by Aneko Yusagi
Big sister can swim just as well as I can!”
“Well, isn’t that something?”
I’d watched Filo swim for a few days now. She could stay underwater for quite a while. She could really hold her breath.
If Raphtalia could match that, then it was pretty impressive.
“Well I am from a fishing village, so I’m a pretty decent swimmer.”
“I guess that settles it then. Let’s go check this place out.”
“I wonder what the monsters in the ocean are like?”
“We’re pretty strong now. I’m sure we’ll be alright.”
“I hope so.”
We had never fought in the water before. Eventually we were going to have to learn how to do it.
“Ride on my back!”
Filo turned into her filolial queen form and jumped into the water.
We could climb on her back and go wherever we wanted. I guess we never really needed to use a boat.
We climbed onto her back, and she lunged forward into the surf.
“It’s down there.”
We had left the island pretty far behind and were getting out into deeper water when Filo indicated the location.
“Let’s change into the kigurumi and swim down there then.”
Fumbling on Filo’s back, we pulled the kigurumi on.
Raphtalia still wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but eventually we had the new equipment on and were ready,
“Alright, let’s dive.”
“Okay.”
“This looks so strange.”
“Too bad. This is the only equipment we have that will let us swim to the bottom.”
We grumbled about it, but a second later and we were diving below the waves.
Wow! It was incredible! We could swim with so little effort, we didn’t really need to try to hold our breath, and the littlest kick sent us moving swiftly through the water. I didn’t care how it looked. I could get used to this.
Filo pointed the way and kept on swimming downwards.
We followed her, and soon enough we saw something that appeared to be an island rising from the ocean floor below.
Had it sunk or something? It was glowing red, just like the island had been when we first approached.
We dove towards it.
Ten minutes had elapsed since we started to dive.
It was amazing that we were able to stay underwater for that long. This world really was like a game—if you had the right equipment you could basically do anything.
Even still, I felt like I was starting to approach my limit. I don’t think we’d be able to stay under for more than 20 minutes.
Luckily, we didn’t run into any monsters while we were swimming.
If we had gotten in a fight, I wasn’t totally sure what we were going to do. Could Raphtalia swing her sword under water? Before I had to worry about it any more, we arrived at the island.
It didn’t seem like there were any monsters lurking about. Besides, if we wasted time with a battle we were sure to run out of air. I looked around the island and quickly spotted something artificial. It looked like a building.
We swam over to get a better look. It seemed to be a temple of some kind.
Was it a water temple? The door was shut tight.
I reached out to touch it. When I did, the jewel in the center of my shield started to glow, and the heavy door creaked open on its own. I looked over to Raphtalia.
We were going to run out of breath soon. Should we go to the surface?
A bubble of air plopped out of the opening door. Was there air inside? I swam to the bottom and looked up, into the temple.
The surface of the water broke soon after the entrance, and it looked like we could climb into the temple to get out of the water.
I motioned for Raphtalia and Filo to follow me.
“Ha!”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know . . . .”
We all took deep breaths and looked around to get a sense of the place. It was pretty dark, but our eyes soon adjusted. We were in a large room built from stone. The interior of the building looked dry, and the water was only there in the entrance. We walked deeper into the temple.
“It’s so dark.”
“Should I use some of my light magic?”
“Yeah.”
Raphtalia chanted a spell and the room lit up. When the room came into view, I could hardly believe my eyes.
“What the . . . .”
Large and looming in the center of the room stood a giant dragon hourglass.
To make matters even more mysterious, the top portion seemed to be nearly empty. Like it had been counting down to our entry.
What was a dragon hourglass doing in a place like this?
I remember that Fitoria had mentioned it. She’d said that waves occurred in other places too, places without people.
This must have been one of those places.
What should we do? The area might have been under Fitoria’s control, but it didn’t seem wise to just ignore it either.
The islands were full of adventurers and tourists. If a wave happened now, the destruction would be immense.
The wave wouldn’t be confined to the island either.
The ocean all around would overflow with monsters. It would be exceedingly dangerous.
“We need to hurry back and report this to the soldiers.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
I held my shield up to the hourglass.
A light flashed from the hourglass and entered the jewel in my shield. The remaining time appeared in my field of view.
48:21
There were two days left before the countdown ended.
“There’s a dragon hourglass in the underwater temple?”
When we have back to the main island, I called an emergency meeting of the heroes.
“But that . . . .”
“If you don’t believe me, I’ll take you there right now.”
“I’m not calling you a liar.”
“At the bottom of the ocean? I remember a really rare quest like that in my game.”
Itsuki responded exactly how I assumed he would.
“So what do you want to do? Ignore it?”
If we ignored it, a wave of monsters would wash over the islands.
At the very least, we needed to evacuate the islands. That would do a lot to prevent loss of life.
But if what Fitoria has said was true, then the heroes had a responsibility to do something about it.
I thought that if the heroes ignored the hourglass, Fitoria might show up and kill us all.
“It’s a good chance to put our new powers to the test. I’m not against it.”
“Me neither. It’ll be a good challenge if Naofumi is telling the truth.”
“I’m not lying. I’ll take you there.”
Both Motoyasu and Itsuki were on board with going because they wanted to put there new, higher level parties to the test.
“Huh? Give me a break, who cares?”
But one hero didn’t seem interested.
It was the Sword Hero, Ren. He’d been quiet for the whole conversation. Now he said he didn’t care and acted like he was about to leave.
“Hey, haven’t we been charged with protecting the world? Are you going to turn your back on it?”
I thought that he LIKED fighting. Was he saying that he didn’t care what happened to the world one way or another? He was starting to piss me off.
I grabbed his hand before he could leave. He shook me off.
“Don’t touch me. I didn’t come here to make friends with you all. If you three think you can handle it on your own, then I’m going to leave the islands.”
That struck me as strange. Why was he acting like that?
I slipped my arms under his and grabbed him, to keep him from leaving.
I wondered if I was breaking a rule of some sort by restraining a hero.
But nothing happened. As long as I
wasn’t attacking him directly I guess it was okay to restrain him.
“Let me go!”
Ren started violently writhing and tried to throw me off. What was it with him?
“Motoyasu! Itsuki! Make Naofumi stop this! I’m not going to let you force me to fight!”
Haha! I suddenly understood what was going on. It seemed like Motoyasu and Itsuki figured it out too.
“Ren, you don’t know how to swim, do you?”
“What? No! That’s not it! Fine. If you want me to come so badly, I will. I’ll do it for you. Be grateful.”
He couldn't swim, so of course he didn’t want to go to an underwater temple. And if a wave of destruction was going to come to the islands, he wanted to make sure that he was somewhere else.
That had to be it.
Ren was still refusing, and it looked like he was preparing to fight back in earnest.
“Naofumi, you better let me go before you get hurt. “
“Go ahead and try.”
“ARRRRRGGGGH!”
He thrashed violently and tried to throw me off, but I had him from behind and he couldn’t get at me.
Was he really that scared of the water?
“What are you going to do?”
“Are you really afraid of the water? Naofumi, just drag him into the ocean and let’s go.”
“Sure.”
I couldn’t believe I was agreeing with Motoyasu, but I was. We had to see if Ren was lying.
If he tried to look cool and pretend that he could swim when he really couldn’t we’d end up in deep trouble by the time we got to the water temple.
“Hey! Stop it! I can swim, so just let me go!”
“Fine.”
I dragged Ren over to the docks.
“Itsuki, you can swim, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you wouldn’t lie like Ren here, would you? You’ll have to prove it eventually.”
“That’s fine.”
“Let me goooooo!”
“Ren is always acting so cool. How lame is it that he can’t swim?!”
Motoyasu was gloating and laughing at Ren.
“I . . . I CAN swim.”
“Then show us.”
I loosened my grip on him, and Motoyasu kicked Ren off the pier and into the water.
“?!”
With a pathetic look on his face, Ren fell straight into the water, headfirst.
Bubbles came floating to the surface behind him, but Ren went on sinking.
“ . . . .”
“ . . . .”
“He’s not coming up, is he?”
“Oh well.”
I jumped into the water after him. The water wasn’t deep at all, but Ren was randomly struggling at the bottom.
I slipped my arms around him and pulled him up. The idiot. He’d drown in four feet of water!
“Upah! You idiots! Why are you doing this!?”
Ren was furious, but not intimidating at all.
“You didn’t waste a minute drowning.”
He hadn’t even been in the water 30 seconds.
He could have just stood up, but he just let himself sink—it was a scene I wouldn’t soon forget.
“Doesn’t look like Ren is going to be much help.”
“That’s not good for the rest of us.”
It was a serious loss to lose one of our main offensive heroes.
“I can swim!”
“You still say that after what we all just saw?
We weren’t going to be able to take him with us, which meant that we were going to have to think about another strategy.
“When the waves come, we’ll have to be in a boat or something. Then we can leave Ren in the boat any time we have to be in the water.”
He was going to be a burden, but if we were in a boat, then he wouldn’t be completely useless.
“Who knows what’s going to happen. But let’s plan on using the boat.”
“Good idea.”
“What about the rest of you. I hope you’ve realized that you can add support troops to your party during the waves.”
Motoyasu and Itsuki both winced.
I wasn’t making fun of them or anything. I was just telling them the truth.
“Yes, we understand.”
“Of course we know that!”
“Then let’s talk strategy. What sort of formation are you thinking of using? It will depend on the situation, but what sort of patterns do you have in mind?”
“Naofumi, you sound like you know your stuff.”
“Are you three still thinking of these huge scale battles as if they were the exact same thing you’ve encountered in the games you know?”
If I was being honest, I was an otaku myself.
So I had a ton of knowledge about event battles in MMOs.
It’s not like I was the strongest player, or that I’d maxed out my stats or anything like that, but I did really enjoy these exciting events when they happened online.
I used to make my own guilds and teams. I recruited all the players by myself. I really enjoyed those sorts of events, and so I felt like I knew how to play them most effectively. They were one of my favorite parts of online games.
The waves of destruction did seem to have a lot in common with those sorts of events.
“I have experience with things like this from games I’ve played, but the mechanics are not the exact same. It sounds like these sorts of events were part of the games that you all are used to.”
“I already told you that I have experience with this stuff.”
Motoyasu disagreed—not that I really cared.
Motoyasu might have had experience of a sort, but it sounded like he had never been in charge. He’s always let the other players figure things out.
He might as well have not known anything at all.
“Motoyasu, your experience was always just as a participator, right? Have you ever fought in a guild of like 50, or a hundred people?”
“No . . . are you saying that you have?”
“Yeah.”
I had once set up and run the third most powerful guild on a server.
“Really?”
“If you think I’m lying, just try to remember what happened during the last wave. Pretty much all the villagers escaped unharmed.”
Itsuki and Motoyasu shot me some disgruntled looks. Whatever, I was only stating the facts.
They both knew plenty about the world, but that didn’t mean that they were experienced.
Diplomacy was necessary, even in games. Equipment and leveling could only take you so far. You needed an instinct for command.
“I can figure out the basics and tell people what to do. But I think that there are people in this world that know better than we do, so I’d rather just leave it up to them.”
They were still thinking of it as a game. How much use were they going to be in a real battle? At the end of the day, a game is just a game.
Once formations were formed, we’d have to deal with offense, retreats, and holding patterns. Just getting an army together wasn’t the end of the job. People that played these games were not natural soldiers.
There was no guarantee that the people you played with would respect your commands, so there was always an element of unpredictability due to the individual players. All you could really do was point out weaknesses and time your attacks.
But in this world, there were actual soldiers.
If you tried to utilize actual troops the same way that you used online gamers, you weren’t going to get the same result.
And besides, there were rules that governed behavior in games that weren’t applicable here. In this world, you could do anything.
But in this case, the waves of destruction were a mystery—you never knew quite what to expect when the time came.
Furthermore, there were way more classes and jobs here than there were in games. So the possibilities were far more varied. For example, I was used to online battle events where
large armies tried to control the opposing team’s fort. The walls around the fort were indestructible, so you couldn’t destroy the fort by breaking down its defenses.
But here, I was sure that you could break down a wall if you were strong enough. If so, then it would require a different strategy all together.
“We should call for reinforcements from Melromarc. We’ll have to use the formation function to get them to participate in the battle. They will be really useful because they understand how to fight in this world.”
“Alright. I’m starting to understand.”
“That’s a very roundabout way of saying that you want to depend on the castle troops.”
He wasn’t wrong. But it’s not like I could hope to depend on the other heroes. Hadn’t they realized yet that they weren’t going to be able to face down the waves on their own?
“Anyway, here’s how I see it. We call for reinforcements, but we have to act as the high level players in the battle. We have to lead the charge and break through the defenses. We need to assume that we are the secret weapon here. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“I hate to admit it, but you’re right.”
“I can swim!”
“Ren, are you still harping on that? Regardless, we are going to the water temple, so we’ll find out soon enough how well you can swim.”
“What? You want me to come with you? I thought I was supposed to go call for reinforcements?!”
“Nope, here’s a kigurumi. Wear it. I’ve got three.”
“What is that thing?!”
Motoyasu burst out laughing when he saw the pekkul kigurumi.
“I know it looks stupid, but it gives you great abilities when you’re in the water. Didn’t you guys get the drop items from the island bosses?”
“Yes, but I received a risuka kigurumi.”
“Yeah, and I got a usauni kigurumi.”
“Mine was an inult kigurumi.”
There was no overlap at all. I wanted to laugh. I pictured us all wearing the different kigurumi and it was hard not to smile.
The fact that they were actually good pieces of equipment only made it worse somehow. Raphtalia had really resisted wearing one too.
“Anyway, we all received the drops, but I certainly didn’t end up with THREE of them.”
“Sure, the bosses didn’t appear all that frequently, but they were just weaklings, so eventually I ended up with three.”