by Aneko Yusagi
I wondered if there might be some mountain-dwelling ascetics up there too, but we didn’t run into any.
The coalition army followed us up to the tortoise’s shell.
The town we found on the shell was completely ruined, and there were corpses scattered around the streets. The Spirit Tortoise’s servant monsters had probably killed them.
The smell of putrid rot stung my nose.
There were no servant monster bodies to be found. All we found were the bodies of the townspeople.
But the familiars infected the people they killed. We had to be careful of the remaining bodies while we took a look around.
After a short walk, we came upon a building that looked like a temple.
It looked like the sort of place that would give us an important clue. Any gamer would think the same thing.
“Let’s check out that building.”
“Okay.”
“Yay!”
“Oh, yes. I believe that temple was very famous in the area.”
“You know your stuff, Rishia.”
Eclair was saying short prayers over the bodies we passed.
“I read about it in an old travelogue.”
“I came here once, many years ago. It’s like there is nothing left. This is horrible.”
We couldn’t rely on the old lady’s knowledge about the place then.
But at least she had been there once before. That was better than nothing.
I walked up to the temple and looked inside. The building had been severely damaged in the Spirit Tortoise's rampage.
I looked around the interior, but the only thing of interest I found was a mural depicting the Spirit Tortoise.
“What’s that?!”
There was writing in the lower corner of the mural.
It was Japanese.
“What’s it say?”
Those summoned from Japan . . . If you can read these words . . . Know . . . Please . . .
. . . Monster very dangerous . . . After the seal . . . Seventh . . . Destroyed . . .
After looking into it . . . The goal . . . Of the world . . .
Please . . . Intent . . . Do not break the seal.
Those that sacrifice all do so for the world.
Their sacrifice will be rewarded.
Yet pride . . . no . . . Can read these words . . . Then . . . You must for . . . defeat. . .
The way to defeat it is . . .
Eight . . . Hero . . .
—Keichi
Much of the message was too degraded to make out.
But I could fill in some of the blanks myself.
The seventh would break the seal.
That fit with the number on the blue hourglass. Did the seal number count down to this?
The writing was too faded to make out the important parts. What was the “goal” it referenced?
It mentioned sacrifice for the sake of the world, and that lined up with what Fitoria had said.
Hey, this wasn’t an anime or a manga or anything—why were the important parts all missing?
If I hadn’t spoken with Fitoria before, I wouldn't have been able to make heads of tails of most of it.
I looked closer. Most of the writing had faded, but the section after “the way to defeat it” looked like it had been purposefully erased.
The scratch marks looked too old to have been created in the recent awakening. The writing itself looked ancient—so I couldn’t complain about its illegibility. That didn’t make it any easier to read though.
The only other thing I could get from it was the name at the bottom.
I didn’t know his last name, but there must have been a hero named Keichi.
But it was all very old. There was no way to know what sort of person he had been.
Still, I knew there was a high likelihood that he had come from an alternate version of Japan, just like me and the other heroes.
There was no way to know how long ago that mural was painted. And all of our worlds might have been on different timelines.
Ren seemed like he was from a different time. Still, there was no point in guessing at random.
And what was this “eight” that was mentioned at the end? That couldn’t have been referring to the seven star heroes.
It must have said something important, but it was too degraded to read.
Hm...
“Can you read it, master?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow! The writing is so strange.”
“Yeah, I guess they don’t write like this in Melromarc.”
“Is this the kind of writing system they use where you are from, Mr. Naofumi?”
“Yeah. Remember how I read that other thing?”
“Oh yes, that’s right.”
“Hero writing?”
Eclair whispered as she ran her hand over the letters.
Hero writing? That was the sort of thing an otaku would flip over. It did sound kind of exciting.
“Hero writing?”
“Yes. You probably know about it already, Rishia. It’s the kind of writing that the ancient heroes left behind. It’s from their world.”
“It’s just normal Japanese. Nothing special.”
“The writing means something different depending on the hero who wrote it. Deciphering the messages can be very difficult.”
I could sort of understand what she meant.
So Ren and I might use the same characters to write, but there was always the chance that the words themselves could be different.
Words and their meanings change and evolve over time. Something that was said a long time ago could carry a different meaning when spoken in the present.
So the writing could mean different things, even if it was written with the same characters, depending on who wrote it.
It was possible to study the writing, but how would you even know if you were interpreting it properly?
“Has this been analyzed?”
“Um . . . Well, this land has adhered to isolationist policies for the last hundred years or so. It was very difficult to enter or leave it. So I don’t know.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. They wished to protect their unique culture. Our own land was running out of resources due to all the wars at the time.”
Did that mean this was the only chance anyone had yet had to read the mural? And was I the only person who could read it?
I’m sure someone else, some studied expert, could read it too.
But could we really be sure that all the heroes had all come from Japan?
If we found messages in English, that would be fine too, but what if they were in another language?
But then there were the characters themselves.
My shield could translate languages, so I’d been doing alright this whole time. Written language, on the other hand . . .
“It doesn’t look like there is much else for us to learn here.”
“No, it doesn’t it.”
“This temple was famous. What a shame that it was ruined by the Spirit Tortoise.”
“Feh . . . Yes, it’s very sad.”
I turned to the two of them and indicated it was time to move on.
“Where shall we go next?”
“To the castle we saw earlier? It might be filled with useful materials.”
“Wait, Mr. Iwatani. What do you intend to do with the castle’s treasure?”
Eclair shot me a suspicious look.
Raphtalia gave an exasperated sigh.
“The owners are all dead, so I thought it would make the most sense for us to take what is useful.”
“Isn’t that just like looting a disaster area?”
She was technically right. . .
But there were sure to be people out there that needed those materials more than we did. They could be used to help other towns rebuild.
“We can distribute the materials to communities affected by the Spirit Tortoise’s rampage.”
“I suppose you
are right.”
“Or shall we surrender it all to the coalition army? They are heading for it as we speak.”
“What?!”
Eclair gazed at the castle. A line of coalition army soldiers was heading for the doors.
Say what you want. Armies always behaved this way.
I hadn’t been face-to-face with this stuff much lately, but the army was full of jerks. Not that I was one to talk.
“We cannot permit such barbarism! Mr. Iwatani, we must go stop them.”
“Oh, yeah, right, right. Filo, take Eclair over there.”
“Okay! Let’s go, lady! Your hair is like red veggies!”
“Red veggies?”
Eclair was stunned by Filo’s “special” way of viewing things.
Granted, most of us wouldn’t take kindly to being called vegetables.
If she’d talked to me like that, I would have given her an earful.
“Listen up. My name is Eclair. I expect you to remember that, Ms. Filo.”
“Um . . . Declaria?”
“No! Did you even listen to me?”
They both looked crazy to me.
I decided to tell the queen about what the coalition army was doing.
“Hey, old lady! Do me a favor and tell the queen about this.”
“Very well. When I return I will accompany my disciple, Eclair, and help her defend the treasure.”
She quickly ran from the temple ruins.
That just left Raphtalia, Rishia, and I.
“Let’s continue looking into this.”
“Alright.”
“Fehh . . . It’s so quiet. It’s kind of scary!”
She was right—temples were kind of scary. They always made you feel like you were going to run into a ghost.
I guess ghosts were just ordinary monsters in this world.
“Hope we don’t run into any ghosts or undead monsters!”
“Fehhh!”
The sun was starting to set, which helped with the creepy atmosphere.
“Mr. Naofumi, you’re scaring Rishia. Please don’t get her too excited.”
“I know, I know. Let’s leave the town to the army. Want to go check out the mountain?”
“Yes.”
We went to the mountain and looked around for a little while. But we didn’t find anything of interest, so we called off the investigation.
We did find a cave, and it seemed to lead into the inside of the tortoise’s body, just like the legends had said. When the sun rose the next day, we went back to check the cave out in more detail but were not able to find a passage that led to the inside of the monster.
In the end, all we found during our investigation of the Spirit Tortoise was an eerie, empty mountain, and a town full of the sleeping dead.
Epilogue: A Disquieting Place
We didn’t find the heroes, but we eventually made our way to the town where they were last seen.
Eclair and the old lady were off searching for the heroes on their own.
Rishia had wanted to go with them, but she was a bookish girl, so I figured she’d be most useful back at the Melromarc library researching the legends about the Spirit Tortoise.
The new town we found ourselves in had been damaged in the Spirit Tortoise’s rampage, but there were a number of survivors, and they had already begun the rebuilding efforts.
Oh, and while we’d killed all the ones that were hanging around the tortoise, off in other places, the familiar monsters were still causing trouble.
We saw them from the road sometimes. They must not have been completely dependent on their master.
“Hey! Ren! Motoyasu! Itsuki! If you’re around, come on out! It’s not your fault that you lost to that thing!”
“Mr. Naofumi, you don’t sound like you actually want to find them.”
“I’ve been yelling their names for how many days now?”
Three days had passed since we defeated the Spirit Tortoise.
I still had no idea where the other heroes were wandering about, but I wanted to hurry up and find them.
Their party members were also still unaccounted for. All in all, we were looking for a pretty big crowd of people. How could so many people have vanished without a trace?
“But I heard that the only one that helped in the last battle was the Shield Hero.”
We were passing through a damaged town center when I heard some adventurers talking about the Spirit Tortoise.
Raphtalia and Filo were resting in the carriage, so I decided to go visit an adventurer’s guild and see if I couldn’t find any new information.
Considering how major all the recent events had been, I thought there was a good chance that someone would know something.
“Really? What about the other three heroes? They call them the four holy heroes, so there must be three more, right?”
“I heard they tried to take the tortoise on by themselves and ended up disappearing.”
“Did they lose or did they run away? Maybe it was just other people pretending to be heroes.”
I eavesdropped on their conversation as I walked up to the reception counter of the guild and showed the staff a portrait of Ren and the others.
In the end no one knew anything.
Where the hell had they gone?
“If that’s true, then we really can’t count on the heroes for much, can we?”
“I know. Anyway, I’m gonna get going. I guess we just met, but you look out for yourself, you hear?”
“Yeah, thanks for the chat.”
The adventurers finished their conversation.
They were complaining about the heroes, but I guess that’s just how people talked.
There was no point in trying to correct them. I decided to just let it go.
I left the counter and starting thinking about whether or not we should move on to the next town. Then I heard it.
“You might be the strongest of the four holy heroes, Shield. But this isn’t over. Next time more people will die.”
“?!”
I turned to see who was talking, but there was no one there.
I thought I saw a few slips of paper fluttering to the ground, as if the speaker had just disappeared with some kind of trick.
What was that? The voice sounded like it might have been one of the adventurers I’d just been eavesdropping on.
I was carrying a shield, but I hadn’t announced to anyone in that town that I was the Shield Hero, and no one in the area should have recognized my face.
I showed the guild staff a paper that the queen had given me, but it didn’t indicate anywhere that I was the Shield Hero.
So how had the voice known who I was? Had I just imagined it?
“A hallucination? Or maybe I was talking to myself?”
I had a bad feeling about it. The ominous words hung over my head for a while.
It felt too ominous, too bad to brush off as a hallucination.
The blue hourglass was still blinking in my peripheral vision too. Something wasn’t right.
There must still be something important about the Spirit Tortoise that we didn’t know. We’d looked into it all we could. The queen and the army were still investigating.
I still needed to focus on finding the missing heroes.
When I found them, I had to find a way to make sure they understood how weak they were. That was the only way that they would listen to what I had to say.
But if they would listen, then maybe we could power-up enough to survive whatever was coming.
If they were alive, I wanted them to show their faces.
“Did you find the heroes?” Raphtalia asked as I climbed into the carriage.
“No. Nothing.”
“Oh...”
Raphtalia looked upset.
Of course she would be. The whole world was going crazy. It was hard to smile.
“Hey, master!”
“What is it, Filo?”
She sat there, gripping the reins and pointing to
a collection of stalls that lined the street.
“I’ve never seen that kind of food. I wanna eat it!”
She was the same pig she’d always been.
“Right...”
Were they selling local delicacies? I saw a dish that looked a lot like yakisoba .
It was like the Napolatta that Raphtalia had when we went to that lunch spot a long time ago.
Napolattta, to a Japanese person, looked just like a pasta dish.
There was a griddle where they fried pasta-like noodles in an original sauce.
“I can make that myself. Just wait a while.”
“But—”
She really looked like she wanted to fight me for a second. Give me a break.
The food was more expensive than I wouldn't have expected, probably because of all the damage the Spirit Tortoise caused.
We had so much food in the carriage too. I thought I could make it myself, so I told her we couldn’t buy any.
“But I want to eat it!”
“Filo, if you calm down, then Mr. Naofumi will make you some. Okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll make you some for dinner. So chill out.”
“Really? You promise?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
I didn’t know what to do about the sauce though. I’d just have to mix some stuff together and hope for the best.
Filo finally settled down and started pulling the carriage.
Hm...
“Mr. Naofumi, what’s wrong?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You’ve been lost in thought since you got back.”
“I was just thinking how all of this has left a nasty aftertaste in my mouth.”
“I know what you mean.”
She looked like she’d realized something.
“Mr. Naofumi.”
“What?”
She raised her face and looked straight into my eyes.
“Whatever happens, we can get through it. Just like we have until now. We just need to keep training.”
“You’re right.”
We were training to prepare for the unknown, for the unpredictable.
So we had to stay optimistic and hopeful. We had to keep moving forward.
“Let’s stick to the plan for now. Let’s go find those heroes.”
“Yes!”