by Aneko Yusagi
“Yup.”
Fitoria looked to Raphtalia next.
“My name is Raphtalia. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleasure.”
“I’m Filo!”
Filo didn’t wait to be addressed before jumping in.
Fitoria stared at Filo for a moment then directed her gaze to Melty.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we? You love Filolials. You protected me then. Thank you for that.”
“Yes. My name is Melty Melromarc.”
“Okay. I’ll call you Mel-tan.”
Meltan? She didn’t have good taste in nicknames.
Back in my own world, I had a friend that used to add “tan” to everything. That just reminded me of it.
Being an Otaku myself, I was probably in the same category as people that did that though…
“Meltan… Please to formally meet you.”
See? Even Melty made a weird face when she heard it.
“Boo.”
Filo shifted her weight and stepped forward. It almost looked like she was trying to protect Melty from Fitoria.
Was she jealous? She looked like a jealous friend who was mad that their friend was talking to someone else.
I pictured Fitoria saying something like, “Filo, behavior like that will not win you any friends.”
Was I over thinking it? It reminded me of a traumatic scene from a famous game I’d once played.
If we all fell silent here, the conversation would take a weird turn. I decided to hurry things along.
“So? Of course I’ll thank you for defeating that huge monster, the Tyrant Dragon Rex, for us… but… what can we do for you now?”
“I’ll explain the details of it all, but this is not a good place to talk. I’ll show you where to go, so please follow me.”
Fitoria pointed to her carriage. Did she want us to ride in it while she took us somewhere?
“First, we should…”
“Should what?”
Fitoria turned her head to the side again.
I looked over at the Tyrant Dragon Rex’s corpse.
In response, Fitoria furrowed her brow.
“I would rather the Heroes did not use things from dragons to improve their weapons.”
Oh that’s right, Filolials and dragons didn’t get along. Apparently the Queen of the Filolials had the same way of thinking about them.
But that had nothing to do with me. I had to do whatever I could to get stronger.
Especially considering how powerful the Tyrant Dragon Rex had been… I couldn’t afford to ignore materials like that.
“Too bad.”
“Very well then. I’ll have my tribe bring it after us then. Please get into the carriage.
“Will you bring the organs too? Filolials sometimes can’t control their appetites, and I need more than the bones.”
“As you like.”
“Thank you.”
“Naofumi, you’re so petty.”
“Whatever.”
I went over to the shredded Tyrant Dragon Rex and let my shield absorb various parts of its body.
I let it absorb the flesh, bones, scales, horns, fangs, and organs. It unlocked a new shield.
…Or so I thought. Apparently I couldn’t completely unlock the shield without reaching a higher level.
Compared to our own strength, the Tyrant Dragon Rex had been much more powerful, so I suppose it only made sense. My level still wasn’t high enough to unlock the shield I’d gotten after defeating the Zombie Dragon anyway.
“Are you ready?”
Fitoria asked calmly.
“Sure…”
“Okay. And your name was Filo, right? Can you turn into a human and ride with them?”
“I could… but I’d rather pull the carriage.”
“That is my carriage, so you can’t pull it.”
I didn’t know if she really couldn’t let someone else pull it, or if she was childishly rebuffing Filo.
Maybe she really was just like Filo but was pretending to be really important.
“Um…”
“Filo… don’t be selfish. Respect what Fitoria says.”
“Okay!”
Filo calmed down and turned into her human form.
What was with them? Whatever. We all climbed into Fitoria’s strangely gorgeous carriage.
The interior was more spacious than I’d expected. But… I guess we were going to start traveling by carriage.
We were surrounded by a vast herd of Filolials. If we weren’t careful, we’d be spotted soon enough.
I guess Fitoria had cast a force field over us though, so that should keep people away.
If Motoyasu realized that I was in the carriage, he’d come chasing after it—no doubt about that.
“Portal…”
Fitoria stepped in front of the carriage and took the reins before shouting something.
When she yelled, the scenery around us instantly changed.
“What?”
“Huh?!”
“Wh… What’s happening?!”
“W… wow…”
What the hell? This girl clearly had some impressive powers.
“Did we move?”
Games often provide the player with a magical form of transport that will allow them to teleport to places they have already been.
Most famous games seem to have them… I guess they were part of this world too.
And yet… If I hadn’t heard of it yet, then it must be pretty rare.
The Legendary Filolial… Yeah, maybe she did have reason to claim that title.
“We should be able to talk safely here.”
We climbed down from the carriage and took in our surroundings. It was dark, which made it hard to pick out much, but we seemed to be in the forest.
Was it some kind of village in the forest? No… Ruins?
It appeared to be a destroyed castle.
There were stones laid out in lines and buried in the dirt, and here and there stone houses poked out of the gloom. Plants had grown over everything, and the size and extent of the root systems meant that these things must have been here for a while.
Further out, and the forest had taken over.
There was a thick white fog over everything, which limited how far we could see. Vines and shrubbery covered everything, as far as I could see. I couldn’t discern a way out.
“Where are we?”
“This is the country that the original Heroes fought to protect, or the ruins of it anyway. That’s what they say.”
“That’s a vague answer.”
“Well, it’s been here since before I was born. I try to watch over it.”
“Do you live here, Fitoria?”
Melty’s eyes were sparkling again.
“About half the time. My real home is… well… I don’t take people there.”
“Huh…”
“Probably the forest.”
“Yup.”
“It’s so ooooold!”
“You can really feel the history.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
Saying it’s old, or that you feel the history here… Filo and Raphtalia were apparently really sharing the experience. As for me, the fog was so thick that I really didn’t know.
She didn’t really “lead” us here, after all. She’d just transported us. How convenient. How were we supposed to get back?
“Hey, since you just transported us here, I was wondering if you could teleport us to a specific place when it’s time to leave.”
With any luck we could get Motoyasu off our tail for good. Or even better, we could find asylum in the demi-human kingdom without needing to rely on Melty’s mother.
“You just got here, and you’re asking about how to leave?”
“It doesn’t seem like the kind of place we should hang around.”
“What?!”
Melty shouted in disappointment.
What was that all about? Did she want to hang out with t
he Filolials THAT badly?
I wanted to keep this as short as we could. We were just visiting. That’s all.
“For the time being, you should try and get some rest.”
Fitoria raised her hand, and a Filolial appeared from the fog tugging a carriage loaded down with firewood. She set it on fire, making a large bonfire.
That was a good idea, and we probably didn’t need to worry about attracting enemies. The woods didn’t seem to be populated by anything more vicious than a Filolial.
Since the Filolials had invited us here and asked us to rest, there was probably nothing worth worrying about.
Night was falling too. We should probably talk while we rested.
“Okay. It’s definitely better to rest here than where we were before. C’mon everyone. Let’s rest up.”
“Okaaaay!”
“That was a long, tough day.”
“Yes, it was… I sure hope that Keel and the others are all right.”
“Worrying about it won’t help them. If we try to go back to the town they’ll catch us for sure.”
“Yes…”
We all sat down before the campfire and relaxed.
We had piles of Tyrant Dragon Rex meat, and I started to prepare it for dinner.
Luckily enough, the well still seemed to be full of water. I checked to make sure it was safe then decided to prepare a stew.
“Let’s get some food in our bellies.”
I said to Raphtalia and the others as I cooked.
“…”
Filo stuck her index finger into her mouth and stared greedily at the bubbling pot.
There were less of them due to the teleportation, but the surrounding Filolials were looking on hungrily as well.
Dammit. It was hard to eat when everyone was staring at you.
“Um… Naofumi?”
“Mr. Naofumi. It’s hard to eat with everyone looking at us.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Huh? You think so?”
Raphtalia and Melty felt the same way I did. They cradled their bowls and looked around nervously.
Filo was just greedily slurping down her food without a thought.
“You want some food too?”
“May I?”
“Well, we don’t have enough food to feed you at the size you were earlier.”
“That’s all right.”
All I’d done is offer Fitoria some food, but the surrounding Filolials started gawking in response.
“Be quiet.”
All of them fell silent at Fitoria’s reproof but they kept staring on with oppressive determination.
“This is delicious!”
“It is.”
Ugh. Now Filo was staring at me with that look in her eyes. She and Fitoria were like two peas in a pod.
They were different colors though, so I suppose that was proof they weren’t related.
With Melty next to them, they could have all been sisters. They were pretty enough. I could have painted a picture of them.
“Very good.”
Raphtalia had better manners than any of them. She was more dignified.
Melty was dignified too, but she shared something with the ravenous Filolials that made me want to lump them all together.
“What?”
Melty made a face and glared at me.
“Nothing.”
“Were you thinking rude thoughts again?”
“No comment.”
“That means yes, doesn’t it?”
“I was thinking that those two make you look a little unrefined. You should pick your friends better.”
“What was that?!”
There she went again. She could be so noisy.
“Now, now… I was…”
Raphtalia paused in the middle of her sentence to look around at all the Filolials. They stared back.
I couldn’t ignore them either. I felt like the food was going to get caught in my throat. It was starting to get annoying.
“This is getting so annoying! Can’t we just make a really big pot of it? I’ll make whatever they want, just bring me some tools!”
In the end, I couldn’t endure their incessant stares, so I made a giant pot of soup and let them go at it.
All in all, it took a few hours.
Before they’d all finished eating, Raphtalia, Filo, and Melty had all fallen asleep. I was exhausted from all the cooking.
“Whew…”
I was cleaning up the dishes and complaining to myself about why I had to spend my time feeding a bunch of birds when Fitoria came over to me.
“What do you want? There isn’t any left.”
“I know that.”
“Oh. Okay then. What do you want? Can’t it wait until morning?”
I wanted to get some rest.
Huh? Melty and Filo were leaning against some fluffy Filolials and sleeping soundly.
How convenient. It must be nice to get some sleep while someone else does all the work. She was clearly accustomed to living the royal life.
“I was thinking the same thing. But the timing is right, so I’d like to talk a little.”
“What is it?”
“I’d like to know how the sealed monster came to be released.”
“Huh? So you came without knowing that?”
“No… I came because I’d been given a report that a new queen candidate had appeared.”
“A queen candidate? You mean Filo?”
Fitoria nodded.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“What?”
It was a suspicion that had been growing on me ever since Filo had hatched.
“Why does Filo grow so differently than other Filolials?”
Fitoria had said that she was a queen candidate.
That’s why I thought that she might have known the answer.
“Because she’s being raised by a Hero.”
I suspected as much. Filo clearly looked different from other Filolials, and she could even transform into a person. It was because I was raising her?
“I’ve answered your question. Now answer mine.”
I don’t know how much I can tell you. How much do you know about me?”
“I know that you are a Hero that was summoned here because of the waves. I know that you are considered the religious enemy of Melromarc, a human-supremacist nation.”
“Oh…”
Had she learned all of that through word-of-mouth from the other Filolials?
I didn’t know just how well Filolials were capable of communicating with one another, but I wouldn’t have guessed that they were so good at gathering and transmitting information.
“I’m not all-powerful, you know. I forget things a lot.”
“You said it, not me. So anyway…”
I explained everything about how the Tyrant Dragon Rex had come to be freed from the sealing stone.
Then I started telling her about myself. I told her how I’d been summoned, then framed and discriminated against. I told her about all the major events that had happened up until now.
“….Whew.”
Fitoria sighed deeply.
“What?”
“I just get exhausted when I hear of the stupid things the Heroes are occupying themselves with, considering that the waves of destruction are what they should be focusing on.”
“It’s not me. It’s them.”
“I don’t care about that. I just have to carry out the task entrusted to me by my old master… the Hero.”
“Huh…”
“From my perspective, the little fights between humans and demi-humans are irrelevant. The world does not exist just for people. Even still, I cannot stand to see the Heroes quarrel. When the Heroes fight, I can’t achieve what my master entrusted to me.”
“And what is that?”
I guess she meant that a hero from the past had asked her to do something.
Based on what she’d just said, I guess I couldn’t expect Fitoria to interven
e in the battle between humans and demi-humans any time soon.
“It sounds like you’re saying you don’t plan on teaming up, but that you feel like you have to help me because I’m a hero.”
“That’s right. Both the humans and I are in the midst of a very long conflict. A long time ago I decided not to participate. I decided that I would only associate with my tribe, the Filolials.”
What would a long-living monster like this Filolial think of humans? How would she use them?
For convenience? No—if there was a stronger power, a power they couldn't understand, they’d try to get rid of it.
At first they might try worshiping it or something.
Could it be that she’d grown tired of authority and renounced the world so that she could live with her Filolials in the woods? She might pretend to be a normal Filolial and just travel around.
Before Melty had fallen asleep, she kept talking about how she’d met Fitoria before. She was clearly very proud of herself.
It sounded like Fitoria was standing back to watch the way that normal Filolials interacted with humans—something like that anyway.
“Do the four Holy Heroes know? About the hourglasses? I’ve been covering the area entrusted to me, but the four Heroes aren’t doing their part elsewhere.”
“Hourglasses? I know about those.”
“Then why aren’t you participating in the waves?”
What was going on? I was getting a bad feeling. A strong one.
I knew that there were dragon hourglasses in other countries too.
Could it be… Was she saying that waves in other countries came at different times?
“What are you talking about?”
All I knew was that the waves came about once every month.
If they were happening all over the world, I don’t think I’d be able to do much about that.
You’d think that the other countries would try to build up their defenses, so that they wouldn’t need to depend on the heroes for protection. Oh well.
I assumed that one of the past heroes must have asked Fitoria to see to that.
But now she was upset that the summoned heroes weren’t fully devoting their energies to battling the waves?
“I’m not like the other heroes. I may have been summoned here, but I don’t know anything about anything. No one explained anything to me. I just found out there were hourglasses in other places the other day.”
“Very well. I understand. I have another question.”