The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 13

  Prologue: Team Assignments

  “You ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sheesh. Could you have come from a more inconvenient place?” I grumbled.

  Due to a particular string of events, I was currently in the process of getting ready to depart for a certain country. It had all started when . . . When had it started again? I wanted to say it was when I had Raphtalia change into a miko outfit in this world, but I had a feeling it actually went back a lot further than that. Either way, I was going to avoid taking any responsibility and say it wasn’t my fault.

  I guess I should start with a little bit of background. My name is Naofumi Iwatani. I was originally a university student living in Japan, but for various reasons I ended up getting summoned to another world to serve as the Shield Hero. That new world functioned a lot like a game. People had levels and could gain experience to level up by defeating monsters. The system made it easy to see the results of one’s hard work.

  The reason the people of this world summoned me here was because they wanted me to fight against what they called “waves,” a phenomenon that was threatening to destroy their world. Getting summoned to a parallel universe felt like a dream come true in the beginning. But the country I’d been summoned to was simply rotten and I got caught up in the middle of several big conspiracies. I hate to admit it, but I ended up with a completely warped personality as a result. Just thinking about that stuff made me depressed.

  “Can you blame us for coming here? The Seaetto territory here in Melromarc actually welcomed vagrant demi-humans, after all,” Sadeena replied.

  “My birth is the real problem here, isn’t it?” Raphtalia said quietly with a hint of regret in her voice.

  Raphtalia was the girl who’d become my first companion after I was summoned to this world. In the beginning, I bought her as a slave to make her fight for me, since I had no way of attacking on my own. But we’d been through a lot together since then, and now she was my trusty sidekick. She was also kind of like a daughter to me.

  Thinking back, we sure had come a long way. I would have never been able to imagine a future like this back in the beginning, when I was first summoned here. To summarize what had happened without going into too much detail, it all started with a string of conspiracies in Melromarc, which was the country that summoned me. After finally overcoming all of that, we had to deal with enemies who showed up from a different world on the other side of the waves.

  The waves that we heroes had been summoned to fight were actually a phenomenon that stemmed from the imminent fusion of different worlds. If two worlds failed to defeat the waves caused by their collision, the worlds would fuse together. As a result, the maximum capacity that a single world could contain would be surpassed. Ultimately, the worlds would be torn apart and destroyed. That was pretty much the extent of our current understanding.

  Anyway, we eventually made peace with the enemies that initially crossed over during the waves — Glass, L’Arc, and Therese . Later on, another enemy hijacked the Spirit Tortoise, which was one of the four benevolent animals meant to protect this world. But we defeated him and brought him to justice. For the time being, the Spirit Tortoise’s power had temporarily put a stop to the waves in this world.

  For Raphtalia’s sake, I decided to use that time to rebuild the village where she had been born and raised, since it had been destroyed by one of the waves. As part of that, I’d also gone around buying up the villagers who’d been forced into slavery after leaving the village and then brought them back to the village. I did this so that I could train them to fight for me against the waves, of course. I needed more offensive capabilities, and slaves and monsters raised by a hero would be more powerful than usual.

  After that, I went about rounding up the other three holy heroes, one by one. I took them into protective custody so that we might actually have a chance against the waves. After being summoned to this world, they ran around fighting like it was all just a game. But they finally came to terms with reality and turned over a new leaf. That was what happened in a nutshell, anyway.

  “What do you want us to do? We should go with you, right?” asked Ren.

  “Hold on just a sec,” I replied.

  That was the Sword Hero that just spoke to me. His name was Ren Amaki. In the beginning, he had been all about maintaining his “cool” persona. But he got a bit wonky after experiencing a big failure. He decided to put his faith in Witch, the bitch who had deceived me and framed me for rape. She betrayed him, and he fell into despair once again. After that, a bunch of stuff happened, and now he was staying in my village under my protection.

  After Ren’s reform, among us four holy heroes, his personality actually ended up fitting the hero image the most. He was 16 years old. Honestly, I’d become so warped now that Ren’s innocence could be quite a shock at times. He wasn’t weak, by any means. But he’d been consumed by multiple curses in battle before coming to the village, so he was currently in a weakened state. For now, he was just training and waiting for the effects of the curses to wear off.

  That said, I’d relied on the cursed power of the Shield of Wrath to make it out of my own tight spot, so I was in a weakened state too. Apart from my defense, most of my stats were currently just a bit higher than those of the average adventurer. But Ren had implemented the weapon power-up methods I told him about, so he was definitely far stronger than he had been before coming to the village.

  I mentioned this earlier too, but Ren had been deceived by Witch. Just like I had. Having a shared enemy had given birth to a growing sense of camaraderie between the two of us. After all he’d been through, Ren had become a serious, level-headed guy. But Witch was one person he could never forgive.

  “Where’s Itsuki?” I asked.

  “Right here,” said Itsuki.

  I looked around and saw him standing with Rishia and raising his hand. Itsuki was the Bow Hero. His full name was Itsuki Kawasumi. He’d come to the village fairly recently.

  Just like Ren, Itsuki had been summoned from a different version of Japan than me. He’d originally had a really strong sense of justice. But like Ren, he’d been consumed by a cursed weapon and his personality ended up being corrupted as a result. He had lost practically all sense of identity, not to mention his sense of justice.

  We’d found him fighting in the coliseums of Zeltoble — the country of merchants and mercenaries —under the absolutely cringeworthy alias Perfect Hidden Justice. While there, Witch deceived him, stole all of his money, and left him with a massive pile of debt. I’d agreed to shoulder his debts for the time being, but I certainly had no plan of just writing them off.

  Itsuki’s sense of justice had once saved Rishia and she subsequently joined his party because of it. But Itsuki eventually tossed her aside in his selfishness. After that, she trained under my guidance for a while before facing Itsuki in battle. By that time, she’d grown enough that she was able to defeat him and show him the meaning of true justice.

  Rishia had come from a ruined noble family, apparently. But she was in charge of guiding Itsuki along the path of reform now. She carried a mysterious, semitransparent weapon, and she had become remarkably powerful.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you were here. So yeah, there are several issues at hand here,” I said.

  “What do you mean, Naofumi? Sadeena tried to explain earlier, but it’d be nice if you could put it into terms we could understand,” Ren replied.

  It all started when L’Arc dressed Raphtalia in a miko outfit. L’Arc was a vassal weapon holder, which was his world’s equivalent of this world’s seven star hero. Anyway, the miko outfit looked so good on Raphtalia that I be
gan plotting ways to have her continue wearing one even after we returned to this world. So I had a miko outfit made for her here. But when I had her try it on, it triggered a whole mess of problems.

  Raphtalia had apparently been born into the royal bloodline of a demi-human country named Q’ten Lo, and the official dress reserved for the country’s empress closely resembled the miko outfit. Raphtalia’s parents had no interest in inheriting the throne, so they left the country. But the country’s spies had been keeping tabs on Raphtalia all along.

  I didn’t know about any of that when I had her try on the miko outfit. But in their eyes, Raphtalia was wearing the royal garb and associating with the Shield Hero, who was basically the god of the demi-humans. In other words, they took it as a claim to the country’s throne and decided to eliminate her as a result.

  On top of that, the spies who were keeping tabs on Raphtalia caused a huge disturbance in my territory. And now assassins were going to just keep coming after her, it seemed. That wasn’t the kind of thing I needed to deal with.

  The fact that they had been observing Raphtalia the whole time meant they’d been watching when the village was attacked by the monsters from the wave, when Raphtalia was captured by slave hunters, when she was tortured as a slave, and when she was going through all of the hardships she’d suffered after becoming my slave. And I was certain they were powerful enough to have saved her from pretty much anything. But ultimately, they went so far as to try and kill her when they didn’t like the way things were going.

  I didn’t care what I had to do—I was going to make them pay! That pretty much summed up my thoughts on the issue, so I decided to invade the country known as Q’ten Lo. I’d asked Sadeena where the country was, but she still hadn’t answered me.

  “Sadeena, you still haven’t given me any more than a general overview, either. We have to stop by Siltvelt, right? Can you explain?” I asked.

  “Alright, boys and girls. I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” she replied.

  Sadeena was kind of like a big sister to all of the village slaves, including Raphtalia. She was a demi-human, but she also had a killer whale therianthrope form that she could use. She was oddly powerful for not being a hero.

  Looks-wise, she was pretty much on par with Raphtalia. She also made no attempt to hide her unwelcome sexual advances on me. She’d apparently publicly declared that she would marry the man who could outdrink her, and since I couldn’t get drunk, she was always hitting on me. She was a real pain in my ass. I’d heard she was born in the same country as Raphtalia’s parents and accompanied them here as something like a bodyguard.

  “I want to be sure I have this right. We can’t get to Q’ten Lo without going through Siltvelt, right?” I asked.

  The country we were headed to — Q’ten Lo — was even further to the east than Siltvelt. One had to cross the sea to get there, and the country had sealed itself off from the rest of the world too.

  “Yes, it’s even further east than Siltvelt. It’s also extremely hard to get into,” Sadeena replied.

  “Hard in what way?” I asked.

  Sadeena looked like she was reminiscing about the past.

  “Well, to start, it’s in the middle of the ocean, so you have to travel by boat. There are several small countries along the way that we can ignore. Q’ten Lo lies beyond all of those. The ocean currents are really chaotic, which makes it practically impossible to get there in the first place,” she explained.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “And there’s an even bigger problem. There’s a water dragon in the ocean who keeps a protective barrier in place around the country and guards it carefully. Not even I can break through that barrier,” she continued.

  “Can’t we just defeat the dragon?” I asked.

  If it was being guarded by a monster, then surely we could just defeat the monster.

  “The water dragon remains hidden somewhere in the depths of the ocean below Q’ten Lo. If there’s a way to defeat him, I’d like to know too,” she said.

  Hmm . . . I guess it was like asking how to attack me directly when I had Shooting Star Shield activated. Protection was my specialty, so I could understand just how difficult that would be. It would be easy if we could break through using brute force, but it didn’t sound like that was likely.

  “I guess that means he’s maintaining the country’s barrier from the inside, and while hiding at the bottom of the ocean on top of that,” I said.

  Sadeena nodded. That reminded me. The attackers had called her the water dragon’s former miko priestess or something like that. I wondered if that was why she knew so much.

  “Thanks to that barrier, invading from the air is impossible too. As far as I know, the only way into the country is on a trading ship from Siltvelt. I found that out while still living there,” she added.

  Strange. Q’ten Lo was starting to remind me of Japan from a long time ago. It had isolated itself with extremely limited access to the outside world. I guess that made Siltvelt the equivalent of Portugal or maybe the Netherlands.

  “Then what about using the port to smuggle ourselves in?” I asked.

  “They’ll be on high alert after what happened with little Raphtalia. Getting in without some serious support from Siltvelt is probably going to be difficult,” Sadeena replied.

  I let out a deep sigh. I guess this was going to be a tough one. Under the circumstances, getting into the country secretly would be pretty much impossible. So basically, Sadeena was saying we would have to pry the borders open by force. She did say I should be prepared to crush a country for Raphtalia’s sake, after all. I guess there was no other option. We’d just have to go to Siltvelt and request their help.

  “Got it. We’ll go to Siltvelt and have them prepare a boat for us, then,” I said.

  I had no idea how much time we would lose going to Siltvelt, but we had no choice. Ren and Itsuki didn’t seem to understand the full scope of what going there meant, but I could see a lightbulb turn on in Rishia’s head.

  “So that’s settled. Ren and Itsuki, taking you two to Siltvelt would most likely just complicate matters. In fact, it would probably be downright dangerous,” I said.

  Things were complicated between Siltvelt and Melromarc, which is where we were currently based. The two countries had been on bad terms for ages now. That had a lot to do with me getting framed and put through all kinds of hell here.

  The four holy heroes were four people with holy weapons who were summoned to this world as its saviors. Because of that, the people of the world worshipped the heroes. But the official religion of Melromarc had originally been the Church of the Three Heroes, which worshipped all of the holy heroes except for the Shield Hero. According to the Church of Three Heroes, the Shield Hero was a demon. But it had been a rotten religion, and when the members showed their true colors and started running rampant, we ultimately ousted them.

  It was the opposite in Siltvelt. The official religion there worshipped the Shield Hero. It wouldn’t be unheard of to have related issues arise there. Operating within Melromarc had been easy for the other three heroes, so it was highly likely that the reverse would be true in Siltvelt. Of course, I wanted to think they’d be fine if they were with me. But under the current circumstances, even I was bound to get wrapped up in a mess or two while there. Ren and Itsuki coming would probably just needlessly complicate matters.

  “Then what should we do?” Ren asked.

  “They don’t worship any heroes in Q’ten Lo, do they?” I asked Sadeena.

  “I want to say no. My work limited my exposure to things like that, so I can’t say for certain,” she replied.

  She sure was useless. I guess it wasn’t her fault, though.

  “Anyway, we’ll use my portal to return to the village at regular intervals, so you guys just be ready to join the fight at any time. If you have any spare time, head to the Cal Mira islands and focus on getting rid of those curses,” I said.

  “Got it. If y
ou have any trouble, just call for us any time,” Ren replied.

  “Understood,” said Itsuki.

  “Fehhh . . . We sure got wrapped up in a big mess,” Rishia muttered.

  Yeah, she was right about that.

  “Alright, so that means we need to depart for Siltvelt. I wonder where Filo is,” I said.

  Filo had been the second companion to join me after I was summoned to this world. She was a young girl that was actually a kind of monster called a filolial. Filolials were bird-type monsters that loved pulling carriages more than anything else. When raised by a hero, they could gain a filolial queen form that allowed them to transform into a human.

  In her filolial form, Filo was a white bird with pink highlights on her feathers. When she turned into a human, she was a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. She had a childlike innocence. She was kind of like a celebrity in the eyes of the villagers. There was an incident not long ago that resulted in her level dropping drastically, so she had gone out to level up with her close friend Melty—princess of Melromarc—and my precious familiar, Raph-chan.

  I wondered if she would come back if I used the monster seal to order her to do so.

  “Who knows where they are now,” Raphtalia replied.

  “The monster seal does tell me her general direction. She’d probably come back if I gave her the order.”

  It would probably take a while for her to get back, even if I did give the order, though. I was in a bad mood at the moment. Rather than dealing with that headache, I had a feeling it’d be better to just come up with another plan. I gave up on summoning Filo back. She’d finally gotten the chance to go level up, so interfering with that would’ve made me feel bad too.

  And then a little red dragon raised his hand.

  “Kwa!”

  The dragon’s name was Gaelion, and he was the culprit responsible for the recent incident I just mentioned.

  Not too long ago, I’d been gifted a bunch of supplies as a show of support — most likely from Siltvelt — and there’d been a dragon egg mixed in among them. I wanted to experiment with the dragon at the village, so I decided to raise it with the help of Rat, an alchemist who had come from this world’s largest country, Faubrey.