The Rising of the Shield Hero Vol 14 Page 13

  “Little Naofumi. A woman needs to maintain some mystery if she is to allure men.”

  “Enough games. I launched this whole attack on Q’ten Lo in order to deal with Raphtalia’s problems.” At my demand, Sadeena took a drink, looked and me, and then slammed the cup down. Huh? There was a cup on the opposite side from me?

  “Very well. Having come this far, it may be worth explaining things a little more.” Her voice was different from her normal mocking tone. She sounded just like she had when she drank Raphtalia under the table prior to the Q’ten Lo attack. So she was finally ready to discuss this seriously. “What do you want to know first? You already know some details about Raphtalia’s parents already, correct?” They were the bloodline of the Heavenly Emperor and left the nation due to the fighting over succession. I knew that much.

  “I would like to hear that from you too, but first things first. I need to ask about you, Sadeena.” Lots of people knew Sadeena, and she was often called by various names, including the water dragon’s miko priestess and the miko priestess of carnage. I knew she’d worked in lots of different professions, but I had so much more that I needed to ask, especially in regard to how she never held back, even slightly, when fighting her own kind. We’d recently been able to capture them alive more often, but until entering Q’ten Lo, many of them had chosen to kill themselves rather than be captured.

  I continued to inquire. “You’re incredibly strong for one of your race, and I’ve never seen anyone use magic like you.” We’d fought members of Sadeena’s race numerous times, but I was yet to see anyone use the same lightning magic as Sadeena. I’d expected to face a horde of Sadeenas, but that hadn’t happened. Not yet. Still, those battles hadn’t been easy, with the nullification of our hero weapons forcing a reliance on pure technique.

  “Oh my, you might be right. You’ve been doing so well, little Naofumi, so I guess I can share more of myself with you.” With all her mocking stripped away, for once Sadeena actually started speaking honestly. “The village, settlement, whatever you want to call it, that I come from. We have some serious issues, even among our own race.”

  “Differences between your people, you mean?” I wondered. There were numerous different types of killer whale, after all. Quite different when compared to each other. A total of four types had been observed, if I recalled correctly, including resident fish eaters, transient marine mammal eaters, and offshores, or something like that. So they were a race like that, similar but not the same.

  “You’re careful with use of your demi-human and therianthrope forms, aren’t you? Any reasons for that?” I pondered.

  “I stay in my therianthrope form as much as possible, it’s true, in order to appear my most capable. I only use my demi-human form when I want to avoid attention, things like that. It was like that in Siltvelt, right?” I remembered Werner and those guys paying attention to that. The demi-human form was used as a way of showing no intent to attack. Sadeena likely created the impression of her therianthrope form being her normal state and then used the demi-human form for infiltration and the like.

  “Although in Q’ten Lo the orca whales are probably treated as a related species and the same race,” I ventured. This linked back to my previous discussion on killer whales. Those without the ability to turn into demi-humans were just called orcas. They were a closely related but different race and also treated differently from the “orcinus.” Yes, this could all get confusing.

  “Maybe my family was a little more involved with our bloodlines. Humans do that too, sometimes, don’t they?” she contemplated.

  “Yeah, sometimes. It was pretty clear in Melromarc, places like that.” The queen, and Melty, probably had good families and were definitely invested in bloodlines. The queen said something about the bloodline of the Shield Hero when Witch framed me.

  “My family is the house that serves the water dragon and the house who carries out the punishments of the Heavenly Emperor. In other words, his executioners. The house that does all the dirty jobs, basically,” she explained.

  “Hold it there.” Man, having a sister to replace Sadeena? A pretty twisted family.

  “Yes?”

  “So you serve the water dragon but act on behalf of Raphtalia’s family? Isn’t that a bit strange?”

  “Well, like I said, it’s our role to do the dirty jobs for those of noble standing, although it’s treated as delivering the punishment of the gods,” she went on. Hmmm. A complicated position, then.

  “So you basically do the stuff the water dragon and Heavenly Emperor don’t want to?”

  “Oh my, well, if you put it like that, yes. The miko are positioned as the miko in service of the two gods.”

  “Okay, so moving on. Sadeena, you can use that lightning magic because of what? You’ve received some kind of special blessing?” I asked. Sadeena was a melee fighter and could use magic, and even cooperative magic, making her an incredibly versatile, all-round fighter. Even if her innate abilities weren’t considered, her specs were just too high.

  “Oh, you’re making me blush! All of these probing questions.”

  “Stop joking around.” Sadeena had a talent for diverting the topic with those kinds of comments. I wasn’t going to let her escape this time though.

  “I was born with this lightning magic. It’s rare too, so I’m told. There have been others with this power in my family, apparently, so maybe it’s a family thing?”

  “Hmmm. So you were born with it?”

  “The orca whale and orca are generally based in water magic, but my family tends to have quite different properties.”

  “So it’s an aspect of your family?”

  “Maybe. But I’m an especially rare example. Just like how you don’t get drunk, little Naofumi.” How could I respond to that? Eating the rucolu fruit was considered disgusting. People even considered it sacrilegious. “By the time I was self-aware, I was aware of my lightning magic and could already use it.” Being able to control lightning freely underwater, that had to be powerful. To be honest, the only time I’d even seen her close to being in trouble was when she fought us—and even then, I wasn’t sure she was being serious during that battle.

  So the fight with the Demon Dragon? Maybe that was the only time she really couldn’t do anything.

  “My house has long served the water dragon, you see. I started my work as the miko at a pretty young age and underwent rapid maturation since I was small.” Demi-humans and therianthropes could be rapidly matured by leveling them up. Raphtalia had a big gap between her appearance and actual age too. Did this mean Sadeena had received a special education since she was small?

  “After that, I started doing work for the village and nation. That’s why I don’t have many friends my own age,” she said.

  “It all makes sense now.”

  “Oh, little Naofumi, you’re so mean!”

  “Yeah, yeah. How did that environment turn you into this person, then?”

  “Who knows? I’m not sure about that myself.” Was this really just her natural personality?

  “Also, I guess being able to train as much as I liked at the castle of the Heavenly Emperor in the old city is a part of it. I had the chance to learn whatever martial arts I wanted, from all sorts of people.”

  “You make it sound simple.”

  “You think it’s okay for me to be a bit conceited here? Like, maybe I’m just an Atla-level combat genius?”

  “Asking if it’s okay to be conceited is a bit odd, you know,” I quipped. It was true though. In all aspects, combat sense, everything, she was a bit of a high-spec monster. In fact, I almost felt like asking what she was bad at. In terms of being able to learn anything by watching it, just like Atla, Sadeena could indeed be said to have the same combat sensibilities.

  “You do have an excellent sense for combat. I’ll admit that,” I maintained.

  “You praised me! Yay!”

  “This isn’t a ‘yay’ situation!”

  “My real
reason was the drinking after the training, of course.”

  “I should have known. So you’ve been drinking since way back when?”

  “Yeah, come to think of it. I guess I was avoiding reality. I had a lot of pressure from my family, stuff like that.”

  “I bet I could have had an honest conversation with you back then too.” I said. Sadeena gave a wry smile at my comment.

  “If I’d met you back then, little Naofumi, maybe I would have turned out like Atla.” I didn’t think they were so different even now, but I managed to hold that in. Still, if Sadeena came at us full strength, I didn’t think Raphtalia or Fohl would be able to stop her.

  She continued. “We’re getting off topic, anyway. I did three jobs. First, my work as the water dragon’s miko priestess. This involved listening to the voice of the water dragon, receiving his blessings, and conducting divine ceremonies. Well, my parents did the ceremonies, so I really just listened to the voice of the water dragon.” Sadeena was the miko priestess. A bit of a delinquent one, perhaps. I could easily picture her stealing holy wine and getting wasted on it. “I can still say all the prayers,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not interested in what I did as miko?”

  “I just need an overview, not a play-by-play.”

  “You really don’t cling to the past, do you, little Naofumi. I love that about you.”

  “I don’t see why,” I said. It didn’t sound like much of a compliment.

  “Next job, the miko for the Heavenly Emperor. Here there were also a variety of priestesses serving other things. And priests as well. If you must know, I was the representative of my species. When it came to the crunch, I had to fight a variety of foes as the symbol of authority.”

  “So more a general than a miko?”

  “You’re not wrong. These jobs are treated as priestesses and priests because they serve a god. The old guy’s master, the one who gives you so much trouble? Technically, he’s also a priest.” Man. That pickup artist, a priest?

  Anyway, this meant it was like a noble rank, a title given to the best of the nation’s generals and artisans. Hmmm. This really was quite a unique culture.

  “Then, as an extension of that, the one responsible for handling the dark side of the country was the representative of the orca whale race, the water dragon’s miko priestess,” she continued to explain.

  “You were an executioner? One who puts criminals to death?”

  “That’s right. My role was that of executioner. That’s why I was called the priestess of carnage.”

  “I see.” From what I was learning of the nation when Sadeena was here, it was clear she had occupied a pretty twisted position. It seemed there was still a lot I wasn’t being told too.

  “I had to perform all sorts of different executions. Shocking with lightning magic, chopping off heads with a katana, running them through with a harpoon. All sorts.”

  “Whew.”

  “There are all sorts of detailed stipulations about how to conduct the execution, depending on the crime. We might be a small country, but you’d be surprised. It also fed back into the issues we were having as a nation.” In regard to executions, my limited experience was just violent comics and games and materials from long ago that I’d seen online. So I was completely unable to imagine the suffering of Raphtalia and the others, those who had undergone real torture.

  “At my own discretion, I also sometimes fought the condemned. Like, if they could beat me, they could go free. That made it easier for them to accept their fate. A fight to the death rather than just being put to it.” Sadeena had been forced to perform executions, just because it was her job. So she’d alleviated her guilt by giving the other side the illusion of a chance. I wasn’t affirming her decision, necessarily, but someone had needed to do it. The dirty jobs, in the right way.

  To put it one way, Sadeena was somehow broken as a human. But with an awareness of that, she’d also managed to overcome it. Somehow, even though she was older than me, I felt a weakness in Sadeena I hadn’t seen before.

  “I see.” It would be easy to provide some cheap sympathy and pretend to understand, but that wasn’t going to console Sadeena. That said, about the only thing I could do was sit at her side and silently listen to what she had to say.

  So silence it was.

  Sadeena gave her wine bottle a shake, gave me a cup, and then poured. She didn’t want sympathy. Just listening was enough.

  I took the cup, which brimmed with wine, and drank it down.

  Sadeena laughed, and it didn’t look like bravado to me; she really was enjoying this moment. Even if Sadeena suffered everything that I’d personally been through, the same litany of pain, she might still be sitting there laughing.

  In fact, I was starting to feel a bit stupid, dragging so much baggage along with me. Just thinking that, though, certainly wasn’t enough for me to be able to cut it all free.

  “Sounds like a workplace with a lot of problems.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My only real concern was not being an oracle.”

  “Ah, that suspicious power again,” I said. That comment got Sadeena laughing. It didn’t feel like she was drunk, but something else. Something a bit different.

  “I was a terrible actor back then, so my worries were pretty obvious,” she lamented. She never showed anything of her true self nowadays! “The blessings of the Heavenly Emperor would have allowed me to do some incredible things, so I was told. They must have been talking about the sakura stones of destiny. They weren’t strewn about like they are today back when I lived here.” Did this mean that only being blessed a little by the Heavenly Emperor had formed something of a complex for Sadeena? “My parents were pretty hard on me because of that. Always expecting so much. They weren’t much like real parents to me at all.”

  “They just threw you into the work, from the sound of it.”

  “Yes. As early as I can remember, I was likely a match for them in raw strength.”

  “And I’m guessing your parents weren’t weak. You were just too strong. The only reason you aren’t an oracle is because you can handle your drink, meaning you didn’t lose yourself and spout spiritual nonsense like those other lightweights.”

  “Oh my.” Sadeena laughed at that too. “You might be right. I never made any serious mistakes, and if only I’d also been an oracle, it was said I would have been the greatest miko in history.”

  “Hey. Don’t downplay the one power I’ve got—not getting drunk!”

  “I know. It all seems very silly now. It was just a bunch of people getting drunk and proclaiming that their ancestors were visiting them and other impossible stuff,” she lamented. What a crazy situation. These were the kind of abnormalities that only came into view with a wider perspective. I was almost starting to feel sorry for them.

  My own parents, too, had been pretty hands-off. All parties had already been aware of that fact. Reaching my age, and coming to know something of the world at large, I understood now that there was such a thing as compatibility between parents and children. It wasn’t that either side was at fault, but I did believe I had some experience with a case of incompatibility.

  All of that said, Sadeena’s family was really twisted.

  Sadeena had been forced into becoming an adult without knowing the joy of being a child. I started to wonder if maybe I’d been doing the same thing to Raphtalia. Maybe she needed more time to blow off steam and act her age a little?

  “The Heavenly Emperor at that time was Raphtalia’s grandfather. He was sick all the time. He and Makina would abuse me all the time, saying I was a corrupted miko without any oracle powers,” Sadeena continued.

  “I hate them both already.”

  “Can’t be helped. In either case, just as I was coming to feel these days would continue until I died, I met Raphtalia’s father.” Sadeena looked up at the sky as though enjoying the memory.

  “The ne
xt Heavenly Emperor?” I said.

  “Yeah. He had a real sense of responsibility, such credibility, and always had people around him.” Even as she said it, Sadeena looked at me.

  “Yes?”

  “When you were looking after the kids in the village, little Naofumi, you reminded me of him. Maybe a bit softer. That kindness was the same.”

  “I’m not sure what to say to that.” I mean, I was acting like a parent to Raphtalia, so I could maybe see some overlap there, but I wasn’t kind. I was a dictator.

  “After all the punishment I’d taken, he consoled me and asked me if there was anything wrong. Then we talked about all sorts of things,” she went on. A key meeting in her life, huh. Hard to imagine a time when the robustly competent Sadeena had struggled with anything. “He could also hold his liquor. Boy, the man could drink. He could even hold his own against me, pretty much.” She was obviously enjoying reminiscing and gave me a smile. “He was the greatest person I’d ever met, until you.”

  “So you liked him because he could drink? Or as, you know, a man?” I asked.

  “Hmmm. We didn’t really have that kind of relationship. Of course, I felt love for him, but he never looked at me like that. I mean, I wasn’t exactly going around proclaiming my feelings,” she explained. She wasn’t? Then something had changed, because she was always trying it with me. She never did that with Raphtalia’s father? She continued. “Among all the children of the Heavenly Emperor, he was the closest in the line of succession. But he had some younger half-siblings, I think.” There had been some assassinations or something, right? Raluva had mentioned them.

  “Carry on. Just what you remember,” I said.

  “Raphtalia’s father also showed me around the old city. Took me to lots of interesting places.”

  “Sounds promising.”

  “He was a considerate person, but—perhaps due to that—it also felt like he’d experienced his fair share of bad stuff. He started talking to me because he wanted to know what kind of things an executioner really did.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat. He sounds like the type to get caught up in all sorts of trouble.”