The Rising of the Shield Hero Vol 15 Page 13

  “Yes,” Itsuki confirmed.

  “Me too!” Motoyasu added. Then they actually used energy boost.

  “I can also use a bit of life force now,” Itsuki added vaguely. He then used a little of it, showing how it differed from energy boost.

  “Like this, I say!” Motoyasu seemed to have a better handle on it than Itsuki. He’d been the last one to come to the village but could already use it. What was going on with him?

  “Your orders are absolute, father-in-law. You told me to master life force, so of course that’s what I have done,” Motoyasu explained intently, flexing his fist as he did so. “All I do, I do for you, father-in-law.”

  “We’re getting off topic again, but if you’ve got good enough control of life force, that only leaves learning the Way of the Dragon Vein—Liberation-class magic,” I concluded.

  “We’re all still working on that. It is going well though, thanks to you, Naofumi. We’ll get it soon,” Ren said. Our evening training recently had all been me teaching them magic.

  The battle with the Phoenix was getting close.

  It was still fresh in my memory how Motoyasu had really been opposed to Gaelion placing the blessing of the Way of the Dragon Vein on him. His attitude had been that the enemy of the filolials was also his enemy, and he would rather die than receive any blessings from them.

  For the sake of our future operations, I ordered him to put up with it and he was blessed in the end.

  “Indeed. I’m sure it will help in our future battles,” Ren said.

  “I concur!” Motoyasu agreed. Everything was proceeding unbelievably smoothly, to be honest. I could barely hide my surprise.

  “So are we finished?” I attempted to wrap things up. Much easier than expected! But then Ren shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he stopped me.

  “What? Still something to talk about?” I asked. In response, Ren changed his sword and showed it to me.

  It was a strange-looking weapon, like a bunch of strings connected together. Honestly, it looked pretty weak.

  “What’s that thing?” I asked him.

  “It’s a sword called the Comradery Blade. It’s got a skill that it can teach you called ally growth adjustment (small),” he explained.

  “What are the conditions for it?” I asked. I wanted to know.

  “No idea. It was unlocked by the time I noticed it,” Ren replied apologetically.

  “Hmmm.” That wasn’t much help, but ally growth adjustment (small) sounded like the same type of skill as the slave growth adjustment I’d used. “Approaching it from a video game kind of thinking, the conditions are probably something like trusting your allies with all your heart.” I went on. That sounded like the easiest starting point. Ren nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah, that’s probably it,” he said. With a bitter expression, he then muttered, “Which means I didn’t trust my allies before. If I’d obtained this sword sooner, they might not have had to die.”

  “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean the experience was meaningless,” I said.

  “A very Naofumi-like take on the situation. Anyway, if I have further discoveries like this, I’ll share them with you,” Ren said.

  “Hey, I know. Ren, try putting some of Eclair’s hair into it,” I suggested. “If you’ve achieved the Comradery Blade already, that might score you the Comradery Blade II or something like that.”

  “I’m not sure what Eclair would say about that . . .” He hesitated. Yeah, she probably would have a complaint or two. But hold on . . . What if Ren made a familiar using Eclair’s hair? Yeah, that was something to think about.

  “Father-in-law. I’ll try putting feathers from everyone into my spear too,” Motoyasu said.

  “I’ve already completed the filolial line,” I replied.

  “I’d expect no less, father-in-law! How did you collect them? Please, share your wisdom with me!” he said.

  “Shut up, Motoyasu.” I shot him down. “Work it out for yourself.” Maybe I should tell him, just to piss Fitoria off. But no, I should keep the information to hold over her in the future. If she gave us another weird request, I could threaten to unleash Motoyasu on her. That could be his reward.

  “That reminds me, I’ve learned a new skill—well, a powerful skill that you all already know about actually,” Motoyasu recalled.

  “Oh yeah? Like what?” I asked, maybe foolishly. Motoyasu proceeded to change his spear.

  Hold on. It looked like the very spear that Sadeena had been boasting about nabbing from her childhood home. What had it been called? The Water Dragon’s Harpoon?

  “Filo-tan’s big sister lent it to me to copy, father-in-law,” Motoyasu explained. What? Had Sadeena been back to the village and given Motoyasu a weapon already? Had she heard from Raphtalia?

  “So what skill did you learn?” I kept things moving along.

  “Brionac, I say!” he revealed with a flourish. That was the skill that the high priest of the Church of the Three Heroes had tried to unleash using copies of the four holy weapons, right? That had been a copy. Was this the real deal?

  “I’ve also discovered that applying things like life force and energy boost at the same time can greatly reduce the charge time,” Motoyasu revealed.

  “Wow,” I managed.

  “That’s amazing, Motoyasu.” Ren was a little more forthcoming with his praise. Itsuki was just kind of staring vacantly on.

  In any case, it meant Motoyasu had acquired a pretty powerful skill.

  “What about you, Ren?” I asked. “You’ve got the weapon that Motoyasu II is reforging for you in Q’ten Lo, right?”

  “What kind of love hunter is this fellow who bears my name?” Motoyasu asked.

  “You just stay quiet,” I told him bluntly. It would be more trouble than it was worth to try and explain. He wasn’t a “love hunter,” anyway. He was an old perv.

  “It’s still being purified. He said it should only take a little longer,” Ren reported.

  “Okay, good,” I replied.

  “However, it’s not like the Spirit Tortoise Sword or Spirit Tortoise Katana that I’m currently using. It’s a much more powerful weapon. I’m not even sure whether I’ll be able to handle it at the moment,” Ren explained. It had a pretty powerful curse on it. We just had to hope we could get our hands on it quickly. “The old guy’s master said he’d need to make some adjustments to let me use it, so I’ll just wait a little longer.”

  “Understood. If you can master it, it’s going to make things a lot easier going forward. We’ll just have to look forward to that day and wait,” I said. Once the purification was finished, would the stone that formed the core have to be fed to Gaelion? There weren’t many other ways to use it outside of enhancing Gaelion and letting a sword-wielder other than Ren use it. Did we even have anyone who used a longsword?

  Eclair used a dagger. Raphtalia, a katana. Maybe Shildina would be able to use it? It seemed that the healing of the hole in her soul perhaps had caused her oracle powers to decline somewhat. It was now impossible for her to become anyone else at least, but she could likely still copy their skills.

  “Thinking about the Phoenix battle, it seems most practical if I defend while chanting support magic,” I suggested. These would be called “buffs” in a video game. Because I was the one who could use Liberation Aura—which provided a boost to all stats—it was most efficient for me to be the one who cast support magic.

  Of course, dropping beast transformation support would be even more efficient, but that was never a sure thing.

  “I can use rucolu fruit to recover magic,” I continued.

  “Ah, the rucolu fruit. They always seem to come up when anyone in this world is talking about you, don’t they, Naofumi?” Ren jibed.

  “They do taste really nice,” I replied, a little defensively. I also remembered how they knocked Motoyasu right out. It seemed anyone other than me eating them was a pretty bad idea. “If you guys could also recover using them, you wouldn�
�t have to waste time drinking magic potions and stuff like that,” I pondered. When a battle drew out, the need arose to replenish things like magic and SP. With its high healing potential, the rucolu fruit was a real effective item when it came to cost-performance.

  “Sure, but they also make us collapse if we eat them,” Ren countered.

  “You might be able to build up some resistance if you level up a bit,” I replied.

  “No way. Just smelling the stuff makes my head spin,” Ren stated stubbornly. Even Motoyasu had a dry smile on his face concerning this topic.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, Naofumi. Now I finally see the truth of it. You have the special ability to nullify intoxication,” Itsuki said, not making a lick of sense. Hold on. What did he just say?

  “Special ability? Is that some kind of system I don’t know about?” I asked. There were skills that increased resistances to status effects. Maybe that was what he meant. If so, however, I could report that I unfortunately had learned no such skill.

  “No, I mean it’s an ability you had prior to coming to this world,” Itsuki explained.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I replied. What was he talking about?

  For a moment there, anyway, I had flashbacks to when I first chatted with Ren and the others like this. It had been like fanboys discussing some online game. Back then, Ren had said that normal MMOs were outdated, causing confusion among the rest of us. Now I felt something similar from Itsuki and his comments.

  Ren seemed to be feeling something similar too, because he was looking at Itsuki with his eyebrows drawn together.

  “Hey, Ren, do you have any idea what Itsuki is talking about?” I asked him.

  “No, sorry. There’s all sorts of possibilities, so I can’t really say,” he replied.

  “Hmmm,” I pondered. Ren was like me, quite capable of extrapolating information, but seeing as Itsuki probably couldn’t lie at the moment anyway, just asking him outright seemed like the best approach. He responded quite openly to questions at the moment. He’d surely regale us with stories of these “abilities.”

  “Tell us, Itsuki, what are these abilities you are talking about? Do you mean the power of the legendary weapons?” I asked.

  “No. The legendary weapons may very well have such abilities, but I’m clearly talking about something completely different,” he explained.

  “Hmmm. I don’t recall anything like that.” Even Motoyasu didn’t seem to have a clue. So this was clearly knowledge unique to Itsuki’s world.

  “Itsuki, tell us more. Back in your world, just what are these ‘abilities’?” I pressed him.

  “What do you mean, ‘what’? Why don’t you understand them, Naofumi? Did you live so far out in the sticks that ability management hadn’t even reached you yet?” Itsuki asked casually with no expression on his face. It looked like these “abilities” were just an everyday part of life for him. Even his curse-infested thinking wasn’t puzzled about concepts like “do you breathe air?”

  Perhaps this was very much the kind of response that you would get if you asked someone else how to breathe.

  “Right, so tell us all about them from the beginning,” I asked.

  “Very well. These abilities were discovered in my world about twenty-five years ago through research into individuals who were causing all sorts of disasters and incidents. It is the name given to certain powers possessed by each individual. They are also called things like ‘psi’ and ‘supernatural powers,’” Itsuki revealed. Right, so hold on. So in Itsuki’s world—

  “Ren, do you understand all this? Hey, you’ve got VRMMOs in your world, right? So you’ve probably got something like this too?” I asked him.

  “You think we’re all mind wizards or something? Are you joking?” he replied. Hmmm, as the resident of what to me was basically a sci-fi novel, I would have thought Ren could understand.

  So this meant Itsuki’s world was a near-future setting with crazy mind powers? I would probably have been pretty into the idea of crazy psychic battles before I came to this world.

  The issue now was, in this world with these newly revealed abilities, what kind of standing Itsuki had held and what kind of abilities he brought to the table.

  “Okay. So in the world you come from, how are these abilities handled?” I asked.

  “First, every prefecture has at least one school where those with abilities are taught. I mean, there are generally a lot more than just one,” he continued.

  “Okay,” I prompted.

  “Abilities are divided into ranks, with S at the top, then A through F. Classes at these schools are divided up into those ranks,” Itsuki explained further.

  “So everyone in your world can use abilities?” I asked.

  “No, not at all. In fact, there are many more people who can’t,” he replied.

  “What about you personally?” I pressed on to the heart of the matter.

  “I have an ability called ‘Accuracy,’ and I’m E class.” Accuracy, huh? I guess that finally explained, after all this time, why Itsuki generally never missed when he fired an arrow.

  “What is this accuracy ability, then?” I asked for clarification. “Just so we’re clear.”

  “It’s a skill that lets me use ranged weapons with far greater precision than a normal person. I could even be a pretty mean sniper, if I wanted to,” he explained. That also explained why during the suspected kidnapping incident he had fired toward me even though Melty had also been there. No one would have taken that shot if they weren’t completely confident in the result.

  So he wasn’t just a moron who loved justice. This definitely changed how I felt about his actions back then. Indeed, although his comments had seemed completely natural, they might also have alluded to this new truth we had just learned.

  Still, “Accuracy?” From what I’d heard about it so far, it seemed like a pretty potent ability. If there was S down to F, then why was it closer to the bottom of the pile?

  “That sounds like a quality ability, so why’s it ranked so low?” I probed.

  “I’m E class because I’m not compatible with the higher ability ‘Ultra Accuracy,’” he explained.

  “It has an ‘ultra’ on it, so I presume that’s pretty good,” I said.

  “Anything you fire never misses,” he replied.

  “Wow.” That sounded broken.

  “Even if you turned away from the target, the arrow would surely fly around to it,” Itsuki added. Homing capabilities?! Ultra-broken, for sure! “Lots of baseball players have that ability. Of course, its use is carefully controlled.”

  “In other words, Itsuki, you have a low-ranking ability, so at your little school for the gifted, you were seen as low-ranking?” I laid it all out.

  “Naofumi, that’s not a nice way to put it,” Ren cut in.

  “That’s right though,” Itsuki answered honestly. If I’d been trying to be mean, he hadn’t picked up on it. “So I played games to get away from my horrible reality. When my ability was detected at elementary school, making it seem like I was special, I let it go to my head. Once I actually reached junior high and started the special school, I learnt that there’s always a bigger fish. It almost wiped me out. Nothing changed in high school.”

  So while most people were just normal, Itsuki had been born with special powers, and that had given him confidence during his younger years. Once he went to a school for people with similar gifts though, he had been slammed with the reality that his own ability actually wasn’t all that great and had started to play games as a result.

  Sure, comics and games with a main character with such abilities normally featured someone who was, well, actually powerful. But when it came to actual abilities in real life, there was good and bad ones. Not having one at all might be less hellish than getting stuck with a crappy one.

  His focus on justice then had come from the heroes of comics, cartoons, and games who worked with the abilities they had been given to defeat
evil.

  “I understand now. Do you think I have an ability that prevents me from getting motion sickness or drunk?” I asked.

  “Yes. I am estimating it as the ability ‘Nullify Sickness.’ There’s a lower version called ‘Resist Sickness,’ which would be an F rank ability,” Itsuki revealed.

  “What about mine then?” Couldn’t hurt to ask.

  “Its prospects are a C or D rank, but it’s a conditional S rank when fighting supervillains with gravity-based powers,” Itsuki explained.

  “Hmmm. And what do you mean by ‘prospects’?” When we fought Kyo, I’d been unable to move when he used that gravity attack on me, so it didn’t sound quite right to me.

  “Think about it. Not getting motion sickness means you are resilient to the effects of gravity, with exceptional semicircular canals. A vital skill for astronauts, for one. Some people were advocating for the name to be changed to ‘Nullify Gravitational Load,’ but research was still being conducted,” Itsuki revealed.

  It sounded like this skill could do quite a lot of stuff!

  But no, come on. I was just lucky enough to not get motion sickness . . . At least, that was what I’d been thinking. But maybe I was starting to feel otherwise. I could scoff down the same rucolu fruit that had made Motoyasu pass out, and I felt nothing when riding Filo even at top speed. The others might have gotten used to that, but they still said it was hard. So it had to be pretty rough.

  Nullify gravity though? I’d definitely been pressed down by the gravity attack that Kyo unleashed, so that side of this was more suspicious.

  “Of course, there are various branches of the ability, so I can’t say for sure. But maybe in your case the emphasis is just placed on not getting sick, rather than the gravity side of things,” Itsuki clarified. So the same kind of ability, but with subtle differences. Like not getting sick at all, or just not getting motion sickness, maybe. “I also think,” he went on, “that you might have double abilities.”

  “You mean two of them?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Itsuki’s world from my perspective was the near future where everyone was getting supernatural abilities. If you considered then that the reason Itsuki had always quietly mocked Ren, Motoyasu, and me was because he’d thought we didn’t have said abilities, that might also explain quite a lot.