The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 05 Read online

  “How should we fight?”

  At least we had sailors now, thanks to my Melromarc detour.

  “The best swimmers are all already in the water, fighting the monsters there.”

  The queen was acting as the high commander. She came running over and reported on the plan.

  “Water-type demi-humans led the charge. Many adventurers joined them, trusting their knowledge of the sea. They are already swimming and battling.”

  “Good thing we recruited those adventurers around town.”

  Melromarc was a human supremacist country, and so there weren’t many demi-humans in the army.

  As a consequence, most of the soldiers that could fight in the wave, or that we could organize to fight in the wave, were humans. And humans could really only fight from the deck of a ship—with cannons.

  That meant it was going to be our job, the heroes’ job, to get out on the front lines.

  “Let’s get going.”

  “Mr. Iwatani, wait just a moment.”

  “What is it?”

  “There are a great number of smaller monsters to deal with, but I think we can handle them. I would like the heroes to focus on the larger threats that come from the wave.”

  “I understand. But how are we supposed to find the larger threats?”

  I sort of imagined they would be concentrated at the foot of the wave, where the rifts in the sky met the surface of the water.

  The surface of the ocean was white and frothy. You could see that it was writhing with creatures moving towards the ships. We were going to have to dive into the water to fight them.

  I spotted a swiftly moving shadow under the water. A second later the beast had flung itself up onto the deck. It was an inter-dimensional sahuagin shadow.

  It looked like a half fish, half man-type creature. As for the shadow, I wasn’t sure, but it might have been a type of demi-human.

  “Shooting Star Spear!”

  Motoyasu stabbed at the saguahin with his spear.

  “This thing is tougher than it looks!”

  “Hya!”

  Bitch and her retinue, Ren and his party, Itsuki and his party, all of them ran to attack the line of monsters that was threatening to overtake the boat.

  “Hya!”

  Filo flew forward and spun, kicking one of the monsters high into the air and off of the boat.

  But there were more monsters. A lot more.

  I looked around. There were ten ships or so. How were we supposed to protect ten ships?

  The troops were made up of the strongest adventurers on Cal Mira and experienced soldiers from Melromarc. I hoped they could stand their ground.

  But the battle line was getting chaotic. Should I use the shooting star shield?

  It would be impenetrable to anyone not in my party though and it wasn’t large enough to protect the entire ship.

  I saw a crowd of monsters fly off the ship.

  “Full Moon Army!”

  It was L’Arc.

  He was swinging his giant scythe.

  Wow, with so many monsters swarming the deck it looked like a scene from that Dynasty battle game. He seemed to be having a good time.

  Therese was behind him, casting a spell.

  “Shining stone, showering thunder!”

  A sharp crack of lightning shot out of the sky and killed a monster in front of her.

  Those two were really something. I had to find some way to get them into my party.

  “We’re dropping a rucolu explosive barrel into the sea! Warn the adventurers!”

  The queen shouted the order and another soldier blew into a conch—the sound resounded and echoed over the ships and water.

  The adventurers and demi-humans in the water all came swimming back to the ship. One second later, and a number of barrels were pushed overboard.

  “The explosive barrels . . . .”

  I looked over the side of the ship to see what happened.

  The barrels slowly sunk. How effective would they be?

  The second I though it, the barrels exploded dramatically, sending up a geyser of bubbles into the air. The sea itself slowly turned red.

  Whoa! Slowly, the corpses of fish and monsters came floating to the surface. There were tons of them.

  I guess the whole sea really had turned into alcohol.

  Of course it was only effective in the immediate area, so over time the water would mix with the rest of the ocean and the effect would diminish. But in the interim, it seemed to have a deadly effect on the monsters there.

  It was amazing. I never would have thought those little fruits were so powerful.

  “Don't get too comfortable!”

  “Right!”

  “Where’s the boss?!”

  That reminded me. I’d actually never seen the arrival of a boss monster before.

  I’d only seen the other heroes battling the boss from far off in the distance.

  “Should we jump in and swim out to find it?”

  I think that maybe you had to attack the rifts directly to get the boss to appear.

  I wasn’t going to be able to do that by myself, but with Raphtalia and Filo it wouldn’t be impossible.

  And we didn’t really have another option. The monsters had not stopped coming out of the rifts.

  There was no point to stay on the ship and keep fighting these minor monsters.

  “But if we don’t kill the boss first, it will take a long time.”

  Damn.

  That was why they’d dedicated all the energies to defeating the boss during the last wave. I guess.

  We were talking over our plan when one of the neighboring ships flew into the air and broke apart.

  There must have been a huge monster below it.

  The sailors and soldiers all started to scream.

  “What was that?!”

  I spun on my heels to look. There was a massive whale falling back into the ocean from where it had jumped. It had massive horns growing out of its head.

  Its name appeared in my menu screen.

  Inter-dimensional whale.

  How big was that thing? Judging the best I could, it looked like it was over 150 meters long. It looked like a sperm whale with a twisting horn like a drill, and the whole beast was unnaturally white.

  In a few places there were large bumps that seemed to be jewels. They made the whole thing look like it had an undefined shape.

  All in all, it didn’t really seem right to call it a whale—it was too different.

  It also seemed safe to assume that we were looking at this wave’s boss monster.

  I pointed to it and made sure that Ren, Motoyasu, and Itsuki were looking at the same thing that I was.

  Ren was shaking his head, Itsuki was nodding, and Motoyasu was pointing.

  “That must be it.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “You can wait here, Ren. Deal with all the minor monsters while we’re gone!”

  “Dammit! Hundred Sword!”

  He held his sword a loft and it shattered into hundreds of smaller swords that flew into the air and rained down on the weaker monsters in the ocean.

  What could he do if he couldn’t swim? He’d have to do what the other adventurers were doing—shoot cannons and stuff like that.

  Itsuki had turned his bow into a giant ballista and was shooing arrow after arrow.

  Was there no job left for a shielder like me?

  “Motoyasu! You’re the Spear Hero, aren’t you? That’s the same as a harpoon! Go kill that thing!”

  Isn’t there some story about a captain who wants revenge? Channel that energy and kill that thing!

  “Motoyasu! Do a kamikaze run at the thing!”

  “Naofumi! You bastard!”

  “Stop arguing!”

  Raphtalia snapped at me like I was the bad guy or something.

  “Mr. Naofumi, we need to think of a plan instead of arguing.”

  “You’re right. Motoyasu?”

  “What?�
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  I motioned for him to come over to the edge of the deck. He came over suspiciously, wondering if I really had a plan.

  “You’re weapon is the best suited for a battle at sea, so you need to get closer and lead the charge!”

  And I pushed him over the edge.

  “What?! AHHHHHH!”

  That was easier than I had expected. He just fell right over the side.

  He fell heavily in the water, sending up a spray of foam behind him.

  “Oh nooooo! Mr. Motoyasu!”

  Bitch and her friends all screamed.

  “The Shield Hero is trying to kill the Spear Hero!”

  Bitch raised her hand to point and berate me, but when she did the slave seal on her chest activated.

  “Kyaaaaaa!”

  “Myn…. Whore!”

  Bitch turned to hear what Motoyasu was shouting. He had finally surfaced below.

  “This is part of Mr. Iwatani’s plan. You must respect it!”

  The queen turned and shouted at Bitch.

  Bitch would try to ruin my life whenever she got a chance.

  “I have a suggestion. Mr. Kawasumi and Mr. Amaki will support the battle from the deck of the ship, focusing on ranged attacks.”

  “Very well.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Motoyasu, if you can fight in the water, then please do so.”

  “I’d rather not!”

  “You are the only one who can effectively attack in this situation. Doesn’t this seem like good opportunity to earn the funds necessary to buy back my daughter’s freedom?”

  “Um . . . .”

  He thought about disagreeing for a moment, before giving up and diving beneath the surface.

  The legendary weapons could give the user skills that enabled better swimming, and if they were combined with a pekkul kigurumi, then you could really stay underwater for a really long time.

  You didn’t even have to have goggles on to see easily underwater.

  “What about me?”

  “Mr. Iwatani, I would like you to protect our ships in case that monster comes to attack us.”

  “That sounds like you want me in the water. If the monster dives to the ocean floor and starts charging upwards, you want me to block it!?”

  “Naturally, I don’t want you to do it if you don’t think you will be able to.”

  “Oh, um . . . understood.”

  I didn’t really know if I would be able to block a monster that big, but her plan was definitely the best one we had.

  “Oh, and Ms. Raphtalia? Please use the ship’s ballista to aim at the monster.”

  “What?”

  Raphtalia was shocked she was being considered for the job. I could hardly believe it myself.

  I guess it made sense. I couldn’t picture her standing on its back and stabbing down at it with her sword. I guess that’s all Motoyasu could really do though.

  “It seems that your friend, Raphtalia, is quite powerful. If that’s true, then I think she will be able to get the most out of our powerful ballista.”

  “Huh? I don’t really understand what you are getting at.”

  I knew that a ballista was more powerful than the sort of bow that you could draw back with your hands. But why did it matter who used it? Itsuki might even have a skill or two specifically to use with ballistas. He was the Bow Hero, after all.

  I couldn’t think of a reason that Raphtalia would use it better than anyone else though.

  Maybe there was some system that I didn’t know about? Like how I hadn’t known about the hero power up systems?

  “Bows and ranged weapons still are subject to the stats of their users.”

  So guns and bows were similar to other weapons in this world?

  In my world, the power behind a gunshot or an arrow didn’t really depend on who used them. You were sure to die if you were hit. But I guess in this world the stats of the user had an effect. Maybe it worked by increasing the speed of the arrow or something like that.

  It really was like a game.

  Things like that happened all the time in games. Bows and guns and swords could all be just as powerful as any other weapon.

  That wouldn’t make sense in my world, but then again, we didn’t have numbered stats in my world.

  I had to think of this place as something completely different. If I treated it like the world I was used to, I was going to end up dead.

  Thinking about it from the queen’s perspective, it probably did make sense to let Raphtalia do the shooting.

  “Got it. Okay Raphtalia, you attack the inter-dimensional whale using the ship’s ballista.”

  “Oh . . . . Okay.”

  “I’ll show you how it works, so please don’t be worried about that. Now then Mr. Iwatani, take Filo with you and please protect out ship. We will be casting ceremonial magic to support you.”

  I remembered they had used collective ceremonial magic during the battle with the high priest. It had been extremely powerful. I think the queen had explained that it was normally reserved for wartime battles. I hoped it would be effective against the boss.

  One more thing, up until now the heroes had been leading the charge in every wave that had come. Were we really supposed to act as supporting attackers in this fight?

  “Leave it to me. Alright! Let’s go, Filo!”

  “Yeah!”

  We climbed onto the deck railing and dove in to the ocean.

  The water was still red due to the rucolu barrels.

  The inter-dimensional whale had dove down deep below us.

  That seemed to be its attack pattern—dive deep and then ram the ships from below.

  Motoyasu was actually really impressive. He had his spear stuck in the side of the beast and was riding down with it.

  But he didn’t have any time to use a skill, and the boss was far more powerful than he was—so his attacks weren’t having much effect.

  What?! The whale turned towards the surface. Was it preparing to charge?

  I took a deep breath and swam down under the boat, positioning myself beneath the hull.

  I looked down into the depths and spotted the whale swimming far below.

  I didn’t know where it was planning to attack, which made it hard to think about defense.

  Before it could attack, I pushed off from the hull and started swimming downward in the direction of the beast.

  Filo was there with me, right by my side.

  The first thing we’d have to do was get ourselves in a position to block the horn.

  It wasn’t going to be hard. The whale noticed us and leveled its horn. It was charging straight at us now!

  Yes! Keep on coming, straight at me—you dumb whale.

  At that moment, Motoyasu, Filo, and I were the only living things around the whale. All the other monsters had left the area.

  Come on!

  I readied myself and then it was on me. The horn was slicing through the water, threatening to impale me.

  I felt the horn slam into me with a thundering crash, but my defenses were strong enough to withstand the attack.

  But I didn’t have anywhere to brace my feet, so I wasn’t able to stop the whale from advancing.

  The whale kept pushing towards the surface, and I felt my feet hit the underside of the ship’s hull.

  I couldn’t do much else.

  But either could the monster.

  It started rocking back and forth, trying to fling me off of its horn.

  As if I would let it!

  I shot a glance at Filo.

  She was in her filolial queen form, and she knew what I meant. She flipped through the water and kicked the whale hard.

  And the monster reacted—it was thrown off balance!

  While the monster reeled through the water, Motoyasu kept his attack up.

  Because I’d stopped the monster for a moment, Motoyasu had found a free second to start using skills.

  Above the water, the soldiers on the ship had be
en following the fight. Cannon balls and huge arrows rained down on the whale, and the water was filled with a booming and crashing sound.

  The water was chaos. It was filled with white bubbles, and I couldn’t see a thing.

  But I kept my grip on the horn and pushed the monster back from the hull.

  It was getting harder to breath.

  Keeping my grip on the horn, I turned to the side and swam for the surface.

  Huh? The whale looked surprised. I was pulling it through the water!

  “Pufah!”

  I stuck my head out of the water and took a deep breath.

  “Huff . . . . Huff . . . .”

  I filled my lungs and dove again. The whale was wriggling and writhing through the water. It couldn’t get its horn free.

  There was nothing else I could do.

  The jewel-like bumps across its body were sending out magic spells left and right, but they weren’t hurting me at all.

  “Shooting Star Spear! Lightning Spear!”

  The whale was on the surface of the ocean now. Motoyasu climbed onto its back and used skill after skill.

  “Take that! Hya! Hya!”

  Filo was doing the same thing. Now that she had a place to stand, she was finally doing some real damage. Her sharp claws were shredding the monster’s back.

  Raphtalia got a lock on the monster with her ballista.

  Itsuki was already shooting at it. Raphtalia’s ballista was huge, so I was hoping that it had some serious attack power.

  Everyone was pummeling the monster, and the water around it was turning a deep red.

  There was a rush of wind when Raphtalia loosed the ballista’s arrow. It connected with the monster and the air was filled with the sound of a successful attack.

  Huh? Was Raphtalia’s the most effective attack yet? Had we won?

  “Shield Kiddo! Don’t move!”

  “What?”

  L’Arc readied his scythe and jumped into the water.

  “Flying Circle!”

  A disc of light came from his weapon and sliced into the whale.

  …?!

  “Wha . . . .”

  A massive spray of blood shot into the air and rained down on us. The whale’s tail had been split in two.

  “ . . . ?!”

  The inter-dimensional whale screamed in agony.

  “Can’t let him have all the fun!”

  Filo shouted, and she reared back to deliver a decisive kick to the monster.