The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 12 Read online

  Dragon Emperor, huh? I kept hearing that name. Fitoria had mentioned it. They’d talked about it in Kizuna’s world too.

  “Oh yes, the legendary king of the dragons that supposedly fought the queen of the filolials, right?” Rat replied.

  “I heard about that thing in the other world. Is there one here too?” I asked.

  “It’s just a legend. It’s questionable whether either creature actually exists. Oh, wait . . . I think I heard the queen of the filolials is the one that held the Spirit Tortoise off, right?”

  So basically, there must have been some legend about the dragon threatening the existence of humans and demi-humans. And then the queen of the filolials showed up to kill it, I guess.

  “But despite supposedly being so promiscuous, I’ve hardly run into any dragons. The Tyrant Dragon Rex is about it, I think,” I said.

  “That thing was fearsome. We fought a dragon once in the coliseum too,” Raphtalia added.

  Oh yeah. We’d instantly killed that one, so I’d completely forgotten about it.

  “Dragons are generally only found in regions that people don’t visit. Have you ever been in dragon territory, Count?” asked Rat.

  The roads I’d traveled were pretty much limited to where I’d gone peddling wares. Now that I thought about it, I’d hardly ever gone up into the mountains or into any caves. We’d gone hunting in the mountains just before catching Ren, but that was about it. I did remember fighting some part-dragon monsters then.

  “Ren’s fought a dragon. Right, Ren?”

  “Yeah. I went and defeated it based on what I knew from a game and ended up causing a huge mess. I don’t know how I’ll ever make up for that.”

  I guess he legitimately regretted it, because he started looking really depressed. Ren had an excessively strong sense of responsibility.

  “If you’re sincere about doing your best to save the world, I’m sure that’s enough,” I told him.

  “Yeah, I guess so, but still . . .”

  “You know that you can’t make up for it by dying, right?”

  If any of the other holy heroes died, it would make my job harder when the waves struck again. Fitoria had told me that, and the reality of it had become clear in Kizuna’s world to a certain extent too. I couldn’t let Ren die.

  “. . .”

  Wyndia had been glaring at Ren for a while now.

  “Well, they have their territories and they don’t leave them, so you won’t run into any unless you purposely head there to find them,” Rat continued.

  “I see. Either way, I don’t believe in wasting resources, so let’s hatch it and raise a dragon.”

  “The more the reconstruction progresses, the less the village feels like the Lurolona I remember!” Raphtalia exclaimed.

  Rat would be tending to the monsters and plants. I imagined the village being a farm, and now I couldn’t think of Rat as anything but a farmer. She would be the farmer, and we could harvest some herbs or something using the bioplant. We could make a profit using the monsters too. It was exactly like one of those relaxing farming games we had back in my world.

  “Raising a dragon is a hassle. You’ll get a taste of what dragon knights have to deal with,” said Rat.

  “Oh yeah. I remember seeing some of them when we fought the Spirit Tortoise. They weren’t very strong.”

  I recalled seeing them screaming and falling out of the air after being attacked by the Spirit Tortoise familiars.

  “Who knows what will happen when you raise one though. It might develop differently, like the filolials,” she replied.

  “Hmm . . . You have a point. I’ll be careful.”

  And so I decided to hatch the dragon egg. That said, it would be a while after performing the monster seal ceremony before the egg actually hatched. I had to be the one to do the hatching, apparently. Rat looked like she was in a bad mood as she went about taking care of the preparations. And then . . .

  “Why the hell do I have to carry the egg on my back?!”

  I had to carry the dragon egg around on my back to keep it warm.

  “Can’t Ren do this?!”

  I glared at Ren.

  “No . . . It would probably rot if I touched it,” he replied.

  Ren was still suffering from the effects of his curses. It wasn’t like I had forgotten that. One of the consequences for using his curse skills was that the quality of anything he touched deteriorated. Because of that, he was being careful not to touch anything.

  “No! Definitely not the Sword Hero! Even the Shield Hero is a better choice than him!”

  Wyndia insisted that it be anyone but Ren. I kind of wanted to ask her why she was being so hostile toward Ren, but . . . whatever. I’d just think of carrying the egg around as one of the hardships of raising an expensive dragon.

  “Where is Raph-chan?!” I asked.

  “Why are you bringing up Raph-chan now?” Raphtalia responded.

  “I need to pet her to destress!”

  Nothing could beat Raph-chan at times like these. Why wasn’t she here?! I found out later on that she’d been taking a nap back at the village, by the way.

  “Hahaha! You’re so silly, bubba!”

  Keel was pointing at me and cracking up.

  “You bastard! Damn it! I can’t do this, after all! All I really need to do is register it to me, right?!”

  “You can’t register yourself as the parent if you don’t carry the egg. This is part of laying the groundwork for a successful registration. If you don’t do this, it will end up ignoring your commands all the time, so just deal with it!”

  Rat sounded annoyed when she replied. Were dragons really that much of a hassle? I almost wanted to just get rid of it right away.

  “They’ll really ignore commands?” I asked.

  “Yes! I’m a monster researcher, so you better believe it!”

  “The fact that you’re saying it is exactly why I can’t believe it . . .”

  “What was that?!”

  “Okay, okay. Fine. I get it.”

  Damn it. What a hassle. And then Filo returned with Melty in tow. Her timing was terrible. It was like when that one really annoying classmate sees you make a fool of yourself.

  “Ahahahaha! Naofumi! What is that?!”

  “Shut the hell up, second princess!”

  “You promised you wouldn’t call me the second princess!”

  “Then don’t laugh at me, you idiot!”

  “Idiot?! Did you just call me an idiot?!”

  “Umm . . .”

  Raphtalia didn’t know what to say to all this. The strange look on her face just made it worse. Then Atla butted in.

  “I don’t know what it looks like, but if it makes Mr. Naofumi uncomfortable then we should dispose of it.”

  “Buying one would be expensive, so no!” I shouted.

  Sheesh . . . Why did things have to turn out like this?

  “Okay, Count. What do you want to do about the dragon’s gender?” Rat asked.

  “Huh?”

  “We can influence the gender by adjusting how warm we keep the egg. You can choose whichever gender you prefer.”

  I think I’d heard about egg temperatures determining the gender of certain reptiles. I guess the same was true for dragons.

  “You’d probably prefer a . . . female, right? It might be able to use a human form like your filolial variant, after all,” Rat continued.

  “And what are you basing that on? Keel said something similar before. Is it because I’m surrounded by females?”

  I slowly looked over toward Filo.

  “Whaaat?”

  Assuming it did exhibit a special pattern of development due to me raising it, which gender would be best? If it ended up being able to use a human form like Filo, I could imagine things getting really messy if it went into heat. With that in mind, I’d want to choose the gender that would spare me from becoming a victim.

  “Male it is.”

  “I want to know why you deci
ded that after looking at Filo,” Melty said with an uncomfortable look on her face.

  Wasn’t it obvious? I’d be more likely to make it out unscathed if it were a male.

  “Okay then. I’ll make sure it ends up a male. You just relax and keep the egg on your back. You should only have to carry it around for two or three days before it hatches,” said Rat.

  “Yeah, whatever. Damn it! This isn’t funny!”

  “Once again, I look forward to working with you, Count.”

  And so the village ended up with its own resident alchemist.

  That wasn’t quite how the average day went though. I would usually go out hunting later in the day, if I had some spare time. That day I’d made an appearance in the castle town and dealt with Rat and the mountain of gifts, so there hadn’t really been time for hunting. Once evening rolled around, I made dinner and fed the villagers.

  “Bubba! I want seconds, bubba!”

  “Sure, if there’s any left.”

  “Of course there won’t be any left! Make another batch!”

  Making enough food to satisfy Keel and all of those other growing pigs was real manual labor. After all was said and done, it was pitch dark outside by the time we finished eating dinner.

  “Stop it, Brother! Let go of me!”

  “No!”

  “Alright, Fohl, I’m counting on you to look after Atla. Don’t let her get away tonight.”

  “I . . . I won’t . . .”

  I passed Atla off to Fohl after he got back from training.

  “Mr. Naofumi! There’s no way you’ll stop me from getting away, Brother!”

  “There’s no way I’ll let you get away!”

  I could never decide if those siblings got along well, or terribly. Just as Atla and Fohl left, Sadeena showed up with Raph-chan on her shoulder.

  “Little Naofumi! Let’s have some fun!”

  “The drunkard has arrived.”

  “Good evening, Sadeena,” said Raphtalia.

  “Oh? Isn’t it about bedtime, little Raphtalia?”

  “You’re right. The children should be getting to bed,” I replied.

  “Stop treating me like a child!” Raphtalia shouted.

  I had a feeling we repeated this same exchange every night. Some of the slaves were afraid of going to sleep and it was Raphtalia and Sadeena’s job to go stay with them until they managed to.

  “Alright, we’ll make sure the children go to sleep. After that, let’s have some fun, little Naofumi!”

  “Hell no!”

  “You know you want to!”

  Sadeena started to pull her vest off, but Raphtalia grabbed her shoulder. She was emanating murderous intent.

  “Sadeena?” she said.

  “Oh my!”

  Sadeena giggled like it was all a game, but I really wished she would stop already.

  “That’s too bad. I’m game any time you are though!” she said.

  “Go to bed already!”

  Sheesh . . . Speaking of Sadeena, she had continued to level here and there after her reset and was already level 62. I couldn’t help but think her method of fighting might have been more effective than Filo’s power-leveling. Fohl had reset his level on the same day and he was still only level 39.

  “Alright, Sadeena. Let’s go,” Raphtalia said.

  “Yes, ma’am! See you later, little Naofumi.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  The morning had started off early with taking care of the monsters, and it ended up being a long, busy day. I didn’t have time to go level at all. I wondered if maybe I should go level with Sadeena. That would probably be kind of like making a bargain with the devil though. Ren couldn’t swim, but maybe I should try sending him as a sacrifice next time.

  I was just thinking maybe I should go to sleep when I heard a knock on the door.

  “Naofumi, are you there?” asked Ren.

  He’d shown up just moments after Raphtalia and Sadeena left.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Umm . . . After what happened this afternoon, I went out with Eclair and the slaves. I figured out what the consequences for using the gluttony curse were.”

  “Oh? What is it?”

  Checking his stats hadn’t been enough for Ren to tell what the consequences of the gluttony curse had been. He’d been testing likely effects one by one, so figuring it out had taken time.

  “It looks like I can’t gain experience until the effects of the gluttony curse wear off.”

  “Ugh . . .”

  He had sacrificed experience points to use the skill, so I’d suspected that he might not able to gain experience for a while as a consequence.

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t because you were fighting near me?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Way back when I was in Kizuna’s world, we’d done some testing to figure out more about the penalties for holy heroes fighting together. One of the penalties was not being able to gain experience when fighting near another hero. It turned out that “near” meant a radius of around one kilometer. It was a distance that felt rather close, and yet far at the same time.

  If we fought within a kilometer of each other, we wouldn’t be able to gain experience. If he had been further away than that and still wasn’t able to gain experience, then it was likely that was due to the effects of the curse. Damn. Ren had it at least as bad as me. All of the curse effects he was suffering from affected his development. We’d have to wait for the effects to start wearing off before we could really work on getting him stronger. He was as good as useless with the way things were now.

  “And you came to tell me that?”

  “Yes. I also wanted to ask if you would check my writing practice for me.”

  Keeping Ren’s future in mind, I’d been teaching him the written language of this world. I wanted him to be able to read magical tomes so that he could learn magic. The problem was that only I could check his quizzes, since no one else understood Japanese. Maybe I could teach Rishia Japanese. She’d managed to learn the languages of the other world pretty quickly.

  “I have to get up early tomorrow, so I was about to go to bed. You mind if I give you the graded quiz back tomorrow?”

  “That’s fine. I’m sure you’re worn out. Get some rest.”

  “Yeah.”

  Maybe I should’ve seriously considered having someone take Ren to the hot springs on the Cal Mira islands. They were supposed to be effective against curses. The curse that Raphtalia, Filo, and I were suffering from couldn’t be fully healed that way, it seemed, but Ren’s cursed weapon hadn’t been powered up. It would probably work for him.

  I could make some scheduling adjustments and send him to the islands with Eclair. The activation was probably over, so using a portal skill shouldn’t be a problem. Even if it was, I could just have Raphtalia bind to the hourglass in the underwater temple and then she could use Return Dragon Vein to take them close to the islands.

  “You should go with Eclair or the old lady sometime soon and focus on healing,” I told Ren.

  The trip only took one day by boat. If he went with Eclair or the old lady, he wouldn’t have to worry about wasting any time. They could get some training in on the way. It wasn’t like he couldn’t spare a day off from studying writing and magic. I was teaching him, after all. If everything went as planned, he should be able to learn it more quickly than I had.

  “Okay. If you say I should, then I’ll go.”

  “You’ll be able to put up a good fight once you implement the power-up methods.”

  Ren was training now, but he was also working on implementing the power-up methods I’d told him about. The effects of the curses didn’t directly affect his combat, so he shouldn’t lose, even if he did happen to run into any of those creeps that were trying to kill the heroes. Probably. Just to be extra safe, I’d send Eclair or the old lady to protect him. That should be plenty.

  “Alright, I’ll send someone with you tomorrow, so be expecting that.�
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  “Later, Naofumi.”

  After Ren left, I got in bed and went to sleep. And that was a typical day of mine at the village. The things I had to do varied from day to day, but that’s how my days went, more or less. I was always busy. Ugh . . . I really needed to go level up sometime soon.

  This egg on my back sure made it hard to sleep.

  It was afternoon, two or three days later.

  “Mr. Naofumi.”

  Raphtalia glanced at me with a slightly bitter look in her eyes. Even I felt like we might have gone a bit too far.

  “I’d say things turned out pretty good,” I said.

  “Yup. We did all of this in just two days. I really am a genius,” Rat replied.

  Rat and I had modified the bioplant. The results had been truly impressive. Getting an expert involved really made a big difference after all.

  We’d registered Rat as one of my slaves. I made sure that she hadn’t been lying to me about anything. The slave curse we used on her was a powerful one too. There was no way I was going to let her get away. Betrayal would mean death. I wasn’t planning on lowering my guard, but Rat was absorbed in her research and seemed to be content with her current treatment.

  On to what we’d done. I’d asked her to focus her research on developing a bioplant variant that could be used to create simple housing. I figured I would be getting more slaves eventually, so I wanted to build more dwellings. I’d thought maybe our interesting little plant could take care of that.

  The experiment had been a success. Rat developed a convenient bioplant that would take on the form of a house when instructed to do so. She named it “camping plant.” I was really tempted to make a wisecrack or two about that one, but the name did describe the plant’s purpose perfectly, so I couldn’t really argue with it.

  The plant used photosynthesis to convert sunlight into magic power during the daytime. At night, that magic power could be used to make the plant’s flowers give off light. The slaves were as adaptable as ever, and they had no problems getting settled in the camping plant houses, despite the fact that the whole idea seemed a bit dangerous at first. The nice thing about the houses was that we could just use weed killer to get rid of them when they were no longer needed. To sum it all up, we had successfully developed an extremely convenient and simple dwelling environment.