The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 03 Page 7

  We’d just have to try our luck out on the plains. I could have tried them out on the slave trader, but that would probably come back to bite me.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I have something that might be just perfect for someone in your situation.”

  The slave trader’s subordinate stepped forward and spoke.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “The nobility of Melromarc has been using the sewers to raise a monster in secret, but it grew too large for them to control it.”

  “So it’s under their control with a monster control spell?”

  “It had been acting on its own for so long that it found ways to get around being controlled.”

  That didn’t sound good at all…

  “And the monster has gotten so big that the spell stopped being strong enough to control it quite a long time ago.”

  How could they allow a monster like that free reign in the sewers? If a kid or something went inside to play, just think what could happen.

  It was like some kind of movie—the idea that there was monster hiding out in the sewers.

  I couldn’t explain why, but I was picturing some kind of alligator.

  “No one has gotten hurt yet, but people are talking about hiring an adventurer to go down there and take care of it.”

  “I assume there is some kind of reward?”

  “Naturally. Yes sir.”

  I nodded along, deciding that taking the job would be a good idea.

  “Very well then, this way please.”

  The slave trader led me to the back of the tent.

  Soon we left the tent all together and were at the entrance to some kind of large tunnel, which apparently was an entrance to the sewers.

  “…”

  So he’d already been prepared to bring us here. What was that supposed to mean?

  “This is a map of the sewer system.”

  The slave trader handed me a map that had apparently had a spell cast on it. The target area was glowing.

  “This will tell you where the monster you are hunting is at the moment. Yes sir.”

  “Good. By the way, what level is this thing at?”

  “The owners stopped keeping track at level 50. Yes sir. As for its current level, no one knows.”

  So it was over level 50. Guess that meant that even monsters could class-up before we could.

  But at the very least, it seems that owned monsters can’t level up on their own quite the same way that monsters in the wild can. So its growth would have to be limited to how big it could grow on the food it could find in the sewers… maybe.

  The sewers stunk as badly as you’d think. I pinched my nose as we walked.

  “It stinks!”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Both of you just deal with it. We’re almost there!”

  We had walked a long way into the sewers without running into any dangerous monsters.

  The slave trader’s subordinate had given us some instruction to get through the tricky parts, and so we were able to arrive without much trouble at all.

  And when we got there the monster we found was… yup—an alligator.

  Its body was a yellowish-white, and it’s eyes were shining red, it looked really creepy down in the sewers.

  All together it was probably around six meters long. Which is huge. I mean it wasn’t a dragon, but it looked very strong.

  “Grrrrrrr…”

  “Are we fighting that thing?”

  “Yes. Hey Raphtalia, give that new sword of yours a practice swing.”

  “Okay!”

  We all turned and readied ourselves for the fight against the monster, the Cream Alligator.

  “Let’s do it!”

  The Alligator came running at us with its jaws open wide, trying to eat us. I jumped out of the way, and once I saw its jaws snap shut I leapt onto its head to keep it from opening its mouth again.

  I’d read a book once about how to fight off an alligator. Of course, that book was about alligators back in my world.

  Even still, it seemed to be working.

  “Grr?!”

  I kept my weight on the top of its head, but it was trying so hard to open its jaws that its eyes were spinning.

  But, probably because of how much weight I was throwing at it, it wasn’t having much luck.

  “Now!”

  “Argh!”

  Raphtalia ran at the Cream Alligator’s thrashing tail and swung her new sword.

  With a swift and satisfying thwack the sword slid through the tail, slicing it off clean and leaving a stump. The rest of the tail went flying through the air.

  “…?!”

  “Big Sister, you’re so strong! I won’t let you show me up!”

  Filo dropped her weight to charge up, then turned to the Cream Alligator’s exposed belly and kicked it with all her might.

  The alligator flew into the air.

  “Finish it!”

  The spinning gator crashed into the floor headfirst.

  Then… Well, its skull was completely crushed, so the Cream Alligator just lay there, dead. I had been standing near where it landed though, and now I was drenched in its blood.

  “Wow! Wow! These claws are awesome! That would have been a little harder without them!”

  “Um…”

  Filo was so excited about her victory that she was jumping up and down in place and cheering.

  And the monster was apparently over level 50, so I guess our new weapons were working really well.

  And so our test of Raphtalia’s new sword and Filo’s new claws was a resounding success.

  We hurried back to the slave trader’s tent, though of course I cleaned the blood off of myself before we got there.

  By the way, I did go ahead and let the shield absorb the Cream Alligator’s body, but it only unlocked a shield that wasn’t as strong as the Chimera Viper Shield. As for equip effects, there was only one. It was an ability that raised your fighting ability at night—apparently by improving your vision in the dark.

  “Well, well… I must say I’m very impressed that you were able to defeat the monster in such a short amount of time. Very impressed indeed. Yes sir.”

  The slave trader was obviously excited by what had just happened. His eyes flashed when he gave me the reward money. That money more than covered the price of the claws.

  I was ready to leave, thinking we had nothing else we needed to do there, but then I remembered something.

  Back when we’d fought those bandits in the woods, I thought about selling some of them into slavery, but it would have been a pain so I never did.

  “In this country humans are not allowed as slaves. If you looked really hard though, I’m sure you could find a buyer. They’ll want high quality specimens though, and it will be risky.”

  So I guess demi-humans were as far as you could push it here. They were human-supremacists after all.

  “Ok then. Later.”

  We turned and left the tent. Filo turned back into a human and carried her claws. Our shopping was finished for the time being, so we went back to the weapon shop.

  “Hey kid, that carriage isn’t looking so good these days.”

  “It has gotten a lot of use.”

  Filo loved the carriage so much that we hadn’t even parted with it long enough to make repairs. I’d done what I could on my own, but I wasn’t a professional.

  “Want me to make you a new one?”

  “Really?”

  Filo’s eyes were flashing in anticipation.

  “C’mon Filo… I just bought you those claws.”

  “But…”

  It had been rattling more than normal lately, so I’d thought about getting it fixed. As for buying a new one, I wasn’t so sure about that.

  “I’d make it as cheaply as I could.”

  He was right. If we wanted to keep traveling, I needed to consider the durability of my carriage. I didn’t want to spoil Filo, but at the same time, if we were going
to have to keep making repairs to our rickety wood cart, it would be better, in the long-run, to just have a higher-quality one built.

  “I’d like a durable one that can fit a lot of materials in it. My budget is around 10 pieces of gold.”

  “With 10 pieces of gold you can make a really nice carriage. You don’t care about how it’s decorated, do you?”

  “Of course not. Focus on the practical details. Filo doesn’t mind if it’s heavy.”

  Sometimes Filo even pulled the carriage with one hand. We could make it much heavier and she wouldn’t complain.

  “Gotcha, kid. Leave it to me. The bird-girl is fine with it, right?”

  “Um… Yeah! I want a big one—like a house!”

  “That’d be pretty big, lass.”

  That would have put us over budget. I was about to mention it when the owner gave me a sign that he knew what I was thinking.

  “Thanks.”

  “Now lass—it’s good to have dreams and ambitions, but why not wait until you are bigger and stronger before you make one that big?”

  “But…”

  “Wouldn’t you be embarrassed if I made one that big and you couldn’t pull it?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Excellent. Well, I don’t know how much you can pull, so I’ll just make something that looks good to me. Okay?”

  Yeah, and it would be custom anyway. It would be different from the sorts of carriages that the nobility used, so it was a new project all together. That made it important to set priorities.

  “Fine. I’d like a new carriage then.”

  “Good thinking, kid.”

  Okay then—we still had some time before the wave came.

  It would be a little while before the weapons and carriage were ready, so I decided to get back to our traveling merchant work.

  Chapter Seven: General Commander

  I was thinking that we could probably move our stock faster. So we went to a village in the southwest and purchased cheaper materials.

  You see, I’d heard that there was a famine in the north, which meant I could sell my stock for more money and make a good profit.

  The village in the southwest was the very same village we’d already visited, where the BioPlant monster had caused a big ruckus.

  We cleaned up their mess for them the last time we were there, but before we left we gave them the improved BioPlant seed.

  That’s why I figured they’d be willing to sell us some food at a cheap price. And, just like I’d expected, the villagers were happy to see us. They sold us food at a huge discount.

  From the look of things, the improved BioPlant seed I’d given them had been planted. The fields of that southwestern village were covered in vines that hung with plump, red, tomato-like fruit.

  We loaded up the carriage and headed north. Then something happened in a little town on the way there:

  “Huh? Some kind of traveling merchant certificate?”

  We were stopped on our way into town by a guard on duty who demanded a tariff and taxes for his governor.

  So I showed him the certificate from Riyute, but…

  “That means nothing here! Pay your dues!”

  “But…”

  The guard ignored Raphtalia’s protest and continued to demand money.

  I stepped forward to start negotiating with him, but he wouldn’t back down.

  “You brute!”

  Hm… For them to get so angry, something must have been going on.

  Since I started this whole traveling merchant gig I’d learned a thing or two about how to get your way.

  The first of which was threats. If you had power you could use it to force people to agree to things they normally wouldn’t. You had to identify their weakness and use it to sell things at a higher price. This strategy worked the best on haughty customers. But looking at the way this guard was acting, he was taking us seriously. The next was negotiation. We form our relationships with people based on the ebb and flow of conversation. It works the best on people who aren’t antagonistic. This guy was not exactly antagonistic. He was in a hurry.

  If neither of these methods would work on him, it must mean that…

  “Sounds like your governor is a pretty crazy guy.”

  I looked around the town and muttered to myself. The guard noticed and his expression changed slightly.

  “Do not speak ill of our governor! You’ll have charges brought against you!”

  Things were starting to make sense. The guard apparently had bigger problems that just dealing with us—in which case, neither of my strategies would work.

  If I pushed too hard, we’d end up paying for it.

  If I wanted him to budge, I’d have to create a big stink and get him flustered, or cause enough of a fuss to get the governor to come talk to me. But I had no way of knowing if the merits of the outcome would compensate for the risk of the undertaking.

  “Fine then. I can see you have your own problems to deal with.”

  I gave him the amount of money that he asked for. When I did, the guard suddenly looked very disappointed.

  “Here you go.”

  He leaned forward and whispered.

  “Sorry…”

  “No problem.”

  He must have been under orders from the Trash. There was obviously some kind of problem with the governor here.

  We entered the town to find taxes levied on nearly everything. From food and equipment to handicrafts and rooms at the inn. And the tax rate was invariably high.

  It looked like the town had plunged into some sort of depression. The markets were nearly empty. The businesses must have been under the burden of heavy taxes.

  “I’m going to go look for some food and try and figure out what’s going on.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yay! Bring me back a souvenir!”

  “You have enough already. Don’t tell me you still want more!?”

  Didn’t Filo realize how overpriced everything was here?

  I left Raphtalia and Filo, who was in human form, in the inn and went out to a bar to figure out what was going on.

  Also, I turned my shield into the Book Shield and roughed up my appearance a little before I entered the bar.

  And there was someone I knew there. Someone I didn’t want to run into.

  Or so it seemed.

  He carried a bow, but for some reason also had a sword at his waist. He was dressed simply, and carried shabby equipment. And he was holding a small bow that could change shapes, like my Book Shield. If it were my first time meeting him, I could be forgiven for thinking he was a vagabond.

  He had some people with him, one of whom was wearing brightly colored armor—the guy with the bow hid in the shadows.

  That’s right, Itsuki, the Bow Hero, was hiding out in the corner of a bar, deeply involved in conversation.

  Like Motoyasu, this one had also arrived from some alternate Japan.

  He was 17-years-old, and had the face of a quiet piano player. He kind of looked mild-tempered.

  He hadn’t noticed me yet.

  I wondered what he was talking about, so I slunk over without letting him see me and tried to eavesdrop.

  “The governor is…”

  It sounded like he and his party were gathering information on the local governor.

  From what I could gather it sounded like the guy had set his taxes higher than what the Crown demanded, and accepted bribes from some merchants in the area. He used the money to hire a bodyguard and would severely punish anyone who spoke out against him. Everything he did, he did to line his own pockets. All in all, he sounded like your standard corrupt official.

  “Sounds like we’ll have to teach him a lesson.”

  Whoa! I was so surprised by Itsuki’s words that I nearly lost my footing.

  But how should I go about joining the conversation?

  Here he was hiding out for no reason, and, putting aside whatever his plan was—just what kind of a General Commander did he thi
nk he was?

  Did he think he was traveling the world to save it?

  Even accounting for lies and elaboration, I still hadn’t heard a peep about what the Bow Hero was up to.

  Although, to be fair, I was traveling around as a holy man with a bird-god, so I couldn’t exactly deride him for hiding his identity.

  But in my case I had a good reason—people had been lied to about the Shield Hero, and there was a terrible reputation I had to escape. Even now, if people found out who I was they would be on guard, so it was in my interests to let them think I was a saint. People still whispered about the Shield Demon!

  Anyway, as far as I knew there was no compelling reason for Itsuki the Bow Hero to keep his identity secret.

  Was it some kind of order from the Crown? Even if it was, I never heard anything about the Bow Hero. So he was purposely lying about who he was…

  “Very well then. Everyone, let’s go.”

  They finished their conversation, and Itsuki led his party out of the bar.

  My best guess was that they were planning on heading over to the governor’s mansion and causing a ruckus before revealing Itsuki’s identity and telling the corrupt guy off. There were similar storylines in my own world in period dramas on TV. They always feature the archetypal traveling warrior who rights the wrongs of the world.

  It was easy enough to picture. The king would find out that the corrupt politician had been deposed, and he’d appoint someone new. It all made sense.

  Was he an idiot? Why go out of your way to get further involved?

  I carried out what I’d come there to do: look for information on where I could buy foodstuffs for a reasonable price. Then I went back to the inn for the night.

  Filo’s souvenir? Like I would buy souvenirs in a town where the cost of living is through the roof?

  Of course Filo had some choice words to say about that, but I didn’t bother listening.

  The next morning the whole town was talking. Adventurers had infiltrated the town in the night and had removed the governor from office.

  Among the throngs of pedestrians moving up and down the street, Itsuki was standing around chatting up a beautiful girl.