LN Tate no Yuusha Prolog - CH 4 Vol 12 bahasa indonesia

Prologue: The Shield Hero’s Morning

This is out of left field, but my mornings usually started early. I was up and out of bed before the slaves even woke up. Well, maybe not when I’d been up all night compounding medicines or taking care of odds and ends, but still . . .

My name is Naofumi Iwatani. I was originally a university student in present-day Japan. One day I was in the library reading some book called The Records of the Four Holy Weapons, and that’s when I had the misfortune to be summoned to another world to serve as the Shield Hero. A phenomenon they called “waves” threatened to destroy the world I was summoned to. I found out later that the phenomenon was a result of separate worlds beginning to fuse together, and my mission as a hero was to stop that from happening.

In the beginning, the thought of being summoned to another world was like a dream come true. But then I got caught up in an awful conspiracy, which ended up with me being framed and thrown out on the streets without a penny to my name. That’s probably why I developed a warped personality—a distrust of others so severe that even I recognized it was absurd. But I did eventually manage to expose the conspiracy and have those who orchestrated it held responsible, so it’s gotten somewhat better.

After that, it was just one incident after another. I tried establishing friendly relations with the other heroes and failed, and then there was the whole Spirit Tortoise mess. But resolving the Spirit Tortoise ordeal ended up buying us a big chunk of time before the arrival of the next wave. I’ve been using that extra time to build my own private army to face the waves. That was an idea I got from observing Kizuna Kazayama and her companions. They were heroes from another world we visited while dealing with the Spirit Tortoise mess.

In order to do that, I started rebuilding the village that Raphtalia was from. Raphtalia was my most trusted companion, and I was kind of like a surrogate father to her. Her fellow villagers had ended up becoming slaves, but we brought them back to the village and began training them. Of course, that came with its own set of problems too. But we had taken care of those for the most part, and the reconstruction of the village had been going smoothly.

“Now then . . .”

It was still dim out, but . . . I looked out the window at the rising sun.

“Ho! Ha! To!”

Ren was diligently practicing swinging his sword. Oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten that he was already staying here in the village.

Ren was the Sword Hero, and he had been summoned from a different Japan. One with VRMMOs, a technology that let people travel into online worlds. When we were first summoned here, he had been preoccupied with projecting an image of imperturbable “cool.” But now he was showing a sincere willingness to take things more seriously. I probably would have gone and given him an earful if he’d still been in bed, but it seemed like he was serious when he mentioned having a change of heart the other day. I headed outside to talk with him.

“Already training this early?”

“Oh hey, Naofumi. Morning. Yeah, I’m going to do what it takes to get stronger.”

There were four holy heroes, including myself. I managed to get the other three to safety after they were defeated by the Spirit Tortoise, but then they ran off and disappeared.

I’d initially tried to take the Spear Hero—Motoyasu—into custody, with the cooperation of his former companion Elena, but that ended in failure. Afterward, on the way back to the village, I ran into Ren and tried to take him into custody, but . . . he fled too, after being seduced by Witch’s sly tongue. Witch was the root of all evil and the one who had originally framed me. On the upside, Motoyasu agreed to come with me after having finally realized the true nature of Witch.

That was all well and good, but then Filo tried to cheer up Motoyasu, since he’d gotten depressed. As a result, Motoyasu started acting really strange and ultimately ended up stalking Filo. Even just thinking about what had happened made me start to feel confused. Just suffice it to say that Motoyasu had gone a bit bonkers. After that, we used my portal to run from Motoyasu and returned to the village safely.

I enjoyed a string of mostly problem-free days for a short period afterward, but then some bandits started stirring up trouble in my territory. Naturally, I headed out to suppress them, but it turned out to be complicated. Ren had been deceived by Witch, consumed by a curse, and was wreaking havoc as the bandit boss. After that (I really just wanted to forget this part), I ended up using Motoyasu, who like Ren was off-kilter, to lure him out for Filo and me.

At first, Ren seemed intent on resisting. I started to think that taking him into custody wasn’t going to be possible, but Eclair managed to successfully get through to him via a dialog of swords. After that, Ren embraced his newfound mission to save the world and has been training under her guidance, while staying in my territory.

The only thing was, Motoyasu ended up getting away again. As far as I could tell, he had managed to implement the power-up methods that I’d told him about, so I wanted to think he’d be fine to some degree. But I was sure that our coming battles were only going to get tougher.

With that in mind, I figured I should learn the Hengen Muso style that had given Eclair the skill to defeat Ren. I decided to study under the master that had taught her. The master was an old lady who had recovered from a grave illness and ended up becoming exceedingly feisty after I administered her medicine while out peddling my wares. The old lady told me she had the perfect training method for me, so I was training separately from Ren and the others.

“You’re using a different training method than me and Eclair, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You do your best too, Naofumi.”

“Why the hell do I have to do my best? And why me too? Never mind. Sorry.”

When I was trying to capture Ren, he used skills from the greed curse series. It required him to pay a price. The price for greed was decreased luck and an inability to amass any kind of wealth. That apparently included equipment, and the cheap armor that he had been wearing was ragged and completely unusable.

The consequences for me using Blood Sacrifice had included suffering a massive amount of damage and reduced stats. Similarly, Ren was suffering from his own set of consequences and persistent curse effects. I was pretty sure the price he had to pay for using the Gold Rebellion curse skill was the forfeiture of his riches. The persistent curse effects caused a reduction in quality of anything he touched, and also reduced the quality of any drop items he obtained. I’d finally managed to capture Ren, but he’d joined the team at a time when he was in a really problematic condition.

It became clear right away what the consequence was for the gluttony curse that surfaced while Ren was fighting Eclair. He had apparently been level 95 before losing to Eclair, but that had now dropped down to 85. So the price for triggering the curse had been his levels, or so it seemed. Even though he seemed to want to help out now, I’d have to think long and hard about letting him fight in the condition he was in.

“Later, then.”

“Later.”

Ren returned to swinging his sword. I waved to him and walked away. After that, I dropped by the monster stable. I grabbed the feed bucket and began feeding the monsters. Then I got in a bit of light exercise with them. I played with them, in other words. The village slaves were in charge of looking after the monsters, but I took it upon myself to tend to them in the mornings.

“Alright then, you guys. What should we do this fine morning?”

The monsters all cried out excitedly in unison. Sometimes I would throw a stick and have them fetch it, and other times we’d chase each other around, kind of like playing tag.

The slaves also looked forward to participating in these games. They woke up early so that they could get ready and be waiting by the time we started. Of course, that only included slaves or monsters that weren’t out hawking our wares. The earthworm-looking monsters, called dunes, were in charge of working the land, so they got to join in every time. The dunes got along really well with the lumo slaves.

“Bark! Bark! Again, bubba!”

Keel came running back with the stick I’d just thrown hanging out of her mouth. Yeah, she was pretty much just a dog now. Literally.

Keel had originally been a demi-human slave that lost her parents just like Raphtalia. She’d apparently shown potential for being able to use a therianthrope form, so Sadeena taught her how. Now she spent most of her time running around in therianthrope form—an animal form, basically. Hers looked like a Siberian Husky pup. But recently, I couldn’t help but feel like Keel was quickly turning into an actual dog.

Other than that, I made breakfast when I felt like it. All of the prep had already been taken care of today, so I just helped the cooking division slaves do the cooking, and then I served the villagers.

That reminded me. We had some new slave children in the village. One of the slave trader’s assistants stopped by while I was out and dropped off some slaves. They weren’t originally from this village, but I had a serious lack of manpower, considering what was coming. We’d established a basic framework for how things operated in the village and development had really started to take off. Now was the time to start thinking about beefing up our offensive capabilities in preparation for the coming waves, so I needed to gather up more heads without being too picky.

After applying their slave curses, I left it up to Keel and the others to deal with the new slaves. I didn’t need to manage them directly anymore. The veteran slaves would see to it that they learned all of the rules and whatnot. Raphtalia was in command. Keel and the first round of slaves I’d overseen assisted her. They took care of pretty much everything, including the scolding, which made things a lot easier on me.

“Good morning, Mr. Naofumi.”

“Rafu!”

“Oh hey, Raphtalia and Raph-chan! Morning.”

Raphtalia had brought the slaves to eat breakfast. Raphtalia was my trusted sidekick. She had originally been a slave, but she became a hero after being chosen by the katana vassal weapon in another world. She was the first person to believe in me in this world. I was like a surrogate father to her. Whenever I made mistakes, she was always careful to point them out. It was just how you’d expect a parent and child to act.

“Rafu!”

Raph-chan was a shikigami, or what they called a familiar in this world. I’d made her from a lock of Raphtalia’s hair when preparing to search for Raphtalia after she’d gone missing in another world. Raph-chan was a cute little thing that looked kind of like a tanuki or a racoon. She was really good about playing along with the situation. I enjoyed doting on her, but Raphtalia always got upset if I gave her too much attention. Raphtalia said it made her feel awkward, for whatever reason.

“Good morning, Mr. Naofumi.”

Atla came strolling up. I’d purchased some new slaves recently in Zeltoble, and one of those was Atla’s older brother. The brother had been the actual product, and his sickly younger sister, Atla, basically got thrown in as part of the package—a bonus, I guess you could say.

The siblings were demi-humans, like Raphtalia. Specifically, they were a type of demi-human called hakuko. Hakuko were supposed to be one of the highest-ranking types of demi-humans. They were pretty much famous in Siltvelt, which was the country that worshipped the Shield Hero.

Despite being one of those hakuko demi-humans, Atla had been suffering from a congenital disease and was basically on the verge of death. But when I gave her some of the Elixir of Yggdrasil that I’d gotten hold of, her condition began to improve instantly. Before long, she was walking for the first time in her life.

She’d been covered in sores and wrapped in bandages from head to toe, but the medicine took care of the sores too. Now she was one of the village’s most beautiful, young girls. She’d been blind, unable to walk, and on the verge of death, yet she managed to make a near-complete recovery. It was truly impressive.

“Oh hey, Atla. Where’s Sadeena?”

Sadeena was a killer whale woman with a penchant for drinking. She had the ability to transform, and she usually ran around in her therianthrope form. She played the role of the dependable big sister to the village children. She also had tons of combat experience, and we really struggled when we fought against her in the coliseum tournament.

Sadeena apparently had a thing for men that could outdrink her. Since I was physically unable to get drunk, she sexually harassed me every chance she got. Atla and Sadeena both liked me, so they tended to hang around together a lot.

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Come now, Brother. Let go of my hand. Off you go to find Sadeena.”

“No, Atla! If I let go of your hand, you’ll just run to him, right?!”

That was Fohl holding on to Atla’s hand to make sure she didn’t come to me. Fohl was Atla’s big brother. He was the reason I’d originally bought the siblings, seeing as how I’d needed offensive capabilities. He had a sister complex and the spirit of the Alps . . . No, never mind that. His little sister meant everything to him, but he was completely at her mercy too. He was one of the older slaves in the village.

“Brother, take a look at the sky over there.”

“Huh?”

Out of nowhere, Atla used a completely hackneyed line to divert Fohl’s attention. Immediately after, she jabbed her finger into her big brother’s stomach.

“Aiya!”

“Guh!”

Taken by surprise, Fohl hugged his stomach tightly and fell over, writhing in agony. Between the two of them, it seemed like Atla actually had the most combat potential. I was pretty sure that wasn’t just my imagination. According to the old Hengen Muso lady, being blind made Atla more sensitive to things like the surrounding life forces, flows of magic, and sounds, which gave her the ability to identify opponents’ weak spots precisely. As a result, she had become a poking specialist.

“I’m still . . . not going to let go!”

“Don’t be so stubborn, Brother!”

They were a strange pair of siblings in more ways than one.

“You two, stop messing around. Finish eating and get out of here. Atla, sparring isn’t until after you’ve finished breakfast.”

“I’m looking forward to it!”

“Yeah, good for you. Fohl, you better get out there and start leveling. Otherwise, your little sister is going to pass you up.”

“Ugh . . . I know that!”

Fohl glared at me and nodded.

Just recently, the two of them—well, just Fohl actually—had been affected by a skill Motoyasu used and started attacking Atla. The scene was still fresh in my mind. I say “attack,” but he was really just hugging her and wouldn’t let go. Either way, it was clear that Fohl’s feelings for Atla went beyond brotherly love.

“. . .”

And then there was Filo. She had run off to play with Melty and still hadn’t returned. Filo had become my second ever companion, after Raphtalia. She was a bird-type monster called a filolial that could also transform into a human. In her human form, she was a young girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a pair of wings on her back.

Filolials loved nothing more than pulling carriages, and they exhibited a special type of development when raised by a hero. Filo had great fighting instincts, and she’d helped me make it out of tight spots time and time again. She had a childlike innocence and an insatiable appetite.

Filo tried to cheer up Motoyasu not too long ago and ended up becoming the sole target of his romantic pursuits. As if that weren’t bad enough, she’d also had her precious carriage stolen away from her, so she was a bit on edge lately.

“Alright, everyone, once you finish eating, get started on your tasks for the day. That will be all.”

As I was giving my orders, a single sleepy-eyed girl came strolling up along with her two . . . companions.

“N———”

Her name was S’yne. She was a vassal weapon holder who wasn’t from this world or even Glass’s world. Her vassal weapon was a sewing kit, or something like that. She fought with scissors and a ball of thread. And for whatever reason, I’d ended up looking after her here in the village.

She had silver hair and appeared to be around 15 years old at first glance. She was on the short side. I guess she probably would have been considered cute, but I didn’t really look at her that way. Her home world had been destroyed, and now the people who had destroyed it were here in this world, trying to kill the holy heroes. She was basically acting like my bodyguard now.

“Good morning, Mr. Iwatani.”

One of the stuffed dolls that S’yne had with her spoke on her behalf. I wondered if the reason S’yne looked so tired was because she’d been up all night making the doll. Apparently, she could use stuffed dolls as familiars.

Perhaps it was because sewing was her specialty, but there were some real issues with the designs of the stuffed dolls she made. First of all, for whatever insane reason, she had made a stuffed doll that looked like Raph-chan and gave it the ability to talk. Raph-chan squeaking “rafu!” —and nothing else— is exactly what made her so cute. When the stuffed doll started speaking human language fluidly, it immediately lost half of its allure. S’yne made it stop talking when I pointed that out, and now it’s sitting on my bed beside my pillow.

The newly designed stuffed doll was based on Keel’s therianthrope form. I’d call it Keel #2 for now.

“Good mo ——— ”

The translation functionality of the vassal weapon that S’yne was using was damaged as a result of her world having been destroyed. Half of what she said just ended up turning into static.

“Morning. You know, your stuffed doll sure is speaking a lot more clearly now,” I said.

“Please, allow me to explain.”

The Keel #2 stuffed doll responded and pointed at an accessory hanging off of its collar.

“This accessory has the ability to translate. My master used it on me after taking it off of the dead body of her arch-enemy’s companion, who you defeated.”

Like I mentioned earlier, there were invaders from another world who were trying to kill the four holy heroes. Just recently, a couple of them had attacked us. They apparently got all kinds of benefits from destroying other worlds, and they had no interest in settling things amicably, like we had done with Glass and Kizuna.

Those benefits included what was usually referred to as “resurrection” in games. They had the ability to return from the dead. The enemies had been quite skilled at combat, as well, and it had been a tough battle. Luckily for us, the circumstances at the time had prevented them from resurrecting long enough for us to finish them off for good.

So the equipment was something that S’yne had scavenged off of the corpse of one of those enemies.

“That’s probably something we should be trying to study,” I said.

“You can have it, if that’s what you would like.”

It’s not like I wanted to monopolize the technology, but I wouldn’t be able to communicate effectively with S’yne without it. If the familiar used it to act as an intermediary like this, it would make talking with S’yne a lot easier. And we were still focused on analyzing the accessories we had gotten in Kizuna’s world. I’m sure it would have been convenient if we figured out how the translation functionality worked, of course. But my shield already translated for me, so the only person that really needed the technology was S’yne. Studying it would be low on the list of priorities.

“I’ll ask for it when I need it, so just hold on to it until then.”

“Understood. I will continue using it, in that case.”

“Can S’yne not use it directly?”

“Her vassal weapon interferes with it. We’re lucky that I can even use it.”

Ugh . . . So S’yne couldn’t use the technology herself. It certainly seemed convenient, but I guess it wasn’t so easy to exploit. I probably wouldn’t be able to use it either.

“I see. Oh well. Are you going to eat, S’yne?”

S’yne responded with a quick nod and held her plate out. I put some food on her plate and she sat down at a table and started eating in silence.

Things were never boring in the village.

Chapter One: Instant Awakening

Once they finished eating, the slaves each got started on their own tasks for the day. Some of them trained, others were getting started studying magic, a number of them headed out to hawk our goods, and others helped with the reconstruction.

My work varied from day to day too, but I was supposed to spar with Atla after finishing breakfast. Fohl had gone out to hunt and level up. Atla had been on guard duty, but Raphtalia was filling in for her. As for why I was sparring with Atla, well, it was complicated. It all started when I called the old Hengen Muso lady to the village to talk.

“Hey, old lady. I want to start training too,” I told the old lady.

Rishia and Eclair had been making clear progress, so I figured I needed to get serious about training too. I asked for the old lady’s help. Starting a conversation by calling someone “old lady” like that probably sounded pretty rude, but that had become her nickname, so that’s just the way it was.

“Duly noted. However, you can’t start training until you learn how to sense life force.”

“Hmm . . . I thought that might be the case.”

“I’m starting to get a feeling for it,” Raphtalia interjected.

“Oh? It seems you’re starting to understand, young grasshopper,” replied the old lady.

The old lady looked at Raphtalia and seemed to be able to verify her claim.

“In that case, I’ll have you work on something a bit more difficult later, young grasshopper!”

“Am I supposed to do more sitting meditation in the mountains, then? Or is my only option to use life force water or something?” I asked.

I was fully aware that there were no shortcuts and I would need to put in the work, but still, it had just been one problem after another lately. I wanted to learn the style quickly. But I guess that was just wishful thinking.

“Well, it’s a slightly rough approach, but I do have a method in mind that might work well for you, Saint,” the old lady replied.

“Then spit it out already. I don’t mind if I have to suffer a bit.”

Getting stronger quickly was all that really mattered.

“There is someone that can see life force even better than I. If you were to spar with this person, then I am sure you would be able to get a feeling for it as well, Saint.”

“Oh yeah, I heard you had said something about Atla having an aptitude for the art.”

Eclair had mentioned the old lady saying Atla didn’t even need to study the style.

“That’s right.”

Fohl was standing there with us. The old lady looked at him, and he cautiously looked at Atla.

“Huh? What is it?” Atla asked.

“I believe that sparring with this girl will help you understand life force, Saint.”

“Well, she did seem stronger than Fohl last time we went out hunting,” I said.

“Say what?! It goes without saying that I’m stronger than her!” Fohl cried out.

“Brother, please refrain from belittling me in front of Mr. Naofumi.”

Atla poked Fohl in the side sharply.

“Guh!”

Fohl nearly fell over backward when she did.

“Ugh . . .”

“There you have it, Fohl. Right now, you’re weaker than Atla. If you want to redeem yourself, go train with this old lady here,” I told him.

“Brother, thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

After everything Fohl had done to help raise Atla, I couldn’t believe she was content with expressing her gratitude in nothing more than a few words.

“A . . . Atla?! Ugh . . . Fine! I’ll get stronger, no matter what!”

His determination to grow stronger was evident in his expression. Atla was spurring his growth. In that sense, I guess her attitude actually wasn’t all that bad.

“And I will train with Mr. Naofumi!”

Atla wrapped her arm around mine. I didn’t really like the idea of her hanging on me, but if she was going to be my sparring partner, then I guess I would have to give her a little leeway.

“That settles that. Raphtalia, you go ahead and go with the old lady to—”

“No, thank you!”

Raphtalia objected for some reason. I wondered why. She had seemed motivated to train up until that point.

“Hmm . . . I suppose Raphtalia joining in for a bit of healthy competition could make for effective training. Rivalry gives birth to ambition!”

Now the old lady was compromising too. Was rivalry really going to help? I guess I had read a manga where something like that happened before.

“In that case, Saint, please procure some life force water. Also, if you’re truly serious about training, then we will have to go into the mountains at some point. Please consider making time to allow for that in the near future.”

Studying the Hengen Muso style would normally require going off deep into the mountains. But since learning about life force water, we had been able to train in the village, and even in the more urban area of the town. Thanks to that, Eclair and Rishia had been able to train much more consistently.

Ren was apparently planning on studying under the old lady with Eclair too, so I wasn’t sure how much life force water we would need. The old lady originally intended to have Ren train with me. But Ren didn’t seem interested in taking any shortcuts to getting stronger, so she said it would probably be good to have him and Eclair train together and push each other to improve.

And that’s how Raphtalia and I ended up sparring with Atla. We needed to develop the ability to see life force with our own eyes before we could progress any further.

“Alright, Atla. I want you to use that same attack I asked for before, but this time make it powerful and swift,” I said.

“Understood!”

I blocked Atla’s jab, and a loud twang rang out. I felt something travel into my body and burst. It felt exactly like the technique that the old lady had used on me before. I was glad that I had used a weak shield for our training. If I’d been using one of my more powered-up shields, that attack would have done some real damage.

“Ugh . . .”

I used my own inner flow of magic to forcefully expel the foreign energy from my body. But I remembered the old lady mentioning that was the wrong way of doing it.

“Ugh . . . I managed to expel it, but this is tough. Alright, let’s do some sparring then.”

“Okay! Here I come! Aiyah! Aiyaya!”

The old lady had given me a bunch of pointers. She told me that I needed to do more than just block. Apparently, sparring with Atla as if it were a real fight would be more effective. She told Raphtalia to do the same.

“Mr. Naofumi . . .” Raphtalia said worriedly.

“The old lady says that if I continue to take Atla’s attacks I should start to see life force. I just have to stick with it.”

I continued to take the attacks until I was too exhausted to keep standing. I flumped down and took a break.

“You’re next, Raphtalia!” Atla shouted.

She beckoned Raphtalia over with several flicks of her wrist.

Why was she always so provocative? Raphtalia responded as expected. She readied herself with a dead-serious expression on her face, regardless of the fact that she was using a wooden practice sword.

“I hope you’re ready!” said Atla.

“I’m ready to see you try!” Raphtalia responded.

The two edged closer . . . and closer . . . The tension between these two when they sparred was enough to make anyone watching think it was a real battle. Did they not realize they were only supposed to be sparring? Or maybe I needed to be taking the sessions that serious too.

“Hiya!”

Raphtalia closed in on Atla rapidly and swung her wooden sword down. Atla dodged the attack by a hair’s breadth and jabbed at Raphtalia sharply. Raphtalia bent backward and dodged the jab as she followed through with her swing, swiping sideways. Atla crouched down and thrust at an opening in Raphtalia’s guard, but Raphtalia swiftly blocked the jab with her wooden sword. A loud thud echoed out.

“Here I go!” taunted Atla.

Atla gave another sharp jab, which Raphtalia redirected to the side with her arm. Then she countered by swinging her wooden sword down once again.

“Tsk! You don’t give up!” Atla snapped.

Atla did a backflip to put some distance between them.

“As soon as one of my attacks lands, this match will be over. Of course, I will see to Mr. Naofumi’s training afterward. You can spend that time recovering quietly,” she said.

“That’s not going to happen! You’re the one who’s going to experience the impact of my blade, Atla! Then you can watch me and Mr. Naofumi train!”

Raphtalia placed her hand on the back of the wooden sword’s blade. I was guessing she was channeling something into it. I still couldn’t see life force, so I wasn’t sure.

“It looks like you can’t afford to hold back,” said Atla.

“I could say the same about you!”

The two exchanged glances and then swiftly charged forward. They clashed, and sparks flew. Were they really just pretending to be serious? They were putting on a real performance considering they were only sparring.

“Impressive, as usual,” said Atla.

“Still not as impressive as you,” Raphtalia responded.

Their matches were always unusually spirited like this. The old lady mentioned that observing them fight was also part of my training. My mind wandered and I gazed on as the two continued to battle it out.

Eventually midday rolled around, and I made lunch. It would have been nice if I had the time to just train all day long, but that wasn’t the case.

“Your cooking is delicious as always, Bubba Shield!”

Keel got so excited that she turned into a dog and started wagging her tail. Did my cooking really make the little loincloth pup that happy? Whatever. If it motivated her, that was a good thing.

“Alright, we’ve had lunch. I guess we should go give the old guy a visit at his weapon shop.”

“Agreed,” responded Raphtalia.

“Understood!” Atla replied.

We wrapped up our training and used my portal skill to teleport to the castle town.

Chapter Two: The Alchemist

I walked into the weapon shop. Imiya’s uncle was standing behind the counter.

“Oh hello, Shield Hero.”

“Hey. How’s it going?”

“The weapons are selling as fast as I can make them. I’m setting aside a portion of the profits for your equipment, of course.”

Oh! I liked hearing that! With everything I had going on, it seemed like I was always broke lately. I still didn’t have enough financial leeway to be spending money on equipment. If Imiya’s uncle working meant a reduction in equipment costs, that was a good thing.

“Thanks. Imiya and the rest of you handy bunch are a real help.”

“Don’t mention it! We can’t thank you enough for giving us such fulfilling work.”

Imiya’s uncle was a type of therianthrope called a lumo. They looked like moles. Imiya was the first lumo that I had bought from the slave trader. She was good with her hands, so I decided to buy more lumo slaves. When I did, it turned out that one of them was her uncle, so I just referred to him as Imiya’s uncle in my head. He had a name, but . . . what was it, again? These lumos all seemed to have really long names.

I asked the old guy to take on an apprentice so that I would have someone to make equipment back at the village. So I brought Imiya’s uncle to the shop and introduced him to the old guy, and it turned out the two already knew each other. Imiya’s uncle had studied blacksmithing together with the old guy a long time ago, and the two of them had been close.

“We’re still trying to work out the peculiarities of that mountain of materials. We spend all of our time arguing about that lately. It even turned into a bit of fisticuffs just last night.”

“That’s something I didn’t expect to hear.”

He had gotten into an argument with the old guy that ended up getting physical, and yet here he was, acting completely normal and tending to the shop. I got the feeling those two really trusted each other.

“What’s going on?”

The old guy came strolling out from the back of the shop. He was holding a hammer in one hand. It looked like he had been in the middle of working on it.

“Oh? It’s you, kid! How have things been lately?”

“Not bad. Been doing a bit of training lately, among other things. How about you? How is that equipment coming along?”

“A few days isn’t really enough time to make much progress with that stuff. Is that all you’re here for today?”

The old guy responded cheerfully, so I mulled over whether there was anything else I needed for a moment. Then I slowly looked over toward Raphtalia and Atla, who I’d brought along with me.

“Well . . .”

I didn’t really have any money to spend, but I figured that Imiya’s uncle working there was kind of like having a line of credit. In that case, there was something I’d been considering asking the old guy to do for me.

“It’s about that Siderite Shield you showed me before.”

“Hmm? What about it? Do you need it to get stronger or something?”

“No, nothing like that. Shooting Star Shield is already a lifesaver as it is.”

Honestly, I had been using Shooting Star Shield in battles pretty much nonstop since I learned it. It was a versatile skill that would remain useful for a long time to come. My battles had made that clear. Plus, it would probably be even more effective if I used an accessory on that shield.

“I was wondering if the Siderite Shield had some kind of special meaning for you and that’s why you were keeping it tucked away like that.”

“Hmm . . . I just didn’t want to sell it because the material is so rare, so I’ve been keeping it in storage. Why?”

“Oh, really? In that case, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

“What is it? Spit it out already, kid.”

I shifted my gaze toward Raphtalia and told the old guy what I had in mind.

“Do you think you could melt the Siderite Shield down and make a katana? A Siderite Katana?”

The old guy and Raphtalia both nodded simultaneously, as if my suggestion made total sense.

“I’d been wondering about that for a while now. I’m guessing the little miss’s weapon is similar to your shield.”

Ah, that’s right. I still hadn’t told the old guy about Raphtalia’s katana. It was a vassal weapon from another world, which made it something like a seven star weapon. Raphtalia pulled her katana out and showed it to the old guy.

“It’s from the other world. They called it a vassal weapon, which is most likely equivalent to what we call the seven star weapons here in this world,” I explained.

“I see. In other words, you’re thinking that if I rework the Siderite Shield into a katana, the little miss will be able to gain some kind of powerful skill.”

“Exactly. Do you think you could do that?”

“Mr. Naofumi is ordering a weapon for you. I’m jealous! I want a weapon too.”

I ignored Atla. She could fight just fine with her bare hands. She didn’t need a weapon.

“I suppose it’s possible,” said the old guy.

“Will you do it for me?”

“Sure. It’s really just a collector’s item that’s taking up space anyway. I’m happy to do it if it will help you and the little miss out, kid.”

“Should I move it to the forge later?” asked Imiya’s uncle.

The old guy nodded.

“But a katana . . .”

The old guy looked off into the distance. He seemed to be lost in thought.

“What is it?” I asked.

The old guy and Imiya’s uncle both seemed to be reminiscing now.

“Shield Hero, katanas were our master’s specialty,” replied Imiya’s uncle.

“Yeah, the master was a swordsmith by trade, although he was still skilled at making other weapons too,” added the old guy.

“I see.”

I remembered having heard something about blacksmiths specializing in certain kinds of weapons. In Europe a really long time ago, back in my world, all of those details were decided by permits and stuff. Of course, this was a different world and things seemed to work differently here. The old guy seemed to be able to handle just about anything, so I made all kinds of requests. But it might have just been that the old guy and Imiya’s uncle were unusually well-rounded.

“In the end, the master certified me in everything. Even so, I honestly don’t think I’ve come anywhere close to surpassing the master’s skill yet.”

“I see.”

I remembered them mentioning recently that their master was a womanizing troublemaker. He was the kind of craftsman that had impressive skills in spite of having a problematic personality. And his specialty was katanas.

“I already have all of the materials, so it shouldn’t take long. Come check back again in two or three days.”

“Got it. As for payment . . .”

“It’s not like you’re going to buy it off of me, right? It’ll be good practice for me too. You don’t need to pay me for the little miss to just hold it.”

That’s what I loved about the old guy. His generosity really made things easy on me.

“Thanks. I’ll give you plenty of business when I order equipment for all of the villagers one of these days.”

“Righto!”

That’s why I wanted to pay the old guy back in whatever way I could.

“And don’t hesitate to let me know if you’re looking for some rare ore or something. Alright, later then.”

“Goodbye,” added Raphtalia.

“Until next time,” said Atla.

“Righto. It seems like things are getting livelier for you, kid. Even I can’t help but get excited.”

We parted with the old guy and made haste back to the village.

“Master! Big sis! Welcome baaack!”

Oh? Filo was back at the village. She came trotting up to me in her filolial form.

“Oh hey, Shield Hero. Welcome back.”

One of the slaves that took a special interest in the monsters welcomed me back. That was unusual.

“Shield Hero, we have a really stubborn visitor that we don’t know how to deal with,” the slave said.

“Huh?”

Eclair and Ren showed up a few moments after the monster-enthusiast slave. Eclair seemed a bit perturbed. I wondered just what was going on.

“Hold on, surely it can wait. She’s being watched,” said Eclair.

“But she’s almost gotten away several times already!” snapped Ren.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

I looked at Ren.

“I don’t really know. Someone is here to see you, Naofumi.”

“Surely you can deal with the visitor, Ren.”

“Well . . . yeah, you’d think so, but . . .”

Ren was acting oddly too.

“This one is a bit of an oddball. She says she wants to see you immediately, Mr. Iwatani,” said Eclair.

I sighed.

“Who the hell is she?”

“She’s some alchemist that supposedly caused all kinds of problems in Faubrey,” answered Eclair.

Say what? Faubrey was the superpower that worshipped the four holy heroes. Why would an alchemist from Faubrey be here?

“I received word from the queen several days ago. It appears as if the alchemist was deemed a heretic and thrown out of Faubrey. And then she showed up in Melromarc,” Eclair explained.

Just what kind of alchemist was this?

“If she’s that suspicious, then throw her the hell out, no questions asked!”

“Well, the queen said something about poison becoming medicine in the right hands. So I figured we should ask you first, Naofumi,” said Ren.

Hmm, he did have a point, I guess.

“When she saw the monsters that you’ve been keeping, she started talking about wanting to inspect them and—”

“Oh . . . So this is the infamous bird god!”

An unfamiliar woman appeared from out of nowhere and started poking and prodding Filo.

“Wh-wh-whaaat?!”

“Whoa!”

“When did she get here?! I didn’t even notice!” cried Raphtalia.

“Impressive speed! Her approach rivals even that of my brother when he’s gone mad,” Atla commentated.

“M . . . Maaasteeerrr!”

Filo screamed out. Her response reminded me of when Motoyasu had grabbed her.

“Oh, it seems to understand human language too. This must be the filolial queen variant that the legends speak of!”

The woman had long, silvery blonde hair and dark brown skin. She appeared to be human. Probably in her mid-twenties. She had curves in all of the right places and she was wearing a lab coat. She seemed to fit the “hot older sister” role that was common back in my world. But any big sister role just made me think of Sadeena.

“These feathers go really deep. I wonder if it has any unusual organs.”

The alchemist (?) forcefully pried Filo’s mouth open and grabbed her tongue. Filo tried to struggle but was easily subdued. The alchemist seemed to be able to hold her down as effortlessly as if she were taking candy from a baby.

“Mmmrrghhhh!”

The alchemist stuck her head deep into Filo’s mouth, but Filo flapped her wings violently and spit the alchemist’s head out.

“How am I supposed to inspect you if you struggle like that? Settle down.”

Just before Filo could toss her away, the alchemist (?) pulled out a syringe and thrust it at Filo. Unable to dodge in time, the needle stabbed Filo right in the mouth.

“Wha . . .”

Filo flumped down onto the ground with a thud.

“I . . . feel so weak . . .”

“Umm, lady . . .” I said.

“Wait just a moment. I’m right in the middle of inspecting this monster.”

“Well, that monster is mine, and I can’t have you just doing whatever you want with her.”

“Oh?”

When she heard what I said, the alchemist (?) seemed to lose interest in Filo momentarily.

“Does that mean you’re the Shield Hero?”

“Umm, yeah . . . and who are you?”

“Me? I’m Ratotille Anthreya. My friends call me Rat.”

“Umm, I see. I’m Naofumi Iwatani. Just call me Naofumi.”

“Nice to meet you, Naofumi.”

Rat’s eyes were fixed on Filo, who was still slumped down on the ground.

“So do you mind if I inspect this monster of yours?”

“M . . . Master! Nooo!”

Hmm . . . I had a feeling that the mystery that was Filo would be unraveled if I agreed, but I also couldn’t help but feel like there would be significant consequences for Filo.

I sighed.

“I’m going to have to refuse for now.”

“Aww, that’s too bad.”

Filo must have started to recover, because she stood up slowly.

“Oh my, it looks like I’d need to use a stronger sedative to inspect her, anyway.”

“Nooo! Save me! Mel-chaaaan!”

Filo ran away and disappeared into the distance. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be coming back for a while.

“So I guess you’re the person who wanted to see me. What do you want?”

“That’s right. I took the liberty of checking out the monsters in this village and a certain plant.”

“Okay . . . ?”

“And I’m intrigued. I’d love to tinker around with things a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“You say tinker . . .”

What in the world did this lady plan on doing? It seemed like she already knew about the bioplant, so she must have done her homework before showing up.

“You’re the alchemist that stirred up some trouble in Faubrey, right?”

“Trouble? That wasn’t trouble. Those idiots don’t want to admit their own ignorance. They simply couldn’t understand my research.”

She was clearly one of those mad-scientist types.

“Those idiots referred to my research as ‘godless deeds,’ of all things. And then they exiled me. Their ‘gods’ are the four holy heroes and the seven star heroes, right?”

“So what? You want one of those four holy heroes to acknowledge your work and that’s why you came here?”

I glanced over at Ren, but he shook his head.

“That’s not it,” replied Rat.

“Then why did you come here?”

“I originally came to investigate the Spirit Tortoise. But my interests have already begun to shift.”

Rat reached out to grab my hand with a look of passion in her eyes. I pulled my hand away.

“Don’t touch me. I can’t stand women like you.”

“Oh? Then I won’t touch you, but I’d still like to tinker with your monsters.”

My monsters, huh? I didn’t think I really had that many yet.

“Every one of them exhibits development like I’ve never seen before. I’d love to observe them.”

I couldn’t deny that all of my monsters had begun to exhibit abnormal development. They were around level 25 on average, but I’d been told they were all bigger than usual.

I looked over at the three caterpillands, which were caterpillar-like monsters. They were helping the slaves clear away stalks of the overgrown bioplant. Wait . . . three? I had only purchased two caterpillands. One . . . two . . . three . . . I counted them several times, and there was definitely one too many! What the hell?! There were only two this morning!

“Who the hell got a new caterpilland without asking?!”

“Uh oh!”

The slave that had just been standing near us tried to hide one of the caterpillands in a hurry.

“It’s too late!” I shouted.

The slave must have been one of the culprits. And the caterpilland she hid was the biggest one too. Since I hadn’t seen it this morning, it was safe to assume they had been hiding it somewhere and raising it in secret. We had expanded the bioplant field. It was starting to look like a forest. Maybe that’s where they had been hiding it. On top of that, I could check its stats, which meant that it was registered to me!

The monster-enthusiast slave was using her whole body to try to hide the caterpilland, but it wasn’t enough. And behind them was the bioplant. Something about the scene felt vaguely familiar. The fact that I was seeing it in a sepia tone was just my imagination, I’m sure.

“I feel like I’ve seen this before . . . in an old anime . . .” said Ren.

I guess they had something similar in his world too. But whatever. That was beside the point.

“There’s no new caterpilland! There’s no new caterpilland here!”

“It’s huge! I can still see it!”

Was she seriously going to try to pretend it wasn’t there? What valley did this princess come from?! The caterpilland behind her was huge and looked just like one of those bugs!

“I want you all to think about what you’ve done!”

The slaves cast their eyes downward. And then Atla stepped forward, for whatever reason.

“It’s time for your punishment. Each one of you will be severely punished, by order of Mr. Naofumi. We’ll start with—”

“Umm . . . Atla, you stay out of this. I want them to tell me what’s going on.”

What had Atla been planning on doing to them? I could easily imagine her choosing a punishment far worse than anything I would have done.

“Alright, I want to know how this happened.”

“Listen, it’s not like anyone wanted to upset you, bubba.”

Keel stepped forward and spoke in defense of the monster enthusiast.

“And how the hell did you manage to get it registered to me, anyway?!”

“The man that sells slaves secretly did it for us.”

“That damned slave trader!”

When the hell did he do that?!

“Why is the slave trader dealing with my slaves?!”

“It was the first egg we all found together!”

“Huh?”

The slaves explained. They had taken an egg from a monster nest that they had found when they went out to level. Bringing it back to the village had been easy enough, but they had no idea how they would manage to raise it.

“Did Raphtalia know about this?” I asked.

“I did not!”

“If we’d told Raphtalia, she would have told you, right?” said Keel.

“Of course I would have! What were you thinking, Keel?!” Raphtalia snapped.

Keel continued her explanation. Even the slaves recognized that hatching a monster egg without registering someone as the monster’s owner would be dangerous. They were trying to figure out what to do when the slave trader showed up.

I had been giving them some spending money when they went out to peddle our wares. They all put together what they had left of that money and paid the slave trader to take care of the registration. Rather than registering it to one of them, the slave trader mentioned that registering it to me would make it stronger and more impressive, and the rest was history.

Hmm . . . I had intentionally adjusted the caterpillands’ levels to keep them from getting too big, and yet this one was still huge. It was fifty percent bigger than the other caterpillands. I wasn’t sure what I should do.

“Don’t kill it!”

“Shut up, valley girl!”

“What in the world is ‘valley’ supposed to mean, bubba?” asked Keel.

“I’m guessing there’s a character from a story in Naofumi’s world that did something similar,” said Ren.

He had seriously gone and just calmly explained my wisecrack. Oh well. I didn’t want to explain it, anyway, so whatever. But damn it, these brats just did whatever they wanted. The slave that kept spouting off valley princess lines was doing her best to stand up for the caterpilland.

“Listen, if you just do whatever you want, you’re not only making trouble for others, you’re making trouble for me too! If you wanted to raise the monster so badly, you should have talked to me!”

I already had my own transactions with the slave trader, so if they did things on their own it would most likely just double the effort involved.

“And you better look after that thing properly. If I see you pushing the responsibility off on others, I’ll sell it off without a second thought.”

“I . . . I will!”

Sheesh . . . These brats just caused one problem after another.

“It’s like you’re running a daycare, Naofumi,” Ren said.

“What the hell?!”

That bastard! What was he thinking saying that?! A daycare?! He couldn’t have been more wrong! I glared at Ren and was about to give him a piece of my mind, but Keel started shouting.

“See, I told you! I told you bubba would forgive you!”

“But you said Bubba Shield would sell it if he found out, Keel. You told me I had to keep it a secret. Because he’d sell it without hesitation, since he’s a money-grubber.”

“I said penny-pincher, not money-grubber!”

“You guys . . .”

What a bunch of . . . Wait, did that brat not say it was the first egg they found?

“Was this the only egg?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“What?!”

The slaves were shaking their heads. They must have been really good at finding monster nests, because they started pulling out tons of eggs that they’d hidden away at their residences.

“The slave trader is going to process them for us once we save up enough money.”

“That’s a lot of eggs! What were you planning to do after hatching all of those without even asking?!”

That would have been a complete disaster. Then again, I guess it would have been easy enough to dispose of a bunch of baby monsters.

“We didn’t plan that far . . .”

I’d never really thought about there being monster eggs in the wild. We could always use the extras to make food. I had a feeling they’d get mad at me if I said that though.

“Are those all caterpillands?”

“Who knows? We got them from lots of different places, so I have no idea.”

Rat plopped her hand down on my shoulder.

“What is it? I’m busy right now. We’ll talk later,” I told her.

“I’ll analyze and take care of the eggs for free if you’ll let me do my research here.”

Hmm . . . I was all about cost-benefit analysis, so “free” always got my attention. Then again, they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch too. I couldn’t make up my mind.

“We decline!”

The monster-enthusiast slave, a.k.a. valley girl, refused before I could even respond. The little brat seemed to become unusually aggressive whenever it came to anything dealing with the monsters.

“Hold on now. Let me think about this,” I said.

Keeping Rat around might not be a bad idea. She was an expert on monsters, after all. There were plenty of ways I could make use of her. I might have been expecting too much, but they did call her an alchemist. Maybe she could take over modifying the bioplant and monsters for me. That said, something about the timing of it all seemed just too perfect.

“Is this some kind of conspiracy? Some kind of performance to get me to agree?”

“It’s not!” shouted Keel.

“Naofumi, I agree that it all seems a little bit too convenient, but I don’t think that’s the case,” said Ren.

Hmm . . . So it wasn’t just me that thought it seemed convenient. But just saying so wasn’t going to accomplish anything. In that case, I’d try a different approach.

“Rat, what is it that you hope to achieve? Depending on your answer, I might consider letting you stay.”

“Achieve? I want to create a powerful monster.”

“Oh?”

So she wanted to create a powerful monster. That was really simple and straightforward. I knew of games that had monster fusion and mixing systems, so it wasn’t like I couldn’t understand where she was coming from. But I guess if someone was actually trying to do something like that with real, living creatures, it was only natural that it would repulse some, just like it had in Faubrey.

“In order to do that, I need to analyze monsters and combine various alchemical techniques with magic. But those fools called my research evil and said it was beyond the forgiveness of the gods. They destroyed my lab and killed my research subjects. It was a real mess.”

“Umm . . . So in other words, you’re basically a monster tamer that was researching how to make monsters stronger using alchemy.”

“That’s more or less accurate.”

Heh. I’d said that assuming that she would argue, but I guess she was fine with being considered a monster tamer. I’d figured she was just loony, but she seemed to be able to look at things objectively too. Add a sense of purpose to the mix and the result is recklessness.

“Let’s look at this from a basic common-sense perspective. Eclair, I want to know what you think.”

“Huh? What I think?”

Eclair’s wary expression turned to one of confusion as she responded.

“Do you think the research she’s doing crosses any lines?”

“I don’t really know enough to say one way or the other, personally. However, having seen Filo in action, I do believe that monsters should be considered part of our offensive capabilities.”

It was an honest reply. But it didn’t answer the question. There was a high likelihood that the research wouldn’t be openly accepted. But I still wasn’t sure what to do.

“Rat, would your research include something like making Spirit Tortoise clones and using them to fight?”

“That does seem like something I would come up with. Shield Hero. What was your title of nobility again?”

“Mr. Iwatani is a Count,” replied Eclair.

“Well then, Count. It’s an interesting idea. Is that something you’re considering doing?”

“Let me continue. I’m guessing you heard rumors about us having gone to another world, right?”

“I did. I heard that you went chasing after the enemy and then returned after successfully defeating him.”

“In that other world, there was an alchemist that had created clones of a certain beast that was at least as powerful as the Spirit Tortoise.”

If someone was trying to do the same kind of thing here in this world, I couldn’t trust them. I was putting the idea out there to see how she responded. If she went for it, she was out.

“Well, that’s boring. I’m not interested in research that someone else has already done.”

Rat ran her hands through her hair. Her reply sounded like she was being completely honest.

“It was an intriguing idea at first. But if it’s already been done, it’s nothing more than reference material.”

Hmm . . . I thought she might just be a whacko, but she seemed to have her own personal philosophy. She wasn’t interested in mimicking others.

“I don’t really get it. Are we talking about monster taming, like in games?”

Ren tried to put it into game terms as he asked me and Rat.

“To be more specific, one of my objectives is filolials.”

Normal filolials weren’t really all that strong. She was probably referring to Fitoria or something. Fitoria was ridiculously strong, after all. She’s the one that had held the Spirit Tortoise back when things got tough. She had been considered a legend before that, but her involvement in the fight had proven her existence to the world.

“This is only what I’ve managed to figure out on my own, but there’s a theory that the heroes created the legendary filolial. The same bird god that is supposed to be as powerful as the infamous dragon emperor. I want to create a monster like that. One that will be remembered for generations to come. One that will fight for the people.”

That made sense. She wanted to create a legendary monster herself, in other words.

“We use filolials as transportation, so they can be found living in most regions. I want to create a monster that will benefit the people.”

“I can understand where you’re coming from,” I said.

I’d played my share of monster tamer games. I’d actually been wondering lately if there were some way I could upgrade Raph-chan to make her even more powerful. Raphtalia didn’t know that, of course. But if I gave Rat some freedom to do her thing and it turned out I could trust her, it might be worth asking for her help.

“I can’t stand liars. I’ll agree if you’re willing to become my slave so that I can ensure you can’t lie. Are you still interested?”

“Slave? That’s typical of you, Naofumi,” said Ren.

“It is indeed,” added Eclair.

“Sure. If that’s all it takes, I’m happy to have you take away my dignity,” Rat replied.

She’d breezily accepted my offer without batting an eye. But I didn’t like the way she said it. Regardless, I felt like I could trust her to some extent. As long as she was a slave, it would be easy to punish her if she lied.

“Hmm . . .”

So basically, if I brought her into the village, that meant she would be able to help power up all of the monsters. Having her on the team might not be a bad thing. If I had a slave curse put on her, I could always just force her to do my bidding if she started causing problems later.

There were also plenty of things she could help with in addition to taking care of the eggs that Keel and the others had brought back. That could work out nicely. Rat could make progress with her research, and our offensive capabilities would be bolstered to better handle the coming waves.

“I work my monsters hard. Does that bother you? I work them like slaves, literally. I’ll do the same with you too.”

“Human or demi-human, slaves are slaves. Treating them specially because you feel sorry for them is just another form of discrimination.”

Oh? Special treatment is discrimination, huh? She had some interesting ideas. That reminded me. Back in my world, I remembered hearing about women outside of Japan demanding equality and not wanting to be treated specially. In the bigger cities in Japan, they had cars on the trains reserved for women. People that wanted true equality disliked those. What Rat was saying was similar to that, I guess.

“I can’t stand the idea of protecting certain living creatures while just ignoring the rest.”

“Oh?”

“I refuse to believe the theory that monsters are a result of the waves. Monsters can fight against the waves just like the heroes, after all!”

Valley girl glared at Rat angrily. She obviously realized that they were different regardless of both having a thing for monsters.

“I think I understand what you want to do. You believe the monsters can make a big contribution to our fight against the waves.”

“I do!”

“Then how about this . . .”

I showed Rat one of the bioplant seeds.

“This is a plant. It can be turned into something like a monster, depending on how it’s modified. But altering it could also make it produce beneficial medicinal herbs. What do you think about that?”

“Something like that would be a piece of cake for me!”

Hmm . . . Her line of thinking seemed to match up pretty closely with what I wanted to do.

“Mr. Naofumi, are you really thinking of taking her in?”

Raphtalia was clearly skeptical. I couldn’t argue that Rat seemed suspicious. But that suspiciousness and her willingness to use whatever means necessary to gain my trust had earned her points in my book.

“We’ll start with a temporary trial period and see how it goes. That should be fine.”

We needed more specialists in the village. S’yne had been a similar case. It wouldn’t be fair to have accepted S’yne, but not give Rat a chance.

I shook Rat’s hand.

“I’m looking forward to working with you,” Rat said.

Eclair suddenly spoke up.

“Pardon me, but if that settles the matter, there’s something else I’d like you to look at,” she told me.

“What now? There’s something else? Was this not what you wanted me to deal with?”

“Oh! That’s right, Bubba Shield! We have another problem!”

Valley girl jumped in and started trying to tell me something. Why was she still here?

“We found something while you were out, Naofumi,” added Ren.

Was there no end to it? I left the slaves behind and followed Eclair out of the village. Rat seemed curious and tagged along. Valley girl followed us too, without asking, of course.

Chapter Three: Filolials and Dragons

Outside of the village, there was a mountain of wooden crates. What the hell? Those weren’t there yesterday.

“Take a look inside,” said Eclair.

I opened several of the crates and looked inside. There were a variety of weapons and other supplies, as well as some monster eggs.

“What is this? Did you guys just decide to buy a bunch of stuff with the money I gave you? And someone just left it all here? Or is this all the stuff that you stole, Ren?”

Ren had been a bandit chief until just recently, after all. I looked over at Ren, but he was shaking his head.

“No. I don’t remember getting any of this stuff,” he replied.

So Ren had no idea what it was either. Maybe it was from Motoyasu. He could have left it here as a present for Filo. That seemed like something he would do.

“Read this,” said Eclair.

“What?”

I looked at the lid of the crate I currently had open. Upon closer inspection, the same thing seemed to be written on all of the crates. The writing was really messy. In large letters the following was written: “To the Shield Hero: Please give these gifts to the disadvantaged slaves.”

“What the hell?”

“The supplies appear to be some kind of donation. There are some fairly expensive items among the equipment. The supplies include quite a bit of rare medicinal herbs, ores, and wood too,” Eclair explained.

“Who in the world would do something like this?” I asked.

“Most likely Siltvelt or Shieldfreeden is responsible. Based on the way the characters are written and the type of ink used, I would say there’s no doubt about it,” she continued.

“Can we accept it?” I asked.

“It’s practically impossible to determine the original owner of any of it. They went to great lengths to carefully remove any type of identifying markings. Even if we found the person or persons responsible, it would be difficult to take any action against them,” she replied.

I suspected it might have been the people in Siltvelt who I sold the slave hunters to. There had been people doing similar things at the Zeltoble slave market. In other words, it was a donation to earn them brownie points, I guess. I sure hope they didn’t expect anything in return.

“Any riffraff causing trouble for Mr. Naofumi deserves certain death. Let us go execute them immediately!” Atla exclaimed.

“That’s going a bit far. It’s not like they’re really causing me any trouble.”

I figured I would just look the other way and accept the gifts.

“Having to deal with it is a hassle though,” said Ren.

“I guess so. What about the eggs? Rat, can you tell what they are?” I asked.

“Seems to be eggs from everything from usapils to some rarer breeds. Then there’s this . . .”

Oh? So she could tell with a single glance.

“This one could be a problem.”

Rat pointed at an egg in the crate that was larger than the others. What was it? Maybe it was the egg of some beast as powerful as the Spirit Tortoise or something.

“What is it?”

“It’s a dragon egg. A rather expensive and powerful one. Rare, I’m sure.”

Well, then . . . I guess they had left something troublesome, after all.

“A dragon, huh? That’s pretty cool,” Ren said.

“Yeah! I . . .”

Valley girl yelped in agreement, but then her voice trailed off and she looked away with a frown on her face. What was that? But she began smiling again soon after. Rat, on the other hand, didn’t look happy. Maybe she didn’t like dragons.

“Having a dragon here in the village would be lovely!” valley girl exclaimed.

“I guess valley girl likes dragons, unlike Rat,” I said.

“Valley girl?!”

“That’s another one of Mr. Naofumi’s fabulous nicknames. I’m jealous,” replied Atla.

She sounded like a complete ditz. I decided to just ignore her. Actually, hadn’t I told her to shut up? That hadn’t lasted long. Valley girl glared at me when I called her that.

“What is with that name?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know your real name,” I replied.

“I’m sure he got the nickname from some anime or something,” said Ren.

“Bingo,” I replied.

I’d chosen that name because she kept insisting the caterpillar wasn’t there earlier. She should have been thanking me, as far as I was concerned.

“If you don’t tell him your real name, Mr. Naofumi will almost certainly continue to think of you as ‘valley girl’ until the end of time. Hurry up and introduce yourself!” said Raphtalia.

She seemed to be in a rush to explain that to valley girl for some reason.

“I’m Wyndia.”

“I see. You’re fine with ‘valley girl,’ right?”

“No!”

“That’s just mean, Naofumi. Think of the poor girl,” Ren said.

He rolled his eyes. Ren was sticking up for valley girl, a.k.a. Wyndia, but now she was glaring at him.

“Oh, fine. Whatever,” I replied.

“We need to have everyone introduce themselves. Otherwise, you never know what Mr. Naofumi will end up calling them,” said Raphtalia.

“Is it really that big of a deal?” I asked.

Surely there was nothing wrong with giving people nicknames.

“We’re off topic. Back to the dragon egg,” I said.

“Everyone be careful. But you’re right. What should we do about that?” Raphtalia asked with a troubled look on her face.

A dragon, huh? I had a feeling Filo wouldn’t like that. It wasn’t like it was a special gift from someone I knew. Accepting it could end up causing a big fuss. Being given something so expensive just gave me more to worry about. Still, if there was no way to return it, I guess I would just have to accept it without complaining. Throwing it away would be a waste, after all.

“I guess we’ll keep it for now. If anyone makes an issue out of it, we’ll just feign ignorance. How do monster seals work with dragons, anyway?”

“You’ll have to apply a high-level monster seal. It looks like they were nice enough to leave all of the equipment required for the ceremony. I can take care of that if you’d like, Count,” Rat replied.

“Yeah, let’s do that. By the way, why do you seem to dislike dragons so much?”

Rat seemed a bit annoyed when I asked her.

“The upper class of dragons lose all sense of integrity once they go into heat.”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t know that? Regions where lots of dragons live are always dirty. They’re dangerous for all sorts of reasons.”

“Really?”

I thought about the regions I knew of where dragons lived. There was the village in the east where Ren defeated a dragon, and then the mountainous area where we had gone bandit hunting. There had been dragon corpses teeming with pathogenic germs in both areas. Describing the regions as dirty wouldn’t have been strange at all.

“Dragons have no integrity, so those areas end up full of half-dragon creatures in no time.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

If it were a fantasy game, there would probably be a bunch of half-dragon or part-dragon subspecies coming out of the regions. I wondered if that was an actual problem here.

“Well, they have their territories and they stay within them. But they mess the ecosystems up without a second thought, so I don’t like them. And the dragons that people use are just half-breed dragons mixed with weaker monsters, really.”

Hmm . . . So it was like when an invasive foreign species messed with the ecosystem back in Japan. Native species had been pushed to the brink of extinction due to black bass being released in lakes there. There would be problems similar to that. Or issues with crossbreeding leading to native species being driven out or becoming extinct, I guess.

“The real problem is the pureblood dragons that refer to themselves as dragon emperors. Those dragons have zero regard for race. They’ll even try to mate with humans.”

They did sound like troublesome creatures.

Hmm? Wyndia seemed upset.

“They have manners!” she shouted.

Why was she talking like she knew about dragons? And seriously, she was really annoying when it came to monsters.

“There are even races of demi-human mixes, already. The aotatsu demi-humans are a well-known example,” Rat explained.

Aotatsu? “Ao” was “blue” in Japanese. “Tatsu” could mean “dragon,” so I guess “aotatsu” was supposed to be referring to the azure dragon. The white tiger race was called “hakuko,” so it made sense. I’m sure one of the past heroes must have chosen this name too.

“Although, the pureblood dragons do have manners and are well-behaved as long as they don’t go into heat.”

“And the reason you looked disgusted is because this egg is one of those vile dragons?”

“Pretty much. The high-level monster seal for dragons allows you to restrict reproductive activities, so make sure you check that box. Otherwise, all of the village monsters are going to be violated.”

It didn’t really make sense to me. I spent all of my time hunting dragon couples in the monster hunter game I’d played. It seemed strange that the dragons didn’t wipe out the humans and demi-humans if they reproduced so aggressively.

“The Dragon Emperor would never allow that!” shouted Wyndia angrily.

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 decided 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.”

“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.

And now the village was covered in green plant-houses, which was why Raphtalia was criticizing me.

“Sorry,” I told Raphtalia.

“About what?” she asked.

“You’re upset because I’m turning your village into a mysterious fantasy world where people don’t belong, right?” I answered.

“Well . . . I guess there’s no avoiding it. I understand the merits.”

Raphtalia aside, Rat had been really ecstatic about the modifications we’d made to the bioplant. She called it a “revolutionary” use of the plant.

I wasn’t sure about “revolutionary.” I’d just used the shield’s abilities to modify it. The shield had a strong effect on the outcome. I made the rough modifications, and then Rat tweaked the details. My next request was for her to develop a bioplant variation that could create medicinal herbs. I would have been happy with a bioplant that could make medicine, but she’d told me that would be too difficult.

We’d had several failures before arriving at the current camping plant, of course. The first prototype had been a man-eating house, for example. Rat told us it was dangerous and repeatedly said not to go inside, but Wyndia and Filo ignored her and excitedly ran in. The plant ate them. But Raphtalia and I destroyed the plant and managed to get them out safely. The faces of the villagers were full of mixed emotions when that happened.

Other than that, I’d had Rat take a look at the monster eggs. She noticed right away that my monsters exhibited extraordinary development. She came and asked me about it. When I told her about the maturation adjustment on my Monster User Shield, she got really excited and spent a while looking the shield over.

“Wow. I’d heard that monsters raised by heroes would be more advanced. I guess that explains why,” she said.

“Yeah, probably. Do the other heroes have something similar?” I asked.

Since Ren was at the village, I’d had him test it out before. He’d gotten a similar weapon.

“The hero I know never mentioned anything like that to me,” she replied.

“I see.”

Then again, she didn’t get along with Faubrey’s seven star hero very well, apparently. She’d mentioned the hero being really uptight. The hero really disliked unconventional research like monster modification or alchemy, which was her specialty. It seemed like she didn’t really want to go into the details, so I hadn’t asked her about what kind of person the hero was. Besides, I’d already requested that the hero get in touch with me so that we could talk. I really should have heard back long ago.

Anyway, research into using a bioplant variant to produce food was well underway too. The flavor of the food was already more than adequate, so I’d leave the rest up to Rat. She could work on creating some variation in the types of food produced. I had the slaves taking care of raising the monsters, so we would probably be able to really get serious about our peddling operations before long.

“This seed made building a laboratory for myself simple too. It’s done nothing but good for us,” said Rat.

Rat’s lab was a huge building that she’d built using the camping plant. She’d brought a massive test tube from who knows where and set it up in the lab. It was filled with bubbling liquid, and some kind of monster was floating in the liquid. It reminded me of some kind of mutant beast in a science-fiction film. When I first saw it, I couldn’t help but wonder if taking her in might have been a mistake.

All of this had happened over the past two days. That was a lot of change for two days. Too much, maybe. A huge laboratory had been added to the village in only two days . . .

Wyndia and Rat had become rivals when it came to the monsters, by the way. Wyndia thought it would be best to strengthen the monsters by having them fight. That clashed with Rat’s assertion that modifying them was the best way to make them stronger. They were both looking for ways to make the monsters stronger, so regardless, they couldn’t hate each other. The two of them were always busy discussing something or other. That said, Wyndia was obviously far less educated than Rat, so it seemed like Rat was just toying with her more often than not.

“Alright, I’m going to focus my research on the bioplant until I get tired of it. Let me know when you can provide some funding for other research.”

“I will. I want to start working on modifying the monsters directly too,” I told her.

The offensive capabilities of my subordinates were of paramount importance to me. There was no way around it. It had become clear from the fight with the Spirit Tortoise that I could never have too many allies. And having stronger monsters could only make things better.

Crack! Crack!

I heard cracking sounds coming from my back. I guess the egg was about to hatch.

“I can feel signs of new life,” said Atla.

“Yeah. You can sense that, huh?” I replied.

I took the egg off of my back and looked it over.

“Is the egg hatching?” asked Raphtalia.

“Looks that way.”

The egg was a lot bigger than Filo’s had been. A crack formed on its surface, and a baby dragon slowly began to emerge.

“What do dragons eat, anyway?” I asked.

“I’m guessing meat,” said Raphtalia.

“Do we even have any meat?” I wondered out loud.

We’d had some smoked meat and some dried meat in the village storehouse, but I wasn’t sure if there was any left.

“It depends on the type of dragon, but this one is an omnivore,” said Rat.

Thank goodness. We could feed him fruit from the bioplant. We had been harvesting more than we needed lately, and it was slowly becoming a key product of our peddling operations.

“Kwaaaa!”

The baby dragon peeked his head out of the egg and squeaked at us. Hatching a monster sure brought back memories. It was just like when Filo . . . No, she’d been a lot more energetic. The baby dragon was about as big as my head. He was definitely bigger than Filo had been when she hatched.

“The thing sure is shaped weird,” I said.

The baby dragon looked like a fat little gourd with pathetically tiny wings on its back. He had a fat tail and two horns, but still didn’t have scales yet. I scooped him up into my arms. His body was warm.

“Kwa!”

The dragon blinked several times and then looked me in the eyes.

“Kwaaa!”

He raised one of his hands when he squeaked, as if he were saying hello. That reminded me. I figured I should absorb a piece of the egg shell into my shield. I picked a piece up and held it up to the shield.

Zap!

What was that? The shield sparked. I recalled something similar happening while we were in Kizuna’s world. It had been the Demon Dragon Shield that time, I think. It had reacted similarly then.

“Tee hee . . . He sure is cute. It reminds me of when Filo was just a chick,” said Raphtalia.

She was poking at the baby dragon with her finger. The dragon was biting at her finger playfully. Was this creature really supposed to turn into a sex fiend?

“So this is a dragon. I can feel an incredibly warm life force stirring,” said Atla.

She gave the baby dragon a warm welcome too. Based on what I knew about dragons, I imagined they wouldn’t get along with white tigers. But that didn’t seem to be the case here.

“Alright, I should do a quick checkup,” said Rat.

She looked the baby dragon over carefully, poking him lightly here and there.

“Good. No major problems. Healthy, overall. Looks like a male. Everything went as planned,” she said.

“That’s good,” I said.

A male meant it shouldn’t be a problem even if it displayed an abnormal development pattern and ended up being able to use a human form like Filo. Then again, just being able to use a human form would be a problem in and of itself, but whatever.

When Rat let go of the baby dragon, it flew over to me and started climbing up my leg. What a little rascal.

“I guess you have a good idea of how to raise him, right?” Rat asked.

“Think so?”

“I recommend you start taking him out to hunt from early on. The amount of food growing dragons eat is just scary,” she said.

“You’re telling me?”

“Ah, that’s right. You’re surrounded by a bunch of kids that might even be able to out eat a dragon, aren’t you?” she replied.

Rat took my wisecrack in earnest and nodded. She’d stole the punch line, and hearing it come from her mouth just made me depressed.

“What kind of dragon is he?” I asked.

“It’s a wyr. They value devotion highly and are one of the most loyal types of dragons. They are a mix between purebloods and tyrellas.”

“Tyrellas?”

“A tyrella is a big lizard-type monster. They can’t fly, but they make for excellent transportation. They’re rare though.”

“I see.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d never seen one. Then again, I hadn’t actually seen that many different kinds of dragons either.

“They aren’t found in Melromarc, so you might not be familiar with them. They’re not kept as pets around here either.”

“Oh really?”

“It’s a monster you’re more likely to see in Faubrey, Shieldfreeden, or Siltvelt.”

“I see.”

“Is this the dragon from that egg?!”

Wyndia came over and approached the hatched dragon excitedly.

“Kwa!”

The baby dragon wasn’t shy at all. It was acting cute to get as much attention as possible.

“Alright, I guess we’ll take him out to hunt later,” I said.

“Yeah! I don’t think Filo will be happy though.”

Wyndia nodded in agreement. She was playing with the baby dragon. All said and done, Wyndia was good about doing as she was told. She didn’t try to complain about killing poor monsters or anything like that. On the contrary, she usually got really excited about going hunting. She seemed to be all about the strong preying on the weak. I didn’t understand her at all. But she was probably right about Filo not being happy. Dragons and filolials were natural enemies, so there was nothing we could do about that.

“Your name is Gaelion,” she said.

“Who said you could name him?!”

“Mr. Naofumi, the village children all chose the name together,” said Raphtalia.

“Oh, really? In that case, I guess it’s okay.”

Coming up with a name was a hassle, anyway. I probably would have named it something lame like Dran. Considering that, Gaelion didn’t seem bad at all.

“I’m going to go show him to everyone!”

And so Wyndia took charge of Gaelion and we took him out to level with the other villagers. I hoped he would grow up and become a strong fighter quickly.

“I miss Raph-chan,” I said.

Raph-chan had been sitting on Filo’s head a lot the past couple of days. She seemed to really like it there and wouldn’t come to me when I called out to her. That made me kind of sad.

“Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Where did you find that monster?” asked Rat.

I glanced over at Raphtalia. She had a really bitter look on her face. I wondered what I should do. Giving a detailed explanation would probably just end up causing trouble. But Raph-chan was my favorite. I wanted to make her stronger so that she could help out even more than she already did. I decided to explain, after all.

“Raph-chan is a shikigami that I made in the other world. Shikigamis are the equivalent to what we call familiars in this world. I used a lock of Raphtalia’s hair as the base material and out came Raph-chan.”

“Mr. Naofumi! That’s your answer after pausing to think for so long?!” Raphtalia snapped.

Well, of course.

“I can use my shield’s abilities to enhance her various attributes, just like with the bioplant. Doing so seems to require different materials and consumes energy though.”

I was always tinkering around with Raph-chan’s attributes. Enhancing them required materials, so I was making progress slowly but steadily. On a fundamental level, it worked a lot like powering up my shield.

“I didn’t know there were familiars like that. I thought it was a new type of monster,” said Rat.

“Making a new type of monster like her is my goal,” I replied.

“That’s news to me! What are you thinking, Mr. Naofumi?!” exclaimed Raphtalia.

Oh, damn. I’d accidentally revealed my aspirations to Raphtalia.

“And I guess you’ve been secretly planning to do this for some time,” she said.

“Hmph. I won’t change my mind about this one, Raphtalia. I can’t let Raph-chan be the last of her kind.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so passionate about her.”

No matter how much two people trusted each other, there would always be things they couldn’t understand about each other. But I didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t just because Raph-chan looked like Raphtalia. I really liked how she always played along with me too.

“What are you upset about, Raphtalia? If that’s what Mr. Naofumi desires, then it’s your duty to accept it as his retainer,” said Atla.

“I’m upset because it’s exactly the kind of thing I shouldn’t accept! Think about it, Atla. Would you want someone to make a monster out of your hair?”

“If it were a monster that Mr. Naofumi would adore, then I would happily offer a lock of my hair!”

I thought about making a shikigami or familiar from a lock of Atla’s hair. I pictured a little white tiger. If such a thing existed, I was sure it would be cute. But it was hard to imagine it being as cute as Raph-chan.

“Mr. Naofumi, I can tell what you’re thinking just by looking at your face. I don’t know why you like Raph-chan so much.”

Ugh . . . Raphtalia had read my mind again.

“I couldn’t tell what he was thinking this time. But I won’t let you win like that again,” said Atla.

What was she getting worked up about? Did Atla really want to read my face? Had she forgotten she was blind?

“In that case, Count, why not try raising the mutability of the familiar’s attributes?”

“After what happened with the bioplant, I really wanted to avoid doing that.”

“It’s not like mutation can’t produce favorable results too, you know. If you trust the familiar, then surely increasing the mutability just slightly is an option.”

Hmm . . . She had a point.

“The legends say that the heroes created the filolials. Since you like her so much, maybe a monster based on her could end up becoming the next filolial,” Rat continued.

What a glorious thought. And it wasn’t unrelated to Rat’s goal of creating a useful monster like the filolials. It would be killing two birds with one stone. I would get to make Raph-chan stronger. Rat would get to create the next filolial. That settled it. I’d try raising Raph-chan’s mutability just a bit. I’d turn my familiar into a monster.

“Please don’t do that, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia pleaded.

“I won’t let anyone take away Raph-chan’s future. Not even you, Raphtalia.”

“Oh, jeez . . .”

She must have sensed my strong sense of determination, because Raphtalia didn’t push the issue any further.

“Anyway . . . Enough about that. We still need to go visit the old guy at the weapon shop today.”

I decided to change the subject and avoid any more argument. The old guy was probably finishing up the katana I’d asked him to make right about now.

“Understood. Let’s go then.”

Raphtalia always let me run away from arguments in the end. That’s what I liked about her. And so we left Rat behind and used my portal to make our way to the old guy’s weapon shop.

Chapter Four: Stardust Blade

“There you are, kid.”

When I arrived at the weapon shop, the old guy came out to greet me like he had been waiting on me. Business seemed to be booming. The shelves appeared to be rather bare inside the shop. Surely it wasn’t just my imagination.

That reminded me. The supplies that had been left at the village two days earlier ended up taking care of a lot of my equipment needs. But getting rid of the equipment just to give the old guy work would have been a waste. If nothing else, I’d just have him reforge it.

“If you need help getting more materials, just let me know. The villagers will give you a hand if I tell them to.”

“That’s Tolly’s family at your village, right? I’d feel bad.”

“All the work I give them is really detailed. Digging holes might be a good way for them to destress.”

Imiya and most of the other lumos tended to be really quiet and submissive. I figured they were the type that would accumulate a lot of stress. They would need a way to blow off some steam. They always looked like they were having fun when they were digging in the dirt, so I was pretty sure they would consider mining to be a fulfilling task.

“If we had the queen set us up with a mine, I’m sure they would clean it out for you.”

“Thank you for your thoughtfulness, Shield Hero,” said Imiya’s uncle.

He bowed his head to me. I guess I was right about mining being a good way to destress for them. They would probably see it as an exciting event or something.

“Really? Well, if you two say so, then I might just take you up on that,” said the old guy.

“Going by our stock of supplies, you should probably take him up on it soon,” Imiya’s uncle replied.

So they were running low, after all. I’d make the arrangements and send them out mining later.

“I’ll get them on it and have the supplies delivered,” I said.

I’d have Filo or her Underling #1 deliver the supplies to the old guy’s shop.

“Thanks, kid. I’ll make a list of the ores I need for you.”

“It’s nothing. I’ve asked my fair share of favors too.”

“That’s right. I finished that last one up for you already.”

The old guy disappeared into the back of the shop and then returned with a single katana in hand. The design looked rather crude. The base of the blade near the guard still looked like a chunk of unprocessed siderite. I wondered if he’d shaped it that way on purpose. The old guy noticed where I was looking and started to explain.

“This is to guide the power of the siderite up into the blade. I know it looks strange, but there’s nothing I can really do about that.”

“I thought that might be the case.”

It just looked like a poorly made katana to me.

“It’d been a long time since I last made a katana. Just like I suspected, I’m still far from the master’s level.”

“It looks like a pretty impressive blade to me,” Raphtalia whispered.

She was squinting at the blade. Did it really look impressive? I tried using my appraisal skill.

Siderite Katana: quality: excellent

The quality was higher than it had been for the shield.

“I’m sure our master would have been able to make something much more impressive,” said the old guy.

Oh? Regardless, I never felt like the old guy’s work was lacking, so it was hard to imagine that being true.

“I’m not interested in wasting time wishing for the impossible. And even if your master were here, I still would have come to you.”

“Thanks, kid. You’re right. Crafting a variety of things is good for me.”

“I’m not going to let you leave me behind, so I guess I should get to work too. I’m getting some good ideas here,” Imiya’s uncle interjected.

“Oh? I won’t let you catch up!”

The old guy and Imiya’s uncle started glaring at each other. I’m sure I was only imagining the backdrop of flames that appeared behind them. They were good friends, but they were obviously rivals too.

“Can you sense anything about this katana, Atla?”

Being blind made Atla sensitive to life force, which allowed her to sense the presence of people. I had been curious whether she could sense other things as well, so I decided to ask what she thought.

“You mean that blade, I assume. I can feel power emanating from it. It seems to be slightly different than the usual equipment.”

It seemed like she could sense something. Then again, she always made her way around the village effortlessly, so I figured that might be the case.

“It seems to be an excellent piece of equipment. Giving it to Raphtalia would be a waste,” she added.

“You’re really something,” Raphtalia replied.

She seemed to realize that saying anything more than that would just cause trouble and decided not to engage Atla.

“Alright, let’s have Raphtalia try holding it, then,” I said.

“Righto! But don’t be firing off any skills in my shop!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He was referring to the time I used Shooting Star Shield in the shop. I’d just wanted to show it to the old guy, but it ended up making a bit of a mess. I guess he was still upset about that.

Raphtalia held the katana and her weapon copy activated.

“It worked. I was able to copy the weapon.”

“Oh yeah? Did you get any new skills?” I asked.

“I did. Let’s see. The skill is called . . .”

It was probably Shooting Star Katana. Ren was the Sword Hero and he got his Shooting Star Sword skill when he copied the Siderite Sword. The other heroes and I had also gotten skills that were a combination of “Shooting Star” and our weapon names.

“Stardust Blade.”

“Huh?”

It was “Stardust” instead of “Shooting Star.” They both had to do with stars, but that still wasn’t quite the same thing. I guess if a shooting star fell to the earth, it could be considered stardust. The weapon had come from siderite, so it wasn’t a completely unrelated concept.

Also, the name wasn’t being translated into Japanese by my shield. It was giving me a transliteration of the English instead. That reminded me that Raphtalia’s vassal weapon had come from Kizuna’s world. That must have meant that different rules applied, and it would give different skills too. That was kind of disappointing.

“The skill name is a bit different,” she said.

Now that I thought about it, I had no idea how skill names were even decided. The skills that Kizuna, Glass, and L’Arc used had all been translated into Japanese by my shield. And yet, here in this world, Raphtalia’s katana had given her a skill that sounded foreign.

“I thought it would be named ‘Shooting Star.’ That’s disappointing,” I said.

“Why is that disappointing?” she asked.

I thought I would be able to say she had joined the shooting star idiots. And that we were shooting star buddies.

“You’re always letting Mr. Naofumi down, aren’t you?” said Atla.

“Why are you blaming it on me?! The katana chose the name on its own!”

“Atla, you’re overdoing it with comments like that. Watch yourself,” I said.

“Understood!”

Did she really understand? Raphtalia gave the Siderite Katana back to the old guy, since she had finished copying it.

“Crafting this was good practice, anyway. Let me know if you need anything else,” he said.

“Will do. And you give me a call if you get stuck too. There could be some kind of trick to working with those Spirit Tortoise materials that I could help figure out.”

“Yeah, that’s a possibility. Got it. I’m sure you want to try that new weapon out, right? Go give it a swing or two.”

“Yeah. Alright, we’ll be back. I’ll bring some of that ore you wanted next time.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

And so we hurried back to the village. As for Stardust Blade, the name of the skill might have been different, but it was basically the same as Ren’s Shooting Star Sword skill. The required SP and the cool down time were both reasonable, and Raphtalia said it should be quite useful.

Around a week passed, and things were strangely peaceful. I continued my Hengen Muso style training by sparring with Atla daily. When I had a bit of spare time, I took the lumos out to the mines and had them mine ore, which I delivered to the old guy afterward. Just as I had expected, the lumos really seemed to enjoy their time digging in the mines. They looked exactly like moles when they were digging around in the dirt with their claws. The look of joy on the old guy’s face when he got the ore was unforgettable.

Wyndia and Rat had been keeping a regular growth log for the baby dragon, Gaelion. He had been growing really quickly since he’d been going out and leveling with the slaves. Sadeena had helped out, and he’d reached level 38 in just one week. He looked much bigger too.

It was morning, and I was already sighing. This again?

Atla had made a habit of showing up in my bed lately. Her advances had been overt to start out with, but recently she was bordering on outright aggressive. The fact that she was able to sneak into my bed without me noticing meant that she had some real skill. I wondered if she’d been practicing moving around silently or something. Maybe that was her way of dealing with my tendency to be sensitive to the presence of others.

I had a talk with Fohl every time it happened, but Atla still always managed to get away from him. In the beginning, Fohl had mistakenly assumed she was sleeping. Last night, he had apparently gotten sleepy and conked out. Atla had made him a snack before that, and I was guessing that she had mixed some kind of sleeping drug in it. Maybe she’d gotten her hands on something from Gaelion. I’d heard that he’d gained an ability called Sleep Breath.

Before that, she’d put Fohl to sleep . . . physically. I wondered what had happened this time.

“Sorry, Mr. Naofumi! I fell asleep with the children last night, which is why I didn’t come back.”

The door swung open suddenly, and Raphtalia, of all people, came barging in with the worst possible timing. Her expression changed to one of puzzlement.

“Umm . . . Nothing happened between you two, right?”

“What the hell would happen?”

Atla showing up in my bed like this sure was troublesome. Being puritanical, Raphtalia was probably upset now. But come on, did she really think I would do something like that? Sadeena was the one that actually scared me. She showed up every now and then too. She’d get drunk and come to “hang out.” I woke up early, so I was always tired at night. Didn’t she know that?

Raphtalia sighed.

“You’re right. You’re not that kind of person,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Anyway, get Fohl over here. He’s the one we should really be worried about.”

This time he’d been on the floor, wrapped up in a bamboo mat. He’d been back at the house lying on his stomach and struggling, unable to move.

“Mr. Naofumi? Why don’t you stop her?” asked Raphtalia.

“I told her to leave and chased her out once. She ended up sleeping outside in front of the house. Before that, I set her slave curse to punish her if she got into my bed and she still showed up.”

“Is she some kind of monster?!”

I chased her out and she went and slept in front of my house. I tried to use the slave curse to punish her, but apparently it was ineffective. She had gotten used to being in pain from head to toe when she was sick. She just kept sleeping like nothing had happened. So this is what it meant to make good on one’s word. Fohl had gotten really pissed off, but what was I supposed to do?

“That’s right. You’re not that kind of person.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that today, so I’m going to repeat myself too. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hmm? What’s the matter, Mr. Naofumi?”

Atla woke up. She was acting like she was completely innocent. Did she not realize we were trying to figure out what to do about her?

“Do you really not know?” I asked.

“Does sleeping together really bother you that much?”

“Honestly, it’s a problem. I’m sure you’re in pain too.”

“Rather than feel any pain, it makes me feel warm inside. Why can’t we sleep together?”

“Your brother will make a fuss about it.”

“Atla! Why do you keep trying to go sleep with a jerk like that?!”

“See what I mean?”

“Don’t worry about it, Brother. I’m simply fond of Mr. Naofumi is all.”

Well, damn it. I guess Atla was just going to be a troublemaker. Her personality was completely different than when she had been sick. I could only think of one possibility.

“Raphtalia. Fohl.”

“Yes?”

“What?!”

“I think this might be a side effect of the Elixir of Yggdrasil.”

“Huh?”

Yeah. I couldn’t imagine it being anything else.

“Look at the old lady. She calls me ‘Saint’ and acts fond of me too. The Elixir of Yggdrasil must make the recipient infatuated with whoever gives it to them. Maybe that’s why even the slave curse can’t stop Atla.”

It was the single weakness of the otherwise almighty medicine. That had to be it. The side effect must have been stronger in Atla’s case since the medicine had been so effective for her. Setting the slave curse settings to be any more restrictive could be dangerous. Worst case, Atla could die.

“We’ll just have to be extra careful until the side effects wear off,” I said.

“I see. Understood!”

“Huh?!”

Raphtalia seemed to be persuaded by my theory, but Fohl sounded unconvinced.

“Is something wrong?” I asked him.

“Oh, uh, no! You’re right! It has to be a side effect! The medicine was powerful enough to completely heal Atla, after all. There’s no doubt it’s just a side effect!”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Naofumi! I am truly fond of you, Mr. Naofumi!” Atla argued.

“Come on, Atla! We’re going leveling again, today!” shouted Fohl.

“But, Mr. Naofumi!” Atla called out.

Fohl dragged Atla out of the house. Then again, I’d be training with her after breakfast, but whatever. I closed the door. As soon as I did, I heard a knock.

“Yes?”

Raphtalia responded and opened the door. But there was no one there.

“Huh?”

Raphtalia looked all around. Confused, she closed the door.

“There was no one there,” she said.

“Yeah. Over the past few days, someone in the village has been playing pranks, it seems.”

Morning and night, one of the slaves had been knocking on my door and then running away whenever I was at home. It had been happening especially often whenever I was the only one there. The fact that it had happened while Raphtalia was there was unexpected.

“I thought that maybe the door was just making noises at first, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

I had one of the soldiers who fixed up the houses take a look at it, but he told me that it wasn’t crooked or anything. I tried standing by the door and waiting for whoever it was the other day. I opened the door the instant there was a knock. It had been Keel. I tried the same thing once early in the morning, and it had been Atla showing up at her usual time. When it was Keel, she had shown up with some of the other slaves to ask what we were having for breakfast, so I was pretty sure she wasn’t the culprit.

“Maybe I’ll try interrogating the villagers at breakfast time.”

“Do you really think any of the children would do something like that to you?”

“One of them is doing it, whether I think so or not.”

“I guess so . . .”

Raphtalia wanted to believe in the villagers. I could understand how she felt. But it was a fact that one of them was misbehaving, and that meant that whoever it was needed to be punished.

“But whatever. It’s about time for me to make my usual visit to the monster stable. You want to come with me?”

“Umm, sure.”

And so I went about finishing up my usual morning routine before making preparations for breakfast.

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Siti Dara

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.

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