by Aneko Yusagi
She might as well have taken a piss on me! Marking me, like a dog marks a tree!
“You have a core inside there, remember?” Gaelion continued. “At the right level, most of the genealogy of dragons should be available to you.”
“I see.” It kind of made sense. I just hadn’t been a high enough level for most of them. So the dragon core overlapped with Fitoria’s cowlick? Like in a game, there was only two options.
I’d been thinking a lot recently that I really wanted someone to make it clear whether this was reality or a game.
“Bring out your shield,” Gaelion suggested.
“Okay. Let’s try it.” Then Gaelion sent something, like his thoughts, to my shield. It felt like the whole thing flickered and sparked.
A number of locks were released.
Conditions for the Dragon Leather Shield were unlocked.
Conditions for the Dragon Scale Shield were unlocked.
Conditions for the Dragon Meat Shield were unlocked.
Conditions for the Dragon User’s Shield were unlocked.
Conditions for the Dragon User’s Shield II were unlocked.
Conditions for the Water Dragon’s Shield were unlocked.
Conditions for the Water Dragon’s Vassal Shield were unlocked.
Interesting. The stats looked pretty high across the board. The name “dragon” really meant something. The ability-up multipliers were also pretty high. The unlock conditions were around level 50.
Fitoria! Gah, she’d really done a number on me!
Oh? Dragon User’s Shield also had Dragon Growth Adjustment (small), which meant collecting more Dragon Emperor fragments would further heighten the adjustment to Gaelion’s abilities.
“I can also provide the other heroes with Dragon Emperor weapons. That’s another reason I want you to collect the Dragon Emperor cores,” Gaelion explained.
“I’d have loved it if you reported all of this sooner,” I quipped.
“That Demon Dragon really stirred things up in my head. It’s taken a while to get all my knowledge back in order,” Gaelion said. It had affected him even more than I’d thought.
“So the plan is to give the protection of the Way of the Dragon Vein to all heroes,” Gaelion said.
One immediate problem was to get Ren and Itsuki to learn the Way of the Dragon Vein. I’d finally managed it myself. But I really needed them to learn it before the Phoenix battle.
“I can also provide a class-up adjustment via my protection,” Gaelion added.
“About that,” Rat said, cutting in. “Most of the monsters in the village have hit the growth limit of level 40. I could have made arrangements with the state to perform class-ups, but I really need the Count’s permission, now don’t I?”
“Definitely nice to be asked,” I commented.
“Your monsters are keen to become stronger, Count,” Rat continued. “They want a special class-up, like the others from the village.”
“They’ve received the protection of the filolial queen, correct?” I sometimes had trouble keeping track of this stuff.
“Ah, that Filo cowlick class-up,” Rat recalled. “That counts as a protection, does it?” Filolials had all sorts of different abilities, but yes, I had thought it was a protection.
“I don’t know the conditions to trigger it,” I admitted. “But it is related to class-ups.” Some people might consider it a nuance.
“Having a hero nearby is one of the conditions,” Gaelion revealed. “The power of the earth is also involved, expanding potential.” The power of the earth—also known as experience.
If that was where it came from, then it should also bring power in a good way to one’s own status magic.
Gaelion continued, “A class-up is an expansion of strength. Of course, receiving the blessings of the heroes can further increase those abilities, but that’s not the point I’m making.”
“So what is?” I asked.
“You can’t place the filolial blessing on monsters,” Gaelion said. “It should go without saying, but you know what the filolial can do, correct?”
“Hmmm.” That gave me pause. They had to want nothing more than to become strong. A tricky proposition. Sadeena, Atla, Fohl, and the others had already had a class-up performed by Filo.
“The monsters want to become stronger too,” Rat assured me. “In order to protect this world. They even want to help in the fight against the Phoenix.”
Another “hmmm.” I hadn’t really cared for them much myself recently, so I was surprised to hear they were pushing so hard.
“Some of them cry at night, wanting to see you, Count,” Rat lamented.
“Why would they do that?” I inquired.
“You used to care for them in the mornings, right? They all love you, Count,” Rat explained.
“I do understand how they feel. Mr. Naofumi is quite considerate when it comes to taking care of people,” Raphtalia chimed in with a somewhat lamenting tone. Yeah, she had a point. Filo, and even Gaelion, did seem to easily take a liking to me. In Kizuna’s world, Ethnobalt had been pretty friendly with me too.
“Raph?” Raph-chan spoke up.
“Huh?” Gaelion looked at her and made a strange noise.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“No, it’s nothing,” the dragon dismissed it.
“Let’s get back on track, then,” I suggested. “You’ve called me here because you want to help with class-ups, is that it?”
“That’s right. Considering what we have coming up, it can’t hurt to do what we can now, right?” Gaelion reasoned.
“Sure,” I agreed. So much other stuff was going on, but the date for the revival of the Phoenix was also drawing closer. I’d started the whole plan to raise the village slaves to prepare for the waves in order to restore Raphtalia’s homeland. That had been successful, and now we could even call in further reinforcements from places like Siltvelt and Q’ten Lo. But I still wanted to make the villagers stronger than anyone else.
So why not have some monsters among them too?
“The reason you had Wyndia go out was to prepare to bring in those you want to class up,” I realized.
“That’s right,” Gaelion confirmed.
“You can get around quickly, can’t you, Count? The class-ups should finish pretty quickly too, right? Shall we sit down and dig into the sakura lumina problem after that?” Rat suggested.
“Sounds good,” I agreed. “Let’s get moving. Raphtalia, you’d better get ready too.”
“Very well. We’ll use a Scroll of Return?” she confirmed.
“Yeah. I have to say, this particular procedure goes a lot easier with you, Raphtalia,” I said. Raphtalia’s katana, which was a vassal weapon from Kizuna’s world, had a transport skill called Scroll of Return. It allowed the user to jump to the last registered dragon hourglass. She’d registered it really recently, so we’d be able to travel at once. I could also increase the number of people she could take with her by using Portal Shield.
“Can I go with you and watch what happens?” Ruft asked, worry on his face. He had Raph-chan in his arms, both of them looking at me.
“Sure, no problem,” I assured him. It looked like he was gradually becoming a true monster lover.
With that, we headed to the monster stable where Wyndia was already making preparations and I popped the big question.
“We’re going to class up! Anyone who wants to get strong, come forward!” My question was greeted by a cacophony of affirmative roars and growls, with almost all the monsters in the stable taking a step forward. Damn! They completely understood me. Even my village’s usapil stepped forward. That beauty was getting pretty big. Big enough to ride, even.
In any case, it looked like all of them had a taste to get stronger.
“This is really going to give our combat strength a boost,” Raphtalia commented.
“I guess that’s a good thing.” I was hedging my bets. Most of these guys had grown up pretty wild.
Would it even be possible to incorporate them into battle strategies? We’d have to give that side of all this some thought as well.
Without further ado, we departed.
Taking the monsters along, we arrived at the Melromarc dragon hourglass and explained the situation to the soldiers placed in charge of it.
“Thinking about it more carefully, we might have been better off doing this in Siltvelt,” I realized. After all, the dragon hourglass was a facility used for class-ups, meaning people who had received permission from the state could very well be coming in and out.
Furthermore, Melromarc had long been a humanist nation. That was changing a little, thanks to my own activities. But it might still cause a problem if we kept other adventurers or national guards waiting while we performed class-ups for a veritable horde of monsters.
For that reason, it might have been better to do this in Siltvelt.
The problem there was requests had to be made very carefully or they might start to ask for strange things in return. The potential for that definitely added some pressure. The trouble we’d had in Siltvelt on the way back from Q’ten Lo, being forced to display the authority of the Shield Hero, was still fresh in my memory.
Still, they should also be starting to prepare for the fight with the Phoenix, so I’d like to think they wouldn’t be making any more annoying demands.
“That’s no problem at all,” one of the Melromarc soldiers responsible for the dragon hourglass replied to our request, smiling while he did so. “Speaking strictly from the state of national affairs, you’d probably find somewhere like Zeltoble more receptive to performing class-ups for monsters, but here in Melromarc, we certainly aren’t going to refuse aid to a hero.”
Hmmm, nice. I knew the queen was doing some things on our behalf.
“You and your party are fighting to protect the peace of our nation,” the soldier went on, “and the famine has been resolved. Why, if someone did try to turn you away, they’d need to be slapped down as a rightly ungrateful so-and-so!”
“You think? I mean, that works for me.” I wasn’t about to touch that.
“Rumors have already been spreading that you’re going to start dealing with the robber problem too,” the man continued. “I take it this is part of that?”
Raphtalia murmured to me quietly, “I think he’s getting the wrong idea about this. Are you okay with that?”
No, not really . . . although on second thought, from a trade perspective that actually wasn’t incorrect.
“It’ll be a pain to correct him,” I whispered back. “The monsters do pull the wagons, so overall he’s not wrong. Let’s just roll with it.”
“You don’t have it easy, do you, Count?” Rat sympathized. “Having to handle all these different jobs, day after day.”
“If you think that, you might help out more,” I jibed.
“I am helping out! Now, monsters, we’re going to class you all up, so form up into a line.” That was all it took from Rat for the monsters to form an orderly line.
The Melromarc soldier was so surprised he could only stand there blinking.
“Your monsters really are very tame, Shield Hero,” he commented.
“Yeah. I guess so,” was all I could say. They weren’t on the level of Filo, Gaelion, or Raph-chan, but they did listen very well. In Japanese terms, it would be like shouting “line up!” and having a bunch of cats and dogs understand the meaning and fall into line.
“Kwaa,” Gaelion offered.
“Right, Gaelion,” I ordered. “Go ahead and perform a special class-up on each of them.”
“Kwaa!” the dragon confirmed.
“We’re counting on you,” Wyndia offered. Proud to be asked, Gaelion beat his chest and then climbed up on top of the dragon hourglass. We’d discussed all of this beforehand, after all. The monsters were going to give it their all too. Just like with the slaves, we were letting the monsters themselves decide the direction to take with the class-up.
“Let’s get started,” I said. With the help of the soldiers, we started the class-up ritual using the dragon hourglass.
First came the largest of the caterpillands—the one Wyndia had protected. It looked to have pretty low latent potential. How much stronger could a class-up make it?
According to Wyndia, when it had been attacked, it had felt terrible about not being able to do anything but just watch. I’d seen it looking at me too. It clearly wanted to get stronger.
The magic circle started to sparkle as Gaelion started to incant magic atop the dragon hourglass. I’d been present at class-ups numerous times. Just like normal, the sand in the dragon hourglass started to give off a faint light that then passed into the magic circle.
I hold ownership of all the monsters. That meant the directions in which they could be classed up appeared before me. I could choose for myself here, but my policy was to leave it up to the individuals themselves. They could do this multiple times by using level resets, but still it was a major element that would have a massive impact on their lives.
I checked the possibilities hovering before me. Yeah, they were pretty different from the choices I had with Filo. It was a caterpilland that we were about to class up and it looked like it could turn into a variety of different monsters.
Those included simply the advanced form of the caterpilland and also a monster called a butterfland. That was the direct class-up cluster.
Checking more carefully, I saw there was a status item called “required attributes,” and if the numbers within that range were satisfied, then the races it could class up into would also increase.
“Kwaa!” Perhaps Gaelion was lending his strength, because there was another item that shouldn’t really exist.
I checked it more closely to see it had pretty high stats across the board. It was an item leading to a complete upgrade monster cluster with a slight lean toward magic.
So this had to be the special class-up.
A filolial would surely choose the complete upgrade, but what decision would this monster make?
An option appeared: select “reject” and allow the monster to choose for itself?
I confirmed it. That was what I wanted to do.
“Raph!”
“Ah!” Ruft gave a shout as Raph-chan leapt out of his arms.
“Huh?” I was surprised too. Raph-chan entered the magic circle, and it looked like she was incanting magic just like Gaelion. Her tail was all shiny and puffed up!
Raph-chan tottered along and climbed up onto the head of the caterpilland. The outline of the caterpilland started to blur.
“Hey . . . I have a really bad feeling about this,” Rat interjected.
“Raph-chan, don’t get in the way!” I shouted.
“Raph!” Raphtalia shouted.
For some reason, Raph-chan’s entire body started to glow.
“Uwah!” I had to shield my eyes because it was so bright! There was normally some shining going on during a class-up, but it was pretty surprising that Raph-chan was glowing too.
Even more bizarrely, there was smoke rising, centered around Raph-chan and the caterpilland. Well, Raph-chan did have something like levels. Due to the further variability provided by Shikigami power-up and through our fighting in Q’ten Lo and other places, she had become pretty strong.
Still, she really needed to wait her turn.
I was about to caution her again when the smoke cleared. I narrowed my eyes.
“Raph!” Everyone there looked on with stunned expressions on their faces, hardly able to breathe due to what we were all seeing. Even Gaelion’s mouth was hanging wide open in shock.
There were now two Raph-chans.
“W-w-what’s going on here?!” Raphtalia was the fastest to recover and react verbally.
“Kwaa!?” Gaelion also gave a shout, confusion in his eyes.
“What’s happened to Raph-chan?” Wyndia, brow furrowed, was looking at me.
Hey! I didn’t make this selection.
&
nbsp; The other animals all started to give roars and growls of approval and support.
“Which one is the caterpilland?” Wyndia asked, to which the Raph-chan-like monster on the right—the one with a pattern around its face that looked a bit like a compound eye—raised its hand and gave an energetic “Raaph!”
Then it leapt up into the air and its body transformed into . . . a large Raph-chan—really—but with a tail like a caterpillar. So it was a slightly unpleasant-looking monster, like a combination of Raph-chan and the caterpilland.
“Raaph!” The former-caterpilland looked pretty pleased with itself. Raph-chan herself struck a victory pose and then pointed at the caterpilland, but I guessed it was fine to just ignore her. I checked her stats instead.
It looked like Raph-chan had managed a class-up herself.
All her stats had more than doubled, and she’d acquired various new abilities . . . maybe? I didn’t understand much of the details and would have to look into it later.
“Raph!” Raph-chan then performed some kind of magic on me.
Shikigami has mutated and skills have expanded!
C’mon Raph acquired!
Oh? She’d acquired a strange-sounding new skill.
“Awesome! We’ve got more like Raph-chan now!” Ruft’s eyes glimmered as he rushed over to the former-caterpilland.
“Raaph!” The new monster just stood there and took Ruft’s eager stroking.
So what about the abilities of the former-caterpilland? I checked them, and yeah, they had all seen quite a boost.
Gaelion slid down from the dragon hourglass, crashing face-first into the ground.
“This is . . . amazing, right?” I postulated.
“Raaph!” The former-caterpilland posed like a bodybuilder for a moment and then turned back into its Raph-chan-like form.
“Hold on, hold on. Just what’s going on here, Shield Hero?” the soldier asked.
“A very good question! Mr. Naofumi, just what is all this?” Raphtalia, face pale, grabbed me by both shoulders and started to shake.
