by Aneko Yusagi
“Well I guess it’s not a loss then. Kind of a win, really.”
If adults sold for 200 pieces of silver, and I was able to buy a baby for 100 pieces of silver, then it wasn’t really a bad deal at all.
“Cheep!”
The baby Filolial was chirping from its perch on my head.
“What does this thing eat?”
“You should start her on cooked beans, mushed into a puree. Something soft. Once she grows up they aren’t picky. They’ll pretty much eat anything once they are adults.
“Gotcha. Thanks.”
I even surprised myself at how quick and sincere my thanks were because, honestly, up until now I’d sort of considered everyone in this world to be my enemy. I was feeling better these days though. I wonder if it was because of what Raphtalia did for me back at the castle.
Anyway, they were selling boiled beans back at the village, so I might as well pick some up.
“What should we name it?”
Raphtalia was petting the little chick when she asked.
“Why do we have to give it a name? We might end up selling it, you know?”
If we went around naming things, we might get attached. That would only make it harder to sell the thing if that was what we decided to do in the future.
“Are you just going to call it ‘chick’ and ‘Filolial?’”
“Hm…”
She was right, that would make things harder than they needed to be.
“You’re right. Why don’t we call it “Filo?”
“Very creative.”
“Oh give me a break.”
“Cheep!”
The little bird let out a loud and satisfied chirp, as if it understood that we had given it a name.
We thanked the rancher and left. Then we bought some boiled beans, had lunch for ourselves, and set out on the road.
“Where are we off to today?”
“Cheep?”
“Right, well, I don’t really know anywhere around here that is good for leveling up, so I guess we will just have to search for ourselves. Let’s just do what we’ve done the whole time.”
“Okay.”
Now that I knew I could depend on Raphtalia, I felt like the battles would be easier than they had been.
Filo was chirping from where it sat on my head. It was loud, but I kind of liked it.
“It’s huge! That frog is huge!”
We’d gone to the swamplands to the west of Riyute to hunt monsters, but I wasn’t able to hide my surprise at the first one I saw.
But let’s be fair here. You might run into giant toads or something when you play an RPG, but if you saw one in real life, you’d be pretty surprised too.
So when this giant frog, “Big Frog” they’re called, hopped over to me, and I saw that it was as tall as my waist, I screamed.
“I’m going!”
“Wait! Raphtalia!”
Before I could restrain the Big Frog, Raphtalia jumped ahead of me.
When it came time to battle, we had agreed that I was to take the lead. If this was an MMORPG, it only made sense to do so because it was dangerous to approach a new monster when you didn’t know its stats. What if the thing was stronger than we were?
If it was, we might not get out with just scrapes and bruises. It might be a mistake we’d have to pay for with our lives.
“Hiya!”
Raphtalia ignored my cry and dashed at the Big Frog with her sword.
The Big Frog let out a deafening screech, as if her attack had surprised it.
Dammit! What was she thinking? What happened to our plan? I was supposed to go in first and hold the monster down for her!
The Big Frog puffed up its cheeks, and then sent its razor sharp tongue flying at Raphtalia.
“Watch out!”
I ran forward and caught the brunt of the attack with my shield.
I couldn’t allow Raphtalia to be injured.
“Cheep!”
Filo was excited on my head. It felt like the thing was running in circles, shadow boxing.
“I’ll hold it down, so you just calm down!”
“But I…”
“Quiet!”
What was going on? It was like Raphtalia and I were not on the same page. I’d never felt that way prior to the wave. What could it mean?
If Raphtalia were to end up hurt, I’d feel terrible. I’d feel like we weren’t honoring the memory of her parents. I’d made up my mind to protect her, to serve as her new father.
The Big Frog turned to me and sent its razor-sharp tongue flying in my direction.
Yes! I reached out and grabbed the tongue from the air. It made a sound like metal clanging against my first.
“Go!”
“Okay!”
Raphtalia lunged at the frog with her sword drawn, her eyes flashing, like she’d just been waiting for my signal.
The Big Frog fell quickly and easily, and we both received experience points.
Nice. It was worth more than the porcupines had been.
“Huff.”
Raphtalia was looking me over, and she seemed disappointed. Her tenacity was starting to get the better of her, and I’d have to say something about it. If she didn’t learn to hold herself back a little, then we might both end up dead.
“Raphtalia, let’s be a little more cautious… okay?”
“But we don’t have much time until the next wave comes. Shouldn’t we defeat as many enemies as we can? Shouldn’t we level up as much as we possibly can?”
“We have a month and a half. That’s plenty of time. Let’s take it slow. You don’t want to overdo it and end up bedridden, do you?”
“You’re right. But I… I want to be stronger!”
At least she agreed with me… Wait, did she?
I didn’t know where all the good monsters were, like the other heroes did. So we didn’t have any other options for efficient leveling up.
“Gugeeeeeeh!”
What the? I turned at the sudden sound and saw something twice the size of the Big Frog. It was a purple Big Frog, and there was a Gray Salamander with it—and they were running straight for us.
“Pii!”
Filo was running circles around my head, apparently ready for a fight.
It wasn’t going to be much good in a fight yet, and it would be dangerous to hang out on my head, so I stuffed the little thing into my armor.
“Pii!”
“I’m going!”
“No! Let me go first!”
“What if you get hurt, Mr. Naofumi?! Didn’t you buy me so that I could fight for you?!”
“If the thing is strong enough to hurt me, just think about what it could do to you. I didn’t buy you to get you hurt! It might have been different back then… but now you need to take care of yourself!”
“Mr. Naofumi…”
I turned my gaze to the monsters, the Amethyst Big Frog and the Gray Salamander, raised my shield, and rushed them. Unfortunately my attack rating wasn’t high enough to do any damage. They spit a viscous, poisonous-looking liquid at me, and I blocked it with my shield.
“Go!”
“Okay!”
She ran at them and quickly cut them with her sword. They fell easily. I wonder if her new weapon was that strong? The armor was better than I had been expecting. I had to hand it to the old guy at the weapon shop.
I butchered the monsters and let the shield absorb the parts.
The frog meat looked gross, and was probably poisonous. I decided not to bother trying to sell it.
“Pii!”
Filo crawled out from my armor, walked over to the defeated monsters, and struck a defiant pose over their bodies, as if it had just killed them itself.
I wanted to ask what the thing was doing, but it was kind of cute, so I just let it go.
We walked around the area for a while longer, defeating monsters all the time. We were leveling up relatively efficiently.
By the time evening fell, I could tell that I had
grown, and Filo had too. The results were:
Naofumi: LV 23
Raphtalia: LV 27
Filo: LV 12
Filo hadn’t contributed to the battles at all, but had still received enough experience points to level up quickly. It looked like it had grown too.
That was good. I’d heard that young demi-humans matured along with their rising levels, so I guess it was only natural to expect monsters to level up in a similar way.
That must have been it…
The little chick was not so large and heavy that it was hard to hold in both hands. It was also, how to put it, rounder? It was like a giant steamed bun. Its feathers were larger, and covered its body now, and the whole guy had changed from a light pink to a darker pink.
Monster User Shield II: conditions met
Monster User Shield II: ability locked:
equip bonus: monster status adjustment (small)
I hadn’t noticed when Raphtalia grew before my eyes, but even I couldn’t help but notice the dramatic transformation the little bird had undergone.
“Piyo.”
It even chirped differently. It was heavy, so I put it down, and it walked around authoritatively.
Grumble…
I’d heard its stomach grumbling for a little while. Then it was louder than both myself and Raphtalia. I’d made sure to buy a lot of food for it, but apparently the bird had already run out. The rancher said that they could eat anything, so I kept feeding it anything that looked like food, like piles of hay we’d found on the road. It ate all of it, and still seemed hungry. That must have been proof of how quickly it was growing.
“Um… Mr. Naofumi?”
“I know… Monsters sure are amazing.”
To think that it had grown this much in the course of a single day… It wouldn’t be long before it could carry us!
It was great, and something to look forward to. If it grew to be really big but was still as immature as a baby, then it could spell trouble down the line. I went to the status screen and set its settings to strict.
We went back to the inn, and I asked the innkeeper where we could keep Filo. He led us to the horse stables, which were lined with hay for Filo to make itself a bed.
“Huh? Why are the Chimera bones and meat in here??”
The meat hadn’t started to rot at all, so it must have been good for keeping. Or maybe it didn’t rot because the monster was from another dimension.
“We decided to hang it up here and wait for it to soften a bit. That should make further processing easier.”
“Huh…”
But they weren’t going to use it for food… And they wanted to process it.
“Then we will smoke it or make jerky. Once it’s done we can look for buyers. There have already been some people who stopped buy and asked for some.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The Chimera had been very large, so they needed to use a lot of space to store the remains. It was probably the size of two full-grown cows. It probably wasn’t going to make for very good food, but it seemed like there was too much there to dedicate to researchers only.
“Piyo.”
Grumble…
Was it already hungry again? I’d bought new food on our way back to the village, and had already fed it. But I guess it had already gone through our stores. Geez, where was it fitting all that food?
Pikee, Pikee, Pikee…
Was that its bones creaking? Was it already growing?
“I can’t believe how much this grew over the day. You might be in over your head, eh?”
The innkeeper looked concerned.
“It’s only at level 12.”
“Huh? Level 12?”
The innkeeper shot a surprised glance at Filo.
“To grow this much in only a few days after its birth! Well, I’d swear it was at level 20! You’re very impressive, Hero.”
Yeah, well… I was using maturation adjustment, so its quick maturation was probably due to that. Every time I checked its status, the numbers were different. So I guess it really was growing very quickly.
“Piyo!”
Filo was chirping happily. It would grow up quickly.
I rubbed the bird’s head until I was sure it was sleeping. Once it was snoring, Raphtalia and I went back to our room. Then I went back to studying the writing system of this world. There was so much to do. I was getting tired.
Chapter Four: Growth
The next morning I woke up and tip-toed out of the room so that I wouldn’t wake Raphtalia, who had been up all night studying, on my way to go see Filo.
“Gah!”
A loud, wild voice greeted me when I entered the stables. Then I saw Filo. It had grown since the previous night. Where it had just been a round thing before, now its legs and neck had grown out. It stood there, looking something like an ostrich. It was changing so quickly! And it was growing so differently from any of the birds I knew anything about. It was now so tall that it stood up level with my chest. Still—it wasn’t big enough to ride yet.
Grumble…
So it was already hungry again? Good thing I’d stopped off to buy some food.
If it was growing this much in a day, I don’t know… Something about it was almost scary.
“Look at you! And you just hatched yesterday!”
“Gah!”
I found myself smiling just looking at the thing.
It wasn’t like I just discovered some deep-rooted love of animals or anything like that. I was just thrilled at the possibilities. I started thinking over all the things it could do for me once it was big enough. If it could pull a cart, I’d love to have it do so.
Its feathers had grown again, and changed colors. Now they were a mix of white and very light pink.
In an effort to clean up a bit, I let the shield absorb some of the feathers.
Monster User Shield III: conditions met
Monster User Shield III: ability locked:
equip bonus: maturation adjustment (medium)
Man, just imagine what I could have gotten if I’d given the shield some of its blood. I should give Raphtalia another haircut and try absorbing more of her hair.
Filo had only just been born, but here it was running around and happy.
“Gah!”
It wasn’t a dog, but I picked up a twig and threw it as far as I could for Filo to fetch. We played that way for a while.
Filo was so fast that sometimes it caught the twig before it had a chance to fall. Then it brought the twig back. It was pretty talented. Anyway, I played with Filo until Raphtalia woke up. It was kind of refreshing, this whole “pet” thing.
Thinking back on it, people back in my world kept dogs and cats. They were pretty cute.
A long time ago, at my school, there was a wild cat. It was really nervous around people, and everyone said that it wouldn’t approach you if you didn’t have food. But it approached me.
In elementary school we had a class in which we took care of animals, and everyone else complained about the chickens because they pecked. But they never pecked me. So I guess you could say that I sort of liked animals. Or at the very least, I didn’t hate them.
“Mmm… There you are, Mr. Naofumi. And look at that smile! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy.”
Raphtalia had woken up and come to find me. She entered the stables looking grumpy.
She had a twisted, tired smile on her face.
“What is it?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Gah!”
Filo was lightly tapping at Raphtalia with its beak.
“Sigh… I guess there’s no getting around it…”
Raphtalia smiled, and reached out her hands to lightly pet Filo’s cheeks.
“Gah…”
Filo looked really happy and squinted its eyes as it saddled up next to Raphtalia and rubbed against her.
“I wonder where we should go today?”
“Good question. You’d probably li
ke to try and save on food costs for Filo, so how about we head out to the plains to the south of here?”
“Hmm… That’s a good idea.”
There were tons of different grasses growing in that area, and plenty of them could be used for medicine. Raphtalia was right… it would be a good place. Our immediate goal was to get the best equipment that we could, and we’d need money for that.
“Right on. Okay, let’s get going.”
“Gah!”
“Okay!”
So we went out to the fields and fought monsters until we leveled up.
Naofumi: LV 25
Raphtalia: LV 28
Filo: LV 15
As for the grasses, I spent most of my energy on looking for things that Filo could eat, so we didn’t end up actually collecting very much for medicine. I did go ahead and let the shield absorb all the things we found, but I didn’t get much out of it except for a couple of small status bonuses.
And I still hadn’t found a shield that would teach me intermediate compounding recipes.
That evening, Filo grew into what appeared to be a full-grown Filolial.
“Sure is growing up quick! Normally it would take them three months or more to reach this size…”
The innkeeper and the rancher were both surprised. They couldn’t believe how fast Filo was growing.
It must have been because of the maturation adjustment, both small and medium, that I was using.
“If only I thought to absorb the ink way back when I bought Raphtalia…”
“Ahaha…”
I wondered if Raphtalia wished that she, too, could grow that quickly.
Creaaakkkkk.
I could hear the creaking and cracking of bones again. Filo must be growing.
“Gah!”
Filo was standing right in front of me, and looked to be large enough to ride.
“You want to carry me around?”
“Gah!”
