by Aneko Yusagi
Prologue: The Never-Ending Labyrinth
“—Fumi-san! Naofumi-san!”
Someone shook me awake. I could hear them shouting my name over the persistent dripping of water.
“Ugh . . .”
I was dizzy and shook my head to try to steady my senses as I slowly sat up to get my bearings.
“Oh thank goodness. Naofumi-san . . .”
Rishia looked at me, her eyes filled with worry. She sat with her legs splayed out like a duck.
“Where are we?”
“I . . . I don’t really know.”
I looked around the room. It was a small dark room, with walls built of stone—very dank and depressing. Behind me was a pile of damp straw on the ground. A crude bed lay in the other corner and iron grating formed the far wall.
“It looks like . . . a prison.”
“Feh . . .”
What the hell was going on?
I climbed to my feet and analyzed the situation further.
The iron grate made it clear that we were in a prison cell of some kind.
But jeez . . . How did we end up here? My memory was still fuzzy with sleep. I better go over everything I can remember and try to clear my head.
My name is Naofumi Iwatani.
I was a normal university student with otaku tendencies back in Japan, but that all changed on the day I went to the library and found a book called The Records of the Four Holy Weapons. I started to read it, only to find myself summoned to another world and treated as if I were one of the characters from the book—the Shield Hero.
The people that summoned me said they needed me to save the word from a great calamity called “the waves.”
At first I was thrilled to find myself in a new dream-like world, but things didn’t end up going so smoothly. Despite the fact that the people in charge of the country—Melromarc—had summoned me to their world of their own accord, they didn’t waste any time framing me for a rape I never committed so that they could throw me out into the streets, penniless and alone.
Eventually, after going through all sorts of hardships and trials, I was able to get rid of the people who were behind a conspiracy to destroy me, the Shield Hero. I was finally cleared of all charges, and the people that had framed me were punished.
Finally cleared of the charges against me, it was time to fight against the waves as a true hero—or so I thought. As it turned out, there was still plenty of trouble waiting for me.
The first problem was the most fundamental. I was summoned to serve as the Shield Hero, but the Shield Hero was specialized for defense and was completely unable to attack enemies on his own.
I was one of four holy heroes, and the other three were heroes of the sword, spear, and bow. All of them had been summoned from Japan, just like I had been. But there were many different Japans in different dimensions, and none of them came from the same one that I had.
What’s that? Why do I remember all this stuff about them?
The important thing about the other heroes is that, back in their own worlds, all three of them had played games that were remarkably similar to the new world that we had all been summoned to.
The world we found ourselves in really did have a lot in common with video games. People had levels and stats, we earned experience points by defeating monsters, and those points could be used to raise your abilities.
Naturally there was magic, and the world was stalked by creatures I’d never seen in Japan. Because you could grow stronger by battling your way through the world, obviously any information you had ahead of time would be useful.
But the other three heroes liked to keep secrets. They didn’t care at all about the conspiracies that had been plotted against me. And they certainly didn’t care enough to tell me any of the things they knew about this new world.
After I’d been cleared of all the charges leveled against me, I was able to convince the other heroes to sit down together so we could discuss what we knew about how to power up our weapons. Over the course of our meeting it became increasingly clear that they were having the time of their lives using their own secret knowledge to play the role of the world’s heroic saviors. They were so pleased with themselves that none of them had stopped to realize that they each only knew a single part of the full method.
After they had heard of the other power-up methods each of the other heroes were using, each one of them still only understood the method they previously knew about from the games they’d played. So they continued to battle against the waves with underpowered weapons. The stupidity was nearly too much for me to bear. In the end, I tried using all of the methods that we discussed during the meeting, and I quickly became much more powerful than any of them. It was a good thing I did, too. Soon after that we ran into all kinds of dangerous situations that I never would have survived had I not powered up the way I had.
A bunch of things happened, but the most notable was probably the battle with the Spirit Tortoise, an enormous monster that could save the world but could only do so by sacrificing a large portion of the world’s human population.
The Spirit Tortoise was a protective beast that existed to save the world, albeit in a very different way than we heroes were supposed to. The other three heroes all went to attack the beast on their own, were defeated, and then went missing. As usual, their failure became my responsibility. I faced the Spirit Tortoise in battle and was eventually able to stop it in its tracks.
With the immediate danger put to rest, my friends and I searched for the missing heroes, hoping to find and rescue them from whatever dire fate they’d encountered. It wasn’t long before we discovered that we weren’t out of trouble yet.
At around the same time that the Spirit Tortoise first appeared, a mysterious woman in a robe came to me and insisted that I should kill her. Her name was Ost Horai, and she was a Spirit Tortoise familiar (human type), a soldier of the enemy. Worse, she carried the burden of the Spirit Tortoise’s will within her.
I didn’t understand what was happening when she first appeared, and she vanished before I could ask anything further. That’s why I was a little slow in responding to the threat. The next time I saw her, she appeared to tell me that the Spirit Tortoise was still alive, despite the fact that we had already blasted its head off. When she appeared before me again, she begged me to finish the job.
She told me the Spirit Tortoise was being controlled by someone. This prevented it from carrying out its true purpose: using the souls of living things to form a magic barrier to protect the world from the waves. She said that if the Spirit Tortoise couldn’t carry out its true intentions then it would have to be defeated.
After that there was a long series of battles.
My friends and I joined forces with Ost to fight the Spirit Tortoise, and we were able to sneak inside of its body. We tried to defeat it in different ways, like attacking both its heart and head at the same time (a method we’d researched beforehand) and using a sealing spell on its heart.
Nothing worked. But then Ost helped us find the Spirit Tortoise’s core, and it seemed like we might be able to defeat the Spirit Tortoise there. That was where we ran into the strange scientist-like madman that had taken over control of the Spirit Tortoise’s body: Kyo Ethnina.
He wasn’t the only person we found in the core chamber. The three missing heroes were there, too. After their pathetic loss to the Spirit Tortoise, Kyo had taken them prisoner.
Kyo manipulated the core and used it to produce powerful Spirit Tortoise familiars to cause us grief. In the middle of the fight, Glass and her friends appeared and joined forces with us in the battle against Kyo.
Speaking of Glass, she was a human e
nemy that came out of the dimensional rifts during the second wave we fought against . . . or at least that’s what I’d thought. We found out that Kyo came from the same world that she did, and he possessed something called the book of the vassal weapon. According to Glass he had crossed over to our world to use our protective beasts in order to cause destruction and chaos—and that was something that could not be permitted. We shared a common goal. So we teamed up to defeat Kyo.
But Kyo had the power of the core behind him, and his attacks were extremely powerful. He used the energy the Spirit Tortoise had gathered to make himself even more powerful, and for a while we weren’t able to hold our own against the strength of his attacks.
His defenses were formidable too, and just when I thought we didn’t have a chance, something snapped in Rishia, and she and let loose a fury of attacks that, luckily enough, broke through his defenses just in time for me to use the special power that Ost had imbued my shield with: The Spirit Tortoise Heart Shield.
It had a special effect called Energy Blast—which was exactly like the killer attack the Spirit Tortoise itself had used against us when we’d fought its head.
I did as Ost asked and directed Energy Blast at the Spirit Tortoise’s core and was able to destroy it—breaking Kyo’s connection to the Spirit Tortoise in the process. Realizing he’d lost his advantage, Kyo opened a portal back to Glass’s world and escaped through it.
And so, finally, the curtain closed on the Spirit Tortoise’s rampage affair.
We were victorious, but the victory came at a heavy cost.
Ost asked me to destroy the Spirit Tortoise’s core, knowing all the while that if I did she would die. I knew it, too, but I did as she asked.
When the Spirit Tortoise was defeated, the energy it had gathered would awaken the next protective beast, and no waves were supposed to occur until that time. But the energy had been stolen, and Ost had interfered, so the next beast didn’t awaken, and the waves threatened the world as they always had.
We joined up with Glass and her friends and followed them back to their world to hunt down Kyo, the man responsible for all the destruction in the first place. The other three heroes were just as useless as ever, so we left them in back Melromarc.
So . . . how did we end up in a jail cell?
“Where are Raphtalia and the others?”
“I do not know. When I woke up, I was lying here with you in this room.”
I decided we’d better start by figuring out what was going on.
“Huh?
I decided to start by checking out the shield I was equipped with, because something clearly wasn’t right. I’d had the Spirit Tortoise Heart Shield equipped before I lost consciousness, but now I was equipped with something else—a feeble looking thing I’d never seen before. If it reminded me of anything, it was the Small Shield from a long time ago.
Beginner’s Small Shield
abilities locked; equip bonus: defense 3
What was this thing? When did I get stuck with this? I decided to change to my strongest shield, but an icon popped into my field of view when I tried.
Change conditions not met
Um . . . What the hell?
I called up my weapon book and quickly scanned the list of shields. There was a long list there, but it was nearly all greyed out.
“What the hell is going on here?!”
I couldn’t use any of my shields!
“Um . . . I . . .” Rishia hesitantly raised her hand. I had a really bad feeling about what she was going to say, so I didn’t even want to ask. Then again, avoiding the truth wasn’t going to make it go away. Besides, I had a pretty good idea what she was going to tell me.
“I’m afraid to ask, but what is it?”
“I just checked my status, and it says that I’m only level 1 . . .”
That’s what I was afraid of. Before we’d gone through the portal, Rishia had been at level 68. How could she be at level 1 all of a sudden?
Maybe the dragon hourglass had somehow returned her to level 1 while we were unconscious. I didn’t know what happened, but I knew what I had to do next. I didn’t want to do it, but I slowly, hesitantly, opened my own status menu.
Naofumi Iwatani
job class: other world Shield Hero Level 1
equipment: beginner’s Small Shield (legendary weapon) ○▼◆x type 2
“Nooooo!!!”
“Fehhhhh?!”
I screamed, and Rishia was so startled she screamed with me.
I was level 1, too? All that work—it had all been for nothing?!
Not good at all! This might have been the worst thing that has ever happened to me!
Shit!
I checked the party functions menu, only to discover that there weren’t any party functions available. Raphtalia and Filo’s names were nowhere to be seen. Rishia’s was the only name listed. Everyone else was gone.
Even the slave- and monster-controlling spells . . .
The slave spell, by the way, was a special spell that could be applied to someone, and then that person would have to follow orders or they would be punished instantly—and Raphtalia was my slave. Actually, at one point the slave spell was taken off of her, but she knew that I wouldn’t be able to trust anyone that wasn’t forced to obey me, so she volunteered to become my slave again so she could earn my trust.
I bought her from a slave trader shortly after I was framed and persecuted, back when I had completely lost the ability to trust anyone at all.
She was a young demi-human, which was a race of humans in the new world that had animal-like characteristics—she had ears and a puffy tail that looked like they were from a tanuki, or a raccoon. That made sense, because she’d said she was a “raccoon-type” demi-human.
She looked like she was about eighteen years old. She was actually younger than that, but demi-humans matured physically to match their current level, not age. She had long chestnut hair, a pretty face, and very fine, clear skin. Even Motoyasu, the Spear Hero, who was the most voracious consumer of female beauty I could think of, counted her high on his list of beauties.
I’d always been an otaku, so it’s natural for me to describe her as one of those beautiful young women you see in video games and anime. She was at least as beautiful as they were.
The first weapon I gave her was a sword, and she quickly grew proficient with it. I was useless when it came to offense, so she cut down enemies on my behalf. Personality-wise she was very serious, and she was always quick to correct me whenever I said something improper.
When the first wave of destruction washed over the world, it took her village and family with it, so she had a lot of heavy emotions connected to the waves. Her family was gone, and in the aftermath she was captured by slave traders and sold to the highest bidder. It was a dark time in her life.
In the end, I bought her from another slave trader, and we began to fight together. Now she’s my most trusted, dependable companion.
I normally never had to use it, but the slave spell was capable of telling me where she was at any time.
If I was ever going to use it, this was the time.
Out of slave spell observation range.
Well I guess that was that. What about Filo?
I received some funds from the crown after distinguishing myself in the first wave of destruction, and I used some of them to play a monster egg lottery-like game back at the slave trader’s shop. Filo hatched out of the egg I got. She was a young monster girl called a filolial—and she loved to pull carriages. Filolials were . . . Okay, it’s a little hard to explain. They are large bird monsters and looked like beefed-up ostriches. But Filo wasn’t just any old filolial. She was a higher-ranking monster—a queen? A mutant?
She was a filolial queen—a sort of boss filolial. She looked different from the others too. She was much fluffier and built like a mix between an owl and a penguin. Her coloring was mostly white, but streaks of pink ran over her feather tips.
Oh—s
he could transform into something resembling a human whenever she wanted.
When she was in human form, she looked like a little angel. She had long, wavy blonde hair and innocent blue eyes. She was as innocent and mischievous as she looked. She was a bubbly, bumbling ten-year-old girl with wings on her back.
Her hair was bright and smooth. Her skin was just as taut and clear as Raphtalia’s. And her face was pretty, too. She really looked exactly like a typical blonde-haired, blue-eyed, angelic little girl. She mostly wore a white one-piece dress with blue accents.
Her favorite weapons were her iron claws. When she was in human form she equipped them on her hands, and when she was a monster she wore them on her feet. She switched up her fighting style to suit whatever the situation called for. About her fighting abilities—well, she was even stronger than Raphtalia. She’d gotten us out of more tough spots than I could count.
I tried to use the monster spell to figure out where she was, but just like the slave spell, it didn’t work. For whatever reason, the spells wouldn’t even specify what direction they’d disappeared to.
Rishia was the only party member left.
Rishia used to be a member of the Bow Hero’s team, but Itsuki framed her for a petty crime as an excuse to kick her out of his party . . . You see, you couldn’t really depend on her for much.
She wore her hair in a French braid, and she came off as a bit of a sheltered, bookish girl. And truthfully, ever since she joined my party, she’d only proved herself useful outside of battle, with her knowledge and research. But that’s not how she saw herself—she kept saying that she wanted to be a stronger fighter.
After Itsuki saved her from a perilous situation, she fell head over heels for his commitment to justice and asked to join his party. It all fell apart pretty quickly after that. She went through the same thing that I did. Her teammates framed her for a crime and kicked her out of the party. In the end, it turned out that Itsuki himself had planned it.
