by Aneko Yusagi
I sent Raphtalia a party invitation first.
“Portal...” Before I could finish saying it, something felt strange. And it wasn’t just me. Everyone else was feeling it, too.
An icon blinked in my field of view.
Teleportation not available.
What? This was the first time I’d been unable to use Portal Shield since I woke up in this world. There was only one other time that I’d felt this strange—when we were fighting the Spirit Tortoise.
“Well, well... Did you really think you were going to get away from me? Hm... Looks like there’s a few more of you than there was...”
I looked to the source of the voice to find who had been chasing Raphtalia and the horde of monsters he was controlling.
“You! It must be destiny that we’d meet here! I’ll make you pay for last time!”
Whoever it was spoke condescendingly to us.
I’d seen him before.
That’s right, it was the supposed genius scientist that we’d run into when we used the dragon hourglass to teleport out of the capital.
“Oh yeah, you were there, weren’t you? I can’t remember your name though...”
I’d rather have avoided meeting him again, but I was honestly starting to look forward to the fight.
He seemed to have more women following him than last time. Something about him really irked me. Maybe it was just that he reminded me of Motoyasu.
“I’ll get you back for last time!”
“Criminals! Come with us peacefully!”
“Yeah! How dare you embarrass us?” he smiled. Surrounded by his gaggle of women, he looked very pleased with himself.
These people were starting to really piss me off. Was I the only one that thought that these women might not really like him? What was he trying to compensate for by keeping them around all the time?
Actually, I probably looked the same way to him. Better to drop the subject altogether.
“You mean you’re in our country but you don’t know my name?!”
“You fools!”
“Then listen up! I’ll tell you whom you stand before. I am the hope of the people, the greatest alchemist in all the land...”
Okay, actually he wasn’t the same as Motoyasu. Women liked him for his affected sense of charm. I started to think that this guy was actually more like Itsuki. What made me feel that way?
The never-ending preface to announcing his name took so long that I actually missed his name when he finally said it.
“—THAT’S who I am! Now you will know true fear! There’s no reasoning with the likes of you!”
“Sure, whatever. Hey—what did you say your name was?” I couldn’t remember what he’d said.
Maybe it was because of all the things I’d been through with Itsuki, but even if I could remember these types of faces, I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to learn their names.
“You insolent fool! I’ll carve my name into your chest! You won’t forget it then!”
If he was so unimpressed with me, why did he want me to remember his name so badly? He made no sense.
A large white tiger prowled behind him and roared. The beast looked wild. A rope of drool dangled from its gaping mouth.
But something felt off about this whole thing. I’d spent so much time in this new world that my intuition had gotten sharper than it had been.
“It certainly looks like you are in cahoots with the thieves. It should come as no surprise that I find you repulsive.”
“Thieves? What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Naofumi...” Raphtalia said, looking at me with repentant eyes. Then she opened her robe and showed me the weapon she had hidden inside. She was holding an unsheathed katana.
Let’s see here—time to review the facts. Whoever had the katana of the vassal weapons was on the run... and Raphtalia had disappeared from the slave spell menu.
And the authorities were after whoever had the katana...
These jerks were probably the people chasing after it... but...
I knew what was going on, but I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself yet.
“Why did you run? Wouldn’t the citizens respect you? Greet you with open arms?”
Raphtalia was being pursued by the government. She was being treated like a thief—even though she was with people as powerful as Glass and L’Arc.
“You see...”
Chapter Fifteen: The Katana’s Choice
I’ll try to sum up Raphtalia’s story.
Raphtalia, Glass, L’Arc, and Therese found themselves in enemy lands. They were thrown into a prison that kept them from utilizing the power of their levels. It was even worse than the place where Kizuna and I had been locked up.
The prison constantly kept magic spells that limited the abilities of its prisoners and then gave an equal amount of power to the prison guards. At least their prison was theoretically escapable, though, unlike the labyrinth we were stuck in.
Anyway, cooperating with Glass and L’Arc, Raphtalia was able to escape by using her illusion magic. Even if her power was restrained, the wielder of the katana of the vassal weapons wasn’t going to lose so easily.
We’d relied so much on Raph-chan to find her that we completely ignored the information available to the public at the guilds. If Raphtalia and Glass escaped from prison and the whole country was after them, it would have been all over the news.
Why didn’t they travel in secret, like we’d been doing?
“How did you get the katana? Didn’t that just put a target on your back?”
“If our actions came to light, it would give the enemy an excuse to attack our country. We wanted to avoid that, so we tried to manipulate the news, which backfired on us,” explained Glass.
That would explain why we hadn’t been inundated with news about the escape.
They had to avoid it for political reasons. It wouldn’t look good to put up wanted posters of the heroes that were supposed to be protecting the world. The katana was a symbol of national strength here, so they would obviously want to secretly dispose of whoever had it and go back to boasting about controlling an unassigned vassal weapon.
Those weapons really made things complicated. Anyone that got their hands on one would become an instant symbol of power.
The holy heroes that were summoned didn’t have that problem, because the powers were limited to the person that had them. There was no competition involved.
The queen of Melromarc said that certain tools and items were necessary to summon the heroes, but procuring and managing those items must have been a lot easier than dealing with the vassal weapons.
Back in the world I’d come from, it was easy to check if the people who held the vassal weapons were alive or dead, which must have simplified some of the international diplomacy.
“Okay, so that’s why you were so hard to find. What happened after that?”
“Well, after we escaped from the prison...”
They decided that they had to get out of the country, so they concealed their identities and travelled to the capital, hoping to use the dragon hourglass to escape. They were very powerful, so they planned to force their way to the hourglass if necessary. It was basically the same plan that Kizuna and I had decided on.
Glass and Raphtalia did some leveling up on the way to the capital.
“This girl here was really tiny, you know? She looked like she was ten years old,” L’Arc explained.
“I thought her maturation might have reset. I guess I was right.”
At least she hadn’t turned into something else entirely, like Filo!
Maybe it would have been nice, if she could transform like Raph-chan, but I doubt Raphtalia would have been excited by that.
“Too bad she grew up so fast, eh, Kiddo? You probably wanted to see her as a child!”
“I’ve seen her like that before... Still, if I had the chance again, it would have been nice.”
And in a miko outfit? That would have look
ed so good on her! She would have been so cute.
I better watch out. I was getting way too excited about these miko clothes.
Whatever. I would just have to cherish the memories I already had of Raphtalia’s childhood. I made a mental note to ask L’Arc for details later.
“Mr. Naofumi!” Raphtalia shouted, her face red with anger.
“It wasn’t easy, you know. Growing up again. I had to go through all those growing pains all over again.”
“It’s not just growing pains, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were little, you used to eat as much as Filo.”
“I was growing!”
That was true. That was how demi-humans matured.
“Okay, so why do you have the katana?”
“When we got to the capital, they were in the middle of displaying the katana in the town square. A lot of people had arrived to compete for the nomination.”
“Even if we were in enemy lands, we realized that another wielder of a vassal weapon may appear, so we split up and mixed in with the crowd to observe the event,” Glass murmured softly. She looked upset. I was guessing the story didn’t end well.
They were in enemy lands, but they still wanted to see what kind of person was using the vassal weapon there. Considering how crazy the man with the book of the vassal weapon was, I could understand why. On the other hand, if the holder in this land was reasonable, it might have been useful.
“Yeah, and then you all took off running! The country was seriously about to entrust the katana to me, but you had to show up!” interjected the genius scientist guy.
Ugh. I was about to lose it with this guy.
Didn’t he care about avoiding war between the nations? If all he cared about was his own country, what were his thoughts about the waves?
“Then this guy came with a group of high-ranking officials and stood before the crowd. With everyone watching, he attempted to remove the sword...”
I tried to picture the scene in my mind. The obnoxious man before us looked at the katana where it sat, plunged deep into the heart of a boulder. The people in the crowd were on the edge of their seats, thinking they were about to witness the birth of a new hero. The guards were doing all they could to keep the crowd under control.
They guy walked forward slowly, one step at a time. He reached for the hilt...
But just before he could touch it, the blade flashed with blinding light and... flew from the stone and shot at the crowd like an arrow, only to land in Raphtalia’s outstretched hand!
“And that was how the katana came to choose me to wield it.”
“I should have predicted as much. After all, she was able to cross between worlds with myself and L’Arc. We are only able to do so because we have the fan and scythe of the vassal weapons,” explained Glass.
Raphtalia was very powerful.
She wasn’t a hero, but she’d gotten through plenty of hard times with me. I could think of a lot of rough spots that I couldn’t have survived without her.
“And?”
“This guy here didn’t like the fact that I was chosen, so he had me declared a thief! Then he brought out these vicious beasts to chase us down! We ran for a long while, but they never let up.”
“That katana was supposed to be mine! Therefore I will require its return!” the genius yelled at us again.
I looked over at Raphtalia, silently.
Honestly, I couldn’t see why a vassal weapon from Glass’s world had chosen Raphtalia to wield it. Aren’t the people with the vassal weapons supposed to cross over to other worlds and kill the four holy heroes in the previous world? Wouldn’t that mean that Raphtalia was now my enemy?
And why did it choose someone from another world?
It didn’t make sense.
But then again, I’d been summoned from another world to be the Shield Hero. I guess that didn’t make sense, either.
“I asked Therese and Glass to tell the katana that it had chosen incorrectly. I asked them may times, but the katana will not leave me,” Raphtalia said.
“Can’t you let it go? If I could let this shield go, I’d have dropped it a long time ago.”
What was this about talking to the weapons? If you talked to them, would they leave you alone? I wished I could be rid of the shield. Being stuck with no means of offense was no picnic.
Sure, I’d managed to put the shield to pretty good use, but I figure you should be able to protect people and also be able to do other things, too!
Fine.
“Shield, are you listening? Get out of here.”
“Don’t say that! You could lose everything!”
“I must kill you to reclaim my rightful place as the true owner of the katana!” the man screamed. The tiger behind him howled along with him.
“Oh please! Will you shut up for just a second?!” I yelled back at him.
I was getting really tired of listening to him complain. He was like a little kid that didn’t get his way. He reminded me of the other three heroes—idiots, all of them.
“Alright, I think I understand. Basically, this guy doesn’t like who the katana chose, so he’s mobilized the whole country to hunt you down.”
“Yes, that’s about it. We’ve been able to fend for ourselves for a long while, but they just keep coming. We escaped from the capital a short while ago, and now we’ve run into Kizuna and Naofumi.”
“Kizuna, Kiddo—you see the predicament we’re in. Think you can help us out?” L’Arc asked.
As if I were some kind of hero?! Not that we would be of much use—neither of us could fight well against other people.
Besides, once we defeated these people, the country would keep sending more and more people out against us. If it didn’t, then the government would look ineffectual and lose face. It couldn’t let that happen, so it’d come after us with everything it had.
“Why don’t you just show them what you’ve got? You’re all pretty strong, aren’t you?”
“They won’t back off. These guys are pretty high-level, too.”
“Heh. You may have vassal weapons, but no one from your country could ever hope to best us in battle. How foolish are you?”
“You’re the fool! Blathering on and on just because you didn’t get what you wanted!”
“What was that?!”
The vassal weapons were just like the holy weapons weren’t they? Didn’t they exist to protect the world? If the weapons were necessary to protect the world, how could this guy live with himself? He’d kill a hero just because he didn’t like them!
That alone should explain why the katana didn’t choose him.
“...”
Looking closer, I could that see Raphtalia, Glass, L’Arc, and Therese were all showing signs of exhaustion. Their journey must have been more difficult than ours had been.
I sighed and looked at Kizuna. She nodded.
“Fine. We can team up for a little while. I want to make Trash #2 pay for picking a fight with Raphtalia.”
“Trash #2?!”
“Yeah, that’s your name now. I know a piece of trash just like you back in the world I came from.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia remarked.
“Your nicknaming sensibilities are remarkable,” Trash #2 said.
“Shut up. The point is that I’ve had it with pieces of trash like you!”
I stepped ahead of Raphtalia to protect her.
The enemy... Trash #2... regarded my glare with condescension. He raised his hand.
. . . And two more tigers appeared behind him.
What was going on with these monsters? Were they the reason that I couldn’t use Portal Shield?
“Rafu!” Raph-chan chirped, jumping up onto my shoulder.
“Thanks for the help, but you’d better hang back. These guys mean business,” I said.
Raph-chan just wasn’t strong enough to join the battle. She did what I said and ran over to sit by
Raphtalia’s feet.
“What is this little thing?”
“It’s a familiar—they call them shikigami here. They made her with a ceremony for us. She led us to you.”
“Rafu!”
“Oh... Is that so? Why does it... um... Why does it sound like it’s saying my name?”
“...”
“You won’t tell me?”
Oh jeez... But it wasn’t my fault! I had to use something that would help us find Raphtalia.
“You see... Remember back when you were little and I cut your hair? I still had some hair stored in the shield, so we used it as a medium to make her.”
“Oh, that’s right... You used the shield to clean up all the hair... How dare you!”
“It’s not my fault! They said that we had to use something of yours to make it work!”
“Rafu!”
Raph-chan jumped up and down and chirped at us both. It was like she wanted us to stop the fighting.
“Oh well. I understand.”
“Rafu...” Raph-chan jumped up on Raphtalia’s shoulders and pressed her forehead against Raphtalia’s.
“Hm? What’s...”
“What is it?”
“Oh. Something just popped up saying that the shikigami has been registered to me.
Hm... Oh, that’s right. It must have been like how Glass and Kizuna made that penguin together.
“Um, Naofumi? We’re kind of preparing for battle here. Can you focus please?”
The tigers were continuing to take slow steps toward us.
“What are these things?”
“The White Tiger is one of the holy beasts in our world. This seems to be a replica of it. It’s like if someone made a replica of the Spirit Tortoise back in your world, Kiddo.”
“What?!”
This thing was one the protective beasts from Glass’s world?
What was it doing here? Weren’t they supposed to be suppressed for now—isn’t that what the blue hourglass was indicating?
“The White Tiger was defeated in the past, but they made a replica version of it to use in battle. They are considered a powerful weapon of war in this country. Kizuna—you better watch out.”
