by Aneko Yusagi
Itsuki stuck his chest out and spoke with an important air about him.
“In this world, the rarity of a weapon is very important. The abilities it comes with are just an afterthought. If the weapon itself isn’t strong and rare, then it won’t be worth very much.”
“You mean unique weapons or legendary equipment?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“Stop lying!”
“It’s not right to start off telling the truth and then switch to lies halfway through.”
Ren and Motoyasu both snapped and spat at Itsuki. Here come more lies.
“What? What are you saying? I’m telling the truth!”
“Nope. That was a lie.”
“Yeah, you’re a liar.”
“I am not! I’m not lying!!”
What was going on? Itsuki had lost his cool. He really seemed to be angered by the other two.
Something strange was going on.
“Let’s hear him out.”
I waved off their little argument and signaled for Itsuki to continue.
“Right, well . . . . It depends on the type of weapon you’re working with, obviously, but normally you can use ores to make them stronger.”
It sounded like he was talking about some kind of refining system. I’d seen things like that in games before.
“Iron plates have the most amount of ore slots.”
“I’m sure there’s a risk of failure. You shouldn’t tell such dangerous lies.”
Motoyasu spoke out to silence Itsuki.
“No! It never fails!”
Wait, so there was no risk of failure? What was the truth?
“What are you talking about? You don’t use ores to power up anything.”
“You better stop calling me a liar! What about you, Ren? How do you power things up?”
“Me? Good question. I don’t want to see Naofumi get all confused by your lies, so I guess I should step in and tell him the truth.”
Why did he need to call me out by name? Whatever, he was right that I was getting confused.
“This world is all about your level. There might be other things to worry about, but in the end it all comes down to whether you have leveled up enough.”
“Another liar.”
“You! You think you can lie all you want if you keep your face all cool and aloof!”
What was going on here?
“Naofumi, apparently both of these guys are planning to lie their way to the end of this meeting. I guess it’s up to me to tell you the truth. If you want to power up your weapon, it’s all about skill mastery.”
“Skill mastery?”
“Exactly. The more you use a weapon, the stronger that weapon will get. The important part is that when it’s time to switch weapons, you have to turn that weapon’s accumulated skill mastery into energy. Then you add that energy to your new weapon, and that will unlock the new weapon’s hidden powers.”
“That’s one of the more impressive lies I’ve heard yet.”
“Don’t worry about him. You just need to keep increasing the rarity of your weapons. You may fail or you lose a weapon, but our legendary weapons are safe.”
All of their stories made it sound so simple. But none of the things they mentioned could be found anywhere in the help menus.
I didn’t know who to believe. Were Ren and Itsuki lying?
“Just listen to yourself, lying with a straight face like that. You’re no better than Naofumi.”
Motoyasu brushed Ren off.
“What was that?!”
“He’s right, you shouldn’t listen to him—he’s lying.”
“You’re all crazy. Who is he supposed to believe? And I am NOT lying!”
“See for yourself. Open up your skill tree and look at a weapon you use a lot. You can check its skill mastery right there.”
I did like Motoyasu said and opened my menu, then looked for the Chimera Shield.
But when I got the menu for the shield open, it just displayed the status like it always did.
He said I should check something? It was looking like a lie.
I reached a finger out to touch it but nothing happened.
“Nothing happened.”
I should have known it was a lie. I knew enough not to believe them from the start of this, but I was surprised that they would lie to my face when I could check the veracity of their claims.
If that was a lie, then their claims about the weapon copy system were probably lies too.
“I am not lying! You’re just trying to ruin my reputation!”
“I can’t do it either.”
“Me neither. That option just isn’t in the help menu.”
“Ugh! Whatever! I was stupid for trying to help you in the first place!”
Ren got very upset at each of Itsuki’s and Motoyasu’s explanations, sighing and crossing his arms angrily. He slumped down in his seat.
Ren was normally so cool and collected. In fact, I don't think I’d ever seen him so upset. Still, both of the other heroes insisted that he was lying, and a quick look through my own help menu seemed to verify as much.
“I wasn’t finished. There is another way to power up your weapon. You have to take the energy out of another item and use it to enchant the weapon. If you do it will increase the power of the item by a certain percentage.”
“You mean like raising the attack power by 10 percent?”
“Yes, but there is a significant risk. If you fail, then the value falls to zero.”
“Another lie. Stop telling Naofumi about some other game.”
“I’m telling the truth! This is how I’ve gotten stronger—by using the energy of different monsters and items to enchant my weapon. It works for all of my weapons. It's a parallel system to your current level—like having a job level.”
Thinking over what he said, I realized I’d seen similar things in games I’d played in the past. You could level up your equipment to gain new abilities. It wasn’t very exciting, but it worked. Still, I think I remembered learning some really powerful abilities that way.
“Okay, okay . . . Ren and Itsuki are getting a little out of control. Allow me . . . .”
“I’m not expecting much, but go ahead.”
I was already expecting nothing but lies out of the whole group.
“I’m telling you, the most important thing to focus on is smelting weapons and status levels. The performance that you get out of status levels is way more important than what you get from your actual level. Even if you stick with the weakest weapon, the one you started with, if you smelt it properly, it can be really strong! I made all my equip bonuses work to raise my attack power.”
“Now THAT’S a real lie!”
“It is. Naofumi, don’t listen to him!”
Motoyasu brushed their protests aside and kept speaking directly to me.
“It’s different for every weapon, but the first thing you need is to collect ores for smelting. Now, in Emerald Online you would lose your weapon if the smelting process failed. But that doesn't happen with our legendary weapons. Here, if you fail, the smelting value just falls to zero.”
“That’s not true!”
“Yeah!”
The argument was getting intense and out of control. The queen looked puzzled by all the disagreements.
Honestly, I was pretty confused myself.
Did they think they could get away with lying if they all lied?
“Anyway, then there are the eye spirits and the status enchantments. Depending on the piece of the monster soul you combine with the weapon, the effect will be different. The options vary by weapon, but let’s say that you have a weapon for dueling. You can raise the damage the weapon does to other humans.”
“Itsuki, didn’t you say something similar to that?”
“There are only so many slots available on the weapon, and the percentages are fixed.”
“Tell the truth!”
“Yeah, I’m tired of hearing about some
other game.”
Both Ren and Itsuki shouted to silence Motoyasu, who turned, frustrated, to face them both.
“Why do you all keep lying?”
“Why are YOU lying?”
“Both of you are lying!”
“Well I don’t know who’s lying and who’s not . . . .”
The conversation had gone so well until we reached the end. Then apparently everyone had a different version of the truth.
The three of them all looked incensed—I don’t think I’d ever seen them all in such blatant disagreement.
“Could it be that all of your weapons are powered up differently?”
“Let’s just agree to disagree.”
“It works as an explanation in the short run. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Fine—but so far none of your explanations have meshed with what I’ve seen going on.”
And then, apparently, the conversation was over.
If all of them were as angry as they seemed to be, then they probably weren’t lying.
Even if they were lying, their lies would only affect their own reputations.
“Fine. Well I guess it’s my turn.”
“Yes. We’ve all done our best to fill you in on what we know, so you better come clean yourself.”
“If you think I’m lying, I’m not going to take the blame.”
This whole thing was getting more confusing by the minute.
“What do you want to know first?”
To tell the truth, these three approached everything as if it were a game. At the very least, I needed to find some way to make them take this seriously—or all our lives would be in danger. So I had better tell them the truth.
“Tell us why Raphtalia and Filo are as powerful as they are.”
“That’s easy enough. I have a Slave-User Shield and a Monster-User Shield, both of which have great equip bonuses that let me affect how they level up. There are effects like ‘status adjustment’ and other things. And Filo has one other bonus from my Filolial Shield.”
Should I tell them about the floating cowlick during the class-up ceremony? I decided to wait and see how the rest of the meeting played out.
“The shield class in the game I know didn’t have any skills that were that useful.”
“I find that very difficult to believe. Such skills would break the game . . . . Where did you find a cheating shield?”
Cheating? Ha . . . whatever—there was no pleasing these guys.
“I got the Slave-User Shield from the ink that is used in the slave curse ceremony, and I got the Monster-User Shield from a piece of the egg that Filo hatched from.”
“Well if he tells us where he got the shields, we might as well try for ourselves.”
“You can try, but there’s no guarantee that the same thing will happen for you.”
“Sure, but you could be lying to us.”
“Think whatever you want. What if it's a leveling system that’s only available on the legendary shield?”
“Okay, let’s just pretend you’re telling the truth. It still doesn’t explain why Filo is as strong as she is. Her power is remarkable. She’d been strong enough from the beginning, but now she’s something else completely. How did that happen?”
“Oh—that. That happened when we were busy running away from you and Bitch. A nobleman that was under the employ of the Church of the Three Heroes removed the seal on a powerful monster.”
“I heard about that—but I heard that you were the one that released the beast.”
The queen leaned forward and interjected.
“Actually, I had an official investigation conducted concerning this matter. It seems the corrupt nobleman in the town refused to admit his defeat at Mr. Iwatani’s hands, and then released the monster out of desperation.”
I hadn’t had a chance to go back and check on the area after we’d left. There was a really nice nobleman in the neighboring town. I privately called him Nice Guy. He’d made the local demi-human community into a priority of sorts. I wonder what ended up happening to him?
“Excuse me, your majesty. What happened to the nobility in the neighboring town?”
“After all that transpired, we have decided to have him brought back to his town. It’s only been a short time, but he was very exhausted from the escape, and we have been seeing to his medical treatment in the meantime.”
“Oh . . . .”
We’d also met someone from Raphtalia’s village, and they’d escaped with Nice Guy. We could only hope that they’d all made it home safely.
“What sort of monster did the nobleman release?”
“We lured the beast away from any populated centers and attempted to fight it out in the wilderness. But just as the battle was starting, the queen of the filolials, Fitoria, appeared and defeated the monster. Then she used some sort of magic to transport us all to a safe place.”
“Transport?”
“That’s the only word I can think of. It was like I suddenly lost my footing. I don’t really understand it.”
“Don’t you have any transport skills? When I saw you running from Motoyasu before, I realized you didn’t know any, but I figured you must have procured one or two by now.”
Ren nodded along with Itsuki, and Motoyasu also nodded in agreement.
“There are skills like that?”
“Of course. Mine is a skill called Transport Bow. You can register places that you have already visited, and then instantly transport yourself and your party there at any time.”
“Mine is called Transport Sword. It works the same way.”
“Mine is Portal Spear. You really don’t know about this stuff?”
“No! This is the first I’ve heard of it!”
What were they talking about? I sure wish I’d known that being a hero had such convenient benefits!
“To unlock it you have to be at level 50 though—a little high.”
That would explain why I didn’t have it. I was still at level 43.
Wait a second, did that mean that these clowns were all over level 50?
“What materials do you need?”
“The sand from the dragon hourglass.”
“That’s right . . . .”
The three of them nodded. But . . . .
“How did you get them to let you have any sand?!”
“We just asked for it and they gave it to us.”
Dammit! I’d only run into those curmudgeon sisters when I was in the church—and they wouldn’t let me have anything at all.
“Well? So what happened after the transport?”
“She spent some time teaching Filo how to battle effectively, and then she did . . . something . . . and Filo’s stats shot way up. Then she sat me down and lectured me, saying that the heroes needed to work together. She said that if she didn’t, she’d kill us all.”
Ha! The three of them looked like they didn’t believe a word that I was saying.
“If you think I’m lying, maybe you’d like to have a battle with Filo for yourselves? We just went through the class-up ceremony too, so she’s even stronger now.”
Didn’t they realize that Filo’s stats were nearly double my own?
Motoyasu had a hard enough time holding his own against me in a battle—he wouldn’t stand a chance against Filo.
“No. That won’t be necessary.”
“Okay, I’ll ask the next question. During the battle with the high priest, Naofumi commanded a lot of power. It was unnatural. It came from that ominous-looking shield of his. I never saw anything like that in the game I played.”
Itsuki shot me a doubtful look and kept on talking.
“Where did you find a power like that? No, that’s not quite right, let me rephrase: Where did you meet God?”
“What?”
“Did you meet God somewhere and receive a cheating shield from him? There’s a web novel I read where the main character gets a special power like that and it enables him to pull ahead of the other characte
rs. Tell me the truth.”
Ha! I knew the story he was talking about, but nothing like that had happened here.
I’d been through a lot since showing up in this world, but few questions have irritated me the way that this one did.
“It’s not cheating!”
“Oh, yes it is. A shielder shouldn’t really be able to deal any damage at all!”
Ren and Motoyasu nodded.
“Where did you get it? If we were able to get our hands on a power like that then we would be unstoppable. You have to tell us.”
These morons just spat nonsense on top of nonsense. It was starting to really piss me off.
“Maybe I just worked really hard for it?”
“Yeah right.”
They were a bunch of brutes. They had already made up their minds about what a shielder could do.
But I had a feeling they were mistaken. I think that shielders were stronger than they thought.
I saw it this way: I worked on getting more and better equip bonuses, and as a result I eventually got my hands on the curse series—that’s how I ended up being stronger than any of them.
But they seemed to think that I had somehow figured out how to cheat so that I could be as powerful as they were.
“That shield is called the Shield of Rage. It’s part of the curse series that is contained in the legendary shield. I don’t know exactly what caused it to come out, but if I had to guess . . . I would say that it responded to my own anger. It first showed up when I was dueling with Motoyasu. I was very angry because I was tricked and cheated and everything was unfair.”
I remembered when it happened. I was so angry and the anger had nowhere to go. I thought it was going to swallow me completely.
If Raphtalia hadn’t been there to calm me down, who knows what would have happened?
“It’s all right there in the help menu. It says you’ll have to pay a price for using it. Could you three control it? By the way, I used it to defeat the high priest, but it attacked me too, and as a result my stats are still recovering.”
Ren squinted and waved his finger through the air. He must have been looking through the help menus.
Then, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, he said, “Nope. There’s nothing like that in here.”
