by Aneko Yusagi
“Haikuikku!”
She had used that back when she was fighting the inter-dimensional Soul Eater. It was a powerful technique that made her move faster.
For a second, just a second, Filo was nothing but a blur.
When she hit the enemy the attack was so strong it sent the air vibrating, and I felt the shock through my shield.
“Ugh… That person is so hard! She took my attack and didn’t go flying!”
“Yes, you were able to kick me eight times in that second. Unfortunately you simply aren’t powerful enough.”
What? Did she mean that she was able to follow Filo’s attacks?
Glass turned quickly, like a pirouette, and opened her fan, slicing at Filo. She was our enemy, but I couldn’t help but admire her graceful movement. She took the brunt of Filo’s attacks without even batting an eye.
“Filo! One more time!”
“I can’t! I don’t have any more magic, and I need time before I can attack again!”
So that was her secret, her ultimate attack? I guess she hadn’t been able to use it in quick succession during the last fight either.
It wasn’t looking good. We were running out of options.
While Filo kept Glass occupied, Raphtalia had maneuvered behind her and sprung a surprise attack. She appeared out of nowhere, so she must have used magic to hide herself.
“Now! Filo!”
She’d waited for the perfect moment—for Glass to expose a weakness. Glass would surely take heavy damage if she were attacked from the rear.
And yet...
“What are you doing?”
No! Raphtalia had snuck behind Glass and aimed an attack straight at her back, but Glass had stopped it without even turning.
“There’s no point.”
Glass looked a little disappointed. She sighed and then flicked her fan, parrying Raphtalia’s sword. She seemed to move as lightly as a breeze, but the clang of her fan against the sword spoke to the strength she concealed.
Clang!
“Wha…”
Raphtalia’s sword… broke?!
How strong was this girl? Sure, Iron Fans had long been known to be capable of breaking a sword—but to think that she could do it so easily? I’d cast First Guard on myself and switched to my hardest shield, but even at that I could barely stop her attacks.
Now only Filo had a chance of defeating her. But she wasn’t strong enough.
“Ugh…”
Raphtalia jumped back to put some distance between herself and the enemy. Then she pulled out another small sword she’d had stashed away. Did she stand a chance?
“Is this really your true ability? To be honest, I’d expected more of a fight from you.”
“That’s what you get for assuming. We’ve been giving this our all the whole time!”
“What a shame.”
Glass’s whole body started to emit a light.
No! That was the attack that had defeated the other heroes!
“Raphtalia, Filo!”
Glass began to spin, as if she were dancing. There was only a second—we could barely move in time! Raphtalia and Filo leapt behind me.
“Shield Prison!”
I set myself as the target, and we are immediately enveloped in a magical cage of shields.
This was the other way to use Shield Prison. It wasn’t only for stopping the enemy. I could use it to protect us too.
The wall of shields would protect us while we were inside.
Among all my skills, the Shield Prison had the highest defense rating.
“Dancing Circle Zero! Reverse Snow Moon Flower!”
There was a powerful wind, and a barrage of clattering Iron Fans destroyed the Shield Prison.
“Ugh…”
The attack was incredibly strong. If it destroyed the Prison and injured us, then it only seemed natural that it had decimated the other heroes.
“Are you two all right?”
“Yes…”
“It hurts!”
I turned to find both of them suffering from the attack. I quickly applied healing ointment to my own wounds. They were within the effective range of the skill, so the ointment worked on them too, healing their wounds.
“Impressive. That you might stand after my attack speaks to your defensive capabilities.”
The tornado vanished, and the enemy walked in our direction.
“So glad we’ve won your approval.”
We were tattered and tired, but we hadn’t lost yet.
“What’s next? Aren’t you going to use that shield of flame from before?”
Did she think I was holding back?
Or, not quite… It’s like she was waiting for me to use the Shield of Rage II.
What should I do? Keep fighting a losing battle? Send Filo running away and use the Shield of Rage II, knowing that it would consume me?
If we were going to lose anyway, should I accept the regret of using it?
“Fine. But you don’t know what you’re getting into!”
I switched to the Shield of Rage II.
“Gaaaaahhhhh!”
Filo ran at Glass again and unleashed a fury of kicks.
“You’re attacks are stronger than they were, but unfortunately…”
Glass didn’t even change her footing.
All of Filo’s kicks were connecting, but Glass was completely unfazed.
“What’s the point?”
She used her fan to lightly brush Filo away.
“Gah!”
She’d barley touched her, but Filo flew five meters through the air.
“Ugh…”
How strong was this girl? If this were a game, I’d have expected the inevitable "losing event" to have started by now.
“Ugh….
But I was still standing.
I’d be okay. No matter how powerful the hatred that might overtake me, it would never be able to stand up to the feeling I had for those who believed in me.
But if I let it go on for too long, it would be dangerous.
Cold sweat dripped down my face, but I stepped forward anyway, signaling for Raphtalia to get away.
“Mr. Naofumi… Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I can control it.”
I kept walking until I was close to Glass. There was still some Soul Healing Water in the bottle I’d taken from the Bitch. I drank it and recovered my SP.
I felt like I could concentrate suddenly. I felt fresh. I felt like I could keep the shield from consuming me entirely.
“Please show me what you’ve got.”
“I sure as hell will!”
Her fan flicked open and slashed at me.
Yes, this attack was much stronger than the Chimera Viper Shield. I readied the shield.
Self curse burning activated, centered on me.
The flames burned with intensity proportionate to my anger. But I had managed to control my anger, so that was probably limiting the power of the counter attack.
But the flame was still cursed. Raphtalia backed away at the sight of the flames.
A moment later the Shield of Rage II exploded in black flame, spiraling toward the sky. Glass was knocked back.
“What?!”
But she wasn’t concerned. She stood there, placid, like the winds were massaging her.
Could it be? The self curse burning was the strongest counter attack I’d seen. Could she really let it batter her without worrying at all?
How tough was this girl?!
“Why are you still playing around?”
Dammit! She was too strong! Not even the Shield of Rage II could stand against her!
“Is that all you’ve got? Circle Dance Rupture, Tortoise Shell Crack!”
She pulled her Iron Fan back and then thrust it powerfully in my direction. It emitted something like an arrow of sharp light.
Dammit! I raised my shield and felt it reverberate with the heavy, dull shock. My whole body ached.
I’d taken damage, straight through
the shield.
“Ugh…”
“So you can absorb an attack with that much power? Impressive.”
It was hard to stay focused through the pain. But I couldn’t lose myself. Not now.
“That was some attack.”
It might have been a piercing attack. They showed up in games now and then.
They had a chance of ignoring the defense rating of the target. Some attacks would even deal more damage to targets with higher defense ratings.
Is that what the other heroes had meant when they said that shielders became less useful with time?
Experience points, in online game, tended to get harder and harder to accrue as you leveled up. I don’t know what kind of game the other heroes were familiar with, but as for the games I’d played, I could think of some examples of how it could be true.
The first is the simplest. The enemy’s attack power would eventually outrank the defensive capabilities of the shield.
The next was based on dodging because as you leveled up there were more and more enemies that could kill quickly with one hit.
The last was firepower type games, as the defense abilities of the shielders were not nearly as useful as the ability to quickly overpower the enemy with your attack power.
I’d given a fair amount of thought to everyone’s dismissal of the shield class, but none of those options seemed to be the case in this world. I couldn’t figure it out, but I had no choice but to keep moving forward.
I cast First Heal on myself to heal my wounds.
“I have discovered the weakness in your attacks.”
Glass spoke with extravagant confidence.
“The black flames appear in response to attacks in your immediate vicinity. If you are attacked from a distance it will not activate. Then you shout to your subordinates to indicate the target.”
Damn. She’d figured it all out. She was a real bushi. And her powers of observation were sharp.
Two waves back it was a black beast; then it was a chimera. This time it was an intelligent. It was a person.
Just what were these waves? Weren’t they just natural disasters?
“So that is all I must do to win. I defeat your party, and then attack you from a distance. It would be very easy. But honestly, such strategies aren’t even necessary in a fight like this.”
“Ugh…”
“Come at me with your strongest attack.”
It was like she was playing with me. She didn’t even look like she was preparing to avoid my attack.
I knew why. It’s because she was playing with me.
If she stood up to my strongest attack and took the full force of it without buckling, that was her way of humiliating me.
But I wasn’t going to lose that easily. I couldn’t!
“Shut up already! Shield Prison! Change Shield (attack)!”
Glass was immediately trapped in the Shield Prison, and the shields quickly turned into shields that would attack her.
And then…
“Iron Maiden!”
I used my newest skill—an instant kill.
A massive iron chamber, shaped like a woman, appeared in the sky and pulled the Shield Prison inside. The door slammed, and the shields themselves were pierced through.
“How’s that?!”
But…
“You’re more powerful than I expected.”
The door swung open, and Glass was alive and well inside.
The Iron Maiden hadn’t damaged her much, and it dissolved into small particles and vanished.
It vanished, leaving Glass standing there without a scratch.
Like nothing had happened at all.
“But…”
There were no other options.
“Very well then, we will consider this wave ended—and we have emerged victorious. I bare you no hatred. However…”
Before she finished her speech, the hourglass countdown icon in the corner of my visions quickly changed.
00:59
A new set of numbers appeared.
“The time? But it’s much sooner than…”
Now! Raphtalia aligned her breathing with me and quickly chanted a magic spell.
“First Light!”
A ball of light appeared right before Glass—then it exploded in a great flash of light.
Glass was stunned by the flash, and stood there motionless for a moment.
I immediately changed to the Chimera Viper Shield and ran over to Filo. She had jumped to her feet, ready to go crazy, but quickly recovered her senses.
“Get us out of here!”
“Wait!”
“Don’t doubt her speed. We’ll get away just fine.”
“You would subvert the rules of the waves? I can’t have you making time for yourselves like that!”
“I’m tired! What’s going on?!”
I guess she couldn’t seriously hope to fight.
If the Iron Maiden didn’t work then I was out of options.
“Very well then. It’s disappointing, but we seem to be out of time.”
Glass walked off toward a giant rift. Before she entered it she paused, then turned.
What? What did she want to say?
“I will withdraw for now, but you will not be so lucky next time. Do not allow yourself to forget that it is WE who will emerge from the waves victorious. If that was your true strength, it is only a matter of time.”
What did she mean, “we?” She was making it sound like some kind of competition.
I didn’t understand. I thought that the waves were natural and were going to destroy the world.
Thinking further though, I realized that nobody seemed to know anything at all about the waves. We had to figure out what they were. At the very least, we’d realized that the enemy was intelligent, and a force to be reckoned with.
The Trash and his Bitch were really holding me back. We just figured out who our real enemy was, who the heroes needed to be fighting.
Geez… enemies, everywhere I looked, more enemies!
“Naofumi. I will remember your name. Lick your wounds and await my return.”
“Don’t bother learning my name. We aren’t planning on losing to you.”
She nodded, satisfied. Then she killed a Soul Eater that had been hiding near the rift before stepping inside and vanishing.
Did she just kill her ally? Glass was a human, so was she not on the Soul Eater’s side?
At Glass’s retreat the rifts closed, and at the same time the hourglass countdown vanished from my vision.
“Whew…”
“We made it out of that alive, but who was that woman?”
“Who knows?”
“Wheeeeew!”
Filo was out of energy, and she lay sprawled on the ground. For a second I wanted to join her.
“Well, we managed to close the wave.”
“We did.”
“I’m tired!”
“Me too. Let’s leave the heroes where they are and pick up the pieces.”
Honestly, it had been a terrible loss. How could we have known the enemy was so strong? If we couldn’t win despite knowing all the secrets of the game, what hope did we have?
And what was that countdown that appeared at the end?
Regardless, we needed to get stronger before the next wave arrived.
It was clear as day. If we didn’t class-up, we’d never survive the next wave.
But still, the others must have classed up—and they were still defeated. We needed something else, some kind of decisive advantage.
And so the third wave of destruction came to an end, and we made it out alive.
Chapter Thirteen: Parting Ways
We went back to the ghost ship where we’d fought the inter-dimensional Soul Eater. Perhaps because the enemy had been defeated, the ship was lying on its side on the ground. The heroes and their parties were there too, unconscious.
The volunteer soldiers and villagers were standing around them, apparently they’d
been protecting them. They shouldn’t have had to do that.
Finally, it was time for the best part of this whole disaster: Adding the materials to my shield’s repertoire. Unfortunately, the Goblin Assault Shadows and Lizard-Man Shadows were just that, shadows. Therefore there were no materials left for me to absorb. Well, there was a little clump of shadowy material, but I was only able to unlock one new shield with it.
Shadow Shield: ability locked: equip bonus: shadow resistance (small)
There were some other things, but they just unlocked status boosts, so I’ll just ignore them for now.
All that was left was the inter-dimensional Soul Eater.
“Oooh. Yummy!”
“Don’t eat it.”
Filo had grabbed it and was about to put it in her mouth when I stopped her. It was clear enough what had caused her to go crazy and violent. Any way you looked at it, it must have been because she’d eaten the dragon core.
“Come on!”
I reached out and took the material from Filo, but for some reason it instantly ran through my fingers and fell to the ground.
“How did you hold onto it?”
“I cast wind magic on my hands.”
“Really?”
So you couldn’t hold the fish in your bare hands? That was weird.
“Is everything okay?”
The volunteer soldiers saw the confused face I was making and came over to help.
“Oh, yeah. I was just asking Filo how she was able to hold onto the monster here.”
“These monsters don’t have physical bodies. To get a grip on them you need to use something that has magical properties.”
“What?”
“It’s pretty well known. Did you not know about it, Shield Hero?”
“No.”
“Oh, well, monsters without physical bodies are a pretty rare thing, so you’ve probably just never run into one.”
“Then do any of you have a weapon with magical properties I could use? I’d like to butcher this thing.”
The soldier went around the group asking if anyone had a weapon like that, and he found one person whose weapon had some cheap magical materials in it. They let me borrow it, and I butchered the fish.
Filo told me how she’d gotten the magic into her hands, and I copied her. I picked up the tail and let the shield absorb it.
