by Aneko Yusagi
No—that wasn’t it. I could still take the initiative.
“Filo! Throw Motoyasu over here!”
“What?!”
“Yup!”
Just as I’d asked, Filo threw Motoyasu in my direction before I’d even hit the ground.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
I could hear Motoyasu’s scream get louder as he flew closer to me.
“Motoyasu, attack me!”
“What?! Ah, okay!”
Motoyasu was an idiot, but at least he figured out what I was after.
I turned to face him, and Motoyasu thrust his spear at me. There was a metallic clash as the tip clattered against my shield.
Yes—that was perfect.
“Shooting Star Spear!”
Immediately after hitting me, Motoyasu turned and sent a skill flying for the high priest.
“Fool.”
Motoyasu’s skill broke in mid air. It failed to penetrate a mysterious force field that the high priest must have had around himself.
“What?!”
“My turn!”
Self curse burning activated, and a huge vortex appeared centered on myself. The cursed flames spread to enclose the high priest.
The force field around him vanished, and the flames…
“That won’t work!”
The high priest’s disciples were all singing…
“Our God is the source of all power. Hear the truth and head it. Miraculously purify the curse!”
“High-level ceremonial magic, Sanctuary!”
The area was suddenly filled with white light, and my self curse burning was blown away.
Was I stupid? Of course, I should have known that “holy” power would have a negative effect on my “curse” power.
Could it be that the holy water I’d bought to cure Raphtalia’s curse had just been a trick? Maybe.
But to heal her, I’d needed the best holy water there was. I thought the curse was powerful, and yet he’d destroyed it in an instant…
“Air Strike Shield! Second Shield!”
Before Motoyasu and I could hit the high priest, I conjured up some shields that we could use to move back.
“Hey, Motoyasu’s friends! Can we get some restorative magic?! If you treat us like enemies, we aren’t going to make it out of this!”
“Oh! Um… Zweite Heal!”
Motoyasu and my wounds healed. That was good and necessary.
Ugh… I had to fight with Motoyasu. I couldn’t think of a worse situation. But if we didn’t do something about the enemy in front of us, we wouldn’t survive.
“Master! I’m coming too!”
“Be careful!”
“Okay!”
Filo turned into her human form and ran for the high priest. So did I, and so did Raphtalia and Motoyasu too.
There was no reason to stand there and let him play with us.
Just because the self curse burning hadn’t worked didn’t mean that we should just stand there twiddling our thumbs.
Luckily enough, and maybe just because the powerful skill took a while to charge, the high priest was still pointing the spear at us. He wasn’t moving.
“Hai….kuikku!”
Filo shouted as she ran, and turned in to a blur. Then she was behind the high priest.
But everything stopped for a minute. Filo was cradling her fist.
“Ugh… It’s so HARD!”
Whatever sort of force field that replica weapon had produced had stopped her punch.
“Shooting Star Spear!”
A thousand lights flew at the high priest, but they didn’t seem to reach him.
“Use Fire Lance or something!”
“Hey, yeah! Myne!”
“I’ll punish you for defying the future queen!”
Bitch was furious as she cast her spell. Her friends were casting too.
“Mr. Motoyasu. This is support magic! Zweite Power!”
Hey, couldn’t they cast that kind of thing on Filo too? Couldn’t they try and be a little more helpful?
“Thanks! Come on!”
Motoyasu flashed a smile at his party and then obnoxiously winked. Then he used a skill, but it was slower than before.
“Fire-Storm Shooting Star Spear!”
It was basically the Shooting Star Spear imbued with wind and fire magic. It took a little longer to activate than his basic skill.
The flames flickered in the wind. The blade blazed like a shooting star. The winds came up, and the fires blazed all the more as the spear accelerated.
There was no snap, no flash. Motoyasu heaved the spear at the high priest.
Had it been me, I wouldn’t have even tried to block it. It was easy enough to dodge.
The attack wouldn’t work on anything but a completely immobile enemy. Unless, that is, it had some kind of effects I didn’t know about.
Besides, they’d just cast support magic on Motoyasu. Maybe that would do something?
And yet… with a disappointing clang, the spear clattered against the high priest’s defensive barrier, accomplishing nothing.
“Ugh…”
Motoyasu moved to put distance between the high priest and himself. Then he held his head in his hands as though he was suddenly dizzy.
“Mr. Motoyasu, are you all right?!”
“Yeah, but… I need SP. And the cool down time…”
Apparently he had to pay a price for using a high-level skill.
It took a while to pull the skill off, and it had been too slow to hit its mark. If it took so long, you’d think it was powerful, but it hadn’t been enough to make it through the barrier. How hard was that thing?
It had rendered my self curse burning useless, and neither Filo nor Motoyasu’s attacks had been able to penetrate it.
“Your Holiness!”
“We’re about to use defensive magic!”
“Our God is the source of all power. Hear the truth and head it. Protect the holy one!”
“High-level ceremonial magic, Castle Wall!”
Three of the disciples standing behind the high priest cast support magic on him, but there was no way for us to interfere before it was effective.
What the hell was a castle wall? A wall of light appeared around the high priest, and it looked a lot like a fort.
“Hiyaaaa!”
Raphtalia and Filo attacked the wall, but it simply repelled them.
“Filo! Raphtalia! I’ll help too!”
Melty used her preferred spell, Aqua Shot, but it was as ineffective as I expected. Nothing made it through the barrier.
I started to think that it might be better to focus on attacking the disciples in the back. But before I could give voice to my concerns…
“Well, I think that’s enough playing around. I’m ready to put an end to this.”
The spear in the high priest’s hands began to spark, perhaps indicating that it was ready to use a skill.
“All right, we have reached the end. Farewell, Demon and false Hero.”
The spear burst into light, and the high priest smiled at us. He looked like a satisfied exorcist.
“Mel!”
In a flash, Filo was protecting Melty. Raphtalia took my hand.
“Is this it…?”
Motoyasu muttered. It sounded like an admission of defeat.
“I…I’m going to be the queen! If you treat me this way then I—”
Bitch was screaming whatever came into her head.
The other girls in Motoyasu’s party had lost their composure entirely and were sobbing hysterically.
The only one of us that might be able to survive the attack was me…
Which meant that all I could do was run to the front and hold up my shield.
Obviously, I wouldn’t do it to protect the likes of these jerks.
But I’d do it to protect Raphtalia. To protect Melty—and Filo. I’d do it to protect the people that believed in me.
I readied my shield and stepped forward.
“
I’m with you.”
Raphtalia stepped forward at the same time as me. She held my hand.
She stayed with me this whole time.
Even if she hadn’t been aware of it, she’d been bought as a slave by the Shield Demon and forced into the world of battles and violence.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought you into all this.”
“Don’t be, Mr. Naofumi. I believe you can still protect us.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what the past Spear Hero was like, but this is still a skill from the Spear Hero.”
There was still more to do. This couldn’t be the end.
Finally all the conspiracies, and my chance to right them, were standing right before me.
Brionac… It was the name of a spear from Celtic mythology. And I was about to block it.
The high priest raised his spear to the sky…
“Hand Red Sword!”
“Shooting Star Bow!”
A shower of swords appeared directly above the high priest, and one huge arrow. They came streaming down from the sky.
“What’s this?!”
The high priest immediately stopped using the skill and used another one, which I think had been called Windmill Spear, to block the sudden shower of weapons.
I turned to find the source of the voices, and I saw…
“What’s this? I thought that the two of you had been purified by the judgment of God. What are you doing here?”
Ren, Itsuki, and their respective parties were standing there. I thought they were dead! But there they were anyway—alive.
“Don’t just go imagining us dead! Did you bother to check for bodies?”
“Just on the edge of a crisis, glad we made it.”
Ren and Itsuki were standing in their battle poses and calling out to us.
“I’m sure that you wouldn’t even think to check for bodies after using magic on the scale you did But these are the consequences of your oversight.”
I looked at the crater that remained from the high priest’s original attack.
Fair enough… If the attack was powerful enough to leave a crater of this size, you wouldn’t expect there to be anything remaining of its victims. Still—we’d all survived it.
I was looking over at Ren when I suddenly realized how heavy my body felt.
The Shield of Rage was screaming in my head as though it had finally found the enemy worthy of all its hated.
It was just like Fitoria had said. The shield had found the person it hated. Ren was filling the shield with rage.
I had to contain it… This was no time to lose control.
“How did you…”
Motoyasu was talking to them as if he’d seen a ghost.
I didn’t share the same suspicions, but it was a little odd that all of the heroes suddenly found themselves together way out in the middle of nowhere.
“Shadows… or something like that, came out of nowhere and saved us.”
“Yes, it was very close.”
“Huh? Shadows are the ones that told us where we could find Naofumi. I thought they were on the Church’s side?”
I had been wondering if Motoyasu had some way of figuring out where we were going. After he disappeared I wondered if he had only “vanished” to head us off. It was sounding like I was right.
What did it mean? It meant that shadows working for the Church had been slipping Motoyasu information about our whereabouts.
Which reminded me…
“You said that the shadows weren’t a monolithic organization, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. The shadows that helped us said that they were under orders from the queen.”
Okay then. So I guess that meant that there were still shadows looking out for us.
That meant that it was probably safe to assume that the queen and the Church were enemies. At the very least, now that all four of the heroes were enemies of the Church, there wasn’t much of a chance that she would be working with them.
Still… Why did they have to just show up like that? It was so over-dramatic. It reminded me of a weekly, serialized manga or something.
It made me wonder if they had been holding back and watching for the best time to show up and save the day.
If it were a manga, I guess that would make Motoyasu the protagonist, and I’d be… what? Some kind of mini-boss? Give me a break.
Nah, I’d be the kind of character that was chronically misunderstood but actually a good guy at heart. If all this were a manga, I mean.
Not to disappoint, but I couldn’t picture Motoyasu and I embracing in an emotional reconciliation.
“Backup is coming to help us arrest you, High Priest! Give it up!”
Ren pontificated, very authoritative. But the high priest didn’t seem very concerned.
“How many troops arrive is irrelevant. Victory is mine. That simple fact will not be changed. All your efforts are meaningless!”
The high priest slipped back into skill summoning.
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
The two heroes and their parties formed a line and began flinging skills at the high priest.
“Shooting Star Sword!”
“Shooting Star Bow!”
Arcs of light flew from Ren’s sword, lightning arrows from Itsuki’s bow. They flew straight for the high priest.
But they broke against the replica weapon’s force field. The high priest just smiled.
Ren and Itsuki didn’t give up though. They continued casting spells and summoning skills.
But the force field around the high priest expanded, and none of their attacks were able to make it through.
“I should have expected such disappointing efforts from false Heroes.”
“Wha…?”
“This is tough. I didn’t think he had a force field like that!”
“I thought you were going to take him out! You can’t?! Why did you bother coming?!”
Did they just want to make a good entrance?
“You showed up without a plan?”
“Don’t you think you could be a little more polite?”
Ren and Itsuki’s weapons burst into light. But it would take time for them to activate their skills.
“Thunder Sword!”
“Thunder Shoot!”
With a loud clap, the high priest’s force field shattered.
“We were just buying time to activate these skills.”
Whoa. They’d broken through the field that my self curse burning had been useless against. They might have been assholes, but they really were heroes. Nothing at all like Motoyasu. Did we stand a chance?
“I could have done that if only I’d had SP…”
“Oh, get over yourself!”
Or hey—if he had access to such powerful skills, why hadn’t he used them against me?
I guess the skills took a while to activate, and I hadn’t given him a window of opportunity. Although his Shooting Star Spear had been a little sluggish…
Whatever. If we were going to attack, the time had come!
“C’mon everyone. Let’s go!”
Ren shouted, and we all started to attack.
“I’m first!”
Filo had dashed to the front of the line. Judging on speed alone, she was by far the fastest one of us.
“Hiya!”
Motoyasu ran at the high priest and thrust his spear at him.
“Take that!”
Ren followed him, his sword cutting arcs left and right.
“Everyone, I’m right behind you!”
Itsuki drew back the string of his bow and shot an arrow.
“Mr. Naofumi. I’m going too.”
“I am too!”
Raphtalia and Melty both ran to attack.
The high priest held his weapon out and took the brunt of everyone’s attacks. They didn’t seem to faze him at all.
A barrage of attacks from heroes didn’t bother him at all?
“Fools. You
think you can defeat me when I have a Legendary Weapon like this? Ha!”
The high priest’s disciples immediately cast restorative magic on him, and the small wounds he had received vanished.
Things weren’t looking good. If we could manage to get a single hit in, the disciples healed it instantly.
“Now then… Let us move into the casting of Judgment.”
The disciples all nodded, and a moment later they all began chanting in unison.
“All those that would pretend to be Heroes are evil.”
This guy was really something. He was obviously a fanatic. Didn’t he notice that?
“This will take care of you all.”
The high priest was really planning to kill everyone.
He was charging up for something, probably for the Brionac attack…
“Naofumi.”
“What?”
Ren was speaking to me.
“Work with me. Let’s take him out.”
“You’re really the last person I want to work with. But, oh well…”
We weren’t going to be able to escape the high priest’s attack. And it looked like he was planning on using the Judgment spell at the same time. Not even I could survive both of them.
“First take out the people in the back. Until they’re taken care of, we don’t stand a chance.”
“Yeah.”
Ren and his party were already running for the group of disciples.
Unfortunately the disciples weren’t mere underlings. They seemed to be pretty damn powerful, actually.
More than any other time, all the heroes, Raphtalia, Filo—all of us were fighting together.
And the high priest was charging up for a major attack. And the disciples were preparing to use Judgment.
“Friends, this is a holy war! Fight for justice! Your deaths will not be forgotten.”
“Yes, Your Holiness!”
The fanatics behind him all responded in unison.
The high priest was taking the attacks of the sword, spear, bow, and all of their party members. He was bleeding, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.
He’d move until he lost his legs. Then he’d use his arms. Then when he lost them, he’d use magic.
His fanatical devotees also seemed ready to fight to the death.
They were positively insane!
“Damn… I can’t get an attack in.”
There were too many of them. It looked like a scene from the Battle of the Three Kingdoms, or from Dynasty Warriors.
