Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 18 - Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Fishing Fool’s Determination 

After escaping from the Ancient Labyrinth Library, we returned immediately to Kizuna. As we did so, Ethnobalt read more from the materials that we found. 
“It seems the content of that vial can remove any illegitimate power placed on the holy weapons or vassal weapons,” he informed us. 
“Well? Would you say the curse of sloth is illegitimate?” I asked. Rather than having been in the weapon all along, wrath had been more of a problem found inside my own heart. If the overflowing hatred that had boiled out of me and then been absorbed by the shield could be expressed as being “illegitimate,” then the content of the vial could probably have removed it. On the other hand, if it was unable to remove the curse of sloth, that would mean curses like wrath and sloth were some form of function that had originally existed within the legendary weapons. 
“I’m aware that it is hard to draw a firm line here. We will just have to give it a try,” Ethnobalt said. 
“Indeed,” I responded. As it was so effective, we could probably also use it to cure curses. We were talking about a small vial so dense it couldn’t be appraised properly, suggesting we probably wouldn’t be able to replicate it. I’d learned quite a lot about potions and medicine myself, but I had no idea what that small vial contained. It could be some kind of drug or some kind of toxin. It looked like blood but also like some kind of condensate. In any case, it was definitely strange stuff. The sheer density of it made Shildina feel like throwing up. I had to wonder if it could possibly have any effect on Kizuna—but it was right there in the texts we had recovered, so we had to give it a try. 
We returned to where Itsuki and Filo were holding back the corruption of the curse. 
“Welcome back, Naofumi. It looks like you found what you were looking for,” Itsuki said. 
“Master! Welcome back!” Filo enthused. 
“Thanks. We’re all back safely. We found some other stuff too, but we need to treat Kizuna first,” I said. I still wasn’t sure about forcing something upon a patient that we weren’t even sure would work, but we had to give it a try. 
“Here you go, Glass.” Ethnobalt passed the vial to her. “Simply apply it to Kizuna’s hunting tool and it should take effect. Please go ahead.” 
“Very well,” said Glass. 
“I’ll play some music to increase your resistance to curses,” Itsuki said. 
“And I’ll sing too!” said Filo. The two of them both started making music. They complemented each other pretty well. Itsuki was drawing out the power of the musical instrument vassal weapon, making it sound like he was playing multiple instruments at once, and Filo also sounded like she was projecting multiple voices at once—I had no idea how she was doing that. 
“I guess Itsuki is using magic to create that effect, but how is Filo producing multiple voices like that?” I asked. 
“The higher varieties of humming fairy have multiple vocal cords. So they can produce more than one voice at a time,” Glass explained. That sounded absolutely terrifying. 
“If she can produce all of those sounds, surely she can use magic without me having to make her fly,” Shildina complained. 
“Tell me, little Shildina, do you only use your voice for incanting magic?” Sadeena asked. Shildina thought for a moment and then thoughtfully shook her head. 
“No. I divide my soul and have each half perform the incantations. I use that to trigger the first magic and then incant some more,” she explained. It all sounded a bit complicated to me. Even if she really dumbed it down, I was pretty sure I’d never be able to copy it. 
“That’s the sum of it, anyway. Even if Filo can do it in this world, it isn’t something a filolial could do,” I said. She did seem to be able to use the performance magic that she had learned here even when she was back home, but it had a very different quality to it. She could only pull off the easy stuff. 
As we were chatting, the support magic was cast on Glass and she gained extra resistance to curses. It looked like Chris was also adding his own strength, providing a bit more protection for Glass. 
“Kizuna, I’m coming to save you now,” Glass said with determination in her voice. She proceeded to allow a few drops from the vial to fall onto the cursed weapon of the lounging Kizuna. The contents of the vial that fell onto the cursed weapon was immediately absorbed into it as a material. Immediately afterward, the accessory attached to Kizuna’s weapon cracked with a loud splitting sound and then scattered into dust. 
“Wow,” I said. It seemed to have worked. 
“Kizuna! Hurry up and change that cursed weapon!” Glass exclaimed to the still lethargic Kizuna. 
“What? What a pain . . .” Kizuna said. She sounded completely disinterested and then fell asleep right where she was lying. She was elevating sloth to an art form. Maybe I wasn’t one to speak, but if this was the effect of the sloth weapon, then it was terrifying indeed. 
“Even allowing her to change weapons hasn’t restored her will to act . . . This is serious. Maybe the curse wasn’t illegitimate after all,” I said. The accessory had been, but the cursed weapon itself was not. That was what it looked like. 
“I thought destroying the accessory would bring her back . . .” Raphtalia muttered. The others all nodded their agreement. 
“Kizuna! You can’t stay like this forever! Come on! Stand up!” Glass started to berate Kizuna, unable to take this situation any longer. 
“You can’t keep coming to me with every little problem . . .” Kizuna mumbled, descending into snores again. That seemed to freeze Glass in her tracks, but I wasn’t sure why. Does she really rely on Kizuna that much? From my point of view, Kizuna seemed like she was just having some fun doing whatever she liked. 
“If you were put under this curse, Mr. Naofumi, and said the same thing to me . . . I might not be able to reply to it either,” Raphtalia admitted. 
“I think you’d handle yourself pretty well in this kind of situation,” I replied. If I ever did end up like this, corrupted by a curse and out of control, I had faith that Raphtalia would stop me—and that she could do it by force, if she had to. She was pretty muscular, actually. 
I might have to take it easier on her going forward. 
“Ren once said it, didn’t he, Naofumi? You were working as hard as a slave for everyone in the village,” Itsuki mentioned. 
“Itsuki, no need to bring that up now,” I told him. I was no slave! That was one of the nastiest things Ren had ever said to me, something he would need to work to repay for the rest of his life. 
“Kizuna! If you think I rely on you too much, at least prove yourself worthy of being relied on first! Like Naofumi!” Glass seemed to have decided that the only way to defeat Kizuna’s shaky logic was to drag my name into it. I had to wonder why it always seemed to come back to me. 
“Oh my,” said Sadeena with a chuckle. 
“Oh dear,” added Shildina. I didn’t need mockery from the killer whale sisters at that juncture either! 
“That certainly seemed like the hardest thing for Mr. Naofumi to hear—” Raphtalia started. 
“Raphtalia, can we please just stop talking about it? Otherwise, I’m going to spend all of tomorrow stroking Raph-chan,” I threatened. 
“Raph?” Raph-chan asked. It did the trick, though, because Raphtalia nodded and fell silent. Seriously . . . after all, I could be lazy sometimes too. 
“I have doubts myself.” Now it was S’yne’s familiar who was voicing an opinion about me working too hard. I took breaks—I did—whenever I needed them. In fact, I got annoyed about having to do stuff far more often than not. 
Meanwhile, there was no sign of the slumbering Kizuna changing her cursed weapon. In fact, her fishing rod looked even more dark and troubled than it had when I first saw it. 
“It looks like she’s becoming even lazier . . . like her sloth is intensifying,” I said, unsure about the correct terminology in such an instance. It looked like the longer she did nothing, the more intense the condition became. I was starting to feel that, among all of the seven deadly sins, sloth might well be the one that could cause the biggest annoyance to other people once it became a weapon. It was powering up simply by Kizuna doing nothing and spreading its curse all around itself. 
“I guess the silver lining here is that she doesn’t even have the energy to use a curse skill . . . but if they start to be activated automatically, it’s going to be hard to get her back,” I pondered. Kizuna’s level had already been reduced, so if this curse made her take even longer to recover, we really would be at our wit’s end. 
“Kizuna! Just change your weapon, please! Otherwise, I really will get mad!” Glass threatened. 
“What a pain . . . Ah, napping is such fun . . . Working is for losers! NEET life forever!” Kizuna drawled. 
“Why does working mean you lose? Lose what, exactly? What are you fighting?!” Glass asked. 
“Different worlds, same crap,” I muttered. It seemed Kizuna’s own Japan was also overrun with the scourge of the NEET. 
“Naofumi, do you know what Kizuna is fighting?” Glass asked me. 
“The ones who say that kind of thing back where I’m from mean that they are fighting against society,” I told her. 
“What is this ‘neat’? Someone who is very tidy?” she asked. 
“Originally it was used to indicate young people ‘not in education, employment, or training,’ but the way Kizuna used it, it just means ‘lazy bum,’” I explained, shaking my head at having to do this, here in another world. It didn’t help that after graduation I’d been likely to turn into one myself. 
“‘Sloth life forever.’ That’s what she said,” Glass confirmed. 
“She really has slipped into total lethargy. I’m starting to get scared that I might trigger the same curse myself,” I replied. This whole “teleported to another world” gig was surely something young people who didn’t want to work would dream about. After it had actually happened to me, I found myself with an annoying volume of things to do. Nowadays there were also people exhausted from work who envied the NEET lifestyle. 
“You can seem a bit annoyed about having to . . . well, do things, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia said. 
“I’ll do my best not to end up like her,” I promised. “Like cooking, stuff like that.” 
“You can slack off on the cooking if you like,” Glass said, once again coming at me with the cooking stuff. What should I do instead, then? 
“Ah . . . I can’t even be bothered to breathe . . . Can someone breathe for me please?” Kizuna asked. This might be a terminal case. The cursed accessory had been removed and yet she was still lazing around. It didn’t look good for saving her from this. 
“Ethnobalt, you got any ideas?” I asked. The book we found had information on breaking curses, after all. 
“Well . . . it says that a diligent mental attitude is required in order to break the curse of sloth,” he reported. 
“Diligent, huh?” I replied. In order to break the curse of wrath, I had needed the mercy of Atla, but that didn’t sound like what was going on here. I was also well aware that I had no mercy to give anyway. Getting back on track, the issue was that Kizuna didn’t show a single shred of diligence at the moment. 
“Have you heard of the seven great virtues, intended as the opposites of the seven deadly sins?” Itsuki asked. “There is some debate about their content.” 
“I’ve heard of the concept, yeah. But I don’t recall them being all that clearly defined,” I replied. The seven deadly sins had started out as the eight evil thoughts. There was little evidence that the seven virtues would be able to directly oppose the sins—they weren’t even exact opposites. It would just depend on how the weapon perceived what was happening. “That said, we don’t have many options on the table. Ethnobalt, is there no other way to cure sloth?” 
“It also says that hope and bravery have the power to scatter sloth,” he said. 

“Oh boy . . . that’s a lump of putrid sugar if ever I heard of one,” I muttered. 
“I don’t think you should be dismissing the idea out of hand, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia chided me. I knew where she was coming from, but it just sounded so corny. 
“So Kizuna’s own diligence, combined with hope and bravery . . . it sounds like she just needs some motivation, basically,” I surmised. 
“I’m not sure that’s exactly what it adds up to . . .” Raphtalia responded. 
“Sloth—the desire to do nothing—is opposed by motivation, right?” I replied. 
“You might be right . . . but that still doesn’t tell us what to do,” Raphtalia bemoaned. Glass, meanwhile, looked like she was checking something in her status. 
“Naofumi,” she finally reported, “it seems there’s some candy—rainbow candy, it’s called—that can be used to boost motivation.” 
“You want me to make some? Do we have the ingredients?” I asked. 
“Hmmm, it looks like it uses some pretty rare stuff,” Glass replied. Even if we had the recipe, that still meant another bug hunt for all the ingredients. Even as we did that, Kizuna was clearly going to continue to get worse. Quite aside from anything else, the cursed weapon she was holding was a fishing rod. She was the Hunting Hero and had quite a range of weapons at her disposal, but this one was a fishing rod. 
Then it hit me. 
“Glass, considering how long you’ve known Kizuna for, aren’t you going about this in a bit of a roundabout fashion?” I asked. 
“What should I be doing?” she replied. 
“I’ve got an idea. Let’s give it a try. Rather than stand around thinking, we need to start getting Kizuna motivated,” I said. Then I turned and looked over at the killer whale sisters. 
“Oh my!” 
“Oh dear!” 

“Is this really going to work?” Glass asked. 
“That all depends on Kizuna,” I replied. I had carried her on my back from the castle to the port in the adjacent town. Then we had boarded a ship owned by L’Arc and headed out into the offing. “If it doesn’t, we’ll just think of something else,” I said. Kizuna, for her part, was still completely out of it. I had Itsuki, Filo, and Raph-chan boost my curse protection and then took Kizuna by the hand. Then I forced her to swing her arm, sending the fishing hook on the end of her rod out into the ocean, where it splashed down heavily into the water, looking more like an attack than just casting her rod. After a short while, the line dipped low into the water and the reel started to spin at high speed. 
“Good! You’ve got this! Killer whale sisters!” I shouted. This was the entirety of my plan: bring Kizuna out to the ocean and motivate her by getting her to do some of the fishing she so loved. However, I figured some regular old weak fish weren’t going to motivate her to do anything. However, I thought, what about a powerful fish . . . well, I mean a sea creature that pulled the line directly toward the seafloor? That was when I had turned to the killer whale sisters, Sadeena and Shildina, for their aid. They were by far the best swimmers we had access to. Itsuki had already cast support magic on them, and they had raised their levels considerably since coming to this world. They could easily play the role of monster fish, pulling harder than any lazy denizen of these waters. 
I was staking the entire operation on Kizuna’s passion for fishing. 
With a whirring sound, Kizuna’s slackline was pulled tight as it continued to play out from the reel. I touched the reel and stopped the line for a moment, and the rod pulled so hard our entire ship leaned to the side. 
“Kizuna. Do you really love fishing? It doesn’t look like it to me,” I taunted her, even as she made another listless noise. 
“Mr. Naofumi, the ship is going to tip over! Are you sure about this?!” Raphtalia asked. 
“Tell me you’re sure! This isn’t Ethnobalt’s ship!” Glass added. 
“Fehhh?!” Rishia contributed. 
“Don’t worry, Rishia. Even if we do sink, I’ll play a song to make us float,” Itsuki said reassuringly. I wonder where he picked that up from. He was becoming quite the jack-of-all-magic. 
“Raph!” exclaimed Raph-chan. 
“Shall we sing a sinking song? Mel-chan told me about monsters called sirens that sing songs and sink ships,” Filo said. I seemed to recall this topic coming up back at the Cal Mira islands. I needed to warn Filo to pick her spots to start singing, otherwise she might get mistaken for a siren or nereid herself. 
“If you want to fish—” S’yne said. 
“Lady S’yne is recommending the use of a fishing net,” her familiar reported. “She says that using a fishing rod is extremely inefficient.” I shook my head. Now was hardly the time for comments like that! However, that very comment also made Kizuna visibly twitch. It might actually be working! 
Dragged by the killer whale sisters, the ship started to move along. Kizuna still showed no sign of taking real action. Seriously, it was feeling like the curse was going to jump to me in a moment. Even though my weapon had changed to the mirror, the Shield of Compassion should still be providing some curse protection . . . but I guess I had no choice. 
“This is the extent of your fishing spirit? I’m disgusted,” I said, increasing the intensity of my taunting. Kizuna twitched a little, as though she was convulsing. But I might just have been imagining it. The fishing rod in her hands bent and quivered unnaturally. It was starting to look like all of this was just serving to power up her sloth. A weapon that got stronger just by doing nothing really was a pain in the ass. 
The shape of the fishing rod itself wasn’t really changing much, however. So why was it shaking so hard? The strange aura Kizuna was continuing to give off . . . suddenly started to scatter, starting from around her chest. Then Kizuna’s eyes opened wide and she stamped down on the deck. 
The next thing from her mouth was an impassioned roar. 
She shook off my support, placed one foot up on the lip of the ship’s railing, gave a determined grunt, and started to reel like crazy. 
“I never felt a pull like this before in my life! This feeling . . . this power! I can’t let this one get away!” Kizuna shouted. 
“Kizuna! You’ve got your motivation back!” Glass exclaimed, her expression instantly brightening. 
“I can’t believe this worked,” Raphtalia said, shaking her head. 
“Fehhhhh!” Rishia yelled, while Itsuki started playing some up-tempo music to set the mood. It felt like everything was finally working out! 
“Raise the fishing flag!” Filo started to sing, mixing some bizarre lyrics with rhythmic noises. “We’re the true fishing masters!” I hoped it wasn’t one of the sinking songs she had been talking about. As I tilted my head in puzzlement, Filo was able to explain it even as she continued to sing. 
“I heard some people singing this in a tavern in Q’ten Lo. I’ll also sing something from the village in a moment,” she explained. Fishing had been pretty big business in Q’ten Lo. It made sense that there would be some fishermen in the taverns there. Sadeena and Shildina liked fishing too. Lurolona village, which I had restored, was also originally a fishing village, so I guessed they would have some fishing songs. 
Itsuki and Filo provided more background music as Kizuna desperately continued her fishing battle. Sadeena and Shildina didn’t seem ready to lie down and just get fished out of the sea, however. They started to move left and right at incredible speed. Kizuna’s rod bent even further. The light of magic started to glow from under the waves. Glass had told us that Kizuna would sometimes hook a fish-type monster, causing it to counterattack with magic to avoid capture. It looked like Sadeena and Shildina had decided to also recreate that situation. The magic was from an ofuda. 
“This rod is so hard to use!” Kizuna complained, groaning and growling. “The reel is so stiff! And my body feels so heavy! Give up? Never! There are fish to be caught beneath those waves!” Her frustration with the situation was reaching its peak . . . and as though she was resisting the very sloth that was infesting her, the smoking rod started to change shape. 
“Kizuna!” Glass exclaimed, her expression lighting like a candle as Kizuna finally changed her weapon completely from the sloth rod. Kizuna roared louder than I thought her little body was capable of. 

 

“I’m catching this fish!” With energy flowing from her entire body, she unleashed a skill. The therianthrope forms of Sadeena and Shildina were pulled from the waves and flew up into the air. 
“Oh my!” 
“Oh dear!” I heard them exclaim. Then they landed on the deck. They had recovered in the air and landed on their feet. There was no doubting their physical abilities. 
“What a surreal scene,” Raphtalia said, narrowing her eyes and shaking her head. 
“Raph,” Raph-chan agreed. 
“This is pretty much what I’d expect from Kizuna,” Ethnobalt said, smiling wryly. 
“Great! That was close! I just managed to catch it . . .” Kizuna struck a victory pose and then actually saw the killer whale sisters. “Them? I caught them? And who are they?” Then she looked around at everyone else on the boat. “Huh? Naofumi, what are you doing here?” It looked like she had finally grasped the situation, at least to some degree. 
“Nice to see you again . . . I guess I should say. I did talk to you after we turned you back from stone,” I told her. 
“I remember now . . . that guy who took L’Arc’s scythe tricked me and I was captured . . . Then they put some strange accessory on my hunting tool . . .” she murmured. It seemed her memory was still a bit fractured. 
“First things first, let’s take a rubbing of these fish! Glass! I’ve landed two big ones today!” Kizuna enthused. Her fishing spirit, which even sloth had been unable to quell, quickly alleviated the tension among everyone on deck. Glass almost immediately changed from happy to joining Raphtalia in disapproval. 
“Is everyone who comes from this ‘Japan’ a bit strange in the head?” Glass wondered. 
“Mr. Naofumi definitely is,” Raphtalia said. How rude! There was no way I was on the same level as this fishing fool! 
“Oh my. She wants to take a rubbing of us,” Sadeena said. 
“Very well. I’ve got size to match you, Sadeena,” Shildina responded. 
“Oh my! You really think you can defeat me, little Shildina?” Sadeena mocked. 
“Stop thrusting your breasts out,” I told them. “What exactly are you expecting to get rubbed?” 
“Hmmm . . . this feels odd. Like I’ve been tricked into something,” Kizuna said. The killer whale sisters’ joking around meant Kizuna gave up on taking her rubbing too. Chris, who had been supporting the sisters, popped out from the water with a squeak and struck a pose on the side of the ship, celebrating the successful mission. 
“I also remember someone suggesting we use a fishing net! I’m never going to allow that!” Kizuna seethed. 
“I bet you wouldn’t allow our harpoon fishing either, would you?” Sadeena said. 
“Of course not! Fishing is about rod and fish, that’s it! A one-on-one battle!” Kizuna stated. 
“Sure, sure, whatever.” I didn’t care about any of that. All that mattered was that Kizuna had escaped from the clutches of the rod of sloth and was back to normal.