Chapter Seven: The Demon Dragon’s Treasure
“Wow! This is the treasure trove? It’s an underground cavern, but it looks really nice!” Kizuna exclaimed. I had to agree. It was a massive underground limestone cave. Sunlight seemed to be filtering in from somewhere. The light was captured on exposed gemstones lining the walls and illuminating the entire interior. In the middle of the cave there was another structure made pretty tastelessly out of gold.
“That’s—” Kizuna said.
“Yes. It’s the dragon hourglass for this castle,” the Demon Dragon confirmed. There in the garden of the building stood the dragon hourglass. Vines wrapped around it. It looked a bit like the one from Q’ten Lo.
“Now, I shall combine my strength with that of the Four Heavenly Kings and break the seal,” the dragon said. The Demon Dragon started to incant some magic.
“Boo! Stop making me do things I don’t want to!” Filo protested, upset at the proceedings. It was like she was being forced to take part. Having confirmed that the barrier surrounding the building had vanished, we gingerly approached the structure. I took a look at the plants covering the dragon hourglass. They looked like camellia. They had a bit of an unsettling color about them—evil-looking, you might have called it.
“They look pretty evil,” Raphtalia said. “Like the bad twin brother of sakura lumina.”
“Yeah. I guess these are this world’s version of sakura lumina . . . If they are camellia, then maybe we should call them camellia lumina. But there’s something about them . . .” I mused, trailing off.
“This place is filled with magic, after all. Some strange mutations can surely be expected,” the Demon Dragon said. She almost sounded proud of it, which was definitely odd.
“Think we might find something like the sakura stone of destiny?” I asked.
“I’ll have to take a look around to be sure . . . Those stones are created over a long period of time by the sakura lumina, or so I’m told,” Raphtalia told me.
“I thought they just came out of the ground,” I said. Mutated camellia lumina probably weren’t going to give us much luck then—no sakura stone of destiny in this world.
“Glass, please come over here. We won’t be able to get the exact same effect, but let’s try the Heavenly Ritual,” Raphtalia said.
“It can work even with these plants around the dragon hourglass?” Glass asked. Raphtalia led her over to stand in front of the dragon hourglass. It did seem like Glass was in the position of being the Heavenly Emperor for this destroyed nation. Sadeena and Shildina also knew the ritual from Q’ten Lo, and they were able to put on a pretty convincing performance.
However, neither the dragon hourglass nor the camellia lumina seemed to be responding as desired. I might have seen a little movement, nothing more.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“The response is a little weak,” Raphtalia confirmed. “It did seem to be aware of us though.” She tilted her head while touching the camellia lumina. It seemed there was some cross-compatibility with heavenly powers.
“Hmmm . . . there’s something interesting about this tree.” The Demon Dragon had taken an interest in what Raphtalia was doing and muttered to herself as she analyzed the situation. “That reminds me, Shield Hero. Your minion with the fan vassal weapon can combine with one of your other minions now, correct? Why not give that a try?”
“Yeah, good idea. Shildina, try combining your strength with Glass,” I said. Shildina nodded, coming forward from where she had been lurking in the back and reached out for Glass. Glass took Shildina’s hand, the oracle powers kicked in, and the two of them combined. The camellia lumina immediately started to glow more brightly. Flower petals gathered around Glass and Shildina, forming a magic circle. It looked a lot like Raphtalia’s Sakura Sphere of Influence.
“Power is flowing into me,” Glass said with a gasp.
“I feel it too. It feels like my residual memories have been refreshed,” Shildina said. The two of them stood ready and then spoke in unison. “Camellia Sphere of Influence, deploy!” At the call of their voices, the magic circle became fixed in the air.
“The details of the ceremony may not be exactly compatible . . .” Raphtalia said. They proceeded to recreate the ceremony as close as they could to the one performed in Q’ten Lo, and the camellia lumina continued to glow . . . before finally going out. It didn’t seem to have worked.
“I think—in Q’ten Lo terms, that is—that would have appointed her as Heavenly Emperor,” Raphtalia said. Shildina shut off her oracle powers and Glass checked herself over.
“I don’t have access to the same power I just felt,” she reported.
“So it’s only when you are combined with Shildina,” I mused.
“It seems that way,” Glass said. It was something else that was probably too hard to practically use, then.
“That said, having camellia lumina around is great. Plant them carefully in your territory and they should boost your experience,” I told her.
“They have that effect too?!” Kizuna exclaimed.
“Yeah, that’s how they work back home,” I replied. It made quite a difference, having them around. Our breeding plans had worked well and you could see them all across Melromarc now.
“Why do you think the camellia lumina didn’t respond when it was just Glass, then?” I pondered.
“Think about how she differs from Raphtalia, maybe,” Kizuna suggested.
“Okay, well we worked out that Raphtalia was the daughter of some royals who fled from a nation called Q’ten Lo,” I said.
“Glass is from the line of a country that was wiped out long ago,” Kizuna added.
“Maybe that means she’s too distant a relation. But the oracle power brought up some residual ancestor stuff and made it work,” the Demon Dragon said. That made us all fall silent for a moment. It sounded possible—and like there were just too many differences between the pair of them. Glass raised her hand and Raphtalia twitched. This was starting to get uncomfortable. It was like we had considered them to be the same for so long, but actually that wasn’t the case.
“Ah . . . I’m not bothered by this, don’t worry,” Glass said.
“Well, okay,” Raphtalia replied.
“You’ve registered now anyway, so even if your bloodline isn’t that strong, maybe you can compensate in other ways. With some training, you might be able to use it alone, like Raphtalia can,” I suggested.
“Indeed. I’m not giving up now. It seems there are still some secrets to find in this world,” Glass said.
“Anyway!” Kizuna said, cutting through the awkward moment. “If we have the materials for these pacifier weapons, we’re going to have an easier time of it going forward, right? So let’s have a look around for them,” she suggested.
“Good idea. Take a branch of camellia lumina and we’ll see if we can transplant it later,” Glass suggested. We finished the survey of the dragon hourglass and moved on to fishing for some of the Demon Dragon’s treasure. What we found were a whole bunch of rare gems and all sorts of magic-related tools.
“Hey! This looks promising! Take a look!” The Demon Dragon lifted up what looked like a gun from among all the junk and showed it to me. “You make ofuda bullets and then fire them with this. A pretty interesting idea, don’t you think?”
“It looks kind of useful,” I said noncommittally.
“You agree, right? But you need to imbue it with magic in order to fire it. If you can’t imbue it with magic, you may as well just throw the ofuda at the enemy,” the Demon Dragon admitted. Okay, so it was just trash.
“The guns from our world have wider applications than that,” Itsuki said—and he was the Bow Hero. “The bullets can be made to contain fire, and the weapons have good range too.”
“If you want range, you’d be better off just attaching the ofuda to an arrow. If you apply enough energy to make this shoot long range, the whole thing will just explode,” the Demon Dragon revealed.
“So it’s just a toy shaped like a gun,” I said. I understood the feeling of wanting to make something like that, though, rather than just using magic. I was an otaku myself, prior to becoming a hero.
“I guess so. Just an odd, toy-like weapon,” the Demon Dragon said. The search continued, and more and more junk of a similar nature was revealed. A lot of it would probably reach a good price if sold, but in terms of gear, there wasn’t much to beat what we were already using. We didn’t need old works of art.
“Booze!”
“Drink time!” The killer whale sisters found a stash of something alcoholic and looked ready to call it a day.
“No slacking off!” I shouted.
“I have collected the best beverages from across the world. Shield Hero, will you join me?” the Demon Dragon asked.
“I’ll drink you all under the table,” I threatened. I knew where my strengths lay.
“Very well. Let us see which of us can better hold our drink!” the Demon Dragon replied.
“Mr. Naofumi! Don’t give in to her games! She’ll pretend to be drunk and then attack!” Raphtalia shouted.
“Raph!” added Raph-chan.
“Boo!” said Filo.
“I’m sure she has something like that planned . . . but this stuff does look like it would be good for cooking-enhancement experiments. Let’s take some of it back,” I decided. We might find some potent brew that allowed for full magic recovery with a single mouthful—we couldn’t afford to miss out on that.
“Booze it up! Little Naofumi! This stuff is delicious!” Sadeena howled.
“Oh my! It was worth coming all this way after all!” Shildina added. The killer whale sisters wouldn’t be any good to us now. Shildina looked ready to get off-her-face drunk.
“Look, Shield Hero! A statue of me!” the Demon Dragon proclaimed, ignoring the killer whale sisters and continuing to boast about her stash. It was a Demon Dragon made of gold though. Pure trash. It had been polished to an intensely annoying gleam too.
“Melt it down and turn it into coins!” I shouted.
“Huh, I guess you don’t like that one. Maybe I will have a Shield Hero statue made instead, then. That’s all I need, and then . . . Oh yes, delightful,” the Demon Dragon mused.
“Make anything of the sort and I’ll kill you. Just what are you planning to do with a statue of me?!” I asked.
The search continued. Then we happened across what looked like stone tablets set into the old walls of the horrible-looking building. There were a number of them there. It was something the Demon Dragon liked to collect, perhaps.
Then I realized I had seen tablets like this before somewhere.
“These are hero text tablets, aren’t they?” I asked. They looked really similar to the ones in Q’ten Lo. Tracing the carvings on them, I could tell they were faintly responding to the light. “It would be super convenient if they had holy weapon power-up methods written on them or something,” I said. We had been planning to explore the rest of the Demon Dragon’s nation for stone tablets later, so finding them here would be a stroke of luck. Then I took a closer look. “There’s lots of text on them . . . and I can’t even read it.” That was strange. In our world these tablets appeared to be written in Japanese, and I could read them easily. Different worlds meant different systems—I should have learned that by now.
“Oh, those old things. There was this religion that had a problem with me, and my forces ‘collected’ those from the head temple. They are like a prophecy, if I recall. It’s about the heroes who will be summoned here to face the waves at the end of times,” the Demon Dragon said.
“What?! In our world I heard they were being kept by the Church of the Four Heroes!” Rishia exclaimed. I wasn’t sure where she came into this.
“We have these too?” I asked. If that huge church had information like this, they should have hurried up and brought it to me. It always seemed to be the case that by the time such information arrived, I didn’t really need it anymore.
“We do. The Church of the Four Heroes in Faubrey has a secret room, or so I have heard, that only the heroes and the bishop may enter,” Rishia continued. I shook my head, wondering why I was only hearing this now, in a place like this.
“I’ll have to put checking that out onto my list of things to do,” I said.
“That’s the thing . . . When Takt rebelled, the church denounced him for breaking with tradition. In order to put the pious ones back in their place, Takt’s forces destroyed all the tablets,” Rishia relayed. My eyebrow twitched in anger. So I couldn’t read them after all. I almost wished Takt was still around so I could kill him again.
Those guys, the Vanguards, loved to trash tradition. They had surely targeted the tablets on purpose, seeking to destroy anything that might give us an advantage.
“Kizuna,” I said.
“Okay . . .” Kizuna stepped up in front of the stone tablets and placed her hand on one of them. It looked pretty worn down . . . Then text from the stone tablet illuminated and floated upward, with a mark that looked like a fishing rod.
“Let’s see what it says . . . single hero for whom this message will glow. One who knows the joy of hunting. One who continues to struggle even against such harsh restrictions. You cannot consider the one who lurks beyond the waves to be a person. Open your awareness to the meaning of hunting. Aim for the moon . . . and you will be able to hunt even a god.” Kizuna paused. “That’s what it says.”
“I don’t know what half of it means, but it definitely seems to be on the money,” I said. Our enemy, the one causing the waves, was known as the “one who assumes the name of god.”
“The meaning of hunting? Do you think I’ve been doing something wrong?” Kizuna asked.
“No idea. It says aim for the moon! Are we meant to go into space?” I replied. That would be quite something—from fantasy to sci-fi. Kizuna made a noise like she was thinking. Was it wrong to want the tips we received to be a little easier to understand?
“The moon . . . You know what, in the memories of a past Dragon Emperor, I seem to recall an ancient vessel designed to travel to the moon,” the Demon Dragon said, suddenly getting involved in the discussion again. The lines of “fantasy” were definitely starting to blur.
“Can’t you fly to the moon?” I asked. I’d seen summoned dragons breathing fire in the void of space in certain RPGs I’d played.
“Even I can’t reach the moon. Library rabbit, isn’t it said that your ancestors originated on the moon?” the Demon Dragon asked Ethnobalt. Right, rabbits in Japanese culture—living on the moon, making mochi, all that jazz. Indeed, I might have thought the ship vassal weapon he originally had could have taken us to the moon.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything of the sort. Maybe those records have been lost in our long history,” Ethnobalt said. It sounded like he had no idea.
“Hmmm . . . very well. We’ll just have to keep on searching,” the Demon Dragon concluded.
“Indeed. It sounds like a lead, so we just need to keep chasing it,” I affirmed. That seemed like the only tablet that was responding . . . As I looked around, I saw another one of them glowing softly. The tablets showed four weapons, and it was the ones with the hunting tool and what looked like an ofuda on them that were illuminated.
“Based on the one you read, Kizuna, it looks like only the Ofuda Hero can read this one,” I guessed. “Does this mean someone holding the ofuda holy weapon is close by?” Everyone was immediately on alert. The only ones with any chance of launching a raid on this party were S’yne’s sister and her forces. I looked around, tense for a moment longer, but there was no sign of anything happening.
In fact, it was completely quiet.
“I can categorically state that it would be impossible for anyone to reach this point undetected while I am in the castle,” the Demon Dragon said.
“I know some folks who just might pull it off,” I replied.
“Hmmm . . . yet none seem to be appearing. We should investigate that stone tablet,” the Demon Dragon said.
“I guess so. Kizuna, give it a try,” I told her.
“Sure thing, but . . . hold on. This looks different from the one I read,” Kizuna realized.
“What?” I took a look myself. The text on the one with the hunting tool and ofuda definitely wasn’t Japanese. Ethnobalt moved over and ran his paw over the stone.
“It is an ancient language, but one from this world. However . . . the changes in design make it hard to read. Rishia, can you make anything out?” Ethnobalt asked.
“Actually, I can,” Rishia replied. Our head researcher, coming through again! Having someone around who knew about this stuff was super convenient. “I think I can read it, even. Has the design of the letters really changed that much?” she asked.
“Maybe it is selective about who gets to read it,” Ethnobalt mused.
“I can’t read it either,” the Demon Dragon confirmed.
“Maybe it’s set up so that monsters can’t read it,” I said. “Rishia, go ahead.”
“Yes, of course.” Rishia started to read the floating letters. “This tablet appears to be a list of the candidates who can be summoned as heroes. That’s what the part I can read says,” Rishia reported.
“The candidates who can be summoned due to the waves, huh?” That reminded me, the holy weapon spirits had talked about this topic. I wondered if that meant the heroes who could be called had been determined far in the distant past or if there was some kind of prophet who was giving out this information. “When I was inside the shield, I heard about this. There’s a list of candidates to be summoned. Why don’t we find out what number you were, Kizuna?” I said tauntingly.
“Why me? No thanks,” she replied.
It would certainly suck if you found out you were low down on the list. I had apparently been the shield spirit’s first pick . . . and my name wouldn’t be here anyway.
“About that . . .” Rishia pointed at the tablet so I could see what she meant—the part about the hunting tool had been completely scraped off. It didn’t look like something that had occurred when the tablet was stolen. More like wear with age.
“Bah!” I said with some gusto.
“Naofumi, please don’t be so mean to me,” Kizuna said.
“That’s right. What is your problem with Kizuna?” Glass said, both of them frowning intently.
“Mr. Naofumi, please don’t take things too far . . .” Now Raphtalia was on my case too. Even Raph-chan climbed up on my head and beat at me with her paws. Okay, I’d definitely gone too far. I was aware myself that I’d been complaining a bit too much recently.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’ll read what I can from the ofuda section . . . The text here is like writing from Siltvelt,” she said. She started to follow the text with her eyes and read it aloud.
“. . . born from . . . and given life to replace one with duties to perform; who can recreate any technique. You who have run from that role, swimming beyond the worlds in pursuit of freedom. The ofuda holy weapon will surely come to you. That’s what it says,” Rishia finished. The text for the first part has been erased, and it was quite long. Rishia had read out the part that could be read, but . . .
“Is that stuff all true? About the Ofuda Hero?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The Ofuda Hero I met was a student who looked like he loved games,” Kizuna replied. Everyone had their own stuff to deal with, in the end—stuff they didn’t always want to share with other people.
“Hey, Shildina,” I said.
“Oh dear!” she replied. I was having her check all the junk for any residual memories.
“Can you extract any residual information from this stone tablet?” I asked. “If there is a strong lingering intent, you can hear things, right?”
“Hmmm, there’s nothing left, so I can’t read anything. I can tell the magic behind this is incredible though,” Shildina said. Having the text floating like that was quite something.
“There must be some other reason for this response. Maybe it was just a mistake,” I said.
“You think so?” Kizuna replied.
“We can’t worry about it too much right now. At best it’s just talking about a hero who can be summoned,” I said. If they were needed, they would be summoned when the time came. We couldn’t sit around hoping for aid from someone who wasn’t here. I needed better information than this unreliable poetry. Something about the holy weapon power-up methods would have been nice, but it was no good if Kizuna couldn’t read it. “Back to the treasure hunt!” I shouted. Everyone shouted their agreement, and we searched the Demon Dragon’s treasure trove from top to bottom. When all was said and done, we found some stuff that might prove useful as weapons, some strange-looking tools, magic items, and other materials. Filo had gotten a big power-up too, so the trip had definitely been worthwhile. We’d also managed to form an alliance with the Demon Dragon’s minions under her orders. Everything was coming together in preparation for the final battle. We were also able to have the Four Heavenly Kings perform something in this world called a “job change.” It was a post-limit-break class-up, making us even stronger.
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