Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 2 - Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen: Diseased Village 

We ended up camping that night. 

We had left all the food just sitting in the carts, but Filo seemed to be having her way with it, so we’d just leave it like that for a while. 

During the time we had spent on the road, we heard rumors of another famine in the North. We decided to take a detour to the southwest to pick up more food. They would have trouble keeping it anyway, and we could probably sell it for a good price. 

“I’m hungry!” 

Filo stuck her head under the tarp we’d covered the carts with and started fishing around for food. 

“Oh, Yummmmmmmmies!” 

I’d heard that before. 

Filo had finished with her growth spurt but still ate a ton of food. The amount she went through every day was pretty unbelievable. She paid for it by pulling us all down the road at a brisk pace. It was almost too brisk, really. We had to stop and make repairs to the carts relatively frequently. 

“What happened?” 

I thought about changing out the wooden parts for metal ones. Filo was always complaining about how light things were. But thinking about the improved durability made me wonder just how much it would end up costing. 

Raphtalia had started to get over her motion sickness, but Filo ran over all the dips and jumps in the road so quickly that most of our passengers ended up puking. We should probably add springs or something to the axels, something to cushion all the shocks. 

We’d made quite a lot of money recently. I was looking forward to visiting the weapon shop. 

After spending some time wandering around the country, I could now say with certainty that that old guy had the best weapon shop in the whole kingdom. 

I didn’t know where the other heroes were getting their equipment, but in all of my travels I had yet to come across even one shop that was as good as his was. 

“Master!” Ugh… Filo ran over and leaned on me with her heavy wings. “Ehehehe.” “Ugh…” Raphtalia, for some reason, sidled up close to me. “He, he, he… We’re all so warm and cuddly.” “I’m hot, actually.” “Filo, you back away. If you back off then we’ll be super comfortable.” “No! Raphtalia should back away! You can’t just keep Master all to yourself.” “I’m not keeping him all to myself!” 

“Both of you go the hell to sleep!” 

“But…” 

“But we should sleep together! Masterrrrrr!” 

I went over our stocks of medicine and soon realized that we were not going to have enough. I quickly began working to make more. It bothered me that there was no way to know whether or not I’d made enough… but I guess that’s just part of the job. 

“Bu….” 

Filo sulked and dragged her feet as she went outside. 

At the same time, Raphtalia climbed into the carriage. I guess it beat sleeping on the hard ground. 

“All right.” 

It was my turn to watch the fire, so I sat down and starting working on my compounding. 

“Mr. Naofumi.” 

“Huh?” 

I turned to look at the carriage. Raphtalia was there in the back, motioning for me to come over. 

“What is it?” 

“Let’s sleep together.” 

“Not you too! You two sure are needy. Did you have a bad dream or something?” 

She used to have such bad dreams that she couldn’t sleep without someone there next to her. 

Granted, she had good reasons for having bad dreams. Considering how she’d lost her parents and all that. “I did not!” She protested. But no matter how much she might look like an adult, she was still a kid on the inside. She must have wanted a parental figure. “That’s not it? You should get Filo to turn into a girl, then you can sleep with her if you are lonely.” “It’s not that I’m lonely, exactly.” Raphtalia, suddenly embarrassed, turned her eyes to the floor. That reminds me, just when did she stop crying in the night? It felt like a very long time ago. “Mr. Naofumi… Back in your own world… Was there anyone you… liked?” “Huh? No.” What the hell was she talking about? I had no idea what she wanted. “What’s up with you?” “Nothing. I… Mr. Naofumi? What do you think of me?” Huh? Ugh… Suddenly an image of the Bitch flashed through my mind, and I was pissed off. It wasn’t Raphtalia’s fault though. Why did I have to think of that Bitch at a time like this? I didn’t understand it myself. “I feel like I work you too hard. That I push you too hard for a slave.” “Anything else?” “I want to raise you to become a great person. You know, I want to take over for your parents.” 

I answered, but my tone of voice made it clear that I was a little confused by all the questioning. Raphtalia was making a weird face too. 

“You said that you believed in me so… So I kind of think of you like my daughter. I want to take care of you.” 

We hadn’t been together for all that long when you thought of it as a period of time. But I had known her since she was very small. 

Like I’ve just mentioned, she looked like an adult now, but on the inside she was still a kid. She was trying really hard to act like an adult, but without someone there to protect her, there were definitely things that she wouldn’t be able to handle on her own. 

“Oh, um… Okay! But wait, isn’t that kind of weird?!” 

“It’s not weird. We have a long day tomorrow. Get some sleep.” 

“Okay.” 

She nodded and smiled, but I could tell she was still turning some doubt over in her mind. She slipped back into the carriage and tried to get some sleep. 

I, for one, turned back to my compounding work. 

Oh, that reminds me: As we’d been traveling around, we still were fighting monsters. We’d leveled up a bit lately. 

Naofumi: Level 37 

Raphtalia: Level 39 

Filo: Level 38 

Now even Filo was stronger than I was. Why did I level up so slowly? 

No, it was just because the two of them were both attackers. And Filo was so quick and agile she could take enemies out in the blink of an eye. That was why she was leveling up so quickly. Raphtalia, too, rushed into combat —even to the point of ignoring my orders. Even still, she wasn’t as fast as Filo. 

“Master!” 

“What is it, Filo?” 

I was still working on my compounding when a sleepy Filo reverted to her human form and came to lean against me. 

“Master! Aren’t you sleepy yet?” 

“I haven’t finished compounding all this medicine yet. I’ll sleep once I finish with this stuff.” 

“Oh…” 

“You get some rest. You’re working the most out of all of us, after all.” 

Even if she said that she liked pulling the carriage, that didn’t change the fact that it was still hard physical labor. She said it was easy, but I still needed to think about her health. 

“Aren’t you lonely, being awake all by yourself?” 

“It’s all in how you think about it. I can watch you two sleep, and then I’m not so lonely myself.” 

“Really? Ahahaha.” 

Filo looked happy, and she giggled to herself. She didn’t seem very exited though. Maybe I was just imagining it. 

“What is it?” 

“Master…. Well, if you aren’t lonely when you watch me sleep, then that’s good!” 

What the hell? 

“Um… Master? What were you thinking about when you chose me?” 

“What?” 

I hadn’t really been thinking of anything. I chose her at random. 

Even further: I’d picked the egg thinking that I didn’t care whether or not I got what I was looking for. 

“You know what? I feel really lucky that I got picked by you.” 

Well, when you think about it, I felt pretty lucky too. She was a strong attacker. She was fun to have around, and cute too, and I felt myself growing parental to her too. I couldn’t deny that. 

Both Filo and Raphtalia were still just kids, even if they were on their way to looking like adults. 

I knew that I really shouldn’t have them fighting for me. It didn’t matter what world we were in—regardless of the world, no one with a good heart would push little girls to the front lines of battle. 

Did it even matter if they wanted it to be this way? I was in the wrong, and I knew it. 

What I really should have done, had it been possible, was to make a safe place for Raphtalia where she could escape the horrors of battle. 

But the reality was that I wasn’t powerful enough to do that—and I didn’t have enough money. 

As for Filo—she was a normal girl now, and I didn’t really have any business getting her to fight either. If we were free to do whatever we wanted, I’d just set her free. Monsters should get to do whatever they wanted to. Like… pull carriages? I guess that wasn’t so different from what we were actually doing. 

Whatever… However you looked at it, I was the bad guy. 

“Hey, you know what I heard? I heard that I was cheap.” 

“Huh?” 

Filo just stated talking. 

The day I had left her at the slave trader’s tent, she’d reached out her hands for where I’d been and was crying and calling for me. The slave trader had whispered to himself: 

“It’s so strange… That egg I sold him was just some cheap thing… Why had it mutated so much?” 

“Qweh?!” 

The slave trader might not have known that Filo could understand human speech, so he had just blurted it out to an assistant of his. 

“Let’s double check this. This Filolial was from two flightless birds… and was supposed to be raised for her meat, correct?” 

The assistant nodded. 

“Well, the egg was worth 50 pieces of silver… same as an adult specimen…” 

“Gwehhhhhh!” 

Filo had flapped her wings in anger once she found out how little she was worth. She started balking. 

“Is this all from the Hero’s power? Or is it because of the monster’s meat she ate? She’s turning all white too… Yes… if we are careful here, we could make a lot of money.” 

“What should we do with this Filolial?” 

“We need to study her. Just think—a 50 pieces of silver specimen has advanced this much! What would happen if we supplied the Hero with a higher quality sample? We could make even more money. The worst we could do is fix our weaker specimens and sell them for a higher price… but think what we could do if we gave him a better Filolial… or even better yet… a dragon!” 

“Qwehhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!” 

“Oh no! The cage!” 

Filo had gotten so upset that she broke her cage. I guess she wanted to show off how powerful she was… especially considering the way they were talking about her. 

She wanted me to decide what she was worth. She’d do anything I asked. If I didn’t, she didn’t understand where she fit into the world. She wanted, more than anything, to emphasize that she was MY Filolial. 

“Master… Don’t abandon me. I want to stay with you…” 

Her eyes were filled with tears. I tried to calm her down. 

“If you behave yourself, I won’t abandon you.” 

I had just chosen her at random, but you could also say that because of my actions she was now faced with a different fate than she would have had. 

I wondered if she could have been bought by a normal customer and just lived her days out on a farm somewhere. Granted, if she was raised for her meat, it wouldn’t have been an ideal life, but maybe that’s just what life was like for Filolials. 

When you think about it that way, it was all my fault. It was my fault that she had to throw herself into battle like this. 

Was that… Happiness? Being chosen for some role without your input is a tough hand to be dealt. I knew that first-hand. Who had asked me to be the Shield Hero? 

“You promise? If I break my leg or something, you won’t sell me off and buy yourself a new girl?” 

“Yeah, I promise. And I don’t lie… normally. Yeah, you’re good.” 

“Yes! I’ll do my best.” 

“I hope so.” 

And then she leaned against my back and started snoring. 

C’mon… What was she so afraid of? 

I suppose the real root of the problem was me. Sticking with Raphtalia and me, she must have been growing used to being told how awful we are, and never getting a word of thanks. 

Maybe she was afraid that I would think she was worthless, like the rest of the country seemed to consider us? Maybe she’d been afraid of that from the beginning. 

But I was the one who was really afraid. What if Raphtalia and Filo just decided they didn’t want to fight anymore? 

I was contradicting myself. The only reason that I was able to fight was because Raphtalia and Filo were there with me. Maybe, originally, they didn’t have to fight at all. But when I chose them from the slave trader’s place, I changed their fates. 

That was why I needed to think about my responsibility to them. 

Once the world was at peace, I’d have to make a place for them, a place where they could live out their days happily. 

We arrived in the eastern territory. 

The trees were all wilted and cracking, and the air felt heavy. It wasn’t supposed to be particularly cold there, but the sky was black, and the whole land seemed bathed in darkness. 

I looked to the sky, which was covered in a thick layer of clouds. We were approaching a mountain range. It felt ominous. 

“Um…” 

We reached a fork in the road and stopped to check the map. 

“Filo, head toward the mountains.” 

“Okay!” 

“Both of you get some cloth to cover your mouths—just in case. There’s supposed to be a disease spreading around here.” 

“Okay.” 

I covered my own mouth with a strip of cloth as well, and readied my nerves for defense, in case we needed that. We made for the farming village. 

To simply describe the village: It was dark. The sky was covered in thick clouds, and the whole village was black and dark. 

“Are you a merchant? I hate to… tell you this but… our village is very sick. You should escape… cough… while you can.” 

A miserable looking villager told us about the situation in between coughs. 

“I know about all that. We’ve come to sell you medicine.” 

“Have you? Wonderful!” 

The villager took off running, telling everyone that a medicine man had arrived. 

Honestly, the place was looking pretty bad. I wasn’t sure if we would have enough medicine to take care of everyone. 

As if to further stimulate my insecurity, a wave of village voices swelled, calling for medicine. 

“The bird-god carriage! We’re saved!” 

Oh no… With all these expectations, what if my medicine didn’t work? They’d lose all trust in me. 

Oh well. 

“Who needs medicine?” 

I climbed down from the carriage, explaining that my medicine was most effective when administered by myself. 

“Over here, Beloved Saint.” 

Man, they were calling me a saint right from the get go… Something about it made me uncomfortable. Even still, it was better than being the despised Shield Hero. 

They led me to a long building filled with sick people. The building itself stood apart from the other buildings in the village. 

A cemetery stood behind the building, and there were a number of fresh graves there. 

If I said that it smelled like death, you would know what I meant, that horrible atmosphere that hangs around hospitals and graveyards. I was confident that it was all the same. 

I wasn’t sure if my medicine would solve the problem here. 

They were only intermediate recipes, so I shouldn’t be overconfident with them. If the medicine didn’t work, there was no back-up plan. Or no… It would be expensive, but I could administer more expensive medicines to them. 

I wished I could be more flexible with my products. I wish that I could make stronger medicines, even if it meant struggling through another book. It was better than running out of options. The next time I passed that apothecary, I’d have to ask if he would sell me a book of higher-level recipes. 

“Please, help my wife!” 

“Sure.” 

There was a woman there, coughing endlessly. I pulled her into a seating position and gave her some medicine. 

Poof… A glowing light appeared radiating out from her center. 

Color returned to her face. Excellent. It must have worked. 

“Next!” 

I raised my eyes to see the villager standing there, a look of astonishment on his face. 

“What is it?” 

“I… um…” 

The man pointed to a child lying down next to the woman. 

The child had been coughing, just like the woman, but now the coughing had suddenly stopped. 

Why? Did he die? 

I leaned closer to check to see if the child was breathing. He was. Good, he was still alive. 

But the child had been coughing so violently only a moment earlier. Now he appeared very calm. 

“What happened?” 

“When you, Beloved Saint, healed my wife, at the very same time, my child’s coughing stopped.” 

Hm… could that have been because of the medicine efficacy range expansions (small) ability? 

Expanding the range of a medicine… now that was an awesome ability. 

It seemed like the medicine would be effective on anybody within a radius of one meter. 

This shield had access to all sorts of tricky specs hidden away, didn’t it? 

But I bet that the ability wouldn’t help very much in a battle because how often were we within a meter of one another in battle? The enemy would have to be pretty weak. 

“Well that makes things easy! Anyone that needs healing, crowd around! This medicine will work on anyone within this circle here. We can cure everyone at once. Hurry up!” 

“Yes sir!” 

There weren’t enough people there to help, so Raphtalia and Filo helped carry the sick to the center of the room, where I administered medicine to someone in the center. 

It helped us save medicine, and it was easy and fast. With that one bottle, we’d managed to heal the entire building’s worth of patients. 

After some time had gone by, we realized that while everyone’s symptoms had improved, no one had completely recovered from the disease. I wasn’t sure what to do about that. 

“I suppose that’s about all I can do with the medicine I’ve got.” 

“Thank you so much!” 

It was nice to have some gratitude, but I honestly wasn’t totally satisfied with my results. 

There was still a risk of infection, and we hadn’t managed to eradicate the disease. 

“Can you tell me where this disease came from? Is it endemic? Or is it contagious, and you caught it from a traveler?” 

If the medicines I had weren’t able to cure it, then it must have been a pretty severe disease. Who knows when we would catch it ourselves? In the worst case, we’d have to turn tail and get the hell out of there. 

“Well, a doctor told us that the disease blew down on the wind from those mountains over there. Those mountains are full of monsters though.” 

“Tell me more.” 

“You can ask him yourself.” 

In my world, a doctor would have understood science and how to use it to cure people. Here, a doctor used magic to the same effect. 

He had been working in the village for a while, trying to compound a medicine that would be effective on this new disease. Just as we’d arrived, he was holed up in that building with the patients, and he helped us out. 

“Hey, can you make better medicine than an apothecary?” 

“Yes, I’m making some right now. And yet, after seeing what you, Saint, were able to do with your own medicines, and the dramatic improvement among the villagers, I don’t think my own project is necessary anymore.” 

“I’d get back to that as soon as you can. We haven’t managed to completely cure the disease, which means it will probably come back.” 

“Yes sir!” 

“Wait.” 

The doctor had run back to his tools and was about to enthusiastically throw himself back into his work when I called for him to wait. 

“You said that this disease came down on the wind from the mountains. Why do you think so?” 

“Yes, well… about a month ago the Sword Hero was in these lands, and he slew a powerful dragon that had his territory in those mountains.” 

Oh yeah… I think I had heard something about that. 

“Dragons typically make their nests far from human villages but this was a strange dragon.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” 

“Well, at the time, a great number of adventurers gathered here to watch the Sword Hero work. They climbed the mountain afterwards, and everyone took pieces of the dragon with them.” 

I guess you could make really good weapons and equipment from dragon materials… 

I was a little jealous, actually. 

“And?” 

“This is where it gets good. Everything was fine until the adventurers stripped the dragon down to its bones. It actually brought quite a lot of money to this poor village. The problem started when the dragon’s remains started to rot. Some adventurers went to see the body, and they came back sick.” 

“So the dragon’s body is the source of all this sickness?” 

“I believe so.” 

If they had gone up there to strip off what would be good for equipment then I can imagine what was left. The meat. No matter how awesome a dragon was, a dead dragon’s meat would rot just like anything else. 

There might have been connoisseurs out there that would have a little interest in the meat, but the majority of it would be left to rot. I’d read in stories that dragon meat was so delicious, that nothing would go to waste. But by the standards of this world, who knew? Maybe it was poisonous or something? 

Then there would be the organs. Livers rot very quickly. 

Ren would have been after more useful materials, so I am sure they left the organs there. 

What about the heart? I felt like the heart was sure to have some sort of magical purpose. 

“If you know what the problem is, why don’t you take care of it?” 

“The mountains are crawling with powerful monsters. You’d have to be a pretty experienced adventurer to go in there and hope to come out. None of these famers are able to undertake such a task.” 

“Then why not get an adventurer to help you?” 

“By the time we noticed, the whole ecology of the mountain range was thrown off balance. The air turned to poison, and the sickness is so strong— normal adventurers would never make it out. Not that they come anyway. Everyone is afraid of the disease, and no one comes by anymore.” 

Dammit, Ren… I sure wished he would clean up his own mess. 

Ren was the youngest of us heroes. Had I been a high schooler, I probably wouldn’t have given any thought to the lingering effects of dead dragon either. These effects wouldn’t happen in the games he was used to, so I suppose it was to be expected. 

“What should we do, Beloved Saint?” 

“Did you send a report to the Crown?” 

“Yes, we are waiting on a medicine delivery.” 

“What about the… heroes?” 

“They are very busy, so we are probably not a high priority for them.” 

Whether it be Motoyasu or Itsuki or Ren… it didn’t matter. They all pissed me off. 

“Have you already sent money to the Crown for their support?” 

“Yes…” 

“If you cancel, will the money be returned?” 

The doctor caught my eye and looked at me straight and deep. 

“Are you going to take care of it, Beloved Saint?” 

“Well, if it is going to be a while before the medicine arrives, I might as well. If I succeed, I’ll accept your payment.” 

“All right… Well, it should take another half-day, at least.” 

“Okay great. I’m going to go take care of the dragon remains. I will take the money that you previously sent to the crown.” 

“Yes sir.” 

And so we left for the mountains to see what we could do about the dragon remains.