Chapter Four: The Filolial Ruins
The next day, we arrived at the filolial sanctuary, guided by Fitoria. It seemed different from the place we had come to before.
“I have to say though . . .” I said, looking around.
“What?” Fitoria asked.
“Haven’t you ever heard of tidying up?!”
Fitoria had come to the village and then teleported everyone who wanted to come. I hadn’t said anything yet, but Fitoria’s carriage was super suspicious. The thing could teleport around, after all! In Kizuna’s world there were eight vassal weapons, but in our world there were only seven. Fitoria had lived for a long time too. These facts had me considering a certain possibility . . .
“Fitoria. There’s all sorts of things I want to ask you about your carriage, but could it be a vassal weapon?” I asked. “The eighth seven star weapon, as it were?” She stayed quiet as I asked and didn’t provide any answers. There had to be some reason for that too—like something that was better kept secret, or maybe it was at the request of a past hero.
Investigating the filolial sanctuary came first. When Fitoria and her filolials turned up at our village earlier, they had brought for us various pieces of gear that the heroes in the past had owned—other than the holy or seven star weapons. But there had been some real junk mixed in among them. So we had decided that the heroes and others from the village should come to Fitoria’s sanctuary and sort through the stuff to find those items we could actually use. Trash had not joined us; he was busy working things out with other nations. L’Arc was, of course, training in accessory making in Zeltoble, and Therese was with him there. Gaelion and Wyndia were absent too.
It looked like we had arrived in some kind of ruins. There was a forest around us and what looked like the remains of an abandoned village. There was also some sort of shrine in the ruins nearby. This reminded me of something Melty had said once about the filolial legends of a place called the Lost Woods. As the name suggested, anyone who went inside got lost. I was beginning to think we were in the Lost Woods right now. This was a different place from the whole Church of the Three Heroes incident. I would have to bring Melty to see this next time.
Motoyasu immediately gave a shout. “This sanctuary shall become my new paradise!” he exclaimed.
“Why did you bring the Spear Hero?!” Fitoria squawked.
“I thought you might like to see him,” I said innocently. I had registered a portal, returned to the village, asked Motoyasu if he wanted to join us, and then came back. In the moment Fitoria saw Motoyasu, she backed away from him at incredible speed. Motoyasu was not deterred, still leaping toward Fitoria, who promptly kicked him away.
“You won’t stop me!” Motoyasu had taken almost no damage, immediately springing back to his feet and starting to chase Fitoria around. This was her punishment. I had been pissed off too many times to count by Fitoria’s attitude in the past.
We left Motoyasu to his own devices and started to investigate the inside of the ruins. The reason I had made that cutting jibe about tidying up was because the narrow interior of the ruins was packed with what looked like little more than trash. All the sparkly things were likely because we were dealing with birds. I remembered Filo collecting her “treasures” in the past.
“Wow! It’s so sparkly! I love sparkly!” Filo shouted. She was pretty much the same right now. This was Fitoria’s nest. The sparkly things scattered around ran the gamut from rare-looking treasures to cheap-looking crystal.
“Let’s tidy up,” I said. What a collection she had amassed though! These were large ruins—or a temple, maybe—but the collection was rough and ready. The setting might have given the impression of dungeon treasures, but that wasn’t what we were looking at here. It was more like a random collection of trash. There were loads of bird feathers mixed in as well, and it was all pretty dirty.
“Shall we just burn all the feathers away?” I suggested.
“What if there’s something here that we don’t want to burn up?” Raphtalia warned me. She was right, of course. Better not to start burning stuff. All of Fitoria’s long years of collecting had turned her nest into a veritable trash pile, anyway. It made me sad to think rare items might be slumbering amid this muck. We were planning to recover anything promising and get it analyzed, which meant we had to sort through all this crap by putting it into the heroes’ weapons, of course.
“Split up and start the cleaning operation!” I ordered, and so the spring cleaning of Fitoria’s stink pile started. I found myself wondering which was preferable, rabbits that lived in a mysterious dungeon with a load of strange rules or birds that didn’t have any dangerous dungeon-like elements to deal with but also couldn’t keep their nest tidy.
“What’s this? It’s all sparkly and beautiful! Some kind of crystal?” Filo said.
“That’s trash! A literal ball of trash!” I told her.
“This is rare ore, I say! Naofumi, what shall we do?” Motoyasu asked, pulling his weight for once.
“Keep a hold of it. I’ll requisition it later,” I told him.
“Why is there a sword here? It doesn’t look rusty either. Ren, what do you make of this?” Rishia asked. She was here too, helping to clean up with Itsuki.
“Huh?” Ren looked over. “That’s a sword I don’t have yet. Let me have a look . . . Ascalon, is it? What’s this? Effective against dragons?” The name of that sword sounded familiar to me, for some reason, but for now we needed to keep working. I was just glad we didn’t bring Gaelion along.
“Why is there a spear wrapped up in cloth and suspended here?” Rishia continued. “Motoyasu, please take it and have a look. You can pick up feathers and sniff them later.”
“Very well! Bah! I can’t reach it!” Motoyasu quickly exclaimed.
“Dafu!” said Raph-chan II. She was up on the spear-like item suspended in the air. It looked like something a hero must have made—like a yokai-fighting spear bound in red cloth from that one famous manga.
“Why don’t you just copy it?” Rishia suggested.
“Good idea! Beast Spear? Oh, this one works automatically. A convenient-looking weapon,” Motoyasu reported. We had some pretty yokai-like creatures among our allies. I had to hope it wasn’t going to be effective against the Raph species in particular. We didn’t need Motoyasu having that power.
“Dafu,” said Raph-chan II—who was the past Heavenly Emperor. After making sure Motoyasu had copied the spear, she tapped the tip of the spear, making the cloth fly off it, then took it into her hand. It had even shrunk down to her size! I was starting to feel like we were finding all sorts of crazy items. We could think about it all later.
Shildina gave a groan, using me as—appropriately enough—a shield as she watched Raph-chan II powering up. She didn’t get along well with that one.
“There’s no need to be scared, Shildina. You’re stronger than her now, surely,” Ruft told her.
“But still . . .” Shildina said nervously, tightening her ofuda defenses even as Ruft tried to bolster her courage. She just needed to keep powering herself up. So long as she did that, she should be able to handle anything that came her way.
We continued to clean the interior of the shrine, picking our way through the mixture of various rare items and trash.
“There are some dragon bones here. I guess we should take those,” I said. It looked like a couple of skeletons’ worth. Just how much history was scattered across the floor in here? We were lucky to find things still intact, too, because the entire collection had been exposed to the elements for who knew how long.
In one room of the ruins there were all sorts of weapons lying around, including one used by the high priest of the Church of the Three Heroes. That had to be a replica, but I still wondered what the hell it was doing here. Maybe it could be used for something—but it would need to be refilled with magic and looked difficult to handle. We should probably carry this stuff to the castle or village and have the old guy and the others analyze it.
A shield also turned up for me, which I copied. It was called the Ancient Shield. It wasn’t all that effective either. An unlock effect that increased magic defense, that was about all it had to offer. It was the same for Ren and the others—all the Ancient series. These were weapons that could cause a status effect called “magic blocker.” That sounded kind of useful, but it was only for use against humans.
“Big lady filolial!” Motoyasu shouted.
“Boo!” Fitoria rejected him using the same type of line as Filo. I hadn’t heard the reasons why, but Fitoria seemed to dislike Motoyasu as much as Filo did.
S’yne was pointing at Motoyasu, and I realized she was asking if maybe she should stop him. As I waved at her not to worry, I looked between S’yne and Fitoria. They were wearing different clothing, and there was the issue of feathers, but . . . they actually looked kind of similar. S’yne was taller, but they had a similar atmosphere about them. Fitoria, originating as a monster, and S’yne, a resident of a destroyed world . . . there was a real connection between them. Maybe they just happened to look alike. I wondered if it could be that simple.
“Ah! Filo!” Motoyasu quickly changed target.
“Boo! Stay away!” she replied. As Motoyasu closed in, she leapt up into the air and flew away.
“Oh wow, she’s flying!” said one of Fitoria’s minion filolials who could talk.
“That looks like fun,” said another.
“How did she learn to fly?” a third asked, all of them watching her with jealous eyes.
“What? Someone is making her fly with magic?” a fourth one said.
“Let’s get them to do that for us!” said a fifth one. I wasn’t sure where they had heard it, but all filolial eyes turned to Shildina.
“Help me!” Shildina hugged Raph-chan II to her, going on the defensive with Ruft.
“Dafu,” said Raphtalia II, looking a little perplexed at Shildina’s change of heart. Then she used magic to make Shildina and the others vanish, turning the awareness of the filolials away from them.
“We aren’t making much progress here! If you’re only here to mess about, you can leave!” I shouted.
“Hahaha! Father! I’ll do everything I can to turn this filolial sanctuary into a paradise!” Motoyasu exclaimed.
“Stop flapping those lips and start tidying up!” I replied. How easily these airheads got distracted! I could hardly deal with them. Kizuna’s bunch were even more lively, perhaps, but they also had a clearer sense of purpose.
“Seriously, there is so much trash in here. What’s going on back there?” I asked. We pushed deeper into the ruins, eventually coming to what looked like a large altar. There wasn’t any trash on the ground here. The floor was paved with stone, and it looked to be decorated like a clockface.
“The air feels kind of heavy in here,” Raphtalia said.
“Agreed,” I replied.
“My, my, this house of filolials is full of such special things!” Motoyasu exclaimed.
“Motoyasu, stay back,” I told him. Ignoring me, he stood in the center of the clock and stuck his spear into the ground. It made a clicking sound, followed by an ominous rumbling.
“Motoyasu!” I shouted.
“Oh my! Whatever do you think is happening?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me! Shooting Star Wall!” I shouted. Picking the wall version just to be sure, I created a barrier to protect everyone other than Motoyasu and his own band of filolials.
“Fitoria, you got any idea about this?” I asked.
“No idea,” she replied, tilting her head to the side. She wasn’t any help at all!
“Oh? Oh? Oooh!” Motoyasu breathed. There was light starting to shine out from the hole he had placed the spear into. Then the light was absorbed into the spear, leaving flickering images in its wake.
“Fehhh!” Rishia exclaimed. “What just happened?!”
“No idea,” I said. Nothing else seemed to change. “Motoyasu, anything different?”
“There is something . . . a weapon called Dragon Clock Hand has appeared,” he reported, transforming his weapon. It was a long, thin spear. Simple, almost, which might have sounded refined—but it looked more like the minute hand from some old clock.
“Does inserting your weapon into that hole trigger something?” I pondered aloud. I felt around the hole Motoyasu had used and experimentally tried to stuff the shield into it. Nothing happened or even looked like it was going to happen.
“First come first served?” Ren wondered, also giving it a try.
“Motoyasu!” I shouted.
“I have no idea, I say!” he replied. One would not normally just stick their weapon into any hole that presented itself . . . I would like to believe. But I couldn’t be sure, it being Motoyasu. I gave a sigh.
“Just more unexplained shit. Come on, let’s keep moving,” I said. It didn’t look like we had any monsters to contend with, anyway. This was filolial territory, so with their boss Fitoria along, it wouldn’t matter even if we did bump into some monsters.
Traps were a different matter. All the classics sprang off around us, from rolling boulders to spikes on the ceiling, but they meant nothing in the face of a party of heroes. My Shooting Star Wall blocked them all, and I even gave a chuckle when the boulder stopped dead. Eat your heart out, Indy.
I also expected some light puzzle-solving, but there was nothing so complicated. We had a read on the shape of the space thanks to Sadeena and Shildina’s sonar ability. That was a useful one to have around in places like this, places filled with secret doorways and passages. At the heart of the ruins, we came to a stone room that appeared to be floating in the air via magic. Floating stone . . . It was known as “glawick,” I recalled. We climbed the steps carved from it and reached the room at the top, then looked around.
There was a seriously heavy atmosphere in the room. It felt like this was the origin of the magic.
“Mr. Naofumi, we’ve seen a place like this before,” Raphtalia said.
“Indeed we have,” I recalled. It was exactly like the stone chamber assigned to the curator in the Ancient Labyrinth Library, Ethnobalt’s home.
“After hearing your description of that place, I thought I had better bring you here,” Fitoria explained.
“So there’s one on this world too,” I said. Here, in the depths of the ruins—of Fitoria’s home—a small vial was floating in the air. Behind it there was the same mural on the wall as we had seen in Ethnobalt’s place, depicting some kind of winged cat-like creature. There were images of the holy weapons . . . and the vassal weapons too, when I looked more closely. Some of the images were glowing. To start with, I thought it was the exact same image as before, but it was actually different in multiple places. The cat part was different too. There were two whale-looking creatures hanging around in the background. Seeing where I was looking, Rishia started to investigate the wall herself.
“It looks very similar to the one we saw with Ethnobalt, but there appears to be text written on this one,” she reported.
“There is?” I asked. Rishia pointed to a section of the wall. At a glance, it had appeared to just be another kind of pattern, but now I saw it was covered with text. It was almost like a piece of art, forming an image from a distance but turning into text when you got close. I appreciated the effort—almost—but kind of wished they had just written it out in more legible lettering.
“I’ll leave the analysis to you,” I told her. Time for our true main character and the greatest intellect present to step up to the plate.
“I’m sure I’ll make all sorts of interpretation and translation mistakes,” she replied, unsure of herself.
“You’ve got incredible analytical skills, I’ll vouch for that. You can do this,” I told her.
“He’s right, Rishia. I believe in you too,” Raphtalia offered.
“Fehhhhh!” came her predictable response, but she seemed ready to give it a try.
I turned my attention to the vial of red liquid that we had also seen with Ethnobalt. I picked it up. No problems. There was also a lot more left in the vial here than there had been over there. I wondered if that meant something. It might be related to how long Fitoria seemed to have lived. Over there they had been forced to use it more frequently. Maybe that was the reason.
“That is the medicine that guardians from other worlds should drink, correct?” Fitoria asked, pointing at the vial.
“What is it? What is its purpose?” I asked her.
“It’s a poison, but I don’t really understand it. I drank it before,” Fitoria said.
“Okay. What about people? Can they drink it too?” I asked.
“I think I remember hearing that they’d better not,” she replied. So it sounded like it was only for monsters but had the effect of extending their life span—like some kind of elixir of eternal life. “What I do remember is one drop means eternal pain, two drops means eternal loneliness, and three drops . . . means something truly terrible.” That was the exact same thing that Ethnobalt had said.
“The thing is, using the weapon produced by this to attack a wave crack greatly increased the time before the next wave. There’s more of it here than there was in Kizuna’s world—enough for all of our heroes, most likely,” I explained. A mysterious liquid left by a hero in the past. We were going to have to make good use of it . . . but I was still wondering what this wall meant, with all the same images as the one in a totally different world. That was not an issue that could be resolved by simply thinking about it, however.
I dripped a drop of potion onto my shield.
Conditions for Shield 0 unlocked!
Shield 0 (Awakened) 0/0
<abilities locked> equip bonus: skill: “Shield 0”
special effect: Judge of Reason, World Protector
It turned out to be a shield even lower on the ladder than the Small Shield, with everything at 0. Kizuna had obtained the same thing for her weapon, but I wondered again just what this was. I changed to it to see what would happen. It looked the same as the Small Shield.
“Shield 0,” I said, using the one skill it had. Light flashed out and the shield started to shine. It looked pretty cool. I’d have to experiment more with it later. The potion hadn’t produced any strange side effects, and so it seemed safe to use. The shield itself was far too weak to use, but it might offer some excellent effects. Games often had weapons and armor of the same type.
“All of the heroes should have this, in order to overcome the trials ahead,” Fitoria said.
“You heard the crazy bird lady. Let’s have everyone put some of this into their weapons,” I said. Each hero present proceeded to place one drop into their own weapon, releasing the same 0 series for each of them, with the same effects for each.
“Do you want to try some?” I asked Filo.
“You’re asking me again? Boo!” she said. I had indeed asked her the same thing when Ethnobalt underwent the drinking ceremony. She hadn’t wanted to drink it then either, but in the end, I thought—one day—she was probably going to have to. She was Fitoria’s successor, after all.
“You are the next queen, Filo, so one day you will have to drink it,” Fitoria said, confirming my own thoughts.
“Boo!” she replied again. I wondered about this past hero who had made Fitoria drink it, even though he probably knew it was poison. I couldn’t see Fitoria accepting it easily—but here I was, trying to get Filo to drink it.
I looked at the wall, with its cat creature, and wondered when that little mystery was ever going to be solved. With our track record, maybe never. Always seen close to materials covering the waves, it didn’t really feel like the one behind the waves . . . but maybe it was. I wondered if this was the one who assumed the name of God.
If so, there should be images in the ancient texts that Rishia had been reading.
“Fitoria,” I asked. She looked over at me. “Have you met this thing here?” I said, pointing at the creature on the wall.
“I think . . . I probably have,” she replied.
“You normally sound more confident about things than that,” I commented.
“I can remember what it looked like moving around. I don’t think it is a bad creature . . .” she said, trailing off.
“Is it the one who assumes the name of God?” I asked. If so, we needed to be ready to dispatch immediately, if we ever encountered it.
“No, that doesn’t sound right. But I remember it talking with the heroes,” she replied. That sounded like the one who made this wall was trying to impart something about this creature—but also that the cat wasn’t an enemy. No answers there. “. . . moru,” Fitoria said softly, almost inaudibly, placing her hand on the wall.
“Whatever is going on here, the one behind the waves has been trying to kill those just like you, Fitoria, all across history, so you need to be careful,” I told her.
“I understand that. Now maybe you see why I rarely show myself,” she replied. That was true. Ethnobalt worked in the library, but there was no telling where Fitoria might show up next. Her nest was in the Lost Woods—even the resurrected would have trouble finding her. She might be like the Demon Dragon, living so long that she had come to look down on humans and distanced herself from them.
“I’ve met those trying to kill me many times. They have to be ones under the influence of whoever is behind the waves. They had led the people and betrayed my trust over and over,” she continued. It sounded like she’d experienced her fair share of trouble, eventually leading her to only deal with humans through her underlings.
“Ah, here . . . I can read this part,” Rishia said, still looking at the text on the wall. “This weapon is highly effective against those who possess eternity . . . for defense against those who would take the name of a god . . .”
“That suggests the 0 series weapon cluster would be effective against the one behind the waves, the one who assumes the name of God,” I pondered aloud. In Kizuna’s world, attacking a wave crack with the 0 weapon had extended the time until the next wave was going to arrive. That also seemed to suggest these were special weapons that would be effective against the one who assumed the name of God. It was mainly an assumption for now, but we were starting to see some proof of it.
“The heroes . . . are intended as stopgaps, until help can arrive . . . and that’s all I can read,” Rishia finished.
“That’s more than enough. It overlaps with what we heard in Kizuna’s world,” I told her. It seemed that the heroes fighting the waves presupposed the eventual arrival of help from somewhere, otherwise text like this wouldn’t keep saying it. I didn’t know who or what we were meant to be counting on . . . but the expectation to do so made me feel pretty uneasy. I wondered if we could really rely on whoever it was who was meant to be coming, looking again at the creature on the wall. Maybe that was who we were waiting for.
We completed the cleanup and returned to the village. I still had the vial in my possession, and it was doing a good job of keeping Gaelion away.
“Kwaa!” he squawked.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked. As I moved toward him, he slid back the same distance.
“Stay away!” I heard his voice in my head. “I feel something from you, something sending shivers down my spine!” I handed the vial to Raphtalia and moved closer to Gaelion again. This time he didn’t move away. It seemed the poison was also good at warding off dragons. I tried to remember if we had experimented with it on the Demon Dragon. It might work on her too, I thought hopefully.
“Ah, I think I get it,” I said. When I applied what Rishia had discovered, the Dragon Emperor was a little different but still something close to being immortal. Even if it died, it could be revived, and it lived for so long it was hardly worth counting the years. The poison was effective against all creatures that “possessed eternity,” after all.
“I can use this to help keep the Demon Dragon under control. It’s almost like Kizuna is already using it,” I commented.
“Kwaaaaaa!” Child Gaelion didn’t miss the chance to leap at me, flying onto me as I got closer in an attempt to get some attention. I was amazed again at how he could push down base instincts with emotion. I still didn’t understand why he was so attached to me either. I hadn’t done anything in particular for him.
“Okay, enough of that. The experiment ends here,” I told him. Fitoria had asked that I return the vial to her once we had unlocked the weapons for all the heroes, so I proceeded to do that—including L’Arc—and then returned it to her. There hadn’t been much left in Kizuna’s world, but we still had quite a lot here.
I turned my attention to the skill called Shield 0 . . . indeed, the entire series. After unlocking the skill, I tried activating it and then having a monster attack me, but—as I had expected—nothing happened. I couldn’t even resist the attack. The skill simply shattered in an instant. It was the same with the others—the skill looked super flashy when triggered, but it was unable to cause a single scratch. It wasn’t about holding back or anything like that—it really was just a zero-damage skill. It had zero cooldown time and consumed zero SP.
With that, anyway, the cleaning of Fitoria’s nest and our excavation of ancient gear that had been slumbering for who knew how long came to an end. We had acquired some pretty fine new gear, and so I was quite pleased with the final result.
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