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Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 20 - Chapter 6




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Chapter Six: Encounter with Extinct Monsters 

“Brother . . . do you recognize that mountain at all?” Fohl asked me, tilting his head in puzzlement while pointing to the “new” mountain outside the village. Unfortunately for all of us, I couldn’t say I’d ever seen it before. 

“Nope, no idea. Does it look like a mountain we would recognize?” I asked. 

“I’m not sure,” Fohl replied. “I do feel like I’ve seen it before somewhere, but only vaguely.” That was no help. Whatever the situation was, we needed to gather information. 

“I need some of you suited to recon . . . Filo, Gaelion . . .” I started to give orders, the monster seal registration still in place, but then realized communications were cut off. The status of Gaelion and the others was the same as it had been while I was in Kizuna’s world. “How about Sadeena and Shildina . . .” I muttered but then realized that now that they were heroes, I couldn’t track their slave seals anymore. With something big like this happening, I would expect them to hurry back immediately. But the fact that they weren’t here meant we couldn’t count on them showing up. “Before we explore outside the village . . .” I thought for a moment. “Everyone, gather up! Take a proper roll call of whoever is here!” 

So we were out of contact with Filo and Gaelion. Raph-chan was here, but I thought about sending her out to scout a bit later. If we didn’t get a handle on who was actually here, there was a risk of failing to respond effectively. 

“Don’t worry, just fall into line!” Ruft said, helping to keep everyone calm. 

“That’s right!” Keel said, helping out. Raphtalia and Fohl were helping to gather everyone together and take down their names. 

“What’s going on?” said one filolial. 

“I’m scared,” said another. 

“Raph . . .” added one of the Raph species, all of them looking around with concern on their faces. It looked like we didn’t have that many filolials with us. Maybe only half the Raph species too. 

“Naofumi,” said Melty, sliding up to me, looking worried. She really looked her young age at times like this. “Filo is okay, isn’t she?” 

“It looks like we’re the only ones caught up in this. I bet Filo is worrying about us just as much right now,” I told her. 

“Yes, you’re right,” she replied. Finally coming back to herself, Melty slapped her own cheeks a couple of times and her expression returned to normal. “If I look too worried here, I won’t be able to call myself a queen, will I?” I expected no less from Trash’s daughter. She had been trained well in how to be royal. She dashed off toward Ruft to help identify everyone we had with us. 

“Whatever . . . is going on here?” Ren appeared, still looking worse for wear. 

“Hero Iwatani, what is the meaning of this? I was just checking on Ren, and then . . .” Eclair said. She was with Ren. She must have come as protection for Melty and then gone to check on the convalescing Ren. 

“No idea. We were just counting up the villagers before starting to investigate further,” I said. I was using my registered slave seals to check on which slaves were here and which were missing. Ren was here, anyway. That could turn out to be good or bad luck. 

“Ren, have you seen Motoyasu or Itsuki?” I asked. 

“Sorry, no. I haven’t,” he replied. 

“Okay then,” I said. There was no way that self-centered Motoyasu wouldn’t come bursting out amid a crisis like this. Itsuki and Rishia had still been at the filolial sanctuary, attempting to read the information we found there. 

I really needed to work out why I couldn’t portal to any of my registered locations. I could still come into the village, so I wasn’t simply being blocked. I couldn’t believe every location had been stopped somehow. 

“Archduke!” Rat ran up with Wyndia. Rat was an odd one, choosing not to call me “Shield Hero” or by my name, but by my rank. “What’s going on?” 

“No idea,” I replied. I had left her in charge of analyzing the technology we obtained from Kizuna’s world. She had moaned about it not really being her specialty. Complaints or not, she still did a good job of it. Most of her recent research seemed to have been focused on the Raph species and the filolials, but I didn’t really know the details of what she was mucking about with. She was also responsible for the care of the village monsters, so she was far from useless, but some of the stuff she was doing with the Raph species seemed a bit icky. 

“Wyndia, where’s Gaelion?” I asked her. Wyndia had been entrusted with Gaelion as a kind of surrogate parent. She shook her head, indicating she didn’t know. 

“After you got angry at him, Gaelion had semi-run away from home. Don’t you know where he is, Shield Hero?” she asked. “Semi”-run away, huh? I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. 

“I guess that means he’s not in the village,” I concluded. That wasn’t just limited to Gaelion; it included Filo too then. Many of the slaves and monsters registered to me were in the same boat. 

“Oh no! What’s happened to Gaelion?!” Wyndia started to panic. 

“Stay calm. Neither Filo nor Gaelion are the types to be defeated so easily, you know that. It seems far more natural that we’re the ones who have been caught up in something, not them,” I said. 

“That makes more sense. Try to calm yourself,” Rat said, soothing Wyndia. Rat knew more about monster biology, making Wyndia like her student. 

“When was Gaelion going to be back?” I asked. 

“Mealtime. That’s normally how it works,” Wyndia replied. 

“And that’s him ‘semi’-running away?” Raphtalia asked. 

“Gaelion is such a softie. I’m sure he would have come back. No matter how rough things get with the Shield Hero, he would come back complaining, but he would come back,” she said. So it was all a little act to get some attention, which was pointless if I wasn’t even hearing about it. He was just taking a stroll. That was all you could really call it. 

I rarely understood anything that these dragons did, to be honest. They were so peculiar it was almost impossible to understand what they were thinking: old Gaelion, so paternal while calling himself the weakest dragon, the Demon Dragon, magical queen of evil who came onto me like Atla on steroids, and the child Gaelion, who in some ways was even harder to fathom than the Demon Dragon and old Gaelion. 

“We just have to believe Gaelion and the others can handle themselves and work out what’s going on with us,” I decided. “Raph-chan!” I called out. 

“Raph?” Raph-chan replied, tilting her head at being called upon. 

“Anything you can share with us?” I asked. Raph-chan had saved us many times before in all sorts of ways. She was probably going to understand our situation the fastest, so that’s why I asked her. 

“Raph . . .” Raph-chan responded. 

“Dafu,” added Raph-chan II, both of them shaking their heads to indicate they didn’t have any ideas. They had been doing something in front of the sakura lumina growing in the village, but they didn’t seem to know where we were either. I was just thinking the Raph-chans weren’t going to be any help when Raph-chan pointed behind Melty. 

“Indeed. It iz my time to shine, zo to zpeak,” said a Shadow, appearing out of nowhere. He even had a Raph species dressed like a ninja on his shoulder! Cosplay, I liked it! 

“It’s you!” I said. It felt like a while since I’d last seen him, but I immediately recognized his voice. It was the same Shadow who had done so much during the Church of the Three Heroes incident as the body-double for the queen. I hadn’t seen him at all since then and wondered what the hell he had been doing. 

“I waz protecting Queen Melty, concealing myzelf just in case,” he explained. 

“Hey, Raph-chan. Didn’t you think you should mention this potential assassin?” I asked her. 

“Ah, don’t blame your monsterz, Shield Hero. Of course, they zensed me. I explained the zituation to them and they have been letting my prezence zlide,” he explained. 

“Raph!” said the Raph species in the ninja getup. I was starting to feel that village security might not be as tight as I would have liked. I would have liked Raph-chan and the Raph species to react to Shadows as well, if possible. At least let us know they were there. 

“Shield Hero, are you okay?” Ruft asked me, noticing I was a bit pissed off. 

“Did you know about this too, Raphtalia? Ruft?” I asked them. 

“Well . . . Eclair told me that he has been placed as protection for Melty,” she hesitantly replied. 

“You mean the spy guy? Sure. I thought you all knew about him too. He’s right there,” said Ruft. These two had concealment abilities, after all. It had to be nice to be able to see this guy wherever he was. I certainly couldn’t. “If the Spear Hero was using this to follow Filo around, I would point him out. But it’s someone we know, so I didn’t think I needed to,” Ruft explained. Obviously, Motoyasu would have to be stopped. He could confound even Filo’s natural instincts in his attempts to snap unwanted images of her, so capturing him would be a given . . . but I couldn’t help but wonder if they really should be letting a Shadow slide so easily. 

“I have been in contact with individualz from Q’ten Lo, in a mutual exchange of information, and have honed my craft as a rezult. I am a Shadow . . . and also a shinobi, making use of the artz of Q’ten Lo. Your village, Shield Hero, is the one place where people gather who can still zee through my enhanced artz,” the Shadow explained. 

“Yet the hero himself can’t see you at all. What a farce! I’m not sure you are worthy of the title of ‘shinobi’ either,” I told him. I might have to put Raph-chan on his head at all times, to track him for me. 

We needed to deal with this emergency, anyway. 

“Okay! Is that everyone from the village gathered together? Make sure we don’t have anyone hiding away!” I shouted. 

“Bubba, I don’t think anyone would be dumb enough to hide themselves at a time like this,” Keel said. Sure, that was a good point. Everyone was gathered in the village square. I proceeded to look over the assembly. 

There was Raphtalia, Melty, Raph-chan, and S’yne. They had been with me since this all kicked off. Fohl, Keel, and Imiya were there, central village figures. There were a lot of other village folk too. Many of them looked like lumo, a pretty technical-type species. Then there was Ren and Eclair. He had been convalescing in his own home—which might turn out to be a stroke of luck—and Eclair had been visiting him there. After that, we had the monster-lovers—Rat, Wyndia, and Ruft. After having them count up the Raph species and the filolials, I found out the number of monsters had apparently been pretty reduced. There was also the past Heavenly Emperor, Raph-chan II. She had all sorts of other silly names, such as Dafu-chan. And finally, the Shadow who had been guarding Melty. 

On the flip side, the people we couldn’t contact were Filo, Gaelion, L’Arc and his party, Itsuki, Rishia, Motoyasu and his retinue, and of course Trash. Sadeena and Shildina weren’t here either. From the slave seal responses and what Keel had told me, those who had been away from the village for trade also weren’t responding. 

“The common connection between all of us here is that we just happened to be in the village when this—whatever it was—happened,” I pondered aloud. Just what “this” was though, I was still left guessing. 

“Has some kind of technology moved the entire village?” Raphtalia wondered. The scenery outside our familiar boundaries was quite different—but there were still points that didn’t line up. 

“It’s not impossible . . . but I can’t understand why only the village can be selected when I try to portal,” I replied. This was a different phenomenon from when we had been on the Cal Mira islands. 

“Maybe some kind of barrier has been put up?” Raphtalia hazarded another guess. 

“Okay. That sounds like a thread worth pulling on,” I agreed. Perhaps a barrier had been put up to stop us from teleporting out, and then we had been teleported away somewhere. That seemed like one possibility, considering we didn’t recognize this place. I had first wondered if we had been sent to some unfamiliar new world completely, but when I looked at our levels and other data, it didn’t seem like that was the case. 

“How long until the next wave?” I wondered aloud and looked at the number. For some reason it was unstable. “Raphtalia, can you use Scroll of Return?” 

“No, I can’t,” she replied. Raphtalia had tried using teleport skills herself, a number of times, but was having no luck either. “To be exact about the issue, we are outside the specified range of a dragon hourglass teleport,” she reported. Outside the range—I wonder how something like that happened. 

“S’yne, what about you?” I asked, but she was already shaking her head. She was suffering from the same issue. “Looks like we have to leave the village and see what’s out there,” I concluded. 

“Okay! Let’s do this!” Fohl seemed keen to get started. The Shadow would probably prove to be better at collecting information, but Fohl was light on his feet. That would count for something. We needed to gather as much information as we could—and quickly. 

“Hold on, Naofumi. We have no idea what is happening here. Should we all be rushing out there?” Melty said. She had a point. 

“Better than doing nothing. Our fastest, most flexible members should take the lead and search out the vicinity,” I said. It definitely hurt that we didn’t have any powerful fliers among our team—Filo and Gaelion, basically. “We don’t know what might show up, so the heroes should go along too. Split up into teams and start getting the lay of the land,” I told them. 

“Leave it to me,” the Shadow said. 

“Yes, I’ll be counting on you in particular,” I told him. With that, we split up and got started. Raphtalia, Melty, Raph-chan, and S’yne headed north with me. Fohl put together a team of the more competent fighters from the village, led by Keel, and headed east, while Ren took Eclair and Wyndia and headed west. The Shadow planned to take the Raph species and strike out to the south. Ruft, Rat, and the remaining villagers would remain behind to protect the village. The range of the search was to be the ground covered in thirty minutes. If nothing was found, we would return to the village after that time, collate our information, then expand the range and strike out again. Seeing as we didn’t even have a basic map, it didn’t hurt to start out prudent. If anything did happen, the affected party would shoot some magic up into the air to let the others know. We decided to use the filolials remaining in the village to get around. From among them, I was to ride the one known as Chick, Filo’s immediate subordinate and the one leading the village filolials. 

Immediately prior to our departure, I was looking at the ground with Rat. 

“It seems this is the boundary line,” Rat stated, pointing to the ground just outside the village. A single, clean line extended all around the village from there. We had investigated, and it encircled the entire thing. “If some kind of power or technology has transported us, it looks like it moved everything inside this circle.” 

“That would make sense,” I agreed. It was a big chunk of real estate to move, however. The entire village, pretty much, apart from the filolial stable. One of the monster stables had remained, so it was hard to guess the reasoning behind the selected area—and impossible to guess how it had been achieved too. I couldn’t help thinking that S’yne’s sister had tricked us after all. 

“Well then, Archduke. I’ll let you proceed with the survey,” Rat said. 

“Okay. You take care of the village,” I told her. Then we crossed the line and started out on our investigation of whatever lay beyond. 

“Everyone, go your separate ways!” I said. Following my instructions, each group moved away in its designated direction. The sky was clear and blue, with no clouds in sight. We had been a village on the coast, so there was normally the smell of salt on the air, but I couldn’t smell a hint of that now. 

“Huh?” We hadn’t walked far from the village when we encountered a monster. I considered having Chick just smash it away, but I wanted to conduct this search carefully, so I climbed down and went into combat. 

Red Snake Balloon 

A long and thin, pencil-shaped balloon was wriggling in the air and coming toward us. It looked like something you might use for balloon art. 

“A snake balloon? Those monsters don’t live in Melromarc,” Melty said with a frown, pointing at the balloon that was clearly intent on attacking us. I had already grabbed it with my bare hands, of course, holding it still in the air. The part that looked like the head was biting eagerly into my hand, but it didn’t hurt at all—it didn’t even tickle. 

“So where do they live?” I asked. This could be useful information. 

“Siltvelt and demi-human countries. However . . .” She trailed off, still frowning. 

“Yes?” I prompted. 

“Being a shape suited to use as pool inner tubes, and after a boom in balloon art, I heard their numbers are close to being wiped out. They have various uses you can’t really do with other balloons, something like that . . .” she explained. 

“Okay,” I replied. As we wasted our time on balloon trivia, a load of more snake balloons showed up and flew toward us. There was a lot of them to say they were meant to be close to being wiped out. I used a skill called Hate Reaction, one I hadn’t popped off recently, and drew the attention of all the monsters to me. It also served to draw even more of them out of hiding. I was already protecting Melty and the others with Shooting Star Wall, and quickly found myself surrounded by a gaggle of snake balloons. They were even trying to get in through gaps in my armor. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Naofumi. I’m sure you are okay, but shall we defeat them now?” Raphtalia asked. 

“Okay. I’ll throw out a Shooting Star Shield, so match your timing with me and finish them off,” I ordered. 

“Okay!” she replied smartly. 

“Shooting Star Shield!” I shouted. Countless snake balloons were suddenly sent flying away by the barrier I created. At the same moment, Raphtalia swung her katana, Melty unleashed some magic, and S’yne swung her scissors. Raph-chan was riding Chick and had the filolial kick the snakes away. The snake balloons were defeated in an instant. Talk about weaklings. I guessed being rare didn’t make them strong. 

“I bet there are still some live ones, so let’s capture them,” I said. 

“Naofumi? Can I ask you why?” Raphtalia asked. 

“To sell. If these things really are rare, I bet collectors will pay through the nose for them,” I said. 

“You’re still thinking about making cash at a time like this? You’re an archduke now!” Raphtalia exclaimed. 

“Why does that matter?” I asked. 

“I think I can understand why the accessory dealer wants you as his successor,” Raphtalia said, a little dejectedly. 

“Raph,” said Raph-chan, but I wasn’t giving in. These were rare monsters. There was no reason not to make use of them. There was a load of them here too, so it would surely be okay to take some back with us. 

“We can do that later, anyway,” I said. For now, I put one into my shield and unlocked the corresponding shield. To say how rare these things were meant to be, it only had the specs of a balloon variant. It wasn’t even worth discussing in detail. 

Taking some of these balloon corpses back with us would give the kids in the village something to play with, at least. We pressed on, carving our way through the balloon party. 

“Melty, these snake balloons are definitely monsters found in the vicinity of Siltvelt, correct?” I confirmed with her. She nodded. It was pretty convenient, being able to work out where we were by the monsters around us. Fohl had said he recognized the place so it had to be somewhere he knew. 

“Let’s assume this is Siltvelt for now and expand our search area. Raph-chan, Chick. Do you have anything to add?” I asked the motley pair. 

“Raph?” questioned Raph-chan, her nose twitching. Chick also made a puzzled noise. Neither of them seemed to know anything. Melty was looking around, making similar noises. 

“What’s up?” I asked her. 

“This place is just so strange. I kind of recognize it and kind of don’t,” she replied. 

“Fohl said the same thing,” I told her. If this was close to Siltvelt, then it made sense that he might recognize it. “What about you, Raphtalia?” I asked. She was always great at remembering people’s names and other details, so I hoped I could count on her memory here. 

“Oh . . . I’m sorry,” Raphtalia said. She didn’t know this particular place then. Fohl and Melty had been pretty well-traveled before meeting up with us. That was probably why they recognized it and we didn’t. 

We continued onward, over ground that was gradually getting drier. We were just walking in a straight line. 

“Hey. I think I see a road there,” I said. I stepped out onto the well-worn route and looked left and right. There could be a town or village in either direction, but if possible, I wanted to go to the closest one. I registered a portal here, just in case. “If we continue along this path, we might find something. Come on! We’ll start by going right.” That was what we did, for the rest of the thirty-minute search, but we didn’t reach a town or village before the time ran out. It was starting to feel like Siltvelt to me, though, just from the atmosphere. It might be the mountains that looked so worn down by the elements, like ancient hermits were living in them. They looked kind of Chinese in style. That said, they probably weren’t the best reference material. I saw Siltvelt as being a pretty mixed-up place, topographically speaking. There were jungles and then suddenly barren plains, thin, narrow mountains, and then suddenly fat ones covered with trees. Even Melromarc felt more unified. The Japanese-style hot spring towns there could be explained away by heroes spreading their home culture. 

“We should drop back and see how everyone is doing,” I said. It looked like thirty minutes hadn’t been long enough. I only had to register a portal here and we could be back in the blink of an eye. So none of our efforts would be wasted. Even the smallest piece of new information could prove vital. 

With that, we returned to the village. 

“Archduke! This is incredible!” The moment we arrived Rat was there, waiting for us, lifting up the corpse of a monster. 

“Are you talking about the almost-extinct snake balloons?” I asked her. 

“No! The others have found a monster that actually is extinct!” she replied. Someone always had to one-up me. “This is the discovery of the century! It could rewrite everything we know about monsters!” 

“Great, sure . . . but how much is such a discovery really worth in a place with waves occurring in an attempt to literally fuse worlds together?” I said. 

“You could at least try to sound excited, Archduke,” Rat said sullenly. 

“I understand how you feel, but none of the creatures here can be found where I come from—in Japan. So it’s pretty hard for me to get any more excited over another weird blob of goo or whatever,” I replied. I had been quite into all the creatures when I first got here, but every time a new monster attacked us now, I only thought about kicking its ass—and turning it into cash, if possible. What Rat was feeling now might be the same as a Japanese person finding a live dinosaur. Okay, a dinosaur might be a little much—how about a dodo? They were extinct too, if I recalled correctly. Of course, in the worlds Ren, Itsuki, and Motoyasu had come from, there might be dodos everywhere. That was what this felt like for me . . . but I was getting lost in pointless thoughts again. 

“I’m interested in studying new breeds of monsters, of course, but isn’t it even more amazing to rediscover a monster that everyone thought was wiped out?” Rat asked, still all hyper. 

“Yes, you might have a point,” I conceded. Capturing a monster thought to have been wiped out probably was more impressive than discovering a new continent or some unknown creature. 

“Brother, you have returned,” said Fohl, noticing us and coming over. 

“Bubba, did you find anything?” Keel asked, following behind him. 

“We found a road and were running along it. What about you?” I asked back. 

“We returned just after discovering a river,” Fohl replied. 

“Okay. There might be a village or town along that river too,” I said. Fohl agreed. “And then you showed the monster you defeated to Rat?” Fohl nodded. So there were extinct monsters out there too. Keel was already happily swinging around the corpse of one of the snake balloons we had brought back with us. I had to warn her not to play with balloon corpses too much. It wasn’t fair to turn monster’s lives into toys—they needed to be processed a little first. Then it was fine. 

“What about Ren?” I asked. It wasn’t like him to be late. If he wasn’t back here at the appointed time, that suggested something had happened. Even as I had that thought, a flare went up in the direction Ren’s party had headed. That certainly suggested they had gotten themselves into some trouble. I clicked my tongue in annoyance and climbed back up onto Chick. 

“Naofumi!” Melty shouted. 

“We’d better not risk your life, Your Majesty,” I said, a little sardonically. “Stay here. If anything happens, Fohl, you protect Melty.” 

“Okay. Be careful yourself, Brother,” Fohl replied with a nod, putting his fist in front of him. 

“Hey, don’t I get a say?” Melty whined. 

“We need to work out what is happening, but even more importantly, we need to ensure the village is well defended. Ruft, you help protect it with the Raph species,” I said. 

“Sure thing!” Ruft replied. 

“Raphtalia, S’yne, Raph-chan! Let’s ride!” I said. With Raphtalia and S’yne behind me and Raph-chan riding up on Chick’s head, we started out. It shouldn’t take too long to reach the point the flare went up. I started to carefully enchant Liberation Aura X. 

“You called?” The Demon Dragon’s voice popped up at once in my head, coming from the shield. She was hot on her protection—or magical assistance, whatever you wanted to call it. 

“Liberation Aura—huh?!” My voice stifled as I tried to cast the spell. I tilted my head. 

“Mr. Naofumi?” Raphtalia asked. 

“This is strange . . . I can’t enhance the magic any further?” I said. All I had managed to complete was a regular Liberation Aura. I wondered what was going on. I’d felt something similar when I cast Shooting Star Shield during our balloon battle. I had been rendered unable to use magic, and unable to use my shield recently, and while I’d done my best to adapt to each situation, it was confusing to have a mix of things I could and couldn’t do. I was just trying to come back from that. 

“We need to get to Ren as quickly as possible!” I said. The normal Liberation Aura would have to do, and I applied it to Chick to boost her speed. She put her head down with a squawk and rushed forward, carrying us swiftly toward whatever trouble Ren and his party had bumped into. 





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