Chapter Seven: Double the Shield Heroes
“Wait! Just listen, please!” Ren was shouting as we arrived at the spot the flare had gone up.
“Listen to what? A holy weapon hero, here to assault us?” said his opponent, an unknown enemy.
“I can’t believe how hard he is to fight! He seems so similar, but he moves so differently!” Ren exclaimed. I noticed a village nearby, which I’d also never seen before. Eclair and Wyndia had been bound up in threads that almost looked like spiders’ webs. It seemed possible to cut through them, but there was a vast volume of them spread across the area. Ren was fixated on protecting them both, meaning he was barely holding his own in defending the attacks from his enemies.
“Who are they?” I wondered. There was a woman with an air about her a lot like S’yne—she even carried some large scissors. And what I presumed to be a man in full-body armor and holding a shield was also there. They had to be pretty tough if they were giving Ren a hard time.
Even as I took in the scene, Chick sensed what I needed and rushed toward all the threads.
“Stardust Blade!” Raphtalia shouted. “Mr. Naofumi! I’ve lost all my skill enhancements too!” she promptly reported. So the katana was on the fritz too. Her Stardust Blade still managed to cut through all the strings.
“We’ve still got to fight! S’yne!” I shouted.
“Okay,” she replied, briefly but with confidence. Then she leapt down from Chick to defend Eclair and Wyndia. She released her own threads, binding them to the ones her opponent was freshly creating and opening a path for Chick.
“Naofumi!” Ren said.
“Are you all okay?” I asked.
“Yes, thanks for coming!” he replied. Luckily, no one seemed to be hurt. I turned to these new attackers. I still had no idea who they were, but if they wanted a fight, then I’d pick up the tab.
“More of them?” said the scissors woman.
“Dammit, can’t we catch a break?” said the shield guy, both of them facing us down as we prepared to join the fray. Behind them, a bunch of demi-humans were all facing off with us, holding a bunch of weapons. The situation looked pretty bad. It wasn’t like all demi-humans were my allies, after all. If we were in Shieldfreeden right now, then there would be plenty of demi-humans filled with rage toward me.
“What’s that strange monster?” the armored guy with the shield muttered, looking at Chick. “It doesn’t matter! We still have to fight them!” I was puzzled that he was hanging out with demi-humans but didn’t know what a filolial was, but for now I needed to confirm the situation with Ren.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“We found this village and so we stopped by. We were explaining who we are and asking some questions when the villagers ran off. Then these guys attacked us,” Ren explained.
“I don’t think we caused any problems. I started by explaining that we don’t know where we are but that we’re with the Sword Hero,” Eclair responded. That all sounded fine. The job of being a hero had all sorts of side benefits, but trying to conduct yourself covertly was not one of them. Ren and Itsuki wouldn’t go around hiding their past anymore. But to come seeking help in an emergency and instead get attacked—something was going on here.
“Whatever is all this?” scissors woman asked. “We need to capture them and find out.”
“Good idea. Everyone, pile on!” the shield guy shouted. His command was met with shouts of agreement from the band of allies behind him, and then they rushed us. These guys were spoiling for a scrap, that much was clear. Fighting our way out seemed to be the only option right now.
“Raphtalia, Ren, you unleash your skills the moment I pin him down! S’yne, you interfere with the thread-user. She’s a lot like you! Everyone else, stop this other rabble!” I ordered.
“Understood!” Raphtalia leaned down, ready to unleash a skill as soon as it was required.
“Naofumi!” Ren shouted. “Watch out! This guy—!” Ren started to shout. The shield guy seemed to want to fight me. I also raised my shield and intoned some skills.
“Air Strike Shield! Second Shield!” It took me a moment to realize that the other guy had shouted the exact same skill names as me, almost exactly as I said them. Familiar-looking shields appeared at my front and back and tried to hem me in. In that same moment, my own two shields tried to pin down the shield guy, but he grabbed my shoulder to restrict my movements.
“Now!” he shouted. Two more shields came in from the sides to try and prevent my escape, but I blocked those with two of my own float shields. The grating sound of shields clashing filled the air. In the next instant, the demi-humans fighting with the shield guy came to attack me with swords and spears.
“Hah!” I shouted as I created a wall of life force, blocking their movements.
“Haah! Instant Blade! Mist!” Raphtalia shouted, quickly circling around and unleashing her skill at the shield guy’s neck, but it was cut short with a sound like it had crashed into a wall.
“Mr. Naofumi, he fights just like you—” Raphtalia started.
“Raphtalia, Raph-chan, fall back! Ren!” I shouted, cutting her off. The two of them quickly did what I asked.
“Naofumi!” Ren said, a bitter expression on his face, knowing what I was going to ask.
“Don’t worry about me! Hit us both. Go ahead!” I told him.
“If you say so!” Ren still didn’t sound convinced. “Hundred Sword X!”
“Shooting Star Shield!” There it was again—both shield guy and I launched the same skills at the same time. They caught Ren’s incoming attack but were unable to stop it, hitting us both. Ren had intentionally directed the attack more toward our opponent, preventing it from hitting me too hard, but it definitely hit.
Ren was getting stronger too. I couldn’t handle this attack without enhanced skills. I’d used some life force, which had definitely helped, but my stamina wasn’t going to handle repeated hits like that.
“Mr. Naofumi!” Raphtalia shouted.
“Naofumi! Why did you let that happen?!” Ren exclaimed, his face asking why I had taken the attack on a weak version of my skill.
“There are reasons, but no time to explain right now. Focus on the fighting,” I told him.
“You attacked your own ally?!” the shield guy shouted. He seemed to be in pretty good shape, even though he must have taken more damage than me. That only made me angrier! “Do you think so little of those you fight alongside?” he accursed, turning his rage and attention onto Ren.
“That’s not what this is . . .” Ren stammered with a confused look on his face at this turn of events.
“You’ve got the wrong idea, so let me explain.” I stepped in to defend Ren. “Ren only unleashed his skill like that because he thought I could withstand it. If you have a stronger defense than an ally’s attack, you can defend against it, right? And if you can’t, you just have to do . . . this.”
“It’s one of my best features!” the Demon Dragon said, although everyone around me didn’t hear that part and so was probably quite puzzled. Her assistance was super useful, anyway. I had to give her that much. I might even pet her a bit next time we met.
“Liberation Heal!” I incanted. Light appeared around me and the pain was immediately whisked away. Excessive pain could sometimes interfere with casting, but with the assistance of the Demon Dragon, I reckoned I would be able to handle anything other than the most serious, limb-removal-type situations. “Now do you get it?” I asked.
“You’re still crazy, getting him to attack you,” the shield guy said. Sure, I’d give him that. “Crazy” was not the worst thing I’d ever been called. If this was like most games, in which you couldn’t damage those on your side, then we wouldn’t be having this problem. Unfortunately, this was not one of those games. I didn’t want to get hit by friendly fire, of course, but needs must be met and all that.
“Ren, press your attack! He’s pretty well pinned down now!” I shouted.
“That’s not going to happen!” shouted the scissors woman, who S’yne had been doing a pretty good job of controlling until that point. That was before butterfly wings of light popped out of scissors woman’s back, filling the air with countless more threads.
“Sword Wire! Spider’s Poison Web!” she shouted.
“What—” S’yne said in confusion, and then her cheek was cut and blood splashed out. She had barely managed to block the attack but was unable to neutralize it completely.
“We’ve got some magic ready!” Wyndia shouted, accompanied by a bird squawk from Chick. “Cooperative magic, Tornado!” The two of them combined their skills to launch off some magic. A vacuum of wind descended from the sky toward us.
“Don’t expect to stop me with magic like that!” scissors woman shouted. The magic and threads started to clash off each other.
“Brave Blade! Crossing Mists!” Raphtalia brought her sword down on the threads but it only created a shower of sparks. They were tougher than they looked.
With a shout, Ren took up swords in both hands and locked himself in combat with the scissors woman. She grunted, holding her own. The shield guy was bad enough, but she was a problem too.
“Phoenix Gale Blade X!” Ren shouted, unleashing a fiery bird with what looked like deadly timing, but the scissors woman grabbed his shoulder and flipped over in the air to avoid it. Her lithe movements were already impressing me. She would probably give Sadeena a run for her money.
“Shield Bash!” shouted my assailant in the full-body armor as he unleashed a skill toward me with a heavy thunk. This was a skill with a short stunning effect. Against stronger opponents it only caused mild dizziness—really nothing to write home about. The impact, though, felt stronger than when I had used it in the past. There was also some life force mixed in, I noticed. So he could use life force too—but not very well. I guided the life force through my own body and then returned it to him.
“You’ve got some skills!” he grunted, then gave a shout. Slamming his rear leg into the ground, he let the life force I tried to return to him seep away into the ground. The impact shook the earth beneath our feet. It looked like he was better with life force than I initially thought. I was going to have my hands full with just this guy.
“As Eclair taught me! Multistrike Demolition!” As I was dealing with my own issues, Ren unleashed one of Eclair’s techniques—I noticed he was keen to credit her with it—toward the scissors woman. Being a technique, rather than a skill, meant it didn’t have any cooldown time to worry about. However, it was also easily avoided. “Straight into . . . Liberation Magic Enchant!” Ren seemed to have guessed it would be avoided and proceeded to unleash some magic right away. As he raised his sword to the sky, the cooperative magic that Wyndia and Chick had unleashed—which at this point was about to fade away—gathered around his blade.
“Tornado Edge!” he shouted. “Naofumi! You’d better get out of the way this time!”
“Okay! Air Strike Shield! Second Shield! Dritte Shield, Chain Shield!” I deployed a series of shields all around me while attempting to bind up the shield guy using Chain Shield. But the moment I released him, he dropped back a distance and threw out three shields of his own.
“Air Strike Shield! Second Shield! Dritte Shield!” Then he bound them into a barrier that was different from my Shooting Star Shield. “Tri Barrier!” This completely stopped my chain shield.
“Vorpal Comet Sword X!” Ren didn’t miss a beat, launching a skill mixed with magic at both scissors woman and the shield guy as soon as he dropped away from me. Countless powerful stars turned into vacuum blades, becoming a whirling tornado heading directly for our foes and tearing up the ground in the vicinity as it did so. Dust and smoke were thrown up into the air.
“Naofumi, are you okay?” Ren asked.
“I’m fine,” I replied. I was also suspicious of whether this would be enough to end the fighting, and I kept my guard up. There was a high likelihood they would avoid the attack completely.
“Shield Boomerang!” The shield guy’s shield whistled out of the smoke, spinning like a flying saucer. I deflected it with my own shield. But maybe due to life force imbued in the shield again, I really felt the impact.
“That was pretty powerful,” came the shield guy’s voice.
“Don’t give up now,” said scissors woman. I groaned inside when I saw both of them still alive as the dust cleared. They were super tough, that was for sure—or super good at avoiding things.
“I’ll hit them with the next one!” the shield guy shouted.
“There iz no need for that,” said a new voice. Everyone looked in the direction it had come from to see the Shadow with his knife at the throat of one of the demi-humans. There was noises of surprise from both sides. “You might want to reconzider making any zudden movez,” the Shadow warned. “Thiz izn’t a zituation you can rezolve by force.” I wondered how he had even slipped in there.
“Gah! Cowards!” the shield guy shouted. Taking hostages felt a lot like something Takt would do—indeed, something he had done to us—which I didn’t really like the feeling of. Not that I was going to start trying to play the good guy now.
“You’re the onez who attacked uz. I will be happy to free thiz hoztage if we can reach an underztanding,” the Shadow replied.
“What do you want? Let him go!” the shield guy shouted without continuing the attack. The demi-human being held was also a man. If we were dealing with one of the vanguards of the waves, he would probably just call this a necessary sacrifice and continue the attack anyway. The guy with the shield didn’t move at all, however. Same thing for scissors woman. Raphtalia and the others seemed to notice this too and ceased attacking while remaining on alert.
It looked like we might actually be able to talk to these guys.
“First,” the Shadow asked those immobilized by his hostage strategy, “can you tell uz why you attacked uz like thiz? Are you also one of the vanguardz of the wavez?”
“Certainly not!” the shield guy answered without hesitation.
“Then what iz the meaning of thiz battle?” the Shadow asked.
“What do you think? The sword holy weapon hero has launched an attack on our world, even bringing someone with a copy of the shield holy weapon, and is trying to kill us!” the shield guy said.
“There we have it,” the Shadow said, turning to me. “What do you make of all that?” Something about being attacked by the Sword Hero stuck out first. I didn’t know why they were fighting, but these guys seemed to have mistaken us for someone else.
“I hate to break it to you, but this shield isn’t a copy of anything. It’s the real shield holy weapon. We also haven’t launched an attack on anything. We’ve been caught up in some kind of incident and brought here,” I explained. If only my shield was some kind of copy, then maybe I could get rid of it!
“And you expect us to believe that?” came the reply.
“I guess it could be a lot to swallow. You get to decide for yourselves if what we’re saying is the truth or not. How does that sound? While you’re doing that, start talking. Who are you?” I asked the guy in full-body armor who used the same skills as my shield. We at least needed to find out what we were dealing with here. From the way he reacted to the hostage being taken, he seemed to care for his allies. That was something. He had also said that my shield holy weapon was a “copy.”
At my question, the shield guy and scissors woman looked at each other, and then scissors woman took a step forward and introduced herself.
“My name is R’yne. I am the hero from another world chosen by the sewing kit vassal weapon. I am cooperating with the others here for . . . various reasons,” she said.
“Sewing kit?” S’yne said. I looked over to see her eyes wide in surprise. It was starting to look like there could be multiple versions of the same vassal weapon. We had waves causing worlds to literally crash together, so anything seemed possible.
“A strange coincidence. This is also the holder of the—a sewing kit vassal weapon. Unfortunately, the world she comes from was destroyed,” I explained. As I did so, S’yne held up her scissors to be seen, changing them into a form that was absolutely identical to the ones held by scissors woman—R’yne. Even their names were almost identical. I didn’t need to see it written down to know R’yne also had that dumb “fantasy” apostrophe. That said, she also had wings on her back, and the weapon itself seemed to be in good shape, so there were some differences too.
“A strange coincidence indeed,” R’yne said.
“I agree,” I replied. Then she pointed at me, expecting an introduction in return. I didn’t have much choice. After all, I wasn’t one of these vanguards of the waves, asking people to tell me who they were but then thinking they didn’t need to do the same.
“My name is Naofumi Iwatani. I was summoned here from Japan, and I’m one of the four holy heroes—the Shield Hero,” I said. As I spoke, the shield guy in his full armor finally removed his helmet and let us see his face. He looked like a young, agreeable youth, at a glance. Not overly handsome, but with warm and appealing features. He also looked to be around the same age as me.
“My name is Mamoru Shirono. I was also summoned here from Japan, and I’m also the Shield Hero. I’m fighting in this world to overcome the waves. I don’t know what world you wandered in from, but you’d better get back there right away,” he suggested. Hearing these words, the Shadow released his hostage and moved swiftly over to join us. They seemed relieved to have that threat lifted from their head.
“The Shield Hero, huh?” I said. From the skills he had used, it seemed to fit. I didn’t know where we were, what place—or what world—this was, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find the same holy weapons here. There weren’t that many types of possible weapons anyway, so it wasn’t unnatural for them to start overlapping. In fact, it was more miraculous that between our world and Kizuna’s, which had a total of twenty-three types of weapons, all of them were different from each other.
What this seemed to mean, anyway, was that this new Shield Hero was in conflict with a different Sword Hero—someone other than Ren—who also came from a different world to this one.
Just to be on the safe side, I checked whether I could use the sakura stone of destiny shield on him. Weapons made from that special stone were very effective against heroes—and I was pleased to see that, yes, I could use it. If negotiations collapsed, then that’s what I would turn to.
“Sounds like we’re both heroes,” he said.
“Yep, Shield Hero,” I replied, trying it out.
“That’s right, Shield Hero,” he said back, doing the same. It looked like the forces to which S’yne’s sister belonged had moved us to some other alternate world. Our levels hadn’t reset because it was very similar to our own, perhaps. It was probably something like that. There were other things that also didn’t quite fit together, but it sounded like we’d been drawn into the conflict between two opposing worlds.
In that moment, the core parts of both my shield and the shield of the other Shield Hero both flashed. It was like they were telling us to trust each other, almost.
And that was the meeting of the two Shield Heroes.
“Hold on. Did you say four holy heroes?” asked Mamoru Shirono.
“The four holy heroes, one for each of the four holy weapons,” I told him.
“There are four holy weapons in your world?” Mamoru said incredulously. In every world I had visited so far, there were four holy weapons and then their vassal weapons. This world seemed to be different. I wondered again what kind of place we had ended up in—but for now, all we could do was keep talking.
“Our investigations on the subject have led us to believe that, at some point in the past, two sets of waves caused a total of four worlds to be merged together, thus allowing for there to be four holy weapon heroes. Just to avoid confusion here, let me clarify that the first and second bouts of waves—that is, the merging of worlds—have been completed, and we are now experiencing the third bout,” I explained.
“I see,” Mamoru pondered. “Things sound pretty different from our world. Here we are known as the ‘two holy heroes’ or the ‘holy weapon heroes.’ From what you just said, it sounds like we are in the second batch of waves, then?” Okay then. It really sounded right to say we were in a totally different world. This was all S’yne’s sister’s doing! She’d sent us right into this trap!
The otherworldly Shield Hero looked over at Ren.
“Ah, this guy with the sword is Ren Amaki, the Sword Hero. We’re both heroes together,” I explained. Ren relaxed his stance too, showing that he didn’t want to fight any longer. Those we were talking to seemed to pick up on this, and while they didn’t move any closer, they seemed willing to keep talking.
“I see. I’m sorry for attacking you without talking first,” Mamoru said. Sometimes these situations required sudden action, so I did understand—but accepting an apology too easily could put us on unsteady footing in future dealings.
“We didn’t have any intent to fight you, so you could have stopped and asked. Ren clearly wanted to talk with you, right?” I pointed out. The other hero seemed to be feeling sufficiently guilty about it, averting his gaze apologetically while saying nothing.
“Mamoru . . .” Raphtalia muttered, looking across at him.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“No, it’s nothing . . .” she replied.
“Sorry, who is she?” Mamoru asked, pointing at Raphtalia.
“This is Raphtalia, my right hand in combat. Her weapon is the katana vassal weapon, which we obtained in a different world to this one—and different from our own world too, actually,” I said. I was starting to juggle a lot of worlds.
“You’ve got quite a collection of weapons,” Mamoru commented.
“You too, from the look of it,” I replied, looking across at R’yne.
“I guess so. Sorry, I was just surprised how much she looks like someone else I know,” Mamoru said, still looking at Raphtalia. I wondered if that was just a line.
“I see. Even more strange coincidences,” I commented.
“This person comes from far across the eastern sea, a place called Q’ten Lo. Do you think they originally were summoned from your world, perhaps?” Mamoru inquired. Raphtalia and I both did a double take. Q’ten Lo! That was clearly what he said.
“Maybe someone like your parents, Raphtalia, cast out of their home nation, were summoned here,” I theorized. Their bloodline had survived by being caught up in a summoning. That sounded possible. We knew from Shildina that summoned heroes didn’t only have to come from modern Japan—or some version of Japan, anyway.
“Do you know of Q’ten Lo?” Mamoru asked, puzzled at our exchange.
“It’s the name of a country on our world,” I replied.
“We have one here too,” he responded. I shook my head. Something wasn’t fitting together here. It felt like we were making some kind of fundamental error.
“Ah!” Raphtalia suddenly exclaimed. She turned away from Mamoru and had a look of surprise on her face.
“Mamoru . . . no, it can’t possibly be . . .” Eclair had also seemed to be chewing something over since hearing that name. If Raphtalia and Eclair had both realized something, it was likely pretty good information.
“What is it? Do you know something?” I asked.
“No . . . it doesn’t seem possible,” Raphtalia said.
“You know everything that happened with Rishia, right? Nothing is impossible. We need to find out what’s going on here. Ideas about what’s ‘possible’ only get in the way. Let me decide for myself if something sounds right,” I told her.
“Okay, very well.” Raphtalia looked at Eclair for a moment and then gathered her breath and continued. “There are lots of fairy tales mixed into the legends of the four holy heroes. Some of them, dealing with the waves that caused the previous cataclysm, talk about an object of worship and the founder of Siltvelt itself—one of the most famous of the Shield Heroes. Well, his name was . . . Mamoru.”
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