Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 22 - Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: 0 Territory

It was the next day.

“Hey, Naofumi! Wake up!” Melty exclaimed in a panic. She was hammering on the door to my room.

“What’s all the noise?” I said.

“Big trouble! Wake up and listen to this!” Melty shouted.

“Okay, okay. What’s going on? Another Piensa attack?” I asked.

“Indirectly, yes!” Melty exclaimed. I shook my head. They weren’t going to give up easily. I’d thought proclaiming loud and clear that we had the Hammer Hero would have shut them up, but it didn’t seem to have worked. It might be time to crush them once and for all. That sounded like a faster move than waiting for Mamoru to take care of things. We’d give them a taste of what it was like to be invaded.

“We sent emissaries in order to form our own alliance to other nations. They’ve been attacking all of those nations!” Melty said.

“Finally showing their true colors,” I muttered. We had them on the ropes, but that also made them dangerous. But we should be careful or they might hand us the justice in this situation.

“I don’t know what they want. But they aren’t holding anything back. Shadow barely made it back,” Melty said.

“That’z right,” Shadow said, arriving moments later. He was a mess and was basically being held up by Raphtalia. He was badly injured. Bloody bandages were wrapped around his head. The Raph specimen that had been with him was badly injured too. He was basically clinging to Shadow’s shoulder. Things were bad if they had discovered Shadow’s covert infiltration and caused this much damage to him.

“Mr. Naofumi, the situation is grave,” Raphtalia said.

“I see that, but we need to prioritize healing them first,” I replied.

“That would be welcome,” Shadow said, “but I’m not zure even you can heal these woundz, Zhield Hero.” The Raph specimen squeaked too.

“I think I can handle it,” I said. They didn’t look completely hopeless, like Atla had. In fact, they looked like a little magic or medicine would heal them right up without any trouble. But no one had done that yet, which suggested something else was going on here. There was only one way to find out—I incanted some healing magic at the Shadow and his ninja-cosplay Raph specimen.

“My time to shine!” said the Demon Dragon in my head.

“All Liberation Heal,” I said. My healing magic was instantly activated. For a moment I thought it was working, but in the next instant their wounds burst open again. “What’s the problem?” I exclaimed.

“The Pienza forcez have introduced zome myzteriouz new weaponz that cause incurable injuriez. The zoldierz from the nationz we tried to form an alliance with were attacked in the zame way. The battle was completely one-zided,” Shadow explained. This was a new pain in the ass that I didn’t need. It looked like some kind of curse. Perhaps it was similar to when I was badly wounded by Blood Sacrifice. I combined the power of my shield and the Demon Dragon to analyze Shadow’s wounds. I hoped that some ritual magic or holy water could cure them. If not, they were eventually going to die. The continued bleeding was weakening them, I could tell.

“Raphtalia, we need to get them to the treatment center in the village,” I said.

“Of course,” Raphtalia replied.

“Naofumi. They’ll be okay, won’t they?” Melty asked.

“We’ll heal them, don’t worry,” I assured her. “Can you get Rat and Holn, please?”

“Sure,” Melty replied. We took Shadow and the Raph specimen to the village treatment center and began their treatment. Rat and Holn arrived quickly and joined me in analyzing the wounds of Shadow.

“I’m not seeing many signs of a little old curse,” Holn admitted.

“Indeed,” Rat agreed. “It’s more like the wounds have been fixed in an open position. I think their condition would be even worse if it wasn’t for the properties of Duke’s healing magic.” Rat and Holn’s analysis revealed that incorrect treatment would have the opposite effect, and so should be avoided. The reason that my magic hadn’t made things worse was because I couldn’t attack. The effects of incoming magic were being reversed, which should turn healing into attack. Seeing as I was unable to attack, however, the healing magic just cut out instead. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or abjectly depressed at this new twist in my physiology. At least it had prevented Shadow and the Raph specimen from getting any worse.

“This whole setup is pretty nasty,” Holn muttered. “I don’t think Piensa has access to technology like this.”

“There’s a curse that prevents healing in the future . . . but nothing quite like this,” Rat admitted.

“Diagnosis is one thing. But is there any way to fix it?” I asked.

“Maybe in a limited capacity,” Holn said. “They might heal if the wounds were cut out completely.”

“Cazes like that were zeen in the intel I gathered . . . The woundz zimply got deeper,” Shadow reported. He had been collecting information on our enemies, and it sounded like that had included information on other victims. I cursed. Every treatment I had been thinking of would probably have the opposite effect.

“We could try using healing cultivation fluid,” Rat suggested. “Let’s see what that does.” She took out a test tube of it and placed some on one of Shadow’s wounds. Smoke rose with a sizzling sound, blood sprayed out, and the wound only got deeper. “That’s having the opposite effect,” she said, quickly stopping.

“I refuse to believe that anything is impossible to heal. That sounds like complete fiction,” Holn said firmly. It certainly sounded like fiction to me too—like a weapon from some ancient myth from Earth that caused wounds that would never heal. “We might be able to overwrite it with a cell transplant. This is pretty thorough though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it blocks that too,” she went on. I cursed again. This was black, twisted technology. It was just evil. It was almost as if S’yne’s sister and her organization were here working in Piensa. We were in the past, so they actually might be . . .

“Do you have any other ideas?” I asked. If the wounds themselves couldn’t be healed, maybe we could treat the area around them. But even placing a skin transplant over the top probably wasn’t going to work here.

Then I recalled how Kizuna had saved the modified Tsugumi and ended the power of one of the resurrected.

“Raphtalia,” I said. Ren and S’yne were here too, looking on with concern, but I thought it was fastest to ask Raphtalia.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Try cutting their wounds with Katana 0,” I told her.

“Are you sure?” she asked after a pause.

“The 0 weapons don’t have any attack power. They’re also the only thing I can think of that might work against a bundle of pure evil like this,” I said. This seemed as unfair, unjust, or irregular as anything we had seen so far. The 0 weapons seemed to exist to combat that brand of unfairness.

“I’ll give it a try,” Raphtalia said. She drew her katana, changed it to Katana 0, and slid the blade over Shadow’s wounds. He moaned, trying to withstand the pain. Something seemed to be working. Maybe that was all we needed to do.

“First Heal,” I said, applying some healing magic to the areas Raphtalia had tended to. But there didn’t seem to be any major changes, and blood started to seep out again.

“I can’t believe it,” Raphtalia said.

“Even 0 can’t help us,” I muttered. Maybe this wasn’t such an irregularity after all.

“This is extreme,” Rat agreed.

“I must admit even my impressive brain can’t seem to come up with a treatment,” Holn said. “Maybe I could create some homunculi and transfer their souls over?”

“And you can do that in time?” I asked.

“I ztill have . . . a little time. I’m not . . . dying yet,” Shadow said weakly. Probably not in the next few minutes, but with all the bleeding, I’d be surprised if he had two days. Maybe we should use that time to raid Piensa and find the one responsible for this.

“Will your idea work in time, Holn?” I asked again.

“A tall order. Even if I cultivate the cells at a breakneck pace . . . we can’t be sure they haven’t planned for this eventuality,” she admitted. She was normally so confident, so the hesitancy in her answers shook me as much as anything else. That told me how hopeless this was. The only one who could remove this was the one who had caused it, but who knew what they would ask in order to do so?

“Naofumi. . .” Melty looked at me. Both of her hands were pressed together as though in prayer. If we allowed Piensa to invade, we might be able to save Shadow and the Raph specimen. It would delay us finding a way back to the future—indeed, it might prevent it completely. But that wasn’t reason enough to dismiss it out of hand.

“Zhield Hero. You muzt not accept the evil of Pienza . . . for my zake,” Shadow said. The Raph specimen squeaked too, both of them shaking their heads. “There’z ztill time. I underztood how the queen felt now . . . painfully underztand. At leazt I have zome time before I pazz to zhare my final wordz with you.”

“Raph,” managed the Raph specimen.

But I made a decision after losing Atla, and being saved by everyone, and then talking to Atla again. Whatever happened, I made a decision not to lose anyone else. Whatever the cost, I wanted to protect them all. I clenched my fists tightly, pushing down the urge to scream out. Then I heard a voice from somewhere.

“Are you sure?”

It wasn’t a voice I had heard before, but it also felt vaguely familiar. It was a bit like my own voice, but also not quite the same. I had no idea who it was. It might be coming from the shield, and it might just be ringing in my head.

The question the voice asked was more important than who was speaking.

Of course, I was sure. We’d had less contact with Shadow since wrapping up the stuff with the Church of the Three Heroes, but he had still done so much for our cause. Here in the past, he had gathered information on Piensa and helped Melty with her workload. I was also sure he had done all sorts of things to aid our cause. I didn’t want to lose someone who had done so much to help out.

“This could be a path of thorns. There might be no going back. Will you still regret nothing?”

I was unshaken. I had made my decision. There was no going back on it. If I could save the life of my allies, I’d do whatever it took.

“Then I shall answer your resolve.”

It felt like the voice got louder for a moment.

“. . . forgotten by . . . to 0 territory.”

 Beginning of 0 has changed! It became 0 territory: upper layer!

 Attack −1

 Enhanced magic passage rate

 Learned Reverse Dimensional Defensive Wall (weak)

All of that popped up in my status. At the same time, a way to heal these wounds . . . a magic formula also appeared in my mind.

“Translucent black, vomiting forth to create nothingness! Allow me to guide that power and ask for realization!” I incanted.

“Mr. Naofumi?” Raphtalia asked, startled.

“Has something happened?” Holn asked her.

“I’m not sure. I feel something from Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia replied. I was cursing to myself. This incantation was incredibly hard. It wasn’t the normal puzzle style, and the Demon Dragon wasn’t reacting either. It was like scooping fish from a pond that had been added to the normal style of puzzle; the pieces were the fish, but I had nothing but a flimsy membrane to collect them with.

“I, the Shield Hero, order the heavens and the earth to correct all order and return the puss to nothingness . . .” I tried again, but that didn’t work either. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I failed, but each one was increasing the length of time until the magic would be triggered. The difficulty of this was just so high! But that wasn’t going to stop me.

“I order the source of all power! Eradicate this cursed blight from these victims of irregularity! Fill First Heal Zero!” I finally got it. With a crackling, it felt like all the magic was draining from my fingers.

“Some kind of incantation? Zero, did you say?” Raphtalia murmured. Even as she did so, what looked like some distortion of space itself appeared from my hand and flew toward the wounds on Shadow and the Raph specimen. The magic I had unleashed passed through them, running over their wounds, and then vanished into the air a moment later. After finishing the incantation, I collapsed on the spot, perhaps even losing consciousness for a moment.

“Mr. Naofumi?!” Raphtalia exclaimed. She quickly moved in to support me, preventing me from hitting the ground. I moaned. “Are you okay?!”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I managed. “I just blanked out for a moment. Lack of magic.”

“I’ve never seen that happen to you before, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia said with concern.

“Just what magic did you use there?” Holn asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I replied. “Some magic that just popped into my head, basically.” I was more concerned with the strange new skill that had appeared: 0 territory: upper layer. There was a value next to it as well: 3%. “What about Shadow?” I asked.

“I’m not seeing any real changes,” Rat reported. I chugged some magic water to try and get my magic back up. I was still far from being fully healed, but the lethargy was at least gone. I was really hoping that had been more than just a waste of magic! I tried some healing magic on Shadow again. This time his wounds just closed right up.

“Oh wow!” said Rat.

“What did you do?” Holn asked. “I still wasn’t close to working out how to heal them.”

“I don’t know myself,” I replied. “Holn, that leaf you gave me which I put in my shield provided a certain skill. Well, that skill just evolved to let me use that magic.” I didn’t understand why myself, but for now we could simply celebrate the treatment of these untreatable wounds. “I’ll heal the rest of them.”

“Zhield Hero . . . thank you,” Shadow said. The Raph species thanked me too.

“I don’t need any more thanks. Heal those wounds and recover your strength,” I told them.

“Underztood,” Shadow replied.

“I think we need to give you some training too. Help keep you in the fight,” I told him. He was fairly strong, but we hadn’t applied things like the whip power-up method especially attentively. I needed to make sure I was suitably rewarding those who helped me out. Our enemies were ruthless. They would use whatever means they had at their disposal to injure and kill us. I wanted to make sure he would be able to make it through the next situation like this.

“Pleaze don’t take it too hard on me,” Shadow said. “I can reward you by turning into Raphtalia and zaying thingz zhe normally wouldn’t zay to you!”

“You just got saved from a certain death situation! Don’t put yourself in another!” I said. I wondered where these jokes of his came from. Maybe he was just trying to lighten the mood. “This sounds like we’ve got some trouble to deal with, anyway.” Internally, I was feeling upset about all of this. I applied healing magic to Shadow and the Raph species again and then decided what to do next. We would have a meeting with Mamoru and his allies. This was going to put off our trip to the sanctuary.

Mamoru and his allies had heard of the attack and came to discuss it. I was explaining everything in the village refectory. Hearing about this new threat from their enemy Piensa had created a heavy atmosphere in the room.

“Weapon attacks that only Naofumi can heal,” Mamoru muttered, crossing his arms.

“At least we do have a way of healing them,” Melty offered.

“Not one I can use repeatedly. It takes too much magic,” I said. We weren’t going to get far if I collapsed every time I had to use it. And it also took a long time to activate too.

“I wonder how they’re doing it . . . maybe an imbued effect or something special about the materials?” Ren started to analyze things from the perspective of a blacksmith. We hadn’t seen anything like this in the future. It was an attack so powerful even Holn couldn’t come up with a way to cure it right away.

“If we could obtain one of the weapons that caused it, or bring some of the victims here and run a few little old experiments, I might be able to work out how to deal with it,” Holn said. “The only issue is that I can’t guarantee the lives of those subjects.” Medicine had been built on a foundation of countless experiments and sacrifices. Holn was letting us know that even she might not be able to deal with something this evil without some such sacrifices.

“Not being able to heal from it makes it seem like it’s like some kind of mythical weapon,” Mamoru mused. I’d been thinking the same thing. There were a lot of weapons like that in mythology.

“That’s right. There are lots of weapons with legends like this in our world,” I agreed with him. Some famous examples I recalled from Celtic mythology were the Fragarach and Gae Bolg. Then there was the Harpe in Greek mythology. This was a world with many game-like elements. It wasn’t out of place to have weapons with mythical or legendary properties. Maybe the reason the 0 series hadn’t managed to resolve the effects was because they actually weren’t irregular to this world.

One thing that was easy to understand about this curse to prevent healing was that the only way to make it so evil was through careful manufacture. There was a way to resolve the damage, but it had been willfully removed.

“There’s also a chance they found the weapon in some ruins or something,” I said. Although we hadn’t found them in our world, there were apparently powerful weapons in this world that could rival the holy or vassal weapons. That reminded me of the one Ren had found in the filolial sanctuary. I remembered it was called Ascalon. If there was a famous dragon-killing sword here, all bets were off. There could even be things that other heroes had created replicas of. “The timing does seem a little suspect, however.” If they had this in their back pocket the entire time, it seemed strange that they would wait until now to unleash it. It was more than just using it because they were on the ropes.

“Melty, did Shadow say anything else?” I asked.

“No. Just that they suddenly deployed this kind of weapon,” Melty reported.

“This sounds like there’s someone behind all this feeding things to Piensa,” I mused.

“That sounds likely. So what do we do? Go on the attack ourselves?” Melty asked. I looked over at Natalia, who had her role as pacifier to consider.

“I admit, this is strange. But it’s too soon to attack Piensa. If they aren’t using hero weapons, then I can’t cooperate with deploying heroes to destroy them,” Natalia said firmly. She was answering strictly as the pacifier. Her stance that the power of heroes should not be used to ignite conflict was unchanged. “If those other than the heroes want to fight, be they from Piensa or Siltran, then they are free to do so.”

“And the exception would be if someone else was behind all this, and the Piensa Bow Hero was somehow involved,” I confirmed. Natalia nodded in response. So if technology had advanced to the point they could attack without using the power of the heroes, Natalia couldn’t get involved. That really pissed me off. “We killed one of those actually causing the waves,” I said, gritting my teeth. “What are they thinking, attacking us like this? Don’t they like world peace?”

“For Piensa, we’re the ones getting in the way of that—their own vision of what ‘world peace’ looks like,” Natalia said. They believed that Piensa was the center of the world and an environment in which everyone obeyed them was true peace. That had worked out for them up until now. They appeared to have justice on their side and then used their muscle to push that through. Our appearance and subsequent involvement had messed up their plans. But I still didn’t understand why they would cast their “justice” aside and launch an all-out assault using this new type of weapon.

“Sounds about right. They have been attacking other nations, saying that Siltran are the cause of all these troubles by keeping the strength to defeat the waves to ourselves,” Melty added. “They are staking everything on defeating us—after that they can spin things however they like.” They really were like Melromarc in the future. Maybe it was just human nature to prioritize one’s own authority over something like the waves. The time period didn’t matter; there were always countries like that. I was happy that I knew Piensa got wiped out in the future—the natural order restored. But considering that the roots of that same nation would become Melromarc made me sad too. Melty’s own ancestors might be in Piensa right now. “I’ll say what everyone here is thinking,” Melty continued, looking at Natalia and me. “The ones who assume the name of god are behind this. Right?”

“That seems very likely,” Natalia agreed. “But we can do little without decisive proof.”

“Indeed, and it would be difficult to scout out such proof,” the Water Dragon lamented. The dragon looked at me and added, “You’re brimming with violence. Control yourself.” I wondered if I really was so pissed off. I didn’t feel like I was exuding violence. I didn’t even feel like I was in a bad mood.

Back to the problem at hand. We were dealing with just the kind of scum who would try the roundabout approach next. Having these deadly new weapons appear at just the perfect moment seemed like all the proof we needed. But if we accused them of it now, they would deny everything. Even if we took Piensa off the map, the ones behind it would just do the same thing with a different country. The important thing here . . . was to keep Piensa dancing to their tune while luring out the ones pulling the strings and ending them. Easy enough to say, but we had no ideas for a plan to make it happen. This was going to be a difficult issue to resolve.

“There are still ways to deal with Piensa,” Melty said. “They might have some powerful new weapons, but they still need to hit us for them to work. We can send in our powerful non-hero fighters on a raid, obtain some of the weapons, and put together a treatment plan.”

“That sounds like the best approach,” I agreed. “Take their weapon and use it against them. We don’t know what the ones behind them will do next, but you can bet they will show their hand somewhere,” I said. This was all such a pain in the ass to deal with. I was starting to feel the same levels of aggravation as I did with Bitch. “Can we go into Piensa, just for some recon? We aren’t going to fight a war there, so that’s fine, right?” I asked Natalia. She didn’t say yes or no, just closed her eyes. It looked like she had given the green light. She just didn’t want to be too open about it.

“What about the justification Piensa originally gave about occupying the sanctuary? We won’t be able to make any moves while we scout things out,” Mamoru said, asking his sheep therianthrope aide and Melty.

“They are standing by that,” Melty said. “Domestically, they are saying that if they can occupy the sanctuary, the heroes will have to obey them, and then they can overcome the waves.” The sheep added his own “baah” of affirmation. It was interesting that Piensa remained so fixated on this sanctuary place. I wondered what special reason they might have for that—a reason that made it more important for them to obtain the sanctuary than even their neighbor Siltran.

“Information obtained by Shadow suggests they’ve sent a small elite force toward the sanctuary,” Melty reported.

“Okay. And how long will it take for Piensa to reach Siltran?” I asked.

“We still have some time as they try to get the other nations on board. I don’t think they will attack right away,” Melty guessed.

“The battlefield will be dangerous, but perhaps those other than the heroes should take part,” I pondered.

“Fighting is one thing, Naofumi, but what about people getting injured?” Melty asked. I was the only one who could heal those wounds. I froze at the thought of anyone from the village getting injured or dying in battle. If we took the lead, it would also pass the hand of justice back to them.

“If I’m totally honest about it, I’d like to just crush them and move on. We don’t need a big, protracted war,” I said. Then Mamoru put up his hand.

“I’d like to talk to the Bow Hero from Piensa,” Mamoru said. “Ask him if he’s really going along with this immoral plan of theirs and whether or not they should really be using methods like these, even in wartime.”

“If this was just a war of technology, we probably wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, but timing-wise, this is just too suspicious,” I said. “If all the heroes abandon Piensa, that would change the way the wind is blowing.” Sending heroes into war was not allowed. They were, from one perspective, weapons of mass destruction. Conflict in this time period was about making use of these trump cards without actually playing them outright. But what if your enemy didn’t have any hero cards in their deck, just some powerful new weapons? Without righteousness on their side, Piensa would descend to the level of a conquest-hungry enemy that needed to be defeated.

That strategy relied on being able to bring the Bow Hero to our side. It wasn’t going to work if he was like Itsuki used to be. But during the previous invasion, he had abstained from the fighting. There was a good chance we could get through to him.

“We need an attacking force to go into Piensa and a defending force to protect the sanctuary,” I surmised.

“That sounds right,” Melty confirmed.

“Leave the infiltration to me,” Mamoru said. “But if you have anyone who could help out, we could definitely make use of them.” Someone good at infiltration? Shadow had already been taken out.

“Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia said to me. “I think I would be suited to infiltration.” She was from a race skilled at illusion and concealment magic. From an abilities perspective, Raphtalia was best suited to the task.

“I’m not sure . . .” I said. I didn’t really want to send her into enemy territory when those enemies had such deadly weapons.

“I’m not going alone. I’ll have the Raph species helping me out,” Raphtalia assured me.

“That’s not all,” Rat said. “Even if we can’t heal the wounds, we can think up ways to escape those attacks. I might be able to make some single-use bio-armor, based on the body of Mikey Holn modified.”

“That sounds promising,” Holn agreed. “I’ll have it look like a robe or something. When it’s attacked it can swell up and prevent the attack from landing.”

“Sounds convenient,” I said. “That thing has multiple bodies?”

“It has slime characteristics, meaning it replicates by corrosive fusion,” Holn explained. I wondered if I was meant to understand that. I imagined a powerful slime for a moment, absorbing prey into itself, consuming it, and increasing in mass as a result. Part of that slime could then be turned into a robe. It probably would survive an attack.

“Mikey can use illusions and concealment, too, due to his Raph species heritage,” Rat continued. “He should be pretty well suited to infiltration.”

“I’ll go along too,” Natalia said, raising her hand as though to cut off Raphtalia. Natalia was both a pacifier and a hero and could do pretty much the same things as Raphtalia, so she should be fine. “I need to check for myself whether the Bow Hero has stepped off the path. His priority has to be protecting this world from the waves, so I need to ensure he isn’t involved in this foolish Piensa war.”

“Dafu!” said Dafu-chan. It sounded like the past Heavenly Emperor (the future Natalia) was praising her. This was a moment for tension in the air, but Dafu-chan seemed to be ignoring that completely.

“Curse-inflicting injuries that can’t be healed?” Filolia said with a chuckle. “What an exciting development! I’m going to send all who use such twisted means to the depths of hell!” She was off in her own head again. “Mamoru! A true hero can’t back down from this! Heroes must lead by example!”

“Filolia . . . you’re right. Let’s start by making contact with the Bow Hero,” Mamoru replied. This seemed like the moment to share the information the past Heavenly Emperor had given me last night and propose a full recon of the sanctuary.

“Okay. We’ll let Mamoru take charge of infiltrating Piensa, and everyone else will go take this ‘sanctuary’ they are so keen on and turn righteousness in our favor,” I said. Piensa’s supposition was that the heroes would gather to the side who held the sanctuary. If Siltran took the sanctuary, then Piensa would probably say it didn’t count because Siltran was an “evil” country.

“That’s not really the kind of place to be used in these games,” Mamoru said. “But I guess it would be worth you taking a look, Naofumi.”

“Okay, Mamoru! Leave Piensa to Filolia and her band of Dark Braves! And you take Naofumi and his allies to meet the folks at the sanctuary!” Filolia said loudly. Natalia had an instant frown on her face; maybe it would be better not to include her in the “Dark Braves.”

“The folks at the sanctuary?” I asked.

“That’s right. The ancestors of those who acted as allies to the original heroes still live in the vicinity of the sanctuary to protect the place. Lizard men, uhnte jimna, and races like that,” Mamoru explained.

“Ren.” Eclair chose this moment to address the Sword Hero.

“What?” he replied.

“I’m becoming interested in the sanctuary myself. Could I join you?” she asked.

“Naofumi, what do you think?” Ren asked me.

“You didn’t need to ask him. Just ask me,” I said. Such a waste of time. I guessed that from Eclair’s perspective Ren was the more approachable of the two of us. “Something on your mind?” I asked.

“Something personal, maybe. Like with Queen Melty or the former queen,” Eclair said. I waited a moment. “The warrior who was my father’s right hand . . . I was told he was the last direct descendant of the lizard men who allied with the Shield Hero. Unfortunately, he fell alongside my father, protecting the people during the first of the waves.”

“He was important to you?” I asked.

“Someone I respected as a warrior and teacher, yes. He often looked after me when my father was busy and is the reason I have such compassion for demi-humans. My father helped him build his own family. I can only presume . . . they were lost too . . .” Eclair trailed off. There was a moment of silence. That was a sad story, for sure. I could see why she might want to meet others of his race. I had been filled with malice toward Ruft when he sent his minions to attack Lurolona, but after I learned he was just a decoration—basically a prisoner—I had started to want to save him.

“There’s a portal located close to the sanctuary,” Holn said.

“No time to waste, then. Good. Eclair, Ren, with me,” I said.

“Thank you,” Eclair said.

“I’ll head over with you to check out the sanctuary, Naofumi . . .” Ren started.

“Leave defense of this nation to me!” Fohl said, raising his fist. This was the land that would eventually become Siltvelt, so I could understand Fohl wanting to protect it.

“No big risks, okay? Everyone else from the village, that goes for you too! If you see any suspicious weapons that could be this new type, don’t get hit by them! Understand?” I shouted. Shouts of general agreement came back.

“You bet, Bubba!” Keel replied happily. I still wasn’t sure she had conquered her trauma, but Keel and the others would form an important part of pushing back Piensa’s attack. We didn’t have enough justification for the heroes to fight. That was a pain, but we’d only be able to act if they played the hero card first.

Melty stood up and spoke too. “I’m interested in the sanctuary as well. Ruft, what about you?” she asked.

“I’m going along. I want to be ready to fight, no matter where the fighting breaks out,” he said.

“Okay. Naofumi, let’s get going,” Melty said.

“Off we go,” I agreed with her. We finished our meeting and set out on our separate ways to prepare for the conflict ahead.