Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen: The Country Above the Spirit Tortoise 

“Mr. Iwatani, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for your efforts in this latest battle.” 

I went back to the meeting tent of the coalition army after the battle. The queen and foreign generals there all offered words of gratitude to me. 

The crowd of soldiers and adventurers in the camp had also shouted their thanks to me when I walked over. 

I have to say, I didn’t hate it. 

The only strange thing was that no one had said thank you before. 

There had been times when those directly affected by the destruction of the waves had offered their thanks, sure, but no one had ever cheered for me and meant it. 

As for the wave in Cal Mira, we hadn’t had the time to celebrate because we’d been so worried about what was coming next. 

For the time being, I wanted to immerse myself in the joy of victory. I wanted to savor it, just once. 

Recognized as the MVPs of the battle, Raphtalia and Filo were surrounded by enthusiastically cheering soldiers. 

“Wow! Mr. Naofumi!” 

“Yay! Master! They like us!” 

Considering I was a hero, I thought it would be best to avoid the limelight. 

Then the crowd split and bowed, forming a path for me to enter the meeting tent. Eclair, the old lady, and Rishia were standing off to the side, watching. I guess I was the only one that really needed to stand before the crowd. “This is all well and fine,” I said, acknowledging their cheers. I looked through the flap of the tent. I could see the massive body of the Spirit Tortoise where it lay on the battlefield. It was just lying there, not even twitching, on the silent ground. Clearly, we had won. “But there is still a problem.” “What’s that?” The queen and the others hadn’t noticed yet. I guess only a hero could really check anyway. I looked at the icon flashing in my field of vision. The blue hourglass was still there. The countdown to the waves always appeared immediately when the current wave ended. So if the icon was still there, what could it mean? The blue hourglass was silent but present. “The blue hourglass . . . It wasn’t caused by the Spirit Tortoise.” Something else was going on. The Spirit Tortoise had fallen easier than I would have expected, and the blue hourglass was still there. 

What was it trying to say? It was saying that whatever was going on wasn’t over yet. 

“But...” 

The whole tent fell silent. Everyone looked around, their faces growing pale. 

We’d dealt with the immediate problem. The Spirit Tortoise was dead. But something else was going on. 

“I want to you to look some things up for me. There’s still something important we haven’t figured out yet.” 

“Mr. Iwatani speaks the truth. Do not let your guards down yet. We must search out the cause of this.” 

“I’ll leave it to you then.” 

“Then I will send word to the seven star heroes. They are currently on their way here, but I will have them visit the land where the Spirit Tortoise slept to see what they discover. Besides, they would be able to get there sooner than you could, Mr. Iwatani,” 

I didn’t know what sort of people these other heroes were, but I don’t think it was the sort of investigation that needed a crowd. 

Anyway, I had other things I wanted to look into. 

“Please leave the Spirit Tortoise investigation to us.” 

“Yeah, good. We’re going to look for the missing three heroes. And the coalition army will probably need help assisting the areas that were damaged in the Spirit Tortoise attack.” 

“As you wish.” 

The queen left to go investigate the tortoise’s body. The land where it had been sealed away was going to be looked into by the seven star heroes. So what was left for us to do? We needed to backtrack, following the path the Spirit Tortoise had taken, to try and discover what happened to the other heroes. 

Still, if we helped the damaged areas we came across along the way, people would start to think better of the Shield Hero. 

I wanted the other heroes to understand how different I was from them. 

The four heroes had to fight together, and yet I was the only one, along with Raphtalia and the others, who helped the coalition army in this fight. I should let them know how different we were—I had the right to do so. 

There was a feast that went all through the night. I spent a little time there before meeting up with Raphtalia and the others. 

“It looks like we are going to go searching for the other heroes pretty soon. We’ll assist any communities we pass through on the way.” 

I told the queen to send word if they found anything of interest. 

The investigation of the tortoise itself was very important. I wanted to help if I could, but it was also essential that we find and secure the other heroes as soon as possible. 

If they were just out wandering around the countryside, I’d have to drag them back to the castle. And if they were hurt or unable to move for some reason, I’d have to find a way to rescue them. 

Apparently they weren’t dead—which meant I was going to have to go after them. 

They had probably just run away when they realized that they weren’t a match for the Spirit Tortoise. 

They did have bad luck with that sort of thing, after all. 

“We should check out the back of the Spirit Tortoise, too.” 

“You want to climb up on the back of a dead monster?” 

“The shell is like a mountain, I think we can get a lay of the land and look for affected towns from up there.” 

“Understood.” 

The earlier we got started, the better. 

They queen had mentioned going inside the tortoise’s body. I hoped that we’d find the other heroes in there. 

I had no doubt they realized they were in over their heads when they found themselves face-to-face with the tortoise for the first time. 

Maybe they would have decided to sneak under its shell and to fight it from within. 

They’d probably come crawling out and find some way to complain about the fact that we had defeated the Spirit Tortoise. That’s just the sort of people they were. 

We started the climb up onto the Spirit Tortoise’s shell. 

I took a look around. There was a small town nearby. 

I wondered what the residents of the town had thought when they realized their homes were actually built on the back of a giant monster. 

There was a building that looked like a castle of some kind. 

The town itself had a Chinese aesthetic. People said that the Spirit Tortoise had Mount Penglai on its back, so I guess that made sense. 

I wondered if there might be some mountain-dwelling ascetics up there too, but we didn’t run into any. 

The coalition army followed us up to the tortoise’s shell. 

The town we found on the shell was completely ruined, and there were corpses scattered around the streets. The Spirit Tortoise’s servant monsters had probably killed them. 

The smell of putrid rot stung my nose. 

There were no servant monster bodies to be found. All we found were the bodies of the townspeople. 

But the familiars infected the people they killed. We had to be careful of the remaining bodies while we took a look around. 

After a short walk, we came upon a building that looked like a temple. 

It looked like the sort of place that would give us an important clue. Any gamer would think the same thing. 

“Let’s check out that building.” 

“Okay.” 

“Yay!” 

“Oh, yes. I believe that temple was very famous in the area.” 

“You know your stuff, Rishia.” 

Eclair was saying short prayers over the bodies we passed. 

“I read about it in an old travelogue.” 

“I came here once, many years ago. It’s like there is nothing left. This is horrible.” 

We couldn’t rely on the old lady’s knowledge about the place then. 

But at least she had been there once before. That was better than nothing. 

I walked up to the temple and looked inside. The building had been severely damaged in the Spirit Tortoise's rampage. 

I looked around the interior, but the only thing of interest I found was a mural depicting the Spirit Tortoise. 

“What’s that?!” 

There was writing in the lower corner of the mural. 

It was Japanese. 

“What’s it say?” 

Those summoned from Japan . . . If you can read these words . . . Know . . . Please . . . 

. . . Monster very dangerous . . . After the seal . . . Seventh . . . Destroyed . . . 

After looking into it . . . The goal . . . Of the world . . . 

Please . . . Intent . . . Do not break the seal. 

Those that sacrifice all do so for the world. 

Their sacrifice will be rewarded. 

Yet pride . . . no . . . Can read these words . . . Then . . . You must for . . . defeat. . . 

The way to defeat it is . . . 

Eight . . . Hero . . . 

—Keichi 

Much of the message was too degraded to make out. 

But I could fill in some of the blanks myself. 

The seventh would break the seal. 

That fit with the number on the blue hourglass. Did the seal number count down to this? 

The writing was too faded to make out the important parts. What was the “goal” it referenced? 

It mentioned sacrifice for the sake of the world, and that lined up with what Fitoria had said. 

Hey, this wasn’t an anime or a manga or anything—why were the important parts all missing? 

If I hadn’t spoken with Fitoria before, I wouldn't have been able to make heads of tails of most of it. 

I looked closer. Most of the writing had faded, but the section after “the way to defeat it” looked like it had been purposefully erased. 

The scratch marks looked too old to have been created in the recent awakening. The writing itself looked ancient—so I couldn’t complain about its illegibility. That didn’t make it any easier to read though. 

The only other thing I could get from it was the name at the bottom. 

I didn’t know his last name, but there must have been a hero named Keichi. 

But it was all very old. There was no way to know what sort of person he had been. 

Still, I knew there was a high likelihood that he had come from an alternate version of Japan, just like me and the other heroes. 

There was no way to know how long ago that mural was painted. And all of our worlds might have been on different timelines. 

Ren seemed like he was from a different time. Still, there was no point in guessing at random. 

And what was this “eight” that was mentioned at the end? That couldn’t have been referring to the seven star heroes. 

It must have said something important, but it was too degraded to read. 

Hm... 

“Can you read it, master?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Wow! The writing is so strange.” 

“Yeah, I guess they don’t write like this in Melromarc.” 

“Is this the kind of writing system they use where you are from, Mr. Naofumi?” 

“Yeah. Remember how I read that other thing?” 

“Oh yes, that’s right.” 

“Hero writing?” 

Eclair whispered as she ran her hand over the letters. 

Hero writing? That was the sort of thing an otaku would flip over. It did sound kind of exciting. 

“Hero writing?” 

“Yes. You probably know about it already, Rishia. It’s the kind of writing that the ancient heroes left behind. It’s from their world.” 

“It’s just normal Japanese. Nothing special.” 

“The writing means something different depending on the hero who wrote it. Deciphering the messages can be very difficult.” 

I could sort of understand what she meant. 

So Ren and I might use the same characters to write, but there was always the chance that the words themselves could be different. 

Words and their meanings change and evolve over time. Something that was said a long time ago could carry a different meaning when spoken in the present. 

So the writing could mean different things, even if it was written with the same characters, depending on who wrote it. 

It was possible to study the writing, but how would you even know if you were interpreting it properly? 

“Has this been analyzed?” 

“Um . . . Well, this land has adhered to isolationist policies for the last hundred years or so. It was very difficult to enter or leave it. So I don’t know.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yes. They wished to protect their unique culture. Our own land was running out of resources due to all the wars at the time.” 

Did that mean this was the only chance anyone had yet had to read the mural? And was I the only person who could read it? I’m sure someone else, some studied expert, could read it too. But could we really be sure that all the heroes had all come from Japan? If we found messages in English, that would be fine too, but what if they were in another language? But then there were the characters themselves. My shield could translate languages, so I’d been doing alright this whole time. Written language, on the other hand . . . “It doesn’t look like there is much else for us to learn here.” “No, it doesn’t it.” “This temple was famous. What a shame that it was ruined by the Spirit Tortoise.” “Feh . . . Yes, it’s very sad.” I turned to the two of them and indicated it was time to move on. “Where shall we go next?” “To the castle we saw earlier? It might be filled with useful materials.” “Wait, Mr. Iwatani. What do you intend to do with the castle’s treasure?” Eclair shot me a suspicious look. Raphtalia gave an exasperated sigh. “The owners are all dead, so I thought it would make the most sense for us to take what is useful.” “Isn’t that just like looting a disaster area?” 

She was technically right. . . 

But there were sure to be people out there that needed those materials more than we did. They could be used to help other towns rebuild. 

“We can distribute the materials to communities affected by the Spirit Tortoise’s rampage.” 

“I suppose you are right.” 

“Or shall we surrender it all to the coalition army? They are heading for it as we speak.” 

“What?!” 

Eclair gazed at the castle. A line of coalition army soldiers was heading for the doors. 

Say what you want. Armies always behaved this way. 

I hadn’t been face-to-face with this stuff much lately, but the army was full of jerks. Not that I was one to talk. 

“We cannot permit such barbarism! Mr. Iwatani, we must go stop them.” 

“Oh, yeah, right, right. Filo, take Eclair over there.” 

“Okay! Let’s go, lady! Your hair is like red veggies!” 

“Red veggies?” 

Eclair was stunned by Filo’s “special” way of viewing things. 

Granted, most of us wouldn’t take kindly to being called vegetables. 

If she’d talked to me like that, I would have given her an earful. 

“Listen up. My name is Eclair. I expect you to remember that, Ms. Filo.” 

“Um . . . Declaria?” 

“No! Did you even listen to me?” They both looked crazy to me. I decided to tell the queen about what the coalition army was doing. “Hey, old lady! Do me a favor and tell the queen about this.” “Very well. When I return I will accompany my disciple, Eclair, and help her defend the treasure.” She quickly ran from the temple ruins. That just left Raphtalia, Rishia, and I. “Let’s continue looking into this.” “Alright.” “Fehh . . . It’s so quiet. It’s kind of scary!” She was right—temples were kind of scary. They always made you feel like you were going to run into a ghost. I guess ghosts were just ordinary monsters in this world. “Hope we don’t run into any ghosts or undead monsters!” “Fehhh!” The sun was starting to set, which helped with the creepy atmosphere. “Mr. Naofumi, you’re scaring Rishia. Please don’t get her too excited.” “I know, I know. Let’s leave the town to the army. Want to go check out the mountain?” “Yes.” We went to the mountain and looked around for a little while. But we didn’t find anything of interest, so we called off the investigation. 

We did find a cave, and it seemed to lead into the inside of the tortoise’s body, just like the legends had said. When the sun rose the next day, we went back to check the cave out in more detail but were not able to find a passage that led to the inside of the monster

. 

In the end, all we found during our investigation of the Spirit Tortoise was an eerie, empty mountain, and a town full of the sleeping dead.