Chapter Seventeen: An Order
Father took a deep breath and clenched his fists tightly. Mustering up courage, he entered the tent. The monster trainer came to greet us.
“Ah, hello there, heroes. I’m so glad you came back to my humble store. Yes sir.”
“So?” Father asked. “Do you have the slave we ordered?”
“I certainly do. Fortunately, a colleague of mine had purchased the slave quite recently, so I was able to procure it immediately.”
The monster trainer gave an order to a subordinate, who went to the back of the tent and brought a piglet out toward us.
The piglet oinked several times, struggling against the subordinate’s grasp. Could that be Keel? A pig—that wouldn’t do at all! I wasn’t able to form a clear memory of Keel, so I had no idea if it was even her or not. I certainly wasn’t able to communicate with her. Perhaps I would be able to understand her after she transformed into a dog.
“How is she? Yes sir,” the monster trainer asked.
Father paused. “How much?”
“Well, we’ve selected her according to your personality, and the slave registration ceremony is included as well. How about 45 silver pieces? Yes sir.”
I saw Father’s eyes dart around and he took a deep breath.
I remembered something. I turned to Father and whispered in his ear.
“Father, it’s best if we get a little bit of slave registration ink from him too. We can use that to power up her abilities and growth.”
I had never had a slave of my own before, but I had used the ink to power up my spear. I’m sure I couldn’t do it as well as Father could, of course.
Father nodded. He took a step toward the monster trainer and assumed a haughty expression.
“Hmmm . . . so this is Keel, eh?”
Keel spat out a series of oinks. Father interpreted for me. Apparently, she was talking about how she wouldn’t let us tyrannize or mistreat her.
“She seems to have a rather aggressive personality. Yes sir,” the monster trainer said, smiling nervously. “Is that a problem?”
Of course, Father’s response was right on the mark.
“Part of the point of having a slave is to whip her into shape, isn’t it?” Father asked the monster trainer. “A bit of an attitude makes that all the more interesting.”
The monster trainer nodded excitedly. “I can tell that you’re going places, Shield Hero. Yes sir. Now let’s begin the registration—”
“Could you throw in some registration ink too? We’d like to use it on our weapons as well.”
“Of course! Yes sir!”
Things had gone as smooth as can be. It was like night and day compared to when I visited this place by myself. Father had even gotten him to throw in extra services for free! I wondered if it was thanks to his haughty attitude.
I explained to Father that in order to complete the registration, he had to add a drop of his blood to the ink. Father cut the same place on his hand as yesterday, where the cut he made to register Sakura was just beginning to heal. A drop of blood fell into place.
The monster trainer’s subordinate held the so-called Keel in place and applied the registration seal. She cried out in pain.
She glared at us like we were her oppressors, but halfway through the registration she suddenly went quiet and endured the pain. Naturally, any friend of big sis’s would be able to tough it out, I say.
Keel grunted in pain as the registration finally finished.
Father carefully examined the monster seal, checking it all over.
“All done, right?” he asked.
Father handed over the silver pieces to the monster trainer and looked down at Keel.
“From now on, you’re mine!” he declared. “Do your best to stay alive, if you can.”
Keel cast an angry stare at Father. However, I knew it wouldn’t take long for her to get as attached to him as everyone else did.
“See you next time,” Father said to the monster trainer. “I’ll come back if I need something else.”
“Please come again. Yes sir. I’d be happy to serve you.”
Father waved and grabbed Keel by the hand.
“Let’s go,” he called.
“Yes, Father!”
I followed Father out of the tent. The filolials greeted us with merry chirps.
“We’re back!” Father said.
“You waited so patiently,” I cooed, petting them and lifting them into my arms.
I could tell the filolials were on the verge of another growth spurt. They were as hungry as could be.
Keel blinked in surprise upon seeing them but quickly looked the other way.
“So what do we do now?” Father asked. “Do you want to take Keel with you so we can have everyone level up together?”
“Not a bad idea,” I said. In order to best level up Sakura, I could wait until night, not let her eat anything, and then take her out to the mountains again. We had to make sure that no one suspected that Father and I were working together, I say.
The only problem at the moment was that I had no idea what Keel was saying. This was going to pose a problem, especially considering that the filolials couldn’t speak yet either.
“Father, please assist me,” I said. “I can’t understand the language of pigs, so I don’t think I can work with Keel.”
“I get that you call women you dislike pigs,” Father said, “but what exactly is the problem?”
“Pigs are pigs, I say!” I declared. “They are lowly creatures that squirm in the mud and think of nothing but themselves!”
Father sighed. “I don’t know why or how, but you see women as pigs, right? Because of the time loop, maybe? Wait, you’re saying she’s a girl?”
“Oink!?”
Keel had started to play with the filolials and she quickly turned to Father.
“I thought you were a boy with pretty eyes or something—so . . . so you’re a girl?”
“Oink! Oink oink oink!”
For some reason Keel was making a fist and waving it at Father angrily. I had no idea what was going on.
I was merely training filolials to pull carriages for Father! All of us, as Father’s servants, had to do our very best to help him, I say.
“Well, if you say so, that’s fine with me. Nice to meet you.”
“Oink, oink?”
Keel bent her head, seemingly confused. A pig is a pig, but somehow I grasped the gist of her expressions. While words are an absolute no-go, I’m not half-bad with pig expressions.
“So, Miss Keel, since we’ll be—”
“Oink!”
“Right, just Keel—since we’ll all be working together, meet Motoyasu and Sakura. You, me, and Kou are going to go out and do some fighting to level up together.”
“Let’s do it!” I proclaimed.
“We just need to make some preparations first,” Father said.
But of course! Keel needed equipment from the weapon shop.
Incidentally, it was wonderfully convenient that it wasn’t particularly important for filolials to have any equipment at all. And it was hard for me to comprehend why pigs would need equipment, but since it was Father’s idea, I didn’t say anything.
We went back to the weapon shop. When the old guy saw Father and Keel, he rubbed his forehead in thought.
“Kiddo . . .” he began.
“No, it’s not what you think!” Father said. “Don’t look at me like that!” Flustered, Father quickly explained what we had done.
Was the old guy upset that we had a pig with us?
No, he was upset that we had bought a slave.
“I don’t know if it’s that you’re more ruthless than I thought, or if this is just a stain on our country . . .” The old guy trailed off.
“It’s the country, I’m telling you,” Father said. “I’m the same as I was before! I had no choice!”
The old guy sighed. “Well, if you had no choice, it is what it is. What do you need this time?”
“Can you show me some good equipment for her?” Father asked. He kneeled down in front of Keel and looked her straight in the eye. “We’re going to fight together from now on,” he said.
“Oink!?”
“I suppose I haven’t introduced myself yet,” Father said. “My name is Naofumi Iwatani, and I was summoned to this world as the shield hero.”
Keel oinked quietly.
“Exactly. And the shield hero can’t fight monsters alone. So I bought you so you could become my offense. It may be a selfish reason, and I understand that you can’t trust me yet, but please, from here on, I’d like to earn your trust.”
Once the old guy picked them out, Father gave Keel her dagger and armor. But because of her level, they were of fairly poor quality.
“We can’t really get around the fact that this is weak equipment,” the old guy said. “But you need to be able to use your weapons and armor. Once you get stronger, come back and we’ll exchange them for something better.”
“Sounds good,” Father said.
Keel oinked.
Naturally, having strong weapons alone wasn’t enough. I never had to worry about it because I had my spear. But I remembered that even the legendary weapons got gradually stronger as you leveled up, so they worked pretty much the same as if you were buying new, regular weapons—like the old guy was saying.
So was the old guy done talking to Father yet?
“I’m up next,” I announced.
“Huh? Do you need something, Spear Kid?”
“I’d like to borrow the back room for a moment,” I informed him.
“Again? What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“I’d like you to come with me.”
“Well, fine with me. Let’s go.”
We left Father and Keel in the shop and went to the back room.
“What could it possibly be?” the old guy asked.
“Please allow me to show you something for a moment,” I said. I took out all the equipment I had collected as drop items from the monsters last night and emptied it out on the floor. The old guy gasped as they popped out of my spear.
“What the hell!?”
“This is my weapon’s drop ability, I say,” I announced. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about. The next time Father needs new equipment, I’d like you to show these items to him. But when you do, make sure that you tell him that you made them and act like they’re weak items.”
The old guy nodded. “I don’t mind looking after them for you, but why?”
“If I told you,” I said menacingly, “I’d have to kill you.”
If it became known that Father was in fact strong, then assassins would start coming after us. I had to make sure Father stayed on guard for one, and since the old guy was able to ascertain the weapons’ true strength, he had to be in on it too.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” the old guy said.
“I’ll give you your choice of item as a payment,” I declared.
“Hang on a second . . .” The old guy took a close look at the drop items. “There’s some high-quality stuff in here,” he said. “It’ll sell well. All right, that settles it. I can take it apart for materials for one, and if it’s really helping you kids, I don’t mind doing you the favor.”
“I thank you from the bottom of my soul!”
“Leave it to me, kid.”
With that, I had made arrangements to get Father more powerful equipment. We went out from the back room and I winked at Father.
“Shall we proceed, Father?”
Next up, I had to continue to level up Yuki and Sakura until I could meet Father again.
“See you later. Keel and I are going to go level up. Well, who knows how strong we’ll actually get?” he said.
I chuckled. “Do your best, I say!”
“Good luck, kids!”
The old guy saw us off and Father and I went our separate ways. I headed off from the castle town in a direction that suited my whims—toward a different nearby village. I took care of some monsters along the way and fed them to Yuki and Sakura.
My primary objective was to raise Sakura to be as strong as possible. The only problem would be if the Siltvelt emissary were to try to find Father and take him to Siltvelt. But since I already explained all that to Father, he would probably refuse the emissary’s offer.
I walked through and out of the castle town with a smile on my face.
Two days passed.
“Gweh!”
Yuki had grown remarkably fast and was about to evolve into her filolial queen form.
“Gweh!”
Sakura was a day behind and had grown into her filolial form.
Today I planned to meet Father “by accident” again. I hopped onto Yuki’s back and headed back to the Melromarc castle town.
“Hey, Motoyasu,” Father called. “I haven’t seen you in a few days.”
“Quite so!” I proclaimed. “What an entirely unexpected encounter!”
“Kou really helped me out. Thanks for letting me borrow him.”
We acted as if we had found each other by chance at our planned meet-up spot. Kou, like Yuki, was about to change into his filolial king form.
“Want to chat for a few minutes?” Father asked.
“Why not?” I said. “So how much stronger did everyone get?”
Father glanced at Keel and Kou. I didn’t see much difference from how they looked two days ago, besides the fact that Keel looked like she had cleaned herself up a bit.
“Oink! Oink oink!”
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t understand a word she said. I wished she would hurry up and transform into a dog so I’d be able to at least talk to her!
I suddenly realized that even if a pig could transform into a dog, that didn’t necessarily mean it could suddenly speak human language. That would be problematic.
“I’m about level 7,” Father said. “Keel is level 8. Kou . . . he’s level 10, I think.”
Just in case we were being watched, I could tell Father was lying about Kou’s level.
“Not too different from Yuki and Sakura,” I informed Father.
“So it looks like filolials take on different forms when raised by heroes,” Father said. “I was surprised! They sure can go fast.”
“That’s filolials for you, Father! Kou, you’ve done a wonderful job at protecting Father, haven’t you?”
“Gweh!”
“Oink!”
“That’s right. Keel did a great job too,” Father said and patted Keel on the head. Keel looked like she was much more relaxed compared to a few days ago, I noticed. Of course Father, with all of his experience with slaves, was able to calm her down!
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Father said. “An emissary from Siltvelt came yesterday.”
“An emissary?” I acted surprised. “Why would they come to you?”
“They asked me to come to Siltvelt, but I decided I couldn’t trust them and turned it down.” He spoke loud for anyone nearby to hear, as if they had tried to force him to come to Siltvelt and it had been quite the traumatic experience. We knew that Melromarc was monitoring Siltvelt closely, so there was a high likelihood they were observing any contact Siltvelt made with Father. Which meant that now Melromarc was probably convinced that Father didn’t trust Siltvelt. I’m sure Melromarc’s schemers were breathing a sigh of relief, as the last thing they wanted was for Father to make his way to Siltvelt.
There wasn’t much upside to going to Siltvelt for us either. They would start sending assassins after us, which defeated the purpose of our whole plan to level up and earn money while tricking Melromarc into thinking that Father was still weak.
Father leaned over and whispered in my ear.
“They want to work with us, so I made a plan to talk again with them today. Do you want to come?”
I nodded.
Then I spoke up again. “Now that you mention it, some emissaries came to me too.”
I didn’t remember what country it was, but they had invited me to come to their country in the first go-around as well. At the time, the crimson swine had interfered and I wasn’t even able to give them an answer.
“But I also refused the offer,” I continued. “Shall we take a stroll, Father?”
Back in the first go-around, I had been convinced that Melromarc was the best for me, so I likely would’ve refused the offer anyways. At the time, I was still being influenced by my knowledge of the online game from my original world, and I thought back then that it would be inefficient to bother working with another country. Ren and Itsuki probably felt the same way.
Based on my knowledge now, I knew that Melromarc was doing everything they possibly could to prevent us from getting our hands on accurate information.
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