Chapter Four: In the Back Alley
Using my portal, I arrived at the location I had set near the Melromarc castle town. I set off on foot.
Oho? The village closest to the castle town . . . was it Riyute? I heard Father’s voice in the back of my head.
But now Riyute was a wasteland. The buildings were burned black, and some sort of evil magic had destroyed the fields. The homes were eaten by ruin and the shops a wreck. I could hardly see the remnants of the original town.
I saw some people who had set up tents as temporary provisions, and they all had bleak looks on their faces.
Well, since it wasn’t strictly necessary to come to Riyute, I figured I’d just skip it. I wondered if perhaps the wave had come here, since it was so near Melromarc castle. I tried to remember if there had been this sort of damage before. In my memory, it hadn’t looked anything like this, but maybe I wasn’t remembering correctly.
Even if I worried about it, unfortunately, it wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever. So I left that village and its bad vibes and hurried on to the castle town, I say!
Very well then! My objective today was to find the monster trainer and purchase Filo-tan. Let the mission commence!
I had got plenty of money to get it done. I intended to buy every single filolial they had, I say! With pep in my step, I skipped over to the market district in the castle town.
Hmm. Most places seemed to be closed for some reason. The pharmacy and the magic shop were closed too. Well, I didn’t need them anyways, so who cares? I continued into the back alley where the monster trainer’s tent was.
“Hey, is that you, Motoyasu?”
As I was walking down the alley, I bumped into Ren, who for some reason was calling my name. Should I kill him? But if I killed him, I’d just end up resetting the time loop again.
That settled it. I would silence Ren without killing him, if I could.
“W-wait! I don’t want to fight you! I don’t want a scene!” Just as I had begun to raise my spear, Ren held his hands out and took a step back.
Hmm. This time around, Ren had a laudable attitude, I say. If Ren wasn’t my enemy, perhaps I ought to talk to him, at least a little.
On the other hand, maybe he was just putting on a front. Perhaps he was just buying time to attack me while my guard was down.
“What kind of foul play is this?” I demanded.
“Nothing. No foul play—I told you I don’t want to fight,” Ren said. “But, Motoyasu, why are you here? I thought you went to Siltvelt!”
“My beloved Filo-tan is here, so why wouldn’t I be here as well?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but listen, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“That’s just a trick—you’re going to call for help from the castle, I say!”
“No! I just want to talk! I’m not going to do that!” he shouted.
What to do? What to do? I really couldn’t bring myself to trust him. When you think about it, it’s always best to crush your fears into oblivion before they come back to haunt you later. I had already managed to get Father safely to Siltvelt, after all. But perhaps I should hear him out, at least to get information on the Church of the Three Heroes, who were after Father’s life.
“I’ll let you choose where you want to talk—wherever—but I just need to tell you something,” Ren said.
“Very well,” I said. “In that case, here will do just fine. So what is it that you need to tell me?”
“Right in this back alley?” Ren looked around. “Okay, fine. Well, a lot. I want you to also let Naofumi know—it’s about what’s happened to this country.”
Ren, who had stepped closer, began talking about this so-called thing he needed to tell me.
He explained that after Naofumi and I fled, Melromarc treated him and Itsuki well. With funds from Melromarc, Ren bought equipment and started to level up to get stronger. In the meantime, he heard rumors about us, but he kept focusing on getting stronger and familiarizing himself with the world. So all that was smooth sailing.
However, according to Ren, the whole country had been slowly overtaken by a disquieting gloom. One of Itsuki’s companions was apparently lynched by a demi-human who fervently believed in the Church of the Shield Hero—and was acting on the Shield Hero’s orders. Ren started to look into the evidence, but a lot of it seemed suspicious. It didn’t make sense that Father would be after one of the other heroes since he was already on the road to Siltvelt.
Said Ren, and so on and so forth.
“So,” he continued, “is Naofumi really trying to kill us? And if so, did you come to kill us too?”
“Not in the slightest,” I declared. “The only reason I came to Melromarc is to buy Filo-tan, I say.”
Ren stared at me blankly. “Well, I suppose if you wanted to kill us you would have already done it.” It seemed that he was finally satisfied with my response.
And he was right, of course. There was absolutely no reason to kill Ren or Itsuki. And it would be doubly meaningless, because I’d just have to start everything all over again. If I had to kill anybody, it would be Trash and the high priest, I say.
“Okay, so back to what I was saying,” Ren said. “There are a lot of strange things about this country. For one, the princess is showing a lot of favoritism to Itsuki and it’s really making him a pain in the ass.”
“A pain in the ass, you say?”
“Yeah, and the king and the princess are acting really fishy in general. When we pressed them about whether they caught Naofumi in a trap on that first day, all their responses were basically obvious lies and acting, just saying that it was all a big misunderstanding and that Melromarc would help you as soon as they could. But they attacked you at the border, didn’t they? They said that they’d help you, but instead they attacked you and our own border. Everything they said was just littered with contradictions.”
I got the sense that now Ren would finally believe me.
“In the end, last night, after defeating the wave boss I went to a big celebration at the castle, and what do you think they told me? ‘It appears that we can’t trust the strength of the heroes. Please train with more discipline.’ That’s what they said, after I beat the boss!”
For some reason Ren appeared to have accumulated a lot of stress and was grumbling on and on. Since I’d be able to get plenty of useful information, I nodded and kept the conversation going.
“Yeah! And so when I asked them why they told me the training wasn’t enough, they said, ‘The legendary heroes are far stronger than what you have shown. Please obtain godlike strength.’ I heard a crazy rumor that you blew up an entire fortress, so I wonder if they were actually measuring us up against that.”
“That actually happened,” I declared. “It took a single blow.”
“Right,” he said. “Not a rumor, just a little embellished.”
Ren didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the true strength of a hero. When I first came to the world, I was the same as him and Itsuki, not even believing what Father had told me about the false accusation. But even now, Ren simply didn’t understand what it took to get stronger.
“The king and princess gave me funds and hinted that Naofumi might actually declare war on Melromarc. I don’t want to get caught up in such a pointless war. That can’t be true, right?”
Father? War? Surely that’s impossible.
“I was thinking about going to Zeltoble and hiding away there. So if you need anything from me, come find me in Zeltoble.” Ren nodded. “Okay. See ya.”
With Ren having said whatever he had wanted to say, he ran off. I supposed he was headed to Zeltoble.
Zeltoble, huh? That country was the perfect place to hide. It’s not the safest place in the world, but it’s not terrible, and there’s a dragon hourglass there.
But enough with Ren. I had to purchase my precious Filo-tan.
When I entered the tent, the monster trainer came to greet me.
“What do we have here? A customer? Welcome! Yes sir,” called the monster trainer.
“Give me Filo-tan.”
“Um, excuse me?”
“Filo-tan.”
“Yes sir. Um, I’m not sure that I understand . . .”
The monster trainer was staring me up and down. Then he suddenly gasped.
“Um, I see! Y-you are the Spear Hero that I’ve heard rumors about! Yes sir.” For seemingly no reason at all, he started to nervously sweat all over his body.
“That is correct! It is I, Motoyasu Kitamura, the Spear Hero, I say!”
The monster trainer fell over with a clatter and scrambled back up.
“Um, so that means you’re the criminal mastermind wanted for the destruction of the Melromarc fort . . . C-can I help you? Yes sir.”
Criminal mastermind?
Oh, was he talking about the time Father asked me to demonstrate my magic? But that was just a little sprinkle of fire, nothing major. And even if I was a wanted criminal, I had just walked around the castle town without anyone saying anything. I supposed people didn’t expect to see a wanted criminal walking around in broad daylight. Regardless, the deed had been done.
“I’ve come to buy Filo-tan, I say!” I repeated.
Since today was the day after the Melromarc wave, if I count backward based on the previous go-around, today was the very same day that Father bought Filo-tan. Therefore, Filo-tan must be here today!
“Um, Filo-tan . . . ?” The monster trainer started whispering to his associate next to him. They conferred back and forth in hushed tones before responding to me.
“By Filo-tan, do you mean a filolial?” he asked me.
“That is exactly what I mean. Or will you not sell me one?” I gripped my spear and raised it a little. A technique I learned from Father.
“U-um, of course, no problem at all! Yes sir. Look over here!”
“I’ll buy every single aria-type filolial egg that you have in this tent here,” I proclaimed.
“Um, all of them?”
“Precisely. I would like to purchase every single aria-type filolial egg here. I have this much money.”
I dropped the purse they gave me back in Siltvelt at the monster trainer’s feet with a thud.
“I’d expect to get some change back as well,” I told him.
The purse was filled with gold coins, I figured. And if it wasn’t enough, I’d go back to Siltvelt, get more money, and come back here again. And if that wasn’t enough, I’d go kill some bandits and get enough money that way.
“I see that this is Siltvelt currency. Yes sir. Isn’t it?” the monster trainer asked.
“Will that be a problem?”
“Um, no, since I sell between different countries, it’s no problem at all. Yes sir. But since we’re in Melromarc now, it just means that the currency will be worth a little less, if that’s acceptable?”
“That’s acceptable, I say.”
“In that case, I’ll give you all of the aria-type filolial eggs that we have. Yes sir,” he said.
The monster trainer’s associate counted up all the money and let out an audible gasp. Even the monster trainer was staring at the money and was at a complete loss for words.
After a while, they brought me the pushcart loaded with filolial eggs.
“This here is all of the filolial eggs that we have. Yes sir,” the monster trainer said.
“This is it?”
“Yes, this is all of them. Yes sir. We’ve even included a filolial egg vending machine as a bonus. Yes sir.”
Hmmm. But that means . . . that Filo-tan’s egg must be one of these!
I was filled with overwhelming gratitude. “Perfect! This is perfect!” I declared.
“How will you handle the registration and hatching them, if I may ask? Yes sir.”
“That’s no problem.” I’d just have some people in Siltvelt do it. “So then, farewell!”
“Thank you very much,” the monster trainer said. “Um, so . . . yes, because we are being suspected of, umm, collusion by the Melromarc, umm, government, we’ll be closing our shop for a while, yes, for a while . . . Yes sir.”
I skipped merrily out of the tent. It was basically a mountain of filolials! And just like that, I was ready to take them all back to Siltvelt with the portal.
How should I do it? I could go to a safe place, split up the eggs, and transport them via portal in manageable loads that way. I pulled the pushcart through the castle town, my face beaming with joy.
I split up the filolial eggs and put them into pouches and started to take them back to Siltvelt. Of course, well aware of my past mistakes with the portal, I made sure to prepare it properly. Before, I could only register four different locations to my portal, but with skill power-up and the seven star power-up, I could now register many more locations to my portal. Using the portal had also gotten much easier.
So after transporting all the eggs to Siltvelt, I spent the rest of the day taking care of registering and preparing to hatch the eggs. One of them will definitely be Filo-tan, no doubt about it!
“Well then.” I had completed the preparations. Without reporting to Father, I decided it was time to deal with the core problem at hand: crushing Melromarc, the Church of the Three Heroes, and Trash! Since Father had mentioned a grim atmosphere before, I figured I could cheer everyone up by simply steamrolling our enemies into dust.
Soon it was the dead of night. The perfect time to launch a surprise attack, I say.
Way back when, this was also the perfect time to get pigs out of my room. I also used to sneak into school on dares and go to shrines at this hour.
I transported myself back to the Melromarc castle town in front of the Church of the Three Heroes and blasted my way into the church.
“Brionac V!”
I remembered the Church of the Three Heroes from the previous go-around. Only something in Melromarc castle town would be this ridiculously big! And yet at the same time, it was also pretty small. It was only about half the size of the Church of the Four Heroes in Faubrey and the Church of the Seven Heroes.
In fact, this church was even smaller than the Church of the Shield Hero in Siltvelt. I wondered how that could be. I had absolutely no interest in the history of the Church of the Three Heroes or anything, but with a lame church like this, it certainly seemed like it wasn’t doing its best to convince its followers to stay put.
Regardless, I planned to destroy it.
I blew open the door with a thunderous roar, went inside, and after a lot of fuss and noise, eventually a monk and a pig of the Church of the Three Heroes came running out. Two sinners guilty of the same crime, I say.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Love Hunter, I say! I have come to teach Father’s accusers an important lesson!”
“What in the world!?”
“Aiming Lancer V!”
Using multi-lock, I targeted as many believers in this idiotic church as I possibly could. I activated the skill and exterminated them all.
“Ahhhhh!”
“Noooooooo!”
“Hahahahahah!” I cried with glee. “I’ll destroy this seed of evil before it can even sprout!”
Well, you know, I tried not to kill too many people. But I had far surpassed the limit of my restraint.
“Now, where is the high priest?”
I pointed my spear at a surviving monk who was begging me for his life. Since Father told me not to kill people, I had decided to kill only enough to instill mortal fear in the living. But depending on where he was, I intended to turn everything surrounding that high priest into ashes.
“I don’t answer to demons!” he cried.
“Well, then it looks like this demon is going to tear you apart,” I said. I stabbed my spear into his mouth and twisted bit by bit, moving my spear from left to right. My spear—the legendary spear with countless power-ups that had made corpses of monsters. Human flesh was like paper to it.
He screamed in blood-curdling agony.
Finally he told me where the high priest was.
“The h-high priest left the country! He’s not here!”
Hmmm. It seemed like a suspicious answer, but since I didn’t see the high priest anywhere, I figured he wasn’t lying.
What a self-centered religion. He gave me the answer so easily in the hope that I would spare his life. If he really believed in his faith, giving up his life for it should have been his heart’s desire. For Father and Filo-tan’s sake, it wouldn’t be disappointing to lose my life, I say.
I knocked the monk in the head with my spear and left him unconscious.
Next up . . .
“This Spear Demon is headed straight to the castle, I say!” I proclaimed.
“Hurry! Prepare a line of defense!” people were shouting.
After I destroyed the Church of the Three Heroes, I walked across the town with my eyes on the prize: Melromarc castle.
Huge groups of soldiers attacked me in waves, but they were no match for me. I tore them apart and cast them aside in a way to get past without killing them.
“What insane power!”
“Aiming Lance X!”
Screams filled the castle. As I mowed down row after row of soldiers, they began to cast their own spells at me, blasting a sea of fire my way. In order to avoid their flames, I chanted a fire spell of my own. If you can control fire with magic, you can erase it, I say.
I mean, it was a little tricky, but I didn’t come here to start a war or anything, so I supposed I had no choice. I just came to defeat the villainous fools who were trying to kill the heroes.
“Well then . . . where might Trash and Witch be?” I asked aloud.
Soldiers had closed the castle gate, so I blasted it open and marched into the castle. Slowly making my way through the halls, I disposed of any soldier that tried to attack me. They ought to know how much of a pain it can be to hold back for so long!
Did no one understand that it would be so easy to destroy a pathetic castle like this with just a sprinkle of strong magic?
“Trash! Witch!” I called. “King! Princess! Where are you? I, Motoyasu Kitamura, have come to punish you without killing you, I say!”
I went past the throne room, into Trash’s bedroom, and then into Witch’s bedroom, but I didn’t see them anywhere.
The cowards had run away! Just what I expected! Fast legs for fleeing.
“Hey!” I shouted. “The king and princess took the troops and got out of here! They’re not even here!”
I looked over at the nearest minister-looking type, who was on his knees and begging me to spare his life.
So this had been a giant waste of time. What a pain. Well, at least now they’d understand what the Spear Hero was all about.
“Tell the king and the princess what happened here, I say,” I told him. “Tell them it’s meaningless to try to defeat me. I can easily mow every last one of you down. I want them to think carefully about that, I say! Think carefully! Hahahahahahaha!”
“Curse you,” he moaned. “You—you’re an imposter. You’re with the Shield Demon! The gods will punish you for this!”
I ignored his agonized groans and returned to Siltvelt via portal.
“Hey, welcome back, Motoyasu. You’re pretty late, aren’t you?”
Father came to greet me upon my return even though it was so late, I say!
“What were you doing up so late? I saw that carriage full of eggs. Does that mean they are . . .” He trailed off.
Incidentally, in this world there was a slight time difference between Melromarc and Siltvelt. So in Siltvelt it was already early morning. That Father would come to greet me even at this hour demonstrated the profound depths of his compassion, and overwhelmed, I burst into tears.
“They’re filolial eggs, I say!” I bawled.
“I should’ve realized. You bought a lot.”
I wiped away my tears. Yuki and the filolials, now woken up by my return, also came out of their room.
“So we’re going to get some more underlings?” Yuki asked.
“Awesome! It’s gonna be so fun!” Kou said.
“No matter what happens, I’ll still protect you, Naofumi!” Sakura chirped.
“Thanks, Sakura. Okay, Motoyasu, explain yourself,” Father said. “You bought quite a lot of filolial eggs.”
“I have reason to believe that Filo-tan is in one of those eggs,” I declared.
“So you bought them all. I guess this is just your crazy way of doing things.” While Father was staring at me with sleepy eyes, Sakura was hugging him tightly from behind. What an absolutely delightful sight.
My heart raced at the thought of Father reuniting with my beloved Filo-tan.
“At last, I infiltrated the Church of the Three Heroes in Melromarc,” I proclaimed.
“What?” Father exclaimed. “Wait, you did what? Back up, back up. Don’t you realize that if you mess that up it could lead to war?”
For the next few hours, Father kept requesting various things from me. That is to say, in a fiercely authoritative tone, he commanded that I not do anything reckless without consulting him first. That is to say, he admonished me.
I, Motoyasu Kitamura, was ashamed to the most remote chambers of my very soul.
“So even though we’re supposed to be searching for the Claw Hero, it doesn’t seem you have the slightest interest in looking for him,” Father was saying angrily.
“Preparation is essential!” I told him.
“I suppose that’s just how you do things, Motoyasu.” Father sighed. “At the very least, with this many filolials, we’d be able to launch a filolial-wave attack, I guess. In the meantime, a lot of people from Siltvelt are helping in the search for the Claw Hero, reaching out to any connections they have for leads.”
Father gently calmed the filolials and told them that it was time to get back to bed.
“It’s really late,” Father said, “so we all better get back to sleep. The only problem is that tomorrow is already about to start.”
“Yes! Bedtime, I say!”
And just like Father told me to, I returned to my room and went back to sleep.
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