A/N: (Note/Disclaimer) All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. Such as Neopeople for Dungeon Fighter Online(Also known as Dungeon & Fighter) and Aneko Yusga for The Rising Of The Shield Hero
Note 2:
("Human/Speech")
("Thoughts")
(Attacks/Weapon names)
(Other/Foreign/ Speech & Text/Book/Scroll)
(Actions/POV)
(Titles/Flashback/Time/Dates/Place)
(Narration & Everything else)
('Demonic Speech')
("Demonic Thoughts")
Hero And Fighter Chapter 25
Village Of Hotsprings
6/21/0000: 1000
Third Person: Omni
"We have arrived at our destination, Milord." Senka is the driver for today, with Rino sitting just behind her to observe the movements of the former church blade. Naofumi looked up from his grimoire of support magic to the large tourist trap.
"Thank you Senka," Naofumi spoke gratitude to the former secret service member of their party. The carriage silently pulled into the gates. After confirmation of the traveling merchant's pass, the group rode through with a few of the guards staring at the large bird pulling the carriage across the town limits.
"Now to find the recipient." Naofumi's eyes observed their surroundings, a town made of the local stone type, mainly grey in coloration. They had come at the behest of the gem maker to deliver a shipment, thinking nothing of it, Naofumi decided to deliver.
"Senka, can you stop at that fountain with people near it. We need to get directions." Naofumi said with his regular calm tone. She nodded her head slightly as she followed his gesture.
"Who is a good girl?" Eclair spoke to the hatchling dragon with a smile. Considering that she was the one to identify the gender of the dragon, Naofumi already knew that the woman with so many alternative lives awakened her Dreadnought self.
_(The Rising Of The Shield Hero)_
Reclaimed Village: Naofumi's Carriage
6/19/0000: 0635
"Crack, Crack, Crick, Crack… Clack" The webbing of cracks slowly spread across the outer surface of the shell from within, making a fairly loud set of sounds to go along with the birthing of a new hatchling for the hero's party to take care of, though Naofumi already knew that it would grow very quickly with them.
"Fuwa" Much like their older sister, the organism within the protective confines of the egg slowly popped its head up from underneath the shell hat that it created, their first breath into the world was very much a cute sight. The reptilian eyes immediately going to Naofumi, the side of their new companions head pointed directly at him, a single slitted pupil observed the parent.
"A dragon?" Naofumi mumbled, already thinking about how much time the other girls had spent with the egg as the reptile flew up to him with their membrane wings. The reasoning behind it was the remembrance of one of Eclair's alternatives being intrinsically connected to dragons.
"A dragon…" The lady in question had been spending the second-longest amount of time with the egg, second only to Naofumi himself, with him having the egg close to him whenever there was training that did not involve him or was just reading books about the world to expand his vocabulary and knowledge. The only reason why Raphitala was not second was with her curbing Filo's more gluttonous aspects, without her intervention, the bird would have eaten them out of room and board.
"A dragon…!" The first monster of the group looked a bit annoyed at the new addition, she knew that Naofumi would not make the lizard leave, nor would he allow anything of the sort. If she hadn't spent as much time with the egg, she would have had a far worse reaction to the dragon that sat upon his head, very much like a mirror to what she once did when she was young...er.
"Grewn" The flying reptile made a content noise while it sat upon the raven locks of the leader, already recognizing him as their parent. None of the group could figure out what the gender was, though Naofumi felt like it would have been determined by temperature like those nature shows he watched said about crocodiles.
"Hmmm." Senka looked at the dragon with a blank expression as usual, though it did have a hint of interest in the flying dragon… she already knew the strangeness that happened around heroes and wondered what would happen to the dragon later down the line.
"Why do you all always hop onto my head like this?" Naofumi said with more than a little exasperation when addressing the flyer of a scaly type. Senka had a pondering expression, one shared with Raphtalia when he asked the question.
"It's been a while since I have seen a hatchling." Melina was the last to speak up about the lizard, their final companion who did not speak was currently in the carriage, resting after the harsh training that they went through.
"Yeah, it would have been a while for you…" Despite how much Naofumi did for her, it was still a sped-up amount of time when compared to his own world when accessing Arad and Pandemonium. It was actually slipping his mind when she, and by proxy himself, last saw a hatchling.
"Well, Enyo had quite the ability with dragons, it is kinda surprising the first time we met, though it was probably an interaction that you saw before… Father." Melina remarked while he motioned for the other girls to get to work on getting everything ready to go, they had to finish up the final bits of the contract anyway.
"That is the main reason why I had Eclair handling the egg, I figured it was a dragon egg from Filo's reaction to it when we got Rino and our egg. And don't call me father." Naofumi sighed at her way of addressing him, why couldn't he get a break when it came to this kind of stuff, knowing his luck, the dragon was going to turn out like Filo, turning into a chief example of their species and turning into a girl.
"Hoping to get Tia in her head?" Melina asked while looking at the lady in question, a reminiscing smile on her face as she observed the knight, to her, it has been quite a bit of time since she last saw them.
"Well, she would have ended up in there anyway, it is not like synchronizing with your other self left only one option exclusive to you," Naofumi said with a smile as the lizard hopped off of his head and yawned, taking their head to his chest, right above his heart now that he was leaning back in the upholstered bench.
"Who are you?!" Eclair's voice was loud enough for the pair in the carriage to hear, but not loud enough for the villagers who have gone farther away to listen in on. Melina just laughs silently at the sudden sound.
First Person: Eclair
I stared at my reflection's right side in shock, the clear water bringing another woman that she had not expected to be there. Instead of my other self that wore her rose hair freely, a woman with the same face as myself stood there with a confused expression on her face.
"Well, well, well, look who decided to show up." My look-alike showed up to my left side. Ellen just smiled while looking at the other woman in the reflection. It was a flash of light that signaled her arrival to the mental world reflected in the water.
"Ellen? What are you doing here?" The exact same voice that I heard come from Ellen whenever we talked came out of the lips of the black and pink-haired woman. Those horns upon her head showcased that she was definitely not human.
"One of our other selves needed help, so I synchronized with her. From what I can understand, we have a connection to each other due to our creation and the interaction of her party leader." I flicked my eyes over to the holy knight as she spoke, a majority of what she said was retained from earlier when we were back in the dungeon.
"You know each other?" But the main thing that was speaking out to me was the idea that they knew one another… especially from the explanation of alternates that she gave.
"Well, Arad is a pretty strange place temporarily… especially when Pandemonium started to invade." The dragonic woman said with a shrug. Her short dark brown hair swayed with the movement. The streak of pink was the only indicator that she is my alternative.
"From what I can tell, this world is also in peril as a malicious god has set their sights on the destruction of this plane," Ellen spoke with a serious expression, she already sensed the malicious intentions of someone close by when she manifested herself in my conscious.
"Well, it is not like I need the gist of it. I may not be Eris, but I do enjoy a good fight." I shuffled through my memories to find which version of myself that she was talking about… the one who controlled demonic knights came to mind in short order.
"Well, do either of you know why I would be synchronizing with her?" Tia, my instincts was screaming to me her name, asked with a confused expression… much in the same way that I myself would be confused with.
"Well, she was a witness to a dragon hatching," Ellen said with a smile, something that I also started to feel on my face, as we were both expecting a certain reaction from the dragon rider… one that I don't know of yet I still expected. But I could hazard a guess.
Her short black hair overshadowed her eyes when she heard Ellen's comment. An emerald blue glint came forth despite her hair blocking a majority of light sources.
"Where. Is. It." If I weren't instinctually expecting this… I would have been quite scared of this little thing. I felt my body begging me to move back into the carriage when she said so… well, if anything, The one universal constant to myself and my alternates was a weakness to cute things.
_(DUNGEON FIGHTER ONLINE)_
Village Of Hotsprings
6/21/0000: 1050
"Thank you very much." Naofumi just nodded his head once to the young man that was receiving the shipment. The girls were loading the young man's storefront with crates of merchandise for the man to use.
"And this is the letter that he wanted me to give you." Naofumi brought out the letter that was kept close to his person. The man quickly received it and read through it. Naofumi did not bother to look into the letter, it was in confidence after all.
"Alright then, one second while I write something down. Are you staying here for a few days?" The young merchant asked after reading through the second in a few seconds. The smile on his face was genuine, leaving Naofumi unworried about potential betrayal.
"Why do you ask?" Naofumi decided the best course of action, as much as he trusted his teacher, he did not trust that easily, especially when it has only been a few minutes to make an impression.
"He wanted to give you some time to relax, he has already paid for it. So you have 2 nights and 1 day at a friend of mine's inn." The young man said while penning the letter on the hardback of the crate that Naofumi delivered to him.
"Okay then…" Naofumi decided not to think about it too much, he knows that the merchant wouldn't be betraying him… if not for their partnership, but to not piss off the hero who already has issues with the country that their market resided.
"Here you go, three rooms at the inn, the directions and name are written on the envelope." The young merchant gave the letter to Naofumi with quite a bit of respect. Despite being merchants… they did care for their customers… though that was more in the form of smarter merchants.
"Alright girls, after visiting the inn let's see if there are any monster gathering spots near here." As much as Naofumi would rather not be the lowest leveled Hero… there was only a single real remedy to the matter, growing the party and hope the saying of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.
"Hai!" All of them responded in one voice, Filo herself pumped her right-wing in the air in response.
Ifrit Hotspring Inn: Private Men's Bath 15
6/21/0000: 1800
Third Person: Omni
"Well… it is a beautiful sight at the very least," Naofumi remarked to the empty bath as he stands with a towel tied around his waist. He knew the girls were higher up… to be honest, it was a better system than the usual anime-style hot springs with a wall separating the two. If it did have a wall… it would have been him waiting for the cliche of them trying to peek at him.
"And you are still analyzing the information." Naofumi glanced at the shield on his arm, as of current, is in Bronze Shield to gain the mastery skill Alloying I. Since putting in the memory stick… the Shield has never shown the percentage of completion for the analysis of the DFO data.
"Well, it is no use worrying about it now." Naofumi sighed as he stared at the mirror reflection of the shield unlocked through absorbing some bronze. Now that he looked at himself, his face had aged quite a bit when compared to when he was transported to this world. It was definitely a result of the stress that he went through. One would not guess that it had only been a few months since then.
"...now that I think of it, this world did wonders for my body." Despite all the pale scars from monsters that actually got through his defense stat, it could be said that his body is quite the good-looking one. While not the laziest person, he did not have the sheer muscle tone of his current self.
Naofumi silently stepped into the hotspring, one of the many things he missed from his own world was actually this style of bath. It was a fair bit of nostalgia to those days in convention centers and renting out an onsen for a few hours.
"That feels nice," Naofumi commented to himself while closing his eyes, letting the heat of the onsen treat his tensed muscles. While never personally having a massage from another individual, it is what he would imagine it would be like.
"You know that you can come out right?" Even with the eyes closed, he could still tell that there was a presence in the nearby plant life, his experience with Senka allowed him to notice the two shadows in viewing distance.
"Of course Shield Hero-Sama." The shadow of the queen's faction silently slipped into the pool, hiding her body in shadow, though with his eyes closed, it wouldn't have mattered. Upon hearing the splash of the female body entering, Naofumi stopped any real reaction from coming forth. Despite having a slight aversion to the fairer gender, he still is a teenage male.
Chapter Length: ~2500 Words
Date Completed: 4/30/2021
Note: Sorry for the delay everyone… my grandmother died on the 12th of march, so I took a while to write this. I am focusing on A Retired Officer's Shop In The Eastern Wonderland for about a week and a half after this due to a certain project requiring it.
Review Corner:
FFN:
SomeDudeThatReads: Is the newest member Elena or not? You referred to her as such the first time you mentioned her, but eveytime after have referred to her as Rino. Rino has blond hair though, and you said it was a girl with green hair that was saved/bought. Just really confused.
To be fair the more I look at Rino's pictures the more I realize her hair is a very light shade of green. Not what I imagine when someone says that something is green. My bad, but also feel like it could have been described a little better there. I'm assuming the other part of my problem from my previous review was entirely my bad for misreading the text bit from Motoyasu's party member.
Response: Yeah… I saw it more as lime green, but didn't put that specification in. Technically, Elena is not in the party, Rino is. I think I messed up who was enslaved and picked up, sorry about that.
AO3:
havefeith: Loved it. I wonder if Naofumi can do the same thing for other fruits...? He could probably modify lumber trees, too, if he can get his hands on the seeds for them, now that I think about it. And possibly even any super hard woods, like Ironwoods, or the equivalent in the 4 Heroes multiverse. It would fix a number of shortages, if it's possible. Looking forward to more of this, regardless of what's going on. Just... don't burn yourself out, yeah? That'd kill the story outright.
Onto the DFO situation, I got my account unblocked, and they said it was because of third party apps, but didn't say which one it was. So I reopened the ticket to ask for clarification of which one did it. Haven't checked back since. And I haven't tried to redownload the rest of the updates. Edit: so I got a message back from the moderators... and they're saying they can't tell me what program was flagged because it would "affect our security", in their words. Gods, some companies just should NOT have certain types of powers, or should be shut down because they're improperly using said powers.
Response: Naofumi could do so for other fruits, but it would still be an issue of how many mutation points there are in a plant. The only reason why the Biopant could be modified to such a degree is the number of points it had originally. A regular tree would have far less in that regard, he might be able to make them grow slightly faster or make the wood slightly harder, but it would be sacrificing needed things for a tree to grow properly. (Though, technically, if Naofumi had not killed the monster bioplant with herbicide, it would have been turned into hardwood lumber.)
To Issei, Sans8, and have faith: (Since I don't want to muddy it… and I am lazy.) I was going off the original English spelling.
Phara_mine: Alright will be waiting for those flashbacks.
Hope you've got Vincenzo during Imperial Tragicomedy (I don't and it was all of my 200+ cubes wasted :(
Response: These chapters at the hot springs will be the flashback chapter… I thought it the perfect fit. Especially as a way to tell how Melina got into the world.
As for Azur Lane: I did get all the ships during the event… and I have all the ships in the current event as well… with the creation of 6 Venetos.
As for a comment on chapter 6:
KyuubiDono: If Naofumi knew Malty was planning something...if he knew she was fake...why in the world is he still upset? He knew the king didn't like him. He knew they were hiding shit and spreading rumors on purpose. Why is he surprised? Oh well. I'll assume you have a plan and keep reading. Is the rage shield doing this? That evil goddess? There doesn't seem to be much of a reason for him to be angry enough to be so heavily influenced...
Also, on the off chance that you'll see this, and I know it's in the tags, but does this have to be a harem? Is it already set in stone? I'll try to keep reading, but harems are difficult for me. Also, just pointing it out now, Melina should definitely be daughter zoned. Raphtalia too. Shield Dad is best dad.
Response: (Half this reply is to show that I am not dead yet, but a tragedy happened that I explained on the discord.)
Just because he knew that she was planning something, does not mean that he was fully prepared for it to happen considering he never really had to experience betrayal, of any kind really. The rage shield took the opportunity to influence Naofumi's original righteous anger and intensified it into a rage.
As for the harem, it is set in stone, but it won't be as blatantly obvious as other fics... at least I hope. And on the daughter zoning... well in the original it was due to maturing incredibly quickly due to being betrayed and having to do basically everything with the scorn of the people... but Naofumi is still dense, in an omake I happen to be planing, it would be him not noticing his harem developing in the background when he was still in high school. But Filo is definitely daughter zoned, raising her from an egg and all that.
KyuubiDono: Ahhh. That makes sense. Thank you for explaining. And a tragedy! Oh my goodness. Take all the time you need.
Response: You're welcome… and if there is anything else, I am mostly recovered now. Check out the discord for updates to when I post the chapters.
On Chapter 3
Astrum_Bartimaeus: robbed individual or robed individual... the one letter difference makes quite the distinction here.
Response: Ah spelling errors… how I hate thee. But yes, robed was meant to be used throughout the chapter as there were no robberies.