Chapter 1 – An Unexpected Summoning
Author's Note: This story is a rewrite of "The Reimagining of the Bow Hero", written by me, Alexanderctn. For improved immersion, there will be no author's notes in this fanfiction.
Many elements of this fic are inspired from people in the #shield-fanfics channel of the Shield Hero discord server. I'd like to give special shoutouts to Javetts, author of "Family of the Shield"; Misato, author of "Triple Threat"; Emmanual, author of "Fall of the Seven Star Heroes"; hiiroakisan, author of "Taktical Failure"; JH0NMAX, author of "Seven Star Hero: Second Chance" and Gamerteen13, author of "Low Hanging Fruits".
Some important facts to note:
Satoshi's world is a slightly different version of our world. The only changes are that some events happened at different dates than our world, and some inventors and creators and people may be marginally different, although most people in this world are the same ass in our world.
Unlike your typical Shield Hero "lawyering" fic, this one will continue until at least the events of Volume 17, maybe even further. Also, I will follow the rules of Shield Hero's Light Novel as closely as I can. However, do note that there may be some deviations here and there to suit storytelling.
This story is rated T, for people age 13 and above. There will be NO inappropriate scenes, and minimal romantic scenes. The focus of this fanfiction is on country building, adventure, drama, fantasy, politics, and the whole shebang. If you couldn't tell, there will be no harems to be found here, at least in Satoshi's and Naofumi's parties.
Uploads will happen weekly on Wednesday. Also, every chapter will be around 3,000 words or so, give or take. Also, I will very rarely add new bows for Satoshi, unlike many of the other fanfics out there.
Finally, this rewritten version will have MANY changes from the original story. Any feedback and constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated!
With that out of the way, we can proceed.
January 9th, 2019.
"Oh, crap. I'm not really that prepared for this, am I? How could this be?"
An exam was coming up, and I could not afford to fail it. I needed to remain at the top of my class no matter what it takes.
I'd been endlessly flipping through former lawsuits, and supreme court cases, for the past 6 hours. I've been struggling to keep my eyes open, the bright light radiating from my desk lamp not helping me at all.
Oh, sorry. How rude of me. Allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Satoshi Sera, and I'm a third-year student in law school. Although I excelled in my field, and constantly shocked professors with my silver tongue, I had always been teased by my classmates for being quite the nerd. Ever since my junior high school days, I've been infatuated with RPGs, MMOs, visual novels and indie games. Heck, I even coded them myself. When I was younger, I spent more of my time on games than actual studies, but certain circumstances changed that.
The summer of eighth grade was over, and freshman year began. As the first quarter ended, my grades were sitting at Bs and Cs, with one A, in, you guessed it, physical education. My mom definitely wasn't too happy about that.
"Satoshi! If you continue getting such bad grades, I'll confiscate your devices and unplug your ethernet! I'm being serious!"
"Please no! I promise, mom, I'll do anything to get them up!"
At that point, I was trembling in fear. I couldn't imagine how I'd live my life without the sweet joys of Halo: Combat Evolved, Diablo II and Doom. Those games were my childhood!
From that moment on, I studied as if my life depended on it. Because it did.
Day and night, I pushed myself like never before, skimming through books and rushing through worksheets. My notebook was filled with newly written information, and my backpack was full of textbooks. Calculus, Geometry, Algebra, Literature, History, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering. You name it, I studied it.
After receiving my report card for the second quarter, the radiance in my mother's face was clearly visible. She gave me a $100 bill and allowed me to play videogames 1 hour a day. That wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
Seeing those rewards, I kept up my good grades. Month after month, year after year, I was consistently at the top of my class. Initially, my mom kept peering over my shoulder and keeping tabs on everything I did, but as the good results continued to come in, she loosened up a little. Due to my busy schedule, I only had a brief amount of time left for games and visual novels. Even so, I treasured every last moment of it.
Then came college. I continued my strict studying regimen, although now I had a bit more time to pursue my hobbies, without my pushy mother around to nag me. I began to pursue coding again and spent much of my limited free time reading Fate: stay/night and Steins; Gate visual novels, doujinshi, and learning about other things on the internet.
To reward me for my top-notch grades, my mother gave me a small allowance, although it was not nearly enough to sustain my lifestyle. To address this, I took up tutoring at the local high school, making a bunch of money in the process while educating the younger generation.
I should probably tell you about the other hobbies I had. I had a strange attraction to weapons, and I frequently read and memorized blueprints about them ever since I was a young boy. Hey, don't call me weird for liking those things! It wasn't that strange! Be it guns, planes, tanks or boats, especially warships, I tried my best to learn about how they worked and how they were constructed, and I even built working small-scale models of them. I always had an incredible knack for crafting things, which probably contributed to my success in such endeavors.
I also enjoyed learning about chemistry and industrial processes, such as the Haber-Bosch Process and Basic Oxygen Steelmaking. I don't know why, but the science and technicalities of how these large-scale things function just intrigue me so much! Just viewing each part function in tandem could keep me watching for hours.
The last hobby that is worth mentioning would probably be my infatuation with geography and politics. When I was a kid, my father made me memorize whole history books, and participate in geography competitions. I almost won the National Geographic Geography Bee one year, but I forgot the name of the mountains separating Idaho and Montana. Bitterroot, yeah, that was the answer. From that day on out, I studied every geography and history fact possible so that would never happen again.
Life was stressful, but it was good. You know, double majoring in economics and mathematics and minoring in mechanical engineering, and then studying law to become a lawyer wasn't exactly an easy thing. Although I enjoyed coding more than lawyering, the latter made more income, and I could always pursue coding as a side job. I've always seriously considered being an engineer due to my interests and talents for making stuff, but my mother wasn't too keen on that either, even though aeronautical engineers at Boeing or Northrop Grumman can make a ton of money.
As I continued to lazily scroll through the Iowa Shotgun Trap case, throwing a potato chip into my mouth, I heard a *ding from my computer, barely audible amidst the whirring fans.
Almost instinctively, I clicked on the email notification. It led me directly to my inbox, where I had one unread message.
I'd never received any emails from this sender before. The sender's name was some jumbled collections of words and symbols that I couldn't possibly comprehend, and the email subject read "Chronicles of the Cardinal Weapons".
Out of sheer curiosity, I couldn't help but click on the email. I was terribly bored and about to fall asleep. Maybe a good read would stimulate my mind and help me focus on my test preparations. If I failed this test, that transfer student from Harvard would take my spot as number one in the class! Unacceptable.
The email took a while to render. I tapped my foot anticipatingly, waiting for something to happen. I even grew bored enough to play the Google dinosaur game on my smartphone. Eventually, after refreshing the page, it loaded in correctly. The only thing that lay before my eyes was a link to a Google Drive document, and large bold red letters right below it.
"Chronicles of the Cardinal Weapons".
I hesitated for a bit, but I reluctantly clicked on the link. I had antivirus after all, and a high-quality VPN. I paid a good 65 dollars for that thing, though I saved quite a bit using a link from an education Youtuber. I was confident my computer was adequately prepared to deal with any virus that might come my way. All my data was backed up anyways, so nothing was at the risk of being lost. No computer geek in the world would ever surf the web without having at least three hard drives, after all.
The link directed me towards the Google Drive homepage. I clicked on the folder that read "story" and proceeded to download the PDF that titled "Chronicles_of_the_Cardinal_ "
After a few seconds, I found myself reading through what appeared to be a science fiction novel. It told the story of a world on the verge of destruction, and the people there must summon heroes to protect themselves. If the catastrophe troubling this world was not stopped in time, the world would end. Eh, pretty generic. At least this is better than some other web novels I've read, where some random main character gets a harem of cat girls. Disgusting.
"Jeez, did some troll just forward me the rough draft of a crappy web novel isekai?" I complained audibly, drawing the ire of my slumbering roommate.
"Satoshi!" My roommate, Mark, groaned. "It's like 1 in the morning! Man's gotta get his sleep!"
"Sorry, Mark!" I shouted back. "I'll be quiet now."
Since I read this far, might as well continue until at least the end of the first chapter. I could read at a few hundred words per minute, after all, so that wouldn't be that big of an issue. You can't judge a book by its first page, after all. You never know what hidden gems you might find.
Lacking much interest, I quickly scrolled through the rest of the story, getting a gist of the whole thing, until I reached the part talking about a certain bow hero. Before I could scroll any further, a bright, blinding light beamed outwards from the screen. Imagine the Star Trek transporter beam but cranked up 10 times. That's pretty much what this looked like.
As my retinas were being burned, I instinctively raised my tired arm and shielded my eye. I had perfect 20/20 vision, so I couldn't risk it getting damaged.
Jeez, what was messing with my brightness settings! Such a bright light in this dark room hurt my eyes even more! Was it that stupid virus that I had probably downloaded? That VPN sure didn't do it's job correctly!
"SATOSHIIIII!" Mark screeched from across the room. "That's it, I'll take care of this myself."
Before I had time to consolidate my thoughts, I found myself spiraling downwards towards an endless abyss. It slowly shifted hues, from brighter colors to darker colors. The colors slowly shifted into spirals, like a black hole sucking in a star. I was way too nauseated at the moment to do anything, anyways. I felt like I was on an acid trip, for no motion sickness could be this bad, though I had never experienced either of the two before.
As soon as the color reached turquoise, and the spiraling reached its maximum vigor, I blacked out.
When I woke up, I found myself in a totally new location. Utterly baffled, I lifted my head that was previously planted onto the cold, stony floor. I didn't know what was happening at that point in time, but I could have never expected that I had been summoned to a whole new world.
Where was I?"
I asked myself as I woke up to the sound of conversing voices.
Those were the only words in my mind as I heard a group of people dressed in strange robes chattering among themselves. They were staring at me with pure astonishment, and I didn't feel comfortable being the center of attention amid a group of potentially hostile strangers.
I looked in every direction imaginable in an effort to grasp my surroundings, but all I could see were colossal stone walls, with some creaks and clear marks of infestation on some of them. I didn't know where I was, but I sure as hell wasn't in my dorm room. Unless Mark suddenly installed a dungeon downstairs, which is highly unlikely.
Even stranger, I realized that I was surrounded by three other men who were also bewildered about their surroundings. They were frantically looking around, same as I had been doing. Perhaps there was some sort of correlation here. Perhaps we were all kidnapped? For ransom money? My parents surely could pay. Hopefully that wasn't the case. Hopefully this was all just a big prank or a misunderstanding.
How did this happen? I remember before blacking out that I clicked on some weird link and downloaded it and read some sort of story. That story wasn't very good, by the way. I've read better Harry Potter fanfictions than whatever the heck that was. Cardinal Heroes. Saving the world. Generic material.
The next moment, I was here. I didn't even have time to say good-bye to my dormmates. Mark, in particular. I could swear he was going to slap me with a sandal due to all the ruckus I was causing in the middle of the night.
What I could grasp so far is that I was in a dark, dingy room made out of stone. Great observations, I know. Only the greatest of detectives could have possibly figured that out. My current location looked like the inside of that castle I visited while in Southern Germany, in the state of Bavaria. They have great sausages and beer down there, though I don't drink.
Strange patterns littered the floor I was standing on. It was glowing, emanating turquoise light, providing the only illumination other than the bright door that the strange people were blocking. It looked like a satanic summoning or something of the sort, only that the color was not blood red.
As I looked down at my arm, I noticed something strange. I definitely didn't possess that before.
Why did I possess a bow? This bow was unexpectedly light, like some sort of Nerf toy gun. It's composition, however, felt like it was of the highest quality. It didn't make any sense how something so beautiful and heavy in appearance could be lighter than some cheap plastic I could buy for a buck at the local Dollar General.
I tapped my bow a few times with my knuckle. Then, I gave it a light tap on the ground. Then, a heavier tap. I waved it in the air a few times. Yep, this was high quality all right.
Thinking back on everything that had happened so far, one of this made any sense. The only thing on my mind, and most likely on the other three's as well, were:
"Where the heck are we right now?"
I was going to voice my concerns, but the man carrying a sword, appearing similar to my bow in design, asked the exact same question to the strange people clad in robes.
"Oh Heroes! Please save our world!"
Unsatisfied with this mundane and unclear response, which honestly, I wasn't too satisfied about it either, the three men shouted in unison.
"What do you mean?"
I didn't speak though, as I did not want to offend these strange people. I would like to have better knowledge of the situation anyways and letting those three do the talking would be most beneficial. I was without any allies, in an unfamiliar place. However, this did sound slightly familiar. The isekai genre in anime was quite hot at the moment. I mean, if you were suddenly whisked away to a new world, you'd probably know it too. That was probably like less than a 1% chance, but I wouldn't rule it out just yet. We just have to wait and see.
I couldn't afford to make any mistakes. I didn't want to end up dead in the side of a ditch for pissing off a cult leader. Or worse.
One of the ones in the robes answered our question.
"There are many complications in this situation, but to offer a simple answer to your question, we have just completed an ancient ceremony and summoned you four heroes."
"I was summoned?" The three men asked. "How come?"
I almost wanted to laugh out loud. This sounded like some social experiment pulled off by the other fraternities, to try to get me to screw up the test. That explains why the strange email was sent, and the brightness was turned up. Maybe one of them was hiding in my room and bopped me on the head with a baseball bat. However, the talk about summoning increased the chances that we were isekaied away to another world to 2%.
I was so about to call them out on that but decided to wait. These people could be a cult or serial killers for all I know, so I didn't want to risk anything. Patience is key, after all.
The robed individual continued his clearly scripted monologue.
"Our world teeters on the brink of destruction. Heroes, please lend us your strength."