Apologies for the delay. My desktop has been completely fried for weeks, and my net's been borked for eight months. I don't know what I did just now, but my internet is working again now, so let's hope it stays that way. In addition, my usual editor is on vacation, and while I've looked over things a few times myself, it's 2.30 in the morning and I've been working on this for a week now.
For clarification, I'm discarding most of the web novel here and going with light novel canon. (Yes, I'm aware that the shield turns into a bracelet in the WN.) There are currently 13 volumes of the LN released in English. Currently, the story takes place at a projected post-canon time. I am sticking with the Shield of Compassion and several other events/abilities, because they will likely be included in the LN in the next couple of volumes (if anyone speaks Chinese, feel free to correct me).
I wasn't really expecting all the support the first chapter got, so I'm pretty surprised, especially considering the limited number of fics in this section. Thank you all.
Final note: "Chevaux Shield" literally means "Horses Shield", but it's in reference to chevaux de frise. You might know them better as "those pointy wooden x-shaped fence things" - they're spiked barriers.
chapter two: zero wave
"So you're okay?" Jun pressed.
"Yes. I'm totally fine," Naofumi sighed. "The guy already had a warrant out for his arrest, so it didn't take a lot of convincing." He let out a yawn as he savagely bisected an entire head of cabbage with one vicious chop, turning the cutting board to slice the leaves into long, thin ribbons. "If he hadn't already been criminal scum, I probably would've had to head to the police station and spend the next twelve hours listening to a bunch of lazy assholes waste time."
"You're not too keen on the police, huh?" his brother prodded, mincing a clove of garlic and sweeping it into a saucepan per Naofumi's instruction.
"I'm keen on police doing their jobs."
This guarded banter continued as they wrapped up dinner, Naofumi doing most of the work; it wasn't that Jun was unskilled (though he was certainly inexperienced), but Naofumi had a habit of taking over the cooking any time he was in a kitchen.
When his brother headed for the bathroom, Naofumi took a moment to check his status screen.
46:14:08
It was still ticking down.
He couldn't help but remain on edge all throughout the evening, though he tried his damndest to push off his anxiety. You can't do anything about it, he reminded himself. There's no way you can figure out what this timer means. You'll see when it ticks down, anyway...and if it's a wave, you should at least have your power back to some extent.
He was pretty sure that was what had happened with the beggar-turned-mugger - he'd been struck by wave energy at just the right moment. The odds were infinitesimal, but they weren't zero, and he'd have to chalk it up to whatever scraps of luck he had left. Perhaps the Shamrock Shield he'd picked up in northern Melromarc had actually been worth the time he'd invested to unlock its "Luck up (small)" ability…
When they'd finished preparing dinner, they headed into the dining room to eat; the food wasn't bad, but it wasn't up to Naofumi's usual standards, so he frowned as he ate, chewing slowly. He'd been unable to take his mind off of the timer, to the point where he'd flat-out forgotten some of the seasoning and nearly burned the vegetables.
After they ate, they headed back to Naofumi's room, where they watched a couple episodes of a popular anime that had released during his absence; it was good, but every time he saw a girl with animal ears, it was an effort not to show the pain that stabbed through his heart.
Still, his heart couldn't take much more, and when one of the girls in the series gave a passionate declaration of her feelings for the main character, he slammed his fist into the arm of his chair and nearly broke it. Jun nearly leapt out of his seat, looking alarmed, but the sound brought Naofumi to his senses, and he forced himself to unclench his fingers, relaxing his grip on the chair.
"What the hell was that about?" Jun spluttered, slopping water down his front.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Don't worry about it."
"After that? I would like to know what's got you so frustrated," Jun sighed. "Try me?"
"Please. You'll just call me insane like everyone else," he grumbled, refusing to meet his brother's eyes. "You can just ask one of the damn doctors, I really don't - "
"Nii-san, you've never spoken a word about anything you've been through to me," Jun cut in, expression unusually intense; for a moment, Naofumi had an idea of what it was like to be on the receiving end of one of his own glares. "Do you really want me to get your story from someone else?"
Isn't this what you wanted from the start? To be given a voice? asked a small voice in the back of his head. Back then, you just let the rumours from the castle spread, because there was no fighting it...but you have people who believe in you now.
Yeah, I know, he snapped at it. I'll tell him, alright? Just shut the hell up.
"What do you know?" The question came out as more of a demand than a request, but Jun appeared unfazed.
"I know you vanished for a year, and you're regarded as one of the greatest cold cases in modern history," he replied, ticking off each point on his fingers. "You were kept in a national psychological ward for three months until they determined you were fit to return to society as a high-functioning schizophrenic. That diagnosis has been used to brush off pretty much everything you've said on the matter, but you really don't seem like a schizophrenic to me. There was a guy in my class who had it, and he got a little weird when he was off his medication...but you haven't even been taking them, have you?"
"How did you - ?"
"Nii-san, I'm not an idiot. There are five unopened pill bottles on your nightstand. They're right there."
Naofumi didn't actually have a response to that, so he just dipped his head. "Go on."
"Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with you," Jun continued. "Since the story I've been given feels really out of place, I'd like to hear your side of it."
He makes a point, Naofumi had to admit. Anyone who knew him personally wouldn't have fallen for the "schizophrenia" excuse - he didn't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it was almost as if that narrative was being pushed a little too hard… "What do you wanna know?" he asked, caving, and Jun cracked a smile.
"Where were you?" was the first question out of his mouth. Naofumi had expected this, and he let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
This is gonna be a long night.
He tried his best to explain what exactly had happened to him; the entire time, Jun listened in silence, expression unreadable. Naofumi glossed and skipped over as much as possible, more for the sake of time than anything, but his story seemed to go on and on anyway - but what's important now, he reminded himself, is to emphasize how dangerous the waves are…
"...and so Motoyasu fell madly in love with a giant bird," he heard himself say.
No! Idiot! That is not the intended message!
With a groan, Naofumi clutched at his head, running his fingers through his unkempt black hair. Jun's, straight and dyed a natural shade of blonde, flopped open to either side as he brushed his entire hand through it from front to back.
"So, you got isekai'd," he summarized, "then the kingdom that summoned you immediately branded you as a criminal and left you to rot…."
A nod from Naofumi, who bore an expression similar to that of someone visiting a sewage plant for the first time.
"Why even bother summoning the shield hero if your religion says he's a demon?" Jun seemed genuinely perplexed.
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" the shield hero in question spat. A second later, his face fell, and he dipped his head. "I...sorry."
Jun didn't respond immediately, and Naofumi kept his head down. When his brother eventually spoke, his usual composure was gone, and the words came slow, as if he'd put great thought into each one. "I think...to go through that, and to...to live...that takes a lot of strength, nii-san," he murmured. "I...honestly don't think I could have done it myself."
"I didn't do it alone," Naofumi pointed out. "If it hadn't been for Raphtalia…"
"The slave you bought?"
"Yeah."
Silence again. Then -
"Is that why you have a raccoon plush?" - and to Naofumi's surprise, Jun was teasing him.
"It's - it isn't like that!" he spluttered. "We're - we were - close...no shit I'd want to remember her. It's not like I'm ever going to see her again."
Again, Jun's reply was delayed; following his brother's gaze, Naofumi realized he was staring at the bracelet.
"That's what you said the shield turned into?"
"Yeah. I literally can't get rid of it. It just keeps coming back. If it weren't for this, I'd have honestly believed that everything I went through was just some kind of shitty dream."
"Logically, I'm disinclined to believe you," Jun reasoned. "There's no evidence that any such worlds exist."
"I knew you'd say that," Naofumi grumbled. People who see themselves as intelligent always think that what they see is the truth…
"That said," Jun went on, "I've known you for sixteen and a half years, and I don't get the impression you're a liar."
SIxteen and a half years and all you have is an impression!? "Thanks," Naofumi deadpanned. "Means a lot."
A roll of the eyes. "Plus, there's that bracelet to consider. I haven't seen you without it since you got home. Do you think you could show me what it does when you try to take it off?"
With a long-suffering sigh, Naofumi got up and made his way to his nightstand, withdrawing a folding knife from the top drawer.
"Do our parents know you have that?"
"I'm twenty-two."
"That's not what I asked."
Naofumi responded by making a single clean cut through the leather strap of the bracelet and handing it to Jun. "Here," he said. "Go hide this somewhere. I guarantee you it'll be back before you even return."
Sure enough, within a minute of his brother's departure, the bracelet reappeared on his arm in a flash of emerald light, and a few seconds later, Jun strolled back into the room and stopped dead in the doorway.
"Did you have another one in your pocket or something?" he demanded, evidently unable to believe what he was seeing.
"No! What happened to wanting to believe me?"
"I never said I wanted to," Jun sighed. "But as long as all the evidence is pointing towards your story being true…"
"Go check your hiding spot, then." With a yawn, Naofumi slumped backwards onto the bed. "Go on."
His brother hesitated, then stepped back inside, biting his lip. "Alright. I won't deny that's weird," he admitted. "So how's it related to you punching your chair over an anime?"
"Because - look, that's not as important right now," Naofumi snapped. "There's something else that's been bothering me. Remember the status magic I talked about?"
A nod.
"On the main interface, there was always a timer with an hourglass that counted down to the next wave. Did you hear that weird noise earlier? The one that sounded like the sky was screaming?"
Another nod.
"That was around the time I was getting mugged. Right after the sound stopped, that timer came back."
He almost could see the gears turning in Jun's head. At length, his brother blinked a few times, then said: "You're saying there's a wave coming here now?"
"Yeah, and if the waves are coming to Earth, nobody's going to stand a chance. I already told you about how levels work in the other world - and since there's no way anyone here could have had access to experience points, I'm pretty sure everyone besides me is going to be at level one…"
"So, if these waves were to come here, we're all going to be impossibly weak and even low-level monsters will pose an insurmountable threat to our strongest weapons?" Jun guessed.
"Something like that. Imagine pitting a level one character with the best possible equipment and abilities against a level one hundred enemy with only its fists or teeth - the level one is going to lose, no matter what."
Biting his lip, Jun placed his elbows on his knees, resting his forehead on his palms. Naofumi knew what he was saying dealt a hard blow to his brother's rational view of the world, and he waited for the shock of the paradigm shift to subside before he continued, a little more kindly than before.
"I...don't know how I'm going to keep anyone safe," he sighed. "I'm the Shield Hero. I can't sit by and watch these waves destroy a world. But I also can't attack - I have a few counterattack abilities, but the only consistently powerful one disappeared when the shield that could use it was given a new form." He was referring to the Dark Curse Burning counterattack, the Shield of Wrath's signature ability; after Atla's death, the Shield of Wrath had become the Shield of Compassion, and he'd lost the ability to use it in exchange for a stronger shield that didn't curse everyone within ten meters. With a party, it was far more effective, but right now, he found himself wishing for Wrath's destructive power.
"Is there not another way to close a wave?" Jun asked.
"Well...if the people in the world on the other side of the wave close it there, it closes on both ends, and since that cuts off the flow of mana between the two worlds, the monsters that already came through will become level one again," Naofumi said, recounting something the queen of Melromarc had told him - that waves would close on their own given time - and piecing it together with what he'd discovered in Kizuna's world. "The military could feasibly take them down at that point, but I don't know if they would gain experience from it."
It would be great if they could, because then they could actually do something about the waves on their own, he mused. But if you think about it, Raphtalia and I could probably take over the entire world by ourselves with our power level if everyone else is level one...so maybe turning the military into effective superhumans isn't such a great idea. Ordinary people wouldn't be able to do anything if some power-hungry asshole decided to stage a coup. They'd probably outlaw monster hunting to prevent people from gaining the strength necessary to rebel, too.
He supposed that was just another reason to fear the waves.
"...What's your timer say?"
Jun's question brought him back to his senses.
"Huh?"
"You mentioned a timer, right? How much time is left?"
Naofumi checked.
"Forty-four hours, give or take." Even as he said it, a sense of creeping dread filled his body, and he fought back the bile rising in his throat. He'd long ago stopped feeling nervous about the Melromarc waves, viewing them as merely a problem that needed solving, but back on Earth, things were different. It was very likely that they would destroy civilization before they destroyed the world itself, whereas back in the other world, there had been heroes and armies capable of stopping them. Even if the cataclysmic attacks didn't shake humanity to its foundations, the widespread rioting and ennui would inevitably tear apart even the closest-knit societies.
"What'll happen when it reaches zero?"
"I guess a wave will come," he shrugged. "We'll deal with it when it happens. There's no way a confirmed schizophrenic will be taken seriously if he tries to tell the government monsters are coming out of the sky."
"You'd probably just get dragged back into the ward," Jun agreed. Then: "...I missed you."
"Huh?"
"Don't make me say it again." - and suddenly his brother, upset somehow, had his gaze fixed on the floor.
"I wasn't under the impression that things had changed much with me gone," Naofumi shrugged, belatedly realizing that his response might have been a little callous. "Sorry, I just - "
"It wasn't the same, you know."
Naofumi couldn't think of anything to say. Jun kept staring at the rug.
"Every day, we just went on with this emptiness in our lives," he went on, voice hollow. "I never knew how powerful negative space could be until the space where you were supposed to be was empty. I - I always thought that no matter what happened, we'd still have each other, you know? Family, and all. But - it was like looking at a skeleton, every time I passed your room. There should have been more there. There should have been a person around that framework. But there wasn't. And I just - I…"
Something dripped down onto the carpet, and Naofumi realised that Jun was crying.
"Mom and dad wouldn't talk to each other for a few months. It felt like the entire house was just filled with that negative space. I would avoid coming home from school as long as I could...even if it got me in trouble. Even when they did start speaking again, it was always so hollow. I thought when you came back, things would get better, but it feels like I'm just living with three skeletons instead of two now."
"Jun, I - "
"You what!?" - and his brother was shouting now, suddenly standing, suddenly angry. "We thought you were dead! And when you come back, you're a completely different person, and - "
Jun didn't get to finish his sentence. Naofumi flung himself from his chair, hurling his arms around his brother's shoulders and hugging him as tightly as the former hero could manage without hurting him.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, chin resting on Jun's shoulder. "I didn't exactly choose to disappear, and I didn't choose to become who I am now. But...if you believe me, you'll understand that I know what it's like to have everything fall apart like that.
"And," he continued, as Jun raised his head, face contorted with - grief? - "if I had the chance to go back and not spend two and a half years in another world, I wouldn't take it."
"...Why?"
"Because, now that I know what I was missing by living as complacently as I was, I couldn't go back and be satisfied with it."
For several moments, the only sound was the faint whir of Naofumi's desktop fan, punctuated by Jun's irregular, choking hiccoughs, then the front door opened downstairs and Naofumi recognized their parents' voices. Shooting Jun one last look that he hoped conveyed his mixed sympathy and resolve, he clapped his brother awkwardly on the shoulder and beckoned for him to follow Naofumi downstairs.
When they reached the front hall, Naofumi was more than a little surprised to see their parents smiling. Before he could say anything, Jun stepped past him, calling: "Did you have a good time?"
"Yes, actually," their father chuckled, dipping his head. "There was the strangest sound earlier. Everyone in the restaurant went outside to see what it might have been, but nobody saw anything. It was exciting!"
Naofumi bit his lip. Jun's smile didn't quite reach his eyes when he mentioned that they'd heard it too, but written it off as machinery.
Their mother had disappeared into the kitchen with a bag, and a moment later, she popped back into the hallway, wearing a smile Naofumi hadn't seen since he was Jun's age.
What the hell has them so cheerful? he groused, mentally.
As it turned out, their parents had brought home a cake - Naofumi's favourite kind of chocolate cake, to be precise. He sniffed it suspiciously when he thought nobody was looking, but it smelled fine; when Jun tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped, nearly burying his face in the plate.
"They're not trying to poison you, you know," the younger Iwatani sighed. "You can't be that dense, nii."
"Maybe it's just a coincidence they bought this kind, then," Naofumi shrugged, wiping a smear of icing off of his nose. They can't have remembered. Why would they remember?
"Oh for - can't you tell?" Jun snapped. "They've been in a good mood all day because of this morning. Like I said...you've been home all this time, but you haven't really been home."
Naofumi grunted, shoveling a bite into his mouth and pausing as something he hadn't tasted in nearly three years hit his taste buds. He didn't realize that he'd started to cry until a tear splashed down onto the cake, scattering into pristine beads that quivered atop the dense icing.
"And, um...sorry for a few minutes ago," Jun mumbled, scratching at the back of his head. "I kinda lost my cool."
He shrugged again, not taking his eyes off of the cake. "There's nothing to apologize for. I stand by what I said, though."
The two of them had taken a seat at the kitchen table, sitting at right angles, and as Jun opened his mouth to respond, their parents came back in with a bottle of wine they'd brought from the restaurant and took the opposite corner. The two of them were definitely in high spirits, and Naofumi felt a pang shoot through his chest as they had their dessert. It was something close to grief, though not quite the same; he supposed it could be classed as loss, but they were still here, so why…?
Then, out of sheer force of habit, he checked the blurry icon lurking just barely within his field of vision, and as the familiar status menu blinked into view (he supposed they couldn't see it, which was odd; it had been visible to the others in Melromarc), he figured it out.
43:40:06
Everything he knew could come crashing down around him in less than two days. He hadn't exactly set much store by his family until this very evening; before his summoning, he'd taken them for granted, and after his return, he'd been incapable of seeing them as anything more than more enemies, people who tolerated his presence and who he tolerated in return according to some unspoken social creed that sanctified their blood relation. But their smiling faces now - this, more than anything, drove home the hurt, drove home the loss, and suddenly he understood very well what Jun had meant by negative space, by skeletons. The people before him now were alive, more so than he'd seen them in years, and he was the one who wasn't there.
The night dragged by, Naofumi unable to fully invest himself in his family's impromptu celebration. Every so often, when he had the chance, he'd pull up the timer again and watch the seconds tick away.
At some point, between the wine and the fact that it was already very late, he dozed off on the sofa. When he awoke prematurely at four in the morning, he found that he'd been carefully covered in a warm blanket and was now sweating like a pig; groaning, Naofumi dragged himself into the kitchen, mouth dry and eyelids heavy, to get himself a glass of cold water.
39:28:19
The next two days were, for Naofumi, excruciating. He slept half the first, and although he felt guilty not doing anything, he had to admit it was a relief to get some rest for once. His sleep had been sparse and broken ever since his return, and he'd been starting to think the bags under his eyes would soon be inviting their relatives to come and stay with them.
At the twenty-four hour mark, his resource bars came back, alongside his name and the familiar shield icon to the left of his health. He was, predictably, listed as level one. Everything else was still either missing or indecipherable.
He checked the timer compulsively, on the hour, even though he knew it would still be there, even though he knew it wouldn't have magically dropped to zero. Until the evening of the second day after his failed mugging, Naofumi felt as if he were unable to focus on anything except it, except what would come when those numbers that only he could see read zero, zero, zero, zero…
1:59:04
He couldn't help it. He had to go for a walk.
The faint scent of petals on the breeze did nothing to ease his pounding heart; all he could think of was the fact that it could easily turn to the scent of blood, that the hustle and bustle of the city around him could, within just a couple of hours, turn to panic and devastation.
Blood, blossoming like flowers, and he remembered the way Trash #2 had been reduced to nothing more than a screaming mess of splintered bone and sundered flesh.
Wandering, Naofumi couldn't focus - he didn't know how to feel, what to do, where to go. At some point, he become conscious of the fact that his feet had taken him to an ancient Shinto shrine on the city outskirts, preserved by centuries of caretakers and protected from decades of tourists by both law and locals.
Things were calmer here, and the stillness helped him relax. Checking the timer again (he'd been walking for half an hour), he studied the interior of the open-air shrine; a vertical stone slab punctuated an otherwise-smooth floor of treated wood planks, fenced off by four red-stained posts linked by a length of rope. Walls rose to about the height of his head, then stopped, leaving the high pyramid roof supported by pillars alone.
As far as he could tell, he was the only human around for a mile or more, but he was far from the only life in the building: a wasp buzzed around the far corner of the roof, seeking to nest; the sound of birdsong and frog-calls swelled from the trees all around him; somewhere nearby, a stream burbled. Breathing deeply, he struggled to still his mind, to meditate and connect his life force to the earth's in whatever limited capacity he could in this world. It was a basic Hengen Muso technique, but one that had served him well over the years, and even if he couldn't utilise the combat skills anymore, he could at least calm his nerves.
Naofumi didn't know exactly how long he'd been sitting cross-legged before the stone tablet when there was a distorted series of screeches from seemingly nowhere. The sequence was vaguely familiar, but the actual sound of it was filled with static and broken up beyond recognition. Checking his status screen, he immediately noticed the addition of a second name and health bar below his own, the name unreadable and the health bar flickering like digital candleflame.
The icon that typically accompanied a party member's resources was missing entirely.
What the hell is this? Who the hell is this?
He couldn't read their level, either, but he noticed that unlike the other scrambled text, the length of the level string kept changing, fluctuating wildly between one and three characters.
1:01:36, read the timer.
An hour. A single, measly hour was all he had left.
Naofumi went home.
By the time he got back, the timer was down to less than half an hour, and his family had already come home for the day; his mother bustled in the kitchen, preparing an early dinner while his father sorted through a stack of papers at the table, his briefcase open on the seat next to him. Jun was most likely upstairs, working on some assignment or other.
"Oka-san. Oto-san."
He was being abnormally formal, and both of his parents turned to face him with surprise written plain as day on their faces.
"Naofumi? You're back early. I was expecting you to be at the library for a while longer."
Ah, right. I told them I'd be at the library again. He'd fallen back into his old habit of meticulously combing the dusty shelves for new books to read, whiling away the time until the next event in his life - only this time, the event was apocalyptic destruction from another world. "Yeah. I, uh, ran into some old friends and they invited me out, but my phone died and I thought I'd drop by here first to let you guys know I'd be gone for longer than usual."
This was, of course, a lie. Naofumi hadn't had any friends at university.
Not that his parents knew any better, and while he didn't particularly enjoy deceiving them, it was necessary. If they knew that, even as they spoke, he was keeping an eye on a timer only he could see, counting down to a wave only he knew about, they'd probably try to have him committed again.
"Thank you for telling us," his mother acknowledged, dipping her head. "I'll set some dinner aside for you. If you get back after ten, please try to be quiet - your father has to get up early tomorrow."
"Right."
Silence. Naofumi wasn't sure why he still stood there, in the entrance to the dining room, breathing the pungent tang of soy and spices. There was something more he'd meant to tell them, wasn't there? - but he didn't know what it was until he opened his mouth to say it.
"Thank you."
"Hm?" His father glanced up from his papers, adjusting his glasses as if they'd somehow help him hear Naofumi better.
"Thank you," he repeated, bowing his head. "For taking care of me."
"You're our son," Iwatani Katai shrugged, though his attempt at nonchalance was betrayed by the expression on his face. "It's nothing to thank us for. We care for you in your youth, and in turn, you care for us in our old age."
"But I know it hasn't been easy for you!" Naofumi pressed. "I - before I disappeared, I didn't have much of a drive to do anything, and we had problems, and I - "
Both his mother and father had paused, frozen in place. He knew they hadn't been expecting this, but with twenty-eight minutes remaining before the wave, he had to say it. He couldn't just let these things go unsaid.
"Thank you," he choked out, and ran.
He had no destination in mind, no plans for after he'd said what he'd meant to say. All he knew was what came next.
The unnamed health bar flickered at the edges of his vision.
Stormclouds, thick grey ones like sheep's wool, blanketed the skies from east to west, but the lights flashing within were no storm. On the horizon, he could make out the distinct swirling of what was unmistakably a wave…
So it's coming right to me this time? He couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad one.
Once he was a safe distance from home, both emotionally and physically, Naofumi stopped to rest and catch his breath. He was in good shape, but he'd grown too used to the bolstered stamina from his levels, and even now he sometimes overestimated his own abilities now that he was back at level one.
All around him, people cast worried glances at the distant sky, the rising storm, and hurried for imagined safety.
00:09:18
Naofumi gripped the bracelet in the palm of his other hand until his knuckles turned white.
As the sky roiled and rolled towards the city, his status screen began to undergo changes: garbled text became legible, corrupted elements were restored to their original form, new options came into view. The pitiful "1" next to his level became "1+255", and he felt an impossible surge of power flow through him, far stronger than the one he'd experienced forty-eight hours prior. On his arm, the bracelet began to glow, brighter and brighter until it was almost blinding to look at - and then it was the shield again, and as passerby stared, the timer hit the number he'd been dreading since its appearance.
00:00:00
People, fleeing the sudden eruption of colour from the clouds, began to scream as countless threads of light scattered from up on high, each one striking the ground like lightning and splitting open the pavement; something stirred within the fissures, and Naofumi instantly knew what was hauling itself out of the closest one.
Monsters.
They were all beast-types and fairly weak (perhaps level fifteen or twenty on average), but to the level-one citizens of Japan, they were lethal, unstoppable forces of destruction, capable of killing a normal man in a single bite, a single swipe, a single sting. Viewed in "real-world" terms, there was no way any of them should be able to kill so easily, but Naofumi knew that the damage they dealt would simply cut off the victim's life force and the unfortunate body would drop to the ground, limp as a ragdoll.
It's okay, he told himself. They're just monsters. Low level. You must have killed a thousand of them. Maybe more. This is just another problem to be solved.
With his stats restored, Naofumi was easily able to keep up with the beasts' movements, but he could imagine that everyone else saw only black blurs with bloodied fangs.
Another problem...how the hell am I going to protect all these people? And how long am I gonna have to do it? How long is it going to be before the other side closes this thing?
If he hadn't been warned in advance, he'd probably have been in a state of shock; thankfully, he'd had two days to sort through his emotions and mentally prepare himself for this moment, and his body moved freely on instinct as he hurled himself into the midst of a fleeing group and shouted:
"Shooting Star Shield!"
The force of the ability sent the closest monster - a two-headed black dog, identical to the one he'd met with Raphtalia in some abandoned mines oh-so-long ago - sprawling with a resounding bang, one of its necks bent at an odd angle.
"Hate Reaction! Air Strike Shield!"
As he raised his shield, the thin metal letting out an ungodly screech to draw the attention of all within earshot, he pointed two fingers at a catlike creature in the act of approaching a cornered man; its claws, sharp as razors, gleamed in the unnatural light, and Naofumi recalled seeing one hunt a rabbit, tearing the small animal's guts out in one vicious tearing swipe -
"Second Shield!"
Crunch.
As his first shield popped up between man and beast, the second appeared behind the monster, sandwiching it between the two barriers and crushing it with relative ease. His attack might not have been very high, but he could at least use his impenetrable defenses to deal minimal damage by force of impact. A monster his own level wouldn't have taken much damage, but the enemies here were (thankfully) so weak that his makeshift attacks were lethal.
Still, his pool of energy was finite, and he'd run out of SP sooner or later. Magic was also useless; the only offensive ability he had access to was the Way of the Dragon Vein, and the earth didn't have any such innate magical power that he could harness. There was no way he'd be able to turn the spray from a fire hydrant into a lethal, cutting torrent like Melty's water spells; it simply wouldn't respond.
"Damnit!" he swore, throwing his Float Shield in between a woman and an incoming Interdimensional Bee (he recognized it from the first wave he'd fought, and when he thought of Raphtalia slashing them to bits, a pang of hurt he couldn't afford to feel struck him squarely in the chest) before enclosing another three people in a protective Shield Prison. Clenching his jaw, Naofumi flung his arm out, raising a wall of spiked barricades ("Chevaux Shield!") behind the monsters attacking the prison before calling two more Air Strike Shields to either side of them, binding the shields together with Chain Shield, and using the chain to fling the entire group into the barrier, impaling them. He released the prison, but he barely had time to shout at its occupants to run before another scream reached his ears, followed by a shrill screech and a distinct hissing sound. "Now what?"
He didn't have to look far - sprinting to the end of the next street, he spotted a chimaera-like creature that had given Raphtalia some trouble near the start of their journey, when they'd played the role of travelling merchants and adventurers: it was a nue, and he remembered its weakness well. After a brief search through his status screen, he found the shield he was looking for.
"Change Shield!" he commanded, and the shield on his arm shifted into a megaphone - it had been an oddly convenient find at the time, but he sure as hell wasn't going to complain. A deep breath, and as the nue reared to deliver a lethal blow to the couple it had pinned, he screamed:
"Fuck - OFF!"
The nue was vulnerable to loud sounds, to the point where it would take actual damage from them, and at Naofumi's shout, blood spouted from its ears; unbalanced, it toppled over backwards, slumping onto the cold pavement.
He kept running.
Naofumi didn't know how long he'd been fighting when the gunfire started, but he could only assume the military had gotten involved. He didn't have time to go looking for them, though; his job right just then was to hold off the wave for as long as possible, hoping against hope that the heroes on the other side would close it - then the glass front of a towering office building exploded into thousands of deadly shards, and Naofumi found himself once again in the position of having to protect far too many people at once. He didn't even know if the shield he had in mind was large enough, but damnit, I'm going to try!
"Meteor Wall X!"
The SP consumption of most skills was minimal in comparison to his total pool, but some of them used a set percentage of his maximum. The Meteor Wall ability was one such skill, ordinarily consuming ten percent of his SP to summon a five-meter-wide defensive wall, but by pouring even more of his energy into the ability, Naofumi found that he could increase the size of the wall alongside its SP consumption. A third of his SP vanished as, sweating, he crossed and uncrossed his arms, keeping his open palms facing the rain of shrapnel; the moment he stopped moving them, a shimmering, semitransparent wall of light erupted above the street, shielding those beneath from the lethal onslaught.
Crisis averted, Naofumi turned his attention to whatever had broken the windows in the first place and his heart skipped a beat.
Framed in the building it had torn through, a long, scaly neck connected to a massive, scaly head, and even as he stared, the fearsome mouth opened wide and let loose a gout of flame that, while it glanced harmlessly off of the Meteor Wall, would have likely obliterated any man-made structure in its path.
There's no way in hell I can fend off a dragon and handle the rest of this wave. One way or another, people are going to die, and there's nothing I can do about it.
Just as he thought this, two things happened in very quick succession: a streak of light, very different from the ones that had summoned the monsters all around him, cleft the air above the dragon's head, and a moment later, he noticed that the icon next to his unidentified party member had returned.
Up until then, it had remained the only missing piece in the puzzle of his status screen; everything about it had remained corrupted or simply absent. The moment the icon returned, however, the flickering health bar, the ever-changing level, even the corrupted string of text that was the name - each one instantly became whole again, and Naofumi couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.
Lv1+255
He only knew one other person who'd hit that level, who'd be strong enough to decapitate a dragon in one stroke while falling from the heavens.
Before the head even hit the ground, he saw the lithe, lean body land light as a feather in spite of the incredible speed of its fall, and he read the name over and over again, unable to believe his eyes, unable to believe the status magic that told him, plain as day, that her name was
Raphtalia