"Thank you again for all your help." Rozemyne said to the owner of the magic store, Minerva.
"Think nothing of it. I was glad to be able to exchange knowledge with such a talented young lady." Minerva replied, waving goodbye to Rozemyne. "If I ever find any more books on magic, I will be sure to contact you first."
"Thank you!" Rozemyne said happily at the prospect of more books, before turning and heading down the street with her personal guard, five of the orphan children who had grown up way too fast.
Turned out, Demihumans would age as they leveled up, with most gaining the appearance of full grown adults by level 20.
With Ren's advice and assistance, the children found perfect training grounds to grow levels and gather valuable resources with minimal risk, and two weeks later, they had become level 30. Ren had been glad to trade information about training as a fee for transportation using Lessy, who was ten times faster than their dragon horses and could easily move over forests. Perfect for a solo trainer like Ren who is constantly moving to the most effective training grounds for his level.
And while she was moving Ren around, Rozemyne would sell her stock of potions in the various places she passed, as well as healing injuries and providing mana to the land to help with the crop yields, combating a recent famine.
Rozemyne was proud of her kids, but also very sad, as they wanted to be treated as adults rather than children.
It was her two years sleep all over again, with Gil saying he was too old for her headpats anymore.
"We still have a few hours until it is time to meet the others for our strategy meeting." Rozemyne said as she looked at the clock that was conveniently located in her status menu.
Rozemyne and Ren had planned for a strategy meeting for the first, technically second, Wave of Calamity, to be held at a local inn. An odd location for a meeting between Heroes, but Rozemyne wasn't going to complain about the friendly atmosphere, so long as the other Heroes didn't mind a few magic tools to prevent eavesdropping.
Ren seemed to believe that the Waves would follow the order and difficulty of a video game he had planned which seemed to have the same mechanics as this world, but Rozemyne convinced him to air on the side of caution. So they would hold a meeting for the Wave that was to hit in three days.
"Let's go and get something special for a victory celebration for once the Wave is over." Rozemyne said, getting approval from her guards and many a wagging tail.
So off they went to grab as much sugar and flour as they could afford, and a bit of meat of course.
The Legendary Shields ability to transport goods was eternally useful. It made shopping so much nicer.
Rozemyne wondered if Ren was already in town. Perhaps she would run into him buying sweets himself.
No matter how much he denied it, that man had a sweet tooth.
"Where's Rozemyne?" Motoyasu asked as he sat down at the table with Ren and Itsuki, his girl's squad forming up behind him.
"She had some last minute business at her orphanage, so she'll be a little late." Ren said, adopting his cool guy pose as he leaned back in his chair, eyes closed. He had lied to Rozemyne about the time for the meeting, and he felt guilty about that. However, he had a good reason for it. "Before she gets here, there is something I want to confirm with you guys."
"And what is that?" Itsuki asked, not seeming too thrilled about being at a strategy meeting for the second wave.
All three of them had massively overleveled for this, with the recommended solo level for the Wave being level 35, and each of them being level 40+.
Thanks to Rozemyne, with her helping him get around and her magic tools, magic buffs and potions allowing him to safely stretch his limits during training, Ren had grown to level 56 already. She'd also helped him learn to read the local language and taught him basic magic.
She was an amazing teacher, even if her treating him like an elementary school student, along with the rest of the orphans, was a bit embarrassing.
"While talking to Rozemyne, we discovered that each of us had power up methods for the Legendary Weapons that weren't recorded in the others help page, and that weren't available to us until after we told each other about them." Ren said, getting the other two's attention.
Rozemyne had two power up methods that Ren hadn't had access to from the start. The first was called 'Mana Boost' which would let the user permanently strengthen the individual weapon forms by pouring a large amount of mana into it. There didn't seem to be a maximum as far as Ren could tell, but the cost of levels increased exponentially, so anything more than level 5 was hard for him.
The second, and the reason why Ren wanted to do this without Rozemyne present, was an ability called 'Trust', which would increase the power of people the wielder of the legendary weapons trusted and would increase their own power based on the trust people had in them.
In order to boost Rozemyne's trust in him, Ren was going to learn the other twos methods and share them with her himself.
…SHUT UP!
Rozemyne was his only friend in this world. The only person who shared his loneliness.
It hadn't taken long for Ren to understand this. That the allies he had surrounded himself with were not and would never be his friend. At least, not like the friends he had before. Their loyalty was true and they wished to serve him with all of their hearts, and he cared for them and would do whatever it took to make sure they were safe. But the way they idolized him, how he was placed above them, it made it so that they could never fill the gap left behind by the loss of his friends and family when he came to this new world.
Rozemyne was the only one who understood that and who saw him for who he was, and not the Saint Hero of the Sword. She was the only one who empathized with his struggles, as she too knew that while she cared for the orphans under her care, there was a barrier that existed between her and them that couldn't be overcome.
Motoyasu, Itsuki, they were too narcissistic to even think about such complex things. Motoyasu just wanted to surround himself with women and Itsuki just wanted to hear people praise him for his heroics. Just meeting their cheer squads was enough to make Ren feel sick.
Rozemyne was a Saint. Those two were just self-centered dicks with overpowered weapons. He didn't want them trying to get close to her.
"So here is the deal. I'll tell you everything I know first, and then you tell me what you know. Deal?" Ren said, betting nods of agreement from the other two before taking a deep breath and starting. "Alright. Let's start with the 'level link' system."
Ren was livid as he stomped through the streets away from the disaster which had been his meeting with the other two male heroes.
He had opened up to them, going first and telling them nothing but the god honest truth, and they had returned the favor by feeding him absolute crap! Then they went and claimed that he was the one lying to them!
"Those immature, brainless bastards. Don't they understand that things are serious here." Ren growled to himself, too wrapped up in himself to notice his surroundings.
"Lord Ren?"
Ren froze, his head shooting up to see Rozemyne standing there with the grown up orphans who were her usual bodyguards. "Lady Rozemyne… I…"
Ren shifted awkwardly until Rozemyne held out a hand towards him, containing a magic tool to prevent eavesdropping. It was something they often used to talk to each other, as while Ren trusted his party members to not be plotting against him, Rozemyne had said that sometimes those who don't mean you harm could be the most dangerous to you.
Considering how experienced she seemed to be with people trying to deceive and hurt her, he was willing to humor her. …It wasn't like he was worried about it himself or anything.
"What happened?" Rozemyne asked him after they became functionally alone in the middle of the busy street.
"...I met with Motoyasu and Itsuki early in order to exchange information about power up methods for the Legendary Weapons." Ren admitted weakly, hoping that Rozemyne wouldn't be too mad at him.
"Is that so? You don't seem happy about it." Rozemyne said, seeming more concerned for him than angry that he had gone to talk to them behind her back.
"Well, after I told them everything I know, they proceeded to only feed me lies, telling me fake methods." Ren said angrily. "Like Itsuki. That guy was trying to tell me that each weapon form had slots that you could infused special ores into in order to increase its stats, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find any such method."
"...Um. Ren. I can see it in my status menu now." Rozemyne said, shocking Ren.
"What?" Ren said before checking his own page again. Sure enough, that method was now there, where it hadn't been a moment before. "But how. I know it wasn't there before."
"...What other things did they tell you?" Rozemyne asked.
Ren shared them one-by-one, and each time he did, the Power-Up method would suddenly appear in his menu. "But why? Why are they appearing now?"
"...I think it is because of me." Rozemyne said, surprising Ren. "I just found it in my own menu after I thought about it a little. It seems I have an ability called 'Sharing and Understanding' which lets me learn the Power-Up methods of other Legendary Weapons and teach them to others."
"That's amazing." Ren said in disbelief.
He had gone from having 3 upgrade methods and 1 passive to having 11 upgrade methods and 4 passives.
His total power was going to skyrocket because of this. He wanted to immediately get to work minmaxing his power that very moment, but…
"We should probably tell the others as well." Ren said after a moment's consideration.
While he sort of saw the other two as his rivals, he didn't want to seem selfish in front of Rozemyne.
"...Maybe. But let's wait for a little bit." Rozemyne said, much to Ren's surprise. "This is a lot of power. I'd rather be sure that they are mature enough to handle it before we teach it to them. …Also, I've been trained to never give people free meals."
Ren stared at her before snorting with laughter. "Alright, fine. I'll leave it up to you then."
"Thank you very much." Rozemyne said, pulling out two yellow stones from her pocket and a wand out of seemingly nowhere. She tapped her wand against the stones, causing them to turn into birds and then spoke out a message. "I'm ready for the meeting whenever you all are. Ren and I will be waiting at the inn." Then with a flick of her wand, the birds flew off. "I suppose this is the first test for them. We will see if they come back to have our strategy meeting."
…They didn't.
The High Bishop didn't know what to do.
There original plan of framing the Shield Hero for raping the Princess kind of went out the window when she turned out to be a woman. And not just a woman, but a politically savvy Archduchess. One who immediately set up her assigned guards to act in a way in which she could dismiss them for insubordination, leaving them stuck, as they couldn't exactly go and complain to the King.
If they were brought forward in front of everyone and it was told that they had acted against their duties as guards, they would face court martialing. So they were never officially dropped and no new guards could be assigned, letting her move around as she wished.
The odd thing was, she didn't seem interested in gaining power. Just money.
She never hunted monsters herself, keeping her own level low, and rather than training, she collected slaves and taught them trades so that she could make money off of them.
She had a lot of slaves mind you, but almost none of them were growing levels. They were all doing basic labor instead.
Problem was, even if all she was doing was trying to make money, her reputation among those who had seen her was too good for them to try to accuse her of any sort of crime.
The High Bishop had tried to send his Shadows to investigate her, but that strange house of hers that had appeared out of nowhere was surrounded in some kind of magic barrier that prevented their entry.
Attempts to use force to get in had ended in disaster, nearly killing the Shadow who had tried.
The girl was very familiar with magic and potion making, unlike the other Heroes.
Worst of all, the Sword Hero seemed to fancy her, spending far more time with her than any of the other heroes. He seemed to trust her completely.
Well, as long as she remained a low level and remained useless, she wouldn't cause any serious harm. They just had to keep suppressing any rumors about her Sainthood and spreading positive rumors about the other heroes.
Sooner or later though, they would need to remove the girl from the picture, and what better time than a Wave of Calamity.