"Wait, no shit?! You fought a boss?" asked Spe-Motoyasu, as he slammed the cup of…I assumed alcohol of some kind. It fizzed anyway, though to his credit, the guy was able to hold it. That was his third mug, and they weren't small, and he was only slightly red in the face. Ren meanwhile was sipping tea and trying to look all broody, despite sitting with the two of us in the middle of a busy tavern.
Naofumi was…nowhere to be seen. He'd apparently gotten tired of the other two thanks to some bad blood between them. Apparently, after I'd decided to go have a starting adventure, the other party members had been allowed to pick who they went to. Not a bad idea, honestly, they were living people, but given we were the leaders I honestly feel it would have been best for us to pick.
Most especially because of what had happened. Naofumi had ended up with no one, while Ren and Motoyasu got the rest of the eleven members distributed between them, favoring Ren more than even Motoyasu. That was…a dick move honestly. Luckily, one of Motoyasu's ladies(The fact that he called them that made me want to kick him in the dick), had volunteered to go with him.
More, they'd gotten silver, I would too apparently when I went back to the castle tomorrow, as Lucia and I had been turned away at the gates due to the whole Nest Mother thing. They were protecting the King and the nobles inside until the corpse had been dealt with completely. Burning it HAD reduced the amount of toxins in the body, but it did need some purification to get rid of it completely.
So we were stuck out here for the evening in an inn that had come with some good reviews from our party members…and had a bar downstairs which helped. Seemed decent enough to me, and Lucia, exhausted, had already retired to a room, along with a few of the others. Naofumi meanwhile was staying across the way at a slightly more upscale sort of place with his lone party member, a woman named Myne.
That was possible for him because the King was a generous sort of guy, and had given him some extra funds, to the tune of two-hundred silver for a total of eight-hundred, though he'd have to make do with five-hundred silver a month after that just like us. That sounded...really high, honestly, but then, we were this world's only hope of fighting the Waves, and unlike a lot of rulers, this King seemed to get that.
My own funds would be a bit less, I'd learned due to the expense of the jerkin and other clothing I was wearing. It had cost, no joke, around three-hundred silver, but was one of the finest the kingdom made. That was good, but it meant I only had three-hundred more waiting for me tomorrow to begin my adventure with. That said, it still put me on the same level as Naofumi with what I'd made for rat killing.
"It wasn't really a fight. My partner and I ran away from it after pissing it off by killing its children, and then she blew its brains out with a lightning spell. About all I did was give her some MP to help," I explained, and he scoffed, chugging the rest of his drink down, while I looked to Ren who was nursing a…I had no idea. I was having that 'coffee' stuff from the keep, luckily it wasn't super expensive or rare, but he was having something else. Ren was the legal drinking age in Japan…I think. Hadn't asked him about that.
"So, you've already shot up in the levels. Our balloon popping today saw us not go up by a single one," he said, reminding me of where they'd been while I'd been crawling around in the sewer. Apparently there was this field outside of town that had some monsters called 'balloons' of all things, that came in a variety of colors. The ones they'd seen being the weakest variants, orange.
They died in a few blows from any adventurer with a halfway decent strength stat, but the things bites could take off limbs, according to the party, and so they made good fodder for starting quests. Each one had been worth one point of EXP though, and there'd been only a few dozen in the whole area, and they tended to scatter when the guys got close, meaning they'd each gotten barely two dozen kills despite the ease of their prey.
Meanwhile, the rats had been worth three to eight a piece depending on factors that apparently had to do with Wave contamination. That was, in fact, what the EXP was doing. We gained it for killing the things because our Weapons 'converted' the energy from them into power for us. The same happened to adventurers, thanks to the Dragon Hourglasses, but us partying with them boosted their gain rate by at least a factor of two.
Oh, and the Nest Mother had been worth almost a thousand. That was a big part of my gains, and unfortunately, I had to admit we'd been thorough, and there weren't any more rats down in the sewers. Motoyasu was man enough to admit he wouldn't have wanted to go down there anyway. Tight spaces freaked him out, and Ren wanted to find his own prey to level up with, so wouldn't have followed in my footsteps anyway.
We also found out we did indeed have some differences. For instance, I could read…not like the others were illiterate, they could read Japanese fine, and even my native English to some degree, but they didn't get the same translation I did when looking at text in this world, which meant I had a good advantage there…though considering we wouldn't be signing contracts that was mostly useful for gathering info.
Ren, the lucky snot nosed brat, meanwhile had a minimap. Like, in the edge of his vision, the opposite of the status window icon was a map of the local area. It even had markers for people if he knew they were there, and color coded them based on his own thoughts on them. Red for enemies, blue for allies, and yellow for people he didn't care about. That last apparently applied to us, something Motoyasu told him to screw off for.
Motoyasu figured he was just all around better than us, as he hadn't found anything like a map or the ability to read the local language, which I doubted, but I'd let him have it. And neither had been able to get Naofumi to talk to them long enough to really learn what his deal might be. I figured it might be some kind of item buff or something myself, like healing or equipment bonuses were double for him like in Dimensional Sign, but I kept that idea back for now, until I could talk to him in the morning.
We soon drained our cups, and while Motoyasu went to get more, I myself was going to head to bed. Going up the stairs, I took a moment to check in on Lucia, whose door happened to be locked so I left it at that, heading to my own room. The bed wasn't quite as good as the one at the castle, but still, I was old, and it didn't take long, even with three cups of the local brew in me to fall asleep.
I woke before dawn, just like back home, and was sitting in the dark, not surprised at all to still be in this RPG fantasy world, and wishing I had something to do with a computer back home. I was itching for some of my games, as I liked fantasy just fine, but kind of wanted something with giant mechs or the like. Perhaps someone could make one here? Or already had, I'd have to check that out.
Bored, I was surfing my menus, finding out what they did, and did not allow me to do, and interestingly, discovered some hair and eye options. That was…odd, and standing up, I lit a candle to investigate the changes, soon swapping my hair color around, even finding I could do patterns, which was neat, and my eyes could be changed too. I briefly considered going with silver hair and glowing purple eyes, but thought better of it, for now, and switched back to my normal stuff as I smiled, and then came out of my room.
The inn was mostly quiet, save for some snoring coming from a few of the rooms, including one I knew had Motoyasu's 'ladies' in it. That amused me, but as I walked downstairs, and the first stains of gray streaks stained the sky, something happened. Guards, like, a dozen of them, came in, making a racket and waking us all up, and asking us to come to the palace at once, as something had happened in the night.
The others, bleary eyed, and barely awake were still able to follow us to the street, where a carriage was waiting for us, and then we rode out, the party members being woken up and taking one. I noticed then that no one had gone into the inn across the way, though two guards were waiting outside the door at attention, making me wonder just what the heck had happened, and if Naofumi was in trouble.
To be fair, he was. So much trouble in fact that when I saw him again, I'd beat the ever loving shit out of him. Myne, the woman in his party, the one who'd volunteered for that duty in fact, was weeping openly as she told her story, and showed off the marks on her body, marks that had many possible explanations, but she gave us one of the most damning ones between fits of sobs.
When she was done, when she literally collapsed into the arms of Motoyasu who nearly ran out of the room, saying things about how he'd go out there and kill the bastard himself. Drunk or not, it was no excuse for what he'd done, and I for one agreed. Still, the King advised we give the man his day in court. He didn't doubt the woman thought something had happened, but there were other ways it might have been done, without involving him.
He wasn't dragged in, he wasn't forced down onto his knees, but he instead stumbled from a small push and fell forward, showing he was lacking in coordination. Worse, he smelled of alcohol, lots of it, and he blabbered something about a thief stealing all his money and belongings. Gods, that sounded just like an excuse a drunk would make, and as he tried to rise, the King had Myne repeat some of what she'd told us.
The previous evening, while we were in the inn across from him, the drunk had gotten alcohol brought to him, and apparently been deep, deep into the cups, which he hadn't been able to handle. He'd then broken into Myne's room and forced himself onto her, leaving the marks we saw, which looked like they'd perfectly fit his hands. Worse, one of the guards soon brought in a set of lingerie, Myne's by her admission, that they'd found in his room, along with the gear he'd said had been 'stolen'.
That clenched it, and for a moment, it looked like Motoyasu would kill him, the two trading barbs for a moment, Shield even accusing Motoyasu of being behind all this from the way the woman was hanging off him. That he and Myne had somehow planned this all out. That was…absurd was probably the right word, but when he was done railing against it, and the nobles had had their say, a bit more loudly than was really needed, Shield demanded to be sent home.
"Oh, so you want to run away the moment things get tough then? Have you no honor at all?" asked Ren, and I nodded.
"You have committed a crime, young man, and penance must be served," I added with contempt, and Motoyasu shrugged, holding Myne closer to him.
"You know what, let the bastard go home, let him live with this shame for the rest of his damn life," said the blonde, and I was tempted to agree with that, if I thought he felt shame, but he seemed more angry than anything, trying to leap through the guards to get at Myne at one point.
"I'm afraid that's not an option we have, Heroes," said the King, as he leaned back in his throne and placed his fingers of one hand on his temples, looking weary and downtrodden.
"It is said that, until the Waves are defeated the Heroes cannot be returned to their own worlds, and regardless, even if we could, we could not summon a new Shield Hero until such time as the rest of the four have perished," he declared, and we all turned to face him, Motoyasu with shock, Ren with…I'm gonna call that expression dull surprise, and I hoped my own face showed at least some of the anger I was feeling.
"Wait, you mean you can't send us home?" asked Motoyasu, and the King nodded.
"Had we proper warning, we might have sent you back to your world before the Waves had begun crashing into our world, if that was your wish. Now that they are here, however, we lack that ability. I'm sorry I held that back from you," he said, sounding sincere in his apology, as Shield brought our attention back to him.
"So what?! Are you gonna throw me in a dungeon and pull me out whenever a Wave happens?" he demanded, and I turned back, ready to just end him here and now, but the King's voice calmed me.
"No, as much as your crime warrants far, far worse in our nation than this, we cannot afford it. You will be released to your own devices, but news of your transgression is already spreading, and I will offer you no more aid. You will be without friend or ally within this country, until such time as you prove worthy of it," he declared, and I felt that would work. It still might have done to send him with a keeper of some kind, but Shield proved why that wouldn't work a moment later.
He…I have no words for it directly. He gathered an aura around himself, a green glow coming from the green gem in the center of his weapon, and then he flared it out, knocking back, and even knocking down, the guards with spears that had surrounded him, as he began to stalk out, only to stop in a moment, and then pull out some coins from the bracer attached to his shield, tossing the silvery things at Motoyasu's feet.
He ranted about how that was what he wanted, implying again that Motoyasu had something to do with his punishment, and the Himbo proved to be just that as he charged at him, grabbing him by the wrist. Not that he did anything to stop him, Shield leaving us alone in the room, allowed to walk free, if only because the world had need of him in a way that prevented a replacement.
Myne sought comfort in Motoyasu's arms, but I ignored it, walking over and picking up the pieces of silver, actually smiling despite myself when I realized there were thirty of them. I then handed them to one of the guards, honestly not sure what else to do with the things as we stood there. It felt…hollow as I walked over to Lucia, and then had her follow me out of the throne room, so we could continue on our quest to save the world from monsters…like the one that had just walked out of this room.
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(Authors Note: Now, to assuage some people who might think it, I'm not gonna spend this fic bashing Naofumi, and no, he did NOT do it. I just didn't find the original 'evidence' all that compelling, so I added some things to it that would have been easy to fake, but harder to deny. Basically, there's a reason everyone thinks he did something wrong here, not just one pretty face's word.
I also changed it from her running to Motoyasu, which was suspicious all on its own, to going to the guards. And yes, his stuff WAS back in his room when they went to check, in order to make the framing better, as it makes no sense for her to bother with stealing his things OTHER than to make the framing better. From here on, the story will diverge a lot, as we don't get much from the other Heroes beyond small snippets of their adventures, and even then focused mostly on Motoyasu of the Spear, until season 2 of the anime, and volume 7 of the LN.)
