The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 05 (2 page)

That was all well and fine for me, but he had created a situation where neither Raphtalia nor Filo was able to level any further.

When all the investigations and talks were over, I addressed this issue to the queen, and she summoned Trash to get the truth out of him.

But Trash was equivocal, giving excuse after excuse. It took encasing him in a block of ice to get him to speak the truth—but he eventually did.

I grinned as I watched him confess. I guess it makes me look bad to admit that though.

I didn’t care. That man had made our lives a living hell for months. Couldn’t I take some degree of pleasure in his downfall? Anyone that saw me smiling at his misery would think I was a bad person though.

“By the way, what happened to the sisters that lived here?”

The last few times I’d come to the church it was filled with nuns who treated me terribly. But now when I came to the church all the nuns were gone. They’d been replaced by soldiers.

“They accompanied the high priest to the battle field and have therefore all been arrested.”

That seemed reasonable. As far as I was concerned, they deserved whatever they got.

“Okay, so what do we need to do to have the class-up ceremony?”

“First tell us who would like to participate in the ceremony.”

A little while ago, when I thought we couldn’t participate in the ceremony, I had no idea what to do.

I didn’t see any other options, so I decided to go to Shieldfreeden, which was a country of demi-humans, to see if I could do it there.

But just as we tried to leave for Shieldfreeden, we got mixed up in the whole princess-kidnapping affair. Did it mean that we’d be able to class-up here after all?

For now, I’d just do as the queen asked. She wanted to know who needed the ceremony, so I sent my gaze over to Raphtalia and Filo.

“Me!! I want to go first!”

Filo threw her hand into the air, desperate to go first.

I looked over to Raphtalia, who nodded in agreement.

“Alright, let’s have Filo go first.”

“Yayyy!”

Filo stepped forward with confidence.

“Now then, stand in a relaxed way, touch the dragon hourglass, and focus your mind.”

“Like this?”

Filo turned back into her monster form and slowly reached out to touch the glass.

When her feathers brushed the glass, the red sand inside swelled and rippled in waves before beginning to glow mysteriously.

“Very well. We shall now begin the class-up ceremony.”

The queen snapped her fingers and soldiers appeared and surrounded the dragon hourglass. There was a large and complicated pattern cut into the floor, a series of grooves that crisscrossed the area. The soldiers knelt and poured a liquid into the grooves.

“What’s that? Do you guys hear that?”

“Keep focusing.”

“Okaaaay!”

Filo slowly closed her eyes and raised both of her wings.

The hourglass was filling with a faint light, and the light was echoed back by the magical pattern on the floor.

Filo stood in the center, and the light grew stronger until she was completely enveloped in it.

“Now then, chose your desired future.”

“Hey! I can see something!”

Filo’s eyes were closed.

Just then, a small, somewhat warped image of Filo appeared before me, a flashing icon of sorts, and branches extending from the icon like . . . . To borrow language from games, it looked like a sort of growth tree.

“And this is the monster that you will choose? Mr. Iwatani, please decide.”

Like I’ve just described, Filo is actually a monster. Monsters that you use in your team can be controlled with a monster control seal, which allows the owner to control the monster by hurting them if they disobey or ignore orders. It basically gave me the right to control her life and death.

It seemed that her owner, myself in this case, had the right to decide whether she participated in the class-up ceremony too.

“Guess I can control that too.”

A filolial growth chart appeared before my eyes, splitting off into many directions, each indicative of new possibilities.

And yet, I . . . .

“Filo, this is something you should decide on your own. It’s not my choice.”

I rejected the choice, and a new option appeared, asking if I would like the monster to choose on her own. I chose yes.

“Oooh! I can see so many things! Which one should I choose . . . ?”

Filo closed her eyes and an expression of joyful anticipation spread over her face as she considered the possibilities.

I could have chosen for her, but Filo should have some say over how she spends the rest of her life.

I decided to tell Raphtalia the same thing.

“Raphtalia. I already went over this with Filo, but after the waves are finished and I return to my own world, you need to live on your own. So you need to decide your path for yourself. Okay?”

“I would have been okay with any future you’d chosen for me.”

“You have to choose.”

“ . . . Very well.”

She nodded, looking somehow disappointed.

But it would be worse if I chose and later had to regret my decision.

I trusted her—that was enough reason to let her decide on her own.

So what would Filo pick?

I looked over to see that the feather standing up from her head was now glowing.

“Huh?”

The light grew stronger and seemed to vibrate before flashing brilliantly.

It was so bright that I was blinded for a moment. I blinked a few times to get my bearings, then looked again at Filo.

Her appearance hadn’t changed very much. But the vertical feather on her head seemed somehow more splendid than before.

It looked like . . . a small crown.

“The class-up ceremony was a success.”

“I see that.”

I opened up Filo’s status menu to take a look at what had changed. The star symbol that had been next to her level earlier was now gone, which probably meant that the level ceiling had been removed.

That must mean that she could now level far beyond the previous cap. I looked at her actual stats and discovered that most of them appeared to have doubled.

So that’s how powerful the class-up ceremony really was.

“Heh . . . This is pretty impressive.”

Filo’s stats had always been better than average, and now she was substantially stronger than she had been.

I decided to compare her stats to my own to see how far ahead I was only to discover that her stats had surpassed mine!

Of course, I meant compared to my stats before the curse had lowered them.

The only stat of mine that was higher than hers was my defense rating!

“I couldn’t pick . . . .”

Filo had turned back into her human form and came running over to me with tears in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I wanted to learn how to spit poison, but then, before I could pick one of the paths I wanted, another option showed up and picked itself.”

A while back we’d been fighting some monsters that were able to spit poison. Ever since then, Filo had sort of romanticized the notion.

She doesn’t need to spit poison because she already has a poisonous tongue.

“Well it looks like that cowlick of yours is glowing now.”

“Erm . . . .”

“Filo, don’t lose hope. When you start to get stronger, you still might learn how to spit poison.”

Raphtalia tried to cheer up Filo.

“Really?! Then I’m gonna try real hard!”

“Okay Raphtalia, you’re next.”

“Oh, alright.”

Raphtalia reached out and touched the hourglass, just as Filo had.

And just like last time, the soldiers in the room all knelt and poured a viscous liquid into the grooves on the floor. Just then—just like last time—a flashing icon appeared in my field of vision.

Right—I selected to refuse the choice . . . .

But just then, Filo’s cowlick split in two and one of the cowlicks came flying straight at me.

“Huh? What?! Filo!!”

“It’s not me!”

What did she mean by that? Did she mean that the new cowlick was somehow moving and acting on its own?

Raphtalia was looking over at us, her eyes wide and surprised.

“Mr. Naofumi?!”

The floating cowlick caused a new potential line of growth to extend from Raphtalia’s growth tree—one that hadn’t been there before—and the new growth line selected itself.

“Ahh?!”

Raphtalia suddenly yelped.

The whole area was engulfed in flashing, blinding lights. A column of smoke appeared. The whole thing seemed to be proceeding differently than Filo’s class-up ceremony.

A moment later, the smoke dissipated, and Raphtalia appeared standing where it had been, coughing, but looking otherwise healthy.

“Are you okay!?”

“Y . . . yes. I’m alright, but . . . .”

What was happening?!

I was worried, but I opened the status screen to check on her. Just as with Filo, the star had vanished, and most of her stats had doubled.

“What happened?!”

“I don’t really know. Some option automatically selected itself. It filled me with a horrible feeling of dread, but everything seems to be just fine.”

“Well that’s good . . . but what is going on? Why are your class-up directions being decided on automatically?”

“Who’s behind it?”

“I don’t know. But Filo’s cowlick was originally given to us by Fitoria, right?”

“You’re right. “

When we were in the middle of the whole princess Melty-kidnap debacle, we’d come across a legendary creature—the queen of the filolials herself.

Filo and the queen talked about a lot of things, and in the end the queen gave Filo this cowlick, saying that it would help her in the days to come.

She also did something to my armor—saying it would help us. In return, she only commanded that I find a way to bring the heroes together.

If I wasn’t able to get the heroes to cooperate, she warned that she’d have to see us killed.

“What does it mean?”

I looked over at the queen. Her eyes were shining.

“You don’t say? I’ve wanted to meet with the filolial queen for ages.”

“That’s not what I’m asking!”

The queen seemed to know a lot about the heroes, but according to Melty, she’d also spent some time exploring legendary lands.

Maybe she had a personal interest in exploring ancient legends?

Her daughter, Melty, harbored a deep-seated interest in filolials. Like mother like daughter, I guess.

Regardless, it wasn’t the time or the place to wax poetic on inherited traits.

“How are you two feeling?”

“I feel stronger than I used to.”

“The feather from the filolial queen . . . I wonder what it all means?”

The queen sighed, looking disappointed.

“I know that certain special tools can be used during the class-up ceremony to achieve certain special effects. I don't know what this means, but I’d like to assume it's a good thing.”

“Right . . . .”

“How much have their abilities improved?”

“From the look of it, most of their stats have doubled.”

“DOUBLED?”

The queen was shocked. Was it safe to assume that the growth was more dramatic than usual?

The filolial queen’s feather had somehow affected the ceremony. If it had raised their stats more than usual, I certainly didn’t think that was anything to complain about.

“Typically the ceremony is considered a relative success if one of the items raises by 50 percent. Compared to the average outcome, this is very impressive.”

As for our stats, there are all sorts of them: HP, MP, SP, attack power, defense, agility, strength, and so on.

I could keep going into more subtle stats, but there are at least this many main ones.

Well, Raphtalia and the others don’t have SP. It might be a stat that only heroes share.

The “one item” that the queen mentioned referred to one of these stats. She meant that normally a stat, like attack power, would get a 50 percent boost.

“You don’t say? Guess we got a good deal here.”

But the two of them both seemed a little disturbed by what they’d been through. I guess I could sympathize with that easily enough.

Class-up . . . . As common a concept as it is in online games, the best thing about the system was that you had the agency to decide your growth path.

“Well . . . keep your chin up.”

“I feel . . . I feel sad.”

“I do too!”

“Shall we try to redo the ceremony?”

The queen suggested a redo. Was that even possible?

“Can you do that?”

“Normally it is only done for convicted criminals, but it is not impossible.”

Apparently the ceremony could be reversed.

This whole time I’d been thinking of it as an analog to the job-change system you find in so many online games—which was typically a one-time thing that couldn’t be reversed.

“With a ‘level reset’ we can return someone to a point at which they were unable to class-up. That will reset the changes, but they will also revert to level one.”

“Level one? That doesn’t sound good.”

Considering the situation we were in, if either Raphtalia or Filo were to drop to level one, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to carry on.

The next wave would be here soon, and I was sure we’d get involved in all sorts of petty conflicts before then.

Still, those sorts of punishments existed in games.

It seemed reasonable enough that they could exist in a world like this too.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed wrong. How could you take all the work and effort someone invested in their leveling and just render it all moot in an instant?

“But what should we do?”

“I want to redo it!” Filo shouted. “I want to learn to spit poison!”

Her tongue was poisonous enough as is, but I’d leave that issue for another day.

“The feather on your head is what caused this, so I don’t think that will work. The same thing would just happen again.”

“Oh . . . .”

“Raphtalia? What do you think?”

“I didn’t really have an idea of how I wanted to progress. I just wanted to be stronger, and I’ve become stronger—so I’m fine with this.”

She was right. This co-opted class-up had resulted in much higher stat gains.

As a result, she was already much stronger than I was.

“Alright then . . . . Let’s head back to the castle.”

“Okay.”

“But . . . Pooooooison . . . .”

“You’re plenty poisonous.”

“But . . . .”

And so our bizarre class-up ceremony came to an end.

We turned, leaving Trash collapsed before the hourglass, and made our way back to the castle.