Chapter Twenty: The Shield of Rage
As if to match the howling of the beast, I let out a scream and accepted its attack with my shield.
It didn’t hurt at all.
“Gaah?!”
The black shadow had been laughing at me, mocking me, but now it contorted its mouth in confusion and shock.
Hilarious.
“Die!”
I caught him by the arm and flung him away with all the strength I could muster.
The huge shadow let out a shriek of surprise as it flew through the air
“Gaoooooh!”
But instead of realizing that it should think before attack me again, it rose to its feet and came running at me.
I wondered…could I still not attack anyone? Even with this shield?
I couldn’t.
The beast turned and made to knock me over with a sweep of its tail.
“That won’t work!!”
The tail bounced off with an ineffectual clang. Its attacks wouldn’t work on me.
“Useless!”
I had no way to beat the monster.
Or so I had thought. Suddenly a large whirlwind of black fire spiraled skyward with me at its center. It set the shadow’s tail and arms ablaze.
“GAOOH?!”
The shadow fell to the ground in surprise.
“Heh… If the attack is this strong, I wonder if it can counter-attack.”
The shadow was backing away from me, suddenly intimidated.
“Ha! Now you beg for your life?! You’ll get no forgiveness from me!”
I shouted the title of my new skill.
“Iron Maiden!”
But the skill did not activate. Rather, the skill tree appeared before my eyes.
Shield Prison: Change Shield (attack): Iron Maiden
What was this? There were conditions on its use?
What a pain. If that was how it was, I’d just let the shadow attack me and try to get a counter-attack to activate.
“Just you wait… I’ll kill you for sure!”
As I approached, the shadow behaved as though it was afraid of my anger, my murderous intention. It flung its arms about wildly.
Its arm connected with the shield and suddenly burst into flames.
The meat burned up, and the bones melted.
The flames weren’t strong enough. I wanted to completely eradicate the beast.
“!”
I got it! The Shield of Rage was stronger the more enraged I was. The attack would rise, the crazier I felt.
Well, that was easy for me.
All I needed to do was think about how THEY made me feel.
Myne Sufia… I guess her real name was Malty.
Just thinking of her name filled me with rage.
Next was the Trash… Then Motoyasu, Ren, Itsuki…
I went over all that they had done to me, one memory at a time…
I hated them… I wanted to kill them…
The blood-red shield was reacting to my hatred and turning black.
“This time I’ll really kill them… All of them…”
I caught the shadow by the arm and turned all my hatred into glowing coals.
The coals flew out from the shield and completely covered the shadow, swallowing it whole.
Then I felt something, right there on my hand, something warm. My black hatred started to melt away.
Thump…
It was… kind…
“Even if the whole world turns against you I won’t. I’ll say it, time and again: Mr. Naofumi didn’t do it.”
What?
At the sound of the voice, the darkened, warped world before me began to waver.
Somewhere in my heart, I knew that giving myself over to anger would result in losing something even more important.
I wanted to ignore it… and yet…
“Please, believe me. I have confidence in Mr. Naofumi. He hasn’t committed any crime. He gave me medicine and saved my life. He taught me how to fight, how to survive. He is the great Shield Hero. I am your sword. No matter how hard the path, I’ll walk it with you.”
The voice was whispering to me.
I can’t allow myself to be swallowed by hatred. I still had things I needed to protect.
Your anger weakens…
I can’t forget it. But… But I want to give myself over to those who believe in me.
Would you refuse me?
I don’t like orders. I’ll choose my own path!
I’m always watching. Watching for your weakness.
The dark voice vanished, and some light returned to the world.
“Cough! Cough!”
I came back to my senses. Raphtalia was next to me, coughing violently, and holding my hand in hers.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes… Yes, I’m…. fine. Cough!”
She’d been burned badly. But there were no enemies here that used fire.
What could it… No!
The special effect of the Shield of Rage, Self Curse, it must have hurt her too!
“Raphtalia! Why were you holding onto my hand?!”
“I thought that you… That you would disappear if I… If I didn’t… Cough!”
Raphtalia smiled, then collapsed to the ground.
It was my fault… My fault that Raphtalia was hurt!
“I am in the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them, heal her!”
“First Heal!”
“I am in the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them, heal her!”
“First Heal!”
“I am in the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them, heal her!”
“First Heal!”
“I am in the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them, heal her!”
“First Heal!”
I kept casting the spell until I ran out of magic power.
Raphtalia… Raphtalia was the only person who believed in me. She was important to me!
The burns were bad. My low-level magic wasn’t enough to heal them. I ran to the carriage to get the healing ointment.
“Gaoooooooh!”
I spun to see the dragon there, howling and swinging his burned arm at me and preparing to unleash its poison breath.
“Out of my way!”
I threw my arm up to catch the Zombie Dragon’s attack. When I did, the shield began to shine with a black light and nearly activated the Self Curse Burning skill.
“Stop!”
The shield fell silent at my shout.
Had the flames erupted then and there, they would have killed Raphtalia. That wouldn’t be good at all. But with how weak Raphtalia was, I didn’t know if she could survive a blast from its poison breath.
As if the shield knew what I was thinking, it activated the Self Curse Burning, but only burned the streaming cloud of poison gas. It wasn’t strong enough to actually kill the dragon though.
What to do?
The shield was constantly absorbing my hatred and anger, inflaming them. I was able to keep from being completely swallowed by them only with an enormous effort. How long before I was consumed by it?
But right now, I had to get to the carriage and get medicine for Raphtalia.
My need to protect Raphtalia was just barely strong enough to keep the anger at bay.
“Gah?!”
We were trading blows and then, in the middle of the fight, the dragon let out a terrible voice of confusion and pain.
“Wh…What the…”
What was happening? Did this mean that the Self Curse Burning was consuming the dragon?
“Gaooooooooooh!!!”
Finally, the Zombie Dragon stopped moving altogether and returned to its skeletal form.
But this was no time to stand back and reflect on the battle.
The clouds of Poison Flies were nowhere to be seen. The raging dragon must have scared them off.
I held Raphtalia against myself, ran for the carriage, found the healing ointment and quickly applied it to her burns. Then I gave her the antidote.
“Oh… Mr. Naofumi…”
Her breathing had grown more regular, and she opened her eyes and smiled.
“Are you all right?!”
“Yes… Thanks to your medicine…”
And yet her wounds still looked pretty bad. The wounds themselves seemed to have shrunk and healed over from the medicine, but there were black scars remaining, maybe because of the black magic the shield had used. Anyway, the burns still didn’t look very good.
“Don’t… worry about me… take care of the dragon.”
“The dragon isn’t moving anymore.”
“Oh… then… then hurry and get rid of the skeleton.”
“Okay.”
Her eyes were insistent, desperate. They drove the point home: I had to do something.
“Are you okay staying here for now?”
“I can protect myself if I need to.”
“Good… Good.”
I climbed down from the carriage and walked in the direction of the dragon corpse.
I needed to butcher it and get the shield to absorb it all.
And Filo… At the very least I wanted to recover her body and give her a proper burial.
I approached the corpse and could see that the internal organs were still twitching and squirming.
What was going on? There might be a way for me to fight it.
The Shield of Rage.
This dangerous shield that threatened to consume my heart also happened to have a fantastic defense rating and a strong counter attack.
My heart couldn’t take it, so I had switched my shield back to the Chimera Viper Shield. But I was ready to switch back at any time… if I needed to.
The wriggling internals moved, then stopped, then they shook with such force I thought the stomach would tear… then… then I could see…
“Huff!”
“It was… a bird that I knew on its side. She was covered in the rotted liquid of the dead dragon.
“Huff! I finally made it out!”
Filo seemed to be in a good mood, and just fine, despite climbing from the stomach of the beast that had eaten her.
“Filo?! Are you all right? Are you hurt?!”
“I’m fine!”
“Then… Then what was all that blood when the dragon ate you?”
“Blood? Oh, yeah, when the dragon swallowed me it pushed on my tummy, and I threw up.”
What had she been eating? Oh yeah, all those tomatoes! That must have looked like blood.
That’s right… She’d been stuffing her face with them for hours.
“Don’t scare me like that! I thought you were dead!”
“An attack like that? That didn’t hurt one bit!”
This bird was a monster. I guess she really was a monster.
Man… She’d really given me a scare.
“Master, were you worried about me?”
“Whatever.”
“Master! You’re embarrassed!”
“Want me to give the eulogy at your funeral?”
“No! But I’m happy! Don’t you start thinking about buying a replacement for me!”
Right… Well, she was okay.
Filo stood there smiling, which annoyed me. She better remember all this.
“Anyway, what happened?”
“Well, the dragon swallowed me, and then when I was in his tummy I walked around and found this weird, glowing purple crystal.”
Could it be that the dead dragon was reanimated by this purple crystal?
Filo had ripped her way out of the corpse. In its chest… Could it have been the heart?
But why?
Because it was a dragon? Even though it was dead, could it be that the dragon’s latent magical power had gathered in the heart and crystallized?
“So what was with the crystal?”
“Ugh! Blech!”
I guess that was the answer… she’d eaten it. Her stomach looked like it was glowing too.
Geez… I could have hit her.
“There was a little left over. Does Master want a snack?”
She held out her little wing, and there was a purple crystal shard there in her hand.
What the hell?
I broke it in half and the let the shield absorb it.
I knew it… My tree wasn’t advanced enough to unlock anything.
“Raphtalia is hurt, so you and I are going to clean up this dragon.”
“Okay!”
I swear… This bird was going to put me in the madhouse.
Good think I didn’t let myself get consumed by anger.
I’d switched to the Curse Shield to avenge Filo, but I’d almost been completely consumed by hatred.
If Raphtalia hadn’t stopped me, I would have burned the dragon completely… and burned Filo too.
Rage… That shield was cursed.
It took me over to accomplish its own ends.
Had I let it take me over, I would have gone on to kill the other heroes when I finished with the dragon.
“Yummy!”
“Filo! That meat is rotten, don’t eat it!”
“Meat that’s just starting to rot is the best kind, Master!”
“It’s not ‘just starting,’ it’s completely rotten!”
We kept on cleaning in our half-hearted, playful way. Soon enough, the dragon was gone.
I’d absorbed everything I could, but the tree wasn’t advanced enough to unlock anything.
Even still, the bones and skin seemed like they would be useful materials, so I took a portion of them and loaded up the carriage.
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