Chapter Eleven: Rescuing the Angel
We waited for night to fall over the town before making our way back to the marketplace.
Kizuna and I crept lightly over the rooftops and approached the building where they were holding the show. I had to keep an eye on Rishia the whole time. I didn’t want her stumbling and screwing up the whole plan. On the other hand, Raph-chan was quite a bit more dexterous than I’d expected. I didn’t have to worry about her at all. She was just as light on her feet as Raphtalia.
“In this country, and in the next one over, there’s a law that you have to carry a light if you go out after dark.”
“It really feels like Edo-period Japan, doesn’t it?” It was strange, because the town and the people in it looked like they were in the midst of a modernization movement. Everything was all mixed up. Not that I was particularly nostalgic for the Edo era. The townsfolk made it feel like an imitation version of Edo.
It was like foreigners had built it, wanting to make it really EDO¬PERIOD JAPAN! For a Japanese person, though, it was clear that something was off.
“Running over the roofs like this makes me feel like we’re going to run into a ninja or something.”
“I have a friend that’s a ninja, actually. I think you might have seen them in one of my pictures.”
I didn’t recall having seen any ninja. This girl had way too many weird friends—and that includes Glass and L’Arc. As for Therese, I hadn’t made up my mind yet.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ll introduce you some day.”
“I’ll pass.”
I couldn’t stop picturing the shadows from Melromarc and their strange, annoying way of speaking. You’d think they would try not to stand out, but the shadows had a very distinct way of speaking. They were like lazy ninja.
“Alright, that’s enough chat for now...” I said. We were getting close to the building. “You think she’s in there?”
“There’s no way to know for sure. Anyway, it looks like there are some rooms built over the showroom. If she’s here, that’s probably where she’ll be.”
That reminded me—if I was this close to Filo, shouldn’t I be able to use the monster spell to find out where she is? I tried using it to get an idea of where to go next. It hadn’t worked when we were in the labyrinth, and it hadn’t worked when I tried it after we escaped. That had led me to mostly give up on it, but now... it was working.
I turned around to make sure I was getting an accurate sense of where it was indicating, and sure enough, it looked like Filo was inside.
“Okay, great. I’ll use a skill to make us hard to see,” Kizuna said, pulling out her fishing rod and whispering.
“Invisible Hunter!”
There was a soft humming sound, and we were all suddenly covered in a thin film that made us invisible. I had nearly forgotten that Kizuna was the Hunting Hero. I’d assumed that she’d been able to sneak up on monsters and beasts, but I hadn’t expected her to have such a useful skill.
Maybe it was because of the type of monsters I’d fought up until that point, but I had never learned a skill that could make me invisible.
Where would I even learn a skill like that? A Cloaking Shield? A Hiding Shield?
Raphtalia could probably do it.
“Raph-chan, can you use any stealthy magic?”
“Rafu?”
I guess not. She cocked her head to the side and looked confused. Still, she was made from Raphtalia, so I thought there might be a chance. I’d have to make a point of teaching her as many skills and techniques as possible.
“Should we get going?”
“Yeah. But how does this skill of yours work?”
“They won’t be able to see us unless they use magic to search us out. You have to be in our party to hear our voices and footsteps.”
“That’s great.”
“It took a long time to learn the ranged version of it, but I learned the simpler single-person version of it when I was still pretty low level.”
“I wouldn’t complain too much.”
“Should I cast a spell, too?” Rishia asked hesitantly.
She probably could cast it, technically. Too bad she was so bad at everything she tried.
“Maybe if you were Raphtalia, but it’s probably better that we leave it to someone who knows what they are doing.”
“But I...”
“I know how you feel, but let’s just leave it up to Kizuna’s for now.”
Kizuna hopped off of the roof and snuck off toward the building where Filo was imprisoned.
We jumped down after her and followed her to the building's back door.
“It’s locked. I should have known.”
“I don’t know how to pick locks...”
“Yeah, and this lock... It will set off an alarm if you break it.”
“They take security pretty seriously, don’t they?”
“A craftsman might be able to disable the alarm...”
She had mentioned that there were times when you needed a good craftsman on your side.
I reached out and touched the lock. It looked very old. It would trigger an alarm if we tried to pick it. I focused my magic power and touched it again, and I was able to get an idea of how the device worked. It was clear that something would happen if you were to just start fiddling with it.
But I had an idea.
It looked like it would just make a noise, not necessarily send a notification to anyone. If it was like a burglar alarm, then I might be able to find a way to disconnect it.
“If I can destroy the alarm it’s rigged to, do you think you can break the lock?”
“Hm... Yeah, probably. But can you do that?”
I focused my magic power into my hands and sent it all flowing into what looked like the most important part of the alarm.
“Beeeee...”
Just before the alarm could sound, the lock started sparking. The alarm sounded very quiet and low, like a rumbling hum in my hand, unable to make any more noise. Because I was holding the lock in my hands, the noise was concealed by Kizuna’s skill.
“See?”
“Wow! Okay...” Kizuna said. She whipped out her tuna knife and quickly sliced the lock in two. Everything happened in complete silence. If I covered the pieces with dirt, it would probably take care of any noise.
“You said that you made accessories, didn’t you? You’re quite the craftsman, aren’t you?”
“Back in the world I came from, maybe so. I can handle some simple magic-imbuing and that kind of thing. It’s not difficult.”
It wasn’t difficult, but it had taken a while to really get a handle on the feeling that goes along with drawing power out of gemstones and things like that. I’d failed quite a few times before I got the hang of it.
On the other hand, breaking things was much easier.
For this alarm, all I did was focus on the part that emitted the sound and then poured my magic power onto it. It was sort of like dumping water on a computer motherboard. Had it been very sophisticated, it might not have worked. Luckily, it was a simple little thing, and it broke easily.
“And you can cook, too! You’re very talented.”
That’s enough of that. Let’s get going.”
“Raphtalia was very complimentary of you in that way. She always said that you were skilled with your hands, so she wanted to have you make her some accessories.”
That wasn’t a bad idea, actually—I could help Rishia out by giving her accessories with abilities imbued in them to make up for her poor battle skills.
Now that she mentioned it, I remembered having that conversation with Raphtalia. With all of the training, the searching for the other heroes, and the battles with the Spirit Tortoise... I’d completely forgotten.
We snuck inside and took in our surroundings. The interior looked like an old row house, and there was a stove near the back entrance. There was a place to remove your shoes and a staircase leading up to the second floor. At the back of the room there were a number of empty cages. They must have had a few different things to use for their show, but for the moment, it looked like they were focusing on Filo.
“That’s not the way,” I said, stopping Kizuna from continuing toward the front room.
“How do you know? She could be this way.”
“Now that she’s nearby, I can see what direction she’s in.”
An indicator in my field of vision pointed the way to Filo’s location, so the fastest way to find her was simply to follow it. The original use of the spell was probably to help owners track down escaped slaves—or monsters.
Either way, at least I could see where she was now. That made the search much easier.
We kept our shoes on and crept up the stairs to the second floor, where there was a hallway with a few rooms on either side. There were a few merchants, or maybe noblemen (I couldn’t tell), standing in the hallway watching over the rooms. They had drunk themselves to sleep and looked like they were passed out cold.
There weren’t very many rooms, so finding Filo should be a pretty simple matter.
I looked over at the drunk, sleeping guards. I guess there were drunks no matter what world you went to. It was pretty dark, but luckily I’d acquired an ability to see in dark places a long time ago.
“Feh... Naofumi. Please don’t let go of my hand!” Rishia murmured. It must have been too dark for her to make out her surroundings.
Kizuna, on the other hand, moved forward through the dark without hesitation.
As the Hunting Hero, she probably had no trouble at all seeing in the dark.
“Which way is she?”
The arrow in my field of view was pointing to the right, so I waved toward the closest door and we quietly slipped inside. Inside we found a futon laid out on the floor. There was a well-off-looking man sleeping in it.
Behind him, I could just make out... a sack of money?
He must have been making a pretty profit off of Filo’s show.
Seeing the money really pissed me off. I’d raised Filo from an egg—she was like my daughter! Hearing her pained shouts earlier that day had been bad enough.
I would have to make sure this creep paid for his crimes... but first we needed to free Filo. I turned back to the search, but I couldn’t see her. I looked around the room, but she wasn’t there.
I thought that I’d find her sleeping in her human form, maybe locked in a cage or something. I must have been wrong. Was she in her filolial form? I wasn’t sure the floor would be able to support her in that form. She was a very large filolial, and the floor would probably have broken under her weight.
The only other thing I saw was a small birdcage in the corner... and the arrow in my vision was pointing directly at it.
“Pii?!”
The little chick in the cage noticed us and started to chirp and fly around the cage.
Damn... Wasn’t there any way to get this monster—or wild animal—to stay quiet?! The man would wake up if the bird kept making a racket.
“Naofumi! This guy is going to wake up!” Kizuna said, pulling out her tuna knife and pointing it at the birdcage. She wanted my confirmation before she killed the monster inside.
But...
“Kizuna, wait a second. Why is that little thing causing my monster spell to react as if Filo is here?”
“I don’t know, but that’s just a little chick. I think they call them humming fairies.”
A humming fairy, eh?
But why was my spell reacting to it?
“Pii! Pii!”
The humming fairy chick threw itself against the bars of the cage, extending its wings at me. The way it held its wings out... It reminded me of how Filo used to try to hug me when she first turned into a human.
“Could it be? Are you... Filo?”
The humming fairy chick nodded. That settles that.
“Well, be quiet. If you make too much noise, this guy will wake up.”
Filo (?) nodded and stopped making noise. She jumped up onto a perch and sat quietly.
What was going on? Why was Filo a different kind of monster? Why was she in a little birdcage?
There was an ofuda stuck on her back, and she looked gloomy and depressed.
Maybe the ofuda turned her into a different monster so this guy could keep her in a little cage.
“Should I break the birdcage?”
“Just a second. We don’t know if it’s rigged with an alarm.”
“Let’s check it out.”
I focused my magic power and reached out to touch the cage. It felt like there was some kind of amplifier inside, and it was resonating with the ofuda on Filo’s back.
“What does that ofuda do?
“It’s a servant ofuda. People use them to control monsters and use them as servants. When the monsters aren’t being used, the ofuda can be used to hold them prisoner, too. But this one is strange. Normally, the ofuda fuses with the monster’s skin.”
“Maybe because I already own her. The ofuda might not work the way it should, because I already have a monster spell cast on her.”
These people were real creeps. Based on how upset she’d sounded earlier in the day, I assumed that they were treating her terribly. But they were people, so neither Kizuna nor I were going to be able to attack them. That left us with Chris, Rishia, and Raph-chan to rely on.
“Rishia, do you think you can take him out while he sleeps?”
“Feh... I can try, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to.”
Damn it... We didn’t have any way to make this guy pay! I didn’t think it was a good idea to trust Rishia with the job. And Raph-chan wasn’t strong enough to attack a person on her own.
“There are some things we could do to raise Rishia’s attack power, but it’s probably not worth the risk of being discovered. Let’s focus on escaping while we still can.”
“What about Chris? If he’s strong enough to handle it, we should let him.”
“Pen?”
“If we let Chris do it... he won’t just hurt the guy. He’ll probably kill him.”
How strong was this shikigami of hers?!
“If we take the ofuda off of her back, will she be free?”
“It won’t be so easy to get it off. Many ofuda have special magic applied to them...”
“This one doesn’t seem to be working properly, though, so hopefully we can just rip it off.”
“Pii...”
“If it has a lot of different settings and effects, then it could cause trouble.”
It might kill her if she got too far away from her master—or it might tell him where we were. We were right in front of him.
I looked into the optional effects of the magic spell I had applied on Filo to see if there wasn’t something I could do to make escape easier. The magic spell itself was a very powerful one. I decided to try to activate it.
“Filo, this may hurt a little bit. Bear with me.”
I activated the monster spell and checked to see if it was working properly. A magic circle appeared in the air over Filo’s stomach, and she began to writhe in pain.
And then the ofuda peeled up and twisted on her feathers.
When she realized the ofuda was loose, she cocked her head to the side and started pulling at it with her beak.
I guess a little strip of paper and a powerfully applied monster spell weren’t in the same league.
“Piii!”
“Kizuna, Filo is about to pull the ofuda off. The birdcage seems to be connected to it, so we’d better destroy it.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah. I don’t see any alarms on it. Even if there was one, we don’t really have a choice here.”
“Okay,” she said. Then she drew her tuna knife and quickly sliced the cage to pieces.
The cage clattered loudly to the floor in chunks. At nearly the same moment, the monster spell circle on Filo’s chest sparked, and the ofuda peeled off completely.
I immediately deactivated the monster spell. Filo transformed into a human and threw her arms around me.
“Master!” she shouted, raising her head to look up at me. “You’re here! You’re really here! This isn’t a dream, is it?!”
“I’m really here. It’s not a dream.”
Filo was on the verge of tears. She was finally standing right before my eyes.
“Rafu?”
Raph-chan poked her head out and barked at Filo.
“Hm?”
“Rafu!”
“Master, what’s this thing? It kind of smells like Raphtalia!”
Her sense of smell was as good as ever.
“Her name is Raph-chan. She’s a creature called a shikigami. We made her out of Raphtalia’s hair, so that’s probably why she smells like her.”
“Oh wow! Nice to meetcha, little, big sister!”
“Rafu!”
They smiled at each other. I started to smile, too, when...
“What the hell?!”
The sleeping man jumped to his feet—very awake. He clearly knew that he was about to lose Filo—the goose that laid his golden eggs.
“Who are you?! Show yourselves!” he said, pulling a katana out from under his pillow. “That bird is mine! I’ll take her back now!”
“Damn...”
Kizuna’s skill must have stopped working, because once the man noticed us, we quickly came back into full view.
“Boo!”
“How did you manage to get the servant ofuda off of her? No matter— I’ll cut you down and take her back!”
I felt something snap, like a string pulled too tight. It must have been the limits of my patience. Was I letting this guy get away with too much?
“Okay... So you beat up my friend here, and now you’re going to act all tough?”
I didn’t feel like holding back anymore. Making this guy suffer was my highest priority.
“Rishia, Kizuna, I want to give this guy a taste of hell—any problem with that?”
“We’re not going to run away?”
“Run away? Ha! Not until I torture this guy and destroy his soul.”
“Ra! Fu!”
What’s that now? Raph-chan understood how I felt? She was smiling devilishly.
But that’s not the way that Raphtalia would have responded, so that made it clear that they had very different personalities. Raph-chan was an individual.
I took slow steps toward the creep that had captured and profited off of Filo. He had to pay. He had to pay for what he’d done.
“Stay away! Hya!”
The man swung his sword, but at nearly the exact same second, the Nue Shield’s Night Terror effect activated.
A low rumbling emanated from the shield and echoed through the room. Is that all it did?
A split second later the man yelled, “Stay away...”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” A shrieking, high-pitched, nearly supersonic voice split through the room. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, only much louder and longer.
Kizuna, Chris, Rishia, and Filo all immediately covered their ears.
“Feh...”
“What’s that sound?”
“Ah... Ugh...” The man who owned the show tent started shaking.
“Ahhhhhh...” His face quickly twisted into one of extreme terror.
“No! Stop! Stay away!” he shouted, shaking his arms and running over into the cover of the room.
The shield must have had a powerful effect on the enemy—he looked like he was crippled with fear. It must have dug deep into his subconscious fears and brought them to life in his mind.
“Rafu!” Raph-chan puffed up her tail and a started to cast a spell. It looked like she could use the same kind of magic that Raphtalia could— illusion magic.
I squinted in the dark and could just make out the owner of the show, cowering and running from something. It looked like a ghost or something... Was the skill using his past traumas to torture him?
“How can you turn against me? How can it be?!”
It looked like he might have been having hallucinations—like maybe all the poor things he tortured for his business had risen up to exact revenge on him.
“Someone! Someone please!”
No good. I couldn’t have him yelling for help.
I walked over to the cowering businessman. He was terrified and randomly swinging his sword, so I grabbed him by the shoulders to stop him.
“What do you want?!” he yelled and swung the sword at me. I stopped the blade.
There was a loud clang when it hit my shoulder.
Then Lightning Shield (medium) activated and electrocuted the man. He twitched violently in front of me.
“But how... You... You monster!”
“Calm down... The terror has only just begun.”
“Naofumi... you sound so villainous,” Kizuna said.
“You’ll pay for what you did to my friend. Shield Prison!”
I wouldn’t take damage either way, so I enclosed myself in the prison with him. Then I shoved the Nue Shield against his ears and blasted him with Night Terror. That’s when I realized I could control the volume of the shrieks.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
The man’s screams echoed through the prison. They were loud—and annoying.
“Fine then... Maybe you’d rather answer some questions. Where, and how, did you get your hands on Filo—I mean, on this angel?”
“Why would I tell you?!”
“Don’t want to talk?”
I raised the Night Terror volume even higher.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!”
I turned the volume back down and told him, “I suggest you start talking soon. Personally, I’ve got no problem with watching you suffer all day long.”
“Whh... I...”
I smiled, and the man’s eyes filled with terrified tears. He must have been leaking everywhere, because a liquid seemed to be running down his legs.
But that wasn’t nearly enough to make up for all he’d done to Filo. She must have been terrified! I don’t think any of the creatures whose misery he’d profited from would be close to satisfied yet.
“See?”
“My parents gave her to me! They said they found her unconscious!”
“Who are your parents?”
“They’re nobility in the town!”
So they found Filo when she was unconscious, thought they could make money by showing her off, and captured her. What creeps!
“Who else is helping you run your show?”
“I’m nobody! I was just tasked with the running the show, as a representative of a local family!”
So there were clans that basically ran the town here? The place was organized like the Edo period, so maybe they were magistrates. It sounded like people were in positions of power strictly because of their families. I decided to ask Kizuna about it later.
I’d probably gotten all the information I could out of this disgusting businessman.
“Thanks for the information. As a reward, I’ll provide you with supreme terror. Did you think it was already over?”
“Rafuuuuu...” Raph-chan cooed, seemingly enjoying the sight. That’s it, Raph-chan. We can enjoy his misery together!
“Ah... Ahhhhhhhhhh!”
You know, there’s really nothing better than watching someone you hate suffer. It was such a relief to watch this piece of trash howl in fear. If only I could make Trash and Bitch suffer like this, back in Melromarc.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
He was leaking liquid from all the holes in his body and vomiting, but I kept on dealing him more terror. I liked watching him writhe and struggle.
Finally, like a switch had been flipped, his eyes rolled back into his head, he foamed at the mouth, and then he fainted.
“Don’t think that passing out will save you.”
“Rafu, rafu!”
I pressed my shield against the man’s ears and continued to use Night Terror.
Even though he was unconscious, it still seemed to be working. His limp body started to twitch. He might have been asleep, but I was injecting terror into his dreams.
I liked this skill. I could use it to torture people. I’d have to remember to use it the next time I came across a jerk like this.
It was a psychological attack, so there might be people that it wouldn’t work on.
No matter—I continued using Night Terror to fill the man’s dreams with fear while I waited for the Shield Prison around us to disappear.
“Ew...” Kizuna muttered, looking down at the unconscious man.
He had leaked all manner of things from every part of his body, and his face was still twisted in terror, like he was being tortured in his dreams. He looked like someone that had seen one of those videos that would kill you if you watched it. He had an unbelievably violent and pained expression on his face.
Humans were actually pretty tough. They could go through all of this and still not die.
“Feh...” Rishia was scared of the man’s pained expression.
If I used Night Terror on Rishia, she’d probably lose her mind in a heartbeat.
Not that I would do that...
“Alright, we got our revenge. Now let’s split.”
“Right... Remind me never to piss you off. But you know, saying ‘let’s split’ like that makes you sound like a criminal.”
We had just committed a crime, hadn’t we? This was illegally breaking and entering—even if we were rescuing a hostage.
“Thank you, master!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
A loud beeping sound rang out through the night outside.
I opened the wooden shutters to look outside, and I didn’t like what I saw. The building was surrounded by scowling men.
“You think they’re out to expose the crimes of the show?”
“I doubt it. I think they must know we’re here.”
We’d used Kizuna’s skill to stay hidden, and we hadn’t run into any guards on the way in, but there was still a chance that we’d been noticed without knowing it.
“Come out and surrender!”
Yup... There was no doubt what they were after.
The townspeople had gathered around the building to find out what all the trouble was about.
“What should we do? How are we going to get away with all those people out there?”
“Rishia, I’m sure you know the answer to that. Think back on all the time you spent with Itsuki...”
“Feh? We would all proclaim Itsuki the Bow Hero and fight on his behalf.”
That’s what Itsuki did? What an idiot.
Well, I guess the Bow Hero was a pretty famous person back in Melromarc. He could probably use his notoriety to get out of a tough spot. He might not have had to escape all the time.
“So how do we escape?” Kizuna asked while Filo threw her arms around me.
Before answering, I invited Filo into our party and waited for her to accept.
“Here’s the plan: Portal Shield!”
I chose a location outside of town that I’d registered before we snuck in to save Filo.
In a flash, our surroundings completely changed, and we were safely out of trouble.
I hadn’t known if we were going to be successful in our attempt to free Filo, but I had always planned on using Portal Shield to escape.
“Wow!” Kizuna yelled, quickly looking around to get an idea of where we were. “That’s totally different than Return Transcript!”
“You mean the rules are different?”
“I guess? This skill of yours is great for getting away from a pursuer.”
“Let’s hope it worked.”
It was the middle of the night and very dark outside, so I would be surprised if anyone could figure out where we’d vanished to. We’d be in trouble if anyone recognized us—you could never be too careful.
“Anyway, we’re done here, so let’s split.”
“Okay!”
“Alright!”
“Oh jeez, I guess we still have to run for it.”
So after teleporting to the edge of town, we took off running into the night.
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