“A tall order. Even if I cultivate the cells at a breakneck pace . . . we can’t be sure they haven’t planned for this eventuality,” she admitted. She was normally so confident, so the hesitancy in her answers shook me as much as anything else. That told me how hopeless this was. The only one who could remove this was the one who had caused it, but who knew what they would ask in order to do so?
“Naofumi. . .” Melty looked at me. Both of her hands were pressed together as though in prayer. If we allowed Piensa to invade, we might be able to save Shadow and the Raph specimen. It would delay us finding a way back to the future—indeed, it might prevent it completely. But that wasn’t reason enough to dismiss it out of hand.
“Zhield Hero. You muzt not accept the evil of Pienza . . . for my zake,” Shadow said. The Raph specimen squeaked too, both of them shaking their heads. “There’z ztill time. I underztood how the queen felt now . . . painfully underztand. At leazt I have zome time before I pazz to zhare my final wordz with you.”
“Raph,” managed the Raph specimen.
But I made a decision after losing Atla, and being saved by everyone, and then talking to Atla again. Whatever happened, I made a decision not to lose anyone else. Whatever the cost, I wanted to protect them all. I clenched my fists tightly, pushing down the urge to scream out. Then I heard a voice from somewhere.
“Are you sure?”
It wasn’t a voice I had heard before, but it also felt vaguely familiar. It was a bit like my own voice, but also not quite the same. I had no idea who it was. It might be coming from the shield, and it might just be ringing in my head.
The question the voice asked was more important than who was speaking.
Of course, I was sure. We’d had less contact with Shadow since wrapping up the stuff with the Church of the Three Heroes, but he had still done so much for our cause. Here in the past, he had gathered information on Piensa and helped Melty with her workload. I was also sure he had done all sorts of things to aid our cause. I didn’t want to lose someone who had done so much to help out.
“This could be a path of thorns. There might be no going back. Will you still regret nothing?”
I was unshaken. I had made my decision. There was no going back on it. If I could save the life of my allies, I’d do whatever it took.
“Then I shall answer your resolve.”
It felt like the voice got louder for a moment.
“. . . forgotten by . . . to 0 territory.”
Beginning of 0 has changed! It became 0 territory: upper layer!
Attack −1
Enhanced magic passage rate
Learned Reverse Dimensional Defensive Wall (weak)
All of that popped up in my status. At the same time, a way to heal these wounds . . . a magic formula also appeared in my mind.
“Translucent black, vomiting forth to create nothingness! Allow me to guide that power and ask for realization!” I incanted.
“Mr. Naofumi?” Raphtalia asked, startled.
“Has something happened?” Holn asked her.
“I’m not sure. I feel something from Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia replied. I was cursing to myself. This incantation was incredibly hard. It wasn’t the normal puzzle style, and the Demon Dragon wasn’t reacting either. It was like scooping fish from a pond that had been added to the normal style of puzzle; the pieces were the fish, but I had nothing but a flimsy membrane to collect them with.
“I, the Shield Hero, order the heavens and the earth to correct all order and return the puss to nothingness . . .” I tried again, but that didn’t work either. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I failed, but each one was increasing the length of time until the magic would be triggered. The difficulty of this was just so high! But that wasn’t going to stop me.
“I order the source of all power! Eradicate this cursed blight from these victims of irregularity! Fill First Heal Zero!” I finally got it. With a crackling, it felt like all the magic was draining from my fingers.
“Some kind of incantation? Zero, did you say?” Raphtalia murmured. Even as she did so, what looked like some distortion of space itself appeared from my hand and flew toward the wounds on Shadow and the Raph specimen. The magic I had unleashed passed through them, running over their wounds, and then vanished into the air a moment later. After finishing the incantation, I collapsed on the spot, perhaps even losing consciousness for a moment.
“Mr. Naofumi?!” Raphtalia exclaimed. She quickly moved in to support me, preventing me from hitting the ground. I moaned. “Are you okay?!”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I managed. “I just blanked out for a moment. Lack of magic.”
“I’ve never seen that happen to you before, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia said with concern.
“Just what magic did you use there?” Holn asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I replied. “Some magic that just popped into my head, basically.” I was more concerned with the strange new skill that had appeared: 0 territory: upper layer. There was a value next to it as well: 3%. “What about Shadow?” I asked.
“I’m not seeing any real changes,” Rat reported. I chugged some magic water to try and get my magic back up. I was still far from being fully healed, but the lethargy was at least gone. I was really hoping that had been more than just a waste of magic! I tried some healing magic on Shadow again. This time his wounds just closed right up.
“Oh wow!” said Rat.
“What did you do?” Holn asked. “I still wasn’t close to working out how to heal them.”
“I don’t know myself,” I replied. “Holn, that leaf you gave me which I put in my shield provided a certain skill. Well, that skill just evolved to let me use that magic.” I didn’t understand why myself, but for now we could simply celebrate the treatment of these untreatable wounds. “I’ll heal the rest of them.”
“Zhield Hero . . . thank you,” Shadow said. The Raph species thanked me too.
“I don’t need any more thanks. Heal those wounds and recover your strength,” I told them.
“Underztood,” Shadow replied.
“I think we need to give you some training too. Help keep you in the fight,” I told him. He was fairly strong, but we hadn’t applied things like the whip power-up method especially attentively. I needed to make sure I was suitably rewarding those who helped me out. Our enemies were ruthless. They would use whatever means they had at their disposal to injure and kill us. I wanted to make sure he would be able to make it through the next situation like this.
“Pleaze don’t take it too hard on me,” Shadow said. “I can reward you by turning into Raphtalia and zaying thingz zhe normally wouldn’t zay to you!”
“You just got saved from a certain death situation! Don’t put yourself in another!” I said. I wondered where these jokes of his came from. Maybe he was just trying to lighten the mood. “This sounds like we’ve got some trouble to deal with, anyway.” Internally, I was feeling upset about all of this. I applied healing magic to Shadow and the Raph species again and then decided what to do next. We would have a meeting with Mamoru and his allies. This was going to put off our trip to the sanctuary.
Mamoru and his allies had heard of the attack and came to discuss it. I was explaining everything in the village refectory. Hearing about this new threat from their enemy Piensa had created a heavy atmosphere in the room.
“Weapon attacks that only Naofumi can heal,” Mamoru muttered, crossing his arms.
“At least we do have a way of healing them,” Melty offered.
“Not one I can use repeatedly. It takes too much magic,” I said. We weren’t going to get far if I collapsed every time I had to use it. And it also took a long time to activate too.
“I wonder how they’re doing it . . . maybe an imbued effect or something special about the materials?” Ren started to analyze things from the perspective of a blacksmith. We hadn’t seen anything like this in the future. It was an attack so powerful even Holn couldn’t come up with a way to cure it right away.