“The easiest way to tell the difference between a man or woman is to ask Motoyasu,” I said. He saw all women other than Filo as pigs. His eyes were very accurate. He could probably tell if Shadow was a man or woman with just a glance. “But maybe you’re happy being a genderless shadow?” This whole debate was starting to feel pretty pointless. Be nice to women and hard on men, was that it? Ridiculous. If that was my outlook, I wouldn’t be so eager to send Bitch to hell.
“I underztand exactly how Melty feelz,” Shadow exclaimed with a shout, shaking his fist. I wondered what that meant.
“Where does Melty come into this?” Keel asked. “Raphtalia, do you know?”
“I think it’s to do with being called by title rather than name. Mr. Naofumi called her ‘second princess’ for quite a long time,” Raphtalia explained.
“Oh, okay,” Keel said.
“Whatever the reason, stop believing this crap about leveling people up to make them my lovers. You’re meant to gather intelligence for us! I’m starting to doubt your skills,” I said.
“I’m ztill at the ztage of determining if thiz iz crap or not! I’m running an experiment! Uzing Keel!” Shadow declared.
“Me?! Am I fated to become Bubba’s lover as well?” Keel yipped.
“Keel, there’s no need to worry about this,” Raphtalia assured her again.
“Enough, all of you!” I shouted. “Just shut up and follow me! If you want me to remember your name, tell me what it is!”
“No! No way!” Shadow protested. He was just messing with my head now. He didn’t even want to say his name. If he was a ninja, maybe he didn’t have a name at all. I had no points of contact with any other shadows, so it was fine to just leave him as “Shadow,” but I was getting a bit exhausted in terms of reaching that point.
“Just quit it. I’ve had enough of talking about this. If you want to go back into Piensa, then you need to raise your level and get stronger first. Unless you want them to find you again!” I said.
“I didn’t expect to get caught like that either,” Shadow said. His account of events was that he had been hiding on the battlefield when he was discovered and attacked before he had a chance to escape. I was impressed that he managed to get away from such a situation while injured. Maybe he had used a smoke bomb or something—or pretended to be dead. His survival skills had brought him back to us, anyway. That was a fact.
“Raphtalia, how do you rate Shadow’s infiltration and disguise abilities?” I asked. Raphtalia sounded puzzled for a moment.
“Well . . . he’s good enough that even someone with a high level of exposure magic would still take a while to find him. If he disguises himself as well, that would make it even harder to spot him,” Raphtalia said.
“I can’t even sniff him out,” Keel said, also offering her praise of Shadow’s infiltration techniques—but I hardly rated Keel’s detection abilities very high.
“Look what I can do,” Shadow said. It looked like he was taking off his clothes, but then he had suddenly changed into Sadeena.
“Wow! Amazing! Sadeena!” said Keel excitedly.
“What do you think, zweet Naofumi?” Shadow said. I had no reply. I knew he was good at disguising himself, but he had picked the wrong disguise with this one. “Thiz will give me the advantage over the Zhield Hero!” Shadow crowed.
“Fine. You’ll make a great shield yourself for fighting these monsters. Sadeena can handle anything,” I said.
“‘I’m only joking!” Shadow quickly fired back. “I’m not fully recovered!” He quickly changed back to normal. We hadn’t had many chances to talk like this in the past, and now we were getting one . . . I actually preferred it that way. He was like a comedian trying to push through a bit that wasn’t working. I never thought he had this kind of personality. I needed to have words with Melty to put him right.
“Enough talk. Time to level up,” I stated firmly. “We might encounter Piensa infiltrators too, so keep your wits about you—especially you, Shadow, with your skill set.”
“I would rather thiz goez off without any zuch excitement,” Shadow said. Our goals were to level up while patrolling places a Piensa unit might try to come in from. I’d formed the party from those with skills in detecting others. I would have normally left Ruft with Ren or Fohl, but he needed some work on his level just like Shadow did. He was in a key position, after all—just like Melty and Shadow. Melty herself was off with Eclair and Ren.
Before we left the village, they had been using the names “Raph Species Squad” and “Filolial Squad” to differentiate the two groups, but I was choosing to ignore that.
After a lot of unnecessary noise, we were finally underway. This party of excitable individuals and I were going to defeat the monsters in the vicinity of the sanctuary and gain an understanding of the routes the enemy might use to attack. We could have just waited for them in the sanctuary itself, but we needed to keep the village safe too. It was also an excellent chance to obtain some materials from unknown monsters.
We proceeded along the route we had been asked to clear out.
“There sure are a lot of them,” I commented. “Is there a larger monster population back here?” We continued along the beast track and reached an area with exposed rock . . . it looked like something from the land time had forgotten. There were monsters called the kaiser rex, which looked like an earlier form of the Tyrant Dragon Rex, and then emperor triceratops, king stegosaurus, and lord pteranodon, all dinosaur-type enemies with a royal connection. They were strutting around like they really did rule the place. I guessed we could clear them out too . . . and I was really getting time-travel vibes from this scenery too. Those “other worlds” were such a crazy mashup of concepts. I was willing to bet there would be dinosaur-type therianthropes as well. The lizard men already kinda looked like crocodiles.
I was also a little puzzled to find these dinosaurs so close to human habitation. I knew ecosystems changed over time, but there seemed to be far too many monsters here.
“Hey, Shadow,” I said.
“What?” he replied.
“Are there monsters like this in our time too?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ve seen bonez in the Faubrey muzeum,” Shadow revealed. If we took Rat along, I was sure she’d go crazy for that. This was a world full of dragons and griffons, so why not dinosaurs too?
When we first encountered the first rex, we thought it had been unlikely that we’d defeat it head-on, but I was sure we’d have no problem this time.
“Let’s start the fighting,” I said.
“Yes, okay,” Raphtalia replied.
“I’m ready too!” Ruft added.
“It reminds me of that monster we met when you saved me, Bubba! I won’t be left behind again!” Keel barked.
“I’ve got this,” S’yne said. Each of them took out their respective weapons and prepared for combat. Ruft was using an axe. He seemed to have taken a shine to heavy weapons.
“What can we hope to offer in thiz battle?” Shadow wondered.
“Raph,” said his ninja Raph specimen. Both of them sounded uncertain.
“Don’t worry. Much worse things than this come out on the ocean tours with Sadeena,” I told him. The oceans were a treasure trove of crazy. The experience down there was delicious, but we wouldn’t be able to hack some underwater grinding without the killer whale sisters. On dry land and against these kinds of monsters, I wasn’t expecting any trouble.
“Just stick close to me until you level up a bit. You’ve got some combat experience, so you shouldn’t get too cocky even once your level increases a little,” I said.
“That’z true,” Shadow replied, but he didn’t sound especially confident.
“Let’s go!” Raphtalia drew her katana and rushed toward the dinosaurs. They had noticed us and were already moving in with predatory intentions. Ruft was right behind her, and then S’yne was close behind. A kaiser rex opened with a roar, leaping toward Raphtalia and breathing fire. Then it tried to bite her. It was a wild but carefully targeted fire-bite attack. The jaws of the kaiser rex closed fast and hard over the spot where Raphtalia was standing.
The image of Raphtalia vanished completely. Then she popped up at the side of the kaiser rex and slashed into its ribs with her katana. The attack made a satisfying noise, blood sprayed out, and the monster groaned. Raphtalia passed beneath the beast and not a single drop of blood landed on her. She cut as she went along to induce further cries of pain.
“It’s got tougher skin than I expected. It feels like the flesh is clinging to my blade,” Raphtalia reported.
“I’ll give it the axe!” Ruft quipped, seemingly popping into existence in the middle of the air. The kaiser rex was still focused on Raphtalia and didn’t even notice the axe coming for its head until it was too late. “Just to make sure!” Ruft transitioned into a kick on the spot he had just hit and then unleashed some magic. “Zweite Illusion!” Ruft said and dropped back. The kaiser rex rushed off roaring at a ninety-degree angle from us. It started biting and swinging its tail at thin air. Ruft had applied some illusion magic.