Chapter 48 - Glass' World and Meeting Kizuna

Chapter 48 – Glass' World and Meeting Kizuna

Author's Note: We're finally in Glass' World!

"Satoshi! It's you! Have you seen Indigo, Raphtalia and Filo?"

"I haven't. I just got out of there. How long have you been out here?"

"I just got out here as well. What should we do now?"

"Hold that thought. What level are you?"

"I'm level 1. What about you?"

"Same. About what we should do, I think we should head to the fields to grind some levels. We'll die otherwise."

"Agreed."

We headed for the field.

It wasn't long before we encountered an entirely foreign creature. Luckily, all the status boosts and special functions I'd earned by unlocking all my previous bows were still in effect, same with Naofumi, so we were more powerful than your average level 1. Especially the bow's power up method, which was extremely useful for lower leveled people to hold their own against mid-level monsters.

With an almost ungodly reaction time, something I had trained tirelessly in ever since I had gotten here, I aimed my bow at the monster in a fraction of a second and let the bowstring fly.

BLAM!

Right before the thing was blasted into smithereens, its name appeared in my field of vision.

White Box.

The thing was about the size of my head. As its name implied, it was white and square and quite like a cardboard box. It was nearly a perfect parallel to the balloon of the world I was summoned in in terms of the ease of defeating it and its attack power.

"Oi, Rishia." I asked. "Have you seen this before?"

"Fueeeeee? No, this is the first time I've seen of or heard about a creature like this."

As the three of us continued wandering around, searching for Raphtalia, Filo and Glass' group, we encountered many alien objects. There were new medicinal herbs that Naofumi and I took keen interest in, my reason being mainly economic, and tons of new creatures were also appearing all over the place.

The monsters here also gave more experience than usual, since I had nearly reached level 20 by the end of the day, with Rishia being level 17 and Naofumi being level 2 due to his inability to gain EXP by himself. We split up and traversed different parts of the island to avoid the hero interference phenomenon. We made sure to break down all the monsters we killed, myself switching to the crossbow when I unlocked it to not obliterate the monsters, and we scoured each dead corpse for all the materials and drop items we could get out of them.

A few of my bows were now unlocked, but the guns were still a bit out of reach. The closest gun that I could unlock would probably be a Melromarc musket or an Arcian pistol.

Eventually, we met up with Naofumi at our original meeting spot.

"Huff…Puff…I'm getting tired." Rishia whined.

"Naofumi, now that we're reunited, let's take a break."

"Very well."

Good thing I was carrying a massive rucksack that I had brought along with me for the Kyo fight, though I had set it aside during the entire sequence, or not we would be starving. I had plenty of water, rations and other necessary equipment.

I threw Naofumi and Rishia a pack of jerky each, and a canteen of water.

"Let's eat first, but then we should follow the river and raft across it and set up a camp over there. I do have a tent in my backpack, but that'll only fit one person. We could create a makeshift shelter out of sticks and leaves."

Naofumi, Rishia and I gnawed on our portions of jerky and sipped our water. This was by no means a good meal, but if Arcian troops could deal with it, so could we.

After finishing our meal, we constructed a makeshift raft and paddled across the river, barely avoiding sinking into the bottom of the river because Rishia was quite clumsy.

Gathering a bunch of sticks and leaves, and using some mud to stick everything together, we had set up two shacks of sorts. Since Indigo wasn't here, we couldn't use his nifty earth magic to help us out. I set up my tent facing the entrance of the camp, so I could see what was happening outside.

Using my fire magic, I created a large campfire in the center of the camp. All three of us gathered a bunch of earth, clay, water and straw to create a mortar wall around the perimeter of the camp, reinforced with some boulders. I used my fire magic to quickly solidify the wall. There was a small archway with pointy sticks facing it for accessibility purposes.

Wiping droplets of sweat off my face, I stared proudly at our creation. I climbed to the top of the short wall and dangled my legs off of it. It was almost the dead of night.

"Nice fort you've got there."

Freaked out, I almost fell off the wall as I saw a girl standing behind me. Or was she a girl?

She had ferocious, deep brown eyes. She had healthy skin, with a pink hue to it. She was about the height of a middle schooler, with long hair pulled into two pigtails, and she wore feminine clothes similar to what Fitoria had. A fishing rod hung at her waist.

"Nice to meet you. What is your name?"

"I'm Kizuna. I've been watching out for you guys since you all fell out of the sky."

Naofumi and Rishia came rushing up upon hearing the commotion.

"Who are you!" Naofumi shrieked.

"I'm Kizuna."

"We should continue this conversation around the campfire. That way it should be more comfortable for all of us."

We all took a seat around the campfire, the three of us huddled together while Kizuna sat at the other end.

"Since you gave us your name, it is only fair to give you ours. I am Satoshi Sera, one of the holy heroes, the Bow Hero, President of the Arcian Confederation and Count of Port Sera. This here is Naofumi Iwatani, the holy Shield Hero, and Rishia, the heiress of the Ivyred Territory."

"What?"

Kizuna looked at us confused.

"I've never heard of a Bow Hero, Shield Hero, Arcian Confederation, Port Sera or Ivyred Territory. What are you talking about?"

"How about you introduce yourself." Naofumi joined in.

"I'm Kizuna Kazayama, and I'm one of the four holy heroes, the Hunting Hero."

"What are you talking about?" Naofumi blurted out. "I've never heard of a Hunting Hero."

"We need to get this sorted out somehow. Let's just call each other by our first names, alright?"

"Deal."

"I guess it's safe to assume that you were summoned from Japan, right?" Naofumi asked.

"Yeah, and you too?"

"Naofumi here was summoned from Japan, and I was summoned from the Bay Area of the United States. My parents are Japanese, hence my Japanese name."

"So anyways, I've never heard of a Bow Hero or Shield Hero, which makes me think that you must have been summoned to a different world to serve in a different set of holy heroes."

"So, it seems."

"Why were we summoned in a prison?" I asked.

"This place is a never-ending labyrinth. In terms of prisons, it's the worst. Even though there's no guards, it's impossible to get out."

Kizuna was giggling to herself.

"What's so funny!" Naofumi asked.

"It's just that I haven't talked to anyone for years. I don't even know how long I've been trapped in here."

"What about the waves? Don't you get teleported out to fight the waves?"

"Waves? You mean those things in legends? They're real?"

"You've never fought in one?" I chimed in. "How come?"

"I told you. I've been stuck in here for forever. How would I know what a wave is?"

Kizuna then explained to us about the place we were in. Basically, it was an island that was impossible to escape. If you went inland, it was a jungle, and there was a maze underwater. I also gave her a brief recount on what had happened to us before we came here.

"Heh…Spirit Tortoise? We have protective beasts such as that here. We have the Black Turtle and White Tiger, but they're mostly legends. You said Kyo Ethina took control of the thing?"

"Yeah," Naofumi spoke calmly. "We chased him through the portal he made back to this world."

"Maybe this was a trap." Kizuna conjectured.

"That's what I thought too, but we really had no other options."

"Anyways," I cut off Naofumi. "You're saying Glass and L'Arc are your friends?"

"Yep. Glass and L'Arc Berg Sickle."

We continued to walk around, entranced by all the new things around it. Then, it struck me.

"Naofumi. Do you remember what happened right before we were summoned here?"

"I don-wait. I do remember."

I told Kizuna what had happened, with Naofumi having nearly the exact same experience.

As I entered the portal that Kyo opened, the current that carried all of us along suddenly split, like in that Ice Age movie where the mammals were chasing that baby down those ice slides. Indigo was crying out for me, but he was drawn down a different tunnel along with Raphtalia and Filo. Afterwards, I lost consciousness.

"Glass! Where did you meet Glass!"

"Well, she was on this ghost ship back in Melromarc, then she tried to destroy the Cal Mira islands, and then she fought with us against Kyo. Do you know her?"

"Yeah! She's a close friend. She's the person who gave me this haori."

Strange. Glass really did have some weird taste in clothes.

"If Glass teamed up with you guys to take down Kyo, he must really be a bad guy. And L'Arc nii-chan was with her too, right? How's he doing with Therese?"

"How would I know?" Naofumi asked.

"I know them even less than Naofumi does." I replied.

"Is Glass here, too?"

"She went through the portal." I responded. "Ever since, we haven't seen her."

"Right. I would probably have known if she was here. I guess it's my turn now. I'll tell you how I was summoned to another world."

"I'll have to start from way back when." Kizuna began. "Back where I had the chance to participate in a special game with my two sisters…"

Chapter 49 out soon! We're almost at 50, where I have something special planned…