This chapter has a little bit of an info dump about the power up methods, I tried to keep it short
It was just past midnight, the moon was out and the stars were twinkling in the night sky, inside a room of an inn, near the wall of the Castle Town of Melromarc, Naofumi Iwatani the Shield Hero was sleeping peacefully, not knowing about the vile plans of his one and only teammate, Myne Sophia also known as Malty S Melromarc, the First Princess of Melromarc
If fate would have allowed it, then when he had awakened the next day he would have faced the betrayal of a lifetime and would have been scorned by the entire country. He would have raged, despaired, seeked revenge...
But fate is a fickle thing, and those with enough strength can change their own as well as other's fate, and it seemed like an entity with the strength to do so had decided to change Naofumi's fate
As suddenly Naofumi started breathing rapidly and his whole body started spasming, his hands went towards his chest and started pushing in with all his strength, as though they were trying to keep something inside
But whatever was happening to him, was something he could not resist and soon his body went limp and his breathing stopped
The fate of Naofumi Iwatani had changed, though if it was for the better or worse will depend on the perspective of the individual
Outside the room, Myne Sophia was standing with her ear on the door trying to listen to any noise coming from inside of it
'Looks like the Shield Devil is asleep, ugh finally I will be able to get away from his pathetic presence' she thought about what was going to happen tomorrow and almost couldn't stop herself from laughing
Just as she was about to open the door, she heard some sounds coming from inside the room. She thought about coming back later as she didn't want to get caught but the sounds soon stopped
If she was in the same party as Naofumi, she would have figured out what just happened to him, but she hadn't bothered even telling him about the party system as she didn't want him to get stronger and she didn't want to think about joining his party
'Is he awake? Should I come back later?' These thoughts were going on inside her head but they soon stopped as she had no choice but to leave
GASP
She heard another noise from inside but this time much louder
'Tch looks like he is awake. I will have to come back later' With that she went back to her room
Inside the room, Naofumi woke up with sweat poring down his face and his breathing ragged. He looked at his surroundings as if to figure out where he was
After confirming his surroundings he started taking deep breaths to compose himself. He looked at his hands, and his legs, different from his original, then he grabbed a bunch of his hair and pulled them down so he could see them
"They are black..." he muttered
He started looking around for a mirror or anything he could use to see his face, soon he found one and started walking towards it with shaky steps
As soon as he reached the mirror and looked at his reflection his breathing stopped. The face he saw in the mirror had messy black hair with teal-green eyes. He moved his hand to touch his face, pull his cheeks, nose, chin and rubbed his eyes as if to confirm if everything he was seeing was real
"I really became Naofumi..." he said with relief evident in his tone
Even though the entity, which he would rather not think about, had told him that this would happen he still hadn't completely believed it. Maybe he getting toyed with and being treated as nothing more than a form of entertainment. Even now he wasn't sure if this was all a dream or if he had actually been granted a second chance, maybe this was all an illusion...
But he put those thoughts to rest, as it didn't matter what the entity had done. It's not like he could do anything against it, so for now he will treat it as a second chance at life
He pulled up his status to check if his wish had been granted and as soon as he saw his attack stat he wanted to jump in joy
His attack stat was not 1, instead, it was exactly one-third of this defence stat, which mathematically meant that 25 percent of his defence had been sacrificed to become his attack stat
(A/N- For the dumb dumbs, if his total defence for 4 then 25% of that would be 1, so his attack stat would be 1 and his defence stat would be 3 making it one-third)
He couldn't check his second wish, though if things went well then he wouldn't need to use it, he could feel that if the situation arises then he would be able to do what he wished to
After checking everything he looked around the room to figure out what else was there, and his gaze soon landed on a table with a metal chain mail and a coin pouch
"What are..." he didn't even finish his sentence as he had finally figured out the reason behind the price of his second request, and upon coming to that conclusion the only thing that came out of his mouth was
"Fuck!"
After calming down, he sat down on the bed and started thinking about his current situation
'I haven't even started doing anything and my plans are already ruined. My original plan was to avoid that 'bitch', so I could avoid getting framed which would result in me losing the trust of all the other so called 'Heroes' and being ostracized by the entire country.
But now there is nothing I can do to avoid it, as it's already night so even if I approach the other Heroes now nothing would change. As Malty has extremely good acting skills, she will somehow convince the other Heroes that I was trying to cover for myself by getting them on my side. The 'Trash' King, the ministers and the Church are also going be on her side, so I can assume that none of the other Heroes are going to side with me tomorrow
I can't run away as that would probably make the situation worse, they might even put a bounty to capture me. Of course, they can't kill me, as I am the Shield Hero, so killing me would result in war with Siltvelt and Shieldfreeden, but if I try to run away, they can imprison me or do something else'
He let out a loud sigh after realizing that there is nothing he can do to get out of this situation
'But maybe this is for the best because as of right now I still know about the future as nothing has been changed yet, but if I had avoided getting framed a lot of things would have changed. The Church would start making different moves and I have no idea what the King would do because of his hatred.
In the Canon, the Church didn't make any big moves till they tried to kill all the Heroes, most likely because they didn't need to as the reputation of Naofumi had already been destroyed and he had become the 'Shield Devil'. But if it does not happen, they would try other methods to destroy me, and I would have to be constantly on my guard which would exhaust me'
He had started thinking to make the best out of his situation, even though his plans had been foiled it's not like he would not just roll over and give up. No, he would destroy all of his enemies not just so he could live, no, he had to do it for the original Naofumi whose place he had taken
'Naofumi I will do my best in your place, I will protect everything you wanted to protect, I will save everyone you could not. But I won't just become your replacement, no I will become better than you, I won't drown in anger and hatred. I won't let them control me, I will live my life to the fullest'
He reaffirmed his will and then looked at the table where the Chain mail and the coin pouch were kept, he went towards the table and picked up the coin pouch
'That bitch is going to come and take everything I have, but I won't let her. I am going to need all this money, as for the chain mail? I guess I will have to sacrifice it because if she doesn't find anything then she might get suspicious and that might lead to other problems'
He then opened his Status Menu and started looking for the inventory, at first he couldn't find it but soon he remembered how the Legendary weapons functions
'All I need is belief right? Then I believe that I should have an inventory in which I could store my items'
And voila! He could now see the inventory icon. He clicked on it and just as he was about to store the money he realized another thing
'Didn't Naofumi hide some coins in his shield?'
He searched the part where his shield was connected to his arm and found 10 silver coins, he put all of them in the coin pouch and then put the coin pouch in his inventory. He opened his inventory and saw
[Inventory]
Coin Pouch x1
Silver Coin x200
'200 Silver coins huh, guess that is enough for now but I am going to have to figure out a way to earn more money'
He then sat down on the bed and started thinking about the other functions of the Shield and how best to utilize them
'The absorption function lets me absorb items and materials to unlock new weapon forms hmm...so will this work?' He thought and then took out a silver coin from his inventory and held it in front of the Jewel on his shield
In a few moments it was absorbed inside his shield and he received a notification on his status
Silver Shield: Conditions met
Equip Bonus: Luck Up (Medium)
Ability Locked
"It worked.." He muttered and then switched to his new shield and then wondered about the equip bonus
'Luck Up? Is it supposed to make me lucky? Or will it affect the item drops?'He asked himself
Suddenly the status screen changed and it now showed something else
[Luck Up (Medium): Increases the item drop rates from monsters]
His eyes widened a bit but then he remembered 'Aah I forgot that the shield can explain certain things. I will have to test it out later to find out the limits but for now I have to check the other functions'
'I already tested out the Weapon Transformation and I can't utilize the Weapon Copy system or the Crafting System right now, so the only thing left is the Power Up Methods'
He then started remembering all the power up methods, he had spent quite a bit of time in that strange room with that entity thinking about all the other power up methods, and thankfully his memory had not failed him even after death so he remembered most of them
He first unlocked the Power Up methods of the other Legendary Weapons
The Legendary Spear's first power up method was fairly simple as it increased the strength of the weapon the more he used it
The second method allowed him to use different kinds of Ores to power up his weapons forms but there is a chance of failure
The third method used the Soul of monsters that he had absorbed to imbue his weapon forms with special effects, such as Balloon damage taken -5%
The last method used items and the Soul of the monsters to give stat bonuses to his weapon forms
Then came the power up methods of the Legendary Sword
The first method was that the higher his level grew, the more powerful his weapon forms would get
The second allowed him to increase the Mastery of his weapons the more he used them, which would improve the stats of the weapon
The third allowed him to reset the Mastery of his weapons and convert them into energy. Which he could use to 'awaken' his weapon forms, which would increase their stats and might unlock new abilities
The fourth allowed him to use the energy to increase the Rarity of his weapons forms. The rarity starts from Common(C), Uncommon(UC), Rare(R), Super Rare(SR), Super Rare+(SR+), Legendary(L) and the highest rarity Artifact
Now it was the Legendary Bow's turn
According to the first method the rarer a weapon is, the stronger it is
The second method allowed him to raise the power of weapons by equipping Ores on his weapons forms. Each weapon has a finite number of slots and different types of Ores give different boosts
The third method turned the items absorbed into energy that can be used to grant enchantments which raises the stats by a certain percentage
The last method allowed him to use the energy from items or monster parts to increase his stats by filling up the level gauge of a certain stat. Upon filling the gauge the stat is increased and the gauge is reset
The last Weapon was his own the Legendary Shield
The first Power Up method allowed him to share the power up methods of different weapons with the other Heroes. He doubted that this was going to be much use considering what was going to happen tomorrow
The second increased the abilities of people the more he trusted them and in turn, he gets strengthened the more he is trusted by them
The third allowed him to use an energy called 'EP' which was basically his life force. He could use this energy to permanently increase his stats and by assigning this energy to his skills and magic made them more powerful
He did not know the last remaining method of the Shield so he went on to the power up methods of the Vassal Weapons
The Vassal Whip method allowed him to sacrifice his levels to get a permanent stat growth modifier which makes it so he gets more stat points upon leveling up and he can also use it on other people with their consent
The Vassal Staff method allowed him to gain points, which he could use to upgrade his magic spells to boost their efficiency. The boosted spell will have a Roman Numeral attached after it, indicating the level of that spell
The Vassal Gauntlets method is similar to Vassal staff except it works on skills instead of spells and sometimes it might also result in simple stat increases for the weapon
The Vassal Claw method was fairly simple, it increased the power and effectiveness of the skill the more he used them
The Vassal Projectile allowed him to use money to increase the success rate of enchanting or crafting items using his shield
As for the rest of the Vassal weapons, he did not know their power up methods but he could learn them in the future, right now he had quite a lot of ways to get stronger and he was going to use every single one of them because he is going to need all the strength he can get
After unlocking all the power up methods he knew, he looked outside the window and the position of the moon had changed, he did not know how to read the time using the moon or the stars but he could guess that quite a bit of time had passed
He then changed his shield back to his normal form to avoid any sort of suspicion, laid down on the bed, and closed his eyes
Though he did not fall asleep as he was waiting for someone and after an hour of pretending to sleep the person he was waiting for finally arrived
Malty opened the door to his room and peeked inside to check if he was asleep or not, even if he was awake and she got caught she could just play it off as coming to check up on him. But seeing that he was asleep he quickly stepped inside the room and with silent steps moved towards the table where the chainmail was kept
She looked around a bit to find something else but couldn't and started growing frustrated
'Tch, where did he hide the money? Did he sleep while holding it?' She thought for just one second about trying to look around the sleeping Shield Hero but soon dropped that thought as she didn't want to wake him up
So she took the chainmail and started moving towards the door, just before she left though she looked back towards the sleeping figure of the Shield Devil who according to her had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow
She couldn't wait to see his betrayed expression, full of rage and anger but unable to do anything. With one last look, she stuck out her tongue and mocked him one last time before she left
'Now it's time to put my acting skills to use'
'She's finally gone' he sighed in relief 'Now I can finally get some sleep, as I sure am going to need it to deal with what's going to happen tomorrow'
He then soon went to sleep, exhausted from everything that has happened in the short time
The next morning he woke up to the sounds of guards banging on his door
Aight that's it for this one
Lemme know how it was
Senpai~ Out