Our resident Shield Hero's (har har how original) sword slides out of a Daemon's body with ease, thick red blood coats the blade as he whipped it at the ground, the blood comes sliding off almost as if it was choreographed.
...
Which it was, by me of course, hi! I'm the narrator, it's been some days haven't it?
Oh, I'm well aware of the passage of time.
Connie sheathed his sword as he wiped away the blood from his pauldrons, iron rusts after all, and he'd rather not buy another set. It's been ten days since he was brought here to this otherworldly... world, and in those ten days he's made quite the name for himself. Despite being labeled as a hero of the shield and representing the shield, Connie was known more to the people as the faux-shield guy, seeing as how he has no idea what blocking or parrying is.
Some dissenters scoff at the idea of someone supposed to represent the shield not knowing how to use one, but hey, what do those pitiful peasant schmucks know anyways? Are they the ones fighting the demon lord's armies? Hell no! It was him!
Of course, due to some extraordinary circumstances, all four heroes were forced to split up because blah blah blah experience gain and numbers and spreadsheets and all that crap. Connie still traveled with Manniemaru for quite some time before realizing that his proximity with her is directly limiting his own growth, after this revelation, he then split up and went his separate ways.
One wonder if Manniemaru ever noticed his presence in the first place.
Probably because most of the time, she was the one doing the brunt of the fighting.
Which is still true to this day as Connie prepared to rejoin his group of companions and walk away, not realizing that that daemon that he just stabbed hasn't fully died yet, hence no experience pop-up to tell him that he did good.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that maybe giving this guy 'main character status' wasn't a good idea. Most monsters that he has encountered were either left heavily wounded or just unconscious. It's as if he didn't want to kill them or something.
Either that or he's just genuinely that stupid.
Still, this is pretty frustrating to watch so I'll just do some narrator magic and...
Connie locked back with widened eyes as the daemon's head exploded into bits.
GREAT DAEMON DEFEATED
REWARDS:
+ 39 Experience Points (2892 Left Before Level Up)
+ Daemon Greatsword (Quality: Worn-down)
+ 27 Star Coins
+ 13 Sacrificial Totems
+ Much Needed Confidence (Boost For Hidden Stat)
- Mental Stability
- Hope Of Escape
+ Sadness
! + 2 More Quests Have Been Made Available + !
Some of the gore splattered onto his armor, which he then spent more time wiping off.
"Great! Now we can move to the next item on our list!" a scantily dressed woman with animal ears said cheerfully, one of Connie's adventuring buddies she is, quite skilled in the arcane arts too.
Connie sighed as he checked his stats.
CONNIE V. LANG
LEVEL: 13
DEFENSIVE CLASS (BULWARK)
ATK: 48
DEF: 10
LCK: 2(?)
SPD: 1
!! 4 UNALLOCATED SKILL POINTS !!
SKILLS:
- CONVENIENCE
- LATENT MAGIC (Blooming)
- NATURAL COUNTER
For someone who claimed to have read many fantasy novels, Connie doesn't seem to have a good grasp at what the words "defense" means.
Probably because he never played those roleplaying-type games before.
Or read any roleplaying-type game literature too.
Y'know, it's quite hard being trapped inside an alternate world as a narrator whilst having a mind capable of seeing past the physical world. It's torture, real, unadulterated torture. Which is probably why Diane trapped me here in the first place.
Hah, at least the Armored comes visiting sometimes. Real eccentric one she is, has a penchant for creativity and world building.
Unlike someone.
Connie walked past the scantily dressed woman, barely catching a glimpse of the slave (WOW!) mark embedded on her back.
See! Morally questionable protagonists always sell well! I hope.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He grimaced every time he sees that mark, he really wanted to free her, he really does! Unfortunately for our wide-eyed naive shield-wielding protagonist, the process of removing a slave mark takes time and a whole lot of gold too. Gold that he does not have.
If he had a choice in the matter, he wouldn't have picked her to be his adventuring partner, emphasis on if he had a choice. Over several days of adventuring, Connie began to resent the king and the kingdom by proxy. After all, any sane and good person would be too after discovering about the slave trade.
Some tried to justify their choices in having a slave, Kendall actually immediately bought one the moment his feet touched the outside of the king's court, saying things like "when in Rome, do as the Romans do!" which greatly confuses Connie as he knows nothing about whatever "Rome" or the "Romans" are.
He then decided that whoever these Romans are, they weren't very nice.
Also, also, this shows off his character depth! Connie clearly had the mental capacity to realize that caving in due to societal pressure is no excuse to do bad things! Especially when it comes to slavery.
Oh, but here's the catch, a hero so vehemently against slavery yet he has a slave companion himself? Oh ho! The scandal!
Connie kept walking, he walked and he walked and he walked until he reached the kingdom walls. After gaining entry back into the kingdom, he entered an inn, rented out two rooms, told his companion to stay in the other room (to which she obliged his request so obediently that freaked him out to no ends). He then entered his own room and sat down on the soft but dingy wooden bed. He sighed heavily, even after days of living in this world, he still couldn't get the thought of slavery out of his mind.
The very thought of such atrocities scared him, it frightened him, and made him think about his faith in humanity. He tried to rationalize it, this couldn't be an alternate world, it must be something like a virtual reality simulation or something! All of these people that he met aren't real! They never were in the first place!
But even this rationalization falls short, these people, all of them, they certainly felt real enough for him. Sometimes he'd wander the streets, completely alone as he watched people move about, they talk, they laughed, they cried, they all had lives and emotions and memories, both the good and the bad.
But the other "heroes" didn't think so.
Manniemaru just saw them as a means to an end.
Kendall never 'saw' any of them as people to begin with.
Takeshi's heart is in the right place, but he just sees them as information to be gathered and lore to be logged.
In their eyes, the people were tools, not people.
He'll have to do something in the future. He can't just live like this forever, he hasn't done anything so far, that means he's complicit!
Can he truly call himself a hero if the world he's defending is evil?
He doesn't know.
----------------------------------------
Meanwhile, far, far away from the kingdom...
No such thing as a good slaver.
The only good slaver is a dead one.
Slaves. Slaves. Slaves.
Blah blah blah who cares! Get a new hobby already!
Even after all my efforts of isolating and villainizing her, she still finds a way to fuck with my story!
God damn it! She's supposed to be the disgraced and edgy minor antagonist of the first arc! Not some sympathetic god-like figure worshiped by the marginalized minority!
Argh! Wanted by several different kingdoms... pursued by even more mercenary groups... god damn it! She's building a better backstory than I am!
Fuck's sake! Pull up her stats, now!
ANNE MARR
CASTER (OFFENSIVE TYPE)
LEVEL: 27
ATK: 51
DEF: 36
LCK: 11
SPD: 14
SKILLS:
- SEPARATION
- REPAIR
- QUICK WIT
How- What in the- the fuck?!
13 days! I came back to check on these fuckers after 13 fucking days!
Barely two weeks and she's already half-way through my whole progression system?!
Look! She's approaching a village right now! Let's see what she does...
A farmer approached Manniemaru after putting away his tools.
"Ah! Hello adventurer, it's a good thing you're here-"
"Quest."
"Right, uh, please gather 24 elderberries for my wife's pie! You can find them in the mansion garden's. Although, watch out for the owner of the mansion, he's quite the character!"
"Slaves?"
"Hm? I suppose he have some slaves but I'm not really sure- wha- where?"
The farmer then looked back to see the aforementioned mansion in smoldering ruin.
"Wha- I- huh?"
Manniemaru held out her hands, her armor covered in soot and scorch marks, "berries."
"Ah, right! Of course, thank you so much!"
The farmer looked nervously between her and the burning mansion before grabbing all 24 elderberries.
"I- uh- what happened to the slaves? I- if you don't mind me asking that is."
"Safe."
"Oh, well... that's good? I guess?"
She nodded, before leaving the village.
Looks like she left quite an impression on those villagers. A good impression, they're very impressed.
...
Which is something I don't want! She's supposed to be scary, villainous even!
Damn it! She's snatching the main protagonist role from the shield hero!
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Argh! People like morally questionable characters whose personality might as well correlate with a chunk of concrete!
How else will idiot losers like you relate to these characters otherwise?!
I can't have a character who's just always good all of the time!
Not to mention it's a she!
...
Wait a minute!
Ha... ha ha ha!!
No one's reading this shit anyways!
I can do whatever the fuck I want!
----------------------------------------
Meanwhile, in the Director's office...
"Looks like our narrator's gone self-aware," I said, turning the volume up as we stared intently at the screen, "is that a good thing? I don't think it's a good thing."
"Pssh, this just makes the story better! Look, look! Takeshi's about to do something stupid!" Arma pointed at the screen like an excited child, she then stuffed some popcorn into the slit of her helmet.
I looked back at the screen to see one of the characters, Takeshi, was his name apparently, be beaten into a pulp by one of the women in his team whom he had accidentally assaulted by slipping?
"I don't get what's funny about this." I look to Arma only to see her on the floor, clutching her sides as she cackled loudly.
"Oi! What're you two doing?" Igna poked his head in from the kitchen, contrary to popular belief, working for a questionable organization does not come with good pay.
What I would give away to just live alone rather than with these two jokers.
"Oh cool! Is that 'I Got Reincarnated As A Fantasy Hero But It's Not Actually In A Fantasy World And I Got Trapped Inside An Eldritch Object Made To Simulate A Fantasy World'? I love that show!" how popular was this show where even a fifty year old candle maker knows about it?
"Aren't you fifty years old?" Exactly, thanks Arma.
"Hey! People my age can have interests too!"
"Still," Arma shoveled more popcorn into the slits of her helmet, "it's still weird how you know about IGRAAFHBINAIAFWAIGTIAEOMTSAFW in the first place." why is the abbreviation harder to say than the actual title?
"Oh come on, it's not that weird," Igna huffed, sitting down next to us, "it's the hottest, what do they call it? Ah right! Anime this year."
"And last year too."
"Damn right! So basically everyone knows about it."
Arma nodded, before twisting her head towards me, "except for him apparently."
"Really now?" Igna also looked at me incredulously, "seriously Dunn? That's even more weird! You're younger than Arma, aren't you?"
"I am, but I don't see how that relates to this... anime."
"It does relate!" Arma yelled out, "you're a young dude! In fact, you should know more about this than we do!"
"But I don't!"
"That's it, we're going back to season one, I can't watch the latest episode with someone who knows nothing about IGRAAFHBINAIAFWAIGTIAEOMTSAFW and it's associated medias!"
Fuck.