The Rising of the Fisticuffs Hero

Chapter 14: The Story of a New Comrade

They spent the next hour taking the bandits loot. Various crates of foodstuffs, jewels, building material and tools. Once everything had been loaded into the wagon, Naofumi asked the merchant who was travelling with them how he would repay him for causing this amount of trouble. In response, the merchant lead Naofumi to the merchants guild in the town they reached and introduced him to the guys inner circle. Apparently, the dude was actually a top merchant, and had decided to take the shield hero under his wing. He taught hi, rudimentary crafting magic, and even helped him locate a magic stone he was looking for.

This then lead to the party heading to that area, where they found a cave at the side of a huge mountain. The nearby quarry workers warned them about the dangerous monsters that had taken up residence in the caves, but they pressed on. They walked slowly through the passageway, until they came across a open box with an inscription scratched into the wall. Yuxin approached it and ran her delicate hands over it.

"This is the ancient language. I'd be surprised if anyone besides wizards or witches would know it. It says 'We made this seed in the hopes that we would never feel the pangs of hunger ever again, but instead we made something that would feed on everything until nothing was left. We now hope it is never released from this box to ruin the land.'"

"Well, seems somebody has already unleashed it." Naofumi bluntly stated. "Let's keep moving, there's a side passage here."

They all began heading down the passage, but Filo stopped and looked around confused. Lupina turned around and looked back at the filolial.
"What's wrong Filo?"

"There's, um, something here that is hard to make out..."

"Don't worry Filo, I'm a hunter class, anything but high level magic or skills could hide things from my detection, so come on, hurry up or we'll be left behind."

"Or are you just the worthless chicken your master accidentally chose?"

Filo seemed hurt for some reason, even though Lupina only said for her to hurry up. They all continued their tromp along the corridor, before the were engulfed in a weird shadowy area.

"What the heck?" Naofumi muttered, his voice distorted. "What on earth is going..."

"Now would be an excellent time to remove the shield hero, it's not like any of the other heroes would mind" 'Cadverus voice echoed from in front of him, swiftly followed by Raphtalia's.
"I've only pretended to listen to Naofumi. I'm so strong that one slice will be all it takes to end his miserable existence." Naufumi was certain these voices weren't coming from his companions, but the source of them was still unknown to him, so he acted quickly.

"Shield Prison!" He called up his metal armour sphere around the whole party. Even as it was forming, clangs of bodies hitting against the metal made it clear that invisible things were all around them. Naofumi looked back to the group and noticed that none of his party were looking too happy. Raphtalia, Filo and Yuxin were backing away from everyone, while Cadverus and Lupina had a glaring contest, one step away from attack each other.

"Yuxin!" Naufumi yelled, getting the Mages attention. "Cast an anti illusion spell. Something, anything, that reveals invisible threats." With a fearful nod, Yuxin spoke simply, a single phrase, which according to her teaching wasn't possible for normal casters, a silver light emanating from her back.
"Sight Restoring Aura!" Silver light blasted out, removing the shadowy, veil of shadow that surrounded them shattered and hundreds of bat-like monster blanketed the area.

With a surprising amount of co-ordination, everyone turned on the little beasts. Probably the most impressive was Lupina, who seemed to have taken the hidden-from-her-senses thing personally, releasing three yellow arrows which ricocheted around the tunnel, killing dozens of the monsters without hurting the rest of the party. Naufumi grabbed one of the bats and fed it, alive, to his shield. Cadverus had his Rock Smashers equipped and slammed the ground. A wave spread through the ground, which then led to several rock spikes to skewer the bats out of the air.