Shield to Support

Royal Summoning

It was a pleasant summer afternoon. A young man was dropping by the Book Off for a quick read. This is Iwatami Naofumi, a local university sophomore. Compared to everyone else around him, he was as normal as normal could be. He was a guy trying to make his way in life, playing all sorts of video games in his free time.

While browsing the light novel section, he accidentally caused several books to fall off the shelves. From the front, a voice called out. "You better put those back, and if you break them, you buy them!"

"Sorry!" Naofumi responded quickly. He got down to on one knee and started collecting the books until he found a particularly strange one. "Huh?" The book was much different from the others. It looked very antique with its hardcover and slightly worn pages "Four Heavenly Weapon's Manual?" After putting away the other books, Naofumi started reading the Four Heavenly Weapon's Manual, leaning against one of the shelves.

*Flip... Flip...* The story began with the description of another world and it's prophesied demise. Over time, waves of disaster will assault this world one after another until it's finally destroyed. To escape the impending doom, the denizens have to summon heroes from other worlds and request their aid. So far, this fantasy novel sounded like a traditional Isekai, nothing significant. Four people will be summoned and be given the titles of Heroes. With their new title, each of them was granted a Legendary Weapon: a Sword, a Spear, a Bow, and a Shield.

At face value, the offensive equipment differed in terms of range: Short, medium, and long. 'I'm surprised that there isn't a mace or another blunted weapon in there. If I remember correctly, they countered chainmail.' The shield didn't seem out of place. With offense, comes defense. Most depictions of medieval knights had a sword and a shield, like Link with the Master Sword and Hylian Shield.

The story went on to say that the heroes then ventured separately, forming their own parties, in order to gain power in preparation against the waves of disaster. While Naofumi didn't know why they had to split up, he rolled with it. Individually, they would have their flaws, but if they worked together well against the waves, they seemed like a well-rounded team.

Even though this book is ancient, there were several ink drawings depicting some of the characters. 'The Sword Hero probably had overwhelming combat strength, while the Spear Hero was probably the considerate type of guy. I wondered if the Bow Hero would be able to get rid of a horrible dictator like Robin Hood did.'

"Huh?" The story was shifting towards the Shield Hero, but the pages were blank. He continued to flip through the book only to see more blank pages. 'Is this a defective copy?' As he continued to flip through the pages, the book started to glow with white light. He barely had a chance to let go of the strange object. "What the hell?!" Right when those words left my mouth, my consciousness drifted away.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that I would awaken in a parallel world.