The Rising of the Shield Hero – Rewrite

This is a story about Naofumi Iwatani, a 20-year-old Japanese guy who, after finding a mysterious book in a library, gets summoned to another world to fight off a recurring phenomenon called "The Waves of Calamity", and finds himself, along with three others, equipped with one weapon each, Naofumi's "weapon" being a shield.

After being summoned to another world to fight, how will this other world receive them? And of course, how will Naofumi fight when he can only defend?

This is a story based on Aneko Yusagi's "The Rising of the Shield Hero" Light Novel. This story came to be after I began getting increasingly bored of the original series since it left its initial premise after volume 5 of the Light Novel.

This also aims to fix a lot of personal gripes with the original series post-volume 4, mostly to do with power levels and scale of each conflict.

Note: There will be relatively small changes in the beginning, but the number of changes, as well as the impact they have on the overarching story will increase as this progresses.

So, if you liked the original premise for this story and wanted to see something more grounded compared to the later parts of the story, then this is definitely for you!

Prologue

"Ouch... What's with this book?" I said looking at a book that fell on my head.

My name is Naofumi Iwatani, I'm 20-years-old and currently attending college, I'm a bit more of a nerd than others since I usually spend my time watching anime and occasionally playing games. Eventually, I just stopped being as good at school once I got into these, but I don't mind since my brother is the one my parents have their hopes set on.

Ever since I helped my brother relieve his stress by introducing him to otaku culture, he seems to have started doing really well in school, and thus, my parents have let me do as I please as long as my brother continues like this.

"Won again, huh?" I say to no one in particular as I see the victory screen pop up on my computer monitor. This is from my favorite types of games, the guild-managing type of game. These basically consist of the player forming and managing their own guilds and engaging against other players in grand scale fights involving dozens of different units you have to give orders to. I've always had a knack for these types of games, and since I started playing this game I've gotten my guild to one of the top places in the entire Japanese server.

"It does get boring if it's just a one-sided win, though"

Tired of the game matching me with inexperienced players, I decided to go to the library to see if I can find anything interesting.

As I start looking through the bookshelves, I spot a book that seems out of place in this era, it seems old, almost ancient.

"What even is this?" I can't read the title so I decided to pull it out, and it falls on my head along with a couple more books.

"Damn, that hurt" I curse under my breath while I pick up the book.

Its title reads "The Records of the Four Holy Weapons"

Inside it read: There were once four holy heroes, the Spear Hero, The Sword Hero, The Bow Hero, and the Shield Hero.

"Shield? But wasn't this about weapons? A shield doesn't even have any offensive power!" I laugh, figuring it's just an error or something from the author who was naive and thought a shield counted as a weapon.

The book continued on about its world and seemed to be talking about a fantasy world. It went on about how at some point in time there was a phenomenon, called the "Waves of Calamity", this having caused great amounts of destruction and death all around the world. And so, to prevent any more losses, the people of that world summoned four heroes, each one with a different weapon. Spear, Sword, Bow, and Shield.

Each of them went their own way in order to get stronger and fight off these waves. Along the way they met different characters, though none of them were interesting enough, and the only girl was this princess, and she was horrible, she manipulated the heroes and made them go against each other for her own amusement instead of that of the world.

"Yawn..." I was almost falling asleep when I got to the part describing the Shield Hero's journey

"Wait, am I missing something?" Oddly enough, the shield hero was nowhere to be found in the book's section dedicated to him, instead it was just a bunch of blank pages.

"Huh... What the hell...?" That's when I started feeling dizzy, and before I knew it I lost consciousness.