The Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 05 by Aneko Yusagi Page A

tree of this one shield, then all the skills would suddenly be available.
    Anyway, what really surprised me was that, despite all these differences, the three of them still seemed confident that they were in the same game as the one they were familiar with from their own worlds.
    “You’re right. It was just like that.”
    “Yeah.”
    “But I think that only the heroes are able to unlock the entire skill tree.”
    I was starting to understand. Normal adventurers could only unlock certain portions of the skill tree, depending on the conditions that open up to them in their growth. Only the heroes, because of their legendary weapons, could unlock everything.
    “My turn. If you hold a weapon type that you specialize in, you can copy them. I think they have a ‘weapon copy system.’”
    “What?”
    What was that? I’d never heard of anything like that!
    “Yeah, that’s a lot different from the game I was used to, but I was able to get a really strong weapon for free, so it ended up being a big help.”
    “Well, we are heroes, after all. We do have some advantages.”
    “I’m sure everyone already knows this, but the weapon shop in the capital of Zeltbul, the mercenary country, has the best equipment.”
    The other two went along nodding with what Motoyasu said.
    “What’s that now?!”
    I was so upset I practically screamed.
    Weapon copying?
    I’d never seen anything like that in the help menu. I’d already spent four months here, so I’d taken the time to go through the entire menu item by item.
    It sounded like they were saying that if you just picked up a weapon at a shop then you could unlock the ability to use it.
    “Naofumi, you mean to say that you didn’t even know that? I’m impressed you’ve managed to stay alive for as long as you have!”
    Ugh . . . now I was getting pissed. Really pissed! I’d just assumed that I could only use special shields I unlocked myself!
    I’d only seen weird things like iron shields and round shields and book shields up until this point—I thought those were the only kinds available.
    “You guys figured this out on your own?”
    “Not really, we just went to buy weapons at the shop. That’s a normal thing to do, right? Considering that the weapon you start out with is so weak.”
    I had tried to do the very same thing when I first got here. I’d wanted to give up on being a shielder, so I tried to use a sword I’d picked up at the weapon shop.
    But when I did, a warning popped up that said, “You are unable to equip or carry a weapon other than the legendary weapon you have been assigned.”
    It meant that I couldn’t use anything other than my shield in battle.
    “The rules say that you can only use the weapon you’ve been assigned, but if you use the weapon copy system, you can pretty much equip anything.”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s right.”
    This was starting to give me a headache.
    Besides, I was stuck with a shield. Attacking was the most important thing for me to focus on, so I had pretty much ignored the shields that were on sale at weapon shops.
    I was already equipped with a shield that leveled up with me, so I had only been focused on trying to get a weapon, like a sword, into my other hand.
    Maybe that’s why I had never noticed?
    “Alright, keep talking.”
    If they’d already covered such major things that I hadn’t been able to figure out, I was nervous just thinking of how much else had been kept from me.
    “When you kill a monster and it turns into materials that you absorb into your weapon, you can open the weapon menu at the same time to get the monster’s dropped items.”
    Dropped items?
    Hmm . . . I’d seen something like that in online RPGs before. Normally monsters would leave items behind once you defeated them.
    They might leave behind something that had nothing to do with the sort of materials they were made from.
    I’d been so stupid! I should have been able to figure something that simple out for myself!
    “There are