“Sigh . . . Oh well. I guess for now, other than watching the slave auctions to see if any Lurolona slaves show up, we might as well head back to the village to do some peddling or training.”

“That would seem reasonable. Yes sir. By the way, Shield Hero . . .”

“What?”

The slave trader stopped filling out the tournament entry papers to ask a question.

“What should I put down for your ring name?”

“Hmm . . .”

Putting down something obvious like “The Shield Hero’s Party” would make concealing our identities pointless. The same would probably go for using my own name. The fact that the accessory dealer already knew we were participating in the first place made it feel like what we were doing was pretty reckless anyway, though. This was probably just one of those things. I needed to pick some random name that wouldn’t give me away.

“‘Rock Valley’s Party’ should do.”

“Where did that come from? Yes sir.”

“It’s my last name in English. It was my nickname in another world.”

Now that I thought about it, a lot of skill names and stuff were just English words . . . But I guess that was just because my shield was translating them for me. Raphtalia and Filo were actually using the Melromarc language when they were casting spells and stuff, after all. But it was easy to forget that.

It was unlikely anyone would make the connection with my last name, Iwatani, right? To do that, they would have to be someone from another world, like Ren, Itsuki, or Motoyasu. Still, it was scary to think that I had no idea what words really meant in this world. The slave trader looked confused, so I might have gotten the pronunciation wrong or something. Like maybe it would be translated differently if I pronounced it Lock Barley or something.

Just then, Raphtalia and Raph-chan walked in sighing, back from the underground auction.

“How did it go?”

“We saw one.”

“I see . . .”

So she had found a Lurolona slave.

“How high did the price go?”

Raphtalia cast her gaze downward when she replied.

“The bidding stopped at . . . 95 gold.”

Who knew just how high the prices would jump. I really wished this ridiculous bubble would burst already, but we had no choice but to deal with the situation as it was.

“I guess all we can do for now is head back to the village and train until the coliseum tournament starts.”

“Agreed. Let’s win this . . . no matter what!”

Raphtalia was looking at me with her eyes full of strong determination. That’s right. We’d been left with no choice but to fight to get her village back.

“Raphtalia, I’m thinking we should probably address each other using aliases during the matches. What do you think?”

“Umm, okay. What should they be?”

“Hmm . . . I’m going to go with Rock for my alias.”

I doubted anyone would associate that with the Shield Hero, but what about Raphtalia and Filo?