No One Gets Past This Gatekeeper: The Unwanted Warrior Guards His New Post Volume 4 (eBook)

Kametsu Tomobashi (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-8088-2 (ISBN)

Infos

The Guard Corps of Astaroth has a serious crisis on its hands: the repeated attacks on the Royal Capital have taken their toll, and now they've been left with a severe shortage of able-bodied defenders. When Sieg and the Fifth Squadron go out recruiting, they stumble upon Leobolt-who might well be the best swordsman in the kingdom! He seems like the perfect fit for management, but it doesn't take long for him to start taking his reforms a bit too far. Is the Fifth breaking up?! With some of its members scattered, Sieg rushes off to find Spinoza, and her mysterious origin finally comes to light. Can the team take back the Guard Corps before it's too late?

Textauszug

Chapter 1: The Guard Corps’s Shortage of Manpower

Every single day, monsters flock to the royal capital where the Orb of Light is enshrined, like moths drawn to a flame.

As we stood before the city gates on this particular occasion, we saw a swarm of bugs approaching—and “swarm” wasn’t just a figure of speech. These were demonswarm—dangerous insects imbued with magical energy. Some of them were mothlike, while others more resembled beetles or praying mantises.

There had been a sudden demonswarm infestation in a forest located a short distance away from the capital, and a portion of them had begun to invade—seemingly drawn to the city by the Orb of Light, within which the Demon King was sealed. The entire Guard Corps had gathered in front of the gates to intercept them.

The fact that we were being invaded wasn’t a particularly big problem in itself; what was a big problem was what the horde had done on its way in. The creatures had crossed many fields full of crops as they’d headed toward the capital and had greedily gorged themselves on the bountiful harvests there, leaving nothing but ruin in their wake.

Since it was constantly beset by monster attacks, the royal capital of Astaroth was not very active in terms of merchant traffic. It wasn’t able to rely on foodstuffs coming in from beyond its borders; it needed to be self-sufficient. Having seen their already limited provisions devoured before their very eyes, the guards were incensed and out for blood.

“Let’s make those food-thieving insects pay!” one guard bellowed.

The others shouted out in a fiery chorus of agreement, then began turning their ire to the swarm directly.

“Keep your filthy bug mandibles off our human food!”

“Go back to sucking tree sap, monsters!”

My fellow guards swung their swords furiously, cleaving insect after insect in two, their blows far more powerful and piercing than they had been in the past. Their fighting spirit had certainly been bolstered by their anger, and no doubt their diligent daily training was also a factor; however, there was one other reason behind their vigor that overshadowed the rest.

“Sieg will take the enemies’ attacks for us!” Commander Bolton thundered. “None of us need to worry about anything at all besides tearing through every last one of these damn bugs!”

The Guard Corps responded enthusiastically. Having the ability to devote themselves to attacking without having to worry about defense was huge. When they were able to focus solely on striking down their enemies with all their might, the force behind each sword blow could be many times greater than usual.

For everyone else to feel safe while they’re on offense, it’s absolutely crucial that I do my job right on defense. I’m not going to let a single one of these things touch my comrades.

“Iron Target!”

That was one of the tank skills in my repertoire that let me take on every single attack dealt by my opponents. It forced the attention of the swarm in my direction—as if someone had picked them all up by the scruffs of their necks and made them focus on me, whether they liked it or not.

In battle, showing your back to your enemy meant certain death. The guards, seeing the insects’ open backs on display, did not waste the chance to strike; the demonswarm could do nothing, and their corpses began to pile up on the battlefield.

However, the enemy would not be fully vanquished quite so easily. There was one variety among the demonswarm that was proving a bit more complicated to deal with.

“Ugh! I can’t hurt this damn thing at all!”

A guard’s sword strike bounced harmlessly off the shell of a demonswarm that resembled a giant pillbug. Its round body was as hard as armor; swords and spears were unable to penetrate it.

The pillbug-like creatures then curled themselves up into balls and began rolling toward the guards at high speed, trying to bowl them over; however, once I activated my Iron Target skill, they all came barreling toward me instead. Considering their weight and the speed they had picked up, their rolling bodies had a considerable amount of force behind them.

If the guards took a hit from one of these, their armor wouldn’t do a thing—they’d be flattened into sheet metal. The bugs’ defense power is high enough to make swords and spears ineffective too, so our side is completely powerless against them. These things will be tough nuts to crack.

I wanted to finish our opponents off as quickly as possible, but unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly gifted when it came to attack power. Breaking through their defensive shells myself would be no easy task.

It would be a prodigy of a guard indeed that boasted both high attack power and high defense power—and, well, that guard wasn’t me. Nobody could master everything perfectly; whatever someone excelled at, there was always something else they were hopelessly lacking in.

But that’s what makes us human. That’s why people form bonds with each other—why they band together.

I didn’t have high attack power, but I had comrades who did—and they were more than willing to make up for my inadequacies.

“Hah! Step back, I got this—time to smash things up!”

Spinoza, the assault leader of the Fifth Squadron, dashed out onto the front line with her roughly person-sized war hammer lifted high above her head, then brought the weapon crashing down violently.

The strong shells of the pillbug-like demonswarm had deflected every sword and spear that had come at them—but Spinoza’s war hammer blasted through them like they were nothing. Her initial blow turned one of the creatures into a mangled pile of scrap, and a follow-up horizontal swing caved in over half of another opponent’s body.

“Damn, this feels good!” Spinoza shouted out in sheer joy as she rampaged across the battlefield.

To her, the word “defense” simply didn’t exist. The other guards had been told to focus on attacking, but that didn’t mean it got the full hundred percent of their attention; there was always that tiny bit of awareness reserved for defending themselves on the off chance that the worst happened. Spinoza, however, didn’t have that. She had forsaken defense entirely.

I would have liked to say that was because of the trust she had in me, but there was definitely more to it than that. It wasn’t possible to throw caution to the wind quite that hard without being a little bit out of one’s mind already. As a result, though, Spinoza possessed an overwhelming offensive power that only manifested in those who cared about nothing else besides demolishing their enemies.

“All right, men! Spinoza crushed their defenses! Now—fire!”

On Commander Bolton’s signal, the archer unit that had been on reserve in the rear released a volley of arrows. The throng of projectiles had varied success in striking their targets, but there was one archer in particular who landed perfect hits with every single shot, as if each arrow had somehow been pulled straight in by its target.

That person was Fam, the Fifth Squadron’s archer.

While other arrows exceeded their range of fire and began falling to the ground, Fam’s arrows left those in the dust, maintaining full velocity and power as they pierced straight through the enemies’ vital points.

The other archers were absolutely amazed by her skills. Fam herself no doubt had supreme confidence in her pinpoint accuracy as well, since she was lining up particularly needle-threading shots: she would fire an arrow right over a fellow guard’s shoulder.

If her aim was even slightly off, the projectile would end up lodged in her own ally’s back. The average archer would be intimidated and unable to take a shot like that without some deliberation; Fam, however, could fire without so much as an ounce of hesitation. That may have been because she was absolutely certain in her ability to land the shot—though part of it may also have been the coldhearted belief that, if her ally happened to get hit, that was just how things went sometimes.

Either way, arrows with no hesitation held immense power within them. This one flew straight and true after she loosed it, passing right over the guard’s shoulder and shooting through the forehead of a demonswarm.

To Fam, it was a job well done, as always. However, the guard whose shoulder space had been violated didn’t have the same opinion. One wrong step and the person would’ve had an arrow embedded in their back.

Once the demonswarm had been completely wiped out, tempers began to flare.

“What the hell, Fam?! You tryin’ ta kill me?”

The victim of Fam’s shoulder shot shenanigans, Spinoza, let out a howl of protest.

“I felt that arrow zip right past my shoulder! It was yours, wasn’t it?! What were you gonna do if it hit me in the back, huh?”

“That wasn’t going to happen,” Fam retorted. “Not when you’re as good as I am.”

“Feh. Like I can trust a single damn word from someone who just sneaks around and fires arrows from way in the rear,” Spinoza shot back. “A fight just ain’t a fight unless you’re up on the front lines.”

“Don’t you think you should cut back on your drinking a bit,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.5.2025
• Reihe/Serie: No One Gets Past This Gatekeeper: The Unwanted Warrior Guards His New Post
• Illustrationen: Kametsu Tomobashi
• Übersetzer: Kametsu Tomobashi
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: adult protagonist • Game elements • Harem • Magic • male protagonist • OP protagonist • skill usage
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-8088-7 / 1718380887
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-8088-2 / 9781718380882