“Raph!” said Raph-chan.
“Dafu!” added Dafu-chan. The two of them were up on Raphtalia’s shoulders, looking around. They were so cute! I was holding hands with Ruft.
“I already knew this about you, but you really do like your secret labs,” Natalia commented wryly.
“Every evil alchemist should have at least one or two!” Holn cackled, puffing herself up.
“That’s nothing to boast about,” Natalia shot back, exasperation in her voice. Holn had made one secret base underneath our village already. Kyo had done something similar. I wondered if Holn was right. Maybe it was something alchemists felt compelled to do. “You do seem keen to show me something,” Natalia continued. “What exactly have you got in store for me?”
“You’ll find out soon. This is the room,” Holn reported. She opened a door located deep in the facility and ushered us inside. At a glance, the room we came into looked a lot like the one in the facility under our village where she had been planning to modify Keel. There was a cultivation tank at the back of the room, which had a hammer floating inside it. That definitely caught my attention.
“Dafu!” said Dafu-chan, as surprised by the hammer as I was. I looked at it more closely. I was pretty sure I’d seen it somewhere before.
“What is this? Some kind of modification of the old weapons we found in the filolial sanctuary that you took from our village?” I asked.
“Nope, this is something completely different,” Holn replied. “This one isn’t even finished yet.” I gingerly moved over to the hammer and checked it out.
Hammer of—
quality: ?
Imbued effects: ?
“It certainly looks unfinished to me. I thought you were more the type to keep things secret until they’re complete,” I commented.
“What is it?” Natalia asked, a frown on her face.
“There’s certainly something strange about it. All these surprises are getting to be a bit much,” the Water Dragon said. I didn’t have a clue what it was either.
“I’m not a fan of explaining things by starting with the conclusion, but okay. I was wondering about making something like this, thinking about future generations and filling in the gaps left by losses in battle,” Holn started to explain.
“I think I understand,” Rat said. She seemed to have worked out what was going on. “You just keep on making incredible things, don’t you!”
“You are my descendant, after all. I thought you’d understand what this is,” Holn replied.
“I’ve seen others making similar pieces. There are always alchemists and blacksmiths who seek to make weapons equal to those made famous by legends,” Rat said.
“And this is one of those? Equal to what, one of the holy weapons?” I asked. I wouldn’t say no to having a powerful new weapon at our disposal, but Holn had said it was incomplete. It felt strange that Holn, an alchemist, was making weapons. She wasn’t a blacksmith. Then there was the fact that repairing ancient weapons fell under modification, not invention.
“That’s almost the correct answer, but not quite,” Holn replied.
“R’yne mentioned that prior to coming here she visited a world where weapons could take on human form. Are you trying to re-create that?” Mamoru asked.
“That was very interesting too, but also not the correct answer,” Holn stated. That sounded like a crazy place. Of course, there were worlds where gemstones turned into people. Therese was one such person. What a big universe. So many strange races in all these other worlds.
An unfinished weapon that was a hammer, the same as Natalia’s weapon. She was a pacifier, not a hero, and used techniques unique to Q’ten Lo. Then there was Holn, an alchemist with skills that would be impressive even in the future. This hammer being based in alchemy suggested an emphasis on more than pure function as a weapon.
I was still thinking about that world where people could turn into weapons. I wondered what might happen if a gemstone like Therese was polished up and placed in the middle of such a weapon. Weapons that could become people meant weapons that had minds of their own. I looked again at the weapon floating in the cultivation tank. It reminded me of an old game I played once.
“Hey, Shield Hero. This looks like the hammer Shildina used,” Ruft said.
“Now that you mention it . . .” His comment reminded me of where I’d seen this hammer before. It was the hammer the past Heavenly Emperor had been using! Shildina had used its latent memories to trace the awareness of its owner. If this weapon was completed and then ended up in Q’ten Lo . . .
“What would the term for this be? Personality transcription?” I asked.
“Bingo! You hit the nail on the head, future Shield Hero! This invention of mine can transcribe the personality of those with skilled techniques into the weapon and then re-create their moves,” Holn revealed. That would definitely re-create powerful residual memories, especially if they were there from the start.
“I thought as much,” Rat said. “But even if you have the technology to give life, is such a thing as ‘personality transcription’ really possible?”
“Turning the impossible into the possible is what I was born to do,” Holn said, being as humble as ever. Pretty much none of her work had made it to our time—likely due to interference from the ones who assume the name of god. But she was going to follow up on Mamoru’s research and create the filolials as a result, so it seemed safe to expect big things from her.
“It should turn out to be a pretty powerful weapon, capable of copying techniques and reducing magic casting time. Unlike my other work, this isn’t a living creature that looks like a weapon,” Holn said.
“I get what you’re trying to say . . .” I trailed off. The difference there was difficult to pin down. Kyo had made some pretty suspicious weapons too. I wondered if the only difference was whether they were alive or dead. If it allowed access to the techniques and magic of the person it was modeled on, that was something different, but I wasn’t ready to simply accept that and move on. “If you’re going to perform this personality transcription, whose personality are you planning on putting in there?” I asked. I certainly didn’t want it to be me. I’d rather die than have a copy of my personality going around in a weapon.
“If I’d never bumped into you guys from the future, I was planning on having the pacifier help me out. Q’ten Lo already has this kind of technique, I believe, so it should match well with her, and she’d definitely make a good copy,” Holn said. She was talking about the oracle powers that Shildina had used—the ability to draw the intent out of something and trace it.
“You must be joking!” Natalia raged. She gave Raphtalia a run for her money when she got mad. Her hair and her miko priestess outfit were rippling with magic.
“Human curiosity is an incredible thing,” the Water Dragon said. “I’m a dragon, a creature formed from a core, and this is still amazing to me.” He certainly sounded intrigued, but I wondered if that wasn’t dangerous too. Natalia, meanwhile, was swinging her hammer and closing in on Holn.
“Oh boy! Mamoru, are you going to let this happen?” Filolia asked.
“I’m sure Holn has something up her sleeve,” Mamoru stammered back. He seemed willing to just let Holn handle everything rather than get involved and maybe blow things up.
“Why do I have to take part in this experiment?” Natalia asked. If Holn said the wrong thing here, she was going to get hammered into a stain on the floor—if not by the authority of the Heavenly Emperor, most definitely by Natalia’s personal indignation.