“If we could obtain one of the weapons that caused it, or bring some of the victims here and run a few little old experiments, I might be able to work out how to deal with it,” Holn said. “The only issue is that I can’t guarantee the lives of those subjects.” Medicine had been built on a foundation of countless experiments and sacrifices. Holn was letting us know that even she might not be able to deal with something this evil without some such sacrifices.
“Not being able to heal from it makes it seem like it’s like some kind of mythical weapon,” Mamoru mused. I’d been thinking the same thing. There were a lot of weapons like that in mythology.
“That’s right. There are lots of weapons with legends like this in our world,” I agreed with him. Some famous examples I recalled from Celtic mythology were the Fragarach and Gae Bolg. Then there was the Harpe in Greek mythology. This was a world with many game-like elements. It wasn’t out of place to have weapons with mythical or legendary properties. Maybe the reason the 0 series hadn’t managed to resolve the effects was because they actually weren’t irregular to this world.
One thing that was easy to understand about this curse to prevent healing was that the only way to make it so evil was through careful manufacture. There was a way to resolve the damage, but it had been willfully removed.
“There’s also a chance they found the weapon in some ruins or something,” I said. Although we hadn’t found them in our world, there were apparently powerful weapons in this world that could rival the holy or vassal weapons. That reminded me of the one Ren had found in the filolial sanctuary. I remembered it was called Ascalon. If there was a famous dragon-killing sword here, all bets were off. There could even be things that other heroes had created replicas of. “The timing does seem a little suspect, however.” If they had this in their back pocket the entire time, it seemed strange that they would wait until now to unleash it. It was more than just using it because they were on the ropes.
“Melty, did Shadow say anything else?” I asked.
“No. Just that they suddenly deployed this kind of weapon,” Melty reported.
“This sounds like there’s someone behind all this feeding things to Piensa,” I mused.
“That sounds likely. So what do we do? Go on the attack ourselves?” Melty asked. I looked over at Natalia, who had her role as pacifier to consider.
“I admit, this is strange. But it’s too soon to attack Piensa. If they aren’t using hero weapons, then I can’t cooperate with deploying heroes to destroy them,” Natalia said firmly. She was answering strictly as the pacifier. Her stance that the power of heroes should not be used to ignite conflict was unchanged. “If those other than the heroes want to fight, be they from Piensa or Siltran, then they are free to do so.”
“And the exception would be if someone else was behind all this, and the Piensa Bow Hero was somehow involved,” I confirmed. Natalia nodded in response. So if technology had advanced to the point they could attack without using the power of the heroes, Natalia couldn’t get involved. That really pissed me off. “We killed one of those actually causing the waves,” I said, gritting my teeth. “What are they thinking, attacking us like this? Don’t they like world peace?”
“For Piensa, we’re the ones getting in the way of that—their own vision of what ‘world peace’ looks like,” Natalia said. They believed that Piensa was the center of the world and an environment in which everyone obeyed them was true peace. That had worked out for them up until now. They appeared to have justice on their side and then used their muscle to push that through. Our appearance and subsequent involvement had messed up their plans. But I still didn’t understand why they would cast their “justice” aside and launch an all-out assault using this new type of weapon.
“Sounds about right. They have been attacking other nations, saying that Siltran are the cause of all these troubles by keeping the strength to defeat the waves to ourselves,” Melty added. “They are staking everything on defeating us—after that they can spin things however they like.” They really were like Melromarc in the future. Maybe it was just human nature to prioritize one’s own authority over something like the waves. The time period didn’t matter; there were always countries like that. I was happy that I knew Piensa got wiped out in the future—the natural order restored. But considering that the roots of that same nation would become Melromarc made me sad too. Melty’s own ancestors might be in Piensa right now. “I’ll say what everyone here is thinking,” Melty continued, looking at Natalia and me. “The ones who assume the name of god are behind this. Right?”
“That seems very likely,” Natalia agreed. “But we can do little without decisive proof.”
“Indeed, and it would be difficult to scout out such proof,” the Water Dragon lamented. The dragon looked at me and added, “You’re brimming with violence. Control yourself.” I wondered if I really was so pissed off. I didn’t feel like I was exuding violence. I didn’t even feel like I was in a bad mood.
Back to the problem at hand. We were dealing with just the kind of scum who would try the roundabout approach next. Having these deadly new weapons appear at just the perfect moment seemed like all the proof we needed. But if we accused them of it now, they would deny everything. Even if we took Piensa off the map, the ones behind it would just do the same thing with a different country. The important thing here . . . was to keep Piensa dancing to their tune while luring out the ones pulling the strings and ending them. Easy enough to say, but we had no ideas for a plan to make it happen. This was going to be a difficult issue to resolve.
“There are still ways to deal with Piensa,” Melty said. “They might have some powerful new weapons, but they still need to hit us for them to work. We can send in our powerful non-hero fighters on a raid, obtain some of the weapons, and put together a treatment plan.”
“That sounds like the best approach,” I agreed. “Take their weapon and use it against them. We don’t know what the ones behind them will do next, but you can bet they will show their hand somewhere,” I said. This was all such a pain in the ass to deal with. I was starting to feel the same levels of aggravation as I did with Bitch. “Can we go into Piensa, just for some recon? We aren’t going to fight a war there, so that’s fine, right?” I asked Natalia. She didn’t say yes or no, just closed her eyes. It looked like she had given the green light. She just didn’t want to be too open about it.
“What about the justification Piensa originally gave about occupying the sanctuary? We won’t be able to make any moves while we scout things out,” Mamoru said, asking his sheep therianthrope aide and Melty.
“They are standing by that,” Melty said. “Domestically, they are saying that if they can occupy the sanctuary, the heroes will have to obey them, and then they can overcome the waves.” The sheep added his own “baah” of affirmation. It was interesting that Piensa remained so fixated on this sanctuary place. I wondered what special reason they might have for that—a reason that made it more important for them to obtain the sanctuary than even their neighbor Siltran.
“Information obtained by Shadow suggests they’ve sent a small elite force toward the sanctuary,” Melty reported.
“Okay. And how long will it take for Piensa to reach Siltran?” I asked.
“We still have some time as they try to get the other nations on board. I don’t think they will attack right away,” Melty guessed.
“The battlefield will be dangerous, but perhaps those other than the heroes should take part,” I pondered.
“Fighting is one thing, Naofumi, but what about people getting injured?” Melty asked. I was the only one who could heal those wounds. I froze at the thought of anyone from the village getting injured or dying in battle. If we took the lead, it would also pass the hand of justice back to them.