“A shame we didn’t get the details of the power-up method from that axe girl,” Ren said.
“Even if we did, we don’t know it would have been the same as the axe in the future,” I told him.
“That’s an issue, sure,” he admitted. Power-up methods didn’t respond unless you were absolutely sure. We would need definitive proof that both the present and future axe had the same power-up method . . . “But the holy weapon hero they believe in is the Sword Hero, for sure.”
“No doubt about that,” I agreed. Serious fighting against actual heroes, not resurrected, would be such a pain in the ass. I didn’t want to consider it. It would be great if we could find some common ground like we had with Glass and L’Arc, but that would be difficult if their holy weapon hero had been taken hostage. There were some gaps we could exploit—the fact they were doing this under duress and the fact we had the means to resist the ones doing the threatening. If we could rescue the hostage, they might well immediately side with us. “Defending isn’t enough anymore; we need to go on the attack.”
“Indeed. They seem to be prioritizing you over the sanctuary now,” Melty said.
“What about everyone else?” I asked. “I bet they would come for Fohl too.”
“I’m worried. Let’s go!” Raphtalia said. We headed out to check on the other patrol groups and the village.
“Hey! Is everyone okay?” I shouted as we returned to the village. There were signs of fighting. A bloody Fohl was slumped at the entrance with Mikey behind him. Mamoru, Rat, and Holn were tending to everyone.
“Hey, Brother. We’re okay. No loss of life. They attacked with their strange weapons, as we expected. We held them off for a while and then a flare went up in the distance and they retreated,” Fohl explained. I checked Fohl’s wounds. He looked like he had some incurable ones.
“Their plan was to injure and weaken, surely,” Holn said. “The future Shield Hero also drove off the ones attacking him, correct? They seemed to be in contact with their other allies.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “Were there any vassal weapon heroes among your attackers?”
“No. You saw some?” Holn asked in surprise. It sounded like we were only facing four of them. When we beat our group and then rushed over to help Ren, they must have made the decision for a full retreat.
“We’ll get to that. I need to heal everyone first. Gather everyone with incurable wounds together. Best to handle this in one shot,” I said. We decided to get into further discussion after the incurable wounds had been dealt with. “At least not many of you got hurt.” Fohl and Holn had taken the bulk of the injuries. None of the others were especially badly hurt.
“Mikey was pretty good at protecting people who were about to get hurt,” Rat explained. His clay-like body gave him excellent defensive properties. He did look a bit reduced in size though.
“Raph,” said Mikey.
“The prototype Mikey vests also did a good job protecting everyone wearing them,” Rat added. She pointed at a pile of them that were discarded after the combat ended. It looked like a mountain of reddish lumps of flesh.
“They still broke through and focused their attacks to strip the armor away,” Holn said. “I’m just happy it wasn’t worse than this.” I might have done better with some of that armor myself, but considering the volume of attacks I had suffered, it wouldn’t have made much difference. Any protection I was wearing would just have been chopped up too. “With all of these injuries to examine, it will help my research.”
“If you find a good counter, we need to get the information out there,” I said.
“I’ll do the best I can,” Holn confirmed.
“What about you, Mamoru?” I asked him.
“Well . . . we were in the middle of infiltrating Piensa when the Raph species started to get worked up about something. We hurried back and took part in the battle,” he explained. It sounded like they hadn’t been attacked themselves. They had still been sneaking around—they probably hadn’t been spotted at that point.
“The power of Filolia drove our enemies away!” Filolia exclaimed. She looked pretty happy with herself. I wondered what she had done. “It’s a hard life having such a worthless sister.”
“Please, don’t get too carried away,” R’yne said pretty halfheartedly. I pointed over at Filolia and Mamoru gave a wry smile.
“She shot out feathers from her wings, which confused the auto tracking on their weapons. That, combined with the Mikey protection, allowed us to put up a good fight. We only failed to keep Fohl safe because he was fighting on the very front line,” Mamoru explained. Her feathers were treated as magic, making them a convenient form of attack that wasn’t bound by rules regarding weapons.
Then Natalia and the Water Dragon came over.
“This is a critical situation. As both a pacifier and a vassal weapon hero, I can confirm that Piensa has crossed the line,” Natalia declared.
“What about the Bow Hero?” I asked.
“He will still have a chance to explain himself, but I see little chance for him to talk his way out of this. Siding with Piensa makes him an enemy of the world. They have gone too far,” Natalia said. Piensa had the advantage, but that was only because the ones who assume the name of god were involved in all this. My allies and I had been the secret weapon Siltran had been holding, and now Piensa had some vassal weapon heroes in pretty much the same position. The brief chat we had shared had revealed the complexity of the situation. We were in Siltran because we couldn’t get back to our original time, and our holy weapon heroes hadn’t been taken hostage.
“We need to be careful,” the Water Dragon cautioned. “The fighting is only going to escalate from here.”
“Indeed,” Natalia agreed.
“I’m interested in why the Bow Hero didn’t show up,” I said.
“True,” Natalia said. “It made things easier for us without him around, but it makes you think.”
“There’s a reason he didn’t show up,” I continued for her. From what Mamoru and Raphtalia had said about him, he didn’t seem completely without promise. It was possible he had been imprisoned, or even killed, for speaking out against the direction Piensa was taking.
I really hoped Piensa weren’t that stupid. They would need him to enhance their forces, if nothing else—even if those vassal weapons were the seven star weapons from the future, and they could perform some enhancement themselves. There were power-ups that Ren and I couldn’t use. And the power-ups they were using were being reflected in Ren’s power-ups. I thought for a moment about which power-up methods Ren was using on our allies. The staff was magic, the gauntlets were skills, and the projectile involved using money to increase the weapon upgrade limit. The axe was some kind of physical enhancement, we had learned. The effects were likely similar to the whip. If the ones who assume the name of god were involved in this, who knew how many worlds we would be facing enemies from? They probably wanted to confirm whether we were connected to the God Hunters or not. It didn’t feel good being under the microscope like this.
“How are your investigations going, Mamoru?” I asked.
“Even inside Piensa, they are only claiming to have introduced some new technology that is giving them an edge. We need to dig a little deeper,” Mamoru replied. They hadn’t made much progress yet. This was something that was going to take time.