All right, now that I’ve calmed down, I can do what I came here for. I just need to take out that thing and...
Having had my fill of durian, my original goal returned to mind, and I made my way toward Avare, the magic item I had crafted especially for this occasion in hand.
The squad leader yelled at me to come back, but I paid her no mind.
“It seems to me, Avare, that you and your little friends have come to Hanche to plot the revival of the Motar Faith, despite it having been dissolved, haven’t you? You’ll tell me exactly what you’re scheming, yes? Oh, and I have another question...”
Avare let out a panicked cry, his gaze darting between me and the durian. His face was sheet-white, his entire body trembling.
Eventually, he hung his head and replied, “Fine...”
It seemed the durian scent spell I had cast on him in the past must’ve traumatized him quite a bit.
“What are you even doing here in the first place?” I asked. “I thought Lance had dealt with you.”
“With everything that was happening, he didn’t have the leeway to ‘deal with me’ right away, so I had time to leave Tête and make my way here,” he replied.
“In other words, you took advantage of Lance’s confusion to run away. How shrewd.”
“Sh-Shut up!” he said, panicked. It appeared I had hit the nail on the head.
“Now, tell me about your plan to revive the Faith.”
“This kingdom is known for being the Faith’s second base of operations. The king and his ministers were overjoyed to lend us a hand here. There, I told you everything you wanted to know, so get the hell out of here! I don’t want to see your face ever again!”
“That just won’t do. I can’t let the bogus religion Epocha started spread again. Besides, Lance is currently hard at work, traveling from nation to nation to announce the dissolution of the Faith.”
The Faith’s big shots began stirring when I mentioned Lance and Epocha.
“That woman is looking down on Mr. Avare, and she’s impudently called the Holy Father and one of the cardinals by their names! You’re just a knight! How impudent!”
“You dare to mock us, knight?! Guess I need to teach you what happens to the bad girls who cross us, heh heh!”
The guests were seemingly growing more and more worked up... However, I had no idea why they looked so smug.
“Stop right there! If you do anything inappropriate to Ahn or the others, I’ll turn your arms into weeds for three days!”
“Huh? The hell’s that woman talking about? Stop messing with us—”
My words seemed to have angered one of the Faith’s men. He marched toward me, fist raised, but I didn’t falter for a single second before launching a spell at him.
“Shining Weeds!”
“Wha—?!”
A gust of green wind swirled around his arm. When it dissipated, what remained from the elbow down was a tangle of overgrown weeds.
“Phew. I’ve transformed that insignificant louse’s arm into weeds.”
“Gyaaah! My arm! It’s all bushy and green! That woman’s a mana wielder!”
Chaos erupted inside the fancy tent. It was as if someone had kicked a hornet’s nest. Everyone tried to rush outside at once, fighting to escape first.
“I’ll just build a wall outside the tent so that they can’t run away,” I said to myself.
Not wanting to look conspicuous, I used Light Magic to create an invisible wall that spanned the entire perimeter of the tent—imperceptible to anyone outside. Avare moaned in anguish as he curled up on himself in a corner and covered his face, his body shaking like a leaf. The senior female knights, however, pounded at the transparent wall to break it.
“You’ll all tell me exactly what you’ve been scheming since arriving in Hanche!” I declared. “I want to know everything, including all the crimes you’ve committed!”
Using Wood Magic to bind their arms, I restrained all the Faith’s members.
“Oh, right. There’s one last thing I meant to ask. One of you has a corrupted weapon, don’t you? Give it to me. Or else, I’ll turn everyone in this tent into weeds.”
“She’ll turn us all into weeds! Not just our arms!” Avare yelled from his corner.
A young, lanky bishop was pushed forward by his comrades, able to approach me as the Faith’s members’ legs remained unfettered.
“Do you have the weapon on you?” I asked.
He let out a whine and nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. I’ll free your hands, so take it out and hand it to me.”
I did as promised, and the trembling man took out the weapon he was hiding under his outerwear and made to give it to me like I’d asked. But he shifted to point it at me!
I gasped. Now I was sure of it: That twisty, glowing, sword-looking thing was the same item Epocha had tried to popularize before we’d dealt with him.
Though he had previously mentioned having a mana wielder use the weapon in his stead, he hadn’t had the luxury to stick to his plan under these circumstances.
“Die! You heretic, heinous witch!” the bishop yelled, aiming the weapon at me point-blank.
He waited. And waited. But no matter how much time passed, the weapon remained inert. Silence fell over the tent.
“What?! Why is nothing happening?! According to the documents I found, this should be a weapon of immense power!”
“Only a mana wielder can unleash that weapon’s full powers,” I said matter-of-factly. “You didn’t know that?”
The magic item in the man’s hand was made to react to mana, meaning the user needed to channel a bit into the weapon to activate it. In a way, it had been a good idea for him to stick the sword into a mana wielder’s hand. I was glad to see whomever he’d planned on using for the job hadn’t arrived yet.
At this unexpected turn of events, the bishop started to panic.
Most people have their mana sealed as children, so this type of item won’t react to any of them at all.
Of course, there were also items that didn’t require mana to function and could be used freely. However, the weapon the bishop had tried to activate simply wouldn’t work unless the user had access to their mana.
The soldiers Epocha had gathered in Lèvres all had traces of mana in their body, which had allowed them to use the weapons, although I had no idea if they had been mana wielders to begin with or if Epocha had sneakily unsealed their powers himself.
“Too bad. You can’t use it,” I said, snatching the weapon from the thunderstruck bishop. “Time to destroy this thing.”
With that, I transformed the corrupted item into a tuft of weeds using a compound Wood, Light, and Dark spell. It worked by altering matter and turning anything I wanted into grass. The magic weapon’s components disaggregated from each other, and just like the man’s arm earlier, the entire thing metamorphosed into a bundle of weeds. Once I was sure it had been rendered completely harmless, I handed it back to the bishop.
“Now that this is out of the way, I’m going to have you all confess your plans! And don’t even think about lying to me if you don’t want me to retaliate with magic,” I declared.
The Faith’s big shots all paled at my words.
One by one, they confessed their schemes, and I was able to finally start gathering the evidence I needed.