Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 17 - Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: Forced Possession 

All of a sudden, I heard one of Miyaji’s women screaming. Miyaji shouted out her name, but I couldn’t hear it. 
Then the door behind Miyaji opened, the one Glass had gone through, and Shildina came into the room. 
“Master Hidemasa! I’m sorry!” a spirit woman overlapping Shildina, just like Miyaji, whined. This one had a pained expression on her face. 
“Quit resisting,” Shildina said. The woman moaned again. “Are you okay, sweet Naofumi.” Shildina ignored the enraged Miyaji and instead directed her attention at us. 
“We’re not badly hurt. What’s that though?” I asked her. 
“When this spirit attacked me, I used my oracle powers on it and caused a sort of forced possession. It’s a single-use thing, but it’s made me super powerful,” Shildina explained. That sounded wrong on all sorts of levels! 
“How dare you!” Miyaji raged—even though he seemed to be using the exact same technique. I also didn’t think her oracle powers had been behind the attack she used when she appeared. 
“So you can use magic now?” I asked. 
“No. I imbued this with power and used that,” Shildina explained, holding up an ofuda. It looked like she had access to some pretty different attacks from Rishia. 
“So she was too much for them to handle . . .” Miyaji muttered. It sounded as though Miyaji had taken steps against Shildina, but they clearly hadn’t worked out. “But to make use of her yourself! This is the height of cowardice! Release her!” he yelled. I guess it made sense that he would have placed a trap for everyone after splitting us up. 
 
“Sweet Naofumi, watch this!” Shildina said and turned to Miyaji. “You get defeated by this!” 
“Ah! My power . . . she’s draining it! Master Hidemasa!” The transparent spirit split off from Shildina and collapsed. Shildina threw out a bunch of ofuda and then incanted by passing magic through them. 
“I call upon your power. Ofuda! Respond to my word! Become a torrent and wash these enemies away! Watatsumi!” Shildina’s cards unleashed a flood of water created from magic, which rolled like a tidal wave toward everyone she considered an enemy! She was pulling off what looked like cooperative magic on her own. Just like Itsuki, she seemed to have a pretty solid understanding of magic in this world already. She had also taken the spirit and was using her as a magic tank . . . What was she, a monster? 
“What is this?!” Miyaji raged as his allies screamed and flailed. “More cowardice, interfering in our battle!” The magic hit Miyaji, Armor, and Witch too. The moron woman spun her chain around herself. She was a moron, but she was also the strongest one here. S’yne was struggling, that was for sure. If we didn’t save her soon, she’d be in trouble. 
“I heard everything you were just talking about,” Shildina said, her voice warped by the fact that she was still casting magic. A number of mysterious ofuda swam smoothly through the air like they were water, targeting Miyaji’s musical instrument, sticking onto it. 
 
“Paper Splits Rock: Explode!” The ofuda flashed and then exploded, blowing Miyaji away. He managed to recover—but he was gripping his stomach, a pained look on his face and groans coming from his mouth. 
“I’m not finished yet! What . . . what’s this feeling . . . like my insides are being stirred around?!” I saw something moving through Miyaji’s body, a flicker of light that I recognized. It looked like a Hengen Muso Style Point of Focus. 
After the tidal wave Shildina launched had passed, Ethnobalt appeared behind her. He was surrounded by layers of paper, even using it to stand on in the air. In his hand, there was a book. From the shape, it looked like the vassal weapon Kyo had used. 
“Ethnobalt,” I said. 
“I am here!” he replied. 
“Me too!” said Filo, popping her head out from behind Ethnobalt. 
“It seems the book vassal weapon wanted to guide us here after we were all scattered,” Ethnobalt explained. 
“That book?” I said. 
“Once it finished guiding us, it settled in my hand and seems to have accepted me as its owner,” Ethnobalt continued. That made sense. Ethnobalt was a type of monster called a library rabbit, so this might suit him better than a ship. 
“With my acquisition of Hengen Muso Style, all of my training, and now a vassal weapon . . . you can’t count me out in battle any longer,” Ethnobalt said. 
 
“Glad to hear it,” I told him. “So defeat these guys.” There was no time for heartfelt reunions. 
“Of course. If they are binding the vassal weapons with illegitimate power, I will free them from that binding!” Pages from the book flew up, obeying Ethnobalt’s will, and wound themselves around Miyaji. “A skill mixed with Hengen Muso Style . . . you might call it: Life Force Style Magic Explosion.” The name was similar to a skill Kyo had unleashed. Ethnobalt must have added some life force to it. Miyaji was certainly moaning enough about it. 
“What have you done to me?!” he shouted accusingly. 
“I’m simply circulating some life force through your body. It’s just that each of those pages is also holding it inside, causing further damage,” Ethnobalt explained. That was a pretty nasty trick too. It was the kind of attack that would have shredded me to pieces before I learned how to let life force flow out of me. 
“It only has one exit,” Ethnobalt said. “That accessory.” 
“You can’t be serious!” Miyaji raged. The life force from Ethnobalt passed through Miyaji’s body and then erupted out from the accessory, which was itself about to break anyway. With a high-pitched sound, the accessory shattered. 
“No! Stop! You’re mine! Don’t leave me! You’re mine!” Miyaji shouted, trying to cling to the musical instrument. Like shedding its skin, the musical instrument popped into a ball of light, moved away from Miyaji’s hands, and then flew into Itsuki. 
 

Then, as I had expected, the musical instrument was in his hands. It was shaped like a violin. The small accessory representing the bow became large enough to be used as a violin bow. 
“I heard the voice of the vassal weapon. It wants us to protect from this invasion from evil powers. I don’t know if I’m suited to this task, but I want to respond to that desire, if I can,” Itsuki told us and checked the violin over with sleepy-looking eyes. He then ran the bow over the strings. Clear and beautiful music, incomparable with the dirge Miyaji had performed, echoed out in the vicinity. 
“Amazing, amazing! I’ll sing too!” Filo said. She turned into the humming cockatrice and circled around behind Itsuki and then started to sing in accordance with the music. The music seemed to be the one Miyaji had called “Hero’s Melody”—but the breadth of the sound was so different it was hard to believe it was the same piece. Numerous magical lights immediately floated up in the vicinity. 
“Hero’s Melody . . . wasn’t it?” Itsuki said. The support magic was cast on everyone, greatly boosting our stats—although not to the extent of Liberation Aura X. Still, this was great timing. 
I flicked my hair up like Miyaji had and gave the same kind of exaggerated laugh. Eventually I managed to speak. 
“What a dumb look you have on your face, dumbass! I simply can’t hold my laughter in!” Then I returned to normal. “That was the line, right? So now the shoe is on the other foot.” He’d pissed me off enough, so I was happy to rub things in a bit. 
 
That did feel better. 
“You bastard!” Just my laughter had already set Miyaji off, and now his face was so red with anger it looked like it might start giving off smoke. 
“What are you screeching for, you chimpanzee! You did all of this to us first! If you don’t want it to happen to you, don’t do it in the first place!” I told him. A little childish perhaps, and maybe I felt like I’d fallen to his level, but I also wasn’t going to just sit there and take this. 
“Can you please stop taunting our enemies?” Raphtalia said and looked at me with exasperation on her face. But I didn’t care about that. 
“You dare steal my weapon?! You bunch of thieves! Do you have any idea how wonderful I am?! How much I’ve done for this nation, as its hero?!” he raged. 
“The musical instrument vassal weapon is under new ownership. How do you hope to explain how you treated it now?” I asked him, just out of interest. Not to mention, he had kidnapped Kizuna and killed the other holy heroes! There was no talking his way out of this one. 
“Master Hidemasa . . .” one of Miyaji’s women began and put a hand on his shoulder in worry. 
“Death! I will bring death to every single one of you who have made me feel this way! Come on, everyone!” Miyaji shouted, as if he hadn’t been planning on killing us all along. Even as I had that thought though, Miyaji continued. “But first . . .” He suddenly attacked Armor from behind. 
“What are you doing?!” Armor shouted. 
 
“Give me that weapon!” Miyaji shouted back. He grabbed the axe in Armor’s hand and tried to wrestle it away from him. It was such an insane thing to do we were all suitably shocked—even Rishia, who was still fighting. “I didn’t want a dumb musical instrument in the first place! But that was the only vassal weapon in this country, so I was told I didn’t have a choice. Now I do, so give that weapon to me! I have the power to control vassal weapons even without that accessory! I’ll make better use of it than you!” It sounded like he had a similar ability to Takt. But he was caught up in someone else’s summoning, right? Tracing that backward . . . this guy had to be a vanguard of the waves, no doubt about it! 
In the moment after I came to that realization— 
“Mountain Break IV!” Armor slashed his axe down hard at Miyaji! Miyaji howled in pain. With the loss of his vassal weapon, he couldn’t hope to withstand the attack, and he was promptly sliced in two with a single stroke. Blood vividly erupted from the pieces just after Miyaji gave a final scream. 
“Master Hidemasa!” one of his women screamed his name as all of his allies involved in the battle were thrown into confusion. 
“All your arrogant talk just reminded me of that fake over there! I hated it, and I hated you! Without a weapon, that means you are basically evil yourself! Your death is just the natural order!” Armor said. He swung the axe again, just to be sure—I mean, Miyaji was clearly dead. 
“Raph . . .” said Raph-chan. 
“Wow. He’s real mad,” Shildina said. It seemed they were both seeing the soul of Miyaji. Armor swung his axe around, slung it up onto his shoulder, and turned a taunting expression on us. “Ah! He destroyed it,” Shildina revealed. I almost felt sorry for Miyaji, for a moment. He had been caught up in all this, trying to look cool, and ended up dead, his soul destroyed. 
 
I had to wonder if this was all some kind of psychological attack. It was all so pathetic—beyond pathetic—a farce I no longer wanted to take part in. 
“Next, I’m going to do the same thing to you,” Armor gloated, turning the axe that had just killed one of his allies onto me. 
“You just cut down your number of allies. Literally. Do you think you stand a chance?” I asked. Miyaji’s women weren’t going to cooperate any longer either. 
“I won’t allow that anyway!” Rishia raised her projectile weapon and leapt at Armor. “I just need to destroy that accessory, correct?” 
“That’s right,” I confirmed before turning to Armor. “Now it’s your turn. We’re stealing that axe off your corpse if we have to!” 
“Isn’t there a better way of saying that?” Raphtalia commented. She made a good point, on reflection. I was sounding like the bad guy again. 
“Hah!” Armor launched a bold swing at the incoming Rishia. But he couldn’t hope to hit her as she darted around, using the walls and even the ceiling to launch herself freely through the air. 
“Air Strike Throw Z Second—” Rishia started. 

“Great Tornado IV!” Armor interrupted, intercepting her projectile skill with a tornado just before it landed. That trick again! 
 
“Well, well, well. I hardly know what to say. I’m so disappointed. Right, S’yne?” the moron woman said. I looked over in that direction to see S’yne wrapped up in the chain. She’d been holding her own until a moment ago! The situation was that bad? 
Then I noticed a number of Miyaji’s women bowing their heads to the moron woman. Were they going to try and get some revenge? 
“Please, let us join those who follow you!” one of them said. I almost fell over in surprise.