“Sneaking into my nation based on some selfish sense of your own justice, and infiltrating key areas without authorization—not to mention your attack on the dragon hourglass—even for a vassal weapon hero, I think these are crimes too serious to forgive,” Miyaji said to Glass. “Don’t you think?”

“How dare you! We already have proof—proof that Kizuna was brought to this nation. Thanks to a search by a shikigami Kizuna created. We also know that she is being held here,” Glass replied. Miyaji gave a high-and-mighty smile at her words, then took a look at the women around him.

“Even if we say we have no idea what you mean, I suspect you won’t just give up and go home. I am here, trying to prove my innocence in all sincerity, and this is how you respond? As I suspected, Kizuna Kazayama and her allies think that being heroes gives them the right to act however they please.”

“You took part in the murder of the four heroes, and now you’re playing the victim—” Glass began.

“Hold on, Glass. I’ll handle this.” I stepped up in front of her.

“You, a hero from a completely unrelated world, have some opinion? Do you believe you have any right to speak here?” Miyaji said. Wow. In a past life, I would have let that go with a smile and just backed away. Don’t mess with me, I wanted to say. I’ve fought plenty of phonies like you already.

“Kizuna and I are allies in that we were both summoned as heroes from another world and are fighting in order to quell the waves. We’ve built up a relationship of trust that you know nothing about. You can’t write me off as being unrelated to all this,” I replied. What he was really saying was something a lot simpler. He was saying this had nothing to do with me, so I should back off. My response was the first step in the process of dealing with someone like him—to hit him with the reasons why I was very much involved: she was an ally of mine.

“However you try to twist it, you aren’t responsible for this world, are you? Whatever an outsider like you says, I don’t think you can influence a hero of this world,” he replied. Just as I suspected, then. He wanted to push the claim that I was just an outsider, unrelated to the situation, and stop me from getting into the middle of things. I was only speaking sense, and yet he had no intention of listening to me.

From this, I could determine he was the same type as Ren, Itsuki, and Motoyasu. That meant I needed to proceed to step two.