“Hah! You’ve got a seven star weapon and you still can’t handle your business! Why would I help you out?! If that weapon had come to me, I’d be able to make much better use of it than you! But who was the one shooting off his mouth?! I won’t get my own weapon unless we win this battle either!” Witch screamed back—seemingly revealing more of what she was really thinking than perhaps seemed like a good idea. It also sounded like they still had a trump card up their sleeve.

I could probably guess what it was. The chain S’yne’s sister used was one thing, but seeing the axe Armor used . . . it seemed safe to assume that they had possession of the missing seven star weapons.

Which just meant we had to take them back.

“Stop playing around and finish them off!” Witch barked. Armor gave a wordless shout of rage. If this had been a cartoon, there would have been smoke coming out of his ears. As someone accustomed to a bit of rage myself, I decided to offer him some advice.

“You need to review your reality. Getting all enraged like that isn’t going to change the facts in front of you. Push down your murderous rage and think calmly about the most horrible, graphic way to kill your enemy,” I told him.

“Only a demon king would say such a thing!” Raphtalia commented from the sidelines. This all took me back a bit, honestly. It had been a while since things were quite like this. I was finally finding my groove again. Time to ramp things up.

“Can you keep your taunts down to a minimum?” Glass said. I would have told her this was what we were always like, but that wouldn’t have made her think any better of us.

“Everyone. Focus,” Itsuki called out while still playing his support magic on his leaf. He was right, of course. I was feeling lighter on my feet too. My wounds were gradually healing. This performance magic was pretty convenient to have around.

“Raphtalia, the power-up method!” I reminded her.

“Ah, of course!” Raphtalia proceeded to tell me in a whisper. We didn’t need our enemies overhearing it. “Still, the method for the katakana is refinement, correct? You said it added a plus.” So there were overlapping methods? Even if that was the case, when I took the examples from the past into account, there was no way you could just guess your way into using them. You needed an awareness of skills, levels, and weapon power-up methods.

I decided to use materials I had on hand to enhance the mirror. I wasn’t sure if the failure rate was the same or not, but I raised it to +6. I made it in one go, so I guess I was lucky.

“You know the one for the fan, Glass?” I asked her.