“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.