“You’ve still got that bad habit,” Ethnobalt noted.

“Hah! Stop bringing that up. It feels strange to call him ‘Naofumi,’ so you’ll all just have to put up with it,” L’Arc said. I gave a sigh. There was no putting him right. I was getting sick of constantly pointing it out too. I guess he could call me whatever he wanted.

“Stay on topic, please. How long will it take to return Kizuna to normal?” I asked.

“Good question. This is a dense, heavy case of petrification. We have Therese, others from my nation, and Ethnobalt doing all they can to heal her, so she should be back to normal in maybe two days,” L’Arc replied.

“Good to hear,” I said. Glass was looking at Kizuna and her treatment with sadness in her eyes. Just that was enough to reveal the powerful bond of trust between the two of them. I continued. “Onto other things, then. After these events, L’Arc, we’ve become more than just the visiting help. We need to increase our activities in this world in order to defeat the enemies at work here.” Once Kizuna was back with us, the situation would swing back in our favor. The main problem was that Itsuki and I still couldn’t use our original weapons and magic—oh, and Witch and Armor were also here and up to no good. This had started out as just having to defeat the presumed vanguard of the waves in this world, but now Witch, Armor, and S’yne’s enemies had been added to the equation.

If this had all been happening back in our world, we would have had more leeway to deal with it all. All sorts of stuff had happened over there, but cooperation between the nations was running pretty smoothly now, and most of the hostile countries had been dealt with. We’d at least eliminated those nations trying to pull some shady stuff.

But here in Kizuna’s world, they didn’t have that cohesion. And apart from Kizuna, all the holy heroes were dead. The moron woman had said their holy weapons had been rounded up too. It would be nice to do something about all of that, if we could. I also didn’t want Raphtalia to keep getting teleported over here each time this world was in trouble. Unless we gave up the katana vassal weapon completely, our fates were intertwined.

I had no intention of abandoning them. No plans to lose any more allies.

“S’yne’s enemies and Witch have a nasty habit of just popping up. I would guess they are likely working with someone in authority,” I said.

“Looking at the enemies we have left . . . the Harpoon Hero has the biggest force,” L’Arc said.