“He healed Therese’s wounds . . . Incredible . . . I can’t compete with that . . .” L’Arc bemoaned to himself. Hold on! You don’t have to compete with me!

So I told her, “Look after L’Arc too, okay? By which I mean don’t cast him aside, understand? And definitely don’t say stuff like, ‘Whatever you wish, Master Craftsman!’ Okay?” I pressed the point home pretty hard. Please, for God’s sake, don’t let me end up on the route where I take a woman from L’Arc! I had no interest in doing such a thing anyway.

“Whatever you say!” she replied, a little too close to my command for comfort. Still, it was nice to see her full of energy again. Maybe she’d be strong enough now to take down our enemies with one punch.

Imiya’s accessory was something else, that was for sure. If Imiya could find the time, I’d get her to make something especially for Therese.

“Little Naofumi, little Raphtalia,” Sadeena said, approaching us as we watched Therese power up. “At first I thought little Naofumi had brought us to a different country with one of his teleportation skills, but this really isn’t the world I know,” Sadeena said.

“Finally got that, did you?” I asked.

“It certainly is not. Why? Have you noticed something?” Raphtalia asked. What was she onto?

“Is there something here that’s different from our world?” I asked.

“Well . . .” Sadeena muttered, looking from the courtyard out toward the town. “First, I don’t have a clue what people are saying. Not a word. This isn’t like a dialect or just a different language. You really are heroes, aren’t you? Raphtalia included.”

“I understand. I couldn’t understand what people were saying until I obtained this katana,” Raphtalia replied. The hero weapons all had a universal translation function. But for someone without any such special powers—someone like Sadeena—it made sense she wouldn’t have a clue what people were saying. The translation attribute was just another thing we had the hero weapons to be grateful for.

“In Zeltoble, that melting pot of peoples, I encountered some languages I hadn’t ever heard before . . . but they weren’t like this. This is totally different,” Sadeena said.

“Rishia picked it up in a few weeks,” I responded.

“Little Rishia is very smart. I won’t be pulling that off, I can tell you,” Sadeena replied. Maybe not. It had taken me a long time to learn the alphabet in Melromarc, and the magic alphabet too. It was unfair to use Rishia as an example.

“It would have worked out better if the analysis of that translation accessory S’yne enemies carried had made some progress,” I said. I’d left that task to the accessory dealer, but the accessory in question was made from some kind of unknown material and couldn’t be replicated. S’yne’s familiar currently carried it. Without it, communication with S’yne would have been almost impossible. She seemed to understand what I was saying, but hardly anything other than strange noises emanated from her own mouth. It had been getting even worse recently, preventing us from conversing even on basic topics. If her vassal weapon broke down completely, she might not be able to talk at all . . . but I didn’t think it would come to that.