“One thing . . . I don’t think I’ve ever asked this before, but how many vassal weapons do you have in this world?” I questioned. This was another world, and I hadn’t really felt the need to find out, but it seemed like a good idea to confirm the number right now.

“I have heard there are eight,” Ethnobalt informed me, opening up a book and checking its pages.

“Eight, huh? Can you tell me all of them? Just in case. You’d better tell me about the four holy heroes too,” I said. We had the seven star weapons in the other world, meaning they had one extra here. I couldn’t quite explain it, but something felt off about all this. Like, maybe there was a secret eighth seven star weapon in our world too. When I was in the shield world, I had counted the lights and seen eight, if I recalled correctly, so the possibility seemed pretty high.

“Very well. I’ll explain everything we know in order,” Ethnobalt said.

“Sounds good,” I confirmed.

“So we have Glass’s fan, L’Arc’s scythe, and the ship that I held. Then there’s Raphtalia’s katana,” Ethnobalt said. Those were the allied vassal weapons. “Next there is the book that Kyo had and the mirror Albert held.” Albert . . . I didn’t know much about him. I didn’t know what kind of guy he had been, but from what I’d heard, he had been surrounded by women. I couldn’t get past the feeling that he had been a Kyo II.

“Then there’s also the harpoon and musical instrument vassal weapons. We’ve found the owners of each one . . . and are currently opposed to them,” Ethnobalt said. That meant we had the fan, scythe, ship, katana, book, mirror, harpoon, and musical instrument. All of them sounded pretty funky.

“What about the four holy heroes?” I asked.

“There’s the hunting tool, held by Kizuna, and then the jewels, the blunt instrument, and the ofuda,” Ethnobalt revealed. I shook my head. A bit of an odd menagerie. The vassal weapons sounded more promising, to be honest! Jewels? A “blunt instrument”? And ofuda were one of them too? Those could be made. A lot of mysteries around these four holy weapons, I thought. Ofuda and jewels both sounded kind of magical.

“You’ve got a pretty abnormal selection in this world,” Itsuki stated, choosing this moment to unleash his caustic tongue.

“Itsuki!” Rishia quickly shushed him. “They might kill you for insulting the four holy heroes, for all you know!” Both Ethnobalt and Glass showed discomfort on their faces.

“I’m not really sure what you mean. Are they that strange?” L’Arc questioned.

“Based on the Japanese standards I am used to, the only answer to that is yes. Didn’t Kizuna say something about this?” I asked.