What exactly was the use of the "Arrow of Orion"?
As a weapon capable of killing gods, Isagi figured it was honestly kind of underwhelming — gods didn't truly die from it. They'd simply wait in the divine realm for a thousand-odd years before reviving.
Did that even count as death? That was, truthfully, a rather subtle question.
On the way back, he had been turning the arrow over and over in his hands, studying it.
Goddess Artemis herself didn't know why she had given it to him, nor what was supposed to happen with it afterward.
Because at the time, the word from the Guild side — from the great god Ouranos — had only been to pass the divine artifact on to the boy. Nothing more.
"Perhaps it's for the future. Something that may come in useful—" the Moon Goddess murmured softly.
But what she would never have imagined was that, at that very moment, what Isagi was actually thinking was: could Cecil turn the divine artifact in his hands into some other piece of equipment?
Maybe worth researching when they got back...
A little over half a month later, Isagi received the brand-new version of the [Moonlight Greatsword] that Cecil had forged for him.
Autumn was growing colder.
But the weather had been decent lately — little wind, sparse rain, not exactly sunny, yet cool and refreshing enough to lift the spirits.
The Festival of Abundance — the Goddess Festival — was only a few days away.
As the city's most important annual celebration, what Isagi felt most directly was that the goddesses at home had all been run absolutely ragged lately.
Goddess Demeter went without saying.
As one of the goddesses symbolizing abundance, she was a central figure of the festival by nature — she would stand alongside Goddess Freya and the others in the towers of Central Park, offering the city their divine blessings.
Goddess Astrea served as her aide.
On the other side, Aphrodite and Artemis were still rehearsing the theatrical performance they'd be putting on that day.
The Goddess of Beauty was treating it as a crucial step in building her Familia's "reputation" in the city, driving the whole thing forward with absolute seriousness.
As for Isagi himself.
The festival was, frankly, not that important to him — last year's Goddess Festival, he'd been out selling hamburgers, but there was no need for that this year, since the shop's business had gotten almost too busy to manage.
So what he actually needed to think about was: should he wait a few days after the festival to go challenge Zard, or head out right now?
Ryuu-senpai and the goddesses alike had all advised waiting until after the festival.
For one thing, it was the same as always — they'd just come back from the Dungeon, and it was better to rest for a while, let the body unwind before throwing themselves into another high-intensity battle.
And for another.
He'd only just gotten his new weapons. It would be best to get a feel for them first before going to challenge a veteran of both the Zeus and Hera Familias.
And so, that very evening.
The sun had set long ago. The moon shone bright, and the stars were out in force.
Isagi was still out with Ais and Ryuu-senpai, running drills amid the ruins of a fortress in the wilderness beyond the city.
The wide stretches of grassland had long since been reduced to a cratered, pockmarked ruin. Even the river in the distance hadn't been spared — it bore several horrifying "wounds," as though something had slashed clean through it, jagged and ghastly.
Even though Isagi and the girls had been holding back as much as they could.
The damage was still permanent, carved into the earth — and in the far distance, the mountainside that Lefiya's Explosion Magic had sheared half away from still stood as proof.
That was exactly why he and the girls had taken to training on deserted islands instead.
Otherwise, the only option would be the Dungeon.
The night air was soft and gentle.
All around, sharp blades split the sky with their keening shriek.
The sword-cane in Isagi's hand had transformed into an impossibly slender length of chained blades. Wreathed in blood-red radiance and the brilliant crack of thunder, it flashed by like a silent bolt of lightning.
Blindingly fast. Its attack range was impossible to track, and beyond that —
[Like a Shadow].
The golden-haired girl wreathed in a gentle breeze, longsword in hand, darted left and right through the air — yet for all her effort, she couldn't seem to escape the encircling net of those steel-serpent blades.
What a bizarre weapon!
The first time Ais had seen Isagi holding the sword-cane, she'd assumed it was probably one of those longswords disguised as an everyday object — a style fairly popular among certain nobles outside the city.
But in reality, it was something else entirely.
The retraction function it demonstrated transformed what looked like an ordinary longsword into a chain-blade deadlier and more terrifying than any whip.
And beyond that.
In Isagi's hands, it could be overlaid with special magic to amplify its power.
Like right now — wreathed in the "Lightning of Baal," it had taken on a kind of lightning enchantment, in the truest sense of the word.
The friction between the gentle breeze and the writhing electric serpents detonated into a deafening, rolling crash of thunder.
It wasn't just loud.
The blinding flashes of light that erupted alongside it made the chain-blades — already impossible to track — strike from all directions at once, tightening and loosening in turn, assailing her from every angle.
Ais could only fall back as fast as she could.
Then Ryuu-senpai stepped in, taking over from the golden-haired girl.
She quickly found that she had no answer for it either. The green orbs of light gathered around her body were being popped and detonated one after another by the chain-blades — which actively sought them out — and she nearly got caught in the blast herself.
Even when she sped up the rate at which she gathered and fired them, the magic orbs she launched still couldn't break through the chain-blades' encirclement. Every last one was intercepted.
This was an exceptionally effective mid-to-long-range, wide-area weapon of destruction.
With a light flick of his wrist, Isagi retracted the chain-blades, and they collapsed back into an ordinary-looking walking staff. He then drew out the brand-new [Moonlight Greatsword] that Cecil had forged for him.
Earlier.
His original idea had been to recreate the legendary wheelchair-bound weapons and absurdly overpowered divine arms from his memories — to bring them into this world using his own divine power.
What he hadn't expected was for Cecil to take it even further.
The blacksmith girl with the [Mystery] development ability — her capacity to forge weapons was beyond question.
When it came to "greatswords," she clearly had her own philosophy.
As a two-handed weapon, there wasn't much about it that warranted deep reflection on the surface.
What made a greatsword truly excellent?
Thick. Big. Heavy —
A greatsword wasn't just for slashing enemies. It was for bludgeoning them, too.
The greatsword in the [Complete Hunter's Arsenal] Isagi had commissioned for Ais was a perfect embodiment of that principle — from its impossibly dense blade to the charge-up special technique built into it, every aspect said the same thing.
But Cecil had taken the concept somewhere entirely new.
Right now.
As [Wolf's Devouring Feast] took hold once more, Isagi — just as before — reached up through his helmet, which loomed like the head of a great wolf yet tapered like the point of a spear, and wrenched the massive sword free.
But unlike before, when the blade had shone with a pure and resplendent lunar radiance.
The greatsword was now an absolute, pitch-perfect black. A dark, viscous liquid oozed from its surface and fell in slow, heavy drops — pitter-patter, pitter-patter — onto the withered autumn grass below, dyeing everything it touched into an expanding black mire.
The blade was coated in a thick layer of black, viscous fluid.
Isagi swung it.
In the darkness of the night.
What Ryuu spotted first, from a distance, was those black liquid drops suddenly reshaping themselves into arrows and javelins — and in an instant, they came hurtling toward her.
"Magic?!"
That black fluid clearly carried the unmistakable aura of magic.
In an instant, she understood.
The raging flames coiling around the girl's body ignited the incoming black arrows and javelins in a flash — but they didn't disappear. Instead, they melted rapidly, like wax, and rained down around her as spattering droplets.
Then, from every direction, sharp lances emerged and thrust toward where Ryuu stood.
She knew this all too well.
Wasn't this exactly the magic used by the "Nameless Hero" Dawn-Dark Moon — Airon — whom she had fought in the Dungeon before?!
And indeed it was.
The [Moonlight Greatsword] in Isagi's hands right now had incorporated many rare materials. Among them was the black magic gemstone recovered from inside the body of the already-dead tree dragon beneath the pearl tree that Airon had been guarding — the one known as the "heart," the stone that could summon Teardrop Big Bro.
After being fused into the Moonlight Greatsword.
All of the effects it carried — the ability to use that mysterious black viscous magic to fashion all manner of weapons, including a perfect copy of "Teardrop Big Bro" himself — had been fully preserved.
And not only that. A fascinating kind of alchemy had occurred between it and the other materials.
Now, the massive sword in Isagi's hand began to "melt."
The pitch-black fluid dripped away entirely, pooling around the boy and forming a shape that was his own perfect double.
From the outside in — from nothing.
What it revealed beneath was a blade of extraordinary beauty — resplendent as a glittering sea of stars, suffused with the shimmering glow of moonlight.
Then, magical energy began to gather. It became a brilliant arc of stellar and lunar light — and in silence, it swept toward the girl in the distance.
"!!!"
So fast.
Ryuu barely managed to dodge, and even that was only possible because Isagi had clearly been holding back — because in theory, the number of "sword arcs" he could unleash was unlimited.
Just like the [Left Bow] before.
Right now, Isagi stood completely still with the greatsword in hand — and yet the next instant, the sword arcs surged forth in a torrent so vast they threatened to swallow everything in the world, burying the girl's entire field of vision in a blaze of brilliant starlight and moonlight.
[So beautiful.]
Ryuu tugged at the corner of her mouth, then used a companion's defensive magic.
And of course, Isagi hadn't put in any real effort.
So this strike was all flash and no substance — the magical sword arcs shattered on contact and had no real destructive power to speak of.
But even so, it was frightening. Astonishing.
From a distance, Ais even felt for a moment as though she had glimpsed some kind of "dream."
That sense of unreality lingered — but the residual magical energy dissipating across the sky and earth told both girls plainly that every last bit of it had been absolutely real.
But even so.
The [Moonlight Greatsword] in Isagi's hands still hadn't shown its full strength.
Because the sword itself was something that Isagi and Cecil — those two — had spent an all-nighter on, pouring every wild idea they had into it, only for those ideas to be realized in a form that defied all belief, resulting in this ultimate "Frankenstein's monster" of a weapon.
Right now, the magic gemstone set into the blade was still trembling — pulsing like a heartbeat, emitting faint, rhythmic thumps from beneath his arm. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Isagi held the weapon.
And walked calmly toward Ryuu-senpai and Ais in the distance.
And for reasons neither girl could quite explain, as they stood watching the boy draw steadily closer, something about their vision began to feel strangely... warped.
Not only could they not fully gauge the distance between themselves and Isagi.
More than that.
Why did the longsword in his hand look... somehow "crooked"?
____
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