Author's Note: Not many reviews this week, I hope this means that it's just the holiday season and not that you guys are losing interest over here. Read, Review, Favourite, Enjoy and Please Stay Safe.

Chapter 41: The Bow Hero's Experiments

Zeltoble had been quite generous with it's labour, every couple of days another group of people would come in, and after a bit of 'persuasion' from Tatsuya and his new slave dealing friend they were more than happy to join the defence building efforts for the Ivy-Red Territory. Thanks to them there were now stone and spear chucking balistae mounted on granite walls for hardness durability reinforced by wooden support columns for shock absorption. Something that in turn freed up Rishia for use as Tatsuya's guinea pig.

"Rishia!" Tatsuya shouted looking around at the area for the girl with the rare affinities for support and offensive magic, he needed someone to test the shield he made for Naofumi. "Has anyone seen where Rishia went?"

One of the people from the village shook their head in the negative and Tatsuya went on his way. With the coast clear Rishia emerged from the vase that she had been hiding in fearfully.

"Fuu..." Make no mistake, Tatsuya had Rishia's eternal and everlasting gratitude for rescuing both her and her family. But he terrified her. Within ten minutes of properly meeting him for the first time he strapped her to a rocket spear and sent flying on a ride through hell, stopped only when it landed in a tree and smacked her face into it. She did not want to experience that hell again, so here she was hiding from him.

"I thought you were in here."

"FUUUU!" Rishia's first instinct was to duck back into the vase to hide, which quickly back fired as Tatsuya simply sealed her inside using the lid, picked her up and carried her away.

"We've finished work on the spear for now. What I require right at the moment is someone to test the shield for me." Tatsuya dumped Rishia into the makeshift laboratory he had built inside of a village store room.

"Again!?"

"Again."

"Fuuu..." Rishia didn't know which one she was more upset about, that whatever brand of magic item that Tatsuya was using her to develop required that he strip her down into her underwear and lay down on this table while he analyses her body, or that he seemed to be completely unperturbed by said almost completely naked body. He did give her a curtain for the sake of her modesty, didn't help her feel that much better though.

"Are you done yet?" Rishia asked after being made to lay down on the table half naked for several long uncomfortable moments before Tatsuya answered her.

"Yes. Get dressed." Rishia was quaking in terror the longer this went on.

The C.A.D. looked like a giant octagon shaped battering ram with straps going along the width instead of the length of the thing for Rishia to strap to her arm.

"What am I suppose to do with this!?" Did this even count as a shield? Did Tatsuya actually expect someone to use this thing as a shield?

"Strap it on."

"Fuu..." Rishia put the 'shield' on her arm strap first and a interface appeared in her line of vision resulting in the image of a dozen inch thick plates lined up in a row. A little bit of magic and it suddenly became much lighter.

"We fix the position of the ions of the plates in a magnetic field making it possible to have them move around once in position." Tatsuya explained, horribly it should be noted.

"What?" Rishia asked making it perfectly clear she had no idea what Tatsuya was talking about.

"Touch the picture in your H.U.D. and try to move around one of the plates." Tatsuya decided that it was probably best to explain how to work it rather then how it works. Rishia did as instructed and to her surprise bore witness as a inch thick plate slid off of the battering ram in sync with what she saw in her H.U.D. Experimenting further and Rishia had broken down the battering ram into shield like plates and was moving them around her.

"It... moved?" Rishia gasped in shock.

"That is the idea. Though that's just the first part. Each disk has it's own C.A.D. built in and is able to use the magic of my world Phalanx." Tatsuya explained which in turn led to Rishia to tap on one of the plate icons she moved earlier, from the displaced plate a magic barrier appeared in front of her.

"A magic barrier?" Rishia walked to the barrier but was surprised when it moved away.

"The plate is fixed to your location, when you move it moves." Tatsuya explained prompting Rishia to just move the barrier over to her. Rishia pressed her hand to the barrier but her hand was suddenly pushed off to the side.

"It moves?" Clearly there was no ending of the surprises she was met with today.

"Unlike the barriers of your world which simply produces a magical wall to stop attacks via brute force Phalanx disperses and deflects enemy attacks." Tatsuya explained though Rishia was still shocked. "The next time I see Naofumi he should be able to copy this and increase his defensive capabilities again."

"Can we mix this together with other kinds of magic?" The Scholar in Rishia was looking at the floating disks in shock.

"Theoretically possible. Hitting a incoming magical attack with it's opposite element can be used to situation-ally increase it's defensive power against specific attacks." Tatsuya was already applying his knowledge of his world to his growing knowledge of this one. He was at least enjoying the academic challenge he was being presented with, if nothing else, blending together the magic styles of two entirely different worlds one of which he was almost entirely unfamiliar with.

But at the same time he still remembered his sister he wanted to get back to, perhaps he could put this bow to use over there. If his world was swallowed in nuclear hell because of this world... with a loud smack Tatsuya had snapped himself to his senses as he slammed his own hand across his face and immediately sat down.

"What's the matter?" Rishia saw Tatsuya's abnormal behaviour and knelled down to get a better look at his face.

"I unlocked something that I shouldn't have, it's messing with my head. I need to figure out a way of suppressing it's effects, or getting rid of it." Tatsuya stated letting out a exhausted sigh.

"Maybe I can help. What's it called?" Rishia asked looking at the depressed Tatsuya.

"The Bow of Sloth. It's part of the 'cursed series.'" Tatsuya stated making his exhaustion clear, this was something that was clearly draining him emotionally and physically. Whenever he lets his guard down he hears this little voice at the back of his head questioning why he was here helping these people when his home land could be burning as they speak. The fact that he was running out of good answers had not escaped him. Rishia took one look at the depressed Tatsuya and gave him a hug, figuring that he needed one. It felt empty, not Rishia's intention mind you, but as she wasn't his sister she was irrelevant for fulfilling his emotional needs.

"It appears that the shield works. Let's go find Naofumi." As Tatsuya and Rishia left the village they were quickly approached by the village head man, in other words Rishia's father.

"You're leaving Sir Hero?" Rishia's father looked pretty concerned that the walking artillery who had been camping out of his village for the past several days would be leaving them with a unknown number of monsters and Bandits on the way.

"If your village can't stand to lose me then there's no point in fortifying it for the waves." Tatsuya's main tactic during a battle is flying around the battle field using AOE attacks to eliminate groups of monsters. This in turn takes pressure off of Ikki who spent the last fight trying to eliminate as many monsters as possible, Setsuna who focused on killing the wave's boss, and Naofumi who would work on defending the surrounding villages. And if they did ultimately have to split up to tackle the waves that made fortifying the defending villages all the more important, less the nightmares that would be raining down from the sky overwhelmed them.

"There was a message for you from the castle town." There were certain privileges of being a hero, like long distance communication accessories that linked you directly to the crown in the event of a emergency. Course there was only one available, Naofumi wasn't having anything to do with the King, Setsuna wasn't even in the country, and that just left the choice between Ikki and Tatsuya, and of the two Tatsuya was more willing to listen to the king. Speaking of whom... "One of the Sword Hero's party members has arrived at the castle on the back of his Kirin, there is a matter of top priority that requires your immediate attention."

Tatsuya cocked a interested brow as he used the portal function to transport himself and Rishia along with the three weapons C.A.D.'s they had been working on. The third weapon, a sword for Ikki, was equipped with water based healing magic, if used with his Ittou Rasetsu it should be enough to keep him from self destructing during his power up phase of the next battle. Well at least in theory, Neither he nor Rishia could use water or healing type magic so they couldn't test it. In any case Tatsuya, Rishia and Ryuteimaru teleported into the castle's summoning room. Ryuteimaru managed to acquire a convenient ability to shrink down to something roughly the size of a beagle, which was good because they were apparently expected and escorted directly to the dungeons.

"Sir Hero, you'll forgive me but the seriousness of this situation demands that we drop any pretence of formality." That did not make Tatsuya feel better. "Sir Kurogane's companion rushed this towards us as quickly as possible as he went to try and intercept the other packages in question." It was a knife, sinister green and full of dubious unpleasantness. Nothing good was coming out of this. "It came from a laboratory being operated by the Church of the Three Heroes. Sir Ikki was able to capture the man who was running the experiments, though capture might not be the best word for it. It warrants seeing for yourself." The wound Ikki left on the "scientist" he captured had been stitched up and healed and now the man himself was sitting alone in a cage with guards to either side of him. "Tell him what you told us."

"I'm a researcher associated with the Church of the Three heroes. We were studying a cursed fragment of the Seven Star Projectile weapon and have succeeded in producing several replica's using the original as materials. We sent them to the Baumiester, Phillip, Hohenheim and most recently the Reichnott territories. The brain washing is three fold, it affects the wielder, the people cut by the blade, and when a sufficient number of them gather together other people near by." The researcher explained with some enthusiasm.

"Why are you telling us about all of this?" Tatsuya asked though he dreaded the answer he was about to receive.

"Ikki told me to tell you everything I knew, he stabbed me with the legendary sword after he copied our dagger. I even have the scar from where the sword hero stabbed me." The researcher pulled up his shirt from where Ikki stabbed him.

"Shit." Tatsuya did an analysis on the blade and true enough it had the suspect blade indeed had the powers that he suspected, something that he confirmed for the King when he whipped out one of his Silver Horns and vaporised the blade.

"I was afraid you might've reacted like that." It effectively confirmed the fact that the blade that Ikki's party brought back to the castle was as dangerous as it seemed. "If Ikki is still using this blade..."

"Then he will understand the truth of the world soon enough." The researcher stated bluntly, prompting Tatsuya to smack himself in his face.

"I'll track Ikki down and try to snap him out of whatever trouble he's gotten himself into." Cursed weapon? The curse series then. Tatsuya knew the effect the sloth series was having on him, he didn't want to imagine what would happen to Ikki if he unlocked a new cursed weapon from this dagger. "We'll come with you!" Ikki's party member, Ake, stated looking quite excited.

Tatsuya flew ahead while Ryuteimaru flew behind him carrying Ake, the Kirin and Rishia. Go back to the village Ake had come from to pick up Ikki's trail? Unlikely, he was most likely on his way to the nearest territory under the influence of the cursed knife, assuming that he was successful in preventing a crisis he would then be onto the next territory. But if he wasn't successful...

"The Territory closest to the town was the Baumiester's, they're known for their very pro demi-human policies." Rishia piped up after they passed over the town in question. "Not anymore." A massive fight had broken out in the town below, mobs of people had been sent rampaging through the streets in a swarm beating down anyone who was not already converted and absorbing them into their numbers. Ikki was fighting his way through the crowd, Hundred swords in Intetsu's illusion form being shot through the crowd eating away at their stamina their attempts to swarm the sword hero be damned. Ikki was not suited to this, with Intetsu's real form he could end each and everyone of them with a single swing to the neck, in fact it's something that he relied on during the waves, but now the blasted brainwashing was giving them unnatural superhuman stamina, which made the non-lethal version of his signature weapon annoyingly ineffective, even if he did have hundreds of blades swarming around him like some kind of magical blender passing through the enemy by the dozens. It was the dozens that most concerned Ikki, the only thing protecting him from getting completely swarmed by these people was the dozen or so ones that he was supposed to be protecting acting like a human shield to cover his flank, even then thanks to the effects of this blasted brainwashing he had to keep an eye on them too less those pitch forks being used to poke the enemy away poked him instead. Then there was the way his H.U.D. was acting up, like he was under attack by a computer virus, the truth of the matter was quite similar he supposed and he was using it as a warning system to get away from that situation fast. Tatsuya's familiar psion wave attack bombarded the swarming mob of people which together with the effects of constantly spamming intetsu's illusion form against the mob soon had the lot of them flat out on their faces vomit leaving their mouths.

"Tatsuya! Good to-" Tatsuya had Ikki pinned flat to the ground using Ryuteimaru's claws as he did an analysis on the possibly possessed sword hero.

"He's clean." Tatsuya stated as Ryuteimaru removed his paw.

"That's good to hear, I was concerned about that for a moment there." Ikki commented as Tatsuya pulled out his silver horns and looked down at the mind controlled populace. "I thought you couldn't use those to attack?"

"This isn't a attack. It's a medical treatment." Normally Tatsuya would use his ability to heal a person of their wounds, the downside to that being that he would suffer the pain of those wounds, which after a while would do serious damage to him. However when it's just removing brainwashing, Tatsuya could do it as many times as he wanted to. Thus within 10 minutes everyone who had been put under control within the past twenty four hours had been un-brainwashed. Everyone else was quickly tied up as Tatsuya started putting his helmet on them one by one. "Any idea where this dagger that caused all of this is located now?" Tatsuya asked looking at Ikki suspiciously.

"Let's ask him, he was one of the first people taken by the looks of things." Ikki asked looking down at the man who currently had Tatsuya's helmet on.

Based purely on his uniform he was from the lord's mansion, which was the most likely explanation given that he was the one who was supposed to be targeted by the church.

"I'll go track down the lord, you keep purging the people of their brainwashing here, let's try and keep the body count down. Also on a side note, I'm going to want a helmet like that, or five." Ikki commented looking at the helmet Tatsuya had been using.

"I'll add it to the list. For now you're gonna have to settle for this." Tatsuya handed Ikki the C.A.D. sword he had been working on.

'Weapon Copy activated. Iyashinomizu. Level locked 100'

"Healing water?" Ikki asked recognising the name of the weapon.

"To be used in combination with your Ittou Rasetsu. I can't increase your defences to keep you from hurting yourself so healing you when you do will have to do instead." Tatsuya explained as Ikki simply looked at the progress bar for his weapon.

Funny thing efficiency, since Intetsu was his primary weapon that meant that he had it out the most, which also meant it was the sword he mostly quickly built proficiency with, which also meant that it would stop doing that whenever it maxed proficiency. Thus for the sake of building proficiency for his other weapons Ikki usually kept the blade's proficiency at around 90% while constantly adding to his collective pool of proficiency.

"Alright I'm off. If I come back under control of someone else..." Ikki stated ominously.

"I'll shoot you when you get back, if you dodge I'll assume that you're under their control and I'll order Ryuteimaru to bring you down."

Lovely thought that. Ikki made his way to the lord's manor where he quietly sneaked up on the people who already had their senses compromised thanks to the brainwashing and cut them down using the real version of the blade. With Tatsuya and his ability to resurrect the dead here there was no more need to hold back and take the risk of being cut down or taken control by these crazy people. "One down, three to go." Ikki commented as he started scratching the back of his head with a sigh. Once Ikki got back to Tatsuya the people stuffed into his sword were back to their proper mindset quite quickly.

"Thank you for protecting our people Sir Heroes." The Dagger of Mob mentality and the box it was brought there in was presented to Tatsuya along with the individual that brought it there. Tatsuya long sense copied a form for his bow that allowed him to hide it somewhere no one would be able to see it, at least not if they were looking for it, instead he took out one of his silver horns and in a single moment vaporised the box along with it's contents.

"As for you." Tatsuya turned the weapon on the messenger his threat having been made clear. "Where is the Pope!?"

"Go to hell you false-GUH!" Ikki couldn't believe he was using the Dagger again, but they had a limited amount of time to work with. The ominous green glow of the dagger swept over the man's eyes as true to the effect of the dagger the man's features twisted to a much friendlier look. "Ah Sir Sword Hero! Huge fan of yours!" The sad part of all of this that might actually be true, Ikki probably would be their idealise sword Hero were it not for his refusal to succumb to the blatant bigotry that the church propagated.

"We want to know where we can find the Pope." Ikki stated as he switched the Dagger of Mob Mentality out as soon as it was out from between the man's ribs.

"At once Sir Hero! The Pope means to make the Reichnott territory our new base of operations as part of our efforts to launch an attack against the animals!" The man explained sounding a little too proud of a act that would lead to the destruction of the world at large.

"I, The Hero of the Sword, command the origin of power. Take the water from the air and knit my target's flesh back together into one form. Zweite Aqua Heal." The man's flesh knit itself closed, though the stab wound was gone it's effects remained clear as he did not loose the chipper look on his face.

"Ignore every order given to you after this one. Live out the rest of your life as a farmer in this village and never hurt another living thing again." That should prevent this loser from coming up with anymore bright ideas.

"Are you sure that this is a wise idea?" Tatsuya questioned looking at Ikki with blatant suspicion.

"It's the correct one. Unless of course you'd rather we just kill him?" Ikki countered as he got on the back of his Kirin. Better to conserve Magic and Spirit if this situation goes pear shaped on them.

"...Hmm. If we do need more information on the church he could provide it. Very well then, let's see if we can go find out how to end this situation before it goes any farther out of control than it already is." After this situation was resolved though disposing of this fool and his aura of brainwashing was the best course of action.

Setsuna was fond of the Reichnott territory even if she wouldn't admit it, it would be troublesome if she got ambushed on her way back from whatever Bloody tear she's on right now by the church and she ended up starting another fight. They did not need this, especially this close to the next wave, it was days away and it was no coincidence that the church chose now to try and make their power move.

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: Hard. I have thought of a ending yes, might change it depending on how things go considering I've already got over a year worth of content worked out in my head.

superpierce: Thank you for saying so.