AN:

▂▃▄▅▇█ : exists

Me: I'll take your entire stock

~~o0o~~

'Wonderful, just wonderful.'

Naofumi thought as he sighed in exasperation, rubbing his temples.

He came to this village to sell herbicide, only to find himself playing doctor again because the invasive vegetation was parasitic.

Because of course it was.

Oh, and did he mention that this all happened because Motoyasu gave them that alchemist's seed that was sealed away and had a warning beside it about how dangerous it was?

Well, now he did.

These villagers weren't helping the headache he felt developing either.

Did they really have nothing better to do than follow him around? He needed space to work, dammit, not idiots 'ooh' and 'aah'-ing every time he cured someone. It was sorely tempting to add an audience fee on top of the cost for the medicine.

At least the herbicide they were here to sell seemed to be effective with plantification removal, though whether or not it will work for removing the jungle that the poor sods' village became remains to be seen.

Not that it mattered to him. In his humble opinion that job was more suited to a flamethrower, but who was he to argue with customer demands?

"What's wrong with him?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, noticing that unlike the rest of his patients the man was gagged, and that limbs were bound to some stakes embedded in the ground around the bedding.

"Oh, poor Nandor. We's had to tie him up because he started trying to bite people and thrashing around," one of the villagers answered.

'Please don't be what I think it is,' the merchant hero thought as he stepped up cautiously, observing the wriggling man's skin covered in purple pustules and growths instead of the green he's seen so far.

Plant zombies. Shit.

Breathing in, he steeled himself before starting the same procedure he's done with the previous patients.

However, just as he finished pouring the herbicide over the affected areas, the man began struggling even harder against the restraints with a muffled roar, making fearful murmurs reverberate through the tent.

Frowning intensely, Naofumi removed the cloth gag so he could administer the restorative, pinning the villager who was trying to bite him ineffectually by the neck.

He was about to administer the restorative when he saw something wriggling in the infected's throat.

Now fully grimacing, Naofumi pinned the man to the bed with his knee instead, leaving his arms free to take another bottle of herbicide from his pack and mixed half with the restorative. It was the only thing he thought could work at this point.

After he wrangled the man's jaw to stay open and poured the mixture down his throat, the outworlder quickly stepped back as the villager began to convulse.

For a long minute, Naofumi commiserated with the rest of the villagers in the tent as they watched their fellow man thrash and moan in pain.

After what felt like an hour, the merchant hero exhaled in relief when he saw his patient's movement stop and be enveloped with a soft glow.

"Thank you, thank you!" "As expected of the Saint!" the villagers cheered.

The outworlder brushed them off as he made his way out of the tent. "I'm just doing what you're paying me for..."

Which they did, happily at that.

"Great. Now I'll sell you the rest of the herbicide and I'm out of here," he sighed, saying it more to himself than anyone else as he took the crate off the carriage.

"Wait! Saint, won't you save our village?" the villagers begged, making him grimace again.

"You didn't report this to the Crown?"

"We have, but they said the heroes are busy and wouldn't come for a while. We're afraid our village will be as good as gone by then."

He really, really wanted to just say no and get the hell out of here. The desire was compounded by the fact that he didn't want to clean up after a mess Motoyasu was responsible for, and that he'd rather the cretin face up to his mistakes for once.

'We can't walk away from this one, Master,' Kuro's voice resounded in his head, making him groan. 'I saw the zombie patient. This is the sort of thing Counter Guardians would be sent to intervene in, you know. If we don't do something about it right now, I guarantee you that it will eventually become a disaster on the level of the Waves you've described to me.'

Naofumi glanced at the girls as he scratched his head and immediately regretted it as he saw Raphtalia's pleading eyes.

"Fine! But I'm taking payment for this upfront."

To the girls' wry amusement, he didn't stop grumbling even after the villagers went above the sum he asked for, and stubbornly gave the extra money back.

"It's all here. We're heading out!"

With a flash, the gem-encrusted shield on his arm reappeared as the invisibility spell broke when he changed its form as he walked to the edge of the clearing followed by his party.

"I-it's the Shield Hero?!"

While most of the villagers gawked at the revelation, some of the others who watched the party disappear in the thicket saw how a large black bow appeared in the girl's hands with another flash of magical light.

"The Bow Hero is working with the Shield Hero?!"

~~o0o~~

Kuro had explained to Raphtalia how serious the situation actually was, which is why she made sure her puppy eyes looked extra big when Naofumi inevitably looked at her when he thought about how a decision might affect her. She knew him more than well enough at this point to pick up on that habit.

But as much as the Servant underlined the possible disaster, the tanuki girl could not have anything but nonplussment on her face at the moment.

For they were following a pair of- what had she called them? Kladenets? Anyways, the point was that they were jogging after swords that swung themselves on their own to clear the overgrowth in their path.

Naofumi initially had wanted to go at a slower pace to take on the local fauna piece by piece, but the Archer had interjected that if they didn't move fast enough, the monsters would zero in on them and they would be surrounded before they knew it.

Now that Raphtalia thought about it, the white haired girl had been kind of snappish ever since they entered the village.

Had the Servant experienced something similar before?

She tried to ask her what were those 'plant dead apostles' she was muttering under her breath about but only got brushed off that it was not important at the moment.

The tanuki girl's train of thoughts was interrupted by hisses and screeching coming from up ahead.

Seeing another pair of vaguely human-shaped clumps of vines and a pitcher plant up ahead, she readied her sword.

"Trace, on."

As soon as the words were incanted, several broadswords materialized above Kuro's head and shot off, stabbing the monsters in their center of mass and impaling them into the ground. Well, the upright ones, that is.

Raphtalia and Firo then quickly tore the monsters apart with a few deft cuts and kicks, hacking a piece or two for Naofumi to feed into his shield in the process before they started moving again.

Thankfully, it seemed like the infestation focused more on quantity than quality at the moment so individual monsters weren't able to put up much of a fight against them.

"Graaah!"

Every now and then, the group stumbled upon a couple villagers with the purple infection variant. Initially, Kuro impaled them to the environment with arrows by shooting somewhere nonlethal, but her niece had inadvertently come up with a better solution.

"Go away! Firo doesn't want to hurt you!" the filolial exclaimed even as she was punting the shambling villagers off their path into the distance.

They would go and find the poor sods again after they dealt with the source. The infection gave them some monster-like endurance anyways, so it wasn't like they were going to be hurt badly from it.

After a handful more encounters, the party had reached a clearing that looked a lot like the town square.

A large, strange looking tree stood rooted in its center. The air was so thick with poisonous pollen that it tinted the air with purple, making Raphtalia incredibly thankful for the red piece of cloth tied around her mouth and nose that was torn off the Servant's shroud.

"That doesn't look tasty..."

As they stepped closer to it, a bulging, bright purple eye opened in its center.

"Well, I think we've found the right spot," Naofumi deadpanned.

With a contemplative look on her face, the Archer cocked a large arrow and fired it at the obvious target, making the eye explode with liquid.

"▂▃▄▅▇█!"

Hisses and screeches could be heard from the surrounding area as the tree and the vines around it writhed, and the eye reappeared with a wet noise.

"Can't have been that easy, huh?" Kuro commented wryly.

"Why don't we try to use the herbicide then?" Naofumi suggested, "Hit the eye again and use it on the internals. Seemed to work well enough on the infections."

The Servant nodded. "You know what? Give me a bottle."

Acquiescing, the outworlder watched with a raised eyebrow as the white haired girl fused the surface of the glass bottle close to the tip of an arrow, then fired it.

Unfortunately, it seemed that being shot in the eye once was enough for the tree, as it intercepted the projectile with one of its large vines which immediately began to wither as the bottle of herbicide broke against it.

And if the screeches were any indication, it definitely wasn't going to let another one of those hit its eye now that it was aware of the consequences.

"Oh well."

"Firo, Raphtalia, try to get close and dump this in the eye socket after hitting it," Naofumi quickly ordered, handing the tanuki girl two bottles out of his pouch. "We'll cover you."

"Understood!" "Okay Papa!"

With that the tanuki girl hopped on the filolial and quickly speeded towards the tree.

"Air Strike Shield!"

Firo, seeing the opportunity, leapt for the ghostly shield floating high above her and used it as a platform to jump even higher with her powerful legs.

Seeing thick vines encroaching to intercept them midair, Raphtalia raised her sword to fend them off, which quickly proved unnecessary as they were blasted away with Kuro's explosive shots.

With their path unhindered, Firo then wound up for a strike as they were about to reach the eye, which was again blasted apart with a grand squelch. Acting quickly, Raphtalia took aim and threw a bottle which smashed against the seed-like object in the spot before retreating.

For a long moment, everything stopped.

"▂▃▄▅▇█!"

But it did not last as the eye appeared with another squelch, this time bloodshot and crazed looking, with its pupil collapsed and twitching erratically.

'That was reinforced herbicide!' Naofumi thought in alarm as he helped Kuro fend off some plant monsters that began closing in on them.

What now?

...

Wait. Didn't one of his shields increase the effectiveness of concoctions that were administered by him?

"Goddammit!" he swore at the realization. Things dragged out this far due to sheer thoughtlessness!

He waited until Raphtalia and Firo came back to back up Kuro with culling the smaller plant monsters before stomping off and making a beeline for the tree. The vines tried to strike at him, but even the biggest ones could barely lower his HP by a sliver.

"▂▃▄▅▇█!"

The tree screeched again, but this time it seemed different.

Groans and hisses started multiplying until it was a loud murmur, coming from all directions. From the thickets surrounding the square, a small horde of infected villagers appeared, now straight up scrambling towards them instead of the harmless shamble they've come to expect from them, and from the 'crown' of the tree, the plant monsters began to simply rain from them.

Suddenly, getting close to the tree got a lot harder for Naofumi, now struggling through bodies and vines in his path.

'He's not going to make it in time!' Kuro thought in alarm as she saw her master trying to push through the blockade of bodies, desperation beginning to show on his face. Herself, Raphtalia and Firo were doing an admirable job of coping with the sudden increase of enemies, but her Eye of Mind might as well be a blare of alarm shouting in her mind that they'll be overwhelmed within a minute.

"Firo, blow these guys away! I need space!" she ordered quickly as she closed her eyes and held out an arm.

"Okay, Auntie! Fast Tornado!" Firo obeyed quickly after a mere glance at Kuro, blasting the monsters from the immediate vicinity.

"Trace, on."

In the past few days, tutored by Kuro, Raphtalia has become significantly better at perceiving magical energy.

Which is why she instantly braced herself when she could sense a small torrent of prana, as she was taught to call it, coalescing in her teacher's palm- the last time she felt so much of it used being when she had the misfortune of being close when Kuro conjured Hrunting.

So when she felt heat instead of raging bloodlust, she was greatly surprised.

Yet, the magical pressure of the simple, yet dazzling sword with a pale gold hilt was no less overwhelming.

It felt as though the Sun descended to the surface of the world.

'She had another sword like that?' the tanuki girl thought in astonishment.

"I am the bone of my sword," she listened to Kuro chant, watching as she nocked the blade, which elongated and thinned out before her eyes into an arrow as she drew the string.

The transformation of the blade was accompanied by a second wave of magical pressure, which made the previously stunned monsters around them attack with renewed frenzy.

They could sense that what stood before them was a threat that could not be ignored.

Yet, instead of shooting the projectile as soon as it became an arrow, the Archer seemed to only continue pouring prana into it to the tanuki girl's confusion.

In fact, so much of it that the projectile seemed to be vibrating from the quantity it was being made to-

Wait.

That's precisely what she's going for, isn't she?

She's going to make it self-destruct on impact.

And with the magical pressure it was already giving off unaltered-

"Shine, of O' Sword of-"

Was as far as she got before the monster tree cracked. Loudly.

A deep, jagged line appeared on it diagonally before it fell apart, revealing that it had already rotted from the inside-out. As it hit the ground, they looked around to find the plant monsters collapsed and crumbling, seeming to have been afflicted the same way as the tree was from the inside.

"Oh well," was all Kuro said in reaction as she let both the arrow and the bow in her hands fade into dense motes of light.

Raphtalia fell to her knees, nearly succeeding to hold back a groan of relief and disappointment.

"Awww," Firo pouted, "Firo wanted to see the tree go boom!"

The infected villagers on the other hand only seemed to crumple on the ground without their controller, but their infection didn't wither in the same way as they were still rooted to people whose bodies they were using as nutrients.

Oh well. More patients for Naofumi to get paid for.

~~o0o~~

In the back of the carriage, which now had two carts of fruits attached to it courtesy of the village they saved, Raphtalia watched the Archer materialize her arrows. The flashes of magical light were soothing in the same way looking into a campfire was.

'What is a Noble Phantasm?' she wondered not for the first time.

Kuro and Naofumi tried to explain Phantasms to her when detailing the Servant's powers, going so far as to argue among themselves, trying to make comparisons about their power level and status without much success. In the end, Naofumi just said that Kuro can conjure some very powerful magical weapons.

But after...experiencing the sword Kuro called Hrunting, Raphtalia felt she could understand a little better. A sword that felt like it was eyeing her like prey was simply not normal. She could only imagine what it felt like to Firo, who was an actual monster unlike herself who was only a demi-human with a couple animal features.

Moreover, after seeing such a display of power and being exposed to the magical pressure of that pale gold sword, one would expect it to feel completely natural to be unnerved. It felt...heavy in a way the Holy Weapons she saw in the hands of the other heroes didn't, blasphemous as it sounded.

And yet...she just couldn't find it in herself to be afraid of Kuro.

This was the girl who became an object of young women's steamy fantasies around Melromarc as a result of trying to avoid using Raphtalia as her main secondary source of prana, all because she thought kissing still made her uncomfortable, for goodness' sake.

Raphtalia is more liable to be afraid for her than anything else.

And no, she was still not opening that particular can of worms. Although...she did start to see girls in a different- no, no, still not going there.

Anyways, what was it that made them so special to struggle to explain what Kuro's weapons were?

"Oh right!" the white haired girl suddenly exclaimed, snapping her fingers.

Raphtalia blinked as she went over one of the crates in the carriage and took out a sheathed sword.

"Here. I know it's kind of late, but the bandits had this sword that's quite a bit better than what you're using at the moment," she said, holding it out to her, "I wanted to ask if you wanted it. I checked its history and it was bought, not stolen."

The tanuki girl took the blade and examined it with a raised eyebrow, unsheathing it halfway. It was a simple thing with black wrapping around the handle and an upwards curving guard.

She was by no means an expert in weaponry- far from it, as she just used whatever Erlhardt thought suited her, but the brunette could tell that it was noticeably heavier and longer than what she's been using.

As she handled it and the light hit it from a different angle, she noticed that the metal had a brassy tinge to it, however, making Raphtalia frown slightly as she remembered the bandit that wielded it.

"Yeah, sorry, I guess it is kind of disappointing compared to what I can conjure up," Kuro apologized wryly.

"Huh?" Raphtalia blinked at the Archer. "I don't..."

"You don't have to deny it," Kuro said with a teasing smile, "If you really wanted it, I would give you one of my magic swords."

"No, it's not that!" Raphtalia denied, flustered, "It's just that it's different than what I'm used to, really!"

The white haired girl only hummed skeptically, much to the brunette's embarrassment and annoyance. "If you say so."

"Well I do!" the tanuki girl harrumphed.

"If that's the issue, I could show you how to use it," Kuro offered diplomatically.

"You know how to? I thought you used curved swords."

"But of course," the Archer confirmed smugly, "I know how to use every single weapon that I can Trace."

Well, technically she also downloads the original wielder's experience into herself while she uses a weapon, but the statement is true enough.

"I'll think about it..." Raphtalia answered noncommittally.

Truthfully, she knew that accepting was a no-brainer as she had no formal martial training whatsoever- so far she had been just swinging around a sharpened piece of metal guided with no more than her gut feeling and experience.

But that wasn't what she wanted to get into right now.

"Uhm," she began, "Could you try to explain to me what those phantasms of yours are again? And why are they called that?"

Kuro hummed. "Well, I suppose I've had plenty of time to think about it since I last tried."

"Imagine it like this: the Four Holy Weapons can change into many shapes to use their abilities, right?"

Raphtalia nodded.

"What would have been the Four Holy Weapons in our world was split into as many individual weapons as many shapes they have, and strewn across the history of the world. Therefore our world has had hundreds of heroes of greater and lesser fame, and the powers of their weapons grew more powerful alongside their legends than they could have been as part of a singular Holy Weapon."

That...that Raphtalia could understand, yet found difficult to imagine.

"So how does that work?" Kuro asked rhetorically, guessing her thoughts, "Do we have a Holy Hero of the...Chimera Shield?"

The white haired girl smiled teasingly at the undignified snort of the brunette.

"We don't have any particular Holy Weapons that are constant fixtures from legend to legend. They aren't a given that a Holy Hero simply has them and is only allowed to use that weapon like here- they're made by mortal hands, found or given by the gods, so the weapon is also subject to being broken, stolen or lost to history. But because of that we don't have the limitations of the Cardinal Weapons either, so there can be as few or as many heroes and legendary weapons around the world at once as possible," Kuro concluded.

Raphtalia stayed quiet for a long while. She didn't know how to feel about the revelation that her world's system was so…mediocre in comparison.

"I wish our world could be more like yours, to have so many heroes and legendary weapons..." the tanuki girl sighed.

She wouldn't know what to do with one, but couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to bear a weapon of legends of her own.

"Your World probably can't afford to wait for them to occur organically," Kuro replied, making Raphtalia's head snap up.

"What do you mean?"

The white haired girl sighed. "I don't know why the Cardinal Heroes have to be summoned or why your World doesn't have defense mechanisms like mine, but if the best it can do is make four Divine Constructs chock full of raw Divinity and leave it all in the hands of four people, then there must be something unimaginably serious going on," she elaborated, making the tanuki girl's stomach fill with dread when she considered all that Kuro has said.

How much danger was their world really in?

"But hey," Kuro called to her, interrupting her pessimistic thoughts, "You've got me now," she said, winking, "So maybe your World knows what it's doing after all."

Her expression was smug enough to make Raphtalia laugh.

"Then we must be doomed if you're the best the World can come up with."

"Hey!"

In the end, it did leave Raphtalia feeling more glad that they had Kuro and less concerned about how inadequate she felt in comparison.

In their bickering, she didn't realize Kuro didn't actually explain why her weapons were called 'Noble Phantasms'.