Chapter 21 / Entangled and Enlightened


No matter how much the monsters tried to catch Ren, they could never get close. The vines soared from all around him, but their attempts went fruitless. Ren would spin his sword within the palm of his hand, sawing off the vines as if they were being blended up, before backing off to leave the trail of perished plants behind.

However, the vines were adapting to his movements. They tried to sneak up behind him as a mutated plant monster coordinated an attack to distract him. For a moment, it looked as if it was finally going to grab him.

"Sir Ren! Watch out!"

Eclair cut off any chances of that from happening. She rushed over to Ren's side to slice off the approaching vines and unleashed a rapid execution of attacks. As quickly as the vines increased its assault, Eclair put them down with triple the speed.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been appreciated.

However, Ren's foot stepped on itself because he was trying to turn around and spin in the air to deflect the vines before landing. The moment Eclair came into the picture unexpectedly, he had to stop himself from accidentally hitting his ally, but it caused him to stagger in his movements.

Simply put, it made it wide open to the plant monsters in front now.

He took a few steps to the left, adapting to the improvisation and recovering his stance, but the monsters shot out their own vines to make sure Ren wasn't getting the chance to do so. He twisted his body to dodge out of the way of one of their attacks, but the momentum from his trip carried over.

Eclair, however, saved him again and rushed in to break through their attacks to deal a finishing blow to each of them. The stray ones that were further away that Eclair couldn't reach had been picked off from Itsuki from a distance. With the encounter over, Eclair waved a sign of thanks to Itsuki before hearing Ren finally collapsing over his prolonged trip.

"Damn it…" Ren grunted. He wasn't in pain, but this was slightly discouraging for himself.

"You should watch your back, Sir Ren." Eclair sheathed her sword for now, coming over to help Ren up with an extended hand. "Since these monsters all originate from a single source, expect that they'll be able to coordinate their attacks more easily like a hivemind."

"I had that handled!" Ren knocked away Eclair's hand, choosing to stand up by himself. He dusted off his clothes from the dust. "I already knew that an attack was coming from the back and I was going to move to account for it, but you jumped in to mess up my movements!"

"Sakura thinks Ren didn't have that handled though," Sakura said.

"Eclair was only trying to help out." Motoyasu added on.

"Yeah, but the help wasn't needed," Ren scoffed, returning his sword to his sheath. He glared at Eclair, looming with exasperation and annoyance. "Next time, stay out of my way."

"If that's what you want, then fine by me." Eclair's words were stern, unimpressed by Ren's response as she leered at the defeated monsters. Although Ren wasn't saying anything unreasonable, something about his tone made it sound like she was being a bother. "Your skill with the sword may be impressive, but I would ask for you to not be overconfident about it."

"There's a difference between being overconfident and knowing when knowing capabilities and I was far from the former. I already knew they were approaching me, but you suddenly got in the way and messed me up."

"My words aren't meant to offend you, nor were my actions to insult you."

"Consider all of that a waste of our time." Ren growled as he picked back up their pace into the heart of the village. "Besides, even if they did manage to somehow land a hit on me, it wouldn't do much. My levels may be scuffed compared to everyone else, but my strengthening methods ensure that I won't be taking any stray hits that would be considered as dangerous."

"It's that type of attitude that I'm trying to warn you about." Eclair tried to stop Ren, only finding a will to take a few steps before stopping in his trail. "Cardinal Heroes or not, there is such a thing as a limit that everyone must learn to play around."

Ren paused, glaring over his shoulder. "Just stay out of my way, alright? If you can't keep up with what I do, it's better if you don't try to help me at all."

"Are you insinuating my strength?" Eclair frowned.

"I'm insinuating that you can't keep up with me," Ren offhandedly dismissed. "You'll end up messing me up more often than—"

"Alright, let's stop it there!" Motoyasu clapped his hands, trying to stop the argument. Sakura used her wings to clap, trying to intimate her father in a light-hearted manner. "Let's not try and make some conflict between ourselves. We're here to help out the villagers, not to fight within ourselves."

Ren clicked his tongue again and stomped ahead of the group.

"Don't worry, Eclair. I'm sure Ren will understand what you meant well soon."

Eclair never noticed it, precisely because Ren always tried to isolate a few enemies for himself to handle as everyone else dealt with the others in their own manners, but fighting directly alongside the Sword Hero was much more insufferable than she had ever imagined.

"How do you fight alongside someone like that, Sir Motoyasu?"

"I just let him do what he wants to do," Motoyasu laughed, trying to pivot the atmosphere around. "I already know that Ren's the strongest hero out of the four of us, so I try to let him do what he wants to do in fights. We'll only be getting in his way if we try to help out in any capacity."

"Don't worry about it," Itsuki sighed. "It was the same deal in Brave Star Online. Although he was good at it, he could never work well with party members there.

"Brave Star Online?" Eclair asked. "Is that a sword style back in your home world?"

Itsuki stroked his chin, trying to conjure up how he was going to explain it. In a world without video games, it might have been difficult to grasp the concept of a virtual reality.

"It's kinda like—"

"Pretend make-believe!" Motoyasu exclaimed.

"Pretend make-believe?" It wouldn't make sense for Ren's movement to be as sharp as they were if all the experience he had back in his world were a figment of imagination. "Are you serious?"

"No, it's not!" Itsuki rolled his eyes, glancing over to the interruption. "Ren would have your head on a silver platter if he heard you say that!"

"How else would you describe it? Don't people use it for roleplaying?"

"No… At least, I don't think so…" Itsuki sighed, being much less confident in his denial, but he went on to return back to his response quickly. "Look, Brave Star Online… is something like a world that was created by people. It's managed by its creators while others can go in between the normal world and the world of Brave Star Online using special equipment."

"Humans in your world play god by creating a new world?"

"No, that's not exactly it either. Leaving out many attributes, Brave Star Online is similar to Melromarc, only that the existence in that world is merely trivial. People come in to have some fun, not to make another living or to survive there. Once all is done, they return back to the normal world."

Eclair raised her eyebrow, trying her best to understand what Itsuki was talking about.

"We don't have to worry much about fighting monsters and kingdoms and stuff like that where we're from. Fights in Brave Star Online adversely would always be for amusement and if you died there, it wasn't as if your life ended. You would simply come back as if nothing happened. It's a playground, if you want to put it in other terms. While you're inside of Brave Star Online, your real body is still dormant in the normal world. You'll have to disconnect yourself from that world in order to tend to your normal life, like going to school, heading to work, eating, sleeping, whatever life would encompass."

"Your civilization must have progressed quite far to have developed things like that. I still can't begin to grasp what you might be saying here about this Brave Star Online, I can at least tell that this is something amazing the people of your world have created. If that was able to produce abilities similar to Sir Ren's, I wouldn't mind having something like that in Melromarc."

"Ren's a bit of a special case."

Itsuki glanced over to Ren who had been gaining ground far ahead of them. Even a few stray monsters didn't make the trailing group stop at any moment due to how quickly Ren dispatched them before they got anywhere close. Whatever agitation he built up from his interaction with Eclair, he was certainly lashing it out onto the monsters in a silent manner.

"Out of all the people that have entered Brave Star Online, Ren is among the strongest. He's deemed as a powerful force by himself within that world. Being able to challenge monsters that normally take an entire party to defeat, taking on multiple squadrons who are trying to defeat him for glory, rising through tournaments as if they were nothing…"

"It's definitely different here compared to virtual reality," Motoyasu commented, "but it's easy to see that some of what he learned in Brave Star Online transferred over pretty easily. I'd say he was the one to get a grip on the situation the easiest out of all of us."

"Everything sounds complicated…"

Sakura, in the midst of Itsuki's explanation, was trying to understand it as well, only for her head to be practically spinning in confusion. A monster like her wouldn't have been able to grasp the idea that Itsuki was talking about. Motoyasu reached out to her, rubbing her head reflexively.

"It isn't something you need to worry about," he chuckled.

Itsuki sighed, "I'm just asking you to be patient with Ren. It takes a while for him to warm up to others, but he definitely knows what he's doing when it comes to a fight, so you don't need to worry about him too much."

"What the hell are you guys doing back there!?" Ren's shouting reached out to the others for them to realize that he was much further ahead than they expected. "If you guys got time to chat around like that, maybe you should keep moving forwards into the village!"

A plant monster was creeping up behind him as he called out to the others, but as Itsuki suggested, Eclair didn't really say anything. Once the vine launched itself out, Ren swung backwards to get rid of the enemy. Although she couldn't see it as ideal, Eclair could respect those wishes. To not fix it if it wasn't broken, as the saying goes.

Itsuki and Eclair went off ahead after Ren.

"When will Sakura get the fruits, Daddy? Can't Sakura just go ahead and eat them right now?"

"Soon, Sakura. We'll get you a whole cart-full of fruit for you after we're done here. We'll need to make sure everything is safe here for the villagers."

Motoyasu gave a distant gaze over to the buildings and no matter where he looked, it was all buried underneath the roots of the sprouted plants. The homes of the villagers that lived here, all taken away and partially destroyed. Even if they do reclaim this land from the villagers, they would have to spend their time rebuilding their village and even more so, potentially return back to square one. They've been depending on the Miracle Seed he gave to them for food and here, they were off to destroy it.

All Motoyasu felt like he did was cause them more problems, but they still had to move forwards. Although the monsters and vines hadn't been difficult, there were plenty of them, so it would take some time to arrive at their destination. He let out a heavy sigh before following the others.

-/IV/-

"Okay, this should be enough."

Setting the crate of weed-killers down to the nursing villagers, their eyes were ecstatic to see that the patient's lives were saved. Naofumi and Raphtalia did one more count to make sure that everyone was accounted for and then some extras, just in case there was any need for them.

"Apply these weed-killers onto the affected areas before giving them medicine. That way, the medicine will have a better effect."

"Thank you so much! We'll distribute them as quickly as possible!"

One of the villagers tried to apply them as directed by Naofumi, but the villager frowned to see that the weed-killer hadn't been working as Naofumi intended.

"Is this the right one?"

"It should be." Naofumi received the bottle to check it out. "I made all of them the same as the one I used on the first patient and those two adventurers. This shouldn't be any different."

"The medicine appears to have some effect, but I'm afraid it won't last for long if the infection is still present in this form."

Naofumi knelt down to the patient, curious as to why it didn't work. The villager was worried that they had done something wrong during the application, but from what Naofumi could tell, it shouldn't have been difficult to simply pour the weed-killer onto the required area.

It took out one of the extra ones and tried to replicate the motions that the villager had done, but to his surprise, the weed-killer started to be effective as quickly as before. His genuine flinch of surprise didn't go unnoticed by the villagers of Lerno as they started murmuring amongst themselves.

"This man must truly be a saint!"

"If the infection only falters to his command like this…!"

"This is incredible!"

Naofumi felt like there was something else at play here.

He tried to teach Raphtalia how to make the weed-killer earlier, but no matter how she did it exactly as Naofumi instructed, it wouldn't result in a quality that mirrored his own. She didn't do anything wrong from what Naofumi could see, but she mentioned that her compounding skill may have been lacking, thus unable to reproduce items to Naofumi's level.

Was there perhaps a skill level for applying weed-killer too? Or even medicine in general?

Naofumi wasn't sure of it, but it was a thought to stir on for later.

For now though, the answer was clear for him to do, even if it might take a while.

Naofumi stood up, moving over to the next patient and having Raphtalia bring the next set of medical items for him. The villagers watched in awe as one by one, Naofumi restored the patients back to normal. The atmosphere was slowly starting to have its morale boosted and while none of the patients were able to get up immediately, some of them managed to wake up mere moments after the medicine was administered to them.

It took just as long, if not longer, to help the villagers as it did to create the weed-killer and Naofumi found himself to be a bit tired out from all of it.

"Master Naofumi. Here's some water."

Raphtalia handed him one of the canteens from the cart, prompting him to take it. He must have drank about half of it before getting a breath of relief out of him. "Thanks, Raphtalia."

Raphtalia chuckled. "I can clean up the cart for you to rest a bit."

He was about to take Raphtalia up on her offer when the village chief came over with one of the villagers, looking slightly distressed. They weren't coming to talk to him, but Naofumi ended up raising his voice to get their attention.

"Hey, excuse me? Is there something wrong?"

"Have you seen my son?" the woman asked. "He's gone missing and I'm worried about him."

"I've been stationed here ever since…"

As Naofumi trailed off, not being able to tell how long he was here for, Raphtalia stepped in to help out. "Almost an hour ago, but we haven't seen any children roaming around by themselves."

"The children had been advised not to come here by their parents, so it would be almost ridiculous to have you notice any of them," the village chief commented. "If you did, that would mean somebody would be in trouble."

"If that's the case, then why—?"

"Because we've checked everywhere else." Unintentionally interrupting Raphtalia, the mother whimpered. "It's not like my son to wander off like this without letting me know."

"How long ago was this?"

"We noticed around thirty minutes ago, but he could have been gone an hour ago. We used the better part of the time to search for my son, but nothing's coming up. Lerno's emergency camp isn't that big to begin with, so if no one was able to find him—"

"Hey! You're the one asking around for their son, right?"

One of the adventurers from before came by, running down with some light breaths to spare. He was still limping from his injuries, but it looked as if he tried to cover distance as fast as he could. "Some of my buddies said they saw someone of that description about less than an hour ago, but since they were weak, they couldn't call out to him and get his attention."

"Calling out to the kid?"

"Yeah, because it looked as if the kid was heading into the village."

"Wh-why would he be doing such a thing!?" The mother looked like she were about to faint from the news. It weren't for the chief, she would have collapsed. "I have to go find him!"

"It's dangerous there, so I can't allow you to go in," the chief said, shaking his head. "You've only recently recovered from the effects of the famine. You were bedridden for some time, weren't you? So much so that your son had to be the one to go out and receive the emergency rations in your stead?"

"I know that, but I can't leave my son!"

"If it was around an hour ago, it might be possible that he was following my friends," Naofumi realized. "I'd say that maybe they'll be able to cross paths with him and bring him back, but considering how they haven't returned yet, I don't think they noticed that they were being followed by your son."

He knew he needed to be taking his break, but with something like this, he didn't think he had much of a choice. The best way to relay information here was to personally deliver it. In the meanwhile, Raphtalia had been glancing at his expression.

Even though he was trying to hide his thoughts, Naofumi wasn't doing a good job at doing so.

"Master Naofumi. Are you thinking about heading out?"

"Wh-what? How did you know I was considering—"

"It's written all over your face. And, uhm, I think I know you well enough to predict what you want to do after hearing their problems."

"Really now?" Naofumi scratched the back of his neck. "The villagers aren't in a rush to get the weed-killers and medicine, so I can still finish the rest before the end of the day easily. If no one else can reach the others, that'll leave it to us to try and do it for ourselves."

Raphtalia grabbed her sword from the cart.

"Just make sure you aren't pushing yourself, Master Naofumi."

"You worry a bit too much."

"I wonder who I got it from," Raphtalia slightly smiled.

Naofumi turned back to the mother.

"Alright, we'll be heading out shortly to help find your son."

"Thank you, kind travelers!"

Naofumi rolled his shoulders, still feeling sluggish, but he pushed through it. The concerns of the lost kid overtook his tiredness.

-/IV/-

There had been something growing from the farmlands that Motoyasu guided them to, but the seed's stem hadn't been there. They had to begin to widen their search a little bit, hacking and slashing through the various monsters. It seemed as if some of the buildings looked more covered in vines towards a specific direction, so the group decided to follow the path over to the town square.

A giant tree, as big as the buildings, had been stationed in the middle, but its trunk hadn't been made out of bark. Instead, it was completely created by intertwining pieces of vines. They were around a corner when they first noticed the structure, but before they had the sense to simply walk up to investigate it, Ren held out his hand to stop them.

Something was moving unnaturally and as that "something" revealed itself, it made most of them get shivers down their spine. Within the center of the vine tree, an eye bulged outwards as if it detected a disturbance in its area, only for it to close its supposed eyelid and return back to a seemingly normal state.

"What the actual hell was that!?"

Itsuki was the first to react vocally.

"It's like something that got ripped out of a horror game!"

"And it's reallyyy big…"

"Yes, we can see that too." Seeing how dismissive Ren was, Sakura pouted a bit, walking a bit back to her father as Ren's eyes were glued to the vine tree. "That's probably our target. If we can kill that, we might have a chance to stop the rest of the monsters."

"It won't be too difficult to clean up the smaller monsters, but the question is as to how tough this main body will be." Eclair pondered aloud.

"At least it's obvious what the weakness is," Motoyasu pointed out. "It has to be that eye that popped out for a brief moment, right?"

"I was just thinking about cutting down the entire tree with a few skills," Ren debated. "If I separate the main body from its roots, it's going to shrivel up and die."

"Does this mean you'll be trying to approach this problem yourself?" Eclair asked, slightly passive-aggressively. "You won't be needing our help, right?"

Ren swung down his sword, walking around the corner once he got a better grip of the situation here. With a twirl of his blade, he ran forwards with an air of aloof confidence to him.

"Obviously! I'll end this quickly!"

Ren knew that there was still a considerable distance he would have to cover to get an ideal attack off, but when he stepped forwards, the mutated tree glanced over towards Ren's direction. Almost immediately, vines from all around pointed over to the intruder and flung themselves to capture him.

"Are you sure this is the right approach to handle this, Sir Itsuki?"

"Don't worry," Itsuki sighed, "I've got a back-up plan. Sakura, want to help out a bit?"

"Okayyy…!"

However, Ren's movements were too much for the vines to handle. He kept slipping by their aim, slashing through those he couldn't dodge easily, while keeping up his momentum towards the target. As he got closer, the vines started getting more aggressive, breaking the ground when they missed their attempt, but there wasn't a single misstep coming from the hero.

"Quick and easy!" His sword ignited in a brillant sword as he leapt into the air to swing his skill right into the trunk. "[Severing Slash]!"

With one strike, Ren ripped through the trunk without any problems, soaring right by to land on his feet perfectly. He slid to a halt as he looked back to the falling tree.

"And that's how you handle—huh?"

However, it wasn't falling. Ren looked back at the place where it sliced through it, knowing that his attack did connect as he intended it to, but the vines had grown back to connect up with the roots. As if it was fusing back up together with regenerative powers, it didn't take long for the vine tree to return back to how it looked seconds prior.

More vines flung themselves over to Ren's position, forcing him to keep moving as he tried to do the same thing again. While it felt tougher to approach it again, Ren managed to slip on by. Since [Severing Slash] was on cooldown, he approached with a blade flickering itself ablaze.

"[Flame Sword]!"

With a lunging thrust, the vines burned as his attack connected, sinking into the center of the tree trunk, but he was surprised to see that it was his flames that ended up conceding first. The flames weren't even spreading as he had hoped, so he tried to pull his sword out to retreat, only to see that the vines regenerated around it.

"Seriously?"

He tugged on the sword, trying to get it out, but he was forced into another course of action when the vines struck first.

"[Change Sword]!"

Using the unlocked skill from the [Chimera Viper Sword], he quickly swapped over to the [Ironclad Sword], a weapon he copied that was oriented more to its defensive measures. The sudden increase of the blade's size had caused the vines to release his sword.

However, a solid hit against his chest landed and sent him flying, but with the additional stats he applied onto the blade, he was able to flip himself in the air and land on his feet. He barely felt a thing, but the vines weren't finished yet. He jumped into the air to dodge, but he noticed how the tree's eye had been watching him carefully.

He summoned a transparent blue sword above his shoulder and sent it forwards.

"[Air Strike Sword]!"

The skill connected, echoing the sound of a gushing water leaking as the eye popped from the impact. It wasn't a pretty sight, but Ren noticed that the vines were still aiming for his airborne body. He turned to block some of the attacks, but he didn't have many aerial options.

He was quickly struck down by the vines, landing right into the ground. It didn't hurt too much, giving himself a chance to catch himself back on his feet. The mutated plant was relentless like a mindless hunter, still firing off its vines.

Switching his sword back over to an offensive one, Ren was prepared to slice them up into pieces before Sakura suddenly jumped into the fray, kicking away the vines from its target. He was a bit surprised that she leapt in like that, but he didn't expect Sakura to run up to him and pick him by the back of his collar with her beak before running back to where he started.

"H-Hey, wait! What are you doing, you dumb bird!?"

As they approached back to the original position, he could hear Itsuki's voice. It sounded as if he was saying some incantation, but it didn't make sense. He didn't know any magic while skills didn't need any chanting to cast them in the first place. What exactly was he—?

"—and leave nothing behind except dust! [Tempest Arrow]! Full Charge! AND FIRE!"

"Did he make up an incantation for a skill…?"

The surrounding roared with a thunderous clap of Itsuki's dramatic arrow and the skill flew right into the vine tree's eye, basically disintegrating everything that was in its way. It left a hole where the arrow passed through, causing the plant to collapse slightly on itself. Ren glanced back, being a bit in disbelief, until Sakura dropped him on his face to bring him out of it.

"Sakura isn't dumb! Hmmph!"

Itsuki shrugged, having a bit of a smug smirk on his face as he hung himself over his childhood friend. "Quick and easy, right?"

"Shut up already…"

"Get yourself up."

Ren didn't even bother to pull himself up, causing Itsuki to help him out in his place. He tried to avert his gaze from Eclair. Her attention, however, was pulled over to the main matter at hand though, not paying anymore attention to Ren's rashful rushdown.

"I didn't realize Sir Itsuki had something that powerful in his skills." Eclair looked over at his bow, the harbinger of the attack. "Though, I do fear that it might have brought a lot of attention to ourselves and the villagers might be asking questions when we get back…"

"We'll just blame it on stray thunder."

"There's no gray storm clouds in sight."

"Then we can just blame it on the mutated plant boss here. Say that one of its attacks produced the sound and all will be well. It's not like anyone will be able to double-check, now that it's dead." Itsuki watched the plant's corpse twitch to a stop. "I guess anything would go down if it got hit with—"

"Whoa…"

An innocent voice emerged from the shadows of a building, as if he was trying to hide himself , but his amazement couldn't be contained for any longer. He staggered outwards, trying to get a better look at the work Itsuki's [Tempest Arrow] had unleashed onto the enemy and he glanced over with bright eyes.

"A child?" Eclair gasped. "What's a child doing here?"

Ren sighed, as if it became more of a bother. "I say Motoyasu and Sakura bring him back to the camp while we start looting some of these monsters."

"That's a pretty good idea. I'll make sure he gets back safely."

As Motoyasu nodded and took a first step towards the child, he widened his eyes. Something about the kid looked familiar to him, but that rush of familiarity was replaced with a pressing concern.

In the shadows following the child, the vines had been returning and it seeked out its nearest prey.

"Damn it! Watch out, kid!"

He ran as fast as he could, all while the child was clueless what was going on until he slowly looked behind him. With a vine about to lunge right at him, Motoyasu knew he wasn't going to make it in time. With his skill, he summoned a transparent red spear over his shoulder.

"[Air Strike Spear]!"

It ripped right through the vines. Supporting arrows from Itsuki flew over his shoulders to assist in fending them off. It bought Motoyasu enough time to reach the child and grab him safely. Sakura, being fast on her feet, rushed over in no time for Motoyasu to put the child over onto her back, but he felt something rumbling in the ground underneath his feet. It caused him to flinch as the underground roots leapt up to attack Motoyasu in retaliation.

It wasn't a clean dodge, but it didn't hurt. The attack managed to knock itself against his head and he countered by cutting the roots off as fast as he could before leaping onto Sakura's back with the kid.

He could hear the kid's voice being very quiet.

"H-huh? Wait, you're—"

Suddenly, Motoyasu started to hear the ground grumbling around the area. When he looked over to the others, he saw the ground around them had been cracking themselves. Plant monsters were climbing out. The fruits on the vines started to grow bigger, dropping down onto the ground and exposing themselves as monsters as well.

It didn't scare Ren, Itsuki, and Eclair, but the hole that Itsuki caused with his [Tempest Arrow] started to refill itself with growing vines and before they knew it, the vine tree had been restored to its original state, eye and all.

It was still alive.

"Oh, come on!" Itsuki angrily stomped the ground, pouting a bit. "That's cheating!"

"Sakura thinks it's even more mad…"

"Sir Motoyasu!" Eclair called out to him as he held the boy properly upwards between him and Sakura. "Please bring that child back to the settlement! Make sure he gets back safely!"

"Already on it! We'll come back as soon as we can!"

"Wait, Motoyasu! Hold up! Don't you realize that your mask—!?"

Motoyasu had already departed before Ren managed to finish. The vines tried to stop Sakura, but they were far too slow, just like his words to the wind. Swearing under his breath, he clicked his tongue as he looked over to where Motoyasu was standing with Sakura.

On the ground, his mask was lying down there from when the roots managed to hit his head. Itsuki and Eclair looked over, starting to see the problem.

"Crap, this isn't going to play out well," Itsuki sweated.

Eclair's blade held itself outwards. "It doesn't matter right now. That simply means that we'll have to defeat this mutated plant before we return. The worst case would be that we won't be able to stay around in order to subjugate this abomination, so we should do our best here."

"Well, we went for the trunk and the giant eye." Itsuki gulped, feeling more pressured by the incoming situation on their shoulders rather than the fight at hand. "Do you, uh, have any other suggestions for beating this monster?"

"I wish I could answer that."

"Well, we'll simply have to kill over and over again until it goes down. There has to be a limit to how much it can regenerate, right?"

Ren rushed forwards, slaughtering the monsters with ease, prompting the others to cover the other sides. Though, his concern of Motoyasu's current appearance was still at the top of his mind. He was tempted to turn back to try to stop him, but he could never catch up to Sakura at that rate.

He could only hope that Naofumi and Raphtalia could help ease the situation since they were seen as saviors against the infection happening to them. Knowing Naofumi, he'll find a way to ease the problem—

"Here you guys were!"

Ren froze. "Please tell me I'm hearing things."

As Ren cut down one of the monsters, he turned to look where the voice had been coming from. From another direction, Naofumi and Raphtalia emerged from the streets, but once they saw what they were up against, Naofumi reactively brought up his shield as Raphtalia unsheathed her sword.

"Why are you two here!?"

Naofumi and Raphtalia made their way over towards Ren, Itsuki and Eclair, taking care of the monsters in the way. Naofumi showed no problems against them, mostly because their attacks proved meaningless to his defense, while Raphtalia sliced them up whenever they were bounced back.

"We originally intended to tell you about a lost child, but if you found the source of the plant mutations, then we'll probably lend a quick hand here!"

"A lost child? The one Motoyasu and Sakura took off to the settlement?"

"Oh, you guys seriously already found him? That's one load off our—"

"But he dropped his damn mask and he's returning to the villagers! And knowing him, he's not going to realize until one of the villagers points it out and by then, it'll already be too late!"

"Then I'll have to—" Vines slammed down where Ren and Naofumi were, causing them to jump out of the way. Raphtalia followed the attack, striking down on the vine to disable it. "As I was saying, we'll have to immediately return over to—"

Naofumi noticed a few vines coming from the side and he casted [Air Strike Shield] to barely stop their attacks where they were. Raphtalia used the opportunity to cut them all down.

"They're fast! Much faster than the vines we were dealing with when we were moving in!"

"Yeah, uh, I think we might have triggered the second phase."

"I guess that's one way to put it."

"Unless you can outrun them like Sakura, I don't think this plant monster is going to be letting us leave so easily. I think our only option is to defeat this monster, but the problem is that it keeps regenerating."

Naofumi glanced over to the boss for a brief moment while he held off a few monsters.

"Have you tried weed-killer?"

"Didn't the guy say that weed-killer hasn't been working?"

"The weed-killer I was making seemed to be effective on the parasitic infection back in the settlement, but only when I used it. So while arriving here, I tried it out on some of the monsters that we crossed with and despite what they said, it seemed to be effective as well."

Ren shrugged, readying his sword. "Better than nothing, I guess."

-/IV/-

Motoyasu arrived back in the settlement in no time. With Sakura running the entire way, it made the trek less time-consuming. Since they were carefully investigating the area, it was to be granted.

He noticed the village chief and a villager standing on the outskirts of the settlement. They must have been concerned about something, but if anyone knew anything about a missing child, it would have been the village chief. He didn't want to speak up, just in case he recognized his voice, so Motoyasu coughed a bit to try and put on a deeper tone.

Sakura stopped as he requested before the village chief, but before he asked about, the child hopped off already into the arms of his mother. It seemed like his guess was right, so there wasn't even a need to speak up. He tried to keep himself as silent as possible, waiting for the chief and the mother to thank him for him to gesture back as a response, but they were merely staring at him with widened eyes.

"Mommy! Did you see that? The Spear Hero saved me!"

"The Spear Hero…?" The mother casted out her bewilderment. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, he was the person that helped give me the rations to bring home for you!"

The village chief gulped, unsure what to say.

"Yes, we… we have noticed…"

"Huh? The Spear… Hero…? I-I'm not the…"

Motoyasu instinctively responded without changing his pitch, slapping his hand onto his mouth to try and alleviate that suspicion, but as his hand brushed across his face, he noticed that it felt a bit lighter. Something was missing and his fingers slowly crawled up to touch his mask.

Or rather, the lack-there-of.

"Oh. Oh, shit." With sweat dripping down his forehead, he held Sakura's reines and tugged her back towards the village. "Sakura, let's get out of here! Quickly!"

"Okayyy…!"

Without breaking a sweat, Sakura rushed off as Motoyasu demanded, leaving the village chief and the mother to speculate what just happened here. That bird belonged to the traveling group that set out to help them out, saving them from the parasitic infestation and seeing if they could help out by taking care of their mutation problem in the village.

So if the Spear Hero had been riding that monster, then…

-/IV/-

"Get me closer!"

"On it!"

Itsuki fired a barrage of arrows, preventing the vines from getting in the way as Raphtalia and Ren sliced open a path for Naofumi. He slammed an [Air Strike Shield] to his side, bouncing a few vines off as he pulled out the weed-killer. Itsuki suggested that they use it on the eye.

However, a stray root managed to burst out of the ground to trip Naofumi over. He could have dodged it, but his fatigue from helping the villagers out was starting to catch up to him. His hand instinctively threw the weed-killer as he fell forwards, but before he could get dragged off, Raphtalia cut off the roots. He watched as the weed-killer was falling to the ground and as he was thinking of pulling out another one, Eclair had quickly swooped in to snag it.

The boss' attention pivoted all onto her. Unfortunately for it, Eclair was too fast on her feet, dodging all the attacks without too much effort and even closed the gap in the meanwhile. She bent her legs and leapt upwards, thrusting forwards next to the eye to bury her sword into the vines. As she popped open the bottle, the vines returned to strike her back, but Ren threw himself forwards to eliminate them.

With a grunt, he leered over to Eclair as he flew right past her.

"Hey! Consider us even now!"

Eclair smirked, choosing not to respond any further than that. At the very least, he knew how to show appreciation, even if it was in his own special way.

Without any further hesitation, she dumped the entirety of the weed-killer onto the eye, causing it to shake violently. The tree's grip on her blade loosened, allowing her to kick herself off back to the ground as Ren landed on the other side. They turned to watch the eye pop once again, showing more of a reaction to falling, but something didn't sit right with Eclair.

It still looked like it was feigning defeat when Itsuki attacked it with [Tempest Arrow].

"I don't think this was enough!"

"Wait! Let me try it!"

With all movement being stalled, Naofumi quickly ran forwards and stopped right by the base of the vine tree. There was no way he could get to where Eclair jumped to, so he merely poured a weed-killer onto any surface it could get to. Once he did, changes started to happen immediately.

The plant started screaming, a sound that hadn't been heard yet. Naofumi covered his ears, as did everyone else nearby as the vines started to unravel themselves, spiraling out of control.

Naofumi backed off, noticing that the eye was turning brown. The vines followed in its discolouration and before he knew it, the entire boss dried up alongside any of the roaming monsters around them. Seeds bursted out and scattered onto the ground as a final cry shrieked into the air and the vines collapsed onto the ground.

"Has it been defeated?" Raphtalia asked.

"I don't think it's going to recover from that," Ren responded. He glanced around to notice that even the vines covering the buildings had dried up as well. "I'd say it's dead for good."

"Having the solution be weed-killer being applied to a random part of the boss seems a bit, I don't know, anti-climatic?" Itsuki shrugged, sighing a bit. "I guess whatever gets the job done, but really now..."

Naofumi pondered, glancing at the drops. "Still though, I don't think we should be leaving those seeds around. They might just sprout back up, given some time and cause more problems here."

They all took the time to clean up, picking up the seeds, but the heroes held another agenda to them. Of course, when everything was dealt with, it became the opportunity to absorb some of the dropped materials to gain new weapon forms.

As Naofumi worked, he swept up the different wilted plants into his shield.

That included things like the [Plantriwe Shield] and the [Mandragora Shield], but when he picked up some parts from the boss they defeated, Naofumi's eyes narrowed on its bypassing information.

[Bio-Plant Shield + 0] 0/40 C
(Equip Bonus Skill) : [Plant Reform]
(Special Effect) : [Hook]

"[Plant Reform]?"

Being a bit interested in the skill, intuition led him to use it upon one of the seeds. As it slowly floated within the palm of his hand, a stray menu appeared before him. It contained an assortment of abilities that the seed contained, ranging from propagation to vitality, from growth to even mutation. Numbers were assigned to each other as Naofumi carefully studied them, noticing how most of the abilities had been distributed evenly, let alone immunity and intelligence.

However, there was an option to re-allocate these stats.

The only reason Motoyasu brought the Miracle Seed into the village was to stop the famine from hurting anymore villagers. Motoyasu wouldn't have known that its mutation ability had been equal with the others, but if the group left the village as it was right now, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine that they would be right back to square one.

An idea started to swirl into his head.

"Naofumi! Guys! Bad news!"

As he grabbed the seed out of the air, he turned to see Motoyasu approaching the site quickly on Sakura. He had a troubled expression, giving the group a good guess as to what happened when he arrived back to escort the child.

"We could guess what happened," Ren groaned. "It's a good thing that we're all finished here. We won't be getting more money out of them, but we got enough. You've already given the medicine to them, Naofumi?"

"Yeah, we've upheld our end of the deal."

Ren crossed his arms. "So we'll have to immediately ditch this village and start heading out—"

"What about Sakura's cart!?" the young filolial cried out, probably with the most energy she had shown her entire life. "Sakura doesn't want to leave it!"

"We can get you another cart!"

"No! Sakura wants that cart!"

"All carts are the same!" Ren growled.

"They're not the same…! Daddy helped pick that one out for Sakura! That cart is Sakura's cart and Sakura wants it back!"

"Motoyasu," Ren groaned, "say something already…"

Motoyasu saw how much her adopted daughter wanted it badly, but it meant that they would have to return to face the villagers who despised him for destroying their homes. He simply wanted to follow through with Ren's idea, but he didn't want to make Sakura sad over something he caused.

Holding onto Sakura's reines tightly, Motoyasu took a deep breath.

"We'll go back to get the cart."

"Yay…!"

Sakura hummed happily, nudging her head towards Motoyasu, as Ren facepalmed behind them.

"Are you sure about that?" Itsuki asked.

"Yeah. I'm sure. Besides, I promised Sakura that she would get a cart-load of fruits and we can't exactly have a cart-load of fruits without a cart."

"Maybe we can use this opportunity to clear things up," Raphtalia said. "Since Mister Motoyasu didn't mean things to end up like that, perhaps the villagers will forgive him when they find out we've dealt with the problem already?"

"Perhaps if we didn't already extort them from their money," Eclair sighed, silently leering at Ren. "It makes the earnest position slightly difficult to sell here."

"If Motoyasu is going to confront them, we might as well get this over with as quickly as possible." Ren walked off, ignoring Eclair's comment. "We can leave the rest of the clean-up to the villagers if they really want to run us out."

"What? We saved them from the plant mutation, right!?" Itsuki dynamically pointed over to the fallen vines. "Shouldn't they be somewhat grateful!?"

"You don't know how people will act."

Heading back to the settlement's direction, Naofumi's heart felt uneasy for Motoyasu. Since they were basically worshiping Naofumi for the medical help he provided to him, he was prepared to step in. He hoped it wasn't needed.

-/IV/-

As they arrived back at Lerno's settlement, Motoyasu could see that there was a bit of a commotion going around. He was prepared to take the worst of what they could say, but all the villagers merely stared as they walked past. From the look of their eyes, they already recognized them, but Motoyasu didn't look too much at them out of fear. He didn't want to see their anger, their trauma, or their despair.

However, Sakura nudged at him with her beak.

"It looks like somebody is stopping us, Daddy…"

The village chief had stood in their way. Beside him, there were a few villagers, but the best Motoyasu could do was look at their feet.

All his recent memories here have been apologies. Apologies for messing up. Apologies for making things harder when it really shouldn't have been difficult in the first place. He caused trouble for his friends by his own decisions and now, he caused trouble for these villagers as well.

"I'm… I'm—"

"I'm happy to see everyone is alright." The tone of the village chief had thrown him off guard. It felt too content for it to match with what Motoyasu had expected. "I was surprised when you suddenly ran off like that."

Motoyasu was left speechless, only able to stutter.

"Has the mutation problem been resolved?" the chief asked.

"It has," Eclair nodded. "We've successfully eliminated the source of the mutations. There won't be any more problems in returning back to the village safely."

From the moment that Eclair finished her debriefing announcement, cheers started to surround Motoyasu. He widened his eyes and started looking around his surroundings for the first time. It was nothing like he had imagined. All the villagers were happy, celebrating that they could finally return back to their homes, even if it was somewhat covered by vines and destroyed a little.

Even then, perhaps they didn't realize he was the Spear Hero. He kept telling himself lies like that before his eyes settled on the village chief. With a gentle smile and soft nodding, he was showing gratitude rather than agitation. No forms of negativity sprouted from anyone he could find; the only negativity he could feel was the one that he was giving to himself.

"I… I don't…" Motoyasu stammered, stepping forwards to the chief. "Don't you remember who I am? I'm the Spear Hero!? The guy who caused all of this to happen!"

"It may have been true that we were angered by what disaster you have brought upon us, but that does not change what your company, yourself included, have done for us. The Miracle Seed may have destroyed our village, but for the few weeks prior, everyone had been fed just as you requested. And even as the mutations started occurring, we've made sure that people wouldn't go hungry for a while by stocking up the food before things blew out of proportion."

"And when we heard about the rumors from the capital," one of the villagers explained, "of course, many of us feared that we had been duped by someone disguising themselves as the Spear Hero, being an evil entity instead, but the village chief never believed that one bit. Even though you were misinformed about the Miracle Seed, he believed you had good intentions."

"We'll make sure everyone will get the message eventually, but perhaps we don't need to," another villager said. " Not only have you saved our people from their infections, but you've given us our home back. And we still have a very good supply of food left."

"Your time is limited when it comes to that stock," Ren responded, "so you should figure something out before you run out."

"Of course," the chief nodded. "Hopefully, we'll be able to resolve something ourselves."

"Wait, this doesn't make sense!" Motoyasu suddenly stomped the ground. "I should be despised!"

"Given what you have done now, no one can say that your actions held ill-will to them," the chief responded. "You've returned to us once you've heard about the situation and did your best to resolve it."

"But I…!"

"Look around you, Spear Hero."

Motoyasu did so once again, seeing how the villagers were going off to prepare for their returns immediately, but for those who he had made eye contact with, they had sent their energetic waves. Their eyes said that they knew he was the Spear Hero, but they were still more than happy to celebrate his reappearance here.

"It seems like the only person that despises you is yourself. You feel as if you've failed somewhere along the way and you can't ever be redeemed from those actions, but it takes some goodwill and actions, things that you've demonstrated here, to be forgiven."

He knew that. He already knew that. When he was apologizing to Ren, Itsuki and Naofumi for putting them into this fugitive situation in the first place, that was something he swore to do better for them in order to climb back up to being the heroes that they deserved to be.

And yet, his own words never truly sunk in before. He thought he had understood, but he was far from that assumption. It was seeing how everyone around him had been happy while he was still beating himself up that Motoyasu finally realized what was going on here.

"Find the heart to forgive yourself, Spear Hero. No one else will do that for you."

Motoyasu slowly glanced behind him to see all his friends supporting him from behind. Holding his arm tightly, a bitter smile turned into a soft laughter as his guilt started to finally fade away from his shoulders. He knew he wasn't a perfect person and there wasn't going to be a way to fix everything that he had caused, but if he went on to do his best to remedy everything—

—would that be enough to find forgiveness for himself?

"You're more than welcome to stay in our village for the night. You've saved us from the famine, and the plant mutations."

"Can Sakura have some fruit now?" Sakura asked suddenly, pulling a bit on her father's cape. "Sakura is hungry alreadyyy…"

"You know, I've been wondering something," one of the villagers said, turning to his neighbor, "but I'm not the only one going crazy and hearing that a filolial is speaking, right?"

"I was honestly trying to ignore it because it's too abnormal for me to understand."

"Wait, so that thing is talking after all!?"

Sakura pouted. "I'm not a thinggg. I'm Sakuraaa."

"And she forgets that we told her not to speak." Ren grumbled under his voice. "Stupid bird…"

Raphtalia awkwardly laughed, being the only person that heard him.

"If your filolial has such an appetite that it has started to speak," the chief chuckled, making a joke, "then we have more than plenty to provide to her. It's the least we can do for what you've done."

"We can update you, as the village chief, on the rest of the situation," Eclair said. "There is still information we'll need to relay, mostly regarding the aftermath. Will you need a report to be filled out?"

"No need for that," the chief said, shaking his head. "For these circumstances, perhaps it's better if it was off the table if it concerned the Cardinal Heroes on fugitive matters to the country. Though now, I know that all of those rumors are rubbish."

The chief nodded to the idle villagers as the tension in Motoyasu's shoulders lessened.

"Bring them over to a place to rest up. They deserve it."

-/IV/-

The next day, things were already looking cleaner than before inside Lerno's town square.

The group came around to check on things after they woke up, but Naofumi lagged behind everyone else with the seed he was holding from yesterday. There was more to the seed than what [Plant Reform] allowed him to perceive, but he was required to obtain the equip bonus skill from the [Mandragora Shield] which provided him [Plant Analysis].

His intuition paid off in the end, allowing him to see that there was actually another ability hiding underneath that skill. Alongside the base abilities, there was a special ability that the seed had, being called [Mutation Range Expansion]. He checked another one to see it was the same deal, so he could guess that it was this particular ability that induced the problems caused here.

[Plant Reform] had another function to it. With the skill, he was able to act on the idea that got stirred up from yesterday. Eventually, the villagers would suffer underneath the effects of the famine, no matter how good their current supply is. It was simply a matter of time, so Naofumi didn't want to leave them hanging around like that.

He was able to reduce all of the points to the seed and then relocate them to the abilities that he wanted to focus on. He made sure that mutation and intelligence were as low as they could be while focusing the majority of the points into production, growth, and a bit of vitality. He lowered immunity a bit too, allowing the villagers to be able to use weed-killers on it if something were to occur once again, but he kept in mind that the plant needed to resist diseases to stay healthy.

As for the special ability, he eliminated [Mutation Range Expansion] and replaced it with something else called [Quality Improvement]. Although that meant the seed would not produce a variety of fruits and vegetables like before, the quality of what it could produce would be great.

He wanted to test it out, but with the villagers still cleaning up the mess in their village as a potential audience, he decided to give someone else the honors. Nudging Motoyasu as he was walking with Sakura, he handed Motoyasu the seed.

"Huh? What's this?"

"It was one of the seeds that the mutated plant spat out, but I made some changes to it that might prove to be more effective for what the village needs. Don't worry, I think I was able to deal with the mutation problem, so they won't have any additional problems."

"Then why are you giving it to me?"

"I want you to plant it."

"Me!?"

"Yeah. Plant it where you think it should be."

Motoyasu took the item off Naofumi's hand and stared at it for a bit. It was this thought that caused all of this, alongside his misunderstanding of how it functioned, but since Naofumi said it was okay, he trusted that the confirmation was more than enough to give it one more try.

With that in mind, he already had an idea of where to plant it.

Slipping away from the others, Motoyasu, along with Naofumi and Sakura, headed over to the fields where the first Miracle Seed had been planted. Coincidentally enough, the village chief had been there to check up on the soil alongside the other villagers when they approached. He didn't look too glad to see that the soil had been in bad shape for farming as before, but he kept a spirited attitude when he noticed the pair of heroes were approaching.

"What do you have there?"

"It's…" Motoyasu struggled to explain, but he took a deep breath. He held it out for the chief to see. "It's one of the seeds that was dropped by the plant."

"You can leave that with the other seeds we picked up. We are to dispose of them to make sure they won't be causing any further problems."

"No, this one's different." Naofumi stepped up to explain a bit. "I tinkered a bit with the seed's settings and discovered why it spiraled out of control. I readjusted everything, such that it's currently a safer version of what it was before. The only problem is that it will only produce one type of fruit, but as long as you're alright with that, the famine won't be returning anytime soon."

"Is that right?" Motoyasu handed the chief the seed, just as before, but a slow laughter emerged from the man. "I'll take you on your word for it. Shall we see this in action?"

The village chief walked up to the fields and planted the seed into the ground. When he backed up, it immediately sprouted up. However, Motoyasu could see that it was smaller than what had originally shown up here with the Miracle Seed. Naofumi gave weed-killer to the chief to test its control and it was reduced back to a seed in a few drops.

"You folks truly are saints, aren't you?"

The village chief was glad the seeds were in a stable condition, asking if they could fix the other seeds as well. Being the nice person Naofumi had been, he'd accepted the job and they went on their way back to the village to meet up with the others.

Motoyasu stopped before leaving the fields to gaze upon the plant that the seed grew into. He wasn't sure why, but he could feel himself choking up with emotions to watch them celebrate. He didn't want to tear up, but Naofumi bumped him on the shoulders with a slight smile on him.

"Remember what I said, Motoyasu?"

"Hmm…?"

"You don't have to deal with your problems by yourself. We're here for you and if you needed any further proof than this village, I'd call you ridiculous."

Motoyasu ended up laughing, as Sakura tugged on his cape.

"You're really happy, Daddy…"

"Y-Yeah, I guess I am."

"That means I'm happy too…" Sakura smiled as well. "I like it when you're happy…"

Naofumi chuckled. "Now that we're done here, shall we head back? I'm sure the others are confused as to where we slipped off to."

Motoyasu was always worried about making others satisfied, he never stopped to figure out what made himself happy to begin with. That was why, under all odds, he would try and make sure the situation would end well for everyone, but he had to make time for himself, his own desires, and his own happiness.

"Then I'll try to be happy, as much as I can."

Hugging Sakura in her filolial form softly, he smiled.

"Not just for everyone's sake, but for my own as well."


[SKIT 091 : Lerno II]

[Itsuki] : "This looks like a jungle the deeper we head in."
[Sakura] : "The fruits were still edible, but the vines themselves taste weird."
[Itsuki] : "Wh-when did you—!?"
[Itsuki] : "No, wait! How did you—!?"
[Eclair] : "It's still unbelievable that a single seed was able to cause this much destruction."
[Eclair] : "It may take the same amount of effort for the villagers of Lerno to rebuild their homes like the villagers of Riyute."
[Eclair] : "So far, I've never even heard about anything that came close to such destructive potential in such small sizes."
[Ren] : "No use pondering about it now. I'm sure Motoyasu wouldn't want to hear any further than that."
[Motoyasu] : "..."
[Sakura] : "Daddy...?"
[Eclair] : "O-oh, I... I didn't mean to..."
[Ren] : "Let's just deal with the mutations already before we start moping around."

[SKIT 092 : Special Partner]

[Motoyasu] : "You know, the only person that I've seen work well with Ren is Itsuki."
[Eclair] : "Is that right? That's interesting to hear. Is there a particular reason?"
[Eclair] : "Is there some sort of method that you use in order to fight alongside Sir Ren properly, Sir Itsuki?"
[Itsuki] : "Honestly, I'm not too sure. I think it's just because I understand Ren enough. I have moments when in the heat of battle, I can predict Ren's moves seconds before he could even do it. I guess when it boils down to it, it's probably because I've spent a lot of time with him."
[Sakura] : "Hmm. Sakura wonders if she could understand Daddy like how Itsuki understands Stupid Ren."
[Motoyasu] : "Well, I'm sure I can predict what's on your mind right now."
[Sakura] : "Really?"
[Motoyasu] : "Yep, it's... what we're having for dinner tonight!"
[Sakura] : "Wow! Daddy is amazing! Sakura was exactly thinking about that!"
[Itsuki] : "... Huh."
[Eclair] : "... Not much of a guess, I take it?"

[SKIT 093 : Bored of the Taste]

[Ren] : "I don't want to rain on our parades, but..."
[Ren] : "Are we really going to have a diet consisting of these fruits for the next few days...?"
[Raphtalia] : "I'm sure Master Naofumi could fix something new everyday to make it easier."
[Raphtalia] : "He's your friend, so you should have confidence that he could do it. I don't think you'll get bored of the taste."
[Naofumi] : "Well, I don't want these fruits to be wasted, after all."
[Ren] : "We have Sakura for that, don't we? I'm sure she can finish it up before they could go bad."
[Naofumi] : "Well, if you want to eat something else, you can make it yourself."
[Ren] : "... Really?"
[Naofumi] : "... No, sorry. That was a reactive response. Please do not step into the kitchen."
[Raphtalia] : "I've been... wondering about that, actually. Why is Mister Ren not allowed to cook?"
[Naofumi] : "Don't ask."
[Ren] : "Oh, geez, thanks, Naofumi. Love the confidence."