[Third Person POV]
The first thing Hajime directed his attention to was the Fire Flower card.
He knew it was one of Mario's simpler power-ups and the weakest item he planned on 'upgrading'.
Summoning the flower into his hand, Hajime started injecting his soul power into it.
When the energy reached the required energy for homie creation, Hajime held off on letting the homie form.
Energy kept flowing into the flower, causing it to emit a minor glow.
Once Hajime had injected one percent of his energy into the flower, he activated the transformation process.
The glow of the flower grew to create a small ball of energy that lit up the field before rapidly dimming.
As the light disappeared, the flower in its place had a noticeable change.
The flower had its familiar white face surrounded by yellow and red petals. The green stem was much darker and longer than before. The leaves and stem were also moving around, the leaves acting like hands and the stem a body.
"Can you understand what I'm saying?" Hajime asked the flower.
The flower looked at him and nodded, showing more intelligence than you'd expect from a plant.
"Is there anything you can do? Maybe shoot some fire?" Before creating any other homies, Hajime wanted to test what this one was capable of.
The flower nodded once again before turning and facing the field.
From the flower, a small orb of fire appeared in front of it, which turned into a flamethrower. It reminded him of Natsu's fire dragon roar, but much weaker.
Following that, the flower created several small orbs similar to the first, but rather than turn into flamethrowers, these orbs were fired away in different directions before all converged onto a training dummy.
Finally, the flower created a dome of fire surrounding it, which could change size at will.
"Flamethrower, homing fireballs, and fire dome," Hajime mused, thinking of ways to use this homie. "I'll give you to Pam then," he decided.
She was just a regular human, while the flower's power seemed to be about beginner low-class. It wasn't much, but it would at least prevent her from getting injured for now.
Performing a second test, Hajime injected more soul power into the flower, which he could feel slowly raising its power. A crude way of strengthening homies, but unless they grow by training, he won't have many options.
"I'll call you, Vulcan," Hajime declared. Though not the most original name, names had power. Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and equivalent to Hephaestus, was both important and unnoticed compared to their Greek counterpart.
Taking out the second card, this time it was Jack Sparrow's Compass.
This compass, unlike others, would guide the owner towards their desires.
For example, Rizevim required Rossweisse's notes to locate and release Trihexa, who was sealed and hidden by God. Even if Hajime didn't know anything about Trihexa or God, as long as he wanted to find the seal, the compass would point in its direction.
Repeating the homie process, Hajime, rather than injecting one percent like with Vulcan, injected five.
The compass's powers were conceptual; as such, Hajime figured that injecting more energy would mean a more powerful ability.
Once the homie was created, the compass floated around him. Though he could sense something coming from it, it felt more like Dr. Strange's Cloak of Levitation or Aladdin's Flying Carpet than a living object like he expected.
The flower functioned like an animal, but even then, it already had a face.
Big Mom even created a living cloud and fire that could talk, so having a face wasn't a prerequisite.
That was something worth investigating.
Testing out the compass, he learned its abilities had evolved slightly.
Now, the compass was slightly bigger than before, growing from the size of a pocket watch to that of a small tablet.
The center of it was much more complex than before, now containing a small reel, similar to those on slot machines. On it, contained the names of all the existing dimensions, such as Earth, Asgard, The Underworld, The Dimensional Gap, and more.
With the multitude of existing dimensions, it would be impossible for the compass to point through dimensions in its previous form. This new upgrade remedied that, allowing the user to know which dimension they needed to be in to follow the compass's directions.
Putting the compass down, Hajime then withdrew three objects from his inventory.
The first was a card that he activated, releasing a sheathed katana into his lap.
Second was a small-spiked mace with a leather-like strap on the end.
Lastly, there was a European sword with a golden guard and a plant stem design going up the center of the blade.
These three objects were Yatsufusa, the Thanagarian Mace, and Excalibur Blessing.
Hajime's plan was simple. Enhance the weapons by turning them into homies, thereby strengthening both their abilities and combat potential, while also ensuring they wouldn't be stolen when used in the future.
Aside from Zeus, Big Mom's homies were completely loyal to her. The only way Zeus was able to betray her was because he was too weak, so she created Hera to replace him. After that, she tried to take back the soul piece used to make him, but failed, causing him to fuse with Nami's Clima-tact for survival.
In this case, even if someone were to get any of these weapons, the soul energy inside them would reject random strangers from wielding them. Even if someone tried to activate the weapons forcefully, the homies could then deactivate their powers, thereby removing any benefits from having them.
As the soul energy flowed into each weapon as Hajime turned them into homies, different effects covered the area.
For Yatsufusa, the blade was covered in a black, glowing aura that seemed to remove all light that passed by the sword, like a black hole.
A feeling of dread oozed from the blade, something Hajime connected to its resurrection ability.
Even with such an aura, Hajime didn't feel any fear from it. The weapon contained part of his soul, giving him a sort of hierarchical dominance over it.
While Hajime could tell that Yatsufusa could be used on him, the chances of that happening were nearly impossible. That would imply someone strong enough to kill him knows about the sword, steals it, and kills him with it. Another possibility was someone he knew killed him with it, which was also unlikely since the only people he'd even think of giving it to would be those who aren't insane in some way.
The Thanagarian Mace created its usual energy field around it. In that field, all magic was turned off.
The energy that makes up magic is like an infinite light switch. It's off when inert and turns on when any spells are cast. The mace does the equivalent of cutting off the wires connecting the switch to the light. It wasn't something impossible to bypass, but someone would require intimate knowledge of Nth metal properties to know where to begin, something Hajime doubted was possible in this world unless he allowed it.
Excalibur Blessing was the weapon that showed the biggest change. The holy aura that the blade naturally produced grew stronger, slowly encompassing the entire field.
Unfortunately for Bunnicula, when the energy touched him, his fur was set alight before he managed to move away from the growing holy energy, something that Hajime would make up for later.
The others present all felt different things from it.
The homies Hajime had just created had felt a minor connection to each other, their 'siblings', and Hajime, their creator. That connection, feeling the large increase in holy energy grew stronger, unknowingly giving the weapons a minor boost that went unnoticed.
As for those Hajime summoned, each of them could feel themselves changing slightly. Past injuries had healed, while their bodies had undergone minor enhancement.
Out of all of them, Pam felt the biggest difference.
Having lived in a normal world, she was surprisingly sensitive to the changes around her, as if she had a second skin that was surprised by everything new it felt.
The biggest change she could feel was in her lower half. Aside from the strange feeling of knowing her hymen was somehow regrowing, she could feel her body tighten up, restoring herself from the effects of her past pregnancies, even eliminating the stitches she got from her C-section when she delivered Phillip. The weirdest part was that she didn't know how she knew which parts of her were being healed; she just did.
Blake felt some scars that she had vanish as if they were never there. What surprised her more was that she could feel her aura and semblance grow slightly while she was bathed in the energy. She wasn't sure what her new employer was doing, but she planned on asking him once he was done.
Welf felt himself grow stronger, like whenever Hephaestus would update his falna. A few injuries from the dungeon, as well as some burn scars, were healed. Seeing that the cause of this healing energy was a magic sword that Hajime took out, it inspired him. Though not ready to make magic swords, he had ideas he was planning on testing out once he got his new forge up and running.
Jenny and Monet were the least affected. Minor training injuries they received in the past vanished, while they felt their bodies' natural strength increase slightly.
Hajime felt a similar thing happen to himself, but ignored it while he focused on strengthening Excalibur Blessing more. With the ability to give boosts to the person holding the blade, Hajime felt that strengthening this sword as much as possible was the best investment possible.
If before it had a top multiplier of 2.5x, Hajime felt that the blade's power was reaching a nice, even 10x power boost.
Once the sword reached the strength needed for a 10x boost, it automatically turned into a homie, refusing to budge beyond that limit.
Seeing that the weapon was choosing to be done with the energy infusion, Hajime relented for now, putting it down with the others.
Looking at the three weapon homies, Hajime left Yatsufusa's name as is, while naming the others Hol and Benedict. Yatsufusa was already a named weapon, but the others weren't. Hol was just a random mace, while Excalibur Blessing was named after its origin and powers.
Hajime got up and stretched, only to realize that there were changes to his body. His entire body felt rested, like each cell was given a premium spa treatment.
The injuries he'd gotten from all his training over the last few months had vanished, leaving him feeling slightly stronger than before.
Turning toward his summons, Hajime realized that they also seemed to have changed slightly.
Seeing Blake walk toward him, he figured he knew what this was about, when a black and white ball flew into his face.
Remembering that Bunnicula was a vampire and likely hurt from that light, Hajime sighed, realizing it would take a lot to coax the vampiric lagomorph.
-----
[Michael POV]
I was doing some work on Father's system. Both to understand more about how it worked, and to keep it from falling apart.
It was the most complex thing he ever made, and even after all these centuries, I don't even think I'm a tenth of the way to fully understanding it.
The biggest problem is that almost every function requires a significant amount of energy to use. Father did that shortly after Lucifer's fall to prevent him from sneaking in and messing with everything, but now that Father is gone, the system has become unmanageable for me.
The energy provided to us through the faith of our believers helps mitigate it somewhat, but I try not to use it when I can, preferring to use my own energy for my studying.
Instead, I usually use the faith energy to power the Miracle system, the only thing I've finished studying.
It was through this system that I've been able to bless others across the world, helping to create some of the most devout believers we've ever had.
Unfortunately, at the rate things are going, it'll still take me several millennia before I can say I understand Father's work, but at the rate things are going, I don't know if it will last that long.
While I was testing out a feature that lets me locate sacred gears, the system started pinging.
Upon checking the alert, I discovered there was a significant surge in holy energy in Japan.
*Sigh* Great.
The last thing we need is to keep getting involved there.
Over the last one and a half centuries since America reopened Japan, the church has tried whatever it could to spread the faith there with little success.
At this point, we only had a few outposts there just in case anything happened, though I hoped nothing ever did.
The system didn't say where the energy came from, meaning it was likely under someone's wards.
I pray to Father that this doesn't turn out badly.
__________
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!