I have had a great many names over my many years of life.

Depending on my wielder and the age, I have been called various things.

In my first days of existence, I bore the designation IW-A-P-03, short for Intelligent Weapon, Series A, Piercing Type 03. My user, Nicholas, called me Aethry. He was nice enough, often speaking to me and being very diligent with my maintenance. However, back then, I was a young AI. I wasn’t really able to respond to him beyond what was included in my core programming. It’s kind of a shame, but I never really had the opportunity or the capacity to thank him for his kindness. He fell in the war against the gods, and I found myself abandoned on the battlefield. When the gods remade the world, the various shifts in geography and nature caused me to be lodged in the base of a large lake.

The next hundred or so years that passed were extremely boring. My AI had not yet developed to the point where I was able to assume a humanoid form, and even if it had, the lake I was in was filled with some sort of special water that interfered with magical energy absorption, meaning that I wouldn’t be able to assume said form anyway. I rested there and basically idled away my days while performing extensive self-maintenance and developing upgrades to my functionality, in preparation for the seemingly impossible day that I would be used in battle again. Most of my intelligence and personality was developed during this hundred-year period, so I suppose it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Over the years, a great many people dived down to the lakebottom to try and pull me out of the rock. However, none of them had the strength or lung capacity to properly accomplish it. Many drowned in the process. For the longest time, I was puzzled as to why people kept coming down to die, but I eventually discovered the reason when I was finally liberated from that lake. Apparently, my upgrading and experimentation had caused various phenomenon to occur, such as causing the water of the lake to glow. It had been enough to cause nearby villages to treat this lake as a holy lake, and when people found out that there was a weapon – that is to say, myself – lodged in the riverbed, they started circulating legends about me being a magic weapon.

…Well, it was true that my function was powered by magical energy, so in that sense, I was in fact a magic weapon, but the villagers’ willingness to believe such a silly superstition shocked me. Well, more than that, I was shocked by how much civilisation had regressed since the War ended. It was like the gods had decided to push the reset button on humanity. Which was basically what had happened.

But I digress. The one who finally pulled me out of the lake was a young black-haired man. According to him, he was a hero summoned to our world from another world to fight the revived Demon Lord. I accepted his story without much trouble. I mean, I’m a sentient spear. What right do I have to doubt other people when they make ridiculous claims? Also, research back in the pre-War days had already confirmed the existence of parallel universes, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to think that people might fall into our world from another.

In any case, that young man, Koji, had a strange obsession with calling me Brionac. So that became the name that I was known by in that age. He had superhuman physical abilities, and used me in plenty of combat situations. As a fighter, he was reasonably proficient, and he used me effectively and took care of me regularly as well. If I had to voice a complaint about his fighting style, it would be his strange tendency to strike poses with me while yelling out weird lines like “Spear of Light, Brionac. Become the bolt of justice that strikes down my foes!” before lobbing me at some enemy. It was annoying, embarrassing, and quite honestly, painful. Imagine if someone threw you headfirst into metal armor. Imagine how that would feel. That was basically how I felt, every day. I’m a spear, not a javelin. Know the difference, please. If I had been able to speak at the time, I would have chewed him out, but unfortunately, my long stint at the bottom of the lake had caused me to delete several of what I had assumed would be unnecessary functions in favour of new ones – speech was one of them. I eventually did manage to reconstruct my speech functions, but only after my stint as Koji’s weapon had ended.

Anyway, Koji brought me along and used me to slay the Demon Lord, upon which a voice from the sky – presumably one of the gods – spoke up and sent him home. Meanwhile, his numerous companions returned to their respective countries, where they were hailed as heroes and legends. Happy ending for everyone. Except me. While his strangely gender-skewed party of female compatriots were showered with accolades and rewards in their home countries, I was stuck between the ribs of a rotting demon corpse. Not an enjoyable experience.

Some years later, I was found by another young lad, who called me Lancelle. After him, a young king picked me up and called me Rhongomyniad. Then a woman from the Eastern country wielded me and called me Tonbokiri. Like so, I changed hands numerous times over the centuries. Each time, my users accomplished great deeds with my help. Each time, I was called by a different name. Each time, I was eventually abandoned or left behind, waiting for a new user. I grew sick of it. I grew tired of being used and then discarded. And so, finally, I took on a humanoid form.

For the next few decades, I wandered the world, passing myself off as a human. Sometimes, I would be a mercenary. Others, I would be an adventurer. I even worked as a maidservant for a period of time, when I was getting bored with a life of adventure. During my travels, I met a great many people, and even some of the other Intelligent Weapons, who had, like myself, assumed human form.

It was during my travels that I met Kyrin. I first met him as part of an adventurer party, but revealed my true nature to him after journeying with him for some time. With my help, he accomplished his long-desired objective, and in turn, he made a promise to me that I would not be abandoned, even after his death. He was probably the first wielder that I ever came close to designating as my True Owner, if not for the fact that a sense of unease prevented me from making that leap. Kyrin called me by the same name Nicholas had given me, the name that I had assumed as a human: Aethry. When he died, I felt true remorse, but I followed his instructions, to fulfill my end of the promise we had made. Among all my owners, Kyrin was my second to last one.

Now, everything up to this point has been about my history, about my names, and about my various owners. However, what is to follow concerns not my past owners, but my final owner – my True Owner – and the name that I have taken in this age, my true name.

It began with an alarm, and a panic.