2

For quite a while after that, the only sound was of boot soles striking marble stairs.

Everything else was ear-splitting silence. As far as Eugeo knew, there were many monks and understudies living in the Axiom Church’s central building, but no matter how they looked and listened, there was no sign of life anywhere around them.

On top of that, the sight that confronted them on each new floor—a rectangular chamber with hallways extending forward and to the sides, with equally spaced doors along them—was so uniform that it began to feel like they were under some kind of bewitching spell that was making them pass the same exact floor, over and over again.

Eugeo wanted to stop and check a nearby door on one of the floors, just to confirm that this wasn’t the case, but Kirito’s upward progress was so steady that it seemed like a bad idea to disrupt him. If Deusolbert was telling them the truth, the fiftieth floor not too much farther up would feature many more foes to deal with.

He ran his fingertips along the hilt of the sword at his side to calm his mind and focus on the task at hand.

Just then, Kirito came to a sudden stop on the staircase landing just ahead. He turned back, face dead serious, and said, “Hey, Eugeo………What floor are we on now…?”

“Um…well,” Eugeo said, wobbling a bit. He sighed, shook his head, and slumped his shoulders all at the same time. “Next one’s the twenty-ninth floor. I’m going to assume you were at least counting at the start.”

“Well, you’d think they would have floor number displays along the way. I mean, it’s just common sense.”

“I agree, but you should have noticed before this!” Eugeo scolded, but Kirito merely brushed it off and rested his back against the landing wall.

“So we’re still only that far up…I was sure we were way farther. Man, I’m getting hungry…”

“…I agree with you there.”

It had been nearly five hours since their fancy breakfast with Cardinal in the library. Through the long, narrow windows, Solus appeared to be near its peak. And after a fierce battle, followed by twenty-five flights of stairs (a thousand steps in total), it was natural that their bodies were asking for replenishment.

Eugeo thrust out his hand and demanded, “So hand over one of the ones you’ve got in your pockets.”

“Uh…but…I was saving them for emergencies…Man, you’re greedier than I thought.”

“You thought I wouldn’t notice how much you stuffed in there?”

Kirito gave up and slipped his right hand into his pants pocket, then pulled out two steamed buns and handed one to Eugeo. The smell of it was still strong enough to stimulate his appetite, even though they’d left the library long ago.

“That flame attack kinda charred it a bit.”

“Ha-ha…I see. Thanks, man.”

Cardinal had generated the steamed bun out of some precious old tome’s pages using her high-level sacred arts, a fact that Eugeo had to ignore as he bit into the treat. The crispy, burned outside gave way to juicy meat on the inside, which he savored rapturously.

In less than a minute, their little lunch was over, and Eugeo licked his fingers in satisfaction. Kirito’s other pocket was still bulging suspiciously, but Eugeo was happy enough to let it go for now.

“Thanks for the meal. So, what now? We should reach the fiftieth floor in another thirty minutes or so. Do we just charge straight up there?”

“Hmm…” Kirito grunted, scratching his head. “Good question…I think we’ve seen firsthand how deadly a fight against the Integrity Knights can be, but on the other hand, if we’re taking the fight between you and him as an example, they don’t seem to have much experience facing combination attacks, if any. I want to believe we stand a chance in a close-range, one-on-one battle. But if there are multiple knights ready and waiting, that becomes much more difficult.”

“So…we give up on charging straight through and find another way instead?”

“I’m not sure about that, either. Cardinal said this staircase was the only way up, and even if we find some kind of shortcut, it still leaves the possibility that we’ll get ambushed. I really think we need to beat those Integrity Knights on the fiftieth floor while we’re there. We’re going to be forced to use the ace up our sleeve, but thanks to the warning he gave us, we know we’ll have time to prepare those long commands before we get there.”

“Oh, right…the Perfect Weapon Control,” Eugeo murmured.

“I’m worried about using it for the first time in an actual battle,” Kirito admitted, “but it doesn’t make sense to test it here and waste our swords’ durability, either. We should use our Perfect Control right as we’re reaching the fiftieth floor and neutralize as many knights as we can…”

“Uh, Kirito, about that…,” Eugeo said, feeling bad about bringing it up. “Um…my Perfect Control isn’t going to be a powerful direct attack—not like that knight’s just now.”

“Huh? It’s…not?”

“Well, it was Cardinal who wrote my actual command. I mean, I know it was me who envisioned the actual thing,” Eugeo said, feeling apologetic.

Mildly confused, Kirito suggested, “Why don’t you try reciting it now? Just don’t include the starter command.”

“Okay.”

Eugeo rattled off the various parts of the long command, leaving out the System Call that was supposed to precede them all. Kirito listened with his eyes closed, and after Eugeo finished with Enhance Armament, he had a surprising smile on his lips.

“I see. You’re right; it’s not exactly offensive in nature, but it can be plenty helpful if we use it properly. And it seems like it should complement my own pretty well.”

“Really? What kind is yours?”

“Why ruin the surprise now?” Kirito teased, earning himself a glare from Eugeo. He swept his bangs aside with a smug smile and leaned against the wall again. “Okay, I think I know what we’ll do, not that it’s much of a plan. First, before we exit onto the fiftieth floor, we chant our Perfect Weapon Control and keep it on standby. Once we’re in there and know where our enemies are, you unleash first, and I’ll go after. If we manage to successfully cluster the knights in one spot, we might be able to neutralize them all at once.”

“Might,” Eugeo repeated with plenty of skepticism. But in truth, he had no countersuggestion. Admittedly, his partner was the better one when it came to planning with all possible variables in mind, and given Eugeo’s trouble with high-speed chanting, the chance to take care of it beforehand was greatly appreciated.

“…So let’s go with that. First, I’ll…”

Eugeo turned to his left and glanced at the staircase leading up to the twenty-ninth floor of the cathedral. Then his eyes bulged.

In the shadows beneath the handrail were two small heads and two pairs of eyes watching them intently.

The instant Eugeo’s gaze passed over them, the heads darted back behind cover. But even as he watched, momentarily stunned, they eventually came back into view, innocent eyes blinking with interest.

Kirito sensed the anomaly and followed Eugeo’s line of sight. His mouth, too, fell open, before he finally asked, “Uh…who are you?”

The two heads shared a look, then a little bob, and then the bodies attached came into view.

“They’re…children?” Eugeo couldn’t help but mutter.

Standing on the stairs were two girls, dressed in identical black outfits. They looked to be around ten. Eugeo felt a flash of fond reminiscence and then realized it was because their plain black clothes looked a little bit like the apprentice habit that Alice’s sister, Selka, wore back at the church in Rulid.

But unlike Selka, these girls had green belts with thirty-cen swords attached. For an instant, he felt his hackles rise, but just as soon, he noticed that the blades and hilts were made of reddish wood. While the coloring was different, they looked just like the little wooden swords every child used to practice.

The girl on the right had her light-brown hair tied into two braids. Her eyebrows sloped downward over her round eyes, giving her a weak-willed look. The girl on the left had straw-blond hair cut short, and her eyes were sharp and triumphant.

To no surprise, the first of the two to step forward was the bolder-looking one on the left. She took a deep breath and abruptly introduced herself.

“Um…I’m Fizel, an Axiom Church sister-in-training. And she’s another apprentice like me…”

“L…Linel.”

Their youthful voices wavered a bit at the end due to nerves. Eugeo smiled to put them at ease, but then he realized that if they were holy women in the Church—even as apprentices—that made them enemies.

But Fizel’s follow-up question was even more direct than Eugeo’s line of thought.

“Um…are you the intruders from the Dark Territory?”

“Huh…?”

He and Kirito shared a look. Even his partner seemed at a loss for how to respond. His mouth opened and shut several times without producing any words, and then he drew himself behind Eugeo and said, “I’m not good with kids. You take this one.”

Eugeo hissed, “No fair!” but he couldn’t circle around to hide behind Kirito. Instead, he looked up at the two girls and said awkwardly, “Um…well, uh…we’re from the human world, actually…but I guess if anyone’s an intruder, it would be us…”

The girls put their heads together and started trading whispers. Their voices were low, but the area was so devastatingly quiet that they couldn’t help but be audible at this distance.

“See? They look like totally normal humans, Nel. No horns or tails!” hissed Fizel, the feistier of the two.

The other one, Linel, argued, “I—I just told you that was in the book, that’s all. You’re the one who took the idea and ran with it, Zel.”

“Hmm. Maybe they’re just hiding them. Would we be able to tell if we got closer?”

“But they just look like totally normal people. Then again…they could have fangs in their mouths…”

Eugeo couldn’t stifle a grin, as he was reminded of Telure and Teline, the twin girls from Walde Farm. If he and Kirito were that age and had heard about intruders from the land of darkness nearby, they would have very likely tried to go see them, too. And they’d probably have gotten a tongue-lashing from their father or the village elder for it.

That thought gave Eugeo pause. What if the girls got punished for making contact with rebels against the Church? It didn’t seem like he was in a position to spend much time worrying about that, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Um…are you girls going to get in trouble for talking to us?”

Fizel and Linel both went silent and then grinned. Fizel replied with a smirk and considerably less formality than before. “This morning, all the monks, nuns, and apprentices were ordered to stay in their rooms and lock the doors. Don’t you get it? We can slip out to see the intruders, and no one’s going to be around to notice us.”

“Uh…right…”

It was just the kind of logic that Kirito would come up with. In fact, he could practically see his partner getting scolded for it already.

The girls discussed something between themselves again, and this time, it was Linel who said, “Um…and you’re definitely not monsters from the Dark Territory?”

“N-no.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, may we see you up close? Um…your forehead and teeth in particular.”

“Huh?” Eugeo replied, turning around to Kirito for help, but the other boy was conveniently looking away. This one would be up to Eugeo.

“…Well…I suppose that would be all right…”

The inability to refuse such a request was in his nature, but a part of Eugeo also felt it was important for people to realize that even a traitor like him was a regular human being. Plus, they might be able to get information about the cathedral from the girls.

Their faces shining, Fizel and Linel trotted over with a mixture of curiosity and caution. They stopped when they reached the landing and stared with blue and gray eyes.

Eugeo crouched over, drew back his bangs from his forehead, and showed them his teeth. They stared at him without blinking for a good ten seconds, then looked satisfied.

“He’s human.”

“Yes, human.”

He snorted at the obvious disappointment in their reaction. Linel wondered, “But if you’re not monsters from the Dark Territory, why did you decide to infiltrate Central Cathedral?”

“Um, well…,” Eugeo started, wondering how they could continually throw him off guard, then decided to be honest and admitted, “…Long ago, a little girl who was a friend of mine got taken away by an Integrity Knight. So I’m here to take her back.”

Surely, this statement would be difficult to accept, given how a sister-in-training would feel about the righteousness of the Axiom Church. Eugeo expected to see fear and revulsion in their young features, but instead, they merely bobbed their heads.

Fizel, the one with the straw-blond hair, complained, “Oh. That’s kind of an ordinary reason.”

“O-ordinary?”

“People whose families or lovers have been taken here have always come to argue their case to the Church. Not many, but it happens. But I bet you two are the first who actually got all the way inside.”

Linel continued, “Plus, you got thrown into prison, and yet you broke your spiritual chains, then you defeated two Integrity Knights. So we figured you were monsters…maybe even real dark knights. And it turns out you’re just ordinary humans…”

The girls looked at each other and said, “Good enough?” “Good enough.”

Linel turned to Eugeo again and tilted her head at a questioning angle, braids swaying. “Well, can you at least tell us your names, here at the end?”

Surprised, because he was hoping to ask them plenty of his own questions, Eugeo replied, “I’m Eugeo. And that’s Kirito behind me.”

“Oh…No last names?”

“Er, no. I was raised out on the frontier…Same for you two?”

“No, we have full names,” said Linel, smiling. It was the bright innocent smile of one about to stuff her face with a delicious treat.

“My name is Linel Synthesis Twenty-Eight.”

In the moment, Eugeo could not process the implication of that name.

Suddenly, he felt a chill in the pit of his stomach and looked down.

At some point, Linel had removed her short sword from its sheath and had buried the tip in Eugeo’s stomach by about five cens.

It had only looked like a wooden toy before. The wood he’d taken to be the blade had actually been the scabbard. The blade she pulled from it was not made of wood but an unfamiliar metal that appeared cloudy green. The surface caught the outside light and gleamed wetly.

“Eu—!”

That was Kirito. He craned his neck to look back at his partner, frozen in place, right foot forward. Fizel had been at Linel’s side just an instant earlier, but now she was standing behind Kirito, thrusting her own green blade into his black shirt. Just as before, her smile was triumphant and confident.

“And I am Fizel Synthesis Twenty-Nine.”

They pulled their short swords from Eugeo and Kirito simultaneously. With swipes so fast they were invisible, Fizel and Linel flicked the blood off their blades and returned them to their sheaths.

The chill that snuck into his stomach began to spread to his whole body. Everywhere that freezing feeling touched, his sensations began to numb.

“You’re…Int…eg…,” he managed to stammer before even his tongue froze in his mouth. Eugeo felt his knees give way, and then he toppled to the floor. His chest and left cheek smashed against the marble, but he didn’t even feel an impact, much less any pain.

A second later, he heard Kirito hit the floor, too.

Poison, he belatedly realized, trying to think of a counterplan.

In class at Swordcraft Academy, they had learned about poisons and antidotes found in the natural world. But all the cases presented were from sources like plants, snakes, and insects. The school never even considered the possibility that they would be attacked with poisons in battle.

But of course. At the school—in the entirety of the human realm—battle was merely a competition of ferocity and aesthetics. Spreading toxic substances on a weapon was completely against the rules. Even that noble boy who released a poisonous insect to impede their advancement at the Zakkaria tournament didn’t actually put any on his blade in competition.

So the extent of Eugeo’s knowledge of poisons was: If such and such bug stings you, rub such and such herb on it. He didn’t know what kind of poison the girls used, and there wasn’t a single natural object around, much less an antidote herb. The last resort would be to attempt cleansing via sacred arts, but that was impossible while his hands and mouth were paralyzed.

So if this poison was the kind that both immobilized them and steadily drained their life, they could easily perish before they reached even the halfway point of Central Cathedral.

“You don’t have to be so frightened, Eugeo,” said Linel Synthesis Twenty-Eight overhead. Her high-pitched voice was warped and warbled; the poison made everything sound like it was underwater. “It’s just a paralysis poison. But the only difference is whether you die here or on the fiftieth floor.”

She trotted over until a little brown shoe came into Eugeo’s vision where he lay with his cheek pressed to the floor. Linel lifted her foot and rested the toe right on Eugeo’s head, rolling it around in search of something.

“…Hmm, no horns after all.”

The foot moved over to his back, where it pressed down repeatedly on either side of his spine.

“And no wings, either. What about him, Zel?”

“He’s just plain human, too!”

Somewhere outside of his field of view, Fizel was doing the same thing to Kirito. She said, “Aww, just when I thought we’d finally get to see some Dark Territory monsters!”

“Don’t worry. If we take them up to the fiftieth floor and chop off their heads in front of everyone standing around up there, they should finally give us our divine weapons and dragons. Then we can just fly to the Dark Territory and see the real monsters for ourselves.”

“Good point. Okay, Nel, let’s race to see who can take out a dark knight first!”

To Eugeo’s mind, the most horrifying part of all of this was how Fizel and Linel still sounded as childlike and innocent as ever. Why were children like them turned into Integrity Knights—and why were there children inside Central Cathedral at all?

Eugeo hadn’t seen Linel draw her sword, and she had been right in front of him. Fizel was quick enough to easily neutralize Kirito from a distance. Their abilities were undeniable.

But true skill in battle had to be gained through years of training and experience in battles of life and death. Eugeo’s ability to wield the divine Blue Rose Sword was not just because he had swung an ax at the Gigas Cedar for years, but it was also because of his battle against the goblins in the Northern Cave, according to Kirito.

Fizel and Linel, however, looking to be no more than ten years old, didn’t act like they’d ever faced the monsters from the world’s extremities in battle. So how had they developed this blinding speed and skill?

Eugeo could not give voice to any of these questions. The poison had spread throughout his entire body, such that he didn’t feel the coldness of the floor or any sensation that suggested he had a body at all. Linel grabbed Eugeo’s right ankle with a tiny hand and started dragging him along, which he only realized because his vision rotated.

By turning his eyeballs to the left—the only part of him he could apparently move—Eugeo saw that Fizel was tugging Kirito along like a piece of luggage. His partner’s face was impossible to read, owing to the same paralysis.

The young Integrity Knights lightly skipped up the stairs, dragging the boys with their swords still in place. With each step, his head bounced violently, but he still felt no pain.

If there was any time to think of a way out, it was then, but the paralyzing poison seemed to work on his brain, too, as Eugeo’s mind was empty and numb.

Even for a foe he had sworn to fight, Eugeo found it difficult to believe that the Axiom Church was performing its inhumane knighting ceremony on mere children. After all, the population of the world had believed that this organization represented absolute goodness and justice—for centuries.

“You find it strange, don’t you?” he heard Linel say, a hint of mirth in her voice. “Why are these children Integrity Knights? Well, since we’re about to kill you anyway, I can explain first.”

“If we’re going to kill them, Nel, talking is a waste of energy. You’re such an eccentric.”

“It’s going to be a boring trip up to the fiftieth floor. You see, Eugeo, we were born and raised here in the cathedral. Administrator herself ordered the monks and nuns in the tower to create us—in order to test out a resurrection sacred art that can heal totally lost life.”

Despite the horrific nature of what she was saying, Linel’s voice was utterly pleasant. “The children outside earn their Calling when they turn ten, but we got ours at five. Our job was to kill each other. We got these little toylike swords, even smaller than our poison blades, and would take turns stabbing each other.”

“You were terrible at it, Nel. It hurt and hurt, every single time,” Fizel interjected.

“Only because you would jump around in weird ways,” Linel complained. “As you two probably know, since you’ve already defeated multiple knights, humans are surprisingly hard to kill. Even at five years old. So we would stab and slice, trying to kill the other as quickly as possible, and when the life would finally go down to zero, Administrator would bring us back to life with her sacred arts…”

“And the resurrection barely even worked at all in the beginning. The ones who died normally had it best. The ones who were exploded into bits or lumped into blobs of flesh would practically come back as different people altogether.”

“It might have been our Calling, but we didn’t want to go to all the trouble of getting hurt and not come back to life. We did a bunch of research together about the cleanest and quickest way to kill, because that had the least pain and the highest rate of successful resurrection. The problem is what you do for that single blow itself. Do you stab the heart as quickly and smoothly as possible or lop off the head?”

“I think we were about seven when we were finally able to do that. We would do all our practice swings while the other kids were sleeping.”

His bodily sensation showed no signs of returning yet, but Eugeo still imagined the prickling of his hair standing on end.

In other words, Fizel’s and Linel’s extraordinary physical capabilities were the result of years of practice killing each other. Each and every day, they focused on nothing but how best to end each other’s lives.

He supposed that practice of this sort would indeed be enough to grant even a child the right to be an Integrity Knight. But at what cost? These children had entirely lost a crucial part of themselves that would never return.

The constant shuffle up the staircase continued, as did Linel’s pleasant tone of voice. “Administrator gave up on the resurrection tests when we were about eight. It seems that total resurrection was impossible in the end. Did you know that when your life goes to zero, a bunch of arrows of light come down and they kind of, like, carve your mind down? The kids who lost important parts of themselves that way never went back to normal, even after resurrection. There were many times that I came back and couldn’t remember what had happened in the last few days. There were thirty of us in total when the experiment started, and by the end, only Zel and I were left.”

“Since we survived and the test was over,” Fizel said, “those old senate fuddy-duddies said we had to choose our next Calling, and we told them we wanted to be Integrity Knights. They got mad and said that Integrity Knights were summoned from Heaven by Administrator, and kids like us couldn’t be one of them. So we ended up having a fight against the newest knights at the time…What were their names, again?”

“Umm…it was Something Synthesis Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine.”

“It’s the Something I was asking for, Nel! Well, anyway, you should have seen the looks on those senators’ faces when we lopped off those cocky guys’ heads in one shot.”

The girls giggled, and Linel continued the story. “…So Administrator made a special exception and named us Integrity Knights in the place of the two who died. But since we haven’t learned enough to go on defensive duties like the other knights, we still have to spend a two-year period learning the laws and sacred arts like the other apprentices. It’s really getting old.”

“We were just wondering how to hurry up and get our dragons and Divine Object weapons, when an alert went out that agents of the Dark Territory were loose in the cathedral. So we decided this was our chance! If we caught them before the other knights and executed them, Administrator would surely make us full-fledged knights at last. That’s why we were waiting on the stairs.”

“Sorry about using that poison. But we really wanted to take you up to the fiftieth floor alive, if possible. Oh, and don’t worry—we’re really good at killing, so it won’t hurt.”

The girls could scarcely wait for the moment when they dropped the boys’ severed heads before the Integrity Knights’ defensive line on the fiftieth floor. They bounded up the stairs with surprising speed, dragging their heavy prey behind them.

Despite the increasingly urgent need to devise an escape plan, all Eugeo could do was listen passively to their story. Even if his mouth wasn’t paralyzed, it seemed impossible that he could actually talk the girls out of it. They didn’t even seem to possess the concepts of good and evil. The only thing they obeyed was the order of their creator, the pontifex Administrator.

After dozens of times changing direction, the ceiling that formed the entirety of what Eugeo could see went from being a steady upward slope to a flat surface like any ordinary ceiling. There was no more staircase to travel—they had arrived at the Great Hall on the fiftieth floor that marked the midpoint of the cathedral.

Fizel and Linel stopped walking and exchanged brief comments about getting ready.

There were maybe minutes left—seconds, perhaps—before that green blade severed his neck. No matter how hard he willed, he couldn’t even budge a finger; there was no sensation in his body.

The ceiling here was taller than anywhere previous, probably a good twenty mels overhead. The curved marble featured brilliant portraits of the three goddesses of creation and their followers. The circular pillars supporting the ceiling were covered in a multitude of sculptures and reliefs. On either side of the hall were massive windows beaming in the light of Solus. It was a tremendous sight, a place worthy of the name “Great Hall of Ghostly Light.”

The girls dragged Eugeo and Kirito five mels forward, then came to a stop. The momentum left Eugeo’s body in a half-turn, giving him a full view of the Great Hall at last.

It was frighteningly vast, seemingly spanning the entire breadth of the cathedral floor for one chamber. The distant corners of the multicolored stone floor were hazy through the light. A deep-red carpet ran from the entrance all the way to the far wall, where double doors stood, so tall they seemed to be built for a giant. Clearly, the stairs to continue moving upward were through that door.

In the middle of the hall, far before the giant door, a number of knights stood in their armor and helmets, bristling and forbidding, preventing further progress. Four of them stood in an evenly spaced row, and another waited slightly ahead.

The four in the back all wore brilliant silver armor and helmets with a cross-shaped slit in the middle—exactly the kind that Eldrie wore. Their weapons were identical longswords, each standing on its tip with its owner’s hands resting heavily on the pommel.

The knight in the front looked much different from the others. This one’s armor shone with a regal pale-purple color and looked comparatively delicate, and a thin sword designed for thrusting hung at the knight’s side. It was tempting to think of this as “light” armor, but the suffocating sense of danger rolling off the one wearing it far outclassed the others. The knight’s face was hidden under a helmet designed to resemble a bird of prey’s wings, but it was clear that he or she was just as mighty as Deusolbert.

Five Integrity Knights, an incredibly imposing wall to surpass in order to continue upward—and yet, at that moment, it was the two little girls right next to them who represented a greater threat to Eugeo’s and Kirito’s lives.

Linel and Fizel, standing proud in their apprentice habits, faced the five knights.

“You must be Fanatio Synthesis Two, the vice commander of the knights,” Linel said crisply. “If Fanatio of the Heaven-Piercing Blade is being called upon, then the senate must be panicked indeed. Or are you the worried one, Fanatio? At this rate, you might find your vice seat taken by the Osmanthus, won’t you?”

After several seconds of strained silence, the purple knight spoke. The metallic voice carried that familiar inhuman rattle unique to Integrity Knights, but Eugeo did not miss its note of irritation.

“…Why do you apprentice children barge onto the battlefield of honorable knights?”

“Oh, this is so stupid!” Fizel immediately shot back. “It’s that insistence on honor and dignity that got two of the so-called invincible Integrity Knights beaten. But don’t worry; we’ve caught the intruders, and we won’t let any more harm come to the reputation of the knighthood!”

“We’re about to chop off their heads, so watch closely and give the pontifex an accurate report. Not that I would expect an ‘honorable knight’ to claim the credit like a coward.”

Despite the desperate circumstances, Eugeo couldn’t help but be amazed at the boldness of Linel and Fizel and how they stayed so composed facing five superhuman warriors.

But, no…Perhaps he was wrong. The emotion exuding from their little figures—was that…hatred?

With all his strength, Eugeo focused his eyes on the girls. Even if his intuition was correct, what did they hate? They’d showed nothing but pure curiosity toward Eugeo and Kirito, who were high traitors to Administrator and the Axiom Church.

Linel and Fizel were so busy staring at the Integrity Knights with open loathing and disrespect, the knights themselves were so obviously annoyed by them, and Eugeo was so preoccupied with trying to figure out the two girls, that it was unlikely anyone noticed the figure in black moving behind them until it actually appeared.

Like a panther on the hunt, despite suffering the same paralyzing toxin that Eugeo did, Kirito snuck behind the girls and grabbed their short swords from their belts, one with each hand. In one smooth movement, he drew the blades and pressed them against their exposed arms.

By the time they turned around, mouths agape, Kirito had already leaped clear backward, short swords in hand.

They were stunned. “Why…?”

“I can’t move…”

The paralysis worked instantly, and after just a few words, the children toppled lightly to the floor. As they fell, Kirito rose. He held both poison daggers in one hand and stepped forward to search in their pockets with the other. In no time, he had found a little bottle the size of a fingertip, filled with an orange liquid.

He popped the cork out, sniffed it, and looked satisfied. Still paralyzed, Eugeo had no other option but to trust that it was an antidote as the bottle’s contents slipped between his lips. It was probably for the best that his numb tongue couldn’t taste it, either.

Kirito leaned down on his knee, an unfamiliar and severe look on his face, and whispered, “The paralysis will wear off in a few minutes. Once your lips work again, start chanting the Perfect Weapon Control command so the knights don’t hear you. When it’s ready, hang on to it and wait for my signal.”

With that, he stood up and moved back to stand next to the girls. In a loud, clear voice, he called out to the five Integrity Knights, “The swordsmen Kirito and Eugeo apologize for the disrespect of entering your presence on our backsides! We seek to make amends and repair our dishonored reputations, and to cross swords with you!”

Promptly, the purple knight, who seemed to be the most important, replied, “I am second of the Integrity Knights, Fanatio Synthesis Two! Sinner, know that my divine Heaven-Piercing Blade knows not the concept of mercy, so if you wish to speak, do so while it remains sheathed!”

Kirito looked down at the collapsed girls next to him and, loud enough for the other knights to hear, said, “You must be wondering how I was able to move.”

Linel was unable to speak, of course, but her eyes seemed to well up with frustration.

“You gave the game away. You said that all the monks and nuns were ordered to stay in their rooms. Nobody in the cathedral would dare disobey an order—so given that you weren’t following them, you couldn’t be real sisters-in-training.”

The antidote started working, sending little prickles of pain into Eugeo’s limbs, but he hardly noticed them at all. At last, he realized the nature of the emotion he saw on his partner’s face.

Kirito—placid, aloof Kirito—was furious.

But his anger didn’t seem to be directed at the children themselves. If anything, there was pain in his eyes when he glanced down at Linel and Fizel.

“And those sheaths you wear. They’re made of ruby oak from the south. That’s the only material that won’t corrode when touched by these swords made of Ruberyl’s poisoned steel. There’s no way a simple apprentice nun would be carrying something like that. So before you approached, I cast a poison-dissolving art—it just took a little time for it to actually work. The speed of your sword isn’t all there is to strength. In short, you were stupid enough that you might as well die here.”

He held the poison swords aloft in his left hand, then swung them down without mercy or hesitation.

The two short swords flew, leaving little green trails. They thudded dully, the blades stuck into the floor right before Linel’s and Fizel’s noses.

“But I will not kill you. Instead, I want you to watch the Integrity Knights that you insulted and see how powerful they truly are.”

Then he turned and took several steps forward. He drew his black sword loudly and swung around to brandish it before a knight.

“You have waited long enough, Fanatio! I challenge you!”

No…he wouldn’t.

But Eugeo’s lips could do no more than tremble. He couldn’t call Kirito back; his mouth and tongue were still regaining their sensations.

Kirito often liked to take out books on weapons from the academy library, so that might explain how he knew about things like ruby oak and poisoned steel. It was just like him to employ his skills of observation to escape from the girls’ trap, but the two had still undoubtedly left them in a far more dangerous situation than before. They had to face five Integrity Knights, one of whom was the vice commander, and fight them in direct battle. Their great idea about having Perfect Control ready to go before they entered the Great Hall was totally ruined.

Normally, Kirito would drag Eugeo away from this situation to regroup and improve their chances. That he wasn’t doing it now was a sign that he wasn’t in his right mind. He was gripped by such a rage that if Eugeo squinted, he thought he could see wisps of pale-blue flame rising from the back of his black shirt.

Even the instructors at Swordcraft Academy would be taken aback if they faced Kirito in his present state. But the purple knight named Fanatio, vice commander of all Integrity Knights, boldly grabbed the handle of his rapier and drew it. Eugeo’s eyes were pierced with such a brilliant light that it seemed the weapon itself was glowing.

Following Fanatio, the other four soldiers flipped up their downward-pointed swords in unison and took stances. The swell of tension and hostility pushed back against Kirito’s, making the air in the hall practically crackle.

Fanatio showed no signs of being affected by the tense mood. His dark voice issued forth from the helmet.

“Sinner Kirito, it seems that you desire a duel of single combat with me. Unfortunately, we are under strict orders to slaughter by any means necessary if you should reach the Great Hall. So you will fight them first—my personal students, the Four Whirling Blades!”

With that grand pronouncement, Fanatio promptly launched a System Call and began a complex, high-speed casting chant. It was most likely—most definitely—Perfect Weapon Control. They either had to use the same art to counteract it or attack before the spell was finished.

Kirito chose the latter. He sprang forward at Fanatio so hard that the hobnails on his boots created sparks. His black sword swung up high in the air.

But at the same moment, the leftmost of the four knights standing behind Fanatio began a similar charge. This one met Kirito with a two-handed greatsword, whipping it horizontally from the left.

Kirito changed the angle of his swing, bringing it straight down to block the knight’s attack. There was an ear-rending screech of metal, and both combatants sprang backward, creating a gap between them.

Unlike the knight, who had to redirect the momentum of his massive sword, Kirito recovered quickly. By the time he landed, he was already in follow-up mode, ready to plunge in again and deliver one fatal blow—

“…?!”

Eugeo gasped. Somehow there was a second knight there, unleashing a devastating slice from Kirito’s left. Kirito paused, tilting his sword up to slice left and deflect. There was another screech, a shower of sparks, and they ended up about four mels apart.

This second knight also ended up significantly off-balance. This was natural, as anyone swinging such a huge sword so hard would find it difficult to avoid the shift in momentum when it was knocked off its trajectory. If anything was worthy of praise here, it was Kirito’s skill in repelling the enemy’s attack with a minimum of movement, absorbing the impact, and promptly transitioning to the next move.

However—before Eugeo could even suspect it, the third knight was leaping at Kirito where he landed. Eugeo tore his eyes away from the third clash of blades and forced himself to look farther behind them.

“!!”

His jaw clenched. By the time Kirito and the third knight’s swords met, the fourth was already charging.

How could they predict his movements so accurately? Yet another sideways swipe, and this time, Kirito’s reaction was off. He managed to block the swing, but the momentum finally pushed him back, and his black form teetered in the air.

That’s it…

Belatedly, Eugeo realized the knights’ intentions. All their attacks were horizontal swings from left to right. If he deflected them with his sword, that limited the direction he would be pushed. Then the next knight would rush to that spot and start another horizontal slash. Given the increased effective area of their attacks as compared to vertical slices or thrusts, and the size and length of their swords, it must have been easy enough for them to ensure that even when jumping early, they had enough leeway to hit Kirito no matter where he landed.

The Integrity Knights didn’t have consecutive techniques the way the two boys did, but this was effectively the same thing, just spread out over a group. These were not the preening, demonstrative swordsmen of Centoria but true fighters with experience in the Dark Territory.

But even the Integrity Knights’ combination strategy was not infallible.

Figure it out, Kirito! Then you can counteract it!

The only sound that erupted from Eugeo’s throat was a dry groan. At least his tongue and lips were starting to move again. He worked at the tense muscles as best he could so that he’d be able to start his chant and silently prayed. Figure it out, Kirito.

After deflecting the fourth knight’s attack, Kirito finally faltered on the landing and had to put a hand to the floor.

The first knight had recovered and blazed forward with another ferocious attack. Kirito promptly leaned backward, trying to duck under the sword. A lock of his black hair made contact with the blade and flew free.

Exactly. If he knew they were always going to swing horizontally, he could dodge above or below, rather than stopping it with his sword.

But that evasion had to be one with his countermove. If all he did was fall over to dodge, he would be that much slower to transition to his next action, if not worse.

And the second knight, who bore down on Kirito from the left, was not going to give him time to recover. He raised his sword from flat to overhead and started a massive downward swing.

“Ah…!”

Eugeo tried to yell Watch out, ignoring the sharp pain that stabbed at his throat. But he wasn’t in time. Sensing that there would be no way to avoid it, his eyes instinctively tried to avert themselves from the grisly outcome.

Just then, the first knight, who had finished his swing to Kirito’s right, suddenly lurched. Kirito hadn’t just been lying on the ground. Somehow, he wrapped both his legs around one of the knight’s and pulled the larger man down on top of him.

The second knight was already into his attack and couldn’t stop now, so the huge greatsword dug deep into his companion’s back. He tried to pull it away, visibly startled, when a dark blur rushed up from below.

Kirito thrust through the knight’s upper arm as he jumped to his feet, then turned to the third knight, who was hastily trying to follow up, and hurled the second knight at him. The newer attacker had no choice but to stop before he simply sliced his partner in two.

At last, the combination attack of the group Fanatio called the Four Whirling Blades came to a halt.

Kirito took advantage of this brief interval to burst forward. He completely ignored the fourth knight and charged at Fanatio, who was still chanting his Perfect Weapon Control.

Make it in time! Eugeo prayed.

“Enhance—!” Fanatio shouted.

“Yaaaah!!” Kirito bellowed.

He swung back his sword, still at a considerable distance. Normally it would never reach from this far, but the blade promptly let off a pale-green light—the Aincrad-style attack Sonic Leap. Like Vertical, it was a single downward slice, but this one had a charging power that covered over twice the distance in an instant.

Kirito leaped like some hunting animal, trailing colored light, as Fanatio held out the tip of his rapier. But no matter what he did with it, such a slender tool could not completely block the impact of an ultimate technique. The Gigas Cedar blade was even heavier than Eugeo’s divine Blue Rose Sword. When combined with the tremendous speed of Kirito’s attack, three of those little rapiers together would shatter easily under its force.

The black swordsman reached the peak of his jump, and just as he started to swing the sword forward, the rapier glinted in the knight’s hands. Or more accurately, the entire body of it flashed, and then it stretched forward at incredible speed.

The slender beam silently punctured Kirito’s left flank, continued onward through the air, then exploded at last against the ceiling of the Great Hall. All of this happened in a single moment.

The shock of his pierced stomach threw off the trajectory of Kirito’s attack, causing the brunt of its force to hit nothing but air and merely glance off the plume of Fanatio’s helmet.

There was hardly any bleeding from the wound, so it didn’t seem like much of a danger in terms of his life value, but Kirito immediately fell to a knee as he landed. Eugeo looked closer and saw that there was a faint trail of smoke rising from the edges of a little hole in his shirt.

So it was likely a fire-based attack. Yet the light that shot from Fanatio’s sword was so white, it was nearly blue. Eugeo had never seen fire that color before.

Fanatio turned with almost detestable grace and pointed the tip of the rapier at the prone Kirito. It let off a soft hiss, and another beam of light shot out. If Kirito hadn’t immediately leaped to his left, it would have caught his leg. Instead, the beam pierced into the marble floor and exploded again. When the light faded, there was a melted red hole in the spot.

“No…way…,” Eugeo grunted, though he didn’t even realize he’d done it at first.

The materials used to build the cathedral were the same excellent marble as the Everlasting Walls that divided Centoria, judging by the pure color and smooth sheen. It wasn’t the kind of stone that would melt from a simple fire. Even Deusolbert’s Conflagration Bow only succeeded in burning the carpets and tapestries.

So if Fanatio’s Perfect Control arts were fire-based, they were easily far greater than Deusolbert’s. It was possible that Kirito’s life was already in dire condition from the earlier shot.

Clutched in the grips of cold fear, Eugeo could only watch as Kirito continued to leap around irregularly. Fanatio’s sword flashed and blasted after him, gouging stone with each volley.

The most frightening part of the technique was that it operated instantly, with no preparatory period of charging or thrusting. From Eugeo’s location, it was impossible to tell when the casually pointed rapier would emit the beam of light. It was similar to Eldrie’s Frostscale Whip in terms of its range, but that one seemed positively cute compared to this.

Fanatio continued pressuring Kirito, gliding after him. It was only Kirito’s honed primal instincts and excellent reflexes that helped him evade the fourth, fifth, and sixth beams.

It was the seventh that finally brought an end to the deadly game of cat and mouse.

The beam sizzled through the air and caught Kirito on the top of his right foot in midair. He lost balance and fell hard on his shoulder. Even then, he lifted himself up immediately, but Fanatio was there, training the point of his weapon below that black head of hair.

“Ki…!” Eugeo started to shout, but then he realized the numbness in his throat and mouth was finally subsiding for good. He thought he might have enough voice to execute the sacred art.

He summoned strength into his gut and began to recite the commands, quietly enough that the knights couldn’t hear but loud enough for God.

“System Call…”

Kirito would be able to get out of his predicament on his own. There was only one thing for Eugeo to do, and that was to recite his Perfect Weapon Control and have it ready to go when it was needed.

Fanatio held his deadly sword directly before Kirito, drawing out the silence, and then muttered, “…For a hundred years, the commander has scolded me for a bad habit of taunting in these situations…but I must admit, it is so pathetic. Why do those who fall before the might of my Heaven-Piercing Blade always look so foolish? I am certain that you, too, are wondering about the nature of this attack that defeated you so easily.”

The four knights working under Fanatio finished their healing, and they fanned out behind Kirito at a distance, brandishing their swords one-handed. That made escape more difficult, but it also looked like Fanatio’s speech might last a while. Eugeo focused his entire mind on chanting, taking great pains not to make a single mistake.

“Sinner though you may be, if you lived in Centoria, then you must know what a mirror is,” Fanatio prompted Kirito, who looked baffled by this sudden leap, despite his obvious agony.

A mirror?

Eugeo had seen them before, of course. Not back home in Rulid, but the rooms in the elite disciple dorm at the academy each had a small one. It was a curious item that reflected light far more vividly than water or metal plates, but Eugeo hadn’t spent much time looking in it. He didn’t like his weak-willed appearance.

Fanatio kept the sword trained on Kirito in case he moved, and continued, “It is an expensive item made by pouring molten silver into a case of glass, so few outside of Centoria will have seen one. A mirror can reflect the light of Solus with nearly perfect results. Do you understand me? Any place that receives both Solus’s light and a reflected beam from a mirror is made twice as warm. One hundred and thirty years prior, our exalted pontifex summoned all the silver coins and crafts in Centoria, then ordered the glassmakers to fashion one thousand great mirrors from them. It was an experiment in creating a weapon that did not require a sacred arts chant to execute. A thousand mirrors, arranged in a semicircle in the cathedral’s courtyard, could focus all of Solus’s midsummer strength into one point and produce pure-white flame. Within minutes, it could melt down a rock the size of a person.”

Weapon…White flame…?

Fanatio’s statement didn’t exactly add up in Eugeo’s mind. But he could sense instinctively that this plan of the pontifex’s was just as horrific as making children kill each other in order to test resurrection arts.

“Ultimately, the pontifex decided it was too elaborate to utilize in battle. But she did not want all the work to go to waste, and so she had those thousand mirrors bundled and strengthened and honed down into a single sword: the Heaven-Piercing Blade. Do you understand me, sinner? It was the power of Solus itself that pierced your stomach and foot!”

Eugeo was so stunned by this proud speech, he nearly slipped up at the end of the chant.

So the white beam of light was Solus, amplified by the power of a thousand mirrors.

An attack with heat elements could be fought off with ice elements. But how would one defend against an attack of pure light? And as far as Eugeo knew, no art that used light elements as its base had any direct attack power to speak of. An illusory light spell could be eliminated by one using darkness, but not even ten or twenty layers of darkness could withstand a beam of that power.

Eugeo continued with his recitation largely automatically, resisting the sense of panic driving him, and finally reached the end. All he had to do was finish with Enhance Armament, and the Blue Rose Sword would unleash its hidden strength. Now he had to wait for Kirito’s signal.

Fanatio had said all he wanted to say and pushed forward the rapier he had pointed at Kirito’s head.

“Kirito, do you understand now the full power of the sword that will take your remaining life? Before you die, repent for your sins, pledge your faith to the three goddesses, and beg for forgiveness. Then the purity of the ghostly light will wash your sins clean and guide your soul to Heaven. And now I bid you farewell, young, foolish heretic.”

The Heaven-Piercing Blade flashed, surging with the beam of light that would pierce Kirito’s heart and end his life.

At that exact same moment, Eugeo heard, “Discharge!”

Before the light erupted from the tip of Fanatio’s sword, Kirito smacked his hands together and shoved them forward. Right in front of his palms was a silver-colored sheet.

But it wasn’t just an ordinary metal plate. It was perfectly square and flat, and in it, Eugeo could see a reflection of Fanatio’s helmet.

Just before Kirito had brought his hands together, Eugeo had glimpsed two different-colored elements gripped in his fingers. In his right hand was a steel element, used to throw needles or create temporary tools. And in his left hand was a crystal element, an essence of glass for fashioning cups or building barriers that were hard to see. By combining the two and forming them into a flat surface, he had created…

…a mirror.

The spear of superheated light hit the magically created mirror and instantly turned the silver into orange.

Tools created from sacred elements were naturally short-lived. It might look like the same knife, but one forged from proper ore would last for decades, while a tool crafted from steel elements would run out of life and turn to dust in mere hours. This mirror was no exception, and it clearly wouldn’t last against the Heaven-Piercing Blade’s incredible power.

Sure enough, the mirror only held up for a tenth of a second. The liquefied mixture of glass and metal sprayed outward, and 80 percent of the beam’s power proceeded toward Kirito.

He made use of that instant, however. By tilting his body to the left just enough, it singed his hair and a bit of his cheek as it passed him.

The other 20 percent of the beam reflected by the mirror bounced sharply back at Fanatio’s helmet.

Despite the stunning turnaround, the second of all Integrity Knights yanked his head aside with similarly quick reflexes. But the winglike plumes on either side of the helmet did not escape damage. The light penetrated the left wing, obliterated the fastener that held it down—and then the entire helmet fell off in two halves, front and back.

The first thing Eugeo noticed was the volume of hair that burst free.

It was just as black as Kirito’s, yet the shine of it was far richer. The long, wavy locks, which must have required a lot of upkeep, shone in the midday sun from the Great Hall’s window.

Wow, for being a knight, he’s kinda…, Eugeo started to think, and then Fanatio raised a hand to block the light and shouted, “You dare see me, you knave?!”

Unlike the metallic, warped voice that came from the helmet, this one was clear and high-pitched.

It’s a woman?!

In his shock, Eugeo nearly discarded the sacred arts he had in waiting. He clamped his lips shut and tried to focus on holding the spell in. But part of him couldn’t avoid staring at Fanatio’s back.

She was as tall as Kirito, if not taller, but seen in this new light, the curve from back to waist was indeed too delicate. And yet he had never doubted that Fanatio was a man until that point.

They’d already met Alice Synthesis Thirty and the children Linel and Fizel, so there was no reason to assume there weren’t plenty of women among the Integrity Knights. And at the academy, nearly half the students were girls like Ronie and Tiese. Many of those students wound up to be Integrity Knights, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the second-in-command was a woman.

Eugeo was puzzled by why he was so thrown for a loop, until he realized that Fanatio’s mannerisms and attitude were extremely masculine. So perhaps Fanatio’s current rage wasn’t about the revelation of her face—but her femininity.

Even Kirito looked completely shocked, one knee on the ground and burns on his face.

Fanatio glared at him through the fingers of her left hand and said, “And you…you look at me the same way, sinner? Even a traitor and rebel against the Church claims that he cannot fight me seriously once he knows I am a woman?”

Despite her strangled cry, her voice was as pure and beautiful as an instrument played by a master musician.

“I am not human. I am an Integrity Knight summoned to earth from Heaven…and yet you men mock and slander me as soon as you learn I am a woman! And not just my fellows…but even the general of the dark knights, the very manifestation of evil!!”

No, you’re wrong. Neither I nor Kirito is mocking you, Eugeo thought.

Between the garrison at Zakkaria and the academy, he had fought against many women. Many were better than he was and had bested him in combat. In none of those battles did Eugeo fight at less than his best because they were women, and he held an equal regard for the skilled, no matter their sex.

But what if it wasn’t a fight with rules for victory and defeat, but a true battle to the death? Could he actually destroy the last of an opponent’s life without hesitation?

The breath caught in Eugeo’s throat. He’d never had to consider this question.

Just then, Kirito launched himself up into the air. It wasn’t a fancy technique of any kind, just a slash from the upper right. It was so fast that Eugeo could barely see the blade moving. It was practically a miracle that Fanatio was able to block it in time, given her distress. An earsplitting clang ripped through the vicinity, sparks briefly illuminating the faces of the two combatants.

Fanatio caught the sword on the rapier’s guard, but the momentum of the attack drove her several steps back. Kirito did not let up any pressure on the knight as they clashed hilt to hilt. Bit by bit, Fanatio’s purple-armored knee began to bend.

Voice low, Kirito said, “I see. That’s why you chose that sword and that move. So that you could fire those shots and keep anyone from finding out you were a woman…Isn’t that right, Miss Fanatio?”

“You…y-you wretch!!” she shrieked, pushing back on her sword.

At great pains, Eugeo tore his eyes away from the combatants to look at the four knights surrounding them, who did seem slightly unnerved. Perhaps even some of them were unaware of Fanatio’s true identity. He had no idea about the two paralyzed girls to his right, though.

Kirito and Fanatio continued their deadlock, soaking in the attention of all present. In terms of personal and sword weight, Kirito had a clear advantage. But once she pushed back on equal footing, Fanatio exhibited a tremendous force of her own that did not seem to come from her physical arms.

Through gritted teeth, Kirito tried rattling her again. “…Just so you know, the reason I was so shocked earlier is because your spirit got so weak as soon as the helmet broke. You hide your face and your swordfighting style…I’d say you’re the one who’s most obsessed with your femininity.”

“Sh-shut up! I’ll kill you…I swear I’ll kill you!”

“That’s the point of this fight. And I’m certainly not going to let up just because you’re a woman. I’ve lost to girls plenty of times already!”

Even from just what Eugeo knew, Kirito had lost to Sortiliena, his tutor disciple at school, plenty of times. But the way he was speaking now, it didn’t sound like he was talking about training and practice duels. It sounded like he had engaged in real, actual battles against swordswomen and lost…

Kirito abruptly swung his right foot forward and swept her leg. Her balance lurched, and the two blades gave off sparks. He pushed the jet-black sword forward with one hand.

But the Integrity Knight flashed her hand with impossible speed, and the rapier deflected the side of the black sword like a living creature. With his thrust pushed aside, she had time to recover her balance and take a step back for distance.

Kirito countered just as quickly. He plunged in close, practically ramming her, to keep the gap small. Given the way she could produce that light beam without any preparation, fighting at a distance was a nonstarter.

A swordfight erupted at point-blank range and lightning speed.

Most shocking of all to Eugeo was that for all of Kirito’s blinding combination attacks, Fanatio met every one without faltering. Her shining rapier moved here and there and everywhere, dispatching every strike of the black blade that just kept coming. Whenever the slightest opening presented itself, she threw in two or three jabs in a row. Neither was using any ultimate techniques, because neither had the time to take the proper stance.

None of the sword schools in the human realm possessed anything like the combination attacks of the Aincrad style. Even the veteran Integrity Knight Deusolbert wasn’t aware of them. That would mean that Fanatio’s combos were something she came up with herself. Surely, the reason for that had something to do with what Kirito had said earlier.

The Heaven-Piercing Blade defeated foes without letting them approach. The combination attacks ensured that if she couldn’t use Perfect Weapon Control, she could continue attacking, even if the first blow was blocked.

Fanatio was terrified of fighting at ultraclose range and having what was underneath her armor revealed.

But why…? Why would she go to such lengths to hide her own nature?

Eugeo watched their battle in stunned rapture as he considered these questions. The other four knights were in the same state of mind—they were all watching with their greatswords lowered.

Wow…

What a truly brilliant battle.

Even at such close range, both combatants kept their feet still and traded furious storms of slashes and thrusts, dodging and deflecting as necessary. It felt like he was watching shooting stars clash, reflecting and vanishing. The impact of steel on steel was so quick and constant that it began to resemble a kind of percussion performance.

A ferocious smile was plastered on Kirito’s pale, excited face as he moved, a single being of man and sword. The strategy was to stick close to prevent her from using the Solus attack, but at this point, he just seemed to be enjoying unleashing his swordfighting skill.

But Fanatio had no need to indulge him. She could have one of her knights attack Kirito from behind, then pull back and use her beams. He would have no defense against that.

Yet the Integrity Knight with the long black hair seemed to be determined to beat him at his own game. Eugeo couldn’t guess what her reasons were. Was it anger at Kirito’s taunts? Because her pride wouldn’t allow her to back away? Or did she, too, find some value in trading combination attacks at the very limits of possibility?

Eugeo couldn’t see Fanatio’s face from his position, so he didn’t know what kind of expression she was wearing. Based on what had been said, Fanatio seemed to have been an Integrity Knight serving the Church for at least 130 years, if not longer. It was an amount of time that Eugeo, who was not yet nineteen years old, could scarcely fathom.

So he had no way of knowing how many years ago she started hiding her face and gender, but if she had developed these combinations skills all on her own, it had to be over ten or twenty years. The only reason Kirito could keep up with Fanatio was that he was an expert practitioner of the rare Aincrad style. Any other swordsman would have been crushed flat without getting in a single swipe.

So perhaps Kirito was actually the first opponent Fanatio had ever been able to exhibit her utmost abilities against.

Based on the examples of Eldrie and Deusolbert, even the Integrity Knights prized the beauty and gallantry of the single attack. It was hard to imagine that Fanatio could utilize her combination skills in training against the other knights. For a long, long time, she had trained in secret against the imaginary shadow of another wielder of these arts—a shadow that now had flesh and blood in the person of Kirito.

As their superhuman duel continued, Eugeo eventually realized that all the hair on his body was standing on end, and his eyes were brimming with tears.

Ever since he started learning the Aincrad style with Kirito, he had been envisioning an ultimate form of battle that was now realized before him. This was not the practiced beauty of the principled aesthetic but the stark allure that could only result from the ultimate fixation on cutting down the enemy, and nothing else.

Five consecutive thrusts from Fanatio met five consecutive slashes from Kirito, and with each rebound they brought their weapons back around with even greater fury.

“Ryaaaa!”

“Seyaaaa!”

The shock waves of their weapons intersecting felt hot on Eugeo’s skin, even from where he lay on the floor a considerable distance away. Their black hair danced and flew, metal snarled, and they switched spots, back and forth.

When Fanatio’s face finally came into view, Eugeo’s breath caught in his throat.

She had the pure beauty of a holy woman from fairy tales come to life. By appearance, she couldn’t have been more than in her mid-twenties, with smooth skin the color of tea mixed with plenty of milk. Her arched brows and long lashes were black, but her irises were a light brown very close to gold. She appeared to come from the eastern region, with a slender-bridged nose and a rounded chin that added softness to her beauty. Her small lips had just the faintest tinge of red.

There was none of the lethal fury in her features that he’d felt earlier. Instead, there was simply determination, enclosing and protecting a kind of pain.

“Ah, I see,” said Fanatio in her smooth voice as their swords crossed. “Sinner, you are not like the others I have fought until today. No man has ever looked upon this cursed visage and truly attempted to kill me.”

“Cursed, huh? Then who are you combing your hair and wearing lipstick for?” Kirito taunted. But Fanatio merely grimaced.

“For over a hundred years, I have waited in hope that the man I love might seek something in me other than my skill with the sword and the number of heads I bring him. But after pining behind my mask for so long, and then tasting defeat at the hands of a newer knight more beautiful than me, who bothered not to hide her features…I could not help but seek a touch of cosmetics.”

A knight more beautiful and mighty than Fanatio. A woman.

The thought of yet more powerful knights in the tower gave Eugeo the chills, but then he realized that he knew of an Integrity Knight who fit the description. A recent knight who did not wear a helmet, and who had dispatched him with a single blinding strike—Alice Synthesis Thirty.

Kirito must have felt something in her words, too, but he kept his face an utter mask as he demanded, “What is the most important thing to you? If all the Integrity Knights do is obey the pontifex’s orders, then there shouldn’t be any room in your heart for love or jealousy. I don’t know who this man is, but if you’ve been in love with him for a hundred years…then it’s because you’re human. You’re just as human as me. I’m fighting to destroy the Church and your leader so that human beings like you can fall in love and lead happy lives!”

Even Eugeo was stunned by this speech. Kirito was always so aloof; he had no idea his partner was thinking about such deep concepts. But Eugeo also sensed his friend was grappling with himself as well.

For just an instant, Fanatio’s expression twisted.

When a deep furrow appeared on her smooth forehead, he wondered if her Piety Module would emerge the way Eldrie’s did, but it was only the number-two Integrity Knight’s extreme reaction.

“…Child, you have no idea what kind of hell this world will be plunged into without the might of the Axiom Church…Day by day, the Dark Territory amasses its forces. They bristle just beyond the boundary of the End Mountains. Yes, I admit that you are strong. And you are not an agent of darkness or a wicked intruder, contrary to what the prime senator claimed. But you are still dangerous. You threaten the Church and its knights not just with your sword but your words as well. In the face of our greatest duty, to protect the human realm and those who dwell in it, my feelings of love are but chaff in the dirt.”

She looked stern and resolute, all reservations cast aside. All throughout her long speech, the Heaven-Piercing Blade and the black sword creaked and screamed at maximum volume. If either combatant pulled back even the tiniest amount, they would surely be thrown off balance.

Even as they struggled, the life of the two swords was dropping. If the deadlock continued, the Heaven-Piercing Blade would give out first. Among Divine Objects with similar rank, the larger and thicker weapon always had more life to begin with.

Naturally, Fanatio would be aware of this. She knew that if her sword gave out and left her open to attack, Kirito would slice her without mercy or hesitation.

“And that is why I must defeat you—even if it means trampling upon my pride as a knight. Mock me for winning with a shameful technique. You have that right,” she muttered. Then she bellowed, “Hidden light of the Heaven-Piercing Blade, cast off your shackles!! Release Recollection!!”

That was it—the command to unleash its greatest power!

The silver blade shone brighter than it ever had.

An instant later…

Bwaash! A multitude of beams streamed outward from the tip of the weapon. A blinding attack, was Eugeo’s first reaction. It was a way to rob Kirito of vision and throw him off balance so that she could strike.

But that possibility was ruled out when one of the beams in the omnidirectional spray landed on the stone floor right next to Eugeo and gouged deep into the marble.

That’s no blinding technique—they’re all the same beams! Kirito!! Eugeo thought desperately, sitting upright. Just at that moment, one of the beams was about to pierce Kirito’s right arm. And in fact, there were charred black holes on his left shoulder and right thigh already.

Kirito wasn’t the only one who was suffering from the superheated light.

Even Fanatio, the very owner of the Heaven-Piercing Blade, received ugly holes on the armor over her stomach, shoulders, and legs. The punctures looked even deeper than Kirito’s. And yet there wasn’t a single shred of anything but determination in her proud features.

The Integrity Knight Fanatio Synthesis Two was going to put a stop to Kirito, and she would sacrifice her life to do so.

Eugeo recalled what the previous pontifex, Cardinal, had said. The Release Recollection command summoned all of the weapon’s memories and unleashed its wildest power. Power that was enough to destroy not just the enemy but the wielder as well.

The unleashed Heaven-Piercing Blade’s initial volley inflicted nearly fatal wounds on the two directly in its presence, and it caused at least minor damage to the other four knights at a distance. The stately, impressive decorations in the Great Hall were hideously blasted and charred, and expensive glass windows shattered left and right. Few of the lights reached Eugeo or the two paralyzed girls beside him, but eventually they would get hit.

The lights shone and shone from the tip, but the weapon forged of a thousand mirrors showed no signs of stopping. Every second, the tip of the sword flashed, sending out short bursts of light in every direction. Half went up into the air, hitting the walls, pillars, and ceiling, but many of those that traveled downward naturally landed on the two people closest to the source.

Without letting up any pressure on the intersection of the swords, Kirito craned and darted his head out of the way of any beams threatening to hit his brow. More light-headed for Fanatio’s face, but the Integrity Knight did not budge. A beam brushed her cheek, gouging a deep red furrow into her spotless skin and evaporating a lock of her full black hair.

“You…colossal idiot!!” Kirito screamed. A spray of blood shot from his mouth. No matter how much life Kirito had, there was no question about being in danger of running out, given the damage he was taking. But the swordsman in black refused to falter. He slid his sword up so the side of it covered the beam-emitting point of the Heaven-Piercing Blade.

Brief as this moment was, it succeeded in blocking all of the light that was shooting at Kirito and Fanatio.

Now—now is the moment!

Kirito did not give an explicit signal, but Eugeo’s senses of reason and intuition both told him that the time had come.

Fanatio and her four knights, who held up their greatswords like shields, were too busy with the light beams to pay any attention to the other guilty party. No one was going to take advantage of the moment of weakness when Eugeo activated his Perfect Control.

He leaped up with tremendous force and drew the Blue Rose Sword he’d been cradling beneath his stomach the entire time.

“Enhance—”

In midair, he spun the handle so that it pointed down, added his left hand to the hilt, and thrust it into the marble floor with all his strength.

“—Armament!!”

Nearly half of the pale-blue blade sank into the stone.

Craaakk!! With an earsplitting bursting sound, the marble was instantly covered in white frost.

Sharp, crystalline pillars thrust upward in a wave of ice that swelled forth. Within five seconds of launching, the ten-mel-wide ice wave had swallowed up the feet of Kirito, Fanatio, and the four other knights.

At last, the quartet of knights noticed the anomaly. Their helmeted heads turned to look in his direction.

But it was too late.

Eugeo clenched the sword with all his strength and screamed, “Roses—bloom!!”

Instantly, countless vines of pale-blue ice sprang up around the feet of the knights, Fanatio, and Kirito. Each one was only the width of a pinkie finger, but every single tendril bristled with sharp thorns that dug into the legs of their prey.

“Rrgh…”

“Wh-what is this?!”

The knights exclaimed their surprise. By then, the icy vines were climbing up their legs and to their waists and bellies. One knight belatedly tried to sever the vines with his greatsword, but the moment the weapon touched the ice, more vines wrapped around it and sewed it to the ground.

The vines covered the knights from toes to fingertips to head, turning them into immobile ice sculptures. The ice creaked as it snaked upward, firming its grasp on its prey, and then, with the crisp ringing like a bell, it sprouted a multitude of dark-blue roses.

They were all ice, of course. There was no nectar or scent coming from the hard, crystalline buds, only freezing white mist. Soon the air in the hall was filled with it: a thick, sparkling haze. The source powering the chill was the very life of the captured knights.

The drain on their life was slow, but there was no way to summon the strength to break the chains of ice while the roses sucked it away. This sacred art was not designed for killing foes. Eugeo had settled on this particular effect for the purpose of immobilizing Alice.

The four knights were completely neutralized, but their worthy leader was sharp enough to intuit the nature of the attack as soon as the vines started breaking through the frost on the floor, and she jumped away to evade them.

But Kirito’s reflexes were even quicker, aided by his prior understanding of Eugeo’s technique. Improbably enough, he not only leaped earlier than Fanatio, but he landed on her shoulder armor to leap a second time farther away. He did a somersault in the air to distance himself from the vines of ice, spreading a fine spray of blood as he went.

The pressure of his jump pushed Fanatio back to the floor, where she landed on one knee and was immediately surrounded by the ice.

“Rrgh…!”

Her concentration faltered, and the indiscriminate shower of light beams from her sword succeeded in severing a few of the vines before it fell silent. Her hideously damaged purple armor was wreathed in fine tendrils, then covered in thick ice.

Blue roses sprouted up her body, the last one appearing right over the wound on her cheek. The penultimate Integrity Knight and her divine weapon stilled completely.

Kirito continued his backward leaps and flips to evade the ice vines, despite the terrible injuries all over his body. Eventually he lost his balance on a landing and fell right next to Eugeo.

“Grf…”

A little cough emerged from deep in his throat, spraying out an alarming amount of blood. It soon froze over into crimson frost, to Eugeo’s alarm.

“Kirito…hang on, I’ll use a healing art on you…!”

“No! Don’t stop the technique!” Kirito demanded, eyes flashing despite the loss of color in his skin. “That isn’t enough to stop her…”

Flecks of blood around his lips, he used the black sword as a crutch to hold his battered body upright. After wiping his mouth, closing his eyes, and getting his breath under control, Kirito glared and held his sword aloft.

“System…Call!!”

Given the state of his body, the speed of his desperate chanting was really remarkable. Between every command was a bloodcurdling wheeze, and occasionally a bit of crimson spittle flecked from the corner of his lips. But still he continued to recite the dozen-plus commands of the art.

Up close, the sight of the numerous marks on Kirito’s body was ghastly. The light from the Heaven-Piercing Blade had punctured him everywhere, and the wounds were charred and black. The only upside was that he hadn’t lost much blood, but several of the beams had pierced his organs. His life was dropping faster than the knights trapped by the ice roses, and he needed help immediately.

But Eugeo couldn’t let go of the hilt of his sword if he wanted to maintain his hold on the Perfect Control arts. Kirito might have been able to heal himself, but he was so viciously focused on his recitation that it was clear he had no such intention.

You don’t need to rush, Kirito. Those knights won’t break their cages of ice that quickly, Eugeo thought, looking up at the soldiers ahead.

Just then, a beam of light shot from the midst of the profusion of ice roses and stuck in the wall. He was so startled that he grunted, “Wha…”

The source of the light was Fanatio, who should have been completely immobilized under all those vines of ice.

Perfect Weapon Control wasn’t some infinite power once the sacred art was cast. In order to control the expanded power of the weapon, the caster expended considerable concentration. Eugeo had to clutch the hilt of the sword stuck into the floor and continue envisioning the wild sprouting roses in order to maintain his prison of ice.

Fanatio had unleashed her sword’s Perfect Control, fired sunrays, engaged in a light-speed battle with Kirito, then unleashed indiscriminate beams all over and suffered nearly fatal wounds for it. Her concentration should have been shot, and her control over the Heaven-Piercing Blade gone.

And yet…

The slender weapon covered in ice and clutched in Fanatio’s right hand was slowly moving, creaking and crackling. Before Eugeo’s stunned eyes, a wisp of steam, like the essence of her fighting spirit, rose from the knight’s body.

“Rrgh…!”

He bit his lip and clutched the hilt of his sword even harder. Guided by this image, ten or so fresh vines of ice rose around Fanatio. They struck her right arm like whips and wrapped around it, forcing her to be still.

But that lasted for only a second. The knight shrugged off the clinging thorns of ice and forced her arm down. Nearly half of the azure vines shattered and spilled to the ground.

A chill colder than ice ran down Eugeo’s back.

Is she even human?

Kirito was exhibiting tremendous force of will with his bloody recitation, but this woman was beyond even him. The uncontrollable light-beam attack had riddled her with holes, and the ice roses were mercilessly draining her life—and yet she still did not fall. Instead, she was ripping herself free from the chains of ice that her companion knights were helpless to stop, using nothing but the strength of one arm.

With horror, Eugeo noticed that the Heaven-Piercing Blade in her hand was steadily changing angle to point in their direction.

What was giving Fanatio so much strength?

Was it the Integrity Knight’s sense of compelling duty to uphold the law? Her love for this man that had apparently lasted for a hundred years? Or did it have something to do with what she’d said earlier…?

Fanatio claimed that if the Axiom Church’s power was lost, the armies of the Dark Territory would run wild over the human world.

If true, then she was sacrificing her own health for the sake of the common people—the ones the higher nobles treated like livestock, abusing and exploiting them for all they were worth.

But that couldn’t be true. The Integrity Knights were the tools of the wicked Administrator, who took young Alice away, robbed her of her memories, and turned her into someone else. They were the hateful enemy. Their whole quest up the length of Central Cathedral had been built on the knowledge of their nature and the possibility that they would need to kill them.

They couldn’t be anything else—the Integrity Knights couldn’t be a bastion of goodness now.

“You…you people have no goodness!!” Eugeo growled, pouring all the hostility welled up in his heart into the Blue Rose Sword.

Once again, a wave of ice vines grew around Fanatio, winding up her right arm and digging into her flesh with their thorns.

“Stop…just stop!!”

But although his heart was full of overwhelming hatred, something spilled from Eugeo’s eyes. He could not accept that they were tears; he refused to recognize that he was being moved by the sight of her foolish insistence on extending her own arm, despite the binding thorns that embodied Eugeo’s hatred and fury.

The Integrity Knight’s arm was tattered. A carpet of broken thorns stuck in her skin, her blood oozing out and freezing into hanging red icicles.

But it never stopped moving, lowering until the upright Heaven-Piercing Blade was pointed level, its tip directed right at Eugeo and Kirito.

Through the blur of tears, Eugeo saw the silver weapon shine brighter than ever before. The light was so bright that Fanatio must have been burning off the entire remainder of her life. He had to squint his wet eyes to shut it out; the light was as bright as if Solus itself had descended on the Great Hall.

I can’t win. I just can’t beat her. Eugeo sighed softly, watching the ice roses melt and break down from nothing more than exposure to her light.

But he wasn’t going to simply close his eyes and wait for that sun to bring him death. He refused to give in to Fanatio’s “righteousness” like that.

He would at least create one last rose in a symbol of spite. He summoned the last dregs of hatred from the depths of his heart for that final act of defiance—when Kirito finished his recitation and murmured, “You can’t beat her with hatred, Eugeo.”

“Huh…?”

Eugeo turned back and saw his partner with blood-flecked lips turned into a tense smile. “You didn’t come all this way because you hate the Integrity Knights, right? It’s because you want to get Alice back, to see her again…You’re here because you love Alice. And your feelings aren’t in any way inferior to her justice. Same for me…I want to protect the people of this world: you, Alice, even her. So we can’t afford to give up and lose now…Right, Eugeo?”

Despite the desperate circumstances, Kirito’s voice was calm. The mysterious black swordsman smiled, nodded, and looked forward.

Just then, the Heaven-Piercing Blade unleashed its biggest and final flash.

It was a spear of light that not even all the beams until now, bundled together into one, could have matched. The light of the heavens, which Solus herself flung to banish the god of darkness—Vecta—in the age of creation, bore down as it prepared to burn everything in its path.

Kirito’s eyes were wide with astonishing willpower. The final line of the chant left his mouth, a single note of defiance amid desperate odds.

“Enhance Armament!!”

The black sword, pointed straight ahead, pulsed.

From every surface, every angle, darkness poured forth.

A surge of pure, light-sucking black writhed, soared, and tangled. It, too, coalesced into a massive spear, thick enough to require both hands to encircle, and shot forward. The tip of the spear seemed to have physical form: a hard, sharp tip like obsidian. Eugeo recognized that texture—it was the wood of the giant tree he had spent every day of his youth chopping at, until just over two years ago. The prior form of the black sword: the Gigas Cedar.

In that moment of recognition, Eugeo understood the nature of the Perfect Weapon Control that Kirito had activated.

By awakening the dormant memories in the black sword, he had brought the proud giant tree, which resisted any effort to cut it down for centuries, back to life in this place. It wasn’t the same size and shape, but it was certainly the same material.

Hardness, sharpness, and overwhelming weight.

All three in such measure that its existence itself made it the largest weapon possible.

Eugeo felt his heart lurch. And then the tip of that void-dark spear made contact with the end of Solus’s light. The resulting shock wave ripped through the Great Hall of Ghostly Light…and possibly rattled all of Central Cathedral itself.

The tremendous outpouring of heat and dense light did push back even the demon tree, bringing its relentless onslaught to a halt. Yet the endless darkness continued pouring out of the sword in Kirito’s hands, propelling the weapon onward.

The Heaven-Piercing Blade showed no signs of stopping, either. The wild stream of light strengthened by the moment, until the heat had totally melted all of the ice roses keeping the knight captive. Not only that, but the gauntlet protecting her right arm was bright red and smoking.

Yet the stalemate between light and darkness in the center of the Great Hall continued.

But this sort of ultrapowerful clash could not possibly equal out and vanish into nothing. One sword would vanquish the other and utterly destroy its wielder.

And the one disadvantaged here was Kirito.

No matter how tough the Gigas Cedar was, it was a tree with physical form. Just as the real thing was eventually felled after years of chopping, it would take damage and gradually weaken until it was no more.

But the light of the Heaven-Piercing Blade was pure heat. How would one destroy a force without mass?

If there was a way to counteract that, it would have to be either a mirror, like Kirito had already tried, or some kind of absolute cold from the Blue Rose Sword—some special quality that was anathema to the light itself. But if the Gigas Cedar had any qualities, it was being incredibly hard and heavy…

And one other thing.

It greedily absorbed all of Solus’s light and turned it into its own power.

Suddenly, Fanatio’s spear of light splintered into a thousand tiny streams. It was Kirito’s tree of darkness that broke the stalemate and resumed its charge.

The tip of his spear was, unsurprisingly, glowing red-hot, but it stood strong as it gouged through the sheer pressure of the light and bore down on its source. Meanwhile, the light itself sprayed wildly and landed all over the Great Hall, melting the ice vines and causing little explosions everywhere. The four other knights were blasted free from the ground and flew through the air.

Fanatio the Integrity Knight did not budge a step when she saw the enormous black lance approaching. Her beautiful features no longer contained any anger or hatred. Her eyelids fluttered down, and her lips budged. Surely there was some emotion contained in that action, but Eugeo could not detect what it was.

The sharp tip of the tree made its way up the stream to the source of the light at last, colliding with the end of the Heaven-Piercing Blade.

First, the silver rapier bent, then it twanged and rotated as it flew through the air. Then the knight herself launched backward with astonishing force. Her body flew directly toward the ceiling, spraying shards of purple metal and obliterating the painting of creation on the plaster.

Her fall was much slower. She came down with a shower of little pieces of structural marble and landed limply in front of the doors at the far end of the hall. The second Integrity Knight did not get up after that.

The spear of darkness gradually lost form and retreated like a shadow, retracting back into Kirito’s sword. The blade itself seemed slightly bigger than usual, just like during the fight against Raios, but by the time all the darkness was absorbed, it was normal again.

Eugeo merely stood and stared at the aftermath of the tremendous battle.

The perfect, spotless marble floor and walls were now melted, burned, and pockmarked all over. In the middle, where the spears of light and darkness clashed, there were fissures in the floor so deep, it was a wonder you couldn’t see through to the cathedral level beneath.

No one who wasn’t present would have believed that this stunning destruction of the Great Hall of Ghostly Light on the fiftieth floor of Central Cathedral was between just two people, one of whom had been a mere academy student just two days before.

But we did it, Eugeo told himself. We fought five Integrity Knights of the Axiom Church, the absolute power that has ruled the world since its creation…and won.

That meant that, including Eldrie, they had defeated nine Integrity Knights so far. According to Cardinal, there were twelve or thirteen knights stationed inside the cathedral. So if they overcame a few more…

Just as Eugeo was savoring the feeling of their progress, Kirito fell heavily to his knees. The black sword tumbled from his hand.

Eugeo hastily let go of the Blue Rose Sword, still stuck in the floor, and helped support his partner’s body before it fell over.

“Kirito!”

He was stunned at how light his friend felt, a sure sign of how much blood and life he’d lost. His skin was paler than the marble, and his eyelids weren’t popping back open. Eugeo quickly looked him over and then put a hand to the deepest-looking wound, a gash in Kirito’s side.

“System Call! Generate Luminous Element!”

He moved the three light elements this produced into the wound and continued the sacred art to unlock their healing power. When the cauterized wound began to seal up, he let go and repeated the process on Kirito’s left shoulder. Normally, light elements required a significant amount of spatial resources, and thus a catalyst like holy flower essence, but not in this case. The life the Blue Rose Sword had absorbed from the five knights was now present in the air around them as sacred power.

He had patched up the primary wounds, which would stop the continual loss of life, but Eugeo was not able to use light-based healing arts that could actually recover the amount Kirito had already lost—which was most of it. He clutched Kirito’s right hand with his left and began to chant a new art.

“System Call! Transfer Human Unit Durability, Self to Left!!”

This time, motes of blue light appeared all over Eugeo’s body and gradually converged on his left hand, through which they traveled to the other youth. Compared to the simplicity of casting the spell that moved life from one person to another, the actual effect was enormous.

Between the fight with Deusolbert and now this one, it was Kirito who had taken all the damage, with hardly anything befalling Eugeo. He could never make up that debt unless he gave back to the point of passing out.

But after half his life had transferred over, or so it felt, Kirito opened his eyes, grabbed Eugeo’s hand, and pushed it away.

“…Thank you, Eugeo. I’m fine now.”

“No, you’re not. You took so much damage, I’m sure there’s still more you just can’t see.”

“It’s not as bad as when the goblins got us. I’m more worried about her now…”

His black eyes searched until they saw Fanatio’s body lying at the far end of the hall.

Eugeo bit his lip. “…Kirito…she was trying to kill you…”

Just then, he recalled what Kirito had said before he activated his Perfect Control. Eugeo continued, “‘You can’t win with hatred,’ you said. Maybe you were right. That Integrity Knight wasn’t fighting out of personal spite or hatred. But…but I still can’t forgive what the Church and Integrity Knights have done. If they have both incredible power and the will to protect the innocent people who live here…then why can’t they use that power for…for more…”

He stumbled, unable to continue. Kirito got to his feet unsteadily and picked up his black sword from the floor, then indicated that he followed Eugeo’s logic.

“They’re probably grappling with their own decisions, too. I bet we’ll learn more about this if we meet this knights’ commander…Your Perfect Weapon Control was incredible, Eugeo. You were the one who beat the knights. You have no reason to hate Fanatio as a person or the Four Whirling Blades anymore…”

“As a human…Yeah…I suppose you’re right. I was able to understand that much while we were fighting. She was as strong as she was because she was human,” Eugeo mumbled. Kirito chuckled and agreed.

“They would insist that they stand for absolute good, and you’d think they were absolute evil, but both sides in this equation are flesh-and-blood humans. Absolute good and evil can’t be determined by regular people.”

Eugeo got the feeling that Kirito was saying this as much to convince himself as anything else.

Kirito, think about how furious you were about that Administrator…Can you still hold the same opinion when it comes to the absolute ruler of the Axiom Church and the entire world?

But before he could actually ask the question, Kirito took off walking for Fanatio, who was still collapsed before the far doors. After five or six steps, he turned back and rustled in his pockets for a little bottle.

“Whoops, nearly forgot. Use this to cure the kids’ poison. Just make sure you break their knives and remove any other suspicious tools they might have before you give it to them.”

Eugeo caught the bottle, realizing that he’d forgotten about them, too. He pulled his sword from the floor and turned back to Fizel and Linel, who were both still sprawled out and paralyzed. The frost was totally gone from the area now, and the girls didn’t seem to have taken any damage from the ice vines or beams.

When he made eye contact with them, they averted their eyes (the only part of their bodies they could move) in a sulking fashion.

Lamenting that he wasn’t likely to get along with them, although for very different reasons than with Fanatio, Eugeo knelt down and pulled the two poison swords out of the ground where Kirito had stuck them. Then he tossed them up, so that they spun end over end in the air, and smashed them both with one swing of the Blue Rose Sword.

They shattered easily and melted into little particles of light before they even hit the floor. He sheathed his sword, knelt again, and began patting the girls down for more weapons, apologizing as he did so.

Lastly, he pulled the stopper out of the vial and split the remaining three-quarters of the bottle between Fizel and Linel. Like Eugeo, they would recover from the poison within ten minutes.

He could have simply left them there, but he tried to imagine what Kirito would tell them, and decided he would give it a shot.

“…Knowing you two, you might be tempted to think that Fanatio and Kirito are as strong as they are because they have Divine Objects and Perfect Weapon Control at their disposal…but you’d be wrong. They’re strong to begin with. Their hearts are strong, not their techniques or weapons, and that’s how they can fight through such terrible pain and perform such incredible feats. You girls might be skilled at killing people. But killing and winning are completely separate things. I didn’t understand that, either, until today…”

The girls were still refusing to meet his gaze. Eugeo didn’t know if he was getting through to them at all. He wasn’t good at dealing with children, anyway.

But even then, the two girls must have felt something, watching that fight. It was hard to think of Fizel and Linel as representing absolute evil, given the innocent, childlike way they reacted to things. Eugeo gave them a brief good-bye, then turned and trotted after Kirito.

As he made his way through the devastated hall, Eugeo glanced left and right, checking on the condition of Fanatio’s four knights. All four were still collapsed, significantly injured by the indiscriminate light-beam attack. But in keeping with their lofty title, none of the Integrity Knights had lost their full life. They had bled little, and they would probably be moving again before too long.

But unlike her companions, who merely suffered from the beams’ minor explosions, Fanatio had taken the full brunt of that charging spear of darkness. Her critical condition was clear from a distance, judging by the large puddles of blood surrounding her prone form.

Eugeo came to a stop near Kirito, who was kneeling at her side. He held his breath and looked over his partner’s shoulder at the knight.

Up close, Fanatio’s wounds were so hideous that he could barely stand to look at them. There were four puncture wounds on her torso and legs from the beams, her right arm was shredded from the thorns, and she was burned by the aftereffect of her own final attack. Every bit of her was in tatters.

But the most devastated part of her was, of course, her upper stomach where the Gigas Cedar’s blow landed. There was a deep gouge the size of a fist pumping blood out constantly. Her face, eyes closed, was so pale that it had almost taken on the color of her armor. She didn’t even look alive.

Kirito had his hands over Fanatio’s stomach in an attempt to repair her wound with sacred arts. That her Stacia Window wasn’t open was probably a sign that he didn’t think it was worth looking at the actual amount of life left. He sensed Eugeo’s approach without looking up and said, “Help me, she won’t stop bleeding.”

“Uh…sure,” Eugeo said, and he knelt on her other side and put his hands to the wound, too. Like he had done to Kirito earlier, he chanted light-based healing sacred arts. It seemed like the flow of blood was weaker after it, but still far from stopping.

It was clear that if they kept doing this, they would eventually use up all the resources in the area and be unable to generate more light elements. They could temporarily refill some of Fanatio’s life by giving her theirs, but it would be meaningless if they didn’t stop the bleeding. They needed either a more powerful arts-user or some legendary healing herb to save her now.

Eugeo watched Kirito purse his lips in worry, then eventually decided it was time to say it.

“It’s no good, Kirito. She’s losing too much blood.”

Kirito hung his head for a little while, then rasped, “I know…but if we keep trying to think of an idea…we’re sure to find a way. C’mon, Eugeo, help me.”

Eugeo was struck by his powerlessness, and it particularly reminded him of how he had felt two days ago when he’d been unable to prevent the evil acts that befell Ronie and Tiese.

But no matter how hard he thought about it, there simply wasn’t any way to call back the life that was vanishing before their eyes. For a moment, he even considered healing the four other knights instead for extra help, but they clearly didn’t have the time for that. If either Kirito or Eugeo stopped healing her, Fanatio’s life would run out within a matter of seconds. And even if they continued, the only difference was that the moment would arrive in a few minutes instead.

Eugeo summoned his determination and told his partner, “Kirito, when we escaped from the underground cells, you said that we needed to be prepared to kill any enemy who came across our path if we wanted to keep going. That’s the mindset you had going into this battle, right? You knew that one side would live and the other would die when you used that attack? At the very least, I don’t think Fanatio had any hesitation. It looked like she was risking her entire life. And I think you know, too, Kirito…that this isn’t the point where we can go easy on the enemy out of concern for them and actually win.”

Ultimately, that was what it meant to use a real sword on someone else, not a wooden one. It was a lesson Eugeo had learned through personal experience; cutting off Humbert’s arm had left his hands trembling, his eye in agony, and the pit of his stomach frozen with fear.

He’d always assumed that his black-haired partner had understood these things for ages, ever since they met in the forest of Rulid.

Kirito clenched his teeth and shook his head. “I know…I know. She and I fought our hardest…It was a true duel, one where either of us could have won. But…she’ll be gone if she dies! She lived for over a century…worrying, loving, agonizing…and I can’t just erase that soul of hers. I mean…if I die, I just…”

“Huh…?”

“If I die, I just”…what? Everyone was beckoned up to Stacia’s side and disappeared when their life ran out. Kirito might be mysterious in many ways, but he was still human and subject to that universal rule.

But Eugeo’s moment of confusion was cut short when Kirito abruptly looked up and shouted, “Can you hear me, Commander?! Your vice officer is going to die! Or prime senator, whatever that is! If any of you can hear me, come down and help her!!”

His voice echoed faintly off the distant ceiling and died out meekly. But he kept shouting.

“Anyone…I know more of you Integrity Knights are up there! Come and save your companion! Priests, monks…somebody come!!”

Up above, the disfigured representation of the three gods simply stared down at them in silence. No one was coming—not even the slightest breeze stirred the air.

Back on the floor, the color continued draining from Fanatio’s hair and skin. Her life was down to a hundred, or maybe fifty. Eugeo considered suggesting that they observe a moment of silence for Vice Commander Fanatio Synthesis Two as her soul departed for the heavens, but Kirito wouldn’t stop screaming.

“Please…someone! If you’re watching, help us! Oh…Cardinal! Come quick, Cardi…”

He abruptly fell silent, as though the words caught in his throat. Eugeo looked over at him, and he was surprised to see in his face a transformation from astonishment to hesitation, and then to determination.

“H-hey…what is it?”

But Kirito didn’t answer. He stuck his hand through the collar of his black shirt—and pulled out a small bronze dagger hanging from a thin chain.

“Kirito!” Eugeo shouted on impulse. “You know that’s—!”

Eugeo had one around his neck, too. Of course he wouldn’t forget the daggers Cardinal had given them before they left the Great Library. The daggers had no attack capability, but the target of the blade would be temporarily connected to Cardinal. They were their ultimate weapons. Eugeo would use his on Alice—and Kirito, on Administrator.

“You can’t do that, Kirito! Cardinal said there were no extras after these! It’s for the battle against Administrator…”

“I know that…” Kirito groaned. “But I can save her with this. I can’t have the one thing that will help her right here and simply choose not to use it…I can’t just assign a priority order to people’s lives like that.”

He stared down at the dagger in his hand, equal parts pained and determined. Then he quickly but carefully stuck it into Fanatio’s left hand, which was relatively unscathed.

Instantly, the blade and the chain shone bright.

Before there was time to draw a breath, the dagger dissolved into numerous little strings of purple light. On closer look, the strings were actually lines of the sacred runes that appeared on Stacia Windows. The fine little lines of text broke free and swooped through the air, then vanished into spots all over Fanatio.

The dagger vanished completely, and purple light enveloped the Integrity Knight’s body. Eyes bulging at this astonishing phenomenon, Eugeo belatedly noticed that the blood oozing from the wound in her upper torso was totally dry now.

“Kirito…”

Eugeo was going to point this out, but a voice from nowhere cut him off.

“Good grief. I should have known with you.”

Kirito’s face shot upward. “Cardinal…is that you?!”

“Time is short. Don’t ask the obvious.”

That combination of sweet voice and irritated tone could only belong to the previous pontifex they’d met in the Great Library.

“Cardinal…I’m sorry…I—,” Kirito stammered.

“Don’t apologize to me now,” she snapped, cutting him off. “Given what I’ve seen of how you fight, I had an inkling that this might happen. I understand the situation—I will heal Fanatio Synthesis Two. But I will have to bring her here, as full recovery will take some time.”

The purple light covering Fanatio’s body flashed brighter. Eugeo had to shut his eyes, and by the time it was safe to look again, the Integrity Knight was completely gone—and to his surprise, so was the pool of blood on the floor.

There were a few of the little strings of sacred text still floating in the air. They blinked in synchronization with the sound of Cardinal’s voice, which was getting quieter.

“I’ll be brief, as the insects are starting to catch on. Based on the situation, there is a high likelihood that Administrator is not in a waking state at the moment. If you can reach the top floor before she wakes, you can eliminate her without needing the dagger. Hurry…there are few Integrity Knights remaining…”

Eugeo could sense that the invisible corridor to the Great Library was rapidly closing. Cardinal’s voice grew distant, and just before it faded out for good, the light in the air flickered, then fell to the ground.

Instead, what landed on the marble floor was two little glass vials. Kirito gazed emptily at the azure liquid for a while before reaching out to pick them up. He looked at Eugeo and dropped one in his partner’s open palm.

“…Sorry for getting out of hand, Eugeo.”

“No…you don’t need to apologize. Though I was kind of startled.” Eugeo chuckled, eliciting a grin from Kirito at last. He got steadily to his feet and flicked the stopper out of the vial.

“We’d better accept these generous gifts while we can,” he said.

Eugeo followed his partner’s lead, opened the vial, and downed its contents. It was not at all tasty, kind of like a bitterly sour siral water without any sugar in it, but it was like a douse of cold refreshment to a mind exhausted by so much battle. The substance was healing their damaged life rapidly, the wounds on Kirito’s limbs shrinking moment to moment.

“This is amazing…She could have given us more than just the two, though,” Eugeo commented, which earned him a shrug from Kirito.

“It would take too long to send such a high-priority object as dat…er, through sacred arts. I’m actually impressed she pulled that off in such a short— Whoa!”

Eugeo swiveled to look at Kirito in surprise. “Wh-what?”

“Eugeo…um…don’t move. I mean, don’t look down.”

“Huh?”

Of course, saying so just made it harder not to look down. Eugeo’s head automatically craned toward his feet. He spotted something that had appeared there without drawing their attention until now.

“Yeep!” he shrieked.

It was about fifty cens long. A long, flat body divided into narrow ringed segments was flanked by a multitude of little legs, about half of which were resting on Eugeo’s shoe. At the tip of what was likely the head was a line of at least ten little red eyes, and on either side, a frighteningly long set of needlelike horns, each one waving on its own. It was probably some kind of insect, but it looked more bizarre than disgusting. There were plenty of bugs around Rulid, but none looked like this.

With Eugeo frozen in surprise, the mystery creature waved its feelers around for about three seconds, then began climbing from his shoe up his pants in earnest. He shrieked again and jumped.

“Yeep…!!”

He stomped his foot. The bug fell, landing on its back, then flipped over and promptly scuttled between his legs. Eugeo leaped up and down several times, trying to keep himself away from the creature—and eventually, tragedy struck.

With a crisp crack and the sensation of something snapping and squishing underfoot, Eugeo’s right foot came straight down on the thing.

Bright-orange liquid spurted in all directions, releasing a sharp, pungent odor. Eugeo nearly fainted when he saw the severed legs still attempting to crawl, but he used superhuman effort to avoid passing out or vomiting. He looked up to Kirito for help.

But his trustworthy partner was now a good three mels away and backing up quickly.

“H-hey…hey! Where are you going?!” he demanded, his voice cracking.

Kirito just shook his head, face pale. “S-sorry. This isn’t my kind of thing.”

“It’s not my kind of thing, either!”

“Bugs like that always come the same way: You kill one, then ten more show up.”

“Don’t you dare say that!!”

Eugeo lowered his waist, ready to leap onto Kirito and take them both down together, when a purple light suddenly flashed below him, causing him to freeze again.

Beneath his shoe, the wretched remains were evaporating into light. Within a few seconds, the spattered gunk and broken carapace were totally gone. Eugeo felt the soothing calm of deep relief.

Noticing from a distance that the danger had passed, Kirito returned rather matter-of-factly and noted, “…Ah, right, I see. That must be one of the familiars that Administrator has prowling around, looking for Cardinal. I bet it smelled the connection to the library…”

“…”

Eugeo glared up at Kirito with no small measure of hatred, then gave up and replied, “So…you’re saying there’s a bunch more of those things crawling around the tower? I’ve never seen anything like it until now.”

“Remember how there was that shuffling on the other side of the door when we escaped into the library from the rose garden? They’re probably good at hiding—and I’m not gonna try snooping around to find them. Plus, Cardinal said something strange…about Administrator being in a non-waking state or something…”

“You’re right, she did…So she’s sleeping? In the middle of the day…?” Eugeo wondered.

Kirito rubbed at his chin and answered doubtfully, “Cardinal said that Administrator and the Integrity Knights were making certain sacrifices to be able to live for centuries. Administrator in particular sleeps almost the entire time…but it makes me wonder how she’s controlling the bugs and the knights…”

He looked down at the floor for a while and then scratched at his bangs as he murmured, “But I guess we’ll find out the answer when we go up there. Anyway, Eugeo, can you take a look at my back?”

“H-huh?”

Kirito spun around before he could react. Baffled, Eugeo’s eyes slid across the black fabric, which looked tattered from the rigors of so much battle but was otherwise normal.

“Um…I don’t see anything wrong…”

“I’m just wondering…Do you see a little bug on it? Kind of a spidery thing.”

“No, nothing.”

“Okay. That’s good. Well, let’s start the second half!”

Kirito started walking for the huge doors at the north end of the hall, and Eugeo had to rush after him.

“Hey, what was that all about?!”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Well, now I can’t help but be worried! Look at my back now!”

“Trust me, you shouldn’t be concerned.”

They proceeded onward, bickering and joking like they’d done ever since Rulid, but deep down, Eugeo practiced the question he really wanted to ask.

If you’re always so calm and collected all the time, what made you so distraught about Fanatio’s death? What was supposed to come after, “If I die, I just…”?

Kirito…who are you…?

The swordsman in black stopped at the massive doors several times his height, reached out with both hands, and heaved them open. A gust of cold air rushed to meet them, and Eugeo had to turn his face away.