3

“There…we…goooo!”

For the umpteenth time, I hauled myself up, caught my right leg on the corner of the marble, and swung up onto a flat surface at last.

My joints and muscles, taxed well beyond their limit, screamed and throbbed like they were being seared by flames. Large beads of sweat rolled down my forehead and neck, but I couldn’t even move my hands to wipe them away; I couldn’t do anything other than pant. The fatigue was so real and all-encompassing that it was hard to remind myself that this was just the STL’s virtual world.

Once the moon had fully risen, we spent the next two hours in another agonizing climb, and now that I was finally up on the ninety-fifth floor of Central Cathedral, I didn’t even have the energy to look around. I let my limbs lie flat, closed my eyes, and waited for my life value to return.

There were nearly fifteen floors between the terrace with all the stone minions and here. It wouldn’t have been that bad if not for the golden knight fixed to my back by her slender chain, necessitating all that time and stamina.

Alice Synthesis Thirty had impressively overcome the Seal of the Right Eye, that mysterious system that kept all Underworldians in check, but the cost had been severe. It had exploded her jasper-like right eye without a trace, and the shock and pain had knocked her unconscious.

The Underworldians’ souls were stored in lightcubes, an artificial memory medium. Perhaps because of that, they had a tendency to be more susceptible to psychological shock. When they were faced with immense sadness, fear, or anger, they went into a kind of temporary shutdown to protect their fluctlights from some kind of fatal error—but in a world without the concept of crime, it was quite rare for such extreme emotions to manifest. It had happened to Alice’s sister, Selka, two years ago, too, when we were attacked by the goblins in the northern cave.

Alice went unconscious merely to soften the shock of breaking through that eye seal. I expected she would awaken eventually; if there had been some fatal-error damage to her fluctlight, she would have died on the spot, as Raios Antinous had.

In that sense, it was remarkable that Eugeo, who had suffered the same phenomenon as Alice, stayed awake and finished his swing when it happened. He’d been fully spent after we got tossed into the cells, but he still responded when I spoke to him.

So the reason for the Underworldians’ mental fragility and absolute obedience to orders was still a mystery, but at least I knew it was possible for them to overcome it; Eugeo and Alice proved that. Yes, they were technically artificial intelligences, but the power contained in their souls was no different from that of people in the real world…

These thoughts and more went through my head for an hour on the terrace with the minions while I waited for Alice to recover, but she never opened her eyes. I used sacred arts to stop the bleeding, but I had neither the resources nor the skill to heal her entirely. While I waited, the moon rose and granted some spatial resources, but I needed them to generate the ice picks for climbing. The best I could do was rip the hem of my shirt to make an impromptu bandage for her, then continue climbing the tower with the unconscious knight weighing me down.

I removed the chain that connected us, tried hauling Alice’s slender but unbelievably heavy body over my back, and seriously considered removing the golden armor and Osmanthus Blade that made up most of that weight. However, it would have been stupid to leave those tools of hers behind now that she had made up her mind to fight on our side.

Instead, I steeled myself, hooked the chain to the knight’s body, and began climbing up toward the top of Central Cathedral in the distant night sky. After two hours of miserable effort, the sight of a new terrace brought me such relief, I accidentally dropped one of the hooks. All I could do was hope nobody was waiting on the ground far below, unsuspecting.

At any rate, once I had made it the ninety yards straight up that vertical wall to the ninety-fifth floor, I figured I had earned the right to lie down on flat ground for a little while. I wasn’t planning to move for another three minutes at least.

Just when I hoped to enjoy the feeling of every muscle in my body relaxing, I was interrupted by a quiet groaning from atop my back.

“Mm…muhhh…,” the knight said, her breath tickling my neck. “Where…? What…did I…?”

She tried to get up, but the chain quickly went taut, and the weight returned to my back.

“These chains…Kirito…Did you carry me…up here…?”

That’s right—you owe me some gratitude, I thought.

“Oh no, you’re all sweaty! You’ll stain my uniform! Get away from me!” she shouted, whacking the back of my head. My forehead smacked the hard marble floor.

“I don’t know…what I did to deserve that shabby treatment…,” I grumbled as I undid the chain and removed the cargo from my back, then leaned against a nearby pillar. The knight didn’t utter a word of thanks for my extreme physical labor; she was busy flapping her white skirt in an attempt to air it out. Once she finished, she felt the sleeve that had been pressed to the back of my neck the entire climb and glared at it suspiciously. Well, I wasn’t going to let this insult go without some banter of my own.

“If you’re that concerned, why don’t you go and take a bath, princess?” I said sarcastically, but fastidious Alice actually looked like she was taking the question seriously. “I’m just kidding!” I added. “There’s no way we’re going back down all that way.”

“That won’t be necessary, actually. There’s a Great Bath for the knights just five floors below us.”

“Wha…?”

Now it was my turn to look baffled. After escaping the underground prison, running through battle after battle, and completing this unplanned wall-climbing campaign, I would be lying if I said I didn’t want the chance to wash off the dust and sweat. It didn’t even have to be a bath, just a water pump—and then I looked around at last.

Like the name Morning Star Lookout suggested, the ninety-fifth floor was built to be one giant observation deck. The four edges of the tower had no walls here—which was why I was climbing up to it—just round pillars supporting the ceiling at ten-foot intervals. Given how open it was, I could now understand why Administrator placed those minion gargoyles along the walls below.

We were on the outermost part of the floor, which was a terrace with the occasional little set of stairs leading within. The interior was slightly elevated, with marble sculptures, verdant plants, and tastefully designed tables and chairs. I had no doubt that the wide-open view of the Underworld below would be breathtaking in daytime.

On the north end, a great set of stairs led to the adjacent floors. We were the only people in sight.

But had Eugeo passed through here yet or not?

Seven hours had passed since I was separated from him on the eightieth floor. I had to scramble for my life up a sheer wall and he had regular old stairs to use, so he should have gotten here much quicker.

But the problem was that he had to face a foe much stronger than the minions: Bercouli Synthesis One, commander of the Integrity Knights, a hero of legend stronger than Vice Commander Fanatio and Alice, both of whom had already fought me off without much trouble.

Eugeo was mighty, too, of course. In terms of sword skill, he had probably surpassed me already. But skill alone could not dispatch the superhuman Integrity Knights, especially the senior ones. It required taking advantage of the opponent’s mindset and utilizing anything you possibly could in the vicinity—a true “anything-goes” approach. Could earnest, straightforward Eugeo pull that off…?

Alice finished her own examination of the vicinity. “I say this with no relation to the issue of baths…but I must doubt that your friend Eugeo has come up this far yet.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because once we were thrown out of the cathedral, this floor became the only place we could get back inside. It’s really obvious from a glance…so if he had gotten here already, he would likely be waiting for you.”

“…I see. You’ve got a point,” I said, crossing my arms. If Eugeo had reached this floor before us, he’d have been either caught or killed by now. While I’d been doubting him just a moment ago, I also wanted to believe Eugeo was good enough not to end up with either of those fates.

“The other thing for Eugeo,” Alice said, clearly not realizing how naturally that name slipped out of her mouth, “is that if he came up the stairs from the Cloudtop Garden, he would run across our most powerful fighter before reaching the Morning Star Lookout. That would be Uncle…Commander Bercouli.”

Setting aside the use of the word uncle, I couldn’t help but be curious about something she said.

“Is he really that tough? This knights’ commander guy.”

Alice turned to me with a grin, part of her face still hidden by the makeshift bandage. “I have never once bested him in a practice duel. If you lost to me, and Eugeo is at your level, then by that logic, he will not win, either.”

“…Sure, by that logic. But if not for what happened, I may not have actually lost to you, either,” I grumbled.

The golden knight ignored me and continued, “Uncle’s skill with the blade is absolutely first-class, but his Perfect Weapon Control is simply divine. His Time-Splitting Sword, like the name suggests, is capable of piercing time itself. I suppose you would understand if I said that when he cuts the air, that slicing force remains suspended there for a time. Even if you avoid his strikes, eventually you will be trapped in a cage of blades that you cannot see. The slightest move might cost you a hand or a foot or, worse, your head—but if you don’t move, you are an easy target. Ultimately, any opponent of Uncle’s will be forced to stand in place and succumb to one of his greatest attacks like a practice dummy.”

“…The slices…remain suspended…”

It was hard to imagine from the way she described it, but it sounded like the chronological length of a swing was extended out into the future. If so, it was a frightful power indeed. It would totally override the strength of the Aincrad style, which was to reduce the strength of any single blow but make up for it by extending the range and time of our attacks with combos.

What would have happened to Eugeo against such a foe? I was certain he wouldn’t be dead, but a chilling foreboding crept up my spine. Perhaps we ought to head down in search of my partner after all. But what if he’d already been captured and taken to Administrator’s chamber on the top floor? What if she was performing some dangerous sacred arts on him, with her knowledge of all the user commands…?

At last, the fatigue was starting to leave my legs, and I got to my feet, if unsteadily. I glared at the stairs on the north end of the floor and bit my lip. What I would give for a sacred art that could tell me Eugeo’s current location—but as a basic rule, no art could be cast on a human target that wasn’t present. If that were not the case, Administrator and Cardinal’s duel would have been over ages ago. But if the target were an object rather than a person, there were other options…

Only then did I realize that there was such an easy way to solve this problem.

“Of course…that’s right.”

I motioned to Alice, who was looking at me with suspicion, raised my right hand, and at a moderate volume announced, “System Call!”

My fingers glowed purple, a sign that the spatial resources were charged again after the exhausting climb up the wall. Careful to control my emotions, I enunciated the following commands: “Generate Umbra Element. Adhere Position. Object ID, DLSS703. Discharge.”

It was always good to memorize your vocabulary. Naturally, my search target was the unique ID of Eugeo’s Blue Rose Sword. From what I was able to guess, DLSS was probably an abbreviation for “Double-Edged Longsword Single-Hand,” while the string of numbers was the identification for that particular sword within that category. My black sword’s ID was DLSS102382, which suggested that when the Blue Rose Sword was generated in the early days of the Underworld, there were only about seven hundred one-handed longswords at the time, but by the time my sword was crafted just two years ago, there were over a hundred thousand. At least, if my deduction was correct…

The little darkness element floated steadily downward until it landed on the ground a short distance away and burst.

“…It’s below.”

“So it would seem,” Alice noted with mild interest.

I clutched and released my fist a few times, sensing that some of my fatigued life was back, but I knew that Alice had suffered more damage. I glanced her way and asked, “Do you think you can heal your eye…?”

She put her fingers to the strip of cloth that had previously been part of my shirt and asked, “Did…you do this?”

“Yeah…It managed to stop the bleeding, but that was the best I could do with my sacred arts. I thought maybe you…”

“Of course. My sacred arts authority is far beyond yours,” she snipped in her usual manner. Her visible eye turned to the sky to stare at the full moon. “But there is not enough sacred power in the air to generate the light elements needed to restore my lost eye. It will not be possible until Solus rises.”

“Then perhaps if you converted one of your high-priority obj—I mean, one of your precious valuables into power…Your armor, perhaps…”

“Even the art to return a receptacle into its basic sacred power requires more than a small amount of power to begin with. Didn’t you learn that at the academy?” she said with exasperation, then thought it over. “I do still feel the pain, and my vision on the right side is limited, but neither is enough to prevent me from fighting. I shall be able to continue in this state for now.”

“B-but…”

“More importantly, I want to feel. I want to feel the evidence of my intention to fight against the Axiom Church I’ve believed in for so long…”

In that sense, I couldn’t argue. This fight was as much about Alice creating her own destiny as it was about mine.

“All right…if it comes to combat, I’ll protect your right,” I said, eyeing the main staircase. “We’ve got to hurry, though. Based on the movement of that darkness element, Eugeo’s got to be pretty far down from here.”

Technically, my search spell was for the location of Eugeo’s sword, not Eugeo, but he wouldn’t let go of it unless something very bad happened.

Alice looked to the stairs as well and announced, “I’ll take the lead—I know the way. Then again…we’re only going down the stairs.” And without allowing me any chance to interject, she strode toward them, boots clicking. I hurried to keep up.

Cool air flowed up from the descending stairs at the north end of the floor, and I couldn’t sense anyone in the darkness below. Even on the lower floors, there was very little sense of activity; up here at the top, Central Cathedral was simply cold and dead, like a series of lavish, beautiful ruins. It was hard to think of this as the center of power for the organization that oversaw the entire human world.

There was supposedly a senate in addition to the Integrity Knighthood among the upper echelon of the Axiom Church. It seemed strange that I’d ascended so high in the tower yet had not seen a single one.

I caught up to Alice on the right side as she descended and voiced my suspicions. The knight looked a bit perplexed, then whispered back, “As a matter of fact, even we knights aren’t told anything about the senators. I’ve heard that the ninety-sixth floor and up is a section called the senate, but we are forbidden to enter…”

“Oh…So what do the senators actually do, anyway?”

“…The Taboo Index,” she said, her voice even quieter now. “The purpose of the senate is to observe and confirm that all people are following the Taboo Index. When there is an Index violation, they dispatch an Integrity Knight to control the situation. I went to take in you and Eugeo from North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy two days ago on just such an order.”

“…I see…So the senate is kind of like a proxy for the pontifex. I’m surprised that Administrator would give them such powerful privileges, knowing how cautious she is. Unless the senators have their memories controlled the same way the knights do…”

Alice scowled and shook her head. “Please don’t talk about memory. I don’t want my remaining good eye to start hurting, too.”

“S-sorry. I think you’re safe now, though…Eugeo’s eye seal broke, too, and nothing much happened to him after that…”

“…Let’s hope you’re right,” she said, rubbing her eye patch.

I recalled what had happened on that exterior terrace. Alice had been shaken a number of times before she ultimately swore to fight against the Axiom Church and its leader, but at no point did her Piety Module ever show signs of activity. I assumed that the memory fragment Administrator took from Alice had to do with her sister, Selka, or childhood friend Eugeo, but unlike what had happened with Eldrie, when Eugeo mentioned Selka’s name to her at the academy, no purple prism appeared from her forehead.

So what in the world was the memory that Administrator took from Alice’s mind?

It was rather pointless to wonder about that now. Once Cardinal performed her Reverse Synthesis Ritual (if you could call it that), Alice would regain her past memory, and the Integrity Knight I was with now would cease to be…

Again, I sensed a subtle little twinge in my chest as I mechanically walked on.

The only sounds on the late-night staircase were two echoing pairs of feet. After five repetitions of landings with bright-red carpets, the descending stairs came to an end, revealing a very large set of doors. We’d passed the ninety-fourth through ninety-first floors, and there were no marks of battle anywhere.

Alice came to a stop, and I sent her a questioning glance.

“Yes…this is it. The Great Bath on the ninetieth floor. I would assume that Uncle wouldn’t choose such a place as his defense point…but then again, knowing him…” She trailed off as she put her hand to the door. Just a light push, and the thick slab of marble rotated without a sound. Instantly a wave of thick white mist pushed out, and I turned away on instinct.

“Whoa…that’s some major steam. How big is this bath? I can’t even see inside.”

Although it obviously wasn’t the time, it was very tempting to strip off my sweaty clothes and jump into that hot cleansing water. Only when I took a step inside the cloudy air did I realize it was not hot steam but freezing mist.

Alice wasn’t expecting this, either—she sneezed daintily, and I promptly unleashed a percussive blast of my own. The veil of white air hovering in front of me gave way, but not because of the force of my sneeze. When I saw the state of the bathing chamber, I stood still in shock.

It had to take up the entire floor of the tower, because the far wall was foggy in the distance. Almost the entire chamber was a bathtub, split in two around a long straight walkway right in front of us. Each bathtub was practically a fifty-meter Olympic pool on its own.

But the truly shocking detail was that the bath-pool on our left was completely frozen white. Even the animal-head faucet in the corner of the bath, pouring water in, was frozen into a curved pillar of ice, indicating that the freezing process had happened in an instant. That would be not a natural effect but the work of sacred arts, of course.

Whatever froze this much water at once was no laughing matter. You’d need at least ten expert casters utilizing ordinary sacred arts with ice elements to achieve this effect.

I headed to the left and descended the stepped lip of the tub so I could rest my foot on the surface of the hard ice. It didn’t creak, even with my full weight and heavy sword resting on it. I guessed that the water was frozen all the way to the bottom of the baths.

“Who did this…and why?” I wondered. After a few steps over the wispy surface, my boot landed on something hard. It crumbled delicately. Upon closer examination, I saw a number of the small round objects on the surface of the ice. I reached down and broke one off, then lifted it up.

It was a rose of ice, with many layers of blue, translucent petals.

“…!!”

I’d seen these before on multiple occasions. In the Great Hall of Ghostly Light on the fiftieth floor, when we fought Vice Commander Fanatio Synthesis Two; and in the Cloudtop Garden on the eightieth floor, when we fought Alice Synthesis Thirty. Eugeo utilized his Perfect Weapon Control to immobilize his targets in those situations, producing ice roses just like these.

It wasn’t sacred arts that froze this mammoth bathtub solid…

“…It was Eugeo…”

Alice lowered herself on the ice next to me. Her working eye was wide as she gasped, “By the Three…You’re saying Eugeo did this…?”

“Yep, no doubt about it. It’s the Perfect Control effect of his Blue Rose Sword. But I’ll be honest…I didn’t think it had this much potential…”

Eugeo claimed his Perfect Weapon Control was designed for slowing down opponents. He was dead wrong—anyone trapped in this hell of ice would lose their life before long.

Perhaps he really did defeat the legendary hero Bercouli. I looked around, desperate for information. The darkness element had indicated that the Blue Rose Sword would be around here, and that meant Eugeo was here, too.

Just then, I heard Alice gasp.

“…!”

I sucked in a sharp breath, too. About twenty yards away was a rather large silhouette. It was unmistakably a human head and shoulder. Someone buried in the ice.

Alice and I shared a glance, then we raced over, scattering ice roses.

I soon realized the person trapped in the ice was not Eugeo. His shoulders and neck were at least twice as thick as my partner’s.

I slowed down out of disappointment and caution, but Alice only went faster. “Uncle!” she cried, racing for the frozen silhouette.

That’s Commander Bercouli?! Then where’s Eugeo…?!

Confused, I increased my speed again. When I caught up several steps later, Alice was on her knees before the burly man, clenching her fists and screaming, “Uncle…! Commander! What happened to you?!”

Alice had seen Eugeo’s ice power on the eightieth floor, so she should have understood what the Blue Rose Sword’s effect was; when I got closer, I realized what she meant.

The man wasn’t simply frozen up to his chest. His rippling, muscular shoulders, trunk-thick neck, and fierce, proud features were all colored in a drab, inorganic gray.

“That’s…not part of Eugeo’s…Perfect Control effect…,” I murmured, stunned.

Her back to me, Alice said, “I…I agree with you. Long ago, Uncle told me…the prime senator has the authority to turn all human beings into stone…even Integrity Knights. I believe the name of the ability is…Deep Freeze.”

“Deep…Freeze,” I repeated. “Then this old guy—er, I mean, the commander—got turned this way by the prime senator? Aren’t they on the same side? Why…? I mean, he should be a valuable force in fighting off intruders, right?”

“I think Uncle secretly questioned the senate orders handed down to him…but like I did, he believed peace was impossible without the rule of the Axiom Church, and he spent countless days battling for that purpose. No matter what powers the prime senator has, there is no call…no reason for him to do such a horrid thing!!”

Tears dropped onto Alice’s knees from her left eye. She reached out, not bothering to wipe her cheeks, and clung to the petrified Bercouli. One of the teardrops landed on the commander’s forehead and vanished into little sparkles of light.

A sharp crack split the scene.

Alice leaped up to her feet, staring at Bercouli’s neck. There was actually a small split there, as though the mild warmth of her tear had melted the stone effect. The fissure widened and grew, throwing off tiny shards of material.

We watched in amazement as the gray statue continued splitting, very gradually changing the angle of its neck. Soon the face was pointing toward us, and the stone around the mouth began to crack. Shards of stone that would have been flesh and blood just hours ago continued to fall away.

Based on the name Deep Freeze, I assumed the command would completely pause an Underworldian’s state, body as well as mind. It wouldn’t be like spreading liquid plaster over someone in the real world. Through the orders of Stacia, the god of all, his every movement was forbidden—and he was trying to overcome it through willpower alone.

“Uncle…stop, stop it! You’ll tear your body apart, Uncle!!” Alice pleaded tearfully. But not for an instant did Commander Bercouli stop his defiance of the gods. With an especially loud crunch, he lifted his eyelids. The eyes revealed were as gray as his skin, but the irises rippled like the surface of water, and they began to regain a very faint bluish color. The absolute strength of will they exuded was so overwhelming, it gave me goose bumps.

He grinned, throwing off another shower of shards, and opened his mouth to emit a hideously raspy but powerful voice.

“…Hey…little Alice. You shouldn’t cry…that hard. It ruins…your pretty face.”

“Uncle…!!”

“Don’t…worry…A single art isn’t going to kill a guy like me. Besides…”

Bercouli paused, taking in Alice’s tear-streaked face and the impromptu bandage that covered the right side. He gave her a smile full of fatherly love and said, “Oh, I see…little Alice, you made it over that wall…You broke through…the right eye…like I never could…in three centuries…”

“U-Uncle…I…I’m…”

“Don’t look at me…that way…I’m…happy for you…Now there’s…nothing left…for me to…teach you…”

“That’s…that’s not true! There are so, so many things…I still want to learn from you, Uncle!!” she cried, not even trying to hide her childish sobs, flinging her arms around his neck.

“You can do it, little Alice,” Bercouli whispered into her ear, beatific smile on his lips. “You can…correct the mistakes of the Church…and help guide this world…to its proper…state…”

I could tell that the strength was rapidly draining from his voice. The remarkable willpower coming from the knights’ commander’s fluctlight was reaching its end at last. His eyes suddenly turned to me; they were losing their focus and turning gray again. He worked stiffening lips and croaked, “Hey…kid…Take care of…little…Alice…”

“…You bet,” I said simply, and the hero of old nodded back, creating a fresh crack in his stony neck. What I interpreted as his final words emerged as white, frosty mist. “Prime Senator Chudelkin…took your…partner ’way…I bet it was…to ’ministrator’s…chamber…Better hurry…before he gets trapped in the labyrinth…of his memories…”

And with that, Bercouli the Integrity Knight Commander returned to silent stone. There was something truly appropriate about the heroic figure he struck, buried to his chest in solid ice, neck and face covered in fine, tiny cracks.

“…Uncle…,” Alice whimpered, still clinging to his shoulder. I turned away, considering what the man’s words meant.

This Prime Senator Chudelkin was the one who’d placed the Deep Freeze command on Bercouli and taken Eugeo away. That much was certain, because, in a spot not far from the frozen Bercouli, there was a square shaft carved out of the ice all the way down to the floor, as though cut by an electric saw. Eugeo must have used his ice roses’ power expecting to go down and take the commander with him, but then the prime senator came along, cut him entirely out of the ice, and took him up to Administrator’s chamber at the top of the tower.

I had to wonder what this “labyrinth of memories” meant, though. I didn’t like to think about Eugeo being handily brainwashed, but I also had no idea what sort of methods Administrator would use to manipulate his fluctlight directly.

I peered down the square hole and saw, just through the perfectly smooth sides, something shining. I crouched down to see a longsword plunged into the floor of the bath. Even through several inches of ice, I would never mistake that beautiful curve. It was the Blue Rose Sword.

That striking weapon was practically a part of Eugeo; the sight of it left behind under thick ice only made me more worried. I glanced back at Alice, who was still clinging to Bercouli, then drew my black sword and stuck the tip into the ice directly above the Blue Rose Sword. For just an instant, I pushed down.

The ice cracked, split vertically, and crumbled into the shaft nearby. I knelt and squeezed the exposed handle of the Blue Rose Sword, then pulled, wincing against the sensation of well-below-zero-degrees metal on my skin. It resisted a bit, then slid out silently, scattering ice fragments.

I stood up, black sword in my right hand and Blue Rose Sword in my left, and felt my joints buckle with the extra weight. No wonder, since I was holding two very high-priority Divine Objects, but I wasn’t going to complain. Ronie and Tiese, our trainee pages, had worked their palms bloody carrying these swords to Eugeo and me before we were taken to the cathedral.

Now it was my turn to take this sword to Eugeo.

A familiar white leather sheath was on the frosted ice surface nearby. With my sword at my side, I picked up the sheath and placed Eugeo’s sword in it. After a little more thought, I then attached the second sheath to my belt on the right side, balancing the weight so I could still move reasonably well.

I exhaled and turned around to find Alice up on her feet. She rubbed the moisture on her cheek with her sleeve and, to hide her embarrassment, grumbled, “The only person mad enough to carry two swords would be some peacock of an elite noble…but oddly enough, it seems to suit you.”

“Hmm? Oh…”

I couldn’t help but grimace. During SAO, my lifeline as a solo player was my flashy Dual Blades style, but I’d hidden that skill for so long, I still felt anxious about showing off a two-sword approach in front of others.

Or maybe that wasn’t entirely it. Perhaps I was somehow afraid—even sick—of the ostentatious description of Dual-Bladed Kirito, the hero who’d beaten the Game of Death. I never wanted to take on that particular role again, no matter what anyone said about me.

“…Yeah, but I can’t actually swing two swords at once,” I told her with a shrug.

Alice nodded as if this were obvious. “If you swing two swords, there is no way to execute a proper ultimate technique. In that sense alone, there is little reason to ever wield two swords at once. Anyway, if the sword is still here, then we ought to assume that the pontifex has apprehended Eugeo already. We ought to hurry; she is not bound by typical logic…”

“Have you…spoken with Administrator before?”

“Only once,” she answered, lips pursed. “It was six years ago, after I woke up as an apprentice Integrity Knight with no memory, facing my summoner, and God’s proxy in the mortal world, the church pontifex. She was very beautiful and fragile, not the kind of person who has ever held a sword…but her eyes…”

She clutched her own shoulders. “Her eyes were silver and reflective, like a mirror…I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I do: I was terrified of her. It was an absolute kind of fear, the sort that told me I should never defy her or doubt a word she said, and instead I should offer her my everything.”

“Alice…,” I murmured, feeling momentary disquiet.

But she sensed what I was thinking, took a deep breath, and raised her head to look at me. “I am fine. I’ve made up my mind. For the sake of my sister living in the far north…for my unfamiliar family, and for all the citizens of the realm, I must do what I believe is right. Uncle knew about the eye seal that we all bear. That tells me that Bercouli Synthesis One, leader of the Integrity Knights, did not blindly believe that the Axiom Church’s reign was entirely good. Our trek down here to get your partner was a failure, but I’m glad that I saw Uncle…I know that my heart is firm and in the right place now.”

She crouched and caressed Bercouli’s stone cheek, lingering no more than an instant before she turned away, striding purposefully over the ice in the direction we had come. “Let’s hurry. We may need to battle the prime senator before we have a chance to face the pontifex herself.”

“W-wait…are we just going to leave the commander like that?” I asked, trotting to catch up.

Alice glared at me with her good eye and snapped, “Either we will truss up Prime Senator Chudelkin to make him undo the sacred art…or we will cut him in two and solve the matter that way.”

As I struggled to walk with the weight of two swords, I realized I never wanted to make an enemy of this knight again.

We raced back up the five flights of stairs, dealing with extra gravity this time, and stopped when we made it back to the Morning Star Lookout. I was wheezing with the effort of lugging the Blue Rose Sword, but the Integrity Knight was largely unaffected, despite wearing so much armor that her weight couldn’t be far from mine. With her frosty-blue eye and snow-white skin, she faced the next staircase with determination.

“Listen to me as you catch your breath. The senators are not much more than simple civilians when it comes to using weapons in short-range combat, but their sacred arts authority is higher than ours. Even in this resource-scarce environment, they can use the catalyst crystals from the Rose Garden to unleash practically unlimited long-range attacks.”

“Enemies like that…you need to…sneak up, then stick close,” I wheezed between breaths.

“We can’t be bothered with personal dignity now,” Alice agreed. “If we can successfully approach without detection, that would be best, but there is no guarantee of that. If that plan fails, I will use my sword’s Perfect Control to block their sacred arts, and then you can charge them.”

“So I’m the suicide-charge guy…,” I lamented, recalling how much I hated dealing with mage-type enemies.

Alice arched her eyebrow and offered sarcastically, “We can switch roles, if you prefer. But you will be in charge of blocking their sacred arts.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll do it.”

My black sword was still recovering its life value, and I wasn’t sure whether it had enough for a good Perfect Control use. If possible, I preferred to save that for a fight against the pontifex. My sword’s ultimate power was a fairly simple one—summoning a giant spear of darkness—that excelled in power, but it didn’t have the varied effects Alice’s flower storm did.

“If I feel like it, I might favor you with a recovery art from behind,” Alice said generously. “You may cause as much damage as you wish, but make sure that Prime Senator Chudelkin survives. If my memory is accurate, he will look like a small man in bright-red-and-blue clown clothes.”

“…That…does not sound very…dignified.”

“But you must not underestimate him on account of it. In addition to his powerful Deep Freeze ability, he has a number of speedy and powerful arts. He is likely the most powerful caster in the Church, after the pontifex.”

“Yeah, I get it. It’s pretty much a quest cliché that the little silly-looking guys end up being the toughest enemies.”

Alice briefly shot me a suspicious look, then turned her face to the staircase and announced, “Let’s go.”

We raced up the flight of steps as fast and quiet as we could, and we came upon a cramped and dark hallway, which ended at a black door. The hall was maybe five feet across and lit by eerie green lamps. It was just tight enough to force you to move out of the way if someone was coming from the other direction. The door at the end of the hall was small, too. Alice and I could just walk through without bumping our heads, but a man as large as Bercouli would have to crouch down quite a bit.

It just didn’t sit right with me. Normally when you got into the ultimate enemy’s stronghold—the final dungeon, if you will—the design and furnishings got fancier and more imposing. And just one floor below, the Morning Star Lookout had been extravagantly outfitted. So why would it suddenly get so cramped and unpleasant, right before the very end?

“Is this…the senate you mentioned earlier…?” I murmured.

“It should be,” she replied uncertainly. “It will be clear when we go in, at least.”

She strode down the hallway, flicking her golden hair aside to blow the hesitation away. I was starting to think this might be a trap and was tempted to reach out and stop her. But then I thought better of it; the Axiom Church wouldn’t set up a trap for intruders this high in the tower. And even if they did, it would be a bold projection of its power, like those minion statues on the walls outside.

The twenty-yard-long hallway did nothing to block our way. In moments, we reached the little door and shared a glance. As the up-close attacker, I grabbed the tiny doorknob to take the lead. It clicked open, no lock, and smoothly swung outward.

There was a sudden gust of cold air from the darkness within, suggesting the thick presence of something. It was the kind of foreboding sensation I got when opening the door to a labyrinth boss chamber in Aincrad—and it made my spine crawl.

I wasn’t going to beg Alice to take the lead, of course. I pulled the door all the way open, ducked my head, and looked inside. The hallway continued a short way through, then turned into what looked like an open space with hardly any light. All I could see was a faint, flickering purple light, though the source was unclear.

The moment I moved through the doorway, I heard what sounded like mumbled chanting. I stopped to listen harder: It wasn’t just one voice. There were several, perhaps dozens, all in unison. Behind me, Alice murmured that it was sacred arts, and I realized she was right.

I tensed, preparing for multiple attacks all at once, then realized I was mistaken. From what I could hear of the spell words, none included the “generate” command that was a virtual requisite of any attack art.

If I was curious, Alice was downright proactive. “Let’s go in. If the senators are preparing some major unrelated sacred art, that suits our purposes. We can sneak through the darkness and get within sword range before they realize it.”

“…Oh, good thinking. I’ll go first, like we said. Watch my back,” I whispered, quietly drawing my black sword. The Blue Rose Sword was only likely to weigh me down in combat, but I wasn’t going to just leave it on the ground there. Once Alice had her Osmanthus Blade drawn as well, I resumed sneaking forward.

The closer we got to the dim chamber, the more I noticed a nasty smell in the cold air. It wasn’t a fetid odor like animals or blood, but more like the stink of rotting food. I tried to ignore it as I pressed my back to the wall of the corridor and peered into the dark space that I assumed was the senate.

It was large—but more than that, it was tall.

At its base, the chamber was a circle about twenty yards across. The curved walls stretched up about three floors to a ceiling hidden in darkness. The structure of it reminded me of Cardinal’s Great Library.

There were no lamps in the room, only a flickering purple light coming from the walls here and there. There was also a series of many round objects placed at set intervals, but I couldn’t tell what they were.

Then a new light source appeared very close to us. It was a square board glowing light purple—a Stacia Window. And the sphere within it was…

A human head.

Did that mean every last round object here in the cylindrical chamber was…

“…A…h-head…?” I gasped.

“No, they seem to have bodies,” Alice noted, as quietly as she could. “But it’s like they’re growing out of the walls…”

I squinted as best I could. There were indeed necks and shoulders beneath the spheres, but that was all I could make out—their bodies were stuffed right into square boxes mounted into the walls.

Based on the small size of the boxes, I had to assume their limbs were folded into an absolutely minimal space. It didn’t look comfortable in the least, but I couldn’t actually tell how the people in the boxes felt about it, because their faces showed zero emotion.

Their pale, exposed heads had no traces of hair on their scalps, chins, or brows, and their beady, glassy eyes gazed at nothing but the Stacia Windows right before them. There were complex strings of letters appearing on the windows, at the end of which the box-people would intone, “System Call…Display Rebelling Index” with washed-out, bloodless lips.

I froze. Their voices didn’t sound like they belonged to living people. “Are…are these the ones who…?!”

“You’re familiar with them?!” Alice snapped. I glanced at her and nodded.

“Yeah…There was this window that opened in the corner of the room right after we had that big fight at Swordcraft Academy two days ago. There was a white face watching me and Eugeo from it…and no doubt about it, it was one of these…”

Alice paused to listen to the box-people chant, then frowned. “The sacred art they are reciting is completely unfamiliar to me…but it seems they have the realm divided into sections. I am not certain what all those numbers are supposed to mean, however.”

“Numbers,” I repeated to myself, hearing a voice in my head.

Among those hidden parameters is a value called the violation index. Administrator quickly discovered that she could utilize this value to sniff out people who were skeptical of the Taboo Index she had set forth…

That had been from wise little Cardinal in the Great Library. This proved it: The Rebelling Index, as the box-people called it in the sacred tongue, was that very violation quotient she mentioned. All the dozens of “boxen” in this chamber were monitoring the values of every man, woman, and child in the world.

If they detected abnormal values, they would open a portal and peer into the location, identifying and reporting the violator. Then whoever received that report would order an Integrity Knight to bring that individual to justice. That was how Eugeo, Alice, and I were brought to the cathedral in the first place…

I was broken out of my stunned stupor by the sound of some kind of buzzer. Alice and I both tensed and raised our swords, but we hadn’t been spotted. The boxen stopped their chanting and all looked upward.

Until now, I hadn’t noticed that, on the walls just over their heads, faucet-like objects jutted upward. The box-people all opened their mouths, and a thick brown liquid abruptly flowed out of the spigots. They caught the liquid in their gaping mouths and swallowed it mechanically. Some of the liquid spilled out of their lips, staining necks and collarbones. That was likely the source of the stench.

Soon the buzzer sounded again, and that was the end of the liquid feeding. Their faces snapped forward again, and the chanting resumed: System Call…System Call…

This is no way to treat human beings.

In fact, even cattle and sheep shouldn’t have been treated this way, I recognized with a surge of anger pulsing up from my gut. I clenched my teeth.

Alice grunted, “Are they…the senators who help the Axiom Church rule over the human realm…?”

I looked over to see that her one visible eye was shining with fury. I hadn’t put that idea together, but it seemed accurate now. All of these dozens of people stuffed in boxes were the senators, the high administrative officers of the Axiom Church.

“And was it…the pontifex who created what I am seeing now?” she continued.

“I reckon it was,” I said. “I bet she found people from all over the realm who were weak in combat skills but excellent in sacred arts, then stole their thoughts and emotions and turned them into this senatorial security system…”

System was right. These weren’t people; they were devices. Their job was to maintain perfect peace—or stagnation—across the realm under the Axiom Church’s rule. Even the Integrity Knights, with their most precious memories stolen, didn’t suffer such an ignoble fate. It was atop centuries of this sacrifice that Administrator had reigned.

Alice slowly hung her head, until her dangling hair hid her expression.

“…This is unforgivable.”

The Osmanthus Blade in her right hand rang softly, as though channeling its master’s rage.

“No matter the crime, these are still human beings. But she did more than steal their memories—she removed the very intelligence and emotion that makes them human, stuffed them into these cages, and now feeds them worse than beasts…There can be no honor or justice here.”

She raised her head to a noble tilt and strode willfully into the chamber. I rushed after her.

The senators’ eyes did not move from their Stacia Windows, even with the shining presence of a beautiful lady knight in the darkness. She walked to her left and stood before one of the boxes. I watched the pale face of the senator over her shoulder.

Up close, there was no way to tell even a gender, much less an age. The endless period of captivity in this lightless prison had robbed all traces of humanity.

Alice lifted the Osmanthus Blade. I thought she was going to destroy the box at first, but instead she rested the tip right around the location of where the senator’s heart would be. I gasped and hissed, “Alice!”

“Wouldn’t it be a mercy…to end this life?”

I couldn’t answer.

Even if we returned their memory fragments—assuming such things had even been saved—it seemed impossible that it would return them to their former selves. I had to assume that the senators’ fluctlights had been broken beyond repair, twisted into something unrecognizable and wrong.

But even then, perhaps Cardinal or even Administrator herself could grant them some wish aside from death. It was this thought that made me reach out for her shoulder guard to stop her.

But just as I did, a strange sound from farther into the chamber caused us to freeze.

“Aaah…Aaaaah!”

It was a high-pitched, grating screech.

“Aaah, oh my, ohhh, Your Holiness, what a waste…Ohhhh, ahhh, you musn’t, aaah, ooooh!!” howled the bizarre voice. Alice and I shared a suspicious look.

I didn’t recognize it. It didn’t sound young, but it didn’t sound elderly, either. All I could tell from its voice was that it seemed to be in the throes of some kind of maniacal excitement.

Her anger temporarily forgotten, Alice lowered her sword and stared in the direction of the sound. The screeching voice was coming from another hallway in the wall, just like the one we came through but deeper inside the cylindrical room.

“…”

Alice pointed toward the hallway with her sword, motioning me on. I nodded, and we began to lurk toward it.

There were no pillars or furniture of any kind in the wide-open chamber, so crossing it was mildly terrifying, but none of the dozens of senators along the walls paid us any mind or seemed capable of recognizing our presence at all. Their entire world was the system window in front and the food spigot overhead, and that was it. I remembered feeling twinges of pity at the lives of the basement jailer and the girl controlling the elevated platform, but the word pity on its own was entirely inadequate to describe the plight of these creatures.

As for whoever was moaning and screeching at the top of their lungs right near this dehumanizing place, I couldn’t begin to fathom the mindset. Whoever it was, I couldn’t imagine them being an ally of any kind.

Alice felt so, too, and there was a different kind of anger now creeping over her pale face. She crossed the chamber on a straight line and peered around the side of the corridor, while I stole a look over her shoulder.

At the end of the similarly cramped hallway was another large room, albeit much smaller than the circular chamber. The light inside was soft but bright enough to make out its contents.

And they were absolutely bizarre.

Every last fixture of the room shone in garish gold, from cabinets and beds to little round chairs and storage boxes, all reflecting the light in equal measure. Even from this distance, I could feel it penetrating my eyeballs to the back of my head.

A plethora of toys in every size was scattered all over—in some cases spilling out of—this furniture. Most were stuffed animals in bold primary colors. There were dolls with button eyes and yarn hair, familiar animals like pets and livestock, even some hideous monsters I couldn’t begin to identify, heaped into piles all over the floor and beds. There were building blocks, a wooden horse, instruments—like the entire stock from the District Five toy maker had been dumped here.

And sitting half-buried in them, facing away from us, was the voice’s owner.

“Hoooooo!! Hooooooo!!” it screamed, over and over. This figure, too, had a bizarre appearance.

It was round, almost a perfect sphere of a torso, with a round head on top, like a snowman. But rather than being white, the body was clad in a clown’s outfit, with the right half bright red, and the left blue. The short-armed sleeves had red-and-blue stripes, as well. It was making my eyes hurt.

The round head was completely white, and from the rear it looked no different from the senators’, except that the skin was oily and shiny. Resting atop the head was a golden cap the same shade as all the furniture.

I leaned over Alice’s ear and whispered, “Is that the prime senator…?”

“Yes, it’s Chudelkin,” she whispered back, but with an audible loathing. I stared at the clown’s back again.

The prime senator was a kind of counterpart to Bercouli the commander of the knights, the greatest caster of sacred arts in the Axiom Church and one of its chief officers. And yet, he seemed totally defenseless. Whatever was in his hands, it had his entire attention.

From what I could make out beyond his very round back, Chudelkin was gazing into a large crystal ball. With each flash of color inside, he flopped and kicked his little legs and shrieked, “Haaa! Hohhh!”

I’d been expecting a tense and uncertain lead-up to a spectacular battle, like with Deusolbert and Fanatio, so I had no idea how to react to this. But while I wasn’t sure how to proceed, Alice had no such hesitation. She raced toward him, not even bothering to sneak.

But her feet hit the ground only five times. She easily brushed me off and raced like a golden gust into the toy room, and by the time Chudelkin’s fat head started to turn, she already had the frilly collar of his clown outfit clutched in her fist.

“Hooooo?!” the round object howled. Alice yanked him out of the sea of plushies and held him high. At last, I caught up to her and, glancing around the entire room, looked for any sign of Eugeo—but wherever Chudelkin had brought my partner after the Great Bath, it wasn’t here. Disappointed, I turned back to the middle, where the crystal ball that had so enraptured the strange little man caught my eye.

A somewhat three-dimensional image wreathed in swirling light was projected in the center of the large glass ball, which was about a foot and a half across. It displayed a girl sprawled on her side atop lustrous bedsheets. Her face was hidden behind long silver hair, but it was clear from a glance that she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.

Both disappointed and fulfilled that this was what Chudelkin had been exclaiming over, I then noticed that there seemed to be someone else with the girl. I tried to lean in for a closer look, but the spell vanished, the images inside the ball abruptly flashing into whiteness.

Alice had no interest in the crystal ball to begin with. With her free hand, she thrust the tip of her sword toward the dangling man and threatened, “If you try to start chanting an art, I’ll cut your tongue out from the root.”

The little man clamped his mouth shut before any complaints could arise. Given that all sacred arts in the Underworld had to begin with the System Call prefix, the caster was essentially at our mercy now. Still, I paid close attention to his stumpy arms for any movement and glanced up quickly to get a view of Prime Senator Chudelkin.

I couldn’t imagine a more enigmatic human face. His bright-red lips dominated the lower half of his round face, with a large bulb of a nose, and eyes and brows as curved as an iconic smiley face.

Those beady eyes were bulging now, though, the small, dark pupils jittering as they stared right at Alice. Eventually he relaxed his heavy lips from their trumpeter’s sour pucker and screeched in tones of rusted metal, “You…Number Thirty…What are you doing here? You fell out of the tower with the other rebel and plummeted to your death!”

“Don’t call me by a number! My name is Alice—and I am not Thirty any longer,” she snapped, her voice freezing air. Chudelkin’s greasy face twitched, and for the first time, he looked at me. His crescent-shaped eyes bulged out to half-moons, and he gurgled a series of gasps.

“You…Why—what is this?! Number Thir…Alice, why do you not attack this boy?! He is a rebel against the Church…an agent of the Dark Territory, as I warned you!!”

“He is indeed a rebel. But he is no soldier of the dark lands. He is just like me.”

“Wha…? Wha…?”

Chudelkin’s stumpy arms and legs flopped around in midair like the toys that filled the room. “You—you would dare to rebel against us, you little piece of shit!!”

His round white head instantly turned beet red, and his scream reached an even higher register than before, the sword pointed at his throat entirely forgotten.

“You Integrity Knights are nothing but mindless puppets!! You don’t move until I command you to move!! And now you have the gall to rebel against our glorious leader, my lady Administrator herself?!”

Alice snapped her head to the side to avoid the spittle flying from Chudelkin’s apoplectic lips, but she did not otherwise react to his insults. “It was the Axiom Church that turned us into puppets,” she stated coldly. “The Synthesis Ritual blocked our memories, instilled loyalty into us by force, and made us believe the lie that we were knights summoned to earth from Heaven.”

“Wha…?” Chudelkin’s face went from red back to white, his large mouth flapping helplessly. “Why…? How did you…?”

“Blocked or not, there are a few memories I still retain. When we stepped into the senate room, I caught a glimpse of an image…A terrified girl tied up in the center of that chamber, subjected to three days and nights of the senators’ multilayered spells to crack open the walls of her mind. That was the truth of the Synthesis Ritual…and the stone floor of that chamber is most certainly stained with the tears of lamentation and despair of that girl I once was.”

Alice’s voice was controlled, but it cut like a steel blade. Chudelkin’s face bounced back and forth between red and white at a dizzying speed. Ultimately, the only person in the senate with his own will regained his swagger and leered at us.

“Oh yes…that is correct. I can recall the scene quite clearly, in fact. You were so young and innocent and sweet, and you pleaded with tears in your eyes so many times…‘Please, don’t let me forget…Don’t let me forget the people I care about!’ Hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh!”

When he put on a hideous falsetto to mimic a little girl’s speech, Alice’s eye grew bright with flame. This did not threaten Chudelkin into stopping his mockery.

“Oh-ho! Oh-ho! Yes, I remember indeed! Even now, I could spend an entire night basking in the delicious memory! They dragged you out of that rural hellhole you called a home, and I put you to work as an apprentice sister for two years. You were the kind of tomboy who would slip through the curfew regulations and go see the Centoria solstice festival, but you really truly believed that if you studied hard, we’d let you go home again. Of course, that wasn’t true in the least! Just when you raised that sacred arts authority level to a good solid amount, boom! Forced synthesis! Oh, you should have seen the look on your face when you learned you’d never go home again…I wish I could have turned you into stone and kept you around as a decoration in my chamber forever! Hoh-hoh-hoh!!”

Even I couldn’t stop my sword arm from trembling. I heard Alice grinding her teeth over Chudelkin’s jabs, but she kept herself under control and said, “You mentioned something odd just now: forced synthesis. That makes it sound like there’s a voluntary version of the Synthesis Ritual.”

The prime senator’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Hoh-hoh, very shrewd of you. Yes, that’s correct. Six years ago, you steadfastly refused to recite any of the secret commands that are necessary for a typical Synthesis Ritual. You actually had the nerve to tell me your calling was still back in your home village and that you didn’t need to obey my orders!”

That sounds just like what young Alice would say, I thought, despite having not known her back then. The memory of this experience caused the prime senator’s lips to curl into a nasty sneer.

“What a disgusting little shit you were. I wished so badly to have my lady awaken early, but the rule is that she’s not to rise until all the preparations for the ritual are completely done. So I had no choice but to temporarily pause the automated senators and have them pry open the door to your most precious secrets through magical force. I suppose I shouldn’t complain about getting such a juicy show, however! Hee-hoh, hoh-hohhh!”

His gale of laughter stopped the instant she moved the tip of the Osmanthus Blade an inch closer. But the ugly smirk on his lips and in his eyes remained.

Chudelkin had boasted several crucial bits of information. I wanted to pry out some more intel, assuming Alice could maintain her composure, but something about it felt wrong. Would this clown really reveal core secrets of the Church without even being prompted? He wouldn’t taunt her this way if he was afraid for his life, and he didn’t seem to be waiting for a chance to take her by surprise, either.

While my mind raced on, Chudelkin resumed his story. “When the first stage of the forced synthesis ended and you blacked out, it was none other than I who took you to Her Holiness. Regrettably, I was not allowed to witness what happened next, but when the ritual was done and you awoke as an Integrity Knight, you had total belief that you were a disciple of God, dispatched from Heaven. Just like all the other knights. Boy, when I hear you folks drone on and on about the celestial realm, I have to hold my sides in to keep them from splitting! Ohhh…”

He babbled and chattered away, dangling in the air, and I gradually noticed that his eyes were jittering slightly, as though he were waiting for something. Was he carrying on like this in order to keep us here in the room with him…?

I was about to warn Alice, but she spoke first. The golden room rang with her voice, even icier now than in the Great Bath: “Prime Senator Chudelkin, you may be just another victim like the Integrity Knights, a sad little clown whose life was a plaything for Administrator like everyone else. But regardless of that, you have enjoyed your circumstances immensely. Surely you have been satisfied with your life. I am done listening to you.”

The Osmanthus Blade’s tip pressed against the center of the bulging clown costume, right above his heart. The shining material dipped inward with one final show of resistance.

If Chudelkin’s goal was to buy time, he would bring up some new piece of information now, I assumed—perhaps Eugeo’s location.

But one second was all it took to prove me wrong.

As the prime senator froze, his mouth half-open, the golden sword plunged deeper and deeper. His narrow eyes shot wide open, and the red-and-blue outfit bulged out even farther, testing its limits. Alice turned her face away, anticipating a spray of blood.

There was a tremendous bang! and Chudelkin’s body popped like a balloon. A massive gush of blood landed on Alice’s armor and did…nothing.

“What…?”

“Huh?!”

Alice and I were stunned. It was not liquid that burst forth, but smoke that had somehow been colored deep red. It spread farther and farther, filling the room.

There had been a special kind of monster in Aincrad that did this. It puffed out the skin of its body, and if struck with any kind of non-blunt damage, it would burst and emit a huge blast of smoke, allowing its true body to escape.

With that old instinct in mind, I swung my sword at a narrow shadow that quickly passed the corner of my vision. I felt it strike something, but the only object I could see through the smoke was a familiar golden hat rolling at my feet.

I made to chase after him, but the moment the nasty-colored smoke entered my nostrils, I felt a needling pain in my throat and doubled over coughing.

“Chudelkin!” Alice hissed, hand over her mouth, and leaped for the shadow. Chudelkin ran toward the back of the chamber, not toward the hallway to the senate room. I followed after them in a crouch, believing there wasn’t actually an exit back there.

Instead, the first thing I saw when I got through the choking smoke was a golden chest of drawers pushed to the side to reveal a hidden passage. A comically thin figure with that same fat round head was nimbly racing down it.

“Hee-hoh!! Heeee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hoh!!” he cackled, loud enough that I could hear it through my coughing. “Sacred arts isn’t all I’m good at, you pathetic losers! Sucks to be you! Wanna play tag? Because I can play the host, and I’m very thorough! Hoh-hohhhhhh!!”

The pattering of his shoes soon drowned out his maniacal, broken-toy laughter.