3

I thought I had a pretty good handle on physical pain.

A bit over two years ago, I had fought a group of goblins from the Dark Territory, in the cave to the north of Rulid. During that battle, the captain goblin’s machete had caught my left shoulder, and though it hadn’t been fatal, the agony had been so great that utter fear had paralyzed me and left me unable to react.

That experience was a huge wake-up call as to my physical weakness in the Underworld. I’d spent so long playing in worlds with the pain-absorption function of the NerveGear and AmuSphere that I didn’t have any resistance to unrestricted physical pain.

Since then, I’d focused on keeping myself solid and tough when hit by wooden swords during practice with Eugeo or duels at the academy. Thanks to that, I was at least able to keep my wits and stop from freezing up when I suffered wounds when fighting the other Integrity Knights. And in the Underworld, anything was perfectly healable as long as your life didn’t reach zero—even severed limbs.

But…right at the end of this long journey, I received a painful reminder that I hadn’t actually conquered anything.

The power and speed of Administrator’s battle weapon, the Sword Golem, were off the charts. It was impossibly capable, beyond the limits of what should have been possible in this world. Already it was miraculous that I was able to defend against the first blow from its arm, but I couldn’t even see the one that had come from its leg.

The sword that made up its rear left leg entered my right flank and passed through to my left side, slicing everything in its path. The instant I first felt the shock, I recognized an icy chill brushing my belly, but after I’d been thrown against the window and I’d slumped to the floor, my insides were burning like they were on fire. I couldn’t move a muscle. I didn’t even have any sensation from my lower half. I could’ve been split in two with just a little scrap of skin holding me together, for all I knew.

In fact, it was a mystery as to how I could think at all.

Or perhaps it was just a sign that the despair was far more powerful than the actual pain assaulting me.

I knew my life had to be dropping at a calamitous rate. I didn’t have more than a minute or two before it ran down to zero. And Alice had even less time than I did. The golden knight, now collapsed on the floor across the room, had been pierced through the chest. It hadn’t hit her heart, from what I could tell, but the loss of blood would certainly do her in first. Perhaps even the highest level of sacred healing arts wouldn’t help her now. Her miracle fluctlight, which had overcome the seal in the right eyeball that every Underworldian had, was about to perish before my very eyes.

Although I couldn’t see him from my position, I was sure that my irreplaceable friend Eugeo’s life was also hanging in the balance. His technical ability was greater than mine, but this was not a foe who could be handled with a blade.

Through foggy eyes, I saw the Sword Golem advance, shaking the ground. I wanted to shout at him to run, but the only thing my mouth could do was exhale weakly.

And even if I shouted, Eugeo wouldn’t run away. He would raise the Blue Rose Sword and face this huge, unfair enemy to save his friends.

Worst of all, the cause of this horrible outcome was my own mistaken assumption: the idiotically naïve conjecture that Administrator couldn’t kill human beings.

In the Great Library, Cardinal had used a teacup to demonstrate how the taboos of this world really worked. The point of her lecture was that all taboos had loopholes that could be exploited. Administrator had simply overcome hers not by acting on her own but by creating a weapon that would automatically kill her enemies for her.

The burning agony of my insides was starting to turn into an empty numbness. My life would fall to zero very soon. In that instant, my mind would be kicked out of this world, and I would wake up inside The Soul Translator. There, the Rath staffers would inform me that the current form of the Underworld— including all the fluctlights, like Alice and Eugeo—had just been wiped clean, deleted.

If only my life held the exact same meaning as Eugeo’s and Alice’s.

If only I could experience true death with them in this moment.

How else could I possibly apologize for what I’d put them through?

My vision was dimming now—the only things I could see were the legs of the advancing Sword Golem and the shining gold of Alice’s hair on the ground. And even that light was waning.

That was when I heard a quiet but firm voice, right in my ear.

“Use the dagger, Eugeo!”

It was a smooth, silky tone that I was certain I’d heard before. But my mind was already too fuzzy to do anything with that information. The mezzo-soprano continued talking to my friend.

After it had delivered a few instructions, it said it would buy some time and moved away from my ear. For a moment, I thought I felt something warm touch my cheek.

That tiny little brush of warmth brought back some bodily feeling. I struggled to lift my half-closed lids.

Right before my eyes, a tiny, shining black spider landed on the bloodied carpet.

That was it. Charlotte. The very agent of Cardinal that had been hiding on my person for two whole years to gather information on me.

But why here? Why now? The spider had finished her duty when we reached the Great Library, and she had vanished into the cracks between the bookshelves.

I was so surprised by this that I forgot all the pain and terror. Before my eyes, the tiny creature sped toward the gigantic golem as it approached. Eight fragile legs buzzed along the carpet at dizzying speed. But each step for the spider was nothing compared to a step for the golem. How was she going to buy time for Eugeo to escape from the creature that was bearing down on him?

But in the next moment, I gasped weakly as a new shock came over me.

The spider’s body got bigger.

With each contact of pointed leg against carpet, her body mass seemed to grow. First she was the size of a mouse, then a cat, then a dog, and still growing. Soon my ear, pressed against the carpet, could actually hear the vibration of each leg against the ground.

“Greeeh!” roared the Sword Golem—it had noticed Charlotte at last. The two gemstones on its “face” flickered, seemingly assessing this new enemy.

“Shaaaa!” hissed the spider, now over seven feet long, four eyes flashing menacingly.

She wasn’t half as tall as the golem, but while the enemy was constructed entirely of long, narrow swords, the enlarged Charlotte’s body was covered in thick, tough carapace. Wherever the light hit the black surface, it reflected in lustrous gold, and the claws on the ends of the eight legs were like obsidian.

The two front legs were especially large, their claws nearly as long as swords themselves. Charlotte raised the right one and smashed it against the golem’s left leg.

A tremendous clanging filled the room, as though two greatswords had just collided. A shower of orange sparks lit up the darkened room.

And in that light, I was stunned to see the figure of Eugeo running. Not at the golem. Not for either me or Alice.

He was racing for the circular pattern in the carpet along the south wall, to carry out Charlotte’s order to stab his dagger into the levitating platform.

Behind Eugeo, the Sword Golem lost its balance the tiniest bit after Charlotte’s attack, but it promptly held firm, then raised its right arm high in the air to strike. The golem had identified the newly appeared spider as an enemy. Pale eyes glinting, it swung down its massive arm.

Charlotte lifted her front left leg to block it. The clash of golden sword and obsidian claw again resulted in a powerful vibration that made my body rattle at the edge of the room.

With the help of her six rear legs for resistance, the giant spider had succeeded at stopping one of the blows that had so easily knocked me and Alice off our feet.

The two giants held their limbs forth, each trying to push over the other. The hard carapace of Charlotte’s legs warped under tremendous weight, and the joints of the three swords that made up the golem’s right arm creaked.

The standoff lasted all of three seconds.

With a wet crunch, Charlotte’s front left leg snapped off. Milky white liquid shot forth from the break over her black surface.

But the spider didn’t stop. She swung her front right leg this time, right at the gap between the three greatswords that made up the Sword Golem’s spine—toward the glowing purple Piety Module within.

Just when it seemed like the black lightning that was her claw would pierce the prism representing the golem’s ultimate weak point, the many swords that formed the creature’s ribs moved at once.

Like a paper cutter, the four blades on the left and the four blades on the right met in the middle.

Sha-shunk!! They easily sliced through Charlotte’s leg, causing a fresh gush of her bodily fluid to spill forth.

The golem’s ribs slowly parted, allowing the severed half of the leg to fall. Its gemstone eyes twinkled steadily, almost seeming to mock Charlotte over its impending victory.

But losing another one of her legs did nothing to diminish the spider’s bravery. She hissed again and leaped toward her foe, thick mandibles churning for a bite.

Her attack did not land. The golem kicked upward with blinding speed, slicing off two more of Charlotte’s left legs. The giant spider lost her balance and toppled to the floor.

Forget about it—run! I wanted to scream.

I’d never actually had a direct conversation with the spider named Charlotte. But she had always been with me, protecting me. When Raios and Humbert had torn up the zephilia flowers I’d been growing at the dorm, she’d even told me there was still a way to save them—when the only job Cardinal had asked her to do was simply keep tabs on me.

It wasn’t right for her to die for this hopeless fight, just to buy us a little bit of time. I tried to yell for her to run, over and over, but nothing came out.

Somehow, Charlotte managed to stand with her four remaining legs, and she tensed for another mad charge at the golem. But its left arm was quicker, swinging down from overhead to stab deep into the black spider’s curved abdomen.

“…Uhk…”

It was just the smallest gasp that finally escaped from my throat, far too weak to be the scream it was meant to be.

And just then, I saw nothing but purple light.

It was a shine I’d seen just once before. The band of light that shot around the room was one conglomeration of tiny script. It was the same light that had erupted when I’d used Cardinal’s dagger to save the life of Vice Commander Fanatio.

Eugeo must have reached the platform and stabbed it with his own dagger. I wasn’t sure what kind of result that would have, but at least I knew that he hadn’t let the time Charlotte had bought with her suicidal charge go to waste.

When the light began to dim, the black spider was scrabbling at the floor with her remaining legs, trying to stand despite being impaled. Then the golem removed its sword with a wet shlurk, and her massive bulk fell limply into the white puddle below her.

Her four eyes had been as bright and brilliant as rubies before, but now they were losing their luster. They did catch sight of the levitating platform, and with blood dripping from her fangs, Charlotte whispered, “Oh, good…He made it.”

Her right legs trembled, rotating her body. Four eyes looked at me with tenderness.

“I’m happy…that I got to fight with you…one…last…”

Her words melted away into space. The round eyes flickered red and then went dark.

I felt my vision blur. Despite the fact that I myself was dying, my eyes brimmed with tears. The huge black spider began to shrink without a sound. The puddle of white liquid evaporated, too, leaving behind only a corpse about the size of my fingernail, rolled onto its back with four legs curled up above it.

The Sword Golem instantly lost all interest in the target once it had squashed the life from her, and it rotated until its gleaming eyes caught sight of Eugeo. The massive creature then turned its body ninety degrees, and its pointed legs thudded into the floor. It was heading for the waving ribbon of purple light.

With all the strength I had left, I raised my head a few inches and looked to the source of the light. On the southern end of the circular room, not that far from the window, there was a pulsating, glowing ring: the levitating platform that had brought Alice and me to the hundredth floor.

Something that looked like a tiny cross was stuck in the middle of the ring. That was the little bronze dagger, one of two that Cardinal had given me and Eugeo. She’d fashioned it from the magical resources in the braids that she’d been growing for two hundred years, and whatever the dagger pierced would open a channel through space directly to her.

It was meant to be the final weapon against Administrator, but on Charlotte’s orders, Eugeo had stuck it into the platform on the floor. Now the entire thing was glowing purple. It rang and whined like a thousand tuning forks coming into harmony, until the very physical makeup of the dagger came undone, turning into a long pillar of light that ran between the circular platform and the ceiling.

Standing right next to it, Eugeo covered his face against the light with his arm. Even the Sword Golem came to a clanking stop, uncertain of how to respond to this unexpected phenomenon.

The pillar of light steadily expanded. At its center, a smooth dark-brown surface appeared—a board. But not any regular board. It was surrounded by a rectangular frame and had a silver knob on one side—it was a door.

As I had that moment of realization, the light flashed and disappeared. The high-pitched wavelength faded, and quiet returned to the chamber.

Something about the design and coloring of the thick door was familiar to me. Eugeo and I watched without a sound while the Sword Golem took a step forward, its programming active again.

Just then, there was a small, hard click, accompanied by an almost imperceptible shift in the air. The silver doorknob began to rotate. There was another click, and the door quietly began to open.

It was just a door standing in empty air, so once open, it should have just been the same room on the other side. But there was no moonlight shining through the space inside the open frame. It was completely dark.

The door continued its slow progress until it came to a stop when it was about a foot and a half open. The other side was still out of sight. The Sword Golem continued its forward advance, ignoring the door. In just three steps, it would have Eugeo within swinging range of its massive arms…Two steps…

Then the darkness beyond the door was full of light.

A pure-white lightning bolt shot horizontally out of the frame.

Grrrakow!! My ears were buffeted by a tremendous shock—one greater than any sacred art I’d ever witnessed. The bolt hit the Sword Golem head-on and wriggled like a living thing, turning the massive creature into a black silhouette.

It took several seconds for the thrashing lightning to finally die down. The Sword Golem, which seemed so hardy that it was unstoppable, slumped over and stopped moving. Its dozens of swords hissed and smoked, and the gemstone eyes blinked sporadically.

The monster stubbornly tried to move again, but another bolt from the doorway caught it. A sacred art of this power should require dozens of lines of sacred words, so this kind of rapid fire was astonishing. Scorched all over, the golem let out a high-pitched moan and tried to step back.

Just half a second later, the third and largest lightning bolt ripped past. This bolt, burlier and meaner than the prior two, tossed up the nearly twenty-foot battle creation as if it were made of paper. It spun through the air, passing to the right of the floating Administrator, and crashed to the floor on the other end of the room. The tremor of its fall seemed to shake the very foundation of Central Cathedral.

The upturned golem was immobile at last but not entirely dead. The tips of the swords that made up its limbs trembled and twitched. At the very least, it wouldn’t be popping back up again anytime soon.

I looked back at the darkness through the doorway. I was already certain of the name of the person who would soon appear through it. Administrator was one of the two people in this world who could execute such rapid and transcendently powerful magic—and here was the other.

A thin staff and the small hand that held it were the first things to appear from the darkness. Next were a fragile wrist and a wide sleeve. A black velvet robe large enough to form several draping folds. A pointed hat with an ornament on it. A flat-soled shoe extended from the bottom of the robe to step silently onto the carpet.

The moonlight caught soft brown curls and small, silver-rimmed glasses. Large eyes that were young and yet filled with infinite wisdom glinted behind the lenses of the glasses.

Cardinal the sage, who was another incarnation of Administrator with equal powers, and who had spent an eternity isolated within her massive, hidden library, took several smooth steps forward in the moonlight before coming to a stop. The door closed on its own behind her.

How had Cardinal left the library, which existed in a space that was everywhere and nowhere, and come into this room? The key was the dagger that Eugeo had carried around, of course. On Charlotte’s orders, he’d stabbed it into the levitating platform, causing it to be connected to Cardinal. That would have made it child’s play for her to change the connecting point of the platform to the library.

The wise little sage wore the expression of a strict teacher as she stared at the top floor of the cathedral for the first time. Then she turned to Eugeo, who was standing right next to her, and gave him a quick nod. Next was Alice, still lying on the floor a short distance away. When her eyes met mine, she gave me a reassuring little smile and nodded once more.

Lastly, Cardinal arched her small back and stared up at Administrator, who was still silently floating on the far side of the room. Whatever emotion she was feeling about this showdown with her ultimate foe, their first meeting in two hundred years, I couldn’t read from her profile.

Once she had taken stock of the situation, Cardinal raised the staff in her right hand. Her body rose off the ground, and she slid through the air to where Alice and I lay helpless on the ground.

She landed and brushed Alice’s back with the head of the staff. Little glittering motes of light sprinkled down and sank into the knight’s body.

Next, she tapped my shoulder with the narrow staff. Another warm shower of light appeared and engulfed my body, which was completely devoid of sensation by now.

The first thing that happened was that the cold, hollow sensation that filled me vanished, and the searing pain from the golem’s attack to my abdomen rushed back to fill its place. I fought to keep from screaming, and the pain steadily melted into waves of warmth. As the agony subsided, my bodily sensations returned. I opened and closed my stiffened fist until I felt able to touch the wound on my torso.

The injury tingled sharply when I touched it, but to my shock, the gash that had nearly bisected my entire body was completely gone. In order to re-create that effect with healing arts, I’d have to sit in a sunny forest lush with resources, chanting for hours on end.

It was such a miracle that I had to fight the momentary urge to celebrate that I’d been saved—but I knew that such a miracle required an equal compensation. And not from me but from Cardinal. After all, this situation had to be exactly what Administrator wanted…

But Cardinal paid no heed to that horrifying possibility. She floated into the air again. When she landed this time, she was before the tiny black body that lay atop the carpet. With a little thump, she set the end of the staff against the ground. She took her hand off it, but the staff remained perfectly vertical on its own.

Cardinal crouched down and gently scooped the tiny body up off the carpet. She clutched Charlotte the spider to her chest, lowering her head, and in a voice too quiet to be fully audible, whispered, “You stubborn fool…I released you from duty, hailed your service, and told you to live the life you wanted in whatever bookshelf you desired.”

Behind the round glasses, her long eyelashes blinked twice, then three times.

My right arm was finally able to move properly, so I reached out to grab my sword and used it as a crutch to get to my feet. I made my way unsteadily over to Cardinal and, ignoring all the things I should’ve said first, asked, “Cardinal…was that…Charlotte’s true form…?”

The sage looked up, chestnut-brown curls bouncing and eyes misty. In her oddly old way of speaking, which almost seemed as nostalgic as if I hadn’t heard it in ages myself, she said, “In this world…since ancient times, there have been many magical beasts and beings that made their homes in the forests and wilderness. I believe these creatures are familiar to you.”

“…Named Monsters…But…Charlotte spoke human language and had emotions of her own…Did she have a fluctlight, too…?”

“No…To use the language of your world, she was the same as an NPC. She was not stored in a lightcube but was a tiny part of the Main Visualizer function, given a small simulated thought engine—in other words, a part of the system. In the past, there were many large animals, ancient trees, boulders, and so on who had the ability to hold simple conversations in the common tongue. But…they are all gone now. Most were vanquished by the Integrity Knights, while others were harvested by Administrator for their object resources.”

“I see…like the guardian dragon whose bones sleep in the cave beneath the northern mountains…”

“Indeed. I took pity on them and, whenever possible, took newly generated AIs under my wing. The familiars I use as my agents are mostly miniature units without a thought engine, but some are the AIs that I put to my own uses, like Charlotte. Because they are so statistically powerful, there is little fear of them being damaged, even when shrunken down. That is how she was safe hiding in your clothes, even with all of your wild thrashing in combat.”

“B-but…but…,” I stammered, staring at the tiny body in Cardinal’s palm as I fought back tears, “Charlotte’s speech and behavior wasn’t that of a mimic AI. She saved me. She sacrificed herself for me. Why…? How could she…?”

“As I’m sure I told you before, she’s been alive for over fifty years. She spent all that time in contact with me and watching over many people. It’s already been two years since I put her on you…One doesn’t need a fluctlight to develop an attachment over that much time together…”

Cardinal’s voice got firmer, more insistent. “Even if the nature of that intelligence is nothing more than an accumulation of input and output data, a true heart can reside within it. Even love, at times. But I don’t suppose you would ever understand, Administrator—you empty husk!!”

The little wise woman glared up at her two-hundred-year foe, her voice righteous and bold. But the pontifex, still watching the situation unfold from her floating position across the room, did not respond. She merely steepled her fingers in front of her mouth, mirror eyes shining enigmatically.

According to what Cardinal had said in the library, when Administrator fused with the original form of the Cardinal System, the self-correcting process—which was the basis for her second personality, the one that was in Cardinal’s form now—was powerful enough that she had to manipulate her own fluctlight to remove her emotions in order to counteract Cardinal’s rebellion.

Once the two split into separate bodies, she no longer had to worry about the subprocess taking over her body, but her emotions were still meaningless noise to her and unnecessary to bring back.

So the image of Administrator that I’d carried in my head was that of a programmed human, someone who mechanically carried out her tasks. But the pontifex I saw at the top of Central Cathedral was far from what I’d expected. She sneered at Chudelkin and toyed cruelly with our lives; something told me the grin that she constantly wore was no false simulation.

Even now, the silver-haired, silver-eyed young woman burbled and giggled behind her hands, her eyes narrowing with pleasure.

“Heh-heh-heh.”

She laughed, slender shoulders rocking, letting Cardinal know that her righteous missive was no more damaging to her than a slight breeze. Eventually, between her chuckles came a short message that made real the very thing I’d been afraid of.

“I thought you’d show up. Heh. Heh-heh-heh.”

“I figured that if I picked on these children enough, you’d poke your head out of that musty little burrow of yours. That’s the limit of what you can do, little one. You can arrange for pawns who will come after me, but you can’t bring yourself to abuse them like the pawns they are. You humans are such helpless creatures.”

I knew it…

As I feared, Administrator’s true intention was to put enough pressure on us to lure Cardinal out from her isolated library. Or in other words, she did this knowing that she still had a secret trick that would absolutely ensure her triumph.

But the Sword Golem, which ought to have been her ultimate weapon, was virtually destroyed, and now Eugeo and I were perhaps battle capable again. Even Alice was awake, pushing herself up with one hand in an attempt to get up.

Cardinal and Administrator were two sides of the same coin, and in a one-on-one fight would surely draw, so in these circumstances, our presence gave our side an overwhelming advantage, I assumed.

That meant that the instant the door to the library had opened, Administrator’s rational choice would have been to stop observing and simply attack at full power without delay. So why had she let Cardinal destroy the Sword Golem and heal Alice and me and even allowed us to have a brief conversation?

Cardinal had to be wondering the same thing—but her expression betrayed nothing but firm determination. “Hmph. In the myriad years since I saw you last, you’ve learned to affect a passable human being. Been practicing smiling into a mirror for two hundred years, have you?” she mocked.

Administrator shrugged off the comment with that very smile. “And that way of speaking, tiny one. So wise and scholarly! When I had you dragged before me two hundred years ago, you were trembling and alone…Weren’t you, Lyserith?”

“Do not call me by that name, Quinella! My name is Cardinal, and I am the program that exists solely to eliminate you!”

“Hee-hee, yes, of course. And I am Administrator, the one who manages all programs. So rude of me to have waited so long to introduce myself, my little one. It just took a while for me to prepare the formula in order to welcome you.” She gleefully raised her right hand.

Her outstretched fingers curled, as if they were grabbing and crushing some invisible object. At this point, her pure-white cheeks, which had seemed impervious to any rise in emotion, actually flushed with the faintest trace of red blood, and a ghastly look came into her mirror eyes. A chill raced up my back as I realized this was the very first time I had seen her utilizing her full focus and concentration.

But there was no time to act. In an instant, Administrator’s right hand clenched fully shut.

Craaaash!! Dozens of heavy shattering sounds burst from every direction in a deafening chorus. My first thought was that the giant glass walls that surrounded the room had all exploded at once.

But that wasn’t the case.

What had shattered was beyond the windows—the dark, roiling clouds, the blanket of stars, the cold full moon, and the very night sky itself.

The sky rained into an impossible number of fragments, which collided and burst into even smaller pieces as they fell. To my dumbfounded eyes, what appeared after the pieces of literal sky fell could only be described as “unbeing.”

A void of black and purple that seemed to have no depth, swirling and marbled, churning away. It was a world of nothing, the kind of sight that would suck away the mind of whoever stared at it for long enough.

In terms of color and beauty they were nothing alike, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of another scene I’d witnessed—when the original Aincrad had collapsed, and a veil of white had appeared to swallow the sunset that remained behind.

Had the Underworld just collapsed and vanished as well? The human realm, the Dark Territory, the villages and towns…and all the people living within them…

The only thing that saved me from this momentary terror was Cardinal’s shocked but still resolute voice.

“You…you cut the address loose.”

What does that mean…?

Despite my confusion, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Administrator. The silver-haired woman lowered her hand and said in a whisper, “Two hundred years ago, I made the mistake of letting you get away when I absolutely had the chance to kill you. That was me who placed your stinking little hole on a nonconsecutive address, wasn’t it? So I decided to learn from my mistake. I knew that if I could lure you out, I’d trap you on this side—the rat in the cage with the cat who hunts her.”

The pontifex snapped her fingers to punctuate this statement. Instantly, there was another crashing noise, but much quieter than the last, and the dark-brown door that stood on its own in the middle of the carpet shattered. The pieces split apart before they hit the ground and vanished. Even the circle on the ground that was meant to indicate the location of the elevator platform was gone.

Eugeo was standing right next to it, and he reached out his foot to step on the carpet several times with surprise. Then he looked up, straight at me, and shook his head quickly.

In other words, what Administrator had destroyed wasn’t the outside world itself but the connection between this floor of the cathedral and the outside.

Even if we could somehow destroy the windows, there would be no way out of them—there was no space there to travel through. It was the perfect way to trap someone in a virtual space—almost too perfect—and the exact kind of thing that only someone with admin privileges could do. The prison area in Blackiron Palace on the first floor of Aincrad was child’s play compared to this.

In short, Administrator hadn’t been wasting her time in the minutes since Cardinal had appeared. She’d been preparing this exact tremendous command for execution.

However, if the consecutive connection between spaces had been completely severed, then…

“I find your analogy lacking in precision,” shot back Cardinal, who’d arrived at my conclusion a second before I did. “It might take minutes to sever the connection, but patching it back together will not be so easy. Now you are trapped in here as well. So which of us is really the cat, and which is the rat? We have four in number, and you are alone. If you think these youngsters are beneath your notice, your mistake is grave indeed, Quinella.”

She was exactly right.

This now meant that Administrator couldn’t easily leave this place, either. And she and Cardinal had identical power when it came to using sacred arts. While her and Cardinal’s arts were at a perfect equilibrium, the rest of us could cut her to ribbons and seize victory.

But Cardinal’s correction did not wipe the little smile off the pontifex’s face.

“Four against one? No…your numbers are off. It’s actually four against three hundred. And that doesn’t even include me,” she gloated.

Just then, the upturned mass of metal—the almost totally destroyed Sword Golem—let out a discordant, eardrum-rending screech.

“What…?!” shouted Cardinal. She’d hit it with three devastating lightning bolts in a row and clearly assumed it was out of commission. I had certainly thought so, at least.

But the golem’s eyes, which had been completely dark just seconds ago, were now glittering like twin stars. It fixed us with a murderous glare, pushed itself up with its arms, and got to its four feet as though all the damage it had suffered was instantly gone. When it stood, it let out a belly-wrenching roar.

That was when I noticed that the various sword parts that had been charred and smoking from Cardinal’s lightning bolts were gleaming like brand-new weapons.

It was true that weapons with a high-priority value had natural life-restoring capabilities in this realm, but only if they were cared for and put back into their sheaths. Even then, it supposedly took an entire day to recover half of an object’s total life, and beyond any of that, the swords that made up the golem’s body had been just decorative objects stuck to the room’s support pillars—they didn’t have sheaths.

Even if every part of the golem was a Divine Object type of weapon, they still could not recover so much damage so quickly. But the giant made of swords standing behind the pontifex looked just like it had before the lightning hit it—even more powerful than before, actually. It occurred to me that if she could mass-produce these golems, she might actually rebuff a full-scale invasion from the Dark Territory after all.

I stood there in mute shock until I heard the little sage command, “Kirito, Alice, Eugeo, get behind me! Do not allow yourselves to slip forward!”

I was already behind her, so the other two rushed over. Alice seemed completely healed after being impaled through the chest, in fact. She’d lost her golden breastplate, and the blue knight’s corsage beneath was torn, but I didn’t get the sense that her flesh was injured under it.

She bravely squared her shoulders and held up the Osmanthus Blade, whispering, “Kirito…who is this person…?”

“…Her name’s Cardinal. She fought with Administrator two hundred years ago and was banished. She’s another pontifex, basically.”

And if one was Administrator, the other was Formatter—the one who would mercilessly reset the world to nothing.

But I couldn’t explain all that now, of course. Alice still seemed suspicious, so I added, “It’s all right—she’s on our side. She rescued me and Eugeo and showed us the way to get here. She loves this world with all her heart and mourns what it has become.”

That, at least, was all true. Alice wasn’t over her confusion and doubt yet, but she pressed her hand to her right breast, to the spot where Cardinal’s miraculous power had healed her, and nodded deeply.

“…I understand. High-level sacred arts reflect the heart of the caster…and after the way she healed my wounds, I trust in the warmth of her strength.”

I nodded back at her. She was absolutely right. Whether the sacred arts caster was hastily tossing off a healing effect or truly putting their prayer into it made a big difference in the effect of the healing art, even when it came to the simplest and quickest of commands.

Cardinal’s healing arts were full of true compassionate love. They engulfed and melted away all pain. That was why I hoped there was still room to talk her out of her plan to reinitialize the Underworld—but only if we actually won this battle.

First, we had to figure out the secret of how the Sword Golem had instantly healed itself of all damage, and how we could counteract that.

It began moving forward, its dark-gold body gleaming in the light. Cardinal readied her staff at once, but she couldn’t get the jump on it with a major attack in advance like she had a few minutes ago. Administrator would be waiting with eagle eyes to strike at the moment Cardinal started chanting her commands.

Think, think, think. It’s all I can do right now.

Most likely, the Sword Golem’s auto-healing ability had something to do with Memory Release. So whatever object was the source of the thirty swords that made up the golem’s body, it had properties that enabled that effect.

The first thing that popped into my head when I imagined natural healing of life was the Gigas Cedar, the source of the sword in my hand now. But that healing power was fueled by the spatial resources it sucked in from the sun and the earth.

The only resource in this place was the moonlight coming through the windows from the south. And it couldn’t possibly have accumulated enough of that to heal the entirety of its massive body in a single moment. So the source of the Sword Golem was not some natural feature like the Gigas Cedar.

That left only some kind of living object with a healing ability that did not require spatial resources. But Cardinal claimed that all the giant Named Monsters that had once existed in this world were now extinct. And ordinary animal units like bears and cattle didn’t have the system priority to achieve power like that. Even tens of thousands of them converted into a single sword would fall far short of the Integrity Knights’ Divine Object weapons—that was how little life beasts had naturally. Priority and durability were proportional, so how many hundreds, if not thousands, of massive animal units would you need to create thirty of those weapons…?

Wait.

Hadn’t Administrator just said something strange a moment ago?

Four versus three hundred.

She hadn’t used moving objects like animals to create that Sword Golem. She’d used human units—the people who inhabited this world. Three hundred of them. Enough that their loss would completely eliminate an entire village.

This thought process happened in a span so short, my brain cells were practically frying—and I innately sensed that my hunch was true. But there was no triumph in this realization. The only thing I felt was overwhelming terror. My skin was crawling, from my toes up to my spine and the back of my neck.

Underworldians weren’t just mobile objects. They had fluctlights—human souls—just like any person in the real world. And their fluctlights would be active as long as they had bodies, even if they’d been converted into something like a sword.

Perhaps the people who’d been turned into those golem parts were still conscious, trapped inside metal without eyes or ears or mouths to speak.

Cardinal reached the same conclusion as I did. Her small body tensed imperceptibly. The hand that clutched her staff was white with the pressure.

“…You wretch.” Her youthful voice cracked with rage, betraying the weight of her full age. “Wretched thing…Is there no depth to which you will not sink?! You are their ruler! Your duty is to protect the subjects you turned into those swords!!”

“Subjects…? Like…human…beings?” gasped Eugeo, falling back a step.

“You mean…that monster is…human?” moaned Alice, putting her hand to her chest.

Cold, tense silence filled the room. Administrator drank in our shock, fear, and anger. With a gloating smile, she said, “Very good. You finally figured it out, did you? I was getting worried that you’d all be wiped out before I could reveal the big secret.”

The supreme ruler laughed, a true laugh of pure delight, and clapped her hands together. “But,” she continued, “I’m disappointed in you, little one. After two hundred years of hiding in your den, you still don’t fully understand me. In a sense, I am your mother, after all.”

“…Enough japes! I’m fully aware of just how depraved your madness is!”

“Then why would you say these silly things? About duties and subjects to be protected. Of course I would never bother with such trifling matters.”

Her happy smile did not change, but I could sense the atmosphere around Administrator growing rapidly chilly. It was like her lips were absolute zero and the words that came from them were particles of ice in the air. “I am a conqueror. As long as what I rule remains in the lower world in the state that I desire to rule it in—whether human or sword—then there is no real problem.”

“You…evil…” Cardinal’s voice creaked and cracked. I couldn’t think of anything to say, either.

Whatever form the mind of the woman—the being—known as Administrator took now was beyond my understanding. She was literally a systems manager and viewed the people of her world as nothing more than data files that could be manipulated and rewritten as she saw fit. Like some Internet addict who downloaded massive numbers of files for the sole purpose of collecting and organizing, without much fussing over what they actually contained.

In our conversation at the Great Library, Cardinal told me that the fundamental purpose burned into Administrator’s soul was “maintaining the world.” She was probably correct about that, but I felt it didn’t fully capture the truth of the situation.

The original Cardinal System in the old Sword Art Online was a soulless management program. Did it actually recognize its players as human beings…as living things with individual wills of their own?

The answer to that was no.

We were nothing but data meant to be managed, selected, and deleted.

Maybe Quinella, the little girl who’d existed centuries ago, couldn’t kill a person.

But to Administrator, even human beings were no more than fodder.

“Oh, you’ve all gone quiet. What’s the matter?” she said, tilting her head curiously as she surveyed us from on high. “You aren’t alarmed by a little thing like matter conversion for a measly three hundred units, are you?”

“Measly…?” Cardinal repeated, her voice barely audible.

“Yes, little one. ‘Measly,’ ‘just,’ ‘no more than.’ How many fluctlights do you think collapsed before I completed this puppet? And this is only the prototype. In order to mass-produce the finished version that can counteract that nasty stress test, I expect I’ll need about half.”

“Half…of…?”

“Half. Half is half. Half of all the human units that exist in the world…so about forty thousand units. I think that ought to be enough to put a stop to the Dark Territory’s invasion and take the fight back to them,” she said, a horror show without a hint of irony or doubt.

Then she turned her silver eyes on the knight standing to my left. “Are you satisfied, Alice?” she giggled. “Your precious realm will be quite safe, you see now.”

Alice said nothing. I noticed that the hand holding the hilt of her Osmanthus Blade was trembling, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or rage.

Ultimately, her answer came in the form of a question, her voice compressed so that nothing showed in it. “Pontifex…it is clear that no words can reach you now. So I ask you as a fellow user of sacred arts. Where are the owners of the thirty swords that make up that giant puppet?”

I was momentarily confused. It was Administrator who had used Memory Release on the thirty swords, transforming them into the golem. So while it broke from the traditional pattern, it would stand to reason that she was their owner. But what Alice said next shattered that assumption.

“It is not possible for you to be the owner. Even if you were to break the basic rule that one can only achieve Perfect Control over one sword, there is no breaking the next one. To perform Memory Release, there must be a powerful bond between the sword and its owner. Like me and the Osmanthus Blade, the other knights and their divine weapons, even Kirito and Eugeo and their swords. The master must love the sword and be loved by it. If the source of the swords that make up that puppet are innocent people, then there is no way they would love you for what you did to them!!” Alice declared, her voice ringing loud and clear.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh,” Administrator chuckled, breaking the silence that followed. “What is it with you young, foolish souls that makes you so vivacious? This sentimental quality, as sour as a fresh-picked apple…Why, I could just crush you in my fist and slurp down every last drop of juice right now.”

Her mirror eyes sparkled with a continuum of color, perhaps reflecting her rising excitement. “But not yet. It is not yet the time, no. What I believe you’re trying to say, Alice, is that I cannot make use of enough imagination to overwrite all of these swords. You are correct about this. I do not have enough capacity in my memory to record highly detailed records of every one of these weapons.”

She pointed regally toward the thirty swords that made up the Sword Golem, which was still inching onward.

From what I understood, Perfect Weapon Control involved taking one’s memory of all the information about a weapon—its appearance, feeling, weight, and so on—and, with the help of spoken commands, altering the weapon itself using the power of the imagination.

In other words, to utilize that ability, the owner of the sword absolutely needed all the information about the weapon to be stored in their head.

For example, if I were to use Perfect Weapon Control with my black sword, I would first need Information A about the sword as it existed in the Main Visualizer of the Lightcube Cluster to match Information B about the sword as it existed in my own fluctlight, with an absolute minimum of discrepancy. By doing so, I could then use my imagination to change Information B and thus overwrite Information A in the process, which would then share that change in information with everyone else. This logic also applied to the strange visual transformation that had come over me earlier.

As for Administrator, her lightcube memory was compacted to its limit by the memories of three hundred years of life. She couldn’t possibly keep a picture-perfect memory of all thirty of those swords. Alice’s convictions were clearly based on emotion and belief, but unbeknownst to her, it was accurate in terms of the underlying system’s limitation as well.

So that meant that each of the swords that made up the golem would have to have its own separate owner. Souls that held those swords in their memories and that had the wicked will to use them for destruction.

But where? In every sense of the word, this space was currently isolated from the outside world. It didn’t make sense unless those owners were inside the chamber with us…

“The answer is right before your eyes,” she said, suddenly looking right at me. Then her eyes shifted sideways. “Eugeo should understand by now.”

“…?!”

I looked over at Eugeo on the other side of Alice, not daring to breathe.

My flaxen-haired partner was staring the pontifex directly in the eyes, not budging, his face completely bloodless and pale. His brown eyes were almost oddly devoid of expression, in fact. Then he craned his neck, trembling, to look up at the ceiling.

I followed his gaze. The rounded ceiling featured a mural that depicted the creation of the world, embedded with little crystals that glittered in the light.

Up until now, I’d assumed this was all decorative. But in Eugeo’s blank expression, his eyes were the only thing that emoted, staring holes into the ceiling, searching fiercely for something.

At last, words came croaking from his throat. “Oh…of course.”

“What did you figure out, Eugeo?!” I asked. He glanced over at me, his face full of profound fear.

“Kirito…those crystals stuck into the ceiling. Those aren’t just…decorations. I think they must be the memory fragments…that were stolen from the Integrity Knights.”

“Wha…?” I gaped. So did Cardinal and Alice.

The Integrity Knights’ memories.

The most important of memories, the things extracted from the subjects through the Synthesis Ritual so they could be turned into knights. In most cases, this would, rather obviously, be the memories of their most beloved person. For Eldrie, it was his mother. For Deusolbert, his wife.

So did this mean those crystals were the owners of the swords that made up the Sword Golem?

No. The crystals were just isolated information that was stored in the fluctlight. They weren’t entire souls with the independent ability to think. It just couldn’t be possible for them to link with the swords and activate Perfect Control.

But then…something prickled in the back of my head.

If all those crystals were the memory fragments taken from Integrity Knights, then that must include the memories of Alice when she was synthesized six years ago.

This was the top floor of Central Cathedral.

When we fought the band of goblins in the cave north of Rulid two years ago, Eugeo was gravely injured. While healing him, I heard a very strange voice speaking.

It sounded like a young girl who claimed that she was waiting for Eugeo and me on the top floor of the cathedral. Then a huge rush of spiritual power flowed through me and healed Eugeo.

What if that voice was coming from Alice’s memory fragment? Did that mean the stolen memory itself had some power of independent thought?

But still, all sacred arts operated on that principle of direct contact. Even Administrator herself couldn’t send her voice and healing power from Central Cathedral all the way to Rulid, nearly five hundred miles away.

The only way a miracle like that could happen was if the same overwriting logic that Perfect Weapon Control worked on could also apply here. Which would mean the memories stored in Alice’s memory crystal were…were…

Cardinal’s furious shout cut off my train of thought. “I see…So that’s what this is! Oh, Quinella…you have gone too far…This is depraved manipulation of the highest order!!”

Jarred loose from my thoughts, I focused once again on the serene smile of the silver-haired overlord.

“Well, well…I suppose I should give you my compliments, little one. You figured it out faster than I expected for a bleeding-heart altruist. So tell me: What is your answer?”

“It’s the fluctlight’s shared pattern. It is, isn’t it?!” Cardinal said, leveling her black staff at Administrator. “By placing the memory piece you extract during the Synthesis Ritual into a mental model loaded into a fresh lightcube, you can treat it like a simulated human unit. But its intelligence is severely limited that way—essentially no more than a series of instinctive impulses—and it is far from able to execute complex commands like Perfect Weapon Control.”

I tried my hardest to process her terminology. Back in the library, Cardinal had said that babies in this world started as fluctlight prototypes loaded on new lightcubes and given a portion of their parents’ physical traits and mental and behavioral patterns. So this had to be a similar idea. But instead of starting with information from parents, these came from memory fragments taken from the knights.

In other words, the crystals shining in the ceiling were babies raised on memories of some beloved person. But if that was the case, how could that “Alice” have talked to me two years ago? No newborn child could speak as convincingly as that. The questions kept piling up in my mind.

Cardinal continued, “But there is a shortcut past that limitation. The fact that the memory piece placed in the fluctlight prototype and the structural information of the linked weapon share almost entirely identical patterns. Meaning…”

She paused to smack the butt of her staff hard against the ground and shouted, “That you created those swords using the very beloved that you stole from the Integrity Knights’ memories. Didn’t you, Administrator?!”

Once the initial confusion of this accusation died down, I was assaulted by such overwhelming fear and disgust that I felt my entire body turn to ice.

The owners of the swords that made up the golem were the fluctlights that had been made from the Integrity Knights’ stolen memories.

The swords themselves were crafted using the people in those memories—Eldrie’s mother, Deusolbert’s wife, and probably other close family members—as a base material. That was Cardinal’s accusation.

Once they belatedly understood the implications, Eugeo and Alice uttered simultaneous grunts of shock and horror.

If it was true, then perhaps it was theoretically possible to execute Memory Release. After all, Information A in the Main Visualizer and Information B in the fluctlight were coming from the exact same individual. If the newborn fluctlight with the memory fragment in it felt something strongly enough about the sword it was linked to, it was possible.

The problem was what that “something” would be. The memory fragments shouldn’t have had more advanced minds than a newborn baby. What impulse, what emotion could they be feeling that would control that mammoth Sword Golem…?

“Desire,” said Administrator, practically reading my thoughts. “Desire to touch. To squeeze. To make one’s own. Those are the ugly urges that drive this sword creation.”

“Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.” She narrowed her eyes. “The simulated personas made from the knights’ memory fragments all desire just one thing: to own the one person they remember, whoever it is. They’re stuck up there in the ceiling, but they can sense that person is right nearby. They just can’t touch them. They can’t be one. Afflicted by maddening hunger and thirst, all they see are enemies that keep them from what they want and need. If they just kill those enemies, then whoever they want will finally be theirs. So they fight. No matter how much they suffer or how often they fall, they’ll get back up and fight for eternity. What do you think…? It’s lovely, isn’t it? The things the power of desire can achieve…they are tremendous!”

Her voice rang out on high. The approaching Sword Golem’s eyes flickered violently. A harmonic roar—which now sounded to me like a scream of grief and despair—erupted from its vicious form.

It wasn’t just an automated weapon designed to slaughter. It was a poor, pathetic lost child, driven by nothing more than the hope to see that one person it knew again.

Administrator said desire was the power that moved the golem. But…

“—You’re wrong!!” shouted Cardinal, just as the thought entered my head. “Do not disgrace the emotion of wanting to see someone again, to touch them again, with a word like desire! This is…this is pure love!! The greatest power and final miracle of humanity…and it is not to be weaponized by the likes of you!!”

“They are the same thing, little one,” said Administrator, her lips twisted with happiness. She extended her palms toward the Sword Golem. “Love is control…Love is desire! It is nothing more than a signal that is output from the fluctlight! All I did was take that signal, the most firm and powerful of any you can get, and use it effectively. I did it much, much better than your way!!”

Her voice rose to a fever pitch, as if she was certain of her triumph. “The best that you could achieve was ensnaring two or three powerless children. But I am different. The puppet I created runs on the overflowing energy of over three hundred units’ desire, including the memory fragments! And most important of all…”

She paused for dramatic effect, preparing the final poison stinger.

“…Now that you know the truth, you cannot destroy it. Because now you know that my puppet is actually living human beings turned into swords!!” she announced, her words trailing off in the long silence.

Stunned, I watched as Cardinal’s staff slowly dropped from its position pointed at the Sword Golem. When she spoke, it was almost bizarrely calm.

“Yes…that is right. I cannot commit murder. That is a limitation I can never break…I spent two hundred years devising an art that would kill you and your inhuman form…but it would seem my efforts are for naught.”

I was stunned. She’d admitted her defeat just as simply as that.

But if the weapons in the Sword Golem were indeed living people, then Cardinal could not end those lives…She would not even attempt it. Even if, like with the teacups and soup cups, there was some way around that limitation.

“Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh-heh.”

Administrator’s lips curled up as far as they could go, her throat convulsing with unstoppable laughter amid the shocked silence. “How foolish you were…What a tragic comedy…”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha.”

“You should’ve known. You know the true nature of this world. You know that the ‘life’ around us is just a collection of data that can be changed and rewritten. Yet you treat that data as human, binding yourself to the rule against murder…Truly, there can be no greater folly…”

“They are human, Quinella,” Cardinal remonstrated. “The people who live in the Underworld have the true emotions that we lost. They laugh, grieve, rejoice, and love. What more does one need to be human? Whether the container of that soul is a lightcube or a biological brain is of little matter. This I believe. And thus—I accept my defeat with pride.”

The mention of the word defeat gouged deep into my chest. But that was nothing compared to what she said next.

“But I have one condition. I will give you my life…but in exchange, I ask you not to take the lives of these young ones.”

“…!!”

I held my breath and started to step forward, while Eugeo and Alice froze with shock. But the sheer willpower radiating from Cardinal’s figure stopped me short.

Administrator narrowed her eyes like a cat with her prey in her claws and wondered, “Oh…but what do I stand to gain by accepting this condition of yours?”

“As I said, I’ve been preparing an art for you. If you seek battle, I could keep your pitiable puppet at bay and tear away half of your remaining life. With that much stress, your uncertain memory capacity might be in even worse peril, no?”

“Mmmm…,” she murmured, putting a finger to her cheek and pretending to think without breaking her smile. “Well, I don’t feel that my fluctlight is threatened by a battle whose outcome is already known. But I suppose it would be a bother…and when you say to spare ‘the lives of the young ones,’ would sending them back to the lower world from this isolated space fulfill that condition? If you say I can never do anything to harm them for all eternity, I refuse.”

“No, just a momentary evacuation is all I ask. I trust in them to…”

Cardinal did not finish that sentence. Instead, she turned on her heel, robe swaying, and looked at me with kindness in her eyes.

I wanted to scream that this was ridiculous. My temporary life here and Cardinal’s one and only life were not equal. If anything, I was seriously considering throwing myself at Administrator to buy Cardinal time to escape instead.

But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t risk Eugeo’s and Alice’s lives on my own suicidal gamble. I clutched my sword so hard my hand hurt and my foot creaked with the pressure against the floor. I was caught between impulse and reason.

“Hmph. Fine,” said Administrator, her beautiful mouth forming a smirk. “That gives me another game to look forward to later. Right? So you have my word to Stacia. I will take the little one—”

“No, don’t swear to any god. Swear to the one thing that you actually think has absolute value: your own fluctlight,” Cardinal interrupted.

A slightly exasperated note entered Administrator’s smile, but she nodded again. “Fine, fine, I’ll swear to the precious data accumulated in my fluctlight. And once I’ve killed you, I’ll let the other three go unharmed. That pledge is the one thing I cannot break…for now.”

“Good,” said Cardinal. She gave a look to both Eugeo and Alice and lastly, turned to me. There was a gentle smile on her young face, and nothing but benevolent kindness in her brown eyes. I couldn’t stop the emotions in my chest from spilling out as liquid and blotting my vision.

Her lips opened and silently mouthed the words I’m sorry.

In the distance, Administrator called out a triumphant good-bye to her victim. She waved her hand, and the Sword Golem stopped where it was, near the center of the room.

Then she made a clenching gesture, hand still held high, and glittering bits of light came dancing out of empty air, coalescing into a long, slender shape.

The object that emerged was a silver rapier. It was as thin as a needle, with a beautifully curved guard, all of it perfectly silver in color. It was so delicate that it almost seemed decorative, but the overwhelming aura surrounding it spoke to its priority value and made it hard to breathe even at a distance.

Like Cardinal’s black staff, this was Administrator’s personal weapon—the ultimate source of the power that supported her sacred arts.

The silver rapier rang like a bell when she pointed it straight at Cardinal. The sage faced her directly, showing no fear of the divine weapon trained upon her heart, and walked forward.

Alice and Eugeo leaned forward, as though they were going to chase after her. But I held my hand out to keep them back. Deep down, I wanted to swing my sword right through Administrator, of course. But giving in to my emotions now would only waste Cardinal’s determination and sacrifice. I had to hold back my tears, grit my teeth, and stay put.

Rainbows of sheer delight cascaded through Administrator’s eyes as she stared down at her counterpart. Then a bolt of lightning shot from the tip of the rapier, painting the entire chamber white for a split second as it pierced Cardinal’s little body.

In the center of the blurred wall of white that was my vision, I saw a silhouette bend backward as though it had been flicked.

The energy of the beyond-massive lightning bolt charred the air as it dispersed, and I struggled to keep my eyes open as it threatened to bowl me over.

The youthful sage hadn’t actually fallen yet. She leaned on her long staff, feet planted firmly into the carpet, face resolutely pointed at her archenemy.

But the signs of damage were ghastly. Her black hat and robe were ragged and smoking, and part of her proud, shining curls was burned so badly it was basically ash.

As we watched in silent horror just fifteen feet away, Cardinal lifted her left hand and brushed off her charred hair. When she spoke, her voice was ragged but loud. “Hmph…So this is all…y-you’re capable of. Fire as many as you want…but you can’t—”

Krakowww!!

Another mammoth thunderbolt shook the world.

A lightning bolt even greater than the first one rocketed out of Administrator’s rapier, mercilessly tearing through Cardinal. Her pointed hat flew off and evaporated into tiny shards. Her body twitched in agony, slumped to the side, and escaped falling over entirely only by going to one knee.

“Oh, but of course I’m going easy on you, my little one,” Administrator whispered, just barely holding back her mad exultation. “It would be too boring if I finished you off all at once. I’ve been waiting two hundred years for this…moment!!”

Craaak!! A third blast.

This one arced overhead and struck Cardinal like a whip, slamming her against the ground with terrifying force. She bounced high and collapsed to the ground again, where she lay limply.

Half of her velvet robe was charred cinders now, and there were more burnt holes in the white blouse and black knickers underneath it. Her skin was white as snow before, but now there were burn marks like black snakes running along her limbs.

Still, her arm pressed into the carpet, trying to lift her body off it. As if just to mock this tiny act—practically the last ounce of strength Cardinal could have had left—Administrator hit her with another lightning bolt sideways. The little girl was blasted into the air and rolled several yards away across the floor.

“Heh…heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.” From her distant height, Administrator’s laughter spilled forth, as though she couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Heh-heh, ah-ha. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

Her mirror eyes had neither white nor iris. Instead, brilliant refracted rainbow light swirled through them. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

She held up the rapier, and from its tip poured a succession of lightning, one bolt after another, endlessly ravaging Cardinal’s helpless body. Each one kicked her like a ball, burning away her clothes, her skin, her hair, her very existence.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” bellowed Administrator, hair spraying as she writhed in demonic pleasure.

I barely even heard the sound. Tears flooded from my eyes and blurred my vision, and it wasn’t because the rampant flashing of lightning was burning them. It was just the only outlet for the storm of feelings that was roaring through me: lamentation that Cardinal’s life was slipping away before my eyes, fury at Administrator’s delight in her callous execution, but most of all, anger at myself for being powerless to do anything but watch.

I couldn’t even ready my sword or take a single step forward. Even if the worst should come to pass and Cardinal’s sacrifice was utterly wasted and the voices in my head screamed to use that sword to kill Administrator, my body might as well have been turned to stone for all it listened to me.

And I knew why.

If it was my power of Incarnation that caused my Vorpal Strike to extend far beyond its range to pierce Prime Senator Chudelkin, then that very same power was what turned me into helpless stone now.

When I attacked the Sword Golem minutes ago, I didn’t put a dent in it—and its counterattack nearly killed me. The feeling of that cold blade severing my torso left me with a powerful mental image of defeat. Terror gripped my limbs, so powerful that it made me all but certain that I couldn’t summon that mental image of being Kirito the Black Swordsman again.

I couldn’t beat any Integrity Knight now. Not even the students at Swordcraft Academy. And the idea that I might attack the pontifex was simply laughable.

“…Nngh…hrrk…”

I felt my throat convulse and heard the miserable sobs that escaped.

Cardinal knew she was defeated, accepted it, and bravely faced her fate. The thought that she was in the act of giving up her life now and I was going to be saved by abandoning her filled me with a festering self-hatred.

Then I noticed Alice, clenching her teeth, and Eugeo, his body curled, shedding silent tears. I couldn’t know what they were feeling, but at the very least, it was clear that they, too, were aware of their own powerlessness.

Even if we escaped with our lives now, what could we possibly do with these mental scars on our souls?

All we could do was watch as presumably the last and largest bolt of lightning infused the rapier, which the young woman brandished on high. “Now…let’s finish this—our two-hundred-year game of hide-and-seek. Good-bye, Lyserith. Good-bye, my daughter…and my other self.”

It was almost sentimental, if not for the fact that it came from lips twisted with sick joy. She lowered the rapier.

The final attack came surging on a million rays of light, striking Cardinal’s prone body, burning it, obliterating it.

The sage’s body flew high in the air, right leg disintegrating from its charred state below the knee, and landed at my feet. The sound it made was dry and weightless, like there was no longer any mass to her. Pieces of blackened soot scattered off her skin and melted into thin air.

“Heh-heh…ah-ha-ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Aaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

Administrator spun the sword in her palm, contorting her upper body like she was doing a dance. “I can see it…I can see your life ebbing away, bit by bit!! Oh, what a beautiful sight…each little droplet like the finest gemstone…Now show me the final act. I will give you just enough time to say your good-byes.”

I fell to my knees, as though my body had been waiting to obey that order, and reached out to Cardinal. The right side of her face was charred black, and her left eye was closed. But where I touched her cheek, I felt the slightest warmth of life, just before it could vanish.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had lifted her up with both hands and cradled her to my chest. My tears overflowed, dropping onto her badly burned skin.

Her burned eyelashes fluttered and rose. Even at the moment of her death, Cardinal’s dark-brown eyes were full of everlasting love and tenderness.

“Don’t cry, Kirito.”

She didn’t say the words aloud. The concept just entered my consciousness as thought.

“It is not the worst end I could have. I never expected…that I would die in the arms of someone…whose heart I felt a true connection with…”

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…,” I choked out, hardly more audible than she’d been. Cardinal’s lips—miraculously unharmed—curled into a faint grin.

“What…do you have…to apologize for? You still have…a duty…to fulfill. You and Eugeo…and Alice…must find a way…this beautiful…fragile…world…”

Her voice suddenly got much more distant, and I thought I felt her body getting lighter. Kneeling nearby, Alice quickly reached out to engulf Cardinal’s right hand with both of her own.

“We will…we will.” Her voice and cheeks were wet with tears. “You saved these lives for us…and we will use them to fulfill this mission.”

Eugeo’s hands reached in from the other side. “I swear, too.” He was full of powerful intent, so forthright that it made me wonder whether he was really the same shy, gentle boy I’d known all this time. “At last, I have learned the duty I am meant to fulfill.”

But I wasn’t expecting the words that came next. Neither was Alice, and perhaps not even Cardinal.

“And the time for me to fulfill it is now, in this moment. I will not run. I have…a duty that must be executed.”