6

The last rays of Solus had vanished to the west long ago, but the sliver of sky over the Dark Territory visible beyond the Eastern Gate was still stubbornly, eerily bloodred.

In the center of the grassy clearing the Human Guardian Army used for dragons to take off and land during the day, there was a pure-white enclosure that seemed designed to draw the eye away from that baleful red color. Just before the fence, under the proud flag of the Axiom Church, a group of about thirty Integrity Knights and army captains had their heads together, faces solemn.

Alice came to a stop, startled to notice that the knights and soldiers were not separated into distinct groups. A knight wearing shining silver armor and a military captain with less attractive but still effective steel plate stood drinking from the same pitcher of siral water, deep in discussion. From what she could hear from listening in, they had completely dispensed with any formalities that would have bogged down the conversation.

“Pretty good for a hastily assembled force, don’t you think, little lady?” said a deep voice at her side, drawing her attention.

Commander Bercouli, hands thrust into the waist of his eastern-style clothing, shook his head to stop her from saluting. “I decided that all that tedious saluting and protocol was a waste of time for this army. Fortunately, the Taboo Index doesn’t have an entry that says ‘Normal folks must ensure that a knight is properly mollified before they speak to them.’”

“I…see. That is all well and good, but aside from that,” Alice prompted, looking back to the military discussion, “where are the other Integrity Knights? From what I can see, there are only ten or so of them here.”

“Sadly, that’s about all of them.”

“Wh-what?!” Alice yelped, then covered her mouth with her hand. She looked up at the commander, aghast. “You…can’t be serious. There should be thirty-one members of the knighthood, including me.”

It was easy to remember, because the latest knight was Eldrie, who was designated Synthesis Thirty-One. Bercouli sighed in acknowledgment and lowered his voice to explain.

“I’m sure you know that Prime Senator Chudelkin performed ‘tune-ups’ on any knight who was about to suffer from memory issues. When he died, there were seven knights undergoing retuning in the senate. None of them has awakened as of yet.”

“…!”

Her eyes bulged. Bercouli looked away from her uncomfortably. He continued, “Only Chudelkin and the pontifex knew how to perform the art of retuning. Now that they are dead, we can’t bring those seven back without working to decipher the command, and we don’t have the time we need for that. There was just one knight who was in simple cryosleep there, not undergoing retuning, and we managed to get them awake, but…”

She sensed the awkwardness in his tone, so she asked, “And who was that?”

“…Sheyta the Silent.”

“…!”

It was a name Alice knew from a number of stories, but she’d never actually met the knight in person. She held her breath, however, because they were terrible stories, indeed.

Bercouli just cleared his throat to suggest they could talk about that later and continued discussing numbers. “Ultimately…there are twenty-four Integrity Knights awake at the moment. Four of them are managing things back at the cathedral in Centoria, and another four are patrolling the End Mountains for safety. That leaves us with sixteen. That’s the maximum we can have at this crucial line of defense. That includes you and me, of course.”

“Sixteen…,” she murmured, biting her lip not to include the word only.

And once she studied the lineup that was present, she realized that the majority of the fourteen here were lower knights without divine weapons—and thus without Perfect Weapon Control arts. They were still stout warriors who could kill a few hundred goblins in a battle, but they did not have the kind of overwhelming power that could alter the course of battle in an instant.

Bercouli filled in the silence by changing the subject. “By the way, about the question of what to do with the young man…I could have the rear guard take—”

“No…it will be fine,” she said, responding to his awkward offer with a smile. “There are volunteers who were his pages at the training academy…Once the battle starts, I will leave his care to them.”

“Aaah, that’s good to hear. So…did the fellow show any response when meeting someone from his past?”

Her smile vanished. She shook her head.

Bercouli exhaled and grunted in acknowledgment. “Just between you and me…I can’t help but get the feeling that he’s the very person who will determine the course of the coming war…”

Alice was stunned to hear that.

“The fact that he defeated the prime senator and pontifex with his sword, even accounting for the help from his partner and you, is a hard thing to fathom. I might not even be a match for the sheer durability of his Incarnation.”

“…I didn’t think it was so remarkable…”

She had no intention whatsoever of doubting Kirito’s strength at this point, but Commander Bercouli’s Incarnation was an ability he’d spent over two centuries honing. And Kirito was just a student, not yet a full adult. If anything, Incarnation should be the one category in which he was absolutely unable to match the commander, regardless of his technique and stamina.

But Bercouli was certain in his assessment. “When I struck him with my Incarnate Sword, and he struck back, I could feel it. That boy’s got just as much experience with true battle as I do, if not more.”

“True battle…? What do you mean…?”

“Just what it sounds like. The trading of life.”

Now, this she could not believe.

The people of the human lands were protected—or perhaps imprisoned—by the Taboo Index and Basic Imperial Laws. Duels with wooden swords were common, but it was typical for one to go from birth to death by old age without ever once experiencing a true battle to the death with naked steel.

The only exception was for the Integrity Knights, who did fight against goblins and dark knights attempting to breach the End Mountains. But these events happened only once or twice over the course of a long campaign, and the Integrity Knight was inevitably far superior to the other side, so it was hard to call that a real battle of life and death.

In that sense, the one person with the most bountiful battle experience would be Bercouli himself, who had been fighting the monsters of darkness since the knighthood was at its smallest. Apparently, soon after he had been made an Integrity Knight, he even lost to a dark knight at the time—hard as it was to believe now—and had to flee for his life.

And somehow, Kirito had more experience with fighting for his life than Bercouli?

If that was even possible, then it was not experience that came from this world.

His real home was in the “outside world.” But that was also the place where the gods who truly created the Underworld lived. True battle? Who would he have fought for his life…?

Alice wasn’t sure how to process all this information. Ultimately, she had to make a decision for herself: She would tell Bercouli everything. About the existence of the outside world—and the World’s End Altar that led to it.

“Uncle,” she said hesitantly, choosing her words carefully, “the truth is…during the battle against the pontifex…”

But she didn’t get any further because a sharp voice interrupted over Bercouli’s shoulder. “It’s time, Commander.”

She started and looked toward the owner of the voice.

It was an Integrity Knight, dressed in beautiful light-purple full armor that shone even in the twilight, with a silver rapier on her left hip. The moment she saw the full-face helmet adorned with wings like a bird of prey, Alice’s instinctual emotion was…Ugh.

It was probably the one person in the world whom Alice got along with least: the vice commander and second of all Integrity Knights, Fanatio Synthesis Two.

On instinct, Alice made the knight’s salute of a right fist across the breast and a left hand on the sword hilt, doing her best not to let her emotions show on her face. Fanatio made the same gesture, her armor clanking. But while Alice stood up straight, feet slightly apart, Fanatio placed her weight on her right foot and dropped her left shoulder in an affected way.

This is the exact sort of thing that drives me mad about her, Alice secretly grumbled, lowering her arm.

Perhaps she thought that her imposing helmet and tone of voice hid it, but to a member of the same sex, it was clear that Fanatio couldn’t help but exhibit a flowery femininity. Having been taken to the cathedral at a young age, Alice had never successfully learned such a skill.

On the fiftieth floor of Central Cathedral, Vice Commander Fanatio fought Kirito and Eugeo and suffered nearly fatal wounds when Kirito’s Perfect Weapon Control hit her directly. But despite the great effort it took him to win, Kirito used healing arts on Fanatio and then used some mysterious ability to teleport her away from the place, according to one of the lower knights who’d been present.

It did sound like something Kirito would do, but she couldn’t help but be unnerved by it.

For one thing, Fanatio seemed to be utterly devoted to Commander Bercouli, and yet, she had four attendant knights who were clearly smitten with her. Didn’t she pity the ones who admired her so much but would never be able to even touch her? She could at least show them her face, rather than hiding it at all times with that helmet.

So it was to Alice’s great surprise, during Alice’s secret griping about the helmet, that Fanatio actually reached up and clasped the sides of it with her hands. She clicked the fasteners to undo them and easily lifted off the light-purple piece of armor. In the firelight, her smooth black hair shone like spun silk.

The only times Alice had ever seen Fanatio’s face at the cathedral were when they encountered each other in the great bath by coincidence. As far as Alice could remember, this was the first time she’d ever seen the vice commander remove her helmet out in the open.

Compared to before, her beautiful looks seemed somewhat softer, and upon closer examination, Alice understood why. Her plump lips were actually colored in, albeit subtly. The woman who tried so hard to hide that she was a woman was…wearing makeup?

Fanatio took the occasion to flash the stunned Alice a warm smile. “It’s a joy to see you again, Alice. I’m ever so glad to see you well.”

“…”

A joy? Ever so glad?

That added another three seconds to Alice’s stunned silence before she recovered enough to return the greeting.

“I…it’s been a while, Vice Commander.”

“Please, call me Fanatio. By the way, Alice, I couldn’t help but overhear…Did you bring that black-haired boy here with you?”

The question was framed innocently, but it replaced Alice’s surprise with caution instead. It was Kirito and Cardinal who’d healed Fanatio’s injuries, but she might not be aware of that. It was possible that she still harbored hatred for the boy who’d bested her in combat.

“I…I did,” Alice replied. The vice commander deepened her bewitching smile and nodded.

“I see. Do you mind if I meet with him after this conference?”

“…Why do you ask, Fanatio?”

“Don’t give me that look. I’m not going to attack him at this point,” Fanatio said, her smile turning faintly sour. She shrugged. “I just want to thank him. I understand that he helped heal me when I was mortally wounded.”

“…So you knew. But I don’t think you need to thank Kirito. I’ve heard that it was actually a person named Cardinal, the previous pontifex, who saved your life. And sadly…she passed away in the battle half a year ago,” Alice explained, feeling her hackles lower a bit.

Fanatio gazed into the sky and said, “Yes…I faintly recall it. I’d never felt such warm and powerful healing before that. But it was Kirito who sent me to her…and there is one other thing I wish to thank him for.”

“Other thing…?”

“Yes. For fighting and defeating me.”

…Maybe she does mean to attack him, Alice wondered again, backing up half a step.

But Fanatio only shook her head, her expression earnest. “It is my honest wish. For all the many years I have lived as an Integrity Knight, he was the only man who ever truly fought his hardest against me after learning that I was a woman.”

“Huh…? What do you…mean by…?”

“In the past, I did not have this helmet. I fought with my face exposed, as you do. But one day, I came to understand that the male knights who fought me in mock battles, and even the dark knights I faced in true combat, had just the tiniest falter in their actions. To be pitied in combat for my sex is more humiliating than any defeat in the dust.”

But surely that was an unavoidable thing. Very few men could completely ignore the potent allure of Fanatio’s looks.

It wasn’t until she set up in the cabin outside Rulid that Alice learned that almost no women received a calling that involved taking up the sword. The only exceptions were the daughters of noble or landowning families. Ordinary women were prevented from choosing any life for themselves other than as wives, homemakers, and mothers.

If it was this old-fashioned custom that bound men’s hearts just as the Taboo Index did, it was an ironic thing indeed. The assumption that women were meant to be protected by men caused their abilities to weaken in the presence of her radiant beauty. If the knights in the Dark Territory had wives and children of their own, they would be no exception. At least the goblins and orcs, who had completely different appearances, were exempt from this belief.

But Alice, a fellow female knight, had never noticed or cared if male knights showed her favor or weakness. She had confidence that whether her opponent went easy or tried his best, she would be the victor, regardless.

Perhaps your anger is simply proof that you cannot move past your status as a woman, Alice thought right as Fanatio said something to the same effect.

“I used this helmet to hide my face and learned consecutive swordcraft techniques to keep foes away from close range. But that was because I myself was too obsessed with my gender. Not only did that boy recognize it immediately, he attacked me with all of his ability. I used every battle technique and art that I knew in the fight, and I lost. When I came to, thanks to Cardinal, that petty obsession of mine was simply gone…The entire time, the whole point was that I should be strong enough that no opponent would dare to go easy on me. Is it really so strange that I would want to thank the boy who showed me this simple truth and made sure I lived to understand it?”

At the end of that impassioned speech, Fanatio put on a little smirk and grinned. “And I must admit…I’m a bit chagrined that he never sensed any femininity from my bare face. I was thinking that I might try a few things to see if he wakes up from his fugue.”

“Wha—?”

What kind of nonsense…?

If that actually worked on Kirito, everything she’d done would feel so empty and pointless. And when it came to Kirito, she couldn’t completely rule out that possibility.

Alice did not bother to hide the stern furrow in her brow. “I appreciate your sentiment,” she snapped, “but he is currently resting in the tent. Do not worry; I will relate your feelings to him later.”

“Oh my,” said the vice commander, her eyelid twitching. “I need your permission to visit him? When you sought an audience with the commander at the cathedral while he was on duty, I don’t recall ever trying to stop you for personal reasons.”

“That is because your permission is unnecessary for me to meet with him. And really, now that I think about it, if you wanted a man to beat you senseless, you always could have asked Uncle to do it.”

“Oh, there’s no reason for that. He’s the strongest swordsman in the world, so of course he goes easy on everyone. He even showed mercy to the dark general.”

“Oh, did he? When we trained together, Uncle always worked himself into a heavy sweat out of true exertion.”

“…Is that true, my lord?!”

“Uncle, if you didn’t always pamper her…”

Both of the women turned to the side—but the commander was not there.

Where Bercouli had stood just minutes before, there was now merely a pile of dried grass.

* * *

When the conference began at six o’clock, it was under rather tense circumstances, owing to the frosty air between the master of ceremonies, Vice Commander Fanatio Synthesis Two, and the newly arrived Alice Synthesis Thirty.

Alice completed a brief introduction and plopped into one of the chairs in the front row.

“…Miss Alice.” Eldrie hesitantly reached over with a glass of siral water, which she snatched from his hands. She drained the cold sweet-and-sour liquid in one go. After a long, deep breath, she managed to shift to a different mental state.

Now that I get a good look…

There really were too few higher Integrity Knights with Divine Object weapons. The ones she knew and recognized were Commander Bercouli with his Time-Splitting Sword, Fanatio with her Heaven-Piercing Blade, Eldrie with the Frostscale Whip, and Deusolbert with the Conflagration Bow.

There were also Sheyta Synthesis Twelve, known also as Sheyta the Silent, and a very young boy knight named Renly Synthesis Twenty-Seven, both of whom had divine weapons, but she had hardly ever met them before and didn’t know what they were capable of. At any rate, including Alice and her Osmanthus Blade, that was seven higher Integrity Knights in total.

The other nine, including the Four Whirling Blades who served under Fanatio, were lower knights without Divine Objects. And that included the infamous problem children, the apprentice girls whom even Bercouli had trouble managing—Linel Synthesis Twenty-Eight and Fizel Synthesis Twenty-Nine. They were seated obediently at the end of the row, but who knew whether they would behave and join the battle when it arrived.

That made sixteen in total, which was the grand sum of Integrity Knight power that they could actually apply to the ultimate line of defense.

Meanwhile, about thirty officers from the Human Guardian Army were also seated in attendance. Their morale didn’t seem poor, but even at a glance, the difference in power between them and the knights was clear. Even one of the lower knights could take on all thirty of them in a consecutive match and win with ease…

“We’ve considered all potential strategies over the last four months,” said Fanatio all of a sudden, pulling Alice back to the purpose of the meeting, “and the first conclusion is that with our current status, it will be very difficult to push back an all-out attack from the enemy, and if we are surrounded, we will not stand a chance of winning.”

Using the long, slim scabbard of the Heaven-Piercing Blade as a pointer, Fanatio tapped a point on the strategic map set up at the back of the conference area. “As you can see, for ten kilors in all directions on this side of the End Mountains, it is nothing but grassland and rocks. If we get pushed back this far, their tens of thousands will surround us and defeat us. Therefore, we will have to maintain the fight in the narrow ravine to the Eastern Gate—a hundred mels wide and a thousand mels long. We’ll set up a long, deep formation here to absorb the enemy’s rush and grind them down. That will be the basic thrust of our strategy. Does anyone have any thoughts about this so far?”

Eldrie was the first to raise his hand. He got to his feet, lilac-purple hair waving, and kept his usual flowery formality to a minimum.

“If the enemy were only made up of infantry like goblins and orcs, fifty or a hundred thousand would be no matter. But they know that as well. They have units of ogres with powerful war bows and even more dangerous dark mages. How will we counteract the long-range attacks that will come from the rear of the infantry?”

“It is a dangerous gamble, I will admit,” Fanatio said, pausing and looking to Alice. She straightened up and waited for the rest of the answer. “But the sunlight does not reach the floor of that ravine, even in midday, and there is not a blade of grass on the ground. In other words, the sacred power there is weak. If we can consume all of it before the battle, the enemy should be unable to utilize their powerful attack arts.”

This bold idea brought a murmur to the knights and military officers.

“Naturally, the same will apply to us. But we only have a hundred capable of sacred arts in the first place. If it comes to a battle of arts thrown back and forth, the enemy side is bound to consume far more sacred power than we are.”

That did make sense in its own way. But there were two problems with Fanatio’s plan.

Eldrie was too stunned to speak, so Deusolbert, the archer, requested permission instead. The senior knight in his bronze-colored armor asked, “I believe you are correct. But sacred arts are not only used to attack. If the sacred power dries up, will it not be impossible to heal the wounded, too?”

“Which is why it is a gamble. We brought all the high-quality reagents and healing herbs from the cathedral’s treasure repository here to this camp. If we reserve our sacred arts just for healing and use the herbs for extra support, the reagents should last us two…even three days.”

This statement caused even louder gasps than the first one. The treasure room of Central Cathedral was known for having such tight security, there were fairy tales about it. Treasure was brought in—but this might be the first instance in history of anything being removed.

Even the imposing knight’s stern face was slack with shock. Deusolbert sat down heavily with a grunt, and Alice took her turn to stand.

“There is one other problem, Miss Fanatio,” she said, putting aside their earlier argument to offer feedback. “While the blessings of Solus and Terraria might be weak, the ravine is not perfect darkness, nor is it separated from the earth. I believe that a vast amount of sacred power has been stored in that place over the course of many years. What kind of person can use up all that power in the brief time we have before the coming battle?”

Now it was Fanatio’s turn to be at a loss. The ravine through the mountain range was indeed more constrained than the grassland behind the camp, but it was still a hundred mels wide and a thousand long. It would take hundreds of people using high-level arts at once to completely sap all the sacred power in that vast space, and as Fanatio had just said, the guardian army did not have that many.

Perhaps a smaller group could achieve the same effect by casting some mega-scale art with cataclysmic effects, but no one was known to have that kind of power aside from the late Administrator and Cardinal.

But the vice commander stared at Alice with light-brown eyes and shook her head.

“I can tell you. We have just one person capable of that.”

“…One…?” Alice asked, looking at the faces around her. But the name Fanatio said next was the last one she expected to hear.

“It is you, Alice Synthesis Thirty.”

“What…?!”

“You might not realize it, but your present power surpasses the Integrity Knight’s bounds. At this moment, you should be capable…of wielding true godly power that splits the heavens and earth.”