CHAPTER NINETEEN

PRIESTESS OF LIGHT, EIGHT PM, NOVEMBER 7TH, 380 HE

1

The dust cloud kicked up by the march of the army of darkness was gray against the night sky of the Dark Territory and its red stars.

Commander Bercouli took his eye away from the simple eyeglass made from crystal elements and growled, “Well, this certainly looks like Vecta’s got an obsession with you. He’s sending their entire army.”

“I suppose we should be happy. It’s certainly a much better outcome than being ignored entirely,” Alice muttered, washing away her nerves with a swig of lukewarm siral water.

After proceeding about five kilors directly south through the uncharted—at least by inhabitants of the human realm—wastes of the Dark Territory, the guardian army’s decoy force took its first break on a small hill.

The guards’ morale was high. The dreadful magic the enemy had used on them had been briefly terrifying, but the sacrifice of a single Integrity Knight had both relieved them and filled them with determination to succeed in his memory.

But Alice had still not fully registered the fact of Eldrie’s death. The time they’d spent together at Central Cathedral had not been long, to be sure, but he had given Alice tastes of his favorite wines and sweets; he’d told silly, charming jokes; and there had never been an entirely dull day with him around.

There had been times when she’d wondered whether the young man really wanted to learn sword techniques and sacred arts, or whether he just wanted to make merry. But only now, in his passing, did she realize how much his presence had lightened her heart and kept it fresh.

…I took him for granted such that I barely noticed when he was around, and it’s only after he’s gone that I finally realize what he meant to me. Pathetic.

She gazed up at the End Mountains to the northwest jutting up against the stars and touched the coiled whip now fastened behind her waist. Now she understood how Kirito felt, the way he never let go of Eugeo’s sword.

Alice closed her eyes, and as if waiting for that very cue, the knights’ commander said, “So shall we assume that our plans for now are to continue leading the enemy army onward, chipping away at their numbers until the last of the four remaining Integrity Knights have fallen?”

She turned to the commander, who stood next to her on the northern end of the hilltop, and nodded. “That’s what I am thinking. We’ve eliminated half of the fifty thousand members of the invasion army already, and the dark mages, the most vexing of them all, are essentially wiped out. Next, we fatigue the dark knights and pugilists who make up the bulk of their strength…and if we can topple Vecta, the god of darkness, I think it is highly likely that those who remain will enter stalemate negotiations. What do you think?”

“Yes…the only problem is who the enemy leader will be at that time. If only that Shasta boy were still alive…”

“So is it true, Uncle? The dark general is…gone?”

“From what I could see of the battlefield earlier, he’s not around. No sign of Shasta or of his apprentice knight, the woman you fought before…”

He sighed heavily. Alice knew that Bercouli had secretly had high hopes for the general and his disciple. The eldest of knights shook his head and muttered, “All we can do is hope that whichever dark knight took over Shasta’s position has inherited some of his mind-set. Though I wouldn’t bet on it…”

“You think it unlikely?”

“Aye. The people who live out here in the Dark Territory have no book of laws like the Taboo Index. All they have is an unwritten rule to follow the mighty. And sadly…Vecta’s Incarnation is overwhelming…No buffed-up knight will serve as a true counterweight…”

True, when she had announced herself to the enemy army earlier, Alice had keenly felt some terribly cold and unfathomably dark presence reaching and tangling itself around her. She had never felt that sensation since awakening as an Integrity Knight. If the Incarnation of Administrator was fierce lightning, this felt more like an endless black void.

The memory of the sensation brought goose bumps to Alice’s biceps. She rubbed her arms and nodded. “You’re right…I can’t imagine that there are many who would desire to fight back against a god.”

The commander chuckled and patted Alice on the back. “And yet, we had three on our side: you, Kirito, and Eugeo. Let’s hope that there are some folks with similar backbone on this side.”

There was a powerful beating of wings overhead, and they looked up. Kazenui, Renly’s dragon, was descending toward them. The boy knight leaped off even before the dragon’s talons touched the ground, and he rushed to report to Bercouli, the words practically ejecting themselves from his mouth.

“Report for you, Commander, sir! About one kilor south of this point, there is a shrubland area that might serve for an ambush.”

“Good spotting. Get all units ready to move again. And…your dragon must be tired, so give it plenty of food and water.”

“Yes, sir!” The small figure saluted and raced off. Alice noticed that there was a faint smile on the commander’s lips.

“…Uncle?” she prompted. Bercouli scratched his chin, bashful, and shrugged.

“Just thinking…It’s an awful thing to steal someone’s memories and freeze their life for the Synthesis Ritual to make them into Integrity Knights…but it’s also a shame that we won’t get any more young fellows like him anymore.”

Alice thought this over and smiled back. “I don’t think there’s any rule that says you can’t be an Integrity Knight without having your memory altered and life frozen, Uncle.” She reached back and brushed the Frostscale Whip again. “Even if every last one of us is defeated, our souls…our wills find themselves taking root in fresh minds. This I believe.”

“It’s about damn time!!” shouted Iskahn, the young leader of the pugilists guild, as he smacked his right fist against his other palm.

They’d been so close to the fighting but forced to sit and wait for what felt like an eternity. The fearsome pillar of light that had burned the demi-human battalions, the freakish worm things that the dark mages had created, and even Emperor Vecta’s mysterious order to pursue the Priestess of Light had had no effect on Iskahn’s readiness to fight.

The world was split into two things: his body and everything else. Meanwhile, the entirety of Iskahn’s interest was in strengthening his own flesh and nothing else. So confident was he in his own ability that if facing down one of those massive dark arts, he was certain he could beat it back with his fists and fighting spirit alone.

His bronzed, muscular body was fixed with leather straps, shorts, and sandals, and that was it. He glanced at the five thousand men and women following his lead and at the dark knighthood behind them. They’d been running for not even five minutes, but the gap between the pugilists and the knights was nearly a thousand mels already.

“For riding horses, those knights sure are damn slow!” he spat.

A large man right next to him, standing a full head taller than Iskahn, opened his cave-like mouth in a pained smile. “They cannot help it, Champion,” he said, using the dark-tongue word for that generation’s strongest of pugilists. “They and their horses are outfitted in armor that is equally heavy.”

“Even though it’s not doing them any good!” snapped Iskahn. He looked ahead and curled the fingers of his right hand into a tube, then placed it against his eye. In the middle of his fiery iris, his pupil expanded.

“Oh, they’re moving again. But…not this way. They’re still running,” he said, clicking his tongue.

In other words, Iskahn had just accurately read the enemy movements from five thousand mels away, using nothing but starlight. He thought it over and said, “Hey, Dampa. The emperor’s orders were simply to chase and capture her, right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Okay…” He scratched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and grinned. “Guess we’ll try poking the bush. Rabbit Team, move forward!!”

There was an immediate roar at his order. Leaping forward out of the ranks to line up were about a hundred fighters of slim build—not weak, but whip slender and hard. They had matching white string decorations tied around their foreheads.

“We’re going to pay our respects to these Integrity Knights! Get pumped!!”

“Yah!”

“Begin Combat Dance Seventeen!!” shouted Iskahn, thrusting his right arm and pounding the ground with both feet. His confidant Dampa and the hundred members of Rabbit Team repeated the motion in perfect synchronization.

“Doom, dah, doom-dah.”

“Ooh, rah, ooh-rah.”

Amid the rhythmic pounding of feet and chorus of cries, Iskahn’s bronze curls began shining with beads of sweat, and his sunbaked skin began flushing a redder shade. His followers were exhibiting the same symptoms.

When the minute-long combat dance was complete, a hundred and two fighters came to a stop, steam pouring off their bodies.

In fact, that was not all of it. In the darkness, their skin was actually faintly glowing that red shade.

The pugilists were a tribe of people who had spent centuries attempting to learn just what makes up the body.

Swordsmen and mages both ultimately made their pinnacle the use of Incarnation to affect their target. In other words, they used the power of imagination to overwrite external phenomena and information.

But the pugilists were the opposite—they used Incarnation to power up their own bodies. They surpassed their original limitations, making their naked skin stronger than steel and giving their fists the strength to crush boulders.

And their feet, the strength to outrun horses.

“Ooooo, raaaaah!!” bellowed Iskahn, beginning to run. Dampa and the hundred fighters followed close behind.

In their wake, the air split, and the earth shook.

“…?!”

Alice took several steps forward, intent on catching up to the guardsmen who had headed toward the shrubland area that would help them set an ambush, then she sensed something off and turned back.

Something was coming.

And fast.

Upon closer examination, the enemy forces that should have been slowly following near the horizon were sending forth a unit of about a hundred that was closing the gap at astonishing speed. It was faster than any cavalry. She almost thought they were dragon knights, but there were too many of them, and they were clearly marching on foot.

“…Those are the pugilists,” Commander Bercouli grumbled next to her.

“They are…?”

She’d heard the title before but had never actually seen them for herself. It was usually goblins and orcs that harried the regions around the End Mountains—and very rarely a dark knight. Never before had the pugilists even attempted to invade the human lands.

But as was typical for the eldest of the Integrity Knights, Bercouli had experience with them, and there was a note of concern in his voice. “They’re a real pain. They’ll happily take an injury from naked fists, but they absolutely refuse to be cut by a sword.”

“Huh…? Refuse…?” It seemed to Alice that when it came to a steel blade against flesh, refusal and acceptance shouldn’t even enter into the picture.

Bercouli just shrugged. “You’ll see when you fight them. It’s probably better if the two of us go together.”

“…”

Alice swallowed hard. If Bercouli alone wasn’t enough for the task, the pugilists had to be dangerous, indeed. But whatever resolution and intensity she had built up was totally wiped out by what the commander said next.

“Uh, by the way…I’m guessing you’ve got a problem with stripping, Little Miss?”

“What?!” she yelped, crossing her arms in front of her body before she realized it. “Wh-why would you ask that?! Of course I do!”

“No, I didn’t mean it like…Well, yes, I suppose I did…but my point is, armor and clothes don’t really do anything against their fists, except maybe slow you down, so…,” he stammered, rubbing his chin. Finally, he gave up his explanation and shook his head. “At any rate, if you’re going to fight dressed like that, you’d better have Perfect Weapon Control ready to go.”

“Um…okay.”

She felt her nerves creep up her spine again. From what she could see, there were around a hundred enemies approaching. If she needed to use every bit of power she could muster with the Osmanthus Blade to beat them, they were dangerous foes, indeed.

But there was one problem.

She had already used Perfect Weapon Control twice—when she had activated the reflective cohesion beam and when she had wiped out the dark mages—so the life of the Osmanthus Blade was already severely drained. Normal swinging attacks would be fine, but she didn’t know how many more minutes it could withstand its own swarming attacks.

The same was true for the commander’s Time-Splitting Sword. She had witnessed at close range his wide-ranging trap that instantly dispatched hundreds of minions at once. Both of their swords would normally need to be returned to their sheaths until daybreak to recover.

But even over the seconds of conversation, the pugilists had come close enough that she could make out the details of their imposing bodies. The soldiers weren’t done preparing for their ambush. She had to keep them away from the ranks.

Alice nodded to the commander, her lips pursed, and readied herself to slide down the north side of the rock face—until a woman’s quiet voice interrupted the two of them.

“I shall go.”

Alice turned around in shock and saw that Bercouli was doing the same, eyes wide.

Standing there, to their complete surprise, was the last of the four elite Integrity Knights in the decoy group, after Bercouli, Alice, and Renly.

She was tall and thin, with a dull and drab set of gray armor. Her dark-gray hair was split evenly over her forehead, practically plastered tight to it, and tied into a ponytail behind her neck. Her features were clear and, while not unattractive, utterly emotionless. Like Alice, she appeared to be around twenty years of age.

Her name was Sheyta Synthesis Twelve. The divine weapon at her side was the Black Lily Sword.

But she was almost never referred to by the moniker of her weapon. There was a different nickname that the other knights used on the rare occasion that they spoke about her.

She was known as Sheyta the Silent.

It wasn’t Sheyta’s volunteering to fight the enemy pugilists alone that had shocked Alice.

It was that she had just heard Sheyta the Silent speak for the very first time.

Iskahn and Dampa and their hundred followers leaped easily over ditches and brooks and even kicked their way through boulders here and there as they raced on. Very soon they would get to fight the Integrity Knights, who were feared as much as demons. The young pugilist felt the corners of his mouth curl with a possessed smile.

As a matter of fact, until the topic of this battle came about, Iskahn had never felt particularly interested in the Integrity Knights of the human lands. He saw them as nothing more than cowards who hid behind swords and armor. The only knight in their own dark tribes whom he truly respected as a gladiator was the now-dead General Shasta.

But the spirit of the enemy knights that he’d sensed while meditating before they got their orders had been no joke. At the very least, they were not just scrubs who relied on fancy weaponry to get themselves out of trouble.

Iskahn placed a bet that if he smashed those ugly swords and suits of armor, he’d find pristinely muscled bodies underneath—and the anticipation of fist meeting fist at full power got him pumped up and ready for battle.

So when he did finally catch a glimpse of one of the knights standing before the hill at which the enemy had been waiting earlier, the pugilist was stunned.

He was too thin.

No, not he—it was a woman. So it wasn’t surprising that she would be thinner, but this was too much. Even covered in metal armor from head to toe, she was skinnier than any of the female pugilists under Iskahn’s lead. Underneath the armor, this woman would look more like a mage. Even the sword at her side looked more like a meat skewer than a weapon.

Iskahn held his troops back with a motion and came to a skidding stop, dust swirling. His eyebrows, which curled up at the ends like flames, rose as he said, “Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing there?”

The knight inclined her head the tiniest bit, her straight gray hair swaying. It looked as though she was considering how to answer—or more likely, whether there was any need to answer at all. The bridge of her nose was as smooth and small as if it had been carved in a single motion by a very sharp knife, and she betrayed no emotion whatsoever in saying, “I am here to prevent your advance.”

Iskahn snorted tremendously, though it wasn’t clear whether it was out of mirth or anger. He shrugged. “You couldn’t stop a single child from getting past you. Or let me guess…Are you a knight who also casts arts?”

This time, the knight paused just long enough to be irritating. “I am not skilled at sacred arts.”

Getting irritated that his finely honed spirit for battle was beginning to wilt, Iskahn spat, “Okay, fine. Whatever.” He gestured to one of his followers. “Yotte, deal with her.”

“Here we go!!”

Bounding forward out of the formation was a pugilist of slightly smaller build. But while she was smaller, she was at least twice the size of the enemy knight. Her firm muscles bounced and stretched as she stepped forward, light on her feet. If the enemy was without expression, she was the opposite, bearing a fierce, proud smile.

“Hah!”

From five mels away, the pugilist punched the empty air. The wind this movement created rippled the knight’s bangs.

Even after this, the knight’s thin features betrayed no intention to fight. Instead, she looked almost disappointed and mumbled, “Only…one…?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’, string bean!” shouted Yotte, her thick lips curled back in scorn. “After I’ve beaten you down, but before I kill you, I’m gonna stuff that tiny mouth of yours full of dried meat! Now draw your damn weapon!!”

The knight gripped the hilt of the sword, looking as if she thought even the idea of replying to that taunt was a waste of time. She pulled her weapon loose without much fanfare.

“…What is that?!” shouted Iskahn from his vantage point farther away, arms crossed.

It wasn’t just thin. If the sheath itself was as thin as a meat skewer, the blade when drawn was barely even a cen across, no thicker than a child’s pinky finger. And it was as thin as a sheet of paper and matte black in color, such that with no light brighter than the stars around, it barely seemed as though there was a weapon there to begin with.

Scarlet fury rippled across Yotte’s face.

“…Think I’m some kinda joke…?”

Her feet beat a brief combat dance, more of a tantrum, and the pugilist crossed the gap at once. To Iskahn’s eye, it was an excellent lunge. Despite the name Rabbit Team, the pugilists that made up the squad not only were agile but had sharp, deadly fangs, too.

Yotte’s fist lunged forward, audibly tearing the air around it. Rather than dodging the punch headed for her face, the knight made to block it with her slender sword.

The resulting sound was high-pitched, like two pieces of metal striking. Orange sparks flashed around them.

Then the needlelike weapon bent, easily and pathetically.

Iskahn smirked. That flimsy little sword would not even split the skin of a hardened pugilist.

When the children of the pugilist clans turned five, they were sent to the guild’s training ground. The first training exercise they were assigned there was to break a cast-iron knife with their bare fists.

As they grew, they graduated from cast iron to tempered, from knives to longswords. Not only did the students break the weapons, the instructors swung the blades down on them. It impressed upon the youngsters that they need fear no blade. Their bodies were an inviolable temple to any sharp edge. And that certainty—that Incarnation—turned their bodies to iron, in fact.

Iskahn, the guild leader, could stop a two-cen metal needle with his eyeball. As a member of the guild, Yotte was not at that level, but she was one of the ten group leaders of Rabbit Team, and no sword could possibly stop her fist.

Certainly not a flimsy, paper-thin sword like that one.

Every pugilist there could see it coming next: the black needle bending until it broke with a pathetic snap, then a steel fist driving itself into the knight’s face.

But what they heard was an odd pwipp, like a leather whip cracking on empty air. Yotte was still, the follow-through of her punch clean. Her fist had just barely grazed the knight’s right cheek, and that knight’s right hand was fully extended as well.

From where he stood, Iskahn could not see what the black blade was doing. C’mon—you shouldn’t be missing a target that big, he grumbled to himself. Assuming Yotte won this fight, he would send her to start over from the third-class waiting rooms at the coliseum. Who cares how strong your punches are if you can’t hit the target…?

Without a sound, a split appeared between the middle and ring finger of Yotte’s clenched fist.

“Wha…?”

Before his shocked eyes, Iskahn saw the tear extend from her lower arm to her elbow, then to her biceps and the top of her shoulder. The cut was pristine, absolutely preserving the bone, muscle, and narrow capillaries along its length, until the outer half of Yotte’s right arm toppled to the ground. Only then did hot fountains of blood spray like mist from the wound.

“Aaaaaaah!!” shrieked Yotte. She fell to the ground, clutching her arm.

The knight stood straight again. A brief sigh escaped her lips.

Sheyta the Silent did not maintain her silence during her stay in Central Cathedral out of some kind of introverted personality or dislike of interacting with others. Instead, she was utterly focused on avoiding the attention of the other Integrity Knights—ensuring that none of them thought to ask her to train or duel with them.

In fact, it was the fear that if she crossed swords with anyone, even Commander Bercouli himself, she might accidentally cut off his head that made Sheyta choose to live out her time at the cathedral, over a hundred years, in absolute silence. The only people she spoke to were the personal attendant who saw to her needs and the girl in charge of operating the levitating disc.

Sheyta was a true savant of the sword, synthesized following her victory in the Four-Empire Unification Tournament.

But the results of that year’s tournament had been struck from the record. It had been covered up, because instead of stopping at the last possible moment, as custom dictated was most appropriate and graceful, Sheyta had slain every last opponent she’d fought.

In a sense, Integrity Knight Sheyta Synthesis Twelve had a very similar mentality to Iskahn, head of the pugilists guild.

If all Iskahn thought about was punching people, Sheyta had no interests outside of cutting. But it was not something that she enjoyed in the least. It simply happened. Whether it was a person or an object, whenever Sheyta faced off against a target, she had a clear vision of the cross section of what she was meant to cut. At that point, there was no choice but to make the foreshadowing a reality. Against an immobile training dummy, she could even slice it to a smooth edge with the side of her hand.

Sheyta had always suppressed the side of her that desired the sheer slice; she considered it to be distasteful. It was Administrator who’d first recognized that hidden impulse within her.

Over two centuries ago, Administrator had attempted to master the theory of spatial sacred power, which all who wielded the sacred arts now considered to be common sense. What piqued her interest most of all was the great and final battle that brought about the end of the Age of Blood and Iron in the Dark Territory. At a spot in the wilderness halfway between Obsidia Palace and the human realm, the five tribes of darkness fought to a stalemate, unleashing a nearly infinite amount of spatial power. She desired to use that power for herself.

But being cautious, she could not travel to the Dark Territory. Instead, she summoned Sheyta the Integrity Knight. The pontifex called for Sheyta the Silent, as she was already known, and gave her a tempting message.

You will go to that place alone and look for something in the battlefield. Some kind of living magical beast that would have avoided the slaughter that unfolded there. If not magical, then some kind of large animal. A bird or an insect at minimum. I just want something that has absorbed that spatial power.

If you find it for me, I will create a divine weapon from it, just for you.

The highest-priority sword you could imagine. Capable of cutting anything…

Sheyta could not resist the temptation—not that the Integrity Knights could refuse an order from the pontifex to begin with. She scaled the End Mountains on foot, without a dragon, crossed thousands of kilors of charred landscape, and finally reached the gruesome site of that terrible battle.

Nothing moved in the place where the five tribes had so desperately killed one another. No magical beasts, not a mouse, not a single crow lived there. But Sheyta did not give up. The idea of a sword that could cut anything had seized her mind and would not let go.

After three days and three nights of searching, she finally found a single black lily waving limp in the wind. It was the only object that had the ability to absorb spatial resources that had survived the battle.

Administrator generated a sword with the thinnest and smallest of blades from that flower and gave it the name of the Black Lily Sword.

The next year, Sheyta was challenged to a duel by another Integrity Knight, whom she killed with that sword. By her own request, she was put into a long, long sleep.

Sheyta could not tell whether the breath she exhaled upon slicing the pugilist’s arm in two was one of lament or of exultation.

For that matter, she also didn’t know why she’d broken her long vow of silence minutes earlier, when she’d elected to stay behind and defend this position. She didn’t even know what had driven her to raise her hand when the call went out to join the guardian army half a year ago at Central Cathedral.

Did she want to protect the realm, as the other knights did? Or did she just want to cut enemies? Perhaps she really wanted them to cut her?

It didn’t matter now. At this point, there was no stopping her sword. All she could do was pray that the number of lives she snuffed out was small.

Sheyta raised her head and glanced at the frozen, shocked pugilists.

The gray knight raised her slender black sword and plunged into the midst of a hundred enemies without a moment’s hesitation.

“…She fights with great fury,” Alice noted hoarsely.

“Yes…,” Commander Bercouli hummed. “Just between you and me, when we pulled her out of Deep Freeze six months ago, I was actually a bit scared.”

“I had no idea that Sheyta was capable of such things…”

Below them, Integrity Knight Sheyta was battling a hundred pugilists. Technically, it was less battling than simply severing. Her sword, so thin its shape was almost difficult to make out, whipped left and right, each high-pitched zip easily cutting off another arm or leg of whatever enemy happened to be nearby.

Despite her wonder at the sight, Alice couldn’t help but feel concerned about something she sensed emanating from Sheyta’s slender form. There was no hostility coming from her. She didn’t seem to be feeling anything at all. So what was it that drove her to fight so fiercely?

“Don’t think about it. I’ve known that girl for more than a hundred years, and I don’t understand a single thing about her,” the commander grunted. He turned his back. “I think we can leave this to her. The enemy’s main force should catch up soon, and we ought to prepare to fight them off.”

“…Yes, sir,” Alice said. She tore her eyes away from the battle below and hurried after him.

About a kilor south of where Bercouli and Alice were descending the hill, the wasteland of blackened gravel finally began to give way to a region covered in oddly shaped shrubs, where the decoy group was hiding.

The group consisted of a thousand guards, two hundred priests, and fifty supply team members. They would have to fight back five thousand enemy pugilists.

Renly and the guards and priests, split into twenty groups, were hiding among the plants and waiting. There were fresh wheel ruts on the single narrow path winding through the woods, dug by the supply wagons. The enemy would follow the tracks as far as they could lure them in before the ambush pounced from either side.

The commander had already warned Renly that the pugilists would be highly resistant to sword attacks. But he’d also described their weakness: Pugilists were very bad at defending against sacred arts.

To the north, where there was not even a patch of moss growing, there was not enough sacred power to use a higher-level art, but the air was thicker here in the shrubland. The priests hiding in the shrubs would unload sacred arts on the enemy lured into the trap, then evacuate south, protected by the soldiers. With the enemy in disarray, the five dragons would burn them from above.

In the hopes of a speedy escape, the eight supply wagons were situated at the very southern end of the shrubland. Renly decided that the farther they were from the fighting, the safer they’d be. He believed that there was almost no chance that the enemy would slip into the darkness and attack the supply team directly.

But even as Renly busied himself with the coming ambush, the five guards he had placed on the carriages, just in case, were in the process of dying without a sound.

A shadowy figure moved silently, despite the full-body metal armor in unreflective black and the helmet with demonic horns.

It headed for a young guardsman from the Human Guardian Army who was ceaselessly glancing left and right—but never over his shoulder. There should have been other guards looking in that direction.

The shadow slid closer, remaining in the guard’s blind spot. There was an excellent longsword hanging from its waist, but it remained there as the figure lifted a tiny dagger.

The figure’s left hand reached forward, a black serpent, and covered the guard’s mouth and nose. The right hand flashed as the blade slid across the guard’s exposed throat.

The body bled out the flicker of life it still contained in absolute silence, then slumped over dead, and the shadow pushed it beneath a nearby shrub.

Through the black fabric that covered its face, the shadow muttered “Five down” and chuckled. It was speaking not in the ancient sacred tongue but in modern English.

This shadow was none other than one of the three current inhabitants of the Underworld who were actually from the real world—subordinate officer to Gabriel Miller, one Vassago Casals.

About an hour before this, Vassago had been chugging yet another glass of red wine in the huge carriage at the rear of the Dark Territory’s army when the dark mages’ attempt at a grand magic spell had failed. At last, he’d needled Gabriel.

“Hey, Bro. Don’t you think we’ve delegated enough of the work? Why don’t we get our own hands dirty already?”

Gabriel glanced at Vassago, a golden eyebrow raised. “You can go first, then.”

He ordered Vassago not to invade the ravine that the other army was defending but to move to an empty place far to the south of the battlefield.

From the moment that the nonhuman troops had been zapped by that sci-fi laser attack, Gabriel had predicted that a portion of the enemy forces would slip through into the Dark Territory. Vassago wondered why he guessed they would go south, rather than north, and when Gabriel explained that “there was more room that way,” he nearly fell off his seat. But now that the enemy had indeed come this way, he didn’t have much choice but to give up and do his job.

No matter how high functioning the human units were, they would come to a stop if their supplies were lost. For the first time since diving into this world, Vassago had a chance to kill time with “killing time.” He stared into the dark woods, hoping to make the moment last.

He soon found several wagons camouflaged with branches and leaves. Under his mask, the assassin licked his lips and continued moving.

There was movement at one of the wagons. He froze, hiding behind a tree trunk.

From out of the wagon canvas poked the face of a young woman with dark-brown hair and the kind of pale skin that none of the darklanders had. She was looking around the area nervously, clearly sensing something was amiss.

As Vassago waited, immobile, the girl carefully stepped down from the wagon, whispered something to someone inside it, and began to walk slowly away. The girl wore gray clothes that looked like a high school uniform with just the flimsiest bits of armor added, and she was heading straight for the place where Vassago was hiding.

He had to stifle the urge to whistle with excitement. His fingers gripped the handle of the dagger, which was still slick with blood.

“Don’t…think…”

Iskahn boiled with rage at the sight of the fighters he had personally trained being chopped to pieces before his eyes.

“…you’re going…to get away with thiiiis!!”

He barreled forward, his legs working so hard they put cracks in the ground. Flames covered his right fist, a manifestation of the burning fury that consumed him.

Iskahn thrust that fist at the base of the gray Integrity Knight’s neck. Sparks spilled over the sides of his hand, leaving a brilliant trail in the air. The knight, who had just finished swinging her sword, made to catch Iskahn’s punch with her gauntleted free hand.

Your armor is just paper against my fist!!

His punch, brimming with pure Incarnation, collided with the knight’s palm and sprayed a huge wave of sparks outward in all directions. There was an explosive ripping sound, and the gray gauntlet shattered, followed by the metal pieces up to her shoulder.

The knight’s exposed left arm showed off a lattice of tiny cuts across the smooth white skin that promptly burst forth with a misting of blood. But to his surprise, he did not register the feedback of breaking bones.

He knew she had to be in intense pain regardless, but the only thing the knight did was lower her eyebrows a bit. With her left hand squeezing his wrist, she whipped the narrow sword with the other.

There was a ringing metallic sound, and sparks shot out from the pugilist’s elbow area.

The source of the pugilists’ strength was the belief and understanding that it was impossible for any blade edge to violate their bodies. They wore only scant leather straps, leaving the rest of their skin bare, to help feel the certainty of this belief. The moment a pugilist relied on any armor, he revealed the weakness of his heart.

So Iskahn attempted to rebuff the black blade with willpower alone before it could slice through his arm. But the chilling bite of this weapon as it dug into his skin was unlike any blade he’d taken before.

The ultrathin, ultranarrow blade was not simple steel, either, but another manifestation of will. It desired not victory but the sheer thrill of cleaving in twain anything it touched.

On sheer instinct, Iskahn punched with his other arm. It rippled through the air, bursting into the place the knight had stood just an instant before. She was incredibly nimble but did not evade it entirely; his hand made slight contact with her gray breastplate. It cracked and split as she jumped away, just like her gauntlet had.

But Iskahn was not unharmed, either. The inside of his right elbow, which the sword had touched for less than a second, had a very thin cut on the skin. A tiny bead of blood bloomed in the center of the line. One drop of blood—just one.

The young pugilist licked it off and grinned fiercely at her. “Woman…your appearance and what lies underneath it are very different things.”

The gray knight did not respond in the way he’d expected.

“But…I’m older than you…”

“Huh? Of course you are. You Integrity Knights are monsters that live for decades without any sign of aging, right? Should I call you Grandma instead?”

“…” The knight’s eyelids twitched through her cool gaze. That was all the reaction she showed, however. “I will allow it. You are very hard. I almost cannot find a place to cut.”

“Tsk…What’s that supposed to mean?”

Iskahn was getting irritated; he could sense that her off-putting attitude was throwing off his will to fight just the tiniest bit. A quick glance at his fellow pugilists defeated around him was enough to rekindle that rage.

Over twenty men and women moaned on the ground, arms and legs severed by that eerie sword. What was worst of all was not that she had hurt them but that she was probably doing her best to hold back and keep from killing them. Not a single pugilist had lost their head. She should have been eminently capable of that, given her knight’s training and the excellence of her weapon.

“…How dare you treat us like training dummies. You’ll pay for this…I will find a way to crush you!!”

Stomp, sto-stomp!!

The fighters around kicked out a brief combat dance to indicate their ability to fight. They crowed in rhythm with their feet.

“Ooh, rah, ooh-rah-rah! Ooh, rah, ooh-rah-rah!”

With each pounding of the earth and battering of the air, the pugilists’ Incarnation strengthened. Sweat began to pour from their bronzed skin, the droplets flying loose and turning into sparks.

The Integrity Knight did not budge. It was as though she was waiting for Iskahn to reach the height of his fervor.

Fine, then.

The king of brawls stopped his combat dance. His dark golden curls stood up with fire, and light began to blaze around his arms. In contrast, the knight was quiet. The narrow black blade in her right hand exuded a frosty cool.

“Here…I…come…womaaaaan!!”

Iskahn closed the gap, the air burning around him. The woman lazily swung the sword up.

Piuw.

Just before the whipping black sword could touch Iskahn’s left shoulder, the pugilist hit her left leg, when her sword should have won the battle of distance. He had kicked her, not punched. The toe of his right foot swung low off the ground and hit her gray shin guard directly.

With extraordinary reflexes, the knight stopped her sword and lowered her waist, keeping her from tumbling, but the guard protecting her left leg immediately shattered. The impact ripped the skirt wrapped around her waist, exposing thin but chiseled legs.

“Don’t assume that because I’m a pugilist, all I do is punch!” Iskahn smirked. He whipped his left leg into a high kick. The knight turned her wrist so that her sword would meet the kick.

The instant shin and blade connected, a shower of sparks appeared with a roar. The chief of the pugilists felt a piercing pain in his hardy shin and pulled his leg back, throwing a punch instead.

The flaming blow caught the knight directly on the breastplate.

Gagaaang! The resulting explosion threw them in opposite directions. Iskahn did a backflip in the air and landed on his feet. The pain ran through his left shin again, and he glanced at it.

His shin, which was strong enough to break a steel stake in half, had a brilliant line cut right into the skin. Bright-red blood gushed from the wound and dripped onto the black ground.

He snorted—it was only a scratch—and examined the state of his foe.

She had held strong this time, too, but she had her hand to her chest and was coughing quietly. The impact of his fist had completely shattered her breastplate, leaving only the gauntlet on her right arm and the gray cloth around her chest. On her lower half were just the torn skirt and the armor over her right leg.

Iskahn looked at the way her snow-white skin, a feature of the Human Empire, glowed bright even in the dark of night, and he snorted again. “You’re looking much more like a gladiator now. But you don’t have anywhere near enough muscle. You ought to eat more and train more, woman.”

The pugilists around them jeered and taunted, but the knight’s expression did not change. She merely grabbed the scrap of cloth hanging from her left shoulder and ripped it loose, then whipped her flexible sword around.

“And I’ve noticed that you’ve grown softer.”

“…The hell did you just say?” growled Iskahn, the bridge of his nose wrinkling as he exposed his canines. But despite his menacing look, he could tell that his own breathing had gotten just a bit shallower.

It didn’t make any sense that his will to fight would weaken just from seeing some bare skin. The women of his tribe exposed their flesh all the time in much greater degree, and only a little kid freshly entered into the training hall would let that unnerve him.

The only thing the world held was opponents waiting to be crushed by a clenched fist. Even if they were exotic foreign women so thin they could snap in the wind, with blindingly white skin.

“You’re going to pay for this…I’m going to show you what I’m like at full power,” howled Iskahn, wolflike, jabbing a finger at the knight. “So give me all you’ve got!! Quit lookin’ like you’re gonna fall asleep from boredom!!”

She looked somewhat troubled by this, brushed her cheek and forehead with her free hand, and tilted her brows just a bit downward. “Then that’s what…you’ll get.”

“…G-good. That’s good.”

It was these pauses in the action that kept filling his head with strange thoughts. Iskahn sucked in a deep breath, tensing the power in his gut and lowering his center of gravity. He posed with his left fist at his waist and his right fist pointed at the enemy, and he exhaled loudly. With each forceful breath, his firmly planted legs sucked up power from the earth, glowing red, until the heat traveled through his body to gather in his fist.

The glowing flames went from red to yellow, then reached white with blue ends. Iskahn’s right fist contained enough heat to char the very atmosphere. It emitted high-pitched pinging sounds.

The knight met this challenge by taking a sideways stance. She extended her left hand straight forward, the fingers lined up, and stretched her ultrathin sword straight backward. The way that her arms were extended straight made her look like a stone-throwing tool that was taut at maximum pressure.

Iskahn grinned. He felt as nervous as if his body had already been split from head to belly.

I’ve never fought someone like this before. I feel so fired up.

They moved at the same moment.

The knight’s sword made a black semicircle.

The pugilist’s fist created a bluish-white comet. An ultra-dense shock wave erupted when they met, cracking the earth as it spread. Every last one of the pugilists standing around the duel was thrown backward.

Sword and fist shook for control over an intersection point the size of a needle’s eye. Power compressed beyond its limit raged into a pillar of light that burst upward into the night sky.

In terms of Sheyta’s skill, she could have defeated her foe without having to rely upon a straightforward contest of strength like this.

The young pugilist’s Incarnation was as tough as an elite Integrity Knight’s, which was a mild surprise to her, but she could also see that when he concentrated it all into his right fist to attack her, his other parts looked much softer. She could have dodged his straightforward punch and cut off his head, just like that.

But Sheyta did not do that. She chose to stand put and block the shining fist. It was not a conscious decision—it was what her body and sword wanted.

Even Sheyta found her decision surprising. For over a hundred years, she had known that she had nothing in common with the knightly ideals of pride and duty and honor. The only thing she wanted was to cut, because she enjoyed it.

One might as well say that she killed because she wanted to. Only when she was on a guard mission over the End Mountains did Sheyta allow herself to be free. Countless dark knights and goblins had lost their heads and their lives to her sword.

She felt her peculiar nature to be distasteful and chose to live in silence instead. So why did Sheyta choose not to kill in this one battle, out of all the battles she’d been in? It was a mystery.

It was also a waste of time to think about it. The only things that existed in this moment were her, the Black Lily Sword, and the fist before her.

It’s so hard and tough. I wonder if I can cut through it.

This is fun.

The enemy knight’s small, thin lips actually curled into a tiny smile. Iskahn already understood that she was not mocking him—or this fight. He knew because his own lips formed the exact same smile.

Y’know, for lookin’ like a scrawny little wimp from the prissy, soft human lands, you’re just like me deep down.

A small crack ran through the inside of his clenched fist. It was not the sound of the enemy’s black blade chipping but the sound of a bone in his own hand fracturing, he knew.

Dammit. She’s still gonna overpower me, even with this punch? Oh well, then.

If she cut through his fist, that thin black sword would split his entire body in two, his instincts told him. But Iskahn felt no fear. He would never get another chance to face an opponent of this quality. So he supposed it wasn’t a bad way to die.

He started to close his eyes, to accept his fate. But then the pressure on his fist gave a little.

All at once, the incredible pent-up force between them was unleashed, and Iskahn and the knight blew backward like leaves in a storm. He understood at once why her Incarnation had weakened. There was a huge figure breaking between the two of them.

Iskahn fell onto his backside and yelled at the man who toppled nearby. “What the hell was that for, Dampa?!”

“Time’s up, Champion.”

His second-in-command sat up, his normally slit-narrow eyes actually opened wide for once. Dampa lifted a burly arm and pointed to the north. Iskahn followed his gesture and saw the main force of the pugilists and the dark knights behind them, within visual range now. With a full group battle about to begin, it wasn’t the time for their leader to be engaged in a personal duel. And yet…

He clicked his tongue and looked forward again. Beyond the swirling dust devils, the enemy knight, nearly all armor and clothing gone, slid her sword into her sheath, seemingly unbothered by any of it.

“Woman! Don’t think you’ve won this fight!!” crowed the young pugilist, momentarily forgetting that he had been expecting to die just a moment ago. The knight glanced at Iskahn, her gray hair shifting, and seemed to search for the right words to say.

“I wish…you would stop calling me ‘woman.’”

“Oh yeah? Well…how do you even plan on escaping from this…?”

At that moment, a gust of wind hit them from the south, so powerful that all the pugilists attempting to surround the knight turned their faces away. Iskahn blinked and saw the knight raising her hand high into the sky, and the shape of a huge monster descending rapidly from above. It was a dragon, gray scales glistening in the moonlight.

She threw a leg over the creature, and the dragon swept back up into the sky. Furious, the king of fighters couldn’t help himself from shouting, “At least name yourself before you run away!!”

He could barely hear her voice descending through the beating of the dragon’s wings. “I’m…not running away. I am…Sheyta Synthesis Twelve.”

Dampa grabbed Iskahn’s arm and pulled him away, but he did turn back to stare at the flying dragon as it vanished into the night, and he clicked his tongue again.

If possible, he wished to have a rematch with that mighty foe after another year of training.

He had learned that there was still room to grow. But Iskahn was not so immature that he thought this kind of selfish desire could pass on a battlefield. Once they rejoined the rest of the pugilists, they had to work with the dark knights to wipe out the enemy army. It wasn’t clear if there would be another chance to battle that woman.

If I capture that Priestess of Light or whatever…, Iskahn thought for a moment, then clicked his tongue one more time. How stupid can I be? Asking the emperor to spare that woman’s life as my reward? Every last member of my tribe will assume I’ve gone mad.

Iskahn spun on his heel and gestured to a subordinate for a jar of ointment to spread on the cut on his leg.