“I see. You’re right; it’s not exactly offensive in nature, but it can be plenty helpful if we use it properly. And it seems like it should complement my own pretty well.”
“Really? What kind is yours?”
“Why ruin the surprise now?” Kirito teased, earning himself a glare from Eugeo. He swept his bangs aside with a smug smile and leaned against the wall again. “Okay, I think I know what we’ll do, not that it’s much of a plan. First, before we exit onto the fiftieth floor, we chant our Perfect Weapon Control and keep it on standby. Once we’re in there and know where our enemies are, you unleash first, and I’ll go after. If we manage to successfully cluster the knights in one spot, we might be able to neutralize them all at once.”
“Might,” Eugeo repeated with plenty of skepticism. But in truth, he had no countersuggestion. Admittedly, his partner was the better one when it came to planning with all possible variables in mind, and given Eugeo’s trouble with high-speed chanting, the chance to take care of it beforehand was greatly appreciated.
“…So let’s go with that. First, I’ll…”
Eugeo turned to his left and glanced at the staircase leading up to the twenty-ninth floor of the cathedral. Then his eyes bulged.
In the shadows beneath the handrail were two small heads and two pairs of eyes watching them intently.
The instant Eugeo’s gaze passed over them, the heads darted back behind cover. But even as he watched, momentarily stunned, they eventually came back into view, innocent eyes blinking with interest.
Kirito sensed the anomaly and followed Eugeo’s line of sight. His mouth, too, fell open, before he finally asked, “Uh…who are you?”
The two heads shared a look, then a little bob, and then the bodies attached came into view.
“They’re…children?” Eugeo couldn’t help but mutter.
Standing on the stairs were two girls, dressed in identical black outfits. They looked to be around ten. Eugeo felt a flash of fond reminiscence and then realized it was because their plain black clothes looked a little bit like the apprentice habit that Alice’s sister, Selka, wore back at the church in Rulid.
But unlike Selka, these girls had green belts with thirty-cen swords attached. For an instant, he felt his hackles rise, but just as soon, he noticed that the blades and hilts were made of reddish wood. While the coloring was different, they looked just like the little wooden swords every child used to practice.
The girl on the right had her light-brown hair tied into two braids. Her eyebrows sloped downward over her round eyes, giving her a weak-willed look. The girl on the left had straw-blond hair cut short, and her eyes were sharp and triumphant.
To no surprise, the first of the two to step forward was the bolder-looking one on the left. She took a deep breath and abruptly introduced herself.
“Um…I’m Fizel, an Axiom Church sister-in-training. And she’s another apprentice like me…”
“L…Linel.”
Their youthful voices wavered a bit at the end due to nerves. Eugeo smiled to put them at ease, but then he realized that if they were holy women in the Church—even as apprentices—that made them enemies.
But Fizel’s follow-up question was even more direct than Eugeo’s line of thought.
“Um…are you the intruders from the Dark Territory?”
“Huh…?”
He and Kirito shared a look. Even his partner seemed at a loss for how to respond. His mouth opened and shut several times without producing any words, and then he drew himself behind Eugeo and said, “I’m not good with kids. You take this one.”
Eugeo hissed, “No fair!” but he couldn’t circle around to hide behind Kirito. Instead, he looked up at the two girls and said awkwardly, “Um…well, uh…we’re from the human world, actually…but I guess if anyone’s an intruder, it would be us…”
The girls put their heads together and started trading whispers. Their voices were low, but the area was so devastatingly quiet that they couldn’t help but be audible at this distance.
“See? They look like totally normal humans, Nel. No horns or tails!” hissed Fizel, the feistier of the two.
The other one, Linel, argued, “I—I just told you that was in the book, that’s all. You’re the one who took the idea and ran with it, Zel.”
“Hmm. Maybe they’re just hiding them. Would we be able to tell if we got closer?”
“But they just look like totally normal people. Then again…they could have fangs in their mouths…”
Eugeo couldn’t stifle a grin, as he was reminded of Telure and Teline, the twin girls from Walde Farm. If he and Kirito were that age and had heard about intruders from the land of darkness nearby, they would have very likely tried to go see them, too. And they’d probably have gotten a tongue-lashing from their father or the village elder for it.
That thought gave Eugeo pause. What if the girls got punished for making contact with rebels against the Church? It didn’t seem like he was in a position to spend much time worrying about that, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Um…are you girls going to get in trouble for talking to us?”
Fizel and Linel both went silent and then grinned. Fizel replied with a smirk and considerably less formality than before. “This morning, all the monks, nuns, and apprentices were ordered to stay in their rooms and lock the doors. Don’t you get it? We can slip out to see the intruders, and no one’s going to be around to notice us.”
“Uh…right…”
It was just the kind of logic that Kirito would come up with. In fact, he could practically see his partner getting scolded for it already.
The girls discussed something between themselves again, and this time, it was Linel who said, “Um…and you’re definitely not monsters from the Dark Territory?”
“N-no.”
“Then, if you don’t mind, may we see you up close? Um…your forehead and teeth in particular.”
“Huh?” Eugeo replied, turning around to Kirito for help, but the other boy was conveniently looking away. This one would be up to Eugeo.
“…Well…I suppose that would be all right…”
The inability to refuse such a request was in his nature, but a part of Eugeo also felt it was important for people to realize that even a traitor like him was a regular human being. Plus, they might be able to get information about the cathedral from the girls.
Their faces shining, Fizel and Linel trotted over with a mixture of curiosity and caution. They stopped when they reached the landing and stared with blue and gray eyes.
Eugeo crouched over, drew back his bangs from his forehead, and showed them his teeth. They stared at him without blinking for a good ten seconds, then looked satisfied.
“He’s human.”
“Yes, human.”
He snorted at the obvious disappointment in their reaction. Linel wondered, “But if you’re not monsters from the Dark Territory, why did you decide to infiltrate Central Cathedral?”
“Um, well…,” Eugeo started, wondering how they could continually throw him off guard, then decided to be honest and admitted, “…Long ago, a little girl who was a friend of mine got taken away by an Integrity Knight. So I’m here to take her back.”
Surely, this statement would be difficult to accept, given how a sister-in-training would feel about the righteousness of the Axiom Church. Eugeo expected to see fear and revulsion in their young features, but instead, they merely bobbed their heads.
Fizel, the one with the straw-blond hair, complained, “Oh. That’s kind of an ordinary reason.”
“O-ordinary?”
“People whose families or lovers have been taken here have always come to argue their case to the Church. Not many, but it happens. But I bet you two are the first who actually got all the way inside.”
Linel continued, “Plus, you got thrown into prison, and yet you broke your spiritual chains, then you defeated two Integrity Knights. So we figured you were monsters…maybe even real dark knights. And it t
urns out you’re just ordinary humans…”
The girls looked at each other and said, “Good enough?” “Good enough.”
Linel turned to Eugeo again and tilted her head at a questioning angle, braids swaying. “Well, can you at least tell us your names, here at the end?”
Surprised, because he was hoping to ask them plenty of his own questions, Eugeo replied, “I’m Eugeo. And that’s Kirito behind me.”
“Oh…No last names?”
“Er, no. I was raised out on the frontier…Same for you two?”
“No, we have full names,” said Linel, smiling. It was the bright innocent smile of one about to stuff her face with a delicious treat.
“My name is Linel Synthesis Twenty-Eight.”
In the moment, Eugeo could not process the implication of that name.
Suddenly, he felt a chill in the pit of his stomach and looked down.
At some point, Linel had removed her short sword from its sheath and had buried the tip in Eugeo’s stomach by about five cens.
It had only looked like a wooden toy before. The wood he’d taken to be the blade had actually been the scabbard. The blade she pulled from it was not made of wood but an unfamiliar metal that appeared cloudy green. The surface caught the outside light and gleamed wetly.
“Eu—!”
That was Kirito. He craned his neck to look back at his partner, frozen in place, right foot forward. Fizel had been at Linel’s side just an instant earlier, but now she was standing behind Kirito, thrusting her own green blade into his black shirt. Just as before, her smile was triumphant and confident.
“And I am Fizel Synthesis Twenty-Nine.”
They pulled their short swords from Eugeo and Kirito simultaneously. With swipes so fast they were invisible, Fizel and Linel flicked the blood off their blades and returned them to their sheaths.
The chill that snuck into his stomach began to spread to his whole body. Everywhere that freezing feeling touched, his sensations began to numb.
“You’re…Int…eg…,” he managed to stammer before even his tongue froze in his mouth. Eugeo felt his knees give way, and then he toppled to the floor. His chest and left cheek smashed against the marble, but he didn’t even feel an impact, much less any pain.
A second later, he heard Kirito hit the floor, too.
Poison, he belatedly realized, trying to think of a counterplan.
In class at Swordcraft Academy, they had learned about poisons and antidotes found in the natural world. But all the cases presented were from sources like plants, snakes, and insects. The school never even considered the possibility that they would be attacked with poisons in battle.
But of course. At the school—in the entirety of the human realm—battle was merely a competition of ferocity and aesthetics. Spreading toxic substances on a weapon was completely against the rules. Even that noble boy who released a poisonous insect to impede their advancement at the Zakkaria tournament didn’t actually put any on his blade in competition.
So the extent of Eugeo’s knowledge of poisons was: If such and such bug stings you, rub such and such herb on it. He didn’t know what kind of poison the girls used, and there wasn’t a single natural object around, much less an antidote herb. The last resort would be to attempt cleansing via sacred arts, but that was impossible while his hands and mouth were paralyzed.
So if this poison was the kind that both immobilized them and steadily drained their life, they could easily perish before they reached even the halfway point of Central Cathedral.
“You don’t have to be so frightened, Eugeo,” said Linel Synthesis Twenty-Eight overhead. Her high-pitched voice was warped and warbled; the poison made everything sound like it was underwater. “It’s just a paralysis poison. But the only difference is whether you die here or on the fiftieth floor.”
She trotted over until a little brown shoe came into Eugeo’s vision where he lay with his cheek pressed to the floor. Linel lifted her foot and rested the toe right on Eugeo’s head, rolling it around in search of something.
“…Hmm, no horns after all.”
The foot moved over to his back, where it pressed down repeatedly on either side of his spine.
“And no wings, either. What about him, Zel?”
“He’s just plain human, too!”
Somewhere outside of his field of view, Fizel was doing the same thing to Kirito. She said, “Aww, just when I thought we’d finally get to see some Dark Territory monsters!”
“Don’t worry. If we take them up to the fiftieth floor and chop off their heads in front of everyone standing around up there, they should finally give us our divine weapons and dragons. Then we can just fly to the Dark Territory and see the real monsters for ourselves.”
“Good point. Okay, Nel, let’s race to see who can take out a dark knight first!”
To Eugeo’s mind, the most horrifying part of all of this was how Fizel and Linel still sounded as childlike and innocent as ever. Why were children like them turned into Integrity Knights—and why were there children inside Central Cathedral at all?
Eugeo hadn’t seen Linel draw her sword, and she had been right in front of him. Fizel was quick enough to easily neutralize Kirito from a distance. Their abilities were undeniable.
But true skill in battle had to be gained through years of training and experience in battles of life and death. Eugeo’s ability to wield the divine Blue Rose Sword was not just because he had swung an ax at the Gigas Cedar for years, but it was also because of his battle against the goblins in the Northern Cave, according to Kirito.
Fizel and Linel, however, looking to be no more than ten years old, didn’t act like they’d ever faced the monsters from the world’s extremities in battle. So how had they developed this blinding speed and skill?
Eugeo could not give voice to any of these questions. The poison had spread throughout his entire body, such that he didn’t feel the coldness of the floor or any sensation that suggested he had a body at all. Linel grabbed Eugeo’s right ankle with a tiny hand and started dragging him along, which he only realized because his vision rotated.
By turning his eyeballs to the left—the only part of him he could apparently move—Eugeo saw that Fizel was tugging Kirito along like a piece of luggage. His partner’s face was impossible to read, owing to the same paralysis.
The young Integrity Knights lightly skipped up the stairs, dragging the boys with their swords still in place. With each step, his head bounced violently, but he still felt no pain.
If there was any time to think of a way out, it was then, but the paralyzing poison seemed to work on his brain, too, as Eugeo’s mind was empty and numb.
Even for a foe he had sworn to fight, Eugeo found it difficult to believe that the Axiom Church was performing its inhumane knighting ceremony on mere children. After all, the population of the world had believed that this organization represented absolute goodness and justice—for centuries.
“You find it strange, don’t you?” he heard Linel say, a hint of mirth in her voice. “Why are these children Integrity Knights? Well, since we’re about to kill you anyway, I can explain first.”
“If we’re going to kill them, Nel, talking is a waste of energy. You’re such an eccentric.”
“It’s going to be a boring trip up to the fiftieth floor. You see, Eugeo, we were born and raised here in the cathedral. Administrator herself ordered the monks and nuns in the tower to create us—in order to test out a resurrection sacred art that can heal totally lost life.”
Despite the horrific nature of what she was saying, Linel’s voice was utterly pleasant. “The children outside earn their Calling when they turn ten, but we got ours at five. Our job was to kill each other. We got these little toylike swords, even smaller than our poison blades, and would take turns stabbing each other.”
“You were terrible at it, Nel. It hurt and hurt, every single time,” Fizel interjected.
“Only because you would jump around in weird ways,” Line
l complained. “As you two probably know, since you’ve already defeated multiple knights, humans are surprisingly hard to kill. Even at five years old. So we would stab and slice, trying to kill the other as quickly as possible, and when the life would finally go down to zero, Administrator would bring us back to life with her sacred arts…”
“And the resurrection barely even worked at all in the beginning. The ones who died normally had it best. The ones who were exploded into bits or lumped into blobs of flesh would practically come back as different people altogether.”
“It might have been our Calling, but we didn’t want to go to all the trouble of getting hurt and not come back to life. We did a bunch of research together about the cleanest and quickest way to kill, because that had the least pain and the highest rate of successful resurrection. The problem is what you do for that single blow itself. Do you stab the heart as quickly and smoothly as possible or lop off the head?”
“I think we were about seven when we were finally able to do that. We would do all our practice swings while the other kids were sleeping.”
His bodily sensation showed no signs of returning yet, but Eugeo still imagined the prickling of his hair standing on end.
In other words, Fizel’s and Linel’s extraordinary physical capabilities were the result of years of practice killing each other. Each and every day, they focused on nothing but how best to end each other’s lives.
He supposed that practice of this sort would indeed be enough to grant even a child the right to be an Integrity Knight. But at what cost? These children had entirely lost a crucial part of themselves that would never return.
The constant shuffle up the staircase continued, as did Linel’s pleasant tone of voice. “Administrator gave up on the resurrection tests when we were about eight. It seems that total resurrection was impossible in the end. Did you know that when your life goes to zero, a bunch of arrows of light come down and they kind of, like, carve your mind down? The kids who lost important parts of themselves that way never went back to normal, even after resurrection. There were many times that I came back and couldn’t remember what had happened in the last few days. There were thirty of us in total when the experiment started, and by the end, only Zel and I were left.”
Alicization Rising Page 13
