It didn’t seem likely that the pontifex, who was head of the Axiom Church and thus all of humanity, would appear directly, but the knights’ commander and prime senator surely wouldn’t allow him to get to the top of the tower undisturbed. So Eugeo focused all his energy as he went, Blue Rose Sword in hand. And yet, he couldn’t keep his mind from straying to other things.
What were Kirito and Alice doing now? Was she chasing him as he tried to climb the cathedral? Or were they still fighting, hanging off the side of the wall? Could Kirito’s unique charisma have actually caused the proud knight to stay her blade…?
Suddenly, Eugeo sensed an unfamiliar emotion welling in his heart. It made him recall the conflicted feeling he’d had a few hours ago, when he’d turned his blade on the fallen Integrity Knight Deusolbert.
When he’d realized that Deusolbert was the very man who had taken Alice away from Rulid all those years ago, hatred and rage had overtaken him, pushing Eugeo to end the knight once and for all. But Kirito had intervened, and Eugeo had felt a powerful sense of inferiority.
You wouldn’t have just stood there, he thought. You would have attacked that knight, consequences be damned, and found a way to save Alice.
Maybe Kirito’s strength and kindness would find a way into Alice’s heart. This Alice was an imposter, of course, her old memories stolen by Administrator. But Kirito had tried to save the lives of Deusolbert and even Fanatio, who had nearly killed him…so perhaps…
“No. That wouldn’t happen.”
He shook his head, forcing himself to dispel those thoughts. It was pointless to think about it. As long as he could get to the top floor and retrieve the memory fragment stored there and return it to Alice’s soul, her entire memory of being a knight would vanish. Then at last, the real Alice, the person he adored more than any other, would return.
When she awakened again, he would hold her tight and at last say, I’m going to keep you safe…forever. That moment would come soon, by tomorrow or perhaps even that night.
Now was the time to drive those thoughts away and focus on getting closer.
The bells somewhere in the cathedral tolled seven as he came to the end of the stairs. Eugeo counted each time he arrived at a flat landing; that number was now ten. That made this the ninetieth floor. He was approaching the heart of the Axiom Church’s power now.
There was no indication of any staircase continuing upward in the large entrance hall, just a single massive doorway on the north end. It suggested that, like the fiftieth and eightieth floors, the ninetieth would be one wide-open chamber. And within it, more powerful foes than anything he’d seen yet.
Can I really win? All on my own? he wondered, standing at the end of the hall. Fanatio had nearly killed Kirito, and Alice was even more powerful. How would he manage someone notably stronger than them?
Upon reflection, it had been Kirito alone who’d suffered the blows in those fights. All Eugeo did was hide behind him and activate his Perfect Weapon Control. Kirito claimed that was the smart thing to do, considering their respective strengths, but now he was gone, and it was up to Eugeo to do all the fighting himself.
He brushed the Blue Rose Sword at his left, feeling the texture of the hilt and guard. He’d be able to use Perfect Control one more time, but just wildly throwing it around wasn’t going to help him capture anyone with his ice vines. He needed to overpower his foe with swordplay alone and create an opportunity to use it.
“…Here goes,” he told the sword, then lifted a hand and pushed on the white door.
Instantly, he was greeted with bright light, thick smoke, and a continuous booming rumble. A sacred arts attack?! he wondered instantly, moving to leap out of the way…until he noticed that the pale substance billowing out of the doorway was not smoke but steam. It merely moistened his hands and sleeves. Through the swirling vapors, he identified what was happening inside the room.
As expected, this entire floor of the cathedral was dedicated to a single vast chamber, and countless lamps shone from its extremely high ceiling. The floor probably had some fancy name like the Corridor of Ghostly Light or Cloudtop Garden, but there was no way to know. The steam hung low to the ground, blocking Eugeo’s view, but the place seemed empty.
Eugeo took a few steps into the hall, trying to discern the steam’s source. He heard splashing water, and there was a distant rumble that was probably a large stream.
Just then, a draft of cold air from the door rushed through, pushing the wafting steam aside. There was a marble path about five mels wide farther into the chamber. On either side of the walkway the floor dropped, down a series of steps covered by clear water—and hot water, at that. It was at least a mel deep, too. If this entire chamber was full all the way around, he couldn’t even imagine how many lils of water it held.
“What…is…this room…?” He gasped.
The water temperature was too hot to support fish or other animals, and the humidity was too unpleasant for some kind of viewing garden. If anything, it would probably feel good to strip off his clothes and jump into the hot…
“Oh…w-wait a second…”
He knelt at the edge of the pathway and stuck his hand in the water. It was neither too hot nor too lukewarm—exactly the sort of thing that Kirito would describe as “just the right temp.”
It was an enormous megabath.
“…”
Eugeo exhaled, still on his knees. Back at his family home in Rulid, the bath was not much bigger than a simple water basin, and since he was the youngest, by the time it was his turn, the water was half-gone. The first time he saw the bathhouse at the academy dorm, he couldn’t believe it was possible to heat so much water at once.
But that was nothing compared to this place. You could fit all the students from Swordcraft Academy in here with plenty of room to spare. Though they wouldn’t allow the male and female students to bathe at the same time, of course…
Eugeo exhaled again and washed both hands, just because he could, being considerate enough not to bother with his face. He proceeded down the marble walkway toward the ascending staircase, which he expected would be on the other end of the room. Surely they wouldn’t attack him in a bath…
But this assumption delayed his recognition of what was ahead. In the center of the Great Bath chamber, the walkway bulged into a circle. And when he approached it, Eugeo at last noticed a shadow lurking in the water ahead and to his right.
“—?!”
He leaped back on instinct, putting a hand on his sword handle. The misty figure was large with short hair, suggesting that it was not a woman. He was submerged up to his shoulders, with all his limbs stretched out.
This pose indicated he was simply bathing, rather than waiting in ambush, but Eugeo couldn’t afford to be careless. Given the circumstances, the man was almost certainly an enemy. Perhaps it would be best to strike now, while he had the advantage of terrain.
He was about to slide his sword from its sheath when a deep, rusty voice said, “Sorry, you mind waiting first? Just got back to Centoria, and I’ve been on my dragon for ages. I’m all stiff.”
His manner of speaking was rougher than that of anyone they’d met in the cathedral, which surprised Eugeo. The man had a kind of informal simplicity—he was more reminiscent of a rural farmer than a knight.
Eugeo was frozen, unsure what to do. The water sloshed, parting the clouds of steam hovering over the bath. The owner of the voice had stood up, droplets pouring off his frame. He stood with his back to the intruder, hands on hips, rolling his head around on his neck and groaning. It looked totally careless, but even with his hand on his sword, Eugeo couldn’t take a step.
The man was huge. His knees were submerged in the bath, but even then, he was nearly two mels tall. His steely blue-gray hair was shorn short, revealing a shockingly thick neck connected to two very wide shoulders. His biceps were like logs built for swinging even the largest greatswords with ease.
But the most eye-catching detail was his
rippling layers of back muscles. Back at school, Eugeo served as page to Golgorosso Balto, who was quite imposing himself, but this man was on another level entirely. He didn’t seem young, but the muscle around his midriff was still perfectly taut.
Eugeo was so arrested by the body of this warrior god that he initially failed to notice the countless scars crisscrossing his skin. In fact, they all seemed to be either arrow or blade injuries. Even deep wounds would heal without a trace if treated right away with high-level healing arts, so this spoke to a number of harrowing battles.
This had to be the commander of the Integrity Knights. The strongest one. The greatest obstacle Eugeo would face on his way to the top of the cathedral…
In that case, now was the time to strike, when he had neither weapon nor armor. Kirito would certainly do it.
Eugeo knew what needed to be done, but once again he froze.
He couldn’t tell whether the man was exposing his back to him as a sign of carelessness or as an exhibition of total confidence. If anything, it seemed like he was enticing Eugeo to attack.
The man finished stretching, totally unconcerned with the boy, then sloshed north through the water. On the walkway just ahead, there was a basket that most likely contained his clothes. He strode up the step onto the lip of the walkway, removed a pair of underpants from the basket, and put them on. Next he donned a thin top—it appeared to be a kimono from the eastern empire, with a wide sash that matched the fabric.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, facing Eugeo at last. His features were chiseled and bold, in keeping with his deep, manly voice. The crisp wrinkles lining his mouth indicated that he was over forty when he became an Integrity Knight, but his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose were hard and strong. The most distinct feature of all was the powerful eyes under his full brows.
There was no real hostility in the pale-blue irises, but even standing over fifteen mels away, Eugeo felt a powerful pressure from them. It was interest in the foe he would soon overpower that dwelled in those eyes, and eagerness for the battle itself. Only one with absolute confidence in his skill could produce such a look. He was like Kirito in that way.
Once he was done tying his sash, he held out a hand to the basket. A longsword rose up from the bottom and fit into his burly hand. He lifted it to his shoulder and walked barefoot across the marble toward Eugeo.
The man came to a stop just eight mels away, stroked his lightly bearded chin, and said, “Now, can you tell me just one thing before we fight?”
“…What is it?”
“Is, er…the vice commander…is Fanatio…dead?” he asked, in the tone of one inquiring about the dinner menu. Eugeo felt momentarily offended—she was his subordinate, after all. But then he noticed an awkward artifice to the man’s expression: He’d glanced off to the side. He truly wanted to know the answer, couldn’t wait to find out, but didn’t want to seem too obvious about it. That, too, reminded Eugeo of someone very familiar.
“…She’s alive. She’s being tended to now…I believe,” he answered.
The man let out a long breath and said, “That’s good. In that case, I won’t take your life, either.”
“Wha…?”
Eugeo lost his voice again. He felt so inferior that it wasn’t even worth trying to call the man’s bluff. Kirito had once told him that belief in oneself could be a weapon of its own, but even he hadn’t exhibited this much confidence in the presence of an enemy. The enormous man had a wealth of confidence as unshakeable as a boulder thanks to something neither he nor Kirito had: the experience of having won countless furious battles, enough to leave his body covered in their scars.
But while Eugeo might not come close to matching him in victories, he had vanquished more than one Integrity Knight on the way here—the very title this fellow wore. If he felt overwhelmed before they even started fighting, he’d be shaming the knights he defeated, Golgorosso and the other people at the academy who’d helped train him, and most of all, his black-haired partner.
Mustering all the courage he could, Eugeo glared at the man facing him. He tensed his gut to ensure his voice would not falter.
“I don’t like it.”
“Oh?” the man said amusedly, his hand paused on the inside of his eastern-style clothing. “What don’t you like, boy?”
“Fanatio is not your only subordinate. There’s Eldrie and the Four Whirling Blades…and Alice as well. Don’t you care for their lives or deaths?”
“Oh…that’s what you mean,” he murmured, looking up and scratching the side of his head with the hilt of his longsword. “Well…Eldrie is little Alice’s disciple, and the other four belong to Fanatio: Dakira, Jace, Hoveren, and Geero. But Fanatio is my disciple. I’m not the kind to fight out of hatred and hostility, but if a disciple of mine gets killed, I need to avenge them. That’s all.”
He smirked, then added, “Actually…little Alice might consider me her teacher…but just between you and me, if we fought, I couldn’t say who’d win. When she was an apprentice knight six years ago, sure. But now…”
“Six years ago…apprentice knight…?” Eugeo murmured, forgetting his anger for a moment.
Six years ago was just two years after Alice had been taken from Rulid. The Integrity Knights’ names included numbers in the sacred tongue, and according to what Kirito had taught him while they ascended the stairs, Alice was thirty, Eldrie was thirty-one, and Deusolbert was seven. Based on the high value of her number, he doubted that she was converted all that long ago…
“But…Alice is the thirtieth Integrity Knight…isn’t she?” he asked.
The man looked briefly confused. “Ohhh. The apprentices aren’t given numbers, as a general rule. She was officially made number thirty when she was turned into a proper knight last year. She was certainly powerful enough to be a knight six years ago, but she was so young then…”
“But…Fizel and Linel had numbers, and they were very young.”
Hearing those names made the man scowl as if he’d chewed a bitter bug. “Those little squirts had a…different…route into knighthood. They had a special exception that allowed them to receive numbers as apprentices. Did you fight them? I’m surprised you’re alive—for a different reason than I’m surprised you beat Fanatio.”
“I nearly lost my head, actually. They paralyzed me with Ruberyl’s poisoned steel,” Eugeo admitted.
The man had known Alice when she was an apprentice knight. Perhaps that meant Alice had undergone the Synthesis Ritual that had covered up her memories six years ago…when she was thirteen. And ever since then, she’d been living here in the cathedral, believing that she’d been summoned from the celestial realm to be an Integrity Knight…
Shrugging, the large man said, “Look, you’re not going to get the best of me, and if she’s just as tough as I am, I doubt you cut her in two, either. From what the damn prime senator tells me, you’ve got a partner. If he ain’t here, then I presume he must be battling the young lady somewhere.”
“…You’ve got the right idea,” Eugeo admitted, gripping his sword hilt. Something in the way the man spoke was dulling Eugeo’s hostility, but this was no time to be lax. He narrowed his eyes and taunted, “If I strike you down, who will come out for vengeance next?”
“Heh! Don’t worry about that. I’ve got no teacher.” The man grinned, lowering the sword from his shoulder so he could draw it. With his left hand, he thrust the empty sheath into his wide waist sash.
The thick, dark blade was smoothly polished, but the little nicks and imperfections from a plethora of battles over the years glinted in the light from the ceiling. The guard and hilt looked like the same kind of steel as the blade itself, but unlike the legendary weapons of the other Integrity Knights, this one had no ostentatious decoration.
Even from a distance, it was clear this weapon was not to be trifled with. It had tasted the blood of many, many foes over a mind-bending span of time. There was a kind of cursed energy infused into the dull gray meta
l.
Eugeo exhaled slowly and slid his own sword free. He wasn’t using Perfect Control, but the pale-blue sword was exuding a chill that turned the nearby steam into glittering frost, perhaps channeling its owner’s nerves.
With a grand movement befitting his size, the man held up his sword nearly vertical with his body and drew his leg back into a firm, poised stance. It was similar to the High-Norkia Lightning Slash but not the same. With his sword perfectly straight up, he’d need extra movement before he initiated the technique. So Eugeo made the stance for the Aincrad style’s Sonic Leap.
The mysterious Aincrad style—of which Kirito was the only user, as far as Eugeo knew—had many different secret techniques, all named with the exotic sacred tongue. The sacred tongue was taught to the founder of the Axiom Church when the three goddesses created the world. There were no dictionaries for it in the academy’s library—and according to the instructors, none even in the four Imperial Palaces.
Vocabulary words for the sacred arts were the only words one was allowed to know. So Eugeo, as a dutiful student, understood the meaning of just a select few sacred words, like element and generate.
But Kirito, despite losing all memory before he ran into Eugeo in the woods two years before, seemed to know a variety of unfamiliar sacred words, including ones in his techniques: Sonic Leap meant “jumping at the speed of sound,” apparently. Eugeo didn’t know how fast sound traveled, but like the name suggested, it did allow him to jump forward about ten mels with astonishing speed. If you unleashed it at the moment the enemy took the first step forward to close the gap, you were practically certain to seize the initiative.
Eugeo let the tension go and held up his sword to rest on his right shoulder. New furrows appeared in the man’s brow.
“I don’t recognize that stance, boy. Do you use the continuous blade?” he mumbled.
“…!”
Eugeo sucked in a breath. Technically, his Sonic Leap skill was a singular technique. But in the sense that it wasn’t taught in any other school in the human lands, it was just like the Aincrad style’s signature feature: combination techniques. This man’s instinct and experience were evident from his starting stance alone.
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