But just because he could sense that Eugeo wielded a continuous style did not mean he could predict the Aincrad school’s specific teachings—not unless he had fought Kirito before his memory loss.
“…And what if I do use combination skills?” he rasped.
The man snorted. “No, there was a knight in the Dark Territory who could use it. We had a number of fights, and I don’t remember them fondly…You see, I’m not the type to use tricky, fussy swings like that.”
“…So you’d prefer me to use an orthodox style?”
“No, no. Use whatever you like. I’m just letting you know that I’ll be jumping straight to my best,” he said, mouth curling into a grin. He thrust his upright sword even higher.
An instant later, Eugeo held his breath again; the worn gray metal rippled like heat haze. At first he thought it was steam from the bath, but the more he watched, the more he was convinced the sword itself had lost its firmness.
Maybe the sword is already under Perfect Control.
Eugeo’s mind raced as he held his attack pose. It wasn’t long ago that the mysterious Cardinal had taught him how to use Perfect Weapon Control, but after using it in battle a few times, Eugeo was starting to understand the ability better.
It was similar to sword techniques in the way it gave the weapon power, but Perfect Control was sacred arts through and through and required an incantation. Like your typical sacred arts, one could perform the base command and have it on hold for a time before it was activated with the code Enhance Armament.
The actual amount of holding time depended on the caster’s potential and training. If Eugeo kept quiet and focused hard, he could last for several minutes, but Kirito, who had phenomenal concentration when it mattered most, could do so and hold a conversation.
Eugeo didn’t yet know what form this man’s Perfect Control took, but it was obvious since he’d been talking at length that this man was extremely skilled with it. For his part, Eugeo didn’t have time to start chanting the words, and his ice roses weren’t going to be very effective in a steamy bathhouse.
That left one option: use Sonic Leap in the instant the man used his own technique or Perfect Control arts, in the hope of clinching the fight. He would be expecting Eugeo to use a combination attack, and hopefully he would be taken by surprise when it was an ultra-speed jump.
He tensed his gut, focused all his concentration forward, and watched.
The distance between them was about eight mels.
Neither Norkia style nor its advanced counterpart, High-Norkia style, had a technique that could cover that much ground at once. So if the man swung his sword from his position without stepping closer, that “best” attack of his would be some kind of Perfect Weapon Control that extended the reach of his swings. Eugeo would have to evade it somehow and strike with a counter.
As expected, the man stood in place and slowly swung his upright sword downward. The smile was gone from his lips, which opened to bellow, “Taste the blade of Integrity Knight Commander Bercouli Synthesis One!!”
For just an instant, Eugeo wondered, Where have I heard that before? But he hastily overrode his side thoughts to focus only on the enemy’s movement.
The so-called commander’s left foot pounded heavily onto the marble stone. All the steam in his vicinity shredded into nothing.
Incredibly fast and yet somehow graceful, his powerful hips, chest, shoulders, and arms rotated. First his sword tilted to the right, then it swiped out directly level. Eugeo could sense that this was the greatest of swordplay taught by the orthodox schools. The movement was simple and unadorned yet utterly polished through years and years of experience.
But all the orthodox schools of swordfighting had a weakness in common. Because their forms were so proud and distinct, it was easy to predict the attack’s trajectory. By the time the commander’s sword was slicing flat through the white steam, Eugeo was already in the air, jumping forward to his left. He would be able to dodge cleanly, even if the sword exhibited some kind of Perfect Control attack.
The air rippled at his right ear, but he felt no pain or impact.
I dodged it! he thought, then landed and activated Sonic Leap.
“Rrraaaah!”
His sword took on a green glow tinged with yellow. An invisible power accelerated his body, turning Eugeo into a gust of wind that burst toward the knights’ commander, who had just finished his own swing.
Behind him, the burst from the sword he had just dodged continued until it hit the doors of the bath with a huge—
Nothing.
No sound. Not even a vibration.
Had the slash from the commander been that slow? Or had it dissipated before it reached the doors?
That couldn’t be. That would mean this man, who should be stronger than Deusolbert and Fanatio, had a Perfect Weapon Control with a weaker range than Eldrie, who’d been an Integrity Knight for only a month. Eldrie’s Frostscale Whip struck dozens of mels away like lightning.
It couldn’t be true. So was the commander’s attack not one of an elongated attack range? In fact, Eugeo didn’t get hit at all. That meant all the man did was a simple swing. An ordinary exhibition of a form, the same thing that every student at Swordcraft Academy did during a test.
Is he toying with me? Or does he think a mere student will turn tail and retreat from a single free swing?
The thought burned in his mind—and delayed his realization.
There was something right between the path of Eugeo’s rampaging attack and the stationary man. A horizontal, transparent ripple suspended in the air. Just like the heat haze that surrounded the man’s sword before he swung it.
And that’s…right where he swung his sword…
A deep chill ran down his back. Instinctually he tried to cancel his charge, but once initiated, a technique couldn’t be stopped that easily. He tugged on his sword and scraped his foot on the floor, but the best he managed was a slight dip in speed.
Then Eugeo’s body passed through the floating haze. A burst of blazing heat passed through him from left pectoral to right flank. He was rocketed through the air like a scrap of cloth caught in a gale, rotating madly. Blood gushed from the massive gash on his chest, tracing a spiral through the air.
He landed flat on his back in the bath on the left side of the walkway. A plume of water shot up, and soon the water around the impact was a vivid red.
“Grg…aaah…!”
He spat up the hot water that flooded his mouth; there was red spittle there, too. The gash had reached his lungs, then. If he hadn’t slowed his momentum that little bit before he hit the haze, it might have completely severed his torso.
“System…Call. Generate…Luminous Element…,” he said, casting a healing art as he floated. Fortunately, there was plenty of warm water around, which had much more sacred power than when cold. But Eugeo wasn’t a skilled enough caster to heal such a deep wound in a short amount of time.
He stopped the blood loss, though, and got unsteadily to his feet. The knights’ commander stared down at him from the walkway. The sword was already back in its sheath, and his right hand was thrust into the opening of his kimono, resting there.
“That was a bit dangerous, there. Didn’t expect you to come rushing up so fast. Sorry, nearly ended up killing you.”
His words seemed really informal for such a dire situation, but Eugeo didn’t have time to argue over that. Through pained lungs, he rasped, “Wh…what was…that…you did…?”
“I warned you I’d be giving you my best. And I didn’t just swing and slice through the air. You might say…I sliced the future, just a moment ahead.”
It took some time for the commander’s words to make concrete sense to Eugeo. The throbbing of his wound, which felt like ice in the midst of so much hot water, impeded his thoughts.
Sliced…the future?
It seemed to match the phenomenon he’d witnessed. Eugeo activated Sonic Leap after the swordsman had already swung his blade.
But the instant he touched the path where it had been, he suffered a terrible wound, as though the sword had struck him in that passing moment.
But that wasn’t exactly right. If anything, it was like the force of the slice had somehow remained, hanging in the air. He’d seen the wavering ripple right up to the moment his body made contact with it.
In order to land a successful hit with a sword, you had to cut the right place at the right time. If either of the two weren’t accurate, the sword would not strike true. Most likely, the knights’ commander’s Perfect Weapon Control gave him expanded control over the latter. Even after swinging, the force of his sword stayed in place. In other words, it cut the enemy who would fill that space in the future.
Visually, it was the least impressive of all the times he’d seen Perfect Control, but it was perhaps the most fearsome. Every space the enemy’s sword passed through turned into a deadly trap. And the length of its effectiveness was much longer than a combination technique, which was itself a method of increasing an attack’s time. There was no way he could force a close melee battle.
A long-distance fight, then.
The commander’s Perfect Control enabled him to extend his attack time but not the range of his swing. Meanwhile, the range of Eugeo’s ice vines was over thirty mels. The real question was whether the Blue Rose Sword could use its ability properly in a place with so much hot water. At the very least, he’d have to count on a delay between activation and taking effect. In other words, Eugeo would need to lure the enemy close enough to use his sword’s vine ability and still have it work whether or not the man caught on to it.
It would be difficult, but he had no other choice.
Eugeo traced his chest with his left hand. The flesh stung, but the healing was firm enough that he could move about without reopening the wound. He wasn’t fully healed by a long shot—he’d probably lost a third of his life—but he could stand, and he could swing.
“System Call,” he said quietly, letting his voice hide under the thunder of the pipes gushing water into the bath from each corner of the room. He didn’t expect the commander would let him get away with the chant, but if anything, the way the man leisurely crossed his arms and chatted made it seem like he was intentionally giving Eugeo time.
“The first time I saw a knight of darkness use a continuous blade, it was just after I’d been made an Integrity Knight. At first I got beat, and beat good. But I escaped with my life, and I racked this dumb old brain of mine to find the reason I lost.”
He rubbed a scar on his chin, likely a memento of that experience.
“But once I figured it out, it turned out not to be that tricky. Basically, the swordsmanship I’d learned was all about putting as much power into a single swing as possible, while the continuous blade was all about deflecting the enemy attack and hitting him with your own. It ain’t a question about which of the two is more practical in a fight. Doesn’t matter how hard you swing if you miss the mark. The best you can do is give them a refreshing breeze…”
His lips twisted into a grimace, and he let loose a puff of air.
“But I wasn’t clever enough to begin learning the continuous blade right away, just because I’d figured out its point. If the pontifex really wanted an Integrity Knight, she could’ve summoned one a bit less stubborn.”
Eugeo felt his curiosity grow, even as his mind was occupied with chanting his sacred art. The self-proclaimed commander of the Integrity Knights himself had lost his prior memories, just like the others. But even if he, too, forgot his story, was it possible that the rest of the world would simply fail to remember the wielder of such an overpowering sword? Ever since Eugeo had heard him announce himself earlier, something had been steadily eating away at him.
Bercouli Synthesis One. That’s what he had called himself.
He knew he’d heard that name before. It was either a previous champion of the Four-Empire Unification Tournament or some general of the Imperial Knights.
But the man paid little heed to Eugeo’s piercing gaze or the muttered incantation under his breath.
“So I racked my brain for a way to help my sword hit the enemy better. And the answer I landed on was this.” He slid the simple steel sword out of its sheath. “This sword was originally part of a Divine Object stuck to the wall of Central Cathedral, a thing called a clock. In its place is now a Bell of Time-Tolling that measures the hour, but in the past, it was a big circle of numbers with a huge needle that pointed to them. Apparently it was around at the world’s very creation. The pontifex had a weird, unfamiliar name for it…called it a System Clock, as I recall.”
Eugeo didn’t recognize the sacred words. But neither did he know the common-tongue clock Bercouli mentioned. The man had a distant gaze in his eyes, as if staring into the long-lost past.
“As the pontifex says, ‘The clock does not indicate time—it creates time.’ I had no idea what she meant by it, though. But this blade is what resulted when the hand of that clock was reforged. Little Alice’s Osmanthus Blade cuts through the horizontal axis of space, while this one cuts the vertical axis of time. It’s called the Time-Splitting Sword.”
Eugeo found it difficult to envision this clock’s form, but he felt like he understood what the knights’ commander was saying. The power from the sword’s swing could pierce through time and hold its place. With that ability, there was no need at all to chain multiple slashes together, like the Aincrad style. And the only reason that a combination attack needed to be combined was to lengthen the time of the attack without having to recover and refocus. If Bercouli’s sword had both the power of a singular attack and the striking accuracy of a combination, it was basically invincible—as long as you were within its range.
As Bercouli himself had said so poetically, there was only one way to counteract it: fight not with time but with the expanse of space.
But no sooner had the thought occurred to Eugeo than the knight grinned. “And now you think you must attack from a distance. They all do after they see my technique.”
Eugeo felt a twinge of panic at being read so easily, but there was no stopping the chant now. He might be able to predict that Eugeo would attempt a long-range attack, but he wouldn’t know what kind of attack.
Whether aware of Eugeo’s internal logic or not, the commander shrugged and said, “The fact that all the Integrity Knights who were summoned after me, including Fanatio and Alice, have a tendency to choose long-range Perfect Control, probably has something to do with seeing what I can do…I suspect. They’re all very stubborn in that way, you see. But let me be clear that I’ve never lost a sparring match with any of them. I told them that if they ever beat me, I’ll make them the commander on the spot. One day, little Alice might find a way to beat me. In short, I’m looking forward to this. I want to see what your sword can do, if it really did knock them out left and right.”
“…You sound very confident.”
Eugeo had finished chanting the bulk of his sacred arts a few seconds earlier. But something about the intense concentration coupled with his nerves allowed him to murmur the statement without losing the stocked magic.
So Bercouli was admitting that his long speech was meant to give Eugeo time to exhibit his most powerful ability. He knew that whatever it was, he could overcome it the first time he saw it.
And frustrating as it was to admit, even if he could capture Bercouli with the vines of ice roses, Eugeo had zero confidence that he could deplete the man’s life. It was a technique designed to stop movement, after all. And that surely wouldn’t be entirely effective against him, either. At best, it might stop him cold for a couple of seconds. How he used that brief moment would determine the battle’s outcome.
Eugeo rose from the bath, water cascading from his body. Just rising the three steps to the marble walkway caused the wound on his chest to throb painfully. He wouldn’t have the strength to heal the next attack.
“Heh! Come for me, boy. And let me warn you: I won’t go easy
on the next one.”
He squeezed the hilt of the Time-Splitting Sword tucked into the sash of his kimono and chuckled. On the walkway twenty mels away, Eugeo brandished the Blue Rose Sword in front of him. With the art on standby, the blade was already coated in thin frost, dusting the hovering steam nearby with ice.
Kirito would have a snappy comeback in a situation like this, but Eugeo’s mouth was parched and stiff, unable to work smoothly. He took a deep breath and carefully spoke the activation words for Perfect Weapon Control.
“Enhance…Armament.”
A chilly wind swirled up from his feet and burst in all directions. He flipped his sword around to hold it in reverse and slammed it right into the stone floor. Instantly, the water on the smooth marble froze into a mirror surface. With a sound like a tree splitting apart, the band of ice raced toward Bercouli.
The walkway was five mels across, but the width of the Blue Rose Sword’s ice wave was nearly ten. The water’s surface on either side of the stone developed an icy film, but its spread was weaker and slower, due to the water’s heat. Still, no excuses were possible at this desperate juncture.
Focusing all thoughts into his right hand, Eugeo clenched the sword ever tighter. He roared, and the frosted floor sprouted not vines but sharp thorns. They formed a thick pillar of ice that rippled down the walkway toward Bercouli, vicious glinting spikes covering the entire floor. But the commander merely tightened at the mouth and stayed put, standing in a slight crouch. He had no intention of escaping into the water.
Seeing his opponent stand firm like a fortress, Eugeo realized what he had to do. If he didn’t risk everything in this fight, he would never win.
He pulled the Blue Rose Sword from the floor and raced after the carpet of ice. His moment of opportunity would arise when the dozens of ice spears reached Bercouli.
Naturally, the commander could see Eugeo charging toward him, but he didn’t show the tiniest smidgen of reaction. He simply spread his feet and willed power into the sword at his left side.
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