“Release Recollection!!”
The ultimate form of Perfect Weapon Control. The true secret art that unlocked the weapon’s unconscious memories and brought forth a power greater than any sacred arts…
But Administrator was completely naked, without so much as a knife on her person. It wasn’t the Piety Module she was holding, was it? But that prism couldn’t possibly have memories that could be released…
As he stared at the distant figure, Eugeo eventually became aware of a faint sound growing firmer. It was the metallic clinking of some object from behind…but now from the right and the left as well.
He spun around and moaned in shock at what he saw.
The forty-mel-wide chamber was supported by a number of pillars. And the gleaming golden swords in a variety of sizes that adorned those pillars were now trembling.
“Is…is this…?!” He gasped. Alice murmured, “It can’t be…!”
The biggest swords were three mels long. Even Administrator couldn’t possibly swing such a thing around. And from what Eugeo knew, the rumbling wasn’t just coming from the one he was looking at. The same phenomenon was happening to all the pillars that lined the room. There were at least thirty of the swords in total.
But Memory Release was a skill that worked only on weapons that had been used so often, they might as well be a part of the wielder’s body. It was through the deep relationship between master and blade that one could come into contact with the sword’s memory at all.
The pontifex treated her own subjects like tools. There was no way she had such deep bonds with thirty different decorative swords. So what in the world was the “memory of the sword” she had just unlocked…?
As the three of them stood dumbfounded, there was an especially fierce rumble, and the enormous swords pulled away from the supports to float in the air. Eugeo had to duck as one swooped over his head, rotating madly. They gathered in the center of the room, right over Administrator. Then something even more shocking happened.
Thirty swords of various sizes rang loudly as they contacted one another, banging and sliding into place to form one gigantic mass. Eugeo noticed at once that it seemed to be vaguely humanoid in shape.
A thick backbone ran through the center, and long arms stretched to either side. There were legs below, but four of them instead of two.
When the swords finished transforming into the bizarre giant—no, monster—Administrator held out the Piety Module toward it.
That prism is the centerpiece of her Memory Release, Eugeo instantly sensed.
At the exact same moment, Kirito yelled, “Discharge!!”
Suddenly, there was a bird of flame in his outstretched right palm. While Eugeo—and likely Alice—had been watching the swords connect in shock, Kirito had busied himself with chanting an art.
The firebird shot forth toward the prism in Administrator’s hand. There were many kinds of heat-based attack arts; the Bird Shape art that Kirito used automatically tracked its target. And the pontifex was concentrating on the sword giant above her, so she didn’t notice Kirito. It was going to work! Eugeo was sure of it—
Until the next moment, when one of the sword giant’s legs stretched out and blocked the bird’s path. It was unable to dodge and smacked into the metal, bursting into deep-red droplets. The shining golden sword got a bit of soot on its surface but was otherwise unaffected.
Administrator completely ignored that whole sequence. She released the triangular prism in her left hand—not so much tossing it as letting the prism rise on its own until it fit inside the space between the three swords that formed the creature’s backbone.
The purple light continued to rise until it came to a stop at about the spot a heart would be in a living being and flashed much brighter. That light then spread throughout the giant, and the swords that had seemed more decorative than practical suddenly rang loudly as their edges spontaneously sharpened. Eugeo’s instinct told him that this was the completion of the pontifex’s art.
Administrator narrowed her eyes and smiled.
Then the sword giant spread its four legs and leaped through the air in between the humans and the pontifex, landing on the floor with a thunderous rumble.
Eugeo gaped up at its towering five-mel height. Backbone, ribs, two arms, and four legs—all made up of golden swords. It was like a toy that a child would make out of carved branches…or some creature of living bone from the depths of the Dark Territory.
“…Impossible…,” moaned Alice under her breath. “Controlling multiple weapons at once—thirty, at that—goes against the very properties of Perfect Control arts. It shouldn’t be possible, even for the pontifex. She still has to follow the laws of sacred arts…So how is she…?”
Administrator would have heard her, of course, but the woman floating behind the sword giant ignored her. Instead, she gloated, “Ha-ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. This is the power I sought. Pure attack, a power that will fight for eternity. Its name…will be Sword Golem, I have decided.”
Eugeo tried to use what he knew about the sacred tongue to decipher the two strange words she had just said. He knew that the sacred word Sword came from weapon-enhancing arts. But he’d never even seen the word Golem in his textbook at the academy. Alice didn’t seem to know, either, and she would have a much stronger grasp of the terms.
The silence was broken by Kirito’s hoarse mutter.
“A moving puppet…made of swords.”
His description of it in the common tongue must have been correct; Administrator’s smile widened, and she clapped her hands together.
“I should have realized that you would know your sacred language…excuse me, your ‘Ing-lesh.’ If you don’t want to be a knight, I can still make you a secretary—but only if you drop your sword, apologize for your transgressions, and promise your eternal loyalty to me.”
“Sadly, I have a hard time believing that you would trust my promise. Plus, I haven’t given up on this one yet.”
“I do not dislike this boldness of yours, but stupidity I cannot abide. Do you really think you can best my golem? Against a puppet whose each and every blade has the priority level of a Divine Object? The ultimate weapon of war, which I used every bit of my valuable memory space to construct…?”
Something about the term ultimate weapon stuck in Eugeo’s mind. Yes, it reminded him of what Vice Commander Fanatio had said—that the pontifex used a thousand mirrors to gather Solus’s light into a single point that could produce superheated flames without sacred arts. Fanatio had called it a “weapons experiment.”
So a weapon of war would refer to some tool with more potential power than any sacred art. Was this Sword Golem standing before them now the realized form of just such a weapon…?
Whatever Administrator might have registered from the looks on their faces, she now waved her right hand with a cold, cruel smile on her lips. “Now…fight, my golem. Destroy your enemies.”
And as though the giant had been waiting for just that command, its heart pulsed with purple light.
The four-legged monster issued a metallic roar and began to charge. Its size was not nearly as large as the clown of flames that Chudelkin had created earlier. But the freakish way its many joints scraped and creaked as it approached froze Eugeo’s heart with terror.
The golem swung its arms up high, each one made of three swords together. The quickest to react was Alice, who’d seemed paralyzed before this. Half a second after it moved, she was plunging forward, bravely meeting the monster’s swing.
“Yaaaaaah!!” Her scream was even sharper than the golem’s screeching. Her back arched as far as it could go as she wound up, clutching the Osmanthus Blade in both hands.
At that point, Kirito was moving, too. He leaped forward to his right, trying to circle around the golem. Eugeo was stock-still as of yet, too afraid to move, but he could at least attempt to discern what Kirito and Alice were doing.
They both suspected that if the golem had a weak point, it was
where the backbone met its four legs—what would be the pelvis on a human. But it was too dangerous to attack the area head-on. So Alice was acting as a decoy to draw the golem’s attention—if it was conscious enough to have such a thing—while Kirito tried to sever the weak point from the side. It was essentially the same strategy they’d used against Chudelkin.
Eugeo couldn’t help but be impressed at how the two launched into this combined stratagem without any planning ahead of time. But there was a twinge of pain there, too.
Alice’s sword traced an arc through the air as bright as Solus. The monster’s right arm swung down ferociously. When the two golden blades connected, the resulting shock wave seemed to shake the entire cathedral, its wind buffeting Eugeo.
Just two seconds had passed since both sides charged.
And whatever you might call a “battle” ended at this exact moment.
Alice’s Osmanthus Blade, a Divine Object with the property of “everlasting eternity,” was easily overpowered by the golem’s arm. The knight was unable to stop the backward momentum of her sword and lost her center of gravity.
As she struggled to regain her balance, the golem’s left sword plunged in at blinding speed. Compared to the first rush, the little thunk that followed was barely noticeable. But it was the sound that heralded the end of the fight.
The ghastly huge tip of the sword appeared from Alice’s back, spraying dark-red droplets. Her long, beautiful hair floated upward with the impact, taking the brunt of the spatter.
Her golden breastplate, which had been split clean in two, instantly shattered with the loss of its life value. The Osmanthus Blade fell from her hand and clattered on the ground.
Lastly, the golem promptly yanked its left arm back, leaving the Integrity Knight to fall to the floor.
“Aaaaaaahh!!”
It was practically a scream. That was Kirito, the black-haired swordsman just around the giant’s right side, eyes livid with rage as he charged.
His black sword glowed a brilliant blue. That was the attack known as Vertical.
The golem would stop if they could shatter the Piety Module encased in its backbone, but it was heavily defended and too high for any ultimate techniques to reach. So Kirito was aiming at the point where the golem’s spine met its legs instead. If just that point could be destroyed, it would prevent the giant from moving.
Just after its attack, with both arms lowered, the golem shouldn’t have had a way to defend itself. But the moment Kirito’s sword started to move, the giant’s top half rotated around the spine with tremendous speed. It swung in a way that no human being could ever do, its left arm in a side swipe toward Kirito.
There was a blunt impact. With superhuman reflexes, Kirito changed the course of his technique and fought back the golem’s strike.
But before Eugeo’s horrified eyes, the exact same thing happened again.
Kirito rose off his feet, unable to bear the full brunt of the impact. The golem’s back left leg promptly shot forward toward his unprotected side.
There was another heavy thud, and Kirito shot sideways until he crashed against an east-facing window. A frightening amount of blood splattered against the glass, and the swordsman in black crumpled to the floor.
Eugeo watched in silent shock as a pool of blood formed beneath his facedown partner; he could feel nothing in his own arms and legs. It was like his body didn’t belong to him anymore. He was helpless to stop it from shivering.
Only his face was able to respond to commands. He turned it to look up at the Sword Golem standing just five or six mels away.
The monster looked straight back at him. The hilt of the sword located at the top of the backbone almost looked like a face. Two gemstones inlaid on the guard twinkled like blinking eyes.
He couldn’t move or speak. All that Eugeo’s numb mind was capable of doing was repeating the same thought.
It can’t be.
It can’t be. This can’t be happening.
Alice and Kirito were essentially the greatest warriors in the entire world. They would never lose a fight together, even against a freakish creature—a weapon of war—like this one. They were going to get back up and draw their swords again, very soon…
Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee.
Over the constant heavy grinding of the golem came a quiet chuckle. Eugeo saw then that Administrator, levitating in the background, was surveying the battle with great pleasure. The only color in her mirror eyes was the red of the blood that Kirito and Alice shed. There was not the tiniest bit of pity in them.
The giant creature began to move again, preparing to carry out its master’s orders to completion. The front right leg raised and fell, taking a huge step. The front left leg followed it.
Red drops decorated the left arm of the approaching giant. Eugeo hoped it would just kill him and be done with it.
Even his fear was gone.
The entire world was utterly silent…
Until suddenly, a tiny voice popped into his head. So small, he didn’t even realize he was hearing something at first.
“Use the dagger, Eugeo!”
It was a woman’s voice, a bit deep but beautiful.
If this was an illusion just before his death, it certainly didn’t sound like any voice from his past. He looked to his right and saw—
—resting on Kirito’s right shoulder, barely the size of a human fingernail, a black spider.
But no bug that small could speak. Yet, there was something in the voice that made Eugeo believe it. Perhaps due to his exhausted wits, Eugeo fully trusted that the tiny creature, waving its front leg as if scolding him, was indeed the source of the voice in his head.
“I…I can’t. The dagger won’t reach her,” he mumbled. The spider waved its raised leg even harder.
“No! The corridor! Stab the levitating disc in the floor!!”
“Huh…?”
His eyes went wide. The black spider stared back at him with its four little ruby eyes and said, “I’ll buy you time! Just hurry!!”
Cute little fangs spun as the spider yelled at him. Then it turned briefly toward Kirito, who was looking pale, and brushed his cheek lightly with a single leg before jumping down to the floor.
The tiny black dot landed on the carpet without a sound.
Then it started running straight at the Sword Golem, a creature thousands upon thousands of times its size.
3
I thought I had a pretty good handle on physical pain.
A bit over two years ago, I had fought a group of goblins from the Dark Territory, in the cave to the north of Rulid. During that battle, the captain goblin’s machete had caught my left shoulder, and though it hadn’t been fatal, the agony had been so great that utter fear had paralyzed me and left me unable to react.
That experience was a huge wake-up call as to my physical weakness in the Underworld. I’d spent so long playing in worlds with the pain-absorption function of the NerveGear and AmuSphere that I didn’t have any resistance to unrestricted physical pain.
Since then, I’d focused on keeping myself solid and tough when hit by wooden swords during practice with Eugeo or duels at the academy. Thanks to that, I was at least able to keep my wits and stop from freezing up when I suffered wounds when fighting the other Integrity Knights. And in the Underworld, anything was perfectly healable as long as your life didn’t reach zero—even severed limbs.
But…right at the end of this long journey, I received a painful reminder that I hadn’t actually conquered anything.
The power and speed of Administrator’s battle weapon, the Sword Golem, were off the charts. It was impossibly capable, beyond the limits of what should have been possible in this world. Already it was miraculous that I was able to defend against the first blow from its arm, but I couldn’t even see the one that had come from its leg.
The sword that made up its rear left leg entered my right flank and passed through to my left side, slicing everything in its path. The instant I first
felt the shock, I recognized an icy chill brushing my belly, but after I’d been thrown against the window and I’d slumped to the floor, my insides were burning like they were on fire. I couldn’t move a muscle. I didn’t even have any sensation from my lower half. I could’ve been split in two with just a little scrap of skin holding me together, for all I knew.
In fact, it was a mystery as to how I could think at all.
Or perhaps it was just a sign that the despair was far more powerful than the actual pain assaulting me.
I knew my life had to be dropping at a calamitous rate. I didn’t have more than a minute or two before it ran down to zero. And Alice had even less time than I did. The golden knight, now collapsed on the floor across the room, had been pierced through the chest. It hadn’t hit her heart, from what I could tell, but the loss of blood would certainly do her in first. Perhaps even the highest level of sacred healing arts wouldn’t help her now. Her miracle fluctlight, which had overcome the seal in the right eyeball that every Underworldian had, was about to perish before my very eyes.
Although I couldn’t see him from my position, I was sure that my irreplaceable friend Eugeo’s life was also hanging in the balance. His technical ability was greater than mine, but this was not a foe who could be handled with a blade.
Through foggy eyes, I saw the Sword Golem advance, shaking the ground. I wanted to shout at him to run, but the only thing my mouth could do was exhale weakly.
And even if I shouted, Eugeo wouldn’t run away. He would raise the Blue Rose Sword and face this huge, unfair enemy to save his friends.
Worst of all, the cause of this horrible outcome was my own mistaken assumption: the idiotically naïve conjecture that Administrator couldn’t kill human beings.
In the Great Library, Cardinal had used a teacup to demonstrate how the taboos of this world really worked. The point of her lecture was that all taboos had loopholes that could be exploited. Administrator had simply overcome hers not by acting on her own but by creating a weapon that would automatically kill her enemies for her.
Alicization Uniting Page 11
