Volume 16

by Reki Kawahara

  The apprentice knights, Linel Synthesis Twenty-eight and Fizel Synthesis Twenty-nine, were born in the Central Cathedral. Though they had heard their parents were among the ascetics of the Axiom Church, they recalled neither their names nor faces.

  Their parents were ordered by the highest minister, Administrator, to procreate and to send the babies to a certain establishment in the tower. Though there were a grand total of thirty in that establishment from the same background, the only ones living on now were Linel and Fizel. All of the other twenty-eight could not endure the «resurrection sacred art» experiments conducted by the highest minister and died.

  Fizel and Linel lived on only because of their wholehearted research into «good methods of dying» that placed their flesh and spirit under least burden. The pair stabbed each other in the heart as ordered, died, and were resurrected by sacred arts. By the time the highest minister gave up on her experiments, each of them had already gotten the knack of killing the other while causing nearly no pain.

  Strength, to the pair, referred to effective techniques for murder. If the opponent proved stronger, they would promptly flee. Flee, and train, to surpass and to kill again when given an opportunity. By that logic, there was no reason to take on injuries while standing against someone stronger. They had always thought so.

  The rebels, Kirito and Eugeo, appeared to be only as skilled as the lower ranking knights when judging from their combat capabilities alone. However, the pair fought against that highest minister, abandoning an arm and a life, and triumphed.

  For what cause?

  And thus, what had that pair to gain?

  They wanted to ask Kirito upon meeting again with him, but Integrity Knight Alice was constantly by his side and they found no opportunity to come into contact with him. Though they did not know if they could hold a conversation with him in his current state, it would be a bother if he died off before they could try. The supply unit behind ought to remain safe as long as the second unit hold, but that chaos on the left flank was definitely of worry.

  —And as they could not possibly explain all of that to Scheta, the acting commander here, the pair restlessly waited for approval.

  The knight, «Silent», glanced towards the left flank with her grey eyes and pointed towards the rear with her left hand after approximately two seconds of thought.

  “Eh… erm, s-so we can go?”

  As Scheta nodded without a word, she hastily made a simplified knight’s salute with Fizel.

  “Thank you very much, we will be back immediately after confirming their safety!”

  Turning about, they began running by the side of the ranks.

  —Thank you very much, huh. She had never said that, not even to the esteemed highest minister.

  Linel’s eyes met with her partner and they exchanged cynical smiles before she accelerated further.

  * * *

  Integrity Knight Renri Synthesis Twenty-seven, about to put his arms around his knees once more, drew in a sharp breath deep in the supplies tent after several shouts reached his ears from surprisingly close by.

  Could it be? He could not believe the enemy army could have broken through the valley’s defense lines so quickly. Only tens of minutes had passed since battle began.

  It was just due to him being worked up that he could hear those faraway noises so clearly; Renri convinced himself.

  However, the reactions from the two girls who had taken refuge in the same tent told him that he did not mishear the approaching soldier voices.

  “No way… they’re already this far back?”

  The red-haired trainee named Tiezé Shtolienen flicked her face up and rushed to the tent’s entrance. Lifting the drapes, she ascertained the outside. Her whispering resounded immediately after, in a tone of increasing anxiety.

  “…There’s smoke…!”

  The trainee called Ronye Arabel, too, tensed up at that.

  “Eh… Tiezé, is there fire too!?”

  “No, there’s just this oddly colored smoke streaming in… —No, wait. In the smoke… there are all those people…”

  The words from Tiezé, peeping outside through the gaps in the drapes, stopped as though absorbed by the thick cotton.

  Renri strained his ears once again in the tense silence, getting onto his feet.

  The cries had vanished some time ago. However, he sensed someone approaching beyond that stillness. He heard gradual, damp footsteps.

  Without warning, Tiezé retreated to the middle of the tent with uncertain steps. Her shuddering right hand reached out towards her left waist.

  It happened then, when Renri realized she was trying to draw her sword.

  Baff! The drapes at the entrance tore as they were pulled apart without care.

  The outside was mired in dusk without him knowing and the torches’ light quivered alone in a pale red. A humanoid silhouette stood in silence against that backdrop. Despite its small frame and hunched back, its two arms were abnormally muscular and gripped onto a coarse machete that appeared as though cut out from sheet metal.

  The stench mixed into the air blowing in from the entrance stung Renri’s nose.

  Trainee Shtolienen drew her sword as its sheath clattered and Trainee Arabel shouted in a low voice from beside the wheelchair.

  “—A goblin!?”

  The intruder with bizarre features responded in a hoarse voice, scratchy in some places.

  “O-hoh… white ium girls… trophies for me…”

  Tiezé slowly stepped back at the sheer rawness of his desires.

  While he was a high ranking integrity knight, this was Renri’s first time witnessing a demi-human from the Dark Territory. He had been dealt with, by being frozen, before he was granted a flying dragon to fly to the mountain range at the edge.

  This was completely… different.

  Renri thought absentmindedly.

  He thought he had learnt sufficiently regarding the four demi-human races from the lectures given by the senior knights and the written material in the cathedral. However, the goblin he imagined, taking on an appearance like that of the mischievous fairies from nursery tales, resembled this repulsive organism standing a mere eight mel away in no way.

  The goblin lumbered a step forward in Renri’s view as he shivered to the tips of his fingers, unable to even move. His dirtied plate armor shone dully like scales.

  Tiezé turned the long sword held in her two hands towards the goblin, but its point wobbled as her knees quivered uncontrollably. Did that soft clattering come from the girl’s teeth?

  “Ti… Tiezé…”

  A feeble voice leaked out from Ronye’s throat. She hid the wheelchair Kirito sat upon before her back and held onto her sword’s grip with her right hand, but her legs, too, were shaking.

  He had to stand.

  He had to stand, draw the Twin Edged Wings from his waist, and fight against the goblin soldier.

  Despite those thoughts, Renri’s body rejected any notion to move as though petrified. The enemy was no more than a single demi-human soldier. The high ranking knights, capable of matching a thousand, should have been bestowed enough power to achieve victory even when up against a thousand of these goblins.

  “Gufh… you look tasty…”

  The goblin licked his lips as his viscous drool dripped in strings.

  “Ba… back off! If you don’t…!”

  The warning Tiezé desperately wrung out served no purpose except to stimulate the goblin’s appetite. With a smug smile, the demi-human took another step forward, his machete brandished. Then—

  Thump.

  That stale noise rang out in the tent.

  The goblin soldier’s two yellow eyes opened widely in confusion as he looked down at his own chest.

  Sharp, smooth metal sprung from the coarse plate armor. It was wet with drops of fresh blood; a sword’s pointed tip. Some being had stabbed precisely into the demi-human’s heart from behind.

  “…What is, this thing …?”
<
br />   Those became the goblin soldier’s final words. Strength left his brawny frame and he crumbled onto the tent’s floor in exhaustion.

  Standing beyond him and half a head shorter than the two female trainees was a small swordswoman, or perhaps a female ascetic. Her dark, reddish-brown hair was braided and she wore a silver breastplate atop black ascetic clothing. The sword she held in her right hand was rather short, fitting her physique. Despite how she could still be labelled a child as according to her age—despite how she had just killed that horrifying demi-human soldier, her adorable face showed not even a hint of fear.

  After seeing that much in a daze, Renri noticed at last.

  This girl was neither a swordswoman nor an ascetic.

  She was a knight. An apprentice integrity knight with a name of Linel Synthesis Twenty-eight if he recalled right. The girl was half of the «dreadful twins»: the one who murdered the previous twenty-eighth knight in a match and stole the position.

  Linel’s expression showed no reaction even when she saw the foolish sight of Renri sinking onto the ground. After confirming the safety of the two trainees and Kirito, on the wheelchair, she spun about.

  Another apprentice knight appeared at the tent’s entrance immediately after. Her short hair was in same hue as Linel’s and Fizel Synthesis Twenty-nine whispered to her partner in a soft voice.

  “Nel, I took care of all of the goblins nearby, but they’re still coming. May be best to move.”

  “Nn, okay, Zel.”

  Having nodded, Linel caught the obstructing goblin corpse on the floor near the entrance with the tip of her right foot and rolled it somewhere less troublesome. The near lack of spilled blood was likely due to the speed and precision of that one strike from behind.

  Turning around, she called out to the trainees who appeared incapable of speaking.

  “I am Linel and this is Fizel. The two of us are apprentice knights.”

  “Y-Yes, we’ve seen you during practice. We are trainees, Tiezé Shtolienen and Ronye Arabel. Thank… Thank you very much for saving us.”

  Tiezé stated her name with a voice that still trembled and Ronye bowed as well. Linel shrugged her shoulders in a precocious fashion at that.

  “It’s still up in the air whether you’ll live or not. It looks like more than a hundred goblins slipped through the defense lines while the left flanks of the first and second units are covered in a smokescreen.”

  Linel went quiet for a moment there and finally looked straight at Renri.

  Her grey eyes tinged with violet narrowed.

  “What could you be doing here as the esteemed knight who is supposed to be taking command of the second unit’s left flank? Those under you are moving about in confusion under the smokescreen, you know?”

  Averting his face as though to escape from the apprentice knight’s sight, Renri replied softly.

  “…It’s nothing to do with the two of you. Please take those two and the ill one to somewhere safe.”

  Renri felt vividly a change in Linel’s presence in that moment.

  A cold, murderous aura, unfitting for a child, brushed against his cheek. The sword stained with goblin blood shone orange in the torches’ light.

  Was she thinking to kill him like she did to the previous twenty-eighth?

  Then that would be all to that. It was a mistake in the first place to hurl him, a failure of a knight who should have been frozen forever, into a real battlefield. He could not possibly return to the second unit now and there was no place for him even if he fled back to the cathedral. Though she was an apprentice, an execution by Linel who held a number as a knight would be a fitting end for such a coward.

  Renri turned his face away as he awaited the blade of condemnation.

  But what he heard was a soft whisper rather than approaching footsteps.

  “…You are a terrible coward, but you must have some strength if you’re supposed to be a high ranking knight. Thank that swordsman you called ill.”

  —What did she mean; that thought came and he raised his face only after Linel’s ascetic clothing spun about.

  “Trainees, come, and bring Kirito with you.”

  Went Linel’s instructions.

  “Nel, they’re here! There’re eight… no, ten!”

  Before Fizel’s voice overlapped them. Certainly, there were multiple sets of footsteps approaching from the east.

  Turning about, Linel quickly instructed Tiezé and Ronye who stood frozen.

  “I take back that order, stand by for a while. We will take care of the goblins.”

  “We… we understand, esteemed knight.”

  Tiezé nodded and Linel left the tent, as though sliding away, and vanished alongside Fizel. Cries from the goblins going, “There they are! Ium children!” came straight away as the footsteps left. They must have planned to draw them away before engaging.

  Standing against ten whole goblins without fear required courage beyond what one would expect from apprentices. However, those two held strength worthy of that.

  Strength.

  Linel judged Renri as a coward but still said he “must have some strength”. And that he should thank the rebel, Kirito, who should have originally been their enemy.

  He did not understand the meaning behind those words and he doubted there was even a trace of strength inside himself. After all, he could not even bring himself to stand even with an enemy soldier within sight.

  Renri looked downwards, unable to even muster the courage to confirm the expressions Ronye and Tiezé had.

  However, that lasted only seconds. A straight line tore through the thick, woven fabric on Renri’s immediate left, separating the tent’s inside from the outside. That was reason enough for him to get up and leap backwards, rather than cower as he did.

  Standing on the other side of the torn fabric was a goblin soldier shorter in stature than the one earlier but clad in armor that oper

  seemed of somewhat high quality. Though made from leather, it was tailored skillfully and even dyed black. Judging from how he hid from Linel and the rest’s notice, he was apparently a scout that excelled in covert operations.

  Renri unconsciously reached out towards the throwing knives on his waist. But he could not draw them. Like when he saw the first goblin, the fear seeping from the depths of his stomach numbed his frigid finger tips.

  Renri was mostly unaware of it himself, but the source of that fear did not stem from seeing a demi-human soldier up close for the first time.

  It was fear towards fighting. To be specific, he feared the death match that engaging a goblin would lead to.

  He feared getting killed. That said, he feared killing even more.

  Sets of footsteps reached Renri’s frozen ears. They must be from a unit different from the one Linel and Fizel drew away. There really were more than ten or twenty goblins who slipped past the defense lines.

  Perhaps having seen through Renri’s fear as he stood frozen, the scout grinned and turned towards Tiezé and Ronye. The two female trainees hid Kirito on the wheelchair behind themselves and firmly brandished their swords once more. However, despair flashed onto their faces right after. Numerous shadows approached through the smoke hanging behind the scout.

  The scout readied the scythe-like weapon in his right hand and sidled towards Tiezé and Ronye.

  “Stop… stop there! We will cut you if you come any closer!”

  The red-haired girl shouted boldly. But that voice was faintly hoarse and quivered.

  “……”

  The goblin shortened the distance in silence. The lack of pointless banter, unlike the normal soldier from earlier, indicated him to be higher up among the soldiers, with more training. Still, Tiezé held her ground and held her sword aloft with an expression displaying her readiness to die.

  —You can’t do it, run.

  He wanted to say so. But Renri’s mouth did not move. His body, no, his soul rejected the option to fight even in this situation.

  It wa
s then—

  A weak, creaking noise reached Renri’s ears.

  He flicked his sight alone towards the right.

  The black-haired youth looking downwards with an empty expression, still powerlessly sitting on the wheelchair in the tent’s murky depths. The noise came from his left hand. Blood vessels showed up on the hand hugging the two swords, rousing his joints, displaying the tremendous power within them.

  As though resenting the lack of a right hand to draw those blades.

  “You……”

  Renri whispered with an inaudible voice.

  You wish to protect those two? Despite being unable to stand, to draw your sword, or to even speak?

  Out of nowhere, he noticed.

  The strength Linel and Fizel mentioned before they left. That must refer to neither swordsmanship, nor arts, nor divine instruments, nor even the armament full control art.

  It was that meager power everyone, both integrity knights and the common folk, possessed from the start, yet lost sight of all too easily.

  Courage.

  Renri’s right hand slowly began moving. His still-numbed finger tips brushed against the Twin Edged Wings on his waist. Sensation returned to his hands in that instant. His divine instrument seemed to speak to him.

  The goblins carelessly swung that brutal scythe up towards Tiezé.

  Then—

  The sharp noise of the air being sliced apart echoed as a bluish-white light illuminated the murky insides of the tent.

  The light sprung upwards, tracing an arc from Renri’s hand, grazing the tent’s roof as it dived. It turned upon passing through the goblin’s body and settled between the index and middle fingers of Renri’s outstretched right hand.

  “…Gh-hi…?”

  The goblin moaned as though doubting what had occurred. A light red line drew across the middle of his face without a sound.

  Immediately after, the top half of the goblin’s face slid out of place and fell onto the ground with a damp noise.