Five seconds left. Eugeo moved his hands as though pulling on a greatbow, and the arrow in his grasp flashed blue.
“Discharge!!”
With that, the arrow of ice flew, but not straight at Chudelkin. Eugeo’s left hand guided it in the air, first around the right of the flame clown, then curving left and upward. With all the red from the flames filling the chamber, the blue trail the ice arrow left behind stood out by contrast. The clown’s burning eyes followed its course.
Four seconds left. When the ice arrow had nearly reached the domed ceiling, Eugeo clenched his controlling hand. On command, the arrow plunged at twice the previous speed. Its vicious head bore down—and not on Prime Senator Chudelkin.
But on Administrator, who lay prone in the air behind him.
Three seconds left.
The silver-haired woman showed no signs of alarm at Eugeo’s brilliant ice attack. She merely glanced upward in annoyance, puckered her lips, and blew out a little puff of air.
That was all she did. But the arrow of ice promptly melted, several feet away from her.
The true attack Eugeo was making was not on Administrator herself, however, but on Chudelkin’s abnormal fixation and attention on her. The instant the arrow flew behind him, Chudelkin’s eyes bulged, and he rotated around on his head.
“Your Holiness, bewaaaare!”
Two seconds left.
I was already on the move before Chudelkin’s scream hit my ears. I held the sword at shoulder height, right arm pulled back as far as it could go. The preliminary motion kicked in and turned the blade red as blood.
The system started moving my body automatically. My feet, wide apart, launched off the floor. The acceleration was funneled into my rotation, traveling through my back into my right shoulder. The rotation went back into a straight motion, bursting through my right arm into the sword that was now just an extension of it.
With the metallic roar of a jet engine, the sword burst forth in a straight line with a shining crimson light that was deeper than any of the flames.
This was the One-Handed Sword skill Vorpal Strike.
The reason I had used this skill so much in SAO was because it had the tremendous power to change the course of any battle, and a range that seemed almost unfair for a One-Handed Sword attack. The crimson effect carved through a space about twice the length of the blade itself. When combined with the full reach of my arm, it could sometimes outdistance even a long spear.
But the distance to my target, Prime Senator Chudelkin, was a good fifty feet. A normal Vorpal Strike would never reach him.
In other words, I had to use my imagination—my Incarnation power—to extend my first use of this attack in the Underworld to over five times its range.
This would not be easy.
But I didn’t think it impossible. I would never think it.
Alice was exposing herself and her blade to hellfire, trusting in me to find the solution. My best friend, Eugeo, had used all his smarts and concentration to unleash a sacred art that would allow me this opportunity.
If I couldn’t step up and do my part for them, I had no right to call myself a swordsman.
And I was nothing if not Kirito the Black Swordsman.
“Rrraaaahhh!!” I bellowed, summoning all my force. At that moment, a fingerless black glove covered my right hand, as though it had seeped out of the very air around me.
On its heels, smooth black leather appeared over my battle-torn sleeves, stretching up my arms to my shoulders, then my torso. Instantly, it turned into a long coat, the studded hem whipping wildly.
The light effects around my sword flashed brighter, almost like an explosion. From one concentrated point at the tip of the sword, they practically drowned out the red light coming from the flaming clown.
“Aaaah!!”
I unleashed all the power at my disposal.
One second left.
2
What was that sound?!
Eugeo gaped at the abnormal roar coming from just nearby.
All ultimate techniques created a multitude of lights and sounds. But this was different from anything he’d heard to this point. It was thicker, heavier, harder, sharper—just like the sword was roaring on its own.
The sound was coming from the black sword in Kirito’s right hand. It sparkled like black crystal, the blade’s sharp edge rattling and emitting an ear-splitting roar. And it wasn’t just sound—the entire sword was wreathed in deep-red light.
It’s a special technique. But I’ve never seen this kind before.
Eugeo held his breath. But the truly shocking part of this was what happened right after that.
This time, his partner’s entire body flashed brightly and transformed into an appearance that he’d never worn before.
Kirito had been dressed in a black shirt and pants, tattered somewhat from all the fighting they’d done. But after the wave of light passed over his arm, body, and legs, a long, dark leather cloak with a high collar and a pair of slim-fitting leather trousers appeared out of nowhere.
That happened in less than a blink, but the strange phenomenon did not end there. There were more changes to Kirito’s body, though they weren’t as dramatic as the changes to his clothes.
First, his black hair was longer now, covering half of his profile. Also, what was visible of his eyes through the wild blowing of his bangs was fiercer than anything Eugeo had seen before. They were wild, the look harder—harder than when they’d fought the goblins in the northern cave, harder than when he’d cut off Raios Antinous’s arms, harder even than when he’d fought against Deusolbert and Fanatio. It was like Kirito’s very spirit had fused with the sword, becoming sharper and more dangerous.
His lips peeled back to expose his canines as he growled, “Rraaaaahh!!”
Kirito’s sword also blazed with metallic sheen, the red light rapidly increased in intensity, and then his friend’s hand shot forward with blinding speed. The long hem of his coat flapped behind him like monstrous wings.
It was clear that this was an ultimate technique of the Aincrad style.
But what a tremendous thrust it was. It was unlike any of the moves he’d learned from Kirito; its ferocity seemed more High Norkia in style but with all the ornamentation and beauty removed. It was an attack meant for nothing but piercing a target…
“……!”
Eugeo sucked in a breath and followed the crimson shine with his eyes.
Kirito was aiming, of course, for Prime Senator Chudelkin, who was controlling the fiery behemoth. But the target was at least fifteen mels away. No special technique would reach that far as long as it was from a sword.
The moment Kirito unleashed the thrust, Chudelkin wasn’t watching him. He was gazing toward the rear of the room, where Eugeo had shot his ice arrow just seconds earlier.
Eugeo had used all his knowledge and creativity to attempt that trick, but of course it didn’t work on Administrator, who simply shattered it with a breath. But as Eugeo expected, Chudelkin couldn’t possibly ignore an attack on his master and had to turn to shriek a warning. As Kirito had requested, he’d managed to distract their target.
Relieved that the ice arrow had vanished without a threat, Chudelkin turned back, still on his head. Instantly, his narrow eyes fully opened, revealing a quick succession of emotions.
First was shock upon registering the sound and light of Kirito’s oncoming sword.
Second was relief upon recognition that it was a thrust that surely wouldn’t reach him.
Lastly, he felt terror at the realization that the red light causing all that metallic roaring was still coming closer.
Like him, Eugeo was too surprised to breathe. The bloodred light passed by Alice, who was still blocking the atronach, and jumped through all fifteen mels in an instant—until it easily shot right through the upside-down Chudelkin’s stick-thin torso.
The blade of light extended nearly another two mels, then dissolved into little points of deep-red light tha
t hung in the air like motes.
And then a gushing jet of actual blood shot through the air.
It was coming from a massive hole in the center of Chudelkin’s chest, nearly large enough to bisect his body.
“Oh-hooooooo…” He exhaled weakly, like air escaping a balloon. His body slowly tilted until he toppled with a splat into a puddle of his own blood.
It continued gushing out, a seemingly impossible amount for such a small form. Chudelkin lifted a trembling arm, reaching for the floating Administrator.
“…Y…Your…Hol…i…ness…”
Eugeo couldn’t see the little man’s expression from where he stood.
But Prime Senator Chudelkin’s hand fell to the soggy carpet with a squelch, and he moved no more.
At the same moment, the clown of flames that had been just about to crunch through Alice’s golden tornado vanished, its puffed-up torso evaporating into smoke, briefly leaving that evil grin before it too disappeared. As though baffled by the loss of their enemy, Alice’s little golden blades slowed until they hung in the air.
Eugeo felt his ears ringing in the sudden and complete silence that fell over the room. He glanced to his right. Kirito was paused in a low crouch, his right arm extended as far as it could go.
The light that covered the black sword’s surface vanished, and the tail of his coat flapped once more before it hung still. Right before Eugeo’s unbelieving eyes, Kirito’s appearance went hazy and changed back to the way it had been before.
Kirito still didn’t move after he was back in his simple black shirt and pants. Eventually, he let his right arm drop until the tip of the black sword landed on the carpet, and he hung his head.
Eugeo didn’t know what to say to him.
Kirito had tried to save even Vice Commander Fanatio. Even against someone like Prime Senator Chudelkin, he would never celebrate the taking of another’s life. With his bangs back to being short, it was easy to see that the icy harshness he’d shown in the moment of his attack was gone.
Only the sharp ringing of Alice’s cloud of golden petals clicking back into their rightful place broke the silence, several seconds later. Sensing a hint of nervousness in her demeanor, Eugeo looked over her shoulder toward the other end of the room.
Administrator, floating in the air, was reaching out her delicate hand toward the collapsed prime senator.
It was obvious from a glance that Chudelkin was dead. She couldn’t possibly be administering healing arts. Or did she actually have the ability to bring corpses back to life…?
Eugeo sucked in a sharp breath, right as the pontifex’s utterly impassive voice said, “I’m only cleaning him up, because it’s such an unsightly mess.”
She waved her hand lazily, and Chudelkin’s body flew into the air as easily as if it were made of paper, slammed into the window on the distant eastern side of the room, and fell into a little heap there.
“…How could you…?” Alice murmured under her breath.
She was still the cold, dispassionate Integrity Knight whose personality had been tinkered with, but even Eugeo understood why she felt the need to speak up. Chudelkin was hardly respectable, but at the very least, he had given his life fighting for the sake of his master. The least he deserved was a worthy burial for his remains.
But Administrator didn’t spare a second glance for his corpse. If anything, the way she was smiling mysteriously made it seem like she’d completely wiped all knowledge of the prime senator from her mind already.
“…Well, that was a very tiresome show,” she said, “but I suppose I did glean a little bit of meaningful data from it.”
Her voice was innocent and beautiful, and she even threw in a few sacred words that Eugeo did not recognize. Without breaking the sideways pose atop her invisible couch, she slid five mels through the air, into the center of the round chamber.
Administrator pulled back a lock of silver hair that had fallen over her face in the wind, then narrowed her reflective rainbow eyes and placed that magnetic stare right next to Eugeo—onto Kirito, who was still crouched.
“Irregular boy. I had thought my inability to read your properties was because you were an unregistered unit from an unofficial marriage…but that’s not the case. Did you come from over there? Are you one of the people…from the other side?”
Eugeo hardly understood the implication of anything that she whispered.
Over there? The other side…?
Kirito, his black-haired partner, had appeared without any of his memory in the forest south of Rulid two and a half years ago, a so-called Lost Child of Vecta.
The town elders had told Eugeo that such people sometimes appeared. But it was only when he was a little child that he’d actually believed Vecta, the god of darkness, was reaching over the End Mountains to play tricks on the memories of people, the way the stories said.
When people experienced things that were tremendously sad and painful, they could actually lose their memories and sometimes even their lives. Eugeo had learned that from Old Man Garitta, the previous carver of the Gigas Cedar. Years ago, Garitta’s wife had drowned, and his grief had been so great and so deep that he’d lost over half of the memories of his life with her. He had chuckled sadly and told Eugeo that this was both the mercy and the punishment of Stacia, goddess of creation, at work.
So Eugeo had always secretly assumed that this must be what had happened to Kirito, too. He would’ve been from the eastern or southern empire, based on the color of his hair and eyes. Something horrible and sad had happened to him back home, and he’d wandered for a long time without memory, until he’d eventually come to the forest near Rulid.
This was partially why Eugeo hardly ever brought up the topic of Kirito’s past while they were on their long journey to Centoria and through the academy. Of course, there was also the fact that he was scared Kirito might remember and then go back to his real home, never to return.
However, Administrator, who had the power to see all things that happened in the human world, had used a strange term to describe Kirito’s origin.
The other side. Did she mean the other side of the End Mountains, in the Dark Territory? Was the one clue to Kirito’s birth, his consecutive-attacking Aincrad style of swordfighting, actually a school developed in the land of darkness?
No. She would certainly have more knowledge of the Dark Territory than that. The Integrity Knights under her control ranged freely over the mountains to do battle with the dark knights there. It was impossible to imagine that Administrator, the supreme ruler, would not know what the Dark Territory was like, how its towns looked, and what kinds of lives the residents lived there. She wouldn’t need to use a vague placeholder term like the other side.
Which would mean…
Administrator was referring to something even she couldn’t see, some place outside of the very world…? Something beyond even the Dark Territory…or perhaps even farther, even more removed. Like some kind of other world entirely…?
This concept was so abstract for Eugeo that he couldn’t even find the words to describe the thoughts in his head. But his hunch told him that he was on the verge of something unbelievably massive, some kind of great secret of the entire world. Unable to resist a sudden burning impatience, he looked around, out the huge windows, into the night sky.
Between the black shapes of the clouds was a sea of stardust.
Was Kirito’s home…somewhere on the other side of the sky? What kind of place was it? And did Kirito in fact have those memories back now…?
Several seconds of silence were eventually broken by his black-haired partner. Kirito got to his feet and answered Administrator’s question with a simple and monumental “Yes.”
Eugeo stared at his partner, feeling himself go numb with shock. Kirito had gotten his memory back already.
In fact…had he always had his memory, right from the start…?
For an instant, Kirito looked back at Eugeo. There was a multitude of emotions in his blac
k pupils, but it seemed to Eugeo that foremost among them was pleading, a desperate wish for Eugeo to trust him.
Then he looked back at Administrator. Despite the fierce determination on his features, there was also a note of self-deprecation. He held out his hands and said, “But…my designated authority level is the same as any other person in this world, and far from your own, Administrator…or should I say, Quinella?”
The instant he said that mysterious-sounding name, the grin vanished from the pontifex’s beautiful features. It was only for an instant, however, and soon a much larger smile was playing on her luscious lips.
“So I see the little one in the library has been filling your head with silly tales. And…? What did you come tumbling into my world to do? And without any kind of administrative privileges.”
“I may not have privileges, but I do know some things.”
“Oh? Such as? Be warned, I have no patience for old, foolish tales.”
“Then how about the future?” Kirito offered, sticking the point of his sword into the floor and resting both hands on the pommel. There was harsh tension in his cheeks again, along with a fiery look in his black eyes. “In the fairly near future, Quinella, you are going to destroy your own world.”
All this shocking pronouncement achieved was to deepen the smile on Administrator’s face.
“…I will? It’s not the boy who tormented so many of my sweet little puppets who will destroy the world, but me?”
“You heard me. And your mistake was that you created the Integrity Knights to fight off an all-out invasion from the Dark Territory. Their existence is the mistake.”
“Hah. Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
It was almost certainly the first time, at least since she became the supreme ruler, that Administrator had ever been corrected by someone else. She put her finger to her lips, and her shoulders shook, as if she was holding in a gale of laughter.
“Hee-hee-hee. Yes, that does sound like something she’d say. She must have practiced her feminine wiles, if she was able to ensnare boys like you with that childish appearance. I merely feel pity…both for her jealous desperation to see me fall and for you willingly being her cat’s-paw.” She chuckled deep in her throat.
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