A slightly exasperated note entered Administrator’s smile, but she nodded again. “Fine, fine, I’ll swear to the precious data accumulated in my fluctlight. And once I’ve killed you, I’ll let the other three go unharmed. That pledge is the one thing I cannot break…for now.”
“Good,” said Cardinal. She gave a look to both Eugeo and Alice and lastly, turned to me. There was a gentle smile on her young face, and nothing but benevolent kindness in her brown eyes. I couldn’t stop the emotions in my chest from spilling out as liquid and blotting my vision.
Her lips opened and silently mouthed the words I’m sorry.
In the distance, Administrator called out a triumphant good-bye to her victim. She waved her hand, and the Sword Golem stopped where it was, near the center of the room.
Then she made a clenching gesture, hand still held high, and glittering bits of light came dancing out of empty air, coalescing into a long, slender shape.
The object that emerged was a silver rapier. It was as thin as a needle, with a beautifully curved guard, all of it perfectly silver in color. It was so delicate that it almost seemed decorative, but the overwhelming aura surrounding it spoke to its priority value and made it hard to breathe even at a distance.
Like Cardinal’s black staff, this was Administrator’s personal weapon—the ultimate source of the power that supported her sacred arts.
The silver rapier rang like a bell when she pointed it straight at Cardinal. The sage faced her directly, showing no fear of the divine weapon trained upon her heart, and walked forward.
Alice and Eugeo leaned forward, as though they were going to chase after her. But I held my hand out to keep them back. Deep down, I wanted to swing my sword right through Administrator, of course. But giving in to my emotions now would only waste Cardinal’s determination and sacrifice. I had to hold back my tears, grit my teeth, and stay put.
Rainbows of sheer delight cascaded through Administrator’s eyes as she stared down at her counterpart. Then a bolt of lightning shot from the tip of the rapier, painting the entire chamber white for a split second as it pierced Cardinal’s little body.
In the center of the blurred wall of white that was my vision, I saw a silhouette bend backward as though it had been flicked.
The energy of the beyond-massive lightning bolt charred the air as it dispersed, and I struggled to keep my eyes open as it threatened to bowl me over.
The youthful sage hadn’t actually fallen yet. She leaned on her long staff, feet planted firmly into the carpet, face resolutely pointed at her archenemy.
But the signs of damage were ghastly. Her black hat and robe were ragged and smoking, and part of her proud, shining curls was burned so badly it was basically ash.
As we watched in silent horror just fifteen feet away, Cardinal lifted her left hand and brushed off her charred hair. When she spoke, her voice was ragged but loud. “Hmph…So this is all…y-you’re capable of. Fire as many as you want…but you can’t—”
Krakowww!!
Another mammoth thunderbolt shook the world.
A lightning bolt even greater than the first one rocketed out of Administrator’s rapier, mercilessly tearing through Cardinal. Her pointed hat flew off and evaporated into tiny shards. Her body twitched in agony, slumped to the side, and escaped falling over entirely only by going to one knee.
“Oh, but of course I’m going easy on you, my little one,” Administrator whispered, just barely holding back her mad exultation. “It would be too boring if I finished you off all at once. I’ve been waiting two hundred years for this…moment!!”
Craaak!! A third blast.
This one arced overhead and struck Cardinal like a whip, slamming her against the ground with terrifying force. She bounced high and collapsed to the ground again, where she lay limply.
Half of her velvet robe was charred cinders now, and there were more burnt holes in the white blouse and black knickers underneath it. Her skin was white as snow before, but now there were burn marks like black snakes running along her limbs.
Still, her arm pressed into the carpet, trying to lift her body off it. As if just to mock this tiny act—practically the last ounce of strength Cardinal could have had left—Administrator hit her with another lightning bolt sideways. The little girl was blasted into the air and rolled several yards away across the floor.
“Heh…heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.” From her distant height, Administrator’s laughter spilled forth, as though she couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Heh-heh, ah-ha. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.”
Her mirror eyes had neither white nor iris. Instead, brilliant refracted rainbow light swirled through them. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
She held up the rapier, and from its tip poured a succession of lightning, one bolt after another, endlessly ravaging Cardinal’s helpless body. Each one kicked her like a ball, burning away her clothes, her skin, her hair, her very existence.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” bellowed Administrator, hair spraying as she writhed in demonic pleasure.
I barely even heard the sound. Tears flooded from my eyes and blurred my vision, and it wasn’t because the rampant flashing of lightning was burning them. It was just the only outlet for the storm of feelings that was roaring through me: lamentation that Cardinal’s life was slipping away before my eyes, fury at Administrator’s delight in her callous execution, but most of all, anger at myself for being powerless to do anything but watch.
I couldn’t even ready my sword or take a single step forward. Even if the worst should come to pass and Cardinal’s sacrifice was utterly wasted and the voices in my head screamed to use that sword to kill Administrator, my body might as well have been turned to stone for all it listened to me.
And I knew why.
If it was my power of Incarnation that caused my Vorpal Strike to extend far beyond its range to pierce Prime Senator Chudelkin, then that very same power was what turned me into helpless stone now.
When I attacked the Sword Golem minutes ago, I didn’t put a dent in it—and its counterattack nearly killed me. The feeling of that cold blade severing my torso left me with a powerful mental image of defeat. Terror gripped my limbs, so powerful that it made me all but certain that I couldn’t summon that mental image of being Kirito the Black Swordsman again.
I couldn’t beat any Integrity Knight now. Not even the students at Swordcraft Academy. And the idea that I might attack the pontifex was simply laughable.
“…Nngh…hrrk…”
I felt my throat convulse and heard the miserable sobs that escaped.
Cardinal knew she was defeated, accepted it, and bravely faced her fate. The thought that she was in the act of giving up her life now and I was going to be saved by abandoning her filled me with a festering self-hatred.
Then I noticed Alice, clenching her teeth, and Eugeo, his body curled, shedding silent tears. I couldn’t know what they were feeling, but at the very least, it was clear that they, too, were aware of their own powerlessness.
Even if we escaped with our lives now, what could we possibly do with these mental scars on our souls?
All we could do was watch as presumably the last and largest bolt of lightning infused the rapier, which the young woman brandished on high. “Now…let’s finish this—our two-hundred-year game of hide-and-seek. Good-bye, Lyserith. Good-bye, my daughter…and my other self.”
It was almost sentimental, if not for the fact that it came from lips twisted with sick joy. She lowered the rapier.
The final attack came surging on a million rays of light, striking Cardinal’s prone body, burning it, obliterating it.
The sage’s body flew high in the air, right leg disintegrating from its charred state below the knee, and landed at my feet. The sound it made was dry and weightless, like there was no longer any mass to her. Pieces of blackened soot scattered off her skin and melted into thin air.
“Heh-heh…ah-ha-ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Aaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
> Administrator spun the sword in her palm, contorting her upper body like she was doing a dance. “I can see it…I can see your life ebbing away, bit by bit!! Oh, what a beautiful sight…each little droplet like the finest gemstone…Now show me the final act. I will give you just enough time to say your good-byes.”
I fell to my knees, as though my body had been waiting to obey that order, and reached out to Cardinal. The right side of her face was charred black, and her left eye was closed. But where I touched her cheek, I felt the slightest warmth of life, just before it could vanish.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had lifted her up with both hands and cradled her to my chest. My tears overflowed, dropping onto her badly burned skin.
Her burned eyelashes fluttered and rose. Even at the moment of her death, Cardinal’s dark-brown eyes were full of everlasting love and tenderness.
“Don’t cry, Kirito.”
She didn’t say the words aloud. The concept just entered my consciousness as thought.
“It is not the worst end I could have. I never expected…that I would die in the arms of someone…whose heart I felt a true connection with…”
“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…,” I choked out, hardly more audible than she’d been. Cardinal’s lips—miraculously unharmed—curled into a faint grin.
“What…do you have…to apologize for? You still have…a duty…to fulfill. You and Eugeo…and Alice…must find a way…this beautiful…fragile…world…”
Her voice suddenly got much more distant, and I thought I felt her body getting lighter. Kneeling nearby, Alice quickly reached out to engulf Cardinal’s right hand with both of her own.
“We will…we will.” Her voice and cheeks were wet with tears. “You saved these lives for us…and we will use them to fulfill this mission.”
Eugeo’s hands reached in from the other side. “I swear, too.” He was full of powerful intent, so forthright that it made me wonder whether he was really the same shy, gentle boy I’d known all this time. “At last, I have learned the duty I am meant to fulfill.”
But I wasn’t expecting the words that came next. Neither was Alice, and perhaps not even Cardinal.
“And the time for me to fulfill it is now, in this moment. I will not run. I have…a duty that must be executed.”
4
Powerless.
I’m so powerless.
It was the only thought that Eugeo could entertain as Administrator was charring Cardinal’s body with her tremendous bolts of lightning.
The Sword Golem, which seemed like some horrific demon from the land of darkness, had started off just as human as Eugeo. The thought itself was a shock, and the realization that the pontifex was capable of envisioning and creating such a thing made him quake with fear. But what wounded Eugeo deepest of all was the despair that he was unable to do anything about it.
The entire reason that Eugeo, Kirito, Alice, Charlotte the spider, and Cardinal had come to the top floor to battle the supreme ruler was because Eugeo had wished he could save his childhood friend Alice Zuberg from the clutches of the Axiom Church. It was Eugeo who had put them in this terrible situation. It should have been him standing at the very front, fighting and taking all the wounds of battle. It should have been him.
And what did I do?
He’d fallen prey to Administrator’s seduction, allowed her to steal his memory, and pointed his sword at his best friend, Kirito. And when he’d finally regained his wits, he’d encased Kirito and Alice in ice and gone back to the top floor to defeat the pontifex, but he couldn’t manage it. In the fight against Chudelkin, the only thing he’d done was distract the enemy with sacred arts. And then with the Golem, all he’d done was watch as it had sliced up Charlotte, Kirito, and Alice.
Am I really this powerless?
Alice’s memory fragment is only a dozen or two mels away…somewhere in the mural on the ceiling. But I failed to get it back and survived only through Cardinal’s sacrifice, and now I’ll be thrown out of the tower. Is that the end of my journey?
The pontifex would surely send Eugeo, Kirito, and Alice to far separate locations. He might not even wind up in Norlangarth Empire. He might never find Kirito again or get back home to Rulid. He’d live the rest of his life in a strange, foreign land, trembling in fear of the Axiom Church’s retribution and cursing his own foolishness and lack of ability…
At the very least, he could keep his eyes open, to fully take in the blinding flash of the lightning that struck Cardinal.
And then he realized at last: Accepting the offer of banishment to another realm was the worst possible choice he could make.
The pontifex herself had said she would turn half the people in the world, forty thousand of them, into swords. A veritable army of horrifying, tragic monsters to fight against the army of the land of darkness.
It meant that every family, every couple would be torn apart. Just like Eldrie and his mother. Like Deusolbert and his wife. Like Alice and the Zubergs.
And then they’d be turned into the most hideous and horrific weapons imaginable. It couldn’t happen. It mustn’t happen.
Stopping that tragedy is my final duty. That’s why I’m here right now. I don’t have Kirito’s and Alice’s skills with the blade or Cardinal’s talent for arts…but I know there’s something else I can do. Don’t waste your time lamenting your lack of power, Eugeo—find a way to fight.
And so Eugeo stood in place, thinking his hardest.
The Blue Rose Sword was half ice, so it might break the barrier that rebuffed all metal, but if he just swung it at Administrator, she would either blaze him with her lightning or send the golem to slice him to pieces. At best, his Memory Release power might stop her in her tracks for a moment or two.
He couldn’t destroy the Sword Golem first, because its one weak point, the Piety Module, was safely stored in its chest, far from his attack range. Even assuming he could reach it, he’d have to strike through the tiny one-cen gap between the three swords that made up its spine—while avoiding the attacks of its rib swords. If that was possible, he’d need the pontifex’s ability to fly and armor that deflected sharp blades.
If only he could make his body as hard as ice, like the vision of Blue Rose and permanent ice that he’d seen in the Great Library, and become one with his sword. Become so hard that neither lightning nor flame could stop him…nor any blade cut his skin.
Eugeo’s eyes flew open.
There was a way he could do it. There must be.
But even if he could achieve it, there was something else he would need. A power like that which operated the Sword Golem. Some miraculous power that would call forth his Memory Release.
Just then, he felt like he heard someone calling his name.
His gaze was drawn upward to the ceiling.
Running around the side of the massive dome was a mural that depicted the creation of the world. The gods that built the sky and earth. The ancient humans who were allowed to live there. The gods choosing a single priestess and giving her the role of guiding humanity in their stead. The birth of the Axiom Church, and the building of the white tower in the middle of Centoria.
It was the same as the history book that Eugeo had practically devoured while he was in the library. But it was probably all fiction. A story that Administrator had cooked up to make it easier for her to rule humanity.
At the edge of this ceiling of lies, there was a fine picture of a small bird. It had a stalk of barley in its beak and was flying away. This was the blue bird, from the children’s story, that took the stalk from the strictly regimented fields of the great nobles and flew it out to the rural areas before it died. At this point in time, it seemed that this might be the one story that was actually true.
The crystal embedded in the bird’s eye glittered.
It was a glitter that had been familiar to Eugeo all his life. The light that sparkled in the eyes of the little blond girl his age…
And then Eugeo realized his role to play
at last.
5
Eugeo…what are you going to do? I wondered, my eyes darting.
The flaxen-haired youth, my unquestionable best friend, Eugeo the swordsman of the Aincrad style, looked back into my eyes for just a moment and smiled. Then he turned to Cardinal and said, “With what strength you have left, turn me—turn my body into a sword. Just like that puppet.”
As though it were bringing her mind back to the surface, this statement caused Cardinal’s eyes to sharpen again, widening in surprise.
“Eugeo…are you…?”
“If we escape this place…then Administrator will turn half the people of the world into those horrible monsters. We cannot let that happen. If there’s any way to prevent that tragedy, any last hope remaining, then it must be in that sacred art…”
His smile had the serenity of understanding and acceptance. He wrapped her left hand in both of his and whispered, “System Call…Remove Core Protection.”
I’d never heard that command before.
Eugeo closed his eyes when he was finished. On his forehead appeared a complex series of glowing purple lines, like some kind of electrical circuit board. They stretched downward, across his cheeks and his throat, to his shoulders, his forearms, his fingers.
The little pathways of light pushed a small amount of the way into Cardinal’s left hand where he held it, their ends flickering as though waiting for an input.
Remove Core Protection.
Based on the definition of the English in that command, I assumed that Eugeo had just given Cardinal limitless privileges to manipulate his own fluctlight. I didn’t know how he knew that art, but at the very least, it was a trio of words that spoke to his utter determination and acceptance.
The dying sage’s eyes bulged—one fine, one burned—and her lips trembled. Her uncertain thoughts traveled through skin contact.
“Are you sure…Eugeo? I don’t know…if you can be turned…back.”
Eugeo closed his eyes, his forehead and cheeks covered in glowing lines, and bobbed his head. “It’s all right. This is my role…This is the reason I’m here right now. In fact, there’s one thing I need to tell you here at the end. Cardinal…Kirito, and Alice. Metal weapons cannot reach Administrator’s body. It’s why I wasn’t able to stick her with the dagger you gave me.”
Alicization Uniting Page 15