“…!”
Alice and I gasped and held that breath.
But Cardinal didn’t seem surprised at all—or maybe she just didn’t have the strength to show that much emotion. Her only response was to blink.
Eugeo bobbed his head and prompted, “Please…do it. Before Administrator notices.”
“…No, Eugeo. Stop,” I demanded, my throat dry and hoarse. “If you don’t…make it back…then…then your dream…”
If we actually won this fight and Eugeo didn’t get turned back into a human, then the hopes he’d been holding on to for the last eight years—his dream of getting Alice back and taking her home to Rulid—would never come true.
Administrator and Cardinal were the only two people in the world capable of this ultra-advanced ability to convert people’s flesh into weapons. One of them was the ultimate enemy, and the other was at death’s door. If this gambit actually succeeded, it could very well leave him with no means to return to human form.
I wanted to continue arguing, but Eugeo turned his purple-lit face up to the ceiling and interrupted, “It’s okay, Kirito. This is what I was meant to do.”
“…!”
My best friend’s mind was made up, and there was nothing I could say to him.
And what could I say in such a situation?
One single defeat had me shaken to my core. I couldn’t swing my sword or even step forward closer to danger.
Instead, I looked pleadingly at Alice. Her blue eyes were full of pain and respect in equal measure. In the next moment, her head hung low. She bowed to the criminal whom she’d struck without hesitation just two days ago at the academy’s great hall.
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. In my arms, Cardinal struggled to keep her eyes open. “Very well, Eugeo. Then I dedicate the very last art of my life…to your decision.”
Like a candle before it burned out, her voice regained a valiant bit of strength inside my mind. Purple glimmers lit up the middle of her brown eyes.
The pathways of light that ran from Eugeo’s hands to Cardinal’s suddenly flashed. That light raced through Eugeo’s body, and when it reached the pattern on his forehead, it emerged as a pillar of light that blazed all the way to the ceiling.
“What—?!”
That was Administrator, who was still looking drunk with exultation on the far side of the room. Instantly, her triumphant expression vanished. Fury crossed her silver eyes, and she bellowed, “You half-dead little whelp! What are you doing?!”
She pointed her rapier at me, Eugeo, and Cardinal. White sparks shot from the body of the weapon.
“No, you don’t!!” shouted Alice.
The Osmanthus Blade, which had to be near the end of its remaining life, disintegrated loudly into a golden chain that flew through the air. At the same time, an earsplitting blast from a giant bolt of lightning came toward us.
The tip of the chain brushed the white bolt. The enemy surge was directed down the length of the chain toward Alice.
But by that point, the golden chain was stretching behind her as well, the far end jammed into the floor. Locked into the ground wire and unable to escape back into the air, the massive burst of energy flowed directly into the tower itself, producing a roar and white smoke before it vanished.
Alice leveled her index finger at Administrator and declared, “Your lightning will not affect me!!”
“Why, you little puppet knight…Don’t you dare speak back to me!!” the supreme ruler spat, snarling. Just as quickly, her sublime smile returned, and she held the shining rapier on high. “What about this, then?!”
A multitude of red dots popped into being around the weapon, well over thirty. If they were all heat elements, then their number was certainly over the element-controlling limit of twenty for a human being.
The Osmanthus Blade’s Perfect Control weakness against shifting flames had been made clear in the battle against Chudelkin earlier. But the golden knight did not give way; in fact, she took one loud, bold step forward, boot clacking against the ground. The golden whip, sensing its master’s determination, disintegrated into shards and reformed in a grid pattern.
While the two women faced off, the purple light shining from Eugeo only grew brighter and brighter, until he suddenly slumped powerlessly. Instead of falling to the floor, however, he began to float into the air.
He went into a horizontal position, eyes closed, and all his clothes vanished as though they’d evaporated. The beam of light rising from his forehead touched the ceiling. As though answering his call, one of the pictures in the mural began to twinkle—the little bird soaring through the ancient skies, its eye crystal shining.
The roughly thirty crystals embedded in the ceiling, the memory fragments taken from all the Integrity Knights, should have been active in owning the Sword Golem. Only the bird’s crystal was different, pulsing with light as it came free from the ceiling and descended through the beam of light.
And that crystal, perhaps—no, almost certainly—was the memory fragment belonging to Alice.
I suspected that when Alice was synthesized, she’d lost the memory of her sister, Selka. But if that were the case, then Selka would’ve already been abducted and turned into a sword here by the time I first met her in Rulid two years ago.
So if it wasn’t Selka…then who were the memories saved in that crystal about?
The hexagonal prism crystal, pointed on both ends, descended silently, offering no answers. The Blue Rose Sword rose from the floor, rotating, and came to a stop with the tip pointed at Eugeo’s heart.
Eugeo’s muscled body, the translucent blade of the Blue Rose Sword, and the crystal prism formed one straight line.
Meanwhile, the distant Administrator screamed and swung down her rapier.
“Then you can all burn!!”
Thirty heat elements floating around the rapier fused, forming a giant fireball that shot forth.
“And I said…no you don’t!!” cried Alice, her voice ringing loud and clear. She pointed her right hand at the swirling flame.
The tiny blades forming a cross in midair swarmed together into a giant shield. The knight leaned against it and pushed off the ground, rushing straight toward the coming fireball.
A crash.
A short silence.
The resulting explosion was big enough to rattle the entirety of the enclosed space. Fire whipped, light flashed, shock waves burst across the chamber, and most of the carpet on the floor burned into nothing. Even the massive Sword Golem, inactive across the room, buckled with the force, and Administrator herself shielded her face with her arm.
But safe behind Alice’s shield, the worst I felt was a wave of heat that caused me to gasp. Neither Eugeo floating in the air nor Cardinal in my arms seemed to have been affected by the blast.
Within a few seconds, the maelstrom of flame was gone, as quickly as it’d come…and at its center, Alice fell to the ground with a thud. A second later the Osmanthus Blade, back to its original form, slumped next to its master, point stuck in the ground.
Alice’s white-and-blue knight’s uniform was charred and smoking here and there. Large burn scars ran over her arms and legs; it was clear from a glance that she was catastrophically wounded. She didn’t get up—possibly unconscious—but in the valuable few seconds she bought us, Cardinal managed to finish her command.
Within the pillar of purple light, Eugeo’s body lost its solidity and turned invisible. The Blue Rose Sword, also becoming transparent, moved into the center of his chest, fusing with him.
There was another flash.
I squinted against the brightness, and Eugeo unraveled into a million ribbons of light.
Fiercely swirling, they condensed back into a new shape.
What was left floating there was not human in appearance.
It was one mammoth sword, stark white with the faintest hint of blue, and a cross-shaped guard. The blade was as long and wide as Eugeo’s actual body. Its slight curve was beautiful, endi
ng in a fiercely sharp point. A little furrow in the raised ridge on the flat of the blade was perfectly sized for the floating crystal to fit inside, and it did, with a little click.
Cardinal’s arm fell limply to the floor. Her lips quivered, and the final part of the command escaped like the slightest of breezes.
“Release…Recollection.”
Keeeeennn! The double-edged, six-sided crystal, Alice’s memory fragment, shone and reverberated. Eugeo’s sword rang on its own to answer that call and floated even higher.
Now the white greatsword was moving on its own, using the same logic that powered the Sword Golem. A sword forged from a human body, the fragment of memories that owned the sword, and the energy that bound them together: the power of love.
But there was one thing the Sword Golem had that Eugeo’s sword didn’t: the Piety Module prism that Administrator had placed in the heart of the golem. That was the tool that twisted the love powering the creature, driving it to murder.
“You’ll pay for this meddling, Lyserith!!” shouted Administrator, flinching away from the shine of the greatsword as though it was blinding her. “You can mimic my great creation…That one flimsy sword cannot withstand the might of my killing machine! I’ll break it in two!!”
She swung her left hand, and the silent Sword Golem’s eyes lit up again. It emitted an unpleasant metallic whine and began to shuffle forward at high speed.
Eugeo’s sword rotated until the flat was entirely level, with the point trained straight on the five-mel-tall giant. Its white length shone brighter and brighter, casting off motes of light into the air around it.
Then the greatsword flew, ringing like a bell. It soared, a sharpened comet, leaving a long white trail behind it.
“…Beautiful…,” Cardinal thought audibly from my arms. “Human…love. And the radiating light…of purpose…So…beautiful…”
“Yeah…it is,” I whispered, feeling more tears coming to my eyes.
“Kirito…I leave this to you now…Protect this…world…and its…people…”
With her last bit of strength, Cardinal turned her head to look at me with eyes crystal clear and smiled. Once she saw me nod my understanding, the little girl who was the world’s wisest sage closed her eyes, exhaled—and never drew breath again.
As I fought against the sobs, I felt the weight in my arms grow lighter and lighter. In a world blurred by tears, the white sword that bore Cardinal’s last wish flew straight and true on wings of light.
The golden giant spread its arms and ribs wide to welcome this oncomer. The blades took position like gleaming jaws, surrounded by an aura of darkness.
In terms of sheer numerical priority, there was no way that a greatsword based on Eugeo and his Blue Rose Sword alone could compete with a golem converted from three hundred human beings. But Eugeo’s sword sped up regardless, charging into the waiting fangs of the beast.
Its tip was pointed right at the middle of the golem’s spine—which was made up of three swords in alignment—at the purple light spilling from the cracks between the swords.
The Piety Module.
Gold and white collided for the briefest of moments. White and black light tangled, swirled, burst.
The overlapping metal collisions sounded like some beastly roar, and the golem’s arms and ribs slid down to an intersecting point. But just before they could close, the white sword plunged deep into the tiny gap in its backbone.
My ears caught the faintest crackling sound. The purple light seeping from the spine burst into nothing.
From the point where the white greatsword struck, the thirty gigantic blades held together with thick darkness began to sparkle and lighten. It almost felt like Eugeo and Alice’s love was repairing the sorrow of all those separated lovers.
Greeeee! A discordant scream came from the creature, gradually resolving into clean, clear harmony, a beautiful musical chord that rang long and loud before dispersing.
Then the killing machine, the creature that had nearly pushed us to death, fell apart into its individual swords and burst. Thirty different swords spun out following thirty different arcs, sticking and clattering on various surfaces around the room in a deafening clamor.
One of them stood directly behind me like a gravestone. It was from the left arm of the golem, the one that had sliced into me, but the aura of evil around it was gone now, and it was just smooth, cold metal again.
The glittering crystals on the ceiling that were controlling the golem blinked unsteadily and lost their light until they were still again. I didn’t know what had happened to the “minds” inside of them, but at the very least, Administrator’s Perfect Control, which had abused their emotions for power, was broken—never to return, I assumed.
The white greatsword that had destroyed the Sword Golem in a single swing was still levitating flat in the air, beams of light shining off it.
Glistening in the center of the blade was Alice’s memory fragment. Like a bolt from the heavens, I suddenly understood what was contained within it.
Thirty-one Integrity Knights. But only thirty swords in the Sword Golem. The fusion with Eugeo’s sword made it clear that the only memory fragment that hadn’t been used for that purpose was Alice’s.
So why couldn’t Administrator forge a sword that would pair up with Alice’s memories?
It must’ve been because Alice’s memories…her love…was too great. Young Alice loved Eugeo, loved Selka, loved her parents, loved everyone who lived in the village, loved Rulid itself, and even loved the time in which the people she loved lived and would continue to live.
Even the almighty pontifex couldn’t convert time and space into solid matter. So she wasn’t able to make a sword she could link to Alice. And it was why the sword that Alice and Eugeo made was so beautiful and radiant.
“Yes…it really is beautiful,” I whispered to Cardinal’s soul, which was now traveling to a place much farther than anywhere in the Underworld or the real world, as I clutched her body.
She didn’t speak back, but I felt her tiny body taking on a faint phosphorescence in my arms. It was the exact same kind of purity of being that I felt from the white sword’s miracle light.
This, to me, was the proof that Cardinal, who was once a girl named Lyserith, was not simply a program, as she claimed so many times, but a true human being with real emotions and love.
The glow brought a gentle warmth that penetrated my freezing flesh, even as her body began to lose its solidity. It was becoming transparent, until at last the contours broke apart, and she vanished in a spray of light.
The waves lit every surface of the isolated chamber, purifying it all—until they were ripped apart by a voice like a blade that resisted everything.
“That was a very vexing stunt to play right at your death, little one. You’ve put a very nasty scar on my long-awaited memory of triumph.”
Even after the destruction of her ultimate weapon, Administrator was as haughty as she’d ever been, a cold smile on her lips. “But the best she could do was destroy one measly prototype. I can make hundreds of them, thousands.”
The way she boasted about this with her rapier in hand was so mechanical, so utterly artificial, that it truly made me wonder, despite her having the same origins as Cardinal, whether she had actually lost her ability to feel emotion. Her shining white skin and dazzling silver hair exuded pulses of darkness like some kind of miasma.
Deep inside me, the cold serpent of fear bared its fangs once again. On instinct, I clutched my now empty arms together.
The seemingly invincible Sword Golem was destroyed, but at a tremendous cost. We’d lost the sage who was the only person in the world capable of counteracting Administrator’s overwhelming power.
All I could do was stare up at the pontifex in silent horror—but Eugeo’s sword kept rising, and with a smooth ringing sound, it pointed directly at our last and greatest foe.
“Oh?” Administrator’s mirror eyes narrowed. “You still want to figh
t, little boy? A little bit overconfident, just because you managed to stick in the gap and destroy my puppet, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t even be sure whether her words were registering with Eugeo while he was in sword form. But the pure-white blade steadfastly held its tip in her direction. The shine that surrounded the weapon grew stronger, its vibrating pitch growing higher and higher.
“…Stop it, Eugeo,” I rasped, reaching out toward the shining sword. “Don’t…don’t go alone.”
Driven by a burning panic, I shuffled over the charred carpet on weakened knees. I stretched as far as I could toward the sword and touched one of the motes of light that came off it, but the mote burst and vanished.
Out of the handle of the greatsword, another set of wings made of light grew. The wings flapped hard, pushing the white weapon directly at Administrator.
A wicked grin appeared on her pearly lips. Her mirrored rapier creaked as she swung it down, and another blast of lightning, perhaps even bigger than the ones that killed Cardinal, burst forward to meet the rushing sword of light.
The instant the lightning touched the tip of the sword, there was an even greater shock wave than the one that had started upon the Sword Golem’s destruction. Even at my distance, it buffeted my weakened body.
I tensed against the shock and did my best to keep my eyes open, which is how I saw that Administrator’s bolt of lightning erupted into millions of tiny tributaries.
Baaaam!! A peal of thunder accompanied the flying sparks, which in turn created their own, much smaller explosions around the room. And even through the tremendous deluge of energy that it shattered, the sword flew on. The white surface of its blade was covered in fine cracks, and pieces began to fall off. They were parts of Eugeo’s body, pieces of his very life.
“Eugeo!!” I screamed, my voice lost in the storm.
“Boy…!!” The smile was gone from Administrator’s lips.
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