Alicization Rising Read online

  Was it the Integrity Knight’s sense of compelling duty to uphold the law? Her love for this man that had apparently lasted for a hundred years? Or did it have something to do with what she’d said earlier…?

  Fanatio claimed that if the Axiom Church’s power was lost, the armies of the Dark Territory would run wild over the human world.

  If true, then she was sacrificing her own health for the sake of the common people—the ones the higher nobles treated like livestock, abusing and exploiting them for all they were worth.

  But that couldn’t be true. The Integrity Knights were the tools of the wicked Administrator, who took young Alice away, robbed her of her memories, and turned her into someone else. They were the hateful enemy. Their whole quest up the length of Central Cathedral had been built on the knowledge of their nature and the possibility that they would need to kill them.

  They couldn’t be anything else—the Integrity Knights couldn’t be a bastion of goodness now.

  “You…you people have no goodness!!” Eugeo growled, pouring all the hostility welled up in his heart into the Blue Rose Sword.

  Once again, a wave of ice vines grew around Fanatio, winding up her right arm and digging into her flesh with their thorns.

  “Stop…just stop!!”

  But although his heart was full of overwhelming hatred, something spilled from Eugeo’s eyes. He could not accept that they were tears; he refused to recognize that he was being moved by the sight of her foolish insistence on extending her own arm, despite the binding thorns that embodied Eugeo’s hatred and fury.

  The Integrity Knight’s arm was tattered. A carpet of broken thorns stuck in her skin, her blood oozing out and freezing into hanging red icicles.

  But it never stopped moving, lowering until the upright Heaven-Piercing Blade was pointed level, its tip directed right at Eugeo and Kirito.

  Through the blur of tears, Eugeo saw the silver weapon shine brighter than ever before. The light was so bright that Fanatio must have been burning off the entire remainder of her life. He had to squint his wet eyes to shut it out; the light was as bright as if Solus itself had descended on the Great Hall.

  I can’t win. I just can’t beat her. Eugeo sighed softly, watching the ice roses melt and break down from nothing more than exposure to her light.

  But he wasn’t going to simply close his eyes and wait for that sun to bring him death. He refused to give in to Fanatio’s “righteousness” like that.

  He would at least create one last rose in a symbol of spite. He summoned the last dregs of hatred from the depths of his heart for that final act of defiance—when Kirito finished his recitation and murmured, “You can’t beat her with hatred, Eugeo.”

  “Huh…?”

  Eugeo turned back and saw his partner with blood-flecked lips turned into a tense smile. “You didn’t come all this way because you hate the Integrity Knights, right? It’s because you want to get Alice back, to see her again…You’re here because you love Alice. And your feelings aren’t in any way inferior to her justice. Same for me…I want to protect the people of this world: you, Alice, even her. So we can’t afford to give up and lose now…Right, Eugeo?”

  Despite the desperate circumstances, Kirito’s voice was calm. The mysterious black swordsman smiled, nodded, and looked forward.

  Just then, the Heaven-Piercing Blade unleashed its biggest and final flash.

  It was a spear of light that not even all the beams until now, bundled together into one, could have matched. The light of the heavens, which Solus herself flung to banish the god of darkness—Vecta—in the age of creation, bore down as it prepared to burn everything in its path.

  Kirito’s eyes were wide with astonishing willpower. The final line of the chant left his mouth, a single note of defiance amid desperate odds.

  “Enhance Armament!!”

  The black sword, pointed straight ahead, pulsed.

  From every surface, every angle, darkness poured forth.

  A surge of pure, light-sucking black writhed, soared, and tangled. It, too, coalesced into a massive spear, thick enough to require both hands to encircle, and shot forward. The tip of the spear seemed to have physical form: a hard, sharp tip like obsidian. Eugeo recognized that texture—it was the wood of the giant tree he had spent every day of his youth chopping at, until just over two years ago. The prior form of the black sword: the Gigas Cedar.

  In that moment of recognition, Eugeo understood the nature of the Perfect Weapon Control that Kirito had activated.

  By awakening the dormant memories in the black sword, he had brought the proud giant tree, which resisted any effort to cut it down for centuries, back to life in this place. It wasn’t the same size and shape, but it was certainly the same material.

  Hardness, sharpness, and overwhelming weight.

  All three in such measure that its existence itself made it the largest weapon possible.

  Eugeo felt his heart lurch. And then the tip of that void-dark spear made contact with the end of Solus’s light. The resulting shock wave ripped through the Great Hall of Ghostly Light…and possibly rattled all of Central Cathedral itself.

  The tremendous outpouring of heat and dense light did push back even the demon tree, bringing its relentless onslaught to a halt. Yet the endless darkness continued pouring out of the sword in Kirito’s hands, propelling the weapon onward.

  The Heaven-Piercing Blade showed no signs of stopping, either. The wild stream of light strengthened by the moment, until the heat had totally melted all of the ice roses keeping the knight captive. Not only that, but the gauntlet protecting her right arm was bright red and smoking.

  Yet the stalemate between light and darkness in the center of the Great Hall continued.

  But this sort of ultrapowerful clash could not possibly equal out and vanish into nothing. One sword would vanquish the other and utterly destroy its wielder.

  And the one disadvantaged here was Kirito.

  No matter how tough the Gigas Cedar was, it was a tree with physical form. Just as the real thing was eventually felled after years of chopping, it would take damage and gradually weaken until it was no more.

  But the light of the Heaven-Piercing Blade was pure heat. How would one destroy a force without mass?

  If there was a way to counteract that, it would have to be either a mirror, like Kirito had already tried, or some kind of absolute cold from the Blue Rose Sword—some special quality that was anathema to the light itself. But if the Gigas Cedar had any qualities, it was being incredibly hard and heavy…

  And one other thing.

  It greedily absorbed all of Solus’s light and turned it into its own power.

  Suddenly, Fanatio’s spear of light splintered into a thousand tiny streams. It was Kirito’s tree of darkness that broke the stalemate and resumed its charge.

  The tip of his spear was, unsurprisingly, glowing red-hot, but it stood strong as it gouged through the sheer pressure of the light and bore down on its source. Meanwhile, the light itself sprayed wildly and landed all over the Great Hall, melting the ice vines and causing little explosions everywhere. The four other knights were blasted free from the ground and flew through the air.

  Fanatio the Integrity Knight did not budge a step when she saw the enormous black lance approaching. Her beautiful features no longer contained any anger or hatred. Her eyelids fluttered down, and her lips budged. Surely there was some emotion contained in that action, but Eugeo could not detect what it was.

  The sharp tip of the tree made its way up the stream to the source of the light at last, colliding with the end of the Heaven-Piercing Blade.

  First, the silver rapier bent, then it twanged and rotated as it flew through the air. Then the knight herself launched backward with astonishing force. Her body flew directly toward the ceiling, spraying shards of purple metal and obliterating the painting of creation on the plaster.

  Her fall was much slower. She came down with a shower of little pieces of structural mar
ble and landed limply in front of the doors at the far end of the hall. The second Integrity Knight did not get up after that.

  The spear of darkness gradually lost form and retreated like a shadow, retracting back into Kirito’s sword. The blade itself seemed slightly bigger than usual, just like during the fight against Raios, but by the time all the darkness was absorbed, it was normal again.

  Eugeo merely stood and stared at the aftermath of the tremendous battle.

  The perfect, spotless marble floor and walls were now melted, burned, and pockmarked all over. In the middle, where the spears of light and darkness clashed, there were fissures in the floor so deep, it was a wonder you couldn’t see through to the cathedral level beneath.

  No one who wasn’t present would have believed that this stunning destruction of the Great Hall of Ghostly Light on the fiftieth floor of Central Cathedral was between just two people, one of whom had been a mere academy student just two days before.

  But we did it, Eugeo told himself. We fought five Integrity Knights of the Axiom Church, the absolute power that has ruled the world since its creation…and won.

  That meant that, including Eldrie, they had defeated nine Integrity Knights so far. According to Cardinal, there were twelve or thirteen knights stationed inside the cathedral. So if they overcame a few more…

  Just as Eugeo was savoring the feeling of their progress, Kirito fell heavily to his knees. The black sword tumbled from his hand.

  Eugeo hastily let go of the Blue Rose Sword, still stuck in the floor, and helped support his partner’s body before it fell over.

  “Kirito!”

  He was stunned at how light his friend felt, a sure sign of how much blood and life he’d lost. His skin was paler than the marble, and his eyelids weren’t popping back open. Eugeo quickly looked him over and then put a hand to the deepest-looking wound, a gash in Kirito’s side.

  “System Call! Generate Luminous Element!”

  He moved the three light elements this produced into the wound and continued the sacred art to unlock their healing power. When the cauterized wound began to seal up, he let go and repeated the process on Kirito’s left shoulder. Normally, light elements required a significant amount of spatial resources, and thus a catalyst like holy flower essence, but not in this case. The life the Blue Rose Sword had absorbed from the five knights was now present in the air around them as sacred power.

  He had patched up the primary wounds, which would stop the continual loss of life, but Eugeo was not able to use light-based healing arts that could actually recover the amount Kirito had already lost—which was most of it. He clutched Kirito’s right hand with his left and began to chant a new art.

  “System Call! Transfer Human Unit Durability, Self to Left!!”

  This time, motes of blue light appeared all over Eugeo’s body and gradually converged on his left hand, through which they traveled to the other youth. Compared to the simplicity of casting the spell that moved life from one person to another, the actual effect was enormous.

  Between the fight with Deusolbert and now this one, it was Kirito who had taken all the damage, with hardly anything befalling Eugeo. He could never make up that debt unless he gave back to the point of passing out.

  But after half his life had transferred over, or so it felt, Kirito opened his eyes, grabbed Eugeo’s hand, and pushed it away.

  “…Thank you, Eugeo. I’m fine now.”

  “No, you’re not. You took so much damage, I’m sure there’s still more you just can’t see.”

  “It’s not as bad as when the goblins got us. I’m more worried about her now…”

  His black eyes searched until they saw Fanatio’s body lying at the far end of the hall.

  Eugeo bit his lip. “…Kirito…she was trying to kill you…”

  Just then, he recalled what Kirito had said before he activated his Perfect Control. Eugeo continued, “‘You can’t win with hatred,’ you said. Maybe you were right. That Integrity Knight wasn’t fighting out of personal spite or hatred. But…but I still can’t forgive what the Church and Integrity Knights have done. If they have both incredible power and the will to protect the innocent people who live here…then why can’t they use that power for…for more…”

  He stumbled, unable to continue. Kirito got to his feet unsteadily and picked up his black sword from the floor, then indicated that he followed Eugeo’s logic.

  “They’re probably grappling with their own decisions, too. I bet we’ll learn more about this if we meet this knights’ commander…Your Perfect Weapon Control was incredible, Eugeo. You were the one who beat the knights. You have no reason to hate Fanatio as a person or the Four Whirling Blades anymore…”

  “As a human…Yeah…I suppose you’re right. I was able to understand that much while we were fighting. She was as strong as she was because she was human,” Eugeo mumbled. Kirito chuckled and agreed.

  “They would insist that they stand for absolute good, and you’d think they were absolute evil, but both sides in this equation are flesh-and-blood humans. Absolute good and evil can’t be determined by regular people.”

  Eugeo got the feeling that Kirito was saying this as much to convince himself as anything else.

  Kirito, think about how furious you were about that Administrator…Can you still hold the same opinion when it comes to the absolute ruler of the Axiom Church and the entire world?

  But before he could actually ask the question, Kirito took off walking for Fanatio, who was still collapsed before the far doors. After five or six steps, he turned back and rustled in his pockets for a little bottle.

  “Whoops, nearly forgot. Use this to cure the kids’ poison. Just make sure you break their knives and remove any other suspicious tools they might have before you give it to them.”

  Eugeo caught the bottle, realizing that he’d forgotten about them, too. He pulled his sword from the floor and turned back to Fizel and Linel, who were both still sprawled out and paralyzed. The frost was totally gone from the area now, and the girls didn’t seem to have taken any damage from the ice vines or beams.

  When he made eye contact with them, they averted their eyes (the only part of their bodies they could move) in a sulking fashion.

  Lamenting that he wasn’t likely to get along with them, although for very different reasons than with Fanatio, Eugeo knelt down and pulled the two poison swords out of the ground where Kirito had stuck them. Then he tossed them up, so that they spun end over end in the air, and smashed them both with one swing of the Blue Rose Sword.

  They shattered easily and melted into little particles of light before they even hit the floor. He sheathed his sword, knelt again, and began patting the girls down for more weapons, apologizing as he did so.

  Lastly, he pulled the stopper out of the vial and split the remaining three-quarters of the bottle between Fizel and Linel. Like Eugeo, they would recover from the poison within ten minutes.

  He could have simply left them there, but he tried to imagine what Kirito would tell them, and decided he would give it a shot.

  “…Knowing you two, you might be tempted to think that Fanatio and Kirito are as strong as they are because they have Divine Objects and Perfect Weapon Control at their disposal…but you’d be wrong. They’re strong to begin with. Their hearts are strong, not their techniques or weapons, and that’s how they can fight through such terrible pain and perform such incredible feats. You girls might be skilled at killing people. But killing and winning are completely separate things. I didn’t understand that, either, until today…”

  The girls were still refusing to meet his gaze. Eugeo didn’t know if he was getting through to them at all. He wasn’t good at dealing with children, anyway.

  But even then, the two girls must have felt something, watching that fight. It was hard to think of Fizel and Linel as representing absolute evil, given the innocent, childlike way they reacted to things. Eugeo gave them a brief good-bye, then turned and trotted after Kirito.
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br />   As he made his way through the devastated hall, Eugeo glanced left and right, checking on the condition of Fanatio’s four knights. All four were still collapsed, significantly injured by the indiscriminate light-beam attack. But in keeping with their lofty title, none of the Integrity Knights had lost their full life. They had bled little, and they would probably be moving again before too long.

  But unlike her companions, who merely suffered from the beams’ minor explosions, Fanatio had taken the full brunt of that charging spear of darkness. Her critical condition was clear from a distance, judging by the large puddles of blood surrounding her prone form.

  Eugeo came to a stop near Kirito, who was kneeling at her side. He held his breath and looked over his partner’s shoulder at the knight.

  Up close, Fanatio’s wounds were so hideous that he could barely stand to look at them. There were four puncture wounds on her torso and legs from the beams, her right arm was shredded from the thorns, and she was burned by the aftereffect of her own final attack. Every bit of her was in tatters.

  But the most devastated part of her was, of course, her upper stomach where the Gigas Cedar’s blow landed. There was a deep gouge the size of a fist pumping blood out constantly. Her face, eyes closed, was so pale that it had almost taken on the color of her armor. She didn’t even look alive.

  Kirito had his hands over Fanatio’s stomach in an attempt to repair her wound with sacred arts. That her Stacia Window wasn’t open was probably a sign that he didn’t think it was worth looking at the actual amount of life left. He sensed Eugeo’s approach without looking up and said, “Help me, she won’t stop bleeding.”

  “Uh…sure,” Eugeo said, and he knelt on her other side and put his hands to the wound, too. Like he had done to Kirito earlier, he chanted light-based healing sacred arts. It seemed like the flow of blood was weaker after it, but still far from stopping.

  It was clear that if they kept doing this, they would eventually use up all the resources in the area and be unable to generate more light elements. They could temporarily refill some of Fanatio’s life by giving her theirs, but it would be meaningless if they didn’t stop the bleeding. They needed either a more powerful arts-user or some legendary healing herb to save her now.