Alicization Rising Page 7

  “But that is what historical record is. And the Axiom Church’s style is to block each and every hole of the sieve until the water no longer passes through,” Cardinal spat. Eugeo looked shocked. I couldn’t blame him—I was sure he’d never heard someone openly criticize the Church that way, especially someone who appeared so young.

  “Um…so, who are you…?”

  “Oh, her name is Cardinal,” I answered. “She’s, uh…another, former pontifex. She got kicked out by the current pontifex, Administrator.”

  Eugeo made a strange sort of gulping sound deep in his throat and backed away.

  “It’s okay—you don’t have to be afraid. She’s going to help us fight against the Integrity Knights.”

  “H-help…?”

  “That’s right. She’s got a mission to stop Administrator and restore her own rule over the world. So we’re, uh…working for the same side,” I said. It was extremely brief, and although I didn’t lie to him, I wasn’t about to explain that Cardinal’s first act after she regained control would be to bring about the premature end of the Underworld. I’d have to talk to Eugeo about it eventually, but at this moment in time, I couldn’t begin to guess how I’d broach the topic.

  My partner, who was essentially the personified concept of honesty wearing clothes, stared at Cardinal without a shred of doubt in his eyes and grinned weakly. “I see…That’s very good news, then. Well, if you were the old pontifex, doesn’t that mean you can tell us if the Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty is the same person as Alice Zuberg from Rulid? And if so…is there a way to turn her back to her old self…?”

  Cardinal looked downcast as she replied, “I’m sorry…but my sources of information from here are very limited. I only know what my modest number of familiars see and hear directly. My knowledge of the cathedral and the middle of Centoria is better, but the farther toward the frontier you go…I am aware of the birth of the Integrity Knight named Alice, but I have no means of knowing the details at this point…”

  Eugeo looked crestfallen at first, then sucked in a sharp breath when he heard what came next.

  “…However, I can teach you how to undo the Synthesis Ritual, the sacred art that creates an Integrity Knight.”

  Cardinal looked first at Eugeo, then at me, and intoned, “Simply remove the Piety Module that has been inserted into their souls.”

  “Pye…moju…?” Eugeo repeated, stumbling over the unfamiliar English (“sacred tongue”) words.

  I helpfully added, “Module is a sacred arts word that means, uh, part. Remember what we saw when we were fighting Eldrie in the rose garden? When he started acting weird…”

  “Yeah…that purple crystal rod started coming out of his forehead…”

  “Precisely,” Cardinal said, using her staff to draw a line in midair and then bisecting it down the middle. “The Piety Module is designed to interrupt the connections between memories. Thus, it hides the future Integrity Knight’s past and forces absolute fealty to the Axiom Church and pontifex. However, such a forceful and complex spell is not stable by nature. If those crucial base memories around the module are externally stimulated and activated, it can start to undo the effects of the spell, as you saw for yourselves.”

  “Meaning…to undo the sacred art, you have to force the knight to confront their old memories?” I asked excitedly, but Cardinal did not confirm.

  “No, that would not be enough. There is another element that must be present.”

  “Wh-what is it?” Eugeo asked, leaning forward.

  “It is what existed in the place where the module is inserted—in other words, the knight’s most precious memories. Usually, this is their most deeply beloved person. Do you remember what you said to him to cause such a strong reaction?”

  Eugeo already had it on the tip of his tongue before I could recall.

  “Yes, it was his mother’s name. That almost caused the crystal to fall out of his head.”

  “That would be it, then…Eldrie’s memories of his mother were removed, and the module was inserted to take their place. Administrator does not need any of the Integrity Knight’s past, but memory is strongly tied to skill. If she removed all their memories, their ultimate strength as knights—sword skill, ultimate techniques, sacred arts—would be lost. So she merely impedes the flow of memories. I removed much of my own memory for the sake of prolonging my life, and much of the knowledge and ability I learned during that period was lost along with it…”

  Cardinal then sighed and continued, “…To repeat, Administrator has taken the most precious memories of all the Integrity Knights. Unless you can regain those, even removing the Piety Module will not return the flow of memories to its prior state. And in the worst case, it might even damage the memories themselves.”

  “A piece of memory…But…then…what if the piece of memory that Administrator removes from the knights just gets destroyed?” I asked, hesitant to learn the answer.

  Cardinal frowned as she thought it over, then said, “No…I do not think she would do that. Administrator is a cautious woman above all else—she would not discard something that could be used. But I am absolutely certain she would store them in her chamber at the top of Central Cathedral…”

  The words top of the cathedral roused some part of my memory like a little jolt of electricity, but the sensation dissipated before I could pin it down. I tried to dispel the bad aftertaste by saying, “So we need those lost bits of memory to return the Integrity Knights to normal, but in order to get them, we have to break through the knights’ guard and reach the top floor where Administrator is…”

  “Do not presume that you can simply defeat the Integrity Knights without killing them,” she said, glaring at me. “All I can do for you is give you equipment that is the equal of the knights’. The rest comes down to how hard you fight against them.”

  “Wait…You’re not coming with us?” I said. I’d been counting on a helpful back-row mage with unlimited healing powers.

  But Cardinal simply said, “If I leave the Great Library, Administrator will instantly detect my presence, and we will be forced to fight both her and the combined power of all her knights. But if you are confident that you can tackle ten Integrity Knights at once, we might try it. Well?”

  She smirked at her suggestion, and Eugeo and I shook our heads in protest.

  “On the other hand, Administrator still likely plans to take you two alive and make you into knights. If you leave alone, she will send a smaller number after you. Your only choice will be to defeat them in order and make your way up the cathedral.”

  “Hmm…”

  True—when outnumbered, it was smarter to use ourselves as bait to split up the enemy as much as possible. But even succeeding in that sense, we were facing the most powerful fighters in the world. We’d had plenty of trouble against Eldrie alone. If we ever faced two at once, I had a feeling we’d be done for.

  While I pondered, Eugeo took on a serious look and said, “All right. If we have to fight, we’ll fight, and if we have to kill…then we have no choice. I was prepared for that from the moment we broke out of our cell. But…what if we have to face Alice? I can’t fight against her—I’m here to get her back.”

  “Hmm. You are correct. I am aware of your quest, Eugeo. Very well, if you run across the Integrity Knight Alice, you may use these,” Cardinal said, removing two very small daggers from the pocket of her black robe.

  They were simply shaped, like crosses with the long end sharpened. The only decoration of any sort was a delicate chain running through a hole on the hilt of each. Cardinal gave us both one of the deep-copper stilettos. I reached out to grab the fragile handle between my fingertips and was stunned at its weight. It was less than eight inches long, but it felt as heavy as the official swords at the Swordcraft Academy.

  “What’s this…? Some kind of one-hit-kill superweapon?” I asked, dangling the dagger from the chain in front of my face to examine it.

  “That dagger is only
what it looks like; it has nearly no attacking power,” Cardinal answered. “But anyone who is pierced by that blade will be instantly linked to me in the library via an unbreakable connection. In other words, any and all of my sacred arts are guaranteed to land on them. Those daggers are a part of me, you see. Eugeo, all you need to do is evade Alice’s strikes and hit her with that knife, anywhere on her body. It will cause hardly any damage. I will instantly put Alice into a deep sleep, one that will last until you can regain her memories and prepare to undo the Synthesis.”

  “A deep…sleep…,” Eugeo muttered, looking down at the dark-red blade in his hand with suspicion. He seemed to be grappling with the idea of harming Alice, even with a flimsy little paper knife.

  I slapped him on the back and said, “Let’s trust her, Eugeo. If we do have to fight against Alice and our only option is to knock her out, we’ll all get pretty badly hurt, including her. Compared to that, a poke from this little thing is no worse than a greater swampfly bite.”

  “…Except they don’t bite people,” Eugeo corrected, seemingly back to his usual self. He turned to Cardinal and said, “All right. If we can’t argue Alice down, I’ll have to use this.”

  He gripped the dagger tight and nodded deeply to reassure himself. I let out a breath of relief and looked at my own cross-shaped knife.

  “…Cardinal, you said this was a part of you, right? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Just because Administrator and I can generate any kind of object does not mean we fashion them from nothing.”

  “Huh…?”

  “There is a finite amount of resources in the world. You know that from the way the Gigas Cedar prevented any fields from growing in its shadow. Along the same lines, if I want to generate an object of a certain priority level, I must sacrifice something of equal substance. When I battled against Administrator all those years ago, she summoned a sword, while I generated a staff—and at that exact moment, quite a few very valuable treasures vanished from her chamber, heh-heh.”

  She rapped the stone with the butt of her staff, looking rather pleased with herself. “But as you can see, the library is a closed-off space. I do not have any objects noteworthy enough to convert into a high-priority weapon. These countless books are, of course, very precious, but only due to their contents. I thought about using this staff, but I will need it to fight Administrator, which means that the only possible substitute to create these weapons is my own body. It is extremely valuable—I have the highest authority level possible in this world.”

  “Your…”

  “Body…?”

  Eugeo and I stared at her tiny, fragile form from head to toe. I could sense how rude I was being almost instantly and turned my eyes away, but not before confirming that she had all her limbs. I started to comment but stopped myself several times before I finally said, “…S-so, um…you cut off part of your body, converted it into an object…and then regrew the part…?”

  “Fool! How would that be any kind of sacrifice? It is this.”

  She turned her head to the side and quickly ran her fingers through the short, bouncy curls of brown hair at the sides of her neck.

  “Ohhhh…your hair…”

  “The price for each dagger is a lock of hair that I was growing for two hundred years. If you had come sooner, I could have showed them off before I cut them,” she teased, but I caught the hint of sadness in her eyes. Perhaps that part of Cardinal came from the young girl who made up her bodily foundation.

  A moment later, she was the wizened sage once again. “For this reason, although they are small, the blades are sharp and tough enough to pierce the Integrity Knights’ armor. And because they are still, in a sense, part of my body, they can link to me through the void that surrounds the library. I fashioned these weapons for direct use against Administrator. I will need you to plant the blade into her body without falling prey to her fierce attacks. The other is a backup weapon, but as long as you’re successful the first time, you won’t need it.”

  “Wow…talk about laying on the pressure…”

  I glanced at the knife dangling from my right hand again and noticed that the shade of deep brown was the same as the hair visible underneath Cardinal’s hat.

  Despite the many confusing sacred words in the explanation, Eugeo seemed to accept the importance of the weapon. He stammered, “Umm…a-are you sure about this? You don’t mind if I use one of these precious blades for Alice…?”

  “I am fine with it. And in either case…”

  She paused and looked right through me with those all-seeing eyes.

  Yes, in either case, if I was going to bring ten souls back to the real world safely, including Eugeo and Alice, I would need Cardinal’s help to undo Alice’s brainwashing. It would probably be better to save this explanation until after we got Alice back to normal. If it was at the side of someone he truly cared about, Eugeo might actually agree to the escape plan. I had to make him agree.

  I clenched the fine chain, realizing with no small frustration that I was already taking Cardinal’s world-obliteration plan for granted. Perhaps the end of the Underworld really was inevitable at this point. But even if that was the case, I needed Cardinal to be one of those ten—even if I had to deceive her to do it.

  I turned away to escape that omniscient gaze and opened my collar wider to slip the chain of the knife around my neck. Once Eugeo had done the same, I went back to something Cardinal had said earlier that bothered me.

  “By the way…you said that there needed to be some kind of price to generate objects. So what did you use up to create all the food and drink when we first got here?”

  Cardinal shrugged easily and grinned. “Don’t let it bother you. Just two or three books of law that nobody will miss.”

  Eugeo the history buff made another strangled gulp, clutching the chain around his neck with both hands.

  “Hmm? What, did you want more? You growing boys…”

  She lifted her staff and made to wave it, but Eugeo’s head and hands both waved frantically. “N-no, I’m full, I swear! I-I’d rather hear more of your story!!”

  “You don’t have to be shy,” Cardinal muttered with a grin that was so cheeky, I could have sworn she was teasing him on purpose. She lowered the staff, cleared her throat, and continued, “We’ve gotten a bit out of order. As I explained earlier, those two knives are my secret weapon. Your top priority is to stab your targets with them: Alice for Eugeo and Administrator for Kirito. Do anything you can to raise your chances of success—ambush, playing dead, anything. If there is any way that I believe you outrank the Integrity Knights, it is your wiles…er, your practicality in a pinch.”

  Before Eugeo could lodge a righteous protest at that last comment, I said, “Completely agreed. If possible, I’d love to be able to utilize trickery all the way through…but sadly, they have the home advantage. We need to be outfitted for all-out combat. Earlier, you said you could give us equipment that was equal to that of the Integrity Knights, Cardinal. Does that mean you’ll be giving us piles of Divine Object weapons and armor?”

  Even in these desperate times, the old Aincrad instincts couldn’t help but react to the scent of a legendary gear event. But in contrast to my eagerness, Cardinal put on yet another exasperated face and said, “Have you been listening to anything I say, fool? To generate a high-level object—”

  “Right, right…you need to sacrifice an object of equal value…right…”

  “Don’t look like a child who just dropped his dessert on the floor! It is making me question why I asked you for help in the first place. For one thing, I believe you must realize that a weapon does not perfectly obey your commands from the moment you first touch it. No matter how powerful a blade I give you, it cannot hope to match the weapons the Integrity Knights have used as extensions of their very bodies for decades.”

  I recalled the way Eldrie’s whip had moved through the air with a mind of its own, like some silver snake, and
had to concede the point. Even back in SAO, it was a kind of behavioral taboo to immediately put your new rare gear to real use without practicing with it first.

  My disappointment was more than dropping a dessert on the ground—it was like missing out on an entire holiday cake. Her reaction a mix of annoyance and pity, Cardinal continued, “And besides, why would I need to give you powerful weapons when you already have excellent and familiar swords?”

  “What?” Eugeo reacted instantly. “You’re going to get back my Blue Rose Sword and Kirito’s…black one?!”

  “I see no other option. Those two swords are truly divine. One is the weapon of one of the four dragon knights, and the other is the essence of a demonic tree that absorbed vast resources for centuries. Even Administrator and I would find it difficult to instantly produce weapons of that scale. And you both have had plenty of practice with them.”

  “Oh…well, you could have mentioned that you can do that.” I sulked, leaning back against the nearest shelf. I’d mostly given up on retrieving the swords that were confiscated when we got thrown into the dungeon. Getting them back was the best possible news.

  “But…you can’t actually teleport them directly here, can you?”

  “No. I see you’re finally figuring this all out,” Cardinal said. She crossed her arms and looked troubled. “I suspect that your swords are being held in the armory on the third floor. The nearest back door will dump you out just thirty mels from there, but as you’ve now seen, any such door within the tower can be used only once. The insects that Administrator sends to look for me will swarm it at once, you see. So after you’ve left the door to get your swords in the armory, you will have to climb the tower on your own from there. Fortunately, the great stairs are right in front of the armory.”

  “Hmm, starting from floor three…and what floor is Administrator’s chamber on?”