9
How many minutes—how many hours had passed?
Without a window to look out, being stuck underground where no bells from Centoria could reach, there was no way to know the present time of day. The swordsman delegate always said he wanted to produce a clock that could be carried around, and while he’d been working on that with arsenal-master Sadore, they were far from being finished.
Each time she heard that, Ronie thought, The bells always tell us the exact time, so what would be the point of carrying such an item around? But now that she was in this situation, she had to admit there was a point to it after all.
Plus, the thousands of bells across the human realm all played a melody called “By the Light of Solus.” It was a beautiful song, but knowing that the history of the Axiom Church was full of so much falsehood made it much more difficult for Ronie to get into that worshipful mood whenever she heard the hymn play now.
The arts, such as music, painting, sculpture, and poetry, were still strictly controlled by the Taboo Index. Only those given the callings to make them could proceed down the creative path, and the imperial government had to assess a finished work before it could be unveiled. If the content of the art had any hint of negative sentiment toward the genesis legend or the Axiom Church, or was aiming for too vulgar or amusing an effect, they would not be approved.
The swordsman delegate wanted to eliminate that standard’s body immediately, but there were countering votes on the Unification Council—chief among them being Nergius—so it hadn’t happened yet. Ronie found this to be a tricky topic, but she hoped that someday people could sing what they wanted—and paint and write the stories they wanted, without being tied to their callings.
But in order to see that world become a reality, she needed to escape this place alive.
While she was gathering her resolve, a voice that was the utter opposite grumbled, “Ugh, it’s no good…”
Tiese had been attempting to open the lock using Incarnation, but now she was lying flat on her back on the ground.
“And Kirito opened it just like that…”
The situation was perilous and not a joke, but Ronie couldn’t help chuckling at her friend. “C’mon, you know you can’t just repeat what he does like it’s easy.”
“Yeah, I know…How about you?” Tiese whispered back. Ronie said nothing.
While her partner was attempting to unlock their cell door, Ronie was studying the wall of the underground prison, but she did not find the hidden door she was hoping for—or even any sections that might be easier to destroy. The blocks were made of Norlangarth’s special granite, placed without even a single milice gap between them. An apprentice knight couldn’t pull them loose in silence, and if they tried to destroy any part of the wall or bars with force, the sound would reach the mansion above.
Tiese sat up at last and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Shimosaki’s okay, right?” she murmured.
It was the fourth time she’d asked that. But Ronie knelt next to her friend, rubbed her back gently, and said, “He’s just fine. You’ll see him very soon.”
Tiese nodded silently. As she continued to rub, Ronie herself was secretly worried about Tsukigake.
Between the mansion and the gate to Centoria, it was mostly flat grassland with a few features here and there and the private imperial plantation. She didn’t think any animals that would attack a baby dragon lived there, but to be fair, Ronie didn’t know that much about the estate. There was no denying the possibility of unexpected danger, but for now, all Ronie could do was pray that Tsukigake made the trip safely.
Gods above…
She knew that the celestial realm beyond the clouds and the gods said to dwell there did not truly exist, but Ronie prayed to them anyway.
…Please give your protection to Tsukigake and Shimosaki.
She heard no reply.
The only sound was that of heavy rocks scraping together.
The left end of the lantern-lit hallway began to part, and the thick stone wall slowly rose. Ronie and Tiese shot to their feet and backed against the rear wall. The goblins in the adjacent cell croaked and shrieked.
From the darkness beyond the hidden door came the figure of the robed man that Emperor Cruiga called Zeppos, as smoothly as ink spilled from the black void.
The key ring in his right hand jangled as he stepped into the hallway and came to a stop before Ronie and Tiese’s cell. He peered in with a creaky motion, staring closely at the two girls, then straightened up again without a word. After that, he took a few more steps down the hall and stopped before the adjacent cell.
It was probably just a routine patrol, but Ronie carefully approached the iron bars to watch him. He had selected a key from his ring and was just placing it into the lock.
The cold, hard click it made was followed by more shrieking from the goblins. The man opened the door anyway and, in a strangely twisted voice, said, “You three. Out of the cage.”
Instantly, their shrieking stopped. Then a whispery voice asked, “Are you…letting us out?”
Three seconds later, Zeppos said, “Yes.”
Ronie could sense it was a lie. The pause was suspicious, and they’d gone to great lengths to abduct these goblins from the inn in South Centoria. They weren’t just going to release them now.
But the goblins walked out of the cell without any apparent doubt about his words.
“Walk past that door,” said Zeppos, pointing not to the exit down the right side of the passageway that led to the surface but to the hidden doorway on the left. The three began to walk, Zeppos following them to block their escape route.
When he started to pass the iron bars, Ronie was unable to help herself. “What are you going to do with those people?”
The goblins came to a stop, apparently completely trusting that they were about to be freed, and looked at Ronie and Tiese with gazes of confusion and apology. Behind them, Zeppos barked with laughter.
“Keh-heh…‘people,’ you call them.”
“What’s so funny?” demanded Tiese. Zeppos twisted forward to peer into the cell again. His grin had vanished.
“Once a goblin, always a goblin—no matter how much the world changes.”
Those words sounded somehow familiar to Ronie. But before she could place the memory, Zeppos straightened and barked an order to his prisoners: “Now walk. Go up the stairs, and I’ll let you outside.”
The goblins resumed their march, and Zeppos followed them into the darkness of the hidden door. Four sets of footsteps went up the stone stairs and faded. Lastly, there was a wooden creaking, and silence returned to the cells.
“……He’s not actually releasing them…is he?” Tiese whispered. Ronie had to agree.
“I think…they finished preparing for something. I don’t know what it is…but I’m sure it’s going to involve doing something to those poor goblins,” she whispered.
Tiese bit her lip, her expression worried. “Kirito said the kidnappers might commit another murder in Centoria and frame the kidnapped goblins for the act. If that’s true…then some innocent soul in Centoria is going to die again.”
“……Yes.”
Ronie’s mind raced. If her partner’s conjecture was correct, the kidnappers—Emperor Cruiga and Zeppos—would commit another atrocity. But who would they kill—and where?
Kirito had said something else, too. If the killer was able to murder Yazen in violation of the Taboo Index, and it was because he was a former serf of the private estate, then other serfs might be equally vulnerable.
He had come to that conclusion because Asuna had been able to hear the killer’s voice through past-scrying. The words the killer had said just before killing Yazen:
Once a serf, always a serf. If you don’t like that, then die right here and now!
“……Ah!”
The sound of Zeppos’s voice, still fresh from just a few minutes ago, flooded Ronie’s mind.
Once a goblin, always a goblin.
Aside from the subject, it was the exact same phrase.
That was it. It was far too weak to be a certainty and didn’t indicate any kind of causality. But Ronie had absolute belief that her intuition was correct in this case.
“…That man…Zeppos. He’s the one who killed Yazen at the inn,” she said, her voice quivering. Tiese bobbed her head decisively, expression firm; she had come to the same conclusion.
“Yes…I get that feeling, too. I don’t know how much of the Taboo Index he can break, but it’s clear he’s going to use the goblins to do something that’s much worse than what happened with Yazen. We have to stop him.”
“Yes…”
Ronie stared at the darkness beyond the hidden doorway on the other side of the bars. The door had not yet been returned to its closed position.
She didn’t know the precise time, but if all was going well, Tsukigake should be reaching the gate of Centoria by now. Sadly, she couldn’t speak human language. How many minutes would it take for the guards at the gate to notice that Tsukigake was a dragon hatchling, send a messenger to the cathedral, and deliver a report to Kirito or Asuna or one of the Integrity Knights so that someone could come here to the private estate to save them…?
And the carriage that Ronie and Tiese took to get here was still at the east side of the lake. Even the swordsman delegate wouldn’t be able to guess that they were actually deep in the woods on the west side of the lake and trapped in a dungeon beneath the mansion there. They’d have to hope that Tsukigake would be with the rescue team, but that would all take time, so even if all went as smoothly as possible, they ought to assume help wouldn’t arrive for another hour, at least.
It was too optimistic to believe nothing would happen to the goblins that had been taken upstairs before then. The girls needed to do something right now, or it would be too late.
But it was impossible to break their iron bars quietly, and it remained to be seen if they could accomplish it at all. Plus, succeed or fail, the sounds of the attempt would surely reach the mansion, where the emperor and his crony would hear. Such a thing could spell disaster for their hostage, Shimosaki.
What can we do? What is the best plan…?
Ronie squeezed her eyes shut, with no clear answer coming to mind.
She’d felt this awful feeling just one week earlier. It was when she’d visited Obsidia Palace in the Dark Territory with Kirito, when Ambassador Sheyta and Commander Iskahn’s daughter Leazetta was kidnapped, with the demand for her release being the public execution of Kirito. If they didn’t do what was demanded, Leazetta’s life would have been taken.
As the time limit approached, Ronie had lost her cool. In Kirito’s presence, she had claimed that if he was to choose his own execution, she would demand to receive the same fate right next to him.
And in response, Kirito had said, I won’t give up. I’ll find a way to rescue Leazetta…and I’ll return to the cathedral with you. That’s our home.
He was right. She couldn’t give up. She had to think for all she was worth. What was something she could do here on her own, without waiting for Tsukigake to make everything succeed? There had to be a way to avoid losing either the goblins or her dragon.
“Tiese…,” Ronie murmured, right at the same moment her best friend said, “Let’s break the bars.”
“Huh…?”
That had been her last resort, not the first thing she expected to hear. Ronie shook her head and protested, “B-but if they hear us up there, Shimosaki will be—”
However, Tiese’s lips pursed, as though she expected that rebuttal. She looked up at the ceiling of the underground cell.
“…I don’t think there are that many people in this mansion. Probably just the emperor and Zeppos…Otherwise, there’s no reason the emperor himself would risk danger to appear before us.”
It was true that, earlier, Emperor Cruiga had acted as a decoy, drawing the girls’ attention until Zeppos could sneak up from behind and capture Shimosaki. If there were other followers, they would be the ones left to be the distraction.
“Yeah…that might be true, but…”
“I think if it’s just two of them, we can get Shimosaki back safely if we catch them off guard. Fortunately, they’ve probably left our swords just beyond the hidden door.”
“…”
Ronie stared at the darkness beyond the doorway again. When they dropped their swords on the ground, Emperor Cruiga kicked them through the doorway, but there hadn’t been any sign of them being carried upstairs. If they could escape from the cell, there was a good chance they’d have their swords back.
If she had her sword, she knew she could win the fight, whether that was the true emperor or not. The real concern was Shimosaki. Even if it was only the two men up there, they should at least know ahead of time where the dragon was being kept if they were going to stage a surprise rescue, as Tiese suggested.
“Tiese,” Ronie said, lifting her hands up to her friend, “give me your hands.”
“Huh…?” She reached out, not understanding, and squeezed them.
“We might not be able to open the lock with Incarnation, but we can use Incarnation to pick up a signal,” Ronie said. Tiese’s maple-red eyes widened.
In their Incarnation training, the power to affect other things was actually equal in importance to the power to sense things. Their difficult meditation lessons were meant to develop that part of Incarnation. They would sit in the training hall, eyes closed, and extinguish their thoughts, expanding their ability to perceive the world through the realm of imagination.
Kirito, who had the greatest Incarnation power in the world, said he could sense a dragon from a distance of ten kilors, but for the girls, it wasn’t even a surefire guarantee that they could sense a person in the same room. Now they were trying to do it through the thick stone ceiling. It was a reckless attempt, but that was the only method they had for identifying the little dragon’s location.
Tiese started to say something, probably thinking the same thing, but then she clamped her mouth shut. She pulled a firmer grip on Ronie’s hands and closed her eyes.
Ronie did the same and breathed in the cold air of the underground cell. Across from her, Tiese inhaled, held it for a second, then slowly exhaled.
Incarnation was an individual power, but by holding hands and matching breathing, the law of unity in body and spirit allowed for it to be amplified over multiple people. It was a very advanced technique, and even with Tiese, whom she knew so well, they’d only succeeded at it a few times before. But one person’s Incarnation probably wasn’t going to be enough to probe through the ceiling.
With each breath, their respiration rates grew closer to synchronization. The sensation of touching skin melted into one, so neither could tell where her own hand ended and the other’s began. The boundary between self and external world faded, ever so slowly, and their senses expanded…
There were three auras directly above the basement cell. They seemed to be lying down side by side. That had to be the trio of mountain goblins.
A bit farther away were two more presences. They felt unbearably cold, too much so to be living humans, but they undoubtedly belonged to Emperor Cruiga and Zeppos.
And in a corner of the same room was a small but very warm aura. As soon as they sensed that, Tiese’s breathing went out of sync. The combination of their Incarnation wavered briefly, then stabilized. They could feel Shimosaki’s worry and loneliness, but he didn’t seem to be badly hurt.
Then they expanded their range. It gave them a broad understanding of the mansion’s layout. It lived up to the reputation of an imperial villa, as there were many rooms on the first and second floor, but aside from the large chamber where the five people and Shimosaki were found, they did not sense any other inhabitants.
If they went up the stairs behind the hidden door, they’d be in what seemed to be a storeroom on the ground floor. If they went down the hallway from there, the door to the great hall was just five mels away. If they ran at top speed, they could get there in fifteen—maybe even ten seconds.
Ronie and Tiese opened their eyes and stared at each other.
There was no need for words. They let go and turned toward the bars.
The iron was very tough, probably extremely difficult to destroy with their bare hands, but they still had their empty sword sheaths. The sheaths’ priority levels were far below that of their swords, but they were probably still tough enough to withstand a single swing.
“…Hey, do you remember the story of how Eugeo and Kirito escaped the prison beneath Central Cathedral?” Tiese whispered, to Ronie’s surprise.
“Of course. They cut the metal chains and used them to break the bars.”
“At the time they told us, I thought it sounded so reckless…Who would have guessed that we’d one day be trying to do the same thing?”
“Not me, that’s for sure,” said Ronie, grinning briefly. Then she removed her empty sheath from her sword belt’s fastener, moved it to her right hand, and held it up in a vertical stance. Tiese prepared herself in the exact same manner.
They didn’t know what the emperor and Zeppos were doing to the goblins upstairs in the great hall. But once they engaged in the next step, they couldn’t afford to lose a single second to hesitation.
…I’m sorry, Ronie said silently to her sheath, sucking in a sharp breath.
She couldn’t use one of her techniques with the sheath itself, but she launched herself as if to do it anyway.
“Haaaah!!”
“Yaaaa!!”
The two burst forward with fierce shouts, swinging their empty sheaths downward in the form of the Norkia-style Lightning Slash, also known as the Aincrad-style Vertical.
The wood-and-leather sheaths seemed to take on faint-blue glows, which was surely a trick of the eye. The two sheaths made contact with the steel bars and shattered with a tremendous smashing sound.
But a moment later, the set of bars, two mels tall and four mels wide, bent in two different places and came loose from where they met stone, flying to the far side of the hallway. The entire underground passage thundered.
Let’s go! was Tiese’s silent message.
Ten seconds! Ronie thought back, leaping into the hallway.
They rushed through the open doorway and found themselves in a small storage room. There were leather straps on the right wall that looked like restraints and an assortment of oddly shaped blades and glass containers on the left. It was clear what these tools were used for, but they pushed that thought out of mind and scanned the floor by the weak light coming into the room behind them.
Ronie’s Moonbeam Sword and Tiese’s standard-issue sword were tossed into the corner of the room as if they were just sticks. Ronie spotted them first and scooped up her sword in one hand and Tiese’s in the other, tossing it to her partner.
Three seconds had passed.
A stone staircase led up from the wall straight ahead of them. They leaped up the stairs, skipping five at a time, blades in hand.
Ronie kicked open the door at the top, putting them in a larger storage space. The windows faced north, but there was plenty of sunset light streaming through them, making it much brighter than the underground chamber. The many display shelves and armor racks lining the floor and walls were entirely empty. When the mansion had been placed off-limits, all the treasures within had surely been carried out. Turning to look at the door she’d kicked open, Ronie saw that it was fashioned to look like a large shelving unit and would have been difficult to spot from this side.
Seven seconds had passed.
The real doors out of the room were to the west and south. They’d learned the general layout of the mansion from their invocation, so they rushed straight for the western door and kicked it open, too.
The blow was so forceful that it broke the hinges, causing the door to smash against the wall on the other side. They rushed through it into a long, opulent hallway that went left and right. The red wallpaper was decorated with lilies and hawks.
Fifteen mels down the left side of the corridor, the entrance to the great hall stood on the right.
Eight seconds. Nine.
Using every bit of her knight’s strength, Ronie charged down the hallway in two seconds and delivered a backspin kick to the center of the huge double doors. It didn’t smash them off their hinges, of course, but they shot open with nearly enough force to break them, revealing what lay beyond.
Ten seconds.
The vast room took up an entire third of the first floor of the mansion. It was gloomy inside; black curtains covered all the windows on the south side. But it wasn’t entirely dark, because ten or twenty candles burned near the center of the space.
The candles were arranged in a circle about two mels in diameter, within which the goblins were laid. One black figure stood just outside the circle, engaged in chanting some kind of art. It was clear something bad was in progress, but there was a more pressing priority at the moment.
Ronie looked around, wide-eyed, and spotted a sack in the far left corner of the hall—and a second dark figure starting to run toward it.
That shadow had to be Zeppos. They didn’t need to think twice about what was in the sack.
Tiese! Ronie shouted in her mind, thrusting out her left hand.
Tiese joined her, lifting her hand—transferring her sword to the left—to cross over Ronie’s.
“System Call! Generate Thermal Element!” Tiese chanted, as Ronie added, “Form Element! Arrow Shape!”
The five heat elements Tiese created were instantly transformed into five arrows by Ronie’s art. This synchronized casting was a high-level technique for halving the execution time. Tiese and Ronie were only apprentice knights, but they’d been practicing this long before that, when they were primary trainees at the academy. That was why they had a small chance of pulling off advanced abilities like Body-Spirit Unity and Synchronized Casting, which even proper knights found difficult.
It took just two seconds for them to finish preparing the art, and they spoke the final command together.
““Discharge!!””
Five brilliant lights cut through the darkness.
The flaming arrows roared toward the black-robed figure, who leaped out of the way with inhuman agility. The arrows hit the wall one after the other, causing little explosions.
“Go, Tiese!” Ronie shouted, controlling the final two arrows with Incarnation.
Hands free, Tiese charged for the linen sack. Ronie curved the path of the remaining fire arrows to chase Zeppos and push him farther away.
The fourth arrow missed as well. But the fifth one caught his flapping robe, lighting it on fire.
Zeppos silently tossed off the robe and retreated farther. Tiese reached the sack at that point and sliced the tightly wound rope with her sword.
“Shimosaki!” she shrieked, sticking her hand into the sack. The juvenile dragon was out of it; some of his pale-blue feathers had fallen out from rough treatment. But once clutched to his master’s chest, he crooned softly. “Krrrr…”
Ronie was relieved but also worried about Tsukigake’s late return. Both emotions flooded her at once, but she pushed them down and shouted, “Tiese, take Shimosaki outside! Leave this to me!”
“But…?!” her partner protested.
“Go!” she insisted.
To rescue the apparently unconscious goblins, battle with Zeppos and the eerily chanting emperor was unavoidable. Tiese couldn’t fight carrying the dragon, and if their adversaries managed to capture him again, the girls would probably never get him back.
“…All right! I’ll be right back!” Tiese shouted, swinging her sword in a flat line. A nearby curtain split, and the glass behind it shattered tremendously.
Red light flooded into the hall now that a rectangle had been cut out of the darkness. Zeppos backed away farther without his robe, as if afraid of Solus’s power.
Beneath his robe, he’d been wearing what looked like restraints. Leather belts covered in studs wrapped around his rail-thin limbs and torso, and at first glance, it was impossible to tell if it was supposed to be armor or some kind of punishment.
And even the flesh peeking through the leather strips was an unnatural color. It was unclear, just from the reflected light of the sunset, but it appeared to be bluish gray—not something you would associate with living human flesh.
I feel like I’ve seen that color before, Ronie realized as Tiese jumped through the broken window and escaped into the front yard of the building. She ran out into the woods nearby to find a safe place to hide Shimosaki.
Until her partner returned, it would be a two-on-one fight. She couldn’t try to take on too much, but she was worried about the goblins on the floor and the unsettlingly long art that Emperor Cruiga was reciting.
She listened to his hoarse voice but did not understand a single word of what he was saying. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be pleasant when he was finished.
With the point of her sword directed at Zeppos, Ronie started to generate a fresh heat element for the purpose of stopping the emperor’s cast.
But first, without a sound, Zeppos unsheathed two daggers from the leather belts around his thighs. The one in his right hand was slightly larger, but the one in the left was smeared with a green substance.
The left was the poisoned knife used to threaten Shimosaki in the dungeon.
And the right was probably the knife that took Yazen’s life.
Zeppos made his way closer, circling around the candles in the center of the room. As he passed through the light left by the now-bare window, it illuminated a face that had been hidden up till now.
There wasn’t a single thread of hair on his head. His long, narrow face, like the rest of his body, was blue, and his eyes glittered with extremely small pupils. She didn’t recognize his features.
“You got out of that cell much earlier than I expected, girl,” Zeppos rasped, his lifeless mouth twisting.
“Expected…? Then…you left the hidden door raised on purpose?” Ronie replied.
The skinny man gave her a thin smile. “But of course. As the Norlangarth family’s grand chamberlain, I would never be careless enough to simply forget to close a door.”
“Chamberlain…?!” Ronie gasped. Zeppos’s smile deepened.
Before and after the battle at the palace, Ronie had never met the grand chamberlain of the Norlangarth Empire, so of course she wouldn’t recognize him. But Ronie did know what had happened to him: In the meeting after the suppression of the rebellion, General Serlut, leader of the Human Guardian Army, had made an announcement that she still remembered vividly.
“The imperial grand chamberlain…is dead. I heard that he resisted surrender, just like the nobility’s officers, and was killed by the army.”
“That was my duty and my pleasure. I would die and come back to life as many times as His Imperial Majesty requires me,” Zeppos announced, crossing his arms over his chest, knives at the ready. He glanced briefly at the robed man standing in the center of the great hall.
Speaking of people who were supposed to be dead, Emperor Cruiga Norlangarth continued with his eerie chanting. And unlike Zeppos’s case, Ronie herself had been responsible for ending the emperor’s life. She could still feel the sensation of her sword driving deep into the man’s chest.
If these two were not impostors, then as Zeppos said, they had come back to life. But Kirito, who had the strongest Incarnation of the entire human world; Asuna, who wielded the godly power of Stacia; and Ayuha Furia, leader of the sacred artificers brigade—even the half-god Administrator, who ruled the world for over three hundred years—could not achieve the feat of resurrecting the dead. They couldn’t have really come back to life. There had to be some trick…some evil mechanism that Ronie couldn’t even imagine.
Sensing something in Ronie’s expression, Zeppos uncrossed his arms and said, “I left the door to the basement open to lure you up here, naturally. You’ll be the perfect combat training partner for the goblins, but they can’t get through that little passageway, of course…”
“Combat training…? Can’t get through…?” she repeated, her voice hoarse. She threw a glance at the goblins lying down in the circle of candles. They were very clearly smaller than Zeppos and the emperor—and even Ronie. And there had been no problem with taking them out of the cell in the first place.
It defied all understanding, but there was one thing she knew for certain. She had to stop that sacred art as soon as possible. And the first step in doing that was eliminating Zeppos.
“…I’ve heard enough chitchat,” Ronie announced. “If you’ve come back from the dead, I’ll just send you back to the depths of hell!” Bracing herself, she brandished her weapon.
Zeppos carried a blade in each hand. That meant he couldn’t use sacred arts. But she could—and she was going to immobilize him, then close the gap and cut him in two.
“System Call! Generate Thermal Element!” As fast as possible, she recited the element generation that Tiese had handled moments earlier and called forth five heat elements. Zeppos bolted forward, daggers at the ready. He probably thought that without their synchronized casting he was faster—but this was Ronie’s trap.
She kept the elements floating where she’d generated them, then leaped back and shouted, “Discharge!!”
The unrefined heat elements released their stored power, exploding with a tremendous blast.
Processed elements were needed in attacking arts to actually strike a target. Arrow Shape prioritized directional accuracy and puncturing power. Bird Shape was good at tracking a moving object. There were other commands with other effects, as well—but none of them were necessary if the enemy was going to rush right into the element anyway. Simply discharging them was good enough.
Just as Ronie hoped, Zeppos wound up right in the midst of the explosion. Those leather straps that could barely be called armor weren’t going to help him. Heat arts were basic, but five elements at once packed enough power that even a young and hardy soldier could easily perish.
Even if he was still alive, he would be immobilized. This was her chance!
“Haaah!” she screamed, raising the Moonbeam Sword as she burst through the black smoke floating in the air.
Kchiiing! There was an earsplitting rattle, and her sword came to a stop, a shock running from her wrist up through her shoulder.
“…?!”
To Ronie’s amazement, Zeppos emerged through the thinning smoke.
Most of the leather straps were burned and charred—and torn through at several points. His right breast was the most damaged part, where the tattered leather dangled loosely, revealing a hole deep enough to fit two entire fists inside.
But that was it. There was not a drop of blood, and the larger knife that his right hand held above his head was firmly blocking Ronie’s sword.
It was impossible. How could he be standing, with a hole in his chest deep enough to crush a lung as well as his heart? A member of the Integrity Knighthood had swung her Divine Object weapon at full strength. How could a chamberlain, not even a guard, block it one-handed?
Zeppos smiled, right into her face.
She jumped backward again, trying to evade the small blade, its sharp point glowing that awful green. But it wasn’t in time. The knife slid through space like a green snake and into her vicinity. The edge of her cloak ripped without a sound.
Shunk!
She heard a wet, nasty sound.
But it originated from a silver piece of metal that came flying from behind her back—probably a stake made from steel elements—piercing deep through Zeppos’s stomach.
“Ronie!”
It was Tiese, jumping back through the broken window, standard-issue sword drawn.
“Get away from him!”
She obeyed her partner’s voice and jumped backward again, away from the poisoned knife that had stopped just milices away from her solar plexus. Zeppos tried to follow, no longer smiling, but then Tiese shouted, “Discharge!!”
A second stake came roaring closer, hitting Zeppos in the back and piercing through him, until the pointed end was visible through the front of his chest. Blackened blood sprayed from his mouth.
Surely he was dead this time. No human being could survive being pierced through the heart by a three-cen-wide stake. Certain of their victory, Ronie planted her feet and raised her sword to deliver the final blow.
“No! He’s still moving!” Tiese called out.
If she hadn’t, Ronie’s head might have been cut clean off by the light-speed slash from Zeppos’s knife.
“Wha…?”
She whipped her upper half as far back as she could, stunned. The dull metal blade passed by her neck close enough that she could feel the air from it.
The strike missing, Zeppos retreated with awkward steps—he wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t unscathed, either. He stopped near the center of the great hall and stretched out his weaponized arms, as if to protect the circle of candles.
Tiese used that moment to cross the hall and run to Ronie’s side. She pointed her sword at Zeppos and shouted, “He’s not human, Ronie!”
“Huh…? What do you mean…?” she stammered.
Tiese glanced back at the broken window she’d just jumped through, then forward again. “In the woods, I found a huge pile of those sacks. They were all filled with soil…nasty-smelling clay.”
“Clay…?”
The mention of that word caused something in Ronie’s mind to flash.
Zeppos’s grayish skin. The body that was only dented in by the fiery blast. The dark, blackened blood.
Ronie had seen something with the same properties at Obsidia Palace in the Dark Territory. It wasn’t a human. It was a gigantic monster that appeared in the treasure repository…
“……A minion!” she moaned. Tiese nodded, and Zeppos’s black-stained lips grinned.
Minions. Artificial life that only the dark mages of the Dark Territory could manufacture. They only received simple orders, but their large bodies contained massive life and were very resistant to heat and cold. If Zeppos was a minion made of clay, rather than a person, that would explain why his chest merely dented inward when hit with five heat elements.
But that just raised new questions.
“Minions…are mindless monsters that can’t talk. But he…,” she cried.
Then Zeppos spoke, his voice rumbling and difficult to discern with the steel-element stakes through his stomach and chest.
“The Axiom Church…were not the only people…studying sacred arts…Emperor Cruiga—in fact, all four imperial dynasties, they of the oldest and most regal blood, have been performing endless research for centuries, all to complete one very special art…”
“All four imperial dynasties…together?!” Tiese gasped.
Ronie was just as shocked. As a member of a lower noble family in Norlangarth, Ronie had long felt that the other three empires were such distant entities, they might as well not even exist. The idea that she could simply fly over the Everlasting Walls, which felt like the very end of the world, was something she didn’t come to appreciate until after she took part in the Otherworld War.
But Zeppos was saying that the emperors of the four empires had been cooperating on research of sacred arts for centuries. It was a shocking revelation, but upon further reflection, it wasn’t impossible. Even under the pontifex’s rule, a travel pass would allow its bearer to pass through the Everlasting Walls, and the four imperial palaces that surrounded the cathedral were, in fact, less than a kilor apart if viewed from above the walls. The actual emperors might not pass through them, but their agents certainly could. Someone like, say, a grand chamberlain…
“What kind of sacred art is that?!” Tiese demanded.
Zeppos just leered at her eerily. “Geh-heh-heh-heh…If you still can’t tell at this point, you truly are stupid girls. It should be obvious…I speak of the godly power the pontifex monopolized, the art that confers eternal life…”
“Eternal…”
“Life?!”
Ronie and Tiese were stunned into inaction. Zeppos, meanwhile, shivered with injured delight and framed his narrow head with the knives he held.
“Geh-heh-heh…We used every art, every drug, even virulent poisons, to experiment with the process of stopping the natural decrease of life. And the laboratory for our experiments was the underground cells where we held you. All the serfs who died in those cells gave their lives to a great and honorable purpose,” he confessed, his horrifying admission adorned by grating cackles. The deep, searing hatred and envy contained in his voice and gaze weighed heavily on Ronie’s mind.
The imperial family’s grand chamberlain had status and power equivalent to that of the highest nobles. Why would such a man feel envious of two mere apprentice knights…? Then she gasped.
Zeppos wasn’t jealous of Tiese and Ronie personally. He was jealous of the very concept of the Integrity Knights. The undying souls whose lives were frozen, such that they lived for an eternity…
The emperors and high nobles enjoyed every privilege and luxury a human being could possess, but eternal life was the one thing that remained forever out of their grasp. How they must have stared up at the towering white structure that loomed over their own palaces, cursing and envying the pontifex and her Integrity Knights. And because the Taboo Index forced their loyalty and obedience to the Axiom Church, even the emperors could not make their resistance known.
But the Integrity Knights suffered in their own way. Ronie learned this when she joined the cathedral.
Those whose lives were frozen were fated to repeatedly say good-bye to those whose lives were not. Even Commander Fanatio. She was undying, having lived over two hundred years, but her son Berche was not the same as her. So long as no one resurrected the life-freezing art that died with Administrator—and so long as she did not implement that procedure on Berche—her son would age and die before his mother did. It was an unbearably cruel fate for both mother and son.
“Eternal life goes against all the rules of nature,” Ronie declared, desperately trying to keep her voice under control. “You’ve killed so many innocent people in search of a thing that should not be…It’s unforgivable.”
Zeppos’s artificial face twisted with rage. “You accursed knights,” he spat, spraying black blood from his lips. “You don’t have the right to speak those words.”
If Zeppos was a minion, as Tiese suspected, there was no guessing how his body worked exactly. He had huge stakes through his chest and stomach and was still alive, so he clearly wasn’t human, but that didn’t mean he was simply clay in human shape. For one thing, there was clearly blood flowing through his body, so perhaps if he lost it all, he would finally die. His form was much smaller than a true minion, so he must have much less blood, too.
Of the three minions they faced at Obsidia Palace, two had been punched to dust by Commander Iskahn, and the third was split down the center of its brain by Ambassador Sheyta’s chop. Inflicting that kind of damage might not be possible at Ronie’s and Tiese’s level of skill, but if they could avoid his knives and cut off an arm or a leg, they could win.
The real problem was the man Zeppos was protecting with his life: Emperor Cruiga. Over three minutes had passed since they barged into the great hall, but his chanting continued. The longer the recitation, the more complex and powerful the effects of a sacred art—and Ronie knew of no art that lasted this long. Asuna’s command for past-scrying felt very long, but even that was only about two minutes.
They couldn’t let the fight with Zeppos drag on. No waiting for him to die of blood loss; just finish him off as soon as possible so they could stop the emperor’s art.
“Tiese, when I execute my technique, you stop him with light elements,” Ronie whispered to her partner.
The two girls’ abilities with the sword, sacred arts, and Incarnation were even. In her heart, Tiese probably didn’t want to put all the danger directly on Ronie’s shoulders—but there was one area where a significant difference of power existed between them. Tiese’s standard-issue army sword had a priority level of 25, while Ronie’s Moonbeam Sword was at 39. It had to be Ronie who slashed him.
“You’re right that the Integrity Knights and Axiom Church may not have absolute rights,” Ronie shouted, brandishing her sword above her head, “but we’re always striving to be right and just, and no matter what anyone says, what you’re doing is evil!”
As though taking on its master’s will, the sword began to glow bright blue. When Tiese spoke the command of creation, she raced forward, pushing herself off the ground.
Invisible wings beat on her back, slamming forward with great force. In an instant, she had crossed over ten mels of distance toward the enemy. It was the Aincrad style’s ultra-speed charge technique, Sonic Leap.
“You will be fodder for our great ambitions, too, girl!!” Zeppos shouted, baring yellow teeth as sharp as fangs. He spun his knives to hold them backhand and prepared to meet her in combat.
White light enveloped his fierce features.
There were three sharp bursts in a row—Tiese’s light bullets had shot past Ronie in the air.
Light-based arts were not as powerful as heat or frost, but they featured overwhelming speed and accuracy—ideal for blinding targets. It was also the opposing element of the dark-built minion, so it would deal some extra damage in that regard, too.
Purple smoke began to sizzle from where the fierce light burned Zeppos’s face. He stopped only for a brief instant, but it was enough for Ronie. Her blue glow raced on a slant between the knives he was lowering.
The Moonbeam Sword cut deep through the former chamberlain’s right shoulder and through his left side. Zeppos froze in position with his hands near his waist, mouth open in a croak.
“…Emper…or…Crui…gaaa……”
The top half of his skinny body slid downward to the left and fell onto the carpet with a dull thud. A moment later, his lower half slumped to its knees.
Ronie had to jump out of the way of the spray of black blood that shot from the two halves of the man’s flesh.
The certainty that this time they had won threatened to flood her body with relief, but the battle was not over. They had to defeat Emperor Cruiga before he finished his sacred art.
Before her eyes was a ring of silent, flickering candles. In the middle were three goblins on the ground, eyes closed. And beyond them, a man in a black robe, his arms held high, in the midst of fervent recitation…
If the revived emperor was also a minion, then no half measures would defeat him. Like Zeppos, they would need to cut his body in half or cut off his head.
Summoning all her willpower, Ronie took a stance to perform another sword technique.
And in the next moment, several things happened at once.
“Ronie!!” Tiese screamed.
“Fulfill your duty, Zeppos!” thundered the emperor, pausing in his recitation.
Gahk! A shock ran through Ronie’s right foot.
A moment later, severe pain shot through her body and into her mind. She looked down and saw Zeppos’s head and left arm stabbing its knife deep into the top of her foot. The blade was mottled green.
She gritted her teeth as severe numbness followed the pain. She had to do something before the poison made its way all through her body, but there were a number of different arts for neutralizing poison, and she couldn’t tell which one to use without knowing the type of poison.
“Rrgh!” Ronie growled, slicing off Zeppos’s arm with her sword. Then she used the tip against the hilt of the poisoned knife to pull it from her foot. The blood that spurted from the wound was already looking blacker.
In an attempt to slow the spread of the poison, Ronie generated five light elements, then used her sword to cut deep into the flesh above her right knee. More blood gushed out, but the color was still slightly reddish. She seeped the light elements into the wound and executed Mist Shape to diffuse them into her bloodstream.
The light elements would neutralize the poison to a degree, but to entirely purify the toxins, she needed to use a special art that involved the medicinal herbs in the pouch she carried on her waist. She’d just have to try all the curing arts she knew, one after the other.
She reached back to open the bag with her left hand, but her fingers were already losing sensation, and she couldn’t undo the leather drawstring. The strength was going out of her left leg just as it did for the wounded right one, and her body toppled over.
“Ronie!” shouted Tiese, who came running up to support Ronie as she fell. Wasting no time, she swung her sword at what remained of Zeppos on the floor, slicing straight through his head where it still writhed.
In addition to the dull sound of a claylike substance being split, there was a sharp metallic clang. Zeppos was cut in two from brain to jaw. This time, his life was truly extinguished; the pieces lost their shape and melted into a sludge. The lower half of his body nearby turned into black phlegm that spread across the floor and began to evaporate.
Where Zeppos’s head had vanished was a strange object. It was a silver disc fashioned to look like a lily petal and a hawk feather—the special insignia given to those who served the Norlangarth Empire. The petal and feather were reserved for the highest honors.
The disc was split perfectly in two, broken by Tiese’s sword. Purple smoke was rising from the crack, issuing a faint sound like a wailing scream.
That was the core of the mystery—of how Zeppos and the emperor were back as minions, when they should be dead. There was probably—no, definitely—the same thing inside the emperor’s head that related to him in the same way, giving his clay body a personality and a memory.
“Tie…se…,” Ronie mumbled, even her lips starting to lose their ability to move.
Cut the emperor’s head. That’s how you beat him.
But she couldn’t speak the words. Tiese was holding her up with one hand, sword jammed into the floor, and rummaging through her own bag. She was prioritizing Ronie’s antidote over stopping the emperor. Ronie couldn’t blame her—she would be doing the same thing in that situation.
Deep within his lowered hood, Emperor Cruiga smirked, or so Ronie felt. There was not a single shred of empathy for the second death of Zeppos, the man who served him for so many years.
“Connect All Circuits! Open Gate!” the emperor shouted in a voice like a cracked bell, throwing his hands as high as he could and leaning his tall, thin frame backward.
She had no idea what those words meant. But struck by a kind of intuition, Ronie did her best to crane her neck upward through the numbness.
The tall ceiling of the great hall was painted black. A number of expensive-looking decorative lanterns hung from it, but they were not lit. But what drew Ronie’s eye was something in the center of that ceiling—a circular hole directly over where the goblins lay.
It was about thirty cens across. The work was not finely done; it was crude, with broken wood ends visible along the edges. It looked as though the floor of the upstairs room above had been broken through with an ax.
Why would they do such a thing? she thought. Within seconds, that curiosity turned to horror.
Through the hole pulsed something black and gleaming. Something viscous, something muddy. It was very similar to the claylike material that made up Zeppos’s body.
To Ronie and Tiese’s shock, the black claylike substance hung down from the hole. It moved like it was being pushed through by some great force or else was oozing out of its own will. The liquid bulged like a balloon, pulsed, writhed—and then burst with an awful sound.
It fell to the ground like a pitch-black waterfall, instantly engulfing the three mountain goblins and forming a cover over them before Ronie’s and Tiese’s eyes. Once the pile of material was over two mels tall, it stopped pouring down from above at last, but its lifelike pulses did not stop. It began to shiver and shake with the goblins wrapped inside it.
“…!”
Tiese shrieked internally and backed away in a hurry, still holding up Ronie.
The trio of minions opened their jaws as far as they could, preparing to unleash their darkness breath. The vicinity suddenly grew much darker.
At first, Ronie thought that the miasma coming from the minions’ mouths was blocking the sunlight. But she immediately realized this was not the case. It wasn’t just around the minions that was getting dark—the whole forest surrounding the mansion was plunged into deep shadow. The vivid, crimson sunset had abruptly turned into the dark purple of night, complete with twinkling stars.
Even Solus on the western horizon lost all its light, as though Lunaria had completely covered its passage.
But in the midst of this sudden arrival of night, there was one thing that shone fiercer than before.
It was the Night-Sky Blade in Kirito’s hand. The flat of the blade was emitting a golden light so bright that you almost couldn’t look directly at it.
Even Cruiga was taken aback by the arrival of another supernatural phenomenon, this one far surpassing the dismantling of the mansion. But he recovered, throwing his left arm into the air and boldly shouting, “Pay it no mind! Shoot them!!”
The minions threw back their heads into the sky and unleashed the purple miasma, which shone with a very dull glow of its own. Unlike the searing rods of heat from the dragons, these were spheres that left a trail behind them. They rose into the sky with an eerie sound like the screaming of a wild beast. Kirito swung down the Night-Sky Blade at them.
Ronie’s vision was filled with white.
It was so bright that she couldn’t keep her eyes all the way open, but she forced her face to stay in place so she could see it for herself.
The light was coming from a vast number of particles in the air. The dots of pure-white light held no heat, but they filled the air all around. The miasma breath continued ascending, devouring the motes of light along the way, but like a chunk of ice dropped into hot water, they shrank rapidly and ultimately blinked out of existence.
“…Are these…all…light elements…?” Tiese whispered. Ronie nodded silently.
The appearance, color, and movement of the points of light were exactly those of familiar light elements. But generating any element, not just light elements, was limited by the number of fingers of the caster: ten at once.
And there were thousands…even tens of thousands of light elements filling the air at this moment.
She could guess at how they were generated. Kirito’s Night-Sky Blade had a Perfect Weapon Control art—technically, it was the higher version of that, Memory Release—that absorbed the sacred power directly out of the space around it. He used that power to suck up the light of Solus and turn that vast sacred power into light elements.
But elements released from their caster’s mental control either vanished or burst. When you learned, you started with maintaining a single element on one finger. Once you could control five on one hand, you were a proper artician, and a master of the craft could control all ten fingers at once. Ronie and Tiese could only manage five at once right now.
How could he possibly control ten thousand of those capricious elements at once? Ronie simply gazed up at the floating lights in wonder; they looked like glowing snowflakes all around her.
The minions, meanwhile, opened their mouths again for another round of miasma breath.
That was when the floating lights all began to move. As though they possessed one mind among them, the ten thousand dots flowed and swirled, enveloping the three minions. Like when they were exposed to the ghostly light of the Moonbeam Sword, their skin smoked and hissed, exuding foul-smelling smoke. But that did not last long:
The dark-gray bodies were permeated by the light elements until the glowing was coming from within them—and without so much as a scream, the horrible monsters simply crumbled into liquid form.
As the substance splattered and flew, it evaporated into thin air, promptly exposing the mountain goblins that tumbled out onto the ground. They were unconscious and missing their clothes and accoutrements, but they were unharmed.
Some of the light elements swirled around Ronie and Tiese as well, healing their wounds. A warmth and comfort that was difficult to put into words threatened to ease her entire body, but she focused hard and stayed on her feet.
As soon as the fusions were gone, and the girls’ wounds were healed, the sky regained its sunset color.
The majority of the light elements had expired, having completed their role, but the last few hundred or so arranged themselves into ten rings that floated not far off the ground. They were placed in a parallel pattern rising vertically, forming a tall cage holding none other than Emperor Cruiga Norlangarth. The rings were just wide enough not to touch the edges of his robe. If he moved even a little, the light elements would infuse his clay body and cause him to dissolve, too.
In the light of the setting sun, a bit redder and darker than before, the man was now an utter shadow, his face hidden beneath his hood. Of course, the haughty, proud emperor would never become a meek prisoner by choice.
“Can you stand, Tiese?” Ronie murmured.
Her partner nodded crisply. “Yes, I’m fine now. Thanks, Ronie.”
“I should say the same…Thank you, Tiese.”
They hugged for a moment. After a quick examination of her injuries, Ronie saw that there was only a slight scar left on her right foot and above the knee, and her left arm and ribs were intact once more, if not perfectly so. Tiese had been hurt even worse, but she was able to move again without trouble.
Tiese’s sword was resting on the opposite end of the great hall floor, where the minion had thrown it. She started to walk over to retrieve it, but Ronie held out a hand to stop her.
“You can get it later. Don’t take your eyes off the emperor.”
Tiese nodded, her expression tense. They were worried about the mountain goblins, too, but he might attempt to cast some art upon them again. Ronie approached the rings of light carefully, sword held at the ready.
Kirito and Asuna were descending in a graceful arc from the sky above. Ronie and Tiese’s job was to make sure the emperor couldn’t attempt any nonsense before they landed.
When the girls came to a stop three mels away from the cage, the robed figure in black shivered.
“Heh-heh, heh-heh-heh-heh…”
It was a horrible chuckling that snuck into the ear. She pointed her sword at him, but the emperor did not stop laughing.
“Cruiga Norlangarth…your plot is at an end. Surrender peacefully this time,” she said as menacingly as possible. He stopped laughing, but it did nothing to change his arrogant demeanor.
“This is a repeat of one year ago, girl. I chose a death of glory then. Did you think I would submit to indignity this time?”
“You don’t have any other choice.”
“Choice…? You don’t understand. None of you understand a thing,” the emperor muttered. His hood tilted up just a bit. Ronie glanced up, too; Kirito and Asuna were just over the mansion now. Merely ten seconds, perhaps, until they touched down.
I won’t let him do anything, she told herself.
She did not expect the method that the emperor used to slip past her watch.
“This is farewell for now, girl. May we meet again,” he said, leaning forward.
“Ah—!”
Tiese gasped and reached out, but there was nothing she could do. The rings of light, which were no more than a milice thick, sliced straight through the robe and Cruiga’s body as he tilted through them. The clay form was chopped into layers that tumbled loudly to the ground in a pile, starting from the top.
Eleven black pieces promptly melted into a liquid substance that spread out and began to evaporate. By the time Kirito and Asuna landed behind them, the only things on the carpet were some scraps of black cloth and two accessories.
One was a golden ring carved with the family crest. The other was an eerie, glowing red jewel set into a blackened chain.
Ronie was standing still in shock when Kirito rushed up and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I’m so late! Are you all right?!”
Instantly, her nerves loosened, and she nearly fell to the ground, but she retained enough strength to stay standing and turned to the delegate.
“Y-yes, I’m fine,” she said. “But the emperor…”
“E-emperor?!” Kirito repeated, looking utterly shocked. But she couldn’t give him a detailed explanation. As Asuna was reaching out to comfort Tiese, a little yellow mass leaped free and smothered itself over Ronie’s face.
“Kyurrrrrrrr!”
That sound, at last, brought tears to Ronie’s eyes. “Tsukigake!”
She gave her sword to Kirito so she could hug her dragon with both arms.
Up close, it was clear that Tsukigake’s feathers were smeared with mud and blood in places, and her beautiful tail feathers were in a dreadful state. Centoria was a long distance away, but just running through fields and meadows wouldn’t cause damage like that. Tsukigake must have gone through a terrible ordeal to bring Kirito and Asuna here.
She caressed the crooning baby dragon, and soon there came another high-pitched cry from the eastern woods.
A ball of light-blue fluff burst out of the brush and came rolling into the open. It made its way through the stacked-up remnants of the mansion out in the yard and bounded onto the carpeted floor in the middle, then leaped high into the air toward Tiese.
“Shimosaki!!” she cried, embracing her dragon. Asuna stood nearby, watching with a beaming smile.
“If we hadn’t heard Shimosaki crying and seen the light elements flashing through the windows, we wouldn’t have noticed this place. You fought so well,” she said.
“……Thank you…,” Tiese said, her voice tearful. Shimosaki crowed “Krrrr!” into her chest, Tsukigake added in a “Kyurrr!” of her own, and then there was a third cry that went “Kyu-kyuu!”
“…?!”
To Tiese’s shock, the extra voice was coming from a creature in Kirito’s jacket that was much smaller than the juvenile dragons. It raced up his body and perched atop his head. The brown animal looked like a cross between a rat and a rabbit, with very long ears. It looked around at the entire group and squeaked “Kyuu!” with great insistence.
“K…Kirito, what is that?” she asked.
He rolled his eyes upward toward the rat on his head and said, “Well, uh…we were flying over the fields on the southern edge of the private holding when we saw Tsukigake fighting against some type of badgers…”
“I don’t think they were badgers, more like coatis,” Asuna pointed out.
“What’s a…?” he murmured. “Never mind. Anyway, we drove off the…coatis and healed Tsukigake’s wounds. Then, when we were about to start flying toward the lake, Tsukigake ran over to a wooden bucket…and this guy popped out.”
“From the bucket…?”
“Yeah. Based on the circumstances, it seems like Tsukigake helped it hide inside the bucket before fighting the coatis. I thought it might be some kind of quest flag…er, something important to keep around, so I brought it along, but nothing really happened,” the swordsman delegate explained.
Tsukigake looked back and forth between Ronie and Kirito, then crooned, “Krrrr…”
The rat chimed in with a “Kyu-kyu-kyu!”
Ronie didn’t know exactly what Tsukigake’s chirping meant—and certainly not the rat’s. But she could get a vague sense of the implications and tried to put them into human words.
“Ummm…it seems to me like Tsukigake made some kind of a deal with that rat…”
“A deal…?” said Kirito and Asuna and Tiese together. The rat bounced up and down unhappily on the delegate’s head. It was such a funny sight that Ronie burst into giggles.
But at just that moment, on the floor not far from them, there was a blood-red flash.
“Kii!” the rat shrieked, and it dived into Kirito’s pocket. Tsukigake and Shimosaki both growled a warning.
Ronie held up a hand to block the eye-piercing light and caught sight of its source.
It was the jewel resting on the ground. The necklace that both Emperor Cruiga and Emperor Hozaika had worn around their necks.
“Kirito! That’s the root of all this evil!” Ronie shouted. Kirito took a step toward the red light.
Then the jewel shot up into the sky with terrifying speed. The red light raced upward faster than even the art that shot fire arrows. Kirito reached out with his hand. The light slowed at once and came to a stop in the air about thirty mels up.
He had grabbed it with Incarnate Arms.
His Incarnation could make an entire metal dragoncraft fly; of course, the jewel couldn’t shake it off, Ronie was certain. But the jewel did not descend. It hung in that spot in the air, the chain trembling and taut beneath it.
The stalemate lasted all of three seconds.
With a loud, abrupt crack! the chain Kirito was pulling with Incarnation broke into pieces and fell.
But the jewel, as though freed from shackles, burst upward and simply melted into the red of the sunset. There was one last glimpse of it, nearly up to the clouds, where it briefly left behind a little red trail. The direction of the light’s movement was where Solus was sinking…toward the empire of Wesdarath.
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