Sword Art Online - Volume 28 - Chapter 5

5

Alice, Selka, Airy…Fanatio.

I envisioned the faces of the four people who should be protecting Central Cathedral right now.

But it wasn’t just them. There were a dozen-plus Integrity Knights on the ninety-ninth floor, plus an equivalent number of dragons in the stables below that, all in Deep Freeze, plus Natsu the long-eared wetrat.

Even from the space force base six miles away, I could clearly see the crimson flames wreathing Central Cathedral. The marble walls of the tower had the highest possible priority rating, so they couldn’t be actively burning, but the heat and impact would transfer to the inside, and on top of that, Alice, Airy, and Fanatio were on the outer part of the tower.

“…A hundred Incarnate missiles couldn’t cause that explosion…,” I said hoarsely, turning my gaze back to Tohkouga Istar, who leaned against the desk.

Istar had just told me I was not Kirito the Star King—because I did not understand the mercilessness of those who had the blood of the imperial lines. At last, I realized what he meant by that.

“It wasn’t missiles… They rammed it with a dragoncraft,” I said, barely above a whisper.

Just before teleporting there, I had managed to guard against eighteen missiles from three dragoncraft with an Incarnate wall. While their power was tremendous, the explosions themselves hadn’t lasted long. The flames licking Central Cathedral showed little sign of abating, so there had to be way more than twenty or thirty heat elements being unleashed. An Avus-class dragoncraft had three heat-element engines on each wing, and I had to assume the eternal-heat elements locked in their canisters, over a hundred in all, had been released and exploded at once.

Alice and Fanatio wouldn’t have shot down the dragoncraft hovering over Centoria, so there was only one possible answer: Emperor Agumar had ordered his faithful subjects to fly their craft directly into the cathedral.

Underworlders couldn’t disobey their superiors, but their hearts, the parts of their fluctlights that governed emotion, were no different from ours in the real world. How much terror and despair must the commander who received the suicide order from the emperor and the pilot who pushed the thrust lever down have felt at that moment?

“…Weren’t the crew who performed that suicide run also your subordinates?” I accused Istar, my voice as cold as it could be.

After a few more seconds of silence, the handsome figure in black responded in kind. “They took part in this operation knowing they would not be returning.”

“Took part? Don’t you mean, had no choice?” I shot back, staring Istar dead in the face.

I wanted to take the unconscious Eolyne and injured Lagi back to the cathedral as soon as possible, but I couldn’t make the gate to travel back until I dealt with Istar, who was a supremely capable gunman. Plus, Stica and Laurannei were still on the base, as were Tiese and Ronie, who had gone to rescue them.

One way or another, I’d have to use all the Incarnation I had to apprehend Istar.

His voice was colder than ever. “Even still, not a single one of them wasn’t prepared to sacrifice his life. Neither the crew of Ship Three, nor I…nor the crew of Ship Four, which waits above this base.”

As if on cue, the walls and ceiling of the office began to rattle and shake.

My first thought was earthquake, but I had never once experienced a quake in the Underworld. Plus, the source of the shaking wasn’t below, but above. It was the sky itself that was shaking.

……It can’t be.

I reached above myself and sent out a wave of Incarnation. The minimal density wave held no physical power, but it passed through virtually all objects while still providing sensory feedback to me, giving it radar-like properties. It wasn’t something to use incessantly, because other Incarnation users might sense it, but that wasn’t my concern at that time.

The Incarnation pulse instantly passed through the material of the ceiling and the roof beyond it, spreading through the sky.

Instantly, I discovered that my fears from a second before had come to pass.

The large dragoncraft floating over the command building was slowly tilting forward, flames spouting from the stabilizing reverse thrusters on the front of its wings. As the nose of the craft pointed toward the ground, it was clear what their purpose was.

“You goddamn fool!!” I swore, both at the emperor for not having the slightest concern for the lives of his followers and at myself for failing to anticipate this. Instantly, I pushed my Incarnation as far as I could. The space before my right hand warped like heat haze, and the ceiling and the support beams of the roof behind it burst into tiny pieces. The sky yawned, deep purple, through the gaping hole I’d created.

In the middle of that hole was a dark, triangular shape. The reverse thrusters glowed red against the darkness of its hull, pushing it into an inverted position. The movement it was making would’ve been impossible for a bomber plane in the real world, but the heat-element engines could put out maximum power even from a still position, and they forced the bulk of the craft into a nose-down vertical shape.

Once it was perfectly vertical, the reverse thrusters stopped. It was momentarily still, and then the main nozzles on the rear of the wings belched fire, transitioning it to full acceleration.

A direct collision from a vehicle well over a hundred feet long, laden with eternal-heat elements and missiles, would surely destroy the entire command building without a trace and knock down any adjacent buildings, too. With a smaller Incarnate wall barrier, Eolyne and I would survive, but it would mean abandoning Lagi, the girls, and the hundreds of pilots and technicians fighting minions around the base—and that wasn’t an option.

“Rrraaaahhhh!!”

I bellowed from the bottom of my gut, placing an Incarnate wall before the nose of the dragoncraft. A split second later, the nose hit the wall, causing huge ripples to spread across the sky.

An impact rivaling what I felt when stopping the energy attack from the Abyssal Horror ran through my arm to the top of my head.

But it wasn’t enough pressure to crack the defensive wall. As long as I could maintain the super-hardened wall built from imagination, the dragoncraft would crush itself and explode under the force of its own weight and propulsion.

However…

The instant a crack spread through the craft’s nose—technically, the moment I sensed the ten-plus crew members beyond the broken outer hull—I made the unconscious mistake of altering the defensive wall. It went from the absolute hardness of diamond to the resilience of thick rubber.

The wall gave way into a funnel shape, slowing down the dragoncraft while preserving its hull. But the power of those six large engines was too great, and they pushed the wall’s shape farther and farther downward. The distance from the top of the command building was down to one hundred and fifty feet.

I could intuitively sense the wall alone couldn’t stop the downward force. In my head, I said, Sorry, Eo! and let go of him to reach up with my left arm, too. Another wave of Incarnation traveled upward, seeking to make contact with the eternal-heat elements inside the engines, but the thick armor and sturdy canisters rebuffed my grasp.

Eolyne’s slender body toppled backward. I would’ve used Incarnate Arms to give him a soft landing on the floor, but with two forms of imagination employed at once, I couldn’t spare the attention. A tiny thought in the back of my mind reassured me that I didn’t have to worry about concussions for him like in the real world, and I focused instead on honing the Incarnate waves to their greatest sensitivity.

There were six orange lights lined up along the dark silhouette of the dragoncraft. The unseen eternal-heat elements in those engines were overlapping with my actual vision.

“Hnng…!!”

I held my breath and connected imaginary lines to all the hundred-plus heat elements in those engines. My left hand felt as hot as though it were being seared over an open flame. I could feel the temperature of the sealed canisters, turned red by heat elements fed with the greatest possible amount of sacred power.

Eternal elements were reinforced with sacred arts to continue existing without the control of their caster and were harder to harness than regular elements. Trying to contain them brought the risk of an explosion, so I tried to enclose all the heat elements in a shell of Incarnation to cut them off from the sacred power that was their energy source.

Maintaining a rubbery defensive wall and isolating over a hundred elements at the same time was like trying to split my brain into two halves. But if I failed, the entire base would end up under a sea of flame. The emperor had clearly wagered sacrificing a dragoncraft and a dozen-plus crew members was a price worth paying to neutralize the space force and Integrity Pilots. I couldn’t let him be proved right.

My conscious mind was accelerated to its limit, turning everything around me into slow motion. Eolyne’s hair waved gently as he fell, and I could even see the sparkling droplets of sweat out of the corner of my eye while I focused on locking the heat elements into their own capsules.

When I had isolated about half of them, the forward push of the engines rapidly dropped. My Incarnate wall was already stretched to its limit; the nose of the dragoncraft was just sixty feet over my head. Ninety percent of what I could see was taken up by the black shape of the craft. I could even see the rivets of the hull flying loose as the nose steadily crumpled.

Stop! I commanded, working at full force on isolating the heat elements.

Sixty percent…70…80. The flames emerging from the rear of the wings grew shorter and shorter and began to flicker intermittently until they were out.

But it was too early to relax. If the capsules shutting out the sacred power vanished, the eternal-heat elements would begin burning again. I maintained the isolation and put more strength into the Incarnate wall.

The cone of the dragoncraft’s nose crumpled into a nasty mess. But that was the end of its vertical descent.

Through the cockpit window just a few dozen feet away, I could see the face of a young-ish pilot. Was the look in his eyes shock at the stillness of their gigantic craft in midair, or was it terror at the feat I had just achieved?

No matter how much they feared me, I wasn’t going to allow them to carry out Emperor Agumar’s hideously cruel orders—or allow them to die, either. I summoned more mental strength and carefully lifted the dragoncraft higher, making sure it didn’t crumble into more pieces.

Because maintaining the capsules and controlling the defensive wall took all my concentration, I hadn’t heard Eolyne’s body falling. Half a second later, I felt a gust of wind on my left cheek, and Eolyne’s slack body slid across the ground.

He wasn’t awake. He was being pulled by ESP—or Incarnate Arms.

“Eo…!” I shouted, trying to pull Eolyne back in the same way, but black-sleeved arms were already wrapped around my friend’s body.

“Don’t move,” ordered a cold voice. There was a brief flash of light as Tohkouga Istar held a knife to Eolyne’s throat. It was less than four inches, but thin as a razor, and would easily split the pilot commander’s delicate windpipe—if the wielder felt like it.

Istar’s ice-blue eyes looked up for a brief instant, then back at me. “Once again, the strength of your Incarnation is preposterous. I can’t believe you stopped an Avus-class in full descent.”

I ignored his comment and said tersely, “You can’t hurt Eolyne, can you?”

“Really? That’s your comment? You saw me and him locked in battle back on Admina,” Istar said mockingly.

“I take that back,” I said promptly. “You cannot harm Eolyne when he’s unconscious.”

“…You want me to test that?”

Istar’s smile vanished, and he pressed the knife to Eolyne’s skin. That was all it took to break it, causing a tiny red droplet to form.

“Stop it!!”

That wasn’t me. The voice came from Operator Second Class Lagi Quint, leaning wounded against the bookshelf. The minion blood had permeated his body, making even speech difficult, but he managed to drag his legs toward Istar, one step at a time.

That was the best he could do, however. Lagi slumped to his knees.

Istar gave him a cold glance, then looked back to me and said, “The emperor gave me three orders…to abduct the Integrity Pilot commander, kill him if necessary, or buy enough time for Ship Four to commit a suicide bombing, joining it in the process, if neither of the other two options are possible. I’m sure you know how it works, Kirito. That as an Underworlder—as an artificial fluctlight—I don’t have any choice but to obey.”

“……!”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

He was aware that he was an artificial intelligence created by real-worlders. And not only that, but he understood the structural destiny of artificial fluctlights—their inability to disobey orders and laws.

When Alice learned those facts, her rage at the ones who created the Underworld activated the seal in her right eye and ultimately burst her eyeball. Istar’s eye looked unharmed, and if he couldn’t disobey orders, then his seal was clearly still intact. So how did he feel about the fact that his own free will was a victim of this structural limitation?

The questions were overflowing; I had to push them all down. The only thing that mattered was getting Eolyne back.

Istar’s right hand held on to Eolyne, while his left hand held the knife. In that position, he couldn’t immediately draw the large pistol, which was his most dangerous weapon.

If I used my Incarnation to the fullest, I could immediately turn the knife pressed to Eolyne’s throat into a liquid if I wanted. But 99 percent of my power was committed to the dragoncraft over our heads, and I couldn’t guarantee the remaining 1 percent would get the job done. If Istar was prepared to give his life to fulfill the emperor’s orders, then the instant I tried to do anything, he could deliver a fatal blow to Eolyne’s throat.

Suddenly, my vision was full of crimson light.

It was not a real light. It was a color pulled from my memory. The color of blood…freshly spilled blood, pouring from a wound to pool on the floor.

The warm, fading blood of Eugeo.

I shivered, unable to withstand the memory, and the dragoncraft resting atop the wall of Incarnation above tilted onto its back and began to crackle like lightning.

I shifted my attention to the wall, trying to restore balance to the dragoncraft. Istar leaped away on a diagonal, still gripping Eolyne around the chest, to the other side of the massive desk. It was a tremendous jump, but the window behind the desk was fixed with a sturdy lattice, and only a drop of over seventy feet awaited him beyond that.

Even if he somehow destroyed the window and used that wind-element cushion he demonstrated on Admina to land safely, he still had to escape from the middle of the space force base while carrying an unconscious Eolyne. And the Avus-class dragoncraft that brought Istar there had a split hull and bent frame, and would not be flying on its own anymore.

Even still, I continued rebalancing the dragoncraft and sent a projectile toward the knife at Eolyne’s throat—not an Incarnate Blade, but an even smaller and faster Incarnate Bullet.

The invisible bullet struck the knife right on target, knocking it loose from Istar’s hand with a loud clang!

But once again, it was followed by something I did not expect.

The window frame behind Istar broke in two places simultaneously and then burst outward, metal lattice and all. For a second, I thought Istar had destroyed it with Incarnation, but that was not the case; someone had grabbed the window frame and wrenched it loose from the outside.

Istar seemed to have known it would be destroyed ahead of time and instantaneously leaped into the void beyond the window, Eolyne in hand.

“Eo…!” I shouted, my voice drowned out by a violent buzzing.

Something like a black rope clung to Istar and Eolyne as they fell. The way it tapered down suggested it wasn’t a simple rope, but the tail of a living creature. I followed it up into the dark sky, where I could just barely make out the form of a winged humanoid—a minion. This wasn’t the warrior-type like those dead in the office, but a much more delicate flying-type minion.

It must have been lurking outside the office from the start, prepared to lend a helping tail once Istar approached the window. The minions did not have true intelligence, so it surprised me to learn they could understand such complex commands, but either way, I couldn’t let them escape. I loaded another Incarnate Bullet into my imaginary gun and took aim for the base of the leathery, batlike wings flapping in the distance. If I caused enough damage to prevent one of the wings from moving freely, I could at least avoid a headfirst free fall.

But the instant I was about to place my finger on the imaginary trigger, Istar’s words repeated in my head.

To abduct the Integrity Pilot commander, kill him if necessary, or buy enough time for Ship Four to commit a suicide bombing, joining it in the process, if neither of the other two options are possible.

What if Istar was prevented from making his minion-aided escape and activated his Perfect Weapon Control art—an Incarnation nullification zone—and it reached me on the seventh floor?

The capsules containing the heat elements and the Incarnate wall holding the dragoncraft aloft would vanish, and the Avus-class craft would plunge into this building a second later. Even still, I would probably be able to save Lagi, who was on his knees just nearby, but Ronie, Tiese, Stica, and Laurannei, who were fighting elsewhere in the command tower—and Eolyne, who was no longer in my sight—would be beyond my ability to protect with an instant barrier.

In one brief, soul-tearing moment of indecision, I lowered the aim of my Incarnate Bullet from the minion’s wing to the large pistol on Istar’s hip.

The bullet fired in silence, striking the pistol squarely, cutting through the leather holster, and destroying its firing mechanism. The minion began flapping its wings wildly, vanishing from sight through the rectangular window, with Istar and Eolyne wrapped up in its tail.

Don’t give up. Eolyne’s still just a few dozen feet away, I told myself, and unleashed all the Incarnation I had at my disposal.

I changed the rubbery defensive wall into Incarnate Arms that clutched the body of the upright dragoncraft, this time tilting it onto its underside. The devastated body screeched in pain again, little pieces of metal and bolts falling off left and right, but it went back into a horizontal position without completely falling apart.

Once there, I slid it sideways until it was over the runway beneath the command tower’s window. I tried to set it down as gently as I could, but in my haste, the landing gear was unable to withstand the impact, and it all broke off. I hastily added a bit more lift and gently nestled the underside of the body against the ground. This time it was fine, I told myself—just before the left wing snapped off at the base and landed on the runway.

Fortunately, it didn’t set off the missiles or cause an engine explosion. The landing was rougher than I intended, but now the dragoncraft couldn’t move, even if the eternal-heat elements came back.

At last, I released the two forms of Incarnation I’d kept running at close to full power. The rebound made me dizzy, but I took off running, calling over my shoulder to Lagi, “Just hang on a bit longer!” and jumping over the desk. I reached out to grab the frame of the broken window and leaned out to get a good look at the sky.

It was less than twenty seconds before that Istar and Eolyne went out of my sight. Even if that minion had evolved to be a flying specialist, it was still just a living creature, and it could only have gotten a few hundred yards away at most carrying two grown men like that.

“……”

And yet, all I could do was grit my teeth and stare around the sky, unable to spot even a glimpse of the minion’s silhouette. Frustrated, I leaped out and used Incarnate Flight to rise another hundred yards. After another rotation, I hadn’t found anything that looked like them, so I expanded my active radar in a spherical shape.

The wave of Incarnation burgeoned outward at incredible speed, catching every human and minion inside the building. I could even identify the people I knew the instant the wave passed through them. In less than a second, I discovered Ronie, Tiese, Stica, and Laurannei were in the hallway leading to the office. They were trying to get past the solid nets blocking the corridor.

On the floor below the command room, the fighting was fierce, but the minions inside the base were being steadily wiped out. The enemy soldiers manning the dragoncraft resting on the runway were not attempting to leave yet.

The Incarnation wave reached the limits of the base, which was almost two miles to a side, and picked up the signals of a great many animals living in the surrounding forest, before it faded out.

But I never sensed Eolyne’s signal.

The wave expanded in a sphere, so it wouldn’t have mattered if the minion had pretended to fly upward and then shot back down to earth; I would have caught them anyway. That left only one reason—actually, two—why I couldn’t detect them.

One was that the minion had reached speeds faster than a dragoncraft, moving two-thirds of a mile in just twenty seconds.

The other possibility was that Istar knew the Hollow Incarnation technique Eolyne used in the secret base on Admina, which erased oneself and whatever one touched from others’ consciousness. If he could use that, then I wouldn’t even notice if the Incarnate sensor found them.

A minute had passed since I’d lost sight of Eolyne.

I clenched my hands as hard as I could and admitted I was a far more arrogant and self-satisfied fool than I realized. In the Underworld, I had an extreme level of Incarnation that allowed me to manipulate all manner of events using only my imagination. Compared with the Kirito in the world of Unital Ring, who struggled just to light a fire, I was almost a godlike figure here.

And because of that, I assumed I could do anything. Even when the Black Emperors and their rebel armies and whatnot appeared, I assumed that if I just tried a little harder, they didn’t stand a chance against me. In Aincrad, Alfheim, and even the Underworld, that arrogance had led to disastrous consequences, time and again…

But this wasn’t the time to blame myself. There were still pilots and operators fighting with minions across the base, and the cathedral was still on fire.

I’m going to find you and save you, Eolyne.

The thought practically burned through my fluctlight; it was so powerful. I descended the same hundred yards at a free fall, then changed my angle just slightly to slide back through the office window.

As I landed, I generated twenty light elements and hurled them toward Lagi, who was curled up on the floor. With light-element antidotes, it was best to convert them to liquid for ingested poisons or apply them directly to the skin for contact poisons, but Lagi had been poisoned for too long and had lost too much blood. I converted the light elements into a mist and shrouded his body with it.

Fortunately, the room was full of minion blood from those Eolyne had defeated. Even poison blood created spatial sacred resources, so I could create more light elements easily if I needed them.

As Lagi breathed in the mist of light, his face started to regain color. Satisfied, I took off for the door, yanked on the well-used knob, and pushed it open, only to be greeted by a bizarre sight.

Despite the lights being on, the wide hallway was dim. A dark, stringy substance stretched from ceiling to floor and from wall to wall, like a gigantic spiderweb that completely blocked the corridor. I grabbed a nearby strand and tried to tear it loose, but it was as hard as reinforced plastic and barely budged even with all my weight on it.

My next step was to lift my hand to use Incarnation—but I stopped short. Relying on Incarnation to do things I could do manually was the kind of arrogance that had led me to this point. Even Alice had said I shouldn’t try to solve every problem with Incarnation.

Instead, I drew the Night-Sky Blade.

“Sir?! Is that you, Kirito?!”

From the other side of the hallway came the familiar voice of Ronie. That was right; I’d just detected their presence with my Incarnation radar earlier.

I couldn’t see them at all through the spiderweb, but they had somehow detected it was me over here.

“It’s me!” I shouted. “All four of you, get out of the hallway! I’m going to clear out the webs with a secret art!”

“It won’t work! The nets are hardened with minion blood, and even our best techniques couldn’t affect them!” cried Tiese.

“And neither wind nor flame nor ice work!” added Ronie.

“…Are you serious…?”

I’d never examined their swords closely, but they were both elite knights, so their weapons had to be Divine Object-level priority. That meant it was very likely the Night-Sky Blade would be deflected as well.

So I’d have to use Incarnation to rip it loose after all. I lifted my hand again, but once again held myself back. If this net was made of hardened minions, creatures of darkness, then maybe I could weaken it with the opposing element: light. In fact…

Suppressing my urge to rush for the cathedral, I gazed closely at the spot where one of the netting strands connected to the wall. The spattered minion blood had hardened the instant it touched the stone of the wall and ceiling, and seemed to be pulling with an incredible suction, yet the material did not appear to have permeated the interior of the stone at all. Which meant…

“I’m gonna try something! Everyone, step back!” I called out. Ronie replied, “All right.” Then I held my sword up. I was going to try the simple slicing sword skill, Vertical.

Shak! A blue slash ran from top to bottom with a crisp sound, not toward the black string or the spot where the string connected to the wall, but the tiniest bit closer to me along the wall. I wasn’t trying to use Incarnation, but using sword skills in the Underworld inevitably infused them with a bit of it. The range of Vertical, which would only expand a normal swing by a few inches in ALO or Unital Ring, expanded it by more than fifteen feet here, delicately carving the surface of the wall.

I straightened up. A crack ran along the entire right wall, and a fragile layer of rock just an inch wide came loose. It was still attached to the strings, but after I repeated the feat along the left wall, more of the strings started to droop without the tension supporting them. The strings attached to the floor and ceiling were still intact, but nearly 40 percent of them were loose, leaving enough slack for a small person to squeeze through the gap.

But no sooner had the thought occurred to me than the girls in their pilot uniforms began to make their way over. They easily managed to wriggle through the narrow space and were on my side in less than ten seconds.

Integrity Pilots Stica Schtrinen and Laurannei Arabel promptly saluted me and asked, “Is the commander…?”

“Is Lord Eolyne all right?!”

I paused, at a loss for words, then bowed deeply and answered, “I’m sorry. Tohkouga Istar got away with Eolyne.”

They gasped. When I looked up, Stica and Laurannei were frozen in shock, their eyes wide.

I couldn’t blame them. It was clear from our day spent together how much they revered Eolyne with all their hearts. They had clearly raced all the way up to the seventh floor of the minion-infested command building solely out of a desire to protect him.

I waited for them to speak, ready for whatever insult or disappointment they were going to hurl at me.

But Stica and Laurannei were more mature than I gave them credit for being. They were pilots, and they were knights.

“Understood, sir. Leave the cleanup of the remaining minions and the rescue of Lord Eolyne to us,” Laurannei said quietly.

Stica blinked back pain, then said bravely, “Lord Kirito, please return with Ladies Ronie and Tiese to Central Cathedral. We must not allow these savages to run rampant any longer.”

The shock and consternation in their eyes were gone, replaced by the fires of pure determination.

“…All right,” I said, glancing down the hall. Ronie and Tiese were having a bit more trouble getting through the spiderweb due to their armor, but they had heard the conversation and were ready to act.

I nodded back to them, then trotted back into the office and found Lagi getting to his feet again.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes…I’m so sorry,” Lagi said. “I let the Pilot Commander be taken away on my watch…”

“We’ll air out all our regrets once we get Eolyne back. Tell the girls about everything that happened here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lagi saluted, and I saluted back. I’d never performed the salute in the real world, but I found my arm strangely comfortable making the motion. I didn’t have time to interrogate that sensation, however.

Lastly, I glanced out the window into the sky once more, then lifted my hand toward the center of the room. I’d have to rely on the Incarnate door to return to the cathedral, as there was no real substitute. Of the six minion corpses in the room, I left one for research purposes, then converted the other five directly into crystal elements, condensed them into one large door, and placed that on the floor. I had maybe a minute until the deadline of midnight.

“Ronie, Tiese, let’s go back!” I called out, wrenching open the door with my mind. A wave of dizziness hit me, but I still had more to do before I could give in.

The area beyond the portal looked like empty space. There was only neatly arranged marble tile flooring that reflected blue starlight and red flames. It was probably the rooftop of Central Cathedral. Straight ahead, facing away from me, were three knights.

My leg refused to step through the doorway. I had followed Alice’s presence when creating the door, so she was one of them, and another was Fanatio, brought back from petrification. But who was the third?

Whoever it was, the armor was unmistakably that of an Integrity Knight, so I didn’t need to be on guard. I nodded to the girls and strode through the crystal portal this time.

The next instant, the night sky overhead blazed crimson red.