Chapter 95

“You want to know why I’m here? To listen to your voices! And to respond with my own!” An image of Diamond appeared before them, projected by the white-suited woman’s strange item. Nick immediately realized the item was Diamond in her holy sword form and that the woman was her wielder. The identity of the angel-like woman also finally dawned on him; a visor hid her eyes and her clothes were completely different from normal, but there was no mistaking a companion he’d gone on many adventures with. “You’re speaking nonsense. Begone.” A clone of the burning white knight moved to attack Diamond and her wielder. “Damn it. Ugh…!” Nick groaned. “It’s okay. We came prepared,” Diamond’s wielder said, delivering the words directly into Nick’s mind. She didn’t use Telepathy; the words seemed to gently seep into his emotions. “Wait…! Karan!” Nick wanted to blame her for coming. He was angry with himself for forcing her to come here to save him. But most of all, he was happy to see her standing tall in front of him one last time before his death. Karan sensed these emotions swirling inside him and smiled. “This isn’t Parallel. He created clones and filled them with preserved souls to make them fight. It’s stronger than Parallel, but all we’ve gotta do to stop it is break through their security,” Karan said. She readied her strange sword and pointed it at the burning knight clone. “…I hear your soul crying out. You’re being used to fuel this white knight and fight against your will. Your true name is…” ““Barzelle Adoleed.”” Karan and Diamond said the name together. The burning knight stopped moving as if paralyzed. “You’re from an adventurers’ party called Rainbow Mine. You barely survived a cave-in while collecting minerals in a labyrinth… Is that how he got you? You, over there—your name is Farrah Davis. You worked for the Sun Knights and took out a massive loan to treat your husband’s illness. Benjamin Yugo. Zava Lodge. Kenjiro Kishu.” Karan detected the names of the burning knights one after another despite their identical appearances, and she used that to determine their backgrounds. The burning knights fell silent as she spoke. Diamond played an alluring melody, which came from the sword Karan was holding. “Is that your power, Diamond…?” asked Nick. “I thought you said you couldn’t turn into a sword.” “I decided it was time for a new look,” Diamond said. “Whoa!” Nick gasped as an image of Diamond appeared right next to him. “Hee-hee. I’m Diamond, formerly the Sword of Distortion and now the Sword of Resonance. I’m looking forward to working with you.” “She is using her disassembled parts to form an instrument and make a sound barrier… And Karan is the center of that barrier,” Bond explained, astonished. He was in his sword form, being held by Nick. Diamond shrugged. “Well spotted… Though this is hardly the time to talk about that. You need to heal up first. You look like a zombie.” “I’m out of mana, and I’m physically spent. Zem and Leon are unconscious…if they’re even still alive,” said Nick. “Fine, fine. I’ll share some mana with you. I’ll even include the kitty sleeping behind you.” Diamond snapped her fingers, and Nick’s body shone. He could feel mana seeping into him. He also heard groans from Zem, Leon, and the Sword of Evolution. They were being given mana, too, which seemed to have woken them up. “Well, that’s handy… You should’ve mentioned you had that kinda power earlier,” Nick complained. Spells that transferred or recovered mana were significantly more difficult than normal healing magic. Diamond had used her sound and light to skip the complicated incantations and rituals those spells usually required, instantly filling Nick, Zem, and Leon with a large amount of mana. “I see you’ve been fighting, too, Karan,” Nick said. “Sorry. We’ve had a lot going on in secret,” Diamond answered for her. “…Huh,” Nick said, his voice mixed with a wide range of emotions. He had tried to keep Karan from fighting, and then forced her into the battle anyway; he was left with reluctance, regret, and guilt. Karan sensed all those feelings but didn’t look back at him. “I know this is rich of me to say,” Nick continued. “I said I was gonna save you, after all. I even ignored what you wanted and yelled at you. I didn’t believe you could recover like this.” “Mm-hmm,” Karan said. “But when I saw your face in what I thought were my final moments…it made me happy.” The joy in his voice made Karan shiver. “…I missed you,” she said. “I missed you, too… I kept thinking about how I wished you were here.” Nick’s words were filled with kindness, but they ignited a flare of anger within Karan. “It was really hard without you! I was so lonely! I had to make every decision by myself! I had to figure out how to persuade people to work with me, and I had to take responsibility for all of them! So many people depended on me, but I had to suspect every one of them! I had to think so hard about what was true, what wasn’t, how to solve a whole bunch of problems… It was so stressful!” “…I don’t know what you went through, but I can tell you worked really hard,” Nick said. “You have no idea how much of a slave driver Diamond is! But does she hold herself to the same standard? No! That goes double for Hector! And I couldn’t trust anything Samurialie, Alice, or Marde said because of all their lies! I had to talk to them again and again to get them to tell the truth. And…and…” Tears formed in Karan’s eyes as she yelled. Nick smiled awkwardly and drew close to her. “I know. So…let’s do this next part together.” “Okay,” Karan said meekly. “I’ll always be here for you. I’ll be by your side in good times and bad.” “I’ll be really angry if you’re lying.” “I’m done lying to you.” “If you’re lying about that, too, I don’t know what I’ll do to you.” “Being killed by your hands would be an honor. I actually thought you were an angel here to take me to heaven.” “…You’re an idiot!” Karan yelled, red-faced. She wiped away her tears. Diamond interrupted by clapping her hands. “You can catch up later. This battle’s far from over. And I’m not a slave driver!” “Why do you think people call you Sergeant Demon…?” Nick asked. “Anyway, can we do this?” Diamond smiled. “The Sword of Tasuki has collected a boatload of souls. No one should be able to stop him…except for the one little fact that souls aren’t an energy source you can use however you please.” She spoke with her usual cheerful tone, but her eyes were stern as she watched the burning knight. “He’s bound each of the souls into a contract that forces them to serve him. They aren’t fighting for him willingly, which means it’s possible to speak to them and urge them to escape the spell… We had no way to practice this beforehand, though, so it was a gamble.” “You came down here on a gamble? Really?” Nick said. “What else could it have been? We didn’t know if their names would be on our lists until we got here. I loaded myself up with data on tens of thousands of names from a missing persons list we borrowed from the Sun Knights, a list of Marde’s debtors, a list of people who are suspected to be demon-god worshippers, and more so I could pull up their profiles on the spot. Once I find their name, I just have to persuade them to stop fighting.” “That’s amazing…but we’ve got a problem,” Nick said, looking toward what he thought was the main burning knight. It was looking at Karan and Diamond as if astonished. “What’s wrong, Sword of Tasuki? Are you still in shock over what we just did? You got the better of me last time, but oh man, does it feel great to get my revenge! Who’s laughing now, loser?!” Diamond yelled. “No, don’t provoke him! Are you stupid?! He’s still way stronger than us!” Nick said with a shudder. He knew Karan and Diamond had hindered the burning knights with their surprise attack, but that had only robbed it of a hundredth—no, a thousandth—of its power. They hadn’t done anything to overcome the hopeless difference in strength. “You stole…souls from me…?” the burning knight asked. Nick braced himself for another merciless assault, but surprisingly, the burning knight just stared at Karan in shock. “We didn’t steal them; we freed them from their prisons. They get to decide whether they want to leave,” Karan said. “That’s the same thing!” “…You can’t own a person’s soul in the first place. It’s not something you can add to your personal collection and consume for your own use. You can’t possibly forge a better future if you don’t understand that.” A flame-like aura suddenly erupted from the burning knight, seemingly matching the Sword of Tasuki’s emotions. “You…Karan…Karan Tsubaki… How did you become able to do such a thing? How did you end up like this?” “You wanna know how? It’s your own fault. You tried to kill me, so I worked hard to get stronger. You tied the noose around your own neck.” “I can tell you haven’t overcome the curse. You’re feigning strength with the help of a holy sword that doesn’t possess much mana herself. You’re puny compared to me. So how…?” “Oh, shut up. I just told you—it’s your fault,” Karan said with a look of exaggerated disbelief. That earned the burning knight’s wrath. “…Careful how you speak to me, little girl. Hero or not, I refuse to believe that a fragile person like you, who relies on a clever tongue to survive, should be the one to live on and establish the next generation of humans.” The burning knight’s clones rushed at Karan simultaneously. Nick realized the Sword of Tasuki was trying to send knights at her faster than she and Diamond could persuade them to stop fighting. “I’m not fully healed yet, but… Damn it! Zem! Leon! Get up now! This is no time for napping!” Nick yelled. “Ngh… You really know how to work a person to the bone,” Zem grumbled. “Shit, man… Do you realize how long we’ve been holdin’ out? Lemme rest…!” Leon complained. They both staggered to their feet. Karan watched them happily. “Nick. Zem. And Leon, I guess. Thank you… But you’ve done enough.” “What do you mean…?” Nick asked. The burning knight was gathering mana for a long-range attack, too far away to hear their voices. Its flames burned bright like the sun. The mana alone felt like it would tear through Nick’s skin. Nick wondered fearfully if the Sword of Tasuki had ceased holding back. The titan that was once Argus hadn’t given him a chance to perform such a powerful attack against it, quickly squashing any sign of powerful spells or ritual magic. No one remaining could perform such a superhuman feat, however. They would only get overwhelmed by the burning knight’s great power. “What’re you talking about? We have to do something!” Nick protested. “Don’t worry. We brought the most powerful help there is,” Karan said. Nick had no idea what she meant, but then he realized she was looking at someone. The person’s presence was hardly reassuring; whoever it was looked minuscule next to the blinding light of the burning knight. “He was crazy strong on the way here. He can handle this. Probably.” “Did you really just throw a ‘probably’ in there?” Nick exclaimed, but Karan ignored him. “Oh, gimme a break…,” grumbled Leon. “D’you really think this guy can do anything? I heard he was almost killed by Stampede monsters.” “Will you quit complaining so much?” Nick said. “It’s okay, really!” Karan insisted. The man had an air of aloofness about him. He wore a katana at his waist in the style of southern adventurers. He was also a bona fide celebrity in Labyrinth City. “That’s…Fifs…!” Nick exclaimed. The man who’d appeared was the S-rank adventurer Fifs—otherwise known as the Solo Diner. “I can only manage this one time. The rest is up to you!” Fifs called out, his voice echoing clearly across the space. The man’s unease was visible even at a distance; he knew how reckless a fight this was. Nick was grateful he’d come this far belowground to help, but he couldn’t help feeling disappointed. What could one man do against such an absurdly strong opponent? “…To my main body sleeping far away at the end of the Monster Belt—heed my call and awaken from your doze.” Nick’s assumption was wrong. Fifs’s unease wasn’t because of the burning knight—he was afraid of a terrifying being that wasn’t even there. “What’s happening?” Nick asked. Fifs lifted his sword high in the air and slashed at nothing. The sight gave Nick déjà vu; he’d sliced a rift in the air that looked similar to the hole the Sword of Tasuki had opened in Argus’s body. Something began to emerge from the rift. It took a moment for Nick to realize what it was. The object had a familiar shape, but his mind rejected that as a possibility. He wanted to say it was a building, or a monument, or a strangely shaped rock. But of course, it was none of those things. Part of it shone with silver light: a blade. The next part was thicker than a person or even the average monster: the handle. A giant katana emerged from the rift, held by a giant hand twice as wide as the average person was tall. It looked like a cicada shedding its skin as it forced its way through the too-small hole. The wrist squeezed out first, then the forearm, then the elbow and upper arm, and finally the shoulder. The absurdly large right arm was holding an appropriately massive katana. “I see,” said the Sword of Bonds. “It’s a multidimensional body.”