Just then, he recalled what Kirito had said before he activated his Perfect Control. Eugeo continued, “‘You can’t win with hatred,’ you said. Maybe you were right. That Integrity Knight wasn’t fighting out of personal spite or hatred. But…but I still can’t forgive what the Church and Integrity Knights have done. If they have both incredible power and the will to protect the innocent people who live here…then why can’t they use that power for…for more…”
He stumbled, unable to continue. Kirito got to his feet unsteadily and picked up his black sword from the floor, then indicated that he followed Eugeo’s logic.
“They’re probably grappling with their own decisions, too. I bet we’ll learn more about this if we meet this knights’ commander…Your Perfect Weapon Control was incredible, Eugeo. You were the one who beat the knights. You have no reason to hate Fanatio as a person or the Four Whirling Blades anymore…”
“As a human…Yeah…I suppose you’re right. I was able to understand that much while we were fighting. She was as strong as she was because she was human,” Eugeo mumbled. Kirito chuckled and agreed.
“They would insist that they stand for absolute good, and you’d think they were absolute evil, but both sides in this equation are flesh-and-blood humans. Absolute good and evil can’t be determined by regular people.”
Eugeo got the feeling that Kirito was saying this as much to convince himself as anything else.
Kirito, think about how furious you were about that Administrator…Can you still hold the same opinion when it comes to the absolute ruler of the Axiom Church and the entire world?
But before he could actually ask the question, Kirito took off walking for Fanatio, who was still collapsed before the far doors. After five or six steps, he turned back and rustled in his pockets for a little bottle.
“Whoops, nearly forgot. Use this to cure the kids’ poison. Just make sure you break their knives and remove any other suspicious tools they might have before you give it to them.”
Eugeo caught the bottle, realizing that he’d forgotten about them, too. He pulled his sword from the floor and turned back to Fizel and Linel, who were both still sprawled out and paralyzed. The frost was totally gone from the area now, and the girls didn’t seem to have taken any damage from the ice vines or beams.
When he made eye contact with them, they averted their eyes (the only part of their bodies they could move) in a sulking fashion.
Lamenting that he wasn’t likely to get along with them, although for very different reasons than with Fanatio, Eugeo knelt down and pulled the two poison swords out of the ground where Kirito had stuck them. Then he tossed them up, so that they spun end over end in the air, and smashed them both with one swing of the Blue Rose Sword.
They shattered easily and melted into little particles of light before they even hit the floor. He sheathed his sword, knelt again, and began patting the girls down for more weapons, apologizing as he did so.
Lastly, he pulled the stopper out of the vial and split the remaining three-quarters of the bottle between Fizel and Linel. Like Eugeo, they would recover from the poison within ten minutes.
He could have simply left them there, but he tried to imagine what Kirito would tell them, and decided he would give it a shot.
“…Knowing you two, you might be tempted to think that Fanatio and Kirito are as strong as they are because they have Divine Objects and Perfect Weapon Control at their disposal…but you’d be wrong. They’re strong to begin with. Their hearts are strong, not their techniques or weapons, and that’s how they can fight through such terrible pain and perform such incredible feats. You girls might be skilled at killing people. But killing and winning are completely separate things. I didn’t understand that, either, until today…”
The girls were still refusing to meet his gaze. Eugeo didn’t know if he was getting through to them at all. He wasn’t good at dealing with children, anyway.
But even then, the two girls must have felt something, watching that fight. It was hard to think of Fizel and Linel as representing absolute evil, given the innocent, childlike way they reacted to things. Eugeo gave them a brief good-bye, then turned and trotted after Kirito.
As he made his way through the devastated hall, Eugeo glanced left and right, checking on the condition of Fanatio’s four knights. All four were still collapsed, significantly injured by the indiscriminate light-beam attack. But in keeping with their lofty title, none of the Integrity Knights had lost their full life. They had bled little, and they would probably be moving again before too long.
But unlike her companions, who merely suffered from the beams’ minor explosions, Fanatio had taken the full brunt of that charging spear of darkness. Her critical condition was clear from a distance, judging by the large puddles of blood surrounding her prone form.
Eugeo came to a stop near Kirito, who was kneeling at her side. He held his breath and looked over his partner’s shoulder at the knight.
Up close, Fanatio’s wounds were so hideous that he could barely stand to look at them. There were four puncture wounds on her torso and legs from the beams, her right arm was shredded from the thorns, and she was burned by the aftereffect of her own final attack. Every bit of her was in tatters.
But the most devastated part of her was, of course, her upper stomach where the Gigas Cedar’s blow landed. There was a deep gouge the size of a fist pumping blood out constantly. Her face, eyes closed, was so pale that it had almost taken on the color of her armor. She didn’t even look alive.
Kirito had his hands over Fanatio’s stomach in an attempt to repair her wound with sacred arts. That her Stacia Window wasn’t open was probably a sign that he didn’t think it was worth looking at the actual amount of life left. He sensed Eugeo’s approach without looking up and said, “Help me, she won’t stop bleeding.”
“Uh…sure,” Eugeo said, and he knelt on her other side and put his hands to the wound, too. Like he had done to Kirito earlier, he chanted light-based healing sacred arts. It seemed like the flow of blood was weaker after it, but still far from stopping.
It was clear that if they kept doing this, they would eventually use up all the resources in the area and be unable to generate more light elements. They could temporarily refill some of Fanatio’s life by giving her theirs, but it would be meaningless if they didn’t stop the bleeding. They needed either a more powerful arts-user or some legendary healing herb to save her now.