ALICE THE INTEGRITY KNIGHT, MAY 380 HE
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Creak.
Creak.
With the repetition of each tiny sound, I felt my heart shrink.
The sound came from the tip of my still-unnamed black sword, which was just barely sticking into the gap between Central Cathedral’s roughly one-inch-thick white marble blocks.
My right hand was damp with sweat where it clung to the sword’s hilt, and my elbow and shoulder joints were screaming with pain, ready to disconnect at any moment. Which made sense—my assuredly not-beefy arm was supporting the weight of two people, one ultra-high-priority longsword, and a full set of armor.
There wasn’t a single handhold in the mirrorlike smoothness of the wall, so there was no way for me to wedge the sword farther into the surface. There was nothing below me but an endless expanse. And in addition to the pain in my right hand, my left was also reaching its limit as it clung to the lady knight in her heavy suit of golden armor.
Physical fatigue in the Underworld was slightly different from in the real world. In terms of long-distance walking, sprinting, fierce training, and lifting heavy objects, it was the same sensation. The difference was that fatigue acted like injury in the way that it reduced one’s “life,” the numerical value of vitality in the Underworld—i.e., your hit points.
In the real world, hardly anyone ever literally died of fatigue. Before the body could reach a state of serious, permanent injury, fatigue rendered you unable to move. But here, it was possible at times for strength of will to override physical possibility. In other words, it was theoretically possible that you could run, resisting pain and exhaustion, until the moment your life reached zero and you instantly died.
At the moment, I was supporting an unbelievable amount of weight with my body. My life value was slowly but surely decreasing as long as this state continued. I could keep both hands clenched out of sheer determination, but eventually my life would reach zero, and I would die. In that instant, my hand would probably let go of the sword, and the knight with me would plunge to the ground hundreds of feet below and die as well.
I wasn’t the only one suffering damage. My beloved sword was supporting more weight than it could handle, with only its very tip for leverage. And I’d already used the immensely taxing Perfect Weapon Control twice in the day’s battles. I couldn’t open its Stacia Window to check numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if its life reached zero within a few minutes. When that happened, the sword would shatter and no longer recover its strength by merely returning to its sheath.
It would be a terrible shame to break my sword before I could even give it a name, not that it would matter for long once I plunged to my death. I needed to do something and fast, but just holding on took all my strength, plus…
“That’s enough! Let go of me!” shrieked the woman dangling from me—Alice Synthesis Thirty, the golden Integrity Knight with the Osmanthus Blade. “I would rather die than live with the shame of having been saved by a criminal sinner like you!”
She struggled and rocked, trying to break herself loose from my grip. Her gauntlet slipped a little bit in my sweaty palm.
“Arghk…stahppit…” I tried to control the shaking while uttering nonsense. But the vibration of her thrashing worked the blade’s tip a tiny millimeter out of the wall. When all was still again, I glanced down and yelled, “Stop moving, idiot! You’re an Integrity Knight; you should know that getting suicidal here isn’t going to solve anything! Idiot!”
“Wha…?” The pale face visible between my feet turned red. “Y-you…you dare insult me, you rogue? Take that back!”
“Shut up! I’m calling you an idiot because you are an idiot, you idiot! Idiot!” I yelled, uncertain whether I was doing this to engage her in negotiating for help, or whether I was just working out my frustration. “Do you understand the situation? If you fall off and die here, Eugeo’s going to keep climbing up to Administrator’s chamber all by himself! It’s supposed to be your job to stop that from happening! Shouldn’t your top priority as an Integrity Knight be to sacrifice anything you can to stop him?! If you’re too stupid to see the logic there, then you’re an idiot!!”
“Th-that’s eight times you have insulted me now…,” Alice said, glaring up at me with her cheeks reddening; I doubted she’d ever been called an idiot since she became an Integrity Knight. She raised her Osmanthus Blade, eliciting chills as I pictured an attack that would send us both to our doom. But it seemed that her sense of reason won out, because the sword soon dangled at her side again.
“I see. There is a logic to what you say,” she admitted, her pearly teeth gritted. “But why don’t you let go?! Can you prove that your reason is not pity, a fate more painful than death?!”
It certainly wasn’t pity. Saving Alice from this fate was half the reason Eugeo and I were here at Central Cathedral in the first place. But there wasn’t enough time to explain all that. And besides, it wasn’t Alice Synthesis Thirty that Eugeo wanted to rescue from the tower, but his childhood friend Alice Zuberg, who had been abducted from Rulid Village eight years ago.
I tried to come up with an argument that would convince Alice as I fought against the screaming pain. But no such rationale manifested. I could offer up only a partial truth.
“I…Eugeo and I didn’t come charging up the cathedral for the purpose of destroying the Axiom Church.”
I stared down at Alice’s fierce blue eyes, searching for the right words. “We want to protect the realm from a Dark Territory invasion, just like you. We fought a goblin band in the mountains two years ago…not that I expect you to believe me. So I don’t want you to die, if you’re one of the most powerful Integrity Knights. You’re a valuable source of power.”
She drew her brows together, taken aback by this comment, but regained her poise to snap, “Then why do you turn your sword upon your fellow man and commit the greatest taboo of bloodshed?!”
The question came from a place of pure righteousness—implanted by Administrator for her own ends or not. Alice’s eyes burned. “Why did you harm Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One and all those subsequent knights?!”
Sadly, I didn’t have a convincing reply. My desire to save the human realm was both honest intent and an act of hypocrisy. If I reached the top of the cathedral and defeated Administrator, Cardinal would regain all system privileges. In order to prevent the coming catastrophe, she would attempt to reinitialize the entire Underworld. And as of that moment, I couldn’t think of a way to avoid this outcome: salvation through utter oblivion.