Sliced…the future?
It seemed to match the phenomenon he’d witnessed. Eugeo activated Sonic Leap after the swordsman had already swung his blade. But the instant he touched the path where it had been, he suffered a terrible wound, as though the sword had struck him in that passing moment.
But that wasn’t exactly right. If anything, it was like the force of the slice had somehow remained, hanging in the air. He’d seen the wavering ripple right up to the moment his body made contact with it.
In order to land a successful hit with a sword, you had to cut the right place at the right time. If either of the two weren’t accurate, the sword would not strike true. Most likely, the knights’ commander’s Perfect Weapon Control gave him expanded control over the latter. Even after swinging, the force of his sword stayed in place. In other words, it cut the enemy who would fill that space in the future.
Visually, it was the least impressive of all the times he’d seen Perfect Control, but it was perhaps the most fearsome. Every space the enemy’s sword passed through turned into a deadly trap. And the length of its effectiveness was much longer than a combination technique, which was itself a method of increasing an attack’s time. There was no way he could force a close melee battle.
A long-distance fight, then.
The commander’s Perfect Control enabled him to extend his attack time but not the range of his swing. Meanwhile, the range of Eugeo’s ice vines was over thirty mels. The real question was whether the Blue Rose Sword could use its ability properly in a place with so much hot water. At the very least, he’d have to count on a delay between activation and taking effect. In other words, Eugeo would need to lure the enemy close enough to use his sword’s vine ability and still have it work whether or not the man caught on to it.
It would be difficult, but he had no other choice.
Eugeo traced his chest with his left hand. The flesh stung, but the healing was firm enough that he could move about without reopening the wound. He wasn’t fully healed by a long shot—he’d probably lost a third of his life—but he could stand, and he could swing.
“System Call,” he said quietly, letting his voice hide under the thunder of the pipes gushing water into the bath from each corner of the room. He didn’t expect the commander would let him get away with the chant, but if anything, the way the man leisurely crossed his arms and chatted made it seem like he was intentionally giving Eugeo time.
“The first time I saw a knight of darkness use a continuous blade, it was just after I’d been made an Integrity Knight. At first I got beat, and beat good. But I escaped with my life, and I racked this dumb old brain of mine to find the reason I lost.”
He rubbed a scar on his chin, likely a memento of that experience.
“But once I figured it out, it turned out not to be that tricky. Basically, the swordsmanship I’d learned was all about putting as much power into a single swing as possible, while the continuous blade was all about deflecting the enemy attack and hitting him with your own. It ain’t a question about which of the two is more practical in a fight. Doesn’t matter how hard you swing if you miss the mark. The best you can do is give them a refreshing breeze…”
His lips twisted into a grimace, and he let loose a puff of air.
“But I wasn’t clever enough to begin learning the continuous blade right away, just because I’d figured out its point. If the pontifex really wanted an Integrity Knight, she could’ve summoned one a bit less stubborn.”
Eugeo felt his curiosity grow, even as his mind was occupied with chanting his sacred art. The self-proclaimed commander of the Integrity Knights himself had lost his prior memories, just like the others. But even if he, too, forgot his story, was it possible that the rest of the world would simply fail to remember the wielder of such an overpowering sword? Ever since Eugeo had heard him announce himself earlier, something had been steadily eating away at him.
Bercouli Synthesis One. That’s what he had called himself.
He knew he’d heard that name before. It was either a previous champion of the Four-Empire Unification Tournament or some general of the Imperial Knights.
But the man paid little heed to Eugeo’s piercing gaze or the muttered incantation under his breath.
“So I racked my brain for a way to help my sword hit the enemy better. And the answer I landed on was this.” He slid the simple steel sword out of its sheath. “This sword was originally part of a Divine Object stuck to the wall of Central Cathedral, a thing called a clock. In its place is now a Bell of Time-Tolling that measures the hour, but in the past, it was a big circle of numbers with a huge needle that pointed to them. Apparently it was around at the world’s very creation. The pontifex had a weird, unfamiliar name for it…called it a System Clock, as I recall.”
Eugeo didn’t recognize the sacred words. But neither did he know the common-tongue clock Bercouli mentioned. The man had a distant gaze in his eyes, as if staring into the long-lost past.
“As the pontifex says, ‘The clock does not indicate time—it creates time.’ I had no idea what she meant by it, though. But this blade is what resulted when the hand of that clock was reforged. Little Alice’s Osmanthus Blade cuts through the horizontal axis of space, while this one cuts the vertical axis of time. It’s called the Time-Splitting Sword.”