I caught up to Alice on the right side as she descended and voiced my suspicions. The knight looked a bit perplexed, then whispered back, “As a matter of fact, even we knights aren’t told anything about the senators. I’ve heard that the ninety-sixth floor and up is a section called the senate, but we are forbidden to enter…”
“Oh…So what do the senators actually do, anyway?”
“…The Taboo Index,” she said, her voice even quieter now. “The purpose of the senate is to observe and confirm that all people are following the Taboo Index. When there is an Index violation, they dispatch an Integrity Knight to control the situation. I went to take in you and Eugeo from North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy two days ago on just such an order.”
“…I see…So the senate is kind of like a proxy for the pontifex. I’m surprised that Administrator would give them such powerful privileges, knowing how cautious she is. Unless the senators have their memories controlled the same way the knights do…”
Alice scowled and shook her head. “Please don’t talk about memory. I don’t want my remaining good eye to start hurting, too.”
“S-sorry. I think you’re safe now, though…Eugeo’s eye seal broke, too, and nothing much happened to him after that…”
“…Let’s hope you’re right,” she said, rubbing her eye patch.
I recalled what had happened on that exterior terrace. Alice had been shaken a number of times before she ultimately swore to fight against the Axiom Church and its leader, but at no point did her Piety Module ever show signs of activity. I assumed that the memory fragment Administrator took from Alice had to do with her sister, Selka, or childhood friend Eugeo, but unlike what had happened with Eldrie, when Eugeo mentioned Selka’s name to her at the academy, no purple prism appeared from her forehead.
So what in the world was the memory that Administrator took from Alice’s mind?
It was rather pointless to wonder about that now. Once Cardinal performed her Reverse Synthesis Ritual (if you could call it that), Alice would regain her past memory, and the Integrity Knight I was with now would cease to be…
Again, I sensed a subtle little twinge in my chest as I mechanically walked on.
The only sounds on the late-night staircase were two echoing pairs of feet. After five repetitions of landings with bright-red carpets, the descending stairs came to an end, revealing a very large set of doors. We’d passed the ninety-fourth through ninety-first floors, and there were no marks of battle anywhere.
Alice came to a stop, and I sent her a questioning glance.
“Yes…this is it. The Great Bath on the ninetieth floor. I would assume that Uncle wouldn’t choose such a place as his defense point…but then again, knowing him…” She trailed off as she put her hand to the door. Just a light push, and the thick slab of marble rotated without a sound. Instantly a wave of thick white mist pushed out, and I turned away on instinct.
“Whoa…that’s some major steam. How big is this bath? I can’t even see inside.”
Although it obviously wasn’t the time, it was very tempting to strip off my sweaty clothes and jump into that hot cleansing water. Only when I took a step inside the cloudy air did I realize it was not hot steam but freezing mist.
Alice wasn’t expecting this, either—she sneezed daintily, and I promptly unleashed a percussive blast of my own. The veil of white air hovering in front of me gave way, but not because of the force of my sneeze. When I saw the state of the bathing chamber, I stood still in shock.
It had to take up the entire floor of the tower, because the far wall was foggy in the distance. Almost the entire chamber was a bathtub, split in two around a long straight walkway right in front of us. Each bathtub was practically a fifty-meter Olympic pool on its own.
But the truly shocking detail was that the bath-pool on our left was completely frozen white. Even the animal-head faucet in the corner of the bath, pouring water in, was frozen into a curved pillar of ice, indicating that the freezing process had happened in an instant. That would be not a natural effect but the work of sacred arts, of course.
Whatever froze this much water at once was no laughing matter. You’d need at least ten expert casters utilizing ordinary sacred arts with ice elements to achieve this effect.
I headed to the left and descended the stepped lip of the tub so I could rest my foot on the surface of the hard ice. It didn’t creak, even with my full weight and heavy sword resting on it. I guessed that the water was frozen all the way to the bottom of the baths.
“Who did this…and why?” I wondered. After a few steps over the wispy surface, my boot landed on something hard. It crumbled delicately. Upon closer examination, I saw a number of the small round objects on the surface of the ice. I reached down and broke one off, then lifted it up.
It was a rose of ice, with many layers of blue, translucent petals.
“…!!”
I’d seen these before on multiple occasions. In the Great Hall of Ghostly Light on the fiftieth floor, when we fought Vice Commander Fanatio Synthesis Two; and in the Cloudtop Garden on the eightieth floor, when we fought Alice Synthesis Thirty. Eugeo utilized his Perfect Weapon Control to immobilize his targets in those situations, producing ice roses just like these.
It wasn’t sacred arts that froze this mammoth bathtub solid…
“…It was Eugeo…”
Alice lowered herself on the ice next to me. Her working eye was wide as she gasped, “By the Three…You’re saying Eugeo did this…?”
“Yep, no doubt about it. It’s the Perfect Control effect of his Blue Rose Sword. But I’ll be honest…I didn’t think it had this much potential…”