However, every last drop of that strength had left her.
She had a question for Eldrie—for her former disciple. Exactly what do you fight for, now that both the church and the highest minister have been exposed as falsehoods?
But she could not ask. None of the integrity knights were informed of the entirety of the highest minister’s horrifying scheme aside from Bercouli and herself. Not even Eldrie knew the fact that his «memory fragment» and his «most beloved person», reduced to a part of the sword golem, remained on the sealed highest floor.
As such, he still believed in the concept of the Axiom Church. He still waits, expectantly, for the day the three goddesses would send a new highest minister to the cathedral to bestow their infallible guidance.
But what should she do, as one aware that the goddesses and the Celestial World were both great lies?
It was perfectly understandable, but Knight Commander Bercouli had to hide half of the truths from the knights to have them prepare for the incoming war. The hesitation currently in her breast would certainly infect the other knights if she was in their presence.
Nobody knew if the Defense Army established in haste could repel the coordinated assault from the darkness forces. If they broke through the Great East Gate, the monsters thirsting for blood would march on to this remote village sooner or later. Was there no method to avoid that disaster—a certain voice replayed within Alice’s mind every time she pondered that.
The two lines that came from that mysterious crystal plate after the battle with the highest minister, before Kirito collapsed.
—Head for the World End Altar.
—Straight south after you exit the eastern large gate.
She had no recollection of this name, «World End Altar» in the Sacred Tongue. However, she knew what could be found upon exiting the Great East Gate. The wilderness of the Dark Territory: soil blackened like cinders and skies in the shade of blood reaching out. Neither advance nor escape was easy once one took a step in.
Even if she surmounted the outrageous difficulties to reach the altar, what awaited her there? Was there truly someone—or something—capable of protecting the inhabitants of the Human World from the darkness forces…?
Alice tilted her head atop the pillow and stared at the youth stretched out on the other side of the bed.
Creeping through the blanket, she moved to Kirito’s side. Reaching out her hands after slight hesitation, she clung onto him like a child spooked by a nightmare.
No matter how hard Alice drew his dismally thin body closer, the youth who made her heart waver with intensity on a par with flames showed absolutely no reaction. His pulse continued its sluggish pace; his lowered eyelashes remained utterly motionless. He… no, that might no longer be anything more than an empty shell with its soul utterly burnt out.
If her sword was now in her right hand—
She could bring an end to it all, stabbing their two touching hearts as one.
That momentary thought overflowed from Alice’s eyes as tears and fell onto Kirito’s nape.
“Tell me, Kirito… What should I do…”
No answer for her question came.
“What… should I……”
The moonlight pouring in from a gap in the curtains coalesced and faded within the teardrops ever-increasing.
Part 2
The twenty-second day of the tenth month that came next was the coldest it got throughout that autumn.
Calling off the walk, she spent it together with Kirito by the stove. She intended to make plenty of firewood as the elderly Garitta had taught her to before winter truly arrived, but it appeared there would be no need for that.
After taking the entire day to write a mere two letters on parchment, Alice hesitated for a moment before signing off with Synthesis Thirty in Sacred Tongue as well below the Schuberg family name in Common Tongue.
She neatly folded one, put a wrapper on it, and addressed it to Selka. She set it on the table beside the other for the elderly Garitta.
The letters expressed farewells and apologies. She could no longer stay in this house now that Integrity Knight Eldrie knew of it. The next to come would likely be Knight Commander Bercouli himself, rather than Eldrie. Alice had no words she could use against her master in swordsmanship, her benefactor.
Hence, she would leave once more.
A thin, long sigh leaked from Alice before she raised her face and looked at the black-haired youth sitting on the opposite side of the table.
“Hey, Kirito. Where do you wish to go? I heard the highlands in the west are a truly beautiful sight. Or perhaps the jungles in the south? It would be warm year-long and the fruits there seem plentiful.”
Despite the bright voice she deliberately used, Kirito showed no response as always.
His empty eyes stayed glued to the tabletop. Her heart hurt upon thinking how she had to drag this injured youth from stability again. Still, even so, she could not possibly leave him in Rulid. Alice could not force such a task on Selka who was a sister apprentice, neither did she desire to. Caring for Kirito was the one and only reason Alice found to continue living.
“…I know, let us leave our destination to Amayori. You should go to bed soon, we will have to wake early tomorrow.”
Alice changed Kirito, put him to bed, then changed into her own sleepwear, and extinguished the light before slipping under the blanket.
Her ears focused on Kirito’s breathing by her side in the darkness. She gently shifted herself after he completely fell asleep.
Steady beating made itself known to her ear, pressed against Kirito, as she laid her head on his chest that had grown bony.
Kirito’s heart was no longer here. These heart beats, too, were no more than echoes from the past. Alice came to think so through the months she spent sleeping aside him each night. However, she still believed there was something remaining deep within each beat that echoed out.
If Kirito currently lost only his means of expressing himself yet retained his ability to think, what could she say to excuse this behavior of hers? Alice sank into the shallow abyss of sleep as a mild smile formed as she pondered.
Startling, weak shaking came from the body against hers.
She somehow managed to lift her heavy eyelids. She turned her left eye towards the window in the east, but the sky visible in the gap between the curtains was still pitch dark. Her sleep lasted two, three hours at most by her intuition.
Alice whispered to Kirito whose body stiffly trembled once again.
“It is still night… go to sleep for a little longer…”
She moved her eyelids back down and thought to rub Kirito’s chest until he went back to sleep. However, Alice finally noticed the youth’s abnormal behavior as his soft voice reached her ears.
“Ah… aah…”
“Kirito…?”
Kirito, in his current state, possessed no extraneous needs. He should not awake due to the cold, his thirst, or any such thing. And yet, the youth’s trembling grew stronger while his legs moved as though to leave the bed.
“Is something the matter…?”
Alice quickly brought herself up, wondering if he had, by some chance, regained his consciousness, and generated a single luminous element as even the time required to light the lamp seemed too precious.
She breathed out a disappointed sigh as she saw only that usual hollow darkness within Kirito’s eyes that showed up in the faint white light. But, then, what had—
The sound that reached Alice’s ears this time came from outside the window.
“Kururu, kurururuu!”
Cries came from Amayori who should have been sleeping in a corner of the vacant land. Sharp, shrill reverberations as though advising her master to stay vigilant.
Leaping to the floor, Alice ran to the living room from the bedroom and forced open the entrance door. The cold night air immediately blew in. A strange smell was mixed into the wind that normally smelled only of the forest. It seemed to p
rick into the depths of her nose; the stench of something burnt—
Alice jumped down onto the front yard still barefooted. She drew a sharp breath the moment she turned about, scanning through the night sky.
The skies to the west were aflame.
The ominous vermillion glow was unmistakably reflected from some humongous inferno. She focused her eye and spotted numerous trails of black smoke across the starry sky.
—A bushfire!?
She retracted that thought an instant after it came to her. Aboard the burnt, pungent wind faintly reaching her was the noise of metallic clangs—and a clamor of screams.
An enemy assault.
The Dark Territory forces were attacking Rulid Village.
“…Selka!!”
A hoarse cry escaped from Alice and she dashed back to the house. However, she stood petrified just as she got on the porch.
She had to save her little sister and parents.
But what about the other villagers?
If she tried her best to save everyone, she would need to fight the forces of darkness head-on. But did the strength to do so still remain in her current self?
The source of Alice the integrity knight was her almost blind loyalty for the Axiom Church and the Highest Minister. Now that she lost that faith along with her right eye, could she truly swing the Fragrant Olive Sword and use her sacred arts?
Standing frozen, Alice’s ears—
Picked up a gatan, from within the cabin.
Her left eye flashed wide open. A chair fell over in the middle of the dim living room and beside it was a black-haired youth crawling on the floor.
“…Kirito…”
Alice moved her paralyzed legs and entered the cabin.
The light of determination was absent as usual from Kirito’s eyes. That said, the motive for his sluggish movement was evident. His one, extended arm reached out straight towards the three swords hung on the wall.
“Kirito… you…”
Something hot was caught between her chest and throat. It took some time before she noticed what faintly warped her sight were tears.
“…Ah… aah…”
Kirito’s frame moved without pause as his hoarse voice escaped, desperately approaching the swords. Alice swiped at her eyes, then ran straight to the youth and raised his frail body up from the floor.
“Everything will be fine, I will go. I will save the villagers. So please settle down and wait for me here.”
Quickly whispering so, Alice drew Kirito into a tight hug.
Thump. Thump. The reverberations of his heart beats reached her from their touching chests.
A persistent willpower definitely lurked in those beats even with his heart closed off. Even as indistinct embers, they still transmitted distinct warmth to Alice’s body.
Alice pressed their cheeks together tightly before gently bringing him up and sitting him on a chair.
“I will be back immediately after saving them.”
She spoke again, and then first took her armor and sword belt out from the closet where they were this whole time before equipping them atop her sleepwear. Rushing over the eastern wall next, she grasped her beloved sword without hesitation.
The Fragrant Olive Sword weighed down her two hands as they held it for the first time in half a year. Attaching its scabbard’s metal clasp onto her sword belt, she threw an overcoat on while sticking her feet into boots, then ran down onto the front yard again.
“Amayori!!”
A gigantic silhouette flew out at once, lowering her head, after she called out towards the bed in the east.
Alice commanded in a keen voice after leaping onto the base of her long neck.
“Go!!”
Her pair of silver wings beat loudly and the flying dragon lifted straight off into the night sky after a short ground run.
She could clearly see the catastrophe in Rulid after gaining a little altitude. The grandly rising flames were mainly from the village’s north end. The aggressors likely did come from the Dark Territory through the mountain range at the edge after all.
Eldrie had said that there were no abnormalities at the «North Cave», blocked on Bercouli’s orders, last night. The numbers required to be mobilized for removing all that rubble in a single day definitely exceeded a mere ten or twenty.
It seemed small units had been sneaking in via the three caves through the mountain range at the edge under the cover of night to commit evil deeds since times long past. Kirito and Eugeo had claimed that they fought a group of goblins in the northern cave before they arrived at the central capital too. However, she had never heard of an attack this extensive yet bold. The whole of the land of darkness might truly be thinking that the time is ripe for an all-out assault on the Human World.
Amayori flew over the dense forest in a single go and arrived at the skies over the wheat fields at Rulid’s outskirts even as such thoughts went through Alice’s mind.
She had no reins, but she still conveyed her instructions to hover by lightly tapping the dragon’s nape.
Alice leaned forward and focused her eye on the village’s state. The main street crossing from south to north shone red with flames on its northern end and she could spot the distinct shadows of the advancing attackers. The nimble goblins dashed as though they were leaping forward. The large orcs, too, advanced with a short distance from them.
An impromptu blockade was built from furniture and lumber piled up immediately north of the central plaza, but the goblin vanguards had already reached there and their drawn swords flickering in the light struck as one to pass the obstacle.
The ones fighting back were of the village’s guard corps. However, they were likely surpassed by even the goblins: be it in numbers, in equipment, or in experience. At this rate, it would take but a brief moment before the orc unit, causing tremors as they approached from behind, pulverized them.
Holding back her desire to dive into the midst of that battle this very moment, she continued checking the situation.
Flames rose all about the eastern and western sides of the village as well. It seemed to have yet suffer damage from the plaza to the south, however. Aside from the guards, the other villagers—including Selka, of course—must have fled from the south gate and evacuated to the forest.
Alice focused her eye on the plaza once more with that thought in mind and could not help but to let out her voice.
“Why…!?”
There were countless silhouettes sticking close to the central fountain, surrounding it in the circular plaza before the church. It escaped her immediate notice as there were far too many of them. Nearly the whole of Rulid’s inhabitants must have been gathered there.
Why did they not escape from the village?
The guards would certainly be crushed in no time when the attackers’ main force reaches the blockade. Unless they begin moving straight away, it would be too late to evacuate.
Alice tapped the flying dragon’s neck again and shouted out a line after moving right above the plaza.
“Amayori, standby here until I call!”