Sword Art Online - Volume 20 - Chapter 10

10 
“Tiese, Ronie, how are your injuries doing?” asked the swordswoman subdelegate. The two of them responded energetically. 
“I’m perfectly healthy again,” said Ronie. 
“Like Kirito would say, I’m at max health!” Tiese added, clenching her fist. She didn’t actually know what the term meant, but Asuna apparently did, and she chuckled. 
“That’s good to hear…We put you two through a terrible ordeal…” Her smile faded as she spoke, and her long lashes drooped as she looked away from them. 
But Ronie and Tiese protested. 
“No, we were the ones who put ourselves in danger…” 
“And thanks to your good word, Ayuha made sure that we were fully healed. Just look at this!” 
Tiese lifted up her shirt and flipped down her skirt waist to expose her stomach. The place where the minion had slashed her was completely healed, without a single trace left. 
That was very good, of course. But just because it was only the three girls on the Morning Star Lookout on the ninety-fifth floor of Central Cathedral didn’t mean that they should be showing off their midriffs. 
Ronie reached out and pulled Tiese’s shirt back down. “I must say, Lady Ayuha’s knowledge of medicines is really impressive…I thought we were very diligent students at the academy, but she was pulling out all kinds of plants and minerals I’ve never even heard of.” 
“Even after she was given the position of leader of the sacred artificers brigade, Ayuha has spent her days off going to search for new kinds of herbs on her own. Her sister, Soness, was complaining that she’s often forced to taste test them,” reported Asuna with a little smile. She added quietly, “Apparently, Ayuha wanted to be an herbalist as a child, and when Kirito told her about how he grew zephilia flowers in North Centoria, it rekindled her love for botany.” 
“Oh…but I don’t know that I would recommend trying to compete with the things Kirito does…,” Ronie added without thinking, prompting a big laugh from Tiese. Tsukigake and Shimosaki stopped in the course of eating their dried fish nearby to chirp, while their new friend, Natsu the long-eared wetrat, chewed blissfully on a walnut. 
Three days had already passed since the incident on the imperial holding, making today February 27th. The last day of the month, the 30th, would see a great celebration throughout the entirety of Centoria in memorializing the one-year anniversary of the quelling of the Rebellion of the Four Empires. As such, even the cathedral itself was bustling a little more than usual. 
But for the Unification Council, the situation was too serious to allow anyone to get carried away. 
They had killed both Emperor Hozaika Eastavarieth and Emperor Cruiga Norlangarth one year ago, yet the two men returned with minion bodies and were closely involved in the recent incidents. Cruiga, in particular, had spent a long time hiding out in the emperor’s private lands, directly in sight of Centoria, working on a plan to mass-produce fusion-type minions that were much more powerful than the traditional kind. When Fanatio, Deusolbert, and Xiao Choucas of the intelligence agency had heard this, they were shocked. 
With that news, they searched the imperial holdings and noble lands of all four empires again, but the most they found was some hidden fortunes—and nothing that tied into any grand conspiracies. The most important search was for the red jewel that had flown into the west from the emperor’s villa, but they had found no sign of it since. It was a jewel the size of a songbird’s egg, not a human being, so even Fizel and Linel were having trouble conducting the search in the western empire. 
As for Emperor Cruiga’s other relic, the imperial ring, the two greatest artificers in the cathedral, Ayuha and Soness, were busy studying it. The emperor had called it a vessel, and while it clearly contained some secret to resurrection, actually extracting and identifying the sacred arts commands from the object was a hundred times harder than placing the art upon it in the first place, according to Soness. 
In other words, the strings that would have connected them to the real mastermind were all cut. The only other physical clues they held now were the two knives that Chamberlain Zeppos had possessed and the sacks of clay piled up within the mansion premises. Neither of them seemed likely to develop into new leads. 
The Human Unification Council made the decision to hire high-ranking dark mages from the Dark Territory to examine the clay and ring, and the horseback messengers were sending the request along to Obsidia Palace already. But the letter to Commander Iskahn would take another twelve days to arrive—and two weeks for a return message—so the actual hiring wouldn’t take place for quite a while. 
As for Ronie and Tiese, they were firmly questioned by Fanatio as to why they didn’t return to report in as soon as they heard the sound beyond the mansion door. But she also lauded them for finding and rescuing the kidnapped mountain goblins and announced that they would be promoted from apprentice knights to lower Integrity Knights. 
The official promotion was scheduled to happen in early March, after the celebration of liberation, but they’d already received their internal numbering. 
After Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One, who perished in the Otherworld War, the thirty-second knight would be Tiese. Ronie would be the thirty-third. 
By the knighthood’s tradition, they should have to abandon their family names, but synthesis was a sacred word indicating one who had received the ritual of synthesizing, so after discussing the matter with Kirito and Asuna, it was decided that because the two hadn’t been synthesized, they would simply add the number to their birth names. Next month would see the birth of Tiese Schtrinen Thirty-Two and Ronie Arabel Thirty-Three. 
After their promotional battle, their equipment-authority level rose to 40, which was an absolutely respectable number for a proper knight, but for the moment, Ronie still didn’t feel like she was official. 
Perhaps that was because, since receiving the news two days ago, she and Tiese had not talked about it once. 
Ronie had hinted at the topic a few times, but in each case, Tiese said “Sorry, not yet” and looked away. And in this case, Ronie had a vague idea of why she might not want to. 
Most likely, there were two things that Tiese wanted to settle before she rose to the rank of a full-fledged knight. 
One was her proposal from Renly. 
The other was her love for the late Eugeo. 
The entire reason they’d approached the off-limits imperial villa in the first place was to investigate the rumors of ghosts. If the residents had confused anything for a ghost, it was probably the sight of Zeppos digging up soil in the forest. 
But in Tiese’s case, she was probably hoping that the ghosts were real. If the dead could show themselves, she might actually have a chance to see Eugeo one more time. 
There were no ghosts at the emperor’s mansion. Yet the battle that ensued probably did nothing but deepen Tiese’s ambivalence. Cruiga and Zeppos were dead, brought back to life with vessels and the minion-creation process. In other words, the same method might be capable of bringing Eugeo back. 
Eugeo, of course, would not want to be brought back to life in a minion body. But to a painful extent, Ronie understood Tiese’s desire to see him one more time, to speak with him and tell him how she truly felt. 
Now Tiese was faced with a very accelerated promotion to the knighthood, without having gotten over Eugeo or given Renly an answer to his question. In the daytime, she’d been putting on an even more cheerful demeanor than usual, but Ronie knew that she was in her room crying at night. 
She wanted to help. She wanted to lessen her friend’s pain. But there was nothing Ronie could do for her. 
Today’s tea party was Asuna’s idea, after she noticed the way that Tiese’s face occasionally betrayed darker moods. Solus’s light fell gentle and warm into the Morning Star Lookout, where all the walls were open to the sky, and the balmy breeze told of the approach of spring. The apple-scented tea from Hana’s private stock and Asuna’s homemade apple pie were both delicious, and in the pleasant afterglow of the meal, watching the three animals frolic, it was hard not to smile. 
But even with her peaceful smile, the sadness deep in Tiese’s maple-red eyes did not fade away. 
At this rate, it was possible that Tiese might refuse the promotion to become a proper knight. In fact, she might even return her sword and insignia to the knighthood and leave Central Cathedral altogether… 
Seized by this awful premonition, Ronie’s breath caught in her throat for a moment. 
Then a voice said “Sorry I’m late!” and Kirito bounded up the stairs onto the lookout. 
Asuna stood up and put her hands on her hips. “You’re really late! We’ve already finished off the pie.” 
“Huh…? D-did you save a slice for me…?” 
“Hmm, I don’t know, it was really tasty, so…” 
“Aw, that’s not fair!” he protested, placing a long, wrapped object into a nearby flower planter and taking the seat between Ronie and Asuna. 
Asuna had saved some of the pie, of course, and she set out the large slice with some apple tea for him. As he opened wide to take a huge bite, Tiese asked him, “Kirito, you said you were going to be late ahead of time. Where were you?” 
“Mmf, mmf…Actually, Deu asked me to go somewhere with him…He said he wants to beef up the security measures for the festival on the thirtieth, so we were having a meeting about that.” 
Ronie pretended not to hear his extremely informal nickname for Instructor Deusolbert. “Um, is that because the Black Emperor Gang might try to do something during the celebration?” she asked. 
“B-Black Emperor?” repeated Kirito and Asuna. 
Ronie glanced at Tiese and said, “There’s no official title for the people who are responsible for this string of incidents, so we’ve been calling them that…” 
“I see. The Black Emperor Gang, huh…? I like that—I’ll use it, too…Anyway, Deu’s worried about exactly that, but I think the likelihood is low. The goal of the revived emperors is stirring up another war between the human realm and the dark realm, and the fusion minions they were going to do it with are dissolved. If they do mess with us again, it’s going to take a while for them to prepare…” 
“That’s right,” said Asuna. “Or in other words, if you two hadn’t found Emperor Cruiga’s hideout, perhaps those fusion-type minions would have attacked the liberation festival.” 
Kirito nodded. “Exactly…Fanatio might have scolded you for being reckless without backup, but you ended up saving us from a terrible situation. We found over two hundred sacks of clay in the woods…It makes me shiver to consider what would have happened if all those had been turned into minions.” 
“In that case, what do you suppose their plan would have been as far as the subjects trapped inside the minions…?” Tiese asked. 
Kirito took a sip of apple tea and grimaced. “Hmm…It’s not very practical for them to kidnap every last nonhuman staying in the human realm. For one thing, trade has temporarily halted, and all the tourists are going back home…Oh, by the way, Oroi and the other three mountain goblins are leaving tomorrow morning. They wanted a chance to thank you for what you did.” 
“Then we’ll have to go and see them off!” Ronie said at once, looking to the eastern sky. 
The Eastern Gate, which had separated the human and dark realms for over four hundred years, collapsed one year and three months ago, to enable war between the two sides. After the war’s finish, the gate was rebuilt, but the new wooden structure remained open. 
After the murder of Yazen, however, the gate was closed again. In that sense, the black emperors had already achieved part of their goal. And the matter hadn’t been resolved in the least. 
She recalled what Fizel told her in the Great Bath and looked at the side profile of the swordsman delegate’s face. 
“Um, Kirito. It’s true that Aldares Wesdarath V, the emperor of the western empire, was the only one whose body didn’t turn up, right…?” 
“That’s what I hear. Fanatio’s Memory Release arts completely burned down West Centoria’s Imperial Palace…It took them three months to clear the rubble, so if Emperor Aldares’s body was buried under there, it would have dissolved into sacred power long before the castle was cleared away.” 
“Or maybe he escaped and went into hiding…,” Asuna pointed out. 
Kirito crossed his arms. “Hmm…I think Cruiga was able to hide in the villa because he had a minion body and didn’t need to eat. But if Aldares is still alive, he’ll require food. If he comes to buy food in person, he’ll draw attention and get caught in Xiao’s information network…but…” 
“But what?” 
“According to Fizel and Linel’s investigation, there are a number of former Imperial Knights from the four empires’ Imperial Guard who are unaccounted for. They swore loyalty to the imperial families, so I wouldn’t expect them to switch over to the guardian army right away, of course…” 
“But if those former knights had rejoined the emperor, it wouldn’t be that hard for them to arrange for food. So in that sense, we might need to widen the search.” 
“It’s like no amount of manpower is enough for us,” Kirito grumbled. 

Ronie knew he was dealing with so much work that it was pulling him all over the place every day. She straightened her back and said, “When we become proper knights, we will help you with whatever we can!” 
Kirito flashed her a grin and said “I could use that,” then looked at Tiese. His eyes bulged with surprise. 
Ronie looked to her right. Just a moment ago, Tiese had been listening seriously, but now she was crumpling her face, biting her lip, and doing everything she could not to cry. 
“Tiese,” she said, reaching out to touch her friend’s back. In terms of size, Tiese was slightly larger than her, but now she felt as small as a little child. 
Kirito and Asuna said nothing. They remained calm and composed, as the leaders of the knighthood should, but they waited and watched, considerate of her emotions. 
“Kyrrr…” 
Shimosaki had been playing tag with Tsukigake and Natsu in the middle of the grass, but now he approached the table with a little croon and licked at the fingers of her right hand. She scratched the little dragon’s head gently, then looked up at last. 
“Um…Kirito, Lady Asuna…” 
The two of them just nodded. Tiese sounded out each word carefully. 
“I…I think I’m going to refuse the promotion to full-fledged knight.” 
“Why do you say that?” asked Kirito earnestly. His black eyes were as powerful and warm and enveloping as they’d been since the first time they’d met at Swordcraft Academy, and they convinced Tiese to reveal what she’d been carrying inside of her all this time. 
“…I suggested that we should investigate the emperor’s villa…because I heard a rumor there were ghosts there. And if ghosts are real…then maybe one day I can see Eugeo again. I let my emotions carry me onward, and I put Ronie and Tsukigake and Shimosaki in danger. I…I don’t have the right to be an Integrity Knight.” 
Her voice trembled at the very end, and a single set of tears dripped from her maple-red eyes. 
There were many things Ronie wanted to say to her friend, but right now it was Kirito’s job to accept Tiese’s emotions. 
“You want to see him, don’t you?” he said, his voice gentle but ever so slightly strained. Tiese’s face shot upward; she stared at him with teary eyes. 
“There are times when I want to see Eugeo so much, I can’t stand it,” he went on. “When I’m alone, I always find that I’m remembering something he said or the way he smiled. And…the truth is, it’s not like there’s no way to hear the voice of those who have died. Our memories seep into things we treasure and places we love, and it’s possible to summon a kind of imitation soul from them through sacred arts…” 
This caused Tiese to twitch. She clasped her hands before her chest and wrung the words from her lungs. “Then…Then, can I see him? Can I see Eugeo again…?” 
Kirito closed his eyes briefly. He shook his head in one slow motion. “Even if a sacred art could help you hear Eugeo’s voice, that would not be the real Eugeo. Emperor Cruiga came back to life as a minion, and he wasn’t the real person, either…Five floors above us on the top of the cathedral, Eugeo fought the pontifex, and they both died. Like the young Alice, whose soul was taken away from her by the Synthesis Ritual, his soul has gone on a journey to somewhere far, far away. Even after that point, the memory of Eugeo in his sword saved me many times…but that too burned itself out in the battle with Emperor Vecta…” 
His words were full of sympathy and kindness but also cruel honesty. Tiese’s shoulders slumped. 
“Then…I suppose his memories are nowhere to be found in this world…,” she murmured. 
“I didn’t say that,” he insisted firmly. He lifted his hand, then pressed it to his chest. “The memories are in here. His memories still remain in all the people who met Eugeo and spent time with him. And if the Eugeo of your memories speaks to you…then that is the real Eugeo.” 
Tiese inhaled sharply, almost like a gasp, and pressed a hand to her own chest. 
A few seconds later, she let it fall to her lap. 
“……I was. I was…only Eugeo’s page for a little over a month. I didn’t get to travel with him, like you did, or fight against the Axiom Church with him. And the truth is…I’m the reason he was taken to the Church in the first place. It was my fault he couldn’t be at school and ended up going far away…and that’s why I can’t hear his voice!” 
She pressed her hands to her face and began to cry. Shimosaki issued a note of concern and rubbed his neck against her legs. Tsukigake and Natsu stood by, watching. 
“Tiese,” said Asuna quietly as the girl continued to cry. “I lost someone I cared about very much in the real world, too. She was younger than me, but so, so much stronger, always cheerful and smiling. I thought of her like a little sister. The time we spent together was very short…but during the Otherworld War, she helped save me. She appears in so many of my memories. What’s important isn’t the length of time…and what Eugeo did was to save you two. I’m sure he never once regretted doing that.” 
Asuna reached out and gently caressed Tiese’s back. The girl’s sobs were growing quieter. But she didn’t take her hands off her face, so Kirito faced her directly and said, “Tiese, even if you don’t take the promotion to be a knight, you’ll still trade your sword in, right?” 
It was an abrupt question, but Tiese did remove her hands at last to reveal her tear-streaked face. 
“Yes,” she said. “Because I was still using a standard-issue sword at the mansion, Ronie had to do all the fighting…” 
“Then you’ll get to choose your everyday sword from the armory…and I also want you to keep this,” Kirito said, pulling out the wrapped item he’d stuck in the nearby flower bed. 
From the white cloth emerged an unspeakably beautiful longsword, as translucent and blue as ice, with a carving of a rose on its hilt. Tiese’s eyes went as wide as they possibly could when she saw it. 
“Th-the Blue Rose Sword…?!” 
Kirito set down the sword—the divine weapon that once belonged to Eugeo and had been in Kirito’s care ever since his death—on the table before her. 
“B-but—but that’s your…” 
She shook her head nervously. Ronie understood why she wouldn’t want to take it. 
From the battle against the pontifex to the very conclusion of the Otherworld War, Kirito’s heart had remained closed to the world. He hadn’t been able to speak or walk, but he had never loosened his grip on the Night-Sky Blade and the Blue Rose Sword. 
But Kirito just grinned and said firmly, “I want you to have this, Tiese. You don’t have the equipment-authority level yet, so swinging it around might be tough, but you can certainly keep it in good shape…If you polish it carefully, I’m sure you’ll be able to hear Eugeo’s voice, too. And that voice isn’t an imitation. Not the voice that comes from your own memories, rather than some art…Go on.” 
At his urging, she hesitantly held out her hands and grabbed the sword in its white leather sheath. Tiese’s present equipment-authority level was 40, like Ronie’s. The priority level of the Blue Rose Sword was 45, if she remembered right. With a gap as big as five, it would be difficult to even lift it, unless you had a blacksmith’s or craftsman’s calling. 
From the moment they entered Swordcraft Academy, Eugeo and Kirito were able to wield this divine weapon. In other words, their equipment authority was at 45, around the level of a higher Integrity Knight. So it made some sense that they were able to hold their own against Deusolbert and Fanatio in Central Cathedral. But like Kirito always said, the numbers weren’t everything when it came to strength. 
Tiese stood up, widened her stance, and let out a long breath. She inhaled for just as long, tensed, and slowly, carefully lifted the Blue Rose Sword. 
The divine weapon rose to her chest without resisting her grasp. She clutched it firmly, lifted the handle up to her cheek, and smiled, with just a trace of her tears still visible. 
“Kirito, I will treasure this sword. I will perform upkeep on it every day and engage deeply in my training…and one day, I will be a great and mighty knight capable of swinging it!” 
“Good.” 
Kirito and Asuna nodded together. Ronie blinked and found that her eyes were filling with tears, too. 
Her love for Eugeo. Renly’s proposal. Tiese would still need much time to reach her answers to these things. But she could take it bit by bit, one step at a time. Just the way the two always had. 
A breeze blew through the garden, and the bells for the two o’clock hour chimed pleasantly. 
“Ah…time to go,” Kirito said abruptly, shoving the last piece of the apple pie into his mouth. It was big enough that his cheeks bulged like Natsu the nut-loving rat. 
“Where?” Asuna asked. 
“Watch the front gate, everyone.” 
They did as he said, moving down the passage—Tiese taking slower steps with the heavy weapon in her hands—to where they could look south, down to the front yard of the cathedral. 
At that very moment, the gate was open, instead of closed like always, and a large carriage drawn by four horses was making its way onto the premises. 
“Wow, that’s a huge carriage,” muttered Tiese. 
“I wonder who’s riding in it…,” Ronie said. 
“Oh, come on, don’t you remember the announcement at the meeting a few days ago?” Kirito asked with a grin. There was cream stuck to his face. “It’s the apprentice artificers who are entering the cathedral this month.” 
“Wha……?” 
The two girls shared a look, then stared at the carriage again. They had mentioned this topic. The whole uproar with the black emperors had completely pushed it from their minds. But that meant this carriage was carrying… 
“…Frenica!” they shouted together. The girls looked to Kirito and Asuna. “Um, d-do you think we could…?” 
“You want to go see her, right? I’ll deliver the Blue Rose Sword to your room later.” 
“I…I’m so sorry for the trouble! Thank you very much!” Tiese said. She didn’t want to let go of the sword for even a moment, but she couldn’t run with the divine weapon yet. Ronie joined her in bowing to Kirito as he took the sword. 
“Lady Asuna, thank you for the pie and tea! If you’ll excuse us!” 
“Go on, now,” said Asuna, beaming and waving. They rushed past her toward the staircase. 
But behind their backs, they heard Kirito say, “I’ll go down to greet Selka, too.” They looked over their shoulders and saw Kirito, Blue Rose Sword in hand, leap right over the railing into the open air. 
“Oh! Hey, Kirito! Take me with you!” Asuna shouted, jumping after him. The swordsman delegate and subdelegate vanished in an instant. Ronie and Tiese looked at each other, then giggled. 
“Tsukigake, Shimosaki, Natsu, we’re going!” they called out. 
The juvenile dragons chirped, and the rat leaped onto Tsukigake’s back. 
The five of them sped along energetically through the observation deck as flowers bloomed all around them in anticipation of spring. 
(The End)