"S-Sorry. But I think it"s okay now... Nothing real y happened to Eugeo after he broke through the seal once too..."
"...I hope so too."
I looked at Alice softly caress the eye patch over where her right eye was while recal ing what had happened on the terrace outside.
Despite trembling time after time before she made up her mind to revolt against the church and fight against the highest minister, the "piety module" that should have been inserted into her fluct light through that process hadn"t turned unstable in the slightest. I had guessed that the "memory fragment"
stolen from Alice by Administrator was of her little sister, Selka, or her childhood friend, Eugeo, but unlike with Eldrie, that purple prism showed no sign of leaving her forehead, both when she met with Eugeo at the Sword Mastery Academy and when she heard Selka"s name.
In that case, what exactly are the contents of the memories stolen from Alice and in Administrator"s possession?
There wasn"t any point in bothering with that now. After al , if we get Cardinal to conduct a so-cal ed "reverse synthesis", Alice would regain her former memories and her integrity knight persona walking at my side right now would vanish...
My feet moved automatical y as I became aware of a soft throbbing in my chest. Our footsteps were all that reverberated 234.
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in the grand staircase, silent as a cemetery, in the middle of the night.
Upon pa.s.sing a landing covered in red carpeting for the fifth time, the stairs downward cut off and a gigantic door took their place. We did ignore the floors from ninety-fourth to ninety- first, but there weren"t any traces of battle left on the floor and walls thus far.
I gave a look that asked, "Here?", to Alice who stopped in her tracks.
"Yes... The ninetieth floor"s large bath is just ahead. Oji-sama certainly wouldn"t have chosen such a place to intercept him...
or so I would think, but that man is simply..."
Gulping down the rest of her words, Alice raised her right hand and placed it against the double doors. The thick marble slab easily turned without making any noise.
White mist surged forth as a whole from inside in that instant and I instinctively averted my face.
"Woah... this is some amazing steam. Just how huge is this bath, I practically can"t see anything in front of me."
That wasn"t entirely true of course, but it would be so nice to strip my sweat-soaked clothes and jump into the warm water...
with those thoughts in my mind, I took a step in. There, I finally noticed the white mist sticking to my whole body wasn"t 235.
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anything like steam rising from hot water, but a cold wave caused by extremely low temperatures.
It appeared this was beyond Alice"s expectations as well, seeing as she let out a small sneeze-while I let a huge one rip. I highly doubt it was pushed aside by my breath, but the white veil smoothly diverged left and right. The now-exposed, panoramic view of the large bath struck me into standing stil .
It must have used up the entire cathedral floor, with the wall on the other end so far away it appeared white and hazy. The bath took up nearly all of the floor area and was halved by the path stretching straight out from where Alice and I stood, but each of them were a pool with a size of fifty meters, or so they appeared to me.
However, what was truly frightening was how the left side, which should have been br.i.m.m.i.n.g with hot water, was now frozen pure white.
Even the water flowing from a spout installed at the corner of the bath, made in the resemblance of a beast"s head, had turned into a curved icicle, an indication that it froze over in an instant.
This was, of course, no natural phenomenon and should be acknowledged as a result brought about by some large-scale sacred art.
However, it was no simple task to freeze over this quant.i.ty of hot water in an instant. If the usual freezing arts done through 236.
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cryogenic elements were used, it would require ten high ranking users at the very least, wouldn"t it?
I went forward towards the left and down the stairs that served as the edge of the bath, then placed my foot upon the white and hardened ice surface. The ice didn"t even creak with my entire weight upon it while my black sword was still on me.
The depths must have been frozen all the way through to the bottom.
"...Just who and why..."
I muttered, dumbfounded, as I pushed through the lingering mist, my feet taking several steps forward before they treaded onto something hard. A fleeting noise rang out from that before breaking apart in that instant. Frowning and taking a look downwards, I saw that there appeared to be numerous more round lumps scattered on the ice surface. Reaching my hand out, I broke one off and brought it before my face.
It-had several blue, translucent petals in bloom, a rose made from ice.
I had caught sight of this several times before. When I fought against Deputy Knight Commander Fanatio Synthesis Two on the fiftieth floor of the cathedral, "Grand Cloister of Spiritual Light"-or when I fought with Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty on the eightieth floor, "Cloudtop Garden". Eugeo"s 237.
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armament complete control art, used to stop their movement, gave birth to ice flowers like these.
In other words, what froze over the whole of this gigantic bath was not a sacred art, but...
"......Eugeo..."
A chime rang out as Alice came down beside me as I muttered.
She murmured hoa.r.s.ely with her left eye opened wide in shock.
"Goodness... Eugeo was the one who did this...?"
"Yeah, no mistake about that. It"s his Blue Rose Sword"s armament complete control art. ...Honestly, I never imagined it could be this powerful..."
Eugeo mentioned that his armament full control art was meant for restricting movement, but this was ridiculous. A person would have all of his or her Life drained in an instant just by getting caught up in this icy hel .
He might have truly driven away the knight of legend, Bercouli... I pondered while anxiously scanning around. The umbra element searching for the Blue Rose Sword had certainly indicated somewhere around here, thus Eugeo should be near this sword as wel .
That then happened. Alice let out a soft "Ah" by my side.
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I sharply drew in a breath in the next moment. Around twenty meters away, following the knight"s sight, was a visibly large silhouette. That was unmistakably the contour of a human"s shoulders and head. Someone was buried within the ice.
After exchanging glances with Alice, we both kicked through the ice roses at our feet as we started running. But I immediately realized that the silhouette buried in the ice clearly wasn"t Eugeo. Both his shoulder breadth and his neck thickness were several times as burly as Eugeo"s.
I slackened my speed from disappointment and wariness, but on the other hand, Alice cried out shrilly and ran even quicker.
"Oji-sama...!"
She rushed over to the frozen silhouette without restrain.
-That"s Knight Commander Bercouli!? Then where had Eugeo went...!?
I sped up once again even in my discomposure. By the time I got there several seconds later, Alice was already kneeling before the giant half-buried in ice, her two hands grasped together tightly as she wringed out a half-scream.
"Oji-sama...! Your Excel ency, Knight Commander! What had happened that you were...!?"
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Shouldn"t Alice have already known of the Blue Rose Sword"s ability after experiencing Eugeo"s armament full control art firsthand on the eightieth-floor? My doubts were cleared immediately.
The large man sunk chest-deep within the thick ice was not merely frozen. His shoulders, bulging with muscles, his neck, thick as a log, and his masculine facial features with the edge of a war sword were all dyed in an inanimated grey.
"...This... isn"t Eugeo"s armament full control art..."
Still kneeling down, Alice gently nodded when I muttered in a daze.
"...I believe so as well. I have heard about this from oji-sama a long time ago. That the chief elder is granted the authority to turn each and every human to stone... and that includes even the integrity knights. I believe that art was named... " Deep Freeze", if I recall right."
"Deep... freeze. But why... Shouldn"t he be a vital source of combat might for suppressing us intruders right now?"
"...Oji-sama seemed to hold faint distrust against the instructions handed down by the Chamber of Elders... However, he believed peace without the Axiom Church"s rule was impossible like I once did and continued fighting through the endless days. Regardless of the authority the chief elder may possess, this... this treatment is definitely unwarranted, whatever the circ.u.mstances might have been!!"
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Tears overflowing from Alice"s left eye trickled to her knees as she cried out with her head hung down. Without even attempting to wipe her cheeks, Alice reached out with both hands and clung to the petrified Bercouli. The drops of tears falling through the air landed onto the knight commander"s cheeks and scattered as light particles. That was when it happened.
Bishii! That noise hammered my ears.
Alice sprang to her feet and fixed her eyes upon Bercouli"s neck. As though the meager heat from Alice"s tears were dissolving through the petrification, thin cracks formed upon him. The cracks instantly multiplied and miniscule fragments burst off.
The ashen stone sculpture crackled on its own and its neck slowly, sluggishly turned as Alice and I looked on in amazement.
Before long, the stone figure, with its head finally turned upwards, started developing cracks near its mouth this time round. Those broken pieces that must have been living flesh and blood a few hours ago continued fal ing off without stop.
Judging from the name, deep freeze, it seemed probable that command completely froze not just the Underworld inhabitants"
physical bodies, but their minds as well. It was different from being painted over with plaster in the real world. They would be denied from al possible motions as instructed by their 241.