"Quickly!" the Cardinal exclaims, closing down the magical doorway behind her.
Kirito and Yuuki push open the large double doors of the armory on the Third Floor of the Central Cathedral before scrambling apart as the small librarian dashes past them.
"Be on guard, you two," the Cardinal says as the three of them dash up the first flight of stairs. "The Integrity Knights are on guard for intruders so be prepared to fight."
"Intruders?" Kirito asks. "What intruders?"
"It's hard to make an immediate diagnosis, but it appears that Eugeo and Alice are now considered intruders in the Cathedral."
Kirito's eyes widen.
"Eugeo and Alice?! Intruders?!"
"Who're Eugeo and Alice?" Yuuki asks.
"Hopefully, you'll get to meet them soon enough," Cardinal says.
"Wait, if they're now considered intruders in the Cathedral…does that mean they both somehow found a way to undo the synthesis ritual?" Kirito asks.
"Perhaps."
"What's the synthesis ritual?" Yuuki asks.
"You ask too many questions," Cardinal says.
"I'm sorry if that's what people tend to do when they don't know anything about what you talk about!" Yuuki exclaims.
"Kirito, you should've chosen someone not as loud to be your lover."
"Well, she does come with her perks, eheheh…"
"What's with the lack of confidence in that statement?!"
The three of them finally reach the top of the stairs, which puts them on the fourth floor, which was just a large, elaborate hallway adorned with large, crystal blue pillars flanking the left and right sides of a long, large red carpet leading to the next flight of stairs.
But then the three of them stop seeing an Integrity Knight clad in silver and brown armor blocking their path, the long, thin handle of a double-handed battle-ax in his hands.
"Stop right there, intruders!" the Knight shouts. Although the Knight's helmet was hiding his features, the voice made him sound like a young male. "I, Integrity Knight Weiss Synthesis Fourteen, will stop you right here!"
Kirito and Yuuki slide to a stop, drawing their swords out of their sheaths. However, the Cardinal doesn't stop.
"I don't have time for you," she growls, aiming the tip of her staff at the Knight. "System call! Generate aerial element!"
A large ball of visible, light green air materializes at the tip of her staff.
"Burst!"
A large, horizontal beam of light green wind is suddenly blasted from the staff's tip. The Integrity Knight only has enough time to raise his ax just as the wind blast hits him at full force, shooting him into the wall right behind him. He slams into it and slumps to the ground, unconscious. As the wind slams into the wall around him, it bounces back across the whole hallway, making Kirito and Yuuki bring their arms up to their heads to guard them from wind.
Once the wind completely dissipates, Cardinal taps each of them with her staff before taking off again down the hallway towards the staircase. Kirito and Yuuki uncover their heads and follow after her.
"Holy crap! What was that?!" Yuuki exclaims.
"I knew that the Cardinal was powerful, but…" Kirito replies with, obviously awestruck.
The three of them continue up the Central Cathedral in mostly silence. They do run into a few Integrity Knights, ones that Kirito didn't recognize, but Cardinal gets past them just as quickly as she had with the first.
"I feel like you're going through these Integrity Knights way too easily," Kirito says once reaching the twentieth floor after running past their fourth Integrity Knight.
"If I gave them time to perform their Perfect Weapon Control Art, then our little rumbles would last much longer," the Cardinal says. "Who knows, if that were the case, maybe one of these Knights may even take us down. We have the advantage of surprise on our hands, so why not use it?"
Just as the word leaves her mouth, her eyes widen just as a long, thin dark purple blade suddenly appears in her field of vision. Thankfully, she was a quick little librarian and managed to duck right under the blade, sacrificing her hat in the process. Kirito and Yuuki both yelp in surprise as they both hop to the side, just barely managing to avoid the dull-purple-armor clad Knight barreling in their direction. The Knight rolls to the ground behind them, making Yuuki and Kirito face her, swords at the ready.
"It's that same Knight from before!" Yuuki exclaims. "The one that fought me before I met up with you! I think her name was…Cheetah or something? No, it was Sheyta."
"System call! Generate aerial element!" the Cardinal shouts, turning around to point her staff at the Integrity Knight. "Burst!"
"Enhance armament," Sheyta says.
Her thin blade glows as circles and boxes appear along the length of its blade. It then glows a bright violet as Sheyta swings her blade in the air, visibly slicing the Cardinal's wind projectile in two. The halves of the projectile explode against the wall behind her, but she doesn't acknowledge it.
"Damn," Cardinal hisses.
"You've got more than just her to worry about," another voice says as Cardinal turns around just in time to see another Integrity Knight at the other end of the hallway behind her, this one clad in red armor like Deusolbert, but this red was more like a crimson, blood red. In his hand was a single sword, but its turquoise blade was jagged and curved at an unusual angle.
She hops back and aims her staff at the Knight, reciting the command again. A large burst of wind fires off from the tip of her staff, but the Knight doesn't move from his current position. He, instead, just holds out his sword.
"Release recollection.
"Feast, you ravenous beast."
The sword glows as circles and boxes appear all along the length of its curved blade. It then starts vibrating as the Knight swipes his sword through the air. In a small flash of light, the wind projectile promptly disappears as the blade starts glowing a bright green, the blade still humming.
"Curses, a Divine weapon that can absorb Sacred Arts," the Cardinal hisses. "Beating these Knights will take up way too much time."
"Then we're going to have to improvise," Kirito says. "How about this? Cardinal-san, you go on ahead and retrieve Eugeo and Alice while Yuuki and I fight off these guys?"
"Are you insane?" the Cardinal asks. "I am not going to abandon you here with Integrity Knights. Besides, how will I even get past this one?"
"Remember what we came here for, Cardinal-san," Kirito says, with a reassuring smile. "We came here for Eugeo and Alice. We can't all stop here just to fight with these two and since that Knight over there can absorb Sacred Arts, Yuuki and I will have to take them. We don't need to defeat them, we just need to buy time until you reach Eugeo and Alice. As for getting past this guy, just be prepared to speed past him."
The Cardinal looks up at Kirito for a moment, then sighs and nods.
"Fine, but don't you dare die or get captured," the Cardinal sternly says. "I still believe that you're the only one who can truly go up against the Administrator and I still need you to be alive to take her down."
"No worries, Cardinal-san. Now, are you ready?"
The Cardinal nods.
Kirito points his blade at the Integrity Knight in front of him.
"Enhance armament!"
Cybernetic circles and boxes materialize along the length of his dark blade before the blade starts glowing a bright violet, dissolving away the circles and boxes. Then, a large, undulating purple mass erupts from his blade.
Yuuki watches, awestruck, as Kirito raises his sword into the air, allowing the dark mass of energy to swarm and spread throughout the air above him.
"Hey, sir Knight!" Kirito calls, a wide smile on his face. "That's a pretty cool Divine Weapon you've got there. It's just that, you're not the only one with a Divine weapon that can consume something. Except, while yours can only consume Sacred Arts…
"Mine can consume Sacred power straight out of the air assuming that it's there. And in this Cathedral, there's quite an abundance of it.
"Now, Cardinal-san!"
Kirito swings his sword at the Knight, sending the blob of dark energy straight at him. The Knight shouts "Release Recollection!" as the blade of his sword glows a bright light green. He swings his sword at the dark energy, releasing a large blast of wind. The two attacks collide with each other, creating a large explosion and scattering dark energy and wind everywhere.
The Knight staggers backward a bit, but quickly regains his composure and swings his sword just in time to block Kirito's next swing, scattering more wind and dark energy. It takes the Cardinal a moment that this was the opportunity he was presenting to her.
With only the slightest bit of hesitation, she takes off past the Knight, who turns to her and shouts "Hey!" but is forced to turn back to Kirito to block another one of his attacks.
Stay safe, Kirito-san. And I guarantee that I will come back with Eugeo and Alice.
As the small librarian takes off up the next set of stairs, Yuuki and Sheyta are both preparing to start their own fight.
"Man, Kirito's so cool," Yuuki says. "Did you see that power? I'm kinda excited to see if my sword will do something like that."
Sheyta doesn't respond. Instead, she suddenly dashes forward, aiming the tip of her rapier at Yuuki.
The violet-haired girl just sighs and holds up her sword in defense.
"Well then, not the kind to make small talk, I guess," she says, before ducking under the thin blade and twisting her body to swing her sword at the Knight's exposed torso.
"I know who this is now," Alice says. "This is Synthesis Four."
Eugeo moves his head to the side just in time to dodge the tip of a sky blue-bladed spear tip. He steps into the Integrity Knight's, Synthesis Four's, guard, swinging his Blue Rose Sword at his head, his blade glowing green as he activated the Sword Skill Horizontal. The Knight was quick though, managing to bring the handle of his spear up just in time to block the blade. He then bends backwards and twirls his spear in the air, forcing Eugeo to hop backwards in order to avoid being sliced apart.
Alice takes the opportunity to dash in from behind Eugeo, using his body to hide herself, before suddenly emerging from his side and bringing her golden Osmanthus Blade down on the Knight. However, he quickly brings the spear handle to block the blade.
"Synthesis Four is almost always out on missions to the Dark Territory," Alice says. "Not even I remember the last time he was at the Cathedral. Did the Lady Pontifex really call him back just to stop us?"
"Do you remember what his Perfect Weapon Control Art is?"
"No, I have never seen him use it."
"In that case, our best move is to neutralize this one before he uses it."
He tosses the Blue Rose Sword up into the air and catches it again, but this time, the point of his sword was pointed to the ground. He then plunges the crystal blue sword into the ground, the blade easily passing through the crystal floor.
"Enhance armament!"
Cybernetic circles and boxes appear in a large circle around him. They then disappear as ice erupts all around him, surging towards the Integrity Knight. The Knight swings his spear at the incoming wave of ice, shattering it, but he doesn't move fast enough to do anything about the ice that crawls towards him from the sides. They trap his body, making him drop his spear, which clatters against the ground.
"I'll leech away just enough health to subdue him," Eugeo says. "Then we'll continue on to the lower floors.
"Release recollection. Bloom, blue roses."
Vines of ice crawl along the ice and up the Knight's frozen body, wrapping themselves around it.
Then his eyes widen.
"What's wrong?" Alice asks, noticing this.
"Impossible," Eugeo mutters. "The…the roses can't bloom. They can't find any life to bloom off of."
"What?"
"The Blue Rose Sword needs life in order to grow its flowers, so it sucks it out of whoever it wraps its vines around. However, how can the flowers not find any life at all?"
Alice doesn't respond. Instead, she turns to the Knight before walking over to his frozen body. Then she plunges the Osmanthus Blade right through the ice and through the Knight's chestplate. As brutal as the action seemed, Eugeo knew that she had stabbed the Knight in a non-vital spot that wouldn't have killed the Knight right away.
To her surprise though, when she pulls out her blade, blood didn't seep out of the wound like she was expecting. She looks to the blade of her Osmanthus Sword to see that its golden blade was still as shiny and clean as it was before, stained by not even the tiniest speck of blood.
She was now even more confused than before.
"Alice!" Eugeo shouts. "Get away! I can't hold the Art for much longer!"
Alice jumps backward as Eugeo pulls his sword out of the ground. Cracks start webbing throughout the ice surrounding the Knight before shattering completely, freeing the Knight from his confinement.
Alice and Eugeo dash towards the Knight for another attack. The Knight quickly swoops down to pick up his spear and raises it just in time to block Eugeo's sword, the crystal blue blade and the spear handle collide with a thunk. Alice takes the opportunity to get behind the Knight and swing her sword at the Knight's neck, an attack the Knight doesn't move fast enough to block.
By doing this, I may be committing the unforgivable act of killing a fellow Integrity Knight, but this is a Knight without life nor blood. It seems that this is the only way to get past him.
In advance, I apologize.
Alice then slices off the Knight's head, her blade easily passing through the Knight's armor.
Her eyes widen when the helmet drops to the ground, bouncing off the ground with a hollow thunk sound.
There was no head inside the helmet.
"What in Stacia's name?" she hears Eugeo mutter.
She herself was puzzled, staring at the empty helmet on the ground. Then her eyes snap up to the helmet-less set of armor that bends down to pick up its spear from the floor, which had dropped from the Knight's hand again at some point. Alice realizes that just like the helmet, there was nothing inside the chestplate.
"So you've realized," a gurgly, baritone voice says from somewhere inside the armor.
"Who are you?" Alice asks, walking backwards until she was side by side with Eugeo again.
"Who am I, you ask?"
A dark, foggy mass rises out of the armor, making a spherical shape as a head of some sort, though it was featureless.
"When I died during the final war of the Age of Blood and Iron, I was Her Lady Eminence's strongest warrior. And even now, I am still one of her strongest Knights. Petty traitors such as the two of you can't hope to have the caliber to defeat me."
The Knight raises his spear up into the air.
"Enhance armament!"
Green, cybernetic circles and boxes appear along the length of the spear, the whole weapon glowing with lime green light. The spear's shape distorts, transforming into what looked more like a long cylinder with a sharp tip than a spear.
"Prepare yourselves, for I, Integrity Knight Feyton Synthesis Four, will be your opponent."
The Knight stabs the tip of his weapon into the ground before dragging it forward and back up in a vertical arc in front of him. Just as the sharp tip rises into the air, a large light green shockwave fires itself towards Eugeo and Alice.
Thinking quickly, Alice shouts "Enhance armament!," the blade of her sword glowing as cybernetic boxes and circles materialize along the length of its blade before the golden metal splits apart into thousands of small, glowing golden flowers which swarm the air in front of the two. The flowers and the shockwave collide, creating a small explosion of green energy.
"You claim to be one of the Lady Pontifex's greatest warriors," Alice says. "Well, that's just great.
"Because, among the Integrity Knight's, I am second only to uncle, the Knight Commander himself."
A set look of determination appears on her face as she raises the handle of her Osmanthus Sword, her flowers swarming the air above her.
"Let's attack with the ferocity of wolves, Eugeo," Alice says.
"Of course, Alice," Eugeo says, raising his blade.
The crystal blue blade starts glowing as the temperature in the air around begins to drop.
A/N: IMO, Alicization was the best part of Sword Art Online, but one thing that peeved me about it was the fact that only a few of the Integrity Knights were introduced. I think they should've introduced more, but oh well. Anyways, I've introduced two new Integrity Knights, including an undead one because honestly, Quinella is the kind to bring someone up from the dead and make him an Integrity Knight. Anyways, until next time!