A way to pull Joi free came to me.

I couldn’t execute it.

I could use the Deepening Perk Area Imbuement twice per day.

Once before the clash, and once more when I drove Unutus back.

I’d already spent both.

“Damn it!”

I kept High-Speed Cognition running, cursing not the eldest of the Three before my eyes but myself for failing to foresee this situation.

Was there truly no way?

Should I swallow a massive loss and drop a Heavenstrike that would kill both the Knights in that skiff and Joi?

“You look lost in thought, bastard who doesn’t even know his father!”

“I’ll exact the price for insulting the Patriarch, His Highness!”

Unutus slashed up with the Sand-Iron Blades; I scattered them with the Star-Sword and threw the words back any which way.

The electric sparks snapping from my grip were a live wire’s bite.

In the pain that snapped my head clear I made a flat assertion.

No.

I didn’t have to kill both the Knights in that skiff and Joi.

Heavenstrike had once been an Authority I couldn’t even dream of without a Perk—but I’d managed to manifest it without one, and then outright absorbed the Perk into the Celestial Lightning Body.

Area Imbuement would be the same.

So recall it, Kyrie.

The feel of using Area Imbuement.

Right now your adjutant—who holds both your weak point and your army close—is being dragged away.

I know.

It won’t be easy.

But your control has always been excellent, and now you have a Celestial Lightning Body past 1,000%.

Hard or not, you have to do it.

Rescuing a soul from the eternal abyss will be far harder.

Ssshhh!

Unutus swept the Sand-Iron in.

On purpose I blocked not with the Star-Sword but by radiating current from my left hand.

I needed practice.

Kzzzt!

The white current I spewed linked Unutus’s Sand-Iron Blades to my hand.

I forced Imbuement in as if stamping it down with raw strength.

The electric signals running my muscles and the current I exhale are the same in essence.

With a far-off sense of my body extending, my current shoved into Unutus’s current.

Pssst!

Part of the Sand-Iron Blades fell apart.

Not wanting to lose the push-in-as-you-push-aside sensation, I opened the bio-radar.

Joi was about 150 meters from me.

One hundred fifty meters.

A distance hard even to attempt with the Area Imbuement Perk.

But before something that had to be done, difficulty meant nothing.

One hundred fifty meters is far, but my bio-radar swept more than 1.5 kilometers, and my current blasted out hundreds of meters.

In theory it was a distance Area Imbuement could reach.

About as threadbare as saying you could make Rykenta’s automatic ballista if you just used a gear-train.

But even logic like this was desperate and precious now.

Through the bio-radar I built a 3D map in my head of Joi’s position, friendly positions, enemy Knights’ positions.

In a black world, white outlines wavered in human shapes.

They wavered so clearly that I could make out even the eyelashes of every person fighting above my head on the deck, on the neighboring hull, up on the mast, in the water.

By bio-radar I saw the sword Joi hadn’t even been able to draw, the gauntlet still at her hip, the greaves on her shins.

Clench!

With a squeezing hand motion, I unleashed Imbuement.

In the world seen by bio-radar she seemed right beside me—yet in the real world we were separated by more than a hundred meters.

Kzzzzzt!

So the current of Imbuement diffused off into the distance.

Like a starving beast, it ravened for metal across the whole area.

“Urk!”

For an instant I reeled in a brutal collapse of strength.

A flood of mana had poured out in one surge.

Imbuement was unlike Heavenstrike.

I had to flood it entirely with my own mana.

My whole nervous system burned hot as if ablaze, and blood ran from both eyes, my nose, and my ears at once.

Pop!

Unable to withstand the pressure, a fingernail lifted and blood spurted.

“Hm?”

Unutus could at least tell my state wasn’t normal.

Shhhhrrk!

One sweep of his Sand-Iron Blades raked my chest hard.

Skrrrch!

I heard the hair-raising scrape of ribs.

Even so, I didn’t stop Area Imbuement.

“Waaaaah!”

“Sir Kyrie has bestowed the Blessing of Current!”

The result was the roar of our men.

“Sir…?”

Crackle, kzzzt!

And it carried into Joi’s movement.

The instant Joi came to, she thought of killing herself.

At this rate I’ll burn, and I’ll implicate Sir Kyrie as well.

With her sex exposed, death would be ghastly either way.

At least she could save her benefactor.

But with bound wrists she couldn’t even draw a sword.

And there was no way the two Knights and three Retainers in the skiff would quietly watch her kill herself.

Should I just jump?

Joi braced even for drowning.

It had been only about two weeks since she knelt to Kyrie and decided to offer him her life and sword.

Tears stung her eyes and the bridge of her nose burned, but she didn’t hesitate.

If the best was impossible, she would take the next best.

Kzzzt!

That thought vanished with the sparks spitting from her gauntlet, her sword, and her greaves.

“Sir…?”

It was Area Imbuement.

As Kyrie’s adjutant, Joi knew he could use Area Imbuement only twice a day.

She didn’t know he’d succeeded at turning a Perk into an Authority—but she did realize he had taken one step farther on his own private frontline for no one else but her.

What a cowardly thought I had!

Joi erased the idea of suicide completely.

Crackle, crackle!

If Sir hasn’t given up, neither do I.

She pressed sparking wrists together and burned the binding to a crisp.

“What the—?”

“Hold her!”

“Fine, break a leg—just one!”

The Retainers lunged to grab her.

Joi pressed her back flat to the floor, then snapped her body up and kicked a Retainer’s shin.

“Aaagh!”

The Retainer lost balance and splashed into the canal.

He could swim, and his gear wasn’t that heavy—but this canal was a battlefield where ships big and small crashed on all sides.

Krack-krack!

A large sailing ship cut in between the skiff and the Retainer, and the Retainer vanished beyond the fortress-like hull.

Snap!

The cord binding her wrists parted.

Joi sprang up and drew her sword.

“She’s loose!”

“You little—hold her down and split the shares!”

A Navigator yanked the Retainer back down into a seat and drew his own blade.

Thump, thump.

Strangely, she wasn’t afraid.

Feeling the skiff’s sway, Joi made a light leap.

Ching!

A crescent she drew with flair knocked the Navigator’s sword aside and went for his shoulder.

Sparks jumped from the Imbued blade and seized the Navigator’s hand.

Ching!

With a start, the Navigator reeled back hard before he could recover his stance.

Strong.

Not a common Retainer. She aims to vault a wall.

Sensing something serious in her movement, two Retainers stepped in at once.

Joi launched her body between them and drew another crescent.

Saaaa!

The moon waxes and wanes and waxes again.

Feijin had said Joi was like a crescent moon—rising again no matter how the world tried to tip her over.

She wanted to change the fate she was born into.

No—she had to change it.

That drive for ascent was the marrow of the New-Moon Sword.

The moons Joi carved, crisscrossing, knocked the two Navigators’ blades away.

“What are you doing? Move—let me!”

“Useless trash!”

Two Retainers piled in—and at last even the Knight stood.

By then Joi had reached the skiff’s center.

She saw a place where planks had been laid.

Krack-krack!

Aiming for the middle of the boat, she drew a crescent.

Rrrip!

The skiff split in half and water gushed in.

Hooooooorn!

At the same time, one of Kyrie’s sailing ships charged straight in.

Its bow was plated for ramming.

On impact, the Knight’s body would pulp.

Two Retainers jumped from the skiff.

The two Navigators hesitated a beat, then jumped as well.

The Knight tried to attack Joi even as he bounded off the sinking skiff’s planks.

Without a moment’s pause, Joi moved the foot on the gunwale into the water.

Kzzzt!

Current Imbued into her greaves spread and seized the Knight’s body.

“Ghk!”

Krack-krack!

The Knight smashed against the sailing ship and vanished before Joi.

Joi didn’t come out unscathed.

“Gaaaah!”

She was shocked along with him.

Sir Kyrie…

Her legs cramped as if seized; she absolutely could not swim.

“Jo!”

Then, from above the sailing ship’s rail, a Blue Knight’s voice rang out.

A life jacket—woven of cork and bamboo—came flying.

The hand that threw it was a porcelain-textured prosthetic.

“Grab it!”

It was Epicus.

“……!”

With stiffening hands, Joi seized the jacket.

“Area Imbuement?”

“You recognize it, at least.”

I cauterized my chest with electric sparks to staunch the bleeding and lifted my head.

Thanks to the high of Neural Acceleration, there was no screaming pain, but the sensation of muscles curling was vivid.

“Useless either way. My Knight has seen that wench’s body, my Navigator has seen that wench’s body, my Retainer has seen that wench’s body. Add my testimony and you’re finished.”

“You speak as if you’ll be allowed to testify.”

With my mind snapping bright, I raised the Star-Sword.

“Your brother must be lonely. Go keep him company.”

“What a shame, Kyrie. All that rolling about in the South for nothing.”

“I don’t do ‘for nothing.’”

I stamped Thunder-Step toward Unutus.

Rrrolll!

Planks shattered underfoot; his face rushed close in an instant.

“Don’t?”

Shhhhhrrk!

Unutus dredged up even more Sand-Iron.

From the door the Knight had torn through earlier, from between the planks, from the ceiling, black iron dust came whipping in.

“I don’t!”

Clenching my left fist, I unleashed Area Imbuement.

Kzzzzzzzt!

A spherical wave of current spread out and turned Sand-Iron Blades on all sides back into iron dust.

Right. I don’t do inefficient things.

I’ll turn everything I’ve done into efficient work.

Grinding his teeth, Unutus slashed his hands again and again.

Ssshhhh!

The swept-up Sand-Iron wrapped his body.

Blades and shield of Sand-Iron—no, at that thickness it was nearly Sand-Iron armor.

A powerful Authority that protected the body and even boosted physical capability, like Rykenta’s Wind King’s Armor.

Which is to say: if I didn’t have the Star-Sword in my hand.

I poured mana into the Star-Sword and unfurled Linked Thunder.

Th-th-th-thrum!

Twenty-one thrusts in a single breath shredded and carved the Sand-Iron armor to ribbons.

Kzzzt!

And with Area Imbuement on top of that, his Sand-Iron armor turned back to iron dust second by second.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Unutus and I wrecked the first-deck boards as we crashed together.

Sand-Iron Blades he shot out ground thick pillars and punched holes all over the ship.

Ssshhhh!

Even with the sound of water rushing up from below, I charged as if nothing at all was wrong.

“The ship’s shaking!”

“The keel’s damaged! Abandon ship!”

“What’s happening down there?!”

From above, only the soldiers’ shocked voices carried down.

“Planning to sink with me?!”

Unutus’s face twisted.

“I’ve got a glide cloak. Traysan gave it to me!”

Good news.

Kzzzzzzzt!

I blew Area Imbuement once more.

White current spread and iron dust flew.

It seemed Unutus had also decided he couldn’t get out unless he killed me.

The bastard who’d kept slipping back came charging.

Vvvvvv!

His body was sealed without a gap in Sand-Iron Blades, large and small, vibrating razor-sharp.

It was like armor made of countless shards of iron; a dozen Sand-Iron Blades also howled in from behind, leaving me nowhere to dodge.

I took the Star-Sword in both hands.

Feeding Imbuement current with my left and radiation current with my right, I launched the charge technique Heat Wave.

Tclang!

Current amplified through the Star-Sword ripped Unutus’s Sand-Iron armor to pieces.

Thmp!

I pierced the heart.

“Urk!”

Unutus collapsed in my arms.

His twelve Sand-Iron Blades turned to iron dust and cascaded away.

Drawing the Star-Sword from his chest, I looked out through the broken wall at the battlefield beyond.

“Break through! Break through!”

Krack-krack!

The great sailing ship bearing Nereus was driving deep into the Three’s formation.

The fight was ending.

Chapter 106

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