The Night Sky Swordsman (Sword Art Online X OC)

Chapter 66 Truce

No one's POV

After being thrown out of the Cathedrals due to their Perfect Weapons Control, Zora and Alice are hanging on the side of the cathedral with Zora's sword stabbed into the wall.

* Creak. Creak.*

With the repetition of each tiny sound, Zora felt his heart shrink.

The sound came from the tip of his still-unnamed black sword, which was just barely sticking into the gap between Central Cathedral's roughly one- inch-thick white marble blocks.

Zora's right hand was damp with sweat where it clung to the sword's hilt, and his elbow and shoulder joints were screaming with pain, ready to disconnect at any moment. Which made sense—his assuredly not-beefy arm was supporting the weight of two people, one ultra-high-priority longsword, and a full set of armor.

There wasn't a single handhold in the mirrorlike smoothness of the wall, so there was no way for Zora to wedge his sword farther into the surface. There was nothing below him but an endless expanse. And in addition to the pain in his right hand, his left was also reaching its limit as it clung to the lady knight in her heavy suit of golden armor.

Physical fatigue in the Underworld was slightly different from in the real world. In terms of long-distance walking, sprinting, fierce training, and lifting heavy objects, it was the same sensation. The difference was that fatigue acted like injury in the way that it reduced one's "life," the numerical value of vitality in the Underworld, or their hit points.

In the real world, hardly anyone ever literally died of fatigue. Before the body could reach a state of serious, permanent injury, fatigue would rendered a person unable to move. But here, it was possible at times for strength of will to override physical possibility. In other words, it was theoretically possible that they could run, resisting pain and exhaustion, until the moment their life reached zero and they instantly died.

At the moment, Zora was supporting an unbelievable amount of weight with his body. His life value was slowly but surely decreasing as long as this state continued. Zora could keep both hands clenched out of sheer determination, but eventually his life would reach zero, and he would die. In that instant, Zora's hand would probably let go of the sword, and the knight with him would plunge to the ground hundreds of feet below and die as well.

Zora wasn't the only one suffering damage. His beloved sword was supporting more weight than it could handle, with only its very tip for leverage. And he'd already used the immensely taxing Perfect Weapon Control twice in the day's battles. He couldn't open its Stacia Window to check numbers, but he wouldn't be surprised if its life reached zero within a few minutes. When that happened, the sword would shatter and no longer recover its strength by merely returning to its sheath.

Zora(mind): It would be a terrible shame to break my sword before I could even give it a name, not that it would matter for long once I plunged to my death.

Still, he needed to do something and fast, but just holding on took all his strength, plus...

Alice: Enough! Let go of my hand! I don't intend to live with the shame of being saved by a sinner like you!

Alice Synthesis 30, the golden Integrity Knight with the Osmanthus Blade shrieked. She struggled and rocked, trying to break herself loose from Zora's grip. Her gauntlet slipped a little bit in his sweaty palm.

Zora: Hey!...Stop...!

Zora tried to control the shaking while uttering nonsense. But the vibration of her thrashing worked the blade's tip a tiny millimeter out of the wall. When all was still again, Zora glanced down and yelled at her.