"I…"
Echi thought he would say something to her. Regret, anger, resentment, or even a curse. But he stopped speaking there and quietly drew his sword.
Yurien could not defeat her alone.
After a long battle, Echinacea pierced his heart.
Echi watched clearly as the pale man's body was stained bright red with blood and he breathed his last.
The blue eyes that had trusted her and watched over her could not even close, losing their light. She could not even close those eyes for him.
The cursed sword casually tossed his corpse aside and left.
Something inside her shattered.
From that moment on, Echi abandoned even the imagined scenarios she had used to endure. She did not think about what she would do after winning. Only hatred for the cursed sword remained within her.
"I'll kill you."
At the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness, she saw her own silhouette, darkened and flickering, and thought only that. Even amidst the carnage wrought by the cursed sword, she could focus.
The cursed sword moved on to find its next prey. Its relentless slaughter continuously honed its experience. Gradually, it became more skilled at manipulating mana.
Two years had passed since then.
Six years since she had been tainted by the cursed sword.
At twenty-six, Echinacea had crossed a certain threshold. She instinctively knew it. She had reached somewhere beyond the known state called "Master." Since she was not a knight, she did not know what that state was called.
In any case, she had reached it, and finally freed herself from the cursed sword.
Echinacea regained her body in a small fishing village. Of course, there was no one left alive in that village. She threw aside the cursed sword she had held and moved the body that had become hers again after six years.
The black stains were gone from her skin, her hair had returned to its original color. Her hands. Her arms. A body that moved as she willed.
"Haha."
She laughed. She sank down into the middle of the blood-soaked ground.
"It's too late! It's so late!"
She shouted. No one heard. Only death surrounded her, and irreversible events clung to her entire body.
Echinacea looked down at the cursed sword. She struck it with her bare hands, unshielded by mana. She kept striking it, unbothered even as it cut her. That was not enough, she broke into tears.
"What now? What should I do? I…"
Even though she had finally defeated the cursed sword, nothing remained for her. There was no one left to wait for her. She had killed them all with her own hands.
Her blood, falling from her wounds, ran down the transparent blade along with her tears and touched the engraved pattern on the sword. The pattern faintly glowed. It was then that she heard a "voice."
[Try all you want. I won't break.]
A voice that resonated in her soul rather than her ears. She could not tell if it was male or female, young or old. Echi was startled.
"W-Who's there?"
[Me? ValderGiosa. The sword you're holding in your hand right now.]
"…What?"
[You're the second one to awaken my consciousness after I was created.]
She stared blankly at ValderGiosa for a while. Slowly, as her frozen mind started turning, she understood the meaning.
"You… you're the cursed sword? And your consciousness… awoke?"
[You awakened me. That means you've finally earned the right to be my master. Congratulations!]
"…Congratulations?"
Echinacea ground her teeth.
"This damned sword, what are you saying now?"
[Now? You were the one who awakened me.]
"Yes, whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm going to destroy you anyway."
As she looked down at the cursed sword with blazing eyes, a voice sounded frightened.
[H-Hey, calm down. Uh, looks like you've been through a lot.]
"A lot? You say that so easily?"
Her hatred flared blue-hot. Her mana surged out of her body. She spat out her words like she was chewing blood.
"Everything... was your doing! Mother, father, Lancel, Nicole, even Yurien! All of them! You killed them all! Everything! Nothing's left! Everything's destroyed! Everyone's dead! By my hands! Because of you!"
[No, wait, I think you're mistaken. That wasn't 'me.']
"Shut up!"
Masters infuse mana into their sword, overlaying it with a blade of mana. This was called a sword energy. Even for a Master, it was difficult to create sword energy without a sword or something similar. But Echi gathered mana in her bare hands and formed it into a blade.
She struck ValderGiosa with that sword energy. With a bang, the ground cracked and dirt flew into the air. A vibration like an earthquake rippled through, yet the blade showed not even a crack.
[Ah, ah! That hurts! It's not even going to break! Calm down and listen to me, Master!]
"Who's your master?"
She replied in a voice cold as ice, and somehow ValderGiosa seemed to tremble. She repeatedly struck the sword with an expressionless face.
If it didn't break at once, she would just keep going until it did.
Echinacea's eyes burned red-hot, almost unseeing. The cursed sword spoke urgently.
[It can be undone!]
"…?"
Echi froze at the strange words. ValderGiosa hurriedly continued.
[You were consumed by killing intent and lost your body, right? But it wasn't 'me' that made you like that—it was the malice and killing intent from the human that was bound within me. The one who made me used malice and killing intent as ingredients—hey, hey! Wait! Hey!]
"Nonsense."
Mana gathered again in her hands. The cursed sword shrieked.
[There's a way to go back to the time when no one died!]
Echi stiffened. The mana in her hands scattered. She asked in a trembling voice, "What did you just say? You can… go back? To before… all of it happened?"
[Yes. Reversing time is possible. The one who awakened me before you… ended up killing a lot, but after awakening me, he reversed time. You could do it too.]
"…How?"
It was a situation full of helpless despair. She wanted to grasp even the tiniest straw. To her, ValderGiosa's words were the only hope.
[Of course, it's not an easy task.]
"Just tell me! How? Can I save everyone?"
[I said it's not saving—it's reversing time.]
"Enough! Start with the method!"
Desperation gripping her, she clutched the cursed sword. The engraved patterns on the blade gleamed. ValderGiosa spoke obediently.
[Collect the Giosa series, and use the KairosGiosa.]
"…What do you mean?"
[I'm one of the Giosa series, you know that, right? Haven't you heard the Giosa legend?]
Of course she had. It was a famous legend.
Long ago, there was a blacksmith praised as having reached the level of the gods. He was confident that no god could surpass him in sword-making.
One day, a god truly appeared before this blacksmith.
The god lent the blacksmith a divine power, the power to forge swords using things invisible and intangible, like night and day, as raw materials.
The god said,
[I have given you power equal to mine. Use it to forge the greatest swords. This is the trial I grant you.]
The blacksmith pondered for seventy days and seventy nights. Over a hundred years, he forged ten swords from extraordinary materials. All of these swords were beautiful and possessed abilities so extraordinary that they had never existed before—and would never exist again.
The blacksmith proudly showed his work to the god.
The god quietly looked over the swords and, in a single motion, created two swords out of thin air.
Though there were only two, each was more beautiful and stronger than all of the blacksmith's ten swords combined.
Only then did the blacksmith kneel. He repented his arrogance in daring to rival a god. The god, graciously forgiving him, took him to the divine realm.
After the blacksmith and the god departed, the twelve swords left behind in the world came to be called the Giosa series, named after the "trial" they represented.
The ten Giosa created by the blacksmith chose masters among those with exceptional talent.
However, the two swords created by the god accepted no master. It is said that these divine swords lend their power only to the one who possesses all ten of the remaining Giosa.
This was the legend of the twelve extraordinary swords—the Giosa series.
Those recognized as masters by a Giosa were called Giosa Owners. Each Giosa had slightly different criteria for selecting a master, but generally, only someone of Master-level skill could be chosen by a Giosa.
In the past, the Giosa were scattered across the continent. But after several incidents involving these immensely powerful swords, an organization emerged to manage the Giosa series.
That organization became the beginning of the Celestial Knights.
Except for the Giosa whose whereabouts were unknown, most of the swords came under the control of the Celestial Knights.
And the cursed sword ValderGiosa was one of those whose location was unknown.
"Why… that legend?"
[It's true. If a human owns all ten Giosa created by human, they can borrow the power of the divine swords.]
"The power of the divine swords? Can it really reverse time?"
[Of course. My previous master succeeded, didn't he? You just need to use the KairosGiosa, one of the two divine swords. Since KairosGiosa was forged using time itself as a material, it can manipulate time. Of course, changing the entire world is an enormous task, so once you use it, you can never borrow its power again.]
Hope spread through her. It could be undone—all of it. Her vision swam.
Echinacea murmured through trembling lips, "…That's not a lie, right? If it is, I'll destroy you."
[Why would I lie about something like this? And breaking me is impossible. This body is ValderGiosa.]
"I don't care if it's impossible or not. If you lie to me, I'll make sure you pay."
[Wow, look at that gaze. How can someone so pretty look so deadly?]
Echinacea ignored the cursed sword's nonsense and tried to recall everything she knew about the Giosa series. Very little came to mind. She could count on one hand the Giosa whose names she remembered.
After all, she wasn't even a knight, there was no way she had memorized all ten.
How to gather them, how to acquire information, it all seemed impossible. As the cursed sword had said, it would not be easy.
Still, it didn't matter. Even with the slightest chance, she would not give up. She would undo everything. She would bring back all those who had died by her hands.
She resolved, then and there, to claim a miracle for herself.