to be bad."

"Onii-sama.. was?"

"Yes. His complexion was bad, and he was constantly coughing in pain..."

Though Oreki also added that, nonetheless, it was amazing that he had taken the win smoothly.

Shizuku and Arisuin exchanged glances.

"I wonder if he got Stella-chan's cold."

"How could that be true?"

Even if it wasn't true, they had heard Ikki had become soaked while in Okutama. And if the inquiry had deepened his fatigue, it wouldn't be strange if his physical condition had been disturbed. Shizuku and Arisuin thought so. However―

"..No, it was probably..."

Oreki who was well-acquainted with illness had noticed it. Ikki's condition was probably not an ordinary poor physical health. However―

"Sensei?"

"No. It's nothing. Well, Sensei is going to Madam Chairman right now."

Oreki withdrew her words and departed. It wasn't something she'd speak to students like them about. In her judgment, making guesses would only agitate Shizuku's anxiety.

However, the two discerning people noticed it.

"..Oreki-sensei was about to say something."

"Sensei is very well-informed about disease, right? Perhaps she sensed something about Ikki's symptoms."

"Something like.. it wasn't an ordinary cold, maybe?"

"Probably, I think. It may be that something was done to Ikki."

At those words, Shizuku felt a chill running down her spine. She knew that if it was those people, if it was her father, they were capable of anything.

"Onii-sama.. please be safe..."

Everything was happening deep underground, out of her reach. She couldn't do anything about it.

Shizuku, who could do nothing but pray, was awfully vexed.

"Hey! What are you blanking out for!?"

Along with an angry voice and a face red from alcohol, the drinking water for use by inquiry members was thrown on his face, and Ikki opened his eyes.

"Sleeping during the inquiry, it shows lack of sincerity!"

It was a middle-aged man wearing thin round glasses in front of bangs, shouting close to Ikki's ears. His yelling voice was awfully loud, and it resounded in the small chamber. However, even that kind of voice was distant to Ikki now.

That's right. Am I still sleeping?

The inquiry had started two weeks ago. The fatigue of Ikki who had come here was reaching its peak. The confinement had extended over a long period of time. The questions and answers had repeated many tens of times. The assertions hadn't been accepted once. The spirit of any human would have been scraped off thoroughly.

In addition, a few days ago, Ikki had abruptly become feverish and started coughing painfully. His lungs weren't functioning normally. However much he inhaled the air, pain rushed through him, and he couldn't breathe properly. With chronic lack of oxygen, his consciousness had become hazy. It was at least pneumonia. It might be liable to worsen further. It was a symptom that logically would necessitate him being sent to a hospital immediately, but the Ethics Committee would not allow such a thing.

"Hmph. When things become inconvenient, you feign sickness? Something a brat would do."

Driving Ikki whose consciousness was already hazy into a corner. Not letting him rest even a hundredth of a second.

"Now, let's continue the discussion. Concerning the secret arrangement you reached with the board chairman Kurono Shinguuji. We believe that there is an ethical problem in that this secret agreement ignored the fact you were deemed insufficient in aptitude under the system of the previous board chairman such that you were to repeat a year―"

This dialogue had also happened many, many times. The standard created by previous board chairman's system that judged him to repeat the year, and forbade Ikki from participating in classwork, was unreasonable. That sort of thing.. the Ethics Committee surely understood this without him saying it. They were the ones who originally induced the previous board chairman to make that standard in the first place.

But Akaza and the others did not heed it. They threw away the issue. They hammered on questions. But they didn't listen to the answers. Without listening to responses, they dwelt at great length on bad impressions and defiance. More than that feeling of wasted effort, Ikki had put up with a considerable lot by now. But despite that, he had given many refutations, and...

"..Ack,?*cough cough*"

He crumpled while coughing violently.

"You bastard! Who gave you permission to sit!? Do you have no willpower, you weakling!?"

"Guh..!"

Curling up and ignoring it with all his strength, Ikki smashed his nose on the floor. With a?*bam*, a metallic smell spread through his nose, and droplets of red fluid stained the floor.

..How miserable.

Thinking about his current state, Ikki could only laugh bitterly. Even he could slightly tell that his physical condition was unnatural. That perhaps his poor health was due to drugs. However, if Ikki was the way he was usually, even if his physical condition a little bad, he would probably not collapse all the way to this point.

As expected, the decisive blow was his meeting with his father, Itsuki Kurogane. Alas, Ikki believed that no matter how far apart his father was, how cold his father was, in some respect, just slightly, he and his father was connected. Somewhere in his heart, he always believed that. Alas, he believed that. It was something which betrayed him more than anything, and that truth had shattered the stability of his soul.

With his soul that had lost its balance, his body that was attacked by disease could not support him. And once it had collapsed once, the rest was bottomless. Ikki's heart and body had crumbled like he was rolling down a hill. Ikki was now just a shadow of himself.

"My my, please pardon him since he has gone to that extent."

Suddenly, Akaza left his seat, and waved back the men who were ignoring Ikki's face. Then he showed a smile of ill taste in his thin eyes, and came close beside Ikki.

"He he he. It must be extremely painful, no?"

Ikki was silent.

"Well, even if the inquiry is dragged this long, it isn't unreasonable. But I want to understand. We are pushing to verify a knight as splendid as yourself, you know? ...Buuut, after all this time, we haven't made any progress. So I've been thinking. Of a brilliant way to bring over my colleagues who haven't been convinced about the questions on your aptitude. Do you want me to tell you about iiit? You want me to tell you, riiight?"

At any rate, it could not be a decent thing. Because he knew that, he had no interest, but he had a feeling that if he didn't ask, the conversation wouldn't progress.

"..What.. is it..*cough cough*!"

Ikki asked while coughing, and Akaza nodded and continued speaking in satisfaction.

"He he he. It's not as if it's anything special. Ikki-kun, you probably know already. To clear the path of one's destiny with his own sword is a knight's customary practice. In that case, why not act in accordance with the ancient tradition?"

"..Tradition?"

"In other words, entrust the matter of the disagreement between you and the people who have doubts about your aptitude to the final selection battle match tomorrow."

Leave the matter to the outcome of battle. With those words, Ikki understood what Akaza was saying.

"A wholehearted duel, against a designated fighter.. is it?"

"Exactly. A decision reached by duel is absolute for us knights. It is an unwritten rule that can never be changed. No matter how far outside reason, how nonsensical or impossible, it is the custom of knights to abide by decisions made through dueling. That is equally true for the League. If you make a promise on this duel, and show everyone your strength with victory, then no one would be able to slip a word of doubt in to the matter of your qualities as a knight. For you, it would be an opportunity to turn everything around and recover from a hopeless situation. There's no other solution, don't you think? Am I wrong?"

"In other words, if I win tomorrow.. you'll let me go with that, right?"

"Yes, yes. Of course we will. ..It's just, the opponents you've had in your current condition were E-rank third year students. ..Frankly, by facing such low-level knights, it would be difficult to verify your strength. In that case, not everyone would come to consensus. At this duel, there is a need to prepare a suitable partner."

Well, Ikki thought so too.

"*Cough*.. Who, then? ..This partner..?"

At the question, Akaza gave a deep smile greater than any before it―

"We, the Ethics Committee, intend to nominate―the student council president, 'Raikiri' Touka Toudou."

―and gave the name of the assassin.

It was an opponent that Ikki at his very best could have no hope of surpassing. The first place in Hagun Academy's internal ranking, who reached the best four of last year's Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival.

To Ikki, who was on his hands and knees at the bottom of the earth, it was an excessively burdensome opponent. This kind of thing, there was no need to accept it. Eventually, he would meet with Stella's father. If he held out until then, he would arrive at the end of all of this. At a place that Akaza and the others could not reach. And in the first place, this talk about fighting was rude to Touka who had impressed him. Ikki had no reason to accept it.

However―

"Ahh, incidental to this topic, the king of Vermillion is already coming directly here. Which is to say.. it would only take a little blunder, and the king would find out about your decision on the duel. Nooo, I'd feel completely regretful. Moreover, the king was extremely enthusiastic about seeing it. He wouldn't give his daughter to a man who could not surmount even an ordeal of that level! And, well, it sounded something like that, yes. If you refused here~, hmm, it would give a very poor impression, wouldn't iiit?"

Akaza had obstructed Ikki's escape perfectly.

..I see. From the beginning, this was the development that they intended to get, wasn't it?

And Ikki realized it accordingly. The inquiry was, from the start, just a pretext to separate Ikki from Hagun. Akaza and the others weren't thinking about bullying Ikki mentally in order to have him give up. It was all to have him make this promise, and to force him into this desperate duel. It was a scheme for this.

"Of course, you'll accept this like a man, won't yooou?"

If he had this duel, it would already become nonsense without reason or righteousness or anything else. The outcome of the battle was everything. It was the custom of knights since ancient times. Though there was no fault in Ikki, if he lost, he would become the bad one. In becoming the bad one, he would lose everything.

―It was a cruel offer. The risks were high, and the gains were nil.

If there were any gains at all, it would be Ikki regaining the freedom that by all rights he was already due. Truly, a cruel offer. But―

"..I under...stand. I'll do it."

Ikki answered so with a face full of bitterness. With all of his escape routes severed, he could do nothing else.

"Ha, ha ha, hahahahaha! Wonderful, wonderful! How wonderful! He he he! You are a boy after all! Everyone has heard him, right!? What he just said! At this moment, everything will be left to the duel tomorrow, to the outcome of that battle! Everything about the decision is in accordance with the ancient knight tradition, decided by the sword! And no one will make objections to that proud ruling! Well then―we'll declare the end of the inquiry here!"

In this way, the Worst One who was already under siege threw himself into a still more desperate struggle.

Ikki's opponent was Raikiri, who boasted an invincible sphere of influence over the close range that he was limited to. To face that opponent who he was uncertain of defeating even with perfect physical condition, he would be dragging his badly sickened body. Gambling all of his future―

But, standing before that fight, Ikki remembered the words Utakata had spoken some time before.

「Between the two of you, the weight of responsibility you're carrying is different.」

Indeed. Ikki could imagine the burden of many hopes and wishes that Touka had on those slender shoulders. That wasn't limited to just those of the children of the institution. Because she was burdened with the great admiration toward the best four of the entire country.

That kind of proud person.. could he bring her down?

Could he do so with the sword of a worthless person whose own father would not even entrust with a single hope?