"...Stay cool." Upon doing so, his partner who was heading towards his own room looked over his shoulder and spoke with a wry smile. "It may be used for farewells, but that's not something you would use before sleeping every night, really. Use it only if you really consider it to be a parting." "Hmm, complicated, isn't it. Understood... then, see you tomorrow." "Yeah, see you tomorrow." Lightly waving his right hand, Kirito sank into the room on the north side, before Eugeo switched the lamp off and opened the door on the opposite side. The bedroom as spacious as nearly half of those rooms that accommodated ten in the novice trainees' dormitory was neatly cleaned by his valet, Tiezé, so there wasn't even a speck of dirt. Changing his home wear into long white pyjamas, he plopped himself onto the soft bed. Along with the drowsiness that crept up on him all at once, somehow, he could faintly hear merely a single part of the conversation from earlier in his ears. —But if you were to turn that around, it wouldn't be strange for them to come up with anything as long as it doesn't touch the Taboo Index or academy regulations. Those was the words Kirito said in caution of Raios and Humbert. He nodded back then, but still, it was a way of thinking difficult for Eugeo to comprehend all of a sudden. In the process of getting here from the time he was a child, there were a considerable number of times when Eugeo searched for loopholes as well, whether in the Rulid Village's laws, the Zakkaria Guard Squadron's rules or the Sword Mastery Academy's regulations. However, the times he thought of challenging the most eminent law in the Human World, the Taboo Index, was zero—no, once only. That one time was eight years ago, when the integrity knight from the Axiom Church had arrived in the village to take Alice away. Eugeo thought about hitting the Knight with the Dragon Bone Axe held in his two hands to save Alice, but in actual fact, he hadn't take a single step. Even now, if he recalls that instant, there would be a throbbing deep in his right eye for some reason. Of course, he didn't have even a fragment of defiance towards the integrity knights or Church now. That Knight took Alice away according to the law, so he would gain the right to pass the Church's doors through proper means and reunite with Alice. It was for that reason that Eugeo had left the village and overcome many hardships to become an elite swordsman-in-training at the academy. However, as Kirito had said, if Raios and Humbert were thinking that "anything would be fine if it doesn't touch the Taboo Index"... in the end, were they unwillingly abiding by the absolute law that was established at the beginning of the world according to the Axiom Church? Do they feel the Taboo Index to be a hindrance in their minds...? Even if it was Raios and his partner, that shouldn't happen. Even doubting the Taboo Index was unforgivable, it was the conclusive truth that even the emperor should respect, it was the supreme law. Eugeo looked up at the ceiling dyed blue by the pale moonlight while lightly biting his lips. If that thought was allowed, what was he protecting and why was he protecting it; looking on without moving even a single step when the integrity knight took Alice away that day, doing nothing but chopping the Gigas Cedar for over six years after that according to the law. The core of his right eye slightly throbbed with a prickling sensation. Eugeo forced his eyelids down, cast his disorganized thoughts away and his body sank into the depths of an indistinct slumber.