Fanatio

Fanatio (ファナティオ), also known as Fanatio Synthesis Two (ファナティオ・シンセシス・ツー), is the Deputy Knight Leader of the Integrity Knights. Fanatio's weapon of choice is the Heaven Piercing Sword.

Appearance
Fanatio wears a set of full body, purple light armour completely tinged with a refined orchid radiance and noticeably more sophisticated than that of regular Integrity Knights with a helmet modeled after the wings of birds of prey.

Fanatio herself has flowing and silky wavy long deep black hair, much like Kirito's color, groomed with tender care. Her voice has a high-pitch voice, both refined and supple, and her stature is the same as Kirito's or taller, though the line tracing from her back to her waist is more slender. She has a pure, beautiful face which resembles that of a holy woman and also has a silky skin with the shade of black tea with plenty of milk added in. Her arc-shape eyebrows and long eye lashes are black, while her eyes are dark reddish-brown, close to gold. The tinge of roundness of her jawline bring forth a remarkably gentle elegance which is matched by her very mildly red petite lips. Her appearance suggests that she was born in the east region.

Personality
Fanatio's behaviour is rather masculine as she attempts to hide her true gender, due to believing that other people, including her fellow Knights and even the Dark Knights, look down on her because she is a female and that her opponents will not fight with her seriously if they know her true gender. Because of this fear of her opponents finding out about her gender, Fanatio has even developed consecutive hit skills via group and uses her sword's light rays to drive her opponents away from her. She also has a habit of prattling in situations when she has her opponent cornered.

Background
Due to her preference of keeping her opponents at a distance, Fanatio is the only known Integrity Knight who has trained in using consecutive hit tactics, instead of focusing on the gallantry and beauty of a single-hit strike and, therefore, has most likely trained by herself, instead of training with her fellow Knights.

Fanatio has been in love with a fellow Knight, likely Bercouli Synthesis One, for over 100 years, but her feelings have not been requited so far and she admits that she has ended up playing second fiddle after the appearance of a new, more beautiful female Knight, likely Alice Synthesis Thirty.

Alicization Rising
Fanatio awaits Kirito and Eugeo on the 50th floor of the Central Cathedral in the Great Corridor of Spiritual Light, along with the 4 «Four Oscillation Blades». When Fizel and Linel drag the two intruders into the grand corridor, she argues with the two girls about what they are doing in the battlefield of "honourable knights". At that point, Kirito sneaks behind the two girls and slashes them with their own poisonous swords and requests the Integrity Knights to wait for him to explain the situation before crossing their swords with them. After Kirito explains how he was able to avoid being paralyzed, Fanatio declines an individual duel with the youngster and allows her four knights to battle with him first, while she begins chanting her «armament full control art».

By the time Kirito is able to break through the 4 knights and initiate «Sonic Leap» to get close to Fanatio and strike her, Fanatio manages to complete chanting the rather long ritual and uses her sword to fire a ray of light at her opponent, managing to hit him with the ray and shake his trajectory, thus stopping his attack. Fanatio then continues firing light rays at the youngster and, although Kirito is able to dodge the first 6 rays, she finally hits him with the 7th ray and Kirito crashes shoulder first onto the floor. At this moment, the four knights who have treated their wounds by now surround Kirito again. With her opponent cornered and pointing her sword at her opponent, Fanatio begins to explain the origin of her sword to the intruders.

Once she runs out of things to talk about, she attempts to fire a final ray of light to finish off Kirito, but the latter was able to chant a ritual for creating a mirror by that time and discharges the mirror as soon as the ray of light is fired. Although the mirror is only able to reflect about 20% of the ray's power before it melts, Kirito uses the moment of respite to tilt his frame towards the left, and thus the ray singes only a part of his black hair and his cheek before it streams behind him, while the deflected portion of the rays hits the decorative wings of Fanatio's helmet and the helmet breaks into two. With the helmet broken, Fanatio's face is revealed and the two youngsters are shocked to find out that Fanatio is actually a female.

Fanatio becomes angry about the intruders finding out about her gender, because she believes that they will not fight with her seriously now that they know that she is a woman. Kirito uses this opportunity to leap towards Fanatio and launch a miraculously fast attack, though without using any trickery or Sword Skills, and Fanatio is barely able to party against Kirito's blow. The two exchange a few remarks with each other while with swords are locked, before starting their all-out ultra-high speed competition. However neither of the two use any Sword Skills, mostly because neither of them can find an opening to perform the initial move of one. The battle quickly grows into a magnificent display of swordsmanship, as the two get drawn into the thrill of slashing their swords with a worthy opponent. Due to such a battle, Fanatio seems to forget her advantage in long-range battles and that she could call in the help of her subordinates as she does not even attempt to gain distance from Kirito.

After awhile of clashing swords without end, Fanatio finally admits that Kirito is an opponent unlike others. Kirito then tries to prove to Fanatio that she is a human too and that he is fighting against the Axiom Church for a noble cause, but Fanatio responds that without the Church, there would be nothing to stop the army from the Dark Territory. Then, realizing that in their deadlock, the loser would be the one whose sword runs out of Life first and that Kirito's thicker sword has more Life than hers, Fanatio decides to use the second phase of the «armament full control» art to end the duel. Once all of her sword's memories are released, the sword begins firing light rays in all directions and both Fanatio and Kirito suffer greatly from the sword's attacks at point-blank range.

While Kirito attempts to move his sword to partially cover Fanatio's sword's rays, Eugeo intuitively decides that he should take action and completes chanting his «armament full control» art, thus activating the Blue Rose Sword's special ability. With the sword thirst into the ground, the entire floor gradually becomes frozen, with the icicles starting to cover anyone within the frost field. Fanatio manages to see through Eugeo's skill's nature the moment the tendrils break through the frost and she jumps up into the air to avoid the frost. However, Kirito, who reacted quicker due to knowing the special ability of the Blue Rose Sword reacted quicker and thus uses Fanatio as a stepping stone to jump higher into the air, while Fanatio falls back down to the ground as is subsequently covered in the ice tendrils an encased within a block of thick ice.



Even when frozen and suffering major injuries from her own sword, Fanatio does not yield and continues resisting the Blue Rose Sword's freezing ability with the use of her Heaven Piercing Sword. Although Eugeo puts in all his will power to keep Fanatio immobilized, she finally raises her sword towards Eugeo and Kirito and fires a gigantic spear of light towards the two. At that moment, Kirito finishes chanting his own «armament full control» art and unleashes the power of his own sword, launching a gigantic spear of darkness towards the spear of light. The clash of light and darkness continues for awhile, with the ice roses encasing Fanatio having already melted from the heat of the light spear. Finally, the spear of darkness breaks the stalemate and begins devouring the spear of light, until it finally reaches Fanatio and hits the Knight with tremendous impact, throwing her into the air.

After finally defeating the Knight and healing their wounds a bit, the two youngsters approach Fanatio in order to save her from dying. However, even when using their best healing arts, they are unable to stop Fanatio's bleeding. After unsuccessfully calling for help to save Fanatio's life, Kirito remembers the dagger that Cardinal had given them and decides to use his dagger to save Fanatio's life. He stabs the Knight with the dagger, which subsequently turns into several bands of purple light, with Cardinal's voice sounding out from it. Cardinal then retrieves Fanatio's body to the Great Library Room to treat her grievious wounds.

Trivia

 * Although the colour illustration depicts Fanatio as wearing white armour, the translation of the novel mentions that the armour is purple instead.

Фанацио Синтез Два