Integrity Knight



An «Integrity Knight» (整合騎士) is a dragon knight and the main military force of the Axiom Church. Integrity Knights are born through the «Synthesis Ritual», having the memories of their past life suppressed, and are forced to be unconditionally loyal to Quinella at all times through a «Piety Module». The purpose of the Integrity Knights is to protect Quinella against Cardinal, preserve the integrity of the Human World and to maintain the Church’s rule over the world.

Naming
The full names of all Integrity Knights consist of 3 words and follow a common formula: the first word in the name is the Knight’s actual first name, the second word is always the English word «Synthesis», most likely a reference to the «Synthesis Ritual», while the last word is actually a number of the Knight in English.

Background
The first Integrity Knights were actually Underworld Residents with a high level of a hidden parameter called «Transgression Quotient». Such people were likely to disobey the Taboo Index and go against Quinella’s plan of maintaining the regularity of the world, therefore, Quinella wanted to dispose of them. However, she could not murder them because of the single “Do not murder” command passed down to her by her parents. Therefore, instead of murdering, she decided to capture them and use them as guinea pigs for her research into a command that manipulates the Fluctlights directly. These experimental subjects had their memories damaged during the rituals and, after the experimental rituals were complete, the bodies and minds of the subjects were frozen: the natural degeneration of their maximum Life was halted and they were reduced to beings existing only to breathe.

After Cardinal managed to assume control of another avatar who also had supervisor level authority and retreated to the Great Library Room, Quinella took up new measures to protect herself. One of them was to create absolutely loyal followers to protect her. The many experimental subjects that were kept frozen within the Cathedral were the first to become Quinella's absolutely loyal warriors, the first Integrity Knights. Later, Quinella established the Four Empires Unity Tournament as a new method of acquiring the best warriors in the Human World. The winner of the annual tournament is invited to the Central Cathedral, where Quinella forcefully turns the victor into an Integrity Knight. Meanwhile, the victor’s family is awarded with large monetary rewards as well as being bestowed the status of a higher noble, creating an unanimous opinion among noble and wealthy merchant parents to have their children study the sword.

Currently, about half of the 31 Integrity Knights in existence are those who had broken the Taboo Index, while the other half are the past winners of the Four Empires Unity Tournament.

Location
Although the Integrity Knights were initially created as escorts to help defend Quinella from Cardinal, ever since the beginning phase of the «load experimental phase», 8 Integrity Knights are dispatched to guard the Edge of the Human World against the creatures of the Dark Territory, while several more are dispatched to supervise various regions of the Human World. However, about 12 or 13 Knights are always present at the Central Cathedral to defend Quinella. The Integrity Knights are also the ones who are sent to capture major criminals both in the capital and the remote regions of the Human World and bring them to the Central Cathedral, where the criminals are forcefully turned into new Integrity Knights. All Knights are usually dispatched to a different region than the one that the Knight comes from to keep them away from their families to sever the Knight’s connection to his or her past.

Armaments and characteristics
All Integrity Knights are armed with Divine Instrument class weapons, wear armor and have abnormally large Object Control and System Control Authority values (though lower than Quinella's). All Integrity Knights do not die from old age due to their lifespan being frozen by Quinella and are able to use advanced Sacred Art rituals, though they are not able to use supervisor-level ones. The Knights use dragons as their main means of transportation and during air battles.

Synthesis Ritual
A «Synthesis Ritual» is a supervisor-level Sacred Art ritual that allows the manipulation of an Underworld resident’s Fluctlight and requires 3 days of casting, due to the enormous amount of parameters that need to be set for the ritual. The ritual can only be used on targets that are at least within the caster’s line of sight or, preferably, ones that have physical contact with the caster.

The name of the ritual signifies the unification of the soul and memory of the person.

History and use
The Synthesis Ritual was tested on captured Underworld residents with high Transgression Quotients and initially developed as a command that would allow Quinella to manipulate her own Fluctlight. Specifically, it was first used to delete her own emotions safely, so that the error correcting sub-program of the Cardinal could not take control of her body.

Later, after Quinella found out that there was a limit to her memory capacity, it was used to create a backup of her own memories in the Fluctlight of a young nun before deleting her own unnecessary memories. However, this plan backfired and allowed Cardinal to take control of the nun's body.

After Cardinal took control of the nun's body, which had authority equal to Quinella's at the time, and escaped into the Great Library Room, where Quinella couldn't reach her, Quinella started using the Synthesis Ritual on her previous experimental subjects as well as any new captives who had broken the Taboo Index or had won the Four Empires Unity Tournament to turn them into absolutely loyal warriors under her command.

Mechanics
The Synthesis Ritual conducted on the Integrity Knights slightly differs from the ones used on Quinella's research subjects. The main difference is that the ritual conducted on the Integrity Knights also involve the use of a «Piety Module». During the Synthesis Ritual, the Module, which looks like a purple prism 10 centimeters in length, is embedded into the forehead of the victim.

As a person's learned abilities are greatly linked to the person's memories, erasing all of the victim's memories would cause the victim to lose their secret swordsmanship moves and Sacred Arts techniques, therefore Quinella only obstructed the most personal memories. The Module is inserted in a way that it would obstruct the links between such memories, thus sealing the history of the victim and instead creating false memories while simultaneously forcing in absolute loyalty towards the Axiom Church.

The Module is inserted in the place where the memories of the victim's most loved person are usually kept, therefore stimulation of these memories causes the prism to fall out. However, the art can only be fully revoked when the fragment of memory that was replaced with the Piety Module is returned o the victim. Just removing the prism will not return the flow of memories to what was before the ritual took place and, in the worst case scenario, might even severely damage the memories themselves.

Known Integrity Knights

 * Bercouli Synthesis One
 * Fanatio Synthesis Two
 * Deusolbert Synthesis Seven
 * Alice Synthesis Thirty
 * Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-one

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