Bercouli Herlentz

Bercouli (ベルクーリ), also known as Bercouli Synthesis One (ベルクーリ・シンセシス・ワン), is one of founders of Rulid Village, as well as the Knight Leader of the Integrity Knights, and the oldest Integrity Knight in existence. Bercouli's weapon of choice is the Time Piercing Sword.

Appearance
Bercouli has an masculine, bulky, muscular build and is nearly 2 mel (meters) in height. He has short, iron-gray hair, tinged with blue, that exposes his rather thick neck, sturdy chin and short beard that grows from it. He also has abnormally broad shoulders and his forearm is similar to a log in size, thus he is likely capable of swinging any sword with ease. He has a firm look that matches his low, deep, worn-out and crude voice, which sounds more appropriate for a peasant than a knight. A wrinkle engraved near his mouth implies that, biologically, Bercouli is over 40 years old. However, despite his age, there is no slackening around his hips, nor are his cheeks split by his high nose bridge. He has countless old wounds, caused by blades and arrows, running across his body.

Bercouli's most impressive feature is the light released from his pale, light blue eyes, beneath his prominent eyebrows. His eyes lack what could be constituted as a blood-thirst, but his gaze radiates an intense pressure and only contained pure interest in his opponents, implying that Bercouli is absolutely confident in his swordsmanship.

Personality
Bercouli is an extremely self-confident and prideful man due to his immense battle experience. However, Bercouli is also overconfident, as he showed much composure in front of Eugeo, by saying that he would spare his life, as Fanatio's life was protected, and he continued chatting despite knowing that Eugeo was chanting an «armament full control» art. He states that he does not hold grudges, but is willing to take revenge if his disciple was killed. Bercouli is also a person with an impressive level of concentration, yet also relaxed even in intense situations, as he was able to maintain focus on his «armament full control» art even while leisurely conversing with Eugeo.

Although Bercouli is the commander of the Integrity Knights and has his memories of his previous life suppressed, he holds faint distrust against the instructions handed down by the Chamber of Elders, but, due to his wish for peace and knowing peace would be impossible without the Axiom Church. He thus continued fighting on the church's side until he was petrified by Chief Elder Chudelkin, after which, seeing as Alice had the power to change the world, he encouraged her to correct the mistakes of the church and to guide the twisted world to how it should be.

Mythology
According to the legend of «Bercouli and the Northern White Dragon», on a certain day during the peak of the summer, Bercouli noticed a lump of ice floating in the Ruhr river. In amazement, Bercouli walked upstream along the river to find the source of the ice. As he continued to follow the river, he soon arrived at the «Mountain Range at the Edge» and found a huge cave opening.

After entering the cave and overcoming various dangers, he arrived at the largest hall within the cave. There he found a white dragon, rumored to be the protector of Human Empire boundary. The dragon was sleeping on an incalculable amount of assorted treasure, among which was a beautiful long sword, called the Blue Rose Sword. Bercouli wanted to own the sword no matter what, therefore, he softly took the sword without waking the dragon up and tried to run away with the sword. However a blue rose suddenly grew out of the sword and tangled him, which made Bercouli fall and awaken the dragon with the noise.

Bercouli then put the sword back in its rightful place and was thus forgiven, or so the legend says.

History
Bercouli lived some time between the founding of the Axiom Church and the usurpation of power of Quinella over the Cardinal System. At that time, Bercouli was both an unparalleled swordsman who had even won in the Empire Swordsmanship Tournament and a hero who loathed the rule of the Axiom Church, thus he led his comrades to one of the remotest region of the Human Empire where they pioneered their own village, named Rulid, where Bercouli became the first guard chief of the village.

However, at some point after Quinella became the Administrator, Bercouli found his way to the «North Cave» where he attempted to cross into the Dark Territory. Sensing this, Quinella abducted Bercouli and used him as the first test subject in her experiments on manipulating Fluctlights. Most of Bercouli's memories were damaged during the experiments and he was later frozen to be preserved for future experiments. However, when Quinella failed in her attempt to take control of a nun’s body and accidentally allowed Cardinal to assume the young girl’s body and escape into the Great Library Room, Quinella decided to create absolutely loyal escorts to protect her. Bercouli was then unfrozen and subjected to the Synthesis Ritual, during which he became the first Integrity Knight.

During his time as a knight, Bercouli had been constantly sent to battle with the Dark Territory. Such battles did not allow the use of high-ranking Sacred Arts to seal his wound immediately, thus many scars and wounds accumulated throughout his body. During one of these missions, he encountered Dark Knights capable of using consecutive hit skills and so ran away in panic after being overpowered. Although he later spent time thinking about the new style and how it was more practical than the traditional powerful one-hit strikes, he was not able to learn the new style himself. At some point, he was sent back to the North Cave, where he was ordered to slaughter the white dragon guarding the northern border of the Human Empire. Though, for some reason, he did not take the Blue Rose Sword from the dragon. This is likely because the Blue Rose Sword requires a large Object Control Authority value to wield, which Bercouli did not have at the time.

Alicization Dividing
Bercouli, who had recently returned to Centoria from his latest task, was bathing in the «Big Bath» on the 90th floor of the Central Cathedral to rest from his journey when Eugeo came across him. Noticing Eugeo, Bercouli asked the intruder to give him some time to get out of the bath and get dressed. After getting dressed and equipping his longsword, Bercouli first inquired whether Fanatio was still alive. Relieved to find out that she was still alive, he stated that he would spare Eugeo's life as well. When Eugeo asked whether Bercouli did not care about the other knights that were defeated, he explained that he cared about Fanatio the most as she was his disciple. Their conversation then continued with Bercouli mentioning Alice and revealing that Integrity Knight apprentices were usually not given a number yet, aside from Fizel and Linel, who were exceptions. As the conversation continued, Eugeo decided to put an end to it by taunting Bercouli into battle.



When both swordsmen assumed their stances, Bercouli realised that Eugeo was practising a consecutive hit style just by witnessing his stance and revealed that he had seen it used by some of the Dark Knights and also claimed that he would also be starting with his trump card. Assuming that Bercouli did not know of any move that would allow him to hit his opponent 10 mel away, thus he would have to use his «Armament Full Control Art», and also assuming that Bercouli would be anticipating a consecutive hit skill instead of a charge attack, Eugeo decided to use «Sonic Leap» to attempt to hit Bercouli during a gap created by executing a Secret Move or activating an «Armament Full Control Art». However, due to Bercouli's weapon's special ability, he was gravely injured by his special attack and might have even died if he did not decrease the speed of his skill in time.

Surprised by the turn of events, Bercouli explained how his longsword's special skill worked and allowed Eugeo to seal his wounds, remarking that he did not intend to hit him that hard and that he was not expecting a charge attack, thus he apologised for nearly killing him. Bercouli noticed that Eugeo began chanting an «Armament Full Control Art» of his own, but decided to allow him to finish chanting and continued their conversation. He explained the nature of his sword, revealing that it was able to slash through time and, guessing that Eugeo was planning to attack from a distance, boasted that everyone who had fought him thought the same, yet he managed to defeat all of his opponents. Noticing that Eugeo had finished his art and got out of the bath, he remarked that he would not hold back anymore and drew his sword again.

When Eugeo activated his sword's special ability, several icicles were created around Bercouli, who easily slashed them with his sword. However, this allowed Eugeo to close in on Bercouli and, when Bercouli attempted to block Eugeo's sword, it turned that Eugeo had dropped his sword and picked up an icicle instead, which broke upon impact, instead of passing on the force of Bercouli's blow onto Eugeo. Using the opening, Eugeo immediately rammed Bercouli and pushed him into the bath, where Eugeo found his sword and activated the second phase of the «Armament Full Control Art», freezing a large area in mere seconds. Bercouli, who now recovered from Eugeo's unexpected move, remarked that he did not expect anyone to drop their sword in the middle of battle. After hearing that Eugeo was taught that everything in the battlefield could be used as a weapon or trap and digesting this information, Bercouli admitted that Eugeo managed to surpass his expectations, but then also remarked that he could not lose so easily, thus he began using the strength of his muscle to break through the ice.



Witnessing Bercouli's attempt to break free, he unleashed the Blue Rose Sword's second property: the power to create life. Multiple blue roses began growing out of the ice, using Bercouli's and Eugeo's «Life» as a source of energy. With both now weakened and unable to break free of the ice, Eugeo revealed that he was betting on the fact that Bercouli was older, thus he likely had less Life than him. By mentioning this, Eugeo also revealed that Bercouli was actually born as a human and soon remembered who Bercouli really was in the past. Although he attempted to remind Bercouli of his past by telling him to remember the Blue Rose Sword, Bercouli could only remember seeing it when he killed the dragon guardian in the North Cave, this fact greatly shocking and depressing Eugeo. Although Eugeo then revealed that Bercouli's memories of the past were sealed, Bercouli did not fully believe Eugeo's story, though he admitted that he was beginning to doubt the story he was told by the church.

The roses continued to sap their life forces. Just before the swordsmen's «Life» were depleted, Chief Elder Chudelkin appeared and broke the power of the roses. The elder then blamed Bercouli for not finishing off the intruder the moment he saw him. Although Bercouli tried to argue back, the elder told him that the highest minister would likely want to reprocess them and then froze Bercouli with the use of a Sacred Art.



Hours later, when Alice and Kirito climbed down to the 90th floor in search of Eugeo, they discovered that the once large bath had been completely frozen up and Bercouli buried within the ice. As Alice began crying while clinging to Bercouli, the knight began temporarily breaking free of his petrified state using the might of his willpower to temporarily stop the effects of the petrifaction art. Bercouli then told Alice not to cry for him, ensuring her that he would not die from just that art, and showed surprise when he saw that Alice had broken her Seal of the Right Eye. Thus he asked her to correct the mistakes of the church and then directed his attention to Kirito, whom he told to look after Alice and that his partner, Eugeo, was taken by the chief elder to the highest minister's room, thus he should hurry before his partner is misled by his muddle of memories. At that point, Bercouli turned back into a mute statue.

Trivia

 * Bercouli is one of the few people who know about the existence of the Seal of the Right Eye, but even in 300 years, he has not been able to break it.

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