Although several hours behind schedule, we did manage to finish up a Lycoris chapter for this week's release as originally planned. Good thing we don't really have anything to celebrate, so the several hours of tardiness doesn't really change anything!

Now, this chapter of Lycoris is divided into two halves. The first half finishes up the southern empire storyline (Arc 2 from the game itself), while the second half focuses on Medina. If you were wondering why the plot seemed a bit rushed the past few chapters, the answer is now clear - the manga got axed, so the artist decided to be loose with the plot adaptation to cover as much as he could before the manga was forced to stop. So, there were quite a few changes to the story in this chapter as well. The biggest change was that Medina split off from Kirito's gang to join Hersyrian instead right before the end of the second arc, instead of this being done at the end of Arc 3, the northern empire storyline. Instead of Medina, the first half of this chapter gets some Cardinal deban, which, frankly, leads to a much better explanation for what's going on with giants and Clamps than Kirito just randomly figuring things out for no reason. The manga artist also decided to give Kirito an Excalibur replica for some Starburst Stream action just because... cool? The outcome of the battle, however, is relegated to the background so that the manga could cover Hersyrian tricking Medina into serving as his pawn in the second half of the chapter. We only have one chapter left for Lycoris, but since the artist doesn't have anymore leeway to cover another whole arc, we instead get a wishy-washy rendition of a side event from the game while shoehorning as many characters as possible, before finishing it all off with some random teasers for the events that the manga didn't manage to reach... as well as a tease for the future of the Eugeoverse... because the artist wanted to draw an Integrity Pilot Eugeo, I guess?

I'm not yet sure what we're going to release at the end of the week this time. Mtt's still busy, so he asked Jeng to help with redraws for Canon c1, but Jeng won't be able to finish these redraws by the end of the week, so that's out of the question. Meanwhile, Celest has said ~~that he won't have enough time to finish up the final Lycoris chapter by the end of the week.~~ This just in, Celest got fired up to finish the final Lycoris chapter before the weekend, so we might get a second Lycoris release in a row if this works out. If not, I'll get a Plan B done in the meantime.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the release. If you have any suggestions/requests for what to work on, feel free to leave a comment or contact us through Twitter/Discord/Email.

Any feedback is appreciated.

-Gsimenas

Credits

Raws: Celest and MttBlue2
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Kaantantr
Proofreading: JengKay
Redrawing: Hassassin
Typesetting: Celest
Quality Assurance: MttBlue2

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

Page 03: Ziczi begins with the phrase "ware koso ga" (我こそが), where "koso" emphasises the preceding word (i.e. → I ← am (the strongest)). He then starts over his sentence with a different phrasing "ware dake ga" (我だけが) = I alone (i.e. "and no one else") am the strongest.
Page 04: For some reason, the manga uses クリスタル (kurisutaru = crystal) instead of クリスタリン (kurisutarin = crystalline) for the crystal element, even though the official name of the element is "crystalline", not simply "crystal".
Page 04: The phrases "Generate Crystalline Element" and "Discharge!" are meant to be uttered in (katakana) English as system commands.
Page 05+: Cardinal uses archaic grammar and phrases in her speech (e.g., -nu instead of -nai for negative verb suffixes, "oru" instead of "iru/aru", replacing the copula "da" with "ja", using the archaic pronoun "washi" (わし) to refer to herself etc.). To account for this, I've made her lines use some archaic words and grammar (e.g., using the archaic thou and its conjugations (thy = your, thee = "you" as the object of the sentence) for the second person singular pronoun "you"; adding -est to 2nd person verbs, -eth to 3rd person verbs, changing -ed to -'d for past tense words; changing "it is" --> "'tis"; using archaic forms wert/hath/beeth/dost for was/has/is/do respectively, "behold" for "see", "howbeit" for "however", etc.) in the translation as well
Page 05: "Ium" is the Dark Territorian term for "humans". "You puny Iums" - Ziczi uses the derogatory pluralising suffix "-domo" with another derogatory suffix -me with the word "Iums"
Page 06: "Portal" here is used in the old sense of "majestic doors", not in the sci-fi sense of the word.
Page 07: The phrase "living beings" (生物) was accompanied by furigana for "The Giants" (ジャイアント族). "The Giants" refer to the giant race as a whole.
Page 08: Ziczi uses the word 兄弟 (kyoudai, the equivalent of "male sibling") for "brother" in this instance. The word doesn't specify whether it's referring to one brother or multiple brothers, nor whether he's referring to an older or younger brother. I went with the assumption that he's referring to Zacza specifically, since Zacza and Ziczi are the only two brothers mentioned specifically in the chapter.
Page 08: "these puny Iums" - again, Ziczi uses the derogatory pluralising suffix "-domo" (but without -me this time) with the word "Iums"
Page 08: "o brother of mine" - Ziczi uses 我が兄弟よ (waga kyoudai yo) as a fancy way to call on his brother, so I made his line sound fancy in the translation as well.
Page 08: "Dil" is a representation of the broken sound made when a Fluctlight collapses/implodes. I decided to use "implode" for "collapse", because I feel it better captures the essense of what's happening during the process (self-destruction from the inside).
Page 08: "Wrong" - when uttering this word, Ziczi's speech uses katakana instead of hiragana or kanji for the word. This implies that Ziczi's speech starts sounding abnormal (broken or inhuman).
Page 08: "all the giants" - in this case, Ziczi uses the Japanese word for "giant race" (巨人族, kyojin-zoku) rather than the usual English word ジャイアント族 (jaianto-zoku)
Page 09: "Damn that Administrator" - Kirito uses the derogatory suffix "-me" (め) for "Administrator"
Page 10: The word "Machinist" was written as 〝鍛冶屋〟（マシニスト）, where 鍛冶屋 (kajiya) means "blacksmith", while マシニスト (mashinisuto) was used as furigana for the word to make the word read as "Machinist" instead of "blacksmith" (i.e. translate what "Machinist" means to actual Japanese).
Page 10: Kirito literally abbreviated the English phase "logged in" in past tense (ログインした, roguin shita) to just "in" in past tense (インした, in shita). I decided to reduce "logged in" to just "logged" to account for this nuance, as that is NOT how you use the word "in" in English.
Page 13: "oh, you…sheesh" - Eugeo uses the phrase 全く…君ってやつは… (mattaku... kimi tte yatsu wa...) to express his exasperation with how Kirito keeps surprising him. It literally means something like "Sheesh, you are simply unbelievable".
Page 16-19, 22, 23: "Esteemed" is a translation for the honorific 様 (-sama), since I prefer not to leave honorifics untranslated when they're used with titles.
Page 16: "that man", "that bloke" - Hersyrian first used the word 男 (otoko), which is just a general word for "man/male". In the next bubble, he used 奴 (yatsu), which can be either a derogatory or familiar way to refer to another person of any gender. In this case, Hersyrian uses it in a derogatory manner, hence I used a word that sounds more derogatory in the English translation as well.
Page 16: "heretic" - Hersyrian uses the word 大罪人 (daizainin), which literally means "great sinner/criminal".
Page 19: "My Lady" - Hersyriant uses 貴女様 (anata-sama), where he just attached the honorific 様 (-sama) to "anata" (polite word for "you", specifically for females in this case).
Page 21: "with all of your hands" - Hersyrian uses 貴女たち (anata-tachi), which is basically the word "you" specifically in its plural sense. As in, Hersyrian is implicitly referring not only to Medina herself, but to her followers as well, without emphasising that he knows about her power until a later instance in the chapter.
Page 22: "those scoundrels" - Hersyrian uses 奴ら (yatsu-ra), the plural form of 奴 (yatsu) that I mentioned in the Page 16 note. Basically, he's referring to both Kirito and Alice in a derogatory manner.
Page 22: "subjugate" is used in the sense of "making someone obey you".