Notice: This story is only recommended to those who have watched Alicization episodes 1-24, or have read volumes 9-14 of the light novel, since it does make quite a few references to the canon version of the timeline. Also, as this is a direct continuation of If You Were Here, you are advised to finish reading that story first if you haven't done so already. Disclaimer: the story may or may not cause diabetes. Read at your own risk.
Now, I did give this story a once-over before publishing it, but I'm only one man and could have easily missed some blatant fuckups, so if anyone notices anything wrong, be sure to inform me. Feel free to drop any other suggestions or impressions in the comments below as well.
Translation (choice/nuance) comments:
- For some reason, all instances of "glass" are written in kanji with furigana. Don't know why.
- Aside from instances where actual system commands are recited, Sacred Arts elements are almost always referred to with Japanese expressions (kanji), rather than English words. Since the Japanese kanji terms aren't as sophisticated as the English variants, I translated the element names literally when they are mentioned in actual Japanese. For example, the "cryogenic" element is called the "freezing element" (凍素) outside of commands.
- In one instance, I used "but" and "however" one after the other. This is to account for the fact that the original text already used one conjunction (が) like that, but Kirito then decided to throw in a second one (しかし) for good measure.
- In two instances, Eugeo shortened the auxiliary verb command form "-nasai" (なさい) with the sentence ending particle "yo" (よ) to just "na yo" (なよ). To account for this, I made the sentence that this colloquialism is used in a bit more colloquial than usual (your --> yer and come on --> c'mon).
- I went with Tap's translation of Scheta/Sheyta's name, because I feel that it represents the pronunciation more accurately.
- As Kirito is an engrishomaniac with a compulsive desire to use butchered English words to sound cool when decent Japanese words already exist, there is one instance where Kirito talks about wanting to use a butchered English "thank you". I used furigana (ruby) text to make it more clear that he's talking about English words in that instance. Reminder that ruby text works as follows: what he meant to say
- In one instance, Kirito used a colloquial そんで (sonde) instead of それで (sorede). To account for this (lazy) colloquial abbreviation, I shortened "that way" to "t'way".
- In one scene, two different phrasings (顔をしかめる and 眉を寄せる) that are basically just different ways to say "frowned" were used in the text. So, I translated both instances more literally for a clearer distinction.
- In the "dear friend of mine" instance, Kirito went grandiose by using the phrase 我が友よ (waga tomo yo), which is a rather overdramatic/archaic way to refer to one's friend.
Markup explanation:
- Itallics mark text that was written in katakana English (I only highlighted the cases where the author uses both English and actual Japanese equivalents for the same thing, or when I needed to emphasise that an English word is used there).
- Ｆｕｌｌ－ｗｉｄｔｈ text indicates non-Japanese text that was written in the Latin/English alphabet, rather than katakana. Basically, what you see is exactly how it's written in the raw.
- Courier font indicates that the original word was written in kana for emphasis (when such a word usually isn't written in kana)
- Single quotation marks (') are quotes that weren't in the original text but were added for the convenience of English speakers to mark implied quotations. I used it mostly to separate Kirito's internal monologue from his narration, as well as mark sound effects and so on. Actual dialogue lines or quotations (with 「」 punctuation marks) within a narration line are indicated with the usual double (") quotation marks.
- Comic sans indicates emphasis added by myself when I needed to stress something to get the meaning across properly.
-Gsimenas
Credits
Raws: https://sao-alicization.net/bddvd/02.htmlTranslation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas
1
"Furyumuguuuuuuuuuuun!"
When I unleashed a shout from the depths of my soul, holding an iron baking tray in my hands, a smile tinged faintly with sorrow appeared on the face of Eugeo, standing in front of me as he said the following.
"Kirito…… wouldn't it be best to just give up on that cake already and make a different one instead? The tea party is the day after tomorrow, you know, and if you don't manage to bring a new cake to it, both of us will be turned into plates by the Supreme Priest, you know?
"Funuuuun……"
After responding in an enigmatic language, I looked down at the object on the baking tray I had just taken out of the oven.
Twenty centimetres-wide, five centimetres-tall, and cylindrical. The colour: cinder-like jet-black. Actually, not ‘like’. The black colour was the result of the object being scorched, so it was a prime example of cinders.
"……Well, you know…… The ingredients for it are just wheat flour and sugar, then some eggs, cheese, cream, and some Siral fruit juice. All we had to do was mix them all together and bake the thing, so there's no reason for it to be scorched black like this in a mere minute, is there."
When I returned to speaking in the Human Empire language as I said this, Eugeo nodded with an expression that made it clear it didn't make sense to him either.
"Well…… I myself do think that it's strange. It's even more enigmatic that the cake is still utterly half-baked if you take it out of the oven at the fifty-nine second mark."
"You said it. What the heck happens between the fifty-nine and sixty second mark……"
Shaking my head to the sides, I gazed at the large oven.
The place we were occupying at the moment was a corner of the Grand Kitchen on the tenth floor of the Central Cathedral. Even this gigantic kitchen, filled with the bustling orchestra of kitchen knives, pots and frying pans during the day, had fallen completely silent by now. That was because it was now past ten at night, so the head chef and all his cooks had long since returned to their rooms.
Honestly, I am quite sleepy myself and the same probably applies to Eugeo as well. During the day, we were mercilessly worked to the bone from nine till five by high-ranked knight Scheta-sensei; completely exhausted, we took up working on our cake prototype, thus by ten o'clock, the weight of our eyelids is reaching our limits. Till yesterday, this would be the point where we'd finish up our work, but we can't exactly do so tonight until we have achieved some progress. Just like Eugeo mentioned moments ago, if we don't manage to complete a new cake by noon on the rest day two days away, we would be punished by Her Holy Eminence, the Supreme Priest Administrator. I don't really think we'd actually be turned into plates as she had declared…… wait, I should probably assume that it's quite plausible for that to happen.
Heaving a sigh, I placed the pitch-black lump that should have become a baked cheesecake onto the kitchen counter. Due to the faintest shock, the fragile lump crumbled, losing all of its Life before disappearing.
The reason why Eugeo and I are endeavouring to bake cakes in the Axiom Church's Central Cathedral. That's because the ruler of the Human Empire, Administrator, promised us that she would continue her talks with the other Supreme Priest, Cardinal, as long as we can make new cakes for them.
Both Administrator's and Cardinal's ultimate goal is to protect the Human Empire from the near-at-hand invasion by the army of darkness. There's no way that the two going into a deathmatch against each other would be a good idea, thus we have to ensure by any means that the rest day tea party continues on, but at this rate, it's going to end in disaster on just the second instance.
"……Say, Kirito. Wouldn't it be best to just give up on this cheesecake thingie and make a simpler cake instead?"
Staring down at the now-empty baking tray, I feebly responded to Eugeo's words.
"A cheesecake is supposed to be about as simple, if not even simpler, to make than the shortcake we baked last week. There's no need to cover it in cream, nor is it necessary to adorn it with strawberries……"
"Eeeh? Wouldn't that make its appearance a bit too basic……? How should I put it… sounds like it would just be a flat bun or something……"
"Well…… it might be more basic in appearance than a shortcake, but that's the good part about it. The surface baked to a goldish-brown, contrasted by the light yellow of its insides is just……"
My own words made me recall the taste of a baked cheesecake that I haven't tasted in three years by now, prompting me to gulp down the saliva in my mouth. It's not like I’m cray-cray-crazy for sweets, but out of all cakes out there, a rich cheesecake is my favourite one. Honestly, the fact that I wanted to eat one myself may have had a little sway in my choice to have this cake in particular for this week's tea party's menu. However, it can't be that my self-interest has led to the cake always ending up scorched-black.
"……Is there really no way for us to look inside the oven while it's heating……"
When I muttered this, my partner shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'what stupid thing are you thinking of now'.
"The only way to look inside is to open the door. But if you do open it, the heat will escape, causing a cooking failure, you know."
"Right indeed……"
I had to nod at that.
If this were an oven from the real world, you wouldn't end up with a cooking failure just because you opened the door a little bit while it's heating to check on how well the dish has cooked; however, excessively strict requirements are imposed in Underworld. As Eugeo mentioned just now, if we were to open the oven's door before it's done cooking, the temperature inside will instantly drop and even if we heated it again, the cake would never reach its completed state. In other words, the cooks in this world have the following ironclad rule about opening the oven: 《Don't open the door even if you hear a baby crying inside》.
In fact, we were prepared to waste one cake's worth of ingredients and attempted to open the door the moment we reached the fifty-nine second mark, but the cheesecake was still basically raw at that point. Yet when we open it at the sixty second mark, it's already scorched-black. In order to check on what exactly happens in that single second, it doesn't seem like we have any other choice but to install a glass window into the oven door; however, glass production and processing in Underworld is a cutting edge industry that requires proficient craftsmen and high-grade equipment, thus even us Integrity Knight apprentices can't exactly just waltz up to a Centoria glass workshop all of a sudden and tell the craftsmen, "Make us a small window for an oven door!".
In that case, we could just go ＤＩＹ… or at least I'd like to do so, but we don't exactly have the time to start learning the art of glass production right now, nor do we even know what exactly glass is made from in this world, for starters. If we considered what other transparent materials we could use instead, I can't think of anything other than crystals and diamonds, but those are bound to be even more valuable commodities than gla……
"Oh, wait, hold on."
As I muttered this, I was met with a questioning look from Eugeo. After replying to him with a broad grin, I raised my right hand and began chanting a rite.
"System call. Generate crystalline element."
The small dot of light produced on my fingertip was one of the eight elements, the 《crystal element》. Since it was an element with even fewer uses than the steel and darkness elements, we didn't really use it much even during our lessons at the Swordcraft Academy, but now it was our last hope.
"Form element, plate shape."
As I continued the chant, the dot of light turned into the shape of a thin plate via my command and imagination, before materialising with a faint "kin" sound. What fell into my palm was a twenty centimetre square glass plate, five millimetres in thickness.
"……What exactly do you plan to do with it?"
As my partner looked at me with an even more distrustful expression, I gave him a slight wink and closed the valves on the oven's sides with one hand, before bringing the glass plate to the centre of the Grand Kitchen.
There, a pure white marble——the same material that the Cathedral's outer wall was made of—— hemisphere was enshrined. Steel pipes extended in eight directions from the bottom part of the likely one-and-a-half-metre-wide hemisphere; a short tube was furnished at its top, red flames spouting out of it every now and then.
This hemisphere was a Divine Object known as the 《Kiln of Eternal Flames》(1), created by Supreme Priest Administrator with her super high-ranked system control authority; sealed inside of it were heat elements that never went out. Known as the most fastidious of all the elements, heat elements would gradually release their heat just by being kept in the air, until they eventually disappeared; or if they touched any sort of object, they would just heat it up that very moment and, likewise, disappear, thus I don't have the slightest idea on how the heck was anyone able to contain them in a marble kiln.
The pipes extending from the kiln connected to the stoves and ovens throughout the Kitchen, providing them all with intense heat for cooking. Right now, the valves at the end of the pipes were all closed, which meant that the energy from the heat elements was now escaping little by little through the tube at the top of the kiln.
Standing slightly on tiptoes, I held the glass plate in my right hand over the faintly-red flame.
"Oi, Kirito, what are you……"
"An experiment, just an experiment. Oh, just watch."
Responding thus to Eugeo after he spoke out in concern, I focused on the glass plate.
Utensils made out of steel and crystal elements on the whole have low Life values. Even this glass plate would probably easily break if I were to apply some force while holding it between my hands, but what about its heat resistance? Even if it had poor physical strength, its resistance against intense heat and cold…… in other words, its resistance against elemental damage was a different story altogether.
Warmed by the flame, the central portion of the glass began to shine red before long; but however it had yet to break. Twenty seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds…………
"Uo-hoooot!"
Feeling an intense sensation of heat at my fingertips all of a sudden, I threw away the glass plate.
"Towah!"
The reason why even Eugeo let out a scream was because the red-hot glass plate flew right next to his feet. The glass crumbled to pieces near my partner's feet after he had jumped away. However, I believe that it most likely wasn't broken by the heat, but rather by the shock of the crash. If I hadn't thrown it away, it seems it would have lasted for over sixty seconds.
"Oh geez, what the heck are you doing here……"
Saying thus with an appalled expression, Eugeo quickly created a freezing element, turning it into a lump of ice.
"Here, cool off yer fingers."
"Thanks."
This would be a moment where I'd prefer to say thank you, but that's a word that doesn't exist in this world, thus I expressed my gratitude in the Human Empire language, before taking the ice. With my heated fingertips rapidly cooled off, the throbbing pain practically disappeared entirely.
"So, how did your experiment go?"
"Succeeded, probably."
At that answer, a sceptical expression once again found its way on Eugeo's face.
"'Probably', you say…… what the heck are you planning to do with that plate?"
"I'll leave you in suspense, so you'd have something to look forward to seeing. Though, it really is getting late today, so let's save it for tomorrow."
"Is that really a good idea? The tea party is already taking place the day after tomorrow."
"That means we still have one more day, right."
Answering thus, I slapped my partner on his back. On the inside, I was greatly panicking, but since I was the one who dragged Eugeo into the Cake Plan, I didn't want my unease to show on my face at the very least.
"Tomorrow, let's try explaining our circumstances to Scheta-sensei and ask her to allow us to wrap up our training in the morning. T'way, if we focused on the job starting from when we finished our grub for lunch and worked until ten at night, I'm sure we'd be able to resolve even the scorching issue."
"Hmm, I wonder if the Scheta-sensei would actually agree to giving us half a day off……"
"Even Sensei doesn't want to see me and you being turned into plates…… or at least I think she wouldn't. Besides, don't you think that person is somehow similar to Azurica-sensei from the Swordcraft Academy?"
"Well…… I do feel that the aura they give off is just the slightest bit similar, but what of it?"
"Azurica-sensei has overlooked me breaking the curfew on numerous occasions, so Scheta-sensei must actually be a nice person inside as well, I'm sure of it."
At my wishful thinking, Eugeo just slightly shook his head.
Having finished up our experiment at the Grand Kitchen and arrived at our room on the twenty-eighth floor following a lot of stair climbing, Eugeo and I heaved a sigh just as we both collapsed onto the sofa.
At this point, I would love to head to the Grand Bath on the ninetieth floor to recover from all that physical and mental labour, but the elevating disk doesn't operate at this late hour. I didn't have the energy to climb another sixty-two floors worth of stairs, thus I considered going to the shared bathroom on this floor——though, seeing as we are the only apprentice knights living on the twenty-eighth floor at the moment, it's practically our exclusive bathroom——but I can't be bothered to get up for that.
'I'll just take a bath in the morning…… actually, I feel too languid to even go to my own bed……', as I was overwhelmed by such slovenly thoughts, it only took moments for my eyelids to drop down.
"Oi, Kirito, you'll catch a cold if you fall asleep there."
With my right shoulder violently shaken by Eugeo, I somehow managed to just half-open my right eye.
"It's all good, I am an Integrity Knight, even if only an apprentice, so I won't catch a cold by simply falling asleep on the sofa."
"What does being a knight have to do with that!"
Asserting thus with an appalled expression, Eugeo stood up straight, changing his shaking attack into a pulling attack.
"C'mon, get up before you fall asleep. Have you forgotten the time you dozed off at a sheep farm in the middle of the winter when you were a child and caught a cold because of it?"
"Yeah yeah……"
The moment I reluctantly stood up, my drowsiness was blown away as if it had never even been there. Staring fixedly at my partner's face head-on, I enquired in a hoarse voice.
"……Oi, Eugeo, what did you just……"
"Ah……"
Eyes bulged open, Eugeo instantly screwed up his face, lifting his right hand to touch his brow.
"……There it goes again. Just like the time you gave me a cake to celebrate my birthday, Kirito……I felt as if we had been together ever since we were little……"
"…………"
Having no idea how to respond to that, I contracted my brow as well.
Me having spent my childhood with Eugeo at Rulid Village can't have actually happened. The first time I dived into 《this version of Underworld》 was three years ago; by that point, Eugeo was already a seventeen-year-old young man. When we first met under the Gigas Cedar, Eugeo recognised neither my face, nor my name and vice versa.
However, I, too, experienced the phenomenon that contradicts this fact five days ago——on Eugeo's birthday. When he saw my shortcake present for him, Eugeo muttered, "I haven't been this happy with a present since that time you made me a wooden sword from silveroak when we were kids.", and I replied, "I've had quite some trouble with that sword too, but it was easier since Alice made the scabbard for it."
At that moment, I vividly recalled. How I had given Eugeo a wooden sword, which I had made from a silveroak branch over a period of two months of work at a secret vacant plot in the eastern forest, as a present to celebrate his birthday. That was his tenth or eleventh birthday…… what's more, I also remember how Alice had made a scabbard for the wooden sword at the same place as well……
Humans are living beings who sometimes create fake memories, yet I can't find any way to explain why that scene felt so much realistic, nor how I'm sharing the same memory with Eugeo. In the end, our only way to find out the whole truth is to ask the people from Rath who had created Underworld and are now managing it. For starters, that's the reason why I have my eyes set on reaching the topmost floor of the Central Cathedral, where the console for contacting the outside world is located——probably.
The topmost floor is Administrator's personal quarters, thus I definitely can't do something as dangerous as attempting to stealthily sneak in there during the night. My only choice is the orthodox method of earning her trust somehow and thus being invited to the topmost floor; hence, I absolutely must ensure the success of part 2 of the tea party the day after tomorrow if I wish to achieve that goal……
"Don't think about it too deeply for now. I'm sure that someday the time will come for us to resolve this enigma."
When I patted him on the shoulder, Eugeo gave me a slightly impatient look, but his usual smile instantly found its way on his face.
"……Yeah, you're right."
"Now, we have an early morning tomorrow, so how's about we go to sleep already. Good night, dear friend of mine."
Saying thus, I attempted to retire to my own bedroom. Yet my partner displayed fearsome reaction speed by grabbing me by the nape.
"You've built up a lot of sweat today as well, so you have to take a proper bath!"
"Yeah yeah……"
As we had one of our usual conversations that somehow wasn't any different from the ones during our Swordcraft Academy days, I couldn't help but worry whether we truly can become Integrity Knights.
Notes
1. ^ The name is a pun. The name for this Divine Object is Eien no Kama (永炎の窯), while the Japanese word for "eternal/eternity" is also pronounced as eien (永遠).
Nice stuff as always!
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