At the time of writing, only the first two chapters are fully summarised. Feel free to listen to our podcast version of the summary while you wait for the other chapters to be summarised in more detail: Table of contents:
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- [...]
Chapter 1
The chapter begins with a pair of autumnally coloured, wide-open eyes staring in profound shock and astonishment at a pair of jade-green eyes peeking out of a white mask, squinted in a dubious manner. The marked contrast between the two gazes had Kirito frozen in place. Tiese had harboured feelings of love for Eugeo ever since her valet days; her grief upon learning of Eugeo's death had been so profound that even Kirito in his comatose state had managed to feel her pain. After the war, both Tiese and Ronye had been appointed as Integrity Knights, gave birth to their children in their twenties, then had their Life frozen, and finally fallen to sleep via Deep Freeze in their mid-seventies, according to what he'd learnt from the modern Underworld. Despite all the time that had passed, Tiese's deep affection for Eugeo stood the test of time.
As Tiese stood stock still, Ronye noticed her abnormal state seconds later and followed the girl's gaze to Eolyne, upon witnessing whom she let out a sharp breath and let go of her sword in shock. However, it was neither Tiese, nor Ronye who broke the oppressive silence.
Selka (in a hoarse voice): "......No way......Eugeo... is that you......?"
Selka (slowly stepping towards Eolyne): "Eugeo......you were still alive......?"
Tiese and Ronye still remained standing still, as if back in their petrified state. Meanwhile, Eolyne himself shot a glance at Kirito in bewilderment. Stica and Laurannei were wearing their pilot caps pulled over their eyes, but Eolyne was still in his pilot suit, just like Kirito himself, so Eolyne's slightly ruffled flaxen hair was exposed for all to see. No one uttered a word, when suddenly,
Nuts: "Kyuuh! Kyuhkyuru————!"
A certain soakrat broke the silence as it ran towards them through the grass, falling over itself multiple times in the process, until it jumped into Ronye's bosom, nuzzling its snout at the girl's cheeks.
Ronye (in a hoarse voice): "......Nuts! (hugs the rat)"
As the soakrat continued letting out squeaks, they heard someone else stepping on the grass. Airy Toroom climbed up the slope and stopped before Selka, giving her a deep bow.
Airy: "Pleasure to see you again after all this time, Selka-sama. (turns to the two girls) Tiese-sama, Ronye-sama. I am awfully glad to be able see you again."
Selka (pulling her soul back into her nostrils, figuratively, giving a few blinks before focusing on Airy, and giving her a faint smile): "Airy, how many times do I have to tell you: no need to add 《-sama》?"
Kirito (thinking): Wow, Selka doesn't seem like she's been away for long... oh right, the Fluctlight stops functioning entirely throughout a freeze, so to her it does actually feel like only a few days - or even hours - have passed.
Selka walks over to Airy and gives her a big 'ol hug, before putting some distance between them.
Selka: "Nice to see you're doing well...... Airy, what year is it in the Star Empire Calendar?"
Airy: "It's the seventh day of the twelfth month in the year 582."
Selka: "Year 582......"
After a brief moment of shock, Selka looked over the people gathered at the hill, before turning back to Eolyne. Before she could utter a word however, Airy whispered:
Airy: "Selka-sama. This gentleman is not Eugeo-sama."
Selka: ".............But......"
Kirito wasn't surprised that Selka was finding it hard to take in that Eolyne and Eugeo were different people. They were alike in many ways, though over time Kirito has noticed some differences between them: Eolyne's somewhat cynical smile, a demeanour that prevented people from seeing into his heart, and the fact that Eolyne's body wasn't all that robust. The form of their "souls" did, however, have way too many things in common.
As Kirito recalled that Airy hadn't been all that surprised upon seeing Eolyne for the first time hours earlier...
Airy: "This gentleman is Eolyne Herlentz-sama, the Commander of the current Order of Integrity Pilots."
Ronye: "Herlentz...... so is he Berche's......?"
Airy: "Indeed. If we see Berche-sama as the second head of House Herlentz, then Eolyne-sama is the second son of the current seventh head of the family."
Ronye: "The son of the seventh head of the family......"
Kirito (internally): (Starts doing mental math) Technically, he's an adopted son. (Continues doing mental math)
At this point, Tiese seemed to take in the fact that Eolyne wasn't Eugeo, so she picked up her fallen sword, put it back in its scabbard, and then approached Airy.
Tiese: "......Airy, so you watched over us here all this time, huh. Thanks...... (gives Airy a tight hug, before turning to Kirito). Kirito-sempai...... I mean, Your Stellar Majesty. Tiese Schtrinen/Shtolienen Thirty-two hereby humbly returns to service as your knight."
Ronye (after hastily putting Nuts onto her shoulder, picking up her sword, returning it to its scabbard, then lining up beside Tiese and giving an Integrity Knight salute): "Likewise, Ronye Arabel Thirty-three hereby returns to service!"
Kirito (internally): Wow, they sure have grown... oh wait (hastily raises his hands)
Kirito: "W-well, umm...... I'd hate to break it to you girls...... (exchanging eye contact with Asuna) but I'm no longer the Star King."
Ronye and Tiese: "Wha"
Just as Kirito thought over how to explain the situation to the girls, he heard multiple bells ringing. It was the five o'clock chime... and Koujirou would be pulling the plug at 5:10 if they didn't log themselves out by then.
Kirito: "Ronye, Tiese, Selka. Sorry, but me, Asuna, and Alice can only stick around in this world for ten minutes at best."
Ronye: "H......how come?"
Kirito (speeding through his explanations): "We're currently Diving in...... ehm, we've been temporarily teleported into Underworld from the Real World. Our time limit is set at 5:10; if we cross that deadline, we'll be forcibly returned back to our side."
Tiese: "W-why is there a limit like that?"
Kirito (internally): Not like I can say "I've got homework to do" or "My mom will scold me if I don't get back."
Kirito: "There are all sorts of reasons in play...... It doesn't matter right now, I've got to explain something far more important right now."
(Kirito slides over to Stica, Laurannei, and Eolyne)
Kirito: "You already know who Eolyne is, so we can skip that introduction. This here is Seigou Kishi (Integrity Pilot) Stica Schtrinen/Shtolienen. The "ki" in the "kishi" I mentioned is the "ki" in "kiryuu" (dragoncraft)."
Tiese (eyes shooting wide open): "Wha"
Kirito: "And this is Integrity Pilot Laurannei Arabel."
Ronye: "Wha"
Stica and Laurannei: (Finally recovering from standing bolt upright and taking off their caps awkwardly)
Ronye and Tiese: (Running over to their respective descendant)
Kirito (internally): Oh wait, this unexpected meeting might not be entirely pleasant, since the presence of these girls implies that the children they gave birth to themselves are no longer alive. As long as they didn't have their own Life frozen, that is.
Ronye and Tiese: (Giving their descendants a warm hug)
Stica and Laurannei: (Timidly putting their own hands around their ancestors)
Over five seconds later, the two pairs ended their hugs and turned to Kirito.
Ronye: "Your Majesty...... I mean, Kirito-sempai. What was this important thing you wanted to talk about?"
Kirito then explained the whole conspiracy thing going on with Eolyne's help. The "digest" version of the story took about five minutes to cover, leaving them with less than a minute of time. Kirito wished he could stay overnight in Underworld and take his time talking to the girls, but after the whole comatose thing he didn't want to worry his parents by returning home late.
Kirito: "Ronye, Tiese, Selka. Sorry to spring this on you when you've just woken up...... but could you assist Eolyne and the others? I'll try to get back as soon as possible."
Ronye: "Of course, Kirito-sempai!"
Tiese: "You can count on us!"
Selka: "Be sure to hurry back, you hear me!"
At that point, the logout procedure began.
Kirito (internally): So even after I became the Star King while Selka became the Commander of the Sacred Arts Division, Selka didn't change her tone with me.
Chapter 2
Now logged out, Kazuto awoke to the sight of a metal ceiling with panel lights, as the STL headset had already been taken off him. In this room, he found Alice still in her reclining chair, having yet to awake; meanwhile, Asuna was doing a stretch on her own gel bed. After exchanging greetings on a job well done, Kazuto got off his bed, grabbed a mineral water bottle from a trolley, and gave it to Asuna. Seeing her drinking, Kazuto was reminded of the fact that he himself hadn't eaten or drunk anything in the real world while they were diving into Underworld... for the past ten hours. Thus, the boy presumed that Rinko may have been so strict about their logout deadline to ensure they had timely rehydration without resorting to IV drips.
After taking a new bottle of water and gulping half of it down, Kazuto was reminded of the existence of his stomach, but food wasn't allowed in the room, which made the boy a bit jealous of Alice's mechanical body. While letting his mind ponder like that, the boy took out his smartphone from his bag and unlocked it with facial recognition to find Yui on the screen. After the three exchanged pleasantries, Yui reported that there had been no attempts to infiltrate Rath's network while they were in Underworld, nor did she find anyone suspicious on the surveillance cams. Having finished her job, Yui then signed off to head back to Unital Ring.
After returning his phone to his bag, Kazuto and noticed that Alice had yet to awake. Just as Asuna was about to try shaking Alice, Rinko came into the room. Since the three of them hadn't logged out on time, Rinko had assumed that something important may have been going on at that moment, so after discussing things with Kikuoka Seijirou (who had stepped into the room after Rinko), they decided to leave Alice in Underworld.
Kazuto: "Sup, Kikuoka-san. What're you up to all the way out here?"
Seijirou: "Hey now, I'm the founder of Rath. What's so strange about finding me here?"
Kazuto: "I heard you foisted the role of representative onto Rinko-san in favour of prowling around."
Seijirou: "You sure are mean, calling it prowling..."
Asuna then exchanged greetings with Seijirou.
Asuna: "Long time no see, Kikuoka-san."
Seijirou: "Come to think of it, it's been what, two months, since I last saw you, Asuna-kun. Nice to see you're doing well."
Asuna: "Thank you very much. How are your injuries, Kikuoka-san?"
Seijirou: "Confirmed to be fully healed a while ago, though some scars do remain."
While their conversation did sound amiable at face value, Kazuto felt that there was a tinge of tension in the air between them. The boy assumed this was because Asuna placed Seijirou somewhere in the midline between a good person and one who's not, while Seijirou was either feeling guilty about the trouble he had caused, or had some other reasons.
Kazuto (internally): Not like I can imagine Asuna physically hoisting Kikuoka up in the real world, although I could see it happen in the virtual world......
At that point, Rinko clapped her hands.
Rinko: "Now then, please get ready to head back home, you two. You'll make your family members worried if you're late."
Kazuto: "Wha......but do you not need to hear our report on what happened during the Dive?"
Rinko: "I'll ask Alice about it later on. I know you must be exhausted after that long Dive, but could I ask you to brief Lieutenant Col...... I mean, Kikuoka-san on what went on yourself, Kirigaya-kun?"
Kazuto: "Well, sure, but it will take more than just two or three minutes to finish up, you know."
Seijirou: "Not to worry. (Takes out a keycard for a car and waves it around) I'll take it upon myself to drive both you, Kirito-kun, and you, Asuna-kun, home, so I'll hear you out on the road. There's some other thing I'd like to discuss with you, anyway."
Kazuto: "You want to discuss something.....with us?"
Kazuto (internally): I sure hope you're not planning to stack more work on my plate here (glares)
Seijirou: "Go down the elevator to the parking lot at Floor -2 when you're done changing. See ya later."
Once Seijirou was out of the room,
Asuna: "What identity is Kikuoka-san using right now? As the official story goes, he's supposed to have passed away back on the Ocean Turtle, right?"
Koujiro: "Well, I may as well share it with you, but you'll just think that I'm pulling your leg and avoiding to give an actual answer to the question......"
Asuna: "We won't!"
Koujiro: "Kikuoka Reizaburou (菊岡礼三郎)."
Asuna and Kazuto: "Pardon?"
Kazuto: "Who's that supposed to be?"
Koujiro: "Seijirou's twin brother."
Asuna: "......Kikuoka-san had a younger brother......? And he's borrowing the man's identity?"
Koujiro (with an expression filled with exasperation): "Of course not. Higa-kun falsified the family registry at his municipal government, as well as the copy registry and basic resident register at the regional legal affairs bureau to make up a younger brother for him."
Asuna and Kazuto: "............"
The two decided that it would be a waste of time delving deeper into things, so Asuna got dressed.
Kazuto: "Ehm......if possible, I hope you could allow Alice to spend the night on the other side, at least this time....."
Rinko: "Sure, that was the plan. Be sure to get some sleep, you two."
Asuna and Kazuto then left the STL room.
----------
(Kazuto's perspective, Rath's Roppongi Branch, Parking lot)
Asuna and Kazuto stepped out of the elevator and approached a mid-sized sedan waiting for them. Both of them hopped onto the back seats. Kazuto wanted to pull a "Ladies first" move being the gentleman that he is, but since Asuna would be dropped off first, he decided to take the seat further away from the door.
Kazuto: "Sorry for the wait...... Knowing you, I was expecting we'd be riding a car that looked more shady."
Seijirou: "Hu-huh. Why, I do ride a more shady-looking car on my private time. This one is a work car from Rath, however."
Kazuto: "Makes sense......"
As Kazuto thought about what information he should share with Seijirou en route to Asuna's house,
Seijirou: "Kirito-kun, there's a box on the front seat; could you open it up?"
Kazuto looked at the seat and noticed a carton box that looked a tad bigger than a shoe box. The boy picked it up and placed it between himself and Asuna. If it had been wrapped, Kazuto would have assumed this was a belated birthday present for Asuna, but there wasn't even a single ribbon on it. Instead, it had 【試—4】 (Prototype - 4) written on it. After exchanging a glance with Asuna, Kazuto opened the box and peered inside...
Kazuto: "Uwah!?"
Asuna: "Whaaa!?"
Inside, they found what appeared to be a kitten less than a year old, curled up amidst a lot of package cushioning.
Kazuto: "Whoa now, don't just stuff a cat into a box like this!"
In a fluster at the unexpected finding, Kazuto's hands plunged into the box and picked up the fluffy gray kitten... only to freeze up when he noticed that the kitten was utterly cold and stiff. Just he was about to let out a shriek, he realised that the kitten wasn't dead. It was too heavy for its size and its joints felt kinda weird to boot.... which meant...
Kazuto: "Wait, is this an imitation......?"
Asuna: "Wha? (Timidly touches the cat's back) Oh......it actually is. Kikuoka-san, what is this?"
Seijirou (arrogantly): "A cat robot of the future. There's a switch on its right armpit; try holding it down for a bit."
Kazuto looked around the base of cat's right front paw and found a round button. Once he kept it pressed for around two seconds, the kitten quivered, opened its eyes and looked straight up at Kazuto.
Kitten: "Meooow"
Feeling a tinge of dissatisfaction in the cat's voice, Kazuto lowered the empty box onto the floor and then brought the cat closer to the seat. It hopped off, stretched like a real cat, and then looked up at Asuna.
Kitten: "Meeeu~~"
This time, the kitten's voice was clearly fawning for attention. With sparkles in her eyes, Asuna began scratching the kitten's chin. The kitten allowed Asuna to continue scratching it for a few moments, before it eventually jumped onto her lap and curled up.
Kazuto: "Kikuoka-san, is this really a robot......?"
Seijirou: "Didn't you just turn on the power for it yourself? It's a prototype robot pet made from the same CNT actuators......or synthetic muscle, in other words, that we used for Alice's machine body. It's the fruit of Higa-kun's ardent labour."
Kazuto: "Whooah...... and here I was thinking I hadn't seen the guy in a while; so this is what he was working on, I sees."
Kazuto (internally): Whoops, I let some Higa mannerisms slip in at the end. (Higa has habit of adding ス ("s(u)", the slangy abbreviation of "desu") to the end of his sentences)
Kazuto: "So, is this Higa-san's little indulgence? Or it yours, Kikuoka-san?"
Seijirou: "Whoa whoa, we've devoted a whole lot of funds into developing this one little guy. If we were to have used that kind of money on a mere indulgence, Professor Koujiro would sock me good for that."
After confirming the traffic situation on the GPS Seijirou was using,
Kazuto: "If it's not just a little indulgence, then what is it for......"
Asuna: "Could it be that you're planning to commercialise it?"
Kazuto: (shocked)
Seijirou: "I expected nothing less from you, Asuna-kun, you've got good instincts. You're exactly right......our tentative plan is to release a commercial version by the end of next year."
Kazuto: "WHAAA? Rath's going to be selling these?"
Seijirou: "Heavens no, our work ends with planning and development. We intend to partner up with a major manufacturer - on the scale of RECT, for example - to handle production and marketing."
Asuna (maintaining her smile): "Seeing as RECT itself has put some pet robots on the market, I think they would be interested in the proposition. Though, do be prepared for some tough negotiations."
Seijirou: "Hahaha, I wouldn't be surprised. Though, I am confident you wouldn't find anyone better at making machine body tech in the entire world. I'm sure you'd agree after a single look at our Yon-chan there."
Kazuto (internally): I'm guessing it's Yon(4)-chan because it's Prototype - 4, as the box implies. First Ichi(1)emom and Ni(2)emom, now this; who on earth has this weird naming sense.
After petting the now-somewhat-warm robocat,
Kazuto: "True, this might just sell well......"
Seijirou: "Right? If Rath succeeds in securing multiple stable sources of funding, it would make it easier to oppose forces plotting to dispose of Underworld."
Kazuto (internally): If that's what the the pet robot project is for, guess I'll have to support it.
Kazuto: If this here cat robot's the thing you mentioned back at Roppongi that you want to discuss with us, Kikuoka-san, I'm betting that you were hoping to have us help with something, right? So, what do you want us to do?"
Seijirou (grinning): "I'm glad you're quite the perceptive one, as always."
Kazuto: "I usually hear people say the opposite of me."
Seijirou: "As a matter of fact......we've pretty much got all the features Yon-chan needs down on the hardware side, but we have been having trouble with the software side of things."
Asuna: "Huh... seems like it's doing a very fine job of acting natural to me."
Seijirou (shaking his head): "Oh, it has no trouble reacting appropriately to human contact. It's just that spontaneous actions are not quite its forte, you see...... If we programmed in all its behaviour from A to Z, it'd lose its individuality, but when we leave it all up to the AI, it gradually starts acting less and less like a cat. Just yesterday, Yon-chan decided to see if it could walk on two legs at all times, until we reset its learning data."
Kazuto: "............You know, I get the feeling it would find its audience somewhere. Anyway, what are you ordering us to do? I don't think we could help you with anything that Higa-san hasn't had any luck with himself, though."
Seijirou: "Oh no, I'm not asking you to do something to fix Yon-chan. Well, see... Underworld has cats of its own, right, Kirito-kun?"
Kazuto: "Haah? Well, sure......"
Seijirou: "And were those cats acting like proper cats?"
Kazuto: "Well, they weren't walking on two legs or barking, at the very least. Oh...... so you want us to bring a cat out of Underworld for you, is that it?"
Seijirou: "Exactly."
Seijirou argued that animals in Underworld started off as simple programs that came with The SEED package, but with over 500 internal years of learning, the AI should have evolved to a high grade of complexity and polish. Kirito remembered Nuts and how it didn't show a single shred of being an imitation. While Nuts was special in a way, it wasn't too unreal to expect to find a cat with a similar level of complexity around somewhere.
Kazuto: "Bringing a cat out of Underworld is easier said than done; I hope you haven't forgotten one important thing, Kikuoka-san. Underworld's server is back on the Ocean Turtle all the way out on the ocean. While we may be able to dive in with the STLs in the Roppongi branch, we couldn't bring out a single stone out of the place, let alone an entire cat."
Seijirou: "Of course I haven't forgotten about that. It's still on a hypothetical level, but with Alice's cooperation, there is a possibility that we might be able to extract small amounts of data from Underworld. Though we would need to manage the process through the internal system console."
Kazuto (with figurative question marks over his head): "Alice's cooperation......?"
Asuna: "Could it be that you're thinking of using Alice's Lightcube for storage?"
Kazuto: "That's just plain reckless, Kikuoka-san. Even if Alice's Lightcube did have sufficient free space to spare, if Alice's Fluctlight became damaged in the process of burning the cat's data onto the cube, we'd have no way of fixing it."
Seijirou: "Of course, of course. I didn't mean to use Alice's Lightcube itself. You see, the cranial shell in her body......the place used to store her Lightcube, still has some open space, so we've been looking into the possibility of installing an auxiliary memory storage device or something there."
Kazuto: "......That still sounds dangerous. You don't mean to tell me that you plan to conduct something akin to human experimentation without Alice's consent, do you?"
Seijirou: "Of course not. In fact, it's her own request that started the whole thing."
Kazuto: "Alice asked for something like that......?"
Seijirou (before Kazuto got a chance to ask): "You won't hear Alice's reasonings from my mouth. Ask her yourself someday......now going back on track, what I wanted to discuss with you, Kirito-kun and Asuna-kun, is whether you could keep an eye out for a cat with a good head on its shoulders during your next Dive into Underworld."
Asuna: "Well, sure, there is nothing wrong with keeping an eye out for one......but if we were to bring the cat out of Underworld, wouldn't it disappear from Underworld? That would make its owner sad, I believe."
Seijirou: "Oh, it won't come to that. In the case of Underworlders with Fluctlights, the only way to bring them out into the real world is to physically extract their Lightcube, the 《container of their soul》, from the cluster, but with objects like dogs and cats, we could just copy them onto a generic media. Naturally, making a copy wouldn't erase the original. The person... or rather the cat, itself wouldn't even notice that they were copied. The only problem is that we'd need to head over to the Ocean Turtle to create a duplicate like that. Though, we've been considering whether it would be possible to use the internal console and Alice's auxiliary memory unit to take out the data even on the Roppongi Branch side......"
Asuna: "......All right. One more thing......if we do manage to copy the data of a cat from Underworld, are you planning to overwrite Yon-chan with it?"
Seijirou: "Nah, if you do manage to find us a decent cat program in Underworld, we'd load it onto Prototype-5 that's still in development. What you find will probably be adult-sized anyway, so it would cause issues to load it onto the kitten-sized Yon-chan."
Kazuto: "So, what're you going to do with Yon-chan then? Dispose of it?"
Seijirou: "Oh no, no, the little guy might still have room to grow. ――On that note, Asuna-kun, would you care to give a shot at rearing Yon-chan?"
Asuna: "Wha, you want......me to do it?"
Seijirou: "As I recall, you mentioned not having pets at home, right?"
Asuna: "Yes......Our family members tend to be away from home a lot, so we wouldn't be able to manage looking after one......"
Seijirou: "But Yon-chan requires neither feeding, nor toilet cleaning. It's programmed to go into sleep mode and charge up when there are no people around, see. Though, well, there's still quite a high probability that it'll start doing non-catlike actions as before, but I'd leave it up to your discretion, Asuna-kun, to decide whether its learning data needs to be reset. What do you say?"
Kazuto: "Asuna, there's no need to force yourself to......"
Asuna: "Thanks, Kirito-kun. But I'll be fine. ――Kikuoka-san, I think I shall take you up on the offer and take the little guy under my wing."
Seijirou: "Oh, good. You'll find the instruction manual and the charging pad inside the box. Also, since it's technically an industrial secret, I hope you'll refrain from letting people other than family members see it."
Asuna: "Understood."
Kazuto (internally): Oh, so you don't mind if its her family seeing it. No way Kikuoka hasn't taken into account that Asuna's old man is the former CEO of RECT, while her brother Kouichirou-shi is a candidate for the company's executives. Maybe that's actually his goal, in fact.
At that point, Asuna asked Kazuto to bring over the box, so he did just that. Asuna regretfully turned off the robocat and placed it inside the box and then put the box itself onto her lap with a gentle smile. Looking at her expression, Kazuto got the sense that Seijirou might actually have given Yon-chan to Asuna as a birthday gift. Around that point, Kazuto noticed that the car had already reached Setagaya street, so Asuna's house wasn't far away.
Kazuto: "Asuna, you must be tired after all we've been through today. Be sure to head to sleep early when you get home."
Asuna: "Kirito-kun, you're planning to check in on things on the other side, no?"
Kazuto: "Well, yeah......"
Asuna: "Then I'm going in too. Seems like quite a lot happened while we were away, anyway."
Kazuto: "I see. Don't push yourself too much though."
Asuna: "Yeah, thanks."
Just as Asuna gave Kazuto a nod, the car came to a stop. Asuna got off and headed home, Kazuto seeing her off with a wave until the automatic gate lights turned off. Seijirou prompted Kazuto to move to the front of the car and they set off towards Kawagoe. Along the way, Seijirou decided to start some small talk about how a new road would be opened up in five years, making it easier to traverse from Kawagoe to the city centre.
Seijirou: "By then, Kirito-kun, you'd be twenty-two...... or make that twenty-three years old, huh. Have you made plans for your future course?"
Kazuto: "............"
Kazuto had already told his parents and Asuna that he was planning to seek employment at Rath in the future; Koujiro seemed to have also caught onto his plans, but he wasn't sure whether Seijirou was in the know. To avoid cornering himself, Kazuto spent a good three seconds thinking over his response.
Kazuto: "Well, I do plan to go into higher education, for what it's worth."
Seijirou: "I see, so you're not planning on turning into a pro gamer."
Kazuto: "H-hey now......"
Kazuto monologues about how pro gaming is no longer the kind of eccentric career path it used to be, seeing as in addition to the traditional methods of earning income from gaming (game tournaments, streaming, belonging to a pro team), nowadays there are even games like GGO that allow converting in-game currency into real money, or games that allow earning virtual currency and tokens in-game. He also doesn't deny that some part of his mind had been fascinated by pro gamers... until his fourteenth birthday.
Kazuto: "......I can't make a living out of going pro."
Seijirou: "Why's that? Putting aside your ambitions for the future, I think you'd be able to show off pro-level skills in most FullDive games, Kirito-kun."
Kazuto: "You're giving me too much credit. Besides...... (reveals his innermost feelings) I don't think I'd be able to get into a do-or-die mindset on a regular old game anymore. My fighting style in Aincrad and Underworld relied on setting my whole being ablaze to the utmost till burnout comes; I wouldn't be able to pull that off anymore even if I wanted to. And that makes me unqualified for going pro."
Seijirou: "......I see. (in an unusually meek tone) In which case......The job I came to you with must have been a cruel twist of fate......After all, it forced you to recall all your experiences in Underworld from three months ago without giving you a say in the matter."
Kazuto: "Oh, well...... I did get to recall quite a few things...... but my experiences back in that world were by no means all hard on me. Heck, I'd been pestering Rinko-san to let me head back into Underworld once more, anyway."
Seijirou: "I'm glad to hear you say that......However, I will etch your words into my heart, Kirito-kun...... Now, then. It would be awkward of me to ask this of you after all that......"
Kazuto: "You don't need to feel all awkward. You wanna ask about the whole intruder thing, right?"
Seijirou: "Indeed. Did you manage to find any clues?"
Kazuto: "Nothing."
Seijirou (after two seconds of silence): "T-that so. Well...... I guess it's not that easy of a task to find a single particular person when Underworld is the size of an entire continent."
Kazuto: "Make that the size of two entire planets nowadays."
Kazuto spent the next fifteen minutes or so giving Seijirou a rundown of the events of his Dive. By the time Kazuto finished his story, the car had reached a highway and began cruising at 100 km/h.
Kazuto: "Say, where are you residing these days?"
Sejirou: "Huh? Oh......in Shinonome."
Kazuto: "Shinonome...... so right next to Ariake, huh. Have you always been living there?"
Seijirou: "Nah, only after I changed my name...... wait, whoopsie, we're heading into top secret territory. If you want to know more, I'd have to welcome you into the fold."
After his jest, Seijirou asked Kazuto to confirm whether Underworlders were still unable to break rules and regulations. The boy confirmed that he believed that to be the case: not a single piece of trash lying around town, and the cars were driving very orderly too. Though, certain people he'd met on his trip gave off pretty arrogant vibes, so it wasn't the utopia it used to be.
Seijirou: "Hmm... So, I take it this means the current governing institution of Underworld, the Star Empire Unification Council, holds the same level of authority as the old Axiom Church used to?"
Kazuto: "Mmm, well, the Axiom Church and Supreme Priest Administrator acted like proxies for God, see. I can't say whether the Star Empire Unification Council is worshiped, or feared, to the same extent, but I do believe that their authority is unwavering."
Seijirou: "And yet you say that someone has been engaging in subversive activities against the Integrity Pilots under direct control by this very Unification Council, that there's a base on Planet Admina not under the council's control, and that illegal experimentation was being conducted there?"
Kazuto: "Well, yeah......"
The boy recalled a certain man he met at the base and realised he forgot to share something important with Seijirou.
Kazuto: "Sorry, a while back, I said I had no clues as to any intruders, but I might not actually be as empty-handed on that front as I thought."
Seijirou: "Meaning?"
Kazuto: "It's just a deduction with nothing to back it up whatsoever...... but Eol...... I mean, the Commander of the Integrity Pilots pointed out the possibility that some intruder from the Real World was pulling the strings behind the plots against the Order of Integrity Pilots."
Seijirou: "Oh my, the Commander sure has some flexible thinking. I myself have been trying to guess who the intruder could be, but my options were limited to saboteurs sent by some other country, or corporate spies sent after our STL tech."
Kazuto: "I also felt that the idea was a bit far-fetched, but the Commander said as such: Seeing as Dark God Vecta who incited the Otherworlder War was a person from the Real World, it wouldn't come as a surprise for the same thing to happen a second time."
Seijirou: "......I see, he does indeed have a point. However......if that's the case, things have just got far more complicated. If the intruder's goal isn't to interface with the system console, but rather to interfere with Underworld...... that would mean the guy has full grasp of Underworld's current history, geography, and social climate. Though I can't imagine how such a person could exist......"
Kazuto wanted to affirm Seijirou's opinion, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that someone in the Roppongi Branch was using the STLs to gather info on Underworld, similarly to a certain insider who had shot Seijirou three months prior. On the other hand, the fact that Seijirou denies such a possibility would imply that he has a strong reason to do so.
At that point, Kazuto looked out the window and got a sense of deja vu looking at the sky. He got the feeling that he recalled gazing at the stars of the night sky from the window of a car, cruising at a constant speed... but the person behind the wheel was neither his father, nor his mother......
Seijirou: "The sun's starting to go down earlier than usual."
Kazuto: "Well, we're already past Shuubun no Hi (秋分の日), after all."
Seijirou: "Do you know how Shuubun no Hi is called in English?"
Kazuto (with 99% certainty): "ｔｈｅ ａｕｔｕｍｎａｌ ｅｑｕｉｎｏｘ......no?"
Seijirou: "Bzzt."
Kazuto: "Wh...whaa?"
Seijirou: "Too bad, but that's just Shuubun (秋分). Shuubun no Hi (秋分の日) is called Ａｕｔｕｍｎａｌ Ｅｑｕｉｎｏｘ Ｄａｙ."
Kazuto: "H-hey, no fair! That was a trick question, I call foul!"
Seijirou: "You'd never win the Rath Quiz Tournament if you fall for trick questions like that."
Kazuto: "......You're actually holding quiz tournaments?"
Seijirou: "We'd be happy to have you on our next one."
As Kazuto enjoyed the comfort of the cruise, he soon found his eyelids feeling heavier and heavier. The boy tried to force himself to stay awake to talk more about the intruder, when...
Seijirou: "Feel free to get some rest."
Kazuto (internally): If I gave into the flow and fell asleep here, I'd just look like a regular old primary school pupil...
Kazuto: "No, I can keep going."
Despite his struggle, Kazuto failed to lift his head from the headrest. Seijirou turning on some slow jazz was the clincher that made the boy's consciousness give in.
Chapter 3
When Asuna returned home, she found the place empty. Her father was out golfing and her mother was at the university; neither of them would be home before 9 PM. Meanwhile, Asuna's brother was out on a business trip to Kansai and wouldn't be back till the next day. Until recently, Asuna wouldn't feel anything about being home alone, but since she might leave the house in half a year, she started feeling the blues at the sight of her family being all away on their own things.
Asuna went up the stairs to her room, left the catbot box there, and then went back down to the first floor to take a bath, as she had set it up remotely just before leaving Rath. There were quite a few things she was fed up with regarding their smart-home, but this was one of the features she definitely appreciated. The narration also monologues about Asuna comparing her bath to the one at the Central Cathedral. Asuna would usually take her time in the bath with aroma oils and the Augma, but today she finished it up rather quickly. By 6:45 PM, Asuna was done drying her hair and went to have a light dinner, brush her teeth, and then headed back to her room.
Back in her room, Asuna opened up the box, placed the robokitty on a cushion and turned it on. The cat looked around the room, before coming over to Asuna and placing its front paws on her lap to beg. Realising that the cat was hungry, Asuna was about to head over to the kitchen to get some food... when she remembered that Yon-chan was actually a robot. Then she remembered that Seijirou had also included a wireless charging pad in the box, so Asuna took it out, plugged the USB cable into the outlet, and then placed the charging pad onto the floor. Yon-chan happily walked onto the pad and curled up on it to begin charging. Asuna didn't exactly fully trust Seijirou, but she was at least sure he wouldn't use the cat to spy on her. Asuna looked over the manual and learnt that the cat needed five hours to fully charge, thinking that she'd introduce it to Yui when the kitty woke up. Letting the cat sleep, Asuna lay down on her own bed, put on her AmuSphere and logged into Unital Ring.
----------
(Asuna's perspective, Forest Home, Unital Ring 7:00 PM)
Having logged into the game, Asuna looked around the living room of their log house, but didn't see anyone home. Not even Yui, who had logged in two hours prior. Asuna then checked over her status and confirmed that all her survival parameters were nearly full (~80%).
After some internal monologues, Asuna resolved to protect Kirito Town, I mean, Ruis na Rig and stepped out onto the porch. Their front yard, jam-packed with crafting stations, was just as deserted as the log house... but she did hear some bustle coming from the other side of their inner wall surrounding the cabin... as if there was a huge crowd of people going back and forth beyond it. Thinking that this couldn't actually be possible, Asuna tried to cross the wall through the southern gate... only to find a gray wall where there should have been a wooden door. Asuna tried looking around, but she couldn't find the exit anywhere.
As Asuna continued looking around, she noticed something she'd never seen before: a little stone tower constructed on the west side, next to the furnace. The tower was about as high as the wall and had a door at its base, as well as a ladder on its left side leading to its top. Asuna ran over to the tower and climbed up the ladder. On the roof of the tower, Asuna held onto the handrail and looked beyond the walls... only to let out her voice in surprise when she witnessed tens of people walking and chatting with each other around the Inner Circle Road surrounding their log house. There was no system way to distinguish NPCs from players in the game just by looking at them, but from her experience, Asuna deduced that all of the people here had to be players. And it wasn't just this one road populated with players; she saw huge crowds of people on other roads, the Commercial District, and even the Basin Residential Area. There were easily over a hundred players only counting the ones she could see from the tower... and if she presumed that the entire town was so packed with people, there could be more than five hundred of them in total. Until now, she'd only seen up to around fifty people in town even at peak hours. As Asuna began to fear that Mutasina raised another army and occupied their town, she heard someone calling out to her. Looking down the ladder she had climbed up, she found Lisbeth standing at the bottom.
Asuna (relieved): "Liz!"
Asuna slid down the ladder.
Asuna: "Say, what's with all these people in town!? Is everyone okay!? Liz, where had you been!?"
Lisbeth: "Ah, yeah, seeing all this out of the blue is quite a shocker, eh."
Lisbeth pointed at the door at the base of the tower.
Lisbeth: "I came through here. There's a tunnel dug belowground that leads to the Basin Residential Area."
Asuna: "A tunnel......? Why would you need...... what happened to the gate back there?"
Lisbeth: "Ehm, there's a lot of things to explain before I could get to that...... It's going to take a while, so sit down over there."
Lisbeth took Asuna to her blacksmith station, where she sat down on a stool beside her anvil, while Asuna sat down on a garden bench. Despite realising that the town wasn't in any danger from the look of things, Asuna couldn't help but double check Lisbeth's neck for any chokers.
Lisbeth gave Asuna a cup of tea. Asuna was surprised how light it felt despite being seemingly made out of metal.
Asuna: "When did you manage to start making cups like this?"
Lisbeth (giving a proud wink): "Ya know, I develop muh skills day by day. It's made out of a material called a 《Gilnaris Hornet Carapace》."
Asuna: "Hohnetto...... wait, you mean this is made out of a hachi's (hornet/wasp's) shell!?"
Asuna pushes the cup away from her face.
Lisbeth: "Relax, girl, I did melt it down into a 《Gilnaris Steel Ingot》 in the furnace, so there's nothing hornety left in it...... yeesh, and here I was wondering why the gigornet shell felt awfully tough; turns out it actually was made of metal."
Asuna: "......Gigornets? Liz, you mean to say you fought against those Gilnaris Hornets?"
Lisbeth: "Oh, you have no idea..."
Seeing Lisbeth drink from the cup, Asuna timidly took a sniff of the tea in the cup, but didn't feel any weird scents coming off it. In fact, she felt an aroma similar to black tea. After drinking a sip, Asuna realised that it tasted far better than the tea brewed from random leaves she found on the ground. It even had a slight MP recovery effect.
Asuna: "Did you brew this tea yourself, Lisbeth?"
Lisbeth: "Sure did...... not. It's actually sold by the Pattels."
Asuna: "Whoa...... so they didn't stop at selling preserved foods and have now expanded to selling even tea, huh."
Asuna (internally): With how tasty it is and how many shoppers are around, wouldn't this tea just fly off the shelves......
At this point, Asuna recalled their original conversation and asked about the influx of people in town. Lisbeth then explained the events that took place while she and Kirito were busy with Underworld.
Asuna: "......So basically, the giant hornet swarm and its queen, the 《Gilnaris Queen Hornet》, was basically the equivalent of the Twenty-fifth or Fiftieth Floor Bosses in SAO terms?"
Lisbeth: "Well...... I guess so? Wait, no, it would be presumptuous of us to equivalate our boss battle with the achievements of those, like you, who beat a whole seventy-five Floor Bosses back in Aincrad."
Asuna: "Oh not at all; in terms of not having room for any deaths whatsoever, Unital Ring is on the same level as SAO. Besides, you only had twenty-four people on board for the raid party, no? From what I hear of it, wasn't the boss meant to be fought against with a party on the scale of fifty people at the bare minimum......?"
Lisbeth: "Mnn, the Boss Room...... though it wasn't so much a room as a giga dome made out of trees - would have easily fit a hundred people at its size. It actually was a close call fight, but Sinon and Silica were the undisputed MVPs of it. Sinon's command of the battle and sniping were as accurate as you'd expect from the girl, while Silica...... well, she kinda reminded me of Kirito back there."
Asuna: "Wha...... her fighting style?"
Asuna couldn't see see how their fighting styles could be likened to each other: Silica made use of her agility to jump in and out of battle to a tempestuous degree, while she saw Kirito as an oni unloading barrages of attacks against his enemies while staying glued to them using his natural ability of foresight.
Lisbeth: "I wasn't referring to battle power, but rather to her creativity. We had a series of unexpected nasty surprises ever since the queen hornet showed up, but Silica's instant thinking was a wonder to behold. Especially when she delivered the coup de grace onto the queen! She had the queen surrounded by five people after it fell to the ground, then she raised her arms like so and called out her inherited weapon that should have been too heavy to lift by a single milimetre....."
Lisbeth got out of her chair out of excitement to show Asuna how Silica was holding out her hands.
Lisbeth: "...and then just dropped it right onto the queen! That's the kind of strat that only Kirito could ever come up with, no!? She has his recklessness to scour for any loopholes in the game's system and then make it into one helluva blast when it works out!"
Asuna: "Huhu...... guess she does."
Lisbeth (coming to her senses): "Well, anyway...... it's like, y'know, when your kouhai's growing up at a rapid pace and shows great promise for the future."
Asuna: "We're not in a school club here, though......"
For a moment, Asuna thought whether Lisbeth would grow out of VRMMOs when she finished Survivor School and moved on to uni, but decided to put off that question and enjoy her time with the gang at least until Unital Ring was resolved and they got back to ALO. Instead, she got back to the main topic of how the hornets related to the influx of players. Lisbeth then explained that the hornet boss was the gatekeeper to the first obstacle the ALO players would have to face, so word of their victory spread fast to the ALO starting point, seeing only two other game communities (Asuka Empire and Apocalyptic Date, both titles that even Asuna knew of) had managed to pull off such a feat so far. The victory gave ALO players hope that they might still catch up to the front runners, so a small portion (around five or six hundred) of them were drawn to Ruis na Rig to set up base closer to the front lines.
Asuna: "......Okay, I now get why there are so many people around here, but how did that lead to doing away with the gates?"
Lisbeth: "Oh, that's simple. Remember how there's no game system-controlled locks for self-created doors and gates in Unital Ring? We defeated the hornet boss at 4 PM, then we decided to take a return trip to Ruis na Rig for the time being and arrived at 5 PM, then afterwards...... by 6 PM, migrants from Stiss Ruins had already started making their way to Ruis na Rig. And well, isn't it normal for people to go looking around town when they first arrive? And so people started getting the urge to find out what lay beyond the wall at the centre of town. Of course, we did bolt the gate, but people then started pounding down on the door one after another, and some even had the idea to try climbing over the gate pillars..... After talking things over with Agil and the others, we decided to get rid of the gate and fill up the hole with a stone wall as a stop-gap measure and then created a tunnel to allow passage in and out of the inner area for us instead."
Asuna: "......But, in that case, just getting rid of the gate isn't exactly going to solve the problem itself. The more nimble people could just climb over a wall this short, while some might just destroy it outright with a hammer or something......"
Lisbeth: "True that."
By that point in their conversation, it had already been twenty minutes since Asuna dived in. It was about time for Kazuto to reach his home in Kawagoe City, but Asuna presumed he'd need another ten or so minutes to log in.
Lisbeth: "......For what it's worth, Dickos and Holger did do us a favour by spreading the word to the new town immigrants that the centre of town is occupied by Kirito's house so they shouldn't get nosy with it."
Asuna: "......Why do I get the feeling that such a warning will have the opposite effect by tempting people to try something......"
Lisbeth: "Ahaha, ain't that the truth."
Due to all the stuff he's done in SAO, ALO, and GGO, the majority of VRMMO players had at least heard of Kirito's name. And not all of them see him in a good light. So, Asuna feared that Kirito's fame would come back to bite him by drawing people who'd want play tricks on him for one reason or another.
Asuna: "Maybe we should at least strengthen the walls......"
Lisbeth: "The current walls are indeed made from just some rocks and clay we picked up at Malbe River, after all. Come to think of it, I never got a good look at the wall's durability."
Lisbeth walked over to the wall and tapped on one of the rocks.
Window: 【Crude Stone Wall - Structure - Durability 527.3】
Asuna (internally): Figured as much, seeing as a single rock's durability ranges only from 5 to 10. Wait, what's this extra line over here; never seen it before.
Lisbeth (noticing the same line): "Mm, wonder what this is...... 【Blessing of Ancient Trees／Additional Durability １０００００】 ...... a h-handred tausand!?"
The two girls exchanged glances and looked at the window again, but their eyes weren't deceiving them. For the record, the durability for the log house itself was １２５００, so a hundred thousand durability for a SINGLE piece of the wall was totally off the charts.
Asuna: "Blessing of Ancient Trees...... but I don't see any old trees growing anywhere nearby."
Asuna looked around the area but didn't find anything that could be called an ancient tree. She then recalled that she never saw this kind of blessing when they first made the wall... and suddenly, the word "blessing" reminded her of something. Asuna over to the opposite side of the lot and hit the breaks when she reached the log house. Asuna tapped on one of the logs with great force, bringing up the management window for the house. The were four buttons: 【Information】 【Trade】 【Repair】 【Disassemble】 lined up and Asuna pressed the first one, bringing up a sub-window. At the bottom of the window was a Special Effects field:
【Level 1／Blessing of the Forest: Adds a low chance of successfully triggering a still-locked attack skill within 30 metres of the house's centre for friends and party members.】
【Level 2／Blessing of the Bear: Creatures tamed by the owners or their friends do not lose friendship points within 50 metres of the house's centre, also adds +20 to def to the creatures within that area.】
【Level 3／Blessing of the Ancient Trees: Adds +1000 to +100 000 durability to all auxiliary structures within 50 metres of the house's centre, depending on their type. This bonus durability does not degrade over time.】
Both girls: ""BINGO——!""
This led to the question how the house had leveled up TWICE already despite the gang never expanding or renovating the log house itself ever since they repaired it on the first day.
Lisbeth: "Maybe, just maybe......the level goes up not just by expanding the house, but also by building stuff around it......"
Asuna: "But then the tons of houses we build in Ruis na Rig would also have Structure Levels each, no? If we presume your theory is correct, wouldn't the houses interact with each other and level up each other to no end?"
Lisbeth: "Good point............ Oh, that's right."
Lisbeth tapped on the 《Special Effects》 phrase and brought up a Ｔｉｐｓ window.
【When a House Structure is constructed in an area where no other House Structures are present within a ５００ metre radius, this structure is classified as a Core Structure and it will thus have the capability of earning Special Effects in proportion to its Structure Level. All structures constructed in close proximity to a Core Structure will be deemed Auxiliary Structures and become subject to the Special Effects of the Core Structure.】
Lisbeth then tapped on the phrase 《Structure Level》. Another window popped up:
【All Core Structures have a Structure Level. A Structure Level is increased by reinforcing the Core Structure, building attachments to it, or by constructing Auxiliary Structures around it. When a building's Structure Level goes up, blessing effects are acquired proportionally. The Structure Level of Auxiliary Structures is, on the other hand, fixed at ０ and thus they cannot acquire blessing effects.】
This basically meant that all buildings around the log house were now nigh-indestructible, as long as the log house itself remained standing, since its blessing didn't boost its own durability.
Lisbeth: "The range for the effect is a radius of fifty metres, which means there's now a limit for the size of Ruis na Rig, huh......"
Asuna: "Isn't fifty metres more than plenty for us? As I recall, Ruis na Rig currently has a radius of thirty metres, no?"
Lisbeth: "Oh, well, the thing is, see....."
Suddenly, someone rushes out of the log house.
Kirito: "H-hubbuwuh!? Where did the gate go!?"
The girls exchange a glance with each other, before bursting into a laugh at the same time.
----------
(Twenty minutes later)
Asuna, Lisbeth, and Kirito went down into the western underground tunnel. Asuna didn't realise that it was even possible to make a tunnel in the game, since the ground used to always be indestructible in usual games. After walking twenty metres along the tunnel, they saw stairs coming up. Upon climbing up the stairs following Lisbeth, Asuna found herself inside a small tent with no furniture or people in sight.
Kirito: "I see, so we end up in the Basin Residential Area. Indeed, no shoppers would be coming in here."
Lisbeth: "So you'd think.", Lisbeth frowned. "But amongst all the newly-arrived players, there's been some folks brazenly barging into Basin and Pattel houses as if they owned the place and we wound up having to set up tall fences in both residential areas. Things have calmed down for now, but Agil's said that this might blow up into a huge problem down the line."
Kirito: "Wha......? What do you mean?"
Lisbeth: "First, take a good look outside town for me."
Lisbeth led Asuna and Kirito outside the tent. The Basin area was surrounded by a tent with gates at the northern and southern sides, while on the eastern side, connected to the Inner Ring Road, the fence was replaced by a line of tents for street stalls, where the Basin did business with a huge crowd of players bustling about. The Basin's leather armour and bone weapons were a hot commodity at the moment; while they were no means cheap, more people had actually flocked to Basin wares than to Lisbeth's orthodox iron equipment wares.
Lisbeth: "I can't let them outdo me......"
The trio left the Basin area through the northern gate and reached the western Ruis na Rig gate by following the 10 o'clock road. Beyond the gate, Asuna and Kirito were expecting to find themselves at a majestic expanse of trees... but instead, they found trees cleared away, replaced by countless houses cramped together all around the area up to twenty metres away from the gate. Most of these "houses" were just simplistic shacks made out of wood, though there were a few huts made out of stone. It was a chaotic mess, as players packed the area as densely as the system allowed them; there was no specific orientation for the buildings, while the roads zigzagged around all those buildings. Spots that couldn't accommodate even the smallest of hovels were used for bonfires instead, where groups of two to three players could be found roasting something.
Asuna: "W-wowie...... How did it come to this......?"
Lisbeth: "We can probably blame the 《Blessing of the Ancient Trees》 for that.
Lisbeth tapped on one of the huts. Since she wasn't the owner of the building, the window that popped up only had the bare minimum of info to share... but it did specifically state that it was under the effect of the +100 000 durability bonus.
Lisbeth: "Whoever first built a hut right outside the wall must have noticed the blessing. Usually, the durability of these huts is only as high as four or five points, so the players run the risk of finding their homes destroyed and their items snatched up while they're away, but with a bonus as high as a hundred thousand extra points, they end up basically indestructible. With storage space being highly limited in this game, a safe storage area for items that you can build with the bare minimum of effort is tremendous advantage to have. If you have your own house, you also no longer need to rent an inn every time you want to log out."
Kirito: "......I see, no wonder everyone and their grandma is building their own fort here...... But how does this situation connect to the stuff about how this situation and the Basin Residential Area might blow up into a huge problem down the line?"
Lisbeth: "Well, after you've secured a house for yourself, you'd start craving a safer place for your home, and a bigger house for yourself over time. But half of the land in Ruis na Rig is used for NPC residential areas. It's only a matter of time till some random dude kicks up a fuss about driving out the NPCs and redistributing their land to players...... or so Agil said."
Asuna (reflexively): "They can't just do that! We're the ones who invited the Basins and the Pattels to Ruis na Rig. And they also put their lives on the line fighting against The Sku...... I mean, the Life Harvester, so driving them out of town now would just be......"
Kirito: "We know, Asuna, no one's going to allow that to happen, for sure."
Asuna: "Since the range of the 《Blessing of the Ancient Trees》 extends to a radius of fifty metres, we have twenty more metres to expand out walls. If we can just have players temporarily remove their houses and expand the wall to cover all the way to the maximum range of the blessing, and then properly distribute the land so players could rebuild their houses...... or actually, it would be even better if we build two- or three-storey housing complexes instead - we could exponentially increase the number of people we can accommodate here."
Kirito: "......True, you do have a point. But in practice, it's not going to be as easy as it sounds......"
Asuna: "How come?"
Kirito: "MMO players generally hate stuff being imposed on them. I think the majority of dudes would prefer a hut they built themselves over a tidy room someone else allotted them. If anything, I'd assume there are even people who'd love to start their own new town away from Ruis na Rig ins-......"
At this point, Kirito halted that thought for a moment.
Kirito: "Hey, that's right, how come people aren't doing that? From what you mentioned earlier, if someone built a house over five hundred metres away from Ruis na Rig, it'd become a cor-...... a cor-......"
Asuna: "A Core Structure."
Kirito (pointing his finger at Asuna): "What she said. In that case, people could then acquire their own blessings and use the land as they see fit to boot, no?"
Asuna: "......You do have a point......"
Lisbeth: "Oh, someone's already tried that."
Asuna: "Wha!? So there's a new town in the neighbourhood now?"
Lisbeth: "Well, that's the thing...... I don't know the exact details since I've only heard hearsay based on hearsay, but a group of players that moved in from Stiss Ruins has apparently cleared away the land at the riverbank to the north-west and built their own houses there. But when they did, it didn't even take five minutes for them to get attacked by a HUUUUMONGOUS boar, who trashed all their houses to smithereens."
Asuna: "A boar......"
Kirito: "......I've never seen a monster like that around these parts though."
Asuna: "Neither have I. It's not like it was drawn in by the house......or anything......"
Just then, Asuna remembered the bear attack on the first day.
Asuna: "......Actually, that might in fact be the case."
Lisbeth (blinking repeatedly): "So basically, you're saying the boar was in fact drawn in by the presence of a house? Surely that sounds a bit too unfair, no?"
Kirito: "Nah...... it's actually plausible. You hadn't yet been around back then, Liz, but our log house was also attacked by a ridiculously bigass bear on the first night."
Lisbeth: "Oh yeah, I think I've heard about that, come to think of it."
Kirito: "I'd been so sure that it had just been drawn in by the noise coming from using Sword Skills to slice up logs into planks, but it might actually be a mechanism where building a house sets an area head honcho after you. The head honcho around this place used to be the Thorn-Bearing Bear, but since Silica's already tamed it, it might have been switched out for a bigass boar this time, or something......"
Lisbeth: "Uheh, isn't that a bit too mean of a stunt to pull?"
Asuna: "It is certainly a mean stunt to pull, but on the other hand, the effects of the blessings are appropriately powerful to make up for it. I'm guessing that it's awfully hard to set up a house...... make that a town in the field, but when you do manage to pull it off, it can no longer be destroyed so easily either, or something like that to maintain balance, hm?"
At that point, Asuna thought over how often they got attacked and how many close calls they've had. And now, the safety of their town depended on keeping their log house standing.
Asuna: "Say, Liz."
Lisbeth: "Hm?"
Asuna: "As I recall, the Ｔｉｐｓ window for the log house said 'A Structure Level is increased by reinforcing the Core Structure, building attachments to it, or by constructing Auxiliary Structures around it.'... right?"
Lisbeth: "I'm surprised you got it memorised after only reading it once. I'm not confident whether it said that word for word, but it did say something to that effect, at least."
Asuna: "In that case, it means we could get our level even higher by renovating the log house itself, no?"
Kirito: "Wha...... you sure about that, Asuna?"
Asuna: "Yeah, we have to use any methods at our disposal."
Kirito (nodding back with a smile): "......That so."
Asuna would be lying if she said she had no hesitation towards changing their log house due to all her memories with Kirito there, but that was all the more reason to keep it safe and bring it back to ALO in one piece. And besides, the true spirit of the house wasn't in its physical shape. Then Asuna noticed Kirito changing the nuance of his smile.
Asuna: "......What's the matter?"
Kirito: "Oh, well......while you weren't here, me and Yui had actually been talking over expanding and modifying the log house. I figured you'd be against that Asuna...... but Yui then told me the following: Asuna isn't the kind of person to obsess over appearances, so as long as the spirit is in tact, she wouldn't mind alterations to its physical shape at all.
Asuna: "......Yui-chan said that......"
Kirito: "And so, when I asked what 'spirit' entails......"
Asuna stopped Kirito with her right hand mid-sentence.
Asuna: "It's okay, I know."
Kirito: "......That so."
Asuna and Kirito exchange smiles.
Lisbeth: "AHEM!"
Asuna: "S-sorry, Liz."
Lisbeth: "Ooooh, there's NOTHING to apologise for. It's just that I was thinking of going back to work already, that's all.
Asuna: "W-work?"
Lisbeth: "This, my girl, this."
Lisbeth then made a hammering motion with her hammer.
Asuna: "Oh...... right, so you went back to the log house to do some blacksmithing work, huh."
Lisbeth: "Yeppers."
Asuna: "Then where did the others go off to?"
Lisbeth: "Where else. (points to the northern sky) Clearing the stairs dungeon to get to the second stratum!"
Chapter 4
The memories of Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty began from the moment where a lightly-clothed Alice awoke in a room filled with pure white light, lying on the floor. When Alice lifted her eyelids and got used to the dazzling light, she slowly got up and looked around the room, unable to comprehend where she found herself in, nor why she was here... and then realised that she didn't even recall who she was. As she found herself dumbfounded at her inability to recall her name, or her upbringing, she suddenly heard a voice sweeter than sugar and softer than silk behind her――
----------
Selka: "......Nee-sama? What's up with you, Alice-neesama?"
Alice felt someone shaking her shoulder and opened her eyes wide in surprise, only to find a girl with wheat coloured hair ― correction, she was no longer at the age to be called a girl, but her body was as slim as Alice remembered it ― peering into her with a worried look.
Selka (smiling): "Well, it sure does feel great in here, huh. I had hoped I'd have the chance to head into the Cathedral's bath with you one day, Nee-sama."
Alice: "Huhu......well, the bath in the little forest cabin I had been living in was too small for us to bathe together, true."
Selka: "I always thought of the bath in the Rulid church as big, but contrasted with this Grand Bath, it's like cattle and rats."
Alice let out a chuckle upon hearing the nostalgic Underworldian idiom.
Selka: "......? What's so funny?"
Alice: "Pardon me. In the Real World, they say 《the Moon and a suppon》 (=two things that seem superficially similar but are completely different; like night and day) for situations like these."
Selka: "A suppon...... what even is that?"
Alice: "I've never seen one myself, but it's apparently a species of turtles."
Selka: "TURTLES!? Why would you compare Lunaria...... I mean, Admina, to a turtle. One of them is a star, while the other is an animal, no?"
Alice did not have an answer to that question. At this point, Alice thought over how in the Real World, she could summon a hologram window to look up the answer on the Internet, but had to remind herself that this wouldn't fly in Underworld.
Alice: "The world on the other side has heaps of peculiar idioms, I'll have you know."
Selka: "Hmmh...... That reminds me, both Kirito and Asuna would use strange words from time to time, as I recall......"
Looking through the window, Alice thought over Cardina and Admina. She had no doubt that Kirito was behind the new naming of the planets, though she wondered why he would name a planet after Administrator.
Alice: "......Selka, have you ever been to Admina?"
Selka: "Of course! Heck, I was part of the very first expedition to it. It was a shocker to find the ground covered in yellow flowers as far as the eye could see when I got off our dragoncraft."
Alice: "......Oh, right, you did serve as Head of the Sacred Arts Specialist Division."
Alice monologued about how Sacred Arts Specialists were new position created after the fall of the Axiom Church. Before then, they were called monks and were led by the four Senior Priests, and Chudelkin in top command. Which would mean that Selka was Chudelkin's successor... 's successor, since Ayuha Fria was the first head of the division. Alice felt conflicted about Ayuha and Selka being Chudelkin's successors, but it didn't negate the impact of the girls' achievements, so Alice stroked her little (though mentally older) sister's hair.
When Kirito and Asuna disappeared in a veil of light, Alice was sure she would be forcefully logged out as well, so she gave Selka a big hug... but no matter how long she waited in this position, her logout never came, so eventually she released Selka from her embrace, feeling slightly awkward at the situation. Though, she realised that Rinko was being considerate and allowed Alice to stay in Underworld longer. She wasn't sure what to do next, since she had no way of contacting the outside world to find out how much time she had to spend there, but then Selka eagerly expressed an urge for a bath. Ronye and Tiese were all on board for the idea right away. So, aside from Airy and Eolyne, who had other things to do, all of them went down to the bath. Currently, Ronye, Tiese, Stica and Laurannei were busy chatting amongst themselves a bit of a distance away from Alice and Selka. Apparently, the two descendants were telling their ancestors about their family history. Meanwhile, Alice was so relieved to have reunited with Selka that she had momentarily fallen asleep in the bath.
After monologuing about the difference in their age and wealth of memories now, Alice found herself voicing a question she hadn't meant to actually ask:
Alice: "......Say, Selka. Did you undergo the Life Freezing Art for my sake......?"
Selka (taking Alice's hand with both of hers): "That is one factor, sure, but that's not all there was to it."
Alice: "......What do you mean?"
Selka: "Well, see...... While the Life Freezing Art does halt changes to one's Life and appearance, it doesn't help with the problem of limited storage space for Fluctlights, and Fluctlight fragmentation. In order to see the day when you returned to Underworld, Nee-sama, I needed to restore the lost Art of Deep Freeze...... But......"
Selka turned to the north.
Selka: "......I was taught by Sister Azalia from Rulid that people being born, growing up, and then dying from old age was the way of life; this is the teachings from Stacia-sama, so I felt somewhat put off by both the Life Freezing Art and the Deep Freezing Art. I spent a long time brooding over whether it was really okay to resurrect such Arts as they went against the church's teachings solely out of my selfish desire to see you again, Nee-sama. And then, when I went to ask for Kirito's advice one day......"
Alice: "He said, 'it's okay to have selfish desires', I'm pretty sure."
Selka (bursting into a laugh after a moment of surprise): "Ahaha, bingo. Though, his exact words were 『Selka, it's okay to indulge in your selfish desires far far fa～～ar more often. You have my stamp of approval!』, to be accurate."
Alice: "......I can almost hear him saying that in my head already."
Selka: "Huhu. What's more, despite the fact that I'd technically come to the Cathedral to apprentice myself as a sister, he told me something that threatened to shake the foundations of my faith: 'You know, the most selfish person in the world had been none other than the Esteemed Supreme Priest Administrator, who created the Axiom Church and Taboo Index.'....... which made me think that my whole internal conflict itself was self-conceited, so I decided to prioritise what's most important to me."
Alice: "What's important to you......?"
Selka: "Meeting with you again, of course, Nee-sama."
At this point, Selka brought Alice's left hand that she had been holding in her own palms to her chest for a moment.
Selka: "......Afterwards, Ayuha-sama and I began research on the Deep Freeze Art together...... At the time, I wasn't yet planning on undertaking the Life Freezing Art, but then it would be a shocker for you to find me as a granny when we finally got to meet again, no? Besides, Ronye and Tiese had ended up deciding to undergo the Life Freezing Art themselves for a different reason, so I thought I'd tag along."
Alice: "Ronye and Tiese......"
After turning to look at the quartet nearby, Alice asked her next question in a whisper.
Alice: "What different reason?"
Selka: "Umm...... You might be better off asking the girls themselves about it, directly......"
Alice didn't press the question any further, but she did find their decision to freeze themselves strange. Based on her impression of the girls, she expected them to find appropriate partners to marry and start a family with, give birth to some children and then pass away happily and peacefully from old age. Based on examples like Deusolbert, Fanatio, and Bercouli, she didn't feel like eternal life brought happiness. Nor did she feel it from Administrator either. Selka: "I'm not one to talk, but their reasons aren't based on misfortune. I'm sure the girls would be happy to tell you why they did it."
Alice: "That so...... Well then, I'll ask when I get the chance."
At that point, Airy called the girls for dinner.
----------
The girls returned to the Morningstar Lookout. Star King Kirito's dragoncraft was rolled out a hundred years prior in 482 SEC, while Selka, Ronye, and Tiese were frozen in 441, so it was the first time the girls saw the dragoncraft.
Tiese: "So this is the final dragoncraft built by Kirito-sempai......"
Ronye: "Look, there's three jet holes. So sempai succeeded in developing his two-seater triple-engine craft."
Selka: "Looking at all that damage, I'm surprised it managed to make the trip from Admina back to Cardina......"
Airy: "Oh no, it did not fly all the way here."
Ronye: "Wha......? But from what we were told earlier, didn't the damage come from when it was attacked on Admina?"
Airy: "Yes. Kirito-sama teleported X'rphan over here from Admina by using a 《Door》."
Selka, Ronye and Tiese: ".................."
Alice (internally): I'd feared that the girls had left me in the dust after decades of working as knights, but I guess Kirito's absurdity never fails to exasperate people, no matter the age or world.
At that point, Airy called Eolyne out for dinner, and he appeared from the dragoncraft in dirty overalls, rather than his pilot uniform. Apparently, he was either inspecting or trying to repair the damage on the dragoncraft. Stica and Laurannei became flustered at the fact that Eolyne was doing the repairs himself, so they asked him to leave the task to them and they'd call in maintenance from their base, but Eolyne rejected the idea of letting a maintenance crew into the Sealed Floors, and they had no means to transport the craft back to base either. He also felt that even the maintenance crew chief would find the repairs out of his league, as the craft was full of mechanisms and devices that he himself had never seen before. He also preferred to keep info from leaking out.
Since Kirito was the one who built the craft, Alice wondered for a moment if Kirito could fix the dragoncraft himself, but then she recalled he didn't have his memories of building the craft. Alice believed that Kirito was utterly disinterested in power and control, so he would have only taken on the role of Star King if he'd be out of alternative options to weasel out of the grand role, but she did feel thankful for his dedication to Underworld for over a hundred years of time. And so, she did wish that he one day regained his memories so she could express her gratitude to him, but she couldn't bring herself to bring up the idea when it could mean that the current Kirito would disappear. As Alice continued brooding over Kirito and Asuna's choice to delete all of their post-ward memories, Selka prompted Alice to head to the table.
Alice monologued about how Administrator would summon her to the Morningstar Lookout several times a year to this very table to keep her company over tea as she made her reports. She never had an actual conversation with Administrator during these meetings, but she always did look forward to Hana's baked sweets that she only ever served to Administrator's table. Eolyne decided to head to the bath to wash off the grime and headed down the stairs, while the girls began eating their dinner.
Chapter 5
Kirito (internally): "If only there were two of me!". I've probably never wished for that as strongly throughout my eighteen years of life as I have now.
Having been told about all the Unital Ring events the gang had been through, and the info they had learnt while he and Asuna were busy with Underworld from Lisbeth, Kirito now found himself in a dilemma: he didn't feel like he could leave Unital Ring alone that easily, but neither could he ignore the conspiracy going on in Underworld (plus, he didn't even get time to speak with Ronye, Tiese, and Selka all that much before being forcefully logged out).
Kirito (internally): If possible, I wish I could create a duplicate of my Fluctlight, then have one of me in Unital Ring and the other in Underworld simultaneously..... oh wait, then we'd be two different people. And knowing my personality, there's no way I'd get along with the other Kirito. If anything, I frequently find myself cursing "you son of a..." when it comes to His Royal Majesty Star King Kirito, despite him not being a clone of me, but rather a 《Past Version of Me》. Guess I'll just have to make do with alternating between the two worlds somehow...... wait, before we entered the Central Cathedral, Eolyne mentioned 『There might just be a way to solve all of your time-related issues with your and your colleagues' stay here, Kirito-kun』; in the end, what was that all about? Like, what are the odds that he meant he would go out and convince both my parents and Asuna's to permit us to go on long-term Dives with IVs?
As Kirito was busy monologuing incoherently, he and Asuna (along with their respective pets) arrived at the hornet dome following Lisbeth's lead.
Asuna: "......You're sure the boss doesn't repop, right?"
Lisbeth (tilting her head): "Mm, probably not."
Asuna: "'Probably', really Liz......"
Lisbeth: "Ahaha, no worries, no worries at all. Even if it does repop, the tunnel's exit point is a safe point, and we'll hear the hornet buzzing from there."
Asuna: "Don't let me down, now!"
Agah: "Quack!"
Kirito (internally): (launches into a monologue spiel about Agah's species) [...] Out of all four - five if you include Pina - pets, Agah's the most monster-like of them all, but strangely, it does seem attractive for some reason.
Lisbeth goes over to Agah and starts scratching under its jaw while letting out a mysterious "Agagagagah" sound. Then she goes over to Kuro to scratch its nape, while letting out a "Kurorororoh" sound. After having her fill,
Lisbeth: "Alright, how about we get going!"
----------
The hornet boss had not respawned. It was too early to say for sure, but Kirito presumed it was highly likely that the hornet boss wouldn't respawn ever again, similarly to SAO Floor Bosses.
Kirito (internally): It's a shame I didn't get to participate in the battle, but I do have to give credit where credit is due: Silica, Sinon and the others fought bravely and secured victory without suffering any player or NPC casualties. And while I'm at it with the whole credit giving thing, I wanna learn all the deets on the treasure they scored...
As they continued walking through the dome, Kirito started hearing an unsettling sound coming from the flowers in the area and learnt that there were ticks sucking nectar from the flowers.
Kirito (internally): Since the tick bellies are filled to the brim with nectar, this could be our chance to secure a source of sugar - a luxury in this world - but my very conservative estimates say there's a 70% chance at the very least that the idea would provoke screams from Asuna, so I'll refrain from bringing it up.
After crossing the fifty-metre-wide dome, the trio noticed an almost entirely perpendicular wall of rock ahead of them. Being two hundred metres tall, this cliff effectively split the first stratum from the second one. And since there were basically no dents on it that could be used for footholds, trying to climb the wall was suicidal at best. Kirito considered the possibility of players flying up the cliff with an airborne pet like Namari, but he couldn't deny the possibility that some nasty plot twist was set in place as a countermeasure for daredevils like that...such as the cliffside being a nest for overpowered flying monsters. Kirito didn't feel like testing his theory, however, so he reined in the inherrent proclivity for risky stunts in his blood, and followed Lisbeth instead.
The trio found an elliptical entrance to a cave hidden between two trees. It was 2-metres-tall and 1.5-metres-wide, or so. Not what you would expect from the sole passage to the next stratum, that is.
Asuna: "It's surprisingly small......"
Lisbeth: "Sure is. Sinon's guess is that the small size might be meant to place a limit on what pets you can bring with you to the next layer."
Asuna: "Oh....."
While Asuna's Agah and Kirito's Kuro would have no problem fitting through the cave due to their slim physique, Silica's Misha, on othe other hand, would have trouble with the small passage.
Kirito: "So, the reason why Silica didn't bring Misha with her was because it would be no laughing matter if it got stuck midway through?"
Lisbeth: "Yeppers. She said she was going to make a human-only trip the first time to see if Misha could pass through before bringing her pet along."
Kirito: "Makes sense...... By the way, what's the lineup of the party that's inside the cave?"
Lisbeth: "Well, let's see, there's Silica, Sinon, Klein, Argo, Leafa, Yui-chan, Holger, Zarion, Sissy, and Friscal......I think. There were far more of us for the hornet boss battle, but we all returned to Ruis na Rig after the battle, and then only those who could still continue their Dive for some time longer formed a new raid for progressing through the cave. Meanwhile, the Basins and Pattels have a commandment that says 《Thou must not climb the Far-End Wall (最果ての壁)》, apparently."
Kirito: "Far-End Wall......
Kirito (internally): That name sounds kinda similar to the 《End Mountains》 (果ての山脈) that surround the Human Empire in Underworld, but that must have just been a coincidence.
Asuna: "Liz, why didn't you join the raid?"
Lisbeth: "You'll find out in a jiffy."
----------
Twenty metres into the cave, the party reached a spacious room with clearly man-made stairs on the other side. Kirito looked around all corners of the room with his torch but didn't spot any monsters. Instead, he found an iron ore deposit sticking out from a wall.
Lisbeth: "Well I'll be darned, there was still some left over in this room, eh."
Kirito: "I see; you'd refilled your stock of iron ore in this cave, so you were planning to stay behind at Ruis na Rig to get some blacksmithing done."
Lisbeth: "Yeppers."
Asuna: "In that case, sorry about disturbing your work, Liz."
Lisbeth: "No biggie, no biggie at all. I've got enough stock of wares at my store to last a night, and you can never have too much iron ore on your hands!".
Lisbeth mined the last iron ore deposit in the room. Then the trio fed the pets they brought along and refilled their own TP and SP bars, before beginning their ascent up the stairs. After climbing a three-storey building's worth of stairs, they ended up in a horizontal corridor. The structure of stairs -> floor -> stairs reminded Kirito of the Labyrinth Towers in Aincrad, but this dungeon was twice the size of the towers. Starting from the second floor of the dungeon, the trio had their first encounters with monsters, but only occasionally. Probably because the raid party had cleaned out the area and the monsters hadn't yet repopulated the corridors. The trio encountered scorpions, bats, and centipedes as they made their way through the dungeon, mining as much iron ore along the road as they could. The raid party had left behind markers (stones from Malbe river that were far brighter than the stones in this dungeon) at all the crossroads, making it easier for the trio to find their way up. Just as the trio went halfway up the stairs to the eighth floor, they all heard metallic clanks coming from upstairs, and Kuro growling next to them.
Since the clanging was far too frequent for the raid to be dealing with simple monsters, the trio ran up the stairs full throttle, Kirito fearing that the raid was engaging with players. Upon breaking through to the eighth floor, however, Kirito found himself in a basketball-court-sized room with rows of semicircular pillars along the walls, between which he saw niches with eerie bluish-white flames inside them. Kirito then noticed the raid in rhombus formation facing off against a three-metre-tall stone giant... - a golem, that is - rather than against players, as Kirito had feared.
Since distractions could have dire consequences in battles like this, Kirito opted not alert the raid to their arrival and instead focused on examining the situation.
The front row of the raid's formation was taken up by Holger, Zarion, Klein, and Leafa. Holger with his shield and Zarion with his shell were blocking the golem's attacks at the centre, while Klein and Leafa supported them from the sides.
The middle row was taken up by Silica, Argo, Friscal, and a slender Six (six-legged insect type from Insecsite), which Kirito presumed was Sissy. This group was focusing on making use of any openings to attack the golem, but they didn't seem to be able to land any decent blows on it.
The back row was taken up by Yui and Sinon. Kirito presumed that the plan was for Yui to fire off her spells, while Sinon shot at the golem with her musket, but both of the girls were currently on stand-by.
Just then, the golem let out an ominous howl, before bringing its fists together and raising them high into the air.
Klein: "Slam incomin'!"
After more than two seconds of suspense, the golem slammed down its fists, causing shockwaves to spread through the ground. While the front row players managed to avoid the fists themselves, the shockwave tripped them up. Since Kirito was further away, he could time his jump to avoid the shockwave, and set up a Sonic Leap mid-air. As soon as he jumped over the shockwave and landed back onto the ground, Kirito let loose his skill, launching himself at the golem's head and striking its forehead. However, while the forehead was a golem's weakpoint in Judaism's folklore, Kirito's blow only served to give off an ear-splitting clang and blinding display of sparks, before he was repelled with nothing to show for it. Although the intense recoil broke the boy's posture, he was able to kick off the golem's shoulder and somersault safely back onto the ground.
Klein: "Nowah!? ......K-Kiri-no-ji!?"
Kirito: "S'ry, I need you to draw his aggro for ten more seconds!"
Klein: "A-aye, on it!"
Although Kirito's full-power blow was repelled, it did stun the golem for a bit, allowing Klein to land a heavy blow on the golem's shin and draw its ire. Zarion stepped in to receive the golem's fist of rage with its thick brow carapace.
Kirito used the opportunity to dash around the golem, where he found tons of superficial gashes on the golem's back, so the golem's back wasn't the weakpoint either. Kirito had already confirmed that there were no signs of any weakpoints on the front, which is why he came to look at its back, but he couldn't find any symbol, gem, or crest, nor any protrusion or dent that could serve as a sign of a weakpoint anywhere. Kirito was hoping that this golem would be similar to Fuscus from Aincrad and have some weakpoint hidden somewhere on its body, but that appeared to not be the case here.
The golem once again brought his hands together and swung up. Due to having dealt a blow to the boss, Kirito could see its spindle cursor: two HP bars, and the name 【Ｓｔａｔｕｅ ｏｆ Ａｕｒ－Ｄａｈ】 next to them. The two HP bars were nearly maxed out; meanwhile, the raid's front row players' HP bars averaged at 70% or so. Klein and co dodged the golem's second slam attack with a backward dash, but staggered due to the ensuing shockwaves. As the golem was about to kick them in their vulnerable state, Kirito noticed something on the sole of its right foot.
The next moment, the golem unleashed its kick. In their staggered state, the frontliners were unable to dodge the attack; not even blocking with their shields or weapons helped them take the blow, so they were blown away. Zarion's and Holger's HP went below the 50% mark as they bore the brunt of the attack. At that moment, Asuna and Lisbeth ran in from behind them, unleashing Sword Skills at the golem's abdomen, knocking it back. The attacks only managed to take a few pixels off the golem's HP bars, but the joint attack did succeed in staggering the monster.
Asuna: "Zarion, Holger, fall back and heal up! Leafa and Klein, by my and Lisbeth's side!"
Asuna's orders were followed through momentarily, but the golem also recovered from the stagger. In the mean time, Kirito managed to confirm his suspicion regarding where the golem's weakpoint was located. The question now was... how to get to it.
Kirito surveilled the room. The pets were standing by, but their claws and fangs would literally be biting more than they could chew (Kirito used the idiom "歯が立たない", which means "unable to compete with; not able to make a dent in" and has the word "tooth/teeth" in it). There was a door on the far-end wall, but it likely wouldn't open up till the golem was defeated. The sides of the room only had walls and pillars... technically, the top parts of the walls also had niches with lit-up oil bottles, but breaking them would only serve to spill the oil onto the floor and covering the floor in flames, so it would only make the fight that much harder. However, Kirito then noticed that some of the bottles hadn't been lit... out of the ten bottles on either side (twenty in total), like five of them hadn't been ignited. Kirito figured that there was some hidden meaning to this, but the boy didn't believe igniting the unlit bottles was the intended gimmick to weaken the boss, since Unital Ring had clearly-defined cause and effect... just then, Kirito realised that it wasn't the flames on the bottles that was important, but the oil inside the bottles instead.
Kirito: "Asuna, one minute pls!"
Asuna: 'Gotcha!"
Kirito: "Sinon, come here!"
Sinon (having run over to him and grinning): "So you've finally figured something out?"
Kirito: "Well, sorta. Sinon, could I ask you to shoot all five of the bottles in the niches that aren't ignited, with your gun?"
Sinon: "Haah? Well......sure, if breaking bottles is what you need, I can break them."
As Asuna and the others fended off the golem's attacks, Sinon began shooting at the unlit bottles. As a bottle shattered to smithereens, the oil spilled out, dripping down onto the floor. It only took Sinon thirty seconds to shoot all five bottles. Their oil dripped onto the floor and flowed into the centre of the room, creating a seven-metre-wide puddle.
Kirito then ordered Kuro and Agah to attack the golem's feet and then run behind him. Kuro attacked the right leg as Agah took the left one. Although the attacks didn't actually deal much of any damage, they did grab the golem's attention. Letting out a roar, the golem began chasing the two pets. Just as they approached the puddle, Kirito ordered the two animals to jump in order cross over the puddle without touching it. After Kuro and Agah landed next to him, the three of them continued falling back. Meanwhile, the golem plunged straight towards them as it brandished its fists... and thus stepped into the puddle. Ignoring the oil, the golem took one step, then another one forward... till it lost its grip on the third step and slipped, falling forward. The fall caused a shockwave and launched a some oil into the air as the golem's chest hit the floor. The golem's HP visibly diminished from the fall. But that wasn't what Kirito's real goal was. Since he was facing the side of the golem with the head,
Kirito: "Guys, see anything on the golem's feet soles!?"
Leafa: "I do!! There's some kind of round metal plate fitted onto its right sole!"
This confirmed that Kirito wasn't simply seeing things when he thought he noticed a flash of reflected light from the golem's foot, it seemed.
Kirito: "That's the guy's weakpoint! Attack it! Oh, but don't step onto the oil! You'll be hard-pressed get back on your feet if you slip on it!"
Everyone had been running towards the boss by then, but hearing Kirito's words made them hit the breaks. There were over two metres of distance between the edge of the puddle and the golem's feet, so no sword or spear could reach it.
Kirito (internally): Fuck, should have thought up a way to hit the weakpoint without stepping onto the oil first...
Just then, Kirito saw something silver flashing between Asuna and Leafa. Someone had thrown a metallic object at the golem and hit its foot, dealing over 10% damage to its first HP bar.
Argo (holding three throwing pick-like weapons in her left hand): "When it comes to hitting the weakpoint, I've got this in the baG! Though, keep his attention off me, plS!"
Kirito: "Where did she even get those things......"
Sinon: "She had Liz make them for her before we set off, it seems."
Kirito: "Whoa, nice, I need to get some......"
At that point, Kirito halted that thought because the golem got back on its feet.
Holger: "All hands, excluding those of you with projectile weapons, just get going and start running counterclockwise around the oil!"
Sinon: "......You get going, too."
Kirito (returning to his senses): "O...oh, right. Counting on you to hit the weakpoint."
The players kept running around the oil spill, tricking the golem into going in circles at the centre of the puddle and thus constantly slipping on the oil due to its high centre of gravity. When the golem slipped the second time, the players closest to its feet made room for the projectile-wielding players to attack, which happened to be Sinon this time. A shot from her musket wiped out nearly 30% of the first HP bar in a single shot. After seeing the shot land, the players started running again.
The third time the golem slipped, Argo hit it with another pick. Sinon got the fourth hit. Then when the golem slipped for the fifth time, it was Yui's turn to attack. Instead of using her usual fire magic to attack, however, Yui was instead armed with a small bow. Yui's arrow easily scored a bullseye on the golem's sole, wiping out the first HP bar.
Normally, wiping out an HP bar would prompt a boss to change its tactics, but the golem just continued slipping the entire time, so the raid didn't get to see any new moves. Eventually, Sinon, Argo, and Yui managed to break the metal plate on the golem's right foot, wiping out the last shreds of its HP too.
Kirito (narrating): And so, the 《Statue of Whatshisname》 let out out a growl and stopped moving, before splitting apart into numerous lumps.
Fifteen minutes after Kirito and co had joined the raid, the battle was over... and Kirito already forgot the boss's name.
The first to break the silence that followed was Sissy the tiger beetle:
Asuna: "Yui-chan! (lifts up Yui in her arms) You were so awesome! When did you learn how to use a bow?"
Yui (bashfully): "This is my war trophy from the Gilnaris Hornet nest. I asked for it when everyone was splitting the loot."
Asuna: "Wha......so you've only had it for a few hours!? And yet you were making such good use of it already!?"
Kirito: (jaw-drop)
Yui (in a whisper): "After a few trial shots, I realised that as long as I have a stable foothold, enough time to calculate the arrow's trajectory, and no interference from sudden strong winds, I never miss my target."
Kirito and Asuna: "............"
Yui: "When swinging a sword, there is a need to precisely coordinate the movement of all parts of your avatar, and even I cannot optimise all of that so easily. But with bows, most parts of the avatar remain fixed in place; when I want to loose an arrow, all I have to do is to release my fingers, so I can focus practically all of my faculties on estimating the trajectory of the arrow."
Kirito then went on a monologue about FullDive conformity and how one could measure a person's conformity for FullDive by asking them to stand on one leg: those with poor conformity wouldn't be able to stand on one leg due to their brain signals lacking the strength or precision to pull of such a tricky position, while the majority of people would only manage to maintain the position for like twenty or thirty seconds due to balance nuance differences compared to the real world, but since Yui's an AI and doesn't have to deal with brain signal deviations, she could potentially maintain a one-legged position indefinitely... or keep her avatar in a completely fixed position, in this case. Thus, Yui was apparently worried that her nature as an AI was basically akin to cheating in this case, due to the inherent advantage she has. Kirito decided to ease her worries:
Kirito: "Thanks, Yui, we were only able to beat the golem just now thanks to you using your bow. If you'd been using fire magic, the oil on the floor would have caught on fire, which would have led to us being burnt by it, too. I hope you'll continue helping us all with your bow."
Yui (smiling): "......Okay!"
Everyone gathered around them: (giving a round of applause).
Once the applause subsided, Lisbeth approached Kirito and handed him a pickaxe.
Lisbeth: "Here you go."
Kirito: "......'Here you go', she says. What am I even supposed to do with it?"
Lisbeth: "Ain't it obvious; it's for breaking up the golem's corpse and harvesting the mats, what else. I just know we'll get some high-grade ore out of it! I hope anyone else with pickaxes will come to help, too!"
At that point, Asuna put Yui back down onto the floor and materialised a large number of bisque bottles.
Asuna: "Those of you without pickaxes, I hope you could help me collect the oil from the floor!"
Kirito (internally): Is it just me, or have these two acclimatised to this world far better than I have?
With that thought, Kirito went to the golem corpse with his pickaxe.
Chapter 6
As Alice finished eating her dessert, the 7:30 bell rang. Eolyne had returned from the bath ten minutes prior, ate 70% of his portion before apologising to Airy for leaving the rest. In contrast, Alice felt embarrassed at the fact that when they stopped for a meal before coming to the Cathedral, Alice had been hit by a wave of nostalgia at the prospect of eating Centorian cuisine, which led to her overeating... when she didn't have a single coin to her name and had to have Eolyne foot the bill for their meal. While contemplating over a way to earn some funds for the future, Alice's hand unconsciously found its way to the pouch where she kept the two fist-sized dragon eggs of Amayori and her brother Takiguri. Alice had two goals in coming back to Underworld: to reunite with her sister (✅) and to hatch these eggs again and raise the dragons back to their old size. While hatching the eggs wouldn't be that much of a problem, as long as they were incubated in appropriate conditions, dragon fledglings were surprisingly delicate creatures that required constant attendance... and Alice didn't have the leeway to stay in the world for months on end, so she'd have to find someone to entrust the rearing process to. This fact also reminded her of the cold reality that she couldn't stay with Selka forever and would be logged out eventually.
Selka: "Alice-neesama, what's the matter?"
Alice: "Oh, no...... it's nothing. Selka, how's about eating some more?"
Selka: "I'm already stuffed! How about you, Ronye and Tiese?"
Ronye: "I won't be able to fit anymore. How about you, Tiese?"
Tiese: "............"
Tiese, however, was preoccupied with staring at something to her left-front (~11 o'clock direction). There was the dessert plate in that direction, but Tiese wasn't focusing on desserts. Instead, she was looking beyond the plate of desserts to the masked man sitting on the other side of the table and drinking cofil tea - Integrity Pilot Commander Eolyne Herlentz. While Selka and Ronye had mostly, at least on the surface, accepted the explanation that Eolyne and Eugeo were different people, Tiese was still half in doubt. Even Alice almost let out a scream upon seeing Eolyne for the first time, so she could sympathise with how the uncanny resemblance had hit Tiese so hard that she now looked completely out of it. Alice also presumed that Selka and Ronye were also filled with doubt deep inside, but were putting up a front of normalcy for Tiese's sake. Eolyne himself, in the mean time, was also lost in thought, but his mind was instead focused on the matter of the insurgents. Airy was the one who broke the silence.
Airy: "Everyone, may I take it that you have finished your meals?"
Alice: "Oh......yes, indeed, thank you, Airy-dono, I mean, Airy. It was very delicious, thank you."
----------
After dinner, it was time for Eolyne, Stica and Laurannei to return back to base. The two girls tried to throw a tantrum over wanting to stay in the Cathedral for the night, but their 《All Day Leave Permit》 was only valid till curfew time when the gates to the base were closed. Being late for even a minute would trigger a disciplinary action. Laurannei tried to argue that Eolyne had the authority to extend their permit as the commander, but Eolyne didn't give in. He himself would get a scolding from his adjutant if he were to stay overnight without prior notification. This reminded Alice of the freewheeling Knight Commander Bercouli, who did in fact get scolded by Vice-Commander Fanatio often. In the end, the two girls gave up on the idea of staying the night at the Cathedral, and the entire group descended back the 80th floor. While the door to the forbidden floors had been sealed shut when they retrieved their swords, Airy revealed that there was a hidden lever by the door to open it from the inside.
Once the three pilots had taken their leave, the doors were shut once more, and the rest of the gang returned to the 95th floor.
Alice (while looking up to the sky from the 95th floor's aperture): "Say, Airy, it is December right now, right? So why isn't it all that cold up here when this floor doesn't have walls?"
Airy (looking down to the floor): "The potted plants block off the wind, and there are pipes under the floor with warm water flowing through them from the temperaturator (冷温機, reionki) on the 94th floor."
Alice: "Temperaturator......"
Alice (internally): Where have I heard of that before... oh right, Laurannei's brother told us about a heating mechanism using temperaturators.
Alice: "We didn't have this mechanism before in the old days... right?"
Airy: "Indeed. It was the Star Queen who installed it. She referred to it as 《floor heating》."
Alice: "Oh, I see, so this was Asuna's doing, huh."
Looking at Ronye and Tiese, Alice pondered over the logistics of how the girls would live their lives in the modern world... they can't very well just show up to their old homes and proclaim to be the ancestors of the households. As Alice wondered whether Star King Kirito had actually given proper thought on that front, Airy suddenly took a deep breath, before speaking up to them with resolution.
Airy: "Ladies. I would like to carry out my final duty as the overseer of the Forbidden Floors."
Selka: "Final duty......? What's that supposed to mean, Airy?"
Airy: "I would like you all to make a choice."
----------
Airy led the other girls to the north-eastern corner of the 《Morning Star Lookout》. While there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary in this corner, when Airy pressed a hidden button on a column, a spiral staircase descended from the ceiling. The old staircase used to be on the northern side of the floor, but that spot was currently occupied by X'rphan's wings. Alice and the others followed Airy up the set of stairs.
The 96th floor used to be the Senate, a place where even the Integrity Knights were forbidden from setting foot on without permission. It took Alice a second to recall that the Senate housed people robbed of their emotions and thoughts, and placed in numerous capsules on the walls to act as a living monitoring device for Taboo Index offenses. Now, however, the former Senate was completely different in structure: there was a wide (~10 mer wide) corridor with partitions dividing the sides of the corridor into sections; the ceiling was also high up, reminiscent of the Dragon Landing Field on the 30th floor. There was a panel a bit of a distance away from the stairs that Airy was standing beside as Alice stood still next to the stairs, blocking the way in her stunned state.
Selka: "Nee-sama, move a bit forward already."
When Alice made room in a fluster, Selka finished climbing the stairs and looked around the room.
Selka: "......Oh, so they remodeled the place as a bedroom for our little friends."
Selka walked ahead, followed by Ronye and Tiese, then Alice. Alice peeked into one of the sections...
Alice: "......Ah!"
...and realised that the room didn't just look like a Dragon Landing Field... that's exactly what it was. And each section was a pen housing a single dragon, curled up into a ball. However, the dragon scales lacked their usual metallic lustre and instead looked like pieces of stone. Just like Selka and the girls had looked before they were depetrified. Since each pen was about 6 mer wide, while the corridor was just under 50 mer long, Alice calculated that there had to be eight pens on either side for a total of sixteen... each of which containing a dragon.
Ronye: "Tsukigake!"
Tiese: "Shimosaki!"
Alice saw Tiese and Ronye running into the pens down the middle of the corridor, Tiese going to the one on the left and Ronye the one on the right. When Alice ran over, she saw the girls embracing the necks of the two dragons found there.
Alice (to Selka): "......Are these little friends their dragon mounts?"
Selka: "Yeah. The little one on the left is Tiese's Shimosaki, while the one on the right is Ronye's Tsukigake."
Alice: "Oh......"
At that point, Alice recalled Eolyne's words from the day before. When Alice asked what happened to the dragons upon noticing that the dragon stables were gone from the Cathedral grounds, Eolyne had said: "Just as the Knight Order was sealed, half of the dragons being reared at the Central Cathedral were returned to their natural habitat in Wesdarath, while the other half were sealed away along with their knights, as I have heard."
Alice now realised that "sealed" was referring to Deep Freeze, so the dragons here could be awakened just like Selka and the girls. Just then, Alice realised that Eolyne had claimed that the Order of Integrity Knights had been sealed the same way as the dragons, which meant only one thing...
Airy: "Tiese-sama, Ronye-sama. We shall be going to the floor above, what about you?"
Ronye (turning around with Nuts on her shoulder and saying in a hoarse voice): "We'll stay here for just a bit longer. We'll catch up in a jiffy."
Airy: "Very well. (turning to Alice) Now then, let's be off, Alice-sama, Selka-sama."
Airy proceeded along the corridor, Alice and Selka following suit after exchanging glances. At the end of the passageway they reached a large flap door, besides which was a human-sized door. Beyond this door was another set of stairs. While climbing three floors worth of stairs, Alice recalled that the former Senate had also occupied three entire floors... but it wasn't all that wide, and this stairwell was where Chudelkin's room had been hidden. From there, the stairs led to the 99th floor... the place where Alice had awakened as an Integrity Knight with her memories sealed. And where a synthesised Eugeo had fought against Kirito.
Airy went through the door at the end of the stairs and Alice followed after a moment of hesitation. The room was covered in darkness just like the floor below, preventing her from seeing all that far ahead. Suddenly, Airy created a source of light with Sacred Arts, illuminating the surroundings. The room was pure white and spacious, just as Alice remembered it. Completely circular and about thirty mer wide. Walls and ceiling made out of polished white marble. Not a single piece of furniture. Just as she recalled it... aside from one detail: sixteen stone statues lined up along the circular wall, six mer apart. Alice approached one of these statues: it had long, gently-wavy hair; full-body armour similar in design to the set Alice had left back at the mansion; eyes closed and turned to stone, the statue's face was still stunningly beautiful. Alice took one more step forward and let out a barely audible voice as she called out her name.
Alice: "............Fanatio-dono............"
Chapter 7
With the boss defeated, the raid partied arrived to the Second Stratum of Unital Ring and found themselves in a meadow, a crescent moon shining faintly in the jet black sky. The area around the stairs was dotted with ruin-ishy stone bowers.
Holger: "Alright, ten minute break, people! Anyone who needs the toilet, get going!"
Several people took up the offer. As Kirito contemplated how vulnerable the avatars of the logged out players looked in their limp state.
Klein: "Yo, Kiri-no-ji, is this actually the Second Stratum of UniRin's world?"
Kirito: "Why are you asking me......"
Klein: "Well, see, it just ain't sinking in for me...... I was expecting, like, the whole field scenery to change dramatically, or some NPC cutie to pop out and give us our congrats, or somethin'......"
Kirito (internally): (imagines Agil popping out and saying "Congratulations!" in his charming baritone if he were with them, but Andrew was busy with the Dicey Cafe, since it was booked for the night).
After giving it some thought, Kirito took Klein to the edge of the stratum to show him the superb view.
Klein: "Woowieeee......ra～～～～d......"
Klein tried to approach the very edge of the cliff, but Kirito grabbed him by the bandana.
Kirito: "Whoa now, you're a hundracent sure to die if you fall off!"
Klein: "I kno', dude. Though...... it sure is rad......"
Kirito: "Is this proof enough that we're up on the Second Stratum now?"
Kirito observed the First Stratum from their position: the Zelletelio Forest spanning hundreds of square kilometres to the south, the orange light coming from Ruis na Rig at a corner of the forest, the Malbe River, the ALO starting point, and the crash-landed Floating Castle of Aincrad. The bottom fourth of the castle had been utterly destroyed in the crash, but the castle still stood over 7000 metres tall, so Kirito still had to look up to see its top even from his current position. Kirito still wanted to find the time to survey it when things settled down somewhat and noted his desire down on his internal scheduler, when Holger suddenly called everyone in for a meeting.
----------
According to Argo and Friscal's intel, the Second Stratum was divided into four major areas. The western and eastern sides of the stratum were woodland areas; the northern side was a snowland area, and finally, the southern half that they currently found themselves in was a grassland area. Each area contained several small-scale settlements, and at least one mid-scaled town. The settlements and towns had NPCs living in them and would serve as invaluable stopover points on their way to the aurora land, if they could set up a base at them...... but all the NPCs right now were proving to be extremely hostile and would assault anyone even attempting to approach their settlements.
As Argo was explaining this, Leafa suddenly raised her hand.
Leafa: "But, you know, there are only two powerhouses who've managed to get ahead of us: Asuka Empire and Apocalyptic Date, no? Those two could have simply messed up their first contact approach, and there's nothing to prove that all the NPCs are hostile by default...... isn't that a real possibility?"
Argo: "SurE, of course. (picks up a branch and starts drawing a map of Unital Ring) Team Asuka is makin' headway through the snowland on the other side of the world map from our grassland area, while Team ApoD is makin' headway through the western woodland area. Asuka's on the opposite edge of the land, while ApoD's bases is hundreds of kilometres away from us too, so it's not really feasible for us to come into direct contact with either of 'em in-gamE. The info I just shared comes from second- or even third-hand sources from the Real World, seE...... Honestly, I wouldn't say that info is all that reliable, y'knoW."
Friscal: "My intel on Asuka and ApoD is about the same, but there is one concerning thing I've heard about...... Lately, people have had occasional sightings of some newcomer players appearing in Stith Ruins with ALO beginner gear and asking the other starters way too many questions about all manner of stuff, apparently."
Sinon: "......What has that got to do with Asuka and ApoD?"
Friscal: "It's all just a base-lesu guess of mine, but I'm thinkin' they might be spies from Team Asuka or Team ApoD."
?: "Spies......?"
Asuna's offering real-time translation services to the Insecsite American players so they wouldn't be out of the loop
According to Kirito's monologue, ALO's management company currently isn't allowing new account registration... but as long as the serve is still running, it cannot block character conversion conforming to The Seed Nexus rules. Meaning that if Asuka Empire or Apocalyptic Date players had alt accounts made beforehand lying around, they could convert them to ALO before logging in and thus infiltrate Stith Ruins as spies while their main accounts are hundreds of kilometres away. However, Kirito found it incredulous that the powerhouses ahead of them would go so far out of their way to probe into Team ALO's state of affairs. After all, once converted, the accounts would no longer be usable for anything other than information gathering.
Friscal: "Seems like Kirito-san's his own camp, but I think that both Team Asuka and Team ApoD are very much wary of Team ALO... or more specifically, Team Kirito. There's the fact that Ruis na Rig serves as a nice midway point, but more importantly, the group's leader is none other than THE Kirito, after all."
Kirito: "......Just so you know, I'm not 《THE》 Kirito, nor do I recall anyone christening this Raid as Team Kirito either."
Sinon (composed): "That train's already left the station. If you REALLY insist on using a different name, bring up some alternative here and now."
Kirito: "............"
Kirito (fully aware that he sucks and naming stuff): Grrr
Everyone: (bursts into laughter)
Three minutes later, the gang came to the conclusion that if they encountered an NPC settlement, they would observe it from afar without getting too close, and if they did get attacked, they would retreat without resisting. The Raid members then refilled their TP and SP bars before setting off again, following a small road to the north. It was exactly 22:00 by this point, which would normally be the time when gamers actually got serious, but Kirito himself had been busy all day from early morning, so he was feeling weary. However, since Asuna was still hanging in there (and he got 30 minutes of sleeptime in Seijirou's car), Kirito forced himself to continue on with the trek. The monsters along the way included hyena-like carnivores, gazelle-like herbivores, and outlandishly nimble tortoises - all animals, but they were clearly stronger than the ones back in their forest. Kirito's and Sinon's levels had crossed 20, Leafa, Silica and the others were 18-19; Asuna, Argo and Klein, despite being a bit late to the party, were 16-17. Thirty minutes of walking later, they reached an over-twenty-metre-wide river flowing from north-east to south-west. There were multiple buildings on the other shore in the distance. None of them had any lights, while the roof and walls had half fallen apart, so it didn't seem like anyone was living there. Kirito couldn't rule out that some monsters have made their nest in the ruins at this point, but they'd have to cross the river to continue their scouting anyway.
Argo and Sissy approached the river first and confirmed there was nothing dangerous in the sand or water, before the others joined them. Kuro stuck its snout into the water for a drink, while Agah plunged into the water for a swim, which proved that the river was rather deep. There was a bridge where the road ended... but it was all broken at this point.
Asuna: "I think it's safe to say that swimming to the other side of the river is going to be risky."
Kirito: "True, doesn't seem like there are any aquatic monsters in here, but the river is over two metres deep down the middle, and the current is quite strong......"
Asuna?: "In which case, we either have to build a bridge, or a boat, I guess."
Kirito: "Since a bridge is going to be costly, I'd prefer to cross by boat, but crafting one requires 《Large Sawn Logs》. And there are no huge trees around the place, see."
Kirito did see some trees in the area, but they were mostly small shrubs; no big trees in sight. This proved that the grassland area, while easy to maneuver in and full of water and food resources, was greatly lacking in building materials like wood and stone, making it hard to construct a base. Kirito thus presumed that Team ApoD likely had the advantage, starting out in a woodland area.
At this point, Holger and Friscal suggested using Asuna's Agah to cross the river by letting it carry them one by one, since they were lacking in building materials to build bridges and boats. Agah did look like it could carry one single person to the other shore without much issue, but the concern was how to ensure the player riding the pet wouldn't be swept away by the current if something were to happen along the way, since the river likely ended with a waterfall, which would be a death sentence to them.
Yui: "In that case, I shall serve as a tester!"
Asuna: "Whaaa!? You ca-......"
Asuna nearly rejected the proposal reflexively, but decided midway through to hold her tongue. Meanwhile, Kirito wasn't fond of the idea either, but he had to admit that Yui was the most suitable candidate for being a test pilot as she was the most lightweight of them all. Kirito wished they'd had a safety device, like the swimming rings back on the 4th Floor of Aincrad... but in this case, swimming rings weren't sufficient, as it wouldn't save them from a death-by-waterfall. At that point, Asuna took out something from her inventory - something made out of luxurious-looking, glossy, pure white fibres.
Kirito: "What's that?"
Asuna: "I made this from the threads Needy-san spat out."
Needy was an Insecsite player with a cricket-based avatar that could spit out durable threads from its mouth. The thread was strong enough to immobilise Friscal when they'd caught him spying on them for Mutasina, so a rope made out of the threads would be guaranteed to be tough to break. Asuna had Yui store away all her armour and weapons into her storage and then tied the rope around her dress. After reassuring Yui that they would pull her back to shore if she fell into the water, Asuna called over Agah and asked it to swim to the other shore with Yui without going underwater. As Agah set off and reached the mid-point of the river, Kirito began contemplating how the people outside of his circle of friends saw Yui and how she referred to them as papa and mama. As Kirito was lost in thought, Agah finished crossing the river in just short of thirty seconds. Yui got off onto the shore and waved to them, whereupon Asuna asked her to untie the rope from herself, allowing Asuna to retrieve it.
Called back by Asuna, Agah plunged back into the water, swimming back twice as fast on the return trip now that it didn't have to keep its passenger safe.
Holger: "Alright, looks like it's gonna work out. Kirito-san, you up next?"
For a moment, Kirito found himself in a mental conflict: he wanted to hurry up and reach Yui, but he also felt he could treat her like a child all the time. In this world, Yui was proving to be a valiant warrior with the knowledge and bravery to show for it.
Kirito: "......Nah, I can go later, so let's go by order of lighter weight. Silica or Argo can go ne-......"
As Kirito looked over to his companions for a moment, Kuro suddenly stood up and started growling out of the blue. Kirito turned his attention back to the other shore, where he saw something moving in the grass... when suddenly, a human-sized figure jumped out and began bolting straight for Yui.
Kirito: "Yui!!"
Asuna: "Yui-chan!!"
At their calls, Yui began running back towards the river without looking back after a split-second conclusion that she wouldn't be able to intercept the ambush with her hear stored away. However, the ambusher proved to be far too fast, catching up to the girl, grabbing her by the collar of her dress and pulling her out of the water. At this point, the moonlight exposed the ambusher's appearance: covered in black full all over its body; holding Yui in its abnormally long arms in a firm grip; a likewise long tail swinging back and forth - it was a monkey. Since the monkey wasn't human-sized, Kirito presumed that it was an actual monster, rather than a player. But it didn't seem to be interested in attacking Yui; in fact, it was almost as if the monkey was intentionally avoiding any damage to prevent its cursor from showing up. With Yui firmly in its hands, the monkey glanced to the other shore, before dashing off downstream at extreme speed.
Sinon fired her musket at the monkey, but the shot failed to land. Sinon couldn't aim straight for fear of hitting Yui. But the gunshot did wake Kirito from his stupor.
Kirito: "Asuna, get on Agah this instant!"
With those words, Kirito straddled his own pet/mount Kuro and ordered it to break into a run. Glancing back, Kirito saw that Agah was following suit with Asuna in a forward-bent posture. Even on ground, Agah's speed wasn't all that different from Kuro's. Meanwhile, the monkey continued running on the other shore, about thirty metres ahead of them. Yui's white onepiece, reflecting the moonlight, helped Kirito maintain visual contact.
Lisbeth: "Kirito, we're counting on you!"
Kirito (internally): We're rescuing her, if it's the last thing we do!
Kirito bent his body as far as he could to minimise his and Kuro's air resistance as they continued their pursuit.
Chapter 8
The chapter begins with Alice recalling Airy's story:
The 2nd generation Commander of the Sacred Arts Casters, Selka Zuberg, along with Integrity Knight Tiese Schtrinen/Shtolienen Thirty-two and Integrity Knight Ronye Arabel Thirty-three went into their long sleep in the year 441 of the Human Empire Calendar - sixty years after the founding of the Unification Council. That very year, the long-standing Order of Integrity Knights was abolished. In its stead, another organisation that differed by only one kanji, the Order of Integrity Pilots, was established. The old knights were given three choices: 1) transfer to the new order; 2) retire from their duties and live their lives as they pleased; 3) choose to subject themselves to the Deep Freeze ritual of their own volition. [...] Among the knights, there were some who transferred to the Pilot order and some who chose a new way of life, but the majority instead desired to be frozen as well. Some time later, in the year 475 of the Human Empire Calendar, having served at the king and queen's side the longest of all the knights, Fanatio too went into a state of sleep. Three years later, the Star King and Star Queen relinquished all of their authorities to the Human Empire Unification Council and retired.
-Excerpt from V26 chapter 2
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Back then, Alice's mind had been too preoccupied with Selka, so she didn't have the presence of mind to even spare a thought about the other knights. Now that she laid eyes on them in their frozen state, Alice felt something welling up in her chest. Even after Alice was forced to depart to the Real World, Fanatio continued supporting Kirito and Asuna, and devoting herself maintaining and developing Underworld for nearly a hundred years. And so, Alice pondered what thoughts had gone through Fanatio's mind that she herself and made the decision to put herself to sleep here.
As Alice stood stock still, she heard faint footsteps beside her. Turning towards her, Alice saw that Airy's pre-dawnbreak-sky-coloured eyes were gazing intently at her. Her lips began moving, her words followed by a faint echo.
Airy: "The Esteemed Star King and the Esteemed Star Queen had entrusted me with a message for Alice-sama: if there came a time when Alice-sama returned to this world one day and awakened Selka-sama, Tiese-sama, and Ronye-sama, they would like you to talk to Selka-sama and the others and decide whether the seal on the Order of Integrity Knights should be undone......"
Alice: "......So that is the 《choice》 you mentioned wanting us to make, I presume?"
Airy: "Precisely."
Alice looked over Fanatio and noted that Fanatio's expression looked serene, as if freed from all pressure. Looking at her, Alice wondered whether Fanatio had chosen to go into Deep Freeze because of a sense of having fulfiled her duties. If so, disrupting her sleep solely because Alice herself wanted to see her again would be unreasonable.
Alice then stepped away from Fanatio and walked to the statue on Fanatio's left. This statue was of a male knight Alice had never seen before, so Alice guessed that the man was likely one of the single-digit Integrity Knights that had been sealed away somewhere in the Cathedral by the Supreme Priest before Alice had even awoken as an Integrity Knight herself. The next statue was a female knight Alice had never met before either. However, upon seeing the fourth statue, Alice let out a gasp, as she was familiar with this knight. It was none other than the brawny male knight of the Conflagrant Flame Bow, Deusolbert Synthesis Seven. Alice wavered whether it was okay to awaken Deusolbert for a different reason: due to his serious nature, the man had no doubt been put through the wringer mental-health-wise when dealing with Kirito's freewheeling attitude.
Alice (internally): Deusolbert-dono, what should I do.
At that moment, Alice heard footsteps coming from the stairs. Turning around, Alice saw that Tiese and Ronye had caught up to them. The two girls had seemingly already guessed what they would find on this floor and, after looking around the room, headed in a certain direction. As Alice chased after the two girls, Ronye stopped in her tracks, while Tiese continued a few mer more, before reaching a sleeping, small-statured knight.
Tiese: "......Renly-dono......"
At that point, Alice realised that Renly Synthesis Twenty-seven was the guy that Tiese had married and had had children with. Alice witnessed Tiese speaking something to the boy while stroking his cheek, but Alice couldn't hear the girl's exact words. Meanwhile, Ronye continued staying put, gazing at Tiese's back, Selka and Airy refrained from opening their mouths as well, while even the rowdy Nuts seemed to feel something in the air and started behaving itself.
Then the bell rang outside the Cathedral. As if on cue, Tiese left Renly's side and walked back to the other girls. While her expression did look serene, Alice seemed to make out a sense of gloom with a mix of forlornness and bewilderment in her eyes. Alice wanted to say something for the girl, but perhaps feeling the weight of all the years Tiese had lived through, she couldn't bring herself to open her mouth. Seemingly seeing through Alice's mental struggle, Tiese gave a faint smile.
Tiese: "Alice-sama, you have our utmost gratitude for protecting Underworld. Thanks to you, Alice-sama, Renly and I managed to lead a happy life not only as knights, but as people and parents as well."
Alice: "......You're the ones who protected Underworld. All I could do was run away from Emperor Vecta......"
Ronye (suddenly walking up to Alice and shaking her head): "That's not true. It's precisely because you took on the heavy duty of being the slimmer of hope of the Human Guardian Army during the 《Battle of the Great Gate》 that we were able to hold our ground on the battlefield. A great number of knights and men-at-arms who fought in the 《Uprising of the Four Empires》 and the 《War of the Black Emperors》 in the aftermath of the Otherworlder War had been supported by their image of you in their hearts, Alice-sama."
Alice: "War of the blek emperos......?"
Alice frowned upon hearing the unfamiliar term. At least, she never heard of the term from Stica, Laurannei or Eolyne's mouths.
Selka: "The battle against the Black Emperors, Nee-sama."
Alice: (still confused)
Alice didn't get the chance to ask any more questions, as Selka had a question of her own for Airy.
Selka: "Come to think of it, Airy, what came of the War of the Black Emperors?"
Airy: "The last Black Emperor was slain in 475 HEC, approximately thirty years after you, Selka-sama, and the others went into your slumber. Though, a fragment of the Abyssal Horror did manage to slip through our grasp."
Alice (internally): As I recall, 475 was the year Fanatio was frozen. Perhaps seeing the War of the Black Emperors through to its closure was the main driver for Fanatio choosing to enter her state of slumber.
Tiese: "A whole thirty years...... (comes up to Airy and takes her hands) We're so sorry, Airy. For not fighting alongside you to the end."
Airy: "There is no need for your apologies. After all, you had offered us a great many achievements during the War of the Black Emperors, Tiese-sama and Ronye-sama."
Upon hearing this, Alice could no longer hold herself back from asking Tiese a question.
Alice: "Say, Tiese-san. Did you undergo the Life Freezing Art because Renly-dono had been under the effects of the Life Freezing Art himself?"
Tiese: "Yes, indeed, I did. (nods) The main underlying reason why the four emperors rose up against the Axiom Church is because they coveted the Life Freezing Art for themselves. Ronye and I had always felt that an eternal life brought about by this Art is an affront to the ways of the world, and so we had had no intention of undergoing the Life Freezing Art, which had also ended up being the spark for the war. But...... (casting her eyes down)"
Ronye (taking over for Tiese): "......Normally, when the Esteemed Supreme Priest Administrator synthesised someone young into a knight, it seems she would wait for the moment when the knights had grown to the age of their maximum Life before performing the Life Freezing Art on them, but there were three exceptions for some reason: Fizel-sama, Linel-sama, and Renly-sama were the only knights who had their Life frozen the moment they were synthesised. Despite getting married and fathering children, Renly-sama still remained in his young state indefinitely; on the other hand, Tiese continued growing older and older with each year...... Noticing at a certain point in time that the two of them were becoming distressed about this issue more and more often, I pleaded with Kirito-sempai to restore the Life Freezing Art. Even if the Art went against the ways of the world, if it was what it took for Tiese and Renly-sama to remain happy together forevermore... But when I brought up my request, I learnt that Ayuha-sama had actually succeeded in bringing back the Life Freezing Art already......"
When the gazes fell on Selka, she responded apologetically:
Selka: "I didn't keep it a secret by choice. In order to bring back the Deep Freeze art, we needed to first reproduce its foundation: the Life Freezing Art......But when we succeeded in reproducing it, Ayuha-sama proposed to only report her success to Kirito-sempai and Asuna-sama, as she felt that this Art would lead people astray."
Ronye: "We're not judging you for it, or anything, Selka. It does sound, in fact, sound like a concern Ayuha-sama would be likely to have." (smiles nostalgically)
Alice: "Did...... Ayuha refrain from using the Life Freezing Art on herself?"
Ronye: "As far as I am aware...... Ayuha-sama had always been thinking of you, Alice-sama. She would always tell us how you, Alice-sama, were her Sacred Arts sensei."
Alice: "Sensei...... but I've never actually taught her anything......"
Ronye: "That is not true. The 《Hollowsphere Shape》 verse you passed on to Ayuha-sama had then been inherited by Asuna-sama, and then by me, Selka, and Airy. Airy had said that we wouldn't have been able to develop stable Eternal Heat Element Hermetiseal Canisters if we hadn't had your verse to help us."
Alice turned her gaze to Airy, who nodded with a serious look.
Airy: "That is true. Among the many Sacred Arts verses, your verse is my second favourite, following the Wind Element Bursting Art."
Alice (with a strained smile): "Oh, you're making too big of a deal out of it......"
Alice was, in fact, the first one to discover the Hollowsphere verse, but all it did was create a hollow sphere out of metallic or crystalline elements; on its own, it was a very simplistic Sacred Art. Nevertheless, knowing that the art she left to the world two hundred years prior was now the cornerstone for everything from indoor heating to dragoncraft propulsion did warm Alice's heart. Especially since it was an art she had developed for the sake of creating a deadly beam of light for merciless slaughter.
Alice: "But it does make me happy to hear you say that. Thanks."
Alice gave Airy a smile before returning to the main topic.
Alice: "Well, I understand the circumstances behind Tiese-san undergoing the Life Freezing Art now. I presume Ronye-san and Selka undertook it alongside Tiese-san?"
Ronye: "Yes, that's what friends are for."
Selka (nodding): "Yep, Nee-sama. Though, in my case, there was also the fact that I meet with you once more, Nee-sama."
Realising that Selka had to have gone through a great mental struggle to come to this decision despite what she was letting on, Alice got the urge to give Selka a big old hug once again, but she managed to keep herself in check.
Afterwards, Selka and Ayuha had begun tackling the Deep Freeze Art and succeeded in bringing it back after spending a long time on it. Approximately fifty years later in 441 HEC, Selka entered a long slumber with Tiese and Ronye at the Cloudtop Garden. At around the same time period, Renly and the other knights were given the choice to freeze themselves on the 99th floor, transfer over to the Integrity Pilot Order, or retire and choose a new way of life. Finally in 475 HEC, having served the Star King to the very end, Fanatio had also been frozen, leaving no more Integrity Knights in the world.
Alice (pointing at the single digit knights): "......Where were those esteemed knights of the distant past sealed in?"
Airy: "There was a ring-shaped space hidden around the Senate on the 96th floor, where we found seven esteemed knights sleeping in ice that would never thaw. Though, while we did succeed in removing the ice, according to Kirito-sama, the souls of the knights were unstable and it would be difficult to awaken them safely even with the Deep Freeze Art that Selka-sama had developed......"
Selka: "The Art that Ayuha-sama and I reproduced was likely just a little bit different under the hood from the original Deep Freeze Art Administrator-sama had invented. According to what I've heard from Fanatio-sama, Chudelkin-sama, the Prime Senator who led the Order of Monks back in the Axiom Church Days, was capable of using the Deep Freeze Art through a short combination of the starting verse, the 《Deep Freeze》 verse, and a verse for indicating the target for the Art. But when we tried reciting the same sequence ourselves, nothing happened. Chudelkin-sama must have been equipped with a tool that acted as a medium to assist his casting of the Art."
Alice (internally): ――You need not add "-sama" to Chudelkin's name.
Selka: "We had looked for the tool, but we couldn't find it...... And so, the Deep Freeze Art we reproduced required reciting the full rite for both freezing and unfreezing a person, and both rites ended up being so long that you'd need over a minute to finish reciting them. Of course, there should be many small differences between our Art and the original one, so we couldn't rule out the possibility that casting our Art on the Esteemed Knights frozen by Administrator-sama and Chudelkin-sama could result in some unforeseen flaws. That's why Kirito and the others gave up on awakening the seven knights sleeping in the Senate and instead moved them to this floor, I believe."
Alice: "......So that's how things went......"
As Alice looked around the frozen knights, she noticed a glaring issue.
Alice: "Wait......you just said that there were seven knights sleeping in the Senate, right? Is it just me, or do the numbers not add up and we're missing someone......? That's right, if the knights are placed in numerical order, then there should have been four people in-between Fanatio-dono and Deusolbert-dono......"
No matter how many times Alice counted heads, there were only two knights in-between Fanatio No.2 and Deusolbert No.7.
Airy: "Indeed. The only knights we know the whereabouts of are Nergius-sama No.16 and above; the 《Knights of Yore》 found frozen in the Senate were No.4, No.5, No.9, No.10, No.13, and No.15, so if we exclude Scheta-sama No.12, that leaves No.3, No.6, No.8, and No.11 unaccounted for. Kirito-sama has proposed the conjecture that they may have long since exhausted the lifespan of their souls and departed from this world."
Alice: "............Oh......"
Alice (internally): That conjecture is probably correct.
After offering her prayers that the four missing knight souls had found their peace inside the Main Visualiser that housed their Fluctlights, Alice recalled that Scheta should have also been frozen, so she asked Airy:
Alice: "What became of Scheta-dono? She does not appear to be in this room."
Airy: "Scheta-sama is slumbering at the Dark Territory Capital City Obsidia's Administration, what was once known as Obsidia Castle."
Alice: "At Obsidia!? Why would she......"
Tiese (with nostalgia): "Scheta-sama married Iskahn-sama, who had served as the leader of the Order of Pugilists of the Dark Territory Army during the Otherworlder War, Alice-sama."
Alice: (mouth agape with incredulity)
Alice (internally): THE Scheta... with a puglist from the Dark Territory? What in the world could have brought that outcome about?
Despite her curiosity, Alice decided to respect the solemn mood of the room by not bringing up gossip talk there. That only left Alice with two questions. Her first question: if Renly had become Tiese's husband, who did Ronye marry? But Alice couldn't bring herself to ask that question, so instead she faced Airy with the other question:
Alice: "Airy, can the knights in this room be awakened right away?"
Airy (with conviction): "Yes. Excluding the 《Seven Knights of Yore》, the other nine knights can be awakened if you were to recite the rite on the scroll Kirito-sama brought back from Admina yourself, Alice-sama; alternatively, we could also have Selka-sama produce a potion form of the rite to the same effect as well, I believe."
Selka: "Yep, ready whenever you are, Nee-sama. Though, it will take some time."
Alice: "Thanks, Selka."
Alice gave Selka a smile, before returning to Airy with her final question.
Alice: "But Airy, what of the lifespan of their souls? As I recall, Fanatio-dono and Deusolbert-dono had already exceeded a hundred years of life by the time of the Otherworlder War. If they'd continued fulfiling their duties as knights for nearly a hundred years more afterwards, wouldn't the lifespan of their souls already have been at their breaking point by the time they were frozen?...... I'm sure you are no exception either, Airy."
At that point, Alice recalled Quinella's words from their showdown at the Central Cathedral. Quinella had mentioned that she had "fixed" Bercouli and the other knights that had lived for over a hundred years when they started having misgivings by removing "unnecessary worries and distress" from their memories.
Alice: "......Don't tell me that Kirito deleted the memories of Fanatio-dono and the other knights, as well as yours, just like the Esteemed Supreme Priest had done?"
Alice found it hard to believe that Kirito would ever do a thing like that.
Airy: "As the representative of the Human Empire Unification Council, as well as during his time as the Star King, Kirito-sama had left us with a great many contributions, but one project that he had devoted himself to as much as he had towards developing dragoncrafts and improving the standing of the demi-human races, was the development of the 《Memory Compression Art》."
Alice: "Memory......compression?"
Airy: "Yes. It allows increasing the soul's capacity, and thus preventing its degradation and collapse by saving memories, primarily those of the distant past that are rarely called upon, in compressed form. When a person attempts to recall compressed memories, it takes a bit of time to decompress them, but it does not lead to memory loss or personality changes for the affected person."
Based on Airy's resolute tone, Alice had a hunch that Airy had the Compression Art performed on herself as well.
Alice: "......How much can this Art extend a soul's lifespan?"
Airy: "It depends on the volume of memories per day, and the degree of their compression, but Kirito-sama has surmised that around two hundred years should be doable if safety is the main concern, or up to three hundred years at maximum."
Alice (dumbfounded): "Three hundred years......"
A span of three hundred years was tough to imagine for Alice and her six years and a few months worth of memories. But it would be enough to guarantee that Fanatio and Deusolbert wouldn't have any issues with their Fluctlights if they were to be unfrozen.
Alice: "I presume all the knights sleeping in this room have had their souls protected with this Memory Compressino Art?"
Airy: "No, since we had no way to confirm the will of the seven knights frozen and sealed by the Esteemed Supreme Priest's own hands, we have not performed the Art on them. As for the other esteemed knights, those who have been active for around a hundred years or so have all undertaken the Memory Compression Art."
Alice: "Oh, yeah......we can't awake those seven knights in the first place. Alright, thanks."
That cleared up Alice's misgivings. So now, all that was left was to decide whether they should awaken the other nine knights. But then Alice recalled, that the message the Star King and Star Queen had entrusted to Airy had specifically stated that they wanted her to discuss the matter with Selka and the others before making a decision, so Alice didn't have to decide everything for herself.
Alice: "Tiese-san, Ronye-san, and Selka. Do you believe we should awaken the nine knights?"
Girls: (nod)
Ronye (acting as a representative): "Yes, we do, Alice-sama."
Alice: "May I ask for your reasoning?"
Ronye: "We believe that we will require the aid of Fanatio-sama and the other knights from here on out. Normally, the attack against the Order of Integrity Pilots that Kirito-sempai mentioned on the eightieth floor could never possibly come to fruition. That is because us Underworlders are generally unable to defy higher-ranked people or organisations."
Alice: "......That is true."
Having once resisted against the 《Seal of the Right Eye》, Alice was painfully aware of how unlikely the prospect of breaking the seal was.
Ronye (with the most serious expression she had so far): "The current Order of Integrity Pilots holds jurisdiction over the Underworld Ground Army and Space Force; the only organisation higher ranked than them is the Star Empire Unification Council... or so Laurannei told us. Which means, the only people capable of hatching a scheme of an attack against the Pilot Order, and then giving the order to execute it... is either a member of the Unification Council, or someone in a position equivalent to theirs. In the event that such a personage were to come out into the open, the Integrity Pilots could possibly be rendered unable to go on the counterattack."
Alice: "I see......but if we had knights rather than pilots in such a situation......"
Ronye: "Indeed. All Integrity Knights, including Tiese and me, have dedicated our swords solely to Kirito-sama and Asuna-sama. Aside from them, no matter what kind of personage shows up on the scene, they could not render us powerless to fight. And I have a hunch that we shall need this card before long."
Chapter 9
In order to allow Kuro to run as fast as possible, Kirito leaned down as far as he could, so he could only put his faith in Kuro to avoid any obstacles and monsters along the way, as he couldn't see what was in front of him. But he could turn to his right. On the other shore, he could make out a humanoid figure running about thirty metres ahead of them, thanks to both his Night Vision skill, and Yui flailing about with her white one-piece dress.
Kirito and Asuna had been chasing the Yuinapping monkey monster for over two minutes by this point in time. The two of them needed to cross the river to Yui, but they hadn't encountered any spot that would allow them to get to the other shore without going through the water. Technically, Agah could swim over to the other shore with Asuna, but this would cost them at least thirty seconds to pull off, and at the speed the monkey was going at, Asuna would have lost track of it. Their sole saving grace was the fact that there was a steep, ten-metre-high slope on the other shore that forced the monkey to run alongside the river, as it couldn't climb the cliff while carrying Yui in its arm.
Since the monkey was running downstream, the river was slowly getting wider and wider. It was already close to twenty-five metre width at this point. At this rate, it would seem like time wasn't on their side, but Kirito didn't lose hope. If there were settlements on this stratum, then there had to be roads too, and if there were roads, they would require bridges at points where the road meets the river. And just then, Kirito did catch sight of one. The bridge didn't seemed to be in active use, as two segments of it had crumbled away, but it was still an opportunity for Kirito and Asuna to catch up to the monkey.
Kuro veered a bit to the left, before an abrupt turn to the right just before the bridge. Kuro didn't seem to mind that the bridge was half-broken, charging full speed ahead through it. Kirito used this moment to check on the monkey to see if it was planning to throw rocks at them or whatever, but instead he found that the monkey itself had taken a turn to the right and fleeing as fast as it could. There was an unpaved road at the point where the bridge connected with the other shore, stretching on to the north-west... right through the steep slope that had been blocking the monkey's landward escape route till now.
Kuro easily jumped over the two nearly five-metre-long gaps at the centre of the bridge in quick succession. Meanwhile, Agah managed to jump over the first one just fine, but had trouble with the second jump. Without an approach, Agah didn't have enough momentum to land safely, but it was close enough to grab on with its claws and climb its way back up. After confirming that they were safe, Kirito turned back toward the front and managed to make out the figure of the monkey in the darkness by straining his eyes. The monkey had managed to gain a bit of distance while Kirito and Asuna were delayed by the bridge, but at least now they were on the same course. Since both the monkey and the pets were about evenly matched in speed, it would all come down to a battle of attrition.
At that point in Kirito's train of thought, Asuna and Agah managed to catch up to him. As Agah was running to Kirito's right, Asuna brought up a question:
Asuna: "Say, Kirito-kun. Are we really sure that's a monster?"
Kirito: "Huh...... but just look at......"
Midway through that thought, Kirito realised something. The Sixes from Insecsite, such as Zarion and Beaming, looked far more like monsters than the monkey did. And come to think of it, the monkey had been running far too long for a "monster". While it wasn't strange for a monster to target the smallest player of the group and kidnap them—especially seeing as Kirito had heard that the hornets had kidnapped Chet earlier that day—but this monkey had been running for over four kilometres now, and was so fast on its feet that even their mounts couldn't catch up with it. So, it seemed highly unlikely that this was some sort of game event.
Kirito: "them......if that really is a player, then what is their goal......? (shaking his head) Nah, we can save the motives for later. Right now, we have to find a way to catch up to them, so let's just presume we're dealing with a player here for now."
Asuna: "......Yeah."
The road was under two metres in width and seemed to continue on indefinitely through the savanna-like grassland. The grass wasn't tall enough to keep the monkey hidden from sight, were they to try to go off the road. However, there was no guarantee that the same scenery would last forever, so they had to close the distance while the chase was limited to a single path. If the monkey was actually a player, they wouldn't fall for simplistic bait tactics, like making noise or luring them in with the smell of food. But neither would they be as overpowered as the Life Harvester had been. So, Kirito reached a natural conclusion.
Kirito: "Asuna, let's put our faith in these guys!"
Asuna: "Got it!"
Kirito: "We're getting off to our rear on zero! Two, one, zero!"
Kirito and Asuna jumped off simultaneously, landing behind their respective pet.
Kirito: "Kuro, go!"
Asuna: "Agah, please!"
Kuro: "Gauh!"
Agah: "Kuwah!"
Despite the vague orders, the panther and platysaur picked up the pace right away. They'd been running at the same pace as the monkey while carrying Kirito and Asuna respectively... so now that they didn't have to carry their riders, they could squeeze out some more speed. Meanwhile, the monkey couldn't let go of Yui. So, while there had been fifty metres in-between them till now, it was plain to see that the pets were closing in. Kirito and Asuna also followed after them on foot.
The monkey glanced back and twisted their expression in a very humanlike manner. Kirito seemed to even hear a 'Tch' tongue click. The next moment, the monkey undertook an unexpected action. They turned forward again, then wound up their seemingly-empty right hand, and made a submarine pitch. With his Night Vision skill, Kirito managed to make out two trailing sparks in the darkness. Suddenly, blue and red flashed high up in the sky, followed by two burst sounds a moment later. The lights—or more precisely, colored flames—continued hanging in the air even afterwards. Kirito realised that these were signal flares. Implying that the monkey had companions in the area.
Kuro and Agah were only twenty metres away from their target. Kirito did some mental math that they should be able to escape before reinforcements arrived if their pets kept the monkey in place for five seconds so that he and Asuna could join in, then kill the monkey and run away with Yui. Kirito did hesitate about killing the monkey before finding out why they had kidnapped Yui, but he had to keep his priorities straight. The monkey glanced back once more, before coming to a stop, perhaps having concluded that they wouldn't manage to escape. With Yui in their left arm, the monkey seemingly intended to intercept Kuro and Agah with its bare hand. Since Kuro was level 8, and Agah was level 7, Kirito presumed the monkey wouldn't manage to drive them back without weapons.
Kuro and Agah entered their respective leaping motions. That instant, the monkey opened its mouth wide and bent their body backwards as hard as they could. They seemed to have inhaled some air, as their chest expanded like a balloon. The monkey's four canine teeth gnashed with great energy, creating sparks...and the monkey then suddenly spat fire out of their mouth.
Kirito: "Whu......"
Kirito (internally): Why does a monkey have fire breath!?
The fire breath engulfed Kuro and Agah, draining over thirty percent of their HP bars. It also added and icon beside their HP bars: a flame mark. This likely indicated a Burn debuff. Kirito presumed that an attack that strong couldn't be fired off in quick succession, so he mentally asked their furry companions to hang in for a bit as he picked up the pace to close the distance before the attack's cooldown expired.
Leaping past the two collapsed pets, Kirito drew his sword mid-air. Only five metres to go. Due to the monkey attacking Kuro and Agah, the system finally flagged the monkey as hostile, and a spindle cursor appeared over the monkey's head. The spindle's colour was ruby-red with a faint tinge of magenta - the characteristic of a hostile player. Under the full HP bar, Kirito could see a name: 【Ｍａｓａｒｕ】. Kirito didn't have anything against the naming sense (probably referring to the fact that "saru" is Japanese for "monkey"?), but he couldn't forgive this Masaru for trying to kidnap Yui. Kirito was already in range for a Sword Skill, but Kirito couldn't rule out the possibility that Masaru would use Yui as a shield, so he instead decided to use his Sword Skill initiation motion as a feint as he continued closing in. Since his opponent was holding Yui in his left arm, Kirito went in for a reverse kesa slash (i.e. from the flank towards the opposite shoulder) at the monkey's right flank. The monkey just barely managed to jump out of the way, but that's exactly where Kirito wanted him. As Kirito blocked Masaru's view with his raised sword, he turned to the right. Asuna had been running right behind him. Grazing Kirito's back, Asuna jumped into the fray. Her blade took on a clear silver flash that slashed through the darkness.
With her rapier in hand, charged in as if boosted by a pair of invisible wings. She had used 《Shooting Star》. It was impossible to dodge epitome-of-speed technique mid-air. So, Masaru tossed Yui into the grass and crossed his arms. The silver-flashing rapier pierced deep through his arms.
Masaru: "Guhah!"
The Lisbeth-forged rapier penetrated over ten centimetres into Masaru's chest, before blowing him away with a thunderous noise. The monkey slammed into the ground, his body rolling from the momentum. Despite the over-the-top manner of falling, his HP only suffered around twenty percent damage. Although having the urge to rush over to Yui, Kirito kept himself in check and asked Asuna to tend to Yui once she was out of her freeze frame, before rushing over to Masaru.
Just as Kirito was about to trigger 《Vertical》....
"Goaaaaah!!"
A roar boomed through the grassland. Holding back from using his Sword Skill, Kirito looked further down the road, where he saw three figures closing in on them at extreme speed. Kirito quelled his urge to grab Yui and make a run for it, as they wouldn't be able to escape until Kuro and Agah recovered from their burns if the three players were as fast as Masaru. Kirito decided that now was the time to overwhelm his foes with madness, rather than to rely on cold calculations, he rushed past Masaru with a resolute war cry.
On the run, Kirito examined the three new players. The ones on the right and let had small frames, while the one in the middle was rather big... and holding a large weapon with both hands. Judging that this guy was the leader, Kirito set his sight on him. At twenty metres distance, Kirito was able to make out the enemy leader's appearance. This was no regular man: while he was running on two feet and had something that seemed like leather armour on his torso, he had black stripes on his limbs, was covered in fur, and his head was that of a feline predator. A tiger, to be precise. And he was nearly two metres tall. At this point, Kirito belatedly released that these were players from Apocalyptic Date, the VRMMO where players can only play as beastmen.
The tigerman lifted his large two-handed axe high above himself. Since dodging the attack would break his posture, while taking the attack on would run the risk of breaking his sword, Kirito decided to go all out on the offensive instead. Kirito ran right under the axe and kicked off the ground with all he had, swinging down with his sword from an overhead stance. Kirito's sword slammed into the axe's handle, scattering sparks from the impact. Kirito could feel the impact in all of his joints; this only served to support his belief that hitting the blade, rather than the handle, would have led to his sword being crushed by the impact. Kirito's attack managed to stop the axe into a deadlock for a moment, before pushing it back. The momentum forced the tigerman to bend backwards, while Kirito's sword found itself blown back as well.
The tigerman's small-statured companion on the right jumped at the opening, charging in with a curved dagger. If Kirito were to wait until he could move again, he wouldn't have the time to dodge or block the oncoming attack. However, Kirito had already predicted the angle that his sword would be blown back in the moment he clashed with the axe, so he had already adjusted his posture. Kirito's sword landed on his right shoulder, as if drawn in by it... completing the motion for a Sword Skill's initiation. Kirito unleashed 《Vertical Arc》 without a second thought. As the dagger grazed Kirito's side armour, he slammed his sword into the tigerman once more while he still hadn't recovered his posture. Kirito felt a heavy impact. The blade slashed through his foe's leather armour, then suddenly changed its angle and shot up again.
Tigerman: "Guah!!"
With a V-shaped damage effect carved into his frame, the tigerman was sent flying a few metres backwards, landing on his back. Meanwhile, Kirito got stuck in the freeze frame following the use of a Sword Skill. The shortspear-wielding beastman on the left didn't miss this chance to charge in. Kirito was no longer in a position to use another Sword Skill...... but he could still move his wrists... so he let go off his sword and began the gesture for his spell. He fired a 《Rot Bullet》 at the poor unsuspecting beastman, hitting them straight in the chest.
Beastman (doggy scream): "Kyahn!"
While the 《Rot Bullet》 didn't have any attack power, but its tremendous stench and awful taste was nigh unbearable without the utmost of resolve. As Kirito was freed from his freeze frame, he kicked his sword back up with the tip of his right shoe and grabbed it in-hand once more. He felt a presence coming at him from the right behind him, but he ignored it and jumped as hard as he could... towards the tigerman, who had been trying to stand on his feet again. Kirito shoved his sword into the beastman's mouth all the way to his throat, the blade coming back out from the back of his head.
Tigerman: "Gah!!"
Upon landing on the tigerman's stomach, Kirito initiated the motion for 《Rage Spike》. Once executed, the skill would likely blow away the man's head... but just as the blade took on a pale blue light with a high-pitched noise...
"W-wait, hold it!"
Hearing a voice cracking behind him, Kirito held up his Sword Skill in its primed-for-use state.
Voice: "We surrender! We'll drop our weapons! So, just don't kill the guy!"
Kirito (internally): You've sure got nerve, after kidnapping Yui.
Kirito had to take a deep breath to rein in his anger from lashing out.
Kirito (internally): Although Masaru the monkeyman kidnapped Yui, he didn't deal any damage to her. If Yui had lost even a pixel of her HP, I would have murdered you all.
Looking over his shoulder, Kirito gave the beastmen an order.
Kirito: "......You two in the back, toss your weapons into the grass on the right as far as you can, now."
Upon hearing his demand, the two beastmen tossed their weapons. Kirito saw the dagger and shortspear landing over ten metres away. Only the tigerman's two-handed axe remained.
Kirito: "You, let go of your axe, too."
The tigerman blinked in surrender and dropped his axe onto the road. Kirito used his left foot to push it aside, before slowly pulling his sword out from the man's mouth. Kirito then took his foot off the man's stomach, took two steps to the left and stepped on the axe's handle, before turning back. There, he saw what seemed like a beastman modeled after a racoon (Procyon lotor), and another one after a fox. The fox beastman was still reeling from Kirito's spell, constantly trying to spit something out with a greatly disgusted look on their face. Further behind these two beastmen, Kirito saw Asuna and Yui pointing their rapier and shortsword respectively at the monkeyman, sitting on the ground.
----------
"Maaan...... that was some wild berserkering, the rumours don't do you justice, man.", complained Otto the tigerman, the leader of the beastmen party.
The four beastmen were sitting lined up by the wayside, their feet and wrists tied up with Needyrope. Since the beastmen had sharps claws and fangs, you could never be too careful even after confiscating their weapons, after all.
Kirito: "Where do you get off calling our battle back there 'berserkering'. I think you meant 'insanely clever', instead."
"That's rich", squeaked Ralcas (ラルカス) the racoonman, whose shrill voice was similar to that of the Pattels.
Kirito (internally): I have to resist the urge to shout 'Go with Rascal (ラスカル), why dontcha!'. A player name is one's own identity and there's probably something behind it, so I'll back off on that remark.
Ralcas: "Normally, when you're facing off against three foes all on your own, you'd either run away, or come to a stop at the very least. You'd have to be way off your rocker to speed up and charge right in instead."
As Ralcas prattled on, the foxlady beside him, named Azuki, was still busy trying to get the bad taste out of her mouth.
Azuki: "Uegh...... I still can't get rid of the weird taste in my mouth...... What in the world was that spell......"
Based on Azuki's voice, Kirito presumed that Azuki was the only female player amongst the group. Kirito took out a bisque bottle out of his storage and threw it to the fox beastgirl. Azuki caught the bottle with her hands, but eyed it suspiciously nonetheless.
Kirito: "It's just water."
Kirito then turned to Masaru, the monkeyman sitting at the rightmost end of the line.
Kirito: "So then......why did you guys try to kidnap that girl?"
At that point, Masaru glanced over behind Kirito. Yui was in Asuna's arms next to their two pets. The two pets had had their burns treated with ointment, and were even given potions to drink so that their HP recover to max as well, but the two of them still looked so mad that they could jump the four beastmen any moment now, still.
Masaru: "......Err, where should I begin......."
Kirito (internally): For a guy who's using a monkey (saru) avatar and even calls himself Masaru to boot, he sure does have an awfully intellectual and beautiful voice.
Masaru: "We, the ApoD community, arrived at the Second Stratum in the morning the day before yesterday, half a day behind the Asuca community. Though, while those guys found themselves in a snowland area that requires having countermeasures against the cold, we lucked out by finding ourselves in a woodland area, rich in both water, food, and resources, so we should've had no problem catching up to them in a snap. Our forty-man advance force comprised of five parties smoothly traversed the first ten kilometres and found an empty lot with clean spring water, so we decided to set up a supply base there for starters."
Kirito: "Wait, hold up. If your advance force numbers forty, how many people reached the Second Stratum amongst the ApoD community?"
Masaru (after glimpsing at Otto for a second): "Well, I will answer the question, but I've got nothing to back it up as the truth."
Kirito: "We'll be the ones to judge if it's true."
Masaru: "......Aproximately two hundred people. Though, I'm not implying that all of them are Diving in at the same time, of course."
Kirito (internally): Too handred!? The ALO Community currently only has thirteen, including me, Asuna and Yui. I want to believe the guy's just bluffing, but I can't make out if he's lying from his monkey expression.
Just as Kirito was about to give up on confirming that fact and prompt Masaru to continue his story, Yui pitched in:
Yui: "That person is likely not lying."
Kirito (internally): How can you tell? Oh right, Yui probably analysed Masaru's manner of speech and voice tone. Can't exactly expose that to these four.
Kirito: "That so, well then, guess I'll take you at your word then."
Yui: "Besides, there is a method to verify it, albeit not one-hundred percent guaranteed."
Kirito: "Huh? (eyes popping out in astonishment) How?"
Yui: "All Masaru-san needs to do is to open his Ring Menu and check on his Friend List count."
Kirito: "Oh...... ooh, I see."
Masaru: "Never would've thought of that......"
Friend messages were one of the few perks players still had in Unital Ring. Since you can never know when you'll need to contact a specific person, it was actually highly likely that Masaru had added all of the ApoD players on the frontlines to his friend list. Masaru opened his Ring Menu and hit on the Communication icon without waiting for anyone to prompt him. Peeking into the window from behind, Kirito noticed the number '218' written on the top-right side of the Friend List.
Kirito: "......Well, I'm convinced."
Masaru: "Good for you."
After closing his menu, Masaru returned to his story.
Masaru: "So then, in order to set up our base in the vacant forest lot, we first started felling trees. We didn't have quite enough room, and there were heaps of high-grade-looking conifers growing around the vacant lot, see. We've got tons of Therians boasting musclepower, like our boy Otto here, so things went smooth as......"
Kirito: "What's a Therian?"
Masaru: "Oh, it's short for Therianthrope. That's how we call beastmen in ApoD."
Kirito: "I see. Go on."
Masaru: "......smooth as butter, and after five or six trees chopped down, we were about to start sawing the logs with a different team concurrently, when it happened. Around twenty NPCs started attacking us with arrows from the depths of the forest, see. And those arrows both hit and hurt like crazy......"
Otto: "It's no exaggeration that they scored a hundred hits with every hundred arrows. (shaking like a leaf) It's a miracle we didn't have any casualties. That's all thanks to Casper issue an order to retreat so quickly."
Kirito (internally): Okay, that's a name I haven't heard before, but we're going nowhere with this if I ask for elaborations for every single thing like this, so I'll just let them finish.
Masaru: "So then, we ran out of there without looking back, but the NPCs pursued us tenaciously. In the end, we got stuck running for eight whole kilometres. Once we were out of the forest, the pursuers finally stopped coming after us, so we set up camp there for the time being and decided to send out eight Therians suited for covert ops as a scout unit. Me and Azuki here were on it too."
Azuki, finally having washed out the nasty aftertaste, nodded in response.
Azuki: "It was filled with guys like Masaru and me, also a weasel, mongoose, ocelot and guys like that, who were fully confident in their sneaking skills. All of us were spec'd in the 《Agility》(俊敏) tree, and we'd taken on 《Vanishing》 (隠れ身) and 《Acrobatics》 (軽業) to boot, so we figured there was no way we'd get discovered, no matter who our enemy was. True enough, we managed to reach the empty lot without any fuss, so we kicked our ninja power to high and started looking for the enemy base super cautiously, but......"
Azuki's pointed snout drooped down at that point. Masaru took over retelling the story with frustration and terror seeping into his words.
Masaru: "......We were heading towards the depths of the forest, but around the three hundred metre mark, it happened. By the time any one of us caught on, we were fully surrounded by those NPCs. They pointed their arrows and uttered something to us, but we couldn't make head or tails of what they were saying...... Just as I thought that we were goners for sure now, Mageshima the mongoose used his 《Kokuen no Iki》 (黒煙の息, Breath of Black Smoke) and......"
Kirito (unable to control his impulse to ask): "Ko-kokuennoiki? The heck is that?"
Masaru (shrugging): "An inherited skill that blow out a smokescreen. Just like the 《Kaen no Iki》 (火炎の息, Breath of Flames) I used a while back."
Kirito: "Oh......"
Kirito managed to hold off satisfying his curiosity regarding what breath attacks the other beastmen could use.
Masaru: "......Before we got into this situation, we'd all agreed that whenever Mageshima used his smokescreen, we'd hightail it out of there, so I turned tail like crazy. I kept on running in zigzags as arrows whooshed by me the entire time and somehow managed shake off our enemies, so I returned to our rendezvous point that we'd agreed upon beforehand...... but only five out of eight of us actually made it there."
Kirito: "......The three others died?"
Masaru: "Nah. Mageshima, Catoko and Schwein got caught by the enemy."
Kirito: "............"
Getting captured and confined was no laughing matter in any VRMMO game. All the more so in Unital Ring with its one-life rule.
Kirito: "Welp sure, I feel for you...... but how does that have anything to do with kidnapping the girl?"
Masaru: "......We can't just leave Mageshima and the others in the lurch. Though, even if we did mobilise our entire force of two hundred, fighting off those guys in the forest is a pipe dream at best. All we had left was to work out some sort of deal with them...... but I'm sure you're already aware, Kirito-san. Unless you acquire the appropriate language skill, you can't even process words from an NPC as actual words. And the only way to acquire language skills is by speaking with them tenaciously, but those guys start attacking us the moment they lay eyes on us. The moment we made an enemy out of them on our first move, we'd already lost our chance at the diplomatic route."
Ralcas: "But dude! We weren't makin' an enemy out of them, nor were we the ones who made the first move; those dudes just up an started showerin' us with arrows while we were just trying to set up a base. Sure, most of the NPCs in this world are hostile against us, but come on, that was so uncalled for!"
Otto: "If we're going there, the existence of UniRin itself was uncalled for."
Masaru: "......I do have some ideas for the reason behind the preemptive attack against us...... but let's save that for later."
Masaru turned his gaze to Yui for a moment.
Masaru: "Since mounting a rescue by force and peaceful negotiations were both unfeasible......the only choice we had left was to sniff around for some unconventional approach. Following that line of thought, we'd been busy gathering any and all intel we could get our hands on since the day before yesterday. As part of our effort, our companions who've had unused sub-accounts converted their characters to prominent games...... and the dudes we've had infiltrating ALO's starting point came back with very intriguing news. Apparently, right next to the stairs to the Second Stratum, THE famous 《Black Swordsman》 managed to construct a large-scale base, where he managed to get a whole two different tribes of NPCs to move in. Forging cordial relationships with NPCs in general is tough enough already, so managing to get them to move into your base in such a short span of time is no easy feat to pull off. In order to investigate what was going on in more detail, we sent in a few more additional people to infiltrate Stiss Ruins and then one of them had a stroke of luck to slip into a caravan headed for Kirito-san's town..... for Ruis na Rig."
At this point, Kirito recalled hearing from Friscal that there were several newcomer players sniffing around Stiss Ruins lately. Friscal had speculated that these fishy players could have been spies from Asuka or ApoD.
Masaru: "So then, the guy was asking around Ruis na Rig, when he caught wind of a strange player amongst Kirito-san's companions. The player looked like a small girl, but she could fluently communicate with the NPCs, so word was that she could've been the one who persuaded the NPCs to move in to Ruis na Rig...... If such a feat was truly possible, there's only one conceivable explanation for it."
Kirito (internally): Oh no, he's realised that Yui's not human, but rather an AI.
Masaru (turning his gaze to Yui once more): "The girl must've inherited some sort of language grouping skill, right? Something that allows her to communicate with any sort of species she encounters, or something...... If that skill was effective on UniRin's NPCs too, she might be able communicate with the dudes who kidnapped Mageshima and the others, too."
Masaru turned to Kirito once more.
Masaru: "See now why we've tried to kidnap the girl?"
Kirito: "............"
Kirito (internally): "Sure, I 'see', but that doesn't mean I've got even a milligram of approval for the whole idea.
But before Kirito could voice his displeasure, Yui suddenly asked Masaru a question.
Yui: "In that case, why did you not request our cooperation through peaceful means?"
Masaru: (caught off guard)
Otto: "Would you have accepted our request if we had come in asking for your help?"
Yui (puffing her chest out in Asuna's embrace): "Of course!"
Kirito (internally): Aww, I'm so proud of her. But whether I'd have approved of it as her guardian is a different matter. ApoD players had forty elites boasting this much power and they still easily got routed by these western forest NPCs. Just imagining Yui being subjected to those arrows sends a chill down my spine.
Kirito: "......Just because she's okay with the idea, don't push your luck trying to ask for her help NOW.
Since the beastmen found themselves taken aback by Yui's response, Kirito warned them not to get any bright ideas, before realising that there was a question he should've brought up much earlier.
Kirito: "In the first place...... what were those NPCs like?"
Masaru: "Oh, did I forget to mention that? They're elves...... Since they've got darkish skin, I presume they're what you call Dark Elves."
Kirito: "Dark......Elves."
Masaru: "As mentioned earlier, we couldn't make head or tails of what they were saying, but there was one single thing we managed to make out: what they call themselves......guess it's the name of their species, or their country or something. As I recall...... it was 'Loosura' or 'Lyusula', or something along those lines."
Chapter 10
Alice: "............This is truly marvelous."
When Alice let slip how impressed she was, Selka turned around with a smile, holding a just-finished bottle of de-deepfreezing elixir in hand.
Selka: "Nee-sama, you'd be able to make these yourself if you learnt the steps involved. Your arts authority is higher than mine, after all."
Alice (internal monologue via narrator): True, my System Control Authority is currently just barely higher than Selka's, but that's likely due to disposing of the Abyssal Horror, rather than due to hard work studying. I had diligently studied the arts back when I'd been a low-rank knight, and I am rather confident in my element manipulation skills, but I don't feel like I hold up a candle to the sophisticated and bold techniques Selka developed as she climbed up from the position of apprentice sister all the way up to the rank of commander for the Order of Sacred Arts Practitioners. The complexity of 《Liquifying the Deep Freeze Unfreezing Art》 simply boggles the mind.
The process for creating the unfreezing elixir required placing sacred flowers enriched with Sacred Power on a workbench to use as catalysts, then generating light (luminous), darkness (umbral), water (aqueous), and crystal (crystalline) elements simultaneously. After some complex processing of the elements, they need to be maintained in standby mode as the caster recites one line from the ultra-long defreezing command. The effect command is then transferred to the elements, which are then transformed into liquid form that is stored in a crystal bottle. The process is then repeated with the next line in the command. While a similar process could be used even by apprentice Sacred Arts practitioners to create Life-restoring elixirs, it paled in comparison to how high-end Selka's art was. And Selka was likely using Incarnation to maintain the elements during the procedure.
The fact that her little tomboy sister had grown up to become such a master of the Sacred Arts made Alice feel the weight of all the time that had gone by during the Maximum Acceleration Phase. But Alice was happy to know that her Hollowsphere Shape command line was used in Selka's art. It allowed her to feel a link between Underworld's past and present.
----------
Two hours had passed since the group had left the frozen Integrity Knights on the 99th floor, and returned to the 95th floor. In addition to preparing the unfreezing elixirs for the Integrity Knights, they also needed to stock up on food and drinks, as well as clean up rooms for them. Airy went on food duty, Ronye and Tiese went on room-cleaning duty, while Alice volunteered to help Selka with her art, but all she actually managed to help was to prepare bottles and catalysts on the workbench, store the completed elixirs in a box, and then just admire Selka's fine skills. Setting up their workplace took an hour, so they only began producing the unfreezing elixir at 10 PM. One hour of work since then had resulted in producing five elixirs.
Alice suggested taking a break, in consideration of the fact that Selka hadn't fully recovered from her 140 year slumber. Selka tried to put on a brave front, but staggered right afterwards, so Alice didn't take no for an answer and made Selka sit down. Alice poured some water into a cup and then used heat elements to heat it up, before offering the cup to Selka.
Selka: "Huu...... ――Creating elements so quickly without an incantation... I'd expect nothing less from you, Nee-sama."
Alice: "It's not something worth speaking highly of......It's a skill for battle."
Selka: "And that battle of yours saved Underworld, Nee-sama."
Selka then beckoned Alice to sit down, and the two shared a hug. The sweet scent from Selka's silky hair felt nostalgic to Alice, but she had no memories from her childhood and only remembered the five months she had spent with Selka after setting off from the Central Cathedral. And yet Alice felt that her memories from her early life still lingered in the Lightcube that stored Alice's soul.
Alice: "......Say, Selka. When things settle down...... do you want to return to Rulid?"
Alice did feel some hesitation at her proposal. After all, it's been two hundred years since Alice had set off from Rulid Village. Her parents had likely already been called to the Heavenly Realm by now. And since neither Alice, nor Selka had returned to the village in the end, it was likely that the Zuberg line of village elders had also come to an end. But Selka still nodded in response.
Selka: "Sure, Nee-sama. I haven't been to the village since 436 HEC, too......"
Alice: "Did you return to Rulid often?"
Selka: "Nah, only once every several years. 436 HEC was the year when Father......"
Selka didn't manage to finish her thought, since a shockwave shook the Central Cathedral at that very moment.
The two girls immediately stood up, when another shockwave hit the Cathedral. Then another. Alice looked around the room and spotted a rain of sparks beyond the potted plants at the western edge of the floor. Alice had only one explanation for what was going on: something was hitting the walls of the upper floors and exploding on collision. Alice ran over to the edge, passed by the potted plants, and stuck out from the edge of the floor to look up at what was going on. About twenty metres above, the outer wall around where the 98th or 99th floor should be located, Alice spotted countless embers coiling around the wall. While the wall itself seemed to be intact, she couldn't rule out small-scale damage in the dark from her position.
Selka (having caught up and pointing to the western sky): "Nee-sama, look there!"
Upon turning her gaze to where Selka was pointing, Alice had her breath taken away by what she saw. Right above the horizon line was Companion Star Admina (formerly known as Lunaria), and high in the sky above it were three jet-black shadows. Each one seemed to be over 30 mer wide and sporting long wings on either side——
The three shadows were practically identical to 《Arvus》, the dragoncraft Alice had destroyed on Companion Star Admina. As the two girls stared at them in wonder, orange light flashed below the three dragoncrafts. Upon parting from the dragoncrafts, the light fired straight towards the upper floors of the Cathedral with a monstrous roar. Once they struck the walls, three enormous explosions set off, shaking the white tower. The shockwave made Selka stagger, so Alice instinctively drew her into her arms and stepped back. Alice was utterly at a loss as to what she should do. As Alice was wondering who could have committed high treason of attacking the Cathedral, she heard Airy's voice beckoning her and Selka to return to the centre of the floor. Still wearing her cooking scarf on her head, Airy raised her right hand high up and shouted:
Airy: "System Call! Activate Emergency Mode!"
Alice had never heard of that command before. Just then, the floor beside Airy shone purple and several large windows rose up, surrounding Airy. The girl quickly got to work on the windows. Suddenly, the Cathedral shook again, but not because of the explosions. Instead, marble plates rose up at the edge of the floor, sealing the aperture. Moments later, another set of explosions struck the Cathedral, but the resulting shockwaves seemed considerably lighter.
Airy: "......I have sealed all windows and apertures and reinforced all thin-walled segments. We should be able to hold out for a while now."
Alice didn't know where to start with her questions: Did the Cathedral always have this defence mechanism? Where did the three dragoncrafts come from? Why, and under whose orders were they attacking the Cathedral? But Alice already had an answer for her second question.
Alice: "Those dragoncrafts... did they come from Admina?
Airy: "Most likely. Even military-grade dragoncrafts would take five hours to reach Cardina from Admina at that size, thus right after Kirito-sama and Eolyne-sama neutralised the secret base, these dragoncrafts must have set off from a different base on Admina."
Selka: "It should have been utterly beyond their expectations to have their base neutralised, and yet it's incredible how fast they took action against us......"
At that moment, Ronye and Tiese rushed up the stairs, both having removed their armour. Airy opened up a new pop-up window with a detailed video of the three attacking dragoncrafts. Just then, the dragoncrafts fired another set of missiles.
Alice: "Airy, the Cathedral's building blocks are still categorised as Indestructible, right?"
Airy: "Yes, the Esteemed Supreme Priest had assigned the highest Priority and self-repair values to them, which holds up to this day. However......please take a look at this."
Airy pointed to a different window with several bar graphs lined up crosswise, one of which was in the red. She explained that these were directional Incarnometre readings and that the red bar was indicating high Incarnation values on the western side of the Cathedral, where the missiles were striking. This was implying that the dragoncrafts were using military-grade Incarnation weapons.
Tiese: "This is bad news......Although the type and intensity of the Incarnation generated by the jet shells may have some sway on the exact number of attacks that can be taken in stride, the walls may lose their ability to withstand the explosions if the 《Overwriting Effect》 is allowed to accumulate with repeated attacks......"
Alice had never heard of the term "Overwriting Effect", but it was clear what the term was referring to. Incarnation was the power to make the impossible possible via intervention on the laws of the world through mental images conceived by the soul. In other words, Incarnation was the power to overwrite the System (the fundamental laws) of the world. The Cathedral walls' Priority and self-repair function were also categorised as part of these fundamental laws of the world, which meant that it wasn't exactly impossible to destroy them with sufficiently strong Incarnation.
Airy: "Currently, the outer wall on the ninety-ninth floor's western side has lost eleven percent of its Life. Although self-repairs are ongoing, they are unable to keep up with the damage output due to the Cathedral's insufficient capability to absorb Sacred Power."
Alice: "If the wall lost approximately ten percent Life in four attacks......I presume it will be able to withstand about thirty-six more attacks?"
Airy: "Unfortunately, the longer the attacks keep damaging the wall, the stronger the Incarnation weapon Overwriting Effect will become in turn. I would say that the wall will be destroyed in around ten more hits or so, most likely."
Following the fifth attack,
Selka: "......Is it just a coincidence that they are attacking the ninety-ninth floor......?"
Airy: "No, I would say that the assailants are targeting the sealed Order of Integrity Knights specifically."
Despite Airy's calm demeanor, Alice noticed her cheeks tensing up just a little bit. Airy opened up another window, which showed a bird's eye view of Centoria from the south. The top of Cathedral tower in the middle of the city was engulfed in flames from the west side. Technically, it wasn't the wall itself burning, but rather the remains of the explosives launched at it, though from ground level it would look like the Cathedral itself going up in flames.
Although it was past 23:00, the night sky was illuminated by strong searchlights, and there were several vehicles with red revolving lights on ground level. While looking at this scenery, Alice recalled that there should be a base in North Centoria for the space force, which should be the one responsible for air defence in the city. As Alice pondered why the space force hadn't shown up yet, the video zoomed in on a certain point - Lake Norkia, and the old imperial family's domain, where multiple lights could be spotted. As the video feed continued to zoom in on this domain.
Ronye: "Ah......!"
Those weren't lights, but rather flames. Multiple buildings within the space force base were engulfed in tempestuous flames.
Alice: "The space force base......."
Tiese: "Oh no......! The base is where Stica and Laurannei went off to! Airy, can't you zoom in the video a bit more!?"
Airy (shaking her head): "My apologies, Tiese-sama. The art employed on this remote video board can only display a video feed from the viewpoint of Centoria's sky. I shall try adjusting the brightness right now."
With some quick button mashing, the scenery in the video feed gradually became brighter, until they were able to make out a black shadow right above the base. A fourth large-scale dragoncraft. Although the dragoncraft was just hovering in place, small explosions continued to erupt throughout the base. It seemed that the enemy ground forces were engaged with the base's personnel.
Meanwhile, the dragoncrafts stationed at the Cathedral fired their sixth volley.
Alice (touching her sword): "......I shall curb the attack on the Cathedral."
Alice's Fragrant Olive had already proven to be effective against the dragoncrafts on Admina, but these three units were hovering over an urban area and could cause significant casualties if they were to crash into the town. The other issue was that the dragoncrafts were nearly a kilometre away from the Cathedral, so she wouldn't be able to reach them from the Cathedral itself. As Alice continued haphazardly surveying her surroundings for ideas, something in the corner caught her eye. As Alice was about to ask Airy about that particular object.... there was a change with the dragoncrafts in the air.
The one in the middle started emitting white light. Although Alice at first presumed it was some sort of new attack, the light actually went upwards... forming a large human figure. It was half-transparent, like a video projection. Gradually, the blurry human figure took on more details, taking the shape of a man. He was wearing a coat with a high collar and two rows of buttons. On his shoulders were epaulettes with decorative strings, on the left side of his chest were several medals. He had sharp facial features, and the light in his eyes was chilling. Age-wise, he seemed around forty years old. His lips with a small moustache began to move, letting out a sonorous voice.
『To Central Capital Centoria, as well as all inhabitants of the Four Empires. I (using a pronoun that implies royalty) am Emperor Agmarl Wesdarath the Sixth. The rightful ruler of the entire Human Empire.』
Agmarl's voice was amplified through some sort of art or device and easily went through the Cathedral's walls, reaching Alice's ears. Alice remembered the name "Agmarl Wesdarath". Back when Alice had still been in charge of supervising Centoria as an Integrity Knight, the emperor of the western empire had been named Aldareth Wesdarath the Fifth. And his father was Agmarl Wesdarath the Fifth, as she recalled. The names of the first emperors and their fathers (founders) were considered sacred in each imperial family, so much so that the prime imperial prince would always be given either of the two names. While Agmarl VI seemed to follow this naming pattern, there was no solid proof that he was an actual descendant of the Wesdarath imperial line.
As the girls stared at the projection in silence, the man seemed to look straight into the video panel, before announcing in a solemn voice:
『O illicit occupiers of the Central Cathedral's Sealed Floors. I presume you have already acknowledged the offensive capabilities of my dragoncrafts. I shall bestow you ten minutes of grace time. You best use this time to disengage all defensive walls and swear your allegiance to me. Or else, I shall destroy the Sealed Floors, leaving not a trace behind.』
Chapter 11
It took thirty minutes for Kirito and Asuna to return to the rest of their raid party and explain what had happened with the beastmen.
Klein: "Whoa whoa man, aincha bein' a li'l bit too lenient with 'em?"
Lisbeth (not even hiding her indignation): "Look, Kirito, those dudes kidnapped Yui-chan. Regardless of the circumstances, how do you expect us to have a relationship of mutual trust with dudes who pulled that stunt!"
Sinon (calmly): "Heck, don't you think we're getting too little out of working together with ApoD's community? All they had to offer was a cease-fire agreement, remember? And even that offer is only a verbal guarantee."
The beastmen's request was to have Yui accompany them to the western woodland area to serve as an interpreter for their talks with the NPCs. However, the NPCs were already completely hostile against them, so for all they knew, the NPCs could just attack the delegation without even giving them a chance to talk, and there was a real possibility of Yui not being able to escape from the deadly-accurate arrows. And their only reward for taking on these risks would be a temporary "ApoD and ALO communities won't attack each other while on the Second Stratum" cease-fire agreement. Technically, Otto did mention that this was the only thing he could offer at the given moment and would discuss a more concrete reward with Casper, but he didn't make it sound all that realistic. Considering the difference in manpower, the ALO community would seemingly be the one to benefit more from a cease-fire agreement, but the two communities are spread hundreds of kilometres apart, so they wouldn't really have much contact anyway.
In the end, Kirito decided to release the beastmen prisoners, telling them that he would talk things over with his companions. This wasn't because he was amazed at their dedication to save their companions, but because the name of the NPC tribe had been shockingly nostalgic. Exchanging a glance with Asuna, who was still holding Yui in her embrace, Kirito tried to argue with the other members of the raid party.
Kirito: "I know you all have valid reasons to disagree; I also think that we should just ignore whatever troubles the ApoD community is having and focus on our own progress. But...... Asuna and I want to find out more about the NPCs the ApoD community came into contact with for personal reasons."
Silica: "Find out more...... about the NPCs?"
Kirito: "Yeah......Back in SAO, Asuna and I had undertaken a super longwinded series of quests called the 《Elf War Campaign Quest》. The quest had you allying yourself with either the Forest Elves or Dark Elves and gathering key items for them...... The tribe name for the Forest Elves was《Kales'Oh》. And the one for the Dark Elves was 《Lyusula》. (holding back the flood of memories) The NPCs the ApoD community encountered are also Dark Elves, who also call themselves Lyusulians. That doesn't seem like a coincidence. If the Unital Ring world is somehow tied to SAO and Aincrad, I want to know more. No matter what."
Everyone remained silent for a few moments. Before long, Argo, having translated Kirito's speech for Zarion and Sissy, Argo hopped up from the rock she was using as a chair.
Argo: "Kii-bou, is it mere curiosity drivin' yA? Or d'ya suppose figurin' out why the NPCs are usin' the same name for their tribe will offer something of value towards clearing Unital Ring, hMM?"
Upon finishing her words, Argo fixed her gaze on Kirito, her stare seemingly seeing right through him. Kirito realised that Argo did in fact see right through him, as she had been frequently interacting with him and Asuna from the very first floors. And she had encountered 《her》 while helping with the Elf War quest. So, she had obviously caught on to the other, unspoken reason why Kirito and Asuna couldn't ignore the term "Lyusula"... and yet she didn't point it out, which meant that she was interested in how deep their resolve was.
Kirito: "I do think it will offer value. After all, intel from NPCs is of utmost value in this world. From what I've heard, it doesn't sound like you'd have been able to beat the Gilnaris Hornets without intel from the Pattels; it's highly likely that the same will be true for the Second Stratum."
Friscal: "But dude, ain't we gonna mostly stick to a southern approach on our way to the Third Stratum? Our route should have its own share of NPCs, so we could just chum up with those guys instead, ain't that good enough for ya?"
Holger: "I'm of the same opinion. If anything, the ApoD community having a feud with those Dark Elves only serves to our advantage, no?"
Kirito: "Yeah, you do have a point. But...... back in SAO, the Dark Elves and Forest Elves stood out amongst all NPCs with the level of their civilisation. If the Dark Elves in this world happen to follow the same pattern as in SAO, they're bound to not only have indispensable intel for our progressing efforts, but also high-ranked production skills and magic skills. If we can get them to share some of those experience with us, we could drastically improve the scale of our firepower."
Kirito (internally): Everything I said was spoken from the heart, but not everything in my heart was spoken. The reason why I didn't bring up 《her》 name——the name of Kizmel, the Royal Guard, was because it would make things too complicated, and because I fear that it would make the hope - as fleeting as the haze - that Asuna and I have been harbouring seem actually feasible. It'd be too painful to experience the grief of loss we finally managed to come to terms with three and a half years ago......
Holger (folding his arms): Hm～～～～m, well when you put it that way, it does sound tempting......"
Friscal (also folding his arms): "True that. So the western forest route is harder to traverse, but offers a chance at earning some powerful weapons and magic, while the southern grassland route is easy to traverse but you're not going to find much of value there either... if that's how the balancing here works...... then it means our best option would be to stock up on some good stuff from the elves to the west, and then traverse to our destination through the southern grasslands... I guess......"
Zarion:
Kirito pointed to a small ruin on the opposite shore, where Masaru had been hiding for his ambush for a long period of time, proving that no dangerous monsters spawned in the area.
Afterwards, the gang had Agah ferry them across the river - Kirito going first this time. The ruins consisted of three buildings of various sizes, seemingly once having been a watchtower and a station for soldiers watching over the bridge, but they were now mere shadows of what the buildings once were, as most of the roofs and around half of the walls had collapsed. The gang built a simple shelter by repairing the biggest of the ruined buildings (about the size of Kirito and Asuna's log house) with the logs and planks they had on hand. At that point, Holger called for another break, so Kirito decided to log off himself this time. After finding a place to sit down where he wouldn't get in the way, he opened his menu and pressed on the logout button.
Kazuto woke up in his bed and took off his AmuSphere. He had forgotten to leave his nightlight on, so the room was pitch dark. As he began searching for the remote for the lights, he noticed his smartphone notification light on. The boy took his phone and saw that there was one notification: a missed call that came a mere minute prior. The caller - was Alice. Just as he was about to call her back, the phone began vibrating. Kazuto answered the call.
Kazuto: "Alice, nice to hear from you again. Hope you had your fill of time with Sel......"
Alice: 『Kirito, please come over to Rath at once!』
Kazuto: "Huh......W-what's the matter?"
Alice: 『We have a serious situation going on in Underworld! I will be going back right away, but we will need help from you and Asuna too!』
Kirito was about to ask for details on what the "serious situation" was all about, but he swallowed his words when he realised that Alice was as tense as during the battle against Administrator, implying that they couldn't afford to waste a single second.
Kazuto: "Alright. I'll go contact Asuna, after which we'll go Dive into Underworld as soon as we can."
Alice: 『Please do. I shall do all in my power to defend the Cathedral until then』
After Alice hung up, Kazuto logged back into Unital Ring and passed on Alice's words to Asuna and Yui. He then turned to his other companions.
Kirito: "Sorry, Asuna and I have an emergency to get to. I know we were just about to get down to real business, but could I ask for Yui and two others to watch over our avatars?"
Klein: "Whoa whoa, Kiri-no-ji, is this really the time for emer (realising something)......alright, we've got you covered, man."
Kirito: "Sorry, and thanks!"
Asuna and Kirito then logged out. It took him nearly two minutes to log into UR and log out again. But it would take at least an hour to get to Roppongi even with a taxi. However, Kazuto didn't even glance at his phone, and instead ran over to a pair of cardboard boxes piled up in the corner of his room.
Reactions/short summary of other chapters (SAO Wikia Discord)
C12 is back to UW.Alice returned from her two minute logout.
Alice: "How long is the grace period going to last!?"
Selka: "Seven minutes, Nee-sama. Did you manage to contact Kirito!?"
Alice: "Yes, he'll be here as soon as he can...... or so he said, but...... in the Real World, the house Kirito's living in is over 30 kilors away from the facilities that allow transporting oneself to Underworld. I presume it will take him at least an hour, if not more, to get here."
Ronye (daydreaming): "Kirito-sempai's home......"
Ronye (getting serious again): "One hour, huh. ――But we can't keep depending solely on Kirito-sempai all the time."
So, they're splitting into teams. Alice and Airy are boarding Airy's Flight Disc to protect the Cathedral. Ronye and Tiese will be using aerial element flight to distract the enemy and to reinforce the Space Force base. Alice entrusted her dragon eggs to Selka. She kept Eldrie's whip for mental support.
Selka's left to operate the Cathedral's control windows.
Selka opened the defensive wall to allow Airy to move the Flight Disk outside.
Alice noticed the countless dents and cracks on the Cathedral's walls. Normally, they'd be easily repaired by now, but the Incarnation Weapons' 《Overwriting Effect》 meant that barely any repairs had been made by now. Alice felt anger welling up within her to an unexpected degree. Alice had apparently felt no small amount of attachment to the Cathedral.
Alice faced the three dragoncrafts. The middle one created the hologram again.
Agmarl: 『O illicit occupier. If you wish to beg for my mercy and swear allegiance to me, you may drop the sword at your waist.』
Alice noticed that the evacuation of the residents hadn't made much headway, so she couldn't risk letting the dragoncrafts crash into the ground. She felt that Agmarl had no right to call himself emperor when he was using the people he was claiming were citizens under his rule as hostages. Airy used the 《Wide-Range Voice Amplification Art》 on her.
Raising her sword above her,
Alice: 『My name is Alice...... Alice Synthesis Thirty, Integrity Knight of the Axiom Church!!』
Alice swings down her sword towards the hologram. Agmarl shows some minimal signs of surprise.
Alice: 『Agmarl Wesdarath VI, no matter whether you truly are the descendant of the Imperial Family as you claim to be, or whether you are just some pretentious fraud, you shall not be allowed to oppose the words of an Integrity Knight!! I order you: land your dragoncrafts outside the Centoria municipal area, halt your assault of the Space Force base, and surrender with all your soldiers at once!!』
After hearing how the rebellion of the emperors came about under the pretext that the Human Empire Unification council was rebelling against the Axiom Church, Alice had just a sliver of hope that he would not be able to defy orders under the name of the Axiom Church if he were claiming to be the descendant of the Western Empire's emperor....
Agmarl: 『You are the pretentious fraud, little girl. The Axiom Church was abolished an entire two hundred years ago and all their lowly knights died out. You are just a foolish toddler, still clinging to the fairy tale of the Order of Integrity Knights being sealed to be resurrected one day. You are no more than a pilferer living as a recluse on the Central Cathedral's Sealed Floors. I shall deign to give you one more chance. Drop your sword and prostrate yourself on that ant of a flying contraption of yours!! Or else, I shall burn you to ashes with the fire of my dragoncrafts!!』
Airy (remaining calm despite her disc being insulted): "Alice-sama, I believe his words just now were not aimed at you, but rather at the soldiers under his command to prevent them from being shaken by you. It is all but clear that the previous attack was specifically aimed at the knights under Deep Freeze at the cathedral; meaning that we should presume that the man is fully aware that the former Order of Integrity Knights is sealed on the 99th floor, as we had assumed."
Alice: 『——I shall prove to you that I am the Integrity Knight Alice with my Divine Object, the Fragrant Olive Sword!! Fire away your propulsiles if you so wish!! As of this moment, not a single one of them shall touch the Central Cathedral!!』
Agmarl: 『In that case, I shall deign to turn you into charcoal along with that sword of yours!!』
That's where C12 ends.
-----
Chapter 13 turns to Stica and Laura.
Stica and Laura are fighting against a horde of some sort of monsters in armour that are highly resistant to damage and don't feel pain.
Ten minutes prior, Stica and Laura stayed up past lights out time to chat about all of the day's events when the hangers of all the Space Force companies went up in explosions.
Star King himself, apparently, designed the Space Force headquarters
Anyway, large dragoncraft that looks just like the one destroyed on Admina, bombed the hangars and is deploying monster soldiers. But for some reason, it's not bombing the central office. The girls realised that the attackers were trying to take custody of something held there... or capture someone present there alive.
Girls presume they're after Commander Herlentz
Vice Commander (via speakers): To all Integrity Pilots: arm yourselves and head for the central office. Your top priority is to ensure the safety of Pilot Commander Herlentz, followed by eliminating the hostile creatures invading us. It's highly likely the Commander is at his office or his living room on the 7th floor. You are free to move out individually without waiting for your next orders.
Girls used Aerial Elemental Jump Art to run through the air after jumping out of the 3rd floor window of their dorm.
Using this technique, they reached the 3rd floor of the headquarters. And then climbed up to the 7th floor, where they encountered the monsters. That's how they got into the battle at the beginning of the chapter.
Stica: "Laura, get all these guys to bunch up all in one place somehow!"
Laura: "Figure out what the 'somehow' entails before giving me orders."
Laura goes into action immediately.
Laura: "Sti, let's go around that enemy and slip through to the rear! One, zero!"
Stica (internally): You're supposed to do it to the count of three!
The girls managed to slip through the monster, but its nata grazed Stica's uniform and easily cut through it... despite the fact that the uniform has high resistance to slashes and Arts.
Meanwhile, Laura suddenly decelerated after slipping through their foe and triggered a Secret Move: Valetio-style, 《Gyakurou (head/choppy sea)》. Crimson horizontal slash hit the monster's flank as it was turning around, flinging it deeper into the corridor.
The move she used was handed down in the Schtrinen/Shtolienen family for generation. Stica had taught Laura the move and is now surprised over her mastery of it.
The monster Laura flung away crashed into the other monster.
Stica generated 5 cryogenic elements on her left and 4 on her right (the thumb was used to keep her sword in place). Then she fired them at the monsters and bursted the elements.
Stica then used Incarnation to boost the power of the frost, making the ice thicker.
After boosting the size of the ice to reach the ceiling, Stica felt dizzy but Laura caught her.
The girls ran further along, but encountered four more creatures.
Apparently, Stica's the brain in the duo - it was her role to make the calls on what they should do since kindergarten - so Laura prompted her to think of something. But Stica was out of ideas.
Just as Stica was about to volunteer to be a decoy, the window behind them burst into fragments. Stica thought that the dragoncraft sent more hostile creatures down... but she was wrong.
Through the window in came two women in knight outfits
Stica: "Esteemed ancestors! (correcting herself) .......Tiese-sama, Ronye-sama!"
Tiese: "Are you both okay!? (uses aerial elements to close the twenty metre distance between them in one go)."
Ronye (catching up): "These are......minions, I see."
The minions didn't close in on them, as if they'd been ordered to block passage through the corridor.
Stica: "Tiese-sama, the room behind them is where His Excellency Eolyne...!"
Tiese: "I know. Ronye, take the two on the left."
Ronye: "Roger."
The two knights took up stances in sync. Triggering a Secret Move that Stica wasn't aware of.
Laura (in a hoarse voice): "Seven......hit combo."
Apparently, the highest grade Secret Moves that Integrity Knights possessed in their arsenal were Norkia-style 《Raisenzan-Ryouran》 and 《Suirinzan-Hisame》, both four hit combo skills. And only five high-grade pilots were ever allowed to learn them. Stica and Laura weren't even allowed to learn the first kata without years of experience. And each of Tiese and Ronye's strikes held as much power as Tenzanreppa (Avalanche) behind them.
Stica: "Uh...... umm, Tiese-sama. What was that Secret Move just now......"
Tiese: "Aincrad-style, 《Deadly Sins》"
Stica: "A....Ain......?"
Just as the girls were about to move out, the shells of the supposedly Life-depleted husks of the minions suddenly quivered and blew up, gushing black mucus all over the place. The mucus didn't reach the girls, but it stuck to the floor and ceiling and instantly solidified, creating a multi-layered net that blocked off the passage.
The net withstood Ronye's aerial element small-scale tornado, and Laura's sword.
"Kiin!", came a faint sword clash from inside the room.
C13 ends.
-----
C14 turns back to Alice's PoV
Alice: "Enhance Armament!"
Alice's flower petals intercepted the missiles and they blew up three hundred mer away from the Cathedral.
The shockwave of the blast reached the disc, forcing the girls to hold on to the rails.
Alice lost nearly 10% of her petals in that blast.
Agmarl: 『Quite a marvelous display of acrobatics, little girl. In which case, I must offer you what you deserve. How about this next.』
As Agmarl snapped his finger, eighteen lights twinkled among the three dragoncrafts.
Airy: "......Alice-sama. We shall retreat. If you were to block that attack, Alice-sama, your sword will......"
Alice: "No, don't make us move. If I were to turn tail here, I could never call myself a knight again."
Alice's petals formed a rectangle barrier.
Agmarl raised his hand and swung it down.
Eighteen missiles fired.
Alice moved the handle of her sword to her lips for a moment before raising it again.
Suddenly.
The missiles seemed to have hit an invisible wall and blew up two hundred metres away from the petals.
Alice felt a strange sensation engulfing her as she stared on dumbfounded. She felt it somewhere before. This absolute sense of security.
After all eighteen explosions.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Alice, Airy"
Alice turned around and found a black-haired youth floating in midair in a pilot suit, with two swords hanging at his waist.
The fearless grin Alice saw was one she could never mistake for someone else's.
Alice: "......Kirito."
Alice: "How... so quickly......"
Kirito: "You can say your thanks to Kikuoka-san. The guy sent an STLP to my....... nevermind, let's save that for later. I've gotta go support the Space Force base."
Alice: "B...but still, what are we going to do about this"
Kirito tried to say something, but then...a pure white ray of light went over their heads, piercing the top of the dragoncraft and blowing away the hologram device.
Alice turned around and looked up at the Central Cathedral behind her. There was a small figure on the terrace-shaped part of the hundreth floor. Long wavy hair. A familiar Integrity Knight armour and mantle. In its hand was a needle-like-dainty rapier.
Alice: "............Fanatio-dono."
Fanatio gave a slight smile.
End of C14
-----
C15 begins from the perspective of Pilot, Second Class Ragi Quint. Ragi's injured and minion blood is toxic with paralytic properties.
Apparently, pilots learn that the best way to counter poison is to create liquefied light elements and pour them into wounds. But his tongue is already paralysed.
Eolyne's in the room fighting against the minions.
Eolyne's been fighting for over 15 minutes straight and brought down five foes. And he's getting tired... after all, one of them managed to pop one of his shirt buttons now.
Ragi: "............Gu......"
Eolyne: "Ragi, don't move. The poison's going to spread."
Ragi (internally): My role is to protect you
The Quint family is a lineage known for a certain runner-up of the Four Empire Unification Tournament and then lifetime head of the North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy...
The famous swordswoman Azurica Quint:
Apparently, Ragi met Eolyne along the way to his dorm and Eol suddenly asked him to assist with something: carrying materials from the library on the fifth floor of the headquarters to Eolyne's office..
Seeing that Eolyne looked unusually exhausted, Ragi offered to continue helping with food and drinks, as well as looking through the documents. Just as Ragi realised it was getting late (past 11 o'clock), Eolyne suddenly got up and looked up at the ceiling of his office. "They sure got us......"
Then came the explosions.
Multiple minions stormed the office.
Ragi tried fighting back, but regular attacks didn't do anything and when he finally managed to actually wound one with a Secret Move, he got smacked back and covered in the monster's blood, so he collapsed near the door.
Just then, Ragi noticed a pair of shiny boots passing by. Looking up, he saw a tall man with jet black wavy hair hanging on his back, wearing a dark gray cloak/overcoat that went all the way down to his knees.
The man passed through the minions without being attacked and then sat down on the large desk.
Then he kept sitting the and watching for the past fifteen minutes. Without moving throughout that time.
He had a cap of the same colour as his cloak. And Ragi could make out rom a glance that he had a beautiful face. Thin lips, sharp nose bridge, light blue eyes with a tingle of silver.
Eolyne used 《Raisenzan - Ryouran》 to beat the final minion, then used Incarnation to blow away the blood.
Right afterwards, Eolyne staggered. His exhaustion was clear as day.
*Clap* *clap*
Man: "You sure are something, Eol. To think you could take down all six 《Type 3 Minions》 despite being tired."
Eolyne wipes his sweat and straightens up.
Eolyne: "I could say the same to you...... after your magnificent getaway you went out of the way make your grand entrance all the way back at Cardina, must have been a rough time, Kouga. Not blessed with superior officers?"
Istar: "Pft, can't deny that. However, it's my policy to use anything that has worth to be used."
Istar (pointing at the window with a polite gesture): "Well then, could I trouble you to come to the roof? This level of warm reception is by far insufficient to receive the famed Eolyne Herlentz, His Excellency the Commander of the Integrity Pilot Order, after all.
Eolyne: "I think I'll pass. I've still got work unfinished."
Eolyne raises his sword, which he had been using to prop himself up until now.
Ragi couldn't keep up with the ensuing clash. But it didn't last long. Eolyne was blown away several seconds later.
Just then.
Someone's arm appeared out of thin air and caught him.
A long, faintly transparent door began to take shape midair around the Commander.
Beyond the door was jet black darkness... or more accurately, the night sky with countless shining stars.
A leg followed the arm. Then a body. Then the head.
Dressed in Pilot Order space suit and holding two swords at his waist.
Black hair and eyes the colour of deep night.
Ragi knew who this man was. Earlier that very day, Ragi had driven this very man to the base.
Ragi had thought that this was some special envoy from outside the Human Empire travelling incognito, but he was apparently greatly mistaken.
Showing a grin to the commander in his left arm, Kirito brushed up the flaxen-coloured hair that had fallen onto his mask, before saying.
Kirito: "Here I am to help, Eo."
(To be continued)
Afterword: *Reki apologising for taking so long to release the book. His excuse is that he's had a lot of non-novel work in the first half of the book. *Second apology: failing to dive into the mysteries behind the commander. Too much Alice content to write. *Some things post-Moon Cradle revealed. *Next book for sure is going to focus on Commander Eolyne. And also Tiese, Ronye, Selka and even Fanatio will get time to shine. *Due to ambiguity, Kawahara explains that Tiese and Ronye are six generations apart from Stica and Laura *The undebuted old knights finally appear on stage... at least as numbers. Airy said there was no way to unfreeze them at the moment, but they might get their long-awaited debut when the problems are resolved. *Apology for Scherzo movie delay due to corona. No date known at the time of the book's release. *FullDive event promo. Kawahara wrote the script. *Apology to abec and Miki for the troubles.
You havn't updated table of contents from Ch3
ReplyDeleteBecause C3+ don't have summaries yet. It's just one compilation of my reactions while reading.
DeleteI hope there's two STLP for Kirito and Asuna so Sugu & Shino can login using Old STL so I can see 3 Goddesses again and unite ☺
ReplyDeleteThank & thanks & thanks again :)
ReplyDeleteThe more Yui does something great/beneficial for the group, the more I'm afraid that something bad might happen to her in the end of the arc. They don't know what will happen to her when she dies in Unital Ring, right? I'm scared they might find it out. ^^'
ReplyDeleteI'm also excited to see more of the so far unknown Integrity Knights. I'm actually hoping for Eydis entering the main canon, but I think I shouldn't get my hopes up. ^^'
Anyway, thanks for your summary. I'm looking forward to the rest of your detailed ones. Keep up your amazing work!
(Same anonymous here)
DeleteSo according to the newest detailed chapter summary, it's sadly very unlikely that Eydis will make an appearance (not to mention that her/No. 10 being one of the knights hidden away contradicts the game canon anyway), which is a bummer, tbh. :(
I wished Alice had asked Ronye who she had married, I want to know that as well. :D
Thanks again for your work!
Ronnie hadn't been married you could see it in Vol 19 and Vol 20 she loves Kirito and no one else.
DeleteThe self-proclaimed Arabel family is probably a descendant of her little brother .
As proof you could see when Airy meet Kirito and his friends in previous volume, she mentions only Tiese kids have grown up but not Ronnie.
Means she doesn't have kids as if she had one she wouldn't leave them to grow up alone or it would be mentioned they have grown up.
Seems possible, yeah. I just wish she would have grown out of it and found love with someone else.
Delete(Same anonymous here, continuing with my rambling x3)
DeleteI'm wondering if Otto the tigerman is the same as the one we saw in Ordinal Scale. That would be great. :D
What I'm also wondering, now that the Dark Elves will appear in the future again: Aren't they part of New Aincrad when it was included in ALO? It definitely didn't sound like the quest campaign and Kizmel were there.
I think Kizmel will be there in some form or another. Maybe a Kizmel, but not THE Kizmel (similar to Eugeo and Eolyne perhaps)
Anyway, thanks for the new detailed chapter (and I hope my rambling isn't annoying. ^^')
> Ronnie hadn't been married you could see it in Vol 19 and Vol 20 she loves Kirito and no one else.
DeletePeople have a tendency of changing their mind with time. And Ronye's been living for several decades. Just because she thinks she can never love anyone else as a teen doesn't mean she will never mature and find a different love interest with time. And the story specifically said that Tiese and Ronye are Stica's and Laura's ancestors, as in they're descendent from them directly.
> Means she doesn't have kids as if she had one she wouldn't leave them to grow up alone or it would be mentioned they have grown up.
The story specifically stated that Ronye and Tiese lived for several decades before freezing themselves. They would've had plenty of time to raise their children beforehand.
> Aren't they part of New Aincrad when it was included in ALO? It definitely didn't sound like the quest campaign and Kizmel were there.
ALO's new management greatly changed Aincrad floors when they took over. Some floors were changed very drastically, both terrain- and plot-wise (e.g. Floor 8). So, odds are high that the new admins didn't import the Elf War questline from SAO.
First for the person who made this can you send raw version of the novel I hadn't found it anywhere in google.
ReplyDeleteThe email
Yuvaltanami13@gmail.com
Thank you
This group does not disseminate raws on the Internet.
Delete