Attack on the Ocean Turtle, July 2026

Even Takeru Higa, who was well aware of his first-class genius status, couldn't

have predicted the various events of the last two hours. But what was playing

out before his eyes at the present moment was by far the most shocking of

them all.

A delicate girl, only eighteen or nineteen years old, was lifting a man six

inches taller than her by his collar. His flashy Hawaiian shirt was stretched

enough to tear, and the soles of his sandals hung in the air.

As she glared at Lieutenant Colonel Seijirou Kikuoka with radiant fury, Asuna

Yuuki's shapely lips formed a razor-sharp ultimatum. "If Kirito doesn't wake up,

I'll make sure you regret it."

From Higa's position, the lenses of Kikuoka's black-framed glasses reflected

the lights in the ceiling, so he couldn't make out the man's expression. But the

Self-Defense Force officer, who was a black belt in both judo and kendo,

swallowed as though intimidated by her threat. He lifted up his hands in a sign

of surrender.

"I know, I know. And as it is my responsibility, I will absolutely see that Kirito

is restored."

A tense silence filled the gloomy sub-control room. Neither Higa, sitting

before the control console, nor Rinko Koujiro, who stood next to him, nor any of

the other Rath staffers in the room could speak a word before the

overwhelming force of the youngest person present. In the back of Higa's mind,

he recognized that she was indeed a true survivor of life-and-death battle.

Eventually, Asuna slackened her grip. Finally free, Kikuoka nearly fell to the

floor, exhaling heavily. The girl faltered, too. Rinko leaped forward, white coat

flapping, to put a hand on her back for support.

The physicist, who was Higa's friend and mentor from their college seminar,

clutched Asuna to her chest and murmured, "It's all right. It'll be all right. He'll

come back to you."

Asuna's tension finally broke, and her face crumpled.

"...Yes, of…of course. I'm sorry…I went too far…"

Tears formed at the corners of her eyes; she hadn't cried even during the

attack. Rinko gently rubbed them away.

The mood in the room eased up at last, only for the tension to return when

the sliding door opened manually. Lieutenant Nakanishi raced inside.

His white shirt was stained with sweat and dust, and the grip of his large

pistol was visible in the shoulder holster. He glanced at the women first, then

found Kikuoka in the back and said, "Report, sir! Primary and secondary

pressure-resistant barriers are closed, and noncombatant evacuation to stern

block is confirmed complete!"

Kikuoka strode forward, fixing his collar. "Thank you. How long will the

barriers hold?"

"Well…it depends on what they brought with them, but they are

indestructible to small firearms. If they've got circular saws, you're looking at no

less than eight hours to penetrate. They could break through with explosives…

but I doubt that's an option. After all, the center barrier is very close to…"

"The Lightcube Cluster," Kikuoka finished, pushing his glasses up the bridge of

his nose.

He stopped to think, then lifted his head and looked around the cramped

Subcon room. "Let's get a picture of the situation. Lieutenant Nakanishi, give

me a casualty report."

"Sir! Three minor injuries to researchers on the civilian project team,

recovering in the stern medical bay. Two heavy and two minor injuries to our

combatants. They are also recovering, nothing life-threatening. Including the

two who sustained minor injuries, we have six sailors in battle condition."

"It's a damn fortunate turn of events not to have any deaths, for all that

fighting…Next, damage report on the ship."

"Control room on the bilge dock is Swiss cheese, sir. No way to open or close

it remotely. Same for the corridor from the dock to Main Control, but it's more

scratched than anything. The real trouble is that the main power line has been

cut…Our power's still stable because it's coming through auxiliary lines, but if

we don't reactivate the control systems, we can't rotate the screws."

"We're like a turtle without fins—and with a shark clinging to its belly."

"Yes, sir. All twelve sectors of the lower shaft and the bilge dock are under

enemy control."

Nakanishi's chiseled features twisted in frustration. While his hair was closecropped, Kikuoka had longer bangs like a teacher. The superior officer rested on

top of the nearby console and let his wooden geta sandals dangle from his toes.

"So they've got Main Control, STL Room One, and even the nuclear reactor…I

guess the silver lining is that they don't seem to be intent on destruction."

"You…think so, sir?"

"If they just wanted to destroy this facility, they didn't need a sub and a grand

infiltration plan; they could've just shot it up with cruiser missiles or torpedoes.

So the question now is, who are these people? Any thoughts, Higa?"

Higa blinked, not expecting to have the conversation thrown his way.

Eventually, he was able to get his brain running again after the shock of their

recent experience.

"Ah. Right. Um…," he murmured unhelpfully. He turned to his console,

grabbed the mouse, and opened up the ship's security camera footage on the

large monitor.

The video clip was dark and unclear, so he stopped it at a random point and

adjusted the brightness and contrast. It brought into focus a group of figures

moving through the ship interior in a crouching position. They wore black

combat suits and helmets with multifunction goggles that covered the top half

of their faces, and they carried menacing assault rifles.

"…So as you can see, they've got no flags or other identifying features

anywhere on their helmets or suits. The color and shape of their gear isn't

official military hardware of any country on Earth. The rifles look like Steyrs, but

those are everywhere…About the only thing I can estimate is that, based on

their average size, I don't think they're Asian."

"So at the very least, they're not our country's special forces. What a relief,"

Kikuoka deadpanned. He scratched his chin, his normally gentle eyes narrowed

and hard as he stared at the monitor. "There's one more thing we can tell…

These people know about the existence of Project Alicization."

Higa agreed. "Yes, that would be true. They came in from the bilge dock and

raced straight up for Main Control. They've got to be after the STL…No, they're

after the true bottom-up artificial intelligence, A.L.I.C.E."

That meant they'd had a very serious, long-term information leak. But Higa

didn't say that out loud, and he suppressed the urge to examine the faces of

every last Rath employee in Subcon, choosing to be optimistic instead.

"Fortunately, we did lock Maincon up in time. In other words, I made it so

they can't directly interface with the Underworld—much more reliable than just

smashing the console. They can't interfere with the simulation or eject the

lightcube containing Alice's fluctlight from the cluster."

"But the same goes for us, doesn't it?"

"Sure does. We can't perform any operations requiring admin access here in

Subcon, either. It's impossible to eject Alice's lightcube from the outside, either

at Main or here…Doesn't that mean we've essentially won, Kiku? They can't

access the cluster either physically or electronically, and once our defense ship

cruises in with backup, those punks are toast!"

"I'm not sure what makes them toast…but you've actually hit on the

problem," Kikuoka said, frowning. He asked Nakanishi, "Will Nagato come for

us?"

"Well…sir…," Nakanishi replied, lines deepening around his stern jaws,

"Nagato has orders from fleet command in Yokosuka to maintain its present

distance and remain on standby. Command seems to think we've been taken

hostage by the attackers."

"Wha…?" Higa gaped, his jaws open. "Hostage?! But all the crew evacuated to

this side of the barrier, right?!"

Kikuoka said calmly, "I suspect those men in black have a channel to the top

brass of the SDF. Nagato left the side of the Ocean Turtle at eight hundred

hours, six hours before their attack. By the time Nagato gets the order to

engage, they'll already have secured Alice's lightcube. Of course, they probably

have a time limit of their own…"

"So those guys definitely aren't garden-variety terrorists, then. That's bad…If

they've got experts, they might actually be able to figure out the trick to

recovering Alice…"

"An operation from within the Underworld, you mean…? They've got the first

STL room under control, and you can perform the eject command from the

virtual console within the Underworld…"

"What happens if you make that command?" Rinko Koujiro asked.

Higa made a gesture with his hands. "The corresponding cube will be

extracted from the Lightcube Cluster in the center of the main shaft and sent to

the requested control room through the air tubes. That's where it can be

retrieved."

He pointed at a square hatch in the corner of the console desk and looked at

the door on the wall behind it.

The aluminum alloy door had a small metal plate screwed into it. The letters

engraved on the plate said STL ROOM TWO.

On the other side of the door were two Soul Translators. One of them was

under supervision by the nurse Sergeant First Class Natsuki Aki—it contained a

young man. He'd played a major role in Project Alicization since the early stages

and was now practically responsible for the outcome of the project itself:

Kazuto Kirigaya.

Kikuoka looked forward once more, folded his arms, and said heavily, "Once

again, our final hope rests with him…Higa, how is Kirito's condition?"

There was an intake of breath, and Higa looked at Asuna Yuuki, who was still

being held upright by Rinko. Their eyes met.

She was the girlfriend of Kazuto, aka Kirito. How could he explain the present

situation? While it was hoarse, her voice was firm.

"I'm fine. Please, tell me the truth."

Higa took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, "Summed up as briefly as

possible…he's holding steady one step short of the worst-case scenario…Miss,"

he said, trying to soften the blow.

He grabbed the mouse and took down the still image of the attackers,

opening a new window instead. This one displayed a colorful, threedimensional graph that swayed and rolled gently.

"This is a visualization of Kirito's fluctlight," he explained. Everyone in the

room stared at the screen in silence. "In Tokyo, one week ago, he was injected

with a muscle relaxant and fell into cardiac arrest. He did survive, fortunately,

but he suffered brain damage…technically, fluctlight-network damage. It's

something that existing neural medicine finds very difficult to treat, but there is

the possibility of recovery with the STL. So we put Kirito into the STL without

any limitations, hoping it would prompt the growth of a new network and

restore his fluctlight to wholeness."

He took a breath and grabbed a bottle of mineral water off the desk,

quenching his dry throat after the unfamiliar act of continual talking.

"In order to make use of this treatment, he needed to dive into the

Underworld. It won't take hold unless the fluctlight is active the same way it is

in the real world. So like we did when he went on a test dive at the Rath office

in Roppongi, we blocked his memories and dumped him into the outer regions

of the Underworld…or we tried to. For reasons that remain unclear, probably

having to do with the damage to his fluctlight, his memories weren't blocked.

Kirito was sent into the Underworld as himself—Kazuto Kirigaya. And we didn't

know this until we received his contact from within the simulation…"

"W-wait a moment," interrupted Rinko. "Are you saying that in the

Underworld, with time accelerated, he's been living as himself, as Kirigaya?

For…how many months…?"

"…About two and a half years."

Higa's answer caused Asuna to twitch in Rinko's arms. It was a shocking thing

for her to hear, no doubt, but he had to trust in her earlier reassurance.

"For all that time, Kirito's been around artificial fluctlights in the Underworld.

And probably with the knowledge that they are bound to be erased with the

conclusion of the current simulation…So he would have headed for the console

that makes contact to the real world, which is located in the center of the

Underworld, where the first village was installed. To petition you to preserve all

the fluctlights, Kiku."

Higa glanced sidelong at Kikuoka, whose glasses reflected the graph on the

screen he was reading. The researcher turned back to Rinko and Asuna.

"…It couldn't have been an easy task," he continued. "The console was

incorporated into the base of a ruling organization known as the Axiom Church.

The fluctlights belonging to the church have absolute numerical superiority, far

beyond any common citizen's, which is what Kirito was assigned to be.

Normally, he should have died soon after infiltrating the church and gotten

logged out of the Underworld…but instead, he survived. I couldn't check the

event log while the attack was going on, but it turned out that he had a number

of helpers—artificial fluctlights, of course…He had friends. Most of them died in

the battle against the church, but when he finally succeeded in opening the

circuit to the outside, he was strongly blaming himself. In other words, he was

attacking his own fluctlight. Just then, our shady attackers cut the power line,

and the momentary power surge caused an instant spike in the STL's output.

The result was that Kirito's self-destructive impulse was actualized…and his ego

was deactivated…"

"What do you mean…his ego was deactivated?" Rinko asked.

Higa turned to the console. "Just look at this."

His fingers flew across the keyboard, enlarging the real-time graph of Kazuto

Kirigaya's fluctlight activity. At the center of the erratically undulating rainbowcolored cloud, there was a small, persistent void, like a dark nebula.

"Unlike a fluctlight contained in a lightcube, a human being's organic fluctlight

is still far from being fully understood, but we've still got a pretty rough map of

the structure. The part here, at this black hole, is what should normally contain

the subject…the self-image."

"Meaning…the actualization of the self, as determined by the individual?"

"That's right. When we express our will, it happens through simple yes/no

logic pathways in the fluctlight: whether I will or will not do this thing in this

situation. For example, Rinko, have you ever ordered seconds at a beef-bowl

restaurant?"

"…I haven't."

"Even if you wanted to or thought you had the room?"

"Correct."

"So that was the result spit out by your self-image pathways. Virtually none of

our decision-making leads to proper action unless it happens through those

circuits. In Kirito's case, the majority of his fluctlight is unharmed. But because

the area in question isn't functioning, he cannot process exterior input, and he

cannot output his own actions. I would guess that all he's capable of is…

reactions, things based on traces of familiar, rote memories. Eating, sleeping,

things of that nature."

Rinko bit her lip, considering this for a moment. Then she whispered, "And…

what is the status of his conscious mind right now?"

"…I'm afraid to say…," Higa started to answer, then paused and looked away.

"He might not be aware of who he is, or what he should be doing…unable to say

or do anything…"

Yet again, silence filled every inch of the melancholy control room.

2

"Fu—"

Heavy combat boots slamming against thick steel wall drowned out the

second half of the word.

Vassago Casals, one of the Hispanic members of the assault team, was not

satisfied with just putting a few dents in the wall, so he stomped on a package

of snacks left behind by one of the Rath engineers who'd occupied this control

room less than an hour ago. Only then did his stream of obscenities stop.

He brushed back his wavy black hair, marched to the console desk, and

grabbed the collar of the man standing there.

"Say that one more goddamn time."

Hanging from Vassago's whip-strong arm was a scrawny-looking young man.

His blond hair was shaved short, and his skin was almost pathologically pale.

Thick, metal-framed glasses rested over his sunken cheeks.

This was the team's only noncombatant. He was a hacker named Critter, a

nonregular employee of Glowgen Defense Systems's cyber operations (CYOP)

division.

He had an arrest record for cybercrime, and his name was obviously a handle,

not given. The same was true of Vassago. That name came from one of the

seventy-two demons listed in the infamous medieval demonology tome Ars

Goetia, where Vassago was described as one of the princes of Hell. No parent

would actually give their child such a name. He, too, was a member of the CYOP

division, but his specialty was not in computing but in active combat—in a fulldive setting, that is. Like Critter, he had a sordid past record, but his ability to

fight in VR was unparalleled.

As a matter of fact, outside of the leader, Gabriel Miller, the rest of the

twelve-man Ocean Turtle assault team were pet dogs with sordid pasts who

were promised new, secure identities for their work.

As one of those dogs, Critter didn't seem particularly scared, hanging from

Vassago's grip. He continued chewing his gum. "I'll say it as many times as I

want. This system's locks are tougher 'n dried shit. I could have this laptop work

on cracking it, and you'd die of old age before it got in."

"That's not what I meant, Four-Eyes! You said it got locked because the rest of

us were taking too long to break through, you son of a bitch!!" Vassago snarled

back. He had the kind of wild good looks that might've actually earned him a

living as a model, and because of that, he was positively feral when angry.

"I'm just stating the facts."

"Yeah, you talk a real big game now, but you were shivering in the back

during the action!"

The other members just sat and watched, grinning, rather than stepping in to

stop the argument. Once he determined it had gone on long enough, Gabriel

snapped his fingers to draw their attention.

"That's enough, you two," he said. "This isn't the time to be placing blame.

We need to focus on what to do next."

Vassago's head swiveled around, his lips pouting like a child's. "But, Bro, I just

gotta teach this punk a lesson, or…"

Gabriel swallowed his usual demand not to be called bro. Vassago called

Gabriel his bro out of respect for his VR combat-training chops, but it was an

oddly displeasing moniker to Gabriel. To him, friends and comrades and other

human relationships based on fickle and indistinct things like emotions were

indecipherable.

When humanity finally had the means to extract and save the soul, all human

emotions could be neatly described and arranged by the color and shape of that

cloud of light. That would be a very good day, indeed.

Gabriel assumed the tone of a team leader as he announced, "Vassago,

Critter, I'm happy with the work of the team so far. We've taken over the

control room, our primary target, with the only damage being a little scratch to

Gary."

Begrudgingly, Vassago let go of Critter's collar and put his hands on his hips.

"Okay, Bro, but what's the point if the actual control system we're after is

locked? Our final target, the Lightcube Cluster thingy, is on the other side of a

wall of steel, yeah?"

"My point is that now we merely have to think of a way to break through that

wall."

"You don't think those JSDF guys are just gonna hide in their safe space the

whole time, do ya? Once the defense ship that patrols for this turtle busts in

with a whole platoon of soldiers, the eleven of us plus one extra ain't gonna get

far."

Vassago had a better grasp on the situation than your average stray dog,

which was why Gabriel had selected him to be the vice-captain of the team.

Gabriel thought it over and shrugged.

"It would seem that our client and the higher-ups of the JSDF arrived at a deal

of some sort. The defense ship isn't going to act for a whole twenty-four hours

after the start of our operation."

"…Ooh," Critter said with a little whistle. His glasses were thick as goggles,

magnifying his pale-gray eyes narrowed in eagerness. "Meaning this ain't just a

simple smash-and-grab job…Actually, I'm bettin' I'd be wiser not to call it that at

all."

"I would agree with you there," Gabriel replied with a thin smile. He

addressed the team. "Let's reexamine the situation. At present, it is 14:47 hours

Japan Standard Time, forty minutes after we breached the ship. We are now in

the Ocean Turtle's main control room. We succeeded at taking over the desired

location but did not capture any Rath engineers, and we're now locked out of

the system. Our next goal is to take over the sub-control room…Brigg, can we

break through the door in the pressure-resistant isolation wall?"

The hefty team member sauntered forward. "It'll be tough. It's made of the

latest composite material. With the portable cutters we brought, it's gonna take

more than twenty-four hours to break."

"Japanese money's not dead yet, huh? Can we blow a hole in it with C4,

Hans?"

This time, a tall man with a neatly groomed mustache spread his hands in a

flamboyant gesture. "I wouldn't try it, honey. The containment chamber for the

Lightcube Cluster's right beyond that wall. No guarantees we can destroy that

door without harming what's beyond it."

"Aaah," Gabriel murmured, folding his arms. "Well…our mission is to identify

just one of those countless lightcubes and retrieve it, along with the interface.

We already have that cube's unique ID. So as long as we can use the console, it

should be easy to search for that cube and eject it from the cluster. We could

be enjoying a beer on the return voyage right now."

"Can you believe this dickweed in the glasses bragged that he broke into the

Pentagon's servers, and now he can't crack one stupid little server lock?"

"Those are real big words coming from a gamer whose entire gunfighting

career is virtual and online."

Gabriel glared at Vassago and Critter before their argument could resume at

full force and cautioned them, "Do you want to go home empty-handed and get

mockery for your bonus pay?"

"No!!" they all shouted.

"Are you a collection of incompetents who are going to get shown up by a

bunch of amateur engineers?"

"No!!"

"Then think! Prove to me you've got something other than oatmeal above

your shoulders!!" Gabriel ordered, acting out the hard-assed commander

routine half out of habit. On the inside, however, his thoughts went elsewhere.

As a searcher of the soul, Gabriel's greatest goals were to gain Alice,

humanity's first bottom-up artificial intelligence, and to have exclusive access to

Soul Translation technology. Once he had them both, he could eliminate the

rest of the team with his secret stash of nerve gas and escape to Australia, like

he'd planned.

Up to this point, the operation the NSA hired him for perfectly matched

Gabriel's own goals. Now that they were locked out of the admin access they

needed to operate the system, he had to gain Alice's lightcube through some

other means.

Alice…A.L.I.C.E.

The NSA had found out that code name through their mole within Rath. He

didn't know the personal data of the mole. But if the reason for betraying his

company was a massive sum of money, he wasn't likely to make any actions

now that would put himself at risk.

In other words, they couldn't rely on the mole on the other side of the

pressure-resistant barrier to help them out. They'd have to achieve their goal

with the information and gear they had, and they didn't have much time to do

it.

Time. Time was the problem.

Gabriel was capable of entirely controlling pointless emotions like stress and

anxiety, but even he couldn't avoid feeling a certain unpleasant pressure at the

knowledge of their time limit, about twenty-three hours and closing fast.

When the NSA agents asked him to undertake a top-secret theft, they told

Gabriel, Rath's activities represent a clear threat to the interests of Japan's

military-industrial complex. Therefore, a faction exists in the upper echelons of

the JSDF that does not think highly of Rath—and might even seek to actively

sabotage it.

The core of Rath was a group of young SDF officers who had little political

power. The NSA made use of that, sending a CIA agent with the embassy's

office to make a deal with a high-ranking minister of the Maritime SDF. The

Nagato defense ship for Rath's de facto headquarters, the Ocean Turtle, would

stand down for twenty-four hours following the attack, under the guise of

prioritizing hostage safety.

But once that grace period was over, the ship would have to move, as a

defense against the media. Once the fully armed soldiers burst in, they'd wipe

out the outmanned and outgunned team Gabriel had assembled.

Even in that worst-case scenario, he was planning to escape on his own with

the miniature submarine. However, if he failed to gain the lightcube in

question, he would be retreating from his grand journey in search of the human

soul without any means of getting back.

Gabriel already had a detailed plan for the rest of his life after the conclusion

of this mission.

First, he would escape to Australia with Alice and hide the lightcube and STL

tech at his mansion on Sovereign Islands. Then he'd fly back to San Diego and

report to the NSA that the mission was a failure. When everything had cooled

down, he would return to Australia, install an STL machine in his mansion's

spacious basement, and create a virtual world of his own design and tastes.

The first residents of the world would be just Alice and Gabriel. But that was

too lonely. For the sake of his soul research, he would need to expand the

materials he was working with.

He'd go to Sydney or Cairns and find the owner of some soul full of youthful

vitality, kidnap them, rip the soul out with the STL, then discard the

unnecessary husk. And someday, he might even cross the sea to visit his

homeland of America—or Japan, the place where full-diving was born.

Gabriel was deeply charmed by the unique mentality of Japan's VR gamers. A

number of them—but not all—treated virtual reality like it was more real than

real life and spared none of their actual emotions within the game. Every time

he recalled the sniper girl he met in Gun Gale Online, a powerful desire

throbbed within him, even now.

That couldn't be unrelated to the "real virtual world" that had existed for only

two years in that country. Those young players, hacked by the creator of the

device, experienced a game of real life and death. The souls of those survivors

had an aptitude for the virtual world that others did not share.

If possible, he wanted as many of their souls—especially the Progressors, if

you will, the ones who stood at the forefront of the game. He didn't know

whether that sniper girl belonged to them or not, but he wanted her soul, too.

When a lightcube contained such a precious thing, it would surely shine with a

brilliance greater than any jewel's.

The ultimate luster—something that even billions of dollars from the world's

richest people could not purchase. And he would gaze at them, lined up in his

secret chamber, load those souls into whatever world he wanted, and do with

them as he liked.

Best of all, the souls extracted from a human being and contained in a

lightcube could be copied or saved however he wanted. A broken or warped

soul could easily be rewound until Gabriel fashioned it into the shape he

wanted. Until he had given it the perfect cut, like a gemstone, for maximum

brilliance.

Once he reached that stage, Gabriel's long, long journey would finally circle

around to where it all began. To that moment in his youth, under the big tree in

the forest, when he saw the beautiful shine of Alicia Clingerman's soul as it left

her body.

Gabriel's eyes closed, and his spine shivered as he indulged in a brief moment

of fantasy. When he opened them again, his ice-cold logical mindset was back.

If the souls of these young people from around the world were rubies,

sapphires, and emeralds lining a crown, then the giant diamond that deserved

to be set front and center had to be Alice. As the ultimate, pristine soul, she was

the only one truly worthy of being his eternal partner. Which meant he had to

find and gain her lightcube for himself.

However, it would be physically impossible to seize it without breaking the

pressure-resistant door to the Lightcube Cluster room.

That left system manipulation as his only option. But even the first-rate

hacker Critter claimed that he couldn't overcome the defenses on the main

console.

Boots clicking against the ground, Gabriel walked over to stand behind Critter,

whose fingers were flying over the keyboard.

"How goes it?"

His response was raised hands, palms up.

"Absolutely no way to get in on an admin account. All we can do is steeple our

fingers and peer into the little fairy-tale kingdom where all those fluctlights in

the cluster are enjoying themselves," Critter said. He tapped some keys, and a

window opened on the big screen on the wall, displaying a rather odd sight.

It was not at all what you would define as a fairy-tale kingdom. The sky was an

eerie red color, and the ground was as black as fresh asphalt. A number of

primitive tents constructed of simple tanned hides sewn together sat at the

center of the image. Next to them, there were about ten creatures with squat

bodies and bald heads squalling about something.

They were vaguely humanoid but not human. Their backs were hunched, their

arms long enough to drag along the ground, while their twisted legs were much

shorter.

"Goblins…?" Gabriel muttered.

Critter gave him a little whistle of surprise and delight. "Bingo, Captain. Got it

in one. They're not quite like orcs or ogres, so they would have to be goblins."

"I dunno, they're pretty huge for goblins. They gotta be hobs. Those are

hobgoblins," commented Vassago, hands on his hips. Given his expertise in VR

combat, it came as no surprise that he'd know his fantasy RPG design tropes.

As they watched, the clamor of the ten hobgoblins escalated, until two at the

center grabbed each other and started grappling. The others formed a

perimeter around the fight, waving their arms and screeching in excitement.

"…Critter," Gabriel said to the buzz-cut man on the chair as an idea took

shape in his mind.

"Yeah?"

"Are these…these monsters part of the system?"

"Hmm, doesn't seem like it. In a sense, these are real people. They're artificial

fluctlights loaded onto the Lightcube Cluster…They've got souls."

"Really?! Oh my God!" Vassago abruptly screeched, leaning forward. "These

hobs are humans?! They've got souls, just like us?! If my grandma back in Frisco

heard that, she'd fall over dead on the spot!!"

He smacked Critter on the head and continued, "Talk about research that

spits in God's face! Does that mean everyone in those lightcubes is a goblin or

an orc? Even our sweet Alice?"

"Obviously not," Critter replied, slapping Vassago's hands away in annoyance.

"Listen up—the Underworld, as Rath created it, is split into two main areas. Just

to the west of the middle is the Human Empire, where normal people live. And

around it is the Dark Territory, which is chock-full of monsters. Alice is obviously

going to be somewhere in that human realm, but it's super-huge, so finding her

will be impossible if we're just peering in from out here."

"It should be easy. People understand words, right? So just dive into the

Human Empire, ask around if anyone knows an Alice, and we'll find her in no

time."

"You're an idiot. Hey, everyone, we've got a live one!"

"Shut the hell up!!"

"Listen, the Underworld was created by the Japanese. So obviously, the

language those folks are gonna speak is Japanese, too. Can you speak

Japanese?" Critter asked with a mocking smile.

But Vassago just grinned back. "Namete moraccha komarunda yo na."

Instantly, Critter's smirk vanished, and the rest of the team was similarly

stunned. Even Gabriel was stunned at his natural, fluent Japanese: "We're

gonna have a bad time if you underestimate me."

The Hispanic young man switched back to English. "I got no communication

problems. You got anything else you wanna say to me, Four-Eyes?"

"Y-yeah…I do." Critter snorted, recovering admirably. "There are tens of

thousands of people living in the Human Empire. And you think you're gonna go

around alone and ask every…last…one...?"

He trailed off, then shot upright as though reaching an epiphany. Vassago

swore when the man's head struck him in the jaw, but the hacker ignored him.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It might need to be alone…"

At that point, the vague suggestion of an idea inside Gabriel's head began to

coalesce into a rough shape. "Ah…I see. The accounts prepared for logging in to

the Underworld probably aren't all simple level-one commoners. Is that what

you mean, Critter?"

"Yes. Yes, Boss!"

The hacker banged on the keyboard as if it were a percussion instrument,

scrolling through a number of lists on the big screen. "They should have

accounts that correspond to all different classes so that Rath's operators can log

in and observe or manipulate the simulation. Military officers…or

commanders…or nobles, royal families…Maybe even the emperor himself…"

"Damn, that'd be pretty cool," Vassago muttered, stroking his chin. "So you

could log in to play the shogun or president or whatever and just order

everyone around? Full military procession! Right face! Search for Alice! That

would be so easy."

"…Y'know, after you said it, my brilliant idea sounds so stupid now," Critter

grumbled, scrolling through the lists as fast as he could. After a few seconds, he

came to a stop and swore, which was rare for him. "Shit—no good. Direct input

or logging in on a high-level account from this point on has a friggin' password

on it, too. Sadly, it looks like the only way for us to dive into the Human Empire

is in a low-level commoner account."

"…Hmm…"

Critter and Vassago were clearly disappointed, but Gabriel merely inclined his

head without twitching a single facial muscle.

The amount of time they had left to work with was limited. But that was only

a limit prescribed in real-world time. The Underworld displayed on the screen

ran on incredibly compressed time, hundreds of times faster than the real

world.

In other words, the twenty-three hours they had in real life would be over an

entire year in the Underworld. With that much time, it was certainly possible to

log in as a common person, find and secure Alice, then eject to the real world

from the common console within the simulation.

But it was also a very tedious and unnecessary approach. If anything, trying it

from outside the Human Empire might be faster.

"Critter, are there any high-level accounts outside the empire…in the Dark

Territory?"

"…Outside? Wouldn't the likelihood that Alice is on that side be way, way

lower?" Critter wondered, even as he tapped at the keys to figure out the

answer to the question.

Gabriel glanced up at the new window and said, "I suppose it would be. But

the boundary between the two areas isn't completely impregnable, is it?

Depending on the access level of the account, there might be a way to pass that

boundary."

"Oh, hell yeah, Bro! You got all the best ideas! So you're saying…rather than

being some human boss, we'll be the monsters' boss instead and invade them?!

That sounds way more exciting!" Vassago hollered, whistling in excitement.

As usual, Critter was the one to dump cold water on him. "You're free to get

as excited as you want," he deadpanned, "but if you log in to the Dark Territory,

you're gonna have to be a hobgoblin or an orc or whatever. I mean, it suits

you…Oh, hey, I found it!"

He smacked a key with a flourish, and two more windows appeared.

"Let's see. Unlike on the human side, there are only two super-accounts

here…but hey, no password! Let's see…One of them is apparently a dark knight.

Its access level is…seventy! That's pretty good!"

"Yeah, very nice! I'll use that one!" Vassago clamored. Critter ignored him and

brought the other window on top.

"And the other one is…What is this? The status field is blank, and there's no

listed level, either. All it has is the account name. It says…how do you read this?

Emperor…Vecta?"

"Holy crap, an emperor? Never mind, I'll take—," Vassago started to say, until

Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder from behind.

"No, I will use that one."

"Huh? But, Bro, can you even speak Japanese?"

"Omae hodo janai gana," Gabriel replied, the result of three years of

Japanese study. While he might not speak it as well as Vassago—as he had just

said—and he'd given up on reading or writing, he knew he was good enough at

speaking it for casual conversations.

"Ohhh, damn. Okay, Bro, you can be the emperor, and I'll take the dark

knight. Yeah, this is getting fun now! Can we log in yet, Four-Eyes?!"

Critter just typed away, completely ignoring Vassago. He was absorbed in the

information popping up on the monitor. Gabriel approached him and quietly

asked, "What is it, Critter? Is there another problem?"

"…It's not really a problem, more of a curiosity…I'm seeing some strange

terms popping up in the data files. I just don't exactly know what it means…"

"Oh? What would that be?" Gabriel asked.

Critter took a deep breath.

"…Final stress test."

3

Higa hesitantly broke the heavy silence that shrouded the sub-control room.

"Um, well…His body—that is, Kirigaya's physical situation in the real world, as

I just explained…does not leave room for optimism."

When he saw how Asuna Yuuki flinched with Rinko Koujiro's hands still on her

shoulders, he hastily added, "B-but there's also a slim hope!"

"…Meaning?" Rinko asked sharply but with a note of pleading as well.

"Kirito continues to be logged in to the Underworld."

Higa looked up at the monitor, which was much smaller than the big one in

the main control room they'd been chased from. With a few clicks of the

mouse, the display turned into a full map of the Underworld with the circular

human lands and the Dark Territory surrounding it.

"In other words, while his self-image might be damaged, his fluctlight itself

continues to be active, and it receives and reacts to stimuli. So while it might

not be possible here, maybe his soul can be healed in the Underworld instead.

He damaged his own soul by excessive self-flagellation. So if someone else

provides him with forgiveness…then maybe…"

Higa was aware that what he was saying was vague, unscientific. But it was

also his honest, true opinion.

After the NerveGear and the Medicuboid, the Soul Translator was the latest

evolution of brain-machine interface. But when it came to the fluctlight, the

form of human quantum consciousness as discovered by the very machine Higa

had helped develop, what he didn't know vastly outweighed what he did.

Was the fluctlight a physical construct?

Or was it some kind of conceptual phenomenon that couldn't be explained

with modern science?

If the latter, perhaps Kazuto Kirigaya's wounded and exhausted soul could be

healed by some other power that surpassed science.

Such as, for example, love.

"…I'll go."

The tiny but determined voice filled the sub-control room just as the thought

had entered Higa's mind.

Everyone in the room held their breath as they looked at the one who spoke.

Asuna Yuuki nodded to Rinko Koujiro to indicate that she was all right and took

a step forward to repeat herself.

"I'll go into the Underworld. I want to go in there and tell Kirito that he did

good things. That through all the hardships and sad things that I'm sure

happened, he did everything that he could."

Higa was the kind of person who was prepared to be married to his work for

life, but even he had to admit that the sight of Asuna, her light-brown eyes filled

with tears, was indescribably beautiful.

Kikuoka appeared to have been struck by this sentiment, too, but after a

moment, his lenses hid his eyes, and he looked at the door to the adjacent

room.

"We do have another Soul Translator open," the officer admitted, his face

pensive. "But the Underworld is not in a peaceful state at the moment. Within a

few hours by our time, it should be entering its final stress test phase, as we

had planned it out."

"Final…stress? What's going to happen?" Rinko asked.

Higa cut in with a gesture to explain. "Well, um…to put it simply, the shell's

going to crack. The human territory and Dark Territory have been separated for

centuries by the Eastern Gate, which is going to fall to zero durability and allow

an army of monsters into the human lands. If humanity has built up a sufficient

defensive structure, they should be able to drive back the invaders in the end.

But in this experiment, Kirito mostly destroyed the Axiom Church, which is the

ruling body, so…I'm not sure if that will happen…"

"In a sense, it might be necessary for one of us to dive in there, regardless,"

Kikuoka muttered, crossing his arms. "When the invasion begins, it's possible

that wherever she is in the human lands, Alice could be killed. If that happens,

then the entire locking of the main console to buy time will be for nothing…But

if we take a high-ranking account, provide protection for Alice, escort her to the

far altar, and eject her lightcube to Subcon, then…"

"Yes…that's what you asked Kirito to do right before the accident," Rinko

noted. Kikuoka nodded powerlessly.

"Yes. If he had been well, I know he would have done it. He was right next to

Alice at the time…"

"So even though months have passed on the inside since that point…you

think it's likely that they're still together?"

Higa considered that question. "Yes…I think we can make that conjecture. So

maybe we should ask Asuna to do the dive…Not only will she be best at

communicating with Kirito, but combat ability will be needed to protect Alice.

And out of all the people here, Asuna's easily the most experienced at virtual

movement."

"Then the highest-level account we can provide would be best," Kikuoka

suggested.

Higa nodded and ran his fingers over the keys. "Well, you've got the pick of

the litter. Knights, generals, nobles…We've got a whole variety of high-ranking

accounts to use."

"Um, hang on," said Rinko, sounding slightly anxious.

"What's up?"

"…Is there no possibility that the people who attacked us are thinking the

exact same thing? What did you just say? The secret to securing Alice is an

internal operation?"

"Ah…yes, it is possible that they could do the same thing. Maincon down

below has two STLs as well. But they don't have the time to crack the login to

use any high-level accounts, I bet. Only level-one civilians. That's not the kind of

character profile that will help them in the fray of the final stress test," Higa

explained, speaking rapidly.

But he had a brief moment of anxiety—a feeling that he was forgetting

something important.

Unfortunately, the sight of the high-speed list of accounts scrolling past

distracted him, and that concern never reached the surface.