Their Battles, July 7Th, 2026 Ad / November 7Th, 380 He
It was five o'clock in the morning in the city of Alne.
At the center of the virtual world ALfheim Online, in the massive dome that
lay beneath the roots of the world tree, a motley collection of over three
thousand players had gathered.
The winged monsters that had once guarded the gate that stood at the
pinnacle of the dome were long gone, and the dome itself was now used as a
public event space—an appropriate venue for meetings and negotiations
between leaders of the nine fairy races.
Today, just four players spoke to the unprecedented assembly of three
thousand. They were Agil the gigantic gnome, Klein the salamander samurai,
Silica the cait sith beast-tamer, and Lisbeth the leprechaun blacksmith—the
companions of Kirito the Black Swordsman, who had still not awakened from a
dive into the Underworld.
At the time that the companions began sending out messages to everyone on
their friends lists, it was 4:20 AM, and of the various territorial lords of ALO, only
three had been online. But with their help—delegating tasks to subordinate
officers, and even practicing the forbidden art of contacting people offline—
they succeeded in summoning this massive gathering in the span of only forty
minutes.
Over a quarter of the players currently standing or hovering in the half-dome
space were newly generated characters—but they were not VRMMO newbies.
These were all veteran players of the Seed ecosystem, and they'd shown up at
the behest of their friends and guildmates with ALO accounts.
So these three thousand players in the World Tree's dome were the cream of
the crop of Japan's VRMMO players. And they were the last and best hope of
Yui, the top-down AI, the only force that could save the Underworld's Human
Guardian Army.
In the hush, Lisbeth the leprechaun's magically amplified voice addressed the
crowd.
"…This is not a joke or a scam! A research organization based in Japan has
built a special Seed-based virtual world with government funding, and very
soon, thousands of American players are about to dive in without
understanding what it really is—and slaughter all the residents of the
Underworld!"
As she spoke, Lisbeth felt pangs of guilt and shame that she was propounding
a kind of gaming-based nationalist sentiment, but the desperate stakes of the
situation left her with little else she could use to make her case.
"The people in the Underworld are no mere NPCs! They're real artificial
intelligences built from the data harvested from all the VRMMO worlds we
enjoy! They have the same souls, the same emotional depth, that we flesh-andblood people do! I beg of you, help us protect them! We're asking you to
convert your character data to the Underworld!"
At the end of her five-minute speech, she surveyed the crowd, her eyes
pleading, praying. The fairies in the dome looked confused and unsure. She
knew it was the kind of story that couldn't be fully appreciated when it
appeared out of the blue like this. Even Lisbeth wasn't fully clear on all the inner
workings of the Underworld and its artificial fluctlight residents, as far as Yui
had explained it to her.
Among the skeptical, murmuring crowd, one player raised a long, graceful
arm. It was Sakuya, lady of the sylphs, her slender form clad in a green gown.
"Lisbeth, I know you and your friends, and I do not take you for the kind of
people who would do this as a prank. And as Kirito has not logged in to the
game in nearly ten days, I would indeed assume that something is wrong.
However…"
Her smooth, calm voice wavered with indecision. "In all honesty…I have
difficulty believing this. An AI with the soul of a human being—and the
American military attempting to invade and steal it…? Neither of these things
sound believable in the slightest. Although I feel certain that we will be able to
confirm them upon logging in to this 'Underworld'…you mentioned a number of
potential issues when logging in? Would you explain this to us?"
Well, the time has come.
Lisbeth took a deep breath and let her eyelids close.
This was it. If she failed to make the proper case now, no one would come to
help.
She opened her eyes again and surveyed Sakuya, the other lords and ladies,
and the thousands of ALO players behind them.
"That's right," Lisbeth said, loud and clear. "The Underworld isn't operated
the way an ordinary VRMMO is. There will be a number of problems upon
diving in. First, the Underworld does not have a player UI that can be
manipulated. That means that there is no voluntary logging out."
The murmuring in the background grew louder.
No voluntary logging out. It was a phrase that inevitably brought the
infamous and deadly Sword Art Online to mind. ALO and all the other Seedbased games allowed players to log out with both menu buttons and spoken
commands.
"The only way to log out is to 'die' within the simulation. But that brings us to
the second problem. The Underworld does not have a pain-absorber function. If
you suffer enough damage to reduce your HP to zero, it will come with a
considerable amount of virtual pain."
At this, the players began to stir uncomfortably. Shutting out pain signals was
a mandatory part of the VRMMO experience. In a virtual world without it, a
slash from a sword or burn damage would feel essentially as painful as it did in
real life. That kind of signal, once sent to the brain, could even cause the
player's actual skin to swell temporarily.
But the potential concerns didn't end there. Lisbeth waited for the murmuring
to die down a bit before she continued to the third and biggest sacrifice of all.
"Lastly, the Underworld is currently in a state in which even its developers are
unable to operate it fully. Meaning there is no guarantee that if you convert
your character data…it will be able to convert back to your original game. That
means there is a good chance that your character might be lost forever."
There was a moment of stunned silence—and then the dome erupted into
angry shouting.
Lisbeth, Silica, Agil, and Klein—with Yui on his shoulder in pixie form—stood
silent in the center of the open floor, letting the waves of outraged voices wash
over them from all directions.
It was exactly what they'd expected to happen.
These were three thousand of the best players in the nation, and they had
spent countless hours and immeasurable energy building up their characters. In
ALO, an entire hour of hard, constant work fighting monsters might earn you a
single point of skill efficiency. Building these characters up was akin to emptying
a lake with a single bucket.
No one who had put that kind of effort in would be fine with the suggestion
that their painstaking work might be lost forever.
"S-screw this!!"
One player flew forth from the crowd, jabbing a finger at Lisbeth. He was a
salamander decked out in crimson plate armor with a battle-ax strapped to his
back. This was Lord Mortimer, the second-ranking commander of the
salamanders after General Eugene.
The salamander lifted his helmet visor to reveal eyes burning with rage. He
spun around to the vast gathering behind and shouted with enough force to
quiet them all.
"You're crazy enough to wake everyone up at this hour and suggest that we
should go dive into some sketchy server, and now you say we might lose our
characters?! Are you putting up some kind of collateral if we get wiped out?! Or
is this just some kind of trap to weaken the other fairy races?!"
"…!"
Klein was all set to shout back, but Lisbeth held him back with a hand on his
shoulder. She tried to remain as calm as she could.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot offer you any guarantee against damages. I know that
the characters you've created and nurtured can't be replaced with money.
That's why we're asking you for help…Please, lend us your strength in saving
our friends who are fighting to protect the Underworld against the American
players."
She didn't have to raise her voice for it to carry to every inch of the dome. The
salamander was initially taken aback, but he found his voice and his fury again
momentarily.
"And I'm guessing those 'friends' of yours are more SAO survivors, who go
around acting like they're special among all VRMMO players! We all know that
you former SAO folks secretly look down on everyone else who didn't go
through all that!!"
Now it was Lisbeth's turn to be at a loss for words.
She had never consciously recognized that kind of mentality within herself
until the salamander pointed it out—and now she felt that, in fact, she couldn't
say with all certainty that there was nothing like that in her mind. After all, she
had made her player home not in the city on the surface, but in the floating
New Aincrad, and she had spent all her time interacting with her old
companions, rarely ever mingling with the general population below.
The salamander sensed he'd struck a nerve with that comment and continued
mercilessly, "Invasions, artificial intelligence, souls—why should I care?! Don't
bring your real-life crap into VRMMOs and tell us what we should do about it!
You got a problem? Handle it yourselves! With your little club of celebrated
survivors!!"
Other voices in the background echoed his sentiments, telling them to step
off or mind their own business.
It didn't work. I completely failed to convince them, Lisbeth thought as she
fought back tears. She sent pleading glances to those ALO power brokers whom
she'd had good interactions with in the past: Sakuya, lady of the sylphs; General
Eugene of the salamanders; Alicia Rue, lady of the cait siths.
But they did not say anything when she met their gazes. They just stared at
her, their eyes cold. It was as if they were demanding that she show them how
serious she was.
Lisbeth took a deep breath and closed her eyes once again. She thought of
her friends fighting in that far-off otherworld—Asuna, injured Kirito, and Leafa
and Sinon, who had left for the Underworld earlier.
Even if I transfer over, I don't have the strength to fight the way that Asuna
and the others can. But I know there must be something I can do. This moment,
right here and now, is my battlefield.
Her eyes shot open. She wiped away the tears.
"Yes…this is a real-life problem," she repeated. "And like you said, we SAO
survivors might be guilty of blending real life and virtual life together. But I
assure you, none of us think of ourselves as heroes."
She reached over to her right and grabbed the hand of Silica, who was
tearfully silent.
"She and I? We go to a school that only the survivors attend. Our original
schools treated us like dropouts, so we didn't have any other choice. Once a
month, every student at the returnee school must undergo a counseling
session. They monitor our brain waves in the AmuSphere and ask us unpleasant
questions like 'Do you ever feel like things aren't real? Do you ever want to
harm others?' Some of the kids have to take medications against their will. To
the government, we're all just potential criminals who need to be monitored."
The waves of anger subsided, leaving only a tense silence filling the dome.
Even the salamander who'd been shouting at her looked stunned.
No one knew exactly where she was going with this, least of all Lisbeth. All
she could do was put her pent-up feelings and thoughts into words.
"But the truth is, the students at the returnee school aren't the only ones
being treated like that. Every VRMMO player is subjected to that kind of
thinking to some degree. That we're dead weight dragging down society or
cowards who hide from reality and don't pay taxes or social security…Some
people even debate if they should reinstate the draft and force us to do
something productive for society."
The tension in the room grew thicker and hotter. One little pinprick might
lead to an even greater eruption of outrage than before.
Undaunted, Lisbeth pressed her hand to her chest and shouted, "But I know
how it is! I have faith! That what we have here is real!!"
She lifted that hand to point at the dome of the World Tree—and all of
Alfheim beyond it.
"This world, and all the many virtual worlds connected to it, aren't just some
empty escapes from life! To me, it's reality, where I have a real life, real friends,
real encounters and emotions! And that's true for all of you, too, isn't it?! You
put all your effort into playing because it's another kind of reality for you! But if
this is just a game…if this is all just a virtual fake to you, then what is real to us
anyway?!"
At last, the tears burst from Lisbeth's eyes. She didn't bother to wipe them
away. Not until she had said what she needed to say.
"The many virtual worlds we've all nurtured as a group have come together,
firm and tall, like this World Tree, which has finally bloomed the flower that is
the Underworld! And I want to protect that precious flower! Please…please give
us your help!!"
She thrust her hands up to the ceiling of the dome.
Through vision blurred by tears, the motes of light trickling from the wings of
thousands of fairies glittered and sparkled.
Light glittered in an arc across the silvery dawn sky.
A second later, that thick rope cracked drily and split in the middle, both ends
whipping and writhing in the air like black snakes. Dozens of soldiers clinging to
the rope screamed as they plummeted into the bottomless ravine. Meanwhile,
the Double-Winged Blade that cut the rope did a sharp turn and fit back into
the hand of its master, the Integrity Knight Renly Synthesis Twenty-Seven.
Of the ten ropes the Dark Army had stretched across the ravine, Renly had
already severed five, but there wasn't a single shred of pride or
accomplishment on his face. If anything, he seemed anguished to have cut the
literal lifelines of those enemy soldiers who'd bravely carried out death-defying
feats on cruel orders.
The same could be said of Asuna, who watched at his side, clutching the reins
of her horse.
By the time that Asuna, Renly, Alice Synthesis Thirty, Sheyta Synthesis Twelve,
and Integrity Knight Commander Bercouli Synthesis One rode up to the ravine,
hundreds of enemy soldiers had already crossed it and launched desperate
attacks to protect the ropes. Nearly all of them succumbed to the attacks of
Bercouli, Sheyta, and Alice, but a few came around to flank Renly, forcing Asuna
to draw her rapier and defend him during his task.
The Underworld virtual realm used the Seed program as its foundation, which
meant that she could utilize the sword skills and horse-riding techniques she'd
learned back in SAO.
And because Asuna was in the super-account for Stacia, Goddess of Creation,
her statistics were essentially at maximum values. Plus, her rapier Radiant Light
was even more powerful than the divine weapons the Integrity Knights
possessed. Even the basic Linear Thrust skill was enough to pierce the thick
armor of the dark knights and hardy flesh of the pugilists in one go.
However, the fresh blood that spurted from the enemies' wounds, the howls
of agony and hatred that erupted from them, and the life that was lost were all
real.
The people who lived in the Underworld, human side or dark side, all had
souls—fluctlights—that were fundamentally no different from Asuna's own.
They were real people, and these video-game statistics and superpowered
weapons meant that she could kill them with a single blow. It was wrong; it was
an unbearable agony for her.
And the knights and pugilists who leaped at her with grim determination were
not even doing so of their own free will.
As artificial fluctlights, they were incapable of disobeying a direct order from a
higher being. They'd been ordered to attack her, knowing that it was pointless
and would lead to certain death, on the command of another real-world human
who was using the equally powerful super-account for Vecta, the god of
darkness. From another perspective, they, too, were victims of a real-world
battle over cutting-edge technology.
Asuna had to use every last ounce of willpower to cast such thoughts out of
her head. The overall priority at this moment had to be protecting Alice, the
Priestess of Light, from Vecta's grasp—as well as Kirito in the base camp behind
her.
She'd been told that the only forces left in the Dark Army under Vecta's
command were the pugilists and the dark knights. If they used the opportunity
of the enemy's suicidal rush across the ravine to wipe out their numbers, the
enemy would have no moves left to play.
"Let's go for the sixth one!!" shouted Commander Bercouli, bringing Asuna
back to her senses. Alice, Sheyta, and Renly responded immediately, with Asuna
just a moment or two later.
As soon as she turned her horse to move west, a bright, loud horn sounded
behind her. She spun around to see, on the hilltop a portion of a mile away, the
orderly rows of the men-at-arms in the Human Guardian Army's decoy force
rushing toward them. They'd armed themselves and gotten into formation just
fifteen minutes after the knights and charged out of the camp area.
"Psh…They don't know when to quit," Bercouli muttered, eyeing the
guardsmen, but with about five hundred enemy troops already across the
ravine, backup forces were a welcome development. If they could help keep the
enemy soldiers at bay, it shouldn't be too hard to sever the other five ropes.
It looks like we've won this round, Vecta, she thought. But no sooner had the
sentiment crossed her mind than she caught sight of something odd.
Against a dawn sky the shade of dark blood, something rather eerie
descended onto the battlefield.
There were lines that shone red, a lighter shade than the sky. Many lines, in
fact. Dozens…hundreds.
Perhaps thousands.
The countless descending lines appeared to be made of strings of fine pixels.
But if she squinted, she could make out that the individual dots were actually a
number or letter. The unidentified strings of text fell silently to a range of a mile
or so east of the battle, on this side of the ravine.
Before long, it wasn't just Asuna stopping to watch, but the other Integrity
Knights, and even the dark knights and pugilists from the Dark Territory side.
When the first string met the dried, dusty earth, it writhed and massed into
an amorphous clump.
It was only a matter of seconds before it assumed a human form.
Iskahn, head of the pugilists guild, forgot the fury that boiled within him, if
only for an instant.
What is that?
On the far bank of the ravine, five hundred denizens of the dark lands
prepared to take on the four Integrity Knights. But they suddenly came to a stop
and looked away from the battlefield in disbelief.
When Iskahn looked in the same direction, he witnessed a crimson rain
descending upon a location about two kilors east.
It was a stream of many red lines, falling from the sky and emitting strange
vibrations. When the streams reached the ground, they expanded, eventually
taking human shape.
They were warriors, armed with longswords, battle-axes, and spears and clad
in reddish-black armor. Color aside, the armor was very similar in form to the
kind the dark knights wore. At first, Iskahn thought that Emperor Vecta had
used his godly powers to send reinforcements.
But it was only moments until he was hit by an eerie sense of wrongness
about this.
The red soldiers carried on without a care for order or discipline in a way that
was utterly unbecoming of any knight trained by the late General Shasta. They
gestured broadly, spoke with nearby soldiers, sat on the ground, or drew and
swung their weapons without being ordered.
But the main thing was their number.
When the strange rain ended, the group of soldiers that it brought had
ballooned to a number that Iskahn could scarcely believe. It was easily over ten
thousand at a glance, if not twenty…and possibly thirty. If the dark knighthood
actually had this much supplementary manpower, the ten-lords system would
have been obsolete long ago, with Shasta reigning as the true ruler in the world
of darkness.
And the dark knights on this side of the ravine waiting their turn to cross the
ropes exclaimed in shock, too. They did not recognize this mystery force any
more than he did.
That meant these red soldiers must be true forces of darkness, summoned
through some arcane method from the depths of the earth by Emperor Vecta's
godly powers.
And that recognition turned Iskahn's shock into deep, indignant fury.
If he could summon such a tremendous force, why had he not done so
earlier? Why, it made it seem as though the pugilists and knights that had given
their lives in this reckless, mad attempt to cross the ropes were nothing more
than a decoy, a ploy to lure the enemy's forces into the open.
In fact…perhaps it was true.
Had the emperor ordered them to cross the ropes, begging the enemy to kill
them, just to get those enemies to engage them out in the open?
…Not quite.
It wasn't just this time. From the moment the attack against the Eastern Gate
began, the damage suffered by the army of darkness was needlessly severe.
The emperor had ordered the goblins, giants, ogres, orcs, and dark mages guild
to their deaths, and he had barely even batted an eye, much less mourned the
loss.
From the very start, the fifty thousand members of the Dark Army were just
sacrificial pawns to Emperor Vecta.
Until this moment, young Iskahn, head of the pugilists guild, held an interest
only in further improving his own physical discipline and technique and in the
advancement of his people. Now, for the very first time, he was in a position to
view all of the Underworld, both the dark side and the human side. And this
perspective created an unresolvable dilemma within him.
Emperor Vecta was supremely powerful. The powerful must be followed.
But.
But…
"Hrrgh—!"
A terrible pain shot through Iskahn's right eye; he pressed his palm to it,
staggered, and then fell to a knee. The head of the pugilists guild watched as
thirty thousand warriors in crimson red began running, speaking words he'd
never heard before.
They headed for where the thousand Human Guardian Army forces were
descending the hill to join the Integrity Knights and prepare to fight them off.
In between the two sides, five hundred pugilists and dark knights stood
bewildered, unsure of what to do.
No matter how merciless Emperor Vecta's orders might be, this could at least
signal that those five hundred lives were saved, Iskahn thought as he clutched
his stinging eye.
But even at this late point in time, he was underestimating the callousness of
Vecta's thinking. The thirty thousand warriors rushed not for the human army,
but straight at the Dark Territory's five hundred.
All of those raised swords, axes, and spears caught the red light of dawn,
glinting cruelly—and then swung downward with bloodthirsty roars, right at the
men and women that were supposedly on their side.
"Wha…? Who are they?!" cried Bercouli.
Asuna had no answer to his question. It was clear that the thirty thousand
soldiers who had suddenly descended—no, dived—to the east had been called
here by Emperor Vecta.
But where had he summoned a force of this size from, exactly?
Did he generate NPC warriors like monsters and throw them into battle? But
the Underworld control panel in the Ocean Turtle's main control room was
locked down and couldn't be operated without admin access. They wouldn't be
able to do anything but designate coordinates and dive in themselves, like
Asuna did, and on Vecta's side, they had only two Soul Translators available to
them.
The momentary confusion was thawed when the red warriors drew within a
few hundred yards, and she could actually hear them speak.
"Charge ahead!!"
"Give 'em hell!!"
It was English.
They were people from the real world, and based on the accent, Americans.
But how was that possible? This was supposed to be a closed-off VR world,
unconnected to any other system.
Except.
No…
Through the STL, the Underworld was a true alternate world, more real than
reality, thanks to its Mnemonic Visualizer. But the development of that system
was done on top of The Seed, the universal VRMMO development package. In
other words, if you had an AmuSphere, you could dive into that world…and the
Ocean Turtle had a massive satellite connection pipeline.
So with a simple hacked-together client program distributed on the Net in the
real world…you could bring tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people to the
Underworld.
It was what the red warriors did that gave credence to Asuna's stunned
suspicion. Their first move was to set upon the knights and pugilists of the Dark
Army, who were ostensibly on their own side, swinging their swords and axes
without hesitation or mercy.
"Wh-what are you…?!"
"I thought you were on our side…!"
Shocked, the knights attempted to deflect these attacks, but the numbers
were against them. And the red soldiers' weapons and armor were apparently
superior to those of the Dark Army, as the swords and shields raised in defense
quickly broke and shattered. Screams and blood began to issue from where the
armies met.
"Dude, this is awesome!!"
"Sweet! Gore!!"
The elated real-worlders seemed to have no idea what was actually
happening here. They'd probably been convinced to dive into what they
believed was an open beta test for a new, unannounced VRMMO.
The American players couldn't have any natural hostility to the
Underworlders. They just saw the Dark Army before them and assumed they
were enemy NPCs to be targeted. In fact, if there was enough time to explain
what the Underworld was, and how artificial fluctlights worked, maybe even
the majority of them would agree to log out.
But there was no way to do any of that now. If Asuna rushed in and tried to
speak to them in English, they would assume she was just another NPC
delivering her programmed lines. And if they thought that defeating enough
targets in the beta might give them some kind of exclusive bonus item when the
game officially launched, Japanese players would do the exact same thing.
Convincing them with words would be impossible.
The people the Americans were trying to kill weren't NPCs, but artificial
fluctlights with real souls. If they slaughtered all the Dark Territory forces, they
would come after the Human Guardian Army's decoy force next. In that case,
she was the only one present with a temporary life, not a permanent one. She
had to fight.
Resolute, Asuna lifted her rapier and spoke a quick command.
"System Call! Create Field Object!!"
A rainbow aurora appeared around the rapier. She would not be creating a
bottomless ravine like she did last night. There was nothing to be gained by
cutting off the human army's escape route.
Instead, she swung the sword hard, imagining huge, jutting rocks as sharp as
spears.
Laaaaaaa! There was a booming, heavenly sound effect. Rainbow light shot
from the tip of the rapier, jabbing just a bit before the collision point of the
Americans and the Underworlders.
The ground there shook, and a gray rock split the surface. It erupted to a
height of a hundred feet, hurling the red warriors around it into the air.
Four more boulders appeared after it, doing the same. The earth quaked,
sending hundreds of suits of crimson armor skyward. They screamed and
swore, some crushed to a pulp by the rocks, others dashed against the ground.
Blood and guts flew everywhere.
Asuna had no time to consider how they might have perceived their deaths.
She was instantly inflicted with a searing pain in the center of her head, and she
slumped over the neck of her horse.
Silver sparks burst in her eyes, and she gasped for breath. The agony was far
worse than what she'd felt when creating the ravine last night. It was the lurid
sensation of her very fluctlight being spent as so much terrain data passed
through it.
But I can't stop here.
If she suffered the same injuries as Kirito, so be it. She set her jaw, gritted her
teeth, and rose in the saddle.
Her efforts seemed to have slowed the rush of the American players from the
east. But the five jutting rocks spanned a width of only five hundred yards or so.
The tens of thousands of players would quickly rush around them.
She'd have to make another wall of rocks on the south side and allow the
human army to escape from behind it. Her breathing was ragged, and she
raised her sword high again.
But a golden gauntlet grabbed her arm this time.
"Alice…?!" she gasped when she saw who it was.
Alice the Integrity Knight, her beautiful features hard with resolve, quickly
shook her head. "Don't push it, Asuna. Let the Integrity Knights handle the
rest."
"B-but…those soldiers in red are from the real world…They're enemies from
where we came from!"
"Even still. Thousands or not, if they are blindly lusting for blood and swing
their swords with abandon, there is no reason for us to fear them."
"That is true," Bercouli said with a grin, following up Alice's sentiment. "Let us
have a moment to shine."
Their boldness in the face of such desperate circumstances was laudable, but
Asuna could sense that they were more determined than ever.
The red tsunami of foes outnumbered their forces thirty to one, however.
This was not a situation in which grit and determination would reign supreme.
The knight commander raised his polished blade, however, and barked,
"Gather up!! All forces, tight formation!! We're breaking out of here!!"
"A…aah, ah…"
It was a guttural cry from Iskahn's throat, more growl than words.
"Aaa…aaaaaaaaaah!!"
He clenched his fists so hard that blood oozed and dripped from his palms.
The young gladiator wasn't even aware of the pain, however; he just howled
like a wild beast. Nearby, his second-in-command, Dampa, hung his head,
sharing in the anguish Iskahn felt.
They were dying. Dying.
His fellow combatants, with no orders or guidance, and no ability to fight, fell
prey to the swarm of cruel, murderous blades.
And yet, the soldiers making their way across the five intact ropes were not
stopping. The emperor's order that they cross to the other side was still active.
As their master bade them, they scrambled along the ropes, only to promptly
be surrounded by the hordes of red soldiers and their deadly swords.
Why wasn't Emperor Vecta calling off the ravine-crossing strategy for the
pugilists and dark knights, and why wasn't he forbidding these red soldiers from
attacking the other members of the Dark Territory forces?
At this rate, Iskahn's fellow tribesmen were not even decoys. They were just
blood sacrifices for the army the emperor had summoned.
"I…I must…"
Report. I must beseech the emperor to call off this strategy.
Through the rage, despair, and agony of his right eye, Iskahn took a step
toward the dragon tank at the rear of their position. Dampa lifted his head,
sensing his chieftain's intent, and made to say something.
But just then, a huge shadow of something overhead passed them. Iskahn and
Dampa looked to the sky automatically.
A dragon.
On the back of the creature, fine pelt cape and long golden hair flowing
behind him, was Emperor Vecta himself.
"Aa…aaah!!"
Perhaps he heard Iskahn's unconscious shout. From the saddle of the dragon,
the emperor glanced down at the surface.
There was no emotion in his eyes. Not a single shred of mercy or pity for the
soldiers of his own army as they died. Not even a bit of interest. Those orbs
were ice.
Emperor Vecta looked away from Iskahn and flew the dragon toward the far
side of the ravine.
That was a god. That was a ruler.
But if he was the ruler…if he had absolute strength that none could hope to
match—shouldn't there be a corresponding sense of duty to wield it?
A ruler ought to command his army and lead his people to greater prosperity.
No man who sacrificed hundreds, thousands of lives for nothing, and showed no
emotion about it, ought to be emperor…My eye…Don't call yourself…My eye
hurts…No right to…
"Uah…aaah…aaaaah!!"
Iskahn thrust his fist into the air.
He curved his fingers like claws.
Then stuck them against his right eye, the source of the agony that burned at
his mind.
"Ch…Chief!! What are you doing?!"
Dampa rushed over, but Iskahn pushed him off with his left hand and uttered
a brief shriek as he tore out his own eyeball. The white orb still glowed red in
his palm, but it vanished when he crushed the soft organ with his grip.
At this point, Iskahn had not actually reached the spontaneous unlocking of
the right-eye seal, Code 871, that Alice and Eugeo had accomplished. So he was
unable to manifest any direct rebellion against the emperor, and his two
outstanding orders, carrying out the ravine-crossing plan and staying back on
this side of the gorge, were still active.
Instead, the young pugilist forced through a means of avoiding those orders
at such a level that it was tantamount to rebellion.
Iskahn turned slowly to look up at the shocked Dampa and said quietly, "The
emperor didn't give us any orders relating to those red soldiers. Am I wrong
about that?"
"N…no, you're not wrong."
"Then us killin' all of them has nothin' to do with the emperor."
"…Champion…"
Dampa fell silent. Iskahn glared at him with his one remaining eye and
ordered, "Listen to me…if we get a bridge across the valley, take all the troops
over there. Save our people on the far bank, no matter what you do."
"Huh…?! B-bridge? H-how…?"
"I don't know. Just ask whoever can do it," Iskahn growled quietly, facing the
abyss.
Soon, red flames engulfed his powerful legs. He began to spring toward the
yawning ravine, leaving behind footprints that smoldered in the dark ground.
If I'm not allowed to cross the ropes…then I'll just have to jump across myself!!
Iskahn bounded off the earth just before the hundred-mel-wide portal to hell.
Jumping was one of the physical skills that pugilists trained in. They started
with safe long jumps on gravel ground, until graduating up to leaping over rows
of blades and boiling oil, all in pursuit of absolute faith in their jumping abilities.
In other words, to utilize the mental power of Incarnation.
A top-level pugilist could jump a span of twenty mels. Given that any flight
utilizing sacred or dark arts was forbidden in this world, it represented the
maximum possibility of flesh and blood.
But Iskahn was hurtling himself over a bottomless abyss five times the length
of his maximum jump distance. He stared straight ahead, pumping his feet
against the air, leaving fiery traces in the space behind him.
Ten mels. Twenty mels. His body continued to rise.
Thirty mels. Thirty-five. Powerful winds pushing up from the canyon below
buffeted him upward, as though on invisible wings.
Forty mels.
A little farther—just one more push…and then he could coast to the far side
on momentum alone.
But…
Cruelly, the wind stopped right before he was about to reach the middle of
the ravine. His body jolted, losing forward propulsion. The curve of his leap hit a
peak and began to sink downward.
I'm five mels short.
"Raaaah!!"
He bellowed, reaching as though to grab on to something. But there was no
purchase for his hands or feet. The only thing that brushed his body was the
cold of the approaching darkness below.
"Champiooooon!!"
A rumbling roar struck Iskahn's ears.
He glanced over his shoulder to see his second, Dampa, going into a throwing
motion holding a boulder many times the size of his head. Iskahn instantly knew
what his longtime faithful assistant was going to do. But it was not possible for
humans to hurl a rock of that size over fifty mels…
Dampa's arm suddenly bulged. The muscles rippled and tensed, popping
veins, as though all of his entire body's strength was converging in that arm.
"Aaaaah!!"
The massive man ran a few steps and then swung.
The boulder shot forward, shaking the air, like some kind of catapult—and
Dampa's arm burst apart into a shower of blood and meat. Iskahn gritted his
teeth at the sight of his slumping second-in-command, then focused on the
boulder hurtling straight for him.
"…Oraaaaa!!" He screamed and bounded off the rock with the sole of a single
foot.
The rock exploded into pieces, jolting Iskahn forward and giving him a fresh
source of acceleration. The sight of the soldiers fighting on the far bank of the
ravine rushed closer and closer.
"Damn!!" swore the American player before Asuna pulled her rapier from his
lifeless body. She gasped for breath atop her horse.
There was no mental pressure weighing on her now, the way that she felt
when fighting against the Underworlders. She had already defeated over ten of
the red warriors, using the ultrafast combination skills that had earned her the
nicknames of the Flash and the Berserk Healer.
But there were just too many of them.
Asuna wasn't the only one fighting. The men-at-arms of the human army and
especially the four Integrity Knights fought like madmen. They stood at the
head of the tight formation and produced mountains of bodies as they tried to
cut out an open path to the south.
But they couldn't overwhelm the waves of red soldiers who continued to
flood around the rocky mountains that Asuna had created. At best, they could
stop only enough of them to produce a stalemate.
Eventually they were going to notice that the enemies they were cutting
down vanished without bodies—or even a bloodstain. They would realize that
they were fighting a phantom army without true lives of their own.
"Aaah…no! Aaaah!!" a voice screamed, causing Asuna to glance behind her.
Part of the line of guards had broken, and warriors dressed in red were
spilling through. They set upon the human army's guards, hollering and
screaming gamer slang, surrounding them and slicing them to pieces. Blood and
flesh flew, and the shrieks of panic turned to death screams.
The red soldiers mobbed their next targets, seemingly driven to greater
heights of bloodlust by the sheer realism of the deaths they brought.
"Stop…stop…!!" cried Asuna.
This was the time to ignore the few losses they would suffer and focus only on
pushing to the south, she knew. But her body ignored her mind and leaped off
her horse.
"Stoppppp!!" she screamed, feeling her throat go raw, standing alone against
the deluge of red.
The Americans had no malice. They were only being manipulated by the
invaders. But that understanding alone could not withstand the flood of raw,
surging emotion.
Zukakakaow!!
Her right hand flashed, sending a Radiant Light through red visors. Four
soldiers suffered critical hits to the head. Dropping their swords, they slumped
to the ground with a groan. Based on their reactions, it was clear that although
they dived through their AmuSpheres, the pain absorber wasn't functioning.
Sensing that it was likely the case, Asuna had been trying to pierce them quickly
through the heart to log them out instantly, but that idea now fell by the
wayside.
Her rapier, an item of the highest priority level, spun and danced, thrusting
through armor, slicing, and occasionally even severing the enemy's weapons.
The Americans were seeing polygonal in-engine models, with blood spray
modeled as a visual effect of damage. But to Asuna, who was diving through
The Soul Translator, they were flesh-and-blood people, their blood warm and
pungent with the stench of iron.
It began to pool on the ground around them, and her right foot slipped. She
lost her balance and toppled over, right as she saw a large warrior step up to
her.
"Take this!!" he roared, swinging his battle-ax down at her. Asuna rolled to
the right, but she couldn't get all the way free. The thick blade caught her left
arm.
Chunk.
It severed her forearm below the elbow. The loose part flew into the air.
"…Aaah…!!"
Her vision flickered white. The breath caught in her throat. Her entire body
seized up with pain.
Asuna bent over, clutching the arm that gushed blood like a geyser. Through a
sudden rush of tears, she saw four or five shadows surrounding her, raising
their weapons.
Suddenly, the head of the man with the battle-ax appeared to explode.
There were more dull impacts. Each of the soldiers trying to finish off Asuna
split to pieces in turn, vanishing out of view.
"Heh…They're all soft."
Through her agony, Asuna managed to straighten up and see a hardy young
man with bold features, hair red as fire, and darkened skin.
He's from the Dark Territory!
For a moment, she forgot her pain and sucked in a breath. The color of his
skin and the single leather belt on his upper half made it clear that this was one
of the Dark Army's pugilists. But why would one of Emperor Vecta's own troops
attack the red soldiers that Vecta had summoned? It was as if he'd just saved
her life.
He had only one eye looking down at her. There was a grisly, bloody wound
where his right eye had been, as though it had been gouged out. A dried trail of
red-black blood ran down his cheek.
Then he turned that eye on the Americans pressing in on them again and
raised a fist high. The hard, bony hand began to burn with bright flames.
"Raaaaah!!" he roared, his voice splitting the air as he slammed his fist into
the ground.
A shock wave like a wall of fire burst outward, hurtling all the soldiers before
them into oblivion without a trace.
What incredible power!
Asuna was stunned. If she fought him now, she would lose…
But the pugilist reached out without a word and grabbed her armor. He stood
her up and stared closely at her with that one good eye.
"…Let's make a deal," he said in a voice that was young but heavy with
anguish. At first, Asuna didn't understand what he meant.
"A…deal?"
"That's right. You're the one who split the earth and made those huge rocky
outcroppings, yeah? I want you to put a firm bridge over that ravine behind us
—doesn't matter if it's skinny. Then my four thousand pugilists can come over
and help you until all of these soldiers in red are crushed into nothing."
The Dark Army…fighting with us?!
Was that possible? The people of the dark lands, like everyone else in this
world, couldn't disobey direct orders from above, thanks to the seal of the right
eye, Code 871. She glanced at the wound on his head.
Was it the mark of him removing the seal all on his own? Had he, like Alice,
evolved into a fluctlight that had surpassed its own limitations?
But last night, Alice had claimed that if a person fought against Code 871 long
enough, the "eyeball itself explodes without a trace." And the ugly injury to the
pugilist's eye socket looked more like it had been gouged out with fingers than
burst from within. How should she interpret his offer? What should she do?
Her answer came from a voice that was calm and quiet, despite the extreme
danger of the circumstances.
"I don't think he's lying."
That was the gray Integrity Knight, Sheyta Synthesis Twelve, who spoke as she
easily severed the head of an enemy warrior with a sword that was surprisingly
thin, wavy, and black.
The pugilist looked at Sheyta and grinned, equal parts confidence and what
might actually be shyness. He grunted in agreement.
In that moment, Asuna made up her mind. I'll trust him.
This was probably the last time she'd be able to use the land-altering powers
of the Stacia account. It wouldn't be bad to have that last burst be used to
create something, rather than simply destroy.
"…All right. I will place a bridge over the ravine."
She let go of her weeping arm, grabbed her pearl-white rapier, and raised it to
the sky.
Laaaaaaa!
Another heavenly chorus boomed around them, and a rainbow aurora
descended onto the wasteland. It plunged straight to the north and reached the
far side of the ravine. The earth shook violently. Pillars of stone jutted out from
either cliff, reaching toward the middle. When they met in the center of the
open space, they melded together into a firm, thick bridge.
"Ooh-raaah!!"
The roaring of four thousand pugilists drowned out the rumbling of the
shifting earth. The hardy fighters began to rush across the stone bridge, led by a
one-armed giant of a man.
Asuna squeezed her rapier, feeling like she might pass out from the cost of
using her godly powers—the sensation of a burning spear jabbed into the
center of her brain.
Alice should have been at the forefront of the Human Guardian Army, carving
a path ahead with blood, but she was no longer visible. Asuna could only pray
that she was all right…and that, as the red-haired boy claimed, the pugilists
would help them fight against the common enemy.
I'm coming for you, Kirito, she said to herself. It felt as though the pain eased
just a bit.
About a minute before that, Alice the Integrity Knight was losing count of the
number of red soldiers she had cut down. There seemed to be no end to them.
They're…abnormal.
There was no military discipline to them. They screamed words she couldn't
understand and stepped all over their comrades' bodies to attack. It was as
though they didn't care about the lives or deaths of their companions—or even
themselves.
If these were people from the real world…then Asuna was right. It was
certainly no sacred land of the gods.
The endless slaughter and continuous arrival of the enemies had a numbing
effect on Alice's mind.
I hate this. This is no battle.
She wanted to cut through their line and break free from the circle around
them.
"Move…out of the way!!" she screamed, swiping the Osmanthus Blade in a
flat line. Enemy heads and arms came loose, flying through the air.
"System Call!!"
With the initiation for a sacred art complete, she generated ten flame
elements. She followed that with the command to fuse them together into a
long, narrow shape: a spear of flames for her left hand.
"Discharge!!"
Kabooom!!
Though it wasn't as powerful as Deusolbert's Conflagration Bow, the burning
line pierced the enemy crowd, blasting nearly a dozen of them off their feet and
gouging a hole in their blockade.
And through it—she saw black earth and a rising hill.
She would run up that hill, use all the tremendous spatial sacred power spilled
by the battle to produce a reflective cohesion beam art, and burn all those
damned red soldiers.
"Out of the waaaay!!" she shrieked, launching herself forward.
"…Little Miss!!" she heard Commander Bercouli call out after her.
But she never heard him say, "Don't rush ahead."
I can get through. I'm almost there.
She cut down the last one in her way without slowing down, finally broke
through the seemingly endless ranks of enemies, and raced into empty space.
Her abused sword went back into its sheath; she took in a deep breath of fresh
air that didn't stink of blood for once, and she ran for all she was worth.
Suddenly, the world darkened.
At first, she thought it was simply clouds blocking the morning sun.
Then a tremendous force buffeted Alice's back. By the time she realized that a
dragon had descended and grabbed her from behind, its claws were already
pulling off the ground again. Immediately, she raised the Osmanthus Blade and
made to activate her Perfect Weapon Control art.
But before she could chant the command, her vision went dark, and she felt a
terrible chill envelop her. The dragon's rider must've been using dark arts—but
wait, that wasn't it. Alice felt her very mind plunging into what felt like a
bottomless hole.
This was the enemy's Incarnation. Not like Commander Bercouli's hardy
Incarnation, like polished steel; nor like Administrator's piercing Incarnation,
like a bolt of lightning that burned everything in existence. This was an
Incarnation like an endless void, swallowing and seizing all in its clutches…
It was the last conscious thought she had.
To Gabriel Miller, also known as Emperor Vecta, this was a gamble.
But he was certain that if the tens of thousands of American players brought
into the battlefield surrounded the Human Guardian Army, Alice would
separate from her forces, either alone or in a small group, to perform that huge
laser attack again.
Gabriel sat astride the black dragon belonging to the dark knighthood,
hovering high over the battlefield, and waited. This period of time felt like the
longest he'd experienced since diving into the Underworld.
At last, a small golden light escaped from the swarm of red army ants
surrounding the group and started moving toward the hill to the south of the
area.
"Alice…Alicia," Gabriel murmured, wearing a rare, heartfelt smile on his lips.
He snapped the reins, commanding the dragon to descend.
Gabriel possessed an overwhelmingly powerful, if empty, sense of
imagination—in other words, Incarnation. It had totally consumed the AI of the
proud dragon, leaving the beast totally under his control. In one fell swoop, the
dragon folded its wings and plummeted down, reached out with its right claw,
and seized the golden knight as she ran. The huge creature beat its wings and
began to ascend once again.
Gabriel never gave a single thought to the bloody battle that he had
orchestrated. At this point, he did not care at all what happened to the Dark
Territory forces, the Human Guardian Army, or the real-worlders he'd
summoned.
All he had left to do was fly south, to the nearest system console, the World's
End Altar. There, he would eject Alice's soul into the real world and log out.
He glanced down and spotted the unconscious woman his dragon held, her
golden hair trailing in the wind.
I want to touch it. I want to taste her body, her soul, until I am content.
It would be a long trip to the console—several days, even with the dragon
unit's speed. Perhaps a good way to pass the time would be to enjoy Alice while
she still had the flesh of the Underworld.
He felt a sweet thrill of anticipation run up his spine. The ends of his mouth
curled upward again.
Who could have guessed that he would sacrifice the Dark Army of fifty
thousand and a new summoned infantry of thirty thousand, all to kidnap one
girl?
Bercouli Synthesis One, commander of the Integrity Knights and the oldest of
all humans in the world, had been maximally cautious of the enemy's strategy
from the moment he became aware of Vecta's empty Incarnation. But it was
only once Alice was captured that he realized he had completely missed what
Vecta was really after.
When the black dragon seized Alice just a few dozen mels away, Bercouli did
something that he hadn't done in decades, as far as he could remember.
He shouted with true rage, right from the gut.
"What are you doing to my disciple?!"
The very air around him shook, and sparks of white lightning burst and
flickered. But Emperor Vecta did not even turn to face him. He began flying
directly to the south with his prize in tow.
Bercouli squeezed the Time-Splitting Sword and made to run after the dragon,
but the hole that Alice's sacred art had burned through the enemy lines was
already closed. More of the crimson soldiers were barging in at him, hollering
their strange battle cries.
"Get…out…"
But before he could finish his demand, a brilliant-white flash raced overhead.
It was a pair of throwing blades, whistling high and pure as they spun: Renly's
Double-Winged Blades. Behind him, the young Integrity Knight shouted,
"Release Recollection!!"
The throwing blades briefly flashed and joined as one in midair. Now a crossshaped set of wings, the weapon hurtled forward with a mind of its own,
spinning madly as it stopped the enemy soldiers dead along its path.
"Go after her, Commander!!" shouted Renly.
Without turning, Bercouli replied, "Thanks! Hold it down back here!"
He crouched, then pushed off the ground with his right foot. Instantly, the
knight commander in his Eastern-style clothes became a blue blur. He was
speedy enough to break through the new gap in the enemy army in an instant—
it was even quicker than the sprinting speed of the Dark Territory's pugilists,
which required a lengthy combat dance first.
Emperor Vecta's dragon was already just a tiny black dot against the sky. As
he ran, Bercouli put his left hand to his mouth and whistled sharply.
Seconds later, a silver dragon leaped off the ground from behind a hill ahead
—Bercouli's mount, Hoshigami. But that was not the only dragon to respond to
the whistle. Following it was Alice's dragon, Amayori, and then Takiguri, who
had belonged to Eldrie before the knight had perished at the Eastern Gate.
"All of you…?"
Bercouli's first instinct was to give the latter two an order to remain in place,
but it caught in his throat. Hoshigami swept low and fast toward him, then spun
so that it thrust a leg in his direction.
The commander grabbed its talon with his free hand and swung himself up
onto the dragon's back, straddling the saddle with his legs and swinging his
sword in one smooth motion.
"Go!!"
Hoshigami, Amayori, and Takiguri beat their wings in unison, lifting
themselves up into the purple sky of dawn. The three dragons formed a wedge
as they flew, and far ahead in the distance, a little glimmer of gold flashed
briefly at the legs of the black dragon.
Four thousand pugilists raced across the stone bridge Asuna had created, and
they rejoined the two hundred who had barely survived the slaughter. Then
they rushed past the human army and smashed into the center of the red force
like a giant hammer.
Ten of them formed a tight sideways line, pulling back their right fists and
making a battle pose in perfect unison.
"Ooh-rah!"
Ten united voices, ten thrusting fists. They broke the swords of the red
soldiers and smashed through their armor. Over twenty of the soldiers
screamed and flew backward, spraying blood.
When the battle-aura-infused punches finished following through, the ten
pugilists spread apart so that the next ten right behind them could jump
through and form a fresh line in tight formation.
"Ooh-rah-rah!!"
This time, they were forward kicks, again in perfect synchronization. Another
swarm of enemies was blasted into the air as though by a cannonball explosion.
"…Incredible," Asuna murmured, in the middle of chanting the healing arts
commands she'd memorized just last night to heal her wounded left arm.
Though Sheyta casually drank water nearby, there was subtle admiration in her
eyes.
The pugilists' rotating tactic was similar to the "switch" concept used against
bosses in Sword Art Online, except much more refined. They formed many
different hundred-strong groups, ten lines of ten each, and mowed down the
undisciplined enemy with all the strength and efficiency of heavy industrial
equipment. It was frightening to behold.
"You shouldn't be standing around impressed. If you get through them to the
south, what then? Even we might have trouble eliminating such a huge number
of enemies," said their red-haired chieftain, standing next to Asuna with his
arms crossed.
It was true that pugilists seemed invincible when charging forward, but as the
red army many times their number attacked from all directions, some of the
formations were beginning to collapse already. There were still easily over
twenty thousand American players on the battlefield.
"…If we break through the enemy to go south, keep rushing forward and put
distance between yourselves and them. I will create another rift in the earth to
separate us," Asuna said, her throat ragged.
Could she do it? She'd nearly passed out just from making that small stone
bridge. If she performed the manipulations to make another massive ravine as
far as the eye could see, she would either be forced to log out for good or
perhaps even suffer some kind of physical brain damage…
But she bit her lip and pushed those concerns from her mind. She had to do it.
The summoning of the American players had to be Emperor Vecta's last play. If
they put a stop to that, then there was no way they could get Alice, even if
doing so knocked Asuna off the map.
That was when one man-at-arms rushed up toward Asuna and Sheyta from
the south.
"Message!! A message!!"
Half of the man's face was bloodied, injured on the way to get to them at the
north end of the battlefield. He slumped to his knees before Asuna and
shouted, "I have a message from Renly!! Integrity Knight Alice has been
captured by the enemy general's dragon! The dragon seems to have flown to
the south with her!!"
"Wha…?"
Asuna could barely speak. Could…could all of this have been a ploy to lure
Alice away from the rest of the army alone?!
"The emperor…flew away?" croaked not Asuna, nor Sheyta, but the chief of
the pugilists. His one good eye bulged with shock, the iris fiery red. "Then, when
he got onto the dragon…he wasn't just surveying the battle…? Hey! Woman!!"
He turned, fixing that baleful red eye on Asuna. "Alice is the name of the
Priestess of Light, isn't it?! Why does the emperor want her so badly?!" he
demanded. "What's going to happen when he gets the Priestess of Light?!"
"The world…will collapse," Asuna said simply. The pugilist's eye widened even
farther. "When the god of darkness, Vecta, seizes the Priestess of Light, Alice,
and takes her to the World's End Altar…then this world—both the human realm
and the Dark Territory—and all those who live in it will be returned to
nothingness."
Part of Asuna's mind was aware that the things she was saying sounded just
like the main plot of a fantasy role-playing game.
Yet, it was absolutely true. Now that Emperor Vecta had Alice, the assault
team attacking the Ocean Turtle would almost certainly destroy the Lightcube
Cluster that contained the fluctlights of all the people in the Underworld.
What can I do? The Stacia account doesn't have flying abilities. How am I
supposed to go after Emperor Vecta when he's on a flying dragon…?
The answer to her question came from Sheyta, the gray knight. The woman
placed her empty water sack on her belt and said coolly, "Dragons cannot fly
forever. Half a day is the longest they can go without stopping."
The chieftain of the pugilists, after stealing a quick glance at Sheyta, smacked
a fist against his palm. "Then you'll just have to follow him with sheer
willpower!!" he shouted, his face youthful.
"Follow him…? You can't be serious…," Asuna said, aghast. "You're in the Dark
Army, right? Why would you suggest that we…?"
The enemy officer snorted and spat, "Emperor Vecta stood before the ten
lords of darkness and told us that the Priestess of Light was his only objective,
and once he had her, the rest of it didn't matter to him. The moment he flew
off with her, his goal was met…meaning that all of our orders are finished. So
whatever we want to do now is up to us…up to and including working with the
human army to steal that priestess back from the emperor!!"
What an incredible stretch. Asuna stared at him, aghast. But contrary to his
bold and determined words, there was only mourning in his left eye. He looked
directly at her and said, "I…we can't disobey the emperor directly. His power is
all-consuming…Dark General Shasta was maybe even stronger than me, and the
emperor killed him without lifting a finger. If he orders me to kill all of you, I will
not be able to resist that order. So we'll hold off the red soldiers here. You and
the other humans go after the emperor. And…and then you can…"
He stopped there, screwing up his face as though feeling pain from the right
eye that was no longer there.
"Then you can tell him something for us—that we're not his toys."
There was an even higher-pitched roar from the pugilists at that moment,
coming from the south. The lead wedge of the group had broken through the
circle of the red infantry and proceeded out into the open wilderness.
"Here we go…"
The young leader stomped his foot hard on the ground and bellowed with
incredible force, "Hold that breach, people!!"
Then he looked back to Asuna and commanded, "You people, get out of here,
too! It won't last that long!!"
Asuna sucked in a deep breath and nodded.
He's human, too.
His fluctlight might be artificial, but his soul is as hardy and proud as anyone
else's. We mercilessly cut the ropes that his people were desperate to cross, and
we cut down over a hundred pugilists. He must be full of hatred and want to
crush us.
"…Thank you," she managed to say, turning on her heel.
At her back, Sheyta said, "I will remain here, too."
Asuna had a feeling that the woman would say that. She looked over her
shoulder and favored the gray knight with a little smile.
"Very well. Please be the rear guard and aid our retreat."
The mysterious lady knight with the chestnut-brown hair and the seven
hundred remaining members of her Human Guardian Army rushed through the
breach in the red army that Iskahn's tribe held open along the east and west.
He looked away from the dust cloud of their passage and glanced at the gray
Integrity Knight at his side.
"…Are you sure about this, woman?"
"I already told you my name," she said, glaring.
"Are you sure, Sheyta?" he corrected with a shrug. "You don't know if you'll
get back alive."
The slender knight shrugged back, her brand-new armor rattling. "I will be the
one to slice you. They cannot have you."
"Heh. I'd like to see you try."
This time, Iskahn cracked a bright smile.
He wanted to save his people from an ignoble death. That was all he wanted,
and yet, now he had his entire tribe of pugilists risking their lives to protect the
Human Guardian Army from the red soldiers. It was a strange feeling, but
something within him felt satisfied and lightened by the choice.
Hey, this ain't a bad way to die.
His father and brothers and sisters back home would understand. That he did
it to protect the entire world.
"All right, people!! Put some spirit into it!!"
The pugilists promptly replied with an "Ooh-rah!!"
"Circular formation!! Defense all around!! Destroy every last fool who tries to
attack us!!"
"You're blazing, Champion," said Dampa, who had silently returned to his
usual position behind Iskahn. He clenched his bloodied left fist to crack the
joints.
As she crossed the southern hill and retreated to the forest where the supply
team was waiting, Asuna learned from young Renly that Commander Bercouli
had taken three dragons off in pursuit of Emperor Vecta.
"…Do you think he'll catch up?" she asked.
Renly's youthful face put on an uncharacteristically hard expression. "To be
honest, it's tough to say. As a general rule, dragons all have the same flight
speed and need to rest after the same length of time…but because Emperor
Vecta's dragon is carrying Alice, too, it should have a slightly increased wear on
its life value. And the commander can switch between riding each of the three
dragons to minimize the weight burden on each, which should gradually allow
him to close the gap, but…"
That meant all they could do was pray that the commander caught up to
Vecta before he reached the World's End Altar.
But even if he did manage to catch up, could Commander Bercouli actually
defeat Vecta, the god of darkness, in a one-on-one fight?
Asuna had failed to predict that their attackers would also use a superaccount to log in, so she never got an explanation of what Vecta could do. But if
he had powers on the same level as Stacia's terrain-altering ability, then even
the leader of the Integrity Knights, a man as powerful as a thousand, would
surely have a very difficult time winning in a solo fight, she assumed.
Renly said crisply, "If he does catch up, the commander will take back Lady
Alice. He is the most powerful swordsman in the world."
"…Yes, I know," Asuna replied, nodding firmly.
At this point, faith was all they had. And she had just witnessed for herself
how strong the willpower of the Underworlders was. "Then we should head
south as a group. Fortunately, the terrain seems to be flat ahead. We won't
catch up to Bercouli, but we might be able to help him somehow."
"Very well, Lady Asuna. I'll tell them all to get ready to move out!" Renly
stated, picking up speed and vanishing into the woods.
As she watched him go, Asuna told herself that she had to protect Kirito and
the girl he tried to protect, Alice, and all of the rest of the people of the
Underworld. No matter how many scars she suffered. No matter how much
pain she felt.
And while she did that…
In the main control room of the Ocean Turtle marine research megafloat in
the Pacific, the assault team's cyber-warfare expert, Critter, was preparing to
introduce a second wave of twenty thousand American players to the
Underworld.
This time, he adjusted the coordinates to follow Gabriel Miller's current
location, about six miles south of the entry point for the first wave.
2
"…!!"
Vassago Casals sucked in a sharp breath and bolted upright.
He shook his long ponytail out and took a quick survey of his surroundings.
Dully reflective metal walls. Floors with a special resin finish to prevent
slippage. Many, many monitors and indicator lights, glowing dimly in the
darkness.
Only when he saw the tall, skinny bald man sitting in the chair in front of him
did Vassago finally process that he was in the main control room of the Ocean
Turtle.
The bald man, Critter, snorted and said in a high-pitched voice, "Well, well,
rise and shine, sleeping beauty. Thought your brain cells had been fried
already."
"…Shut the fuck up."
Vassago looked down at his own body. He was lying on a thin mattress along
the wall, with a jacket draped lazily over his stomach. He shook his head hard to
drive out the cobwebs, wondering what was going on, but felt a sharp pain in
the middle of his skull.
He swore again, then called out to the circle of men engaged in a game of
cards on the other side of the room. "Hey, someone get me some aspirin."
One of the soldiers, the grizzled Brigg, dug in his pocket and tossed over a
small plastic pill bottle. Vassago caught it in one hand, twisted off the cap,
poured several pills into his mouth, and chewed them.
The tongue-numbing bitterness finally brought his hazy memories back into
clarity.
"That's right…I fell into that bottomless hole…," he murmured.
Critter smirked. "How'd you die over there, huh? You were knocked out for
eight damn hours."
"E-eight hours?!" Vassago repeated, forgetting his headache and jumping up.
The G-Shock on his left wrist said it was six thirty in the morning, Japan time.
That meant they had only twelve hours left until the time limit was up, when
the Nagato cruiser full of armed sailors would rush the Ocean Turtle to restore
order.
But more importantly—if he'd been passed out for eight whole hours, then
months must have passed in the Underworld, with the way its time was
accelerated. What had happened in the battle between the two armies…and
the mission to capture Alice?
Critter seemed to know what Vassago was worried about already. He clucked
his tongue and lectured, "Don't bug your eyes out at me. At the point you died
in there, the acceleration ratio was already one-to-one."
"What…? One-to-one?"
So that meant things couldn't have changed that much on the inside. But in
fact, that was a major problem on its own…
"Hey, Four-Eyes, you know what that means?! Those JSDF troops are gonna
come charging in here in just twelve hours!" Vassago said, briskly rubbing the
man's bald head.
Critter slapped him away with annoyance. "Yeah, no shit. This is all on Captain
Miller's orders."
He went on to explain the plan, which stunned even Vassago, the veteran
VRMMO player.
The assault team's leader, Gabriel Miller, had given Critter secret orders
through the system console in the capital city of Obsidia in the Dark Territory
before he had to travel away from the palace.
He'd told Critter to set up a simple client program and a teaser site for the
beta test for a new "hardcore VRMMO" that would ignore all the legal
regulations of other games—meaning the Underworld, of course. He wanted
the acceleration rate slowly lowered to real time by around midnight of July 7th
and for Critter to go onto the Internet to rustle up beta testers among American
sites.
"…With the console locked down the way it is, all I know is your coordinates
and some vague unit placements. All of this was just some insurance in case the
Human Empire's resistance was fiercer than anticipated."
Critter's long fingers danced over the keyboard, bringing up a map of the
Underworld on the screen. The world was like a triangle with rounded corners.
Two red lines ran from the east edge toward the west.
"This is the movement history for you and the captain. So you wandered
around the Eastern Gate of the empire, and here's where your dumb ass died."
One of the red lines moved south from the Eastern Gate until it ended in an X.
"But the captain went farther south, past the location of your death. All alone,
in fact, leaving the rest of the Dark Army behind to the north. As for what this
could mean…"
"Either he's chasing Alice, or he's already caught her," Vassago growled.
Critter nodded. "The original plan said that if we got down to eight hours left
or wiped out the entire Human Empire, we'd put the time-acceleration ratio
back to a thousand to one. That would be an entire year inside the simulation.
Bumping the acceleration back up would log out all the American players, but as
long as we win the war, it's all good."
"Why don't you boost the acceleration back up, then? There's barely any
forces left in the Human Guardian Army."
"It's not that simple. Take a look at this." Critter tapped a key to expand a
portion of the map.
A few miles south of the Eastern Gate, which separated the human lands and
the dark lands, there were stripes of flatland, hills, and forest, stacked vertically.
The human army was in hiding in the forest…where Vassago had died.
But at some point, a massive fissure had opened up running east to west,
between the forest and flatland, stretching at least thirty miles. Along the
edges, tiny clumps of colored dots were split into red, white, and black groups.
"The ones in red are the US players we guided into the Underworld. Still
about twenty thousand of them down there, though it used to be a lot more.
The black dots half surrounded by the red ones are the Dark Army. About four
thousand, I think."
"H-hey…why does it look like the red ones are attacking the black?"
"All I wrote on the fake beta test promotion was that you could kill all the
hyperrealistic NPCs you want. The people diving from the States have no idea
what the difference between the two sides is. But I will say…the black dots are
holding up longer than I expected. It doesn't make sense, because the Dark
Army's completely subservient to the emperor, so they shouldn't be resisting
against the American players that he summoned."
"I bet those players are just having the time of their lives killing 'em."
"Well, let's assume those four thousand black dots will get wiped out
eventually. The problem is you've got a little white group right there."
Critter moved the cursor. Sure enough, behind Miller in his southward
movement, a small group of white dots was in pursuit.
"That's the human army. They look small on the map, but there's seven
hundred of 'em. We don't want 'em causing trouble if they catch up to the
captain, so we need to stop 'em somehow."
"Stop them…how, exactly?" Vassago asked.
Rather than answer him, Critter just giggled and hit some more keys. A new
window opened on the map. On it, a huge red cloud swarmed and writhed
against a black background.
"This is the second wave of US players, who didn't make it in time for the first
batch. Once it reaches twenty thousand, I'm gonna dump these guys onto the
human army's coordinates. That's twenty-eight soldiers for every one of theirs.
Complete slaughter. We can wait until after that to bump the acceleration up to
a thousand, and that should leave plenty of time for the captain to catch Alice
and get down to the system console at the south end."
"…Let's hope it goes that well," grunted Vassago, rubbing his chin. "The
human side's army is tougher than you'd think. Those Integrity Knights are
crazy, man. They wiped out the entire front lines of the Dark Army. That was
the only reason I got killed…so…bad…"
He trailed off midsentence.
Vassago finally recalled who killed him—and how it happened.
He sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes wide. Flooding into the back of his mind
came the image of a goddess staring down at him from a great height in the sky.
Without realizing it, Vassago spoke in Japanese, rather than English.
"The Flash…!! That's right…I know it was her, no question about it!!"
"Huh? What'd you say?" Critter wondered.
Vassago grabbed his bald head and switched back to English. "Hey, geek!
Rath's doin' the same goddamn thing we are in the second control room!!
There are Japanese VRMMO players on the human army's side!!"
"What?!" Critter looked skeptical.
Vassago ignored him and let a fierce smile curl one cheek. "If Asuna the Flash
is here, then he might be in a dive, too…Damn, I can't be wasting my time
here…Hey, get me back in there! Drop me on the white dots with those twenty
thousand players!!"
"You wanna go back? We don't have that dark knight account you wasted
anymore. But I can give you one of the basic soldier accounts like the other
guys."
"Oh, I've got an account…One I've been saving for a rainy day."
Vassago chuckled from deep in his throat and picked up an empty energy-bar
wrapper off the console desk. He yanked the pen out of Critter's chest pocket.
"Here, use this ID and password to log in to Japan's Seed Nexus portal and
convert the character I've got saved in there to the Underworld. I'll dive in with
that one."
He took a few quick steps toward the door to the STL room—but came to a
stop just as quickly.
When he turned around, Vassago wore a smile so cold, cruel, and vicious that
Critter, a hardened cybercriminal, felt his skin crawl. It was as though the
vulgar, cheerful, boisterous mercenary was only one persona that this man
wore.
Vassago returned to the console with the silent prowl of a cat and whispered
a short extra command into Critter's ear. A few seconds later, Vassago
disappeared through the STL room doorway for good, leaving the stunned
hacker alone with just a small piece of paper in his hand.
It contained three capital letters and an eight-digit number. Critter did not
know what S-A-O or the numbers signified.