Showdown, July 7th, 2026 AD / November 7th, 380 HE
"Dammit!!"
Critter, the information-warfare specialist on the Ocean Turtle assault team,
slammed his hand on the console as he stared at the results coming through on
the monitor.
The amalgamation of red dots, nearly thirty thousand at its peak, was rapidly
disappearing, starting in the middle and trickling outward. In other words, the
Chinese and Korean VRMMO players brought into the Underworld through
Vassago's scheme were being wiped out somehow and automatically logging
off the system.
In the center of the red circle, the human army in blue and Japanese troops in
white still remained at around a thousand. It was too large of a number to
ignore entirely—and if those thousand had the strength to wipe out a combined
army of thirty thousand, they had to be even more dangerous.
"…What the hell is that moron doing…?" swore Critter, clicking his tongue and
staring at a point on the monitor.
There was just one bright-red dot remaining very close to the Japanese squad.
That would be Vassago, who had used his own personal converted account to
dive from the STL room next door. He was directly adjacent to the enemy, but
he wasn't even moving, much less fighting them.
Perhaps he was being held prisoner or immobilized. Or maybe he still had a
secret trick up his sleeve that would allow him to take care of this army of a
thousand…
Critter wanted to rush into the STL room right now, slap Vassago awake, and
yank him around by the collar, but he held that urge in. With the admin controls
to the Underworld currently locked, they couldn't reset any accounts. So if he
forcefully logged Vassago out, the account he was using would not be usable
again. About the only thing Critter could do was operate the time-acceleration
feature, since it was isolated from the Seed program core. But that required
some careful timing.
He took a deep breath and zoomed out on the map. At the far south end of
the Underworld, another red dot was still rapidly on the move. That was the
captain of the assault team, Gabriel Miller.
If Captain Miller either had captured Alice or was in close pursuit, the
question now was: How likely was it for the human army to catch up to him?
The insertion of the American, Chinese, and Korean players had severely
impeded the human army's southward advance. In terms of internal distance,
Captain Miller had to be several hundred miles ahead of them. A jet fighter
could close that gap in a blink, but that technology wasn't likely to exist in the
Underworld. At best, they might have some kind of winged mount to ride on.
They're not going to catch him, Critter decided after three seconds of
consideration.
He glanced at the watch on his left wrist. It was 9:40 AM, July 7th.
The SDF commandos were supposed to be sent in by the defense ship at six in
the evening, giving them eight hours and twenty minutes. Captain Miller had
left instructions to resume acceleration when the time remaining hit eight
hours—meaning ten AM. But now that essentially all the external players had
been wiped out, there was no reason to maintain real-time speed.
Which meant that it would be better to accelerate Underworld time by a
thousand again, giving Captain Miller time to secure Alice.
"Here goes nothing…Best of luck in there, Vassago," Critter said to the
stationary red dot on the battlefield and reached for the lever that operated the
Fluctlight Acceleration (FLA) rate. When he glanced up at the slider on the main
monitor that corresponded to the lever's placement, his eyes stopped on the
scale markings next to the gauge.
The slider needle was at the bottom, next to the ×1 indicator. The scale was
marked in ×100 increments, and a red line cut across at ×1,000. But as a matter
of fact, the scale continued upward until another partition at ×1,200. That,
apparently, was the safety line for a biological human diving with an STL.
Yet, the rate slider continued even farther, until it ultimately reached ×5,000.
If no human being was in a dive—meaning only artificial fluctlights were present
in the world simulation—the internal time could be accelerated that fast.
Changing the FLA involved using the physical lever on the console board, then
pressing a nearby button with a plastic cap that opened and closed over it.
Being careful not to press the button, Critter slowly pushed the lever, which
looked like the throttle on a ship or an airplane.
The slider graphic on the monitor smoothly rose, and the digital number
readout rotated rapidly. When he got to ×1,000, there was a strong resistance
on the lever. He pushed it again, harder, and it moved farther before stopping
at ×1,200 again. It didn't seem as though it was going to budge beyond that, no
matter how hard he pushed.
"Hmm…"
His curiosity piqued, Critter examined the large metal lever. He quickly
noticed that, next to the activation button, there was a shining silver keyhole.
"Gotcha." He grinned, scratching his bald head with a finger.
The safety limit being twelve hundred times regular speed meant that the real
danger area was a bit beyond that. It couldn't be a bad idea to test unlocking
the safety mechanism, just in case internal time was in a major crunch.
Critter spun his chair around and snapped his fingers to draw the attention of
the team members who had just returned to the control room.
"Anyone here good at lock picking?"
What a soft…and wonderful scent…
It was the best sleep he'd had in months. So when Takeru Higa heard a voice
in his ear desperately trying to wake him up, he resisted to the best of his
ability.
"…I said, Higa! Hello?! Open your eyes! Come on!!"
This person sounds really frantic, though. It's not like I got stabbed or shot or
anyth…ing...
"…Aaugh!!"
As his mind regained consciousness, his memory flooded back in a rush, and
Higa bolted awake.
Right before him was a thirty-something man with black-framed glasses.
"Whoa—?!" he screamed.
He tried to lurch backward to get away, but his body wouldn't listen. Instead,
a terrible pain seared his right shoulder, and Higa screamed a third time.
That's right. I got shot by that man in the cable duct. I knew I was bleeding
bad, but I focused on controlling the STLs instead. I connected the output of the
three girls' fluctlights to Kirigaya's STL, but it didn't wake him up…and then…
something else happened…
"…Wh-what about Kirito?" he said, trying to wriggle away from the face of the
man in glasses, who was peering at him very closely.
Instead, his answer came from a smooth female voice. "Kirigaya's fluctlight
activity has returned to full status. In fact, if anything, it might be too active
right now."
"Oh…th-that's…good…," Higa said, exhaling.
It was nothing short of a miracle that his self-image had recovered from the
state it had been in. And speaking of miracles, the fact that Higa was still alive
after how much blood he'd lost…
These realizations gave him reason to examine his surroundings and
condition.
He was resting on the floor of the sub-control room. His upper body was
uncovered, and his right shoulder was bandaged. There was a catheter in his
left arm, supplying him with blood.
On his left side, in the glasses, was Lieutenant Colonel Seijirou Kikuoka. Sitting
directly on the floor to his left was Dr. Rinko Koujiro, her white coat removed.
On the other end of the catheter tube was Sergeant First Class Natsuki Aki, a
registered nurse, who was exchanging blood packs. She must have been the
one who had seen to his wound.
Higa looked back to Kikuoka, who exhaled deeply and finally spoke.
"Good grief…After all my warnings not to do anything too reckless…But then
again, I guess this is my fault for failing to catch the fact that we had a mole on
the engineering team…"
His bangs were bedraggled, and there were sweat marks on his lenses. Rinko
appeared to be drenched in sweat, too. They must have been hard at work
saving Higa's life. Then that wonderfully pleasant feeling while he dreamed
must have been…
Hmm?
Who tried to pump my heart, and who gave me mouth-to-mouth?
He nearly asked the question of them, but he caught himself in time. Some
truths were better off unknown.
Instead, he asked a much more important question: "What's the state of the
Underworld…and of Alice?"
Kikuoka brushed Higa's left shoulder and said, "All the players connecting
from America, China, and Korea have been logged out. In fact, there were
nearly thirty thousand from China and Korea alone, but…"
"What…? From China and Korea, too?! Not as reinforcements…but as
enemies?!" Higa blurted out. He tried to get up again, but the shock of the pain
from his right shoulder stabbed him in the brain.
"Don't get up now!" Sergeant First Class Aki scolded. "The bullet went all the
way through, but I only just got the bleeding to stop."
"Y-yes, ma'am…" Higa relaxed and let Rinko fill him in on the situation.
"Apparently, they recruited the Chinese and Koreans on social media, riling
them up by playing on their natural rivalry as online gamers."
"Oh…I see…," Higa lamented. His participation in Project Alicization was
partially spurred on by the death of a Korean friend who'd been blown up in a
terrorist attack while serving his military years in Iraq. It was galling to think that
the project had now led to further inflammation of the hostilities between
Japan itself and Korean gamers—even if it was the attackers who were doing it.
He found himself shaking his head, then grimaced at the pain. "How many
from China and Korea, again?" he asked.
"It seems they hit nearly thirty thousand. The two thousand players who
came to our side from Japan were essentially wiped out," Kikuoka said. He
closed his eyes for a moment before continuing, "At that point, there were still
over twenty thousand hostile troops present. Fortunately, that's when Kirito
awoke and took care of them in one blow…"
"W-wait, what?" Higa stammered, cutting off his superior. "Kirito neutralized
an army of twenty thousand, all alone…in a single instant?! That's impossible!
The Underworld doesn't have a weapon or command capable of attacking on a
physical scale or intensity of that sort. Or at least…it shouldn't…"
Only then did Higa recall the conversation he'd had with Yanai right around
the time the man had shot him in the cable duct.
Nobuyuki Sugou's former employee Yanai not only was a spy for the attackers
invading the ship but was obsessed with the artificial fluctlight known as
Administrator, the pontifex of the Axiom Church. How had it come to that?
And then there was the question of the "fourth": the irregular fluctlight
connected to Kazuto Kirigaya's fluctlight from the Main Visualizer itself. That—
he or she—had become the key to Kazuto's recovery. But Higa had never even
imagined that an inanimate object without a mind of its own could function as a
human consciousness, even a simulated one.
"…Hey…Kiku…," he said, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with his blood
loss. "Do you think…we've been creating…something much, much bigger—?"
Right at that moment, the speaker in the command console issued a piercing
alarm.
It was the sound that Higa had programmed to alert him to a change in the
time-acceleration rate of the simulation.
Ashen clouds rushed past Asuna and me with blinding speed. A bloodred sky
hung above us, and blackened wasteland stretched out forever below.
In all the vast human-owned lands, only the pontifex herself had mastered
the art of flying, according to Alice the Integrity Knight. Now Administrator was
gone from the Underworld, as was her counterpart Cardinal, so there was no
way to know exactly what the command to perform the flying art was. In other
words, my flight through the Dark Territory was not a function of any sacred art,
but direct control of events through the power of imagination…what the
Integrity Knights would call Incarnation.
I could hear the words of Charlotte the giant spider, the familiar sent by
Cardinal to observe me on my trip all the way from the remote village of Rulid.
The formal arts are nothing but a tool to harness and refine Incarnation—
what you call a mental image. At this point, you need neither chants nor
catalysts.
Now wipe your tears and get to your feet. Feel the prayer of the flowers.
Feel the ways of the world…
From the moment I fell into a closed-off state immediately after fighting
Administrator on the top floor of Central Cathedral of the Axiom Church, to the
moment I recovered just minutes ago, I had been deeply connected to those
"ways of the world."
I could clearly sense the sacred power floating in the air around me and easily
convert its elements without requiring any elaborate commands. I had spoken
the spell's words earlier when healing Klein, Lisbeth, and the others, but I
probably could have produced the same effect with my imagination alone.
At the moment, I had wind elements forming a protective barrier around
Asuna and me, and I was also popping those wind elements in succession from
behind to propel us like a jet engine. It was many times faster than a dragon, I
was sure, but it was still going to take at least five minutes to catch up to Alice
on Amayori to the south of us.
There were so many things I wanted to say to Asuna, so many things to
apologize and thank her for, while we had this time. But as we flew together,
hands clasped, I found I could not look at her.
The reason was that just after I reawakened and the omnipotent sensation of
my body's blood turning into light finally faded, the memories of what had
happened to me recently started coming back to me, clarifying and ordering
themselves.
The big problem was what had happened late last night.
As I lay in the center of the tent, Asuna and Alice and Ronie and Sortiliena sat
around me, each of them telling stories about me…Specifically, revealing stories
of my many bad behaviors and incidents over the years. Recalling it was a living
hell.
Kirito snuck right out of the academy to buy honey pies from the Jumping Deer
and nut cookies from the Sunflower and brought them back for Tiese and me,
Ronie had said.
And when I graduated, he gave me a whole bunch of zephilia flowers that only
bloom in the western empire. He said it took an entire year to make them bloom
here, Liena had bragged.
When we were climbing the outer wall of the cathedral, Kirito pulled a
steamed bun out of his pocket and gave me half. He tried to warm it up with
heat elements and nearly burned it to a crisp, Alice had added.
The very first time I met him, he gave me cream to spread on black bread. And
there were the blueberry tarts and huge roll cakes and all the other things we
ate together…, Asuna had finished wistfully.
For some reason, they'd kept competing to one-up the others with foodbased stories. After that came all the things I'd done and the things I'd said, one
after the other, without end…
"Ah…"
I put my head in my hands, despite the fact that we were flying at high speed,
and screamed.
"Aaaaaah!"
Instantly, my concentration was lost, and the generation and activation of
wind elements stopped. My body was blasted with sudden, ferocious wind
resistance, and I started to go into a tailspin.
I muttered a panicked curse and spread out my wide, long coat into the form
of black wings that gave me aerial stability again. But my relief was highly
temporary, because— "Eyaaaaaa!!"
—Asuna came plummeting from above, screaming. I reached out to catch her.
The attempt was successful—but not by much—and she looked back at me with
big hazel-brown eyes, face-to-face. If I was going to apologize, now was the
time.
"Asuna, it's not what you think!!"
That was an excuse, not an apology, but it was too late to stop now.
"Liena and Alice and Ronie, there was nothing between us! I swear to Stacia,
nothing at all happened!!" I pleaded.
Asuna stared at me…and her face crinkled into a smile. She placed her slender
hands on my cheeks and said, with both exasperation and fondness, "You
haven't changed, Kirito. They say you were fighting and fighting in here for two
years, so I wondered if maybe that would have made you…more mature…but…"
Clear liquid suddenly sprang from Asuna's eyes. Her lips trembled, and her
voice grew hoarse. "I'm so glad…It's really you, Kirito…You haven't changed at
all…You're still my Kirito…"
Her words penetrated deep into my chest. I felt something hot begin to rise
within me, but I caught it before it could reach my throat.
"…I'm just me. Of course that won't change."
"But…but you're like a god now. You froze that entire huge army all at once…
then fully healed two hundred people in a single moment…and now you can
fly…"
I couldn't help but chuckle at that. "No, I've just figured out how this world
works better than most. Once you get used to the concept, you'll be able to fly
very quickly, too, Asuna."
"…I don't need to."
"What?"
"I'd rather have you fly and carry me in your arms like this," she said, smiling
and sniffling, and took her hands off my cheeks to circle my back instead, where
she squeezed me tight. I returned her embrace.
"Thank you…thank you, Asuna. You suffered all those terrible wounds to help
protect the people of the Underworld…I'm sure it must have been agony…"
It was two years ago, when a goblin captain slashed me in a cave under the
mountains, that I had learned just how real the pain was in this world. The
blade had only carved a little bit of the flesh of my shoulder, but it had hurt so
bad I couldn't even stand up for a while.
Asuna, however, had faced an army summoned by PoH and never stopped
fighting, even as she suffered gruesome wounds all over her body. Without
Asuna's hard effort, Tiese and Ronie and the rest of the Human Guardian Army
would have been eliminated long ago.
"No…it wasn't just me," she said, her cheek moving against mine. "Shino-non
and Leafa and Liz and Silica and Klein and Agil…and the Sleeping Knights and
everyone from ALO—they all did incredibly. And Renly the Integrity Knight, the
guards of the human army, Sortiliena, Ronie, Tiese…"
Suddenly, Asuna gasped, and her body went tense. I had a feeling I knew why,
even before she said it.
"Oh…Kirito! The commander…Bercouli went chasing after the enemy
emperor, all on his own, and…"
"..."
I nodded to her without a word, then shook my head.
I was already aware that the massive strength of Bercouli Synthesis One, the
oldest of the Integrity Knights, whom I'd never had the chance to speak to in
person, was already gone from this earth.
Just before this war started, we'd shared a brief clash of imaginary swords—
Incarnate Swords. As the memory came back to me, I realized that Bercouli had
already sensed his coming death at the time.
For the conclusion of his life of three hundred years, he'd chosen to fight to
protect Alice.
Asuna understood the meaning of my gesture, clutched me even harder, and
wept. It did not last long, however; she stifled her sobs to ask, "Is Alice…all
right…?"
"Yeah, he hasn't caught her yet. She's going to reach the southern end of the
Dark Territory very soon…and get to the third system console. But there's a
massive presence chasing after her…"
"I see…In that case, we have to protect her. For Bercouli."
When Asuna pulled away, her face was wet with tears but firmly resolved. I
gave her a slow nod. Her eyes wavered a tiny bit.
"But for now…just for this brief moment, be my Kirito alone," she whispered.
Her lips approached and met mine.
Beneath the red sky of another world, flanked by black wings that flapped
slowly, Asuna and I shared a long, passionate kiss.
In that moment, at last, I recalled why I had awakened in this world two and a
half years ago.
It was the last Monday of June in the real world.
As I walked Asuna back home, we were attacked by the third perpetrator of
the Death Gun incident, the principal member of the red guild, Laughing Coffin:
Johnny Black. My memory of the scene ended when I was injected with a
muscle relaxant by his high-pressure injection gun. I probably went into
respiratory arrest, suffered some kind of brain damage, and was put into the
Underworld with the STL for restorative purposes.
Through whatever twist of fate, Laughing Coffin's leader, PoH, was among the
group that attacked the Ocean Turtle, and he was now stuck in the ground of
the Dark Territory, transformed into a miniature version of the Gigas Cedar.
When the time acceleration started again, he would be stuck without vision or
hearing for days, possibly weeks, before he was pulled out of the system.
However long it would be, he would suffer some kind of mental damage—
possibly as bad as mine had been the last six months. It was cruel, I believed—
but not unnecessarily so.
He had tried to murder Asuna…and other people I truly cared about.
After many seconds where our existences felt like they were melting together
into one, our lips came apart.
"Doesn't it remind you of back then…?" Asuna said, her look pensive. I knew
why.
She was remembering the moment right after SAO, the game of death, had
been beaten, when we'd shared a kiss under a sunset sky, against the backdrop
of the collapsing castle. But that had been a kiss of parting.
To sweep away any hint of foreboding, I grinned and said, "C'mon—let's go.
Let's beat Emperor Vecta, save Alice, and get everyone back to the real wo—"
Before I could finish that last word, a panicked voice spoke directly inside my
head.
Kirito!! Kirigaya!! Can you hear me, Kirito?!
That gravelly voice…
"Uh…is that Mr. Kikuoka? How are you talking to me without a system
console around…?"
I don't have to explain that to you! We've got major trouble!! It's the time
acceleration…They've tampered with the safety limiter on the FLA!!
Critter watched, slightly uneasily, as Brigg's bearded face turned red and
sweaty as he tweaked the two wires around in the keyhole.
Brigg had eagerly nominated himself for the lock-picking job, but given the
importance of the time accelerator's safety function, it wasn't just some simple
old-school cylinder lock. With time, his finger movements got more and more
violent, and the volume of his curses rose.
Right behind Brigg, Hans checked his digital wristwatch and gleefully
announced, "That's three minutes. Two more, and you owe me fifty bucks."
"Shut the hell up! Two minutes is nothing…Once I get this open, I'll be able to
spend a night in Hawaii on the way…home…"
The sound of the wires rotating the lock was sounding less like unlocking and
more like destruction. Critter wanted to interject and tell him to stop there, but
now that the other two had put a bet on the result, there was no stopping
them.
"And one minute left! Get ready to pay up."
"For fuck's sake!!" Brigg finally shouted. He got to his feet and threw the
wires to the floor.
Critter was relieved that he had finally given up on picking the lock—until the
red-faced soldier drew his massive handgun from its holster and pressed the
muzzle to the lock.
"Hey, hey, whoa..."
One blast. Then another.
Brigg put the pistol back in his holster, then looked at the stunned Hans and
Critter and shrugged.
"Lock's picked."
Critter stared at the two-inch hole left in the console panel with his mouth
hanging open. Two or three little bursts of sparks lit up the darkness of the hole,
and then the operating lever, which was still in its tilted position, began to
move again. After about five inches, it came to a stop with a little thunk. On the
monitor, the readout was not just above ×1,200, where Critter had wanted to
test it. The number on the screen glowed ×5,000, the maximum value.
"…F-five..."
He tried to calculate on the spot how many minutes one second of real time
would take at that speed—when there was another dull metallic sound.
"N…no way..."
Critter gaped as he saw the number on the monitor go past five thousand,
then past ten thousand…
No way, we're still fine. As long as nobody touches the activation button, it
won't actually change the acceleration rate. I can still pull the lever back, and
it'll be like nothing ever happened.
"Don't…don't touch it!! Nobody touch it!!" he shrieked, waving Hans and
Brigg away from the console.
Then he snuck closer and carefully reached out.
And just before his hand could touch the lever—boom.
There was a soft little bursting sound.
The red activation button and its plastic cover blew off.
Then the huge monitor on the wall of the main control room turned red, and
an unpleasant alarm blared out of the speakers. A countdown appeared,
starting at fifteen minutes and spinning downward with alarming speed.
When he heard the alarm that indicated the acceleration rate was being
altered again, Higa tried to jump up once more and grimaced in pain.
"Higa! We just told you to calm down," Dr. Koujiro said, rushing over and
putting a hand to Higa's back.
At that very moment, the main monitor of the sub-control room turned red.
"Wh-what's that?!" shouted Kikuoka. With Rinko's support, Higa could see
past the commander's shoulder to the screen.
Displayed in a bold font were a fifteen-minute countdown and a warning
message that all three safety-limit stages on the FLA system were unlocked and
that the entire Underworld was heading into a maximum-acceleration phase.
"Wha...…?"
Higa was speechless. Instead, Dr. Koujiro took it upon herself to ask, "What
does that mean, maximum acceleration?! Wasn't the limit of the FLA twelve
hundred times the normal speed?!"
"…That's the limit when a flesh-and-blood human is in a dive…but artificial
fluctlights can go up to five thousand…," Higa said mechanically, pulling the
number from memory.
The scientist's chilly eyes tightened dangerously. "Five thousand?! Then that
means…one second here is about eighty minutes…Just eighteen seconds will
correspond to an entire day!!"
Her mental arithmetic was impressive. But Higa and Kikuoka shared a look
and shook their heads awkwardly.
"Huh…? What do I have wrong?"
"Twelve hundred is a safety limit taking the life span of the human soul into
account…and five thousand is just the limit of what we can observe as it's
happening in the Underworld. But neither of them is the actual limit of the
hardware…"
Higa's throat was burning, bone-dry. Dr. Koujiro's arm twitched as it held him
around his back.
"Th-then," she asked tremulously, "what is…the hardware limit…?"
"As you know, the Underworld is constructed by and calculated with light
quantums. Its transmission speed within the Main Visualizer is theoretically
limitless…meaning that the actual limit is placed on it by the architecture of the
lower server…"
"Get to the point! What's the number?!"
He pulled his gaze away from the screen to look at Rinko. "In the maximumacceleration phase…the FLA rate is just a bit over five million to one. The two
STLs in Roppongi can't manage that sort of speed over the satellite connection,
so they'll get cut off automatically…but Kirigaya and Asuna in the STLs onboard
the Ocean Turtle…"
A minute of real-world time would be equal to ten years in the Underworld.
Rinko calculated the number instantly, and her eyes went so wide they twitched
with shock.
"My…my God…We have to…we have to get Asuna and Kirigaya out of those
STLs right away!!" she gasped, attempting to stand, but this time Higa held her
arm back.
"No, Rinko! It's already in an early acceleration phase—if you try to pull them
out of the machine now, they'll suffer fluctlight damage!!"
"Then perform the operation to disengage them!!"
"Why do you think I went down the cable duct?! You can only perform STL
operations from the main control room!!" shrieked Higa, his voice rising.
He looked at the commander, who stood before the console. Kikuoka already
seemed to understand where Higa was going with this.
"…Kiku, I'm going down there again."
Sergeant First Class Aki looked horrified by this notion and opened her mouth
to say something, then stopped herself. Instead, she approached and
murmured, "I'll take out the catheter now."
The commander scowled bitterly but nodded. "All right. I'll go, too. I'm strong
enough to carry you down that ladder, I think."
"N…no, Lieutenant Colonel!!" shouted Lieutenant Nakanishi, the leader of the
security team. He strode forward crisply, his face pale. "It's too dangerous. I'll
—"
"We need you to defend the stairs. This will require opening the pressure
barrier again…and we don't have Ichiemon this time, plus Niemon's not
operational."
Everyone in the sub-control room looked to the left back corner.
The human silhouette hanging from a coat-hanger-like support frame did not
belong to an actual human. It was a humanoid machine body that Higa had
researched and developed as a part of Project Alicization called the
Electroactive Muscled Operative Machine #2, nicknamed Niemon. Compared to
Ichiemon, which had been used as a decoy in the previous barrier-opening
mission and destroyed, Niemon had been given a greatly improved appearance,
as it was developed to hold a lightcube on board.
Naturally, the socket on its head was currently empty, so even if turned on, it
would not move. It couldn't be an autonomous shield the way that Ichiemon
was.
Kikuoka looked away from the soulless robot and back to Nakanishi. With a
tremendously stern look, he gave the officer orders.
"You will be engaging directly with the enemy, so your danger is clearly
higher. But I need you to go."
Nakanishi clenched his jaw and snapped off a salute. "Sir, yes, sir!"
While the military officers were talking, Higa timidly lifted his hand. It hurt,
but at least his fingers were capable of moving.
The countdown to the maximum-acceleration phase on the monitor was
down to ten minutes and change. But to reopen the pressure-resistant barrier
wall, climb down that endless ladder, and perform the STL disengagement from
the monitoring port there would take at least thirty minutes.
And in the extra twenty minutes, two hundred years was going to pass inside
the Underworld. That would easily surpass the 150 years that were the life span
of the human soul. And even before that point, it would still be an unbearable,
seemingly infinite length of time for real-world people to suffer inside the
Underworld…
Inside the Underworld...…
"Yes…that's it!!" cried Higa. He swung his left arm, from which the bloodtransfusion catheter had just been removed, toward Kikuoka. "K-Kiku!! When I
operated the STL earlier, I set up a communication channel to Kirito! Talk to him
on line C-12!!"
"B-but…what should I say…?"
"Tell him to escape from inside!! If he either reaches a system console or
loses all his HP in the next ten minutes, the STL will automatically begin
disengagement protocol!! But once the maximum-acceleration phase begins,
the console won't function, and dying would be even worse!! You'd have to live
out two hundred years with all your sensory organs blocked…Just warn him all
about that!!"
"Two…"
Two hundred years?!
I barely caught the words before they flew out of my mouth. Inches away
from my face, Asuna looked befuddled; she couldn't hear Kikuoka's voice the
way I could.
"Listen to me, Kirito—you have ten minutes! You need to get to the console
and log out in that time!! And if that's impossible, you can also reduce your HP
to zero…but that's not as certain, and it's more dangerous. That's because…"
We might be forced to live out two centuries in a simulated state of death, I
already knew. So I cut Kikuoka off and said, "Got it. I'll try to find a way to
escape through the console! With Alice, of course—so be ready for that
outcome!"
"…I'm sorry. In fact, I want you to prioritize your own escape over Alice's
status. Listen, even if we could erase your memory after you log out, two
hundred years is far beyond the life span of the human soul! The likelihood we
could bring you back to consciousness is…almost zero…," Kikuoka said, the
bitterness clear in his voice.
"Don't worry—I'll come back," I stated softly. "And, Mr. Kikuoka, I apologize
for what I said to you half a year ago…I mean, last night."
"Don't. We deserve every last bit of criticism. I'll make sure we've got
bandages for all the punches you owe us…All right, looks like Higa's ready. I've
got to go."
"Okay. I'll see you in ten minutes, Mr. Kikuoka."
The signal ended there.
I was still hovering in midair, coat hem flapping to keep us aloft, Asuna held
tight in my arms.
"…Kirito, did you get some kind of message from Mr. Kikuoka? Was it…
something bad?" she asked.
I shook my head from side to side. "No…he just said that the time rate's going
to accelerate again in ten minutes, so he wants us to hurry it up."
Asuna blinked, then gave me a little smile. "Of course. It wouldn't be fair to
Alice if we're just floating around doing this. Let's go save her!"
"Yeah. I'm going to start flying again."
I clutched Asuna and generated another huge mass of wind elements. A gust
of glowing-green wind arose to envelop us.
And so I flew to the south, sensing Alice's distant presence—and the massive
abnormality that pursued her.
2
He's going to catch me.
Alice, atop Amayori's saddle, looked over her shoulder and bit her lip.
The eerie black dot in the red sky was clearly larger than it had been five
minutes ago. It wasn't that the enemy's speed had picked up; Amayori and
Takiguri were simply running out of strength.
That only made sense, because they'd been flying consecutively without any
breaks. If anything, it was a miracle that they'd brought her this far. They'd
traveled a distance many times greater than the length of the human territory
—from Centoria to the End Mountains—in just half a day. Both dragons were
clearly expending great amounts of life to continue flying at this point.
But why wasn't her pursuer losing stamina, then?
From what she could tell upon performing a farseeing art with crystal
elements, he was riding an odd creature that was not at all like the dragons. It
would best be described as a disc with wings. She'd never seen such a thing in
the human realm or the Dark Territory.
According to the archer named Sinon—another visitor from Kirito's "real
world"—her pursuer was indeed the emperor of the Dark Territory, the God of
Darkness, Vecta, but at the same time, he was a real-world person in an
antagonistic position to Kirito and Sinon.
Emperor Vecta had lost earlier to Commander Bercouli's sacrificial attack—
the Memory Release art of the Time-Splitting Sword, most likely. But he had
come back to this place in a new form to continue his pursuit of Alice.
That horrifying resurrection, which seemed to mock Bercouli's death, filled
her with a rage that would never be quelled. But as she flew alone, Alice found
the time to discover what she truly ought to do.
If the enemy was immortal in this world, then he would need to be killed in
the real world. And to do that, she would need to reach the World's End Altar.
Ahead, far across the red sky, she could see the faint outline of a cliff face on
an impossible scale. It was the Wall at the End of the World, as spoken of in the
founding myth. Unlike the mountains around the human realm, which a dragon
could fly over, the cliff that surrounded the Dark Territory was said to have an
immeasurable height.
Just before the sheer wall, at about the same height at which Alice was flying,
hovered a small island in the air, all alone.
It looked like a little cup with a pointed bottom. She couldn't guess what force
was keeping it floating in the air like that. Upon closer examination, there
appeared to be some kind of artificial construction in the center of its flat top.
That was probably none other than the World's End Altar. The exit of this world,
and the entrance to the real world.
Fewer than ten kilors remained between her and the altar, but Emperor Vecta
was likely to catch up to her just a bit before she reached the floating island,
sadly.
Alice took a deep breath and exhaled. Then she brushed the neck of her
dragon. "Thank you, Amayori and Takiguri. This is far enough. Take me down to
the ground," she commanded.
The beasts crooned weakly and began a parallel spiral descent. The ground
below had turned into a chilly-looking dark-gray desert not long ago. It was just
an empty sea of sand, as though the gods had gotten bored of creation and
stopped there. The dragons came to a lengthy landing and practically collapsed.
Alice immediately jumped off the back of Amayori, who trilled, frululululu,
from deep in its throat. She rummaged in the leather saddlebag and pulled out
the one little bottled elixir still left. Then she poured half of the blue liquid into
Amayori's slack mouth and the rest of it into the mouth of the older brother
nearby. Even the Axiom Church's spiritual elixir wasn't nearly enough to recover
the massive life total of the majestic dragons, but it should at least give them
the strength to take off again.
She reached out with both hands to scratch the soft hair beneath the chins of
both dragons at once.
"Amayori. Takiguri."
Just saying their names brought tears to her eyes. She fought the urge to cry
and continued, "This is good-bye. My final order to you…Fly back to the human
world and return to your dragon nests in the west. Amayori, find yourself a
husband—Takiguri, find yourself a wife. Bear many children and raise them to
be strong. Strong enough that they can carry knights, too."
Amayori suddenly raised its head and licked Alice's cheek. Takiguri nuzzled
her waist and sniffed at the Frostscale Whip hanging there, which had belonged
to Eldrie.
Once they pulled away from her, Alice commanded, "Go!! Fly straight and do
not turn back!!"
Krulululu!! the dragons trilled, lifting their necks. They stood up and began to
run to the west without looking back. Their wings spread wide, grabbing the
desert air and lifting their massive bodies. Brother and sister beat their wings,
which were so close that their ends nearly touched, lifting off at the same time.
Amayori did crane its long neck around, though. The dragon's beautiful
crystalline eye stared straight at Alice. A large droplet of liquid filled its lid, then
sparkled as it fell free.
"Ama…yori…?" Alice murmured.
But before she could even finish speaking the dragon's name, it and its
brother dragon tilted to their right, making a hard turn. With fierce bellows,
they rose in a straight line not to the west, but dead north. Toward the pursuer
in black, who was now close enough to be visible.
"No…no, you can't!! Amayori, nooooo!!" she screamed, breaking into a run.
But the fine sand of the desert clung to her boots. Alice fell to the ground,
hands outstretched, and could only watch as Amayori and Takiguri shot higher
into the sky toward the invincible enemy.
Silver scales caught the red sunlight and blazed like flame.
Jaws full of glittering sharp teeth opened wide.
The sibling dragons unleashed their greatest weapon as soon as the pursuer
was within range: their heat beams. White light shot across the sky, like a
manifestation of their very life force burning.
The enemy, atop his strange mount, did not bother to change his flight path in
the face of the oncoming superheated flame. He simply held out his left hand
and spread his fingers.
There was no way to defend against it. The dragons' beams were the highestpriority attack in the world, with the exception of the Integrity Knights' Perfect
Weapon Control arts, and certain multilayered spells cast by groups of elite
arts-users. And this was two beams. There was not enough time to execute a
defensive art strong enough to counteract them.
Or so Alice estimated.
And prayed.
But the two screaming, resonating beams of pure heat did not envelop the
enemy's body in their all-consuming power. Instead, something that beggared
Alice's understanding occurred.
A swirl of absolute darkness grew from the pursuer's palm.
It looked as though the space around it simply warped and stretched to fall
into the darkness. Even the all-powerful fire from the dragons was no
exception. The direct path of the beams curved, sucked toward the man's palm.
And with nothing more than a brief little illumination, and no flashing or
explosions, the two lines of heat were devoured by the darkness.
Alice did not miss the sight of a faint smile stretching across the enemy's
mouth, despite the fact that he was only a black dot flying high enough that no
art or sword strike could reach him.
Then, with a horrible noise like scraping sand, the blackness surrounding the
man's left hand shot out several bolts of black lightning.
It was as if he had swallowed the dragons' fire breath and made that power
his own. The lightning burst mercilessly through their wings and limbs. The two
dragons lurched, and blood even redder than the sky behind it sprayed into the
void.
"Ah…ah...," Alice gasped. She hurled her hands upward. "Amayoriiii!! Get
away!! You don't have to do this!! Just fly awaaaay!!"
She knew that the dragons could hear her scream. But the mounts seemed to
be only spurred on further by the sound of her voice. They beat their wings and
charged again.
Their mouths opened wide. From between their fangs, the air wavered with
heat haze, and light flickered unsteadily.
Zwamp!! The heat beams scorched the sky a second time.
Once again, the man deployed a shield of darkness and let the flames hit it.
This was clearly leading to another counterattack, like the last one, but the
dragons boldly continued their charge. They beat their wings furiously, even
while the beams lasted, trying to get as close as possible to the enemy.
The blood spray from their wounds turned to flame. Their silver scales fell
loose, disintegrating into motes of light in the air.
The dragons' very existence was converting into light elements.
Those beams of light, representing their very life force burning away, began
to fill the dark vortex, saturating it. White smoke began to rise from the man's
palm, which was seemingly unable to withstand the raging heat.
But just after that, a veil of smoky, black darkness covered his entire form.
The hungering void in his hand grew in power, and soon its black lightning
began to push back the white heat beams.
For just one second, there was parity between the dueling strength of white
and black, and then it was all the other way.
Countless bolts of crackling black lightning seized upon Amayori and Takiguri,
whose wings were finally slowing from lack of strength.
"Amayori!! Amayoriiiiii!!" screamed Alice, but all her words landed upon was
endless desert sand, like her tears.
In that moment, the stars fell.
Two gleaming stars, dropping out of the red sky at tremendous speed.
One headed straight for the ground.
The other came to a complete stop right in the median point between the
dragons and the pursuer. The light itself disintegrated, revealing what it was
hiding within.
A person.
A swordsman.
Slightly shaggy black hair and a long black coat trailed in the wind. White and
black swords crossed each other behind his back. His arms were folded over his
chest, and he stared calmly at the approaching storm of darkness.
Bam!! Bzzsh!!
Lightning blasted the swordsman. But not quite—it only deflected off him
without making contact. It was as though an invisible wall stood before the still
figure with arms folded, blocking the lightning and forcing it to discharge
harmlessly into empty air.
Alice held her breath and watched through wide eyes.
Then the black-clad swordsman turned and looked down at her.
His youthful face crinkled into a smile, and his dark eyes were strong with
purpose. Alice felt sparks shooting deep in her chest. The heat instantly spread,
burning her insides, filling her heart with drive.
She could feel more tears were flooding into her eyes now. "Kiri…to..."
The swordsman, awake again after a half-year slumber, gave her a nod with a
smile that was powerful but somehow shy, then turned away and raised his
right hand in front of him. He pointed toward the dying dragons, who were
flapping their wings with the last bit of strength remaining. The tips of their
wings and the ends of their tails were already melting into light.
Amayori looked at Kirito, with whom it had lived for half a year at the cottage
outside of Rulid, and trilled softly.
Kirito nodded back to it and closed his eyes.
Without warning, iridescent film surrounded the two dragons. It was like a
giant soap bubble had formed around them. But the dragons were not alarmed;
they folded their wings, tucked in their heads, and rolled into balls.
The rainbow orb slowly descended directly over Alice. She was so stunned
that she nearly forgot to breathe.
And then something very strange happened. The enormous rainbow-tinted
bodies of Amayori and Takiguri began to shrink. No, not shrink—they were
getting youthful, growing in reverse.
Sharp talons rounded. Thick, hard scales reverted into soft, downy growths.
Their tails and necks shrank, and smaller wings sprouted fine hair.
By the time they came down to Alice's outstretched arms, the dragons were
less than fifty cens in size. Takiguri was covered in a white pelt with a bluish tint,
its eyes closed in peaceful sleep.
And Amayori was like a green ball of fluff, the same way as when she'd first
met it at Central Cathedral. The little dragon looked right at Alice, opened its
jaws to expose teeth like little pearls, and trilled, "Kyuru!!"
"Ama…yori…," Alice gasped. Tears trickled down her cheeks and sparkled as
they bounced off the dragon's soft, feathery hide.
The rainbow film surrounding the two infant dragons grew brighter, all at
once. The sensation of soft feathers on Alice's arms turned to smooth hardness.
After a few blinks, she realized that she was cradling two large eggs.
The silvery eggs shrank smaller and smaller, until they were capable of resting
side by side in the palm of her hand, and the rainbow glow around them faded
at last.
As she nestled the eggs against her cheek, Alice tried to interpret what had
just happened. Kirito must have determined that the maximum value of
Amayori's and Takiguri's lives was so great that sacred arts alone could not
restore it. So instead, he shrank that maximum value as small as it could go—
effectively returning them to their embryonic egg form and preventing them
from reaching death.
Alice was currently the most powerful user of sacred arts in the entire world,
and even she couldn't imagine what combination could produce such an effect.
But she was not worried. The only thought she kept was warm certainty that
she would one day meet the dragons again.
She wrapped the two eggs between her hands gently and looked up to the
sky again.
"Thank you…and welcome back, Kirito," she whispered tearily.
There was no way her voice could reach the figure floating in the distant sky,
but the man in the black coat nodded firmly back to her and smiled again. She
heard a familiar voice in her mind.
No. I'm sorry for having put you through so much. Thank you, Alice. We'll
meet again in the real world.
Then Kirito slowly turned and faced the darkness-shrouded pursuer.
Sparks crackled here and there in empty space, as if the world itself was
unable to withstand the pressure of two massive sources of competing
Incarnation.
"…Kirito…"
That enemy will not be defeated by any typical attack, even from you, Alice
thought, biting her lip in concern.
From very close by, a voice said, "It'll be all right, Alice."
She spun around to see a real-worlder standing near her in pearly-white
armor.
"Asuna…"
The girl with long brown hair swaying in the wind just smiled at her and
reached out to touch her back. "Let's put our trust in Kirito. The two of us need
to rush to the World's End Altar."
"R-right," she replied, but she knew it would not be as easy as that.
Alice looked to the south, where the Wall at the End of the World rose high
above the horizon—and a small white island floated before it.
"The altar is probably atop that island," she said after a moment. "But we
can't ride on the dragons anymore, so I don't know how to get up that high…"
"Don't worry. Let me handle that," assured Asuna, drawing a thin sword from
her waist. She pointed it at the distant island and let her long lashes droop low.
Suddenly, there was a booming angelic chorus—Laaaaaaaa!—just like the
one Asuna had heard during the Dark Army's ambush last night. A rainbow of
light fell directly downward onto the gray desert from the sky.
The ground rumbled beneath their feet, and a white stone slab rose out of
the sand just before them.
Grunk, gru-gru-grunk! Another slab appeared behind it, slightly higher, and
then another. Alice watched in awe as a white staircase formed itself in the air,
building up to the distant floating island in just a dozen or so seconds.
When the altering of the geography was complete, Asuna lowered her sword
and fell to a knee in the sand.
"A-Asuna…!!"
"I'm…fine. Let's hurry…We've only got about eight minutes until the altar
closes…"
Closes?
Alice didn't understand the meaning of that in the moment, but Asuna
grabbed her by the hand before she could ask. She got to her feet, pulled by
Asuna, and began to run up the white stone staircase. As she ran, she glanced
over her shoulder to look once more at her pursuer and the swordsman in black
facing off in the sky.
There are many, many things I want to say to you and ask of you.
So you'd better win. Win and then come back to me.
The sight of the two swordfighters practically flying up the white stairs to the
island floating over the gray desert was so beautiful, so poetic, so symbolic that
I could only marvel at it. I had to sear the image into my mind.
Alice. Asuna.
This is good-bye.
There was a reason I hadn't told Asuna that the acceleration rate was going to
reach five million times real speed and that if we didn't escape before then,
we'd be trapped in here for two hundred years of perceived time.
If they knew that, both Asuna and Alice would stand with me to fight. Even if
it meant they'd fail to escape before the time limit.
As soon as I'd become conscious of the presence of the foe pursuing Alice, I'd
shivered at the alienness of his nature. But in fact, presence wasn't even the
right word. The only thing there was nothing. He was a void, a black hole that
devoured all information, even light.
The chances of defeating an enemy like this before the time limit, then
escaping with all three of us present, was extremely low.
So that made it clear to me what my priority should be: I had to log Asuna and
Alice out of the Underworld. Nothing could come before that—nothing.
So I fixed the painting-like image of beauty below me into my mind, then
turned away to face the enemy hovering nearby.
It was utterly unfathomable, now that I was finally facing off with it.
It was male. I was pretty sure of that.
But that was all I was sure of.
The form of his face, if it was an avatar of his choosing, seemed to be
intentionally designed to match the "average white male" appearance. His
features weren't bad; it was just that there was nothing notable about them. He
could only be described as having white skin, blue eyes, and blond hair.
His physical figure was utterly average for a white male. A body, neither fat
nor skinny, wrapped in a military jacket. It wasn't clear whether that meant he
was a soldier—because the jacket's black-and-gray camouflage pattern was
constantly shifting and moving like some kind of slime mold. He also had a
sword on his left side that appeared to be a Divine Object.
Asuna had warned me on the trip here that this man was a member of the
special-ops team that had invaded the Ocean Turtle. That would make him a
mercenary hired by some group or company looking to steal tech related to
artificial fluctlights. But the man floating there and staring at me with lifeless
marble-like eyes did not feel like the type of human being who was motivated
by crass concerns like money. He didn't feel like a human being at all.
When one second had passed, I spoke.
"…Who are you?"
His answer was immediate. The man's voice was smooth and yet somehow
metallic in nature.
"One who seeks, steals, and snatches away."
Instantly, the aura of darkness surrounding his being writhed and amplified. I
felt a slight breeze blowing from behind. The air—the very information that
made up the world—was being sucked into the darkness.
"What do you seek?"
"Souls."
With each answer, the suction increased. It wasn't just the information of the
world, either—I felt my own consciousness beginning to succumb to that empty
gravity.
Then something resembling an expression floated past his lips. The faintest of
smiles, but one utterly removed from anything you might call emotion.
"And who are you? Why are you here? What right do you have to stand
before me?"
Who…am I?
The hero the Underworld always needed? Hardly.
A knight who protects the human realm? No.
Each suggestion that came to my mind was rejected, and each slipped right
out of me, like it was being stolen. And yet, for some reason, I couldn't stop the
thoughts from coming.
The hero who defeated the deadly game of SAO? No.
The greatest VRMMO player alive? No.
The Black Swordsman? The Dual-Wielder? No, no.
None of those things were what I wanted.
So what was I…?
I could feel my mind starting to fade, to slip away—when I thought I heard a
familiar voice call my name.
My head rose—I hadn't realized it had dipped—and I named myself as I had
been called.
"I'm Kirito. Kirito the Swordsman."
Bzak!! Sparks flew, and the tendrils of darkness clinging to me were cut loose.
Immediately, my mind felt sharp and focused again.
What just happened to me?
Was this man using the STL to interfere directly with my mind? I hastily
strengthened the defensive wall of imagination around me and focused on the
man's eyes. They were truly empty—bottomless darkness that absorbed the
minds of others.
"…And your name is?" I asked, barely realizing what I was doing.
The man thought briefly. "Gabriel. My name is Gabriel Miller."
I could sense that this was not a character name or an online alias but the
man's actual identity. For just a few seconds, his appearance had changed. His
gaze had become sharper, icy, dangerous. His lips pulled back, and his
cheekbones sharpened.
As his features returned to that earlier fake look, the aura of darkness he
exuded instantly thickened. At this stage, I finally realized that the man's right
arm was entirely missing from the shoulder down. The unsteady mass of
darkness that was acting as his right arm slid down to his left side and grabbed
the sword.
He drew it with a squelch, but the sword did not have a physical blade to it.
There was just an empty darkness there, extending about three feet from the
hilt like black fire. It was a truly unreal thing.
With his shadow arm holding a blade of malignant darkness, the man swung it
forth, the blade issuing an eerie vibration. I distanced myself a bit and pulled
out the two swords over my shoulders—Blue Rose in my left hand, Night Sky in
my right.
In terms of blackness, the sword carved from the Gigas Cedar's branch was no
slouch itself. But while my sword reflected the light like some black crystal
substance, the man's sword was as dark as if the space itself had been removed
from existence. This was a level beyond PoH's Mate-Chopper and its ability to
absorb resources.
But there was no retreat, not even against the most unfathomable of
opponents. I had to hold off this enemy until Asuna and Alice could finish
climbing that staircase hundreds of yards tall.
"Let's go, Gabriel!!" I said, choosing to speak his name. The wing-shaped ends
of my coat flapped powerfully, pushing me upward. I crossed the swords before
my body.
"Generate All Elements!"
Using the air around me itself as a terminal, I generated dozens of each and
every type of element, then activated all of them at once as I fell.
"Discharge!!"
Flaming arrows, spears of ice, blades of wind, and many other elements raced
through the air. My swords swung downward, following the spells.
Gabriel Miller did not move a muscle to evade any of it. He just grinned thinly
and spread his hands.
Omnicolored light stabbed through the blue-tinged darkness covering his
body.
I didn't miss the way he faltered briefly above the waist. I slashed his torso
with my right sword and thrust through his chest with my left. The sticky
darkness burst aside, leaving a chill on my skin where it brushed me.
My momentum took me past him a good distance before I turned back
toward him.
I caught sight of the darkness pulling back in from its undefined shape—and
Gabriel turning to face me as though nothing had happened. There wasn't a
single scratch on his jacket.
I knew it.
He had the ability to absorb and drain slashes, thrusts, flames, ice, wind,
water projectiles, steel arrows, crystal edges, light beams, and dark curses.
And my right shoulder, which his sword of nothingness had brushed when we
passed each other, sprayed blood from the place where both coat and flesh had
simply vanished.
Gabriel Miller glanced down at the Priestess of Light, Alice, and the other girl
with her as they ran up the white staircase hanging in the air. He gauged their
time of arrival at the system console to be five minutes from now.
That meant he couldn't be wasting time with this bothersome interloper. The
logical choice would be to neutralize the young man and proceed to the floating
island quickly. But Gabriel found himself just the tiniest bit interested in his
opponent and chose to hover here.
At first glance, he was nothing but a child. Compared to the aged swordsman
he'd fought to mutual death earlier, there was nothing imposing about this boy.
Like Sinon, he was probably some Japanese VRMMO player cooperating with
Rath somehow, but even that girl had more presence than he did.
For one thing, the boy was exuding barely anything you might call fighting
spirit.
There had been a brief moment when Gabriel was able to glean his will, when
he asked who he was, but that circuit had closed instantly. Since then, he'd
deflected all of Gabriel's mental feelers as completely as though he was covered
in a transparent shell. There was no joy in fighting an enemy whose mind he
couldn't taste.
Better to eliminate him at once and go after Alice, Gabriel thought briefly.
But when the young man transformed the ends of his coat into wings, then
wielded all kinds of magic at once, Gabriel changed his mind a bit. He sensed
that the boy was accustomed to this world.
Once Gabriel acquired Alice and the Soul Translation tech and fled to a third
country, he still had to do the work of building a virtual world just for himself
and to his exact liking. Stealing this young man's level of control wouldn't be a
bad idea, to ensure that he could perform the task efficiently.
So the first step would be to crack the shell of his imagination.
Gabriel smiled almost imperceptibly, then spoke in Japanese to the boy in
black.
"I'll give you three minutes. Entertain me."
"How very generous of you," I muttered, sealing the wound on my shoulder
with a single trace of a finger.
There was plenty backing up Gabriel Miller's confidence, however. For one
thing, the fact that he was immune to basically any kind of attack.
No, there must be at least one kind of attack that works on him. I'm sure that
it was Sinon who blew his arm off—she was fighting him first. She must have
imagined her Hecate II rifle and shot him with it. That would mean that even
Gabriel can't absorb a bullet attack.
It couldn't be a coincidence that he was also wearing a military jacket. He
would know the power of an antimateriel sniper rifle from real-life experience,
and perhaps that meant he couldn't completely negate the thought of the
damage he would suffer with willpower alone.
But Sinon would be able to materialize a gun in the Underworld only because
it was as familiar to her as her own arms and legs. I couldn't repeat an
accomplishment like that, and even if I could somehow make a pistol, it wasn't
going to have the power to stop him.
In other words, I had to find something aside from a gun that this eerie man
would recognize as a source of damage. And that would mean knowing Gabriel
as a person. I had to figure out how he lived, what he wanted, and why he was
here.
I held my swords perfectly still before me and let a smile curl the corners of
my mouth.
"All right. I'll give you some entertainment."
Where was his confidence coming from?
Clearly he had spent a long time logged in to the Underworld and was very
familiar with the systems that underpinned this world, but he was still just a
child. A gamer. He'd just been shown that his flashy swordsmanship and fanciful
magic attacks were completely meaningless. How could he still wear that
impertinent smile?
Gabriel found the fearless attitude to be mildly unpleasant and came to the
conclusion that it must be a bluff to buy time.
The boy knew that dying in this world would have no ill effects on his real-life
body, and he was relying upon that knowledge. All he wanted to do was draw
out their fight until his companion could escort Alice away safely.
He was just a stupid child, after all. Three minutes was more time than he
deserved.
Gabriel raised the empty blade he held in the hand built of willpower—and
stuck it into the back of the winged creature that he rode upon.
The monster was, like his sword and stonebow, simply the repurposed form
of the jetpack that his converted character had brought over. While he could
control it at will, it was slightly unstable with him being able to touch it with
only his feet. A more logical choice would be to turn it into wings only, like the
boy was doing.
The monster screeched briefly at the skewer in its back before it was sucked
into the void. Gabriel moved the data that came through the blade from his arm
to his back and focused his mind.
With a great flapping, black wings just like the boy's sprouted from his
shoulder blades. These were not the membraned wings of a bat, but those
belonging to a bird of prey, covered in sharp feathers. They were much more
suitable for a man bearing the name of an archangel.
"…I've already stolen one thing from you," Gabriel whispered, pointing his
empty blade at the young man.
I'd been planning to get rid of the man's flying disc–shaped mount with my
next attack, so I was briefly taken aback when got rid of it himself.
He didn't miss his chance. He slid into sword range with a flap of his black
eagle wings. The speed of his thrust without any windup was astonishing. I'd
taken him for an amateur when it came to swordplay, but that couldn't be
further from the truth. I swept my swords upward, aiming their intersection at
the point of attack.
Gzyrk!
The sword of inky darkness came to a halt just before my nose with an eerie
sound.
The Blue Rose Sword and the Night-Sky Blade rattled violently. While my
weapons weren't being corroded, it did feel like I was trying to cut emptiness
itself. It wasn't hard to imagine that the actual swords were being put under
terrible strain.
But the choice of a Cross Block rather than a backstep was intentional on my
part. Rather than pushing back against Gabriel's downward swing, I pushed it to
the right and gave him a tremendous high kick.
"Raaah!!" I screamed. The toe of my boot glowed orange as it shot upward
and caught his pointed chin. The darkness burst outward, and Gabriel's upper
half rocked backward.
How about that?!
I beat the air with my wings, darting backward to add distance between us
and give me time to watch him. Maybe it wasn't a gunshot, but if he really was
a special-ops commando, he would have taken some combatives training and
should recognize the damage of a good blow.
Gabriel's head rocked back into position, but on the surface at least, he was
totally unharmed. The darkness that splattered from his chin reformed at once
into smooth skin. He rubbed it with his hand and grinned.
"Ah, I see. Unfortunately, that kind of showy action only looks good on TV.
Real martial arts are more—"
Fwip!!
The air cracked, and in midsentence, Gabriel rushed at me so fast he was
nothing but a blur of black. His sword came down from the left, and I used the
Blue Rose Sword to block it on instinct, swinging back with the Night-Sky Blade.
The edge caught the top of the enemy's shoulder and, with a sensation like
being surrounded by dense liquid, came to a stop.
My right arm was stuck in full extension. Something slithered around it:
Gabriel's left arm. It wrapped around me like a thick snake until it had full
control of the joint—and with a horrible gurnch, I felt agony assault my brain
like lightning.
"Aaagh…," I gasped.
Right up close, Gabriel whispered, "—Like this."
That was just the start of a ferocious rush.
The sword of emptiness lashed out with a blinding combo of what felt like
infinite strikes. I tried to defend against them with just my left sword, but they
slipped past my block here and there, carving out little pieces of me. I had no
time to focus on recovering from my broken right arm.
"Hrg…oahg…," I grunted, beating my wings in an attempt to put distance
between myself and Gabriel. As I bolted backward, I ran the fingers of my left
hand across my other arm, which was just barely able to hold on to its sword.
Right when the light began to gather there, Gabriel raised his hand, curved
the fingers like claws, then opened them wide.
Over ten bolts of black lightning spread outward, then bent at sharp angles
and bore down on me. I gritted my teeth and put up an imaginary wall for
defense. I'd had total confidence when I'd used the same technique to protect
Alice's dragons from the lightning, but half of my concentration was going to
healing my arm now—and it was that very understanding that weakened the
strength of the shield.
Dull vibrations rattled my body in several places. Three bolts of darkness
penetrated my shield and drove into my torso and legs. Before the pain, I felt
only a ferocious chill running through my senses. There was blue-black
nothingness clinging to the places where I was zapped, eating away at my very
existence.
"Rrrgh!!" I grunted again, then sucked in a breath and screamed for energy. It
dispersed the emptiness, but fresh blood gushed from the new wounds that
remained.
"Ha-ha-ha."
I looked up to see Gabriel's empty features twisting with mirth.
"Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."
It wasn't laughter. His lips were upturned, but the muscles around his eyes
were still, and those marble-like eyes swirled only with hunger. Gabriel crossed
his arms and made a gesture of gathering power.
The dark aura around him shuddered heavily. It flickered like a violent flame,
growing thicker.
"Haaaaaah!!" he roared, throwing his arms wide.
Two new black wings grew above the ones he already had, and they spread
themselves outward. Another pair grew from below, too.
Gabriel beat his six wings in order, top to bottom, and gradually gained
altitude. A black ring appeared over his head, and his camo jacket lost its shape,
transforming into a thin cloth of wriggling darkness.
Somehow, his eyes were no longer human, either. The sockets were filled
with nothing but dark light.
He had become an Angel of Death.
A transcendental being that hunted the souls of humans and stole them.
What attack could possibly work against a self-image like this?
I tore my eyes from this personification of horror and checked on Asuna and
Alice, who were racing up the midair staircase, hand in hand. They had just
crossed the halfway point. It would take another two or three minutes for them
to get to the floating island.
At this point, I was already losing confidence in my ability to buy that much
time.