Chapter 12

At no point, in either the real world or any virtual world, had I ever run as

hard as I was now, I decided as I sprinted pell-mell after the flying black snake.

Fortunately, the landscape itself was completely consistent in its series of low,

rolling hills, and my well of stamina was deeper than I'd realized. My breath got

ragged and my muscles burned, but I was maintaining a pace that would have

left me collapsed long ago in the real world, and Eolyne was keeping up.

I recalled that during the Otherworld War two centuries ago, the human

army's secondary force and the Dark Territory's pugilists guild traveled

hundreds of miles on foot. My authority level was far higher than theirs, so I

couldn't possibly give up and cry uncle after a few dozen miles, I scolded myself.

After thirty minutes of sprinting, the black snake finally began to drift

downward. Inwardly praying, I said, "Are we finally reaching the goal?"

"I can only hope so," said Eolyne. I looked over my shoulder at him.

His Highness the pilot commander had loosened his uniform down to the

chest, and sweat ran down his forehead. The leather mask looked extremely

uncomfortable, and if I wasn't so self-conscious about bringing it up, I would

have told him to just take it off.

Then again, he had said he wore the mask because the skin around his eyes

was sensitive to sunlight. Solus still hadn't risen over the slopes to the east, so

he should probably be able to remove it now, at least for a little bit.

"Oh! Kirito, there!" Eolyne cried, pulling my attention away from him.

There was something beyond the hill we were climbing now.

At the foot of a basin collecting the predawn darkness, there was an obviously

man-made structure. It was about the height of a three-story building, and not

that wide, either, but it was accompanied by a nearby road about five hundred

yards long—no, a runway. Making this…

"…A base?"

"So it seems," Eolyne agreed. He put a hand on my shoulder to hold me back,

then proceeded to the top of the hill, staying low, and finally getting down to a

crawl.

In the sky, the black snake was flying right at the rectangular building, until it

was no longer visible among the shadow. That told me it was almost certain

that whatever had birthed that black snake was inside the building.

"Kirito, can you see that? Beyond the runway," Eolyne whispered suddenly. I

looked to the left.

At the end of the runway huddled something dark. At first I took it for some

kind of massive ray, until I understood that this, too, was man-made. It was an

enormous dragoncraft, even larger than the X'rphan Mk. 13.

"…Those wings are enormous…," I murmured back.

"Yes," Eolyne agreed, "it's been maximized for capacity, not speed. There are

a bunch of supports under those huge main wings, I believe."

"Meaning…that's what shot all those guided missiles at us?"

"I think so," he replied quietly. "But if so, it means we were detected

approaching Admina ahead of time. Either our information leaked somehow or

they're utilizing some kind of advanced detection system that even I don't know

about…"

I was a total amateur when it came to military and intelligence matters, of

course, but I understood that either of these cases was a big deal to Eolyne. I

couldn't just shrug it off as "not my problem," but I didn't have anything to add.

"…Kirito. I have to investigate that base. Of course, it'll involve some level of

danger, so I can't ask you to come with me…"

"Of course I will. It shouldn't be a question," I hastened to reply. Before

Eolyne could protest, I added, "If I let you go alone and anything happens, I

don't know what I'll say to Stica and Laurannei. Plus, maybe what I'm looking

for is in there. In fact…if it's okay to use Incarnation, we don't need to sneak. I

can just pull that building up out of the ground and take the walls and roof off

piece by piece…"

"..."

Whether out of annoyance or admiration—surely the former—Eolyne said

nothing for several seconds. He recovered and shook his head. "No. The people

in there might know we crash-landed, but they shouldn't know we've found

their base yet. The perpetrator might be somewhere else right now, and there's

no harm in maintaining our secrecy for the time being."

"That's a good point…All right, I'll follow your orders from here on," I

announced. While Eolyne shot me a suspicious look, he accepted the offer.

"Very well. I only have one order, though: Hold my hand and don't let go."

"H-hold your hand…? I don't think we're at the age where we need to worry

about getting lost."

"That's not what I mean. We have to use Hollow Incarnation."

"H-holo…?"

I couldn't process what word he had said and had to wait for Eolyne to trace

the spelling in the air for me.

"Hollow…? What do you mean?"

"It's the advanced form of the Incarnation-Hiding Incarnation I mentioned

earlier: Incarnation that removes your existence."

"Removes your…existence…"

It was my turn to be totally shaken. I stared at the white leather mask, aghast,

and asked him quietly, "Do you mean imagining yourself being obliterated?"

"No, not like that," Eolyne said, shaking his head forcefully. In a warning tone,

he explained, "It's held to be impossible to remove yourself from existence with

the power of Incarnation. After all, the source of the Incarnation is yourself. It

would be like trying to use the suction tube of a cleaning machine to suck up

the machine itself."

Huh! So they have something like a vacuum cleaner here, too? I thought,

getting distracted. "That's a good point," I said out loud.

Eolyne's mouth was still pursed. "But with the level of Incarnation you can

wield, I suppose you might twist that law of nature, too, Kirito. So don't attempt

to erase yourself with Incarnation, even as a joke."

"I-I'll take that lesson to heart," I swore, raising my hand. "But then what is

this Hollow Incarnation?"

"To put it simply, it's using Incarnation to erase yourself from another

person's perception…Well, maybe erase isn't the right word…Diluting? Fusing,

maybe…"

"Diluting? Fusing…?" I repeated.

On his stomach on the ground, Eolyne shrugged. "It'd take me an hour to

attempt to explain with any detail. Just trust that if you stick with me, the

guards won't spot you."

"A-all right…I believe you."

"Good. Then take my hand," he said, offering his left. I grabbed it and held

tight.

Eolyne's eyes shut, and he let out a long, slow breath.

I was suddenly overtaken by a very strange sensation. A kind of rippling effect

took place before my eyes, starting in front of me and spreading behind. The

boundary between me and the world became vague, and a weightless feeling

took hold in me, as though my flesh were expanding into air.

The feeling dulled very quickly but did not disappear altogether. Diluting was

indeed a good word for it. My very existence was thinner than before.

Next to me, the contours of Eolyne's figure were subtly but undeniably

wavering. It felt like we had both become ghosts. I squeezed without thinking,

and he squeezed back as a sign of reassurance. The thinning effect was only

visual. Our bodies still occupied the space.

If this truly odd sensation was an effect of manipulating reality through

imagination, then Eolyne's Incarnation might not match mine in terms of simple

strength, but his technique far outclassed mine.

I shouldn't be getting full of myself just because I can do things like create

defensive walls and lift dragoncraft into the air, I scolded myself. We started

walking down the hill, matching our steps carefully.

The mysterious base was far more elaborate than I took it for at first.

The building itself was a sturdy mix of metal framework and stone; the walls

seemed to be nearly three feet thick. Despite my confident comments earlier, it

would hardly be a walk in the park to lift something like this with Incarnation

alone.

It looked to be about fifty yards to a side and ten yards tall. The west side,

which faced the runway, featured a massive warehouse-style shutter gate,

while the personnel entrance was on the south side. We were heading for the

back gate on the north side, however.

Guards dressed in dark uniforms stood on either side of the gate. They were

holding not swords or spears but what clearly looked like guns. They weren't

quite like real-world rifles, but they would do more than hurt if we got shot.

But Eolyne headed directly for the gate, not bothering to even slow down.

The guards should be able to see us by now, but neither one was so much as

budging.

At the bottom of the hill, the ground turned from flower field to a gravel

surface. Our boots made an unpleasant scraping sound, much to my

consternation, but the guards did not react to this, either. If Eolyne's Hollow

Incarnation were merely an invisibility cloak, it shouldn't cover up our footsteps

on top of that, so it seemed that his explanation was accurate: It really did

remove our existence from the guards' ability to perceive us at all.

That made me worry about his longevity in maintaining this state, but at this

point, all I could do was trust in him. I matched Eolyne's pace as we took the

shortest and straightest route to the back door of the base.

Fortunately, the gate was open. If we were preventing the guards from

perceiving us, then maybe we could have just flung the gate open without

drawing any notice, but I hadn't wanted to test that hypothesis.

The gravel transitioned into paved stone tiles. The blank looks on the guards'

faces and their dark, shining rifles were crisp and clear now.

Thinking back on my time in Centoria as a student at Swordcraft Academy,

there had never been standing guards like this, and that had been because

Underworlders never broke any rules. If a place was labeled off-limits, you

didn't need a guard there because no one would ever go inside. The

fundamental laws behind that were still intact two centuries later, so why were

this base and Central Cathedral guarded so tightly?

I wanted to ask Eolyne this question—he was right next to me. But I'd

forgotten to ask if I could speak to him while the Hollow Incarnation was active.

It would be a disaster if I caused his Incarnation to waver and the guards

spotted us. So I shelved my question for now—which meant there was a good

chance I'd forget it later—and focused on walking instead.

The gate was at the end of a fence that jutted out from the side of the

building in a rectangular shape. Because it was the rear gate, it was only ten

feet or so across. Meaning that, as we were walking side by side, we would be

going directly past the guards. I'd experienced this a number of times in SAO

and ALO, but unlike those situations, this was not a quest running on a script. It

could turn out the guards were just pretending not to notice us so they could

blast us with their guns when we were right next to them.

Keeping myself wary and prepared to deploy an Incarnate shield at the

shortest possible warning, I made my way down the last few yards. The eyes of

the guards in the fierce helmets turned our way, passed through us, and then

traveled back. I felt sweat blossom on my palms, but Eolyne's stayed dry, and

the cool texture helped keep me calm and centered.

Eugeo's hands were like this, too.

We passed by the guards and got inside the fence. There were no further

guards posted at the back door of the building itself. We quietly opened the

glass door and went inside, where a dimly lit hallway continued straight ahead.

There was no guard station or reception counter, making it obvious this was not

an official facility in any capacity.

Down the corridor, a stairwell appeared on the right. You could go up or down

—or continue down the hall. I didn't have time to make a decision before

Eolyne pulled me into the stairwell. When we were against the wall, he let go of

my hand with a heavy sigh.

Immediately, the wavering of my vision cleared, and the strangely distant

sensations vanished. The Hollow Incarnation had been released.

Eolyne's chest was heaving for breath. I asked quietly, "You all right, Eo?"

"…Yes, I'm fine. I'll be better soon."

But despite his reassurance, he was clearly pale even in the dim hallway light.

I felt around my uniform belt and pulled a metal bottle off a trio of loops.

Laurannei had called it a high-concentration recovery solution. I pulled off the

cap and offered it to Eolyne.

The exhaustion that accompanied the use of Incarnation was not a numerical

decrease to life but the consumption of the fluctlight—the soul itself—so I

didn't know if a healing solution would help. Eolyne took it anyway and thanked

me for it.

He put the little bottle to his lips and swallowed it all in one go. When his face

was level again, there was an odd expression there, so I asked, "Is it, uh…not

very good?"

"It tastes like…dark-roasted cofil tea that was used to pickle siral peel…"

"Uh-huh."

So a rich lemon coffee, then, I thought.

There were no guidance signs in the stairwell, so it wasn't clear what sort of

facilities were located on which floors.

"…So where should we start?"

"Where do you think?" he asked in return.

Taken aback, I said, "Well, the basement, I guess."

"Why?"

"Because whenever you're running sketchy tests, you always do it in the

basement," I replied.

I recalled then that the only thing below Central Cathedral was cells. But that

was a factor of the self-centered, utterly willful ways of Her Holiness

Administrator. If the people who shot down the X'rphan were bad guys with

more common sense, they would hide whatever things they didn't want seen in

the basement level.

Eolyne accepted my simplistic answer and pulled away from the wall.

"Well, let's start from the basement, then. There won't be any Hollow

Incarnation from this point on, so make sure you watch our back."

"Got it," I replied, and we began to sneak down the stairs.