Sword Art Online - Volume 27 - Chapter 10

10

“……It really is a marvel.”

Alice couldn’t help but be impressed. Her sister turned around, clutching the freshly made thawing solution to her chest, and beamed.

“You can even make it yourself, as long as you remember the steps. Your sacred arts authority is higher than mine.”

Indeed, Alice’s System Call authority level was just slightly higher than Selka’s at the moment, but that was only because she had defeated the Abyssal Horror; it wasn’t the product of long, tedious practice.

Of course, when she was a lower knight, she had studied sacred arts for all she was worth, and she was fairly confident in her control of the elements, but she could tell that she was nowhere near ready to match Selka’s delicate but powerful techniques. After all, her sister had gone from an apprentice nun to the commander of the sacred artificers brigade.

On top of that, the process of liquefying the petrification-thawing art was so difficult that it beggared the imagination.

You had to lay out holy flowers, brimming with plentiful sacred power, on the worktable, then generate light, dark, water, and crystal elements simultaneously. After a complex process to preserve the elements separately, you would recite just a single verse of the vast thawing art formula. Once the effect of the art was transferred to the elements, they would liquefy and flow into an empty crystal container before you moved on to the next verse.

This process was just an extension of the life-restoring potion-making process that apprentices learned, but the scale absolutely dwarfed that neophyte’s lesson. On top of that, maintaining the elements probably involved the use of Incarnation.

Seeing her little tomboy sister grown into a master of a craft impressed upon Alice the weight of time that had passed during the maximum-acceleration phase. But she was happy to know that this process utilized the phrase for the Hollow Sphere Shape, which Alice had long ago taught her.

Even two centuries later, the Underworld’s past and present were connected, in ways she could tangibly feel. Alice reached out and took the fifth vial of thawing solution from Selka.

Two hours had passed since she bade farewell to the sleeping knights on the ninety-ninth floor and returned to the ninety-fifth floor.

They had decided to awaken the knights, but to do nine at once required quite a lot of preparation first. They needed not just the requisite number of antidotes, but also an ample supply of food and drink, as well as private chambers for each knight.

Airy went about preparing the food, while Ronie and Tiese agreed to clean out some rooms for them. Alice volunteered to be Selka’s assistant, but all she could do was place the empty vials and reagents on the worktable and put the finished solutions in a wooden box. The rest of the time, she just watched Selka work her magic.

Preparing all the tools and items took an hour, so they only started the work at ten o’clock at night. In the hour that followed, they had finished five vials of solution, but including a safety backup, they needed ten in total, so even if they kept working nonstop, it would be after midnight when they finished.

“Selka, let’s take a little break,” Alice suggested while her sister was setting out a fresh row of holy flowers on the table.

For her part, Selka had only just awakened from a 140-year sleep six hours ago. She had bathed and eaten, but she really wasn’t back to full recovery yet.

She looked up and smiled. “I’m fine, Sister.” But no sooner had she said the words than her upper half visibly wobbled.

“You see?”

Alice hurried to support her little sister, and she escorted her over to a nearby bench to sit down. She filled a cup with water and used heat elements to heat it to lukewarm before offering it to Selka, who took it carefully and slowly drank bit by bit.

“Phew…It’s really impressive how quickly you can generate those elements without a spoken command, Alice.”

“It’s not really something to be proud of…It’s a technique you only learn to use in battle.”

“But your battle saved the Underworld,” Selka pointed out, and waved to the empty spot next to her. When Alice sat down there, Selka gave her a gentle hug.

Alice returned the gesture, putting her arms around her sister’s back and burying her face in that silky hair. A familiar, sweet scent permeated her existence.

This Alice did not have childhood memories. The time she had spent with Selka was only the five months she had spent in the woods outside of Rulid while on the run from Central Cathedral. Even still, somewhere in the lightcube that stored her soul, it felt like there were younger memories still hiding out of sight.

“…Say, Selka,” Alice managed to whisper, pushing through heavy hesitation. “When things have settled down…would you want to return to Rulid?”

Two centuries had passed since Alice had left Rulid to take part in the defensive Battle of the Eastern Gate. Their father, Gasfut Zuberg, and their mother, Sadina, had long ago returned to the heavens. In fact…since neither Alice nor Selka had gone back to the village, it was quite possible that the Zuberg line, which served as the village’s elders, had simply vanished.

But Selka nodded anyway. “That’s a good idea, Alice. The last time I was in the village was back in 438 HE, after all…”

“Did you go back to Rulid often?”

“No, just once every few years. In the year 436, Father—”

She was interrupted in the middle of that sentence by a tremendous vibration that shook the entire length of the cathedral.

Zr-drrmm!!

“…?!”

“Wh-what was that?!”

They stood up as one. There was another vibration. Then another.

Alice cast around for more information. Through the trees lining the western side of the floor, she could see sparks falling like rain. It seemed that something had struck a wall on a higher floor and exploded.

She ran to the west, through the planters, and stood right at the edge of the floor. Using one of the pillars to support herself, she leaned over the edge so that she could look up. About sixty feet above, somewhere around the ninety-eighth or ninety-ninth floor, little remnant fires were clinging to the wall of the cathedral. The wall itself seemed to be fine, but because of the dark, it was hard to see if there was finer damage to the exterior.

What could have exploded?

“Alice, look!” cried Selka, pointing to the sky to the west.

As soon as she looked that direction, Alice sucked in a sharp breath.

Near the horizon was a golden curve: the companion star Admina, which had once been known as Lunaria.

And just above it, high in the night sky, were three dark shapes floating at equal intervals from one another.

It was difficult to gauge the distance, but each one seemed like it measured well over thirty mels across. They had rounded, bulging bodies and vast wings that stretched out on either side, just like…

“…Dragoncraft!!” Selka hissed.

There could be no doubt. These were extra-large dragoncraft outfitted in black armor. When Kirito had summoned her to Admina, Alice had used her Perfect Weapon Control art to destroy an Avus—which was exactly what these looked like.

The two women watched, stunned, as orange lights flashed beneath the wings of the three craft.

The lights separated from the dragoncraft, soaring straight ahead and emitting a ghastly wail like the screams of monsters, before sticking into the top of the cathedral. There were three quick, fierce explosions that shuddered the white tower.

“Ah…!”

Selka stumbled, and Alice acted on instinct to grab her sister close and pull her back from the edge.

She needed to act immediately, but her mind was blank. She didn’t know what to do.

The three dragoncraft in the night sky were firing what the real world called missiles at Central Cathedral. Even as she was watching it unfold before her eyes, her mind seemed to want to resist accepting it as truth.

Central Cathedral was an impregnable holy site, the throne of the God who every person in the human realm feared and revered. Apparently, the old habits from her days of serving the pontifex were dying hard. But that attitude should still be the same in the common people, since they still worshipped Stacia. Who could possibly plot such a dastardly, heretical crime as attempting to destroy the cathedral itself?

She was still frozen in place when she heard Airy’s voice right in her ear. “Lady Alice, Lady Selka, this way.”

Guided by the voice, Alice took Selka’s hand and pulled her through the trees and into the center of the floor.

Airy was still wearing a white triangular hat from her cooking process. She raised a hand high and announced, “System Call! Activate emergency mode!”

Alice had never heard that phrase before. Suddenly, the floor around Airy’s feet glowed purple. A number of massive windows appeared, surrounding Airy.

Her slender fingers danced across the control window closest to her. Once again, the cathedral shuddered, but this time it was not because of an explosion.

“Oh! Alice!” Selka cried. Alice looked back to the west.

With a heavy rumbling, marble slabs jutted from the ceiling and floor, closing off the opening to the outdoors. In just a matter of seconds, the slabs met seamlessly in the middle, so there was no longer a way to see the outside.

Right after that came another series of explosions. But the shaking of the tower was noticeably less than the first and second time.

“…I have sealed all the windows and openings and reinforced the weaker walls. We should be able to withstand for much longer now,” Airy announced calmly.

Alice didn’t even know what to ask first. Had this mechanism existed in the cathedral from the start? Where had the trio of large black dragoncraft come from? Why, and on whose orders, were they attacking Central Cathedral?

Actually, the answer to the second question was obvious.

“Did they come from Admina?” she asked when she was calm enough to speak.

“I believe so,” Airy confirmed. “Even for a military craft, it would take five hours from Admina to Cardina, so they likely took flight from a different base on Admina just after Lord Kirito and Lord Eolyne quelled that unidentified base.”

“The conquering of their base must have come as a total surprise. That is an unbelievably quick turnaround for a full-scale retaliatory action,” Selka murmured, just as clanging footsteps on the stairs announced the arrival of Ronie and Tiese. They had removed their armor and robes and were wearing the much more versatile and light pilot’s uniform.

“What was all that shaking about?! I heard something like explosions…,” Tiese was saying, but she stopped in shock when she saw Airy surrounded by all those windows. Ronie (still carrying Natsu) was likewise open-mouthed.

“Lady Tiese, Lady Ronie, please have a look at this,” Airy directed. She tapped on the control panel, bringing up a new window a bit farther away. It was an entire mel tall and wide, and it showed the three craft floating in the night sky with stunningly crisp detail.

Right as they looked at the image, the craft fired their missiles again. Three orange lights shot forward, splitting the darkness, and vanished off the side of the window.

A roar. Vibration.

Alice held on to the storage box carefully with both hands, to ensure the previous thawing solutions didn’t fall onto the floor and shatter. “Airy, the materials making up the cathedral’s structure are still system-level indestructible, right?” she asked, using a real-world term for VRMMOs.

Thankfully, Airy seemed to understand what she meant. “Yes, the pontifex designated the walls to have the maximum priority and self-repairing level, and those values are still active. But…look here.”

She pointed out another window that featured bar graphs similar to HP bars in ALO and Unital Ring, but arranged in a cross shape. The one on the left was glowing red.

“This is a directional Incarnameter. It is picking up a strong value on the west face, where we were attacked. I believe the dragoncraft are not shooting simple heat-element projectiles, but tactical Incarnate weapons.”

“Incarnate…weapons,” Alice repeated. Three days earlier, she had heard the same term being spoken by the guardsmen who took Kirito away from the Arabel mansion. Although the workings were a mystery to her, she could imagine that it referred to weapons that made some use of Incarnation.

“That’s not good,” Tiese murmured pensively, staring up at the window. “It depends on the type and strength of Incarnation the projectiles are emitting, but it we take too many of them, the accumulation of the overwriting effect could cause the outer walls to lose their resistance to the explosions…”

Overwriting effect was a new term to Alice, but like Incarnate weapons, she could imagine what it signified.

Incarnation was ultimately a concept emitted by the soul: the use of the imagination to interfere with the laws of the world and make the impossible possible. You could move objects without using your hands with Incarnate Arms, cut through a target with invisible slashes using Incarnate Sword, generate elements without saying a word, and create more than ten simultaneous elements on your fingers, all by utilizing Incarnation.

In other words, Incarnation was the ability to overwrite the system of the world. That also applied to the basic laws of the cathedral’s vast priority and regenerative abilities. So if an adequately powerful Incarnation were used, it was still possible to destroy the building.

As if to back up her hypothesis, Airy said, “The life of the west-facing wall of the ninety-ninth floor is eleven percent consumed. Self-repair is engaged, but due to a lack of the cathedral’s sacred-power intake, it will not match the rate of consumption.”

“About ten percent after four attacks…meaning it can take another thirty-six hits?” Alice suggested, doing some quick calculation.

Airy shook her head. “I’m afraid that the more the wall is damaged, the stronger the Incarnate weapons’ overwriting effect becomes. I would hazard a guess that another ten attacks or so will destroy the wall.”

The fifth round of explosions happened before the words had finished leaving her mouth. While the situation was dire, there was one other question on Alice’s mind.

It must have been on Selka’s mind, too, because she looked up at the ceiling and asked, “Is it just a coincidence that they’re attacking the ninety-ninth floor…?”

“No. I believe the attackers’ target is the Integrity Knighthood held there.”

Despite the calmness of her voice, Alice didn’t miss the slight clenching of Airy’s cheeks near her mouth.

That reaction was understandable. Almost no one in existence knew that the ninety-ninth floor of Central Cathedral was where the Integrity Knights of yore now slumbered.

But Airy’s emotional display went no further than that. She performed more commands at the control panel.

Yet another window opened. This one showed the whole of Centoria that was visible from the south. In the middle of the city was the towering white spire, glowing red right near the tip on its west face. The burning was not on the wall itself, but the explosive remnants stuck to the surface. From the ground, however, it surely looked as though the cathedral itself was on fire.

It was after eleven o’clock at night, but there were powerful searchlights all over the city scouring the night sky, and mechamobiles with rotating red lights drove in the streets. Of course, the electroblades used by the North Centoria Imperial Guard would not bring down dragoncraft hovering at a height of over five hundred mels.

On that note, there should be a space force base in North Centoria. Their job was to protect from the sky—what were they doing? As if in response, the image on the window zoomed in on a point in the background.

The black surface stretching beyond the edges of North Centoria was Lake Norkia. Even beyond that, in the region the Norlangarth imperial family had once enjoyed as its private reserves two hundred years ago, a number of lights were wavering. The image got closer and closer to the base.

“Oh…!” Ronie gasped the moment it stopped zooming in.

They weren’t lights—they were fires. Several places on the series of long buildings there were furiously aflame. And the huge, four-sided spire behind them was…

“The space force base…,” murmured Alice.

Tiese snapped upright. “Oh no…! Stica and Laurannei are at the base! Airy, can you get the picture any closer?!”

“I’m very sorry, Lady Tiese,” Airy apologized. “The art this remote vision board employs can only view from the airspace over Centoria itself. I will try adjusting the brightness.”

She performed some quick actions, and the scenery in the window began to get lighter bit by bit. Eventually, a dark, ominous shape became visible directly over the base. It was clearly the same kind of large dragoncraft as the three attacking Central Cathedral.

Although it was only hovering, there were still smaller explosions happening here and there all over the base. Even at this moment, enemy soldiers must have been battling against the space force guards and pilots. And knowing Stica and Laurannei, Alice knew they almost certainly were not hiding in a safe, remote location.

The three craft in a separate window fired their sixth round of missiles. Another series of thunderous explosions sent Natsu trembling in Ronie’s arms.

Another eight blasts until the wall of the ninety-ninth floor was destroyed. They didn’t have time to carry Fanatio and the others downstairs in stone form.

“…I will put a stop to the attacks on the cathedral,” Alice announced, grabbing the Osmanthus Blade resting on her left hip.

She knew from experience on Admina that she could bring down one of those large black dragoncraft with her weapon’s Perfect Control art. But the three were currently hovering over West Centoria. If they crashed there, who could say how much damage it would cause to the populace?

If she could deliver the right amount of noncatastrophic damage, they might withdraw, but from the cathedral here, there was no way for her attacks to reach craft nearly a kilor away. Somehow, she had to get within firing range of her Perfect Control art.

The X’rphan Mk. 13 was right before her eyes, but it was badly damaged and couldn’t fly, not to mention the fact that Alice could not pilot it. Her dragon, Amayori, with whom she’d flown so much, was still only an egg.

Alice bit her lip and cast about desperately for something she could use. Her attention was drawn to one part of the floor.

She turned to say something to Airy.

But just at that moment, the large dragoncraft in the middle of the window did something entirely different.

The craft in the center shone white. Alice tensed, preparing for a new kind of attack, but the light extended upward instead.

Eventually, a massive figure appeared in the midst of the light.

It was translucent, not a physical figure. Through some unknown means, it appeared to be casting an image in three dimensions. Although the figure appeared vague at first, it quickly grew in detail, until it took the clear form of a man.

He wore a high-collared coat with two rows of buttons. There were epaulets with decorative frills on his shoulders and a number of military decorations on his left breast. His brows and nose cut sharp lines on his face, and the look in his eyes was chillingly cold, even in an empty image. Based on his appearance alone, he seemed to be around forty years old.

His mouth, adorned with a fine mustache, emitted a clear, proud voice.

“People of Centoria and all of the four empires. I am Emperor Agumar Wesdarath VI, the rightful ruler of the entire human realm.”

His voice had to be amplified using some art or device. It penetrated the exterior wall of the cathedral and seemed to land directly in Alice’s ears.

Agumar Wesdarath. She remembered that name.

When Alice had been responsible for Centoria as an Integrity Knight, the emperor of the western empire was Aldares Wesdarath V. And his father, if she recalled correctly, was Agumar Wesdarath V.

In the four imperial families that had once controlled the lands of the human realm, the names of the first emperors and the founders—the first emperors’ fathers—were sainted, and the first son of each subsequent generation of princes was always given one of the two names. The name of Agumar VI was indeed in-line with convention, but that did not mean, of course, that he was actually the descendant of the real Wesdarath line.

As Alice, Selka, Ronie, Tiese, and Airy watched in horrified silence, the man seemed to look at them directly through the image window, though it was surely a coincidence, and delivered a stately proclamation.

“You are in illegal occupation of the sealed floors of Central Cathedral. I believe you understand the offensive power of my dragoncraft. I will give you a grace period of ten minutes. Use that time to undo all defensive barriers and demonstrate your obedience. Otherwise, I will destroy the sealed floors without a trace.”