Sword Art Online - Volume 28 - Chapter 10

10

“Go ahead, Alice, dear.”

She received the offered cup with both hands.

“Thank you, Lady Eydis,” she replied, and despite knowing it was pointless, added, “Please, just call me Alice. I’m new to the knights. It hasn’t even been a decade yet.”

“Oh, I don’t decide what I call people based on their number. I mean, I call Fanatio Fanatio.”

“Then why…?”

“Because you’re cute, of course,” Eydis said without a hint of shame. She gave Alice a seat on the sofa and sat down next to her. In a very smooth and natural way, she reached out to caress Alice’s head.

“Plus you did such, such good work last night, dear. As your senior, I need to make sure you get all the praise you deserve.”

Selka sometimes looks bothered when I try to spoil her. Now I see how she feels, Alice thought, ready to give up. She waited until Eydis had her fill of contact.

They were in the middle of a significantly long room. The all-black furnishing was simple, but between the black marble walls and ceiling, the plush rugs made of wool from the black sheep of the southern empire, and the sofa made of leather from the same sheep, not a single square cen of the entire room looked cheap in the slightest.

There was a total of four sofas, each able to seat three, lined up in a row, while the wall they faced was all a glass window. Beyond it was a quietly glittering canopy of stars. But they couldn’t open this window. They were sitting in the viewing lounge at the base of the Black Lotus 02 space fortress hovering 30,000 mels above Centoria.

Eydis caressed Alice’s head for a good ten seconds before she finally lowered her hand and leaned back against the soft back of the sofa, exhaling.

Like Alice, she had removed her armor and was wearing a black sleeveless uniform, leggings, and a narrow sword belt. The clothes had been made for her three hundred years ago, but the shine of the material made it look perfectly new, and the design didn’t feel old in the slightest. It felt as though the overall craftsmanship of it was quite similar to the knight’s uniform Kirito loved to wear.

Her noble features made her look a bit older than Alice, but not so much that Alice deserved to be treated like a little sister. To an Integrity Knight whose life had been frozen in place anyway, age might as well not even exist. Three hundred years ago would be Stellar…that is, Human Era 280 or so. The Integrity Knights were founded another century before that; Deusolbert liked to say the old Integrity Knighthood was much, much stricter when it came to behavior and protocol, so Eydis was sure to be strict on things when it mattered. Alice decided she would prefer to avoid doing anything impolite, if possible.

As she rested deep in the sofa, Eydis reached toward the low table and used Incarnation to lift the cup she’d placed there. With practiced ease, she slid it toward her and grabbed it, then brought it to her lips. But instead of taking a sip, she just savored the steamy aroma.

“Ahh, what a fragrance… The cofil tea of the past always had a bit of a roughness to the scent, no matter how carefully you prepared it…”

Alice was taken aback. She shook her head to recover and said, “It is a variety called Moonlit Evening that Asuna cultivated.”

“Ohhh… And that sweetie Asuna and Kirito were the human realm… I mean, the Underworld’s king and queen, was it? She’s not at all like Administrator if she digs around in the dirt,” Eydis whispered, taking a sip of cofil. “It’s delicious,” she added, turning her gaze to the stars outside.

Alice hadn’t moved the cup from her hands, but now she tasted it. She had insisted again and again she would make this cofil tea, but Eydis had insisted and ordered her to sit, so she had no choice but to obey. Her first sip was on the rich side, but very smooth and without any impurities to distract from the flavor. It was most certainly a grade or two above Alice’s ability to brew it.

“It is delicious.”

“Isn’t it?” said Eydis, beaming. She tapped the armrest of the sofa with a finger on her other hand, bringing up a translucent window. This was tech that didn’t exist in the past, but the holo-window itself functioned as a Stacia Window, so Eydis got used to it at once. She tapped a few menus to get the window before them to switch to a remote feed.

It was displaying the middle of Centoria. The very place where Central Cathedral had stood just half a day before.

The footage was an overhead view from the southeast of the vast grounds. Naturally, there was no giant white tower, just a yawning square hole fifty mels to a side. It was 12:40 in the afternoon, so Solus was almost directly overhead, but the entire grounds seemed to be swallowed up in shadow and unreached by sunlight.

The massive vertical shaft was completely surrounded by metal isolation barriers that jutted up from the ground. Yellow ropes were hung all around it, and guards in gray uniforms and caps stood watch at intervals around the shaft. It wasn’t clear what orders they had, but the occasional glances upward suggested it wasn’t a duty they were following, but a means of fighting off anxiety.

Eydis performed another operation on the window, causing the image to zoom out quickly and display all of Centoria instead. Only by looking from this angle was it clear what was casting a shadow on the cathedral grounds.

An artificial, wedge-shaped ship measuring three hundred mels wide. The mega-sized dragoncraft carrying the so-called emperor Agumar Wesdarath VI—the Principia.

It had hovered two kilors in the sky the previous night, but now it had descended to just five hundred mels. It was no coincidence that they had chosen the height the top floor of Central Cathedral was supposed to occupy.

The people of Centoria, and in particular the guards standing watch over the grounds, were probably terrified that the dragoncraft was going to fall and crash into them. Even in broad daylight, the Principia could not be seen blowing any heat-element engine exhaust.

Eydis, who had been thinking along the same lines, said, “That dragoncraft thing that flew into the cathedral last night was blowing flame from heat elements behind it…but how is that huge one floating like that?”

“I have no idea. Airy’s leading the research team, so I’m sure we’ll have a theory before long…”

“I see…”

Eydis took another sip of cofil and adjusted the image yet again. She zoomed in and brought the focus downward. Eventually, the red sandstone buildings of South Centoria filled the window screen. It wasn’t even a single kilor away from North Centoria, but the clothing of the people walking the streets and the variety of trees standing over them were completely different.

The video zoomed closer to what you might call an open café in the real world, an establishment serving light food in an outdoor setting. It was just around lunch, so the seats were mostly full, but there were no smiles on the faces. They huddled together, occasionally glancing up at the dark shadow filling the sky, and whispered to one another. There was no way to hear their voices, but the nature of the words was clear. They were discussing whether to evacuate the city or to stay put.

Emperor Agumar had used a projection of himself to announce he was the rightful ruler of the entire human realm, but all he’d done since then was lower the Principia to its current height, with no further messages. Most likely, Central Cathedral’s flight and docking with the space fortress were far outside the emperor’s expectations. He had flown the Principia two kilors above the cathedral the previous night to declare victory, but that cathedral now hovered thirty kilors over his head, and he clearly wasn’t sure if it was accurate to declare victory again.

Of course, this side was pretty much stuck, too. The Black Lotus 02 was loaded with a ton of weapons of all sizes, but if the Principia crashed, the damage to Centoria would be immense, far beyond that of a simple Avus-class dragoncraft. If all the thousands of heat elements on board were released at once, it could literally transform all four sides of Centoria into a sea of flame.

So as the commander of the current Integrity Knighthood—which had only five waking members—Fanatio chose to wait and see how the emperor acted next. It was passive, to be sure, but Alice would have done the same if she were commander. At the very least, all the frozen knights the emperor was so determined to wipe out were safe and sound, so there was a sense of security that allowed them to wait to see what the enemy did.

Once Fanatio made that decision, Kirito and Asuna logged out before dawn. The others took turns bathing, while the Black Lotus’s caretaker, Lily Lou, kept an eye on the Principia. After that, they got some sleep in the two-person bedrooms on the ninety-second floor of the cathedral.

They split up the rooms between Tiese and Ronie, Fanatio and Eydis, Alice and Selka, and Airy and Natsu. Alice was excited about the chance to finally have a nice, long conversation with Selka, but as soon as she sat on the bed, exhaustion took her.

What was supposed to be a nap turned into six full hours of sleep, and when Selka finally woke her up, it was after ten o’clock. The enemy ship still had not moved, so the whole group ate breakfast together on the ninety-fourth floor and were essentially on free time until they received word of any updates.

Alice would need to log out soon, before she really started imposing on Dr. Koujiro, and she was concerned about the situation in Unital Ring, too. But if she left Selka now and found something terrible had happened by the time she returned, and they ended up separated again… It was impossible not to think about the worst. She sat around fretting until Selka, who had resumed making her thawing solution, told her she was being a distraction and should find somewhere else to go.

Dejected, Alice had plodded down the great stairs until Eydis caught up to her and suggested they go to the viewing lounge at the base of the Black Lotus 02 so they could look down directly on Cardina. Alice had no reason to say no, so they used the levitating platform on the eightieth floor to go all the way down to the first floor and went through the front door of the cathedral into the fortress. After a few twists and turns, they had reached the viewing platform, and there they were now.

If Alice wasn’t going to log out, there was plenty to get done. Familiarizing herself with new sacred arts that had been developed in the two hundred years she was gone, studying the history of the Stellar Era and its geography, or even just cleaning the cathedral. But the more she rested on the sofa that seemed to cling to her body, and sipped on her cofil tea, the less she wanted to actually get up…

“Three centuries,” Eydis murmured. Alice’s eyelids snapped back open.

To her left, the black-ribbon-wearing knight’s eyes seemed to be flickering as she gazed at the image of South Centoria’s streets.

“…I knew the world would change in many ways after so much time…but not that the Axiom Church and Integrity Knighthood would no longer exist, and that horseless carriages would zoom down the streets, and that tourists from the Dark Territory would be visiting.”

Indeed, there were goblins and orcs here and there in the image. Alice hesitated at first, then commented, “Lady Eydis, those demi-humans are not tourists, but rather immigrants, or perhaps their descendants.”

“O…ohhhh. Really…”

She seemed stunned by this, but there was no hatred in her expression. She exhaled softly and resumed in a whisper.

“But the biggest shock…is learning that Lord Bercouli and Administrator are no longer with us.”

“……Yes.”

It was all Alice could manage to say. Eydis’s hand moved to pat Alice’s where it rested on the sofa cushion.

“I’m not blaming you for fighting Her Excellency, Alice, dear. Yes, I was startled to find out…but I had a feeling such a time might come eventually…”

“…Why did you?” Alice asked.

Eydis’s gaze traveled to the ceiling of the room. “Administrator was too great…and had too much strength. And because of that, she was unable to trust in anyone but herself, in the truest sense. So if a peril were to arise that Her Excellency was unable to handle on her own…”

She did not continue that statement, but Alice felt she understood Eydis’s implication.

The Otherworld War, also known as the final stress test, was that very peril. The pontifex chose not to strengthen the Integrity Knights and the armies of the four empires to fight off the armies of darkness marching on the Eastern Gate, but instead launched a mad project to transform half the humans in the realm into Sword Golems. Kirito, Eugeo, Alice, Cardinal, and her familiar Charlotte fought Administrator to prevent that plan from going into motion.

…But on that very topic, the Integrity Knighthood itself was a product of Administrator’s paranoia. She wanted the ultimate protection for herself, but feared being betrayed, and thus developed the Synthesis Ritual to enforce eternal, unwavering loyalty. Those who became her knights lost their most precious memories, and in their place received programming called a Piety Module that went into their foreheads. That ritual changed their fluctlights and caused them to believe they had been summoned from the celestial realm to be Administrator’s faithful servants.

That module remained in Alice’s fluctlight. It was possible to remove it, but if the stolen memories were not put back in its place, her fluctlight would cease to function properly…meaning she would lose chunks of her memory and potentially even fall comatose. And even if she got her memory fragment back, her persona as the Alice Synthesis Thirty of today would probably be lost. On the other hand, the fragment of lost memories had been lost in the battle with the pontifex, so there was no way to remove the module anyway.

Like her, Eydis had lost memories of someone she loved and had a Piety Module inserted in their place. Fanatio probably hadn’t explained the truth of the Synthesis Ritual to her. One day, Eydis, too, would learn the feelings she held toward the pontifex had been largely forced upon her.

Without thinking about it, Alice curled her fingers and squeezed Eydis’s hand. When she realized what she was doing, it was too late. The senior knight smiled in wonderment.

“Lady Eydis,” Alice said, searching for the right words, “I don’t know if it’s right for me to say this, as I turned my sword against the pontifex, but in her own way, she did love the Underworld. And I believe…her love also fell upon us, her knights.”

“……”

Eydis was silent for a long time. Eventually she turned her hand over so she could squeeze back, palm to palm.

“…You’re right. We may have been dolls that would eventually fall apart and be cast aside…but Her Excellency always treasured us. I don’t regret the years I spent as an Integrity Knight.”

“……Indeed,” said Alice, leaning to the left to rest on Eydis’s shoulder. The two Integrity Knights remained there for a time, watching the beautiful city displayed on the monitor.