Sword Art Online - Volume 28 - Chapter 2

2

To Alice Synthesis Thirty, Commander Bercouli Synthesis One was a treasured mentor and a doting father figure. But Vice Commander Fanatio Synthesis Two was less an object of reverence and more an awkward, antagonistic figure. When she lived in Central Cathedral, there were times it seemed she felt more at odds with Fanatio than with any other knight or priest.

But once the war with the Dark Territory began and they fought side by side at the Eastern Gate, Alice learned of Fanatio’s greatness and the depth of her love. She could still hear the words Fanatio had said when she caught Alice slipping out of Amayori’s saddle after spending all her willpower performing the reflective cohesion beam.

That was incredible spellwork and Incarnation, Alice. The enemy has retreated. You guided us to victory.

After that, Alice joined the decoy squad charging into the Dark Territory, while Fanatio stayed behind to defend the human realm. Ultimately, she left for the real world through the World’s End Altar without speaking to her again. When she next returned to the Underworld, two hundred years had passed, and she had to confront the reality, in her mind, that she would never be reunited with Fanatio or the other knights. Until…

“……Fanatio.”

The air just barely escaped her throat. It was all Alice could do to keep her eyes open wide enough to see past the tears.

The hundredth floor of Central Cathedral, which was about ten mels above the levitating disc Alice and Airy now rode, was a terrace surrounded by delicate silver railings.

She could never mistake the tall, slender knight standing there—the black hair flowing in the night breeze, the lilac-colored armor and violet cloak, and the rapier-thin sword in her right hand. It was the second of all the Integrity Knights, Fanatio Synthesis Two.

She had been petrified on the ninety-ninth floor of the cathedral with fifteen other knights. Kirito must have brought her back with the thawing solution. After seeing she had returned, he opened a door, said, “When I get back, I’m going to force them to land, so hold tight until then,” and then left for the space force base.

There were still three large dragoncraft looming in the sky west of the cathedral. Barely a minute or two earlier, they had fired eighteen missiles, all of which Kirito’s Incarnation wall blocked, but that did not mean they didn’t have more.

Most likely, the man calling himself Agumar Wesdarath VI in the center dragoncraft intended to wipe out the knights stored on the ninety-ninth floor. He had said that if they opened the defensive shutters and indicated surrender, he would stop firing missiles, but that was not trustworthy. He could very well fire them all the instant they opened the shutters—in fact, that was almost certainly what he would do.

The emperor had surely loaded enough missiles that even if the “illegitimate occupiers” demonstrated resistance, he had enough to destroy the top of Central Cathedral, defensive shutters and all. Even still, the fact that none in his impressive volley of eighteen had reached the cathedral was an unpleasant surprise to him. The dragoncrafts’ missile launchers remained silent for now, without loading new projectiles.

This would be the point at which the emperor wanted to threaten them again, but the light from Fanatio’s Heaven-Piercing Blade had destroyed the disc on the center craft that created that three-dimensional projection. There could be no negotiations or threats without a means of communication, which left the emperor’s only remaining options either all-out attack or retreat. It was impossible to tell which it would be.

Anticipating a stalemate of two or three minutes, Alice sheathed the Osmanthus Blade and murmured, “Airy, can you get up to Lady Fanatio?”

“Yes,” she replied, increasing the flow of air from the bottom of the flying platform. The steel disc ascended powerfully, heading for the hundredth floor.

In the Central Cathedral of old, Administrator had placed defensive arts of all kinds around the tower to prevent even birds from reaching the top floor, much less dragons. Surely someone had undone those protections over the last two centuries, but if they were still active, perhaps they would have blocked a missile attack…

Alice swept aside that distracting thought. The flying platform went past the fence of the terrace. She jumped down, not waiting for it to stabilize, and raced toward her one-time comrade, footsteps clanking loudly against the shining marble tiles.

When she saw the smile on Fanatio’s face, lit by the pale starlight and just the same as when she had caught her all those years ago at the Eastern Gate, Alice felt something hot and fierce surging up in her chest.

She wanted to throw out her arms and hug her, but held just enough restraint to keep her hands at her sides. Through trembling lips, she managed to say, “It has been far too long, Lady Fanatio.”

She put her right hand on the lapel of the pilot’s uniform and her left hand on the pommel of the sword in a proper salute.

But Fanatio whispered, “It really has been too long, Alice,” and reached out to grab her shoulders, pulling her close. Alice ended up on tiptoes, and Fanatio’s hands circled her back, hugging with enough force to make her armor creak.

In subjective time, Alice’s farewell to Fanatio at the Eastern Gate had been only about three months ago, but Airy said Fanatio’s decision to undergo the petrification art was in the year 475 HE. To her, this was a reunion ninety-five years in the making.

Alice returned the gesture, squeezing hard. She started to say the words she’d always known she must say if they were ever reunited.

“…Lady Fanatio, forgive me. It was my failure in being captured by Emperor Vecta that caused Lord Bercouli to—”

“Alice,” Fanatio said, firmly but gently, pulling away. Her gold-tinted brown eyes stared right into Alice’s. “I understand. You both did what you needed to in order to protect the Underworld. Now is the time to stand up against this new threat—and we’ll be carrying on his will, as well as Eldrie’s, Dakira’s…and every other brave soldier who perished in that war.”

“…Right,” Alice said, trying her best to hold back the searing sensation that threatened to burst from her chest. Emperor Agumar wasn’t going to give up on his quest to eliminate the frozen knights. They had to protect Central Cathedral until Kirito got back. That was their onus.

“Lady Fanatio, do you know the situa—?” Alice started to ask.

“Yes, I heard from the Star Ki…from Kirito,” Fanatio interrupted. “He said he believed he had defeated the last of the Black Emperors and had the Undying Heart—the jewel that was the repository of their souls—destroyed. So how did this one come back…?”

“……”

Alice hadn’t lived through the Rebellion of the Four Empires or the Black Emperor War that followed it. But when she was placed on watch over the city of Centoria during the Axiom Church’s rule, she had seen plenty of the wanton, arrogant ways of the imperial families. In a sense, the emperors were manifestations of greed even beyond Administrator, and it did not surprise her one bit to hear they would turn themselves into inhuman monsters in their attempts to control the Underworld.

If Agumar was one of the Black Emperors, returned through some unknown means, and he possessed the memory of his “previous life,” then he would naturally hate and fear the Integrity Knights who had struck him down before.

When the missile attack against the cathedral began, Selka had completed five doses of the thawing solution. If she’d used one of them on Fanatio, there were still four more remaining. So Alice quickly suggested, “I believe Emperor Agumar’s top priority is the eradication of the sealed Integrity Knights. Perhaps we should seek to revive some of the others, even if it’s not possible to bring them all back at this moment.”

“Yes…but…,” Fanatio murmured slowly. “If there is a powerful mage or Incarnation user on the enemy’s side, they should be able to detect the knights reviving, even through the cathedral’s walls. We can’t rule out the possibility that the emperor will go on an unprecedented rampage if he learns the knights are awakening.”

“Unprecedented…? Meaning he has an even more powerful means of attacking than the Incarnate missiles…?” Alice asked, aghast.

The one-time vice commander of the Integrity Knights nodded and cast her gaze toward the three dragoncraft. “The Black Emperors I knew always had a trick up their sleeves, if not another one even beyond that. You could call them strategic planners; I think it’s simply that they learned from past mistakes. In the Rebellion of the Four Empires, they hurled troops at the cathedral with no real plan. That they lost to a Unification Council that was vastly outnumbered and led by a mere boy in Kirito must have wounded their pride in a way that could never be forgotten or forgiven.”

“I see,” Alice murmured, looking to the west.

Over three minutes had passed already since the missile barrage, and the dragoncraft remained eerily still. This side had no recourse to attack, either, since they would only crash into the city below. But once Kirito returned from the base, he could force them to land on the lawn of the cathedral. It was hard to imagine Incarnate Arms powerful enough to move such monstrous crafts, but if he said he could do it, it had to be true.

In the worlds of ALfheim Online, Unital Ring, and even in the Underworld, she felt she was at least his equal in her skill with the sword and sacred arts, but he had a commanding lead when it came to Incarnation. Despite the way it rankled her, she would have to ask him for lessons once this was all said and done…

She was broken out of this distraction by the approach of soft footsteps. A voice sounded, potent with pained emotion.

“I am so glad to see you, Lady Fanatio.”

The knight turned around, then broke into a smile and stepped forward. She hugged Airy gently, careful not to hurt her against the ornate armor she wore, and murmured, “I’m glad to see you too, Airy.”

“Please forgive me, that you had to be awakened into such a situation…”

“Don’t apologize. If anyone is at fault for this, it’s me, for choosing the Deep Freeze art knowing it would leave you alone in charge of the sealed floors,” Fanatio replied, releasing Airy. She glanced toward Alice and continued tensely, “I’m certain Emperor Agumar is either going to unleash his best attack now or retreat to build his strength for another attempt later. Our job is to prolong his indecision until Kirito returns…and, if necessary, to limit the damage to a minimum. Airy, you return to the ninety-fifth floor and assist Selka.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said at once, turning on her heel. How was she going to get back down into the cathedral? The answer was a square hole off to the side of the terrace, which apparently went down to a set of stairs.

“What is that, Lady Fanatio…?” asked Alice, who didn’t recall such a passage in the old version of the cathedral.

The vice commander grimaced a little and said, “As you may know, the one-time prime senator, Chudelkin, created a hidden staircase in the walls leading from the ninety-sixth to the ninety-ninth floor. When we were debating renovating the old senate chamber into a dragon roost, we were split on what to do with the staircase. Ultimately, Kirito decided we should make use of what was already there, and Asuna’s terrain manipulation connected it to the roof.”

“…Ah, I see.”

Alice could clearly remember the hidden staircase, too. It felt like just yesterday that she and Kirito had run up the stairs, chasing Chudelkin.

If Kirito asked for the stairs to be preserved as the Star King, perhaps it was meant as a remembrance of Alice and Eugeo, whom he assumed he would never see again. Kirito had irreversibly lost his memories of being the Star King, so there was no way to know anymore.

Once Airy had rushed down the steps, Alice asked, “What is Selka doing?”

“I have her making all the thawing solution she can with the materials she has,” the vice commander said simply, though Alice did not miss the note of concern in her features. Fanatio clearly felt the emperor was more likely to order an all-out assault than a retreat. If they started awakening the knights one after the other, he might detect the activity, prompting him to go ahead with the attack. So her plan was to have Selka work on making more solution while things were in a stalemate in the hopes they would finish enough solution to awaken all the knights and their dragons. This way, they could use them all at once in case the enemy attempted to use his secret attack.

This brought a third question to mind. Alice asked, “Lady Fanatio, why did Kiri…why did the Star King hide the thawing art of Deep Freeze and its solution’s recipe on Admina? Given the matters of safety and urgency such as in this situation, wouldn’t it have been better to keep it here at the cathedral…?”

Ten hours earlier, Alice had asked Asuna the exact same question in the bath. But as she had lost her memory of being Star Queen, just like Kirito, Asuna couldn’t give her an answer. Belatedly, she had realized Airy might know the reason why, but that meant Fanatio might, too.

The vice commander just gave her a conflicted look. “Well…I suppose that’s a natural question. I said the same thing to Kirito.”

“And what did he…?”

“He said it wouldn’t be fun if it were that easy to find.”

“……”

Alice was certain she had the same expression Fanatio did back then. She had never interacted with the Star King, but this was clearly a sign Kirito would always be Kirito. Maybe there was a careful reason hidden behind that flippant rationale, but this wasn’t the time to sit around pondering riddles.

The vice commander shook her head briefly and said, “Let’s just focus on the enemy at hand. Not that we should be attacking and provoking them.”

“Indeed,” Alice agreed, staring at the formation of dragoncraft. They were still stationary, but there was no way to tell if they were hesitating to make their next action or waiting for the right timing for something.

“How many more times can you shoot the Heaven-Piercing Blade’s laser…er, Perfect Weapon Control arts?” Alice asked, keeping her eye on the enemy. She sensed Fanatio looking up.

“It’s night, so perhaps four times.”

“Four…”

Alice stared into the sooty darkness, too. Perfect Weapon Control arts drastically consumed a Divine Object’s life with each use, and the only way it could be restored was over time, in a place replete with spatial sacred power. Each relic had an affinity to certain sources of power. As the Osmanthus Blade had previously been the oldest tree in the world, it enjoyed sunlight and lush soil most, while the Frostscale Whip preferred pure, clean water, according to Eldrie, as it had been a Divine Beast that lived in a lake.

Fanatio’s Heaven-Piercing Blade was previously a weapon Administrator had created out of a thousand mirrors, reflecting the sun into a single beam of light to create superheated flames. Apparently, there was a real-world power generator that worked on the same principles known as a heliostat solar power plant, but whether Administrator knew about such a thing was another question.

In any case, that being the Heaven-Piercing Blade’s source, it preferred the light of Solus more than any other Divine Relic did, and it was clearly slower to recharge during the night, as Fanatio had said back in Alice’s knighthood days. The sky above was half-shrouded in clouds.

“My sword might be able to block another twelve of those projectiles, at best,” Alice said. “If the emperor’s last-ditch effort involves more shots than those at once, then…”

I might need you to shoot down at least one of those crafts, Fanatio, she left unsaid in the chilly air.

The thought that they might lose the fifteen sleeping Integrity Knights just below them on the ninety-ninth floor was unbearable. But if they shot down even one of those dragoncraft, far more than fifteen citizens of Centoria would perish in the crash. Before she broke through the seal of her right eye, Alice would have been racked with anguish, caught between her emotions and her duty.

She glanced sidelong at Fanatio, wondering what she was thinking. There was no way to tell if the seal was there or not from her external appearance, but Fanatio seemed to know exactly what was on Alice’s mind. She said, “We can’t drop the dragoncraft onto the city. We will have lost, even in protecting the cathedral. Don’t worry—I’ll knock down all the projectiles you can’t block.”

“…But…”

Like the light-based Piercing Ray attack from ALfheim Online, the Perfect Weapon Control art of the Heaven-Piercing Blade was a penetrating laser attack. Given the curtain of missiles the enemy could shoot, a defense that could only hit one point at a time was too inefficient to be entirely useful.

But Fanatio was already aware of that. If she said she could handle it, then Alice had no choice but to trust the companion she’d shared battle with before.

“Understood. I’ll let you handle the rest.”

“It’s on me. I suppose I’m asking you to do the impossible again.”

“No…”

Alice shook her head, intending to protest that it was merely the duty of any knight—when she caught the faint sound of machinery in motion.

Her eyes darted in the direction of the noise. The weapons bays on the underside of the hovering craft were bristling with missiles again. Emperor Agumar had chosen to gamble on a last-ditch attack after all.

Fanatio placed a hand on her sword hilt and said, “If we can defend against their projectiles, we win… Otherwise, they win.”

“Yes,” Alice agreed. Thinking quickly, she asked, “How will we contact Selka below, Lady Fanatio…?”

She had forgotten because voices and writing could be sent instantly in the real world. But here, no matter how loudly Alice shouted from the exterior of the cathedral, it would not reach the ears of Selka and Airy, even with voice-enlarging arts. They didn’t have time to run down all those stairs to inform them of the need to unfreeze the Integrity Knights.

But despite having just been awakened from a nearly hundred-year sleep, Fanatio seemed ready for this.

“I already gave her the order to stop producing the solution and begin thawing the knights the moment even a single projectile hits Central Cathedral,” she said.

Alice was momentarily impressed until she wondered, “But…what about the order of thawing…?”

“Starting from the highest-numbered knights,” Fanatio said instantly. For a moment, Alice gave her a look.

The highest-numbered knight sealed on the ninety-ninth floor was Fizel Synthesis Twenty-Nine, the closest in number to Alice. If they started from that end of the numbers, then they might not even get to Deusolbert Synthesis Seven, whom Fanatio had known for two centuries, or the Seven Ancient Knights, whose names Alice didn’t even know.

But even if they were able to somehow get Deusolbert’s opinion on it, he would surely want them to evacuate the younger knights before him.

“Understood,” Alice replied, focusing on the dragoncraft again.

The missiles were being prepared to fire again—six for a craft, eighteen for all three. He was going to fight them with his maximum firepower, then. She gripped the hilt of her sword.

The Osmanthus Blade still had 80 percent of its life remaining, but the more the explosions of those Incarnate missiles overlapped, the more the overriding effect would increase their power. As she’d said earlier, twelve was probably the maximum she could block. The remaining six would have to be the responsibility of Fanatio, who could only shoot her laser four more times.

Kchunk… The final missiles were deployed to their launchers.

Alice and Fanatio drew their blades as one.

“Enhance Armament!”

Alice activated her Perfect Weapon Control first. Golden light shone from the Osmanthus Blade as it frayed into hundreds of tiny petals. Each was less than a cen across, shaped into a rounded cross like the flowers of the osmanthus tree in their base form. In terms of real-world game concepts, this was the balanced form, 50 percent attack power and 50 percent defense, but that was not suited to stopping Incarnate missiles like these.

She focused hard, and the flower petals floating in space sharpened audibly. The points of the crosses became actual points, with 90 percent focus on attack power.

At that moment, Emperor Agumar would be raising his arm to give the command from the control room of the center dragoncraft. She felt like she could hear him roar Fire!—though that wasn’t possible—and thus she swung the sword hilt in her hand in one big motion.

With a loud swoosh, the swarm of petals spread out to the sides.

The next moment, eighteen missiles launched together. With a sound like a monster’s roar, they leaped through the air and bore down on a single point of the cathedral’s exterior wall.

Alice felt a brief pang of concern, of wrongness, but had no time to think about it. She split the petals into four groups and launched them toward different targets at full power.

In the initial clash, the petals were heavily damaged from the blasts of the Incarnate missiles. This time, she would attempt to pierce them instantly with a spear formation rather than block them with a shield formation.

The petals shot forward as golden spears, intersecting with the tips of the missiles. It looked like they passed through them without any resistance, but moments later, ruptured by the sharp petals, the missiles lost their poise and began to explode. By then, the petal swarms had already flown past, but not enough to entirely escape the furious flames, and some fluttered and fell.

The pain of her sword was like an injury to herself. But Alice formed new spears from the surviving petals and continued to fight back against the missiles. Seven, eight, nine…ten. She needed two more to reach the twelve she had promised Fanatio to stop.

“Haaah!” she cried, swinging her arm down. Two spears flew, leaving behind a golden trail.

They struck true—it seemed.

But like living creatures, the missiles twisted and spun out of the way of the spears.

Stunned, Alice followed up by changing the formation of the petals, barely even conscious of what she was doing. They transformed from narrow throwing spears to birds with large, flapping wings, spinning quickly to pursue the missiles. The two massive birds closed the distance and snapped at the missiles with sharp beaks, but the missiles danced from side to side to avoid them.

There was no way projectiles flying with the pressure from sealed heat elements could move like that. It was probably the same kind of guided projectile that had shot down the X’rphan Mk. 13 craft Kirito and Eolyne were riding—a bio-missile engineered to have one of the Divine Beast babies inside.

On closer inspection, she realized that unlike the missiles she had already shot down, these were covered in black scales, not a metal shell. This was the detail that had seemed off to her earlier.

But she couldn’t lament the delay in realization. The other six bearing down on them were also bio-missiles, like the two evading her. Fanatio didn’t seem panicked yet, but it was obvious these would be harder to aim at than the normal projectiles, so Alice felt she had to do something about the two closest ones, at least.

Controlling the petals with her right hand, she thrust her left outward and grasped with all the Incarnation power she had.

Alice’s Incarnate Arms were a technique she’d learned directly from Commander Bercouli. She didn’t have the sheer output of Kirito, but she felt she was his equal in precision. Once the bio-missiles were within a mel of her weapon, she quickly snapped her left hand shut like a claw.

According to Kirito, the bio-missiles being manufactured at the base on Admina had both the mobility of flying animals and the ability to tear through Incarnate walls. The Incarnate Arms Alice created were enough to catch the missiles, but there was a slippery sensation to them, like trying to grasp a wriggling fish coated in slime.

But it was enough to briefly slow the missiles down. That was all the opening Alice needed to slice her right hand downward.

The two mammoth birds bolted downward in a dive, piercing the bio-missiles with their beaks. The missiles writhed violently, then disintegrated into black flames. It was a burst of umbral energy, not thermal; the Osmanthus Blade had greater resistance to darkness than to flame, but it couldn’t emerge unharmed from the center of a blast like that. The petals turned dark and sooty, losing their luster, and dropped like rain.

Returning the few petals left to her hand, Alice cried out, “The rest are up to you, Fanatio!”

“Understood!!”

Fanatio stepped forward in her place and pulled loose the Heaven-Piercing Blade from her left hip.

The remaining half dozen bio-missiles bore down on them, three from the right and three from the left. She only had four shots of her laser, so it seemed impossible that she could hit all six of them, spread out as they were. Still, Fanatio raised her sword, absolutely assured, and cried, “Release Recollection!!”

It wasn’t Perfect Weapon Control arts. It was the Integrity Knight’s greatest technique, Memory Release…

Bwwwom! With a heavy pulse, the Heaven-Piercing Blade shot out a vertical beam of pure light. This was not a laser, but a sword of light that was perhaps fifty mels long.

Alice had only seen this once before, and from a great distance. It was during the battle against the Dark Territory at the Eastern Gate, in the early stages of the Otherworld War. She had used her sword of light to cut apart Sigurosig, chief of the giants. Back then, it was more like ten mels long, however. The sword extending from Fanatio’s hand was five times that size. It wasn’t a sword but something much thicker… Kirito would probably call it a Laser Pillar or something.

The air shook again.

The pillar tilted to the left, wreathed in a pure white halo, then pulled on a diagonal to the rear.

“Haaaaaa!”

Fanatio roared and took a step, then swung the pillar forward.

The bio-missiles, now within thirty mels of the cathedral, reacted to the fierce light and attempted to evade. Perhaps they could have avoided a laser that was just a small, direct point, but the pillar swept through space with a large diameter. The three on the left were swallowed up in its light and disintegrated without a sound.

An instant later, they exploded in sequence. The vast stores of dark elements were unleashed, forming holes that devoured the night sky. The voids that ensued caused a sucking blast wind, drawing everything toward them.

Alice planted her feet against the shift in balance, switched her sword to the left hand, and used her dominant right to grab Fanatio’s sword belt, holding her steady.

“Thank you!” the vice commander shouted, swinging the Laser Pillar again toward the three on the right this time. The trio of bio-missiles darted along irregular paths like winged insects, trying to evade the superheated slashes.

But Fanatio employed ultra-precise hand motion, causing oscillations of light that brilliantly caught the fourth and fifth missiles.

The two projectiles melted into pieces and exploded at the same time. Alice once again dropped her center of gravity to brace against the gust of wind.

The sixth bio-missile—technically the eighteenth of the entire wave—began leaping about wildly, sensing it was the last of its group, but it could not escape the nearly weightless Laser Pillar and finally allowed contact. The obsidian scales instantly evaporated in the blaze of white light…

But then the lightsword flickered and went out.

The last missile had been gouged halfway through the torso, but did not explode, and plunged straight toward the cathedral. Alice’s Osmanthus Blade and Fanatio’s Heaven-Piercing Blade had been utterly spent, and could no longer support perhaps a single slash, much less another round of Perfect Weapon Control.

But just then, a milky, pale glow spread around them from behind.

The light expanded, forming a thin film that enveloped both Alice and Fanatio. There was no impact, no sense that anything had touched them, but they were aware of a gentle warmth that caressed their skin.

Within a second, the film of light formed an enormous sphere that covered the entirety of the top of Central Cathedral. A moment later, the bio-missile struck it, sending out translucent ripples, and came to a stop. It was just two mels away from the wall of the ninety-ninth floor.

Because of the impact, the partially torn part of the bio-missile’s body cracked and finally split in two, spilling forth a mass of black and purple energy that surged and exploded.

Alice instinctually turned her face away, but the film of light blocked the burst of dark energy, too. That was the limit of what it could do, however, because it melted into thin air just after that.

“Was that you, Lady Fanatio…?” Alice asked hoarsely.

Fanatio shook her head. “No…I thought it was your Incarnation…”

They shared a look, then turned around—and gasped.

The circular dome presiding over the terrace of the top floor of Central Cathedral was faintly glowing. It faded and went out just as they watched, but it was no illusion.

That dome was the place where Administrator’s chamber had been. The place where Alice had joined Kirito, Eugeo, and Cardinal in fighting against Administrator.

The underside of the domed ceiling was decorated with frescoes depicting the mythological creation of the Underworld, with crystals embedded in the surface that glittered like stars. They weren’t merely jewels, however, but crystal structures containing the extracted fluctlights of those who became Integrity Knights through Administrator’s synthesis ritual…

Alice stood stock-still, her mind racing wildly.

And she was distracted enough to be late to notice.

The air was trembling. It was a roar not of dark energy, but of heat elements.

Once again, they spun around, brushing shoulders. Beyond the remnants of the burst that still rattled the air around them, crimson flames were roaring brightly.

The source of the flame was the rightmost of the three large dragoncraft, from the tower’s perspective. The six heat-element engines stored behind the sturdy main wings were operating at full output.

For a moment, Alice thought Emperor Agumar had decided he didn’t stand a chance of winning and was using his subordinates as a shield to escape…but he was on the center craft. Was the crew of the right craft mutinying and escaping on its own…?

No, that wasn’t possible. Even now, two centuries after the end of the Axiom Church, the citizens of the Underworld were trapped by the nature of their artificial fluctlights, which prevented them from disobeying the authority of a higher being. The full output of the engine was on the emperor’s orders, which meant…

“Oh no…it’s going to crash into the cathedral!” Alice shouted. Fanatio twitched in horror.

“No, it can’t be!” she moaned, thrusting out her hand. Alice put out her own to join it.

Fwahhh! The large dragoncraft propelled forward with a deep and heavy roar. Once it began accelerating, the dark craft quickly picked up speed, rushing toward them like a landslide.

An Avus-class dragoncraft was twenty mels long and forty mels from wingtip to wingtip. The total weight was unfathomable, and even more frightening, there had to be at least ten crew members on board. The emperor had ordered them all to die.

It was an incredibly cruel and ruthless decision. Crashing the dragoncraft wasn’t just an option because they had used up all their missiles. The exterior wall of the cathedral was imbued with the highest priority level, which meant it wouldn’t budge even when hit by a massive dragoncraft—which was why they were loaded with Incarnate missiles instead—but it wasn’t impervious.

Even a human being who has not learned to wield Incarnation is able to produce powerful bursts of it in extreme circumstances, such as the moment of terror before death. Sigurosig, chief of the giants, had managed to paralyze Fanatio just as he was on the brink of death in the Battle of the Eastern Gate. Agumar VI was going to use his dragoncraft crew as Incarnate weapons.

If not for the city below them, Alice herself would have shot down the dragoncraft to protect the cathedral and the knights inside; she didn’t want to claim unique moral sanctity of thought and motive. But even still, her insides boiled at the thought of a commanding officer using his subordinates like sacrificial pawns.

That sudden surge of anger from her gut turned into Incarnation she could wield. From Fanatio’s hand, held in her own, she could sense a radiating determination in kind.

The nose of the charging dragoncraft made contact with the defensive Incarnate wall they deployed.

Without even a hint of weight or hardness, the wall shattered into nothing.

A moment later, the dragoncraft collided with the outer wall of the ninety-ninth floor of Central Cathedral. The hull of the craft cracked, split into pieces, and shattered in all directions, and Alice could momentarily see nothing but a crimson swell of flames.