Sword Art Online - Volume 28 - Chapter 4

4

The dragoncraft that crashed into the side of the ninety-ninth floor turned into a brilliant fireball, thanks to the vast stock of eternal-heat elements stored within it.

The flames were massive enough to completely envelop the top of Central Cathedral, billowing outward. Alice tried to silently produce as much frost element as she could.

But the spatial sacred power that should have filled the area was not responding to her call at once. Between the breaking of the Incarnate wall by the dragoncraft’s crash and the contact with the Incarnation bursts from the dying crew, she was having trouble focusing her mind. She tried to chant the art out loud instead, but that only allowed a gust of fiery air into her throat and lungs. She tried to pay the pain no mind.

“System Call!” she cried, at the exact moment as Fanatio did the same.

But the flames raced up the walls of the cathedral and reached them before they could continue with the proper command. It was obviously too late to generate the frost elements, but she was wearing the armor-like Integrity Pilot uniform, which would help her survive being engulfed in flames. If she could just fight through the burning of her exposed skin and hair to create an ice wall before all her life was extinguished…

“Generate Cryogenic…”

The roaring flames reached the tips of Alice’s hair, instantly turning it to ash. Imagining the agony of being burned to death, Alice froze.

But a second passed, then another, and she felt neither heat nor pain. The onslaught of fire retreated a mel and stopped there.

She thought Fanatio had created an Incarnate wall, but the vice commander looked just as shocked as Alice was. Then she noticed a very strange phenomenon beyond the terrace.

The raging flames, seemingly furious at being unable to burn them alive, were being blocked by a very thin gray veil… no, they were being absorbed by it. This was not a wall of Incarnation. A shell made of darkness elements was neutralizing the energy of the flames.

Darkness elements had the ability to neutralize all other elements, and heat and flames were no exception. But ordinarily, only frost elements could cancel out heat elements one to one; a single darkness element could not absorb the full energy of an entire heat element.

The number of eternal-heat elements expended in the dragoncraft’s blast was well over a hundred. Not all the flames produced by the crash had gone toward Alice and Fanatio, but the caster who had protected them managed to generate more than ten darkness elements—the most fickle of all—turned them into a massive spherical shell, and maintained it, consistently feeding it more darkness as it canceled out the flames. There could not have been even a handful of knights in the original Integrity Knighthood who had the skill to pull off such a feat with darkness elements, especially under such extreme circumstances…

Alice fought the urge to spin around and look for the figure she expected was right behind her. She had to focus on the flames in front of them. She lifted her hands and focused the Incarnation in her head, now that she was regaining control of it. She raised a hand, generating more darkness elements from the roiling flames and adding them to the sphere. Converting fire directly into darkness was a high-level technique, but she couldn’t be an Integrity Knight without being capable of such a feat.

For ten seconds, she and Fanatio focused on generating as many elements as they possibly could.

The raging fire gradually lost force, dwindled longingly, and finally went out.

Satisfied that the job was done, Alice dispelled the shell of darkness. A burst of heated air gusted through the top of the tower, but it wasn’t hot enough to cause any life loss.

Alice breathed in deeply and focused her mind again. All the released eternal-heat elements had been converted to spatial sacred power, but flames still clung to the wall of the cathedral. If the dragoncraft’s oil and lubricant got stuck to the wall and ignited, those fires wouldn’t go out easily. The marble of the wall had self-repairing arts in it, but the heat could pass through the stone into the tower, and the impact of the dragoncraft against the wall had to have caused some damage. What was the status of the frozen knights…and Selka and Airy down on the ninety-fifth floor?

As much as Alice wanted to return to the stairs, there was no turning away from the craft that carried Emperor Agumar. He might still have missiles, and he could also give the same order to the remaining companion craft.

But she at least had enough time to glance at the unseen caster of the darkness elements that saved her. Alice made sure the two hovering dragoncraft weren’t moving, then quickly turned to see.

The answer was as shocking as when she first saw Fanatio on the terrace with her, if not even more so.

It wasn’t an artician. It was a tall woman dressed in the same style of armor as Fanatio’s, silver with an ink-black accent, with a thin, curving sword at her waist. Her long hair, the color of cofil tea with plenty of milk, was tied with a black ribbon.

It was an Integrity Knight…but Alice didn’t know her name or number. She had never seen this face, with its cool and pristine features, before in her life.

There was a faint mental image of a proudly standing figure in her memory, however, so it was clearly one of the knights frozen in sleep on the ninety-ninth floor. But the fact that Alice didn’t even know her name meant this could only be one of the Ancient Seven, the Integrity Knights Administrator had frozen and locked inside the hidden room herself in the distant past…

With eyes the color of a sunset, the knight looked first at Fanatio, then at Alice, blinked, and grinned. Her face was so gallant, but the expression was shockingly kind and gentle. Alice felt she couldn’t breathe.

When she didn’t say anything, Fanatio spoke in her place.

“How many centuries has it been…? I’m delighted to see you again, Eydis Synthesis Ten.”

“It’s good to see you well, too, Fanatio Synthesis Two.”

She didn’t recognize the name Eydis, but the number ten was obvious. She was one of the Ancient Seven Knights, of course, but the question remained: Why had she awakened from her eternal sleep?

Fanatio had instructed Selka to immediately stop producing the thawing solution and begin using it on the knights if a single missile hit the cathedral, and to start from the larger-number knights first. It was a dragoncraft that had actually hit the building, not a missile, but even if she had stopped at that point and climbed from the ninety-fifth to the ninety-ninth floor and begun the thawing as quickly as possible, it was still much too early for Eydis to have arrived. And the largest number of the knights belonged to Fizel, the twenty-ninth, so she should’ve been the first to thaw.

But whatever the reason for her awakening, if not for Eydis’s protective shell of dark elements, Alice and Fanatio would have been charred alive. Alice let out the breath she’d been holding in, intent on finally expressing her gratitude to the forebear who had saved her.

Before she could do that, however, Eydis raised an eyebrow and asked Fanatio, “W-wait a minute. How many centuries did you say it’s been? What year of the Human Era is it?”

“It’s 582, as I understand it. And the calendar has turned from the Human Era to the Stellar Era.”

“……582……”

Eydis was aghast. Alice thought better of speaking. There was no way of knowing the year she was frozen, but at the very least, in the five years Alice had served since being made an Integrity Knight in 375 HE, she had never once heard the name Eydis. If enough time had already passed that no one remembered her well enough to discuss their memories of her, then Eydis could have been frozen for over three hundred years.

According to Airy, the souls of the Ancient Seven were in an unstable state—which is why Administrator had frozen and locked them away, presumably—and even Kirito in his Star King days decided he wasn’t able to safely restore them. Whatever the reason for her awakening, that situation shouldn’t have changed, so it was possible Eydis’s fluctlight might crumble under any kind of mental shock.

Despite Alice’s concern, Eydis slowly turned and examined the hovering dragoncraft.

“…No wonder such an unfamiliar object was floating in the sky. What is that? It was created by people, I presume. How does it fly?” she asked in quick succession.

Fanatio smoothly answered, “Dragon aircraft, which are called dragoncraft. Heat elements are trapped inside their wings, and they fly using that pressure.”

“Dragoncraft… I see. And that was the cause of that heat-element explosion. If they’re attacking the cathedral, then are they from the Dark Territory’s army? Did you allow them to reach all the way to the middle of Centoria?” Eydis asked with a hint of accusation.

Fanatio was unfazed, and calmly explained, “That is not the Dark Territory in that craft. Although I don’t know if it’s true or not, he claims to be a descendent of the western imperial family. I was just awakened from Deep Freeze myself not long ago, and I’m not entirely certain of the situation, either.”

“…Umm,” Alice ventured, summoning her courage. There was no reason to be afraid of Fanatio anymore, and Eydis wasn’t intimidating in the least, but she couldn’t help but feel her breath coming shorter when both of them looked at her.

But she couldn’t change her mind and back out. She tensed her gut, lowered her voice a little, and explained, “The commander of the enemy troops calls himself Emperor Agumar Wesdarath VI. He demands control of Central Cathedral, but I believe his true goal is the destruction of all the frozen Integrity Knights.”

“Agumar VI,” Eydis said, curling up the fingers of her right hand one by one. “The western emperor I know is Aldares III, and his son is Agumar IV, so it would go Al IV, Ag V, Al V, Ag VI…meaning six generations later. That doesn’t seem like very many generations for three hundred years to have passed while I was asleep…but as long as we can drag him out of that ‘dragoncraft’ so I can get a good look, I’ll know if he’s real or fake.”

Eydis reached for her longsword, which was very similar in make to the katana of the real world. She stopped in the midst of that action, however, and gave Alice a piercing look.

“And who are you again?”

“I…I am Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty.”

“Thirty?!” Eydis squawked. She leaned closer. “So you’re the thirtieth knight? How many years have you been one? How many are after you?”

“A-about five years…after me was Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One, but he perished in the fight against the Dark Territory in 380 HE,” Alice said. She brushed the Frostscale Whip on her right hip before continuing, “After his death, Tiese Schtrinen Thirty-Two and Ronie Arabel Thirty-Three were promoted to knights, and from what I was told, the Integrity Knights were disbanded in 441 HE.”

“Disbanded?!” Eydis shrieked, even higher-pitched this time. She glanced at the circular structure in the center of the terrace, then rounded on Fanatio. “So does that mean the Integrity Knights are no more?! Did Administrator agree to this?! Or was it on Her Excellency’s orders?!”

“The pontifex is…”

Fanatio trailed off, and Alice instantly understood why. The chalk-white cylindrical chamber was masterless. That holy figure had perished in the flames of madness after a tremendous battle there two centuries ago. Prime Senator Chudelkin’s obsession had been the direct cause of her death, but there was no denying Alice had turned her sword against the ruler to whom she had sworn an oath of loyalty.

If they were to explain Administrator’s death and the details surrounding it to Eydis, they would have to discuss Alice’s rebellion, and that was what caused Fanatio to hesitate.

Alice was grateful for the vice commander’s consideration, but if Eydis was going to mourn Administrator’s death and rebuke Alice for her treachery, that was an outcome she needed to face.

With determination in her chest, she took a step forward.

But before she could open her mouth, a most unexpected interruption occurred.

“Rats lurking in the halls of Central Cathedral.”

A booming voice swept through the swarms of sparks that choked the night sky.

Alice instinctually spun around to look at the dragoncraft floating to the west.

As if on cue, the right dragoncraft projected a bright light that revealed the portrait of a forty-something-year-old man. Between the exaggerated epaulets and the numerous medals on his military coat, the receding forehead, and the chiseled features, this was clearly the so-called Agumar Wesdarath VI.

The three-dimensional projection flickered rapidly. He must have had a subordinate fix the projector after the Heaven-Piercing Blade broke it. Fanatio drew that weapon again, uninterested in hearing any more of his insults, but Eydis reached out to stop her hand.

“Let him talk a bit longer.”