6
“Keep him talking,” Eydis urged.
“…I know,” Fanatio replied, taking her hand off the hilt of the Heaven-Piercing Blade.
The vision of Agumar looked smug once again, as though he could see exactly what they were doing.
“I believe you have now seen the depths of my selfless patriotism and the martyrdom of my best and brightest soldiers. But my mercy is granted equally to all my subjects. Even traitors to my rule will be granted one opportunity for clemency. Before the midnight bell, cast off that hoary old sword and armor, throw them from the tower, and press your head against the floor to demonstrate your fealty to me. Otherwise, the flames of purification will lick at your heels once again, and this time you will all perish in their midst.”
The projection flickered and went out.
Alice imagined that if Kirito were there, he’d probably have some snappy response like, “Where do I even start?” Agumar’s words were so arrogant, so hypocritical, that it was impossible to take them seriously.
To her right, Eydis murmured, “I think that’s the real thing.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Fanatio from the left. Eydis shrugged lightly.
“I have no hard evidence. But I’ve talked to Aldares III several times, and he looks and sounds exactly the same. If he’s a fake, then he should make for a grand stage actor in South Centoria.”
“The Galacheon Theater closed about thirty years after you went to sleep. Chudelkin complained their newest play was inappropriate.”
Eydis clicked her tongue in a magnificently loud way and swore, “The next time I see that white tsuruko, I’m going to pound him flat.”
Despite also being from the Underworld, Alice couldn’t help but be curious about that unfamiliar word, and she was unable to resist asking.
“Lady Eydis, what is a ‘white tsuruko’?”
Instantly, the knight in the black ribbon stopped scowling and smiled. “You don’t know tsuruko mochi, Alice? Then I have to take you to this great place in District Five of East Centoria once all this dies down. The best, in my opinion, are the ones with sweet boiled azura beans and the ones with entire chestnuts inside.”
Fanatio couldn’t hold back from opining, “Beans and chestnuts are all fine and good, but my favorite are the chocol-stuffed ones.”
“Chocol?! Listen, I like chocol, too, but that’s not a proper filling for tsuruko mochi, is it?”
“If you’re going to talk about proper, the true experience is just plain white tsuruko.”
They continued to argue. Alice was stunned. If Agumar were listening to this, an ugly purple vein would be pulsing on his forehead. The bickering would do them no good, and only served to waste time until the midnight deadline.
The ever-present status monitor that Alice could see while in her machine body in the real world was obnoxious, but she had to admit that the perfectly accurate clock—and the weather forecast and map overlay—was quite useful to have. Even at that point, the main method of knowing time in the Underworld was via bells every thirty minutes. There was a large wall clock in the Arabel mansion, but pocket- and wristwatches that could be carried around hadn’t yet been developed. Naturally, none of the three there had a watch.
In other words, they just had to use their own internal clocks to conservatively estimate how many minutes were left until the deadline. It was probably just fifteen—if not even fewer.
“Um, my ladies?” Alice said, summoning the courage to interrupt their tsuruko mochi argument. “What shall we do about the emperor’s demands? I believe if we do not surrender by midnight, he will send a second dragoncraft to crash into the cathedral…”
The outer wall was still violently aflame after the first dragoncraft’s collision. Eydis was only fine because it hadn’t damaged the inside of the tower, but there was no guarantee there would be no damage after a second time. However…
“Huh?” asked Eydis, startled. She gave Alice a very piercing look that lasted several moments, then shrugged and said, “We’ll just have to get onto that dragoncraft thing and go take the head of Agumar VI, right? Then the other soldiers will surrender.”
“Huh?” Alice replied in kind. Yes, if they removed the emperor’s power from the equation, the subordinates would likely see them as the higher power next. But they didn’t have a means of getting onto the dragoncraft; that was why they were forced to stay and fight a defensive battle instead.
Fanatio followed up with some rapid-fire questions of her own. “How do you intend to get onto a dragoncraft almost an entire kilor away? Even you can’t jump that far on your own. And even if you had some means of flying, the emperor is monitoring us. If he detects our intentions, he might send the dragoncraft in anyway.”
All these points were valid. At best, there was the practice of wind-element flight in this era, but Alice hadn’t learned that, and Tiese said it made a lot of noise, so it wasn’t good for espionage. Still, Eydis was unfazed.
“Have you forgotten I’m the best darkness-user in the knighthood? There are plenty of ways to blend into the blackness and approach at night.”
“And how are you going to get over there?”
“On my dragon, obviou—” Eydis paused, sucking in a sharp breath, and took a huge step toward Fanatio. “My dragon! Where’s Kirimai?! Is she still asleep in the basement of the dragon stables?!”
“The stables were torn down long ago.”
“No…then…is Kirimai…?”
“Don’t worry. Like my Fujiyui and Her Eminence’s Yukiori, your dragon was moved to the ninety-sixth floor in a frozen state.”
“…Oh…”
Eydis exhaled with obvious relief, though that didn’t clear up every question she had.
“The ninety…sixth? Why are they in the Senate?”
“It’s a long story…but right now, we can’t use the human thawing solution on the dragons, so we can’t bring them back anytime soon.”
“Then what were you planning to do?” demanded Eydis, taking another step closer. Over her shoulder, Alice waited for Fanatio’s answer, too. The vice commander looked at them both and calmly but firmly said, “His Majesty…that is, Kirito, promised to return before midnight. That means he will be back, and we merely need to last until then.”
“Kiri…to…,” Eydis murmured awkwardly, frowning. “Was there a Kirito in the knights? Or is that someone like Alice, who was made an Integrity Knight after I was frozen?”
“He’s not a knight. Kirito is the entire Underworld’s…”
Fanatio stopped there. She was interrupted by a tremendous, bassy rumble that shook the cathedral like several hundred thunderbolts sounding at once. The trio spun to the north-northeast.
Beyond the circular walls that surrounded Centoria, even beyond the dark forests and lake on the other side, a jet of crimson flame was rising into the air. It almost seemed like a volcano had erupted, but there was no such feature just outside Centoria, and there wasn’t one pillar of flame but six, all in a row.
“Are those…dragoncraft heat-element engines…?” Fanatio murmured, just barely audible above the booming.
There was no doubt. The large dragoncraft stationed over the space force base had all six engines at full throttle. But the jets were roaring upward, meaning it was pointing straight down. Or in other words…
“…Another suicide bomb!” Alice cried, just before realizing another detail. The dragoncraft was doing a headstand at a height of just a few hundred mels. If it had all its engine at full blast, it would crash into the base in a split second. But the craft had been blazing like that for well over ten seconds. Something had to be stopping the propulsion created by over a hundred eternal-heat elements and the massive weight of the craft itself. There was only one possible answer: Kirito’s Incarnation.
Alice and Fanatio shared a look. The vice commander’s stunned eyes held the same doubts as her own did. If the dragoncraft at the base had been given a suicide crash order, and Kirito was there stopping it, then he might not be able to return to Central Cathedral by midnight.
“Um…that’s not good, is it?!” cried Eydis, who didn’t know the context of the situation.
“It’s very not good!” Alice replied, then focused for all she was worth. The pillars of fire nearly reached the clouds above, but their red glow was enough to illuminate the pointed, tail-like end of the dragoncraft and the pyramid shape of the base’s command tower.
There was no way the command structure could have the same priority level as the materials making up Central Cathedral. If the dragoncraft hit it and exploded, it would blow the building into a smoking hole in the ground. If it broke through Kirito’s Incarnate wall, he would suffer greatly as well, and Ronie, Tiese, Stica, Laurannei, and Eolyne would be in even more danger.
But Kirito would find a way to do it.
In the battles against Administrator and Dark God Vecta in the Underworld, and in the battles against the Life Harvester and Mutasina the witch in Unital Ring, Kirito had always faced off against seemingly unstoppable foes without giving up. No matter how much pressure he was under, he would surely come through in the end, saving not only his friends but the enemy soldiers as well.
I have to do the same, Alice thought vigorously, squeezing the hilt of her trusty sword.
Despite the passing of the ages, Alice Synthesis Thirty was still an Integrity Knight, a protector of the human realm. Even if the man calling himself Agumar Wesdarath VI was the descendent of the western empire’s imperial bloodline, anyone who would do harm to innocent people was her enemy. She would never succumb to his threats or cast aside her sword, and she would neither stand to see the cathedral damaged any further nor allow him to force his subordinates to kill themselves to further his aims.
Alice’s Incarnation couldn’t stop the charge of a gargantuan dragoncraft, and her sword only had a tiny sliver of life left. She couldn’t sneak on board in the darkness without a means of flight, and she couldn’t just shoot them down to crash into the city.
Was there even a way to land the two craft without causing damage to the homes below?
In the real world, airplanes flew by burning fuel processed from oil. If the fuel began to leak during flight, they had to make an emergency landing. But the dragoncraft of the Underworld flew not with fuel stored in tanks, but using the spatial resources from the air outside the craft. To stop the flow of resources in a way that was invisible and undetectable by Incarnation…
That was when she heard a faint voice in the back of her mind.
But sunlight does not reach the floor of that ravine, even in midday, and there is not a blade of grass in the ground. In other words, the sacred power there is weak. If we can consume all of it before the battle, the enemy should be unable to utilize their powerful attack arts.
It was from the battle at the Eastern Gate with the Dark Territory, which seemed like a lifetime ago. At their strategy council before the battle, Vice Commander Fanatio had come up with that advice.
The desolate ravine that passed through the End Mountains couldn’t be compared to Centoria, the richest and lushest land in the human realm, but according to Laurannei’s brother Phercy, a sacred power drought around Centoria had been a problem for the last several years. And in the middle of the night, the natural replenishment from the environment would be at its weakest.
If they could strip all the resources around the cathedral with a massive sacred art, the same way Alice did in the battle at the gate, the dragoncraft would no longer be able to fly. And the output of the heat-element engines would drop gradually, giving them enough time to make an emergency landing outside the city.
The question was which sacred art to use. If the emperor was monitoring them, he would obviously notice a reflective cohesion beam using a massive sphere of mirrors. It would be just as hard to conceal the flashing of all the elements being generated for any other major art, too.
Only darkness elements were virtually without light…but nothing was more frightening than a great mass of darkness elements. If she lost control of them and they all burst at once, it would eradicate everyone and everything around them, without leaving so much as a hair behind.
But then, Eydis had just said she was the greatest darkness-user in the knighthood. Alice had only known her for about ten minutes, but somehow she already believed it.
“Lady Eydis,” she said softly to the knight in the black ribbon, staring down the two dark shapes in the western sky.
“What is it, Alice, dear?”
“How many darkness elements can you generate at once?”
“Umm…twenty at most, I’d guess. Why?” Eydis asked.
“Ah, I see. You want to do the same thing as at the Battle of the Eastern Gate,” Fanatio whispered, before Alice could explain her reasoning.
This only seemed to confuse Eydis more. “Eastern Gate? Who was fighting who out there?”
“You’ll just have to roll with it for now; we’ll have plenty of time later to explain everything that happened while you were asleep. Alice is thinking that by generating a great number of darkness elements, you can exhaust all the sacred power around the cathedral,” Fanatio explained quickly. Alice nodded to back her up, but that didn’t seem to satisfy Eydis.
“Why darkness elements? If you want to make a ton, it’s easier to handle light elements or water elements…,” she said, trailing off. “Oh! Because you don’t want them to see the light and realize what we’re doing. Yes, then darkness elements will be able to hide in the dark of night, but you’ll need more than twenty to use up all the sacred power for a kilor, more like around two hundred…But considering the heat elements that were unleashed, even three hundred won’t be enough. All three of us could work on them and not come close, right?”
Eydis’s calculations were correct. Alice had been able to exhaust the sacred power at the ravine of the Eastern Gate because she used a reflective cohesion beam made of light elements locked inside a sphere made of mirrors. But as far as Alice knew, there was no container that could safely hold darkness elements, which by their nature carved away all matter. Even in the thickest steel, darkness elements would simply eat away at the container from the inside, and enough of them would eventually open up a hole.
All this was basic information Alice already knew.
“You are correct, Lady Eydis. Just creating and maintaining darkness elements will not nearly be enough to exhaust the power in the area. But if we repeat the cycle of generating darkness elements, harvesting them, and then generating more…”
It was admittedly a rather simplistic explanation, and it unfortunately didn’t pass the scrutiny of the veteran knight, who was also a master sacred artician.
“When you say harvest it, you do realize releasing them will just put the sacred power back into the air, right? You need to either lock them in something or neutralize them. But there are only one or two containers for capturing darkness elements in the cathedral’s treasure repository, and the only objects nearby we could use to make them react is the armor Fanatio and I are wearing,” Eydis pointed out without missing a beat.
Alice was surprised to learn containers for holding darkness elements actually existed, but the treasure repository itself probably no longer existed. And no matter how high a priority level their armor was, it wasn’t going to be enough to neutralize hundreds of darkness elements.
But there was one thing with the mass and the priority that would do the job. Something that could easily handle not just hundreds, but thousands of darkness elements at once. The oldest and greatest creation of the human realm.
“There might not be a way to contain the darkness elements, but there is a way to neutralize them,” Alice prefaced before revealing her idea to the two senior knights. “We use Central Cathedral itself. The floor beneath our feet is set to be ultra-high-priority and has automatic regeneration arts cast upon it. Throwing a few darkness elements at it won’t destroy it. On top of that, the regeneration consumes spatial resources as well, so it will eat up far more sacred power than just generating the elements themselves.”
“…But Central Cathedral is the shining symbol of the Axiom Church and the pontifex…”
Eydis sounded horrified, her casual attitude completely gone. She turned to gaze at the rounded enclosure behind her. Alice noticed the look of realization that crossed her face.
In an instant, however, it was gone, replaced by red, resolute eyes and a swaying ponytail as she turned to face Alice and Fanatio.
“I’m sorry. It’s the people inside Central Cathedral we should be saving, not the building itself. I think your strategy will work, Alice…but we’ll need one more bit of Concealment beyond the dark of night.”
“Concealment…?” Alice asked, furrowing her brow.
Eydis removed her scabbard from her sword belt and placed it at her feet. The emperor would likely see it as an act of surrender, or preparation for it. Stuffy old Deusolbert would probably say something like, “A knight’s holy weapon is his soul! You cannot place it on the ground!” in righteous fury, but he was still a statue on the ninety-ninth floor.
When Fanatio took off the Heaven-Piercing Blade’s scabbard, too, Alice reached for hers as well. She pulled the small, metal loop on the scabbard off the little clasp they called cat-claws in the Underworld and a swivel hook in the real world. In her mind, she told her exhausted weapon that it was only a temporary separation, and she laid it on the cold marble floor.
Then she straightened up and glanced to the north for just a second.
The six pillars of flame shooting toward the heavens from the space force base seemed even longer. It must have been going on for nearly three minutes by that point. Kirito’s Incarnation was simply astonishing—not only stopping the furious charge of the craft but also protecting it from the extreme forces that should have torn it apart. It had to be taking an astounding amount of stamina from him. They had to prevent a second suicide bombing of the cathedral, if for no other reason than to allow him to maintain his focus on defending the base.
Alice, Eydis, and Fanatio formed a line, shoulder to shoulder, and stared down the dragoncraft before them.
They placed their hands behind their backs and proudly puffed out their chests. They could remove their weapons, but as knights, the thought of removing their armor and uniforms was an unbearable blow to their pride—or so the emperor would think.
There were probably five minutes remaining until midnight.
Alice steadied her breathing to match the others’ and silently generated ten darkness elements with her fingers behind her back. She tossed them three mels behind her and cut them loose, allowing them to fall.
Splak, splak. Dry little bursts sounded behind them. The darkness elements touched the marble floor of the terrace, carving out little chunks as they disappeared.
The same sound came from her left and right. Alice and Fanatio could make ten at a time, while Eydis could do double that, making for a total of forty. With that many landing at once, it sounded like a little hailstorm behind them, but that sort of sound wouldn’t register all the way over at the emperor’s dragoncraft.
Through the chaotic popping of the darkness elements, she could also hear a high note, like crystal being plucked; that was the sound of the marble blocks regenerating their life. Central Cathedral was already busy repairing the outer wall that had been damaged by the first dragoncraft bombing, so the amount of sacred power being expended had to be massive. The only question was if they could get the exhausted zone to reach the dragoncraft a kilor away within the next five minutes.
We’ll make it reach.
Alice grasped for all the Incarnation she possibly could, creating dark elements and tossing them behind her. If someone were to watch them from a distance, they might be able to see a faint purple glow around them, as though they were about to transcend to some higher plane of existence.
One long, soul-whittling minute passed, then a second. Alice realized the city below was not as bright as it had been two centuries ago. The eternal light elements they used for illumination were going out due to lack of power.
It wasn’t just the streetlights, but the mechamobiles, coolers, and blowers—all machines that used elements would stop, so the confusion and panic would become greater among the citizens attempting to evacuate. They’d just have to deal with it, though. The darkness spread, swallowing up the government, then commercial, then residential districts of West Centoria.
Right around when Alice produced her hundredth dark element, the dragoncraft on the left—the one not carrying the emperor—produced a red burst of flame from its wing engines. There was a quake-like rumbling, and the massive body moved forward. It was nearly two minutes to midnight, but the emperor clearly wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the anomaly happening on the ground.
This would be the knife-edge of their gamble.
Eydis was on the same wavelength. She cried, “Haaaaah!”
Alice and Fanatio joined her. If Ayuha Furia the sacred arts master were there, she would probably say something like, Shouting only interferes with your arts, but it could also draw out power you didn’t know you had.
There was no point in hiding, so Alice brought her arms forward and started shooting the darkness elements into the floor before her feet. With little pops and faint bursts of light, they gouged tiny holes in the marble, which steadily filled back in as the regenerating art worked its spell. With three of them coordinating, the erosion was a bit faster than the regeneration, but they would clearly run out of spatial resources before they could actually get a hole through the other side of the massive blocks of marble.
And in just seconds, that moment arrived.
Just as the dragoncraft was reaching maximum acceleration, its thrusters flickered unsteadily. The darkness elements growing at Alice’s fingertips blinked a little and went out.
The distance one could harvest spatial resources corresponded to the SC (Sacred Control) level listed in the Stacia Window. Alice’s SC level had jumped mightily to over 70 after defeating the mythic spacebeast Abyssal Horror, but Fanatio and Eydis were close to 60 as well. As she recalled, the distance reached one kilor at level 50, so at that moment, the radius of the dead zone around the cathedral could easily be one and a half kilors. Even the finest absorber on those dragoncraft couldn’t pull in enough resources to work six whole engines at once.
First, the craft moving forward on the left lurched, losing composure, and only managed to recover its balance by converting power to the hover-control thrusters beneath the wings. Then the craft on the right began to tilt forward and used downward propulsion to lift itself.
“You better pull back before you crash!” Eydis taunted—not that Agumar could hear them. The two dragoncraft kept their upward thrust steady and began to fire their reverse thrusters from the front of their wings, slowly backing away. The engines were not steady, and each momentary loss of power caused the craft to slump. At that point they were rooting for the ships to get away, because if they crashed there, they would set fire to the residential area.
The trio lowered their hands and watched with bated breath as the two craft steadily peeled back over the city. Thirty seconds later, they crossed the walls of Centoria. Beyond them were the same farmlands and meadows that had been there two centuries before.
The reverse thrusters stopped, and the upward thrusters weakened. Slowly, awkwardly, the craft descended, wings waving, until they practically fell onto the grassland below. It was dark and far away, so they couldn’t make out details, but it was clear the dragoncraft had suffered damage. They wouldn’t take off again anytime soon, even if the resources came back.
Alice refused to let herself breathe out yet, though. She turned to the north once again.
The pillars of fire over the base were gone, and the command tower still stood. Kirito had not only stopped the all-out charge of the dragoncraft, but had managed to make it land somewhere.
This time, she felt at liberty to exhale. Alice glanced at Fanatio, then at Eydis. She wanted to thank them, but they were Integrity Knights with the same duty she had. They wanted to protect the cathedral and Centoria just as much as she did.
“…That was brilliant work,” she said, opting for praise over gratitude. Fanatio reached out and clapped a hand on Alice’s shoulder.
“Same to you, Alice. I would never have thought of attempting to exhaust all the sacred power of Centoria. It’s the sort of thing Kirito would dream up…”
Just then, Eydis looked down, sensing something.
“…What’s…that…?”
Distracted by the tone of her voice, Alice followed Eydis’s gaze.
The middle of the night sky was a spotless, starless black. It was like something was blocking the starlight behind it, but no matter how much she stared and squinted, it was impossible to tell at what height the object was floating, or even if it was living or artificial.
For an instant she tensed up, thinking it might be a new dragoncraft, but there was no engine sound and no thruster fire. Plus, it was long and wedge-shaped, not at all like the boomerang-esque Avus. Whether in the Underworld or in the real world, there were no dragoncraft or aircraft without wings.
Until suddenly, the tip of the shadow glowed red.
The light rapidly grew in intensity, bursting outward in a cross shape, as though unable to withstand its pressure. Soon after, the low rumble of distant thunder followed.
Alice frowned, confused. Then the dark clouds trailing through the night sky were touched by the red light in a circular pattern around it.
It wasn’t just light, but a ball of superheated flame.
Meaning the long, thin, wedge-shaped shadow in the sky was a dragoncraft. But if it was really that far above the clouds and still clearly visible, the size had to be way larger than just a hundred mels or two. A mass of steel so gargantuan, and yet without wings to hold it up. How was it maintaining elevation without thrusters to push it upward?
But this wasn’t even the time to focus on that. At the very least, a fireball of about fifty heat elements was bearing down on them. It would do terrible damage to Alice, and with the effects of what they’d done to the rooftop of Central Cathedral using dark elements, it might just cave the whole terrace in.
Alice held out a hand toward the fireball, just as Fanatio and Eydis did the same. The sacred power around the cathedral had been completely consumed, so they couldn’t make a shell of darkness anymore. They’d have to stop it using a wall of Incarnation, but after the battle thus far, she felt like she’d already used up just about all the Incarnation that existed in her head.
…It’s all in my head, she told herself, gathering strength from every corner of her consciousness. The souls of Underworlders are contained in lightcubes, not brains, so it’s not possible for exhaustion to build up.
Then, between Alice and Eydis, a fourth hand rose to the sky. Five fingers blessed with suppleness and strength caused ripples to spread in the empty air.
An Incarnation that was terrifyingly powerful, but somehow warm and inviting, enveloped the three and melded with their own, creating a massive defensive wall that spanned the entirety of the cathedral’s roof.
An instant later, the fireball came roaring down onto the defensive wall and caused an explosion so great, it lit up all of Centoria. Through the circuit of the Incarnation, Alice felt heat and impact surge back through her hand.
She had estimated that fifty heat elements were used to generate the fireball, but she realized that was wrong. The scale of the explosion was just about the same as when the first dragoncraft had exploded. In other words, the energy contained in the fireball was equivalent to at least a hundred heat elements.
The billowing ball of fire that lit up the sky raged for over ten seconds, as though incensed that it hadn’t destroyed anything, but gradually abated and went out.
Alice released her Incarnate wall and turned to thank their late helper. But before the words were even out of her mouth, the figure dressed in black just over her shoulder toppled forward.
“Kirito!” she cried, grabbing his left arm. Eydis held him up from the other side.
He had done it. He’d returned before midnight, just as he’d promised Fanatio. After a moment resting his full weight on them, he put his foot forward and rose, straightening up.
“Sorry about the wait,” he rasped to Alice. Then he looked to his right. “Umm…”
Eydis looked at him with about as much confusion as he felt. “Who are you?”
“I’m Kirito.”
“That’s the knight uniform Djarmier designed, isn’t it? Are you an Integrity Knight?”
“Who’s…Djarmier? And who are you…?”
Fanatio decided to step in before they confused each other even more. “Kirito, Eydis, we’ll have time for introductions later,” she said. “For now, we need to do something about that.”
Alice’s attention was drawn to the sky once again. It was still difficult to gauge the distance to the wedge-shaped dragoncraft, but the fact that it was behind the clouds and that the dead area without sacred power was about a kilor and a half meant it had to be around two kilors away. Yet it was visibly larger than her extended index finger, meaning it had to be at least three hundred mels in size. It completely dwarfed the forty-mel Avus-class dragoncraft. The scale was difficult to fathom.
Naturally, its hull would be far thicker, and it was simply impossible to estimate its total weight. When their own Incarnation and sacred arts couldn’t reach that far, was there any way to do something about it?
As she stood there, at a loss, the gentle sound of bells filled her ears. It was the melody of midnight, the quietest of the day.
They had reached Emperor Agumar’s deadline, but they had already forced two of the Avus-class craft to land, and the mega-sized dragoncraft overhead had lobbed an explosive fireball, so there was no room for dialogue anymore.
A number of white beams shot from the belly of the mega-sized dragoncraft, crisscrossing and building a huge, three-dimensional image. Once again, it was the picture of Emperor Agumar Wesdarath VI. So the emperor was not on the dragoncraft they’d forced to land, but on the mega-sized craft hiding at high altitude. Fanatio twitched, reaching for her weapon, but even the Heaven-Piercing Blade’s laser couldn’t reach two kilors away in the sky.
From above, the emperor glared at them, then spoke.
“You have my compliments for defeating all my escorts,” boomed his gloating voice.
From Alice and Fanatio’s arms, Kirito spat, “When you were the one who ordered them to crash.”
Of course, the emperor couldn’t hear that. He continued haughtily, “But if you struggled with an Avus-class, then you will not put a scratch on the Principia. And my generosity has been expended. In the few seconds remaining until you burn to cinders, you may rue your own shortsightedness.”
His thin mustache perked upward in mockery, and the projection of the emperor melted into the night. Once again, Kirito murmured, “Principia…principle. I assume he meant that to be a contrast to the ‘Axiom’ Church, but who gave him the…?”
Eydis and Fanatio just looked confused, but Alice understood what he was saying.
The common tongue of the Underworld was known as Japanese in the real world, while the vocabulary of the sacred tongue was English. But in the real world, a myriad of languages existed—over five thousand, apparently. Alice was still learning English and German, but based on the sound of it, she suspected principia came from Latin, an ancestor to many European languages. Naturally, it was not used in the Underworld.
In other words, Kirito was wondering who had taught the emperor’s faction the Latin word for “principle.”
It could be the real-world intruder Kikuoka had hired Kirito to investigate. If so, then the intruder could be close to the emperor…perhaps even on board the mega-sized dragoncraft…
Alice wanted to relay this hypothesis to Kirito. But before she could even open her mouth, another burst of dazzling crimson light filled the sky.
The mega-sized dragoncraft was preparing a second fireball attack. But this one looked different from the first. The glowing red spot was the same as before, but the initial brightness of this round was far greater than the first, and they could even hear a high-pitched resonance before it had even launched the projectile.
“…How many heat elements…?” Fanatio murmured.
“A thousand,” Kirito said hoarsely.
“A…a thousand?!” shrieked Eydis. He turned and nodded to her.
“Yeah. That dragoncraft has around six thousand heat elements stored inside it, but it doesn’t use them to fly. A thousand of them are being pressurized in steps. We’ve probably got five minutes until they’re fired.”
“Five minutes…,” Alice repeated quietly. She lifted her head to stare at the Principia again.
The light of heat elements leaking through the cannon illuminated the underside of the craft. In the center of the long wedge shape, there seemed to be two massive symbols arranged vertically. The upper symbol looked like a shield and a dragon—the onetime sigil of Wesdarath, the western empire. And the lower symbol was an octagram with eight sharp spindles. She had never seen that before, neither then nor two centuries before.
The light was clearly growing in strength. It was already bright enough that it made the back of her eyes hurt. What would it be like in three minutes?
With this much time, they could take Selka and Airy and evacuate the cathedral. No doubt the idea had occurred to Fanatio, Eydis, and perhaps even Kirito. But no one suggested fleeing. They were in unanimous agreement that they would never run away and leave the frozen knights behind.
Selka and Airy were busy thawing out the Integrity Knights on the ninety-ninth floor, but two or three were the best they could hope for in such a short period of time. Without a means of attacking the Principia two kilors up, all they could do was defend. In other words, their only options were to rebuff or deflect a massive fireball made of a thousand compressed heat elements…but Alice had no idea how to do that.
In principle, they could create a shield of a thousand frost elements to neutralize the fireball, but all the sacred power around Central Cathedral was spent, so without replenishing that power somehow, they couldn’t even make ten elements, much less a thousand. It was another situation that required the use of Incarnation, but they were all nearing their limit—even Kirito.
“…Hey, Fanatio,” said Eydis, who was clutching Kirito’s arm and glancing over her shoulder at the rounded enclosure. “If Administrator still isn’t waking up through all this…does that mean she’s no longer…?”
“……”
Fanatio looked down, not answering. Then she straightened her backbone with resolve. But just before the vice commander could speak, a pair of hurried footsteps approached from behind.
“Sister!!” cried a nervous voice.
Alice wanted to turn around, but as she was supporting Kirito’s arm, she could only manage ninety degrees. Kirito considerately said he was fine, so she took her hand off him and turned to look behind her.
Two people leaped from the tower entrance. The rooftop was dark due to the blackout, but it was obvious at a glance that they were Selka without her long robe and Airy, who was holding Natsu. Near the opening stood Tiese and Ronie, who had presumably teleported with Kirito from the base.
The moment she saw her beloved sister flying toward her, the thought crossed Alice’s mind that this might be the last chance she ever had to feel her touch again. If Alice died then, it wouldn’t affect her lightcube, because it was stored in the machine body in the Roppongi office, but it would probably destroy her unit ID and leave her unable to ever dive into the Underworld again.
It would be beyond tragic for something like that to happen, but she would be able to bear the pain—as long as it was the price she paid to save Selka and the others.
All she wanted to do was hold out her arms and hug her sister with all her being. But Alice had to be strong. She controlled herself, took a deep breath, and said, “Listen closely, Selka. There will be a fireball with the power of a thousand heat elements bearing down on us in just moments. You and Airy should take the flying platform and escape.”
“I’m not going to leave you behind!” Selka cried immediately, spurning her older sister’s request. “Now you listen to me. That dragoncraft collision earlier unlocked the cathedral’s highest commands.”
“Highest…commands?”
“Airy can give you the details!” Selka said, pushing Airy forward. The girl stumbled a little. Natsu the long-eared wetrat was curled up in her arms, still sleeping peacefully despite the chaos around them.
Airy gave them a salute. Slightly faster than usual, she said, “We have no time, so I’ll be brief. Earlier, the continual loss of life for Central Cathedral reached a certain threshold that unlocked the highest level of system commands.”
“And is that different from the Emergency Mode you activated?” Alice interjected.
“Yes,” Airy replied. “Emergency Mode enables a defensive wall and strengthens the regeneration function, but with the highest-level commands, we can make use of attack and evacuation systems.”
“Attack system…? Can we take down that mega-sized dragoncraft with it?”
“Most likely. But we cannot fine-tune its power, so if it is downed, I anticipate massive damage to Centoria.”
“……”
She glanced at the others, who all shook their heads. They had been so careful not to let the Avus-class craft crash; they certainly couldn’t let the massive Principia, nearly ten times the size, smash into the city.
“We can’t attack them. When you say evacuation system, will that evacuate everyone inside the cathedral? Including any frozen knights and dragons?”
“Yes, that is possible.”
“……”
Once again, Alice was speechless. It was probably a function to create teleport gates within the tower, but how would they pass the petrified dragons through it, as big as they were?
But this wasn’t the time to be getting into the finer details. Airy had been protecting Central Cathedral for ages and ages; they would just have to take her word for it.
Fanatio was on the same page and said, “Activate the evacuation function at once, Airy. We only have about three minutes until that fireball is hurled at us.”
“Understood.”
Airy handed Natsu over to Selka, then spread her arms and stretched them forward a bit. She sucked in a deep breath, then said loudly, “System Call! Activate Supreme System Supervisor Order!”
There was a low hum, and a massive window, glowing lavender-blue, appeared in the air. This one looked different from every other window Alice had seen in the Underworld. There were no letters or numbers, only glyphs: two swords arranged vertically, then roses and osmanthus flowers arranged on their four sides…the insignia of the Star King.
Below the diamond-shaped symbol were three rectangular frames with nothing inside them. Airy fixed the window in place and took two steps backward.
“The Supreme System Supervisor orders, known as Triple-S orders, will only be unlocked when Kirito, Asuna, and one of the knights are identified. Please place your palms inside the boxes here. It doesn’t matter where.”
“…But Asuna’s not here,” Alice started to say, causing Airy to go wide-eyed. She stared at Eydis Synthesis Ten, who was standing a short distance away. Her brow furrowed with suspicion—and then her eyes bolted wide.
“L…Lady Eydis?!” Airy gasped.
“That’s right,” Eydis said. “You’re the levitating operator. I remember you.”
“It…it has been quite a long time. But…how…?”
Airy was completely stunned by this development. Alice considered a few possibilities.
Because of the darkness, Airy had probably confused Eydis for Asuna. Which meant it wasn’t Selka and Airy who woke Eydis up. It wasn’t possible for a frozen knight to rouse herself on her own, so who could have done it, and how…?
But that wasn’t important now.
“Airy, can it still work with just Kirito and two knights?!” Alice wanted to ask, except Fanatio did it first. Airy just shook her head, however.
“Both Lord Kirito and Lady Asuna’s presence is required.”
“……”
Alice bit her lip and looked up again.
The Principia’s heat-element cannon was glowing like molten magma. In less than two minutes, a blaze like a thousand heat elements compressed into one would descend upon them.
Kirito had already passed on the request for help to Asuna, but in the real world, her family home was over seven kilors away—that is, miles—from Rath’s Roppongi office. It would take her twenty minutes just to travel there, and probably twice as long when you factored in all the preparations that needed to be done.
On that topic, then, it didn’t make sense that Kirito could dive faster than Asuna, given that he was thirty kilors away, but Alice could find out the reasoning later. It was frustrating that they had a supreme-level command and couldn’t make use of it. They would just have to come up with an alternative.
Maybe she could hop onto the abandoned flying platform and rush the Principia on her own, giving up her life to destroy the heat-element cannon, at least…
Kirito had been maintaining his silence, but without warning, he bolted for the stairs down into the tower at near-teleportation speed. He wasn’t fleeing, of course; he stopped just short of the opening, then reached his hand out and activated Incarnate Arms.
“Aaaaah!” someone screamed, and then a figure literally flew onto the rooftop: a girl with chestnut-brown hair, wearing the same pilot uniform as Alice.
“…Asuna!” Alice cried, but Kirito was already catching her sideways as she fell. Asuna promptly stopped screaming to stare at him.
“What…?! K-Kirito?! Why are you here?!” she shrieked.
“I’ll explain later!”
He sprinted back to the window with her and stood her up next to it.
“Put your hand on one of those squares in the window, Asuna! Whichever one!”
Asuna had no idea what the situation was, but she immediately intuited its seriousness from his expression and reached out her hand. When she pressed her palm against the rightmost square, the window buzzed briefly, and the square glowed a faint purple.
Next, Kirito pressed the left square and quickly backed away. Alice slid in to take his place and slapped her hand on the center square. All the spots flashed together, then went out.
In the center of the logo, between the two swords, a trio of large S letters appeared in succession: bam! bam! bam!
“One minute to go!” Fanatio shouted.
Alice quickly stepped back, which gave Airy room to leap in. The symbol on the window disappeared, and a number of sub-windows popped into being. She quickly ran her fingers over them and cried, “Petras, are you ready?!”
…Who?
But no sooner did the question occur to her than a deep, muffled voice emerged from one of the smaller windows.
“All engines and resource tanks are checked. Ready when you are.”
“Good. Begin countdown!”
Airy smacked another sub-window, and the main screen displayed the number 20, which quickly turned to 19.
“W-wait…engines? Where…?” Kirito asked.
But Airy cut him off. “Lord Kirito, use your Incarnation to fix everyone here to the floor!”
“F-fix?!” he yelped, but held out his arms. Instantly, Alice felt an invisible cushion envelop everything below her waist.
As the number on the window counted down, a rumbling from much farther below traveled up through the tower, rattling the marble floor beneath their feet.
The fireball was going to launch in thirty seconds. The countdown was down to five.
It was at that point at last that Alice understood what was happening. The evacuation function Airy mentioned was not some teleportation gate. It was referring to Central Cathedral itself…
“Emergency escape sequence, initiating stage one!! Three, two, one…liftoff!!” Airy shouted, just as the countdown hit zero.
The rumbling grew much louder, and red light filled the spacious grounds of the cathedral. The entire tower was rumbling, and everything suddenly felt much heavier.
In the real world, they called this “g-force.”
Central Cathedral was lifting off the ground and accelerating upward like a rocket. As they looked over the low parapets at Centoria, the further parts of the city outside the power outage zone, still lit up at night, were getting noticeably smaller.
“Wait…are we f-flying?!” Asuna shrieked.
Even Airy couldn’t hide the agitation in her usually calm voice. “Yes! There are thirty-six large heat-element engines stored in the tenth basement level that will lift the cathedral to an altitude of thirty thousand mels!”
“Thirty thousand?!” screamed Eydis. She came from an era before dragoncraft, so that was a height beyond her imagination. But Alice had never experienced that altitude, either, save for the time Stica’s dragoncraft took her back to the surface from space. And they were standing out in the open on a terrace with no roof or walls. If they tumbled off, there would be no saving them.
It also meant that if they were rising, they would be getting closer to the Principia, which was hovering at two thousand mels.
Bracing herself against the tremendous acceleration and ear-splitting roar, Alice saw Fanatio, Kirito, Tiese, and Ronie were all staring intently upward. She looked up, too, and found the shadowy wedge shape waiting in the sky.
The tip of the shadow, which was twice as big as before, featured the aperture of the heat-element cannon, which burned like the fires of Hell just before it released its shot. At this point, she could easily make out the shape of the cannon itself. It wasn’t just a hole in the hull, but a thick, squat barrel sticking out of a semispherical turret. The barrel could swivel, and it was keeping its aim directly trained on the rising cathedral.
“A-are we going to hit it?!” Selka yelped.
“We’ll be fine,” Airy said calmly. “We should pass twenty mels to the enemy’s starboard.”
“Twenty mels?!” wailed Eydis this time. It was understandable—the Principia was four hundred mels in length, and Central Cathedral was five hundred mels tall. To two objects that large, a gap of twenty mels was almost nothing.
But the thirty-six engines powering the tower continued to roar without end, pushing the white monument up into the void. The shadow of the Principia blotted out the sky, and the dazzling flame shooting from its cannon’s mouth burned their eyes.
It seemed unavoidable to Alice that the tip of the cathedral—the domed roof of the circular enclosure—was going to ram into the underside of the Principia. But at that very moment, the cannon that had been tracking their ascent clunked as it reached the limit of its angle range.
With a deafening shudder, the bladelike edge of the Principia’s wing passed just to the right of the tower.
As Airy had anticipated, the two mammoth structures passed just twenty mels apart. In two or three seconds, the bottom of the cathedral would pass out of the firing range of the heat-element cannon. If the cannon fired on it during that time, it would either split the tower in two in midair or simply eradicate the entire structure.
“It’s gonna fire!!” Kirito warned. Alice could feel the cushion of invisible Incarnation around her getting firmer.
Crimson light filled the twenty-mel gap. A tremendous bwow! sound erupted, like an infinite supply of metal strings all breaking at once.
A thrill of horror colder than any frost element shot through the pit of Alice’s stomach—and after a second that felt like an eternity, someone, probably Tiese, shouted:
“It missed!!”
She craned her neck to the left to see. An enormous ball of scarlet fire was shooting across the sky. It was already over a kilor away from them on the roof of the cathedral, but she could still feel its heat faintly on her exposed skin.
After five seconds of flight, leaving a vermilion trail behind it, the fireball was no longer able to maintain its shape, and a thousand heat elements’ worth of energy erupted in empty space.
As a single explosion, it was far beyond the scale of anything Alice had witnessed before in the Underworld. It was a burgeoning ball of flame, like its own small Solus, brightly illuminating the surface from a height of two thousand mels, followed by an overwhelming roar and a shock wave that rattled the entire cathedral. On the surface, it probably only kicked up a big gust of wind, but it might have been enough to cause damage to a fruit garden.
When the rumbling subsided, Alice breathed as much cold air into her lungs as she could and took her time letting it trickle out. Eydis was enjoying a similarly deep breath.
“…If that had actually hit the cathedral, I bet the explosion would have blown up that Prin-thingy, too…”
“No…the Principia’s armor completely blocked out my Incarnation. It’s not just thick; I think it’s protected by something similar to Incarnate weaponry,” Kirito replied. It almost sounded like he was reproaching himself; it made her give him a searching look. She wanted to ask him what had happened at the base, but Airy was already speaking.
“We have reached an altitude of five thousand mels. In one minute, we will escape the atmosphere. I hate to ask, Lord Kirito, but if you could engage a light-element barrier…”
“No, we’ll do that,” interrupted Ronie. She and Tiese silently generated ten light elements each, then transformed them into a half sphere that surrounded everyone on the roof.
The temperature, which had been rapidly dropping, steadily recovered. In the Underworld, outer space had breathable air, but was tremendously cold. You would freeze solid if you didn’t have any kind of protection. Naturally, the temperature inside the tower would drop, too, which wasn’t a problem for the Integrity Knights and their dragons that were already petrified, but anyone alive and well would freeze to death before long.
Belatedly, Alice began to worry, and asked Airy, “Are there any people on the lower floors? Like Unification Council staffers or security guards…”
“No. All employees at the cathedral are instructed to leave work by six o’clock in the evening. Even Chairman Herlentz is no exception.”
“Oh. I see…”
What would Dr. Koujiro and Takeru Higa say? They were often working well past midnight… The thought put an idea in Alice’s head, so she added, “But who was the person you were talking to a minute ago? Umm…”
“Petras isn’t a member of the Unification Council. He was once a guard of the cathedral’s underground cells.”
“What?!” Kirito exclaimed.
Alice was just as shocked. She remembered that Central Cathedral had an underground prison, and that there was a very large man who stood watch all the time, but she had no idea he was still around two centuries later. Apparently, he had changed positions from jailer to engine maintainer, but was still living underground.
After committing an assault at North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy, Kirito and Eugeo were taken to the cathedral and handed over to the underground cells. It felt like ancient history, and it felt like it happened yesterday. If not for that incident, they would have graduated the academy as first and second seat, won the Four-Empire Unification Tournament, and passed through the cathedral’s gate as apprentice knights, not criminals.
If that had happened…would everything have taken a different path? Would Alice never have turned her back on the Axiom Church? Would Eugeo have survived it all…?
She brushed aside that brief, painful thought and asked Airy, “Is Petras going to be all right outside the atmosphere?”
“Yes. The tenth-basement engine room was outfitted in anticipation of outer-space flight. If anything, they need to vent the heat from the engines, or it gets too hot down there,” Airy replied, then turned back to the big window. “Atmosphere escape complete. All engines are shutting down and entering inertia mode.”
Her delicate fingers activated some commands on a sub-window, and the sound of the heat-element engines gradually died down.
The g-forces trapping Alice’s body against the floor vanished, and a moment later, Kirito’s Incarnation cushion disappeared, too. Her body was suddenly as light as air, and she felt her boots actually start to leave the floor. There was almost no gravity up here.
“Aah! W-what’s going on?” Eydis yelped; she must have pushed off the ground. Fanatio quickly reached out and grabbed her. Selka, Tiese, and Ronie didn’t seem flustered, as if they had prior experience with weightlessness.
Lastly, there was Asuna. Her hazel-brown eyes were locked on the sky above, or more accurately, on the void of space. Alice followed her gaze and was bowled over by the incredible canopy of countless stars around them. She barely ever saw the stars in Tokyo, so it had been a long time since she’d seen a sight like this.
The Underworld was a virtual world, so those stars might have only been a background image, but when they flew dragoncraft to visit the star they called Lunaria, it turned out to be a real planet covered in yellow grass and flowers. So maybe if they were able to actually visit the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of stars out there…
She had to rein in her thoughts before they wandered any further. Alice carefully pushed off the ground to move next to Asuna and said quietly, “Thank you for coming, Asuna. I’m sure it was difficult to get to Rath from your home at this time of day.”
Asuna tore her gaze away from the stars, held out her arms, and gave Alice a gentle hug. “It’s totally fine. I’m just glad that you’re all safe…and all I did was put my hand on that window, in the end.”
“You did more than that, Asuna. If you hadn’t been there, the cathedral and all of us would’ve been charred to bits by that cannon blast,” Alice said, hugging her back. For some reason, Asuna had the same subtly sweet smell as she did in real life. The moment she picked that up and felt the warmth of her embrace, Alice finally felt the tension in the core of her being ease up. Asuna’s ability to make people feel at ease was practically a kind of magic all of its own. She let go and exhaled softly.
She’d never expected Airy’s “emergency escape” was actually shooting Central Cathedral itself into orbit like a rocket, but at least for the moment, they’d escaped the threat of the Principia. But it was a dragoncraft capable of flying between stars. Knowing the stubborn determination of Emperor Agumar, he would not rest until he had wiped out the Integrity Knights.
Airy said she would take the cathedral to an altitude of thirty thousand mels, or thirty kilors. It was a phenomenal height, but the planets Cardina and Admina were five hundred thousand kilors apart. The Principia had presumably flown there from Admina, so thirty kilors was like a stroll down the block to it.
If the enemy chased them outside Cardina’s orbit, then they didn’t have to worry about falling on Centoria and could attack them back, but after seeing that mega-blast earlier, an all-out firefight didn’t seem like a winning proposition. Unless the Triple-S Order attack method had even greater power and range than that heat-element cannon.
Alice watched Airy work the control window, questions swirling through her mind.
Eolyne called her “Airy Trume, original yardmaster of Dragoncraft Yard One.” Once upon a time, she had been simply “Operator.” Over two centuries of serving the Star King and Star Queen, she must have learned and experienced many, many things. Things no knight or artician had ever learned…perhaps things even greater than Administrator herself could do……
“Bearing, angle, speed—all green. Emergency escape sequence, initiating stage two,” Airy said calmly, her voice filling the inside of the light-element wall. All the others silently watched her operate the window. “One minute to reverse thrusters, Petras.”
“Deployment gear and resource tank levels are all green,” said the muffled voice again. The one-time jailer had a metal helmet over his head at all times; perhaps that was one thing that hadn’t changed.
“Roger that. Begin operating reverse thruster engine,” Airy said, fingers flying. Far below, a heavy machine rumbling traveled upward. There was no way to tell what was happening at the base, but it seemed like a number of engines were deployed outward and pushing in the opposite direction to slow the building’s speed.
“Engine deployment complete. Ready to go,” Petras reported. Airy glanced around at them. Kirito promptly gave her a thumbs-up before she could say anything.
“I’ll hold us down.”
“Please do, Lord Kirito.”
Once again, an invisible cushion gripped Alice around the waist and legs. If not for this situation, being grabbed around the lower half by Incarnate Arms would not be a pleasant sensation, but now she was nothing if not grateful for it.
“Thank you once again, Kirito. I know you must be exhausted,” Alice told him. He turned and gave her another thumbs-up and a big smile. There was no hiding the exhaustion and worry on his face, however.
It occurred to her that it was unnatural that he had returned from the space force base accompanied only by Ronie and Tiese. The goal of the dragoncraft attacking the base was to capture or kill Eolyne, commander of the Integrity Pilots. It didn’t make sense that he didn’t come back with his guards, Stica and Laurannei.
She didn’t know if it was right to ask him about that now. But she lost her chance to ask when Airy turned back and shouted, “Ten seconds to reverse thrusters! Brace yourselves!”
Everyone else let their weight rest against the cushion. A number 10 appeared in the window and began to count down. When it hit zero…
A great rumbling, softer than during takeoff but still enough to rattle the tower, passed through Alice’s body and lifted her up. If the Incarnate cushion weren’t holding her to the floor, she would have jettisoned into empty space.
The reverse thrusters lasted over ten seconds, then stopped without warning.
“Thrusters complete, speed good… Initiating stage three,” Airy reported. Alice was surprised by this. If taking off and accelerating were stage one, and slowing down to stop was stage two, shouldn’t the emergency escape be complete?
But the cathedral hadn’t stopped yet. It was still ascending, albeit much slower than before the reverse thrusters had been engaged.
Airy glanced in the direction they were moving, then opened a new sub-window and said, “This is White Cosmos 01. Black Lotus 02, do you read me?”
A few moments later, a relaxed, husky female voice replied, “This is Black Lotus 02. You’re coming in loud and clear, Airy. I can’t believe this moment has actually come.”
The voice somehow sounded familiar to Alice, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it before.
Ahead and to her right, Kirito’s body tensed up slightly. It seemed he recognized the speaker, but she didn’t have time to ask before the conversation continued.
“Proceeding to docking in three minutes. Please deactivate stealth mode.”
“Roger that. Black Lotus 02, deactivating stealth.”
Asuna lifted her face again, so Alice followed her lead to look where the cathedral was going. As usual, it was just a brilliant canopy of stars…except…
A bluish light was flickering somewhere out there. A pulsing wave of light, like a beating heart, spread out and vanished. With each beat, it seemed like something…something unbelievably huge was coming into view.
“…A lotus flower…?” Asuna gasped.
It did look like that. Elliptical flower petals extended in all directions, like a lotus blooming in space. Of course, it was an artificial construction; the base was an octagon, a square that had its corners sanded down. In the center was a similarly shaped hole. Based on the mention of docking, Central Cathedral was probably meant to fit into that hole to become one with the lotus.
In other words, each side of the hole was fifty mels, just like the cathedral. Each side of the base was about five times the length of the hole, meaning it was about two hundred and fifty mels to a side. And because one petal was about twice as long as the base, that meant the entire breadth of the lotus was somewhere around twelve hundred mels.
“What…is that…?” Alice asked, astonished.
Airy turned her head to say, “It’s the Type-Two space fortress, call sign Black Lotus 02.”
“………”
No one spoke for several moments. Why was it built? How did they lift it into space? What happened to the Type-One? So many questions swirled in Alice’s mind, but she didn’t even know which to ask first.
Eventually, after losing her patience, Fanatio glared at Kirito and shouted, “Your Majesty!! When did you create such a thing?!”
“I—I don’t know! I don’t know!!” Kirito protested. His pained cries vanished into the infinite expanse of space.
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