Slowly, not just Asuna, but also the Integrity Knights, and even the Dark Knights and Fist Fighters of the Dark Territory, all ceased their actions to watch this bizarre event.
The first red line that jabbed into the cracked earth became a small pile and shook —
It took only a few seconds to turn into a human form.
***
What he saw made Fist Fighter Chief Iskahn forget the rage coursing through his body, even if it was just for a split second.
— What are those?
On the other side of the great valley, the five hundred Dark Land soldiers who had successfully crossed the rope bridge were about to fearlessly engage the five Integrity Knights.
Yet their movements had suddenly stopped, and all had turned their astonished eyes outside of the battlefield.
Iskahn’s face, as though pulled along by this scene, unconsciously swiveled in the same direction. There, he saw a torrential crimson rain, falling two kilol to their east.
With a odd thundering, countless red lines tumbled from the heavens. They swelled up upon touching the ground, and rapidly molded into human shapes.
Warriors appeared before them, their bodies secured completely in crimson armor, equipped with long swords, battleaxes, and spears.
Although its color was different, the shape of their armor was very similar to that of the Dark Knight Order. At a glance, they seemed to be Emperor Vector’s divinely summoned reinforcements.
Then, Iskahn distinctly felt that something was ineffably queer.
These red infantrymen were standing without any sense of discipline or regulation. It was completely unlike the Knights trained under Dark General Shasta, who was now deceased. Some were chatting casually with swagger, some sat on the ground, and some even drew their weapons and waved them around without waiting for orders.
The most striking thing was — their number.
After the peculiar rain stopped, the legion appearing on the ground had swelled to an unbelievable size.
He estimated that they numbered far beyond ten thousand, twenty thousand… It looked like thirty thousand people. If the Dark Knight Order had such a powerful backup team, they would have abandoned the Ten Lords’ combined regime long ago and brought the entire Dark Territory under Shasta’s rule.
What was more, shocked and disturbed murmurs were breaking out even among the Dark Knights in the troops on this side of the valley. Even they are clueless. What the heck is that?
In this case, these red soldiers were the true “Dark Legion”, which their Emperor, Dark God Vector, had summoned with secret arts from the depths below.
As he realized this, Iskahn’s shock changed to fury.
If he could summon an army as large as that —
Why didn’t he do it earlier?! Weren’t the Fist Fighters and Dark Knights who had perished in this pointless valley-crossing operation just lures that served only to attract the enemy now?!
Wait — what if that’s really the case??
Had the Emperor only given the order to forcibly begin that unprecedented, suicidal operation in order to buy time to summon his own subordinates?
…… No.
Not just this operation. During the entire battle at the Great Eastern Gate, the loss of the Dark Land army’s strength was beyond abnormal. Whether it was the Goblins, the Giants, the Ogres, or even the Dark Sorceress’ Guild, they were all annihilated. Yet the Emperor didn’t even bat an eye, let alone mourn their deaths.
In other words, to Emperor Vector, the fifty thousand people of the Dark Land army had been expendable pawns from the very beginning!
Before that moment, Iskahn, the young chief of the Fist Fighters’ Guild, had merely been a young man uninterested in anything other than training his own skills, and the rise of his tribe.
But in this very second, his thought process had, for the first time, risen to a point from which he was able to view the entire Dark Territory, the Human Empire, and the entire Underworld. This perspective created an unsolvable conflict in his mind.
The Emperor was the strongest one. He must obey the strongest one, unquestioningly.
But.
But —
“Gurgh…!”
Excruciating pain, like nothing he had ever felt before, pierced his right eye. Iskahn groaned as he covered the right side of his face. The Fist Fighter Chief stumbled, and dropped to his knees.
With difficulty, he could make out over thirty thousand crimson soldiers beginning to run, speaking an unintelligible language.
At the location they were running to, nearly one thousand Human Empire soldiers quickly combined with the Integrity Knights and arranged themselves into a counterattack formation.
Between the two sides, five hundred Fist Fighters and Dark Knights stood still, utterly lost.
It seemed that, despite the mercilessness of the Emperor’s strategy, he had at least saved the lives of these five hundred warriors.
Iskahn consoled himself as he massaged the intense pain in his right eye.
— Even after all of their suffering, he had still underestimated just how cruel Vector really was.
The instant that the five hundred Dark Territory soldiers, the Human Empire soldiers, and the summoned Dark Legion met —
Countless swords, countless battleaxes, and countless spears reflected the sunlight —
Then, with bloodthirsty howls, they were swung at the Fist Fighters, who were supposed to be their comrades.
***
“Those guys… Why?!”
It was Asuna’s first time hearing such a shocked yell from Knight Commander Bercouli, but words failed her.
The 30,000 soldiers who suddenly descended… no, dived to the east of the battlefield, had undoubtedly been summoned by Emperor Vector.
But where on earth did he get so many people?
Did he directly create system-controlled monster-type characters? But the central console was already locked, and this type of administrator-privileged operation was impossible; the only way to introduce new fighters was to create a character in the real world, then dive in like Asuna had, but the attackers only had two STLs.
Asuna sank into the chaos of the moment —
Her bewilderment was shattered by the roars of the red troops that had already approached within a few hundred meters.
“Charge ahead!!”
“Give ‘em hell!!”
— English!
Those people are all humans from the real world — judging by their accent, they’re Americans!
But, why would they be here… This is a genuinely different world, completely cut off from the real world…
No.
No —
Maybe, to the people diving in with STLs, Underworld was actually a different world created through the “Mnemonic Visual” with realism rivaling that of the real world. However, the generic VRMMO template «The Seed» had also been used to design this world. In other words, as long as one used an AmuSphere, they could dive into this world using a low-end server based on polygonal construction — furthermore, the Ocean Turtle had a large, military-grade bandwidth satellite connection.
Then, if someone were to write a client program that included Underworld central server address and the accompanying account information, and disseminate it in the real world —
Not just several tens of thousands; summoning an army of hundreds of thousands was certainly not impossible.
But what shocked Asuna the most was how those crimson soldiers acted; they had started to directly attack their supposed allies, the Dark Land Knights and the Fist Fighter army, without any hesitation.
“Wh, what are they…?!”
“Aren’t they supposed to be our allies?!!”
The Knights screamed desperately while trying to defend against the attack, but their numbers were already far too disproportionate, and on top of that, the crimson soldiers’ weapons and armor were of much higher specs than the Dark Land army’s equipment.
One after another
the swords and shields started breaking apart, and together with the agonizing screams from the collision of both armies, innumerable spurts of blood began gushing out.
“Dude that’s awesome!!”
“Pretty gore!!”
These Americans were probably completely unaware of the true nature of this battle. They were probably under the impression that their diving in was merely taking part in an open beta test for some new VRMMO. Therefore, she could not blame them for swinging their swords and killing everyone. After all, to them, these soldiers were not conscious beings equal to humans; they were NPCs, mere trifles. Of course, not everyone was atrociously evil; in the real world, they were still VRMMO players who could be friendly and work together with other players on the same server. If there was time to inform them of the true nature behind Underworld and the Artificial Fluctlights, Asuna believed that most of them would immediately drop their weapons.
But they hadn’t such leisure right now. Even if Asuna tried to step into the battlefield and explain the situation in English, they would just think of her as an NPC speaking preset lines. If they were told “killing enemies right now will earn you points, which you can exchange for rare items after the official release”, even the Japanese players would do the exact same thing.
In short, verbally convincing them was impossible.
The people the Americans were trying to kill were not NPCs, but artificial Fluctlights carrying real souls. After finishing off the soldiers of the Dark Territory, those of the Human World would surely be next. Then, as the only one present inhabiting a transient body, she had to fight.
With that resolve, Asuna raised the rapier in her right hand and began to quickly chant a command.
“System call! Create field object!”
A polychromatic spectrum of rays gathered on her sword.
There was currently no way to create a bottomless canyon like she had last night; if she did so, she would also cut off the Human Empire Army’s path of return. Thus Asuna instead imagined a gigantic rock as sharp as a spear, and slashed her sword down.
Laa—. with a solemn sound effect, the spectrum of rays shot from her sword tip directly into the ground, slightly beyond where the American and Dark Territory armies collided.
The ground before her suddenly shook violently and a steep peak surged out of the ground, rising nearly 30 meters high at once. The tens of crimson soldiers standing atop it were all sent flying.
Four more mountains burst from the ground, shooting into the air, and the ground swayed without pause. Shouting earsplitting curses in English, several hundred crimson-armored bodies were thrown high; some were pierced by the rocks, while others landed heavily on the ground in a storm of flesh and blood.
Asuna could not summon the willpower to imagine how those people felt before dying, because a harsh, searing pain suddenly shot through her mind and caused her to collapse on the back of the horse.
Silver sparks scattered in her vision as she struggled to breathe and began to hyperventilate. The pain now was much worse than when she had created the deep canyon last night. Asuna was now personally experiencing the torment of massive amounts of geographical data coursing through her soul… The raw feeling of her Fluctlight being worn away.
— But I must not fall here.
If this was how Kirito was injured, this was how she wanted it to be. Asuna thought this as she clenched her teeth, and pulled herself up onto the saddle.
The zeal with which the American players came from the east side of the battlefield seemed less ardent than before.
But since the five rocky hills were only around 500 meters wide, the players would soon pass around them.
I must create a rock wall in the south, so that the Human Empire Army can retreat.
Asuna raised her trembling right hand, panting —
But it was seized tightly by another armored hand, which reflected the shining gleam of dawn.
“… Alice?!…” She called the golden knight’s name in a hoarse voice.
The golden knight’s beautiful white face showed steely resolve as she shook her head.
“Don’t push yourself anymore, Asuna. Leave it to us Integrity Knights now.”
“B… But, those people are enemies from the Real World… from my world…!”
“… Even so, if it’s just some tens of thousands of bloodthirsty guys waving their weapons around, it won’t be enough to scare us.”
“Yep, and that’s why it’s our time to shine.”
Bercouli added with an untroubled grin.
Although the Knights’ tones of voice eased the current situation, Asuna still detected tragic understanding in their faces, worse than before.
The crimson tsunami of enemies numbered more than 30 times that of the Human Empire Army.
This was no longer something they could face merely with courage. But the Knight Commander raised his longsword high, high in the air, and shouted an order in an extraordinarily irrepressible voice.
“Listen up! All units, assume a dense formation! Do not let the enemy breakthrough anywhere!”
***
“Oh… Ohh…”
What came from Iskahn’s mouth was no longer human language.
“Oh… OHHHHHHHHHH — !”
Blood dribbled from the fists clenched at his sides. But the young Fist Fighter roared like a wild beast, seeming not to feel pain.
Iskahn’s aide Dampe standing still by his side seemed to share Iskahn’s feelings, and was looking down, deeply… deeply.
All dead. All consumed.
His tribal warriors, in a storm of chaos, had perished, defenseless against the approaching dark cloud of swords, their souls lost in a mist of blood.
Moreover, the soldiers still crossing the valley on the five ropes were unable to stop, because the Emperor’s order of “reach the other side” still affected them. They could only obey their absolute master, precariously cross the rope bridge, then be surrounded by the crimson army and torn apart indiscriminately.
Why — Why hadn’t the Emperor given an order to stop crossing the valley, or for that army to stop attacking the friendly Dark Territory army?
Were his tribal warriors not even lures, but mere sacrifices offered to that summoned crimson legion now?
“Must… To the Emperor…”
He must report to the Emperor. He must request that he stop this operation.
Furious and desperate, Iskahn took a slow step towards the imperial throne carriage behind him. The entire right half of his vision turned deep red, and spates of excruciating pain assaulted his right eye.
Then, his aide Dampe looked at him, his now contorted face seemingly trying to say something.
Just then, a gargantuan black silhouette flew overhead.
Iskahn and Dampe instinctively looked up towards the shadow in the sky; it was a dragon.
Riding on top of the jet black armor was a figure with long, flowing golden hair dressed in a lustrous fur mantle — Emperor Vector himself.
“Ah… AH…!!”
As though he had heard Iskahn’s involuntary shout, the seated Emperor glanced quickly at the ground. No emotions could be read from his dark pupils. It was an icy glance that contained not a sliver of compassion— not even a speck of interest for his soldiers, who were dying in vain.
Then, Emperor Vector turned away from Iskahn, and directed his dragon south of the valley.
This is— the god. This is the ruler.
But, if this is the ruler, if this is the strongest being with unrivalled power—
He must take the according responsibility!!
Leading his subordinate army, ruling over his subjects, bringing the nation to prosperity; those are the duties of a ruler. Therefore, someone who sends several tens of thousands of lives to their end without even using them, without feeling anything at all — the Emperor — right eye — isn’t qualified — right eye hurts — to be a ruler…!!
“Uwo…. OH… OHHHHHHH!!”
&nb
sp; Iskahn thrust his right fist high, and curled his finger into a hook.
Without hesitation, he stabbed it into the source of blazing heat blocking his thoughts — his own right eye.
“Ch… Chief!! What are you doing?!”
The young Fist Fighter stuck out his left hand to block Dampe from approaching him, and with a bellow, ripped his right eyeball from its socket. The white sphere gave off a strange gleam from within his fist, but as it shattered, that light disappeared as well.
As of now, Iskahn had not reached the point of completing removing «Code 871» through his own willpower, like Alice and Eugeo. Therefore, he was still unable to initiate any sort of traitorous intent directly towards the Emperor, or refuse the Emperor’s two orders: “continue the valley crossing operation” and “You yourself may not cross the rope bridge”.
However, he had discovered a rather barbaric method to evade the Emperor’s orders — and this method itself was asymptotically close to betrayal.
Iskahn spun around and spoke to Dampe staring at him speechlessly.
“The Emperor hasn’t told us anything regarding those crimson soldiers, has he?”
“Ah… No, he hasn’t. But…”
“Then, if we were to kill all of them, it would have nothing to do with the Emperor.”
“… Champion…”
Iskahn gazed at the dumbstruck Dampe with his remaining eye, and ordered.
“Listen up… After crossing the bridge, all tribe members will attack that crimson army. No matter what, we must save our partners.”
“Hah…?! The ‘bridge’ you refer to, how… would…”
“You know what I’m going to do. I leave it to you, then.”
With those calm words, Iskahn turned towards the valley.
Suddenly, roaring flames enfolded his feet.
Then the king of the Fist Fighters slowly began to run towards the valley, leaving a trail of blazing footprints behind him. He ran faster and faster, finally transforming into a flash of fire.
If I can’t cross the rope bridge… then all I gotta do is fly over!
Screaming that in his chest, he flung his left foot over the roughly hundred-mel-wide gorge.
“Jumping” was a very important skill in a Fist Fighter’s training.
This training slowly progressed from being able to jump over a safe sand pit, to sharpening one’s willpower by crossing knife mountains and oil-filled vats, and served as the basis of forming one’s own firm confidence to their own jump; «incarnation», in other words.