“……… I see.”
Renri bit his lips tightly.
Even he, an Integrity Knight, had little confidence that he could survive this desperate battlefield. He couldn’t be sure that Tiese, who was not even a proper Guardian, could come out unscathed.
But just then, a new voice came.
“I shall go as well, Sir Knight.”
The tall, female Guardian leader with tea-colored hair tied behind her head walked forward from behind Tiese. She seemed to have been fighting all this time; her clothes were utterly filthy, her armor was filled with cracks, and yet her stern face was not without the will to fight.
“I have not yet fulfilled my promise to Kirito. Right now, I cannot abandon the people that child threw away his life to protect… and this world.”
“Sortiliena-senpai…”
Tiese called her name with a trembling voice. The Guardian leader smiled slightly and nodded at her.
Fighting not for honor, not for fame, but to protect something.
Renri seemed to feel the two women’s determination affecting his own heart, resonating with him.
He gently caressed the Divine Instruments on his waist with his right hand, and nodded strongly.
“… I understand. Then, I shall protect you… do not leave my side no matter what.”
“Yes, sir!”
“We’ll leave it to you, Esteemed Knight!”
Tiese and Sortiliena responded firmly, and drew their swords from the left sides of their waists.
Renri gripped his pair of Divine Instruments in his own hands, murmuring deep down in his heart.
— Eldrie-san. Sheyta-san. And Knight Commander Bercouli.
— Like all of you, I have finally found a purpose for my life.
Then, Integrity Knight Renri and the two swordswomen took off together, towards the battlefield spiraling with anguished wailing and despair.
4
Koujiro Rinko raced back to the sub control room and sat into the mesh chair previously occupied by Higa Takeru.
A few windows were open on the large monitor directly in front of her, but the first one she looked towards was a small window on the bottom. Displayed there was a three-dimensional graph representing Kirigaya Kazuto’s Fluctlight status.
In the direct center of the reflected light, gradually shifting between spectral colors, there was a patch of darkness representing a «main body defect».
Currently, Higa Takeru was controlling four STL units, preparing to mend this defect using the memories in the minds of three girls in profound relationships with Kazuto. To do that, he had snuck into the lower shaft, which was swarming with enemies, by himself — wait, there was another person.
At that moment, the attackers were currently focused on engaging «Ichiemom», who had charged in from the stairs as a decoy. But even a steel-bodied robot couldn’t withstand much of the wild spray from assault rifles. When Ichiemom was destroyed, there was no doubt the enemy would think: What on earth were the Japanese planning?
— Faster, Higa-kun!
As she spoke that inwardly, the sliding door opened with a whoosh, and a man dressed in a Hawaiian T-shirt and clogs rushed inside.
“How… How is Kirito-kun’s status?!”
“Higa-kun’s starting the operation now. Did the decoy work?”
As she answered his question with a question, Kikuoka Seijirou, his breathing ragged and shoulders quaking, pushed up his glasses, which were slipping down.
“We tossed over all of our smoke grenades from behind Ichiemom. It should buy us some more time before the smoke gets cleared from the passageway, but if we don’t seal the partition after that, it’ll be dangerous. We don’t have much time left.”
“Higa-kun said that it would take five minutes at most to show results…”
Rinko closed her mouth, looking towards the monitor again.
Kirigaya Kazuto’s Fluctlight remained unchanged. She thought of that old wives’ tale from America, “a watched pot never boils”, so she clenched her fists tightly and moved her eyes to the center of the monitor.
She saw a map resembling that of a fictionalized fantasy world — no, in a certain sense it was precisely a map of a fictionalized fantasy world, Underworld.
Compared to the full map of the Human Empire that she saw a few days ago when she had first arrived at the Ocean Turtle, this map showed a greater area. Due south of a circular mountain range surrounding the Human Empire, there was an artificial landmark that looked like it was comprised of four rectangles joined together, resembling ruins. The dot representing Yuuki Asuna’s current position, the blue pixels representing the Human Empire Army, and the white pixels representing the Japanese reinforcement players were all densely packed together at that location.
The gargantuan patch of crimson surrounding them was the American players who had dived in after being incited by the attackers — or so it should be, but their scale was simply too immense. Their number was already 20, no, 30 times that of the Japanese.
Was that really okay? Rinko searched the image for the two others apart from Yuuki Asuna, and finally discovered a water-blue dot very far south of the ruins. That should be Asada Shino.
Then where had Kirigaya Suguha gone? Rinko scoured the map, and at last located a yellow-green dot far, far north of the main battlefield. There was also a group of red enemies present there, but Higa had definitely said that both of their login points were at Yuuki Asuna’s coordinates. Rinko couldn’t help but furrow her brow, contemplating a reason why —
Just then, she seemed to notice another white dot blinking underneath Suguha’s gleaming dot, as if covered by it.
“………?”
There shouldn’t be anyone on Rath’s side diving in with an STL. What on earth was that dot, then?
She unconsciously moved her mouse, carefully lined up the cursor with the dot and clicked it once, opening new window. Rinko scrutinized the tiny English letters.
“Um… Restriction, Confrontational Index… Threshold Detection… Report? What is this?…”
Just as she was about to say, “I can’t make heads or tails of it”.
“Wha… Whaaat?!”
Kikuoka suddenly yelled loudly, cutting off his stare at the image of Kirigaya Kazuto’s Fluctlight. Rinko leapt out of her seat in shock.
“Wh-What’s wrong?
But Kikuoka didn’t immediately respond, instead snatching the mouse from Rinko and enlarging the window she had just opened. Then he brought himself right up to the monitor, muttering at an extreme pace.
“Unf… Yes, there’s no mistaking it, it’s another Fluctlight that broke its limits! But, why now?!”
Rinko’s eyes widened, and she looked up at Kikuoka, who was furiously scratching his head.
“Huh… you mean, a second «A.L.I.C.E.»?”
“Yes, exactly… Ah, no, wait… This is…”
Kikuoka rapidly scrolled through the window displaying a detailed log, and began muttering again.
“… Strictly speaking, it’s not of the same caliber as «Alice». It broke the limitations of an Artificial Fluctlight not through its logical circuitry, but its emotional circuitry… nonetheless, it’s an equally important specimen. If only it could stay there and not move… Oh, damn, it’s moving south, where the group of Americans aren’t far away!”
Rinko snatched back the mouse from a distressed Kikuoka and stared at the detailed log of the Artificial Fluctlight at the time it had broken its limits.
“Hmm… Yeah, a new node was generated by a chain reaction in its emotional zone… Huh—? Hey, Kikuoka-san?”
“Wha… What is it?”
Twisting his body and moaning in dismay, Kikuoka craned his neck towards the monitor.
“What’s this external command plugged in here? It feels really off to me… It’s much too deliberate… Almost as if it were created to impede the circuitry.”
Rinko squinted, scrutinizing the code printed in minuscule font.
&n
bsp; “Implant simulated pain… in the right visual domain? But then, even if an Artificial Fluctlight spends all that effort breaking the limits, it would be stopped by the pain created by this process. You guys even placed such a restriction onto the Underworld residents?”
“No… No, we didn’t do that. There’s no way we would, that kind of action runs counter to our goal… That’s practically blatant obstruction.”
“Hmm… Good point. Also, the programming style of this piece of code isn’t the same as Higa’s… Ah, there’s a comment at the very front… «Code 871»? What’s 871?”
“871? I’ve never heard of that number… No, wait… Wait, wait, I think… Not long ago…”
Kikuoka suddenly began to move, the clogs on his feet slapping loudly on the ground. He darted over to a nearby chair, seized a dirty white coat hanging from its backrest, spread it open with a whap, and stared at the inner collar.
“Hey, what’s wrong, what happened?”
At Rinko’s inquiry, Kikuoka, his eyes wide behind his black-frame glasses, held the white coat out to Rinko, inviting her to look at its collar tag.
There, clearly inscribed in black permanent marker, was [871].
“This white coat… belongs to that technician named Yanai who just went down with Higa…”
Muttering that, Rinko suddenly halted her speech.
Yanai. YA NA I.
“… 8 7 1?”25
Rinko and Kikuoka screamed in unison, standing up at the same time.
***
Fist Fighters’ Guild Chief Iskahn was looking at the approaching crimson legion through his murky left eye.
After shrinking their surrounding circle to twenty mel, those soldiers speaking a strange tongue had seemingly confirmed that the Fist Fighters were depleted of their morale, and nodded at each other.
Then they emitted deafening, completely incomprehensible roars, and leapt from the ground all at once.
With his shattered left hand, Iskahn tightly gripped the hand of the female knight sitting beside him. She returned his grip very quickly, causing him a reassuring pain, momentarily restoring feeling to his numb left hand.
He lowered his head, and as he was about to shut his eyes and accept the end, just then —
“……… What is…?”
Sheyta’s voice made him raise his head again.
He saw a vast group of troops storming in their direction from the other side of the valley, north of the battlefield, kicking up a sky full of dust.
They possessed great, rotund physiques, long, flat snouts that curved upwards, and drooping ears.
Orcs.
“… Why?”
Iskahn murmured blankly. Having been ordered by Emperor Vector, the Orc army should still be awaiting orders at the «Great Eastern Gate» in the north. Since the Emperor had vanished, that order should now be unshakable. In fact, the remaining Dark Knights were also dully awaiting orders to no end on the other side of the valley, not far away.
Confounded, Iskahn perused the battalion of Orcs and spotted a tiny, tiny human silhouette running at their very front.
It wasn’t an Orc. Its yellow hair, with a tinge of green, was billowing in the wind, and the limbs extending from its tender green attire were so white that they were shining. Undoubtedly a human, and a young female from the Human Empire at that.
But was this person, who looked like a tiny, tiny swordswoman, heading the entire Orcish army?
Seemingly detecting the troops charging in this direction, the red soldiers surrounding the Fist Fighters stopped moving.
A blinding light exploded into being. The girl drew a silver katana from her back.
In that instant, Sheyta’s right hand, which was gripping Iskahn’s left, violently shook once, appearing to feel something.
When the human girl charged to the center of the bridge, she raised her katana high into the air. At that moment she was still more than two hundred mel away from the red soldiers.
But —
The girl’s sword and hands became blurred like smoke. Even Iskahn’s eyesight was unable to capture that slash. A flash of silver light was over in the blink of an eye, and then there was a terrifying sight.
A dazzling ray of light sped along the dark ground — but not only that; the tens of red soldiers standing atop that extending ray were silently sliced apart, collapsing to the ground before they could even scream in anguish.
The katana that had slashed downwards changed direction in the girl’s hands, and sliced upwards with chilling speed. A second ray of light penetrated the red legion, and the soldiers clad in heavy armor were cleaved in half, carapace and all.
“…… So strong.”
Sheyta murmured in a barely audible voice.
***
Without a moment’s hesitation, Sinon raised her beloved gun, Hecate II, which had transformed from the Bow of Solus.
She was currently less than 20 meters from Subtilizer. Much too close for an anti-material sniper rifle. Even the act of locking onto the enemy’s movements with her high-magnification scope was very difficult.
As such, Sinon decided to determine the outcome of the battle before Subtilizer made his move; she pulled the trigger the instant she spotted a black shadow through the lens of her scope.
A flash of light. An explosive roar.
Intense recoil acted on Sinon’s hovering body, and she urgently tried to control herself as she began to tilt and spin. Every round would cause her body to move, so it was completely impossible to shoot repeatedly, but as long as that shot just now had hit its target, everything would be over.
With difficulty, Sinon stabilized her body, and looked towards Subtilizer.
Then her eyes opened wide with shock.
The man standing on the back of the winged creature had raised his hand, and his five fingers were curled into a claw shape.
In his palm was a vortex of darkness and light, spinning violently, and in its center was a brightly shining particle; it was unmistakably the bullet that Sinon had fired.
In other words, he could absorb that bullet as he had absorbed Sinon’s consciousness?
A bullet capable of piercing a two-centimeter steel plate, fired from a .50 caliber anti-material sniper rifle…
Slight fear emerged within Sinon’s heart. Along with it, the darkness in Subtilizer’s left hand seemed to become fiercer.
“Don’t lose…”
Sinon breathed unconsciously, then yelled vehemently:
“Don’t lose, Hecate!!”
Bang.
With this sound, light penetrated darkness.
A great hole was blown through Subtilizer’s left hand; flesh and blood spun through the air.
— I can do this!!
Sinon sucked in a deep breath and pulled back Hecate II’s bolt. The ejected bullet casing glinted in the air and fell towards the ground.
Subtilizer looked down at his wounded left hand in silence. Although a pitch-black, viscous liquid was currently patching up the huge hole in his palm, a wound that severe did not seem easy to heal.
He lifted his face, which was now devoid of laughter, and stared at Sinon.
His right hand moved and retrieved the crossbow from his waist.
“…Hmph.”
Sinon expelled a bit of air from her nose. How could something like that compete with an anti-material sniper rifle…
Flex.
The crossbow suddenly contorted.
The left and right limbs of the bow began to fold, and it elongated to at least twice its length. The once-wooden structure began to take on a black metallic gleam.
After one short second, Subtilizer’s right hand was gripping a sniper rifle just as big as the Hecate. Sinon immediately recognized this gun.
The Barrett XM500.
Like the Hecate II, it shot .50 caliber rounds, but it was an even more advanced anti-material sniper rifle.
A warped smile appeared once more at the corners of Subtilizer’s mouth.
&n
bsp; “… Bring it on.”
Sinon muttered, and forcefully pressed the Hecate II’s stock to her right shoulder.
***
“Oh god… A-Are you okay?”
Yanai’s seemingly concerned words caused Higa to momentarily forget his pain and shout:
“He… Hey, you were the one who shot me, and you’re spouting stuff like that…?!”
“No, no, I actually didn’t mean to hit you, honest. I’ve no intention of committing murder; it took a lot of effort for me to buy that handsome condo on the west coast, but if I have to live my days in fear, what’s the use in that?”
Once Higa understood that Yanai appeared to be truly serious, a wave of weakness welled up within him and he lost feeling in both hands. He knew that he was in trouble; he frantically pulled himself together and examined the wound on his shoulder somewhat timidly.
It seemed that the bullet had hit the cable duct, ricocheted, and struck him somewhere underneath his collarbone. Higa didn’t feel much pain; rather, an icy numbness began spreading throughout his entire body from his right shoulder. The side abdomen of his shirt had already been dyed dark red. This didn’t look like a mere scratch.
Fear of the current situation, and of its future development, began slowly climbing upwards from Higa’s stomach, causing him to involuntarily begin to breath in gasps. A few meters above his head, Yanai was still chattering away with a complacent look on his face.
“To be honest, I only wanted to slightly hinder your work, Higa-san. After I destroyed the maintenance connector I would escape to the main control room below. That way I would be able to get away on the submarine. No one from Rath has died anyway, so if my side can successfully retrieve Alice, then everyone will be happy.”
“No one… died…?”
Higa demanded of Yanai, forgetting his pain once more.
“… If I don’t seize this opportunity to heal Kirigaya-kun, his consciousness will be gone forever! The one who killed his soul was you, Yanai-san! And you said that you aren’t ready to murder anyone!”
“Ahh. Ahh… Riiight…”
Yanai’s face suddenly went blank. Under the illumination of the orange emergency lights, his stubbled cheek twitched a few times.
“Hmm… Who cares if that brat dies.”