Part 6
Eugeo stood in a dark corridor unknown to him.
However, he was not alone.
Gripping firmly onto his left hand was Alice, smiling, in a blue dress.
With just a little strength in his grip, Eugeo talked to his female childhood friend.
“This is… all for the best, isn’t it?”
The large ribbon binding Alice’s blonde hair shook and she gave a resolute nod.
“Yes. Let’s leave the rest to those two. I’m sure they will lead this world to how it should be.”
“I guess you’re right. Well… shall we go?”
“Let’s.”
Though he didn’t know when it happened, Eugeo had turned young as well. With his hand strongly holding and held by that of a girl at the same age and height, Eugeo began walking towards a white light visible on the far end of the corridor.
In that moment—
The durability of the human unit assigned the ID, NND7-6361, became zero.
Receiving that signal, the programs controlling the Light Cube Cluster issued a command to the light cube storing the corresponding fluct light.
Accepting the command, the interface diligently reset the linked praseodymium crystal structure.
The hundred and tens of millions of photon qubits stored within left behind one final sparkle and diffused—
The soul named Eugeo that had not even lived a subjective twenty years was eternally deallocated from the small cube.
At nearly the same time.
Another cube, stored quite a distance away from Eugeo’s light cube, performed the same operation.
The fluct light, in possesssion of the memories separated from a soul named Alice Schuberg, produced through irregular methods was also deallocated from its crystal cage.
No one yet knew where the collection of photons that formed the two souls would go.
Part 7
I stayed there, on my knees, until Eugeo’s body and Alice’s memory fragment resting on his chest turned into grains of lead and vanished like Cardinal’s corpse.
How long had it been?
The isolated space undulating beyond the glass windows was gone by the time I noticed and the sky filled with stars had returned. A faint violet dawn approached from the far-away mountain range at the edge stretching across the eastern horizon.
Deprived of nearly all ability to think, I unsteadily picked myself up and draw closer to Knight Alice who lay down a distance away.
Alice’s injuries were terrible too. But luckily, most of the damage was burns with barely any bleeding, so any continuous drop in Life should have ceased. I lifted her up with my left hand and she did not regain her consciousness, but her eyebrows moved slightly while a thin breath left her lips.
Carrying Alice, I slowly, slowly walked towards the north end of the hall.
The crystal system terminal was all that remained undamaged now and it let out a mechanical flicker as it greeted me.
Gently laying Alice onto the floor, I tapped a single translucent key with a finger on my left hand. The monitor lit up, displaying a complex administration screen.
The user interface was mainly in the Sacred Tongue, no, English, but I eventually found what I sought after touching the screen several times.
External observer call.
I stared at the tab given that name for a while.
Observer. Those who made this world, set it into motion, and watched over it.
They, the staff members of the venture company, Rath, in other words, had told me only a single lie—but it was one that was far too heavy.
June, 2026, in the real world felt so long ago. Then, I had participated as a tester for an extended continuous operation experiment for the next-generation full-dive machine, the «Soul TransLator», developed by Rath.
The test took place over three consecutive days. Through the STL’s Fluct Light Acceleration functionality, I had spent ten days, roughly 3.3 times what had passed in the real world, in a VR world for that test and had my memories blocked to ensure confidentiality. That was how those from Rath had explained it to me.
But that was a lie. Where I had dived into during that test was not exclusively for that test, but this Underworld where I was in right now. And ten days hardly matched up to how long I had spent in there. It was probably over three hundred times… likely over ten years’ worth of time.
Yes. In those three days of the test, I had experienced childhood for the second time until eleven years old in a small village at the northern edge of the Human World. Playing until my childhood friends, that flaxen-haired boy and that blonde-haired girl, and I were covered in mud and returning to the village through the riverside path when it became evening, walking side-by-side, every single day.
That evening scene I saw at the river in the forest right after waking up in this world two years ago. The sense that Eugeo and I had messed around with swords as fellow children when I fought Eugeo. And the one act involving the platinum oak sword that came to me just a moment ago when Eugeo was on the verge of losing his life; that was no hallucination.
A fragment of memory I had surely experienced, erased. I had grown up in Rulid Village with Eugeo, and Alice as well, and I had forgotten about that until today.
Likewise, Eugeo and Alice lived on with the memories of us growing up erased. That might have been the reason why the pair did not completely lose their sense of self like the other integrity knights when synthesized.
I did not care why did Rath mix me, an outsider, into this civilization simulation now that it was all in the past. But there was something I couldn’t possibly overlook.
There, when the young Alice was being taken away by Integrity Knight Deusolbert.
Eugeo had continued blaming himself for that long period of time. He continued lamenting how he could not save Alice. Originally, I should have borne half of that regret. But I had to go and forget about the past… not noticing the depth of Eugeo’s suffering until the moment he sacrificed his own life……
“U… ug… gh…!”
A queer noise leaked out from my throat. My back molars violently grinded against each other with as much strength as I could muster.
Lifting my stiff left hand, I touched the button to call the observer with a trembling finger.
A dialog in Japanese was displayed with a warning tone when I did.
[When this operation is executed, the Fluct Light Acceleration rate will be fixed at 1.0. Are you sure?]
I pressed the OK button without any hesitation.
It felt like the air turned more viscous all of a sudden.
Sound, light, and everything else stretched out into the distance before giving chase and returning. A strange sensation assailed me for an instant, like my own movement and even thoughts were in extreme slow motion, and faded before I could react.
A single black window opened up in the middle of the screen. A sound level meter was displayed in the middle with the words, “SOUND ONLY”, blinking above it.
The rainbow-colored meter jolted up.
Followed by a steep increase. Mechanical noise reached my ears at that same time.
A sound from the real world, I thought.
The world of «the other side» with its repeating peaceful days with absolutely no relation to the state of the Underworld. The real world with blood, pain, and death being nothing more than a rare occurrence.
With the tempest of intense emotions deep in myself that I had somehow kept in check welling up, I trembled.
Drawing my face closer to the terminal, I shouted out the name of the man who had brought me to the Underworld as loud as I could.
“Kikuoka… can you hear me, Kikuoka?!!”
If this hand of mine could reach Kikuoka Seijirou or any of the other administrators right now, I might actually strangle that person to death.
Slamming my left fist trembling with no target for my rage into the marble table, I shouted once again.
“Kikuokaaaa!!!”
Immediately—some sort of sound streamed out from the screen.
It wasn’t one from a human. Katatata, katatatata; crisp plosive sounds.
What came to mind straight away was the sound of a submachine gun on rapid-fire I heard in a VRMMO game called Gun Gale Online, something from years ago. But on the other side of this screen should have been a research facility of a small venture company. Why would there be such a sound?
I stood still and my ears caught human’s voices this time… a tense exchange of yells.
[—gative, the intruders occupied path A6! We're retreating!!]
[A7, return fire somehow! Stall them until we lock down the system!!]
Once again, the sound of gunfire. Along with sporadic explosions mixed in.
What—is this?
A movie…? Did it pick up the audio from some streamed movie the staff members were watching in the research room?
But then, the unfamiliar voice called out a name I knew.
[Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka, we're at our limit! We have to abandon the main-con and shut the pressure-resistant barrier!!"
A pointed, rusty voice answered.
[Sorry, hold on for another two minutes! We can't let them take this place now!!]
Kikuoka—Seijirou, The man who brought me into this world.
I had never heard his voice this strained. What exactly was happening beyond the screen?
—Could they be under attack? Rath? But why…?
And once again, Kikuoka’s voice came.
[Higa-kun, isn't it locked down yet!?]
I recalled the voice replying too. Higa Takeru, a researcher in Rath who was present at my test dive.
['nother eight... no, seven secs... —Aa...... aaaahh!?"
Higa's voice screeched as though shocked at something.
[Kiku-sann!! Someone's calling from inside! No, from inside Underworld!! This... aaahh, it's him, it's Kirigaya-kunn!!]
[Wha... whaat!?]
Footsteps running in. The mic jerked as someone grabbed it.
[Kirito-kun, you there!? Are you there!?]
This was definitely Kikuoka Seijirou. Pushing aside my hesitation, I shouted.
“That’s right! Listen here, Kikuoka… you… you damned…!”
[I'll take on all the criticism you got later! Listen to me now!!]
I couldn’t help but to shut my mouth at this desperation that didn’t suit him at all.
[Listen... Kirito-kun, search for a girl called Alice! And then...]
“Search for… she’s right here!”
I shouted back and Kikuoka instantly turned silent this time round. Following, he sounded agitated as—
[I-I can't believe it... it's a miracle! Ri... right, the moment this transmission cuts off, I'll return the FLA to one thousand times, so take Alice and head for the «World End Altar»! The internal console you're using now is linked to this main console, but this place's going down!]
“Going down… wait, just what…”
[Sorry, no time to explain! Listen, the Altar is straight south after you exit the eastern large gate...]
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login