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Sword Art Online - Volume 16 - Chapter 19.2




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Chapter 19.2
That’s right.
Just come ‘ere like that.
Vassago thought as he savored the pleasure of the ambush, like a piece of candy in his mouth.
My hiding is perfect. Though the metallic armor had some drawbacks, he was still able to melt into the shadow of the shrubbery.
The black-haired girl was cautiously surveilling her surroundings, but her eyes merely passed through the bush that Vassago was hiding behind. 7 meters left… 5 meters…
— Good. Feels really good. I’ve missed this so much.
Approaching within 3 meters, the girl suddenly turned to her right and walked towards where Vassago had concealed the bodies.
He could have waited for her to come closer, but, well, that wouldn’t change much.
Vassago slid from the darkness in dead silence and lunged at the girl from behind, thrusting forth his left hand. Muffling her mouth and slicing cleanly across her nervously taut throat with his dagger —
His anticipation was so realistic that Vassago could not immediately react to the blade flashing right before his eyes.
“… Whoa!”
As he hurriedly backed off, the tip of the blade whistled under his cheek, where his bare skin was exposed.
The girl, who had seemed not to notice him at all, suddenly unsheathed her sword from her left waist and slashed towards him without even turning around.
That was one awesome counter. Had he stepped forward just a little more, his throat would have been cleaved in two.
Spinning around, the girl held her sword properly. He could see no surprise in her sapphire eyes, though they revealed fear and hostility. Vassago couldn’t help but admit that his hiding was seen through very quickly.
Twirling the dagger in his right hand, he opened his mouth.
“ Hey, baby. ”
He suddenly remembered that English wouldn’t work, and switched to Japanese that sounded almost native.
“How’d you know, little girl?”
The girl replied coldly while gripping her sword, fully alert.
“… My senpai told me: don’t just rely on your eyes; feel with your entire body.”
“S-senpaaai…?”
As he blinked in confusion, Vassago felt the sting of some ancient memory. I must’ve heard that somewhere…
But before he could form any substantial thought, the girl took a deep breath and let out a deafening scream.
“Enemy!! There’s an enemy — !!”
He clucked his tongue, and retracted his short knife back to the right of his waist.
Well, guess that’s the end of the game.
Vassago threw up his left arm with an exaggerated motion and shouted as well.
“Guys… Get to work!!”
This time, the girl’s eyes widened in genuine shock.
From within the shrubbery tens of meters behind Vassago, there came the scuffling of rustling branches; it was created by the thirty lightly-armored scouts selected from the main Dark Knight army rising to their feet, one after another.
A second girl jumping off the wagon, along with the ten or so Guards dashing from the north in response to the girl’s warning, were equally dumbstruck.
***
“Wh… The enemy’s at the back!? And there’s about thirty people!?”
Integrity Knight Renri repeated loudly, hardly believing the distress call from the supply team.
This is bad — This is bad!
If the wagons were assaulted and the supplies were burnt or destroyed, the entire army would grind to a halt. Not only that, there were three people over there: two trainee girls who had sworn on their lives to defend it, and also a young man.
I have to send them a rescue team of a hundred, no, two hundred men. But if I split the main army even further, they might lose to the enemies approaching from the north. By then, they would immediately lose to the enemy’s overwhelming number.
Wait, maybe our ambush plan has already been exposed? If it has, then should I have the entire army retreat further south, and wait for another chance?
Unable to come up with a proper conclusion, Renri stood still. Then, a rough voice entered his ears.
“I never thought that they would’ve predicted us going south and laid an ambush here ahead of us…”
Knight Commander Bercouli and Alice had just returned from the northern hill a kilol away.
Renri viewed them both as possessing strength that towered far into the clouds above, but no longer could he detect even a sliver of calm on their faces, and especially not for Alice. She looked as though she were ready to fly for the supply team at once.
Looking to the north over Bercouli’s shoulder, behind the hilly area, Renri could almost clearly see the giant dust cloud of the approaching army.
The Knight Commander closed his eyes for a moment, then quickly revealed his bluish-gray gaze, and boomed:
“Renri, tell the main army to back off. Lil’ miss, get to the supply team right now. I’ll hold off the enemies coming from the north.”
“But, how, exactly? … There are more than five thousand soldiers, Oji-sama! And didn’t you say that swords don’t work against them…”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find a way. Just go!! Lil’ miss… no, Alice, you were the one who decided a fight to the death until our very last warrior falls!!”
Leaving those words with her, Bercouli immediately turned to the north.
His right hand, rough as the gnarled trunk of a tree, slowly drew the Time Piercing Sword from his left waist.
By the aged blade’s fading gleam, one could clearly tell that the sword only possessed a miniscule amount of Life left.
***
Sparks were thrown three times into the darkness.

The girl with tea-colored hair, who was seeing Vassago for the first time, parried all of his strikes.
Vassago had even used a combo skill. Therefore, when the sword flew from the girl’s hand on the third strike and stabbed into a nearby tree, the assassin couldn’t help but whistle appraisingly.
Even so, the dark-haired girl readied her fists, but Vassago dropped her with a sweep of his leg. Landing hard on her back, the girl let out a pained gasp.
“Ronye ——— !!”
A red-haired girl appeared from the wagon; shrieking, she rushed over.
Gripping the dagger in his right hand, Vassago pressed its tip against the throat of the girl apparently named Ronye, in order to restrain the red-haired girl. As though struck by fear, her slim legs stopped cold.
“Kek… Kekek.”
A muffled cackle slipped out from his mask.
— This is it. This is the feeling.
This is the joy of playing with someone’s life and relationships with a blade. This is why I just can’t stop player-killing.
“… I won’t kill her, as long as you stand and watch right there.”
Whispering to the red-haired girl, he crouched next to the girl called Ronye.
Behind him, about thirty bloodthirsty soldiers were inching closer, step by step.
Tears of fear and humiliation beaded within Ronye’s eyes. Her fierce determination sank into the depths of despair, and ——
………?
Suddenly, Ronye’s eyes shifted focus from Vassago’s face to the sky.
Something was reflected in her watery iris.
— Light.
Milky white, radiant particles descended, slowly, gently, softly, like snow.
As a weird shiver ran down his spine, Vassago slowly lifted his head.
The night sky was pitch black. The stars were blood red.
In such a background, there floated a small silhouette — and yet its presence was ludicrously huge.
— That’s a person. A woman.
She wore a breastplate gleaming with a shine akin to that of a pearl. Her gauntlets and boots were of the same sheen.
Her long skirt was sewed together with countless small pieces of cloth, fluttering like wings. Her hair flying in the wind was in fresh chestnut color—
“Stacia… sama.”
Ronye murmured from below.
These words did not reach Vassago’s ears. The instant he had caught a glimpse of the woman’s face descending from the sky, the assassin had leapt to his feet as though he were being yanked upwards.
Freed from Vassago’s grasp, Ronye immediately backed away to where the red-haired girl was, but he did not even bother to look.
The silhouette floating in the air stretched out her right arm.
She gently swept her delicate hand across.
Laa ———————–
Resembling a chorus of thousands of angels, an overpowering harmony shook the world.
Spectrums of polychromatic light swallowed Vassago.
The ground beneath his feet vanished.
As he fell into the infinite darkness, Vassago thrust both hands upwards, trying to grab onto the tiny silhouette.
“Fuckin’ really? … C’mon, fuckin’ really?”
A trembling voice slipped from his mouth.
That face.
That hair.
That atmosphere.
“Isn’t that… ? The Flash ? from KoB? ”
***
The Knight Commander Bercouli stood still as he raised his beloved sword.
Before him, there yawned an enormous chasm in the earth, over a hundred mel wide. He gazed far towards the horizon to his left and right, but there was no end to be seen. The depth was unpredictable; bits of rock here and there dropped into the abyss, yet no sign of impact against the bottom reached his ears.
Tens of seconds ago, this rift in the earth did not exist.
From the sky, variegated rays of color had poured down with a grandiose harmony, and as they touched the ground, it began to fracture.
There is absolutely no way to trigger such a groundbreaking change, not with one thousand Ascetics, or even ten thousand Ascetics. Perhaps not even the Highest Minister Administrator herself.
This is the power of a God, a holy act.
Following Dark God Vector, another God is descending to the mortal world.
Bercouli thought with respect and fear, but he soon dismissed that notion.
On the other side of the chasm, the five thousand Fist Fighters were standing stock-still, thunderstruck.
If a God was determined to help the Human Empire, possessing the right to freely manipulate the lives and deaths of humans, they could have split the ground directly under the Fist Fighters, mercilessly plunging them to the depths below. This crack, however, was created with a safety margin in mind, enough for all of the Fist Fighters running at full tilt to stop.
From this, the Knight Commander detected a sense of hesitation towards wiping out a multitude of lives.
In other words, this was done according to human will.



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