Sword Art Online - Volume 26 - Chapter 10

10

“Do these flowers have a name?” I asked, picking up one such plant, torn halfway down the stalk.

Lifelessly, Eolyne replied, “They might…but I do not know it.”

“Probably a flower that doesn’t exist in Cardina,” I muttered, gazing at the yellow petals. They looked as delicate as woven silk. Within moments, the flower’s life was fully expended, and it vanished from my fingers in a little puff of light.

A curtain of countless particles lifted up from the ground around my feet and melted away into the chilly night breeze. It was the life of all the flowers and bushes that the X’rphan Mk. 13’s emergency landing had crushed. The dark gash of the slide mark in the pale-yellow field was a good 150 feet long—and that was with Incarnation working to minimize the momentum. We had probably violated some kind of rule in carving it out, but surely the blame for that could be placed on whoever was firing missiles at the X’rphan.

The problem was who that was—and why we’d been attacked. But the pilot commander, who seemed like he might have an idea, was kneeling at the edge of the scar on the ground, gazing dully at the X’rphan’s body. He seemed to be devastated that he’d allowed the legendary Star King’s craft to be destroyed.

The damage to the X’rphan Mk. 13 was indeed considerable. The mysterious bio-missile had come up from below, torn open the craft’s armored belly, and severed or cracked several engine pipes within. Strangely, there were no burn marks, and the canisters containing the eternal-heat elements and wind elements were safe. But this was clearly more damage than we could repair with impromptu means.

My gaze rose upward. We had descended on the day side of Admina and flown toward the night side, so the light of sunrise was to our east, but the sky overhead was still dark. In the center of that expanse was a shockingly large blue planet: Cardina.

According to Eolyne, the two planets were about 300,000 miles apart. The X’rphan had crossed that distance in just an hour and a half, which would make its top speed over 180,000 miles per hour—close to Mach 300. Even adding the acceleration of Cardina’s rotation, it was a speed that was impossible in real-world planes. From what I recalled, even the escape velocity for rockets leaving Earth was about 25,000 miles per hour.

The fact that the Underworlders, previously having no means of flight aside from dragons, had achieved this technological feat in just two hundred years was astonishing. But it also meant that with the X’rphan damaged, Eolyne and I had lost our means of returning to Cardina. Technically, we could fly back with Incarnation, but I couldn’t pull off a speed like 180,000 miles per hour.

Before we got out of the X’rphan, I noted on the dashboard that it was a bit after two o’clock, Cardina time, so we had less than three hours until our time limit with Dr. Koujiro. It was highly questionable if we’d be able to accomplish our goals here in that time, and it would be even harder to return to Asuna and Alice in Central Cathedral. But we certainly weren’t going to solve anything by sitting around here.

“Hey, Eolyne,” I said. The pilot commander turned to me, revealing his white leather mask. He had already taken off his helmet. I circled around in front of him and put my hands on my knees. “Do you still believe I’m the actual Star King?”

Through the mask, I saw Eolyne blink with surprise. He nodded. “Yes…I do.”

“Then in the name of Star King Kirito, I forgive you for damaging the X’rphan. For one thing, it was my fault for not noticing that black worm coming up from below. So let’s put an end to the self-pity and start talking about what to do now.”

“……”

His mouth fell open in shock and only closed when he was ready to smirk. “I wasn’t pitying myself.”

“Liar. You were acting just like you did when we got locked in the cells under the cathe—” I caught myself and shook my head. “I mean, never mind. Look, just stand up.”

I held out my hand to him, stifling the stab of pain in my chest. Eolyne narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but he took my hand and pulled himself to his feet. I helped brush off some of the leaves on the back of his uniform before turning to the X’rphan.

“We’ll have to leave it here. On that note…how come whoever knocked us down isn’t attacking?”

After our landing, my first concern was a follow-up attack from whoever had fired the Incarnate-guided projectiles. But over five minutes had passed, and there was only silence in the skies and on the ground.

Eolyne had considered this already; his answer was immediate: “The question is, was that an automated security system that fired those guided missiles, or was it intended to slow us down here on Admina?”

“Automated security system…? Do you have those things, too?”

“The ground force was trying to implement something like that. But they couldn’t solve the issue of how to tell apart friend from foe, so the project was shelved, as I recall…”

“Ah, I see.”

Naturally, identifying friend and foe in the real world happened through radio signals, but the Underworld didn’t have the concept of radio. The vocal transmitters at the Arabel mansion and the imperial villa ran on some property that was completely distinct from cellular phones.

“Meaning it’s possible to create a device that can fire a guided projectile at any dragoncraft it detects?”

“…Theoretically,” said Eolyne, although it wasn’t the most confident answer. “The problem is what was mixed among the guided missiles—what you called a black worm. Is it possible to load something like that in an automated launcher…?”

“Yeah, that’s a good question,” I agreed.

We looked at the X’rphan’s rear. There was a huge chunk of ice on the ground nearby. The surface was coated with dust and dirt, but it was highly transparent, making it easy to see what was trapped inside the ice.

Without a word, we approached the block. Up close, the black worm—the bio-missile—was much ghastlier than I expected. It was three feet long and two inches wide—a long, dark tube, as I’d noticed while we were in combat. But up close, I could see small hexagonal scales all over its surface, and its semitranslucent head had dark spots in a ring pattern, like those parasites that infected a snail’s eyestalks. The red light they had when chasing the X’rphan was gone, but we couldn’t be sure it was dead.

“…Hey, Eolyne.”

“…What is it?”

“What does your family call you?”

“Huh?” the commander exclaimed. “Are you really asking me that right now?”

“When you’re having difficult conversations, it helps to abbreviate what you call each other, right? Just call me Kirito.”

“……”

Eolyne heaved an elegant, dramatic sigh that made patently clear his doubts that he was talking to the real Star King. “Mom…my mother called me Eo or Eol.”

“All right. May I call you Eo, too?”

“Go ahead,” he said, waving his hand ostentatiously.

I cleared my throat. “Ahem…So, Eo, have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“No. But…”

Eolyne hesitated, then reached out to touch the block of ice that he had created. Then he swiftly pulled back his hand, as though the ice had caused him pain.

“…There is an ancient text that contains a particular passage. This black worm reminds me of it.”

“Text…?”

“It’s a detailed record of the Otherworld War, a document that only members of the Stellar Unification Council can view. At the end of the Battle of the Eastern Gate, the Dark Territory’s sorcerers used a forbidden art that converted the life of their fellow soldiers directly into spatial resources, fashioning them into living weapons with the capability to follow targets of their own accord. I believe they were called…deathworms…”

“…Deathworms,” I repeated, feeling the skin on my arms prickle, the hairs standing on end.

While I was still in a comatose state during that battle, under the protection of Ronie and Tiese, I was able to vaguely sense the events transpiring around me.

A separate troop of human soldiers charging through the pass was set upon by a dark-element art resembling a mass of starving insects. It was a single Integrity Knight, calling all of that magic onto himself, who gave his life to protect his people.

After the battle, I learned that this knight was Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One, whom I’d crossed swords with in the Rose Garden of Central Cathedral. His mentor, Alice, still kept his divine weapon, the Frostscale Whip, safe and sound in storage.

A horrifying magical weapon of slaughter from the war two centuries ago, used today…and on the surface of Admina?

Eolyne could sense my skepticism. “I agree, it doesn’t seem possible. The large-scale offensive arts used in the Otherworld War were all supposed to be destroyed after the war was finished. But of course…any sorcerer who was able to incant the arts would naturally have the formula memorized…so there is always the possibility that it was secretly written down and saved somewhere.”

“Yes…that’s true.”

Sacred arts formulas, all starting with the phrase “System Call,” were something like a primitive form of spoken computer programming. If you understood the meaning of the words being used, you didn’t need to memorize or write down anything, and it was easy to alter them. It would probably take time to modify the deathworm art to create this black worm, but a skilled sorcerer could probably do it.

But we didn’t have time to dig into the details of that now.

“So…what do we do with this worm?” I asked.

Eolyne murmured to himself, thinking hard, then suggested, “If the ice melts, it might start moving again. But I wouldn’t want to damage it and cause an explosion, either. Can you do something with your Incarnation, Kirito?”

“Um…are you sure I’m allowed to do that?”

“You used it when trying to stop the guided missiles and when the X’rphan landed, so there’s no point trying to pretend that didn’t happen. Of course, the smaller the effect, the better.”

“I don’t know if I can do smaller…”

Manipulating things with Incarnation required more imagination the further your intended effect differed from the common sense of the world. Even to do something relatively simple and mundane like burning things, it took more Incarnation to do to stone or metal than something readily flammable like paper or wood.

If I thought my hardest, I could possibly eliminate the entire block of ice, worm and all. But to do it on a smaller scale, as Eolyne requested, I’d need to use a means that was more in-line with the properties of the worm.

“Hmm…”

I pressed against the ice block with my hand. Using the tiniest bit of Incarnation like a 3D scanner, I tried touching the black worm. I expected to be blocked by that Incarnation-violating substance, but it seemed to have vanished along with the red light.

The first thing I felt was the sensation of cold. Not from myself, but the still-living black worm, which desired warmth. Whoever had created this imitation life-form had instilled a primordial fear of cold into the worm, programming it to seek out the nearest source of warmth—such as a dragoncraft’s eternal-heat element.

I continued scanning. In the belly of the worm were four dark elements. They would probably burst if they approached a heat element. In other words, it wasn’t a simple explosion that ripped over the X’rphan’s armor, but a micro black hole without heat of its own.

It was too dangerous to do anything with the black worm without taking care of the dark elements first. I thought for a bit, then stuck out my left hand, keeping the right busy with the Incarnation scan.

“Gimme a light element, Eo.”

“…Give you one? You can’t make your own?” he grumbled, but stuck his index finger over my palm and silently generated a pale glowing dot. I took it and pressed my palm against the block of ice.

Light elements would bounce off mirrors but pass through any translucent material. Since the frost-element-derived ice block Eolyne made had essentially zero impurities, the mote of light sank into it without any resistance. I created the tiniest hole in the black worm’s body and slipped the light element inside it.

A purple light blinked and went out. The dark and light elements, as opposing forces, had canceled each other out.

After repeating that process three more times, the dark elements within the black worm were all gone, and I was able to exhale with relief. There was no longer any danger of it turning into a mini black hole, but the worm itself was still alive, and its drive to find heat was unaffected. If we let it out of the ice, it might still wriggle its way into the damaged craft’s insides and jam itself into a pipe or something, even if it didn’t explode.

“Hmm…”

After some more thought, I decided to scan the worm’s body a second time.

I found that, in addition to the translucent head, I could also sense something like a faint consciousness from the body, even after the dark elements were removed. When I saw the stripes on its head, I felt it was like a parasite, and it seemed there really was a different creature occupying the head, the one that was seeking out heat. That was probably the source of the substance that melted my Incarnate wall, too.

Pressing all my fingers against the ice, I cut open the black worm’s head with an Incarnate scalpel and carefully extracted the exposed parasite.

“Eugh. What are you doing, Kirito?” said Eolyne with undisguised disgust. I appreciated that he was finally being a bit more casual around me, but I was too busy concentrating to respond.

The elliptical parasite had a narrow tube running from its end into the black worm’s body. Very carefully, I pulled it out, trying not to rip it.

Eventually, the entirety of the tube was free, and the two pieces were totally separate—at which point the parasite visibly began to shrivel inside the ice. Apparently, it could not survive on its own. In just seconds, it had lost its shape and melted into yellow liquid.

“…I think that’s removed the danger,” I said, the tension in my shoulders easing at last.

The pilot commander did not approach, however. “It’s still alive, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is…but it’ll probably die if I crushed the whole ice block.”

“Ugh…I don’t really want to watch that…”

“I don’t want to do it, either.” I grimaced. I was about to lower my hand when I picked up another very faint signal of desire.

The body of the black worm, separated from the parasite, was still exuding some kind of instinctual impulse. It was seeking…heat? No, not that. It wasn’t a simple heat source, but a more abstract kind of warmth.

The instant I realized what it was, I gasped.

“…What is it, Kirito?” Eolyne whispered.

I mumbled, “It’s a child…a baby.”

“A b-baby?”

“It’s a newborn. Whoever created this fed dark elements to a baby, stuck another creature into its head, and fashioned it into a guided missile.”

Eolyne seemed hesitant, unsure of what he was hearing in my tone of voice. Quietly, he asked, “Kirito…are you sympathizing with it?”

“No, not really…I’m angry at whoever created it.”

“I think that’s the same thing…”

I ignored his comment and pressed my hands to the block of ice again.

The black worm was a man-made creature of darkness. Unlike ordinary living things, sacred arts made with light elements would not restore its life. But if I sent dark elements in to touch it, they would harm its body because of the way they ate away at solid material.

Fortunately, cold ice was closer to dark than light, in terms of the elements. Concentrating hard, I converted the water in the center of the ice block to a mist-form dark element. The required intensity of Incarnation to do this was much, much lower than creating darkness from fire.

When he saw the black worm surrounded by purple mist, Eolyne murmured, “Oh…you can perform matter conversion without any spoken words? No wonder you’re a legend…”

“Enough about that. Trust me—my conversion abilities are nothing compared to the great and mighty pontifex,” I replied, then realized that it was the first time I’d ever spoken about Administrator of the Axiom Church in Eolyne’s presence. The commander seemed only mildly quizzical, however, and did not say anything about it.

I returned my focus to the block of ice. As I expected, the black worm absorbed the dark-type mist all over its body, which restored its life.

Even the cut on the worm’s head, which I made to remove the parasite, was healing, and a new organ was growing in. Three little orbs on each side shone like rubies. They were probably eyes. There was no mouth, but in combination with the scales covering its body, it was starting to look more like a snake than an earthworm. This was probably its original form before it had been modified into a weapon.

The black worm, now a black snake, began to wriggle inside the little cavity within the ice block. It pressed the tip of its head against the walls here and there, searching for an exit.

“…What are you going to do?” Eolyne asked.

“I think if I release it, it’s going to return to where it was born,” I explained.

“Ah…I see.” His eyes were sharp behind the mask. “And if we follow it, we might find out who made it…or failing that, the whereabouts of the production facility. Seems like a good plan to me…”

“The problem is what we’ll do if it starts flying with the same speed as the guided missiles,” I said preemptively, and tapped the ground with my foot. “I guess we’ll just have to tough it out and run. Are you good at running long-distance, Eo?”

“I’m not bad at it, but I don’t like it, either.”

“Neither do I. Well, let’s set it loose…”

I glanced at the sky to the east. The orange of the coming sunrise was spreading over the gentle hills ahead. Once the sun rose, the dark gouges in the yellow flower field from our crash and the silvery X’rphan Mk. 13 itself would stand out.

First, I reached toward the skid marks and summoned a mental image. From within the exposed earth, countless tiny buds appeared. They grew larger by the moment, spread leaves, added buds, and then bloomed into brilliant flowers.

Once I was satisfied that the marks were gone, I pointed my hand at the damaged craft. I chose to focus only on the vine-based flowers out of the many that were present, causing them to fuse and grow over the body of the ship. When the vines completely covered the craft from nose to tail wings, I made them bloom, and then the massive dragoncraft looked like nothing but a small flower-covered hill.

“…It’s just like the story of Hoyer the Flower Summoner,” Eolyne commented. I frowned, but eventually said, “Uh, sure.” I’d never heard of such a story before in my life, but if I started asking, the sun would rise before I finished.

But I’d covered what needed to be hidden, so I turned back to the ice block. The trapped black snake was moving more frantically than before. Just in case, I focused on its mind again, but I didn’t sense any hostility toward us.

“Okay, I’m going to break the ice,” I announced. The pilot commander nodded.

We were both wearing our leather pilot uniforms, but the air was cool here, so I didn’t see any trouble with running in it. If anything, I was more concerned with the weight of the Night-Sky Blade and Blue Rose Sword on my waist—and I certainly couldn’t leave them behind.

If I needed to, I could use Incarnation to cheat on the weight, I told myself, and drew the Night-Sky Blade.

It wasn’t clear how many years had passed since the Star King last used this sword, but there wasn’t so much as a smudge on the black blade. I hadn’t had the frame of mind to think about my sword when I used it on the door unlocking mechanism of the cathedral’s eightieth floor, so I took the time now to think, Here we go again, partner, and pressed the tip against the top of the ice block.

“……!”

With just the tiniest pressure, the block cracked loudly.

The huge mass of ice silently split into left and right. The sides of the cut were as smooth as mirrors and glowed orange with the light of the morning rays.

The moment the two pieces of ice fell to the ground, the black snake began to float up into the air in its freedom. I had no idea how it was actually flying, but its wounds seemed to be totally healed.

Three red eyes looked down at me and Eolyne. But it turned its head away without much interest and flew into the darkened western sky.

“Let’s follow it!” I called out, sliding the Night-Sky Blade back into its sheath. I started running, and Eolyne rushed to follow.

Fortunately, the speed of the black snake as it undulated through the sky was far slower than when it was a missile. Even still, if I had to run at my very fastest, I wouldn’t last a single minute in the real world. There was stress upon my body in the Underworld, too, of course, but your longevity here was tied to your object control authority number. Eolyne’s authority level was 62, if I remembered correctly, a number even higher than the old Integrity Knights’, so he wouldn’t tire easily. I didn’t even feel like taking my 129 number seriously.

“Just say something if you’re getting tired, Eo!” I called out just in case.

“Same goes for you, Kirito!” he replied, more than game.

His tone of voice was so reminiscent of my late friend that I nearly gasped, and I briefly lost my pace. But I gritted my teeth and pushed harder. I managed to stabilize my posture, and looked into the navy-blue sky.

Ten yards ahead, the black snake was so dark that if I lost my focus for even a second, I might lose sight of it against the gloom. I had a goal to achieve right now, and I needed to use every ounce of my power to do it. For Alice if for nothing else, while she waited on Cardina to be reunited with Selka.

My mindset renewed, I picked up the pace a little bit more.