Sword Art Online - Volume 26 - Chapter 20

20

The first worry that ran through my head was that whatever pierced my body might have hit Eolyne.

But it seemed it only grazed his bangs where I was holding him to my side and continued on through nothingness. I almost felt relief at that, but couldn’t allow myself to relax. I deployed an Incarnate shield and quickly turned around.

At the edge of my cotton-white cloud was a figure so dark they were like a blot of spilled ink.

A person, dressed in black, long hair and coat hem flapping in the wind, just floating there. Their right hand, extended toward me, was holding what looked like a large gun. It was a bullet that had gone through my breast.

I’ve been shot, I thought, and immediately felt the burning pain return. I looked down to see a hole big enough to fit a finger inside, just below my collarbone, out of which blood was spurting.

While it hadn’t hit my heart directly, I would previously have lost half my life value and then bled out the other half over time. But after my battles with Administrator and Gabriel Miller as the God of Darkness, Vecta, I learned that my flesh in this world was nothing more than a projection of my soul.

Thinking back on the time when Gabriel had blown away my lower half and carved out my heart, this barely even qualified as a wound. I used the resource of my own blood to heal the bullet wound and repaired the uniform while I was at it.

If I could have used even half this level of Incarnation in the fight against Administrator, maybe I could have saved Eugeo, I thought, a brief moment of longing regret. I stared down the distant silhouette.

The rising sun was behind the figure, who was nearly a hundred yards away, so I couldn’t see their face, but I could tell from the person’s bearing alone that it was the Excellency we saw in the base: Istar. It was alarming that Istar had immediately tracked us in the midst of all that chaos, but more important was the question of how they were flying.

Should I approach to glean more information, or prioritize the safety of Eolyne and the Divine Beast and flee, or just launch into a preemptive attack?

The figure took advantage of my indecision and moved. Long coat whipping like black wings, they closed the gap with unbelievable speed. On pure reaction, I expanded my Incarnate wall and strengthened its output, too.

I expected that at their current speed, the figure would slam into the invisible wall hard enough that they would break every bone in their body. Instead, they came to a stop so suddenly that they could have left skid marks in the air, just inches away from my defensive wall.

We were no more than thirty feet apart. Below wavy black hair, icy blue eyes cast a steely spell.

Staring into Istar’s face head-on, I was once again struck by their inhuman beauty. I hadn’t felt awe toward a simple personal appearance since facing off against Administrator.

Istar’s face was utterly placid, without emotion, and they said nothing for a good five seconds, examining me and then the unconscious Eolyne. At last, I felt as though I saw the faintest hint of something cross the space between their brows, but then it was gone just as fast.

The figure gazed into my eyes again and finally opened crimson lips. “I apologize for shooting you from behind without warning. I wanted to test it first to see if it would work.”

Istar raised the gun and tilted it to demonstrate their meaning. Hearing such an insincere response finally gave me the presence of mind to think, Oh, you asshole. Without taking down the Incarnate shield, I threw a verbal jab of my own.

“Did you shoot me there on purpose? Or did you just miss my head or my heart?”

“It’s not realistic to aim for any particular spot at that distance. It was a major success just to hit you anywhere at all.”

It was the equivalent of a careless shrug, but this was a shot of nearly a hundred yards that hit me on the first try. I recalled Sinon saying that the effective firing range of a handgun in the real world was maybe twenty yards at best, and fifty in GGO. Istar’s gun was a crude-looking thing, clearly a prototype, and it didn’t seem like a high-performance gun. After the lightning-speed slash in the observation room, Istar was an ace sniper, too?

“…How is that gun firing bullets?” I asked, recalling the strange sound it had made. I didn’t expect an answer, but Istar looked at the gun and gave me one.

“It’s a simple mechanism, just expelling the bullet with the release pressure of a wind element. Though there’s a trick in the regulating mechanism to let off excess pressure in the compression chamber.”

“I see…”

So that ugly noise was probably from this “regulating mechanism,” then. I was still curious as to how it worked, but it seemed like asking to see it would be awkward.

Perhaps even more remarkable was that we were having a conversation at this closer distance, yet I still couldn’t be sure if Istar was male or female. Their husky voice, their unearthly beauty, and even their height, build, and uniform were perfectly androgynous, preventing even an educated guess.

At the very minimum, however, I didn’t see any little propellers or jet engines, so it was unquestionable that they were flying with Incarnation alone, just like me.

In a sense, Incarnation was the power to overturn the rules of the world with your own imagination, so despite the simplicity of flight itself, the strength of the Incarnation required was astounding. After all, the common knowledge that “people can’t fly” existed in the heads of every Underworlder, including the wielder.

As far as I knew, only Administrator and Vecta were capable of absolute Incarnation flight, and if not for the battles we had, I certainly wouldn’t have reached my current state, either.

Meaning Istar had either experienced battle on that scale or somehow achieved Administrator-level willpower independently, I thought, staring into those icy blue eyes.

“I have answered two of your questions, so you ought to answer the same number,” said Istar, returning the large pistol to a holster on their right side.

Hang on—you owed me because you shot me! I protested silently. But I knew if I wanted to extract information, prolonging the conversation was the way to do it, and Eolyne would eventually recover, too. I was a bit worried about what the Divine Beast floating behind me might do if it awoke, but I could always surround it with a shell of Incarnation and figure it out from there.

“…Sure, if it’s something I can answer,” I replied.

Istar’s question was immediate and unexpected. “Were you the one who eliminated the Abyssal Horror?”

For an instant, I wasn’t sure if I should answer. If I said yes, I might be giving a benchmark with which to measure my Incarnation level. But I doubted it would end the conversation and cause Istar to attack me.

“That’s right.”

I didn’t mention that it wasn’t just me. If that made me seem more powerful than I really was, all the better.

“I see…”

Istar appeared to consider this information, long hair whipping in the cold wind.

Far in the distance, the red sun was slowly but surely continuing its ascent. In the real world, it would be four o’clock soon. At five, I would be pulled out by Dr. Koujiro, along with Asuna and Alice. My chances of getting back to Central Cathedral by then were totally devastated—the X’rphan needed to be repaired before it could fly—but I at least needed to get to a situation where I could afford to simply disappear without warning.

If I can keep the conversation going for another five minutes, I’ll capture Istar in a wall of Incarnation and then leave, I told myself.

“It’s a play for time,” said a faint voice in my arms.

With a start, I realized that behind the mask, Eolyne’s eyes were narrowly open. He still seemed to be in pain, but his strength was coming back. That was a relief—but what did he mean by that?

He could sense my confusion and continued, “By now, they’re evacuating personnel from the base down below. Once that’s done, they’re going to erase the facility itself.”

“E-erase…? How…?” I gaped, looking down.

The view was blocked by thick clouds, but with a very delicate application of Incarnation, I could sense heat and movement. On the runway adjacent to the base, the large dragoncraft called an Avus was already running, with soldiers from the cargo bay rushing to load it up.

I had to be an idiot not to notice this activity. I thought I was being clever and getting information out of Istar, but I merely played myself right into their trap.

“…Very perceptive of you,” said a cold voice up ahead, although it did contain a trace of emotion to it.

Eolyne, too, spit back at the mysterious figure with a notable change in emotion. “Just the sort of thing you would come up with, Tohkouga Istar.”

“……!” I held my breath; they knew each other.

“I had a feeling you were our intruder, Eolyne Herlentz. Though you haven’t gotten any sturdier, I see.”

Eolyne seemed to frown at that comment. He looked to me and said, “I’m fine now. Let me down.” At the end of his sentence, he mouthed, Kirito. I took that to be a message not to reveal my name.

I didn’t have a problem with that strategy, but if I let him go, only insubstantial clouds awaited below. I’d have to create a foothold of Incarnation for Eolyne to stand on or keep a firm grip on him. He could see my obvious hesitation, and whispered, “You don’t need to hold me up.”

“…Got it,” I said, and lowered my left arm, which had been propping Eolyne’s legs up.

His black leather boots stood on nothing. Even after he hesitantly released my hand, the pilot commander’s body did not suddenly plummet. In other words, Eolyne had mastered Incarnation flight just as well as Istar had.

Well, it had been two hundred years since the Otherworld War. Science had advanced to the point of flying to other planets, so it would stand to reason that similar advances and revolutions in Incarnate knowledge had happened, too. Naturally, that would include lessons in how to effectively master the art.

I had to tell myself that I could no longer think I was safe as long as I had Incarnate power.

The two stared each other down. Eolyne was the first to speak.

“Drop your gun and sword and surrender. What you are committing is undeniable rebellion against the Stellar Unification Council. I must apprehend you and take you to Centoria to be judged.”

A faint smile grew on Istar’s lips. “Still as uptight as you always were, Eol. If I were going to surrender just like that, I would’ve run away already and not chased you all the way up here.”

“…You’ve changed, Kouga. The old you wouldn’t have risked personal danger to buy time for subordinates to escape,” Eolyne said.

This reminded me to check the surface below again. They were still loading the large dragoncraft; one could assume all the main facilities of the base were underground, so it would probably take time to transport things up the elevator. One of those things was presumably the device they used to turn the Divine Beast’s children into bio-missiles. I really wanted to get the details on that. If the dragoncraft started up, I’d need to do something to stop it.

“Risk personal danger…?” Istar repeated, looking confused. They brushed windswept hair over their shoulder and continued, “I am doing no such thing, of course. I will simply occupy you until the Avus takes off, and after that I will walk…or fly…away.”

Based on their tone of voice, Istar didn’t expect any danger whatsoever. In their mind, there was no chance of them being apprehended, much less sustaining physical damage. Eolyne shrugged and said, “Yes, I take that back. You haven’t changed. But it was that arrogance of yours that caused you to lose to me in the final of the Human Unification Tournament.”

“A duel that forbids Incarnation is nothing more than a sideshow. I’m going to show you what a real battle looks like,” Istar pronounced, and then drew their saber again in a long arc. A moment later, Eolyne pulled his sword from his belt.

Two swords shone crimson in the morning sun. While one was curved and the other was straight, their Object Class levels appeared equivalent. There was clearly some old score to settle between them, and I didn’t really want to interfere in their fight, but I still had my Incarnate wall active, and if we weren’t careful, the dragoncraft below was going to take off.

“Sorry, Eo, I’m gonna go ahead and execute a capture,” I whispered, instantly changing the shape of the wall and ensnaring Istar in an invisible sphere.

There was no need to worry about the base alarm anymore, so I focused hard on strengthening the wall. Istar might be adept enough with Incarnation to fly, but I had blocked the Abyssal Horror’s light rounds with this defensive wall. Istar’s attacks wouldn’t break through.

Istar floated forward within the invisible cage, extended a hand, and touched the wall.

It felt like something exceedingly cold slipped through my consciousness. The Incarnate wall wasn’t broken, but Istar’s hand passed right through it. It felt exactly the same as when the bio-missile had wriggled through the X’rphan’s defensive shield—only dozens, hundreds of times stronger.

Incarnation-Eroding Incarnation.

Istar passed through the wall, cool as you please, and attacked Eolyne with ferocious speed.