Sword Art Online - Volume 27 - Chapter 14

14

“Enhance Armament!”

On Alice’s command, the Osmanthus Blade’s body split apart into a plethora of tiny petals.

This was the second time today that she was using the Perfect Weapon Control art. The sword’s life was not fully recovered yet, she knew, but it would just have to make do.

The minute petals, which glittered so brightly they seemed to be casting a light all their own, split into three bunches on Alice’s orders and flew out to meet the three oncoming missiles.

“Haaaah!” she shouted, and brought down the hilt still in her hand. The flurries of petals writhed like living things, launching themselves at the missiles. Each single petal was less than a cen in size, but they carried a weight and priority level that was unthinkable for how small they were.

She could feel the swarms of petals penetrating the hulls of the missiles. The next instant, the projectiles exploded in the air, each at least three hundred mels short of the cathedral walls.

Flames erupted, an eerie combination of bright red and deep, dark blue. A split second later, the blast buffeted the levitating platform.

“……!!”

Alice grabbed the handrail with her free hand and steadied her feet.

Through the empty hilt in her right hand, she could feel the recoil of the explosions via the petals. It was a harsh, uncomfortable shock that numbed her from elbow to shoulder. Because they were Incarnate weapons, the feedback was different from a simple heat-element release. She squinted and saw the destroyed petals falling helplessly from the roiling flames and smoke at the center of the explosions.

She could tell that fighting off these missiles had cost her nearly 10 percent of the petals. If she blocked another nine of the same attack, the Osmanthus Blade would die. Although, considering the overwriting effect of the Incarnate weapons, it would probably happen sooner than that.

“That was a very impressive bit of acrobatics, girl,” said the image of Agumar Wesdarath VI, still being displayed above the center craft. He wore a cruel, mocking smile. “Then I shall have to present you with a show of my own. How will you like this one?”

He snapped his fingers. Under each wing of each craft, three orange lights appeared instead of one, making six to a craft and eighteen for all three…

“…Lady Alice,” whispered Airy. “I will withdraw. If you block those, your sword will—”

“No. Do not move us,” Alice commanded. “If we run away now, I will never be able to call myself a knight again.” She raised her right arm as high as she could.

Her will passed through to the petals, which arranged themselves into a rectangular shape thirty mels across. The individual petals, each rounded in the style of an osmanthus flower, audibly sharpened into points.

There was no guarantee that this would finish off any missiles. By piercing them instantly, she would attempt to lose as few petals as possible to the explosions.

Agumar lifted his arm, then swung it down, as casually as a flick of the wrist.

Eighteen missiles launched with the sound of a dragon screaming and began to fly toward Alice.

For just a moment, she lifted the hilt in her hand to her mouth, then she brandished it once more.

Instantly, more than two hundred mels away from the neat array of petals, the swarm of missiles exploded, one after the other, as though slamming into an invisible wall.

Dark-red flames billowed outward, sending massive ripples through the night sky—no, through the atmosphere itself. Her mind dulled by shock, Alice felt a strange sensation come over her. It was similar to something she’d felt before, the relief of being protected by something absolute.

The endless thumping of the explosions sounded strangely muffled and distant. Without realizing it, she was counting them, and when the eighteenth and final blast was over, she heard a voice.

“Alice, Airy, sorry to keep you waiting.”

It came from over her left shoulder. Alice turned to see.

Floating there in the middle of the air, with nothing under his feet, was a black-haired young man in a perfectly prim pilot’s uniform with two swords at his sides. There was no way Alice could ever mistake the confident grin on his face for anyone else’s.

“…Kirito,” she breathed out, her voice faint. It couldn’t be him. When Alice had briefly logged out to make contact with him, Kirito was in his home, far from the Rath office. There was no means of wind-element flight in the real world. It would take him more than an hour to get to the Roppongi office, where the STLs were. And it hadn’t even been twenty minutes yet.

“How did you get here so fast…?” she managed to say at last.

This elicited a shrug from Kirito. “You can thank Mr. Kikuoka for that. He set me up with an STLP at home for…You know what? We can talk about that later. I’ve got to go help the space force base.”

“B-but…what about this situation right here?” Alice asked.

Kirito started to respond but was interrupted by a ray of white light that screamed right over their heads.

For an instant, she thought that the dragoncraft might have fired some kind of light-beam weapon, but it came from the opposite direction. It had been fired from the top of the cathedral, directly at the large dragoncraft in the middle of the formation.

The ray of light easily passed through the top of the dragoncraft and blew up the disc that served as an image projector. The large projection of Agumar Wesdarath VI, no longer smiling, vanished without a trace.

Alice twisted around, looking up at Central Cathedral behind them.

Atop the ninety-ninth floor, on the terrace part upon which the rounded hundredth floor sat, was a small human figure.

It had long, flowing hair blowing in the breeze. A familiar Integrity Knight’s armor and cloak. And in its right hand, a delicate rapier as thin as a needle.

“…Lady Fanatio,” Alice whispered.

As though she could hear her, the distant knight raised her left hand and gave a faint grin—or so Alice imagined.