Sword Art Online - Volume 27 - Chapter 4

4

The memories of Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty started in a space filled with pure-white light. She was dressed in a sheer cloth, lying on her side.

She lifted her eyelids, blinked against the brightness, and slowly rose to a sitting position. Alice looked around, wondering blearily where she was and what she was doing there. That was when she realized that she did not even know who she was. Her name and background were a mystery to her, and she could do nothing but sit there in a daze, until a voice, sweeter than any sugared treat and smoother than silk, spoke from behind her…

“…Sister? What’s the matter, Alice?”

A hand rocked her shoulder softly, causing Alice’s eyes to bolt open.

In front of her was a girl with straw-colored hair, gazing at her in concern. Actually, she was too old to be a “girl,” but even still, it was clearly visible in the water that her body was as skinny as it had ever been.

“I suppose I must have dozed off for a bit. I’m fine, Selka,” Alice replied, eliciting a smile from her sister.

“Yes, it feels wonderful, doesn’t it? It was always a dream of mine to take a bath in the cathedral with you.”

“Ha-ha…The bath in the cottage in the woods where I lived was too small for us to have gone in at the same time.”

“I thought the bath at the church in Rulid was big, but compared to this one, it’s like a mouse to a cow,” Selka said, employing a common Underworld analogy. The familiarity of it caused Alice to giggle.

“…? What was funny about that?”

“I’m sorry. In the real world, they would say it’s like comparing a snapper to the moon.”

“What’s a…snapper?”

“I’ve never seen one myself, but I understand it’s a type of turtle.”

“A turtle?! Why would they compare Lunaria—I mean, Admina—to a turtle? One is a planet, and the other is just an animal,” Selka grumbled, splashing the water. Sadly, Alice could not give her an answer, either. If this were the real world, she would be able to summon a visible holo-window to perform an online search…but, of course, that was not possible here.

Instead, she shrugged. “Their world is chock-full of strange sayings.”

“Ohhh…that reminds me. I did notice Kirito and Asuna using some odd words every now and then,” Selka murmured, gazing out the window ahead. Alice followed her line of sight.

Beyond the enormous window around Central Cathedral’s Great Bath, a curtain of stars twinkled in silence. The golden half circle floating among them had always been Lunaria to Alice, but in recent years, its official name had been changed to the companion star Admina.

It was probably Kirito who had named this star Cardina, and its twin across space Admina. It was clear that they were named after the wise sage Cardinal and the pontifex Administrator. One day, she wanted to ask him why he named a planet after the very woman he defeated in such a terrible battle, but sadly, Kirito no longer had any memory of being the Star King.

“…Have you ever been to Admina, Selka?” she asked on a sudden whim.

Her sister splashed the water again. “Of course! In fact, I was present for the very first expedition there. The moment I got out of the dragoncraft and stepped into a field of yellow flowers stretching all the way to the horizon was something I’ll never forget.”

“…Ah, of course. You were the commander of the sacred artificers brigade.”

That was a title that had not existed in the Axiom Church two centuries ago. The sacred articians in the Church were called monks, and they toiled under the four high priests, with Prime Senator Chudelkin above them all. That would mean the commander of the sacred artificers brigade was a spiritual successor to Chudelkin’s position, though it had belonged to Ayuha Furia before Selka.

That ignoble history wasn’t pleasant to think about, but the nature of their predecessor’s character did not tarnish Ayuha’s and Selka’s accomplishments one bit.

“You’ve done well, Selka,” Alice said, reaching out to brush her sister’s damp hair. Selka was physically and mentally older than her now, but a little sister was always a little sister. She beamed happily and leaned against Alice.

When Kirito and Asuna had vanished into beams of light on the eightieth floor, Alice assumed she would be removed moments later and hugged Selka tight. But the seconds ticked by with no change, and eventually, feeling somewhat bashful, she let go of her sister. Most likely, Dr. Koujiro had been considerate and allowed Alice to continue her dive.

She was grateful for that, but she also had no means of communicating with the real world, so she didn’t know when she might be disconnected. She had been uncertain of how to spend this bonus time, until Selka proclaimed, “I want to soak in the bath!”

After all, Selka had been seated in the Cloudtop Garden for 140 years. Airy kept dusting her petrified body every day of that time, but it was understandable that she might want to clean off.

Ronie and Tiese agreed at once, so the group went from the eightieth floor to the ninetieth, where Airy and Eolyne left them to perform other duties, so the six girls (and one animal) enjoyed the bath. Alice, Stica, and Laurannei had just bathed four hours earlier, but the allure of the cathedral’s Great Bath was so great that even going multiple times in one day didn’t dull the novelty.

Not far away, the other four were sitting in a circle, engaged in conversation. It seemed that the two descendants were explaining the family history to their ancestors. If they intended to give a detailed account of two centuries of history, however, they would be in here for hours and hours.

Alice had a whole host of topics that she intended to talk about if she was ever reunited with Selka, but now that they were here, soaking in the bath, the hot water alone filled her body and mind, saturating her and making her feel like her entire being was floating. That was why she had started to drift off earlier. What a waste, to nod off while she was experiencing something she’d waited so long for…

“…Are you tired, Alice? If you want to sleep, you should get some sleep,” Selka whispered.

Alice struggled to lift the eyelids that had drooped without her realizing it. “No, I’m fine. I finally have the chance to see you again—we need to keep talking.”

“Ha-ha…You’re like a little child.” Selka giggled. While Alice took that personally, according to Airy, Selka was mentally over seventy years old now, while Alice herself only had six years and a few months’ worth of memories.

No longer did she believe that Alice Synthesis Thirty was merely a temporary soul existing in the body of Alice Zuberg. But even still, there were times when she felt unbearably juvenile and foolish.

She reached out once again, tracing her fingers across Selka’s cheek, which seemed so much more adult than the girl in her memory.

“Selka…did you undergo the life-freezing art because of me…?” she asked, a question she had not intended to voice aloud. Immediately, she regretted her mistake, but it was too late now.

Selka took Alice’s hand and enveloped it in both of hers. “Of course I did. But that wasn’t the only reason.”

“…Meaning?”

“Well…the life-freezing art stops the decrease of life and change in appearance over time, but it can’t prevent the fluctlight’s lowered capacity and fragmentation. In order to wait for the day when you returned to the Underworld, we needed to bring back the lost petrification art, the formula for the Deep Freeze art…But…”

She paused, contemplating her answer and looking to the sky to the north.

“…Sister Azalia back in Rulid taught me that it’s the way of the world for people to be born, grow, age, and die—that it is the will of Stacia. Because of that, I always felt some resistance to the idea of the life-freezing and petrification arts. I wasn’t sure if it was right to bring back sacred arts that defy the teachings of the Church, just for my own selfish desire to see you one more time. But then one day I spoke to Kirito about it…”

“He said it was okay for you to be selfish, didn’t he?” Alice interjected.

Selka looked momentarily stunned. Then she burst into laughter. “That’s right! But when he said it, it was more like, ‘You can be much, much, muuuch more selfish, Selka! I forgive you!’”

“…I can hear him saying it now.”

“Hee-hee. And right after that, even though I was at the cathedral as an apprentice nun, he told me something that totally shook my faith—that the most selfish person in all the world was Administrator, who created the Axiom Church and the Taboo Index. After I heard that, it felt like my own troubles were just so petty in comparison, and I decided I should prioritize what was truly most important to me.”

“What was that…?”

“To see you again, of course.”

Selka pulled Alice’s hand to her chest, then let go.

“…After that, I began researching the petrification art with Lady Ayuha…At the time, I wasn’t intending to undergo the life-freezing art, but you’d be shocked if you met me and I was a shriveled-up old crone, wouldn’t you? Right around that time, Ronie and Tiese underwent the life-freezing art for their own reasons, so I decided to do it with them.”

“They did…?” Alice murmured, glancing over at the distant group of four. “What was their reason?”

“Hmm…It might be better for you to ask them yourself…”

That put an end to Alice’s line of questioning. As a matter of fact, she had thought Airy’s explanation in the Cloudtop Garden rather strange. She had only interacted with Ronie and Tiese for a few days in the midst of the Otherworld War, but she found them to be very good, sweet girls. Although it was entirely her own imagination, she thought they would find suitable life partners, get married, start their own families, and live to be old and happy.

So while their promotion to Integrity Knights was one thing, Alice was surprised to hear they had undergone the life-freezing art. Not aging, as Selka had just mentioned, meant cutting yourself off from the proper way of the world. Those knights who had lived well over a hundred years—like Deusolbert, Fanatio, and Bercouli—did not seem happy to have eternal life, Alice thought. Neither did the Integrity Knights nor even Administrator, who performed the art on herself.

Selka seemed to detect something in Alice’s expression. She leaned over and whispered into her ear: “I know I shouldn’t say this, but it’s not an unhappy reason. I’m sure they would be happy to tell you.”

“Oh…then I suppose I’ll ask when I get the chance,” Alice said, grinning back.

She was about to suggest that they get out of the bath when a calm but crisp voice from the doorway to the changing room intoned, “The food is ready, everyone.”

Suddenly, as though it understood the meaning of the words, Natsu, the long-eared wetrat, burst out of the water and squealed, “Kyurururu!”

The party rose from the bath, dried off, and dressed, after which they followed Airy to the Morning Star Lookout on the ninety-fifth floor.

The outer edge of the floor, which had been open to the sky two hundred years ago, was now hidden by long marble planters filled with trees. Resting in the center of the very spacious floor was a large pure-white dragoncraft. At first, it seemed just the way it had looked when she visited this floor earlier in the day, but upon closer inspection of the X’rphan Mk. 13, she saw that its belly armor was deeply torn, shattering the tubes and mechanisms inside. Alice did not know the first thing about a dragoncraft’s inner workings, but she could intuitively tell that this damage would not be easy to repair.

She had stopped to stare at the damaged dragoncraft at the top of the stairs; Ronie and Tiese walked past her and stopped a few steps later.

Airy had told them that the X’rphan had been rolled out—a term Alice took to mean completed—exactly a hundred years ago, in 482 SE. Selka, Ronie, and Tiese were turned to stone in 441, so this had to be the first time they were ever seeing this craft.

Alice’s supposition was proven correct. Tiese marveled, “So this is the final dragoncraft that Kirito built…”

Ronie pointed toward the rear of the craft. “Look, there are three exhaust ports. He did succeed at developing the two-seat triple engine.”

Even Selka had a comment. “I’m amazed it flew from Admina to Cardina in that state…”

“No, it did not fly,” corrected Airy, with Natsu on her shoulder.

“Huh…?” This confused Ronie. “But that damage came from an attack on Admina, didn’t it?”

“Correct. Lord Kirito opened a ‘door’ from Admina to this location and teleported the X’rphan through it.”

“……”

Alice had difficulty concealing her laughter from the stunned trio.

She may have felt like the decades of life the girls had as knights after her departure from this world left her trying to catch up from behind, but there was something universal about Kirito’s ability to shock and stun people in any era.

“Please have a seat,” Airy said, motioning them toward the table. Then she turned to the dragoncraft and raised her voice. “Lord Eolyne, it is time to eat.”

Suddenly, a figure emerged from the giant gash in the belly of the dragoncraft and nimbly hopped to the ground. It was Integrity Pilot Commander Eolyne Herlentz.

His white mask was still on, but he had changed out of his uniform into a two-piece connected work outfit. Based on the way it was dirtied, he had probably been examining the extent of the damage or attempting to repair some of it.

Stica and Laurannei were the last to reach the top of the stairs, and as soon as they saw the commander, they flew into consternated activity.

“My lord, allow us to handle the repair!”

“We’ll call for a team of engineers to come at once!”

“No, that’s not an option,” Eolyne said, wiping the back of his neck with a hand towel as he approached. He was calm but sounded a bit lifeless. “We can’t bring a repair team into the sealed floors of the cathedral, and there’s no way to transport the X’rphan to the base. Of course, Kirito might be able to do that with Incarnation, but the craft is packed full of mechanisms and devices that I’ve never seen before. It might be more than even the engineers can handle, and it’s probably best that we don’t let it leave this place, for secrecy reasons…”

Alice thought about mentioning that if Kirito made the dragoncraft, he might be able to repair it, too, but thought better of it. He didn’t have any memory of having developed it at this point in time.

Kirito’s decision to take on the role of Star King, when he was so devoid of the desire for political power and control, must have been because he had no other escape from the responsibility. It was a fact that he had spent more than a century working for the benefit of the Underworld. She hoped that someday he would regain those memories, if for no other reason than so that he could hear their gratitude for his effort and service—but it was hard to give voice to that wish, knowing that such a change might turn Kirito into someone other than the person she knew today.

They said it was Kirito and Asuna who had requested their memories of being Star King and Queen be deleted. Issues of memory capacity aside, surely there could have been a means of making space while still preserving the truly important memories. Why had they chosen to eliminate that vast stretch of valuable, precious experience, starting from right after the Otherworld War?

She was shaken out of this train of thought by Selka, who had walked over and grabbed her hand.

“Come, Alice, it’s time to eat!”

“Uh…right.”

Selka led her to a long white table made of marble, which was lit by candelabras. Five platinum oak seats were lined up on either side, for ten settings in total. All the chairs had been here since the era of the Axiom Church, two centuries ago.

When Alice had lived in this tower as an Integrity Knight, Administrator left her chamber on the top floor only on very rare occasions, one of which was to invite Alice up to this very table on the Morning Star Lookout for tea, a few times a year. Alice’s involvement had merely been to report on her own accomplishments and the activity of the Dark Territory, however, and she did not recall ever having a true conversation there. On the other hand, Administrator’s personal chef, Hana, made her exclusive baked sweets that were not served at the cafeteria on the ninety-fourth floor, so Alice had secretly looked forward to those occasions a little.

Now the table—which looked the exact same as it did centuries ago—was laden with fresh salads, bowls of steaming stew, baked sweets with a familiar scent, and a cake iced with fresh sweet cream, which had not existed back then.

Tiese, Ronie, Stica, and Laurannei had already taken their seats and were waiting for the others. The two youngest looked vaguely blank-eyed, as though their hunger was giving them an out-of-body experience with the feast so close at hand.

It wouldn’t be good to keep them waiting, so Alice promptly sat across from Tiese. Selka sat down next to Alice, but Eolyne started down the hallway to the stairs and said to Airy, “I’ll go wash off first, Lady Trume.”

“Very well. You may use the Great Bath on the ninetieth floor,” Airy replied.

The pilot commander thanked her and quickly headed for the stairs.

Airy turned back to the party and said, “Please enjoy, everyone.”

Instantly, Stica’s and Laurannei’s hands were a blur, grabbing their forks and knives.

Gleefully, they shouted, “Bless this meal!!”