Sword Art Online Volume 17 - Alicization Awakening Page 13

  “… My name is Takashi… Hirono Takashi… Um… Can we, meet again, when the war ends?”

  Frenica raised her eyebrows slightly, narrowed her eyes in kindness, and nodded.

  “Absolutely, Knight Takashi-sama. When the war ends and peace comes to this world, we will. I shall pray to the three gods for your safe return.”

  Frenica softly wrapped her hands around Takashi’s left hand on his knee, and swiftly stood up.

  Frenica flapped the hem of her habit, turned, and ran to heal another of the wounded. As Takashi stared towards her back, and he clearly realized something: if he was going to stand proudly — like a knight in front of her, he would have to fight bravely until the end. This world was no longer a game, but another reality completely equivalent to the real world in which Takashi was born and grew up in.

  Even if he ran out of HP, no, lifetime, and was ejected from this world, he would face forward and hold up his sword until the very last moment. No matter how heavily he was injured, how much it hurt. He would certainly never see Frenica again if he failed.

  Takashi stood up, shouted “All riiiight!”, and ran toward the front line to complete his goal that was not a quest, but his duty.

  Chapter 21

  Awakening

  7 July 2026 / Eighth Day16 of the Eleventh Month of the Human Empire Calendar, 380

  1

  “Can we… make it…?”

  Higa Takeru murmured to himself as both his arms, stiffened from overwork, dangled heavily.

  In just under an hour, he had managed to successfully convert approximately 2,000 pieces of account data, which had been suddenly transferred to the «Ocean Turtle», from Japan’s The Seed network into Underworld. The texture of the keyboard seemed still stuck to his fingertips.

  “We’ll make it. Definitely.”

  Professor Koujiro Rinko answered firmly while thrusting a sports drink towards him.

  Accepting the bottle, Higa painstakingly twisted off the cap with his numb right hand and began to drink in large gulps. The liquid flowing into his mouth was lukewarm, but he felt it in every inch of his stomach.

  After downing about half the bottle, Higa shook his head weakly.

  “Really… That’s the first time I’ve been that careless…”

  Upon learning from two female high school students calling themselves Leafa and Sinon, who had suddenly appeared at the «RATH» Roppongi branch, that their assailants had been letting real world American VRMMO players dive into Underworld, Higa’s mind had blanked for a full five seconds.

  Moreover, the one to discover this had been a top-down AI connected to Yuuki Asuna’s portable terminal. He couldn’t help but acknowledge his own oversights.

  He had allowed these high school students, who claimed to be acquaintances of Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka, dive into Underworld with the leftover Super Accounts using the Roppongi STLs, then completed the mammoth conversion operation, and finally, landed 2,000 reinforcements at Yuuki Asuna’s current coordinates.

  If they fail to eliminate more than 50,000 American players, Alice would almost certainly fall into enemy hands. In actuality, Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka and Captain Nakanishi both understood the situation and had already considered scaling the outer wall of the «Ocean Turtle» to physically destroy the satellite antenna.

  However, to reach the outer wall, they would need to release the lock on the pressure-resistant partition dividing the main shaft for nearly ten minutes. If their assailants notice them, then the worst case scenario would very likely occur, involving them losing control of the sub-control room too…

  Therefore, Kikuoka and Higa entrusted everything to the three female high school students descending into Underworld as the «Three Goddesses of Creation», and the Japanese VRMMO players volunteering to join the battle as reinforcements, despite knowing the risk of losing their accounts.

  From the moment that they had established their connections, more than half the confidential information concerning «Project Alicization» had already become public.

  But that was no longer a significant issue.

  That is, compared with losing Alice to the assailants, who were possibly under the authority of America’s military-industrial complex, and then falling completely under their control in the oncoming era of autonomous weaponry.

  “Indeed…”

  Higa muttered in a voice inaudible to anyone else, his entire body slumping into the chair.

  “Alice is no longer a simple AI to be used as a UAV controller.17 She is now a new human born into a truly different world… You’ve known that for a while, haven’t you… Kirigaya-kun?”

  His eyes moved from the main monitor presenting the situation in southern Underworld to a corner display showing Kirigaya Kazuto’s Fluctlight.

  The delicately quivering ray of light was still wrapped around an empty void in its center. The subject he had lost after injuring himself… His self-image.

  Unable to bear keeping this window open, Higa moved his cursor with the intent to minimize it.

  Just as he was about to click the left mouse button, his finger halted abruptly.

  “Hm…?”

  Pushing up his round glasses, he fixated on the Fluctlight activity log displayed at the bottom of the window.

  Only 45 minutes ago, there was a single sharp peak engraved on the line graph that had remained flat. He frantically maneuvered the cursor again and slid the log to the left. Doing so, he saw another, even greater peak around 10 hours ago.

  “Uh… Um, Rinko-senpai. Could you come and take a look at this?”

  “Could you not call me that?”

  Professor Koujiro snapped as she looked towards the main monitor.

  “This is Kirigaya-kun’s Fluctlight monitor, isn’t it? …What’s up with this movement?”

  “He should’ve lost consciousness, but for a second it was showing activity… or something like that, but that’s not supposed to happen.”

  “Your Japanese is so weird. — Perhaps he somehow received a strong external stimulus?”

  “But the circuit that processes those stimuli is completely dead. … Let me see, the time was…”

  Higa clicked on the peak and the corresponding timestamp popped up. But even if he did confirm the time, they had no way of learning what had taken place in Underworld.

  But at that moment —

  “Wait a second.”

  Professor Koujiro spoke with growing anxiety.

  “Right during this time period. Aren’t these… when those girls dived in with the STLs? The first peak was Asuna-san, and the next would be Sinon-san and Leafa-san, who both showed up in Roppongi…”

  “Huh, really? …Whoa, really.”

  Higa held his breath. The timestamps listed under those two sharp peaks were indeed when the female high school students had descended into Underworld.

  “Um, what exactly happened…? Are these just intense reactions to familiar people appearing? No… Kirigaya-kun’s wounds aren’t something that can be recovered by such fantastical means… There must be some cause… Some physical or logical cause…”

  Higa stood from his mesh chair and began to pace nervously back and forth in front of the console. Perhaps noticing his mood, the technicians sitting on the floor against the wall glanced at him confusedly, along with Kikuoka, who was collapsed dispiritedly in a chair some distance away.

  But Higa paid them no attention and continued to think intently.

  “The self… The subject… A self-image regulated by oneself… A backup of that quantum pattern exists somewhere…? No, that’s impossible… Kirito-kun’s Fluctlight has never been duplicated before. Even if it had, there’s no way to separate his self-image from the backup and copy it over… A dynamic quantum pattern that can connect to his Fluctlight…? Where is it… Where the hell is it…”

  “Hey… Hey, Higa-kun.”

  Higa finally looked up after his name was called several times.

  “What is it?”


  “What exactly do you mean when you said that he ‘lost his subject’?”

  “Umm… Well, that is…”

  He took several seconds to switch trains of thought before answering rapidly:

  “«The one who sees, the one who acknowledges»… the ‘you’ within your heart. In philosophical terms, it is the subject, the opposite of the object. The central processing unit that deals with all information received through your senses.”

  “Okay… In other words, you’ve united materialism and dualism through the STL. Well, that’s fine. What I want to ask is, can you really separate the subject and the object so easily?”

  “… Huh?”

  Higa blinked several times at the unexpected question.

  Kikuoka and the technicians said nothing. Professor Koujiro’s hoarse voice broke the silence of the room, filled only by the drone of the circulatory cooling system.

  “The subject, the one who acknowledges. The object, the one who is acknowledged. Those are only philosophical concepts used to express relationships between objects. I don’t believe you can apply such theory to our consciousnesses, which are visualized as Fluctlights. Humans are social animals, not solitary existences that shun others. Others in you, and yourself in others… They’re all connected, like a network, to some extent. Don’t you feel that way?”

  “Yourself… in… others…”

  After expressing it in language, Higa realized that this concept was one of the things he had avoided the most.

  How am I seen? How do I compare to others?

  How does Koujiro Rinko see me?

  How do I compare to Kayaba Akihiko?

  — Yeah…

  — I don’t even really remember my face. If I were to draw a portrait of myself, I’d end up with something that somehow looks like me and yet actually doesn’t. That’s because I’ve been avoiding myself — whether in terms of appearance or mentality, my sorry ass can never compare with Kayaba-senpai, no matter how hard I try. That’s how low a level the subject in me is.

  Yeah, maybe you could even combine the everyone’s very impressions of «Higa Takeru» and you’d basically end up with me. That’s how low a level my subject is…

  Okay, she’s got me. Higa thought as his mouth stretched into a wry, self-deprecating smile —

  When he arrived at that conclusion, he finally understood what Koujiro Rinko was trying to say.

  “… A backup of the self-image.”

  He murmured, and the instant he looked up, the self-loathing embarrassment vanished from his face.

  “I see… It does exist. The data capable of restoring Kirigaya-kun’s destroyed subject! It’s inside the Fluctlights of the people close to him…!!”

  He shouted and began to rapidly hover back and forth.

  “But we need an STL to extract that data… And the reproducability within one person is not enough… We need at least two, no… we need three… people…”

  He took a deep breath and held it in his chest.

  The person who understood Kirigaya Kazuto the most and preserved a detailed image of him in their soul. Without question, that person was Yuuki Asuna. And she was currently lying in the STL beside Kazuto’s.

  Moreover, there were two more girls who should have close relationships with Kazuto inside the STLs at the Roppongi branch.

  Higa turned towards Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka and asked him hoarsely:

  “Kiku-san. Do the girls who dived in from Roppongi… have relationships with Kirigaya-kun?”

  “… Ahh, of course.”

  Kikuoka nodded, lenses glinting in his black frame glasses.

  “Sinon-kun was Kirito’s partner when he took care of the «Death Gun» incident half a year ago, and Leafa-kun is Kirito’s younger sister.”

  For a moment, the atmosphere was silent. Higa’s round glasses flashed.

  “… That’s it. That’s it, that’s the one! We can do it… We might be able to restore Kirito-kun’s self-image! Let’s say we separate their stored impressions of Kirigaya-kun from their Fluctlights, and then connect it to the missing area… The active data may fit into Kirigaya’s soul and activate it, and that should restore the lost subject…”

  Driven by waves of warmth gushing through him, Higa clapped his hands together.

  Then, a second later.

  A wave of cold suddenly extinguished this warmth.

  “Ah… Ahh… No way… Aaaahh…”

  “Wh-What happened, what’s wrong, Higa-kun?!”

  Watching Professor Koujiro stutter frantically, Higa murmured in a trancelike state.

  “To execute this operation… we have to do it from the main control room…”

  Leaden silence sank like dust once more, piling up on the floor of the sub-control room.

  Commander Kikuoka sighed heavily.

  “I see… That’s right, of course … No, don’t look so down, Higa-kun. We’re very fortunate to have a path towards treating Kirito-kun now, anyway. As for the actual operation, after this current situation is finished and we drive away the people on the «Ocean Turtle»…”

  “It’ll be… too late by then…”

  Higa interrupted Kikuoka’s words, hanging his head.

  “When the Nagato begins the assault as ordered, if a huge battle breaks out in the main shaft, the sub-power will be cut. They might even destroy equipment in main control. Of course, Kirigaya-kun’s STL will shut down, and he will also log out from Underworld without waking up. But then… I’m afraid that Kirigaya-kun will never be able to connect to the STL again. In his current condition, he wouldn’t even be able to pass the preliminary stages… To continue treatment, we have no choice but to do it while the three girls are still diving in Underworld.”

  Higa said lightly. He felt himself filling with a sort of determination.

  What should he do in this situation?

  A moment ago, Higa’s subject would have definitely replied like this: There’s nothing I can do. I’m not Kayaba-senpai anyway.

  But this shouldn’t be his true self-image. He was only avoiding, trying to find excuses.

  The Higa Takeru I know, the brilliant genius who designed the STL and Underworld, would absolutely say this:

  “… I’ll go, Kiku-san.”

  “Go… where?”

  Turning his entire body towards his Hawaiian shirt-wearing commander, whose face was taut, Higa took a deep breath and replied:

  “I’m not going to break into the occupied main control room. Listen… At the stern side of the main shaft running through the «Ocean Turtle», there’s a cable duct connecting STL Room Two, where Kirigaya-kun is now, and the main control room below the pressure partition. There should be a maintenance connector on the cable. If I enter the duct by ladder from STL Room Two and connect my laptop to that maintenance connector, I’ll be able to control Kirigaya-kun’s STL.”

  After hearing Higa’s idea, Kikuoka’s eyes widened in surprise behind his black framed glasses for a moment, as though saying, how didn’t I think of that? But he immediately returned to his severe expression and refuted.

  “But the maintenance connector is on the other side of the pressure connector dividing us and the attackers. To access the connector, we need to temporarily release the lock on the pressure partition sealing the cable duct. Moreover, the duct can also be accessed from STL Room One, which is right next to the main control room. If they notice the lock’s release and realize what we’re doing, they might attack us from below.”

  “Then we’ll just combat that with a decoy.”

  “A decoy…?”

  Kikuoka’s eyes glinted sharply. Higa hurriedly shook his head and replied:

  “We can’t use precious human resources here, of course. As soon as we release the lock on the partition, we’ll make him rush down the staircase on the opposite side of the duct.”

  “I see… You mean «Ichiemom»? Luckily, he’s being kept in the upper shaft storage room. Could someone bring him here?”

  U
nder Kikuoka’s directive, two staff members who had been sitting against the wall and listening to the conversation got up and jogged out of the room. On the other hand, Professor Koujiro spoke with a worried look:

  “Wait a second… you’re using Ichiemom as a decoy, but he can only move slowly on stairs, you know. If he attracts the enemy’s attention, he can’t just run back immediately.”

  Ichiemom, properly named «Electroactive Muscled Operative Machine 1», was an experimental humanoid machine body used for loading artificial Fluctlights. Using artificial polymer muscles to drive its metallic skeleton, it was what could be called a humanoid robot.

  Since it was experimental, it had exposed robotic parts and cables that did not make for an aesthetically pleasing exterior, and it was without any sort of bulletproofing technology.

  Although Rinko, whom Higa requested tune Ichiemom’s self-walking balancer yesterday, had complained quite a bit, she seemed to have become rather engrossed in it, and that was why she had opinions of her own regarding this “Ichiemom decoy operation”. Of course, Higa deeply regretted this strategy himself, but now was not the time to hold back from using available equipment.

  “… I feel really sorry for Ichiemom, but all we can do is make him do his best. However, he looks a bit that, you know, so our enemies might not immediately shoot him for fear that he might explode.”

  “… Indeed…”

  Just as they were talking like this, the door slid open and a huge trolley was pushed into the room. Carried in a seated position with its legs held in its arms was a tall mechanical figure with three lenses mounted in its roughly-shaped head.

  Professor Koujiro glanced at Ichiemom with a somewhat complicated expression and immediately turned around:

  “… Well, he does look pretty conspicuous, and will probably make them think that we have some grand plan here…”

  “At least they definitely won’t ignore him. While the enemy is dealing with Ichiemom, I’ll slip into the lower part of the cable duct and operate Kirigaya-kun’s STL through the maintenance port. The problem is how much time this thing can buy me…”