Alicization Lasting Read online

  After that, the king developed the first dragoncraft and used it to fly over the Wall at the End of the World, which surrounded the continent and rose all the way to the edge of the atmosphere.

  In the uncharted lands he found there, the king patiently negotiated with the ancient god-beasts and occasionally defeated them in singular battle, taking and developing their fertile lands, then giving them over to the goblins and orcs, who had suffered prejudices under the label of “demi-humans,” so that they could have their own nations.

  Once the king had traveled all of Cardina, he set his sights on the endless universe above.

  The dragoncraft were improved again and again, until they were capable of leaving the atmosphere altogether. He found the companion planet that orbited Solus with Cardina, and he named it Admina.

  Then he created large interstellar dragoncraft capable of undertaking regular routes, established the first colony city on Admina, and was urged to take on the role of the Underworld’s first Star King.

  Under the rule of the king and queen, who possessed eternal life without aging, the two stars prospered—and would do so for eternity, all thought. But one day, the two of them left behind a prophecy and entered a long sleep. Thirty years ago, without ever returning to face their people, they vanished from the world.

  Since then, governing had been conducted by a council of representatives from the military and civilians. With no enemy to fight at this point, the ground force and the space force were shrinking, but in accordance with the king’s prophecy, pilots underwent the same fierce training they always had since ancient days.

  This was the king’s last message:

  One day, the gate to the real world will open again. When it does, a great upheaval will come to both worlds.

  Stica couldn’t grasp this event in practical terms, but it was said that when the gate to the other world was opened, it would usher in a time when the continued existence of the Underworld itself would come into flux. They could not just hope for coexistence and brotherly love. They would have to prove their strength in order to maintain their pride and independence. Otherwise, the five human races of man, giant, goblin, orc, and ogre would suffer a tragedy even greater than the Otherworld War of two centuries past.

  But Stica was not afraid.

  No matter what world she might visit and what age might arrive, she would fight valiantly as long as she had the wings of her dragoncraft.

  I’m a member of the proud Integrity Pilots, maintainers of a tradition stretching back to the days of creation, she thought, looking up at the insignia on the roof again.

  Without warning, red blazed on the bottom of the main visual board. Both a written message and an alarm indicated the detection of an element agglomeration of abnormal scale.

  “Wh-what?!” she yelped, sitting up again.

  Over the voice transmitter, she heard Laurannei say nervously, “Blue Rose 74, detecting the approach of an ultra-life-form of darkness! Element density…twenty-seven thousand?!”

  “It’s the mythic spacebeast…the Abyssal Horror…”

  Even as she spoke its name in the sacred tongue, an empty darkness covered the right edge of the main visual board, like a pot of ink had been dropped there.

  Of all the known spacebeasts, the Abyssal Horror was the most dangerous. It was over two hundred mels at its largest, with its twelve huge tentacles fully extended from its spherical body. That was twenty times the size of a single-seat fighter dragon.

  Its vast body was made entirely of high-density darkness elements, meaning that it shrugged off essentially all types of attacks. The reason it was so dangerous was something else, however.

  Unlike many of the other god-beasts, the Abyssal Horror refused to engage in any communication with humans. It seemed to run solely on the impulse to destroy and slaughter. When it spotted any dragoncraft on an interstellar journey, it would pursue them directly until it devoured them.

  The Star King was said to have treated all the god-beasts with respect—but when he heard reports of the large passenger dragoncraft destroyed on the way to Admina, he attempted to destroy this particular creature. But even the king, whose powers were greater than an entire army’s, could not completely destroy the Abyssal Horror.

  Through careful observation, they learned that the spacebeast orbited between the two planets on a fixed speed and trajectory. The best they could do to minimize its threat was to restrict interstellar flight so that they could safely avoid its path.

  Naturally, Stica and Laurannei had taken off from Cardina at a time that the spacebeast would have been on the far side of Admina. It didn’t make sense.

  “Why…? It’s appearing too early…,” Stica murmured, hands trembling on the control rod. She recovered her spirit quickly, however, and shouted into the transmitter, “Left turn, one-eighty degrees, then withdraw at full speed! Retreating to Cardina’s atmosphere!”

  “Affirmative!!” Laurannei replied, a spike of nerves in her voice.

  Stica steered the craft left and pulled the rod as far back as she could. White flames shot from the stabilizing thrust apertures, pressing her body so heavily into the seat that she could barely breathe. The stars in the visual boards blurred from points into lines toward the bottom right.

  When the turn was complete, the main visual board featured the blue shine of the planet Cardina, which she’d left less than an hour before. It felt close enough that she could reach out and grab it yet devastatingly far away.

  She put on maximum acceleration, praying. The eternal-heat elements screamed and roared.

  But the speedometer’s needle came to a stop five whole pips short of its maximum value. The Abyssal Horror was taking resources from such a vast range that the resource-collection tanks in the dragoncraft’s wings couldn’t reach their maximum potential.

  The rear view on the auxiliary vision board made it clear that the spacebeast’s black form was much larger than before. She could even see its writhing tentacled appendages already.

  Soon the ends of two especially long arms began to glow a faint bluish purple.

  “Sti, it’s going into attack position!” advised her second.

  She acted instantly. “I see it, too! Deploying rear light shield!!”

  She hit one of the buttons on the control board to her left. The craft’s pelvic armor opened with a series of clunks. Stica took a deep breath and focused.

  “System Call! Generate Luminous Element!!”

  Through the conducting channels within the control rod in her hands, ten light elements were shot out of the craft’s wings into space. They followed Stica’s mental command, transforming into a circular defensive wall.

  Right then, the spacebeast’s arms hurtled past the bright, purplish light they were harboring. With a shriek like tearing metal, the blasts of darkness roared through empty space.

  Just three seconds later, they made contact with the light walls.

  “Aaaah!!” screamed Stica when the dragoncraft shuddered with the impact. She could hear Laurannei screaming through the voice transmitter, too.

  The two blasts broke through the light shield Stica had deployed as though it were paper, tearing deep into the rear side armor of the craft. Instantly, her instruments glowed red. Something went wrong with the resource conducting channels, and her speed slowed noticeably.

  Through the auxiliary vision board, she sensed the Abyssal Horror, which was no more than an amorphous blot of darkness, somehow leer at her.

  On the auxiliary vision board, the second craft was missing a wing and rapidly dropping in speed. “Laura! Laura!!” she shouted, and she was relieved to hear a response.

  “…It’s all right. I’m fine. But…she won’t fly anymore…”

  “We won’t have any choice but to eject out of the crafts. We’ll have to find a way to get back to Cardina with just the thrusters on our pilot suits…”

  “I can’t! I mean…I won’t! I can’t leave her behind!!” shouted Laurannei. St
ica couldn’t tell her anything to the contrary.

  A dragoncraft was not just a steel construction the pilot sat inside. It was your one and only partner, a piece of your heart. Just like the flying dragons that the Integrity Knights of the distant past were said to ride.

  “…No. No, I suppose not,” Stica murmured, carefully squeezing her control rod. She took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “Then let’s fight to the end. Make another turn, then fire main cannons at maximum power. Will that suffice, Laura?”

  “…Affirmative.”

  Her last transmission was short and brusque, just like she always was.

  Still smiling, Stica pulled back on the rod, leading her wounded dragon into another one-eighty turn. The main visual board displayed the massive oncoming beast. Eight of its writhing tentacles were glowing with its next round of blasts now.

  Ooooooooohng, the Abyssal Horror roared. Or perhaps it was laughing.

  At least let me give it a good stinging as I die. Anything to prolong the time until it attacks this route again, Stica thought, pushing the red button on top of the rod halfway in.

  The main cannon on the tip of the dragoncraft clanked into position. Normally she would generate whatever the most effective element was for the target, but since the Abyssal Horror’s bodily form was thin at best, even its opposite element of light would do very little damage.

  Instead, she decided to go with a frost-element attack, her best type.

  The dragoncraft’s jaws glowed a clear blue. She glanced over at the other craft—its cannon was glowing red. Laurannei had chosen heat elements.

  The spacebeast was just a thousand mels away now. It stretched out its eight tentacles, preparing to attack.

  Stica inhaled, ready to give the command to fire. But instead…

  “W-wait, Sti!! What’s that…?!” Laurannei gasped into her right ear.

  What could it possibly be now? she wondered.

  But then Stica saw it, too.

  A shooting star.

  Just above the main visual board, a shining white light was approaching at incredible speed.

  For an instant, she thought it was a dragoncraft. But she ruled that out right away. It was much too small. It was less than two mels, only the size of a human being…

  In fact, it was a human being.

  What she’d thought was a star was the shine of a spherical wall of light elements. On the inside, she could clearly make out a black shadow in the shape of a person.

  The figure came to a stop about a hundred mels in front of the two dragoncraft. At nearly the same moment, the Abyssal Horror bellowed and unleashed eight light blasts.

  Before she could even grasp the shock of seeking an unprotected person in the freezing chill of outer space, Stica was shouting at them. “What are you doing?! Hurry—get away!!”

  But the person did not budge at all.

  The end of their long coat flapped violently as they remained stationary, arms crossed boldly. That thin defensive wall was going to be less useful than wet paper against the Abyssal Horror’s blasts. Stica could already imagine the figure transforming into a spray of blood and flesh as soon as it made contact with the roaring purple blasts.

  “Run awaaaaay!!”

  “Watch out!!” she and Laurannei shouted together.

  Eight bursts of purple light roared closer, each one nearly three mels in size.

  They stopped in the middle of nothing, as if colliding with an invisible wall and bouncing off in random directions.

  Space shook.

  Before Stica’s stunned eyes, the stars seemed to waver, like the surface of a pond struck to produce ripples. The shock wave reached her dragoncraft, rumbling and vibrating it. Speechless, she glanced at the little gauge on the right end of the main visual board. It had instantly shot all the way to its top.

  “No way…Th-that’s impossible…”

  Stica had never seen the Incarnameter swing as much as 20 percent at a time. With fear in her voice, Laurannei said, “I don’t believe it…Such incredible Incarnate strength…As though the entire universe is shaking…”

  But there was no denying what was happening before them. The small, unprotected human being, without an elemental wall, used his Incarnate power—the greatest technique of the Integrity Knights of yore—to deflect the spacebeast’s attack.

  Ooooooooooooh…, roared the Abyssal Horror in the distance. But was it in anger or in fear?

  The beast seemed to sense that its remote darkness blasts would not work, so it began to charge, thrusting its multitude of appendages forward.

  The small figure reached his arms behind his back and pulled loose the two longswords that were equipped there.

  “He’s not going to fight it…with swords, is he?!” Stica gasped, leaning forward and placing her hands on the vision board.

  The Abyssal Horror was over two hundred mels in size. And its body was an amalgamation of darkness without form. No little sliver of metal less than a mel long could do anything to a monster like that.

  But the mysterious swordsman calmly, easily pointed the white sword in his left hand toward the mammoth creature.

  He shouted something.

  Through the vacuum of space and the thick armor of the dragoncraft, Stica somehow heard his voice loud and clear.

  “Release Recollection!!”

  A bright light flashed, covering her main vision board. When she could see again a moment later, there were many beams of light shooting from the swordsman’s blade toward the monster.

  They looked as tiny as threads compared to the huge spacebeast, but as they pierced through and tangled around its shadowy form, the creature clearly began to lose speed. The twelve appendages writhing on their own stiffened—as though they were freezing solid.

  But that wasn’t possible. The Abyssal Horror was designed to thrive in the ultra-cold region of outer space. There couldn’t possibly be any chill colder than that.

  Stica’s shock didn’t last long, however; Laurannei’s voice in her ear obliterated it.

  “That technique…isn’t that a Perfect Weapon Control art…? No, a Memory Release art…?”

  “What…? Only Supreme Integrity Pilots should be able to use that!”

  “But…I can’t see how it could be anything else…”

  A third roar from the spacebeast cut them off.

  Awooooooooh!!

  Its tied-up body trembled, and three new tentacle arms appeared. They became like great spears of night, bearing down on the mysterious swordsman.

  But the man remained calm and composed, drawing his right-hand sword this time.

  Again, he shouted, “Release Recollection!!”

  The blade erupted with dense darkness, deeper and heavier than that of the spacebeast’s arms. A preposterously huge blade over fifty mels long met the three appendages. When the two sides made contact, there was another shock wave, which seemed powerful enough to bend space itself. The dragoncraft rocked, and purplish lights crawled about in empty space, lighting up the vision boards.

  Stica could no longer put her shock into words.

  There were only seven Supreme Integrity Pilots, and this man was using their greatest power—multiple times at once. Not even a fleet of destroyer craft could handle the Abyssal Horror’s full power, and he was handling it all—just a single man.

  Even her own parents back in Centoria wouldn’t believe her if she told them about this swordsman.

  But the true shock was yet to come.

  “Sti!! There’s a…another person!!”

  Stica looked around until she saw, coming from the same direction that the mysterious dual swordsman had come from, another human figure arriving.

  This one was smaller. Through the defensive layer of light elements, she could see long hair and a skirt. In her right hand was an incredibly delicate-looking rapier.

  The swordswoman raised her arm—then swung it down to point forward.

  A rainbow aurora appeared in the blackness of s
pace, flickering and wavering in beautiful fashion. There was also a very strange sound that accompanied it, like a chorus of countless voices singing at once.

  Laaaaaaaaaaa!

  The needle on the Incarnameter rattled and vibrated at its upper end.

  A star appeared.

  More accurately, a truly massive meteor came out of nowhere, passing just overhead with fire wreathing its surface.

  Any dwarf planets that had existed between Cardina and Admina had been obliterated decades ago. But the sense of gravity that shook the entire dragoncraft could not possibly be an illusion.

  The Abyssal Horror roared, sensing the huge rock plummeting toward it. It generated two more new appendages, holding them out to catch the satellite.

  The impact was silent.

  The tip of the burning meteor instantly obliterated the spacebeast’s arms and sank easily into the center of its enormous body.

  The beast that was an agglomeration of condensed darkness turned to dust in a single blow.

  Ooooooooooooo……

  Its death scream overlapped with the explosion of the meteor; the combination rattled across the universe. Stica’s eyes stung at the sight of resources exploding outward, from white to red to purple.

  “D…did they beat…that monster……?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

  But…

  “Oh…no! Not yet!!”

  Her second craft pilot always seemed to keep her cool and spot things a moment before Stica did.

  The fragments of the Abyssal Horror, which had appeared to be obliterated and burned into nothing by the explosion, were now moving. Each one was only a portion of a single mel in size, tiny pieces of the original whole. They wriggled and wandered away like a swarm of flies.

  According to the records, the Star King had pushed the beast to this point, too.

  But he was unable to eradicate all the thousands of pieces of the Abyssal Horror as they escaped. So the beast fled to the ends of the universe to escape until it could heal its wounds and attack the stellar route again.