SAO 15 - Alicization Invading Page 4

  At a loss, Alice sat down.

  She did trust in Kirito’s words and fought against the absolute ruler, Administrator, in order to protect the people of the Human World and her little sister living in some remote region, but she honestly doubted she could survive.

  When the strange sword soldier the highest minister called «Sword Golem» pierced deep into her body.

  When she used her own body as a shield against that onslaught of lightning bolts.

  And when she threw all caution to the wind and leapt in just as Kirito’s life was about to be severed by that blade swung down—

  Alice braced herself for death countless times. However, the sacrifices of Cardinal the sage, Charlotte that mysterious spider, and Eugeo, along with Kirito’s gallant fighting had held on to her life.

  —You saved me, so take responsibility for it!

  She endlessly shouted that at Kirito who lay down at the side. But the black-haired youth’s eyelids remained shut. Think about the path you should take from now on and choose it yourself… it seemed to Alice as though he was saying that.

  After hugging her knees for tens of minutes, Alice finally stood up.

  Perhaps due to the annihilation of the master of that space, the elevating disk had ceased motion like the crystal plate, so she broke it with her sword and leapt down to the ninety-ninth floor with Kirito on her back.

  Going down the long staircase from there, she went past the elders who continued chanting arts, and reached the grand staircase from where she headed straight towards her master in swordsmanship who she had left in the large bath—towards where Integrity Knight Commander Bercouli Synthesis One was.

  The large quantity of hot water frozen by Eugeo’s armament full control art had mostly thawed and Bercouli’s sprawled body, floating in the bath, was fortunately freed from Chudelkin’s petrification art.

  Upon dragging his large frame onto the aisle and slapping his cheeks while loudly crying out “oji-sama”, the giant man let out a grand sneeze before he opened his eyes.

  Alice somehow had it in herself to explain the situation to her master who went and uttered without showing any tension on his face, “Oh, it’s already morning?” Predictably enough, her words turned Bercouli’s expression grave and he spoke a single line in an overpowering voice after hearing it all.

  Good work there, lil’ miss.

  The knight commander’s consequent actions were prompt. They gathered the integrity knights to the «Grand Cloister of Spiritual Light» on the fiftieth floor, beginning with Deputy Knight Commander Fanatio who was somehow fully healed and asleep in the middle of the rose garden despite losing to Kirito and Eugeo, and continuing with the others who were apparently similarly bound by petrification, such as Deusolbert and Eldrie, then disseminated the facts they could.

  That after a battle with two swordsmen-in-training from North Centoria Sword Mastery Academy, the highest minister, Administrator, was defeated and erased.

  That the highest minister was working on a horrifying plan to transform half of the people into monstrous weaponry with bones made from swords.

  That the Chamber of Elders, superior to the Order, was effectively Chief Elder Chudelkin alone and he, too, had died alongside the highest minister.

  All they kept hidden was the origin of the integrity knights—no, their «conception». Bercouli withstood the impact of the truth, bearing doubts over the words the highest minister used about them summoned from the Celestial World from the start, but decided it should only be communicated to the other knight in progressive steps.

  Nonetheless, Eldrie, Fanatio, and the others were visibly shaken. That was only natural. The highest minister with power comparable to the gods, the absolute ruler who reigned for hundreds of years, had died; it should be no easy task to accept that reality.

  At the end of that discussion filled with utmost disorder, the knights chose to follow their commander’s orders for the time being, thanks to Bercouli’s popularity and ability, as well as perhaps the unbroken operation of the «piety module». Regardless of any changes, they were still knights serving the Axiom Church and now that Administrator and Chudelkin had left the Human World, it was undeniable that Knight Commander Bercouli was at the top of the church’s chain of command.

  And the instant he was entrusted with that right to command, Bercouli focused all of their effort on carrying out their original duty, to «protect the Human World». He must have felt lost and conflicted himself. He did find out that there were memories of those whom he loved, stolen from him, within arm’s reach, after all.

  Still, he decided to securely seal the thirty swords that formed the sword golem and all of the over three hundred crystal prisms on the hundredth floor of the cathedral, and to temporarily hide the death of the highest minister from all but the Order. In order to prioritize the impending, extensive invasion from the Dark Territory over the recovery of the integrity knights’ memories, including his own.

  Bercouli somehow rallied the partially destroyed Order of the Integrity Knights, and then set out on the major task of reorganizing and retraining the Four Empires Imperial Guards of the Human World who were previously no more than an army in name; naturally, Alice assisted as well. With the impromptu eyepatch made by Kirito wrapped around her right eye, she flew about to the north and south of Centoria.

  However, her time at the cathedral was limited. The traitor who turned a sword towards the Axiom Church—the unconscious Kirito, in other words—should be executed; that view was expressed by quite a number of integrity knights and even some of the ascetics who were unaware of the highest minister’s death.

  One dawn, when the work necessary had settled down enough for them to catch a breather, Alice left with Kirito astride a flying dragon. It was two weeks after those intense, bloody battles.

  But predicaments followed them even then. Kirito’s eyes remained shut throughout even the nights camping out that she was unaccustomed to and she felt that he needed a proper roof with a warm bed, but lacked the funds to even stay in the city’s inn, yet outright refused to exert her authority as an integrity knight for such.

  What came to mind then was Rulid, the name of the village Kirito told her of on the outer wall of the cathedral.

  Holding on the ray of hope that its inhabitants might welcome them despite her lost memories since Eugeo and she were born there, Alice turned the flying dragon’s reins towards north. She flew while tending to Kirito’s body, so the trip from the Norlangarth Empire to the small village at the very foot of the mountain range at the edge required three whole days.

  She descended into the forest a short distance from the village in order to avoid startling the villagers and ordered the flying dragon to guard their belongings there, before heading towards the village on foot with Kirito on her back.

  Upon reaching a path after passing through the forest and a wheat field, she chanced upon several villagers. However, they all looked upon them with surprise and suspicion, with not a single one calling out to them.

  It was when they arrived at Rulid Village, built on high ground, and tried to pass through its wooden gate that a youth of large build leapt out from the guardhouse constructed at its side. Blood rushed to his face that still showed vestiges of freckles and he blocked Alice’s path, going—

  —Hold it, outsiders may not enter the village without permission!

  The young guard who shouted so with his hand on the sword on his waist as though flaunting it, before doubt sank into his expression upon spotting Kirito’s face while he was carried on Alice’s back. He muttered, “Huh, isn’t this guy,” before staring at Alice again, his eyes and mouth gradually widening.

  —You… could you be.

  Alice felt slight relief at those words. She talked to the guard who seemed to remember her despite the eight years that passed, paying caution to the words she used.

  —I am Alice. Please call for the village chief, Gasupht Schuberg.

  It might have been bes
t to name herself as Alice Schuberg, but she could not find it in herself to do so. Fortunately, it appeared that name was sufficient as the guard’s face instantly turned blue from red while his mouth opened and closed repeatedly before rushing into the village. He did not mention anything about waiting, so Alice passed through the gate and walked on in the guard’s trail.

  The village soon turned riotous, like a disturbed beehive, in that early afternoon. Tens of villagers filled up the sides of the not-so-wide road, shouting out in shock upon spotting Alice as she passed by.

  Almost no face expressed gladness at her homecoming, however. Rather, they could be said to seem even doubtful, wary, and afraid at Alice, clad in unfeminine metal armor, and Kirito, still asleep on her back.

  The gently sloping road eventually merged into a round plaza.

  A fountain and well lay in its middle with a small church, a ringed cross on its roof, in the north. When Alice came to a stop at the entrance to the plaza and the villagers began exchanging whispers with uneasy looks from a distance.

  Minutes later, a single man approached with firm steps, breaking through the crowd on the east side. Alice immediately recognized the man in the prime of his life with a neat, grayed moustache as Gasupht Schuberg, the chief of Rulid Village and once a father to Alice.

  Gasupht halted a distance away, then gazed at Alice and Kirito in turn without any change in expression at all.

  Roughly ten seconds passed before he let out a deep yet resonant voice.

  —Are you Alice?

  Alice answered the question with no more than a “yes”. Yet the village chief neither walked closer nor reached out with his hands, questioning further in a voice more stern than before.

  —Why are you here? Has your crime been pardoned?

  She had no immediate reply this time. She herself knew neither what crime she committed nor whether it was pardoned.

  Kirito mentioned the explicit reason why Integrity Knight Deusolbert took the young Alice Schuberg to the capital was «Trespassing into the Dark Territory». That was certainly a transgression of the Taboo Index. However, as an integrity knight, Alice was no longer bound by taboos. The highest minister’s orders were the one and only law to a knight. But that highest minister was no more. She had no choice but to determine what were crimes and how to be pardoned from them, what was evil and what was good on her own…

  Alice stared straight back into the village chief’s eyes as she replied with those thoughts in her mind.

  —I have lost all of the memories from when I lived in this village as punishment for my crime. I do not know if I was pardoned through that. However, I can now go nowhere but this village.

  Those were Alice’s unfeigned, true feelings.

  Gasupht’s eyelids shut as deep wrinkles formed themselves at his mouth and brow. However, the village chief raised his face before long and what he announced with a keen light in his eyes were grim words indeed.

  —Leave. This village has no place for one who committed a taboo.

  Selka’s face rose, perhaps sensing that instant Alice’s body stiffened up, and inclined her neck slightly.

  “Nee-sama…?”

  Alice showed a smile as she responded to her little sister’s anxious whisper.

  “It’s nothing, really. Now, it is about time we return.”

  “…Okay.”

  After nodding and freeing herself from the embrace, Selka spent a moment looking up towards Alice, but her bright smile returned straight away.

  “I’ll push until we get to the fork!”

  She proclaimed and immediately stood behind the wheelchair Kirito sat upon and grasped its handles with her small hands. The wheelchair itself was rather heavy, not to mention how a single person, though skinny, along with one and a half swords at the rank of sacred tools weighed it down. That load was too much for one who was merely fourteen years old and served as a sister apprentice that did not involve physical labor—or so Alice thought the first time Selka tried—but she leaned forward with her legs standing firm, the wheelchair began moving, though slowly.

  “Be careful, we are going downhill.”

  Selka had never let the wheelchair fall yet, but she still could not help but to call out in a slightly nervous tone which made Selka reply with a, “It’s fine, you’re such a worrywart, nee-sama”. It seemed that when Alice was still living in Rulid, she showed a little too much concern for her little sister despite going through all those adventures and experiments with Eugeo.

  Was her basic personality preserved even with her memories lost, or was it a simple coincidence? She pondered while walking beside Selka who pushed the wheelchair on with a serious expression.

  Upon reaching the foot of the hill, the gentle slope turned into a flat path. Selka earnestly continued despite the wheelchair’s increase in weight. While staring at her little sister’s profile, Alice’s thoughts switched back to the past once more.

  It was Selka who called, from under a grove of trees’ shade, for Alice to stop after she left Rulid Village, dejected and crestfallen, on that day she was denied from returning to the village. If it was not for Selka’s courage, acting how she did despite aware that her actions disagreed with the thoughts of her father, the village chief, and the good will of the elderly Garitta she introduced Alice to, Alice would have been still wandering about without a destination even now.

  It could not have been an easy story to swallow for Selka either.

  Her elder sister who finally returned to her hometown had lost all of her past memories.

  Kirito who left a deep impression on her through their conversations in mere days two years ago had fallen into a coma.

  And Eugeo who was like a brother to her had died—

  However, Selka showed her tears only when she found out Eugeo would never return, with her smile not fading even once in front of Alice after that. She could not help but feel gratitude and wonder at the depth of her mental toughness and thoughtfulness anew with each passing day. She felt that strength was more precious and mighty than an ascetic’s sacred arts, or even a knight’s sword.

  And at the same time, she was reminded daily of how powerless she was, without the Axiom Church.

  Having built the small yet firm cabin just two kilolu away from the village, deep in the forest, with the help of the elderly Garitta, what Alice set out doing straight away was an extensive healing art on the still-unconscious Kirito.

  Within the vast forest where Terraria’s grace was most bountiful, she chose a day without even a single cloud in the skies to obstruct Solus’s light and coalesced ten luminous elements with the plentiful sacred energy granted by the earth and sun gods to that space, converting them into healing energy and pouring it into Kirito’s body.

  The healing art Alice devoted all of herself to apply had the potential to fully heal even the massive amount of Life a flying dragon had, let alone that of a human. She was confident that regardless of how grim Kirito’s injuries were, he would immediately recover along with his severed right arm and open his eyes as though nothing had happened.

  Yet—

  Right after the blinding spiritual light left, Kirito’s eyes did open but those jet-black eyes lacked any light of reason. Though Alice repeatedly called his name, shook his shoulders, and even shouted at him while embracing him, he merely looked up at the sky blankly. Alice failed to even revive his right arm.

  Four months have passed since that day, but there was no sign of Kirito’s mind returning.

  Selka kept supporting her by insisting that Kirito would definitely recover to his old self some day since she’s putting her all in nursing him. Still, Alice secretly feared it was impossible for herself.

  After all, she was no more than an existence created by the highest minister, Administrator.