Alicization Rising Read online

  So if I accepted her offer, that meant I had to choose the souls I wanted to save.

  This wasn’t like organizing save data on a game console. In a fundamental sense, the artificial fluctlights were just as human as I was. I would choose just ten in this entire world to save from certain death—and only because I got along with them. Did I have the right? Was I qualified to do such a thing?

  “I…I…”

  But I couldn’t bring myself to say the word can’t. Cardinal stared right through me, seeing all. The only thing I could produce was a pathetic complaint.

  “Why did you single out me to be your coconspirator in fighting Administrator, anyway? Let me be clear: I have barely any unique advantages at all in this world. There are tons of people with better skill at sacred arts and swordfighting. In fact…even Eugeo. I bet that if we really fought head-to-head, I couldn’t beat him anymore.”

  Once I was done with my feeble, passive defense, Cardinal shook her head in exasperation. She filled the cups on the table with cofil tea—or perhaps it was real coffee this time—and took a sip.

  “…It was only twenty years ago that I realized that the stress test, the invasion from the Dark Territory, was inevitable. After that, I redoubled my efforts to find someone to fight on my behalf…”

  I kept my further complaints to myself, sensing that her long, long story was finally reaching its conclusion.

  “…But no matter how skilled in sacred arts and weapons the allies I could find were, there was one other huge obstacle to approaching Administrator that needed to be removed, aside from the Integrity Knights.”

  “…You mean there’s more?”

  “Indeed. I considered dozens of possible solutions as my search dragged on, but none was particularly practical…As time passed, and I realized we were in the prelude stages of the Dark Territory invasion, more and more advance parties began threatening the End Mountains—enough that the eight Integrity Knights tasked with protecting the area couldn’t eliminate them all. Just when I was starting to consider giving up on forcibly restoring my authority and risking death in an attempt to convince Administrator instead…one of my familiars picked up on an extraordinary, impossible rumor spreading around the northern frontier lands.”

  “Impossible…?”

  “It was the sort of event that had certainly never happened after Quinella became the Administrator. In order to prevent human settlement from spreading, she had set up massive impediments around the map…and one, a gigantic, resource-sucking tree with nearly limitless priority and durability, got chopped down by two boys.”

  “…Sounds familiar…”

  “I sent my northern Norlangarth agent, Charlotte, to find those boys. She finally tracked them down just before they left the village. I had Charlotte hide in the hair of one of them, the sloppier one, so that I could seek the answer of how they eliminated a near-indestructible object…”

  I wanted to respond to the “sloppy” comment, but then I remembered that Charlotte had been riding on my head for nearly two years without my realizing. I scowled and motioned for Cardinal to continue.

  “I learned the direct reason promptly. The boy with the light brown hair possessed a sword, a Divine Object with few peers in the entire world. It was a legendary weapon only granted to heroes accepted by the world’s dragon guardians, before they were slaughtered…But learning this only brought me fresh questions. Why would these children have such a high object control authority? It was an excitement I had not felt in years. I listened closely to their conversations, day and night. Nearly all of it was idiotic and pointless—”

  “Geez, sorry.”

  “Shut up and listen. Eventually, in an inn along the way to Centoria, I finally understood the reason why. To my surprise, these two had vanquished a large-scale scouting party from the Dark Territory unaided, according to what they were saying. If true, that meant they each received half the authority advancement points that would normally be distributed among dozens of fighters. That explained how you were able to equip the weapon…but again, it raised more questions. How was it possible that two boys raised in a rural village without even a proper armed garrison managed to defeat the vastly more powerful goblin warriors of the Dark Territory?”

  “Just to be clear, that was ninety percent bluff,” I interjected. Cardinal made to scold me, then paused and seemed to accept it.

  “Ah…yes, I suppose that would have been part of it. It took me quite a while before my doubts about this finally thawed. The black-haired boy—you, Kirito—seemed to be taking care with his statements out of concern for his partner, Eugeo. But when I saw you give extra food to a wild animal—a stray dog—I felt a shock like a bolt of lightning. I realized you were totally unbound by the Taboo Index…”

  “…Did I do that…?”

  “Several times. It would have caused great trouble if anyone had seen you. After that moment, I paid keen attention to everything you did and said, through Charlotte’s eyes. Especially after you reached Centoria and passed through the gate of the North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy. After a year of observation, I came to my answer at last. I knew you were not a soul born in this world and trapped in a lightcube…but a human being from the outside, the world where the god of creation Rath exists…”

  “Then I suppose I’ve let you down. I don’t have any of the administrative privileges or means to contact Rath that you’d expect…In fact, I don’t even know what’s going on in the outside world right now…,” I said apologetically. Cardinal grinned and raised her index finger.

  “I knew that from the start. If you had a higher system level than Administrator, you would not have suffered such a wound to defeat those goblins with a sword. Even I cannot surmise the reason you are in the Underworld in this state. Perhaps it is some kind of accident…or a data test with your memory and abilities limited. If the latter, it seems that you have paid a greater price than necessary.”

  “…Yeah, no kidding. I can’t believe I’d agree to something like that,” I muttered, recalling the pain in my shoulder where the goblin captain sliced me.

  “But even still, you were the greatest opportunity I could have hoped for. Your existence itself would help me overcome that other great obstacle to fighting Administrator.”

  “And what is that obstacle?”

  “The Synthesis Ritual requires an extremely lengthy spoken command and a vast amount of parameter adjustment. Including the preparatory stages, the entire process takes three full days.”

  Once again, this sudden topic change threw me for a loop. But Cardinal proceeded onward.

  “Meaning that when it comes to ordinary combat, a sacred art that accesses the lightcube directly is not really a factor. In other words, there is no danger of having your soul taken over and turned into an Integrity Knight in the midst of battle. However, what if Administrator abandoned the idea of absorbing my chosen warrior and decided simply to destroy the soul altogether…? Without requiring stringent parameter adjustment, the command would become dramatically shorter. She might even finish the spell while her guards were still fighting. We can defend against direct life attacks with equipment and sacred arts. But if she attacks the fluctlight directly, there is no defense. This was a quandary that troubled me for many, many years.”

  “…An attack against the soul…That’s pretty chilling…”

  “Just so. Even the most skilled combatant is helpless if their memories are torn to pieces…Which means that you are the only one who can withstand such an attack, Kirito. Your Divine Object of the outside world, the device called the STL, transports your soul into the Underworld, and Administrator cannot harm it—there is no such command. Now do you see why I have awaited you so badly? It is the reason I have waited and worked so hard to install as many back doors as possible, to ensure that I could spirit you here into my library, in case you won the Unification Tournament or broke the Taboo Index and found yourself setting foot onto the Axiom Church’s territory…�
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  At last, at long last, Cardinal had brought her story up to the present moment. She exhaled, her cheeks a bit reddened.

  “…I see. So that’s what this is about…”

  Even at this late stage, I didn’t know why I was here on a dive into the Underworld. If anything, my journey to the center of the world where I might find a way to contact Rath was as much to learn the reason as anything else.

  But after hearing the story from this girl who had lived such an extremely long time, it was hard to argue against the idea that I was guided here by a kind of fate. The outcome of our battle against Administrator was uncertain, but there was a kind of divine voice telling me to do my utmost to help Cardinal and take ten people at maximum out to the real world with me…

  But even before weighty concepts like fate came into the picture, I simply couldn’t look into the eyes of a girl who had waited for two hundred years for this exact moment and tell her no. Over and over, she insisted she was an emotionless program, but over the course of her very long story, that seemed less and less true. Cardinal was another human being with her own emotions, just like me—even if she was bound by her great duty to correct the state of the world.

  “What do you say, Kirito? I cannot force you…If you decide you cannot agree to my plan to wipe the world clean, I can send you and Eugeo out of a back door of your choosing. If so, and you find some way to defeat Administrator and achieve your goals, you might be fighting me next…but I suppose that is simply fate at work…”

  And then, Cardinal gave me a dazzling, transparent smile, one that suited her visual age better than any expression I’d seen yet. I held my silence for a long, long time and then asked, “Cardinal…you said that your soul was a copy of Quinella’s, right…?”

  “Aye. That is absolutely correct.”

  “Then…you must have the blood of pure nobles, too—the genes that command you to pursue your own profit and desires. Why didn’t you give all of this up and just flee for your life? You could go to some distant village, a place so far and insignificant that even Administrator couldn’t find you, fall in love, get married, have children…and then grow old and die happy. Wasn’t that your wish? Your blood should have ordered you to fulfill that desire, for these two hundred years. Why have you been waiting here, alone, resisting your command for all this time…?”

  “You really are a fool.” She grinned. “I told you. The Cardinal subprocess’s reason for existence is carved into my soul. I have only one wish: to eliminate Administrator and restore normal function to the world. To me, there is no way to have a properly functioning world other than to wipe the slate clean. Therefore…therefore, I…”

  She faltered, and I stared through her glasses at her eyes. Those burnt-brown irises were wavering, clearly holding in some sweep of emotion. When her lips moved again, they emitted a voice that was barely even audible.

  “…No…that’s wrong…I…I do have a desire…Something that I just had to know…for these two hundred long years…”

  She closed her eyes, lifted her face, and stared right at me. She bit her lip in hesitation, folded her hands for several moments, then abruptly leaped to her feet.

  “Kirito, stand up with me.”

  “Huh…?”

  I got out of my seat. Once I was upright, Cardinal gazed at me, her back considerably arched. I wasn’t that tall in the grand scheme of things, but there was a big difference between me and the girl, whose appearance was that of a ten-year-old.

  Cardinal looked around, squinting, then put a foot on her chair and lifted herself up. When she had confirmed that we were at the same eye level, she nodded in satisfaction.

  “Good. Come here, Kirito.”

  “…?”

  I took a few steps until I was standing in front of Cardinal, still confused.

  “Closer.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it!”

  I inched forward, despite my misgivings. When she told me to stop, our bangs were nearly brushing. A nervous sweat broke out on my skin as she stared into my eyes, then away.

  “Raise your arms.”

  “…Like this?”

  “Now make a circle with them in front.”

  “………”

  Tentatively—and half expecting her to bash me with her staff as soon as I actually did what she told me—I circled my arms around Cardinal’s back and touched my fingers together, making sure to leave space between us.

  After a few seconds of awkward silence, Cardinal made a cute display of clicking her tongue. “Oh, come now, don’t be coy.”

  Who, me or you?!

  I felt her arms circle around my own back, and then a mild pressure on the fabric of my shirt. My forehead knocked her large hat off onto the table, and her curly brown hair brushed my cheek. There was a mild weight and warmth on my shoulder and chest.

  “………”

  I withstood the incredible pressure of the silence for as long as I could, then decided I would ask her what was happening. But Cardinal broke it first, her barely audible voice the only sound in the vast chamber.

  “I see…So this,” she said, exhaling deeply, “is what it means to be human…”

  I gasped.

  After two hundred years of thinking about every possibility and strategy, the final thing that Cardinal would want to know could be nothing other than the warmth of another human being.

  No human being can survive alone; we are social creatures. To be human means to trade words with others, to join hands, to touch another’s soul. And yet this girl had been isolated in this room with nothing but silent books for two hundred years.

  At last, I felt I was beginning to understand the reality of the life Cardinal had lived to this point. My arms closed, pulling on her back to form a closer embrace.

  “…You’re warm…”

  Something about the quality of her whisper was definitively different from her voice before. I could sense a small but undeniably warm drop of liquid slowly moving down my cheek.

  “…At last…It’s all been worth it…I didn’t spend those two hundred years…for nothing…”

  I felt another drop run down my cheek and disappear.

  “Just learning of this warmth alone…has made it all worth it. I am satisfied…”

  * * *

  After a period of time (I couldn’t be sure how long), I felt the sensation of moving air and found that my arms were empty again.

  Cardinal was off her chair, picking up the toppled hat from the table. She patted it a few times and put it back on her head. When she turned back to me, pushing up her glasses, she was the businesslike sage once again.

  “How long are you going to just stand there like a fool?”

  “…Oh, come on…,” I protested weakly, wondering if those tears had been a trick of the mind. I rested against the side of the table, folded my arms, and exhaled. Cardinal waited in silence until she brought up the big question, rather simply.

  “So did you come to a conclusion? Will you take part in my plan or not?”

  “…”

  Sadly, I did not have the decisiveness to answer right on the spot.

  In logical terms, picking ten names and pulling them out to the real world with Cardinal’s help represented the best-case scenario. I could not have countered with a better idea.

  But just because I couldn’t think of one didn’t mean it didn’t exist. I wanted to believe there was a better option. So I looked Cardinal straight in the face and told her, “…All right. I’ll take part in your plan. But…”

  I spoke slowly, carefully. “But I’m not going to stop thinking about it. Even after we start fighting against the Integrity Knights and Administrator, I’m going to keep searching for a way—for a resolution that avoids the tragedy of the stress test and allows the world to stay at peace.”

  “You are quite the optimist. But I knew that about you already.”

  “It’s just…I don’t want you to disappear. And if ten is all
I get to choose, you’ll be one of them.”

  Her eyes widened briefly, then resumed their usual wry expression. Cardinal shook her head dramatically. “…And you are stupid, to boot. If I escape from the simulation, then who will wipe the world clean?”

  “Like I said…I understand the concept, I’m just not going to stop struggling to find a better answer along the way.”

  She looked annoyed, then turned away from me. Her voice rode the little ripple of breeze from the whipping of her robe, bearing with it the vast loneliness of two centuries that a moment’s embrace couldn’t heal.

  “Someday…you, too, will know the bitterness of resignation…Not from running out of strength and falling short…but being forced to admit that you will likely do so…Now let us return. Your partner will be finishing up that history book, I suspect. We ought to include Eugeo in the concrete planning stages.”

  She rapped her staff on the stone floor and headed down the way we came without a glance back at me.

  2

  As Cardinal predicted, Eugeo was just closing the cover of the heavy tome resting on his knees when we came across him sitting on the stairs. He looked dazed, still lost in that journey over centuries of history.

  I strode up to him and said, “We’re back. Sorry to have left you alone for so long.”

  For some reason, Eugeo shivered briefly, blinked hard, then looked toward me at last.

  “Oh…Kirito. How long has it been…?”

  “Huh? Uh…”

  I looked around, but of course, there were no clocks in the room or even windows. Cardinal cleared her throat and answered, “Roughly two hours. The sun has risen by now. What did you think of the human world’s long history?”

  “Hmm…What can I say?” Eugeo replied, biting his lip and casting around for the right words. “…Is everything written in this book what actually happened? It just feels…like I’m reading a list of very convenient fairy tales. I mean, most of the entries are just, ‘Such and such a problem arose at this place, the Integrity Knights resolved the matter, and after that point, such and such an entry was added to the Taboo Index’…That’s all it is.”