Rath, the company behind the Underworld, had a close connection to Seijirou Kikuoka, an officer with the nation’s Self-Defense Force. That meant this entire operation had to have deep ties to national security in the real world. Perhaps they even meant to utilize artificial fluctlights like Eugeo and Alice to control their weapons of war.
I couldn’t possibly condone such a thing, and yet I was arguing that tens of thousands of civilians should be turned into soldiers for a massive war.
Alice had no idea of this inner dilemma; she was silent for her own reasons. No doubt she was balancing a scale with her soul-etched loyalty to the Axiom Church on one side, and on the other, the words of the intruder she’d escorted here by her own hand. Her expression was controlled, but I knew I couldn’t fathom the true depth of her anguish and indecision.
Eventually, I heard a brief phrase on the night breeze.
“…see her?”
“What…?”
“If I help you…and we regain my hidden memories, will I be able to see Selka…my sister again?”
I had to clench my jaw. She could do it. Of course she could see her. But…
I wasn’t sure whether I should relate my earlier prediction, but the last thing I wanted to do just then was mince words. I steeled myself and said, “Yes…you will. If you use your dragon, it will only take a day or two. But there’s something you need to hear first…”
I stared right into Alice’s eyes, about four feet to my right, and continued, “It’s not exactly you who will be reuniting with Selka. The moment you get your memory back, you’ll return to being Alice Zuberg from before the Synthesis Ritual, and Alice Synthesis Thirty will cease to be. You’ll lose your memories of being an Integrity Knight and return this body to its rightful persona. It’s cruel to say, but…the you right now is a false Alice created by Administrator.”
Her shoulders trembled at various points as I spoke. But there were no more sobs. Seconds later, she spoke in a voice with all emotion restrained.
“Once you told me…that the Integrity Knights were a creation of the pontifex…I had a feeling this might be the case. That I stole this body from a girl named Alice Zuberg…and have monopolized it for six long years.”
I had no idea what to say to this. No doubt she had a storm of feelings, but Alice only gave me a brave smile. “I must return what I have stolen. That would be the wish of Selka…her parents…your friend…and you, I suspect.”
“…Alice…”
“But…I have just one request.”
“Which is…?”
“Before you return this body to the persona of the original Alice…will you take me to Rulid? And then, in secret…I wish to see Selka, my sister…and my family. If you can do that for me, I will be happy.”
She ended there and slowly turned her head to look at me. In that very instant, the moon cast a ray of light between the clouds to the east. With her entire outline framed in golden beams, Alice’s red and swollen eyes softened, and she smiled just a bit. I couldn’t take it and had to look up at the moon.
We’d get Alice’s memory back. That was the only thing that Eugeo truly wanted—and therefore, what I wanted as well.
But it would also be a death sentence for the Integrity Knight—no, the young woman—clenching her knees next to me. An unavoidable sacrifice, and an inescapable set of priorities. I couldn’t do anything about it.
“Yes…I promise. I swear to you,” I said, eyes to the sky. “I’ll take you to Rulid before we return the memories.”
“…You’d better,” she warned. I looked at her and nodded. She returned the gesture, took a deep breath, and put on a brave face. “All right, then. In order to protect the realm…and all the people within it, I, Alice Synthesis Thirty, hereby abandon my title and rank of Integrity Kni— Aah!!”
Her proclamation quickly turned to a shriek. Her golden armor rattled as she bolted backward and covered her right eye. Devastating pain twisted her beautiful features.
I was momentarily stunned into rising off my seat, until I recalled an incident from a few days prior.
Eugeo had cut off the arm of Humbert Zizek to save Ronie and Tiese, and by the time I’d reached him, his right eye had blown clear out of its socket, and tears of vivid blood were spurting down his cheek.
In the school’s detention cell that night, Eugeo had described what he’d felt. The moment he tried to attack Humbert, his arm went cold and dead as if it didn’t belong to him, and his right eye burned with agony. Floating in front of him were bright-red, unfamiliar sacred letters…
Alice had to have been experiencing the same phenomenon. It was some kind of mental block, I suspected, triggered whenever the individual tried to fight against the orders carved into her soul.
“Don’t think about anything! Shut off your mind!” I shouted as I approached, holding down her left shoulder. With my other hand, I grabbed her wrist and forced it away from her right eye.
“…?!”
Alice’s sapphire-blue eye was no longer the same—instead, there was a blinking red tint to it. I gasped and leaned in to get a better look.
Along the edge of Alice’s circular blue iris, there was a series of fine, radiating red lines that rotated slowly. They weren’t of equal width, and their arrangement looked random. It was almost like…a bar code.
Ever since Eugeo had described what had happened to him, I’d assumed it was Administrator who’d installed this mental block on the Underworldians. But I couldn’t ever recall seeing anything resembling a bar code during my two years there.
So this…isn’t Administrator’s doing…? But then, who…?
I gasped.
The circular bar code stopped rotating, and a strange string of symbols passed over Alice’s contracted pupils. The bright-red series of letters looked like
For a moment, I was unsure how to read them—until I realized they were mirrored. Alice’s retina was on the other side of the letters, so their direction was reversed from her point of view. The letters spelled out SYSTEM ALERT.
It was a phrase I was long familiar with from using PCs, typically accompanied by an unpleasant dinging sound. That phrase should have no meaning to Alice and the Underworldians, though. In their lives, all Japanese words were considered the “common language,” while English was known as the “sacred tongue.” Hardly any of the citizens actually understood the definition of the words; they considered them unnecessary.
When learning sacred arts, the initial System Call and its subsequent English commands were essentially treated like sounds, and their meanings were ignored. When I taught Eugeo the various sword skills that I identified as special techniques of the Aincrad style, he always marveled that I understood things about the sacred tongue.
So this SYSTEM ALERT warning was meaningless to the Underworldians. That meant the mental block installed in Alice and Eugeo wasn’t from Administrator but from people in the real world—members of Rath’s staff…
Alice let out a high-pitched scream right in my face, cutting off my thoughts. “My…my eye, it’s burning…! And I…I see some kind…of writing!”
“Don’t think! Empty your mind!!” I shouted, placing my hands on either side of her dainty face. “What’s happening to you now is a kind of mental barrier that happens to those who try to defy the Church. It’s causing that pain in your eye in an attempt to enforce your unconditional obedience…If you keep thinking about that, your eye’s going to burst!”
Unfortunately, given the circumstances, the more I warned her, the more it could backfire. No human being was so in control of their mind that they could stop thinking about something on command.
Alice squeezed her eyelids shut. But that wasn’t going to remove the red letters superimposed over her eye. Her hands floated out into the air and clutched at me when they brushed my shoulder. With each little shriek of pain, more and more force was pressed through her fingers, making my bones and muscles creak. But I knew that my suffering was nothing compared to hers.
I applied pressure to her face with my palms, hoping that it might at least calm her thoughts a bit. In the background, I desperately considered the turn of events.