Mildea Plains, Wesdarath

Eydis holds tight to my waist as thunder cracks in the sky of the MIldea Plains. "Th-This is some noise…"

I gently pat our horse, hoping the storm is distant enough to keep all of them settled for the time being. As we get closer to the source, we may have to travel on foot for their sake. But Eydis is right. While it is raining here in the plains, the light intensity of the rain doesn't match the distant thunder. And where there's thunder, there's lightning, but based on the science of counting seconds between lighting and thunder to determine distance, the storm has not moved. "I guess you don't have to get that close to the ravine to hear the thunder, huh?"

"It's kind of scary… But did we Integrity Knights really have to remove our armor? I don't believe it is necessary yet. Although, in these wet condition, all that armor would be a hinderence."

"Sorry, but I just wanted to be cautious in case the lightning moves from the ravine. I wouldn't have asked that if we didn't find cloaks to cover you girls up, though."

"Hey, look up ahead," Alice says from right behind us, partnered with Renly (who Eydis found almost immediately after beginning her search). "There's a Clamp up ahead,and people around it."

"Why so many," Tiese wonders. "And why so close to the Clamp? Is there a beast nearby?"

"Looks like they're praying."

"So we try talking to them? We do need to ask around about the lightning." I agree with Alice, and ask Ronie to hold our horse as Eydis and I join Alice in our approach of the Clamp worshippers. Not even out of the innermost region of Wesdarath and we find something weird going on.

"Excuse me, mind if I ask what's going on here?"

One man steps forward and talks to us. "We're praying to the Pontifex to stop the lightning."

"We're waiting for salvation," a woman continues.

Alice raises an eyebrow. "Salvation?"

The man nods. "Yes. I have a Calling as a woodcutter, but lightning burned down all my trees. So I lost my Calling and my way."

"I'm a farmer. I can't feed my family after taxes, and my daughter has fallen ill…"

Eydis sympathizes with the woman. "That's awful."

I agree, but it still doesn't add up. The only thing noteworthy is that my caution was correct, lightning has spread this far east. "Okay, but why pray here instead of at a church or your homes?"

"We'd been given a task by the True Axiom Church, led by the savior of the world."

"The True Axiom Church?"

"'The false Axiom Church defaces the law and brought about these disasters. Seek salvation with the True Axiom Church, the savior and her chosen people."

"The savior and her chosen people?" Alice turns to me. "Sounds awfully familiar."

"Indeed… But just to clarify, have any of you met this savior."

"Oh no, we;ve not been granted any audience with the savior."

"The task granted to me by the chosen ones is to stay in this place."

"Because?"

"I was told this was my task, and when my task is complete the lightning will stop."

Eydis crosses her arms. "An obvious lie...and only one person I know would prepare such a preposterous tale. But why--oh no!" Coming from the Clamp is a beast, and the knights and I move to get between it and the people. Actually… I snap my fingers, and momentarily two winged objects strike the beast dead. Dropping my arm, I turn back and nod to Renly, who looks like he just had a fright as he catches his boomerangs or whatever he called them. Eydis turns around as well, scowling. "Oh, how'd you get him to do anything?"

"Easy, I told him that if I keep him at a distance, he must fight when I ask of him. He wouldn't have to fight up close and personal. I say it's a done deal, wouldn't you? Anyway, it doesn't seem like this True Axiom Church is spreading sound doctrine."

"Indeed. It's unclear how deeply Medina is involved, but…" Another beast appears from the Clamp, but before we can strike, it is taken down by a different attack than Renly's...and we don't have an archer. Looking around the Clamp, I spot two young men in wayfarer armor circling around the Clamp.

"Whooomp, there it is! Sacrifice gambit successful! Almost feels like cheating."

"That's why I always say you've got to bait them first."

"Shooting 'em down before the sacrifices even get owned is pretty cool, though!"

Ah, this is a more feasible explanation for this weird prayer ritual. "Hello, gents. What's this about sacrifices?"

"Hey, who're you? You're not here to kill-steal from us, are you?" Why do I feel like I'm dealing with my first meeting with Pitohui and LLENN back when I first joined GGO and Kureha?

"By 'sacrifices', you don't mean these people, do you?"

"You mad, bro? But why?"

"Using people as bait is not a bad tactic," I say, having done it before as leader of Crimson Squad, "but usually it works that way if the bait can also fight for themselves. Innocent, armless people...never a good thing."

"Not a good thing?" The swordsman in the pair looks at me like I spoke a foreign concept to him. "I mean, c'mon, we're warriors chosen to fight the beasts. Nothing wrong with using one of two sacrifices as decoys to get the job down."

Eydis' attitude towards the wayfarers begins to burn. "What do you mean 'sacrifices?'"

"People working with the True Axiom Church. They keep watch for the Clamps for us."

"Have you no shame," Alice angrily shouts. "How can you sue innocent people like this?"

"What is your goal?"

"The savior says we need to frag beasts to collect fruit. We're just being efficient."

The fruit of the Clamps...of course they grow. I put together that the growth is affected by the amount of Sacred Power absorbed by the Clamp, which Eydis and I first noticed long ago. Based on Rulid's monster attack, even if the Core is gone, Clamps with enough Sacred Power can sustain themselves. Never did I consider fruit to play a part in Clamp biology, but what for are they collecting them? "I'm assuming you're not collecting them for consumption."

"Eh, beats me. We just follow the savior's orders."

"You know, these noobs have got some real nerve, going around in gear that nice."

"Yeah, I think we better lighten their loads, amirite. But we haven't been ordered to mug anybody…"

"Don't be such a scrub. We need better gear to beat beasts anyway, right?"

"Yeah. Good thinking, my dude."

I sigh and ball my fists. "Eydis, Alice, let me deal with them."

"Huh, why?"

"Their language and mannerism confirm they're from my world, as I suspected. I don't know much more than that, but I know how to deal with their kind… So come, you punks."

"Let's get to it then! For our savior!"

"For our savior!" The archer holds up his bow and reaches for an arrow, but with the Aerial Element around my body, I'm too fast for him. I appear right in front of him, scaring him a bit before punching him in the face. As he falls, his sword-toting companion comes and tries attacking me. But I instinctively block his blade with my shieldless left arm (but has some protection) and grab his arm, heaving him over my shoulder. With a grunt he lands besides the archer. I left go of his arm, imagining how proud Pitohui might be if she saw me take out two guys bare-handed. Nothing hurts more than damaged pride from someone who is unarmed.

I step back and let them get up. "Damn, this guy is actually pretty OP!"

"Should we try taking one of the kids hostage?"

I scoff and nod to those 'kids'. "Eh, you know what not to do." The two wayfarers drop on the ground, paralyzed by Linel and Fizel's daggers. "Good work, kids. "Maybe I'm going to like having you two around."

"Well, we heard you need to keep people alive if you want information from them."

"So we used a paralyzing poison! Hehe."

I smirk. "You're right. Alice, Eydis, deal with the people." I wish to interrogate the two, but my personal methods might be a little extreme. And now that I think about it, they're undeniably loyal to Medina. If we want to get to her, we'll have to find her on our own. After setting them on the side of the road, I glance at the knights and the crowd. Things are getting too heated and I doubt Alice wants to use the authority of the Integrity Knights...if the people will believe that. "Linel, Fizel, got anything to knock those people out?"

Fizel grins. "I like being around you already."

Linel nods as she coats her blade again. "We were right to come along."

"Hunting beasts, protecting Clamps, gathering fruit...and the wayfarers' dedicated involvement means Medina is behind this."

Sortiliena crosses her arms. "But is she the mastermind, or…"

"No," Eydis states firmly. "Medina might be behind the wayfarers, but there's no way a cute girl like her who wishes to bring honor to her family would draw innocents into this! It's that Senate Representative's doing!"

"But if that's true, should we talk to those guys?"

"No," I reply to Renly. "Talking to them will be like telling you Integrity Knights before this mess happened that Administrator was up to no good. They're loyal to a fault, beyond betraying Medina. But you are right, Eydis. The way they spoke, Medina ordered them to protect the Clamps, destroy the beasts, and collect fruit, but the people, that seems to be an individual idea."

"For now, that is," Alice adds.

"Yeah."

"Let's return to HQ," Eydis suggests. "and bring them back. Maybe Cardinal can do something about it. And while we're at it, the civilians too. Might help explaining the situation."


Cardinal's analysis of the wayfarers supported my conclusion that they're NPCs of some kind, but they wouldn't reveal anything about Medina. That much I've expected. We went over the discussion we had about Medina, Hersyrian, the wayfarers Sheyta, and the civilians guarding Clamps, only to have news of another group of civilians guarding Clamps come to us. With that, we determined our goals were to be completed in this expedition. Find Sheyta, find Medina, and stop both the strange lightning and the actions of the True Axiom Church.

We take care of any Clamps we find in the Mildea Plains, currently destroyed a Clamp guarded by a wayfarer. He isn't too happy I burned it down in flames with a secret skill, Arcfire. But just when we were not catching a break, one comes around.

"What's going on?"

I turn to my left, seeing an oddly familiar girl approach us. Then I recognize her as the one always with Medina. "Selina, right?"

"It's been some time. Wait… What happened to the flower?"

"It was burned down by that black and red-haired guy!"

"You killed the flower?"

"Miss, do you know where Medina is," Alice asks. "We've been searching for her high and low."

"We were ordered not to talk to strangers."

"But you know us," Eydis pleads maybe a little harshly. "You know who we are. And we need to talk to Medina as her friends."

Selina nods. "Right, you're Lady Medina's friends. So you're not strangers. She's at the fort."

"Hey, what are you doing?"

Selina turns to the nearby wayfarer as she approaches me. "They're not 'strangers' so I'm not disobeying our savior's orders. As a matter of fact, this one saved me along with our savior." She turns to me, her face turning worried. "Even though she's surrounded by many people, Lady Medina always looks so sad. Maybe seeing her friends would make her smile again. I have important things to do here, so I can't go with you, but if you continue heading west then trail southwest past the mountain town, you can't miss the fort."

I nod. "Thank you, Selina… Everyone, let's go meet with Medina."


Ocean Turtle, 23 minutes after Jaymes entered the Underworld.

"An operation within the Underworld, huh? Now that they've taken control of STL Room One, they can certainly execute commands via the virtual console installed in the Underworld."

"What will happen if they do," Dr. Kojiro asks.

"The target cube will be extracted from the Lightcube Cluster in the center of the Main Shaft. and transported via air tube to the chosen control room. There's an extraction hatch there. And, of course, there's on in the Main Control Room, as well. We're going to retrieve Alice's Fluctlight from the Underworld before they can. The only ones who can do that are Kirito and Jaymes. In other words, our last hope rests on their shoulders… Higa, tell us. What's Kirito's condition?"

"To be concise…he's teetering on the edge of the worst-case scenario." HIga brings up two panels on the screen, both images of Fluctlights. One of them is visibly more active than the other. "The assault by the last Death Gun member left Kirito wth damage to his neural network, and to treat him, we blocked his memories and had him dive into Underworld like before. But for some reason, his memories didn't get blocked. Kirito was plunged into the Underworld as Kazuto Kirigaya, his real world persona."

"W-Wait a minute! Then he's been living as himself in the Underworld, where time's accelerated, for how long?"

"Over two years. That's how long Kirito has been interacting with the artificial Fluctlights of that world, knowing the entire time that they'll all be destroyed at the end of the current simulation. That's probably why he went to the console in the Central Cathedral to contact the real world. To ask you, Mr. Kiku, to protect all of the Fluctlights. And I'm sure it wasn't an easy thing for him to do. But he did make it. Since we were under attack, I couldn't check the logs, but it seems he lost some allies in the battle against the Axiom Church. That's why, when he managed to get in contact with us, he was berating himself harshly. To put it another way, he was attacking his own Fluctlight. At that moment, the men in black cut the power line, which caused a short circuit, and the ensuing surge caused the STL to spike momentarily. As a result, Kirito's self-destruction impulse was actualized and his ego was deactivated."

"Ego...deactivated? What does that mean?"

"Take a look at this." Higa zooms in on Kirito's Fuctlight, which shows a dark space. "Normally, where this black hole is, what you'd find is, to be precise, the self-image."

"Self-image. One's conception as determined by the self, do you mean?"

"Yes. Apparently, all our decision makiing passes through a 'Yes/No' circuit inside our Fluctlights that asks 'Shou;d I do this under these conditions, or not? For example, Rinko, have you ever ordered a second help at the beef bowl place?"

"I haven't."

"Even if your mind was like, 'I want to have amore, I could eat another bowl?'"

"That's right."

"So in other words, that was the result of your self-image circuit processing. In Kirito's case, his Fluctlight is largely unscathed, but because the circuit in question is non-functional, all he can do in his current state is, most likely, is reflexive reactions triggered by deeply ingrained memories. I don't think he knows who he is, or what it is he needs to do, and he can't speak voluntarily. I believe that's his current state, but if Jaymes has met him, he knows at least the physical aspects of it..."

"It was this portion of the Fluctlight that we stimulated before. The previous patient, as I told you, was similar to Kirito's prior condition, but with some stroke of luck this was the area that actually did us some good."

"Another?" Asuna looks at Kikuoka in curiosity. "Wait, someone else has gone through what Kazuto has?"

Kikuoka nods. "Yes. As a matter of fact, that person woke up right when Jaymes gave me the call about Kirito. I wish I could tell you more about it, but as of right now, they're on standby at the Roppongi Branch." Asuna suddenly walks away, heading back to her beloved boyfriend's side. Kikuoka watches her disappear then faces the console. Jaymes has been down below for close to a month now in simulated time. Any longer... "Higa, keep working on Kirito."

"Aye, sir."