When I logged out of the Underworld, I found myself to be the last to do so.

Opening my eyes, I raise my head past the open headlock of the Soul Translator. Thankful that someone thought to keep the lights dim and not over-sensitize the optic nerve, I turn around in time to catch a water bottle thrown my way.

Momiji, dressed in a uniform for STL diving, must've been first to log out as she is standing by a wheeled cart with water bottles on board. Kazuto and Asuna are seated on their beds, gulping down mineral water. It has been ten hours since Kirito and I entered the Underworld, and I hadn't eaten or drank in our world since six.

Too bad there's no food on the cart. Or that we aren't Alice — who hadn't woken up yet, by the way. I guess the time limit doesn't necessarily apply to her. She doesn't need food and water, or if we were to take a lengthier dive, IV fluid.

"Good work, all of you," Momiji says, breaking the silence as she joins me on my STL bed. She glances at the three of us, frowns, and asks, "Did something happen?"

"What didn't happen?" I answer, then glance at Kazuto and Asuna. "There's plenty for me to catch you guys up on to keep going forward, but we can do that later. There's...enough that I have to say already."

"Then may I ask...is she..."

I nod to Kazuto. "Yes. Princess Sylvie is the biological daughter of Abyssal Empress Eydis and Crimson Emperor Jaymes."

I put some emphasis on the 'biological' part as a dig at my friends, but the overall reaction was rather...underwhelming. Asuna looks like she's holding back a smile, while Kazuto bobbles his head."Hmm.. Speaking of which." Kazuto walks to the cart and grabs his phone from his bag on the cart and scans his face. Once the screen is on, a young girl's voice comes out of it.

"Papa, Mama, you're done with your long dive!"

"Thanks for waiting for us, Yui," he responds, then turns the phone to us so we can wave at her. "Thank you for keeping watch for us, Yui. No problems, I hope?"

"That's right. There were no attempts to hack Rath's internal network. And no suspicious people or objects turned up on the security cameras."

I smile and wink at Yui. "Thanks, Yui. Be sure to give my regards to Rei as well. Thanks to you two, we were able to relax and get into our usual tomfoolery, right?"

Kazuto chuckles and scratches his head. "I guess so."

"Eh-heh-heh. Well, I'm going to return to Unital Ring now. I'll talk to you later, Papa, Mama, Uncle, and Kureha!"

"Say hi to everyone for us," Kazuto says, turning the screen back to him.

"I will!" Once Yui is gone, Kazuto stashes his phone back in the bag, then all four sets of eyes go towards Alice. Her eyes are still closed, indicating she hadn't joined us in the real world.

"She's not waking up yet?"

"Yeah...it's been nearly three minutes. I wonder if there was connection trouble..."

"She'll be fine...right?"

"Well, her obvious differences to us aside, I don't see any reason why she would be force-logged out like we would. We woke her sister, after all."

"I don't suppose there's any point to waking her, then," Asuna says, but she gets up from her bed and walks to Alice anyway. She reaches out for Alice's shoulder, but it interrupted by the sound of the STL Room's slidng door opening.

"Hardin, Kirigaya, Asuna, Momiji, welcome back. Have you rehydrated yet? enters Dr. Koujiro, her white coat fluttering like she's an overconfident mad scientist.

Kirito holds his bottle up, "Yeah. I'm sorry that I couldn't log ot before five o'clock, though."

"That's what happened the last time. I had a feeling."

"Rinko," Asuna calls out, "Alice hasn't woken up yet. Did something happen?"

"Oh, it's not that. Since the three of you didn't come back by five o'clock, I figured that something important was happening in there, so he and I decided that we should allow her to continue the dive." Dr. Koujiro throws a glance over her shoulder to a man taller than her. He wears a linen jacket and banded collar shirt. Underneath his tinted, rimmed glasses is a mysterious smile that never ceases to bug me. How my father got to working with him is a mystery all on its own and I don't have the courage to ask.

"Heya, Mr. Kikuoka. What are you doing here?" Kazuto asks.

Seijouro Kikuoka. Member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Lieutenant Colonel of the Self-Defense Force, and the founder of Rath. That's all I really know about him and wish to know about him. Well, and that he's a proven ally to me and Kazuto's various VR troubles.

His smile morphs into a grimace. ""Come on, I'm the founder of Rath. It shouldn't be that surprising that I'd be here."

"From what I hear, you delegated the public role to Rinko and just mooch around all the time instead."

"Now, mooch is such a dirty word...,"

"I don't know. My father has made more appearances in the last two months than you. And don't forget Rath is a RoboTelligence subsidiary, Mr. Founder. So really, you're mooching off my old man."

"I wouldn't disrespect Jousuke like that."

Asuna ignores us and bows. "It's good to see you, Mr. Kikouka."

"Ah yes. What's it been, about two months? I'm glad you're looking well."

"Thank you. How has your recovery been, Mr. Kikuoka?"

"I got the all clear quite a while back. The only thing left is some scarring."

It may look like the two are being friendly, but I recognize the tension in the air as how Asuna and I used to be in our early SAO days. To Asuna, Kikouka is not exactly a good person, but not exactly a bad person. Kikuoka sounds like he's guilty of something and partially afraid of Asuna or something.

I mean, an angry Asuna did show up on the Ocean Turtle and though we had fierce words over the ethics of Project ALICE, I was more scared she'd string us up over hiding Kazuto.

"Now let's get you two ready to go home." Dr. Koujiro says with a brisk clap of her hands.

"Uh...don't you want to hear of our dive?"

"I'll hear about it from Alice later, and whatever I hear from Momiji and Joshua afterwards. I'm sorry to burden you while you're tired after the long dive, but will you tell your story to Lieutenant—er, excuse me, to Mr. Kikuoka?"

"That's fine, but it'll take a lot longer than two or three minutes."

"No worries," states a key-dangling Kikuoka. "I'll be driving you and Asuna home, so we'll have time in the car to talk. Momiji, Joshua, I'd like for you two to join as well. I've got some things to ask, too."

"To ask, huh?"

Kazuto eyes the man suspiciously, and considering he's asking me and Momiji to join, I feel like I'm about to be worked to death. If not directly by Kikuoka, then by the man currently in charge of Rath — my old man. "Once you're done dressing and all that, take the elevator down to the garage on the second basement floor. See you there."

Once he leaves, Asuna turns to the doctor. "What is Mr. Kikuoka's status now? On paper, did he still die on the Ocean Turtle?" When Kazuto asked the question earlier this morning, Dr. Koujiro brushed it off, saying we should ask him.

But she seems set on answering Asuna. "Well, I could tell you, but I think you'll assume I'm just joking to get you off my back..."

"I won't assume that!" Asuna claimed.

Dr. Koujiro looks at the rest of us before sighing and saying, "Reizaburou Kikuoka."

"Huh?" The four of us say together. We all look at each other, mentally asking "Do you know who that is?" Of course, I never heard of the man, and Momiji, who has worked with Rath the past two months, looked equally as confused.

Then Kazuto speaks our question. "Wh-who is that...?"

"Seijirou's twin brother."

"...Mr. Kikuoka has a brother...? So is he borrowing his identity, then?" Asuna wonders.

Dr. Koujiro looks as annoyed by the subject — understandly so now — as she did this morning. "No, he doesn't exist. Higa modified a municipal registry, the regional bureau's duplicate registry, and the national census to create a brother for him out of thin air."

"..."

That's...wow. It feels so wrong to want to know more, and it also feels like if we know more, we're accomplices to a crime.

Momiji clears her throat and turns to Asuna. "Well...on that note, shall we get changed, Asuna?"

"Y-yeah." The pair of girls venture behind a screen in the corner of the room and got changed. Kazuto and I switched shirts. Once I was done, I nod to the doctor.

"See ya later, Dr. Rinko... If I have working brain cells."

"Good luck with him."

Mr. Kikuoka waits for us in a black midsize sedan that screams suspicious. As we walk to the sedan, I get to the passenger seat on the left side of the vehicle while Kikuoka directs the others to the back seat. There's a paper box present there, but I move it from the seat to the floor between my legs. Momiji hopped in on the right side behind Kikuoka, Kazuto takes the middle, and Asuna on the far left behind me as she's to be dropped off first.

I look at the logo on the steering wheel and roll my eyes. "Nothing says 'sketchy driver here' like a foreign-branded sedan. You owe an apology to the Swedish people."

"Hey, I do drive a much sketchier car when I'm on my own time. But this is a Rath company car."

"I'll file a complaint, then."

"We're strapped in," Kazuto announces. "All right, take us away."

"Thank you for the ride," Asuna adds.

"All righty, then." Kikuoka puts his hands to the wheel and starts the car, heading out of the garage to the street outside. The smoothness of the engine's purr brings a reminder of my dragoncraft when it's not piloted by a crazed teenage girl...or its teenage creator.

Using Route 246, it'll take twenty to thirty minutes to drive from Roppongi, Minato Ward to Miyasaka, Setagaya Ward where Asuna, Momiji, and I live. That's not enough time to fully explain our dive in the Underworld if we wish for Asuna to be involved, and I doubt we could explain everything before dropping Kazuto off in Kawagoe with an hour of additional time. Not like he needs to know everything we did, but the primary reason we're there — the intruder — has born no leads. Admina was our hope, but it launched us into a rebellion and possibly a revived war.

"Jaymes, may you open that box for me?" Silently obeying the colonel, I reach for the box and place it on my lap. I said it was plain in design, but there is a black marking on it that says Test 4. Curious, I open the box to reveal its content.

"Huh?"

"Wha—?"

"Whoa!"

What lies within on top of the cushioning material is a gray kitten. Kazuto snaps at the man for putting a kitten in the box while I reach out for it. My fingers brush its back, feeling how cold and stiff the kitten is beneath its fur. Immediately I can tell its not alive and never was.

"Why you have a fake cat?"

"It's a cat-type robot from the future. Just kidding. There's a button under its right flank. Press and hold it." I maneuver my finger to the belly of the cat, finding the protruding plate and pushing it inward. The robot shows signs of mechanical life, shaking its body and opening its eyes.

We stare at each other for a couple of seconds, then it protests my touch with a "Meowww."

"Eughh... Here you go, Asuna." I hand the cat to the girl, in which she takes hold and starts to pet the robot. It purrs in enjoyment, much like a real cat, then curls up in Asuna's lap.

"Once again, why do you have a robot cat?"

It's a pet robot test model, using the same CNT actuators—the artificial muscles—from Alice's mechanical body. Higa put a lot of work into that one."

"Really...No wonder I haven't seen him in a while. He musta been workin' on this thing." Kazuto suddenly stops, realizing he started to speak just like Higa does, then continues, "S-so is this his hobby? Or yours?"

"Come on, now. An incredible amount of money went into developing that model. Dr. Koujiro or, worse, Dr. Denicia would beat me to a pulp if I were spending that kind of money on a 'hobby.'"

I nod in understanding. "You're right to fear Mom. Better not involve Momiji in your shenanigans, she will do so."

"So I've been warned."

Speaking of Momiji, she's didn't seem surprised by the cat's appearance. If anything, she looks annoyed by its presence and aims that feeling into the back of Kikuoka's headrest. "I guess you wouldn't know of this, Joshua, but the cat is a development between Rath and RoboTelligence. We're still in R&D, but there's plans to put this on the market by next year."

"Whaaat? Rath's going to sell these?"

Well, that explains why she's glaring daggers at the colonel. He has a prototype just out in the open. I shake my head then eye the little guy. "Okay, so we're developing it. I guess RoboTelligence will handle production and distribution too. it is a robotics company, after all."

"No plans have been set on that, but from the options, it seems it'll either be in-house or outside distribution with manufacturers like RCT Progress."

Asuna, the daughter of RCT Progress' former CEO and sister to an executive, smiles at that and says, "RCT Progress has sold pet robots in the past, so I'm sure they would have an interest. The negotiations would be very difficult, though."

"Ha ha ha. I suppose they would be. But I'm confident that our robotic technology is the best in the world. One look at Yon-chan there will convince anyone of that."

"Yon-chan?"

"Really?" To understand my exaperation at the name, the naming of Rath's prototype robots have been uncreatively named after numbers. Ichiemon and Niemon, "one" and "two" in Japanese, were prototypes built to house a Fluctlight like Alice. Yon-chan is Rath's fourth prototype...do I want to know what the san prototype could be?

Petting the curled robot on his girlfriend's lap, Kazuto says, "Yeah, you could probably sell a lot of these."

"Right? And if Rath can acquire multiple sources of stable, independent income like this, we'll have a better time counteracting the faction that wants the Underworld project scrapped."

Well, from that point of view, I can see why Mom hasn't hung, drawn, and quartered Kikuoka. If creating and selling pet robots gives Rath some power against the anti-Underworld faction in the government, that in turn gives RoboTelligence power against them and pushes us closer to our goal.

Which means there's a reason why the four of us are on this car ride. "Let me guess...this has either us doing something for you, or we're doing something for the family."

That man's grin grows by a multiple of ten. "I'm glad you're so perceptive."

"I think I know my family well. What is it?"

"The thing is...Yon-chan there has pretty much hit all our goals on hardware. It's the software that we're having trouble with."

"Really?" Asuna questions in surprise. "But it seems so lifelike to me." Even I could see that it acted as I would expect a cat to do that I would have a hard time believing it wasn't real.

"Its reactions to human contact are fine. The problem is its spontaneous actions...If you program what to do from A to Z, the robot's got no personality, and if you put AI in charge, it eventually stops acting like a real cat. Before we reset its learning data yesterday, Yon-chan was attempting to walk around on two legs."

"...There might actually be some demand for that, though," Kazuto mutters. "So what do you want us to do? I can't imagine there's anything we can do that Higa can't."

"Oh, I'm not asking you to do anything about Yon-chan. It's just, er...Are there cats in the Underworld, too, Kirito?"

"Huh? Well, yeah..."

"Are they actually catlike?"

"They don't walk around on two legs or bark like dogs, if that's what you're asking... Wait...are you suggesting I bring a cat out of the Underworld with me?"

"Bingo. At the time we started running the Underworld simulation, animals were just a simple program included in The Seed Package, but after five centuries of learning on internal time, they should have gained an advanced and highly polished complexity, I believe. I just can't imagine how exactly the simulation has managed to make catlike cats and doglike dogs."

"I could just bring Sylvie out," I state sarcastically. her display of Incarnation earlier — the dark art-made cat ears and tail — were certainly that of a cat's. Her sword, Byyako's Blade, must've came from a feline creature if it bears the mythical monster's name. Now that I think about it, bringing a cat from the Underworld to our world could fix the "software" problem.

But as Kazuto points out, there's one issue with that plan. "You make it sound like 'bringing out a cat' is simple. I assume you haven't forgotten, Mr. Kikuoka—the Underworld servers are on the Ocean Turtle across the sea. I could dive from the Roppongi office, but I wouldn't be able to bring a single rock back with me, much less a cat."

"I haven't forgotten that, of course," the founder of Rath states as he bypasses Shibuya Station and the road opens up to Route 246. As the sedan speeds up, he explains, "This is still only in the theoretical stage, but with Alice's help, there is a possibility that we might be able to export small amounts of data from the Underworld. It just requires the use of the system console from the inside."

"With Alice's help?"

"Are you saying you mean to use Alice's lightcube for storage?" Her tone is low and reproachful, and even Kazuto frowns. But I, who have a much greater stake in Alice beyond friendship, glare at the man.

"You know how risky that is, using Alice's lightcube storage for that. Messing with the fluctlight even a little bit runs the risk of damaging it; what do you think rewriting the cat's data will do?"

"Of course, of course." He takes his hands off the wheel to make an apologetic sign to us. "We wouldn't use Alice's actual lightcube. The cranial shell in her head still has some space for storing a lightcube, so we're looking into adding something like a supplemental memory bank there for her."

"...That still sounds risky to me. You're not thinking of ignoring Alice's will and performing some kind of twisted experimentation on her, are you?"

"No need," Momiji answers. "After all, this was Alice's idea."

"What?" I switch my glare to Momiji — now petting Yon-chan as if she wasn't against the kitten's earlier presence — and reply, "What the hell do you mean it's her idea? No, no, why do you know about this and I don't?"

"To answer your second question, you forget that I am Alice's liaison for RoboTelligence and have spent much of the last two months with her. As a matter of fact, you've taken a vested interest in not being interested in her. As for the first question, you'll have to ask her."

For someone who isn't the son of Jousuke and Denicia Hardin, she's surely more involved with the business than I am. Didn't I not see my dad a couple of weeks back? He could have informed me about what's going on rather than mess with me about girls.

Getting back to the main topic, the thing I wanted to ask you two to do for me is to search for a clever-looking cat on your next dive into the Underworld."

"We can certainly look for one," Asuna says, "but if we bring it out to the real world, then it vanishes from the Underworld, doesn't it? I would assume that its owner would be very sad."

"No, that won't happen. Underworlders with fluctlights cannot be brought to the real world without physically ejecting their lightcube from the Lightcube Cluster, but mobile objects like dogs and cats can simply be copied to regular media. Of course, the original would remain in the Underworld. It won't even realize that it's been copied." Kikuoka smirks at that, and continues, "The problem is that we still can't make that copy without going to the Ocean Turtle. But if we use the interior console and Alice's supplemental memory bank, we think we can extract the data right from Roppongi."

"...I see. Just one more question—if we do succeed in copying a cat's data from the Underworld, are you going to write it to Yon-chan here?"

"Not quite. If you happen to find an appropriate cat program in the Underworld, we'll place it in Prototype Five, which is still in development. Since you're more likely to find an adult-sized cat, it'll cause issues if we put that mind in Yon-chan's kitten-sized body."

"And what will you do with Yon-chan? Scrap it?" I lobbed, but Kikuoka gracefully deflected the blow.

"No, no, it's still got room to develop, I think. On that topic, Asuna...would you like to keep Yon-chan and raise it?"

"Huh...? Me...?"

"You said that you don't have any pets at home, didn't you?"

"Yes...Because my family is often away, we wouldn't be able to take care of one..."

"But Yon-chan doesn't need to be fed or have its litter box cleaned. When there aren't any people around, it's designed to go into sleep mode and recharge. On the other hand, there's a high chance that it will continue to exhibit uncatlike behavior, but I'll leave it up to your judgment whether to reset its learning data. What do you say?"

"..." Asuna strokes the kitten in her lap in quiet thought. For a robot, she's become quiet attached to the kitten, though I guess that's in line with her character. I have my opposition to allowing company secrets be given to Asuna, but at the same time, there's not many people I trust on the same level as Asuna. The other two are in this car.

"Asuna, you don't have to—"

"Thank you, Kazuto. I'm fine, though. I will take care of the cat for the time being, Mr. Kikuoka."

"Ah, that's wonderful. The manual and recharging pad are in the box. Also, this is still a company secret, so it would be great if you avoided showing Yon-chan to anyone outside the family."

"Understood."

"Is that okay with you, Joshua?"

I know Kikuoka only asks because my word is almost as good as my parents...which in turn, her word is as good as mine. "Fine with me. Momiji?"

The brunette smiles at her friend. "Just be sure to let me see Yon-chan from time to time." Then that's that. I hand Asuna the box for the kitten, then let my thoughts subside as we got off Route 246 to Setagaya Road. Asuna's home is almost within sight, and mine is further down the street.

Moments later, we park in front of Asuna's home. She thanks Mr. Kikuoka for the ride, bids the rest of us farewell for the time being, and exits the car. Kazuto scoots over to the left side of the back seat where Asuna sat formerly, right behind me and watches her enter her house. "I could have asked earlier, but are you really driving me all the way home? You all must have better things to do."

"It's part of my job," Kikuoka answers, then he glances at me and Momiji. "Do you two need anything from your home?"

I gaze out the window. I don't need anything from home, but my thoughts linger on my girlfriend. She lives fifteen minutes from Asuna's, and I've come to decide to tell her everything tonight. She may be online still in Unital Ring, though, so I guess I'll meet with her there. "I'm good."

"Same here."

Kikuoka nods and starts driving to Kawagoe. For a long moment, it's a quiet ride to down the road. We hit Metropolitan Route 8 by taking a right turn, and then we'll hit the Nerima Interchange to get to the Kan-Etsu Expressway.

From behind me, Kazuto states, "Once they connect up that outer loop, it'll make getting to and from downtown Kawagoe so much easier."

"Absolutely. But at the current pace, I think it'll take another five years."

"Five years..."

"By that time, you'll be twenty-two...no, three? Have you decided on your future plans?"

"..." Kazuto's silent, but I already knew the answer. As he told his parents and Asuna, he would go to college and eventually a job with Rath. Whether Rath is independent of RoboTelligence or officially owned by then, I don't know. But I know my likely place in five years will be with both companies, so to have Kazuto on board will be excellent. Whatever happens in 2031 happens.

"Well, I'd like to go to college."

"Ah, so you're not going the pro-gamer route."

"L-listen... I can't make it as a pro."

"What?" I find myself saying. I understand that he doesn't want to become a pro gamer, which is a reasonable life style in this day and age. Traditional gaming had huge tournaments that gave out cash prizes, and nowadays games like GGO allows currency conversion between virtual and real-game money back and forth. Let's just say that, even if my family wasn't rich, I wouldn't need money from my parents to thrive on my own. My GGO pockets are deep...and hopefully the UR issue isn't permanent. I worked hard for that money.

On the main topic, I know Kazuto. He was, for a short time, the better gamer in SAO. At times, he's still superior to me and I will openly admit it. To hear him say "I can't make it as a pro" feels like an insult to me, that I wrongly choose him as a rival or something.

"Why do you say that? Setting aside whether you actually want to, I think you've got professional-level talent in any full-dive game."

"You think too highly of me. Plus... I don't think I can reach that level of rabid fanaticism about an ordinary game anymore. I couldn't fight until I threatened to burn out my very life force like I did in Aincrad and the Underworld, even if I wanted to. If I can't reach that level of intensity, I don't have the right to compete as a pro."

Momiji remains quiet. I say nothing. Kikuoka looked as if he'd say something, but he drops his raised hand back to the steering wheel. With a soft sigh, he says, "...I see. In that case...I guess this mission has been a painful one for you two...I suppose it's brought up a lot of memories of what you experienced in the Underworld three months ago."

"Actually...well, it brought up a lot of stuff," Kazuto grumbles. "The things that happened there weren't all bad. Besides, I was asking and asking Rinko if I could go back to the Underworld anyway."

"It's not all too bad. Nothing I hadn't expected..." I turn to the side window, watching the side of the road. "...and a thing I couldn't have expected."

"That's a relief to hear...but I'll take your words to heart, Kirito, Jaymes. Now, it pains me to have to ask you this right now, but..."

"Don't let it pain you. It's about the intruder, right?"

"Yeah. Did you find any leads?"

"None."

"Not a thing."

"Same here. All our possible leads went cold."

Kikuoka remains frozen in silence for a few moment. "Ah. I see. Well, the Underworld is the size of a continent, after all. It can't be easy to search for a single person there."

"These days, it's actually around the size of two whole planets." Kazuto, Momiji, and I spend the next quarter of an hour explaining our two-sided experiences in the Underworld. By the time we finished, we heading up the ramp to the Nerima Interchanage.

After a short conversation between Kazuto and Kikuoka about where the latter currently lives, the founder of Rath shifts the conversation back. "Kirito, Jaymes, I just want to confirm a few things... First of all, is the Underworlders' inability to break rules or laws still unchanged, even two centuries later."

"With a sole exception or two, yes, the Taboo Index's influence remains the same in the Human Empire and the Dark Territory." I answer. I kept tight-lipped about the Primus and the First Children, saving that for later with Kirito, Alice, and Asuna. Kikuoka doesn't need to know the specifics.

Kazuto adds, "As usual, there isn't a single piece of litter to be found on the streets of Centoria, and the traffic was smooth and orderly. I got the feeling that the captains and directors and whatever of the local police were kind of pushy and pompous, so it's still not a utopia by any means."

"From my short time with the Dark Territory's empress," Momiji says, "I can say there's a similar situation in the dark realm. No, maybe a little worse in comparison given the Taboo Index's equivalent, the Law of Power, is a 'rule by strength' type of control. Aside from the politics, Obsidia more or less the same as Centoria as Kirito reports."

"Uh-huh...And the current ruling body of the Underworld is the Stellar Unification Council and the Imperial Dark Council? Are they maintaining the same level of control as the old Axiom Church did?"

"Hmm. Well, the Axiom Church and Administrator were basically stand-ins for God, so it might be different in nature. The Stellar Unification Council probably isn't worshipped or feared in the same way, but its control seems as firm as bedrock."

"As for the Imperial Council, it is operating as the Stellar Unification does, but with a little more of a firm hand. Without Vecta as their god, the ruling body has complete control."

"And yet there's been sabotage of the Integrity Pilots—an arm of the Unification Council itself—a direct attack on the empress and the Dark Council, and there's an unaffiliated base on Admina where they were conducting illegal experiments?"

"Yeah, that's the thing... Wait, sorry. Earlier I said we didn't have any leads on the intruder, but that's not true."

"W-we do?" That's news to me. We exhausted the lead that took us to Admina, a potential mingle between the intruder and Admina's people.

"Meaning?"

"This is just a supposition without any evidence behind it...but Eo...I mean, the commander of the Pilothood pointed out the possibility that the intruder from the real world might be connected to the sabotage of the Integrity Pilots. And possibly the attack on the Imperial Palace is the same."

"Ahhh... That commander must have a very flexible mind," Kikuoka exclaims while tapping the steering wheel with his left fingers. "I did a lot of thinking about who the intruder might be, but I could only come up with foreign saboteurs or industrial spies after STL information."

"I feel like it's a logical leap, but the commander said that the God of Darkness, Vecta, who started the Otherworld War, was a real-worlder, so it's not out of the question that the same thing could happen again..."

"...I see. That's a good point. But...if so, that makes things even more complicated to untangle. If the intruder's goal isn't to gain access to the system console, but to interfere with the Underworld itself, it would suggest that they are very knowledgeable about the Underworld's history, terrain, and social structure. I have a hard time imagining such a human being really exists."

"True... What do you think?"

Kazuto poses that question to me, and honestly, I have a hard time believing an outsider could have pulled the strings behind both attacks. For one, the Cult of Primus attacked the castle, and Tohkouga Istar doesn't look like he's a member of the group. But if I formulate the pieces of our stories together, it makes one strange occurrence make sense—the attack on the X'rphan Mk. 13.

When Eolyne mentioned a potential leaker earlier, I quietly suspected it had to be because of what Sylvie told her mother. But there's something that felt off about that too. Istar knew there were two ships coming, despite the Chaos Drake never coming into the attack range of the Avus dragoncraft. I know there's no radar technology after piloting the Drake myself, so the only way that both the X'rphan and the Drake's trip could have been made known to Istar is through a leak.

But who told Istar?

If they're in the Star Empire, I have no idea...and I don't like the lightbulb flashing in my head, yet it has determined the possible suspects are members of the Dark Council. Namely the three close to Eydis: Knight Commander Acras Zancale, Supreme Commander Sikhan Auratum, and Dark Mage Archmage Mer Agi Ina, aka Merlina Iversiel. When Eydis learned of the X'rphan's departure, they were with her in the room. She came alone to tell me.

If an outsider — someone who had intricate knowledge of the Underworld as Kikuoka just stated — is somehow involved in this plot, then the trouble runs much deeper than we believed this morning.

"We'll see... Hmm?" Just then, my phone buzzes. I take a quick glance, seeing there's a message from Momiji. I refrain from glancing back at her, instead pulling down the notification tab to read the message.

"I don't know if the intruder is connected to all this as Kazuto thinks, but there's a piece of evidence I'd like to go over with you alone when we get back. At the very least, the Cult of Primus has a connection to our world...a weird one at that."