3

Renly the Integrity Knight led the human army, with the American players chasing furiously after them.

But far to the north, on the southern edge of the ravine Asuna created, Iskahn’s pugilists guild and the Integrity Knight Sheyta were battling for their lives against the first red army, which was still over ten thousand in number.

Even farther north, at the plains outside the Eastern Gate, where the scars of battle were still fresh, one nonhuman stood deep in thought.

Steel armor covered his squat body. A leather cape trailed in the wind. Wide ears drooped at the sides of his round head, and a flat-ended nose jutted out of the front.

It was Lilpilin, the chief of the orcs.

With the mere three thousand remaining members of his tribe waiting, he walked alone to a place where he could see the Eastern Gate well. He did not allow a single bodyguard along with him, because he wanted no one to see him crawling along the ground.

After hours of digging through the gravel, Lilpilin finally found what he was looking for—a silver earring with a simple design carved into it.

He scooped it up into his palm. It had formerly been in the ear of Lenju, the princess who had led the orc troops into sacrifice for the massive dark art that the emperor had demanded.

That was the only item of hers he could find. Neither she nor the three thousand orc soldiers who’d died with her had left behind a body—or even a piece of armor. The horrific spell cast by the dark mages guild had converted the orcs’ flesh and even their equipment into dark power, devouring them whole.

The chancellor of the guild, Dee Eye Ell, who’d carried out the cruel spell, and even the emperor, who’d ordered it, were no longer present.

Dee had perished in the deadly and beautiful wide-range counterattack of the Priestess of Light, and the emperor had flown south in pursuit of that priestess. He had not released Lilpilin from the order to stay put.

The three thousand surviving orcs could not defeat the Human Guardian Army and the Integrity Knights guarding the Eastern Gate. The desperate wish of the five races of darkness—the conquest of the fertile human realm—was over.

But in that case…why?

Why did Lilpilin’s lifelong friend Lenju and the three thousand orcs who were sacrificed along with her…Why did the two thousand orcs who fought in the battle at the gate have to die? What glory had their death brought the Dark Territory?

The answer was “nothing.” Not a single thing.

Five thousand of his people had died for an empty struggle. Just because they were uglier than humankind.

Lilpilin clutched the tiny earring to his chest and fell to his knees. Rage, helplessness, and overwhelming grief thrust through his heart, bubbling up in the form of tears and sobs…

Until there was a faint sound behind his back.

The orc chieftain leaped to his feet, spinning around to see a young human woman sprawled on her behind, grimacing with pain. Her hair was brilliant and golden, her skin was flawless, her armor shone, and her garments were the color of young shoots…She was clearly a resident of the Human Empire, not the dark lands.

Lilpilin’s initial reaction was not surprise at her sudden appearance, or anger at what humanity had done to him, but something closer to shame, a wish that she would not look at him.

She was just too beautiful for him to bear.

His first encounter with a young white Ium lady left him with a completely different impression than the tall, powerful, and darker-skinned women of the Dark Territory. Her body was so delicate that a mere touch might break off her limbs. Her hair shone brilliantly even in the weak sunlight, and the large eyes that gazed up at him in surprise were as pure as polished emeralds.

Lilpilin cursed his own senses, that he should find this small, fragile creature so beautiful that she made him quake and tremble. And he feared the recognition of disgust in those green pools.

“D…don’t look!! Don’t look at meeee!!” he screamed, covering his face with one fist and clenching the hilt of his sword with the other. Cut off her head before you hear her scream with horror, his instincts told him.

But in the moment that he went to lift his sword, he felt the earring in his left hand prick his palm. It felt to him that Lenju was telling him not to do it. And in that moment, he heard something he’d never expected to hear—not a scream, but words.

“Um…good afternoon. Or is it morning?”

The girl hopped to her feet, patted her short, flared trousers, and grinned at him. Lilpilin stared down at her from behind his concealing fist, blinking in disbelief.

There was no hatred in her eyes, nor disdain, nor even fear, it seemed. But to white Ium children, orcs from the Dark Territory were supposed to be people-eating monsters.

“Wh…why?” he stammered, at a loss. It was not the voice of one of the ten lords of darkness. “Why don’t you wun away? Why don’t you scweam? Aren’t you human?”

Now it was the girl’s turn to look startled and uncertain. “Why? I mean…”

In the manner of one pointing out such obvious facts as the earth being flat and the sky being red, she said, “Aren’t you human?”

For some reason, a deep jolt ran through his spine. The demi-human chieftain struggled for words but kept his greatsword clenched tightly. “H…human? Me? Dat’s widiculous, just look at me! I am an orc! Da being you white Iums call a pig-man!!”

“But you’re still human,” the girl repeated, putting her delicate hands to her waist. She spoke like a parent lecturing a child. “We’re here talking to each other, aren’t we? What more proof does there need to be?”

“What…? But………”

Lilpilin didn’t know how to argue against that. The confident girl with the green eyes said things that just did not fit into his lifetime of experience as an orc chieftain drowning in hatred for humanity and his inferiority complex toward them.

…If I can talk to them, I’m human?

Was the definition of human really that simple? Because the goblins and ogres and giants could all speak the common tongue, too. And with the orcs included, the four races had always been known as demi-humans or humanoids, a class strictly separated from humanity.

Lilpilin stood there in shock and confusion, gasping and snorting for breath. But the girl just pushed all of that aside with a simple “More importantly” and spun around to survey the area.

“…Where are we?”

Suguha Kirigaya, better known as Leafa, surmised that she had dropped down at a location far off from the initial login coordinates. She stared up at the baleful red sky overhead.

When she’d heard that The Soul Translator she was being given to use, STL #6, was still so new that they hadn’t removed the plastic shrink-wrap yet, she’d had a bad feeling in the back of her mind. Suguha would never use a brand-new shinai in a kendo competition, and she didn’t trust electronics when they were fresh out of the box. She had a very reliable streak of coming home with defective products.

Her login coordinates were supposed to be set to Asuna’s present location, the same as Sinon’s in STL #1 next to her. Given that they were nowhere to be seen, something must’ve gone wrong. But the blasted wasteland all around wasn’t empty—there was a humanoid with a round body and a piglike face nearby: an orc.

According to the color marker that functioned for only a short period after the initial dive, this was an orc, and not one of the enemy American VRMMO players. It was an artificial fluctlight of the Underworld, a true bottom-up artificial intelligence, as Yui described it.

When she’d been given an explanation of what the Underworlders really were, Leafa had sworn to herself that unless it was absolutely, unavoidably necessary, she would never draw her sword to harm them.

It only made sense. She couldn’t kill the people that her brother Kirito was trying to protect. If the artificial fluctlights died in this virtual world, their souls would be forever destroyed and never come back.

But now that she had a better look…

Leafa was used to playing in ALO, which boasted the finest graphics of any game found in The Seed Nexus, but the realism of the orc in her presence left her stunned. The movement and dampness of that large pink snout, the texture of the metal armor and leather cloak over its huge body, and most of all, the richness of expression and intelligence in its small black eyes—these things told her all she needed to know about the authenticity of the soul behind it all.

She tried asking the orc where they were, but for some reason, it looked away in seeming embarrassment and did not reply. Deciding that starting from a more formal position might be better, she switched to a different question.

“Um…what’s your name?”

The white Ium girl’s second question was simple enough that despite the orc chieftain’s extreme confusion, he answered it on instinct. Perhaps because, of all the things he’d been given in life, his name was the one thing he did not hate.

“I…I am Lilpilin.”

Immediately, he regretted it. His introduction brought to mind the first time he visited Obsidia Palace and introduced himself to the human knights and mages, only to be laughed off.

But the girl just grinned innocently again and repeated his name. “Lilpilin…that’s a wonderful name. I’m Leafa. It’s nice to meet you, Lilpilin.”

And once again, she gave him a shock: She extended her willowy arm in his direction.

He was familiar with handshakes, of course; orcs performed them on a daily basis. But he had never in his life heard of an orc and Ium formally shaking hands.

What in the world does this human want? Is it a trap? Or the work of some mage? Have I been placed under the effect of a bewitching art?

He stared hard at the little hand and growled. The girl waited for him for a good ten seconds before she finally lowered her arm in disappointment. He felt a prickle of pain in his chest at that, for some reason.

If he stood around talking to—or even just looking at—this girl, it was going to drive him crazy. Lilpilin had no desire to attack her anymore, so he clung to the simplest solution to this situation that did not involve violence instead.

“You…you awe a guard—no, a knight—of da human awmy. I will take you pwisonah, den. I’ll take you all da way to da empewah!”

She might appear young, but the girl’s armor and the long blade at her side were clearly not ordinary army issue. The way it gleamed with brilliant detail was clearly a step above even Lilpilin’s equipment.

But his threat did not seem to frighten the girl. She looked thoughtful and eventually tilted her shoulders to ask, “When you say ‘Emperor,’ you mean Vecta, the god of darkness, right?”

“D…dat’s wight.”

“All right. Then take me to the emperor,” she said, sticking her hands out together. He was confused at first, until he recognized that she was motioning not for a handshake, but for him to chain her up.

I don’t understand what she’s thinking…

Lilpilin removed a decorative rope from his waist sash and roughly tied it around the girl’s arms—though not very tight. Only after he held the other end and tugged on it did he recall that the emperor was no longer with the main body of the Dark Army.

If he stopped to take any further detail into account, his mind was going to catch on fire. If the emperor was absent, then that flippant dark knight who was his second-in-command, or Rengil, the head of the commerce guild, would be able to decide her fate.

He spun around and began to pull her along, not too roughly, but only got a few steps along when there was suddenly something like a black mist all around them. A nasty stench stung his nostrils. Soon Lilpilin could not even see, and he spun around in alarm.

“Wha…?!” came a yelp of alarm, which belonged to the girl named Leafa. Out of the corner of his eye, Lilpilin caught sight of an arm reaching through the thick darkness to grab Leafa’s dangling hair and violently yank her upward.

Then the owner of the arm came tearing through the veil to reveal herself.

A woman who should have been dead—Dee Eye Ell, chancellor of the dark mages guild—stood there with a sadistic smile on her blue lips.

Why can’t I catch up?

Commander Bercouli of the Integrity Knights felt equal measures of impatience and alarm.

He’d been in pursuit with three dragons for over two hours now. They’d flown over the forest where the Human Guardian Army was camped, over the round crater to the south of it, over the ruins with their eerie, tall statues, and even farther into the south of the Dark Territory, but there was no indication that he’d gotten any closer to the enemy. The dragon bearing Emperor Vecta and Bercouli’s prize pupil, Alice, was still just a tiny black dot on the horizon.

The emperor had the weight of two people dragging on a single dragon. But Bercouli had the trio of Hoshigami, Amayori, and Takiguri, which he rode in turns, minimizing the fatigue of the dragons. In theory, he ought to be catching up by now.

Why couldn’t he get any closer? Could the emperor control the dragon’s life by willpower alone?

That couldn’t be possible. Directly manipulating life was the greatest of forbidden arts, something that even the late Administrator could not do.

And he couldn’t possibly keep it flying indefinitely. The dragon would need to rest at least twice in order to reach the World’s End Altar at the southernmost tip of the Dark Territory. The same was true of Bercouli’s dragons. If they were going at the same speed, he would never close the gap.

Perhaps there was nothing to be done.

Bercouli could not use any ranged arts that could reach to the very horizon. If there was one thing that could break through this stalemate, it was…

The commander brushed the hilt of the sword on his left hip. It was cold, hard, and trusty. But he could sense that his sword was far from recovering all its life. The fatigue on the weapon from the Perfect Weapon Control art he’d used at the Eastern Gate was worse than he’d realized.

And the ultimate technique of the Time-Splitting Sword that Bercouli was considering would cost a vast amount of the weapon’s life.

He could use it only once. It would have to be wielded with such accuracy that it could split the eye of a needle.

Bercouli patted Takiguri on the neck and leaped over to Hoshigami nearby. His longtime partner was so trustworthy he did not need to hold the reins to commune with the dragon. It carefully adjusted altitude automatically.

His aim was at a black dot on the distant horizon the size of a grain of sand. He wanted to aim at the emperor himself, but without being able to visually identify him, the threat of missing was too great. Instead, he focused his entire mind on the one detail he could just barely make out: the flapping wing of the black dragon.

Bercouli stood tall in the saddle. His right hand moved slowly and gracefully, pulling his longsword, which was entirely made of one material, from its well-used sheath.

He took a stance with his right side forward and extended the steel blade, which glowed with a faint light; he had activated its Memory Release art without a spoken command. The sword warped like a heat haze and left behind an unbroken afterimage as the dragon soared forward.

He spoke through gritted teeth, uttering a brief apology to the innocent dragon he was about to attack. Then his pale-blue eyes narrowed, and the oldest knight in the world uttered a brief but powerful command.

“Time-Splitting Sword—Uragiri!!”

He swung the blade downward, heavily but with tremendous speed. The blue afterimages traced the path of the sword, every bit of their length shining, before going out.

In the far distant sky, the left wing of the black dragon carrying Emperor Vecta silently separated from its shoulder joint.

“The smell…This smell…! So strong, the sweet scent of life,” croaked Dee Eye Ell as she lifted the human girl up by the hair.

He should have hated the dark mage more than hatred itself, but Lilpilin found himself utterly at a loss in this situation.

Her tanned skin, once gleaming with perfumed oils, and her thick, wavy black hair were both in a bedraggled state now. Wounds that oozed blood crossed every bit of her skin, like she’d been slashed with countless knives. With each movement, the lacerations pulled apart, sending more fresh blood spurting out. But the dark mist around the mage gathered around her wounds and began to plug them, hissing with an unpleasant stink.

The source of the mist was a small leather sack hanging from her waist. Every now and then, an insectoid creature popped its head out of the opening and belched out a healthy gout of the dark mist. This was clearly some dark art that was meant to minimize her loss of life.

Lilpilin’s snout crinkled in disgust. Dee shot him a look, and the edges of her mouth curled upward. “This is quite a wonderful prize. You have done well, pig. I will reward you with a bit of entertainment,” she croaked.

Dee stuck the clawlike fingers of her right hand down the collar of the hanging, anguished girl. Instantly, she ripped loose the silver armor and pale-green top she wore underneath it.

The girl squirmed even more as her blindingly pale skin was exposed. Dee’s smile was sadistic, and she hissed with laughter.

“Is this your first time seeing the body of a human woman? Does a pig find this tempting? Well, the fun part is only getting started…”

Suddenly, her fingers wriggled as though the bones were gone. They were no longer fingers, in fact, but had the appearance of long wormlike things. Tiny mouths lined with sharp teeth opened at the ends of them, and they flopped and writhed in an unpleasant manner.

“Here we go…!!” shouted Dee.

The five worm things stretched and grew to dozens of times their length and wrapped around the girl’s body. With her bound and immobile, the ends of the creatures reared back and jammed their heads into her flesh to bite down.

“Aaaah!!”

Blood squirted from the bites as the girl named Leafa shrieked, her green eyes bulging. She tried to brush off the worms, to yank them free, but her arms were tied down to her body, and Lilpilin’s decorative rope was still tied around her wrists.

At first, it looked like the blood loss from the five bites was over in an instant. But Lilpilin intuited that the worm things connected to Dee’s hand were actually drinking the blood instead.

The dark mage craned back her head and cried out, “System Call!! Transfer Human Unit Durability to Self!!”

A shining-blue glow appeared at the girl’s injuries. It traveled through the long worms, marking the flow of blood, and made its way up into Dee’s arm. The girl’s anguish grew even more stark, and her delicate body thrashed backward so hard that it seemed ready to break in half.

“Ahhh…Incredible…It is incredible!! How rich…how sweet!!” The screeching voice pierced Lilpilin’s eardrums.

The pain of it caused the orc chieftain to return to his senses. He yelped, “Wh-what awe you doing?! Dat girl is my pwisonah!! I will take her to dah empewah!!”

“Silence, swine!!” shrieked Dee, her eyes bloodshot and mad. “Have you forgotten that His Majesty placed overall command in my hands?! My will is the emperor’s will!! My orders are the emperor’s orders!!”

The breath caught in Lilpilin’s throat. He wanted to argue that the military operation had long ago failed to be; the words were right there. But the emperor had vanished without leaving any newer orders. So there was no evidence for Lilpilin to overturn Dee’s claim that all orders were still valid and active.

As Lilpilin watched helplessly, the struggles of the human girl grew noticeably weaker. Dee’s wounds, meanwhile, began to close and quickly heal.

“Guh…ggrh…,” he grunted through gritted tusks. The sight of the girl with the life being sucked from her overlapped with the lasting image of the princess knight who’d given her life in sacrifice.

The light was going out of the girl’s eyes. The paleness of her skin was turning sallow, and her arms dangled limply at her sides. But Dee’s finger worms continued to wriggle and writhe, determined to suck out every last drop of blood.

She was going to die. His precious prisoner.

The very first human to look at him without fear or disdain.

Just then, Lilpilin’s eyes bulged with shock. The ground…the blackened, sootlike earth of the Dark Territory, began to glow bright green beneath the dangling girl.

Soft, fresh shoots erupted from the ground—something that should have been possible only in extremely limited regions—and bloomed tiny flowers of many colors. Fragrant, healing scent exuded from them, and even the bloodred sunlight changed to a gentle, milky white.

The rich blooming of life from the little mound of grass swirled upward and into the body of the girl. Her pale skin began to flush with blood again, and her eyes went from dazed to bright.

The green on the ground then vanished, and the sun returned to its usual color, telling Lilpilin intuitively that the girl’s life was fully restored. Strangely, relief flooded into his breast, though he shouldn’t have felt anything like that.

The feeling was brief.

“Ohhh, yes…It is surging…Overflowing again!!” screamed Dee in her awful voice. She would’ve already been healed by now. Dee let go of the girl’s hair and turned the fingers of that hand into more of the hideous worm things.

With more wet smacks, the five new tentacles stabbed into the girl’s skin.

“…Aaaah…!!”

Her cry was drowned out by a gale of Dee’s laughter.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Aaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! It’s mine…!! This is all miiiine!!”

I have to endure.

Neither in real life nor in ALO had Leafa ever felt such mind-numbing pain. All she could do was repeat the mantra to herself.

She’d gotten an explanation of the unique abilities of Super-Account 03, Terraria, the Earth Goddess, before she dived. She had Unlimited Automatic Recovery, which absorbed energy from a wide range around the user automatically and could allow her to heal the durability of herself and other people and objects. With that ability, on top of her massive total of hit points, Higa assured her that it was virtually impossible for her to die by means of HP loss.

That was why Leafa prioritized encountering Emperor Vecta, even risking the danger of becoming a prisoner, and why she swore to herself that she would never draw her sword on the Underworlders.

The woman who was constricting Leafa and inflicting agony upon her, like Lilpilin, was an Underworlder—an artificial fluctlight. If she sliced the woman with her sword, her soul would be forever destroyed. She couldn’t fight the woman without knowing why she was injured and why she wanted to be healed this way.

On the other hand…the pain of having her life sucked away was overwhelming, so much so that she didn’t have room to feel the shame of most of her top being ripped away.

Was this really just a virtual sensation, with no relation to anything the real body felt?

“…Stop.”

Lilpilin did not initially recognize that the word was coming from his own mouth.

But then the action repeated itself clearer, the movement of his mouth and vibration of his vocal cords unmistakable.

“Stop!”

Dee’s pupils were contracted to the size of the eye of a needle. She glared at him balefully. The orc chieftain withstood the rising chill from deep in his gut and continued, “You have alweady wecovered all of yoah life. You have no need to continue sucking da life fwom dat Ium!”

“You dare…order me…?” Dee lilted, like an off-kilter lullaby. Her ten tentacles spasmed, squeezing the girl’s flesh and continuing their blood feast. The dark mage’s wounds were entirely healed now, and her skin was shiny and oily again. Even her hair was growing back with more fullness than before.

In fact, the excess of life flowing through her was dispersing out into the air in the form of blue lights. But Dee showed no sign of undoing her wicked bondage.

“I warned you, pig. This prisoner is mine now. I can suck as much life from her as I want. I can defile her right before your eyes or decide to gut her right here and now, and you have no say in the matter.”

She chuckled, the laughter muffled deep in her throat.

“Hmm…but on the other hand, you did find her first. I suppose I could give you something in return…but only if you strip naked first.”

“Wh…what do you mean…?”

“From the moment I first saw you, that fanciful armor and cloak of yours made me sick. What kind of a pig walks around like he’s a person? Take it all off and run around snorting on all fours, and maybe I’ll think about giving the girl back to you.”

Zirnk.

Red light flickered on the right side of his vision. He felt a deep, deep pain in the middle of his head, like a steel needle had been jabbed all the way through his right eye.

What kind of a pig…

…like he’s a person?

Dee’s words repeated in his mind, only to be followed by the girl named Leafa’s.

You’re still human.

What more proof does there need to be?

He couldn’t let Dee kill her. He didn’t want Dee to kill her. And to do that…to prevent that…

Lilpilin’s right hand moved to the clasp of his leather cloak. He ripped it loose from his shoulders.

The cloak fell to the ground, and he reached for his armor’s leather straps next. But then came a faint voice:

“…Stop.”

He looked up with a start, directly into Leafa’s eyes.

Those emerald pools, tearful with pain, shook from side to side.

“I…I’m fine. Don’t…do…”

She never finished. Dee leaned over and gave the girl’s cheek a soft bite.

“If you spout any more of that nonsense, I’m going to chew off your sweet little face. Don’t ruin our entertainment. And what are you doing, pig? Off with your armor. Or has the naked human form gotten you all excited?”

She cackled and giggled.

Lilpilin’s hand shook on the armor’s straps. The pain in his right eye was not going away at all. But it was nothing compared to the fury and humiliation that raged within his rib cage.

“I…I am…I am…”

Abruptly, he felt something burst from his eyes and drip down his cheeks. The droplets trickling down the left cheek were clear, but the ones on the right were crimson. His hand dropped from the armor strap to the sword at his left side.

“I am human!!” he shouted, right as the worst pain yet lanced through his eye, and the organ burst from the inside.

Through his reduced sight, Lilpilin kept a close watch on Dee. The mage’s sadistic smile faded, and her jaw dropped in horror.

Lilpilin hurtled a quick-draw slash right at Dee’s unguarded legs. But since he attacked in the moments just after he lost half of his eyesight, he failed to judge the distance correctly.

The tip of the sword only grazed Dee’s right shin, and Lilpilin lost his balance, toppling shoulder-first into the ground. Through his upturned eye, he saw Dee Eye Ell’s mouth curl into an expression of fury and disgust.

“You stinking hog…How dare you turn your sword on me…!”

She tossed the girl behind her and raised her hands. The ten appendages rang like metal and instantly went from tentacles to shining black blades.

“I’ll carve you into chunks of meat, mix you with the hay, and feed you to the boars!!”

The orc chief waited for the array of blades to come down on him.

Tup.

Thump.

Two quiet sounds happened nearly simultaneously. Dee froze in place.

The mage’s arms separated from her body just below the shoulders and fell heavily to the ground, a fact that Lilpilin only hazily registered.

Dee looked just as shocked as anyone else. Blood spurted and gushed from her shoulders as she slowly turned to look behind her.

Lilpilin saw the figure of Leafa shining brightly. Her body was so slender and fragile that none of it resembled muscle, but she was in the follow-through stance of swinging a truly massive and long sword. Her wrists were still bound together, but it was clear that she was the one who had severed Dee’s arms.

The dark mage’s head shook in utter disbelief. “A human…cutting a human…to save a pig…?” she rasped.

“No,” Leafa explained. “I’m cutting evil to save a person.” And with a smooth, practiced movement, she raised the long blade into a high position.

Shwip.

She slashed the woman from a distance that did not seem possible. It was…beautiful.

There was no excess effort anywhere from her fingers to her toes, but the speed of the strike was breathtaking. It was the ultimate demonstration of experienced precision.

Lilpilin’s vision flooded with tears again, this time of joyful emotion, as the body of Dee Eye Ell, the greatest living dark mage and highest member of the remaining ten lords, split straight down the middle without a sound.