The unvarnished truth was the cruelest weapon of all.
As Cardinal had predicted, half of the Integrity Knights could not withstand it. Their Fluctlights came close to collapsing.
If Cardinal had not intervened and erased their memories of the revelation, their souls truly would have shattered, killing them.
After hearing the full truth, Alice clenched her fists so tightly that her fingernails nearly tore into her palms.
The world in which she had lived for more than a decade was nothing more than a virtual world created by people outside it.
Yet Alice was not angry because her world was supposedly false.
To her, this world was real.
Her anger came from the fact that it had been created for an experiment.
That experiment was called the Final Load Test.
The Dark Territory would invade the Human Empire, triggering a massive war deliberately orchestrated by people in the real world.
They had allowed the inhabitants of the Dark Territory to run rampant. They had even designed their land to be barren, ensuring that it would develop into a society ruled by strength above all else.
It was easy to imagine what kind of people would grow up in such an environment.
By unleashing them upon the Human Empire and creating an enormous war, the observers hoped to produce a true artificial intelligence.
In other words, until a genuine AI emerged, the people of this world were not considered truly emotional human beings by those in the real world.
They were merely programmed entities.
But that was impossible!
To Alice, everyone here possessed genuine emotions. Their personalities, words, and actions were not simply predetermined by some unseen design.
"What do we do now?" Deusolbert Synthesis Seven asked grimly. "Do we return immediately and kill the Highest Minister, Administrator?"
He was one of the knights who had endured the truth without collapsing.
As he spoke, murderous intent flickered in his eyes.
He had experienced the same dream many times—a small hand wearing a silver ring reaching out to awaken him.
The dream had always troubled him.
Whenever he recalled it, a suffocating ache filled his chest and his right eye began to hurt.
No matter how hard he tried, he had never been able to remember who that hand belonged to.
Now, the other Highest Minister had revealed the truth.
It belonged to his wife.
Administrator had stolen every memory Deusolbert possessed of her.
Now, he desperately wanted those memories back.
He also wanted to tear Administrator apart with his own hands.
"With our current strength, defeating Quinella should be possible," Cardinal said gravely. "The problem is that we don't know how far she has progressed with a certain Sacred Art. If cornered, she may decide to destroy everything along with herself."
According to the Creator who had entered from the outside world, Quinella was preparing an especially horrifying Sacred Art.
It would transform the people of the Human Empire directly into monstrous swords.
The art had originally been devised as a last resort against an invasion from the Dark Territory. Quinella had consumed vast quantities of the world's experience and concentrated much of what remained within the Integrity Knights.
Even then, the Integrity Knight Order alone could not defeat the full army of the Dark Territory.
No one had expected Quinella to secretly develop an art so utterly deranged.
They needed to discover how close she was to completing it.
Better yet, they needed to kill her in a single strike before she had any chance to activate it.
Unfortunately, Quinella was exceptionally cautious. Convincing her to appear and confront them directly would not be easy.
"Cardinal, I need your help with an experiment."
After Cardinal finished explaining the truth and the Creator supplemented her account with several additional possibilities, Kain suddenly spoke.
"Of course. What kind of experiment?"
"Just as Quinella intends to invade another person's Fluctlight and take control of it, I want you to invade me."
If the experiment succeeded, capturing Quinella would become extraordinarily easy.
She might even walk willingly into their trap.
The idea had come to Kain after witnessing 6O's experiment.
That experiment could now be considered a success. Strea had successfully entered his consciousness, although his nature as an Untouchable had nearly absorbed her.
Fortunately, Kain had stopped the rotation within his inner space in time.
Strea's conscious data—her spiritual form—remained intact within the subspace deep inside his soul instead of being assimilated.
In fact, the Strea who now existed inside his soul resembled a spiritual projection within that subspace.
Through that projection, Kain could perceive Strea's physical body in the real world.
Of course, her "body" was currently nothing more than a machine. Her true android body had not yet been completed.
Returning to the experiment, Kain needed Cardinal's cooperation because he wanted her to project her consciousness into his inner subspace as well.
However, Cardinal could not simply use Quinella's method of intrusion.
To Cardinal, Kain was an entirely different system. She had no idea how to interface with him, much less install herself within his consciousness.
That was why Strea would serve as the bridge between them.
Kain would allow Strea and Cardinal to establish a connection. Strea would function as an emulator, and Cardinal would install herself within that emulator, allowing her program to operate inside Kain's system.
It was similar to how software designed for an Android phone could not be installed directly on a computer. Once an Android emulator was installed on that computer, however, it could run Android applications.
Entering his consciousness this way would also be comparatively safe.
When Strea entered from the outside world, she had not directly contacted Kain's consciousness. She had first passed through the protective layer of his physical body.
But they were currently inside a virtual world.
That physical barrier did not exist here.
If Cardinal directly invaded Kain's consciousness, her own mind would instantly collapse.
Kain had already witnessed such a result in the Dark Territory. The leader of the Dark Arts Guild had attempted to directly touch his consciousness, and her soul had shattered in an instant.
It had not even been a matter of whether Kain chose to devour her.
Before he could pull her into the subspace within his soul, her consciousness had struck his like an egg against a stone and destroyed itself.
There had been nothing he could do.
To prevent the same thing from happening to Cardinal, Strea needed to act as an intermediary between them—an emulator in which Cardinal could safely install herself.
If the experiment succeeded, they could carry out their plan against Quinella.
The moment she took the bait, they could eliminate her with almost no effort.
"Huh?"
Cardinal stared at him blankly.
This experiment was nothing like what she had expected.
A moment later, Kain opened his hand.
A tiny figure appeared in his palm.
The miniature girl bounced toward Cardinal, forcing her to scramble before finally catching her.
Upon closer inspection, Cardinal noticed an almost invisible thread extending from the tiny girl's lower back to Kain's body.
"Greetings, my compatriot. I am Strea."
Cardinal froze.
Then she felt something resembling a faint electrical current flowing through her hands.
It was a familiar form of program synchronization.
There was no need for spoken conversation. Through direct data transfer, they could exchange information and understand each other far more quickly.
So that was how it was.
Strea's origins bore a remarkable resemblance to Cardinal's own.
She had originally been an operational program under the Cardinal System of another world called SAO. Now, she too had developed into a genuine artificial intelligence.
Through their connection, Cardinal learned what Strea intended and understood the Creator's plan.
Strictly speaking, Kain was not Cardinal's true creator.
As for the people who had actually created this world, they were now under his control.
This man named Kain genuinely intended to preserve their world. He harbored no apparent malice toward its inhabitants.
Then Cardinal began rewriting herself so that she could be installed within him.
She needed to make it appear as though she had successfully transferred her Fluctlight into Kain's body.
Once inside, she would seemingly be able to see the real world through his senses.
It would even appear that she could seize control of his body whenever she wished, allowing her to escape this world and enter reality.
(End of Chapter)
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