Prologue III: Stellar Year 582

"This is Blue Rose 73. I have confirmed atmospheric escape. Transitioning to

interstellar cruising speed," said Integrity Pilot Stica Schtrinen into the voice

transmitter near her mouth, pushing the control rod forward with her left hand.

The dragoncraft's silvery form shuddered. Its widespread wings began to

shine a faint blue. It was collecting the scarce resources of the vacuum of space

and transferring them to the drive mechanism.

The eternal-heat elements locked in the core of the mechanism screamed in

response, sending white flames from the primary thrust apertures on either

side of the craft's long tail. She felt her body being pressed back against the

pilot seat. The sensation of powerful acceleration was something she couldn't

experience within the planet's atmosphere, and it put a smile on her face.

"Blue Rose 74, affirmative," came a brief response from the transmitter. She

looked at the auxiliary visual board on the right. Her number two was following

to her side, jets burning bright.

The pilot of the second craft had been Stica's partner since they'd been

ordained together, Integrity Pilot Laurannei Arabel. She was silent most of the

time, and when piloting her dragoncraft, she was even less chatty.

But even Stica's addiction to speed paled in comparison to hers. Stica

grimaced and warned her, "You're going too fast, Laura."

"You're too slow, Sti."

Oh yeah?

The rules of the Underworld Space Force were absolute, but even their drill

instructor couldn't see them out beyond the atmosphere. And it was a whole

three-hour journey to reach the companion star of Admina. That meant there

was room for a little error.

Stica gave the control rod another push, pulling away from the second craft

just a tiny bit. She leaned back in her seat, grinning.

When her eyes drifted upward, she caught sight of the detailed art relief on

the canopy of the cramped pilot's chamber.

Two vertical swords, white and black. Blue roses and golden osmanthus

flowers entwined around them. The insignia of the Star King, a figure now

turning into legend.

Thirty years had passed since the Star King and Queen left their palace of

Central Cathedral on the main star, Cardina.

Stica and Laurannei were only fifteen years old, and four years into their

service as Integrity Pilots, so they never had the chance for a royal audience.

But they'd grown up on the stories their mothers, also pilots, had told them

about the royal couple. And those mothers had heard plenty of stories from

theirs, and so on.

The Schtrinen and Arabel families had served as Royal Pilots—originally called

"knights"—for all two hundred years of the Star King's long reign. Seven

generations ago, the knights Tiese Schtrinen and Ronie Arabel protected the

Star King before he was king, and they achieved great deeds in the battle

against the four emperors who sought power on Cardina's First Continent. The

imperial families and higher nobles' corrupt and abusive power was stripped

from them, and the common people enslaved on their private property were

freed.

After that, the king developed the first dragoncraft and used it to fly over the

Wall at the End of the World, which surrounded the continent and rose all the

way to the edge of the atmosphere.

In the uncharted lands he found there, the king patiently negotiated with the

ancient god-beasts and occasionally defeated them in singular battle, taking

and developing their fertile lands, then giving them over to the goblins and orcs,

who had suffered prejudices under the label of "demi-humans," so that they

could have their own nations.

Once the king had traveled all of Cardina, he set his sights on the endless

universe above.

The dragoncraft were improved again and again, until they were capable of

leaving the atmosphere altogether. He found the companion planet that

orbited Solus with Cardina, and he named it Admina.

Then he created large interstellar dragoncraft capable of undertaking regular

routes, established the first colony city on Admina, and was urged to take on

the role of the Underworld's first Star King.

Under the rule of the king and queen, who possessed eternal life without

aging, the two stars prospered—and would do so for eternity, all thought. But

one day, the two of them left behind a prophecy and entered a long sleep.

Thirty years ago, without ever returning to face their people, they vanished

from the world.

Since then, governing had been conducted by a council of representatives

from the military and civilians. With no enemy to fight at this point, the ground

force and the space force were shrinking, but in accordance with the king's

prophecy, pilots underwent the same fierce training they always had since

ancient days.

This was the king's last message:

One day, the gate to the real world will open again. When it does, a great

upheaval will come to both worlds.

Stica couldn't grasp this event in practical terms, but it was said that when the

gate to the other world was opened, it would usher in a time when the

continued existence of the Underworld itself would come into flux. They could

not just hope for coexistence and brotherly love. They would have to prove

their strength in order to maintain their pride and independence. Otherwise,

the five human races of man, giant, goblin, orc, and ogre would suffer a tragedy

even greater than the Otherworld War of two centuries past.

But Stica was not afraid.

No matter what world she might visit and what age might arrive, she would

fight valiantly as long as she had the wings of her dragoncraft.

I'm a member of the proud Integrity Pilots, maintainers of a tradition

stretching back to the days of creation, she thought, looking up at the insignia

on the roof again.

Without warning, red blazed on the bottom of the main visual board. Both a

written message and an alarm indicated the detection of an element

agglomeration of abnormal scale.

"Wh-what?!" she yelped, sitting up again.

Over the voice transmitter, she heard Laurannei say nervously, "Blue Rose 74,

detecting the approach of an ultra-life-form of darkness! Element density…

twenty-seven thousand?!"

"It's the mythic spacebeast…the Abyssal Horror…"

Even as she spoke its name in the sacred tongue, an empty darkness covered

the right edge of the main visual board, like a pot of ink had been dropped

there.

Of all the known spacebeasts, the Abyssal Horror was the most dangerous. It

was over two hundred mels at its largest, with its twelve huge tentacles fully

extended from its spherical body. That was twenty times the size of a singleseat fighter dragon.

Its vast body was made entirely of high-density darkness elements, meaning

that it shrugged off essentially all types of attacks. The reason it was so

dangerous was something else, however.

Unlike many of the other god-beasts, the Abyssal Horror refused to engage in

any communication with humans. It seemed to run solely on the impulse to

destroy and slaughter. When it spotted any dragoncraft on an interstellar

journey, it would pursue them directly until it devoured them.

The Star King was said to have treated all the god-beasts with respect—but

when he heard reports of the large passenger dragoncraft destroyed on the

way to Admina, he attempted to destroy this particular creature. But even the

king, whose powers were greater than an entire army's, could not completely

destroy the Abyssal Horror.

Through careful observation, they learned that the spacebeast orbited

between the two planets on a fixed speed and trajectory. The best they could

do to minimize its threat was to restrict interstellar flight so that they could

safely avoid its path.

Naturally, Stica and Laurannei had taken off from Cardina at a time that the

spacebeast would have been on the far side of Admina. It didn't make sense.

"Why…? It's appearing too early…," Stica murmured, hands trembling on the

control rod. She recovered her spirit quickly, however, and shouted into the

transmitter, "Left turn, one-eighty degrees, then withdraw at full speed!

Retreating to Cardina's atmosphere!"

"Affirmative!!" Laurannei replied, a spike of nerves in her voice.

Stica steered the craft left and pulled the rod as far back as she could. White

flames shot from the stabilizing thrust apertures, pressing her body so heavily

into the seat that she could barely breathe. The stars in the visual boards

blurred from points into lines toward the bottom right.

When the turn was complete, the main visual board featured the blue shine

of the planet Cardina, which she'd left less than an hour before. It felt close

enough that she could reach out and grab it yet devastatingly far away.

She put on maximum acceleration, praying. The eternal-heat elements

screamed and roared.

But the speedometer's needle came to a stop five whole pips short of its

maximum value. The Abyssal Horror was taking resources from such a vast

range that the resource-collection tanks in the dragoncraft's wings couldn't

reach their maximum potential.

The rear view on the auxiliary vision board made it clear that the spacebeast's

black form was much larger than before. She could even see its writhing

tentacled appendages already.

Soon the ends of two especially long arms began to glow a faint bluish purple.

"Sti, it's going into attack position!" advised her second.

She acted instantly. "I see it, too! Deploying rear light shield!!"

She hit one of the buttons on the control board to her left. The craft's pelvic

armor opened with a series of clunks. Stica took a deep breath and focused.

"System Call! Generate Luminous Element!!"

Through the conducting channels within the control rod in her hands, ten light

elements were shot out of the craft's wings into space. They followed Stica's

mental command, transforming into a circular defensive wall.

Right then, the spacebeast's arms hurtled past the bright, purplish light they

were harboring. With a shriek like tearing metal, the blasts of darkness roared

through empty space.

Just three seconds later, they made contact with the light walls.

"Aaaah!!" screamed Stica when the dragoncraft shuddered with the impact.

She could hear Laurannei screaming through the voice transmitter, too.

The two blasts broke through the light shield Stica had deployed as though it

were paper, tearing deep into the rear side armor of the craft. Instantly, her

instruments glowed red. Something went wrong with the resource conducting

channels, and her speed slowed noticeably.

Through the auxiliary vision board, she sensed the Abyssal Horror, which was

no more than an amorphous blot of darkness, somehow leer at her.

On the auxiliary vision board, the second craft was missing a wing and rapidly

dropping in speed. "Laura! Laura!!" she shouted, and she was relieved to hear a

response.

"…It's all right. I'm fine. But…she won't fly anymore…"

"We won't have any choice but to eject out of the crafts. We'll have to find a

way to get back to Cardina with just the thrusters on our pilot suits…"

"I can't! I mean…I won't! I can't leave her behind!!" shouted Laurannei. Stica

couldn't tell her anything to the contrary.

A dragoncraft was not just a steel construction the pilot sat inside. It was your

one and only partner, a piece of your heart. Just like the flying dragons that the

Integrity Knights of the distant past were said to ride.

"…No. No, I suppose not," Stica murmured, carefully squeezing her control

rod. She took a deep breath, smiled, and said, "Then let's fight to the end. Make

another turn, then fire main cannons at maximum power. Will that suffice,

Laura?"

"…Affirmative."

Her last transmission was short and brusque, just like she always was.

Still smiling, Stica pulled back on the rod, leading her wounded dragon into

another one-eighty turn. The main visual board displayed the massive oncoming

beast. Eight of its writhing tentacles were glowing with its next round of blasts

now.

Ooooooooohng, the Abyssal Horror roared. Or perhaps it was laughing.

At least let me give it a good stinging as I die. Anything to prolong the time

until it attacks this route again, Stica thought, pushing the red button on top of

the rod halfway in.

The main cannon on the tip of the dragoncraft clanked into position. Normally

she would generate whatever the most effective element was for the target,

but since the Abyssal Horror's bodily form was thin at best, even its opposite

element of light would do very little damage.

Instead, she decided to go with a frost-element attack, her best type.

The dragoncraft's jaws glowed a clear blue. She glanced over at the other

craft—its cannon was glowing red. Laurannei had chosen heat elements.

The spacebeast was just a thousand mels away now. It stretched out its eight

tentacles, preparing to attack.

Stica inhaled, ready to give the command to fire. But instead…

"W-wait, Sti!! What's that…?!" Laurannei gasped into her right ear.

What could it possibly be now? she wondered.

But then Stica saw it, too.

A shooting star.

Just above the main visual board, a shining white light was approaching at

incredible speed.

For an instant, she thought it was a dragoncraft. But she ruled that out right

away. It was much too small. It was less than two mels, only the size of a human

being…

In fact, it was a human being.

What she'd thought was a star was the shine of a spherical wall of light

elements. On the inside, she could clearly make out a black shadow in the shape

of a person.

The figure came to a stop about a hundred mels in front of the two

dragoncraft. At nearly the same moment, the Abyssal Horror bellowed and

unleashed eight light blasts.

Before she could even grasp the shock of seeking an unprotected person in

the freezing chill of outer space, Stica was shouting at them. "What are you

doing?! Hurry—get away!!"

But the person did not budge at all.

The end of their long coat flapped violently as they remained stationary, arms

crossed boldly. That thin defensive wall was going to be less useful than wet

paper against the Abyssal Horror's blasts. Stica could already imagine the figure

transforming into a spray of blood and flesh as soon as it made contact with the

roaring purple blasts.

"Run awaaaaay!!"

"Watch out!!" she and Laurannei shouted together.

Eight bursts of purple light roared closer, each one nearly three mels in size.

They stopped in the middle of nothing, as if colliding with an invisible wall and

bouncing off in random directions.

Space shook.

Before Stica's stunned eyes, the stars seemed to waver, like the surface of a

pond struck to produce ripples. The shock wave reached her dragoncraft,

rumbling and vibrating it. Speechless, she glanced at the little gauge on the right

end of the main visual board. It had instantly shot all the way to its top.

"No way…Th-that's impossible…"

Stica had never seen the Incarnameter swing as much as 20 percent at a time.

With fear in her voice, Laurannei said, "I don't believe it…Such incredible

Incarnate strength…As though the entire universe is shaking…"

But there was no denying what was happening before them. The small,

unprotected human being, without an elemental wall, used his Incarnate power

—the greatest technique of the Integrity Knights of yore—to deflect the

spacebeast's attack.

Ooooooooooooh…, roared the Abyssal Horror in the distance. But was it in

anger or in fear?

The beast seemed to sense that its remote darkness blasts would not work, so

it began to charge, thrusting its multitude of appendages forward.

The small figure reached his arms behind his back and pulled loose the two

longswords that were equipped there.

"He's not going to fight it…with swords, is he?!" Stica gasped, leaning forward

and placing her hands on the vision board.

The Abyssal Horror was over two hundred mels in size. And its body was an

amalgamation of darkness without form. No little sliver of metal less than a mel

long could do anything to a monster like that.

But the mysterious swordsman calmly, easily pointed the white sword in his

left hand toward the mammoth creature.

He shouted something.

Through the vacuum of space and the thick armor of the dragoncraft, Stica

somehow heard his voice loud and clear.

"Release Recollection!!"

A bright light flashed, covering her main vision board. When she could see

again a moment later, there were many beams of light shooting from the

swordsman's blade toward the monster.

They looked as tiny as threads compared to the huge spacebeast, but as they

pierced through and tangled around its shadowy form, the creature clearly

began to lose speed. The twelve appendages writhing on their own stiffened—

as though they were freezing solid.

But that wasn't possible. The Abyssal Horror was designed to thrive in the

ultra-cold region of outer space. There couldn't possibly be any chill colder than

that.

Stica's shock didn't last long, however; Laurannei's voice in her ear

obliterated it.

"That technique…isn't that a Perfect Weapon Control art…? No, a Memory

Release art…?"

"What…? Only Supreme Integrity Pilots should be able to use that!"

"But…I can't see how it could be anything else…"

A third roar from the spacebeast cut them off.

Awooooooooh!!

Its tied-up body trembled, and three new tentacle arms appeared. They

became like great spears of night, bearing down on the mysterious swordsman.

But the man remained calm and composed, drawing his right-hand sword this

time.

Again, he shouted, "Release Recollection!!"

The blade erupted with dense darkness, deeper and heavier than that of the

spacebeast's arms. A preposterously huge blade over fifty mels long met the

three appendages. When the two sides made contact, there was another shock

wave, which seemed powerful enough to bend space itself. The dragoncraft

rocked, and purplish lights crawled about in empty space, lighting up the vision

boards.

Stica could no longer put her shock into words.

There were only seven Supreme Integrity Pilots, and this man was using their

greatest power—multiple times at once. Not even a fleet of destroyer craft

could handle the Abyssal Horror's full power, and he was handling it all—just a

single man.

Even her own parents back in Centoria wouldn't believe her if she told them

about this swordsman.

But the true shock was yet to come.

"Sti!! There's a…another person!!"

Stica looked around until she saw, coming from the same direction that the

mysterious dual swordsman had come from, another human figure arriving.

This one was smaller. Through the defensive layer of light elements, she could

see long hair and a skirt. In her right hand was an incredibly delicate-looking

rapier.

The swordswoman raised her arm—then swung it down to point forward.

A rainbow aurora appeared in the blackness of space, flickering and wavering

in beautiful fashion. There was also a very strange sound that accompanied it,

like a chorus of countless voices singing at once.

Laaaaaaaaaaa!

The needle on the Incarnameter rattled and vibrated at its upper end.

A star appeared.

More accurately, a truly massive meteor came out of nowhere, passing just

overhead with fire wreathing its surface.

Any dwarf planets that had existed between Cardina and Admina had been

obliterated decades ago. But the sense of gravity that shook the entire

dragoncraft could not possibly be an illusion.

The Abyssal Horror roared, sensing the huge rock plummeting toward it. It

generated two more new appendages, holding them out to catch the satellite.

The impact was silent.

The tip of the burning meteor instantly obliterated the spacebeast's arms and

sank easily into the center of its enormous body.

The beast that was an agglomeration of condensed darkness turned to dust in

a single blow.

Ooooooooooooo...

Its death scream overlapped with the explosion of the meteor; the

combination rattled across the universe. Stica's eyes stung at the sight of

resources exploding outward, from white to red to purple.

"D…did they beat…that monster...?" she whispered, her voice trembling.

But…

"Oh…no! Not yet!!"

Her second craft pilot always seemed to keep her cool and spot things a

moment before Stica did.

The fragments of the Abyssal Horror, which had appeared to be obliterated

and burned into nothing by the explosion, were now moving. Each one was only

a portion of a single mel in size, tiny pieces of the original whole. They wriggled

and wandered away like a swarm of flies.

According to the records, the Star King had pushed the beast to this point,

too.

But he was unable to eradicate all the thousands of pieces of the Abyssal

Horror as they escaped. So the beast fled to the ends of the universe to escape

until it could heal its wounds and attack the stellar route again.

This was only going to be a repeat of that legend.

"No…you can't let it get away!! You have to burn all those things!!" Stica

found herself shouting.

But the dual swordsman and the fencer did not seem capable of moving yet.

And no wonder, after the tremendous exhibition of Incarnation they'd just

managed.

The shards of the Abyssal Horror squirmed away, seemingly mocking the

humans.

And yet—suddenly the swarm of flies scattered. They buzzed and fled,

disjointed, all in a panic.

Stica held her breath and touched the main vision board, magnifying its

image.

She saw golden light.

Something was there, shining bright and pure like a tiny Solus. She magnified

it further.

"...A person..."

Yet another swordswoman.

Hair like flowing gold. Armor of the same color. A brilliant-white skirt. And

eyes that stared down her foes with the color of the blue sky.

...I know her.

"I…I know this swordswoman…I mean, this knight," Stica whispered. She

heard Laurannei whisper back, "Me too."

The golden knight looked exactly as she was painted in the huge portrait hung

in the throne room on the fiftieth floor of Central Cathedral. She was one of the

greatest Integrity Knights in history, who'd achieved great feats in the ancient

Otherworld War and disappeared in the midst of the fighting. In fact, her name

was…

"…Alice…?"

The knight's hand moved, almost in recognition that her name had been

called. She drew a longsword from her side with a smooth motion.

The yellow blade reflected the light of Solus to an almost blinding degree. In

their fear, the minute fragments of the spacebeast lost whatever controlling

force they might have had, fizzling away in random directions.

The knight held the sword before her body. She called out in a voice like wind

that blew through space. The dragoncraft's Incarnameter burst right off its

mount.

"Release Recollection!!"

The sword blazed even brighter. Its body made a sound like scraping metal

and fragmented into a million tiny pieces.

The hilt was still in the knight's hand, however, and she swung it easily. The

fragments spilled forth into the void, spreading like flower petals on a light

breeze.

It turned into a golden meteor shower.

Each and every little bit of light exhibited frighteningly precise aim, piercing

the fleeing scraps of the dark beast. Each bit of darkness, once shot through,

was burned away into nothing by the brilliance of the golden line.

"...Incredible…"

It was all that Stica could find the words to say. You could line up every last

craft in the Integrity Pilothood, fire all their main cannons at once, and not hope

to exhibit this much precision and power.

When the last little scrap of the Abyssal Horror, the deadliest spacebeast in all

of the Underworld, succumbed to a golden arrow, it let out a scream that put all

its others to shame.

Gyeeeiiieeeooooo...…

And with that, the creature was finally, truly gone.

Stica watched, dumbfounded, as the golden swarm of shooting stars gathered

at the knight's hand and returned to being a whole sword again.

But if the golden knight really was the very Integrity Knight Alice of old, then

who were the other two people? On the vision board, the knight returned the

sword to her sheath and flew through space toward the warriors in black and

pearly white.

The three had a brief discussion, then turned to face Stica and Laurannei.

They were too far away for Stica to see their faces clearly. But she could tell

that all three of them were smiling.

Then the swordsman with the white and black swords put them behind his

back again and waved to the pilots.

In that moment, Stica felt some tremendous emotion she couldn't describe

piercing her heart deep, deep inside its core. A kind of lonely pain that took her

breath away.

"Ah…ahhh…," she murmured.

Quietly, Laurannei murmured, "Sti, I know him. I know who that is."

"Yes, Laura. So do I…so do I."

She nodded again and again.

It wasn't something she knew because she'd seen his portrait in the throne

room. It was something else.

Her heart. Her fingers. Her soul knew him.

She felt the scent of honey pie, sweet and fragrant, tickling her nostrils.

A calming breeze blowing across the field. The warm light of the gentle sun.

Faint laughter in the distance.

In a daze, Stica put on her airtight helmet and pulled a handle on the right

side of the pilot's seat. The temperature-controlled air squeaked and escaped.

The layer of armor protecting the dragoncraft's control seat moved away,

revealing the sea of stars overhead. Her second was opening her own cockpit as

well.

Stica stood up in her seat, staring at the three warriors standing thirty mels

away, waving at her.

But in fact…

…there was another.

Stica's maple-red eyes beheld the figure of a fourth person flickering into

existence.

He stood just to the left of the one in black, smiling gently. He was wavering

like heat haze, translucent and fragile, like he might vanish if she took her eyes

off him for an instant.

The flaxen-haired young man looked at Stica and nodded firmly, just for her.

She felt tears burst from her eyes.

The warm liquid trickled down her cheeks, spilling into her airtight helmet.

In time, the sight of the young man melted away into the light of Solus as it

appeared around the edge of Cardina.

At that moment, the young Integrity Pilot understood: This instant, right now,

was the starting of the new age that the Star King had prophesied.

They were messengers, appearing from the past to open the door to the

future.

Starting from here, the world was going to change.

The door to the other world would open, and the tide of a new age would

rush through it.

That would not be the arrival of an age of paradise. This would be a time of

revolution and turbulence in the Underworld, an age that none of them could

imagine.

But Stica was not afraid.

She couldn't be—not when her heart was leaping with joy.

This encounter was something her soul had been dying to experience.

She blinked the tears away and stared straight ahead.

From a standing position, she reached to tilt the control rod forward.

The damaged dragoncraft wing took on a blue glow.

The eternal flame elements breathed, putting a tiny bit of life into the craft.

She looked over to Laurannei, and the two of them shared a knowing glance.

The girl of the Underworld, Integrity Pilot Stica Schtrinen, gently flew her

dragon along.

Onward toward the unfamiliar strangers waving at her.

Toward the door to the new era.

Toward the future.