Sword Art Online Light Novel Volume 12

Alicization Rising (アリシゼーション・ライジング) is the 12th book in the Sword Art Online Light Novel series, published on April 10, 2013.

Summary
Cardinal continues the story of Quinella after she found the system command list and became the Administrator. After explaining how the Integrity Knights and Cardinal herself came to be, Cardinal warns Kirito that the creatures of the Dark Territory are on the verge of invading the Human World and slaughtering all of its residents. Cardinal makes a deal with Kirito to help her defeat Quinella and then teaches Kirito and Eugeo how to use the «Armament Full Control» art. The two youngsters are then taken to the backdoor closest to the Cathedral's equipment vault and they begin their quest to recover their weapons and reach the top of the Cathedral.

Part 1
Kirito recollects his life since he entered high school, and how he has been forced to leave his education three times already (one time because of the SAO incident, another time due to being stuck in Underworld and now again because of breaking the Taboo Index). He then resumes his talk with Cardinal who continues the story of Quinella after she had found the list of system commands in Underworld.

She explains that when Quinella attempted to steal the system authority level from the Cardinal System using a complex system command, Quinella accidentally burned the primary instruction of the Cardinal System (to preserve regularity of the world) onto her Fluctlight as a non-changeable principle due to her low knowledge of the complex syntax of supervisor level commands. Because of this, Quinella inherited the Cardinal's duty of regulating the world, but pushed it to even greater extents - to regulate the residents as well.

It was Quinella who divided the human world into four empires and created different obstacles, such as the Gigas Cedar, to restrict the movement of the residents and thus be able to regulate them. Then Cardinal proceeds to explain the origin of Quinella's worry and how she created the Synthesis Ritual to exceed the limit of her memory, which is estimated to be about 150 years. The Synthesis Ritual allowed Quinella to manipulate the Fluctlight of a chosen person and thus she used this ritual to create a backup of her memories in another person's Fluctlight. At the time, a ten-year-old daughter of a furniture's shop owner had become a nun at the Axiom Church due to her above average System Control Authority. Due to her young age and thus, a large free memory capacity, the girl was invited to the top floor of the Cathedral, where Quinella attempted gaining control of the girl's Fluctlight and using it to store a back-up of Quinella's memories. The Synthesis Ritual was successful and Quinella's compressed memories were successfully copied onto the girl's Fluctlight. However, as Quinella and the girl regained consciousness at the same time after the ritual, they realized that they were exactly equal existences and began to break down due to the shock caused by this realization. The nun's Fluctlight was the first to break down and, at that moment, the Cardinal System's sub-program, which was copied onto the nun's Fluctlight along with Quinella's memories, managed to assume control of the young girl and the two Fluctlights stopped breaking down. Cardinal immediately attacked Quinella to gain the upper hand and, at first, she was winning because of taking the initiative. However, Quinella then realized a weakness that Cardinal had and made her room a place where no Sacred Arts could be used, generating a weapon afterwards. Although both generated weapons to fight, but Quinella had the advantage due to being used to her body, while Cardinal had yet to adapt from controlling a grownup's body to that of a young girl, so Cardinal had to escape. She took refugee in the Great Library Room, which Quinella had created to store her memories and had made hard to access from the outside, and destroyed its only connection to the Central Cathedral and thus preventing Quinella from being able to enter the Library.

She waited in the Library and released familiars to look around the Human World for people capable of helping her, but whenever she found someone, Quinella always reached the person first and captured him or her to turn into another Integrity Knight. During the over 200 years without any success, Cardinal began to grow impatient, until she heard rumors that the Gigas Cedar was cut down by two youngsters. She immediately sent Charlotte, her most trusted familiar that was stationed in the northern region, to find the two youngsters and investigate how they were able cut down the Cedar. Having deduced that Kirito was in fact a real human after a year's worth of observation, meaning that Kirito would be immune to Quinella's Fluctlight altering commands and would be able to face Quinella head on, Cardinal set up the maximum amount of backdoors in the Cathedral, to await for the time when Kirito would enter the Cathedral as either the winner of the Four Empires Unity Tournament, or as a criminal who broke the Taboo Index. As Kirito ended up breaking the Taboo Index, Cardinal guided the two youngsters via Charlotte to one of the backdoors in the Cathedral's garden, after they had escaped their prison.

Part 1
After entering the Center Cathedral, Kirito and Eugeo go to retrieve their weapons, while, along the way, Eugeo is having an inner conflict about his actions since he left Rulid Village. After retrieving their weapons and changing their attire, they are confronted by Deusolbert Synthesis Seven, who fires a hail of arrows at them using his Divine Instrument, the Conflagrant Flame Bow. They beat the Integrity Knight and banter a bit with him about the Central Cathedral and the nature of its rule. Finally, they convinced the Integrity Knight not to pursue them.

Part 2
They then meet two ten-year-old girls, Fizel and Linel, on the 29th floor of the Cathedral. The girls talk to Eugeo, as Kirito was "bad with kids", asking if they were really monsters from the Dark Territory. When they boys claimed that they were real humans and they have come to the Cathedral to rescue their friend, the girls ask if they can take a closer look at them to confirm that they are not monsters. Eugeo decides that that is alright, as he wants to prove to himself and them that he is a normal human. Finally, the girls ask the two youngsters for their names and ask if they have family names. Eugeo tells the girls his and Kirito's name and says that they do not have a family name and then ask if the girls do not have one either. However, Fizel and Linen say that they do and reveal themselves to be "Synthesis Twenty-Eight" and "Synthesis Twenty-Nine", before suddenly paralyzing the duo with poison blades. As they drag the two youngsters to the 50th floor, they explain how they wish to kill the two in front of the other Integrity Knights, in order to prove themselves as full-fledged Integrity Knights and receive their own sacred weapons and armor.

The four reach the 50th floor, where 5 Integrity Knights await. The kids get into an argument with one of the knights, Fanatio Synthesis Two, before Eugeo sees a shadow quickly appearing behind the kids. Kirito had managed to cast a Sacred Art that countered the poison from the venomous blades before the they were cut. Kirito then pulled Fizel's and Linel's blades from their sheaths, and paralyzes the duo, before giving Eugeo the antidote. He tells Eugeo to start chanting the «armament full control» ritual, and then asks the Knights to allow him to explain the situation before battling. He explains that he realized that the two girls were lying when they said that they were sisters of the church, as they ignored the order for the sisters of the church lock their doors. He also mentions that he noticed that the scabbards of the girls were made out of ruby evergreen oak, which is used for sheathings blades made out of a poisonous metal, thus he realized their plan and started chanting the ritual for countering poison, while Eugeo handled talking to the girls.

Kirito then seems to wordlessly ask Fanatio for an individual fight, but Fanatio has the four other Knights battle him instead, beginning chanting the «Armament full control art» while Kirito is distracted. The four knights try to overwhelm Kirito by using their Sword Skills one after another, anticipating where their opponent would be after blocking one of their attacks, thus creating consecutive hit skills via group. However, Kirito soon realizes their strategy's weak point and he dodges the 5th hit by slipping under the Knight's sword instead of blocking it. As the next Knight comes in to deal a blow, Kirito uses the previous Knight as a human shield by pulling the Knight atop of him, thus absorbing the blow from the attacking Knight. He then stabs the Knight and shoves him towards another charging Knight. With the consecutive attacks put to an end, Kirito charges through the created gap in the Knights' formation and attempts to use «Sonic Leap» to get close to Fanatio.

However, at that moment Fanatio finishes the chant and uses the Heaven Piercing Sword's special ability to shoot a powerful ray of light at Kirito, shaking the latter's trajectory. Fanatio continues to fire the rays of light at the black-clothed swordsman and, although Kirito manages to dodge a few of them, the 7th shot finally hits the target in the foot and Kirito crashes onto the floor. As the four supporting Knights have recovered from their injuries and have again surrounded Kirito, the overconfident Fanatio decides to explain the origin of the ray-shooting sword to Kirito while aiming at him in case he moves. With the explanation complete, a final deadly ray is fired at the black swordsman. However, Kirito who used the time while Fanatio was busy talking to chant a Sacred Arts ritual uses the finished ritual to create a mirror through a combination of crystal and metal elements. Although the mirror is not powerful enough to stop the ray, it does buy Kirito enough time to dodge the ray, while part of the ray is deflected back at Fanatio. The reflected beam however was only partially as strong as the original, and Fanatio was able to avoid it, with only their helmet struck by it...

Having hit the helmet's weak point, the ray caused the helmet to break into two, revealing that Fanatio was actually a woman. Fanatio becomes angered due to Kirito's surprise, mistaking it for an unwillingness to fight her seriously now that he knows her true gender. Kirito uses the opportunity to close in on Fanatio, while she is distracted, with his outstanding speed, coming too close for her to use her light rays. While crossing his sword with hers, Kirito explains that he was actually surprised by how Fanatio's resolve in her sword decreased so much after her helmet broke and tells her that he has no intention of going easy on her, saying that he himself has experienced how powerful swordswomen are. The two then begin their magnificent ultra-high speed clash of swords.

After an exchange of numerous sword blows, Fanatio compliments Kirito's ability, while the latter uses the opportunity to try and persuade her that he is trying to help the humans of the world live normally. Fanatio, saying that that if the authority of the Church was lost, the world would be thrust into chaos and admitting that Kirito is an extreme threat to the Church, she decides to fully unleash the of her sword by activating the second phase of the «Armament full control art», causing her sword to begin firing extremely powerful rays in random directions once per second, many of the rays even hitting Fanatio herself and some of her comrades. However, Kirito refuses to give up and manages to obstruct the ray by blocking the tip of Fanatio's sword with his own.

At that point, Eugeo decides that this is the ideal time to take action and activates the «Armament full control art» for his Blue Rose Sword, sinking his sword into the ground at the same time. With this, the ground a wave of ice quickly spreads through the floor and icy tendrils to start forming around the Integrity Knights, who had not been quick enough to avoid the attack. The four knights are soon frozen into blocks of ice with blue ice roses blooming out of them, however, Fanatio manages to see through the nature of the attack in time, and jumps to avoid it. But, she is stopped by Kirito who used the advantage of knowing about the Blue Rose Sword's ability beforehand to jump up a few seconds ahead of her in anticipation of her next move and then uses her as a stepping stone to escape further into the air, while Fanatio is scent falling back down to the ground, where she is soon entrapped in the ice.

Kirito then somersaults backwards several times to Eugeo's position where, despite his injuries and Eugeo's protests, he begins chanting the lengthy ritual for his own sword. Meanwhile, Fanatio, who refuses to give up so easily, is able to use her sword's light rays to melt the ice enough to move her sword bit by bit towards the two youngsters, until, despite Eugeo's efforts in containing her, she unleashes her sword's final and greatest beam of light at them. At that moment, Kirito finishes chanting the ritual for his sword and unleashes a pitch-black torrent of darkness, which clashes with the spear of light with explosive impact. The powerful clash of light and darkness continues for awhile, until Kirito's ray of darkness manages to break the balance of power and break the spear of light into thousands of streams, some of which hit the four lying Knights, until the torrent of darkness reached the source of the torrent of light, hitting Fanatio with a tremendous impact.

With the battle finally over, Kirito collapses onto his knees due to the suffered injuries. Eugeo makes haste to immediately seal Kirito's wounds to stop his bleeding and then chants a ritual for transferring Life to share his own Life with his unconscious friend. With nearly of half of Eugeo's Life transferred, Kirito finally opens his eyes and stops Eugeo from continuing with the ritual. Worried about Fanatio's condition, he starts walking towards her, before he remembers about Fizel and Linel and throws the bottle of antidote to Eugeo to cure the girls, while making sure that their venomous swords are destroyed. After doing so, Eugeo joins Kirito and attempts to help his seal the fallen Knights wounds before she runs out of Life. However, even with their efforts, the bleeding is too intense to handle, thus Kirito cries out for help from the Knight Leader and Cardinal. Kirito then recalls the dagger given to him by Cardinal and he decides to use it to save the dying Fanatio, despite Eugeo's protests. Shortly after Fanatio is stabbed with the dagger, the voice of Cardinal is heard. Although annoyed by how things turned out, Cardinal agrees to handle the treatment for Fanatio but says that she needs to bring the Knight's body over to the Great Library Room to do so, thus Fanatio disappears. Cardinal then tells them that if they hurry, they might be able to reach and deal with Quinella before she awakens, thus they wouldn't need the dagger. She then takes her leave, with two small glass bottles left behind.

Part 3
Moving on, they progress to the 80th floor. There, they had a chance meeting with Alice, whom they have come to rescue. Alice, having no memories of them, shows no mercy. Kirito challenges Alice to a sword fight without using their sword's special abilities in a bid to give Eugeo a chance to stick Quinella's dagger into Alice. Alice, possessing an overpowering sword easily beats Kirito, but Eugeo manages to pull off his swords special move and immobilized both of them. Alice, however, breaks the seal with ease. Kirito, seizing the opportunity, attacks with his special move. The special moves of Alice and Kirito clash, sending both of them tumbling out of the Center Cathedral, a few thousand mels off the ground. The wall broken by the special moves reseal itself and Eugeo tries to break it in an attempt to reach Alice and Kirito, before giving up in despair.

Adaption Notes

 * In the web-version, Linel and Fizel were instead two boys, by the names Aashin (アーシン) and Bisten (ビステン).
 * Fanatio's «Four Oscillation Blades» (四旋剣) were originally a 9-member team called Sen-shi kyū ken (宣死九剣) in the web version.
 * The Piety Module was originally a Key Principle (行動原則キー) in the web version.

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Volumen 12 Sword Art Online (Ранобе, Том 12)