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.

Chapter 7 (The Two Supervisors, 5th Month of Human World Calendar 380)
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.

Chapter 8 (Central Cathedral, 5th Month of Human World Calendar 380)
After reentering 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.

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 asks Fanatio for a fight, but Fanatio has the four other Knights battle him instead, and begins to chant the Enhance Armament Sacred Arts ritual. As the fight progresses, Kirito manages to defeat most of the four knights, but not before Fanatio finishes the chant, and begins to shoot lasers at Kirito. Managing to avoid most of the laser beams, he eventually is hit in the foot, and seemingly collapses. Fanatio then spends some time explaining to Kirito the origin of their sword, before firing a laser aimed at his head. Kirito manages to deflect it though, having created a mirror through Sacred Arts, crystal and metallic elements. The reflected beam however was only partially as strong as the original, and Fanatio was able to avoid it, only with it having struck their helmet...

However, this caused the helmet to break away, revealing that Fanatio was indeed a woman, who seemed to be self-conscious, and became angered when she mistook Kirito's surprise, for an unwillingness to fight her seriously. While she was enraged, Kirito took the chance to cross swords with her, coming too close for her to use her light rays. Kirito then explained that he had no intention of going easy on her, and explained that he didn't care about her gender.

After an exchange of numerous sword blows, Fanatio releases the "memories" of her sword, causing it to begin firing lasers in random directions, many even hitting herself, and some of her comrades... Kirito manages to break her concentration, and comes in for an attack, before Eugeo finishes chanting his ritual, and plants his sword into the ground. This causes the ground to freeze, and icicles to form around the Integrity Knights, who had not been quick enough to avoid it. However, Fanatio had seen through the nature of the attack, and avoided in time, but Kirito, having already known of the ability before-hand, manages to have Fanatio entrapped in the ice, before beginning to chant his Sword's ritual.

They eventually defeat the group. 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 (which she claims is the oldest and most ancient sacred weapon amongst them all, planted down by RATH as an indestructible object at the very beginning of the world) 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 Catherdal, 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, Fizel and Linel were instead two boys, by the names Ashin and Bisten.

Volumen 12 Sword Art Online (Ранобе, Том 12) Volumen 12