Quinella


 * Administrator redirects here. You may be looking for the anime episode with the same name.

Quinella (クィネラ), also known as the self-proclaimed Administrator (アドミニストレータ), was the main antagonist of the first half of the Alicization Arc. She was the actual ruler of the Human Empire in Underworld as the highest minister of the Axiom Church.

Appearance
Quinella was an extremely beautiful woman with long silver hair, including eyelashes and eyebrows, which may appear blue or white depending on the surrounding lighting. Her eyes were silver in color, seemingly reflecting the seven prismatic colors. She was voluptuous, donned light clothes, which were hemmed with «Stacia Window»-silver threads, and had an unreservedly open neckline.

Background
Quinella was born three hundred and fifty years before Kirito entered Underworld for the second time as the product of a political marriage between strong noble families at that time. Her father was the lord in charge of the town of Centoria, granting him the right to bestow Sacred Tasks. To maintain power in the family, the lord created a new Sacred Task named Sacred Arts Research to grant to his daughter.

History
Quinella discovered new Sacred Arts that the other Underworld Residents had not known. By studying the meanings of the words used in the commands, she was able to form the first offensive command, the «Thermal Arrow». With it, she discovered that killing any other living being would increase the person's stats, which led to her sneaking out of home every night to hunt nearby animals and thus improving her stats at an incredible rate.



Taking advantage of her knowledge, Quinella made people believe that she was gifted by gods, and took the opportunity to start creating the Central Cathedral, and with it, the Axiom Church. She created the Feudal System in Underworld by making the lords into nobles, thus creating a structure to control the entire Underworld. The restriction imposed by the Axiom Church on lowering the life stats of living beings was created by Quinella to prevent other humans from elevating their authority levels in the same way she did.

As Quinella's power grew, so did the tower in the Cathedral. From a certain point of time, she no longer showed herself to those of the world and immersed herself purely in the analysis of the Sacred Arts to transcend the ultimate limit set upon her, «Life». She became anxious because, despite all her power, her life continued to drop and there was nothing she could do about it, until one day, when she was on the brink of death, she managed to find a command that allowed her to see the list of all commands accessible in Underworld, at the bottom of which was one that raised her System Control Authority level to the maximum and granted herself the authorities that were reserved only for the Cardinal System, including terrain manipulation, item generation and even the manipulation of the durability of dynamic units, including humans.

Quinella immediately used her new powers to completely restore her own Life, halt its natural degeneration and recovered her former appearance from her years as a youth. However, Quinella was not yet satisfied. She could not permit the existence of one that had an authority level equal to hers - the Cardinal System. While recklessly trying to decipher the complex syntax of supervisor-level commands via a reference list created for Rath employees, she devised an extensive complicated command in hopes of stealing the powers of the Cardinal System. However, a single yet enormous error with reciting the command led to her burning the core principles of the Cardinal System onto her own Fluctlight.

Awakening only after an entire day of sleep after reciting the command, Quinella no longer aged or required eating or drinking; instead, however, she inherited a single desire from the Cardinal System — to regulate the world. This desire went beyond the Cardinal System's original purpose: Quinella desired to keep the Human Empire the same for eternity. To achieve this goal, she needed to take control of the most unpredictable factor of the world — the residents.

Quinella took various actions to restrain the lives of the residents. Firstly, she proclaimed a single edict to split the Human Empire into four empires and made the four great nobles of the age into the emperors of the new empires. She then used her supervisor powers to instantly create the «Immortal Wall» that separated the empires, thus creating a physical barrier that restricted the movement of the residents. She also created various other barriers in the more remote regions of the Human Empire where pioneers had founded new villages. These included physical barriers such as the Gigas Cedar, and psychological barriers such as the «Bells of Time Telling», which could only be heard within a certain range within a town or village.

However, Quinella actually inherited two instructions from the Cardinal System. While the main process was in charge of regulating the world, a separate sub-process was in charge of performing error corrections on the main process. The main process was in control of Quinella's body for most of the time; however, whenever Quinella's consciousness slackened, the sub-process was able to float up to the surface of the thought process. The sub-process deemed the main process, Quinella, to be conducting a great error, as the Cardinal System was not supposed to directly affect humans. Therefore, she tried to cause Quinella's death multiple times, but failed due to Quinella reassuming control of her body.

Having realized that the sub-process had become a threat to her, Quinella sought for a way to keep it locked in within herself. Noticing that the sub-process could only take control of her body during times of emotional distress, Quinella decided to freeze her emotions to stay in control of her body at all times. By that point, she had been abducting Underworld residents who questioned the Taboo Index and the Axiom Church and using these captives as test subjects for experimenting with Fluctlight-altering commands called the «Synthesis Ritual». Through these inhumane experiments, she was able to test which part of the Fluctlight should be altered to change a person's memory, thought patterns, emotions etc. Having tested this ritual long enough, Quinella applied the ritual on herself and was successful in freezing most of the emotions that were the cause of her unrest: fear, anger, etc.

Approaching 150 years of age, Quinella noticed an anomaly within herself. Various incidents, from briefly losing her consciousness even outside of sleep to not being able to recall recent memories and even having trouble recalling the Sacred Art commands that she should have memorized perfectly, had been happening recurrently to her. Upon examining her own Fluctlight, Quinella was shocked to find out that the memory capacity of her Fluctlight had reached its limit without her knowledge. Because of this newfound limit on her existence which could not be controlled like Life, Quinella sought for a way to overcome it. In order to accomplish this, she devised a devious scheme for overcoming the memory limit on her Fluctlight by hijacking the Fluctlight of another person who had plenty of memory capacity to spare and using said victim's Fluctlight to store a backup of her compressed memories, before manipulating her own memories to free up more space on her own Fluctlight.

At the time, a 10-year old nun had been studying Sacred Arts on the lower levels of the Central Cathedral due to her above average System Control Authority. Quinella selected this nun to be the vessel for her backup memories, so she invited the nun to the top floor of the Cathedral. There, Quinella successfully overwrote the nun's Fluctlight with Quinella's own thought processes and memories. However, an unforeseen issue arose. After the Synthesis Ritual, which was used to copy Quinella's soul onto the nun's Fluctlight, was completed and the two females awoke at the same time, they came to the realization that they were identical beings, which caused both of their Fluctlights to start breaking down due to the shock caused by the realization.

However, the nun's Fluctlight was the first to break down, allowing Cardinal, the sub-process which was transferred to the nun's body in the process of the ritual, to take control of the nun's body. At that point, they recognized each other as the Administrator within Quinella's original body and the Cardinal's sub-process within the girl's body and this allowed their Fluctlights to stop breaking down.



At that moment, Cardinal seized the initiative and used high-level Sacred Arts against Quinella. The first attack landed magnificently at its target and a magnificent death match of immense lightning and whirlwinds, infernos and ice daggers unfolded. As both Quinella's and Cardinal's paces were exactly the same, Cardinal was winning the battle due to being the one who attacked first. As the battle was coming to its end, Quinella realized a decisive difference between her and Cardinal. She immediately chanted a command to turn one of the high-priority objects within the room into a weapon and then a command that prevented use of system commands within the room. Although Cardinal managed to generate a staff with the same priority as Quinella's sword, Cardinal was put at a disadvantage due to controlling a body that differed in size from the body she used to be contained in before. After two or three blows, Cardinal had to fall back. Quinella gave chase, however, Cardinal chanted the art that allowed her to retreat into the Great Library Room and lock the doors afterwards. As unlocking the door from the outside required a tedious ritual, Quinella was distracted long enough for Cardinal to finish chanting a command that destroyed the door just as it was unlocked.

Afterwards, Quinella had to resort to deleting her most recent peripheral memories to ensure she had at least a minimum of free memory capacity and began spending most of the day lying in bed with her eyes shut to minimize the amount of new memories recorded. Quinella also ensured guaranteed protection for herself by using the Synthesis Ritual on her former test subjects, people arrested for breaking the Taboo Index and, later, the winners of the Four Empires Unity Tournament, turning them into absolutely loyal Integrity Knights. From then on, having delegated most of her duties to her subordinates, Quinella would only rise from her bed at scheduled times to check on the management of the world.

Alicization Dividing
Quinella appears for the first time when she invades Eugeos mind while sleeping, manipulating him into believing she is his mother, taunting him that "he killed them all" when he asks about the whereabouts of his father and brothers. She is next seen sleeping on her bed when Eugeo awakes at the top floor of the Central Cathedral. After waking up, she speaks to Eugeo, talking him into believing of not knowing or posessing any love in his life, accusing him of being jealous and hating his father and brothers for having to share his mothers love with them as well as the same jealousy being the true motive of him attacking Humbert and allowing Kirito to kill Raios, stating that he just wanted Tieses love all for himself. She tells him that he is alone in the wolrd and forsaken by everyone. When he denies this and tells her that he still has Alice, she shows him a memory that seems to depict the younger Alice and Kirito in a romantic situation they want to hide from Eugeo. Breaking his resistance with this false proof of his friends betrayal, Quinella offers him a deal: She will love only him, letting no other being into her heart and fulfill all of his desires, if he vows the same to her. She gets the mindshattered Eugeo to recite the system command to voluntary remove his core protection, allowing her to use the Synthesis Ritual on him, transforming him into the Integrity Knight Eugeo Synthesis Thirty-two.

After Eugeos battle with Kirito and Alice, Quinella welcomes Eugeo back, inviting him onto her bed, where she promises him to give all of her love to him alone as a reward for his victory, but wanting to heal his wounds beforehand. While doing so, she removes his piety module, wanting to repress any resurfaced memories from the confrontation with his two former friends and using a new, stronger form of the piety module she just finished producing by embedding it into the deepest core of his memories. While being initially surprised when Eugeo is able to resist her command to remove his core protection and even attacking her with cardinals dagger, she quickly gets back to her normal self when his attack is repelled by a system protection, revealing to him that she altered her body to be immune to all attacks with metallic weapons, while teasing him for the futility of his resistance. She also notices to him that the dagger has to originate from cardinal. She renews her offer to Eugeo, proposing that she will forgive his betrayal if he shatters cardinals dagger with his sword. When he denies her order, Quinella decides to just use the forced Synthesis ritual on him, taunting him that he will be able to feel the same pain as Alice when she used the ritual on her. When he attacks her again and breaks her protection with the Blue Rose Sword, she easily deflect him using a sacred art.

Following the sudden emergence of Alice and Kirito, Quinella expresses interest in Alices early questioning of her role as Inegrity Knight after just a few years, as well as the mysterious influence of Kirito on her world. She laughs about Alices ambitions and analyzes that the cause of her resistance can only lie in her breaking the Seal of the Right Eye, before ordering Chudelkin to defeat the trio. Hearing his desires of her, she laughs at him but regardless vows to give her whole body to him for one night if he fulfills his order.

Alicization Uniting
In the battle between Kirito, Eugeo, Alice and Chudelkin Quinella is targeted by Eugeos sacred art to distract Chudelkin, but simply desolves the attack just by gently blowin against it. Showing no emotions about Chudelkins defeat, she telekinetically smashes his grievously wounded body into a wall, telling him to just be a hindrance. She declares the fight to have given her important data, deducing the truth about Kirito being a human from the real world, and asking him about his reasons for being in underworld. When being confronted with Kiritos and Alices accusations of all her past deeds, she shows her now lack of real emotions, explaining how she repeatedly wiped the memories of the older Integrity Knights everytime they became suspicious about the Church or witnessed something contradicting their false memories, claiming the use of the piety module to make them into human dolls free any painful memories or emtions to be an act of love. She rejects her own human past and emotions when Kirito reminds her, and chastises him when he warns her about the dooming attack of the dark territory and possible reset of Underworld, telling him to be a hypocrite that doesn't know the fear of living in a world that can be deleted any time by a higher being controlling it. She proclaims that her only goal and reason to exist is total control over her world. When called out for doing nothing about the impending catastrophe just to retain her power, she decides to show her solution to the stress test, an absolute weapon, bare of any humanity or emotion.

Quinella holds up a large crystal, using a weapon release on thirty different weapons chained to pedestals across the room, combining them into a singular entity, before awakening it with the crystal. She names her creation the Sword Golem, explaining all of the weapons forming his body to have a control level equivalent to sacred objecets, and orders the construct to destroy the party, stabbing Alice and Kirito to the point of fatal injuries.

With the interference of cardinal, Quinella smiles that she finally suceeded to lure cardinal out of the library by threatening those close to her. She then isolates the adress of the Central Cathredal, imprisoning cardinal inside with no possibilty to flee. When cardinal questions her confindence in doing so, stating that they outnumber her, she claims the opposite to be truth, with her controlling an army of 300 against the four of them. To everyones shock and disbelieve, she explains the true source of the sword golem, its core module being made from the material transformation of 300 human units. She reveals her plans of using half of the 80.000 inhabitants of the human empire to create an army of golems and conquer the dark territory with them.

Alice states that it would still be impossible for her to use the armament control art on more than one weapon, to what Quinella hints them to the crystals in the ceiling of the chamber, with Eugeo recognizing them to be the stolen fragments of the integrity knights. By this, cardinal deduces the forming of the integrity knights being a part of Quinellas plan to create the sword golem all from the beginning. Quinella confesses that the 300 human units used for its creation are indeed the loved ones of the integrity knights, and that the unreachable and isane desire to posess these people is the force that drives their trapped fragments to use their armament control and power the golem. She believes their will to kill her enemies to stem from their desire of total control of their loved ones, not being able recognize it is their love and the will to protect them instead. She further states that love is just a form of control and desire, a signal emitted from the fluctlight.

Quinella is delighted by cardinals angry reaction, telling her to be a fool for feeling emotions for something that is nothing more than a collection of changeable data, delighting over the fact that it still means that cardinal will not be willing to fight the golem because of it. When receiving cardinals offer to sacrifice herself if Alice, Eugeo and Kirito are spared, she thinks about the risks of losing further capacity by fighting them and accepts, starting to sadistically torture cardinal by hitting her multiple times with non-lethal attacks, enjoying the pain of her other self before finishing her off by ripping her leg of her body.

When Eugeo sacrifices his body to become himself a living weapon like the golem, Quinella is for the first time concerned and emotional, attacking him and the interfering Alice while screaming in rage, disarming the latter. She is utterly surprised by the destruction of the sword golem by Eugeo, but still remains the upper hand, calling it just an unlucky coincidence before attacking and shattering his new sword body herself with her "Silvery Eternity" Sword, fatally wounding the then retransforming Eugeo and cleaving the Blue Rose Sword in the process. While she still lost an arm in the clash due to not recognizing that the Blue Rose Sword (and so Eugeos Sword Form that it was part of) wasn't a weapon made of metal, she is unfazed by it, sealing the wound before going on to kill Kirito as the last one still standing. While she is going to strike Kirito, who is paralyzed due to the shock of witnessing Eugeo dying, she is interrupted by Alice, who, without her weapon, uses her own body to take the hit for Kirito. Before she can connect, her strike is blocked by the reawakend Kirito.

During their fight, Quinella interrupts Kiritos "Virtual Square", calling it out as a sword skill. When Kirito decides that she has to know about the sword skills from Eugeos mind and tries to use an attack Eugeo doesn't know to catch her unaware, she lands multiple surprise hits on him by transforming her weapon into a rapier and a katana and using sword skills form SAO, reminding him that she has total knowldedge about all the data of Underworld, including sword skills due to Underworld being build of the Seed and therefore SAO. She then has a final argument with Kirito, putting her definiton of love als control and rule against his before entering in a final duel against Kirito, who now dual wields his sword with a reforged Blue Rose Sword, made from Eugeos blood, as a secondary weapon. Both suceed in cutting of the others arm, with the black sword made from the Gigas Cedar being able to cut her due to it being crafted out of wood instead of metal. Leaving her unarmed, she starts screaming in hate and strangles Kirito with her hair, before he uses his remaining arm to cut himself free and Quinella is pierced by his second sword, surprised that their enemies had not one but two swords not made from metal

At the end of the gruelling battle with Alice, Eugeo, and Kirito, Quinella suffered fatal injuries, and thus decided to preserve herself by leaving to the real world earlier than planned. With awkward steps, she reached the hidden console for communicating with the real world. After Quinella operated the keyboard to begin the procedure, a pillar of light appeared from beneath her feet and her body began rising. Just as she was about to finish her farewell to Kirito, revealing to him her plan to leave Underworld, she was shocked by the sudden intervention of Chudelkin, who set his body ablaze to reach her. With Quinella embraced by Chudelkin, the two were soon engulfed by the flame and perished.

Afterwards, her soul is seen one last time floating over the Central Cathredal, trying to state that she really loved this world after being reunited with her blocked emotions while vanishing into thin air.

Gallery

 * See Quinella/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Quinella's background story is similar to Alice's. Like Quinella, Alice was very talented in the Sacred Arts. One of Alice's most well-known abilities was to predict a storm one week in advance at a rather young age, while Quinella was also able to predict the weather in advance, though only 3 days in advance. A notable difference between the two is that Quinella was born in a noble family in the capital, while Alice was born in a family of villagers in one of the most remote villages in the Human Empire.

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Quinella Квинелла