Sword Art Online 012 – Alicization Rising Chapter 7 – The Two Supervisors 53 even if the escort swore an oath of allegiance from the heart. After all, that woman was betrayed by even a copy of herself." Saying so, Cardinal broadly grinned. "She required a guarantee that the escorts would definitely not betray her under any circumstances to then bestow upon them authorities and equipment worthy of opposing me. So what could she do? The answer was simple: she would merely have to alter them to become so, through their very fluct lights." "...Wh-What did you say?" "The complex command for that had already been completed. Namely, the «Synthesis Ritual»." "Erm... the unification between soul and memory, was it?" "Yes. In addition, she had a plentiful supply of high-quality raw materials that possessed powerful souls. The humans with high transgression quotients she had captured, used in her experiments and frozen for preservation afterward, were all endowed with high capabilities, without a single exception. ...Or rather, perhaps I should say that they had harbored suspicion towards the Taboo Index and Axiom Church due to their excellent wisdom and physique... There was a hero known as an unparallelled swordsman, who ran to the remote regions with his comrades and pioneered his own village due to his hatred for the church's rule, among those first captured. That swordsman tried to cross the «mountain range at the edge» that separated the Human World and the Dark Territory, which was what caused him to get abducted by the church, but Administrator chose him to be her first loyal escort." It sounded like a story I heard somewhere; Cardinal continued onward while I struggled in chasing after that thought.