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Since the previous CRT is officially done, time to move on to the next.
Solar System and Multi-Solar System level attack potencies are to be removed on (Post-Aincrad) Kirito. Requesting removals for both in a single CRT for efficiency, as they both stem from significant misunderstandings of the text provided, rather than any calculation related matter that needs significant attention and thus both are outright misinformed claims with no basis.
Edit: Per reminders by other members, Small Country Level is also under question, as the citation for it is "Kirito shook the planet" which did not take place either.
Multi-Solar System Removal
The claim currently is that Kirito "shook the entire universe", which is untrue. For starters, there is no "endless Universe" in Underworld. Cardinal creates content to adapt to circumstances and thus has so far only created Solus (the Sun in Underworld), along with Cardina and Admina, the two planets that orbit it. Here's the author, Reki Kawahara's confirmation:
Translation:
Translation of the relevant sentence:
While the Fan Translations are now deprecated due to the official translation by Yen Press catching up and no fan translators taking up anything beyond V18 for that reason, I still approached Defan to clarify the misunderstandings. You can find his responses here (tweet thread with other clarifications as well regarding his translation):
With that, I will now provide the official translation for this scene, Sword Art Online Volume 18, Alicization Lasting, Prologue III:
So now, let's break things down. First off, "generic words" are a thing. Some languages (like Japanese and Turkish) rely on them a lot more than others, but we still have these generic words in English as well. For example, when I say "The weather is hot", I do not mean the entire atmosphere around the earth is hot, I just mean the part of the atmosphere around me is hot. That is a generic word, using a word with a huge meaning in a very specific context that really reduces its meaning based on the context I used it in. And also, keep in mind that the narrator is not an omniscient narrator, as such, the descriptions are not objective facts but rather how Stica Schtrinen perceives them. Reki Kawahara does not use an omniscient narrator in 99% of the cases in his books and prefers keeping the narrator limited to the character perspective he is using for the given chapter. In the rare occasion he is using an omniscient narrator, he switches tone entirely, as well as going as far as mentioning things in text, whether inside the chapter or in his afterwords with statements similar to "I used an omniscient narrator in this specific case. As you can imagine, the characters have no way of knowing this". With both those in mind, let's break down the text:
Solar System Level Removal
The claim currently is that Kirito "Absorbed around 100,000 stars with the Night Sky Sword. Can move an entire night sky's worth of stars during this process.", which is untrue. So untrue and so lacking in context, that I find it more efficient to just illustrate what happened, rather than debunking it.
First off, as we know from the earlier section, a universe, thus the stars themselves do not exist. But there is a lot more, all excerpts below are from SAO V18, Alicization Lasting, Chapter 22 Part 2:
As you can see, the Memory Release function of the Night Sky Sword simply covers the sky of the generated planet (at this point in the simulation, not even Cardina exists as a planet, it is just the plane of Human Empire + Dark Territory, surrounded by impassable walls, thus Cardinal System sees no point in having content outside). It is explicitly told that we are no longer seeing the skybox at all, but rather a blanket created on the sky. It literally states "The sky was covered", thus the "absorbing stars" already gets cancelled out here. But let's go further:
The next section is Sinon's PoV of the Memory Release ability. She states that even the clouds have disappeared, so the blanket is even closer than the clouds themselves, as they do re-appear like nothing happened after the incident.
As for the stars, as you can see in this excerpt, it is not a star. In Underworld, Incarnation manifests in spatial resources. Here, you can see Sinon's prayer, her incarnation, creating enough spatial resources for a little flicker to appear on the black canvas covering the world right now. It is not a star, it is closer to the ground than actual clouds are, and it is just a flickering light, same as any condensed spatial resources (this includes generated elements too, elements are as condensed as spatial resources get and thus have the highest potency for direct use) that give away a hue of light. The mention of a star is very basic imagery, a tool for the reader to be able to visualize something by giving it a visual approximation. Let's go further:
Leafa's perspective. Again, she prays and her incarnation manifests as spatial resources on the black canvas closer than the clouds, looking like a star as a visual reference. Let's go further:
Multiple other perspectives, people pray, their incarnation manifests as spatial resources on the canvas, you get the gist of it by now. For those still not convinced they are not stars:
Sheyta and Iskahn only see the spatial resources generated by Leafa when they look up. Because the canvas is so close to the earth, the Depth of Field is so low that they cannot even see the resources generated by Sinon a couple dozen kilometers to the south. They specifically only see a "single green star twinkling" which is the resources generated by Leafa, after the sky had already reached Sinon and hers was generated.
Small Country Level Removal
The confusion comes from a single sentence taken completely out of context.
As explained below in the replies:
tl;dr: As clearly illustrated above, the power levels of Kirito rely on severe misinformation and thus Solar, Multi-Solar and Small Country levels need to be removed.
My initial suggestion would be to fall back on Small Country level, but seeing the citation for it, that is no longer an option. I will however require guidance on what to categorize Kirito as in this case. As I have explained below in the replies:
Current situation: Downgrades to Kirito, Asuna and Subtilizer to 7B are being recommended.
Disclaimer: This original post will be edited with additional stuff as they are mentioned to give a good overview of everything that is relevant.
Solar System and Multi-Solar System level attack potencies are to be removed on (Post-Aincrad) Kirito. Requesting removals for both in a single CRT for efficiency, as they both stem from significant misunderstandings of the text provided, rather than any calculation related matter that needs significant attention and thus both are outright misinformed claims with no basis.
Edit: Per reminders by other members, Small Country Level is also under question, as the citation for it is "Kirito shook the planet" which did not take place either.
Multi-Solar System Removal
The claim currently is that Kirito "shook the entire universe", which is untrue. For starters, there is no "endless Universe" in Underworld. Cardinal creates content to adapt to circumstances and thus has so far only created Solus (the Sun in Underworld), along with Cardina and Admina, the two planets that orbit it. Here's the author, Reki Kawahara's confirmation:
Translation:
Another statement from Reki is as follows, stating even the stars around that the people inside the simulation see are not real and is simply a skybox the same way we have in games today, let alone Project Alicization having an infinite Universe simulation which is unrealistic by SAO's standards as SAO draws clear lines in its technology and how it functions, making "infinite" an impossibility due to hardware constraints:The current maximum size of the Underworld is one sun and two planets orbiting it. -Reki Kawahara
Translation of the relevant sentence:
This alone should be enough to prove the currently existing claims are misunderstandings, but I will go the extra mile to explain where the misunderstandings come from. It originates from the Fan Translation of Volume 18 by Defan, and features a lot of "context stretching" to come to the unlikely conclusion.It is basically the same starry sky we see in open world games. -Reki Kawahara
While the Fan Translations are now deprecated due to the official translation by Yen Press catching up and no fan translators taking up anything beyond V18 for that reason, I still approached Defan to clarify the misunderstandings. You can find his responses here (tweet thread with other clarifications as well regarding his translation):
With that, I will now provide the official translation for this scene, Sword Art Online Volume 18, Alicization Lasting, Prologue III:
So now, let's break things down. First off, "generic words" are a thing. Some languages (like Japanese and Turkish) rely on them a lot more than others, but we still have these generic words in English as well. For example, when I say "The weather is hot", I do not mean the entire atmosphere around the earth is hot, I just mean the part of the atmosphere around me is hot. That is a generic word, using a word with a huge meaning in a very specific context that really reduces its meaning based on the context I used it in. And also, keep in mind that the narrator is not an omniscient narrator, as such, the descriptions are not objective facts but rather how Stica Schtrinen perceives them. Reki Kawahara does not use an omniscient narrator in 99% of the cases in his books and prefers keeping the narrator limited to the character perspective he is using for the given chapter. In the rare occasion he is using an omniscient narrator, he switches tone entirely, as well as going as far as mentioning things in text, whether inside the chapter or in his afterwords with statements similar to "I used an omniscient narrator in this specific case. As you can imagine, the characters have no way of knowing this". With both those in mind, let's break down the text:
- Abyssal Horror, a creature that is an "amalgamation of darkness without form" (a fancy of saying a concentration of Umbral Elements) shoots projectiles (3 meters in diameter, each are double the size of Kirito) of Umbral Elements towards Kirito (that Stica perceives as lights, blasts among other things. As we clarified in another CRT, there are no actual "light attacks" in Underworld, they are simple projectile attacks using the given elements. Even a Luminous Element attack is not a "Light Attack" and this isn't even a luminous attack, it is an umbral attack, so let's just pre-emptively prevent this CRT going the "FTL route" due to misinterpretations again)
- Kirito had a thin layer of shield around him that he conjured in the earlier chapter to protect himself (and Alice & Asuna) from the cold of the space. However, the projectiles didn't even reach this thin barrier, and collided with Kirito's Incarnate Shield instead (same technique used by the likes of Bercouli and Vixur Ul Shasta) that resulted in an explosion
- As you would expect from an explosion, a shockwave occurred (the same way Defan explained as well regarding his translation)
- "Space Shook" after stuff exploded, from the Stica PoV narrator, indicating that her Mechadragon violently shook when this shockwave reached her.
- The very next sentence explains this exact incident with the clear timeline. Explosion happened, the shockwave started travelling like "a ripple on the surface of the water" describing how vision is warped by sudden changes of pressure/density, causing Stica and Laura to see this distortion caused by the shockwave (high density air pressure) warping what they see of the space around them, and eventually reaching their Mechadragons and shaking them in the end.
- And then Laurannei states how the event, as they felt it, was as if the entire universe was shaking, which is as far as exaggerations can go, considering a Universe doesn't even exist in Underworld and the Underworlders cannot even observe anything that is slightly far away from their planets anyways, so much so that taking off from one planet to go to another planet completely relies on an assumed orbit of the Abyssal Horror (because they cannot observe its full orbit in the first place) and a confirmation from the other planet, requiring them to double-check that the monster is definitively on the other side of their planet and not towards the travel path between the planets. (The other planet knowingly gave them false information in this case, figured I would just clarify, won't go further in since it is plot related spoilers from Unital Ring)
Solar System Level Removal
The claim currently is that Kirito "Absorbed around 100,000 stars with the Night Sky Sword. Can move an entire night sky's worth of stars during this process.", which is untrue. So untrue and so lacking in context, that I find it more efficient to just illustrate what happened, rather than debunking it.
First off, as we know from the earlier section, a universe, thus the stars themselves do not exist. But there is a lot more, all excerpts below are from SAO V18, Alicization Lasting, Chapter 22 Part 2:
As you can see, the Memory Release function of the Night Sky Sword simply covers the sky of the generated planet (at this point in the simulation, not even Cardina exists as a planet, it is just the plane of Human Empire + Dark Territory, surrounded by impassable walls, thus Cardinal System sees no point in having content outside). It is explicitly told that we are no longer seeing the skybox at all, but rather a blanket created on the sky. It literally states "The sky was covered", thus the "absorbing stars" already gets cancelled out here. But let's go further:
The next section is Sinon's PoV of the Memory Release ability. She states that even the clouds have disappeared, so the blanket is even closer than the clouds themselves, as they do re-appear like nothing happened after the incident.
As for the stars, as you can see in this excerpt, it is not a star. In Underworld, Incarnation manifests in spatial resources. Here, you can see Sinon's prayer, her incarnation, creating enough spatial resources for a little flicker to appear on the black canvas covering the world right now. It is not a star, it is closer to the ground than actual clouds are, and it is just a flickering light, same as any condensed spatial resources (this includes generated elements too, elements are as condensed as spatial resources get and thus have the highest potency for direct use) that give away a hue of light. The mention of a star is very basic imagery, a tool for the reader to be able to visualize something by giving it a visual approximation. Let's go further:
Leafa's perspective. Again, she prays and her incarnation manifests as spatial resources on the black canvas closer than the clouds, looking like a star as a visual reference. Let's go further:
Multiple other perspectives, people pray, their incarnation manifests as spatial resources on the canvas, you get the gist of it by now. For those still not convinced they are not stars:
Sheyta and Iskahn only see the spatial resources generated by Leafa when they look up. Because the canvas is so close to the earth, the Depth of Field is so low that they cannot even see the resources generated by Sinon a couple dozen kilometers to the south. They specifically only see a "single green star twinkling" which is the resources generated by Leafa, after the sky had already reached Sinon and hers was generated.
Small Country Level Removal
The confusion comes from a single sentence taken completely out of context.
As explained below in the replies:
As you can see, every word used is used specifically to convey an incredible intensity to the reader in this case, rather than being visually descriptive. Every single word is just upping the intensity to make the reader feel tenser and tenser until the climax delivers the numb feeling of utter loss for all that build up, as Gabriel cuts off Kirito's arm to achieve the ultimate juxtaposition for maximum effect. The entire scene is a description of emotion, not a physical manifestation.
"Winds and blades roaring"
"Clash of light and emptiness"
"giant flashes and explosions shaking the world itself"
"fusing a body with consciousness"
"energy released dispersed into space"
"crackling in search of equilibrium as bolts of lightning"
"no anger, no hatred, no murder"
"endless strength of countless prayers"
gets his arm cut off before the final strike
None of this is tangible statements. Claiming a single statement among a dozen intangible statements to be tangible is the exact problem of "taking things out of context"
tl;dr: As clearly illustrated above, the power levels of Kirito rely on severe misinformation and thus Solar, Multi-Solar and Small Country levels need to be removed.
My initial suggestion would be to fall back on Small Country level, but seeing the citation for it, that is no longer an option. I will however require guidance on what to categorize Kirito as in this case. As I have explained below in the replies:
Considering the final feat is covering the at-the-time-existing Underworld (Human Empire + Dark Territory only), I may recommend somewhere along the same lines. However I am not exactly sure if simply "covering Underworld to drain spatial resources" is actually a power feat or not, so I may need some guidance on that aspect. The output is not exactly on a given powerlevel in the first place. The output of the attack is simply and I mention this very specifically, "feeding all the memory data into Gabriel's real life brain, that causes him to no longer be able to process that much data and die out". There is really no physical output in that sense.
Current situation: Downgrades to Kirito, Asuna and Subtilizer to 7B are being recommended.
Disclaimer: This original post will be edited with additional stuff as they are mentioned to give a good overview of everything that is relevant.
Last edited: