In a vast, silent room.
Most areas of this windowless, doorless building lay submerged in darkness.
Lights of every kind flickered, brightening and dimming.
Their sources were the futuristic-looking instruments hidden in the walls or beneath the floor around him, stacked at varying heights.
Green data streamed like waterfalls across indicator lights and faintly visible Light Screens.
Deep within the light, calculating machines resembling industrial refrigerators emitted an even more ethereal, hazy glow, with specks of dust faintly visible drifting within it.
That was the manifestation of all the information in Academy City. Yet Aleister, surrounded by that light, was not performing calculations with narrowed eyes as usual. Instead, he had fallen into a deep sleep.
Although he had ways to escape this condition that confined him to a cultivation tank, he remained subject to its restrictions as long as he stayed in it.
Roland's intrusion had disrupted far too many of his arrangements and thrown off his timing. Even with Aleister's extraordinary genius, he had to immerse himself deeply to sort out his present and future plans again.
As for Academy City's affairs, the artificial intelligence he had painstakingly constructed would take the initiative to coordinate the intelligence for him.
If the situation spiraled out of control, Aiwass would wake him, so Aleister had no further concerns and soon devoted himself entirely to considering the course of the future.
"Ding, ding, ding-!"
Just then.
Bright lights abruptly illuminated every corner of the vast, dim room.
A piercing, loud melody blared wildly as well, interrupting Aleister's slumber.
"What happened... has Roland attacked?"
Aleister, suspended upside down in the tank, abruptly opened his eyes and glanced at Aiwass, who had silently appeared beside him.
The sound that had bypassed Aiwass and the program to wake him directly was a warning that