‘Sword Art Online’ Preview Teases Surprising Integrity Knight Battle

Sword Art Online has officially kicked-off its next cour with the action packed Alicization Rising arc as Kirito and Eugeo have to climb 100 floors in order to get to the top of the Central Cathedral.

This struggle brings them face to face with the Integrity Knights protecting Administrator, and the next episode preview teases the surprising start to the next of these major fights.

Episode 15 is titled “The Knight of the Blazing Sun” and the preview teases the fallout of meeting the strange two little girls Kirito and Eugeo found themselves face to face with at the end of the latest episode. These two young girls are named Fizel and Linel, and there’s a reason they meet Kirito and Eugeo on one of the floors of the Cathedral. But Kirito and Eugeo have a tough fight waiting for them either way.

After defeating Deuselbert in the latest episode of the series, the two were told that there’s a group of Integrity Knights waiting to ambush them on the 50th floor of the Cathedral. But these young girls are a strange outlier. None of the Integrity Knights have been the same, as it was revealed that they all had lives in the Underworld before they became Knights and their memory erased. It could be the same case for the young girls here, so they may be more dangerous than Kirito and Eugeo realize. The preview enforces this as well with some, literally, shady shots of Fizel and Linel.

If you have yet to catch the new season of the series yourself, Sword Art Online: Alicization can currently be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu. The series is officially described as such:

“Where… am I…?” Before he knows it, Kirito has made a full-dive into an epic, fantasy-like virtual world. With only a murky recollection of what happened right before he logged in, he starts to wander around, searching for clues. He comes upon an enormous, pitch dark tree (the Gigas Cedar), where he encounters a boy. “My name is Eugeo. Nice to meet you, Kirito.” Although he is supposedly a resident of the virtual world – an NPC – the boy shows the same array of emotions as any human being.

As Kirito bonds with Eugeo, he continues to search for a way to log out of this world. Meanwhile, he remembers a certain memory deep down within him. He remembers racing through the mountains with Eugeo as a child… A memory that he should not have in the first place… And in this memory, he sees someone other than Eugeo, a young blond girl. Her name is Alice. And it is a name that must never be forgotten…”