Chapter 7
On the twenty-second floor of New Aincrad, white snow fell upon a deep
forest.
In the real world, too, it was the midwinter chill of early January, but with the
advancing pace of global warming, Tokyo hardly ever dropped below freezing.
The game management wanted to make the most of the season, however, so
Alfheim, realm of fairies, was locked in a devastating winter. North of the World
Tree located at the center of the map, it was common for temperatures to fall
into the single digits and peak below zero. Nobody wanted to fly in conditions
like that without proper equipment or anti-cold buffing spells. At the moment,
Aincrad was floating above gnome territory, the northernmost of all the races,
and the air was cold enough to cause ice crystals throughout all of its floors.
But even a chill that could freeze a running brook solid could not penetrate
the warming effects of thick log walls and a burning-red furnace.
It was eight months since May 2025, when the largest update ALfheim Online
had ever seen added the massive New Aincrad map to the game.
Because ALO functioned on a replica of the system that the formerly deadly
Sword Art Online ran on, the server already contained all of the data for SAO's
setting, the floating castle Aincrad. The new venture that had bought all the
rights to ALO hardware and software from RCT Progress—its previous
administrators—decided on the bold move of preserving all the old SAO
character data that came along with ALO's back end and, even further, merging
it into the game.
Naturally, part of this was a cold, practical decision to shore up their userbase numbers from dropping off after the discovery of RCT Progress's criminal
human experiments by offering a massive and exciting new update. But that
wasn't the only factor. The investors who put together the new company were
all veteran MMO players since the 2-D days, and they couldn't stand to have
that meticulously designed world erased forever. At least, that was what Asuna
heard from Agil, who served as a pipeline to the administrators.
Since the revival of Aincrad, Asuna had continued through the game as an
undine healer/fencer, but with a secret desire in mind.
Naturally, her goal was to raise the necessary col (or wait, it was yrd now) and
reach the twenty-second floor before anyone else so she could purchase the
little log cabin hidden deep within the pine forest there. It was the very place
where, long ago, she had once spent two wonderful, blissful, heartbreaking
weeks.
In last May's update, they'd only added the first ten floors. In September they
opened eleven through twenty. Then, on Christmas Eve, the night of December
24th, the labyrinth door that led to the twenty-first floor opened. At the
moment the little fanfare played to celebrate the unlocking of the new content,
Asuna was already racing up the long stairs with a party she'd put together of
Kirito, Klein, Agil, Lisbeth, Silica, and Leafa.
The twenty-second floor was a quiet one, almost entirely covered in forest,
and there was a number of player homes that could be bought in the main
village, so it was unlikely that any rivals were gunning for the same house that
she was. But Asuna raced through the twenty-first floor like a tornado anyway,
challenged the floor boss in the labyrinth with a joint raid party, and stood at
the front of the nearly fifty-man army with her sword, despite being a halfhealer build. Afterward, Klein told her that she was "even more impressive than
when she was vice commander of the Knights of the Blood."
When she had at last kicked aside the body of the twenty-first-floor boss
she'd finished off herself, Asuna raced to the edge of the twenty-second floor
where the little cabin waited, hit the OKAY button on the purchasing window, and
collapsed in front of it, shedding tears. That night, after all their friends had left
the party, she shared a toast with Kirito and their "daughter" Yui, who was back
in her human little-girl form, and Asuna bawled again. This time, it was a secret
from her friends.
Even Asuna couldn't exactly put into words her fixation on this particular log
house. It was the place where she was finally united with the first boy she'd
ever truly loved, after a great number of trials and tribulations—virtual or not—
and they'd spent a brief but wonderful time together. That was an easy enough
explanation, but Asuna felt there was more to it than that.
She had always sought her place in the real world, and perhaps this was her
"home" in the truest sense of the word. A comfortable, warm place where a
pair of birds could rest their wings and huddle together to sleep. The home of
her heart.
Of course, after all the trouble she went through to get it this time around,
the log cabin ended up as a hangout spot for their friends, and not a day went
by where there wasn't a visitor. Apparently, after her meticulous interior
renovation, the house was such a comfortable destination that people would fly
up from the surface to visit it. Both her old companions from SAO and her new
friends in ALO would stop by incessantly to smack their lips at her home
cooking. There was even one time when, through an act of considerable
coincidence, they had a very tense meal with both Lady Sakuya and General
Eugene at the table.
On this day—January 6th, 2026—the living-wood stump table in the cabin's
main room was surrounded by familiar faces.
To Asuna's right was the beast tamer Silica, sporting the cait sith's signature
triangular ears. She was glaring at math equations from her winter vacation
homework on a holo-display and groaning. To Asuna's left was Leafa the
warrior-mage sylph, her greenish-yellow hair tied into a long ponytail. Like
Silica, she was grunting over homework—in this case, an English essay.
Seated across from her was the leprechaun blacksmith Lisbeth, but she was
reclined back in the chair with her legs crossed, a bottle of raspberry liquor in
one hand and an in-game novel in the other.
In the real world it was around four o'clock, but the time of day in ALfheim
wasn't coordinated with the outside world, so it was already after sunset, and
the only thing to be seen out of the window was the falling snow catching the
light of the lanterns. They didn't need to hear the rustling outside to know that
it was freezing cold, but the logs in the stove crackled merrily, and the
mushroom stew in the deep pot bubbled and filled the room with warmth and
aroma.
Like her friends, Asuna had a holo-keyboard under her hands, poring over a
browser window connected to the Internet and working on a school report.
Asuna's mother did not entirely approve of doing tasks in the VR world that
could easily be accomplished in reality, but lengthy typing sessions were
actually much more efficient here. There was no eye or wrist strain, and she
could call up more pages than her actual 1600x1200 monitor could support and
place them wherever she wanted.
In an attempt to convince her mother, Asuna once had her log in to a full-dive
application meant to facilitate text entry, but within a few minutes, her mother
had logged out, complaining that it made her dizzy. She never bothered with it
again.
Full-dive sickness was a real thing, but after living in that environment for two
years, Asuna couldn't even remember what it felt like. Her fingers flashed and
flew with perfect accuracy as she approached the conclusion of her report
within the editing software.
Just then, something settled on her shoulder.
She turned to the right to see Silica's head resting on her, the large triangular
ears twitching as she slept with a satisfied smile.
Asuna couldn't help but grin. She tickled a feline ear with her index finger.
"Come on, Silica. If you take a nap now, you'll have trouble falling asleep
tonight."
"Hrm…mya…"
"There's only three days of vacation left. Better get working on that
assignment."
She pulled the ear, causing Silica to twitch and straighten up at last. She
stared blearily and blinked several times before shaking her head and looking at
Asuna.
"Uh…aah…I'm sleepy," she murmured, and yawned widely, little white fangs
visible. The other cait sith players who visited the cabin exhibited similar
sleepiness, which made Asuna wonder if there was some kind of racial status
effect it had on them.
Asuna looked at Silica's holo-window and said, "You're almost done with that
page. Why don't you just breeze through that one?"
"Mmm…hokay…"
"Is it too warm in here? Should I lower the heat?" Asuna asked.
To her left, Leafa giggled. "No, I'm pretty sure the culprit is over there."
"Over there…?"
Asuna, ponytail waving, followed the line of Leafa's finger toward the stove
affixed to the eastern wall.
"…Oh…I see," she murmured, nodding. Plopped in front of the red, burning
stove was a finely polished wooden rocking chair.
Slumped in the rocking chair and fast asleep was a spriggan boy with tanned
skin and short black hair. His formerly spiky hair had been altered to lie flat, but
the pointed and mischievous facial features were still intact. It was, of course,
Kirito.
A little dragon with pale blue feathers was curled into a ball on his stomach,
its head resting comfortably on its soft, curled tail. This was Pina, Silica's
miniature dragon partner since the days of SAO.
And snoozing on top of Pina's soft down was an even smaller fairy with
straight, lustrous black hair and a light-pink one-piece dress. It was Yui, an AI
born from the old SAO server, now serving as Kirito's navigation pixie. But most
important, she was the daughter of Asuna and Kirito.
The three-layer stack of Kirito, Pina, and Yui, each sleeping blissfully on the
rocking chair, was having a nearly sorcerous effect on anyone around it. Just
watching them for a few seconds was making Asuna's eyelids grow heavy with
sleep.
Kirito was quite an avid sleeper himself. As if he was trying to make up for all
the sleep he lost trying to defeat SAO the first time, Kirito collapsed into his
favorite rocking chair and dozed away any time Asuna took her eyes off of him
for more than a few moments.
And Asuna did not know anything that made her sleepy faster than the sight
of Kirito snoozing in his rocking chair.
When they lived in the old Aincrad and Kirito fell asleep on the couches in the
upstairs of Agil's shop or on the porch of their forest cabin, Asuna would almost
always slip in next to him and share in the warmth of sleep. She knew from
personal experience what a soporific effect it had, so she could understand why
Silica and Leafa felt the fatigue bearing down on them.
But what was odd was the way the little dragon Pina—which should have
been a simple collection of algorithms—would take off from Silica's shoulders
and curl up on top of Kirito whenever he was sleeping nearby.
It almost made her wonder if Kirito was emitting some kind of "sleep
parameter" as he was snoozing. As evidence of that, she'd just been wide
awake and absorbed in her report, but now her body felt weightless…
"Hey, now you're sleeping, Asuna! And Liz, too!"
She bolted upright, feeling Silica shaking her shoulder. Across the table,
Lisbeth snapped up, too, blinking furiously. The girl smiled shyly and shook her
pink hair, which gleamed with the metallic shine characteristic of leprechauns.
"You can't help but get sleepy, watching him…I wonder if it's one of those
illusion magic things that spriggans do."
"Hee hee! I doubt it. I'll wake us up by putting on some tea. The instant kind,
though."
Asuna stood up and pulled four cups out of the cupboard behind her. They
were magical mugs that produced a random flavor of tea out of ninety-nine
varieties with a single tap—a recent quest reward.
With the mugs and some fruit tarts on the table, the four girls, including the
now-awake Silica, each took a sip of a different kind of hot liquid.
"By the way," Lisbeth started, as though remembering something, "have you
heard about the Absolute Sword, Asuna?"
"The rumors started going around regularly just before the end of the year…
so about a week ago," Lisbeth said, then nodded to herself in understanding.
"Oh, right, no wonder you didn't know, then. You were in Kyoto at the end of
December."
"Please don't remind me of that unpleasant stuff when I'm playing a game,"
Asuna said, frowning. Lisbeth laughed loudly.
"I guess it's hard being a rich girl from a rich family."
"It was hard! I had to spend all day in a full kimono and proper sitting
position, greeting people. I couldn't even enjoy a quick dive at night, because
the building I was staying in didn't even have wireless! I brought my AmuSphere
with me, and it was all for nothing."
She sighed and drained the last of her tea.
At the end of January, Asuna was essentially forced into a trip to the Yuuki
household headquarters—her paternal grandparents' home in Kyoto—with her
parents and older brother. The rest of the family at large was very worried
about her two-year "hospitalization." She couldn't very well refuse a trip to see
them all and thank them for their concern and help during that time.
When she was younger, spending the start of the year back home was an
ordinary event, and she enjoyed seeing all the cousins around her age. But
somewhere around the time she got into middle school, Asuna found this
tradition to be more and more suffocating.
The main Yuuki family was a line that had been in the currency exchange
business in Kyoto for, without exaggeration, more than two centuries. They had
lasted through the Meiji Restoration and the chaos of war, and they now ran a
regional bank that had offices all throughout western Japan. Her father,
Shouzou Yuuki, had grown RCT into a major electronics manufacturer in a single
generation thanks to the ample funds provided by the main family business.
The extended family was positively littered with company presidents and
government officials.
Naturally, like Asuna and her brother, all of the cousins were "good students"
at "good schools," sitting politely at the family table as their parents boasted
about the award their child had won in a recent competition and the national
rank their child scored recently on a standardized test. These conversations
were pleasant on the surface, but that only hid the fierce current of rivalry
running underneath. When Asuna began to recognize this atmosphere and feel
alienated by it, the whole exercise struck her as nothing more than the family
ranking its own children by value.
In November 2022, the winter of her last year of middle school, Asuna fell
prey to SAO and wasn't rescued until January of 2025, exactly one year ago.
That made this her first visit to the family gathering in four years. The main
family house was a massive mansion in the Kyoto teahouse style. She was put
into a tight, long-sleeved kimono and forced to greet countless relatives,
starting with her grandparents, until she began to feel like an NPC whose only
purpose was offering formal pleasantries.
Still, she enjoyed seeing her cousins again, but there was something in their
eyes when they rejoiced at seeing her alive and well that she did not like.
They all pitied her. They showered her with sympathy: the first competitor to
fall off the track in the race they'd all been in since the moment they were born.
She wasn't just overthinking this; ever since she was a child, Asuna had known
how to read what people were thinking from their demeanor.
Naturally, she was now a completely different person than she had been
before. That world, and more important, that boy, had reborn her into
someone else, whether she wanted it or not. So the pity of her cousins, aunts,
and uncles passed through her mind without raising so much as a ripple. She
was a swordsman above all else, someone who fought with her own strength—
a belief that still remained firm within her heart, even after the passing of the
world that taught her that.
But she knew that her cousins, who only saw VRMMOs as an evil influence,
would never understand her philosophy. Neither would her mother, who was
irritable during the entire stay in Kyoto.
There wasn't a shred left of Asuna's former belief that she had to get into a
good college to land a good job. She liked her current school very much, and
over the next year, she would spend her time finding what she truly wanted to
do. Her ultimate goal in life, of course, was to start a family with a boy one year
her junior, but in the real world this time.
Such was the thought Asuna kept in her mind as she grinned her way through
her relatives' prying questions, but the one event that finally got to her
occurred on the day before she returned to Tokyo, when she found herself
isolated in a back room of the main mansion with a second cousin who was two
years her elder.
He was the son of some kind of executive at the family's bank, and he went
on and on endlessly about his major in college, the bank where he was already
promised a job out of school, what his position would be, and how he would
rise through the ranks. Asuna kept her smile plastered on her face to feign
interest, but in the back of her mind, all she sensed was some kind of
underhanded scheme on the part of the adults, in the way they had isolated the
two of them like this…
"Are you listening, Asuna?"
She came back to her senses when Lisbeth poked Asuna's foot beneath the
table.
"Oh! S-sorry. Just thinking about some unpleasant stuff."
"Oh yeah, what's that? Did they try to set you up with a husband in Kyoto?"
"…"
"…Why is your face twitching? Wait…are you saying I was—"
"No, you're wrong! It was nothing!" Asuna protested, shaking her head
furiously. She tapped the lip of her empty mug and chugged down the oddly
purple tea that appeared. Once done with that, she was ready to change the
subject by any means necessary.
"So…this really tough player. Is it a PKer?"
"No, a PVPer—proper duels. You know how, north of the main city on the
twenty-fourth floor, there's a little tourist island with a huge tree on it? Every
day at three o'clock, the duelist shows up at the foot of the tree and duels
challengers one by one."
"Oooh. Is it someone from a tournament?"
"Nope, totally new face. But the skill numbers must be off the charts, so
maybe they converted from another game. At first, there were just posts on
MMO Tomorrow's forum looking for opponents. So about thirty people got
together to show 'this ALO newb' a lesson about running your mouth…"
"And they got whooped?"
"Every single one. Not a single person managed to score more than thirty
percent damage, so it was legit overkill."
"I don't know if I can believe this."
Silica butted in, chewing on a fruit tart. "It took me almost half a year to learn
how to handle air battle, and this person was just zipping around right after
conversion!"
"Conversion" was the system for transferring characters between all the
VRMMOs created from the Seed platform, which included ALO. A character
could be taken from one game to another relatively easily, keeping a similar
level of base stats. However, no money or items could be transferred. Naturally,
the finer points of mastering a new game had to come from experience.
"Did you try, Silica?" Asuna asked. Silica shook her head, eyes wide.
"No way! I watched the duels, but I knew I couldn't win. Liz and Leafa tried,
though. They're both the bold type, I suppose."
"Oh, shuddup," Liz quipped.
"It was a learning experience," said Leafa. Asuna smiled at the banter but was
surprised on the inside. Lisbeth was one thing—she was playing a combat-weak
race, and she prioritized her blacksmithing skills. But anyone who could defeat
Leafa—probably the best air warrior of the sylphs—was a force to be reckoned
with. And fresh after conversion? It was nearly unthinkable.
"Sounds like the real deal to me. I'm starting to get intrigued."
"Heh! I figured you'd say that, Asuna. The only ones in the monthly
tournaments who haven't tried their hand yet are big shots like Lady Sakuya
and General Eugene, and they aren't really in a position to engage in street
duels."
"But if you keep overwhelming everybody, won't you just run out of
opponents eventually? Unlike the tournaments, a street duel has really stiff
experience penalties for dying, right?"
"You'd think so, but no—the draw is what's being wagered," Silica interjected
again.
"Oh? Are they betting some kind of superrare item?"
"It's not an item. It's an Original Sword Skill. A supertough mega-attack."
Asuna just barely managed to keep herself from mimicking a classic Kirito
move and ended up shrugging with a whistle of amazement instead.
"An OSS, huh? What kind? How many hits?"
"Um, from what I saw, it's an all-purpose, one-handed sword attack. The thing
is, it's an eleven-hit combo."
"Eleven!"
This time, she couldn't help but purse her lips and let out a high-pitched
whistle.
Sword Skills were the signature gameplay system of the old Sword Art Online.
Each category of weapon had its own preprogrammed skills, from deadly singleblow attacks to furious combinations. What set them apart from ordinary
weapon attacks was a particular initial motion that the game recognized, at
which point it would automatically "assist" players by moving them through the
entire attack at maximum speed. Each Sword Skill had unique visual and audio
effects that distinguished it, and using them made the player feel like an
invincible superwarrior.
As part of the massive update that added Aincrad to ALO, the game's new
administrators undertook the bold decision to reinstate the Sword Skill system
almost exactly as it had existed in SAO.
In essence, the very fundamental battle system of New ALO underwent a
revolution. Naturally, it led to major debates among the player base, but once
the dissenters had a chance to experience Sword Skills for themselves, they
were all entranced.
Until that point, all the flashiest effects of ALO were the sole province of
magic spells, and magic was also superior in accuracy and range, which left
close-combat physical fighters in a small minority. The advent of Sword Skills
helped even out that balance. Even more than half a year since the update, the
combination of air battle and Sword Skills was producing heated commentary
and debate among the game's community.
But the adventurous new developers were not content just to borrow the
Sword Skill system they'd inherited from those who came before them.
They developed and implemented a new addition to the system called
Original Sword Skills. As the name suggested, these were user-created skills.
Unlike the preexisting skills that had specific motions and details already
created by the devs, these were Sword Skills that players could create and
register for themselves.
As soon as it was unlocked, countless players pulled out their weapons in
town and wilderness, envisioning their own supercool finishing move—and
were instantly plunged into deep despair and frustration.
The method to register an Original Sword Skill (OSS) was extremely simple.
Just open the menu, go to the OSS tab and, from there, into the "skill entry"
mode. Hit the skill-recording button, swing your weapon to your heart's
content, then hit the stop button when done. It was as simple as that.
However, for the user-created ultimate attack to be recognized by the game
as a Sword Skill, it had to fulfill certain extremely stringent requirements. Nearly
all variations of simple slashes and thrusts already existed in the game as Sword
Skills. That meant that any OSS had to be a combination attack, by necessity.
But there had to be absolutely no waste in the movement, trajectory, balance
of weight, and so on, and on top of that, the action had to match the speed of
the finished Sword Skill.
In other words, the player had to prove the nearly paradoxical: that he could
replicate his combination at superhuman speed already, without any help from
the system.
The only way to overcome this hurdle was a blinding amount of practice and
repetition. The movements had to be burned into the synapses of the brain.
Almost everyone who tried it gave up on the dream of his or her own super–
combo attack, unable to handle the endless slog of so much practice. But a few
hardy souls managed to develop and register their own OSSs, earning them an
honor much like the classic sword schools of the feudal era. Indeed, some of
them went on to start guilds titled the " School," effectively running their
own in-game dojos.
It was the "skill inheritance" function of the OSS system that made it possible
for such schools to exist. Anyone who successfully created an OSS could pass a
first-generation copy to other players through an item called a Skill Tome.
An OSS was devastating against monsters as well as other players. Everyone
wanted one. Soon the asking price for secondhand skills grew astronomical,
with Skill Tomes of combinations of more than five hits ranking among the most
expensive items in ALO's economy. The strongest widely known OSS at present
was General Eugene's eight-part "Volcanic Blazer," but he had no need for
money and hadn't taught it to anyone yet.
For her own part, Asuna had successfully created a five-part OSS after months
of practice, but the process had drained her so completely that she didn't feel
like working on a new skill anytime soon.
So it was within this context that the mysterious "Absolute Sword" appeared,
wielding an unprecedented eleven-hit skill.
"Well, that would explain why everyone wants a duel, then. Has everyone
seen this Skill for themselves?" Asuna asked. All three of them shook their
heads. Lisbeth spoke for the group.
"No, apparently it was displayed for all to see on the very first day of these
street duels but hasn't been used since…I guess you could say that no one's
been able to even pressure the Absolute Sword enough to elicit the use of the
OSS."
"Not even Leafa?"
Leafa's shoulders slumped. "It was a close fight until both of us were at about
sixty percent…and it took nothing more than default moves to finish me off the
rest of the way."
"Wow…Oh, that reminds me, I'm missing some basic details. What race, what
weapon are we talking about?"
"Oh, an imp. And the weapon was a one-handed sword, but one almost as
thin as Asuna's rapier. Basically, they were superfast. Even the normal attacks
were about as quick as a skill…You could barely follow it with the naked eye.
I've never seen anything like it before."
"A speed type, huh? If even Leafa couldn't keep up with it, then I don't stand
a chance…Oh!" Asuna suddenly remembered something important. "When it
comes to speed, the most ridiculous person of all is sleeping right over there.
What about Kirito? I bet he'd be interested in this."
Lisbeth, Silica, and Leafa all shared a look, then burst into laughter at once.
"Wh-what? What is it?" Asuna stammered.
To her shock, Leafa giggled. "Hee hee. Oh, Big Brother already tried. He was
very cool in defeat, though."
"Def…?"
He lost. Kirito lost.
Asuna's mouth fell open and stayed there for several seconds.
To Asuna, Kirito as a swordsman had become a standin for the concept of
"absolute power." In both SAO and ALO, as far as Asuna knew, the only person
to ever beat Kirito in a one-on-one duel was Heathcliff, commander of the
Knights of the Blood, and that was only due to his unfair advantage as the
(secret) game administrator.
Though she'd never told Lisbeth and the others about it, Asuna herself had
once crossed blades with Kirito in a deadly serious duel in SAO. It happened
around the time that Asuna had assumed the lead of the KoB forces on the
front line as the vice commander of the guild, just after she first met Kirito.
There was a face-off about the strategy to defeat a particular field boss, with
the split happening between the KoB's speed-prioritizing faction and Kirito, who
spoke for a number of other solo players. There was no compromise to be
found between the two sides, so it ended with a virtual coin flip: a duel
between the leader of each faction.
At the time, Asuna already had an interest in Kirito as a person, but the rest of
her was trying to snuff out that desire. She believed that personal sentiment
could not be allowed to override the duty of beating the game.
Asuna thought that a duel was the perfect opportunity to quash the weaker
side of her heart. By defeating Kirito and efficiently dispatching the boss after
that, she could regain her logical, bloodless side.
But she did not know about the hidden strength behind the otherwise
lackluster-looking swordsman.
Their duel was a truly ferocious battle. With each collision of their blades,
Asuna felt her troubles escaping from her mind, leaving only the delight of
fighting against a worthy foe. For nearly ten minutes, they exchanged brain
pulses on a level that she had never experienced before, but she didn't even
register the passage of time.
Asuna lost that fight. She reacted to Kirito's desperate feint—he reached for
the second, unequipped sword on his back, for reasons she learned later—and
he made use of that opportunity to land a clean hit on her.
Against her rational desire, Asuna's romantic leanings became impossible to
ignore after this duel, and in addition to that personal sentiment, Kirito's
freewheeling sword style put another impression into her mind.
He was the strongest swordsman alive. Even now that the Black Swordsman
of SAO was no more, that image remained as fresh and vivid as ever.
So the revelation that this "Absolute Sword" had beaten Kirito was so
unthinkable, so shocking, that shivers ran across her skin.
Asuna looked from Leafa to Lisbeth and rasped, "Was Kirito…fighting his
hardest?"
"Hmmm," Lisbeth mumbled, crossing her arms. "I hate to say it, but when you
get to fighting at that level, I can't tell what's serious and what's not…I mean,
Kirito wasn't using two swords, so in that sense, I guess he wasn't fighting at his
best. Besides…"
She trailed off and looked over at the sleeping Kirito, ruby eyes glittering with
the reflection of the fire. There was a faint smile curling the sides of her mouth.
"I get the feeling that in a normally functioning game, Kirito won't ever fight
with all of his strength again. Meaning that, the only time he fights his hardest is
when the game is no longer a game, and the virtual world becomes real…Which
means it's for the best if he never feels he needs to fight his hardest again. He's
already got a knack for getting involved in trouble."
"…"
Asuna stared at the sleeping black-haired warrior herself, then nodded.
"Yeah…you're right."
Leafa and Silica bobbed their heads as well, each bearing expressions of their
own understanding. Leafa, who was Kirito's sister in real life, eventually broke
the silence.
"Well, as far as I could tell…he was taking it completely seriously. At the very
least, he definitely was not going easy on his opponent. Plus…"
"…What?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but just before the duel finished, they were locked to
the hilt for a moment, and I think I saw him speaking with the Absolute Sword
about something…After that, they took their distance again, and he wasn't able
to dodge away from the next charge attack…"
"Hmm…I wonder what they were talking about."
"Well, I asked, but he wouldn't tell me. I feel like there's something there,
though."
"I see. In that case, he probably won't tell me, either." Asuna looked down at
her hands and mumbled, "I guess the only way to find out is to ask this Absolute
Sword directly."
Lisbeth raised her eyebrows. "You gonna fight?"
"Well, I doubt I'll win. It sounds like this Absolute Sword person came to ALO
for a purpose. Something more than just challenging people to duels."
"Yeah, I get the same feeling. But I bet you won't learn the answer unless you
put up as good a fight as Kirito did. Which character you gonna go as?"
Asuna thought over Lisbeth's question. In addition to her undine fencer
Asuna, converted from her old SAO player data, she also had a sylph named
Erika whom she'd started from scratch. She decided to try out a different
character for the simple reason of wearing a different face now and then.
Erika's build was a dagger-based close-combat fighter, which made her better
suited for duels than Asuna, who was half healer. But she shrugged
immediately.
"I'll go with the one I'm more familiar with. If the opponent's a speed type,
it'll be more about reaction time than pure DPS numbers. Will you guys be
coming along?"
As she faced the group, all three of them nodded simultaneously. Silica's tail
wagged happily through the space on the back of the chair as she piped up, "Of
course! I wouldn't miss this fight for the world."
"I don't know how much of a fight it'll be…but that's settled, then. The little
island on the twenty-fourth floor at three o'clock, you said? Let's meet up here
at two thirty, then," Asuna suggested, clapping her hands and bringing up her
menu to check the time.
"Oh crap, it's already six. I'm going to be late for dinner."
"Shall we call it a day, then?" Leafa asked, saving her homework progress and
cleaning up. As the others followed her lead, the sylph snuck over to the rocking
chair, grabbed the back, and violently shook it back and forth.
"Wake up, Big Brother! We're leaving!"
Asuna watched the scene with a grin, but a sudden thought wiped it away.
She turned to Lisbeth.
"Hey, Liz."
"What?"
"You said the Absolute Sword might be a converted player," she began
quietly. "With that much strength, it makes me wonder…could it be a former
SAO player?"
Liz nodded seriously. "Yeah, I wondered that myself. After Kirito's fight, I
asked him what he thought…"
"And what did he say?"
"He said there was no way that the Absolute Sword could have been an SAO
player."
"…"
"Because if that were the case…it wouldn't have been him who won the Dual
Blades skill."