Calibur

"Look at this, Big Brother."

With dull, sleepy eyes, I stared at the tablet Suguha was holding out to me.

I'd gotten plenty of sleep last night, but I felt like my dreams

were exceptionally long. So when I got to the kitchen table, it was

the sort of situation where I had to force my recalcitrant mental

gears to turn via a strong cup of coffee. But even with that mental

fog, the warning light in a corner of my brain was flashing as I

took the tablet from her.

After all, the last time she had handed me something under

similar circumstances, it was two weeks ago, when she had proof

of my secret shame—that I had converted my character from

ALfheim Online (ALO), the fantasy flight-based VRMMO, to Gun

Gale Online (GGO), a sci-fi gunfighter of the same medium. At

first I wondered if she'd uncovered some other misdeed of mine

and hastily tried to think of what I'd done recently. But Suguha

only chuckled and reassured me. "I'm not trying to string you up

this time, Big Brother. Just look at it!"

I hesitantly took the tablet she offered me and examined it.

Just like the printed copy she'd shown me last time, it was a news

article from MMO Tomorrow, the country's biggest VRMMORPG

website. But this time, it was not categorized as GGO news, but

ALO. The first thing that caught my eye was the screenshot in the

article, which was not a player avatar but a landscape shot. So the

spriggan in black truly hadn't gotten himself into trouble this

time.

Relieved, I read the lead paragraph of the article. Almost instantly, I was hit by a different kind of shock and couldn't stop

myself from shouting. "Wh-what?!"

The article read, The Holy Sword Excalibur, most powerful of

the legendary weapons, found at last!

My fatigue completely forgotten now, I tore through the rest of

the article and let out a long groan.

"Hrrrrmmm…So they finally found it…"

"Personally, it was a lot longer than I expected." Suguha

pouted, spreading blueberry jam on her toast from her seat

across the table.

The Holy Sword Excalibur.

It was the one weapon in ALO said to be able to overpower the

Demon Blade Gram, weapon of the salamander general Eugene.

Its existence was long known, thanks to its tiny description and

picture on the official website's index of weapons, but the means

of finding it in the game had remained a mystery.

Though technically, there were three—no, four players who

knew about it. Suguha, Asuna, Yui, and me. We'd found it at the

very start of this year: January 2025. Today was December 28th,

so Excalibur's secret had stayed hidden for an entire year.

"Aww, man…If I'd known this was going to happen, I'd have

given it another shot," I grumbled and stuck a spoon in the jar of

homemade jam, scooping out a huge dollop of the gelatinous material and dropping it onto my toast. Next, I added a blast of

whipped butter, spreading it until the two toppings were marbled. Suguha, who'd been watching her calories recently, looked

back and forth between the toast in her hand and what I was

doing with mine. Eventually, she lost the saving roll against

temptation and silently pulled the butter container over to herself.

Her meager resistance came in the form of taking a more reasonable amount of butter. Once she'd taken a bite of her toast,

she pointed out, "Read it closer; they only just found it. They

haven't figured out how to get it yet."

"What?"

I stopped myself in the middle of another huge bite and

squinted at the tablet again. The article said that Excalibur's location had been identified but there was no information about any

player acquiring it. Now that I thought about it, if someone had

found the prize, the screenshot would have been of the lucky winner holding the golden blade aloft.

"Man, don't scare me like that…" I sighed in relief, finishing

the bite I'd started. Suguha smiled at me, picked up the carton of

milk, and filled my glass.

It was nine thirty in the morning on Sunday, December 28th,

2025. Winter vacation started today for the both of us, so it was a

late breakfast. Our mom still had a few proofs to clear up before

the end of the year, so she'd bolted out the door with another

piece of toast earlier. Just because digital publishing didn't need

to worry about the status of the printer didn't mean there weren't

challenges of its own.

As usual, my dad was busy on assignment in New York, and

the last message we'd got from him said he'd be home on the thirtieth. So Suguha and I ate alone, which meant that our conversation naturally turned to the subject of ALO.

After my first slice of toast, I decided on the tuna spread for

the second, at which point a thought occurred to me.

"But how'd they find it, then? You can't fly in Jotunheim, but

Excalibur's location is up high enough that you can't see it without flight."

One year ago, Suguha (as Leafa) and I (as Kirito) were traveling from sylph lands to the center city Alne, and just as the World

Tree came into sight, we got gobbled up by a giant earthworm

and traveled through its digestive tract to the underground realm

of Jotunheim.

We were making our way around the subterranean map,

avoiding the unbeatable, enormous Deviant God monsters as we

sought a stairway back to the surface, when we came across a very

odd sight. A humanoid Deviant God with four arms was fighting

with another Deviant God with countless tentacles and a long

nose, like a cross between an elephant and a jellyfish.

When Leafa begged me to help save the one being picked on, I

somehow managed to pull the four-armed monster to a nearby

lake, where the jellyphant took advantage of the watery conditions to win. When the winner—which Leafa nicknamed

"Tonky"—proved to be helpful rather than hostile, we got to ride

on its back to the center of Jotunheim. Tonky cocooned and subsequently hatched with wings, flying us up to a passage in the

ceiling that took us back to the surface. But on the way, we saw an

upside-down pyramid dungeon tangled in the giant roots of the

World Tree and, trapped in crystal at its very tip, the gleaming

golden sword.

As Suguha revisited the memories of that adventure, she

looked up and grinned.

"You were really torn at the time, weren't you? You didn't

know whether to stay on Tonky and travel to the surface or jump

over to the dungeon and go after Excalibur."

"W-well, yeah, I was torn…But if you ask me, anyone who

doesn't at least entertain the thought isn't a true online gamer!"

"That didn't sound as cool as you thought it did." Suguha

grinned, snarky. But then she looked down in serious thought—

and not about what to spread on her second piece of toast; her

hand was already reaching for the tube of tuna paste.

"…Tonky's not going to come unless you or I call for him…and

I haven't heard anything about people discovering a way of flying

in Jotunheim. So maybe someone else saved another jellyphant

Deviant God the way we did and succeeded in enabling the

quest…"

"I suppose so…It's hard for me to imagine another weirdo—er,

charitable soul like you wanting to save such a gross—er, unique

monster that way."

"They're not gross! They're cute!" argued my little sister, who

turned sixteen this year. She continued. "But in that case, it's only

a matter of time before someone clears that dungeon and succeeds in getting the sword. It wasn't discovered until today because the conditions for unlocking the quest were well hidden,

but it's been a year now, and there was that update that added

sword skills, so the difficulty of the dungeon isn't what it once

was."

"Yeah…I guess…" I mumbled, and took a drink of milk.

It had been this January that we spotted Excalibur. Since then,

ALO's management had passed from RCT Progress to its current

group of venture capitalists, and they'd added the floating castle

Aincrad to the game—in all, it had undergone a massive renovation. Once that upheaval settled down in June, I had joined Leafa,

Yui, and Asuna for another ride on Tonky's back to attempt winning the legendary Excalibur.

We failed spectacularly. The hanging-pyramid dungeon was

packed with the four-armed Deviant Gods that had bullied

Tonky, only big-daddy versions of them, so powerful that it immediately made me want to give up. We challenged the dungeon

as a party of three (plus one companion) as a reconnaissance run

before a true attempt, but it was so clearly out of our league that

we called it off early and decided to try again when we were much

stronger.

But when Aincrad was installed and the first ten floors made

available to play, followed by the second ten in September, we

switched over to that part of the game. We'd go back to Jotunheim to farm materials and hang out with Tonky every now and

then, but there was no rush to deal with Excalibur—no one else

could even spot the thing, much less succeed at reaching it.

The thing about MMORPGs is that no item stays hidden forever. Now that the location of the sword was published online,

even in a vague form, a swarm of players was bound to descend

on Jotunheim. Some of them might even be in the dungeon as we

spoke.

"…What should we do, Big Brother?" Suguha asked, lifting her

glass of milk with two hands now that she was done with her second piece of toast.

I cleared my throat and answered. "Sugu, chasing after legendary items isn't the only pleasure to be had in a VRMMO."

"…Yeah, I know. Getting a weapon with better stats doesn't

mean—"

"But I think that we owe it to Tonky for showing us where the

sword is. I'm pretty sure that deep down, he wants us to beat that

dungeon. I mean, we're pretty much best friends with him, aren't

we?"

"…You just said he was gross," my sister said with a piercing

glance. I summoned my most dazzling smile for her.

"So, you doing anything today, Sugu?"

"…Well, the club's on break, too."

I smacked a fist into my palm in triumph. With that decided,

my mind was now in full-on tactical planning mode.

"I'm pretty sure seven is the most you can fit on Tonky's back.

That means me, you, Asuna, Klein, Liz, Silica…and one more.

Agil's got his business…Chrysheight's too unreliable, and Recon's

going to be in sylph territory…"

"…Why not invite Sinon?"

"Ooh, that's it!"

I snapped my fingers, pulled out my cell phone, and started

scrolling through my contacts list.

Earlier this month, I converted my character Kirito into Gun

Gale Online as part of an ongoing investigation and met a girl

named Sinon there. After the case was solved, Sinon became

friends with Asuna, Liz, and the rest, and created a new character

in ALO to play with us.

It was a brand-new character, just two weeks old, but given

the skill-based nature of ALO, numerical stats carried less weight

than most games. With Sinon's talent, even a high-difficulty dungeon wouldn't be out of her reach.

While I typed up a message at maximum speed, Suguha nimbly stacked the plates and glasses and carried them to the

kitchen. I couldn't help but notice a bit of a bounce to her step as

she did so. She had to be thinking the same thing as I was from

the moment she showed me the news.

We were going to fly into an alternate world with good friends

and tackle a challenging but thrilling mission together. Few

things could possibly be as exciting and fun.

Once I was done sending the invitation to Sinon and the other

four, I practically skipped over to the kitchen to assist Suguha

with the cleaning.

Even on a Sunday, getting seven players together so quickly at

midmorning at the end of the year was quite a feat, only made

possible through the personal respect I commanded—or more

likely, the online gamer instincts roused by the allure of the Holy

Sword Excalibur. Compared to when we challenged it as a group

of four half a year ago, we had more people with better stats now.

We met up at the workshop of the famous Lisbeth Armory on

the main street of Yggdrasil City, where the leprechaun blacksmith took turns sharpening our weapons. It was common practice to refill your gear's durability to maximum before tackling a

major quest.

Sitting on a bench against the wall and slugging from a bottle

of liquor "for atmosphere"—though naturally, there wasn't a single drop of alcohol entering his actual body—was Klein the salamander. Next to him, the cait sith beast-tamer Silica, complete

with fluffy sky-blue dragon on her head, asked, "Are you already

on New Year's vacation, Klein?"

"Yep, since yesterday. Even if I wanted to work, there's just no

business this time of year. And the stupid boss tries to spin it by

saying that we're a worker-friendly company, since we get a

whole week off over the holiday!"

In real life, Klein was an employee at a small import company.

He often complained about his boss, but in reality it must have

been a good company, because they looked after his needs during

his two-year imprisonment in SAO and instantly returned his position to him when he got out. Klein clearly felt some debt to

them in return, as evidenced by the fact that he was working hard

on a new remote presentation system for their clients using the

Seed package and mobile cameras. Given all the help I provided

in modifying the cameras, a single all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ

meal seemed insufficient, but I was willing to overlook it if he

helped out with this quest.

At that moment, Klein looked over as I leaned against the wall,

considering my plan.

"Hey, Kirito, if we manage to actually strike gold and win Excalibur today, you gotta help me go get the Spirit Katana Kagutsuchi."

"Aww, man…That dungeon's so freakin' hot…"

"Yeah, and Jotunheim's so freakin' cold!"

Our childish bickering was interrupted by a soft comment

from the left.

"In that case, I'd like the Bow of Light, Shekinah."

I looked over, feeling my breath catch in my throat. Leaning

back against the wall like me, her arms crossed, was a cait sith

with short, pale blue hair and pointed, triangular ears. If Silica

was a cute, friendly munchkin cat, this cait sith was a cool, aloof

Siamese—or perhaps even a vicious wildcat.

"Y-you made your character two weeks ago, and you're already

after a legendary weapon?" I asked. The wildcat's long, thin tail

swished.

"The bow Liz made me is wonderful, but I could use a bit more

range…"

At the worktable in the back, restringing the very bow in question, Lisbeth looked up with a pained expression and called out,

"Just so you know, bows in this world are basically somewhere

between spears and magic spells in terms of range! You can't normally use them to hit a target a hundred yards away!"

The wildcat shrugged coolly and smirked. "If I could, I'd go for

twice that range."

Knowing that most of her experience was as an expert ultralong sniper who could shoot a target two kilometers away in

GGO, the best I could do was smile uncomfortably. If she actually

found a bow with that kind of range, she'd be able to win any duel

without an area restriction; she could dart out of sword range and

fill her opponent with arrows like a pincushion.

The blue-haired wildcat—my new friend, Sinon, who had just

come to ALO two weeks ago—had picked up the bow, one of the

trickier weapons in the game to use, and mastered it in the span

of just a day. In ALO, the speedy sylphs could use shortbows and

the powerful, burly gnomes could shoot down foes with their

heavy ballistas, but she had overturned the usual tropes and gone

for a long-distance longbow build as a cait sith, which had the

best eyesight of all nine fairy races. At first I was skeptical, but I

decided to let her have her fun. When Sinon started dispatching

monsters before they began approaching, well beyond the range

of even fire magic, I had to rethink my opinion.

Bows in this world got the same accuracy correction that spells

did, but beyond the bounds of that system assistance, the effects

of wind and gravity kept arrows from flying where you wanted.

But given that Sinon had played so much in GGO, which shared

the same engine, she was already trained to take those factors

into account. It was the same thing that happened when I went to

GGO and was able to use my knowledge of "reading eyesight" successfully. Perhaps traveling among the many worlds of the Seed

Nexus carried a meaning that I hadn't considered before—

The door to the workshop crashing open to my right interrupted my thoughts.

"We're here!"

"Thanks for waiting!"

It was Leafa and Asuna, who had gone out to buy potions and

other supplies. They had just flown here straight from the market

without bothering to store their purchases in their inventory, so

the supplies from the baskets they were carrying quickly stacked

up on the table in the middle of the room—colorful bottles of liquid, various seeds, and so on.

A tiny navigation pixie named Yui flitted off of Asuna's shoulder and flew over to plop onto the top of my head. My spriggan

version of Kirito had featured spiky hair for a long time, but at

Yui's request, my hairstyle was closer to the old look now. She

claimed it was easier to sit on this way.

From atop my head, Yui's little bell-chime voice tinkled, "We

were gathering some intelligence on our shopping trip, and it

seems like no players or parties have yet reached the hanging

dungeon, Papa."

"Ahh…Then how did they find out about the location of Excalibur?"

"Apparently they found another quest, separate from the hidden Tonky quest we discovered. As a reward for that quest, an

NPC pointed out the location of Excalibur."

Asuna turned away from sorting the potions, her special undine-blue hair swaying, and grimaced. "And it sounds like this

other quest was pretty vicious. It wasn't an errand or protection

quest, but the slaughtering kind. So now Jotunheim's pretty decimated, with people fighting over pop spots."

"…Yeah, that sounds messy," I opined.

Slaughter quests were, as the name suggested, your typical

RPG quest to "kill X number of X monsters" or "collect X items

dropped by X monsters." Because you had to go and whack every

one of those monsters you could find, that meant that parties on

the same quest in the same small area often found themselves at

odds as they competed for the "pop" point—the place where the

monsters repopulated.

"Don'tcha think it's weird?" Klein said, wiping his lips after

he'd finally drained the last of his bottle of fire whiskey. "Excalibur's sealed at the very bottom of a floating dungeon packed with

all kinds of terrible monsters, right? Why would the location be a

quest reward?"

"That's a good point," Silica piped up, stroking Pina against

her chest. "I would understand if the reward was the means of

getting to the dungeon, but not that…"

"Well, I'm sure we'll find out when we get there," said Sinon

coolly from my left. No sooner had the words left her mouth than

Lisbeth shouted from the back of the workshop.

"All right! Everyone's weapons are at full capacity!"

"Thank you very much!!" we all chorused. We grabbed our

beloved swords, katanas, and bows, sparkling as though they

were brand-new, and equipped them. At the table, Asuna had

called upon her experience as a battle planner to expertly divvy

up seven different potion portions. We packed them away in our

pouches, storing any that couldn't be held as physical objects in

our inventories.

The clock readout in the lower right of my vision said it was

still eleven o'clock. We'd probably have to stop at some point for a

lunch-and-bathroom break, but we could probably reach the first

safe spot in the dungeon before then.

Once the seven players, one fairy, and one dragon were fully

equipped, I surveyed the group and cleared my throat.

"Thank you for answering my abrupt summons today, everyone! You have my word that I will pay you back for your assistance—emotionally! And now…let's kick some ass!"

It was probably just my imagination that there was a note of

exasperation in the cheer that followed. I spun around, opening

the workshop door directly beneath Ygg City and on the way to

Alne, to reveal a secret tunnel entrance that would take us down

to the underground realm of Jotunheim.

2

The door was at the end of a long route through Alne that was not

found on any map; it wound through tiny alleys, up and down

stairs, and even through backyards.

It was just a normal, totally unremarkable round wooden

door. It looked more like a decorative detail than a functioning

door, in fact. But when Leafa pulled a small copper key from her

belt pouch and twisted it inside the lock, there was a dry click.

The key had simply appeared in her inventory after Tonky flew us

up to the bottom of the tunnel that led to this door. In other

words, the door would not open unless you had come through it

from the other side first.

I pulled the round iron knocker, and the wooden door split

into two sides, revealing a staircase leading down. The seven of us

filed in one at a time, and when Klein closed it at the end, it automatically locked itself again.

"Yikes…How many steps are on this thing?" moaned Lisbeth. I

couldn't blame her; the stairs in the six-foot-wide tunnel, lit only

by the small pale lamps on the walls, continued down as far as the

game engine would display.

"Hmm, I'd say it takes us down about the length of an entire

labyrinth tower from Aincrad," Asuna said from the lead position.

Liz, Silica, and Klein all grimaced. I couldn't help but chuckle,

and explained the benefit of the tunnel.

"Listen, first of all, if you want to get to Jotunheim via the normal route, you have to travel to one of the staircase dungeons a

few miles away from Alne, fight monsters all the way down, then

defeat a boss at the end just to get there. It'll take a single party at

least two hours to do that, but this is just five minutes of walking!

If I were Leafa, I'd start a business charging a thousand yrd per

person to use these stairs."

"Big Brother, you know that once you get down there, unless

Tonky comes up to the platform, you'll just fall down into the hole

in the middle of Jotunheim and die," Leafa said exasperatedly,

and she was right.

In the center of the vast cave that was Jotunheim was a bottomless pit about a mile across known as the Great Void. The

hanging pyramid dungeon housing Excalibur jutted out of the

earth directly over said Great Void. The stairs we were descending now let out in the air above the Void, close to the dungeon. So

jumping off the bottom of the staircase just meant you would fall

into the Void, die, and be respawned at the save point on the surface above.

I cleared my throat loudly to cover up the greedy statement I'd

just made and formally intoned, "Well, at any rate, I should think

that you will thank each and every step with all of your heart as

we descend, boys and girls."

"As if you built them," Sinon muttered from the spot in front

of me. She was always quick with a sharp comment, but in this

case, I was glad for it.

"Thanks for the feedback," I said, and grabbed the light blue

tail waving in front of me by way of a handshake.

"Fgyaa!!"

The wildcat archer leaped up with an incredible screech. She

spun around and, running backward down the stairs, held up her

hands as if she meant to scratch my face with her nails.

The cait sith's triangular ears and tail were organs that humans didn't possess, of course. But somehow, they had a physical

sensation when you played as one, apparently. When someone

suddenly grabbed them, a player still getting used to the sensation would feel something "very weird" (according to Silica),

which meant their reactions were always entertaining.

"The next time you do that, I'm shooting a fire arrow in each of

your nostrils," Sinon snorted. Over her shoulder, Leafa, Liz, Silica, Asuna, and Yui all shook their heads in perfectly synchronized exasperation. Behind me, I heard Klein murmur in admiration, "I gotta say, man, you know no fear."

As expected, the party reached the end of the staircase tunnel

that passed through the mantle of Alfheim in less than five minutes. A pale light appeared ahead.

At the same time, the virtual air dropped in temperature. Tiny

little ice crystals began to sparkle around our faces. A few seconds

later, we breached the earth and caught sight of the entirety of

Jotunheim. The stairs, carved into a massive tree root, continued

out into open air until they stopped at a point fifty feet ahead.

"Wh-whoaaa!!"

"Incredible…"

It was the first sight of Jotunheim for the two cats, Silica and

Sinon. Even little Pina flapped her wings wildly atop Silica's head.

The world below us was a cruel but beautiful realm of endless

night, covered in thick snow and ice. The only light source was

from the faint glow of mammoth crystal pillars extending from

the earthy ceiling, carrying a dim remnant of the light from the

surface. Here and there were Deviant God castles and fortresses,

lit by eerie fires of purple and green. At the center of the map, the

span from the floor to the ceiling was over half a mile, so we

couldn't see the countless Deviant Gods milling about from here.

Directly below was the bottomless pit that sucked in all light: the

Void.

When I tore my eyes away from that hole and looked forward,

I was met by another stunning sight.

Entangled in countless writhing roots—coming straight

through the earth from the World Tree that loomed over all of

Alfheim—was a gigantic mass of sky-blue ice crystal, jutting out

like an upside-down pyramid. It was the hanging dungeon that

was our destination. Its base was about a thousand feet to a side,

and the height of the crystal was about the same. From this distance, it was clear that the interior of the ice was carved out with

many rooms and hallways—filled with large, prowling shadows.

Lastly, I glanced down at the sharp tip of the pyramid at the

very bottom.

My spriggan eyes, gifted with an advantage to night vision,

could only make out the occasional tiny glint of golden light. But

the richness of that light exerted a powerful pull of desire on me.

It was the Holy Sword Excalibur, the most powerful of ALO's legendary weapons, sitting right there.

Once we were done confirming the basics, Asuna raised her

right hand and smoothly chanted some spellwords. Our bodies

were briefly shrouded in pale blue light, and a small icon turned

on above the HP gauge in the top left of my vision. Soon the chill

receded, and it felt like I was wearing a thick down jacket. She

had buffed our resistance to cold.

"Okay," Asuna said, and Leafa put her fingers to her mouth

and whistled loudly. A few seconds later came a distant sound

among the wind, moaning, Kwooo…

When I looked down, a white shadow was visible against the

backdrop of the Great Void. From the sides of its main body,

which was flat like a flounder or a rice ladle, were four sets of

white wings that resembled fins. On the underside of the body

hung a mass of tentacles like vines. And on the head were three

black eyes to either side of a long nose. It was Tonky the Deviant

God, who had evolved from its jellyphant look into this eerie and

beautiful form.

"Tonkyyyy!" Yui called out from Asuna's shoulder. The bizarre

creature let out another long moan. With a flap of its powerful

wings, it began to ascend in a spiral pattern. As it got closer, the

sheer size of the beast caused those of us who hadn't seen him yet

to back away.

"No worries, he's an herbivore," I reassured them. Leafa

turned around and beamed.

"But when I brought him a fish from the surface earlier, he ate

it in a single slurp."

"…O-oh."

Klein and the others took another step back, but there wasn't

much room left on the narrow staircase. Once Tonky was right in

front of us, he examined the party with his still-elephantine face,

then extended his long trunk and, with the hairy tip, ruffled

Klein's spiky hair.

"Ubyorhu?!" Klein exclaimed bizarrely. I pushed him.

"He says to get on his back. It's all you."

"Y-yeah, but…My gramps had one piece of advice for me before he died: never ride American cars or flying elephants…"

"Last time we were at Dicey Café, you gave us his homemade

dried persimmons! Get us some more, next time you visit him!" I

scolded, and shoved him again. Klein's momentum took him a

step onto Tonky's shoulder, which he quickly crossed to the flatter part of the back. Next was Sinon, who was always fearless, and

Silica, who decided that her love of animals extended to cover

Tonky as well. Lisbeth crossed next with a very unladylike shout,

and then Leafa and Asuna, who were familiar with riding Tonky.

Lastly, I scratched the root of his trunk and leaped onto the back

of the thirty-foot-long Deviant God.

"Okay, Tonky, take us to the entrance of the dungeon!" Leafa

called from her seat right behind his neck. Tonky lifted his long

snout and trumpeted again, then started flapping his eight wings

in a pattern from front to rear.

Including the times I did it just for fun, this was my fifth ride

on Tonky's back. I never spoke it out loud, but there was a

thought that crossed my mind each and every time. It was…

"…Hey, what happens if you fall off?" said Lisbeth from behind

me, giving voice to that exact thought.

As a basic rule, fairy flight did not work in Jotunheim, and the

normal rules of fall damage applied. Damage would start occurring from a fall of just thirty feet, depending on one's skills, and at

about a hundred feet, death was unavoidable.

At the present moment, Tonky was floating nearly half a mile

in the air. There was no question what would happen if we fell.

Perhaps there was some safety mechanism—say, his stomach tentacles grabbing us if we fell off—but I was certainly in no mood to

test it out.

Everyone else was grappling with the same concerns. The only

ones enjoying the flight were Leafa the speedaholic in the front;

Yui, who was now sitting on Leafa's head; and Pina, in Silica's

arms.

The answer to Liz's question came from Asuna, who was sitting next to her. Despite the concern in her face, she smiled at me

and said, "I'm sure that fellow over there, who once tried to climb

the outer pillars of Aincrad to reach the next floor, will find out

the answer for us."

"…When it comes to falling from heights, I'd think that felines

are best suited for the task."

Instantly, the two felines in the party shook their heads.

As we chatted, Tonky continued to flap his four sets of wings

in a flowing pattern, gliding through the air. It was taking us to

the terrace that served as entrance to the hanging dungeon of ice.

Hopefully the trip would be smooth and safe—

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than Tonky folded

his wings and entered a precipitous dive.

"Aaaaaah!!" bellowed the two men in the group.

"Eeeeeek!!" screamed the women.

"Yahoooo!" cheered Leafa.

I gripped the thick hair covering the creature's back in an effort to fight against the terrific wind pressure. We were practically

vertical; the ground far below was visibly coming closer. But why

would he do this? The times we rode him before, he just made

gentle, relaxing tours from the root staircase to the ice terrace.

Was he getting sick of being used as a taxi? Or had the fish

Leafa fed him last time given him a stomachache?

My pointless questions aside, the texture of the ice-laden

ground came into sharper detail as Tonky headed us toward the

southern lip of the Great Void. It was the very spot where Leafa

and I had rescued Tonky from a raid party of undine hunters.

Suddenly, extreme deceleration g-force hit my body, slamming

me flat against the Deviant God's back. Tonky spread his wings

again, hitting the brakes on his speedy fall. Relieved that he at

least wasn't going to toss his cargo flat against the ground, I

straightened up.

Now that his back was horizontal again, I had the presence of

mind to survey the ground, which was now under two hundred

feet away. The surface was clearly detailed, unlike the previous

aerial scale model view. Dead trees hung sharp icicles from their

branches. Rivers and lakes, frozen solid. And…

"…Huh?!"

It was Leafa, stretching forward to look over Tonky's head. She

pointed at a spot on the ground and practically screamed, "Big

Brother, look at that!!"

The other five and I obeyed, looking ahead and to the left,

where she was pointing. Instantly, I caught sight of a quick succession of bright flashes in the darkness. A bit later came a

tremendous, low-pitched rumble. It was the signature of a widearea attack spell.

Tonky cooed sadly. I understood why at once.

The target of the attacks was a large monster with a dumplingshaped body, long tentacles, an extended nose, and large ears,

somewhere between an elephant and a jellyfish. It was the same

type of monster as Tonky, before he cocooned and hatched.

The attackers were a large raid party of over thirty members.

Based on the vibrant array of sizes and hair colors, they were

clearly a mixed-race team. In that sense, it was a typical Deviant

God hunting party. But what was shocking to us was that it wasn't

just players attacking the jellyphant.

Standing six or seven times taller than the tallest gnome was a

humanoid shape, but with four arms and three stacked faces in a

column. Its skin was as pale as steel, and the eyes burned red like

hot coals.

Just as unmistakable as the jellyphant, this was one of the humanoid Deviant Gods who we saw trying to kill Tonky on our first

encounter. Each arm held a crude sword like a rebar, and it was

slamming the practically blunt weapons against the jellyphant's

back. When the hard surface cracked and liquid spilled forth, the

players would attack those weak points with magic, arrows, and

sword skills.

"Wh-what does that mean? Did someone tame that humanoid

Deviant God?" Asuna gaped.

Silica shook her head furiously and said, "That's impossible!

Even with the skill maxed and a full boost from specialized equipment, the taming rate on Deviant Gods is zero percent!"

"Then that means," Klein grunted, spiking up his red hair to

its proper height again, "they're just…piggybacking? When the

four-armed giant was attacking the elephant thing, they jumped

in to help it out…?"

"But would it be that easy to manage the aggro levels?" Sinon

wondered calmly. She had a point. Given the aggressive behavior

patterns of the Deviant Gods, even if the spells and skills weren't

causing it damage, using them so close nearby would most likely

cause it to target the players instead.

As we watched in bafflement and concern, the jellyphant's

body shook and fell sideways onto the snow with a great crash. A

storm of swords and spells wracked its sensitive underbelly.

"Hrroooo…"

The jellyphant let out a dying wail and burst into a massive

swarm of polygonal shards.

"Kwooo," mourned Tonky. Riding on his head, Leafa's shoulders trembled, and atop her head, Yui drooped sadly.

I had no comforting comments to offer them, so instead I

looked down at the raid party below. Almost immediately, my

eyes bulged with fresh shock.

The four-armed giant, who was neither tamed, agitated, nor

bewitched, bellowed victoriously, and the dozens of players at its

feet cheered and hollered. Then the two sides set off together in

search of a new target.

"Wh-why aren't they fighting now?!" I gasped, but Asuna

raised her head with a start, noticing something.

"Ah…look over there!"

She was pointing out a distant hilltop on the right. There were

more flashes of battle over there. I squinted to see another large

party, this time assisted by a pair of the humanoids, hunting a

Deviant God who looked like a many-legged crocodile.

"Well, I'll be damned…What the hell's going on here?" Klein

said in a daze.

"Maybe these are the slaughter quests that Asuna said they'd

discovered in Jotunheim? Teaming up with the humanoid ones to

wipe out the animalistic ones…" Lisbeth suggested.

"…!"

Everyone else sucked in a sharp breath.

That had to be it. Fighting alongside normally hostile mobs to

complete a specific quest wasn't particularly uncommon. But

what did it mean that the reward for that quest would be Excalibur? The sword was sealed away in the hanging dungeon that

was the humanoid Deviant Gods' base. You'd assume that the way

to get it was to kill the humanoid ones instead…

Instinctually, my gaze swung to the huge ice pyramid overhead. But it was interrupted partway, as at the very rear of

Tonky's back, where no one was sitting, particles of light were

floating and coalescing into the figure of a person.

It was wearing a long robe. Blond hair flowed from its back

down to its feet. The unearthly beauty of the figure marked it as

female.

But the unthinking comment that escaped from Klein's and

my mouths was hardly the kind of thing one was supposed to say

to a beautiful woman.

"She's…"

"…freakin' huge!"

We couldn't be blamed. Even a conservative estimate of the

woman's height put her over ten feet tall, which was twice our

size.

Fortunately, she did not seem bothered by our rudeness. She

serenely opened her mouth and spoke in a voice modulated with

a grand effect that further distinguished her from an ordinary

player.

"I am Urd, queen of the lake."

The enormous blond lady continued. "Little fairies who have

aligned yourselves with my kindred."

Kindred? I wondered. If she were speaking of Tonky, who was

still hovering with us on top of him, then that would mean this

beautiful lady was friends with the animal-type Deviant Gods of

Jotunheim…

At that point, I noticed that the "queen of the lake" was not actually entirely human in shape herself. The blond hair that

stretched to her feet actually ended in writhing, translucent feelers, and the feet peeking out from her long robe were covered in

pearly gray scales. It made me imagine that she was another

bizarre creature like Tonky, except she chose to assume a humanoid form.

"My two sisters and I have a request of you. Please save this

land from the attack of the frost giants."

The next thing I wondered was exactly what she was, systemwise. Given that there was no color cursor when I focused on her,

she couldn't possibly be another player transformed by illusion

magic. But whether she was a harmless event NPC, a trap set by a

spontaneous quest mob, or a human GM role-playing within the

game was unclear to me.

Suddenly, I felt a slight weight on my left shoulder, accompanied by Yui's sweet little whisper.

"Papa, she's an NPC. But something's odd. She doesn't seem to

be speaking using ordinary fixed-response routines like other

NPCs. She's interfacing with a language engine module very close

to the core program."

"…Meaning she's an AI?"

"Right, Papa."

As I pondered the meaning of what Yui had just said, I lent my

ears to the woman's speech. Urd, queen of the lake, beckoned a

pearly hand toward the vast expanse of the underground realm.

"Like your Alfheim, Jotunheim was once under the blessing of

Yggdrasil the World Tree, and it flowed with clean water and lush

greenery. We hill giants lived here peacefully with our kindred

beasts."

As she spoke, the environment of snow and ice silently wavered and faded. Superimposed over them were the very trees,

flowers, and flowing water that Urd was describing. The image

was even lusher than the gnome and salamander territories up on

the surface.

Even more surprising, Urd revealed that the bottomless Great

Void behind us was not a simple hole in this other vision. It was a

wide lake full of crystal-clear water. And the roots of the World

Tree that dangled from the ceiling now were once thicker and

stronger, reaching all the way down to the lake in all directions.

Atop the thick root bursting through the surface of the water

were little log cabins—no, entire towns. The whole image was

very similar to Alne, the city on the surface.

Urd lowered her arm, and the vision disappeared. The familiar

sight of icy Jotunheim returned, and she surveyed it with a glance

that was both impassive and somehow mournful.

"Below even Jotunheim is Niflheim, the realm of ice. One day,

Thrym, king of the frost giants there, turned himself into a wolf

and snuck into this land, where he cast the sword that cuts all

steel and wood, Excalibur, forged by Wayland the blacksmith

god, into the Spring of Urd in the center of the world. The sword

severed the World Tree's most vital root, and in that moment, Jotunheim lost the blessing of Yggdrasil."

This time, Urd raised her left arm. The image screen appeared

again, and I was silenced with wonder by the overwhelming sight

contained within it.

The roots of the World Tree that stretched all around the

Spring of Urd suddenly rose and began to shrink upward toward

the earth ceiling above. The towns resting upon them were shattered and destroyed in their entirety.

Meanwhile, all the trees' leaves fell, the grasses dried up, and

the light faded. The rivers froze, frost descended, and blizzards

raged. The unfathomable amount of water that filled the Spring

of Urd froze instantly, and the withdrawing roots of the tree

pulled the titanic ice block upward. The enormous creatures that

resided within the lake fell out of the massive iceberg, spilling

down into the abyss. I spotted what looked like the same jellyphant types as Tonky.

The roots eventually rose up into the ceiling of Jotunheim—

the ground level of Alfheim—and wedged the block of ice halfway

into the soil. There was no doubt now that the iceberg was none

other than the upside down ice pyramid that loomed over Jotunheim today. The very bottom of the iceberg, sharpened like an icicle, contained a tiny glint of gold. It was Excalibur, the very sword

that King Thrym of the frost giants had used to sever the physical

connection between the World Tree and Jotunheim.

With all of the water gone, the once-beautiful lake had turned

into a bottomless hole.

Urd lowered her hand and the screen disappeared again. But

this time there was no big change in the background behind it. At

most, the block of ice overhead had been reshaped into its current

dungeon shape. Leafa and I had seen for ourselves that Excalibur

was still locked at the bottom of the pyramid.

"A great horde of King Thrym's frost giants spilled forth from

Niflheim into Jotunheim, building fortresses and castles and en-

slaving us hill giants. He built his own castle, Thrymheim, within

the ice block that was once the Spring of Urd, and he ruled over

this land. My sisters and I survived at the bottom of a spring that

froze over, but our former power is lost."

Urd lowered her eyelids, her story approaching its end. We

were all listening with rapt attention, largely forgetting that she

was an NPC relating a game quest.

"The frost giants were not satisfied with just this, and they

continue to attempt to wipe out our kindred beasts, who still survive in Jotunheim. If they succeed, my power will be entirely lost,

and Thrymheim, the land of the pyramid, will be able to ascend

into Alfheim above."

"Wh-whaaat?! But that'll totally destroy Alne!" Klein bellowed

indignantly, lost in his own full dive within the fairy tale we'd just

heard. Urd, who was more of an AI than just an NPC with a few

speech routines, nodded.

"King Thrym's goal is to lock Alfheim under ice as well, and invade the branches of the World Tree Yggdrasil. That is where he

will find the Golden Apple that he seeks."

For a moment, I tried to recall such an item, and then it hit

me. There was an area near the top of the tree guarded by an impossibly powerful eagle type named mob. Perhaps that was where

this golden apple could be found.

"Angered by the continued survival of our kindred beasts,

Thrym and his frost giant generals have decided to use the

strength of the fairies to achieve their goals. They promise Excalibur as a reward, to convince you to help slaughter our kindred.

But Thrym would never give that sword to another. If Excalibur

leaves Thrymheim, the blessing of Yggdrasil will return to this

land, and his castle will melt into water once more."

"So…so Excalibur being a reward is all just a lie?! What kind of

quest is that?!" Lisbeth squawked.

The queen replied regally. "I believe that when Wayland, the

blacksmith god, was forging Excalibur, he made one impure

strike and cast aside his failure. This false blade, Caliburn, which

is otherwise indistinguishable from Excalibur, is what I believe he

intends to give away. It is very strong on its own but does not

contain the true power of the holy sword."

"N-no way…He's a king, and he's just going to lie about that?"

Leafa muttered. Urd nodded and took a deep breath.

"That craftiness is Thrym's greatest weapon. But in his haste

to wipe out my kindred beasts, he made one mistake. In order to

help the fairies he tricked with his honeyed words, he summoned

most of his followers from Thrymheim down to the surface below.

The defenses of his castle are now but a shadow of their normal

strength."

At last, I glimpsed the outcome of this quest—of the queen's

plea.

Urd, lady of the lake, gestured to Thrymheim above with a

massive arm.

"Fairies, will you infiltrate Thrymheim and draw Excalibur

from the keystone pedestal?"

3

"…This is all getting pretty crazy…"

Asuna was the first to speak after Queen Urd disappeared back

into golden droplets and Tonky began to fly back upward—at a

much more reasonable pace this time.

Next, Sinon's light blue tail whipped back and forth as she

wondered, "This is…a normal quest, right? It just seems way too

big for that…What did she say—that if all the animal Deviant

Gods get wiped out, the frost giants will take over the surface?"

"…She did," I muttered, my arms crossed. "But do you think

the developers would really do something like that without an update or an event notification? Other MMOs have events all the

time where a boss comes to invade a town, but they at least warn

you about it a week ahead of time…"

Everyone in the group nodded in agreement. Then Yui leaped

off my shoulder to hover in the air, shouting at a volume loud

enough for everyone to hear, "Well, I have a conjecture, although

I'm not one hundred percent certain about it…"

She blinked slowly, processing how best to say it, then continued. "There is one aspect of ALfheim Online that makes it very

different from other VRMMOs based on The Seed. The Cardinal

System that runs the game is not the scaled-down version the

others use but is a full-scale replica of the processor used in the

old Sword Art Online."

She was right about that. Though I hated to remember it, ALO

started as a wholesale copy of the SAO server so that one powermad lunatic could perform illegal experiments on a small subset

of the old SAO victims. So the Cardinal System that controlled the

game world had the same power as that of the original SAO.

Yui looked at her rapt audience and went on. "The original

Cardinal System had several features that were taken out of the

shrunken version. One of them is an automated quest-generation

function. It absorbs legends and myths from cultures worldwide

using the network, then repackages and remixes the proper

names and story patterns to generate an infinite number of

quests."

"Wh-what th' hell?" Klein gasped, his scraggly chin dropping

open. "You're sayin' that all those quests we busted our asses to

beat in Aincrad were just generated outta thin air by the system?"

"…No wonder there were so many of them. By the seventyfifth floor, the quest database of the intel agents had easily over

ten thousand individual quests listed," said the former vice commander of the KoB, who had diligently taken on as many quests

as she could to help line the coffers of the guild's operating budget.

Meanwhile, Silica looked into the vacant distance and mumbled, "Plus, the stories were weird sometimes. Around the thirtieth floor, I think, there was a quest to beat some weird ogre with

a mask and a saw, and no matter how many times you killed it,

the quest would always reappear on the bulletin board the next

week. Wonder what legend that was based on…"

There were plenty of other examples I could think of, but I

didn't want this to devolve into an Aincrad-griping marathon all

the way until we arrived at the pyramid of ice, so I steered us back

to the original topic.

"So Yui, you're saying that the Cardinal System automatically

generated this quest?"

"Based on the actions of that NPC, I believe it is highly likely.

Perhaps the developers have caused the inactive quest-generation

function to start running again," she said, her face dark. "But if

that is the case, then it's quite possible that the effects of the

quest will play out as the story goes. That ice dungeon could float

up to Alfheim, Alne will fall, and those Deviant Gods will begin to

pop into the surrounding areas. In fact…"

The little AI's lips shut for a moment, and her features took on

a note of fear. "According to my archived data, the Scandinavian

mythology that forms the basis for this quest, and ALO as a

whole, includes an apocalyptic war. It won't just be an invasion of

the frost giants from Jotunheim and Niflheim, but also flame giants from the realm of fire Muspelheim, even farther down, and

they will burn down the World Tree…"

"…Ragnarok," muttered Leafa, who loved myths and legends

and had a number of books about them in her room back home.

Her emerald green eyes shot open and she cried, "But…I can't

possibly believe that the game system would totally overwrite and

destroy the maps that it's charged with managing!"

That was true. But Yui just shook her head.

"The original Cardinal System has the right to completely destroy the entire world map. After all, the final duty of the old Cardinal was to obliterate Aincrad."

"…"

This time, I had no response.

The next to speak was Sinon, who had been listening in silence

until now.

"So…let's say this Ragnarok really does happen. If it's not what

the developers intended to have happen, can't they just rewind

the server status?"

"Oh…yeah, yeah, that's right," Klein muttered, nodding.

Rolling back a server by overwriting the current state with a

backup version was something that happened from time to time,

when programmer error or bugs caused players to gain undue advantages. Alfheim being reduced to a wasteland might not have

any effect on individual players' levels or gear, but nobody actually wanted the entirety of the fairy realm to look like the burned

land in the east of salamander territory.

However, Yui did not immediately confirm this suggestion.

"It will be possible if the developers manually backed up all

data and saved them to physically isolated media…But if they're

using Cardinal's automatic backup function, depending on the

settings, the best they can recover will be player data but not the

original environment maps."

"…"

Everyone was silent for two seconds. Then Klein abruptly

shouted, "I've got it!" and opened his window. Then he hung his

head and shouted, "Never mind!"

"…What was that about?" Lisbeth asked, and the would-be

samurai turned to her with a pitiful look on his face.

"I thought I'd just call a GM and ask to check if they realize

what's going on. But it's outside of normal user support hours…"

"Morning on a Sunday at the end of the year," I sighed, and

looked up into the darkness.

The giant ice pyramid was just in front of us now. If that structure, a thousand feet to a side, burst through the surface above,

Alne would certainly panic—and worse. Half of its population had

moved to Yggdrasil City atop the World Tree, but the city was still

quite busy on weekend nights, both as a base of operations for the

high-level dungeons in the Alne plains and as a central trading

hub for the various fairy races. It was a very memorable city for

me.

"…I think we have no choice but to do this, Big Brother," Leafa

said, holding up a large medallion dangling from her right hand.

Queen Urd's gift to them was embedded with a large, exquisitely

cut gemstone. But over 60 percent of the facets were pitch-black

and did not reflect the light.

When the gem was entirely black and every last animal Deviant God was hunted to extinction, Urd's power would be lost

entirely. That moment would mark the beginning of King

Thrym's invasion of Alfheim.

"…I agree. After all, I gathered you here today so we could

tackle that dungeon and get Excalibur. If their guard is down,

even better."

I opened my window and fiddled with my equipment mannequin. Hanging on my back were both my long sword special-ordered from Lisbeth and a sword I earned from the fifteenth-floor

boss of the New Aincrad.

Seeing that I was back to my two-sword ways again, Klein

smirked and crowed, "Awright, it's the last big quest of the year!

Let's whup some ass and get on the front page of MMO Tomorrow!"

Sure, the reasons were a bit crass, but Lisbeth had no complaints this time. The whole group cheered in unison, and even

Tonky beat his wings and crooned.

As the flying Deviant God picked up his ascent speed, he circled around the ice pyramid and sidled up to the entrance placed

at the top. When Leafa was last to hop off onto the terrace, she

rubbed his massive ear and said, "Wait for us here, Tonky. We're

gonna make sure you get your country back!"

The sylph girl turned and drew a gently curved longsword

from her waist. With all of our weapons in hand, we faced the tall

double doors of ice that greeted us.

Normally you would have to fight the first guardian at this

point, but as Urd said, the door opened right away today. We took

on a formation of Klein, Leafa, and me in the front; Liz and Silica

in the middle; and Asuna and Sinon bringing up the rear. The

group headed across the icy floor into the giant palace of

Thrymheim.

The maximum limit of a single party in ALO was the slightly

irregular number of seven.

In most games it was six or eight, and no official reason had

been given for the choice of seven. That meant the max for a raid

party was forty-nine, from seven parties of seven. It was a good

thing there was an automatic redistribution option for money, because dividing it among seven members would be very annoying.

When trying to construct a full party of just close friends, there

were five of us always present: Asuna, Liz, Silica, Leafa, and me.

We were all in high school—four of us in the same school—and

two of us lived together, so it was easy to coordinate activities.

For the sixth and seventh slot, it usually rotated between Klein

the adult worker, Agil the café/bar owner, Chrysheight the busy

government agent, and Leafa's real-life friend Recon, according

to whoever was free at the moment. Recon was in school, too, but

in the Battle for Yggdrasil months ago, Sakuya the sylph leader

had taken a shine to his bravery, and he was now permanently

stationed in Swilvane as a staff member in her mansion. We

could only hang out with him when Aincrad was hovering over

sylph territory.

In this case, we were happily able to welcome the archer—

more like sniper—Sinon from my time in GGO, but that still left

one problem with our party arrangement.

We didn't have enough magic. Our only member who regularly

used magic skills was Asuna the undine, and because half of her

ability was put into the Rapier skill, she had only mastered support and healing spells. Leafa was a magic warrior, too, but all she

could use was in-battle obstruction spells and light heals. Silica

had some magic skill, too, but she was primarily support, and

Liz's specialty was, of course, blacksmithing. A third of Agil's

skills were mercantile, and Klein and I were muscle heads who

put everything into close combat. Not one of us was any good at

attacking spells.

When our seventh slot was filled with either Recon, who

played a very odd sylph build of daggers and high-level dark

magic, or Chrysheight, whose ice magic attacks commanded even

the respect of his racial leader, our attack strategies were much

richer and varied. So if there was one weakness in this particular

lineup, it was the lack of magical firepower.

But that couldn't be helped—we were transfers from SAO, a

game of swords without any kind of real magic. My longsword,

Asuna's rapier, Liz's battle hammer, Silica's dagger, Klein's

katana, Agil's ax, and no doubt Leafa's sword and Sinon's bow

were not just simple weapons, but something like our proof of existence. We couldn't just give up on the skills we'd honed and pick

up magic. Whether it was inefficient or not, we stuck to our phys-

ical-damage-heavy combat style because that was where our

pride lay…Until now.

But even then, there were times when we faced a truly sticky

situation.

"This is a sticky situation, Big Brother! The golden one has too

much physical resistance!" Leafa hissed on my left.

I only had time to nod before the "golden one" lifted up its impossibly huge battle-ax.

"Two seconds to shock wave! One, zero!" called out Yui from

atop my head, as loud as her tiny body could muster. At the

countdown, the five members in the front and middle rows

leaped to either side. The hurtling ax blade and the resulting

shock wave passed right where we had formerly stood, blasting

against the far wall.

Twenty minutes had passed since we entered Thrymheim, the

palace of ice. As Queen Urd said, the density of enemies in the

dungeon was much thinner than usual. There were essentially no

encounters with ordinary mobs in the hallways. The mid-bosses

on each floor were half gone. But the staircase guardians on the

way to the next floor were still present, and the unfair, overwhelming power that once drove us off on a previous attempt was

still on display.

Still, we somehow managed to defeat the Cyclops-type boss of

the first floor that had crushed us before, and we raced through

the second floor to the next boss chamber.

What awaited us there was a bull-headed man, a Minotaurtype monster. And not one—two. The one on the right was all

black, and the one on the left was all gold. The axes they carried

had blades the size of a dinner table.

They didn't use any attack spells, so at first they seemed easier

to beat than the icicle-dropping Cyclops, but there was a problem.

The black one was incredibly resistant to magic, while the golden

one was incredibly resistant to physical damage.

Naturally, we decided to focus our attacks on the black Minotaur to finish him off, then whittle away at the golden one, but the

two beasts had a very close personal bond, and whenever we

knocked the black one's HP down, the golden one would ignore

its aggro hate and rush to protect his partner. In the meantime,

the black Minotaur would curl into a ball and use some kind of

meditation power to rapidly heal his HP.

After the first time, we considered blasting the golden Minotaur while the black one meditated, but his physical resistance

was so high that we could barely put a scratch on him. Meanwhile, we could dodge the insta-kill attacks, but the splash damage of their area effects was tearing huge chunks of HP away from

us, and it was clear that Asuna's heals on their own would not

hold up over an extended battle.

"Kirito, at this pace I'm going to run out of MP within one

hundred and fifty seconds!" Asuna cried from the back. I held out

my right-hand sword by way of response.

In these battles of attrition, a healer running out of MP signaled the doom of the party—the dreaded wipe. If at least one

person survived, the Remain Lights could be collected and revived one by one, but that took quite a lot of time and effort. And

if we wiped out, we'd all start over from the save point in Alne.

The problem was whether we had enough time to suffer a setback

like that…

Leafa sensed my concerns and whispered, "The medallion's

over seventy percent black now. We don't have time to die and try

again."

"Got it," I said, and sucked in a deep breath.

If this were the old Aincrad, I'd give an order to retreat. Betting on probabilities there was not an option. But ALO was not a

game of death. Whether the Cardinal System burned all of

Alfheim to the ground or not, our only goal here was to "enjoy the

game." Part of that was trusting in the ability of my companions

and myself.

"At this rate, there's just one thing we can do!" I shouted,

dodging the golden Minotaur's ax and checking on the black one's

gauge as it recovered HP toward the rear. "One way or another,

we have to beat down the golden one with concentrated sword

skills!"

Sword skills: the one feature that truly made SAO, SAO. When

the developers of ALO put in the Aincrad update this past May,

they also included the old sword-skill system. But there were a

few new modifications. One of them was the addition of elemental damage. Now, high-level sword skills inflicted not just physical damage like a normal attack, but one of the magic properties

of fire, water, earth, wind, darkness, or light. That should ensure

that the physically resistant golden Minotaur would take damage.

This was risky, of course. With the long combination-attack

sword skills, there was naturally a long delay period afterward.

One direct hit from that battle-ax while immobilized and we

would be dead. A wide-range swiping attack would completely

obliterate the front and middle rows.

But my companions took that into account and agreed immediately.

"Hell yeah! That's what I've been waitin' for, Kiri-my-boy!"

bellowed Klein, holding his katana aloft on the right wing. On the

left, Leafa held her longsword at her waist. Behind me, I could

sense Liz and Silica assume positions with their mace and dagger.

"Give us bubbles on my count, Silica! Two, one—now!" I

shouted, timing the golden Minotaur.

Silica cried, "Pina, Bubble Breath!"

Normally, even a master beast-tamer's orders to a pet were not

successful all the time. But I had never once seen Pina ignore an

order from Silica. As expected, the little dragon fluttering above

her head opened its tiny mouth and blew a rainbow stream of

bubbles.

They flew through the air and popped right at the nose of the

golden Minotaur as it was about to unleash an ax attack. The

magic-weak boss fell under a bewitchment effect—just for a second, but long enough to stop it in its tracks.

"Go!" I screamed.

Every weapon aside from Asuna's glowed and began to fly

forth in a variety of colors.

Why had Akihiko Kayaba, creator of the floating castle Aincrad, implemented the system of "unique skills" that veered so far

from the normal bounds of the game? I felt as though I still

hadn't discovered the full truth of his intent.

If it were just the Holy Sword skill that he kept to himself, that

would make sense. As the leader of the Knights of the Blood,

strongest guild in the game, and holy paladin whose cross shield

had blocked every sword drawn against him, he would have been

the greatest and deadliest final boss of any RPG in history, once

he'd executed his stunning ninety-fifth-floor role reversal as

planned.

That moment would be the very incarnation of the paradox of

an MMORPG in which the players wrote the main story. Aincrad

was "An INCarnating RADius"—which was supposed to mean "an

embodying world." In order to carry out his goal of creating a new

world, he had to continue being the almighty paladin—even if

that meant relying on the unfair advantages of the Holy Sword,

immortality, and system assistance.

But in that case, Holy Sword was the only unique skill the

game needed. In an MMO, there was no need for a lone hero to

fight the big baddie. Such a hero could not exist. Of course, differences in player skill were inevitable, but there had to be a basic

foundation of fairness to prop up the game.

Yet he gave players the Dual Blade skill, as well as several

other unique skills, most likely. He must have known that granting powers outside of the rules would tilt the balance of game resources and twist the story the world should have followed. In

fact, if I hadn't had Dual Blades when I challenged Heathcliff to a

duel for Asuna's right to leave the guild, he would have won without using the system's help. If I hadn't noticed that instant of

wrongness, I wouldn't have discovered Heathcliff's identity there

on the seventy-fifth floor. But because he gave me that unique

skill, the story that he envisioned ended three-quarters of the way

through.

On the rare occasion that I used two swords in ALO, a little

part of my brain always returned to the question: Why?

At the same time, there was a tiny twinge of guilt. Of course, I

had no regrets about defeating Heathcliff—being able to beat him

—on the seventy-fifth floor. If I hadn't beaten the game then, the

number of victims from his crime would surely have risen. Perhaps people I cared about would have been among them. Perhaps

even me.

But I still couldn't eliminate that thought, that wonder if it was

really the right decision. Should I have continued climbing to the

hundredth floor of Aincrad and fought Heathcliff the demon king

there? No, not "should" I have; it was my own desire and personal fixation to do so. It was the worst kind of egotism, and why

I always hesitated to use my dual blades in Alfheim.

But at the very least, there were no unique skills in ALO. The

wise new developers of the game combed through the vast number of sword skills by hand, removing those few with suspicious

effects from the system—rumor said it was ten in all.

So I couldn't use my original Dual Blades skills like Double

Circular or Starburst Stream anymore. As a matter of fact, I'd 99

percent succeeded at recreating the movements of those skills

without the system's assistance, but they were sadly pointless

here. Recreating those skills by hand didn't provide the magic effects that I needed to hurt this golden Minotaur.

But using a one-handed sword skill with two swords equipped

carried one distinct advantage: something Leafa claimed was "a

hundred times worse than using an illegally weighted bamboo

shinai."

Pina's bubble breath stopped the golden Minotaur from unleashing a major attack, stunning it for one second. We charged it

en masse: me from the front, Klein on the right, Leafa on my left,

and Liz and Silica at the far wings.

"Raaaah!"

We all roared, starting the most powerful sword skills we

knew. Klein's katana raged with fire, Leafa's longsword flashed

and brought gusts of wind, Silica's daggers sprayed droplets as

they cut, and Leafa's mace growled with lightning. From the rear

came a series of arrows glinting with icy arrowheads, piercing the

weak point on the bull's nose.

For my part, I swung the orange-glowing sword in my right

hand with all my might. A series of five quick thrusts, then slices

down and up, and finally a ferocious overhand swipe: the eightpart longsword skill, Howling Octave. This did 40 percent physical damage, 60 percent flame damage. It was one of the biggest

attacks in the one-handed sword arsenal. Naturally, that meant it

also had a very long skill delay. However…

"…!!"

With a silent scream, I disconnected my consciousness from

the right hand that was about to deliver the final blow. It was like

cutting all movement commands from my brain to the AmuSphere for just an instant. My next command was only to my left

hand.

The system assistance carried my right hand through its final

overhead swing. But at the same time, my left hand pulled its

sword back. That blade shone with a brilliant blue glow.

The right-hand sword drove deep into the giant Minotaur's exposed belly. This was the point where the delay would kick in,

freezing my avatar. But the parallel left-hand sword skill overwrote that delay. A horizontal swipe leaped out and dug into his

right flank.

It was an extremely bizarre sensation to feel the two sides of

my body—no, my brain—acting independent of the other. But if I

tried to combine them into one, the skill would stop. I let the skill

automatically wrap up my right hand and focused only on my left.

The sword, still stuck in the enemy's body, made a ninety-degree rotation. My hand pushed the hilt up, and the sword ripped

upward through the Minotaur's stomach. It came loose, then

swung downward from the top. This was an effective three-part

skill against larger monsters called Savage Fulcrum: half physical,

half ice.

Just before my left hand completed that final blow—

I shunted my brain output again.

If I were just a moment too soon or late, the skill would fail,

and my avatar would freeze. My window of opportunity was less

than a tenth of a second. When I noticed this odd skill combination effect by coincidence three months ago, I underwent a lot of

practice I didn't care to think about, but my success rate was still

under 50 percent. I started to move my right hand, essentially

praying it would work.

"Kh…aah!" I grunted, my blade blazing light blue. It was a vertical slice, a high-low combination, and then a full-power downward chop: the high-speed four-part skill, Vertical Square.

At this point, the total attack number of my combo was at fifteen, close to the highest Dual Blades skills. Because I was choosing attacks with a high knock-back effect, I could keep the foe in a

delayed state as long as my attacks kept landing. No need to

worry about defense.

As my Vertical Square initiated, the others were recovering

from their own delay.

"Zeryaaaa!" Klein thundered, and a second wave of attacks assaulted the golden Minotaur. The floor of the dungeon rumbled,

and the boss's massive HP gauge began losing large chunks.

Just before the final slice, I attempted another "skill connection," expecting failure for sure this time.

I couldn't just use any old one-handed sword skill. The movement of the non-attacking arm had to match up perfectly with the

starting motion of the new skill.

While my right arm was busy with Vertical Square, my left

arm stayed folded, drawn up to the shoulder. A simple twist of my

body would complete the proper form: sword cradled on the

shoulder, other hand outstretched. The sword in my left hand

took on a deep red glow. The rumbling of a jet engine approached

from behind and burst my left arm forward at light speed. This

was the single-hit heavy attack, Vorpal Strike: three parts physical, three parts flame, four parts darkness.

Zwamm! My blade punctured the enemy's lower belly to the hilt

with a tremendous shock. The Minotaur's massive body, five

times my height, shot back violently. The second round of team

sword skills was finishing up. This time, I was going to suffer a

long skill delay with the others.

The golden Minotaur's HP gauge descended toward the left

edge of the bar, turning red—and stopped at just 2 percent left.

The bull head with massive horns grinned fiercely. The enemy

recovered from its delay first and swung its mammoth ax backward for a horizontal slice. The high-speed rotating swing meant

instant death for anyone caught within it. My mind commanded

me to flee backward, but my body wouldn't obey. The ax glowed

wickedly, and a whirlwind flared from his feet…

"Yaaaah!"

A piercing scream erupted. A blue blur shot past my right side.

The rapier jabbed five times at eye-blurring speed, the high-level

rapier skill with the quickest release, Neutron. The damage, 20

percent physical and 80 percent holy, silently stole the very last

of the golden Minotaur's HP before it could swing its ax.

The Deviant God stopped still. Beyond him, the black Minotaur lifted its ax gleefully, its HP fully recovered through meditation. But the next moment, the partner who had been keeping

him safe emitted a high-pitched shriek and, with a hard shattering sound, burst into pieces.

…Huh? the black Minotaur seemed to be thinking, eyes

bulging. Meanwhile, the seven of us had recovered from our delays and turned to this fresh target.

"…Sit your ass down right there, cowboy," Klein warned,

grinding his exposed teeth at high speed.

4

When our samurai finished taking out all of his pent-up frustrations on the hapless black Minotaur, he ignored the impressive

list of dropped loot as its avatar exploded, and he turned to bellow at me.

"'Ey, Kirito! What the hell was that about?!"

He was referring to the combination of sword skills I pulled off

by equipping two one-handed swords, but it would be very exhausting to explain it all from the start, so I put as much honest

disgust on my face as I could and grumbled, "…Do I have to explain?"

"Bet your ass you do! I've never seen anything like that!"

I pushed Klein's insistent, stubbled face out of my own and reluctantly replied, "It's a non-system skill of mine. Skill Connection."

Liz, Silica, and Sinon murmured in admiring surprise, while

Asuna pressed her fingertips to her temple and groaned, "Wow…

why do I feel like I just got wicked déjà vu?"

"Just your imagination," I grumbled. I reached over and gave a

pat on the back to our healer, whose blazing attack from the back

row had saved us in the nick of time. "But there's no time to sit

around and relax. How much time do we have left, Leafa?"

"Oh, right."

Leafa loudly sheathed her sword and lifted the medallion

hanging about her neck. Even from several steps away, it was

clear that the gemstone in it had lost most of its light.

"…At this rate, we might have an hour left, but not two."

"I see. You said this is a four-level dungeon, Yui?"

The little pixie riding on my head promptly answered, "Yes,

the third floor is about seventy percent the size of the second, and

the fourth is essentially just the boss chamber."

"Thanks."

I reached out and rubbed her tiny head with a finger as I considered the situation.

Right now, on the map of Jotunheim far below, the players undertaking the frost-giant-faction quest would be picking up steam

in their extermination of the animal-type Deviant Gods. If anything, the number of players involved would only increase over

time, not decrease. Factoring that into account, we'd be lucky to

still have a full hour. The final boss—likely King Thrym himself—

might take thirty minutes to finish, which meant we had another

thirty minutes at best to clear out the third and fourth floors.

If we had a bit more time, I might have entertained the idea of

explaining the full situation to the players down on the ground, so

they would abandon their quest and help us out, but we didn't

have time to go back down there now. I wanted to send messages

to friendly leaders like Sakuya and Alicia Rue for backup, but by

the time they arranged parties in their distant mountain homes,

reached the Alne Highlands, finished the staircase dungeon, and

finally reached Jotunheim, it would already be nightfall.

In other words, our only option was for the seven of us to face

nearly impossible odds. Otherwise, it was quite possible that Car-

dinal's automatic quest-generation system already had a massive

quest campaign for Ragnarok prepared, in the event that we

failed Queen Urd's quest and Thrymheim ascended to destroy

Alfheim. If that were true, Cardinal had most certainly inherited

the twisted personality of its creator.

But in any case…

"Well, I don't know much about this Deviant God king or

whatever, but our only choice is to rush him and win!" Lisbeth

shouted, slapping me on the back. The rest of the party chorused

in agreement. I had to wonder from where these people got their

recklessness.

"Everyone's HP and MP fully recovered? Let's go clean out

that third floor, then!"

We all roared again and charged for the icy staircase at the

very back of the boss chamber.

As Yui said, the third floor was clearly smaller than the one

above. That made sense, as we were descending an inverted pyramid, but that meant the halls were smaller and more crowded. In

a normal dungeon crawl, we'd get lost and deal with traps here

and there, but I had a navigation pixie who would put any other

intelligent nav system to shame.

For this one special occasion, we lifted our ban on Yui reading

the map data, so she could offer us the fastest possible route

through the floor. All of the puzzles with levels, gears, and foot

switches were a breeze when you knew exactly what to do. If any

impartial observer had been watching us, they'd assume we were

doing a speed run.

Even with two minor boss fights on the way, we reached the

third-floor boss in just eighteen minutes. The creature was an ex-

tremely unpleasant giant, nearly twice the size of the Cyclops and

Minotaurs, with dozens of centipede-like legs on its elongated

lower half, but its physical resistance was nothing serious. In exchange, it had whopping attack power, and both Klein and I had

our HP in the red several times as we kept pulling aggro. Knowing that if either of us died it was the end of our run, the nine

minutes of battle were practically ulcer inducing.

But with the help of Liz, Silica, Sinon, and Pina severing the

giant's legs one by one, I was able to use my Skill Connection to

do a long combo on the immobilized boss to finish it off. As we

headed toward the staircase in the back, ready to barrel onto the

fourth floor and pound King Thrym back to Niflheim, one particular feature gave us pause.

It was a cage against the wall, made from narrow icicles.

Beyond the bars of ice that hung from ceiling to floor like stalactites was a humanoid figure. It was not giant-sized. As the person was crumpled on the ground, it was hard to tell, but it seemed

to be about Asuna the undine's height.

The prisoner's skin was as white as freshly fallen snow. The

long, flowing hair was a deep golden-brown. The bust volume

peeking out from the meager cloth covering her body was, not to

be politically incorrect, on a class far above all five women present. Crude ice shackles bound her soft limbs as well.

As we stopped still, stunned by this sight, the kidnapped

woman lying facedown twitched, then raised her head, rattling

blue chains.

Like her hair, her eyes were also golden-brown. Assuming she

was a player, her facial features were so finely chiseled that she

was either astronomically lucky or astronomically rich enough to

keep buying accounts until she got a face this beautiful. On top of

that, there was a Scandinavian regality to her beauty that was

quite rare for this game.

The woman blinked, long lashes trembling, and said in a frail

voice, "Please…free me…from this place…"

The samurai lurched toward the ice cage, but I grabbed him by

the back of his bandanna and pulled hard.

"It's a trap."

"That's a trap."

"Totally a trap."

The latter two comments were from Sinon and Liz.

Klein turned back around, his back arched. He scratched his

head with a very doubtful look on his face.

"Y-yeah…it's a…trap. Um…I guess?" he mumbled reluctantly. I

prompted Yui to explain, and the pixie instantly obliged.

"She's an NPC. She is connected to the same language-engine

module as Urd. But there's one difference. This person has an HP

gauge enabled."

Normally, quest NPCs had no need for an HP gauge and

couldn't be harmed. The only exceptions were the targets of escort quests, or…

"Absolute trap."

"Definitely a trap."

"I think it's a trap," offered Asuna, Silica, and Leafa in unison.

Klein made a truly bizarre face with his eyebrows hanging,

eyes bulging, and mouth puckered. I clapped him on the shoulder.

"Of course, it might not be a trap, but we don't have the leeway

for some trial and error right now. We've got to get to Thrym as

soon as we can."

"Y…yeah. Of course. Right. For sure."

Klein kept nodding rapidly and tore his gaze away from the

cage of ice. But after the group took a few more steps toward the

stairs in the back, the voice came again.

"…Please…someone…"

In all honesty, I wanted to help her, too. NPCs weren't just

moving objects automatically generated by the game system; they

were residents of this world. If we were on a normal quest and we

saved her, took her along, then at the climax of the quest story,

she turned on us with a "Fwa-ha-ha, you fools!" then that would

be part of the fun. But now was not the time to take on needless

risks. Klein had to know that.

One of our perfectly synchronized footsteps went sour, scraping on the icy floor.

I turned to see the tall, skinny samurai standing still, his

hands clenched, facing downward. A low murmur emerged from

his unkempt mouth.

"…It's a trap. I know it's a trap. But…even as a trap, even

knowing it's a trap…"

He bolted upright, the liquid pooling in his eyes most definitely not an illusion.

"Even then…I can't just leave her here! Even if…we fail the

quest…and Alne is ruined…saving her here is the right decision,

according to my way of life—the samurai code!"

He bolted around and stomped toward the cage of ice. As I

watched him go, two conflicting emotions came to my mind.

…What an idiot.

And—

You're awesome, Klein!

I would probably never know which of the two was stronger.

Klein called out, "I'll save you now!" to the imprisoned

woman, who was propping herself up now. He grabbed the

katana at his left side, and in the next moment, his quick-draw

sword skill Tsujikaze erupted, severing the icicle bars in one horizontal swipe.

Fortunately, the beautiful woman did not transform into an

enormous monster and attack us the moment she was saved.

With four more slices, Klein's katana cut all of the ice shackles

loose. The woman looked up and said weakly, "Thank you…fairy

swordsman."

"Can you stand? Are you hurt?"

He was fully absorbed in the role, kneeling down and offering

his hand to her. Of course, we were in the middle of a VRMMO

quest, so personal investment in the story was the point. I myself

was in the middle of a desperate quest to help Queen Urd by stopping the plot of King Thrym of the giants, so I couldn't act like

Klein's behavior was beyond the pale. He was within his rights.

But still…

"Yes…I'm fine," the blond woman insisted, but she faltered as

soon as she got to her feet.

He put a chivalrous hand on her back to steady her and asked,

"It's a long way to the exit. Can you make it there alone, madam?"

"…"

The beautiful woman looked down, saying nothing.

Put in simple terms, the Cardinal System's automated conversational language engine module was an extremely complex version of a list of patterns: the player says A, the NPC responds B.

With its advanced predictive and learning ability, the engine allowed any NPC calling upon it to have remarkably lifelike—but

still artificial—conversations with players.

A breakthrough version of the module that had also gained

human emotion and nearly human-level intelligence was riding

on my head at this very moment, in the person of Yui the pixie.

But the automated-response NPCs were far from Yui's level at

present. It was still a night-and-day difference between them and

the fixed-response NPCs who only repeated their written lines,

but there were still times where they had trouble identifying

player speech, which left the players to search for the "proper"

question to elicit the answer they wanted.

I suspected at first that the woman's silence was one of these

pauses, but to my surprise, before Klein could phrase his question

a different way, she looked up and said, "I cannot simply escape

from this castle right away. I snuck in here to steal back a relic of

our people that King Thrym stole from us, but the third guardian

spotted me and imprisoned me. I cannot return until I have the

treasure. Will you please take me to Thrym's chamber with you?"

"Uh…um…hmm…"

For some reason, the man who lived by the samurai code

mumbled and murmured awkwardly. As we watched from several

yards away, Asuna whispered to me, "Something about this

doesn't seem right…"

"Yeah," I responded.

Meanwhile, Klein turned away from the woman and gave me a

pathetic, pleading look.

"Hey, Kiri, my man…"

"…All right, fine, fine. I guess we're stuck on this story route

until the end. And we're not a hundred percent sure it's a trap, I

suppose," I said. Klein grinned and turned proudly back to the

pretty woman.

"You've got a deal, madam! Diversity makes for strange bedfellows! And now, to face Thrym and rip off his balls!"

"Thank you, Sir Swordsman!" she said, squeezing his left arm.

Meanwhile, as the party leader, I saw a window pop up asking if I

wanted to include the NPC in the party.

"Don't get your sayings mixed up, or Yui will learn them by accident," I grumbled, and hit the YES button. At the bottom of the

list of HP/MP bars for the whole party on the left side of my vision, an eighth gauge appeared.

The woman's name was Freyja. The name struck me as familiar for some reason. Both of her numbers were significant, but it

was the MP in particular that was astronomical. She had to be a

mage type.

If she stays with the party the whole while, that would be really helpful, I thought, glancing at the medallion hanging around

Leafa's neck. The many-faceted gemstone was covered with black

over 90 percent of its surface. As we predicted before, that left us

with maybe half an hour. I sucked in a deep breath to give a

speech.