Chapter 2

As Kirito the spriggan swordsman, I set foot in the living room of a little log

cabin in the forest of the twenty-second floor of New Aincrad, a floating castle

that circled above the realm of Alfheim. A day in ALO was only sixteen hours

long, but it just so happened to be late afternoon here as well, as golden

sunlight was coming through the window.

Over time, our home had become a hangout spot for our friends, but at the

moment, it was silent and empty. Asuna had said she was going to be out with

her family until the evening, and Suguha hadn't come home from kendo

practice yet. At least Yui should be waiting for me, I thought—but there was no

sign of her in the darkened living room, either. Instead, all that awaited me was

an incoming message icon blinking on the right side of my field of vision.

It was from the mace-wielding leprechaun warrior, Lisbeth.

As soon as I tapped the icon, a game window full of colorful emojis appeared.

Silica and I are raising our skill levels on the 45th floor. Come help us when

you're done with homework! Oh, and we're borrowing Yui.

"...That would explain it."

At least I knew why my daughter wasn't around. In ALO, Yui was classified as a

navigation pixie—an in-game helper with advanced player-assistance abilities.

She could tell you what monsters would appear in an area and how fast they

populated, which was very helpful when you were grinding. According to the

game system, she was classified as my property, so before this, she only

appeared if I was online and called her name, but lately she was showing up of

her own accord as long as one of my friends was online. I was too afraid to ask

her why.

But on the other hand, while Yui's capabilities were surely advanced enough

that she could appear in two places at once—or ten, or a hundred—if she

wanted, she refused to do such a thing. The tendency to fixate strongly on the

singularity of their condition was a feature shared by all the AIs Akihiko Kayaba

designed. Even the AR idol singer Yuna from the Ordinal Scale incident half a

year earlier was no exception; she had nearly self-destructed because her

agency had tried to copy her program.

"So what now…?" I murmured to myself, closing the message from Lisbeth.

I had dived into ALO so I could talk to her and Silica and do some sly research

about what Asuna might like to receive as a present, but I couldn't bother them

if they were busy playing. I thought about joining them for the fun of it, but the

line in the message about "when you're done with homework" was a big mental

disincentive. I still had a mini-report on a computer science experiment due

tomorrow that wasn't finished yet.

I couldn't choose to ignore my homework, of course, but I was also falling

behind in raising my skill levels in the game. Word was that a big new floor-boss

battle was planned soon, and I wanted to get my combat senses honed again in

time.

New Aincrad had been ported into ALO last May, with the first through tenth

floors available to play. A September update had opened the tenth through

twentieth floors, and in January, they'd made up to the thirtieth floor

accessible. Regular updates had continued, making it possible to reach the

fiftieth floor at the start of this month. You could tell that the development

team, Ymir, was really putting their all into designing the bosses, because they'd

gotten meaner and nastier with each update. As of today, September 27th, the

farthest anyone had gotten was still only the forty-sixth floor.

Lisbeth was very excited about the chance to set up her own shop with a

waterwheel in the town of Lindarth once the forty-eighth floor opened, like she

had back in the original SAO. Agil had announced that he would have his own

general store in Algade on the fiftieth floor, too. But at this pace, we wouldn't

get to the former until next month—and near the end of the year for the latter.

I wanted to make it up to them for helping me so much in the Underworld, and

that meant I had to get my character stronger…

But it took all my willpower to pull back the foot that started to swing toward

the door. There was no way a guy who was going to be eighteen years old in ten

days should be ditching a school report to play games. I had the experiment

data, so I could have everything wrapped up in an hour (I hoped). I sat at the

virtual dining table and, from inside the game, accessed my home PC and called

up the unfinished report and all the data related to it. Then, borrowing Asuna's

magic mug—a quest reward that offered a random choice from among ninetynine types of tea if you tapped it—I sipped on what smelled like mint-chocolate

tea and began to type at the keyboard, telling myself "Okay! Let's shoot for

finishing it in forty-five minutes!"

Throughout my life, even at my worst period of online game addiction, I never

let my homework get backed up or overdue. The toughest part was during this

summer vacation, because to the outside world, I had essentially been in a

coma for an entire month.

I had been attacked and injected with succinylcholine by Johnny Black, a

member of Aincrad's most infamous team of assassins, Laughing Coffin, and

one of the architects of the Death Gun incident. The chemical put me into a

state of cardiac arrest, right at the end of June, not long after vacation began.

While I survived the ordeal, I didn't wake up again until August, and after a

period of physical rehab, I was finally allowed to go back home on August 16th.

In other words, two-thirds of my forty-day summer vacation passed before I

had time for myself, making a backlog of homework unavoidable. I probably

could've asked for half of it to be forgiven, but to negotiate that, I'd have to

explain to my school why I'd been in a coma.

They might believe that I was attacked on the street and hospitalized. But

who would believe that I was abducted from the hospital in a fake ambulance,

flown on a helicopter to a marine-research vessel in the distant southern seas,

strapped to a mysterious machine that accessed the human soul, and sent into

a strange place called the Underworld, where I cut down a giant cedar tree,

went to a swordsmanship school, fought the ruler of the world, and entered a

coma in that world, too…?

In the end, I had no choice but to get through it as best I could with the help

of my friends. As I typed out my report, I thought back on that hellish final week

of summer vacation and exorcised my frustration by grumbling aloud, "The

least you could have done before you vanished was order them to release me

from my homework obligations…"

No one was around to reply, of course. I was the only one in the forest cabin,

and the man I was talking to hadn't shown up in Alfheim in ages.

The real-life player behind the undine mage Chrysheight was Seijirou Kikuoka,

of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' Virtual Division. He had

vanished from both the virtual world and the real world over a month ago.

Control of Kikuoka's shell company, Rath, was now in the hands of Dr. Rinko

Koujiro, and as the chief technical officer, Takeru Higa was an even more vital

figure than before. I had reason to hope for the future of the Underworld, bit by

bit—but Kikuoka's disappearance left me with a strange feeling of loss.

If even I felt that way, after all the troubles and danger he put me through, I

was sure the Rath staff were very subdued now. He was a real pain in the ass,

right to the end, I thought…and then had to remind myself that he wasn't

actually dead.

Kikuoka had passed himself off as a dead-end public servant in the ministry,

but in fact, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Ground Self-Defense Force. He

vanished from the Ground SDF at the same time as several senior officers of the

Department of Defense, who were found to be allied with an American defense

company responsible for attacking the Ocean Turtle. He probably wasn't in

Japan at all at this point.

I didn't know if I would ever have the chance to see him again. But now that I

was here in this second home of mine, far from the Underworld, even Kikuoka's

stories about extremely stinky gourmet delicacies from all over the world were

a fond memory.

Perhaps it was because I was indulging in uncharacteristic thoughts like these

that I missed the sound of a character logging in. Only when the bouncing

footsteps were right behind me did I notice them. I pushed the holo-window

with my nearly complete report to the center of the table and turned around.

"I thought you were asleep, A—"

—suna.

I stopped myself before I could finish. The female avatar standing behind me

was not the blue-haired undine I'd expected, but a feline cait sith, with

triangular cat ears atop her head. Unlike other cait siths, she had none of their

affectionate cuteness.

The hair that hung down to the middle of her back was dazzlingly golden. Her

skin was so pale you could practically see through it. Her eyes were sapphire

blue. All in all, her stunning beauty was very similar to her actual features…not

in the real world, but in the Underworld.

"…H-hi, Alice. Good evening," I said, lifting my hand in greeting. The Integrity

Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty just snorted, her ears twitching with displeasure.

"You seem rather disappointed that I'm not Asuna, Kirito."

"N-no, no, noooo! I'm not thinking that. At all!" I protested, shaking my head,

but the knight's glare only grew colder.

I glanced down and realized that, despite the hour, she had golden armor and

a golden longsword equipped over her blue dress.

"Oh…Are you going hunting?" I asked.

Rather than remove her scowl, Alice merely shifted it into a different

permutation. "Yes, I had an agreement with Lisbeth. But…I will admit, I'm not

used to this word hunt."

She pulled out the chair next to me and sat down with a clank. I rose to a

standing position on instinct, then dashed off to the kitchen, telling her I'd put

on some tea. When I came back, I had another magic tea mug and a tray

featuring an unidentified pastry I'd found in the shared item storage.

I noticed Alice staring intently at my report window, which was still open over

the table. When she noticed me coming, she looked up and asked, "Is this an

assignment for the academy you attend?"

"Er…yeah, that's right."

"Hmm…When I was training at the cathedral, I was given piles of sacred arts

assignments," she murmured. There was a faint smile on her lips, evoking a look

of nostalgia and sadness.

I didn't know any human being who had experienced a fate as strange and

checkered as Alice's.

She had been born in a tiny village in the distant northern reaches of the

Underworld, where she'd lived until she was eleven, when she violated the

Taboo Index's rule against trespassing into the Dark Territory and was

summarily taken by an Integrity Knight to the Axiom Church's stronghold,

Central Cathedral.

The all-powerful Administrator had performed the Synthesis Ritual upon her,

causing Alice to lose all her memories. Eugeo and I made our way to the

cathedral intent on taking her back, but she herself stood in our path as the

strongest of the Integrity Knights. But when she learned of the Axiom Church's

hypocrisy and the pontifex's cruelty, she broke through the seal that had

blocked her mind's free thought and subsequently joined our side and helped

defeat Administrator.

After that, she left the Church and settled into the forest outside Rulid,

where, for half a year, she'd taken care of me while I was in a mentally

comatose state, until word arrived that the ultimate war with the Dark Territory

was beginning. She fought like a demon in the battle at the Eastern Gate but

was ultimately abducted by the man who led the assault team on the Ocean

Turtle. Thanks to the sacrifice made by Commander Bercouli, however, she was

freed, and with Asuna's guidance, she logged out of the system console—and

now she had a mechanical body developed by Takeru Higa that she used to live

in the real world.

Whether she wanted to be or not, she was the world's first true generalpurpose artificial intelligence. Her current schedule was very busy, assisting Dr.

Koujiro with her mission to win human rights for AI, but it seemed she was able

to log in to ALO frequently when she needed a break. Most likely, she found the

fantasy world of Alfheim a lot more familiar than the sights of the real world.

"Yeah, I got plenty of assignments at Swordcraft Academy, too. I even

remember the phrases for the sacred arts," I said, shrinking my homework

window down to a corner of the table and setting down the mug and plate.

Alice's cat ears twitched. "Well, well. And what is the command to create a

small hollow sphere of steel elements, filled with water, then warmed by heat

elements from the outside?"

"Hrrg! W-well…the general rule is to generate elements from the most stable

first, so I'd start with Generate Metallic…er, no, wait. The steel ball has to

surround the water, so does the water element come first…?"

Alice suddenly made the most exhausted sigh I had ever heard, so I childishly

retorted, "L-listen, it's fine. When you have my abilities, you don't need to say

the words. Incarnation will do the trick instantly…"

"That's not the point!" she snapped, like a teacher. With complete familiarity,

she tapped the rim of the mug and took a sip of the pale-pink tea that flooded

up from the bottom. "Mmm…this is a good one."

Based on that reaction, she'd clearly been visiting regularly and having tea

parties with Asuna—or something. God help me, I thought as I leaned back and

tapped my own cup.

The tea that bubbled up was a deep reddish-purple; I tasted it with some

foreboding, and the sourness that struck my tongue was like pickled plums

ground up in a blender. I desperately snatched up the pastry and took a big bite,

and thankfully, it was perfectly normal fruit pie. Alice approved as well, taking

one bite and then another—with the fork, of course.

I cut through the sugar with another sip of mouth-puckering plum tea, then

asked, "So…you were saying something about the word hunt?"

"Ah…yes, I was," Alice said with a nod. She turned her blue eyes to the

darkness outside the window. "To me…and probably the rest of the human

realm…hunting is the act of killing a wild animal for food, while thanking

Terraria for her blessing. But the people of this world—these 'players'—kill

unfathomable numbers of animals and monsters solely for the purpose of

raising their authority level. I do not mean to say this is wicked. In the battle at

the gate, I slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of demi-humans from the

Dark Territory, after all. But…I do not wish to call it hunting."

"…I see," I said, nodding slowly.

Alice understood that Alfheim was a world created within the real world. But

she was having trouble understanding the concept of a VRMMORPG…and what

playing a "game" meant.

I couldn't blame her for that. In the sense that it was a virtual world, they

were absolutely the same as her old home of the Underworld. Like the

Underworld, Alfheim was just another place to her, and she could not share the

conception among every other VRMMO player and me that these places were

temporary.

So when I had first taken Alice from New Aincrad down to Alfheim, and we

encountered a group of salamander PKers in the ancient forest near the sylph

territory, it had turned into quite a scene. Silica took damage from a sneak

attack, and Alice was so furious that she swore at the salamanders like some

fierce demonic menace, until they were so intimidated that they apologized to

Silica and left some money for her as recompense. I'd never even heard of such

a thing happening.

Among the small group of players who knew that Alice the cat-eared knight of

ALO was the artificial intelligence A.L.I.C.E. introduced at the splashy press

conference last month, this incident became known as the Legend of Lady Alice

Scolding the PKers Until They Cried. At any rate, I couldn't help but hope that

the day would come when Alice learned to enjoy ALO for the game it was

meant to be.

In the meantime, I'd finished my portion of the fruit pie and choked down

about a third of my tea when I finally turned to the proud knight from another

world and said, "I agree that the word hunt you hear in VRMMOs has drifted

quite a distance from its original meaning. But the truth is, the vast majority of

the population of modern Japan has no experience with real hunting—including

me. When times and places change, so do words. I'm sure that phenomenon

happened in the Underworld, too…"

"..."

Alice was initially silent because she was chewing the last bite of fruit pie,

which she chased with the rest of her tea.

"Well, two hundred years have passed since I lived in the Underworld," she

said, "so I suppose there has been a great change in not just language, but

culture in general. Whatever change that might be, I must accept it…For one

thing, the very existence of that change is proof that you protected and

preserved the Underworld…"

Much to my consternation, Alice stared directly into my eyes and smiled. I did

manage to mount a denial out of sheer habit, however. "But…it wasn't just me

who did that. Asuna, Sugu, Sinon…in fact, there were thousands of players from

ALO who went to the Underworld to protect it."

"Yes, that's right…In that sense, the use of one measly word seems a very

insignificant thing," Alice said, looking back out the window. She was not seeing

the coniferous forest, however, but the otherworld that existed far beyond it.

On the Ocean Turtle, which was still out at sea but shut down by the SDF, the

Lightcube Cluster, which was the container for the Underworld, and its Main

Visualizer were still active, but the situation was fluid, to say the least.

The anti-Rath conservative faction in the Department of Defense had

temporarily lost power because of Kikuoka's sacrificial move, so for now, the

Underworld was not going to be instantly scrapped. But that situation could

change quickly based on how the struggle for control played out.

Early on the morning of August 18th, Asuna, Alice, and I had dived into the

Underworld from Rath's office in Roppongi. We'd panicked briefly when we

appeared out in space rather than on the ground, but with the help of the two

young Integrity Knights—er, Integrity Pilots—whom we met flying their

dragoncraft, we somehow made it back to the human realm.

But I was extremely conflicted about the idea of just marching into Central

Cathedral. For one thing, whatever happened in the last two hundred years,

Asuna and I were the Star King and Star Queen now and had apparently died

thirty years ago. If we strolled through the front door and said "'Sup!" the

entire cathedral, and probably the rest of the world with it, would go into an

existential panic.

So the three of us allowed the pilot named Laurannei to guide us to her home

in Centoria. The building was over four hundred years old, and it felt strangely

familiar. There, the two pilots caught us up on the current state of the

Underworld and even fed us a meal.

Before we dived, Dr. Koujiro told us she would wake us up by force once five

hours had passed, so before we hit that point (fortunately, there were clocks in

the Underworld now), we promised to meet the pilots again, and the three of

us logged out.

I wanted to go back right away, to be honest, but Dr. Koujiro and Higa told us

that we were forbidden to dive again until they had appraised the information

we brought back from our trip, so they could assess the effects on the

simulation.

I could understand why the adults were being careful. Whoever it was that

told Alice the IP address she could use to connect to the Underworld—I had a

vague idea—they were still unknown. And the direction the Underworld took in

the times ahead would have a huge effect on the outcome of the plan to secure

the Lightcube Cluster—and the issue of human rights for AI.

Fortunately, the Underworld was currently running in real time, not

accelerated time. So there was nothing like before, where you might spend

years inside the Underworld from a single login. Even still, a month had passed.

Laurannei and Stica were probably feeling antsy, and I wanted to hear from

them this time. For one thing, I was pretty sure they were actually—

"…rito. Kirito. Are you listening to me?"

The cat-eared knight jabbed my elbow, and I blinked back to the present. "Ah!

Yes. Sorry, I was thinking about the Underworld…"

That caused Alice's face to soften out of scold mode. "I see. I find myself

thinking about it several times a day."

"Yeah…I want to go back soon."

"Yes," she agreed, then sighed wistfully.

My longing for that place had to be nothing compared to the depth of Alice's

homesickness. And she had two clear goals to achieve.

One was to re-hatch the eggs of her dragon, Amayori, and its brother, Takiguri

—I'd rewound them into their pre-hatched forms before the final battle with

Gabriel Miller.

The other was to awaken her sister, Selka Zuberg, who was in a deep freeze

on the eightieth floor of Central Cathedral.

Neither would be easy—especially the latter. She would have to convince the

current government of the human realm that she was none other than the

legendary Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty, who had vanished over two

hundred years before.

But I knew Alice could do it, and I would do anything I could to help, of

course. I couldn't wait to see Selka again, either.

Before I could mentally travel to the Underworld yet again, Alice's voice

pulled me back. "By the way, Kirito, I have a message from Dr. Koujiro."

"Uh…a message? Could she not just e-mail me?"

"Apparently, she did not want to leave traces on the network," she said.

I grimaced. The lines Rath used were safeguarded with very heavy security. If

Dr. Koujiro wanted to avoid e-mail or even a spoken message, and instead relay

her news through word of mouth in ALO, where there would be no record, it

had to be very important information.

As I tensed, Alice announced, "The twenty-ninth, at fifteen o'clock. The

expensive cake shop."

"...Huh?"

"That's all."

"..."

The twenty-ninth was two days from now. Fifteen o'clock was three in the

afternoon. That part was clear.

But what was the "expensive cake shop"? There were plenty of places in

Tokyo that fit that description. I bet I could even find one or two in Kawagoe

City, Saitama Prefecture, where I lived.

I almost thought about sending Dr. Koujiro a message to double-check but

stopped myself. If I made contact from this side, it would ruin the pains she'd

taken to keep it secret.

As I mulled this over, rocking my head from side to side, Alice looked envious.

"There are countless varieties of cake in the real world. So many things I never

ate in Centoria. Looking at the pictures of them makes me hungry."

"Uh…yeah, I guess…But I really liked the sweets I used to buy in Centoria.

Those honey pies? Three for just ten shia, and that filled a whole bag…"

"Are the cakes here expensive?"

"Well, I always imagined one shia being equivalent to about ten yen, so a

nicer pastry shop might cost…oh, forty shia for one piece?"

"Th-that does sound expensive," she marveled, eyes wide.

I grinned. "And there's much fancier ones. I once had a piece of cake in Ginza

that would be a hundred and sixty shia…"

But I stopped there, realizing something. Dr. Koujiro wasn't the kind of person

who used such mockingly vague code words. Meaning this message about an

"expensive cake shop" was literally just a message to her. She was relaying it

from another person at Rath, and there was only one I could think of who

would write this message.

My shoulders sagged, and I sighed. Alice looked at me with confusion. "What

is it, Kirito?"

"Oh…it's fine. I figured out what the message means. Thanks for telling me,

Alice."

"It was a very easy task…is what I would normally say…but…"

The golden knight's cat ears twitched as she thought, and a mischievous grin

snuck onto her lips.

"Perhaps you can help me with my training, then," she said.

"Huh? Oh, boosting your skill proficiency…?"

There was only one reason that Alice the proud and regal knight had chosen

to play as a cait sith, with their cat ears and cat tails: It was the easiest race for

reaching the character class of dragoon, the knights who rode dragons.

But just because they were the easiest didn't mean it was actually easy. To

ride a dragon, you needed very high skill levels in both taming and swords or

spears. To improve at both at once, you needed to fight and fight, activating the

triggers to increase proficiency in the weapon, while spending the skill points

you earned on the Beast-Taming skill.

I thought it over, then returned the homework window I had pushed to the

corner of the tabletop to its original size.

"Give me thirty minutes, then. Once I've finished this, we can go meet up with

Liz and the gang and work on earning SP for—"

I was cut off by a light swooshing sound.

That was the noise of a player logging in. And there was only one other

person who could appear directly in this log cabin…

I spun around in the chair at warp speed, and Alice followed by rotating

smoothly, just as a slender avatar appeared before the doorway.

She had long, pale-blue hair, a battle dress that was mainly white, and a silver

rapier at her side. Asuna the undine magician and fencer recognized Alice and

me—and her expression steadily changed into one of surprise.

"W…welcome back, Asuna," I said, getting to my feet. At last, she smiled and

lifted her hand to wave.

"Good evening, Kirito. Welcome, Alice."

"Pardon me for intruding, Asuna," replied Alice with the same smile. Perhaps

it was just my imagination, but it felt like the temperature in the room had gone

up a few degrees…

In any case, I still had to finish my homework. I cleared my throat and spoke

again. "Um, I need to wrap up this report, so if you two don't mind, you can go

ahead and meet with Liz—"

Before I could finish my sentence, there was a violent shaking that burst

through the floor of the log cabin, and a low, deep roar like thunder drowned

out all other noise.

"Eeeek!" the girls screamed. On pure instinct, I leaped, grabbing Alice with my

right hand and Asuna with my left. Once I'd gotten them down in a crouch on

the floor, there was another boom. The thick beams that crossed the ceiling

creaked, and the mugs tumbled off the table.

There wouldn't be earthquakes in a virtual world, of course, and even if it did

happen in Alfheim, it wouldn't do anything to New Aincrad, which was floating

in the sky. Plus, if New Aincrad were to somehow shake, it wouldn't mean the

cabin's collapse. But even though the logical part of my brain knew all this, my

instincts kicked in, and I shouted, "Get outside, you two!"

I rushed across the roiling floor, practically dragging the fencer and cat-eared

knight, and made it to the doorway. As soon as I pushed it open and leaped out

onto the porch, the third and largest shock hit my legs, and the three of us

tumbled down the porch steps.

Fortunately, the front yard was just grass, so we didn't lose any HP. I was

about to unfold my fairy wings, thinking that at least if I was floating, the

shaking ground would stop affecting me—when Asuna grabbed my hand with

all her strength.

"Kirito, l-look…!" she gasped.

Her trembling hand was pointing at the blue sky visible through the outer

aperture, which was very close by. A second later, I noticed it, too.

Alfheim's internal time was not synced to the real world, so it was still

afternoon, far from sundown, but the horizon was blazing red now. The

bloodred color was coming this way at astounding speed and soon covered New

Aincrad's entire sky.

"…That is not a sunset…," said Alice, who was clutching my other hand. Hardly

any of the words were penetrating my consciousness, but I was screaming the

same thing inside my mind anyway.

It wasn't just that the horizon was red—a hexagonal pattern was rapidly filling

the sky. On the hexagons was an alternating array of the words Warning and

System Announcement.

"Kirito," Asuna called again, her voice frail.

I squeezed her delicate hand, but my mind was vividly replaying memories of

the last time I saw a sky like this: a very fateful day, indeed.

It was nearly four years ago, on November 6th, 2022.

At five thirty PM on the day of the launch of the world's first VRMMORPG,

Sword Art Online, ten thousand players were automatically teleported to the

square of the Town of Beginnings, where a pattern of crimson hexagons began

to fill the sky.

The titanic game master appeared by dripping downward from that sky and,

in a deep and menacing voice, announced, Welcome to my world, dear players.

From that moment on, Asuna and I and nearly ten thousand others were

trapped in a deadly game with no ability to log out. It'd taken two whole years

of real time for us to finally escape.

Is that going to happen all over again?

No. It wasn't possible. Asuna and I were wearing AmuSpheres, which had

many layers of security and safety measures, not the old NerveGear, and Alice

did not require an interface machine to log in to ALO. Even if the LOG OUT button

on the menu was gone, we would be fine as soon as someone in the real world

pulled the AmuSpheres off our heads.

So what did this red sky represent, then?

Some surprise in-game event? That was hard to imagine. There was no way,

in terms of compliance, that they'd mimic the very event in SAO that led to four

thousand deaths—no matter that Ymir, the company that ran ALO, was a small

venture-funded firm.

Was the server hacked from the outside? It wasn't impossible, but while it

was probably easy to overwrite the skybox texture, actually shaking all of New

Aincrad like that had to be impossibly difficult. There was no magic or item that

could produce that kind of effect in this world.

But no sooner had that thought entered my mind than a fourth shock hit us.

The ground of the twenty-second floor rippled like liquid, and cracks

appeared in the green grass. The log cabin behind us screamed and creaked,

and Asuna clutched the railing of the porch with both hands.

"Asuna!" I shouted—but then I figured it out. The blue-haired undine wasn't

trying to keep herself upright; she was trying to prevent the house from

collapsing. I rushed over instantly and pushed against the wall. Alice did her

part by pressing on top of the porch to keep it in place.

But of course, the three of us alone could not outdo the destructive shaking.

A hundred players would have no more luck than us. The entire six-mile length

of the floating castle's floor was rumbling beneath us.

"Ah…!" Asuna shrieked as a dry bursting sound drowned her out. The

triangular roof over the cabin's porch split in two. If the shaking persisted, the

entire house would suffer similar damage in less than a minute.

I had a powerful attachment to this cabin, too, if not quite on the level of

Asuna. The log cabin we had lived in as newlyweds for two happy weeks in the

original Aincrad was destroyed when the deadly game was finished, but this

one, which had appeared in New Aincrad when it was introduced to ALO half a

year later, was copied straight from the SAO server. It was the real thing. Every

detail about it was the same, from the patterns in the floorboards to the knots

on the load-bearing beams.

In fact, even the Aincrad from the old SAO server was secretly recovered by

Akihiko Kayaba's old teacher, Professor Tamotsu Shigemura…but at this point,

that server was something of a grave marker for the professor's only daughter,

Yuna, who had saved many lives in the Ordinal Scale incident this past April. It

was deep in the fifth basement level of the off-limits Argus building, so it

wouldn't be easy to access—nor did I want to. At this point, the cabin here was

the place Asuna and I called home to our many memories together.

With that thought fueling me, I dug my fingers into the log wall and used all

my strength to try to hold it still.

Then the vibrations stopped, as though they had never happened at all.

In the moment, I felt relief that the shaking was over at last—but then I

noticed that while the fiercest rumbling was gone, the ground itself was slowly

tilted forward…leaning us toward the outer edge of the floating castle.

"What's this…?!"

Gripped by an unprecedented sense of foreboding, I spun around.

And then I was rendered speechless.

Just five to ten feet away from the fence line that marked the edge of the

cabin's plot, the ground ended.

The shaking had split the very floor of New Aincrad itself. The ground we were

standing on now was floating in the air—no, falling. That was why the shaking

stopped.

A moment later, Asuna and Alice came to the same realization and found

their voices.

"Kirito…the ground!"

"The house is falling, Kirito!"

I was aware of that, but I had no idea what to do about it. I could only watch

in disbelief as the slice of the twenty-second floor drifted away. Perhaps our

falling speed seemed slow because the chunk of the floor carrying the log cabin

was over a hundred yards across and was suffering from major air resistance. If

we were in a total free fall, our feet would be pulling away from the ground, but

I could still walk, if with a reduced sense of gravity.

A part of me was optimistic enough to hope that the house might not be

destroyed when we landed, but I stifled that feeling at once. New Aincrad was

floating thirty thousand feet above Alfheim. Even with the virtual air acting as a

brake, the little island we were located upon was going to be smashed to atoms

after a fall of that height, leaving nothing but a crater behind. Maybe the land

itself would be fine, since VR terrain was considered indestructible—but our HP

and the cabin's durability would be blasted to nothingness instantly.

No, wait…

Asuna, Alice, and I could survive. We had fairy wings, after all, so we could

escape that grisly end by simply spreading them and flying. But I didn't think

Asuna would choose that method. She knew that we were falling, but she still

clung white-knuckled to the railing of the porch and wasn't going to let go now.

I watched the floating castle drift farther away from us, my hand similarly

pressed to the wall of the cabin.

It seemed the entire castle itself was falling, not just these isolated islands of

earth. I didn't know what happened to New Aincrad, but there was no doubting

this was an unprecedented catastrophe in motion. Beneath the reddened sky,

the massive conical silhouette tilted in a southern direction and continued to

fall. Islands of rock about the size of what we were resting upon broke off from

the floors below us.

Lisbeth, Silica, and Yui were leveling up on the forty-fifth floor of New Aincrad,

if I recalled. I was worried about them, but the most important thing right now

was to find a way to save this log cabin. If a person falling from a height of thirty

thousand feet spread out their limbs to maximize air resistance, it would take

about three minutes for them to reach the ground, according to something I felt

like I'd read before. That meant we probably had about the same time until this

little island made contact with Alfheim on the ground. But because this was the

virtual world, it could be faster or slower.

To cut through the roaring of the air around us, I screamed at the top of my

lungs, "Dammit! If this were the Underworld, I could use my Incarnate power to

lift this stupid rock right up!"

Immediately, the cat-eared knight clinging to the porch snapped back, "Stop

trying to use Incarnation to solve every problem you have!"

"I-if there's any situation that calls for it, this would be it!"

"It is during the greatest emergencies that a knight's mindset is tested the

most!"

Asuna had recovered some of her wits, and she cut into our squabbling firmly:

"You might not be able to use Incarnation, but there might still be something

we can do!"

The way she said that made me think for an instant that Asuna might actually

be able to call upon Stacia's geography-shaping powers here in this world, too.

But of course, her answer was something completely different.

"Let's use our wings to push this rock!"

"What…?! You know there's no way for us to lift a chunk of earth this big—," I

protested, but Asuna shook her head.

"No, we're not going to lift it, just change the trajectory. If we can push it to

land in the right spot, then maybe…"

"Oh…I—I get it!" I exclaimed, reading the intention of my longtime partner. "If

we drop it onto water, or maybe sand or swamp, the shock should be alleviated

somewhat!"

"I see," murmured Alice, nodding. She spread her fairy wings. Asuna and I

pulled away from the cabin and jumped. Since we were free-falling, it took only

a little upward lift for our avatars to rise quickly off the ground.

At a hundred yards above the roof of the cabin, we stopped buzzing our wings

and maintained distance as we resumed falling. In a (relative) hover over the

little island, it was clear that the chunk of land was like a piece of shortcake, a

hundred yards at most on one side, but two hundred on the other. The cabin

was on the narrower end, so if we could drop the wider end into the water first,

perhaps there was a chance our home could be saved—or so I wanted to

believe.

I looked beyond the island. The land far in the distance below was a brilliantgreen forest. Only in the sylph and undine territories was there such a large,

lush forest, but the shining reflection of water here and there meant that, of

the two, it had to be undine land.

That was lucky for us. The force the three of us could create together was

minuscule, but with that many lakes below, there was less distance we might

need to push to get it to land in one of them—or so I hoped.

With great concentration, I focused on the diagonal descending trajectory of

the falling island. I could see several lakes below, but none of them seemed like

the right match in terms of size and shape. The ideal body of water would be

long and narrow, like an airport runway, but that was too convenient to hope

for—

"Oh…there!"

"That way!" Asuna and I shouted together. The glittering surface in the far

distance was probably a river, not a lake, but it was plenty wide enough to give

the island a soft, watery landing. It was located along the trajectory of the

island's fall, too. Just a shift of two hundred yards to the right should do the

trick.

"Let's hurry!"

Alice spread her wings again. The three of us shot into a descent toward the

left side of the island. As soon as I passed over the edge of the plummeting

rock, a huge increase in air resistance pushed me back upward, but I did my

best to dive and cut through it until I was down at the side of the rock layer.

Our elevation at this point was about four thousand yards. So for every

twenty yards we fell, one yard of lateral movement should put us safely into the

river. The three of us could never move an entire chunk of land like this while

resting on the surface. It was only possible while airborne.

I pressed my hands against the dark rock side and shook my wings as hard as I

could.

"Rrrraaaaah!"

On my right, Asuna joined in, with Alice on the left.

"Urrrrhhh!!"

"Upsy-daisy!!"

That struck me as an odd thing for a regal Integrity Knight and young woman

to say, but now wasn't the time for critique.

If we had tried this during the period when RCT Progress managed ALO, our

flight gauge would have dried up in moments, leaving us helpless to fall. But the

new management team, Ymir, was much more generous and eliminated all

limitations on flight. We could use all the energy we wanted without running

out. The hunk of rock, four hundred yards at its longest, resisted our efforts

initially like the goliath it was, but as we persisted, its path slowly budged.

"If we push it too far, we won't be able to course correct!" Alice warned. We

could only follow our instincts at this point.

"But even now, us getting it there is a long shot…I think! Don't be timid—just

push!"

"I'm trusting in your good luck, Kirito!" Asuna shouted. Well, I had no trust in

that luck. I just had to tell myself that if I'd been saving it up, this was the

moment to use it.

For over ten seconds, we strained and pushed the island through the howling

wind.

The ground was much closer now. We were only a thousand yards up…nine

hundred…eight hundred. I couldn't see the river yet, looking down past the side

of the rock. Without realizing it, I started to kick my legs in a subconscious

attempt to add force. My every ounce of strength was dedicated to pushing.

Then there was light shining below. A water surface…

"That's the river! Push for five more seconds, then disengage!" I shouted.

Asuna promptly began a countdown.

"Four! Three! Two! One! Now!"

The three of us spread our wings to go into a sudden stop. I felt it jolting my

body backward, and I nearly went into a tailspin, but we locked our arms to stay

stable and upright.

The huge shortcake-shaped piece of rock hurtled downward toward the

water, rear end first. The log cabin still clung to the pointed end, ceiling slats

and fence posts flying loose, but the building stubbornly refused to collapse.

As long as the water absorbed enough of the impact…

I prayed to a god that probably wasn't present in this virtual world as the

moment of fate approached.

Three seconds later, the base of the chunk of rock made contact with the

surface of the water.

A curtain of blue burst high into the air on the far end. Moving water was an

area in virtual reality that had a tendency to be abbreviated to save processing

power, but the realism of the jet of water here amazed me; I couldn't believe

ALO was able to depict such details. The island bounced, then bounced again,

and again. With each impact, the cabin creaked and cracked.

Please hang in there! I pleaded, but as if to mock me, the island of rock split

down the middle. The water pushed back harder this time, and the little island,

nearly vertical at this point, was unable to withstand the kinetic energy involved

and broke over the middle.

"Aaah…!" Asuna wailed. I clutched her trembling hand.

The tip of the little island containing our log cabin broke off of the rear wedge

and flew through the air. Up ahead, the river curved sharply, so there wasn't

much water left in that direction to cushion the impact. Beyond the river was

thick forest. The piece of rock plunged into it, sending huge conifer trees into

the air. A choking cloud of dirt and dust billowed upward, blocking our sight.

Lastly, there was a deep rumbling…and then it was bizarrely silent.

I was trapped between the desire to see what happened to the log cabin and

an aversion to seeing it completely shattered into pieces. Neither Asuna nor

Alice said a word. We just hovered there, all three of us, watching the trail of

rising dust.

Oh, but what about the rest of New Aincrad? That was falling along with us.

I was just turning around to survey the fate of the floating castle—when two

things happened in succession.

First, the pattern of hexagonal red warning messages that filled the sky

dissipated toward the horizon at the same speed with which it arrived.

Then the power that was keeping my body aloft vanished.

"Wha—?!" I yelped, trying to vibrate the wings on my back, but it did not

create the tiniest piconeutron of upward force. The girls screamed, and we all

began to plummet headfirst toward the surface of the river, three hundred feet

below.

I thought something was wrong with my voluntary flight mechanism, so I

waved my left hand to bring out the assistance controller. Yet my fingers closed

on nothing but thin air. And I didn't stop falling. A fall from this height, even

into water, was going to cause catastrophic damage.

Then it occurred to me that, if the three of us died, our respawn point was set

to the log cabin. If the log cabin was destroyed or gone, where would we start

over? The nearest town? The previous spawn point before that, in Yggdrasil

City?

And if our log cabin was gone, it still contained all the items we were storing

within it, including some things with memories attached to them. We'd need to

get them back. If we resurrected somewhere very far away, could we get back

here before all those items rotted away? We had to avoid dying here.

"Curl up into a ball, you two!"

In ALO—as in SAO, in fact—falling damage was affected by your position

when you landed. If there was ground below, you wanted to land on your feet,

but if there was water of indeterminate depth, a totally defensive position was

safest. Press your legs up to your chest, put your arms over your head, and hold

your breath.

Impact. My HP immediately halved.

Something in my mind raised a question when it happened. But I didn't have

the wherewithal to pursue the source of that question now. Frothy bubbles

burst from my mouth, and blue water flooded into me as I sank. I stretched out

my limbs, trying to stop the descent, struggling toward the surface.

"Bwaaah!!"

I gasped for air when my head breached the surface of the river. Shortly after,

Asuna and Alice rose as well. They seemed to have suffered the same amount

of damage I did.

But it wasn't smart to tread water with your HP half gone. I didn't know much

about undine territory, but big rivers like this one usually harbored alligators

and turtles and eels and monsters of the like. Better that we get to the

riverbank before they started to nibble on our toes.

"…We really can't fly anymore…," Alice mumbled. I saw that her wings were

simply gone. And strangely, although Alice's cat ears were still there, Asuna's

longer elfish ears looked human again. My ears probably were, too. My sense of

foreboding rose, but safety was the top priority now.

"We'll just have to swim," I said. The other two nodded. There wasn't much

else to do but swim toward the right bank, in the direction the log cabin fell.

Fortunately, no predators leaped out of the water at us. We reached solid

ground, soaking wet, and paused to catch our breath. Asuna's gasping seemed

like more than just exhaustion, so I reached out to steady her.

In the forest ahead, the trees had been knocked down as violently as though

the giant beasts of Jotunheim had charged through them. The dust-cloud

effects had subsided, but the little island carrying the log cabin was out of sight

from here. Either it was hidden by the undulations of the land—or it had simply

been obliterated.

"…I'm all right," Asuna whispered, straightening up. "We need to find out

what happened to our home."

"I'm sure it's fine," said Alice as she approached, shaking off excess water. She

reached up to brush one of her triangular ears and noted, "It's not drying off…"

Indeed, water was still dripping from the sleeves and hem of my black coat.

The current version of ALO sold itself on ease of play, so the extremely

unpleasant "wetness effect" didn't normally last. Within seconds of leaving the

water, your hair and clothes were supposed to be perfectly dry again.

Maybe the fall of New Aincrad wasn't just some freakish occurrence, but only

a part of some greater and more serious disruption. Struck with more

foreboding, I waved my hand to call up my menu and ensure my weapons were

equipped.

But the menu did not appear.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me…"

I made a flicking motion with two fingers, back and forth. But the usual sound

effect would not accompany any of my movements. I tried it with my right hand

and had no more success.

We're not really doing this again, are we…? I thought, feeling a shiver down

my back.

But then there was a faint jingling sound, and a little window appeared below

my raised right hand. I hastily examined it and saw a very plain font reading

Tips: To call up the menu window, make a clockwise circle with the index and

middle fingers of your right hand.

"…A circle?"

I was nonplussed but did as advised, drawing a circle in the air with two

fingers, about four inches across.

With a strange, different sound, a faintly purple menu window appeared. I

was momentarily relieved—until I saw the contents of the window, and along

with Asuna and Alice, I gasped.

For one thing, the menu screen was not the familiar square layout from SAO

and ALO, but a circle of simple icons—a ring menu. That wasn't a particularly

rare format, but I hadn't heard anything about ALO changing up its UI.

Stunned, I moved my fingers around the window. Each icon they momentarily

hovered over grew larger and displayed an English alphabet overlay. Going

clockwise from the top, the icons were for STATUS, SKILLS, EQUIPMENT, STORAGE, QUESTS,

MAP, COMMUNICATION, and SYSTEM. A very orthodox menu set for an MMORPG, but

even that felt cold and strange under the circumstances.

I flicked the SYSTEM icon in the upper left with stiff fingers. Circular icons rotated

and multiplied, displaying a number of submenus. Graphics, sound, UI settings

—and a door-shaped icon for logging out.

"Whew…," Asuna and I said in unison, sighing. Alice was a bit puzzled at first

but then realized why we were relieved.

"Ah, you were thinking of Sword Art Online."

"That's right…," said Asuna with a grim smile. "The AmuSphere was designed

with safety in mind, so the same thing can't possibly happen again…but

whenever anything out of the expected happens in a virtual world, I can't help

but get jumpy."

"That seems like a natural reaction," said the knight with a rare expression of

warmth—mean as that might be to say about her. But then she shook her head

and returned to her usual brisk tone. "I cannot understand that Kayaba man,

however. Over a hundred thousand humans die every day in the real world, so

why would he lock young people within this supposedly safe virtual world and

force them to risk death and fight against monsters and other human beings…?

What would he get out of that?"

Neither Asuna nor I could answer this extremely direct question. What did—

what does Akihiko Kayaba want? We'd been thinking about this for nearly four

years and come no closer to understanding his motivations.

"…If you want to know, I think you'd have to ask him directly. Though, I doubt

he'd give you a straight answer," I said, dismissing the SYSTEM icon. For sheer

safety reasons, we should probably log out first, but before that, I wanted to

check the log cabin's status.

But actually, there was another thing to determine first. What happened to

the rest of New Aincrad, which should have fallen to earth a little bit later than

the cabin? I couldn't imagine such a massive construct simply shattering

without a trace. Any players who were stuck inside might have taken fall

damage after plummeting from such a great height.

I wanted to send a message to Lisbeth, who'd gone to the forty-fifth floor to

level-up her skills with Silica, so I reached for the COMMUNICATION icon but stopped

myself. There was a quicker way to do this than tapping away at a holokeyboard.

"Yui, are you there?" I said into thin air, and then I waited. Asuna and Alice

looked at the air, too.

Yui, the artificial intelligence born in SAO, was registered in the ALO system as

my personal navigation pixie. Unlike other pixies, she could act on her own

elsewhere, but if I called her name, she could appear instantly in my presence,

no matter where on the world map she was.

Under normal circumstances, that is.

"..."

I waited and waited, but nothing happened. Every other time I did this, she

immediately popped into being in the air nearby.

"…Kirito, what happened to Yui?" Asuna mumbled in concern.

I tried to contain my rising panic. "She was with Liz's group on the forty-fifth

floor, I'm pretty sure…"

"Then she should be connected to ALO," Asuna said. I hesitated but was

about to agree with that statement, when Alice stepped forward and looked up

at the sky, now blue again.

"I suppose the question is…are we even in Alfheim anymore?"

"Huh…? Wh-what do you mean?" I stammered.

Alice turned her blue eyes toward the forest behind us. "Though you may not

have been aware of it, Kirito, the variety of plant life in Alfheim was very limited

compared to the Underworld—and especially to the real world. There were

only thirty or so varieties of trees, between deciduous and coniferous…But

there are many kinds of trees in that forest that I have never seen in Alfheim."

"Oh…Now that you mention it…," murmured Asuna. I joined her in staring at

the green of the forest. The detail on the terrain seemed very high…but I

couldn't tell the kinds of trees apart. Asuna had an interest in rare trees and

wooden furniture, however, and she seemed to agree with the assessment.

She turned to me and said, "Alice is right. There are all kinds of trees here that

didn't grow in Alfheim. Plus…I thought something else was strange."

"Strange? How?"

"There are many lakes in Alfheim's undine territory, but they're mostly

connected through underground reservoirs. There are no major rivers there like

this one."

Now that she pointed it out, it seemed accurate to me, but I knew that thirty

minutes ago, I dived into ALO from my device, and there were no terrain maps

in ALO aside from Alfheim itself. Perhaps the other realms of Norse mythology

like Asgard, realm of the Aesir, or Vanaheim, home of the Vanir, had been

added as a surprise event. But this seemed too violent and chaotic to be

something like that.

"…But we're definitely still in ALO, and that means Yui should respond to a

summons," I said, as though trying to convince myself. I reached for the ring

menu again and deployed the STATUS icon at the top of the circle. The round icon

swished and expanded, splitting into four parts and giving way to a rectangular

window.

"See, here's all my character data, just where I…"

My words vanished like smoke.

Right at the top of the window was my avatar name: Kirito.

But that was the only part of my character status that I recognized.

To the right of my name was a shining bit of text that said Lv. 1. Below it, four

colored bars. In order, they were for HP, MP, TP, and SP. Above the HP bar, it

said 98/200, while the MP, TP, and SP bars all glowed white and said 100/100.

HP and MP were pretty obvious—but what about TP and SP? And even

worse…

"...Level-1..."

Asuna and Alice heard me groan and stared at me, then made the same circle

with their hands in the air to open the ring menu. Once they could see their

status windows, they reported in together.

"It says I'm level-1, too!"

"So am I!"

"What's going on?!"

"What is the meaning of this?!"

They turned toward me, but all I could do was shake my head, quivering. "I—I

don't know why you're asking me…I'm ultra-shocked, myself…But the thing is,

ALO isn't supposed…"

…to have levels. I could hear Agil's voice replaying what he said when he was

teaching me about how this game worked, a year and a half ago.

It's heavily skill-focused, meaning there's no level system. You just improve

your skills through usage, and for the most part, your hit points don't go up at

all.

For some reason, I also got a vivid mental image of the bald shopkeeper

flashing me a smile and a thumbs-up. Annoyed, I banished the image so I could

think this over.

If not just the UI had been changed, but even the level/skill system that was

the root of the player's progression, then this was beyond the bounds of a mere

update. It was clear this was no longer the ALfheim Online I knew.

I looked away from the level-1 character data and examined the bar gauges in

the upper left of my vision. My HP bar had barely budged from its halfway point

after falling into the river. Below that was a green MP bar and two more new

bars below it. The blue one was presumably TP, and the yellow was SP. The

reason I felt weird when I saw my HP bar while falling was probably my

subconscious noticing that there were extra, unfamiliar elements in the display.

"…I think the moment our wings vanished, and we fell…that was when the

system switched over…And our ears changed…," I murmured.

Asuna brushed her shortened ears and added, "This can't be a normal update

if they completely reset our character data. And the UI is too polished for this to

be some kind of accident or bug…"

"That's true," I said, circling the menu with my finger. The way the icons

expanded and contracted was very smooth, and they had clearly been

painstakingly programmed.

I didn't see a notification icon for received messages, but I thought that

perhaps there was a notice to players from Ymir, the development team, so I

selected the COMMUNICATION icon. It displayed sub-icons for PARTY, FRIENDS, and

MESSAGES. I picked the third one.

There wasn't a single new message in the window that appeared. In fact, the

entire contents of the inbox were gone. On top of that, my friends list was

empty. Now I couldn't send messages to Liz and Silica's group.

"So both our stats and our friends list have been completely wiped," I said

with a sigh.

Alice shook her head, blond hair swaying. "But we haven't lost everything,

have we? We still have these."

She lifted her left hand and tapped the golden gauntlet still equipped on it.

Indeed, both Asuna and I still had our armor on. Our gear had been crafted for

us by Lisbeth with carefully assembled materials, or earned by running difficult

dungeons in New Aincrad, so if anything was going to be left behind, at least it

was our gear. And the water it had absorbed was finally drying out.

If our armor was still here, then the weapons we didn't have equipped should

be, too, I hoped…and checked the item storage menu.

The item list had also been given a face-lift from its old simple text format.

Now there were square graphical icons for each item arranged in a grid, so you

could see how they looked without taking them out. It was easier to view,

certainly, but the problem was that my enormous grid contained only two little

icons.

Both of them were one-handed swords. One was Blárkveld, a piece made by

Lisbeth's armory, and the other was the holy sword Excalibur, which I'd earned

in Jotunheim. All the other items that had packed my inventory previously were

gone without a trace.

"I only have my swords…," I groaned.

Meanwhile, Asuna and Alice looked up from their own screens to chime in.

"Me too. I only have my rapier and staff."

"The same goes for me. I have my sword and shield."

"Hmm…I know I had other weapons in there, too. Why are only my favorite

ones left…?" I wondered.

Alice shrugged. "Perhaps it's because they're your favorites? The items with

the longest period of usage were left, and all the others vanished…"

"I see. In that case…this must be a man-made phenomenon. No bug or

accident would conveniently leave you with your favorite gear."

To bring it out of my inventory, I tapped the icon of my usual sword, BLÁRKVELD,

and selected EQUIP from the submenu. The sword's icon vanished, and I felt a

comfortingly familiar weight on my back—

"Bwauh…?!"

But in fact, the weight went far beyond comforting. It felt like I had a gigantic

steel construction bar roped to my back. My knees buckled, and to avoid falling

clumsily on my butt, I swung my arms out and instinctually grasped whatever

my fingers could squeeze.

"Eeeek!"

"Hey, what are you—?!"

The two screams caused me to look up, and I saw that my right hand was

holding Asuna's sword belt, while my left hand was holding Alice's. It was the

least gentlemanly thing I could do, but if I let go, all was lost. I would fall right

onto the gravel of the riverbank.

"S-sorry, just hang on a bit longer!" I pleaded as they continued to shriek. At

last, I barely managed to pull myself up to the point that I could touch the

ground with one knee, rather than my bottom. I let go of the ladies' sword belts

and put my hands on the ground where they could support my upper body.

I'd narrowly avoided toppling over, but the weight of the sword was still

intense. I could not stand up. In the space to the right of my HP bar, there was a

metal paperweight icon blinking red. I'd never seen it before, but the meaning

was clear: I was over my encumbrance limit. But why?

The answer to that question came from Asuna, her face red as she pulled up

on her belt.

"Oh, I see…Because all our stats were reset, the amount of weight we can

equip went down. That's the latest sword Liz made for you, right? Of course you

can't lift it with starter stats."

"Ugh, are you serious…? So they left it with me, but I can't even use it…?" I

grumbled, checking the status screen that I still had open. There were two

meters that appeared to be related to encumbrance. The one on top said Equip

Weight, while the one on bottom said Carry Weight. That was fairly

straightforward. The Carry Weight meter, which presumably corresponded to

my inventory as a whole, was only a third full, but the Equip Weight meter was

bright red and completely full to the right edge. In that sense, having the carry

weight be almost a third full just from a single weapon in storage—legendary

Excalibur or not—was rather troubling.

"Yikes…if we don't have any usable weapons, we're not going to stand a

chance if any monsters attack us right now," I pointed out.

Asuna nodded, her expression grim. "That's true. And I'm guessing our magic

skills have been reset…too..."

She trailed off unnaturally, so I looked away from the status screen. Her face

was slack, staring into space like her soul had left her body. Then she snapped

back to attention and spun the ring menu with incredible speed. Based on the

way her fingers moved, I guessed it was the skill menu she was opening and

examining.

"Wh-what's up, Asuna?"

The undine did not answer. She just tapped a part of the window with a

trembling finger, then a few seconds later, she exhaled with supreme relief.

"…What's up?" I asked again, still down on my knee.

Asuna looked at me and smiled weakly. "I thought we might have lost our

weapon skills…and all the sword skills we learned, too. But…while magic and

medicinal mixing skills might be gone, I still have the Rapier skill. My proficiency

and sword skills are still there."

That was when I understood at last. There was another thing here that Asuna

treasured at least as much as that log cabin. It was the original sword skill,

Mother's Rosario, which had been given to her by Yuuki, the ultimate warrior,

who had passed into eternal sleep just half a year ago. Fortunately, that and all

the other techniques she'd learned were still here.

"Mm-hmm…I have my One-Handed Sword skill, too. Like with the weapons, it

would seem that the skill with the highest proficiency has been retained," said

Alice. She was probably correct about that. That meant my One-Handed Sword

skill was safe, too.

I turned to Asuna and wondered, "Um…so, Asuna, does that mean your

Rapier skill was higher than your Water Magic skill…?"

"Is there a problem with that?" she asked, glaring.

I hastily shook my head. "N-no, none at all. I was just thinking about that

Berserk Healer title of yours…"

"Now that I don't have any magic skills, I relinquish that title," Asuna said,

turning her head aside in a huff. When she looked back, she added, "And how

long are you going to keep doing that, Kirito? There's no point to carrying

around a sword you can't hold. Put it back in your inventory."

"F-fine, fine…"

But in one last attempt at resistance, I tried to get to my feet with Blárkveld

on my back. The only thing that happened was a trembling in my knees—and

no lift. I groaned and strained but produced nothing other than a pair of sighs

from Asuna and Alice.

My effort wasn't fruitless, however.

There was a swishing, jingling sound effect, and a little window appeared

before my eyes. I blinked repeatedly as I read the message: Physique skill

gained. Proficiency has risen to 1.

So this world seemed to share the same skill-based system as ALO. When the

player's actions fulfilled the proficiency trigger conditions, it would roll for the

chance to acquire a skill or increase its proficiency level. I'd never seen this

Physique skill before, but it was probably similar to the Carry Limit Expansion

from SAO, so the higher my proficiency got, the heavier weight I could carry.

In other words, if I kept bearing the incredible weight of my sword, it would

steadily increase my Physique skill to the point that the red over-encumbered

icon would disappear—but I didn't know how many hours or even days that

would take. It was better to obey Asuna's command and go back to my

equipment screen, then drag the BLÁRKVELD icon in my right-hand space over to

the inventory area and drop it.

Instantly, the weight on my back vanished, and I sprang to my feet. I

stretched, loosened my cramped muscles—all just a mental illusion, of course—

and looked toward the direction the log cabin fell. The girls silently gazed over

the river with me.

"…Let's go," I murmured, and they nodded. I was nervous about walking into

the forest without a weapon equipped, but we couldn't just sit here on the

riverbank and wait forever.

The riverbank was littered with large and small stones. I had a sudden

thought, so I went into the ring menu and selected COMMUNICATION, then PARTY, and

finally tapped the INVITE icon so I could throw invitations to Asuna and Alice.

When they accepted, new gauges appeared in the upper left of my field of view.

That basic interface functionality was the same as ALO, GGO, and SAO, so I

could guess that we were in a VRMMO world based on the Seed engine, at the

very least.

"HP and MP I understand, but what are these TP and SP bars for…?" Asuna

asked as we walked. They were both full and not changing, so there was no way

to tell for now.

"I suppose it will be clear when they go down," said Alice, who was on the

same train of thought. Asuna grinned and said, "I guess you're right."

These two might get along better than they realize, I thought but didn't dare

say aloud.

Eventually, our careful hike through the rocks got us to the front end of the

terrible gouge where the cabin fell into the forest. Massive trees were torn up

from the roots, which was shocking to see, but at least they offered a bit of a

blockade against any monsters that might be around.

Before we stepped into the fresh scars upon the earth, I checked my MAP icon

just to be sure, but as I suspected, it only contained the mapped areas we'd

seen for ourselves. Whether this was indeed the undine territory of Alfheim or

not, the map data had been reset. But at least I could tell that we were walking

in a northeast direction—assuming "up" on the map meant north.

We made our way carefully through the disordered labyrinth of felled tree

trunks, climbing over, ducking under, and squeezing through the empty spaces,

until after about fifty feet, we found our way blocked by a wall of lumber as tall

as our avatars. It would be a simple hop over it if we still had our wings, but this

time we had no choice but to climb.

"Here we go…"

This was reminding me of being a kid and playing with my sister, Suguha, on

the adventure park obstacle course at Isanuma Park, in my hometown of

Kawagoe.

I was halfway up the wall when Asuna said, "Ah…what if we…?" and tapped

the log my right foot was resting on. A window rotated into existence with a

little swishing sound effect.

"Aha, I was right! This log is treated as a material item. I think it'll go into our

inventory if we select it."

"W-wait, not until I'm done climbing off of—," I said, when suddenly the huge

log under my foot glowed blue and disappeared. "Nwaaa!!"

My leg split empty air. With nothing to support me, I did fall properly on my

butt this time, and then a number of other tree trunks rolled toward me

without the other one holding them up.

"Ah, sorry!"

"Pardon me, Kirito."

Asuna and Alice grabbed me by the back of the collar and hauled me out of

the way. If it had happened a second later, the logs would've flattened me.

So I nearly died, but Asuna had discovered a simple method to remove the

obstacles blocking our way—I considered it a wash. The three of us tapped logs

and absorbed them into our inventories, and in a matter of seconds, the wall

was gone, but our carrying weight was over 90 percent full. We'd have to use

good old-fashioned athletic maneuvering from this point on.

Fortunately, there were no more walls tall enough to need climbing over, so a

sequence of hopping and ducking was enough. A few minutes later, the space

ahead of us opened up much wider.

"Ah…," Asuna gasped. I couldn't tell at first if it was out of relief or shock.

The log cabin that held so many of our memories was resting in the middle of

a little clearing in the forest, badly damaged.

It had escaped total destruction, but it was far from unharmed. The left wall

had absorbed continual shock damage from the fall until it was utterly busted,

and the roof and center of the cabin were heavily dented. Every last glass

window had shattered, and the porch and front steps looked like they'd been

trampled and squashed by the Deviant Gods of Jotunheim.

But considering the cabin fell from a height of thousands and thousands of

feet, it was practically a miracle that it still resembled a house at all. That was

probably thanks to the initial impact being absorbed by the river—and the

many trees that were sacrificed to slow it down once it had skipped.

Asuna started running toward it. Alice and I followed her.

She stopped at the collapsed porch and looked up at the cabin in silence. Alice

was going to say something to comfort her, then decided better of that and

looked to me instead.

"Kirito…is there any way we can repair this house?"

"Repair…? The thing is, player homes are supposed to be indestructible

objects…They don't have a durability rating in the first place," I said, walking

over to Asuna. I tapped the railing of the porch, which was twisted diagonally.

When I examined the window that popped up, I exclaimed in surprise.

In ALO, when you looked at the properties of a player-owned home, all it

displayed was the fact that it was owned by a player. But this large window said

Cypress Log Cabin at the top, followed by the owners—Asuna and me—on the

next line, then a colored bar that seemed to represent a durability level. The

numbers on the bar's overlay said 4,713/12,500. That had to be the log cabin's

HP.

Compared to my own HP, which was under a hundred, a total near five

thousand was vast, but it was nearly at a third of its maximum value. And even

as I was watching, the number ticked down to 4,712. It seemed that damage to

the very structure of the cabin caused a slow continual decrease. It was going at

about one point every ten seconds, meaning we had 47,100 seconds until it

reached zero. Divided by sixty, that made 785 minutes—or a bit over thirteen

hours.

The clock readout in the lower-right corner said it was 5:32 PM on September

27th. If we did nothing at all, this log cabin would lose all of its durability by six

thirty in the morning tomorrow—and vanish for good.

Asuna reached the same conclusion as she stared at the properties window.

She murmured, "By tomorrow morning…"

Once again, however, Alice's calm observation helped to slow my rising panic.

"Is that not a REPAIR button at the bottom of that window?"

"Ah!" I glanced down and saw a series of four buttons: INFO, TRANSACTION, REPAIR,

and BREAK DOWN.

"Whew…," I murmured, feeling relief flood through me. I tapped the REPAIR

button, being very careful to avoid touching the BREAK DOWN button next to it.

Unfortunately, the busted house did not glow with a miraculous light and

refresh like new before our eyes. Instead, we were greeted with two cruel

messages.

The Beginner Carpentry skill is required to repair this structure.

You are missing the requisite materials to repair this structure. To complete

repair, you will need: sawed log × 162, sawed plank × 75, iron sheet × 216, iron

nail × 463, linseed oil × 30, glass pane × 24.

"A hundred…and sixty-two…logs…"

"And what's the Carpentry skill…? Does that mean you can build your own

house?" wondered Asuna, who was equally stunned. We shared a look, and I

nodded awkwardly.

"I…suppose so. It's not rare among games where player housing is a big selling

point, but ALO and SAO never had that system. Meaning…"

"We should consider this to be an entirely different game," said Alice crisply.

She clapped her hands. "But it does mean we now know what to do. If we

gather the materials listed there, and learn this Carpentry skill, we can bring this

house back to life. I suppose there's no point in wasting time, is there?"

"Yeah…you're right," said Asuna, who was quick to transition to action,

despite being more shaken than me by this experience. She stared at the

window again, presumably memorizing the names and numbers of the items.

"First of all, for the hundred and sixty-two logs, I think we'll get them quickly.

There are plenty just lying around here," she said speedily, pointing at the piles

of toppled conifer trees, stacked up like boulders. She was probably correct that

we could use them, but I suspected that a problem or two still needed to be

dealt with first.

But we could worry about that later. I said to Asuna, "Then we should hurry

up with gathering. I can't imagine those logs will stay in acceptable condition for

hours and hours without degrading."

"Good point," she said.

Before she could run off, I grabbed her wrist and advised, "First, let's dump

out the logs we just picked up, so we're carrying less weight to begin with."

Without a word, Asuna promptly opened her window and got to work. Three

large wooden logs settled with a thump onto the front-yard portion of the

cabin, which had once been carefully manicured grass but was now covered in

bushes and weeds. The jagged breaks and extra branches were cleaned up, as

opposed to before we acquired them, but the bark of the tree was still rough.

Alice and I produced our logs in the same place, then brought out our

weapons as well, to stand them up against the pile. I was nervous about leaving

my weapon out in the open, but I couldn't imagine any players were around to

steal it.

Once my inventory was empty, I sprinted back to where the trees were felled.

I tapped them one after the other, selecting the option to take them into my

storage. It took just five or six trees to hit my carrying capacity. At that point, I

had to rush back to the cabin and take them back out.

After I'd repeated this trip five times, the space in front of the cabin was

completely packed with logs. Since we were here, I went ahead and cleared

some of the other felled trees around the building to free up more space. This

process would be impossible in the real world without some special heavy

machinery, but the exercise didn't tire out my virtual avatar. The three of us

worked in silence until, twenty minutes later, all the felled trees were arranged

into massive piles of neat, orderly logs.

Asuna caught her breath and pointed a finger to count them. "Let's see; one

pile is fifteen logs, and there are ten piles, making a hundred and fifty…really?

This much, and we're still short?!"

"By twelve," murmured Alice, shrugging. She looked around at the forest.

"But there are plenty of trees all around. We can make up the difference in no

time by cutting some down."

But even that's not going to be easy, I thought. Then I had a new concern.

"Before that…Asuna, what's the item name for those logs?"

"Huh…?" She tapped a nearby log skeptically. When the properties window

appeared, she read aloud, "It says aged spiral pine sawlog. So I guess these

trees are called spiral pines…"

"Do those exist in the real world?"

"No!" she said immediately, as though annoyed I would even think that. She

brushed the rough bark with her palm. "But I think it's rather fine wood. I bet it

would make for good lumber once it's processed."

"Ahhh…there were similar trees in the forest around Rulid," said Alice. The

familiar name brought a pang of nostalgia to my throat, but I swallowed it down

so I could explain my worry.

"Well, you know how it says sawlog in the name? I don't think this qualifies as

the necessary type of wood to fix the cabin yet. We're going to need to process

these logs into proper lumber."

"P-process…? But there are no chain saws or lumber mills in this world."

I'd never heard of a lumber mill before. In fact, I had to wonder how deep

Asuna's love of wood furniture went that she knew what it was. But that was

beside the point.

"No," I said, "I don't think those larger machines exist at all in this world. We

should be able to turn the sawlogs into sawed logs with the right tools. And I

bet the process is the same as blacksmithing and woodworking in SAO."

"Ohhh," Asuna exclaimed, understanding. She glanced at the mountain of

logs. "As in, you just rub the proper tool against the logs a few times? So that

means the question is what kind of tool is it, and how do we get it…"

"Yeah…Ahhh, if only Yui were here!"

I tried not to take advantage of the privilege of her navigation abilities on a

daily basis, but I wasn't going to be shy in an emergency like this. Asuna

grimaced briefly, then looked worried.

"You still can't contact her?" she asked.

"Yeah…I think the navigation pixie system from ALO has been entirely

removed. But I couldn't guess if Yui's still the way she is with Liz's group or if

she's been cut off from the server…"

I could see Asuna's expression growing gloomier as I went on, so I hastily

added, "Oh, but Yui's physical hardware is in my PC at home, so there's no

chance anything's really happened to her. If you're worried, we can log out to

check on her…"

"…No, I'm fine. If she's with Liz and Silica, I'd want her to help them," Asuna

said bracingly, then slapped the log next to her. "We should do what we can on

our own."

"There's the Asuna I know," said Alice with a smile. She brushed the bumpy

surface of the spiral pine with her gauntleted hand. "I do not know very much

about the carpentry business, but when I fled Central Cathedral to the forest

around Rulid, I got help from Old Man Garitta in building my own shack. I cut

down pine trees like these, if not quite as large, cleared the branches, and

peeled the bark to turn them into logs. But I do recall that to remove the bark, I

had to use a tool like a thin, flat blade with handles on either end."

The sight of Alice moving her hands to indicate the shape of the tool made me

feel self-conscious.

I'd heard what happened in the time between the battle with Administrator

and the eventual Otherworld War. For about half a year, Alice took care of me

in a shack she'd built in the woods outside Rulid, because my fluctlight was

damaged, leaving me unconscious. Trying to imagine what state I was in, and

what she had to do to take care of me, filled me with a feeling that was difficult

to describe. I had to push that carefully aside for now to focus on the topic at

hand.

While I couldn't envision the tool Alice was describing, Asuna knew what it

was right away.

"Ah, that's a drawknife. They use them to shave off tree bark overseas. In

Japan, they usually use a shaver with a long handle that looks like a farming

tool."

"Hmm. Then we shall need to build or purchase this drawknife tool. But to

create one would require other tools and materials, I am sure…and I did not see

any towns or villages around where we fell." The cat-eared knight scowled,

scratching at the stubbled bark of the spiral pine with her fingernails. "Argh!

Forget the drawknife; even a regular knife would be enough for me to scrape

loose this infernal bark."

I had to smile at the boldness of her claim. Asuna herself gasped, as though

she just remembered something.

"H-hang on a moment!" she cried, rushing into the half-destroyed house. But

she emerged in less than ten seconds, shaking her head with disappointment.

"If our home item storage was fine, I could have come out with a knife…but

it's empty, just like ours. All the furniture and cutlery we had sitting in the open

is gone, too."

"Okay…"

The furnishings and decorations we had in the log cabin were an elite

selection that Asuna had bought from shops across Alfheim. The shock of all

that effort gone in an instant had to be worse than I could imagine. I started

toward Asuna, intent on comforting her, when another thought occurred to me.

"…No, wait…If a knife will work, then…"

I spun around to look at the side of a pile of logs, where four swords, a staff,

and a shield were resting. I raced over and grabbed the hilt of the Blárkveld.

"…I should be able to shave down the bark on these logs."

"That might be true, Kirito, but have you forgotten the sorry mess you made

of yourself earlier?" Alice wondered in exasperation.

I threw her a wicked smirk. "Of course I haven't forgotten. But I went over the

weight limit because I had everything on. If I take off all my other gear…"

As I spoke, I spun my hand to bring up the ring menu, then rotated it to the

equipment menu. The mannequin there, at least, was the same as since the

SAO days—I slapped the REMOVE ALL EQUIPMENT button to the left of it. A number of

circles of light surrounded my body, causing my coat, shirt, pants, and boots to

instantly vanish. The only thing left was a pair of black boxers.

Instantly, the girls were shrieking.

"Wh-what do you think you're doing?!"

"Don't just strip naked out here!"

But I didn't want to waste time apologizing. "Just watch!"

I clapped my hands now that they were ungloved and grabbed Blárkveld's hilt.

I dropped my center of weight and moved to pull it out in one smooth motion…

Instead, my knees hit the ground. The sword was simply resting against the

logs, but it felt as heavy as if it were welded to the ground. In the real world, I

could have easily thrown out my back attempting this.

"Huh…?! But why…?"

The armor I'd stripped off was basically only leather and cloth, but it was all

high-level gear, so it had to be heavy. It was impossible for the combined

weight of those clothes to be less than one sword.

Baffled, I stared at the sword from my knees. Then an idea struck my brain.

"Oh…d-do you think maybe it was a temporary assistance measure…?"

"What do you mean?" asked Asuna, confused.

I looked up at her and explained my conjecture. "Well…I don't know when the

exact moment was, but we all got turned back to level-1 characters with our

stats reset, right? I thought the reason I didn't instantly go over our weight limit

from the armor was because I've been wearing leather and cloth…but Alice's

armor has plenty of metal, and everyone who plays a tank would be decked out

in full plate armor. It would be totally unfair if everyone like that was

immediately immobilized by the weight limit after the reset."

"Well…I suppose you're right…"

"So I think there must have been some kind of assistance measure that went

into effect, such that the gear you had equipped during the reset has a lowered

encumbrance, meaning you can still keep it equipped without being weighed

down. But we had our weapons put away in our item storage, so…"

"The weapons didn't get the effect applied to them…and that's why we can't

equip them now?" said Asuna, catching on quickly. She frowned. "But wait. If

that's correct…and you just unequipped all of your armor…"

"Yes," I said heavily, opening my equipment window again. In the list of items

on the right side of the window, I dragged the Cloak of Harald—my main armor

—onto the torso slot. The rings of light appeared, and my dark-gray coat

materialized.

"Hrrg!"

I'd been preparing myself, but I still wasn't able to withstand the weight all

over my body. I had to place my hands on the ground; if I kept sinking

downward, it would look like I was begging Asuna in apology. With great effort,

I lifted my right hand. A pop-up appeared reading Physique skill proficiency has

risen to 2, to which I thought Oh, shut up! and then pushed the REMOVE ALL

EQUIPMENT button again. The torturous weight vanished, and I exhaled again.

"…And there you have it," I said, lifting my face and grinning.

There was a thunderclap behind me. "Are you an absolute fool?!"

Alice lined up next to Asuna, her golden armor clattering, and jabbed an

accusing finger at me where I knelt, dressed in nothing but my boxers.

"Why did you not realize this before you removed all your clothing?! Now you

will be forced to walk about in this pathetic state for the time being!" she

hissed.

"Well, um, yeah," I admitted, grimacing. I hoisted myself up to my feet. "But

at least I'm the only victim. It would be a disaster if you two had stripped down,

too."

"If that happened, I would not log in again until you had prepared new clothes

for us," Alice said bluntly, causing Asuna to suddenly burst into laughter.

"You two always act this way," she said, giggling and shaking her head. That

was enough to disengage Alice from her scolding mode, but it didn't solve our

problem.

"So the swords won't help us…which leaves…"

I folded my arms and thought it over.

We were level-1 again, with all of our stats reset, almost all of our items lost,

and even a UI change, but at the very least, we were still in a VRMMO. That part

was beyond all doubt. But it was seeming to me like the abbreviation at the end

of that term should be different now. We had gone from a VRMMORPG to a

different genre.

"Survival…," I muttered. The two girls looked at me with suspicion.

"What did you say?"

"I think this might be a survival game…"

"…Survival? What do you mean?" asked Alice. The word I spoke was English,

which she understood as the sacred tongue in the Underworld. Her recent

experiences had given her plenty of practice with English, but this reference

was lost on her.

"It's a genre of games. Originally, survival games were something you did in

the real world with air guns—weapons for fun—but lately there's been a

growing genre of computer games by the same name. Some people call them

open-world survival games. They're more difficult to play than ordinary RPGs—

the conditions of survival are harsher, and the penalty is worse."

"What do you mean by conditions of survival?"

"For example, you don't die in ALO even if you never eat or drink anything,

remember? But survival games have hunger and thirst meters, so your HP goes

down if you don't drink water or eat food. Oh! That's why…"

At last, I recognized the purpose of the two extra bars below HP and MP.

"Between the blue TP bar and yellow SP bar, one of them must be hunger,

and the other one must be thirst."

Asuna immediately said, "In that case, TP must stand for thirst points and SP

for stamina points."

"Ah. G-got it."

"Hmm," Alice murmured, putting a slender hand to her throat. "But despite

running back and forth with those logs, I haven't felt the tiniest bit hungry or

thirsty, and the two bars haven't dipped at all."

"I think there's a grace period with that, just like with the equipment weight."

"Oh?"

"The basic structure of survival games is that, when you die, you drop all your

items and have to go back to retrieve them after you revive. It wouldn't exactly

be fair to put players in this unfamiliar world without a manual—and have them

immediately starve to death and lose their gear…I'm betting the TP bar will start

to dip first. Though I don't know if there will be any actual sensation of thirst to

go with it."

As I explained, I could feel myself sinking into a deeper, heavier feeling. I put

my hands on my hips and exhaled slowly. At the moment, I was dressed in

nothing but my underwear, unable to use my sword and armor. It didn't feel

like I was going to be surviving long.

But I told myself, "That doesn't mean I can just sit here feeling sorry for

myself…I can't just go off dying without finding out who completely overwrote

this world and why. Plus, I want to restore our home to its proper state."

"That's the spirit, Kirito," said Alice with a fierce grin. She reached out and

slapped me on the bare back.

It didn't hurt, but out of pure instinct, I yelped, "Ouch!"

"I don't know much about this survival genre, but of course I felt hunger and

thirst within the Underworld. Just look around us…there's a river right over

there—and fruit and beasts in the forest. If you starve among bounty like this,

the goblins in the Dark Territory would laugh at you."

"...W-well, I guess you're right…"

I wasn't sure if they should be compared directly, but it was true that this

forest seemed unimaginably lush in comparison to the misery of the Dark

Territory in the Underworld. Our log cabin could have gotten tossed into the

barren deserts of the salamander territory of Alfheim, so this had to be a pretty

cushy starting location for a survival game.

I stretched up tall and gazed at the sky, which was growing golden. After a

moment, I sucked in a deep breath and announced, "All right…I don't know

what this game is called, but I can tell it's not a VRMMORPG anymore, but a

VRMMO survival game. I'll eat rocks if that's what it takes to survive, until I've

built the Kirito Empire upon this soil!"

Ooh! the girls exclaimed—but only in my dreams.

In reality, Asuna merely gave me an awkward look and said, "Well, um, I'll just

be happy with protecting our home."

Alice looked as annoyed as she could possibly be and added, "Nothing you say

can possibly sound as bold and inspiring as you hope when you're dressed like

that."