I stared at the light, anger momentarily forgotten. The glittering object was slowly, slowly falling toward me. It was like a lone snowflake fluttering in midsummer sky, or a wafting feather of dandelion fuzz settling down after a long journey.
Still hovering in midair, I let go of the sword hilt and reached out toward the light with both hands. After several endless seconds, the silver object fluttered down into my grasp. I clutched it to my chest and carefully opened my grip, sensing a somehow familiar warmth.
Yui looked over from the left, Leafa from the right. Like them, I could only gaze silently at what I held.
“…A card…?” Leafa murmured. It did indeed appear to be a flat, rectangular card. The translucent silver surface bore no words or markings to identify it. I glanced at Leafa.
“Do you know what this is, Leafa?”
“No…I’ve never seen anything like it in the game. Try clicking it.”
I followed her suggestion, tapping the surface of the card with my fingertip. But unlike any other object that appeared within the game, there was no popup menu.
Yui leaned forward to get a closer look and gripped the edge of the card.
“This looks like…a system administrator’s access card!”
“…?!”
I held my breath, squinting at the card. “So…I can exercise GM privileges with this?”
“No…In order to access the system from within the game, you’ll need the console this corresponds to. Even I can’t call up the system menu on my own…”
“I see. But there’s no way something like this would fall down without a reason. I have a feeling…”
“Yes. Mama must have sensed us and dropped it down to us.”
“. . .”
I clutched the card. Just moments earlier, Asuna had been holding it. It was almost as though I could feel her will within it.
Asuna’s fighting, too. She’s doing her best to resist, to escape this world. There must be more that I can do.
I fixed Leafa with a stare. “Where’s the gate that’s supposed to lead to the interior of the World Tree? Show me.”
“Um…that’s in the dome beneath the roots of the tree,” she said, looking concerned. “B-but you can’t go. It’s protected by guardians, and even full-size raid parties haven’t been able to get past them.”
“I still have to go.”
I slipped the card into my chest pocket and took Leafa’s hand.
The sylph girl had saved my behind on many occasions. I came to this world full of panic, not knowing left from right, and I’d never have come so far, so fast, without her knowledge and her energetic smile. I knew that someday, I ought to tell her the truth in real life and thank her properly. It was with this thought in mind that I said what came next.
“Thank you for everything, Leafa. I’ll tackle what comes next alone.”
“…Kirito…”
She looked ready to cry. I squeezed her hand and let go, backing away with Yui on my shoulder.
With one last look at Leafa, her long ponytail swaying in the air, I bowed deeply and turned around.
By folding my wings, I put acceleration into my drop and headed for the very bottom of the World Tree. After a few dozen seconds of almost-blinding descent, the complex shape of Alne came into view at the foot of the tree. Spotting a particularly large terrace between two roots in the city’s top section, I prepared to land.
I spread my wings wide to catch the air and slow my descent as I gauged where to land. Despite my best efforts to cushion the impact, my outstretched feet hit the stone hard enough to cause a small blast. The other players lounging on the terrace turned to look at me with startled faces.
When they had all turned back to what they’d been doing before, I inclined my head toward my shoulder. “Yui, can you tell how to get to this dome?”
“Yes, it should be just up the stairs ahead. Are you sure you want to do this, Papa? Based on all the information, it should be nearly impossible to break through the gate.”
“I’ve got no choice but to try. Besides, it’s not like failing will be fatal.”
“That’s true, but…”
I rubbed her lightly on the head. “Besides, if I have to waste another second not trying, I’m going to go crazy. Don’t you want to see Mama?”
“…Yes,” she responded meekly. I poked her cheek and started heading for the large staircase ahead.
The area at the top of the wide stone steps seemed to be the very top level of Alne. The roots of the World Tree, which snaked up and over the massive conical bulk of Alne, all converged directly ahead, into one titanic trunk. But the diameter of it was so vast that from here, it merely looked like a curved wall.
But a stretch of that wall was decorated with two massive statues of fairy knights, ten times taller than any player. Between them was a stone door adorned with fine carvings. For being the starting point of the game’s final story quest, it was remarkably absent of any players. By this point, the supposed impossibility of the quest must have been common knowledge throughout the population.
But I had to get past this door and its guardians to the gate.
Hang on, Asuna. I’ll be there soon, I told myself, etching the words into my heart.
A few hundred feet later, I was standing in front of the massive door when the stone statue on the right began to rumble with movement. I quickly turned around, taken aback, and saw that the eyes beneath the helmet were glowing palely. The statue opened its mouth and a voice like rolling boulders emerged.
“O warrior ignorant of the celestial heights, dost thou seek entry to the castle of the king?”
At the same time, a yes/no prompt appeared, asking if I wished to initiate the final quest. I pressed YES without hesitation.
This time, it was the statue on the left that boomed, “Then prove thy wings can encompass the very sky above.”
As the distant thunderfall of its voice died away, the large door split down the center. Its two halves slowly rumbled open. The ominous sound made me think of the terrible memories of fighting floor bosses in Aincrad. The unbearable tension of those battles came back to me, stealing my breath and sending a chill down my back.
I had to tell myself that dying here was not permanent. Now that Asuna’s freedom hung on the outcome of this battle, it was truly the most important task I’d yet tackled.
“Here we go, Yui. Be sure to keep your head low.”
“Good luck, Papa,” she squeaked from my pocket. I gave her one last rub and drew my sword.
The rumbling finally stopped when the thick stone door was open all the way. Only darkness lay beyond it. I took a step inside, wondering if I should use my night-vision spell, but before I could raise my hand, a brilliant beam of light shone down from above, causing me to squint.
It was an unbelievably enormous round dome. The shape reminded me of the boss chamber on the seventy-fifth floor of Aincrad, where I’d fought Heathcliff, but this was several times larger across than even that.
I was apparently inside the tree now, as the floor seemed to be made of a lattice of tightly woven roots. At the outer edge of the space, the vines grew over the walls and stretched upward to form the ceiling. They grew more sparse the farther overhead they went, forming stained-glass patterns that allowed in light from above.
And at the very apex of that dome was a circular door. The ring-shaped gate was carved with delicate reliefs and composed of four wedge-shaped wings of stone that met at its center to make a cross. The route up into the tree was clearly through there.
I hefted my sword with both hands. Took a deep breath. Tensed my legs. Spread my wings.
“Go!!” I shouted to brace myself, and leaped with all my strength.
Not even a second into my flight, the luminescent spots in the ceiling began to morph. One of the shining windows bubbled forth as though giving birth: before my eyes, the light seemed to drip downward into the form of a human being, complete with arms, legs, four wings, and a
roar in its lungs.
It was a gargantuan knight clad in silver armor. Its face was hidden behind a mask like a mirror. And in its hand was a sword even larger than mine. This was clearly one of the guardians Leafa had warned me about.
The guardian knight’s mirror face turned to look at me as I raced upward, and with another gutteral roar, it dove.
“Outta my waaaay!!” I screamed in response and swung. As the distance between us closed to nothing, I felt the cold sparks in my head return—that familiar feeling of all my senses accelerating that I’d tasted so many times in SAO’s death matches. At the reflection of myself in the guardian’s mask, I swung the broadsword with all my strength.
When our blades collided, a brilliant light ripped through the open space like lightning. My foe attempted to recover his balance and brandish the sword for another overhead slash, but I followed my blade’s momentum and plunged it into his chest. I grabbed the neck of the massive knight twice my height and pulled in close.
When fighting CPU-controlled monsters, the common strategy was to keep an eye on the damage-causing reach of the enemy’s weapon and maintain a distance at least that wide, but against such a large enemy, even a so-called safe distance would leave me with blind spots. Staying in my current location was dangerous, but I could at least buy enough time to regain my footing.
I pulled back the sword with my right hand and put the tip against the guardian knight’s throat.
“Raaah!!”
Thrusting my wings at full force, I shoved the sword with all of my might. There was the heavy chunk! of a hard object being split, and the blade thrust deep into the knight’s neck.
“Grgaaah!!”
For the guardian’s divine appearance, the scream that erupted from its throat was positively bestial. Its entire body froze, wreathed in pure white End Flames, and shattered.
I can do this! I screamed to myself. Statistically, this guardian was far from a proper floor boss in SAO. In a one-on-one fight, I had the advantage.
I brushed the white flames away and looked up to the gate—then felt my face grimace. Nearly every one of the countless stained-glass windows scattered throughout the still-distant dome was producing its own white knight. There were dozens of them—hundreds.
“Aaaaah!!” I bellowed, more to whip my frightened wits back into shape than anything. I would cut them all down, no matter how many there were. I beat my wings and raced upward.
Several of the new guardians descended to block my path. I set my sights on the closest one and swung again.
This time I focused on the point of the enemy’s sword as it slashed diagonally down at me. I stretched to evade its path, trying to avoid a collision of our blades, which would knock me motionless for precious moments. The maneuver wasn’t perfect, and I felt the sensation of damage suffered as it clipped my shoulder, but I ignored it and trained my every nerve on counterattacking.
My giant blade struck the guardian’s silver mask directly, splitting it in two. But the next foe was already descending through the white flames that erupted from its disintegrating body.
I gritted my teeth when I saw that this one’s sword was already in an attack trajectory. Judging that I didn’t have the time to evade, I held up the back of my left fist to deflect the swing. The resulting shock seemed to reverberate to the bone, and I saw my HP bar lose a full tenth of its value. But the deflection was successful at keeping the enemy’s blow from my body, and the momentum left the knight unbalanced. I brought my sword down on its neck.
Because my attack speed had been sapped by the force of the enemy’s blow, this swing was not a one-hit kill. Meanwhile, a new guardian swooped in from the right. I twisted around to meet the fresh threat and used the spin to kick the wounded knight’s mask with a booted heel.
Thankfully, my avatar had inherited the Martial Arts skill data of SAO Kirito—a skill that was nearly useless in ALO—and the resulting blow was strong enough to finish the job. The guardian burst into flame, the death effect distorting its bellow of pain.
In just the nick of time, I was able to stop the third knight’s swing with my sword.
“Seyaaa!!”
I walloped the knight’s mirror mask with my left fist. It splintered with a sharp crack, and the creature roared in agony.
“Fall! Fall!!” I screamed. I was possessed with a burning desire for destruction that hadn’t been present during the pitched battle against the undine warriors in Jotunheim early this morning. I thrust my sword against the knight’s neck and punched with my left hand, over and over.
This was the world I’d once lived in. Wandering alone in the depths of a dungeon, my soul battered by a constant stream of deadly battles, swinging my sword as though to build my own gravestone out of the corpses of monsters.
My fist finally broke through the mask, and a shining, sticky liquid sprayed outward. I followed the voice inside me that demanded murder, plunging my hand farther into the light. When my entire arm burst through the back of the guardian’s head, its body crumbled away into the familiar white flames.
My heart had been as hard and dry as stone back then. Beating the game and freeing all of the players was the furthest thing from my mind. I shut out all other souls, seeking only the next battleground.
Another four or five knights swooped down on me, brandishing shining blades and screeching like monstrous birds. A fierce grin stretched across my lips as I snapped my wings and plunged into their midst. My nerves trembled at the feel of the ferocious acceleration, and electric-blue sparks danced across my vision—the pulse connecting my brain to my false body.
“Raaaahhhhh!!”
With a war cry, I swung the massive sword in a straight, two-handed swipe. Their weapons deflected backward, and I cartwheeled through the air, using the acceleration to strike at their necks. Two dull thuds later, a pair of mirrored heads flew free. The flames of their deaths were like white thorns raking my nerves, and they only built up the blaze within me.
It was only in the arena of death that I could know I was alive. Only by throwing myself into hopeless battles, pushing myself to the absolute limit until I finally collapsed, could I live up to what I owed those who had died before my eyes.
I redirected myself without stopping the rotation’s momentum, striking at the chest of another guardian, my right foot like a drill. The resulting crunch had an unpleasant, damp softness to it, but I shot straight through the guardian’s body as it burst into flames. Two blades came from left and right as I finally came to a stop. I used my sword to block the right and my other forearm to block the left, ignoring the HP cost.
Wasting no time, I grabbed the right guardian’s wrist.
“Grrruaahh!!” Howling, I swung the creature high overhead and into the one on the left. A heavy thrust through both bodies, and they were dead.
No matter how many of them came for me, I would keep fighting. Just as I had been once before, I would be cleansed by the flames of slaughter, my heart growing harder and sharper…
No—that’s not it…
There were people out there who had done their best to give water to my parched soul. Klein, Agil, Silica, Lisbeth…and Asuna.
I…I’m here to save Asuna, and finally bring an end to that awful world…
I raised my head and looked at the dome. The stone gate was surprisingly close. But when I tried to fly higher toward it, something whirred over and pierced my right leg.
It was an arrow of light, gleaming coldly. A rain of them poured down, as though waiting for the moment I held still enough to target. Two, three, they continued to land, rapidly draining my remaining HP.
I scanned the area quickly and saw that some of the guardians had fanned out at long range, left hands raised, chanting spells in those unpleasant, distorted voices. Another wave of glowing arrows whistled down upon me.
“Gaaahh!”
I swung my greatsword to deflect the arrows, but several more struck true, sending my HP into the yellow zone. I spared
another hard look at the gate.
It would be very difficult to defeat all of those long-range attackers alone, so I charged straight for the gate, hoping to power my way through. The hail of shining arrows pierced my body, but the goal was just ahead. I gritted my teeth against the blows and stretched out my left hand for the stone door…
But just seconds away, my back was jolted by a powerful shock. I turned back to see a guardian at point-blank range, mirror mask twisted in a triumphant grin, its massive sword stuck into my back. I lost my balance and all slowed down.
Like white vultures, a dozen knights swooped in for the kill from every direction. A hail of dull thuds rocked my body as their swords struck true over and over. I didn’t even have time to check my HP.
A vortex of black fire, tinged with blue, swirled around me. It took me a few moments to realize that I was seeing my End Flames. Small purple words floated up against the backdrop of fire: You are dead.
In the next instant, my corpse shot apart.
Like switches being flipped off, I quickly lost all physical sensation. I had a moment of uncontrollable panic as my memory flashed back to the final battle on the seventy-fifth floor of Aincrad, and the moment Heathcliff and I killed each other.
But, of course, this time I did not lose consciousness. I was only experiencing the proper “in-game death” I hadn’t tasted since the beta test of SAO.
It was a strange feeling. All the color drained from my vision, leaving only a purplish monotone. Directly ahead there was a timer marked RESURRECTION COUNTDOWN in the same purple system font. Beyond that, I could see the silver guardians roaring happily at their victory and returning to the stained-glass windows on the ceiling of the dome.
There was no bodily sensation. I couldn’t move, because the only thing left of me was the same tiny Remain Light that I’d seen from all the players I’d defeated so far. I felt lonely, small, pathetic.
That’s right—it was miserable. But that was what I deserved for thinking, somewhere in the deepest parts of my brain, that this world was still only just a game. My strength was only in the numbers assigned to my character, but I’d acted like I could transcend the game, surpass its limits and do anything.
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