Alicization Running

by Reki Kawahara

  Would you go back? he finished, speaking with his eyes.

  There could be no other answer than, Yes, I want to go back home. But home wasn’t anywhere in the Underworld. My home, and the people waiting for me, was outside in a country called Japan in the real world.

  In order to log out voluntarily, I’d need to find either a system manager or a system console. If I was going to find either of those things anywhere, it would be in the Central Cathedral, the very core of power. So both Eugeo and I needed to become Integrity Knights—just for different reasons.

  It hurt to keep a secret from my partner, my friend. I switched the empty watering can to my other hand and patted Eugeo on the back, then left my hand there.

  “No…even if my memory does come back, I won’t leave. I was a swordsman in my old home. That’s the one thing I’m sure of…even if I did like flowers. And why wouldn’t a swordsman want to compete in the Four-Empire Unification Tournament?”

  “…”

  Eugeo’s back trembled a little bit. His flaxen hair hung low from his bowed head as he hunched. I could just barely hear him say, “I’m…a weak person. If I hadn’t met you at the Gigas Cedar, I’d still be swinging my ax at it right now. I’d use that as my excuse, never leave the village…and eventually…I’d forget all about Alice…”

  He stared down at the bricks at his feet and continued, “The fact that I got into the Zakkaria garrison…that I made it all the way to Centoria and into the Swordcraft Academy…it was all thanks to you pulling me along. So I’ve been telling myself…I want to at least be as strong as you by the time we graduate from here. And yet…hearing what you just said…made me so relieved…”

  Eugeo trembled again under my palm. I willed strength into my hand, wishing it would flow through my fingers like it had just done for the plants. You are strong. You are. You’re the one who made the decision to leave your home, in this world bound by laws and rules.

  “Let me just say that I certainly couldn’t have gotten all this way by myself, either,” I said, trying to keep my words lighter than they felt. “I didn’t know the way, my memory of Basic Imperial Law is rusty…and I didn’t have a single shia to my name. The only reason I’m here now is because there were two of us. And it’s going to stay that way. If we don’t work together, we’ll never overcome these elite nobles who have been swinging swords since they learned how to walk. We’ll never match the best and brightest of the imperial knights. You can save your thoughts about striking out on our own for after we’re Integrity Knights.”

  “…”

  Eugeo didn’t have any response to this for a while. When he did speak, his voice was frail. “Yeah. Yeah…you’re right. We came this far together. And we’ll climb that white tower together.”

  “That’s right. And the next step in that process is placing within the top twelve in this month’s test. I might have the physical skill down…but I’m not as sure about the sacred arts. When we get back to the room, teach me more about which catalyst is best for which element.”

  “…Ha-ha, you got it. Calling in that ‘working together’ favor early, huh?”

  “Hey, why not?”

  I slapped Eugeo on the back and got to my feet. When he joined me, he wore his usual genial smile. Then his head tilted a bit, as though he was remembering something.

  “Hang on, didn’t you have something to talk to me about?”

  “Uh…oh, r-right. I completely forgot,” I said. I turned to Eugeo and asked formally, “Eugeo, can I borrow the Blue Rose Sword for tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, so easily it was almost a letdown. Then he cocked his head again. “But why? Weren’t you the one who said we should use the practice swords as much as possible, so as not to throw off our instincts on the test?”

  “I did…but then I made a promise to Liena earlier. I said I’d show her the best I can do. And I can only manage up to a two-part attack with the wooden sword.”

  “Oh, I get it. You want to show her the true power of the Aincrad style. You’re free to use the Blue Rose Sword as much as you want, but…”

  He paused, looking confused. “But Kirito, have you forgotten? Tomorrow’s break is the big day!”

  “Huh? What big day…?”

  “Come on—the seventh day of the third month. The one you were looking forward to!”

  “…Oh, r-right, right. The day it’s finally ready! Gosh, it’s not like I completely forgot…I just didn’t think it would take an entire year…”

  “Meaning that you did forget.” Eugeo laughed and asked, “What’s the plan? Will you use the Blue Rose Sword, or…”

  “No, I’ll use my sword. It’s all according to Stacia’s guidance or whatever. Sorry—just after you said I could borrow yours and everything.”

  “It’s fine. More importantly, let’s get back to the room so I can tutor you until lights-out time.”

  “…Just…go easy on me, okay?” I said, putting the can back on the shelf and following Eugeo back.

  I turned for one last look at the planter, glancing at the glistening young buds stretching up to the night sky.

  As for the second reason for my zephilia-growing experiment…I didn’t even like to acknowledge it. It was just slightly—no, considerably—embarrassing to admit.

  3

  The Underworld boasted an enormous variety of “callings,” lifelong professions for its citizens, but almost none of them related in any way to being a traveler.

  The closest thing, perhaps, was a trader who would cross the walls into other empires, but it was difficult to define this as “traveling” in a true sense. For one thing, in the circular central city, just carrying goods from North Centoria to East Centoria and back was a trip of five kilometers, at best.

  The rural villagers were almost entirely self-sufficient, with the few outside valuables like herbs and fine metalwork coming from the nearest large town (in Rulid’s case, Zakkaria) via periodic carriages. There were no traveling artists, poets, or troubadours, and travel for pleasure was impossible due to the “one day of rest per week” system.

  The only exception to this rule was the Integrity Knight, who rode on a flying dragon from Centoria all the way to the End Mountains 750 kilometers away—but that was too specialized to be considered a “calling.”

  Therefore, long-distance travel was anathema to the Underworld, but that didn’t mean it was actually forbidden in any way, merely impractical. You just needed a calling that allowed for it—say, a furniture maker in Centoria who traveled to sell wares far up to the north in Zakkaria. I myself had managed to cross the entire empire by following its rules.

  In other words, traveling simply came down to the disposition of the individual. And in the case of the Underworld, less than 1 percent of the residents had the disposition to attempt it.

  That didn’t mean that nobody in the world had a heart full of curiosity and adventure. One of those very people was a craftsman in District Seven of North Centoria named Sadore.

  “Just lookit this!”

  A number of rectangular stone plates clattered before our eyes. The fine black objects were grindstones from the eastern empire, but they’d all been ground down to a thickness of less than two cens, rendering them useless.

  “These black-brick grindstones are supposed to last three years each, and I’m out half a dozen in just a single year!”

  “Ah…s-sorry about that,” I said, feeling truly apologetic to the red-faced store owner.

  Sadore’s metalworking business was crammed full of stuff, from raw metal materials, to ornaments, to actual weapons and armor. Most striking was the line of swords on the back wall. Why would a craftsman sell actual swords, we wondered, so we had asked the imposing fellow himself. His answer was simple: He had actually wanted to be a blacksmith.

  As a matter of fact, the only difference between blacksmiths and craftsmen in the Underworld was the tools they used. Blacksmiths used furnaces, anvils, and hammers to fashion metal mater
ials into goods. Craftsmen used chisels, drills, and files. In other words, one pounded the metal, the other scraped at it.

  In the real world, my mountain bike had different options for the same part that were either forged aluminum or cut aluminum. Figuring this was about the same level of difference, I had suggested that a craftsman could still make a sword. Sadore glared at me furiously and groaned that even the same metal parts would end up performing differently.

  According to him, the same metal materials, if used to create a sword through whittling or smithing on an anvil, would be of a higher priority (the class-N object number) in the latter case. Therefore, when he had started trying to make swords, a fellow blacksmith in District Seven had called them “shameless knockoffs that are all look, no quality.”

  Young, adventurous Sadore had gotten fired up over this. He had created and stocked up an entire year’s worth of product, left the management of the business to his wife and apprentice, then gone on a long journey—in search of materials that would make a good sword when cut, not forged.

  Craftsmen couldn’t get permission to cross borders, so his only choice of destination was north, out of Centoria. For months he walked from town to village, finding promising materials here and there, but none of them satisfied his exacting standards. Eventually he wound up in a forest near the very north, where he met an enormous tree that split the heavens.

  No fire could even singe its bark, and a single swing from a metal ax would chip the blade. It simply withstood, tall, hard, and black—the Gigas Cedar.

  He had met the “carver” at the time, Old Man Garitta (who was more like Young Man Garitta then), and, energized by his discovery, tried to break off a narrow branch of the Gigas Cedar for use in crafting a sword. Through Garitta’s help, he had climbed the trunk to a branch of appropriate size, but despite working with his file for three days and nights, he couldn’t create even the tiniest groove in the wood.

  Sadore had sadly descended the tree and told Garitta that if it should one day be felled, to let him know, and that he would return to the forest to get that branch.

  In the end, Garitta did fulfill Sadore’s request, but not in the way he imagined.

  Last March, after a very long journey, Eugeo and I had finally arrived in Centoria, and as Old Man Garitta had asked, we had visited Sadore’s shop in District Seven. I had handed over the branch from the very tip of the Gigas Cedar. Sadore couldn’t speak for three whole minutes, and it took him another five to fully examine the wood.

  Give me a year, he had said. With a year, I can turn this branch into one hell of a sword. A sword to surpass even an Integrity Knight’s Divine Weapon.

  Exactly one year later, on March 7th, 380 HE, Eugeo and I were back at the red-faced craftsman’s shop to pick up the promised item.

  “S-so…did you finish the sword?” I asked, cutting through Sadore’s grumbling so that it didn’t continue forever. He clamped his mouth shut and glared at me, tugging on his gray beard, then snorted and crouched down. He reached with both hands under the counter and pulled out a long, narrow cloth. It took all his burly strength to lift it up.

  Gwonk! It clattered heavily on the counter, but he did not let go of it. One hand rested atop the cloth wrapper, while the other returned to his beard.

  “Young man. We haven’t discussed the price yet.”

  “Urg.”

  The empire ran the Swordcraft Academy, so it had no tuition cost, but for the last year, I’d spent my days off going into the city to shop. Most of the shia I’d earned at the Zakkaria garrison were gone now. I couldn’t begin to guess how much it would cost for the craftsman’s fee (plus a year’s worth of labor and six grindstones).

  “It’s all right, Kirito. I brought all my money, too,” Eugeo muttered into my ear. That was both a relief and ominous at the same time. What if our combined assets were still far short? Was that against the Taboo Index? Would the police—er, Integrity Knights—swoop in and imprison us…?

  “…But I’m willing to waive the cost,” Sadore finally finished after a heart-stoppingly long pause. We were just about to exhale when he dramatically continued, “However! I will only do so if you can swing this monster, young man. The base material itself was already tremendously heavy, and you carried it all the way from the north to Centoria, so I have faith in you…but consider this a warning. The moment the sword was completed, it got even heavier. Blacksmiths and metal-crafters are able to carry around their finest swords thanks to Terraria’s blessing…but even I can’t move this thing farther than a mel.”

  “…Hence the ‘monster,’ eh?” I murmured, looking down at the cloth.

  Even through the heavy woven fabric, there was a powerful sense of presence that practically warped the space around it. It seemed to be inviting me closer…or drawing on some magnetized part of my body to pull me in.

  Eugeo and I had headed south on a stormy spring day two years ago.

  At Eugeo’s waist was the Blue Rose Sword, now safely stashed in the drawer beneath his bed in the primary trainees’ dorm. On my back was the freshly snapped black branch of the Gigas Cedar. Old Man Garitta had told us to ask Sadore the craftsman to fashion it into a sword, but there was a part of me that sensed foreboding and urged me to bury it deep in the woods instead.

  I still didn’t know what it was that had come over me. Obviously it would be more natural and comfortable for two swordsmen to have two swords. Gaining a new weapon as powerful as the Blue Rose Sword should be welcomed, not feared.

  Reason overrode my premonition, and I had ultimately carried the branch all the way to Centoria, where I left it with Sadore.

  And here we were, one year later. The branch was now a sword, waiting beneath the cloth layer for our first contact.

  I took a deep breath, exhaled, and reached out. First I picked up the whole bundle and stood it on the counter. It was indeed quite dense and heavy, but no more so than the Blue Rose Sword.

  The cloth was rolled lightly around the sword, not tied, so it fell loose when I stood it up, exposing the hilt.

  The pommel was a simple weighted design, and finely trimmed leather was wrapped around the handle. The knuckle guard was on the small side, apparently because it was carved straight out of the wood, rather than being a separately attached part. The exposed parts of the handle were the same semitranslucent black color that I remembered from the branch. The leather was gleaming black, too.

  The sheath that swallowed up the blade was also finished with black leather. I reached out, tightening my fingers on the grip one by one, and tensed.

  I’d used plenty of swords before, and they were all VRMMO objects, with the sole exception of the dusty old bamboo shinai at home. But in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—I felt something when I squeezed the handle. A sensation that went from my palm through my arm and shoulder, then shivered down my back.

  The sensation of holding the Anneal Blade when I got it for my first quest on the first floor of Aincrad.

  The sensation of holding the Queen’s Nightblade the dark elf queen bequeathed me on the ninth floor.

  The sensation of holding the black Elucidator longsword that dropped from the fiftieth-floor boss.

  The sensation of holding the pale Dark Repulser longsword that Lisbeth forged for me.

  Even the sensation of the legendary Excalibur that I earned at great cost in the fairy realm of Alfheim…

  A thrill ran through me equal to—perhaps even greater than—the moments I first encountered my various companions throughout my adventures. I was rooted to the spot. When the trembling left, I tensed and yanked the sword out of the black leather sheath.

  Jriiiing! The ringing sound was a bit deeper than the Blue Rose Sword’s. It was heavy, but without the stiffness of a metallic blade. Yet it was also completely different from a wooden sword. It sounded unbelievably tough and yet fierce. I flipped my wrist up straight, and the end of the sword hummed.

  “Hrmm,” Sadore grunted.

 
“Whoaaa,” Eugeo marveled.

  I held my breath and gazed at the blade.

  It looked to be about exactly as long as my old Elucidator. That only made sense, as I was the one who had snapped off the branch at that length and instructed Sadore how long it should be.

  The blade was the same deep black as the handle that it was connected to, a single piece of wood. It still had that slight translucence, taking in the light that shone through the window, and occasionally glowing with hints of gold, depending on the angle. It was shaped like an orthodox one-handed longsword, but the flat was a bit wider than the Blue Rose Sword’s.

  The edge of the bevel slope along the flat had a sharp angle to it and seemed likely to break the skin if you brushed it. The blade itself did not reflect light from any angle; it was as though it cut the light itself.

  “…Can you swing it?” Sadore finally rumbled.

  By way of answer, I glanced around the shop, making sure there were no other customers present. The young apprentice was in the back workshop, out of sight.

  I turned to face parallel to the long counter. There was an empty space at least five mels long ahead of me, plenty enough for a test swing. With my left hand on the sheath, I spread my legs forward and back and crouched. I didn’t need to try a sword skill; just a one-handed vertical slice would do.

  There was a buckler carved from a steel sheet hanging on the wall. I slowly raised the sword up high, setting my sights on the shield.

  After training with nothing but wooden swords for the past year, the black sword was mercilessly heavy in my hand, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. It was a comforting weight—a challenge to me, a demand that I wield it with skill.

  As the tip reached a vertical tilt, I slid my right leg forward, imagining the vector of my weight shifting and the moment of torsion. All the energy stored in that sword tip descending unleashed with a powerful step forward.

  “Shaaa!”

  Black light ran in a straight line, followed by the sound of air being cloven in two. The tip of the sword stopped just short of the floorboard, but the expanding force of the swing caused the board to creak.