A few seconds later, Kirito had finished absorbing all the ribbons of life, and he easily lowered his swords. The majority of the Chinese and Korean players on the battlefield had logged out already. Asuna turned around and indicated her gratitude with a look to the red knight who’d tried to save Klein. Then he, too, vanished, and the wasteland where so much horrible slaughter had taken place was as quiet as though it had never happened.
All she could hear was the sound of dry wind howling and the high-pitched squeaking of metal. It was coming from the black sword that glowed with a golden aura, engorged with so much energy.
PoH gave up on seizing resources at last and lowered the Mate-Chopper in silence. There was still a giant hole in his chest from Asuna’s Mother’s Rosario skill. When the resource power left in his wicked knife was depleted, his life would end.
That must have been clear to him, but he just stood there in silence now. No insults or taunts. He didn’t seem to be giving up, either. There was a freezing-cold aura exuding from his skin, and Asuna could feel it prickling her just from looking at him from a distance.
One side of his mouth curled into a sneer, and his lips parted.
“You really are the best, Kirito. Then and now, no one else has made me want to kill them as much as you do. I hate to bring this all to an end, but I’m not going to get a better stage to do it on than this one…”
PoH lifted the machete and thrust out his free hand. He beckoned with his long fingers, curling them to show off the tattoo of the laughing face in the coffin on the back of his hand.
“…Let’s enjoy this, Black Swordsman,” he said, an invitation of pure, concentrated malice.
“Yes,” Kirito agreed, “let’s end this.”
He spread his feet apart and dropped his hips, holding the white sword forward and the black sword behind him. The hostility and concentration between the two combatants intensified, sparks flying in the space between them.
As they’d both claimed, the next trading of blows would be the last, Asuna could sense. Her eyes were wide open, and her breath caught in her throat.
Another dry gust of wind blew past, and when it stopped, the Black Swordsman and the black reaper moved together.
PoH’s Mate-Chopper emitted a dark-red light, sticky and viscous in quality. As he shot forward with terrifying speed, his body split into three.
Asuna didn’t know this sword skill, but for his part, Kirito left his right sword down, activating his white sword with a crimson glow instead. That would be the One-Handed Sword skill Deadly Sins.
PoH slashed at him, forward, left, and right, but Kirito’s combination attack deflected each of them. The giant bloodred dagger and the ruby longsword caused the earth and the atmosphere to quake with each impact.
Once the three PoHs had attacked twice each, six times in total, the left and right afterimages vanished. The real one then pulled back and swung down ferociously. Kirito swiped at a left angle to block the attack. A shock wave and an explosion of sparks resulted.
Deadly Sins was a seven-part skill; it would cause Kirito to suffer a movement delay. If PoH had another attack ready, Kirito couldn’t defend against it.
The reaper’s hood blew back from the impact of his overhead swing being blocked, exposing his full appearance for the first time since the SAO days.
There was a ghastly smile on his face, which was fiercely sculpted and not quite Japanese looking. PoH swung his gloomy, glowing knife toward Kirito’s shoulder yet again: an eighth attack.
But in that moment, Kirito’s black sword flashed red. It was a shade deeper and hotter than that of Deadly Sins—the color of flame.
Canceling out the delay that should have lasted at least a full second, the black sword was thrust with impossible speed. He was executing a technique that only he could do: Skill Connect, a seamless transition between sword skills with separate weapons.
With a roar like a combustion engine firing, the heavy thrust Vorpal Strike met in midair with what was probably the last of an eight-part combination attack from PoH.
This caused the greatest shock wave of all, which rippled outward, creating cracks in the ground. It whipped up ferocious winds of dust and heat, but Asuna narrowed her eyes only the minimum amount necessary; she was determined to see the end of this duel.
When the gust of wind had dissipated, she saw the two of them motionless, tips of the black sword and red machete intersecting before them. The fight wasn’t over yet. They were focusing the maximum amount of energy into the minimum point of intersection, each pushing with all his strength to overpower the other.
In terms of the accumulated resources in each weapon, Kirito’s black sword ought to be utterly overwhelming PoH’s Mate-Chopper, but it wasn’t turning out that way. In this world, the power of imagination, the power to envision—what the knights called “Incarnation”—had the potential to overturn any numerical value.
The simplicity of PoH’s Incarnation was what made it so powerful. He fought to kill…to fill the world with discord, mistrust, hostility, and malice.
Then why did Kirito fight?
Here in this world, he had lost a treasured friend. And while there might have been external circumstances involved, he had experienced enough despair to be in a vacant state for half of an entire year. But now he was standing again, wielding his swords. What kind of Incarnation was giving him strength…?
Asuna couldn’t put the answer into words—but she didn’t think she needed to. Kirito had fought with so many things on his shoulders to this point. He’d done it in SAO, in ALO, and in GGO. He was doing it right now.
Hesitation, suffering, and sadness could be strength, too. Tears could be turned into light. And that light would never be defeated by PoH’s darkness.
Isn’t that right…Kirito?
Asuna didn’t know whether her prayer reached his ears. But just then, there was a faint but definite sound in response.
Crack.
PoH’s weapon of evil, the Mate-Chopper, created so that man could kill man, now had a glowing red crack running from tip to base like a bolt of lightning.
Then the huge machete burst into countless tiny shards—and Kirito’s Vorpal Strike extended onward for another twenty feet, obliterating PoH’s right arm.
Another gust of wind interfered with Asuna’s field of view. She could no longer sit; she had to rise. So did Tiese, Sortiliena, and Ronie, and behind them, Klein, Silica, and Lisbeth.
In time, the dust settled, revealing the two former SAO players locked in tight formation.
PoH’s remaining arm dangled at his side without a weapon, Kirito’s black sword penetrating deep through his chest. But that was the place where Asuna had burst the hole in the first place, so he didn’t appear to have suffered any new physical damage.
He smiled confidently, blood dripping from the hole and his mouth, probably because the Mate-Chopper was no longer providing him with the resources to keep him alive.
“…Yeah…that’s more like it. But…this isn’t the end. I might log out of this world, but I’ll always come back to threaten you,” he vowed. “Over and over, until I’ve slit your and Flash’s throats and carved out your hearts…”
Kirito betrayed no hint of emotion. He quietly replied, “No, this is the end. You won’t be logging out of the Underworld.”
The black sword flashed for a brief instant.
When the light subsided, Kirito slowly pulled the blade out of the hole in PoH’s chest and took a few steps back. Despite the lack of support, PoH did not collapse. The same awful grin was slapped across his face, and he tried to say something else.
But when his mouth opened, it made a creaking noise and froze in place. So did his limbs. They paused in an unnatural pose, cracking and changing texture. The shining black leather turned to a kind of fabric, covered in hairline cracks. The metal rivets became protruding lumps. The Grim Reaper was undergoing an abnormal transformation of sorts.
Kirito went on: “This sword wa
s originally a huge tree that the people of Rulid called the Gigas Cedar. For two hundred years, they chopped at it with their axes, to no avail. I sent the memory of this sword into your body.”
Indeed, over half of the surface of PoH’s body was turning into a kind of charcoal-black tree bark. His legs fused into one limb, growing roots into the earth. His arms turned into eerily gnarled, twisted branches, and his hair sharpened into needles. Lastly, his eyes and mouth became a trio of small knotholes.
“When they see that the Chinese and Korean players are logging out, your friends will resume the time acceleration. I don’t know if it’ll be years or decades until you’re let out of the STL, but you’d better pray it’s on the shorter side. If some enterprising frontiersmen start a village here, you might have children coming to chop you down with an ax.”
It was impossible to say whether PoH actually perceived the words at this point. There was no longer a human being standing there across from Kirito, but an ugly cedar tree only six feet tall.
Kirito stared at the tree for a moment before turning to Asuna’s group. He smiled and nodded to them, then looked at the wounded Japanese players and Underworlders. He raised the black sword again, which still harbored a golden glow at its center.
“System Call. Transfer Durability to Local Area.”
Shaaaa…
A sound filled the battlefield, faint in volume but stretching from end to end.
It was raining.
The resources released by the sword took form in the sky overhead and descended to earth as little droplets of delicate light. The wounded and exhausted Japanese players and the members of the Human Guardian Army who were utterly spent from consecutive battles all felt their bodies being healed. And perhaps their hearts and minds, too…
Having expelled all of the black sword’s resources, Kirito put it and the white sword he was holding in his other hand back into their scabbards over his shoulders.
Asuna watched the black-clad swordsman take step after deliberate step through the all-healing rain of light. She couldn’t move or even speak. It felt like all of it would vanish if she spoke, returning to illusion. So she just kept her eyes open, smiled, and waited.
Instead, it was Klein who stepped forward.
His severed left arm and skewered torso were back to pristine condition. But the samurai still clutched his chest like he was in great pain, tottering forward.
“Kirito…Kirito, man…,” he said, his usual cheery self, though his voice cracked a bit. “You gotta stop it with takin’ all the juiciest, most heroic scenes…”
He was practically crying. The tall, lanky samurai grabbed the dual-swordsman in black by the shoulders and pressed his bandana-less forehead against the shorter man’s neck. His back trembled, and huge sobs left his throat.
“Aaah…aaaaaaaah…”
Kirito put his arms around his weeping friend’s back. He shut his eyes and clenched his jaws; there were shining tracks down his cheeks, too.
“…Kirito,” Ronie said. She got up and began to run for him. Teardrops flew off her face as she plowed straight into his shoulder. Sortiliena followed close behind her.
Even Agil’s eyes were wet. Lisbeth and Silica were hugging each other and crying. The Japanese players in the area—the ALO leaders like Sakuya, Alicia, and Eugene; Siune and Jun from the Sleeping Knights; and many others—had faces wet and shining, from both the rain of light and the tears that adorned their cheeks.
Even the soldiers and priests of the more distant Human Guardian Army were uniformly red-eyed. They knelt as a group, each pressing a fist to their chest and hanging their head in salute.
“……From the moment I first met him, I knew. I knew that he would save us all with his two swords,” said a gentle voice behind Asuna.
She turned around to see the young Integrity Knight Renly and his dragon mount behind him. Both had been gravely wounded, but the signs of their damage were now limited only to the armor they wore.
Asuna was so full of emotion that all she could do was nod once or twice. Renly’s head bobbed in return, then he walked to Tiese, who was still kneeling on the ground, and crouched next to her.
An examination of the battlefield showed that not a single one of the twenty thousand Chinese and Korean VRMMO players was left. Every last one was gone.
Once the attackers discovered that the players had logged out, they would surely cancel their strategy of bringing in real-world help and raise the acceleration rate to maximum again. Once that happened, Klein and all the others using AmuSpheres would automatically get kicked out.
Kirito must have been aware of that, too. He clapped Klein on the shoulder, pulled away, and looked out on the rest of the Japanese players.
Then he bowed his head deeply and said, “Thank you, everyone…Your feelings for me, and the blood and tears you shed, will not go to waste. Truly, thank you all.”
Yes…the battle was not over yet.
The deadly PoH and his army of American, Chinese, and Korean players were gone, but there was still the head honcho of the enemy left, Emperor Vecta. He had kidnapped Alice the Integrity Knight, the core of Project Alicization, and was flying south at this very moment to the distant World’s End Altar.
Asuna sucked in a deep breath and stood up at last. She made her way through the other players, all standing stock-still and reeling with their own emotions, and walked steadily toward Kirito.
He lifted his face and looked straight at her.
For an instant, she was seized by a powerful urge, and she held her breath.
She wanted to leap into the arms of her beloved. She wanted to cry with the abandon of a child, to unleash all her pent-up emotions.
But she kept them in check for now—barely—and reported the present concern.
“Kirito…Emperor Vecta took Alice.”
“Yeah. I do remember the situation, if fuzzily,” Kirito said, his expression sharp. He held out his hand. “Let’s go save her. I’ll need your help, Asuna.”
“……!……”
It was all she could take.
Asuna rushed over to seize his hand and pressed it to her cheek.
His other arm went around her back and pulled her in close.
The embrace was only momentary, but Asuna felt that, within that moment, an incredible amount of information that couldn’t be expressed in words was traded between them.
He gazed into her eyes again, right up close, nodded, and looked to the sky to the south. He raised his right hand in that direction, his fingers waving around as if searching for something.
“……Found them.”
“Huh…?” Asuna murmured, but Kirito only grinned and did not elaborate.
He looked around at the rest of the group again, clapped Klein on the shoulder, rubbed Ronie’s head, and said, “Well, we’re off.”
And then…
Lisbeth watched as Kirito and Asuna burst off into the sky, glowing brilliant green and heading south at a phenomenal speed. She blinked a few times in surprise, then exhaled long and slow.
“Well, I guess he hasn’t lost his edge or his sense of abandon…”
Nearby, Silica giggled.
Klein clapped his hands together. “Damn, who does he think he is…?” he shouted, then name-dropped the hero of an action comic from generations ago. “He’s freakin’ invincible. He always gets all the best scenes, I tell ya…”
Fresh tears glistened on his cheeks. Ever since they’d first met in Aincrad and he’d been smitten by Kirito, the youth had always been that to Klein: an invincible, unstoppable, eternal hero.
He is to me, too.
Lisbeth looked to the south, her vision clouded by endless tears. She wanted to commit this world to her memory before she logged out in a few moments, never to return to it.
All so she could relate the image to the many players who’d been logged out in agony and humiliation, to let them know that their painful efforts were not in vain.
CHAPTER TWEN
TY-TWO
SHOWDOWN, JULY 7TH, 2026 AD / NOVEMBER 7TH, 380 HE
1
“Dammit!!”
Critter, the information-warfare specialist on the Ocean Turtle assault team, slammed his hand on the console as he stared at the results coming through on the monitor.
The amalgamation of red dots, nearly thirty thousand at its peak, was rapidly disappearing, starting in the middle and trickling outward. In other words, the Chinese and Korean VRMMO players brought into the Underworld through Vassago’s scheme were being wiped out somehow and automatically logging off the system.
In the center of the red circle, the human army in blue and Japanese troops in white still remained at around a thousand. It was too large of a number to ignore entirely—and if those thousand had the strength to wipe out a combined army of thirty thousand, they had to be even more dangerous.
“…What the hell is that moron doing…?” swore Critter, clicking his tongue and staring at a point on the monitor.
There was just one bright-red dot remaining very close to the Japanese squad. That would be Vassago, who had used his own personal converted account to dive from the STL room next door. He was directly adjacent to the enemy, but he wasn’t even moving, much less fighting them.
Perhaps he was being held prisoner or immobilized. Or maybe he still had a secret trick up his sleeve that would allow him to take care of this army of a thousand…
Critter wanted to rush into the STL room right now, slap Vassago awake, and yank him around by the collar, but he held that urge in. With the admin controls to the Underworld currently locked, they couldn’t reset any accounts. So if he forcefully logged Vassago out, the account he was using would not be usable again. About the only thing Critter could do was operate the time-acceleration feature, since it was isolated from the Seed program core. But that required some careful timing.
He took a deep breath and zoomed out on the map. At the far south end of the Underworld, another red dot was still rapidly on the move. That was the captain of the assault team, Gabriel Miller.
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