Once they pulled away from her, Alice commanded, “Go!! Fly straight and do not turn back!!”
Krulululu!! the dragons trilled, lifting their necks. They stood up and began to run to the west without looking back. Their wings spread wide, grabbing the desert air and lifting their massive bodies. Brother and sister beat their wings, which were so close that their ends nearly touched, lifting off at the same time.
Amayori did crane its long neck around, though. The dragon’s beautiful crystalline eye stared straight at Alice. A large droplet of liquid filled its lid, then sparkled as it fell free.
“Ama…yori…?” Alice murmured.
But before she could even finish speaking the dragon’s name, it and its brother dragon tilted to their right, making a hard turn. With fierce bellows, they rose in a straight line not to the west, but dead north. Toward the pursuer in black, who was now close enough to be visible.
“No…no, you can’t!! Amayori, nooooo!!” she screamed, breaking into a run.
But the fine sand of the desert clung to her boots. Alice fell to the ground, hands outstretched, and could only watch as Amayori and Takiguri shot higher into the sky toward the invincible enemy.
Silver scales caught the red sunlight and blazed like flame.
Jaws full of glittering sharp teeth opened wide.
The sibling dragons unleashed their greatest weapon as soon as the pursuer was within range: their heat beams. White light shot across the sky, like a manifestation of their very life force burning.
The enemy, atop his strange mount, did not bother to change his flight path in the face of the oncoming superheated flame. He simply held out his left hand and spread his fingers.
There was no way to defend against it. The dragons’ beams were the highest-priority attack in the world, with the exception of the Integrity Knights’ Perfect Weapon Control arts, and certain multilayered spells cast by groups of elite arts-users. And this was two beams. There was not enough time to execute a defensive art strong enough to counteract them.
Or so Alice estimated.
And prayed.
But the two screaming, resonating beams of pure heat did not envelop the enemy’s body in their all-consuming power. Instead, something that beggared Alice’s understanding occurred.
A swirl of absolute darkness grew from the pursuer’s palm.
It looked as though the space around it simply warped and stretched to fall into the darkness. Even the all-powerful fire from the dragons was no exception. The direct path of the beams curved, sucked toward the man’s palm.
And with nothing more than a brief little illumination, and no flashing or explosions, the two lines of heat were devoured by the darkness.
Alice did not miss the sight of a faint smile stretching across the enemy’s mouth, despite the fact that he was only a black dot flying high enough that no art or sword strike could reach him.
Then, with a horrible noise like scraping sand, the blackness surrounding the man’s left hand shot out several bolts of black lightning.
It was as if he had swallowed the dragons’ fire breath and made that power his own. The lightning burst mercilessly through their wings and limbs. The two dragons lurched, and blood even redder than the sky behind it sprayed into the void.
“Ah…ah……,” Alice gasped. She hurled her hands upward. “Amayoriiii!! Get away!! You don’t have to do this!! Just fly awaaaay!!”
She knew that the dragons could hear her scream. But the mounts seemed to be only spurred on further by the sound of her voice. They beat their wings and charged again.
Their mouths opened wide. From between their fangs, the air wavered with heat haze, and light flickered unsteadily.
Zwamp!! The heat beams scorched the sky a second time.
Once again, the man deployed a shield of darkness and let the flames hit it. This was clearly leading to another counterattack, like the last one, but the dragons boldly continued their charge. They beat their wings furiously, even while the beams lasted, trying to get as close as possible to the enemy.
The blood spray from their wounds turned to flame. Their silver scales fell loose, disintegrating into motes of light in the air.
The dragons’ very existence was converting into light elements.
Those beams of light, representing their very life force burning away, began to fill the dark vortex, saturating it. White smoke began to rise from the man’s palm, which was seemingly unable to withstand the raging heat.
But just after that, a veil of smoky, black darkness covered his entire form. The hungering void in his hand grew in power, and soon its black lightning began to push back the white heat beams.
For just one second, there was parity between the dueling strength of white and black, and then it was all the other way.
Countless bolts of crackling black lightning seized upon Amayori and Takiguri, whose wings were finally slowing from lack of strength.
“Amayori!! Amayoriiiiii!!” screamed Alice, but all her words landed upon was endless desert sand, like her tears.
In that moment, the stars fell.
Two gleaming stars, dropping out of the red sky at tremendous speed.
One headed straight for the ground.
The other came to a complete stop right in the median point between the dragons and the pursuer. The light itself disintegrated, revealing what it was hiding within.
A person.
A swordsman.
Slightly shaggy black hair and a long black coat trailed in the wind. White and black swords crossed each other behind his back. His arms were folded over his chest, and he stared calmly at the approaching storm of darkness.
Bam!! Bzzsh!!
Lightning blasted the swordsman. But not quite—it only deflected off him without making contact. It was as though an invisible wall stood before the still figure with arms folded, blocking the lightning and forcing it to discharge harmlessly into empty air.
Alice held her breath and watched through wide eyes.
Then the black-clad swordsman turned and looked down at her.
His youthful face crinkled into a smile, and his dark eyes were strong with purpose. Alice felt sparks shooting deep in her chest. The heat instantly spread, burning her insides, filling her heart with drive.
She could feel more tears were flooding into her eyes now. “Kiri…to……”
The swordsman, awake again after a half-year slumber, gave her a nod with a smile that was powerful but somehow shy, then turned away and raised his right hand in front of him. He pointed toward the dying dragons, who were flapping their wings with the last bit of strength remaining. The tips of their wings and the ends of their tails were already melting into light.
Amayori looked at Kirito, with whom it had lived for half a year at the cottage outside of Rulid, and trilled softly.
Kirito nodded back to it and closed his eyes.
Without warning, iridescent film surrounded the two dragons. It was like a giant soap bubble had formed around them. But the dragons were not alarmed; they folded their wings, tucked in their heads, and rolled into balls.
The rainbow orb slowly descended directly over Alice. She was so stunned that she nearly forgot to breathe.
And then something very strange happened. The enormous rainbow-tinted bodies of Amayori and Takiguri began to shrink. No, not shrink—they were getting youthful, growing in reverse.
Sharp talons rounded. Thick, hard scales reverted into soft, downy growths. Their tails and necks shrank, and smaller wings sprouted fine hair.
By the time they came down to Alice’s outstretched arms, the dragons were less than fifty cens in size. Takiguri was covered in a white pelt with a bluish tint, its eyes closed in peaceful sleep.
And Amayori was like a green ball of fluff, the same way as when she’d first met it at Central Cathedral. The little dragon looked right at Alice, opened its jaws to expose teeth like little pearls, and trilled, “Kyuru!!”
“Ama…yori…,” Alice gasped.
Tears trickled down her cheeks and sparkled as they bounced off the dragon’s soft, feathery hide.
The rainbow film surrounding the two infant dragons grew brighter, all at once. The sensation of soft feathers on Alice’s arms turned to smooth hardness. After a few blinks, she realized that she was cradling two large eggs.
The silvery eggs shrank smaller and smaller, until they were capable of resting side by side in the palm of her hand, and the rainbow glow around them faded at last.
As she nestled the eggs against her cheek, Alice tried to interpret what had just happened. Kirito must have determined that the maximum value of Amayori’s and Takiguri’s lives was so great that sacred arts alone could not restore it. So instead, he shrank that maximum value as small as it could go—effectively returning them to their embryonic egg form and preventing them from reaching death.
Alice was currently the most powerful user of sacred arts in the entire world, and even she couldn’t imagine what combination could produce such an effect. But she was not worried. The only thought she kept was warm certainty that she would one day meet the dragons again.
She wrapped the two eggs between her hands gently and looked up to the sky again.
“Thank you…and welcome back, Kirito,” she whispered tearily.
There was no way her voice could reach the figure floating in the distant sky, but the man in the black coat nodded firmly back to her and smiled again. She heard a familiar voice in her mind.
No. I’m sorry for having put you through so much. Thank you, Alice. We’ll meet again in the real world.
Then Kirito slowly turned and faced the darkness-shrouded pursuer.
Sparks crackled here and there in empty space, as if the world itself was unable to withstand the pressure of two massive sources of competing Incarnation.
“…Kirito…”
That enemy will not be defeated by any typical attack, even from you, Alice thought, biting her lip in concern.
From very close by, a voice said, “It’ll be all right, Alice.”
She spun around to see a real-worlder standing near her in pearly-white armor.
“Asuna…”
The girl with long brown hair swaying in the wind just smiled at her and reached out to touch her back. “Let’s put our trust in Kirito. The two of us need to rush to the World’s End Altar.”
“R-right,” she replied, but she knew it would not be as easy as that.
Alice looked to the south, where the Wall at the End of the World rose high above the horizon—and a small white island floated before it.
“The altar is probably atop that island,” she said after a moment. “But we can’t ride on the dragons anymore, so I don’t know how to get up that high…”
“Don’t worry. Let me handle that,” assured Asuna, drawing a thin sword from her waist. She pointed it at the distant island and let her long lashes droop low.
Suddenly, there was a booming angelic chorus—Laaaaaaaa!—just like the one Asuna had heard during the Dark Army’s ambush last night. A rainbow of light fell directly downward onto the gray desert from the sky.
The ground rumbled beneath their feet, and a white stone slab rose out of the sand just before them.
Grunk, gru-gru-grunk! Another slab appeared behind it, slightly higher, and then another. Alice watched in awe as a white staircase formed itself in the air, building up to the distant floating island in just a dozen or so seconds.
When the altering of the geography was complete, Asuna lowered her sword and fell to a knee in the sand.
“A-Asuna…!!”
“I’m…fine. Let’s hurry…We’ve only got about eight minutes until the altar closes…”
Closes?
Alice didn’t understand the meaning of that in the moment, but Asuna grabbed her by the hand before she could ask. She got to her feet, pulled by Asuna, and began to run up the white stone staircase. As she ran, she glanced over her shoulder to look once more at her pursuer and the swordsman in black facing off in the sky.
There are many, many things I want to say to you and ask of you.
So you’d better win. Win and then come back to me.
The sight of the two swordfighters practically flying up the white stairs to the island floating over the gray desert was so beautiful, so poetic, so symbolic that I could only marvel at it. I had to sear the image into my mind.
Alice. Asuna.
This is good-bye.
There was a reason I hadn’t told Asuna that the acceleration rate was going to reach five million times real speed and that if we didn’t escape before then, we’d be trapped in here for two hundred years of perceived time.
If they knew that, both Asuna and Alice would stand with me to fight. Even if it meant they’d fail to escape before the time limit.
As soon as I’d become conscious of the presence of the foe pursuing Alice, I’d shivered at the alienness of his nature. But in fact, presence wasn’t even the right word. The only thing there was nothing. He was a void, a black hole that devoured all information, even light.
The chances of defeating an enemy like this before the time limit, then escaping with all three of us present, was extremely low.
So that made it clear to me what my priority should be: I had to log Asuna and Alice out of the Underworld. Nothing could come before that—nothing.
So I fixed the painting-like image of beauty below me into my mind, then turned away to face the enemy hovering nearby.
It was utterly unfathomable, now that I was finally facing off with it.
It was male. I was pretty sure of that.
But that was all I was sure of.
The form of his face, if it was an avatar of his choosing, seemed to be intentionally designed to match the “average white male” appearance. His features weren’t bad; it was just that there was nothing notable about them. He could only be described as having white skin, blue eyes, and blond hair.
His physical figure was utterly average for a white male. A body, neither fat nor skinny, wrapped in a military jacket. It wasn’t clear whether that meant he was a soldier—because the jacket’s black-and-gray camouflage pattern was constantly shifting and moving like some kind of slime mold. He also had a sword on his left side that appeared to be a Divine Object.
Asuna had warned me on the trip here that this man was a member of the special-ops team that had invaded the Ocean Turtle. That would make him a mercenary hired by some group or company looking to steal tech related to artificial fluctlights. But the man floating there and staring at me with lifeless marble-like eyes did not feel like the type of human being who was motivated by crass concerns like money. He didn’t feel like a human being at all.
When one second had passed, I spoke.
“…Who are you?”
His answer was immediate. The man’s voice was smooth and yet somehow metallic in nature.
“One who seeks, steals, and snatches away.”
Instantly, the aura of darkness surrounding his being writhed and amplified. I felt a slight breeze blowing from behind. The air—the very information that made up the world—was being sucked into the darkness.
“What do you seek?”
“Souls.”
With each answer, the suction increased. It wasn’t just the information of the world, either—I felt my own consciousness beginning to succumb to that empty gravity.
Then something resembling an expression floated past his lips. The faintest of smiles, but one utterly removed from anything you might call emotion.
“And who are you? Why are you here? What right do you have to stand before me?”
Who…am I?
The hero the Underworld always needed? Hardly.
A knight who protects the human realm? No.
Each suggestion that came to my mind was rejected, and each slipped right out of me, like it was being stolen. And yet, for some reason, I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming.
The hero who defeated the deadly game of SAO?
No.
The greatest VRMMO player alive? No.
The Black Swordsman? The Dual-Wielder? No, no.
None of those things were what I wanted.
So what was I…?
I could feel my mind starting to fade, to slip away—when I thought I heard a familiar voice call my name.
My head rose—I hadn’t realized it had dipped—and I named myself as I had been called.
“I’m Kirito. Kirito the Swordsman.”
Bzak!! Sparks flew, and the tendrils of darkness clinging to me were cut loose. Immediately, my mind felt sharp and focused again.
What just happened to me?
Was this man using the STL to interfere directly with my mind? I hastily strengthened the defensive wall of imagination around me and focused on the man’s eyes. They were truly empty—bottomless darkness that absorbed the minds of others.
“…And your name is?” I asked, barely realizing what I was doing.
The man thought briefly. “Gabriel. My name is Gabriel Miller.”
I could sense that this was not a character name or an online alias but the man’s actual identity. For just a few seconds, his appearance had changed. His gaze had become sharper, icy, dangerous. His lips pulled back, and his cheekbones sharpened.
As his features returned to that earlier fake look, the aura of darkness he exuded instantly thickened. At this stage, I finally realized that the man’s right arm was entirely missing from the shoulder down. The unsteady mass of darkness that was acting as his right arm slid down to his left side and grabbed the sword.
He drew it with a squelch, but the sword did not have a physical blade to it. There was just an empty darkness there, extending about three feet from the hilt like black fire. It was a truly unreal thing.
With his shadow arm holding a blade of malignant darkness, the man swung it forth, the blade issuing an eerie vibration. I distanced myself a bit and pulled out the two swords over my shoulders—Blue Rose in my left hand, Night Sky in my right.
In terms of blackness, the sword carved from the Gigas Cedar’s branch was no slouch itself. But while my sword reflected the light like some black crystal substance, the man’s sword was as dark as if the space itself had been removed from existence. This was a level beyond PoH’s Mate-Chopper and its ability to absorb resources.
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