3

“…This is all getting pretty crazy…”

Asuna was the first to speak after Queen Urd disappeared back into golden droplets and Tonky began to fly back upward—at a much more reasonable pace this time.

Next, Sinon’s light blue tail whipped back and forth as she wondered, “This is…a normal quest, right? It just seems way too big for that…What did she say—that if all the animal Deviant Gods get wiped out, the frost giants will take over the surface?”

“…She did,” I muttered, my arms crossed. “But do you think the developers would really do something like that without an update or an event notification? Other MMOs have events all the time where a boss comes to invade a town, but they at least warn you about it a week ahead of time…”

Everyone in the group nodded in agreement. Then Yui leaped off my shoulder to hover in the air, shouting at a volume loud enough for everyone to hear, “Well, I have a conjecture, although I’m not one hundred percent certain about it…”

She blinked slowly, processing how best to say it, then continued. “There is one aspect of ALfheim Online that makes it very different from other VRMMOs based on The Seed. The Cardinal System that runs the game is not the scaled-down version the others use but is a full-scale replica of the processor used in the old Sword Art Online.”

She was right about that. Though I hated to remember it, ALO started as a wholesale copy of the SAO server so that one power-mad lunatic could perform illegal experiments on a small subset of the old SAO victims. So the Cardinal System that controlled the game world had the same power as that of the original SAO.

Yui looked at her rapt audience and went on. “The original Cardinal System had several features that were taken out of the shrunken version. One of them is an automated quest-generation function. It absorbs legends and myths from cultures worldwide using the network, then repackages and remixes the proper names and story patterns to generate an infinite number of quests.”

“Wh-what th’ hell?” Klein gasped, his scraggly chin dropping open. “You’re sayin’ that all those quests we busted our asses to beat in Aincrad were just generated outta thin air by the system?”

“…No wonder there were so many of them. By the seventy-fifth floor, the quest database of the intel agents had easily over ten thousand individual quests listed,” said the former vice commander of the KoB, who had diligently taken on as many quests as she could to help line the coffers of the guild’s operating budget.

Meanwhile, Silica looked into the vacant distance and mumbled, “Plus, the stories were weird sometimes. Around the thirtieth floor, I think, there was a quest to beat some weird ogre with a mask and a saw, and no matter how many times you killed it, the quest would always reappear on the bulletin board the next week. Wonder what legend that was based on…”

There were plenty of other examples I could think of, but I didn’t want this to devolve into an Aincrad-griping marathon all the way until we arrived at the pyramid of ice, so I steered us back to the original topic.

“So Yui, you’re saying that the Cardinal System automatically generated this quest?”

“Based on the actions of that NPC, I believe it is highly likely. Perhaps the developers have caused the inactive quest-generation function to start running again,” she said, her face dark. “But if that is the case, then it’s quite possible that the effects of the quest will play out as the story goes. That ice dungeon could float up to Alfheim, Alne will fall, and those Deviant Gods will begin to pop into the surrounding areas. In fact…”

The little AI’s lips shut for a moment, and her features took on a note of fear. “According to my archived data, the Scandinavian mythology that forms the basis for this quest, and ALO as a whole, includes an apocalyptic war. It won’t just be an invasion of the frost giants from Jotunheim and Niflheim, but also flame giants from the realm of fire Muspelheim, even farther down, and they will burn down the World Tree…”

“…Ragnarok,” muttered Leafa, who loved myths and legends and had a number of books about them in her room back home. Her emerald green eyes shot open and she cried, “But…I can’t possibly believe that the game system would totally overwrite and destroy the maps that it’s charged with managing!”

That was true. But Yui just shook her head.

“The original Cardinal System has the right to completely destroy the entire world map. After all, the final duty of the old Cardinal was to obliterate Aincrad.”

“…”

This time, I had no response.

The next to speak was Sinon, who had been listening in silence until now.

“So…let’s say this Ragnarok really does happen. If it’s not what the developers intended to have happen, can’t they just rewind the server status?”

“Oh…yeah, yeah, that’s right,” Klein muttered, nodding.

Rolling back a server by overwriting the current state with a backup version was something that happened from time to time, when programmer error or bugs caused players to gain undue advantages. Alfheim being reduced to a wasteland might not have any effect on individual players’ levels or gear, but nobody actually wanted the entirety of the fairy realm to look like the burned land in the east of salamander territory.

However, Yui did not immediately confirm this suggestion.

“It will be possible if the developers manually backed up all data and saved them to physically isolated media…But if they’re using Cardinal’s automatic backup function, depending on the settings, the best they can recover will be player data but not the original environment maps.”

“…”

Everyone was silent for two seconds. Then Klein abruptly shouted, “I’ve got it!” and opened his window. Then he hung his head and shouted, “Never mind!”

“…What was that about?” Lisbeth asked, and the would-be samurai turned to her with a pitiful look on his face.

“I thought I’d just call a GM and ask to check if they realize what’s going on. But it’s outside of normal user support hours…”

“Morning on a Sunday at the end of the year,” I sighed, and looked up into the darkness.

The giant ice pyramid was just in front of us now. If that structure, a thousand feet to a side, burst through the surface above, Alne would certainly panic—and worse. Half of its population had moved to Yggdrasil City atop the World Tree, but the city was still quite busy on weekend nights, both as a base of operations for the high-level dungeons in the Alne plains and as a central trading hub for the various fairy races. It was a very memorable city for me.

“…I think we have no choice but to do this, Big Brother,” Leafa said, holding up a large medallion dangling from her right hand. Queen Urd’s gift to them was embedded with a large, exquisitely cut gemstone. But over 60 percent of the facets were pitch-black and did not reflect the light.

When the gem was entirely black and every last animal Deviant God was hunted to extinction, Urd’s power would be lost entirely. That moment would mark the beginning of King Thrym’s invasion of Alfheim.

“…I agree. After all, I gathered you here today so we could tackle that dungeon and get Excalibur. If their guard is down, even better.”

I opened my window and fiddled with my equipment mannequin. Hanging on my back were both my long sword special-ordered from Lisbeth and a sword I earned from the fifteenth-floor boss of the New Aincrad.

Seeing that I was back to my two-sword ways again, Klein smirked and crowed, “Awright, it’s the last big quest of the year! Let’s whup some ass and get on the front page of MMO Tomorrow!”

Sure, the reasons were a bit crass, but Lisbeth had no complaints this time. The whole group cheered in unison, and even Tonky beat his wings and crooned.

As the flying Deviant God picked up his ascent speed, he circled around the ice pyramid and sidled up to the entrance placed at the top. When Leafa was last to hop off onto the terrace, she rubbed his massive ear and said, “Wait for us here, Tonky. We’re gonna make sure you get your country back!”

The sylph girl turned and drew a gently curved longsword from her waist. With all of our weapons in hand, we faced the tall double doors of ice that greeted us.

Normally you would have to fight the first guardian at this point, but as Urd said, the door opened right away today. We took on a formation of Klein, Leafa, and me in the front; Liz and Silica in the middle; and Asuna and Sinon bringing up the rear. The group headed across the icy floor into the giant palace of Thrymheim.

The maximum limit of a single party in ALO was the slightly irregular number of seven.

In most games it was six or eight, and no official reason had been given for the choice of seven. That meant the max for a raid party was forty-nine, from seven parties of seven. It was a good thing there was an automatic redistribution option for money, because dividing it among seven members would be very annoying.

When trying to construct a full party of just close friends, there were five of us always present: Asuna, Liz, Silica, Leafa, and me. We were all in high school—four of us in the same school—and two of us lived together, so it was easy to coordinate activities.

For the sixth and seventh slot, it usually rotated between Klein the adult worker, Agil the café/bar owner, Chrysheight the busy government agent, and Leafa’s real-life friend Recon, according to whoever was free at the moment. Recon was in school, too, but in the Battle for Yggdrasil months ago, Sakuya the sylph leader had taken a shine to his bravery, and he was now permanently stationed in Swilvane as a staff member in her mansion. We could only hang out with him when Aincrad was hovering over sylph territory.

In this case, we were happily able to welcome the archer—more like sniper—Sinon from my time in GGO, but that still left one problem with our party arrangement.

We didn’t have enough magic. Our only member who regularly used magic skills was Asuna the undine, and because half of her ability was put into the Rapier skill, she had only mastered support and healing spells. Leafa was a magic warrior, too, but all she could use was in-battle obstruction spells and light heals. Silica had some magic skill, too, but she was primarily support, and Liz’s specialty was, of course, blacksmithing. A third of Agil’s skills were mercantile, and Klein and I were muscle heads who put everything into close combat. Not one of us was any good at attacking spells.

When our seventh slot was filled with either Recon, who played a very odd sylph build of daggers and high-level dark magic, or Chrysheight, whose ice magic attacks commanded even the respect of his racial leader, our attack strategies were much richer and varied. So if there was one weakness in this particular lineup, it was the lack of magical firepower.

But that couldn’t be helped—we were transfers from SAO, a game of swords without any kind of real magic. My longsword, Asuna’s rapier, Liz’s battle hammer, Silica’s dagger, Klein’s katana, Agil’s ax, and no doubt Leafa’s sword and Sinon’s bow were not just simple weapons, but something like our proof of existence. We couldn’t just give up on the skills we’d honed and pick up magic. Whether it was inefficient or not, we stuck to our physical-damage-heavy combat style because that was where our pride lay…Until now.

But even then, there were times when we faced a truly sticky situation.

“This is a sticky situation, Big Brother! The golden one has too much physical resistance!” Leafa hissed on my left.

I only had time to nod before the “golden one” lifted up its impossibly huge battle-ax.

“Two seconds to shock wave! One, zero!” called out Yui from atop my head, as loud as her tiny body could muster. At the countdown, the five members in the front and middle rows leaped to either side. The hurtling ax blade and the resulting shock wave passed right where we had formerly stood, blasting against the far wall.

Twenty minutes had passed since we entered Thrymheim, the palace of ice. As Queen Urd said, the density of enemies in the dungeon was much thinner than usual. There were essentially no encounters with ordinary mobs in the hallways. The mid-bosses on each floor were half gone. But the staircase guardians on the way to the next floor were still present, and the unfair, overwhelming power that once drove us off on a previous attempt was still on display.

Still, we somehow managed to defeat the Cyclops-type boss of the first floor that had crushed us before, and we raced through the second floor to the next boss chamber.

What awaited us there was a bull-headed man, a Minotaur-type monster. And not one—two. The one on the right was all black, and the one on the left was all gold. The axes they carried had blades the size of a dinner table.

They didn’t use any attack spells, so at first they seemed easier to beat than the icicle-dropping Cyclops, but there was a problem. The black one was incredibly resistant to magic, while the golden one was incredibly resistant to physical damage.

Naturally, we decided to focus our attacks on the black Minotaur to finish him off, then whittle away at the golden one, but the two beasts had a very close personal bond, and whenever we knocked the black one’s HP down, the golden one would ignore its aggro hate and rush to protect his partner. In the meantime, the black Minotaur would curl into a ball and use some kind of meditation power to rapidly heal his HP.

After the first time, we considered blasting the golden Minotaur while the black one meditated, but his physical resistance was so high that we could barely put a scratch on him. Meanwhile, we could dodge the insta-kill attacks, but the splash damage of their area effects was tearing huge chunks of HP away from us, and it was clear that Asuna’s heals on their own would not hold up over an extended battle.

“Kirito, at this pace I’m going to run out of MP within one hundred and fifty seconds!” Asuna cried from the back. I held out my right-hand sword by way of response.

In these battles of attrition, a healer running out of MP signaled the doom of the party—the dreaded wipe. If at least one person survived, the Remain Lights could be collected and revived one by one, but that took quite a lot of time and effort. And if we wiped out, we’d all start over from the save point in Alne. The problem was whether we had enough time to suffer a setback like that…

Leafa sensed my concerns and whispered, “The medallion’s over seventy percent black now. We don’t have time to die and try again.”

“Got it,” I said, and sucked in a deep breath.

If this were the old Aincrad, I’d give an order to retreat. Betting on probabilities there was not an option. But ALO was not a game of death. Whether the Cardinal System burned all of Alfheim to the ground or not, our only goal here was to “enjoy the game.” Part of that was trusting in the ability of my companions and myself.

“At this rate, there’s just one thing we can do!” I shouted, dodging the golden Minotaur’s ax and checking on the black one’s gauge as it recovered HP toward the rear. “One way or another, we have to beat down the golden one with concentrated sword skills!”

Sword skills: the one feature that truly made SAO, SAO. When the developers of ALO put in the Aincrad update this past May, they also included the old sword-skill system. But there were a few new modifications. One of them was the addition of elemental damage. Now, high-level sword skills inflicted not just physical damage like a normal attack, but one of the magic properties of fire, water, earth, wind, darkness, or light. That should ensure that the physically resistant golden Minotaur would take damage.

This was risky, of course. With the long combination-attack sword skills, there was naturally a long delay period afterward. One direct hit from that battle-ax while immobilized and we would be dead. A wide-range swiping attack would completely obliterate the front and middle rows.

But my companions took that into account and agreed immediately.

“Hell yeah! That’s what I’ve been waitin’ for, Kiri-my-boy!” bellowed Klein, holding his katana aloft on the right wing. On the left, Leafa held her longsword at her waist. Behind me, I could sense Liz and Silica assume positions with their mace and dagger.

“Give us bubbles on my count, Silica! Two, one—now!” I shouted, timing the golden Minotaur.

Silica cried, “Pina, Bubble Breath!”

Normally, even a master beast-tamer’s orders to a pet were not successful all the time. But I had never once seen Pina ignore an order from Silica. As expected, the little dragon fluttering above her head opened its tiny mouth and blew a rainbow stream of bubbles.

They flew through the air and popped right at the nose of the golden Minotaur as it was about to unleash an ax attack. The magic-weak boss fell under a bewitchment effect—just for a second, but long enough to stop it in its tracks.

“Go!” I screamed.

Every weapon aside from Asuna’s glowed and began to fly forth in a variety of colors.

Why had Akihiko Kayaba, creator of the floating castle Aincrad, implemented the system of “unique skills” that veered so far from the normal bounds of the game? I felt as though I still hadn’t discovered the full truth of his intent.

If it were just the Holy Sword skill that he kept to himself, that would make sense. As the leader of the Knights of the Blood, strongest guild in the game, and holy paladin whose cross shield had blocked every sword drawn against him, he would have been the greatest and deadliest final boss of any RPG in history, once he’d executed his stunning ninety-fifth-floor role reversal as planned.

That moment would be the very incarnation of the paradox of an MMORPG in which the players wrote the main story. Aincrad was “An INCarnating RADius”—which was supposed to mean “an embodying world.” In order to carry out his goal of creating a new world, he had to continue being the almighty paladin—even if that meant relying on the unfair advantages of the Holy Sword, immortality, and system assistance.

But in that case, Holy Sword was the only unique skill the game needed. In an MMO, there was no need for a lone hero to fight the big baddie. Such a hero could not exist. Of course, differences in player skill were inevitable, but there had to be a basic foundation of fairness to prop up the game.

Yet he gave players the Dual Blade skill, as well as several other unique skills, most likely. He must have known that granting powers outside of the rules would tilt the balance of game resources and twist the story the world should have followed. In fact, if I hadn’t had Dual Blades when I challenged Heathcliff to a duel for Asuna’s right to leave the guild, he would have won without using the system’s help. If I hadn’t noticed that instant of wrongness, I wouldn’t have discovered Heathcliff’s identity there on the seventy-fifth floor. But because he gave me that unique skill, the story that he envisioned ended three-quarters of the way through.

On the rare occasion that I used two swords in ALO, a little part of my brain always returned to the question: Why?

At the same time, there was a tiny twinge of guilt. Of course, I had no regrets about defeating Heathcliff—being able to beat him—on the seventy-fifth floor. If I hadn’t beaten the game then, the number of victims from his crime would surely have risen. Perhaps people I cared about would have been among them. Perhaps even me.

But I still couldn’t eliminate that thought, that wonder if it was really the right decision. Should I have continued climbing to the hundredth floor of Aincrad and fought Heathcliff the demon king there? No, not “should” I have; it was my own desire and personal fixation to do so. It was the worst kind of egotism, and why I always hesitated to use my dual blades in Alfheim.

But at the very least, there were no unique skills in ALO. The wise new developers of the game combed through the vast number of sword skills by hand, removing those few with suspicious effects from the system—rumor said it was ten in all.

So I couldn’t use my original Dual Blades skills like Double Circular or Starburst Stream anymore. As a matter of fact, I’d 99 percent succeeded at recreating the movements of those skills without the system’s assistance, but they were sadly pointless here. Recreating those skills by hand didn’t provide the magic effects that I needed to hurt this golden Minotaur.

But using a one-handed sword skill with two swords equipped carried one distinct advantage: something Leafa claimed was “a hundred times worse than using an illegally weighted bamboo shinai.”

Pina’s bubble breath stopped the golden Minotaur from unleashing a major attack, stunning it for one second. We charged it en masse: me from the front, Klein on the right, Leafa on my left, and Liz and Silica at the far wings.

“Raaaah!”

We all roared, starting the most powerful sword skills we knew. Klein’s katana raged with fire, Leafa’s longsword flashed and brought gusts of wind, Silica’s daggers sprayed droplets as they cut, and Leafa’s mace growled with lightning. From the rear came a series of arrows glinting with icy arrowheads, piercing the weak point on the bull’s nose.

For my part, I swung the orange-glowing sword in my right hand with all my might. A series of five quick thrusts, then slices down and up, and finally a ferocious overhand swipe: the eight-part longsword skill, Howling Octave. This did 40 percent physical damage, 60 percent flame damage. It was one of the biggest attacks in the one-handed sword arsenal. Naturally, that meant it also had a very long skill delay. However…

“…!!”

With a silent scream, I disconnected my consciousness from the right hand that was about to deliver the final blow. It was like cutting all movement commands from my brain to the AmuSphere for just an instant. My next command was only to my left hand.

The system assistance carried my right hand through its final overhead swing. But at the same time, my left hand pulled its sword back. That blade shone with a brilliant blue glow.

The right-hand sword drove deep into the giant Minotaur’s exposed belly. This was the point where the delay would kick in, freezing my avatar. But the parallel left-hand sword skill overwrote that delay. A horizontal swipe leaped out and dug into his right flank.

It was an extremely bizarre sensation to feel the two sides of my body—no, my brain—acting independent of the other. But if I tried to combine them into one, the skill would stop. I let the skill automatically wrap up my right hand and focused only on my left.

The sword, still stuck in the enemy’s body, made a ninety-degree rotation. My hand pushed the hilt up, and the sword ripped upward through the Minotaur’s stomach. It came loose, then swung downward from the top. This was an effective three-part skill against larger monsters called Savage Fulcrum: half physical, half ice.

Just before my left hand completed that final blow—

I shunted my brain output again.

If I were just a moment too soon or late, the skill would fail, and my avatar would freeze. My window of opportunity was less than a tenth of a second. When I noticed this odd skill combination effect by coincidence three months ago, I underwent a lot of practice I didn’t care to think about, but my success rate was still under 50 percent. I started to move my right hand, essentially praying it would work.

“Kh…aah!” I grunted, my blade blazing light blue. It was a vertical slice, a high-low combination, and then a full-power downward chop: the high-speed four-part skill, Vertical Square.

At this point, the total attack number of my combo was at fifteen, close to the highest Dual Blades skills. Because I was choosing attacks with a high knock-back effect, I could keep the foe in a delayed state as long as my attacks kept landing. No need to worry about defense.

As my Vertical Square initiated, the others were recovering from their own delay.

“Zeryaaaa!” Klein thundered, and a second wave of attacks assaulted the golden Minotaur. The floor of the dungeon rumbled, and the boss’s massive HP gauge began losing large chunks.

Just before the final slice, I attempted another “skill connection,” expecting failure for sure this time.

I couldn’t just use any old one-handed sword skill. The movement of the non-attacking arm had to match up perfectly with the starting motion of the new skill.

While my right arm was busy with Vertical Square, my left arm stayed folded, drawn up to the shoulder. A simple twist of my body would complete the proper form: sword cradled on the shoulder, other hand outstretched. The sword in my left hand took on a deep red glow. The rumbling of a jet engine approached from behind and burst my left arm forward at light speed. This was the single-hit heavy attack, Vorpal Strike: three parts physical, three parts flame, four parts darkness.

Zwamm! My blade punctured the enemy’s lower belly to the hilt with a tremendous shock. The Minotaur’s massive body, five times my height, shot back violently. The second round of team sword skills was finishing up. This time, I was going to suffer a long skill delay with the others.

The golden Minotaur’s HP gauge descended toward the left edge of the bar, turning red—and stopped at just 2 percent left.

The bull head with massive horns grinned fiercely. The enemy recovered from its delay first and swung its mammoth ax backward for a horizontal slice. The high-speed rotating swing meant instant death for anyone caught within it. My mind commanded me to flee backward, but my body wouldn’t obey. The ax glowed wickedly, and a whirlwind flared from his feet…

“Yaaaah!”

A piercing scream erupted. A blue blur shot past my right side. The rapier jabbed five times at eye-blurring speed, the high-level rapier skill with the quickest release, Neutron. The damage, 20 percent physical and 80 percent holy, silently stole the very last of the golden Minotaur’s HP before it could swing its ax.

The Deviant God stopped still. Beyond him, the black Minotaur lifted its ax gleefully, its HP fully recovered through meditation. But the next moment, the partner who had been keeping him safe emitted a high-pitched shriek and, with a hard shattering sound, burst into pieces.

…Huh? the black Minotaur seemed to be thinking, eyes bulging. Meanwhile, the seven of us had recovered from our delays and turned to this fresh target.

“…Sit your ass down right there, cowboy,” Klein warned, grinding his exposed teeth at high speed.