5

Even I, with my total lack of mythological knowledge, had heard that name before.

One of the most famous of Norse gods, alongside Odin and the trickster Loki, was Thor, god of thunder. The sight of him swinging a hammer that caused lightning to strike down giants was a visual motif found often enough in movies and games.

From what Leafa told me later, there was indeed a story in Norse mythology about Thor going to take his hammer back from King Thrym of the giants. In the story, Thor is disguised as the goddess Freyja and offers to be Thrym’s wife. At the celebration, despite losing his cover several times, his true identity stays hidden through Loki’s clever explanations, and when he finally gets his hammer back, he crushes Thrym and all of his giants one by one, a story as comedic as it was brutal. So it was most likely that Cardinal had collected that myth and rearranged it a bit to attach it to the quest as an optional sub-story.

In other words, if someone present actually knew the story, they would have realized as soon as the name appeared that Freyja was not a secret agent of Thrym’s. I was still grateful to Klein’s honest instincts and samurai code for saving her at the cell—regardless of how he felt after learning of Freyja’s true identity.

“Rrrgh…Cowardly giant! You shall now pay for the theft of my precious Mjolnir!”

Thor the god of thunder held up the massive golden hammer in his right hand and charged across the thick floor so hard he seemed likely to break through it.

Thrym the frost king blew into his hands, producing a battle-ax of ice. He swung the weapon and shot back, “Treacherous god, you will rue this deviant lie! I will cut off your beard and send it back to Asgard when I’m done with you!”

Now that I thought about it, Thrym believed that Freyja was a real goddess and was looking forward to their marriage. He might’ve been the villain, but he had a right to be angry.

In the center of the chamber, the two bearded giants of gold and blue met, golden hammer and icy battle-ax clashing. The impact caused the entire castle to shudder. Meanwhile, the rest of us were still grappling with the shock of Freyja’s growth—and sex change. At the back of the room, Sinon finished up her healing and called out to the group.

“Let’s all attack while Thor’s holding his attention!”

She was absolutely right. There was no guarantee that Thor would be helping us to the very end of the battle. I swung my swords and shouted, “All-out attack! Use all the sword skills you can!”

The seven of us leaped as one, bearing down on Thrym from every direction.

“Nraaaah!”

I felt as though something was sparkling from the ends of Klein’s eyes as he charged with his katana overhead and a particularly fierce battle cry, but my warrior’s mercy made me pretend not to see it. Ignoring the skill delay, we assaulted Thrym’s legs with every sword skill of three or more hits we could. Asuna had switched out her wand for a rapier and was tattooing his Achilles tendon. Next to her, Lisbeth was beating the tip of a toe with her mace.

“Gr…rrgh…!”

Thrym grunted in pain, wobbled, and fell to a knee. A yellow effect was spinning around his crown—he was stunned.

“That’s it!” I cried, and we all unleashed our biggest combos. Brilliant flashes of light enveloped his naked torso. From overhead fell a furious rain of orange arrows.

“Hrrng! Return to the depths from which you came, giant king!” roared Thor, bringing down his hammer right onto Thrym’s head. The crown cracked and flew off, and the boss who had seemed completely untouchable fell face-first onto the ground.

His HP gauge was already gone. His massive limbs and the tip of his beard began to crackle and turn into ice.

The blue light that sparkled in his black eye sockets faded, vanishing. Just then, his tangled whiskers parted and emitted a deep voice.

“Nwa-hah-hah…Enjoy your triumph, little bugs. But you will see…You will regret trusting the Aesir…for they are the true pl—”

Zumm! Thor stomped down powerfully, his foot breaking through the ice giant. An End Flame animation of extraordinary scale erupted, and the frost giant blasted into countless shards of ice. We held our hands up against the pressure of the effect, taking a few steps back. From the heights above, Thor cast us a look with his golden eyes.

“…You have my thanks, fairy warriors. Now I have regained my honor after the shame of losing my treasure. You must have a reward.”

He lifted his left hand to brush the hilt of the massive, beautiful hammer in his other hand. One of the gemstones embedded in it came loose, began to glow, and turned into a hammer sized for a human to use.

Thor tossed this golden hammer, a shrunken-down version of the original, to Klein.

“Use Mjolnir, Hammer of Lightning, for your righteous battles. And now—farewell.”

The god waved his right hand, and a bolt of pale lightning erupted throughout the chamber. We reflexively shut our eyes, and when they opened, no one was there. A small dialog box announced that a member had left, and the eighth set of HP/MP bars was gone.

On the spot where Thrym fell, a veritable waterfall of items was dropping and vanishing as they were automatically stored in the party’s temporary inventory.

When the rain of loot abated, the light shone brighter in the boss chamber, driving away the darkness. Sadly, the mountain range of golden treasure lining the walls also vanished. On the other hand, I had a feeling that we were all packed to the limit with items and wouldn’t have been able to take any of it with us anyway.

“…Phew…”

I walked over to Klein with a little sigh and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Congrats on the legendary weapon.”

“…And here I am, without a single point in Hammer skills,” the katana swordsman replied, face halfway between laughing and crying, holding the hammer as it glowed with a dazzling aura effect. I gave him a big smile.

“Well, I’m sure Liz would be delighted to have it. Oh, wait, she’ll probably melt it down for ingots…”

“Hey! Even I wouldn’t be that wasteful!” Lisbeth retorted.

With a straight face, Asuna pointed out, “But Liz, I hear you get an incredible number of orichalcum ingots if you melt down a legendary.”

“What, really?”

“H-hey, I haven’t said I’m giving it to her yet!” Klein wailed, clutching the hammer. A wave of laughs broke out from the group.

But at that very instant, a roar broke out that shook me to the core, the ice floor rattling and swaying.

“Aaaah!” Silica screamed, her triangle ears down.

Next to her, tail twisted into an S-shape, Sinon shouted, “We’re…moving?! No, floating!”

I came to a belated realization.

The palace of Thrymheim was rising bit by bit, shuddering like a living being. But why—No—Unless—

Leafa looked at the medallion around her neck and yelped, “B-Big Brother! The quest is still going!!”

“Wh-what?!” wailed Klein. I shared his feeling. I assumed that beating Thrym, head of the frost giants, would be the end of the quest—but then I recalled the exact words of Urd, queen of the lake, when she gave us the mission.

Infiltrate Thrymheim and draw Excalibur from the plinth. Not “beat Thrym.” In other words, that horrendous boss was only a single hurdle along the way…

“The last light is blinking!” Leafa nearly screamed.

Yui responded, “Papa, there’s a downward staircase being generated behind the throne!”

“…!!”

No time for a response. I took off running for the royal throne.

It looked like a chair, but as Thrym’s personal seat, it was really more like a shack. If it weren’t such an emergency, we might have fun trying to see who could climb onto the seat portion, but on this occasion, I just ran around the left side.

Around the back, as Yui said, there was a small staircase leading downward in the ice floor. It was much too small for a frost giant but just large enough for a single human—er, fairy—to pass through. I plunged into the dark opening as the footsteps of my companions drew closer.

My mind worked furiously as I dove down the stairs, skipping three steps at a time. If we failed Urd’s quest—meaning that the players down on the ground below succeeded in their slaughter quest—the ice palace of Thrymheim would rise up to the city of Alne above. But Thrym, the very king who sought to invade Alfheim, was no longer around. Maybe he would just come back to life as if nothing had ever happened. But given the Cardinal System’s fixation on details, I couldn’t imagine it going ahead with such a forceful story progression.

Meanwhile, as if she were reading my mind, Leafa’s voice came over my shoulder as we ran down the stairs.

“…Listen, Big Brother. I only remember a few vague details…but I’m pretty sure that in the original Norse myth, Thrym wasn’t actually the master of Thrymheim.”

“Wait…what?! But the name…”

“Yeah, I know. But in the myth, it was Th…Th…”

While Leafa tried to pronounce the name, Yui must have connected to the outer Net and run a search, because she filled in, “Thjazi. In the myth, it was not actually Thrym who desired the golden apple Urd mentioned, but Thjazi. And within ALO, it seems that the NPC actually offering the slaughter quest in question is one Archduke Thjazi, found in the largest castle in Jotunheim.”

“…Meaning the replacement was already there from the start…”

So if Thrymheim ascended to Alne, this Thjazi guy would probably come up and assume the throne above as the true last boss. I couldn’t help but feel that Cardinal was actually trying to have the city destroyed and the Alne Highlands conquered, but I had no intention of giving up now. Not because I wanted Excalibur that badly but because I owed it to our friend Tonky. And if I happened to get a legendary sword out of the deal, I wasn’t going to complain…

Meanwhile, the vibrations running through the castle were getting fiercer. At times there was a palpable shift in speed, making it clear that the palace was carving its way through the soil of Jotunheim. I held my breath and practically fell down the spiral staircase, I was running so fast.

“Papa, the exit is in five seconds!”

“Okay!” I shouted, racing pell-mell for the bright light coming into view.

It was an octahedral space carved into the ice—in other words, like two pyramids placed base to base. Essentially, it was a burial chamber.

The walls were very thin, such that the lower parts of them offered a clear view of the map of Jotunheim below. Around us was a fall of rocks and crystals coming loose from the ceiling of the cave. The spiral staircase went through the center of the burial chamber and down to the deepest point.

And at the end, a deep, pure gleam of golden light.

It was the very same light I’d seen with Leafa when we first rode Tonky up to escape from Jotunheim, twinkling away at the base of the inverted pyramid of ice. After an entire year, I’d finally come to it.

The staircase ended at last, and the seven of us filed down to form a semicircle around it.

At the center of the circular floor was an ice pedestal about twenty inches to a side. Something small seemed to be trapped in the middle. When I looked closer, I realized it was a fine, soft-looking tree root. Countless delicate little fibers wound around each other, forming one thick root.

But after a point, the two-inch-wide root was cleanly severed. The cause of the cut was a thin, sharp blade detailed with delicate runes—a sword. The shining golden sword stretched straight upward, such that half of it was exposed out of the ice pedestal. It had a finely shaped knuckle guard and a hilt of smooth black leather. A large rainbow gemstone shone on the pommel.

I had once seen a sword exactly like this. In fact, I had held it myself.

The man who treated ALO like a tool for his own ambitions had tried to generate it using GM privileges to cut me apart. But those privileges had already transferred to me, so I created the sword instead and tossed it to him so we could finish our fight.

At the time, creating the world’s strongest sword with a single command filled me with revulsion. I felt like I could never undo that action unless I someday sought that blade through the proper means. Yes, it might largely have been through coincidence, but the time had finally come.

…Sorry about the wait, I silently told the sword, and took a step forward to grab the hilt of the legendary blade, the Holy Sword Excalibur.

“…!!”

I tugged at it with all of my strength.

But the sword was totally immobile, as if fused with the pedestal—with the very pyramid castle itself. I got a two-handed grip, braced my feet against the ground, and heaved with all of my body.

“Hrng…gah…!!”

The result was the same. A nasty chill trickled down my back.

Unlike SAO and GGO, numerical stats like strength and agility weren’t displayed in ALO. The requirements for equipping any weapon or armor were vague, no more detailed than ambiguous stages like “easy to use,” to “a little tricky,” to “not really under control,” to “difficult even to lift.” So more than a few players wound up with great weapons that were clearly too heavy for them but, too stubborn to give up, they kept using their overweight gear and ultimately suffered as a result.

But given that it was a game and there had to be numbers underpinning everything, that meant they were simply hidden stats. Basic values determined by race and body size could be affected and pushed in different directions by skill boosts, magical gear bonuses, support magic, and so on. Looking just at base stats, a salamander like Klein would be a bit higher than a spriggan like me.

But as he used a katana and relied on sharpness and accuracy in his cuts, he leaned toward agility effects with his skills and gear. And since I liked using heavy swords, most of my adjustments affected my strength. As a result, out of the seven of us, I most certainly had the highest strength. Meaning that if I couldn’t get the sword to budge, no one else would be able to pull it free. It was so obvious that nobody even offered to try.

Instead there came a voice from behind.

“Keep trying, Kirito!”

It was Asuna. Liz piped up with a “You’re almost there!” Instantly, Leafa, Silica, and Klein joined in with their own cheers.

Sinon yelled, “Show me your spirit!” Yui cried, “Come on, Papa,” with as much volume as she could muster, and Pina howled, “Krurururu!”

As I was the one who recruited this party in the first place, I wasn’t going to stop now. I had as much statistical buff as I could get, so the rest was down to enthusiasm and willpower. I had to believe that my stats weren’t numerically insufficient; I just had to unlock the right amount with force and timing. The only answer was to pull with all of my muscle—all of my mental force of will.

My vision began to fade into white, lights flashed in front of my eyes, and I started to wonder if I’d soon cause the AmuSphere to auto-disconnect me due to abnormal brain patterns, when—

Something cracked. I felt a faint vibration in my hands.

“Ah!” someone shouted.

A powerful light began surging through the pedestal at my feet, blotting out my vision with gold.

Next, a crashing deeper and more tremendous than any sound effect I’d ever heard pierced my ears. My body stretched backward, and amid shards of ice that shot in all directions, the sword in my right hand traced a brilliant golden arc in the air.

My six companions reached out to steady me as my body flew backward. I looked up, struggling with the tremendous weight of the sword, and met their downward glances. Their mouths twisted and broke into smiles, ready to unleash raucous cheers—if it weren’t for what happened an instant later.

The little tree root was freed from the ice pedestal. It rose up into the air and began to stretch, to grow. The fine little hairs spread downward before my eyes. A fresh growth emerged from the severed end of the root, racing directly upward.

A powerful roar was approaching from above. I looked up to see that something was rushing down through the hole we’d come from, disintegrating the spiral staircase as it went. It was more roots. The roots of the World Tree that were holding Thrymheim in place.

The thick roots tore through the chamber to touch the much smaller one freed from the pedestal. They wound together and fused.

Then, as if all the shaking we’d felt so far was just a precursor, a true shock wave rippled through Thrymheim.

“Wh-whoa! It…it’s gonna split apart!” Klein roared, and we all grabbed hold of one another as a million tiny cracks spread through the ice walls around us.

There was a series of earsplitting explosions. Pieces of the thick ice walls as large as a horse carriage broke free left and right, plummeting downward toward the Great Void below.

“Thrymheim itself is collapsing! We must escape, Papa!” Yui bleated overhead. I looked to my right at Asuna, and she looked back.

Together we chorused, “But there’s no staircase!”

The spiral staircase we descended into the chamber had just been destroyed without a trace by the onslaught of the massive roots of the World Tree. And even if we raced at top speed back the way we came, the best we could do was return to that open terrace.

“What about clinging to the roots?” Sinon asked, keeping cool despite the chaos. She looked up and shrugged. “Actually…never mind.”

The roots affixed into the soil above stretched down halfway through the chamber, but even the little capillary roots closest to the circular disc we were standing on were a good thirty feet away. We couldn’t jump that far.

“Hey, World Tree! This isn’t very thoughtful of you!” Lisbeth shouted, brandishing a fist upward, but she was talking to a tree. What was it going to do, say sorry?

“Awwright…Time to check out the great Klein’s Olympic medal–winning high-jumping skills!”

The samurai hopped to his feet and got a running start—but the circular platform wasn’t even twenty feet across.

“No, you idiot, don’t—”

But I couldn’t stop him. Klein launched himself into a beautiful Fosbury flop of about seven feet high. Given the meager running start he had, it was actually quite impressive, but still far short of the roots. He traced a hard parabola in the air and crashed into the center of the floor.

The shock of that impact—or so we all believed—caused a fresh series of cracks to spider through the walls. The bottom of the chamber, the very bottom tip of Thrymheim, separated from the rest of the palace at last.

“K-Klein, you idiot!” cursed Silica, who hated roller coasters, and seven players, one pixie, and one pet entered free fall atop a small circular cylinder of ice.

If it were a slapstick manga, we could all sit down and enjoy a cup of tea during the scene.

But falling from heights in a VRMMO was actually quite terrifying. Sure, we got to fly among the clouds in Alfheim, but that was thanks to our trusty wings. A player in a flightless situation, such as a dungeon, would get quite the scare from a jump of even fifteen feet. Even I didn’t like to do them.

So the seven of us all clung to the circle of ice, screaming for all we were worth.

In the air around us, other massive chunks of ice that came loose at the same time as us were colliding violently and bursting into smaller pieces. Up above, massive Thrymheim seemed to be breaking into pieces, each crack freeing more of the World Tree’s roots to swing loose.

At last, I hesitantly peered over the edge of the circle to what lay below.

Three thousand feet below—less than that by now—loomed the surface of Jotunheim, the Great Void yawning wide. The disc we were riding on was heading straight for the center of the hole.

“I wonder what’s down there,” Sinon wondered.

“M-m-maybe it’s like Urd said, and it g-g-goes down to N-Niflheim!” I managed to respond.

“I hope it’s not too cold…”

“I-I-I bet it’s absolutely f-freezing! It’s the h-home of the f-f-frost giants!”

The conversation gave me a bit of willpower at last, so with Excalibur still clutched in my hands, I turned left to ask Leafa, “H-h-how goes the slaughter q-quest?”

The sylph girl, her ponytail sticking straight upward with the acceleration of the fall, instantly stopped screaming—I suspected she might have been shrieking with delight—and glanced at the medallion around her neck.

“Oh…w-we made it in time, Big Brother! There’s still one light left! Oh, good…”

She beamed wholeheartedly, spreading her arms wide to hug me, and I rubbed her head.

Since the World Tree was regaining its former state, that meant that Queen Urd and her kindred would be regaining their power, and the humanoid Deviant Gods would no longer hunt them. That would mean that even if we fell into the Great Void and died partway or plunged all the way down to Niflheim, our sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.

The only worry on my mind was Excalibur, held tight in my hands. The big question was if I could actually earn the right to own the sword if I hadn’t yet completed the quest. I probably needed to meet up with Urd alive and ensure that the quest completion switch was flipped.

Behind Leafa’s back, I tried to open my window and stash Excalibur inside anyway. As I suspected, the sword resisted my attempt to stick it into the menu.

Hey, I got the sword in my hands legitimately. That’s all that matters. If I don’t get to keep it, well, this gaudy, golden legendary look isn’t really my style to begin with, I told myself, a weak sour-grapes defense.

Suddenly, Leafa pulled back from her grip around my neck.

“…I heard something.”

“Huh…?”

I put all of my concentration into listening, but all I heard was the rushing of the wind. The ground level was much closer now. We had maybe sixty seconds at best before we smashed—er, plummeted—into the Void.

“There it was again!” she cried, and managed to carefully stand up on the falling disc.

“H-hey, be caref…” I started to shout, when I heard it.

It sounded like a distant wailing: Kwooo…

I looked around with a start. Beyond the falling chunks of ice around us, in the distant southern sky, a small white light was approaching. As it swung closer, I made out a fishlike body, four pairs of wings, and a long nose.

“Tonkyyyyy!” Leafa called, her hands around her mouth. It wailed in response again. That sealed it. It was Tonky, the flying Deviant God who delivered us to the entrance of Thrymheim. Now it seemed all too obvious: He gave us a ride there, so it made sense he would pick us up. If only he would hurry…

“Th-this way, this way!” Liz cried, and Asuna waved, too. Silica timidly looked up from Pina’s feathers, where her face had been buried, and Sinon swung her tail in annoyance.

Still sprawled out in the same position that he had landed from his ultra-high-jump, Klein finally looked up, grinned, and gave a thumbs-up.

“Heh heh…I knew this would happen…Knew that guy would come and save us at the last second…”

Liar! I thought furiously, and I suspected everyone else joined me on that one. In fact, we’d all forgotten about him. The dutiful, heroic Deviant God glided closer and closer, with plenty of time to scoop all of us up before we crashed.

Because of all the falling ice around the disc, Tonky couldn’t sidle up directly next to us; instead, he pulled into a hover about five yards away. But even a heavily weighted player could make that jump.

Leafa was the first to effortlessly leap over onto Tonky’s back, practically humming as she did so. She held out both hands toward us and shouted, “Silica!”

Silica nodded, clutched Pina’s legs with both hands, and made an awkward running start before she jumped. Pina was left essentially dangling Silica below her, and she flapped her wings to boost the airborne time. That was a privilege only a tamer with a flying pet could boast. She flew over and landed safely in Leafa’s arms.

Next to leap was Lisbeth, with a bold “Traaah!” and Asuna following with a graceful long jump. Sinon even showed off with a double spin before landing near Tonky’s tail.

Klein looked at me nervously and I waved him onward.

“Awwright, get ready to see my beautiful—” he started, preparing his timing. I whacked him on the back. The jump at the end of his flailing head start was coming up a bit short, but Tonky reached out his trunk and caught Klein in midair.

“Wh-whoaaaa?! Ohmygod!!” he screamed.

I ignored him and looked down below. Beyond the translucent disc of ice, the Great Void threatened to swallow my entire view. I looked forward, started a quick run—then came to a horrifying realization.

I couldn’t jump.

Or to be precise, I couldn’t jump five yards with the tremendous weight of the Holy Sword Excalibur clenched in my arms. It felt like my boots were biting into the ice just standing here.

Over on Tonky’s back, everyone else seemed to pick up on my concern.

“Kirito!” came their impassioned cries. My head downcast, I grappled with a powerful, momentary doubt.

I had two choices—fall to my death holding Excalibur or discard it and live. Was this five-yard gap a test of my greed and fixation as a player, really just a coincidence? Or was it a trap laid by the Cardinal System…?

“Papa…” Yui murmured worriedly above my head. I nodded back.

“…Damn you, Cardinal!” I swore, grimacing.

The next moment, I cast aside the sword in my hand.

Suddenly, my body felt light as a feather. The golden shine glittered as it spun out of my field of view.

I took a short lead, tensed, and leaped, turning around in midair. For all of its weight, Excalibur fell slowly, like a feather fallen from a phoenix’s wing, glittering into the endless hole.

The moment I landed backward on Tonky, his eight wings spread wide. I felt myself pressing into his back with deceleration. The creature had been falling with the disc so we would remain level, and now it switched to a hover, stopping our fall.

Asuna came over and patted me on the shoulder. “We can go back and get it sometime.”

“I will get a lock on its coordinates!” Yui reassured me.

“Yeah…good idea. I’m sure it’ll be waiting for me somewhere in Niflheim,” I muttered, ready to say a silent farewell to the world’s strongest sword, which I had once held in my hands.

But that was cut short by the blue-haired cait sith who stepped in front of me, pulling her enormous longbow off of her shoulder and nocking a narrow silver arrow.

“Two hundred meters,” she muttered, chanting a quick spell. White light wreathed the arrow.

As we watched in disbelief, the archer/sniper Sinon drew her arrow back.

At a forty-five-degree angle, far below the plummeting Excalibur, she let it fly. The arrow shot off, leaving a strange silver line in the air behind it—Retrieving Arrow, a spell common to archers of any race. It essentially stuck an extremely elastic, sticky thread to the arrow. It was a useful spell, allowing you to retrieve arrows that would normally be lost and pulling distant objects within reach, but the thread threw off the arrow’s arc, and there was no homing ability, so it was only accurate at close range.

Finally realizing what Sinon was intending, I couldn’t help but think, Even you couldn’t…

Even she couldn’t do this. That distance was twice the effective range of the bow Liz crafted for her. And even within range, there were plenty of negative factors: unsteady footing, falling ice, a moving target.

But—but, but, but.

The falling point of golden light and the descending silver thread, as if pulling toward the other, grew closer, closer…

And collided with a little thack.

“Hah!”

Sinon yanked on the magic thread connected to her right hand. The golden light abruptly slowed, then came to a stop and began to ascend. The little point of light steadily grew larger and longer, until it resembled a sword again.

Two seconds later, the legendary weapon that I had just given an eternal farewell stuck right into Sinon’s palm.

“Wow, it’s heavy,” the cait sith grunted, using both hands to secure it before turning to the group.

“S…S…S…”

Seven voices chimed in perfect unison.

“Sinon’s so freakin’ cool!”

She responded to the group’s adulation with a twitch of her triangular ears, as her hands were full with the sword, then looked at me last and gave a slight shrug.

“Don’t look so pathetic. You can have it.”

Apparently I’d had a giant message reading Give it to me! in magic marker on my forehead. I looked off in an attempt at innocence, but Sinon grunted, holding out the sword.

I felt a slight bit of déjà vu. Two weeks earlier, Sinon had given me something with the exact same gesture at the end of the battle-royale final round of the Bullet of Bullets tournament in GGO.

I had taken it automatically, a plasma grenade that would wipe out all of my HP in one blast, and the two of us had held it between us so we could die together—a bit of an ominous end, I had to admit. I was too scared to look up how the rest of the Net had reacted to that scene.

But this time, the sword wasn’t going to explode. I hoped.

“Th…thanks,” I said, holding out my hands to accept the sword—which was pulled back at the last second.

“But promise me one thing first.”

And with a dazzling smile, the biggest she’d worn since coming to ALO, the blue-haired cait sith dropped a bomb ten times more destructive than that plasma grenade.

“Every time you draw this sword, think of me.”

Crackle.

The air went icy cold, and the golden blade Excalibur passed from Sinon’s hands to mine. But the virtual sweat running down my back was so vivid, I didn’t even feel its unearthly weight.

“Ooh, it’s tough being a real playe—”

Klein started to say unhelpfully, but I cut him off with a stomp on his foot and tried to keep my voice as calm as possible.

“…Yes, I will think of you, and be grateful. Thank you. Your aim was simply superb.”

“You’re welcome,” Sinon replied with a saucy wink, then turned and moved in the direction of Tonky’s tail. She pulled out a peppermint stem from her quiver, stuck it in her mouth, and sucked on it. Sinon was trying to pull off the super-cool, hotshot sniper aloofness, but I didn’t miss the trembling in the tip of her tail. That was the sign she was holding in belly laughter. She got one over on me! I groaned, but there was nothing to be done about the suspicious glances from the women now.

To my surprise, the first one to come to my aid this time was Tonky.

“Kwoooo…” he trumpeted, drawing out the sound and powerfully flapping his eight wings to ascend. I looked up and saw what was probably the last and biggest spectacle of the entire quest commencing before my eyes.

Thrymheim palace, jammed deep into the ceiling of the cavernous realm of Jotunheim, was beginning to fall.

The bottom part had crumbled without a trace, but the rest of the structure was still intact. We’d always assumed it was an upside-down pyramid, but there had been an identical mass of the same size hidden above it. In total, Thrymheim was a pyramidal octahedron, just like the chamber that contained Excalibur.

The length of each side was exactly three hundred meters. Which meant the distance from top point to bottom point was the same as the diagonal of a square: 300 times √2 made 424.26 meters. The special viewing deck of the Tokyo Skytree was 450 meters high, so it was nearly that size. I was glad that we didn’t need to travel up through the dungeon before going back down.

As my brain was busy with those pointless calculations, the palace of ice began to fall with a cracking like thunder. As the wind pressure hit it, the ice began to crumble faster. Glacier-size crevasses began to form up and down the structure, breaking it into several large chunks.

“…So we got to go on one little adventure in that dungeon, and now it’s gone forever…” Liz murmured. Silica clutched Pina in her arms and chimed in.

“It’s a bit of a shame, isn’t it? There were plenty of rooms we didn’t even go in…”

“Our mapping percentage was only 37.2 percent,” Yui added sadly from atop my head.

“Yeah, it’s a real waste…But I had a lotta fun,” Klein said gravely, hands on his hips. Then he thought of something and swiveled around, and in an odd voice, he asked, “Hey, Leafa. So, erm…that Freyja’s still a real goddess somewhere, right? One that ain’t that Thor guy in disguise?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Leafa said.

He smirked. “Ah, great. So if I go around lookin’, I might just meet her someday.”

“…Maybe you will.”

It was an act of kindness on Leafa’s part that she didn’t point out that Asgard, realm of the gods, did not exist in ALO. I thought back to King Thrym’s final words before Thor finished him off for good. He seemed to be saying something about the Aesir being the true…something. What was it?

But that fragment of memory was wiped out by the dying wail of Thrymheim, the deafening crash of its utter annihilation at last.

The tremendous icebergs falling through the sky passed so near to Tonky that I practically could have reached out to touch them. They tumbled down into the Great Void below and vanished into endless darkness.

…Actually, that wasn’t quite right.

I could see some kind of light at the bottom of the hole. A flash of wavering blue, glimmering just like…water. It was the surface of water.

From the depths of the seemingly endless pit came a different kind of rumbling as a mass of water swelled up higher and higher. The tremendous deluge of ice was swallowed by the liquid, melting and adding to the water level.

“Oh…up above!” Sinon motioned, mint stem still poking out of the corner of her mouth.

Following her lead, I looked upward, to be met by yet another astonishing sight.

With the collapse of Thrymheim, the roots of the World Tree shriveled into the ceiling of Jotunheim were freed at last, thickening and writhing like massive animals. They tangled together and stretched downward, in search of something. It was like a giant had just dropped a mass of wooden stakes. As we watched in silence, the roots reached down into the pure water surface that filled the former Great Void, sending huge concentric waves rippling outward. They spread across the vast lake like a net, until they splashed against its shores.

It was the same sight as Queen Urd had shown us. The roots of the World Tree, now thick enough that they looked like an extension of its massive trunk, finally stopped moving and seemed to be emitting powerful waves of some kind. They felt like pure adulation, the rejoicing of a desert wanderer who arrives at the oasis at last.

“Look…there are buds coming from the roots,” Asuna whispered. Indeed, all over the sprawling roots, tiny buds were popping up and sprouting green leaves—though from this distance, it was clear that each were in fact huge trees of their own.

A breeze picked up.

Not the bone-chilling rattle that had always swept through Jotunheim. A warm, gentle wafting of spring. At the same time, the light filling the realm grew several times brighter. I looked up again to see that the dim crystals embedded into the ceiling of the cave were each shining as powerfully as a tiny sun.

Kissed by the breeze and the light, the snow choking the ground and thick ice covering the brooks and rivers began to melt before our eyes, replaced by fresh green buds on the damp black earth. The Deviant God fortresses and castles here and there were quickly covered in greenery and turned into ruins.

“Kwoooooh…”

Tonky suddenly spread his eight wings and wide ears, lifting his lengthy nose for a long, loud trumpeting.

Seconds later, similar responses echoed back from every direction. Emerging from the springs, rivers, and the massive lake in the center of the world were more jellyphants, like giant dumplings with tentacles. And that wasn’t all. Many-legged crocodiles, two-headed leopards—a variety of animal-type Deviant Gods were emerging from the ground and water to roam the land again.

In fact, amid the beautiful greenery, they were no longer “Deviant Gods” at all. They were simply pleasant, gentle inhabitants of the land, soaking in the breeze, the flora, and the sunlight. Even if they were a bit…bigger than most. No matter how hard I looked, there was no sign of any humanoid Deviant Gods to torment them.

Tonky had lowered himself enough that here and there were tiny raid parties visible below, standing still in shock. They had to be absolutely stunned. After hours of frantic work for Archduke Thjazi on his slaughter quest, just before they were about to succeed, their ally giants vanished and the environment around them underwent a dramatic change. No wonder they were shocked.

As Klein had said before we started, we might need to explain what exactly happened to an MMO Tomorrow reporter for anyone to understand the full story, but he could fulfill that role and soak in the glory, I decided.

Leafa sat down promptly and began to brush the silky white fur on Tonky’s broad back, whispering, “…I’m glad. I’m so glad for you, Tonky. Look at all of those friends. There…and there…and there…All around us.”

Even antisocial me had trouble keeping down a rise of emotion at seeing the large tears dripping down her cheeks. Silica joined in and embraced Leafa, heaving with sobs, as Asuna and Liz wiped their eyes. Klein, arms folded, turned away so that no one could see his face, and even Sinon seemed to be blinking rapidly.

Lastly, Yui leaped off of my head and landed on Asuna’s shoulder to bury her face into the long blue hair. For some reason, she didn’t like my seeing her cry recently. I wondered whom she got that habit from…

And then I heard a voice.

“You have succeeded gloriously.”

I faced forward with a start.

Beyond Tonky’s large head was a floating figure amid a backdrop of golden light.

It hadn’t even been two hours since I last saw it, but the sight was practically nostalgic for me. It was none other than the ten-foot-tall blond bombshell, Urd, queen of the lake, the source of our quest.

But unlike last time, where she was faint and translucent, now she was clearly full-bodied and real. She must have escaped from the spring that she’d been hiding in to keep away from Thrym’s grasp. The pearly scales on her limbs, the golden hair that ended in tentacle tips, and the light green robe that covered her body were all glittering in the fresh new light.

Her mysterious turquoise eyes narrowed serenely, Urd spoke again.

“With the removal of Excalibur, blade that cuts all steel and wood, the spirit root severed from Yggdrasil has returned to its mother tree. The tree’s blessing fills the land again, and Jotunheim has regained its proper form. This is all thanks to you.”

“Aww…shucks. If it weren’t for Thor, I doubt we’d have ever beaten Thrym,” I mumbled, and Urd nodded.

“I felt the lightning god’s power as well. But…be cautious, fairies. The Aesir may be the enemies of the frost giants, but that does not make them your friends…”

“Um…Thrym was trying to say something like that himself. What does that…?” Leafa asked, wiping her tears away as she got to her feet. But the Cardinal System didn’t seem to understand the vague question, and Urd silently ignored it, rising slightly.

“My sisters wish to thank you as well.”

Urd’s right side rippled like water, and a figure emerged.

It was slightly smaller than her older sister—but still tall enough to tower over us. Her hair was blond as well, but a bit shorter than Urd’s. Her robe was a deep blue. If Urd’s features were “regal,” hers were “refined.”

“My name is Verdandi. Thank you, fairy warriors. It is like a dream to witness Jotunheim green and verdant once again…” she whispered blissfully. Verdandi waved a willowy hand, and a wave of items and sacks of yrd fell before our eyes, flowing into our temporary item storage. As a party of seven, we had plenty of room, but I was starting to worry about hitting even that limit.

Then, on Urd’s left side, a little whirlwind burst into life, bringing with it a third silhouette.

This one was in full armor. Long wings stretched from either side of her helmet and boots. Her blond hair was tied tight, hanging on either side of her beautiful, bold face.

And this third sister had a very striking feature of her own. She was human—er, fairy—sized. Compared to Urd, the eldest, she was not even half as large. Klein’s throat made a strange glumph sound.

“My name is Skuld! You have my thanks, warriors!”

Her clear, clipped voice rang out, and she swung her arm in turn. There was another treasure-fall of loot. A warning about imminent space shortage began to blink in my message area on the right side of my view.

The two younger sisters backed away, and Urd strode forward again. If she gave us a similar windfall, we would absolutely run out of space. If that happened, the leftover items would be materialized as objects, to pile up on Tonky’s back. But, for better or for worse, Urd merely smiled at us.

“And I shall grant you that blade. Be careful not to hurl it into Urd’s Spring.”

“N-no, I won’t,” I replied, all childlike obedience.

The legendary blade Excalibur, which I’d been clutching in my hands all this time, vanished. It was now in my inventory, of course. I wasn’t childish enough to scream and holler in joy, so I kept my exultation to a single pump of a fist.

The three women floated to a distance and intoned in unison.

“Thank you, fairies. May we meet again.”

In the center of my vision, a system message in an exotic font appeared. When the notice that we had completed the quest faded, the three spun around and made to leave.

Before they could go, Klein raced up front and screamed, “S-S-Skuld! How can I get in touch with you?!”

What happened to you and Freyja?! An NPC isn’t going to give you her e-mail address!!

Unable to decide whether to hit him with the former or the latter, I froze in place. Only…

My goodness.

The two elder sisters vanished abruptly, but the youngest, Skuld, turned around with what almost looked like an expression of amusement and waved. Something shining flew through the air and landed in Klein’s hand.

Then the warrior goddess did indeed disappear, leaving only silence and a faint breeze behind.

Eventually Liz shook her head and muttered, “Klein, at this very moment, you have my utmost respect.”

I agreed. I just had to agree.

In any case…

Our grand quest, starting spontaneously on the morning of December 28th, 2025, ended just like that, shortly after noon.

“…Hey, you feel like having a party-slash-year-end celebration?” I suggested.

Looking tired, Asuna smiled back at me and said, “I’m in.”

“Me, too!” said Yui on her shoulder, thrusting her tiny hand into the air.