6

I wasn’t sure whether to hold our spontaneous celebration in the forest cabin on the twenty-second floor of New Aincrad or in a real-life location.

In ALO, we had the absolute participation of Yui, who played a huge role in our success. But for a week starting from the 29th of December, Asuna would be at her family’s Kyoto home, so if we missed today, I wouldn’t see her again until next year.

Recognizing this, our “daughter,” Yui, suggested it be held IRL, and so our year-end party was slated for Dicey Café at three o’clock in the Okachimachi neighborhood. After we waved farewell to Tonky at the landing of the hanging staircase, we raced up the long stairway to the city of Alne, which was still as lively as when we started the quest—they’d apparently felt some shaking when Thrymheim began ascending. A quick trip to the inn, and we all logged out.

As soon as I woke up on my bed, I called Agil with the story. He grumbled about not having enough food on short notice, but he said he would have his famous spare ribs and baked beans ready by then in ample supply. The man was a model business owner.

The forecast called for snow in the evening, so Suguha and I took the train into the city rather than my motorcycle. We had big luggage to bring this time, so my rickety old 125cc and its cramped trunk wouldn’t do.

Tokyo residents like Klein often treated Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture like the ends of the earth, but if you got on an express train, it took less than an hour to reach Okachimachi. By the time we opened the doors of Dicey Café just after two, only Sinon was there, and she lived practically down the street.

After greeting the owner, who was busy cooking the meal, I got out the hard case I’d brought along. It contained four cameras with moving lenses and a notepad PC control station.

“What is that?” Sinon asked curiously. She and Suguha helped me set up the cameras in four different locations around the room. They were ordinary webcams with onboard mics that we’d upgraded with high-capacity batteries and Wi-Fi connections, so four of them were enough to cover just about all of the small room.

Once all the cameras were talking to the notepad and working properly, I connected to my high-spec desktop back home over the Internet and put on a small headset.

“How is it, Yui?”

“…I can see. I can see and hear everything, Papa!” came Yui’s clear voice through both the earbud in my ear and the notepad’s speaker.

“Okay, try some slow movement.”

“Sure!” she piped up, and the nearest camera’s small lens began to move.

Yui would have a makeshift 3D model of Dicey Café in real time now, which she could fly inside like a pixie. The picture quality was poor and the system slow to react, but compared to the passive view she’d gotten from my cell phone camera before, this was a much more liberating glimpse into the real world for her.

“…I see. So those cameras and mics are kind of like Yui’s own inputs…her sensory organs,” Sinon said.

It was Suguha, not me, who responded. “Yes. At school, Big Brother’s in the mecha…mechaton…”

“Mechatronics,” I corrected.

“That-nics elective course. He says he built them for class credit, but it’s really just for Yui.”

“I keep ordering more features from him!”

The three of us laughed. I took a sip of caustic ginger ale and argued, “Th-that’s not all! If I can shrink the camera down and mount it on a shoulder or head, then we can take the machine anywhere…”

“Yeah, and that’s for Yui, too, I’m saying!”

I had no rebuttal to that.

But the “AV Interactive Communications Probe,” as we temporarily called it, was far from complete. For Yui to be able to sense the real world just like the virtual world, we needed total autonomous movement of cameras and mics, and we were way short on sensors. Ideally, this automatic terminal would be humanoid in shape. But that was impossible with a mere high school’s resources, so I was hoping that some highly aggressive tech company built a beautiful girl robot soon…

While I was lost in my purely altruistic daydreams, Asuna, Klein, Liz, and Silica joined the group, and two tables were pushed together to hold all the food and drink. Last came an enormous plate of glistening spare ribs, to thunderous applause for the cook. Agil took off his apron to sit down, and we poured glasses of champagne both real and nonalcoholic.

“To earning Excalibur and Mjolnir! So long, 2025! Cheers!” I toasted briefly, and everyone joined in.

“…You know, I’ve been wondering,” Sinon prompted, sitting in the seat to my right. It was an hour and a half later, and the feast had been totally picked clean. “Why is it Excalibur?”

“Huh? What do you mean?” I asked, not understanding her question. Sinon spun her fork in her fingers and explained.

“Normally in fantasy novels and manga and stuff, we Japanese usually pronounce it more like ‘caliber.’ Excaliber. But in the game, it’s pronounced Excalibur.”

“Oh, that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Oooh. You read those books, Sinon?” Suguha asked, perking up.

Sinon smiled shyly. “I practically owned the library in middle school. I read a couple books about the legend of King Arthur, but I’m pretty sure they all phoneticized it ‘caliber.’”

“Hmm. Maybe the designer who put the item into ALO just called it that out of personal taste or a whim…” I offered without any real proof. At my left, Asuna smirked.

“I’m pretty sure that there were several more names in the original legend. Remember how in the quest, there was a fake version called Caliburn? Well, that was one of the real names in that list, I’m pretty sure.”

The speaker on the table suddenly piped up with Yui’s officious voice.

“The main variations seen most often are Caledfwlch, Caliburnus, Calesvol, Collbrande, Caliburn, and Escalibor, depending on the language.”

“Sheesh, there are that many?” I marveled. In that case, the phonetic difference between “caliber” and “calibur” seemed like simple margin of error.

Sinon continued. “Well, it doesn’t mean much…It just struck me as interesting, since ‘caliber’ has a very specific meaning to me.”

“Huh? What’s that?”

“Caliber is the English word for a bullet’s size. My Hecate II is a ‘fifty caliber’ because its rounds are .50 inches wide. I think the English spelling is different from Excalibur, though.”

She paused momentarily, then looked at me.

“…It can also refer to a person’s quality of character. That’s the source of the saying, ‘a man of high caliber.’”

“Ooh, I need to remember that,” Suguha noted. Sinon chuckled and said it probably wouldn’t come up on any tests.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, Lisbeth spoke up at last with a smirk and said, “Then I guess they needed to make sure whoever owned Excalibur had the proper caliber. From what I’ve heard on the grapevine, a certain someone made quite a killing with a short-term job recently…”

“Urk…”

It was just yesterday that Kikuoka wired me the payment for assisting in the investigation of the Death Gun incident. But I’d already set aside most of it for better parts for Yui’s desktop machine and a nanocarbon-fiber shinai for Suguha’s kendo, so the remaining amount was already quite depressing.

But if I backed down now, that would only bring my caliber into question. I puffed out my chest and announced, “I-I intended to pay for today’s party all along, of course.”

Cheers erupted from all around, and Klein emitted an earsplitting whistle. As I raised my hand in response to the crowd, I considered something.

If there was one thing I’d learned about human potential throughout my experiences in the three worlds of SAO, ALO, and GGO, it was that “a single man cannot support anything on his own.”

In each world, I’d been brought to my knees on many occasions and had only been able to continue walking thanks to the help of others. Today’s spontaneous adventure was the perfect example of that.

So I was certain that my caliber—our caliber—was only as wide as when the entire group held hands in a circle and stretched as far as we could.

I would not use that golden sword for just my own gain.

With that oath in mind, I reached down for my glass on the table to lead another toast.