4

When I returned to the academy, savoring the harmonious aftertaste of melting honey and butter, Eugeo split off to visit Golgorosso, while I headed for the primary trainee dorm’s office. I needed to apply to Miss Azurica to bring in the sword as a personal item.

Bringing any blade three feet long into a real-world school would get you not only scolded by the teacher but possibly arrested. Still, given that the goal of this virtual academy was swordsmanship, students were allowed to possess their own personal weapon.

The number was limited to one, because each sword would periodically absorb trace amounts of sacred power—of spatial resources. In practice, this meant that a weapon damaged in a duel, once polished and returned to its sheath, would gradually regain life—in other words, suck sacred power out of the air. If a blade went so dull that it couldn’t automatically repair itself, it needed the help of a professional sharpener. If the damage was bad enough to break or chip the weapon, only a blacksmith could repair it.

If there were no limits on weapon possession, and a particularly obsessed student brought in a hundred, the buildup would cause sacred-power anomalies around the room. So theory said that one was the only safe number.

Azurica wasn’t working the counter, due to it being a day of rest, but she had left the office door open while she did paperwork. Her blue-gray eyes looked up in surprise when I rapped on the door.

“What is it, Primary Trainee Kirito?”

“Pardon me, ma’am. I’ve come to get permission to bring in a personal sword,” I said with a little bow, stepping through the doorway. Along the walls were a number of shelves stuffed with leather-bound files, a desk, and a single chair. In other words, this one woman managed the primary trainee dorm and its 120 students entirely.

She was a bit confused by my request but got up and immediately went straight to a specific file in the wall of shelves. She pulled a piece of paper out of it and slid it over to me.

“Please fill out the necessary information.”

“Er, of course.”

I glanced down in apprehension, but all the form wanted was name, student number, and sword priority. Relieved that it didn’t have a field for “parent/guardian” or anything like that, I put down the name Kirito and the number 7—then came to a stop. Now that I thought of it, I’d even gone so far as to test out the sword, and yet I had never once opened its window.

Miss Azurica watched as I lowered the cloth bundle from my back onto the table and undid the rope tying it up. I could open the window just with the hilt exposed, so I peeled back a corner of the cloth.

“…!”

There was a sharp intake of breath, and I looked up. The normally calm and frank Miss Azurica was staring, wide-eyed.

“Umm…is something wrong?” I asked. She blinked a few times, then shook her head. She did not elaborate any further, so I returned to the sword, made the two-fingered motion command, and tapped the pommel. The properties window appeared with a little bell chime.

It read: Class 46.

That was actually one class higher than the divine Blue Rose Sword. No wonder it was so heavy. I wrote down the number on the third line, returned the cloth, and handed her the completed form.

Azurica’s gaze slid from the sword to the paper. She stared at the information; she already knew my name and number, so it had to be that priority number she was looking at.

I began to get nervous, wondering if perhaps there was an upper limit to the object priority of any weapon being brought into the dorm, when…

“Trainee Kirito.”

“Y-yes?”

“Do you have…that sword’s memory…?”

She stopped there, closed her eyes for a bit, then opened them. She was the normal, stern dorm manager again.

“…Never mind. Your form has been received. As I hardly need mention, use of actual swords is limited to private training. It is not to be used in tests or group practice under any circumstances. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am!” I replied. As I put the black sword’s package over my back again, I wondered if I should ask about her unfinished comment. Then I considered that she wasn’t likely to give me an answer, so I made the knight’s salute and left the office.

As I walked back toward the front entrance, my mind pored over those words.

That sword’s…memory.

It was a strange phrase. True, the sword and everything else in this world was stored in a format called mnemonic visual data. But that was a technology invented by Rath in the real world, and nobody who lived in the Underworld would be aware of it.

So Miss Azurica’s comment was more of a literal one. That this black blade held some kind of memory.

But what did that actually mean? What did she see in this black sword…?

I left the building, thoughts and questions swirling in my head, as the bell tower overhead rang out the three o’clock melody. The bells here were far deeper and louder than those in Rulid, but the tune itself was exactly the same.

My meeting with Liena was at five.

Based on my test swing at Sadore’s shop, the new sword felt perfectly natural to me—so familiar that it might as well have been my sword from the old SAO coming back. But I still needed to confirm that I could actually pull off the high-level sword skills of the Aincrad style first.

On the day of rest, which was the only day of the week we were allowed to leave the academy, most of the Centoria-based students went back home, while the few from farther north went around to visit various spots in the city, leaving the campus rather barren. There was even a small woods and a brook running through the school, creating plenty of places to practice techniques—but I wanted to be absolutely certain that no one would see me. After all, I was about to attempt combination skills, something that no sword school in this entire world possessed.

Why were there sword skills in the Underworld? And why weren’t there any combination skills?

I’d been here for two years now and was no closer to finding the answer to these questions. The only potential theory I had at the moment was that the Rath engineers had made use of The Seed creation package to construct the Underworld…but even that wasn’t a complete explanation.

The freely distributed Seed—a shrunken-down version of the Cardinal system—did not contain sword skills. Out of all the VRMMOs in existence in 2026, the only one with sword skills was ALfheim Online, which contained a full copy of the former SAO server. But there was no way that ALO’s management company, Ymir, was involved with Rath’s experiment.

Anything beyond this point was just baseless speculation. If I wanted to know the truth, I had to get to the top of Central Cathedral and make contact with a system manager.

At any rate, the swordsmen of the Underworld could use sword skills as the ultimate techniques of their respective styles, but they were all single-attack skills like Vertical or Avalanche.

I had a guess as to why this was the case: because there was essentially no battle here. The absolute law of the Taboo Index and the invincible Integrity Knights protected the Underworld. Therefore, all “battle” within its borders came in the form of duels. All they sought was clean, beautiful victory. For centuries, the swordsmen of this world had pursued an ideal form—that of the bold pose from a distance, closing the gap, and finishing with one big, decisive blow.

It also served the purpose of defending against the possibility of spontaneous accidents, perhaps. All the regional dueling tournaments used the “stop-short” method, while the higher events in Centoria were ruled over on the first clean hit. That made it somewhat inevitable that they would avoid any combination attacks that were difficult to stop after the first blow.

Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that fighters like Volo Levantein rose to prominence: blessed with size and strength and absolutely confident in the power of their single strike. If I’d been forbidden from using multipart skills in SAO, I would never have been able to beat players of the same level who used double-handed weapons.

No doubt that was the reason that Sortiliena had been unable to overcome Volo for the past two years.

She wasn’t going to be able to use a multipart attack just because I showed it to her today. Even Eugeo, who hadn’t undergone any training in existing styles before he met me, took months to master the two-part Vertical Arc.

But perhaps I could show her that massive overhead swings were not all there was to swordplay. The Serlut style was similar to my Aincrad style, so if I could help erase her preconception of High-Norkia style being more powerful, she might stand a chance in the graduation match.

I headed east through the campus until I was at the edge of the grounds. The walls around the school were fan-shaped and contained a central school building, main practice hall, library, two trainee dorms and instructor housing, and the elite disciple dorm, with plenty of space to spare after that. There were large gates on the north and south walls, a steep little hill to the west, and a spacious forest to the east, neither of which featured any students on a day off.

I chose the forest anyway, thanks to the ample visual cover, and walked until I found a nice little opening. The short, fine grass was as thick as a soccer pitch, the perfect ground to avoid tripping on. I glanced about me again, making sure there was nothing around except for a few floating butterflies, and reached over my back.

I loosened the cloth by feel and grabbed the exposed hilt, savoring the sensation of the wrapped leather sinking into my palm, and yanked.

The pitch-black longsword caught the sun shining through the branches. As it was carved out of the Gigas Cedar branch, I supposed it was technically a wooden sword. But the reflection of the light off the blade was so sharp and tough that it looked like nothing but metal. One glance was all it took to recognize the high priority of the item fashioned over a very long year by Sadore the master craftsman. Yet no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t see how such an object would contain “memories.”

I decided to save that question for later and took a normal stance, raising the sword with one hand. Unlike my last practice swing, this time I envisioned a technique—Slant, a diagonal slashing sword skill that I’d used countless times before.

After a brief pause and hold, a vivid light-blue glow rippled across the blade. Pushed and guided by unseen hands, I accelerated the effect with my push-off leg and right arm.

Shwa! The slash rocketed through space. A diagonal line quickly erupted and trickled away into the air like heat haze. The force of the gust flattened all the grass in the clearing to one direction.

I watched the trunk of a tree about fifteen feet ahead from my follow-through pose. But while the skill’s effects wore off, no damage appeared on the bark.

That made sense; the range of Slant was maybe eight feet at best. The effect of the move shouldn’t last twice that distance.

But if that was the case…why did the buckler in the shop split, if it was the same distance away? Surely it didn’t naturally reach the end of its life at that very coincidental second. And I did not use a sword skill then. Eugeo claimed the sword had shone…but I didn’t know why.

It just didn’t make sense. This world was full of mysteries.

I sighed, straightened up, collected my breathing, and started the motion for my next skill.

A direct overhead slash. Just before the tip touched the ground, it bounced back upward. That was the two-part skill Vertical Arc. A more powerful gust of wind arose this time, rustling the grass violently.

So far, these were moves I could still achieve with a wooden sword. This time, I shifted my legs, held the blade at my waist, and twisted right.

“…!”

With a silent cry, I slashed horizontally left. The blade stopped straight ahead, as though colliding with something invisible, then leaped up and to the right. A step forward, and then a short-range, high-powered slash. The three-part Savage Fulcrum.

The move left a crimson trail like a closed numeral 4 in the air that quickly trailed away. Satisfied, I continued to the next move, holding my sword directly along the median line, then backswinging up over my head.

High. Low. A connecting forward slash, then a pull all the way over my back for a full-power vertical smash. A blue square floated forward through the air, rotating and spreading apart. That four-part attack had been one of my favorites in SAO, due to its wide range and lack of easy exploits—Vertical Square.

All four sword skills went off without a failure or a single hitch.

That was enough to confirm that the sword was at least the same priority level as Eugeo’s Blue Rose Sword. Of course, I could have anticipated this back in the dorm office the moment I saw it was a class-46 object.

It looked like I would be able to show Liena a higher sword skill. I was momentarily relieved, until a different emotion raised its head.

The Blue Rose Sword could achieve four-part skills, but no matter how hard I tried, five-parters would not work. What about this new sword? If I was going to test that out, this private moment was the time to do it.

I squeezed the handle and slid my right foot forward, pulling the sword back to my left shoulder and imagining power building up inside it.

Something at the root of my bangs itched, like a warning sign. I shrugged it off, trying to focus.

Chik. Chik. I caught sight of orange sparks along the blade out of the corner of my eye.

This was a totally new and less impressive style of sword-skill flash, compared to the usual dazzling light effects. I concentrated on the mental image of the technique and held the preliminary motion. The sparks continued to blink uncertainly.

I was running out of stamina to continue the unstable stance, and when my strength finally reached its peak, I unleashed it.

“Whoa!” I mumbled as the ground trembled under my extended right foot. The sword went from upper left to lower right, and the system assistance should have shot it back up just before bottom dead center—except that instead, it drove straight into the ground.

A tremendous impact ran through my right wrist. Instantly, I recognized that I would suffer serious injury if I tried to force the sword. Instead, I gritted my teeth, turned my body, and pulled straight back on the sword, which was sunk about eight inches into the ground.

There was a terrific, heavy boom, and I toppled backward onto the grass as my body turned.

Didn’t work. What am I missing? Was it my level? The sword’s priority? Perhaps both…?

I lay spread-eagled on the ground, my thoughts racing. Overhead, I saw dirt and grass floating in the air, thrown by the impact of the sword—

And beyond them, a man standing silently at the edge of the clearing.

He was very tall, dressed in a school uniform, though not the academy’s normal gray. His was a pearly-white color with brilliant cobalt-blue lines. The right to color-coordinate one’s uniform was a privilege allowed only to the school’s twelve elite disciples.

Liena’s was a dark, grayish purple. Golgorosso’s was deep green. And this pearl-white with blue accents belonged to none other than first-seat Volo Levantein.

The dull blond, close-cropped hair and steel-blue eyes stared down impassively, clearly belonging to the unquestioned champion of all students at the academy.

As he watched me lie there, a blob of dirt dislodged by my sword’s impact splattered against his pristine white jacket, sending dark flecks out in a circular pattern.

I’d be lying if I said I never considered fleeing the scene.

If this were Aincrad and he was a senior member of the Divine Dragon Alliance guild, I would have scampered off at once. But running after committing an action was the worst possible choice in this world. Crime piled upon crime, certain to eventually grow into a violation of the terrifying Taboo Index.

So a second later, when I recovered, I quickly took a knee and placed my sword on the ground—the sign of absolute deference—and bowed. “Pardon me, Disciple Levantein! Please forgive my rudeness!”

I hadn’t made such an impassioned apology since the time Asuna smacked me in her private room on the sixty-first floor of Aincrad. I held my head down, hoping against hope.

“You are Disciple Serlut’s page, correct?” he said calmly.

I slowly lifted my head and stared into those blue eyes for an instant, then nodded. “Yes. Primary Trainee Kirito, sir.”

“I see,” the disciple said, glancing at the black sword laid atop the grass. In his rich tenor, he continued, “According to school rules, throwing mud upon the uniform of a senior student is a grave offense worthy of disciplinary punishment…”

At that point, I groaned on the inside.

Disciplinary punishment was the term for a privilege only the elite disciples had, a stand-in for instructor authority. In other words, when students accidentally committed minor violations of school rules, disciples were allowed to punish them. On a number of occasions, I’d been commanded to do a hundred swings for the crime of showing up late to Liena’s room.

As for what happened to students who committed serious offenses—such things did not happen in the Underworld. Major violations did not happen by accident, and artificial fluctlights were incapable of intentionally breaking any law or rule. The only danger of that happening was with me, the natural fluctlight—and I’d made it through a year so far without committing any major faults.

Until now. Splattering mud on the top student’s uniform was a critical mistake.

“…However, I am not critical of your dedication to practicing with the sword in secret on our day of rest. Even if such an act is a violation of the academy’s rules.”

Euuugh. Another silent groan.

In fact, he was right. But if I admitted that, it made disciplinary punishment only more likely. I had to at least try some minimal resistance, whether it worked or not.

“N-no, First Seat. This is not practice. I was, er…trying out my new sword. A weapon I had commissioned in District Seven finally arrived today, and I wasn’t able to wait until tomorrow to swing it…”

At that point, I realized something much more important.

How long had the crew-cut blond been watching me? And what was he even doing here in the first place?

I was here in the woods only to practice combination attacks that did not exist in the Underworld’s sword teachings, and that was so I could show them off to Liena in an attempt to help her defeat Volo. Now things were completely backward—he was the one witnessing them first.

The strongest student in the academy smirked faintly, as though he had understood my entire thought process.

“I heard some very enthusiastic shouts for a simple test swing. But all that I witnessed was you striking the ground with that sword. Let’s say that your feet slipped from using an unfamiliar weapon. I will agree that you were not breaking the rules and practicing on the day of rest, as my reasons for being here are similar.”

This both relieved and confused me. “S-similar…you say?”

“I mean that you are not the only one who tries to find a reason to swing his sword on a day of rest,” he said, shapely lips curling into an invincible grin. Volo looked around the clearing I’d chosen for a swing test. “But in truth, I found this place first. I promised my page that he would be allowed to use it after my graduation, so you’ll need to find a new location.”

That explained things for me. He, too, would come up with some non-practice justification to come out here and train on his off days…and I had the sheer bad luck to be using his secret spot right as he was about to show up. No doubt that the pristinely short condition of the grass here was a consequence of him stepping on it every day, resetting its life value.

I made a mental note to find a wilder-looking clearing next time and bowed to him again. “Of course. I will do that, sir. Thank you for your generous understandi—”

“It is too early to be thanking me, Trainee Kirito.”

“S-sir?”

“I said I would overlook your use of the sword on a day of rest. I did not say anything about this.”

My head shot up. He was gesturing with a finger at his uniform breast with a deadly serious expression. At the dark mud stain on the pearl-white fabric.

“B-but, First Seat, you said you weren’t critical of my dedication…”

“Indeed, I am not. So I will not discipline you by commanding you to clean the entire disciples’ dorm or copy a thousand lines of sacred arts.”

Briefly, very briefly, I was relieved.

Then he flicked off some mud and instead commanded, “Primary Trainee Kirito, your discipline shall be a duel with me. Not with wooden swords—you may use that one. I will use this.”

That was when I noticed that hanging at his left side was a real sword, seemingly of quite high priority, with a dull-gold pommel and deep-blue sheath.

“…A…a d-duel…sir?”

“I am referring to training in the form of a match, of course. But this is too cramped a location. The main training hall will be empty on a day of rest. We can go there.”

And with that said, the first-seat disciple spun around on the spot.

I stood there for two seconds, staring at that white jacket as it slid away from the clearing. When my mind started running properly again, I really did consider just scampering away. But failing to complete a disciplinary punishment turned one’s offense from minor into a serious rule-breaking. Given that I wanted to be an elite disciple like Volo after this month’s advancement test, I couldn’t afford to get expelled now.

I lifted up the sword on the ground, returned it to its sheath, and stood up. After a longing glance at the stone wall of the academy through the trees behind me, I followed after that shaved blond head, resigned.

Volo did not trip on any of the varied weeds and grasses that grew thick and clinging outside the clearing.

Belatedly, very belatedly, I realized, Gee…it would be the easiest thing in the world for a guy like him to step out of the way of a flying glob of mud.