CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE SENATE’S SECRET, MAY 380 HE

1

A violent shiver overtook my body, and my eyes snapped open.

I’d merely closed my lids with my back leaning against the wall, and somehow I’d fallen right to sleep. It was like one of those nightmares where you forget all about it as soon as you awaken. Its only remainder was traces of fear and panic.

I sat up and looked around; nothing seemed different. We were on the narrow terrace ledge running around Central Cathedral at about the eightieth floor. The sun had gone over the horizon long ago, leaving the sky as dark as freshly ground ink. But no matter where I looked, the only light I found coming through the cloud layer was stars, no moon. I felt like I’d heard the eight o’clock bell a while ago, but it would still be some time before the moon goddess blessed us with her meager resources.

The Integrity Knight Alice, as a sign of caution toward me, was kneeling so far away that she was nearly in the reaction range of the nearest gargoyle—er, minion—with her eyes closed. I wanted to use this downtime to speak with her and hopefully find a clue that would allow us to avoid hostilities, but she was clearly not interested in chitchat. If only Eugeo were here, he could’ve used his dagger from Cardinal to prick Alice and solve the issue immediately.

And what was he doing now…?

Now that I thought about it, in the two years since I’d met him near Rulid, there had never been a situation in which I couldn’t see him immediately if I wanted—until right now. We slept outdoors on our long journey to Centoria, complained about sharing a cramped inn floor, and even shared dorm rooms the entire time we were at Swordcraft Academy. It was simply a given that we were always together, and although I didn’t always think about him, I felt oddly lonely now that we were apart.

No—it wasn’t that simple.

Here in the Underworld, the ultimate virtual realm, I’d finally found the very first person of my gender that I could truly call a best friend. It was a bit embarrassing to admit, but that was the plain truth of it.

Before I’d been trapped in the deadly game of SAO, I considered all the other boys at school to be childish. I was reserved in my interactions with them. That standoffish nature of mine didn’t change much once I was trapped in that virtual floating castle. I’d met men like Klein and Agil who were good, well-adjusted souls that I found common ground with, but we never reached that level of true friendship when you bare your secrets to the other. Even with Asuna, the deepest relationship I’d ever had, I wasn’t able to confess my inner weakness until just before the moment Aincrad crumbled and our minds were about to vanish.

I didn’t think I had some kind of special power or ability that nobody else did. Between athletics and scholastics, I didn’t stand out in any particular area at school.

But when I became a prisoner of SAO, I was immediately ranked among the top players of the game pushing our progress forward, a pleasure that I believe bewitched me. And yet, the qualities that helped me stand out were the sum experience of totally immersing myself in full-dive games from the moment they first appeared, and the specific SAO knowledge I stockpiled as a beta tester prior to release. None of it had to do with my innate talent or ability as a person.

After I gained my freedom from SAO, my reputation for strength in VR had to be continually upheld, lest I lose that valuable image. I was trapped by the knowledge that others knew me not as the weak, mortal Kazuto Kirigaya, but as Kirito the hero, champion of the game of death. And I couldn’t deny that I had been leading them (and myself) to that conclusion, even though I knew deep down that the more layers of that artifice that built up, the further I got from the truly important things.

So when I first realized after meeting Eugeo that I didn’t have to pretend to be anything, I was amazed—and wondered why.

Because unlike me, Eugeo had an artificial fluctlight? Because he didn’t know Kirito the SAO hero? No, the greatest reason was that here in the Underworld, a place that was both real and false, Eugeo was blessed with far greater ability.

His natural talent for the sword was tremendous. Perception, decisiveness, reaction speed: I’d been fighting through plenty of VR worlds, but he was greater in all categories. If my fluctlight’s battle processor was a current-model silicon CPU, then Eugeo’s was a next-generation diamond CPU. I was still playing the role of instructor to him, but it was only because I had more experience and knowledge. If Eugeo kept improving at his current pace, it wouldn’t be long before our positions were switched.

Like sand sucking up water, Eugeo had absorbed all the combat strategies I’d built up over the last few years, which I grandiosely called the Aincrad style. I couldn’t help but feel a strangely deep joy and satisfaction in his progress. This swordplay had been the source of my personal pride, and yet nothing more than gaming techniques—and it felt like Eugeo learning and making them his own had turned that skill into something real for the first time.

If I could solve all the problems afflicting the Underworld and escape safely with Eugeo’s fluctlight intact, I wanted to have him dive into ALfheim Online instead—I was certain that the lightcube was capable of interfacing with all Seed-based VR worlds equally—so that he could meet Asuna, Leafa, Klein, and all the others. Here’s my first pupil and best friend, I’d say to them.

I couldn’t wait for that moment to arrive. At that point, for the very first time, I’d finally be on the same level as the many people who supported and helped me…

“What are you grinning about?”

I blinked, startled out of my reverie by the sound of a voice to my right. I turned to see Alice, who was watching me with an unpleasant look. I quickly brought up a hand to rub at the corner of my mouth as I protested, “Er, I was just…thinking about some stuff ahead…”

“Based on the slack-jawed smile I was seeing, you’re either a tremendous optimist or a tremendous idiot. At a time when our escape from this stone ledge is far from guaranteed.”

The respite of our perch had not dulled her tongue. I wasn’t familiar with the Alice from Rulid, who was the original basis for Alice the knight, but if her personality was like this after being restored, I could easily foresee a situation back in the real world, post-escape with Eugeo, where she’d clash with some of the more stubborn members of our group, like Sinon and Lisbeth.

On the other hand, there was still a veritable mountain of problems to solve before I even got close to that ultimate good ending. Our first order of business was to escape this terrace with its creepy minion statues, but not only was I still waiting for the spatial resources needed to generate more climbing hooks; my own mental and physical resources—such as my gurgling empty stomach—were also rapidly reaching their limit.

I nonchalantly rubbed my belly with a hand as I composed the most serious expression I could. “I think we’ll be able to resume climbing when the moon is up. It’s not too hard of a process as long as I can make those wedges. It doesn’t seem like there are more minions up above…The biggest problem, as I see it, is that I’m so hungry, even the thought of climbing this sheer wall another few dozen mels is making me dizzy…”

“…It’s that side of you that displays your lack of discipline. So you missed a meal or two. Are you really such a child that you cannot function at all without it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m just a kid, blah-blah-blah. I happen to be smack in the middle of my growth period. And unlike you fancy Integrity Knights, I actually lose life if I don’t eat regularly.”

“Just so you’re aware, Integrity Knights feel hunger, and we lose life if we do not eat, too!” Alice snapped back.

At that moment, a cute, high-pitched squeak emitted from her midsection, and I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling. Instantly, her face went red and her hand snapped over to the hilt of her sword.

I scrambled backward about fifty cens and stammered, “W-wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You’re right—you’re just as alive as anyone else. Of course you get hungry, too.”

I hunched myself smaller, and in the process noticed the sensation of something moving in my left pocket. When I touched it, I instantly recognized the texture and thanked my past preparation and stubborn greediness.

“Ooh! Manna from Heaven. Look what I’ve got here.”

I pulled out two steamed buns. I’d stuck them in my pocket before we left Cardinal’s library. Eugeo and I ate half of them earlier in the day, but I’d completely forgotten about the other two. They were a bit impacted by all the fierce combat earlier, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“…Why did you have those in your pocket?” Alice asked, looking utterly annoyed by this sudden revelation.

“Tap your pocket, and you get two buns,” I said cryptically, referencing a children’s song that I was certain Alice wouldn’t understand, then displayed the buns’ window to ensure they had enough life to guarantee safety. They looked shabby now, but Cardinal had crafted them from some very high-value tomes in her library, and their durability rating was astonishingly high as a result.

Still, a cold, hard steamed bun wasn’t going to be tasty the way it was. After a bit of thought, I spread my fingers and chanted, “System Call. Generate Thermal Element.”

There wasn’t enough magical power in the air for a full climbing hook, but there was for one little bit of heat. A flickering bit of light appeared over my palm. I moved it closer to the buns in my other hand and said, “Bur…”

But before I could finish the word burst, the knight’s hand shot over my mouth, as quick as lightning.

“—Mmph?!”

“Are you utterly stupid?! You’ll be charred to a crisp!” she snapped, eyes full of fury and annoyance and disdain. She snatched the food from my hand. I moaned in disappointment, right as the tiny heat element evaporated.

The knight didn’t even look at me as she zipped her hand and recited, in singsong fashion, “Generate Aerial Element…Thermal Element…Aqueous Element.”

Between her thumb, index, and middle fingers appeared lights of orange, blue, and green. To my befuddlement, Alice then continued the command and manipulated the three elements in complex ways. First the wind element formed a spherical vortex, inside of which she floated the two buns. Next she added the heat and water elements, and when all three were mixed, she unleashed them.

With a little fssh! the wind barrier soon turned pure white. It looked quaint and peaceful, but I knew that inside, it was a swirl of heat and steam. In other words, she had constructed an impromptu steaming device.

Thirty seconds later, the trio of elements had concluded its duty, and it expanded until disappearing. The buns fell into Alice’s outstretched hand, as puffed and round as if they were brand-new, and wafting steam.

“H-h-here, give it— Wha…Whaaaa—?!” I wailed as Alice made to devour both of the steamed buns before I could so much as reach out to them. She stopped just before they reached her mouth and said, in a tone that suggested dead seriousness, “I’m joking.” Then she handed me one, which I took with great relief and blew on before taking a hefty bite.

I understood that everything in the Underworld was a kind of dream object taken from a vast collection of memories—but even still, the soft, steamed bun and juicy, succulent meat sent me into a brief state of nirvana. It took just three bites for the precious food to vanish into my stomach—or more accurately, return to the fluctlight memory field—leaving me with just a combination of satisfaction, disappointment, and one very hearty sigh.

It took Alice four bites to devour her bun, and she exhaled the same way I did. I was struck that the Integrity Knight, practically an avatar of pure battle, could have such a girlish side.

“Ah, I see,” I remarked. “You can steam a bun without even any tools. I guess it makes sense that you’d be Selka’s sister, after how good she was at cooki—”

Midsentence, a hand shot out and grabbed my collar. This time, it was not annoyance or disgust that marked Alice’s features. Those blue eyes were furious as exploding sparks, her cheeks were pale, and her lips were trembling. She practically hoisted me up with nothing but her right hand and rasped, “What…did you just say?”

Only then, at that belated moment, did I finally recognize my terrible slip of the tongue.

The golden-haired Integrity Knight staring a hole in me from less than a foot away was none other than Alice Zuberg, Eugeo’s childhood friend and sister to the apprentice nun Selka—but she herself had no memory of this. Eight years ago she was taken to Centoria and subjected to the Synthesis Ritual that made her into an Integrity Knight by taking away her most precious memory and installing a Piety Module that blocked the rest.

As far as she knew now, Alice was a knight summoned from Heaven to uphold the peace and order of the realm and fight against invasions from the darkness. According to what had been implanted in her mind, the Axiom Church and its ruler, Administrator, were all-powerful and trustworthy. She would never believe the truth: that Administrator was finding promising people around the world and transforming them into her pawns to uphold her own power and greed.

In fact, it was because we could sense that talk alone would not convince Alice that Eugeo and I planned to use Cardinal’s special daggers to temporarily paralyze her. We certainly didn’t plan on the current situation, but my objective remained the same: avoid fighting Alice, regroup with Eugeo, and create an opportunity for him to use his dagger on her.

Sensing that I could have destroyed that plan with one ill-timed slip, my mind raced for a solution. The expression on her face made it clear that I couldn’t wriggle out of this by claiming I had misspoken.

It seemed there were only two options. I could either fight Alice here, knock her out without killing her, and carry her up to the ninetieth floor—or I could suck it up and tell her everything.

My choice would depend on what I believed about her. If I believed her skill with the sword was below mine, I should choose battle. If I believed she could be reasoned with, I should choose dialogue.

A few seconds of deliberation later, I made my choice. With the full might of Alice’s flaming blue eyes upon me, I said, “You have a sister. I’ll explain…I don’t know if you’ll believe it, but I will tell you everything I believe to be the truth.”

However this statement struck her, Alice mulled it over for several seconds and then released me. I dropped flat on my butt onto the stone, where the knight looked down on me from her kneeling position. Even hearing me out in this situation seemed like it was outside the bounds of an Integrity Knight’s activities. She was locked in a battle between her logical duty to vanquish me with her blade and the desire to know what was unknown.

Eventually, desire won out. She slowly lowered herself to a proper sitting position and hissed, “Speak. But be warned…if I sense that your words are meant to mislead me, I will not hesitate to cut you in two.”

I sucked in a long breath and held it. “That’s fine…if your decision to attack me comes from your own true heart. And the reason I say that is because inside of you is an order that was implanted in you by someone else, an order you’re not aware of.”

“…Are you speaking of the Integrity Knight’s duty?”

“That’s right,” I said. Alice’s eyes narrowed with hostility. But I could detect an emotional hesitation lurking behind them. That would be Alice’s true feelings. I hoped that my words would break through to that part of her.

“Integrity Knights are summoned from the celestial realm by Administrator, the pontifex of the Axiom Church, in order to maintain order and justice…or so you understand. But only the people here within Central Cathedral actually think that. The thousands and thousands of people living across the realm don’t see it that way.”

“What…nonsense are you talking about…?”

“Go down there to the city and ask anyone in Centoria what the prize is for the winner of the annual Four-Empire Unification Tournament. They’ll tell you that the winner receives the honor of being made an Integrity Knight.”

“Made into…an Integrity Knight…? That’s nonsense. That can’t be right. I’ve interacted with many of the knights, and not a single one has ever said they were a human being before that.”

“It’s just the opposite. Not a single one of you started as anything other than human,” I said, back straight, staring her right in the eyes. I was desperately trying to break through to that human part of her, deep inside. “Alice, you don’t know who gave birth to you in the ‘celestial realm,’ or where you were raised. I’d bet your oldest active memory is Administrator telling you that you are a holy knight summoned from Heaven.”

“…”

I was correct, judging by her reaction. She leaned back just a little and bit her lip. “I…was told…that when an Integrity Knight is summoned to earth, Stacia removes her memories of Heaven…and that when the evil ones of the Dark Territory are vanquished, and I have completed my duty as a knight, I will be returned to the holy place…and remember my parents and siblings again…according to…the pontifex…”

Her normally crisp voice faltered and trailed away. Suddenly I knew. Somewhere deep in Alice’s heart, in a place she wasn’t aware of, she was desperate for her family memories. That must have been why she had reacted so powerfully to the mention of Selka’s name.

Choosing my words carefully, I explained, “Only a part of what Administrator told you is true. Yes, your memories were kept from you. But it wasn’t because of Stacia; it was the pontifex herself who did it. And it’s not your heavenly memories that are hidden but your human memories, of being born and raised here. It’s the same for all the other Integrity Knights, too, like Eldrie. He’s the son of a noble house in the Norlangarth Empire. He won the tournament this year and earned the honor of being made into a knight.”

“No…that’s a lie! My apprentice, Knight Thirty-One, could not be a descendent of the decadent nobles…”

“Listen to me: When we defeated Eldrie in combat, it wasn’t because we killed him. Did you see any major wounds on him? My partner remembered his real name, Eldrie Woolsburg, and that stimulated his memories of his mother. He wanted to remember her, but he couldn’t. That was because Administrator took that memory out of his soul and keeps it at the very top of the cathedral.”

“…His memory…of his mother…?” she murmured, lips trembling. Her eyes were wandering on empty air. “Eldrie’s…noble…human…mother…?”

“And that doesn’t just go for him. I’d bet at least half the knights are champions of the swordfighting tournament, and the majority of those would be noble children who were raised with the best possible education with the blade. The noble houses receive considerable wealth and status from turning their children over to the Axiom Church. That system has been in place for over a century now.”

“…I can’t believe it…I just cannot accept the story you are telling me,” the Integrity Knight said, shaking her head like a stubborn child at the notion that the Axiom Church and its knights weren’t utterly divine. “Not all the upper nobles in the four empires are like this, but many lead slothful and decadent lives. It is why we Integrity Knights are necessary to protect the human lands. And now you claim…that Eldrie and others in the knighthood…are actually from those degenerate noble houses…? It is not possible. I cannot believe it.”

“The reason those noble families are decadent is because the Axiom Church gave them too much prestige and power. But because of that privilege, their children grow up with excellent instruction in swordplay and sacred arts. In rural villages, children are given their callings at age ten and barely ever have time to practice fighting with swords, by comparison. And only the most gifted of those noble children can appear in the Four-Empire Unification Tournament, and the single champion of that event is invited to Central Cathedral. Have you ever met one of those champions within the cathedral?” I asked.

Alice looked away, uncertain, and shook her head. “No…but there are many monks, nuns, and their apprentices living on the lower floors…so perhaps those champions are down among them, enriching their lives through study…”

I nearly spoke up on the spot to deny that but thought better of it. Eugeo and I had come straight up the stairs to the fiftieth floor after we’d retrieved our swords from the cathedral’s third floor—with only the distraction of the child knights Fizel and Linel around the twentieth floor—and we hadn’t encountered any of the holy workers. But I could still speculate about their source.

My suspicion was that the majority of the monks and nuns undertaking the basic duties of the Axiom Church weren’t hired from the outside but were born and raised within the Church, just like Fizel and Linel. Administrator probably viewed them like practical-use production models she could replicate.

Alice wouldn’t know about that dark side of the organization, I figured. I didn’t need to bring up the idea and tax her mind more than necessary.

“No, you’ve met champions of the tournament. You’re just not aware of it. All the Integrity Knights’ memories are being manipulated and adjusted by Administrator on a constant basis, not just during the ritual.”

“Nonsense!” she shouted, raising her head. “That is impossible! The holy pontifex would never toy with our memories the way you describe…”

“She is!” I shouted back. “You’re not just missing your memories of the tournament champions…You also don’t remember the criminals you’ve brought back to the tower!”

“C-criminals…?” she said, faltering. I stared right into her face, which was pale even in the moonlight.

“That’s right. Yesterday morning, you brought my partner and me here on your dragon from Swordcraft Academy. You remember that, don’t you?”

“…I would not forget it. You were the first ones I have ever been ordered to escort to prison.”

“Yet, Deusolbert Synthesis Seven didn’t remember you. When eight years ago…”

I paused, then steeled myself to say the name.

“…he was the one who took young Alice from Rulid Village in the far north, himself.”

She went whiter than the marble wall. Her bloodless lips quivered, and she croaked, “Rulid…That’s my true hometown…? And Deusolbert escorted me from there as a criminal…? In other words, I once violated a taboo…? Is that what you are saying?”

I waited for her to finish each and every question. “That’s right. Remember how I said half the Integrity Knights were tournament champions? The other half are people who were brought to the cathedral as criminals. They had the force of will to violate the Taboo Index, and that gives them exceptional power as knights. It’s two birds with one stone for Administrator: She turns a potential threat to the Church’s rule into a powerful personal agent. Now…let’s talk about you.”

This was it. The moment Alice would either accept my argument or deny it.

I fixed her with as firm a stare as I could possibly muster. She sat flat on the stone ledge, her shoulders hunched and forlorn, eyelids heavy, as though waiting for some final judgment.

“Your real name is Alice Zuberg. You were born and raised in Rulid, a small village at the foot of the End Mountains far to the north. You’re the same age as Eugeo, my partner, which would make you nineteen this year. You were brought here eight years ago, meaning you were eleven when the incident happened. You and Eugeo went spelunking in the cave through the End Mountains…and at the other end of the cave, you just barely crossed the boundary between the human realm and the Dark Territory. So the taboo you broke was ‘infiltrating the Dark Territory.’ You didn’t steal anything or hurt anyone…In fact, you were trying to save the dying dark knight…”

Now it was my turn to clam up. Did I really hear that many details about Alice’s story from Eugeo…?

Surely I did. I awoke in the Underworld two years ago—I couldn’t possibly know what happened six years before that. But for some reason, there was an image in my brain of a knight in black falling from the sky in a shower of blood and Alice rushing toward him, as vivid and specific as if I’d seen it myself. I even heard the scraping sound of her hand brushing the black soil of the Dark Territory.

Somehow, the imagery of Eugeo’s story must have gotten mixed up with my memories from reality, I told myself. I looked up and saw that Alice was so shaken by all this that she wasn’t bothered by the way I trailed off. Her cheeks were sallow, twitching.

“Alice Zuberg,” she whispered. “That’s…my…name? Rulid…End Mountains…I can’t remember any of it…”

“Don’t force yourself to remember, or you’ll end up like Eldrie,” I warned, cutting her off. If Alice’s Piety Module turned unstable and stopped working like his, there might be trouble—especially if the other knights sensed it happening and came to get her. But Alice merely looked at me with slightly more control than a moment before.

“Why would you say that now?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “I…I want to know everything. I don’t believe what you’ve said yet…but I will make my decision on that once I’ve heard the whole story.”

“All right. But to be honest, I don’t know that much about your past. Your dad is the elder of Rulid, Gasfut Zuberg. I don’t know your mother’s name, unfortunately, but like I said earlier, you have a little sister named Selka, who is probably still a sister-in-training at the church in Rulid. When I stayed there two years ago, I talked with her a lot. She was a good kid, and she cared about her sister; she’d been worried about you ever since you were taken away. When you lived in Rulid, you were also an apprentice and were considered to have a genius talent for sacred arts. She was trying her hardest to inherit that position and take over for you in your absence.”

That was all I knew. Alice said nothing for a while. Her earlier unrest was gone now, and that porcelain-white face was utterly still. She seemed to be trying to dredge up anything she could remember about those proper names, but it wasn’t producing any results.

It didn’t work, I realized. I’d been hoping that even without that missing memory fragment, if I calmly gave her bits of relevant information, she’d eventually recall some of those memories. Evidently, Administrator’s memory block was stronger than I realized.

The only one who could restore Alice was Cardinal, who had admin privileges. And that would still require the missing memory fragment that Administrator was keeping locked up.

Just then, Alice’s mouth opened.

“Selka.”

She did it again.

“Selka…”

Her darkened eyes pointed to the stars overhead.

“…I can’t remember. No face, no voice. But…it’s not the first time I’ve said that name. My mouth…my throat…my heart remembers.”

“…Alice,” I said, but she didn’t seem to even be aware I was there anymore.

“I called it all the time,” she whispered. “Every day, every night…Selka…Selka…Sel…”

Clear drops clung to her long lashes, sparkling with the light of the stars before they fell. I felt like I was seeing something unbelievable. The tears kept coming and coming, dripping with tiny patters onto the marble between us.

“It’s true…I have a family…a father and mother…and a sister I share blood with…somewhere out there under these stars…,” she choked, until her voice turned to sobs.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had reached out to her, but she batted me away with the back of her hand.

“Don’t look at me!” she sobbed, smacking me in the chest with her right hand while she rubbed at her eyes with the left. The tears never stopped, however, and eventually she buried her face in her knees, shoulders shaking.

“Nng…hnk…aaah…”

As the Integrity Knight continued to quietly sob, I came to the realization that liquid was pooling in my eyes as well.

I’ll do it. I’ll stop this Administrator and take Alice back home, I swore, my mission renewed, as I understood what was making me emotional, too.

Even if the plan went successfully, it wouldn’t be this sobbing Integrity Knight whom I reunited with Selka in Rulid. Alice would recover her lost memories, remember how she grew up with Eugeo and Selka, and probably forget about her years of service as a knight.

That would essentially be the destruction of Alice the Integrity Knight.

She’d be returning to the way she ought to be, I reminded myself. But I couldn’t help but feel pity for the weeping knight curled up in a miserable ball.

For all the years she had spent at Central Cathedral, Alice Synthesis Thirty had been pained by the deep, subconscious desire for the company of the family she could never see again. I couldn’t help but sympathize.

Eventually, much later, her racking sobs subsided in volume, to be replaced by silent weeping. My own tears had already dried a few minutes before that, so I decided to focus on what should happen next.

If there was an ideal outcome out of anything I could reasonably envision, it would be as follows: Once the moon rose, we’d resume climbing and reenter the tower at the ninety-fifth floor. Somehow, I would avoid resuming battle with Alice there and meet up with Eugeo again. Whether or not we used Cardinal’s special dagger in his possession would depend on the circumstances.

After that, the biggest obstacle remaining would be to defeat Bercouli Synthesis One or persuade him not to fight us. It would be great if Eugeo had already beaten him, but I couldn’t count on that. Then we’d reach the top floor of the cathedral, where our ultimate foe, Administrator, slept.

We’d have to neutralize the pontifex before she awoke, find Alice’s memory fragment, wherever it was hidden in the chamber, then use it to restore her memories and personality.

Lastly, I’d use the system console to make contact with the Rath staff, preserve the state of the Underworld, and get them to prevent the imminent stress test—a massive invasion from the Dark Territory…

Each one of these missions was astonishingly difficult; all of them together was hard to fathom. I had to assume that each individual goal had a probability of 50 percent, if not 30 or lower.

But I wasn’t allowed to stop in my tracks now. The two years I’d spent in the Underworld—in fact, the very long time ever since I’d first been locked in that game of death—had all been leading up to this encounter with a new kind of humanity so I could save them.

As Akihiko Kayaba had stared at the collapsing Aincrad against the red of the sunset, he’d claimed he wanted to create a truly alternate world. I wasn’t carrying on his mission, not in the least, but I had to admit that a true alternate world was exactly what I was seeing here.

Kayaba’s digital copy left The Seed with me, and it ultimately brought about an infinite array of VR worlds across the Internet. And whether by fate or by coincidence, the lightcube format that stored the souls of the Underworldians was compatible with The Seed Nexus. If there was some greater meaning to the SAO Incident beyond whatever Kayaba hoped to achieve, I got the feeling I would find it here in the Underworld.

I couldn’t turn back now. Two long years after I woke up in the forest south of Rulid, I was finally bearing down on the last floor of Central Cathedral, the goal of my long journey. But if there was any tiny but unavoidable problem along the way, it was that out of those many laudable goals, there was just one I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to achieve…

“…A while ago, you mentioned something,” Alice said abruptly, looking down with her arms wrapped around her knees.

I abandoned the tangle of thoughts I was trying to unravel and looked over at her.

A few moments later, she continued, voice slightly nasal from being blocked up. “After the wall broke, and we fell through it…you said you planned this rebellion in order to correct the pontifex’s mistake and protect the human world.”

“Yeah…that’s right,” I said, noticing the blond hair that fell down Alice’s back.

After several seconds of silence, she continued, “I do not believe…everything you’ve said yet. But…with the minions of the lands of darkness on the outside of the tower…I must admit that your claim that the Integrity Knights are just regular human beings with their memories manipulated seems to be true. In other words…I cannot deny that our master has been deeply deceiving us in order to make us her faithful servants…”

I held my breath. By removing their memories and inserting the Piety Module into the fluctlight of the Integrity Knights, Administrator forced them to be absolutely loyal warriors. No matter what Eugeo and I said to any of the knights we’d met thus far, none had expressed a single word of doubt toward the Church. In that sense, it should’ve been stunning to me that Alice said what she did. Perhaps she had something in her that the other artificial fluctlights did not.

She didn’t undo the grip around her upright knees as she whispered, “But on the other hand, our primary duty as commanded by the pontifex is to protect against an invasion from the Dark Territory. Even now, more than a dozen of my fellow knights are riding their dragons, fighting over the End Mountains. If she hadn’t created the Integrity Knights, the dark forces would have invaded our lands long ago.”

“Ah, well…”

…That’s because this isn’t the way the world is supposed to work.

Those growth resources—i.e., experience points—the Integrity Knights were monopolizing were supposed to be distributed throughout the populace. The people of the realm should have taken up swords and fought against invading goblins, the same way Eugeo and I did in the northern cave, to get stronger. Administrator had taken that possibility away from them.

Alice wouldn’t understand that on the spot, though. Instead, I had to hold back my rebuttal as she continued, quiet but firm, “You claim that my birth home, the place where my parents and sister must still live, is at the foot of the mountains to the far north. In other words, if an invasion begins, they would be the first to fall victim. Even if you defeat all the Integrity Knights and turn your blades on the pontifex herself, who will protect all the distant rural villages like Rulid? You don’t expect to vanquish the entire forces of darkness just with the two of you, I hope.”

The tears in her eyes weren’t totally dry yet, but there was a newfound willpower in her voice. Still, I couldn’t give her an answer right away. Compared to Alice’s open determination to save the people of the world, I still had secrets to hide.

I had to fight the sudden urge to truly spill it all and explain that this entire world was a creation. Instead I said, “Then let me ask you this…If you fight with the full might of the Integrity Knights, do you believe that you can absolutely, without fail, fight off an all-out invasion from the Dark Territory?”

“…”

Now it was Alice’s turn to be at a loss for words. I looked back to the stars and traveled the memories I’d built over the last two years.

“I told you about how my partner and I battled a band of goblins from the Dark Territory. Even those goblins, the lowest members of the forces of darkness, were frightfully skilled and powerful with their weapons. The Dark Territory is full of them, and those dragon-riding black knights, and dark sorcerers controlling their own minions, right? If they all attack at once, then even with all the Integrity Knights together, plus Administrator, you’re not going to be able to hold back the tide.”

The vast majority of this information was just repeating what Cardinal had told me, but Alice seemed to accept it as fact in stride; she didn’t bite back the way she often did. After a few moments of reflection, she murmured, “It’s true that Uncle…er, Commander Bercouli seems to have his own doubts. The Dark Territory already has tens of thousands of elite forces, and if they breach the eastern gate all at once, even the knights may not be able to keep up…But on the other hand, there is essentially no other worthwhile power in the human realm aside from ours. You mentioned that the children of elite noble houses receive special training in the sword and sacred arts—but their skill is aesthetic in nature and not suited to true battle. We will simply have to work together, with the few dragons we have, and trust in the blessings of the three goddesses. You understand the situation, don’t you?”

“You’re correct…There’s nothing here to counteract the armies of darkness aside from the Integrity Knights,” I said, gazing straight ahead. “But that’s a situation that Administrator created by design. Your pontifex was afraid of any kind of power that threatened her absolute rule over the Human Empire. That’s why she gathered tournament champions and rebels against the Taboo Index, removed their memories, and rebuilt them into faithful knights. Or to put it another way, Administrator does not have an ounce of trust in the people of this world.”

“…!”

Alice sucked in a sharp breath. Once again, she didn’t have an instant rebuttal. Praying that I’d struck a nerve deep in her soul, I continued, “If she trusted the people who live here, she would form well-equipped militias and allow them to train, and perhaps there would be a battle force capable of countering the Dark Territory’s now. But she didn’t do that. She allowed the higher nobles—the people who should be first to fight if a war erupts—to be slothful and decadent. Now their souls are corrupted…just like the two Eugeo and I attacked at the academy.”

Raios Antinous and Humbert Zizek’s attempted rape of Tiese and Ronie was just two days ago. If the stress test arrived and the Dark Territory invaded the human realm, scenes like that would occur everywhere, in horrifying numbers.

“But it’s not too late to do anything about it yet. I don’t know how much time we have until the Dark Territory invades, whether it’s one year or two…but if we can arrange a large human army by then, perhaps…”

“We can do no such thing!” Alice cried. “You just said it yourself. The nobles are all craven and corrupt! If a war begins and the four imperial houses and nobles are called upon to take their swords and fight, they will oblige only in name and ensure that their lives and fortunes are kept intact!”

“You’re right that most of the higher nobles have no real intention of fighting. But some do have their pride, and among the lower nobles and common people, there are those with the will to protect their families and towns…and this world as a whole. If the wealth of weapons stored in this tower is distributed to them and you folks teach them your true swordfighting and sacred arts, it’s not unthinkable that we could have a proper army built up within a year.”

“The common…people…?” she repeated.

“That’s right,” I said. “Even if we just take volunteers rather than conscripting an army, we should be able to build quite a crowd. There are already guard garrisons in the towns and villages all over. The problem is…at this point, such a strategy is impossible to employ.”

“Because…the pontifex…would never allow it…”

“Right. We couldn’t even persuade her based on its wisdom. An army that can’t be forced into absolute servitude is just as terrifying to Administrator as the forces of darkness are. That leaves just one conclusion: We must break Administrator’s absolute rule, effectively use what time we have left, and build a defensive force for the upcoming invasion,” I declared, but I couldn’t help but feel irony in that statement.

Rath, the company behind the Underworld, had a close connection to Seijirou Kikuoka, an officer with the nation’s Self-Defense Force. That meant this entire operation had to have deep ties to national security in the real world. Perhaps they even meant to utilize artificial fluctlights like Eugeo and Alice to control their weapons of war.

I couldn’t possibly condone such a thing, and yet I was arguing that tens of thousands of civilians should be turned into soldiers for a massive war.

Alice had no idea of this inner dilemma; she was silent for her own reasons. No doubt she was balancing a scale with her soul-etched loyalty to the Axiom Church on one side, and on the other, the words of the intruder she’d escorted here by her own hand. Her expression was controlled, but I knew I couldn’t fathom the true depth of her anguish and indecision.

Eventually, I heard a brief phrase on the night breeze.

“…see her?”

“What…?”

“If I help you…and we regain my hidden memories, will I be able to see Selka…my sister again?”

I had to clench my jaw. She could do it. Of course she could see her. But…

I wasn’t sure whether I should relate my earlier prediction, but the last thing I wanted to do just then was mince words. I steeled myself and said, “Yes…you will. If you use your dragon, it will only take a day or two. But there’s something you need to hear first…”

I stared right into Alice’s eyes, about four feet to my right, and continued, “It’s not exactly you who will be reuniting with Selka. The moment you get your memory back, you’ll return to being Alice Zuberg from before the Synthesis Ritual, and Alice Synthesis Thirty will cease to be. You’ll lose your memories of being an Integrity Knight and return this body to its rightful persona. It’s cruel to say, but…the you right now is a false Alice created by Administrator.”

Her shoulders trembled at various points as I spoke. But there were no more sobs. Seconds later, she spoke in a voice with all emotion restrained.

“Once you told me…that the Integrity Knights were a creation of the pontifex…I had a feeling this might be the case. That I stole this body from a girl named Alice Zuberg…and have monopolized it for six long years.”

I had no idea what to say to this. No doubt she had a storm of feelings, but Alice only gave me a brave smile. “I must return what I have stolen. That would be the wish of Selka…her parents…your friend…and you, I suspect.”

“…Alice…”

“But…I have just one request.”

“Which is…?”

“Before you return this body to the persona of the original Alice…will you take me to Rulid? And then, in secret…I wish to see Selka, my sister…and my family. If you can do that for me, I will be happy.”

She ended there and slowly turned her head to look at me. In that very instant, the moon cast a ray of light between the clouds to the east. With her entire outline framed in golden beams, Alice’s red and swollen eyes softened, and she smiled just a bit. I couldn’t take it and had to look up at the moon.

We’d get Alice’s memory back. That was the only thing that Eugeo truly wanted—and therefore, what I wanted as well.

But it would also be a death sentence for the Integrity Knight—no, the young woman—clenching her knees next to me. An unavoidable sacrifice, and an inescapable set of priorities. I couldn’t do anything about it.

“Yes…I promise. I swear to you,” I said, eyes to the sky. “I’ll take you to Rulid before we return the memories.”

“…You’d better,” she warned. I looked at her and nodded. She returned the gesture, took a deep breath, and put on a brave face. “All right, then. In order to protect the realm…and all the people within it, I, Alice Synthesis Thirty, hereby abandon my title and rank of Integrity Kni— Aah!!”

Her proclamation quickly turned to a shriek. Her golden armor rattled as she bolted backward and covered her right eye. Devastating pain twisted her beautiful features.

I was momentarily stunned into rising off my seat, until I recalled an incident from a few days prior.

Eugeo had cut off the arm of Humbert Zizek to save Ronie and Tiese, and by the time I’d reached him, his right eye had blown clear out of its socket, and tears of vivid blood were spurting down his cheek.

In the school’s detention cell that night, Eugeo had described what he’d felt. The moment he tried to attack Humbert, his arm went cold and dead as if it didn’t belong to him, and his right eye burned with agony. Floating in front of him were bright-red, unfamiliar sacred letters…

Alice had to have been experiencing the same phenomenon. It was some kind of mental block, I suspected, triggered whenever the individual tried to fight against the orders carved into her soul.

“Don’t think about anything! Shut off your mind!” I shouted as I approached, holding down her left shoulder. With my other hand, I grabbed her wrist and forced it away from her right eye.

“…?!”

Alice’s sapphire-blue eye was no longer the same—instead, there was a blinking red tint to it. I gasped and leaned in to get a better look.

Along the edge of Alice’s circular blue iris, there was a series of fine, radiating red lines that rotated slowly. They weren’t of equal width, and their arrangement looked random. It was almost like…a bar code.

Ever since Eugeo had described what had happened to him, I’d assumed it was Administrator who’d installed this mental block on the Underworldians. But I couldn’t ever recall seeing anything resembling a bar code during my two years there.

So this…isn’t Administrator’s doing…? But then, who…?

I gasped.

The circular bar code stopped rotating, and a strange string of symbols passed over Alice’s contracted pupils. The bright-red series of letters looked like

For a moment, I was unsure how to read them—until I realized they were mirrored. Alice’s retina was on the other side of the letters, so their direction was reversed from her point of view. The letters spelled out SYSTEM ALERT.

It was a phrase I was long familiar with from using PCs, typically accompanied by an unpleasant dinging sound. That phrase should have no meaning to Alice and the Underworldians, though. In their lives, all Japanese words were considered the “common language,” while English was known as the “sacred tongue.” Hardly any of the citizens actually understood the definition of the words; they considered them unnecessary.

When learning sacred arts, the initial System Call and its subsequent English commands were essentially treated like sounds, and their meanings were ignored. When I taught Eugeo the various sword skills that I identified as special techniques of the Aincrad style, he always marveled that I understood things about the sacred tongue.

So this SYSTEM ALERT warning was meaningless to the Underworldians. That meant the mental block installed in Alice and Eugeo wasn’t from Administrator but from people in the real world—members of Rath’s staff…

Alice let out a high-pitched scream right in my face, cutting off my thoughts. “My…my eye, it’s burning…! And I…I see some kind…of writing!”

“Don’t think! Empty your mind!!” I shouted, placing my hands on either side of her dainty face. “What’s happening to you now is a kind of mental barrier that happens to those who try to defy the Church. It’s causing that pain in your eye in an attempt to enforce your unconditional obedience…If you keep thinking about that, your eye’s going to burst!”

Unfortunately, given the circumstances, the more I warned her, the more it could backfire. No human being was so in control of their mind that they could stop thinking about something on command.

Alice squeezed her eyelids shut. But that wasn’t going to remove the red letters superimposed over her eye. Her hands floated out into the air and clutched at me when they brushed my shoulder. With each little shriek of pain, more and more force was pressed through her fingers, making my bones and muscles creak. But I knew that my suffering was nothing compared to hers.

I applied pressure to her face with my palms, hoping that it might at least calm her thoughts a bit. In the background, I desperately considered the turn of events.

Several of the Integrity Knights, including Alice, had already broken a taboo before. I knew that because it was how they’d been brought before the Axiom Church and given the Synthesis Ritual.

But in Alice’s case, there had been no splitting pain in her right eye when she committed the crime of trespassing into the Dark Territory eight years ago—at least, nothing compared to Eugeo’s. According to him, Alice crossed the boundary line without even realizing it. In other words, at the moment of the violation, her mind had no conscious understanding or intent to break that taboo.

Most likely, the mental barrier she was suffering was a reaction to intentionally trying to break a taboo. The instant she got the idea, the pain in her eye started, followed by the SYSTEM ALERT warning, to instill fear of the taboo. As obedient as the Underworldians already were by nature, this magic-seeming mental block had to be sufficient to keep them almost perfectly subservient.

However, if the mental barrier was the work of Rath’s employees, that created one very significant paradox. The purpose of the Underworld test was, I suspected, to create artificial fluctlights that could break rules—or more accurately, that could judge a constructed morality system for themselves. If you had an Underworldian close to a breakthrough, what would be the point of a crude, violent mental block that forces them backward?

Wouldn’t that mean whoever constructed this alert system was intentionally delaying the success of the experiment? Who would such a person be, and what was the point?

I briefly considered the replicated persona of Heathcliff, Akihiko Kayaba, but cast that aside. He wished for the creation of a true alternate world, so he wouldn’t interfere with the evolution of the artificial fluctlights. And this sort of forceful handiwork wasn’t his style. Perhaps it was some kind of group or individual hostile to Rath, performing sabotage.

If Seijirou Kikuoka was running Rath as an SDF officer, I could imagine any number of hostile forces. There could be some other internal group opposed to Kikuoka’s project, a major military company trying to maintain a stranglehold on the defense industry, perhaps even some foreign weapons manufacturer or intelligence agency.

But if such powerful forces were involved in sabotaging Rath, would they really go to these subtle and particular lengths? If they had enough power to install a sabotage routine in the artificial fluctlights, surely it would be easier just to destroy the lightcube cluster itself and be done with it?

In other words, the intention of this mystery saboteur was merely to delay the project, not shut it down entirely. Were they waiting for something to happen? Some massive counterproject that required plenty of time to prepare? Perhaps…

The theft of the complete experiment results, including the lightcube cluster. A chill ran through my hands as they held Alice, who suddenly wailed, “How cruel…”

I came back to my senses and glanced at her. Those graceful eyebrows were twisted in pain, little droplets sat at the corners of her eyes, and she’d bitten her lip so hard, it was bleeding.

That lip trembled, the skin pale, as she continued, “How cruel…to have…not just my memories…but even my mind manipulated…by someone else…” Her hands on my shoulders trembled, out of either sadness or anger. “Was it…the pontifex…who burned this red sacred script…into my eyes…?”

“No…I don’t think it was,” I admitted on the spot. “It’s one of the powers who created this world and observes it from the outside…One of the gods that don’t appear in your creation story.”

“…Gods.” Clear drops fell from her eyes without a sound. “We knights engage in endless battle to protect the world the gods created…and yet, they do not have faith in us? They take my memories of family away, then place this terrible hex on me…to force my servitude…”

Alice lived her life as a holy knight—I couldn’t imagine how much shock, disbelief, and despair she must have been feeling. As I watched, my breath caught in my lungs as Alice’s eyes bolted open.

The letters running across her right iris were still a brilliant red. But she stared right through the message into the sky—at the pale moon floating between the heavy clouds.

“I am not a puppet!” she announced, her voice clear and strong, if ragged around the edges. “Perhaps I was constructed. But I still have a will! I wish to protect this world…and the people in it! I wish to protect my parents! My sister! That is my primary duty!!”

With a high-pitched metallic whine, the letters on her eye glowed brighter. The rotating bar code around the edge of her iris sped up.

“Alice!” I cried, sensing what was about to happen.

Without looking back at me, she whispered, “Kirito…hold me down firmly.”

“…Right.”

There was nothing else I could do. I let go of Alice’s face and moved my grip to her armored shoulders. Through the golden plate, I squeezed her tight as she trembled.

She gestured up to the sky, long golden hair waving, and sucked in a deep breath.

“Administrator…and you unnamed gods! For the sake of my mission…I swear to oppose you!!”

Her declaration of independence rang out, crisp and clear.

Barely a moment after the words left her mouth, the red glow in Alice’s right eye surged into a burst of flame.

A spray of hot blood moistened my cheek.