5

Cup of tea in hand, Asuna stared into the campfire, which popped and snapped merrily.

It looked so real. This one was fundamentally different from the fires she’d seen so many times in SAO and ALO, which were graphical effects generated within the game engine. The brilliance of the sparks that flew out with each burst of the dried logs, the charred tang of the smoke, the radiating heat that warmed the skin of her face and hands—the details stimulated her senses with a reality that even real life failed to deliver.

And it wasn’t just the campfire. It was the hard surface of the folding chair they brought her. The smooth finish of the well-worn wooden cup. The calming scent of the tea. The dry sound of the trees around them, rustling in the night breeze.

Since logging in to the Underworld, she hadn’t had the time to stop and savor the world like this. Now that she was able to focus on the full sensory experience, she was blown away by the quality of the STL’s mnemonic visuals.

If Kirito had logged in to this place without knowing it was a virtual world, it must have taken a great amount of time to figure that out. For one thing, there was no such thing as an NPC in this place.

Asuna tore her eyes off the flickering fire and examined the people gathered at the edge of the little clearing in the midst of the forest. She’d already been given simple introductions to them.

The one just to her left, plopped on the ground with an old-fashioned jar of liquor all to himself, was Commander Bercouli of the Integrity Knights. On his other side was Alice, in her golden armor. Even Asuna had to admire the beauty of that deep-gold hair, enhanced by the orange light of the campfire.

On Alice’s left was a boy swordsman of about fifteen or sixteen who seemed to have no real place here. He, too, was an Integrity Knight, which seemed to be the highest class one could obtain in this world. His name was Renly.

Next, Asuna saw a thin knight who sat as quiet as a shadow. Her new armor didn’t seem to fit her yet, as she was constantly pulling and loosening its leather straps. It was the kind of thing a VRMMO newbie did, but the moment Asuna was told the woman’s name was Sheyta, and she turned her narrow eyes to meet Asuna’s gaze, there was an incredible force in them.

On Sheyta’s left, now directly across the campfire from Asuna, there were about ten people crammed shoulder to shoulder—they were from the chief man-at-arms class, she was told. They were firm, bold-looking men with chiseled features, with only one woman among the group.

Finally, just on Asuna’s right were the uniformed girls, who huddled to themselves and looked quite out of place. The red-haired one was Tiese, and the brown-haired one was Ronie, and they were apparently underclassmen at the academy where Kirito had been until six months ago.

After glancing at each of these dozen-plus warriors in turn, Asuna was left with one very heady conclusion: They were all real human beings.

Nothing about their appearances, actions, and general atmosphere suggested in any way that they had been artificially crafted. It was so seamless that she almost doubted her own secret knowledge: that, of this group, only Alice had surpassed the bounds of the artificial fluctlights that forced them to follow the rules they were given.

Now she could understand why Kirito had damaged his very soul to protect all these people. She had to carry on that spirit for him.

Asuna took a deep breath and said, “It’s good to meet you all. My name is Asuna. I came from outside of this world.”

Although she had left it only eight days ago, already her short life in the rural village of Rulid filled Alice with a pang of nostalgia. During that time, she’d often wheeled Kirito to a nearby pasture.

Within the bounds of the firm wooden fence, many fluffy sheep sat peacefully grazing, their lambs running and frolicking between the adults. Alice thought their life to be so happy. They had no reason to worry about anything beyond the fence. They spent their days in peace and security, locked inside a protected little world.

To think that she and the others were essentially the same way, inside this world they inhabited…

The otherworld girl named Asuna delivered an earth-shattering shock to the Integrity Knights and chief guards crowded around the campfire. Only Bercouli maintained his usual air of aloofness, but surely he, too, had much to take away from her story.

Asuna referred to their entire world, encompassing both the human lands and the dark lands, by a sacred-tongue title of “the Underworld.” And on the outside—not a physical outside but a conceptual one—there was another place called the “real world.”

Naturally, the guardsmen questioned whether this was the place they knew as the celestial world. The visitor answered that the real world was full of human beings with emotions, desires, and a limited life span.

And that at this moment, in a very limited space within the real world, two factions were battling for control over the Underworld. Asuna said that she was an agent of one of those sides. Their goal was to protect the Underworld.

And the goal of the side opposing Asuna’s was to pull one individual out of the Underworld, then wipe the slate clean by erasing the entirety of their world…

The leaders of the men-at-arms murmured uneasily when they heard this. It was Bercouli who calmed them down.

“It’s the same thing,” the three-hundred-year-old hero said. “The human realm is surrounded by the Dark Territory, and hardly anyone, including me, ever gave much thought to the fact that we were all sitting back and waiting for a huge invasion force to reach our doorstep. And now there’s another world beyond them? Big difference.”

His logic was crude, but when delivered in the commander’s firm, reassuring voice, it was convincing. With the audience composed again, Bercouli asked Asuna who it was that the opposing faction wanted to pull out.

The visitor’s bright brown eyes drifted away from Bercouli and locked straight onto Alice. Over the following seconds, Alice gradually understood the importance of what was happening, and she pointed at her own face.

“M…me…?”

Renly, Tiese, Ronie, and even Sheyta looked shocked. But once again, it was Bercouli who took this revelation in stride.

“Ah, yes…Hence the ‘Priestess of Light’ bit…”

Asuna did not seem to recognize the term, as she merely blinked at him. Then she looked back at Alice and said, “There isn’t much time left. To prevent the destruction of the Underworld, I’ll need Alice to come with me to the real world. Once they know that Alice is no longer here, the enemy should give up on interfering with this world…”

“You…you cannot be serious!!” shouted Alice. She stood up so forcefully that she kicked the chair back and smacked her breastplate with her palm. “Run away? Me?! Give up on this world and all its people, including my comrades in the guardian army, just to go to this so-called ‘real world’ place?! Absolutely not! I am an Integrity Knight! Protecting the realm is my one and only mission!!”

This time, it was Asuna who shot to her feet. Her hair, brown like the color of platinum-oak nuts, shook as she retorted in a voice like silver bells, “Then it is even more important that you do so! If the enemy—not your darklanders but powerful foes from the real world—capture you, not only the people of this world but its earth, sky, and everything else will be obliterated! They could attack this place at any moment!”

“I think your intel’s a bit out of date in that regard, Miss Asuna,” interjected Commander Bercouli, his voice calm and controlled. “It would seem that your enemy is already here.”

“What…?” she gasped.

He took a slug from his fire whiskey, just to tease her for a moment, before continuing. “It all adds up now. The Priestess of Light…and the god of darkness, Vecta, who seeks her. The Vecta who’s leading the enemy army right now is most definitely a person from your ‘real world.’”

“God of…darkness,” Asuna repeated, her face clearly pale even in the meager light of the campfire. She murmured to herself, voice thick with the accent of the sacred tongue, “Oh no…the super-account for the Dark Territory wasn’t password locked after all…”

“Um…m-may I ask something?” said Renly the boy knight, raising his hand to fill the resulting silence. When all eyes were on him, his voice became quiet and timid. “What exactly is the Priestess of Light, anyway? Why would these plunderers from the…‘real world’…want Miss Alice so badly?”

The answer to that came not from Asuna or Bercouli but from the previously silent gray knight, Sheyta.

“Because she broke the right-eye seal.”

Alice was shocked enough that she momentarily forgot her anger and unconsciously raised a hand to her eye. “You…you knew about that, Sheyta?! But how…?!”

“There’s a thought that makes my right eye hurt. When I think about how much fun it would be…to cut clean through the hardest material in the world…the indestructible Central Cathedral itself.”

“……”

Knights and guards alike shared an awkward silence, which Bercouli broke with a cough.

“Well, I wonder if any of the rest of you have had similar experiences before. Feeling any kind of doubt about the pontifex’s authority or the Axiom Church’s system of rule, causing red light to flicker inside your right eyeball, and a pain that shoots right through your head. So intense, you can’t maintain that thought any longer. But if you keep going, the pain just gets stronger and stronger, until the right side of your vision is pure red…and then…”

“Your right eye itself simply bursts into nothingness,” Alice finished, recalling in vivid detail that horrible experience. The rest of the campfire party wore expressions of fear to varying degrees.

“Then…Miss Alice, are you saying…?” Renly said with apprehension.

Alice nodded slowly. “I fought against Prime Senator Chudelkin and Administrator. And I had to lose my right eye for a period in order to have the will to go through with it.”

“Um…excuse me…,” said the trainee girl Tiese from the supply team, who had been listening the entire time, her voice even more timid than Renly’s. “Eugeo did it, too…When he drew his sword to protect Ronie and me, blood came from his eye…”

Alice nodded, understanding. The young man, despite his humble origins, had overcome many terrible battles, defeated even Bercouli, and unleashed a brilliant Incarnation against Administrator. Surely he would’ve been able to overcome the seal of the right eye.

In fact, during the battle on the top floor of the cathedral, Administrator had looked at Alice and said something about the eye seal. Something like Code Eight-Seven…

But before she could recall the full list of words, Bercouli grunted, rubbing his chin. “Hmm…so this enemy that Miss Asuna is talking about is in search of someone who broke through the right-eye seal on their own. Now let me ask you: Do you real-worlders have the same seal on you?”

“…No,” she said, shaking her brown hair, after a brief moment of indecision. “I have never experienced such a thing. I believe that the only point of difference between Underworlders and real-worlders is whether one is absolutely forced to obey laws and orders or not.”

“So you’re saying that there’s nothing different between Alice and you folks now? But how does that make sense? Why would Vecta want the same thing as him so much? You’d figure there are plenty of folks living in the real world.”

“Well…,” Asuna muttered, clearly not sure of how to proceed now. But at that moment, the thorn sticking into Alice’s memory at last came loose, and she shouted, “That’s it! Code Eight-Seven-One!”

Alice clasped her hands together and continued, “That’s what the pontifex called the seal of the right eye. She said that someone had installed Code Eight-Seven-One for her. I didn’t understand what the words meant, because they weren’t ancient sacred tongue…They were in your real-world language, weren’t they?!”

“Code…Eight-Seven-One…?” Asuna repeated, dumbfounded, her brows knitted. “So the seal was…put in place…by someone from Rath…? But…that would only make their mission harder…”

Asuna sat down in her chair and thought this revelation over—until suddenly, profound shock colored her features. Her pale-pink lips trembled, and her voice went hoarse. But Alice did not understand the meaning of what she said.

“……Oh no…There’s a mole on Rath’s staff! They have someone on our side…!”

Asuna was in a state of shock.

Higa and his team of engineers had taken great pains to try to remove the one flaw of the artificial fluctlights: their blind obedience. At present, the fluctlights were not able to critically examine the orders they were given through logic or morals. If they were loaded onto weapons as an AI system, they could be hacked and given orders to indiscriminately attack civilians or friendlies and would do so without needing confirmation. They could not, as Western militaries defined it, refuse an unlawful order.

Rath had maintained this centuries-long simulation in the Underworld in order to create a true artificial intelligence that could break through this drawback. But what if the seal in the right eye, this “Code Eight-Seven-One”—which seemed specifically designed to prevent the experiment’s success—had been secretly installed by someone affiliated with Rath?

That sabotage would likely have been ordered by the invading force that was now taking over the Ocean Turtle. They’d wanted to delay the experiment and keep it from succeeding until they were ready to attack the ship.

And the mole was still loose in the Ocean Turtle’s Upper Shaft. If he wanted to, he could wait until no one else was looking and sneak into the second STL room, where Asuna and Kirito were lying helpless. She felt her skin crawl with the thought.

Either Higa, Kikuoka, or Dr. Koujiro needed to be told as soon as possible. But since she had logged in to a coordinate far removed from the system console, Asuna had no way of calling them to talk.

She did have one method of getting out—reducing her current avatar’s HP to zero—but then she would not be able to log in with this super-account again. With sys-admin privileges currently locked, there was no way for her to reset the account data.

Given that the attackers were using the Vecta account, which had as much power as Stacia, there was no way for her to counteract them with an ordinary civilian-level avatar. She needed this character if she was going to protect Alice and safely log her out.

What should I do? What’s the priority? she asked herself, all of the above taking just a split second to run through. She inhaled, exhaled, and made a decision.

For now, she would prioritize the Underworld. This place was running at a thousand times the speed of the regular world. She at least had some wiggle room in terms of time before the mole in the real world did anything.

Until then, she would protect Alice from the Dark Territory army under the enemy’s control and eject her into the real world. If she failed and Alice fell into enemy hands, they would shatter the rest of the lightcube cluster to ensure only they could possess a true AI. They would destroy the Underworld that Kirito had risked his life to protect.

The decision that Asuna Yuuki made at this time was absolutely the right one, given the information she currently possessed. But neither she nor Takeru Higa and Seijirou Kikuoka on the Ocean Turtle had realized one extremely important fact.

After Gabriel Miller and Vassago Casals had logged in, the FLA ratio had been gradually dropping. It was the work of Critter, the assault team’s hacker, on Captain Gabriel’s orders.

Twenty hours from now, the Aegis escort ship Nagato was going to send in an armed Maritime SDF team, so Rath would not have expected that the attackers would make things harder for themselves by lowering the acceleration ratio and leaving their mission with less time.

For one thing, the purpose of lowering the acceleration ratio was completely outside of their expectations.

But at the present moment, there was one person who understood Gabriel’s intentions in doing this. She was collecting information independently through the cell phone that Asuna had brought on board the ship—one of the world’s greatest top-down artificial intelligences, now flying through the network on her own secret mission.

“Is something wrong with you?”

When Asuna noticed that Alice’s voice didn’t have its usual polite formality, she realized that she was the one being addressed. She looked up and shook her head. “No…I’m fine. I’m sorry to have interrupted your conversation.”

“You haven’t, actually. We’re just waiting for your answer,” Alice said in the brusque manner she reserved just for Asuna. “Well? Do you have any ideas about what the words Code Eight-Seven-One mean?”

“I do. And I’m about to explain it.”

Asuna had to wonder at the way that her voice naturally grew snippy when she was talking to Alice. She could barely recall ever fighting with anyone in her life. Things were always fun and lively with Lisbeth, Silica, Leafa, and Sinon, and she got along with everyone at school.

She traced back through her memory, trying to figure out who she’d argued with last before Alice, and she nearly burst out laughing. It had to be Kirito.

After they’d met in the first labyrinth tower of Aincrad, they’d formed a duo for some mysterious reason and started working on the game of death together. In those days, Asuna had glared, yelled, and even smacked Kirito on countless occasions. Only the mystery of human emotions could explain how that relationship had turned into a romantic one.

So would the day come that she got along with Alice, too? It doesn’t seem very likely, she had to admit.

“…The one who enabled the right-eye seal known as Code Eight-Seven-One, according to Alice, is a person from the real world…Someone aligned with the enemy.”

“Hmm…And is there any way to undo this code without blowing up your eyeball?” Bercouli asked. The otherworld girl shook her head apologetically.

“I’m afraid I don’t know…but I suspect that it’s not something that can be undone from inside the Underworld.”

As she listened to Asuna’s pristine voice, Alice wondered what it was about her that made her so irritated.

It was true that her first impression of Asuna had been terrible. Of course she wasn’t going to feel good when the young woman approached Kirito without notice of any kind. It was Alice who had protected and cared for him in his wounded state for the past six months.

But Asuna came from the real world, like Kirito did. It was clear from her actions that she had some kind of personal relationship with him there. In other words, she had come all the way to this realm after him. Maybe she had the right to see him. Once.

Was that the source of this irritation? She had believed that the obligation and duty of keeping Kirito safe belonged to her alone, and now there was a new person who laid claim to his past?

Or was it a sense of competition toward Asuna’s tremendous skill with the sword? It was the first time Alice had seen consecutive attacks of such speed. Even in terms of speed alone, Vice Commander Fanatio wouldn’t stand a chance. The attacks were less consecutive than practically multiple thrusts happening at the same time. If Alice’s blade had been deflected in any way, the other girl would have been quicker to hit first. She had never been shocked by a swordswoman of her age like this before.

Or perhaps…

…it was because the very sight of Asuna’s beauty caused the breath to leave Alice’s lungs. Her features were foreign in a way that personified and exemplified graceful beauty like no one else. Her pale skin was spotless, and her long hair, the color of acorns, looked wavy and soft, like bundles of the finest silk. The admiration on the faces of the head guardsmen was surely not just her imagination. If Asuna had introduced herself as the goddess Stacia, they would have believed her without question.

Alice wanted to know.

She wanted to know about Asuna more than about even this strange new world or their new enemy. She wanted to know about Asuna and Kirito.

Suddenly, she realized that her thoughts had been drifting, and she focused her ears again. Asuna was still talking to the commander.

“…was afraid that the one who could break this Underworld seal…the Priestess of Light, to use their words, might fall into enemy hands. They were afraid, because the Priestess of Light has the possibility of becoming an extraordinarily valuable thing in the real world.”

“That’s the part I don’t get,” Bercouli grumbled, sloshing his jar of fire whiskey. “This Priestess of Light, little Alice, is the same as a real-worlder, right? Like I asked earlier, why the fixation on the same thing? What are both the enemy and your side trying to pull Alice out into the outer world to do, exactly?”

“Well…”

Asuna hesitated, biting her lip. Her long eyelashes drooped, and her voice went quiet.

“…I’m sorry. I cannot tell you now. I want Alice to see the real world with her own eyes to make her decision. It is no world of the gods out there. It’s not a paradise. In fact, it’s much uglier and dirtier than this world. The same is true for the motives of the people who want Alice. If I explain them to you right now, Alice would find the real world and the people who live there to be unforgivable. But that’s not all there is. There are many good people as well, who want to protect this world and get along with the people here. Just like Kirito, in fact.”

Alice listened to her impassioned plea in silence. To her own surprise, she nodded.

“…Very well. I won’t ask you more at this time.” She spread her hands and shrugged. “In any case, I don’t intend to do anything I don’t want to do. And I have not decided whether I am going to this ‘real world,’ either. I’m interested in seeing the outer world, but only after we have broken the invading army of Vecta that is breathing down our necks and have forged a peace with the Dark Territory.”

She figured Asuna would offer a harsh rebuttal, but the other girl was briefly silent, too, before agreeing.

“…Yes, knowing that the Vecta leading the Dark Territory army is from my world, it might be dangerous for Alice and me to leave this group on our own. The enemy will be expecting that. I will fight with the rest of you. Please let me handle Vecta.”

There was a huge roar from the guardsmen at this. To them, Asuna might as well be Stacia herself, regardless of what she said. If she could wield such high-powered arts that they split the earth beneath their feet, then the enemy army might as well be ten times their current number, for all the good it would do them.

The commander was considering this as well. He crossed his arms and said, “Well, we can leave the circumstances of the real world alone for now. Back to more pressing matters…Are you able to use that earth-splitting trick without limits, Asuna?”

“…I’m afraid I might not be able to fulfill your hope,” she replied, shaking her head sadly. “That power places an enormous strain on the mind. I can withstand any kind of pain, but if I’m reckless with it, I might be automatically removed from this world in order to protect my mind. In that case, I won’t be able to come back. I would guess that I can only alter the landscape like that one or two more times…”

Given how great their hopes were, the faces of the guards around the campfire were now crestfallen. Alice sensed their disappointment and spoke a bit louder than she needed to.

“Why would we rely on the help of outsiders to protect our own world? You’ve done plenty to help already. Now it’s time for us knights and soldiers to show these otherworlders what we can do!” she said rousingly, but when she saw the surprise on Asuna’s face, Alice began to feel self-conscious.

After Alice was done, it was the youngest person present, Renly, who spoke up next. “Th-that’s right! Asuna just told you that she wasn’t a god; she’s a human being, like us! So we should be able to fight as hard as she does!”

Alice didn’t fail to notice that the young knight, hands against his divine weapons, was looking not at Asuna but at the red-haired girl sitting nearby. The discovery brought a mild note of mirth to her mind.

Next, even Sheyta the Silent offered her opinion. “I, too…would like to fight that pugilist again.”

The head guardsmen shot each other glances, and it did not take long for them to regain their previous bravado.

“That’s right. Let’s do this. We’re going to protect everyone,” they shouted with excitement and purpose, and pretty soon, all the guards stationed in the surrounding meadows were joining in the chorus. Even the campfire seemed to channel the mood, licking higher and burning the night sky red.

Was this the right thing to do?

Asuna sat in the tent she was given, pearl-white breastplate removed, thinking hard.

In the real world, Higa and Kikuoka were hoping that Asuna would bring Alice to the system console as soon as possible so she could be ejected into the sub-control room.

But what would happen after that? From Kikuoka’s perspective, once he had Alice’s fluctlight, he could just analyze its structure and transfer it to the development of a drone-piloting AI. For these military-industrial men, there was no further merit to the costly maintenance of the lightcube cluster and the thousands of artificial fluctlights contained within it.

And if she saved Alice alone and the other Underworlders got deleted, what would Kirito think when he awoke? And more importantly, would his fluctlight ever be fully whole again…?

But no, she mustn’t think that way. She’d seen him again at last, so she needed to find a way to touch him, speak to him, and give him all the chances he needed to heal. Even Higa had said that at some point, they just needed to hope that a miracle within the Underworld would heal his spirit.

She wanted to sneak into his tent, embrace him, and speak to him. She would do it the entire time she spent in the Underworld, if she could. There was no way she wanted to leave him behind to head for this console far to the south.

At least let me spend one night with him…

With her mind made up, Asuna removed her metal armor, changed into a light tunic and skirt, and waited near the entrance of the tent, listening intently.

Despite her repeated claims that she would be just fine, there was still one guard keeping watch outside the small tent the knight commander had given to her. The young man insisted on the honor of keeping watch over the goddess Stacia, and he was diligently patrolling the exterior of the tent. No napping on the job tonight.

His footsteps crunched over the grass underfoot, past the entrance. When he was behind the tent, Asuna slipped quickly out. In three silent bounds, she managed to sneak behind a large tree over thirty feet away.

She glanced back to see the young guard appear from around the rear of the tent and contentedly continue his patrol, unaware that anything had happened. Asuna gave him a silent apology and headed farther through the trees.

The human army’s soldiers had gone to sleep quickly, fatigued by the massive battle, and aside from a few lookouts, no one seemed to be awake. Those lookouts kept their focus on the outside of the forest, so Asuna was able to reach the supply team’s tents without being discovered.

She closed her eyes and focused her mind. Through either the power of the super-account or her own intuition, she sensed the presence of her beloved at once. Asuna took only a few steps in that direction before she detected a golden light flickering out of the corner of her right eye and froze.

Ugh. She turned, very slowly.

Back against the tent pole, arms crossed, was a person. She wore a dress of the same material as Asuna’s tunic, along with a wool shawl. Her long blond hair stirred in the breeze. Her glaring eyes were a deep blue.

“…I figured you would come.”

Alice took a step forward, her nostrils flaring.

She stared down the other young woman, who was about her height and barely different in age, intent on unleashing the words she’d been prepared to say.

I warned you to stay away from him. Go back to your own tent.

But the breath she sucked into her lungs refused to exit her throat. She could read the emotions in this otherworlder’s eyes far too easily to say those words now. There was deep affection in them—and the anguish and determination that arose from it.

Alice exhaled slowly until her breath was gone. She told herself, I’m not compromising. This doesn’t change the fact that I’m the one with the strongest duty to protect Kirito. We fought together and suffered wounds together, and I was watching when he lost his strength before me.

So whatever she chose to do, it was part of the effort to bring him back to health.

“…Let’s make a deal,” she said. Asuna blinked, taken aback. “I’ll let you see him. And I’ll tell you everything I know. And in return, I want you to tell me everything you know about Kirito.”

The brief moment of surprise on Asuna’s face melted away, replaced by a smile that almost looked cocky to Alice.

“You’ve got a deal. But it’ll take a while. Might not even finish in one night.”

Once again, Alice was reminded that she did not like this person. “How long have you spent with him?”

Asuna turned her light-brown eyes to the night sky, and she began to count, making gestures with her fingers. “Let’s see…I fought alongside him as his partner for two years. After that, a year and a half going out with him. And for two weeks, we also lived together.”

Does “going out with” mean they were lovers? No, probably not…but then again, “living with him” sounds very serious…

Alice couldn’t deny that she was shaken by these facts, but she shrugged it off, determined to stand her ground, and said proudly, “I fought at his side for an entire night. After that, I spent half a year under the same roof, attending to his needs.”

This time, it was Asuna who reeled a bit. Then her back straightened again, and she hummed a sound of feigned interest. The two women rippled with hostility, like fighters engaging in a duel. The crisp night air crackled with electricity, such that an unlucky leaf that happened to fall between them at that moment found itself disintegrating into dust in midair.

The battle of wills between Integrity Knight and goddess of creation was interrupted by none other than the frail voice of a third girl.

“Excuse me…”

Startled, Alice looked in the direction of the voice, as did Asuna. Ronie the supply team student, dressed in gray pajamas with her brown hair covered by a loose nightcap, stood between the tents. She had her hands clasped in front of her. “Um, I…I cleaned Kirito’s room for about two months, and he taught me some sword techniques, and he brought me honey pies from the Jumping Deer several times! I might not have the length of time that you two do, but…I’d like to trade information, too…”

Alice blinked several times, then looked back at Asuna. They both wore exasperated smiles. “Fine. I guess you’re one of us, then, Ronie,” Asuna said, and the smaller girl beamed with relief, coming forth from the shadow of the tent. Alice had to admit that it had taken guts for her to do this.

But to her surprise, the cast was not done growing. Another voice emerged from a different patch of shadows. “I don’t suppose you’d let me join in your exchange, as well?”

Her tone was boyish, but the voice itself was a cool mezzo-soprano. Appearing under the moonlight without a sound was a rather tall woman. The moment she saw the woman’s crisp features, Asuna murmured, “I remember you from before…”

It was definitely her—the lone female senior guard at the campfire meeting earlier. The brown-haired woman with the long ponytail bobbed her head and said, “Norlangarth Imperial Knight Sortiliena Serlut at your service. I was going to wait until the battle was over…but as I, too, have some measure of connection to Kirito, I was unable to withstand my curiosity.”

Alice exhaled loudly. She shrugged and asked the tall soldier, “And what kind of connection did you have with him, Chief Guard Serlut?”

“If it pleases you, Lady Knight, call me simply Liena,” Sortiliena said. She coughed to clear her throat and made an appreciative gesture. “At the North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy, Kirito spent a year as my page, assisting me in various ways. I believe that, in return, I served as a mentor and taught him some things about the sword.”

“……”

The other three went silent, intimidated by this surprising entry.

Asuna shared a look with Alice, and they shook their heads in unison.

“In that case, I suppose you’ve got plenty you can tell us, too, Liena. Come. Join us.”

The four snuck along, all of them feeling awkward, and entered a small tent off to the side with Alice at the lead. On the leather rug were two travel beds, one of which was empty, the other containing a black-haired young man whose eyes were closed. The handles of two swords stuck out of the end of his blanket.

Alice didn’t miss the note of nostalgic longing on Asuna’s lips when she saw him.

“…Is something wrong?” she asked.

The otherworld warrior gave her a momentary innocent smile, all hostility briefly forgotten. “Dual-Bladed Kirito. That’s what they called him over there.”

“…Oh…”

Alice did recall, during the fight against Administrator, how Kirito had fought skillfully with his own black sword in one hand and Eugeo’s white sword in the other. So that wasn’t some spontaneous idea…

She sat down atop the blanket of the bed next to the sleeping youth and beckoned the other three girls to sit around her.

“Let’s start there, shall we?”

Night in the wasteland grew deeper, and the only light upon the earth was from the purple moon. The soldiers of the Human Guardian Army and the dark knights and pugilists of the Dark Territory’s army on the other side of the bottomless abyss fell into a deep sleep.

While the forces of both sides recharged for the coming battle, the light from one tiny tent simply refused to go dark. At times, muffled laughter could be heard from under the hemp canvas—but only by a single owl that perched on the branch of a nearby tree.

Eventually, the lamp oil ran out, and four exhausted young women fell asleep, nestled around the object of their interest.

A while later, in distant Centoria, the midnight bells rang peacefully. Naturally, their sound did not penetrate to the distant Dark Territory.

At that very moment, every citizen of the Underworld experienced what could be called a tiny chrono-vibration. It was the effect of the simulation’s Fluctlight Acceleration dropping to real-time speed, but hardly anyone who was awake even noticed the shift.

It was midnight on the eighth day of the eleventh month of the year 380 in the Underworld’s Human Era.

It was midnight on July 7th, 2026, according to Japan Standard Time.

At this moment, the time of the two worlds was in perfect synchronization.