9

“That’s all for today’s class. I’ll be sending you files twenty-five and twenty-six for homework, so make sure you complete and upload them by next week.”

An electronic chime mimicking the sound of a bell signaled the end of the morning classes. The teacher turned off the widescreen monitor, and the mood in the classroom relaxed.

I used the old-fashioned mouse plugged into my computer unit to open and view the downloaded homework files. The wall of text that popped up made me sigh. I unplugged the mouse, flipped the screen closed, and tossed them both into my pack.

The sound of that chime was dangerously close to the bells of the chapel in the Town of Beginnings on the first floor of Aincrad. If that was by design, whoever had put together this school had a sick sense of humor.

None of the students in their matching uniforms seemed to notice or care, though. They chattered happily, leaving the classroom in small groups and heading for the cafeteria.

I closed the zipper on my backpack and was slipping it over my shoulder when the boy who sat next to me looked up and said, “Going to the cafeteria, Kazu? Save me a seat, yeah?”

Before I could respond, the student on the other side of him grinned and piped up, “Nah, man. Today’s Kazu’s audience with the princess.”

“Oh, right. Lucky sap.”

“Yep, that’s right. Sorry, guys.”

I waved a brief good-bye and left the classroom before their usual complaints could pick up steam.

Only once I’d hurried down the light green hallway and out the emergency exit into the courtyard could I breathe a sigh of relief away from the bustle of the lunch hour. A fresh new brick path started at the door and wound through lines of sapling trees. The plain concrete building that loomed over the branches was nothing special to look at, but for a school thrown together using an old building left unused after school district consolidation, it was an impressive campus.

After I spent a few minutes walking through the tunnel of greenery, the brick path led me to a small, circular garden. The outer perimeter was decorated with a number of flower beds and plain wooden benches. Sitting on one of them was a female student, looking up at the sky.

Her long brown hair fell straight down the back of her deep green school blazer. Her skin was a pale white, but a rosy blush had recently returned to her cheeks.

Her slender legs were extended forward, held neatly together, and covered in long black socks. Her brown loafers were tapping in rhythm on the bricks as she stared into the azure sky. The sight was so endearing that I had to stop at the entrance of the garden, hang on a tree branch, and watch.

When she looked down and noticed me, her face cracked into a smile. Then she closed her eyes and turned her face away in a satisfied pout.

I grimaced and approached the bench.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Asuna.”

Asuna glanced at me and frowned. “Why do you always have to watch me from the shadows?”

“Sorry, sorry. Maybe it turns out I have some stalkerish qualities after all.”

“Ugh…” She drew back, looking disgusted, as I plopped down next to her and yawned.

“Man…I’m so tired…and hungry…”

“You sound like an old man, Kirito.”

“Well, I sure feel like I aged five years in the past month. Plus”—I folded my hands behind my head and shot her a sidelong glance—“it’s Kazuto, not Kirito. It’s against proper etiquette to use character names here.”

“Oh, right. I always forget…Hey, what about me? Everyone knows mine now!”

“That’s what you get for using your own name for a handle. Not that mine is that well hidden…”

All the students at this special school were former players of Sword Art Online who had been in middle or high school at the time of the incident. The actual orange players who had actively engaged in murder within the game were forced to submit to at least a year of counseling and monitoring for the sake of their mental health, but there were many players—including me—who’d been forced to attack others out of self-defense, and there was no official record or means of determining who had engaged in crimes like theft or extortion.

So it was considered taboo to mention one’s name within Aincrad, in order to avoid the settling of old scores. On the other hand, our faces were the same as they’d been in SAO. Asuna was discovered as soon as she stepped into the school building, and among some of the old high-level players, my nickname was common knowledge.

Naturally, it was impossible to expect that everything could be swept under the rug as though it never happened. The things that happened over there were real, not a dream, and every person here would have to find their own way to come to terms with those memories.

Asuna was holding a woven basket in her lap. I reached over and took her left hand in both of mine. It was still too thin, but it had filled out quite a lot since the day she’d awakened.

Her physical rehab had been quite fierce in order for her to make the start of the school term. She’d only recently been able to walk without crutches again, and she was still forbidden from any exercise, including running.

I visited her in the hospital after her awakening just as often as before, and it had been agonizing to watch her struggle to walk with the supports, teeth gritted and tears in her eyes. I rubbed her slender fingers over and over, remembering how hard it had been.

“…Kirito.”

I looked up. There was color in Asuna’s cheeks.

“Are you aware the cafeteria looks directly down onto this garden?”

“Wha…?”

Sure enough, on the top floor of the building over the tops of the trees were the tinted windows of the cafeteria. I let go abruptly.

“Honestly,” she sighed, then turned away in a huff again. “Forgetful people don’t get to have their lunches.”

“Aaah, I’m sorry!”

I apologized profusely for several seconds, until Asuna finally smiled and opened the basket sitting in her lap. She pulled out a round object wrapped in kitchen paper and handed it to me.

I hurriedly opened the paper to find a large hamburger with lettuce jutting out from the sides. The scent hit me directly in the stomach, and I jammed it into my mouth.

“Mm…dif fwavor…”

I chewed ravenously, swallowed to clear my throat, and then gave Asuna a wide-eyed look of surprise. She smiled and said, “Heh-heh. You remember it?”

“How could I forget? It’s the hamburger we ate at the safe haven on the seventy-fourth floor…”

“It was really hard to re-create the exact flavor, actually. It’s just not fair, you know? I worked myself to death trying to copy a realistic taste back there, and now I’m working myself to death trying to re-create it again back here.”

“Asuna…”

I stared at her, a storm of emotions raging in my chest at all of those happy memories. She looked right back at me and grinned.

“You have mayo on your cheek.”

By the time I’d finished my two large sandwiches and Asuna had eaten her small one, the lunch period was nearly over. She was holding a paper cup full of steaming herb tea from her thermos when she asked, “What’s on your schedule after lunch?”

“I’ve got two more classes, I think. It’s so weird. We’ve got EL panels rather than blackboards, tablets rather than notebooks, and our homework gets sent through wireless LAN—at this rate, we might as well just take our classes from home,” I grumbled. Asuna giggled.

“The screens and PCs might only be temporary. Pretty soon everything will be holographic…Besides, coming to school means we can actually meet up like this.”

“Good point…”

We made sure to share all of our electives, but since we were in different years, our main curriculum kept us apart. We only actually saw each other in class three days a week.

“Plus, Father says this is a model case for the next generation of schools.”

“Ahh…How is Shouzou?”

“Well, he was pretty bummed for a while. Said he was no judge of character after all. He’s been half-retired since leaving the CEO position, so I think he’s looking for a good way to deal with the lack of pressure on his shoulders. He’ll be fine once he finds a hobby.”

“I see…”

I took a sip of tea and joined Asuna in gazing up at the sky.

Asuna’s father, Shouzou Yuuki, had long ago decided on Asuna’s future husband—Nobuyuki Sugou.

After he was arrested in the hospital parking lot on that snowy night, Sugou continued to struggle and wriggle to avoid what he deserved. He kept his silence, he denied all wrongdoing, and he ultimately tried to pin everything on Akihiko Kayaba.

But once one of his subordinates was called in for questioning, everything came out into the open. He revealed that the three hundred victims of SAO who had not returned were held captive within a server in the Yokohama office of RCT Progress, victims of inhumane mind control experiments. Sugou was truly done for, but he did appeal for a psychiatric examination when the trial started. His primary charges were based on assault, but the public was curious to see if they could tag him with abduction.

It soon became clear that his shocking experiment on full-dive brainwashing was only possible through the first-generation NerveGear unit. They had all supposedly been destroyed, and with the results of Sugou’s experiment, it would be possible to design protection to ensure it could never happen again.

There was at least one piece of good news: None of the newly released survivors had any memory of the experiment. They suffered no physical tissue damage nor any psychological scars, so with the benefit of proper recuperation and counseling, all three hundred would be able to reassimilate into society.

But RCT Progress and ALfheim Online, if not the VRMMO genre as a whole, suffered a fatal blow.

Society was already wary enough after the SAO incident. So when ALO came along, the implicit promise to consumers was that the incident had been the work of a lone madman, and the VRMMO concept itself was still safe. But after Sugou’s handiwork, the public opinion was that any VR game could be used to commit a heinous crime.

Ultimately, RCT Progress was disbanded and RCT itself suffered heavy losses, but with a changing of the guard in senior management, the company was attempting a recovery.

ALO was shut down, of course, and five or six other VRMMOs in service, though losing only a slight number of members, were taking massive heat from the public sphere. Most speculated that they would all eventually be canceled as well.

It was only through a surprise twist of fate that this state of events was overturned…

…by the “seed of the world” Akihiko Kayaba left to me.

The issue of Kayaba must be addressed.

It was two months ago, in March 2025, that the suspicions were confirmed: Akihiko Kayaba had indeed died with the collapse of SAO in November 2024.

For the two years that he ruled over Aincrad as Heathcliff, Kayaba had been staying in a secluded mountain cabin deep in the woods of Nagano Prefecture.

Of course, his personal NerveGear had no deadly shackles built into it, and he was able to log out whenever he wanted, but there were records of continuous log-in time of up to a week as he carried out his guild leadership duties.

Assisting him during those times was a fellow researcher and graduate student at the industrial college he’d been affiliated with, even as he worked at Argus.

Both she and Sugou had been students at Kayaba’s lab, and by all outward appearances, Sugou had both respected Kayaba and felt a powerful rivalry toward him. Sugou had pursued the assistant romantically as well, a fact I learned from her after she was released on bail last month.

I forced the agent from the emergency response team to cough up her e-mail address and, after much careful consideration, sent her a message claiming that I didn’t want to blame her for anything, I only wanted to ask some questions. Her response came a week later. The woman’s name was Rinko Koujiro, and she traveled to the city from her home in Miyagi, to meet me at a café near Tokyo Station.

Kayaba had decided, even before he put his plan into motion, that he would die when the world of SAO collapsed. However, his choice of method was quite bizarre. He used a modified full-dive machine to perform a high-powered scan of his entire brain, frying it in the process.

The odds of the scan working successfully were only one in a thousand, she claimed. I found her to be both fragile and yet inwardly tough at the same time.

If all went according to his plan, he would be copying his memories and thoughts in the form of digital code so that he could exist within the network as an electronic brain.

I grappled with this information a bit, but eventually told her that I’d spoken with Kayaba’s consciousness in what had once been the SAO server. That he’d spared me and Asuna, and left something with me.

She looked at the ground for several minutes, shed a tear, and said, “I visited his mountain retreat with the intent of killing him. But I couldn’t do it. And because of that, many young people lost their lives. What he and I did cannot be forgiven. If you hate him, please delete what he gave to you. But…if you do happen to feel any emotion other than hatred…”

“Kirito. Hello, Kirito? About today’s IRL meet-up…”

The elbow in my ribs brought me back to my senses.

“Oh—sorry. I was spacing out.”

“No matter which world we’re in, when you get lost in thought, you really have no idea what’s going on.”

Asuna shook her head in exasperation, then unleashed a smile like a ray of sunlight and plopped her head against my shoulder.

With a most unladylike sound, I sucked the last remnants of the strawberry yogurt drink through my straw. We were seated against the west-facing cafeteria windows, at the third table in—at least, as measured by the adjoining southern wall. Keiko Ayano, who was sitting across from me, looked peeved.

“Can’t you drink that any quieter, Liz—I mean, Rika?”

“Well, how else am I supposed to—oh geez, can you believe how close Kirito’s sitting to her?”

A boy and girl were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bench down in the courtyard, which was only visible through the tree branches from this exact table.

“Shameless. Right in the middle of school…”

“A-and you don’t think it’s rude to spy on them?!”

I gave Keiko a glance and remarked, “Remind me again who was just watching them very intently a moment ago, Silica?”

Silica the dagger wielder, also known as Keiko (or should that be the other way around?), went bright red and shoveled her shrimp pilaf into her mouth to avoid having to respond to that.

I crushed the empty drink pack and tossed it into the trash can several feet away, then rested my chin on my hands, sighing dramatically.

“Sheesh…If I’d known this would happen, I wouldn’t have agreed to that one-month cease-fire.”

“That was your idea, Liz! You said we should give them a month to enjoy their company…You should have known this would be the result.”

“You have rice on your cheek.”

I sighed again and stared up through the skylight at the clouds passing overhead.

Kirito had sent me an e-mail out of the blue in mid-February. I don’t know how he got my address.

At first I was shocked, but then I heard the bell inside my head ring, signaling the start of round two. I headed to his meet-up spot, where he told me something even more shocking.

He’d gotten himself wrapped up in that shocking ALO Incident. And not only that, Asuna was a victim of it as well, though that was a secret from the public.

Asuna wanted to see me, so naturally, I rushed to visit her. When I saw how tender and fragile she looked, like a pale snow fairy, I felt that familiar urge to protect her that I’d experienced so many times in Aincrad.

Fortunately, she was getting better by day, and was able to start school along with the rest of us. Even once we were standing side by side again, I couldn’t force myself to see her as a rival. She was still more of a little sister who needed my help, so another friend of mine who was in love with Kirito decided to form an alliance with me—the alliance to let them be lovebirds until the end of May. And yet…

I sighed for a third time and popped the last bite of BLT into my mouth, then looked to Silica. “Gonna go to the IRL meet-up?”

“Of course I am. Lea—Suguha is coming, too. I can’t wait; I’ve never met her in person before.”

“You’ve got quite a nice relationship with Leafa,” I smirked at her. “Must be because you have so much in common, both being little-sister figures.”

“Grr…”

She grimaced, chowed down the last of her pilaf, and returned the smirk.

“Well, Liz, I guess that makes you the older sister now.”

Our glares sent sparks flying. A few moments later, we both looked up at the clouds and sighed together.

The ugly black door of Agil’s Dicey Café was adorned with an ugly sign that said RESERVED in ugly handwriting.

I turned to Suguha and asked, “Have you ever met Agil, Sugu?”

“Yeah, we hunted together twice, I think. He was real big.”

“He’s just like that in real life, too, so get ready.”

Suguha’s eyes went wide. Beside her, Asuna giggled.

“I certainly was surprised the first time I visited.”

“Me, too. I was freaked out.”

I bopped Suguha’s frightened head and gave her a grin before pushing the door open. The bell clanged briefly, but was drowned out by a sudden cheer of applause and whistling.

The small interior was already packed with people. The speakers were blaring some in-game BGM—surprisingly enough, the Algade theme song played by the NPC musicians in Aincrad—and glasses full of drinks shone in every hand. The party was well under way.

“What gives? We didn’t show up late!” I protested, stunned. Lisbeth sidled up in her school uniform.

“Heh, the star of the show always has to be the last to arrive. We just told you it started at a later time than everyone else. C’mon in!”

She pulled the three of us inside and shoved us onto the little stage at the back of the café. The door slammed shut, the music died out, and the lights turned up.

Suddenly I was washed in the spotlight, and beyond the glare I heard Lisbeth say, “All right everyone, are we ready? One, two, three!”

“Congrats on beating SAO, Kirito!!” the entire room chanted. Party crackers popped. There was applause.

Picture flashes went off right in my dumbfounded face.

Today’s offline meet-up, the “Aincrad Conquest Celebration,” had been originally planned by me, Liz and Agil, but at some point the reins had been seized by everyone else but me. There was at least double the number of people inside the building as I’d expected.

After a toast, we had a round of introductions, followed by a speech from me—not planned or prepared for—and a number of Agil’s massive homemade pizzas. The party was in complete chaos at this point.

The ways I was congratulated individually were varied—raucous and hearty from the men, a little too intimate from the women, and by the time I got to one of the stools at the bar counter, I was exhausted.

“Bourbon on the rocks, boss,” I ordered glibly. The large man in the white shirt and black necktie gave me an appraising look. A few moments later, to my surprise, a tumbler came sliding over with ice cubes and an amber liquid inside.

I took a tiny, hesitant sip to find that it was nothing more than oolong tea. I sneered back at the bartender, who was very pleased with himself. Meanwhile, a tall, skinny fellow plopped onto the stool next to me. He was dressed in a suit with an ugly tie, and stunningly enough, an even uglier bandanna.

“The real thing for me, Agil.”

It was Klein, the katana warrior. Glass in hand, he swiveled around on the stool to cast a leering glance at a group of women chattering happily across the room.

“Really, drinks in the afternoon? Aren’t you going to work after this?”

“Bah. Who can stomach overtime without a drink or two in ’em? Besides…hot damn…”

He continued staring goonishly at the girls. I rolled my eyes and tossed back a mouthful of iced tea.

I had to admit, it was a pretty nice sight. Asuna, Lisbeth, Silica, Sasha, Yuriel, and Suguha, together at once—it made me want to take a picture. As a matter of fact, the entire thing was being videotaped…for Yui’s sake.

Another man took the other adjacent stool. He was in a suit himself, but unlike Klein, he looked the part of a proper businessman. This was Thinker, the former commander of the Army.

I raised my glass and said to him, “I hear you tied the knot with Yuriel? A bit belated, but—congrats.” We clinked glasses, and he laughed shyly.

“Well, I’ve just been trying my hardest to get used to real life again. Work’s finally on the right track, too…”

Klein raised his drink as well and leaned in. “Seriously, cheers! I shoulda found someone for myself while I was there. By the way, I’ve been checking out the new MMO today.”

Thinker smiled shyly again. “Aw, geez. We barely have anything up on the site yet…Besides, strategy data and MMO news are quickly becoming obsolete.”

“The birth of a new universe is a time of chaos,” I nodded, then looked at the bartender, who was rattling a shaker. “How’s The Seed been since then, Agil?”

The bald man put on a toothy smile that would make a small child cry and chortled, “It’s incredible. We’ve got about fifty mirrors up, downloads in six figures now, and nearly three hundred functioning servers running.”

Akihiko Kayaba’s thought-simulation program had left me the “seed of a world.”

A few days after meeting with his former assistant, I had Yui transfer the massive file from my NerveGear’s local storage to a memory chip, and brought it to Agil’s bar. He was the only person I knew with the skills to help that seed take root.

Naturally, there was hatred within me for Kayaba and his floating castle world. His game of death killed several people I thought of as friends. It was for their sake, for the memory of their terror, as well as my girlfriend, that I could never forgive Kayaba for what he did.

But unfortunately, I couldn’t deny that somewhere within that great loathing, there was an ounce of empathy for him. With true life and death, he had created another reality. I was desperate to escape that world, but I also loved it. Somewhere deep within my heart, a part of me was constantly hoping for it to continue.

After much hard thought, I came to a conclusion: I wanted to see what would grow from this “seed.”

The seed of a world.

It was a program package designed by Kayaba, officially titled “The Seed,” that contained everything necessary for a full-sensory VR full-dive system.

Not only had he downsized the Cardinal system—which controlled and managed the SAO server—into a compact size that even a small server could run, he’d even packed in the development suite necessary for all the software game components.

In other words, anyone who wanted to create their own VR world, as long as they had a server with a good enough connection, could download the package, design 3D objects or utilize others’ creations, and run the program to create their own world.

Developing a program that managed the input and output for all five senses was incredibly difficult. In essence, every VR game in the entire world was based on some form of Kayaba’s Cardinal system, at incredible licensing cost.

With the end of Argus, control of the program transferred to RCT, and with the end of RCT Progress, a new buyer was needed. But the cost of the software and the social stigma of the VR genre were enough to drive off any company rich enough to afford it. To most observers, the genre was bound to die off.

Into that void stepped The Seed, a compact VR control system that was entirely rights free. I gave the program to Agil, who used his connections to analyze the program thoroughly and determine that it did not pose any harm.

Whether Kayaba’s intended it to be harmless or not, ultimately no one other than its creator could foresee what might happen if this software was unleashed upon the world. Yet I couldn’t help but feel that a very simple emotion was at the heart of his plan.

The desire to see a true “other world.”

At my request, Agil uploaded The Seed to servers all over the world, so that anyone, individual or company, could access it.

Ultimately, ALfheim Online was saved from an untimely demise by a number of venture capitalists who were also ALO players. They banded together to form a new company, and managed to acquire all of the ALO data from RCT at a rock-bottom price.

Alfheim’s vast continent was brought back to life within a new crucible with all player data intact. Apparently, not even 10 percent of the player base had given up the game for good after the incident.

Of course, Alfheim was not the only world brought to life. From companies without the funds to afford the astronomical licensing fee down to single individuals, hundreds of new developers appeared, running their own VR game servers. Some charged fees and some didn’t. These games gradually found themselves aligning and connecting to one another, leading to the formation of some meta-rules widely accepted across the spectrum. There was even a common agreement that a character created in one VR game should be easily convertible across all game worlds.

The Seed’s functionality didn’t stop merely at games. Education, communication, tourism—servers offering new experiences popped up by the day, giving birth to an ever-greater variety of worlds. The day was coming soon when the total size of combined VR worlds eclipsed the land area of Japan itself.

Thinker smiled and spoke with dreamy eyes.

“I honestly think we’re witnessing the birth of a new world. The term MMORPG is too narrow to describe it. I actually want to come up with a new name for my website…but nothing good comes to mind.”

“Hmmm,” Klein murmured, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow in thought. I jabbed his elbow and laughed.

“Come on, nobody’s looking for suggestions from a guy who’d name his guild Furinkazan!”

“What? We’re fast as the wind, still as the forest, fierce as fire, and immovable as the mountain! People are lining up for days to join the new Furinkazan!”

“Good for you. Hopefully you can recruit some cute girls.”

“Ugh…”

Klein had no response to that. I laughed again and turned back to Agil. “There are no changes to the after-party plan, right?”

“Correct. We’re meeting up at Yggdrasil City at eleven tonight.”

“And,” I lowered my voice, “is it going to work?”

“You bet. Took an entire new cloud of servers, but that’s the legendary castle for ya. We’ve got more and more players signed up, and the funds are pouring in.”

“Well, let’s cross our fingers.”

The former SAO server was reformatted and scrapped entirely. But among the former Argus materials the new ALO admins bought was something completely unexpected.

I drained my glass of tea and held it in both hands, looking at the ceiling of the bar. The black panels looked like night sky to me. Gray clouds floated past. Next the moon appeared, casting its blue glow on the world. Beyond that was a gigantic—

“Hey, Kirito! Over here!” Lisbeth bellowed, fully drunk now. She waved me over dramatically.

“I hope she’s not too hammered,” I said, eyeing the large pitcher full of pink liquid in her hands. The outlaw bartender played it cool.

“Don’t worry, it’s only one percent alcohol. Besides, tomorrow’s the weekend.”

“Oh, come on…”

I stood up, shaking my head. It was going to be a long evening.

Leafa flew through the pitch-black night.

Her two pairs of wings beat against the air, propelling her onward, faster and faster. The wind screamed in her ears.

Before, she’d had to master the art of gliding to conserve her limited wing power, finding just the right combination of cruising speed and swooping trajectory. But that was all in the past now. There were no more shackles imposed upon her by the system.

There was no city on top of the World Tree after all. The alfs, fairies of light, did not exist. The King of the Fairies, who was said to transform anyone who could reach him, was a false tyrant.

But now that the land had fallen into ruin and been brought back by a new ruler—or managers—every fairy in the game was given eternal wings. She was still a green wind sylph, not an alf, but Leafa was happy as she was.

She logged in a full hour before the time of the meeting and left the cait sith stronghold of Freelia, which had been her home base recently. She’d been flying for twenty minutes straight, not resting for a second but buzzing her wings at full power, indulging her impulses. Despite such a long flight at top speed, her grass-green propellers never lost an ounce of power. They stayed faithful to Leafa’s commands through thick and thin.

Kirito had described the acceleration theory under the new order of Alfheim as an automobile. Just after leaving the ground, you had to spread your wings as wide as possible “for the purposes of torque”—Kirito’s words, whatever that meant—and catch as much air as you could in each beat.

Once the speed was up to a good level, the wings should be bent at a tight angle and beat quick and short. Once at maximum speed, you could fold the wings into a straight line, vibrating them so fast they were virtually invisible. From the ground, a player at that speed was nothing but a colorful comet. At that point, there was very little that could be done to increase speed; it depended entirely on the flyer’s will and guts. Most would slow down from either instinctual fear or mental exhaustion.

Last week they’d held a race across Alfheim, which was highlighted by a dead heat between Leafa and Kirito that she won by a hair at the very end. They demolished the competition so badly that the prospect of a second race was unlikely at this point.

That was so much fun…

Leafa chuckled to herself as she flew. Kirito trailed her as they approached the goal line, and he’d tried the underhanded tactic of telling stupid jokes in an attempt to make her laugh and lose concentration. It had worked like gangbusters. If she hadn’t hit him perfectly with the antidote potion in her pouch, he might well have overtaken her.

Racing like that was fun, but there was nothing like letting her mind empty as she sped away toward the horizon on her own.

Her long flight had brought her very close to the maximum speed. The dark land below was only a striped blur to her eyes, and any lights from the small towns she saw ahead were behind her in moments.

Just when she physically felt like she was going faster than she’d ever flown before, Leafa spread her wings and twisted into a steep climb.

A full moon was shining through a crack in the thick clouds above. She rose like a rocket, heading straight for the pale disc. A few seconds later, she plunged into the clouds, noting a slight difference in the sound in her ears. She pierced the black veil like a bullet. A bolt of lightning flashed very close by, illuminating the clouds around her, but she did not stop.

Finally she broke through. The entire world was lit by pale blue moonlight—the surface below was an unbroken field of white clouds. The only other object in sight was the top of the World Tree in the distance, towering over the cloud layer. Her speed was indeed dropping by now, but Leafa only tensed her lips and straightened out her fingers, reaching for that moon. It seemed to her that the silver platter was getting larger and larger. She could make out the individual craters.

Was it just a trick of the eyes that made her think she saw a group of glinting lights in the center of one of the larger craters? Could there be an unknown civilization up on that moon, living in a town of their own? If she could just get a bit closer…

But eventually Leafa was caught by the end of the world, the game’s altitude limit. Her speed dropped abruptly and her body grew heavy. The virtual world ended right ahead. It just wasn’t possible to go any farther. But…

Leafa reached out as far as she could, spreading her fingers as though to grab the moon.

I want to go there. Higher. Farther. Out of the stratosphere, free from gravity, to that moon world. And beyond that, too—between the planets, surpassing the comets, out into the ocean of stars…

Her upward acceleration finally died and went negative. Leafa went into a free fall in the night sky, her arms held wide. Bit by bit, the moon grew smaller.

Leafa closed her eyes and smiled.

Maybe not yet, but soon…

According to Kirito, ALfheim Online was in the planning stages to join a vast VRMMO nexus. They’d start by interfacing with a game set on the surface of the moon. Once that happened, she’d be able to fly there. Eventually others would join and take their places as planets, and interstellar ferries would be able to take her through the cosmos.

I can fly anywhere. I can go anywhere…except for one place.

The thought suddenly made her sad. She hugged herself tight as she fell toward the fluffy cloud layer.

She knew why she felt lonely. It was because of the party she’d attended in the real world with Kirito—her brother, Kazuto.

It was so much fun. She’d been able to meet many of his friends in person for the first time, to talk face-to-face. Those three hours had passed in a blink.

But at the same time, she felt the existence of a bond that tied them all together, something invisible but powerful: the memories of their shared battles, tears, laughs, and love from the floating castle of Aincrad. Even now, back in the real world, these things shone brightly within them.

Her love for Kazuto had not changed.

She felt the same sensation of warm sunlight when she said good night in his doorway, or ran to the station with him in the morning.

If they’d been true siblings, or total strangers growing up in different cities, she might have shed bitter tears. But she was lucky: She got to spend every day living with him under the same roof. She didn’t need his entire heart. As long as there was a tiny bit of space in there for her, that was enough.

I’ve finally gotten myself to be content with that.

But at that party, she’d felt a premonition that Kazuto would one day travel far away, far beyond her reach. She couldn’t intrude into that bond that group shared. There was no place for Suguha there; she held no memories of that castle.

Leafa curled into a ball and dropped like a meteor.

The clouds were very close. The meeting place was in the new Yggdrasil City, built into the top of the World Tree. She needed to spread her wings and begin gliding soon. But the coldness sealing her heart prevented her from doing so.

The cold wind brushed her cheek, stealing the warmth from her breast. She sank deeper, deeper into the dark sea of clouds…

Suddenly, something caught her, stopping her fall.

“——?!”

Leafa’s eyes shot open in surprise.

There was Kirito’s face, right in front of her. He was holding her in his arms, hovering just above the clouds. Before she could ask why, the tanned spriggan spoke.

“I was wondering how far you’d go. C’mon, the meeting’s just about to start.”

“…Oh…Thanks.”

Leafa smiled, beat her wings, and rolled out of his arms.

The management operating the new ALfheim Online received the entire collection of game data from RCT Progress, which included within it the old character data from Sword Art Online. The operators decided that when former SAO players started an account in the new ALO, they could choose to carry over their old character and appearance from SAO if they wished.

Therefore, Leafa’s regular partners—Silica, Asuna, Lisbeth—were extremely close to their original appearance, just with a few fairylike features added. But when Kirito was given the choice, he decided to stick with his spriggan form, rather than return to his old look. He also reset his phenomenal statistics so that he could start over from the beginning.

Leafa was struck with a sudden urge to know why, so she asked Kirito as they hovered side by side.

“Hey, Big Br…Kirito, why didn’t you go back to your old look like the others?”

“Hmm…”

He folded his arms and looked hazily into the distance, and then grinned.

“The Kirito from that world finished his quest.”

“…I see,” she laughed.

The thought that she was the one who had first happened across Kirito the spriggan and helped him travel to the World Tree filled her with a kind of pride. She floated over and took his hand.

“Let’s dance.”

“Huh?”

His eyes went wide. She tugged at his arm and slid over the top of the clouds.

“It’s an advanced technique just recently developed. You can move around sideways while maintaining a hover.”

“Ohh…”

That seemed to have stimulated his desire for a good challenge. He attempted to mimic her movements, his face locked in concentration. But he soon tipped forward and lost his balance.

“Nwah!”

“Hee-hee! It won’t work if you try to accelerate forward. It’s more like the teensiest bit of lift, plus a glide to the side.”

“Hrrm…”

Leafa pulled him by the arm, and after a few minutes of awkward stumbling, Kirito seemed to have gotten the hang of it.

“Oh…I see, like this?”

“That’s it. You’re doing good!”

Leafa smiled and took a small bottle from her waist pocket. She pulled out the cork and let it float in midair. Little dots of silver light flooded out of the bottle, along with the sound of a beautiful string ensemble. It was a musical item sold by high-level pooka minstrels, a recording of one of their performances.

Leafa began to step gracefully to the rhythm.

Big step, little step, big again, they floated through the air. She stared into Kirito’s eyes as they held hands, helping him decide which direction to turn in the moment.

They spun and spun across the endless ocean of clouds, lit by pale moonlight. Their slow, graceful actions gradually went faster, farther, with each step of the dance.

The green light scattered by Leafa’s wings and the white light of Kirito’s mingled in the air and vanished. The sound of the wind faded away. She shut her eyes.

She could feel all of Kirito’s emotions and sentiments through his fingertips. This could be the last time for that. It was another one of those rare but magical moments where their hearts made direct contact. This would probably be the last of those.

Kirito—Kazuto—had his own world. School, friends, and those even closer. His wings were so strong, his stride so long, that she would never be able to reach him.

Their paths had been going in different directions ever since the day two years ago that he’d left for that other world and hadn’t come back. She’d found this pair of fairy wings in the hopes that they would bring her closer, but half of the hearts of Kirito and the others were still within that floating castle of fantasy.

Scientific progress had made the world of the imagination impossibly real. It had surpassed the construct of a simple “game” and made the virtual into reality. But people are not built to live in many realities. Kazuto had experienced too much joy, sadness, and love in that other world. The world of dreams, a place Suguha herself would never visit.

She felt tears squeezing through her shut eyelids.

“Leafa…?” Kirito said into her ear.

She opened her eyes and looked at his smiling face. The music coming from the little bottle faded out, and the bottle itself quietly shattered into nothing.

“I’m going to go back home for today,” she said, letting go of his hands.

“Huh? Why…?”

“Because…” She felt the tears return. “It’s just…too far away from me. The place where you and everyone else are. I can’t reach you there.”

“Sugu…” He stared at her solemnly, then shook his head. “That’s not true. You can go anywhere if you set your mind to it.”

He took her hand without waiting for an answer, squeezed it, and turned away.

“Ah…”

Kirito beat his wings powerfully and began to accelerate. He headed straight for the World Tree, across the sea of clouds.

Kirito raced along at ferocious speed, not easing his grip on Leafa’s hand an ounce. She struggled to keep up so that she wouldn’t be dragged along.

In time, the World Tree grew large enough to cover their view of the sky. At the top of the trunk, where the first massive limbs branched out, there was a gathering of countless tiny lights: Yggdrasil City.

Kirito flew toward a tower in the center that stood taller and brighter than the others. Just as they got close enough to discern between the lights beyond open windows and the lights hanging from streetlamps, a great pealing of many bells sounded.

It was Alfheim’s signal for midnight. The sound emitted from the great hollow space within the trunk of the tree, wherein an elevator between Alne and Yggdrasil City had been installed. From there, the sound traveled across the entire world.

Kirito spread his wings to come to an abrupt stop.

“Whoa—!” Leafa wasn’t quick enough to react, and she would have collided with him if he hadn’t stretched out his arms to snag her.

“We didn’t make it in time. Here it comes.”

“Huh?”

She looked at him, uncomprehending. Kirito smiled and winked, pointing to a stretch of sky above. She turned around in his arms and looked up at the night sky.

The gigantic full moon was glowing with a cold blue light. But that was all.

“Um…it’s the moon. What about it?”

“Look closer.” He gestured higher. She squinted.

Along the upper right curve of the silver circle, a tiny piece was missing.

“Huh…?”

She looked harder. An eclipse? But nothing like that had ever happened in Alfheim, to her knowledge.

The black shadow stealing over the moon grew and grew. But the shape itself was not a circle. It was like a triangular wedge, digging farther and farther into the sphere. A low growl hit Leafa’s ears. Something was echoing heavily—gong, gong. It shook the entire atmosphere, as if emanating from a great distance.

The shadow was now blocking out the moon entirely. But the moon’s light, wrapping around, did still dimly illuminate the contours of the triangular shadow. Larger it grew. Larger, and closer—

It was a conical object, but the distance to it was hard to grasp. Leafa squinted for a better look.

The floating object suddenly lit up on its own. Bright beams of yellow light sprayed in all directions.

It seemed to be made of a great many thin layers that were stacked on top of each other, and the light was streaming from between the layers. Three massive pillars hung from the bottom of the object, ending in points that glowed on their own.

A ship? A house? Leafa couldn’t tell. Meanwhile, the thing only got more gargantuan. It was completely blocking out an entire part of the sky. The heavy rumbling vibrated her body.

Suddenly, she realized that she could see something between the bottom two layers. Tiny little fixtures sprouting up and down. In fact, they looked like…

Buildings! There were a number of massive buildings with several floors’ worth of windows. But based on the size of the building, each one of the dozens of layers had to be at least as tall as the Tower of Wind. In that case, how tall must the entire structure be? How many hundreds and hundreds of feet? How many miles…?

“Ah…that— that can’t be…” A shocking thought shot through Leafa’s brain. “Is that…?”

She turned and looked at Kirito. He nodded gravely, but couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.

“That’s right. It’s Aincrad, the floating castle.”

“But…why? Why is it here…?”

The floating structure slowed its approach, and stopped when it was nearly close enough to touch the highest branches of the World Tree.

“So we can finish what we started,” he replied softly. “We’ll beat it from the first floor to the hundredth this time. I only got three-quarters of the way through last time. Leafa…”

He let his hand rest on top of her head. “I’m a lot weaker than I used to be…You’ll help me, won’t you?”

“…Ah…”

The word caught in her throat. She stared at him.

You can go anywhere if you set your mind to it.

Tears fell down her cheeks again, falling to Kirito’s shirt.

“Yeah. I’ll be with you…together…wherever you go…”

A voice floated up to them from below as they gazed at the impossibly large castle.

“Hey! You’re late, Kirito!”

Leafa looked back to see Klein rising to meet them, a yellow-and-black bandanna pushing up his red hair and a wildly long katana at his side.

Next to him was Agil with his massive battle-ax, his brown skin the mark of a gnome.

Lisbeth, with her white-and-blue apron, and a silver leprechaun hammer.

Silica, with luscious black ears and tail, a little blue dragon on her shoulder.

Sasha, who was not yet used to flying, wobbling along with her flight stick.

Sakuya and Alicia Rue, with their own contingent of sylphs and cait siths.

Recon, waving wildly.

Even Eugene the salamander and some of his men.

“C’mon, we’re gonna leave you in the dust!” Klein shouted, and the entire ensemble raced off through the night, heading for the castle in the sky.

Last of all, dressed in a white tunic and miniskirt with a silver rapier at her side, stood Asuna, a tiny pixie on her shoulder. She stopped in front of Leafa and Kirito, her long hair waving.

“Let’s go, Leafa!” Asuna urged, extending a hand. Leafa took it hesitantly. Asuna smiled and turned, beating her pale blue wings.

Yui hopped off of her shoulder and landed on Kirito’s. “Hurry up, Papa!”

Kirito gave Aincrad a brief but serene gaze before hanging his head. His lips moved, as though saying someone’s name to himself, but his voice was inaudible.

When he looked up again, Kirito was wearing his usual invincible smile. He spread his wings and pointed up to the heavens.

“All right—let’s go!!”

(The End)