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Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Epigraph
Chapter Twelve: Administrator, May 380 HE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter Thirteen: Final Battle, May 380 HE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Afterword
Yen Newsletter

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 Copyright

SWORD ART ONLINE, Volume 14: ALICIZATION UNITING

REKI KAWAHARA

Translation by Stephen Paul

Cover art by abec

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

SWORD ART ONLINE Vol.14

©REKI KAWAHARA 2014
First published in Japan in 2014 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through
Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

English translation © 2018 by Yen Press, LLC

Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The
purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works
that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft
of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from
the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for
your support of the author’s rights.

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First Yen On Edition: August 2018

Yen On is an imprint of Yen Press, LLC.

The Yen On name and logo are trademarks of Yen Press, LLC.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned
by the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kawahara, Reki, author. | Abec, 1985– illustrator. | Paul, Stephen, translator.

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Title: Sword art online / Reki Kawahara, abec ; translation, Stephen Paul.
Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2014–
Identifiers: LCCN 2014001175 | ISBN 9780316371247 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316376815 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296427 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316296434 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296441 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316296458 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390408 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316390415 (v. 8 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390422 (v. 9 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316390439 (v. 10 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390446 (v. 11 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316390453 (v. 12 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390460 (v. 13 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780316390484 (v. 14 : pbk.)
Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure.
Classification: pz7.K1755Ain 2014 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2014001175

ISBNs: 978-0-316-39048-4 (paperback)

978-0-316-56106-8 (ebook)

E3-20180719-JV-PC

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 Contents
Cover
Insert
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph

Chapter Twelve: Administrator, May 380 HE

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter Thirteen: Final Battle, May 380 HE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Afterword
Yen Newsletter

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www.justlightnovels.com 13 | P a g e
 Integrity Knights. Or, occasionally, Integrators.
They were the most powerful of servants, possessing finely honed
swordsmanship, high-level sacred arts, and even at-will use of
fearsome Perfect Weapon Control abilities.
For three hundred long years, these knights had been the force
upholding the law and order of the four empires of man, as well as
the rule of the Axiom Church—but the knighthood itself was
stunningly small. As suggested by the name of the most recently
inducted knight, Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One, there were barely over
thirty of them.
But rather than diminishing the dignity and potency of the
knighthood, their small number only enhanced it. A group smaller
than a full raid party in games like SAO or ALO had kept the lands of
humanity safe from encroachers in the Dark Territory for all these
years.
I, Kirito, once known as “Beater” or the “Black Swordsman” but
now an elite disciple at the North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft
Academy, armed with nothing more than my trusty blade and an
even more trusted companion, had launched into battle against this
band of Integrity Knights. Our rebellion wasn’t by design but rather
was the consequence of escaping from jail—because once we had
drawn our blades against the Axiom Church, the ultimate ruling body
of the land, there was no way out but forward.
Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One, user of the Frostscale Whip.
Deusolbert Synthesis Seven, user of the Conflagration Bow.
Fanatio Synthesis Two, user of the Heaven-Piercing Blade and her
Four Whirling Blades.
Alice Synthesis Thirty, user of the Osmanthus Blade.
We had made our way up the grand staircase of the Axiom
Church’s Central Cathedral, just barely besting these knights and
their almighty weapons, which were known as Divine Objects.
Needless to say, it wasn’t my skill alone that had paved the way.

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 The craftsman Sadore in Centoria had taken an entire year to
fashion a branch of the demonic Gigas Cedar into a single black
sword for me.
The sage Cardinal had provided me with rest, food, vast knowledge
of the world, and the Perfect Weapon Control skill needed to fight
back against the knights.
And most of all, I had my friend Eugeo, who had been at my side
for two long years, ever since we left the distant village of Rulid.
I had taught Eugeo the One-Handed Sword skills of the Aincrad
style, but he had given me so much more in return. The only reason
I’d survived my unexpected plunge from the real world into the
unfamiliar Underworld was the help, encouragement, and guidance
of Eugeo.
At the eightieth floor of Central Cathedral, I was separated from
my partner. In the midst of a fierce battle, the Integrity Knight Alice
and I punched a hole in the outer wall of the tower and tumbled out.
I took great pains to convince Alice to stay her sword, but over the
course of an entire night, we managed to climb the sheer wall of the
tower until we at last reentered the building on the ninety-fifth floor.
I raced up the stairs, certain that Eugeo was ahead of me now, and
met a creepy man named Prime Senator Chudelkin. I chased him up
to the ninety-ninth floor, just one floor below the chamber of
Administrator, pontifex of the Axiom Church and supreme ruler of
humanity.
It was in this room, featureless aside from the staircase leading
back down to the senate floors and the levitating platform up to the
hundredth floor, that I was reunited with my partner.
But he was no longer the simple, purehearted young man that I
knew.
Now he was Eugeo Synthesis Thirty-Two, clad in the silver armor of
an Integrity Knight.

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 CHAPTER TWELVE
ADMINISTRATOR, MAY 380 HE
1
Both Eugeo’s Blue Rose Sword and my black blade carved light-
green trails in the darkened chamber.
The paths formed a perfect symmetry. This was to be expected, as
we launched into identical skills simultaneously, including the
charging skill Sonic Leap. The timing was perfectly aligned, such that
the sword tips reached the peak of their curve, flashing brighter to
indicate the attack power was at its maximum potential, at precisely
the same moment before silver and black edges collided.
I didn’t just execute the technique. I used the tension in my feet,
rotation of my body, and swing of my arms as three separate
accelerative forces on the attack. Even so, Eugeo’s Sonic Leap wasn’t
even a microsecond slower than mine. He had pushed his as far as it
could go, just like I had. And I hadn’t even fully taught him how to do
that yet.
Somehow, when I hadn’t been paying attention, Eugeo had kept
patiently, stubbornly swinging away. Hundreds of times, every single
day, until he could hear the voice of the sword.
“…How?” I grunted under my breath as our swords clashed at their
intersection point. “How did you lose to the Synthesis Ritual? The
reason you studied the blade…the reason you left Rulid for Centoria
was to take back your childhood friend Alice. Right?”
“…”
Eugeo stood firm, blocking my sword. As he’d warned before we
started, he had nothing more to say to me—his lips were shut tight. I
felt like I saw a glimmer in his green eyes the moment he heard the

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name Alice, but whatever that was, it was instantly swallowed by
darkness. Perhaps it was nothing more than a trick of the eyes,
caused by the green glow coming from the swords.
If our stalemate continued for a few seconds longer, the Sonic
Leaps would expire, ushering us into a furious close-range
swordfight. At that point, I wouldn’t have the time to think. I used
the brief recess to furiously spur my mind onward.
Integrity Knights were created through direct operation of their
souls, in what was called the Synthesis Ritual. It involved extracting a
crystal of memories from the subject’s mind and replacing it with a
device that forced their loyalty, an object called a Piety Module.
The moment Eldrie had heard his mother’s name, he’d become
unstable, and the Piety Module had begun to emerge from his
forehead. That meant that in order to make him an Integrity Knight,
Administrator had stolen his memories of his mother.
The other knights must’ve lost similarly precious memories. For
Deusolbert, it was likely the memory of his wife. For Fanatio and
Bercouli, I couldn’t be sure yet, but I imagined it was either families
or lovers.
So who would it be for Alice? The golden knight was back against
the wall, watching the fight between Eugeo and me. The most
probable answer was her little sister, Selka, who was still living back
in Rulid. When I had casually dropped Selka’s name while we were
resting on the terrace ledge outside the tower, Alice had reacted
violently. She’d cried at the mention of her sister and even sworn
rebellion against the Axiom Church.
But the mention of Selka’s name didn’t cause Alice’s Piety Module
to become unstable, as far as I could tell. That was either because
she’d been an Integrity Knight for six years already or because the
stolen memories weren’t actually of Selka.
Assuming my conjectures about these matters were accurate, then
whose memory did Administrator steal from Eugeo?
Not far from where we stood locked in combat was the levitating
platform, which Chudelkin had used to flee to the floor above, and
which I’d summoned back down. There was a hole in the ceiling

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about three feet across. It had to be Administrator’s chamber
through there, but it was pitch-black through the hole. If she was up
there right now, I couldn’t tell.
But just an hour ago, she had “synthesized” Eugeo there—stealing
his most precious memories. But of whom?
There was only one answer I could imagine. It was the girl he’d
been chasing after for eight years, ever since Deusolbert took her
away when she was a child. Alice Zuberg, who was now Alice
Synthesis Thirty.
Then why did Eugeo have no reaction toward Alice, who was
standing in the very same room with us while we dueled? Eldrie’s
module nearly fell out just at the mention of his mother’s name. If
his instability was a factor of how little time he’d spent as an
Integrity Knight—well, Eugeo had been one for barely an hour. He
should’ve had an even more violent reaction the instant he saw
Alice.
But this Eugeo was completely closed off from the world. If it
wasn’t memories of Alice that had been removed from him, then
who—or what—did Administrator take away?
At that moment, the shine from the two clashing sword skills
faded.
Without the propulsion that the system assistance gave them, the
white and black blades recoiled from each other. As sparks flew, I
clenched my teeth and Eugeo looked as impassive as ever. We
brandished our swords for new attacks.
“Yaaah!”
“…!”
With simultaneous cries—one voiced and one mute—we launched
high left-handed swings with perfect synchronization. The blades
clashed and recoiled, and next was a swipe from the right side. The
edges clanged and slid, leading to a downward left swing. This, too,
was firmly caught.
As we settled into our second stalemate, I couldn’t help but
marvel. Our swords might have identical stats, but the people who
wielded them did not. I was lighter, with regular clothes, while Eugeo

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wore heavy plate armor. He was lugging around many times the
weight I was, yet his attacks were coming with the exact same speed.
Either turning into an Integrity Knight bumped up his strength, or this
was the effect of that “Incarnate” thing Alice had mentioned just
before the fight.
I knew that this world contained some systems that couldn’t be
explained with the logic of all the other VRMMO worlds I’d
experienced to this point. Invisible forces like willpower and
imagination could, at times, produce effects beyond that of even
high-level system commands.
Becoming an Integrity Knight had taken away Eugeo’s memories
and emotions, but his willpower was cold and sharp. Before we
started fighting, he had summoned the Blue Rose Sword I possessed
to his hand as though through telekinesis—an ability Alice had called
Incarnate Arms.
What was actually in Eugeo’s heart now? It was the determination
to take Alice back from the Church that drove him to want to be an
Integrity Knight in the first place. What kind of will was now filling
the enormous void left in its place?
I couldn’t imagine that it was all just loyalty to the Axiom Church
and its pontifex, etched into his soul. I didn’t want to believe that;
there was no way the Blue Rose Sword could withstand every last
ounce of my black sword’s strength with that kind of artificial
willpower.
Somewhere within those icy cold eyes, something was still
burning. I had to believe in that. And if there was one way to
summon that forth, it had to be…
“…Eugeo,” I whispered, pushing against the sword with all my
strength, “maybe you don’t remember this anymore…but you and I
never actually got to fight with everything we have, before.”
“…”
Eugeo’s eyes, which had once shone a brilliant green, were now
dark and dull. I stared into them, willing them to respond.
“On the journey from Rulid to Centoria, and while we were at
Swordcraft Academy, I asked myself the same question many times:

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Who would win if we crossed blades for real? And to be honest…I felt
like one day, you would surpass me.”
Eugeo returned my gaze without blinking. In fact, he didn’t return
it—his eyes were like closed shutters. I was nothing but an intruder
who needed to be eliminated. If I showed him even an instant of
weakness, he would strike. But I still delivered the conclusion of my
speech, believing that something would get through to him.
“…But now is not that time. You’ve forgotten about me, about
Alice, about Tiese and Ronie, and even about Cardinal. You can’t beat
me. And I’m going to prove that to you.”
As soon as the words had left my mouth, I stopped breathing and
willed the strength of every muscle in my body into my sword. Fine
wrinkles appeared on Eugeo’s brow as he attempted to push back.
At that instant, I pulled back.
Zshang! The blades clashed, producing a line of sparks in the
gloom. The shift in momentum pushed me backward and caused
Eugeo to lean forward.
If I tried to steady myself, I’d be a sitting duck for Eugeo. Instead, I
pushed into the momentum and let my back fall toward the floor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Alice reaching across her body
for the Osmanthus Blade, certain that I had just lost.
But her decision was coming three seconds too early. Victory or
defeat would be determined by whether my strategy was successful
or not—or how well Eugeo truly understood the Aincrad style.
Just before my back hit the floor, I kicked upward with my right
foot. The toe of my boot shone, lighting Eugeo’s chin from below.
“Yaaaah!”
I spun backward, the angle tight. It was Aincrad-style martial arts,
the backflip-kick skill Crescent Moon. This handy move, which you
could activate while falling backward, had saved my life on numerous
occasions in the old SAO. I hadn’t used it in combat or practice since
coming to the Underworld, but the movement was etched into my
muscles—and most importantly, I’d never shown it to Eugeo.
On the other hand, I had shown him martial arts with fists or
shoulders. He’d shown proficiency with it, too. He could do the

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simple punching skill Flash Blow, as well as three parts of Meteor
Break, the high-level combination of body blows and slashes.
If he had discovered the existence of kicking attacks in his own
time, or even just suspected their existence, he was going to evade
my Crescent Moon. And the downside of this attack was that it had
an extremely long recovery after it had been dodged. If I missed, I
would be helpless against his merciless blade.
This is it, Eugeo!
My right foot closed in on my opponent’s gorget. Even in this
situation, Eugeo’s eyes were full of impassive frost. He twisted his
torso without changing his expression, attempting to curve away
from my foot. But the momentum that had pulled him forward when
I fell backward was still a factor. My glowing toe shot toward his
defenseless chin.
“…!”
Air shot from Eugeo’s mouth. The arm holding the Blue Rose
Sword swiped sideways with ferocious force. But no matter how
hard he swung, my leg was faster. If I just focused on connecting, I
would reach…
No.
Eugeo wasn’t attempting a counterattack. He was using not the
blade of the sword but its pommel and aiming it not at my body but
at my leg: a backhand pommel strike. It was an utterly practical
movement, one that would never exist in the Underworld, where
graceful solemnity ruled all concerns of swordfighting. Even in the
old SAO, only the most savvy of veteran PvP players could pull off
such a tactic.
He could change the trajectory of the Crescent Moon by nudging it
from the side. So where did I aim?
“ !”
I gritted my teeth and did everything in my power to hold back the
kick. But if I pulled too hard, the skill would fumble, leaving me
helpless. I had to delay the progress for what felt to me like a quarter
of a second so that Eugeo’s hand would pass first.
Now!

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 A hard crash erupted.
Rather than hitting Eugeo’s throat as originally planned, my
Crescent Moon got him on the back of the hand that held his sword.
Like the other Integrity Knights, he wore tough gauntlets, so this
wouldn’t damage his hand—but it had the exact effect I was hoping
for.
Eugeo’s right hand bounced upward, knocking the Blue Rose
Sword from his grasp. It spun upward and embedded itself in the
marble ceiling, which I spotted out of the corner of my eye. I
squeezed my sword, readying myself to attack once my backflip
followed through and I landed on my feet again.
The sole of my shoe—the glow of the attack fading—touched solid
ground. I bent my knees, absorbing the impact, and launched myself
before I could straighten up or fall again. My left foot soared
forward, pushing me right at the unarmed Eugeo’s breastplate,
where I would deliver the simple Slant attack at an upward diagonal
from the left—
“ ?!”
As I rose, leaning at an extreme forward angle in the process of
activating my skill, Eugeo’s left hand reached out with the fingers
glowing green. Just before my sword could bite into that shining
armor, I heard Eugeo announce, “Burst Element.”
Five separate wind elements burst from his fingers, enveloping me
in an explosive gust of wind. As it was just a simple release, it didn’t
inflict any pain, just force, but that was enough to buffet me into the
air like a scrap of cloth.
“Arrgh…!” I grunted, spreading my arms in a desperate attempt to
maintain balance. If I hit the wall headfirst, I’d lose over 10 percent
of my life. Instead, I managed to spin myself so that my feet were
pointed toward the onrushing surface.
The instant I landed, a tremendous shudder ran through me from
feet to head, pressing me to the wall until eventually the numbness
subsided and I could get back down to the ground. I looked up and
saw that Eugeo had been similarly pushed toward the opposite wall,

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but the extra weight of his armor kept him on the ground. He rose to
a standing position again, his face almost obnoxiously calm.
I scrambled to my feet after him and heard a soft voice from my
right say, “Is that really Eugeo, your partner?”
It was Alice, who was standing at the wall and watching the fight,
as I had asked her to do. I sent the briefest of glances toward the
knight in golden armor and hissed back, “What do you mean? You
were the one who said he was synthesized, right?”
“Yes, I did…but…I’m not sure how to say this,” she mumbled,
strangely hesitant. “For being freshly synthesized, he is far too skilled
in our ways of combat. Between the Incarnate Arms he used before
the fight and this wind-element technique, nothing about him seems
new or inexperienced.”
“…So you don’t just automatically know these things when you get
turned into an Integrity Knight?” I asked, just to be sure. Despite the
tense circumstances, I couldn’t help but hunch my shoulders in
embarrassment when she snapped at me.
“The knighthood’s tools do not simply appear out of thin air! It
takes long periods of training with weapon techniques and sacred
arts to be able to use them—to say nothing of Incarnate abilities and
Perfect Weapon Control!”
“Ah. R-right. But then…what was that all about just now…? I didn’t
think Eugeo was capable of creating five elements on one hand
yet…”
“Which is why I was asking you if that was really Eugeo!”
“…”
I pursed my lips, staring down the knight in silver armor as he
strode calmly toward me.
Just above us, on the hundredth floor of Central Cathedral, was
Administrator, who, along with Cardinal in the Great Library, was the
ultimate wielder of sacred arts. She could already alter the memories
of people, so perhaps she could also arrange an imposter who was
physically identical to the real thing. Yet…
“…It’s Eugeo,” I rasped.

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 His eyes were dull, his cheeks were pale, and there was no hint of
mirth around his mouth, but the Integrity Knight was still none other
than my best friend from Rulid. I’d made plenty of mistakes in the
Underworld, but I was absolutely certain of this one.
How was it that the newest Integrity Knight could wield skills that
stunned even Alice, who was third in their rankings? I didn’t know.
Neither did I know how the forced synthesis process took less than
an hour for him, when it traditionally lasted three days and nights.
But no matter how much of a freakish occurrence this might be,
there was no arguing with the reality of the situation. I had only one
course of action: put everything into my sword and swing it. That
was all.
I sucked in a deep breath, exhaled, and clutched the black blade.
Eugeo stopped in the middle of the round room, perhaps sensing my
determination, and extended his right hand. Those invisible
Incarnate Arms reached out and plucked his longsword from the
ceiling, returning it to their master’s hand.
The Blue Rose Sword would never obey an imposter.
Eugeo deftly spun the impossibly heavy Divine Object and snapped
it, still at chest height. There was no opening to exploit.
“Shall I try him?” Alice whispered.
“Don’t be stupid,” I snapped back, brandishing my own weapon.
Eugeo and Alice had grown up together as friends in the village of
Rulid, though neither of them could remember it now. I couldn’t
allow them to fight—and more importantly, it was my job to wake
Eugeo up.
Alice had exploded with fury when I had called her stupid while we
hung from the outside wall of the cathedral, but now she just took a
step back and folded her arms, a sign that she would not interfere,
even if it meant my defeat.
“…Thank you,” I murmured, summoning all my focus to the task at
hand.
I was going to forget every unnecessary thing for the sake of the
battle ahead. I’d be one with my sword, utilizing every possible trick I
knew. There was no way I could beat Eugeo the Integrity Knight

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otherwise—and no way I could speak to my friend’s heart, which still
beat somewhere beneath that thick metal armor.
The black tip of my sword rang softly. It was like the echo of that
rumble of distant thunder on the day we started our journey two
years ago, arriving through the mists of time.
Please, partner. I’ll give you a name once all the fighting’s done…so
for now, give me strength, I pleaded with the trusty weapon in my
right hand. When I was done, I took a deep breath, steadying myself.
All sounds, scenery, and even sensations faded away. The only
things in the world were me, my blade, Eugeo, and the Blue Rose
Sword. The moment I’d been fearing deep in my subconscious for
the past two years had finally arrived.
Here I come, Eugeo!!
With a silent roar, I lunged across the floor.
Eugeo held his pose, waiting for my strike.
He was a fully adept practitioner of both the Aincrad style of
swordcraft and elite sacred arts—mere trickery was meaningless
against him. I sped across fifty feet of space and used all that
momentum for an overhead strike from the right.
Eugeo stomped so hard he might have cracked the floor,
unleashing a two-handed upward swing from his own right.
Black and white blades clashed, resulting in a bright flash of light.
Our weapons bounced back, but I calculated there wasn’t enough
room to try a sword skill. I moved my left hand to the pommel for a
two-handed grip. Without fighting against the momentum of the
heavy blade, I reached an overhand stance with the shortest arc
possible.
“Yaaaah!”
I expelled all my breath and swung downward. Assuming the specs
of the sword and wielder alike were identical for both combatants, it
was impossible to perfectly parry a direct downward swing at full
strength with either a side or a diagonal swing. The only ways to stop
it were to use the same attack and expect a mutual defeat or to
evade the path of the sword.

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 But after his strike to the right, Eugeo’s sword was still fully
extended in that direction. Because his center of gravity was tilted
there, too, he couldn’t instantly jump back. This time I would land my
blow!
I cast aside all distractions, focusing only on making it as quick and
fierce a swing as possible. The tip of the black blade caught the
armored left shoulder of my target. No matter how high priority the
Integrity Knight armor was, it wasn’t tough enough to deflect a blow
from a divine weapon without harm.
The sword bit into the metal with a high-pitched screech and
continued downward after the briefest moment of resistance. A
stream of light ran from Eugeo’s left shoulder near his neck to the
breastplate.
A moment later, the heavy armor buckled and broke with a sound
like shattering glass. The pieces of metal spun into the air, mixed
with red spray. It didn’t feel very deep, but my sword had undeniably
gouged Eugeo’s body.
The moment I recognized that I’d hurt my friend, I felt a terrible
cutting pain in the same spot. I couldn’t help but grimace with agony,
but there was no stopping now. When my vertical swing reached the
floor, I flipped my wrists and used the rebound to swipe upward this
time.
A dull shock ran through my arms, and the sword rebounded
sideways.
Eugeo hadn’t faltered from the pain of being sliced from shoulder
to chest for even an instant. He’d used his right leg’s greave to smack
my sword out of the way. Realizing that this action also put him in
position for a counterattack, I felt a wave of horror run down my
back and twisted desperately. The Blue Rose Sword came roaring
toward me from the left.
I barely avoided a blow to the neck but couldn’t get all the way
clear. He cut a line across my left shoulder. Rather than pain, I felt a
searing chill there and launched myself off my right foot to throw my
wounded shoulder at Eugeo for a body blow.

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 This time, I did feel a blinding pain, and blood spurted into the air.
Through the red mist, I saw Eugeo steadying himself on his left leg to
keep from falling.
A direct counter would be impossible from that position. I held my
sword to the right, one-handed once again. The black surface of the
sword shone pale blue—this would be the diagonal-slash attack
Slant. If I hit him on the right shoulder, he’d be wounded on both
sides and unable to swing the same way again.
“Raaaah!”
But right as I was about to unleash this attack, a surge of red light
shot out from the far side of Eugeo’s body.
It was the light of a sword skill. But there was no Aincrad skill that
would allow him to attack from a position with his right rear side
exposed to me.
Both stunned and unable to stop the momentum at this point, I
activated the Slant. A moment later, Eugeo’s body spun
counterclockwise at ferocious speed. A bright-red slash shot toward
me from the left.
I recognized it as the two-handed skill Backlash—a counterattack
skill that worked against a foe standing behind you. But I had never
taught it to Eugeo.
The resulting impact completely jarred these thoughts out of my
mind. My Slant and Eugeo’s Backlash collided, and our swords
rebounded hard. As fresh blood streamed from our shoulders, Eugeo
and I found ourselves readying our swords straight overhead in
perfect synchronization.
Two blades shining a deep blue for the single downward strike
Vertical.
While it was classified as a vertical strike, the trajectory was not
necessarily set in stone. It was common for the angle to tilt as much
as ten degrees, according to the position of the dominant hand.
Thus, it was possible for two people facing each other to have paths
that would intersect and force each of them backward.

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 It started out that way this time, too. The black and Blue Rose
swords met at about a third of the length from their tips, throwing
off blinding sparks.
But unlike in the old SAO, there were times in the Underworld
when two sword skills would meet and not deflect each other. I
suspected it was when the fierce will to battle—the strength of
mental image, or Incarnation—on the part of both combatants acted
as a brake on the system’s natural tendency to repel the weapons.
The swords were locked together, spraying orange sparks and
flashing blue light. In this third stalemate, Eugeo and I were thrust
face-to-face, our arms and swords locked in total equilibrium as we
each tried to follow through and finish the skill.
I stared into Eugeo’s pupils beyond the showering sparks and,
through clenched teeth, hissed, “…Does that attack of yours have a
name?”
With a face as still as a frozen pond, Eugeo replied, “…Baltio style,
Storm Wave.”
Off the top of my head, I couldn’t remember where I’d heard that
style’s name before. I frowned, and then it came to me.
Baltio style. It was the school of swordsmanship practiced by elite
disciple Golgorosso Balto, the mentor under whom Eugeo had served
as page at the North Centoria Imperial Swordcraft Academy until this
March.
Because it was plain and unadorned in comparison to the Norkia
and High-Norkia styles, the higher noble students looked down on it,
as they did to the Serlut style used by Sortiliena, who was my own
tutor.
But in fact, this was just a sign that it was a more practical style.
And for the year that he’d been a page, Eugeo had received a
thorough education in its ways, courtesy of Golgorosso. And that
gave rise to another mystery.
“Eugeo…do you remember the person who taught you that
move?” I asked again, putting every last ounce of strength into the
intersection of our blades. A moment later, I got the answer I
expected:

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 “I don’t remember, and I don’t care.”
He must’ve been putting just as much of his power into the
stalemate as I was, but his voice and expression were utterly cold
and dry.
“I only need to know about her,” he continued. “She is the reason I
use my sword. My existence is dedicated to eliminating her
enemies…”
“…”
So he’d forgotten not only Alice and me but Golgorosso as well.
And yet he knew the names of his skills and how to execute them.
Completely resetting the memories of the person being made an
Integrity Knight meant that they would lose all that accumulated
training and all those learned sacred arts. It was why Administrator
had come up with the complicated work-around that was the
Synthesis Ritual.
Rather than deleting all of the target’s memories, it blocked their
access, making it impossible to recall what was still there. I didn’t
know the precise logic behind it, but it seemed similar to what we
would call retrograde amnesia in the real world: loss of memories of
oneself and others, but language and life skills preserved.
The thing blocking the proper flow of Eugeo’s memories was the
Piety Module that was placed inside his soul, his fluctlight. But whose
memories were in the space where the module sat now? If I knew
that, it would be the first step to getting him to come to his senses…
But no.
I would need more than just words to break that woman’s wicked
spell. I’d traded sword blows with so many people since the very first
day I was locked inside the world of Aincrad—Asuna, Suguha, Sinon,
Yuuki. And in this world, there had been Sortiliena, first-seat disciple
Volo, and knights like Eldrie, Deusolbert, and Fanatio. Even Alice,
who was watching this fight from just a short distance away.
Swords in the virtual world weren’t just polygonal bits of data.
Because our lives were resting on them, the feelings that we imbued
the blades with could reach the soul of our opponents. I chose to

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believe that a sword freed from hatred could sometimes foster an
understanding that surpassed mere words.
The blue light of Vertical slowly began to fade from our deadlocked
swords. I wrung out every last drop of power from my body.
I had to make sure that the entirety of my being was reaching out
toward my friend’s soul.
“Eugeooooo!!” I shouted the moment the sword skill ended,
pulling back my sword.
I struck with all my might. My attack was blocked. Eugeo slashed. I
met his strike at the base of the blade. Our feet stayed in place,
where we could keep swinging with the shortest possible range. A
steady stream of clashes and sparks flew, filling the room with sound
and light.
“Rrraaaaahhh!!” I bellowed.
“Seyyyaaaaah!!” Eugeo added, his first roar of the fight.
Faster. Faster!
I strung together a continuous line of attacks—no skills or form or
strategy, just pure instinct—and Eugeo kept up perfectly. With each
trade of blows, I sensed the invisible shell around him cracking.

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 Eventually I realized that I had a fierce grin on my lips. I recalled
that there was a time long ago that Eugeo and I had fought wildly like
this, a good liberating sword brawl. It wasn’t in the training hall at
the academy. Not along the journey to Centoria. No, it was in the
fields and forests close to Rulid…We pretended we were practicing
with our swords, using wooden blades that were practically
toys…whacking one another like rambunctious little boys…
But did Eugeo and I really do that, right after we met in the woods
two years ago?
Were those cracks actually…in my memory……?
Ka-chiiiing! A sharper metallic clang broke my momentary trance.
The black sword and the Blue Rose Sword met at the perfect angle
again, canceling out each other’s momentum, falling still where they
crossed.
“…Eugeo…?” I whispered.
I saw his lips move in response.
I didn’t hear his voice, but I could tell that the knight in silver and
blue had murmured my name.
His normally smooth, pale forehead was now creased and jagged. I
could see teeth clenched shut through his parted lips and a weak
flicker of light in his cold, dark eyes. They looked over my shoulder at
Alice, who was hanging back along the wall.
His lips trembled again, forming Alice’s name with no voice behind
them.
“Eugeo…Do you remember, Eugeo?!” I called out. That caused my
blade to slip. It was unable to withstand the full pressure of the Blue
Rose Sword and faltered backward.
I lost my balance and had to struggle to stay on my feet. I knew I
was a sitting duck—but Eugeo did nothing to follow up. He just stood
there, holding his sword out at an odd angle.
I retreated and came to a stop near Alice, sucked in a deep breath,
and expelled all of it at once.
“Eugeooooo!!”
He flinched, and his downcast face slowly rose.

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 It was as pale as ever, but this time there was true expression
upon it. Confusion, anxiety, regret, and affection…All these emotions
that had been frozen by the ritual combined into one faint smile that
seemed to shake the shell of thick ice that surrounded him, just a bit.
“…Kirito,” he said, and a moment later, “Alice…”
I heard it clearly this time. Eugeo spoke our names out loud.
It had worked. My sword…reached him…crossing the boundaries
that separated his heart from mine.
“Eugeo…”
The thin smile that rested on his lips deepened. He spun the Blue
Rose Sword around in his hand to hold it in a reverse grip. His arm
lowered until the tip of the sword landed on the marble floor. It
crackled, and the slightly misty weapon sank in about an inch.
I saw that as a sign that the battle was over, and I lowered my
sword. The breath I’d been holding escaped, and I took a step
forward with my right leg.
But the next moment was just the start of a series of events I failed
to predict.
“Kirito!”
That was Alice, calling me over my shoulder. I hadn’t sensed her
coming; her left arm circled around my torso and lifted me up
straight.
Then more words escaped from Eugeo’s lips.

“…Release Recollection.”

That was the phrase. The initiation of the greatest of battle

abilities in the Underworld, calling forth the memory of the weapon
and unlocking the true heart of superpowered Perfect Weapon
Control—the secret of Memory Release.
Bright blue-white light shot from his sword.
I couldn’t dodge or defend against it. Absolute cold spread from
the blade, instantly freezing the entirety of the vast chamber. The
mouth of the descending staircase in the corner of the room, the
levitating disc that went up to the top floor, and both Alice and I

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were frozen solid up to our chests in thick, immobilizing ice. If Alice
hadn’t straightened me up, the ice would have swallowed my head.
When we came across Bercouli Synthesis One in the great bath on
the ninety-fifth floor of the cathedral, he had been frozen up to his
neck like this. Eugeo’s Memory Release power was strong enough to
freeze an entire pool of hot bathwater so fast that even the oldest of
the knights wasn’t able to escape. I hadn’t forgotten or overlooked
that, but there wasn’t even any water to freeze on this floor. And he
hadn’t generated a huge number of ice elements to make use of—
where had all this ice come from?
But even that wasn’t the shocking part.
Why did Eugeo do it? He just got his memory back; why would he
need to lock me and Alice in ice?
Against the all-consuming, piercing chill, I just barely had the
strength to make my mouth form the words “Eugeo…why……?”
About fifty feet away, Eugeo got back to his feet easily and favored
me with a sad little smile. “I’m sorry, Kirito…and Alice. Please don’t
come after me…”
And then my best friend, and Alice’s childhood companion, pulled
the Blue Rose Sword from the floor and headed for the levitating disc
in the center of the chamber.
The large marble platform, like the staircase and us, was covered
in thick ice, but the knight simply walked over it and jabbed the end
of the sword down lightly. It began to rise, ice shards cracking and
sprinkling off.
As the disc ascended, I saw that smile stay on Eugeo’s face, an
expression attempting to withstand a whole host of conflicting
emotions, until he eventually vanished through the hole above.
“…Eu…ge…oooooo!!” I screamed, but it was drowned out by the
hard, heavy sound of the disc fitting seamlessly back into the ceiling.

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 2

“Remove Core Protection.”

Just three command words, a phrase he’d never heard before in
his life. But the moment that he finished repeating them, Eugeo
came to realize that he’d just unlocked a door that was never meant
to be opened.
Just one hour before that unthinkable duel against Kirito, Eugeo
had barely managed a painful draw against Bercouli, commander of
the Integrity Knights and wielder of a blade that cut into the future.
By utilizing the Memory Release feature of the Blue Rose Sword, he
had been able to freeze them both in place, until a strange man
named Prime Senator Chudelkin had taken his unconscious body up
to the hundredth floor of Central Cathedral.
It was there that Eugeo had met a girl with silver hair and mirror
eyes, the otherworldly beauty that was Administrator, pontifex of
the Church. Through a mental haze that refused to lift, he’d listened
to her speak.
You are a flower in its flower bed, deprived of the water that is
love.
But I am different. I will love you, and only you.
However, only if you love me just the same.
It was like they were sacred arts commands in and of themselves,
binding his will to them. He’d felt himself repeating the three
command words as she’d bidden him.
It must’ve been some kind of forbidden art. Something that hurled
open the door meant to protect truly precious things—memories,
thoughts…the soul.
With that perfect smile, Administrator had peered into Eugeo’s
mind, looked around, and inserted something deep inside it,
something colder than ice.
Then he’d lost consciousness again.
When he awoke, it was as though he were being dredged up from
the bottom of a deep, dark blackness, answering someone’s distant
call.

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 Bright sparks. Silver steel. And a young man with black hair,
furiously fighting against him.
That was when Eugeo recognized that he was clad in the armor of
an Integrity Knight and that he was using his sword on the friend he
trusted more than anyone in the world and the childhood
sweetheart he’d cared for more than any other soul.
But even that realization did not remove the icy thorn jabbing into
the center of his mind. It bound his thoughts to its will, ceaselessly
ordering him to strike down these foes for the glory of the supreme
Administrator. Helpless to stop himself, Eugeo activated the Blue
Rose Sword’s Memory Release art, locking those two precious souls
in ice. He resisted in vain, but it was the only way to stop the fight.
…I gave in to her temptations and destroyed something that should
never have been destroyed. But even still, there are things I can
do…things I must do.
“…I’m sorry, Kirito…and Alice,” he managed to say.
Eugeo stepped onto the levitating platform to return to the
hundredth floor of the tower—to Administrator’s bedchamber.

When it came to a heavy stop, the moonlight coming through the

enormous windows reflected off Eugeo’s armor and sword, sending
sheets of pale light through the room.
It was about two o’clock in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of
the fifth month of the year.
Just three days ago, at this hour of the night he was in his bed in
the elite disciples’ dorm. He always slept like a rock after a full day of
lessons and training and never awoke before the morning bell.
Thinking back on the last few nights, he remembered that he’d
spent the twenty-second in the school’s detention cell and the
twenty-third in the underground jail beneath the Axiom Church’s
grounds—hardly the best conditions for sleep. After the early-
morning escape on the twenty-fourth, he’d been through battle after
battle, a thought that made his body go numb with the weight of
fatigue, but that pulsing, throbbing thorn of ice stuck in his head kept
him from being sleepy.

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 Give your everything to the pontifex. Fight to protect the Axiom
Church, the thorn commanded, both as stern as a steel whip and as
sweet as the finest honey. In reality, the “thorn” was probably the
same purple crystal that had been stuck in Eldrie’s forehead. And
Eugeo got the feeling that if he gave in and tasted that honey again,
his mind would never return.
The only reason he had any consciousness at the moment was
because of Kirito’s desperate appeal and the ferocity of their
swordfight. And the reason he could return largely unharmed was
thanks to Alice watching them fight, rather than getting involved.
Alice Synthesis Thirty’s skill with the sword and the Perfect
Weapon Control version of her Osmanthus Blade, a storm of golden
petals, was a combination far beyond Eugeo’s current ability to
counteract. If she had drawn her weapon and fought alongside Kirito,
Eugeo would have fallen before he could have ever regained his own
mind.
He didn’t know exactly why Alice would have pledged herself to
rebellion against the Axiom Church. Perhaps, as he imagined while
ascending the staircase, Kirito had managed to convince her. Perhaps
it was something even more impressive than that.
There had been a bandage over Alice’s right eye that appeared to
be fashioned from Kirito’s ripped clothing. Eugeo guessed that
whatever had happened had been the same as when Eugeo himself
had attacked Humbert Zizek at the academy. Her right eye must have
exploded when she committed the crime of declaring war against the
Church. Both the first time they’d seen her at the academy and later
in the Cloudtop Garden of the eightieth floor, they’d been totally
unable to stop Alice. And it wasn’t Eugeo who had brought her to
that momentous decision, but Kirito…
But I don’t have the right to complain about that now. I gave in to
Administrator’s honeyed words. I cast open the door to my heart. It
was a betrayal of Kirito and Alice. Of Tiese, and Ronie, and Frenica,
and Golgorosso and Sortiliena, and Miss Azurica the dorm manager,
and Sadore the craftsman, and everyone on Walde Farm, and Selka

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and Old Man Garitta back in Rulid, and Elder Gasfut, and the little
sage Cardinal in her hidden library.
He clenched the pommel of his sword, withstanding the chilling
throb as it steadily grew worse. There wouldn’t be much time left for
him to maintain his wits like this. He had to atone for his sins before
he vanished for good.
There was only one way to do that.
Eugeo raised his head and looked around. The placement of the
ninety-ninth and hundredth floors had to be unbalanced, as the disc
had put him on the south side of the room here. The only thing
beyond the glass windows that surrounded the room was a full
blanket of stars. The massive sword decorations on the pillars
between the windowpanes gleamed with the light of the moon and
stars.
Suddenly, he got the sense that someone had called for him, and
he looked up.
The pure-white domed ceiling over ten mels above featured a
mural, which he’d seen the first time he’d come here, of the story of
the gods. Among the gods and dragons and human beings in the
image were embedded tiny crystals that shone with their own light.
…Is it that light that’s calling me…?
He squinted, focusing on one of the crystals. Then he heard an
actual voice from a different direction and hastily looked forward.
In the middle of the vast chamber was a circular bed that had to be
ten whole mels across. The drapes were down around the sides,
blocking the interior from view. But if he focused, he could hear a
faint voice on the other side of the sheer material. A voice that sang
as much as it whispered, threaded with sweet, dulcet tones.
The voice of Administrator.
It sounded like she was chanting a sacred art, but it didn’t have the
fierce rigor of an attack spell. If she was performing some typical,
everyday kind of housekeeping art, now was his chance.
He put the Blue Rose Sword in its sheath and laid it on the floor,
then removed the armor that had been damaged in the fight with
Kirito. Off went the gauntlets, the boots, and the cape, until he was

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dressed in his usual shirt and trousers. Eugeo brushed at his chest
with his fingers, just to make sure that what he needed was still
there.
He took one step toward the canopy, then another.
A squat figure tottered closer from farther within the bed. It
produced an unpleasant chortle.
“Hoh-hee, hwee-hee-hee…I figured buying me a good five or ten
minutes would be about right. I didn’t actually expect you to come
back alive. Perhaps you’re a better find than I realized!”
The instant he saw the figure in the moonlight, Eugeo’s breath
caught in his throat. It was all he could do not to grimace.
He wore hideous clothes, bright red on the right half and bright
blue on the left. The middle of his balloon-like chest was an ugly
patchwork. His face was pale white, with narrow eyes like slits in his
face and a long, upturned mouth. The gold cap he wore atop his bald
pate was gone, but Eugeo would never mistake the remaining
features as belonging to anyone else.
This was Prime Senator Chudelkin. He had shown up at the end of
Eugeo and Bercouli’s fight, cast a Deep Freeze art that had turned
the commander to stone, and then transported the unconscious
Eugeo up here to the top floor.
While he looked just like a short, silly clown, he was almost
certainly the most powerful sacred arts user after the pontifex
herself, and a cruel inquisitor in the extreme. If he found out that
Eugeo was (temporarily) back in his right mind, he would use that
petrification art without missing a beat. The only way Eugeo could
fulfill his final duty was if he managed to get past this man without
suspicion.
Chudelkin cast a glance at the armor Eugeo had set on the floor,
and his nearly hairless eyebrows shot upward theatrically.
“Oh, my, you certainly did a number on the armor that Her
Holiness gave to you. I sincerely hope you did not receive this
beating from those brazen rebels and come running back with your
tail between your legs, Number Thirty-Two…?”

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 Her Holiness had to be Administrator, those brazen rebels would
be Kirito and Alice, and Number Thirty-Two was his own designation
as an Integrity Knight. He felt like he’d give away the game no matter
what he said, but he had to answer the question one way or another.
Eugeo steeled himself and kept his face as devoid of emotion as he
could. “I locked the two rebels in ice, Prime Senator.”
Chudelkin’s eyes curved as though he were beaming with all his
might, but the pupils themselves glittered with cold, hard malice.
“Hoh-hoh. You locked them in ice…? All very well, all very good…but
you did finish the job, didn’t you, Number Thirty-Two?”
“…”
Throughout that moment of silence, Eugeo’s mind raced.
Of course he hadn’t killed either Kirito or Alice. The Blue Rose
Sword’s advanced ability was designed only to imprison its targets,
not to harm them. As long as their faces were exposed, they
wouldn’t lose much life despite being stuck under thick ice.
Would it be better to not mention that and to just say they were
done for? If Chudelkin went down below and saw for himself, he’d
uncover that lie in short time. This was the sort of situation where
Kirito would use his intuition and courage to come up with the
perfect answer on the spot.
All I ever did was hide behind him. Whenever there was trouble, I
looked to my partner for help. Every big decision was his to make.
This time, I have to think, and I have to decide. Kirito didn’t just
leave all of the big calls up to his gut. He thought his hardest, picked
out the right answer, and got me all the way here.
I have to think like he would.
Eugeo thought so hard that for a moment, he actually forgot about
the cold throbbing in the center of his head. His lips parted, and he
spoke with the absolute minimum of volume.
“No, I did not finish them off, Prime Senator. The pontifex ordered
me to ‘stop’ the rebels.”
He didn’t actually know whether that was the order he’d been
given by Administrator. But from what he could vaguely remember,
the first time he had awakened in this chamber, the man had not

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been there. If Chudelkin hadn’t been around when Eugeo was turned
into an Integrity Knight, he couldn’t judge the content of any
orders—and if Administrator had said it, this man couldn’t possibly
override that.
Of course, if Administrator herself was listening from the bed just
ten mels away, then all was lost. But she seemed to be in the midst
of chanting some kind of sacred art through the layers of hanging
canopy. There was a good chance that as long as they whispered, she
wouldn’t hear.
Eugeo waited for Chudelkin’s response, desperately controlling his
expression to keep his nerves from showing. The little clown man’s
huge lips twisted, and he scowled.
“Very poor, Number Thirty-Two, very poor indeed!”
He jabbed a finger at Eugeo’s face. “When you refer to me, you
must call me ‘Lord Prime Senator.’ Understand that? Lord! The next
time that you forget that, you’ll be my steed! I’ll ride around on your
back, digging my heels into your sides—hi-hoh, hi-hoh! Hwe-hee-
hee-hee!”
He cackled in falsetto, then clasped his hands over his mouth and
peered toward the bed. Once he was sure that Administrator’s
sacred art was continuing without interruption, he made a grand
gesture of calming himself down, then beamed.
“…Well, I ought to carry out Her Holiness’s orders for me now. That
miserable, corrupted knight must be put in Deep Freeze at once. Oh,
and you’ll wait right here, Number Thirty-Two. It’s no fun if others
are around to interfere, you see. Hoh, hoh-hoh-hoh.”
Eugeo nodded, stifling the sickening lurch rising in his chest.
Chudelkin tottered over to the levitating platform on the south
end of the room. Like he did to Commander Bercouli, he likely had all
kinds of humiliating treatment in mind for Kirito and Alice while they
were stone.
But there shouldn’t have been any concern for them. The prison of
ice the Blue Rose Sword created was nothing compared to Alice’s
Perfect Weapon Control. In the Cloudtop Garden, Eugeo had locked

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Alice’s entire body in ice. But the Osmanthus Blade had turned into
countless tiny shards that had carved the ice into nothing.
Either they were already out of the ice by now, or Alice would use
that merciless power of hers as soon as Chudelkin showed up. For his
part, the fat little man hopped onto the platform, huffing and
wheezing, and headed downward. Eugeo watched and waited as the
platform returned empty, fusing into the floor like always. The prime
senator must have let the platform go back up so that he could enjoy
himself in peace. It left no way to know what was happening on the
ninety-ninth floor.
It’s all right. The stupid man can’t beat them.
Eugeo took a deep breath to steady his nerves and returned his
gaze to the center of the room. He lifted his left hand and pressed
down on the shirt over his chest.
I just have to fulfill my role.
He steeled his resolve, picked up the sword, and started walking
forward. He was just three mels away from the bed, then two, then
one.
Just then, the endlessly droning sacred arts chanting came to an
abrupt stop, like it had been snuffed out. Eugeo automatically froze,
mind racing.
Did the sacred art just happen to finish right then, or did she stop
because she sensed him approaching? What kind of spell was it,
anyway?
His head swiveled around, but nothing seemed different. The
circular room was larger than the floor below, perhaps forty mels
across, and there was hardly any furniture inside—just the bed, the
thick carpet, and more than a dozen pillars with massive sword
decorations to serve as frames for the windows that surrounded the
room. They had gleamed golden in the moonlight, but nothing
seemed different about them now.
Eugeo gave up on his examination and faced the bed again.
Instantly, the middle of his head throbbed.
The cold pain was getting stronger, bit by bit. He probably
wouldn’t be lucid for much longer. Before he became an Integrity

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Knight in body and mind again, he would do what needed to be
done.
He took a few more steps, right up to the side of the bed, and after
some hesitation, laid the Blue Rose Sword on the ground. The instant
he let go, he felt anxiety and loneliness, but he had to remove any
reason for the woman to suspect him of being a threat.
Eugeo straightened up, took a deep breath, and prayed that his
voice wouldn’t tremble.
“…My lady Pontifex.”
After a few seconds of silence, which felt eminently longer, her
voice replied.
“…Welcome back, Eugeo. You finished your errand properly.”
“…Yes, my lady,” he muttered. Eugeo was bad at acting, but he’d
spent years of his life in Rulid suppressing his emotions. All he had to
do was go back to that time in his life. Back to the old him, before he
met that strange, black-haired boy at the Gigas Cedar.
“Very good. Then I owe you a reward. Come into my bed,” came
the soft, velvety welcome beyond the canopy.
He brushed the front of his chest again, then gently pulled open
the part in the canopy surrounding the bed. It was all purple
darkness inside, but the sweet, familiar scent there lured him in
deeper.
He put his weight on the silk cover and crawled forward. While it
might have been voluminous for a bed, it was still supposed to be
only five mels to the center. Yet no matter how many crawling
repetitions he did, he couldn’t see or feel anything ahead.
But if he panicked or said something, it would tell her that his mind
was back under his own control. He kept moving, focusing only on
the feel of the covers.
Suddenly, a bit higher than his eye level, a pale light appeared
without a sound.
That color wasn’t coming from a candle or a lamp. It was a light
element from a sacred art, though he never heard any commands.
The floating little mote peeled back the velvet darkness just the
tiniest bit.

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 Eugeo looked down and saw her smiling face, just two mels away.
For an instant, his eyes bulged, but then he composed his face again
just as quickly and bowed with his hands still pressed against the
bed.
It was a girl dressed in sheer purple fabric, with long silvery hair.
The ruler of humanity, with transcendent beauty and mirror eyes
that kept her thoughts hidden.
Administrator, pontifex of the Axiom Church.
The young woman seated lazily on the blanket stared at Eugeo,
silver mirror eyes reflecting the light of the little floating element,
and whispered, “Come to me, Eugeo. As I promised, I will give you
what you want. The love that belongs only to you.”
“………Yes, my lady,” he whispered, inching closer to her, still
prone.
Once he was one mel away, he’d leap on her, cover her mouth
with his hand so she couldn’t give commands, pull his secret weapon
out from under his shirt with the other hand, and stab her with it. It
would take less than two seconds altogether, but that still seemed
like an eternity against someone like Administrator.
The instant he thought of this act of rebellion against her, a sharp
pain ran from the spot between his eyebrows to the center of his
head. But there was no time to think about it. He had to relax as
much as he could and sneak closer, closer…
“But before that,” Administrator murmured just before he reached
the right distance, causing him to pause, “I want you to show me
your face again, Eugeo.”
Did she sense his malice? If he tried to execute his plan now, he
wouldn’t be in time. He had to obey.
Slowly he rose off the sheets and looked at her, keeping his
expression frozen. At the very least, he wanted to keep from looking
into her eyes, but those glassy surfaces drew his gaze through some
irresistible force. They betrayed no information of their own and yet
had the ability to peer directly into the mind of any who looked into
them. The floating light caused them to reflect an eerie glint.

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 After several interminable seconds, the woman said,
“Conveniently, there was a hole in your memory already, so I
inserted the module right there. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so
lazy…”
It seemed like she was mostly talking to herself, and Eugeo didn’t
understand at first.
There was a hole in his memory—meaning that something had
been missing from Eugeo’s memory even before he was first taken to
this chamber? But he had no inkling that there was some missing
period of his life before this. Maybe the fact that he didn’t remember
it was the hole in his memory, but there had been that thing Cardinal
said, too.
To insert the Piety Module, the most precious memories of the
target had to be removed first, usually of their most beloved person.
That conversation in the hidden library seemed like it was ages ago
by now. Eugeo mulled this over.

…My most beloved person. That would be Alice Zuberg, the girl
who was taken away by an Integrity Knight before my eyes eight
years ago. I’ve never once forgotten her. When I close my eyes, I can
see her golden hair shining in the sun, her eyes bluer than the bluest
midsummer sky, and that dazzling smile.
…And while it might not be the same kind of love, I also have a
partner, a friend almost as important to me as Alice. A strange young
man I met in the forest south of Rulid two years and two months ago.
A “Lost Child of Vecta,” with black hair and black eyes in the eastern
style. Kirito’s been my best friend—he got me out of the village and
helped guide me all the way here to Central Cathedral. I can easily
see that mischievous grin of his, too.
…Alice and Kirito. I may never see their smiles again. But even if I’m
fated to lose my life here, I know that up to that final moment, I’ll
never forget about them.
…I was hoping I’d be able to go back to Rulid with Kirito and Alice
once she got her memory back…but I don’t have the right to wish for

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that anymore. I gave in to Administrator’s temptation. I lost sight of
myself. I turned my sword on the two people I care about most.

Just as he reached that conclusion, Eugeo felt his eye twitch just
the tiniest bit. Administrator tilted her head in slight confusion,
though it was unclear how she chose to interpret that motion.
“Yes, you seem a bit unstable still. Very well, I’ll just have to
resynthesize. Your reward can come after that, Eugeo.”
She thrust out her right hand.
It might have been the perfect moment to leap into action, but the
moment that her delicate finger pointed at his forehead, Eugeo
underwent a most peculiar sensation. His body jolted and went
numb, leaving him unable to even speak, much less move his limbs.
And the next instant, a very bizarre feeling shot from the spot
between his eyes toward the back of his head.
The source of the cold throbbing, that thorn of ice jabbing deep
into his head, was being slowly but forcefully pulled out from its
location. It didn’t hurt, but each movement of the thorn brought a
bright flash to his eyes, and brief glimpses of vague scenes.
Green branches swaying in the wind. Gently shifting sunlight
coming through the trees.
Running and laughing beneath them.
Shining golden hair just ahead.
Coarse black hair bouncing right beside.
Young Eugeo looked to his right as he ran. But the smile of his
other childhood friend drifted away into a bright flash, out of reach…
A powerful shock brought Eugeo back to the surface of the bed in
the darkness. As his numb body arched its back, something alien was
protruding from his forehead. A triangular, translucent prism that
glowed purple.
When they’d fought Eldrie the Integrity Knight in the rose garden,
the mention of his mother’s name had caused him to act strangely,
until this same kind of prism emerged from his head. But the one
appearing out of Eugeo right now was larger, carved with more-
intricate symbols, and glowing brighter.

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 Stunned with both the shock that something this enormous had
been inside his head all this time and the horror that Administrator’s
sacred arts were powerful enough to do such a thing, Eugeo could
only watch in silence.
“Yes…be a good boy. Just stay there,” the silver-haired young
woman purred. She reached out and gently plucked the purple prism
from Eugeo’s head. The moment the object came loose, his mind
went blank, and Eugeo slumped helplessly into the linens.
Administrator cradled the prism in her fingertips, gazing upon it
lovingly. “This is an improved model of the module. I just finished
making it. Not only does it force loyalty to me and the Church, it also
contains circuits for strengthening the imagination. Synthesize this,
and there won’t be any need for inefficient training. You’ll be able to
use Incarnation that very instant. It’s still limited to very elementary
steps for now, however…”
Eugeo understood less than half of what she was saying. But one
thing was clear—that prism, the Piety Module, was what took over
his thoughts, turned him into an Integrity Knight, and made him
threaten his friends. Yes, he had chosen that path for himself, but
now that the module was removed, he could fulfill his final role
without that bothersome false obedience getting in the way. Now he
realized that the horribly cold, stinging pain in the center of his head
was gone, too.
However, even with the module gone, the numbness that came
over him when she pointed her finger at him did not go away. He
was completely unable to control his own limbs.
If only he could move his right hand. Then he could grab the thing
from his chest and swing it down on her…
He struggled with all his might, stuck with his back hunched over—
and then her hand was reaching out again.
Eugeo rolled his eyes upward and saw the pontifex, module in her
left hand, approaching close enough that their knees were nearly
touching. Unable to resist even the slightest of pressures, his head
was pulled toward the smiling woman, and he toppled forward.

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 Administrator rested his head sideways on her lap and traced his
hairline with her fingertip. “Show me your memories again. This
time, I’ll bury this in the most precious place of all. Then your head
won’t hurt anymore. Even better…you’ll be forever free of all those
pointless, petty troubles and pains, your hunger and thirst.”
The pale finger pulled away, then descended to brush his lips. The
numbing feeling went away but only around his mouth.
She removed her hand again, gave him a mind-melting smile, and
commanded, “Now say those words I taught you, one more time.”
“…”
Now that they were barely under his control again, Eugeo’s lips
trembled. His memory of fighting with Kirito as an Integrity Knight
was fuzzy, as was whatever came before that, but he did have a very
clear picture of the three command words he had chanted.
Remove Core Protection.
The sacred words were unfamiliar to him, and he couldn’t guess
what they signified, but one thing was certain: That short command
was designed to seize the door that all people were born with—a
door that stayed shut to keep the mind safe—and hurl it open.
That was how Administrator had been able to peer into Eugeo’s
memory and find the empty space into which she inserted the Piety
Module. But according to her words, the synthesis process had been
unstable, which was why she was trying to do the same thing again.
Despite the incredible danger he was in, Eugeo was still in his right
mind, which meant the door was shut again. Either it closed on its
own over time, or the pontifex had closed it afterward for some
reason or another; he couldn’t be sure. Whatever the case, in order
to resynthesize him, Administrator required that Eugeo utter the
three-word command again.
If he did, he would almost certainly become an Integrity Knight in
every sense and would never again get the chance to restore Alice’s
memory.
But if he didn’t say them, Administrator would detect his rebellion
against her.

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 This was the moment. Right here, with her skin exposed and
defenseless, Eugeo had his last and best chance. He had to find a way
to restore feeling to his numbed hands and stab her.
With just a gesture of her hands, she had paralyzed his body. And
not just that—she’d also generated that light element above without
uttering a word.
There was another occasion on which Eugeo had witnessed an
invisible power being used without a spoken command, although it
was not the same kind of sacred art. It was Bercouli Synthesis One,
whom he’d fought in the bathhouse many floors below—though
Eugeo originally knew him as the ancient hero who had founded the
village of Rulid. With just a motion of his hand, he had drawn his
distant sword to his side.
In fact, that wasn’t the only time. In the Great Library, Cardinal had
closed off passages with a wave of her staff and made a table appear
out of nowhere. There must be a level of power at which simple
thoughts could have the same effect as the chanting of sacred arts.
Of course, Eugeo had been a simple student at the academy just
days ago. His ability with sacred arts wasn’t even as good as the
apprentices in the Axiom Church, much less masters like
Administrator and Cardinal.
But at this moment—right now—he had to break this paralysis
with nothing but the power of his mind.
Kirito once told him that what was most important in this world
was what you put into your sword. In other words, the sword would
take on the power that came from your heart and mind, making its
bite sharper and stronger.
If your mind could make your sword stronger, then the same thing
could be true of sacred arts…or of anything and everything that
human beings did.
Move, Eugeo prayed, opening his lips and breathing steadily.
Move, hand, move.
I’ve made so many mistakes in my life. I failed to save Alice when
the Integrity Knight took her away. I spent years not going after her.

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Right when I was finally at the end of that long journey, I lost sight of
my goal. I have to make up for all that weakness.
“…M—…”
A hoarse sound escaped from his throat.
“…Mo—…”
Administrator’s smile, just above his head, waned. Her silver
mirrors narrowed, searching for Eugeo’s intention. There was no
turning back now. He focused all the energy he could summon into
his right hand.
But the numbness was not abating. Countless invisible needles
stabbed at his fingers and palm, keeping them trapped in place. If
only he could just move his hand this one moment, it could shatter
into pieces afterward. He didn’t need to swing a sword again. Just
one little…
“…Mo—ve…,” he uttered, wringing out the sounds.
Just then, light enveloped the hand that was resting on the
bedsheet. It was warm and gentle and seemed to melt all the pain
away. Instantly, the icy thorns that gouged his flesh and bones
disappeared.
“…What are you…?” Administrator murmured and tried to pull
away. But Eugeo’s mobile hand was already sneaking into the collar
of his shirt and grabbing the object that was hanging on the chain
around his neck.
It was a tiny dagger that gleamed deep bronze.
He pulled it out and jabbed it downward, toward the white skin
visible above the deep collar of Administrator’s sheer nightgown.
It was impossible to miss. The blade of the weapon was barely five
cens long, but they were basically touching already—there was no
way he would come up short.
But just as that needlelike tip was about to pierce the skin of
Administrator’s body, something happened that beggared belief.
Craaak!! There was a blast like thunder, and a film of purple light
appeared, centered around the point of the dagger. The glowing
surface was made up of strings of extremely tiny sacred script. They

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were so small they shouldn’t have had any mass at all, but the thin
film was resisting the sharp tip of the weapon.
“Hrrggh…!!”
Eugeo gritted his teeth and summoned all his willpower, trying to
break through the resistance. Cardinal had given him and Kirito one
of these daggers each. It had almost no attack power of its own, but
whatever target he used it on would be vulnerable to the remote
sacred arts of the little sage in her isolated library.
Eugeo’s dagger was supposed to put Alice the Integrity Knight to
sleep, and Kirito’s was supposed to defeat Administrator. But he had
already used his own to save the life of Fanatio Synthesis Two, the
vice commander of the knights, whom they had fought on the fiftieth
floor.

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 At the time, Cardinal’s bodiless voice had told them, “There is a
high likelihood that Administrator is not in a waking state at the
moment. If you can reach the top floor before she wakes, you can
eliminate her without needing the dagger.”
But they hadn’t been in time. Now that she was awake, the only
way to beat Administrator, who had just as much power as Cardinal,
was to use the dagger in Eugeo’s hand.
He’d wanted to return Alice’s memories and take her back to Rulid
with him. It had been his only desire for years. But then he’d allowed
himself to fall under the pontifex’s sway, even temporarily, put on
the Integrity Knight armor, and threatened both Kirito and Alice with
his sword. Eugeo could sense that his original wish would never
come true. It couldn’t.
But if there was some way he could atone for his sin, it would be to
abandon himself—to carry out this act not for his own personal
conviction but in service of a much larger destiny.
Eleven-year-old Alice, taken from her hometown, bereft of her
memories, and turned into a knight.
Tiese and Ronie, perfectly innocent girls, violated over nothing
more than noble birthright.
These were the products of a warped, corrupt system of rule, and
he would use the last remnants of his strength and life to destroy
that. If he had to die in order to ensure that the pontifex fell, then all
the time he spent on his journey and at the academy would have had
a purpose after all.
But despite all that resolution, that determination, the thin purple
film was keeping him from Administrator’s skin. Meanwhile, she
clearly hadn’t predicted Eugeo’s actions, as she was arching her back
away from him and breathing heavily.
There was rage in those gaping mirror eyes now. Eugeo added his
left hand to his right, trying with all his strength to push the dagger
through.
“Yaaaaah!”

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 The needlelike point pierced barely a single milice into the shining
protective layer—and then the sacred writing that formed the
barrier exploded into bright light, blasting Eugeo and Administrator
backward.
“…!!”
He tumbled through the air as though slapped by an invisible
giant’s palm, but even as it knocked him completely off the bed,
Eugeo was able to achieve two things simultaneously.
He got a fresh grip on the chain holding the dagger before it could
fall out of his grasp, and the moment that his back hit the floor, he
reached out with his other hand to grab the sheath of the Blue Rose
Sword, which was right next to him.
Even with the heavy sword weighing him down, his backward
momentum continued, rolling him along the floor until at last his
back smashed against one of the giant windows that separated the
room from the world without.
“Nng…”
Wincing against the pain, Eugeo raised his head and looked to the
center of the room.
The hanging canopy sheets around the bed had all been blown
clean away, exposing the circular bed. On the far side of it stood a
silent figure. Like Eugeo, she’d been blasted backward by the
explosion of the barrier, but the only damage she seemed to have
received was the swaying of her long hair. In her left hand was the
shining prism she’d taken out of his head.
The sheer purple cloth she’d been wearing hadn’t withstood the
impact, however. But Administrator didn’t show the slightest bit of
concern about her nakedness. She reached up with her free hand to
smooth out her long silver hair.
Then she sat from a standing position, as though there were an
invisible chair behind her, and crossed her slender legs. She moved
silently through the air, not breaking her posture, until she stopped
about ten mels away from where Eugeo lay prone on the south edge
of the room.

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 From atop her invisible throne, the pontifex placed her fingers
against her chin and stared at Eugeo. He was unable to move or
speak. Eventually the silver-eyed young woman grinned and said, “I
was just wondering where you hid that tool of yours…I suppose it
was the doing of the little one in the library, wasn’t it? She filtered it
out of my senses. In the time since I’ve seen her last, she’s gotten
rather crafty, hasn’t she?”
She chuckled deep in her throat. “But too bad. I haven’t just been
sleeping on the job, either. Her mistake was crafting that weapon
with a metallic element. No metal-based object can harm my skin
anymore. Not an ogre’s machete nor a fine sewing needle.”
“Wha…?” Eugeo grunted, still lying on the floor.
No metal weapons could hurt her? If that was true, then not only
was Cardinal’s dagger powerless, but so was any other kind of sword.
Assuming the strange purple film that had rebuffed the tip of his
dagger earlier was that protective sacred art, he couldn’t begin to
guess what precise art it was, in order to undo it—to say nothing of
the fact that Eugeo himself did not have the skill for it.
He palmed his weapon, which was small enough to hide there, and
stared up at the floating pontifex, unable to do anything else.
The naked woman whispered, “You poor thing.”
“…”
“I made a promise to you. All you had to do was give your
everything to me, and I would love you back. And when the eternal
love you always wanted, the eternal rule, was nearly in your grasp,
you chose to do this.”
“………Eternal…love…,” Eugeo repeated, hardly knowing what he
was doing. “Eternal………rule……”
She nodded, playing with the Piety Module she’d just pulled from
his forehead. “That’s right, Eugeo. If you give your all over to me, the
thirst that has tormented you your entire life will be quenched. The
troubles and fears you’ve been grappling with all this time will go
away…This is your final chance, Eugeo. Use the sword in your left
hand to shatter the toy in your right. Then I shall forgive your sins
with the bounty of my love.”

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 “…”
From his prone position, Eugeo looked first at the Blue Rose
Sword, then at the copper-colored dagger. Then he looked up at
Administrator and said, “Love is ruling and being ruled…? The only
one I feel pity for is you, if that is the only way you can describe it.”
“…”
Now it was her turn to have no response.
All it would take was a swing of her slender hand to call down a
high-level sacred art that would eliminate his life value in an instant.
But Eugeo continued talking.
“I’m certain…that you must’ve felt the same way. Starved and
searching for love…but never finding it,” he continued, but on the
inside, he was reflecting.

Maybe I was a child who never found love from his own parents.
But even if that’s true, I have loved many people in my life.
Old Man Garitta, the previous carver. Sister Azalia from the Church.
Selka the apprentice sister. Grandfather, who told me stories of the
past. My elder sister, Celinia, who cared for me when I was little.
Vanot and Triza Walde from the farm. Their twin daughters, Teline
and Telure. Golgorosso, who helped train me. Miss Azurica, the dorm
manager. Tiese, who filled my life with smiles for the short time that
she was my page. Ronie, who was the page of my partner.
And Kirito.
And…Alice.

“You’re wrong, you wretched soul.” Eugeo stared into those

mysterious rainbow eyes of Administrator’s, emphasizing each and
every sentence. “Ruling is not loving. Love isn’t transactional; you
don’t give it to get something in return. You give it continuously and
selflessly, like water to a flower…That’s what love is.”
Administrator listened, a faint smile playing around her lips again.
But there was no honeyed sweetness there anymore.

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 “…What a shame. I was going to forgive the little criminal who
betrayed the Axiom Church and rescue his soul, and this is what I get
in return.”
And to Eugeo’s breathless awe, the silver-haired young woman
floating in the air changed from human to god.
There was no change to her appearance. But her unblemished
white skin filled with a kind of bottomless force, a holy aura.
Something in the air spoke of unfathomable power—that of a simple
twitch of a finger capable of tearing the greatest warrior or arts
caster to pieces.
“Eugeo…are you under the impression that I need you? That if I
really want you to be my knight, I wouldn’t dare take your life?”
There was no discernible emotion in her smile. All he could do was
clutch his dagger even harder and bear the incredible pressure
suffocating his body.
“Hee-hee…I don’t need boring little boys like you. I’ll suck out all
your life, convert your body into a tiny jewel, and lock you away in a
box. That way, even after I file away today’s memories, at least I’ll
feel something when I look at it,” she gloated, crossing her legs as
she sat on her invisible chair.
It wasn’t a bluff. If she decided she would do it, it would happen
without pause.
He couldn’t run away now, even if there was actually a way out.
It’d take far too long for the levitating disc to take him down to the
next floor. If he could somehow break the window behind him, all
that awaited him outside was empty air until he hit the ground
hundreds of mels below.
Besides, Eugeo’s fate had been decided the moment he’d used his
Perfect Weapon Control on Kirito and Alice down below. He had to
stick Cardinal’s dagger into the pontifex, even if the act killed him.
She was protected by a barrier that rebuffed all metal weapons.
But he got the feeling that it wasn’t as absolute in power as she said
it was. When he had used all his strength to push in the dagger, it
looked like the barrier itself had exploded. He doubted it was the end

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of the sacred art, but perhaps the dagger could reach her body right
after a blast.
“Oh…are you still going to try something?” murmured
Administrator, staring down at her prone foe. “How very thoughtful
of you to keep trying to entertain me to the bitter end. Hmm, maybe
it would be a waste to kill you and turn you into a jewel. Perhaps I
could force-synthesize you, like I did her…it’ll just take a while.”
Despite the desperate circumstances, something in what she said
stuck in Eugeo’s ear. “Like…her…?”
The silver-haired woman smiled and nodded. “That’s right. The
one you’re so infatuated with: Thirty. She really didn’t want to say
the words, so I had the automated senate facility undo her
protection. It took several days. I was asleep, so I didn’t see it for
myself, but I’m sure it was torturous. What do you think? Would you
like to try undergoing the same thing…?”
“…Thirty…? Alice…,” he hissed.
As usual, he understood less than half of what Administrator was
saying, but he could tell one thing.
Eight years ago, after she’d been tied up and taken to Central
Cathedral by force, Alice had undergone a harrowing process to
become an Integrity Knight. She hadn’t given in to the demand to say
the Remove Core Protection command the way that Eugeo had, and
as a result, they’d had to pry open the door to her mind by force.
Surely the wounds that Eugeo had suffered along the way were
nothing in comparison to that.
No, he couldn’t run away now.
He couldn’t allow himself to fall without striking back at
Administrator.
“……”
Eugeo clenched his teeth and pushed himself up with trembling
arms, getting to his unsteady feet.
He stared back into those silvery eyes, which were losing their
mirth, wrapped the chain of the dagger around his right wrist, and
grabbed the hilt of the Blue Rose Sword with the same hand. The

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familiar white leather clung to his palm. He drew the blade and
tossed the sheath aside.
In the light of the moon from over his shoulder, the weapon shone
pale and bright.
Ten mels away, the girl seated in the air narrowed her eyes in
response to the light. When she spoke, her tone was noticeably more
chilling.
“So that is your answer, boy. Fine…then I will at least ensure that
your end is not painful.”
She raised her right hand and pointed her index finger at Eugeo.
Clearly, the pontifex did not need to speak the command words
aloud to use sacred arts. But there were still two steps that had to be
taken to use any kind of attacking art—
—the creation and processing of elements. Whether heat, ice, or
some other natural force, even the greatest master needed at least
two seconds to create the elements and give them a shape.
So by the time she started to move her finger, Eugeo already had
the sword propped up near his shoulder.
Light-green color infused the Blue Rose Sword. Pale-blue dots
appeared at the end of Administrator’s finger.
“Yaaaah!”
This would be his final swing, Eugeo knew, as he launched himself
off the ground. The last ultimate technique.
The Aincrad-style charging attack Sonic Leap.
In his ears, he heard Kirito’s voice: Listen, Eugeo, these techniques
will move our bodies for us. But just letting it do all the work isn’t
going to cut it. You have to become one with the technique and speed
it up with your legs and arms. If you can do that, your sword can hit
the enemy before the breeze itself.
How many times had he practiced it? How many times had he
failed and wound up with his face planted firmly in the grass?
And how many times had Kirito laughed with delight…?
Eugeo’s sword flashed the color of fresh green shoots and cut
through the air so fast, even the sound couldn’t keep up.

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 Administrator’s smile vanished. She spread the fingers of her right
hand. The ice elements, which were just about to be shot like
needles, burst as they touched the Blue Rose Sword. Then Eugeo’s
most powerful technique smashed against Administrator’s palm—or
more accurately, the thin purple barrier about five cens in front of it.
He was buffeted by a shock far greater than the one earlier.
The purple barrier did succeed at blocking the accelerated Sonic
Leap, but the fine layer of tiny sacred script that composed it rippled
and shook.
If he kept pushing with all his might, the barrier should explode, as
it had a few minutes earlier. He just had to resist it somehow and use
the dagger hanging from his wrist to stab her this time. His body
could disintegrate after that was done.
“Break…through…!!” he snarled, throwing all his strength into the
still-glowing sword.
“…!”
The pontifex said nothing, but she certainly wasn’t smiling
anymore. Colorful light swirled deep in her narrowed eyes. Her
extended fingers were all bent and strained.
She wasn’t attacking with her left hand, because it was still holding
the Piety Module. If she wasn’t discarding that despite her insistence
that she would kill him, it meant that she hadn’t given up on making
him a knight or that she had some other use for him.
But it was pointless to consider that now. All that mattered was
completing this final attack—whether or not it required the very last
drop of his strength and life.
“Rrraaaahhh!!”
He unleashed a bellow from the very pit of his stomach—and then,
once again, something he never could have predicted happened:
The Blue Rose Sword began to sink into the purple barrier.
The wall itself was not gone. But the tip of the sword was indeed
cutting—no, slipping through—the layer of sacred script that was
supposed to rebuff all metal.
It wasn’t a trick of the eyes. Even the mirrors on Administrator’s
face were gaping.

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 The situation abruptly changed.
Administrator stopped attempting to hold back Eugeo’s sword and
suddenly leaped back. The barrier retreated with her, and without
the surface holding it in place, the Blue Rose Sword swung
downward with a slicing whoosh. The moment the edge touched the
ground, a gash several mels long opened in the thick carpet.
He couldn’t tell what had happened. All he knew was that if he
stayed where he was, her attack art would hit him. His limbs felt
heavy after summoning all that power, but he promptly bolted into
action regardless.
This time, his enemy was faster. As she pulled back, the pontifex
generated fresh elements and sent them hurtling at Eugeo. By the
time he was in his technique stance, green lights were flying right at
him.
On instinct, Eugeo broke the stance and used the Blue Rose Sword
to block his body. The wind elements burst with a flash, and the
ensuing gust of wind pushed Eugeo against the south wall again.
Fortunately for him, she had forgone the step of shaping the
elements. If she’d turned them into blades of wind rather than just
dispersing the energy in the motes of light themselves, he could’ve
easily lost a limb.
But not all his luck was good. Rather than slamming into the flat
glass windowpane, this time Eugeo’s back struck one of the large
pillars that connected the windows. It was designed with a massive
standing sword motif, and Eugeo smashed into the side of the blade
before falling to the ground. If that had been the naked edge, it
might have maimed him, even though the sword was only
decorative. Maybe that made him lucky after all, but the pain was
enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
I have to move. It’ll be real sacred arts next time, he told himself,
lifting his upper half off the ground.
She had retreated to the other side of the bed; the only thing he
could see in the darkness was the shine of her silver hair. She was far
away enough to be out of range of his Sonic Leap—but it was an easy

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distance for a sacred art. If he didn’t get off the ground, he would
die.
“Nnh…hrrg…”
Somehow, he got to one knee. But there was no strength to push
off with. He tried and tried to stand, but the leg only trembled and
refused to obey.
No. Not yet. I can’t give up now. Why did I even come back to this
room, then?
What have I been living for all this time?
“Grr…raaaahh!”
Eugeo pressed his back against the golden sword decoration and
used his Blue Rose Sword as a support to get to his feet. He could tell
that the previous impact had cut him as well as buffeted him,
because there were droplets of blood spattering on the floor below.
It must’ve taken well over five seconds for him to get up, but for
some reason, Administrator wasn’t attacking. She just floated in the
darkness twenty mels away, holding her silence.
In time, he heard an utterance so quiet that it would have been
inaudible if not in the midst of absolute silence.
“……That sword…Ah, now I see…”
Eugeo glanced down at his blades, uncertain of what she meant.
The Blue Rose Sword was thrust tip down into the floor. Hanging
from his wrist was the little copper dagger. Which of the two was she
referring to?
His intuition told him this was a crucial distinction, but before he
could reach an answer, the quiet that filled the top floor of Central
Cathedral was broken by neither Eugeo nor Administrator.
“Ah, ah, aiiiieeeee!!”
It was coming from a circle in the floor about five mels away that
was now sinking out of sight—the platform to the floor below. The
voice was louder now that there was just a dark portal in the middle
of the carpet.
“H-h-help meeeee, Your Holiness!!” wailed the voice, which clearly
belonged to Prime Senator Chudelkin, who had gone down to the

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ninety-ninth floor earlier. Administrator proceeded forward through
the darkness in silence and stood at the edge of the bed.
“…What is it about him that grows more childish with age?
Perhaps it’s nearly time to reset him,” she muttered, shaking her
head. Eyeing her with caution, Eugeo stealthily backed away toward
the west wall, putting distance between himself and the hole.
The disc was sinking but not very fast. It would take most of a
minute for it to descend all the way to the floor, then rise again with
Chudelkin atop it.
But no sooner was there a twenty-cen space between the floor
and the disc than two pale, clammy hands grasped the edges of the
aperture.
“Hohhhhh!!” he screeched, and his round head appeared. The
perfectly hairless skin was bright red now. The prime senator
squeezed and pulled until his body popped through and landed on
the floor.
His clothes hadn’t changed since he’d left the room earlier,
gloating. But now, the puffed-out red-and-blue clown outfit was torn
and sliced all over and slightly deflated. He plopped down on the
carpet, wheezing and puffing.
Administrator gazed at him coldly. “What happened to your
clothes?”
Meanwhile, Eugeo was stunned. The arms and torso that were
visible through the ends of the prime senator’s tattered clothing
were as thin as gnarled branches. And yet his head was as puffed up
and round as ever—like a child’s drawing of a stick figure with a
circle head.
So what did it mean that the first time he’d seen the man in the
great bath, the clown’s outfit was puffed up to bursting? As Eugeo
wondered, Chudelkin got to his feet, seeming not to notice the
presence of the young man, and tried desperately to plead his case.
“Y-Your Holiness, I am certain that my appearance must be most
displeasing to you, but I assure you, it is the result of a ferocious
battle in which I endeavored to punish the rebels and protect the
glory of the great Axiom Church!”

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 At that point, Chudelkin must have realized the pontifex was
completely nude, because his crescent-shaped eyes went full moon.
He slapped his hands over his face, giant head turning even redder.
“Hohhh! Oh-hoooo!! Oh, you mustn’t! Your Holiness, I am entirely
unworthy of your visage! My eyeballs shall explode! I shall turn into
stoooone!!” he wailed, but despite his protestations, the gaps
between his fingers were wide, and his beady eyes gleamed through
them.
Administrator covered her cheek with her hand and threatened, “If
you don’t state your business, I really will turn you to stone.”
“Hohhh! Hwaaaa…ah…aaah!” screeched Chudelkin, immediately
stopping his contortions and freezing in place. His burning-red head
promptly went pale. The prime senator suddenly spun on his heel
and hopped like a frog toward the hole he’d just climbed through.
The platform was still down on the ninety-ninth floor and hadn’t
returned yet.
“W-we must seal this place at once! They’re coming! The devils!!”
“…You mean you didn’t eliminate the rebels?” Administrator
asked.
Chudelkin’s back twitched. “W-w-w-well, I fought valiantly and
with great sacrifice, as you can see from my condition, but these
rebellious devils are most foul and treacherous and sadistic…,” he
screeched.
In the back of his mind, Eugeo considered this information. The
“rebels” Chudelkin spoke of were obviously Kirito and Alice, whom
he’d left trapped in ice down there. No matter that the prime
senator was the second-greatest user of sacred arts in the Church or
that the others were trapped in ice—Eugeo couldn’t imagine them
being defeated. Sure enough, they’d put up a fierce fight that
apparently had sent him running wounded.
However, that meant…
Eugeo subconsciously retreated a few steps from the platform
hole. He must’ve caused some slight rustling of fabric, because
Chudelkin paused in the midst of his excuses and glanced his way.

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 Those thin, beady eyes were wide again. The prime senator thrust
his finger at Eugeo, instantly forgetting his own miserable failure,
and screamed, “Hwaaaa! Y-you! Number Thirty-Two! What in the
world are you doing there?! H-h-how dare you draw your sword in
the Chamber of the Gods, where Her Holiness dwells! You will crawl
upon the ground, this instant!”
“………”
But Eugeo barely heard anything Chudelkin said anymore. His ears
were fixed on a faint vibrating sound coming up from the floor
below. The sound of the thick levitating disc rising through the power
of sacred arts.
Belatedly, the prime senator noticed it, too, in between his
seething insults, and he fell silent. Then he turned around, got down
on all fours, and peered into the hole in the carpet.
“Hwaaaaaa!!” he screamed, his loudest yet, and turned back to
Eugeo. “N-N-N-Number Thirty-Two! What are you doing?! Go! Go
now! This only happened because you failed to rough them up
enough! This isn’t my job! Y-Your Holiness, surely you must know
th……”
Chudelkin was crawling toward the bed, babbling furiously the
entire time, until a hand reached up through the hole in the floor and
grabbed his right foot.
“Eeeeeeeek!!” he squealed, eyes bulging, and kicked his legs. The
pointed clown shoe popped off, and the momentum caused his little
body to roll. The prime senator leaped to his feet, bounded for the
bed, peeled the hanging canopy curtain aside, and wriggled into the
darkness between it and the floor.
The pontifex, who was standing on the bed, stared down at the
hole in the floor with a smile on her face, all thought of the prime
senator’s miserable state banished. Eugeo was prepared to attack at
once if she showed hostility, but for now she seemed content to wait
for her guest to appear.
Eugeo glanced back at the levitating platform. The hand that had
grasped Chudelkin’s shoe was still fully extended. The black sleeve
slid downward, revealing an arm that was thin but finely muscled.

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 How many times had those arms saved Eugeo?
In fact, for as long as he could remember, he’d been led around by
that hand. Even now, after Eugeo had gone the wrong way and
turned his sword on the owner of that arm, the advance continued.
The disc continued rising.
Next to appear was black hair, still tousled from battle. Then two
eyes darker than the night sky beyond the windows and yet brighter
than the stars. Lastly, a mouth curved into a cocky grin…
“………Kirito…”
Eugeo’s voice was trembling. It wasn’t loud enough to be audible
over ten mels away, but his friend glanced toward him along the wall
anyway and nodded, smile never wavering.
It was a gesture that was warm and heartening, just like all the
ones he’d made since the moment they’d met. The disc finally came
to a heavy, grinding stop.
Kirito…there you are…
Something deep inside him throbbed with an emotion he couldn’t
even name.
But that pain wasn’t an unpleasant one. It was certainly much
gentler than the suffering he’d felt when the Piety Module was
jammed into his head—and more wistful and sweet.
As he watched, frozen in place, his partner and teacher dressed in
black smirked and said, “Yo, Eugeo.”
“……I told you not to come,” he murmured.
His partner hurled Chudelkin’s silly shoe and beamed even harder.
“When have I ever followed the instructions you gave to me?”
“……Good point. You’ve always………been like……”
He couldn’t find the words.
He meant to pay for the crime of attacking his friend by sacrificing
his life. He was going to use that secret weapon from Cardinal to
pierce Administrator’s skin, even if he had to get torn to pieces to do
it. And now he was reunited with Kirito again, without having
completed this duty.
But no. It was Kirito’s own will that had brought him here.

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 He’d broken through Eugeo’s Perfect Control art, defeated Prime
Senator Chudelkin, and reached the hundredth floor while Eugeo
was still alive.
Yes, I’m still alive. And I still have the dagger hanging from my
wrist. Which means now is the time to fight. That’s the one thing I
can do.
Eugeo turned away from his partner and looked to the center of
the chamber. Administrator waited on the massive bed, an enigmatic
smile playing across her lips. Her mirror eyes caught the moonlight
but, as usual, did not reveal any emotion of their own. All that was
clear was that she was watching this new visitor and thinking about
something.
He had to explain to Kirito before the battle resumed. He had to
tell him that her flesh was protected by a barrier that blocked all
metal—and that it wasn’t infallible.
Without taking his eyes off the pontifex, Eugeo began moving
toward his partner.
Just then, there was the sound of metal shifting from the direction
he was moving. He had to break his gaze to look over.
To Kirito’s right, another figure strode forward from the thick
shadow cast by the pillar between the windowpanes.
Golden hair and armor sparkled in the light of the moon. At the left
side of the figure’s waist was the Osmanthus Blade, a Divine Object
with a hilt fashioned like flower petals. A white skirt billowed below.
The Integrity Knight Alice Synthesis Thirty.
Eugeo had seen her working with Kirito already on the ninety-ninth
floor. But seeing them standing together like this made his chest
throb even harder. His legs stopped moving toward Kirito of their
own accord.
Alice stared at the pontifex, then at Eugeo.
The right side of her face was covered in the dark bandage still.
Integrity Knights were known for being excellent arts casters, so she
should have been able to heal her eye in an instant. Perhaps she was
leaving it as it was in order to feel the pain.

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 Her deep-blue left eye was full of conflicting emotions as she
looked over Eugeo. It wasn’t at all like the impassive, cold gaze she’d
had down on the eightieth floor. This time, it was full of human
emotion.
She hadn’t recovered her Alice Zuberg memories yet, but there
had been massive change within Alice the knight in a short amount
of time. And the obvious cause of that was the black-haired
swordsman standing next to her. Kirito’s words had pierced the
unmeltable ice that surrounded her heart.
And if, somehow, they could recover the memory fragment that
Administrator was hiding somewhere in this room and return Alice to
her old self, then Alice the knight would go back to being Alice
Zuberg, Eugeo’s childhood friend.
And it meant that Alice the knight, the one who had spoken to
Kirito, sheathed her sword, and withstood the pain of losing her eye
in order to fight back against the Axiom Church, would vanish.
That was Eugeo’s greatest wish and the reason he had fought so
hard to get here. But how did the present Alice understand this? And
Kirito…He had fought to the death against Vice Commander Fanatio,
only to save her life afterward. Did he really desire for Alice the
knight to be eliminated forever…?
Eugeo took a deep breath, let it out, and forced himself to stop
thinking about it. He had to focus on this, the final fight. He’d been
able to let his mind wander because Administrator was passively
letting the situation play out, but she could resume attacking at any
time.
He tore his eyes from Alice and looked back at the center of the
room, resuming his march. He sidled across the moonlit floor until he
was next to Kirito at last. Then he pressed the Blue Rose Sword into
the floor again with a sharp exhale, resting his weight on it.
“Are you hurt?” Kirito whispered. “It’s not…my fault, is it?”
“…”
The fact that his partner was willing to let that simple statement
cover everything that had happened on the floor below them
brought an unexpected smile to Eugeo’s lips.

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 “You never hit me with your sword, not once. I had a run-in with a
pillar.”
“You could’ve waited until we got up here.”
“…I was the one who trapped you to keep you down there, Kirito.”
“As if I was weak enough that something like that would stop me.”
Kirito snorted.
Bantering with him like this reminded Eugeo of before they’d split
apart at the eightieth floor…like the times back at the dorm of the
academy. The throbbing in his chest lessened just a bit.
But what happened had happened and would never go away. He
had given in to Administrator’s temptations and attacked his best
friend, a crime that no amount of words would lessen.
Eugeo pursed his lips and gripped the hilt of his sword. Kirito
stared at the middle of the room until eventually he muttered, “Is
that Administrator? The pontifex of the Church?”
“That’s right,” came the answer from Kirito’s other side. “She
hasn’t changed at all in the last six years,” Alice stated.
After this direct mention, Administrator finally broke her long
silence.
“Oh, my…I’ve never had so many guests in this chamber at one
time. Do I recall, Chudelkin, that you insisted I leave the fate of Alice
and the irregular boy to you?”
The curtains hanging around the side of the bed parted from the
inside, and a very large head popped out. Prime Senator Chudelkin
rubbed his forehead nervously and craned his neck at an angle that
suggested he’d made some kind of mistake.
“Hoh, hoh-hee! W-w-w-well, I assure you, Your Holiness, I fought
as bravely as a lion for your sake…”
“You mentioned that already.”
“Hwaaaa! I-it is not my fault, oh-hooo! Number Thirty-Two was
sloppy and only half encased them in the ice…And Number Thirty,
that hideous gold knight, had the gall to utilize her Memory Release
ability on me! Though I’m not so flimsy as to let that gaudy little
princess’s secret technique put a single scratch on me, hoh-hee-hee-
hee!”

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 “Anyone but him,” Alice muttered darkly.
Chudelkin didn’t notice—he spun around and looked up at
Administrator, who was standing upon the bed, and screeched, “In
fact, it was Number One and Number Two who started it by going
mad! I can only assume that their idiocy has now infected Number
Thirty!”
“Ah…now be quiet,” Administrator commanded. Chudelkin shut
his mouth and froze where he lay on the floor. But he kept his eyes
wide open, which he seemed to be doing in order to drink in the
sight of the pontifex’s nakedness.
Administrator’s silver eyes were fixed on Alice and totally
unconcerned with whatever the prime senator was doing. She
inclined her head in curiosity.
“It was about time for me to reset Bercouli and Fanatio
anyway…but I’ve only had you for six years, yes, Alice? You don’t
seem to have any errors in your logic circuits…So is it the influence of
that irregular unit next to you? Fascinating.”
Eugeo didn’t understand anything of what she was saying. But
there was something in the silver-haired woman’s tone of voice that
made him shiver—like a shepherd speaking about a sheep or a
craftswoman about her tools.
“Well, Alice? Do you have something you want to say to me? I
won’t be angry. Go ahead and speak your mind,” Administrator said
with a faint smile, taking a step forward atop the bed.
Alice took a similar step backward, as though pushed by an
invisible wall. To his surprise, Eugeo saw that the knight’s profile
looked even paler than the moonlight, and her lips were clenched
shut. But Alice stood firm and reached up with her bare hand to
touch the bandage over her right eye. Then her withdrawn leg took a
step forward instead, as if the scrap of cloth had given her strength.
Tak.
The sound of her foot was sharp and crisp, as though there wasn’t
any carpet underneath. The golden knight, instead of kneeling before
her master, thrust her chest forward and declared, “Holy Pontifex,
the proud order of Integrity Knights has been shattered. It was

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defeated at the hand of the two rebels beside me…as well as the
boundless obsession and deceit that you have built with this tower!!”

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 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FINAL BATTLE, MAY 380 HE
1
Ooh, well said.
Given the weight of the situation, I suppose my own reaction was a
bit less than totally serious. But if I didn’t treat it that lightly, the
freezing tone would have overwhelmed me and caused me to back
down.
When we arrived at the hundredth floor of Central Cathedral at
last, it was a circular chamber well over a hundred feet across. In the
middle of the room was a massive circular bed, and that seemed to
be the only piece of furniture.
And atop the bed, without a stitch of clothing covering her body,
was a breathtakingly beautiful woman.
She was, without a doubt, the absolute ruler of the Axiom Church
and thus of the human race as a whole: Administrator. But her sense
of presence was so great that just by standing there, she made me
instantly lose sight of the fact that this was actually a virtual world
called the Underworld and that she and all the other people here
were “artificial fluctlights,” AI routines saved on an artificial medium
in the real world.
But in fact, I didn’t need to see her brilliant silvery hair and
mirrorlike eyes first. From the moment I’d first stepped onto the
platform that would take me up to this floor, my palms had been
sweaty, and cold fear had gripped my spine. As I had looked through
the hole in the ceiling directly above me and into the darkness that
awaited, I had felt an aura of death more thick and cold than in any
of the boss chambers in the original Aincrad.

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 The real me—not Kirito the elite disciple but the actual Kazuto
Kirigaya—wouldn’t die inside The Soul Translator if I lost all my life
value here in the Underworld. But the entity known as Administrator
had the ability to inflict suffering on me that far surpassed death.
In fact, hadn’t Cardinal said that Administrator wasn’t bound by
the Taboo Index she herself had created but instead was still
restricted by the conceptual taboos that she’d been raised with?
That murder was the one thing she couldn’t commit?
But because of that limitation, she could inflict pain that was far
more horrible than logging out of the Underworld—I could wind up
like those senators, living like a machine hooked up to a feeding
tube, forever.
Of course, just because I understood more about the underlying
situation than Alice or Eugeo did didn’t mean that my fear was
greater than theirs.
Administrator had removed Eugeo’s Piety Module herself, but
Alice’s was still embedded in her fluctlight. I couldn’t begin to
imagine how frightening it must have been for her to face off against
her absolute ruler.
And yet the golden knight held her head high and proud as she
declared, “My ultimate duty is not the protection of the Axiom
Church! It is to protect the peaceful labor and rest of the unarmed
multitudes! And your actions, more than any other thing, threaten
the peace and safety of the people of the world!!”
Alice’s golden hair shone, lit with righteous purpose. Her voice cut
crisply through the heavy, cold gloom, keeping it at bay.
But the pontifex didn’t express any anger at Alice’s bold
castigation. If anything, her lips curled with entertainment. Instead, it
was Prime Senator Chudelkin—who was hiding under the bed for
some reason—whose hideous screeching voice rent the air.
“S-s-sileeeeence!!”
He hurtled out of the hanging sheet and performed a series of
somersaults before popping to his feet. He wobbled a bit from all the
rotation but recovered to express his full indignation in the space
between us and the pontifex.

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 His red-and-blue outfit was torn to shreds, and the poison gas he’d
used on the previous floor was gone, thanks to Alice’s Perfect
Weapon Control of the Osmanthus Blade. That skill had split the
blade into hundreds of tiny pieces that whirled into an astonishing
storm of petals that were meant to help us escape Eugeo’s ice—
Chudelkin got caught in the aftermath only because he came
chortling down from the ceiling at the right time.
As usual, his slipperiness was impressive. Despite the damage to
his clothes, he retreated without suffering much injury himself, but
now, on the top floor, there was no escape. With the mighty
Administrator behind him, however, he was bold again, throwing his
hands into the air and then jutting both pointer fingers at Alice.
“Why, you half-broken little toy knight! Your duty?! To protect?!
How you make me laugh! Hohhhh-hoh-hoh-hoh-hohhhhh!!”
He did a little spin, causing the tattered shreds of his clothing to lift
up into the air, exposing striped red-and-blue underpants. Then he
put his hands on his hips and stuck out his left foot at her this time.
“You knights are nothing more than puppets that act on my
command!! If I tell you to lick my boot, you will lick it! If I say that
you are my steed, you will carry me on your back!! That is the duty
you knights are blessed to have!!”
He lost his balance and nearly toppled over backward due to his
massive head, but the wild swinging of his arms helped him stay on
his feet.
“More importantly,” he continued, “the idea that the knighthood
is destroyed is absolute poppycock! Less than ten overall, including
the worthless old Number One and Two, were damaged at all! In
other words, I have more than twenty pawns still remaining! One
single member mouthing off does not even begin to affect the
ironclad rule of the Church, you hideous, shining wench!!”
Ironically, the clown’s vulgar insults succeeded only at calming
Alice’s nerves. She was back to her sharp, rational nature. With a
shake of her head, she said, “You are the fool here, scarecrow. Are
there brains in that oversize head of yours, or just straw and scraps
of cloth?”

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 “Wha…whaaaaa—?!”
The blood rushed to his crimson head until he was fully purple. But
before he could scream whatever came to his mind, Alice icily
continued, “Of the remaining twenty knights, half of them are
immobile at the moment, due to the pontifex’s so-called reset to
modify their memories with sacred arts. And the other half are on
their dragons, fighting at the End Mountains. You cannot call them
back here now. If you did, the forces of darkness would immediately
pile through the caves in the north, west, and south parts of the
mountains, as well as the Eastern Gate, and cause the Axiom
Church’s rule to crumble.”
“Nng…hrrgg…!”
Chudelkin’s face was now turning from purple to black. But Alice
wasn’t done yet.
“In fact, it is already crumbling. Those ten knights and their
dragons cannot fight forever. But the cathedral no longer has any
knights in reserve to replace them. Or will you venture into the Dark
Territory yourself, Chudelkin, and bravely battle with the fearsome
dark knights?”
I couldn’t help but feel a bit self-conscious about that remark. The
backup knights—like Eldrie and Deusolbert and the Four Whirling
Blades—had just been hospitalized because of Eugeo and me.
Still, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Chudelkin’s head
reaching the limit of its internal pressure.
“Mwa-hohhhhh!! You—you—you sneaky little—!! Do you think
you’ve gotten the better of us with that, you miserable whelp?!” he
screamed, like a kettle letting off steam, his feet stomping the floor
in a childish tantrum. “As punishment for this absolute insolence,
you’ll be sent to the mountains for three years once you’ve been
reset! Oh, but before all of that, I’ll keep you for my personal
plaything!!”
He began to screech about exactly the sorts of things that he
would force Alice to do, until a word from Administrator behind him
instantly shut him up.
“…Hmm.”

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 He went stock-still and silent, his face returning to its original
color. The pontifex ignored him and turned to Alice. “No, it doesn’t
seem to be a logic-circuit error. And your Piety Module is still
functional…Does that mean you independently removed the Code
871 that was installed for me…? And not just on a sudden emotional
burst…?”
What is she talking about? I wondered, scowling. Installed? By
whom…? Code Eight-Seven-One…?
The silver-haired young woman was not forthcoming with more
information, however. She swept the hair hanging on her shoulders
back and changed gears. “Well, I won’t know any more than that
without a good analysis. Now, Chudelkin…I am a generous person, so
I will give you an opportunity to improve your now miserable
reputation. Use your abilities to freeze those three. You can reduce
their life to, oh, let’s say twenty percent.”
When she was done speaking, she waved her right pointer finger.
Instantly, the massive bed beneath her feet rumbled into rotation.
My eyes bugged out.
Like an enormous screw, the forty-foot-wide bed began to descend
into the floor. Chudelkin squealed and darted away from it.
Eventually, the entire bed had fit itself snugly into the floor, even
the hanging canopy, such that there was nothing but carpet with a
large circle drawn on it. A moment later, Administrator descended to
the floor without a sound.
On a sudden whim, I glanced down at my own feet and saw that
there was a similar circle in the carpet where the levitating disc had
brought us up. I guessed that the room must be designed so that
everything extended and retracted into the floor that way, but a
glance around the room revealed that there was only one other
circle, a small one on the far wall across from us. I couldn’t begin to
guess what it contained.
Once the bed was gone, the top floor of the tower seemed
shockingly vast.
The circular walls were all made of perfectly unblemished, crystal
clear glass, meaning that only the golden pillars supported the

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domed ceiling. The dome was decorated with art that seemed to be
depicting the genesis of the world, and crystals affixed all over the
display blinked and glimmered like stars.
What did surprise me was the sword-themed golden decorations
that adorned all the pillars. The smaller ones were still over three
feet long, and the longest nearly ten. The hilts were quite small,
though, so it was clearly impossible to pull them off the wall and use
them as weapons. The edges didn’t look very sharp, either.
Otherwise, the hundredth floor of the cathedral was the worst
kind of place to fight someone who could cast sacred arts: wide open
with nothing to hide behind. I put weight into my right foot,
preparing to leap forward on Chudelkin before he could start
chanting.
But before I could execute my plan, Alice shook her head. “It’s
dangerous to just charge in. The pontifex will have an art that can
capture us alive if she simply touches us. The reason she allowed
Chudelkin to go first is undoubtedly to give herself a better chance to
make contact with us.”
“Now that you mention it,” Eugeo whispered, the first thing he’d
said in ages, “I have a feeling that she chose not to kill me, when she
certainly could have. And when the prime senator turned Bercouli to
stone, he was riding on him…touching him directly.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “So it works on contact with the target.”
Propelled attack arts like fireballs or ice blades notwithstanding,
any kind of art that had a specific target, as a general rule, required
that the caster make contact with that target, even if just on the leg
or foot. It was one of the fundamental rules of the sacred arts that
any novice at the academy would learn.
In other words, as long as we didn’t let Chudelkin or Administrator
actually touch us, we didn’t have to worry about falling prey to that
horrifying petrification ability. But at the same time, that meant we
couldn’t get within sword-swinging range.
That ultimately left us at a disadvantage. In terms of sacred arts,
Eugeo and I were nothing compared to Alice, and in a battle of long-

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distance attacks, even the three of us together were likely to get
outgunned against the prime senator.
I bit my lip, thinking hard. Eugeo continued, “Plus…the pontifex has
a full-body—”
Whatever he was trying to say got cut off by Chudelkin, who
sprang up from his sitting position. “Hoh-hoh-hohhh!”
We took fighting stances in reaction. He gave us a suddenly very
nasty smile, then turned back to his commander and simpered, “You
can flatten those three little dung beetles with the press of your
pinky finger, Your Holiness, yet you bestowed upon me the honor
and pleasure of dealing with them! I might cry! I do believe I shall!!
Hoo-goo, hoo-goo-goo-goo…”
Sure enough, sticky tears began gushing from the corners of his
eyes, forming large droplets that tumbled off his cheeks. It was
sickening.
Even Administrator seemed tired of dealing with him. She backed
away about twenty feet and said impatiently, “Fine. Just do it.”
“Yeh-heh-hes, Your Holiness! I shall undertake every last effort to
meet your satisfactiooooon!”
He pushed both thumbs into his temples as if there were buttons
there, and his tears instantly stopped. The little clown leered at us
and continued, “Now, now, now…You will not get off with simple
apologies. No, I’ll be grinding down nearly all of your life before I
finally allow you to sob and beg on your knees. Are you ready for
that? Are you sure?”
“…I’m tired of listening to your nonsense. Just do your worst
already. Like I said on the floor below, I’m ready to cut that filthy
tongue clean out of your hideous mouth,” snapped Alice, who was
not one to lose the war of words. She squeezed the hilt of her sword
and widened her stance.
About fifty feet away, Chudelkin took an odd stance of his own,
crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“Ohhhhhh, you’ll get it now!! If you want my beautiful, perfect
tongue, you’ll have it—sliding all over your body, once I’ve frozen
you in solid ice!! Hwaaaaa!!” he screamed, and launched himself

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into a magnificent leap, performing a one-and-a-half backflip with a
full twist and landing hard. Not on his feet or his hands but on the
top of his head.
“……”
Neither I, Eugeo, nor Alice said a word. Yes, it made sense that
with his enormous head and spindly body, the prime senator would
find it more stable to be situated upside down, but what was he
going to do now that he was stuck there?
But Chudelkin maintain a firmly serious expression—as far as I
could tell, since it was hard to read it upside down—extended his
arms and legs, and screeched, “System…Caaaaall!!”
Alice promptly drew her blade. Eugeo and I took stances as well,
though we weren’t sure what to do yet.
“Generrrate Crrryogenic Element!!” he cried, enthusiastically
rolling his r’s.
The power and scale of a long-range attack art could be narrowed
down to a fairly specific window based on the number of elements
that were initially generated. I watched closely, determined to spot
exactly how many little ice lights appeared in his fingers.
Paaam!! Chudelkin clapped his hands together and spread them
wide, still upside down. At the ends of his fingers, thrumming softly,
were ten little motes of blue light.
“Damn, the maximum,” I cursed, but it wasn’t unexpected. I was
barely more than a beginner, and even I could generate five
elements at a time on one hand if I focused hard enough. Chudelkin
was the greatest caster in the Axiom Church after Administrator, so
making five on each hand would be second nature to him.
Alice didn’t move, but I took a step to the right and held up my off
hand in order to generate the opposing heat elements. Eugeo took
the exact same stance. If we each made five, perhaps we could
defend ourselves against Chudelkin’s ice…
But right as I was about to give the command, there was another
dry paaam!!
It was Chudelkin, this time smacking his bare feet together. Then
he spread his legs wide until they were straight lines along with his

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arms. With the sound of dewdrops falling, ten little ice elements
appeared over the tips of his toes.
Eugeo’s hoarse whisper spoke for the both of us.
“…You gotta be…kidding me…”
With twenty elements in total now floating off his hands and feet,
Chudelkin’s upside-down mouth curved into a huge grin.
“Oh-ho, oh-ho-ho-ho-ho…Very frightened, are we? Peeing our
pants just a little, hmm? If you assumed I was no different from any
of those measly arts casters, you were very wrong.”
The Underworld’s concept of sacred arts—in short, magic—was
confined by vocal commands and the imagination of the caster. For
example, in the act of performing healing arts, any hostility toward
the target in the heart of the caster would dramatically lessen the
effectiveness of the healing. But if one prayed with all one’s being for
recovery, the results might actually surpass the privilege level of the
caster.
Elemental attack arts worked the same way. Vocal commands—
the sacred words—were not enough to alter the shape of the
generated elements. They had to be linked to the image in the
caster’s mind for guidance.
That image was a finger. From the start to the very end of the
process, the caster had to focus on the mental image of each
element, connected to each finger. For this reason, even the most
advanced of users could only control ten elements with ten fingers.
In order to break that limit and utilize the toes for this mental image
as well, you’d either have to be floating in the air off your feet
somehow—or balanced on your head such that all the limbs were
free. Just like Prime Senator Chudelkin.
“Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!” he screamed, and started chanting the
element-activation command at ultrahigh speed as we stood
dumbfounded. First he thrust his right hand toward us, then his left.
“Dischaaaaaargeuh!!”
Shoom! Five icicles shot forth, rending the air in a vortex of chill.
Cold on their heels came another five.

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 There was no escape. Two fanning spreads of ice spears, high and
low, covered every angle. The only way out was to knock down the
spears that would hit us, so I squeezed my sword hilt and focused—
Golden glimmering covered my sight.
Alice had swiped the Osmanthus Blade sideways, disintegrating
the tip into a multitude of little shards that spun and danced through
the air. It wasn’t the first time we’d seen Alice’s Perfect Weapon
Control, but it still succeeded in taking our breath away with its
beauty.
The only light illuminating the top floor of Central Cathedral was
the moonlight coming through the windows on the southern side.
But the golden petals reflected it as though they were glowing with
their own light as they swarmed, creating a thick, dense meteor
shower.
“Haaah!” Alice cried, swinging the hilt, which was all that was left
in her hand.
The storm of petals swooped in coordination with her action,
enveloping the ten icicle spears and filling the air with a tremendous
grinding sound. It was as though she’d tossed ice cubes into a high-
powered mixer on liquefy; in moments, Chudelkin’s spears had been
reduced to sherbet, melting harmlessly into the air and expending
their magical resources.

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 “Hnng…grrrrrrng!!” the little man grunted, grinding his teeth as he
witnessed his confident attack being completely nullified. “Don’t
think you’re so special just because of your stupid little grater!” he
howled. “How do you plan to handle this?! Hohhhhh!!”
He swung his feet, still holding ten elements of their own, from the
sides to a raised position. The ice elements rose in parallel toward
the ceiling, where they met and formed a square crystal block.
The ice grew and grew with a series of heavy booms, until it
formed a solid cube about seven feet to a side. But its
transformation didn’t stop there; vicious spikes grew on every
surface.
If the physical rules of the Underworld were the same as real life,
the cube of ice up above had to weigh a good seven tons. Judging on
the spot that it would be impossible to stop that with swords alone, I
fell back a step.
“Hoh-hee-hee…How do you like that? Just one step before my
ultimate sacred art!! Get ready to be flattennned!!”
From his headstand position, Chudelkin lowered his upright legs to
a forward position. The spiked die made of ice came hurtling
downward with a deafening rush.
Eugeo and I jumped sideways, desperate to get out of the way. But
once again, Alice did not show an ounce of hesitation. She stared
down the massive object that was about to crush her to a pulp, not
moving a muscle…
“Haaaaaaaaah!!”
With the loudest and fiercest cry she’d made in any fight so far,
Alice thrust the hilt of her sword high.
The storm of golden shards floating around her collected into a
sharp formation with a crisp cha-king! They formed a huge cone
about ten feet tall with the pieces arranged outward into fierce
spikes. The formation spun as the block of ice descended upon it.
When the two objects collided, the vast chamber was filled with a
show of sound and light that was both deafening and blinding, all at
once.

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 “Krrrnngggg…Crush…them…flaaaaaat!”
“…Break it apart…flowers!!”
The prime senator and the Integrity Knight screamed, polar
opposites of beauty and ugliness, both twisted with ferocious effort.
With major works of magic like this, in addition to numerical priority,
it was willpower and mental-image strength that would determine
the ultimate winner.
For several seconds, the blue chunk of ice and the golden spiral
held firm at equal distance from their white-hot intersection point,
but they gradually grew closer. Thanks to the overwhelming light and
ear-splitting roaring, it was impossible to tell whether it was the cube
crushing the drill with its overwhelming weight, or the drill gouging
out the ice.
Only when the two objects were nearly overlapping did it become
clear which of the two had won.
With a sharp crack, the entire cube of ice split, going white. Then
the block, which was the size of a small shed, burst tremendously
into a vast number of little shards. The air was instantly colored
white, and I had to hold up my left arm to shield myself from the
onslaught of cold.
“Hkyaaaa?!” shrieked Chudelkin. His outstretched limbs trembled.
“Th…this is preposterous…My superbly impressive and ultimate
sacred art, which was bequeathed to me by Her Holiness…”
That mocking smile had vanished from his venomously red lips, but
despite the feat of obliterating the massive ice block, Alice wasn’t
unscathed, either. She swung her arm to return the cone of shards to
the form of her sword once again but had to valiantly hold firm to
maintain her balance. I guessed that she’d probably taken some of
the impact of the flying ice at close range.
“Alice!” I cried, but she held out her free hand to stop me and
pointed the tip of her blade toward the distant Chudelkin.
“Chudelkin, your faithless acts are nothing more than a paper
balloon filled with air—just like you!!”
“Wha…wha—haah—wha…?!”

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 Her cutting remark was so devastating that for once, the man
couldn’t come up with a response. His round face was distorted
beyond belief and twitching violently as greasy sweat poured in
rivers down his upside-down features.
Just then, Administrator broke her silence from the back of the
room, speaking to her level of boredom.
“No matter how many years pass, you’ll never not be stupid,
Chudelkin.”
The prime senator’s limbs promptly withdrew. He shrank like a
sulking child, while the pontifex gracefully turned on her side and lay
down in the middle of the air, as though there were an invisible sofa
there. She floated upward, crossed her legs, and continued, “Alice’s
Osmanthus Blade has the highest level of physical priority of any
existing Divine Object. And she utterly believes in that fact. And yet
you attempt to use a physical-type attack art against her. Have you
forgotten the most basic fundamentals of sacred arts?”
“Hah…hoh-hoh-hah-hee…,” Chudelkin giggled nervously. Tears
burst from his eyes without warning. Since he was balancing on his
head, they ran down his forehead and sank into the carpet where his
scalp met it.
“Oh-hoooo…Oh, what an honor, what glory, what privilege!! Her
Holiness herself, offering lessons to the lowly likes of me! I shall rise
to the occasion…Humble Chudelkin will prove himself worthy of this
tender mercyyyyy!!”
Somehow, Administrator’s statement had been more effective
than any healing art. His disbelief had been wiped clean in an instant,
and the prime senator was now glaring boldly at Alice with his own
bizarre brand of proud confidence.
“Number Thirty! You just likened me to a paper balloon filled with
nothing but hot air!”
“…Are you saying you’re not?”
“Nooooot! Not, not, not, not!!” Chudelkin’s eyes seemed to light
with visible flames. “I do have strong beliefs of my own! And one of
those is love!! I am driven by pure and selfless love for my wise and
beauteous Holiness!!”

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 At any other time, in any other place, this would come off like
third-rate theater. But somehow, in this moment, the statement
reverberated powerfully through the room. It was almost kind of
touching, in a pathetic way—even if it was coming from a half-naked
clown man balancing on his oversize head.
Chudelkin glared at Alice with burning eyes, spread his limbs wide,
and screeched, “Y-Y-Y-Your Holiness!!”
“What is it, Chudelkin?”
“After so many long years of faithful service, I, Prime Senator
Chudelkin, do finally, for the first time, make a most impudent
request of you!! I shall henceforth risk life and limb to vanquish the
brazen traitors, and all that I ask—nothing more!—is that upon my
successful completion of this weighty duty, I at last be allowed…to
place my hands…to place my lips…upon your blessed figure…and to
spend a…a…a night of dreams fulfilled together!!”
Well, that’s one way to make a bold request of the absolute ruler of
all humanity.
But there was clearly no doubt that this was a scream from the
heart, an absolutely true confession of real emotion from the very
depth of Chudelkin’s soul.
It was so far beyond pathos now that it was genuinely heroic.
Neither I, nor Eugeo, nor Alice could move a muscle.
Floating on the other end of the room, Administrator reacted to
Chudelkin’s request by…curving her pale lips into a smile that
suggested nothing could be funnier. Her mirror eyes, which reflected
all light, now wavered between scorn and mockery. But when she
spoke, covering her mouth with her hand, the voice that emerged
was full of benevolence that was at odds with her expression.
“…Very well, Chudelkin,” she murmured. “I swear to Stacia,
goddess of creation. When you have fulfilled your duty, you shall
have an entire night to do with my body whatever you wish.”
Because I came from the real world, with all its lies and deceptions,
it was laughably obvious to me that she didn’t mean a word of that
promise.

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 But the people of this world, probably due to the structure of their
artificial fluctlights, were unable to disobey the laws and rules that
existed on a higher level of importance than them. These laws ran
from local precepts of villages and towns to Basic Imperial Law to the
Taboo Index and even to personal oaths sworn to the gods.
The higher up in the ruling structures one was, the fewer number
of laws that applied, but even Cardinal and Administrator, the very
highest of managers in this system, were still subject to them. The
range of activities that their parents had limited them to in their
youth was still active. Hence, Cardinal couldn’t put her teacup
directly on the table, and Administrator couldn’t kill human beings.
But Administrator had just proven to me in person that she was no
longer bound by her own oaths to her gods. It was clear evidence
that she did not have a shred of belief in Stacia, Solus, or Terraria,
the three goddesses at the center of the Axiom Church’s influence.
Naturally, Chudelkin was unable to see through his master’s
deception. He heard what she said, her words dripping with derision,
and his eyes filled once again with bulging tears.
“Oh…ohhh…I am filled…I am enshrouded in limitless joy…In this
moment, I am supremely enabled, sublimely motivated…In short, I
am unstoppable!!”
His tears sizzled and evaporated, and suddenly Chudelkin’s entire
body was glowing a furious, flaming red color.
“Sys! Tem! Caaaall!!
Generate…Therrrmaaal…Elemennnnnnntoah!!”
His limbs sliced the air, fully extended and straight, down to the
fingertips, at the ends of which appeared a multitude of burning red
dots. From my position standing behind Alice, I could keenly sense
that this was Chudelkin’s last and greatest attack.
Like the ice, the number of glittering ruby heat elements was
twenty in total. Chudelkin’s balancing entirely on his head meant
that his legs no longer had to support his body. But clearly, having
the strength of mind and imagination to separately envision and
control all ten toes in addition to his fingers required great practice.

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 While his eccentric appearance and personality drew all the
attention, Prime Senator Chudelkin clearly had as much training as
the oldest of the Integrity Knights—if not more—and was a
tremendous foe in his own right.
His eyes narrowed in a gloating manner, as if he sensed my fear—
and then they bulged as far as they could. His tiny pupils shone with
red light, turning my fear into shock. At first, I almost thought he was
like a classic heroic protagonist whose blood burned so passionately
that his eyes turned into literal flames…but then I realized my
mistake.
The “flames” I saw burning right in front of Chudelkin’s eyes were
actually large heat elements. He could use even his own two eyes as
control vectors…They were the twenty-first and twenty-second
elements under his control.
Before being expended, the elements in waiting did release a small
amount of their resources into the nearby air. Having heat elements
an inch or two away from your fingertips caused a bit of a prickling
sensation, but I could tell that having larger elements so very close to
one’s eyeballs couldn’t be safe. Soon the skin around his eyes was
fizzling and charring.
But the prime senator didn’t seem to feel any heat or pain. With
his eye sockets blackening, his strange face looked downright
demonic. He grinned wickedly and screamed in ear-piercing falsetto,
“Witness, my greatest of sacred aaaaaarts…Come forth, genie, and
burn these rebels into ash!!”
He pulled his limbs in, then swung them about with blinding speed.
The twenty elements didn’t change form immediately but flew into
the air in parallel lines of five each, hurtling through the space
between him and us with startling velocity.
To my stunned disbelief, the glowing red lines came together to
depict a very large human. It had short legs. A bulging gut. Oddly
long arms. And a head wearing a crown with several spikes on it. It
was an enormous clown, as if Chudelkin’s original puffed-up form
had grown to several times its size.

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 The last of the elements filled in the crimson stripes that made up
the suit of the twenty-foot-tall burning clown, and then they
vanished. Its face, which was so high I had to crane my neck to see it,
was based on Chudelkin’s features but looked many times more
cruel. A tongue of flames licked out of its heavy lips, and the fissures
that represented its eyes exuded a gaze that was paradoxically
freezing cold.
Now that he was done waving his limbs around to create the
flaming clown, Chudelkin at last closed his eyes so hard it was
audible. The last two heat elements shot forth and took hold in the
dark sockets of the clown to form burning red eyes.
The enormous clown glared at us with horrifying malice—it was as
though Chudelkin’s very soul had transferred to it. It lifted the
pointed boot of its right foot and pressed it down on the ground in
front of it. The floor rumbled, and a great billow of flame erupted
from the giant’s foot, singeing and hazing the air around it.
Eugeo and I were stunned into silence during the entire display. It
wasn’t until Alice’s interjection that we snapped out of it and
brandished our swords once more.
“…I’ll admit that I did not know he was capable of such a thing,”
she whispered. Her words were as precise and controlled as ever,
but I didn’t miss the slight wobbliness in her voice.
“It seems we misread Chudelkin. Sadly, my flowers cannot destroy
that bodiless flame giant. Even on defense, they will not withstand a
direct attack for long.”
“…Meaning that in the meantime, we’ll have to do the job of
attacking Chudelkin’s actual body,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Precisely right,” Alice returned. “I’ll find a way to block him for ten
seconds. Kirito, Eugeo, you must find a way to vanquish Chudelkin in
that time. But you cannot approach within sword-strike range. That
is what the pontifex is waiting for.”
“Ten…”
“…seconds.”
Eugeo and I shared a look and groaned.

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 When we’d fought on the floor below, Eugeo had overpowered me
with his icy impassiveness, but after his knighthood had been
undone, he’d gotten his emotions back. Oddly enough, the sight of
fear and hesitation in his face made me a bit happy. It was
reassuring.
But this was time to think. If Alice just wanted us to rush Chudelkin
while she handled the fire clown, we had several options. I’d taken
on that role many times against floor bosses in Aincrad, and
Chudelkin ought to be defenseless while he was controlling the
clown.
On the other hand, there was no guarantee that Administrator
would stay still and watch while we charged. So we had to keep our
distance as we attacked. Being swordsmen, there were only two
ways for us to attack from a distance.
One was using sacred arts. But with the level of arts that Eugeo
and I were capable of casting, I couldn’t imagine that we could break
through Chudelkin’s defenses to actually do serious damage to his
life.
The other was the ace up our sleeve, Perfect Weapon Control—but
this had a weakness. Activating it demanded the chanting of the
extremely long command that Cardinal put together for us. It would
take well over ten seconds. As an Integrity Knight, Eugeo had used
Perfect Control without a vocal command, but I didn’t think he could
do it again now. I certainly couldn’t.
“…!”
I ground my teeth in frustration. The burning clown moved
forward mockingly, its body swaying and wavering in the heat. The
movement was far from agile, but its size was all that mattered. Each
step brought it several feet closer.
Once it was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating
against my skin, Alice moved at last. She swung the Osmanthus Blade
high overhead. Her free left hand was straight backward, and her
legs were wide apart front and back, as tense as bowstrings.
A whirlwind gust erupted at Alice’s feet, fluttering her long white
skirt and golden hair. The Osmanthus Blade shone with golden light

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and split into hundreds of petals that began to glide through the air
in a line.
“Spin, my flowers!!” she shouted, so loud I had to wonder how her
body could produce such a sound.
The golden petals swirled at such a high speed that they became
individually invisible, melting into a blur that grew into a huge
tornado.
When grinding the ice cube, she’d created a cone with a sharp,
focused point, but this was now the reverse. It was like a funnel that
grew into the air at a diagonal from Alice’s hand, over fifteen feet
across at the widest end. The rotating golden storm sucked in the air
around it, sending out random gusts that buffeted my body and
Eugeo’s.
The flame clown was so close it could practically flatten us.
Smirking all the while, it launched itself into a jump nearly to the
ceiling and came down fearlessly into the middle of Alice’s tornado.
There was a sizzling sound like a furnace bubbling away, so loud that
it drowned out all other sound.
The fire clown’s feet were swallowed up in the nearly vertical
golden tornado. Ripped apart by the rapidly spinning blades, the
flame burst apart in all directions like sparks, singeing the air.
But the clown maintained its enormous size, still holding that
hideous smile that stretched from one side of its face to the other.
Ever so slowly, it began to stomp on the tornado. Directly
underneath, Alice’s legs were trembling, and there was ferocious
concentration on what I could see of her face.
The tiny petals began to take on the heat, turning red from the
clown’s powerful flame. Even now, Alice and her Osmanthus Blade
were undoubtedly taking steady, solid life damage.
Eight seconds left.
It was impossible to defeat Chudelkin with sacred arts. There
wasn’t enough time for Perfect Control. The only things I had on my
side were the black sword in my hand and the techniques that were
fully committed to muscle memory.

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 During the two years I’d spent here, I’d practiced and repracticed
countless sword skills so that I could teach Eugeo all about the
Aincrad style. In the process, I’d realized that in this world, sword
skills could sometimes exhibit a power that far surpassed their
original specs in the game of SAO.
That was because in the Underworld, much of the outcome of
actions was determined not by system calculation but by the
strength of the user’s will and imagination. The little spider named
Charlotte and Alice the Integrity Knight had called this power
Incarnation.
In other words, here, the power and range of sword skills that
were strictly defined in the old Aincrad might actually be augmented
by the power of Incarnation.
But on the other hand, it also meant that negative emotions like
fear, timidness, and hesitation could weaken the same skills.
There was a strong, fundamental desire within me to distance
myself from the Kirito avatar I had cultivated in the SAO days: the
Black Swordsman and the Dual Blades master. I wasn’t able to
analyze the precise cause of that feeling. Maybe it was a desire not
to be treated like a hero. Maybe it was guilt over those people whose
lives I’d failed to save or ended. Either one could be true, but it might
also have been something completely different that I had yet to
figure out.
All I knew for certain was that no matter how much I might dislike
it, Kirito the Black Swordsman was a part of me, had helped shape
who I was now, and was giving me strength.
The same man who’d fought in that world—the same me—was
still here.
Seven seconds left.
With the heat of the giant stomping on Alice’s tornado plastering
my cheeks, I turned my stance to the right and lowered my waist.
I lifted the black sword to the level of my shoulder, laid it perfectly
flat, and pulled back.
My left hand provided catapulting leverage.

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 I hadn’t used this skill or taught it to Eugeo or even attempted re-
creating it yet. And I knew why: Because this sword skill was the one
the Black Swordsman knew best of all and used the most often. It
was his symbol.
On a straight line from the end of the slightly translucent black
sword and about fifty feet away was the upside-down Prime Senator
Chudelkin. His seared eyes were still closed, but he was obviously
using some means of sharing the sight of his flaming clown. He
should have noticed my motion already.
There would be only one shot at an attack. I couldn’t let him
defend or evade it. In that sense, fifty feet was such a tremendously
long distance. Balancing on his head meant Chudelkin couldn’t move
quickly, but I’d already seen plenty of the little clown’s resilience in a
pinch. I needed his attention diverted away from me, if just for a
quarter of a second.
Six seconds left. With as few words as possible, I whispered to my
partner, “His eye.”
“Got it.”
His response was so immediate, so primed to go, that I glanced at
him and saw that there was now a shining arrow of ice in Eugeo’s
right hand. It wasn’t all that big, but the brilliance of its light was a
sign that it had a high system priority. I supposed he must have taken
the ice resources in the air from Alice and Chudelkin’s fierce battle
and converted them for use without anyone noticing.
Five seconds left. Eugeo moved his hands as though pulling on a
greatbow, and the arrow in his grasp flashed blue.
“Discharge!!”
With that, the arrow of ice flew, but not straight at Chudelkin.
Eugeo’s left hand guided it in the air, first around the right of the
flame clown, then curving left and upward. With all the red from the
flames filling the chamber, the blue trail the ice arrow left behind
stood out by contrast. The clown’s burning eyes followed its course.
Four seconds left. When the ice arrow had nearly reached the
domed ceiling, Eugeo clenched his controlling hand. On command,

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the arrow plunged at twice the previous speed. Its vicious head bore
down—and not on Prime Senator Chudelkin.
But on Administrator, who lay prone in the air behind him.
Three seconds left.
The silver-haired woman showed no signs of alarm at Eugeo’s
brilliant ice attack. She merely glanced upward in annoyance,
puckered her lips, and blew out a little puff of air.
That was all she did. But the arrow of ice promptly melted, several
feet away from her.
The true attack Eugeo was making was not on Administrator
herself, however, but on Chudelkin’s abnormal fixation and attention
on her. The instant the arrow flew behind him, Chudelkin’s eyes
bulged, and he rotated around on his head.
“Your Holiness, bewaaaare!”
Two seconds left.
I was already on the move before Chudelkin’s scream hit my ears. I
held the sword at shoulder height, right arm pulled back as far as it
could go. The preliminary motion kicked in and turned the blade red
as blood.
The system started moving my body automatically. My feet, wide
apart, launched off the floor. The acceleration was funneled into my
rotation, traveling through my back into my right shoulder. The
rotation went back into a straight motion, bursting through my right
arm into the sword that was now just an extension of it.
With the metallic roar of a jet engine, the sword burst forth in a
straight line with a shining crimson light that was deeper than any of
the flames.
This was the One-Handed Sword skill Vorpal Strike.
The reason I had used this skill so much in SAO was because it had
the tremendous power to change the course of any battle, and a
range that seemed almost unfair for a One-Handed Sword attack.
The crimson effect carved through a space about twice the length of
the blade itself. When combined with the full reach of my arm, it
could sometimes outdistance even a long spear.

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 But the distance to my target, Prime Senator Chudelkin, was a
good fifty feet. A normal Vorpal Strike would never reach him.
In other words, I had to use my imagination—my Incarnation
power—to extend my first use of this attack in the Underworld to
over five times its range.
This would not be easy.
But I didn’t think it impossible. I would never think it.
Alice was exposing herself and her blade to hellfire, trusting in me
to find the solution. My best friend, Eugeo, had used all his smarts
and concentration to unleash a sacred art that would allow me this
opportunity.
If I couldn’t step up and do my part for them, I had no right to call
myself a swordsman.
And I was nothing if not Kirito the Black Swordsman.
“Rrraaaahhh!!” I bellowed, summoning all my force. At that
moment, a fingerless black glove covered my right hand, as though it
had seeped out of the very air around me.
On its heels, smooth black leather appeared over my battle-torn
sleeves, stretching up my arms to my shoulders, then my torso.
Instantly, it turned into a long coat, the studded hem whipping
wildly.
The light effects around my sword flashed brighter, almost like an
explosion. From one concentrated point at the tip of the sword, they
practically drowned out the red light coming from the flaming clown.
“Aaaah!!”
I unleashed all the power at my disposal.
One second left.

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 2

What was that sound?!

Eugeo gaped at the abnormal roar coming from just nearby.
All ultimate techniques created a multitude of lights and sounds.
But this was different from anything he’d heard to this point. It was
thicker, heavier, harder, sharper—just like the sword was roaring on
its own.
The sound was coming from the black sword in Kirito’s right hand.
It sparkled like black crystal, the blade’s sharp edge rattling and
emitting an ear-splitting roar. And it wasn’t just sound—the entire
sword was wreathed in deep-red light.
It’s a special technique. But I’ve never seen this kind before.
Eugeo held his breath. But the truly shocking part of this was what
happened right after that.
This time, his partner’s entire body flashed brightly and
transformed into an appearance that he’d never worn before.
Kirito had been dressed in a black shirt and pants, tattered
somewhat from all the fighting they’d done. But after the wave of
light passed over his arm, body, and legs, a long, dark leather cloak
with a high collar and a pair of slim-fitting leather trousers appeared
out of nowhere.
That happened in less than a blink, but the strange phenomenon
did not end there. There were more changes to Kirito’s body, though
they weren’t as dramatic as the changes to his clothes.
First, his black hair was longer now, covering half of his profile.
Also, what was visible of his eyes through the wild blowing of his
bangs was fiercer than anything Eugeo had seen before. They were
wild, the look harder—harder than when they’d fought the goblins in
the northern cave, harder than when he’d cut off Raios Antinous’s
arms, harder even than when he’d fought against Deusolbert and

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Fanatio. It was like Kirito’s very spirit had fused with the sword,
becoming sharper and more dangerous.
His lips peeled back to expose his canines as he growled,
“Rraaaaahh!!”
Kirito’s sword also blazed with metallic sheen, the red light rapidly
increased in intensity, and then his friend’s hand shot forward with
blinding speed. The long hem of his coat flapped behind him like
monstrous wings.
It was clear that this was an ultimate technique of the Aincrad
style.
But what a tremendous thrust it was. It was unlike any of the
moves he’d learned from Kirito; its ferocity seemed more High
Norkia in style but with all the ornamentation and beauty removed.
It was an attack meant for nothing but piercing a target…
“……!”
Eugeo sucked in a breath and followed the crimson shine with his
eyes.
Kirito was aiming, of course, for Prime Senator Chudelkin, who was
controlling the fiery behemoth. But the target was at least fifteen
mels away. No special technique would reach that far as long as it
was from a sword.
The moment Kirito unleashed the thrust, Chudelkin wasn’t
watching him. He was gazing toward the rear of the room, where
Eugeo had shot his ice arrow just seconds earlier.
Eugeo had used all his knowledge and creativity to attempt that
trick, but of course it didn’t work on Administrator, who simply
shattered it with a breath. But as Eugeo expected, Chudelkin couldn’t
possibly ignore an attack on his master and had to turn to shriek a
warning. As Kirito had requested, he’d managed to distract their
target.

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 Relieved that the ice arrow had vanished without a threat,
Chudelkin turned back, still on his head. Instantly, his narrow eyes
fully opened, revealing a quick succession of emotions.
First was shock upon registering the sound and light of Kirito’s
oncoming sword.
Second was relief upon recognition that it was a thrust that surely
wouldn’t reach him.
Lastly, he felt terror at the realization that the red light causing all
that metallic roaring was still coming closer.
Like him, Eugeo was too surprised to breathe. The bloodred light
passed by Alice, who was still blocking the atronach, and jumped
through all fifteen mels in an instant—until it easily shot right
through the upside-down Chudelkin’s stick-thin torso.
The blade of light extended nearly another two mels, then
dissolved into little points of deep-red light that hung in the air like
motes.
And then a gushing jet of actual blood shot through the air.
It was coming from a massive hole in the center of Chudelkin’s
chest, nearly large enough to bisect his body.
“Oh-hooooooo…” He exhaled weakly, like air escaping a balloon.
His body slowly tilted until he toppled with a splat into a puddle of
his own blood.
It continued gushing out, a seemingly impossible amount for such
a small form. Chudelkin lifted a trembling arm, reaching for the
floating Administrator.
“…Y…Your…Hol…i…ness…”
Eugeo couldn’t see the little man’s expression from where he
stood.
But Prime Senator Chudelkin’s hand fell to the soggy carpet with a
squelch, and he moved no more.
At the same moment, the clown of flames that had been just
about to crunch through Alice’s golden tornado vanished, its puffed-
up torso evaporating into smoke, briefly leaving that evil grin before

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it too disappeared. As though baffled by the loss of their enemy,
Alice’s little golden blades slowed until they hung in the air.
Eugeo felt his ears ringing in the sudden and complete silence that
fell over the room. He glanced to his right. Kirito was paused in a low
crouch, his right arm extended as far as it could go.
The light that covered the black sword’s surface vanished, and the
tail of his coat flapped once more before it hung still. Right before
Eugeo’s unbelieving eyes, Kirito’s appearance went hazy and
changed back to the way it had been before.
Kirito still didn’t move after he was back in his simple black shirt
and pants. Eventually, he let his right arm drop until the tip of the
black sword landed on the carpet, and he hung his head.
Eugeo didn’t know what to say to him.
Kirito had tried to save even Vice Commander Fanatio. Even
against someone like Prime Senator Chudelkin, he would never
celebrate the taking of another’s life. With his bangs back to being
short, it was easy to see that the icy harshness he’d shown in the
moment of his attack was gone.
Only the sharp ringing of Alice’s cloud of golden petals clicking
back into their rightful place broke the silence, several seconds later.
Sensing a hint of nervousness in her demeanor, Eugeo looked over
her shoulder toward the other end of the room.
Administrator, floating in the air, was reaching out her delicate
hand toward the collapsed prime senator.
It was obvious from a glance that Chudelkin was dead. She
couldn’t possibly be administering healing arts. Or did she actually
have the ability to bring corpses back to life…?
Eugeo sucked in a sharp breath, right as the pontifex’s utterly
impassive voice said, “I’m only cleaning him up, because it’s such an
unsightly mess.”
She waved her hand lazily, and Chudelkin’s body flew into the air
as easily as if it were made of paper, slammed into the window on
the distant eastern side of the room, and fell into a little heap there.
“…How could you…?” Alice murmured under her breath.

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 She was still the cold, dispassionate Integrity Knight whose
personality had been tinkered with, but even Eugeo understood why
she felt the need to speak up. Chudelkin was hardly respectable, but
at the very least, he had given his life fighting for the sake of his
master. The least he deserved was a worthy burial for his remains.
But Administrator didn’t spare a second glance for his corpse. If
anything, the way she was smiling mysteriously made it seem like
she’d completely wiped all knowledge of the prime senator from her
mind already.
“…Well, that was a very tiresome show,” she said, “but I suppose I
did glean a little bit of meaningful data from it.”
Her voice was innocent and beautiful, and she even threw in a few
sacred words that Eugeo did not recognize. Without breaking the
sideways pose atop her invisible couch, she slid five mels through the
air, into the center of the round chamber.
Administrator pulled back a lock of silver hair that had fallen over
her face in the wind, then narrowed her reflective rainbow eyes and
placed that magnetic stare right next to Eugeo—onto Kirito, who was
still crouched.
“Irregular boy. I had thought my inability to read your properties
was because you were an unregistered unit from an unofficial
marriage…but that’s not the case. Did you come from over there?
Are you one of the people…from the other side?”
Eugeo hardly understood the implication of anything that she
whispered.
Over there? The other side…?
Kirito, his black-haired partner, had appeared without any of his
memory in the forest south of Rulid two and a half years ago, a so-
called Lost Child of Vecta.
The town elders had told Eugeo that such people sometimes
appeared. But it was only when he was a little child that he’d actually
believed Vecta, the god of darkness, was reaching over the End
Mountains to play tricks on the memories of people, the way the
stories said.

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 When people experienced things that were tremendously sad and
painful, they could actually lose their memories and sometimes even
their lives. Eugeo had learned that from Old Man Garitta, the
previous carver of the Gigas Cedar. Years ago, Garitta’s wife had
drowned, and his grief had been so great and so deep that he’d lost
over half of the memories of his life with her. He had chuckled sadly
and told Eugeo that this was both the mercy and the punishment of
Stacia, goddess of creation, at work.
So Eugeo had always secretly assumed that this must be what had
happened to Kirito, too. He would’ve been from the eastern or
southern empire, based on the color of his hair and eyes. Something
horrible and sad had happened to him back home, and he’d
wandered for a long time without memory, until he’d eventually
come to the forest near Rulid.
This was partially why Eugeo hardly ever brought up the topic of
Kirito’s past while they were on their long journey to Centoria and
through the academy. Of course, there was also the fact that he was
scared Kirito might remember and then go back to his real home,
never to return.
However, Administrator, who had the power to see all things that
happened in the human world, had used a strange term to describe
Kirito’s origin.
The other side. Did she mean the other side of the End Mountains,
in the Dark Territory? Was the one clue to Kirito’s birth, his
consecutive-attacking Aincrad style of swordfighting, actually a
school developed in the land of darkness?
No. She would certainly have more knowledge of the Dark
Territory than that. The Integrity Knights under her control ranged
freely over the mountains to do battle with the dark knights there. It
was impossible to imagine that Administrator, the supreme ruler,
would not know what the Dark Territory was like, how its towns
looked, and what kinds of lives the residents lived there. She
wouldn’t need to use a vague placeholder term like the other side.
Which would mean…

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 Administrator was referring to something even she couldn’t see,
some place outside of the very world…? Something beyond even the
Dark Territory…or perhaps even farther, even more removed. Like
some kind of other world entirely…?
This concept was so abstract for Eugeo that he couldn’t even find
the words to describe the thoughts in his head. But his hunch told
him that he was on the verge of something unbelievably massive,
some kind of great secret of the entire world. Unable to resist a
sudden burning impatience, he looked around, out the huge
windows, into the night sky.
Between the black shapes of the clouds was a sea of stardust.
Was Kirito’s home…somewhere on the other side of the sky? What
kind of place was it? And did Kirito in fact have those memories back
now…?
Several seconds of silence were eventually broken by his black-
haired partner. Kirito got to his feet and answered Administrator’s
question with a simple and monumental “Yes.”
Eugeo stared at his partner, feeling himself go numb with shock.
Kirito had gotten his memory back already.
In fact…had he always had his memory, right from the start…?
For an instant, Kirito looked back at Eugeo. There was a multitude
of emotions in his black pupils, but it seemed to Eugeo that foremost
among them was pleading, a desperate wish for Eugeo to trust him.
Then he looked back at Administrator. Despite the fierce
determination on his features, there was also a note of self-
deprecation. He held out his hands and said, “But…my designated
authority level is the same as any other person in this world, and far
from your own, Administrator…or should I say, Quinella?”
The instant he said that mysterious-sounding name, the grin
vanished from the pontifex’s beautiful features. It was only for an
instant, however, and soon a much larger smile was playing on her
luscious lips.
“So I see the little one in the library has been filling your head with
silly tales. And…? What did you come tumbling into my world to do?
And without any kind of administrative privileges.”

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 “I may not have privileges, but I do know some things.”
“Oh? Such as? Be warned, I have no patience for old, foolish tales.”
“Then how about the future?” Kirito offered, sticking the point of
his sword into the floor and resting both hands on the pommel.
There was harsh tension in his cheeks again, along with a fiery look in
his black eyes. “In the fairly near future, Quinella, you are going to
destroy your own world.”
All this shocking pronouncement achieved was to deepen the
smile on Administrator’s face.
“…I will? It’s not the boy who tormented so many of my sweet
little puppets who will destroy the world, but me?”
“You heard me. And your mistake was that you created the
Integrity Knights to fight off an all-out invasion from the Dark
Territory. Their existence is the mistake.”
“Hah. Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
It was almost certainly the first time, at least since she became the
supreme ruler, that Administrator had ever been corrected by
someone else. She put her finger to her lips, and her shoulders
shook, as if she was holding in a gale of laughter.
“Hee-hee-hee. Yes, that does sound like something she’d say. She
must have practiced her feminine wiles, if she was able to ensnare
boys like you with that childish appearance. I merely feel pity…both
for her jealous desperation to see me fall and for you willingly being
her cat’s-paw.” She chuckled deep in her throat.
Kirito opened his mouth to say something, but a different voice
spoke up first, loud and determined.
“Forgive my interruption, Pontifex.”
It was Alice the Integrity Knight, who had been silent all this time,
now striding forward in her metal armor. Her long blond hair shone
brilliantly in the moonlight, as if competing against Administrator’s
own silver locks.
“It was also Commander Bercouli and Vice Commander Fanatio’s
view that the Integrity Knights at present would not be sufficient to
fight back the coming invasion of the forces of darkness. And mine,
as well. Of course, every last member of the knighthood would fight

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to the bitter end if need be, but do you have a means to protect the
defenseless citizens after the Integrity Knights are all gone? Surely
you cannot be thinking that you alone could destroy all of the
enemy’s hordes!”
Her fierce, beautiful voice swept through the chamber like a cool
breeze, ruffling her adversary’s hair. The pontifex’s smile waned. She
stared at her knight in gold, seemingly surprised.
Alice’s words came as a shock to Eugeo, too, for a different reason.
Alice Synthesis Thirty the Integrity Knight. The temporary, artificial
persona that now inhabited the body of his childhood friend Alice
Zuberg.
She was a cold and impartial administer of the law’s justice—or
should have been, the way that she had smacked Eugeo when she’d
arrested them at the academy days ago. Within Alice the Integrity
Knight, there shouldn’t have been a single smidgen of all the
emotions that made Alice who she was—her kindness, her
innocence, her love.
But the way she had just spoken was different. It was as if the old
Alice had grown into being an Integrity Knight herself.
She didn’t notice the way Eugeo was gaping at her. The Integrity
Knight thrust the end of the Osmanthus Blade into the floor with a
mighty clang! and continued, “Holy Pontifex, earlier I said that your
obsession and deceit brought the knights to ruin. Your obsession was
in the way that you stole all weapons and power from the people of
the realm, and your deceit lies in how you even abused your faithful
Integrity Knights! You tore us away from our parents—from wives
and husbands and siblings—locked away our memories, and filled us
with false pasts, telling us we were summoned from some celestial
realm that does not exist…”
She stopped, lowering her gaze momentarily, then straightened up
and defiantly continued, “If this was a necessary thing to protect this
world and its people, I will not chasten you at this moment. But why
could you not even trust in the loyalty and respect we have for you
and the Axiom Church?! Why did you have to implement such
accursed measures that forced our very souls into servitude?!”

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 Eugeo saw a number of tiny droplets slide down the profile of
Alice’s shapely face.
Tears.
Tears, from Alice the Integrity Knight, who should have lost all
emotion.
As he watched, stunned, the knight arched her back to stare boldly
up at her ruler, without bothering to wipe her cheeks clean.
But those words, sharper than any sword, failed to register on
Administrator any more than a slight breeze would. She smiled coldly
and said, “Well, well, Alice. These are quite heady thoughts you’ve
been juggling. And it’s only been five…six years? So little time…since I
created you.”
Her tone of voice was the lightness that came from the lack of any
emotion or connection. It was also reminiscent of polished silver.
There wasn’t even the barest hint of warmth in it.
“…You claim that I did not trust in my Integrator units? Why, I’m
almost offended. I trusted you very much…You were my sweet little
clockwork puppets, rattling away for my benefit. You clean and
polish your sword regularly so it doesn’t get rusty, don’t you, Alice?
It’s the same thing. The Piety Modules I gave you are my present, the
proof of my love. That way, you can always be my sweet little toys.
You won’t be plagued by all the stupid troubles and pains that the
lower people have.”
And with that transcendent smile, Administrator lifted her left
hand and spun the triangular prism between her fingertips. It was
the improved version of the Piety Module she’d taken from Eugeo’s
forehead.
Through its wavering purple light, she gazed down at Alice and
whispered, “Poor, poor Alice. Look at how your pretty face is twisted.
Are you sad? Or are you angry? If you’d just stayed as my little
puppet, you would never, ever have had to feel such pointless
things.”
Alice’s tears dripped lightly off her cheeks to hit her golden metal
armor, a sound that was joined by something hard creaking. It was
the Osmanthus Blade pointed into the ground at her feet—and

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piercing the thick carpet to gouge right into the marble floor
underneath.
She clenched the sword so hard she was damaging the
indestructible structure of Central Cathedral, her voice cracking and
trembling. “So you think that Uncle…Commander Bercouli spent
three hundred long years of service to you without the slightest bit
of anguish or doubt? You are saying you don’t recognize the long-
held pain within the heart of the man who swore deeper, longer
loyalty to you than anyone else did?”
There was an especially loud crack from the sword. Alice drowned
it out by bellowing, “Sir Bercouli was constantly torn between his
loyalty to the Axiom Church and his duty to protect the common
people! Many times he pleaded to the senate to strengthen the
Royal Knights of the four empires, who were knights in nothing but
name, but I don’t suppose you knew that! He…Uncle even knew
about the seal placed within our right eyes. That alone should be
proof enough that he suffered a vast torment unlike anyone else’s!!”
But even this ragged, tear-streaked missive was met by nothing
but a cold smile on Administrator’s pale features.
“…Why, this saddens me, to realize that you thought so little of my
love. Of course I knew these things.” She beamed, but there seemed
to be a whiff of cruelty behind her expression. “My poor Alice, let me
explain something to you. Number One…Bercouli did not start
worrying about such tawdry things just now. In fact, he said much
the same thing about a hundred years ago. So I fixed him.”
She giggled musically. “I looked into Bercouli’s memory, found the
mass of troubles and anxieties, and erased the whole lot of them.
And not just him…I do the same for any knight who’s been around a
good hundred years or so. I helped them forget all about the pain.
Don’t worry, Alice. I don’t get bent out of shape over a little mischief.
I’m going to erase whatever memory it is that’s making you look so
sad, too. You’ll go back to being a precious little puppet with no need
to think before you know it.”
The only thing left in the cold, heavy silence that followed was
Administrator’s quiet, mirthless chuckle.

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 She wasn’t human anymore.
It was so obvious to Eugeo now. The fresh wave of chills rolling
over his skin told him as much.
She had the power to erase human memories or create them
anew. Eugeo had undergone that terrifying process himself. Just a
simple spoken command of three sacred words on his part was all it
took for Administrator to lock his memories out of reach, make him
into an Integrity Knight, and force him to attack Kirito.
If Administrator had gone through the full, proper process of the
Synthesis Ritual, Eugeo probably wouldn’t have regained his wits this
way. But some hole in Eugeo’s memories that had always been
there—though he had no idea why or how—had ultimately saved
him from that fate.
That didn’t mean his sin was absolved. Against Chudelkin, all he
was able to do was momentarily distract the enemy with sacred arts.
He couldn’t assume that alone made all forgiven. In truth, he still
didn’t have the right to stand side by side with Kirito…
He focused on the Blue Rose Sword clenched in his right hand,
then felt Kirito’s gaze on his cheek. But he couldn’t look back and
meet it.
Alice murmured, “Yes…I am feeling sadness and pain that
threatens to tear my breast asunder. It is a wonder that I even have
the strength to stand.”
Bit by bit, her trembling voice regained firmness. “But…I do not
wish to erase this pain, this new sensation. It is the pain that tells me
I am not just a knight puppet, but a real human being. Your Holiness,
I do not wish for your love. I do not need you to fix me.”
“…A puppet that refuses to be a puppet,” Administrator replied
musically. “But that does not make you human, Alice. Just a broken
puppet. It doesn’t matter what you think, I’m afraid. Once I
resynthesize you, all of these feelings you have now, and everything
else, will cease to exist,” she said, the gentlest of smiles for the
cruelest of words.

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 “Just like you did for yourself, Quinella,” said Kirito, breaking his
silence at last. Once again, he used that strange name. And once
again, the smile vanished from the girl’s face.
“Didn’t I tell you not to bring up the past, little boy?”
“If I do, will that erase the truth? Even you can’t alter the past as
you please. You were born like any other person. You’re a human
being. And that fact can’t ever be deleted…can it?”
Suddenly, it clicked into place for Eugeo. When they were in the
Great Library, Kirito must have heard about Administrator’s true
name and birth from Cardinal.
“Human…yes. Hu-man,” Administrator murmured sarcastically, the
little grin back again. “I’ll admit that hearing that word from a boy
from the other side prompts some conflicting feelings. Are you
saying you are more special than I am? That an Underworldian like
me should shut up and mind my own business, perhaps?”
“Not at all,” Kirito said, shrugging. “In fact, in many ways, I think
the people from this world are superior to those on the other side.
But at the root of it all, we’re still the same human beings with the
same souls. And you’re no exception to the rule. Does living for a few
hundred years mean a human being becomes a god? It doesn’t, does
it?”
“…And what is your point? That as human beings, we should all sit
down and enjoy tea time together?”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t object to that…but my point is that
because you’re a human being, you cannot be perfect. People make
mistakes. And the mistakes you’ve made are reaching the point
where they cannot be contained. Now that the Integrity Knights are
half ruined, if a full-scale invasion from the Dark Territory comes, the
human realm will fall.”
Kirito paused and glanced at Eugeo before continuing, “Eugeo and
I were in the cave that goes through the End Mountains in the far
north two years ago, and we fought a band of goblins that came
from the far entrance. I’m sure whatever Integrity Knight was
guarding the area must have missed them. That’s going to happen
far more regularly now. Eventually, the incursions will become an

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invasion, and the world you’ve taken such pains to maintain—or
stagnate, as the case may be—will be exposed to an unstoppable
wave of destruction and violence. I can’t imagine that this is what
you really want to happen.”
“Says the boy who destroyed those knights himself. But your point
is acknowledged. And?”
“You might think that as long as you survive, you can always start
over afterward,” he said, his tone getting harder and darker, as he
slid his foot half a step forward. “Maybe you could create more laws
to control the overflowing hordes of darkness and those lucky few
human survivors—perhaps a new control structure, some Church of
Darkness, or something along those lines. But unfortunately for you,
that won’t happen. Because on the other side, there are people who
have true, absolute authority over this world. They’re going to think
this was a failure, and they can and will start over. With the push of a
button, everything in this world will vanish. The mountains, the
rivers, the towns…and all human beings, including you, will disappear
in an instant.”
By now, Kirito’s words were beyond Eugeo’s understanding. The
same could be said of Alice. She turned, eyes red and puffy, looking
at the black-haired swordsman with curiosity.
Only Administrator herself seemed to perfectly grasp the
implications of whatever Kirito was saying. Her teasing smile was all
but gone, replaced by narrowed silver eyes that seemed to freeze
whatever they looked at.
“…No, that would not be pleasant,” she said. “I do not like hearing
that some stranger can treat this world like their own garden to do
with as they please.”
She steepled her slender fingers, covering the lower half of her
face. The toying, teasing note in her voice when she’d been speaking
to Alice was all but gone.
“But then…what of you? What of you people from the other side?
Do you grapple at all times with the possibility that your world was
created by some higher power and attempt to curry the favor of that
force or being so that your own world is not wiped clean, too?”

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 Kirito did not appear to be expecting this question; he bit his lip
and did not respond. Administrator sat up on the invisible floating
sofa and spread her arms. Her long legs straightened out to a
standing position. Her naked form was more beautiful than any
depiction of a goddess, shining in the moonlight and casting an
overwhelming holy presence throughout the room.
“…Of course you do not,” she continued. “You people created a
world and the lives within it, then decide to erase them when you do
not care for them any longer. So, coming from such a world, what
right do you have to argue with my choices, boy?”
She looked up at the ceiling—no, through the marble roof and into
the night sky far beyond it—and declared, “I refuse. I will not beg
those who fancy themselves gods of creation, pleading for the right
to my continued existence. If you heard the tales the little ones
recite, then you should know that my reason for existing is to rule,
and nothing else. It is that desire alone that moves me and gives me
life. My legs exist to climb over others to greater heights. They are
not meant to bend at the knee!!”
The air rushed and swirled around her, buffeting her silver hair.
Eugeo faltered a step, overwhelmed by the force of her presence.
Administrator was the enemy who overwrote Alice’s memories and
allowed the nobles to languish in corruption—but she was also the
supreme ruler of the world, a being who was half human, half god,
and would never spare a glance for a common peasant like him, a
fact he was now reminded of.
Even the partner who had guided Eugeo all this way swayed with
the weight of the moment, but then he recovered and took a step
forward instead. He thrust his sword into the ground before him, just
to emphasize his own presence.
“In that case,” he bellowed, so loudly that the window behind him
rattled, “are you going to let this land be overrun so that you can be
the ruler of a nation without subjects, sitting on a throne in name
alone, waiting for your lonely end?!”
All the youthful beauty of Administrator’s carefully sculpted face
melted away, and the full, true age of the woman underneath came

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to the fore in the form of pure rage. This too faded in short order,
until her pearly lips wore that mocking smile again.
“…I’m offended that you think I haven’t given a single thought to
this all-out invasion, as you call it. I’ve had plenty of time to
think…for time alone is my ally, and not the people on the other
side.”
“So you have some means of avoiding the end?”
“I have the means and also the objective. Ruling is my reason for
existence…and there is no limit to its bounds.”
“What…? What does that mean?” Kirito asked, taken aback. She
didn’t answer him immediately. Instead, she let a note of mystery
linger in her smile, then clapped her hands together as if to say that
the conversation was over.
“I can tell you the rest of it once you’ve become my puppet. And
Alice and Eugeo, too, of course. But if you want a teaser, let me just
add that I have no intention of accepting that the Underworld will be
reset…or allowing the ‘final stress test’ to happen. I’ve already gotten
a sacred art prepared for that. Rejoice, for you three will bear
witness to it before anyone else.”
“…Sacred art…?” Kirito repeated skeptically. “So you’re going to
rely on system commands and all their inherent limitations? You
think that the commands you can execute will completely wipe out
the hordes of darkness? When you can’t even handle the three of us
right here.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s true. Clearly, you have lost. Your long-range attacks will take
seconds, and Alice can stop them. Meanwhile, Eugeo and I will cut
you down. If you try to paralyze me with a contact-based command,
I’ll do what I just did to Chudelkin again. I hate to rely on theory at a
time like this, but a single spellcaster without a front line to hide
behind cannot beat a group of swordsmen. That’s an ironclad rule
that has to apply to this world, too.”
“Single…single, you say,” she chuckled. “That’s a very good point.
Yes, in the end, numbers are the problem. Having too many pawns
means you cannot control them all. Too few, and they cannot

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withstand the stress test. I grew the Integrity Knights over time to
meet that balance…but…”
Without her trusted retainer Chudelkin, the supreme ruler was all
alone. But she exhibited boundless confidence in the face of the
three rebels. “To tell you the truth, the knights were only a stopgap.
The military force I truly seek doesn’t need memory or emotion or
even the power to think. All it needs to do is destroy whatever foe is
before it, over and over. In other words…it doesn’t need to be
human.”
“…What are you…saying…?” Kirito mumbled, but Administrator
ignored him. She lifted her left hand high, holding the triangular
prism that glowed an eerie purple color: Eugeo’s Piety Module.
“He was an idiotic clown, but Chudelkin did prove himself useful.
He gave me enough time to construct this drearily long command
string. Now…awaken, my faithful servant! My soulless slaughterer!!”
That was when it hit Eugeo.
The sacred chanting he’d heard when he’d first returned to this
room, coming from the inside of the bed. An extremely long art, one
of the greatest challenges even for the pontifex, as it could not be
abbreviated with willpower alone. And now she was about to
execute it.
What she sang next was just two simple words, too brief to stop,
but more horrifying than anything else she could have said.
“Release Recollection!!”
The ultimate form of Perfect Weapon Control. The true secret art
that unlocked the weapon’s unconscious memories and brought
forth a power greater than any sacred arts…
But Administrator was completely naked, without so much as a
knife on her person. It wasn’t the Piety Module she was holding, was
it? But that prism couldn’t possibly have memories that could be
released…
As he stared at the distant figure, Eugeo eventually became aware
of a faint sound growing firmer. It was the metallic clinking of some
object from behind…but now from the right and the left as well.
He spun around and moaned in shock at what he saw.

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 The forty-mel-wide chamber was supported by a number of pillars.
And the gleaming golden swords in a variety of sizes that adorned
those pillars were now trembling.
“Is…is this…?!” He gasped. Alice murmured, “It can’t be…!”
The biggest swords were three mels long. Even Administrator
couldn’t possibly swing such a thing around. And from what Eugeo
knew, the rumbling wasn’t just coming from the one he was looking
at. The same phenomenon was happening to all the pillars that lined
the room. There were at least thirty of the swords in total.
But Memory Release was a skill that worked only on weapons that
had been used so often, they might as well be a part of the wielder’s
body. It was through the deep relationship between master and
blade that one could come into contact with the sword’s memory at
all.
The pontifex treated her own subjects like tools. There was no way
she had such deep bonds with thirty different decorative swords. So
what in the world was the “memory of the sword” she had just
unlocked…?
As the three of them stood dumbfounded, there was an especially
fierce rumble, and the enormous swords pulled away from the
supports to float in the air. Eugeo had to duck as one swooped over
his head, rotating madly. They gathered in the center of the room,
right over Administrator. Then something even more shocking
happened.
Thirty swords of various sizes rang loudly as they contacted one
another, banging and sliding into place to form one gigantic mass.
Eugeo noticed at once that it seemed to be vaguely humanoid in
shape.
A thick backbone ran through the center, and long arms stretched
to either side. There were legs below, but four of them instead of
two.
When the swords finished transforming into the bizarre giant—no,
monster—Administrator held out the Piety Module toward it.
That prism is the centerpiece of her Memory Release, Eugeo
instantly sensed.

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 At the exact same moment, Kirito yelled, “Discharge!!”
Suddenly, there was a bird of flame in his outstretched right palm.
While Eugeo—and likely Alice—had been watching the swords
connect in shock, Kirito had busied himself with chanting an art.
The firebird shot forth toward the prism in Administrator’s hand.
There were many kinds of heat-based attack arts; the Bird Shape art
that Kirito used automatically tracked its target. And the pontifex
was concentrating on the sword giant above her, so she didn’t notice
Kirito. It was going to work! Eugeo was sure of it—
Until the next moment, when one of the sword giant’s legs
stretched out and blocked the bird’s path. It was unable to dodge
and smacked into the metal, bursting into deep-red droplets. The
shining golden sword got a bit of soot on its surface but was
otherwise unaffected.
Administrator completely ignored that whole sequence. She
released the triangular prism in her left hand—not so much tossing it
as letting the prism rise on its own until it fit inside the space
between the three swords that formed the creature’s backbone.
The purple light continued to rise until it came to a stop at about
the spot a heart would be in a living being and flashed much brighter.
That light then spread throughout the giant, and the swords that had
seemed more decorative than practical suddenly rang loudly as their
edges spontaneously sharpened. Eugeo’s instinct told him that this
was the completion of the pontifex’s art.
Administrator narrowed her eyes and smiled.
Then the sword giant spread its four legs and leaped through the
air in between the humans and the pontifex, landing on the floor
with a thunderous rumble.
Eugeo gaped up at its towering five-mel height. Backbone, ribs,
two arms, and four legs—all made up of golden swords. It was like a
toy that a child would make out of carved branches…or some
creature of living bone from the depths of the Dark Territory.
“…Impossible…,” moaned Alice under her breath. “Controlling
multiple weapons at once—thirty, at that—goes against the very
properties of Perfect Control arts. It shouldn’t be possible, even for

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the pontifex. She still has to follow the laws of sacred arts…So how is
she…?”
Administrator would have heard her, of course, but the woman
floating behind the sword giant ignored her. Instead, she gloated,
“Ha-ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. This is the power I sought. Pure
attack, a power that will fight for eternity. Its name…will be Sword
Golem, I have decided.”
Eugeo tried to use what he knew about the sacred tongue to
decipher the two strange words she had just said. He knew that the
sacred word Sword came from weapon-enhancing arts. But he’d
never even seen the word Golem in his textbook at the academy.
Alice didn’t seem to know, either, and she would have a much
stronger grasp of the terms.

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 The silence was broken by Kirito’s hoarse mutter.
“A moving puppet…made of swords.”
His description of it in the common tongue must have been
correct; Administrator’s smile widened, and she clapped her hands
together.
“I should have realized that you would know your sacred
language…excuse me, your ‘Ing-lesh.’ If you don’t want to be a
knight, I can still make you a secretary—but only if you drop your
sword, apologize for your transgressions, and promise your eternal
loyalty to me.”
“Sadly, I have a hard time believing that you would trust my
promise. Plus, I haven’t given up on this one yet.”
“I do not dislike this boldness of yours, but stupidity I cannot abide.
Do you really think you can best my golem? Against a puppet whose
each and every blade has the priority level of a Divine Object? The
ultimate weapon of war, which I used every bit of my valuable
memory space to construct…?”
Something about the term ultimate weapon stuck in Eugeo’s mind.
Yes, it reminded him of what Vice Commander Fanatio had said—
that the pontifex used a thousand mirrors to gather Solus’s light into
a single point that could produce superheated flames without sacred
arts. Fanatio had called it a “weapons experiment.”
So a weapon of war would refer to some tool with more potential
power than any sacred art. Was this Sword Golem standing before
them now the realized form of just such a weapon…?
Whatever Administrator might have registered from the looks on
their faces, she now waved her right hand with a cold, cruel smile on
her lips. “Now…fight, my golem. Destroy your enemies.”
And as though the giant had been waiting for just that command,
its heart pulsed with purple light.
The four-legged monster issued a metallic roar and began to
charge. Its size was not nearly as large as the clown of flames that
Chudelkin had created earlier. But the freakish way its many joints

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scraped and creaked as it approached froze Eugeo’s heart with
terror.
The golem swung its arms up high, each one made of three swords
together. The quickest to react was Alice, who’d seemed paralyzed
before this. Half a second after it moved, she was plunging forward,
bravely meeting the monster’s swing.
“Yaaaaaah!!” Her scream was even sharper than the golem’s
screeching. Her back arched as far as it could go as she wound up,
clutching the Osmanthus Blade in both hands.
At that point, Kirito was moving, too. He leaped forward to his
right, trying to circle around the golem. Eugeo was stock-still as of
yet, too afraid to move, but he could at least attempt to discern what
Kirito and Alice were doing.
They both suspected that if the golem had a weak point, it was
where the backbone met its four legs—what would be the pelvis on
a human. But it was too dangerous to attack the area head-on. So
Alice was acting as a decoy to draw the golem’s attention—if it was
conscious enough to have such a thing—while Kirito tried to sever
the weak point from the side. It was essentially the same strategy
they’d used against Chudelkin.
Eugeo couldn’t help but be impressed at how the two launched
into this combined stratagem without any planning ahead of time.
But there was a twinge of pain there, too.
Alice’s sword traced an arc through the air as bright as Solus. The
monster’s right arm swung down ferociously. When the two golden
blades connected, the resulting shock wave seemed to shake the
entire cathedral, its wind buffeting Eugeo.

Just two seconds had passed since both sides charged.

And whatever you might call a “battle” ended at this exact
moment.

Alice’s Osmanthus Blade, a Divine Object with the property of

“everlasting eternity,” was easily overpowered by the golem’s arm.

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The knight was unable to stop the backward momentum of her
sword and lost her center of gravity.
As she struggled to regain her balance, the golem’s left sword
plunged in at blinding speed. Compared to the first rush, the little
thunk that followed was barely noticeable. But it was the sound that
heralded the end of the fight.
The ghastly huge tip of the sword appeared from Alice’s back,
spraying dark-red droplets. Her long, beautiful hair floated upward
with the impact, taking the brunt of the spatter.
Her golden breastplate, which had been split clean in two,
instantly shattered with the loss of its life value. The Osmanthus
Blade fell from her hand and clattered on the ground.
Lastly, the golem promptly yanked its left arm back, leaving the
Integrity Knight to fall to the floor.
“Aaaaaaahh!!”
It was practically a scream. That was Kirito, the black-haired
swordsman just around the giant’s right side, eyes livid with rage as
he charged.
His black sword glowed a brilliant blue. That was the attack known
as Vertical.
The golem would stop if they could shatter the Piety Module
encased in its backbone, but it was heavily defended and too high for
any ultimate techniques to reach. So Kirito was aiming at the point
where the golem’s spine met its legs instead. If just that point could
be destroyed, it would prevent the giant from moving.
Just after its attack, with both arms lowered, the golem shouldn’t
have had a way to defend itself. But the moment Kirito’s sword
started to move, the giant’s top half rotated around the spine with
tremendous speed. It swung in a way that no human being could
ever do, its left arm in a side swipe toward Kirito.
There was a blunt impact. With superhuman reflexes, Kirito
changed the course of his technique and fought back the golem’s
strike.
But before Eugeo’s horrified eyes, the exact same thing happened
again.

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 Kirito rose off his feet, unable to bear the full brunt of the impact.
The golem’s back left leg promptly shot forward toward his
unprotected side.
There was another heavy thud, and Kirito shot sideways until he
crashed against an east-facing window. A frightening amount of
blood splattered against the glass, and the swordsman in black
crumpled to the floor.
Eugeo watched in silent shock as a pool of blood formed beneath
his facedown partner; he could feel nothing in his own arms and legs.
It was like his body didn’t belong to him anymore. He was helpless to
stop it from shivering.
Only his face was able to respond to commands. He turned it to
look up at the Sword Golem standing just five or six mels away.
The monster looked straight back at him. The hilt of the sword
located at the top of the backbone almost looked like a face. Two
gemstones inlaid on the guard twinkled like blinking eyes.
He couldn’t move or speak. All that Eugeo’s numb mind was
capable of doing was repeating the same thought.
It can’t be.
It can’t be. This can’t be happening.
Alice and Kirito were essentially the greatest warriors in the entire
world. They would never lose a fight together, even against a
freakish creature—a weapon of war—like this one. They were going
to get back up and draw their swords again, very soon…
Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee.
Over the constant heavy grinding of the golem came a quiet
chuckle. Eugeo saw then that Administrator, levitating in the
background, was surveying the battle with great pleasure. The only
color in her mirror eyes was the red of the blood that Kirito and Alice
shed. There was not the tiniest bit of pity in them.
The giant creature began to move again, preparing to carry out its
master’s orders to completion. The front right leg raised and fell,
taking a huge step. The front left leg followed it.
Red drops decorated the left arm of the approaching giant. Eugeo
hoped it would just kill him and be done with it.

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 Even his fear was gone.
The entire world was utterly silent…
Until suddenly, a tiny voice popped into his head. So small, he
didn’t even realize he was hearing something at first.
“Use the dagger, Eugeo!”
It was a woman’s voice, a bit deep but beautiful.
If this was an illusion just before his death, it certainly didn’t sound
like any voice from his past. He looked to his right and saw—
—resting on Kirito’s right shoulder, barely the size of a human
fingernail, a black spider.
But no bug that small could speak. Yet, there was something in the
voice that made Eugeo believe it. Perhaps due to his exhausted wits,
Eugeo fully trusted that the tiny creature, waving its front leg as if
scolding him, was indeed the source of the voice in his head.
“I…I can’t. The dagger won’t reach her,” he mumbled. The spider
waved its raised leg even harder.
“No! The corridor! Stab the levitating disc in the floor!!”
“Huh…?”
His eyes went wide. The black spider stared back at him with its
four little ruby eyes and said, “I’ll buy you time! Just hurry!!”
Cute little fangs spun as the spider yelled at him. Then it turned
briefly toward Kirito, who was looking pale, and brushed his cheek
lightly with a single leg before jumping down to the floor.
The tiny black dot landed on the carpet without a sound.
Then it started running straight at the Sword Golem, a creature
thousands upon thousands of times its size.

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 3

I thought I had a pretty good handle on physical pain.

A bit over two years ago, I had fought a group of goblins from the
Dark Territory, in the cave to the north of Rulid. During that battle,
the captain goblin’s machete had caught my left shoulder, and
though it hadn’t been fatal, the agony had been so great that utter
fear had paralyzed me and left me unable to react.
That experience was a huge wake-up call as to my physical
weakness in the Underworld. I’d spent so long playing in worlds with
the pain-absorption function of the NerveGear and AmuSphere that I
didn’t have any resistance to unrestricted physical pain.
Since then, I’d focused on keeping myself solid and tough when hit
by wooden swords during practice with Eugeo or duels at the
academy. Thanks to that, I was at least able to keep my wits and stop
from freezing up when I suffered wounds when fighting the other
Integrity Knights. And in the Underworld, anything was perfectly
healable as long as your life didn’t reach zero—even severed limbs.
But…right at the end of this long journey, I received a painful
reminder that I hadn’t actually conquered anything.

The power and speed of Administrator’s battle weapon, the Sword

Golem, were off the charts. It was impossibly capable, beyond the
limits of what should have been possible in this world. Already it was
miraculous that I was able to defend against the first blow from its
arm, but I couldn’t even see the one that had come from its leg.
The sword that made up its rear left leg entered my right flank and
passed through to my left side, slicing everything in its path. The
instant I first felt the shock, I recognized an icy chill brushing my
belly, but after I’d been thrown against the window and I’d slumped
to the floor, my insides were burning like they were on fire. I couldn’t

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move a muscle. I didn’t even have any sensation from my lower half.
I could’ve been split in two with just a little scrap of skin holding me
together, for all I knew.
In fact, it was a mystery as to how I could think at all.
Or perhaps it was just a sign that the despair was far more
powerful than the actual pain assaulting me.
I knew my life had to be dropping at a calamitous rate. I didn’t
have more than a minute or two before it ran down to zero. And
Alice had even less time than I did. The golden knight, now collapsed
on the floor across the room, had been pierced through the chest. It
hadn’t hit her heart, from what I could tell, but the loss of blood
would certainly do her in first. Perhaps even the highest level of
sacred healing arts wouldn’t help her now. Her miracle fluctlight,
which had overcome the seal in the right eyeball that every
Underworldian had, was about to perish before my very eyes.
Although I couldn’t see him from my position, I was sure that my
irreplaceable friend Eugeo’s life was also hanging in the balance. His
technical ability was greater than mine, but this was not a foe who
could be handled with a blade.
Through foggy eyes, I saw the Sword Golem advance, shaking the
ground. I wanted to shout at him to run, but the only thing my
mouth could do was exhale weakly.
And even if I shouted, Eugeo wouldn’t run away. He would raise
the Blue Rose Sword and face this huge, unfair enemy to save his
friends.
Worst of all, the cause of this horrible outcome was my own
mistaken assumption: the idiotically naïve conjecture that
Administrator couldn’t kill human beings.
In the Great Library, Cardinal had used a teacup to demonstrate
how the taboos of this world really worked. The point of her lecture
was that all taboos had loopholes that could be exploited.
Administrator had simply overcome hers not by acting on her own
but by creating a weapon that would automatically kill her enemies
for her.

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 The burning agony of my insides was starting to turn into an empty
numbness. My life would fall to zero very soon. In that instant, my
mind would be kicked out of this world, and I would wake up inside
The Soul Translator. There, the Rath staffers would inform me that
the current form of the Underworld— including all the fluctlights,
like Alice and Eugeo—had just been wiped clean, deleted.
If only my life held the exact same meaning as Eugeo’s and Alice’s.
If only I could experience true death with them in this moment.
How else could I possibly apologize for what I’d put them through?
My vision was dimming now—the only things I could see were the
legs of the advancing Sword Golem and the shining gold of Alice’s
hair on the ground. And even that light was waning.
That was when I heard a quiet but firm voice, right in my ear.
“Use the dagger, Eugeo!”
It was a smooth, silky tone that I was certain I’d heard before. But
my mind was already too fuzzy to do anything with that information.
The mezzo-soprano continued talking to my friend.
After it had delivered a few instructions, it said it would buy some
time and moved away from my ear. For a moment, I thought I felt
something warm touch my cheek.
That tiny little brush of warmth brought back some bodily feeling. I
struggled to lift my half-closed lids.
Right before my eyes, a tiny, shining black spider landed on the
bloodied carpet.
That was it. Charlotte. The very agent of Cardinal that had been
hiding on my person for two whole years to gather information on
me.
But why here? Why now? The spider had finished her duty when
we reached the Great Library, and she had vanished into the cracks
between the bookshelves.
I was so surprised by this that I forgot all the pain and terror.
Before my eyes, the tiny creature sped toward the gigantic golem as
it approached. Eight fragile legs buzzed along the carpet at dizzying
speed. But each step for the spider was nothing compared to a step

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for the golem. How was she going to buy time for Eugeo to escape
from the creature that was bearing down on him?
But in the next moment, I gasped weakly as a new shock came
over me.
The spider’s body got bigger.
With each contact of pointed leg against carpet, her body mass
seemed to grow. First she was the size of a mouse, then a cat, then a
dog, and still growing. Soon my ear, pressed against the carpet, could
actually hear the vibration of each leg against the ground.
“Greeeh!” roared the Sword Golem—it had noticed Charlotte at
last. The two gemstones on its “face” flickered, seemingly assessing
this new enemy.
“Shaaaa!” hissed the spider, now over seven feet long, four eyes
flashing menacingly.
She wasn’t half as tall as the golem, but while the enemy was
constructed entirely of long, narrow swords, the enlarged Charlotte’s
body was covered in thick, tough carapace. Wherever the light hit
the black surface, it reflected in lustrous gold, and the claws on the
ends of the eight legs were like obsidian.
The two front legs were especially large, their claws nearly as long
as swords themselves. Charlotte raised the right one and smashed it
against the golem’s left leg.
A tremendous clanging filled the room, as though two greatswords
had just collided. A shower of orange sparks lit up the darkened
room.
And in that light, I was stunned to see the figure of Eugeo running.
Not at the golem. Not for either me or Alice.
He was racing for the circular pattern in the carpet along the south
wall, to carry out Charlotte’s order to stab his dagger into the
levitating platform.
Behind Eugeo, the Sword Golem lost its balance the tiniest bit after
Charlotte’s attack, but it promptly held firm, then raised its right arm
high in the air to strike. The golem had identified the newly appeared
spider as an enemy. Pale eyes glinting, it swung down its massive
arm.

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 Charlotte lifted her front left leg to block it. The clash of golden
sword and obsidian claw again resulted in a powerful vibration that
made my body rattle at the edge of the room.
With the help of her six rear legs for resistance, the giant spider
had succeeded at stopping one of the blows that had so easily
knocked me and Alice off our feet.
The two giants held their limbs forth, each trying to push over the
other. The hard carapace of Charlotte’s legs warped under
tremendous weight, and the joints of the three swords that made up
the golem’s right arm creaked.
The standoff lasted all of three seconds.
With a wet crunch, Charlotte’s front left leg snapped off. Milky
white liquid shot forth from the break over her black surface.
But the spider didn’t stop. She swung her front right leg this time,
right at the gap between the three greatswords that made up the
Sword Golem’s spine—toward the glowing purple Piety Module
within.
Just when it seemed like the black lightning that was her claw
would pierce the prism representing the golem’s ultimate weak
point, the many swords that formed the creature’s ribs moved at
once.
Like a paper cutter, the four blades on the left and the four blades
on the right met in the middle.
Sha-shunk!! They easily sliced through Charlotte’s leg, causing a
fresh gush of her bodily fluid to spill forth.
The golem’s ribs slowly parted, allowing the severed half of the leg
to fall. Its gemstone eyes twinkled steadily, almost seeming to mock
Charlotte over its impending victory.
But losing another one of her legs did nothing to diminish the
spider’s bravery. She hissed again and leaped toward her foe, thick
mandibles churning for a bite.
Her attack did not land. The golem kicked upward with blinding
speed, slicing off two more of Charlotte’s left legs. The giant spider
lost her balance and toppled to the floor.
Forget about it—run! I wanted to scream.

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 I’d never actually had a direct conversation with the spider named
Charlotte. But she had always been with me, protecting me. When
Raios and Humbert had torn up the zephilia flowers I’d been growing
at the dorm, she’d even told me there was still a way to save them—
when the only job Cardinal had asked her to do was simply keep tabs
on me.
It wasn’t right for her to die for this hopeless fight, just to buy us a
little bit of time. I tried to yell for her to run, over and over, but
nothing came out.
Somehow, Charlotte managed to stand with her four remaining
legs, and she tensed for another mad charge at the golem. But its left
arm was quicker, swinging down from overhead to stab deep into
the black spider’s curved abdomen.
“…Uhk…”
It was just the smallest gasp that finally escaped from my throat,
far too weak to be the scream it was meant to be.
And just then, I saw nothing but purple light.
It was a shine I’d seen just once before. The band of light that shot
around the room was one conglomeration of tiny script. It was the
same light that had erupted when I’d used Cardinal’s dagger to save
the life of Vice Commander Fanatio.
Eugeo must have reached the platform and stabbed it with his own
dagger. I wasn’t sure what kind of result that would have, but at least
I knew that he hadn’t let the time Charlotte had bought with her
suicidal charge go to waste.
When the light began to dim, the black spider was scrabbling at
the floor with her remaining legs, trying to stand despite being
impaled. Then the golem removed its sword with a wet shlurk, and
her massive bulk fell limply into the white puddle below her.
Her four eyes had been as bright and brilliant as rubies before, but
now they were losing their luster. They did catch sight of the
levitating platform, and with blood dripping from her fangs,
Charlotte whispered, “Oh, good…He made it.”
Her right legs trembled, rotating her body. Four eyes looked at me
with tenderness.

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 “I’m happy…that I got to fight with you…one…last…”
Her words melted away into space. The round eyes flickered red
and then went dark.
I felt my vision blur. Despite the fact that I myself was dying, my
eyes brimmed with tears. The huge black spider began to shrink
without a sound. The puddle of white liquid evaporated, too, leaving
behind only a corpse about the size of my fingernail, rolled onto its
back with four legs curled up above it.
The Sword Golem instantly lost all interest in the target once it had
squashed the life from her, and it rotated until its gleaming eyes
caught sight of Eugeo. The massive creature then turned its body
ninety degrees, and its pointed legs thudded into the floor. It was
heading for the waving ribbon of purple light.
With all the strength I had left, I raised my head a few inches and
looked to the source of the light. On the southern end of the circular
room, not that far from the window, there was a pulsating, glowing
ring: the levitating platform that had brought Alice and me to the
hundredth floor.
Something that looked like a tiny cross was stuck in the middle of
the ring. That was the little bronze dagger, one of two that Cardinal
had given me and Eugeo. She’d fashioned it from the magical
resources in the braids that she’d been growing for two hundred
years, and whatever the dagger pierced would open a channel
through space directly to her.
It was meant to be the final weapon against Administrator, but on
Charlotte’s orders, Eugeo had stuck it into the platform on the floor.
Now the entire thing was glowing purple. It rang and whined like a
thousand tuning forks coming into harmony, until the very physical
makeup of the dagger came undone, turning into a long pillar of light
that ran between the circular platform and the ceiling.
Standing right next to it, Eugeo covered his face against the light
with his arm. Even the Sword Golem came to a clanking stop,
uncertain of how to respond to this unexpected phenomenon.
The pillar of light steadily expanded. At its center, a smooth dark-
brown surface appeared—a board. But not any regular board. It was

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surrounded by a rectangular frame and had a silver knob on one
side—it was a door.
As I had that moment of realization, the light flashed and
disappeared. The high-pitched wavelength faded, and quiet returned
to the chamber.
Something about the design and coloring of the thick door was
familiar to me. Eugeo and I watched without a sound while the
Sword Golem took a step forward, its programming active again.
Just then, there was a small, hard click, accompanied by an almost
imperceptible shift in the air. The silver doorknob began to rotate.
There was another click, and the door quietly began to open.
It was just a door standing in empty air, so once open, it should
have just been the same room on the other side. But there was no
moonlight shining through the space inside the open frame. It was
completely dark.
The door continued its slow progress until it came to a stop when
it was about a foot and a half open. The other side was still out of
sight. The Sword Golem continued its forward advance, ignoring the
door. In just three steps, it would have Eugeo within swinging range
of its massive arms…Two steps…
Then the darkness beyond the door was full of light.
A pure-white lightning bolt shot horizontally out of the frame.
Grrrakow!! My ears were buffeted by a tremendous shock—one
greater than any sacred art I’d ever witnessed. The bolt hit the Sword
Golem head-on and wriggled like a living thing, turning the massive
creature into a black silhouette.
It took several seconds for the thrashing lightning to finally die
down. The Sword Golem, which seemed so hardy that it was
unstoppable, slumped over and stopped moving. Its dozens of
swords hissed and smoked, and the gemstone eyes blinked
sporadically.
The monster stubbornly tried to move again, but another bolt from
the doorway caught it. A sacred art of this power should require
dozens of lines of sacred words, so this kind of rapid fire was

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astonishing. Scorched all over, the golem let out a high-pitched moan
and tried to step back.
Just half a second later, the third and largest lightning bolt ripped
past. This bolt, burlier and meaner than the prior two, tossed up the
nearly twenty-foot battle creation as if it were made of paper. It
spun through the air, passing to the right of the floating
Administrator, and crashed to the floor on the other end of the
room. The tremor of its fall seemed to shake the very foundation of
Central Cathedral.
The upturned golem was immobile at last but not entirely dead.
The tips of the swords that made up its limbs trembled and twitched.
At the very least, it wouldn’t be popping back up again anytime soon.
I looked back at the darkness through the doorway. I was already
certain of the name of the person who would soon appear through
it. Administrator was one of the two people in this world who could
execute such rapid and transcendently powerful magic—and here
was the other.
A thin staff and the small hand that held it were the first things to
appear from the darkness. Next were a fragile wrist and a wide
sleeve. A black velvet robe large enough to form several draping
folds. A pointed hat with an ornament on it. A flat-soled shoe
extended from the bottom of the robe to step silently onto the
carpet.
The moonlight caught soft brown curls and small, silver-rimmed
glasses. Large eyes that were young and yet filled with infinite
wisdom glinted behind the lenses of the glasses.
Cardinal the sage, who was another incarnation of Administrator
with equal powers, and who had spent an eternity isolated within
her massive, hidden library, took several smooth steps forward in the
moonlight before coming to a stop. The door closed on its own
behind her.
How had Cardinal left the library, which existed in a space that was
everywhere and nowhere, and come into this room? The key was the
dagger that Eugeo had carried around, of course. On Charlotte’s
orders, he’d stabbed it into the levitating platform, causing it to be

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connected to Cardinal. That would have made it child’s play for her
to change the connecting point of the platform to the library.
The wise little sage wore the expression of a strict teacher as she
stared at the top floor of the cathedral for the first time. Then she
turned to Eugeo, who was standing right next to her, and gave him a
quick nod. Next was Alice, still lying on the floor a short distance
away. When her eyes met mine, she gave me a reassuring little smile
and nodded once more.
Lastly, Cardinal arched her small back and stared up at
Administrator, who was still silently floating on the far side of the
room. Whatever emotion she was feeling about this showdown with
her ultimate foe, their first meeting in two hundred years, I couldn’t
read from her profile.
Once she had taken stock of the situation, Cardinal raised the staff
in her right hand. Her body rose off the ground, and she slid through
the air to where Alice and I lay helpless on the ground.
She landed and brushed Alice’s back with the head of the staff.
Little glittering motes of light sprinkled down and sank into the
knight’s body.
Next, she tapped my shoulder with the narrow staff. Another
warm shower of light appeared and engulfed my body, which was
completely devoid of sensation by now.
The first thing that happened was that the cold, hollow sensation
that filled me vanished, and the searing pain from the golem’s attack
to my abdomen rushed back to fill its place. I fought to keep from
screaming, and the pain steadily melted into waves of warmth. As
the agony subsided, my bodily sensations returned. I opened and
closed my stiffened fist until I felt able to touch the wound on my
torso.
The injury tingled sharply when I touched it, but to my shock, the
gash that had nearly bisected my entire body was completely gone.
In order to re-create that effect with healing arts, I’d have to sit in a
sunny forest lush with resources, chanting for hours on end.
It was such a miracle that I had to fight the momentary urge to
celebrate that I’d been saved—but I knew that such a miracle

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required an equal compensation. And not from me but from
Cardinal. After all, this situation had to be exactly what Administrator
wanted…
But Cardinal paid no heed to that horrifying possibility. She floated
into the air again. When she landed this time, she was before the
tiny black body that lay atop the carpet. With a little thump, she set
the end of the staff against the ground. She took her hand off it, but
the staff remained perfectly vertical on its own.
Cardinal crouched down and gently scooped the tiny body up off
the carpet. She clutched Charlotte the spider to her chest, lowering
her head, and in a voice too quiet to be fully audible, whispered,
“You stubborn fool…I released you from duty, hailed your service,
and told you to live the life you wanted in whatever bookshelf you
desired.”
Behind the round glasses, her long eyelashes blinked twice, then
three times.
My right arm was finally able to move properly, so I reached out to
grab my sword and used it as a crutch to get to my feet. I made my
way unsteadily over to Cardinal and, ignoring all the things I
should’ve said first, asked, “Cardinal…was that…Charlotte’s true
form…?”
The sage looked up, chestnut-brown curls bouncing and eyes
misty. In her oddly old way of speaking, which almost seemed as
nostalgic as if I hadn’t heard it in ages myself, she said, “In this
world…since ancient times, there have been many magical beasts
and beings that made their homes in the forests and wilderness. I
believe these creatures are familiar to you.”
“…Named Monsters…But…Charlotte spoke human language and
had emotions of her own…Did she have a fluctlight, too…?”
“No…To use the language of your world, she was the same as an
NPC. She was not stored in a lightcube but was a tiny part of the
Main Visualizer function, given a small simulated thought engine—in
other words, a part of the system. In the past, there were many large
animals, ancient trees, boulders, and so on who had the ability to
hold simple conversations in the common tongue. But…they are all

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gone now. Most were vanquished by the Integrity Knights, while
others were harvested by Administrator for their object resources.”
“I see…like the guardian dragon whose bones sleep in the cave
beneath the northern mountains…”
“Indeed. I took pity on them and, whenever possible, took newly
generated AIs under my wing. The familiars I use as my agents are
mostly miniature units without a thought engine, but some are the
AIs that I put to my own uses, like Charlotte. Because they are so
statistically powerful, there is little fear of them being damaged,
even when shrunken down. That is how she was safe hiding in your
clothes, even with all of your wild thrashing in combat.”
“B-but…but…,” I stammered, staring at the tiny body in Cardinal’s
palm as I fought back tears, “Charlotte’s speech and behavior wasn’t
that of a mimic AI. She saved me. She sacrificed herself for me.
Why…? How could she…?”
“As I’m sure I told you before, she’s been alive for over fifty years.
She spent all that time in contact with me and watching over many
people. It’s already been two years since I put her on you…One
doesn’t need a fluctlight to develop an attachment over that much
time together…”
Cardinal’s voice got firmer, more insistent. “Even if the nature of
that intelligence is nothing more than an accumulation of input and
output data, a true heart can reside within it. Even love, at times. But
I don’t suppose you would ever understand, Administrator—you
empty husk!!”
The little wise woman glared up at her two-hundred-year foe, her
voice righteous and bold. But the pontifex, still watching the
situation unfold from her floating position across the room, did not
respond. She merely steepled her fingers in front of her mouth,
mirror eyes shining enigmatically.
According to what Cardinal had said in the library, when
Administrator fused with the original form of the Cardinal System,
the self-correcting process—which was the basis for her second
personality, the one that was in Cardinal’s form now—was powerful

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enough that she had to manipulate her own fluctlight to remove her
emotions in order to counteract Cardinal’s rebellion.
Once the two split into separate bodies, she no longer had to
worry about the subprocess taking over her body, but her emotions
were still meaningless noise to her and unnecessary to bring back.
So the image of Administrator that I’d carried in my head was that
of a programmed human, someone who mechanically carried out
her tasks. But the pontifex I saw at the top of Central Cathedral was
far from what I’d expected. She sneered at Chudelkin and toyed
cruelly with our lives; something told me the grin that she constantly
wore was no false simulation.
Even now, the silver-haired, silver-eyed young woman burbled and
giggled behind her hands, her eyes narrowing with pleasure.
“Heh-heh-heh.”
She laughed, slender shoulders rocking, letting Cardinal know that
her righteous missive was no more damaging to her than a slight
breeze. Eventually, between her chuckles came a short message that
made real the very thing I’d been afraid of.
“I thought you’d show up. Heh. Heh-heh-heh.”
“I figured that if I picked on these children enough, you’d poke
your head out of that musty little burrow of yours. That’s the limit of
what you can do, little one. You can arrange for pawns who will
come after me, but you can’t bring yourself to abuse them like the
pawns they are. You humans are such helpless creatures.”
I knew it…
As I feared, Administrator’s true intention was to put enough
pressure on us to lure Cardinal out from her isolated library. Or in
other words, she did this knowing that she still had a secret trick that
would absolutely ensure her triumph.
But the Sword Golem, which ought to have been her ultimate
weapon, was virtually destroyed, and now Eugeo and I were perhaps
battle capable again. Even Alice was awake, pushing herself up with
one hand in an attempt to get up.

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 Cardinal and Administrator were two sides of the same coin, and in
a one-on-one fight would surely draw, so in these circumstances, our
presence gave our side an overwhelming advantage, I assumed.
That meant that the instant the door to the library had opened,
Administrator’s rational choice would have been to stop observing
and simply attack at full power without delay. So why had she let
Cardinal destroy the Sword Golem and heal Alice and me and even
allowed us to have a brief conversation?
Cardinal had to be wondering the same thing—but her expression
betrayed nothing but firm determination. “Hmph. In the myriad
years since I saw you last, you’ve learned to affect a passable human
being. Been practicing smiling into a mirror for two hundred years,
have you?” she mocked.
Administrator shrugged off the comment with that very smile.
“And that way of speaking, tiny one. So wise and scholarly! When I
had you dragged before me two hundred years ago, you were
trembling and alone…Weren’t you, Lyserith?”
“Do not call me by that name, Quinella! My name is Cardinal, and I
am the program that exists solely to eliminate you!”
“Hee-hee, yes, of course. And I am Administrator, the one who
manages all programs. So rude of me to have waited so long to
introduce myself, my little one. It just took a while for me to prepare
the formula in order to welcome you.” She gleefully raised her right
hand.
Her outstretched fingers curled, as if they were grabbing and
crushing some invisible object. At this point, her pure-white cheeks,
which had seemed impervious to any rise in emotion, actually
flushed with the faintest trace of red blood, and a ghastly look came
into her mirror eyes. A chill raced up my back as I realized this was
the very first time I had seen her utilizing her full focus and
concentration.
But there was no time to act. In an instant, Administrator’s right
hand clenched fully shut.

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 Craaaash!! Dozens of heavy shattering sounds burst from every
direction in a deafening chorus. My first thought was that the giant
glass walls that surrounded the room had all exploded at once.
But that wasn’t the case.
What had shattered was beyond the windows—the dark, roiling
clouds, the blanket of stars, the cold full moon, and the very night
sky itself.
The sky rained into an impossible number of fragments, which
collided and burst into even smaller pieces as they fell. To my
dumbfounded eyes, what appeared after the pieces of literal sky fell
could only be described as “unbeing.”
A void of black and purple that seemed to have no depth, swirling
and marbled, churning away. It was a world of nothing, the kind of
sight that would suck away the mind of whoever stared at it for long
enough.
In terms of color and beauty they were nothing alike, but I couldn’t
help but be reminded of another scene I’d witnessed—when the
original Aincrad had collapsed, and a veil of white had appeared to
swallow the sunset that remained behind.
Had the Underworld just collapsed and vanished as well? The
human realm, the Dark Territory, the villages and towns…and all the
people living within them…
The only thing that saved me from this momentary terror was
Cardinal’s shocked but still resolute voice.
“You…you cut the address loose.”
What does that mean…?
Despite my confusion, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from
Administrator. The silver-haired woman lowered her hand and said
in a whisper, “Two hundred years ago, I made the mistake of letting
you get away when I absolutely had the chance to kill you. That was
me who placed your stinking little hole on a nonconsecutive address,
wasn’t it? So I decided to learn from my mistake. I knew that if I
could lure you out, I’d trap you on this side—the rat in the cage with
the cat who hunts her.”

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 The pontifex snapped her fingers to punctuate this statement.
Instantly, there was another crashing noise, but much quieter than
the last, and the dark-brown door that stood on its own in the
middle of the carpet shattered. The pieces split apart before they hit
the ground and vanished. Even the circle on the ground that was
meant to indicate the location of the elevator platform was gone.
Eugeo was standing right next to it, and he reached out his foot to
step on the carpet several times with surprise. Then he looked up,
straight at me, and shook his head quickly.
In other words, what Administrator had destroyed wasn’t the
outside world itself but the connection between this floor of the
cathedral and the outside.
Even if we could somehow destroy the windows, there would be
no way out of them—there was no space there to travel through. It
was the perfect way to trap someone in a virtual space—almost too
perfect—and the exact kind of thing that only someone with admin
privileges could do. The prison area in Blackiron Palace on the first
floor of Aincrad was child’s play compared to this.
In short, Administrator hadn’t been wasting her time in the
minutes since Cardinal had appeared. She’d been preparing this
exact tremendous command for execution.
However, if the consecutive connection between spaces had been
completely severed, then…
“I find your analogy lacking in precision,” shot back Cardinal, who’d
arrived at my conclusion a second before I did. “It might take
minutes to sever the connection, but patching it back together will
not be so easy. Now you are trapped in here as well. So which of us is
really the cat, and which is the rat? We have four in number, and you
are alone. If you think these youngsters are beneath your notice,
your mistake is grave indeed, Quinella.”
She was exactly right.
This now meant that Administrator couldn’t easily leave this place,
either. And she and Cardinal had identical power when it came to
using sacred arts. While her and Cardinal’s arts were at a perfect
equilibrium, the rest of us could cut her to ribbons and seize victory.

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 But Cardinal’s correction did not wipe the little smile off the
pontifex’s face.
“Four against one? No…your numbers are off. It’s actually four
against three hundred. And that doesn’t even include me,” she
gloated.
Just then, the upturned mass of metal—the almost totally
destroyed Sword Golem—let out a discordant, eardrum-rending
screech.
“What…?!” shouted Cardinal. She’d hit it with three devastating
lightning bolts in a row and clearly assumed it was out of
commission. I had certainly thought so, at least.
But the golem’s eyes, which had been completely dark just
seconds ago, were now glittering like twin stars. It fixed us with a
murderous glare, pushed itself up with its arms, and got to its four
feet as though all the damage it had suffered was instantly gone.
When it stood, it let out a belly-wrenching roar.
That was when I noticed that the various sword parts that had
been charred and smoking from Cardinal’s lightning bolts were
gleaming like brand-new weapons.
It was true that weapons with a high-priority value had natural life-
restoring capabilities in this realm, but only if they were cared for
and put back into their sheaths. Even then, it supposedly took an
entire day to recover half of an object’s total life, and beyond any of
that, the swords that made up the golem’s body had been just
decorative objects stuck to the room’s support pillars—they didn’t
have sheaths.
Even if every part of the golem was a Divine Object type of
weapon, they still could not recover so much damage so quickly. But
the giant made of swords standing behind the pontifex looked just
like it had before the lightning hit it—even more powerful than
before, actually. It occurred to me that if she could mass-produce
these golems, she might actually rebuff a full-scale invasion from the
Dark Territory after all.

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 I stood there in mute shock until I heard the little sage command,
“Kirito, Alice, Eugeo, get behind me! Do not allow yourselves to slip
forward!”
I was already behind her, so the other two rushed over. Alice
seemed completely healed after being impaled through the chest, in
fact. She’d lost her golden breastplate, and the blue knight’s corsage
beneath was torn, but I didn’t get the sense that her flesh was
injured under it.
She bravely squared her shoulders and held up the Osmanthus
Blade, whispering, “Kirito…who is this person…?”
“…Her name’s Cardinal. She fought with Administrator two
hundred years ago and was banished. She’s another pontifex,
basically.”
And if one was Administrator, the other was Formatter—the one
who would mercilessly reset the world to nothing.
But I couldn’t explain all that now, of course. Alice still seemed
suspicious, so I added, “It’s all right—she’s on our side. She rescued
me and Eugeo and showed us the way to get here. She loves this
world with all her heart and mourns what it has become.”

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 That, at least, was all true. Alice wasn’t over her confusion and
doubt yet, but she pressed her hand to her right breast, to the spot
where Cardinal’s miraculous power had healed her, and nodded
deeply.
“…I understand. High-level sacred arts reflect the heart of the
caster…and after the way she healed my wounds, I trust in the
warmth of her strength.”
I nodded back at her. She was absolutely right. Whether the sacred
arts caster was hastily tossing off a healing effect or truly putting
their prayer into it made a big difference in the effect of the healing
art, even when it came to the simplest and quickest of commands.
Cardinal’s healing arts were full of true compassionate love. They
engulfed and melted away all pain. That was why I hoped there was
still room to talk her out of her plan to reinitialize the Underworld—
but only if we actually won this battle.
First, we had to figure out the secret of how the Sword Golem had
instantly healed itself of all damage, and how we could counteract
that.
It began moving forward, its dark-gold body gleaming in the light.
Cardinal readied her staff at once, but she couldn’t get the jump on it
with a major attack in advance like she had a few minutes ago.
Administrator would be waiting with eagle eyes to strike at the
moment Cardinal started chanting her commands.
Think, think, think. It’s all I can do right now.
Most likely, the Sword Golem’s auto-healing ability had something
to do with Memory Release. So whatever object was the source of
the thirty swords that made up the golem’s body, it had properties
that enabled that effect.
The first thing that popped into my head when I imagined natural
healing of life was the Gigas Cedar, the source of the sword in my
hand now. But that healing power was fueled by the spatial
resources it sucked in from the sun and the earth.
The only resource in this place was the moonlight coming through
the windows from the south. And it couldn’t possibly have

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accumulated enough of that to heal the entirety of its massive body
in a single moment. So the source of the Sword Golem was not some
natural feature like the Gigas Cedar.
That left only some kind of living object with a healing ability that
did not require spatial resources. But Cardinal claimed that all the
giant Named Monsters that had once existed in this world were now
extinct. And ordinary animal units like bears and cattle didn’t have
the system priority to achieve power like that. Even tens of
thousands of them converted into a single sword would fall far short
of the Integrity Knights’ Divine Object weapons—that was how little
life beasts had naturally. Priority and durability were proportional, so
how many hundreds, if not thousands, of massive animal units would
you need to create thirty of those weapons…?
Wait.
Hadn’t Administrator just said something strange a moment ago?
Four versus three hundred.
She hadn’t used moving objects like animals to create that Sword
Golem. She’d used human units—the people who inhabited this
world. Three hundred of them. Enough that their loss would
completely eliminate an entire village.
This thought process happened in a span so short, my brain cells
were practically frying—and I innately sensed that my hunch was
true. But there was no triumph in this realization. The only thing I felt
was overwhelming terror. My skin was crawling, from my toes up to
my spine and the back of my neck.
Underworldians weren’t just mobile objects. They had fluctlights—
human souls—just like any person in the real world. And their
fluctlights would be active as long as they had bodies, even if they’d
been converted into something like a sword.
Perhaps the people who’d been turned into those golem parts
were still conscious, trapped inside metal without eyes or ears or
mouths to speak.
Cardinal reached the same conclusion as I did. Her small body
tensed imperceptibly. The hand that clutched her staff was white
with the pressure.

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 “…You wretch.” Her youthful voice cracked with rage, betraying
the weight of her full age. “Wretched thing…Is there no depth to
which you will not sink?! You are their ruler! Your duty is to protect
the subjects you turned into those swords!!”
“Subjects…? Like…human…beings?” gasped Eugeo, falling back a
step.
“You mean…that monster is…human?” moaned Alice, putting her
hand to her chest.
Cold, tense silence filled the room. Administrator drank in our
shock, fear, and anger. With a gloating smile, she said, “Very good.
You finally figured it out, did you? I was getting worried that you’d all
be wiped out before I could reveal the big secret.”
The supreme ruler laughed, a true laugh of pure delight, and
clapped her hands together. “But,” she continued, “I’m disappointed
in you, little one. After two hundred years of hiding in your den, you
still don’t fully understand me. In a sense, I am your mother, after
all.”
“…Enough japes! I’m fully aware of just how depraved your
madness is!”
“Then why would you say these silly things? About duties and
subjects to be protected. Of course I would never bother with such
trifling matters.”
Her happy smile did not change, but I could sense the atmosphere
around Administrator growing rapidly chilly. It was like her lips were
absolute zero and the words that came from them were particles of
ice in the air. “I am a conqueror. As long as what I rule remains in the
lower world in the state that I desire to rule it in—whether human or
sword—then there is no real problem.”
“You…evil…” Cardinal’s voice creaked and cracked. I couldn’t think
of anything to say, either.
Whatever form the mind of the woman—the being—known as
Administrator took now was beyond my understanding. She was
literally a systems manager and viewed the people of her world as
nothing more than data files that could be manipulated and
rewritten as she saw fit. Like some Internet addict who downloaded

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massive numbers of files for the sole purpose of collecting and
organizing, without much fussing over what they actually contained.
In our conversation at the Great Library, Cardinal told me that the
fundamental purpose burned into Administrator’s soul was
“maintaining the world.” She was probably correct about that, but I
felt it didn’t fully capture the truth of the situation.
The original Cardinal System in the old Sword Art Online was a
soulless management program. Did it actually recognize its players as
human beings…as living things with individual wills of their own?
The answer to that was no.
We were nothing but data meant to be managed, selected, and
deleted.
Maybe Quinella, the little girl who’d existed centuries ago, couldn’t
kill a person.
But to Administrator, even human beings were no more than
fodder.

“Oh, you’ve all gone quiet. What’s the matter?” she said, tilting her
head curiously as she surveyed us from on high. “You aren’t alarmed
by a little thing like matter conversion for a measly three hundred
units, are you?”
“Measly…?” Cardinal repeated, her voice barely audible.
“Yes, little one. ‘Measly,’ ‘just,’ ‘no more than.’ How many
fluctlights do you think collapsed before I completed this puppet?
And this is only the prototype. In order to mass-produce the finished
version that can counteract that nasty stress test, I expect I’ll need
about half.”
“Half…of…?”
“Half. Half is half. Half of all the human units that exist in the
world…so about forty thousand units. I think that ought to be
enough to put a stop to the Dark Territory’s invasion and take the
fight back to them,” she said, a horror show without a hint of irony
or doubt.

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 Then she turned her silver eyes on the knight standing to my left.
“Are you satisfied, Alice?” she giggled. “Your precious realm will be
quite safe, you see now.”
Alice said nothing. I noticed that the hand holding the hilt of her
Osmanthus Blade was trembling, but I couldn’t tell whether it was
from fear or rage.
Ultimately, her answer came in the form of a question, her voice
compressed so that nothing showed in it. “Pontifex…it is clear that
no words can reach you now. So I ask you as a fellow user of sacred
arts. Where are the owners of the thirty swords that make up that
giant puppet?”
I was momentarily confused. It was Administrator who had used
Memory Release on the thirty swords, transforming them into the
golem. So while it broke from the traditional pattern, it would stand
to reason that she was their owner. But what Alice said next
shattered that assumption.
“It is not possible for you to be the owner. Even if you were to
break the basic rule that one can only achieve Perfect Control over
one sword, there is no breaking the next one. To perform Memory
Release, there must be a powerful bond between the sword and its
owner. Like me and the Osmanthus Blade, the other knights and
their divine weapons, even Kirito and Eugeo and their swords. The
master must love the sword and be loved by it. If the source of the
swords that make up that puppet are innocent people, then there is
no way they would love you for what you did to them!!” Alice
declared, her voice ringing loud and clear.
“Heh-heh-heh-heh,” Administrator chuckled, breaking the silence
that followed. “What is it with you young, foolish souls that makes
you so vivacious? This sentimental quality, as sour as a fresh-picked
apple…Why, I could just crush you in my fist and slurp down every
last drop of juice right now.”
Her mirror eyes sparkled with a continuum of color, perhaps
reflecting her rising excitement. “But not yet. It is not yet the time,
no. What I believe you’re trying to say, Alice, is that I cannot make
use of enough imagination to overwrite all of these swords. You are

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correct about this. I do not have enough capacity in my memory to
record highly detailed records of every one of these weapons.”
She pointed regally toward the thirty swords that made up the
Sword Golem, which was still inching onward.
From what I understood, Perfect Weapon Control involved taking
one’s memory of all the information about a weapon—its
appearance, feeling, weight, and so on—and, with the help of spoken
commands, altering the weapon itself using the power of the
imagination.
In other words, to utilize that ability, the owner of the sword
absolutely needed all the information about the weapon to be stored
in their head.
For example, if I were to use Perfect Weapon Control with my
black sword, I would first need Information A about the sword as it
existed in the Main Visualizer of the Lightcube Cluster to match
Information B about the sword as it existed in my own fluctlight, with
an absolute minimum of discrepancy. By doing so, I could then use
my imagination to change Information B and thus overwrite
Information A in the process, which would then share that change in
information with everyone else. This logic also applied to the strange
visual transformation that had come over me earlier.
As for Administrator, her lightcube memory was compacted to its
limit by the memories of three hundred years of life. She couldn’t
possibly keep a picture-perfect memory of all thirty of those swords.
Alice’s convictions were clearly based on emotion and belief, but
unbeknownst to her, it was accurate in terms of the underlying
system’s limitation as well.
So that meant that each of the swords that made up the golem
would have to have its own separate owner. Souls that held those
swords in their memories and that had the wicked will to use them
for destruction.
But where? In every sense of the word, this space was currently
isolated from the outside world. It didn’t make sense unless those
owners were inside the chamber with us…

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 “The answer is right before your eyes,” she said, suddenly looking
right at me. Then her eyes shifted sideways. “Eugeo should
understand by now.”
“…?!”
I looked over at Eugeo on the other side of Alice, not daring to
breathe.
My flaxen-haired partner was staring the pontifex directly in the
eyes, not budging, his face completely bloodless and pale. His brown
eyes were almost oddly devoid of expression, in fact. Then he craned
his neck, trembling, to look up at the ceiling.
I followed his gaze. The rounded ceiling featured a mural that
depicted the creation of the world, embedded with little crystals that
glittered in the light.
Up until now, I’d assumed this was all decorative. But in Eugeo’s
blank expression, his eyes were the only thing that emoted, staring
holes into the ceiling, searching fiercely for something.
At last, words came croaking from his throat. “Oh…of course.”
“What did you figure out, Eugeo?!” I asked. He glanced over at me,
his face full of profound fear.
“Kirito…those crystals stuck into the ceiling. Those aren’t
just…decorations. I think they must be the memory fragments…that
were stolen from the Integrity Knights.”
“Wha…?” I gaped. So did Cardinal and Alice.
The Integrity Knights’ memories.
The most important of memories, the things extracted from the
subjects through the Synthesis Ritual so they could be turned into
knights. In most cases, this would, rather obviously, be the memories
of their most beloved person. For Eldrie, it was his mother. For
Deusolbert, his wife.
So did this mean those crystals were the owners of the swords that
made up the Sword Golem?
No. The crystals were just isolated information that was stored in
the fluctlight. They weren’t entire souls with the independent ability
to think. It just couldn’t be possible for them to link with the swords
and activate Perfect Control.

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 But then…something prickled in the back of my head.
If all those crystals were the memory fragments taken from
Integrity Knights, then that must include the memories of Alice when
she was synthesized six years ago.
This was the top floor of Central Cathedral.
When we fought the band of goblins in the cave north of Rulid two
years ago, Eugeo was gravely injured. While healing him, I heard a
very strange voice speaking.
It sounded like a young girl who claimed that she was waiting for
Eugeo and me on the top floor of the cathedral. Then a huge rush of
spiritual power flowed through me and healed Eugeo.
What if that voice was coming from Alice’s memory fragment? Did
that mean the stolen memory itself had some power of independent
thought?
But still, all sacred arts operated on that principle of direct contact.
Even Administrator herself couldn’t send her voice and healing
power from Central Cathedral all the way to Rulid, nearly five
hundred miles away.
The only way a miracle like that could happen was if the same
overwriting logic that Perfect Weapon Control worked on could also
apply here. Which would mean the memories stored in Alice’s
memory crystal were…were…
Cardinal’s furious shout cut off my train of thought. “I see…So
that’s what this is! Oh, Quinella…you have gone too far…This is
depraved manipulation of the highest order!!”
Jarred loose from my thoughts, I focused once again on the serene
smile of the silver-haired overlord.
“Well, well…I suppose I should give you my compliments, little
one. You figured it out faster than I expected for a bleeding-heart
altruist. So tell me: What is your answer?”
“It’s the fluctlight’s shared pattern. It is, isn’t it?!” Cardinal said,
leveling her black staff at Administrator. “By placing the memory
piece you extract during the Synthesis Ritual into a mental model
loaded into a fresh lightcube, you can treat it like a simulated human
unit. But its intelligence is severely limited that way—essentially no

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more than a series of instinctive impulses—and it is far from able to
execute complex commands like Perfect Weapon Control.”
I tried my hardest to process her terminology. Back in the library,
Cardinal had said that babies in this world started as fluctlight
prototypes loaded on new lightcubes and given a portion of their
parents’ physical traits and mental and behavioral patterns. So this
had to be a similar idea. But instead of starting with information
from parents, these came from memory fragments taken from the
knights.
In other words, the crystals shining in the ceiling were babies
raised on memories of some beloved person. But if that was the
case, how could that “Alice” have talked to me two years ago? No
newborn child could speak as convincingly as that. The questions
kept piling up in my mind.
Cardinal continued, “But there is a shortcut past that limitation.
The fact that the memory piece placed in the fluctlight prototype and
the structural information of the linked weapon share almost
entirely identical patterns. Meaning…”
She paused to smack the butt of her staff hard against the ground
and shouted, “That you created those swords using the very beloved
that you stole from the Integrity Knights’ memories. Didn’t you,
Administrator?!”
Once the initial confusion of this accusation died down, I was
assaulted by such overwhelming fear and disgust that I felt my entire
body turn to ice.
The owners of the swords that made up the golem were the
fluctlights that had been made from the Integrity Knights’ stolen
memories.
The swords themselves were crafted using the people in those
memories—Eldrie’s mother, Deusolbert’s wife, and probably other
close family members—as a base material. That was Cardinal’s
accusation.
Once they belatedly understood the implications, Eugeo and Alice
uttered simultaneous grunts of shock and horror.

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 If it was true, then perhaps it was theoretically possible to execute
Memory Release. After all, Information A in the Main Visualizer and
Information B in the fluctlight were coming from the exact same
individual. If the newborn fluctlight with the memory fragment in it
felt something strongly enough about the sword it was linked to, it
was possible.
The problem was what that “something” would be. The memory
fragments shouldn’t have had more advanced minds than a newborn
baby. What impulse, what emotion could they be feeling that would
control that mammoth Sword Golem…?
“Desire,” said Administrator, practically reading my thoughts.
“Desire to touch. To squeeze. To make one’s own. Those are the ugly
urges that drive this sword creation.”
“Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.” She narrowed her eyes. “The simulated
personas made from the knights’ memory fragments all desire just
one thing: to own the one person they remember, whoever it is.
They’re stuck up there in the ceiling, but they can sense that person
is right nearby. They just can’t touch them. They can’t be one.
Afflicted by maddening hunger and thirst, all they see are enemies
that keep them from what they want and need. If they just kill those
enemies, then whoever they want will finally be theirs. So they fight.
No matter how much they suffer or how often they fall, they’ll get
back up and fight for eternity. What do you think…? It’s lovely, isn’t
it? The things the power of desire can achieve…they are
tremendous!”
Her voice rang out on high. The approaching Sword Golem’s eyes
flickered violently. A harmonic roar—which now sounded to me like
a scream of grief and despair—erupted from its vicious form.
It wasn’t just an automated weapon designed to slaughter. It was a
poor, pathetic lost child, driven by nothing more than the hope to
see that one person it knew again.
Administrator said desire was the power that moved the golem.
But…
“—You’re wrong!!” shouted Cardinal, just as the thought entered
my head. “Do not disgrace the emotion of wanting to see someone

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again, to touch them again, with a word like desire! This is…this is
pure love!! The greatest power and final miracle of humanity…and it
is not to be weaponized by the likes of you!!”
“They are the same thing, little one,” said Administrator, her lips
twisted with happiness. She extended her palms toward the Sword
Golem. “Love is control…Love is desire! It is nothing more than a
signal that is output from the fluctlight! All I did was take that signal,
the most firm and powerful of any you can get, and use it effectively.
I did it much, much better than your way!!”
Her voice rose to a fever pitch, as if she was certain of her triumph.
“The best that you could achieve was ensnaring two or three
powerless children. But I am different. The puppet I created runs on
the overflowing energy of over three hundred units’ desire, including
the memory fragments! And most important of all…”
She paused for dramatic effect, preparing the final poison stinger.
“…Now that you know the truth, you cannot destroy it. Because
now you know that my puppet is actually living human beings turned
into swords!!” she announced, her words trailing off in the long
silence.
Stunned, I watched as Cardinal’s staff slowly dropped from its
position pointed at the Sword Golem. When she spoke, it was almost
bizarrely calm.

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 “Yes…that is right. I cannot commit murder. That is a limitation I
can never break…I spent two hundred years devising an art that
would kill you and your inhuman form…but it would seem my efforts
are for naught.”
I was stunned. She’d admitted her defeat just as simply as that.
But if the weapons in the Sword Golem were indeed living people,
then Cardinal could not end those lives…She would not even attempt
it. Even if, like with the teacups and soup cups, there was some way
around that limitation.
“Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh-heh.”
Administrator’s lips curled up as far as they could go, her throat
convulsing with unstoppable laughter amid the shocked silence.
“How foolish you were…What a tragic comedy…”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
“You should’ve known. You know the true nature of this world.
You know that the ‘life’ around us is just a collection of data that can
be changed and rewritten. Yet you treat that data as human, binding
yourself to the rule against murder…Truly, there can be no greater
folly…”
“They are human, Quinella,” Cardinal remonstrated. “The people
who live in the Underworld have the true emotions that we lost.
They laugh, grieve, rejoice, and love. What more does one need to
be human? Whether the container of that soul is a lightcube or a
biological brain is of little matter. This I believe. And thus—I accept
my defeat with pride.”
The mention of the word defeat gouged deep into my chest. But
that was nothing compared to what she said next.
“But I have one condition. I will give you my life…but in exchange, I
ask you not to take the lives of these young ones.”
“…!!”
I held my breath and started to step forward, while Eugeo and
Alice froze with shock. But the sheer willpower radiating from
Cardinal’s figure stopped me short.

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 Administrator narrowed her eyes like a cat with her prey in her
claws and wondered, “Oh…but what do I stand to gain by accepting
this condition of yours?”
“As I said, I’ve been preparing an art for you. If you seek battle, I
could keep your pitiable puppet at bay and tear away half of your
remaining life. With that much stress, your uncertain memory
capacity might be in even worse peril, no?”
“Mmmm…,” she murmured, putting a finger to her cheek and
pretending to think without breaking her smile. “Well, I don’t feel
that my fluctlight is threatened by a battle whose outcome is already
known. But I suppose it would be a bother…and when you say to
spare ‘the lives of the young ones,’ would sending them back to the
lower world from this isolated space fulfill that condition? If you say I
can never do anything to harm them for all eternity, I refuse.”
“No, just a momentary evacuation is all I ask. I trust in them to…”
Cardinal did not finish that sentence. Instead, she turned on her
heel, robe swaying, and looked at me with kindness in her eyes.
I wanted to scream that this was ridiculous. My temporary life here
and Cardinal’s one and only life were not equal. If anything, I was
seriously considering throwing myself at Administrator to buy
Cardinal time to escape instead.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t risk Eugeo’s and Alice’s lives on my
own suicidal gamble. I clutched my sword so hard my hand hurt and
my foot creaked with the pressure against the floor. I was caught
between impulse and reason.
“Hmph. Fine,” said Administrator, her beautiful mouth forming a
smirk. “That gives me another game to look forward to later. Right?
So you have my word to Stacia. I will take the little one—”
“No, don’t swear to any god. Swear to the one thing that you
actually think has absolute value: your own fluctlight,” Cardinal
interrupted.
A slightly exasperated note entered Administrator’s smile, but she
nodded again. “Fine, fine, I’ll swear to the precious data accumulated
in my fluctlight. And once I’ve killed you, I’ll let the other three go
unharmed. That pledge is the one thing I cannot break…for now.”

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 “Good,” said Cardinal. She gave a look to both Eugeo and Alice and
lastly, turned to me. There was a gentle smile on her young face, and
nothing but benevolent kindness in her brown eyes. I couldn’t stop
the emotions in my chest from spilling out as liquid and blotting my
vision.
Her lips opened and silently mouthed the words I’m sorry.
In the distance, Administrator called out a triumphant good-bye to
her victim. She waved her hand, and the Sword Golem stopped
where it was, near the center of the room.
Then she made a clenching gesture, hand still held high, and
glittering bits of light came dancing out of empty air, coalescing into
a long, slender shape.
The object that emerged was a silver rapier. It was as thin as a
needle, with a beautifully curved guard, all of it perfectly silver in
color. It was so delicate that it almost seemed decorative, but the
overwhelming aura surrounding it spoke to its priority value and
made it hard to breathe even at a distance.
Like Cardinal’s black staff, this was Administrator’s personal
weapon—the ultimate source of the power that supported her
sacred arts.
The silver rapier rang like a bell when she pointed it straight at
Cardinal. The sage faced her directly, showing no fear of the divine
weapon trained upon her heart, and walked forward.
Alice and Eugeo leaned forward, as though they were going to
chase after her. But I held my hand out to keep them back. Deep
down, I wanted to swing my sword right through Administrator, of
course. But giving in to my emotions now would only waste
Cardinal’s determination and sacrifice. I had to hold back my tears,
grit my teeth, and stay put.
Rainbows of sheer delight cascaded through Administrator’s eyes
as she stared down at her counterpart. Then a bolt of lightning shot
from the tip of the rapier, painting the entire chamber white for a
split second as it pierced Cardinal’s little body.
In the center of the blurred wall of white that was my vision, I saw
a silhouette bend backward as though it had been flicked.

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 The energy of the beyond-massive lightning bolt charred the air as
it dispersed, and I struggled to keep my eyes open as it threatened to
bowl me over.
The youthful sage hadn’t actually fallen yet. She leaned on her long
staff, feet planted firmly into the carpet, face resolutely pointed at
her archenemy.
But the signs of damage were ghastly. Her black hat and robe were
ragged and smoking, and part of her proud, shining curls was burned
so badly it was basically ash.
As we watched in silent horror just fifteen feet away, Cardinal
lifted her left hand and brushed off her charred hair. When she
spoke, her voice was ragged but loud. “Hmph…So this is all…y-you’re
capable of. Fire as many as you want…but you can’t—”
Krakowww!!
Another mammoth thunderbolt shook the world.
A lightning bolt even greater than the first one rocketed out of
Administrator’s rapier, mercilessly tearing through Cardinal. Her
pointed hat flew off and evaporated into tiny shards. Her body
twitched in agony, slumped to the side, and escaped falling over
entirely only by going to one knee.
“Oh, but of course I’m going easy on you, my little one,”
Administrator whispered, just barely holding back her mad
exultation. “It would be too boring if I finished you off all at once. I’ve
been waiting two hundred years for this…moment!!”
Craaak!! A third blast.
This one arced overhead and struck Cardinal like a whip, slamming
her against the ground with terrifying force. She bounced high and
collapsed to the ground again, where she lay limply.
Half of her velvet robe was charred cinders now, and there were
more burnt holes in the white blouse and black knickers underneath
it. Her skin was white as snow before, but now there were burn
marks like black snakes running along her limbs.
Still, her arm pressed into the carpet, trying to lift her body off it.
As if just to mock this tiny act—practically the last ounce of strength
Cardinal could have had left—Administrator hit her with another

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lightning bolt sideways. The little girl was blasted into the air and
rolled several yards away across the floor.
“Heh…heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh.” From her distant height,
Administrator’s laughter spilled forth, as though she couldn’t hold it
back any longer. “Heh-heh, ah-ha. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha.”
Her mirror eyes had neither white nor iris. Instead, brilliant
refracted rainbow light swirled through them. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-
ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
She held up the rapier, and from its tip poured a succession of
lightning, one bolt after another, endlessly ravaging Cardinal’s
helpless body. Each one kicked her like a ball, burning away her
clothes, her skin, her hair, her very existence.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” bellowed
Administrator, hair spraying as she writhed in demonic pleasure.
I barely even heard the sound. Tears flooded from my eyes and
blurred my vision, and it wasn’t because the rampant flashing of
lightning was burning them. It was just the only outlet for the storm
of feelings that was roaring through me: lamentation that Cardinal’s
life was slipping away before my eyes, fury at Administrator’s delight
in her callous execution, but most of all, anger at myself for being
powerless to do anything but watch.
I couldn’t even ready my sword or take a single step forward. Even
if the worst should come to pass and Cardinal’s sacrifice was utterly
wasted and the voices in my head screamed to use that sword to kill
Administrator, my body might as well have been turned to stone for
all it listened to me.
And I knew why.
If it was my power of Incarnation that caused my Vorpal Strike to
extend far beyond its range to pierce Prime Senator Chudelkin, then
that very same power was what turned me into helpless stone now.
When I attacked the Sword Golem minutes ago, I didn’t put a dent
in it—and its counterattack nearly killed me. The feeling of that cold
blade severing my torso left me with a powerful mental image of
defeat. Terror gripped my limbs, so powerful that it made me all but

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certain that I couldn’t summon that mental image of being Kirito the
Black Swordsman again.
I couldn’t beat any Integrity Knight now. Not even the students at
Swordcraft Academy. And the idea that I might attack the pontifex
was simply laughable.
“…Nngh…hrrk…”
I felt my throat convulse and heard the miserable sobs that
escaped.
Cardinal knew she was defeated, accepted it, and bravely faced
her fate. The thought that she was in the act of giving up her life now
and I was going to be saved by abandoning her filled me with a
festering self-hatred.
Then I noticed Alice, clenching her teeth, and Eugeo, his body
curled, shedding silent tears. I couldn’t know what they were feeling,
but at the very least, it was clear that they, too, were aware of their
own powerlessness.
Even if we escaped with our lives now, what could we possibly do
with these mental scars on our souls?
All we could do was watch as presumably the last and largest bolt
of lightning infused the rapier, which the young woman brandished
on high. “Now…let’s finish this—our two-hundred-year game of hide-
and-seek. Good-bye, Lyserith. Good-bye, my daughter…and my other
self.”
It was almost sentimental, if not for the fact that it came from lips
twisted with sick joy. She lowered the rapier.
The final attack came surging on a million rays of light, striking
Cardinal’s prone body, burning it, obliterating it.
The sage’s body flew high in the air, right leg disintegrating from its
charred state below the knee, and landed at my feet. The sound it
made was dry and weightless, like there was no longer any mass to
her. Pieces of blackened soot scattered off her skin and melted into
thin air.
“Heh-heh…ah-ha-ha-ha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Aaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-
ha!!”

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 Administrator spun the sword in her palm, contorting her upper
body like she was doing a dance. “I can see it…I can see your life
ebbing away, bit by bit!! Oh, what a beautiful sight…each little
droplet like the finest gemstone…Now show me the final act. I will
give you just enough time to say your good-byes.”
I fell to my knees, as though my body had been waiting to obey
that order, and reached out to Cardinal. The right side of her face
was charred black, and her left eye was closed. But where I touched
her cheek, I felt the slightest warmth of life, just before it could
vanish.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had lifted her up with both hands
and cradled her to my chest. My tears overflowed, dropping onto her
badly burned skin.
Her burned eyelashes fluttered and rose. Even at the moment of
her death, Cardinal’s dark-brown eyes were full of everlasting love
and tenderness.
“Don’t cry, Kirito.”
She didn’t say the words aloud. The concept just entered my
consciousness as thought.
“It is not the worst end I could have. I never expected…that I would
die in the arms of someone…whose heart I felt a true connection
with…”
“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…,” I choked out, hardly more audible than
she’d been. Cardinal’s lips—miraculously unharmed—curled into a
faint grin.
“What…do you have…to apologize for? You still have…a duty…to
fulfill. You and Eugeo…and Alice…must find a way…this
beautiful…fragile…world…”
Her voice suddenly got much more distant, and I thought I felt her
body getting lighter. Kneeling nearby, Alice quickly reached out to
engulf Cardinal’s right hand with both of her own.
“We will…we will.” Her voice and cheeks were wet with tears. “You
saved these lives for us…and we will use them to fulfill this mission.”
Eugeo’s hands reached in from the other side. “I swear, too.” He
was full of powerful intent, so forthright that it made me wonder

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whether he was really the same shy, gentle boy I’d known all this
time. “At last, I have learned the duty I am meant to fulfill.”
But I wasn’t expecting the words that came next. Neither was
Alice, and perhaps not even Cardinal.
“And the time for me to fulfill it is now, in this moment. I will not
run. I have…a duty that must be executed.”

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 4

Powerless.
I’m so powerless.
It was the only thought that Eugeo could entertain as
Administrator was charring Cardinal’s body with her tremendous
bolts of lightning.
The Sword Golem, which seemed like some horrific demon from
the land of darkness, had started off just as human as Eugeo. The
thought itself was a shock, and the realization that the pontifex was
capable of envisioning and creating such a thing made him quake
with fear. But what wounded Eugeo deepest of all was the despair
that he was unable to do anything about it.
The entire reason that Eugeo, Kirito, Alice, Charlotte the spider,
and Cardinal had come to the top floor to battle the supreme ruler
was because Eugeo had wished he could save his childhood friend
Alice Zuberg from the clutches of the Axiom Church. It was Eugeo
who had put them in this terrible situation. It should have been him
standing at the very front, fighting and taking all the wounds of
battle. It should have been him.
And what did I do?
He’d fallen prey to Administrator’s seduction, allowed her to steal
his memory, and pointed his sword at his best friend, Kirito. And
when he’d finally regained his wits, he’d encased Kirito and Alice in
ice and gone back to the top floor to defeat the pontifex, but he
couldn’t manage it. In the fight against Chudelkin, the only thing he’d
done was distract the enemy with sacred arts. And then with the
Golem, all he’d done was watch as it had sliced up Charlotte, Kirito,
and Alice.
Am I really this powerless?

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 Alice’s memory fragment is only a dozen or two mels
away…somewhere in the mural on the ceiling. But I failed to get it
back and survived only through Cardinal’s sacrifice, and now I’ll be
thrown out of the tower. Is that the end of my journey?
The pontifex would surely send Eugeo, Kirito, and Alice to far
separate locations. He might not even wind up in Norlangarth
Empire. He might never find Kirito again or get back home to Rulid.
He’d live the rest of his life in a strange, foreign land, trembling in
fear of the Axiom Church’s retribution and cursing his own
foolishness and lack of ability…
At the very least, he could keep his eyes open, to fully take in the
blinding flash of the lightning that struck Cardinal.
And then he realized at last: Accepting the offer of banishment to
another realm was the worst possible choice he could make.
The pontifex herself had said she would turn half the people in the
world, forty thousand of them, into swords. A veritable army of
horrifying, tragic monsters to fight against the army of the land of
darkness.
It meant that every family, every couple would be torn apart. Just
like Eldrie and his mother. Like Deusolbert and his wife. Like Alice
and the Zubergs.
And then they’d be turned into the most hideous and horrific
weapons imaginable. It couldn’t happen. It mustn’t happen.
Stopping that tragedy is my final duty. That’s why I’m here right
now. I don’t have Kirito’s and Alice’s skills with the blade or Cardinal’s
talent for arts…but I know there’s something else I can do. Don’t
waste your time lamenting your lack of power, Eugeo—find a way to
fight.
And so Eugeo stood in place, thinking his hardest.
The Blue Rose Sword was half ice, so it might break the barrier that
rebuffed all metal, but if he just swung it at Administrator, she would
either blaze him with her lightning or send the golem to slice him to
pieces. At best, his Memory Release power might stop her in her
tracks for a moment or two.

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 He couldn’t destroy the Sword Golem first, because its one weak
point, the Piety Module, was safely stored in its chest, far from his
attack range. Even assuming he could reach it, he’d have to strike
through the tiny one-cen gap between the three swords that made
up its spine—while avoiding the attacks of its rib swords. If that was
possible, he’d need the pontifex’s ability to fly and armor that
deflected sharp blades.
If only he could make his body as hard as ice, like the vision of Blue
Rose and permanent ice that he’d seen in the Great Library, and
become one with his sword. Become so hard that neither lightning
nor flame could stop him…nor any blade cut his skin.
Eugeo’s eyes flew open.
There was a way he could do it. There must be.
But even if he could achieve it, there was something else he would
need. A power like that which operated the Sword Golem. Some
miraculous power that would call forth his Memory Release.
Just then, he felt like he heard someone calling his name.
His gaze was drawn upward to the ceiling.
Running around the side of the massive dome was a mural that
depicted the creation of the world. The gods that built the sky and
earth. The ancient humans who were allowed to live there. The gods
choosing a single priestess and giving her the role of guiding
humanity in their stead. The birth of the Axiom Church, and the
building of the white tower in the middle of Centoria.
It was the same as the history book that Eugeo had practically
devoured while he was in the library. But it was probably all fiction. A
story that Administrator had cooked up to make it easier for her to
rule humanity.
At the edge of this ceiling of lies, there was a fine picture of a small
bird. It had a stalk of barley in its beak and was flying away. This was
the blue bird, from the children’s story, that took the stalk from the
strictly regimented fields of the great nobles and flew it out to the
rural areas before it died. At this point in time, it seemed that this
might be the one story that was actually true.
The crystal embedded in the bird’s eye glittered.

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 It was a glitter that had been familiar to Eugeo all his life. The light
that sparkled in the eyes of the little blond girl his age…
And then Eugeo realized his role to play at last.

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 5

Eugeo…what are you going to do? I wondered, my eyes darting.

The flaxen-haired youth, my unquestionable best friend, Eugeo the
swordsman of the Aincrad style, looked back into my eyes for just a
moment and smiled. Then he turned to Cardinal and said, “With
what strength you have left, turn me—turn my body into a sword.
Just like that puppet.”
As though it were bringing her mind back to the surface, this
statement caused Cardinal’s eyes to sharpen again, widening in
surprise.
“Eugeo…are you…?”
“If we escape this place…then Administrator will turn half the
people of the world into those horrible monsters. We cannot let that
happen. If there’s any way to prevent that tragedy, any last hope
remaining, then it must be in that sacred art…”
His smile had the serenity of understanding and acceptance. He
wrapped her left hand in both of his and whispered, “System
Call…Remove Core Protection.”
I’d never heard that command before.
Eugeo closed his eyes when he was finished. On his forehead
appeared a complex series of glowing purple lines, like some kind of
electrical circuit board. They stretched downward, across his cheeks
and his throat, to his shoulders, his forearms, his fingers.
The little pathways of light pushed a small amount of the way into
Cardinal’s left hand where he held it, their ends flickering as though
waiting for an input.
Remove Core Protection.
Based on the definition of the English in that command, I assumed
that Eugeo had just given Cardinal limitless privileges to manipulate
his own fluctlight. I didn’t know how he knew that art, but at the very

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least, it was a trio of words that spoke to his utter determination and
acceptance.
The dying sage’s eyes bulged—one fine, one burned—and her lips
trembled. Her uncertain thoughts traveled through skin contact.
“Are you sure…Eugeo? I don’t know…if you can be turned…back.”
Eugeo closed his eyes, his forehead and cheeks covered in glowing
lines, and bobbed his head. “It’s all right. This is my role…This is the
reason I’m here right now. In fact, there’s one thing I need to tell you
here at the end. Cardinal…Kirito, and Alice. Metal weapons cannot
reach Administrator’s body. It’s why I wasn’t able to stick her with
the dagger you gave me.”
“…!”
Alice and I gasped and held that breath.
But Cardinal didn’t seem surprised at all—or maybe she just didn’t
have the strength to show that much emotion. Her only response
was to blink.
Eugeo bobbed his head and prompted, “Please…do it. Before
Administrator notices.”
“…No, Eugeo. Stop,” I demanded, my throat dry and hoarse. “If
you don’t…make it back…then…then your dream…”
If we actually won this fight and Eugeo didn’t get turned back into
a human, then the hopes he’d been holding on to for the last eight
years—his dream of getting Alice back and taking her home to
Rulid—would never come true.
Administrator and Cardinal were the only two people in the world
capable of this ultra-advanced ability to convert people’s flesh into
weapons. One of them was the ultimate enemy, and the other was
at death’s door. If this gambit actually succeeded, it could very well
leave him with no means to return to human form.
I wanted to continue arguing, but Eugeo turned his purple-lit face
up to the ceiling and interrupted, “It’s okay, Kirito. This is what I was
meant to do.”
“…!”
My best friend’s mind was made up, and there was nothing I could
say to him.

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 And what could I say in such a situation?
One single defeat had me shaken to my core. I couldn’t swing my
sword or even step forward closer to danger.
Instead, I looked pleadingly at Alice. Her blue eyes were full of pain
and respect in equal measure. In the next moment, her head hung
low. She bowed to the criminal whom she’d struck without
hesitation just two days ago at the academy’s great hall.
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. In my arms, Cardinal
struggled to keep her eyes open. “Very well, Eugeo. Then I dedicate
the very last art of my life…to your decision.”
Like a candle before it burned out, her voice regained a valiant bit
of strength inside my mind. Purple glimmers lit up the middle of her
brown eyes.
The pathways of light that ran from Eugeo’s hands to Cardinal’s
suddenly flashed. That light raced through Eugeo’s body, and when it
reached the pattern on his forehead, it emerged as a pillar of light
that blazed all the way to the ceiling.
“What—?!”
That was Administrator, who was still looking drunk with
exultation on the far side of the room. Instantly, her triumphant
expression vanished. Fury crossed her silver eyes, and she bellowed,
“You half-dead little whelp! What are you doing?!”
She pointed her rapier at me, Eugeo, and Cardinal. White sparks
shot from the body of the weapon.
“No, you don’t!!” shouted Alice.
The Osmanthus Blade, which had to be near the end of its
remaining life, disintegrated loudly into a golden chain that flew
through the air. At the same time, an earsplitting blast from a giant
bolt of lightning came toward us.
The tip of the chain brushed the white bolt. The enemy surge was
directed down the length of the chain toward Alice.
But by that point, the golden chain was stretching behind her as
well, the far end jammed into the floor. Locked into the ground wire
and unable to escape back into the air, the massive burst of energy

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flowed directly into the tower itself, producing a roar and white
smoke before it vanished.
Alice leveled her index finger at Administrator and declared, “Your
lightning will not affect me!!”
“Why, you little puppet knight…Don’t you dare speak back to
me!!” the supreme ruler spat, snarling. Just as quickly, her sublime
smile returned, and she held the shining rapier on high. “What about
this, then?!”
A multitude of red dots popped into being around the weapon,
well over thirty. If they were all heat elements, then their number
was certainly over the element-controlling limit of twenty for a
human being.
The Osmanthus Blade’s Perfect Control weakness against shifting
flames had been made clear in the battle against Chudelkin earlier.
But the golden knight did not give way; in fact, she took one loud,
bold step forward, boot clacking against the ground. The golden
whip, sensing its master’s determination, disintegrated into shards
and reformed in a grid pattern.
While the two women faced off, the purple light shining from
Eugeo only grew brighter and brighter, until he suddenly slumped
powerlessly. Instead of falling to the floor, however, he began to
float into the air.
He went into a horizontal position, eyes closed, and all his clothes
vanished as though they’d evaporated. The beam of light rising from
his forehead touched the ceiling. As though answering his call, one of
the pictures in the mural began to twinkle—the little bird soaring
through the ancient skies, its eye crystal shining.
The roughly thirty crystals embedded in the ceiling, the memory
fragments taken from all the Integrity Knights, should have been
active in owning the Sword Golem. Only the bird’s crystal was
different, pulsing with light as it came free from the ceiling and
descended through the beam of light.
And that crystal, perhaps—no, almost certainly—was the memory
fragment belonging to Alice.

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 I suspected that when Alice was synthesized, she’d lost the
memory of her sister, Selka. But if that were the case, then Selka
would’ve already been abducted and turned into a sword here by the
time I first met her in Rulid two years ago.
So if it wasn’t Selka…then who were the memories saved in that
crystal about?
The hexagonal prism crystal, pointed on both ends, descended
silently, offering no answers. The Blue Rose Sword rose from the
floor, rotating, and came to a stop with the tip pointed at Eugeo’s
heart.
Eugeo’s muscled body, the translucent blade of the Blue Rose
Sword, and the crystal prism formed one straight line.
Meanwhile, the distant Administrator screamed and swung down
her rapier.
“Then you can all burn!!”
Thirty heat elements floating around the rapier fused, forming a
giant fireball that shot forth.
“And I said…no you don’t!!” cried Alice, her voice ringing loud and
clear. She pointed her right hand at the swirling flame.
The tiny blades forming a cross in midair swarmed together into a
giant shield. The knight leaned against it and pushed off the ground,
rushing straight toward the coming fireball.
A crash.
A short silence.
The resulting explosion was big enough to rattle the entirety of the
enclosed space. Fire whipped, light flashed, shock waves burst across
the chamber, and most of the carpet on the floor burned into
nothing. Even the massive Sword Golem, inactive across the room,
buckled with the force, and Administrator herself shielded her face
with her arm.
But safe behind Alice’s shield, the worst I felt was a wave of heat
that caused me to gasp. Neither Eugeo floating in the air nor Cardinal
in my arms seemed to have been affected by the blast.
Within a few seconds, the maelstrom of flame was gone, as quickly
as it’d come…and at its center, Alice fell to the ground with a thud. A

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second later the Osmanthus Blade, back to its original form, slumped
next to its master, point stuck in the ground.
Alice’s white-and-blue knight’s uniform was charred and smoking
here and there. Large burn scars ran over her arms and legs; it was
clear from a glance that she was catastrophically wounded. She
didn’t get up—possibly unconscious—but in the valuable few
seconds she bought us, Cardinal managed to finish her command.
Within the pillar of purple light, Eugeo’s body lost its solidity and
turned invisible. The Blue Rose Sword, also becoming transparent,
moved into the center of his chest, fusing with him.
There was another flash.
I squinted against the brightness, and Eugeo unraveled into a
million ribbons of light.
Fiercely swirling, they condensed back into a new shape.
What was left floating there was not human in appearance.
It was one mammoth sword, stark white with the faintest hint of
blue, and a cross-shaped guard. The blade was as long and wide as
Eugeo’s actual body. Its slight curve was beautiful, ending in a
fiercely sharp point. A little furrow in the raised ridge on the flat of
the blade was perfectly sized for the floating crystal to fit inside, and
it did, with a little click.
Cardinal’s arm fell limply to the floor. Her lips quivered, and the
final part of the command escaped like the slightest of breezes.
“Release…Recollection.”
Keeeeennn! The double-edged, six-sided crystal, Alice’s memory
fragment, shone and reverberated. Eugeo’s sword rang on its own to
answer that call and floated even higher.
Now the white greatsword was moving on its own, using the same
logic that powered the Sword Golem. A sword forged from a human
body, the fragment of memories that owned the sword, and the
energy that bound them together: the power of love.
But there was one thing the Sword Golem had that Eugeo’s sword
didn’t: the Piety Module prism that Administrator had placed in the
heart of the golem. That was the tool that twisted the love powering
the creature, driving it to murder.

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 “You’ll pay for this meddling, Lyserith!!” shouted Administrator,
flinching away from the shine of the greatsword as though it was
blinding her. “You can mimic my great creation…That one flimsy
sword cannot withstand the might of my killing machine! I’ll break it
in two!!”
She swung her left hand, and the silent Sword Golem’s eyes lit up
again. It emitted an unpleasant metallic whine and began to shuffle
forward at high speed.
Eugeo’s sword rotated until the flat was entirely level, with the
point trained straight on the five-mel-tall giant. Its white length
shone brighter and brighter, casting off motes of light into the air
around it.
Then the greatsword flew, ringing like a bell. It soared, a
sharpened comet, leaving a long white trail behind it.
“…Beautiful…,” Cardinal thought audibly from my arms.
“Human…love. And the radiating light…of purpose…So…beautiful…”
“Yeah…it is,” I whispered, feeling more tears coming to my eyes.
“Kirito…I leave this to you now…Protect this…world…and
its…people…”
With her last bit of strength, Cardinal turned her head to look at
me with eyes crystal clear and smiled. Once she saw me nod my
understanding, the little girl who was the world’s wisest sage closed
her eyes, exhaled—and never drew breath again.
As I fought against the sobs, I felt the weight in my arms grow
lighter and lighter. In a world blurred by tears, the white sword that
bore Cardinal’s last wish flew straight and true on wings of light.
The golden giant spread its arms and ribs wide to welcome this
oncomer. The blades took position like gleaming jaws, surrounded by
an aura of darkness.
In terms of sheer numerical priority, there was no way that a
greatsword based on Eugeo and his Blue Rose Sword alone could
compete with a golem converted from three hundred human beings.
But Eugeo’s sword sped up regardless, charging into the waiting
fangs of the beast.

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 Its tip was pointed right at the middle of the golem’s spine—which
was made up of three swords in alignment—at the purple light
spilling from the cracks between the swords.
The Piety Module.
Gold and white collided for the briefest of moments. White and
black light tangled, swirled, burst.
The overlapping metal collisions sounded like some beastly roar,
and the golem’s arms and ribs slid down to an intersecting point. But
just before they could close, the white sword plunged deep into the
tiny gap in its backbone.
My ears caught the faintest crackling sound. The purple light
seeping from the spine burst into nothing.
From the point where the white greatsword struck, the thirty
gigantic blades held together with thick darkness began to sparkle
and lighten. It almost felt like Eugeo and Alice’s love was repairing
the sorrow of all those separated lovers.
Greeeee! A discordant scream came from the creature, gradually
resolving into clean, clear harmony, a beautiful musical chord that
rang long and loud before dispersing.
Then the killing machine, the creature that had nearly pushed us to
death, fell apart into its individual swords and burst. Thirty different
swords spun out following thirty different arcs, sticking and clattering
on various surfaces around the room in a deafening clamor.
One of them stood directly behind me like a gravestone. It was
from the left arm of the golem, the one that had sliced into me, but
the aura of evil around it was gone now, and it was just smooth, cold
metal again.
The glittering crystals on the ceiling that were controlling the
golem blinked unsteadily and lost their light until they were still
again. I didn’t know what had happened to the “minds” inside of
them, but at the very least, Administrator’s Perfect Control, which
had abused their emotions for power, was broken—never to return, I
assumed.

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 The white greatsword that had destroyed the Sword Golem in a
single swing was still levitating flat in the air, beams of light shining
off it.
Glistening in the center of the blade was Alice’s memory fragment.
Like a bolt from the heavens, I suddenly understood what was
contained within it.
Thirty-one Integrity Knights. But only thirty swords in the Sword
Golem. The fusion with Eugeo’s sword made it clear that the only
memory fragment that hadn’t been used for that purpose was
Alice’s.
So why couldn’t Administrator forge a sword that would pair up
with Alice’s memories?
It must’ve been because Alice’s memories…her love…was too
great. Young Alice loved Eugeo, loved Selka, loved her parents, loved
everyone who lived in the village, loved Rulid itself, and even loved
the time in which the people she loved lived and would continue to
live.
Even the almighty pontifex couldn’t convert time and space into
solid matter. So she wasn’t able to make a sword she could link to
Alice. And it was why the sword that Alice and Eugeo made was so
beautiful and radiant.
“Yes…it really is beautiful,” I whispered to Cardinal’s soul, which
was now traveling to a place much farther than anywhere in the
Underworld or the real world, as I clutched her body.
She didn’t speak back, but I felt her tiny body taking on a faint
phosphorescence in my arms. It was the exact same kind of purity of
being that I felt from the white sword’s miracle light.
This, to me, was the proof that Cardinal, who was once a girl
named Lyserith, was not simply a program, as she claimed so many
times, but a true human being with real emotions and love.
The glow brought a gentle warmth that penetrated my freezing
flesh, even as her body began to lose its solidity. It was becoming
transparent, until at last the contours broke apart, and she vanished
in a spray of light.

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 The waves lit every surface of the isolated chamber, purifying it
all—until they were ripped apart by a voice like a blade that resisted
everything.
“That was a very vexing stunt to play right at your death, little one.
You’ve put a very nasty scar on my long-awaited memory of
triumph.”
Even after the destruction of her ultimate weapon, Administrator
was as haughty as she’d ever been, a cold smile on her lips. “But the
best she could do was destroy one measly prototype. I can make
hundreds of them, thousands.”
The way she boasted about this with her rapier in hand was so
mechanical, so utterly artificial, that it truly made me wonder,
despite her having the same origins as Cardinal, whether she had
actually lost her ability to feel emotion. Her shining white skin and
dazzling silver hair exuded pulses of darkness like some kind of
miasma.
Deep inside me, the cold serpent of fear bared its fangs once
again. On instinct, I clutched my now empty arms together.
The seemingly invincible Sword Golem was destroyed, but at a
tremendous cost. We’d lost the sage who was the only person in the
world capable of counteracting Administrator’s overwhelming
power.
All I could do was stare up at the pontifex in silent horror—but
Eugeo’s sword kept rising, and with a smooth ringing sound, it
pointed directly at our last and greatest foe.
“Oh?” Administrator’s mirror eyes narrowed. “You still want to
fight, little boy? A little bit overconfident, just because you managed
to stick in the gap and destroy my puppet, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t even be sure whether her words were registering with
Eugeo while he was in sword form. But the pure-white blade
steadfastly held its tip in her direction. The shine that surrounded the
weapon grew stronger, its vibrating pitch growing higher and higher.
“…Stop it, Eugeo,” I rasped, reaching out toward the shining sword.
“Don’t…don’t go alone.”

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 Driven by a burning panic, I shuffled over the charred carpet on
weakened knees. I stretched as far as I could toward the sword and
touched one of the motes of light that came off it, but the mote
burst and vanished.
Out of the handle of the greatsword, another set of wings made of
light grew. The wings flapped hard, pushing the white weapon
directly at Administrator.
A wicked grin appeared on her pearly lips. Her mirrored rapier
creaked as she swung it down, and another blast of lightning,
perhaps even bigger than the ones that killed Cardinal, burst forward
to meet the rushing sword of light.
The instant the lightning touched the tip of the sword, there was
an even greater shock wave than the one that had started upon the
Sword Golem’s destruction. Even at my distance, it buffeted my
weakened body.
I tensed against the shock and did my best to keep my eyes open,
which is how I saw that Administrator’s bolt of lightning erupted into
millions of tiny tributaries.
Baaaam!! A peal of thunder accompanied the flying sparks, which
in turn created their own, much smaller explosions around the room.
And even through the tremendous deluge of energy that it
shattered, the sword flew on. The white surface of its blade was
covered in fine cracks, and pieces began to fall off. They were parts
of Eugeo’s body, pieces of his very life.
“Eugeo!!” I screamed, my voice lost in the storm.
“Boy…!!” The smile was gone from Administrator’s lips.
The white greatsword reached the source of the lightning at last.
Its point hit the needle end of the rapier right on the nose.
An ultra-high-pitched resonance arose, shaking the isolated
chamber. For a few moments, Administrator’s silver rapier—the
source of her godly power—and the white blade that was the fusion
of Eugeo and the Blue Rose Sword grappled for supremacy. It looked
like total stillness, but I could feel on my skin that this was only the
precursor to the coming wave of destruction.

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 What happened next passed as though it were happening in slow
motion.
Administrator’s rapier shattered into tiny pieces.
The white greatsword split in two, spraying motes of light.
The front end of the blade shot off, spinning, and silently sliced
Administrator’s right arm clean off at the shoulder.
The image burned itself into my retinas until sound and vibration
finally caught up.
Sacred resources burst forth from the shattered rapier and
exploded in a colorful array that engulfed the room.
“Eugeooooooo!!”
Again, my scream was swallowed by the storm that buzzed and
squealed like analog static. An oncoming shock wave smashed into
my body as it hurtled toward the southern windows. I just barely
managed to take cover behind one of the giant swords stuck into the
ground that had been part of the golem just minutes ago.
When I could at last stand again, I saw Administrator standing on
the ground on her own two feet, clutching her shoulder with her
remaining hand…and two large shards of metal at her feet.
Eugeo’s broken sword still contained a faint trace of its glow. But
even as I watched, it was growing weaker, pulsing like a beating
heart, until it disappeared.
The pieces of the white sword began to lose their sense of being,
gradually reverting to human form.
The piece from the tip to the middle of the blade became the legs.
And the part including the guard and hilt became the torso and
head.
Eugeo was clutching the crystal prism to his chest, his eyes shut.
His flaxen hair and milky skin were back to their full, solid texture.
Then, the cross sections where his body was split in two erupted
with blood, immediately flooding Administrator’s bare feet.

“Ah……ah………”
The sound that croaked from my throat came to my ears as though
from a very far distance.

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 The entire world lost color, lost smell, lost sound. Everything paled.
In the midst of this existence without sensation, only the color of
the blood that continued to spill out had any vivacity to it. Something
sparkling descended right next to Eugeo, who was lying in a crimson
sea.
It landed and stuck in the liquid, sending a ripple outward—a
slender blue-silver longsword, the Blue Rose Sword. I thought it was
unharmed, but only for a moment; it promptly shattered, the
pointed half of the sword breaking apart into ice crystals.
Without its support, the handle half of the sword tipped over and
landed next to Eugeo’s face. It sent up a splash of blood flecks that
hit Eugeo’s cheek, only to roll back down his skin.
I managed a few wobbling steps before I fell to my knees. With
glassy eyes, I clutched my own sides, clinging to what warmth of
Cardinal’s body still resided in my arms. But that faint heat did
nothing to fill the growing void within me. It was like my mind, my
body, and even my soul were going hollow.
Let’s end this already.
The thought rose from the emptiness like a bubble and popped.
We—no, I—had lost, in every sense of the word.
My one single reason for being in this place was to help free
Eugeo’s soul into the real world. Instead, he’d sacrificed himself to
protect me, and I was powerless, on my hands and knees—the man
who would simply log out to reality when he died in the Underworld.
I just want to fade out, to vanish from the world. I don’t want to
see any more, hear any more.
All I prayed for was my own obliteration.
But the Underworld was its own reality, and its master was not a
program designed to stop once you hit the bad ending.
As she stood in the sea of blood, Administrator’s pale, featureless
beauty took on the slightest bit of color, which vanished just as
quickly. Her gorgeous voice brushed aside the silence of the room.
“I have not suffered such injury in two hundred years. Since my
fight with Lyserith.”

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 It almost seemed like there was a note of praise, of admiration, in
her voice.
“In terms of priority, Eugeo’s converted sword shouldn’t have been
able to match my Silvery Eternity. I’m surprised at the result. I
suppose it was my mistake not recognizing that his sword wasn’t
metallic in nature.”
Drops of blood dripped from her right shoulder, creating more
ripples in the puddle at her feet. She caught one in her left palm,
converted it to light elements, and rubbed it on the wound. Instantly,
the severed cross section sealed over into smooth skin.
“Well,” she said, turning her mirror eyes and their long lashes
toward me now that she was done with her emergency treatment,
“I’ll admit that I’m a bit surprised that you were the one who lasted
this long, little boy. I’m mildly curious as to why you came here
without administrator privileges…but I’ve also grown tired of this. I
will ask the one from the other side about how this came to be later.
For now, I’ll let your blood and screams round out this
confrontation.”
She began to stride gracefully forward, betraying no sign that she
was suffering from her severed arm. She stepped over Eugeo’s split
body and proceeded toward me, leaving bloody footprints on the
bare marble floor.
As she walked, she reached out sideways, and something white
flew up from the ground behind her. It was a slender right arm—the
limb that Eugeo’s sword had cut off her.
I thought she was going to reattach it to her shoulder, but instead,
she lifted it up to her face, holding it by the wrist, and blew on it.
Instantly, the arm was wreathed in purple light, shuddering
mechanically as it underwent matter conversion.
What appeared was a silver longsword, simple in design but
beautifully elegant. Its finish wasn’t the perfect unbroken mirror that
the rapier’s was, but given the fact that it was using the arm of the
most powerful person in the world as its resource, I was certain that
the power it contained was more than enough to separate my head
from my shoulders.

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 Death approached on quiet footsteps. I awaited it from my knees.
In just a few seconds, the administrator of this world arrived
before me, dazzlingly beautiful despite her missing arm, and gazed
down at me.
I looked up and met the colorful reflection of her mirror eyes.
There was just a hint of mirth in them, and a gentle cast to her voice.
“Good-bye, little boy. Let’s meet again someday on the other
side.”
She raised the sword, which caught the light of the moon.
A blade as sharp as a razor cut a blue arc through space toward my
neck.
And then there was a silhouette occupying the space before me.
Long hair fanned through the air.
All I could do was watch as the wounded knight held her arms out
wide.
I had seen this before.
Was I going
to repeat
the same
mistake…

…yet again?!
The thought flashed into my head, stopping time.
In a monochrome world without sound or color, a number of
things happened in quick succession.
A small hand brushed my right arm where it dangled lifelessly.
The cold fear and resignation that consumed my entire being
melted just a bit with the warmth of that palm.
The negative thoughts hadn’t vanished. But the owner of the hand
was telling me that it was okay to admit that weakness.
“You don’t have to always win every time. If you lose eventually, if
you fall, you just need to connect your heart, your will, to someone
else.
“I am certain that is how all of those who shared time with you and
moved on felt. Even I.

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 “Which means you can stand again.
“To protect someone you love.”

I was conscious of a mild heat emanating from my body, or

perhaps my mind, sending circuits of light into my frozen fluctlight.
From the center of my chest, through my right shoulder, down my
arm, into my fingers.
My tense fingertips were suddenly engulfed in a burning heat.
With speed I’d never experienced before, my right hand shot to
the handle of my black sword nearby and grabbed it.
Then time flowed once more.

Administrator’s sword plunged down at the left shoulder of Alice,

who stood with arms outstretched to take the blow for me. The
sharp blade ripped the sleeve of the charred knight’s uniform and
was just about to sink into her pale skin.
I swung my sword as I rose to my feet, and I caught the end of the
silver sword just in the nick of time, sending up a shower of sparks.
The resulting shock pushed Administrator away from Alice and me.
My free hand slipped around to steady Alice as she fell back
against me, while the force of the impact pushed me toward the
wall—it took both feet holding firm to prevent a collision. She rested
her head against my right shoulder, then turned to look up at me
with her blue eyes.
“Oh…” Her cheeks, still ugly and burned from the fire attacks she’d
suffered, crinkled into a smile. “You can still move…after all,” she
whispered.
“…Yeah,” I said, giving her as close to a smile as I could manage.
“Now leave the rest to me.”
“I think…I will.”
And with that, Alice fell unconscious and slumped to her knees.
I lowered her to the floor and set her back against the window. I
sucked in a deep breath and stood again.
Get some rest and leave this to me. Charlotte, Cardinal, and Eugeo
have given their lives for mine…so I’ll make sure to pass it on to you.

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 The one thing that was most important was to get Alice out of this
enclosed space somehow. I had to fight this woman and at the very
least tie if I couldn’t win. Even if that meant losing all my limbs,
getting stabbed through the heart, or getting my head chopped off.
I leveled my gaze, keenly aware of these possibilities, and stared at
my foe.
Administrator’s grin was as faint as ever as she gazed at the hand
holding her sword. There was a part of her soft palm that was
rubbed red and raw, probably from the earlier shock wave.
“…I’m starting to get truly cross,” she said with glacial ferocity. Her
mirror eyes, too, were as icy as though frost had gathered on them.
“What is wrong with you people? Why do you struggle so hideously
for no gain? The outcome of the battle is clear already. What
meaning can there be in the process of reaching that foregone
conclusion?”
“The process is what’s important. The part where you either die
crawling or die with a sword in your hand. That’s what makes
us…human beings.”
I closed my eyes and imagined my past self again. The self-image
of Kirito the Black Swordsman that I’d kept defining for myself for
years. The part of me that could never lose—the curse that said if I
ever fell in battle, I’d lose everything I ever had.
But now I needed to free myself from that fear and fixation.
When my eyelids rose, long bangs hung over my eyes. I brushed
them away with a gloved hand and swept my long black coat aside to
brandish my longsword.
A short distance away, Administrator raised an eyebrow, then put
on a cruel smile like the one she’d worn when she took Cardinal’s
life.
“That black outfit…You look just like a black knight from the Dark
Territory. Very well. If you simply must suffer, then I will ensure that
your fate is very, very long and torturous. The kind that will make you
beg for death’s merciful release.”

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 “That won’t be enough to atone for my stupidity,” I muttered,
dropping my stance and keeping my eyes on the tip of the silver
sword in her left hand.
I’d seen plenty of Administrator’s superlative power with sacred
arts today, but given that her rapier—apparently named Silvery
Eternity—was broken, I assumed she could no longer use that
valuable resource as a power reserve to execute her rapid-fire arts. It
was why she’d had to convert her own severed arm into this sword.
Sword-on-sword fighting was exactly what I wanted, but her skill
was a total unknown. I assumed that, like the Integrity Knights, she
would gravitate toward major single-attack skills, but if my fight
against Alice on the eightieth floor had taught me anything, it was
that this wasn’t the weakness it might sound like.
My weapon’s priority value was probably the lower of the two, so
if our swords clashed enough, my already-damaged black sword
would break. I had to keep close and try to seize victory with a
combination attack, something that Administrator wouldn’t know
about.
With that in mind, I lowered my center of gravity farther, ready to
charge. I slid my right foot forward and pulled my left back, tensing
them against the hard floor.
For her part, Administrator coolly raised her sword high behind her
head. As I’d suspected, she was using a stance of the traditional
High-Norkia style. The attack that would be unleashed was certain to
be so fast and heavy that I couldn’t shrug it off with a deflection. I
had to avoid it entirely and get past her defense.
“…!”
I sucked in a deep breath, tensing my stomach.
The instant I saw her sword waver, I leaped off the floor.
My enemy’s sword glowed blue. Detecting that it was the sword
skill known to me as Vertical, I pushed harder off my left foot,
veering my course right. Vertical was as straight as the name
suggested, which made it difficult to aim at targets fleeing to the
sides.

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 The blue trail of the silver sword approached at terrifying speed. I
turned to my left, trying desperately to make myself a small target
and get past the blade. The end of my coat flapped wide and was
severed clean off.
I dodged it!
Next I pushed off my right leg, reversing the sideways drift of my
progress, and pulled back my sword…
But the shine in Administrator’s sword did not vanish.
“…?!”
As I yelped in shock, her sword completely ignored all inertia and
bounced back with a speed that made no sense. There was no way I
could avoid it. Instead, I pushed my sword forward, trying to get it
into the path of the swing.
Gyaiiing! A cloud of sparks burst with the tremendous impact. I’d
successfully blocked the attack, but the pressure was so intense that
I felt my right wrist creak. The momentum was strong enough that I
had to jump backward to keep from losing my balance. I could use
footwork to dodge her upward swing and throw in a counter—
—but once again, her skill with the sword surpassed my
imagination.
After tracing a V shape back to an upright position, her sword
again roared downward. My weight was held forward, so I couldn’t
evade the third attack and caught a shallow slice on my left breast. It
was only a scratch, but worse than the pain was the fear and shock
that jolted through my body.
If the sword skill Administrator was using was the one I knew, then
trying to dodge or half-heartedly block it would only get me killed.
“Yaaaah!!” I roared to dispel my fear, activating a sword skill from
a posture that wasn’t really meant for it. It was the single diagonal
slash Slant.
This time my expectations were dead-on, and Administrator’s
sword practically teleported upward to an overhead position before
striking for a fourth time, its deadliest blow yet.

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 My black sword met the silver one as it came straight down. The
special light effect that happened when two sword skills clashed lit
up our faces.
The fourth of a four-attack combination couldn’t be neutralized
with a normal single skill. Fortunately for me, Administrator didn’t
have her right arm now. Her balance was off, and the slash slipped to
the left as it descended.
Gyarinnng! When our swords separated, this time I leaped
purposefully outside of swing range.
I touched the cut on my chest and came away with a bit of red on
my fingers. It wasn’t enough damage to need healing from sacred
arts, but I was less concerned with my own flesh than I was horrified
about the vivid slice across my leather coat, which was much higher
quality than it looked—although it was produced only through the
sheer power of my imagination.
Since I was left speechless, Administrator took it upon herself to
describe what she had done.
“That was the One-Handed Sword’s four-part sword skill Vertical
Square…wasn’t it?”
There was a brief mental lag before my mind fully processed the
meaning of what I’d just heard.
She was correct about the name of the attack. But…
Sword skill.
She’d said the proper name.
Yes, sword skills did exist in the Underworld, just as they did in old
SAO. But here, they were “ultimate techniques,” and their dramatic
effects were seen not as active system assistance but as simply the
power unlocked from the sword once the user had undergone
enough training.
But those techniques these humans used were limited to single-
attack skills like Vertical, Cyclone, and Avalanche. It was how I’d won
so many duels and battles with my Aincrad-style continuous blade,
and I assumed that it would be my only chance at victory here in the
final battle, too.

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 But if Administrator could utilize sword skills and execute
combination skills of four parts or more, then my advantage was
gone.
I inched backward, consumed by confusion and panic—and then I
caught sight of Eugeo’s maimed body. Blood was still seeping from
where he’d been cleaved in half. He had minutes at best before his
life ran out.
That beset me with even more to worry about. I needed to think.
Eugeo had been turned into an Integrity Knight, which had
temporarily blocked his memory and caused him to fight me. So she
must have done a pass on his memories when she did the Synthesis
Ritual. In other words, it was possible that she’d scooped the name
and movement of Vertical Square from Eugeo’s memories.
If that was correct, then Administrator could do One-Handed
Sword skills only up to mid-level expertise. I’d never shown my
partner the highest skills, after all.
So if I used an attack with over four parts, I still had a chance. The
highest of One-Handed Sword skills was actually ten swings in total.
And this wasn’t the time to be holding back.
I opened my stance and shifted the way I held my sword, and
Administrator took note of this and giggled.
“Oh…you’ve still got that feisty look in your eyes? Very good. Then
show me a bit more fun, little boy.”
Despite losing one arm, and the major damage to life value that
entailed, the pontifex never seemed anything less than confident
and in control. I didn’t rise to the bait; I just sucked in a deep breath
and held it.
The mental image of the sword skill burned into my body and
memory came flooding back, vivid and fresh. Already, my sword was
beginning to glow with a pale effect.
From the right, it swung around in a circle until it was directly
overhead.
“Haaaah!!” I screamed, activating the highest-level One-Handed
Sword skill, Nova Ascension.

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 My body blazed through the air at an impossible speed, pushed by
an invisible force. The first blow of the skill was a quick high slice that
could get the jump on just about any other skill. No other longsword
skills were faster.
Half a second until my slice caught Administrator’s left shoulder.
My senses were so accelerated that passing through time was akin
to moving through a viscous jelly.
The tip of the silver longsword pointed right at me.
Silver steel shone in a cross shape.
Dak-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!! Six light-speed thrusts riddled my body, first
vertically, then horizontally.
“Guh……”
Blood shot from my mouth.
My ten-move combo, its first attack interrupted, simply vanished
into the air as the ice-blue glow around my blade dispersed.
I couldn’t even register what had happened, much less theorize
how it had happened. Bewildered by pain and shock, I stumbled
backward, staring at Administrator’s sword as it pulled free from my
stomach.
Six consecutive thrusts.
There was no such skill in the One-Handed Sword category.
Hot blood was gushing from small holes in my shoulders, chest,
throat, and stomach. The strength went out of my knees, and I thrust
my sword into the ground in an attempt to stay upright.
Administrator neatly stepped back to avoid the splashing blood
and covered her mouth with the blade of her sword, which suddenly
appeared to be much thinner.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha…Too bad, little boy.” The beautiful pontifex’s lips
curled upward in mocking fashion over the fierce edge of the sword.
“That was the six-attack rapier skill Crucifixion.”
No way.
I had never shown Eugeo that move. More importantly, I could
never use that move. The most I’d done was see it used a few times
all the way back in Aincrad.

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 I felt the world warping around me. Unless it was actually me that
was warping. I was struggling to find an answer that described the
impossible situation I was facing.
Did she peer into my memories? Did she steal that move from my
fluctlight…? And if so, does that mean she perfectly executed a skill
that I myself had nearly forgotten…?
“That can’t be…,” I croaked, in a voice that didn’t even sound like
my own. “That’s impossible…”
My teeth creaked with the pressure of my grinding jaw. I yanked
my sword out of the ground, trying to forget an anger that I didn’t
understand and the fear that refused to release me from its clutches.
I tensed my legs, taking a wide, firm stance despite my weakness.
My left hand went out front, and my right hand pulled in close.
This was the stance for Vorpal Strike, the single-attack skill that had
defeated Chudelkin.
The distance between us was five yards. Well within my range.
“Raaaah!!” I bellowed from deep in my gut, trying desperately to
draw on more of the imagination power that had recently wilted. My
sword glowed a ferocious crimson color where it rested on my
shoulder. It was the color of blood—of naked intent to kill.
In response, Administrator stretched her legs front and back, sank
down, and, like I had, smoothly moved her rapier over to her right
side. There she paused.
As if just to prove that my eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me
seconds earlier, her slender rapier changed shape again. It was wider
and thicker now. One sharp edge, long and smoothly curved. Why, it
was just like a…
No. No more thoughts. Just rage.
“Ruoaaahh!!” I bellowed with animalistic fury and swung.
“Hsst!!” spat Administrator with a short but sharp hiss. The sword
at her right side shone bright silver.
It was faster than the straight-line Vorpal Strike and beautifully
curved. Her abrupt motion slashed across my chest.

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 A brief instant later, an impact like a giant’s fist smashed me
backward. I flew high through the air, much of my remaining life
spraying into the air as a red mist.
With her left arm held in place at the end of her swing,
Administrator spoke so quietly that I barely heard her.
“Single-attack katana skill Zekkuu.”
I didn’t recognize that sword skill—but I had to guess that it meant
Severed Void.
It was more than shock. I felt like the world itself was crumbling
around me as I crashed to the floor. Blood splashed everywhere at
the impact.
But it wasn’t my blood. I’d fallen into the frighteningly large pool of
blood that flooded from the two halves of Eugeo’s body. My body
was frozen, leaving only my eyes capable of movement. I strained
them as far as they could go to see Eugeo’s top half lying right
nearby.
My partner of two years was facing my direction, his skin pale and
eyes closed. Little bits of blood still seeped from the grisly wound.
Whether his life was already gone or on the verge of running out, it
was clear that he wouldn’t be regaining consciousness like this.
Only one thing was clear: I had wasted the life that he’d given his
to keep alive.
I couldn’t beat her.
Not in sacred arts, of course, but not in sword battle, either. She
was far superior to me in every way.
There was no way I could know how she’d learned such a wide
variety of sword skills. At the very least, it was clear she hadn’t
gotten them from Eugeo’s memories nor my own.
Sword skills weren’t a part of the basic Seed package that the
Underworld was built upon. The only game that used them was
ALfheim Online, which was built into the old SAO server. But there
was no way that the Rath engineers who’d built the Underworld,
much less Administrator herself, would have stolen the sword-skill
system from the ALO server.

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 Any further conjecture was pointless. Even if I discovered the truth
somehow, nothing about it would change the obvious reality of my
situation.
Charlotte’s sacrifice, Eugeo’s determination, Alice’s
resolution…and Cardinal’s last will. And all I’d achieved with them
was…
“Yes. That’s the face I like to see.”
A voice like a frozen blade caressed my neck. Administrator
walked, barefoot and languid, across the marble floor toward me.
“I suppose people from the other side must have richer
expressions. I wish I could save that despair of yours for all eternity.”
She chuckled to herself. “And while I assumed fighting with swords
would be a terrible bore, I have to say, it’s not bad. You get to feel
yourself inflicting that agony upon the opponent. Since we’re doing
this, I want you to try a little harder, boy. I want to have more fun
with you, slicing you to pieces, starting with your fingers and toes.”
…Do your…worst, I mouthed. Hurt me, torture me, kill me…
At least make sure that before I vanish from this world, I suffer ten
times, a hundred times, worse than Eugeo and Cardinal.
I lost the strength to speak. Even the hand still stuck to the handle
of my black sword was about to lose its grip…
Until just then, when I heard a whisper at my ear.
“This isn’t…like you. To just…give up.”
It was a halting voice, one about to fade away forever—but one I
would never mistake for another.
My eyes rolled upward again. My mind was a blank.
Green eyes, so familiar and comforting they made me want to cry,
looked back at me through barely lifted lids.
“Eu…geo,” I gasped. My partner gave me a faint smile.
When the Sword Golem had nearly sliced through my stomach, I
couldn’t move from the pain and terror. But what I’d suffered was
nothing next to Eugeo. He was severed clean through—bones,
organs, everything. The agony should have been enough to utterly
destroy his fluctlight. And yet…

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 “Kirito,” Eugeo said, his voice stronger this time, “I
remember…when they took Alice away…how I couldn’t move…But
you…you were so brave at that young age…standing up to the
Integrity Knight like that…”
“…Eugeo…”
It was immediately clear to me that he was referring to when Alice
had been taken away from Rulid Village eight years ago. But I hadn’t
been there at the time. At first, I thought he was confusing it with
some other memory, but the look in his green eyes was so crystal
clear and lucid that it obliterated any doubts I had that he was telling
the truth.
“…So this time…I’m going…to give you that push. Go on, Kirito…I
know you can…stand again. You can stand…as many times…as it…”
His right hand twitched. Through the tears that flooded my eyes, I
saw his fingers scoop up a piece of blue-silver metal from the sea of
blood—the handle of the Blue Rose Sword.
Amid the pool of his own lifeblood, Eugeo squeezed the handle of
the sword, which had lost its blade, and closed his eyes. A warm
orange glow abruptly engulfed the area. The red sea beneath us
shone and pulsed.
“What did you—?!” Administrator raged. But the invincible
overlord covered her face with her remaining hand and backed
away, almost as though she was afraid of the orange light.
The sea of blood grew brighter and brighter, until it was a blanket
of tiny lights that floated off the ground all at once. The levitating
motes then descended and began to swirl, funneling down into
Eugeo’s sword.
A new blade began forming out of the cracked base of the sword.
Matter conversion.
This was a miracle that should only have been possible for the two
managers of this world. My breath caught in my throat. A fearsome
roil of emotions surged in my chest, bursting out of me in the form of
a fresh wave of tears.

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 Soon the Blue Rose Sword was its old length again. The fine carving
of the rose that was its namesake was now a deep-red color. The
blade, guard, grip—everything was turning a brilliant red.
With trembling arms, Eugeo held out the beautiful weapon—now
more like the “Red Rose Sword”—to me.
Despite having no sensation in it a moment ago, my left hand
extended toward the sword, as though pulled by it, and closed
around both Eugeo’s hand and the weapon handle.
Energy instantly surged deep into my body.
I didn’t believe it was sacred arts.
This was the power of Eugeo’s will itself. Pure Incarnation power.
I felt the resonance of the soul from his fluctlight to mine, crossing
the boundary of worlds.
His hand went limp and left the sword to me, then fell to the floor.
Through his faintly grinning lips, from his mind to mine, came a few
short words.
“Now stand, Kirito. My friend…My…hero…”
The pain of the wounds all over my body vanished.
The cold emptiness at the center of my breast evaporated in the
midst of blazing heat.
I stared at the side of Eugeo’s face, his eyes now closed, and
whispered, “Yes…I will stand for you. As many times as it takes.”
Just seconds ago my arms felt no sensation whatsoever. Now I
held them high, black sword in one hand and red sword in the other,
and propped myself up off the floor with the blades to get to my
feet.
My body did not want to listen. My legs trembled, and my arms
felt as heavy as lead. Still, I managed to walk, step by agonizing step.
Administrator stopped averting her face as I approached, and she
stared me down with white-hot fury in her eyes.
“…Why?” she demanded, her voice deep and distorted with a
metallic edge. “Why do you foolishly resist your fate?”
“…That’s why…,” I replied hoarsely. “Resisting is the only reason
I’m here right now.”

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 I didn’t stop walking, despite the many times I nearly toppled over.
I just kept moving.
The swords I was holding were unbelievably heavy. But the weight
of their existence gave me strength and willed my legs to keep
moving.
In the long, long past, in a different world than this one, I had
engaged in battles of life and death with two swords, just like this.
This was the real me…the real Dual-Bladed Kirito.

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 Again, the power of my memory, my vision, overwrote reality, and
the black coat that was sliced to pieces here and there became
whole again. The bodily damage I’d suffered wasn’t gone, but
whatever my remaining life value was now didn’t matter. As long as I
could move and swing my swords, I could fight.
Administrator, eyes blazing with fury, took a step back. A second
later, she realized that she had retreated, and her white features
took on all the wrath of some demon god.
“…How dare you.” Her lips didn’t even move. The words just
rippled her mouth like heat haze. “This is my world. I will not stand
for an uninvited intruder acting this way. Kneel. Expose your neck.
Acquiesce!!”
The air rumbled, and an aura of darkness rose from the pontifex’s
feet, swirling in many layers. The silver sword shifted from a katana
back to a longsword, and she pointed it, shrouded in darkness, right
at my face.
“…Wrong,” I said, planning for this to be my final statement. I
stopped just before the range of her sword skills. “You are merely a
plunderer. One who does not love the world, nor the people who live
in it…has no right to be called a ruler!!”
I took a stance. The Red Rose Sword in my left hand went in front,
and the black sword in my right went to the rear. I pulled back my
left leg. I lowered my waist.
Administrator slowly brandished the silver sword, raising it
overhead. Her pearly lips uttered a phrase she was very familiar with,
this time in the most menacing way.
“To love is to rule. I love all. I rule all!!”
The silver sword grew larger, overflowing with thick darkness.
Instantly, the blade was the size of a two-handed sword, its black
aura mixed with streaks of brilliant red. Then the hefty weapon came
hurtling furiously downward. That was the High-Norkia technique
Mountain-Splitting Wave—otherwise known as the Two-Handed
Sword skill Avalanche.

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 That attack was the symbol of the Underworld’s nobility and had
caused hell for me and Eugeo on many occasions. I blocked it with
the intersection of my two swords: the Dual Blades defensive skill
Cross Block.
“Gahhhh!” I bellowed, summoning all my strength to knock back
the enemy’s weapon. The pontifex’s eyes seemed to widen just a bit.
“Enough tricks!” she shouted, jumping back a step. She steadied
her weapon, which was back to being a normal longsword again, at
shoulder height.
I pulled back my black sword to an equivalent position on my right.
Matching vibrations thrummed from both our swords, like
combustion engines overlapping and harmonizing. Black and silver
swords shone crimson.
Administrator and I leaped at the same time, activating the same
sword skill simultaneously: Vorpal Strike.
Like two sides of a mirror, our swords pulled back like arrows, held
for an instant to glow twice as bright, then shot forward.
The tips of the two swords followed straight lines, brushing just
the tiniest bit before they passed each other.
With a heavy jolt, my right arm was cut clean off below the
shoulder.
But likewise, my sword severed Administrator’s left arm at the
joint.
Two arms, each holding a sword, soared through the air, spraying
red.
“Damn youuuu!!”
Administrator was now armless, and her eyes burned with rainbow
fires. Her long silver hair stood on end like a living creature, waving in
the air in countless locks. The ends of those bunches of hair turned
to sharp needles that bore down on me.
“Not yet!!” I roared, sending crimson light jetting down the length
of the Red Rose Sword still held tightly by my left hand.
The second blow of the Dual Blades Vorpal Strike, something that
would’ve been impossible in Aincrad, broke through the swarm of
silver hair—

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—and sank deep into Administrator’s chest.

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 A sensation unbelievably heavy and solid rang in my palm. A
feeling so vivid, so harrowing, that I forgot all about the pain of being
stabbed by the rapier, or being sliced by the katana, or losing my arm
to the longsword.
The edge of the blade sliced through Administrator’s smooth skin,
broke her breastbone, and blasted her heart behind it—sensations
that I was painfully cognizant of.
I had destroyed a human life. It was an act I’d been terrified of
since I came to the understanding that the people of this world had
true human fluctlights. I’d felt that fear when I used my sword skill
on Chudelkin, too.
But in this one instance, I didn’t have an ounce of hesitation.
Cardinal had left the future in our hands, and faltering was not an
option.
And for the sake of the proud overlord Administrator, too.
I had only a second to indulge in that kind of thinking.
The Red Rose Sword, buried deep within her breast, shone with a
light far more powerful than that of the sword skill itself. The blade,
constructed from the resource of Eugeo’s own blood, twinkled as if it
were a piece of a star.
And in the next instant, all the resources burst—causing a gigantic
explosion.
Her eyes were bulging as far as they could go, a silent scream
erupting from her mouth. All over the most beautiful naked body in
the world, fine lines of light spread and burst forth.
An explosion of pure energy ballooned outward, swallowing
everything in its midst.
I got tossed up like cotton fluff and slammed into the southern
window. When I bounced off it and hit the floor, I could feel the
blood gushing out of the wound on my right shoulder.
It was a wonder that I still had that much blood to lose after all the
cuts I’d taken already. For a moment, I wondered whether my life
really was going to run out, but there was still work to be done. I had
to live at least a bit longer.

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 I glanced at the sword in my hand. The blade was back to its
previous half length, and the rose decoration on the side was blue
once more. I placed the sword on the ground and squeezed my right
shoulder hard.
Strangely enough, white light flooded from my palm and sank into
the wound, warm and soothing, without needing any command. The
instant I felt the bleeding had stopped, I let go. The spatial resources
had to be nearly dried up, and I didn’t want to waste what was left.
I put my left hand, not glowing anymore, on the floor and pushed
myself up.
Then I gasped.
Through the floating little bits of lights that I assumed were the
aftermath of the explosion, I saw the silver-haired girl—who
should’ve been obliterated into nothing—standing unsteadily on her
own two feet.
It was a wonder that her shape was still human at all. Her arms
were gone, a gaping hole sat in the middle of her chest, and there
were cracks running all over her skin, as if it were porcelain that was
ready to break.
And what flowed from that multitude of wounds was not blood.
Something like silver and purple sparks was sputtering and
shooting from her body, filling the air. It was a sight that made it
seem like the people she’d turned to swords weren’t the only ones
whose bodies had been changed—hers didn’t seem to be biological,
either.
Her melted-platinum hair had lost its shine and hung in a
bedraggled state. Through the shadows they cast, I saw her lips
move, emitting a croak that I could just barely hear.
“…Not just one…but both swords…not made of metal…hah…ha-
ha…” She laughed, shoulders bobbing like a broken puppet. “What a
surprise…what an unexpected…outcome…I’ve suffered a
wound…that I cannot heal…even by gathering up the
remaining…resources here…”

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 I had been in the grips of a nightmare vision of Administrator
healing herself instantly and entirely, but now I was able to exhale at
last.
The supreme ruler, on death’s door now, slowly turned her
collapsing body. She tottered forward like a toy losing its battery
charge, sparks shooting from various parts of her body.
She was heading for the north end of the room. There was nothing
I could see there, but she must’ve been going for something.
Whatever it was, I had to finish her off before she reached it.
With desperate effort, I got to my feet and stared carefully at her
backside, which seemed smaller than before. I followed, dragging my
foot, my gait even more awkward than hers.
She was a good twenty yards in front of me and heading for a
specific spot. But without any resources here, she shouldn’t have
been able to escape this isolated space. Cardinal had said it was not
easy to patch such a thing back together, even if separated for only a
few minutes. And Administrator hadn’t denied it.
Many seconds later, she came to a stop in an empty spot. But
when she turned around, naked and wounded, there was a grin on
her face. She looked at me, trying to catch up to her.
“Heh-heh…At this point, I have no…choice. It is a bit…earlier than I
planned…but I suppose…I will be…going now.”
“Wh…what are you…?”
…saying, I wanted to ask. But Administrator cut me off by
stomping the floor with her cracked right leg.
There was a strange circular symbol on the burned carpet beneath
her feet. It was extremely similar to the spot marking the location of
the levitating platform behind me, but something about this one was
different.
This circle, about a foot and a half across, was the familiar purple
color of the user interface.
The floor vibrated subtly and rose up to reveal…a white marble
pillar.
And a laptop computer sitting atop it.
“Wha…?”

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 I was so stunned that my legs gave out and I fell to my knees.
It wasn’t exactly the same as a real-life laptop. The body looked
like some kind of partially translucent crystal, and the screen was
see-through and faintly purple. It was very, very similar to the virtual
system console I saw once in Aincrad.
That was it.
That was the connection mechanism to the outside world I’d been
searching for these past two years.
An almost violent urge overtook me, making me scrape the floor
with my hand in an effort to move forward. But my progress was
devastatingly slow, and my destination was definitively too far.
Without any arms to use, Administrator instead brandished a lock
of her silver hair like a living creature to strike at the keyboard. A
small window opened on the holo-screen, containing some kind of
indicator that began a countdown.
Then a purple pillar of light appeared from the ground where she
stood—and Administrator’s battered body rose into the air.
At last, she lifted her face and looked directly at me.
Her perfect beauty was in a dreadful state. The left side of her face
was badly cracked, and the place where her eye should be was filled
with impenetrable darkness. The lips that gleamed a shade of pearl
looked more like paper now—but the thin smile on them still carried
an arctic frostiness to it.
Her intact right eye narrowed, and she cackled. “Hah…hah…So
long, little boy. Until…we meet again. In…your world…this time.”
At last, I understood what it was she was intending to do.
She was trying to escape into the real world.
She wanted to escape the Underworld, with its absolute limit on
existence in the form of her life value, so that she could preserve her
fluctlight—the exact same way I had hoped to do with Eugeo’s and
Alice’s souls.
“W-wait!!” I cried, crawling for all I was worth.
If I were her, I’d destroy the console just before the moment of
escape. If she did that, then all hope would be lost.

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 Administrator’s naked form climbed, slowly but surely, up the
ladder of light.
Her smiling lips mouthed a silent farewell.
Good-b—
But before they formed the final vowel, someone who had crawled
to the base of the console without either of us noticing screamed.
“Your Holiness…Pleaaaase! Take me with youuuuu…”
Prime Senator Chudelkin.
The clown whose torso my sword skill had penetrated, and who’d
been scrapped for good by Administrator, was right there all of a
sudden, his bloodless face twisted in desperation, reaching upward
with fingers bent like claws.
His small body burst into searing flames. Through some kind of
sacred arts—or perhaps Incarnation—Chudelkin turned his own body
into a flaming clown this time and began to spiral into the air.
Even Administrator looked shocked, and possibly even frightened.
Just as she was nearly up to the exit of the pillar of light, Chudelkin’s
flaming hands caught the pontifex’s feet.
His thin, elongated clown’s body wrapped itself around and up her
naked form, clinging to her like a snake. The ferocious flames
engulfed both of their bodies.
Even her hair caught fire, the pointed ends of it melting away. Her
lips twisted, and she screamed in frustration.
“Unhand me! Let go of me…you fiendish ingrate!!”
But Chudelkin’s round face only beamed with bliss, as though his
master’s words had been a confession of her love for him.
“Aaaah…At last…at last I can be one with Your Holiness…”
His short arms clung fiercely to her body. The cracks in the
woman’s skin turned red with the heat, and small pieces began to fall
away.
“I would never…bother with…a hideous clown…like you…!” she
screamed. Silver sparks from the pontifex’s body mixed with
Chudelkin’s flames, illuminating the vast chamber.

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 Chudelkin’s body had no form anymore; he was a mass of flame
alone, with only a blissful expression left in the middle to utter his
final words.
“Ahhh…Your Holiness…my…Adminis…tra…tor…”
And then Administrator’s body began to burn from the
extremities.
The supreme ruler’s face caught on fire, and the fear and rage
there vanished. Her silver eyes looked skyward. Even in the moment
of her utter destruction, she was unfathomably beautiful.
“……I……my own……world……”
I couldn’t hear anything after that.
The wild conflagration rapidly contracted. The flames converted to
a platinum flash of light that further contracted and then expanded.
It wasn’t quite an explosion. It was more like everything was
returned to a state of light that filled the space. There was no sound
or vibration, simply the conceptual phenomenon of the oldest living
soul in the Underworld perishing, an event that expanded past the
walls of this enclosed, isolated space.
The silver light shone and shone for so long that I began to wonder
whether the world would ever return to its original state.
But eventually, the light did indeed begin to abate, and color
returned to my sight at last.
I blinked several times to clear the tears—surely because of the
light that burned my eyes—and I looked closely at the point that had
been the heart of the explosion.
I couldn’t find a single piece of evidence that the woman and the
clown had ever been there. The pillar of light was gone, leaving
behind only the marble pedestal sticking up from the floor and the
crystal console on top of it.
At last, both logic and intuition told me that Administrator, who
had once been a girl named Quinella, was utterly gone. Her life had
reached zero, and the lightcube that held her fluctlight was
reinitialized. So too, I expected, would be the lightcube of Cardinal,
located adjacent to it.

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 “…So…it’s over…,” I mumbled from my knees, hardly realizing the
words were coming from my own mouth. “……Was this…the right
thing to do…Cardinal…?”
There was no answer.
But it seemed as though a tiny breeze from the depths of my
memory brushed my cheek.
It was the scent of Cardinal when we’d made bodily contact on the
floor of the Great Library—old books, candle wax, and sugar candy,
mixed into one.
I wiped my tears aside with my left arm and realized my sleeve had
reverted from the leather coat back to my black shirt. Then I turned
to crawl toward Eugeo, who was nearly at the center of the room.
My partner’s brutally severed body continued dripping blood at
long intervals, drop by agonizing drop. He had minutes to live at best.
When at last I reached his side, my first idea was to stop the
bleeding by picking up his lower half and fitting it back against the
spot where he’d been sliced. Then I placed my palm against the cut
and imagined that healing light.
The glow that appeared below my hand was so faint that I had to
squint to see it. Still, I pushed it against him anyway, hoping it would
seal the cut.
But the red liquid that was Eugeo’s life itself continued to seep
from his halves. The priority of my healing was definitively
inadequate for the severity of his wound, I knew. But I waved my
hand around anyway and shouted, “Stop…just stop! Why won’t you
work?!”
The power of imagination determined everything in the
Underworld. If I just wished hard enough, I could make any miracle
happen. Right?
I prayed, begged, wished so hard that I could’ve wrung every last
drop of strength from my soul.
But still, another drop of Eugeo’s blood dripped from his wound.
And another.
The overwriting ability of one’s imagination could affect only the
locations and appearances of objects. It couldn’t alter values like

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priority level, durability, and other numerical attributes. I was aware
of this fact, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Not now.
“Eugeo…come back to me, Eugeo!!”
I stuck my wrist into my mouth, ready to bite it off. I knew it
wouldn’t be enough, but in the moment, I needed to give all my
available resources to him. Even if it meant that both of us lost our
lives in the end.
My canines sank into my skin, ready to tear flesh and blood loose,
when I heard a faint whisper call my name.
“……Kirito.”
I looked up with a start.
Eugeo’s eyelids were just barely lifted. He was smiling.
His face was paler than the moonlight itself, and his lips were
totally bloodless. It was obvious that his life was continuing to drain
away. But his green eyes were the same as when I first met him,
gentle and warm and bright.
“Eugeo…!” I exclaimed. “Hang on—I’ll heal you right now! I’m not
letting you die…It’s not going to happen!”
I put my wrist in my mouth again. But then a hand, cold as ice yet
as warm as a patch of sunlight, closed over my wrist and squeezed
gently.
“Eu…,” I grunted, but Eugeo kept his grip. From his lips tumbled an
English phrase I’d taught him back at the academy, a little secret
mantra just between the two of us.
“Stay cool…Kirito.”
“…!”
I took a ragged, quivering breath. I had told Eugeo that it was a
parting phrase. I hadn’t taught it to him so that I could hear him say
it here and now. Absolutely not.
I shook my head over and over, but Eugeo kept whispering:
“It’s…all right. It’s meant…to be this way…Kirito.”
“What are you talking about? Of course it’s not all right!” I yelped.
Eugeo just kept smiling. He almost seemed satisfied.
“…I…fulfilled…my role…to play…This is where…our paths…split
apart…”

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 “That’s not true! I don’t believe in fate!! I don’t accept that
answer!!” I screamed, sobbing like a child. Eugeo wisely shook his
head. Even that tiny gesture should have required intense
concentration, but he showed no signs of suffering.
“…If this…hadn’t happened…then we would’ve had to fight each
other…both for the sake of Alice. I would fight…to take back Alice’s
memories…and you would fight to protect the soul of Alice the
Integrity Knight…”
I held my breath.
It was the very thing I’d been terrified of, deep down, but chosen
not to think about. That when all the fighting was over and it came
time to insert Alice Zuberg’s memory fragment into Alice the knight’s
fluctlight, the question would be posed: Was I going to agree to that?
Even now, when the moment came, I had no answer.
Instead, I tearfully hurled it back at Eugeo.
“Then…fight me!! Restore your full strength and fight me!! You’re
already stronger than I am!! So you need to get back on your feet
and fight me…for Alice…!”
But Eugeo’s serene smile never wavered. “My sword…is
already…broken. Plus…it was…my weakness…that led me to open my
heart…to Administrator…and to try to fight you. I have…to pay…for
that sin…”
“It’s not a sin! You’re guilty of nothing!!” I sobbed, grabbing his
wrist this time. “You’ve fought valiantly the whole way! If it wasn’t
for you, we’d never have beaten Chudelkin or the Sword Golem or
Administrator! You have nothing to blame yourself for, Eugeo!!”
“……You…think so…? I…hope so…,” he mumbled, eyes full of large
tears that ran down his cheeks. “Kirito…I’ve always…been jealous of
you. You were stronger…and more beloved…than anyone…A part of
me was afraid…that even Alice…would prefer…W-well, anyway…I
finally…understand. Love isn’t something…you seek…It’s something
you…give. Alice…taught me…that…”
He stopped talking and lifted his left hand. His palm, ragged and
torn from all the fighting, held a tiny crystal: a translucent, double-
ended hexagonal prism. Alice’s memory fragment.

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 The clear prism glowed as it brushed my hand.
The world filled with light.
I no longer felt the hardness of the floor or the pain of my severed
arm. A gentle flow carried my soul somewhere distant. Even the
terrible sadness engulfing my heart simply melted away in that warm
light.
And then…

Something bright and green was waving far overhead.

Sunlight through leaves.
Fresh shoots were spurting out of the tree branches, soaking in the
long-awaited spring sun and swaying in the breeze. The smooth black
branches rustled as unfamiliar little birds flitted and chased one
another around.
“Your hands are idle, Kirito.”
The sound of my name yanked my attention down from the
branches.
The blond hair of the girl sitting next to me glimmered in the light
falling through the leaves. I blinked a few times and shrugged. “Well,
you were staring openmouthed at that family of cottonrabbits,
Alice.”
“I did not have my mouth open!” protested Alice Zuberg, the girl in
the blue-and-white apron dress. She lifted what she was holding up
to the sunlight.
It was a finely crafted leather sheath for a short sword. The surface
had been polished to a shine with an oil rag, and a decorative dragon
had been stitched on with white thread. It was a somewhat familiar,
rounded dragon, with the tail only half-done, a needle dangling from
the end of the unfinished loose thread.
“Look, mine’s going to be finished very soon. How’s yours coming
along?”
I looked down at my knees. Resting there was a short sword
carved from a branch of platinum oak, the second-toughest wood in
the forest. Old Man Garitta, who knew more than anyone about the
forest, had shown me how to carve the iron-tough material, and it

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had taken me two months to get it to this state. The blade was
already finished; I just had to put the finishing touches on the handle.
“I’m further along. Almost done with it,” I told her.
Alice grinned and said, “Then let’s hurry and finish up the last bit.”
“Mmm.”
I looked up to the sunlight coming through the branches again.
Solus was past the middle of the sky now. We’d been working in our
secret spot here all morning, so it seemed like we should probably
head back to the village soon.
“Hey…we should get going back. Or we’ll get busted,” I said,
shaking my head.
Alice pouted like a little child. “We’re still fine. Let’s stay a bit
longer…just a bit?”
“Well, fine. But only for a little while, got it?”
We called it a deal and spent the next several minutes absorbed in
our work.
“All done!”
“Finished!”
Our voices overlapped, right at the same moment that the grasses
rustled and parted behind us. I spun around, hiding what I was
holding behind my back.
Standing there and looking bewildered was a boy with soft flaxen
hair cut short to keep it under control—Eugeo.
His pure-green eyes blinked, and he said suspiciously, “I didn’t see
either of you all morning. You’ve been here the whole time? What
are you doing here?”
Alice and I hunched our shoulders and shared a look.
“Well, I guess he figured it out.”
“See? I told you. Now it’s all for nothing.”
“It’s not ruined. Here, just hand it over.”
Alice grabbed the newly finished wooden sword from me and
slipped it into her leather sheath neatly—and behind her back.
Then she hopped forward toward Eugeo, gave him a smile as
radiant as the sun, and shouted, “It’s three days early…but happy
birthday, Eugeo!!”

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 The boy stared wide-eyed at what she offered him: a short sword
of platinum oak, in a sheath with white dragon stitching on it.
“Uh…it’s…for me…? This incredible thing…?”
All I could do was chuckle now that Alice had stolen the best part
of the surprise away from me. “You said the wooden sword your dad
bought you is broken, right? So we decided…Look, I know it’s not like
the real one that your brother has, but this wooden sword’s better
than any you’ll find at the general store!”
Eugeo reached out uncertainly and took the short sword in both
hands, then arched his back in surprise when he felt its weight. His
face broke into a smile just as big as Alice’s.
“You’re right…this is heavier than my brother’s sword! This is
amazing…I…I’ll take such good care of it. Thanks, you two. This is
great…I’ve never gotten such a wonderful birthday gift before…”
“H-hey…don’t cry, man!” I shouted when I saw the shine in the
corners of his eyes. He rubbed at his face, claiming that he wasn’t
crying.
Then Eugeo looked right at me. He smiled again.
All of a sudden, his smile blurred and blotted.
There was an abrupt pain in my chest. A feeling of unstoppable
nostalgia, homesickness, and loss. The tears flowed without
stopping, soaking my cheeks.
Alice and Eugeo were crying, too, standing side by side.
We all spoke together.
“The three of us lived the same era together.”
“Our paths separate here…but our memories remain eternal.”
“I will continue to live…within you. So, look…”

The vision of sun and shade vanished, and I was back on the top
floor of Central Cathedral.
“So, look…don’t cry, Kirito.”
Eugeo’s arms went limp. His right hand hit the floor, and his left
landed on his chest. The prism’s glimmering had nearly died out.
The scene that had just played out on the screen of my mind was
my own memory. I only remembered a single scene, but the truth of

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it, that Alice and Eugeo and I had been childhood friends who grew
up together and were connected by an unshakable bond of
friendship, filled my body with a warmth that eased the pain of loss
just a bit.
“Yeah…the memories are in here,” I sobbed, pressing my fingers
into my chest. “They’ll be here forever.”
“That’s right…And it means we’ll be friends forever. Where…Kirito,
where are you? I can’t see you…,” Eugeo called, his fading eyes
wandering, though the smile never left his face.
I leaned over and clutched Eugeo’s head with my one hand. My
tears dripped down onto his forehead. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
“Oh…” Eugeo was gazing somewhere far into the distance now. His
smile looked very satisfied. “I can see it…glittering in the
darkness…like stars…The starry sky…that I looked up at…every
night…from the foot of…the Gigas Cedar…Just like…the shine…of
your…sword…”
His voice was growing clearer, more transparent by the moment. It
caressed my very soul.
“In fact…I think your black sword…should be called…the Night-Sky
Blade. What do you…say…?”
“Yeah…it’s a great name. Thank you, Eugeo.”
I clung to my friend’s body, which was getting lighter by the
second. Our minds were in contact, his final words rippling into the
air like a droplet into water.
“Envelop……this…little world…as gently…as the night……sky……”
The clear liquid trapped in his eyelashes transformed into light and
disappeared.
With what little weight he had left, Eugeo leaned back into my
arms and slowly closed his eyes.

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 6

Eugeo was standing in a dark, unfamiliar hallway.

But he wasn’t alone.
Holding his left hand was Alice, wearing her blue dress, beaming
back at him.
He squeezed her hand a bit harder and told his childhood friend, “I
guess…this was for the best.”
Alice nodded vigorously, shaking the ribbon that held her golden
hair in place. “Yes. We can leave the rest to those two. I’m sure
they’ll guide the world in the right direction.”
“Yeah. So…shall we go?”
“Okay.”
Somehow, he was back to his youthful form again. He and the girl
his age and height walked hand in hand down the hallway in the
direction of the distant light.

And in that instant…

The durability value of the human unit designated NND7-6361
dropped to zero.
Upon receiving that signal, the program that controlled the
Lightcube Cluster issued a single order to the cube that held the
corresponding fluctlight. The interface faithfully executed its order,
reinitializing the praseodymium crystal structure.
Over ten billion cubits of photons glowed at once and dispersed.
A soul named Eugeo, who hadn’t lived even twenty years of
subjective time, was freed forever from the little cube.
And at the same time, another lightcube located far away from his
own was similarly processed.

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 That lightcube, produced through improper system operation
using memories extracted from the soul named Alice Zuberg, was
also freed from its crystal prison.
Where the amalgamation of photons that made up those two
souls disappeared to was a question no one could answer.

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 7

I knelt in that exact spot where I’d been, until Eugeo’s body and
Alice’s memory fragment resting on his chest vanished into motes of
light, the same way Cardinal’s body had.
How long was I there? The next thing I knew, the swirling tempest
that represented isolated space outside of the windows was gone,
and the full starry sky was back. Over the End Mountains on the far
eastern horizon, the faintest bit of violet heralded the coming dawn.
I lifted myself up, mind barely functioning, and approached Alice
the knight where she lay.
Alice’s wounds were terrible to behold. Fortunately, most of the
damage was from her burns and not from blood loss. Her life had
stopped its steady decrease. I propped her up with my left hand, and
although she didn’t wake up, her eyebrows did twitch, and a faint
breath exhaled from her lips.
With Alice on my good arm, I slowly, slowly headed for the north
end of the room.
At this point, the crystalline system console there, sparkling
artificially, was the only object in the room that was undamaged in
any way.
I laid Alice down on the floor and hit one of the see-through
glowing keys. The monitor lit up, displaying a complex management
screen. The user interface was almost entirely in “sacred script”—
English—but a few presses of the screen led me to what I sought.
CALL EXTERNAL OBSERVER
I stared at the tab for a while. “Observers”—the ones who created,
operated, and watched over this world.
These people, the staffers at the tech start-up named Rath, had
lied to me only once—but it was the biggest lie imaginable.

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 In June 2026 in the real world, which felt like an eternity ago, I’d
participated in a long-term continuous test of their next-generation
full-dive machine, The Soul Translator, or STL.
The test period was three days. Through the Fluctlight Acceleration
(FLA) feature, the subjective time I spent in the VR world would be
3.3 times as long as real time, or ten days in total. At the end of the
test, they had blocked my memories of the event to protect
company secrets, or so they’d explained to me.
But that was a lie. I hadn’t dived into a test environment; they had
sent me into the same Underworld I was in now. And it wasn’t ten
days I spent here. I estimated it was over three hundred times that
amount…for a span of ten years.
Yes, during that three-day test, I experienced an entire second
childhood, from infancy to the age of eleven, in a tiny village at the
northern end of the world. I spent every day playing in the mud with
my best friends, the flaxen-haired boy and the golden-haired girl,
and at the end of each day, we trudged home along the riverbanks to
the village, side by side.
Two years ago, when I’d just woken up in this place, I saw a vision
of that sunset at the bank of the river in the woods. When fighting
against Eugeo, I had a sensation of kids swordfighting. And just now,
at the moment of Eugeo’s death, I saw the scene about the platinum-
oak sword. These things weren’t illusions.
They were fragments of the memories that had been deleted,
things I had really experienced. I grew up with Eugeo and Alice in the
village of Rulid, and I had forgotten all about it until today.
Eugeo and Alice, too, couldn’t access their memories of living with
me. They both got synthesized by the supreme ruler, but perhaps
that memory issue was responsible for both of them recovering their
own free will from the process, unlike the other Integrity Knights.
It didn’t matter to me anymore why Rath would have inserted an
outside element like me into their civilization simulation. But there
was one thing I couldn’t forgive.
I’d been there eight years ago.
I’d been there when Deusolbert had taken young Alice away.

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 Eugeo had blamed himself for that for years. He’d never stopped
regretting that he couldn’t save her. And half of that regret should’ve
been mine to shoulder. But I’d forgotten the past…and I’d never
understood the depth of Eugeo’s suffering until the moment he gave
up his life…
“Nn…guh…khf…!”
Bizarre sounds escaped from my throat. I clenched my jaw shut as
hard as I could, my molars creaking and groaning with the pressure.
My stiff left hand rose, the fingers trembling, and pressed the
button to call an observer. A dialogue box in Japanese appeared with
a warning sound.
Performing this operation will fix Fluctlight Acceleration rate at
1.0. Are you sure?
I hit the OKAY button without thinking twice.
Instantly, the air around me felt viscous. Sound, light, all sensation
extended into the distance, then followed behind me. It was as
though my actions and even my thoughts were in super-slow motion
for one brief, disorienting moment—and then the sensation was
gone.
In the center of the screen was a black window. In the middle of
that was a volume meter, just below the blinking words SOUND
ONLY.
The meter twitched, producing a rainbow-gradient bar. Then it
shot upward, just as a rustling static noise reached my ears.
This was sound from the real world, I sensed.
The world on the “other side,” where things were no doubt
peaceful and totally unconnected to the madness happening in the
Underworld. The real world, where this blood and pain and even
death were merely events of interest, at best.
A great storm of numerous emotions that I’d been keeping under
control came bursting up from inside me, rocking me where I stood. I
leaned toward the monitor and, in as loud a voice as I could manage,
called the man who had brought me to this place.
“Kikuoka…Can you hear me, Kikuoka?!”

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 If my hand could reach Seijirou Kikuoka or any of the other
managers right now, I might actually attempt to strangle them to
death. Such was the helpless rage I felt as I slammed my left fist
against the marble table and screamed, “Kikuokaaaa!!!”
Then a noise came from the screen.
It wasn’t a human voice. It was a crisp series of percussions,
tatatak, tatatatak.
The first thing that popped into my head was a memory from years
ago—the sound of automatic submachine-gun fire in the VRMMO
called Gun Gale Online. But the other side of the screen was just a
laboratory for Rath, a small tech start-up. Why would I be hearing
that from there?
But then I did hear a human voice. More than one…carrying on a
tense, shouted conversation.
“…can’t, they’ve got position in the A6 corridor! I’m pulling back!!”
“Fight them off at A7, then! Give me time to lock the system!!”
There was more rattling. Here and there were sporadic explosions.
What is this…? A movie? Were the staffers streaming a movie in
the lab, and was I just picking up the audio from the speakers?
But then an unfamiliar voice said a very familiar name.
“Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka, it’s too late! We’re abandoning
Maincon and shutting the pressure-resistant barrier!!”
A sharp, rich voice replied, “Sorry, hold out for two more minutes!
We can’t lose this place now!!”
Seijirou Kikuoka. The man who’d brought me to this world.
I’d never heard him under such duress before. What the hell was
happening on the other side of the screen?
Are they under attack? Rath? But why…?
Kikuoka spoke again. “Is the locking process still going, Higa?!”
The voice that answered him was another one I remembered. That
was Takeru Higa, the Rath engineer who’d performed the test dive
on me.
“Another eighty…no, seventy seconds to go…Ah…aaaaaah!!”
All of a sudden, Higa’s voice turned into a shriek. Something had
startled him.

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 “Kiku!! It’s a call from inside! I mean, inside the Underworld!! This
is…Ohhh! It’s him! It’s Kirigaya!!”
“Wh…what?!”
Footsteps approached. Someone grabbed the mic.
“Kirito, are you there?! Are you in there?!”
That was definitely Seijirou Kikuoka. Holding back my confusion, I
shouted, “Yeah! Listen, Kikuoka…you monster…What you’ve done
is—!”
“I’ll listen to every last name you can call me later! Right now, you
need to listen to me!!”
He was in such a pressing panic that I actually stopped in my
tracks.
“Listen very carefully, Kirito…You must find a girl named Alice!
When you do…”
“Find her…? She’s right here!” I shouted back, and now it was
Kikuoka’s turn to be stunned into silence. Then he rushed back into
his explanation, faster than before.
“M-my God…that’s a miracle! G-good…Then once this transmission
ends, I’m going to return the FLA rate to a thousand. You take Alice
and head for the World’s End Altar! The internal console you’re using
now connects directly to Main Control, but that’s about to fall!”
“To fall…? What’s going on there…?”
“I’m sorry—I don’t have time to explain! Listen, to get to the altar,
you have to leave the Eastern Gate and head far to the south…”
Then the very first voice I heard came in again, very close by.
“Lieutenant Colonel, I closed the A7 barrier, but that only bought us
minutes at……No, wait, oh no! They’ve started severing the main
power line!!”
“Oh man, that’s bad! That’s real bad!!” shrieked not Kikuoka but
Higa. “Kiku, there’ll be a surge if they cut the main power now! The
Lightcube Cluster’s protected…but the surge will hit Kirigaya’s STL in
Subcon…It’ll fry his fluctlight!!”
“No…that can’t be! There are numerous safety limiters on the
STL…”
“But they were all deactivated! He’s recuperating, remember?!”

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 What in the world were they talking about?
What was this about my fluctlight if the power went out?
A split-second silence fell, until Kikuoka broke it.
“I’ll handle the locking here! Higa, you take Dr. Koujiro and Asuna
and evacuate to the Upper Shaft. Keep Kirito safe!!”
“B-but what about Alice?!”
“I’ll raise the FLA rate to its max limit! We can think about the rest
later! Right now his protection is paramount…”
I hardly listened to any of the rest of their shouted exchange. One
of the names Kikuoka had mentioned struck my mind, rocking it like
a storm.
Asu…na?
Asuna’s there? At Rath…? But why?
I leaned closer to the console to ask Kikuoka. But before I could say
anything, the original voice let out a pitiful scream.
“I can’t…They’re cutting the power!! The screw propellers are going
to stop—all units brace for impact!!”
And then…I saw something strange.
White pillars of light, silently falling from far above and piercing
the ceiling of the cathedral.
All I could do was look upward at all the beams of light intersecting
on me.
There was no pain, no impact, no sensation of any kind.
But I understood on instinct that I had suffered too much damage
to recover from. The light wasn’t piercing my flesh; it was piercing
my soul itself, it seemed.
Something very important, something that made me me, was
ripped into pieces and vanished.
Time, space, even memory melted into an empty void.
I simply was…
Even that word lost its meaning.
And just before the ability to think itself was lost, I heard a distant
voice.

“Kirito…Kirito!!”

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 It was a voice so nostalgic I wanted to cry, a sound that was
maddeningly precious.
It was…

Whose voice is that…?

(To be continued)

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 AFTERWORD

Hello, everyone. Thank you for reading Sword Art Online 14:
Alicization Uniting.
The Alicization arc has gone from Beginning to Running to Turning
to Rising to Dividing to Uniting, and this arc marks a turning point for
it.
At the end of 2008, when I was having a meeting with my editor
about publishing SAO, I remember us saying, “Let’s make it a goal to
publish all the way to the Alicization storyline.” It was so far ahead
that it didn’t seem real at the time, but now I look up and we’re at
the end of the human realm part of the arc. It’s true that time (and
the number of volumes) flies…
Warning: The next section covers major spoilers for this book!
Kirito’s partner and best friend from Volume 9 to Volume 14, and
the other protagonist of this story, Eugeo, has finally left the stage.
For a main character of the series, he was surprisingly passive and
deferential—during the long journey of leaving the village, joining
the academy in the big city, getting arrested, escaping, and climbing
the tower, it feels like all he’s been doing is chasing after Kirito’s
lead.
As a matter of fact, when it came to prepping the original web
novels for this proper book release, I seriously considered changing
Eugeo’s fate. In the web novels, Eugeo left the story without ever
fully expressing himself and his own wants. So it occurred to me that,
given my opportunity to rewrite, he might find himself a new path in
the story.
In the end, that didn’t happen. When I got to “The Scene” in the
revision process, I simply couldn’t rewrite the story that was already

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there. It was almost like Eugeo himself refused to allow me to
rewrite his fate. Perhaps that was the last and greatest act of self-
advocacy from the man who’d always suppressed himself.
I mentioned the “human realm part of the arc” a moment ago; the
Alicization arc will expand further and continue for a bit longer.
Many of the characters you know and love from the real-world side
will get back into the action, so I hope you stick around to see your
favorites!

I’m guessing that by the time this book hits the shelves, the news
will already be out that the TV animation series Sword Art Online II
will begin airing in July. You should really check it out! And once
again, I must apologize for being very late to submit this to my
illustrator abec and my editor Miki. I’ll do better…next volume…!
Reki Kawahara—March 2014

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