Sword Art Online - Volume 18 - Chapter Ep8

Epilogue Part 8
—Or so I thought.

Right up until the moment before I entered a steady slumber in my own bed deep in the night of August 17.

“…Kirito. Please wake up, Kirito.”

Someone was shaking my shoulder, and I was pulled out of a haze of bittersweet emotion.

“……Mff…” I croaked from my throat, lifting my face reluctantly.

When I discovered deep blue eyes adorned with golden lashes right before my face, I froze right on the bedspread.

“Oof…! A… Alice…!”

“Shh, be quiet.”

“Yeah, but, we can’t be doing this…”

“What are you thinking?”

A sharp tug on my left ear finally cleared up my consciousness.

Glancing at the alarm clock next to my pillow through eyes muddled with sleep, I saw that it was just past three in the morning. A bulbous moon still hung tall in the sky, gleaming brightly.

I looked back forward.

Kneeling beside my pillow under the muffled moonlight was Alice, wearing nothing but a blue featureless T-shirt that looked extremely out of place. Her snowy white legs, which seemed to be glowing independently, were unabashedly exposed. The faint connection points that typically showed on her silicone skin were completely invisible in this dimness, making it impossible to believe that those elegant curves were man-made.

“… Stop… Stop goggling at me, would you?”

The way she yanked down the hem of her T-shirt put a lump in my throat and made me leap up.

I kept my eyes fixed firmly upward, but this time a bulge of thin cloth with blonde hair against it like molten gold fell into my vision and caused a rapid decrease in my cognition rate.

My very easily read state of agitation had perhaps finally induced some embarrassment in Alice, who turned her face aside, pouting:

“…You likely do not remember, but we slept in the same bed for half a year. There cannot be further need for this sort of reaction.”

“Oh… Re… Really?”

“Really!” She screeched, then frantically slapped her hands over her mouth. My head shrank into my neck as I listened for noise in the adjoining room, but luckily it seemed that Suguha had not been woken up. But she was already not one to wake up 30 minutes before morning practice, even during the simultaneous besiegement of an earthquake and a typhoon.

Alice cleared her throat, then stared daggers at me:

“It is all because of your bizarre reaction that I have not been able to get to my main point.”

“We… Well, sorry about that. Umm, ahh, uhh, I’m fine now.”

Alice sighed gently and stood as her motors whirred faintly, then began to talk determinedly:

“Around five minutes ago… Someone sent an extraordinary contact message to me with a long-distance Messaging Art… I mean to say, the internet.”

“An email? Who sent it?”

“There was no name attributed to the sender. As for its content… it will be clearer to show you directly rather than telling you.”

She moved her eyes rapidly and fixated upon the printer on my desk.

Horrifyingly, the printer’s cooling fan suddenly roared to life. Alice had undoubtedly sent it a wireless command to begin printing. When she had learned how to do this was beyond me.

Just then, my shock…

…was immediately blown sky-high by fresh astonishment when I picked up the printout that came rolling out onto the tray and quickly skimmed its contents.

Written horizontally there was—

[Ascend the white tower, arrive in that world.

Cloudtop Garden.Great Kitchen Armory.Morning Star Lookout.Sacred Fountain Stairway Grand Corridor of Spiritual Light.]

I was unable to comprehend what I just read for a full five seconds.

As my half-asleep brain began to churn, I was finally able to appreciate what Alice meant by “extraordinary”.

Let’s put aside the first line for now.

The second line was the problem. The black letters were all outlining names I’d heard before.

Cloudtop Garden… Morning Star Lookout… There was no mistaking it; these were all names of floors in the Axiom Church Central Cathedral in Underworld’s Human Empire Central Capital Centoria.

But if that were true, then who on earth sent this email?

There should only be two people familiar with the inner structure of the Central Cathedral in the real world: Alice, and myself.

Not even Kikuoka, Higa, nor the other RATH technicians should have been able to research the names of the floors themselves, even if they were able to learn the name of the ruling organization, the Axiom Church, from their monitors. Moreover, although many VRMMO players like Asuna, Klein, and others had dived into Underworld as reinforcements, they had all appeared and logged out in the wilderness of the Dark Realm, which was an interminable distance away from Centoria. They shouldn’t even have been able to see the Central Cathedral.

No, wait—

I read the paper more carefully again, and realized a truth that was even harder to believe.

The name “Sacred Fountain Stairway” in the latter half of the second line. I racked my brains, but I just couldn’t remember ever hearing about that floor. In other words, whoever sent this email had knowledge not even I was aware of.

I looked nervously towards Alice and asked her, “…Alice. Is there a place called the Sacred Fountain Stairway in the Central Cathedral?”

“Yes… There is, indeed.”

The knight nodded, knotted her white hands together, and continued:

“However… it is a hidden location. The Sacred Fountain Stairway is a splendid cathedral 100 floors tall, an ancient structure left from an age when the church itself was only three floors high! It is sealed underneath the first floor grand staircase and is not easily discovered. The only ones aware of its existence are my esteemed uncle, myself, and… Highest Minister Administrator…”

“Wha…….”

An even heavier wave of shock stifled my breathing.

Alice took a step forward and seized my right hand in a viselike grip. Whether or not it was due to a malfunction in her EAP cylinders, her fingers were trembling slightly.

“Kirito… Could it be… Could it be that she… That demigod… Highest Minister still lives…?”

Her voice was heavy with deep consternation.

I quietly squeezed her thin shoulder with my left hand:

“No… That’s not possible. The Highest Minister is dead for sure. I saw her and Senate Elder Chudelkin melting into particles of light and disintegrating. And… look at this.”

I showed Alice the printout in my right hand.

“The first line says Ascend the white tower, arrive in that world. The white tower is the Central Cathedral, and that world is Underworld. If the sender was Administrator, she wouldn’t write that world. She would write my world.”

“Yes… you are right. I can believe in that.”

Alice nodded, her golden bangs practically close enough to touch my cheeks.

“However… if that is the case, then who exactly wrote…”

“I don’t know. We don’t have a lot to go off of. I should say… if we can understand the meaning behind these words, we’ll be able to discover who the sender was…”

“The meaning…?”

“Yeah. After reading it more closely, I see several strange things about it.”

I made Alice sit shoulder-to-shoulder with me onto the bed, and slid my fingertip across the printed letters.

“The first line says Ascend, but… that would make the second line a bit weird, right?  «Cloudtop Garden» at the start, here, is where you and I first battled each other. I remember it to be very high up. But next, we have «Great Kitchen Armory». I don’t know about a Great Kitchen, but the armory should be very far down, on the third floor. In the same vein, «Morning Star Lookout» next would be the floor we reached after clawing our way up the outer wall and re-entering the Cathedral. That was almost at the very top of the tower. There’s too many differences in order.”

“That… is true… That brings back memories… You called me an idiot eight times while we were suspended on the side of the tower with a single sword blade.”

“Th-There’s no need to recall something that specific.”

Alice looked at me with my neck hunched, and smiled.

“But I really was somewhat happy back then. Because it was the first time I quarreled with someone from the bottom of my heart.”

I couldn’t help but sincerely return her translucent smile.

There seemed to be a wetness in her sapphire eye-lens, though it was probably my imagination.

I summoned all of my emotional strength and tore my eyes away from that light, which was like the bottom of deep water. I continued to explain in a slightly hoarser voice:

“…And, here, too. The positioning of the punctuation is really weird. Why isn’t there punctuation between Great Kitchen and Armory, or Sacred Fountain Stairway and Grand Corridor of Spiritual Light?”

Alice looked back onto the printout with the low whir of gears.

“…I do not think… they forgot…”

Both of us tilted our heads in the same direction but were not able to come up with anything else.

Helpless, I took down a tiny device from my wall shelf to summon an expert who was proficient in reading these sorts of codes.

The hemispherical device sitting in my palm was something called an «Audiovisual Two-Way Communication Probe»; essentially, it was a high-performance webcam. I placed the camera on my left shoulder, switched it on, confirmed that it was connected to my desktop computer, and spoke to it:

“Yui, are you awake?”

About two seconds later, a voice that sounded half-asleep was heard from the probe’s speaker.

“Whew… Good morning, Daddy.”

The camera swiveled inside the dome and greeted the person beside me too.

“Good morning, Alice-san.”

“Ah… G-Good morning, Yui-san.”

It was Alice’s first time seeing the probe, but she had already spoken with Yui several times in Alfheim. Seemingly understanding that the device on my right shoulder was Yui’s terminal in the real world, she greeted it immediately with a smile.

Yui rotated the camera at a frantic pace, then finally posed a question to me in a somewhat more serious voice:

“…Daddy. What on earth is going on?”

“I-It’s nothing, there’s really nothing to be suspicious about. Nothing at all.”

“It is 3:21 in the morning, and in a situation where Daddy is alone with Alice-san in his own room, I cannot help but make irregular judgments.”

As I desperately tried to justify myself, Alice saved me by explaining with what looked to be a restrained smile on her face.

“Yui-san, it really is nothing. Someone sent me a bizarre letter, or, email, and I came to discuss it with Kirito.”

“If Alice-san says so, then I shall record it as such. But Daddy, you can’t keep secrets from Mommy.”

“Of course not.”

As I stole my chance to exhale in relief, to my right, Alice took the printout from just now, showed it to Yui, and explained the contents.

It’s difficult to describe the strong emotions I get when watching those two conversing with each other.

Yui was a top-down AI coming from a maximally-evolved program that ran on existing computer architecture.

Yet Alice was a bottom-up AI coming from a completely new architecture: a Light Cube that imitated a human brain.

The image of these two artificial intelligences born through completely opposite paths talking very naturally and happily with each other had to be the greatest miracle in the world…

Ignoring my inability to surreptitiously hold in the tears, the two of them exchanged many thoughts and eventually Yui seemed to notice something and announced:

“Hold on… If you look closely, the punctuation is different on the first and second lines.”

“Oh, really?”

I also brought my face close to the paper Alice was holding and stared at the dots that were less than a millimeter in diameter.

Yui was absolutely right. A very normal comma was printed between tower and that world in the first line.

But the three symbols in the second line weren’t commas; they looked more like English full stops, or tiny dots.

Dots……

“Ah…… Ah!”

I uttered a low cry and straightened up halfway.

“R-Right. The Central Cathedral only goes up to 100 floors… So if you connect the two… that means, it’s…”

I felt around the bed’s headboard and snatched up a ballpoint pen. Wrenching off the cap, I asked Alice hoarsely:

“Alice, which floor is the Cloudtop Garden on?”

“…Have you forgotten? Forgotten where you and I first battled, Kirito?”

“N-No, I haven’t, um…”

“The 80th floor.”

She told me in a voice that sounded a little cross, and I wrote the number onto a blank space on the printout.

“R-R-Right. What… about the Great Kitchen?”

“The 10th floor.”

I continued scribbling the numbers she reported into the blank space on the printout.

“I think the Lookout was… and then… the Sacred Fountain Stairway is the first floor… the Corridor was…”

By the time my hand stopped moving, the white paper was filled with numbers interspaced by four tiny dots.

It was a format I seemed to have encountered before — but not just that. It was a certain format that someone like me had already become familiar with in his daily life.

The instant she saw that format, Yui uttered a small cry.

“Ah… It’s an IP address, Daddy!”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

It wasn’t the IPv6 type that was almost ubiquitous in 2026, but the older IPv4 type. v4 wasn’t completely out of use, though.

This email was pointing to a server that existed in the real world.

I flew off my bed, plopped into the mesh chair in front of my computer, and seized the mouse. The monitor woke from sleep and displayed the internet browser as I opened it and tried connecting to the server written on the paper over HTTP, and then FTP. But both attempts to access were refused.

“RSTP… No, Telnet?” I muttered and was about to launch a command prompt, when my right shoulder…

…buzzed again with Yui’s earnest voice.

“Daddy! Recall the words in the email!”

“Huh…?”

Alice handed me the printout from behind. Yui looked at it with her camera while she said:

“I believe the «white tower» to be ascended refers to the address in the second line.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And after ascending it, you arrive at «that world». In other words, the server that this address points to is…”

“Ah…! I… I’ve got it!!”

Feeling my fingertips gradually growing cold and numb, I spun my head around.

“Alice, this is a path connected to that world… connected to Underworld!!”

The moment she heard my repressed yell, Alice’s eyes dilated behind me.

“……….Path… connected to… Does that mean… I can go, no, I can return? Return to that world… to my… world…”

Confident, I nodded rapidly in response to her murmurs.

There was a loud whir of actuators as I caught the figure  that came flying towards me in my arms.

The sobs that burst into my ears and the droplets I felt against my cheeks were probably my imagination.

After all, there was no way a mechanical body of metal and silicone had either of those functions.

Neither Alice nor I had the fortitude to wait until a more reasonable time of day.

That was why we chose to see 4:00 AM as early in the morning and not late at night, and unapologetically dialed Dr. Rinko’s cell number.

Luckily, the doctor still seemed to be at the Roppongi branch. At first, just as we expected she was unable to figure out exactly what was going on, but when my explanation got to the good part, she almost screamed at me: “I-Is that true?”

“It’s true. I can’t trace the message’s origin, but it looks to be real just from the content.”

“I… I see. Then we must confirm it as soon as possible…”

In response to the doctor, I quickly appended:

“About that… Please leave it to Alice and me.”

“Huh……?”

That next breath I heard was probably a sigh half-filled with shock and half with exasperation.

“Kirigaya-kun… even though you already went through…”

“If I were really someone who learned my lesson, then I’d never have gone to work at RATH in the first place!”

Another long sigh.

“…You’re right. Some things were only achievable because you are the way you are, and there will probably be things we need you to do in the future as well. However… this time you must get your parents’ permission.”

“Of course I will, leave it to me. And… there’s something I’d like to confirm first… Does Alice require an STL to connect from there to the Ocean Turtle?”

“No, there’s no need. Alice’s Light Cube package can do the exact same thing your organic brain can do with an STL. The only thing she does need is a cable.”

“I thought so. In that case… Umm, one second, please.”

Alice was wringing her hands beside me as I looked to her.

“Alice. Um… I’m really sorry, but can we bring her… Asuna, too?”

Twitch. One of her eyebrows moved.

Then, instead of a sigh, there was a faint drone of motors.

“…Yes, I suppose so. It is safer to have additional strength on our side if something unexpected occurs.”

“I-I see, I owe you… Well, it’s settled then, doctor…”

After some more conversation, I hung up, roused Asuna from her sleep, and explained the situation to her.

All I needed to say was “We’ve found a path leading to Underworld”, and she seemed to understand everything that would happen next.

After one or two short minutes of discussion, I promptly removed the probe from my right shoulder and studied the lens.

“…Sorry, Yui. I haven’t discovered a way to bring you into Underworld yet…”

“Yes, I understand, Daddy. Please be careful when traveling.”

“I’ll bring you there too one day, Yui.”

Promising her so, I placed the probe upon my desk.

Next to it rested a large pile of reference books and textbooks, which all had to be frantically digested starting today. There might be an involuntary delay before they came into play.

Slipping a blank piece of paper from my printer’s inner tray, I hastily scrawled a note with my ballpoint pen. Alice retrieved her school uniform from Suguha’s room, we changed with our backs to each other, and left my room on tiptoes.

We descended the stairs, and I placed my handwritten note on the dining table.

Carefully sliding open our antiquated door, Alice and I stepped out into the chilly morning air.

I pushed the 125 cc motorcycle to a suitable distance away from the house, and swung myself onto the seat. After having Alice strap on Suguha’s helmet, I donned my own and twisted the starter.

After reservedly persuading an engine that had been idle for almost three months, which roared gleefully to life, I called to my tandem-rider:

“Hold on tight! I’m gonna speed faster than a dragon!”

Alice secured her hands around my waist as she replied: “Who do you think I am?!”

“Haha, right you are, Miss Integrity Knight. Well… Let’s go!!”

Here’s what I wrote on the note that I left in my living room:

[Pops, Mom, and Sugu, I’m off to carry through an unfinished adventure. I’ll be right back, don’t worry.]

By the time I had flown past the empty morning streets of Kawagoe Highway, Kannana, and Route 246 in that order and arrived safely in front of RATH’s Roppongi branch, I spotted Asuna who had arrived by taxi.

Beaming and waving with a “Yoo-hoo”, her expression went rigid at the sight of Alice sitting behind me.

“…Kirito-kun. What on earth is this?”

“We… Well, about that. Long story short, a lot of things happened, but nothing bad… happened…”

“Elaborate on «a lot» and «nothing».”

I knew this would happen. I knew, but I came here purposefully without any sort of strategy. There was no way I was coming up with any reasonable explanation.

“I’ll explain everything to you later, I promise! …………During a chat over tea when we’re old……” I mumbled the last bit while parking the motorcycle in the employees’ lot.

When I turned around, I immediately witnessed a petrifying scene.

Asuna was standing with her hands on her hips. Alice was standing with her arms crossed. You could almost see electricity hot enough to scorch the air crackling between the square-off.

I timidly spoke to them both: “…Ummm, you guys, hasn’t this sort of thing come to an end already?… I mean, at the campsite of the Human Empire Defense Army…”

“That was just a ceasefire!”

“Ceasefires are only declared under the pretext that conflict will begin once more!”

Both girls said shrilly, and returned to their visual duel.

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Page 388
After staring at the sight of the two swordswomen with intent to fight fully displayed and showing not a shred of quarter—

I did the only thing I could do at that moment.

And that was to make myself as hidden as humanly possible, slowly back away, and prepare to flee into the building entrance.

However, the instant I allowed the forbidding security system to check my ID card, fingerprints, and retina, a sharp electronic chirp was produced and both girls’ heads spun towards me.

“Ah, hey, Kirito-kun!!”

“Why are you running?!”

By the time I heard those voices, I had already bolted into the building.

Goggle-eyed, Dr. Koujiro received a wildly panting Asuna and me into the the STL Room, along with Alice who did not need to breathe, but whose chassis temperature probably rose.

“…I can understand your urgency, but there was no need to rush over like this. The STLs and Underworld aren’t going anywhere.”

Hearing the doctor say this in an amazed sort of way, I responded with an unnatural smile:

“No, no, we just wanted to connect as soon as possible! No matter how you look at it, the success or failure of this dive will have a huge impact on Underworld’s security guarantee from here on oooouuuut!”

The odd noise at the end of my sentence had been the result of Asuna pinching the right side of my abdomen.

Before Alice could double up, I ducked into the neighboring changing room to don the antimicrobial suit used during STL dives.

Actually, what I said to the doctor were my unreservedly true feelings.

Ocean Turtle was anchored in the waters of the Izu islands and its situation remained very delicate. There was only one way of maintaining its operation and independence now.

Encourage communication between Artificial Fluctlights — or the people of Underworld, and the people of the real world, and kindle friendly relations between the two. If a majority of real world people could acknowledge Underworld people as human, it would stop nations and corporations from using brute-force.

No—

If we accepted the irrationality of it, there was still another way.

Obtaining real defensive power. Using the supposedly in-development «Light Cube Loaded Unmanned Fighters» as our arsenal and establishing our own country.

However, it was nothing but a reckless thought. How were we going to get UAVs? Where would we scrape the maintenance fees from? How many months… or years would it take to teach the people of Underworld, who knew only dragons, how to fly supersonic fighter jets? There were too many dilemmas we needed to solve.

What we absolutely needed, no matter what, was a large bandwidth uplink independent of government-controlled telecom satellites. For the purpose of allowing the people of Underworld to dive into what would be a new realm for them, The Seed Nexus, and inform the people of the real world of their existence.

Our ability to achieve that rested on the IP address written on the note in my breast pocket.

Now wearing new clothes, I stepped out of the changing room and handed the note to Dr. Koujiro.

She hesitated for a moment before accepting it. But her right hand quickly moved up and took it from me.

“…This has probably got to do with him.”

Her quiet words made me nod gently.

I don’t know how he could have possibly learned the names of those floors of the Central Cathedral. But the only one capable of setting up a secret uplink between the Ocean Turtle and the internet was him.

Kayaba Akihiko… Heathcliff.

Thinking back on it now—

Every single time, my battles would only end upon confronting him. This time, Heathcliff had merely passed by the STL I slept in and disappeared again into the darkness of the internet. But he would resurface once more someday. To unify the many shards borne from that floating castle of steel and decide everything once and for all.

With my back to Dr. Koujiro as she readied the dive, I powered on my mobile terminal.

“Yui, have you learned anything new about that address?”

Appearing on the display, Yui’s adorable features shook left and right.

“The server’s location is in Iceland, but I believe it is only a relay point. There is a formidable firewall and I can’t continue investigating.”

“I see… Thanks. Have you been able to trace the sender of Alice’s email?”

“Well… I discovered some similar traces at node 304 of The Seed Nexus, but I lost the trail there…” Yui finished, and her shoulders drooped gloomily. I stroked her head with my fingertip against the touchscreen.

“No, this is plenty. Number 300, would that be in the US…? You don’t need to keep searching. It’ll be too dangerous to contact him directly, even for you, Yui. By now I expect that guy’s become something just like you.”

“I’m stronger!”

I chuckled wryly as I stroked her puffed-up cheeks.

“Well, anyway, we’ll be taking a look there first. There won’t be a whole host of dangers this time… I think.”

“If anything happens, I will be there at once to help!”

“I’ll be in your care. Bye, now.”

My finger touched the tiny hand reaching towards me through the screen, and then I switched off the terminal, just in time for Alice and Asuna to exit the women’s changing rooms, anew.

Fortunately, they seemed to have agreed on a second ceasefire; both faces were shining with anticipation.

I exchanged glances with each of them, then spoke:

“…At any rate, 200 years have passed. I don’t know what’s happened to the Human Empire or the Dark Realm. Though, it’s a shorter time when you compare it to Administrator’s 300-year rule of the Human Empire, so I don’t think the changes will be too drastic…”

Alice nodded fervently and replied:

“At the very least, it seems certain that Central Cathedral still stands. In that case, we can consider that the Human Empire still remains as it was.”

Asuna nudged Alice’s hand, smiling. “The first thing we’ll have to do is wake Selka-san.”

“Indeed!”

Both nodded sincerely to each other—

We each walked towards two STLs and a reclining seat.

I laid down onto the bed of frigid gel. Under Dr. Rinko’s control, the enormous headset descended unhurriedly and draped over everything above my forehead.

“Well… Here we go.”

Our differing voices responded as one to the doctor.

“Yes!”

The epic machine produced a low roar.

The photon network comprising my consciousness — my Fluctlight was lifted away from my physical body, deprived of its senses and weight.

My consciousness was converted to an electrical signal, flying towards a network of infinite boundaries.

Shooting through a large bandwidth uplink of light at ultra-high speed, soaring towards the other world of my memories.

Towards a new adventure.

Towards the middle of the next story.

The first thing I saw was light.

White, infinitesimal glittering that became variegated rays, swelled — engulfing my vision — and continued to broaden.

Pure blackness appeared within.

I dived in a straight line towards the darkness at the end of the light tunnel.

No, it wasn’t complete blackness.

Disconcerting numbers of glowing dots of various colors were twinkling silently against a black backdrop.

Stars. Or the night sky…

Neither.

Because…

“…Wa… Waaarrrgh!?”

The instant I looked down at my feet, I uttered a scream.

Because there was no ground at all.

Panic-stricken, I kicked both legs, but the soles of my boots touched nothing. Just a sea of stars that extended to infinity. I looked all around and above me to see nothing but stars.

“Eeyaahhh!”

“Wha… What is…?!”

I heard two voices from my left and right.

I threw out both of my hands were their fullest extent and caught them tightly.

To my right I saw Asuna floating there, body wrapped in pearly half-armor and matching colored skirt, paired with all the ornaments of Stacia the Goddess, complete with magnificent rapier.

To my left was Alice, in golden breastplate and white longskirt, her waist decked out with silver whip and golden-yellow longsword.

Both were agape at the sky of stars with no boundary.

No.

This was no longer the sky.

“………Space………?”

I muttered timidly.

Instantly, I became aware of violent cold. Asuna and Alice both sneezed hugely with a kerchoo each. This was an environment with dangerously low temperatures, low enough to feel your Life falling rapidly.

No, this couldn’t truly be space, not when I could still hear both of their voices, but it was remarkably close. Our physical bodies were floating lightly in midair.

I focused and produced a defensive globe of Luminous Elements, then surrounded all three of us with it.

The moment we were engulfed by its faint glitter, the bone-chilling cold finally left us for good.

I exhaled and surveyed the unthinkable scene before my eyes again.

Stars of breathtaking density stretched in a band from top right to the bottom left of my vision. I suppose you could call it the Milky Way, but no matter how I lined up the potently glowing stars, I could not recognize a single familiar constellation from the real world.

This was Underworld, all right.

But, in that case, where had the land… or the sky, gone?

Suddenly, I was struck by a powerful chill that hardened my entire body.

—It can’t be.

It’s… gone?

The land comprising the Human Empire and Dark Realm had finally exhausted its Life after 200 years.

And the 10,000 or so people who lived there, had they returned to the void along with it…?

“You’re kidding me… How……”

I murmured in a shaking voice…

Alice suddenly squeezed my left hand hard enough to crack.

“Kirito… Look there.”

I turned to my left and saw the golden knight, who at some point had reoriented herself and was now facing forward.

Her outstretched left hand was pointing right to a certain spot.

Holding my breath; slowly, very slowly, I turned my head.

I saw a star.

Not a star blinking feebly in the far-off distance — an enormous body that occupied a great deal of my eyesight.

The planet’s upper half was masked by soupy, velvety darkness.

But it gradually transformed from black to blue near the middle, slowly but surely changing to bright azure, and finally deep navy.

The hemispherical curve of the lower edge took on a dazzling aquamarine.

Bit by bit, the cerulean hue gleamed more and more intensely. White light began to emerge from over the arc’s center region, quickly stretching forward in a straight line.

Daybreak.

Concealed behind the planet, the sun — Solus, was preparing to reveal itself.

I averted my eyes from the brilliant white light and looked towards the planet’s surface again.

The exterior that had been bathed in navy up until a moment ago was now gradually being dyed bright azure.

Beyond the unbroken, wispy white clouds, the shape of the terrain was visible.

An upturned triangle with rounded edges.

There was a cluster of white light in the upper right region of the landscape. An even greater mass of light presented in the upper left as well.

It was evidently the light of civilization. Upon closer inspection, I spotted many bands of light linking the two clusters and continuing to proliferate downwards in the shape of a web.

Immediately, judging by the shape of the terrain and the positions of the two large cities, I understood what I was looking at.

The city at the top right was Obsidia, capital of the Dark Realm.

And the one at the top left — Central Capital Centoria of the Human Empire.

That land, this planet, was the very same Underworld I had lived in, fought in, and sprinted across.

Overcome with surprise, I tore my eyes away and they landed on Alice next to me.

Her white face was also etched deeply with lines of shock and awe.

At that moment Alice’s eyes suddenly went wide as she dropped my hand and began rifling through the small pouch on her sword belt.

She silently withdrew two eggs, small enough to fit in her palm.

One of them radiated faint green; the other, blue. The light alternated between bright and dim every two seconds. Like a breath. Like a heartbeat.

Speechless, Alice hugged the two eggs to her chest and closed her eyes. Tears slid silently down her cheeks, slipping from her face, beading and floating into space.

I felt tears welling up in my own eyes. I turned and registered that Asuna’s eyes, as she gripped my hand still, were also wet.

As we gazed on, Alice took a sturdy step towards the starry ocean ahead. Clutching both eggs in her left hand, she reached her right hand unswervingly towards the vast planet.

With eyes like stars of daybreak, concealing within them infinite light, the golden Integrity Knight called sonorously with dignity and reverberation:

“O World!! O Underworld, that which I love, in which I began! Do you hear me?!”

Every star in the universe began to shudder. Azure planets gleamed brightly as one, as though in synchronized breath.

I shut my eyes and attuned my ears, to forever etch into my memory the words that would proclaim the advent of a new age.

“I have returned now! ……I am right here!!”

References
1. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Education,_Culture,_Sports,_Science_and_Technology

2. A rare type of fermented sushi made from carp. It is gutted through the gills, salted, aged for a year, then repacked in rice annually for up to four years.

3. A highly-prized, wild subspecies of goldfish found only around Lake Biwa.

4. Okinawan liquor distilled from long grain indica rice.

5. Industrial and financial conglomerates that historically control the Japanese economy.

6. Traditional Japanese chair with no legs but a normal backrest, for use on tatami mats.

7. Low wooden table covered by a heavy blanket, with a heat source underneath.