022-03 Rainbow Bridge Alfheim July 2025
1
On the far side of the violet sky, a castle floated, shining red.
Two months had passed since New Aincrad was added to the game, but looking up at it from sea level still filled me with a very strange sensation. It was hard to believe the tiny structure up in the sky was the exact same size as the floating world I had once lived in.
Of course, if I spread my wings and rose up toward New Aincrad, it would eventually become so huge that it filled my entire field of view. I could fly through the outer edge of the first floor and be in a vast region full of mountains and lakes of its own. Walking from end to end would take the same amount of time as in Aincrad.
But even knowing that, I couldn’t help but wonder.
About being trapped there for two years. About wandering the trackless wilderness, fighting deadly monsters, and meeting and parting with countless people. About fighting Heathcliff on the seventy-fifth floor in a duel, ending the deadly game. And wondering if any of it was actually real.
Or maybe…
It was landing in Alfheim in search of the sleeping Asuna, going on a brief but head-spinning journey, and freeing her from the malice that caged her. Then joining with old and new friends in a peaceful and enjoyable life between the real and virtual worlds. Was that part actually real?
I stared at the floating structure lit by the setting sun, my mind trapped in this cycle of questions—when there was a deafening blast like a horn, rising up from the ground all around. The chalky-gray surface under my avatar’s feet trembled and shook. I raised my arms on instinct and grabbed Asuna’s hand on the right and Klein’s on the left.
“Nwah! Wh-what is this?!” Lisbeth yelped.
“It’s not gonna dump us right here, is it?!” Klein screeched.
“If so, we can just fly away,” Agil pointed out calmly.
A small hole in the ground ahead of us grew, then erupted with a tremendous geyser of water.
“Kwirrrr!” “Hwaaaaaagh?!”
That came from the little dragon Pina, who had been located directly above the hole, and Yui the pixie, who was straddling Pina’s back. The water lifted them over fifteen feet higher into the air, but Pina spread its wings for balance and hovered at the peak of the jet. Yui’s scream of terror two seconds ago turned immediately to delighted laughter.
I held up my arm to block the shower of droplets and turned to confer with Asuna, breaking into a grin.
“…I mean, of course it’ll blow exhaust.”
She nodded and replied, “It’s a whale—it’s what they do.”
Yes: Asuna, Leafa, Silica, Lisbeth, Agil, Klein, and I were in a seven-player party accompanied by Yui and Pina, standing on the back of a massive white whale that was so big, it would send any Deviant God stampeding away in terror.
The group stood around, nodding sagely, as the blowhole blast died out. Yui descended from the air above and moved to Asuna’s left shoulder.
“The whales of the real world don’t actually shoot seawater out of their blowholes, however. It’s just when they surface and exhale that they blow the nearby water up with it!”
“Ooh!” all seven humans exclaimed in unison.
Always happy to show off her impressive ability to memorize facts, Yui placed her hands on her hips with adorable pride.
I looked up at the castle of steel hovering in the evening sky again. New Aincrad flew in laps around Alfheim at a tremendous speed, so it was even smaller now than it was a moment ago. I stared closer at a spot about a fifth of the way from the bottom—around the twenty-second floor.
Only the first ten floors were open at this point, but eventually, we would be able to reach the twentieth floor and beyond. Only when I saw that log cabin deep in the snowy woods would I feel certain that Aincrad had vanished into the memories of the past. Only then would we be back in a world where a game was meant to be played for fun.
The white whale took us from the island of Thule off the southwest of Alfheim to the beach in sylph territory, then beckoned us to step off with a call like a massive tuba. The party jumped off its back onto the white sand under the creature’s gentle eye, after which it turned back around and swam into the red of the setting sun, accompanied by its dolphin friends.
“Mr. Whaaaale! Thank you so muuuuch! Let us ride on your back again somedaaaay!” Yui called out. The white whale responded with another majestic spout of air, then began to submerge until it was underwater and out of sight. Only then did Yui stop waving her tiny hand.
I grinned at the sorrowful expression on her face. “We’ll see it again. It seemed like that quest had more story left to tell.”
“Yeah! That’s just it, Kiri!” bellowed Klein, completely ruining the lingering emotion of our parting. He rubbed his bristled chin and continued grumpily, “What the hell was with that quest? The mermaid princess was an old man, and the old man was a giant octopus, and the giant octopus was some king of the abyss from the something-or-other gods…I have no idea what any of that meant.”
“First of all, the mermaid princess was just your own fever dream,” I shot back. But I couldn’t really solve his problem; a glance at the rest of our party told the tale—Asuna, the demon of quest-solving; Leafa, an eager student of Norse mythology; Agil, the brainy tank; and even Lisbeth and Silica—all of them had their arms crossed as they mulled things over.
It was Friday, July 25th, 2025.
We’d decided to tackle a quest called Pillager of the Deep, which was said to involve gigantic aquatic monsters, since Yui mentioned she wanted to see a whale.
At first, it came across as a typical kind of fetch quest, when an old NPC asked us to go into a dungeon and search for an item. But in fact, the old man was the one behind the problem and was hoping to get us to pillage the treasure sealed in a temple on the seafloor—another fairly common quest pattern. But from that point on, the story went truly haywire. The old man turned into the massive octopus monster Kraken the Abyss Lord, a monstrosity with seven HP bars that, with the flick of a single tentacle, put us into a near-death state. Just when all seemed lost, a gigantic man named Leviathan the Sea Lord descended from above, and the two shared some complicated dialogue, at which point Kraken withdrew to the depths of the sea. Leviathan seized the pearl (actually a large egg) that we took out of the temple, and we got a musical fanfare and a quest-completed notice. It was hard to know what the point was supposed to be.
Stunned, we realized the rumored aquatic monster was actually just Kraken, which was disappointing. But then the man who called himself king of the sea summoned a white whale that took us back to the beach—so at least we completed our initial goal of showing Yui a whale. It was a successful outing overall, but I couldn’t disagree with Klein’s dissatisfaction with the whole ordeal.
After mulling it over a bit, I turned to my friends and asked, “Does anyone actually remember exactly what the octopus and the guy talked about?”
In a classic MMORPG, you could just scroll upward on your message window with the mouse to see all the dialogue from the quest, but VRMMOs did not have such a convenient feature. There was the option of using a crystal to record the dialogue during a story event that seemed like it would be important, but we didn’t have the wherewithal to do that at the time.
The other six all tilted their heads and looked upward, searching their memory, but every one of them eventually shook their head.
“Awww, this is what we get for having a party of all meatheads with no mages,” I commented with a sigh. Liz made a pitcher’s windup motion and hurled an index finger in my direction three times in a row.
“You have! No room! To talk!”
“…I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Yui leaped off Asuna’s shoulder and landed on my head like Leviathan landing upon the seafloor.
“Very well,” she said, resigned. “It’s cheating a little bit, but I can re-create the conversation for you!”
The party exclaimed with wonder, and the pixie puffed out her chest with delight. She began to mimic the conversation between the octopus and the man.
Leviathan: “How long has it been, old friend? You can’t kick the habit of your schemes, can you?”
Kraken: “And how long will you beg for the mercies of the Aesir? You do a disservice to the name of the king of the sea.”
Leviathan: “I am satisfied with being king. This is my garden. And you would knowingly come into my realm to do battle, King of the Abyss?”
Kraken: “…I shall withdraw for now. But I will not give up, my friend. Not until the child’s power is mine, and I can have my revenge on those meddling gods…”
Leviathan: “That egg belongs to the one who will one day rule all the seas and skies. You must return it so that I may transfer it to a new chamber.”
“…The end!”
Yui finished the conversation to a round of applause from the humans and a flutter of Pina’s wings from where it rested atop Silica’s head.
“Thanks, Yui,” I said to my talented daughter, then proceeded to verbalize my thoughts aloud. “Hmm…the two things that stick out to me are the words Aesir and child. I feel like I’ve heard these together before…”
“Ooh!” clamored Leafa the magic fighter sylph, raising her hand. She had the deepest appreciation for mythology and legends, and she stepped forward to demonstrate it.
“The Aesir are a pantheon of gods that show up in Norse mythology! You’ve all heard of Odin the almighty, Thor the god of thunder, and the trickster Loki, right?”
“Yeah, sure, of course,” the rest of us said, bobbing our heads.
Leafa continued, “And as for the child part…”
“Uh-huh?”
“I have no idea!”
We all made a slapstick slipping motion and flopped on our faces.
The next one to speak was Silica, the cait sith beast-tamer. “Ummm, so the old Kraken man doesn’t like the Aesir, but he can’t beat them right now, so he wants the child’s power to be stronger…right?”
“If that giant octopus’s insane power wasn’t enough to do it, how tough do those gods have to be…?” Lisbeth the leprechaun wondered, bouncing her pink hair in a way that showed off its metallic sheen.
“Well, they are gods,” Asuna the undine noted.
Next, Klein the salamander interjected haughtily, “That’s right! You young’uns probably don’t know this, but Odin’s the toughest of them all! When you summon him, he goes zwam! and slices all the monsters in two…”
“Uh, you’re talking about another game, not the actual myth,” snapped Agil the gnome, eliciting laughs from everyone, including Yui.
I snorted, too, because I recognized what Klein was referring to, but I was still working on why that conversation had seemed so strange to me.
The answer came swiftly. Kraken and Leviathan were just NPCs in the middle of the quest, even if they were both boss-type monsters. Their conversation would have been written by the scenario writers from Ymir, the company running ALO now.
Yet all of us were acting as through the two were real beings with minds of their own.
That was probably because their dialogue was very human. When Kraken ruefully claimed, “I will not give up,” it really made you think, Man, I bet that octo’s been through a lot…
Or could it be that Kraken and Leviathan…weren’t actually simple NPCs?
In the very early days of Aincrad, Asuna and I met a dark elf knight and went on adventures with her. Her name was Kizmel, and she was an NPC, but she wasn’t anything like the usual mobile objects that repeated programmed phrases over and over. She had the ability to hold natural conversations with us…something almost like a will and mind of her own.
ALO operated on almost an identical architecture as SAO. Meaning that simply in terms of the Cardinal System’s capabilities, there was the possibility that high-functioning AI NPCs like Kizmel could exist here, too.
But in that case…did that mean that Kraken was both a quest NPC and something more than just a pawn being operated along the quest’s script? Was it the giant octopus’s true innate will that drove it to desire the child’s power to lead a rebellion against the Aesir…?
“…Nah. No way,” I muttered, realizing that my thoughts were leading into the realm of the absurd. Meanwhile, Klein was getting revved up explaining Odin and Bahamut from the good old days to the others, when he suddenly erupted into a squawk.
“Aaaah! Crap! I forgot I paid to have a pizza delivered at ten!”
“Uh-oh, that’s in three minutes. It’ll take you a good ten minutes to fly back to Swilvane from here,” Agil pointed out.
Klein put his hands to the sides of his head and arched his back in dismay. “My seafood pizza and beeeeer!”
I felt like I’d heard him say this long ago, I noted fondly. I strode up to the katana wielder and patted the sleeve of his samurai-style armor. “We’ll watch you until your body vanishes. Just log out here. Make sure to pick it up at the door this time.”
He blinked in surprise, then realized what I was referring to and chuckled.
“Good point. Well, I’ll take up your offer and log off for today.”
“Say hi to the shrimp and crab and squid and octopus on your pizza for me,” said Liz.
Klein blanched, then opened his menu. “Well, my friends, so long!”
He hit the LOG OUT button, and the salamander avatar automatically sank down to one knee and closed its eyes.
In ALO, logging out of the game outside town left your avatar in place for several minutes afterward; it was a measure to discourage escaping a PvP battle by simply logging out. Your avatar could be targeted by monsters, of course, so there was a high possibility that doing so would mean the next time you logged in, you would be in Remain Light (dead) form.
So when logging out in a dangerous area, the common method was to do it with friends who could guard your body until the avatar eventually faded out when it reached the time limit. Fortunately, this beach didn’t seem too dangerous, so I took my eyes off Klein’s body to make a suggestion to the group.
“If anyone else wants to log out here, go ahead. I’ll be the last one waiting around.”
Asuna was the first to raise her hand, looking sheepish. “Um…I think…I’ll go, too…”
I’d not yet had an audience with her, but from what I’d been told, Asuna’s mother was very strict on time and other matters. I nodded and said, “Sure thing. Thanks for coming today.”
“Yeah. Thanks to everybody else, too. It was fun. Take care!” she said and quickly transitioned to the log-out pose, too. Next, Agil said he needed to prep for the café, Liz mentioned a TV show she wanted to catch, and Silica had homework to finish. They left the fairy realm all in a batch.
When Silica went into the waiting position, Pina began swiveling its head around, as though standing guard to protect her avatar. It was a very touching detail, I thought, stretching.
Then I met the gaze of Leafa, who was stretching in the exact same pose.
We both made the same awkward smile, and I looked toward the horizon to the west.
The sun was now completely gone, leaving only a deep crimson along the land. Yui went from sitting on my head to climbing down my shoulder and into my shirt pocket, where she yawned adorably.
“…That whale was really, really big, wasn’t it, Papa?” the pixie said sleepily. I rubbed her head with my fingertip.
“Yup. We’ll have to get another ride someday.”
“Yeah…”
Yui closed her eyes, and within moments, she was sleeping peacefully.
She was an AI independent of the ALO game’s system, so she didn’t need to sleep like a person, but when she received a great amount of information input or didn’t have something urgent to process immediately, she would often go into a visible sleep mode in order to tidy up her memory. In her form of dreams, she was probably reliving today’s adventure already.
A little while later, Klein’s avatar turned into little motes of light that dispersed and vanished, followed by Asuna, then Agil, Liz, and Silica.
I turned to Leafa and extended my hand toward her without thinking. “C’mon, Sugu—let’s just pop back over to Swilvane.”
My sister pursed her lips and pouted. “You know, we’re not underwater now, so I can fly perfectly fine without needing to hold your hand.”
“Oh…r-right. Sorry, uh, I wasn’t thinking,” I said, pulling my hand back, but the golden-haired magic warrior grabbed it anyway.
“But since I’m better than you in the sky, I can be the one to do the pulling!”
“…Th-thanks.”
We spread our wings and took off from the beach, with purple color flooding over the surroundings.
I glanced to the northeast, where the stars were already beginning to twinkle behind the massive silhouette of the World Tree. But closer than that was a crowd of green lights, shining like jewels. It was the familiar capital of the sylph territory, Swilvane.
After I checked to ensure Yui was tucked safely in my pocket, I joined Leafa in flight, gliding on the sea breeze toward our destination.
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