Ｆｕｌｌ－ｗｉｄｔｈ text denotes text that was written in the Western alphabet in the original text. Italic text is Engrish (English written in katakana) or Eiji’s in-game name, because it’s hard to tell the difference in translated text otherwise and there’s several instances where his in-game name is used instead of his real name.

Credits

Raw: Mttblue2
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Pryun
Tie-breaker: ZeHaffen (part 2, 6)

Cordial Chords

Prologue

Gently, my fingers entwined with the chestnut hair, shining due to the early summer sunlight filtering through the trees.

A smooth sensation, as if they were streaming through my fingertips like liquid. Beads of light moved rhythmically as each piece of extremely thin hair slid down. All of this could not be completely reproduced in a VR world, no matter how high-end it was.

In older generation non-FullDive games, CG designers had exercised their ingenuity with methods of expressing their character’s hair; by the beginning of the 2020s, they had already reached a level where everything seemed to be in place. However, the debut of the NerveGear brought about new challenges. In a virtual world that supported all five senses, hair needed not only to be beautiful to look at, but the appropriate tactile sensation needed to be felt as well.

Generating every single piece of the hundreds of thousands of hair on a real person as lines of polygons wasn’t realistic. Even in older-generation games, hair was created in fin-shaped parts; it seems that this achieved a hair-like texture. However, if this method were to be used in a FullDive environment, it would create a big issue when hair was touched. Both the movement and sensation of the hair would be more like that of a thin film rather than a collection of small fibres.

Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of the NerveGear and SAO, handled the so-called three big hurdles of the FullDive environment: 《liquids》, 《food》, and 《hair》 by simply invoking preset sensation data, rather than using real time rendering. For example, if you shoved your hand into water, you’d feel the splashing, as well as the chilliness and resistance of the water, but all of it was just a combination of preset data; it did not completely follow the movements of the hand. The same applied to the sensation of chewing food, as well as the sensation of touching hair.

As for vision, it seems that rendering was used as best as possible, but, as could be expected, each piece of hair wasn’t an individual object, instead, they were organised in very small, but film-shaped parts. So, you couldn’t expect them to flow as freely as this. The same restraint was handed down to all titles following the current 《The Seed》 standards.

As I absent-mindedly thought about such things, my fingertips restlessly continued playing with the hair, when——

“Mm…………”

A faint voice came out and the owner of the hair started moving around.

Although she had been in deep sleep with her head on my lap, it seemed that she had awoken, perhaps because of the sunlight falling on her face. After blinking several times, she focused on my face, then looked around.

At that point, perhaps having finally realised what posture she was in,

“Wawah……”

She attempted to jump up to her feet, but I lightly pushed her back down with my fingers that had been touching her hair just moments ago, now placed on around the second button of her blouse.

“There’s still twenty minutes of lunch break left, so sleep a bit longer, Asuna.”

“B-but……”

“Come on, didn’t Kurahashi-sensei tell you that neuron spine regeneration will be faster if you get tons of sleep?”

“I believe that was referring to sleeping on my own bed at night……”

Despite muttering this, Asuna’s body relaxed and her head once again leaned on my lap.

The higher vocational school in Nishitōkyō that we were attending, commonly known as the 《survivor school》, had an excessively large campus for the number of pupils attending it. Moreover, the campus had a strangely complicated structure and there were not so few places that were rather hard to reach if you didn’t know how in advance.

This small green zone, surrounded by the clubroom building and the library building was one of them; the route to it seemed like one of those that lead to hidden maps in games: after climbing up to the second floor of the clubroom building, you had to descend the exterior stairs and pass through openings in the hedge. Visiting it for a lunch break that only lasts fifty minutes incurred quite the cost in travel time, but we managed to catch the byakudan tree growing in the center of the green zone in full bloom, with loads of lovely, purplish red flowers blooming.

According to Asuna, a byakudan is an evergreen tree from India and it is apparently staggeringly rare to see such a big byakudan tree in Japan. I’m told that it’s a 《hemi-parasitic plant》and, apparently, a byakudan can’t grow big unless it leeches off the roots of a neighbouring tree with its own roots about a year after it sprouts.

It seems that the byakudan tree in this school’s green zone was parasitising a nearby Taiwan nemunoki¹, but the byakudan looked like a completely different tree. I hadn’t even heard of its name until Asuna shared it with me, but when I was told that it’s called 《sandalwood》 in English, I finally understood what it was. Speaking of sandalwood, it was one of the five S-class aromatic trees in SAO—— the other four were cinnamon, benzoin, myrrh, and agarwood—— and we had even drunk tea from cups made out of such a tree.

For byakudans in the real world, apparently only the heartwood of its trunk had the nice scent, while the flowers practically have no aroma. Nevertheless, seeing as Asuna was a person who loved rare sights of nature, this spot seemed to be quite exciting to her and she had been visiting this less than ten metres in all directions green zone quite frequently since we discovered it.

Today—— 7th of May, 2026, was the first day after the Golden Week, so perhaps because of that, I received an invitation email to come here the moment the lunch break started. The survivor school employed a credit-based system, but separation by school year was a thing; I was in the second year, while Asuna was in the third, thus we met up at the entrance of the clubroom building and when we absentmindedly looking up at the sky together after having lunch on the lawn in this green zone, Asuna suddenly fell asleep on my lap.

In this green zone, which Asuna dubbed as the 《secret garden》, aside from the byakudan and Taiwan nemunoki, there were various trees growing in the periphery; these trees were blocking off the view from the windows of the clubroom building and the library. There were practically no weeds growing here and the lawn was growing verdantly, thus there was undoubtedly someone taking care of it, but in the one month since we started frequenting this garden, we had never seen anyone else here.

I’ve felt signs that Lisbeth, who was in the same year as Asuna, had been getting suspicious, thus we’ll likely need to tell her about this place in the near future, but for just a bit longer…… at least, until Asuna’s wounds from the series of events have healed, I’d like treasure the spot that only we know about, and our time here.

I strongly wished for this, while stroking Asuna’s hair even more sneakily than before as she once again dozed off.

1

The wearable multi-device called the《Augma》 was distributed to all pupils at the Survivor School mid-April.

The developer/distributor of it was a rising ICT enterprise known as Kamura. The fact that a company founded in the 2000s and specialising in SNS games and video streaming services entered the manufacturing industry all of a sudden and began selling an advanced device, which was far smaller and lighter than RECT’s AmuSphere, in such large quantities caused an uproar both in the industry and among the users, but the release of the AR game 《#Ordinal Scale#(OS)》 just as the Augma became available swept away scepticism in no time at all.

Honestly, being a person who loved FullDive games, I couldn’t really get into an AR game that required using your physical body in the real world to play; nonetheless, I did have to accept the merits of OS being a thing. Additionally, OS partnered with a great number of enterprises for tie-ups; due to the fact that players could save up points from playing the game and use them in exchange for discounts and complimentary services from the game’s partners, it was only natural that it attained tremendous popularity upon release.

Even in ALfheim Online, the number of active users diminished by the day; even my friends, such as Liz, Silica, and Klein, migrated to OS—— though, that way of wording it feels weird, as it isn’t a VR world—— and tried to drag me in (or drag out) at every opportunity, but the sense of unease I had just wouldn’t disappear.

This was because the degree of the Augma’s perfection was awfully high.

The fact that its CPU efficiency, storage capacity, and battery capacity was higher than that of the AmuSphere’s wasn’t strange, considering that it came more than two years later, but it’s said that the only company capable of producing an EF matrix panel that is essential to FullDive tech is RECT, who have inherited the tech and expertise from Kayaba Akihiko; the fact that an enterprise that had just entered the industry was capable of developing equivalent tech seemed quite unbelievable even to a first year at highschool such as myself.

Of course, the Augma can only send visual, auditory, and limited tactile signals into the brain, thus, compared to the AmuSphere, which is capable of fully supporting all five senses, it had fewer technical hurdles. On the other hand, the Augma has to maintain a link with the user’s brain while they’re awake and moving around, hence the tuning required for that should have colossal costs both financially and time-wise.

Just when I, harbouring misgivings about who on earth the person spearheading the development could be, asked Yui, and Kikuoka Seijirou from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to help me investigate this, it was announced.

That the developer of the Augma was Professor Shigemura Tetsuhiro from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Touto Institute of Technology. That is, the person who served as the academic advisor for Kayaba Akihiko and Sugou Nobuyuki.

If that were the case, it probably wouldn’t be strange for the guy to be capable of developing a panel on the same level as the one for the NerveGear, yet this did not alleviate my anxiety.

For better or worse, the man named Kayaba Akihiko greatly influenced the people around him; he had the kind of aura that could derail the lives of people. Having brought forth not one, but two major criminals of the century——though, in Sugou’s case, the scale was much smaller than Kayaba’s—— from his laboratory, Professor Shigemura couldn’t be spotless himself.

Regardless of my inability to guess what Shigemura’s intentions were with his release of the Augma and Ordinal Scale a year and a half after the end of the SAO Incident, OS was sweeping society with impressive momentum. While SAO did cause enough of an uproar to create huge queues to stores at the time it went on sale, unlike SAO’s limited ten thousand copy release, OS was an app that you only needed to download. Right as the game launched, its active user count exceeded hundreds of thousands; the momentum was so great that if it weren’t for the shortage of _Augma_s, it would be only natural to have double or triple the user base.

What surprised me a little was the fact that even Asuna began playing it quite enthusiastically without my notice. I figured that she was invited by Liz and the others and just couldn’t refuse, but her ranking number topped that of the others in the group in no time, so I could only admire how the 《Demon of Clearing》 of the Knights of the Blood was alive and well.

While Ordinal Scale branded itself as an ARMMO-RPG, its system was simplified to the extreme. Rather that assigning numerical stats like HP and STR to players, the only numbers displayed were the total of points acquired, the current point balance, and the ranking number, which was calculated based on your point total.

As the title, which meant 《measure of numerical order》, implied, the player’s strength was regulated by their ranking number. While there would be barely any difference in your capabilities if you were a player at rank 1000 and fought against one at rank 999, there would be an obvious difference in your ability to take a hit and your offensive capabilities if you were pitted against a player at rank 900 instead, and you practically wouldn’t have a chance against one at rank 500.

In that case, it would seem that once someone beat you in ranking, there would never be a chance to turn the tables again, but that’s where the ARMMO came in; in PvP, the player’s own endurance and reflexes were a huge factor. No matter how great your offensive ability was, it was meaningless if your sword couldn’t land a hit, while players specialising in running could just run around till their enemy eventually runs out of breath. If you continued winning in PvP through stamina, your ranking would also go up rapidly.

However, if that’s all there was to it, young and sporty players would have too much of an advantage——though, seeing as it’s an AR game, that would essentially be the case no matter what you did——thus, there were other means of earning points steadily, such as by defeating monsters and picking up items in town. Asuna herself went up the ranking to the 3,000s in two weeks through only monster battles and item collection, basically avoiding PvP altogether, so all I could say was ’that’s just like her'.

On the other hand, I was still loitering in the 100,000s even at the end of April. I was prepared to stay like this until the boom cooled off, when I—— no, Asuna and I were struck by that incident.

Floor Bosses from Old Aincrad that began to appear in Ordinal Scale’s limited time event battles.

Eiji, the rank 2 player, appearing before us.

Asuna’s and Klein’s memory loss, and the final battle at the New National Stadium——

Professor Shigemura Tetsuhiro’s goal was to revive Yuuna, his only daughter, who had lost her life in SAO, as a digital ghost. Using the Augma to scan the memories regarding Yuuna from the survivors of SAO, he was attempting to create an AI with the memories and personality of Yuuna based on that enormous lifelog.

The plan was almost successful; the professor succeeded in creating an AI with his daughter’s personality and limited memories. This AI that we dubbed as 《White Yuna》, however, due to being bestowed a virtuous personality, attempted to stop the final stage of the plan that could kill a large number of SAO survivors.

Surprisingly, Ordinal Scale was operating on the old SAO server that was left behind beneath Argus’s office, while White Yuna was running based on the language engine of Aincrad’s hundredth floor boss——the final boss that was supposed to appear in the original SAO before Kayaba Akihiko took over.

My friends and I defeated the final boss with Yuna’s help, stopping Professor Shigemura’s fearsome plan. However, as the final boss’s language engine was reset, White Yuna also vanished into nothingness.

The memories stolen from Asuna and Klein were recovering bit by bit as their scanned neuron #dendrites#(_spine_s) regenerated, seemingly putting an end to the incident.

But even now, eight days since that battle, there were two small thorns still gnawing at my mind.

The first was Shigemura Yuuna’s childhood friend, the person who was with Yuuna when she died in Aincrad and thus helped with the professor’s plan - Eiji.

The other was the AR idol and image character of Ordinal Scale that had the exact same face as White Yuna, but had an entirely different personality - 《Black Yuna》——

Using an exo_suit_ that greatly strengthened his movement capabilities, Eiji, aka Nochizawa Eiji, sent all the members of Klein’s guild, Fuurinkazan, to hospital. Actually hitting and kicking other players in an AR game PvP was clearly a crime of inflicting bodily injury. Two days after our battle at the New National Stadium, he turned himself in to a police officer at Yoyogi and is still being detained as of this moment, six days later. Klein and the others weren’t going to file a report “about something in-game”, thus it was quite questionable whether he was going to be prosecuted.

As for #Black Yuna#(Kuroi Yuna)——these days, we shorten it a bit to 《Kuro Yuna》—— she was still working as an AR idol even now.

Although she was also an AI, that didn’t mean she possessed a super high-grade language engine, unlike White Yuna. As her personality program and desires were both simple, it was unlikely for her to commit anything bad of her own accord, yet for this very reason, when I happen to see her singing innocently, I feel a little sting inside my chest.

I was unlikely to meet either Eiji or Kuro Yuna anymore.

However, I still feel that the thorns stuck inside me won’t be removed so easily.

2

Travelling from Seibuyagisawa Station, the closest station to my school, to my home near Hon-Kawagoe Station along the Seibu Shinjuku Line took forty-five minutes. It also took five minutes to travel to the station from school on foot, and ten more minutes to travel home from the station by bike, so a one-way school commute took me around an hour.

Asuna’s home in Miyasaka, Setagaya Ward was much closer if we were to look at linear distances; however, she had to use an extremely complicated route: first, she had to take a bus from school to Kichijoji Station, then travel to Meidaimae Station via the Keiō Inokashira Line, then switch over to the Keiō Line to travel to Shimo-takaido Station, where she needed to switch over to the Tōkyū Setagaya Line, before finally arriving at the Miyanosaka Station near her home; hence, her door-to-door travel took up an hour and a half.

I believe a brisk ride by motor_bike_ through Kanpachi Street and Ome Highway would be better as it would only take a bit over thirty minutes, but I couldn’t really say “Ya shud get a license” to Asuna, the daughter of a company’s director. On the other hand, perhaps due to all the training she had in her rehab after being released from ALO, she didn’t seem to mind the long commute as she thought of them as good exercise.

From my perspective, it was painful that the time we could spend together after school would surely grow shorter, but, now that I think about it, the very fact that I could meet with Asuna in the virtual world and go to the same school as her in the real world was a miracle in itself. And we could meet up as much as we wanted in ALfheim after she returned home, thus asking for more would be demanding luxury.

After arriving in front of my home by bike and engaging the wirelock, I opened the sliding door.

At that moment, Suguha, who usually returned home later than me, stuck her head out from the corner of the corridor.

“Onii-chan, welcome home.”

“I’m home. You sure are early today; what about your club work?”

When I asked this question while taking off my shoes, Suguha answered while still leaning out from the corner for some reason.

“We had a joint practice yesterday, so we have the day off today~”

“That so…… good work then.”

Having entered a prestigious girls’ school in Saitama City under the sports referral from her kendo club, Suguha, now a second-year student, was leading a life with increasingly hard club work; on the nineteenth last month, individual match preliminaries of the Kanto Tournament were held, followed by the team preliminaries the week after, and she managed to clear both of them.

Since she only needed one stop down the Kawagoe Line to the Ōmiya Station close to her school, I heard her commutes to school take around thirty-five minutes, but she returned home later than me practically every day. You’d think that she wouldn’t have the energy left for playing games with a lifestyle like that, but she would always find at least a little bit of time to log in each day before going to bed, and she’s apparently enjoying tackling large-scale quests with her mates on her days off.

Additionally, Suguha had a strange method of concentrating; the night before a match, she’d always duel with me in ALO until we fell. Both I and Leafa were speed-types, thus our battle would always turn into a show of vehement speed, but, strangely, she’s apparently able to fight calmly in her match the next day.

Someone who loved ALO as much as Suguha couldn’t possibly have no interest in Ordinal Scale—— there was no way to question the fact that her kendo techniques were many times more effective in AR battles than in VR—— and using her mother’s connections, she finally acquired an Augma, but she had departed to the faraway Shimane prefecture for a kendo club training camp around the time SAO bosses began to appear. However, she was able to take part in the final battle against the hundredth floor’s boss at the spur of the moment from Shimane and had been a great help to us in that very unfavourable situation, so I feel quite indebted to her.

She said that the next Kanto Tournament would be in early June, so I should go to cheer her on then…… with such thoughts, I stepped into the corridor and saw that Suguha, aside from her head and right shoulder, was still hiding behind the wall.

Having caught on to what was up, I pretended to head for the washroom before suddenly breaking into a dash, thus catching Suguha by the nape of her T-shirt just as she tried to escape.

“Gueh.”

As my sister gave such a moan, I discovered her holding 1 little cup of economical vanilla ice cream in its entirety in her left arm, with a spoon dipped into it. Apparently, she was eating directly from the cup.

“Come on now, mom will be mad at you for this.”

When I said this to her while letting go of her nape, Suguha turned around and stuck out her tongue.

“But if I use a plate, we’d have more dishes to wash. I’m thinking eco; eco, you hear.”

“That’s definitely not how it works…… I’ll keep quiet about this, so give me some too.”

Offering a backroom deal, I was about to extend my hand towards the spoon, but Suguha grasped it a moment sooner. Just when I thought that my deal had been rejected, she scooped out a heap of the vanilla and shoved it into my mouth.

“Hnn!”

“Hnn, hey…… that’s too much……”

With these words, I unwillingly got my cheeks stuffed with a mouthful of vanilla ice cream and then felt my temple aching from the cold. Seeing my frown, Suguha cackled.

When I opened the door to my room after washing my hands and face, the light of the setting sun coming from the window in the south-western corner dyed the room a deep red.

It seems like I have developed a weakness for the red sunset after two years of living in Aincrad, as I was taken aback by the sight despite a year and a half having passed since I returned from the game. Only after staring at the orange sky for twenty seconds did I hastily get changed.

Just as I began wondering whether I should sit down on the chair and start on my homework, or take a peek at the land of fairies for a bit, a lavish device placed at a corner of my work desk caught my eyes.

This headset-like device with a white plastic frame was the Augma. The details of the incident were left entirely unreported; instead, the rampaging boss monsters at Black Yuna’s concert venue were explained away as just a surprise for the event, thus, unlike the NerveGear, this device wasn’t confiscated.

Even now, if you take a stroll around town, you could easily find people who still wear an Augma, but I’ve become even less interested in it than before. Kikuoka has said that performing a scan with the kind of output that could inflict damage to the brain required wireless charging from special large drones, and that the latest firmware created by Professor Shigemura would have killed the memory scan function of the device, yet that kind of experience couldn’t just be cleared away through reasoning like that. Even I had such sentiments, so Asuna, who had her memories stolen, albeit temporarily, would have all the more reason to think like that.

As I thought, I’ll stop using the Augma.

Having made this decision, I took the device into my hands in order to format it. There were plenty of handy AR apps other than Ordinal Scale on it, but it wasn’t like they couldn’t be substituted by traditional portable devices.

When I equipped it by placing it on my left ear, the device automatically booted up and the Augma’s logo was displayed in the middle of my vision. This logo was directly projected into my eye through the projection lens at the tip of its thin arm, but, at that same moment, the matrix panel installed in the device’s support arm that reached for the back of my head initiated a link with my brain. This ability to use both retinal projections and cerebral _link_s at the same time could be considered the Augma’s greatest feature.

Once the logo disappeared, my vision was filled to the brim with a large number of icons and widgets.

When I first experienced this 《virtual desktop》, I thought, ‘This is so messy that it’s making me dizzy!’, but I got used to it in no time. Thinking about it, if you were to expand the various holo-windows in ALO, you’d find that the density of information would be about the same. And, when I got used to it, I had to accept that it was so handy that it even got on my nerves.

Though, this would be the last time I looked at this virtual desktop——

As I looked around the weather forecast and news widgets with such deep emotions, I noticed a character string scrolling through the upper left side of my view, and frowned.

Ordinal Scale was a well-made game, but the thing about it I hated most was that you couldn’t turn off the push notifications. The entire string of characters was a so-called 《announcement from the administrators》.

Through the strenuous effort I had invested in order to bring back Asuna’s memories, I defeated several old SAO bosses, which offered a large number of bonus points, one after another, then won against Eiji, the 2nd-ranked player, and, in the end, I crushed the final boss, thus I quickly rose from the 100,000s rank to rank 1. It was no longer realistic for anyone to exceed the number of points I had accumulated if they only got their points through item collection and monster farming, thus I believe that players who wanted to reach rank 1 would need to beat me in PvP several times to achieve their goal, but I wonder how this will turn out when I retire from Ordinal Scale today——

Nah, someone else can worry about that.

In order to begin formatting, I was about to reach for the system settings icon with my left hand, when I stopped it midair.

That was because a new message was displayed on the annoying push notifications I mentioned earlier. Noticing that it had the characters 《Yuna》, I tapped it by reflex.

Written on the window that opened up wasn’t a notice for an event or a new song, but an announcement on the release of a new desktop mascot app.

“……A Yuna mascot……?”

Muttering this, I read the details. Apparently, it was a traditional widget that only served to tell you the weather forecast and your schedule, but it seems that the mascot could grow to some extent through conversation. Of course, I had Yui with me, so I had no need for such a mascot, but I suddenly felt the need to say my goodbyes and thus tapped on the link in the message.

The window transitioned to an app store; the download and install was finished in no time. When I returned to the home screen and tapped on the icon with a ’new’ mark, a familiar terms of service window came up.

‘This doesn’t look like a good idea’…… with this thought, I quickly skimmed through it and touched the agree button. The window disappeared and a small ring of light appeared on the surface of the desk that I had been using for many years.

That ring, having turned into a progress meter, spinned around once and disappeared, creating a humanoid avatar with a soft sound effect.

It was somewhat smaller than the PET bottle of carbonated water that was placed nearby, thus the avatar’s height should be around twenty centimetres. Long, pure white hair coupled with a mainly black costume. When the closed eyelids suddenly opened up, I saw the avatar’s ruby-like red eyes——

As a smile adorned her beautiful, coquettish face, the avatar turned to me and waved her hands.

“Nice to meet you! I am Yuna. T-h-a-n-k-s for the download!”

She greeted me in a bittersweet voice and right afterwards blew a kiss. The behaviour of this avatar could apparently be customised through conversation with the user, but the default version seemed to be quite impish.

——Hmm, perhaps it should be called a nice reproduction of the original’s personality.

The small Yuna took a brisk walk atop the desk and leaned against the PET bottle. I see, so it’s a literal desktop mascot. It tilted its small head and looked at me at an angle.

“Say, what is your name?”

It was a sequence to confirm the pronunciation of the user’s name that frequently took place the first time you log into a VRMMO, but it was quite unnerving when this happened in the real world. Taking care to make my pronunciation clear——

“Kirito.”

“Kirito, is that right?”

Hearing the same voice as that in my memories, I nodded in silence, after which I answered again, ‘Yep’. Yuna once again smiled, as she said, ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Kirito!’

The only thing this mascot had in common with the White Yuna that saved us was its face, while it’s probably not sharing its data with Black Yuna either. Nevertheless, feeling that this would pass some sort of message along somewhere, I was about to say ‘Thanks’ and ‘Goodbye’ to the Yuna before me.

Yet, a moment before I could open my mouth.

Something abnormal happened to Yuna, leaning on the PET bottle.

*Zaza*, with such a jarring sound, an electronic noise affected various parts of the avatar. The avatar stood upright in a way that felt like an unnatural drop-frame², as if it was resisting this phenomenon, and then, looking straight at me——

“Kirito.”

It once again called out my name. However, the alluring tone from just moments ago was nowhere to be found in this voice; instead, it sounded rather serious.

“Kirito, save me.”

Upon whispering this, the mascot once again returned to its original place as if by warping. With no more noise affecting her body, she began rocking and humming a tune.

After gazing dumbfounded at this scene for over ten seconds, I timidly called out.

“Yuna……?”

“What is it, Kirito? If you want me to sing, I need a mic and costume!”

“Ah…… U-uh huh……”

Perhaps judging my unintelligible response as a positive answer, the small Yuna suddenly waved her right hand. The newly displayed window was an item shop filled with _mic_s and dresses of various design, among other accessories. Apparently, when you collect an entire set, the corresponding repertoire of songs will be available to the mascot.

Points from Ordinal Scale could be used in place of real money, thus, if I felt like it, I could purchase all the _item_s in the store with no significant change to my enormous point balance, but now wasn’t the time for something like that.

“……Hmm, I’ll leave it for later.”

When I pronounced it clearly this time, Yuna responded, ‘That so?’, without any sign of dissatisfaction, after which the window disappeared. After a stroll atop my desk, Yuna sat down on the mouse for my PC and once again began humming something to herself.

For a desktop mascot, there was nothing unnatural in her actions. But, in that case, what was with those words just moments ago? “Save me”—— I certainly heard these words after the Little Yuna called out my name.

What if that was a message sent by someone on the Net, borrowing the mouth of the mascot to do it?

There was only one person like that that I could think of. The White Yuna that should have disappeared in the New National Stadium—— the digital ghost of Shigemura Yuuna.

To Professor Shigemura, the original Black Yuna that continued her AR idol role appeared to be but a tool for resurrecting his daughter. The reason why the idol had the same face as his daughter was to make SAO Survivors recall the memories of Yuuna they had held sealed deep in their mind; perhaps for this very reason the professor was so cold towards Black Yuna, said Kikuoka. In fact, the professor shut down the workstation that was controlling Black Yuna just before his attempt at a simultaneous memory scan at the New National Stadium began.

Afterwards, it’s said that the control of Black Yuna was transferred to Kamura, though I’ve heard that her data was reset at the time. So, her recognising me and using the mascot to request help was unthinkable.

Assuming that White Yuna’s consciousness still remained somewhere…… the only conceivable place was the old SAO server. However, even I didn’t know what became of that machine after the incident.

Should I try to contact Professor Shigemura again, I wonder.

Just as I had that thought, I recalled the time I visited the Toto Institute of Technology to question the man, and thus I frowned. When I straight up asked him, “Aren’t you performing memory _scan_s on SAO survivors with the Augma”, I figured that, knowing his position, the professor would only deny the allegation, yet the blunt answer he gave me really ate away at me. Even if I gave him another nonchalant visit to tell him that “the Black Yuna mascot asked for help”, I don’t think I’d get a proper answer from him. In the first place, I don’t even know where the professor currently is, and Kikuoka wouldn’t tell me about that either.

In that case, there was but one other person I could go to for a talk about this case.

First, I looked up the instructions for the desktop mascot and called out to the still humming Yuna to say, “See you later.” Then, Yuna quickly stood up, “Okay, later, Kirito!”, and waved her hand, before being engulfed by light and disappearing. There appeared to be a way to turn off the app without the need to call out to it, but since the avatar was similar to Yui in appearance and size, it would have felt awkward to make her disappear with my fingertip without saying a thing.

Once the mascot disappeared, the words I heard from her felt more and more like a dream or illusion, but I wouldn’t have got myself involved in all those incidents if I was actually capable of pretending that something like this never happened. Preparing for the worst, I opened my mouth once again.

“Command, call Kikuoka Seijirou.”

At that moment, the Augma’s voice call app started up and began ringing. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to return to using portable phones if I got used to this, but it’ll just be for today…… no, until I figure out the intention of that message… as I made this decision, I waited.

The twenty-second ring was suddenly interrupted and I heard a slightly flustered voice.

『You know, Kirito-kun, today is a Thursday and it’s not even six yet. As great as I am, even I could be unable to answer a sudden call like that.』

“My bad, I figured a government worker would have finished up by five.”

At my sincere apology, the elite bureaucrat riddled with mysteries, ‘Fuga’, let out some strange sound, after which he answered in a resigned voice.

『……So, what brings you to me?』

“There’s something I want you to look up for me.”

Next, I raised two questions. He told me he’d call me back in five minutes, so I quietly hung up and activated a timer app.

I can’t say I didn’t expect it, but I heard the ringtone again when the timer reached four minutes and fifty eight seconds.

After writing down the info he looked up for me on a note app, I gave my sincere thanks, before hanging up.

The date and time handwritten on the note was the 8th of May, Friday, sixteen hundred hours. Meaning, tomorrow. Was this nice timing a coincidence or intentional?

The answer should be clear if I got to meet with her once again.

Just as I saved the note, I heard a knock on the door. After looking around the desktop reflexively, I realised that it came from the real world.

“Onii-chan, it’s about time to make lunch.”

Having heard Suguha’s voice from across the door, I replied, “Okay”, while taking off the Augma.

3

Having taken several of his personal belongings stored in a large manila envelope and signed umpteen documents, Nochizawa Eiji stepped out through the front door of the Yoyogi police station.

It had already been seven days since he turned himself in on the 1st of May. Actually, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was only seven days.

Eiji had testified the truth about everything, apart from his motives, regarding how he attacked and injured the members of the Fuurinkazan guild in Akihabara and at the Yoyogi Stadium. During the investigation, he claimed that he “held a grudge over some trouble in-game”, though that wasn’t a complete lie.

He figured that there would be no chance of being released on bail as he had sent as many as six people to the hospital, while not having anyone to vouch for his behaviour upon release; however, today he was suddenly informed that he would be released without indictment. It seemed that the Fuurinkazan guys either hadn’t filed a report or withdrew it, but Eiji didn’t feel indebted to them for that. After all, just because he was released didn’t mean he had any place to go to.

Conventionally, he had no other option but to return to his apartment in the Meguro ward. He did want to get changed, take a bath and, most of all, sleep soundly in a familiar bed.

However, at the same time, he also felt that he absolutely didn’t want to do that.

He didn’t want to return to his normal life. He never ever wanted to return to those days when he could only wait for his regrets and despair to eat him up bit by bit.

Ever since he was released from the death game in the autumn two years ago…… no, to be accurate, an additional year before that, since 18th of October 2023, the day Yuna—— Yuuna died in Aincrad, Eiji lived in a world with no light to be found.

Having left the Knights of the Blood, he secluded himself in the inn on the First Floor where he had been living with Yuuna, recalling Yuuna’s final moments time after time each day. His head was filled with nothing but thoughts such as ‘At that time, if only I had done this or that.’

At first, he only blamed himself. ‘If only I had been stronger. If only I had noticed the gimmick for that trap zone. If only I hadn’t gone out to help those trapped players’——

However, about half a year after the incident, he noticed that he wasn’t the only one at fault for Yuuna’s death.

‘If only those reckless players didn’t fall for that painfully obvious trap.’

‘If only they had actually read the strategy guide and all had a 《Cough Potion》, an item that was indispensable for the fortieth floor.’

‘If only the players that came to the rescue with us didn’t prioritise crushing that boss monster and instead helped save Yuuna from her plight……’

At that moment, Eiji had desperately pleaded the main players of the rescue party—— the two members of the Clearing guild named 《Fuurinkazan》. ‘I’m begging you, please go save Yuna’, he begged.

However, those two answered that they would all be wiped out if the boss wasn’t defeated properly and thus didn’t even try to leave their posts.

Before he knew it, Eiji became possessed by the thought that Yuuna was killed not by the monsters or SAO itself, but by those two guys. As progress was made on clearing the floors and Eiji began seeing the name Fuurinkazan in the info broker’s newspaper, the focus of his hatred expanded to include the other members and even the guild leader.

‘They were the ones who killed Yuuna. They wanted to hog the boss’s drop items, so they didn’t come to Yuuna’s aid.’

In a corner of his mind, he realised that this was an absurd grudge that was based on what was practically a false accusation. However, Eiji had no other way to continue living in that world apart from being fixated on that idea.

Of course, he had deliberated suicide many times. If he jumped off the peripheral terrace in the Town of Beginnings into the sea of clouds, he would be able to die without leaving for the Outer Field.

Yet, while no one voiced this out loud, deep in their hearts, everyone clung to a certain idea——‘Could the players who died in Aincrad not actually be dead? Perhaps they had been teleported to some other place, where they’re waiting for the game to be cleared?’, this faint hope stopped Eiji from commiting suicide.

On the 7th of November 2024, SAO was finally cleared and Eiji returned to the real world.

In the hospital that he had been admitted to, he discovered several things.

The fact that Eiji’s parents had divorced merely a month after he became trapped in the death game. The fact that the house they had been living in had already been sold off, his parents had both moved out, and that the one taking care of Eiji was Yuuna’s father, Professor Shigemura.

And also, the fact that the proclamation made by Kayaba Akihiko, the mastermind of the death game as well as Professor Shigemura’s disciple, was true, word for word——

The exact same day and moment Yuna died on the fortieth floor of Aincrad, Yuuna had of course died. In the presence of the professor, who informed the boy of this truth quietly, Eiji began weeping.

Having received a call from the hospital, his parents arrived to meet him several days later, yet it seemed that neither of the two wanted to take their son in. At that moment, for the first time in his life, #Eiji#(鋭二) discovered the reason why the character #two#(二) was in his name, despite him being an only child. His father and mother were in a second marriage, while Eiji was a child from his mother’s previous marriage, and thus he had no blood relationship with his father. Apparently, his mother’s former husband had taken custody of his elder brother whose name Eiji did not even know.

When Eiji announced that he wanted to live alone, his parents, having already begun a new life, returned to their respective homes with an expression of relief.

Even so, they did give him a minimal allowance, thus Eiji rented a cheap apartment and, making use of the SAO Incident Victim Relief Programme, received a high school diploma by completing a correspondence course. He had absolutely no desire to go to the survivor school where there was a chance the guys who had let Yuuna die studied at.

Despite qualifying to take an entrance exam, Eiji had no desire to study at university or anything, thus, as before, he remained drowning in despair from losing Yuuna. An end to his dreary days of darkness finally came in autumn the following year—— the moment Professor Shigemura requested his help for a 《project to restore Yuuna》.

Ever since that day, the chance to meet Yuuna again was the only pillar supporting Eiji’s will to live. He once again began studying for the entrance exam and even joined Shigemura’s lab as an auditing student.

He understood that the digital ghost they recreated from the memories of SAO players wasn’t the real Yuuna. Despite this, Eiji couldn’t help but cling to that faint hope. This attempt at creating an artificial intelligence from human memories was the first of its kind in the world. In that case, it wouldn’t be strange for some miracle to take place within it.

Yes…… a miracle did in fact take place.

By combining the memories scanned from tens of survivors, an AI that made use of the language engine developed by Kayaba Akihiko successfully reproduced Yuuna’s personality. Following this, if the final stage of their plan - to steal a large quantity of memories from over a thousand survivors gathered at the New National Stadium and integrate these memories into the AI - succeeded, Yuuna was sure to be revived completely.

However, the AI Yuuna’s personality was too much like Yuuna’s.

She once again decided to do the exact same thing.

Just like how she sacrificed herself in an attempt to save other players on the fortieth floor of Aincrad, this time too she decided to assist a player from the Clearers…… the 《Black Swordsman》 who had cleared SAO, to stop the professor’s plan, knowing that this would lead to her disappearing.

In the stadium’s underground parking lot, Eiji fought the Black Swordsman and lost, despite exploiting his exo_suit_ to its very limits. And at that point, he was betrayed by Professor Shigemura, whom he had trusted deeply.

The professor attempted to steal even Eiji’s memories of Yuuna.

He did not recall whether this memory scan had been actually conducted or not. When Eiji entered the concert venue upon regaining consciousness in the underground parking lot, everything had already ended.

Yes…… anything and everything had come to an end.

While he was released with his personal belongings, Eiji had no idea where to go now.

If he returned to his apartment, it would only lead to those gray days of monotony again. Nevertheless, he had no intention of contacting Professor Shigemura. The home he was born in had already been taken up by another family. He was so hungry that it felt like his stomach was twisting, yet he didn’t feel like going to a restaurant to get something to eat.

When he directed his gaze at the upper-right corner of his vision in an attempt to look at the time, he noticed that nothing was there. That was only natural; after all, he did not have his Augma equipped.

As Eiji’s Augma was customised to control his exo_suit_, it was confiscated along with his broken suit. Assuming he’d get it back, it would probably only happen after it was confirmed that he would not face prosecution, but it was unclear how likely that would happen.

Regardless, if he continued standing on police grounds indefinitely, he’d probably be told to go someplace else by the officer on watch. In that case, perhaps he should continue walking without a care until he became unable to move from exhaustion?

While deliberating this idea, Eiji came out onto the sidewalk in front of the police station and before him…

Idly stood the person that he least wanted to see.

4

As I saw signs of sharp antagonism on Nochizawa Eiji’s——Eiji’s face the moment he recognised me, I thought, “That’s to be expected, I guess.”

If our places were to be reversed, I would be just as cautious. Not only did I obstruct their plan to restore Shigemura Yuuna, I was also one of the players from the Clearers that he ought to despise.

Following the end of the incident, I had Agil, a man well up in the news, look up some things for me, thus, by now, I too knew the reason Eiji despised Fuurinkazan and the Clearers, and I’ve also heard about the circumstances regarding how Yuuna lost her life in Aincrad to some extent.

It’s only natural to be despised… is what I don’t feel. At least, not when it’s to the extent where he felt the need to send Klein and the others to hospital.

However, on the other hand, I am able to somewhat understand——though this could just be my arbitrary assumption——Eiji’s feelings. After the devastation of the 《Moonlit Black Cats》 guild, I too tried to find something other than myself to blame for the incident. And I had even taken a cold attitude towards Klein and Asuna, who worried about me. If there had been other players in the room where Sachi, Tetsuo, and the others died, I could have grown to vehemently detest them as well.

As I thought over such conjectures in the corner of my mind, I considered how I should greet Eiji.

Yet, before I could say a thing, Eiji opened his mouth.

“……What do you want.”

His tone was harsh, but it was better than if “Get out of my sight” were the first words to leave his mouth. I coughed and pointed to the left with my eyes.

“Before I answer that, can we go somewhere else? Just moments ago, that officer over there asked me what I was doing here.”

“…………”

An even more suspicious look appeared on Eiji’s face, but he still turned in silence. As he began walking at a quick pace, I hurried after him.

“Ehm…… There’s a family restaurant where you can pay in OS points a bit further up. I’ve got tons of points saved up, so my treat.”

Just as I spoke out to him from the side, the clearest tongue click I’ve ever heard in my life came in response.

“I don’t need to be treated by you, even I have some po……”

After spitting this out hatefully, his expression changed as if he had just realised something. While I had an Augma in my bag, Eiji did not have one on his head. It was most likely confiscated as evidence for the incident. And, of course, Ordinal Scale points couldn’t be used without an Augma.

While Eiji did become unable to say a thing, he did not resist when we arrived at the family restaurant and I attempted to lead him through the door. Luckily, the inside of the restaurant was practically empty, so I had Eiji follow me to a four-seat table far in the back. Here, our conversation was unlikely to be overheard by others.

Sitting across the table, Eiji once again said “What do you want” in a low voice. As he said this, I placed the menu, picked up from the stand, in front of him.

“Let’s talk about that after placing our orders. Pick anything you like.”

Just then came another tongue click. Still, Eiji quickly glanced through the menu and pressed the call button after a mere ten seconds. Not having decided what to order yet, I also hurriedly opened my menu.

The waitress who showed up was wearing an Augma instead of using a wireless portable device.

“Beef rib roast stake, C set.”

As Eiji showed absolutely no restraint with his orders, the waitress wrote it down on a holo-window that only she could see. And I’ll have the same thing… is what I’d like to say, but I had a promise to make dinner with Suguha today, so I decided to only order a cheesecake and something from the drink bar.

Once the waitress left, Eiji sent me a sharp look. For the third time, I was asked “What do you want”——is what I thought would happen, but the question was different this time.

“……Is that a survivor school uniform?”

“Huh?”

Looking at my blazer with slightly conspicuous piping embellishments³, I nodded.

“Ah, yeah…… that’s right.”

“Hmph.”

He gave a short snort, but he didn’t seem to be planning to say anything else. ‘What’s up with that, sheesh’…… I thought, but it’s not like I came here to speak about school, thus I took out my tablet from my messenger bag. I displayed the page that I had bookmarked and presented it to Eiji.

“Know anything about this?”

“…………”

Having picked it up in silence, Eiji glanced through the screen and, at that very moment, a noticeably stern expression appeared on his face.

“A Yuna…… desktop mascot?”

He quickly followed the link and said in a hoarse voice.

“For a price, you can change her clothes……and have her sing to the user, it says? No…… I don’t know; not about something like this. Did the professor approve the creation of such an app……?”

“The management rights for Black Yuna…… I mean, Idol Yuna were apparently taken away from Professor Shigemura’s hands.”

When I revealed this piece of info that I discovered with Yui’s help, Eiji’s suddenly had his breath taken away for a moment.

“Currently, Yuna is being independently operated by an entertainment company named 《Ario Room》 , as well as Kamura.”

“……Ario Room is the company that the professor put in charge of Yuna’s management. Though, Yuna’s appearance schedule was effectively decided by the professor and me. She…… the one you call Black Yuna is a being that was created in order to assemble SAO survivors, after all……”

As Eiji muttered this, it seemed like a faint aura of pity appeared on his face. However, it disappeared right away, replaced by a tone of resignation.

“……If that’s what the professor decided to do, there’s nothing I can do about it. I no longer have the right to say anything about how Black Yuna should be used.”

‘Are you sure you’re actually okay with that?’, were words that I swallowed down. It seems that Professor Shigemura ceding the rights to Black Yuna was done to take responsibility for the havoc caused during her first live concert nine days ago. And the one who thwarted the Yuna restoration plan that the professor and Eiji had staked everything on… was me…… albeit, there would have been a lot of casualties if I hadn’t done so.

Having raised his eyes off the tablet, Eiji once again formed a stern expression as he looked at me.

“……And so? Did you really go out of your way to see me to tell me about this? Hold on…… how did you know that I was going to be released to-……”

However, Eiji closed his mouth as the waitress approached us at that moment.

She lined up the sizzling steak with a round bun as part of the set, as well as a plate with a piece of cheesecake on the table. ‘Would that be all?’, ‘Yes.’, after this short exchange, the waitress left a paper bill before leaving, after which Eiji shot a glance at me.

“Ah, go ahead, feel free to dig in first. I’m gonna go get a drink, want some?……”

At that point, with an expression that seemed to scream ‘Why are you doing this?’, Eiji bluntly said “Oolong tea, hold back on the ice.”

At the drink bar corner, I poured some iced oolong tea, as well as some hot coffee for myself, and returned to my seat, where I found that Eiji had already finished off half of the steak and bun. Was he that hungry or was he just trying to get things over with quickly?—— most likely both.

Giving up on continuing our conversation while eating, I took a piece of the smallish cheesecake with the fork and carried it to my mouth. The taste reproduction engine in ALO was constantly being updated, yet to the brain itself, rather than to the tongue, it just couldn’t induce the kind of sense of fullness that real food could. Speaking of which, virtual desserts didn’t have the issue of making you feel guilty about the sugar and calories involved either.

In the end, it wasn’t like Kamura and Professor Shigemura developed the Augma independently from scratch; it was just a product that re-used Kayaba’s FullDive tech——of course, it was remarkable that they managed to downsize it to that extent—— but with its FullDive featured sealed away, so, if someone felt like it, it should be possible to reproduce the sense of taste in an AR environment as well. I wonder if the reason why no one had done so is because of a marketing strategy decision, or because they were holding back due to Kayaba.

As such observations crossed my mind, I put my fork to work, putting an end to the cake in no time. Meanwhile, Eiji finished eating his steak at practically the same moment, and drank his oolong tea in one gulp.

I was honestly curious about the kind of meals you’d get in a police cell, but even someone with a skill of reading the mood as low as mine could tell that this wasn’t the best time to ask about such a thing. Making use of the opportunity provided by Eiji taking in a breath, I suddenly brought out the main subject at hand.

“Yesterday, I installed that desktop mascot into my Augma.”

At that very moment, Eiji’s stern expression returned as he said, ‘And?’

“……And, at first, that mascot Yuna did nothing that you wouldn’t expect from such a program, but…… once I told her my name, she suddenly started acting as if she was affected by some abnormal load, and……”

As I explained all of that, I started having less and less faith in whether that actually happened, but if I just said “Actually, nevermind.” now, the whole thing would just end with me going all the way to Yoyogi, a place that required me to take a route that was in the opposite direction than the one I needed to go back home, after school and treating Eiji to some steak; all for nothing. Resolving myself, I finished the sentence.

“……She said, ‘Kirito, save me.’”

“…………”

As Eiji remained silent, his upturned gaze was fifty percent 《Is this guy okay?》 and 《Do you think I’d fall for that》 each.

……No, that wasn’t all. 《Don’t tell me…》 and 《Could it be》 were gaining presence bit by bit, exceeding his initial misgivings.

“……‘Save’, that all?”

At his question, raised in a whisper, I quickly nodded.

“Yeah. That’s all she said before another drop-frame affected her…… afterwards, she didn’t say anything that was unbefitting of a mascot.”

“……So, based solely on that, you went so far as to look up when I’d be released and came to see me?”

This time, I couldn’t give an answer so easily. Because, ‘Why did I go so far?’……is not the kind of question that I avoided asking myself.

However.

“Perhaps, if any other word were used instead, I would have just assumed that I misheard it or there was some bug with the program, and would have forgotten all about it right away…… but, when a word such as ‘save’ was used, I kinda……”

After drinking up the now cold coffee that remained at the bottom of my cup, the bitterness making me frown, I spoke about the conjectures that crossed my mind yesterday.

“If someone used the mascot to send a message, there’s only two people who could have done that. It was either White Yuna…… the digital ghost of Professor Shigemura’s daughter who should have disappeared at the stadium, or Black Yuna the idol operated by Ario Room. Though, I’m guessing you didn’t make Black Yuna’s character that complicated, right?”

Eiji didn’t answer my question right away and instead, after several seconds, muttered.

“Two, huh.”

“Huh……?”

“……Nothing. ——Indeed, Black Yuna…… though the professor and I call her ＹＵＮＡ, written in the western alphabet; she has only one impetus - 《a desire to sing in front of a large crowd》. She didn’t even understand what our plan entailed. Even if the right to manage her was transferred from the professor to Ario Room, it has no impact on Black Yuna’s role as an AR idol. If so, there’s no way she’d voice any displeasure…… I think……”

His explanation suddenly faded out, thus I looked into Eiji’s face. Noticing my gaze, he quickly shook his head.

“Well…… There were several occasions when she did something that she wasn’t programmed to do, like showing eagerness in reading an irrelevant book, or interest in the memory data that we had materialised into objects. Though, I can’t really imagine that the foundation for her personality has changed. If it’s really one of the Yunas that sent you a message, it would be……”

At that moment, Eiji once again shut his mouth. Staring at a single point on the table, he did not move a single muscle.

Thinking about it reasonably, it couldn’t have been Black Yuna that sent the message. Nevertheless, he was probably reluctant to take a leap in logic and infer that White Yuna was still out there somewhere. Bearing a hope only for it to be crushed right afterwards…… As someone who tried to acquire a revival item to bring back Sachi, I could understand his pain.

Nevertheless, now having explained all that had happened, I had to bring up the core question. Asking that very question is why I came to see Eiji.

I exhaled deeply, then once again breathed in—— but then stopped at that point. After hesitating for about two seconds, I asked something different from what I had planned.

“Umm…… I wonder, how should I call you? We can’t go on with 《#you#(socchi)》 and 《#you#(omae)》 forever now, after all…… Eiji? Nautilus? Nochizawa-kun?”

Just then, I got an intense stare from beyond the gently wavy forelocks of his.

“The third one is a definite no-go. Second one is a no-go too……Just use Eiji.”

“G-gotcha……Then call me Kirito……”

“Hmph.”

Placing my trust in the assumption that that answer was an ‘okay’, I moved forward with the topic.

“So…… Eiji, the reason why I came to see you was because I wanted you to tell me what’s become of the old SAO server that White Yuna ran on.

“The old SAO server…… you say?”

After parroting my words in a mutter, Eiji frowned.

“Well, naturally, the professor shut it down and sealed it away again………… No, wait. You said that Black Yuna is running not only as a desktop mascot, but as the real thing too?”

“Ah…… Yeah. Umm……”

I picked up my tablet from the table and went to the official site that I had bookmarked.

“……Look, she’s having a mini concert in Akihabara and Osaka today. Also, a new song is being released at the end of the month, it seems.”

“In that case, the SAO server is still running.”

I took several seconds to digest Eiji’s words.

With ‘It can’t be’ and ‘I knew it’ sentiments mixed in, I unconsciously gave a sigh.

“……So that’s it…… Meaning, Black Yuna is also an AI based on SAO, huh……”

“Yep. Regardless of how simple her impetus is, it’s impossible for Professor Shigemura to have created an AI that could speak as naturally as her when it’s not even his field of expertise.”

Upon asserting this, Eiji extended his hand towards his glass. But noticing that only water from the melted ice remained, he stood up.

“This time, I’ll go get your share. What do you want?”

Thinking that this was the first time I’ve ever been asked about getting a beverage from the drink bar in such an edged tone, I answered, “In that case, some ginger ale.”

“Hmph.”

As I’ve already grown used to that response, I waited quietly at the table and Eiji returned in no time. Having placed a glass and straw in front of me, before sitting down on his chair and taking a sip of his cappuccino, he continued his explanation.

“Black Yuna wasn’t the only one running on the SAO server. Ordinal Scale itself is running on another system that was hidden on the SAO server.”

“Another……system?”

“Have you ever heard of the name ‘Cardinal System’?”

At this question, I nodded reflexively.

“Ah….. yeah, I have. It’s an autonomous system that controlled SAO and made maintenance unnecessary…… It swiftly dealt with any bugs or glitches, controlled inflation and deflation, and even automatically generated quests.”

“Hmph…… That’s right. Apparently, the name for the Cardinal System comes from 《#cardinal numbers#(kisuu)》, cardinal numbers. Do I need to explain what a cardinal number is?”

“Err…… It’s a number that denotes quantity and number, if I recall correctly? Like ‘one’, ’two’, ’three’……”

“Well, that’ll do. That means that the Cardinal System is a system that controls the game based on cardinal numbers. Player and monster stats like HP and STR, weapon and armour specs, various correction and resistance values - everything and anything was managed and processed through cardinal numbers…… Well, it’s an awfully ordinary thing in RPGs though.”

“I see……”

Predicting where this was going, I shoved my straw into the ginger ale. Eiji took another sip of his cappuccino, his gaze roaming through the air.

“……However, Kayaba Akihiko created a prototype for another system that was based on the exact opposite principal. Not cardinal numbers, but 《#ordinal numbers#(josuu)》……it managed players through ordinal numbers.”

“Ordinal numbers…… numbers that denoted sequence and number in a series……?”

“That’s correct. The Ordinal System, the opposite side of the coin of the Cardinal System…… Being a outside-the-company board member of Argus, Professor Shigemura discovered the system that, in the end, Kayaba never made use of while examining the SAO server. The professor copied and recycled it for Ordinal Scale. The main server for OS is located in Kamura’s subsidiary, but it has a direct connection through a private line to the SAO server in Argus’s headquarters. In order to have Black Yuna and White Yuna in OS, you see……”

“……That means that Ordinal Scale, in a sense, was SAO itself…… is that it? Even the old Aincrad bosses that appeared during the event battles weren’t just lookalike remakes……”

“We just reused the original data as is. Have you noticed that the locations where the bosses appeared were lined up with the coordinates of the Aincrad Labyrinths?”

“Yeah…… Though, only after several battles.”

As I nodded, Eiji glimpsed through the eastern window—— towards the Yoyogi Gymnasium that should lie beyond it.

“That was because we couldn’t change the location where the bosses would appear. Though luckily, the Ordinal System automatically tailored the nearby parks and plazas…… Supposing Kayaba had made use of the Ordinal System, rather than the Cardinal System, SAO players would have also been managed based on ranking numbers.

“If that were the case, it wouldn’t have been possible to avoid having rankings specified, so there would have been more PK victims……”

“Though, there would have been fewer reckless idiots who’d take on monsters that were obviously out of their league.”

Having said this in a low voice, Eiji grasped his coffee cup with both hands. Some bones became clearly visible on the back of his hands.

But after several seconds, he breathed out and took his hands off the cup, before continuing the explanation.

“……There was another merit to reusing the Ordinal System. The language engine developed by Kayaba for SAO had three levels. The least advanced one was an engine for ordinary NPCs. This was followed by an engine for event NPCs and care support AI. And the most sophisticated one was an engine for last bosses…… As a container for White Yuna, no, Yuuna, the professor naturally chose the last boss language engine. However, a problem lay there. Under the Cardinal System, the last bosses were formidable but not immortal. If attacked by tens of high-level players, it was possible for them to be defeated.”

“And if it were defeated, the language engine that provided Yuna’s personality after all that effort put into it would be reset……”

As I muttered this, Eiji’s lips became faintly distorted.

This wasn’t something hypothetical, but what actually occurred. My battle against Eiji in the New National Stadium, as well as the defeat of the last boss together with Asuna and our comrades, took place merely nine days ago.

But Eiji only gave another side, before confirming my words.

“That’s how it goes…… Yet, this wouldn’t be the case with the Ordinal System. I still don’t know why, but Kayaba set it so that the top-ranked under the Ordinal System would be granted immortality. Whether it’s because he planned to be that person…… or perhaps……”

Without finishing that line, he drank up his cappuccino. It was my turn to head to the drink bar this time, but I couldn’t stand up due to all that shock I had from the words I just heard.

“He-hey, hold on. Im……Immortality? You mean the top-ranked would be…… invincible?”

“That’s how it is.”

Asserting this, Eiji looked at me with a scornful expression.

“No, h…… hold on. It’s not like I was planning on going on OS to wipe out people left and right.”

“Nobody said anything of the sort.”

“I-I’ll have you know, I’m planning on retiring from OS, you hear.”

“Hmph, do as you please.”

With that blunt declaration, Eiji reclined on the sofa. The rays from the setting sun coming through the window blinds behind him drew red lines on his face.

I also finished my ginger ale and muttered this, recalling my memories of that day.

“……So that’s why White Yuna had us Dive into Aincrad and fight the last boss under the Cardinal System’s rules. On the other hand…… if the last boss were to be summoned to the real world to fight us under the Ordinal System rules, we would’ve had no chance of winning……”

“Yuna…… Yuuna was that kind of person. Always calm, intelligent, and kind to everyone……”

Having whispered this in such a low volume that even I, sitting right in front of him, could barely hear it, Eiji suddenly opened his eyes wide, before lowering his head.

I think he was one or two years older than me, but with the sharp look gone from his face, it suddenly gave off a childish impression. However, this only lasted for a few seconds, before Eiji glared at me with his brow once again creased.

“……And so? What of it if the SAO server is still running?”

“Ain’t it obvious.”

After glimpsing at the time displayed on my tablet, I said.

“Tell me how to access the SAO server. I want to Dive into Aincrad once more.”

5

Minato Ward, Motoakasaka, Block One⁴.

The eight-storey building slightly to the north of Aoyama Street was once the headquarters of Argus.

Having ridden the subway Chiyoda Line and Ginza Line to arrive here from Yoyogi, Eiji and I——we hadn’t spoken to each other at all on the train——looked up at the black-tiled building without windows in silence for a few moments. I’ve laid my eyes on this building through pictures and videos numerous times, but I’ve never visited it directly till today.

The reason why Argus, a company that had been called a puny maker till the 2010s, grew so much that it was able to build an office for themselves in such a super prime district, was because they had the superhuman genius that was Kayaba Akihiko with them. The game titles for the consoles and PC that he developed sold over twenty million copies worldwide in total, earning Argus an enormous profit. Using those funds, Kayaba developed the NerveGear and SAO, which led to the incident that plunged the company in its entirety to the bottom of hell.

There were no lights in the pitch black building, while some grill shutters were lowered on the front entrance. There was a side entrance on the left side, but there were placards on the glass and it seemed unlikely that the door could be used.

“……Hey, ya know.”

I called out in a whisper to Eiji, standing at the boundary of the sidewalk and the building grounds.

“What I wanted to know is the means to access the server; that doesn’t mean I wanted you to accompany me to the server itself……”

“Hmph, we’ve come here specifically because there are no such means. I thought I told you that the OS server is connected to the SAO server through a private line.”

“B-but, well, how about the lab at the institute or something?……”

As I persisted, Eiji went silent for a moment, before quickly shaking his head.

“Indeed, the lab at Touto Tech has a terminal for controlling White Yuna and Black Yuna. But it’s impossible to access the SAO server through that machine. You need to open up a gate for FullDive use from the server side.”

“But I……”

‘Dived into the SAO server from the New National Stadium’, I attempted to say but stopped midway. In that instance, there was no doubt that White Yuna opened up the gate for us from inside the server. And she was no longer with us.

Having given me a sharp glance as I sank into silence, Eiji took out a portable device from the pocket of his blue track jacket. He launched some sort of app, before muttering.

“I think I should be able to open the side entrance and server room doors with my ID. However, there are remote surveillance cameras inside. If they spot something, the guard will be after us in no time.”

“……I see……”

Nodding, I took out the Augma from my bag. The reason I had once again taken it off after using it to pay using points at the family restaurant was because I suspected that I’d have the urge to launch OS and go item hunting.

The moment the virtual desktop booted up, “Yui, you there?”, I called out. In no time, white light gathered in the centre of my vision, forming a small fairy.

Being based on the 《SAO care support AI》 that Eiji spoke of a while ago, Yui spent each day persistently improving her abilities; right now, I am unable to even imagine where her limits lay.

This super AI, ‘Fuwawaa’, gave a big yawn before looking up at me, a cheerful smile appearing on her face.

『Good morning, Papa!』

Turning my back to Eiji as he gave me a suspicious expression, I greeted her in a whisper.

“M-morning, Yui. Though it’s already evening……”

『In the business world, 《Good morning》 is a greeting used all day long!』

I was curious about what business she had in mind, but I didn’t have the time to get sidetracked right now.

“Hey, Yui. I’d like to infiltrate, I mean, pay a visit to that building right now, so I was wondering if you could do something about the surveillance cameras for a bit……”

Seemingly having understood my extremely vague, roundabout phrasing in an instant, Yui looked up at the black building.

“Okay, piece of cake! …… Though, oh my, isn’t that building the former main office for Argus.”

“Yeah, umm, it is.”

“And what about the person behind you, Papa……”

As Yui tilted her head, I considered how I should explain this, but this would by no means end with just a word or two.

Also, the Augma doesn’t have any cameras and instead makes use of an advanced tech that converts data in real time from the user’s eyeball sensor, that is, the view that the user’s eyeballs perceive, into visuals that can be processed by the system. Meaning that Yui should only be able to see what I myself am looking at, so how is she able to perceive Eiji’s standing behind me?

Deciding to ask her about this secret after we got back home, I limited the explanation to the bare minimum.

“Well, we kinda went with the flow and decided to enter this building together…… he has an ID that grants access to it.”

『There is no danger involved, right?』

“Sure, nothing dangerous either legally or physically…… or so I expect. Can you do something about the cameras?

『Yes, I have already done something about them.』

“Wha?”

『I have ensured that all the surveillance cameras in the building will play a five minute-long looped recording. But the sun is setting, thus someone could notice that the angle of the sun remains unchanged.』

“E……. eh, isn’t that a bit too much to ask of a person…… Thanks, Yui, I’ll be sure to properly explain this in detail later on.”

『That is a promise! Also, no keeping secrets from Mama, you hear!』

“Of course, I’ll inform Asuna about this too.”

Having finished the conversation in whispers, I quickly turned around. Eiji’s expression was full of suspicion, but as someone who had been working with Black Yuna, he should be able to deduce something as trivial as the fact that I was speaking to an AI.

“Eiji, seems like we’ll be able to get around the cameras. I’ll leave the door to you.”

“……I’ve just been released, you know, so I’ll run away without you if a guard comes.”

For a second, I hesitated whether I should say something like, “While I won’t be abandoning you”, in response, but gave a short answer in the end.

“Gotcha…… Let’s go.”

Having given each other a slight nod, we looked to the left and right of the road, before stepping onto the building grounds. Here and there, some passers-by could be seen, but it didn’t seem like they were paying any attention to us.

Having approached the side entrance, Eiji held his device over the verification system. Without giving me any time to feel worried, I heard the system making a ‘pipi’ sound, followed by a clank as the door unlocked, thus we promptly opened the glass door and entered.

At that moment, the surveillance camera on the ceiling of the dark passage suddenly looked down at us. Its red indicator seemed to be staring at us.

Turning around, Eiji,

“Oi, are you sure we’re okay here?”

The moment he whispered that, Yui, who was standing on my shoulder, seemingly took offense and jumped to face him.

『Please inform this person that we are a hundrecent okay!』

“……We’re a hundrecent okay.”

It wasn’t clear how much Eiji trusted my response, but there was no turning back after coming this far. Pushing him by the back of his track jacket, I made him go forward.

At the end of the short passage lay the entrance hall; the room was dyed purple by the remaining rays of sunlight coming through the front grill shutters. We’d be visible from the road in front of the building, thus we quickly crossed the room and plunged into the elevator hall.

Among the three of them, only one was still powered. Upon Eiji pressing the ‘down’ button, the door instantly opened.

What surprised me was the fact that the elevator had _button_s for six underground floors in addition to eight above-ground floors. Eiji didn’t hesitate to press the button for the fifth underground floor. According to the information plate on the wall, B1 through B3 were the parking lot, B4 was the data centre, B5 was the server room, and B6 was the machinery room.

“……Wouldn’t you normally put the data centre and server rooms on the upper floors? It would be bad if they got flooded due to a downpour.”

As I asked this, to my surprise, Eiji didn’t give his typical “Hmph”, but instead formed a faint smile. However, this shred of a smile vanished instantly, as he responded bluntly.

“When I came here for the first time, I asked the professor the exact same question. I’m told there’s an underground water cooling system on the fourth and fifth underground floors that is cooling down the server. Also, while the underground floors are susceptible to flooding, they’re resistant to earthquakes.”

“…………I see……”

It was unclear whether it was Kayaba Akihiko’s idea to set up the server underground, but come to think of it, Aincrad’s system console was also located beneath the Town of Beginnings. Yui, who was about to be deleted at that location, was now sitting on my left shoulder, swaying her feet to and fro.

Upon leaving the elevator, I saw a passageway lit only by emergency lights stretching on straight forward. It was so dark that I couldn’t see the floor, but Eiji proceeded without any hesitation.

There was a verification system beside the sliding door at the end of the passageway as well; this time, when Eiji held his portable device out, it took a bit of time before it opened. The inside was completely pitch dark, while a chilly and dry air flowed out of it.

As I felt an indescribable pressure causing me to hesitate stepping forward, this time it was Eiji’s turn to push me in the back.

“Hurry up and get inside.”

“Ah……yeah.”

When I somehow managed to step forward, the sliding door closed behind me.

Pitch darkness. But in the depths of the room, multiple red and blue lights continued blinking. I could faintly hear the roar of an exhaust fan.

The moment I took one step closer as if drawn in, a white light dispelled the darkness. Eiji had pressed the light switch.

My eyes, half-closed for a moment, opened wide.

Inside the approximately ten jō-sized space, there was another room with glass walls. Enshrined in the middle of it was a jet black mainframe that was far bigger than me.

Inside the two front panels with sculpture-like figures, numerous _indicator_s switched on and off restlessly. On the silver plate, attached to the panel on the right, were three characters: SAO.

“So this……is the SAO server……”

When I muttered this, Yui, sitting on my shoulder, spoke out in an unsurprisingly nervous voice.

『Inside, Aincrad still exists even now, I see……』

Nodding in silence, I turned around and looked at Eiji.

“Now that we’re here…… we can log in to SAO, right?”

“Yeah…… There’s an access point that you can only use in this server room. No other signals reach here, so you should be able to pick it up automatically.”

Once he gave this answer, Eiji took out a worn-out AmuSphere from the boxes piled up in a disorderly manner beside the glass partition. Before I could say a thing, he quickly equipped it on his head.

“Naturally, I’m going too.”

Now that he declared that, I couldn’t just ask him to wait here. Besides, if he’s using an AmuSphere, at least there shouldn’t be any danger to his real body.

“……Gotcha.”

Once I also firmly attached my Augma to my head, I looked for a place suitable for a FullDive. However, of course, I couldn’t find a bed, mattress, or anything of the sort.

On the other hand, Eiji sat down on the floor without any hesitation and leaned his back against the glass wall. I sat down in silence beside him, assuming the same posture.

Exchanging glances, we matched our timing. We both inhaled, gathered some air, and shouted at the same time.

“"Link start!!””

The Augma, whose FullDive function White Yuna had unlocked during the stadium battle nine days ago, detached my consciousness from my body, making it soar through a rainbow space.

The sound of the wind.

Chilly air was stroking my cheeks. I felt the fragrance of flowers. And the sound of water flowing.

The moment I suddenly opened my eyes, a sky dyed a red as deep as blood due to the setting sun expanded as far as I could see.

The sky——

Yet, that was impossible. There was no sky in Aincrad. Lying on the stone paving, what I saw should have been the bottom of the floor above——a roof made from stone and iron. In that case, was this not Aincrad? Did I end up Diving into some other world……?

As my gaze remained fixated on the endless evening sky, my thoughts of disbelief were cleared away when a familiar voice suddenly reached my ears.

“Papa, please wake up!”

With that, my ability to think finally returned and I quickly sprang up. First, I looked over my body and hands, noticing a black leather coat with black fingerless gloves, as well as a metal plate on my chest. There was no doubt about it—— this was me in SAO, the avatar of the 《Black Swordsman》 Kirito. When I moved my hands around my back just to be sure, the hilts of my two beloved swords touched my palms as if clinging to them.

The moment I lowered my hands, stood up, and turned around, it came into my view. Standing about two metres away was Yui, the girl-in-a-white-one-piece-dress version, rather than her pixie form from ALO. The white stone-paved pathway extended straight ahead, with flower beds filled with multicoloured flowers in full bloom to the left and right.

And, towering over the end of the pathway, stood a magnificent and dignified deep crimson palace.

“The Ruby Palace…………”

Muttering, I took several steps forward, before Yui’s black hair, swayed by the wind, came into my right hand. Yui raised her left hand and grasped my coat.

“So, this is Aincrad’s hundredth floor, huh……”

When I spoke out again, Yui nodded.

Strictly speaking, this was the third time I’ve come here. However, in the first instance, I was led here by White Yuna in a state of not being able to tell whether I was in a dream or reality, thus my memories of that time aren’t clear even now. The second time, I appeared in the sky above the palace and descended straight inside.

So, this would be the first time I got to gaze thoroughly at the Ruby Palace.

If I hadn’t fought Heathcliff…… Kayaba Akihiko on the seventy-fifth floor, the conquest of the floating castle would have probably continued until we reached this palace with our own feet one day. Or perhaps, we would have been defeated on some floor without being able to accomplish this goal……

“……Is the last boss still inside……”

In response to my half-soliloquous utterance, Yui answered in a whisper.

“No…… the server appears to still be in the status where the last boss…… 《An Incarnation of the Radius》 has been defeated by Papa and the others.”

“That so…… An MMO has no credit rolls or a second world, huh……”

In that case, at this moment and onwards, the palace would probably continue towering on the hundredth floor without any inhabitants. Having somehow suppressed the strange, strong emotions overflowing me, I looked around my surroundings.

And so, I finally realised that Eiji was nowhere to be found.

“Huh……where’s Eiji……?”

“The only ones to appear at these coordinates are Papa and me, you know?”

Yui looked up at me, her lovely eyes a faint light of surprise.

“……By any chance, did you not have a plan on regrouping prepared beforehand?”

“……N-no. I was sure we’d appear at the same place……”

I mumbled some excuse, but if you think about it, there’s no way that would have happened. In MMORPGs, 《appearing at the place you logged out last time》 is part of the basics; I logged out right after defeating the last boss nine days ago, thus I appeared on the hundredth floor——but outside rather than inside the dungeon.

In that case, Eiji too should have appeared at the place he logged out the last time…… the place he had been at when SAO was cleared one and a half years ago. Most likely, that place was the vast Town of Beginnings… some inn within that town.

“……As if I can find you……”

I moaned, while Yui once again gave a stunned expression; at that moment.

A tiny insight went through my consciousness.

There’s no way that guy——Eiji would patiently wait for me at the Town of Beginnings. He was sure to go out on the search himself. Not for me, but for her…… for Yuna.

“Let’s go, Yui!”

Shouting this, I grasped Yui’s hand and began running in the opposite direction of the Ruby Palace, towards the Teleport Gate at the southern edge.

6

Running. Earnestly running.

Having rushed out of the inn located downtown in the Town of Beginnings, he ran through the streets populated by no one aside from NPCs towards the plaza in front of the Blackiron Palace. He jumped into the Teleport Gate that flickered blue, teleporting him to main town of 《Jaileum》.

Once again running through a town devoid of players, he arrived at the plaza of the western gate.

He was about to run out into the field from the gate, but an open cafe facing the plaza caught his gaze.

Naturally, it had no visitors. But as his eyes were caught by one of the tables, Eiji stopped.

As he continued staring at it, two players appeared there like a mirage.

Sitting on one of the chairs was a boy wearing a red-on-white mantle with a silver breastplate. On the other side - a girl wearing a white hood. While eating pancakes and some croque-monsieur, they had a friendly chat.

When Eiji took a step forward, the two figures disappeared without a sound.

“…………Yuna…………”

Muttering this, Eiji took a step closer to the cafe.

On the store’s window glass, he saw the reflection of his own avatar. The exact same appearance as that of the illusory boy he had just seen. He was shorter than Eiji in the real world by ten centimetres, and his face looked younger too.

His other self that he never wanted to see…… Nautilus.

Having grit his teeth, Eiji turned around and once again began running.

This time, he did take a step into the Outer Field through the western gate. A field that was as complicated as a maze due to the walls of steep boulders; to the west, to the west he ran. At times he saw the red cursors of monsters appearing, but he took detours to avoid battle and continued running.

It was a road that he had only taken once over two years ago. But strangely, he did not hesitate on which path to take.

If Yuna were asking for help from this world, there was only one place where she could be located that he could think of. The field dungeon at the western edge of the fortieth floor. The place where Yuna had died.

It’s not like the words of Kirito, the man who thwarted their plan to bring back Yuuna, were all believable to him. But that man went out of his way to meet Eiji, a person whom, by all rights, he wouldn’t ever want to even see again. Solely because ＹＵＮＡ’s desktop mascot had told him to “save” her.

If Kirito had appeared at the same place as him, perhaps Eiji would have taken the guy to the place where Yuna had died. But he was nowhere to be found. And Eiji currently did not have the mental fortitude to just wait until they regrouped.

Running. Running.

Before long, a half-collapsed ruins-like structure appeared up ahead. Thus far, he had been able to avoid monsters, but this would be difficult to do in a field dungeon with confined passageways. While on the run, he pulled out a one-handed sword from the left of his waist.

Nautilus’s level had not increased since the day Yuna died. This means that his stats were just barely suitable for fighting on the fortieth floor. Yet that didn’t mean that he could just stop.

The moment he set foot in the dungeon, three cursors were displayed in his path. Their formal name was 《Harsh Tormentors》. They were the typical small fry monsters you could find on the fortieth floor, but they always operated in groups, thus you couldn’t let your guard down with them.

However, Eiji shouted while readying his sword.

“Out of the way!”

Fifteen minutes later.

A huge, familiar gate appeared ahead. Raised up to the top of the high gatepost was a portcullis of sturdy-looking iron bars.

Eiji stopped and leaned against the wall, breathing erratically. He opened his window and objectised his last healing potion. He drank it all in one go, but it was not nearly enough to heal up completely; he had lost so much of his HP during his battles thus far that it had reached the red zone.

He threw away the empty bottle and approached the gate.

Beyond the gate was an oblong chamber; and beside the farthest wall imposingly sat a gigantic figure. It was the boss of this field dungeon. Once he reached a line past the gate, the boss would operate the lever behind it, causing iron bars to descend.

In order to have the bars rise once again, your only choices were to either defeat the boss or have it move away and once again operate the lever, but it would indeed be difficult to win against the boss on your own. Moreover, a large number of henchmen monsters would appear in this chamber.

“Yuna…………”

Shouting the name of his childhood friend in a hoarse voice, Eiji stared fixedly at a single spot within the chamber.

This was the place where Yuna, having attracted all the henchmen with her 《Chant》 skill to serve as a decoy, died. He had somehow managed to arrive at this place, believing that if Yuna were still around somewhere, it would be here.

However.

Inside the chamber paved with gray stones, only a dry wind blew through, with no sign of Yuna showing herself.

‘Do I have to enter and stand at the place where Yuna died?’

That moment was still etched in Eiji’s mind even now. The place where Yuna fell after being surrounded by numerous monsters was quite a bit closer to the gate than the chamber’s midway point. If it was so close, the boss shouldn’t go on the move even if he entered the chamber.

Having come this far, there was no option to run back. Right now, even if Eiji died, his real life wouldn’t be taken from him.

“Yuna.”

He muttered once again, before stepping through the gate.

The boss monster, the 《Feral Warder Chief》, was still sitting on the stone throne alongside the farthest wall without moving. Eiji moved forward bit by bit towards the place where Yuna had died.

There were no traces or landmarks to follow, yet Eiji could see that very spot as if there was a faint light shining upon it. It wasn’t dyed in the colour of blood by the rays of the evening sun coming from outside the farthest wall; he felt as if a pure, white light had formed there.

Five more metres. Three metres……

“Durururu…………”

A grotesque roar resounded, causing Eiji to quickly move his gaze.

Deep within the chamber, a dark shadow, with light shining behind it, slowly stood up. With its left hand, it lifted the two-handed axe, which looked like the blade a guillotine, that had been set against the throne——

With its right hand, it pulled the lever sticking out from the wall.

“…………!!”

As Eiji took in a sharp breath, the iron bars behind him fell with a fierce crash. With this, he could no longer escape from the chamber without defeating the boss or raising the lever.

Eiji was currently using an AmuSphere, so his brain wouldn’t be destroyed even if he died. This much was certain but——what would happen to Nautilus? There was no revival function in the original SAO, thus, in the worst case scenario, weren’t it possible for all of his character data to be purged?

A purge of data wasn’t scary. However, if he were killed by the boss and his data were deleted, he would not get a second chance to meet Yuna as Nautilus.

The Warder Chief stepped onto the floor, raising tremors.

Bearing its ridiculously gigantic axe on its shoulder, the boss took a step forward, then another. There were no signs of the henchmen appearing, but they should begin surging up one after another sooner or later once the battle begins.

As his path of retreat was cut off, he no longer had any choice but to fight. But Eiji’s chances of winning against the boss while solo right now were exceedingly close to zero. Even that day, Eiji——Nautilus wouldn’t have been able to fight it properly if the members of Fuurinkazan hadn’t been there with him.

Yes……thinking back upon it now, thus far has Eiji ever once defeated a formidable opponent using only his own strength?

After becoming trapped in SAO, he devoted himself to practicing Sword Skills in the training grounds within the Town of Beginnings, and raised his level by only farming safe monsters. After joining the Knights of the Blood, he had only ever fought monsters as part of a group.

The same applied in Ordinal Scale. He climbed all the way to rank 2 solely thanks to the battle assist tool equipped on his Augma, as well as his exo_suit_, rather than because of Eiji’s own strength. That’s why once the suit was destroyed, he was at his wit’s end and lost against Kirito.

Yet, now. At least now.

“Yuuna…………”

Muttering a single word, Eiji readied his sword.

His memories from this world should have been buried so deeply within him that he couldn’t even find them himself, yet his body moved on its own, starting the motion for the Sword Skill 《Sonic Leap》.

His blade shined blue. With his right foot he kicked off the floor with all his strength, the system assist fiercely accelerating his avatar.

Eiji’s charging skill… was taken in by the Warder Chief’s now sideways two-handed axe. As a metallic sound and sparks were released, the blade nearly half-sunk into the handle of the axe while trembling violently——when the light effect disappeared.

The Sword Skill ended there; during the time Eiji’s body was rendered rigid mid-air, the boss used the butt of its axe to strike Eiji hard.

“Guah……!”

The moment he was knocked onto the ground, a pathetic sound escaped his mouth. His body bounced time after time again as he rolled on the ground, and when he finally stopped, his HP bar took a sudden dip. A terror as if the blood in his entire body had frozen still.

The bar stopped just as it plunged into the red zone. No more _potion_s left. The boss’s two-part HP bar was still full.

Yet, he couldn’t give up now.

Having stood up while staggering, Eiji once again brandished his sword and attempted to step forward.

Yet, his right leg… became fixed to the ground as solid as a rock, so much so that he could even hear a thud.

He thought perhaps he had fallen into a trap, yet he saw nothing wrong with his leg when he looked down. At this point, he finally realised.

This was the same as that time…… the avatar stiffening phenomenon that had Nautilus expelled from the First Army of the Knights of the Blood, and was also the cause of Yuuna’s death.

After being released from SAO, Eiji finally discovered the cause of this phenomenon.

FNC——_FullDive Non-Conform_ity. It was a condition where a malfunction occurred in the transmission between the cerebrum and the EF matrix panel, limiting his actions in the virtual world.

——Move! Move move!!

Shouting the exact same words in his mind as at that time, Eiji desperately attempted to move his right leg.

The trigger for the FNC, in Eiji’s case, was his fear of death. When trying to evade danger, his instincts overwhelmed his ability to reason, freezing his avatar. Professor Shigemura, who had explained this logic to him, had said that this was a flaw on the device’s side, thus it was an issue that Eiji couldn’t do anything about through his will and thoughts.

Yet, that man——Kirito made the impossible possible.

He defeated Eiji, who had been assisted by both software and hardware, and even crushed the final boss, which should have been an absolute existence even on the Cardinal System. Eiji was sure that Kirito himself was not endowed with any special power or anything. If forced to say, it was because of his strength of will…… the mental strength to face any hurdle no matter how hopeless the situation without giving up, unlike Eiji.

The reason why Eiji became unable to move due to FNC, was because the desire to run away lurked somewhere within his heart. The professor called that desire an ‘instinct’, yet a man should have the capability to cast away his instincts.

In front of him, the Warder Chief absentmindedly turned his body, facing Eiji to head towards him. In the surroundings, three blue lights began flickering like the heat haze. The effect for the surging of the henchmen.

Scared.

Nothing could be done about feeling scared. Yet he was unable to avert his eyes from that emotion and pretend not to see it. No, that wasn’t true; he accepted his frightened self…… his weakness, and turned it into faith in himself. He could move. He could overcome his weakness and move forward.

“————I said mooooooove!!”

Straining his voice to its limit, Eiji shouted.

*Bakin*, he felt as if something broke when his right foot stepped forward.

He kicked off the floor and ran. The Warder Chief brandished its two-handed axe high, while the henchmen tormentors that had appeared raised their thorny clubs.

Even if he didn’t even have a one in ten thousand chance of winning, Eiji was still alive. In that case, he would fight until the last of his final moments.

At that moment——

“Eiji! Use this!!”

With that shout, something glittered in the air.

Spinning as it flew towards him, shining in gold as it reflected the rays of the setting sun, was a surprisingly enormous sword. Looking more like some sort of device rather than a weapon, it had a strange shape.

His subconscious at work, Eiji’s right hand sheathed his sword into his scabbard, while at the same time his left hand extended towards the large, golden sword. The moment he grasped the handle made of a transparent material, countless buff icons lit up under his HP bar, and his HP suddenly began to go up.

“Dyurudoraaaaah!!”

The Warder Chief raised a cry as its two-handed axe slashed at him with great strength.

At the same moment, Eiji also swung the large, golden sword in his hands straight down.

The moment both weapons made contact, the Warder Chief’s axe crumbled into countless fragments with barely any resistance. The large sword continued along its path, bisecting the large body of the boss monster and instantly wiping out its two-part HP bar.

Just as the Warder Chief broke into blue particles and disappeared, the three tormentors stopped moving for a moment. Not letting this opening slip, he slashed with the large sword horizontally. Having had their bodies bisected, the three little ones disappeared before they could even let a scream out.

With the golden sword having eliminated the boss and henchmen in merely three seconds, Eiji stared at it with dumbfounded eyes. He heard the sound of the lever next to the throne moving, causing the iron bars at the entrance to rise.

Rushing into the room was Kirito, with two long swords equipped on the back of his black long coat, as well as a young girl wearing a white one-piece dress.

“…………Kirito……you, how did you know that this place…… ——What’s this sword……who’s this child…………?”

Without answering any of Eiji’s three questions, Kirito asked back.

“More importantly what about Yuna!? Is she here!?”

At that point, even Eiji finally remembered what he had to do. Having pushed the large sword onto Kirito, he ran to the south-eastern corner of the chamber——the place where Yuna had died.

“Yuna…………Yuna!”

Shouting, he stepped into the place where faint light had gathered; at that moment.

The light gently focused, clumped together, and formed a single figure.

White long hair. A black one-piece dress and thigh-high socks. Her eyelids closed.

It wasn’t Yuuna——White Yuna. It was ＹＵＮＡ——Black Yuna, who shouldn’t have existed in this world.

“Yuna……!?”

Shouting, Eiji reached out for her with his hands. Having materialised and being unable to stand straight, Black Yuna collapsed into Eiji’s arms.

He kneeled to support her, but he couldn’t feel any weight at all. On the contrary, her avatar was riddled with blockiness and even now it looked like it could crumble at any moment.

“Yuna……what’s going on, Yuna!!”

When he shouted out to her desperately, her eyelashes trembled slightly as her red eyes slightly peeked out.

“E……Ei…………ji.”

The voice, created from a sampling of Yuuna’s voice yet having a slightly different ring than Yuuna’s, called Eiji’s name.

“You came……for……me…………”

Having voiced just that, she closed her eyelids again.

Eiji looked up at Kirito standing beside him, and shouted feverishly.

“Kirito, what’s going on……! Yuna…… Yuna, what is happening……!”

The one to answer was not Kirito, but the black-haired girl standing next to him.

“Yuna-san’s AI module has begun breaking down.”

“Wh…… what do you mean!? Yuna’s out there in the real world as an idol, even now……”

“Currently, operating as an AR idol is a copy of the original Black Yuna-san that they have there. At minimum, it seems there are at least five of them operating simultaneously.”

The girl’s words were calm, yet her expression was tinged with pain. Kirito shouted in astonishment.

“C……copy, you said!? B-but, if you did that……”

“……Yes. All of us AI based on SAO are created on the foundation of our uniqueness. We are unable to bear the recognition that there are duplicates of us, and errors will thus accumulate in us.”

“So…… the copy Yunas who are working as _idol_s will also one day……?”

“Yes. I fear that there are probably some copies of Yuna who have already collapsed. The original Black Yuna is also continuing to accumulate errors, though…… another one…………”

The girl closed her eyelids for a few seconds and, after frowning as if she were looking for something, she continued where she left off.

“……It seems another, higher-ranked AI module is performing some error corrections and has somehow been able to halt her decay.”

“A higher-ranked…… module.”

The one to mutter that was Eiji.

The language engine module on the SAO server had three _level_s. Black Yuna should be using level 2, the engine for care support AI. Above that was only one module, level 1. The language engine for last bosses……

“The higher-ranked module is using its own data to halt the decay; however, it seems to be lacking a piece of information…… a memory core. If it only had that, it seems that it could completely repair her……”

“A memory core…… what’s it like, specifically……”

At Kirito’s muttering, the girl raised her small hands in a gesture as if she were holding something.

“Data that would symbolise the most precious memory of Black Yuna. Even I am unaware what specific shape it holds. Even the higher-ranked AI who is trying to repair Black Yuna is in the process of losing her personality and is currently unable to respond to requests.”

——The most precious memory… of Black Yuna.

Eiji had no idea what that could be. Black Yuna, or ＹＵＮＡ, was created with only the desire to sing. Speaking of precious memories, he figured it could be her final stadium live concert, but there was no way he’d know what shape that memory had taken.

In his arms, Yuna’s right hand, riddled with noise, abruptly began to move. It moved as if she were holding something between her fingers and was holding it out towards the light.

————Have you grown to like them that much, Yuna?

Inside his ears, his own voice resounded faintly. Followed by the answer.

————Yeah, they are pretty after all.

“…………!!”

Gasping, the entranced Eiji opened his storage. As if guided by something, he switched tabs, and objectised a single item.

A spherical, glass bottle, stuffed with multi-coloured pieces of candy. The sole momento that Yuna——Yuuna had thrown over to Eiji just before she died.

“Yuna…………”

Calling out her name, Eiji had Black Yuna grasp the bottle.

In an instant, all the pieces of candy inside the bottle shone in the colour of a rainbow.

The bottle itself disappeared as if melted by the light. Yet the light didn’t disappear and instead lodged itself in the broken parts of Black Yuna’s avatar, beginning to blink gently.

And so, Eiji saw.

A white-hooded girl, kneeling beside Black Yuna and stroking her cheeks with a gentle smile.

“…………Yuna.”

As he whispered out to her, the girl raised her head, looking straight at Eiji. That smiling face, for a moment, overlapped with the face of another girl, wearing a feathered hat.

——Eh-kun, you’ve kept it with you all this time for me……

The voice resounded in his head, as the girl turned into countless beads of light and disappeared.

“Eiji…………”

Having his named called again, he turned his face down.

With all the noise having disappeared from her body, Black Yuna’s ruby-coloured eyes were gazing intently at Eiji.

Atop her chest, clear drops dripped down one after another. The fact that these were his own tears… eluded Eiji’s senses for a few moments.

“…………The higher-ranked AI… has completely vanished.”

Muttered the black-haired girl, yet Eiji slightly shook his head as tears continued to drip down.

It wasn’t like White Yuna…… Yuuna had disappeared. Inside Black Yuna, as memories…… as recollections, she continued to exist. She was still alive.

Firmly embracing Black Yuna, Eiji let out an unbearable sob. Indefinitely, indefinitely he continued weeping in a voice like that of a child.

(The End)

Notes