Aincrad 2

by Reki Kawahara

  There was an almost disgusting number of new items in the display: weapons and armor, various jewels and crystals, even food ingredients. I carefully scrolled through the extensive list, looking for only one thing.

  A few seconds later, it popped into my view, so matter-of-factly that it caught me off-guard.

  It was labeled the SACRED STONE OF REBIRTH. My heart instantly leaped to life—it felt as though the paralysis that had afflicted it for the past days and months was finally wearing off, and blood was flowing through it again.

  Would I really, truly be able to bring Sachi back? Was it possible that Keita and Tetsuo and everyone else who’d died in SAO might not have lost their souls after all…?

  I might be able to see Sachi again. The thought set my heart trembling. No matter the insults she might hurl at me, no matter the lies she might rightfully accuse me of, this time I would hold her in my arms and tell her. Not that she wouldn’t die, but that I would protect her. That I’d made myself so much stronger just for that purpose.

  My trembling fingers stumbling several times, I finally got the Sacred Stone out of my inventory. The egg-sized jewel hung radiant above my status window, sparkling beautifully with the colors of the rainbow.

  “Sachi…Sachi…”

  I called out her name as I clicked the jewel and hit the HELP button. A simple description appeared in that familiar system font.

  “By selecting the Use command from this pop-up window or calling out the command ‘Revive: (Player Name)’ with it held in your hand, the target player can be brought back to life during the brief period (roughly ten seconds) between death and the conclusion of the disintegration visual effect.”

  Roughly ten seconds.

  That tiny little phrase told me in the clearest, cruelest terms that Sachi was dead, and she would never come back.

  Roughly ten seconds. That was the amount of time that the NerveGear took to microwave the player’s actual brain after her HP dropped to zero and her avatar shattered into pieces.

  I couldn’t help but imagine it. When Sachi’s body disappeared, just ten seconds later, the NerveGear on her head killed its wearer. Did Sachi suffer? What did she think in those final ten seconds? Did she curse me to her final moment…?

  “Aaah…aaaahhh…”

  It burst out of me like an animal screech. I grabbed the Sacred Stone floating above my window and hurled it with all my strength against the snow.

  “Aaaaaaahhh!!”

  I stomped it with my boots repeatedly as I screamed, but the jewel kept gleaming, expressionless. It didn’t break in half; it didn’t even crack. I roared with all of my being, got down on my hands and scrabbled through the snow wildly, rolled back and forth as though possessed.

  It was meaningless. It had all been for nothing. Sachi’s fear and pain and death, my insane fight against the Christmas boss, even the birth of this world and the imprisonment of ten thousand innocent people inside of it. There was no meaning to any of it. In this moment, I understood entirely that this was the one absolute truth of SAO.

  How long did I go on? No matter how much I screamed and wailed, it never felt like I was going to cry. My avatar must not even have had that function. Eventually I dragged myself onto my feet, picked the stone out of the snow, and headed back to the warp point that led to the previous area.

  Only Klein and the rest of Furinkazan were left in the clearing. The Divine Dragon Alliance was gone. I mechanically counted Klein’s group to confirm that none of them had died as I walked up to their seated leader.

  Klein appeared to be just as terribly exhausted as I was. I guessed that he had decided to settle the matter with the DDA through a one-on-one duel, but no emotion rose in my chest at the thought.

  He looked up at my approach, and relief crossed his face for a moment. But he must have noticed my expression, because his mouth tightened immediately.

  “…Kirito…”

  He muttered it, his voice hoarse. I tossed the crystal onto his knees.

  “That’s the resurrection item. You can’t use it on someone who died in the past. Next time someone dies in your presence, use that on them.”

  I had nothing more to say. I turned to leave, but Klein grabbed my coat.

  “Kirito…Kirito, man…”

  I watched with curiosity the two trails of tears run down his stubbled cheeks, as though they were some rare and unfamiliar phenomenon.

  “Kirito…you gotta promise…that you’ll survive…Even if everyone else dies, you gotta keep going, man…Live on until the end…”

  I pulled my coat from Klein’s fingers as he continued bawling and repeating himself.

  “So long,” I said, and walked off into the Forest of Wandering.

  The next thing I remembered, I was back in my inn room on the forty-ninth floor.

  It was after three o’clock in the morning.

  I wondered what I would do next. My reason for living over the past month, the resurrection stone, had been real, after all—but not what I wanted. Over that time, I’d turned myself into a laughingstock, a fool starved for experience points. I’d even lost the last remaining friendship I had at the end.

  After long, embattled thought, I decided to challenge the boss of this floor’s labyrinth in the morning. If I won, I’d go straight up against the boss of the fiftieth floor. Then the fifty-first.

  It was the only fitting ending to such a pitiful clown. I felt much better once I made up my mind to do it, and I sat in my chair waiting for the dawn, unseeing and unthinking.

  The moonlight streaming through the window slowly changed position bit by bit, then faded, replaced by the dim gray light of dawn. I had no idea how long it’d been since I’d last slept, but for it being my final morning after the worst night ever, I felt surprisingly good.

  The clock on the wall pointed to seven, and I was just standing up from the chair when an unfamiliar alarm reached my ears.

  I looked around the room but could not identify the source of the sound. Eventually, I noticed in the corner of my vision that a purple marker alerting me to open my main menu was flashing. I waved my fingers to bring it up.

  Inside the menu, the tab for my shared inventory with Sachi was glowing. There was some kind of timed alarm item inside of it. I scrolled through the items, confused, until I found an audio message crystal that was timed to go off today.

  I removed it from the menu and placed it on top of the table.

  When I clicked the crystal, I heard the familiar sound of Sachi’s voice.

  Merry Christmas, Kirito.

  By the time you hear this, I will likely already be dead. If I were alive, I would have taken this crystal out and told you this on Christmas Eve myself.

  Well…first, I should probably explain why I decided to record this message.

  I don’t think I’m going to survive for very long. Of course, I don’t mean this in the sense that I think you or anyone in the Black Cats isn’t strong enough. You’re an incredibly good player, and I can tell that everyone else is getting better by the day.

  Umm, how should I explain…? Recently, a good friend of mine died, someone from another guild. That friend was just as big a scaredy-cat as me, and never hunted anywhere that wasn’t supposed to be absolutely safe, but that didn’t matter when a monster attacked her all alone at the worst possible time. This really made me think for a long time, and I realized something. If you want to survive throughout this entire game, it doesn’t matter how strong your friends are. If you yourself don’t have the will to live, the determination to survive, you won’t make it.

  I’ll be honest—I was scared from the moment I first set foot in the wilderness. I never wanted to leave the Town of Beginnings. I was friends with everyone in the Moonlit Black Cats in real life, and it was fun being around them, but I never wanted to go out and hunt. And with that kind of attitude, I was bound to die someday. It’s not anyone else’s fault. That’s all me.

  Ever since that one time, you’ve told me I
’ll be all right, every single night. That I’d never die. So if I die, I have a feeling that you’ll blame yourself terribly. You’ll never want to forgive yourself. That’s why I decided to record this message: to tell you that it’s not your fault. I wanted to tell you that it’s my fault. I set the timer on this message to next Christmas because I wanted to try lasting until that long, at least. I want to walk through town with you while the snow is out.

  To tell the truth…I know how strong you are. Once, when I was in your bed, I woke up and saw your window open over your shoulder.

  I tried my hardest to think of why you would work with us but hide your real level, and I still don’t understand. But I figured you would tell me eventually, so I stayed quiet about it. I…I was really happy to know how strong you are. Once I knew that, I was finally able to sleep at your side without any fear. And the idea that you might actually need to be around me made me really happy. That meant that there was even a meaning to a scaredy-cat like me reaching the upper floors.

  Um…um, so what I want to say is that even if I die, I want you to keep going. Stay alive until the end of the game and find the reason why this world was created, the reason why a wimp like me came here, and the reason that we met. That’s my only wish.

  Umm…there’s a whole lot of time left here. These things can really hold a lot of storage. Well, since it’s Christmas, I’ll sing you a song. I’m actually a pretty good singer. I’ll sing you “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Normally I’d pick something a bit cooler, like “Winter Wonderland” or “White Christmas,” but this is the only one I remember the lyrics to.

  Why do I remember the lyrics to “Rudolph”? The other night, you said that everyone has a role to fill. That there was a reason everyone was here, even me. That made me really happy, and it reminded me of this song. It was almost like I was the reindeer and you were Santa. Okay, to be honest…it was more like you were my dad. My dad left when I was little, so every night, I’ve wondered if this is what it’s like to sleep next to your dad. Okay, here goes.

  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer / Had a very shiny nose

  And if you ever saw it / You would even say it glows

  All of the other reindeer / Used to laugh and call him names

  They never let poor Rudolph / Join in any reindeer games

  Then one foggy Christmas Eve / Santa came to say

  Rudolph with your nose so bright / Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?

  Then how the reindeer loved him / As they shouted out with glee

  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer / You’ll go down in history!

  You were like the stars, shining and illuminating the dark path in the middle of the night for me. So long, Kirito. I’m glad I met you and got to be with you.

  Thank you.

  Good-bye.

  (The End)

  AFTERWORD

  It’s good to see you again—or for the first time, whichever the case may be. I’m Reki Kawahara. Thank you for reading Volume 2 of Sword Art Online.

  After publishing the first volume, I received a great many responses wondering how the story could continue after an ending like that. After all, the game was beaten and the world came crashing down. I myself realized that there were virtually no elements of the story that might continue from there.

  So here’s the follow-up: a retread back in time. And not only that, a collection of sub-stories. I’m truly sorry for this…

  I’ve played a number of online games in the past, and I never succeeded in joining the top echelon of players in any of them. I spent all of my days watching other players with rare weapons and elite stats crush hordes of monsters and marveling at their feats.

  So while the first volume focused on Kirito and Asuna, two of the game’s “clearers” (top players), I really wanted to write more about the normal, mid-level folks who don’t get much of the spotlight. That’s the angle I was going for with the four stories contained in Volume 2. Each story features Master Kirito kicking ass and taking names, but the admiration and wonder of the characters who watch him, like Silica and Lisbeth, are an expression of my long-held emotion toward such bad-asses in real life. One of these days, I’d like to go around showing off a rare sword that only has three copies on the entire server, just to see what it’s like.

  One more apology. The heroine in each of the four stories in this volume is a different woman, but the male lead across from them is always Kirito. I realize there’s no possible excuse for this blatant favoritism, but if I might attempt to rationalize it, think of a mystery series, in which the killer and victim are always different, but the detective is always the same, and you’ll see that it’s quite natural and normal to…Okay, you’re right, sorry, sorry.

  I’d like to end with enormous thanks to both abec, who provided charming and unique illustrations for each of the heroines in these stories, and to my editor, Mr. Miki, who was never intimidated by the weird and complicated background of my stories and still found the wherewithal to add his own suggestions and ideas.

  But most of all, thanks to you for following along, dear reader.

  Reki Kawahara—May 26th, 2009