But that did not mean that the skill of the Underworld’s swordsmen was in any way inferior. I had most definitely learned that lesson over the last two years. They practiced their forms infinitely to produce a single perfect technique that could easily overpower a more practically minded fighter who lacked their level of discipline.
It all came down to the power of imagination.
The Underworld was a virtual world, but its fundamental nature was completely different from Aincrad’s. Here, the strength of the mental image emitted by the soul, or fluctlight, could sometimes have an influence on events.
The imagination of a swordfighter who had been practicing the same move since childhood, for a decade or two, could be so powerful that it overrode a higher OC authority level—as in this situation, where Liena was overpowering me. The power of the mental image was the true hidden power of this world that couldn’t be expressed numerically. And given that I had been in this world for only two years—and Eugeo had started practicing the sword at the same time—we just didn’t have that skill yet.
Most of the students at the Swordcraft Academy were born from noble stock, social elites who had received special sword training from the age of three or four. Only a handful of them had gone through truly bloodcurdling training, but we had to surpass them, too, in order to be at the top of the class.
The only weapon I had to my benefit was the Aincrad style. Sword skills.
I still wasn’t sure exactly how sword skills had come to be in the Underworld. But for whatever reason, the people here either knew only singular skills or were incapable of doing more than that.
When Egome, the apprentice sentinel, had used the “Bluewind Slash” of the Zakkarite style in the tournament a year and a half ago, it would have been called “Slant” back in SAO. Liena’s Serlut-style “Ring Vortex” was just the two-handed spinning attack Cyclone. There were others, of course; the Norkia-style “Lightning Slash” was just Vertical, and the High-Norkian “Mountain-Splitting Wave” was the double-handed Avalanche.
These were the secret techniques of the masters of their respective styles, and there were no supersecret or ultrasecret moves beyond that. That meant the two-part and three-part skills I knew were one of the few weapons that could actually counter the tremendous skills of the elites at the school. Yes, it felt a little cheap and sneaky, but we weren’t trying to become the most venerable people of this world. All we needed to do was pass through the gate to the Central Cathedral, the Axiom Church’s massive tower just a few miles from the academy.
For Eugeo, to reunite with Alice, after she had been taken away as a child.
For me, to find the administrator of this world.
We would do any cheap and cowardly thing we could in every single duel if it meant achieving those goals. I would use the higher sword skills I knew, one match at a time, to continue winning. Whatever it took to win the Unification Tournament and earn the title of Integrity Knight.
That was why I hadn’t used any multi-strike skills over the last year. And even if I had, it was always a charge attack like Rage Spike.
But somehow, my sneaky, underhanded secrecy was no match for my beautiful upperclassman. Liena leaned in even closer and whispered into my ear conspiratorially.
“Our distant Serlut ancestors earned the displeasure of the emperor at the time and were banished from the official High-Norkia style. For that reason, we had to compensate with whips, knives, and other irregular tools, crafting a style that relied more on softness than strength. That is the Serlut way…Do not get me wrong. I am not unhappy about this. In fact, I am proud to be the only one to carry on our style. It’s what I’ve spent my life studying…”
Despite her strong words, her hands were trembling, causing our wooden swords to creak with pressure. It could have been my chance to push back, but I didn’t. I stood my ground, waiting for her to continue.
“But my father hopes that I will graduate this academy as first seat, win the imperial event, and restore the honor of the Serlut family. But don’t you find that a contradiction? Even if I fulfill his desires and earn us the right to practice the High-Norkia style again…would our family then abandon the Serlut style? If so…then what is the meaning of the pride I have felt in our style since childhood…?”
I had no immediate answer to that question.
I hardly even thought about it anymore, but it was an undeniable fact that Liena, Eugeo, the students and teachers at the academy—all the people who lived in the Underworld—were not actual human beings. This place was a virtual world, and they were just human units populating it.
And yet, they were not like the NPCs of ordinary VRMMO games. They were artificial fluctlights, copies of human souls saved to a special media format. A totally new form of AI created by someone in the real world, probably the mysterious venture capital project Rath…
Yet somehow, their emotive capability sometimes appeared much richer than that of real humans. They sensed, worried over, accepted, and occasionally defied this world and their fates within it. Every time I saw this happen, I couldn’t help but be amazed. Their existence, the existence of Sortiliena as she ground her wooden blade against mine, felt like an astonishing miracle.
“…Miss Liena,” I mumbled. She was wearing the tiniest bit of a sardonic smile.
“I’ve been carrying that question around with me since long before I came to this school. Not once in these two years did I ever succeed in beating him. Perhaps it’s because of that hesitation…”
She was referring to the first-seat elite disciple, the indisputable top student at the school: Volo Levantein. He was the heir of a second-rank noble family that had served as the sword instructors for the Norlangarth Imperial Knights for generations, and he was an appropriately tremendous swordsman. The power of his overhead smashes was far and away the greatest in the academy, and I had witnessed him split a practice log with a wooden sword before.
The top elite students of the academy were ranked, from first seat to twelfth seat. Those ranks were determined based on the results of test matches held four times a year.
Naturally, I had witnessed the three matches so far from the fancy close-up VIP seats. Like the Zakkaria Tournament, the event was put into a bracket. The twelve disciples played through two rounds to produce three finalists, with the highest-ranked of the three according to pre-tournament rankings getting seeded before the other two. All three times, the final of each ended up being Liena versus first-seat Volo. All three times, she was unable to overcome his ability.
As far as I could see, their skills as swordsmen were equal. Volo was strength, and Liena was softness. He struck with incredibly fierce slashes, which she handled with the grace of flowing water, occasionally striking back with acute skill. The matches would continue without a clean hit until time was nearly up—at which point Volo would attempt the High-Norkian secret overhead slash technique, which Liena always failed to block. Twice her wooden sword had been knocked aside, and once it actually broke.
All three matches had to go to judgment, but given these final moments, it was no wonder that the judgment would go to Volo’s corner in each case. Thus, for the entire year, Volo had been first seat and Liena had been second seat.
The third seat was also unchanged; the semifinalist who consistently lost against Liena was a large fellow known as Golgorosso Balto. Incidentally, Golgorosso’s page was my very good friend Eugeo.
When Liena said this was the last time, just before our duel, she was referring to the fact that her fourth and final “graduation match” was coming up in two days. That would determine the final ranking, and the day after that, the twelve elite disciples and all the secondary trainees would graduate from the academy.
In other words, the match in two days would be Liena’s last chance to finally overcome Volo. Technically, since the top two ranks could appear in the post-graduation Imperial Battle Tournament, she had the opportunity to face off against Volo again, but she didn’t seem
to feel that she had a chance against him then if she never beat him once at school.
“I’ll be honest,” she murmured, our swords still pressed against each other, “when I see his Mountain-Splitting Wave stance…I falter. No matter how hard I train and prepare, I cannot convince my body that it is capable of withstanding that blow. It’s been that way ever since I was a primary trainee…since the first time I ever saw him fight, in the entrance test…”
I was surprised at this revelation, but I also completely understood her point. There really wasn’t a difference in skill between them. The only gap was in the strength of the mind—the amount of confidence.
If my theory was correct and this virtual world was built on mnemonic visual data, then the strength of the mind would be a huge factor in determining the outcome of events. The things that we saw and touched were not polygonal data and textures but memory images extracted from our fluctlights.
How could this mental data, which must surely have fine differences from individual to individual, be shared like this? There was probably something like a “main memory device” that buffered all the fluctlight output data and averaged it. In that case, if a particular fluctlight had a powerful enough mental image to affect that buffer data overall, that would essentially mean that the willpower of an individual could rewrite events.
That was the secret to the overpowering strength of Volo Levantein and others like him. Their absolute confidence in their skills and sword styles led to an unshakeable mental image that manifested in those unstoppable attacks.
On the other hand, Liena had a tiny sliver of self-doubt about her style. The source of that doubt was in the founding and backdrop of the Serlut style, as she had just mentioned. The understanding that her style came about due to her ancestors being forbidden from using the High-Norkia style created something negative, some little element of shame in her heart. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would fall to Volo’s absolute confidence.
But this time, I really wanted her to win. Not because of anything to do with the workings of this world or theories about imagination power, but simply because I wanted her to be able to graduate with pride. She had the qualifications and the right to do that. She’d undertaken more training over the last year than any of the other disciples…
“Well…you’ve been training longer and harder than anyone, even Volo. Is that fact not enough for you to feel confident…?” I asked. She thought for a few moments, then shook her head.
“No…I suppose it isn’t. The further I study the Serlut style, the more I think of it. What if this were a true steel fight, not with wooden swords? What if I were allowed to use my whip or knife? Then I would surely be a match for the High-Norkia style. But that’s just an excuse. Within the human realm, there is no combat…no true battle. As long as I use that as an excuse, I will never be able to stop Volo’s blade…”
Before I could find some response, she smiled and continued, “But you’re different, Kirito. You have your own unique style, too, but you don’t feel any sense of inferiority toward those of the orthodox styles. I’ve been watching you for a year now, and I think I finally understand why. Like I brought up earlier…there’s much more to your Aincrad style, isn’t there? That’s why you have such an unshakeable core. Just like that tree from your home forest…the Gigas Cedar.”
“Oh…you mean the one I cut down with my own hands,” I noted ironically. That one actually got a little laugh out of her.
At some point, the consistent tension had gone out of our arms, and our wooden swords were simply resting against each other. Still, she placed her weight forward, pushing on me. Her voice was deep and smooth for a girl’s.
“Then that tree stands within you now, firm against any storm, looking up only to Solus overhead. Kirito…I want to see your hidden inner strength.”
“…”
“It has nothing to do with the fight with Volo. I just want to see it…to know it. I want to know everything that makes you the swordsman you are before I graduate.”
Inside those evening-blue eyes, floating just in front of my face, little stars twinkled.
Without realizing it, my face tilted a fraction of an inch closer to that soul-absorbing beauty. Suddenly, there was a sharp little prick of pain at my hairline, jolting me back to my senses. I blinked and restarted my train of thought.
The fact that I hadn’t shown Liena the “next step” of the Aincrad style had nothing to do with any frugal ideas about keeping an ace up my sleeve.
It was as simple as this: The class-15 wooden swords we used in duels and sparring could not execute it. The best I could manage was two-part skills like Snakebite and Vertical Arc; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull off three-parters or better. I’d tried it with steel swords of the same class, to no success.
Only when I had used the holy class-45 Blue Rose Sword that had managed to cut down the Gigas Cedar was I able to pull off four-part sword skills. I had no idea why. At the very least, there were no restrictions like that in SAO.
At any rate, she wanted to see “everything” I could do, so I didn’t want to throw her a bone with an ordinary two-part attack and pretend that was it. It left only one option: to borrow the Blue Rose Sword from Eugeo and execute a five-part attack, the most powerful I could currently use.
Eugeo would probably happily lend it to me, but I felt a bit hesitant about his doing so. The sword belonged to him, and I believed that a sword was the swordsman’s soul. I couldn’t shake the feeling that as long as I knew I was using another’s sword, I couldn’t actually deliver the greatest possible attack. And I couldn’t just take the highest-priority sword found in the school armory, either; even that wouldn’t be my sword.
Realizing that there was no option and that I would have to borrow the Blue Rose Sword, I resigned myself to the inevitable choice and said, “All right. But can you give me a day, please? I promise you, at this time tomorrow…I will show you the greatest move I know.”
Liena’s mouth briefly curled into a smile, which disappeared in favor of a quizzical look. “But tomorrow is our day of rest. Training is forbidden, and this hall will be off-limits.”
“…It’s not training,” I replied.
This intrigued her for some reason. “Oh? What is it, then?”
“W-well…” I started, trying to come up with the right words. Off the top of my head, I said, “It’s a thank-you. You’ve taught me so much over the last year. I’ve heard that there’s a custom at this school, that the day before a disciple graduates, their trainee page gives them some kind of present. I’ll make my present a sword attack. That can be given on a day of rest, can’t it?”
She smirked. “You’ll never change, will you? I’ve never heard of a sword technique being given as a graduation present. But I suppose this is a good time to make a confession…”
“Uh…what’s that?”
“As a matter of fact, I broke with tradition in a way just by choosing you for my page—although the custom is admittedly stupid to begin with. When a noble girl chooses her trainee page, she should choose one from another noble house, but one lower than her own. When I singled you out, the representatives of the higher nobles came to my dorm room in person to complain.”
She chuckled at this memory, but I grimaced in horror.
In the privileged classes of the Norlangarth Empire, there were six ranks of nobility, above which was the imperial family. Volo Levantein’s family was a second-rank noble house, while the Serluts were third-rank—both multiple levels above the fifth-rank lord of Zakkaria.
I, meanwhile, was as common as common gets (same as the real world), the lowest of social classes. Even without nobility, if you held a certain amount of power within a community or owned significant land—such as Gasfut Zuberg, the Rulid elder, or the farmer Vanot Walde—you earned a last name. The people lower than that didn’t even have that right.
What I didn’t realize until I had wormed my way into the Imperial Swordcraft
Academy was that nearly all the students here were from noble or merchant families; only one in five was of common stock. For one thing, the requirements were completely different. Eugeo and I had had to work our butts off for six months to earn the Zakkarian garrison commander’s recommendation just to take the academy entrance test, while nobles had that right by default. When I found that out, I was so angry I could have written a letter of protest to the Ministry of Education.
Once I got in, I learned that the school treated you no differently, whether you were noble or common…but there was still discrimination in various forms. I had withstood all that nonsense over the course of the year without blinking an eye (and so had Eugeo, I expected), but I had no idea they’d gone after Liena as well, just for choosing me as her page.
“If…if that’s the custom, then why pick me…? There were six students who scored higher than me on the entrance test. They were all nobles, so you wouldn’t have gotten flack for choosing them…”
“But those six scored their points on presentation. I have no interest in the beauty of the form. From what I saw, you were the one who put up the best fight against the testing instructor. In fact, it was more like…”
She paused but did not finish her sentence. Instead, Liena grinned and started over. “No, it’s been a year. Don’t force me to say why I picked you now. I’m about to graduate. Tomorrow is more important. If you’re going to present me with a demonstration of the Aincrad style’s secret technique, I would be glad to receive it.”
“Ah, uh, g-great.”
“But…something bothers me. Based on how you brought it up, I could interpret your gift to be something you forgot about and just improvised on the spot…”
“N-no, not at all! I’ve always meant to give you this, I swear,” I claimed.