Instead, I had to find out if I could break my own rules that I lived by—my own set of personal morals. I’d been considering this topic for several days, but it was actually quite difficult. Attacking the villagers or stealing their possessions was out of the question, and I didn’t feel right insulting someone just to confirm a personal suspicion. There was only one thing I could think of.
I turned and stared right into Selka’s face.
“…What?” she asked, blinking. I put a hand on her cheek and silently apologized to Asuna and Yui. Then I audibly apologized to Selka, leaned closer, and placed a light kiss on her white forehead, just before the headband.
She twitched, then sat still. I pulled away after three seconds and saw that she was glaring at me, cheeks red all the way to the ears.
“What…did you just do…?”
“Let’s call it…a swordsman’s oath,” I suggested weakly. On the inside, I savored a new factual certainty.
I had just carried out something that the real me would never do, thus proving that I was the real me. If I were a replica fluctlight, my body would have stopped automatically a few inches from Selka’s forehead.
She continued staring at me, rubbed her forehead, and sighed.
“An oath…? I don’t know if that’s how you do things in your country, but if you had kissed my…instead of my forehead, an Integrity Knight would be coming for you right now. That’s against the Taboo Index.”
Her voice had gone quiet at one point, and I couldn’t make out what she’d said, but I wasn’t going to ask. Selka shook her head again, grinned in annoyance, and asked, “So…what did you swear?”
“Isn’t it obvious? That I’ll go with Eugeo, save Alice, and bring your sister back to this village. You have my word…”
I paused, then slowly said the words.
“…as Kirito the Swordsman.”
6
The next morning was brilliantly clear.
Eugeo and I headed down a southern path we would not see again for quite some time, savoring the weight of the lunches that Selka had packed for us.
When we reached the split in the path that headed into the Gigas Cedar’s woods, I noticed an elderly man standing there. His wrinkled face was covered in white hair, but his back was straight, and his eyes were sharp.
As soon as he saw the man, Eugeo burst into a dazzling smile and began to trot.
“Old Man Garitta! You came to see me off! I’m so happy—I didn’t get to see you yesterday.”
That name was familiar to me. If I recalled correctly, it was the previous carver of the Gigas Cedar.
Garitta smiled kindly under his heavy whiskers and placed his hands on Eugeo’s shoulders. “Eugeo, in all my life, I only deepened the Cedar’s cut by the length of a finger, and now you’ve toppled the beast…Tell me, how did you do it?”
“With this sword,” Eugeo said, pulling the Blue Rose Sword from its sheath just an inch and letting it click back into place. Then he glanced at me. “And most of all, thanks to him…my friend. This is Kirito. He’s really pretty crazy, actually.”
I shook my head modestly, wondering what kind of introduction that was supposed to be. Garitta moved over to me and gave me a piercing, knowing stare—then beamed.
“So you are the lost child of Vecta I heard about. Yes, I see…You have the face of change.”
No one had ever described me that way before, and I wondered what he meant by it. The old man gestured to the forest at his left and continued, “Well, I hate to delay your travels, but could you stand to help me? It won’t take long.”
“S-sure. You don’t mind, Kirito?”
I couldn’t see a reason to refuse. The old man smiled again and headed down the path into the forest, beckoning us onward.
I’d been walking down the path for only about a week, but it filled me with rich nostalgia now. After twenty minutes, we arrived at a wide opening.
The tyrannical tree that had split the heavens in the midst of this clearing for centuries was lying still on its side. Narrow vines were already climbing over its pitch-black bark, beginning the process that would one day, in the distant future, break down the tree and return it to the earth.
“What is it about the Gigas Cedar, Garitta?” Eugeo asked, as the elderly man proceeded toward the tip of the fallen tree. We followed after him, but the branches of the Gigas Cedar and the trunks of the other trees it had toppled in its fall were like a maze. I was stunned to find, on closer look, that no matter how narrow the Cedar’s branches might get, every single one was still intact, even the ones stabbing into ground and rock. The toughness of that bark was simply astonishing.
With great difficulty, we made our way through the branches, picking up scratches on our exposed arms, and at last reached Garitta, who was standing calmly up ahead. Eugeo wiped his sweat with the palm of his hand and grumbled, “So what are we supposed to be looking at?”
“This,” the old man said, pointing at a branch extending directly out of the very tip-top of the Gigas Cedar’s trunk. It was very, very long, without a single side branch, and the end was pointed as sharp as a rapier.
“What about this branch?” I asked. He reached out his knotted hand and caressed the end, which was about two inches wide.
“Out of all the Gigas Cedar’s branches, this one absorbed the most of Solus’s blessings. Cut this loose with that sword. You must sever it in one strike. If you hack at it several times, it may break apart.”
He made a chopping motion with his hand about four feet from the tip of the branch, then stood back.
Eugeo and I looked at each other and decided to follow his instructions. I took Eugeo’s lunch from him and stepped back as well.
When he pulled the Blue Rose Sword from its scabbard to shine in the sunlight, the old man let out a muted gasp of wonder. There was a note of longing, it seemed, something that suggested that if he’d gotten his hands on that sword when he was younger, his life would have been different. But when I looked at his face in profile, it was placid, impossible to read.
Eugeo brandished the sword but didn’t move after that. The tip quivered a bit, reflecting his inner indecision. Perhaps he wasn’t confident that he could cut through a branch the width of his wrist in one swing.
“I’ll do it, Eugeo,” I offered, and reached out. Eugeo nodded and willingly handed me the hilt. I handed over the lunches, and we switched spots.
I didn’t even think. I just looked at the black branch, lifted the sword, and brought it down. With no more than a slight crack and the briefest of sensations, the blade passed through my target spot. I used the flat of the blade to stop the long branch from falling and flipped it up into the air. It came down, spinning, and landed in my outstretched free hand. The weight pushing down against my wrist and the icy chill of it caused me to falter.
I gave Eugeo the sword back, then held out the black branch with both hands for Garitta to see.
“You should take this with you,” he said, producing a heavy cloth and carefully wrapping the branch in it. When it was safely covered, he tied a rawhide cord around it.
“There you are. When you get to Centoria, take this branch to a craftsman in north District Seven named Sadore. He will be able to fashion it into a mighty sword—one that is every bit an equal to that beauty there.”
“R-really, Old Man Garitta? That’s wonderful! It was worrying only having one sword between the two of us. Right, Kirito?” said Eugeo excitedly. I nodded and agreed, but the branch was a bit too heavy for me to throw my hands into the air with exuberance.
We bowed to express our gratitude, but the old man only beamed.
“It’s a meager parting gift. Take care on your travels. It is not only the benevolent gods who watch over these lands now…I think I will stay here and look at this tree some more. Farewell, Eugeo. Farewell, young traveler.”
We headed back up the little path to the main road and found that where the sky had been clear blue earlier, there was now a stor
m cloud forming over the eastern edge.
“The wind’s getting a bit damp. We should probably move on while we still have the chance.”
“…Good idea. Let’s hurry,” I replied, and fastened the wrapped-up Gigas Cedar branch to my back with the cord. The rumble of thunder in the far distance resonated with the weight of the branch, casting a bit of gloom over my mind.
A pair of swords.
Was it a sign from the future, a portent of something?
I stopped in my tracks briefly, wondering if I should just bury the bundle deep in the forest somewhere. But I didn’t know what I was afraid of or why.
“Come on, Kirito, let’s go!”
I looked up and saw Eugeo’s smiling face, dazzling with anticipation of the wider world ahead.
“Yeah…here I come.”
I caught up with the other boy. He may have been someone I’d met just a week ago, but he felt like a friend I’d known all my life. Together, we headed south, our pace brisk—down the road leading to the center of the Underworld, where the answers to all the mysteries lay.
(Alicization Beginning—The End)
AFTERWORD
Hello, this is Reki Kawahara, and you’ve finished my first book of 2012, Sword Art Online 9: Alicization Beginning.
It was last August when Volume 8 came out, which means it’s been half a year now. There are a number of excuses that may or may not apply to the situation, but I still wish to apologize for making you wait so long. I’m sorry! I’ll do better next time!
…Well, I was planning on addressing the content of the book at this point, but where do I start…? I’d love to avoid spoilers for the sake of those readers who flip to the afterword ahead of time, but there’s no way to get into it without spoiling! So I’m going to draw a spoiler warning line here. Beyond this line is the Dark Territory, where cruelty and unfairness reign! Wait…I just spoiled something there…
SPOILER WARNING LINE
So, after Asuna was the protagonist for Volume 7, and Volume 8 was a collection of short stories, we finally get to the beginning of Kirito’s next journey in Volume 9. He’s been through SAO, ALO, and GGO, and now, for the first time, he is tackling a virtual world from Level 1. No New Game+ this time! Or so it seemed…until he pulled out his trusty sword skills. I hope you’ll forgive the familiar crutch…
I’ve been challenging myself as a writer to do unfamiliar things in this new Underworld setting. For example, it’s not a girl who Kirito first runs across…Er, disregard that. What I mean is, I tried eliminating most of the online terminology to tell a traditional fantasy story, and I paid more attention to the AI NPC characters than usual, in the hopes of expanding my VRMMO setting to its limits. I can worry about bringing it all together later. This is going to be my mindset as I forge ahead into future volumes!
And now, much belated, I wish to touch upon the topic of Sword Art Online’s TV anime series. I began writing SAO in late 2001 and started quietly publishing it on the web the following year, and now the day has come that it turns animated…If you had told me back then, I would never have believed it. “What, like a GIF animation?” So to abec, the illustrator who helped this miracle come to life; to Mr. Miki, the editor who three years ago suggested, “Let’s put this out, too!”; to the sub-editor Mr. Tsuchiya, whose HP bar was in the red due to the tightrope schedule; and to the many readers who have continued to support this series and its author: Thank you so much. The original novels will continue as always, of course!
Reki Kawahara—December 2011
Reki Kawahara, Alicization Beginning
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