Alicization Rising Read online

  Copyright

  SWORD ART ONLINE, Volume 12: ALICIZATION RISING

  REKI KAWAHARA

  Translation by Stephen Paul

  Cover art by abec

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  SWORD ART ONLINE

  ©REKI KAWAHARA 2013

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS

  First published in Japan in 2013 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2017 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kawahara, Reki, author. | Abec, 1985– illustrator. | Paul, Stephen, translator.

  Title: Sword art online / Reki Kawahara, abec ; translation, Stephen Paul.

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2014–

  Identifiers: LCCN 2014001175 | ISBN 9780316371247 (v. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316376815 (v. 2 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296427 (v. 3 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296434 (v. 4 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296441 (v. 5 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316296458 (v. 6 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390408 (v. 7 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390415 (v. 8 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390422 (v. 9 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390439 (v. 10 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390446 (v. 11 : pbk.) | ISBN 9780316390453 (v. 12 : pbk.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure.

  Classification: pz7.K1755Ain 2014 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2014001175

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-39045-3 (paperback)

  978-0-316-56104-4 (ebook)

  E3-20171123-JV-PC

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TWO ADMINISTRATORS, MAY 380 HE

  1

  It was on November 7th, 2024 that I—Kazuto Kirigaya—escaped from the VRMMORPG named Sword Art Online.

  In mid-December, I finished my physical rehabilitation and returned home to the city of Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture. Two months before that had been my sixteenth birthday, but while all my old classmates were studying to get into high school, I’d been busy delving into the labyrinth tower of the fiftieth floor of Aincrad, completely cut off from all formal education.

  Fortunately (if you can call it that), my middle school sympathetically offered me a graduation diploma, despite the fact that I’d finished only half my credits. As long as I took some cram school courses, I should have been ready to tackle high school a year late—until the government offered me an unexpected source of salvation.

  Of the roughly six thousand people who returned from SAO alive, over five hundred were in middle or high school. In April 2025, the government opened a special school just for them in west Tokyo, free of entrance requirements or tuition, with the promise of college entrance–exam eligibility once we graduated.

  They reused a condemned municipal high school campus that had been waiting for demolition since the previous year. Many of the teachers commissioned to work there had already been retired. It was officially classified as a national specialty school.

  The comprehensiveness of this safety net paradoxically filled me with concern, but after consulting with my family and, of course, Asuna, I decided to enroll. Never once did I regret that decision. Designing and creating various devices with my new friends in the mechatronics course was great fun, and I got to see Asuna, Lisbeth, and Silica every day. Even with the mandatory weekly counseling session, it was a fulfilling school life.

  But once again, I was unable to finish my education.

  One year and two months after enrolling, in June of 2026, I found that my mind had been whisked into the alternate realm known as the Underworld through means unknown. After waking up in the forest near a village named Rulid at the far northern stretches of the human territory, I tried in vain to contact the employees of Rath, the company that developed and operated the Underworld, and received no answer.

  That left me no choice but to attempt to reach a system console that might allow me to contact the outside world—a device that could only be in Central Cathedral, a tower that belonged to the Axiom Church and loomed over everything in the land of Centoria, the very heart of the human realm. Thus, I set out on a long journey from Rulid with my partner, Eugeo, the very first person I’d met in this world.

  After an entire year, by the calendar of the Underworld, we reached Centoria but did not make it straight into the cathedral. The Church kept its gates locked shut, letting in only the champion of the annual Four-Empire Unification Tournament.

  And so Eugeo and I, chasing the same goal for different reasons, started at the Imperial Swordcraft Academy in the hopes of winning the right to compete in that very tournament. The classes were almost all based on swordfighting and magic (or sacred arts, as they called them), so it was a curriculum I’d never experienced in the real world. That, combined with the novelty of living in a dorm, made my stay at the academy an interesting one…even enjoyable, in a way.

  But a year and a month after starting school, in May of the year 380 in the Human Empire calendar, disaster struck, and my schooling came to an abrupt end. Two male students of elite noble lineage set up a clever trap to abuse and assault Ronie and Tiese, our personal pages.

  When he discovered the ugly scene, Eugeo managed to break loose from the shackles that compelled all Underworldians to follow the law, and he drew his sword. He severed noble Humbert’s left arm, and when I arrived, I fought with Raios and cut off both his hands.

  Despite these wounds, both should have survived if they stopped the bleeding and underwent emergency sacred arts healing, but something very strange happened: Forced to choose between following the Taboo Index that dictated law in this world and preserving his own life, Raios let out an inhuman wail and perished…or, more accurately, froze still.

  Eugeo and I were banished from the school and led to the dungeon beneath Central Cathedral by an Integrity Knight dispatched by the Church. Undeterred by my third consecutive dropping out of school, I broke us free, and we wandered the rose garden within the cathedral grounds in search of a way into the tower itself. We wound up in battle against a new Integrity Knight and, in our most desperate moment, found salvation from an unlikely source: a strange little girl named Cardinal.

  Living in a mammoth library that was sealed from the inside, Cardinal sent Eugeo to a hot bath to recover from getting dumped into a fountain during battle, and then took me aside to reveal the stunning truth.

  The Underworld itself was a simulation of an entire civilization that had been running for over 450 internal years.

 
And the pontifex, the supreme commander of the almighty Axiom Church, was once a beautiful girl named Quinella, a resident of this place just like any other.

  She mastered the sacred arts—in other words, the program’s system commands—and, in her never-ending thirst for power, finally unearthed the full command list. It launched her from a simple active agent—a unit within the simulation—into a full-blown system administrator.

  With her absolute control over the Underworld, Quinella was up on the top floor of Central Cathedral even now, looking down on the world. But could she see me, the interloper who had wandered into her sacred garden…?

  I felt a sudden chill rack my body. On the other side of the round table, Cardinal gave me a pained look. She took a sip of tea from her cup and adjusted her little spectacles. “It’s too early to tremble in fear.”

  Somehow, I managed to dispel the cold. “Right…right. Please continue.” I lifted my own cup and slurped the tea, which tasted a lot like real-world coffee.

  The small girl leaned back in her chair and resumed her explanation in her easygoing way. “Two hundred and seventy years ago, after Quinella succeeded at calling up the entire command list, the first thing she did was raise her own Authority level to the maximum, which allowed her to affect the world-controlling Cardinal System itself. Next, she conferred all rights and privileges afforded only to Cardinal to herself: manipulating terrain and buildings; generating items; altering the durability of all mobile units, including human beings…in other words, meddling with their life itself…”

  “Manipulating…life. In other words, changing the limit of one’s life span…” I gasped. The little sage nodded.

  “She had broken through. The first thing Quinella did as administrator, at the age of eighty and on death’s door, was to completely restore her own life value. Then she stopped its natural decay process and returned her physical appearance to the radiant beauty of her late teens. You are still young, and male to boot—I daresay you cannot fathom the nature of her triumphant joy…”

  “Well…I understand that it’s one of the wildest dreams of any woman, I suppose,” I said, straight-faced. Cardinal snorted.

  “I don’t even have human emotions, and I’m glad that my features are fixed in this state. Though if I’m being honest, I’d like to advance by five or six years…At any rate, Quinella’s bliss at having all her ravenous desires fulfilled was nearly unfathomable. She was able to freely control the vast reach of the Human Empire and had attained eternal youth and beauty. Her jubilation was…sheer madness. Enough to loosen, just by a bit, her grasp on sanity…”

  Behind the lenses, Cardinal’s big eyes narrowed. They seemed to mock the foolishness of humanity—or perhaps pity it.

  “She ought to have been happy with that. But the hole that had opened in Quinella’s heart was bottomless. She didn’t know how to be satisfied…and so she decided she could not condone the existence of the one with privilege equal to hers.”

  “Meaning…the Cardinal System itself?”

  “None other. Indeed, she attempted to eliminate a program without a conscious will of its own. But…no matter how advanced her sacred arts were, Quinella was nothing more than an Underworldian, far from a resident of a scientific culture. She could not fathom in a single night the workings of admin-level command structures. Quinella attempted in vain to decipher the reference materials saved for Rath engineers…and she made a mistake. One simple but enormous mistake. She decided to absorb the Cardinal System itself and chanted a mammoth string of sacred arts. And as a result…”

  She breathed out a sigh, the words tumbling free with her breath.

  “…Quinella burned the prime directive of the Cardinal System into her own fluctlight, as her own behavioral principle, in a way that can’t be overwritten. She meant to steal its authority level alone, but instead, she fused her very soul with Cardinal!”

  “…Uh…wh-what…?” I mumbled, unable to grasp this concept in the moment. “What exactly is Cardinal’s…prime directive…?”

  “The upholding of order. It is the very reason for the Cardinal System’s existence. I’m sure you understand, having been in the world controlled by that system. Cardinal is constantly observing the actions of all players like yourself. When it detects a phenomenon that disrupts the balance of the world, it acts mercilessly to correct it.”

  “Yeah…that’s true. I’ve spent plenty of time trying to get the better of Cardinal, but every time I thought I found a hole, it was always plugged instantly…”

  I recalled all the times back in SAO when I thought I’d hit upon a new farming technique, only for it to fail within moments. Cardinal, the girl in front of me, grinned proudly. This expression was the only moment when she truly went from being a wizened sage to the mischievous girl that her appearance suggested.

  “But of course. You little whelps can’t possibly get the better of me, no matter how many of you there are…But Quinella’s upholding of order was far more extreme. With these orders now written into her fluctlight, she passed out, and did not wake for an entire day. By then, she was no longer human in any sense of the word. Never aging, drinking, eating…her only desire was to preserve for eternity the world she ruled over…”

  “Preserve…for eternity…,” I mumbled, contemplating the idea.

  Every manager of a VRMMO wishes for the game world to continue into perpetuity, not just the Cardinal System AI. It is why they fine-tune game economies, items, and monster rates—to maintain order. But there is one thing that a godlike administrator cannot entirely control: the players.

  Could the same thing be said of the Underworld…?

  Cardinal sensed my unspoken thought and bobbed her head. “Once, the Cardinal System of this world controlled just the flora and fauna, terrain, and climate. In other words, it managed only the container and allowed the artificial fluctlights within it to go about their lives unaffected…But Quinella was different. She wanted to fix even the lives of her subjects into a permanent state.”

  “Fix? You mean like…making it so that everyone does the same thing every day, and nothing new ever happens…?”

  “Well…I suppose you could put it that way. Continuing on…Once Quinella had fused with the Cardinal System, she gave herself a new identity. Now she was the pontifex, the highest officer of the Axiom Church…and her name would now be Administrator.”

  I jumped at the mention of that name. “Oh! Yeah, he said that name, too. The Integrity Knight Eldrie Synthesis…um…”

  “Thirty-One.”

  “Right. He said something about how Administrator, the pontifex, had summoned him from the celestial world to the land…So he was talking about Quinella…It’s, um, quite a name to give yourself.”

  To me, the English term administrator was more familiar in terms of computer control status—admin accounts, say—than its original meaning. But I couldn’t be sure which definition Quinella had chosen it for.

  Cardinal smirked briefly and nodded. “I suppose it is fitting that she would name herself after the gods of our world…But at any rate, she was now the administrator in both title and function, and her first edict was to elevate the four major noble lines of the time into emperors, and split the four directions into four empires. You have seen the walls that break Centoria into quadrants, I trust?”

  I confirmed with a bob of my head. The Swordcraft Academy was in District Five of North Centoria, the capital of the Norlangarth Empire. From the dorm, I could see the chalk-white walls that rose higher than any building in the city. I was stunned when I first learned that those Everlasting Walls were all that separated us from the capitals of other empires.

  “Those walls were not constructed by granite blocks, mined and assembled over decades. The Administrator used her godly powers to summon them in an instant.”

  “…An…an instant?! Those walls?! That’s got to be beyond the scope of sacred arts…Didn’t that stun all the people of Centoria…?”

  “Of cours
e. That was the point. She used the power of the Cardinal System to impress fear into the hearts of the citizens. Through this mental barrier, and the literal barrier of the Everlasting Walls, she could limit the flow and mingling of the people. That way, the Axiom Church had control over the passage of information, and thus a better grip upon the people’s minds. She wanted the people to be ignorant, pliable, faithful servants of the Church in perpetuity…And those preposterous walls weren’t the only physical barriers she erected. In order to limit the frontier expansion happening in all directions, Administrator placed many massive terrain obstacles in their way—unbreakable rocks, bottomless swamps, uncrossable rapids, unfellable trees…”

  “W-wait. Trees…you can’t cut down?”

  “Correct. A cedar of nearly unfathomable size, with practically unlimited priority and durability.”

  I thought of the tear-inducing hardness of the demonic Gigas Cedar and rubbed my palms together under the table.

  So the Gigas Cedar wasn’t a natural growth south of Rulid but an artificial roadblock placed by the Administrator, intended to prevent the residents from expanding their territory and activity by refusing to budge and sucking up local resources.

  And there were other features like that out in the world. Things that people had wasted centuries of hard work in a futile attempt to eliminate…

  When I looked up, the little girl was once again gazing at me with all-knowing eyes. Her tiny lips opened to continue the lesson.

  “…And thus, under the control of the all-powerful Administrator, a very long time of peace and idleness came to pass. Twenty years, thirty…The people lost their spirit of ambition, the nobles fell into slovenly greed, and the heroic swordsmen of old sank to the level of a stage show. You have seen these things for yourself. For forty years, then fifty, Administrator gazed down at the lukewarm state of the human world and felt deep, deep satisfaction…”

  It must have been like gazing upon the complete, pristine ecosystem of an aquarium. I recalled the fascinating entertainment I got from my ant farm kit as a boy and felt uncomfortable.