Sword Art Online - Volume 8 - Early and Late Read online

  The roots of the world tree which expanded over the surface of the huge lake —— «Urth’s Spring», shook and floated over the surface, then shrunk toward to canopy. The town which was built atop the roots collapsed all at once.

  At the same time, all the leaves of the tree fell, the grass withered, and the light faded. The rivers were frozen, the frost condensed, as a snowstorm raged. The huge amount of water in «Urth’s Spring» froze momentarily and became the large mass of ice, which was wrapped and pulled up by the roots of the world tree as they retracted back into the sky. The large number of lake inhabiting creatures snapped off the ice mass and fell down. Among them was the elephant-jellyfish type, like the old Tonkii.

  The roots of the world tree ascended and reached Jötunheimr’s canopy or Alfheim’s crust before long, and half of the huge ice mass it carried pierced into the canopy. That ice mass was no doubt, set up and honored as the «Inverted Ice Pyramid» in the current Jötunheimr. At the bottom-most of the ice mass, a sharp edged icicle, a glittering golden light could be seen. It was from the sword thrown by the frost giant king Þrym, the sword which severed the connection between the world tree and Jötunheimr, it was, without a doubt, Excaliber.

  When all of the water was lost, the once beautiful lake turned to a huge bottomless pit.

  Urth lowered her left hand, causing the illusory screen to disappear. However, this time it didn’t make a large change to the scenery. The most change was the mass of ice in the sky, which had undergone restructuring into the linear dungeon. The existence of Excaliber at the bottom of that pyramid had also been confirmed by Lyfa and me with our own eyes too.

  “King Þrym’s subordinates, the «Frost Giant Tribe» is preparing a big plan to invade Jötunheimr from Niflheimr, many of us, the «Rock Giant Tribe», had been captured and imprisoned in the various fortresses and castles they had built. The king built the castle «Þrymheimr» in the large mass of ice once called «Urth’s Spring», and ruled over this land from that castle. No longer having the power we once had, my two younger sisters and I had to escape to the bottom of a certain frozen spring.”

  Urth’s eyelids were half-downcast, she resumed the tale which was probably nearing the end. We had partly forgotten that she was an NPC, and the tale was just an in-game quest, wordlessly listening.

  “The frost giant tribe wasn’t satisfied with just that, but also wants to massacre every one of my kin, the beasts living on this land. That way, my power will completely vanish, and it would allow Þrymheimr to float up to the plane above, Alfheim.”

  “W-What! If it happens, Aarun will be destroyed!”

  Klein, who seemed to be deeply immersed into the story, yelled. The non-fixed response routine and partial AI, Queen Urth nodded at Klein’s words and said,

  “King Þrym plans to enclose Alfheim in ice and snow, then continue attacking until reaching the top of the world tree Yggdrasil, where the «Golden Apple» exists, his objective is to obtain that fruit.”

  ……something like that exists up there? I thought for a moment, then suddenly realized, near the summit of the world tree, there was an impossibly strong eagle, a named mob, guarding an inaccessible area. It could be possible that the golden apple existed inside.

  Urth gazed at the ground, her eyebrows still bated with sadness.

  “Being irritated by being unable to easily destroy my kin, Þrym and the frost giant generals started to use the power of ye fairies. Inviting them to hunt my kin, using Excaliber as a reward. However, it is not possible for Þrym to bestow the sword to others. Once Þrymheimr loses Excaliber, the blessings from Yggdrasil will return to this land, and that castle will melt.”

  “Eh……then, then, Excaliber as the reward is all lie!? Is it possible to have a quest like that!?”

  The queen generously nodded at Lisbeth’s wild voice and said,

  “When the god of blacksmith Völundr forged the sword, he discarded the one in which he slipped when striking with the hammer, which looks just like Excaliber, but it is actually the «Fake Sword Caliburn». Þrym is probably going to give that fake sword as the reward, while it is strong enough, it doesn’t possess the true power of the real one.”

  “S-Sly……is it alright for the king to do this……?”

  Lyfa murmured in confusion. Urth nodded again and exhaled deeply.

  “That cunning is Þrym’s strongest weapon. But he was too impatient in destroying my kin, and committed one mistake. In order to cooperate with the fairy warriors they lured in using the fake reward, almost all of the giant subordinates are down on the ground. So, the defense in the castle is now thin.”

  Arriving at this point, I finally realized the future of this quest —— no, this «queen’s request».

  The queen of the lake Urth stretched forth her large arm toward «Þrymheimr» in the air and said,

  “Ye fairies, please invade Þrymheimr and remove Excaliber from its «Plinth».”

  Part 3

  “……Somehow, that was an amazing tale……”

  Was the first thing Asuna murmured after «Queen of the Lake Urth» melted into shiny water droplets and disappeared. Tonkii ascended again —— this time gradually.

  Her words were followed by Sinon’s, who seemed to have recovered her thoughts, talking as she moved her light blue tail,

  “This is…a normal quest……right? But isn’t this assignment, the story too great? ……Once all the beast type evil-gods had been annihilated, the frost giants will invade the surface next, did she say this?”

  “……Yes, she did.”

  I nodded, then twisted my neck while folding my arms.

  “But, would the management’s side go that far without any updates or event notices? For any other MMOs, any «Boss Invasion Event» would normally come with at least one week of advance notice though……”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  Then, Yui who sat on my left shoulder flew to hover in the middle of us and said in a volume everyone could hear,

  “Well, This might be just a guess, but……”

  With a slight pause as if to think about what to say, she then continued,

  “——This «ALfheim Online» has one major difference from other standard VRMMOs from «The Seed». That is, the game operation isn’t based on the feature reduced version of the «Cardinal System», but uses the same full specs version as the one used in the old «Sword Art Online».”

  That was certainly correct. It wasn’t a story I wanted to remember, but ALO was created by a man whom was possessed by greed, in order to use some of the old SAO players in his illegal research, he copied the whole original SAO server. So the autonomous system operating the world «Cardinal» in ALO has the same capability as the one used in SAO, of course.

  Yui looked around at our attentive listening faces, then added,

  “The original Cardinal System has a few functions which had been cut out in the shrunk version. One of them is the «Automatic Quest Generation Function». It will collect legends and folklore of the world through the network, and continue to generate infinite amount of quests using proper names and story patterns.”

  “W-What?”

  Klein’s stubbly jaw dropped abruptly as he groaned.

  “That means, that disastrous quest from pacific we did in Aincrad was created by system-sama?”

  “……I can recall too many of them. At the time we reached the 75th floor, just those listed in the quest database of the information shop exceeded ten thousand……”

  At one time, in order to earn the management fund, the guild had to seriously take on many of those quests, the KoB sub-leader said as she shook her head. Silica who was next to her stared to the distance and muttered,

  “Also, I could hear this sometimes-myo. It was probably on the 30th floor, the slaughter quest to kill the ogres wearing strange masks and using chainsaws, but no matter how many times they were killed, the next week the quest would pop up on the bulletin board again. What legend did it come fr
om though……”

  For quests like those, I too have a lot in my memories, but at this rate, until we reach the ice pyramid, it’d be a meeting to complain about old Aincrad. So, in order the steer the topic back, I cleared my throat and said,

  “That said, Yui, is this quest also created by the Cardinal System?”

  “Judging from the behavior of the NPC earlier, the probability is high. It might be possible that the automatic quest generator that stopped until now had been restarted from the management’s side.”

  Yui continued with a difficult face after she nodded to my question.

  “If the story keeps progressing like this, the situation will end up in the worst state. That ice dungeon floats up to Alfheim above, Aarun collapses, the evil-god class monsters popping up on the surface…… No, even worse……”

  Her lips closed for a moment —— the AI girl then continued with a frightened expression,

  “……According to the data in my archive, as ALO has included parts of the Norse mythology in the quest, it’d certainly lead to the so-called «The Last War». Not only do the frost giant tribe from Jötunheimr and Niflheimr invade, but those from the lower plane «Muspellsheimr», the flame giant tribe would also appear, and burn down the world tree…… That is……”

  “…………«Ragnarök».”

  Suguha —— Lyfa, who loves legends and mythology, also has those kind of books in her room, said quietly. Immediately her emerald pupils widened and she shouted “But!”.

  “Something like that…… The game system shouldn’t be able to completely destroy its own managed maps though……!”

  What she said made sense. But Yui gently shook her head.

  “……The original Cardinal System has the authority to completely destroy the map. Because, the old Cardinal’s final duty was to destroy the floating castle Aincrad after all.”

  “………………”

  This time we sank into complete silence, unable to say anything.

  The next person who opened their mouth was Sinon, whom up till now was mostly listening.

  “——If that «Ragnarök» really happened and it wasn’t the management side’s intention, isn’t it possible to do a roll back?”

  “O……Oh, that’s it, that’s right.”

  Klein nodded repeatedly. Simply speaking, «Roll back» was used to overwrite the current situation with backup data. It was mainly done when players gained unexpected benefits due to bugs or programming oversights. In this case, if Alfheim had been turned into scorched earth, although it wouldn’t affect individual player’s exp or items, nobody would want the whole place to be like Salamander territory’s «Burnt Land».

  However, for some reason, this time Yui didn’t nod in agreement.

  “It would be possible if the management’s side did backup all the data manually and kept the physical media in a separated location…… however, if they used Cardinal’s automatic backup function, depending on the configuration, it could be possible that the roll back would only affect player data and not include the fields.”

  “………………”

  Again, all members went silent for two seconds. Klein suddenly shouted “Oh yeah!” then opened the system window. But just after that, he held his head and said “No good!”.

  “……What did you do?”

  Lisbeth asked while turning to the katana user’s miserable face.

  “Well, calling a GM, just wanting to confirm if they know about this situation . But it’s off hours for human support now……”

  “End of the year, Sunday, in the morning too……”

  I sighed, shook my head, then looked into the sky.

  The huge ice pyramid was quite close now. It’s three hundred meters wide on each side, if it pierced up through Aarun it would certainly cause a great clamor. While half of its population had migrated to «Yggdrasil City» at the top of the tree, with the raiding base for the advanced dungeon on Aarun plateau, the central trading market for all races, and the familiar crowded weekend nights, it was a town full of my profound memories.

  “……When it comes down to this, there’s nothing but to do it, Onii-chan.”

  Lyfa held a big medallion hung on her right hand up high.

  It was given by «Queen of the Lake Urth», a cleanly cut large jewel was inlaid in it. But now, more than sixty percent of the cut surface had sunk into pitch black darkness, not reflecting any light.

  When the jewel was dyed in total darkness, it meant all of the beast type evil-gods had been completely annihilated without a single one left, and Urth would be stripped of all her power. At that time, «Frost Giant King Þrym»‘s Alfheim invasion would begin.

  “……That’s right. Initially we gathered today to raid that castle and get «Excaliber» anyway. It’s in our favor when the defense is currently weakened too.”

  I nodded, then opened the system window and operated the equipment figure.

  Long swords appeared hanging crossed on my back, one was humbly made by Lisbeth’s equipment shop, and the other was dropped from the 15th floor boss we defeated the other day in the new Aincrad.

  Looking at my nostalgic back carrying two swords, Klein smiled from ear to ear and yelled,

  “Alright! This is this year’s final big quest! I’ve decided, let’s get on the tomorrow’s front page of MMO Tomorrow!”

  The target was somewhat realistic, so this time Lisbeth didn’t make a wry smile. “Oo―!” Everyone said in chorus, Tonkii under our feet moved its wings violently and cried “Krrr―n!”.

  The aviation type evil-god increased its ascending speed and crossed the pyramid at once, its big body hovered along the entrance at the top of the pyramid. Lyfa, who was the last person, jumped to the ice terrace, stroked Tonkii’s big ear and said,

  “Just wait, Tonkii. We’ll surely take your country back!”

  She then turned about and pulled the long sword hanging loosely on her waist. At the same time, we took our weapons out too, in front of the big twin ice gates which stood tall in front of us.

  Just as Urth had said, there was no first guardian here like always, and the doors began to open. Exchanging glances with each other, we quickly set up a formation, with the front row being Lyfa, Klein, and I; Lis and Silica were in the middle, while on the back row were Asuna and Sinon, we kicked the ice floor to begin running, and broke into the huge castle «Þrymheimr».

  In ALO, the upper limit of a party size was, strangely, seven people. The reason why it didn’t use six or eight like most other titles, until now, has never been officially told. That way, the maximum size of a raid party was 7x7 or forty nine people. The currency obtained from the monsters would automatically be distributed by the system function, as manual distribution would be very troublesome to calculate.

  Well, from the seven people slot, if filled with only close friends, five would be pretty much fixed. With Asuna, Lis, Silica, Lyfa, and I. All were high school students, furthermore, four went to the same school, and two even lived together, so the timing was easy to set.

  The sixth and seventh slots could still be smoothly filled up, by the company employee Klein, coffee shop and bar master Agil, the senior bureaucrat Chrysheight, or Lyfa’s real life friend Recon. Recon was also a high school student, he was part of the olden day’s «Yggdrasil Capturing Operation» and had been recruited by the Sylph lord Sakuya to help with scouting duty. Currently he was a permanent member of the Lord manor staff in Sylvain town, I had played together with him for a brief period of time when Aincrad was over the sky of the Sylph territory.

  This time, I was glad the slot was filled with the bow user I met in GGO —— Sinon, however, there was still one unresolved problem for the party.

  It was the lack of a mage. The only permanent member who had increased their magic skill was Undine Asuna, and as half was spent on her thin sword skills, her master leveled skills were only for support and recovery purposes. Lyfa was also a spell fencer but her spells were only for
enfeebling during combat. Then Silica had a little magic but her main focus was on support duty; Lis, of course, had spent more than half of her skills on smithing; Agil also had more than thirty percent on trading skills; then Klein and I had all our skill points focused on physical close combat, the so-called «Brain muscle» type. There was no one capable of casting attack spells.

  Occasionally, when Recon, the Sylph dagger wielder with a mysterious build of very high dark magic; or Chrysheight whose freezing attack magic was at the lord class; joined as the seventh slot, the flexibility in combat was much wider. So lacking the fire power of a mage was really our weak point.

  But that couldn’t be helped. Because most of us had migrated from SAO —— a world where magic didn’t exist. My one-handed straight sword, Asuna’s thin sword, Lis’ war hammer, Silica’s dagger, Klein’s katana, Agil’s axe, then Lyfa’s long sword and Sinon’s bow, were all not just mere weapons, but could be exaggerated into considering them as proof of our existence. At this point, discarding our weapons to raise our magic skill was already impossible. Even knowing it wasn’t efficient, but all we could do was to trust our battle style that focused on physical attack, we managed to come this far with it anyway.

  Still, we encountered dangerous situations occasionally.

  “This is bad, Onii-chan, that gold one has high physical resistance.”

  Lyfa at my left side whispered quickly.

  Before I could say anything after nodding to Lyfa, «That gold one» brandished its extraordinary huge battle axe up high.

  “Shock wave attack in two seconds! one, zero!”

  Yui who sat on my head exuded a loud voice despite her small body. Following the countdown, the five people from the front and middle rows split up to the left and right, creating a gap. The blade of the axe swung roaring down, and created a shock wave, cut in a straight line, which passed through the gap and hit the wall on the other side violently.

  It had already been twenty minutes since we broke into the ice castle «Þrymheimr».