Alicization Lasting Read online

  For one, Vassago the hit man would not be able to leave the game until it was beaten. If he died in the game, he was dead for real. And Vassago himself could not attack the target. If anyone got their hands on a game log of who attacked whom, they could potentially trace back the assassination attempt.

  The price the syndicate offered to complete this near-impossible mission was astonishing. Vassago thought it unlikely that he would actually get it, even if he succeeded, but he didn’t have the right to refuse either way.

  Nearly all the unused NerveGears had been confiscated by police, but somehow, the syndicate acquired one. As long as he had the SAO software and the will to go in there, neither the police nor the software company could prevent him from logging in. The only real question after that was his character name. Vassago had never played a video game, and he wasn’t sure what to go with at first. Deciding to keep it in-line with the name of the prince of hell his mother had given him, Vassago chose the handle PoH.

  Vassago’s first experience with virtual reality altered his personality—it set him free. He saw his long-forgotten father and distant relatives in the other Japanese players and was keenly reminded of just how much he loathed all Asian people.

  He would kill his target, since that was his job. And along the way, he’d kill as many other people as he could.

  It was with this thought in mind that Vassago founded the biggest guild of murderers in SAO, Laughing Coffin, and took many, many lives in total, not just that of his original target. When the guild got too big and he grew tired of running it, he had it clash headlong with the game’s elite players to wipe it out so he could engage directly in the job of killing those he’d identified as the greatest targets of all: the Flash and the Black Swordsman. Not long after that, the game was beaten, releasing them all.

  When he returned to the real world from the game of death, Vassago felt not joy but emptiness and disappointment. He knew that he would never again experience the dream come true that was Aincrad, so he chose to return to America in search of a similar experience. He murdered the boss, who was reluctant to pay what he’d promised, made off with the money, and crossed the Pacific. Over in San Diego, he found a place in the cyber-operations wing of a private military contractor.

  In VR combat training against the National Guard and the Marine Corps, Vassago’s SAO-honed skills shone brilliantly. He was promptly chosen to be an instructor, but the stable life and income that came along with it did not satisfy him.

  One more time. I want to go back there, just one more time. Back to that false world of truth, where everything is digital, bringing true human nature to the surface.

  For all his wishing, Vassago finally found himself in the Underworld, a terrifyingly real virtual world, where he came across the Flash and the Black Swordsman again. It wasn’t a miracle; it had to be considered fate at this point.

  For some reason, the Black Swordsman had undergone some kind of change in mental state, but Vassago knew that if he killed enough people around him, he’d wake up again. It was exactly because the Black Swordsman was that kind of man that Vassago was drawn to him in the first place. It was such a singular desire that Vassago would be happy to kill himself once he’d killed the swordsman.

  First, he’d lure the Chinese and Koreans in with false information, then have them slaughter one another en masse. He’d never expected that impromptu story to hold up under scrutiny for very long anyway. More than a few of them were skeptical of the situation already and were arguing with the more fervently patriotic members of the crowd. Once that tension reached its peak, all he needed to provide was a little spark.

  Not far away, the Korean he’d given a good punishing was still stubbornly trying to argue with his compatriots. If he shouted to them to cut that man’s head off and slaughter all the cowards, the patriots would surely be driven into a bloodlust and draw their swords.

  “Just you wait, man…I’ll get you up and on your feet in no time,” Vassago whispered to the empty-eyed swordsman in black on the ground nearby. Belatedly, he realized that something in the young man’s profile reminded him of the glimpse he’d gotten of his half brother just before the kidney-transplant surgery. Something sharp surged in his chest.

  First, he’d kill the Black Swordsman and the Flash to log them out, then disengage himself. The next step would be to find wherever the two of them were on the Ocean Turtle and kill them again with the utmost relish.

  Only imagining that moment could temporarily ease the dull ache in his left side that had been with him since having his kidney stolen when he was fifteen.

  Beneath the hood, he grinned and muttered to the young man, “If you keep spacing out, everyone’s gonna die. C’mon—you gotta wake up soon.”

  He took slow, deliberate steps, twirling the Mate-Chopper around in his fingers.

  Scritch.

  Asuna heard the dry sound of boot soles scraping on parched ground, even as her soul threatened to leave her ears.

  Scritch, scritch. It was mechanical, artificial, and yet rhythmic, almost dancing. That was something she’d heard several times before in the old floating castle: the footsteps of Death.

  She moved her head to the side and saw, twenty yards away near where Kirito lay, the silhouette of the man in the black poncho stalking toward her.

  But it wasn’t actually Asuna he was walking toward—it was Klein, two swords stuck through his back. The samurai seemed to be staving off death through willpower alone, and now the man was going to finish the job himself.

  Or so she thought at first, but soon she sensed this wasn’t correct, either.

  Near Klein, two knights in red armor were squabbling in Korean. In fact, all around the army of thousands surrounding the surviving Japanese players and Underworld warriors, violent arguments were breaking out.

  It was probably the players who still believed PoH laying into those who had figured out it was all a lie. At this rate, it was going to take only a minor trigger for the former to draw their swords on the latter. Once that happened, the built-up hatred between the Chinese and Korean players would probably be the next thing to explode. PoH was heading over to stop them from…

  No…

  No. Oh no.

  He was heading over to start the fire himself.

  Just the same way he had when he leaked the location of his own murdering guild’s hideout to the frontier group so they could launch a bloody battle to wipe the guild out.

  It wasn’t clear what he stood to gain by halving the power of the force at his command. The only thing she knew for sure was that something terrible would happen.

  As he strode forward, PoH gave instructions in Korean. The two knights holding Klein down turned on the one who’d failed to execute him, sweeping aside their momentary hesitation and grabbing his arms.

  The Grim Reaper in black flipped his knife and snatched it out of the air again with a loud smack.

  He was going to execute the “traitor” and display his head to the crowd, driving those Chinese and Korean players who believed him to betray their skeptical companions.

  She couldn’t allow him to do that. In terms of the ultimate goal of protecting the Underworlders, preventing the red knights from killing one another probably wasn’t what she should worry about. But even half of them was still at least ten thousand—and when they were done, they would be even more furious and hateful and would be seeking to channel those feelings toward the Japanese and the Underworlders.

  More importantly, the Chinese and Korean players who were in danger of being killed were the ones who were beginning to see the truth…the ones who believed what the Japanese players told them. She couldn’t give up and allow them to suffer this painful fate.

  She had to move. Had to stand, draw her sword, and stop the execution ordered by PoH.

  But her hands and feet wouldn’t obey. With each breath she took, the plethora of wounds all over her body ached and sapped her willpower.

  ……It’s no use
………I can’t get up.

  Asuna could only exhale weakly, her knees stuck to the dusty ground.

  Her back arched slowly. Dirty, bedraggled hair slid down over her shoulders, blocking her vision.

  Tears filled her eyes, and she tried to shut them against the approach of Death’s footsteps.

  And then…

  It’s all right.

  You can make it, Asuna.

  Someone’s voice was in her ear, soft but clear.

  Someone’s hands squeezed her shoulders, gentle but strong.

  Warm light flooded into her body—into her heart. A fresh gust of air blew all her pain away.

  Stand up now, Asuna.

  Stand to protect what you truly care about.

  Her right hand twitched, slid across the surface of the earth, and grabbed what lay there: the handle of Radiant Light, the rapier belonging to the Goddess of Creation.

  When she raised her head, the Grim Reaper in black had a blade that gleamed bloody crimson held high above him. The pinned-down red knight tensed with terror. The furor around them seemed to vanish momentarily, all eyes trained upon that merciless edge.

  Asuna held her breath, gritted her teeth, and put all the strength she still had left into her legs.

  She pushed off the ground.

  “Raaaaaaaaah!!”

  With a bloodcurdling scream, she drew back the rapier. Brilliant-white light shone from its tip. The basic fencing sword skill Linear was one she’d performed thousands of times, if not hundreds of thousands.

  PoH’s reflexes were sharp enough that he noticed the surprise attack.

  “Oh—,” he grunted, leaning backward. She thrust her hand straight for the darkness of the hood, which was now moving away from her.

  There was a small bit of feedback in her arm. One lock of curly black hair flew into the air, and a few droplets of fresh blood sprayed from dark skin.

  He dodged it!

  The Underworld was no different from Aincrad in that there was an unavoidable pause after a sword skill. Asuna was frozen for a brief, fatal instant—and PoH’s knife came rushing straight for her torso.

  But at the same time, she focused her mind on the ground under PoH’s feet.

  A faint rainbow of light glowed there and vanished. She used the power of Stacia to generate a little bump of earth, just inches tall, under his feet.

  Despite being the smallest possible manipulation of the terrain, it felt like lightning struck her brain. And for that heavy price, the dark reaper lost his balance, and his knife did nothing but rip her dress a little.

  “Rrgh…!”

  Free from her paralysis, Asuna pulled back the rapier again.

  “Whoa!” PoH’s poncho swung up into the air as he raised his knife to block it.

  The divinely quick thrust and the powerful slice met in midair, creating a mixture of white and crimson sparks. Asuna put all her strength behind her weapon, trying to push through PoH’s blade.

  “What…do you want?” she demanded, her voice hoarse.

  With a smirk and a snarl, PoH said from beneath his hood, “Isn’t it obvious? The one in black…the one I first tried to kill on the fifth floor of Aincrad and never could. He’s the only one I really want.”

  “…Why do you hate Kirito so much? What did he ever do to you?”

  “Hate?” PoH repeated, affronted. He leaned in closer and whispered, “I thought you, of all people, would understand how much I truly love him. In this world full of assholes, he’s the only person you can unconditionally believe in. He never broke down, no matter how much I tormented him. Never gave in to temptation, no matter how much I invited him. He always brought me hope and joy. That’s why I can’t stand that he ended up like that…while I wasn’t around. I’m gonna be the one to wake him up. And I’ll kill anyone I need to in order to make that happen. Thousands…Millions.”

  As the personification of death exhaled these words, they became a black miasma that clung to Asuna, sapping her will to fight.

  “Hope…? Joy…? As if you had any idea…of how much he had to endure because of you!” she snapped back, but the point where their weapons met and scraped sparks into being was slowly, slowly tilting back toward her.

  In fact, it wasn’t just that Asuna’s willpower was weakening. PoH’s wicked Mate-Chopper was trembling like a living creature in his hand, growing slightly thicker and larger with every passing second.

  PoH noticed her shock. A smile emerged from the darkness beneath his hood.

  “I finally figured out how this world works, too. In here, spilled blood and spent life converts straight into energy. Just like how the Priestess of Light burned up the Dark Army with that huge-ass laser beam.”

  Asuna had been given an explanation of the core system of the Underworld, too, before she dived in. These “spatial resources,” as they were called, couldn’t be used without complex commands or weapons that absorbed them from the air. But even if the Mate-Chopper’s enlargement was an effect of spatial resources, PoH hadn’t spoken any commands, and the knife itself had to be a converted item from his SAO character data. It couldn’t be equipped with the Underworld’s resource-absorption function.

  PoH continued, reading Asuna’s thoughts.

  “This dagger, the Mate-Chopper, was designed so that every time it kills monsters in Aincrad, its stats go down, and the more you slice up players—other people—the higher its stats get. But if you kill an obnoxious number of mobs, eventually the curse is supposed to wear off, and the weapon transforms into some special katana with a similar name. Obviously, I wasn’t interested in that. The point here is that the way its strength grows as it slashes human beings still works in the Underworld. The lives of the Americans you people killed, and the Japanese the allied Chinese and Koreans killed, swirl around this battlefield. If the Chinese and Koreans kill one another after this, there will be even more life in the air.”

  As the Grim Reaper whispered, his Mate-Chopper creaked and groaned, growing larger. Asuna’s Radiant Light, top-level GM equipment, seemed unable to withstand its pressure. All the sound in the background faded away, leaving Asuna with only her breath and her pulse in her ears.

  PoH’s very presence seemed to weigh on Asuna, as though the evil weapon’s effect also applied to his height.

  “Once I suck up every last one of those lives, I’m going to kill all the artificial fluctlights in this entire world, from end to end. I’m not just talking about those pathetic people trembling behind you—I mean all of them: the monsters in the dark lands and the humans from the dark empire. However many thousands of people that is, I’m sure he’ll wake up in response to it. If he is the Black Swordsman I believe in.”

  A cold gust of wind rustled his leather hood, revealing the eyes underneath for a brief moment. They were red and dimly glowing.

  A devil. He was not human, but a true devil.

  That was the true nature of PoH. The mask of the cheerful agitator he wore in Aincrad and the mask of the harsh commander he wore here were both just that: lies. In truth, he was a cold, cruel agent of vengeance who sought only to inflict pain, to torment, and wipe out all traces of humanity…

  The strength went out of Asuna’s knees. Her rapier creaked in its struggle, and the knife’s blade edged closer to her throat.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t kill you yet. I’m just going to make sure you can’t interfere anymore. You need to be around to watch…when he wakes up and dies in my arms.”

  The Mate-Chopper was close to twice its original size now. Radiant Light issued a high-pitched scream, and a fine crack ran through its length.

  With her right knee having fallen to the ground, Asuna watched a black mist spilling from the hood covering her eyes. Through the darkness shone only the thick steel blade and her crimson eyes.

  Just before Asuna completely lost all strength, someone’s small hand touched her back, providing support.

  It’s all right.

  I’ll always be at your side.
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  A pure-blue light shot from the center of Asuna’s chest, piercing the darkness.

  In the reflection of the flat surface of the Mate-Chopper, Asuna could see pristine white wings extending from her own back.

  All the sound came back—the clamor and chaos of the battlefield mixing in again, along with the voices of her friends.

  “Asuna!! You can do it, Asuna!!”

  “Asuna!! Asunaaaaaa!!”

  “Get up, Asuna!!”

  “Asunaaaaa!!”

  Lisbeth. Silica. Agil. Klein.

  And not just her closest companions. She could also hear the surviving ALO players, like Sakuya, Alicia, and Siune and the other Sleeping Knights, as well as the soldiers from the Human Guardian Army, like Renly, Tiese, Ronie, Sortiliena, and the many other guards and friars, all chanting her name.

  Thank you, everyone.

  Thank you, Yuuki.

  I can still fight. Your hearts united give me strength.

  “I won’t give in…I will never allow myself to succumb…to someone like you…who is only capable of hatred!!” she screamed. A surge of white light issued from her being, jolting PoH backward.

  Asuna returned to her feet and drew back her rapier hand. Waves of pale-purple light reminiscent of the color of thyme flowers emerged from the weapon, coloring the entire world.

  “Hrrrng…!!”

  The reaper attempted to stand his ground, but that just left him wide open to attack.

  Asuna activated the Original Sword Skill she’d received from Yuuki, the Absolute Sword.

  Five attacks from the upper right, lightning-fast thrusts in a diagonal line.

  Five attacks from the upper left, another line of glowing points intersecting with the first.

  “Gaaah…” PoH gasps were flecked with bright blood, but his giant knife still glowed red. If he caught her flush with a direct counterattack, it would easily wipe out what health she had remaining.

  But Asuna’s onslaught wasn’t over.

  “Raaaaaaah!!”

  She focused all her remaining energy into the tip of the rapier for the last—and biggest—attack, right at the intersecting point of the two lines.