I waited for her to finish each and every question. “That’s right. Remember how I said half the Integrity Knights were tournament champions? The other half are people who were brought to the cathedral as criminals. They had the force of will to violate the Taboo Index, and that gives them exceptional power as knights. It’s two birds with one stone for Administrator: She turns a potential threat to the Church’s rule into a powerful personal agent. Now…let’s talk about you.”
This was it. The moment Alice would either accept my argument or deny it.
I fixed her with as firm a stare as I could possibly muster. She sat flat on the stone ledge, her shoulders hunched and forlorn, eyelids heavy, as though waiting for some final judgment.
“Your real name is Alice Zuberg. You were born and raised in Rulid, a small village at the foot of the End Mountains far to the north. You’re the same age as Eugeo, my partner, which would make you nineteen this year. You were brought here eight years ago, meaning you were eleven when the incident happened. You and Eugeo went spelunking in the cave through the End Mountains…and at the other end of the cave, you just barely crossed the boundary between the human realm and the Dark Territory. So the taboo you broke was ‘infiltrating the Dark Territory.’ You didn’t steal anything or hurt anyone…In fact, you were trying to save the dying dark knight…”
Now it was my turn to clam up. Did I really hear that many details about Alice’s story from Eugeo…?
Surely I did. I awoke in the Underworld two years ago—I couldn’t possibly know what happened six years before that. But for some reason, there was an image in my brain of a knight in black falling from the sky in a shower of blood and Alice rushing toward him, as vivid and specific as if I’d seen it myself. I even heard the scraping sound of her hand brushing the black soil of the Dark Territory.
Somehow, the imagery of Eugeo’s story must have gotten mixed up with my memories from reality, I told myself. I looked up and saw that Alice was so shaken by all this that she wasn’t bothered by the way I trailed off. Her cheeks were sallow, twitching.
“Alice Zuberg,” she whispered. “That’s…my…name? Rulid…End Mountains…I can’t remember any of it…”
“Don’t force yourself to remember, or you’ll end up like Eldrie,” I warned, cutting her off. If Alice’s Piety Module turned unstable and stopped working like his, there might be trouble—especially if the other knights sensed it happening and came to get her. But Alice merely looked at me with slightly more control than a moment before.
“Why would you say that now?” she demanded, her voice trembling. “I…I want to know everything. I don’t believe what you’ve said yet…but I will make my decision on that once I’ve heard the whole story.”
“All right. But to be honest, I don’t know that much about your past. Your dad is the elder of Rulid, Gasfut Zuberg. I don’t know your mother’s name, unfortunately, but like I said earlier, you have a little sister named Selka, who is probably still a sister-in-training at the church in Rulid. When I stayed there two years ago, I talked with her a lot. She was a good kid, and she cared about her sister; she’d been worried about you ever since you were taken away. When you lived in Rulid, you were also an apprentice and were considered to have a genius talent for sacred arts. She was trying her hardest to inherit that position and take over for you in your absence.”
That was all I knew. Alice said nothing for a while. Her earlier unrest was gone now, and that porcelain-white face was utterly still. She seemed to be trying to dredge up anything she could remember about those proper names, but it wasn’t producing any results.
It didn’t work, I realized. I’d been hoping that even without that missing memory fragment, if I calmly gave her bits of relevant information, she’d eventually recall some of those memories. Evidently, Administrator’s memory block was stronger than I realized.
The only one who could restore Alice was Cardinal, who had admin privileges. And that would still require the missing memory fragment that Administrator was keeping locked up.
Just then, Alice’s mouth opened.
“Selka.”
She did it again.
“Selka…”
Her darkened eyes pointed to the stars overhead.
“…I can’t remember. No face, no voice. But…it’s not the first time I’ve said that name. My mouth…my throat…my heart remembers.”
“…Alice,” I said, but she didn’t seem to even be aware I was there anymore.
“I called it all the time,” she whispered. “Every day, every night…Selka…Selka…Sel…”
Clear drops clung to her long lashes, sparkling with the light of the stars before they fell. I felt like I was seeing something unbelievable. The tears kept coming and coming, dripping with tiny patters onto the marble between us.
“It’s true…I have a family…a father and mother…and a sister I share blood with…somewhere out there under these stars…,” she choked, until her voice turned to sobs.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had reached out to her, but she batted me away with the back of her hand.
“Don’t look at me!” she sobbed, smacking me in the chest with her right hand while she rubbed at her eyes with the left. The tears never stopped, however, and eventually she buried her face in her knees, shoulders shaking.
“Nng…hnk…aaah…”
As the Integrity Knight continued to quietly sob, I came to the realization that liquid was pooling in my eyes as well.
I’ll do it. I’ll stop this Administrator and take Alice back home, I swore, my mission renewed, as I understood what was making me emotional, too.
Even if the plan went successfully, it wouldn’t be this sobbing Integrity Knight whom I reunited with Selka in Rulid. Alice would recover her lost memories, remember how she grew up with Eugeo and Selka, and probably forget about her years of service as a knight.
That would essentially be the destruction of Alice the Integrity Knight.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
She’d be returning to the way she ought to be, I reminded myself. But I couldn’t help but feel pity for the weeping knight curled up in a miserable ball.
For all the years she had spent at Central Cathedral, Alice Synthesis Thirty had been pained by the deep, subconscious desire for the company of the family she could never see again. I couldn’t help but sympathize.
✦ ✦ ✦
Eventually, much later, her racking sobs subsided in volume, to be replaced by silent weeping. My own tears had already dried a few minutes before that, so I decided to focus on what should happen next.
If there was an ideal outcome out of anything I could reasonably envision, it would be as follows: Once the moon rose, we’d resume climbing and reenter the tower at the ninety-fifth floor. Somehow, I would avoid resuming battle with Alice there and meet up with Eugeo again. Whether or not we used Cardinal’s special dagger in his possession would depend on the circumstances.
After that, the biggest obstacle remaining would be to defeat Bercouli Synthesis One or persuade him not to fight us. It would be great if Eugeo had already beaten him, but I couldn’t count on that. Then we’d reach the top floor of the cathedral, where our ultimate foe, Administrator, slept.
We’d have to neutralize the pontifex before she awoke, find Alice’s memory fragment, wherever it was hidden in the chamber, then use it to restore her memories and personality.
Lastly, I’d use the system console to make contact with the Rath staff, preserve the state of the Underworld, and get them to prevent the imminent stress test—a massive invasion from the Dark Territory…
Each one of these missions was astonishingly difficult; all of them together was hard to fathom. I had to assume that each individual goal had a probability of 50 percent, if not 30 or lower.
But I wasn’t allowed to stop in my tracks now. The two years I’d spent in the Underworld—in fact, the very long time ever since I’d first been locked in that game of death—had all been leading up to this encounter with a new kind of humanity so I could save them.
As Akihiko Kayaba had stared at the collapsing Aincrad against the red of the sunset, he’d claimed he wanted to create a truly alternate world. I wasn’t carrying on his mission, not in the least, but I had to admit that a true alternate world was exactly what I was seeing here.
Kayaba’s digital copy left The Seed with me, and it ultimately brought about an infinite array of VR worlds across the Internet. And whether by fate or by coincidence, the lightcube format that stored the souls of the Underworldians was compatible with The Seed Nexus. If there was some greater meaning to the SAO Incident beyond whatever Kayaba hoped to achieve, I got the feeling I would find it here in the Underworld.
I couldn’t turn back now. Two long years after I woke up in the forest south of Rulid, I was finally bearing down on the last floor of Central Cathedral, the goal of my long journey. But if there was any tiny but unavoidable problem along the way, it was that out of those many laudable goals, there was just one I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to achieve…