Sword Art Online Aincrad - VOL 2

CHAPTER 4

For the first time in an entire year of play in Sword Art Online, my HP fell into the red zone and stayed there.

When the boss finally fell and exploded, leaving only his sack behind, I didn't have a single recovery crystal left. I'd been closer to death than ever before, but despite my slim survival, I felt no joy of victory or relief. It was almost a sense of disappointment. Oh, I'm still alive.

The sack of presents followed by shattering into fragments of light as I slowly returned my sword to its sheath. All the items the boss dropped would have automatically been added to my inventory. I sighed heavily and raised a trembling hand to call up the window.

There was an almost disgusting number of new items in the display: weapons and armor, various jewels and crystals, even food ingredients. I carefully scrolled through the extensive list, looking for only one thing.

A few seconds later, it popped into my view, so matter-of-factly that it caught me off-guard.

It was labeled the SACRED STONE OF REBIRTH. My heart instantly leaped to life—it felt as though the paralysis that had afflicted it for the past days and months was finally wearing off, and blood was flowing through it again.

Would I really, truly be able to bring Sachi back? Was it possible that Keita and Tetsuo and everyone else who'd died in SAO might not have lost their souls after all...?

I might be able to see Sachi again. The thought set my heart trembling. No matter the insults she might hurl at me, no matter the lies she might rightfully accuse me of, this time I would hold her in my arms and tell her. Not that she wouldn't die, but that I would protect her. That I'd made myself so much stronger just for that purpose.

My trembling fingers stumbling several times, I finally got the Sacred Stone out of my inventory. The egg-sized jewel hung radiant above my status window, sparkling beautifully with the colors of the rainbow.

"Sachi...Sachi..."

I called out her name as I clicked the jewel and hit the HELP button. A simple description appeared in that familiar system font.

"By selecting the Use command from this pop-up window or calling out the command 'Revive: (Player Name)' with it held in your hand, the target player can be brought back to life during the brief period (roughly ten seconds) between death and the conclusion of the disintegration visual effect."

Roughly ten seconds.

That tiny little phrase told me in the clearest, cruelest terms that Sachi was dead, and she would never come back.

Roughly ten seconds. That was the amount of time that the NerveGear took to microwave the player's actual brain after her HP dropped to zero and her avatar shattered into pieces.

I couldn't help but imagine it. When Sachi's body disappeared, just ten seconds later, the NerveGear on her head killed its wearer. Did Sachi suffer? What did she think in those final ten seconds? Did she curse me to her final moment...?

"Aaah...aaaahhh..."

It burst out of me like an animal screech. I grabbed the Sacred Stone floating above my window and hurled it with all my strength against the snow.

"Aaaaaaahhh!!"

I stomped it with my boots repeatedly as I screamed, but the jewel kept gleaming, expressionless. It didn't break in half; it didn't even crack. I roared with all of my being, got down on my hands and scrabbled through the snow wildly, rolled back and forth as though possessed.

It was meaningless. It had all been for nothing. Sachi's fear and pain and death, my insane fight against the Christmas boss, even the birth of this world and the imprisonment of ten thousand innocent people inside of it. There was no meaning to any of it. In this moment, I understood entirely that this was the one absolute truth of SAO.