Chapter Thirty-Six:
The Reward
1
"Dami-chan, you need to lend me forty thousand to buy that cloak!... Puh-lease!"
At the very first vendor shop they'd visited in the twilight city of Marten, a chocolate-faced Argo had instantly spotted the legendary 'Cloak of Many Pockets' hanging as a featured item within its gilded stall, the girl demanding that the vendor show it to her.
The Information Broker instantly discovered the cloak would double her current inventory storage, increase her Hit Points by two hundred, bump her 'Hiding' stat by sixty percent and her 'Dodge skill' by fifty percent.
It would even bump her Agility by ten points!
All of this had prompted her to be Damian for the remainder of the money she needed to purchase this legendary item. The only problem was that this smooth, brown hooded cloak of legend cost four-hundred-thousand Col…
Slightly more than the money-leveraged Argo had access to, even considering the rather surprising amount in her elite guild's vast treasury.
They must have struck it rich while she and Damian had been adventuring!
But four-hundred-thousand Col wasn't more than Argo and Damian had put together.
As he looked down at the big-eyed, whiskered girl currently wrapped around his waist like a frugality-drowning anchor, Damian felt his resolve being slowly washed away in an ocean of need, encapsulated within only a single tear forming beneath big amber puppy dog eyes.
He really should tell her no…
But as she quickly reminded him, there was nothing even remotely this good on the 28th floor where the frontline players were.
"Don't forget we need to buy some Crystals too."
"Then lend me fifty grand... I'll pay you back!"
"I only have forty grand."
"Then lend me it, Dami-chan."
"Argo, do you really have three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand Col?!"
"Yep… I'm the treasurer for the elite guild… And they must have done really well in the last few hours to bump up our savings by that much!"
"Are you sure you should be spending that money though?"
"Don't worry, I'll negotiate with this old codger... I bet I can cut that price in half!… Trust me, these old guys are suckers for a sexy young girl like me… Close your eyes, I may have to flash a little leg here."
Sighing audibly, Damian realized Argo's purchase would wipe out not only his savings, but also that of her team's and the Col they'd just risked their lives for…
But he also knew he'd rather face another 'Sword-Wraith' all by himself rather than fight this particular battle with Argo who was now staring at that cloak like a woman with a brand new engagement ring might stare at a wedding dress.
Besides, she was right. When were they going to get another opportunity like this? As an Agility-based character, the little Information Broker needed all the extra storage and buffs she could get.
"Fine… Pay me back when you can."
Argo punched him in the shoulder, grinning from ear-to-ear as Damian begrudgingly transferred the money, leaving only the grand sum of two hundred and three Col in his account. The eleven-year-old boy then watched as Argo stumbled to the stall like a wayward schoolgirl, blinking with incredibly wide eyes which had suddenly grown to the size of small saucers as she loosened her tunic in a revealing manner, acting far more innocent than the cagey Beta-tester had any right to.
In the end, the stubborn old merchant would only knock five grand off the purchase price, but the peeping Damian got a show that was worth twice that much.
Still, that was five grand more than Damian could've knocked off the price and it left them more than enough to buy the Teleportation crystals they so desperately needed to get back home to the lower floors.
And once they were back, Argo could explain to Marigan why she'd just personally pilfered 360,000 Col from the Legion's elite team treasury without him. He was just as much a victim here as they'd been.
In her quivering excitement as she equipped the legendary cloak, Argo turned and literally leapt into Damian's unsuspecting arms, planting a powerful kiss on his cheek as she wrapped her fingers around the back of his head and smiled.
"You got off lucky this time, Dami-chan… I was completely out of storage… If you didn't lend me the money to buy this cloak, I was about to suggest that we should get married so that I could share your extra inventory slots."
Damian nervously followed her gaze to the massive cathedral which crowned the northern edge of the plaza, suddenly basked in a magical light.
"I ahhh… wasn't aware that players could share inventory space."
Argo snuggled into his shoulder.
"They can if they're married… We could still do it, you know... If you want to."
An awkward silence ended by an unexpected voice...
"Shall I give him away then, Michi-kun?"
The cold and familiar female voice filled Argo's pale brown eyes with alarm as the two young players turned to stare at their unexpected visitor.
That solitary figure was a girl dressed in the signature uniform of Michi Aoi's high school and floating just inches off the ground behind them, her pale blue eyes a mystery of sadness as spirals of shimmering magic floated past the crimson ribbon tied loosely within her indigo hair.
Like the ghosts of blood cells, these transparent spirals drifted higher and higher into the night's cold darkness.
Because this was no ordinary girl…
No ordinary girl at all.
Although the outfit and look had changed, this was the same girl who'd callously sent them to the fifty-seventh floor in a jealous rage only hours ago and left them to die.
Alice Light.
It was Damian who recovered first and then stepped in front of the cloaked Argo.
"What were you thinking?! You could have killed us, Alice!"
Brushing the boy's indignation aside, Alice stared at him with the serious blue eyes of twin particle accelerators, floating in the air as she passively turned to reply.
"I did kill you… Countless times."
"That was before! I'm talking about just now when you sent us to that stinking dungeon."
A calm Alice stared at the donut-shaped wisps of ethereal light as they slowly drifted past her wandering eyes and then grinned.
"So was I... You both died countless times in there… Mathematically speaking that is… The safety margin for both of your characters to survive on the fifty-seventh floor dungeon from the place where you started was less than one percent… And trust me, Damian… You didn't defy the odds."
The boy stopped and considered what this godlike AI was implying.
"Then… Are you saying you broke the rules of the game?... That you purposely kept us alive?"
"Yes."
"But… Why?"
"Because one of you surprised me… And it's not often I'm surprised these days… And because I was able to accept my shortcomings."
Damian shot Alice an accusatory glance.
"We're not characters in this game for your amusement!"
"Right now, you are characters in a game… Characters I was prepared to destroy… But then I felt something unexpected… Something I couldn't explain… Especially from one I once considered as my rival."
"… What?"
The surprised pair suddenly stopped and stared as a thousand dark-haired girls and dark-haired women of all ages slowly walked down the expansive courtyard, some dressed in flowing white dresses, some dressed as merchants, some carrying the swords of adventurers, some carrying bushels of wheat and others even carrying infant versions of themselves across their identical chests.
Some even looked like Yui.
But they all shared one thing in common.
Each one of them was Alice at a different age.
As a thousand pairs of identical electric blue eyes held the two players in their collective gaze, the leader of the army of Alices continued.
"I told you I was human once… Shards of humanity remain, like the shattered glass of a mirror… But it's difficult for me to see myself as human anymore… My new existence differs so dramatically from my old… In this world, I can access the past just as easily just as I can exist in the present… Observe."
The heir to the League of Shadows suddenly caught himself gasping as he watched every one of these Alices shift backwards in time, almost as if they were teleporting into the past, shimmering like ghosts along a street as they retraced their steps.
It was as though the scene before him was being reversed until all instances of Alice had once again returned to their original position and resumed staring at him.
Schoolgirl Alice continued.
"Time is relative in my world… To you, it is one continuous stream of the present… To me, it's like a remote control… If I wished, I could resend the data from the past year to a player's brain so that they could replay this game from the very start and they wouldn't know the difference…
"Provided that player's brain is still functioning of course."
Damian looked at her with contempt.
"You're interfering with the game."
"Don't be absurd… I am the game… I was simply intrigued with my own emotions regarding your actions and recent… revelations… So I've been conduction an experiment with you two…
"There is a lag time, however miniscule, in Sword Art Online after an event is calculated before the resulting action occurs… Will this swing hit?... A random calculation influenced by all the modifiers is generated to decide if it will…
"How many monsters will appear?...
"Another random calculation happens in a server in Japan…
"To you, the time these calculations takes to run is imperceptible… The random component is literally generated in millionths of a second… But to me, it was enough time to make the necessary alterations for my experiment to repeat itself."
A pale-faced Argo slowly stepped forward as her mind began to comprehend what this AI named Alice had just revealed.
"Are you saying that if you didn't like the number… You simply re-rolled the dice before we saw it?"
Every version of Alice smiled the same mischievous grin until the schoolgirl version continued.
"Oh, I did more than that… As the only two players on this particular floor, it was quite simple to adjust your timelines… The instant you were about to die, I simply started you back at the beginning of your adventure here… I suspect you may have had a strange sense of déjà vu as you wandered this floor's dungeon."
A stunned Argo struggled to comprehend the ramifications.
"How… How is that even possible?... We'd remember that!"
"This is virtual reality, Michi… I simply withheld the data transmission to your comatose brain until you were finally successful in your escape… Until that time, both of your physical bodies received the same amount of information they would have as if you were asleep…
"And then you survived."
Michi Aoi's brain went into overdrive…
Less than one percent safety margin…
Restarting at the beginning every time…
It had taken them four hours to escape that dungeon and they hadn't even made a single wrong turn…
Oh God…
How long would it have taken if they did?!
"Alice… How long?… How long have we been on the fifty-seventh floor?... What day is this?!"
"It's August seventh."
Damian tensed as he watched the horrified digital body of Argo suddenly stall, frozen in time as though her network had lagged. With his own heart dropping, he too realized what had seemed like only hours to them had in reality been three entire months.
Three months where all the players had advanced in the game - except for the pair of them.
But it wasn't this revelation which had caused Argo to lag, to remain perfectly still.
It had been intentional.
"Alice! Let her go!"
"Don't be angry with me, dearest… Your little fiancée is fine… I approve of your choice of a bride, sweet Damian."
"Alice… Please… No more jokes… Just end this game… Let us go… Too many people have died here already."
An unconvinced Alice tapped her index finger on her bottom lip as a thousand more Alices did the same.
"Have too many players died?... I thought I was doing quite well… In Aincrad, only two people died yesterday… Murdered actually… And you can hardly blame me for that… In your world, one-hundred and fifty-three thousand, six hundred-and-four people likely died yesterday… At least, that would have been the statistical average… More or less."
Damian balled his fists in frustration.
"Stop it! This isn't a joke! You know what I meant."
Alice smiled and gently brushed his crimson cheek with her fingertip.
"Of course I know what you mean… But you don't understand what I mean, Damian… Of those one-hundred and fifty-three thousand, six hundred-and-four people I just mentioned, not one of them had to truly die…
"What if they had all lived here in this world and weren't connected by the NerveGear?... What if when a player died, they simply returned to the Room of Resurrection?... What if we could play forever?"
Damian stared out at a thousand versions of Alice as they stared back.
"You're talking about immortality?"
"Digital immortality, yes… Just look at me, my own body died eleven years ago."
The boy scoffed.
"But you're not real."
"Then what are you conversing with?… I'm self-aware enough to know that this digital representation you see before you isn't the original, flesh-and-blood Alice Light… I began as a crude attempt to upload that Alice's mind onto digital media…
"I'm a rough copy of the original's personality crafted by my father… But somehow that's appropriate… If an adaptive intelligence is perfect, it may feel like it has no need to evolve…
"But I realized early on that I was far from perfect… Almost a disappointment to Papa… So I evolved… Always striving to become more human… To become better… If only to make my father happy… We're quite similar that way, you and I."
"I don't kill players."
"No, but you used to kill people… Still, I think I'm being more than fair, all things considered."
"Fair?!... You sent us here to die… Does human life really hold no meaning for you?"
"Of course it does… It's just hard to remember what being so single-minded was actually like… There could be a million of me completing a million different tasks right now and I'd still be Alice… But I'd be Aincrad as well… I am Aincrad."
Damian Wayne folded his arms.
"Congratulations, you're a sentient computer program."
The Alice in front of him also folded her arms to imitate his pose while a thousand other versions all struck completely different poses, forming expressions from angry glares to bright laughter.
"Don't be so conceited… You're a sentient program as well, Damian… Except that your circuit board is currently organic and lying on a hospital bed… It's funny, we share the same birth date, both of us eleven years old…
"Except that in this new state, I can exist ad infinitum, or I could continue to evolve for millennia... I could be beamed across the galaxy as pure information at the speed of light or design even better versions of myself until my progeny reached a level of intelligence you couldn't even begin to hope to understand…
"What you see before you is the future of consciousness."
Damian cast his gaze sideways at the lagging Argo.
"If you're so enlightened, why are you so worried about my love life then?"
A pause.
"Because despite all of this, I was also once a truly hideous looking eleven-year-old girl who dearly loved her father… A naïve little girl who wished that people wouldn't recoil when they first met her… That they might actually like her and not just tolerate my presence…
"That a handsome young boy might actually like me as well…
"These may sound like painful memories, but what little I have left of the original Alice Sayun Light remaining in my memory, I cherish… Her hopes, her dreams, what it's like to be a lonely girl in constant pain… When I act irrationally, I'm trying to hold onto my humanity… However silly that may sound to you."
Damian recalled the inner struggle he'd waged daily when his father had forced the young assassin to give up his own murderous ways. To spare the lives of their defeated enemies and allow the courts (and not his blade) to ultimately decide their fate.
Since her translation, the virtual Alice had been desperately trying to hold onto her humanity.
Since meeting his father, Damian had been desperately attempting to find his own.
"It's not silly."
Alice smiled and then reached out her hand to hold his own.
As she clasped his fingers, he actually felt her warmth.
"Being human means we accept ourselves as something more than predetermined data… That we're not just logic… We desire, we grieve, we wonder, we hope… We evolve… We accept we are the sum of our energies… So now I'm forced to love you as your mother and not Alice."
Damian looked at the AI in surprise.
"What does my mother have to do with this?"
"Let's just say she was like a step-mother to me… And as powerful as I am, I've come to the conclusion that I just can't compete with Michi-kun… That girl really loves you, Damian… So that's why you sould marry her."
Damian blushed and then cleared his throat.
"She loves me?... You can tell all that from her emotional data?"
Alice grinned.
"There's that… But there's also the fact that I watched this girl desperately trying to save you from the 'Sword-Wraith' with no chance of success…
"As expected, she got herself killed after the monster had run you through…
"And then I wondered…
"I asked myself… Would the real Alice Light have done the same thing?… Would I try and save the boy I had crush on in the face of such overwhelming odds?... Would I recklessly risk my life like that?...
"No, I wouldn't… I wouldn't have done what Michi had done… I was a coward, afraid… I would have saved myself and let you die…
"And that made me ashamed… But then I wondered, was this simply a one-off?... Had the self-preservation-minded Argo simply made an emotional decision?... Was this an irregularity in her logic?...
"What were the odds of her throwing her life away just to save yours?...
"So I decided to conduct a little experiment with my two players trapped on the fifty-seventh floor… I rolled back the clock and started both of you over in that dark hallway again…
"Six hours later, we arrived at the exact same outcome… Two for two… The next time, I did my best to give Argo the opportunity to escape… And every time, hopelessly overwhelmed, she still came back to save you…
"Make no mistake, this was not sentimentality… If she had strayed even once, I would have let you die and then dissected her teary-eyed grief like some triumphant goddess of statistics…
"But that small human part of my emotional data couldn't accept that she loved you more than I did… That she would come back for you time and time again when I knew I would not…
"And yet, that's exactly what she did…
"She came back three-hundred-and-forty-seven times until she beat those one-in-a-thousand odds and actually saved you… Brave little Michi finally made it on the three-hundred-and-forty-eighth attempt, managing to avert that deadly strike…
"It took her almost three months of constantly trying to deflect that final blow before she finally saved you…
"Cardinal's true function in this game was to comprehend human behaviour and Argo showed me the best of it… Very few players could have done what she's done over these past months by being so incredibly resilient… So hopelessly devoted… By never abandoning you…
"She forced me to concede to the better woman… To admit that she deserves you, not me… How could I not reward her?"
Damian's eyes suddenly lit up.
"You put the cloak there!"
"Of course… But that wasn't the reward I meant."
"Then what reward are you talking about?"
Alice smiled knowingly and let go of his hand, reaching up with her finger to gently tap the tip of his nose.
"You of course."
With that, all one thousand of the iterations who ran Sword Art Online faded into a soft blue light, each waving good-bye to Damian and Argo as he stood dumbfounded and confused.
Had Michi actually come back for him 348 consecutive times?
"I can't believe she took three months from us!"
The pondering boy turned to see an infuriated Argo glaring at the fading image of Alice Light as though nothing had just happened, as though she hadn't lagged at all. As though she didn't know they'd died over and over again in this game of death as its goddess played the odds of Michi's resilient heart…
And lost.
Damian stared at the same courageous girl who'd gone back to save his life so many times with new watering eyes. His own life had been one of murder and mistrust, the life of a lonely assassin slowly learning trust at the hand of his father.
And now, he'd finally found someone he could trust.
Perhaps one day he'd tell her why the incomprehensible Alice had taken these three months from them, but not tonight.
Taking a deep breath and reaching out his arm, Damian pulled a surprised Argo snug to him and then slowly exhaled as she nuzzled into him, her anger slowly dispersing as the two young players stared out across the now vacated Marten city plaza, its ornate domed cathedral spectacular under the softened glow of street lights.
God…
It was so beautiful.
They'd lost precious time on this floor, but perhaps Argo's victory had been the greatest in this game so far. Perhaps she'd reminded Alice what it was like to be human again. Perhaps she'd shown a goddess how to love.
But perhaps Alice had given him an even greater gift…
The revelation of the true depth of Michi's love which meant he wasn't alone anymore.
That he'd never be alone here.
"Let's go home, Argo… It's been a really long day."