#alicization rewatch

Eugeo, just like the Blue Rose in this tale, was discovered by Kirito, became Kirito’s best friend, got trained in Aincrad style and grew into a stronger swordman and a person. What a journey it was.

But sadly, he can’t survive the final fight, just like how the Blue Rose can’t survive cold winter.

For the beginning part of ep 24, in this part of the novel, Kirito was beaten by Administrator pretty badly, to the point that he fell into Eugeo’s pool of blood, was ready to give up and let Adminstrator kill him along with Eugeo too. That’s why Eugeo spoke up “This isn’t like you” to Kirito, and gave him a much needed final push. It’s a bit of a pity the anime’s changes made the scene lost a bit of its meaning.

Just like how the Blue Rose wanted to leave its beautiful form to the Ice as a remembrance, Eugeo left Kirito everything he still had right then: the memories Kirito & Eugeo both shared together in UW as children (with young Alice as well), as teenagers, and as young adults. That amounts to 12+ years alone (10+ years as children (from baby time until they’re both 11 years old) plus 2 years 2 months as partners from 17 to 19 years old), as well as Eugeo’s ice sword partly repaired from his blood.

With everything that rode on him in this fight, Kirito managed to use the sword Eugeo gave him to  cut off her remaining arm and push back Administrator, which forced her to use the “logout to real world” card. But then she got killed by burning with the very Prime Senator whom she treated lowlier than trash earlier.

And here comes the goodbye with Eugeo and little Alice, how beautiful and sad it is... Both of them might have left, but their memories will remain in Kirito’s heart.

The end of the episode comes with the scene when Kirito’s Fluctlight got hit with the surge that fried his brain.

Because Kirito is the Ice in the Blue Rose Sword’s memory, this isn’t the end of his suffering. The end of ep 24 isn’t as clear about this later point as the novel, but thankfully WoU ep 2 talked about it in details: Kirito’s regret and self-blaming for the death of Eugeo and everyone else he fought along with became too much, that he attacked his own Fluctlight, which was amplified with the power surge from the attack in real world, and ended up making him lose his own ability to speak and think properly, entering a catatonic state in Underworld. His 1st priority in this state seems to always holding on to the broken Blue Rose Sword Eugeo left for him.

Interestingly, Kirito isn’t just the Ice in Eugeo’s fate, he also has its own story foreshadowed by his Divine Weapon.

2) Night Sky Sword’s Memory: The Curse a Wise Old Tree Suffers

Kirito’s Night Sky Sword has a memory attached to it as well, which is from the branch of the Gigas Cedar that Kirito and Eugeo cut down.

tl;dr: Gigas Cedar in its past wanted to quench its loneliness of being a isolated old tree so much it tried to reach other trees, but because its nature is to sucking up other trees’ power to grow, the other trees died because of it. However it still doesn’t give up and continue to reach out, and thus its curse and the dead trees around it continues to grow with time.

When you look at Kirito’s life thus far, you can tell that all the people he befriended in a normal way, who liked him as his own person first before knowing he’s a strong swordman (Sachi and the Moonlit Black Cat in Aincrad; Cardinal, Charlotte, little Alice Zuberg and Eugeo, his other half in Alicization), all died horrible deaths. Until these days Kirito still blames himself for all of these deaths, because according to his POV they were all his faults.

Not delving into specific spoilers, yes Sachi and the Moon Black Cat guild are still relevant to Kirito, you will understand later with WoU anime. For other friends and partners who are still living around Kirito, they’re different. Kirito abandoned Klein on the first Aincrad day and he still finds himself awkward around the kind adult friend now because of it, and others like his girlfriend Asuna, his close friends Lisbeth, Silica, Sinon, Agil he originally met them during cooperation in either dangerous missions or uncalled-for situations, and ironically they still stay with him until now despite his original intentions with them. Even if he now has close friends and a lover around, they’re still a separate category from the dead comrades to him and can not help him forgive himself. What a sad curse Kirito is suffering.

However, both these foreshadowing stories of Eugeo and Kirito still don’t give us readers a conclusion to Kirito’s fate, because he still lives on. Even in Unital Ring arc, the sequel to Alicization, until now it still hasn’t come to that ending. I hope, no matter what fate is awaiting Kirito it will be a satisfying one and give his suffering a rest. Poor guy’s gotten so much despair for himself and misunderstanding from other characters as well as both fans and haters already.

2) Eugeo’s Recovery and Restored Faith in Love & Heroism

What Eugeo wants? Besides Alice, he wants to feel being loved, he wants to feel recognized by his family, village and peers. I have already proved in my previous Rewatch post that Eugeo was brainwashed and synthesized quickly because he already had a hole in his memory and Quinella already inserted Piety Module to his head before he woke up in her room. But not only that, Eugeo’s problems also stem from how unfulfilled his upbringing back at Rulid Village and his life ending at Swordcraft Academy were and Quinella took advantage of this splendidly. You can find my previous post about this on my tag “Alicization Rewatch” at the end of this post.

Why is Eugeo S32 so strong? Besides the fact that Quinella has synthesized him with a newly improved Piety Module that makes him able to use Incarnation immediately, in the skipped LN materials Kirito himself cited that Eugeo has a lot of potential as a swordman that he might be able to catch up with Kirito in some years. Back at academy Eugeo was also a much better Sacred Art user than Kirito (especially with Cryogenic Element aka Freezing Sacred Arts) while Kirito sucked at it sometimes, thus why he was able to ranked 5th why Kirito ranked 6th at academy. It’s so ironic that to become the strong Knight Eugeo aspired to become, he had to give up all his negative and conflicting feelings associated with his memories as human. There are times the biggest enemy of you is yourself.

Thus Kirito tried his best to remind Eugeo what he had been fighting for all this time and the people who have tried to encourage him.

And thus Eugeo started to remember...

...not the memories of any people Kirito mentioned, but memories of him and Kirito fighting when they were kids.

And he then remembered Alice too.

But then just when Kirito was happy Eugeo remembered, this happened.

In the novel it’s made extremely clear that by this point, Eugeo already remembered everything, so to atone to his friends whom he accidentally fought while brainwashed, he wanted to go keep both Kirito and Alice trapped in ice for a while before he went to assassinate Quinella alone. But as always, anime doesn’t like having monologues, so they left this plot point in hints.

First, you can see the ice rose bud is melting here, indicating that Eugeo’s Enhance Armanent effect is very low.

Second, Administrator meant to tell Eugeo to kill off all rebels, but when Chudelkin asked him about it, he said he took Administrator’s orders technically so he only stopped them.

And so Eugeo managed to shoo Chudelkin away so he can continue his plan to stab Quinella.

Because his Synthesis was done in such a hurry, Quinella wanted to redo Eugeo’s Synthesis properly. And in a moment, he regained even more memories...

...with big focus on Kirito again.

In a previous reblog post, a viewer pointed out that for how much Eugeo’s goal was to save Alice, for how much Kirito pretty much tried to grill into Eugeo’s head “Do It For Alice!”, it was Kirito who Eugeo remembered first, it was Kirito who is the focal silhouette in Eugeo’s memories. Is that saying something about who the most important person to Eugeo really is?

So finally, he grabbed the chance to stab Quinella.

Sadly, the assassination was unsuccessful, but he managed to land a few blows on Administrator and got the knowledge that metal weapons couldn’t work on her at all. From the memories that he gained back, he finally learned back the lesson of what love really is, something he knew since he was a child but he had forgotten all because RATH blocked all his memories that have Kirito.

Then Chudelkin went up the floor to tell Quinella that Eugeo had deceived all of them for his assassination plan.

Then Kirito caught up with him him on the 100th floor, a heartfelt reunion between two boys occured. Please read the Adapted Out monologues of Eugeo here, you might be able to understand how much love he had for Kirito at this moment

And our Rulid Trio finally reunited, ready to take on the biggest enemy in Human Empire.

2) Administrator and Cardinal

The anime portrayed really well how terrifying, power-hungry and prideful Administrator is, and her rational point of view was even able to make Kirito unable to rebut. The Sword Golem made out of 300 living souls in UW is the epitome of her utmost cruelty and twisted view on human’s love. Even just one Sword Golem was even able to nearly kill Kirito and Alice S30 in mere seconds.

I can feel Eugeo’s despair here again, from countless times of seeing his best friends in danger or being left far away from them, unable to do anything.

The spider Charlotte, who has been with Kirito and Eugeo since the Zakkaria chapter in LN and Swordcraft Academy time decided to jump out to sacrifice itself for Eugeo to transport Cardinal here. It was a very sad goodbye for me, especially since I know how much help she was to the boys back in Zakkaria, unknowingly to them.

This is not the end to Administrator’s cruelty, she even intended to sacrifice 40,000 more souls to make her invincible army of Sword Golems to fend off the Dark Territory’s invasion. Also, despite all Administrator’s long babbles, her main goal in this fight was actually luring Cardinal here to kill her once and for all. That’s why when Cardinal arrived, Administrator closed off all doors of Central Cathedral from the outside world, so that even if any of them are heavily injured, they can’t draw Solus resource to heal their wounds, even Administrator herself (which is why when Administrator’s arm was cut off later, she couldn’t heal her arm and turned it to sword instead). That is how far she went to ensure Cardinal’s demise.

I recall from LN, The Rulid Trio were still so traumatized from the Sword Golem to the point of not being able to move from their frozen fear of death when Kirito & Alice S30 were stabbed to near death in mere seconds, as well as the fact that it’s made of 300 living human units that they didn’t have enough resolve to destroy. This is an example of what I call the reverse effect of Incarnation, which is also what put Kirito in his current state in WoU. The situation is dead end for Cardinal then: all the exits were sealed and Cardinal can’t directly kill 300 human units, because even though she might have been able to use her believing power to think that her decision to click an erase button to UW is “to save all UW souls”, it’s still against the Taboo Index for her to directly kill anything she knows as “human”. Meanwhile, Rulid Trio in their frightened state were literally dead weights for Cardinal, if Cardinal attacked Quinella, the Sword Golem will attack the trio, and if Cardinal attacked Sword Golem, she could deplete half of Quinella’s power in the process, but Quinella is still overpowered enough to kill off the Rulid Trio in that state.

So in her mind there is now only the slim chance that because Quinella had done everything just to lure Cardinal out of her 200 years of hiding, Quinella would do everything to ensure killing Cardinal first, Cardinal’s sacrifice would get enough time and motivations for the Trio to snap out of their fear, live on and defeat Administrator later. Also, even though Quinella can have her ways to bypass the Taboo Index, she can’t go against the rules & teaching set by her parents, her direct authority who have all passed away, which, as Cardinal explained to Kirito in LN, include from basic stuff like “You always have to put tea cup on tea dish” to morality like “You can not kill humans”, and in my speculation, Quinella’s parents also taught her “You have to keep your promises to others”, which is what Cardinal used to force Quinella to swear to her own Fluctlight instead of a fictional Goddess Stacia to not harm the Rulid Trio.

By the time Eugeo thought of a plan, it’s already too late for Cardinal.

3) Eugeo’s decision

When a person has chewed on their thoughts of being powerless for far too long, whenever they get their resolve, their inner willpower will be the strongest.

LN described Eugeo’s thoughts very clearly, at that moment he understood better than anyone that if they run away according to Cardinal’s wish, there is no other better chance to stop Administrator from turning 40,000 people into weapons. If they run away now they would just live with regret for years like he did, and Administrator of course would seperate them again. He thought of the seperation of Eldrie and his mother, Deusolbert and his wife, Alice and her family, and he was deadset on not letting such tragedies happen again. That’s why he thought of the analogy with the making of Sword Golem, and he asked Cardinal to turn him into a sword, with the driving core of his sword being the young Alice Zuberg’s soul crystal on the ceiling.

In the LN, Kirito wondered why only little Alice’s Crystal was not used to make the Sword Golem, and while watching Eugeo’s transformation, he came to an answer:

Thirty-one Integrity Knights. But only thirty swords in the Sword Golem. The fusion with Eugeo’s sword made it clear that the only memory fragment that hadn’t been used for that purpose was Alice’s. So why couldn’t Administrator forge a sword that would pair up with Alice’s memories? It must’ve been because Alice’s memories…her love…was too great. Young Alice loved Eugeo, loved Selka, loved her parents, loved everyone who lived in the village, loved Rulid itself, and even loved the time in which the people she loved lived and would continue to live. Even the almighty pontifex couldn’t convert time and space into solid matter. So she wasn’t able to make a sword she could link to Alice. And it was why the sword that Alice and Eugeo made was so beautiful and radiant.

LN source: Chapter 13 Part 5, Volume 14 Alicization Uniting

Therefore, the pure love of little Alice’s soul towards everybody around her is the true antithesis to Administrator’s twisted view of love. She is one of the strongest souls in UW, and befitting to fight against Administrator as well.

The giant white sword fought so well, that it defeated Sword Golem.

But much to Kirito’s desperate plea, Eugeo went off to fight Administrator as well.

And Eugeo managed to cut off Administrator’s arm…

But at a huge, huge cost…

Seeing Eugeo’s bloody form seemingly about to die, part of Kirito’s heart had died right there, his soul in tremendous pain.

“Ah……ah………” The sound that croaked from my throat came to my ears as though from a very far distance. The entire world lost color, lost smell, lost sound. Everything paled.

Let’s end this already. The thought rose from the emptiness like a bubble and popped. We—no, I—had lost, in every sense of the word. My one single reason for being in this place was to help free Eugeo’s soul into the real world. Instead, he’d sacrificed himself to protect me, and I was powerless, on my hands and knees—the man who would simply log out to reality when he died in the Underworld. I just want to fade out, to vanish from the world. I don’t want to see any more, hear any more. All I prayed for was my own obliteration. But the Underworld was its own reality, and its master was not a program designed to stop once you hit the bad ending.

LN source: Chapter 13 Part 5, Volume 14 Alicization Uniting

And when Aministrator came to the despaired Kirito to finish him off, Alice S30 jumped out to take her hit for him, and it jolt him back to remember the past, Asuna sacrificed herself to save him, just now Charlotte, Cardinal, little Alice Zuberg and Eugeo also just did so in this fight, and Alice S30 is the last one. How many more times he would keep despairing and did nothing to save the situation?

And so Kirito stood back up to fight again.

Back to present, he learned that the Integrity Knights’ heroism is all false, and vented about it all to Bercouli.

After fighting to a draw against Bercouli Synthesis One, his childhood hero, he also learned that Bercouli was the one who killed the White Dragon, his once best friend, and the last of his faith in never-falling heroism crumbled. Even his childhood hero had fallen under Quinella, got brainwashed, and made to kill his best friend Dragon.

Then Chudelkin appeared, put Bercouli in Deep Freeze state, kidnapped a Eugeo who was at his most tired and depressed state in order to turn him into same fate as his heroes. In his despair, he called his best friends’ name, who were nowhere to be found.

2) Eugeo, the Unloved Child and his Insecurities:

Before delving into Eugeo’s Synthesis Ritual, I want to remind you all how Administrator Quinella usually does it:

Step 1: Take out her victim’s memories of their most beloved person/people to create a hole in their memory;

Step 2: Insert a Piety Module into a hole in their forehead that originally held those memories. When Piety Module activates, it blocks the victim’s other memories, while brainwashes them by forcing absolute obedience to the Axiom Church and Administrator into their mind;

Step 3: Make the victim say the secret command “Remove Core Protection” so Administrator can gain full editing access to make them an Integrity Knight.

So conveniently for Quinella, Eugeo already had a hole in his memory (like she explained in ep 21 about his Synthesis), so she could skip Step 1 and go straight to Step 2!

The hole in his memory was his precious memory of Kid!Kirito, who was also one of Eugeo’s most important people in the world, but after Kirito left UW the first time RATH blocked all memories of Kirito away from all UW people including Eugeo. Even more conveniently for Quinella, Eugeo’s Synthesis can be quicken even further!

According to both the Light Novel & the game SAO Alicization Rising Steel (which is usually considered an extended version of the anime that fixed a lot of its flaws with additional contents), Quinella seems to be quite fond of giving her soon-to-be Knights disturbing dreams to break their spirit before the Piety Module acts up and brainwashes them.

Eugeo was also given a really disturbing dream where he killed his father & brothers to gain his mother’s love. I already talked about details anime has skipped about Eugeo’s family in my Alicization Rewatch Episode 14, you can find it in tag #Alicization-Rewatch at the end. In sum: his family treated him unfairly because he was assigned woodcutter Calling instead of farmer like them, most of his salary went to his father & older brothers, they didn’t give him enough life support and didn’t accept him going to Centoria to save Alice. Though Eugeo, as a gullible child, felt guilty for leaving his family and dreamt to become an Integrity Knight to support them with money. Sadly after he became criminal for cutting down Raios & Humbert, hid dream went down the drain. The dream is metaphor for his unchecked negative feelings for his family.

When did Quinella insert Piety Module into Eugeo’s head? The Light Novel mostly described Eugeo’s extremely hazy and unstable mental state during the whole section, but through some evidences I found in Light Novel and some anime visuals, the Piety Module was already in Eugeo’s head before he woke up in Administrator’s room. If the disturbing dream wasn’t an indication already, in the Light Novel, Eugeo’s monologues mentioned that there was a thick fog that constantly clouded his judgement the whole time and lead him to follow Administrator’s words.

The anime showed Eugeo shaking his head to try to clear away the fog in his mine, only that they cut out his monologues, bad direction choice is bad.

More LN mentiones of the fog in his mind:

Also Administrator continuously used words that fed into Eugeo’s fears and insecurities he has since he was a child, striked into his thirst for family’s love (which he lacked) and someone’s unconditionally love for him (Tiese, who was nearly defied by Raios) and his insecurity that actually he might have never been loved.

Then as a last resort Eugeo arrived at his ideal of love, Alice Zuberg.

This might be a lot easier for some of us keen LN readers to see, but Eugeo loves Alice as an ideal, a distant memory more than he actually loves her as a person. Whenever he was sad or brooding during his 2-year journey with Kirito or in Sword Academy, he would think of a smiling 11-year-old Alice or her kind acts to him for his comfort, but those thoughts was never about who Alice was as a person. Thus it’s extremely hard to understand who Alice really is going by Eugeo’s monologues alone, imo the only part I can get to know young Alice as a person is through Chudelkin’s recollections of her Synthesis ritual, surprisingly! In a sense, because Eugeo chewed on memories of young Alice for too many years, that love became obsessive and too idealistic to be real.

That’s exactly where Admistrator striked, by showing him a distorted piece of memory: his ideal of love, Alice was a real person who could have her own love, and might have loved his other best friend the most and not him.

This is also way easier to see in skipped LN materials not shown in anime, that Eugeo feels inferior to many people close to him: his parents favor his brothers more than him; nobles looked down on him for coming from a poor farming family with no family name; and Kirito his best friend is usually seen as the better swordman and while he causes many troubles, he can easily win back favors from other people as well. Not to mention Eugeo already has deep fear of Kirito leaving him if he’s got his memories back, ever since ep 7.

And now through Administrator’s editing skills, he was presented with a new deep fear of Kirito leaving him and go away with his idealistic love, Alice. In his mind, he has nothing left to cling to. And so Administrator offered him another chance of becoming Integrity Knight and gain her “love” (or actually physical control and blind faith).

Right then, when Eugeo’s spirit was at his weakest, the Piety Module acted up, blocked all of Eugeo’s memories and brainwashed him with blind faith to Quinella and the Church.

Note: both memories of Tiese & young Alice managed to say something to Eugeo, Kirito also tried to say something but he was muted right away. Clearly Kirito’s words were most influential to Eugeo, thus why Quinella had to shut him up ASAP.

Clearly here, it works exactly like Cardinal has told Kirito:

And now, all light is already absent in Eugeo’s eyes, it means Piety Module already brainwashed him and thus with a brainwashed mind he gave his dubious “consent” to her invitation.

Exactly at this moment, Kirito and Alice S30 already climbed through bath floor 95th, saw Bercouli who was defeated by Eugeo and got Deep Freeze by Chudelkin, and went to Chudelkin’s room. While Alice S30 was busy strangling the creepy ass Chudelkin, Kirito noticed the crystal ball Chudelkin was using to peep Administrator’s room, and he saw a naked Administrator who was taking the currently brainwashed Eugeo into her embrace.

Quinella finally completed Step 3 of Synthesis ritual, making the brainwashed victim to repeat the secret command.

Eugeo, in his most weakened, hazy, and brainwashed still has some little bit of feelings left, that it was painful of fighting for love all the time, and still got no acceptance in return, and he was now tired and fallen.

In mere 5 minutes later (according to the time count of ep 20), after Chudelkin got away from Alice’s wrath, Alice S30 and Kirito met Eugeo Synthesis 32, the newly brainwashed Knight through an unusually quick Synthesis Ritual.

Eugeo, watching how Kirito fought Fanatio, finally learned what true strength means, it’s not due to their weapons and skills, it’s because their hearts are so strong that they could perform such incredible feat.

Thanks to the game Alicization Rising Steel for adding this LN dialogue back to the Alicization plot, it’s such an important moment to show Eugeo’s development and it’s also the catalyst for Fizel and Linel’s change of heart in War of Underworld, I’m sad anime cut it.

2) Kirito wanted to take Eugeo to real world so much he would do anything for it

First of all, Eugeo is the first AI to break the Seal of the Right Eye, he put rules and his life away to save his friends, that makes him the first A.L.I.C.E candidate who entered complicated dilemma and performed a difficult conscious choice successfully that prioritized justice. Of course Kirito wanted to take Eugeo to meet Kikuoka and also tell Kikuoka not to delete the Underworld, where thousands of souls have the right to live here. For that he said: “I had to get Eugeo to the top floor of the cathedral safely—the place where I should find a control console that would let us disengage the simulation and return to reality.”

Secondly, Eugeo had given Kirito so much more than just a normal friend: a company of more than 2 years, direction from Rulid to Centoria, money, Sacred Arts, Taboo Index lessons, and he also nearly gave up his Life for Kirito twice. How could Kirito not want Eugeo to continue staying with him?

It just gets me everytime I rewatch when Eugeo selflessly gave no hesitance to transfer his Life to Kirito here

Kirito also said he wanted to turn Alice over to their side so that it’s easier for Eugeo to agree to go with him to real world.

Poor Kirito, he so wanted to tell Eugeo the truth but he couldn’t because he didn’t want to confuse Eugeo and let them focus on fighting.

(Personal opinion: Kirito should have told Eugeo the truth here though, Eugeo had always had insecurity about Kirito leaving him some day, an assurance from Kirito would help him so much when he faced Administrator’s brainwashing later, if only he knew how much Kirito truly cares for him T_T)

They later met and fought with Alice Synthesis 30, which ended up blowing Kirito and Alice outside the Cathedral.

You know, it seriously hurts seeing Eugeo being so desperate running after his friends, he lost them the 2nd time and was left alone again.

Next episodes we’ll see how Kirito’s persuasion of Alice to turn to their side fares, and how Eugeo would face off against the enemies alone in Central Cathedral.

Other comments:

- This is the face of the man who looked down on Fanatio when he learned that Fanatio is a woman during their fight, it was an extremely insulting experience to her:

And we met him again in War of Underworld:

He’s Shasta, the Dark Knights’ Commander in Dark Territory. Yes, he used to be a sexist man due to how bad the society in Dark Territory is. But after he met Lipia, the love of his life who showed him the true strength a female warrior can have, he had a change of heart. His fate later was sad though.

Alice was praised as a Sacred Art genius since she was a child, so when they asked her to say the secret Command line for what ever lie they used, she could understand what the Command is for right away, and absolutely refused to say it. So they forced her through an unusual “Forced Synthesis” for 3 days straight in order to convert her into an Integrity Knight, skipped through her “consent” as a Fluctlight, and thus the original Alice Zuberg with all her disobedience became a separate Fluctlight, trapped in a Memory Crystal located at Administrator’s room on Central Cathedral’s top floor. This Alice in the Memory Crystal is not just mere memories like other Memory Crystals, she is still a functional Fluctlight and can still send her voice and echo to communicate with Kirito and Eugeo.

Meanwhile a new persona was created and took over original Alice’s body and became the puppet Knight Alice Synthesis 30. This Alice might have some memory traces of the old Alice, but she seems to be even more cold and empty than the other Knights and she couldn’t recognize Kirito and Eugeo at all when she faced them even though her other self was best friend with them.

It can be explained that because a Knight’s skills are attached with their older self’s memories, so the Administrator has the rights to keep only certain memories and remove or block the unecessary ones (including Alice’s memories of Kirito & Eugeo). Or it can be explained that to Alice Zuberg, the person she holds dearest is actually her sister Selka, even more so than Alice’s relationship with Kirito & Eugeo, and because her Synthesis already happened longer than Eldrie’s case, she can only react to her dearest people: her family including Selka and to an extent her father Gasfut. Looking at the trio’s background: Kirito lived in the Church as a child because he was an orphan in UW, Eugeo’s family didn’t treat him very fairly, while Alice had a perfectly happy family before she was arrested as a sinner, so it’s understandable for a blessed child like her to see her family as more important than her friends. The sisters’ closeness was also hinted on how Selka risked breaking Taboo Index by running to the End Mountain 2 years ago just to be able to reunite with Alice, or how Alice S30 can feel muscle memories in her throat while spelling Selka’s name, even if the person who used to call Selka was technically not her.

Kirito, as the only person who ever interacted with both Alices at this point in time, saw them as separate souls, and thus said these lines:

Kirito’s reasoning here is pretty much how I understand the “Undo” button while editing files. When you want to undo a wrongful edit (aka the Synthesis ritual) you click “Undo” on an existing file (aka Alice S30), the system will revert the file to an older version (aka original Alice Zuberg), and when you click “Save” the system will erase the latest edit that you just undo’ed (which means Alice S30 will be erased forever). Pretty chilling when you realize those doc files you edit everyday might be bottom-up AIs equal to human souls, right?

Anyway, Alice S30 finally understood what she really is, and agreed to return the body to the original Alice when it comes down to it, and was willing to forfeit her obedience to the Church. Unfortunately the Right-Eyed Seal acted up right then and in pain she had ask Kirito to hold her firmly so she could break the seal.

And thus Alice Synthesis 30 was convinced successfully, became Kirito & Eugeo’s ally and assisted them in their fight against the Church. Meanwhile, the original Alice Zuberg was still trapped in the 100th Floor’s ceiling.

That concludes my account of Alice S30′s development in Alicization 1st half. Next time, I’ll dive into Eugeo’s development and how Administrator shortened her Synthesis of Eugeo through brainwashing, manipulation and preying on his secret negative emotions, as the Church saw Alice Zuberg’s Synthesis as such a long hassle because of her refusal and how Administrator had no time to waste before Kirito approached.

P/S: It’s such a pity Alice S30′s cool payback moment against Chudelkin in the novel was cut in episode 21 :(

If Kirito had never come and found the idea to cut down the Gigas Cedar with Blue Rose Sword after both boys raised their Authority Levels during the goblin fight, his life would be stuck with it forever.

When Eugeo left the village with Kirito, his family of course wouldn’t receive any more salary from Eugeo's labor, so they were openly disappointed with him even though he fulfilled a huge feat his village has always dreamt of (sorry for my crude personal opinion, but Eugeo’s family are pretty much assholes all around, even when Eugeo tried to paint them in a better light in his monologues). But Eugeo still thought it’s his fault so he decided that he’d become an Integrity Knight to one day compensate more money for his family.

But after what happened with Raios & Humbert, both Eugeo and Kirito became criminals, the village and his family would shun them away even harder (like you guys can see what happened to Alice S30 in WoU ep 1-2), all Eugeo’s plan to become Integrity Knight to help his family became meaningless.

From then Eugeo saw himself straying away from the righteous path. He thought of himself as a monster. He read many history books in Cardinal’s library to see if there are any other people like him who have committed crimes and could go back to their families unchanged. No such records exist. He can no longer go back to live a normal life, only a bloody path ahead. Eugeo mentally broke down and he would curve himself into a ball and cry if Kirito didn’t find him before then.

In his mind, his goal of taking Alice back to her family still didn’t change, he’d do anything for it to go smoothly. But for himself, he’d wanted Kirito, the black-haired boy walking in front of him to be his partner for all their hardships ahead. He’d even ask Kirito to flee and live in the Dark Territory with him if they ever achieved their goals.

There was no place he could live after his many sins anymore, except for the horrifying Dark Territory beyond the End Mountains. But even that was a price worth paying if it meant Alice could go back home and live in happiness again. Eugeo watched Kirito walk before him, turning over this secret determination in his head. If I said I was going to the Dark Territory, would you come with me…?

LN Excerpt: Sword Art Online Volume 12 Chapter 8 part 1

After the fight with Deusolbert, while Kirito could see the Integrity Knights as poor beings whose memories were blocked and manipulated, Eugeo still viewed the Axiom Church as a wicked being and the Integrity Knights as a huge farce who had indirectly caused despair to their citizens and yet they all forgot about all their shady missions under Administrator’s orders, so they aren’t worthy of calling themselves justice defenders. That’s why Eugeo was so angry during his fights with Deusolbert (& Fanatio later), because he couldn’t accept their existence.

After it all, Kirito still bantered with Eugeo a lot like the old school days as a way to help ease his tension down, and assured Eugeo that everything was still fine. The silly banters the boys shared unfortunately have been changed into a very bland and dragged out version in the anime which shows none of their dorky character, so I post their original banters here:

Just then, Kirito came to a sudden stop on the staircase landing just ahead. He turned back, face dead serious, and said, “Hey, Eugeo………What floor are we on now…?” “Um…well,” Eugeo said, wobbling a bit. He sighed, shook his head, and slumped his shoulders all at the same time. “Next one’s the twenty-ninth floor. I’m going to assume you were at least counting at the start.” “Well, you’d think they would have floor number displays along the way. I mean, it’s just common sense.” “I agree, but you should have noticed before this!” Eugeo scolded, but Kirito merely brushed it off and rested his back against the landing wall.

“Man, I’m getting hungry…” “…I agree with you there.” Eugeo thrust out his hand and demanded, “So hand over one of the ones you’ve got in your pockets.” “Uh…but…I was saving them for emergencies…Man, you’re greedier than I thought.” “You thought I wouldn’t notice how much you stuffed in there?” Kirito gave up and slipped his right hand into his pants pocket, then pulled out two steamed buns and handed one to Eugeo. The smell of it was still strong enough to stimulate his appetite, even though they’d left the library long ago. “That flame attack kinda charred it a bit.” “Ha-ha…I see. Thanks, man.” Cardinal had generated the steamed bun out of some precious old tome’s pages using her high-level sacred arts, a fact that Eugeo had to ignore as he bit into the treat. The crispy, burned outside gave way to juicy meat on the inside, which he savored rapturously. In less than a minute, their little lunch was over, and Eugeo licked his fingers in satisfaction. Kirito’s other pocket was still bulging suspiciously, but Eugeo was happy enough to let it go for now.

LN excerpts: Sword Art Online Volume 12, Chapter 8 Part 2