As far as i’m aware, Kirito does not lose his memory so to say. But I am not certain on all the details. What [i]does[/i] happen, however, is that he goes into a vegetative state, barely being able to move and make sounds, after Eugeo dies. What happens is that around the same time Eugeo dies, the CIA attack the base to destroy the STL, retrieve the technology and Alices fluctlight (which is proven to be the most advanced). As a result, all of the safeguards on the STL are removed, and Kiritos fluctlight becomes more like those of the people of the Underworld, and is severely affected by Eugeos death and guilty feelings, nearly causing it to breakdown. As a result, he goes into a vegetative state.

However, he does manage to briefly make contact with the outside world after Administrator is “defeated” (she tries to “log out” or something, but naturally, she can’t, and is terminated from the system) and it is revealed that Kirito actually shouldn’t have his memories from before, and this was caused by some problem when sending him in. After that he goes vegetative and all. Because of the attack, the Acceleration rate is increased and stuck at 10000 FLA.

You will recall in an earlier volume (12 or 13) that there was a navy ship that turned away and left when it was supposed to be guarding the vessel. This is because some higherups resent this program as it will put soldiers out of jobs. They’ve made an agreement with the CIA to give them a few hours to attack before they have to move in.

From this point, there will be spoilers for what I presume will be in volume 15 and perhaps volume 16;

Now, the CIA, under Gabriel Miller (who is mentioned by Sinon earlier), Subtilizer in GGO and a soldier, as Kirito and Sinon suspected, IRL, is locked out by Higa from accessing the Superuser accounts, such as the Goddesses and higher level beings….but only of those for the Human World, and not those of the Darkness World. As such before he can lock them out, they hack into this and Gabriel as the Darkness God Vector and his Lieutenant-who I believe is PoH (the Laughing Coffin guild leader from SAO)-as a Knight of Darkness, log in and take control of the planned attack by the armies of darkness, for the Load Experimental Phase thing.
Gabriel is a nut, kinda like some of Reki’s previous villains. He plans to make off with Alice and the STL data himself and live in his own constructed world in some unspecified South American/South East Asian (can’t remember which) country. Subtilizer is a mutilation of a word of some language meaning one who steals.

While this has happened, I’m not sure if they’ve regained their memories, but the Integrity Knights are trying to prepare for the attack, with that school place and the competitors in those tournaments and everybody they can.

Meanwhile Alice has briefly settled down with Kirito in Rulid village. Although they’ve liberated the people from Administrator, most are weary and don’t actually trust them.
Asuna, meanwhile, in the real world, convinces Higa and Kikouka to send her in via the other STL, using Stacias Superuser account, to retrieve Kirito and Alices fluctlight (to keep her from the CIA).
As I said, i’m not solid on the details, but some things happen, an attack, some fight scenes, blah blah blah, Asuna appears and raeps the Darkness army with her new super powers, gets into a mini confrontation with Alice, and I’m not actually sure about what happens between that and the next few bits.

There may be a few things between that volume and the rest of what happens (the following), so I dunno. I didn’t read it in too much detail.

Ending spoilers

Kirito somehow regains his memories, the CIA decide to get help and allow access via the Amusphere and the seed to allow players to log in and advertise it as a test run for an amazing new game, and all them evil non-Japanese people join on the Darkness side and battle it out with the good guys, Yui-who later or around this point apparently becomes a true intelligence with a fluctlight….somehow-convinces a lot of ALO and SAO players to join in on the good side, stuff happens, fights go down, Sinons fight with Subtilizer goes badly and he creeps her out, even though she and Lyfa/Suguha logged in with the two other Goddess accounts (…somehow). Kirito, duel wielding Sword of the Night Sky and The Blue Rose sword fights and defeats Gabriel, though not before Eugeo, Cardinal, even Bercouli (who I think dies) and some others appear and help him overpower Gavriel, PoH is turned into tree before he dies for a while(…somehow, rofl, though, that’s kind of funny in a horrifying way.) Some of the other CIA guys set a bomb in the Ocean Turtle but RoboKayaba says hi and bye to Rinko and then saves the day (apparently what he used to scan his brain was not just a nervegear, but an STL translator….SOMEHOW) and then disappears.

Asuna manages to get Alice out, into the robot body (which was in fact being built with Alice in mind) shit goes down, everybody is logged out except Kirito and Asuna, the CIA guys return to find Gabriel and PoH with horrifying expressions, suggesting some hardcore pain (lol), and then decide to GTFO, having failed, before the military attacks. Some of them try to kill some people, Kikouka shoots one. The FLA is now stuck at 5,000,000 and Kirito and Asuna spend in there as the rulers of the Underworld or something since fluctlights don’t have lifespans after all, or at least theirs are longer than regular human bodies or something, for around two hundred years, or 25 minutes IRL. Alice spends this time as a UW citizen ambassador to the real world….I actually have to give props to Reki for not making it all happy and having everybody accepting them immediately, instead portraying a more realistic apprehensiveness and mistrust towards the Artificial Fluctlights. Kirito asks Higa to erase his and Asunas 200 year memories, which he does. Though he still remembers everything before it was set to 5000000 FLA. I think. Somehow.

Final Epilogue spoilers

Whew, this sure has gotten long hasn’t it.

Well, basically what happens is that theres a lot of chaos going around, people are pissed at the military, scared of the Fluctlights, etc. Kikouka decides to stay and work for the protection of the Underworld (I think he acquainted himself with Alice and saw they weren’t just tools, or something, that’s why) they announce he’s dead. It doesn’t really matter because everyone who really knows him is in the know, and his family are dead. In any case, Higa has copied Kiritos fluctlight since he thought it would be a waste to let that experience go to waste, and put it in the UW (I think) but he only had space for one, so he chose Kiritos. Apparently Kirito went kind of crazy in there, because he mentions that he had predicted this possibility, and they would do the following depending on what happened.

If Kirito and Asuna fluctlights were copied, they would work together for harmony and to help both the Real World and the UnderWorld merge.
If just Asunas was copied….she would kill herself because she doesn’t have strength to go on without Kirito, apparently. -.- Fucking Kawahara…..that’s just demeaning on her, isn’t it?
If just Kiritos was copied, he would work for the betterment of the people of the Underworld only. Like I said, kind of crazy.

In any case, at this point, Alice, Asuna (normal Asuna, not 200years) and Yui (via a phone or something, somehow) are meeting with Kirito (normal Kirito, not 200years) in his house, when he receives an anonymous message telling him that he can still access “that world” via a specific IP address (as it was disconnected from the general public after the preceding events). Kirito deduces that it was Kayaba who sent this, and Yui states that the data trail fades off somewhere in Iceland.
Kiritos father is briefly mentioned here for the first time, whoa, lol.
They then head somewhere, I think the STL place, and log in to the UW

Final Prologue spoilers (true finale, symbolic Prologue to future adventures and whatnot)

They are dropped into space, first thinking its the night sky, then that the planets hp depleted and shattered but then they see that 200yrs Kirito changed a lot while he was there, turning it from a flat plane to a globe and moons and adding space (not space as in a space, space as in cosmic space) and what not, and the UW is now an advanced spacefaring race with spaceships and shit like that.
As the Cardinal system still runs (not Cardinal-chan though) it produces monsters and challenges and whatnot. Kirito briefly thinks he sees the spirits of his old comrades, particularly Eugeo, after having logged in. (This happens sometimes before too, when he’s wielding the Blue Rose Sword, and as I mentioned earlier, when defeating Gabriel).

From this point i’ll more directly use the summary;
Suteika, Ronie’s descendant, and Ro-La, Teiza’s descendant became spaceship pilots in the current day, and they’re currently en route from one planet to the next. They’re the 7th generation descendant from Ronie’s time. Their ship uses Incarnation to fly. There are two planets in this system, with the 2nd planet named after Administrator (Admina), and the main planet named after Cardinal (Karuteina). Kirito was known as the Star King
to the UW people, and it has been thirty years in here since Kirito and Asuna left UW, before Suteika or Ro-La was born. Kirito’s crest was the black and white swords,covered with the Blue Rose and Osmanthus flowers that were Eugeo and Alice’s flower motif respectively.

The narration here briefly summarized Kirito’s work up to the end of the last War, then went on to explain how Kirito took down the nobility system, widened the lands around UW, fought Legendary beasts (Basically Enemy mobs that’s just under the Four Gods power level), set up new lands for non-human settlers and gave each of the demihuman races their own countries. ( yeah forgot to mention, all the beings, even the Darkness ones, join together and come to an agreement to live peacefully) After having been everywhere on the
planet, the Star King turned his eyes towards space, and developed his machine dragons into being capable of spaceflight. Upon the discovery of the 2nd planet and setting up a new colony there, Kirito obtained the title ‘Star King’. The people of UW had believed Kirito and Asuna would be their immortal rulers and keep their planets prospering until the end of days, when the two of them had left suddenly to sleep, leaving the authority up to the
Assembly of military and civilians.

The land forces and space forces have been downsized, but the Synthesis Machinists (used to be
called Synthesis Knights) have increased in number. The Star King left a prophecy before he left, saying one day the doors to the ‘Reality’, a different world to Underworld will be opened. A great change will envelop the two
worlds then. They should develop their strengths, for their pride, independence, peace and love –otherwise the outcome for when the Gates open would be far worse than the war 200 years ago.

New Enemy showed up in space:
Abyssal Horror, a Legendary class enemy. Scouter level: over nine thous-I mean, 27,000. It’s like a rip-off
of Gabriel’s Incarnation skillset (the powers that Gabriels incarnation gave him, this resembles that). Over 200m long, not even the Star King alone can completely defeat this foe. Suteika and Ro-La were attacked, and Kirito, Asuna, Alice came in just in time to save the two of them using Incarnation to fly in space and attack. Scouter went off the charts at the three’s combined level, when nothing reaching 20% of the scouter limits have been seen for years. The amount of power here is enough to make a planet tremble from its presence.

Machinists in these days capable of Release Recollection only number 7 in total. The battle in short: Kirito used Release Recollection on both blades, Asuna shot a meteor at the Enemy, and Alice used her own Release Recollection to mop up the remnants that tried to flee the scene.After the battle, Suteika and Ro-La recognized Alice, and then the rest of the three.

Suggestions are here that the two of them are the reincarnation of Ronie and Teiza, with memories of the two girls overlapping with some of Kirito’s memory of back in the sword academy. The two girls could see Eugeo behind Kirito, acting like a guardian spirit. They realized this is the start of the new age that was prophesized about. A great revolution and agitation is about to begin. Seteika and Ro-La went onto greet the newcomers that came from UW’s past, ready to take them on into the future.

Uh…wow, this definitely got long, waaaaay too long. Sorry bout that. XD One last bit though;

Kawaharas final words (still kind of major spoilers, don’t read if you don’t want to be spoiled)

“The story ends here. However, the battles of Kirito and Asuna, Leafa and Sinon and others, And Alice will be continued.
The next time they and their descendants, Once again take up swords, Was something that happened,
At the final, greatest battlefield: ‘The War of Intelligence Space’ (sounds kinda stupid, doesn’t it….?). All Possibilities,
Right now is only at, The other side of the Light, Fluctuating slightly. Only Fluctuating slightly.” (if that didn’t make sense, it’s because the whole bit from where I started using the summary more directly is a rough, quick translation of a rough, quick, Chinese translation and summary)
Sword Art Online series – THE END
2005.01.31 – 2008.07.25