Charlotte

Charlotte (シャーロット) is Cardinal's oldest and most trusted familiar, sent to observe Kirito and Eugeo on their journey to the Central Cathedral in Centoria, Underworld.

Appearance
Charlotte is a very small pitch-black spider with 4 deep crimson-red eyes and 8 slender legs. Most of the time, she is less than 5 millimeters in size, with an ability to change her size to 10 centimeters and likely even more. This however is not her original size, as she remarks that even such a size is still much smaller than her original size. Charlotte also has the voice of a calm, wise, gentle and warm adult woman.

Personality
Although Charlotte does have a consciousness, she does not view herself as a person, which is why she refers to herself as "it". As an observer, she believes that it is her duty to not interfere with her observed parties and also believes that she does not have any emotions, nor had she ever been interested in the parties that she had to observe. Only after meeting Kirito and Eugeo did she start to change. She became influenced by them and began showing certain emotions, like anxiousness, curiousness and frustration. She has also decided to interfere with certain events on multiple occasions to help the two young men on their journey, using excuses, like her interference making her observations more efficient, to justify her actions. Moreover, after meeting the two mysterious young men, she spent more time pondering about various details, instead of just observing them, like she used to do until then.

Charlotte's main wish is to finally return to a corner of the Great Library Room that she used to live in and also expresses a wish to see the land of the Dark Territory to confirm its existence with her own eyes.

Background
Charlotte used to be an ordinary spider, until Cardinal used the art of «consciousness sharing» to acquire observes to be her eyes and ears in the world. Charlotte's natural degeneration of Life was frozen during the ritual and she developed a consciousness of her own to some extent, as well as a certain degree of using Sacred Arts. Cardinal assigned Charlotte to look for possible collaborators for about 200 years, until one day, while being stationed in the northern region of the Norlangarth North empire, she was assigned to find and observe two youngsters who had managed to chop down one of Quinella's indestructible barriers, the demonic tree Gigas Cedar, meant to limit the movement of all Underworld Residents. Charlotte caught up with the two young men on the day that they were preparing to leave Rulid Village and hid herself in the hair of the more careless one of the two.

Alicization Running
163 days after being assigned to observe Kirito and Eugeo, Charlotte awakes at night and notices that Kirito's shirt flipped up due to the wind and exposed his navel. Knowing that this might lead to illness and that the next day would be the day of the Zakkaria Sword Arts Tournament, she decides to interfere and use an Aerial Element to cover the exposed navel. Afterwards, she returns to Kirito's hair where she falls asleep.

The next day, she observes the two young men as they finish their morning work and set off on their journey to Zakkaria. As they arrive at the west gate, one of the guard's horse becomes berserk, endangering everyone next to it. Charlotte nearly interfered with the situation and used a Sacred Arts to protect Kirito, but luckily, the young man managed to find what was causing the horse to go out of control and managed to calm the horse down, before Charlotte managed to take action herself.

After the incident, she observes the two as they sign up for the tournament, while pondering about their mysterious Aincrad-style and whether the two had any plans to ensure that they would be assigned to different blocks during the tournament, but from a later conversation she realizes that the two had not thought things through that far.

At 11:30 in the morning, when the two young swordsmen arrive at the tournament restroom, Charlotte is shocked to hear Kirito warning Eugeo that one of the participants, a seemingly harmless person, might do something. When the time comes for the draw, Charlotte realizes that Kirito intended to draw first, in hopes of being able to distinguish the colours of the balls while there were many of them left, but such a method would not work in Underworld. Charlotte then decides to intervene again and help the two boys be assigned to different blocks. After ensuring that the two young men drew different coloured balls, Charlotte suddenly remembers the supposedly harmless participant who Kirito was worried about and, being driven by curiosity, she decides to ensure that the mysterious apprentice guard is assigned to the same block as Kirito.

After the preliminaries, Kirito is assigned to fight against the apprentice guard, Egome Zakkalight. During their battle, Charlotte learns that Kirito identified Egome as the one who released the Large Marsh Horsefly on the horse at the west gate earlier that day, which is why Kirito was cautious about him. As the battle intensifies, only Kirito's sword appears to be losing its Life and Charlotte frantically opens the Stacia Windows for the two swords, only to find out that Egome's sword had 1.5 times the priority of Kirito's. After Kirito dodges Egome's blow, causing him to hit the marble wall and suffer the effects of the recoil, Egome decides to end the match by activating his Secret Move, Azure Wind Slash. At that moment, realizing the danger of using such a skill in battle, Charlotte attempts to sub-consciously warn Kirito to put down his sword to stop Egome from attacking and even considers revealing herself to stop the battle, even if it is against her orders, but before she could take action, Kirito activates Snake Bite and easily counters Egome's skill. The shocked Charlotte then realizes how much Kirito exceeded her expectations and thinks to herself how she would like to see the end of Kirito and Eugeo's journey.

By the 3rd month of 380 HWC, Charlotte had followed the two young swordsmen to the Sword Mastery Academy where she secretly helps Kirito by pulling his hair whenever he is about to cross the line to secretly warn him. One example of such an instance is when Kirito attempts to try out a 5-hit Secret Move in the Academy's forest, as Charlotte most likely sensed the presence of Uolo Levanteinn, but Kirito ignores this warning and continues with his attempt, staining Uolo's uniform in the process. That evening, after Raios Antinous and Humbert Zizek snap all of Kirito's Zephyria flowers, Charlotte again interferes, but this time she speaks out to him to tell him not to give up and to believe in his own power. She also tells him that the other flowers in the garden wish to help him restore his lost flowers and that Sacred Arts are just a way of arranging and guiding thoughts to tap into the power of imagination and that he doesn't need words to guide the energy of the flowers that want to help him. Because of this encouragement, Kirito is able to revive his dying Zephyrias with the help of the 4 Sacred Flowers in the garden.

Alicization Turning
Sensing the presence of Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-one in the Central Cathedral's rose garden, she warns the two escaped prisoners by pulling Kirito's hair, however, before they manage to take action, the Integrity Knight calls out to them to come out. They soon engage in a battle which is interrupted by another Knight armed with a bow when the two escapees start reminding Eldrie about his past life. After Kirito and Eugeo start fleeing from the attacking Knight and into the Cathedral's garden maze, Charlotte begins pulling Kirito's hair left or right whenever they reach a junction in the maze and Kirito immediately takes the designated route due to his lack of time to think things through. After the nth junction, they arrive at what seems to be a dead end, until Cardinal opens one of her backdoors that is linked with the dead end and lets Kirito and Eugeo enter the Great Library Room.

Alicization Rising
After Kirito asks Cardinal if she had been spying on him with her familiars as well, she confirms this and calls Charlotte out by reaching out with her hand. Charlotte then jumps out of Kirito's hair and finally shows herself to Kirito. A few minutes later, without answering any of Kirito's doubts, she gets off Cardinal's palm and disappears into a nearby bookshelf, having finally completed her duty as a familiar.

Trivia

 * Charlotte seems to have developed the method of pulling Kirito's hair to interact with him during the events in Zakkaria, when she pulled Kirito's hair to vent her frustration with his lack of planning. Kirito mistakes these warnings as his own divine inspiration.

Шарлота Charlotte