It took me a while to figure out why this would be—and it wasn’t because the nobles lived simple, humble lives, too. It had to do with the Underworld’s peculiar concept of spatial resources. There was a limit to the quantity and volume of objects generated within a certain range of space and time, which meant that there were only so many crops, livestock, animals, and fish to harvest or hunt at a time.
If the nobles were to monopolize this limited food source, there wouldn’t be enough for everyone, and some disadvantaged residents would go hungry. That would cause their life to drop, which was against the Taboo Index law about causing damage to others’ lives without justifiable reason—and even nobles and emperors could not defy the Index. Therefore, given its direct link to maintaining life, food was not the subject of fixation and monopolization that it was in real life…Or at least, that was how I interpreted it.
Of course, just because they weren’t snooty about food didn’t mean that all the nobles were automatically of exemplary character.
“Why, I’m positively jealous, Raios!” someone boomed from right behind us. We both made sour faces.
“We poured our own sweat into cleaning this mess hall, and yet some people just get to waltz in afterward and eat! Truly jealous!” the voice continued accusingly.
Another voice chimed in. “Oh, don’t be spoiled, Humbert. No doubt the pages are subject to rigors that the rest of us could never understand!”
“Hah! I bet you’re right. From what I hear, a page has no choice but to do as their tutoring disciple commands.”
“Boy, what if you wound up stuck with a tutor who was of low birth or banned? You never know what they might put you through.”
I just sat there, eating my food, understanding that they were just trying to get a rise out of me and responding would be giving them exactly what they wanted. Still, that didn’t stop the anger. Not only were they taking it out on us, they also referred to “low birth” to mean Eugeo’s tutor, Golgorosso, while the “ban” was referring to Liena’s style having come about due to her family’s banishment from its original sword style.
That wasn’t the only sarcastic needling contained in their statements. The bit about coming in “afterward” was a reference to the fact that there were twelve pages in total, but Eugeo and I were the only ones who showed up just before the dinner bells, identifying us as their targets.
There were creeps like this in Zakkaria, too. Egome Zakkarite had displayed some truly wicked smarts during our tournament duel. But the twisted way that some people had gone after us once we joined the academy was almost impressive. In fact, their totally natural harassment was one of the factors that caused me to forget that all these people were just artificial fluctlights, AIs.
“…We’re almost there, Kirito,” Eugeo muttered, tearing off a bite of his bread.
He was referring to the fact that we would be disciples soon and live in a different dorm from them. It was a bold statement from Eugeo, to be sure, but it wasn’t just idle boasting.
The twelve pages were chosen out of the 120 primary trainees based on their results in the academy’s entrance test, meaning that the twelve elite disciples from the second year of the academy got to pick out one page each.
When you were a page, you didn’t have to clean the dorm or take care of the practice tools like the other students. Instead, you would clean up the chambers of your tutor disciple, help them with their tasks, and act as their sparring partner.
The two who kept offering up snarky comments hadn’t been selected as pages, meaning that their test results were lower than ours. They’d been hovering around the twenties and thirties in rank through the periodic progress tests, so Eugeo was justified in assuming that they would not reach the elite disciple boundary.
But I wasn’t so sure about that…
I held up the knife in my right hand and used the reflective flat of the silver blade to see behind my back.
At a nearby table, two male students were continuing their insulting innuendo, throwing occasional glances our way. The one on the left with the slicked-back gray hair was Humbert Zizek, who came from a fourth-rank noble family. The one on the right with flowing blond hair down to his back was Raios Antinous, the eldest son of a third-rank noble line. There were no first-rank nobles at this school—they were prestigious enough to have their own private instruction—and only a few were second-rank, such as Volo Levantein, so third was quite high.
But of course, not all the noble children were like these two. Volo the first seat was the quiet, stoic warrior type—not that I’d interacted with him much. Liena was a third-rank noble like Raios, and she was the very picture of grace.
In that sense, Humbert and Raios fit the mold of the stereotypical pampered rich boys who talked a bigger game than they were actually worth…but I wasn’t sure if that told the entire story. Through either good or bad luck, I’d never faced either in a duel, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they were slacking off in the seasonal testing periods—perhaps even the original entrance tests, too.
The reason for this was that the top twelve students were automatically thrust into the page’s role for the elite disciples. This was treated as an honor within the academy, but given that Raios and Humbert were easily the proudest nobles in the school, they might have gone out of their way to avoid having to take orders from a fellow student.
I had no proof of this, of course. But when I saw their forms during sword practice, I would feel a kind of pressure, a very foreboding chill. It was that sense of mental power again, the absolute self-confidence they possessed by being noble.
“Hey, Kirito, your dish is empty,” Eugeo said, nudging me. I looked down and realized that my fork was simply poking an empty salad bowl. To cover up my embarrassment, I lowered the knife to my fried fish, only to see that it was gone, too. I’d been so focused on Raios and Humbert that I had eaten my dinner, the second-best part of the day, without enjoying any of it. So much for not letting them get to me.
Worst of all, the best part of my day—the sparring sessions with Liena—was coming to an end today…
Actually, that wasn’t quite right. My official duty as page was over, but I did have a big promise to fulfill tomorrow, on our day of rest. I was going to show her everything my style could do.
That reminded me of a very important fact. I set down my knife and fork and leaned over to Eugeo.
“Hey, I need to ask you something. Will you come out to the courtyard after dinner?”
“Yeah, sure. I was just wondering how your little ‘garden’ was coming along, Kirito.”
“Heh! Believe me, it’s doing great. Should be ready just in time for graduation.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
We finished whispering and stood up with our empty trays. As we passed Raios and Humbert, still prattling on about us, I caught a pungent whiff of the animal-oil perfume they put on their uniforms and rushed past to get away from it.
Once we had returned our dishes to the counter and left the mess hall, we both exhaled mightily. The bells had rung once, just a few minutes ago, which meant it was past six thirty now. That meant we had free time until lights-out at ten, but it really wasn’t that free—we couldn’t leave the dorm building, and we had to be back in our rooms by eight. There wasn’t much else to do but some self-training or studying. I, however, had just one activity after dinner.
On the west wall of the dorm (opposite the mess hall) there was a small door that led to a little yard. High walls without a roof surrounded it, but it was treated as part of the dormitory building.
The square yard was split up into four beds, each sprouting buds of different plants and flowers. There were designated students to tend to the beds, but they weren’t just for show. The four different plant species were all materials used as catalysts in sacred arts classes. The plants flowered three months apart, so materials could be harvested year-round. If you crushed a dried-up fruit in your fingers, it would release sac
red power into the air, providing the resources necessary for students to practice the arts.
Of course, the earth and sun provided regular resources on their own, but the earth power was diminished in the city, and the sun’s strength was affected by weather. In order for 120 students to practice the sacred arts all at once, they needed a more substantial material than spatial power.
Since it was spring, the northeast bed was full of blue anemones in bloom. In summer it would be marigolds, followed by dahlias in the fall and cattleyas in the winter. These were all high-priority, resource-rich flowers.
The Underworld’s plant species had evolved in peculiar ways over 380 years of history, but the fact that these flowers still shared the same name and appearance as their real-world counterparts spoke to their importance. I was not as certain that the rest of their biology was so heavily based on reality.
For one thing, once the petals were gone, all the flowers left behind similar rounded fruit. If you plucked and peeled it, you’d wind up with a glass-like ball about an inch across. Pinch it with your fingers, and it would break and release sparkling green light, indicating sacred power…That part was clearly unique to this virtual world.
From what the teacher in sacred arts class said, outside of these Four Holy Flowers, there was one other miraculous species that could bloom throughout the year and grow a particularly lush fruit called the rose. But commoners, nobles, and even emperors were forbidden to cultivate it. If you wanted to see one, you’d have to seek out the rare, secluded locations where it actually bloomed in the wild. That reminded me that I hadn’t seen a rose since coming here. Given this description, it made sense that they were reserved for the crafting of divine objects.
We headed west down the little path that split the garden, gazing at the beautiful anemones along the way. Just before the fence, there was a large metal stand laden with gardening tools like shovels and watering cans.
Eugeo and I crouched down around a small, unassuming planter located at the side of the stand.
“It’s really growing now. Look, the buds are actually swelling,” he noted.
“Well, we’ve failed at this three times now. I hope that we actually get somewhere this time…”
Growing in the planter was something known as a “zephilia,” which had sharply angled leaves that were nearly blue in color. It was probably unique to the Underworld. It apparently did not generate much magical resource…but it was very beautiful. The reason it “apparently” didn’t have much magic was that neither I, nor Eugeo, nor just about anyone else in Norlangarth had ever seen one before.
The zephilia plants were exclusive to the empire of Wesdarath, beyond the Everlasting Wall. They did not grow in the northern empire; they were not even cultivated.
There was a small but brisk trade among the empires, so you’d think they would sell the flowers or put them in pots, but that was not the case—because there was no calling for “flower traders.” They considered it a waste of sacred power to grow inedible flowers for the purpose of commerce. There were herb traders who grew their products in their own fields, but they were limited to the Four Holy Flowers. Everything in this world came down to effective use of resources.
So where had the seeds for this zephilia plant come from?
“Did you use up all the seeds you got to produce this seedling, Kirito?” Eugeo asked. I nodded.
“Yeah…this is our last chance. The spice trader said that the next shipment of them wouldn’t come until this fall.”
They didn’t sell the flowers, but they did sell the seeds. Zephilia seeds would produce a vanilla-like scent when crushed into a powder. Therefore, a small amount was imported from Wesdarath as a spice for sweets—a fact I had learned last fall.
I had taken all the shia I had—basically, all the salary from the Zakkaria garrison—and bought as much as I could get from a spice trader. All they had in stock was a small bag of seeds, but it was enough for me to try growing them on my own.
There were two reasons that I had suddenly gotten into gardening.
For one, I wanted to do a little experiment about a core nature of this world: what I called the “Imaging System.”
The spice trader had told me that zephilias wouldn’t grow in Norlangarth soil. I had dug up dirt as close to the western empire’s wall as possible to use in the planter, but the first batch of seeds ran out of life without even budding. They simply vanished from the planter.
But that couldn’t be a conscious design decision on the part of whichever real-world people (probably Rath’s staff) built and managed the Underworld. Unlike anemones and cattleyas, zephilias weren’t a real flower.
So why would zephilias grow in the west empire but not the north?
My suspicion was that the people of this world believed that to be so. The mental image of their beliefs fixed the properties of the zephilia flower within the buffer data of their main memory device.
If that was the case, could I laser-focus a mental image that was stronger than the people’s common knowledge into just a few dozen seeds, causing a temporary overwrite of the buffer data…?
The idea of one person overturning the common sense of thousands and thousands sounded ridiculously arrogant, but it was worth trying out, in my opinion.
I was challenging a piece of ancient knowledge that had been passed down for over a hundred years. In the present day of the Underworld, there likely wasn’t a single person bothering to chant, “Zephilias only bloom in Wesdarath!” every single day. In other words, it wasn’t like the zephilia data in the main memory device were completely locked from change.
So what if I used my imagination, my mental power, to will it into being…to pray, every single day? Could I actually overturn some ancient bit of common-sense knowledge?
With that idea in mind, I spent six months starting in the fall, giving it water and mental images to feed on.
The first attempt was a failure. The second attempt was a failure. The third attempt had produced tiny little buds. They wilted soon after, but I’d managed something they said was impossible. I had used up the rest of my seeds in the fourth attempt, and now I was going twice a day, in the morning before school and in the evening after dinner, to focus on them like never before. Soil is soil, and water is water. You’re going to sprout, and grow, and bloom.
At this point, when I silently spoke to it, I could even see the sprout take on a faint glow at times. That was probably just a trick of the eye (or the mind), but by now I was sure of it: the twenty-three plants growing in the planter were going to bloom beautiful flowers this time.
“Here, Kirito, I brought some water.”
“…Ah, oh, thanks.”
Eugeo had carried over a watering can full to the brim while I’d been lost in thought in front of the planter. I took it from him, and he grinned. “We’ve been together for two years, Kirito, but I’d never have guessed you had an interest in gardening.”
“Neither would I,” I said idly. I didn’t think much of it, but Eugeo’s face suddenly went serious.
“What if it’s a sign that your memory’s about to come back? What if, before you showed up in Rulid, you had grown flowers back home…? Maybe you had a gardener’s calling.”
I stared back at him in stunned disbelief, then quickly cleared my throat. “Ah, ahem…I don’t know about that. Remember, I didn’t know anything about plants. I needed all of Muhle’s expertise to get this far.”
I’d almost forgotten that I was technically a “lost child of Vecta,” a term that Underworldians used to describe people who showed up far from their homes without any memory—which they attributed to a prank of the god of darkness, Vecta. Eugeo was the only one who knew this about me, since I was registered with the academy as being from Rulid Village. And he’d stopped bringing it up recently, so I figured he had essentially moved past it. Apparently I was wrong.
Eugeo nodded slowly and refrained from further comment. Instead he looked at the plants. “Well, let�
��s give them their water. Don’t you hear them begging for it?”
“Oh? Have you learned to hear their voices, too, young Eugeo?”
“Well, I’ve been going along with this idea of yours for half a year now, Kirito,” he joked back. I straightened up and prayed quietly before the planter.
I know it’s small, but that’s your country. There’s nothing there to threaten you. Take in the light, suck up the water, and bloom your beautiful flowers.
Once I felt certain that this wish had permeated the water in the can, I tilted my hand. A spray of droplets issued forth, wetting the fragile bluish leaves and stems, trailing downward, seeping into the black dirt…
I thought I sensed a gentle, warm light infusing the twenty-three sprouts. Another illusion? Or…I glanced over at Eugeo, who was praying with his eyes shut and hadn’t noticed anything. By the time I looked back to the plants, the light was gone.
As a matter of fact, I hadn’t told Eugeo the truth about my little experiment (disguised as a hobby). He didn’t know the flowers were zephilias; I’d told him only that I’d picked out the seeds at the market at random.
My expectation was that if I told Eugeo the truth, his common sense might cancel out my efforts. The experiment wasn’t to compare our willpower, and that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I was already nervous enough about the possibility that in the testing exams for elite disciples, he and I would end up forced to face each other in a duel…
“…Hey, Kirito.”
I spun toward him, surprised. Of course he hadn’t really heard my inner voice. But I still wasn’t ready for what he asked next.
“What would you do if all your memory came back, Kirito…?”
“Uh…what would I do?”
“I mean, you’re here trying to be a disciple…and, ultimately, an Integrity Knight…because you’re helping me with my goal, remember? We’re trying to look for Alice, since the Axiom Church took her away eight years ago. But…what if you remember everything—remember your true hometown…”
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