“Hmm, a place to stay. My village is just to the north, but we never get any travelers, so there’s no inn. But…if I explain the situation, maybe Sister Azalia at the church can take you in.”
“Oh…I see. That’s good,” I said with all honesty. If there was a village, a Rath staffer might be in a dive there or monitoring it from the outside. “In that case, I’ll go to the village. Just north of here, you said?”
I glanced ahead and saw that in the opposite direction of the way I’d come, there was indeed a narrow trail. No sooner had I started walking than the boy held out a hand to catch my attention.
“Oh, w-wait. There are guards in the village, so it might be difficult to explain the situation if you show up alone. I’ll go with you and tell them what’s going on.”
“Thanks, that’ll be a big help,” I said. Inwardly, I was certain he wasn’t just an NPC. His conversational skills were too fluid for him to be a low-level program with preset answers to general questions, and an NPC wouldn’t elect to be so active in my affairs, either.
I didn’t know whether I was diving from the Rath lab in Roppongi or their company headquarters at its undisclosed location in the Tokyo Bay area, but I could tell that whoever owned the fluctlight controlling this boy had a very helpful personality. Once I had safely escaped this test, I owed him some thanks.
Meanwhile, the boy’s face clouded again. “Oh…but I can’t right now…There’s still work to be done…”
“Work?”
“Yes. I’m on my lunch break.”
I glanced down at the bundle of cloth at the boy’s feet, through which peeked two round rolls of bread. That was what I’d seen him holding at first. The only other object was a leather water pouch—a very meager excuse for a lunch.
“Oh, I didn’t realize I was interrupting your meal,” I said, but he only grinned back.
“If you can wait until I’m done working, I’ll go to the church with you to ask Sister Azalia if she’ll let you stay there. That’ll be four hours from now, though.”
I wanted to go to the boy’s village as soon as possible and find someone who could explain the situation, but more important, I didn’t want to be on thin ice with a bunch of conversations. Four hours was a long time, but with the STL’s fluctlight acceleration, it was only an hour and change in real time.
And for some reason I didn’t understand, I found that I wanted to talk more with the helpful young man. I told him, “It’s fine, I can wait. I appreciate the help.”
His smile grew a bit wider, and he replied, “I see. In that case, you can sit anywhere you like. Oh…I didn’t give you my name yet, did I?”
He held out his right hand. “I’m Eugeo. Nice to meet you, Mr. Kirito.”
His grip was much firmer than his skinny build would suggest. I rolled the name around in my head. I didn’t recall hearing it before, and it didn’t sound like it belonged to any language in particular, but the word was familiar on my tongue for some reason.
The boy named Eugeo let go and sat back down on the tree root, took the rolls out of the cloth, and handed one to me.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said, waving my hand, but he didn’t withdraw the offer.
“Aren’t you hungry, too, Mr. Kirito? You haven’t eaten anything, I bet.”
As soon as he said that, a pang of hunger hit my brain, and I unconsciously clutched my stomach. The river water was delicious, but it didn’t fill the belly like food did.
“True, but…”
I hesitated again, and this time he pushed the roll into my hands. Eugeo grinned and shrugged.
“It’s fine. I know it’s ironic to say this after I just gave you one, but I’m not really a fan of them.”
“In that case…thank you. As a matter of fact, I’m about to pass out from hunger.”
Eugeo laughed and said that was what he figured. I sat down on the root across from him and added, “Plus, you can just call me Kirito.”
“Really? Well, I’m just Eugeo, too, then…Oh, hang on,” he noted, holding up a hand to stop me from taking a bite of the bread.
“…?”
“Well, that bread’s only good point is how long it lasts, but it never hurts to be sure.”
Eugeo put his left hand above the piece of bread he held in the other. With his index and middle fingers, he traced a curvy figure in the air that was like a combination of an S and a C.
To my astonishment, he tapped the roll, and with a strange sound like vibrating metal, a glowing, translucent light-purple rectangle appeared. It was about six inches wide and three inches tall. From a distance, I could make out the familiar letters of the alphabet and Arabic numerals. It was a status window.
With my mouth wide open, I told myself, That settles it. This isn’t real life or a true alternate world. It’s virtual reality.
That confirmation brought a wave of relief to my mind, and my body suddenly felt lighter. I had been 99 percent certain before, but that last little bit of blank uncertainty had been weighing on me, I realized now.
Of course, the circumstances of my dive were still unknown, but with the reassurance that I was within the familiar embrace of a virtual world came a bit of comfort and confidence. I held out two left fingers to call up my own window.
I copied the symbol and tapped the bread. A purple window appeared with a bell chime. I leaned in for a closer look.
The contents were very simple: just a single line that said Durability: 7. It was clearly the life span of the bread. When that fell to zero, what exactly would happen to it, though?
Eugeo asked, “Kirito, you’re not going to tell me it’s your first time seeing the sacred art of a Stacia Window, are you?”
I looked up and saw him staring at me suspiciously, holding his bread. I tried to put on a reassuring smile and brushed away the window, which vanished in a little spray of light. It was a relief that I’d demonstrated some familiarity.
Fortunately, Eugeo seemed satisfied with that. “There’s plenty of life left, so no need to gobble it down. There wouldn’t be nearly as much left if it were summer, though.”
I guessed that the “life” he mentioned was the durability of the item. “Stacia Window” was the name for the status window. Based on how he’d described the act of calling up the window as a “sacred art,” Eugeo understood this not within the context of a computer system but as a religious or magical phenomenon.
There was a lot still to process, but I set that aside for the more pressing concern of my hunger.
“Okay, here we go.”
I opened my mouth wide and bit down. The toughness of the bread was astonishing, but I couldn’t just spit it out; I had to keep chewing. The sensation was more real than any virtual food I’d ever tasted, which I marveled at even as my teeth felt ready to loosen in their sockets.
It was similar to the whole-wheat bread that Suguha liked to buy, but harder and firmer. The effort necessary to chew it was a bit much, but there was a rustic flavor to it, and I was hungry enough to keep my jaw moving. If I just had some butter and a slice of cheese—even having it freshly baked would be a considerable improvement, I thought, rather rudely for one who was getting a free meal. I glanced over and saw Eugeo smirking as he himself struggled to chew.
“It’s not very good, is it?” he said.
I shook my head. “N-no, I didn’t say that.”
“Don’t try to hide it. I buy some from the baker as I leave every morning, but it’s so early that the only bread left is from the day before. And I don’t have time to go back to the village for lunch, so…”
“Ohh…Couldn’t you just bring lunch from home…?” I wondered idly. Eugeo looked down, bread still in his hand. I winced, realizing it was none of my business, but fortunately, he looked back up and smiled.
“A long time ago…there was someone to bring lunch fresh from the village. Not anymore…”
His green eyes wavered, brimming with the deep sadness of loss, and I was so absorbed in it that I forgot
this whole world was a creation.
“What happened to them…?”
Eugeo looked up at the branches far, far above in silence. Eventually, he began to tell the story.
“…She was my childhood friend. A girl my age…When we were little, we played together from sunup to sundown. Even after receiving our Callings, she brought me lunch every day. But then, six years ago…in my eleventh summer, an Integrity Knight came to the village…and took her away to the central city…”
Integrity Knight. Central city.
The terms were unfamiliar, but the context of his statement suggested an agent for maintaining order and the capital of this virtual world. I held my silence, urging him on.
“It was…my fault. On a day of rest, the two of us went spelunking in the northern cave…and we got lost on the way back and wound up leaving through the other side of the End Mountains. You know what the Taboo Index says—the land of darkness that we cannot set foot in. I didn’t venture out of the cave, but she tripped, and her hand landed on the ground of the other side…And just for doing that, an Integrity Knight came to the village, tied her up in chains in front of everyone…”
The half-eaten bread crumbled in Eugeo’s hand.
“…I tried to save her. I didn’t care if he arrested me, too. I was going to attack him with the ax…but my hands and feet wouldn’t move. All I could do was stand there and watch as she was taken away…”
Eugeo continued to stare at the sky, his face devoid of emotion. Eventually, his lips curled into a self-deprecating sneer. He tossed the smooshed bread into his mouth and chewed it viciously as he lowered his face.
I didn’t know how to respond. I took my own bite of bread and chewed it as best I could as I considered the information.
The existence of status windows meant this was a virtual world created with modern technology, and that this had to be a test of some kind. But if that was the case, why was this story event occurring? I swallowed my bread and asked, “Do you know…what happened to her…?”
Eugeo didn’t look up. He shook his head weakly. “The Integrity Knight said she would be questioned and sentenced…but I have no idea what sentence she was given. I tried asking her father, Elder Gasfut, once…and he told me to assume that she was dead. But I still have faith, Kirito. I know she’s alive.”
He paused.
“Alice is alive, somewhere in the city…”
I sucked in a sharp breath as soon as I heard that name.
Again, an odd sensation raced through my brain. Panic. Desolation. And most of all, a soul-shaking nostalgia…
It was an illusion. I told myself that and waited for the shock to pass. I had no personal connection to this Alice, Eugeo’s old friend. My mind must have reacted to the generic name, that was all. In fact, hadn’t Asuna just been talking about it at Dicey Café yesterday? Rath, the developers of the STL, the Underworld virtual realm—they were all taken from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The coincidence of the names repeating was startling but probably meaningless. More important was another piece of information contained in Eugeo’s story.
He said he was eleven years old as of six years ago. Which meant he was seventeen now, and as far as I could tell, he had full memory of all that time—about the same length of time that I’d been alive.
But that was impossible. If the FLA’s factor of time was three, it would take nearly six years of real time to simulate seventeen years’ worth of time for this world. But as far as I knew, it had been only three months since the STL’s test unit was set up.
How should I take this information?
If this was not the STL but some other, unknown full-dive machine, then it had been functioning for seventeen years. Or perhaps the time factor of three for the FLA was a lie, and they could run it over thirty times the speed of normal time. Neither case was believable in the least.
Anxiety and curiosity welled up within me in equal measure. Part of me wanted to log out at once and ask a human being what had happened, while another part of me wanted to stay on the inside and track down the answers to my doubts directly.
I swallowed the last bit of bread and hesitantly asked, “Then…why don’t you go search for her? In this central city.”
As soon as I said the words, I realized I had made a mistake. The suggestion was too far outside of Eugeo’s regular expectations. The flaxen-haired boy stared at me for several seconds without reaction, then whispered incredulously, “Rulid Village is at the very northern end of the Norlangarth Empire. To get to Centoria at the very southern end of the empire, it would take an entire week with the fleetest of horses. I mean, it takes two days just to walk to Zakkaria, the nearest town. You couldn’t even get there in a day if you left at sunrise on a day of rest.”
“Then if you prepared for a proper journey…”
“Listen, Kirito. You’re about my age—didn’t you get a Calling where you grew up? You know I can’t just abandon my Calling and go on a journey.”
“…Oh, g-good point,” I said, scratching my head. I watched Eugeo’s reaction carefully.
The boy was clearly not just a regular old NPC. His wealth of expression and natural conversation skills were absolutely human in nature.
But at the same time, his actions appeared to be bound by some limiting force far more effective and absolute than the laws of the real world. Just like a VRMMO NPC, forbidden to act outside his approved boundaries.
Eugeo claimed he wasn’t arrested because he didn’t venture into this area defined by what he called the “Taboo Index.” So that was the absolute standard he had to follow—probably hard-coded through his fluctlight. I didn’t know what Eugeo’s Calling (his job) was, but it was hard to believe that it could be more important than the life or death of the girl he grew up with.
Deciding to get to the bottom of this, I chose my words carefully as Eugeo put the waterskin to his mouth.
“So in your village, are there others besides Alice who broke the Taboo…Index and got taken to the city?”
His eyes widened again. He wiped his mouth and shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no. In three hundred years of Rulid history, the only time an Integrity Knight has ever come was that one time, six years ago. According to Old Man Garitta.”
He tossed me the water. I caught it, thanked him, and pulled out the stopper, which looked like a cork. The water wasn’t cold, but there was a pleasant aroma to it, something like a mix of lemon and herbs. I took three mouthfuls and handed it back to Eugeo.
While I wiped my mouth in feigned self-control, on the inside another storm of shock buffeted me.
Three hundred years?!
If that wasn’t just a piece of background writing but indicated three whole centuries of fully simulated time, then the fluctlight acceleration factor would have to be hundreds…over a thousand, even. If that was how quickly they had accelerated my personal time when I went on that recent continual-dive test, how long had I actually been inside the machine? I felt a belated chill crawl across my forearms, and I was too preoccupied to even marvel at how real it felt.
The more information I gleaned, the deeper the mysteries got. Was Eugeo a human being or a program? Why was this world built?
To learn more, I’d have to go to Eugeo’s home of Rulid and contact other people. Hopefully I would run into someone from Rath who could fill me in…
I managed to put on something resembling a smile and said, “Thanks for the bread. And sorry about taking half your lunch.”
“No, don’t worry. I’m sick of that stuff anyway,” he said with a much more natural smile, and quickly folded up the cloth. “Sorry about forcing you to wait. I’ve just got to finish my afternoon work first.”
Eugeo stood up easily in preparation for his duty. I asked him, “By the way, what is your job…I mean, your Calling?”
“Oh, right…You can’t see it from over there.” He smiled and beckoned to me. I got up, curious, and followed him around to the other side of the
tree trunk.
Once again, my mouth fell open as I registered a different kind of shock.
Carved into the midnight-black trunk of the enormous cedar tree was a cut about 20 percent deep—nearly three feet. The inside of the trunk was as black as charcoal, too, and there was a metallic gleam among the dense growth rings.
Then I noticed that there was an ax standing against the tree, just below the cut. The blade was simple, clearly not designed for battle, but it was striking how both the large head and long handle were made of the same ash-white material. It looked kind of like stainless steel with a matte finish. As I stared at its strange, shining surface, it dawned on me that the entire ax was carved down from a single mass of whatever its material was.
The handle was wrapped with shining black leather, which Eugeo grabbed with one hand, lifting it onto his shoulder. He walked over to the left edge of the five-foot-wide cut, spread his legs and lowered his stance, then squeezed the ax with both hands.
His slender body tensed and spun, the ax thrust backward, and after a momentary pause, it shot through the air. The heavy-looking head landed firmly in the center of the cut with a dry krakk! It was indeed the very sound I had followed to this place. My instinct that it had come from a woodcutter was correct.
Eugeo continued his chopping with mechanical precision and speed while I watched his smooth form in total wonder. Two seconds to pull back, one second to tense, one second to swing. The whole motion was so smooth and automatic that it made me wonder if this world had sword skills, too.
He made fifty chops at four seconds each in exactly two hundred seconds, then slowly pulled the ax out after the last one and heaved a deep breath. He stood the ax against the trunk again and sat down heavily on a nearby root. Based on the pace of his breathing and the beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, the swings were much more laborious than I had thought.
I waited for Eugeo’s breathing to slow down then asked, “So your job…I mean, your Calling is a woodcutter? You cut down trees in this forest?”
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