Alicization Beginning

  Is going on? I replayed all the events that had transpired between entering the village and now.

  The first thing Eugeo had done was head for the guard station right next to the gate. There was another youngster in there named Zink, who glanced at me suspiciously at first but accepted Eugeo’s story that I was a “lost child of Vecta” with almost laughable ease and granted me entry to the village.

  The entire time Eugeo was giving the story, my eyes were locked onto the simple sword hanging from Zink’s belt, so the specific words all went in one ear and out the other. I desperately wanted to borrow the aged sword to see if my skills—technically, the virtual swordsman Kirito’s skills—would still function here, but I valiantly resisted that urge.

  After leaving the station, we walked down the village’s main street, attracting a slightly unnerving amount of attention. Several villagers asked who I was, and Eugeo stopped to explain each time, so it took us nearly thirty minutes to get to the small village square at the center of Rulid. One old lady carrying a large basket got teary-eyed when she saw me. “You poor thing!” she exclaimed, and pulled an apple (or something close to one) out of the basket for me. I felt a bit guilty about that.

  By the time we got to the church standing on the small hill overlooking the village, the sun was almost entirely gone. Sister Azalia, a nun whose picture ought to be in the dictionary under the word stern, answered Eugeo’s knock on the door. She looked so much like Miss Minchin from A Little Princess that I was certain our plan would end in disaster. But at odds with her appearance, Sister Azalia welcomed me in almost instantly and offered me dinner to boot.

  Eugeo promised to meet me in the morning, and thus left me at the church. Aside from Selka, the oldest, there were six children to meet, and we shared a quiet but peaceful meal of fried fish, boiled potatoes, and vegetable soup. As I feared, the children assaulted me with questions afterward, which I hoped I answered without dropping the ball. After that, I was sent to the bath with the three boys, and after undergoing all of these many trials, I was free at last to lie here, in the bed in the guest room.

  The fatigue of the day rested heavily on me; I was certain that I’d fall asleep as soon as I closed my eyes, but the waves of confusion washing over me prevented that from happening.

  What does all this mean? I asked myself silently.

  In conclusion, there was not a single NPC, as I would define them, in the entire village.

  From Zink the guard; to the passing villagers and the old lady with the apples; to the stern but kindly Sister Azalia and apprentice, Selka; to the six orphan children who’d lost their parents. Every one of them had realistic emotions, conversations, and subtly unique body movements, just as Eugeo did. They were all real people, as far as I could tell. At the very least, they were absolutely not the automated-response characters found in every VRMMO.

  But that shouldn’t be possible.

  There was one Soul Translator at Rath’s Roppongi office and three more almost ready for operation at their headquarters. That’s what Higa told me, and he was one of the developers. Even if there were a few more than that in reality, it certainly wasn’t enough capacity to create an entire village of this scale. From what I could tell on our trip through town, there were at least three hundred residents of Rulid, and they couldn’t mass-produce that enormous STL test unit on that kind of scale. If you actually factored in all the other villages, towns, and that center capital they talked about, there was no way they could hire tens of thousands of testers in secret, even if they had the capital to create and run that many machines.

  “Or else…”

  Were Eugeo and the others not real human beings—players with limited memories? Were they actually automated programs operating in a realm far beyond common sense, to a level of unfathomable perfection…?

  The term artificial intelligence floated through my head.

  The use of AI had been advancing rapidly in recent years, mostly in PCs, car navigation systems, and appliances. They would take the form of human or animal characters that could receive spoken commands or questions and perform actions or answer questions with remarkable accuracy. In a sense, the NPCs in the VR games I played were a kind of AI, too. Mostly they existed to provide information on quests and events, but if spoken to without a particular reason, they could give natural answers to a certain shallow extent. There were even people who exhibited what they called “NPC-moé,” who followed around the pretty girl NPCs to talk with them all day long.

  But that did not mean those AIs had true intelligence, of course. They were just a complex set of orders—“if they say this, answer that”—and could not provide real answers to questions outside of their parameters. If that happened, nearly all NPCs would offer a confused smile and say something along the lines of, “I don’t understand your question.”

  Had Eugeo responded in that way even once throughout the entire day?

  He reacted to my every question with natural displays of surprise, hesitation, laughter, and so on, and he gave me proper answers to everything. And not just Eugeo—Sister Azalia, Selka, and even the younger children never gave me a reaction that suggested what they heard wasn’t “in their databank.”

  As far as I knew, the highest-level artificial intelligence of that sort was one named Yui, developed to be a mental counseling program for the old SAO and now considered a virtual “daughter” to Asuna and me. She had monitored countless player conversations for two years, collecting a vast amount of detailed data and compiling it into a complex database. She was perhaps the best current example of the boundary between automated program and true intelligence.

  But even Yui wasn’t perfect. Occasionally she would react to a statement by claiming that word wasn’t in her database, and she sometimes mischaracterized more complex emotional expressions, like feigned anger or acting grumpy to hide embarrassed pleasure. All it took was a brief moment in a conversation for her “AI-ness” to show itself.

  Yet I saw none of that in Eugeo or Selka. If human hands programmed all the people of Rulid into boy AIs, girl AIs, elderly AIs, adult AIs…it would be an even more preposterous case of super-advanced tech than the STL itself. It was impossible to take seriously…

  I paused my roiling thoughts there and sat up so I could put my feet on the floor.

  Fixed onto the wall behind the head of the bed was a cast-iron oil lamp that emitted a wavering orange light and a faint burning smell. I’d never touched one in the real world, of course, but there had been a similar lamp in the place where Asuna and I stayed in Alfheim, so I did what came naturally and tapped the surface.

  When no control window appeared, I realized my mistake and made the two-fingered gesture—the “sigil of Stacia.” When I tapped the lamp after that, the purple window appeared as expected. But all it displayed was the durability of the lamp itself and no buttons to turn it off or on.

  I felt a rush of panic when I realized that I’d dismissed Selka’s offer to teach me how to put out the lamp, but that vanished when I noticed the small dial on the bottom of the lamp. I gave it a clockwise twist. The metal squeaked, and the flame narrowed until it died out, leaving a brief line of smoke. Now the room was shrouded in darkness, with the only light coming from the faint moonlight streaming through the gap in the curtains.

  With that surprisingly difficult task out of the way, I turned back to the bed, placed the pillow where I liked it, and lay down again. It was a bit chilly, so I pulled Selka’s thick blankets up to my shoulders and felt sleep closing in.

  They’re not human, and they’re not AIs. So what are they?

  In a corner of my mind, an answer was already forming. But it was too terrifying to put into words. If what I was thinking was even possible, then this Rath company had plunged its hands deep into the realm of God. Compared to that, reading people’s souls with the STL was as harmless as prodding the key to open Pandora’s box with one’s fingertips.

  As I fell asleep, I heard my own voice rising
from the depths of my mind.

  This wasn’t the time to be searching left and right for an escape route. I had to go to the city. I had to find out the reason this world existed…

  Clang.

  Somewhere far off, I heard what sounded like a bell ringing.

  No sooner had my dreaming brain processed that than something prodded my shoulder. I wriggled deeper into the blankets and groaned, “Urr, ten minutes…just five more minutes…”

  “No, it’s time to get up.”

  “Three…just three minnis…”

  The prodding continued, sending a signal of confusion through the sleep clouding my brain. My sister, Suguha, wouldn’t wake me up in such a timid way. She’d scream at me, pull my hair, pinch my nose, or even use the cruel nuclear option: yanking the covers off the bed.

  At last I remembered I wasn’t in the real world or Alfheim, and I popped my head out from under the blankets. Through parted eyelids, I saw Selka, already in her nun’s habit. The apprentice sister looked at me in exasperation.

  “It’s already five thirty. All the children have risen and washed up. If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late for worship.”

  “…Okay, I’m getting up…”

  I sat up slowly, lamenting the loss of the bed’s warmth and the comfort of peaceful sleep. Just as I remembered it from last night, I was in the guest room on the second floor of the church in Rulid. Or within the Underworld created by the Soul Translator, if you preferred it that way. My odd experience would not end as a brief one-night dream, it seemed.

  “So it’s a dream, but it wasn’t a dream.”

  “What was that?” Selka asked, catching the statement I hadn’t meant to say out loud.

  I shook my head in a mild panic. “N-nothing. I’ll just change and get ready. In the chapel downstairs, right?”

  “Yes. You might be our guest and a lost child of Vecta, but if you’re going to sleep in the church, you must pray to Stacia. Sister Azalia always says, even a cup of water contains the goddess’s blessing and must be appreciated…”

  I slipped quickly out of bed before her lecture could start dragging on. I lifted the hem of the thin shirt they gave me as nightwear, and this time it was Selka who called out in a panic, “Uh, y-you only have twenty minutes, so don’t be late! Make sure you wash your face at the well outside!”

  She trotted off and quickly opened the door to disappear through it. That was definitely not an NPC reaction…

  I took off the shirt and reached for my “starter equipment”—the blue tunic draped over the back of the chair. Out of curiosity, I lifted it to my nose but didn’t smell any sweat. Surely they weren’t simulating the bacteria that produced odors. Perhaps the measure of item degradation, like when something gets filthy or starts fraying, was summarized by the durability counter they called life.

  I opened the tunic’s window just to check, and it listed the value at 44/45. It would still be good for a while yet, but the longer I stayed here, the more likely I’d need to change at some point, and that meant looking into a means to earn money.

  Pretty soon I had changed back into my original clothes, and I left the room.

  Down the stairs and out the back door next to the kitchen, there was a brilliant sunrise overhead. She had said it was before six o’clock, which made me wonder how the people in this world told time. I hadn’t seen any clocks in the dining room or guest room.

  I puzzled over that one as I walked down faded paving stones. Very soon I saw a stone well ahead. The grass around it was wet, probably from the children using it. I removed the lid and lowered the wooden bucket until it made a satisfying kerplunk at the bottom. When I pulled the bucket up on its rope, it was full of crystal clear water, which I transferred to the nearby basin.

  It was bitingly cold, but I slapped it onto my face anyway, then scooped up another cup and drank it down, feeling the last remnants of sleep wash away. I had probably gone to sleep before nine o’clock last night, which was why it felt like I’d had a solid eight hours, despite being up so early…but that raised another question.

  If this was the Underworld, then the FLA function had to be in effect. If the acceleration factor was three, that meant I had less than three actual hours of sleep, and if my vague theories from last night about a thousand-fold accelerator were right, that would mean less than thirty seconds of sleep. Could so little rest actually refresh my mind the way it felt now?

  It was all incomprehensible. I had to get out of here as soon as possible to figure out the situation…and yet that whisper in my ears from last night refused to go away.

  Didn’t I, Kazuto Kirigaya—regardless of whether my awakening in this world was the act of an error or the intentions of someone else—have a role to fulfill here? I didn’t necessarily believe in fate, but I couldn’t deny that I often believed that everything held a meaning. Because if not, then what was the reason for all those lives that vanished in SAO…?

  I splashed another douse of cold water on my face to snap me out of my thoughts. I had two courses of action here: first, to look around the village to see if there were any Rath staffers who would know how to log out. The other was to travel to this “central city” they mentioned to learn the reason that this world existed in the first place.

  The former didn’t seem like it would be that hard. I couldn’t say anything for sure without knowing the exact FLA factor, but if there were any Rath employees among the villagers, then they couldn’t possibly be logged in for years or decades at a time. In other words, if any residents were traders or travelers who left home at times, it was highly likely that they would be company observers.

  As far as the latter went, I had no plan for that. Eugeo said it would take a week to get to the city by horse, which meant at least three times that by foot. I wanted to ask for a horse, but I didn’t know how to get one, and I had no money for the equipment and supplies necessary for the journey. I was missing too much basic knowledge about the world; clearly, I needed someone to act as a guide. Eugeo was the best suited for that, but he had a Calling that he needed to do for the rest of his life.

  Would the quickest method be to violate that Taboo Index and have a whatever-knight come and arrest me? But that would probably get me taken straight to the cells of the city, and I wasn’t cut out for years of hard prison labor. Not to mention the possibility that I would be executed outright.

  I ought to ask Eugeo if there are any sacred arts that unlock doors or revive the dead, I noted to myself, when the church’s back door opened and Selka popped her head out. When we locked eyes, she shouted, “How long does it take to wash your face, Kirito?! Worship is about to start!”

  “Oh, r-right…Sorry, I’m coming,” I said, waving. I put the lid, bucket, and basin back in their original places and quickly returned to the building.

  After the austere worship service and a lively breakfast, the children engaged in their chores like cleaning and laundry, and Selka went with Sister Azalia into the study to practice and learn about the sacred arts. Feeling guilty that I was getting free food and board, I left through the large front doors of the church and headed to the middle of the square right out front to wait for Eugeo.

  Within a few minutes, a familiar head of flaxen yellow hair appeared through the vanishing mist of the morning. Moments later, the bells atop the church pealed a simple but beautiful melody.

  “Oh…now I get it.”

  Eugeo looked at me in surprise as he approached. “Good morning, Kirito. What do you get now?”

  “Morning, Eugeo. Well…I just now realized the bells play a different melody for each hour. So that’s how the people of the village know what time it is.”

  “Of course. It plays each of the twelve verses of the hymn ‘By the Light of Solus.’ And simple chimes mark each half hour. Unfortunately, the sound doesn’t carry all the way to the Gigas Cedar, so I have to estimate the time by the angle of Solus.”

  “I see…So there are no clocks in this world,” I mutter
ed to myself. Eugeo looked confused.

  “Kloks…? What is that?”

  I panicked, having not realized that even the word itself was foreign here. “Uh, a clock is…a round board with numbers on it, with metal hands that spin around to tell you what time it is…”

  To my surprise, Eugeo’s face lit up with delight. “Oh, yes! I read about that in a storybook once. Long, long ago, a Divine Object of Time-Telling stood in the middle of the capital. But because the people spent so much time gazing at it rather than working, the gods destroyed it with a lightning bolt. Since then, the only thing that tells humanity the time is the bells.”

  “Ohh…Yeah, I get that. Sometimes you can’t help but keep an eye on the time toward the end of class,” I said carelessly, forgetting where I was again. Fortunately, he understood my meaning this time.

  “Ha-ha-ha, indeed! When I had to study at the church, I kept my ears open for the lunch bells.”

  He glanced away, and I followed his gaze up to the church’s bell tower. Gleaming bells of all sizes hung in a circular window on every side. Yet I didn’t see anyone in the tower, despite the fact that the bells had just rung.

  “How…do they ring the bells?”

  “You really have forgotten everything, haven’t you?” Eugeo said, half-dismayed and half-amused. He cleared his throat. “No one rings them at all. It’s the only divine object in the village. They play the hymn on their own, at the exact same times, every single day. Of course, Rulid’s isn’t the only one. There’s another in Zakkaria, and in the other villages and towns, too…Oh, although I guess that’s not the only one now…”

  I lifted an eyebrow in surprise. It was quite uncharacteristic of helpful Eugeo to trail off like that. But then he clapped, intent on changing the topic.

  “Well, I’ve got to get to work. What will you do today, Kirito?”

  “Umm…”

  I gave it some thought. I wanted to go searching all over the village, but snooping around by myself was likely to get me into trouble. If I needed an idea of who might be an observer, I could ask Eugeo if anyone was out of the house a lot—and if I was going to lure Eugeo into this insane plan to travel to the capital, I’d need to learn a bit more about his Calling first.