4

My eyes opened at the clanging of the five-thirty bell and I leaped out of bed, emboldened by the realization that I could do it on my own after all.

I threw open the eastern window, stretched, and sucked in a lungful of the cold daybreak air. The more I breathed in, the more it wiped away the last cobwebs of sleep clinging to the back of my mind.

In the room across the hall, I could hear the children starting to wake. I slipped on my clothes, determined to get down to the well to wash up before they did.

The tunic and cotton pants that served as my “starting gear” had no visible stains yet, but according to Eugeo, their life dropped faster and faster the less you washed them. So it was probably time to think about acquiring another outfit. That would be one of the things to ask Eugeo about today, I decided as I headed out the back door to the well.

I transferred a few cups of water from the bucket to the basin, splashed some on my face, and heard someone coming up behind me at last. I straightened, shaking the water from my hands, expecting to see Selka.

“Oh…good morning, Sister.”

It was Sister Azalia, wearing her pristine nun’s habit. I bowed hastily, and she returned the gesture and said hello. The perpetual frown tightening her lips seemed especially harsh today, which raised my hackles a bit.

“Um…Sister…is something…?” I asked.

She blinked, hesitating momentarily, then said, “I cannot find Selka.”

“Uh…”

“Do you know anything about this, Kirito? She seemed to have taken a liking to you…”

For a second I panicked, thinking that she might be suspecting that I’d done something to the girl, but I soon realized that this could not be the case. The ironclad Taboo Index that none dared to violate governed this world; Azalia would not imagine in her wildest dreams that someone would actually kidnap a child. She assumed that Selka had vanished of her own volition and was simply asking me if there was any information I might possess about it.

“Umm…No, I haven’t heard anything. Today is a day of rest, correct? She hasn’t gone back to her family?” I suggested, trying to kick-start my recently awakened mind, but she immediately shook her head.

“In the two years since Selka came to the church, she has not once returned home. Even if that was the case, I cannot believe that she would go there without attending prayer or saying anything to me. Even if there are no laws against it…”

“Then…maybe she’s out shopping. How do you get the ingredients for breakfast every day?”

“We bought two days’ worth of food yesterday evening. All the stores in the village are closed today.”

“Oh…of course.” That emptied my meager stock of imagination. “…I’m sure she had something important to do. She’ll be back very soon.”

“…I certainly hope so…” Sister Azalia murmured, her brow furrowed with concern. She sighed and said, “In that case, I will wait until midday, and then pay a visit to the village hall if she is not back yet. Forgive me for interrupting you. I must prepare for the morning prayer now.”

“It’s all right…I’ll check around the area afterward,” I told her as she inclined her head and left. A faint, nasty tinge of worry welled up within me as I dumped out the remaining water in the basin. I recalled something troublesome in my conversation with Selka last night but couldn’t remember what it was. Had I said something that would prompt her to slip out of the church?

Morning prayer passed with this concern gripping my chest, and at the end of breakfast, where the children all wondered where Selka was, she still had not returned. I helped clean up the dishes and went out the front door of the church.

We hadn’t explicitly made the same agreement as yesterday, but it was nonetheless a relief when I saw that flaxen hair coming from the northern path at the eight o’clock bell.

“Good morning, Kirito.”

“Morning, Eugeo.”

He showed up with the same smile as ever. I followed up with, “You get the entire day off, right?”

“That’s right. So I figured I would show you around the village today.”

“That’d be great, but I need you to help with something else first. Selka hasn’t been seen all morning…so I thought we could go look for her…”

“What?!” he exclaimed, his green eyes wide and worried. “She walked out of the church without telling Sister Azalia first?”

“That’s what it sounds like. Sister Azalia said it was the first time this has ever happened. Can you think of anywhere she might have gone?”

“Might have gone? I don’t know…”

“Last night I talked with Selka about Alice for a little bit. So I was wondering if she might be someplace that reminds her of Alice…”

Only once I had said the words aloud did I finally, belatedly, ashamedly realize the source of my unease.

“Ah…”

“What is it, Kirito?”

“No way…Say, Eugeo. When Selka asked you why the Integrity Knight took Alice away years ago, I hear you didn’t tell her the reason. Why not?”

He blinked rapidly and, after a few moments, bobbed his head. “That’s right…she did ask that. So…why didn’t I tell her? I didn’t have a very solid reason…Perhaps I was just uneasy about the possibility that Selka would try to go after Alice…”

“That’s it,” I grunted. “I told Selka last night. I told her how Alice touched the ground of the land of darkness…She must have gone to the End Mountains.”

“What?!” Eugeo paled. “That’s bad. We have to track her down and bring her back before the villagers realize…When did she leave?”

“I don’t know. She was gone by the time I woke at five thirty…”

“In this season, the sky starts to lighten up around five. She couldn’t walk through the forest before that point. Which means she left three hours ago,” Eugeo said, looking up at the sky. “When Alice and I went to the cave, it only took us about five hours to get there, and we were kids. Selka’s got to be over half the way there by now. I don’t know that we can overtake her in time…”

“Let’s hurry. We’ll go right now,” I insisted. He agreed at once.

“We don’t have time to prepare. Fortunately the path is along the river, so we won’t lack for water. Okay…it’s this way.”

Eugeo and I started walking north, just slowly enough that no passing villagers would be suspicious of us. As the shops trickled away, so did the foot traffic, and we were soon racing down the paved road. Within five minutes, we reached a bridge over the river and snuck out of the village without drawing the posted men-at-arms’ notice.

Unlike the wide barley fields of the southern end, the north end of the village ran right up to dense forest. The river that wound around the hills of Rulid in the form of a canal split the forest as it ran north to south, and there was a small path on its bank covered in short grass.

Eugeo plunged down the riverside path without hesitation, then came to a halt about ten steps in. He held out his hand to stop me and crouched, touching a patch of grass with his other hand.

“Right here…It’s been stepped on,” he murmured, and made the sigil to bring up the grass’s window. “Its life is a bit down. It would be more if an adult had stepped on it, so that certifies that a child walked here a little while ago. Let’s hurry.”

“Uh…right,” I said, and picked up my pace to follow after him.

For as long as we walked, the river stayed on the right, and the forest stayed on the left. The only change to the scenery was one large pond and a brief elevation change. It almost made me wonder if we’d fallen into the RPG trope of the “looping dungeon.” We were out of hearing range of the town’s bell, so the only way to tell time was the slow progress of the sun.

Eugeo and I continued to trace the river’s path at a trot just below a run. I would absolutely have run out of steam going at this pace for thirty minutes in the real world. Fortunately, the average male my age in this world was much healthier, and I felt it more as a pleasurable activity than fatigue. I proposed speeding up to Eugeo, but he said that if we ran any faster, our life would drop too much and force us to take a long break to recover.

We’d been following the path at this precise speed for two whole hours but hadn’t seen the girl yet. In fact, she would probably have arrived at the cave by now. Fear and haste mingled in my mouth with a metallic tang.

“Hey…Eugeo,” I called out, taking care to keep my breathing steady. A step ahead and to my right, he looked over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Just to be sure…If Selka goes into the land of darkness, will the Integrity Knight immediately come to take her away?”

His eyes unfocused as he consulted distant memories. “No…I think the Integrity Knight will fly to the village the next morning. That’s what happened six years ago.”

“I see…Then even in a worst-case scenario, we’ll still have a chance to save Selka.”

“…What are you thinking, Kirito?”

“It’s simple. If we can take Selka out of the village before the end of the day, we might be able to run away from the knight.”

“…”

He faced forward again, mulled it over, then muttered, “We can’t…do that. I have my Calling…”

“I didn’t say you had to come with us,” I noted forcefully. “I’ll take Selka and go on the run. This was my fault for running my mouth, anyway. It’s my responsibility.”

“…Kirito…”

I caught sight of the wounded expression on Eugeo’s face and felt a prickle in my heart. But this was necessary to challenge his subservient nature. I felt guilty using Selka’s peril for my own purposes, but I needed to ascertain whether the Taboo Index was simply a list of ethical and moral taboos or if it was an absolutely enforced set of rules for the residents of this world.

After a few seconds, Eugeo slowly shook his head side to side.

“You can’t…You just can’t, Kirito. Selka has her own Calling. Even if the knight comes to take her away, she won’t agree to go with you. And I don’t think it will come to that in the first place. Selka would never violate the serious taboo of setting foot in the land of darkness.”

“But Alice did,” I pointed out. He winced and bit his lip but argued more forcefully this time.

“Alice…Alice was special. She wasn’t like anyone in the village. Not like me…and not like Selka.”

He picked up speed, suggesting that he wasn’t going to talk about it any further. As I followed, a silent question echoed in my heart to that mysterious girl.

Alice…who are you?

To Eugeo, Selka, and the other people of this world, the Taboo Index was clearly something they could not break, even if they wanted to—the same way that you could not break the physical laws that kept a human being from flying in the real world. That seemed to line up with my suspicion that they had true fluctlights but were not human beings in the same sense as I was.

But what did that make Alice, who broke—was able to break—that terrible taboo? Was she another tester diving in with the STL like I was? Or…

My brain seized upon different fragmented thoughts one after the other as my legs moved automatically. Eventually, Eugeo broke the silence.

“There it is, Kirito.”

I came to my senses and looked up. The forest was clearing out up ahead, and I could see a wall of ashy gray rock beyond it.

With a last spurt of energy, we sprinted across the remaining few hundred yards and came to a stop where the ground underfoot turned from grass to gravel. I stared at the sight before me in shock, panting at last.

It was nothing short of a transition space between area maps, a sure sign of artificiality if I’d ever seen one. The thick green of the forest hit a brief neutral zone, then abruptly turned into a nearly vertical rock cliff. To my surprise, a light snow dusted the surface close enough nearly to touch. However high the altitude was, the peaks of the mountains were pure white.

Those peaks continued to the left and right as far as the eye could see, perfectly splitting the world between this side and that. If someone had designed this world, I could practically scold them for the lazy way they’d drawn this border.

“These are…the End Mountains? And just on the other side is the land of darkness…?” I muttered in disbelief. Eugeo nodded.

“I was surprised the first time I came here, too. That the end of the world…”

“…Was so close,” I finished, unconsciously craning my neck in confusion. It was close enough that we’d reached it in just two and a half hours, without any impediments on the way. It was as if…it was tempting the villagers to come and trespass into the forbidden land. Or on the flip side, allowing the residents of the land of darkness to attack…

I stood there, mulling it over blank-faced, which prompted Eugeo to say, “Let’s hurry. We must’ve closed the gap with Selka to thirty minutes by now. If we drag her back as soon as we find her, we can still be back to the village during daylight.”

“Y-yeah…good point.”

He was pointing ahead, where the little brook we were following got sucked into a hole in the rock face—technically, it was flowing out from there, not going in.

“So that’s it…”

I trotted closer. The cave was quite tall and wide, with a rock shelf jutting from the wall to the side of the fierce creek. It was totally dark on the inside, and the occasional breeze brought a freezing chill with it.

“Wait, Eugeo…What are we going to do about light?” I asked. I had totally forgotten about the most important item for a good dungeon spelunking, but Eugeo said he had it under control. He lifted a stalk of grass that he had picked up along the way. I wondered what he was going to do with the fuzzy cattail—until he started chanting in English.

“System Call! Lit Small Rod!”

System Call?! I thought, shocked.

The tip of the stalk of grass in Eugeo’s hand started to glow. It had enough pale bluish light to illuminate a few yards ahead. He headed farther into the cave.

I raced to catch up alongside him, the shock still racing through my veins. “Eu-Eugeo…what was that?”

He squinted sternly at me, but there was a hint of pride tugging at his mouth as he said, “A sacred art—a very easy one. I had to practice it a whole lot two years ago when I decided to come and get the Blue Rose Sword.”

“Sacred art…But…do you know the meaning of those words? Like system and rod…”

“Meaning? There’s no meaning; they’re just spellwords. They’re words you say to beseech God and receive a miraculous blessing. The higher sacred arts have many times more spellwords, I hear.”

That made sense to me. They didn’t know the meaning of the system terminology—it was all treated like mystical magic words. Still, that was a very practical spell. Whoever designed this world was clearly quite pragmatic.

“Say…do you think I can do it, too?” I wondered, excited despite the circumstances.

Eugeo wasn’t sure. “It took me about two months to use this art, practicing between my work shifts every single day. According to Alice, people with the talent for it can use it in a day, and others might never be capable of it their entire lives. I don’t know where your talent level lies, but I doubt you could do it right away…”

Did that mean that using magic—sacred arts—required some amount of skill training through repetition? If so, he was probably right that it couldn’t be mastered in a day. I gave up on the idea for now and stared into the darkness ahead.

The wet gray walls turned right and left and seemed to continue on forever. A chilling wind assaulted my skin at all times, and even with a partner at my side, the lack of any sword, or even a sturdy stick, was starting to make me feel helpless and uneasy.

“Hey…are you sure Selka came down here?” I wondered aloud. Eugeo pointed the glowing cattail toward the ground at our feet.

“Oh…”

Within the ring of the impromptu lantern’s glow was a shallow, frozen puddle. It had been stepped on in the middle, and there were cracks extending in all directions from that spot.

I tried stepping on it myself. The ice cracked loudly and split further—which meant that before me, someone lighter had been the perpetrator of the first cracks.

“I see…That settles it, then. I don’t know if she’s reckless or fearless…”

Eugeo found that statement to be curious. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. No white dragon in this cave anymore—not even a mouse or a bat to contend with.”

“Oh, r-right,” I replied, reminding myself that there were animals in this world but no actively aggressive monsters to worry about. At the very least, I could consider this side of the End Mountains to be the equivalent of a VRMMO protected area.

I exhaled, trying to let the tension drain out of my spine—when from the darkness ahead came an odd sound on the breeze. We looked at each other. It sounded like the screeching of a bird or wild animal of some kind.

“Hey…what was that?”

“…I don’t know…I’ve never heard that sound before…Ah!”

“Wh-what is it now?”

“Do you…smell something, Kirito?”

I drew in a deep breath of the cave air through my nostrils.

“Oh…it’s kind of a burning smell…and…”

Mixed with the scent of burning tree sap was just a hint of something raw and bestial. I grimaced; it wasn’t a reassuring smell.

“What is that…?” I wondered when a new sound came, and I held my breath.

It was the long, trailing sound of a girl screaming.

“Oh no!”

“Selka!”

We both leaped into action, our feet sliding a bit on the frozen rock.

The blood in my veins froze, and my limbs felt numb. It was the first true, palpable sense of danger I’d felt since I showed up in this world—even more than I’d felt when I originally didn’t know where I was.

So the Underworld wasn’t a paradise after all. It was a thin layer of peace stretched over a core of evil. That was the only explanation. This world was an enormous vise meant to trap all kinds of people in its grasp. Someone had spent centuries slowly, methodically screwing it tighter. To see if the residents would band together and fight back or be crushed under its weight.

Rulid Village was one of the places closest to the vise’s jaws. As the final moment of reckoning approached, the souls in the village would slowly disappear, one by one.

But under no circumstances could I allow Selka to be the first. It was my fault she came to this cave in the first place. For toying with her fate, I had a responsibility to see her home safely…

Eugeo and I raced through the cave by the weak light of the grass stem. With each desperate gasp of air, my chest hurt. I slipped numerous times, the elbows and wrists that whacked against walls of ice throbbing constantly. It was easy to imagine our “life” dropping throughout the process, but that wasn’t going to slow us down now.

The farther we went, the stronger the odor of burning wood and animal stink. Mixed in with the screeching voices was the constant shuffling of metal. I didn’t know what awaited us ahead, but it was hard to imagine it being friendly.

My gamer’s instincts told me that with a single knife on hand, we had to come up with a plan and tread lightly, but even louder in my head was the knowledge that we had no time to waste. Plus, Eugeo’s panicked face was even paler than mine, and I knew he wouldn’t be convinced to turn back anyway.

Suddenly, I saw orange light flickering on the rock walls ahead. Based on the way it was reflecting, there seemed to be a very large dome in the distance. I could feel the antagonism ahead, prickling against my skin. There was more than one of them—many, in fact. Eugeo and I plunged into the dome together, praying for Selka’s safety.

Take in everything and execute the most efficient choice of action, as quickly as possible.

Following the guidelines burned into me from experience, my attention darted around, absorbing the images like a wide-angle camera.

The circular dome had to be nearly a hundred and fifty feet across. The floor was covered with thick ice, but there was a stretch toward the middle that was cracked open, exposing water nearly dark enough to be black.

The source of the orange light was a pair of fires lit around the impromptu pond. Firewood snapped and crackled within black iron braziers.

And surrounding the fires sat grouped figures, humanoid in shape but clearly neither human nor animal. There were over thirty of them.

Individually, they were not that big. Standing at full height, their heads might reach my chest. But their hunched frames were stout and stocky, and their abnormally long arms and gleaming claws looked strong enough to tear anything to shreds. They sported gleaming leather armor on their wide chests and dangled small furs, bones, and pouches from their waists. In addition, some held crude but deadly machetes.

Their skin was a dull grayish-green with patches of bristling hair. Each head was clean and bald; the only hair there proved to be needlelike clumps protruding from their ears. They had no eyebrows, either, just jutting foreheads hanging over bizarrely large eyes that threw off a cloudy yellow light.

The creatures were alien in appearance and yet completely familiar to me from over the years.

They were undeniably goblins, those low-level monsters that appeared in nearly every single fantasy RPG. My recognition brought a certain amount of relief, too: Goblins were usually designed for novice players to practice their skills on and earn experience, and they were almost always weak pushovers.

But my relief lasted for only the brief moment until the nearest one to me and Eugeo noticed us.

The look I caught in its yellow eyes froze me down to the marrow. I saw a bit of suspicion and surprise, then cruel delight, and, lastly, boundless hunger. There was enough malice there to make me feel as helpless as a fly trapped in a spiderweb.

The goblins weren’t programs, either.

This realization hit me with an overwhelming terror.

They had souls, too. Just like Eugeo and me—up to a point—they had the same kind of intelligence shaped by fluctlights.

But why…? How could such a thing be?

In the two days I’d been in this world, I had come to a rough estimation of exactly what Eugeo, Selka, and the other people who lived here were—artificial fluctlights controlled not by the brains of flesh-and-blood people but by saved images of such, stored on man-made media. I couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of media it was that could record a human soul, but if the STL could read one, it stood to reason that it could also copy it.

Chillingly, I similarly surmised that the source of the copies was an infant’s fluctlight; that archetype soul was then copied countless times so they could be raised in this world as babies. This was the only hypothesis that could explain the contradiction inherent in the Underworld’s residents: They possessed true intelligence, and yet there were far more of them than actual STL units. Rath’s true goal, their blasphemous attempt at playing God, was to create true AI—actual human intelligence. And they were doing it by using the human soul as a mold.

That goal seemed to be 90 percent complete by now. The depth of Eugeo’s thoughts surpassed mine, and the complexity of his emotional urges was profound. In other words, Rath’s vast, arrogant experiment might as well be complete.

But if the simulation was still running, that meant Rath was still unhappy about something in the project. I couldn’t begin to guess what that would be, but perhaps it had something to do with that Taboo Index, the set of rules that these people were fundamentally incapable of breaking.

At any rate, this theory did put a rough explanation to Eugeo’s existence. He and his kind were just as human as us, with their own souls and everything—they simply existed on a different physical plane.

But then…what were these goblins? What was the stinging malice that sprayed from those yellow eyes…?

I couldn’t believe—didn’t want to believe—that their souls were based on a human’s. Perhaps Rath had caught real goblins in the real world and put them in the STL seat, I thought bizarrely.

The goblin and I shared a look for not even a second, but it was enough to terrify me to my core. I stood stock-still, unsure of what to do, and then it unleashed a screech that might have been a laugh. It got to its feet.

And then the goblin spoke.

“Hey, look! What’s going on today? It’s another two fresh little White Ium younglings!”

Instantly, the dome was full of high-pitched screeching. One after another, the goblins got to their feet, brandishing machetes and looking at us hungrily.

“What now? Shall we capture them, too?” the first goblin cried. From the back came a ferocious roar, and all the goblins stopped laughing. They spread apart in two directions to clear a path for a much larger individual, one who seemed to be some level of leader.

This one wore metal scale armor and a headpiece around its forehead sporting bright feathers. Under that, its reddened eyes were full of an overwhelmingly evil and icy intelligence. Ugly yellow teeth jutted from its leering mouth. The goblin captain rasped, “You can’t sell the male Iums for beans. Just kill them for their meat.”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure at which level the word kill should be taken.

I ought to be able to rule out actual death: a fatal wound to my real-life physical body. My body was sitting in an STL in real life, far from the danger posed by these goblins.

But I couldn’t assume that death here was just a bad outcome, a minor setback like in any other VRMMO. Outside of the exception of the Axiom Church elites, there was no resurrection magic or items here. If they killed me here, that was probably game over for this Kirito.

So if I died, what happened to my consciousness?

Would I wake up in Rath’s Roppongi office to a greeting from Takeru Higa, the operator, and a fresh cup of water? Would I just wake up in another forest, all alone, to start from scratch? Or would I float through the world as an immaterial ghost, fated to watch its outcome?

And if that happened, what fate awaited Eugeo and Selka, who were sure to be killed with me?

Unlike the self-owned storage media that was my physical brain, their fluctlights were probably stored on some kind of massively high-capacity memory system. Was it possible that when they died…they were simply deleted?

Though…Selka. Where is Selka?

I shut off my existential line of thought and focused on the scene before me.

At the goblin captain’s orders, four followers began to walk toward us, machetes in hand. Their steady pace and toothy, sadistic smiles said that they meant to kill us long and slow.

The twenty-something goblins left around the pond screeched the others on, excitement in their eyes. In the back, I finally spotted what I sought: Hard to see against the gloom was the black nun’s habit of Selka’s, lying on a crude cart. She was tied down with rough ropes and her eyes were shut, but from the color of her face, she was only unconscious, not dead.

I thought back to what the captain said: the male “Iums”—that probably meant “human” to them—couldn’t be sold, so kill them here.

That meant that the women could be sold. They were going to take Selka with them back to the land of darkness and sell her. And if we didn’t do anything about the state of affairs, Eugeo and I would die. But in a way, Selka’s fate was crueler than death. I couldn’t just chalk this up to being part of the simulation. I just couldn’t. She was a person just like me. A girl, only twelve years old.

That meant…

“There’s only one thing to do,” I muttered. Next to me, Eugeo’s frozen body twitched.

I would save Selka, even if it meant paying the price of this temporary life.

It wouldn’t be easy. They far outnumbered us, thirty goblins with machetes and armor, and we didn’t even have sticks. But I had no other choice. It was my careless comment that had brought about this situation.

“Eugeo,” I said under my breath, keeping my gaze forward, “we have to save Selka. Can you do this?”

I heard him murmur in the affirmative. As I expected, reserved and gentle Eugeo had a strong core.

“When I count to three, we’ll rush the front four with a body slam. We’re bigger than them, so we can win as long as we don’t falter. Then I’ll knock the left fire into the pond, and you do the right. Don’t lose your glowing grass. When the fires are out, pick up a sword and guard my back. You don’t have to beat them if you don’t need to. I’ll work on taking out the big guy.”

“…I’ve never swung a sword.”

“It’s just like an ax. Here goes…one, two, three!”

We got a perfect start, racing down the ice without slipping. I could only pray that luck held out to the very end of this maneuver.

“Raaaaah!!” I bellowed.

A moment later, I heard Eugeo echo, “Waaah!” It was a bit more like a scream, but it did the trick. The four goblins stopped, their yellow eyes bulging. Then again, their surprise may have had more to do with the “Ium younglings” engaging in a suicide charge, rather than the ferocity of our yelling.

At the tenth step, I sank down, lowered my right shoulder, and charged like a football tackler for the gap between the leftmost goblin and the one next to him. Thanks to the size difference and element of surprise, I knocked both onto their backs, where they slid across the ice, arms wheeling. To the right, Eugeo’s tackle was equally effective, sending the other two spinning like turtles in their shells.

We continued toward the goblin force, picking up momentum. Fortunately, their reaction time was poor, and most of them, including the captain, were still staring at us in shock.

That’s right, keep gaping, I thought savagely, racing through the goblin ranks toward the final few yards.

Just then, the goblin captain showed off the intelligence that separated him from the others and snarled, “Don’t let them near the—”

But he was just a bit too late. Eugeo and I leaped onto the fire braziers, kicking them over toward the water. The flames plunged into the black water, shooting up a cloud of sparks and emitting white steam where they fell.

For a moment, the dome was totally dark—until a faint white light pushed back the blackness. It was coming from the cattail in Eugeo’s left hand.

Then the second stroke of luck occurred.

The crowd of goblins all around erupted into shrieks. Some covered their faces, while others turned away and cowered. Across the pond, even the goblin leader was leaning back, holding out his hand to shield his eyes.

“Kirito…What is this…?” Eugeo gasped, stunned.

“I think…they’re weak to that light. Now’s our chance!”

From the piles strewn around the pond, I picked up a crude longsword that was more like a flat sheet of metal, as well as a scimitar with a heavy tip. I pressed the latter of the two into Eugeo’s free hand.

“That weapon should work the same way as an ax. Use the light to push them back, and swing that sword at any that venture too close.”

“Wh-what about you?”

“I’ve got him.”

I plunged forward at the goblin captain, who glared furiously through the slits of the fingers he held out to block the light. I tested the sword in my hands with a quick swing back and forth. It felt less sturdy than the appearance suggested, but it was certainly much easier to use than the Blue Rose Sword.

“Grurah! Filthy Ium brats…You think to challenge the great Ugachi the Lizard Killer?!” he roared, watching me close the distance toward him with one baleful eye. He drew an enormous machete from his waist with his other hand. The blackened blade was covered in menacing stains of blood and rust.

Can I win this fight?!

Although we were of equal height, he was clearly heavier and stronger than I was. But the next moment, I gritted my teeth and plunged onward. If I didn’t defeat him and failed to save Selka, that would mean that all I’d accomplished in this world was setting her up for the most gruesome of fates. Size wasn’t an issue. I had killed countless foes three or four times my size in the old Aincrad. And back then, I knew for a fact that death was permanent.

“I’m not going to challenge you—I’m going to beat you!” I yelled, half to him and half to myself as I closed the last stretch of distance.

My left foot plunged forward, and I swung the sword diagonally at his left shoulder.

I wasn’t taking the foe lightly, but even then, his reaction was quicker than I had expected. He ignored my strike and swiped sideways with the machete, which I just barely evaded by hunching down. I felt a few hairs rip out as it passed. My own swing had struck true, but all it did was crush his metal shoulder pauldron.

Sensing that if my momentum died, he would overpower me, I stayed low and spun around the enemy, swinging horizontally at his exposed side. The feedback was solid again, but this time it merely broke five or six metal scales free without even piercing the crude armor.

I hissed a silent insult at the sword’s owner to polish his weapon properly, as the counterattack just barely hurtled past my head. The heavy end of the machete drove deep into the ice underfoot, and another chill ran down my back as I was forced to know the goblin’s strength.

Single attacks weren’t going to do the trick. I strode in hard, intending to counter before the goblin captain recovered. My body moved largely on its own, repeating the movements I’d performed countless times in a different world: the special attacks known as sword skills.

The result was not in the least what I expected.

My sword took on a very faint red light. My body darted at a speed beyond the physical laws of the world. It was as if an unseen hand had just pushed me on the back.

The first slash rose from the lower right, clipping the enemy’s left leg and arresting his movement.

The second swipe from left to right dug into the target’s breastplate and lightly gouged his flesh.

The third slice from the upper right hit the enemy’s left arm, raised in defense, and loudly severed it just below the elbow.

The spray of blood from the arm stump looked pitch-black in the pale glow. The severed limb spun through the air and landed in the pond on the left, splashing loudly.

I won! I thought, equal parts triumphant and shocked.

That attack wasn’t just a mimicry of the three-part longsword combo Sharp Nail. It was the real thing. The blade took on a red light as it flew through the air, and an invisible force accelerated my movements. They were visual effects and system assistance by any other name.

Sword skills existed in the Underworld. They were written into the system that controlled the world. You couldn’t explain this as a recreation based on the mind’s imagination. I was barely even conscious of the movements as I executed them. The system read my first motion, activated the skill, and adjusted my movement accordingly. It couldn’t happen any other way.

But that just led to a new question.

The day before, I’d tried to use the Horizontal skill on the Gigas Cedar with the Blue Rose Sword. That was an easier skill than Sharp Nail; it was nothing more than a flat swipe. But the system hadn’t helped me then. The sword didn’t shine, my body didn’t speed up, and the weapon clumsily struck far from my intended target.

So why did it work now? Because this was a real battle? If so, how would the system determine if it was a “real” fight or not…?

All these thoughts ran through my head in the blink of an eye. In the old SAO, there would be no true window of opportunity. I’d be hit with my own post-skill delay, while the enemy suffered from a knock-back effect following huge damage.

But even with sword skills, the Underworld was not a VRMMO. I had very nearly forgotten that basic truth already.

Unlike a 3-D-modeled monster, the goblin captain did not stop moving whatsoever after I cut off his arm. The gleaming yellow eyes swam with no fear, no hesitation—just pure hatred. Black blood streamed from his wound as a roar shot from his mouth.

“Garruaah!!”

The machete in his other hand swept forward.

I wasn’t able to cleanly evade the horizontal swipe of heavy metal. The end of it merely brushed my left shoulder, but it was enough force to knock me over six feet backward to slam onto the ice.

At last, the captain crouched, put the machete in his mouth, and squeezed the stump of his left arm with his remaining hand. A horrendous creaking emerged. He was stopping the flow of blood with sheer pressure. That was not the action of a straightforward AI. I should’ve realized this the moment he’d introduced himself with the name of Ugachi. This wasn’t a battle between player and monster—it was a fight to the death between two armed warriors.

“Kirito! Are you down?!” Eugeo called from a distance, keeping the goblins at bay with the scimitar in one hand and the lit cattail in the other.

I tried to tell him that it was just a scratch, but my tongue was too stubborn to comply. I merely wheezed and nodded. I put my hand to the ice, trying to get up.

Instantly, a burning sensation like all the nerves in my left shoulder catching fire shot through my upper half, causing sparks to fly before my eyes. Unstoppable tears flooded from my eyes, and a groan tumbled from my throat.

What tremendous pain!

It was far beyond what I could stand. All I could do was curl up on the ice, panting quickly. Somehow, I managed to turn my head to look at the shoulder. The sleeve of the tunic was ripped, and an ugly wound gaped in the exposed skin. It looked more like I’d been gouged than sliced. The skin and the flesh beneath it was torn right out, replaced by gushing blood. My arm was equal parts numbness and burning, and my fingers were as immobile and unfeeling as if they belonged to someone else.

This can’t be a virtual world, I wailed to myself.

A virtual world was supposed to eliminate all the pain, suffering, ugliness, and dirtiness of reality, providing an environment of sheer cleanliness and ease. What was the meaning of so thoroughly simulating pain this awful? In fact, it seemed worse than real life. In the real world, my brain would produce chemicals to knock me out as a defense mechanism against shock, right? No human being could withstand pain like this…

Maybe that’s not quite right, I thought wryly to myself, trying to avert my eyes from the carnage.

Kazuto Kirigaya was completely unfamiliar with real pain. I’d never suffered a major injury in my life, and when Grandfather forced me to start kendo, I quit before long. The physical rehab after SAO was tough, but thanks to the high-tech training machines and supplemental drugs, I hardly had to deal with any pain.

And my virtual experience was even softer. With the pain-absorbing functions of the NerveGear and AmuSphere, I lived such a sheltered experience that wounds in battle meant nothing more than a loss of abstract HP. If pain like this existed in Aincrad, I would never have left the Town of Beginnings.

The Underworld might be built of dreams, but it was also built of reality’s nightmares.

At last, I understood the meaning of the words I had said however many days ago in Agil’s café: Reality was where true pain, suffering, and sadness existed. Only those who withstood and survived the endless repetition of those things could be strong here. Ugachi the goblin knew that, ages before I’d even considered the possibility.

Through tear-blotted eyes, I saw Ugachi finish staunching his bloody arm and turn to me. The fury exuding from his eyes seemed to set the air shimmering with heat. He moved the machete from his teeth to his remaining hand and swung it loudly.

“…Even tearing you to pieces and devouring your flesh will not remove this humiliation…but that doesn’t mean I won’t do it.”

He swung the machete over his head as he approached. I tore my eyes away and glanced at Selka, trussed up in the far distance. I had to stand and fight, but my body wouldn’t listen. It was as if the fright and hesitation in my heart took the form of physical shackles that bound me in place…

The heavy footsteps came to a stop before me. I sensed air moving, the approach of an enormous blade bearing down on me. It was too late to evade or counter. I gritted my teeth and waited for my last moment in this world.

But no matter how long I waited, the guillotine never struck.

Instead, I heard the sound of quick footsteps on ice and a familiar voice—

“Kiritoooo!!”

My eyes shot open and caught sight of Eugeo, leaping over me to attack Ugachi. He swung the scimitar wildly, driving the enemy back a few steps.

The goblin was initially startled, but he regained his poise quickly, nimbly reaching out with the machete to block Eugeo’s attacks. For a moment, I forgot my pain and yelled, “Don’t, Eugeo! Just run!!”

But he was bellowing and swinging the sword, apparently beside himself in the moment. Thanks to years of swinging that ax, the speed of his strikes was stunning, but they were on a predictable rhythm. Ugachi focused on defense, enjoying the resistance of his prey, and finally growled and swept Eugeo’s support leg out from under him with a toe. As Eugeo lost balance and toppled, the monster confidently pulled back his machete.

“Nooooooo!!”

He swiped effortlessly before the scream left my lips.

The machete hit Eugeo in the stomach and threw him back to fall heavily at my side. I turned over to his direction, feeling a blinding pain in my shoulder but summoning the strength to ignore it.

Eugeo’s wound was far worse than mine. A jagged line was carved straight across his torso, pulsing rivulets of blood. The piece of grass still clutched in his hand illuminated the vague sight of organs deep within the injury, moving irregularly.

He coughed and gurgled, producing a bloody froth. His green eyes were already losing focus, staring emptily into thin air.

But Eugeo did not stop trying to get up. He exhaled short bursts of misty red breath, willing strength into trembling arms.

“Eugeo…it’s okay…just stop…” I mumbled. Eugeo had to be suffering far more than I was at this moment. He couldn’t be in his right mind.

Just then, his unfocused eyes stared right at me, and he uttered blood-flecked words: “Wh…when we were…kids…we made a promise…You and I…and Alice…would be born on the same day…and die on the same day…This time…I’m going…to keep…”

The strength drained from his arms at last. I promptly reached out to support his frame with both hands. Eugeo’s slender but muscular weight. The moment it sank into me—

A series of white flashes blinded my vision. Vague shadows floated onto that blank screen.

Beneath a vivid red sunset, walking down a road through barley fields. Holding my right hand was a young boy with flaxen hair. Holding my left, a girl with golden braids.

Yes…we believed the world would never change. We believed the three of us would always be together. And we failed to protect her. We were helpless. I would never forget that despair, that lack of power. This time…this time I would…

I didn’t feel the pain in my shoulder anymore. I lay Eugeo’s limp body down onto the ice, reached over, and grabbed the handle of the longsword.

When I lifted my head, Ugachi’s machete was in the process of coming down on me. I swiped sideways and knocked it away.

“Grruah,” he grunted in surprise, backing off a step, and I rose to my feet and tackled him. The goblin took a few more steps back.

I pointed the sword in my hand at the dead center of my target, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

Yes, I was an amateur when it came to physical pain. But I knew about anguish that was far more horrific than that. This wound was nothing compared to the pain of losing a loved one. This machine might manipulate memory, but the pain of loss never truly left.

Ugachi roared in fury and impatience. His screeching underlings fell silent around us.

“White Ium…Learn your place!!” he roared, rushing at me with the machete. I focused just on the point. My ears rang, and everything else on the outside of my vision disappeared. It was the speeding up of the senses, a sensation like brain cells blowing out that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. In this world, I guess it was more like my soul burning.

I lunged forward to avoid the diagonal swipe, bringing my sword up to slice off the enemy’s remaining arm at the base. The massive limb and its machete spun through the air to land amid the goblins, who shrieked at the sight.

Ugachi, missing both arms now, locked me with yellow-eyed rage and even more shock as he faltered. Black liquid gushed from the fresh wound, landing in the water and sending up steam.

“…No…no Ium whelp could possibly…” he moaned. Before he could even finish his sentence, I was racing forward.

“No! My name is not ‘Ium’!” I screamed, the words coming straight from my unconscious mind. My whole body whipped forward, from my toes through my fingers, to the end of the sword. It glowed again, light green this time. An invisible hand shoved my back. The charging skill, Sonic Leap.

“I am…Kirito the Swordsman!!”

The sound of air ripping hit my ears just after Ugachi’s massive head floated high into the air.

It flew straight up, then spun in place as it fell into my left hand. I clutched the feathered headdress like a rooster comb and held up the bleeding trophy.

“I have taken your leader’s head! If any of you still wish to fight, come now, or flee to your home of darkness!”

On the inside, I was urging Eugeo to hang in there, while outwardly, I glared at the goblins with all the malice I could muster. The death of their leader had made the group quite antsy. They looked at one another, screeching nervously.

Eventually, one stepped forward, a club bobbing on his shoulder.

“Ge-heh! If that’s the case, then if Aburi kills you, he can be the next—”

I didn’t have the patience to listen to his taunt all the way through. I raced forward, still holding the head, and used the same skill to sever him from right flank to left shoulder. Another spray of blood issued forth, and a moment later, his top half slid off the bottom to land on the ground.

That seemed to settle the issue at last. The remaining goblins let out high-pitched wails and breathlessly raced for the dome’s exit on the far side from where we came in. They kicked and shoved one another in the hurry to escape through the tunnel and were soon gone from sight. The echoes of their footsteps and screeching faded away, and a cold silence fell within the icy dome. That prior heat might as well have never been there.

I took a deep breath to hold the returning pain in my shoulder at bay, and tossed aside the sword and severed head. The only thing that mattered now was getting to my fallen friend.

“Eugeo!! Hang in there!!” I called, but his pale eyelids didn’t even twitch. Faint breath was going through his parted lips, but it might stop at any moment. Blood still oozed from the ghastly wound in his stomach, but I didn’t know how to actually stop it from continuing.

With cramped fingers, I made the sigil and tapped Eugeo’s shoulder, praying as I looked at the window that appeared.

His life power now read 244/3425. Even worse, it was dropping a point every two seconds. That meant I had perhaps eight minutes left before Eugeo’s life bled away forever.

“Hang in there; I’m going to save you! Don’t die on me!” I pleaded, getting to my feet. I raced as fast as I could to the cart placed to the side of the dome.

It held barrels and boxes with unknown contents, a variety of weapons, and a trussed-up Selka. I grabbed a knife out of one of the boxes and quickly cut her ropes.

I lifted her light body and set her down on the floor for a quick examination—no noticeable wounds. Her breathing was much steadier than Eugeo’s. I put my hands on the shoulders of her habit and shook her as firmly as I dared.

“Selka…Selka! Open your eyes!!”

Her long lashes twitched immediately and flipped open to reveal wide brown eyes. She started to shriek, not able to recognize me from the weak light of the cattail over at Eugeo’s side.

“N-no…nooo…!”

She waved her arms, trying to push me off her, but I held tighter.

“Selka, it’s me! Kirito! It’s all right; the goblins are gone!”

She stopped struggling as soon as she heard my voice. Her hand reached out, trembling, to trace my cheek.

“Kirito…Is that you…?”

“Yeah, I came to save you. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I…I’m fine…”

Selka’s face scrunched up, and she flung herself desperately around my neck.

“Kirito, I…I…!”

I heard her suck in a fierce breath near my ear, about to begin bawling as only a child could—so I abruptly lifted her into my arms and spun around to run again.

“Sorry, hold back the tears for a bit! Eugeo’s really hurt!!”

“Wha…?”

She tensed up in my arms. I raced back for Eugeo, kicking the chunks of ice and junk littered around by the goblins on the way.

“Normal measures aren’t going to help him in time…You have to save him with your sacred arts, Selka! Hurry!” I urged, setting her down next to him. She held her breath and reached out a hesitant hand. When her fingers brushed the terrible wound on his torso, she shrank back.

A few seconds later, she shook her head, the braid waving back and forth.

“I can’t…It’s too deep…My sacred arts…aren’t good enough…” she lamented, touching his pale cheek this time. “This can’t be happening, Eugeo…You couldn’t have done this…for me…”

Tears tracked down Selka’s cheeks and landed softly in the pool of blood atop the ice. She pulled her hands back to her face and started to sob. I knew it was cruel, but I had no choice but to yell at her.

“Crying won’t help Eugeo! I don’t care if it doesn’t work; just try it! You’re going to be the next Sister for the village, remember? You’re going to take over for Alice!”

Her shoulders twitched and slumped. “I…can’t be like her…She mastered a sacred art in three days that I can’t memorize over an entire month. The only thing I can heal…is the tiniest little scratch…”

“Eugeo…” I started to say, faltered, then allowed the emotion welling up within me to burst free. “Eugeo came to save you, Selka! He risked his life to come here and save you, not Alice!”

Her shoulders shook again, harder this time.

All the while, Eugeo’s life was plunging toward zero. We had only two minutes, maybe one. An agonizingly long moment of silence passed.

And then, Selka abruptly looked up. The fear and hesitation in her eyes from just seconds earlier was no more.

“Normal healing arts won’t work in time. I’ll have to attempt a dangerous high-level art. I’m going to need your help, Kirito.”

“A-all right. Just say the word—I’ll do anything.”

“Give me your left hand.”

I reached out, and she gripped it with her right. Next, she used her other hand to hold Eugeo’s where it lay atop the ice.

“If this art fails, both you and I might die. Just be aware of that.”

“If it happens, make sure it only happens to me…Ready when you are!”

She nodded, gazing at me with powerful intent. Then she closed her eyes and sucked in a breath.

“System Call!”

A heavenly, pure sound filled the dome of ice.

“Transfer Human Unit Durability, Right to Left!!”

A high-pitched whir followed the echoes of the voice. It swelled—and then a pillar of blue light surrounded Selka.

It was blinding, far stronger than the cattail’s light. Sky-blue filled the dome from end to end. I squinted a bit, but a strange sensation coming from the hand holding Selka’s made me open my eyes wide again.

It felt like my body itself was melting into the light and flowing right out of my hand.

In fact, little motes of light were visibly passing from my body through my left arm and into Selka’s hand. With blurred vision, I saw the trail of light pass through Selka, grow stronger, and funnel down through Eugeo’s hand.

Transfer Durability. The sacred art must be designed to allow people to pass their life to another. I was certain that if I opened my window now, I would see my number sinking fast.

I don’t care; use all of it, I prayed, focusing hard on my left hand. Selka was acting as a conduit and booster for all that energy, and it was taking its toll on her. It made me recall the enormity of what it meant for pain to be the payment in this world.

Pain, suffering, and sadness. Clearly these things, unnecessary in a virtual world, had some deep link to the very purpose of the Underworld’s existence. If Rath’s engineers were hoping to find a breakthrough by tormenting the resident’ fluctlights, then my unexpected presence and salvation of Eugeo were unwanted interference with their project.

If that was the case, then they could eat shit for all I cared. Soul without a physical body or not, Eugeo was my friend. I would not let him die. Not like this.

As the life flowed out of me, a terrifying chill began to descend. My vision grew darker and darker, but I tried desperately to track Eugeo’s condition. The wound across his belly was noticeably smaller than before we started. But it was not completely healed, not by a long shot. Even the bleeding was still ongoing.

“K-Kirito…can you…keep going…?” Selka said under her breath, pained.

“I’m fine…G-give Eugeo more!” I answered promptly, though I could barely see anymore. There was no feeling in my right hand or foot. My left hand was the only part of me that beat with a hot pulse.

If I lost my life in this world, it wouldn’t bother me a bit. If I saved Eugeo’s life, I could withstand twice the pain that I had earlier. The only regret I’d have would be failing to see what became of this world. What if those goblins were only the vanguard? What if the invasion from the land of darkness only intensified? I couldn’t help but worry for Rulid, being situated right at the most vulnerable place. I knew I would lose my memory once I logged out, and it would be impossible to get back in.

But no. Even if I died…

Eugeo had seen and swung a sword at the goblins, too. He would do something about this. He would warn the elder, prompting more guards, and alert the neighboring towns and cities of the danger. I knew it with every fiber of my being.

For that reason as much as any other, I could not let him die here.

But on the other hand, my life was draining out of me. I could tell very clearly, despite my fading senses. Eugeo’s eyes were still closed. Even the gift of my entire life would not be enough to heal his wounds and call him back from the brink of death?

“Oh, no…no…If we keep going, your life will run out…” Selka wailed, as if off from a distance.

I wanted to tell her not to stop, to keep going, but my mouth was frozen. It was getting hard even to think anymore.

Was this death? A pretend death of the soul within the Underworld…or could the death of my soul kill my physical body, too? It was cold enough to make that idea plausible to me. I felt so terribly alone…

Suddenly, hands touched my shoulders.

They were warm. My insides began to melt before they could freeze entirely.

I—I knew these hands. As delicate as birds’ wings but powerful enough to seize the future when no one else would.

…Who…are you…?

The feeling of soft breath on my left ear met my silent question. Then I heard a voice so familiar and nostalgic that it made me want to cry.

“Kirito, Eugeo…I’ll be waiting for you always…I am waiting for you at the top of Central Cathedral…”

A golden shine like starlight filled my insides. The surge of overwhelming energy permeated every last inch of my body and, looking for an exit, spilled forth from my left hand.