5

A light, percussive sound dispersed far above the spring haze.

Eugeo finished his fifty ax strikes and wiped the sweat from his brow, and I tossed him the flask of siral water.

“How’s the wound feeling? Giving you pain?”

“After a whole day of rest, it’s all the way better now. Just left a bit of a scar. In fact…maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel like the Dragonbone Ax is way lighter now.”

“I don’t think it’s your imagination. Forty-two of those fifty swings were right on the mark.”

Eugeo’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and his face crinkled into a grin. “Really? Then I guess I’ll win today’s bet.”

“We’ll see about that.” I laughed, took the Dragonbone Ax, and gave it a one-handed swing. It did seem to be much easier to control than I remembered.

Two nights had passed since the nightmare in the cave beneath the End Mountains. With Eugeo on my right shoulder—having been revived with Selka’s sacred arts—and the head of the goblin captain slung over my left, we returned to Rulid far past sundown. The adults were gathered in the square, debating whether to form a search party, as we arrived. After the initial wave of relieved outcry, there came a thunderous scolding from Elder Gasfut and Sister Azalia. The unthinkable situation of three youths breaking the village laws seemed to have thrown the adults into a panic.

But that lasted only until I thrust the severed head under their noses. When they saw Ugachi’s hideous head—larger than ours, with yellowed eyes and ugly, jagged teeth—they fell silent at first, then erupted into greater shock.

After that, Eugeo and Selka explained about the goblin band camping out in the northern cave and how they were probably scouts from the land of darkness. The elders wanted to laugh it off as the overactive imagination of children, but the presence of the monstrous head the likes of which none of them had ever seen prevented them from dismissing our story. The discussion turned to the defense of the village, and we were released to drag our weary feet back home.

In my room at the church, Selka tended to my wounded shoulder, and then I collapsed into sleep. Both Eugeo and I were exempt from working the next day, and I took that opportunity to stay in bed. By the time I woke up after the second night in bed, the pain and fatigue were entirely gone.

After breakfast, the similarly hearty-looking Eugeo and I headed for the forest, where he had just finished his first set of fifty swings.

I looked at the ax in my hand while he sat down a short distance away.

“Say, Eugeo, do you remember…when the goblin in the cave slashed you…? You said something strange. That I was friends with you and Alice years ago…”

He didn’t answer right away. After a long silence, a pleasant breeze rustled the nearby leaves, and his voice seemed to hang on to the tail end of the wind.

“…I remember. It’s not possible…but for some reason, I remembered it very clearly then. You, Alice, and I were born and raised together in this village…and on the day Alice got taken away, you were with us…”

“…I see,” I replied, and fell into brooding.

You might explain it as memory confusion in an extreme situation. If Eugeo’s mind and personality were made of a fluctlight just like mine, it was possible that in the moment of life and death, his mental banks made a few mistaken connections.

But the problem was that I’d experienced the same memory confusion at the same moment in time. When I saw Eugeo dying before my eyes, I had a vivid sensation of growing up with him in Rulid Village—along with memories of Alice, the golden-haired girl whom I’d never met.

It was impossible. I had very clear and detailed memories of living in Kawagoe City of Saitama Prefecture as Kazuto Kirigaya, with a sister named Suguha, up until the day I woke up in this world. I couldn’t believe that my background was fictional. I didn’t want to.

Was this phenomenon just a kind of shared hallucination between Eugeo and me in that instant and nothing more?

But that left one thing without an explanation. While Selka’s sacred art attempted to save Eugeo’s life by transferring my life to his, I felt a fourth presence with my fading wits. Someone said, Kirito, Eugeo, I’m waiting at the top of Central Cathedral.

I couldn’t simply claim that voice was the product of my exhausted mind. I had never heard the term Central Cathedral before this. I had never even heard of, much less been to, a place by that name in any world, real or virtual.

So the voice had to actually be coming from someone else, not me, Eugeo, or Selka. Was it a stretch to suggest that it was Alice, the girl taken from the village six years earlier? And if so, was this impossible past where I grew up with Eugeo and Alice in Rulid also real…?

I decided to stop thinking in circles about what had filled my head since yesterday morning and said, “Eugeo, when Selka used the sacred arts on you in the cave, did you hear someone’s voice?”

This time, his reply was quick. “Nope, I was completely unconscious. Did you hear something, Kirito?”

“No…just my imagination. Forget it. Well, I’ve got to get to work. I’m shooting for at least forty-five hits.”

I faced the Gigas Cedar, banishing the swirling thoughts that plagued me. My hands gripped the ax, and my mind dedicated all its concentration to the task at hand.

The ax followed the precise trajectory I envisioned, striking the exact middle of the crescent-shaped cut in the tree.

Our quota of a thousand swings for the morning session ended thirty minutes earlier than it usually did. We had barely any fatigue and required very little rest. The number of clean hits was far more than last week, and if it wasn’t my imagination, it actually looked like the cut in the giant tree was deeper than before.

Eugeo stretched with palpable satisfaction and suggested that we take an early lunch, sitting down on his usual root. I joined him, and he pulled two of the same old rolls out of the cloth and tossed them to me.

I caught one in each hand, grimacing at the stony toughness of them, and said, “If only the bread had softened up, the way the ax is lighter now.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” Eugeo laughed, taking a big bite and shrugging. “Sadly, it seems to be the same as before. Anyway…I wonder why the ax seems so light all of a sudden.”

“Who can say?” I replied, but truthfully, I had a good idea from when I’d checked out my own window last night. My Object Control Authority, System Control Authority, and maximum life were all much higher than before.

I was pretty sure I knew why. By driving off that goblin brigade—in other words, completing a difficult quest—I had undergone what a normal VRMMO would call a “level-up.” I was not in any hurry to repeat the process, but at least I’d been rewarded for braving that dangerous battle.

This morning I’d asked Selka about it, and she, too, had claimed that, oddly enough, she was now much better at the sacred arts she’d struggled with just last week. Although she hadn’t taken part in the battle, the level-up effect made sense if you presumed that the three of us were treated as a party.

I suspected that, like mine, Eugeo’s Object Control Authority had risen to around forty-eight. There was no way I wasn’t going to try my idea again.

I rushed to finish my two rolls of bread and got to my feet. I strode over to a large knot in the Gigas Cedar’s trunk, feeling Eugeo’s eyes on me as he chewed, and pulled out the Blue Rose Sword from where we’d left it the other day.

I grabbed the leather package and tried to lift it, half-certain I was right and half praying I was.

“Whoa…!”

I nearly tipped backward, and carefully steadied myself. The overloaded barbell weight that I remembered had now shrunk to that of a thick metal pipe instead.

It still put strain on my wrist. But if anything, that weight was now comforting, reminiscent of the swords that I used so lovingly in the later stages of old Aincrad.

I undid the string that bound the leather and squeezed the hilt of the beautiful sword. As Eugeo looked on with the bread stuck in his mouth, I gave him a little grin and drew the blade with a spine-tingling shinng!

Unlike its bucking bronco routine of the other day, the Blue Rose Sword settled into my palm with all the grace of a sheltered lady. It truly was a stunning weapon. The sticky texture of the white leather grip, the translucent cast of the blade that trapped the light in intoxicating patterns, the fine decoration of rose vines—these things could not be represented in the old-fashioned polygonal way. It made perfect sense that old Bercouli would have tested a dragon to steal a sword like this.

“W-wait, Kirito…You can lift that sword now?” Eugeo asked, stunned. I swiped it back and forth to show him.

“The bread isn’t any softer, but it looks like this sword is lighter, at least. Watch this.”

I faced the Gigas Cedar and crouched, drawing back my right leg to face sideways and pulling the sword straight back at level height to maximize rotation. When I held it there, the sword began glowing a faint blue.

“Seii!”

I shot forward. The system added the velocity as I intended, hurtling the sword with tremendous speed and precision in the one-handed sword attack Horizontal.

The Blue Rose Sword flashed like sideways lightning, striking the target with pinpoint accuracy and tremendous impact. The Gigas Cedar’s massive bulk rattled, and the birds gathered in the branches nearby all took flight.

It was so satisfying to indulge in the feeling of body and blade being one again. I followed the line of my right arm with my eyes, down to where the bluish-silver blade was stuck halfway into the blackened tree.

Eugeo’s eyes and mouth bulged open. The half-eaten piece of bread fell from his hands and landed on the moss. But the woodcutter boy wasn’t even aware it had happened.

“…Kirito…was that…a sword art?”

Well, well. That suggested that the concept of sword techniques did exist here—though I didn’t know if he was referring to system-designated “sword skills” or something more organic. I put the sword back into its sheath and chose my words carefully.

“Yeah…I think so.”

“That means…before the god of darkness spirited you away, your Calling must have been a man-at-arms…or even a sentinel at a larger town. I mean, they only teach official sword arts to garrison sentinels.”

Eugeo’s green eyes sparkled with excitement as he spoke, chattering much faster than usual for him. In that instant, I realized that despite being a woodcutter and doing his Calling for six years without complaint, what Eugeo’s soul cried out to be was a swordsman. His admiration for the sword and thirst to control it at will were etched into the deepest parts of his heart.

He approached me on stumbling feet and looked me in the eyes. His voice trembled.

“Kirito…what style of swordsmanship do you use? Have you forgotten the name…?”

I thought it over briefly, then shook my head. “No, I remember. My sword is the Aincrad Style.”

The name just came to me, of course. But once I said it, I realized that it couldn’t be called anything else. All my skill had been learned and honed in that flying fortress.

“Ain…crad…Style,” he repeated, then nodded. “It’s a strange name. I’ve never heard of it, but I suppose it might be the name of your teacher or the town where you lived…Kirito, will…”

He looked down and mumbled. But when his head rose again a few seconds later, there was powerful intent in his eyes.

“Will you teach me your Aincrad Style swordfighting? Of course, I’m not a soldier or even a village guard…so it might be breaking some rule somewhere…”

“Is there a verse in the Taboo Index or the Basic…Imperial Laws that forbids a non-soldier from training with a sword?” I asked quietly.

Eugeo bit his lip and muttered, “There’s no verse like that…but holding multiple Callings at once is forbidden. It’s only people with man-at-arms or sentinel Callings who train with swords. So if I start training…it might be seen as neglecting my own Calling…”

His shoulders fell, but his hands were balled into fists that trembled with the tension in his arms.

I could practically see the battle raging inside him. All these people living in the Underworld, these artificial fluctlights mass-produced somehow by Rath, all shared one trait that the people of the real world did not have.

It was my belief that they could not disobey the higher rules written into their consciousness. They were incapable of breaking the Axiom Church’s Taboo Index, the Basic Imperial Law of the Norlangarth Empire tasked with managing the realm, and even the village standards of Rulid passed down through the years. They couldn’t do it.

That was why Eugeo had to subdue for six long years his raging desire to rush to save his friend Alice. He suppressed his own feelings and swung his ax—against a tree that would never be felled so long as he lived.

But now, for the first time, he was attempting to carve his own path. Perhaps his request to learn how to use a sword was not just out of a childhood dream but something much deeper…A means to gain power in the pursuit of his ultimate goal: saving Alice from captivity.

I watched Eugeo tremble in silence and thought, Hang in there, Eugeo. Don’t give up—don’t give in to what binds you. Take a step…take your first step. You’re a swordsman.

The blond-haired boy suddenly looked up as though he heard me. His pristine green eyes pierced my own, shining with intent. Through gritted teeth, he rasped, “But…but I…want to be…strong. So that…I never make…the same mistake again. To get back…what I’ve lost. Kirito…teach me how to use a sword.”

Something powerful welled up in my chest, and I had to fight it down to maintain control. I grinned and told him, “All right. I’ll teach you everything I know. But the training will be harsh.”

I let my smile turn impish and held out a hand. Eugeo’s mouth softened at last, and he clasped it.

“That’s just what I’m hoping for. In fact…it really is what I’ve wanted…for ever and ever.”

His head dipped again, and a few clear drops fell, catching the sunlight. He stepped forward before I could even register surprise and thudded his forehead against my shoulder. I felt his whisper through my body more than heard it.

“I just…figured it out. I’ve been waiting for you, Kirito. Waiting here in the forest for six long years for you to come…”

“…Yeah.”

My own voice was barely audible. I reached around and thumped him lightly on the back with my left hand, still holding the sword in it.

“I’m pretty sure that I woke in this forest…in order to meet you, Eugeo.”

I hardly even recognized that I had said the words, but I was certain they were the truth.

The Gigas Cedar—steel giant, tyrant of the forest—toppled without much fanfare just five days after I began training Eugeo in the ways of the Aincrad School.

Mostly, it was because the tree made for the perfect practice dummy. With each demonstration of Horizontal and Eugeo’s subsequent practice attempts, the slice in the tree’s trunk grew visibly deeper. The momentous event occurred when the cut was about 80 percent of the way through the tree.

“Seyaa!”

Eugeo hit the trunk with a perfectly executed horizontal slice, and it let out an eerie creaking the likes of which it had never made before.

We looked at each other in shock, glanced up at the branches of the Gigas Cedar far overhead, and froze in place. It was falling, very slowly, toward us.

In fact, it produced the illusion that the tree was not falling on top of us but that the ground was tilting forward. Such was the unreality of the sight of a thirteen-foot-wide tree giving in to gravity and toppling over.

The two and a half feet of trunk still connected—eighty cens, in this world’s measurement—was unable to bear the force of the rest, and it splintered and sprayed flecks like charcoal. The tree’s dying wail was louder than the force of ten consecutive thunderbolts, and the sound carried through the center of town all the way to the guard outpost at the northern end of the village, from what we were told.

We screamed and split in different directions. Ever so slowly, the black mass split the orange of the late afternoon sky and finally crashed to earth. The thunderous impact threw me high into the air, and when I landed on my rump, my life went down by about fifty points.

“I’m amazed…I didn’t realize there were so many people here,” I mumbled, taking the mug of apple ale from Eugeo’s outstretched hand.

Red fires ringed the center square of Rulid, illuminating the faces of the people gathered within it. Beside the fountain, an impromptu troupe of musicians played a jolly waltz with hide drums, very long flutes, and an instrument that looked like a set of bagpipes. The stomping and clapping of the people dancing along swirled up into the open sky.

I sat at a table off to the side, keeping time with my foot, possessed by a strange urge to leap into the midst of the people and join in the dancing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many villagers in one place, either. There’s even more people here than during the Great Solemnity prayer at the end of the year,” Eugeo said, smiling. I held out my mug and we shared yet another toast. The bubbling cider-like drink was the weakest kind in the village, but downing a long swig of it was enough to make my face hot.

When the village elder and other dignitaries learned of the tree’s fall, they had no choice but to convene a village meeting, right after the previous one last week. They came together and argued passionately about what should be done with Eugeo the Carver and me.

Frighteningly enough, many argued that we should actually be punished for completing the task of cutting down the tree a whole nine centuries ahead of schedule, but at the merciful suggestion of Elder Gasfut, a village-wide celebration was arranged, and Eugeo would be dealt with as the law dictated.

I couldn’t actually tell what the law dictated in this particular case. I asked Eugeo what it meant, but he just laughed and said I would find out soon enough.

Based on that reaction, it seemed clear that he wasn’t going to be persecuted. I drained my mug, picked up a meat skewer dripping with juices from a nearby plate, and took a massive bite.

In fact, all I’d eaten since coming to this world was that dreadful hard bread and the weak vegetable soup at the church—this was the first real meat I’d had. The tender beef substitute, slathered in its rich sauce, was so succulent, savory, and flavorful that I considered it worth cutting down the Gigas Cedar for this taste alone.

Of course, all was not well. In fact, I felt now that we had arrived only at the very start. I glanced over at the Blue Rose Sword, hanging proudly on Eugeo’s belt.

Over the last five days, he had used the Gigas Cedar as a practice target for the basic One-Handed Sword skill Horizontal. As the impromptu “Aincrad Style” name would suggest, it was a system-recognized sword skill from the old Sword Art Online VRMMO.

It made sense that you could recreate the action. When I visited Gun Gale Online, which was based around gun-fighting, I managed to make my way through a few very sticky fights by using sword skills. But that was only by retracing my avatar movements—there were no flashes of light or system-assisted acceleration. It simply wasn’t a gameplay system there.

But the Underworld fully facilitated sword skills. Make the designated motion and envision the movement of the entire skill, and then the sword would flash and speed away. On our first day of training, I was worried that I might be the only one capable of doing this, but by the second afternoon, Eugeo executed his first successful Horizontal, proving that any citizen could use sword skills if they fulfilled the requirements.

The problem was why it worked. There couldn’t be any connection between Rath’s STL virtual-reality Underworld and the late Argus’s SAO game. If anything, perhaps the answer lay in the man who’d brought me this fishy job with Rath and had once been part of the government’s SAO task force…

“That can’t be,” I muttered to myself as I took on a second skewer. If my imagination was correct, then he wasn’t just a go-between but someone inextricably linked to the core of all these events.

But there was no way to figure out any of that from here. I’d have to leave Rulid and go to the central city, far to the south, to gain more information.

The biggest impediment to the plan had just been cut down. There was only one thing left to do.

I finished off the meat and vegetables on the skewer and called out to my partner, who was watching the villagers from his seat across the table.

“Hey, Eugeo…”

“Uh…what is it?”

“After this—”

But a high-pitched shout interrupted me.

“Aha, here you are! What is the star of the festival doing sitting over here?!”

It took some time for me to recognize that the girl with her hands on her hips was Selka. Instead of her usual braids and black sister’s habit, she had her hair tucked behind a headband and wore a red vest and green skirt.

“Uh, well…I’m no good at dancing,” Eugeo mumbled.

I shook my head and hand as well. “And I’ve got memory loss…”

“It will come back to you once you try it!”

Her little hands grabbed ours and launched us out of our seats. Selka dragged the two of us to the middle of the square and pushed us forward. A cheer erupted from the crowd, and we were swallowed into the midst of the dance.

Fortunately, it was no more complex than the dances at the school sports festivals, and by the time they’d switched through three partners, I was getting the hang of it. Moving my body to the simplistic rhythm started being fun, and my feet got into the act.

The more I danced with the laughing, red-cheeked girls with features somewhere between Eastern and Western, the more I fell under the strange suspicion that maybe I really was a wanderer who had lost his memory.

In fact, I had danced in a VR world before, with the sylph warrior Leafa, the Alfheim avatar of my sister, Suguha. I saw her smile on my dancing partner’s face and felt something inside my nose sting.

A rush of keen homesickness overcame me. Meanwhile, the music sped up to a manic pace, then abruptly ended. I looked at the musicians and saw that the stage next to them now featured an imposing old man with a majestic beard. It was Gasfut, elder of Rulid and Selka’s father.

He clapped his hands and spoke in a strong baritone.

“My fellows! Please forgive the interruption, but you must hear me!”

The villagers raised their mugs of ale and apple liquor in a cheer, quenched their dance-induced thirst, then fell silent. The elder looked out over the crowd.

“The deepest desire of our founding ancestors has been fulfilled at last! The devil tree that stole the blessings of Terraria and Solus in the fertile land to the south has been felled! We will have fresh new barley and bean fields and grazing pastures for our cattle and sheep!”

Cheers drowned out his speech. He held up his hands, waiting for quiet to return.

“I call forth the one who achieved this feat—Eugeo, son of Orick!”

He beckoned to a corner of the square, where a nervous-looking Eugeo stood. The short man next to him must have been his father, Orick. Aside from the hair color, they looked totally unalike, and he appeared more confused than proud.

Eugeo proceeded forward at the urging of the other villagers, not his father. He rose next to the elder and turned to the crowd. The third and largest cheer yet erupted. I clapped, too, not to be outdone.

“In accordance with our rules,” the elder began, and the village fell silent, “for completing his Calling, Eugeo is granted the right to choose his next Calling! He may continue as a woodcutter, or plow the fields after his father, or tend to cattle, or brew ale, or do business, or whatever he chooses!”

What was that?!

I felt the afterglow of the dance rapidly fading.

This was no time to be holding hands and dancing with girls. I should have been giving Eugeo one final pep talk. If he announced he would start growing grain, my plan would be completely ruined.

I watched him with bated breath. He looked down, uncomfortable, scratching his head with one hand and clenching and unclenching the other. I began to wonder if I should rush the stage, put an arm around his shoulders, and announce that we were off to see the big city—until I heard a small voice at my side.

“Eugeo’s…going to leave the village…”

Selka had come to stand next to me at some point. There was a faint smile of both sadness and happiness on her lips.

“Y-you think so?”

“I know so. Why else would he hesitate to give his answer?”

As if he heard her, Eugeo’s hand reached down to grip the hilt of the Blue Rose Sword at his waist. He looked up, first at the elder, then at the rest of the village, and stated clearly and loudly, “I’m going…to be a swordsman. I will join the garrison at Zakkaria, train my skills, and one day reach Centoria.”

After a few moments of silence, little waves of murmuring broke out. It didn’t seem to me to be adulation. The adults were craning their necks toward one another, muttering darkly. Eugeo’s father and two other young men who I took to be his brothers looked more pained than anything.

Once again, it was Gasfut who brought order. He lifted a hand to silence the crowd, and with a stern expression, he said, “Eugeo, surely you don’t…”

Then he paused and stroked his long beard. “No…I will not ask why. It is your church-given right to choose your next Calling. Very well—as elder of Rulid, I recognize that the new Calling for Eugeo, son of Orick, is a swordsman. If you wish, you may leave the village and train in the sword.”

I heaved a long sigh of relief. Now I would be able to witness the core of this world with my own eyes. If Eugeo had chosen to remain a farmer, I was prepared to head out on my own, but with a lack of knowledge or resources, I couldn’t say how many months or years my trip would take. A weight left my shoulders as my concerns of the last few days evaporated.

The villagers seemed to have accepted their elder’s decision, and they began a hesitant round of applause. But before it could swell any louder, a sharp bellow cut across the night sky.

“Not so fast!”

A large young man strode through the crowd and leaped on the stage.

He had rough features and short hair the dull brown of dead leaves. But the simple longsword at his left side was what stuck out to me first. It was the guard who always stood watch at the southern waypoint of the village.

He puffed out his chest as a challenge to Eugeo and shouted, “It is my right first and foremost to seek employment in Zakkaria’s garrison! Eugeo cannot be the first to leave the village ahead of me!”

“Yeah! He’s right!” came a follow-up shout from a man behind him. He had the same color hair as the youngster but was much older and larger around the middle.

“Who’s that?” I asked Selka. She made a face.

“That’s Doik, the old head guard, and his son, Zink, who has the position now. Their family likes to claim they’re the most experienced in the village.”

“Ah, I see…”

I wondered what was going to happen now. Gasfut listened to Zink and his father and raised a hand to calm them down. “But Zink, you have only been at your man-at-arms Calling for six years. According to the laws, you cannot enter the dueling tournament in Zakkaria for another four.”

“Then Eugeo should wait for four years, too! He’s not as good at the sword as I am! It makes no sense that he should go first!”

“Mmm. Then how will you prove this claim that you are superior to Eugeo in skill?”

“Wha…!”

Zink and his father both went red in the face. The elder of the two was nearly steaming from the ears as he bellowed, “I won’t stand for such an insult, even from the elder of Rulid! If you’re telling me that a mere woodcutter can swing a faster sword than my son, then let’s have them prove it right here and now!”

A few irresponsible villagers shouted, egging him on. Sensing that there was more entertainment to come from this impromptu festival, they raised their mugs and stomped their feet, crowing about a duel.

To my astonishment, within moments Zink had challenged Eugeo to a duel, which Eugeo could not very well refuse. A space before the stage was cleared away, and they faced off. In disbelief, I turned to whisper into Selka’s ear, “I’ll be right back.”

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I made my way through the crowd in the direction of the fountain and raced up to Eugeo. While his opponent was as unruly and indignant as a bronco, Eugeo seemed more confused that it had come to this. His features relaxed when he saw me.

“Wh-what should I do, Kirito? Look what’s happened!”

“I don’t think you can get out of this with a simple apology at this point. Anyway, is this duel going to be a true sword battle?”

“Of course not. We have to stop before drawing blood.”

“Ahh…but if you can’t stop the sword in time and hit your target, that might end up killing your opponent. Listen—aim for Zink’s sword, not Zink. Give him one Horizontal on the blade and that should do it.”

“A-are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I guarantee it.”

I pounded him on the back; gave a quick bow to Zink and his father, who were staring at me suspiciously; and returned to the line of spectators.

At the podium, Gasfut clapped and called for silence.

“And now, outside of the original plan, we have a duel between Zink, our head man-at-arms, and the carver…er, the swordsman Eugeo! You are not to lower your opponent’s life through direct strikes. Is that understood?!”

Zink loudly drew his sword from his waist, and, a bit later, Eugeo reluctantly drew his. The gasp from the village crowd was no doubt due to the beauty of the Blue Rose Sword as it shone in the firelight.

Even Zink seemed to be overwhelmed by the aura of the sword. His head tilted back briefly before he regained his posture. With an even more hateful glare than before, the young guard jabbed a finger at Eugeo and said, to my surprise, “Does that sword really belong to you, Eugeo?! If it’s borrowed, I have the right to force you to use a different—”

But Eugeo interrupted with righteous fury. “I got this sword in the northern cave, so it belongs to me now!”

The crowd murmured, and Zink seemed to be at a loss for words. I figured that he would demand proof of ownership from Eugeo, but he didn’t. In a world without thievery, perhaps the simple act of stating that something was your own property was all the proof needed. Even doubting that statement might be seen as a violation of rights.

I had no idea if that was correct or not, but Zink didn’t push the issue any further. He spat into his palms and held his sword up high.

Eugeo, meanwhile, held his blade perfectly still at eye level, drew his left side back, and crouched.

As hundreds of villagers watched in silence, Gasfut raised his hand high, then brought it down as he commanded, “Begin!”

“Raaaah!!”

As I expected, Zink was the first to charge. He bellowed and raced forward to deliver a vertical slice from overhead. It was so forceful that I feared he might really intend to hit Eugeo.

“…!!”

I gasped. Zink’s sword changed directions in midair. He had gone from an overhead swing down to a sideways swipe from the right. As a feint, it was crude, but the timing was awful. I’d advised Eugeo to hit Zink’s sword with a Horizontal, but it would be very hard to deflect a flat swing with a flat swing. He could easily miss and wind up losing…

“Y-yaaaah!!”

The shout was rather inferior to Zink’s. And Eugeo’s sword skill was not Horizontal.

He set his sword at the right shoulder. The blade glowed deep blue. He made one earth-shaking stomp and sliced at a sharp forty-five-degree arc. That was the diagonal sword skill Slant—but I had never taught him that.

Eugeo’s attack, which came out a single pulse later, shot forward with lightning speed, striking Zink’s sideways swing from above. Even in the moment that the steel blade shattered miserably, I couldn’t help but question myself.

No doubt Eugeo had been practicing with a stick or something else when he went home at night. During that practice, he’d become aware of Slant—but there was nothing hesitant or amateur about that movement. If anything, the way he became one with the Blue Rose Sword was graceful, beautiful.

If he continued to build experience, learned a multitude of skills, and grew through actual battle, what sort of swordsman might he end up being? If…if I ever had to cross blades with him, would I actually emerge the victor?

The villagers marveled and applauded the flashy and unexpected conclusion, but it was the cold sweat running down my back that held my concentration.

Zink and his father retreated in stunned disbelief, and the music started up again. The festival was even more rousing than before, and it did not disperse until the church bell rang ten o’clock.

It took another three cups of the apple beverage for me to forget about my unease and rejoin the intoxicating dance circle. In the end, Selka had to drag me back to the church. At the door, Eugeo looked at me in mild exasperation but promised that we would begin our journey in the morning. I stumbled up to my room somehow and toppled onto the bed.

“Just because it’s a festival doesn’t mean you have to drink that much, Kirito. Here’s some water,” said Selka, offering me a cold cup fresh from the well. I downed it, feeling it cool off my brain, and exhaled. In Aincrad and Alfheim, the best you could do was pretend you were feeling drunk, but here in the Underworld, the alcohol was real. I made a mental note about that for next time. At my side, the young girl looked worried.

“Wh-what?” Selka asked suspiciously, noticing that I was staring at her. I tipped my head in embarrassment.

“I…I’m sorry. You probably wanted to speak more with Eugeo, huh?”

Selka’s cheeks suddenly went cherry red. She was still dressed in her nicest outfit. “Why would you bring that up?”

“Because by tomorrow morning…Actually, I should apologize for that first. Now it looks like I’m pretty much taking Eugeo out of the village. If he had been a woodcutter here for the rest of his life, he might have, well…started a family with you, eventually…”

Selka sighed theatrically and sat down next to me on the bed.

“Honestly, what do I even say about that?” she wondered, shaking her head in utter exasperation. “Well…fine. Yes, I’m sad that Eugeo will be leaving the village…but I’m also happy. Ever since Alice went away, he’s been living his life like he’s given up on everything, but now he’s smiling again. He made up his mind to go searching for my sister. I’m certain that on the inside, Father was happy, too…to learn that Eugeo hadn’t forgotten about her.”

“…I see…”

She bobbed her head and looked up at the full moon outside the window.

“Actually…I didn’t go into the cave hoping to copy my sister and touch the soil of the land of darkness. I knew I wasn’t capable of that. I knew…but I just wanted to get a bit closer to her. To go as far as I could…up to the point where I couldn’t go any farther, and then I’d know for sure…that I can never be Alice’s replacement.”

I pondered the meaning of her statement, then shook my head. “No, you’re really something. A normal girl would turn back at the bridge out of the village, or in the woods, or at the cave’s entrance. But you went all the way down into that dark place and found a goblin scouting party. You did something that only you can do.”

“Something that…only I can do…?” she asked, her eyes huge.

I nodded. “You aren’t a replacement for Alice. You have your own unique talents, Selka. So focus on developing those.”

In fact, I was certain that Selka’s talent for the sacred arts was about to take a huge leap. She had helped defeat the goblins with Eugeo and me, so her system authority level had to be higher now.

But that wasn’t the crux of the matter. She had sought the answer to who she was and found one. That, more than anything, would give her incredible energy. Belief in oneself was the truest power of the human soul.

It was time for me to find the answer to the question I’d been putting off.

Who or what was this sentient consciousness calling itself Kirito, or Kazuto Kirigaya? The fluctlight residing in a biological brain—the “real” me? Or a replica saved on storage media, read from my brain by the STL?

There was only one way to find out.

The Underworldians like Eugeo and Selka, with their artificial fluctlights, could not break the Taboo Index or Basic Imperial Law. But just because I could run afoul of this world’s taboos was not proof that I wasn’t an artificial fluctlight. I hardly knew any of the individual taboos in the index. The rules hadn’t been written into my soul.

Instead, I had to find out if I could break my own rules that I lived by—my own set of personal morals. I’d been considering this topic for several days, but it was actually quite difficult. Attacking the villagers or stealing their possessions was out of the question, and I didn’t feel right insulting someone just to confirm a personal suspicion. There was only one thing I could think of.

I turned and stared right into Selka’s face.

“…What?” she asked, blinking. I put a hand on her cheek and silently apologized to Asuna and Yui. Then I audibly apologized to Selka, leaned closer, and placed a light kiss on her white forehead, just before the headband.

She twitched, then sat still. I pulled away after three seconds and saw that she was glaring at me, cheeks red all the way to the ears.

“What…did you just do…?”

“Let’s call it…a swordsman’s oath,” I suggested weakly. On the inside, I savored a new factual certainty.

I had just carried out something that the real me would never do, thus proving that I was the real me. If I were a replica fluctlight, my body would have stopped automatically a few inches from Selka’s forehead.

She continued staring at me, rubbed her forehead, and sighed.

“An oath…? I don’t know if that’s how you do things in your country, but if you had kissed my…instead of my forehead, an Integrity Knight would be coming for you right now. That’s against the Taboo Index.”

Her voice had gone quiet at one point, and I couldn’t make out what she’d said, but I wasn’t going to ask. Selka shook her head again, grinned in annoyance, and asked, “So…what did you swear?”

“Isn’t it obvious? That I’ll go with Eugeo, save Alice, and bring your sister back to this village. You have my word…”

I paused, then slowly said the words.

“…as Kirito the Swordsman.”