Alicization Running

by Reki Kawahara

  I stood up again. Eugeo beamed and applauded, while Sadore snorted ferociously.

  “Hmph! So the skinny little academy trainee can swing that thing, eh?”

  “It’s a good sword,” I said, judging that no more needed to be said. The craftsman finally broke into a snarling grin and tugged his beard again.

  “Bet your ass it is. Six black-brick grindstones! But…a promise is a promise. No charge for my services—just tell ’em it was the master craftsman Sadore’s work, once you get famous! The sword’s yours now.”

  “…Thank you. Thank you very much,” I said, bowing deeply. Eugeo joined in. Then I straightened up and sheathed the sword again.

  Sadore gazed at the black blade for two seconds, then grinned again. “You’ve got to think of a name now. And remember, my place is associated with it, so don’t go givin’ it some weird title.”

  “Uhh…”

  I had no quick answer. Until this point, all the virtual worlds I’d been through were the kind where objects had preset names when you got them. Coming up with names wasn’t my strong suit.

  “I…I’ll think about it,” I suggested. “Anyway, if its life starts to drop, I’ll be back to get it sharpened again…”

  “Sure thing. And it won’t be free, I’ll tell you that!”

  “I—I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  We gave him one last round of bows and took a few steps toward the door.

  Suddenly, a loud clanging erupted behind us, and we jumped. Over my shoulder, Sadore was staring at the west wall in shock.

  I followed his line of sight to the buckler on the wall, now split into two, with one half clattering on the floor.

  It would be a violation of the Taboo Index to intentionally destroy shop merchandise.

  It would be a violation of the Taboo Index to accidentally destroy merchandise and fail to pay for it.

  In the case of , one may escape punishment only if the shopkeeper forgives the violator.

  I rushed back to the academy, poring over these newly learned bits of information. My teacher of all things taboo-related, Eugeo, muttered and complained into my ear as we rushed along.

  “…If you were just going to test it out, you didn’t need to use one of your top-secret techniques! You should have realized that it was going to ruin some of the wares in there!”

  “Er, well…I didn’t think I was using a sword sk—er, a technique…”

  “I saw what you did, Kirito. The moment you swung it down, the blade glowed just a bit. I have to assume that it was some supersecret Aincrad technique you haven’t taught me yet!”

  “Er, well…I’m pretty sure there’s no such technique in the Aincrad style…”

  As we walked and bickered, a sweet scent hit my nostrils and went straight to my brain.

  North Centoria was split into ten districts. The farthest south (and closest to Central Cathedral) was District One, home of the imperial palace; then District Two and the imperial government; while Districts Three and Four contained noble houses. The mansions in District Three would make Asuna jealous, but even more surprising was that the nobles from first- to third-rank also owned large private estates outside the city.

  Some estates contained their own little villages, the residents of which were essentially servile to the noble family. It was only inevitable that noble children raised in those circumstances eventually went on to produce a few bad eggs like Raios and Humbert.

  District Five was a cluster of imperial facilities and buildings: the knighthood headquarters, the coliseum, and, of course, the Imperial Swordcraft Academy.

  Districts Six and Seven were commercial areas. Districts Eight, Nine, and Ten at the north end of the city were civilian residential areas. From what I had learned in geography lessons, this layout was absolutely identical in the east, west, and south portions of Centoria, too. That couldn’t be by coincidence, and I doubted that all four emperors had gotten their heads together to plan it out, either. It had to be a unified design choice by someone powerful within the Axiom Church. Being a student meant I was too busy to think about them much, but it was a reminder of the absolute power of the church.

  At any rate—in order to get from Sadore’s metalworking shop in District Seven to the academy in District Five, we had to pass through District Six, which was packed with tempting food markets and restaurants. Essentially all the money that had fled my wallet over the past year had gone into District Six.

  The most dangerous time was around two o’clock on a day of rest. This was right around the time that the Jumping Deer restaurant on East Third Street baked up its famous honey pies and sent the smell wafting out into the street. Every time I caught that smell, I needed to make a high-difficulty saving throw against temptation—and most times, I lost.

  “…Hey, Eugeo. It’s a good thing we didn’t have to pay for the broken shield or the sword itself, isn’t it?” I noted, slowing down.

  My partner nodded, but with suspicion. “True…After we joined the academy, I found out that Sadore’s got certification as a first-class crafts-master. If he’d forced us to pay, our entire savings wouldn’t have covered it.”

  “Ohh…Hey, maybe this is a pointless question, but what would’ve happened if we didn’t have enough? Would they arrest us on the spot?”

  “No, that wouldn’t happen. It would get put on a tab that we’d have to pay down in monthly amounts.”

  “Oh, I see…”

  Unlike Aincrad, where the Cardinal control system regimented the in-game economy to fix the value of col, the shia of the Underworld had a more free-flowing value dictated by the residents’ activities. Therefore, it was important for even starving students to do their part and stimulate the economy.

  Empowered by this noble motive, I suggested, “Well, since we’ve saved ourselves some extra cash, why don’t we swing by and get three each?”

  My partner sighed, having seen all of this coming a mile away, and said, “Make it two.”

  I grinned and nodded, then shifted directions to lead us over toward the left, where a young lady was setting some fresh-baked honey pies at the sales window of the restaurant.

  At some point, the weight of the sword package slung over my back had vanished into familiarity, and I didn’t even notice it was there. As if it had been there for years.

  4

  When I returned to the academy, savoring the harmonious aftertaste of melting honey and butter, Eugeo split off to visit Golgorosso, while I headed for the primary trainee dorm’s office. I needed to apply to Miss Azurica to bring in the sword as a personal item.

  Bringing any blade three feet long into a real-world school would get you not only scolded by the teacher but possibly arrested. Still, given that the goal of this virtual academy was swordsmanship, students were allowed to possess their own personal weapon.

  The number was limited to one, because each sword would periodically absorb trace amounts of sacred power—of spatial resources. In practice, this meant that a weapon damaged in a duel, once polished and returned to its sheath, would gradually regain life—in other words, suck sacred power out of the air. If a blade went so dull that it couldn’t automatically repair itself, it needed the help of a professional sharpener. If the damage was bad enough to break or chip the weapon, only a blacksmith could repair it.

  If there were no limits on weapon possession, and a particularly obsessed student brought in a hundred, the buildup would cause sacred-power anomalies around the room. So theory said that one was the only safe number.

  Azurica wasn’t working the counter, due to it being a day of rest, but she had left the office door open while she did paperwork. Her blue-gray eyes looked up in surprise when I rapped on the door.

  “What is it, Primary Trainee Kirito?”

  “Pardon me, ma’am. I’ve come to get permission to bring in a personal sword,” I said with a little bow, stepping through the doorway. Along the walls were a number of shelves stuffed with leather-bound files, a desk, and
a single chair. In other words, this one woman managed the primary trainee dorm and its 120 students entirely.

  She was a bit confused by my request but got up and immediately went straight to a specific file in the wall of shelves. She pulled a piece of paper out of it and slid it over to me.

  “Please fill out the necessary information.”

  “Er, of course.”

  I glanced down in apprehension, but all the form wanted was name, student number, and sword priority. Relieved that it didn’t have a field for “parent/guardian” or anything like that, I put down the name Kirito and the number 7—then came to a stop. Now that I thought of it, I’d even gone so far as to test out the sword, and yet I had never once opened its window.

  Miss Azurica watched as I lowered the cloth bundle from my back onto the table and undid the rope tying it up. I could open the window just with the hilt exposed, so I peeled back a corner of the cloth.

  “…!”

  There was a sharp intake of breath, and I looked up. The normally calm and frank Miss Azurica was staring, wide-eyed.

  “Umm…is something wrong?” I asked. She blinked a few times, then shook her head. She did not elaborate any further, so I returned to the sword, made the two-fingered motion command, and tapped the pommel. The properties window appeared with a little bell chime.

  It read: Class 46.

  That was actually one class higher than the divine Blue Rose Sword. No wonder it was so heavy. I wrote down the number on the third line, returned the cloth, and handed her the completed form.

  Azurica’s gaze slid from the sword to the paper. She stared at the information; she already knew my name and number, so it had to be that priority number she was looking at.

  I began to get nervous, wondering if perhaps there was an upper limit to the object priority of any weapon being brought into the dorm, when…

  “Trainee Kirito.”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Do you have…that sword’s memory…?”

  She stopped there, closed her eyes for a bit, then opened them. She was the normal, stern dorm manager again.

  “…Never mind. Your form has been received. As I hardly need mention, use of actual swords is limited to private training. It is not to be used in tests or group practice under any circumstances. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” I replied. As I put the black sword’s package over my back again, I wondered if I should ask about her unfinished comment. Then I considered that she wasn’t likely to give me an answer, so I made the knight’s salute and left the office.

  As I walked back toward the front entrance, my mind pored over those words.

  That sword’s…memory.

  It was a strange phrase. True, the sword and everything else in this world was stored in a format called mnemonic visual data. But that was a technology invented by Rath in the real world, and nobody who lived in the Underworld would be aware of it.

  So Miss Azurica’s comment was more of a literal one. That this black blade held some kind of memory.

  But what did that actually mean? What did she see in this black sword…?

  I left the building, thoughts and questions swirling in my head, as the bell tower overhead rang out the three o’clock melody. The bells here were far deeper and louder than those in Rulid, but the tune itself was exactly the same.

  My meeting with Liena was at five.

  Based on my test swing at Sadore’s shop, the new sword felt perfectly natural to me—so familiar that it might as well have been my sword from the old SAO coming back. But I still needed to confirm that I could actually pull off the high-level sword skills of the Aincrad style first.

  On the day of rest, which was the only day of the week we were allowed to leave the academy, most of the Centoria-based students went back home, while the few from farther north went around to visit various spots in the city, leaving the campus rather barren. There was even a small woods and a brook running through the school, creating plenty of places to practice techniques—but I wanted to be absolutely certain that no one would see me. After all, I was about to attempt combination skills, something that no sword school in this entire world possessed.

  Why were there sword skills in the Underworld? And why weren’t there any combination skills?

  I’d been here for two years now and was no closer to finding the answer to these questions. The only potential theory I had at the moment was that the Rath engineers had made use of The Seed creation package to construct the Underworld…but even that wasn’t a complete explanation.

  The freely distributed Seed—a shrunken-down version of the Cardinal system—did not contain sword skills. Out of all the VRMMOs in existence in 2026, the only one with sword skills was ALfheim Online, which contained a full copy of the former SAO server. But there was no way that ALO’s management company, Ymir, was involved with Rath’s experiment.

  Anything beyond this point was just baseless speculation. If I wanted to know the truth, I had to get to the top of Central Cathedral and make contact with a system manager.

  At any rate, the swordsmen of the Underworld could use sword skills as the ultimate techniques of their respective styles, but they were all single-attack skills like Vertical or Avalanche.

  I had a guess as to why this was the case: because there was essentially no battle here. The absolute law of the Taboo Index and the invincible Integrity Knights protected the Underworld. Therefore, all “battle” within its borders came in the form of duels. All they sought was clean, beautiful victory. For centuries, the swordsmen of this world had pursued an ideal form—that of the bold pose from a distance, closing the gap, and finishing with one big, decisive blow.

  It also served the purpose of defending against the possibility of spontaneous accidents, perhaps. All the regional dueling tournaments used the “stop-short” method, while the higher events in Centoria were ruled over on the first clean hit. That made it somewhat inevitable that they would avoid any combination attacks that were difficult to stop after the first blow.

  Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that fighters like Volo Levantein rose to prominence: blessed with size and strength and absolutely confident in the power of their single strike. If I’d been forbidden from using multipart skills in SAO, I would never have been able to beat players of the same level who used double-handed weapons.

  No doubt that was the reason that Sortiliena had been unable to overcome Volo for the past two years.

  She wasn’t going to be able to use a multipart attack just because I showed it to her today. Even Eugeo, who hadn’t undergone any training in existing styles before he met me, took months to master the two-part Vertical Arc.

  But perhaps I could show her that massive overhead swings were not all there was to swordplay. The Serlut style was similar to my Aincrad style, so if I could help erase her preconception of High-Norkia style being more powerful, she might stand a chance in the graduation match.

  I headed east through the campus until I was at the edge of the grounds. The walls around the school were fan-shaped and contained a central school building, main practice hall, library, two trainee dorms and instructor housing, and the elite disciple dorm, with plenty of space to spare after that. There were large gates on the north and south walls, a steep little hill to the west, and a spacious forest to the east, neither of which featured any students on a day off.

  I chose the forest anyway, thanks to the ample visual cover, and walked until I found a nice little opening. The short, fine grass was as thick as a soccer pitch, the perfect ground to avoid tripping on. I glanced about me again, making sure there was nothing around except for a few floating butterflies, and reached over my back.

  I loosened the cloth by feel and grabbed the exposed hilt, savoring the sensation of the wrapped leather sinking into my palm, and yanked.

  The pitch-black longsword caught the sun shining through the branches. As it was carved out of the Gigas Cedar branch, I supposed it was technically a
wooden sword. But the reflection of the light off the blade was so sharp and tough that it looked like nothing but metal. One glance was all it took to recognize the high priority of the item fashioned over a very long year by Sadore the master craftsman. Yet no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t see how such an object would contain “memories.”

  I decided to save that question for later and took a normal stance, raising the sword with one hand. Unlike my last practice swing, this time I envisioned a technique—Slant, a diagonal slashing sword skill that I’d used countless times before.

  After a brief pause and hold, a vivid light-blue glow rippled across the blade. Pushed and guided by unseen hands, I accelerated the effect with my push-off leg and right arm.

  Shwa! The slash rocketed through space. A diagonal line quickly erupted and trickled away into the air like heat haze. The force of the gust flattened all the grass in the clearing to one direction.

  I watched the trunk of a tree about fifteen feet ahead from my follow-through pose. But while the skill’s effects wore off, no damage appeared on the bark.

  That made sense; the range of Slant was maybe eight feet at best. The effect of the move shouldn’t last twice that distance.

  But if that was the case…why did the buckler in the shop split, if it was the same distance away? Surely it didn’t naturally reach the end of its life at that very coincidental second. And I did not use a sword skill then. Eugeo claimed the sword had shone…but I didn’t know why.

  It just didn’t make sense. This world was full of mysteries.

  I sighed, straightened up, collected my breathing, and started the motion for my next skill.

  A direct overhead slash. Just before the tip touched the ground, it bounced back upward. That was the two-part skill Vertical Arc. A more powerful gust of wind arose this time, rustling the grass violently.

  So far, these were moves I could still achieve with a wooden sword. This time, I shifted my legs, held the blade at my waist, and twisted right.