Alicization Beginning Read online

  Copyright

  SWORD ART ONLINE, Volume 9: ALICIZATION BEGINNING

  REKI KAWAHARA

  Translation by Stephen Paul

  Cover art by abec

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  SWORD ART ONLINE

  ©REKI KAWAHARA 2012

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS

  First published in Japan in 2012 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2016 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Yen On eBook Edition: July 2017

  Originally published in paperback in December 2016 by Yen On.

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  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-56099-3

  E3-20170614-JV-PC

  PROLOGUE I

  JULY 372 HE

  1

  Squeeze the ax handle.

  Lift it up.

  Swing it down.

  Such simple actions, and yet the tiniest lapse of concentration would cause the ax to miss its mark, sending a tremendous jolt through the arms as the blade struck hard bark. Breathing, pulse, speed, shifting of weight—all these factors must be perfectly controlled for the heavy ax head to properly unleash its power into the tree and create the sound of its famed bite.

  But understanding these things did not make them any easier to execute. It would soon be the second summer since Eugeo had been given this job, which was bestowed upon him in the spring of his tenth year. At best, even now, he could produce this perfect strike only one time in ten. Old Man Garitta, who had previously held this position and taught Eugeo the ropes, could strike true every single time. Garitta never looked tired, no matter how often he swung the heavy ax, but it took Eugeo only fifty swings for his hands to go numb, his shoulders to ache, and his arms to stop rising when he commanded them.

  “Forty…three! Forty…four!”

  He tried counting aloud the ax strikes against the tree as a means of encouragement, but sweat blurred his eyes, his palms slipped, and his accuracy fell further. He swung the tree cutter’s ax around madly, putting his entire body into the rotation.

  “Forty…nine! Fif…ty!!”

  The last swing was wildly off base, hitting the bark far from the sharp, deep rut in the tree and producing an ugly ringing noise. The vibration nearly caused sparks to shoot from Eugeo’s eyes; defeated, he dropped the ax, stumbled a few steps back, and plopped down onto the thick moss.

  He sat there panting until he heard a joking voice off to his right. “I counted about three good sounds out of your fifty swings. That makes, what, forty-one in total? Looks like the siral water’s on you today, Eugeo.”

  The voice belonged to another boy about his age, lying down a short distance away. Eugeo felt around for his leather canteen and lifted it to his lips. He gulped down the lukewarm water and tightened the cap again, feeling human at last.

  “Hmph! You’ve only got forty-three yourself. I’ll catch up in no time. Go on,” he said. “It’s your turn…Kirito.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Kirito—Eugeo’s closest, longtime friend and his partner in this gloomy “Calling” since last spring—brushed back his sweaty black bangs, lifted a leg straight up, then hopped to his feet. But rather than pick up the ax, he put his hands on his waist and looked up. Eugeo’s gaze traveled to the sky with his.

  The mid-July summer sky was astonishingly blue, and in the midst of it, the sun goddess, Solus, unleashed all her light. Yet the tree towering over them spread its branches so thick and wide that nearly none of the light reached Eugeo and Kirito on the ground.

  With every passing moment, the great tree’s leaves devoured the blessing of the sun goddess and its roots sucked up the favor of the earth goddess, Terraria, healing the damage that Eugeo and Kirito were so painstakingly chopping into it. No matter how hard they tried on any given day, by the next morning the tree had refilled half the damage they’d cut into it. Eugeo sighed and returned his gaze to the tree.

  The tree—called by its sacred name of “Gigas Cedar” by the villagers—was a true monster, with a trunk four mels wide and a height of easily more than seventy mels from the ground. Even the bell tower of the tallest church in the village was only a quarter of that height, and to Eugeo and Kirito, who had just grown to a mel and a half this year, the tree might as well be the Titan for which it was named.

  As Eugeo looked at the slice cut into the trunk, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was even possible to fell the beast with human strength alone. The wedge was just about a mel deep now, meaning the trunk still had three quarters of its thickness intact.

  Last spring, Eugeo and Kirito had been summoned to the village elder’s home, where they were given the duty of carving the great cedar and told its mind-numbing story.

  The Gigas Cedar had spread its roots throughout this land ages before the village of Rulid was founded, and ever since that founding generation, the villagers had ceaselessly put ax to trunk. Old Man Garitta was the sixth-generation carver of the tree, which made Eugeo and Kirito the seventh. Over three hundred years had been spent on the task.

  Three hundred years! It was more time than Eugeo could fathom—he had only just turned ten. That hadn’t changed now that he was eleven, of course. All he could process was that over his mother and father’s generation, his grandparents’ generation, and generations even before that, the carvers had put a countless number of swings into the tree, and all that work had combined to produce this slice he was looking at now, less than a mel deep.

  The elder told him in grave tones why it was so important for them to fell the great tree.

  The Gigas Cedar was so large and its vitality so powerful that it was stealing the blessings of the sun and earth gods over a vast region. No seeds could take root in the land over which its towering shadow reached.

  Rulid was at the very northern end of the Norlangarth Empire, the northern of the four empires that ruled over the realm of humanity—in other words, it was literally at the end of the world. Steep mountains surrounded it to the north, east, and west, which meant that the only means to expanding their cropland and grazing pastures was cutting down the forest to the south. Unfortunately, the Gigas Cedar was located right at the forest’s entrance, so the village could not grow until it was taken out of the picture.

  Yet the tree’s bark was as hard as iron; no amount of fire could induce it to smoke, and its roots stretched just as wide and deep as the reach of its branches. So they used the Dragonbone Ax left beh
ind by the founders, a tool strong enough to cut metal, and the task of carving the tree was passed down through the generations.

  When the village elder had finished the tale, his voice trembling with the weight and dignity of duty, Eugeo had timidly asked, “If it’s so hard, why don’t we leave the Gigas Cedar and go around it?”

  The elder sternly informed him that cutting down the tree had been the founders’ deepest desire, and it was customary for two of every generation to carry on the carver’s Calling. Next, Kirito had asked why the founders had bothered to start the village here at all. The elder had been momentarily taken aback before exploding with fury and boxing first Kirito’s ears, then Eugeo’s for good measure.

  Thus, for the last year and three months, the boys had taken turns chopping away at the Gigas Cedar with the Dragonbone Ax. But perhaps because they were still inexperienced at the task, it did not seem like they were making much progress on the existing slice within the tree. Three centuries of chopping had gone into that cut, so it made sense that two children would not produce much in a year’s work, but it was nonetheless very discouraging to have so little to show for their labor.

  In fact, if they wanted to, they could be discouraged using much clearer and more concrete evidence. Kirito had the same thought as he glared silently at the Gigas Cedar and walked over to it, reaching for the trunk.

  “Don’t do it, Kirito. The elder told you not to go around constantly reading the tree’s life,” Eugeo pleaded, but Kirito wore only his usual mischievous grin when he turned around to look at his friend.

  “The last time I looked was two months ago. It’s not constantly, just every once in a while.”

  “Oh, you and your excuses…Hang on, I want to see, too,” Eugeo added. His panting had finally calmed down, so he flipped up onto his feet like Kirito did and trotted over to his partner.

  “I’m going to open it now,” Kirito muttered, and held out the index and middle fingers of his left hand, the others tucked away into his palm. Using this brush, he drew a shape like a writhing snake in midair—a primitive version of the sigil of dedication to the goddess of creation.

  Once the sigil was done, Kirito struck the trunk of the Gigas Cedar. It didn’t make the usual dry bark sound but instead rang out soft and pure, like silverware. A little square window of light appeared, as if shining right out of the tree’s trunk.

  Everything that existed in the world, whether mobile or stationary, was given “life” by Stacia, the goddess of creation. Insects and flowers had small amounts of life, cats and horses more, and humans even more than that. The forest trees and mossy rocks had many, many times more life than humans. Every being’s life grew from its birth until a certain peak point, and then shrank. When that life ran out at last, the animals and people would perish, the plants would wilt, and the rocks would crumble.

  A Stacia Window displayed the remaining life in sacred script. Anyone with enough sacred power could call one up by drawing the sigil and striking the target. Just about anyone could bring up a window for little things like rocks and grasses, but it was more difficult for animals, and a background in elementary sacred arts was necessary to open a human’s window. Of course, everyone was a bit scared to look upon their own window.

  Normally a tree’s window would be easier to see than a person’s, but the monstrous Gigas Cedar was much more difficult, and it was only half a year ago that Eugeo and Kirito had become skilled enough to see it.

  According to rumor, a master of the sacred arts who was elected senator of the central Axiom Church in Centoria once succeeded in opening the window of the earth goddess, Terraria, herself after a ritual lasting seven days and nights. One simple glimpse at the life of the earth was enough to terrify the wits out of the senator, and he fled and disappeared, driven mad by what he saw.

  Ever since hearing that, Eugeo was afraid of looking at not just his own window but at other large things like the Gigas Cedar. However, Kirito was not bothered in the least; in fact, his face was pressed up close to the shining window. Eugeo was reminded that sometimes he just couldn’t fathom his best friend, but eventually he gave in to curiosity and peered at the window for himself.

  The purple rectangle contained a string of odd numerals written in a combination of straight and curved lines. Eugeo could read just the numbers of the ancient sacred script, but writing it was forbidden.

  “Umm…” Eugeo murmured, sounding out the numbers one by one as he counted them on his fingers. “235…542.”

  “Yeah…How much was it two months ago?”

  “I think it was about…235,590.”

  “…”

  Kirito threw up his hands in a dramatic gesture of defeat and fell to his knees. He scrabbled his fingers through his black hair. “Just fifty! All that work over two months, and we took it down only fifty out of 235,000! We’ll never topple this tree for as long as we live at this rate!”

  “Of course we won’t.” Eugeo smiled wryly. There was no other answer to give. “Six generations of carvers have been working for three centuries and only gotten a quarter of the way through. At that rate, it’ll take, um…at least eighteen generations and nine more centuries to finish.”

  “Don’t…even…start,” Kirito groaned, looking up balefully at Eugeo. Suddenly, he lunged and grabbed his friend around the legs. Stunned, Eugeo toppled backward onto the local bed of moss.

  “Why do you always have to be such a goody-goody?! Try to figure out some way to deal with this unfair duty instead!” Kirito demanded, but he wore a huge smile as he straddled Eugeo and ruffled his victim’s hair.

  “Ahh! Hey, stop it!”

  Eugeo grabbed Kirito by the wrists and pulled hard. Kirito yanked back on his own to avoid being hurled over, and Eugeo took advantage of that momentum to roll upward and take the overhead position.

  “There, we’ll see how you like it!” He laughed, tugging at Kirito’s hair with his dirty hands, but unlike his own flaxen hair, Kirito’s black hair already stuck out any which way it wanted, so the attack did little. He was forced to switch to tickling instead.

  “Agh! S-stop…n-no fair,” Kirito heaved, out of breath, as he struggled against the tickle attack.

  Suddenly, a fierce, high-pitched voice broke the grappling stalemate:

  “Hey! You’re slacking off again!”

  Eugeo and Kirito instantly froze.

  “Ugh…”

  “Oh, crap…”

  They both hunched their shoulders sheepishly and turned toward the voice.

  Standing atop a rock nearby was a figure with hands on hips and chest puffed out. Eugeo grimaced and muttered, “H-hi, Alice. You’re early today.”

  “I’m not early, I’m exactly on time,” the figure snapped in a huff, the long hair on either side of her head throwing off dazzling blond light in the meager dapple that reached through the leaves. The girl leaped nimbly off the rock, her bright blue skirt and white apron flapping in the breeze. She held a large woven basket in her right hand.

  The girl’s name was Alice Zuberg, and she was the village elder’s daughter. She was the same age as Eugeo and Kirito.

  Custom in Rulid—in the entire northern territory, in fact—stated that all children in the spring of their tenth year were given a Calling and entered into an apprenticeship for that job. Alice was the sole exception, as she attended school at the church. She was receiving private instruction from Sister Azalia to capitalize on her gift for the sacred arts, which was the most noteworthy of any child in the village.

  But Rulid was not a bountiful enough place to allow an eleven-year-old girl to sit around and study all day, even if she was the elder’s daughter and had a preternatural gift. Every able-bodied resident needed to work together to combat the Mischief of the Dark God Vecta—drought and flood, pestilence, and anything else that threatened the life of crops or livestock—or there wouldn’t be enough to survive the winter.

  Eugeo’s father, Orick, raised a barley field on cleared forestland to
the south of the village that had been in the family for generations. He made a show of being delighted when his third son, Eugeo, was chosen to be a Gigas Cedar carver, but inwardly, he was disappointed. They’d be paid his earnings as a carver from the village treasury, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to replace that extra set of hands to work in the field.

  The eldest son of each family typically received the same Calling as his father, with the daughters and further sons of farming families usually following suit. The child of the general store took on the general store, the sons of the men-at-arms grew up to guard the village, and the village elder’s child became the new elder. Rulid followed these traditions for centuries after its founding. The adults claimed that this preserved the village and was thanks to the blessings of Stacia, but Eugeo couldn’t help but feel something unsatisfying with the explanation.

  He couldn’t tell if the adults really wanted to grow the village or if they wanted things to stay exactly the same. If they really wanted more farmland, why didn’t they just go to the trouble of moving past the accursed tree to the lands farther to the south? But even the village elder, purportedly the wisest of anyone, saw no need to change any of their ancient traditions.

  So no matter how much time passed, Rulid was chronically poor, which meant that Alice could study only in the morning, after which she would tend to the livestock and clean the house. Her first task after school was bringing lunch to Eugeo and Kirito.

  Alice leaped off the tall rock, basket slung over her arm. Her deep-blue eyes glared at Eugeo and Kirito, locked in mortal combat on the ground. Eugeo hastily sat up and shook his head before those lips could issue another bolt of lightning.

  “W-we weren’t slacking off! We finished our morning work, promise!” he babbled as Kirito mumbled an affirmation from below.

  Alice graced them with another withering stare, then snorted. “If you’ve got the energy to wrestle after finishing your work, maybe I should ask Garitta to up your number of swings.”

  “P-please, anything but that!”