S.A.O Project Alicization - OC/Male Reader Insert

Project Alicization ----- Chapter Twenty-One

March 378 HE, Underworld Human Realm
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It was an illusion. I told myself that and waited for the shock to pass. I had no personal connection to this Alice, Eugeo's old friend. My mind must have reacted to the generic name, that was all. In fact, hadn't Asuna just been talking about it at Dicey Café yesterday? Rath, the developers of the STL, the Underworld virtual realm-they were all taken from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The coincidence of the names repeating was startling but probably meaningless. More important was another piece of information contained in Eugeo's story.

He said he was eleven years old as of six years ago. Which meant he was seventeen now, and as far as I could tell, he had full memory of all that time-about the same length of time that I'd been alive.

But that was impossible. If the FLA's factor of time was three, it would take nearly six years of real time to simulate seventeen years' worth of time for this world. But as far as I knew, it had been only three months since the STL's test unit was set up.

How should I take this information?

If this was not the STL but some other, unknown full-dive machine, then it had been functioning for seventeen years. Or perhaps the time factor of three for the FLA was a lie, and they could run it over thirty times the speed of normal time. Neither case was believable in the least.

Anxiety and curiosity welled up within me in equal measure. Part of me wanted to log out at once and ask a human being what had happened, while another part of me wanted to stay on the inside and track down the answers to my doubts directly.

I swallowed the last bit of bread and hesitantly asked, "Then...why don't you go search for her? In this central city."

As soon as I said the words, I realized I had made a mistake. The suggestion was too far outside of Eugeo's regular expectations. The flaxen-haired boy stared at me for several seconds without reaction, then whispered incredulously, "Rulid Village is at the very northern end of the Norlangarth Empire. To get to Centoria at the very southern end of the empire, it would take an entire week with the fleetest of horses. I mean, it takes two days just to walk to Zakkaria, the nearest town. You couldn't even get there in a day if you left at sunrise on a day of rest."

"Then if you prepared for a proper journey..."

"Listen, Shi. You're about my age-didn't you get a Calling where you grew up? You know I can't just abandon my Calling and go on a journey. Also your friend must have one too"

"...Oh, g-good point," I said, scratching my head. I watched Eugeo's reaction carefully.

The boy was clearly not just a regular old NPC. His wealth of expression and natural conversation skills were absolutely human in nature.

But at the same time, his actions appeared to be bound by some limiting force far more effective and absolute than the laws of the real world. Just like a VRMMO NPC, forbidden to act outside his approved boundaries.

Eugeo claimed he wasn't arrested because he didn't venture into this area defined by what he called the "Taboo Index." So that was the absolute standard he had to follow-probably hard-coded through his fluctlight. I didn't know what Eugeo's Calling (his job) was, but it was hard to believe that it could be more important than the life or death of the girl he grew up with.