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

Project Alicization ----- Chapter Twenty-Four

March 378 HE, Underworld Human Realm
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Pretty soon I had changed back into my original clothes, and I left the room with Kazuto.

Down the stairs and out the back door next to the kitchen, there was a brilliant sunrise overhead. She had said it was before six o'clock, which made me wonder how the people in this world told time. I hadn't seen any clocks in the dining room or guest room.

I puzzled over that one in conversation with Kazuto as I walked down faded paving stones. Very soon I saw a stone well ahead. The grass around it was wet, probably from the children using it. Kazuto removed the lid and lowered the wooden bucket until it made a satisfying kerplunk at the bottom. When he pulled the bucket up on its rope, it was full of crystal clear water, which I transferred to the nearby basin.

It was bitingly cold, but I slapped it onto my face anyway, then scooped up another cup and drank it down, feeling the last remnants of sleep wash away. I saw Kazuto do the same as I thought about my sleep time. I had probably gone to sleep before nine o'clock last night, which was why it felt like I'd had a solid eight hours, despite being up so early...but that raised another question.

If this was the Underworld, then the FLA function had to be in effect. If the acceleration factor was three, that meant I had less than three actual hours of sleep, and if my vague theories from last night about a thousand-fold accelerator were right, that would mean less than thirty seconds of sleep. Could so little rest actually refresh my mind the way it felt now?

It was all incomprehensible. I had to get out of here as soon as possible to figure out the situation...and yet that whisper in my ears from last night refused to go away.

Didn't I, Shi Saiko—regardless of whether my awakening in this world was the act of an error or the intentions of someone else—have a role to fulfill here? I didn't believe in fate, but I couldn't deny that I often believed that every human action held some sort of either conscious, subconscious or unconscious meaning. Not to mention, I was obviously here due to a human action, wether mine or someone else's.

I splashed another douse of cold water on my face to snap me out of my thoughts. We had two courses of action here: first, to look around the village to see if there were any Rath staffers who would know how to log out. The other was to travel to this "central city" they mentioned to learn the reason that this world existed in the first place.

The former didn't seem like it would be that hard. I couldn't say anything for sure without knowing the exact FLA factor, but if there were any Rath employees among the villagers, then they couldn't possibly be logged in for years or decades at a time. In other words, if any residents were traders or travelers who left home at times, it was highly likely that they would be company observers.

As far as the latter went, I had no plan for that. Eugeo said it would take a week to get to the city by horse, which meant at least three times that by foot. I wanted to ask for a horse, but I didn't know how to get one, and I had no money for the equipment and supplies necessary for the journey. Not to mention whatever we needed, we'd need two times the amount for me and Kazuto. I was missing too much basic knowledge about the world; clearly, I needed someone to act as a guide. Eugeo was the best suited for that, but he had a Calling that he needed to do for the rest of his life.

Would the quickest method be to violate that Taboo Index and have a whatever-knight come and arrest me? But that would probably get me taken straight to the cells of the city, and I wasn't cut out for years of hard prison labor. Not to mention the possibility that I would be executed outright.