"If we want to start with the ALO servers currently managed by RECT Inc., we will have to get around the server firewall. I am not especially skilled in that area, but while I was looking after Kayaba, I became familiar with the architecture of the SAO servers. Later, I also took part in observing the Argus servers. If ALO's architecture is similar to SAO's, there should be a way."
After gathering her emotions, Rinko began discussing the matter with Satoru.
"In short, as long as we have enough time, we should be able to observe ALO the same way we observed SAO before. But anything deeper than that will probably still be unreachable without sufficient permissions."
She thought for a moment.
"Sugou is talented as well, but he and Kayaba did not seem to get along. That was also why he left the lab. He is not a network specialist either, but he did put some effort into that field."
"When the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications asked me to help before, I had contact with people well versed in network defense. If I find a suitable excuse and ask them a few key questions in passing, it should be feasible."
"What can I do?" Satoru asked.
"In the SAO Kayaba created, there is a program-level 'Impact Program.' We can call it that for now." Rinko paused. "SAO had an end trigger. For example, reaching the hundredth floor and defeating the boss would trigger the game's dismantling, though in your case, you challenged him directly and achieved it before reaching the hundredth floor."
"You mean...?" Satoru seemed to understand.
"Yes. If ALO's architecture relies on SAO's, then that Impact Program should have been preserved. It is the heaviest part of SAO's program, and it may be almost bound to it. I do not know the specifics, but it must be extremely complex. It is the result of the better part of Kayaba's life work. It should not be something someone could alter and exploit so quickly, not even Sugou."
Rinko rested her hand against the coffee can, showing absolute confidence in the man she had loved.
"At most, he could replace the trigger conditions."
"If the Impact Program is triggered, it creates a major shock to the overall program. Its original consequence would have been SAO's direct deletion, but that result has likely been replaced."
Satoru folded his arms and thought for a while.
"ALO does have an epic world quest: climb to the top of the World Tree, and that race gains the right to fly indefinitely. The quest itself carries a sense of 'ending' with it. It could be that."
His voice was low.
"Then if you climb the World Tree and complete that quest, it can trigger the program?"
"Yes. It would shake the stable game world and peel away ALO's shell. Maybe then we would be able to see the ashes of SAO hidden underneath. That is how I am thinking about it. And inside a turbulent program, some firewalls may develop openings. I might be able to retrieve something useful as well."
Rinko picked up the canned coffee and took a small sip.
"If our guess is right, and SAO was merely covered over by ALO rather than completely destroyed, then we have a path toward what we are looking for."
"This step... is almost like climbing directly to the hundredth floor of Aincrad," Satoru said gravely.
"Yes. That is the precondition. And if we want to improve the success rate of the retrieval after that step is achieved, then we may need to use this so-called Fluctlight." Rinko put more weight into the word.
Satoru could not help looking at her.
"In Kayaba's definition, Fluctlight is only an integration of elusive concepts such as thought and soul. What you experienced, by his stricter standard, should be called the Fluctlight Domain," Rinko said slowly. A hint of nostalgia appeared on her composed face, perhaps because she had remembered the days when she discussed these things with that man. "Human thought speed increases dramatically. And in a VR environment, the danger signals the brain would normally send to the body under stress are blocked, so brain activity can operate with its physiological limits removed."
"That is only the simplified explanation. As for the extraction of human potential in that instant, Kayaba also tried to explain it through time dilation. But in the end, there was not enough time and no examples, so it came to nothing. The only rough conclusion is that in such a state, at least inside an open-thinking environment like VR, that person becomes terrifying."
Rinko frowned.
"Faster calculation, more accurate judgment, and the avatar carries no physical burden. The diver becomes like a superhuman. Of course, that means a 'superhuman' only within the rules set by that Dive environment. If the avatar's original strength value is only 10, then even if its speed reaches 70, its strength is still only at the standard of 10."
"So it is basically what people call 'bullet time,' right?" Satoru said, understanding. He had entered that state more than once, so he grasped it more easily. "But virtual space cannot perfectly simulate reality anyway, so the idea that greater speed equals greater force is empty talk."
"Yes... but if that Dive environment were originally designed according to strict physical rules..." Rinko nodded, and perhaps out of a scholar's rigor, she could not help emphasizing the point again.
Satoru politely interrupted her.
"I think I understand. The basic meaning is that it is only bullet time on the level of thought. As for an avatar moving so fast that only an afterimage remains, that is simply the system following your will."
Rinko stopped there, then nodded without further objection.
"More or less, yes."
"So it just makes your mind run faster..." Satoru said as if impressed. Then he saw Rinko frown again, wearing the stern face of a teacher whose student had not fully understood the lesson, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
"It is not that simple," Rinko, now a university professor, immediately began lecturing him. "It extracts the brain's potential while also giving it faster thought capacity. The result is that the human brain is being rapidly transformed into something like artificial intelligence, and I mean high-level intelligence."
"I mentioned this before, didn't I? A true super-AI is almost equivalent to God, and a human in this state is precisely approaching that kind of existence. That hypothesis alone is already extraordinary. In an age when virtual space is becoming increasingly widespread, this may even be the road by which humanity advances into a higher-dimensional future."
Rinko even folded her arms, as if there were a blackboard behind her.
"The emergence of virtual space is not only a blessing for patients with serious illnesses. A blind person can experience dazzling scenery, and an amputee can even run. It has value in other fields as well: adaptation training for soldiers across all kinds of terrain, and even in entertainment, where virtual space can simulate far grander sets..."
"It may already be a defined turning point in human evolution. If the strength of consciousness can truly be trained, then perhaps human consciousness could be preserved even through a network."
"Would that still be called human...?" Satoru weakly raised a hand. Although he had dropped out of school nearly seven or eight years ago, he suddenly felt as if he had returned to elementary school, asking the teacher a question. "I only feel like I can think faster. I have not had the illusion that my IQ suddenly skyrocketed."
"Your development level is still not high enough. According to Kayaba's thinking..." Rinko stopped halfway through. Her expression suddenly darkened.
"Wh-what is it?"
"No, nothing... To be honest, I still do not know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing." Rinko gazed at Satoru, sighed, and spoke softly. "People talk about advancing toward God, but I feel that humans should carry reverence with them."
"That kind of self-forcing is something ordinary people like us surely cannot bear. I am not sure whether a soul also has a soul, because humans die after at most a hundred years, so we cannot judge the upper limit of a soul's lifespan. But humans are creatures who get tired and feel pain. Excessive strain will eventually lead to collapse."
She was silent for a moment.
"You should stay as you are now. And do not use that thing too often. No one knows what the consequences of that burden will be."
Satoru froze for a moment, then smiled somewhat freely.
"Do not worry. Even if you say it is a chance to evolve toward God, I will not feel anything. That is just the kind of person I am. I have no knowledge, no experience, and none of your higher-level perspective, so I will not start thinking, 'I can become someone who changes humanity.'"
"To me, it is just a small extra skill, about on the level of spinning a pen with one hand. If it helps what I am doing, I will use it without hesitation. But if I only play around with it like spinning a pen, it is not as if I will spin myself to death, right?"
He said it lightly.
"Besides, you need that state right now too, don't you? So discussing its consequences and possibilities is getting off topic, isn't it, Sensei?"
"But..." Rinko hesitated.
Satoru placed his hand on his cross-legged thigh.
"Relax. Even if I die, I have to reach my goal first. Otherwise, it would be too regrettable, and too much of a loss."
"What I mean is..." Rinko said hesitantly. "If we are going to use your Fluctlight Domain for observation, I will also need equipment on my end capable of receiving your intense fluctuations. Otherwise, I will not know what you have found, and I will not be able to monitor your health. And that kind of machinery is very expensive."
"..."
For a moment, a strange silence fell over the room.
Satoru's expression stiffened.
Right.
He said silently in his heart.
At the core of it... I am still broke. No, dead broke.
"And when I observed the SAO servers, I was using resources provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. I do not have equipment that advanced on hand. All I have is an ordinary office laptop, around seventy thousand yen."
Rinko looked a little awkward too.
The two of them lowered their heads in unison.
Satoru looked as if all his strength had left him, his head hanging.
...No money.
...This hurts so much.
At that moment, one person lost all ideals.
Beep, beep.
Satoru weakly picked up his old secondhand phone and answered in a listless voice.
"Hello... who is this?"
"Huh?"
He let out a surprised sound.
"Saki Kurosaki?"
In his dim black eyes, perhaps without even his own awareness, the gold that had always been hidden in the shadows of his heart or the depths of his soul drifted through his pupils and flickered quietly, like stars half-hidden behind the curtain of night.
Saki Kurosaki. Sixteen years old. Female. Height: 1.56 meters. Weight: 43 kilograms.
Those were images he had once seen, intentionally or otherwise, flashing through his mind like slides and being extracted with perfect accuracy. Even from a hurried glance, he began recalling from the afterimage left behind. Her height was measured against the image in his memory as if by an invisible ruler, and her weight was estimated instantly from her build.
Kurosaki Enterprises. A well-known Japanese game company. It relies on traditional console hardware, and its market has been squeezed by the surging VRMMO sector. Its future is somewhat worrying.
That was a memory from three days earlier, when he had passed a newspaper stand in the subway and glanced at a newspaper on the rack. One of the neatly arranged papers faced him with its business section, where letters as tiny as ants enlarged in his mental image until they became clear.
It was the result of estimated magnification based on the rough number of strokes.
No one noticed.
No one noticed at all, including him.
He merely received that information suddenly in his heart. The almost supernatural act of recollection, reorganizing and extracting it again, was neglected and forgotten as naturally as breathing.
"Is this Argo?"
One second later, he answered, and in doing so named the person on the other end.
After leaving Aincrad, he had learned some people's real names from Seijirou Kikuoka.
"Ah... dinner? No, there is really no need to thank me." He continued. "Uh, really, no..."
That power beyond ordinary humanity was still running.
The equipment Rinko needed.
The development of Kurosaki Enterprises.
Argo's invitation.
A chance to make contact.
The danger hidden in ALO.
His conversation was still ongoing, but in the cold silence of his mind, those pieces of information had quietly linked together.
And from that, he saw another opportunity.
"In that case, I will impose on you."
He changed his tone calmly and accepted.
"Yes, Sunday then. I will come early."
He hung up.
"A date with a friend?" Rinko asked simply.
"Yes."
Satoru started to stand as usual.
But suddenly, he staggered and clutched his forehead as if he had been struck by a heavy blow.
"What is it? Are you unwell?" Rinko noticed immediately and stepped forward in concern.
"No, it is nothing. I have not been resting well, so it is probably anemia and dizziness. I will go buy some food. Please rest a little longer, Ms. Koujiro."
He forced himself to stand and walked toward the door.
Only after he closed the door of the rented apartment did he slide down with his back pressed against it. His rough breathing trembled like that of a dying beast. His clenched jaw seemed ready to crush his teeth, and the veins at his temples pulsed faintly. He dug his fingers hard into both sides of his head. The searing pain radiating from deep inside nearly stopped his breath.
Is it really this painful...? It was not this painful when I was still in that virtual world.
Ah... right. I am in my own body now, not Yurnero's invincible Sword Saint body.
"I see... No wonder it feels so unreal. I was wondering why I suddenly remembered."
He managed to speak with great difficulty, his voice thick with self-mockery.
"Once this thing activates... does it not stop?"
He forced out a grim smile.
"This really sucks."