Chapter 5

I'm glad I dived in without eating anything first.

Sinon stared at the chunk of meat before her, sizzling and snapping.

The rare steak was three inches thick and almost a foot in size. By real-world

standards, it was so big that even a sumo wrestler would have trouble finishing

it. But the birdmen seated around the gigantic table were all busy with steaks of

the same size, carving with their knives and chewing vigorously.

Of course, this was a virtual world, and no matter what she ate, nothing went

into her real stomach, but one of the strange features of full-diving was that the

satiating feeling of a full belly lasted for a while, even after logging out. Sinon

had a small appetite to begin with and wasn't the biggest fan of meat, so a rare

steak of this size was a major challenge for her. Especially since it wasn't beef,

or even pork.

Confirming that the birdmen on either side were completely absorbed in

eating, Sinon quickly tapped the hunk of meat. The properties window said it

was Sterocephalus Tail Meat Steak. It had previously belonged to the dinosaur

she killed with a shot from the Hecate II.

Last night, Sinon had been on the brink of dying of dehydration just before

reaching a pool of water. Surrounded by birdmen delighted at the defeat of

their sterocephalus foe, she allowed them to escort her to their village.

As usual, the two sides couldn't understand a word the other said, but she

received a savior's welcome in the village anyway. They showed her to a pretty

little house in the center of the village, where she was able to log out safely.

This evening, she drank some water as soon as she got home and promptly

dived back in, where they more or less forced her into this celebration.

What surprised her a little—no, a lot—was the high level of civilization the

birdmen enjoyed. The houses of the village were neatly arranged and built with

fired bricks, and the perfectly circular outer edge of the village was surrounded

by a sturdy stone wall. The tiled streets led to a large meeting space in the

center of the village that was surrounded by shops.

She shouldn't have been this surprised, she realized, because the fact that

they used muskets already spoke to a culture of a certain level. So if she left the

majority of her dinosaur steak, maybe they would be civilized enough not to be

angry with her, she hoped…

" ?"

A small birdperson who came up to her side poured red wine-like liquid into

the glass in front of Sinon. Their words sounded like a question, but she still

couldn't understand them.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're saying to me," she replied. The child's

yellow beak hung open partway in apparent confusion. Sinon was going to

apologize again when a voice cut her off.

"The child is asking why you do not eat," the voice said from her left. Sinon

turned in that direction in utter shock.

The voice came from an elderly-looking birdman who had long gray feathers

hanging from the edges of his beak.

"You…you understand my language?" she asked hoarsely.

One edge of the elderly birdman's beak twitched upward. "When I was

younger, I adventured all over the continent with humans. But…does the

dinosaur meat not suit your tastes, human girl?"

"Er, no…it's fine. Thank you," she said, summoning her courage and picking up

the knife and fork. She carved a bit off the end of the singed log of a steak and

popped it into her mouth.

Once her teeth bit through the crispy exterior, they met much more resilience

than she expected. But a firmer bite cut through it easily enough, and a fatty

sweetness filled her mouth. It tasted like beef ribs but was more fibrous and

gamy. There was no sauce on the meat, but the spices the birdmen cooked it

with had a kick. It wasn't bad.

"Um…how do I say delicious in your language?" she asked the elderly

birdman. He made a sound like hyufol. She turned to the child and repeated the

word the birdman had just taught her. The child looked befuddled.

"No. It is hyufol."

"Hyufol."

"Close. Hyufol."

"Hyufol!"

After a few repetitions like this, the child finally understood her, and she

beamed and shouted, "Hyufol!" Her head bobbed up and down excitedly, and

then she walked away.

Instantly, there was a window in front of Sinon's face that read Ornith skill

gained. Proficiency has risen to 1.

She blinked, then listened to the conversations happening around her in the

large room. Most of them still just sounded like strange chirping, but

occasionally she heard snippets that she understood, like "Now the farm to the

south will be…" and "I'll have more wine…"

In their meeting after school, Yui said that the NPC language in Unital Ring

was actually the Seed protocol's Japanese language set but with several layers

of filtering to make it impossible to understand. Most likely, thanks to gaining

the Ornith skill, the game was decoding fragments of those filters now and

then, so she could hear the Japanese. If she raised her proficiency further, the

filter would eventually disappear altogether, she supposed.

But how to raise that proficiency? She took another bite of dinosaur steak,

chewed it briskly, and replayed the conversation before the skill pop-up

appeared. Then she swallowed her food and spoke to the elderly birdman

again.

"Um, how do you say knife in Ornith?"

"Hmm? You mean fetu?"

"Fetu."

"No, fetu."

"Fetu."

"Listen to me. It is fetu."

"I am saying fetu!" Sinon snapped, and another message appeared, reading

Ornith skill proficiency has risen to 2. The same child as before ran over and

offered Sinon a new knife. That settled it—raising her Ornith proficiency

required repeating the undecoded words perfectly. Why did it have to be

annoying?

Once again, she turned to the elder.

"…How do you say thank you in Ornith?"

Forty minutes later, Sinon returned from the feast to her room and flopped

face-first onto the bed.

Thankfully, the birdpeople, known as Orniths, did not have any barbarous

customs of searing and devouring ungrateful guests who didn't finish their food.

Sinon stubbornly continued to pile dinosaur steak into her virtual stomach as

she learned vocabulary words from the elder birdman, but her core was

screaming at her to stop when she was only half done. Still, she must have

devoured at least two pounds of it. She didn't even want to think about eating

meat again for a while, real or virtual.

But attending the feast was certainly worthwhile, because she got her Ornith

skill up to 10 and learned much more valuable information as well. She rolled

over onto her back, opened the ring menu, and flicked open the MAP icon.

The image it summoned showed the ruined city where she'd started, the

wasteland to the east of it, the rocky outcropping where she'd fought the giant

sterocephalus, and the Ornith village well to the north of that. She felt like she'd

covered quite a lot of ground, but if she used two fingers to zoom out on the

map, the lit portions shrank smaller and smaller until they were the size of

grains of sand. If that represented the full size of the entire world map, then the

vast distance she'd spent hours walking across represented less than 1 percent

of the game world.

The real problem wasn't the distance to the edge of the world, though, but

how far away she was from Kirito and Asuna's location.

At the end of the feast, Sinon asked virtually everyone who was present if

they knew about the name Bashin. When even her elderly Ornith tutor, who

had traveled the world, said "Never heard of 'em," she felt desperate. But by

some miracle, just one birdperson there said they'd heard the name before. So

Sinon used all of her proficiency-10 Ornith skill to ask everything she possibly

could.

That one birdperson had never met the Bashin, only heard a story from his

grandfather, but the information in the story was worth its weight in gold: The

Bashin village is past the vast Giyoru Savanna to the southeast. It was worth the

trouble. Asuna's log cabin had fallen near the Bashin village, supposedly, so if

she went southeast, she should be able to catch up to them—possibly. Of

course, if the Bashin had villages all over the world map, she could easily find

herself on a wild-goose chase, but for now, she could only trust that her new

lead was the right one.

"…Okay!"

Sinon closed the map and sat up forcefully. She'd already told the Orniths that

she would leave before the end of the night. The reason they'd been waging

that hopeless fight against the ferocious sterocephalus was because the

dinosaur was attacking their farm to the south and devouring the valuable

psittacos there.

It wasn't clear what kind of livestock psittacos were, but when the Orniths

learned that their new hero, vanquisher of the previously unbeatable

sterocephalus, was leaving already, they were very disappointed. Sinon wanted

to stick around and use the village as a base for leveling-up—after all, she could

eat and stay for free—but more than that, she wanted to regroup with her

friends. That fallen log cabin was a special place to her, too, and there wasn't

much of a point to solving the mysteries of Unital Ring if it wasn't with Asuna

and Kirito.

With the Bellatrix SL2 and Weasel Suit equipped again, Sinon left the building

and looked around. Across the way, the lights were already out at the feast hall,

and there was no one to be seen around the circular building. The time was

only just after seven o'clock, but the Orniths did not seem to have a nightlife.

No sooner had the thought occurred to her than Sinon muttered, "Dammit!"

She was going to use her 100-el silver coin to buy some rations and drinking

water, but all of the shops on the southern side of the village center had their

shutters down. She'd been careless; NPC shops in ALO and GGO both ran

essentially twenty-four hours a day, but normal VRMMO logic didn't apply here.

"…And that probably means there's no guarantee this village even takes silver

el coins…," she murmured, feeling dejected. After eating and drinking as much

as her willpower could possibly allow, her SP and TP were full, but she never

wanted to be foolish enough to head into the wilderness without water again.

Should she wait until the morning for the shops to open? Or look for a place

where she could get free water…?

"Miss Sinon!"

She spun to her right at the sound of her name. There were two Orniths

trotting toward her, a young one and a child. At first, they'd all looked the same

to her, but now she could tell them apart to a small degree, due to the colors

and patterns of their feathers and the shape of their eyes and beaks.

The young Ornith was the musketeer she'd saved from the sterocephalus. The

child was the birdgirl who'd been serving the table at the feast. The young one

lowered the plumage over his eyes and asked, "Sinon, are you already ?"

Her Ornith skill was only at a proficiency of 10, so part of the sentence was

unclear, but she could guess that he was asking if she was leaving now, and she

nodded in response.

"Yes. I must go to the Bashin village."

He understood her response and seemed to frown, as far as she could tell. "I

see…I don't anything about the Bashin, but if you are crossing the Giyoru

Savanna to the southeast, you will need to prepare . Please take this with you,

Miss Sinon."

He held out a shiny black musket. Sinon blinked, then shook her head

vigorously. "No, I can't! This gun is very important to you, isn't it?"

"No!" shouted the birdgirl, who had light-brown feathers. She looked at the

musket in the young birdman's hands and explained, "That isn't my brother's. It

belonged to our late grandfather. Father says there's no anymore, so he

should it to you for saving our village, Sinon."

"That's right. It's an old gun, but the quality is . Of course, it's nowhere near

as fine as your gun, but you wouldn't want to use something so powerful on

smaller beasts and insects, would you?"

He had a good point. She only had six of the Hecate's .50 BMG bullets left,

and they had to be saved for emergencies. The Bellatrix also had only 60

percent of its energy remaining. The chances of her getting more ammunition

for either were low.

"…In that case, I'd be glad to use it," Sinon said, and the young Ornith happily

offered her the musket. There was a satisfying weight to it in her hands. He also

gave her a leather bag slung over his shoulder.

"Those are the bullets and gunpowder. If you use them all up, the bullets can

be from iron, and for the gunpowder, you can mix the secretions of bursting

beetles and charcoal powder, then let it dry."

"B-bursting beetles?" Sinon repeated, suspicious. The birdgirl, who seemed to

be the older Ornith's sister, formed a large circle with her hands.

"They're at the base of cacti! Just watch out, because if you step on them,

they'll blow up and hurt you real bad!"

"Um…okay, I'll be careful."

Sadly, she couldn't make out the name of the cactus itself, but that was all

right. She wasn't planning to go walking up to any cacti anytime soon.

Sinon slung the gun over her back, then hung the ammo bag on her shoulder.

This time, it was the birdgirl who offered her yet another object, a large cloth

bag.

"There's water and butter and hard bread in here! Me and Mom and

Grandma made them! There's also a pelt cloak in there, so if a comes, use it!"

If she refused now, it would probably be rude. She was very curious about

what "if a comes" was referring to, but she didn't want to grill the birdgirl, so

she thanked her and took the sack.

The birdgirl grinned and added, "The hard bread's not very good, but it lasts a

really long time! When , sear it over a fire and spread the butter on it, and

it'll taste much !"

"…Okay, I'll try that. Thank you so much," she said, bowing one more time,

then took the birdgirl's hands in her own. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Sure! I'm Fikki, and my brother is Ufelm!"

"Fikki…and Ufelm. I will return to this village someday. And I'll bring you many

gifts from my travels."

"Yay!" Fikki exclaimed excitedly. Sinon fixed the image of the little birdgirl's

excitement in her mind and swore to herself that she would uphold that

promise.

It was seven thirty PM. Sinon left the Ornith village, opened her map window,

and looked for a landmark that would help her head southeast. Fortunately,

there was a large moon shining in the sky, and with the help of the Night Vision

skill, she could make out the terrain on her own. Upon gazing to the southeast,

she noticed a rock growth in the distance that looked just like a gate.

"…There we go!"

With her motivation as fuel, Sinon strode across the dried earth. She had no

idea how many miles across this Giyoru Savanna was, but she was determined

to cross it and reach the Bashin village by the end of the night. After all, beating

the sterocephalus field boss had put her all the way up to level-16, and she had

a musket on her back and a Bellatrix SL2 at her side.

She certainly didn't want to fight any more giant dinosaurs, but she felt

confident she could beat any centipede or scorpion. Her HP was higher, her

stats built up…

Right. Her stats. Unital Ring didn't have basic character stats like STR and AGI.

Instead, it had a varied system of abilities, which served a different function

from skills. With the levels she'd gained, she now had fifteen ability points to

spend, and there was no point hoarding them if she was going to try crossing

the dangers of the wilderness alone.

"…I'm really not good at this sort of thing," she murmured, switching from the

map screen to the ability list. At the meeting after school, Kirito had said that it

didn't seem like you could re-spec your abilities once chosen, which was the

same way it worked in GGO. The problem was that there were way too many

choices in Unital Ring.

Perhaps she should return to the Ornith village, log out in a safe spot, then

look up information on the abilities online. But no…barely twenty-four hours

had passed since the incident began, so it wasn't smart to believe anything you

saw written on the Net at this point. She should think for herself about what

she needed and make that choice on her own. That was a lesson the GGO

player Zexceed had taught her before he was killed by Death Gun.

"…I guess I should use ten points now," Sinon murmured and lifted her finger

to pick from the four starter abilities.