「図書室の賢者」 (Toshoshitsu no Kenja)
“The Sage of the Library”

This week’s episode was exactly what I’ve been waiting for from Alicization.

Gosh, where do I even start with this one? There was so much world building going on this week that I feel like you could literally write a novel with the huge info dump that was dropped on us — the biggest of which would have to be what the hell are the actual Underworld administrators (the people in the real world) doing?! In any case, I guess it would make sense to go in chronological order so let’s start things off with the really creepy way that Integrity Knights are made.

Okay so, I wasn’t the only one who saw that big ass crystal come jutting out Eldrie’s head, right? Looking back at it after-the-fact though, these crystals seem like a very interesting way at creating very obedient soldiers. Especially when you consider what happens when a fluclight’s psyche gets a little too out of hand and decides to implode on itself. However with all that in mind there’s an even bigger question — how do people not already know how Integrity Knights are created? It’s not like other peoples’ memories are affected when someone gets a crystal jammed in their head and you’d think that one of these knights would have family who would be concerned about someone straight up disappearing. In any case, I hope we get to watch Kirito return the favor to the knight that got an arrow lodged into his foot.

Moving on to the central library, boy was this a moment have I been waiting for. Ever since I saw Cardinal in the opening sequence, I was curious just what kind of role she’d play in the story. Luckily, she served the best role of widening the world of the Underworld by bringing back some real life elements into the mix of things. The best of which was when she effectively let Kirito start talking about the real world. In terms of what was brought up, I’ll admit that I wasn’t too surprised to hear that the “perfect” Underworld was far from it. What I was surprised to hear though was just how complex the fluclight who become the “Administator” was. Thinking back to that specific fluclight’s motivations, it’s tough to fault them for wanting to cement their status in the world. Seeing how the world itself is relatively new and they were able to figure out the status quo a lot quicker than anyone else, it’s tough to really find fault in what they did. At this point though, I hope we get to see more of the Administrator and just what it is they want now that they’ve obtained literal near-god status.

Overall a fun episode! With things ramping up a lot quicker than I expected, hopefully we’ll continue to get bombarded with even cooler things down the road. In any case, I’ll catch you guys next week. See you then!

 

Preview

10 Comments

  1. Hmmm…things are getting complicated. This is what you get for playing God and rushing to utilize a module (The Seed package) that you don’t know much about. Who would have imagined the consequences of all this. Speaking of which, when I read about this part, this theme felt fitting here. Perhaps I’ll bring it up again in another part, but I wanted to share it here first.

    https://youtu.be/Ptb27TaoQeg

    Anonymous
  2. This part that has the talk with Cardinal was really long in the novel. Cardinal was talking in an old fashioned way because she was old even though she looks that young.
    We learned how nobles like Raios and Humbert came to be. It was because of that one corrupted employee out of those four.

    “the biggest of which would have to be what the hell are the actual Underworld administrators (the people in the real world) doing?!”
    The time inside the Underworld is accelerated. They don’t know every detail. More than 300 years have passed inside Underworld since the four employees supposedly died, in reality logged out and they are probably inside the Ocean Turtle.
    The mistake they did was that they gave access to the command “inspect the entire command list” to the fluctlights. It was for the administrators while they were logged in. They forgot(?) to not allow a fluctlight to see/use those commands.
    Qinella’s father to maintain power in the family he created and bestowed upon her a new Sacred Task: Sacred Arts Research.
    Quinella discovered new Sacred Arts that the other Underworld Residents had not known. By studying the meanings of the words used in the commands, she was able to form the first offensive command, the «Thermal Arrow» and with it, she discovered that killing any other living being, will increase the person’s stats, so she sneaked out of home every night to hunt nearby animals and rose her stats at an incredible rate.
    She became anxious because, despite all her power, her life continued to drop and there was nothing she could do about it, until one day, when she was on the brink of death, she managed to find a command that allowed her to see the list of all commands accessible in Underworld, at the bottom of which was one that raised her System Control Authority level to the maximum and granted herself the authorities that were reserved only for the Cardinal System, including terrain manipulation, item generation and even the manipulation of the durability of dynamic units, including humans.
    While recklessly trying to decipher the complex syntax of supervisor-level commands via a reference list created for Rath employees, she devised an extensive complicated command in hopes of stealing the powers of the Cardinal System. However, a single yet enormous error with reciting the command led to her burning the core principles of the Cardinal System onto her own Fluctlight.

    Awakening only after an entire day of sleep after reciting the command, Quinella did not age, did not need to eat or drink, but she inherited a single desire from the Cardinal System – to regulate the world, but she went further than the Cardinal System in regulating the world. She desired to keep the Human Empire the same for eternity, but to achieve this goal, she needed to take control of the most unpredictable factor of the world – the residents.

    JR
    1. I’d say the biggest mistake they did was to allow the fluctlights to use any system command in the first place. Why do they even need magic? Can’t they just simulate a medieval world with sword only?

      If they really need magic, fine. Make it a different thing, separated from system command. Letting your AI run system command willy-nilly is just asking for trouble.

      il-Palazzo
    2. Thanks for the details!

      You know, although she’s a ruthless tyrant, Quinella is almost worthy of admiration. Her feats are numerous:

      -When she was very young, she explored the command system like nobody had done before.

      -She attained power and created a working, prosperous society. Even if her laws were self-serving (like banning hunting and murder so that no one else could be above her), they were still useful.

      -Fearing old age and death, she tried and tried until she found out the entire command list. She also discovered the system that was above all and sought to usurp it. She succeeded, up to a point.

      True, it sucks for the poor people under her rule, but it was the guys in our world who created an entire setting where intelligent beings are born, suffer and die so that the data can be used for defense projects. I can’t really blame Quinella for finding a way to hack the laws of the world and try to usurp “god”; I would even say that she had the moral right to do so (I can and do blame for her tyranny, though).

      Like with Gridman, this arc raises interesting questions about creation, divinity and morality.

      Mistic
  3. For any normal person who saw this scene in real life they will be wigged out. Normal people don’t protrude some crystal thingy out of their forehead while they are tripping.

    Let’s just call this crystal thingy a memory card of sorts that boots a software that runs on top of the person consciousness and hijack the persons brain completely. Then let’s say this protruding crystal is made of quarts because quarts stores memory when you apply a current to it.

    https://randomc.net/image/Sword%20Art%20Online/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alicization%20-%2012%20-%2010.jpg

    RenaSayers
  4. “It’s not like other peoples’ memories are affected when someone gets a crystal jammed in their head and you’d think that one of these knights would have family who would be concerned about someone straight up disappearing.”

    It’s unlikely they just go missing, another knight or some member of the church probably just visits their town and gives them a calling to serve the gods. At that point even if their family never hears from them again it’s likely against the taboo index to even think about questioning the church.

    qwert
    1. Which would have made for a lot more interesting fight than just some random guy they sort of remembered hearing about… could have had them wearing a helmet and they recognized their fighting style and then knocked the helmet off for a big reveal.

      qwert

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