The Demon Tree

Synopsis

Kirito wakes up dazed only remembering he was with Asuna and Sinon. He’s in a forest somewhere and he’s sure he’s in a game, but there’s no game menu to be found. He then realises he’s in the Underworld.

He comes across a huge tree and another person. That person is Eugeo and explains that people like Kirito who appear for no reason are called a lost child of Vecta as the dark God Vecta likes messing with humans and spirit them away to faraway places and take their memories.

Kirito eventually confirms he’s in a game world as he’s able to see the ‘durability’ of food through a UI. The topic falls on Eugeo’s childhood friend, Alice, who used to bring him lunch but was taken away for breaking a taboo.

He wants to save her but he can’t step aside from his ‘calling’ which is chopping down a huge tree called Gigas Cedar aka the demon tree as it sucks up all the nutrients around it. Eugeo is the 7th generation ‘chopper’, they’ve been going at this tree for 300+ years.

They head back to the village and after showing off some sword skills to a guy called Zink, an arrogant ‘men-at-arms’, he is introduced to the church where he will stay.

He reflects on the events of the day and concludes that this is the virtual world, but there are no NPCs in this village. He believes that someone like Eugeo must be a copy of a ‘soul’ from a newborn that was raised in this world, known as an Artificial Fluctlights. His decides next objective is to reach Central City and try to contact the ‘outside world’.

Thoughts

After the prologue from the last episode, we have very much settled into this world. Unfortunately though that does mean as we plunge headfirst into this world, much like Kirito, we have no idea what’s going on. As he’s still ‘alive’ I’m assuming that means this virtual world is like what Yuuki had, i.e. because of the attack from last episode he’s comatosed and needs to be in another world to keep his mental condition stable or something like that? Nothing else would really make sense otherwise. I mean why else would you keep someone’s mental state in a virtual world after being stabbed by lethal poison?

Seeing durability for items sure brings back nostalgic memories though. I remember when I played mmorpgs and I had to deal with durability of weapons and armour and couldn’t stay out farming monsters all day as I had to go back to repair everything. It was such a hassle! Though I never did have durability for food, so that’s a new one that I’ve not seen before…

I still don’t understand anything, don’t know what a fluctlight is, or what anything is about, but I see they found a new way to trap Kirito in a virtual world where he can prosper with his in game sword abilities which seem to have transferred over from SAO. Also, what did he mean by soul? Something about a baby being hooked up to the system and so grows up in a virtual world? Doesn’t sound like something that would be allowed in this modern day and age, and why would you be running those experiments anyway? I don’t see the point in exploring how a real person grows up completely in a virtual world… or is he saying that a baby’s brain is ‘copied’ onto the system and then allowed to grow on its own like some sort of machine learning AI but mimicking humans? That I can kinda understand, especially as I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries recently about AI and trying to make them adapt themselves like humans.

Before I start to spout more nonsensical gibberish I think I’ll leave it there and wait for some explanations first. Regardless, this is clearly the world from before in the prologue, sure Eugeo doesn’t recognise him, but that might be because they loaded up another ‘save file’ where Kirito didn’t exist or something.

Anyways, this episode pretty much sets the scene that we’ll be witnessing for many episodes to come. Sad that we didn’t get much more than that as the prologue did enough scene setting, but I do remember reading that the pace of this series is quite slow, so perhaps I should’ve expected this. Regardless, as this’ll be the world we see for a while, it’s still good to get familiarised with the mechanics of the world first.