“So, um, what are the rules…?”
“How about whoever whaps the other first wins?”
“G-got it,” Asuna said, pulling her left foot back into a stance. Argo, however, was standing still, arms dangling at her sides.
“Okay, whenever yer ready.”
With an invitation like that, it was hard to get into the spirit, but she wasn’t going to make light of an honest competition. She glanced to her sides, surveying the area.
The bathing chamber was about thirty by twenty-five feet. On the right was the tub, lowered down into the floor, and on the left wall was a line of wooden chairs. The floor was polished granite and appeared very slippery where it was wet.
It would be difficult for Argo to take advantage of her footwork here. It would turn into a flat-footed jab fight, Asuna thought…and then she realized just how much her brain had switched into combat mode. She took a deep breath.
“All right…here I go!”
Asuna took a sharp stride forward with her right foot.
Poof! Argo disappeared, leaving only a puff of white steam behind.
She’s fast!
Faster than any monster Asuna had fought before. Even the strongest elite mob she’d ever faced, the Forest Elven Hallowed Knight, hadn’t been able to move faster than Asuna’s eye could follow. But Argo was so quick that it seemed she had teleported. The only reason Asuna was able to raise her left hand and lean to the right was her sense of hearing: She caught a single footstep hitting water on her left side.
A yellow blur grazed Asuna’s side and passed behind her, producing a tiny little smacking sound.
“Kah…!”
Did it hit?! Asuna jumped as high as she could, spinning around in midair. She slid her feet back when she landed, taking advantage of the slippery floor to create extra distance between them.
As she took position with the bundle of herbs in front of her, Asuna saw, on the other side of the bathroom, Argo twirling the banana in her fingers, left hand on her waist.
“That was really good, A-chan. I figured I was going to win it in one go, but that was more of a lil’ smack than a whap.”
“…So the fight continues?” Asuna asked. The broker gave her a toothy grin.
In a sense, the display of that light-speed movement served the purpose of the duel in the first place. But being startled and letting it end would be a waste of Argo’s invitation.
Huh? What am I…?
For a brief moment, she realized she was thinking something strange, so she cast that thought aside to concentrate. She couldn’t keep up with Argo’s speed, but speed alone was not all there was to fighting.
The experience in the catacombs was so terrifying that she never wanted to think about it again, but it had also taught her something very valuable. Battle wasn’t just something that happened between you and your opponent. It also inevitably involved the surroundings. When Asuna fell through the trapdoor, and when she used the shrewman to recover her rapier, it had been the surroundings that had dictated the circumstances. In fact, the only way she had dodged Argo’s swipe was the water on the floor telling her the direction.
Just as with the rapier, she could take that extra step and utilize her surroundings to her advantage.
Without taking her eye off the distant Argo, she confirmed the state of the arena. They’d switched spots so that the bath was now on her left side. She began to inch toward it, sliding the soles of her feet over the wet floor.
There was no extruding lip or boundary between the sunken bath and the floor of the washing area, and the water continually flowed up and out onto the floor, so it was hard to tell where the surface of the bath started. As she kept inching her way sideways, keeping the tip of the herbs pointed carefully at Argo, Asuna’s toes eventually found the corner of the bath. But she didn’t stop there—she continued sliding a further six inches to the left.
Asuna’s left foot was completely off the floor, touching the surface of the bathwater. All her weight was supported on her right foot, in a pose that made it look easier than it actually was. It was an impossible pose to keep in the real world, but muscle fatigue was handled differently here. Any action that exceeded one’s strength stat—carrying items that went over the weight capacity, trying to lift very heavy rocks—would cause a hidden fatigue parameter to rise. When that number reached its peak, the player’s limbs or entire body would enter a weakened stun state. But it didn’t necessarily show until that point, which made it hard to gauge when a player was attempting more than they could handle.
Based on how her right leg felt, Asuna guessed that she could keep her left leg steady there for another ten seconds. She waited for Argo to move.
The steam gathering at the ceiling formed a large drop of water that fell and dripped onto the floor.
Once again, white steam billowed from Argo’s feet.
This time she charged straight forward, not to the side. It was so fast that if she’d been standing normally, there would be no chance to react. Asuna tried to intercept Argo with the herbs, but her opponent simply slid past the tip toward Asuna’s side.
Suddenly, the yellow swimsuit tilted to the left.
“Mwah—?!”
Argo’s right foot sank through the water. That was Asuna’s trap—resting her foot on the bath to make it look like she was standing on firm ground. As she hoped, Argo stepped off the bathing room floor, plunging her leg into the bath.
Got her!
She lowered the bundle at the sinking Argo. It wasn’t a sword skill, of course, but it would be enough to whap her helpless opponent.
But instead of sinking down into the bath, Argo’s body reacted unnaturally.
One of the leaves at the end of the herb bundle softly brushed the shoulder string of the tankini. Asuna lost her balance and toppled as she turned with Argo’s momentum.
As she landed on her bottom at the lip of the bath, Asuna could not believe her eyes.
Argo was running on top of the water.
Before her right foot started to sink, she pushed off the water with her left, and before that one sank, she pushed again with her right. She got through four steps across the water, splashing uproariously, before plunging face-first into it and eventually rising out.
“…Nya-ha-ha-ha!”
The sight of the information agent laughing heartily with her face poking out of the water was somehow extremely funny to Asuna. She snorted and joined in.
After a good dozen seconds of laughing, they both got to their feet. Argo walked through the water normally to get out this time, tossed the banana into the bath, and stretched luxuriously.
“Mmmmm…Well, that was fun. I guess we’ll say that each of us got in a smack and call it a draw?”
“Uh…y-yes, of course,” Asuna agreed, dropping her herbs into the water. After watching the ripples spread across the bath, she looked up at Argo and asked, “Um…was that some kind of skill effect, the way you ran across the water…?”
“Well…” Argo started, tugging on her wet curls and rolling her eyes. “Normally I’d charge ya for that info, but I don’t mind. It’s not a skill, just a lot of hard training. Remember how I used those Floater Sandals on the river in the fourth floor?”
“Yes…”
“I had a lot of fun with those. I ran all over with ’em, and by the time I was good at it, I went into the water without them on. Well, I sank in, of course, but the first step I stayed on the water…Remember trying that as a kid at the pool? The theory that as long as your other foot moves while the first one hasn’t sunk, it’s like you’re running on water.”
“…M-maybe I did try that…”
“Well, when it occurred to me that maybe that’s possible here, I couldn’t hold back. Since then I’ve been practicing it in rivers and baths, until I was able to take about four steps. I guess you might call it an unofficial skill.”
“…”
Asuna wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or exasperated by this.
Eventually, she decided to ask, “Do you think I could do that?”
“Mmm, I dunno. I was able to do it, so it’s not that the game doesn’t permit it…but it might be hard unless you put all your points into agility and have a lightweight avatar like mine. With your ample endowments…”
“Th-they’re not that ample!” she shouted, crossing her arms in front of her. Argo hissed with laughter again and opened her window. She removed the yellow swimsuit and sent Asuna a trade window.
“Thanks for the suit. You can have it back.”
“No…take it as payment for the info.”
“You sure? Well, thanks.”
Argo canceled the trade, and Asuna removed her own suit. She sank her chilly body back into the bath and exhaled.
Once every last cell of her body was relaxing in the crystal-clear water, a thought floated to the surface of her mind like a little bubble.
I was…enjoying that duel.
Well, they were using a banana and a bundle of herbs and never officially challenged each other, so it couldn’t be called a duel, but they were two players competing in a fight. And at the very least, partway through Asuna had been a hundred percent serious about trying to land a good hit on Argo. And Asuna didn’t shrink away. She enjoyed the excitement of the challenge.
“…Do you have a lot of dueling experience, Argo?” she asked, looking over to see the mousy brown curls swish sideways.
“Mm, not really. And definitely not since the retail game started.”
“Well, you seem very used to it to me…”
“Izzat so? Given the trick you came up with on the spot, you seem a lot more comfortable in battle than me, A-chan. Ya tricked me good.”
Asuna hunched her neck, embarrassed by the mention of her impromptu one-legged bath boundary ruse. “Th-that was just a spur-of-the-moment idea…”
“I’m not complainin’. It was a real good trick. Mind if I copy that one?”
“P-please do, I insist.”
“Nee-hee-hee! Thanks. Well, I oughta pay you for that idea,” Argo offered, grinning widely. Before Asuna could reply, she abruptly asked, “Are you afraid of dueling, A-chan?”
Only a truly talented gleaner of information could have seen through Asuna to the issue eating away at her heart.
“…Yes, if you can even say that. I only tried it once, here on this floor with Kirito. In fact, I couldn’t even officially start the duel. The countdown ended, and we were facing each other with our weapons, and my body just refused to listen to my commands…”
Despite being in a warm bath up to her shoulders, she felt a chill trace her back in thinking about that moment. She clutched herself with both hands, trying to explain what was going through her mind at the time.
“…It wasn’t that I was afraid of Kirito. He was very serious, but not in a threatening way. I was the one who asked him for PvP tips…and the duel was first-strike mode, but I was still terrified. And it made me horrified to think of moving onward…”
She lowered her mouth into the water and let out a little sigh. The stream of bubbles popped under her nose, filling her nostrils with a citrus scent.
“…I’m not sayin’ I don’t understand that feeling. But a silly sword-fight game and a real duel are different things. Even in a first-strike duel, you’re losing HP,” Argo offered. Asuna nodded, lifted her face out of the water, and turned to the other girl.
“To get back to the topic…when you go on solo recon missions, you can do that because of the incredible speed you showed me just now, right? You can handle a dangerous dungeon on your own, having the confidence to evade any attack that comes your way. Is that what you were trying to tell me with this duel?”
“When ya put it that way, I sure sound full of myself,” the broker chuckled, shrugging, “but I’ll admit that a part of me knows if I need to, I can sprint outta there. I’ve just got to be more careful about where I’m steppin’ from now on.”
She winked at Asuna, who grimaced and asked, “But having extreme AGI means low HP, and you can’t equip tough armor to protect you, right? Don’t you worry about what would happen if you take an unlucky heavy hit from a monster or get immobilized by a trap…?”
“I do worry about that, of course,” the Rat said, smiling in a way that was more transparent than her usual smirk. “I’m scared of losing HP. Ya can’t just respawn like in the old Aincrad…If I was thinking about survival and nothing else, I’d join a big guild and put all my points into strength to be a tank. In fact, maybe never leavin’ the Town of Beginnings would be the smartest option. But…I happen to place a bit higher priority on what I’m doin’ now rather than sheer survival.”
“Because…you’re a beta tester?”
“True, but not just that.” Argo grinned and winked again. “Sorry, but any more than this will cost ya. Still, in thanks for inviting me to this incredible bath, I’ll give you one piece of intel on the house.”
“Uh…o-okay…”
“Earlier, you said that I didn’t need to do this dangerous reconnaissance alone, that I could do like Kii-boy and join the frontline gang.”
Asuna nodded, and Argo held up her index finger, waving it back and forth.
“But I think the reason Kii-boy doesn’t brave the dangers of solo adventuring isn’t because this way is more safe.”
“Then…why?”
“Ain’t it obvious?”
Argo’s finger moved through the air to gently poke at Asuna’s collarbone.
“Because he’s got you.”
7
“NEW YEAR’S EVE…” I SAID TO NO ONE IN PARTICULAR, lying in the grass and staring up at the bluish bottom of the floor above.
The date was indeed December 31, but it was still the bright daytime, the breeze wasn’t particularly cold, and there was no house to clean, so it didn’t feel like the end of the year. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what last New Year’s Eve had been like.
I had wanted to participate in the New Year’s Eve event of the MMO I had been playing at the time, but on my father’s orders after his return for the holidays from America, I had to join the huge house-cleaning effort. I remembered the cleaning of the little kendo dojo in the corner of the yard being exhausting, so I had to bow and scrape to my sister Suguha, whom I hardly ever spoke to anymore.
When I returned to the living room, exhausted, my mother had brought out the sweet mochi rice cakes early, which were so tasty they hurt. I gave up on the MMO event and watched TV with my family, ate the special New Year’s soba noodles, listened to the bells, then went to the nearby shrine for the customary first visit of the year…
I lifted my eyelids, ending the reminiscence.
All I saw was a lid of steel and rock, looming three hundred feet overhead.
Was my family in the real world cleaning at this very moment? Would Suguha be struggling to wipe the dojo clean without my help?
Fifty-five days ago, when Akihiko Kayaba announced that the game of death had begun, I never imagined that I would spend New Year’s Eve in this world. I didn’t have a vision about how many days it would take in total to clear all one hundred floors of Aincrad. And I certainly didn’t expect that nearly two months later, we wouldn’t even have beaten the fifth floor.
Assuming our pace remained the same, we would be here for New Year’s Eve not just next year, but the year after as well. In fact…that was just a hopeful calculation. If I kept participating in the frontier group, I might not even survive to see the next New Year’s Eve.
Until now, a part of me felt that if I died fighting monsters, I would have no regrets. Just after the game began, I left the Town of Beginnings before anyone else to make use of my beta knowledge and experience and up my chances of survival, but that wasn’t all. In a way, I was afraid of other players being stronger than me. As a level-based MMORPG, once someone else got ahead of you in level, there was no catching them again. I was pressured by that fear playing on my ego. If I wanted to stay one of the best player
s, I had to continually risk the dangerous boss fights…It was a paradoxical thought process.
However…
Two days ago, I realized a new motive had appeared within me.
Even relaxed in the safety of the dark elf village, thinking about that moment made my guts churn uneasily. As I was rushing through the second level of the catacombs beneath Karluin to the next staircase in search of Argo the Rat, I saw Asuna’s HP bar suddenly drop 10 percent in the upper left corner of my vision.
At first, I had no idea how my temporary partner could have lost HP while asleep in her bedroom above Blink & Brink. The first possibility that occurred to me was that she accepted someone’s duel within the city and was fighting them. But that was unlikely, given that it did not rise or fall any farther for many seconds afterward.
That left only one answer. Asuna had come into the catacombs dungeon after me. I had to overcome the urge to start sprinting madly and force myself to think about where she might be.
The toughest monsters on the second level were the poisonous Moldy Mummy and the astral Mournful Wraith. Both were tricky, but neither could take that much HP from Asuna at level 17 with one hit. Since her HP didn’t change after that, it was most likely from a trap, not combat. This dungeon didn’t have any traps that caused direct damage, which meant it was a trapdoor. And the only trapdoor was in one of the crypts right at the start of the second floor.
It would be more direct to go down the same trap to find her, but I was already deep on the second level, and the stairs were closer to me. I raced to the third level, cut down any monsters I saw, and raced straight for the area where the trapdoor let out.
Eventually I sensed people ahead, but all I saw were two unidentified cursors. They were both green, but I hid just in case, approaching the little room in the cave until I saw the two men in black cloaks.
Soon after, I heard one screech about a Chivalric Rapier +5. As soon as I saw the silver sword in his hand, I felt all the blood in my body freeze and boil simultaneously, a sensation I would never forget.
Asuna’s HP bar was still displayed in the corner, yet I couldn’t stop myself from imagining that they’d PKed her to get the rapier. Perhaps the cyclical updating process of the HP information was behind, and when it refreshed, it would instantly drop to zero. My body trembled at the thought.
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