Sword Art Online Progressive 4

by Reki Kawahara

  Depending on the boss’s type, it sometimes had no effect, but fortunately Fuscus was susceptible; he roared and moved faster. Shivata and Liten stood bravely against the enormous golem, which was even bigger than Asterios the Taurus King of the second floor.

  “Vwoagh!!” our opponent bellowed, raising his right fist to nearly scrape the ceiling and slammed it down onto the pair. They stood fast against the blow with their shields.

  Even tanks had to perform upkeep on their shields, so the ideal defense was a sidestep move, but they wanted to see if blocking was a viable strategy while they still had the leeway to try. As I watched with equal parts admiration and terror, Shivata’s heater shield and Liten’s round shield collided with the giant boulder fist, generating a huge blast and a flash of light.

  Sure enough, they were pushed about six feet back, but stayed on their feet without suffering damage. Since that was just a normal attack, they certainly wouldn’t be able to block a special attack with unique effects. But just knowing something could be blocked was a mental boost. Fuscus’s right arm was briefly immobilized after the attack, and Hafner tore into it with Cataract, a two-part greatsword skill that knocked down about 3 percent of the last HP bar.

  “All right…let’s attack!” I ordered Asuna, leaping into motion. I struck the golem’s tree trunk–sized left calf with a Vertical Arc. When the pause ended, I yelled, “Switch!” and pulled back. Asuna jumped into my spot, dancing into a high-low Diagonal Sting.

  At the right leg, Agil and Wolfgang were swinging their two-handed weapons with abandon, tearing out solid damage. Fuscus faltered with the damage to its legs, roaring. For a moment I was afraid we’d pushed too hard, but thankfully, the golem kept its sights on our tanks.

  In the distance along the wall, Nezha was preparing to launch his chakram at the weak point, while Argo darted nimbly across the chamber, leaving healing potions on the floor around A-Team.

  “It’s finally looking more like a boss fight!” Asuna murmured as she darted back past me.

  “Yeah…but it’s not going to just end without a struggle. Stay focused!”

  “Of course!” she replied, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. There was nothing of the old newbie Asuna from the first two floors left in her. There were many pieces of knowledge left to teach her, but perhaps the moment that she “didn’t need me anymore” was going to come sooner than I expected. The sudden realization caused the breath to catch in my throat.

  But that was what I wanted, of course. Only when she left my side and joined a major guild would her ability truly blossom. It was all for the sake of beating this deadly game…Asuna was fighting to get herself back to reality, too.

  I clenched the grip of my sword and returned the smile to my partner for now.

  “Okay…next time we’ll attack a different spot and find its weak point.”

  “Sounds good. Maybe it’s an Achilles tendon or a pinkie finger,” she suggested confidently, whipping her silver rapier back and forth.

  As I suspected, Fuscus’s attacks expanded to include simple punching attacks, a foot-stomping combo, that aggravating debuff voice, heat lasers from the eyes, and a frenzy mode for his final stage.

  I considered a brief retreat every time the pattern changed, but the six members of A-Team, particularly Shivata and Liten, were standing strong through the occasional potion rotation.

  When the last HP bar went red, all six of them withstood the golem’s furious double-fisted whirlwind attack. Shivata turned to me and yelled, “Kirito! You can have the LA, just make it look good!!”

  At that, I had no choice but to put on a show. “All right! I’ll take it, then!!”

  I rested the dark-elf Sword of Eventide against my right shoulder and ran with all my might.

  It hadn’t been powered up yet, but the sword had a magic boost of +7 to AGI, a remarkable effect for just the fifth floor. I made full use of my speed boost, sprinting at full blast as I drifted toward the wall. When I got there, I leaped onto the curving surface and kept running, practically parallel with the ground, passing over A-Team on defense, and when I couldn’t climb any farther, I jumped as hard as I could.

  Fuscus’s enormous face was directly in front of me. The red ring eyes shrank, trying to focus on the small leaping human approaching them.

  “Vwoaaaaaaah!!”

  I did my best to cut through the golem’s bellow with a shout of my own.

  “This is…the eeeeeeend!!”

  I held the blade at my left side and activated Horizontal Square, a four-part skill that no other player had yet learned.

  The longsword whirred like a coaxial helicopter rotor, striking Fuscus’s red forehead symbol with one, two, three, four glowing lines.

  The sigil split off of the surface and vanished into a little glow of light.

  The ringed eyes began to blink irregularly.

  The red lines covering its body flashed brighter. Something like flame erupted outward from the lines—and Fuscus the Vacant Colossus, boss of the fifth floor, exploded.

  The Last Attack bonus readout appeared as I landed on the ground again and fell to one knee.

  The boss’s death effect was more impressive than any of the previous ones, but even after it faded away at last, no one spoke.

  Amid the silence, I noticed a change in the texture of the floor. That smooth, crystalline reflection was gone, replaced by the same rough, dark-blue stone that the tower was built from. I reached out, still kneeling, and touched the craggy surface. The entire floor suddenly began to rumble.

  At first I was afraid that, like on the second floor, there was another boss to deal with. This time, a new object descended from the ceiling, and to my great relief, it was not an arm, leg, or face, but a spiral stone staircase.

  “…It’s over…”

  I wasn’t watching, but I guessed the voice belonged to Shivata or Hafner. Like the breaking of floodgates, that comment let loose a storm of cheers from our little raid party.

  I wanted to join them more than anything, but an onrush of fatigue threatened to knock me out; it was all I could do to steady myself by jabbing the sword into the floor. As I struggled to use that prop to get to my feet, a pale hand appeared in front of my face.

  “Good job, Kirito.”

  I clasped it and pulled myself up to a shaky standing position. My partner was grinning next to me, her rapier already put away. We celebrated with a light fist bump.

  Behind us, an even louder cheer arose, so I turned to see Shivata lifting Liten up into the air. He was spinning her around, holding her under the arms, as though that full plate armor weighed nothing at all.

  “…Looks like they could be the talk of Aincrad by tomorrow,” I muttered, but Asuna shook her head.

  “Nobody here is going to spread irresponsible rumors. I don’t think even Argo would sell info on them.”

  Argo herself was standing not far away, and she managed a brave, “N-nah, never!” Nezha joined in the laughter, and the four of us all shook hands.

  “You were an excellent leader, Kirito. Why don’t you try recruiting members to start your own guild?” Nezha suggested innocently. I shook my head in vigorous terror.

  “D-don’t even joke about that. Besides, there’s no use inviting you, remember?”

  “That’s not true. I’m sure the entire Braves team would love to join your guild, Kirito.”

  “Nope, no way. Then Hafner would kick my ass and accuse me of having planned that all along,” I protested quietly, glancing over to see that he and Okotan were still enraptured in the glow of victory. I had reluctantly taken on the role of raid leader to prevent a disastrous split between the DKB and ALS, not to lay the sparks of fresh conflict.

  In any case, we had beaten the boss without losing a single person, so disaster was averted for now. The only issue was the item in question, I thought with a weary heart…

  At that very instant, my body was shot through with an unpleasant shiver, as though a needle of ice
had pierced my spine.

  I was so involved with the strategy of the boss that I’d forgotten the most important part until this very moment.

  The most basic of SAO rules.

  When any monster—including bosses—dropped an item, it would appear directly in the player’s inventory…and even other party members would not know about it.

  Meaning that when the group’s celebration ended and we got to the post-battle phase, I would ask about who got the guild flag, the ultimate purpose of our entire plan. And if no one raised their hand, it meant that either there was no flag dropped by the fifth-floor boss in the official release of SAO or whoever actually got the flag wasn’t telling anyone—and I would have to discern between the two.

  Technically, it was possible for all of us to set our menus to visible so that everyone’s gains could be examined. But the contents of one’s inventory was the most crucial of personal information in SAO, and even bossy guild leaders like Lind and Kibaou would not dare conduct forced inspections of their members’ items.

  I briefly considered sorting the item lists to have the newest items at the top, but I discarded that one as well. The sort feature worked only on the main inventory window, like a root folder in a file-based OS. It didn’t work on the subfolders—if the flag had been moved to a container or sack within the inventory, it wouldn’t show. I’d have to inspect all those containers, and if it was within a multilayered sub-storage, like a sack inside a box inside a sack inside a box, not only would the process take forever, but it would be easy to miss.

  I should have noticed the issue before we started the fight and talked it over. If we had established a protocol wherein nobody opened their window after the boss was defeated, and we then checked just our main inventory screens one by one, nobody would even attempt to hide the item.

  So what should be done? Did I raise the issue now and get permission to check everyone’s stuff? Or did I put my hopes on the probability that someone would materialize the flag and drop it out in the open, preventing my fears from coming true in the first place?

  “What’s wrong, Kirito? Does your tummy hurt?” Asuna asked, noticing my unnatural state.

  “What am I, a little kid?” I wanted to snap, but I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. I looked at Asuna, Argo, and Nezha in turn and asked, “Um…did the guild flag drop for any of you?”

  All three of them shook their heads. Asuna gave me a questioning look, so I shook mine in return. “Nope, nothing for me…”

  “Ahh. So it must be someone over there.”

  It was then that Asuna and Argo realized my concern. The two girls grimaced and muttered, “Oh, right…” and “Dang, how careless I was…” That got Nezha’s attention.

  But the chakram thrower only grinned and said quietly, “It’ll be fine. We all worked as one to win this fight. I’m sure they’ll come forth.”

  “…Yeah, I’m sure…” I replied, then turned and steeled myself.

  The spiral staircase touched the floor about ten feet away from the descending stairs. It met the stone seamlessly, as though it had always been in that exact spot.

  As I approached, Shivata lowered Liten at last and turned to me, beaming. “Hey, we did it!” he cheered, raising his hand. I tried to put on the most natural smile I could summon as I slapped his palm.

  The sound brought the other members over, and I addressed the entire group.

  “First, congratulations, everyone…and thank you. We managed to beat the boss, and it was thanks to your incredible effort. Lots of stuff didn’t go according to plan—I mean, our reconnaissance run ended up being the final attempt—but you all did admirably against undoubtedly the toughest boss yet.”

  I paused, and Hafner, hands on hips, filled the silence—but not with what I expected.

  “Given my position, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but…maybe we were able to defeat a gimmicky boss like this without casualties because we only had a dozen members. If it was a full raid of forty-eight, I feel like it’d be impossible for every last one to avoid those floor lines.”

  As if noticing what he was just saying, he then looked at the ALS’s halberdier. “Uh…Oko, do you think the ALS was planning to attempt the boss with just their core members because they knew how to tackle it properly?”

  Okotan lifted his hands in a shrug and said, “Nope, I think that was a total coincidence. Plus—and this is totally off the record—I don’t think the ALS’s three main parties could have done this without losing anyone. We don’t give members any orders based on build, so we don’t have any pure tanks in that group. It’s too tough a role for too little experience gain. Scouting Liten was a big step toward fixing our tank situation…I knew she would be a bearer—I mean, a bear for us.”

  “I am not a bear, Oko!” the maiden in love protested from inside her damaged plate armor. Okotan smiled in mild panic at the unintended insult, but Shivata, Hafner, and Agil’s team roared with laughter.

  With the conversation at a lull, Shivata opened his window and looked at it, then at me. “It’s already eight thirty. The ALS could be showing up any moment now. Have you thought about how we’re going to return, Kirito?”

  I was taken aback; I’d been occupied with a different question.

  “Uh…yeah, right. We might run into the ALS if we go back down the tower, so I think we should go up to the town of the sixth floor and teleport back to Karluin through the gate. We went to the trouble of beating the boss; you all want to see the next floor, right?”

  “You bet I do! I’m so excited!” Hafner bubbled. The group laughed again, but I cut them off by raising my hand.

  “Like Shivata just said, we don’t have much time. I’d like to rush up to the next floor, but before that, there’s something very important to take care of.”

  The group grew serious again with my expression and tone of voice. I motioned Asuna forward, then looked at each of the raid members in turn: Hafner, Shivata, Liten, Okotan, Agil, Wolfgang, Lowbacca, Naijan, Asuna, Argo, and Nezha.

  “The purpose of this fight was to get the guild flag from Fuscus. I want whoever got the flag to speak up now.”

  “Oh, right, that was the point. I totally forgot,” said Agil. He rubbed his head and held his empty hands out, indicating that it wasn’t him. His companions shrugged or shook their heads, and the pairs of ALS and DKB members gave similar reactions. Of course, neither Asuna, Argo, nor Nezha spoke up, either.

  After five seconds of silence, Wolfgang said hesitantly, “It’s not…you, Kirito?”

  “Nope…didn’t drop for me.”

  “So that means the fifth-floor boss in the official game didn’t have this flag after all?” the wolfman asked in surprise, stroking his beard. Meanwhile, the even hairier Lowbacca raised his arms over his head in disbelief.

  “Well, what a bunch of nonsense over nothing! What was all that hard work even…for…?”

  His words slowed and faded out as he came to a realization. At the same time, the expressions wore off of everyone else’s faces.

  The possibility that someone had the guild flag and wasn’t announcing it to the group mercilessly shredded the post-victory glow hanging in the air.

  The companions who had fought the boss with one heart and one mind now looked at one another in suspicion. It was stoking all my worst fears.

  It would be so easy to simply declare, “The fifth-floor boss did not drop any flags,” and head upward.

  But that only put off the problem at hand. In fact, I would be abandoning my duty.

  Because I already had a suspicion about who had earned the guild flag and was hiding it from the group.

  Of course, I couldn’t present undeniable evidence, but if I framed the discussion just right, I might be able to put pressure on the guilty party. Still, if they insisted innocence, I could not force an inspection of their inventory or threaten with my naked blade. I had to produce a willing confession, not create a stalemate.

  But how could I fashion that outco
me?

  I’d never attempted to understand the minds of others before this; I only pushed them further away from me. Even with my family in the real world, the people whose faces I saw every day, I often found myself wondering what they were thinking, what kind of people they truly were. The feeling of not knowing who another person really was drained the feeling from my real life, and at times filled me with an inexpressible emptiness.

  I found my escape from real life in online games starting in elementary school because the idea of communication through an avatar seemed very natural to me. The 3-D avatar and the real human manipulating it were in separate realms, completely isolated from each other. That way I didn’t have to worry about who anyone else was.

  That was why Sword Art Online, the world’s first VRMMORPG, appealed to me so much. My application to the beta test and eventual imprisonment in this virtual world were essentially inevitable.

  But from the day the log-out button disappeared and my avatar turned into my own body, I tried to distance myself from people again. I abandoned Klein, my very first friend, and was nearly killed by Kopel, my very first collaborator—but the root of the problem was with me, for being afraid of getting close to others.

  Once this world became my second reality, I tried to have zero connection to anyone else, just like before. The player was always a player; even with my life on the line, I would continue to role-play under a fictional name. Maintaining that mind-set allowed me to engage in a minimum of communication with other people.

  I might be able to pressure whoever was hiding the guild flag with logic, but I could not convince them in the truest sense of the word…

  I let out my breath, started to lower my head.

  But my attention was drawn by a small but bright light in the right corner of my vision.

  The source of the light was a pair of hazel-brown eyes, staring straight at me. Not pleading, not urging—just watching, silently.

  Asuna.