Sword Art Online - Volume 2 - Aincrad (Side Stories)

by Reki Kawahara

  Kirito stopped talking and glanced down at Scilica’s face.

  “So I might have saved you to satisfy myself, to atone for my past… Sorry.”

  Scilica was an only child so she couldn’t completely grasp all of what Kirito said. But for some reason, she felt as if she could understand his little sister.

  “…Onii-chan’s little sister… she doesn’t resent you. If she didn’t like it, then she wouldn’t have been able to do so well. She most probably liked kendo very much.”

  As Scilica said this, choosing her words carefully, Kirito smiled.

  “It seems I’m the one who keeps getting comforted… Is it really like that? …It would be nice if it is.”

  Scilica felt something warm spread in her heart. She was happy that Kirito had opened up to her.

  The two soon arrived at the north entrance of the village. Countless white flowers grew from the vines that were coiled around the slim, silver-colored metal arch. The main street passed through it and stretched on to become a highway surrounded by green hills before disappearing into the haze.

  “Well… our adventure finally starts.”

  “Yeah.”

  Scilica pulled herself away from Kirito’s arm, steadied her expression, and nodded.

  “With your level and equipment, the monsters around here shouldn’t be too difficult for you to beat. But…”

  As he said this, Kirito rummaged through the pouch hanging on his belt, took out a sky blue crystal, and then placed it in Scilica’s hand. It was a Teleport Crystal.

  “You don’t know what’s going to happen on the field. So keep this in mind. If something unexpected happens and I tell you to get away, then use that crystal to leave. Any village is fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Bu-but…”

  “Promise me. I’ve… destroyed a whole party before. I don’t want to repeat the same mistake again.”

  Kirito’s expression was so serious that Scilica couldn’t do anything but nod. After Kirito received her answer he smiled in relief.

  “Then, let’s go!”

  “Okay!”

  Scilica made sure of the feel of the dagger equipped at her side and resolved in her mind; she at least wouldn’t become confused like yesterday and that she would fight to the best of her ability.

  But–

  “Kya-aaaaaah!? What’s that—!? It, it looks horrible–—!!”

  They had met their first monster only a few minutes after they started walking in a northward direction on the fields of the forty-seventh floor.

  “U-uwaa!! Go away–-!”

  The thing that appeared and was making its way through the bushes had a form that Scilica would never have imagined. «A walking flower» would be the best description. The dark green stem was about as thick as a human arm and it stood up using its roots, which was split in numerous places. The stem or body supported a huge yellow flower that was similar to a sunflower. It had its mouth open, with teeth spouting out of it, revealing flashes of the red from the inside.

  It had two vines that stretched out from the middle part of the stem, which made one think of the arms an animal had. It seemed that those arms and its mouth were the bodyparts it used for attacking. The man-eating plant ran towards Scilica with a smiling mouth while swinging its tentacle-like arms. This thing that looked like a grotesque caricature made Scilica feel disgusted.

  “I said go away–!”

  Scilica swung her dagger wildly with her eyes almost closed. Kirito, who stood next to her, said in a disconcerted voice:

  “It-it’s fine. That monster’s really weak. If you aim for the white bit just under the flower, then you can easily…”

  “Bu-but it looks horrible—!”

  “If that thing looks bad then this is going to be hard. There’s also a monster that has numerous flowers, and one that looks like a carnivorous plant, and even one that has lots of sticky tentacles…

  “Kya–-!!”

  As she screamed at what Kirito said, Scilica activated a sword skill; of course, it simply cut through the empty air. During the short delay after that, the two tentacles wrapped themselves around Scilica’s two legs and lifted her up with surprising strength.

  “Uwah!?”

  Scilica found herself hanging upside down with her vision reversed while her skirt, faithful to the virtual gravity, slid down.

  “Uaaa!?”

  She quickly pressed down on the end of her skirt and tried to cut the vine. But since she was in an awkward position, it didn’t work out very well. Scilica shouted with her face red:

  “Ki-Kirito onii-chan, help! Don’t just look and help!!”

  “Tha-that’s a bit hard.”

  With his left hand covering his eyes, Kirito answered with an uncomfortable expression while the huge flower continued to swing Scilica to and fro.

  “Stop!”

  Scilica didn’t have a choice but to let go of her skirt, grab onto the vine, and cut it. The back of the flower’s neck came within reach as she fell and she initiated a sword skill. This time it struck the mark, and as the flower’s head fell off, its whole body exploded and vanished. Scilica, who landed lightly amidst a rain of polygon debris, asked Kirito as soon as she turned around.

  “…Did you see?”

  The black swordsman looked down at Scilica through the gaps between his fingers and answered:

  “…No, I didn’t.”

  They went through five more battles to get used to the monsters before increasing their pace; although she almost fainted when a monster that looked like a sea anemone grabbed her with its sticky tentacles.

  Kirito didn’t participate much in the battles and mostly just supported Scilica, occasionally blocking attacks when Scilica was in danger. The party experience is divided according to the amount of damage each party member dealt to the monster. Since she was defeating high-leveled monsters, she also gained experience points several times faster than usual and quickly rose a level.

  As they kept following the endless red brick road, a bridge that led over a small stream appeared. Beyond it they could see a large hill, and the path seemed to lead to its top.

  “That’s the «Hill of Memories».”

  “There doesn’t appear to be any forks.”

  “Yeah. We just have to keep going up, so there’re no worries about getting lost. But they say that there are lots of monsters. Let’s be careful.”

  “Okay!”

  Soon, soon she could revive Fina. When she thought of this, her footsteps hastened naturally.

  As they started walking along the uphill path that was full of blooming flowers, they ran into more monsters just like Kirito had predicted. The plant type monsters were also much bigger, but Scilica’s black dagger was much stronger than she had thought, allowing her to defeat most of them with a single combo.

  But Kirito’s skill was even more surprising.

  She had thought that he was a pretty high-level swordsman after seeing him defeat two drunken apes with a single swing of his sword. But even after coming up twelve floors, he still didn’t lose a single bit of his composure. When a large number of monsters appeared, he helped Scilica by just taking out all of them except one.

  As they continued, Scilica couldn’t help but wonder what such a high-level player was doing on the thirty-fifth floor.

  Based on what he said, it seemed like he had something to do in the «Forest of Wandering». But she had never heard of any rare items or monsters there.

  Let’s ask him after this adventure is over– Scilica thought as she swung her dagger; yet even as she did this, the narrow path began to gradually get steeper. As they defeated the increasingly aggressive monsters and made their way through the densely wooded area–

  They arrived at the top of the hill.

  “Uwa—!”

  Scilica held herself back as she ran forward a couple of steps and exclaimed.

  Sky garden– this was truly a place that suited its name. The open space surro
unded by the dense woods was full of flowers contending against themselves as they bloomed.

  “We’re finally here.”

  Kirito said as he walked toward Scilica and sheathed his sword.

  “The flower… Is it here…?”

  “Yeah. There’s a stone in the middle and on top of it…”

  Scilica was already running before Kirito even finished talking. She could definitely see a shining white stone in the middle of the flower beds. She ran towards it, panting, and then carefully examined the top of the rock that came up to about her chest.

  “Huh……?”

  But there was nothing there. There was only a small bit grass in the middle of an indent in the rock; there was nothing that one could call a flower.

  “It’s… It’s not here, Kirito onii-chan!”

  She shouted at Kirito, who had run up to her side. Tears started to appear in her eyes.

  “There’s no way… –Ah, look.”

  Scilica followed Kirito’s gaze and looked back at the stone. Then–

  “Ah…”

  A small sprout grew out from amidst the soft grass. As she stared at it, the focus system activated and the young plant became more detailed. Two white leaves opened up like a clam and a stem quickly grew out from in between.

  The stem grew tall in the blink of an eye, just like in that video she had seen during a science class ages ago, and then a small bud appeared at the end of it. The small raindrop-shaped bud gave off a pearly white light from within.

  As Kirito and Scilica watched with bated breath, the end of the bud started to open; then– with a bell-like tinkling, it opened. A little spot of light danced across the air.

  The two simply watched the white flower grow without moving an inch. Seven petals reached out like the radiance of a star, and light shined softly from its center, mixing in with that of the sky’s.

  Scilica looked up at Kirito, feeling as if she shouldn’t touch this. Kirito gave a soft smile and nodded.

  Scilica nodded in response and then reached towards the flower with her right hand. The moment she touched it, the stem that was as thin as a thread of silk broke as if it was made of ice, and only the flower was left in her hand. She then touched it gently as she breathed softly. The name window appeared soundlessly. «The Flower of Pneuma»–

  “Now… we can revive Fina…”

  “Yeah. You just have to drip the droplet of water in the flower on the heart item. But there are a lot of strong monsters here, so it would be better to do it after we get back to the village. Let’s just wait a bit longer and hurry back.”

  “Okay!”

  Scilica nodded and opened her main window before putting the flower in it. She checked that it was in the item inventory before closing the window.

  To tell the truth, she wanted to use a teleport crystal to return immediately, but Scilica held herself back and started walking. It was a virtually a rule never to use the expensive crystal unless one was in real danger.

  Fortunately, they didn’t run into that many monsters on the way back. They soon reached the stream after coming down at a quick pace.

  Now I can meet Fina in about an hour at the most–

  She hugged her chest, which felt as if it was going to explode, and was just about to cross the bridge–

  Suddenly Kirito grabbed her shoulder. She looked back, her heart beating rapidly, and saw Kirito glaring at the dense group of trees over the bridge with a frightening expression. He then opened his mouth and talked in a low and tense voice:

  “–You guys lying in ambush, come out right now.”

  “What…!?”

  Scilica quickly looked towards the other side, but she couldn’t see anyone. After a few tense seconds passed, the leaves started moving with a rustling sound. Cursors that represented the players appeared. They were green, so they weren’t criminals.

  Surprisingly – the person who came into view across the short bridge was someone that Scilica knew.

  Flame red hair, with lips of the same color; the spear warrior wielded a slim, cross-shaped spear and wore black armor that shone like enamel.

  “Ro-Rosalia-san…!? Why are you at a place like…”

  Rosalia smiled lopsidedly and ignored the question from Scilica, whose eyes were wide open with surprise.

  “To think that you saw through my hiding; it seems that your scan skill is pretty high, swordsman. Did I underestimate you a little?”

  Then she turned towards Scilica:

  “Looks like you luckily managed to get «The Flower of Pneuma». Congratulations, Scilica.”

  Scilica, who couldn’t figure out Rosalia’s true intentions, took a couple of steps back. She felt something inexplicably bad about this.

  Rosalia didn’t betray her expectations and began speaking a second later:

  “Hand over that flower right now.”

  Scilica didn’t know what to say.

  “…!? What… what are you saying…?”

  Then, Kirito, who had been silent until now, stepped forward and opened his mouth:

  “I can’t let you do that, Rosalia-san. No– should I call you the leader of the orange guild «Titan’s Hand».”

  Rosalia’s eyebrows twitched upwards and the smile disappeared from her face.

  In SAO, players who commit acts that are judged as criminal, such as stealing, harming other players, or killing them, have their cursors’ color changed from green to orange. Therefore, people refer to these criminal individuals as orange players and a guild that consist of them as orange guilds. Scilica knew about this, but she had never seen them before.

  Yet Rosalia’s HP cursor, which she could see right in front of her eyes, was green no matter how she looked at it. Scilica looked up at Kirito, who was standing next to her, and asked in a dry voice:

  “Hey… but… look… Rosalia-san’s, it’s green…”

  “Even in an orange guild, there are plenty of occasions when not all of the members are orange. The green members search out prey and hide amongst their parties before luring them to the ambush point. The person who was eavesdropping on us yesterday must be a member of her group as well.”

  “Wha-what…”

  Scilica looked at Rosalia with shock and loathing.

  “The–then, the reason she partied with us for the past two weeks was because…”

  Rosalia smiled venomously once again and spoke:

  “Yeah~ I was checking out how strong the party was, and at the same time was waiting for them to grow fat on the money they earned through their adventuring. In fact, I was going to take care of them today.”

  She licked her lips as she stared at Scilica.

  “I was wondering why the person I looked forward to hunting the most suddenly left, and then I heard that you were going to get a rare item. «Pneuma’s Flower» is pretty expensive these days. Gathering information is important after all~”

  Then she stopped talking for a moment, looked at Kirito, and shrugged.

  “But swordsman, you were playing with this kid even though you knew that? Are you some kind of idiot? Or did you really fall for her?”

  Scilica’s face reddened with fury at Rosalia’s insults. Her hand moved to draw her dagger. But Kirito grabbed her shoulder.

  “No, it’s none of those things.”

  Kirito said, his voice cold.

  “I was looking for you as well, Rosalia-san.”

  “–What do you mean?”

  “You attacked the guild «Silver Flag» ten days ago on the thirty-eighth floor, right? The one where four members died and only the leader survived.”

  “Ah~, those beggars?”

  Rosalia didn’t even flinch as she nodded.

  “That leader… he was looking for somebody to avenge his team in the gate plaza at the front lines, crying from morning till night.”

  A terrifying coldness could be felt from Kirito’s words. It felt like a blade of ice that had been sharpened to cut anything that came near.

 
; “But when I received his request, he didn’t ask me to kill you. All he asked me to do was to throw you all into the prison of the Black Iron Castle – could you understand how he felt?”

  “Nope.”

  Rosalia answered as if she couldn’t even be bothered.

  “What? Why are you acting so serious? Are you stupid? There’s no evidence that the person dies in real life if you kill them here anyway. Besides, it’s not like this will be a crime when we return to the real world. We don’t even know if we can go back, yet here you talk about justice and rules; it’s not even funny. I hate guys like you the most – people who dragged some weird logic in with them when they came into this world.”

  Rosalia’s eyes grew angry.

  “So, you mean to tell me that you seriously took the words of some guy who couldn’t even die properly and were looking for us? You really have nothing to do. Well, I’ll acknowledge that I fell for your bait. But… do you really think that you can do anything with just two people…?”

  A sadistic smile appeared on her face and she waved her hand twice in the air.

  At that moment, the trees on either sides of the path that led straight from the bridge shook violently, and people appeared from between them. Cursors emerged one after another into Scilica’s vision. Most of them were orange. Their numbers went up to ten. If they had crossed the bridge without spotting the ambush, then they would have been surrounded. There was one other green amongst the orange players– his spiky hairstyle was, without a doubt, the one they saw at the inn last night.

  The bandits who just appeared were all male players dressed in gaudy clothes. They all had silver accessories and sub-equipment hanging from all over their bodies.

  Scilica hid behind Kirito’s coat as feelings of revulsion came over her. She whispered quietly: