“Teasing…?”
Asuna recognized something about this scene, looking up at me, then at the panini in her hands, then to Argo on her right-hand side.
“I-it’s not like that, Argo! We are not, at all, in any way, like that!”
“Nyo-ho-ho, I get it, I get it,” she laughed creepily.
I plopped down on the bench to Argo’s right and quietly clinched the message. “It’s true. Don’t go selling any funny rumors.”
“Why, that hurts. You know it’s not my style to sell rumors and gossip.”
“Yeah, sure. Anyway, the fact that you’re here must mean you’ve got all the intel you needed.”
“You bet. In fact, it took just three hours from your message to look up what you wanted, so I figured that might earn me a free meal in addition to my fee, but…”
She had me over the coals. After all, I’d told her I wanted it ASAP, just before I passed out for a quick nap.
“F-fine, fine. What do you want?”
“Gosh, I could sure go for a nice cheesy pizza,” she started. Before the sentence could finish, I had dashed at a sprint to the seafood pizza cart, bought one with three times the cheese, then bolted back to the bench.
“Sorry about all the trouble. This is a mere token of my gratitude.”
I presented the pizza with a flourish and Argo grinned back at me.
“Very good, sir.”
“Then let’s talk as we eat…Chow that down before it gets cold, Asuna,” I called to the fencer on the other side of Argo. The three of us said grace and started scarfing down our Italian-style dinner.
I had never eaten a true panini in real life, but between the crispy and chewy bread, the fragrantly grilled whitefish, and the herb-scented tomato sauce, it seemed like this was probably a pretty good re-creation of one. Now if only the main ingredients were a nice thick slab of meat and a thick teriyaki-and-mayo sauce…
Both Asuna and Argo were hungry, and we each gobbled down half the meal before finally stopping to breathe.
Before I could prompt her, Argo pulled out a scroll of parchment from one of the many pouches at her waist and held it out between her fingers.
“Normally I’d charge you an extra fee for quick service…but I’ll go with the normal rate this time as thanks for the pile o’ cheese you bought me. That’s five hundred col.”
I pulled out the gold coin I’d stored in my coat pocket for just this occasion and handed it to Argo. Tapping the scroll she handed over caused it to automatically unfurl.
“What information did you request from her?” Asuna asked, leaning over. I showed her the illustration on the scroll: a detailed map of Rovia. Argo herself hadn’t drawn this map, however. Anyone could produce the same thing by simply walking all over the town, then copying the map data to a scroll item like this.
The difference was that Argo’s map had about twenty exclamation point markers placed all over the town. This was what the five hundred col paid for.
“Are those…all of the quest NPCs?” Asuna wondered, as astute as ever. I nodded silently and got back an exasperated glance in return.
“Well, I hate to be hard on Argo, since she did all the work…but you could find all of this stuff just by walking around town. And we’ll need to visit these spots to start the quests anyway.”
“That was my assumption as well. And didn’t you already finish all of these quests in the beta, Kii-boy?”
“That’s the thing,” I murmured, my mouth full of panini. “I feel like the longer I walk around town, the more my old memories will fade…I just wanted to be able to see the locations all at once like this.”
“…Ohhh?”
There was more than a hint of entertainment in Argo’s voice. I chose to stare at the map of the town rather than indulge her.
As I suspected, the layout of the town itself was exactly the same. I tapped each icon in turn, remembering the dried, dusty form the settlement used to take. With each tap appeared a quick quest rundown written by Argo.
Once I had examined all of them, I pointed out a single marker in the northwest corner of the map.
“This one.”
“…What about it?” Asuna asked, suspicious. I grinned at her.
“This quest wasn’t there in the beta. This is the spot that’s the key to this town…no, to conquering this entire floor.”
“If you get all the intel on this quest, I’ll buy it off you,” Argo had offered, and with a lingering whiff of cheese, she melted back into the darkness.
Asuna and I finished the last scraps of our sandwiches and got up from the bench to watch the dock to the south. The line looked a little bit shorter than before, but it was still a good thirty-minute wait.
Thanks to the power of a full stomach and a conversation with Argo, Asuna had recovered her normal mood. She noted, “I don’t mind lining up…but that dock has a terrible system.”
“Oh? What about it?”
“The little two-seaters and the big ten-person boats both stop at the same place. It’s taking extra time because one person will end up riding the big gondola, and then the larger groups have to split up and take multiple smaller ones. They ought to at least split the people up into three different lines.”
“Good point. So…should we propose that idea?”
“…That’s not really my style.”
“I don’t know. You’ve got that class rep–style attitude, so I bet people will…”
I let the rest of the sentence hang when I felt Asuna’s chilling laser beam stare on my face.?
The nighttime sights of Rovia were truly enchanting now, as the colorful lamps and window lights of the town glimmered off the surface of the dark water. Even the gondolas full of smiling players had lanterns of their own, sitting on the prow and stern of the small ones and the overhanging roofs of the larger ones. The sight of the gondolas crossing in the canals was so beautiful that…
“—Ah!”
I snapped my fingers, a sudden idea lighting up my brain.
“Wh-what?”
“This way! I’ll explain later.”
I prodded Asuna’s back and trotted toward the wharf at the north end, the opposite direction from the dock. There was no boat landing here, so the drop from the piled stone fence to the water was quite far. But that also meant the gondolas were floating quite low.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Asuna muttered, trying to back away. I grabbed the hem of her cape tight.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine.”
“It is not fine! I don’t like it!”
“You’ll be perfectly all right.”
“Do it by yourself if you’re so keen on it!” she shouted.
I glanced left and right. Within a few seconds, one of the large twelve-seat gondolas came chugging closer on the right. Luckily enough, another gondola of the same size was approaching from the left. I calculated where the two would pass, given that traffic seemed to move on the right side here, then moved us three yards to the left and five yards back.
“I’ll give you a five-second countdown.”
“I-I told you, I don’t want to do this!”
“That’s funny, Asuna, I could have sworn you had a higher agility than me.”
“Rgh…y-you know that’s not fair to bring up…”
“This should be easy for you, Asuna. I mean, since you have the Sprint skill and everything.”
“But I just switched that one out…Arrgh, oh, fine!”
“And five, four, three, two, one…”
At zero, we started running. I hit the low fence in stride and launched off of it with my right foot.
All the traffic in the canals of Rovia traveled on the right side, so I leaped and stretched out for the gondola approaching on the left. Once I had just barely landed by my tiptoes, the gondola shook fiercely and the passengers below shouted in alarm. I yelled a quick apology and cut across the roof to leap again.
In midair, I glanced back to see that Asuna was keeping u
p. She had better jumping power than I did, so she should be able to make any jump that I did, but I was secretly relieved when I landed on the second gondola coming from the right.
The people riding this gondola must have already noticed the display of ninja acrobatics going on overhead, as they applauded and whistled at the sight of Asuna leaping gracefully through the night sky. Glad that we weren’t being yelled at, I raced across the roof and jumped for a third time.
But…
“Ugh!”
The far bank was farther away than I thought. I scrambled my limbs in midair, stretching my arms as far as I could, until I just barely caught the lip of the wall with my fingertips.
As my entire body slammed up against the wall, I heard a light footfall over my head. When I looked up, I saw Asuna standing safe and sound above me, her hands on her hips and a disappointed look on her face.
“If you weren’t sure you could make it, you shouldn’t have tried,” she scolded. I couldn’t be bothered to answer her. I had a very sudden and clear understanding of exactly why the passengers on the gondola had been cheering.
“Um, Asuna?”
“…What?”
“You’re, um, in a bit of danger…angularly speaking.”
“What do you mean…?”
Asuna trailed off, looking down suspiciously at me as I hung there next to her feet, then suddenly went red enough that I could see it, even in the darkness. She quickly put her hands down over the hem of her skirt, then smiled for some reason and lifted one of her boots.
“Better climb up quick before I step on you.”
“O-okay, okay, I’m coming up!”
I scrambled up the wall in a hurry.
Rovia had a square layout with main channels that intersected—technically, the teleport square was in the center of town, so there was no actual intersection—and split the town into quarters.
If north was the “top” of the town, then the top right was the sightseeing area, with a park, a plaza, and an outdoor theater. The bottom right was the market area, crammed full of a variety of businesses. The bottom left was the lodging area with inns large and small. And the top-left quadrant, where we were now, was the downtown area where all the NPCs lived.
Naturally, each quarter had smaller canals that split it up, requiring the use of a boat to get around farther. But circling gondolas passed by every stretch of water, so we decided to flag down a two-seat boat.
This time, we gave the NPC gondolier coordinates instead of a name, paid the fee by an automatic half-and-half calculator, then wearily sat down in the two seats.
The fencer in the miniskirt was in a much better mood the instant she sat down at the prow, and she began taking in the sights of the town with sparkles in her eyes. This was the most plain of all the areas in Rovia, but even the practical, homey residential sector had its own charm.
Children played with toy boats at the waterside of their entrance porch, while a mother and baby bird somewhere between a duck and a seagull swam past. Evening sounds and smells wafted through kitchen windows, and warm orange light shone off the water.
“Ooh, that house is for sale!”
I looked where Asuna was pointing and saw a small two-story house with a wooden FOR SALE sign.
“Hey, you’re right. So there are player houses here.”
“I wonder how much it costs,” she wondered, her eyes sparkling even brighter.
I snorted wryly. “I wouldn’t look at the price if I were you. You can only be disappointed.”
“I know it’ll be expensive. But I’m free to keep it in mind as something I can get if I work hard enough!”
“Su-sure, that’s true…but I wouldn’t recommend buying in this town. It’s a fun, pretty place for sightseeing, but actually living here would be tough when it comes to getting around,” I noted. Asuna took that advice to heart surprisingly fast.
“Good point. I wonder what the people here do for their daily shopping and such.”
“Maybe they just swim around when we’re not watching.”
“Come on, don’t ruin the illusion. But…if I do decide to get a house, I’ll save up for a normal one with a view of a lake,” she announced, then faced forward again.
I was more of the opinion that the money you could use to buy a player house was better spent on cheap inn lodgings and better gear, but given Asuna’s proactive nature, I could certainly see her landing a lakeside residence someday. Maybe she would even let me crash on her couch…No, definitely not.
Meanwhile, the gondola wove its way through the narrow channels right and left and deposited us at our destination in under ten minutes.
Beyond the tiny dock was a very large but very old building. Aside from the large double doors facing the water, it appeared to be just a plain old house without any notable features.
I approached the building cautiously and peered into a dirty window. Inside was an equally messy room, and in the back was what looked like an old man sitting on the floor, facing the other direction. I thought I could see a faded golden ! mark over his head. This was our quest NPC.
“…I’m surprised Argo was able to spot him,” Asuna commented. I agreed.
“This is more than just good instincts…Anyway, let’s go inside.”
I went to the front door and knocked twice. After a good five seconds, a brusque voice replied, “It’s not locked. Come in if you want something.”
This one feels like a real pain in the ass, I thought to myself as I opened the ancient door.
Inside, we were greeted by an old man in a rocking chair that seemed ready to fall apart at any moment, with a bottle of booze in one hand and a pipe in the other. Technically all he did was glare at us with one eye, so it wasn’t even a greeting.
His wispy, balding hair and scraggly beard were bone white, but his skin was well burned by the sun, and the muscles of his arms and chest were taut. He looked like an old sailor who’d once boasted of his strength and was now retired and drowning in liquor.
Asuna and I shared a look, in which I saw the message This one’s all on you in her eyes. I hesitantly tried to say the magic quest words.
“Um…sir, can I help you with anything?”
The old man took a slug from his bottle and grumbled, “Nope.”
There was no change in the mark over his head or in my quest log. If he didn’t respond to the usual prompt, that meant this was the type of quest you were supposed to arrive at after hearing stories from all over town. Following the proper trail would give us the right keyword to engage him, but since we’d used Argo’s supernatural sense of smell to sniff out the quest, we’d bypassed the natural process, and I didn’t know what I should say to advance the story.
Perhaps we ought to withdraw and go collect information. But since we’d spent our time and fifty col to get here, it would be a waste to leave empty-handed.
I looked around the large room, hoping to find some kind of hint.
In a properly cleaned place, anything out of line would be apparent quite soon, but this room was anything but. There were so many weird items, it was impossible to tell which one might be a hint to the story. Wall hangings of huge fish, stacks of animal pelts, rusty harpoons, lumber of all sizes, pots with unknown contents, oars snapped in the middle…I couldn’t make any kind of guesses, other than that he was a former sailor.
Just as I was about to give up and do this thing the right way, Asuna spoke.
“You really shouldn’t leave things like this on the floor, sir.”
She picked up something off the ground right next to the leg of the rocking chair—a half-rusted nail about four inches long. It had probably fallen out of the decrepit old chair.
The man took a look at the nail in her hand and snorted angrily for some reason, then tilted back more of his drink. Asuna looked back to me for help, but I could only grimace.
“Just put it on the table or something.”
“Okay…”
She nodded and moved her
arm to drop it.
But I snatched the nail away without thinking.
“Ack! Wh-what?!”
“Hang on…This isn’t just a nail. It’s…not a throwing pick, either. It’s a square nail…Where have I seen something like this before?” I muttered to myself, pieces of information connecting within my brain.
Large double doors facing the water. Leather and wood inside the room. A collection of items I’d seen in a real-life museum years ago. A quest that didn’t exist in the beta.
This old man’s not a former sailor.
I faced him head-on and took a deep breath.
“Sir, can you build us a boat?”
3
I HAD THOUGHT THIS QUEST WOULD BE A PAIN IN THE ASS, but I was wrong.
It was more than just a pain in the ass. It was an indescribable, monumental, unprecedented pain in the ass. That was the only way to classify our first quest on the fourth floor: the “Shipwright of Yore.”
“Listen…we can’t take this thing with us to any other floor, so what’s the harm in a little bit of compromise?” I pleaded, but Asuna would have none of it.
“No. If he’s going to make us a ship, it’s going to be the best it can possibly be.”
“Fine, fine. By the way, the word ship is a bit ostentatious for what we’re getting. A gondola is really more of a boat.”
“Fine, it’ll be the best boat it can possibly be!”
We were making our way through a forest at night.
Unlike the dry, desolate tinder of the beta, the large forest to the southeast of Rovia was now brimming with life. The way the branches and leaves practically blotted out the sky was very similar to the forests of the third floor, but the ground underfoot was much different. The thick, wet moss swallowed the soles of our boots with every step, making traversal quite difficult. On top of that, little springs were everywhere, and I’d already stepped into deep water four times in our three hours of searching.
The reason I wasn’t paying attention to my footing was because we were looking up above us as we traveled. Asuna was doing the same, but I never saw her step in water or trip on any tree roots. Had to be a high-resistance value to stumbling or an excellent real-life Luck stat.
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