by Miguel .
“...And what do you mean by that?”
...Oh no.
They were both absolutely furious. Shivata in the DKB might be able to step in before things got truly dangerous, but there was no officer with a similarly cool head on the ALS side.
I certainly couldn’t improve the situation by trying to interfere now. But what options were available to defuse this perilous situation? I gritted my teeth hard.
Suddenly, Lind’s words from just moments ago replayed within my head.
These key spots disappear once someone completes the quest.
From what I heard later, Kibaou and Lind stood there holding the other, neither backing down an inch, and all eighteen players present nearly ended up in a footrace up the hill to see who could ransack the forest elf camp first.
As allies of the forest elves, the DKB were supposed to deliver supplies from the home base to the captain in charge of the camp. But the ALS, working the dark elf story line, needed to steal the commander’s orders, the same as me.
Meaning that if both guilds charged in at once, the dozen-plus forest elf warriors in the camp would be friendly NPCs to the DKCB but powerful (yet not as much as elite types like Kizmel) monsters to the ALS. If that happened, Lind’s party of six would witness an open battle between Kibaou’s dozen and the forest elves.
How would the DKB react?
The most sensible reaction would be to ignore the allied NPCs and deliver the supplies to the captain, thus completing the quest. It wasn’t clear if the camp would simply vanish on the spot as soon as the quest ended, or if the captain would even be able to accept the supplies if he was stuck in combat, but at least that would do as little damage as possible to the frontline group as a whole.
But depending on the mental state of Lind and the DKB, the worst was also possible: siding with the forest elves and turning their swords on the ALS.
If the six DKB members joined with the dozen or so forest elves, their power would be about equal to the twelve ALS warriors. Since they weren’t going to calmly challenge each other through the duel system, players on either side would turn into orange criminal players. At that point, there would be no stopping the infighting. We might be on the verge of the first top player killed since the first-floor boss battle...and at the hands of another player. If that happened, the frontline clearers would never again be a unified group.
Fortunately, that dire outcome for the state of our advancement in the game was avoided at the last moment.
Just as Kibaou and Lind began to climb the hill, each trying to push the other back, the elf camp simply disappeared, as though by magic–though according to SAO’s story, it probably was elven magic.
The two guild leaders and their sixteen followers, all comically locked in place in sprinting poses, stared dumbfounded at the top of the hill.
Eventually, a single player came trotting down the moonlit path. The moment they saw the face of the player who’d just beaten both guilds to the punch and completed the quest in the camp, no doubt that all present had one thought on their minds.
Not him again.
Faced with eighteen pairs of eyes, I was much less comfortable than I let on.
As soon as I made up my mind to beat them to the quest, I took the following actions.
I ran back through the forest the way I’d come, only several times faster, then sped along the river until I was directly beneath the camp. From there, I scrambled up the twenty-foot cliff. Once inside the camp, I made my way around the preset guard routines and snuck into the captain’s tent. Careful not to wake the sleeping leader in the back, I snatched the sheet of orders off the table in the center of the tent. Once out in the open again, I retraced my steps around the guards and descended the cliff behind the camp.
It sounded simple when put like that, but if I hadn’t learned the details from someone else during the beta test, I would certainly have been spotted in the process. Once I set foot back down on the riverside mud and the quest log updated, I nearly fell to the ground with relief.
A part of me wanted to just slip away and return to the base. But if I was going to help avert disaster between the DKB and ALS, I couldn’t just spirit the camp away and leave. It had to be made clear to all that someone had completed the quest–or as good as completed, since it wasn’t official until I reported to the dark elf commander.
So I climbed back up the cliff again, where the entire camp was vanishing in a poof of green light. Anyone else who wanted to finish the “Infiltration” quest or deliver supplies to the forest elf captain would have to find the camp in its new, randomized location, following the new marker on their maps. No matter where it appeared, there would be a way to sneak in the rear, but this cliff-climbing location was the only one I knew well. Even Argo the Rat would have a difficult time providing detailed maps for this part of her strategy guide series.
I crossed the hilltop, now bare of even a single fence, and descended the path to the foot of the hill.
Stopping a slight distance away from the stunned looks of the two guilds, I opened my window to check the time. It had taken just under five minutes to steal the commander’s orders, traversal time included. Meaning that Lind and Kibaou had spent at least that much extra time trying to convince the other of his logic since I left the scene. Sadly for them, that effort had gone to waste.
Window closed and my hands in my pockets, I tried to put on as casual an attitude as I could.
“Sorry, I just finished this quest. You’ll have to look for the camp elsewhere.”
Lind’s face went pale, while Kibaou’s only grew darker. By the light of the moon, it was hard to tell which of them was angrier.
As I might have suspected, the first to speak was Kibaou, he of the blinding rage against all former beta testers.
“...No wonder I ain’t seen ya around. The little beater boy was busy with the campaign. And just like this fool with the topknot, you knew we needed a quest reward ta beat the boss and didn’t see fit ta tell anyone.” Kibaou elbowed one of his DKB cohorts out of the way and glared back and forth at me and Lind. “In the end, y’all don’t give a fig for rescuin’ all eight thousand folks trapped in this game; that’s all secondary to ya. Yer only among the top players so y’all can get your weapons and items and lord it over the rest of us, nothin’ more. Yer just like all the other beaters what up an’ vanished from the Town of Beginnings on the very first day. You ain’t got the right to pretend yer inheritin’ Diavel’s lead!”
He’d been keeping his volume low prior to this, but now that the camp was gone, all restraint went out the window. As Kibaou’s torrent of rage spilled forth, the ALS members at his back shouted encouragement and called Lind a cosplay freak.
The taunts about Diavel’s will and cosplay were aimed squarely at Lind, who had dyed his hair blue in honor of the late knight. Even after I’d snuck in and nicked the quest from under their noses, their rage was still focused on the DKB.
Lind’s face was clearly pale, even under the moonlight. His slender eyes were burning with anger, and his teeth were gritted hard.
But he did not explode in kind. He held out his hand to stifle any return shouts from the DKB team. Perhaps he felt ashamed of his attempt to force their way ahead to the camp. In any case, he showed great restraint in holding back, but the internal tension must have been unbelievably high.
He sucked in a deep breath, held it for several seconds, and let it out, then spoke, his voice tense but low.
“Kibaou. I will repeat myself: None of the DKB members, including me, had any idea that the rewards from the campaign quest would be crucial to defeating the boss. Where did you get this information?”
But Kibaou, still in the midst of his outburst of rage, ignored that question.
“Nice try, but I ain’t failin’ for it! You’re just thinkin’ you can monopolize all that info for yerselves!”
“I just told you, that is not the case!”
They headed into a fresh round of angr
y shouts. I watched the back-and-forth, frustrated by this turn of events.
The “clearers” might be a handy shorthand term for those players who were active in advancing our progress in the game, but they were not a unified force.
There were the DKB, a group of handpicked elites; the ALS, who focused on expanding their group; Agil’s neutral team; and then me, the outcast beater, and my partner, Asuna. On top of that, there was Morte, who for reasons unknown, was moonlighting in both guilds to get them to advance in the campaign, and the person (or people) acting as his dueling partner.
Ironically, I recalled Kizmel’s story about the background of this world and how the humans had split into nine different nations.
“Lind, Kibaou,” I said. They stopped butting heads long enough to glare at me.
There were no magic words that would heal the wounds between these two groups–they were too far apart for that. And
all magic had been lost from this castle since the Great Separation of old. All the foolish remnants of humanity could do was make use of what they could.
“You both know I’m a beater. So I know what the rewards of the Elf War quest are and what effects they have. But I’m not rushing through the campaign for the rewards. I’m doing it to level up and strengthen my equipment so I can beat the floor boss. I’m sure you didn’t go through the trouble of the guild quest just so you could squabble like this.”
As soon as I stopped speaking, Kibaou jabbed an index finger at me. “Don’t talk down ta me, just after ya slipped in and stole this quest like some kinda sneak thief! How you gonna prove yer not after the item rewards?! Even as we stand here, I know that deep down, yer just dyin’ to get on with the next quest!”
“I’m stopping the campaign at this point,” I said flatly. Kibaou growled a wordless question, and Lind squinted at me, his brow furrowing. I removed my hand from my coat pocket and jabbed a thumb behind me–up the gentle hill and far into thé distance, where the dark silhouette of the labyrinth tower loomed.
“I’m about to start tackling the labyrinth. And while you’re stuck in the campaign quagmire, bickering every step of the way, I’ll be ransacking all the chests and ores in the tower. Remember, I’m a beater–don’t expect me to leave any of the good stuff. And if you don’t catch up by the boss chamber, I’ll gather my own group of players to take him down. I’m a beater and a frontrunner, and I’ll do things however I please.”
I stopped talking and put my hand down, but no one spoke up. The silence that covered the hill had to be 20 percent surprise, 30 percent anger, and 50 percent exasperation. Even I felt like I was overdoing it with this speech, but it was necessary to bring this tension under control.
Again, it was Kibaou who reacted first.
“...Ya got to the sixth chapter of the quest, and now yer gonna abandon it?”
“That’s right,” I confirmed, feeling a guilty throb deep in my chest.
It was heartbreaking to leave in the middle of this lengthy quest sequence–there were ten on this floor, and dozens if you counted everything up to its finale on the ninth floor. The system would allow me to come back and resume after finishing the labyrinth, but I expected Kibaou to demand that I destroy the commander’s orders I’d just stolen to prove that I wasn’t secretly after the rewards. Once that story item was gone, I could never complete the “Infiltration” quest.
That wasn’t the only thing. Giving up on the campaign quest here meant leaving Kizmel behind. Her help in our activities the last few days was predicated upon our assistance of the dark elf advance force in their fight against the forest elves. If we abandoned that mission, she would have no cause to help us anymore.
But that was just how big campaign questlines worked.
If a single quest was a book, then a campaign was a series that spanned several volumes. As long as we were in the process of reading that series, we were within the story. But close the book, and the setting and characters were out of reach. The items and experience were just window dressing. The true value of the campaign quest was how it gave flesh and blood to the virtual setting and turned it into a story...
As I hung my head, feeling gloomy, a high-pitched cry stabbed my ears.
“That’s impossible!”
I looked up and saw a man in the midst of the ALS crowd, waving a fist around as he screamed. His skinny torso was clothed in the moss-green tunic of the guild and dark studded leather, and he wore a leather mask of the same color, which covered his face except for the eyes and mouth. He was obscured by the other members, so I couldn’t see his weapon.
The man’s screech was strangely familiar. “He’s full of it! You can’t get to the boss chamber on your own! He’s just pretending to go to the labyrinth so he can finish the campaign behind our backs!”
The other ALS members, and some of the DKB, started to rustle uneasily. From what I could make out of their voices, most were skeptical of my statement.
The skinny man screeched again. “Don’t let that beater lie to you! He’s the reason Diavel died! Ignore him and focus on the campaign...”
“Shut up, Joe,” Kibaou grumbled, and the masked man named Joe grudgingly lowered his arm. This opening gave Lind a chance to speak.
“...I’m well aware of your skill, Kirito, but even you cannot conquer the labyrinth on your own. I’m not in total agreement with the ALS, but I do find it hard to believe that you have given up on the campaign. As a former tester, you certainly understand the benefit of completing an extended quest series. Besides”–his sharp eyes scanned the area–“where is your partner? What if she took the story item and ran off to complete the quest while you’re occupying our attention here?”
It was completely off the mark but difficult to deny. My partner–temporary party member, technically–was back at the dark elf base, sleeping in the tent next to Kizmel. There was no way to spirit her here to prove my innocence.
I had no choice but to stay silent as both guilds hurled accusations in my direction. As the volume grew louder and louder, I was struck by faint déjà vu. It was the same kind of massive public condemnation that surrounded Nezha of the Legend Braves after admitting to his upgrading scam just after the second-floor boss battle.
Back then, the cries had eventually demanded his life as payment. If the other Braves hadn’t gone down on hands and knees to apologize with him, someone might actually have drawn their sword on Nezha.
Now that I thought about it, one of the reasons that terrible, tense scene had come about was the mysterious man in the black poncho who taught the Braves about the trick to swindling others through the upgrade system. His presence seemed eerily similar to that of Morte’s in this case.
Was it possible that they were the same person?
If that was the case, Morte’s motivations were definitely evil. He’d convinced both guilds to take part in the elf quest on opposite sides and got them to collide at that hill. And that meant he was hiding at the riverside hoping to prevent anyone–meaning me–from completing the quest and causing the camp to disappear.
But...
What did he possibly stand to gain by pitting the DKB and ALS against each other?
While we weren’t a unified group, the frontline players had successfully beaten the first and second floors and were just about to reach the third labyrinth. Weakening the group with infighting would only delay our ability to beat this game and escape. It would have a much wider effect than just PK-ing me.
Did Morte...not want to escape this digital prison?
Could anyone really think that way?
“Say something!” came the high-pitched screech again. I raised my head. The man Kibaou had called Joe was shouting, his eyes blazing through the holes in the mask. “Where is she? I bet she’s rushing ahead, finishing all the quests before anyone else! And if not, bring her out here to prove it!”
It was not me who answered that challenge, or Kibaou, or Lind.
A voice, quiet but strong willed, carried through
the night air of the forest from the back of the group.
“If it’s me you want, I’m right here.”
Later–much, much later–Asuna told me, “If someone had drawn their sword, I might have gone orange,” with a grin on her face.
Fortunately, it did not rain blood, but there was a fresh, different kind of tension that gripped the scene.
Both guilds were quite shocked, of course. But that was nothing compared to me. For an instant, I thought I had to be imagining that voice.
I stood dumbfounded on the path halfway up the hill, staring at the wall of players ahead. Eventually, the ALS members moved right, and the DKB members moved left, as though pushed by some invisible force.
The open path split east and west at the foot of the hill, and there was thick forest beyond that. Right across from the T-intersection was a particularly wide and ancient tree that dwarfed the others. From around the rear of that tree, whose trunk I had just been hiding behind as I spied on the group only minutes ago, a single figure emerged.
A red hooded cape tinged with gray. A dark crimson tunic and leather skirt. And at her waist, a silver rapier that glinted and shone bright, even in the dim light of the moon.
If she was hiding behind that same tree, then she couldn’t have been there all along, but only during the ten minutes I snuck around into the camp, I speculated, to little benefit or point.
Lind and Kibaou joined the others in stepping back. With the path entirely clear, the intruder coolly stepped forward. Underneath her rippling hood, the light brown eyes were firm and resolute. There was no way to read the emotions within.
Asuna the fencer, sole woman of the frontline population and my current partner, stopped at my right side and spun around theatrically, then spoke to the crowd, her voice crisp and clear.
“As his partner, I too will be heading for the labyrinth. Once there, we will be looking for the boss chamber. As I recall, whoever finds it first gets to be raid leader.”
At that, both Lind and Kibaou went pale, and the other sixteen stirred and muttered. In a way, her statement was even more grandiose than mine, but no one stepped up with accusations this time, partly because of the surprise of her sudden entrance, and partly because of the sheer presence of that glittering Chivalric Rapier on her belt. The knight’s sword, far better than even my Anneal Blade +8, unleashed a ghostly pressure in the bluish light of the moon.