If I blocked the head of the ax swooping toward me with my sword alone, I would lose in terms of weight and momentum. But I also didn’t have time to slash at it from a crouched position. I had no choice but to put my left hand up behind the blade and assume a two-handed blocking pose.
Morte’s ax smashed against the side of the Sword of Eventide, spraying sparks that were nearly blinding, even in the thick haze. The impact was so strong that I was briefly afraid my sword would break, but the Yofilis clan’s legendary blade absorbed it valiantly—the rebound buckling Morte’s stance slightly.
“……!!”
I bolted up with a dull roar, executing the basic martial arts skill Flash Blow with my left hand. My fist shot forward wreathed in red light, which Morte blocked with his clenched right arm—but not solidly enough to keep himself from tipping off-balance. I had a post-skill pause, too, but of all the sword skills I knew, Flash Blow had the shortest delay. When I recovered less than a second later, Morte was still reeling.
His right side was guarded by his tough-looking ax, but his left was defenseless. The best way to strike him there would be with the longsword skill Horizontal—
No. Wait.
When I fought Morte at the forest elf camp on the third floor, he used Quick Change to switch his sword for his ax. But he also brought up a round shield alongside the ax. But now his left hand was empty. Did he change his style? Why—?
To make me think his left hand was empty.
“!!”
I gritted my teeth and stopped myself from using the sword skill I was just about to cue up, pulling back my blade. At the same moment, Morte snapped his left wrist and threw something at my face.
The object split the poison gas and deflected off my sword, which I barely lifted in time. Based on the loud metallic clang and the strength of impact, I could guess that it was a throwing pick—probably poisoned.
In the time that I drew my sword back to defend, Morte had recovered, but he chose to withdraw rather than counterattack. He jumped backward, and I followed, careful for any additional throwing darts. In five seconds, I was out of the poison gas, so I expelled my breath and sucked in fresh air.
Five yards up ahead, Morte took a breath of his own, his mouth wide with glee.
“Ha-ha…Well done, Kirito. I can’t believe you blocked that.”
“Say, wherever did you get that very dangerous and rare poisoned pick?” I asked him, glancing at the polished Sword of Eventide to see what was reflected in its surface from behind me. Asuna recovered at the same time I did, but she hadn’t left the green smoke yet. The debuff icon was gone from her HP bar, so I knew she hadn’t sucked in a new dose of it, but I didn’t know what reason she might have for not moving yet.
“Well, if I told you that, you’d go and get it yourself, wouldn’t you? It’s surprising how useful these things can be,” Morte leered, reaching down to draw a fresh one from his belt.
Poison in SAO—especially the paralyzing kind—was incredibly dangerous, as evidenced by the way he’d nearly used that paralysis event to kill us. For that reason, it was very, very hard for players to make use of it. Not only was it difficult enough to craft a high-level paralysis agent with the Mixing skill, spreading it on your weapon alone did not have any effect. The weapon itself needed to have an extremely rare Toxicity attribute, and I’d never even seen a weapon like that, much less found one. The man in the black poncho, Morte’s boss, had claimed the knife he had on my back was augmented with level-5 paralysis and level-5 poison, but I later discovered that was just a bluff.
But the four-inch pick Morte had between his fingers was shining with oily residue under the light of the moon. He’d clearly given up on his shield and accepted the “irregular equipment” status that made him ineligible to use sword skills, all just so he could perform sneak attacks with this thing, so it had to be a poisoned weapon. Whatever solution he’d put on it, I was not going to let him hit me.
Fortunately, picks were disposable weapons by nature, with both buyable and droppable versions coming in sets of three. The first one Morte threw went into the forest somewhere, so he had two left. If I could remove them from the equation, I had the advantage.
Morte’s leer softened a bit. He pushed his ax forward and hid his throwing hand behind it. I set my sword up at mid-level, ready to deflect from any angle.
The poison gas behind me was still there. It only lasted thirty seconds when Cylon had gassed us, so I assumed it would be the same here—but what if the activation period was compressed just for the event, and once it had dropped for a player, its default length was longer? If it was two minutes, or even just one, I couldn’t guarantee that Asuna’s breath would hold out. If the paralysis was gone, why wasn’t she emerging from the smoke…?
Right as I started to get legitimately worried, I heard a screech from the far side of the smoke cloud.
“Whew! Finally lost him! Hey, you all done over there yet?”
The second hooded man who’d pulled the NPC into the woods returned sooner than I expected. I gnashed my teeth, while Morte’s smile returned. If Asuna was in some kind of trouble and couldn’t get free, I’d have to fight one-on-two while protecting her. In fact, her life was the top priority, so if need be, I’d have to sacrifice myself so that my partner could escape.
In the flat of my blade, my impromptu rearview mirror, I saw a dark hooded figure skirt the poison cloud at a wide distance.
“…Damn, he’s still alive? What’s up with this smoke anyway? We weren’t supposed to be usin’ this, right?”
“It’s not mine. Kirito here found a way to utilize the NPC’s poison item. Aha-ha-ha,” Morte replied.
The second hood clicked his tongue theatrically. “What a pain in the ass. On the other hand…maybe I’m lucky, now that I get to finish someone off? I still haven’t gotten over my rage at having my Cilvaric Rapier stolen from me on the fifth floor. Hey, where’s the woman?”
“She still seems to be paralyzed inside the smoke cloud.”
“Cool. Then let’s kill the beater over there first.”
Hood Number Two pulled a dark, gleaming dagger from his waist.
I maintained my silence while the other two talked on either side of me, but the instant Number Two mentioned Asuna, I felt my blood boil and nearly leaped to the attack. But I knew that the instant I turned my back to Morte, he’d throw the pick. The Coat of Midnight I’d powered up at the dark elf camp was still powerful enough to hang here on the sixth floor, despite it being the Last Attack bonus prize for beating the boss on the very first floor. The problem was that it was weak to piercing attacks, like all nonmetal armor. It was only a minor deal in Aincrad, where there were no bows and arrows, but alongside polearms like spears and lances—and one-handed weapons like estocs and stilettos—throwing picks were a perfectly serviceable kind of piercing weapon.
I’d rush Morte as fast as I could to neutralize them, then defeat his comrade. That was the only way out of this—but could I actually overpower the axman, knowing that his dueling ability was probably sharper since the last time we fought? Even if I had the technique and statistics, could I myself cross that final line…?
Unlike in the real world, as long as you had a single pixel of health left on your gauge, you could move and fight. So the only way to guarantee his neutralization without poison or traps was to reduce his HP to zero—to kill him.
Because Morte and the dagger user had attacked Cylon and his assistant, their player cursors were orange, the color of criminals. As a green player, I could attack them without penalty or fear of turning orange myself, but that was only going by the rules of the system. At the present moment, SAO was an inescapable death game, and losing your HP meant the NerveGear would fry your brain with intense microwaves. If I killed Morte and his friend, I would be killing their biological bodies, wherever they were in the real world.
Player-killing was actual murder now. Could I do that?
Demonic intuition saw right
through me in that moment of indecision.
“Shah!”
Morte hissed into movement. I jumped to my left to get out of the way and to keep the dagger user in sight. But Morte read that all the way and turned the same direction with me, swiping sideways with his ax.
As long as he was holding the poison needle in his left hand, he’d be registered as dual-wielding—and unable to use sword skills. But Morte’s one-handed ax had a power that couldn’t be overlooked, even using just ordinary attacks. Unlike the Anneal Blade and its excellent weight and toughness, the Sword of Eventide was sharp but light, and it might not stand up to tough attacks if my guarding technique wasn’t thorough.
When I landed, I swayed backward, and the thick blade of the ax roared directly where my neck had been. The swing was so heavy that Morte ended up exposing his back to me. Despite my stance, I could’ve attacked him from that position, but Hood Number Two was bearing down on me with his dagger. If they trapped me front and back in the open, I’d get hit by that poison pick eventually. I needed to lure them to the woods on the north side of the road so that I could fight with my back against a tree.
I bent my knees, ready to jump again.
Just then, the green cloud of smoke behind Number Two split down the middle.
It was a fencer, dark red hooded cape flapping behind her, silver rapier in her hand. Her face was hidden behind a monstrous leather mask—the gas mask Cylon used in Pithagrus’s hideaway and dropped upon his death. Asuna had been lurking in the midst of the gas for over a minute because she’d been wearing it.
Both Morte, who was trying to pull his ax momentum back toward me, and the onrushing Hood Number Two, failed to notice her. She could take the advantage by using a sword skill against the second one’s defenseless back.
But the question was: Could Asuna, who’d never experienced a duel as a form of truly mortal combat, actually do this? If she hesitated for even an instant during activation, the skill would fumble, and she’d be frozen in place, open to a devastating counter.
All through this moment of breath-stopping apprehension, I kept my focus on Morte’s ax. If my expression caused Number Two to realize the back attack, Asuna’s patience and trickery would be lost. I had to believe in my partner.
“Shhu!”
Morte swung the ax again. I stepped backward only as little as I needed to avoid it, keeping my eyes on his left hand. He was looking for me to block the ax, giving him an opening to throw his pick, so I had to keep out of the way with swaying and quickstepping.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Asuna racing at incredible speed to close the gap, pulling back her rapier to strike. Her target was rapidly slowing, perhaps noticing the footsteps behind him.
The fierce point of her weapon shone a brilliant red. Asuna’s right arm and sword melted into the flow of light. As I prepared for Morte’s third strike, I sent a silent message to my partner.
Go, Asuna!!
There was a series of heavy impacts. Her sword skill Triangular hit the man right in the back, knocking off over a third of his health.
“Aaah…crap!” he grunted in pain and fury, doing a roll and a half over the ground with his back bleeding a huge damage visual effect, but he did bounce up onto his feet rather than enter a fallen state.
“She ain’t paralyzed! That was a dirty trick!” he yelled.
Asuna recovered from her post-skill delay and, ignoring his hypocritical protest, pulled off her leather mask and tossed it to the grass. In the pale moonlight, her beautiful features were fierce with an anger—the likes of which I’d never seen. It was enough to shut up the screeching man, that was for sure.
“Leave this one to me. You get Morte, Kirito.”
Her quiet voice arrived loud and clear at a distance of over thirty feet. I gave her cold, glowing eyes the briefest of nods, then turned to the axman.
The cruel mouth visible beneath his coif did not contain the slightest hint of a smile any longer. “Oh, my,” he growled. “Our fun has turned into a real predicament, very quickly.”
“You thought you were going to have an easy time killing some immobilized people? Think again.”
“Now, now, it’s not settled yet. I still have two poison…picks!” he shouted, flipping the ax in his right hand up vertically. I leaned back on instinct as the darkened blade rushed toward my nose.
It hurt not to be able to guard, but Morte’s Harsh Hatchet was upgraded with +6 to Heaviness, which was enough to weigh down the avatar’s center of gravity at the start of the swing. It was a very minor tell, but if you were watching for it, you could notice.
While Morte and I were locked in combat, Asuna and Hood Number Two were going at it with quite spectacular results.
Both were speed types—the dagger and rapier flashing with dizzying speed, lighting up the night with a shower of sparks. In terms of pure speed, none of the frontline players could surpass Asuna—if anyone could do it, Argo’s extreme AGI build might do the trick. But in a player-on-player fight with no rules, her style was just a little too straightforward. Against an opponent well versed in feints and tricks, she was likely to meet stiff competition.
But after she’d fallen onto her seat in simple practice bouts against me, the fact that she was putting her all into a fight against a true PKer was a sign of huge progress. I had to match her example. I couldn’t stay on the defensive this whole time.
Morte continued swinging furiously at me, trying to force me to block his ax—or just knock me off-balance so he could stab me with the needle directly. In the real world, he would be out of breath by now, but as long as you didn’t perform actions beyond your strength variable, the hidden “fatigue quotient” would not be a problem here.
The forest at night offered poor visibility and uneven footing, so if I kept dodging, I was bound to trip over a root or stone eventually. I had to break out of this situation before that happened.
“Sh…shwaa!”
I evaded Morte’s consecutive swipes, sideways then vertical, with quick, narrow footwork. Then I gambled: I pretended to trip on something, slumping forward.
Morte pounced. “Haaaa!” he hissed, swinging the Harsh Hatchet from above. He was stepping in quite far, since I’d been pulling back with all of my evasion.
Axes were powerful whether equipped in one hand or two, but if you got close enough—and you used all your boldness and bravery—you could take advantage of their structural weakness.
“Argh!” I shouted, tensing my bent, “tripping” left leg and launching myself forward off it. That pushed me inside of the falling ax head’s path, where I could reach up with my left forearm and brace it against the ax handle.
A fierce shock ran through my arm and shoulder, and I lost about 5 percent of my HP. But at the same time, I activated the sword skill Slant with my other hand. The glowing blue blade struck Morte’s left arm as he was pulling his wrist back to flick the poisoned projectile.
I figured that if I could get him to drop the pick, great. But my dark elf masterpiece showed even greater ability in answering my risky gamble. The sword silently sliced Morte’s arm off below the elbow. His forearm burst into tiny crystal pieces, and the pick he was holding fell to the grass.
I’d caused part-loss damage. He couldn’t throw his picks with his left hand for at least three minutes, when he would recover from this effect.
“Ha-ha!” Morte chuckled, either as a bluff or a sign that he still had tricks up his sleeve. He jumped backward, vivid red particles spilling from his severed arm like blood.
I wasn’t the type to pursue further attacks in a duel after I’d already struck home. Throwing together sword skills in pursuit of maximum damage also maximized your own vulnerability, and it was very easy to suffer devastating consequences when caught up in the moment.
But in this one instance, as soon as my skill delay was over, I rushed forward, chasing after Morte as he withdrew. It seemed I was angrier than I realized at the PKers for going after Asuna…and a
t myself, for not recognizing the danger of the paralysis event.
“Raaahh!!” I bellowed from deep in my gut, thrusting the sword with a twist of my wrists. Multiple traces of pale blue light shot from its tip, and an invisible force pushed me from behind. It was the low thrusting skill, Rage Spike.
This sword skill, which unlocked at a one-handed sword’s proficiency of 50, was one of the basic skills after Slant, Vertical, and Horizontal. So it had low power, but unlike Sonic Leap, which involved jumping high and striking downward, it thrust in a straight line along the ground, making it more accurate and harder to defend against.
With his left hand gone and no longer wielding weapons in both hands, Morte was now free to use sword skills with his ax, but seeing me bent over and racing along the ground, he instantly abandoned the idea of countering. He flipped the ax over and held it before him to guard.
The ax’s handle was essentially just a round stick, though some could have spikes or little blades of their own. But because of that structure, it was the weapon’s weak point during attack—though unlike swords, an ax’s shaft was much less likely to be destroyed when defending, no matter how it was struck. And with Morte’s skill, he wouldn’t have too much trouble guarding my thrust with the handle, even one less than an inch thick.
However, a thrust when blocked could still knock back the target. Now was the time to put everything into this strike without fear of reprisal—to let him know what he was dealing with.
“Yaaa!” I bellowed, unleashing my sword straight for his chest.
“Sshheh!” Morte hissed, brandishing the ax handle in the path of the pale blue line. The tip of my sword rushed forward, ready to split that steel pole.
And then.
As though the sword moved on its own, the tip swayed just a tiny bit to the right. The perfectly hard, implacable Sword of Eventide, in this single moment, took on a living suppleness, twisting itself to evade its obstacle…or so it seemed to me.
It grazed the edge of the Harsh Hatchet just enough to create sparks, then regained its usual hardness, striking an inch to the right of Morte’s center—directly into his heart, a critical point—with terrifying accuracy.
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