What drove her to undergo such a ferocious string of battles? What had kept her alive up to this point? She must have some source of strength I could only imagine.
“Maybe I should have paid Argo the Five hundred col,” I muttered, then shook my head and looked upward.
The white-painted windmills that were the defining symbol of Tolbana had just a tinge of orange to them. It was a bit past three o’clock—time to grab a bite to eat before the undoubtedly long and tedious boss raid meeting.
When the meeting started at four, things would get ugly.
Today, for the first time, one hidden fissure between SAO players would come into clarity: the unbridgeable gap between new players and beta testers …
There was only one piece of information that Argo the Rat refused to sell to others, and that was whether a person had been a beta tester or not. She wasn’t alone in that philosophy. All the former testers, who could recognize one another by name or voice, if not by face, intentionally avoided reaching out to each other. The previous encounter was no different. Both Argo and I knew the other was a beta tester, but we went light-years out of our way to never discuss it.
The reason was simple: Being publicly outed as a beta tester could be fatal.
Not because of monsters in a dungeon. Because if you wandered alone in the game map, you could be executed by a lynch mob of new players. They believed that the deaths of two thousand players within a month could be laid at the feet of the beta testers.
And I couldn’t totally deny that charge.
4
FOR HER FIRST MEAL IN THREE OR POSSIBLY EVEN four days, Asuna chose a heel of the cheapest black bread the NPCs in town sold, as well as the free water available at the many fountains around the place.
She’d never particularly enjoyed eating in real life, but the total emptiness of eating in this world was hard to describe. No matter how gorgeous the feast might appear, not a single grain of sugar or salt reached her real body. It seemed to her that they should have eliminated the concept of hunger and fullness altogether, but the virtual body craved food three times a day, and the pangs did not disappear unless virtual food was eaten.
She’d learned how to shut out the feeling of hunger through sheer willpower while lurking in the dungeon, but there was no hiding the need once back in town. As an act of protest, she always chose the cheapest possible option, but it made her angry, in a way, that even the rough black bread eaten a scrap at a time actually tasted pretty good.
Asuna was sitting on a simple wooden bench next to the fountain square at the center of Tolbana, chewing away with her hood pulled low. For only costing a single col, the bread was fairly large. Just as she’d finished half of it—
“Pretty good, isn’t it?” came a voice from her right. Her fingers stopped in the act of ripping another piece free, and she threw a sharp glare in that direction.
It was the man she’d just left behind at the town entrance a few minutes ago, the black-haired swordsman in the gray coat. The meddlesome stranger who’d somehow transported her unconscious body outside of the dungeon, keeping her journey going when it should have ended.
Her cheeks suddenly grew hot at the thought. After all of her bold statements about dying, not only was she alive, but he’d seen her chowing down on a meal. Her entire being was wracked with shame, and she froze with the crescent of bread in her hands, uncertain of how to respond.
The man eventually coughed politely and asked, “May I sit next to you?”
Normally, she would silently stand up and leave without a second glance, but in this unfamiliar situation, she was at a loss. Taking Asuna’s lack of response as silent permission, he sat down on the far right corner of the bench and rummaged in his pocket, giving her as much space as possible. When his hand reappeared, it was holding a round, black object—a one-col roll of black bread.
For an instant, Asuna forgot her shame and confusion and looked up at him in simple astonishment.
If he was good enough to have reached that deep a spot in the labyrinth, and have such excellent equipment, this swordsman must have enough money to afford a full-course meal at a nice restaurant. Was he just a cheapskate? Or …
“Do you really think that tastes good?” she asked, before she could stop herself. His eyebrows took on an expression of hurt dignity, and he nodded vigorously.
“Of course. I’ve eaten one every day since I got to this town. Of course, I throw in a little wrinkle.”
“Wrinkle …?”
She tilted her head in confusion beneath the hood. Rather than explain out loud, the swordsman reached into his other pocket and produced a small porcelain jar. He set it down on the bench between them and said, “Use this on your bread.”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure what he meant by “use it on the bread,” then realized that it was a common video game phrase. Use the key on the door, use the bottle on the spring, and so on. She reluctantly reached out and touched the lid of the jar with a fingertip. She selected “use” on the pop-up menu that appeared, and her finger started glowing purple, the signal for “target selection mode.” By touching the black bread in her left hand, the objects would interact.
With a brief jingle, the bread was suddenly white, coated—no, covered—with a thick substance that appeared to be—
“… Cream? Where did you get this?”
“It was the reward for the ‘Revenge of the Cows’ quest in the last town. It takes a long time to beat, so I don’t think many people have bothered to finish it,” he said seriously, using the jar on his bread with a practiced motion. It must have been the last of the container, because the jar flashed, tinkled and disappeared. He opened his mouth wide and took a large bite of his cream-slathered bread. His chewing was so vigorous she could practically hear the sound effects, and Asuna realized that for the first time in ages, her stomach pangs were not an unpleasant pain, but the healthy sign of honest hunger.
She took a hesitant bite of the creamy bread in her hand. Suddenly, the rough, dry bread she’d been eating had turned into a heavy, rustic cake. The cream was sweet and smooth, with a refreshing tartness like yogurt. Asuna took a few more rapturous bites, her cheeks packed full with a numbing sense of contentment.
The next thing she knew, there was not a single crumb left of the item in her hands. She looked over with a start to see that she’d finished her food just two seconds before the swordsman. Overcome with shame again, she wanted to get up and run off but couldn’t bring herself to be so rude to the man who’d just treated her to a tasty meal.
Breathing heavily, attempting to get her mind in order, Asuna finally managed to squeak out a polite response.
“……… Thanks for the food.”
“You’re welcome.”
Done with his meal, the swordsman clapped his fingerless-gloved hands together and continued. “If you want to do that cow quest I mentioned, there’s a trick to it. If you’re efficient, you can beat it in just two hours.”
“…”
She couldn’t deny the temptation. With that yogurt cream, her cheap black bread turned into a proper feast. It was only an artificial satisfaction created by the game’s flavor modeling system, but she wanted it again—every day, if possible.
But …
Asuna looked down and quietly shook her head. “I’ll pass. I didn’t come to this town in order to eat good food.”
“I see. Why, then?”
While the swordsman’s voice wasn’t particularly melodious, there was a boyish inflection to it that was not displeasing to her ears in the least. It was perhaps this feature that led her to speak what was on her mind, something she hadn’t done with anyone else in this world.
“So that … I can be myself. If I was going to just hide back in the first city and waste away, I’d rather be myself until the very last moment. Even if it means dying at the hands of a monster … I don’t want to let this game beat me. I won’t let it happen.”
The fifteen years of Asuna Yuu
ki’s life had been a long series of battles. It started with the entrance exams to kindergarten and followed with an endless succession of tests big and small. She’d beaten them all. Losing in a single instance would mean that her life was no longer of any worth, and she’d successfully shouldered that pressure since the very start.
But after fifteen years of winning, this test, Sword Art Online, would likely be the end of her. It was too mysterious to her, a culture steeped in foreign and unfamiliar rules, and it was not the kind of battle that could be won alone.
The only means of victory was reaching the very top of the giant floating castle, a full hundred floors above, and beating the final enemy. But a month after the start of the game, one-fifth of the players were already gone, and most of them were experienced in the ways of these things. The forces left behind were too weak, and the path ahead was so very, very long…
As though the faucet holding her innermost feelings had been opened the tiniest bit, the words trickled drop by drop out of her mouth. The confession came in fragments, pieces of logic that didn’t add up to full sentences, but the black-haired swordsman sat and listened in silence. When Asuna’s voice had died away in the evening breeze, he finally spoke.
“… I’m sorry.”
A few seconds later, Asuna skeptically wondered why he would say that.
She’d only met him today. He had no reason to apologize to her. She peered to her right and saw that he was hunched over on the bench, his elbows on his knees. His lips shifted, and more faint words reached her ears.
“I’m sorry … This current situation—the reason you feel so pressured—is my…”
But she couldn’t make out the rest. The especially large windmill in the center of town started ringing its wind-powered clock bell.
It was four o’clock, the time of the meeting. She looked up and saw that a large number of players had gathered across the fountain square.
“Let’s go. You invited me to this meeting, after all,” Asuna said, getting to her feet. He nodded and slowly rose. What was he going to say? It ultimately didn’t matter, because she was never going to speak with him again, but the thought dug into her side like a tiny thorn.
I want to know. I don’t want to know. Even Asuna didn’t know which desire was stronger.
5
FORTY-FOUR.
That was the number of players who gathered at the fountain in Tolbana.
I had to admit, it was well below my expectations—my hopes. An official party in SAO could be up to six players, and a throng of eight of those, forty-eight people in total, was a full-size raid party. My experience in the beta test had taught me that the best way to tackle a floor boss without any casualties was two raid parties trading off, but this wasn’t even enough for one.
I sucked in a deep breath for a sigh, but held it in when a voice came from behind me.
“There are … so many …”
It was the fencer in the hooded cape. I turned and shot back, “Many …? You call this many?”
“Yes. I mean, they’re all here for the first attempt at this floor’s boss monster, right? Knowing that they could all die in the process …”
“… I see.”
I nodded and gazed around at the small groups of fighters huddled throughout the square.
There were five or six players I knew by name, and another fifteen or so were familiar faces I’d come across along the frontier. The remaining twenty-something were all new to me. Naturally, the gender balance was extremely uneven. As far as I could tell, the fencer was the only woman in the group, but with her hood pulled so low, it wasn’t quite apparent, and I was certain that anyone else observing would assume it was all men. Across the square, Argo the Rat was perched upon a high wall, but she would not take part in the battle.
The fencer was right—they were all going to face the first floor boss, an enemy no one had seen before, at least in the official Aincrad. Of all the battles one could tackle on the first floor, this would carry the highest risk of death. That meant that every player here was prepared for the possibility of death, in order to serve as a stepping-stone for those who came after them. However …
“I’m… not so sure,” I muttered. She turned to me, her eyes flashing doubtfully within the hood. I chose my words carefully.
“I don’t think it applies to everyone, but I think a fair number of them aren’t doing it out of self-sacrifice, but because they just don’t want to be left in the dust. If anything, I’d be one of the latter, myself.”
“Left in the dust? Behind what?”
“Behind the frontier. The thought of dying is frightening, but so is the idea that the boss is being defeated without you.”
The cloth hood dipped slightly. I figured that being a total beginner at MMOs, she wouldn’t understand what I was saying. But I was wrong.
“Is that the same kind of motivation… like when you don’t want to fall below the top ten of the class, or you want to stay above the seventieth percentile, or whatever?”
“…”
Now it was my turn to lose my voice. Eventually, I agreed. “Yeah … um … I think so …”
The shapely lips visible through the hood crinkled into a tiny smile, and I heard a few quiet snorts of breath. Was she … laughing? The wielder of that ultra-precise Linear, who told me to mind my own business when I brought her out of the dungeon?
I was almost about to rudely stare directly under the hood, but I was saved from that faux pas by the sound of loud clapping and a shout that echoed across the square.
“All right, people! It’s five minutes past already, so let’s get started! Gather ’round, folks—you there, three steps closer!”
The speaker was a swordsman clad in glimmering metal armor. He leapt nimbly up onto the lip of the fountain at the center of the square from a standing position. A single jump of that height wearing heavy armor made it clear that he had excellent strength and agility.
Some within the crowd of forty-odd began to stir when he turned to survey the group. It made sense—the man standing on the lip of the fountain was so brilliantly handsome that you had to wonder why he would bother playing a VRMMO in the first place. On top of that, the wavy locks framing his face were dyed a brilliant blue. Hair dye wasn’t sold at NPC vendors on the first floor, so he must have gotten it as a rare drop from a monster.
If he’d gone to all this trouble just to look good in front of the crowd, I assumed he must be disappointed, given that there was only one woman in the group (and it wasn’t clear she was one, given the hood), but the man flashed a dashing smile that suggested he would never stoop to thinking such a thing.
“Thank you all for heeding my call today! I’m sure some of you know me already, but just in case, my name’s Diavel and I like to think of myself as playing a knight!”
Those closest to the fountain started jeering and whistling, and someone cried, “I bet you wanted to say you’re playing a ‘hero’!”
There were no official character classes in Sword Art Online. Every player had a number of skill slots, and they were free to choose which skills to equip and advance. As an example, players who focused on crafting or trading skills might be referred to as blacksmiths, tailors, or cooks … but I’d never heard of anyone called a knight or hero.
Then again, if someone wanted to be known by that title, that was their prerogative. Diavel had bronze armor on his chest, shoulders, arms, and shins, as well as a longsword on his waist and a kite shield on his back. Added up, they certainly made a proper knight’s outfit.
Watching his proud display from the back row, I quickly consulted my memory. The equipment and hair were different, so it was hard to tell, but I could have sworn I’d seen that face a few times before in towns around the first floor. What about before, in the other Aincrad? I didn’t recognize the name …
“Now, you’re all top players in the game, active around the front line of our progress, and I hardly need remind you of why we’re here,” Dia
vel’s speech continued. I stopped trying to remember and focused on his words. The blue-haired knight raised a hand and gestured to the massive tower—the labyrinth of the first floor—outside the town limits.
“Today, our party discovered the staircase that leads to the top floor of that tower. Which means that either tomorrow or the day after, we’ll finally reach … the first-floor boss chamber!”
The crowd stirred. I was surprised as well. The first-floor labyrinth was a twenty-level tower, and I (and the fencer) had been just around the start of the nineteenth level today. I had no idea that others had mapped so much of that floor already.
“One month. It took an entire month… but we still have to be an example. We have to beat the boss, reach the second floor, and show everyone back in the Town of Beginnings that someday we can beat this game of death. That’s the duty of all the top-level players here! Isn’t that right?”
Another cheer rose. Now it wasn’t just Diavel’s friends but others in the crowd who applauded. What he said was noble and without fault. In fact, anyone seeking fault in it had to be crazy. I decided the knight who stood up and took on the role of uniting the scattered players at the frontier deserved some applause from me, when—
“Hang on just a sec, Sir Knight,” the voice said calmly.
The cheers stopped and the people at the front stepped aside. Standing in the middle of the open space was a short but solid man. All I could see from my position was a large sword and spiky brown hair that conjured the image of a cactus.
The cactus took a step forward and growled in a rasp totally unlike Diavel’s smooth voice, “Gotta get this offa my chest before we can play pretend-friends.”
Diavel didn’t bat an eye at this sudden interruption. He beckoned to the squat man with a confident smile. “What’s on your mind, friend? I’m open to opinions. If you’re going to offer yours, however, I’d ask you to introduce yourself first.”
“… Hmph.”
The cactus-headed man snorted, took a few steps forward until he was right in front of the fountain, then turned to the crowd. “The name’s Kibaou.”
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