But just as I was about to tell her this, Asuna waved it aside.
“It’s fine. I get it. I know what you’ve been through to get here … and where you’ll go on your own from here. But … someday, I’ll …”
She broke off there in a whisper. After a brief silence, her voice was calm but firm.
“See you around, Kirito.”
There was the creak of a door opening. Footsteps. The thump of it closing.
I stayed sitting on the edge of the terrace jutting from the mountain until the sensory information of Asuna’s scent disappeared from the virtual air. I tried to figure out what she meant, but decided I didn’t need to know that right now.
With a deep breath, I got to my feet, looked at the door Asuna had just passed through, then turned and started descending the steps.
As they wound down the side of the slope, I found myself counting the stairs. Every forty-eight steps, they turned back the other way in a zigzag pattern. Eventually, the meaning behind that became clear. Forty-eight was six times eight—the number of people in a full raid party. If we’d had a full complement and beaten the boss without any fatalities, we could have filled an entire flight from landing to landing, with a step for each member.
I doubted the designer of this feature imagined just a single player descending these steps. The path seemed to be foretelling my travels ahead. Looking forward or back, there was not a soul in sight. I walked on, down and down, entirely alone …
But, after the umpteenth landing of the endless staircase, I noticed a small envelope icon flashing on the right side of my view. It was a friend message, a form of communication that could bridge any floor of Aincrad. There were only two players on my friend list. My first friend, Klein—and Argo the Rat.
I opened the message to discover that it was from the latter.
Sounds like I really put you through the wringer, Kii-boy, it said. I marveled at how fast she worked. I scrolled down to read more, but the message was very short.
I’ll make it up to you by giving you any single piece of info on the house.
Oh? I grinned devilishly and popped up the holo-keyboard as I continued walking down the steps, typing my reply.
Why the whiskers?
I hit the send button, smiled again, then finally set foot on the soil of the second floor of Aincrad and started walking in the direction of Urbus.
URBUS, THE MAIN CITY OF THE SECOND FLOOR OF Aincrad, was carved directly into the flat top of a three-hundred-yard wide mountain, with only the outer perimeter left standing.
Once I was through the southern gate, a notification reading SAFE HAVEN appeared, and the sound of a slow-paced town BGM hit my ears. Unlike the strings-heavy music from the first-floor towns, this was played by a wistful oboe. The style of clothes worn by the NPCs milling about was subtly different, reinforcing that sense of having come to a new floor.
About ten yards past the gate, I took a look around me and didn’t find a single green player cursor—as it should be. I’d just defeated Illfang the Kobold Lord, boss of the first floor, barely forty minutes before. All the other raid party members who had taken part in the fight had turned back to the first floor rather than follow the spiral staircase up to the second.
Which meant that there was only one solitary player on this entire, vast floor: Kirito, former beta tester, beater.
It was a luxurious feeling, but it would not last for long. Two hours after the death of the floor boss, the teleport gate in the center of the floor’s main town (Urbus, in this case) would automatically activate, linking up with the gate of the floor below. As soon as that happened, an entire flood of excited players would burst through the portal.
On the flip side, that meant that if I felt like it, I could monopolize this floor for another hour and twenty minutes.
With that much time, I could complete two or three “slaughter” quests to kill a certain number of monsters without having to jostle with other players. It was a tempting idea for a truly self-interested solo adventurer, but I didn’t have the guts to hold out on the hundreds, if not thousands of players below who were waiting for the gate with bated breath.
I trotted through the main street of Urbus directly north, climbing a wide staircase to the open town center, which featured a large gate in the middle. It was not really a gate so much as a standing stone arch with no door or fence connected to it. Only by standing close to the structure was it possible to see that the space beneath the arch was gently rippling somehow. It was like a very thin, vertical film of water suspended in the air.
Only after scanning the perimeter for a convenient escape route did I reach out to the shifting, transparent veil. My fingertip, covered by black leather, brushed the water surface.
In the next instant, my vision burned a brilliant blue.
The light pulsed outward in concentric circles until it filled the fifteen-foot arch. Once the entire space was full, the teleport was complete, and the town had been “opened.” The exact same phenomenon was happening at the same time down on the first floor. The players below would be preparing to dash through the finished portal, now that they realized they wouldn’t need to wait the full two hours.
But I didn’t wait to witness the entire show. I turned and sped toward a church-like building on the east end of the square, bursting through the door and scrambling up the stairs inside. Eventually I made my way into a small room on the third floor and set my back against the wall next to a window so I could see down into the clearing.
At that precise moment, the interior of the gate flashed, and the NPC musicians set up in the corner of the square began to play the bright and cheery “Opening Fanfare.” A second later, countless players spilled out through the blue light in a jumble of colors.
Some stopped in the middle of the clearing and looked around. Some held parchment maps bought from information dealers and took off running. Some jammed fists into the air and shouted, “We made it to the second floor!”
A similar town opening had occurred nine times in the SAO beta test, and in each case, the raid members who had dispatched the previous floor’s boss lined up facing the new teleport gate, soaking in the applause and congratulations of those who traveled upward to see the new environment. But in this case, I was the only person who had stuck around to open the town, and I’d taken off running. There would be no grand celebratory event. Perhaps those looking curiously around the square were searching for me, but I could not step forward to name myself.
Just minutes earlier, after we defeated the boss, I made a proclamation to the forty-some raid members that I, Kirito, was not just some beta tester, but a “beater” who had ascended further than any of the thousand other testers, accumulating more information about the game than anyone else.
It wasn’t out of a desire to play the villain. I did it to avoid having the wrath of the new retail players focused on the former testers, but the end result was that, soon, every high-level player in the game would know of my infamy. Appearing in public would not provoke cheers but ugly booing. I didn’t have the willpower to withstand that kind of open hostility.
So I decided to hide out in the third floor of this chapel until the excitement in the town square subsided. However …
“… Huh?”
I noticed something odd down in the square. One female player who traveled through the gate ran pell-mell straight to the west end of the square. She might have been rushing to find a weapon shop or quest-giving NPC, but the real issue were the two men who showed up after her. They stopped briefly and looked around for the retreating player, then raced after her. They were clearly chasing the woman.
The safe haven of town was under the anti-crime code, so normally I’d pay no attention to something like that, but it was different when the person being chased was someone I knew. Those brown curls and the plain leather armor belonged to none other than Argo the Rat.
Plenty of people hated her and her motto of “selling any information with a
price,” but something was wrong if they were hurtling around at that speed. I pondered the situation for a moment, then put a foot on the windowsill and leapt down to the short roof below.
I dashed across the tiles and leapt onto the next roof over, making good use of my high agility stat before anyone could spot me, and continued along the rooftops in the direction of the chase. This feat was only possible thanks to the uniform height of the buildings in Urbus.
I waved my hand to call up my menu as I ran after them, clicking the Search button in my skills tab. When a sub-menu followed, I selected “Pursuit,” then entered the name “Argo” into the field. A set of green footsteps suddenly glowed on the path below me.
Pursuit was a modifier effect on the Search skill once its proficiency level was high enough. It was designed to increase the efficiency of monster hunting, but it could also be used to track a player on your friends list. My level was still fairly low, so I could only see footsteps up to a minute old. I raced alongside the trail, trying to keep up before they vanished.
If Argo, with her incredible agility, couldn’t shake the two men, they were bad news. I didn’t recognize them from the boss raid, but they had to be among the top players by level. Moreover, the chase was proceeding straight down the westward route and through the town gate carved into the outer perimeter of the flat-top mountain in which Urbus was nestled.
The plains to the west of town were a dangerous zone populated with large cattle monsters. The situation was looking downright grim now. I bit my lip and raced out into the virtual savanna.
The wasteland beyond the plains was deadly enough that even at my level it was too risky to go in there alone. Fortunately, the footsteps in the grass were growing brighter, meaning that Argo’s pace was slowing and I was getting closer. Eventually I reached a small canyon between two rocky hills and heard a familiar voice.
“… told you a hundred times! I wouldn’t sell that info, no matter the price!”
The nasal inflection was undoubtedly Argo’s, but it was fiercer and angrier than I’d ever heard her before. Next was a similarly furious man’s voice.
“You do not intend to monopolize the information, but neither will you reveal it. One can only assume that you seek to inflate the value of it in order to sell!”
His way of speaking was oddly archaic. I slowed down and began to climb the rock face at the side of the canyon. Even the most forbidding terrain in SAO could be climbed with enough persistence and cleverness. It was a secret ambition of mine to one day attempt to scale the enormous pillars that separated the floors of Aincrad in the hopes of bypassing the labyrinths altogether. But my clandestine climb in this case was not done for want of a good challenge, but to guarantee my own safety.
After about fifteen feet, I reached a narrow flat space that overlooked the canyon. I crawled forward on hands and knees. The shouting voices were almost directly below me.
“It’s not a matter of price! I’m saying that I don’t want to sell something if all it gets me is hatred in return!”
The second man responded, “What quarrel would we have with you? As we said, we will pay the asking price and be grateful for your service! Just sell us the information on this floor’s special quest that grants the Extra Skill!”
…What?
Now I held my breath entirely. Extra Skills were hidden abilities that could not be chosen without meeting special conditions. Only one had been discovered in the beta: the Meditation skill, in which assuming a pose of concentration increased the HP recovery rate and decreased the infliction time of negative status effects. Because of its tricky usage and very uncool look, few bothered to earn it. I had my suspicions that the katana skill used by the kobold lord and the samurai monsters on the tenth floor might be an Extra Skill as well, but the means to unlock it were still a mystery.
At any rate, Argo and the two wannabe actors were clearly not talking about Meditation. The NPC that taught that skill was up on the sixth floor. No, this was about some hidden quest on the second floor that even I didn’t know about (and neither did almost any of the former testers) that unlocked an Extra Skill, and the two strange men were pressing Argo for that information.
The men’s voices grew louder.
“We are not backing down—not today, you see!”
“That Extra Skill is necessary for us to complete our characters, you see!”
“You just don’t get it! I’m not going to sell it to anyone, you see—I mean, I’m not going to sell it, period!”
The tension in the air turned electric, crackling tangibly. I leapt to my feet on the rocky ledge and jumped down the fifteen feet to the ground below, landing perfectly between Argo and the men. I didn’t have quite enough agility points to jump that distance without damage, so I had to tense my knees to cushion the shock.
“Who goes there?!”
“An interloper from an enemy province?!”
A single glance at their outfits sent a powerful shock through my memory. They wore full-body cloth armor in dark gray, with light chainmail on top. I noticed small scimitars draped over their backs, and dark gray bandanna caps and pirate masks to match the armor.
Taken as a whole, these outfits could be interpreted as a creative attempt to re-create a classic “ninja” costume. I couldn’t help but feel as though I’d seen people dressed in this style during the beta as well.
“Oh! You’re, um, you’re… let’s see, the F, Fu… Food? No, Fugue—no, not that either…”
“It is Fuma!”
“We are Kotaro and Isuke of the Fuma Ninja Force!!”
“Right! That was it!”
I snapped my fingers, satisfied that my memory had been corrected. These two were members of a ninja guild feared for their incredible speed during the beta test. As to why they would be “feared”—like Argo, they raised their agility as high as possible, forming a wall of eye-popping speed on the front line, then running off when the battle grew too dangerous. When the monsters followed in pursuit, they usually wound up targeting a different party when the ninjas escaped, which earned them a very bad reputation indeed.
I didn’t realize that they’d continued their adherence to the way of the shinobi even after SAO had become a game of death, but I didn’t have any issue with their choice—for now. But chasing down a female player, ganging up on her, and demanding her trade secrets was crossing a line.
I reached back to make sure Argo was safely behind me and ran a finger along the hilt of my Anneal Blade +6.
“As a spy for the shogun, I cannot overlook the wicked deeds of the Fuma.”
Instantly, Kotaro and Isuke’s eyes flashed beneath their knockoff ninja hoods.
“You Iga dog!!”
“Huh?!”
It seemed my half-assed joke had struck a nerve, and they’d confused me for a member of a rival school. In perfect rhythm, they reached over their shoulders to remove the scimitars that passed for ninja blades.
They weren’t going to draw on me, were they? Then again, we were out in the open, where the anti-crime code had no effect. If a player attacked another player, damage would be done. At the same time, the aggressor’s cursor would turn orange, signifying them as a criminal and keeping them from entering town. Even ninjas could not fool the god that presided over this game.
I briefly considered resolving the argument with the preposterous claim that I wasn’t an Iga ninja but a Koga ninja like them, when the situation was resolved in a most unexpected way.
When I snuck into the canyon, I scaled the walls in order to eavesdrop on their conversation rather than standing around near the entrance. I did this because we were out in the wilderness, not in town, and standing around in place long enough always led to one thing happening.
I took a careful step backward and murmured, “Behind you.”
“We will not fall for your trickery!”
“It’s not trickery. Look behind you.”
Something in my voice convinced the skeptical ninjas. Ko
taro and Isuke turned their heads and abruptly leapt backward. Right before their eyes, someone had joined the group. No, something.
It was a Trembling Ox, a giant cattle monster unique to the second floor, standing over eight feet at the shoulder. Its attack power and toughness were obvious at a glance, but what made them so dangerous was their extremely long targeting range, both in time and distance. I’d climbed the inaccessible boulders specifically to avoid drawing the notice of these fearsome beasts.
“Brooooh!!” the ox roared.
“G-gaaah!!” the ninjas screamed in unison. With stunning speed, two gray-clad blurs shot back toward town away from the canyon, but the ox showed surprising agility for its size. In no more than five seconds, the rumbling footsteps and screams disappeared over the horizon. Kotaro and Isuke would likely be in a footrace all the way back to Urbus.
The great ninja war averted for now, I sighed in relief and looked down at my body. Until an hour ago, I’d been wearing a boring outfit of black leather pants, cotton shirt and a dark gray leather coat. However, with the unique Coat of Midnight I’d looted from Illfang the Kobold Lord, I was dressed in full black to match my hair and eyes. It seemed like a good way to reinforce the dirty beater persona I’d developed, but I had to admit it also made me look a bit like a ninja. I started to wonder if I should put on a different color undershirt just to avoid any rumors about “Kirito the Iga Ninja” from now on.
Once again, I was broken out of my thoughts by a very unexpected event.
Two small arms reached out and squeezed around my midsection from behind. I felt a soft warmth on my back, and heard a faint whisper.
“That was a little too much showing off, Kii-boy.”
It belonged to Argo, who had been silent since I leapt from my perch. But it felt as though the sound of her voice was different somehow from the snide, obnoxious Rat I knew.
“Keep that up, and you might force Big Sister to break the very first rule of the information dealer.”
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