Asuna’s eyelashes dropped as she mulled over this information. Her response caught me by surprise.
“Meaning that if your main weapon gets snatched and you do a Quick Change to a backup weapon, you should put it in your left hand rather than your right?”
“Eh …?”
I was momentarily taken aback, but I eventually understood her point. It was indeed true that if a monster stole the player’s weapon and they put a backup in the same hand, the equipment right of the stolen weapon would vanish. If the player had to retreat for survival and couldn’t immediately kill the monster to retrieve the weapon, the results could be disastrous. Once the player was back in the safe haven of town, there would be virtually no way to get it back.
“Ah, I see … Yes, that’s a good point. But it’s a lot harder to swing a sword with your non-dominant hand.” Even as I said it, though, I made a mental note to practice sword skills with my left hand.
“And one other thing. When you barged into my room and forced yourself a peek at my equipment mannequin, that’s what you were checking, yes? That I hadn’t equipped another weapon in its place. So if that was the very first condition…”
I nodded slowly as she stared directly into my eyes. “Yes, that’s right. The second condition was that it had to be within three thousand six hundred seconds of letting go: one hour. As long as those two conditions were fulfilled, we had a shot—one ultimate method of pulling back your equipment, no matter where it happened to be. Remember that you asked me how your supposedly shattered sword was in your item storage?”
“In reality, my sword wasn’t shattered, and it wasn’t in my inventory, either. So that’s why …” She took a deep breath and resumed glaring up at me. “And your last-ditch method of bringing back my sword was the Materialize All Items command. And because there was not a second to spare, you had no choice but to invade my room and force me to flip through my menu. Is that what you’re claiming?”
“Umm, I think that sums it up… I guess?” I trailed upward at the end in an attempt to sound innocent, but Asuna only snorted, unconvinced. Fortunately, she seemed more interested in getting to the bottom of the situation than holding me responsible. She handed back the Anneal Blade and changed topics.
“So anyway … why was that materialize button buried so deep in the menus? It’s almost like they don’t want you to use it … And why does it have to be all of the items? If you could just select the items that aren’t on hand already, there would be no need for that pile of my und… my other equipment.”
“You just said the answer yourself. They want to make it harder to use.”
“Huh…? Why would they do that?” she asked, shapely eyebrows squinting in suspicion. I shrugged.
“It’s basically a last-resort option. If you drop your weapon, leave it behind, or lose it to a monster and have to run away, those are all the player’s fault. In a sense, you should probably just accept your loss and move on. But they probably decided that it would make the game a bit too hard, so they added this option in case of an emergency. They just made it less convenient so you can’t use it like a crutch. Hence, it’s stuck under a pile of menus and you can’t just pick and choose what to materialize. Boy, you should hear this story from the beta test …”
I grabbed a star-shaped nut from the dish on the table, flipped it into the air, and caught it in my mouth. Even this trifling action was affected by agility, the brightness of the surroundings, and the hidden influence of luck.
“So, the first snatching mob appears in the fifth-floor labyrinth. A guy loses his main weapon and doesn’t have a backup for a quick change. So he turns tail and manages to escape the monster. However, he doesn’t feel like trekking all the way back to a safe room. Instead, he finds a spot he thinks is safe, then does the Materialize All Items trick. Sure enough, in the pile is his stolen sword. The problem is, the snatch mobs aren’t the only guys to watch out for there … there are also looting mobs! All these little gremlins come pouring out of the woodwork and grab everything off the floor, stuff it into their sacks, and scamper off.”
“That does sound awful … But couldn’t he just find an actual safe haven and do that same trick again to get it all back?”
“That’s the thing. Most looter mobs have the Robbing skill, which immediately rewrites the item’s ownership. Fortunately for him, nobody else had been to that area yet, so he crawled the entire dungeon to hunt down all the gremlins and managed to get his stuff back by hand. I tell you, it brought tears to my eyes …”
I flipped another nut into the air, sighing in exasperation.
“That story sounded like there was some personal experience behind it,” Asuna noted wryly. My internal panic system must have kicked in, because the nut landed in my hair rather than my mouth. I shook my head and tried to look aggrieved.
“It’s … just a story I heard, nothing more. Anyways, where was I …”
“You were explaining how the Materialize All command is useful but has its limitations,” she sighed, and reached out to pluck the star-shaped nut off my head. Before I could ask what she planned to do with it, she flicked it with a finger directly into the open crack of my mouth. I crunched it with my teeth, marveling at her accuracy.
“At any rate, now I understand the logic of how my sword came back,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. When the glass left her lips, that dangerous light was back in her eyes. “But that’s only half of the story, isn’t it? After all, I saw the sword I gave the blacksmith shatter on top of that anvil. If the Wind Fleuret that came back was my original sword… what sword was it that broke into pieces?”
A very good question. I nodded slowly, trying to piece together the fragments of information and suspicion into an easily explainable form.
“To be honest, I don’t have a full explanation of that train of logic. What I can say for certain is this: At some point from the time you handed your Wind Fleuret to Nezha, to the time it shattered into pieces, he switched it out for another item of the same type. At first, I suspected that he’d found a way to intentionally destroy other players’ weapons, but that wasn’t it. He’s the first blacksmith in Aincrad, and the first upgrade scammer …”
Upgrade scams, enchantment scams, forging scams, refinement scams.
The name varied depending on the title of the game, but it was a classic, traditional means of deception that had been around since the early days of MMORPGs.
The method was simple. The blacksmith (or other type of crafter) put out a sign advertising his weapon upgrade service, charged his clients expensive fees, then embezzled the funds by pretending the upgrade attempt destroyed the item. In games where weapon destruction wasn’t one of the failure states, they had a variety of other options to fool clients, such as replacing the item with the same one a single level lower, or just keeping the crafting materials for themselves without attempting to upgrade.
In the original pre-full-dive games played on a monitor, the player’s weapon was completely lost from view as soon as they handed it over to the blacksmith. The entire process happened on the other player’s screen, so there was no means of telling whether any fraud had taken place.
Leaning too heavily on such deception would quickly lead to the kind of bad reputation that kept any more players from using their services, but rare gear in MMOs could be incredibly valuable. Even the occasional bit of trickery might reap huge benefits. There were almost no bad rumors about Nezha, so the rate of his fraud must still be quite low. However …
“The problem is, this is the world’s first VRMMO. Even after handing over the weapon, we can see it. It can’t be easy to switch it out—in fact, it must be incredibly hard.”
My long explanation finally concluded, Asuna frowned and murmured, “I see … I thought I kept the sword in my sights the entire time after giving it to him. The blacksmith held my sword in his left hand and did all of the controls and hammering with his right. He couldn’t possibly have opened a window, put my swo
rd into storage, and brought out a fake.”
“I absolutely agree. He had a number of pre-forged weapons on his store display, but the best ones were Iron Rapiers, and none were Wind Fleurets. So he couldn’t have just switched them like that. However …”
“However?”
“However, there was a brief point where my eyes left the sword. The time when Nezha tossed your materials into the forge and it started glowing blue. It was three seconds at the most. I wanted to make sure that he used all of the materials we spent so much time collecting …”
I trailed off. Asuna’s hazel eyes went wide.
“Oh! I … I think I was watching the furnace the entire time … but only because I thought the blue flames were pretty.”
“Um, okay. Anyway, we weren’t watching the sword in his hand while it happened. I think anyone would be staring at the flames. The materials burn and melt and change into the color of the property, so it’s a big show to those watching. I think he might be using that as misdirection, the way a magician would…”
“So he switched out the sword in the three seconds we were watching the forge? Without opening his menu?” She started to shake her head in disbelief but stopped just as quickly. “On the other hand, that’s the only moment it could have happened. He must have pulled off some kind of trick in those three seconds. I can’t imagine what it is, but if we can just witness him doing the same thing again …”
“Agreed. Then we can watch his left hand the entire time. But that’ll be difficult …”
“Why?”
“Nezha must have noticed by now that the Wind Fleuret plus four he supposedly stole is gone. Meaning that the player he tricked—in this case, you—utilized the Materialize All command, because you probably saw through his deception. He’ll be spooked, and either not set up his shop for a while, or if he does, he won’t attempt that scam again.”
“… I see. He didn’t seem to be that excited about it to begin with… In fact …”
Asuna paused, but I knew exactly what she was about to say. In fact, he didn’t seem like the kind of person to commit fraud.
“Yeah … I agree,” I said. She glanced over at me and smiled shyly. I went on, my voice quiet. “We’ll lay low and gather information. Both on the switch-out trick and on Nezha himself. Either way, we’ve got to get back to the front line tomorrow.”
“Yes, you’re right. From what I heard in Marome today, they’re going to challenge the last field boss tomorrow morning, then enter the labyrinth in the afternoon.”
“Wow, that’s quick … Who’s leading the battle force?”
“Kibaou and someone else … named Lind.”
I recognized the first name she said, of course, but the second was unfamiliar.
“Lind was in Diavel’s party during the first-floor boss fight. He used a scimitar.” Her words seemed to be coming from miles away.
The instant the words hit my brain, I heard his tearful scream in my ears. Why did you abandon Diavel to die?!
“Oh … him.”
“Yes. It seems like he took over in Diavel’s place. He even dyed his hair blue and his armor silver, just like Diavel’s.”
I shut my eyes, envisioning the dead knight in his blue-and-silver finery.
“Between Kibaou and the other guy as leader, I’m guessing they won’t save a space for me in the boss fight. Will you participate, Asuna?” I asked her. She was a solo player, just like me. Her long brown hair shook left and right.
“I took part in the scouting of the boss, but it was just a big bull. Didn’t seem like it needed too many, as long as they were well coordinated. Plus they started getting really bossy about who would get the last attack bonus, so I told them straight out that I wouldn’t be in the battle.”
I grimaced to myself; I could practically see the scene floating before my eyes.
“I see. You’re right; that boss isn’t anything to worry about. The real problem is the floor boss …”
“It’s a problem?” she asked, to the point. I grimaced again.
“Of course. I mean, it stands to reason that the second-floor boss would be tougher than the first.”
“Oh … right. Of course.”
“His attack isn’t all that high, but he uses special skills on you. It’s possible to practice a defensive strategy on the auto-generating mobs in the labyrinth, but …”
If Diavel—secretly a beta tester—was still alive, he’d make sure that information made it to all the other front-line players. But without him, the only reliable source of beta info was Argo’s strategy guides, and that was a problem. As we learned in that terrible battle four days ago, the boss’s attack patterns could have been altered since the beta.
“Let’s ignore the blacksmith for now and spend tomorrow on practice,” she suggested.
I nodded automatically, lost in thought. “Yeah, good idea …”
“South gate of Urbus, seven o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“Sounds good …”
“And make sure you get a full night’s sleep tonight. If you’re late, you go back to a full hundred g.”
“Yeah, I know—wait, what?”
I tuned back in to the conversation and raised my head. Across the table from me, her normal spirits recovered with the return of her sword, Asuna set her morning alarm.
7
SCATTERED IN THE WILDERNESS OF EACH FLOOR OF Aincrad were unique named monsters called “field bosses” that acted as gatekeepers of sorts along the route to the labyrinth.
Field bosses were always found in tight areas adjacent to sheer cliffs or river rapids, natural chokepoints that couldn’t be passed without defeating the guardian. What this meant, in practice, was that while each floor might be circular in shape, it was broadly divided into multiple discrete zones.
The second floor was split into a wide northern area and a cramped southern area, which meant there was only one field boss on the entire floor. It was named the Bullbous Bow, a combination of “bull” and “bulbous bow,” the protruding bulb at the front of many large ships. As the name suggested, it was a massive bull with a bulging, rounded forehead that it used for powerful and deadly charging attacks.
I watched the distant, twelve-foot-tall monster paw at the ground with powerful legs and lower its four-horned head. “Since his fur is black and brown, does that make him a Black Wagyu?” I wondered.
“You’ll have to ask them to share any meat it drops in order to find out,” Asuna responded, disinterested.
“Hmm …”
I actually gave that option serious thought. Many of the animal-type monsters in Aincrad dropped food items like “so-and-so meat” or “so-and-so eggs” that could actually be cooked up into meals. The flavors varied far more widely than the offerings available from the NPC restaurants in town—meaning that some of them tasted much better than what you could buy, while some were much worse.
The Trembling Oxen that roamed the second floor had such unfortunately tough meat that you could chew it forever without softening it up. On the other hand, the Trembling Cows weren’t bad at all. Therefore, you’d expect the boss of all the cattle on the level would taste better than any of them. I rued my lack of foresight in not testing that theory during the beta.
“Forget about that. They’re starting.”
Her elbow snapped me out of my reverie, and I concentrated on the sight below. I, Kirito the swordsman, and my companion for the last two days, Asuna the fencer, were in a position atop one of the mesas that looked down on the field boss’s lair. Some low trees growing right at the lip of the mountaintop made for excellent camouflage that kept us hidden from those below.
The basin was about two hundred yards long and fifty yards wide. The Bullbous Bow stood its ground, ready to turn aggro at any moment, as a neatly organized attack party inched toward it. The group was made of two full parties and three reserves—fifteen players in total.
It didn’t seem that impressive in comparison to the forty-some warrio
rs that tackled the kobold lord on the first floor, but field bosses were generally designed so that even a single party of a decent level could emerge triumphant. Fifteen was more than enough to do the job, but that depended on their knowledge of the boss’s patterns and their ability to work seamlessly as a team.
“Hmm?” I muttered to myself, watching the raid closely.
Asuna whispered, “Which ones are the tanks, and which ones are the attackers?”
“I was just noticing that … Both parties look awfully similar from up here.”
The Bullbous Bow was the size of a small mountain, but its attack pattern was quite simple: charge, turn, charge, turn. With two parties, the orthodox strategy said that the tanks should hold its attention and absorb its charges, while the attackers did all the damage at its flanks.
But from what I could tell, there was no real difference in the equipment of the two parties of six. Both had roughly the same number of heavily armored tanks and lightly armored attackers.
I continued to squint down at them from our height of three hundred yards and eventually noticed a subtle detail.
“Wait … look at the cloth they’re wearing under their armor.”
“Huh? Oh, you’re right. Each party has its own color.”
It was hard to tell beneath all the metal and leather armor, but Asuna was correct. The right-hand part wore royal blue doublets, and the six on the left were clad in moss green.
If the colors were meant for easy visual identification of either party, it made more sense to wear brightly colored sashes on top of the armor. Also, blue and green weren’t the most distinct opposing colors. No, those were not temporary colors arranged for this fight—they were probably the original uniform designs of their parties.
“They didn’t reform into new parties based on battle roles,” Asuna noted, her voice hard. “The blue party on the right is Lind’s—they’re all Diavel’s friends. And the green party on the left is Kibaou’s. I suppose they weren’t the type to get along …”
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