I couldn’t blame her for assuming there was something deeper going on, but in my personal dictionary, a “party of two” and a “team” were very different things.
A party could come together spontaneously for the sake of a battle or two, then be disbanded and never return, but a proper team was designed to work together, each player fine-tuning their skills based on the presence of the other. This translated to choosing a particular equipment loadout and skillset that made up for the weaknesses of the other player so as to create attack combos that could take down difficult mobs—not so we could each attack our own targets (as Asuna and I did against the wasps).
It was only once you reached that step that I considered it to be a team, and by that definition, Asuna and I would probably never be a team. Even ignoring all of the beater baggage, Asuna put an incredible amount of craft and pride into her fencing skills, and I couldn’t see her abandoning that fine-honed technique to prioritize her teamwork with me.
I had no idea how much of that explanation—more like excuse—got through, so I sat down across from Argo with an innocent look on my face, waited for my temporary party companion to sit down, then ordered a black ale. Asuna ordered a fruit cocktail cut with soda water, and the NPC waiter left for ten seconds before returning with the drinks. With that kind of speed, it felt as though they should dispense with the employee altogether and have the glasses just appear on the table, but I supposed the game’s creator felt it was a necessary touch. NPC employees didn’t cost real money, anyway.
We lifted our drinks, as did Argo, who shot me an encouraging look. I cleared my throat and announced, “Erm… to reaching the second-floor labyrinth!”
“Cheers!”
“… Cheers.”
The enthusiasm was not quite shared by all, but at least we were on the same page. I drained half of my mug of beer—they called it ale in the game, but I didn’t understand the difference. It was the same sour, bitter carbonated drink I remember tasting at my mother’s permission in real life, but it was strangely satisfying after a long day of racing around the wilderness and dungeons. Though from what I understood, the adult players of SAO thought there was no reason for alcohol that didn’t get you drunk.
In that sense, it seemed obvious that Argo, who gulped down her entire mug of foamy yellow liquid and exhaled with satisfaction, was probably another teenager who wasn’t fixated on the alcohol part of the drink. But there was no way to be sure. In fact, it was nearly impossible to guess her age, even if there were no familiar whisker stripes painted on those cheeks.
Argo slammed her empty cup onto the table and immediately ordered another.
“Five days from the opening of the gate to reaching the labyrinth. That was quick.”
“Compared to the first floor, sure. Plus, we had lots of players over level 10 because it took so long the first time. The original level required to beat the second floor was more like 7 or 8, right?”
“Well … maybe from a numerical standpoint. But that’s just the point at which it becomes beatable.” She lifted the second mug of ale to her lips, and Asuna filled the silence.
“How many attempts did it take to defeat the second-floor boss in the beta?”
“Hmm. We got wiped out at least ten times, and that was only the attempts that I participated in… But the first time was pure recklessness. I was only level 5.”
I didn’t mention that I did it hoping to score the LA bonus.
“I think when we actually did succeed, the raid’s average level was over 7.”
“Ahh… But this time, it’ll be at least 10.”
I checked the party HP gauge. I’d earned a level-up thanks to our hunting of the minos—er, tauruses—in the labyrinth, so I was up to fourteen. Asuna claimed to be twelve. Most likely Lind and Kibaou’s teams, the main muscle of the raid party, would be about the same.
“Yeah … I bet it’ll be over 10. Statistically, that’s a high enough level … but floor-boss battles don’t follow the same rules as wimpy mobs.”
The battle against Illfang the Kobold Lord seemed like it had happened ages ago by now. Our average level was far higher than it had been during the beta test. Our leader, Diavel the knight, was level 12, just like me.
That did not stop the kobold king’s katana skills from draining all of Diavel’s HP. The sheer firepower of a boss’s attacks rendered the “safe range” of levels meaningless.
Asuna and I thought in silence as Argo emptied three quarters of her second mug and said, “Plus, this boss is more about having good equipment than a high level.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” I agreed with a sigh. The second-floor boss had a special sword skill called Numbing Detonation that wasn’t primarily about dealing damage. But because of that, increasing the player’s HP wasn’t an adequate defense. Careful raising of debuff prevention via equipment upgrades was crucial.
That would all be covered in the next edition of the info dealer’s strategy guide series, no doubt. All the front-line players would eagerly delve into the upgrading system, and Nezha would do a booming business here in this town.
“… Ugh…” I grunted without realizing it.
What if Nezha hadn’t moved from Urbus to Taran in order to wait out the storm… but because he foresaw that there would be high demand for his services here? He might bilk players out of their hard-earned rare gear without a care for his reputation, making the Legend Braves the top guild in the game, surpassing even Lind and Kibaou’s teams. And what would happen to Nezha the blacksmith?
“… Argo.” I brushed off the crawling sensation going up my arms and opened my window over the table. “Here’s the map data for the first and second level of the labyrinth.”
I turned it into a scroll and plopped it down before her. She picked it up and made it disappear faster than a parlor magician.
“Thanks again, Kii-boy. Like I always say, if you want the proper value of this information…”
“No… I’m not trying to make a business out of map data. I couldn’t sleep at night if I knew players were dying because they couldn’t afford maps. However, I do have a job with a condition I want you to do for me in return.”
“Ohh? Why don’t you tell Big Sister what you want?”
She cast a sidelong glance at me. I could feel some kind of waves radiating off of Asuna, but I was too afraid to look, so I focused my eyes on Argo.
“I’m sure you’re aware of them already …” I lowered my voice and looked around the bar. The entrance was at the end of a narrow alleyway, and no other players had come in. “I want info on a team called Legend Braves that took part in this morning’s fight against the Bullbous Bow. All their names and how they got together.”
“Ahh. And … your condition?”
“I don’t want anyone to know that I’m looking for information about them. Especially the people in question.”
The scariest thing about Argo the Rat is that not only did she not practice client confidentiality, she actually made it her motto that every buyer’s name was another product to sell. So normally, there was no way I could buy information on the Legend Braves in total secrecy. Argo would follow her own rules and go straight to the Braves, asking if they wanted to buy the name of the person snooping into their business. Of course, I could pay her more than what they offered in order to keep my name out of it, but it would still let them know that someone was asking about them. That was what I wanted to avoid.
My condition was that I wanted her to collect information on the Braves without making any kind of contact. It was in direct conflict with Argo’s motto and principles.
“Ahh…Hmmmm.”
She twisted her curly hair with a finger as she mulled it over, then shrugged and said okay with surprising ease. But my relief only lasted a split second.
“Just remember this: Big Sister prioritized her feelings for Kii-boy over her rules of business.”
Again, I felt a burning sensation emanating from the right, and fro
ze solid. Argo never let the smile leave her face.
“Now, what did you want with me, A-chan?”
Ten minutes later, Asuna and I were back at the eastern plaza of Taran.
As a village, the scale of Taran was much smaller than the main town of Urbus. However, it shared the same basic construction in being carved down out of a flat mountaintop, with only the outer walls left standing. Therefore, it had at least twice the vertical space of any village built on flat plains.
The circular plaza was no exception, surrounded by tall buildings in every direction. But most of them were not NPC shops like inns or item stores, and there were no player-owned homes yet, so anyone could walk in or out.
More than a few players used these empty houses as squats instead of paying for an inn. The biggest difference was that an NPC-run inn offered full system protection on its rooms.
Of course, while it was impossible to hurt anyone in one of these places, there was always that uncertainty about sleeping without a lock, and the beds were painfully hard. I’d tried them out a few times when trying to skimp on expenses, and barely got a wink of sleep—I bolted to my feet every time I heard a noise inside the room or outside in the street. It was truly unfair; my real body was probably in some safe, sanitized hospital, with all of my senses disconnected from their external organs, but I was still terrorized by awful beds and outside noise in this virtual world.
After I’d suffered enough, I finally swore off of such frugality, and had been staying in proper inns or NPC homes ever since.
But there were other uses for an empty home than just sleeping. You could have a meeting in private, divvy up loot—or spy on someone.
“This is a good angle,” Asuna said from the chair in front of the window, looking down at the plaza below, but careful not to get too close.
“It’s probably the best spot you can get. Straight behind him, the angle would be too extreme to have a good idea of what’s happening. I’m gonna set the dinner down here.”
I placed four steamed buns of uncertain filling I’d bought from a street vendor on top of the round table. Their skin was the usual milky white, and nothing seemed out of order with the scent of the rising steam. In fact, they looked good. The official item name was “Taran Steamed Bun.”
Asuna turned away from the source of the clanging outside and cast a doubtful look at the steamed buns.
“What’s … inside of those?”
“Dunno. But it’s a cow-themed floor, so I’d guess it’s probably beef? By the by, in western Japan, when they talk about steamed meat buns, they mean beef. It’s in eastern Japan that the generic term means pork.”
“And is this town western or eastern?” she asked exasperatedly. I apologized for my pointless trivia and pushed the pile toward Asuna.
“Go on while they’re hot.”
“… Very well.”
She removed the leather glove from her hand and took the bun from the top of the pile. I hurriedly grabbed one of my own.
We’d been in the dungeon since this morning, and hadn’t had time to stop for a snack, so I was nearly starving. If our avatars exhibited biological processes other than emotion, my stomach would have gurgled all through our meeting with Argo. I opened my mouth wide and was about to stuff the steaming treat into my mouth, when—
“Nyaak!”
A strangled shriek hit my ears and I looked over in surprise. Asuna was sitting frozen in her chair, the steam bun held in both hands. The large, five-inch bun was missing one small bite—and the opening had squirted a thick cream-colored liquid across her face and neck.
She stayed dead still, properly chewing the bite she already took while resisting the impulse to cry, then finally spoke in a soft voice.
“… So the filling is warm custard cream… and some kind of sweet-sour fruit …”
“…”
I slowly lowered the Taran steamed bun from its position an inch away from my face, down to the table. The moment I let go, her voice struck again, sharp as a rapier.
“If … if it turns out you ate this during the beta test and knew what was inside, and intentionally didn’t tell me what it was … then I may not be able to stop myself from what comes next …”
“I swear to you that I did not know. Absolutely, positively, categorically.”
I took a small handkerchief out of my belt pouch and handed it to her. Fortunately, “mess” effects here would disappear in only a few moments, even if left alone, and wiping them with any item categorized as cloth made them disappear entirely. With each mess, the durability of the cloth would fall, but I’d heard rumors of a magic handkerchief that could be used forever. Mess effects caused by mobs or special terrain often contained their own debuff effects, so an unlimited handkerchief would be really handy to have. If only it weren’t such a rare piece of loot …
“Mm.”
I was shaken from my reverie by the return of my handkerchief. After a few seconds of wiping, Asuna’s face was free of cream.
She gave me one last glare, turned back to the window, and announced, “I’ll cook my own food the next time we have a stakeout. I’d rather not have to eat something terrible like this again.”
I felt tempted to point out that with a Cooking skill of zero, she couldn’t make anything that wasn’t terrible. But even as a fourteen-year-old, I was smart enough to know I shouldn’t. Instead I gave her a forced smile and opined, “Th-that sounds great.”
Two arrows shot forward and wiped the smile off my face. “When did I say, ‘I’ll cook my own food… for both of us’?”
“You didn’t,” I admitted sheepishly. When I actually tried the cooled-off Taran steamed bun, it wasn’t bad … It was pretty good, actually. But only as a dessert.
The outer skin was soft and chewy, and the cream inside was smooth and firm and not too sweet, the perfect match for the sour, strawberry-like fruit inside. I suspected that the preset flavor values for the bun were meant to resemble a strawberry cream pastry, but through developer error or some whim of the system, it was sold heated. Asuna’s mood improved eventually—she even ate two of the buns.
That was all well and good, but unlike the buns, the actual purpose of our stakeout was turning out to be fruitless. The entire point of doing this, of course, was to monitor Nezha the blacksmith and attempt to discover the means of his weapon-switching trick.
His business was thriving, but nearly all of the requests were maintenance repairs, and only two players in the hour that we watched asked him to upgrade their weapons. Both of those attempts were successful. I suspected that it was because they were only mid-rank weapons, but it was starting to make me doubt the possibility that there was any deception at all. What if Asuna’s sword breaking and then reappearing thanks to the Materialize All Items button were just freakish errors, bugs in the system…?
“No, that can’t be it,” I muttered to myself, trying to shake aside my self-doubt.
The means of the weapon-switching trick were still a mystery, but we knew how it was that the Wind Fleuret was destroyed on the first attempt—it was the very piece of information that Asuna bought from Argo.
When Argo had asked Asuna what her business was, the answer surprised me. She said, “I want you to find out if destruction is one of the possible penalties for an unsuccessful attempt at upgrading a weapon.”
Argo’s answer was just as unexpected as the question. “I don’t need to look it up. I already know the answer.”
We were stunned. Argo said up-front that she’d give it to us for the cost of her drinks, and explained.
“Strictly as a failure penalty, weapon-breaking will never happen. However, there is one way to ensure that a weapon will break with absolute certainty: when you attempt to upgrade a weapon that is out of upgrade attempts.”
Meaning this. Last night, the Wind Fleuret that crumbled to pieces before our eyes was in fact switched in at some point … and it had already used all of its allotted upgrade attempts. It was a “spent”
weapon. But the Wind Fleuret +4 hanging from Asuna’s waist still had two chances left. So even if the attempt had failed, it could not have caused the sword to crack.
Now that the spent-weapon concept had entered the picture, I thought back to Rufiol, the fellow who tried out Nezha before Asuna did.
I couldn’t determine if Nezha had indeed switched out his Anneal Blade with a different one. But the result was three straight failures, not destruction. Perhaps he couldn’t do his normal trick because there were so many people around, or perhaps he just didn’t have a spent Anneal Blade to switch it with.
If that was the case, it explained why Nezha offered the crestfallen Rufiol a sum of money much higher than the going rate for that spent +0 Anneal Blade. He wasn’t compensating the man for his loss, but stocking up for the next attempt …
“Kirito.”
I blinked, snapped out of my speculation. My eyes focused and saw that the plaza below was shrouded in night, and few players were still going to and fro.
One player walked directly across the circular plaza. He wore metal armor that reflected the light of the lampposts, and a dark blue shirt—clearly the uniform of Lind’s group, the top team among the front-line players.
Asuna and I watched with bated breath as he approached Nezha’s smith shop and removed his sword from his waist attachment. Its length and shape identified it as a one-handed longsword.
But it was slightly shorter and wider than my Anneal Blade. I couldn’t be sure because of the distance and darkness, but the large knuckle guard appeared to be that of a Stout Brand. That was a broadsword, a sub-category of one-handed swords that prioritized attack strength over speed. It was about as rare as a Wind Fleuret, if not slightly higher.
“Certainly good enough to be a target for his switcheroo,” Asuna whispered. I was surprised that she’d identified it at a glance, but I didn’t let it show.
“Yeah. Now, whether he asks for maintenance or an upgrade …”
There was at least fifty feet in between us at the southwestern side of the plaza, and the outdoor blacksmith shop at the northwest edge. The Search skill’s parameter adjustment brought several details into focus, but it was much too far to hear a conversation at normal volume.
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