1

After a rushed morning coffee—thank goodness this exists in Aincrad—serenaded by the music of the water wheel’s rhythmic thumping, I changed into my blacksmith’s uniform, inspecting myself in the full-length mirror on the wall.

Though I considered it a uniform, it was closer to a waitress outfit than heavy smithing garb. There was a cypress-brown top with puffed sleeves and a flared skirt in the same tone. I wore a white apron over that, with a red ribbon on the chest.

The outfit wasn’t my own design. A friend of mine had arranged it, another girl the same age who often visited the shop to buy equipment. She claimed that heavy clothes didn’t suit my baby face, and while I’d originally wanted her to mind her own business, it was true that my business had doubled since I started wearing this. So while it wasn’t really my first choice, I’d been using it ever since.

Her advice didn’t stop at clothes. She fiddled with my hair at every opportunity—it was currently set to an aggressively pink color in a short cut. Once again, though, the reactions from others suggested that it was working for me.

I’m Lisbeth the blacksmith, and I was fifteen when I first logged in to SAO. People thought I was younger than I looked back in the real world, and that pattern only grew more pronounced here. What I saw in the mirror was pink hair, large eyes with dark blue irises, and a petite nose and mouth that, combined with the apron dress, made me look like a little doll.

I was a serious student in the real world with little interest in fashion, which only made the dichotomy stronger. Even though I’ve gotten used to my new look recently, my personality has always been the same. Every once in a while, I can’t help but snap at a customer, which always elicits shock.

I double-checked my equipment and exited the store, flipping over the CLOSED sign. I flashed the players waiting for entrance a dazzling smile and said, “Good morning, and welcome!” This was another thing I’d only recently gotten used to doing.

It had always been a dream of mine to run my own business, but even inside a video game, dreams and reality are very different beasts. I’d had more than enough experience with the difficulty of meeting customer demand from the moment I started selling in the street and living out of an inn bedroom.

My first lesson: If you’re not good at smiling, make up for it with quality. In retrospect, the decision to focus on raising my Weaponcrafting skill at the expense of everything else was a wise one, as many of my repeat customers vouched for the quality of my weapons, even after I moved into my permanent storefront.

After I greeted all the customers, I left the business end up to my NPC employee and retreated into the workshop behind the storefront. I had about ten orders for custom equipment that needed to be fulfilled within the day.

Pulling the lever on the wall activated the bellows hooked up to the water wheel. That sent air into the furnace and set the grindstone spinning. I pulled an expensive metal ingot out of my inventory and tossed it into the burning furnace. Once it had absorbed enough heat, I pulled it out with tongs and set it atop the anvil. I got down on one knee, favorite hammer in hand, and selected the item to be produced from a pop-up menu. After a specified number of whacks with the hammer, the metal would turn into the desired item. There wasn’t really any technique to it; the quality of the finished weapon would vary at random, but I chose to believe that the concentration of the blacksmith during the process affected the result. So I focused all my nerves on the ingot as I slowly raised the hammer. Just as I was about to strike the very first blow—

“Morning, Liz!”

“Aaah!”

The door of the workshop slammed open and my swing went wide. Instead of the ingot, I hit the corner of the anvil. Sparks flew everywhere as a pathetic clang echoed throughout the room.

I looked up to see the surprise intruder scratching her head and sticking out her tongue in guilty embarrassment.

“Sorry! I’ll be more careful about that.”

“How many times have I heard that one before? At least it happened before I actually started working on anything this time.”

I stood up with a sigh and tossed the metal back into the furnace. Turning around with my hands on my hips, I looked up at my visitor, who was just a bit taller than me.

“Good morning, Asuna.”

Asuna the fencer was a good friend and loyal customer. She wound her way through the now-familiar workshop and plopped into a round chair of unfinished wood, then flicked her shoulder-length chestnut hair with her fingertips. Every motion was as pristine as a movie star’s, and despite having known her for many months, I couldn’t help but admire her grace each and every time.

I sat myself in the chair next to the anvil and hung my hammer on the wall.

“So what’s happening today? You’re here early.”

“Oh, I need this done.”

She pulled the rapier off her belt, scabbard and all, and tossed it to me. I caught it one-handed and drew it out enough to check the blade. Its typical sheen was dulled with use, but the edge was still sharp.

“This isn’t that bad at all. Seems a bit early to have it sharpened.”

“Yeah, I know, but I want it to be shiny.”

“Oh?”

I looked at Asuna again. She was wearing the same old knight’s uniform of white with red crosses and a miniskirt, but her boots looked shiny and new, and there were small silver earrings sparkling in her ears.

“Okay, something’s weird. This is a normal weekday. What happened to your mandated guild activity quota? I thought you said progress was slow on the sixty-third floor.”

She smiled shyly at my question. “Actually, I got the day off. I’m going to meet someone after this…”

“Ohh~?”

I dragged the chair several clattering steps closer to Asuna.

“Tell me more. Who are you meeting?”

“I-it’s a secret!” she stammered, blushing slightly. I folded my arms and nodded.

“I see…No wonder you’ve been so cheerful lately. You’ve finally found a boyfriend.”

“Th-that’s not it at all!” Now her face was really red. She coughed and gave me a sidelong glance. “Am I…really that different from normal…?”

“Of course. When I first met you, all you cared about was labyrinths this, conquest that! I thought you were a bit obsessed, honestly, but you’ve changed since the spring. I mean, I could never imagine you skipping out on your game-clearing on a weekday before.”

“I see…Maybe he is rubbing off on me…”

“So who is it? Someone I know?”

“I don’t…think so…but maybe?”

“Bring him next time.”

“I swear, it’s not like that! I mean…it’s totally one-sided…”

“Really!”

This time I was truly stunned. Asuna was the sub-leader of the strongest guild in the game, the Knights of the Blood, and one of the most beautiful women in Aincrad. There were as many men who courted her as stars in the sky, but I’d never imagined the opposite would happen.

“I don’t know. He’s very strange,” she said, gazing into the distance. A slight smile played across her lips. If this were a manga for girls, there would be an explosion of roses in the background.

“It’s really hard to get a handle on him. It’s like he goes to the beat of his own drum…but he’s incredibly powerful.”

“Oh? More than you?”

“Way more. I wouldn’t last for a minute in a head-to-head duel.”

“Well, well. This narrows down the list of names.”

I consulted my mental registry of famous clearers while Asuna hastily waved her hands.

“Y-you don’t have to guess!”

“In that case, I’ll just have to look forward to the day you show him to me. Feel free to put in a good word about me if he has any weapons needs!”

“You’re always looking out for your business, Liz. I’ll tell him about your work…Oh, crap! Can you sharpen that now?”

“Sure thing. Just give me a second.”

I stood up with Asuna’s rapier in hand and walked over to the grindstone in the corner of the room.

The thin blade was housed in a red scabbard. It was a rapier named Lambent Light and was among the greatest of all the weapons I’d handled in SAO. Even with the finest materials, the finest hammer, and the finest anvil I could find, the random nature of the crafting process ensured a range of potential quality. If I was lucky, I might craft a blade this fine once every three months.

I cradled the sword with both hands and lowered it to the slowly spinning grindstone. There was no real technique to sharpening a weapon—you simply held it to the stone long enough for the process to finish—but a masterpiece of this quality demanded to be handled with proper respect.

I slid the blade carefully across the stone from hilt to tip. The process produced a cool metallic noise and orange sparks, and the silver metal began to regain its former gleam. By the time I was finished honing it, the rapier was practically a translucent silver, glittering in the morning sunlight.

I popped the weapon into its sheath and tossed it back to Asuna, then caught between my fingertips the hundred-col coin that came flying back.

“Thanks, come again!”

“Next time I’ll need you to do my armor, too. But I’m in a rush today, so this is all for now.” Asuna stood up and hung the rapier from her sword belt.

“Now I’m really curious. Maybe I should tag along.”

“What? N-no!”

“Ha-ha-ha, I’m just kidding. But you’ll bring him here sometime, won’t you?”

“S-sometime.”

Asuna waved and darted out of the workshop as though fleeing. I heaved a sigh and sat back in my chair.

“…Lucky.”

I was surprised at the word that escaped my lips.

I wasn’t really one for moping. In the year and a half I’d spent here, I’d poured all of my enthusiasm into building this business out of nothing, but now that I’d practically mastered my Blacksmithing skill and set up my own shop, I was running out of personal goals and found myself lonely from time to time.

There are few girls in Aincrad, so I’ve received my share of suitors, but I never felt in the mood. I’d rather have someone who I loved myself. In that sense, I was jealous of Asuna.

“If only some kind of wonderful matchmaking event happened for me, too,” I muttered, then shook my head to clear it. I stood up and retrieved the glowing red ingot from the furnace, placing it back on the anvil. This is the only lover I need for now, I told myself as I swung the hammer down.

Normally the rhythmic clanging echoing throughout the workshop cleared my head, but today it couldn’t get rid of the cobwebs.

It was the next afternoon that the man came to my shop.

I’d stayed up too late trying to finish up all my orders the previous day, so I was napping in the large rocking chair on the porch of the store.

The dream was about elementary school. I was a good, hardworking student, but I always felt drowsy in the first class after lunch, and the teacher often had to snap me awake.

That teacher was a favorite of mine, a young man fresh out of college. I was embarrassed to be scolded for sleeping, but I kind of liked the way he woke me up. He’d place a gentle hand on my shoulder and in a low, calm voice—

“Uh, hey…”

“Y-yes! I’m sorry!”

“Whoa—?!”

I bolted upright as though on springs and shouted, only to find standing before me a male player with a startled expression on his face.

“Huh…?”

I looked around. It wasn’t my classroom, packed with rows of desks. There was only a road lined with trees, a waterway surrounding the wide stone path, and a lawn of grass. It was Lindarth, my second home.

Apparently I’d drifted off to sleep for the first time in ages. I coughed to hide my embarrassment and turned to my potential customer.

“W-welcome to my store. Is there a particular weapon you’re looking for today?”

“Uh, y-yeah,” he replied, nodding.

At a glance, he didn’t seem that powerful. He might have been slightly older than me. He had black hair and a monochrome outfit of a black shirt, black pants, black boots. A single sword was slung over his back. The weapons I sold required high attributes to wield, and I was concerned that he didn’t have a high-enough level to wield them, but I showed him in anyway.

“My one-handed swords are over in this case.”

I showed him the display containing all my pre-made models, but he smiled awkwardly and cut me off.

“Er, actually, I’m looking to do a custom order…”

Now I was really worried. Made-to-order weapons with special materials were exorbitantly priced. He was looking at a six-digit cost, at least. I never liked seeing people turn red or white after I showed them what their orders would cost, so I tried to head him off before we reached that uncomfortable point.

“The market for metals is rather pricy these days, so it will be a considerable cost,” I began, but I was shocked by what the man in black said next.

“Don’t worry about the budget. I just want the best sword you can possibly make.”

“…”

I stared at him, stunned, but somehow or another managed to find my voice again.

“…All right, but…I need to know what properties, what stats you’re looking for…”

My tone had lost a bit of its civility, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Oh, good point. In that case…”

He pulled the sword harness off his back entirely and handed it to me. “How about something at least as good as this?”

It didn’t look all that fancy. It had a black leather hilt and a scabbard of the same color. But the instant I held it in my hand—

It’s so heavy!!

—I nearly dropped the blade. This thing must have required a phenomenal amount of strength. As a blacksmith and mace-wielder, I’d built my strength stat up fairly high, but there was no way even I could swing this sword.

I pulled it out of the scabbard with hesitation and found a thick, meaty blade nearly black in color. One look told me this was an extremely well-crafted weapon. I clicked the blade with a fingertip to bring up a menu. CATEGORY: LONG SWORD/ONE-HANDED, NAME: ELUCIDATOR. There was nothing listed in the “crafted by” field. A fellow player had not created this.

The weapons of Aincrad fall into two large categories.

One is the “player-made” weapons created by blacksmiths within the game. The other is “monster drops,” weapons earned through adventuring. As you might imagine, we smiths don’t think much of dropped weapons. Some of us even use the terms off-brand or generic to describe them.

But this was clearly very rare, even among dropped loot. Normally, player-made weapons were higher in average quality than those dropped by enemies, but every once in a while, you found a truly monstrous blade among them…or so I heard.

At any rate, this had certainly gotten my competitive juices flowing. If I was a master smith, I couldn’t afford to be shown up by a stupid looted item.

I handed the heavy sword back to him, then pulled down the single longsword I had on display on the back wall. It was my greatest masterpiece to date, forged about two weeks earlier. The blade glowed a dull red, as though rippling with a gentle flame.

“This is my best sword so far. I doubt it’s inferior to yours.”

He took my crimson blade and swished it about in the air, then tilted his head in puzzlement.

“A bit on the light side.”

“…Well, the metal I used is meant for speed…”

“Hmmm.”

He swung it a few more times, clearly unsure of it, then turned his gaze on me.

“Can I test it out?”

“Test it…?”

“The durability.”

He pulled out his own sword, then laid it flat on the shop counter. Standing still over it, he slowly lifted my glowing red blade…

I hurriedly called out when I realized what he was about to do.

“W-wait, don’t! If you do that, you’ll break your sword in two!!”

“And that’ll prove it’s inferior. If it happens, it happens.”

“But…”

I swallowed my protest. There was a sharp light in his eyes as he held the blade overhead. The red sword suddenly glowed with a pale blue visual effect.

“Seya!”

He brought it down with a flash. Before I could blink, sword met sword, and the shop rattled with the shock. The explosion of light was so fierce, I had to narrow my eyes and take a step back.

The blade split cleanly down the middle and burst into pieces.

Not his sword. My masterpiece.

“Aaaaagh!!”

I screamed and leaped onto his arm, wrenching the lower half of the sword away from him and scrambling about for the pieces.

There’s no fixing this.

I slumped my shoulders in despair, and a moment later, the half sword in my hand burst into polygons and vanished. After several seconds of silence, I looked up.

“What,” I snarled as I grabbed the collar of his shirt, “the hell was that?! You can’t just go around breaking people’s stuff!”

He jerked his face away in panic.

“S-sorry! I didn’t think the sword I was holding would break…”

I snapped.

“Meaning my sword was even weaker than you thought it would be?!”

“Huh? Uh, um, well…yes.”

“You admit it! You’ve got some nerve!!”

I put my hands on my hips and leaned forward.

“W-well, I’ll have you know that if I get the right materials, I can make a sword that will crush your stupid sword like an insignificant twig!”

“Oh?” He grinned at the bravado. “Well, that’s the one I want, then. A sword that will snap mine like a twig.”

He grabbed the black sword off the counter and sheathed it. Now the blood was truly rushing to my head.

“Well, if we’re really doing this, I’ll be involved in every step! Starting with retrieving the metals!”

My brain was screaming at me to stop, but it was too late now. His eyebrows rose and he cast an openly appraising gaze at me.

“Well…I don’t mind. But wouldn’t it be better if I got them myself? I don’t want anyone dragging me down.”

“Arrgh!!”

Could anyone be more irritating? I waved my arms wildly, stomping like a child having a tantrum.

“D-don’t you dare humiliate me! I’m a master weapons-crafter, I’ll have you know!”

“You are?” He whistled, clearly enjoying himself. “In that case, I ought to observe a master at work. I’ll start by paying you for the last sword.”

“I don’t need your sympathy! Once I make one better than yours, I’ll make sure you pay through the nose for it!”

“And I’ll do it gladly. My name’s Kirito. Nice to meet you, at least until this sword is finished.”

I folded my arms and turned my head in a huff.

“Likewise, Kirito.”

“Really? Not even a ‘Mr.’? Fine, Lisbeth.”

“Argh!!”

It was the worst possible way to form a new party.