Part 10

Just as the steam was about to pour from my ears in frustration, I heard a sound.

It was the distant, rhythmic clanging of metal. Clank, clank, went the hammer.

“Ah...”

I snapped my fingers, finally having spotted a use for the twelve remaining minutes of good luck.

 

 

4

Five hours after our last visit to the eastern plaza of Urbus, there were virtually no people wandering around. The only souls left were a few players standing around the NPC shop stalls that opened only at night, and two or three couples seated on benches. Of course, I hadn’t brought Asuna here to sit on a bench and stare up at the bottom of the floor above in lieu of stargazing.

The short player was still there in the northeast corner, his small anvil and display case sitting atop the vendor’s carpet. This was who I came to see: the blacksmith, likely the very first committed crafter since the start of SAO.

“Asuna, you met your quota of upgrading materials for your Wind Fleuret during our hunt, right?” I asked. She gave me a brief nod, her hooded cape back on.

“Yes. I’m a bit over, in fact, so I was planning to sell the rest and split the money with you.”

“We can do that tomorrow. Why don’t you try getting it to plus five right now?”

She looked upward, thinking it over. “I see. But does the good luck bonus affect weapon augmentation attempts? Isn’t it the blacksmith who does the attempt, not me?”

“True. But we can’t give the blacksmith some of that cake, for obvious reasons...”

Obvious meaning financial reasons. I shrugged and continued,

“So I can’t claim that the effect will work, but you are the weapons owner, so maybe there’s a boost to the chance of success. I’m certain it won’t have a negative effect, so you might as well give it a shot.”

The explanation had wound the buff timer down to seven minutes. Asuna nodded again and said, “All right. I was going to do it today, anyway.”

She pulled the rapier from her waist and strode directly over to the blacksmith’s display. I followed her without comment.

Up close, the diminutive blacksmith reminded me even more of a dwarf. He was short and squat, with a young, honest face. It really was a shame that he didn’t have any whiskers. Hairstyles and facial hair were easily customizable with cosmetic items from shops, so it seemed like he could draw in more customers by going with the classic look.

Asuna’s voice broke me out of my pointless reverie.

“Good evening.”

The blacksmith looked up from his anvil and gave a hasty bow. “G-good evening. Welcome.”

His voice was young and boyish, a far cry from that dwarven baritone. Every avatar’s voice was sampled from the player’s real-life voice, so while it seemed slightly different from his face, it didn’t change his overall impression. As I suspected the first time I saw him, he might be a teenager close to my age.

Atop the signboard with his list of prices, it said Nezha’s Smith Shop. Under Japanese rules, I supposed that to be pronounced “Nezuha”–it must have been his name. Sometimes it was difficult to tell with the alphabetized display of Sword Art Online player names. In our first-floor raid party, there was a trident user with the handle Hokkaiikura. After much deliberation, I concluded that it must be “Hokka Iikura,” only to find out later that he called himself “Hokkai Ikura.” Nezha itself could have some different pronunciation, but it seemed rude to ask him that on our first meeting.

At any rate, Nezha. the blacksmith got to his feet and bowed again nervously.

“A-are you looking for a new weapon or here for maintenance?”

Asuna held up the rapier in both hands and answered, “I’d like you to power up my weapon. I want this Wind Fleuret plus four boosted to plus five, bonus to accuracy. I’ve got my own materials.”

Nezha took one glance at the fleuret and his already-drooping brows looked even more troubled.

“A-all right...How many materials do you have...?”

“The upper limit. Four Steel Plates and twenty Windwasp Needles,” she answered promptly. I recalculated everything in my head.

Equipment upgrade materials came in two categories: base materials and additional materials. Every attempt had a fixed, mandatory cost of base materials, but the additional materials were optional. The type and number of additional mats would have a wide effect on the chance of success.

Windwasp Needles were an accuracy-boosting additional material, which meant that they would increase her critical hit chance even more. If my memory was correct a full twenty needles would max out the success rate of the upgrade attempt at 95 percent.

In other words, this should have been a very good thing for the player actually performing the upgrade attempt. The best customers of all would pay the blacksmith for the materials themselves, but it still had to be much better than failing with no additional mats.

And yet, Nezha looked terrified after hearing her answer. He was clearly unsettled by the request, but he couldn’t find a reason to turn her down.

“All right. I’ll take your weapon and materials.” He bowed again.

Asuna thanked him and handed over the Wind Fleuret first.

She then opened her window and materialized a sack in which she had placed all of the goods. She handed them over to the blacksmith through a trade window. Finally, she paid him the cost of the upgrading attempt.

At this point, the luck bonus effect had only four minutes left. That would not be much help in battle, but it was more than enough for a single weapon upgrade. Whether or not it actually worked in the way we hoped was another question, but that was one expensive piece of cake. Surely they could afford to bump us from 95 percent to 97.

I said a silent prayer to the god of the game system. Asuna took two steps back and sidled right next to me. She muttered, “Finger.”

“Huh?”

“Stick out your finger.”

Baffled, I lifted my left hand and extended the index finger. Asuna reached out with her brown leather gloves and gripped my finger in two of hers.

“Um...what is this...?”

“If I do this, maybe your buff effect will be added to mine.” That seemed stupid. “W-well, in that case...shouldn’t you hold my entire hand...?”

I felt an icy stare emanating from her hood.

“Since when were things like that between us?” Since when were they like this?! I wanted to yell, but the blacksmith signaled that he had counted all of the materials and found them satisfactory, so I had to stay quiet and let her squeeze my fingertip, draining away all of my valuable good luck.

Asuna and I watched over the sign as Nezha the blacksmith turned and reached for a portable furnace set next to his work anvil. The number of ingots it could melt at once was very low, meaning he couldn’t create large polearms or suits of metal armor, but it did the job for a simple street side business.

On the furnace’s pop-up menu, he switched it from creation mode to strengthening mode, then set the type of augmentation. Nezha then tossed Asuna’s materials into the furnace.

Four thin sheets of steel and twenty sharp stingers turned red and burst into flame in seconds, and soon after, the furnace began burning with a blue flame that signified the accuracy stat. All preparations complete, he removed the Wind Fleuret from its sheath and set it down within the brazier-shaped furnace.

The blue flames enveloped the slender blade, and the entire weapon was soon glowing azure.

Nezha quickly pulled the rapier out and laid it on top of the anvil, then gripped his hammer and held it high.

At that exact moment, something prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. It was the same sensation that I’d felt earlier that afternoon, when I decided to hold off on upgrading my Anneal Blade +6.

I opened my mouth, preparing to yell, “Stop!” But the blacksmith’s hammer had already made its first strike.

Clang! Clang! The rhythmic pounding echoed throughout the square, orange sparks flying from the anvil. Once the upgrade attempt had begun, there was no stopping it. Well, I could grab his hand and force him to stop, but that only guaranteed that it would end in failure. All I could do now was watch and pray for success.

There was no foundation for my panic; it was a manifestation of my inner worrywart, nothing more. All the materials had been invested, the blacksmith represented better odds than an NPC, and we had two players’ worth of luck bonus. We couldn’t possibly fail.

I held my breath and watched the hammer go up and down.

Unlike with weapon creation, only ten strikes were necessary to upgrade a weapon. Six, seven–the hammer smacked the blue rapier at a steady pace. Eight, nine...ten.

The process complete, the rapier flashed brightly atop the anvil. There’s no way it can fail I repeated to myself, gritting my teeth. The result was far, far worse than my bad premonition could possibly have signaled.

With a fragile, even beautiful tinkling, the Wind Fleuret +4 crumbled into dust from tip to hilt.

* * *

No one reacted for several seconds, from Asuna, the sword’s owner; to me, the emotional and luck bonus support; to Nezha the blacksmith, the one who had caused it to happen.

Perhaps if a single passerby had been watching, they might have broken the ice. But for now, all the three of us could do was stare emptily at the anvil. As the third party in this transaction, perhaps I was best suited to smooth over the situation, but my mind was occupied by one massive question, not to mention the sheer shock of what had transpired. This is ridiculous!

The phrase echoed through my head over and over. All I could do was stare.

It was impossible. As far as I knew, there were only three negative outcomes of a weapon upgrade attempt in SAO: the materials disappeared and left the already-upgraded values where they were, the properties of the bonus got switched around, or the upgraded value decreased by one.

In the worst case scenario, Asuna’s Wind Fleuret +4 should have decreased to +3, and that was, at most, a 5-percent chance. Of course, 5 percent put it well within the bounds of possibility for an MMO...but it should never result in the weapon just completely disintegrating.

But there was no getting around the brutal truth that the glittering shards of silver scattered about the anvil had been, until a few seconds ago, Asuna’s precious sword.

I watched the entire series of events. Asuna removed the rapier from her waist and handed it to Nezha. He picked it up in his left hand and manipulated the portable furnace with his right, then pulled the sword from its scabbard and put it in the fire. Nothing in that sequence of events was out of the ordinary.

As we watched in silence, the scattered pieces around the furnace melted into the air. The weapon-damaging skills that some monsters used might melt, warp, or chip a blade but leave it in a repairable state. A weapon that had shattered into pieces represented the loss of all durability and was irretrievably gone. Asuna’s sword wasn’t just visibly destroyed–it had been deleted from the SAO server’s database entirely.

As the final fragment disappeared, it was Nezha the blacksmith who moved first.

He threw aside his hammer and bolted to his feet, bowing to the both of us over and over, his parted bowl cut waving in the air. He squeaked and wailed, trying to trap the screams in his throat.

“I...I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll return all of your money...I’m so, so sorry!”

Asuna couldn’t react to the repeated apologies. She just stood there, her eyes wide. I eventually stepped forward to speak.

“Look, um...before we talk about money, I want an explanation. I thought that weapon destruction wasn’t a possible failure state of upgrading in SAO. How did this happen?”

Nezha stopped bobbing his head and finally looked up. The angle of his hanging eyebrows was extreme, his round, honest face screwed up in agony. It was as though his face had been designed as an expression pure apology. I felt extremely uncomfortable, but there was no way I could tell him that it was “all right.” Instead, I tried to keep my voice as calm as humanly possible.

 

“Listen...I played in the beta test, and I remember the player manual they put on the official website. It said there were three possible penalties for failure: lost materials, property alteration, and property downgrade. That’s a fact.”

As a publically outed “beater,” I had no desire to bring up the beta. But this was not the time for self-preservation. I stopped there and waited for his answer.

Nezha was no longer bowing and scraping, but his eyesight was fixed firmly downward as he spoke, his voice trembling.

“Um...I think that maybe...they added a fourth penalty type for the launch. This happened to me...once before. I’m sure the probability is very low, though...”

“......”

I had no argument left. If Nezha’s claim was false, then he’d somehow just accomplished a destruction penalty that did not exist in the game. That was far more unlikely.

“I see,” I murmured lifelessly. Nezha looked up and mumbled again.

“Um...I’m truly sorry. I don’t know how to repay you. I’d give you a replacement Wind Fleuret, but I don’t have any in stock. I’d hate to leave you without an option, so I can give you an Iron Rapier, if you don’t mind the downgrade...”

That wasn’t my choice to make. I looked to my left at the still silent Asuna.

Her face was almost entirely hidden by the gray hood, but I could still make out delicate chill moving side to side. I answered Nezha for her.

“No, thanks...We’ll make do on our own.”

With all due credit to Nezha’s offer, the Iron Rapier was sold as far back as the Town of Beginnings on the first floor, and wasn’t going to be very helpful up here.

If he couldn’t give us a Wind Fleuret, the Guard’s Rapier that was one rank below it was the only thing that came close to a replacement.

Besides, the risks of failing in an augmentation attempt should fall upon the shoulders of the client, not the blacksmith carrying the job out. Nezha’s shop sign had a list of the success rates for various jobs at his current skill level. Being unlucky enough to hit the 5-percent chance–probably less than 1 percent for this worst of all outcomes–of failure was our problem, not his. Even Rufiol, he of the Anneal Blade +0 disaster this afternoon, had eventually given in and accepted his fate.

Nezha’s shoulders slumped even lower at my answer. He murmured, “I see. Well...at least let me return your fee...”

He moved his hand to start the transfer, but I cut him off. “It’s all right, you did your best. You don’t need to do this. There are some crafters who say it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you hit the weapon enough times, so they just whack away...”

I didn’t mean anything by that, but for some reason, he shrunk his head even farther. His arms were held as close to his body as possible, trembling fiercely. Another apology shuddered out.

“...I’m sorry...!!”

After that painful, heart-rending apology, there was nothing more to say.

I took a step back, nodded to Asuna, and started to move her away.

It was only at this moment that I noticed that her hand, which had been pinching my index finger originally, was now fully gripping my palm.

I pulled the silent Asuna away from the blacksmith and out the northern entrance of the plaza.

 

There were few NPC shops or restaurants along this stretch, only a number of buildings of unknown utility–perhaps they would be available as player homes after some later point in the game. At any rate, the street was nearly empty.

We walked on and on, the only points of interest the occasional signboard of an inn. There was no destination, not even a general direction. The cold grip of her hand on mine told me of how heavily the loss of her favorite sword was weighing on her, and the shock of its abrupt disappearance after a single upgrade attempt. But I had no idea how to react or console her. My meager life experience as a middle-school gamer left me unprepared for this. All I knew was that pulling my hand free and running away was the worst possible choice. I wanted to pray for the advent of some sudden salvation, but the good luck bonus icon below my HP bar was long gone.

First, let’s stop walking.

I noticed a wider space ahead with a bench and started off for it.

After a few dozen steps, I stopped and awkwardly said, “L-look, here’s a bench.”

The voice inside my head screamed at me for being an idiot, but Asuna sensed my intentions and turned to sit down without a word. She was still holding my hand, so I automatically took a spot beside her.

After a few seconds, her fingers eased up and left my own to land on the wooden slats of the bench.

I had to say something, but the more I thought, the tighter my throat shrank. How could I be the same person who had stood before dozens of powerful warriors and proclaimed myself a beater? And not that just that. I was the one who had spoken first when I originally found Asuna deep within the first-floor labyrinth, wearing a much harder expression than she was now.

 

Sure, it had been an emotionless admonishment about overkill, but there was no reason I could say something then and couldn’t now. None at all.

“........Um, so,” I finally began. Fortunately, the words seemed to form themselves after that point. “It’s a real shame about the Wind Fleuret. But once we reach the next town after Marome, they sell a weapon that’s even a bit better. It’s not cheap, of course...but we manage it together. I’ll help you save up...”

If mana points existed in this world, it would have cost me every last one of mine to get those words out of my mouth. Asuna responded so quietly that I could barely hear her, even at this close range.

“...But...” The word melted into the night air as quickly as it had appeared. “But that sword...that sword was my only...”

Something in her voice, some emotional resonance, pulled my gaze directly to her face. Two clear drops ran down her cheeks, glowing with a pale light under her hood.

It wasn’t as though I’d never seen a girl crying up close. But the source of those tears was always my little sister Suguha, and almost all of the instances had occurred years ago, in my kindergarten and early grade-school years.

The last time I’d seen her cry was three months before I fell prisoner to SAO. She’d lost at the prefectural kendo tournament and cried in the corner of our backyard. I had no words to console her, only a bag from the convenience store with ice pops, the kind you sucked from a plastic wrapper. I broke one in two and stuck one of the halves in her hand.

In gaming terms, my proficiency in the Reacting to Crying Girls skill was barely above zero, if I’d even unlocked that skill in the first place. I had to compliment myself on even having the guts to stay there rather than run off.

 

On the other hand, an objective look showed me in a very pathetic light: frozen still and dumbfounded, watching the tears streak down Asuna’s cheeks one after the other. I ought to speak or move, but I had no ice pops in my inventory, and I wasn’t ready to speak to her when I wasn’t entirely sure what she was crying about.

I understood the shock of seeing her favorite weapon crumble to pieces before her eyes, of course. If my Anneal Blade suddenly vanished, I’d probably get tears in my eyes as well.

But in all honesty, I didn’t peg Asuna as the type to form a deep attachment to her weapon, to see it as an extension of herself and talk to it soothingly as she oiled it...That was my category, if anything.

Asuna seemed like the opposite case. She would see a sword as simply one element of battle power out or several. If she looted a slightly stronger sword from a dead monster, she’d toss aside the one she’d been using without a second thought. The first time I met her, she had a bundle of starting rapiers that she’d bought in town, throwing each one away when it was no longer of any use.

It had only been a week since then. What had changed Asuna’s way of thinking 180 degrees in just seven days?

...No.

No matter the reason, there was no use wondering about it now. She was shedding tears over her partner, the blade she’d used for seven whole days. I could understand her sorrow. What else was there to think about?

“...It’s a real shame,” I murmured. Asuna’s back shivered. She seemed even more doll-like than ever.

 

“But listen,” I continued. “I know this might sound cold, but if you want to keep fighting on the front lines to help beat this damn game, you’re going to have to keep getting new equipment. Even if that had worked, your Wind Fleuret would be useless by the end of the third floor. I’ll have to replace my own Anneal Blade at the first town on the fourth floor. That’s just what MMOs–what RPGs are like.”

I had no idea if this was actually comforting her, but it was the best I could do.

Asuna did not react for several moments after I finished speaking. Finally, a few weak words trickled out from her hood.

“I...I can’t take that.” Her right hand clenched lightly atop her leather skirt. “I always thought my sword was just a tool...a bunch of polygonal data. I thought that only my skill and determination mattered here. But the first time I tried out that Wind Fleuret you chose for me...I’m ashamed to admit I was blown away. It was as light as a feather and seemed to home in right on the spot I wanted to hit...as if the sword was helping me, out of its own will...”

Her cheeks trembled, and a fleeting smile crossed her lips. For some reason, this seemed like the most beautiful expression I had seen Asuna make yet.

“I thought, I’ll be fine as long as I have her. I’d have her by my side forever. I told myself, even if the upgrading fails, I’ll never get rid of her. I’d take great care of her, for all the swords I wasted before this...I promised...”

Fresh tears dripped onto her skirt and vanished. When things disappeared in this world, they left no trace behind. Swords, monsters...even players.

Asuna quietly shook her head and whispered, her voice barely audible.

“If what you say is true, and I have to keep switching to weapons...then I don’t want to go upward. I feel so bad. We fight together, survive together...I can’t bear just throwing it away...”

Something in Asuna’s words brought back a memory of entirely different scene.

A child’s bicycle with a black frame. Twenty-inch tires, a six-gear shifter. I picked it out myself on the day I entered elementary school. I treasured that junior mountain bike than any child would. I put air in the tires once a week. If it rained, I wiped it off and oiled the moving parts. Perhaps borrowing Dad’s bike care chemicals to waterproof the frame was going a bit overboard.

Thanks to all of that, the bike was still sparkling like new after three years, but that was the root of my predicament. Once I outgrew the bike, my parents said they would buy me a new one with twenty-four inch wheels. But rather than allowing me to keep my precious first bike in storage, they said I had to give it away to a younger boy in the neighborhood.

I was in third grade at the time, and I fought back like I’d never fought before. I claimed that I’d rather not have a new bike at all. I even asked the fellow at the neighborhood bike shop to store it away in secret for me.

Instead, he told me that he’d transfer the soul of my machine to the new bike. Before my stunned eyes, he took out a hexagonal wrench and removed the bolt from the right crank. This bolt was the most important out of all of them, he claimed. So as long as he stuck that on the new bike, its soul would come over with it.

Today, it was obviously a bunch of baloney meant to quiet a child, but that first bolt and another one from my second bike were currently sitting in the saddlebag of my twenty-six-incher.

With this past experience in mind, I told Asuna, “There’s a way to keep a sword’s soul with you when the time comes to say goodbye.”

“...Huh...?”

She raised her just a bit. I help up two fingers.

“Two ways, in fact. For one, you can melt down your inferior sword into ingots, then use them as the base for a new sword. The other way is to just keep your old sword in storage. There are downsides to both cases, but I think there’s merit to them.”

“Downsides, how?”

“Well, when it comes to turning them into ingots, you have to have strong willpower when you loot good weapons from monsters. If you switch over to a looted sword, that ends the bloodline there. You could always melt down the loot and mix them together for your new sword, but it’ll cost a lot. On the other hand, if you keep it in your inventory, that’s using up valuable space. Again, your willpower will be tested when you’re deep in a dungeon and you run out of space for items. In either case, the more practical players will probably laugh and wonder why you’d bother...”

Asuna was looking down, deep in thought, then raised her head and brushed a tear away with her fingertip.

“And do you plan to do either of those...”

“I’m on the ingot side, but I should explain...I do it for my armor and accessories too, not just my sword.”

“...Oh.”

She nodded and smiled again. This one was a bit clearer than the last, but the air of sadness still had not vanished from her face.

“If only I could have kept the shattered pieces so they could be melted down,” she murmured. I could only nod in agreement. The first sword that Asuna had felt a connection to was gone forever without a trace. There was no way to bring that soul back…

I was lost in silence. Eventually, she spoke again.

“...Thanks.”

“Huh...?”

She didn’t repeat herself. Asuna stretched her legs forward and stood up from the bench.

“It’s getting really late. Let’s head back to the inn. Will you help me buy a new sword tomorrow?”

“Um...yeah, of course,” I nodded, hastily getting to my feet.

“I’ll, uh, see you to your inn.”

She shook her head at my offer. “I don’t feel like walking back to Marome. I’ll stay in Urbus tonight. There’s a place just over there.” I turned and saw that indeed, there was a gently glowing sign that said Inn. Upon further reflection, it would be too dangerous to walk through the wilderness between towns without a decent weapon. Leaving her here for tonight and coming back tomorrow to help her buy a weapon seemed like a much better idea.

I walked her to the door or the inn about twenty yards away and watched her check in, waving as she walked up the stairs. I didn’t have the guts to stay at the same inn with her.

Besides, there was one other thing for me to do tonight.

I headed south back down the street toward the eastern plaza of Urbus.

 

 

5

When the bell rang out eight o’clock, the tireless clanging of the hammer finally stopped.

I rushed through the gate of the east plaza of Urbus and made my way across the open space, avoiding the lighting radius of the streetlamps. I reached the line of leafy trees planted at the eastern border and put my back against a thick trunk.

In my player menu, there was a shortcut icon at the bottom of the main screen that corresponded to my Hiding skill, which was set in my third skill slot A small indicator appeared in the bottom of the view reading 70 percent–my avatar was now 70 percent blended into the tree at my back. A number of variables affected that number: my armor type and color, surrounding terrain and brightness, and of course, my own movement.

I was risking the exposure of my “evil beater” persona by wearing the Coat of Midnight, but the black leather coat’s bonus to hiding would be of more use than my usual disguise. The area was dark and there was no one else nearby, maximizing my stealth efficiency. The number seventy wasn’t great because my Hiding proficiency was still low. Increasing that skill was a long and boring process, so I wouldn’t max it out for quite a long time.

Even at starter status, the skill was powerful enough to work easily against the mobs on the first two floors (as long as they were sight-dependent), but that number felt awfully low against a human being. A perceptive player like Asuna would probably see through 70-percent camouflage without any trouble. On top of that, hiding in town was considered poor manners, so getting revealed by other players could lead to trouble, especially if it was one of the recent “game police” type who took it upon themselves to uphold proper etiquette.

It wasn’t my style to sneak around and spy on people, but this was a special circumstance. I was about to embark on my very first attempted trail of another player.

As I waited behind the tree, a player-crafter closed up his shop at the eight o’clock bell. It was Nezha, of course, the first blacksmith in Aincrad to sell his wares in the street.

He extinguished the fire in his portable forge and put away the ingots in his leather sack. His hammer and other smithing tools went into a special box. He folded up the sign and set it down on an empty spot on the carpet, then straightened out his display of weapons for sale.

Once every object related to his business had been neatly packed on top of the six-by-six-foot carpet, Nezha tapped the corner to bring up a menu screen and hit the “store” button. The carpet rolled up by itself, absorbing the countless items on top of it. In just a few seconds, the only thing left was a thin, round tube.

The short blacksmith picked it up easily and hoisted it over his shoulder. The magic Vendor’s Carpet was always the same weight, no matter what items were locked within its internal storage. When I first learned about that, visions of unlimited space for potions, food, and loot in the dungeon floated through my head, but reality was not so generous. The carpet only worked in towns and villages. On top of that, it couldn’t be fit into a player’s inventory, meaning that the four-foot-long, four-inch-thick rolled carpet had to be carried everywhere by hand.

Normally, this item bore little use for non-merchants or crafters, but some enterprising people found unexpected avenues for fun. Back in the beta, there was a brief period where pranksters used the “items on carpet cannot be moved by anyone but the owner” rule to block off major streets with large furniture, sowing chaos left and right. This was addressed very quickly in a patch that limited use of the carpets to the corners of public spaces over a certain size.

Magic carpet on his shoulder, Nezha heaved a sigh of exhaustion and started plodding off, head down, toward the south gate of the square.

I waited for him to be at least twenty yards away, then pulled away from the tree. My hide rate indicator dropped rapidly until it hit zero, at which point the hiding icon disappeared entirely. I still stayed in the shadows, trying to cut down on any unnatural footsteps as I trailed him.

Of course, I was not following Nezha home in order to confront him about his failure to improve Asuna’s weapon, or to threaten him away from prying eyes.

If anything, it was that feeling of wrongness.

As far as I knew, he had failed twice–no, five times–to upgrade a weapon over the course of the day. The destruction of Asuna’s Wind Fleuret and the four consecutive tries on Rufiol’s Anneal Blade, rendering it a “spent” +0. Of course, this outcome was possible from a statistical standpoint, but it struck me as a little to easy. Or a little to hard, depending on how you looked at it.

The only reason I’d visited the eastern plaza of Urbus in disguise in the first place was because I heard rumors in Marome that an excellent blacksmith had set up shop there. I packed up enough materials to boost my chances to 80 percent and was pondering whether to bump up sharpness or durability when I happened across the scene with Rufiol. I would have gone up to him directly afterward to have my weapon upgraded if I hadn’t happened to run into Asuna at that precise moment.

Would my weapon have failed just like theirs? I couldn’t help but feel that way, although I had no proof backing my suspicion.

If rumors of his skill had reached Marome, then Nezha’s chances of success must be noteworthy. There was no way to test for myself, but his numbers must surely be better than the standard NPC blacksmith.

 

However, if he was somehow able to fulfill a condition that guaranteed failure, there must be some hidden reason behind it. It was possible that some malicious trick lurked behind this series of events.

This was all personal conjecture–perhaps even paranoid suspicion. Even if there was some kind of knack to what he was doing, I couldn’t possibly guess how it worked. He had put Asuna’s materials into the forge, heated her sword in it, then moved it to the anvil and hammered it–all before my eyes. It was all according to the book, nothing out of place. Besides, what could he possibly stand to gain by downgrading or destroying other players’ weapons...?

Even as the possibilities swirled through my mind, I kept a bead on his back as he walked. Fortunately, he seemed to have no idea he was being followed and didn’t spin around or force me to come to an awkward halt. On the other hand, I had no experience trailing another player, so a cold sweat ran down my back the entire time. If I got my Hiding skill higher, I could follow at a much greater distance without trouble, but at this point, the only experience I could rely on was spy movies.

I darted stylishly from shadow to shadow for seven or eight minutes, a certain impossible theme song ringing in my ears. Nezha plodded his way almost to the town walls at the southeast edge of Urbus before stopping at a faintly glowing sign. I stuck close to a tree lining the street to watch. Anyone witnessing this scene would find it extremely suspicious, but I didn’t realize that until later.

The sign clearly said BAR in the light of the oil lamps. Again, I felt a strange suspicion. Nothing was out of place for a hard-working player to settle down with a drink after a long day of work...but something was wrong with Nezha’s demeanor. He wasn’t racing up the steps in anticipation of a nice cold mug of ale. In fact, he stood still outside the swinging door for over ten seconds, as though hesitating to even go inside.

He’s not going to turn around, is he? I thought in a panic. Nezha adjusted the roll of carpet on his shoulder, then set a heavy foot forward. He put out his hand and slowly pushed the door open. His small form disappeared into the bar, the door swinging shut behind him. It only took two seconds–but even at my distance, I could faintly hear what came from inside.

There were a great cheer and applause, and a man’s voice shouting, “Welcome back, Nezuo!”

“...?!” I sucked in a deep breath.

This was not what I expected. My spur-of-the-moment decision to trail Nezha was only meant to find where he was spending the night. Instead, he went to a bar at the edge of town where at least four or five people knew him personally. What could it mean?

After a brief hesitation, I left the shadows and raced up to the swinging door of the inn. Unfortunately, even with my back to the wall next to the door, I could hear nothing from inside. By nature, all closed doors in the game were soundproof; the only way to hear through them was the Eavesdropping skill. Even the swinging door, with its wide-open gaps above and below, was no exception.

I swore under my breath. There were only two options here, and entering the store disguised as a customer was not one of them. I could either give up and leave, or...

I steeled my nerves and reached out to gently push open the door a crack. Five degrees, ten–there was no sound from within. Once I got it to fifteen degrees, the man’s voice from earlier floated up to my ears.

“Might as well chug it, Nezuo! None of the beer in this place actually gets you drunk, anyway!”

In contrast to his statement, he seemed to be plenty drunk already.

 

It was true that you could drink gallons of beer in Aincrad and never take in a single molecule of alcohol, but it was fairly common for players to get “drunk” on the atmosphere of the situation. The excited cheers and yelling that floated through the doorway were no different from what could be heard from groups of college students walking through a nightlife district after a few rounds of drinks in the real world.

I strained my ears and heard a hesitant “okay” in a quiet voice, chattering died down for a moment, only to be followed by an excited cheer and applause.

Based on the evidence, I assumed that the five or so people waiting for Nezha in the bar were close friends of his. This came as a surprise to me, as in my experience, crafters tended to be lone wolves–or in Nezha’s case, sheep. I was curious as to the player builds of his friends, but there was no way to identify their play-styles based on voices alone.

I decided to take another risk and peer over the top of the swinging door for just an instant. I blinked quickly, like the shutter of a camera, then pulled my head back.

As I suspected, there was only the one group in the cramped interior. It I’d tried to waltz in pretending to be a customer, I would have drawn all of their notice. There were six of them sitting at the table in the far right corner. Nezha had his back to the door. The other five all appeared to be fighters clad in leather and metal armor.

This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It was completely normal for MMORPG guilds to have fighters and crafters mingling naturally. The official guild feature of SAO wasn’t unlocked until a particular quest on the third floor was beaten, but many players had gathered into organized groups already. In fact, solo players like Asuna and me were already in the minority.

 

Having a crafter or merchant in the group made equipment maintenance and selling loot much easier for the adventurers, and the crafters could get the materials they needed for cheap, if not free altogether. So there was nothing wrong with Nezha having friends who happened to be fighters...but the lump of suspicion in my chest did not show any signs of disappearing.

Just as I was trying to figure out the exact nature of what troubled me, one of the friends who was just entertained by Nezha’s downing of an entire mug of beer said something that caught my ear.

“...So, Nezuo, how was business today?”

“Oh...um, I sold twelve new weapons...and got a few visitors for repairs and upgrades.”

“Hey, that’s a new record!”

“We’ll have to scrape together some more ingots!” two other men shouted, and there was another round of applause. It was the very picture of a close-knit band of friends with a network of support. I didn’t recognize any of the other five, which meant they probably weren’t front-line players, but they might rise to that rank soon with a talented blacksmith on their side.

Maybe I really am being paranoid...

I felt ashamed. If Nezha really was using some kind of bug or trick to intentionally downgrade or destroy other players’ weapons, it would have to be planned and supported by his entire group, and I just couldn’t see a logical motive for them doing that.

With considerable pain, I recalled that Diavel the Knight, leader of the first-floor boss raid party, had gone through a secondary negotiator in an attempt to buy my Anneal Blade +6. Only in his final moment of life did I learn that he’d done it to deny me the Last Attack bonus on the boss.

In hindsight, I did score that very last hit on the kobold lord and earned his unique Coat of Midnight for the feat, so there was a kind of logic behind Diavel’s attempt to lower my attack output.

But on the other hand, Nezha and his friends were not even on the front line. They weren’t in any position to be concerned with the boss’s LA bonus. There was no benefit to ruining Rufiol and Asuna’s weapons.

I guess it really was just a series of coincidences...

I sighed silently to myself and was preparing to let go of the swinging door and allow it to close, when something stopped my hand.

“...I don’t think we can keep doing it,” came the sound of Nezha’s frail voice.

The men carousing inside the bar suddenly went quiet. After a short silence, the first man responded, but in a whisper too quiet for me to make out. I pushed the door in again, moving the angle to twenty degrees.

“–ust fine, you’re doing great.”

“That’s right, Nezuo. Nobody’s talkin’ about it in the least.”

I held my breath. I had a feeling they were talking about the failed upgrade attempts, and focused all of my attention on the words. Nezha protested against their apparent encouragement.

“It’s too dangerous to keep up. Besides, we’ve already made back our cost...”

“Are you kidding? We’re just getting started. We’ve got to rake it in so we can catch up with the top players while we’re still on the second floor!”

Made back the cost? Rake it in...? I leaned forward, unsure of what they were discussing.

Was it really unrelated to the upgrade failures?

After all, Nezha should have lost money buying back Rufiol’s spent sword, and he only made the standard fee in Asuna’s case, nothing more. How could that make him any money...?

No...No, there was a way. Perhaps I was looking at this from the wrong viewpoint...

Just then, a suspicious voice arose from the bar.

“...Huh? Hey, look at the door.”

I closed the door as smoothly as I could and immediately jumped off to the right, flattening myself against a nearby tree and employing my Hiding skill. Almost immediately, the swinging door burst outward.

The face that emerged was of the leader-like man who’d been sitting next to Nezha and egging him on. He wore banded armor that made his already hefty form look even more rotund, and a bascinet helm with a pointed top. While the overall effect was humorous, the sharp look in his eyes was anything but. His thick eyebrows squinted, scanning the surroundings of the bar.

The moment his eyes passed over the spot where I was hiding, the indicator dropped to 60 percent. I wasn’t in any physical danger within the safe zone of town, but I didn’t want to alarm them–I was just starting to peel back the curtain on Nezha and his five friends’ plot. The tools at my disposal were poor, but all I needed were answers.

My hide rate dropped continuously while his eyesight was fixed on the tree. If it got down below 40 percent, he would certainly detect something wrong with the tree’s outline. I kept an eye on the number and slowly, slowly tried to rotate around to the back of the trunk. Inch by inch I crawled, trying to keep the fluctuating value from creeping below 50.

Once I was around the backside of the tree, he must have looked away, because the hide rate jumped back up to 70. A few seconds later, I heard the creaking of the door swinging shut, and dashed through an alley until I was a block away from the pub.

“Whew...”

I leaned against the wall and wiped away a cold virtual sweat with the sleeve of my coat. If this was what Argo the Rat did every day in her profession, then I was in no mood to follow that line of work.

I might have made a poor spy, but at least I’d succeeded at my mission. I found Nezha’s base of operations–probably the second floor of that bar–discovered the existence of his partners, and even gained a little fragment of information about the mysterious trick behind the failed weapon upgrades.

That was assuming that the snippets of conversation I overheard were in fact related to such a trick. If it was true, they were somehow profiting from forcing other players’ upgrade attempts to fail. Profiting enough that they were even staying in the black by buying a spent +0 weapon at twice the going rate.

If that was possible...was someone else paying them money to intentionally sabotage the orders of specific players? That was hard to imagine. It was such a roundabout way to get back at someone, and there was no guarantee that the target would ever come to Nezha for his services. If this mystery client was going to spend money, they’d be much better served following Diavel’s plan and contacting the target directly.

But if that wasn’t the case, what other explanation could there be?

The thoughts raced through my head so fast, I could practically feel the steam shooting from my ears. The scene from less than an hour ago replayed in my head.

Nezha taking the Wind Fleuret from Asuna. Accepting the materials and putting them into the forge with his right hand, sword in the left. When the forge was full of blue light, he pulled the sword from the scabbard and laid the blade into the fire. Once infused with that blue light, he moved it to the anvil and struck it with his hammer. A few seconds after that, the sword shone like a death scream, then shattered and disappeared.

I watched the entire string of events. I couldn’t believe that there had been some sleight of hand there. If I had to assume that deception had occurred, perhaps it was in the materials. But there was no way to mimic the bright blue light that flashed out of the forge–

“Ah...”

Wait. Wait...I thought I had seen the entire thing, but there was one moment. One spot, invisible to both me and Asuna...

That meant it wasn’t the materials that he’d falsified.

“Gah...!!”

My mind jumped over several logical steps and landed at a conclusion. I grunted and slapped my main menu open, checking the time readout in the corner.

The digital clock said 8:23.

There’s still time!

My right hand flashed to the instant message tab, but I reconsidered and brought it down, closing the window. It was impossible to describe what I was about to do in text. I had to state it directly in person.

“There’s still enough time to pull this off!” I said aloud this time, bursting out of the alley way and racing north down the street.

The route that took eight minutes to cross during my attempt at spywork was less than three in a blazing sprint. I reached the familiar eastern plaza of Urbus but shot straight through it to the north without stopping and back into the streets of the town. Past the bench where Asuna had cried, then a hard turn shortly after. I burst through the door of her inn and raced upstairs, taking three steps at a time.

Thanking my lucky stars that I’d asked for her room number, I charged over to room 207 and slammed on the door as if to break it down.

It followed the same physical rules as any other closed door, but several seconds after knocking, it would allow voices to pass through.

“Asuna, it’s me! I’m coming in!”

I turned the knob without waiting for an answer and practically pushed the door down. Instantly, my eyes met those of a figure who leapt from the bed inside like a shot. Her hazel eyes were wide, and she was sucking air through her lips when I slammed the door shut.

“Eeyaaaa!!”

The scream was completely smothered by the closed door. I felt almost like a criminal–what I did was practically a crime–but this was all for Asuna’s sake.

She clenched her fists over her chest and continued to scream. She wearing a white sleeveless shirt on top, and some kind of poofy, rounded shorts below. This didn’t seem to be underwear, so I gauged that it was safe to walk over and grab her shoulder.

“Asuna, this is an ultra-emergency! There’s no time, just do as I say!”

She finally stopped screaming, but I could see in her face that she was simply deciding whether to resume screaming even louder, or to start attacking me directly. But there was truly no time for anything else–I had to get to the point immediately. “First, call up your window and set it to visible mode! Now!”

“Wha...wha...?”

“Just do it!”

I grabbed her hand, still clutched in front of her chest, and moved it in the appropriate motion, pushing out two of her fingers and sliding them through the air. A purple window materialized with a soothing sound effect, but only looked like a blank, flat board to me. I guided her finger over to the general location of the button that would display the contents of the window to other players.

“But, um, I...I thought I locked the door...” she murmured. I answered without thinking.

“You’re still partnered up with me, remember? The default setting on inn room doors is to allow guild and party members in.”

“Wh...what? Why didn’t you tell me that–”

I swiveled around next to the fencer, peering at the now-visible contents of her main menu. It was arranged just like mine but with a floral pattern skin selected. For a moment, I was surprised, remembering that my own window was still in the default setting, then scolded myself for getting distracted.

The right side of the window featured a familiar equipment mannequin. It was mostly empty, as she was not wearing any armor. I scrolled past the something-or-other camisole and whoopty-doo petticoat to look at the right-hand cell: no item selected. Meaning that Asuna had not equipped a new weapon since giving her Wind Fleuret to Nezha. “Okay, first condition complete! Now the time...” The clock in the bottom right corner read 20:28, despite how fast I’d run,

Asuna and I had returned to Urbus after our Windwasp hunt at 19:00. We had finished eating dinner around 19:30. Immediately afterward, we had moved to the plaza and asked Nezha to her weapon...meaning there was only a minute or two to spare!

“Crap, we gotta make this quick. Just hit the buttons as I tell you. Move to the storage tab!”

“Uh...um, okay...”

Asuna faithfully followed my order, perhaps so confused by the sudden turn of events that she had no time to resist.

“Next, the settings button...search button...now there should be one that says Manipulate Storage...”

Her slender finger flashed over the buttons, diving deeper and deeper into the menu. After three or four selections, we finally reached the button I wanted.

“There, that’s it! MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS! Hit it!!” I screamed. She hit the tiny button, bringing up a YES/NO prompt. At maximum volume,

“Yesssss!!”

Click.

Asuna muttered to herself as she hit the button. “Hmm...mm? Materialize all items...? When it says all items...does it mean...?”

With the satisfied smile of a man who did his job, I replied, “All, everything, the entire shebang, the whole nine yards.”

The next moment, all of the rows of text in Asuna’s inventory vanished.

And then–

Clunkclankthudwhamwhudclinkflopflipfwapswishfwuf came a cavalcade of sound from hard and heavy to light and airy. Every single item contained in Asuna’s player inventory had been materialized into the game world to fall onto the floor in a great messy pile.

“Wha...what...wha-wha-wha?!”

The mess’ owner couldn’t contain her shock at what had just happened, but I knew it was coming–this was what I’d run all way from the other side of Urbus to do. The only hitch was my slight underestimation of the volume of her inventory–just a mere two or three times what I’d expected.

The amount of space for storage varied depending on the player’s strength, Expansion skill, and the presence of certain magical items. For a moment, I marveled at how Asuna, a low-level player with no Expansion skill and an agility-heavy fencer build, could have packed so many items in. The answer soon became apparent.

Capacity was determined not by volume, but weight. Metal armor and weapons, liquids such as potions, and stacks of coins put a major dent in item storage.

On the other hand, lighter items such as leather armor and accessories, rolls of bread, and parchment scrolls could be packed in there with ease. The majority of Asuna’s inventory was taken up with those loose effects, big and small...meaning clothes and undergarments.

I stared at the four-foot-tall pile of stuff, feeling slightly self-conscious. The heavier items had fallen out first, so the metal equipment was on the bottom, followed by leather goods, then various clothes and finally, resting on top, a small mound of frilly white and pink underwear. What was the point of keeping so many of them? Avatars in Aincrad had no bodily waste functions, and the only thing that took durability damage in battle was the outer armor. You only truly needed one set of underwear. I had three, for battle, everyday use, and sleeping, but that was probably on the high side for a male player.

And yet.

I couldn’t stop here. If my suspicion was correct, and we’d hit the command in time, it would be here...piled at the bottom of this mountain.

“Pardon me!” I said, ever the gentleman, and started shoving the piles of cloth out of the way. I heard a trembling voice over my shoulder.

 

 

Um, excuse me...Do you have a death wish? Are you one of those people who dream of dying in battle...?”

“No way,” I said in all honesty, still scrabbling through the pile.

I got through the clothes to the leather armor, gloves, and small boxes, and finally reached the metal layer at the bottom.

With great effort, I pushed them aside and got to the very last section of the little mountain. The heaviest item Asuna owned–though light as a feather compared to what I had slung over my back–a single rapier.

Wind Fleuret +4.

I grabbed the green scabbard and lifted it out of the pile, then turned around to face Asuna. Her eyes had the look of one deciding a suitable means of execution, but they grew wide when she saw the sword she’d thought was gone forever. Her lips trembling, a tiny little squeak escaped her throat.

“......No way...”

 

 

6

Later–much, much later–Asuna smiled angelically and told me that if I hadn’t found her sword at that moment, she would have thrown me through the window of the inn.

In truth, I hadn’t spared a single thought for what might have happened if my suspicion had been false. It wasn’t confidence in my logic as much as it was panic, knowing that there were only seconds to spare before the time limit hit. So when I barged into Asuna’s room without asking, forced her to open her window, and yelled at her to press those buttons and eject all of her stuff, I wasn’t acting in my right mind. At least, I hoped I wasn’t.

Order finally returned out of chaos three minutes after I held out the Wind Fleuret +4 to Asuna.

All of the many items spilled over the inn room floor were back in item storage. Asuna sat on the side of her bed, dressed in her normal tunic and leather skirt. She silently cradled her precious, miraculous weapon in her hands, her face a mixture of emotion–probably caught between the polar extremes of joy and rage.

As for me, I sat in a guest chair in the corner of the room, breaking into a cold sweat as I reflected on what I’d actually just done. There was no time to explain anything until I got her to press that MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS button several layers deep in the menu. But once that step was complete, there was no more time limit, which meant I had no reason to search for the sword myself.

Perhaps I had gone a step too far by ransacking the crown of delicate snow that was Asuna’s undergarments on top of the pile. On the other hand, I still couldn’t fathom why she would need so many of them. If my hazy memory served, there were enough of them that she could change every day for two weeks without reusing any. Yes, they were light enough that you could store a nearly infinite supply, but those weren’t cheap.

 

The silky smooth ones cost quite a pretty penny at the NPC shops, and surely that kind of scratch was better spent raising one of the properties of her armor–

“So, I’ve done some self-examination,” came a voice from the other side of the room. I hurriedly sat up straight.

“Y-yes?”

“If the anger I’m feeling represents ninety-nine g, then my joy is a hundred g. Therefore, the one leftover g represents my gratitude to you,” she said, light flashing in her eyes.

“So, um...why is it represented in g?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? If my anger had been the greater force, I would have pummeled you to make up the difference.”

“Oh...so you’re talking about g as in gravity, not gold? I...guess that makes sense.”

“I’m glad you understand. Now, will you please explain? Why was my supposedly shattered sword left in my inventory...and why did you barge into my room like this?”

“O-o-of course. But it’s a very long story. And I’m not even sure exactly how it works, myself...”

“I don’t mind. We’ve got all night.”

And the fencer, her beloved sword back in hand, finally cracked a menacing smile.

I went down to the check-in counter and bought a small bottle of herb wine and a mysterious bag of assorted nuts. When I got back to the door to room 207, I politely knocked and waited for an answer before opening.

Once the wine was poured, we shared a toast to the recovery of her fleuret, though there was still a dangerous air to her attitude.

I moistened my tongue with a sip of the sweetly sour nonalcoholic wine and decided that getting right to the point was in my best interest.

“A minute ago, you asked why your shattered sword was in your item storage.”

“Yes...and?”

“That was the hitch...the trick...the centerpiece of an upgrading scam.”

Her eyes narrowed at the clear direction of the conversation after that last word. She nodded silently, pressing me onward.

“It might be faster to show you than to explain,” I said, swinging my hand to call up my own menu and hitting the visibility button. I touched the top and bottom of the screen and flipped it around until I got it to an angle that was easily visible to the both of us, then pointed out a spot.

“Right here. See how the right-hand cell in my equipment mannequin has an icon for my Anneal Blade plus six?” Her hazel eyes glanced at the sword grip poking out over my back, and she nodded. I reached backward and removed the entire scabbard, which was affixed to my coat, and dropped it to the floor with a heavy thud. A few seconds later, the icon on my menu was grayed out.

“This indicates that the equipped weapon has been dropped. It happens if you fumble the weapon in battle, or an enemy uses a disarm attack on you.”

“Yes, I’m familiar. It can be quite alarming if you’re not used to it.”

“You can always stay calm and pick it up once you evade the next attack, but it’s tricky at first. The Swamp Kobold Trappers in the middle of the first floor were the first to use disarms. I hear there were quite a few casualties around then...”

“In Argo’s strategy guide, she warns not to attempt to pick it up right away...When I had to fight them, I dropped a spare rapier first, almost like a good luck charm.”

“Ahh...that’s a good idea. You can do that if you’ve got plenty of the same weapon.”

I was impressed. It wasn’t the kind of idea you expected a new player to implement...although maybe her lack of experience gave her greater creativity in tackling the game’s challenges.

“But I digress. If you don’t pick up the dropped weapon, it eventually goes into an Abandoned state, which gradually decreases its durability rating. Asuna, go ahead and pick up that sword.” She raised an eyebrow but dutifully stuck the Wind Fleuret onto her waist attachment point and bent down to my scabbard. Asuna lifted the simple one-handed longsword with both hands, grunting, “This is heavy. Am I doing it right?”

“That’s good. Now take a look.” I poked at my window, still floating above the table. The cell with my Anneal Blade grayed out had gone empty the moment Asuna picked it up.

“In combat, this is called weapon-snatching. Unlike a disarm attack, snatching enemies don’t show up until much later in the game. For a solo player, that can be deadly. There’s a weapon skill modification called Quick Change that you’ll have to get before you fight them...but that’s not the point.”

I cleared my throat and attempted to get back on topic again. “You can give your equipped weapon to your friends, even when you’re not in battle. Instead of a ‘snatch’ that’s called a ‘handover.’ So anyway...if someone picks up your weapon or you hand it to them, the weapon cell in your menu goes blank. Including situations like the one where you gave the blacksmith your Wind Fleuret.”

“...!”

She must have seen where I was taking this at last. Her eyes went wide, then filled with a sharp light.

“But here’s the thing. The equipment cell might be empty, as though you’re not equipping anything...but that Anneal Blade’s equipper info hasn’t been deleted. And the equipment rights are protected much more tightly than simple ownership rights. For example, if I take an unequipped weapon out of storage and give it to you, my ownership of that item disappears in just three hundred seconds–that’s five minutes. As soon as it goes into someone else’s inventory, it is owned by that player. But the length of ownership for an equipped item is far longer. It won’t be overwritten until either three thousand six hundred seconds have passed, or the original owner equips a different weapon in that slot.”

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 players 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 items 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 sword 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 be 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 warriors 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 mass 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...”

“Maybe they just figure that they’ll perform better if each team is made up of familiar faces.”

“But that will make coordination across the parties worse. It seems obvious that against that boss, you want one team to pull aggro from him, and another to deal all the damage.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. The slowly advancing twelve below had finally breached the boss’s reaction zone.

“Bullmrooooh!!” it roared. Even the ground up here seemed to shake. White steam puffed out of the Bullbous Bow’s nostrils, and it lowered its four horns and began to charge.

There were still nearly five hundred feet between the boss and the raid party, which left plenty of time to react before it reached them, but that was easy to say from my safe vantage point. Those fighters down on the ground no doubt felt like the bull would reach them in no time at all.

After a pause long enough to make me feel nervous, the two leaders finally issued commands to their companions. I couldn’t make out their voices from here, but the orders were obvious. On either side, heavily armored fighters stepped forward, raised their shields, and roared.

That was not bluster but a skill called Howl that increased the target’s aggression and made it focus attacks on the user. At least, it was supposed to.

“Wait a second...why are they both trying to pull aggro?” I wondered. The Bullbous Bow looked back and forth between the two in indecision, then ultimately settled on the blue party. The fighter who had howled and one other shield user inched forward and stood their ground, crouching.

Two seconds later, thwam! The giant bull collided with the two fighters. If their defense was not up to the task, they’d be thrown into the air and take massive damage, but fortunately they managed to stay on their feet, despite being knocked ten yards backward. The other four members of Lind’s party descended on the beast, unleashing sword skills on its open flanks.

“I feel nervous watching them...but it seems like they might manage to win,” Asuna murmured, unimpressed. I hesitantly agreed.

“Yeah, I guess. It’s supposed to be beatable by a single party. But...”

Kibaou’s green party was standing off to the side rather than joining the fray. In fact, the tank was still up front, tensing himself for another Howl once the cooldown timer expired.

“Seems to me like there was no point to forming a raid party in the first place. They’re more like parties competing for the same mob. Maybe it’s working for now, but who can say if that will last?” I sighed.

At this point, I began to wonder about the three reserve members who weren’t in the equal camps of Lind and Kibaou’s men. Were they aligned with either side? I took my eyes off the fight and examined the backup adventurers standing far to the rear.

“Hng–?!” I grunted. Asuna gave me a questioning look, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to answer her. I leaned forward. Standing at the center of the three was a burly swordsman. He wore dark banded armor and a pointed bascinet helm that look like an onion sprout–the leader of the five men I saw last night after trailing Nezha to the bar.

His outfit was humorous, but I would never forget the sharpness in his eyes when he noticed me listening in on them. It seemed likely that the other two reserve members with him were also in Nezha’s party.

“What are they doing here?!” I muttered. Asuna shot me another suspicious look. I pointed down at the rear of the battleground. “Do you know the names of those three guys on standby? Particularly the middle one in the bascinet.”

“Bassinet...? Aren’t those baby cribs?”

“Huh? N-no, I mean the guy in the pointy helmet with the visor that looks like a duckbill. That’s called a bascinet helm...”

“Oh. Maybe they’re spelled differently. You know, it’s really irritating that being stuck in this world means I can’t open a dictionary. Maybe someone will make one.”

“I think it would be nearly impossible to craft an E-J dictionary, writing by hand. On the other hand, Argo did say that some folks were looking to create a simple game encyclopedia of sorts. Wait, why are we talking about this?”

I pulled us back to the topic at hand by pointing down at the rear of the basin. “That round guy in the middle of the reserve members. Ever seen him before?”

“I have,” she said easily. I froze for a moment, then turned on the fencer, the questions flowing out of me.

“W-when did you see him? Where? Who is he?”

“Yesterday morning, exactly where he’s standing now. He was at the Bullbous Bow scouting session. Remember how I told you about that? His name is...Orlando, I think...”

“Orlando...? First a knight, now a paladin,” I muttered to myself. Asuna raised a questioning eyebrow. I added a quick explanation as the three men continued to survey the battle before them. “Orlando was the name of a knight who served King Charlemagne of France and bore the legendary blade Durendal. He was an invincible hero.”

“A knight...I see.”

Something in her voice made me curious, and it was my turn to cast her a quizzical look. She extended a slender finger to point to the short warrior with the two-handed sword to the right of the onion-headed paladin.

“When we did introductions, he called himself Beowulf. That’s another legendary hero, right? From England. And the skinny spearman on the other side was Cuchulainn. That name sounded familiar, too...”

“Ohh...Yes, that’s another legendary hero. I think he’s Celtic,” I added. Asuna shrugged her shoulders.

“Apparently they already decided on their guild name. I think it was Legend Braves.”

“...I see...Hmm...Hmmmmmmm!” I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

A player was free to choose any name they wanted to attach to their MMO avatar–as long as it didn’t violate the game’s terms of service, that is. If they wanted to name their guild Legend Braves and pretend they were all legendary heroes, that was their right. In fact, it was probably fairly rare for names like those to go unclaimed in an MMO.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a much harder sell in a VRMMO, where you literally became your avatar. That took guts. But...what if their choice of names was a statement of intent?

Perhaps they meant to grow into the heroes their names suggested. You couldn’t just write that off as youthful exuberance. Orlando, Beowulf, and Cuchulainn were currently standing just behind the front line of player progress in SAO. In terms of pure distance, they were two hundred yards closer than I was.

Before I could ask the question, Asuna said, “They just showed up in Marome yesterday morning, where all the frontier players were gathering, and asked to take part. Lind checked out their stats and said their levels and skill proficiency were a bit below average for the group, but their equipment was good and powered up. So instead of putting them in the main force, he let them join as reserve fighters. Part of the reason I didn’t join in is because they showed up to round out the group.”

“I see...That makes sense.” I nodded slowly and gazed down at the three heroes, feeling conflicted.

I hadn’t explained to Asuna yet that they were Nezha’s friends. Based on this new information, he must be another member of the Legend Braves. Perhaps the reason he had the name Nezha and not another knight or hero was because he was a crafter, not a fighter.

This also led me to a new conjecture.

 

One that explained how three men that neither of us had seen until a day ago, who hadn’t taken part in the first-floor boss raid, could be right here with the other front-line warriors...

“Bullmrrrroooh!!”

Another ferocious roar redirected my attention to the far end of the basin. For the second time, I was stunned.

Now both Lind and Kibaou’s parties, a confusing mishmash of blue and green, were tangled together in one unorganized mass. They’d been squabbling over who was drawing the Bullbous Bow’s aggro and collided in an attempt to get into the proper position to defend his charge. The shield-carrying tanks had lost their balance–it took quite a long time for heavy warriors to recover from a Tumble status–and no one was able to defend.

“Watch out!” Asuna hissed.

“Attackers, dash outta the way!” I shouted. They couldn’t hear me, of course, but Kibaou and Lind finally raised their hands and the eight light warriors darted left and right.

But they weren’t quite fast enough. The raging ox passed right through the line of shield-bearing warriors, who were only just now getting back to their feet, and caught two swordsmen with his four horns. With a vicious toss of his head, they flew high into the air.

Asuna and I both gasped. I had a momentary premonition of both men shattering into glass, either in midair or when they crashed to earth. Fortunately, perhaps because of the soft grass, they recovered and got their feet after only a few bounces. They had trouble keeping their footing, however; they’d suffered quite a mental shock.

Lind swung his arm again–probably the signal for retreat and potion recovery–and at the same moment, Kibaou looked back to the rear of the battleground and waved his sword.

As the bull dashed back to the far end of the basin, the two wounded members retreated, and two of the reserves stepped forward to take their place: Orlando the bascinet-wearing paladin and Beowulf with his two-handed sword. They ran forward a few yards, then stopped in apparent hesitation. The pair unleashed roars so loud that even Asuna and I could hear them, and resumed dashing toward the battle.

Orlando reached behind his round shield and pulled out a longsword of black iron that was unmistakable to me–the very same rare Anneal Blade that was only available as a reward for a quest on the first floor. The paladin brandished his sword high, glowing with the light of a highly upgraded weapon, and valiantly charged at the massive boss.

* * *

The Bullbous Bow, the only field boss on the second floor of Aincrad, exploded into a small mountains worth of polygonal shards about twenty-five minutes after the start of the battle.

Based on the scale, level, and gear of the raid party, that was quite a long time, but it was easy to say that from my vantage point, safely removed from danger. And above all, there was one new, ironclad rule that never existed in the beta: Even a single fatality was an unacceptable result.

In that sense, the three from the guild (technically, still just a team) Legend Braves performed admirably. Compared to the first-string members who had fallen into the yellow danger zone, their movements were a bit awkward, but they upheld their duty well.

“Well, that was nerve-wracking...but at least it all ended safely,” Asuna said. She took two steps back from the lip of the flat mountaintop, sat down on a rock, and looked up at me, crossing her legs.

“Well? What is it about those heroes?”

 

I nervously looked back down at the far end of the basin, where the fifteen combatants were gathered together and raising a victorious cheer. However, there seemed to be differing degrees of celebration–Lind’s royal-blue team and the colorless Braves were truly rejoicing, while Kibaou’s moss-green team was a bit muted. Probably because it was Lind’s scimitar, Pale Edge, that had scored the last attack on the boss. I couldn’t tell how much it was powered up at this distance, but the strength of its glow suggested that a considerable amount of work had gone into it.

I fixed Orlando the paladin with another gaze before I turned back to Asuna. He was standing boldly right next to Lind, sword raised in the air.

Asuna’s cape hood was off, and the morning light shone dazzingly in her light brown eyes. It was as though they stared right through my avatar and into my soul. There was no use hiding anything at this point. I summoned my courage and began to explain.

“...Nezha the blacksmith is one of the Legend Braves.”

“Wha...? So...you mean...”

I nodded. “Nezha’s upgrading fraud was done at the order of their leader, Orlando. I think. Do you know exactly when Nezha’s Smith Shop first set up in Urbus?”

“Umm...I think it was the very day that the second floor was opened.”

“So it’s only been a week. But even bilking one or two high-powered Wind Fleurets or Anneal Blades a day would make them a ton of money. At least ten–no, twenty times what you’d make in a day from farming monsters. Remember what you said earlier? Orlando’s group was weak, but they made up for it with good gear. Weapon skills have to be raised through experience in battle, but weapon upgrades...”

 

“...are easy if you’ve got the money. So that’s what’s going on,” she said, her voice hard. Asuna bolted to her feet and glared down at the battlefield, then turned to the path that wound down the mountainside. I rushed to stop her.

“W-wait, hang on! I know how you feel, but we have no proof yet.”

“So you’re just going to let them get away with it?”

“If we don’t at least figure out how exactly they’re performing the trick, people will accuse us of defamation. There are no GMs in this world, but you don’t want the majority of people treating you like an enemy. It’s too late for me, but I’d hate to see you slapped with the beater tag and–”

A finger jabbed right at my face stopped me mid-sentence.

“We’re about to go adventuring in the dungeon together, and that’s what you’re trying to protect me from? Anyway, your point is taken. If we don’t have any proof or explanation, the only thing we’re producing is empty accusations...”

She pulled her finger back to her chin and looked down, her voice softening. “I’ll try to come up with some ideas of my own.

Something that won’t just expose how their weapon-switching trick works but also give us solid proof.”

There was a different kind of fire blazing in the fencer’s eyes now, and I had no choice but to agree with her.

Once the victorious battle party turned and headed back to Marome to restock supplies, we descended the mountain and stealthily raced across the narrow basin. The right to set the first footprint on the southern side of the second floor belonged to Lind or Kibaou, but we didn’t have the patience to sit around and wait for them. Plus, they seemed competitive enough that they’d waste time arguing about who got there first.

The far end of the basin turned into a narrow, winding canyon. The walls were nearly vertical and so sheer that not a single handhold could be seen. There was no climbing them.

We took a breather in the empty gorge after our sprint, then headed through the exit to a brand-new sight–well, for Asuna, at least.

The flattop mountains with two or three levels were the same, but the gentle grasslands of the northern area were replaced by thick jungle. Vines and ivy crawled up the sides of the mountains, and clumps of fog here and there made visibility poor.

There was one thing clearly visible through all of the fog, however, looming over everything on the far side of the jungle. The labyrinth tower of the second floor stretched all three hundred feet to the bottom of the floor above. It seemed thinner than the first-floor labyrinth, but it was still a good eight hundred feet across. It was really more like a coliseum than a tower.

We stared at the shape in the distance until Asuna finally broke the silence.

“...What’s that?”

I suspected that she was referring to the two protuberances extending from the upper half of the tower.

“Bull horns.”

“B-bull?”

“When we get closer, you’ll see a huge relief of a bull on the side of the tower. It’s kind of the theme of the second floor.”

“I just figured that giant one they killed was the last of the ox things...”

“Not even close. The Moo-Moo Kingdom is only getting started. The ones ahead are certainly beefy, but they don’t look very tasty.” I coughed to hide my embarrassment at that terrible pun and clapped my hands to switch gears. “Well, let’s get going. The last village is about half a mile to the southeast, and beyond that is the labyrinth. We could do all the quests in the village and still reach the tower before noon. It’s actually safer and quicker to take the detour to the left, rather than going straight through the forest.”

Just as I was getting ready to start hiking, I noticed that Asuna was watching me with a strange expression.

“...What is it?”

“Nothing...” She coughed as well, then looked serious again. “This isn’t meant to be sarcastic, it’s an honest opinion.”

“...Y-yes?”

“With all that knowledge, you’re very handy to have around. Everyone should have one of you.”

I had no idea how to respond to that comment. Asuna strode past me and turned her head.

“Come on, let’s go. I want to get into that tower before Lind’s group catches up.”

 

 

8

“Eek...no! Stay away!”

The beautiful girl’s eyes were wide with fear as a menacing silhouette plodded closer.

It sounded like a scene from a suspenseful horror film, but it would not be following the Hollywood template for much longer.

“I told you...to stay the hell away!” she roared, and dashed forward rather than backward. The large attacker reacted by waving its crude two-handed hammer, but her right hand shot forward like lightning before it could hit the target.

The rippling thrust caught the attacker directly on its exposed chest. Brilliant beams of light exploded outward, and the hammers progress slowed. Normally at this point, the player should dart backward and evade, but the girl plunged farther onward, pulling her rapier back and unleashing another attack. Two strikes hit the thick chest high and low, and the half-naked body writhed in pain.

“Brmooooh!!”

It leaned back and emitted a death cry, short horns and ring-pierced snout in clear profile. The massive body tipped backward, then stopped in mid-fall. The rippling muscles turned to hard glass and cracks trickled down the surface, emitting blue light until it finally exploded.

The combo was Linear and the two-strike Parallel Sting, and the creature was a Lesser Taurus Striker, a humanoid with the head of a bull. The fencer bent over, panting heavily, and turned to fix me with an angry look.

“That...was a bull!”

Two hours had passed since Asuna and I reached the second-floor labyrinth, the first players in Aincrad to set foot inside of it.

 

Kibaou and Lind’s parties were probably down on the first level of the tower, gnashing their teeth over the ransacked chests they found, but if I had to be stuck with the “evil beater” role, I might as well reap the benefits. The initial locations of the treasure chests were about 80 percent unchanged from the beta, so I steered us from one to the other, with the occasional battle in between. Once we reached the second floors, we finally met one of the true masters of the labyrinth–a Taurus.

“Well, I guess they’re closer to human than bull,” I admitted. I had no idea why Asuna was so upset about this. “But this is pretty much what minotaurs are like in every MMO. So people call them ‘bulls’ or ‘cows’ as a nickname”

“...Minotaurs? Like from Greek mythology?”

The anger in her eyes subsided slightly. It seemed that she had a fondness for topics related to studying and learning. I wasn’t particularly well versed in mythology, but my little sister had always liked the stories, and I had read them to her when she was young. I nodded and tried to recall some nuggets of information.

“Y-yeah, that’s the kind. The legendary minotaur lived in a, dungeon on the island of Crete–they called it the labyrinthos in Greek. Anyway, the hero Theseus delves into the dungeon and kills the minotaur. It’s a very game-like scenario, so the minotaur has been a classic RPG enemy type for years and years. In this game, they take out the “mino” part and just call them tauruses.”

“Well, that makes sense. Isn’t the mino in minotaur from King Minos of Crete?”

“Huh? So you’re saying that calling it ‘mino’, for short would be incorrect?”

“Of course. After Minos died, he became the judge of the dead in Hades. So it’s probably best that you don’t call them that.”

This discussion seemed to have taken the edge off of Asuna’s anger, so I tried to take advantage of the opportunity.

“So, erm...Asuna-san, what was it about that mino–I mean, taurus, that didn’t meet your approval...?”

She glared at me side-eyed. “It wasn’t wearing, well...hardly anything at all! Just a tiny little scrap of cloth around the waist. It was practically sexual harassment! I wish the harassment code would kick in and send it to the prison of Blackiron Palace.”

“Ah...I see.”

The lower tauruses did indeed feature minimal clothing compared to the kobolds and goblins of the first floor. If you removed the bull head, they were basically nearly naked muscle men–quite a shock to (I assumed) a pampered rich girl from an all girls’ school.

But that left one big problem. One of the chests I’d just opened had a set of armor called Mighty Straps of Leather. Not only did it have excellent defense, it also granted a strength boost. However, when equipped, it turned the wearer’s torso naked except for a few strategically placed leather straps. No other clothes or armor could be worn over or under it. I figured the dungeon was a discreet enough place for it, and was planning to change the next time we found a safe room, but Asuna’s reaction to the taurus causing me to reconsider. Still, it was a shame to waste such a great piece of loot. Should I offer it to her, or banish it for having no value to the party?

“Hey, Asuna...I got a strap-style armor with magical effects from a chest back there.”

Suddenly, her eyes were three times as frosty as when she had dispatched the taurus.

“Yes, and?”

“......Um...Just thinking, not many people will look good in that. Maybe he would. You know, the tank leader from the first boss raid...”

“Agil? Yes, I suppose he would look the part. I met him at the reconnaissance mission for the Bullbous Bow yesterday.”

I hid my surprise with an expert poker face, secretly relieved that I had avoided stepping on a landmine.

“O-oh really? But he wasn’t in the actual battle today, was he?”

“I don’t think he really gets along with Lind or Kibaou. But he did say he’ll be there for the floor boss, so you’ll see him there. Why don’t you give it to him then?”

“G-good idea. So anyway, do you think you can handle the mino...I mean, taurus’s Numbing Impact?”

“Oh, just call them minos already. I think I’ll be fine after another two or three encounters.”

“Okay. The boss’s numbing effect is way wider than the normal ones, but the timing works the exact same way. Anyway, shall we go to the next block?”

She nodded without a hint of fatigue, got to her feet, and started marching off toward the exit.

We defeated four more tauruses after that, but they were timed to pop at set intervals, so you couldn’t hunt tons of them even if you wanted. Our inventories were bulging with loot from the monsters and chests we’d run across, and luckily for us, we were able to leave the labyrinth without running into any other players.

At a safe zone near the entrance, I flipped open my map tab and found that we’d almost entirely filled in the blank space for the first two levels. If I turned that data into a scroll and sold it, I could make some pretty good cash, but the evil beater wasn’t enough of a merchant to make a business out of map data. I decided to offer it to Argo the Rat free of charge.

In a way, it didn’t seem fair. By tomorrow, Argo would be selling the latest strategy guide out of the nearest town, based on intel provided by me and the other former beta testers, and I’d have to spend five hundred cor for it. But I couldn’t complain too much.

She claimed that the funds she earned selling the guide to the top players went into producing a free version for middle-zone folks who were still catching up.

I switched tabs and shot her an instant message with the map data, then yawned widely and looked up at the sky. Looming over the overgrown jungle was not actual sky, but the bottom of the third floor. Yet the sunset rays coming from the outer perimeter of Aincrad cast that lid overhead in a brilliant, beautiful orange.

“Today is December ninth...a Friday. It’s got to be winter on the other side by now,” Asuna murmured. I gave that some thought.

“I read in some article that, depending on the floor, some places in Aincrad are actually modeled after the current weather conditions. Maybe if we climb a little bit higher, it’ll really be winter.”

“I don’t know whether I want that or not. Oh, but...” She trailed off. I turned to look at her. Her lips were pursed, but I couldn’t tell if she was feeling angry or shy. “It was just an idea. What if we reach a floor with proper seasons by Christmas, and it snows that day?”

“Oh...good point. It’s already December. By Christmas would mean...fifteen days left. I sure hope we finish this floor by then...”

“Well, that’s not very ambitious of you. I want to be through here within a week–no, five days. I’m exhausted from all these cows.”

“Oxhausted?”

I couldn’t help it. She stared at me blank-faced for several seconds, then her cheeks went bright red, and she stomped on my foot just softly enough not to cause damage. The fencer promptly turned and stormed off toward the town, forcing me to run after her.

We walked for twenty minutes down the stone path through the jungle, evading battles whenever we could, and only stopped for breath once we reached the limits of Taran, the village that would serve as base for the boss raid.

As I suspected, the main street was already packed with players. Once the Bullbous Bow that blocked the path was defeated, many who’d been staying in Marome made their way here, I carefully removed my black leather coat and covered half my face with the bandanna that Asuna loved to hate.

She couldn’t complain, though; she was wearing her own hooded cape low over her face. Unfortunately, her reason and mine were almost polar opposites.

“So, um...I’m going to go meet Argo in a little bit,” I muttered as we walked along the side of the street. Asuna’s nod was barely visible beneath her hood.

“That’s perfect. I have my own reason...my own business to do with her. I’ll join you.”

“A-ahh.”

I had no reason whatsoever to be afraid of Asuna and Argo in the same place, which made it very strange that I felt a sudden panic. I tried to hide the shiver that ran down my back by showing her to the bar where we’d meet up.

But before I could, a sound hit my ears. I nearly missed it at first, so I focused and caught it directly.

The regular clanging of metal on metal. Not as melodious as a musical instrument–tough and hardy, like a tool.

“–!!”

Asuna and I shared a look and turned together in the direction of the sound: the eastern plaza of Taran. We proceeded quickly toward the plaza, stifling the urge to sprint. When we got there, our expectations were not betrayed.

A carpet was laid out with an array of metal weapons and a simple wooden sign. A portable forge and anvil. Seated on a folding chair, swinging away with his hammer, was a short blacksmith. It was Nezha. A member of the Legend Braves, and Aincrad’s first upgrade scammer.

“The nerve he’s got. You saw through his deception yesterday, and instead of laying low, he’s setup in the latest town,” Asuna whispered with distaste from the shadow of a pillar. I was going to agree but changed my tack at the last second.

“Actually...Maybe the fact that he’s here in Taran is a sign of caution. I mean, he has no way of knowing that we’d be here at the same time. Maybe he’s just avoiding Urbus for now, since that’s where his fraud was discovered.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that he’s got nerve. I mean, if he’s going to change towns just to set up shop again...it means he’s still going to do his weapon-switching trick, right?”

She silently mouthed the words “weapon-switching,” then bit her lip. There was anger in her face, of course, but also a number of other emotions. My skill at reading expressions was near zero, so I had no way of knowing exactly what was on her mind. But it seemed to me that there was something like sadness shining in those eyes, within the darkness of her hood.

I turned to look back at Nezha, who was a good sixty feet away, and said, “He probably will. He’ll just be more careful about choosing his victims...”

“What do you mean?”

“If the Legend Braves are trying to leapfrog their way up to the ranks of the front-line players, they’re not going to target those players for their scam. There’s no point trying to reach that rank if no one else trusts you.”

But then I gave voice to a suspicion that had just popped into my head.

Unless Orlando and his friends intend to cut Nezha loose.

After all, they might be friends in the same party, but the guild feature hadn’t been unlocked in the game yet. There was no guild emblem showing up on his player cursor to identify him, no proof that he was connected to Orlando and Beowulf.

They might be forcing him to use his sleight of hand to bilk other players out of money and equipment, and if the word got out that he cheating customers, they could cut him out of the team and avoid any blowback.

“But...no...”

I dispelled that depressing thought with a sigh.

The camaraderie I had witnessed after trailing Nezha back to that bar did not signify a group that met in an online game for the first time. They seemed to have been friends since long before SAO came along.

So that theory was impossible...I didn’t want to believe it could happen.

I felt a gaze on my cheek and turned to see Asuna staring at me. If she was annoyed by my solitary muttering, she did not dig deeper for clarification.

“So I suppose that means they didn’t classify me as one of the top players, since they weren’t afraid of stealing my sword,” she said bitterly. I hastily tried to do some damage control.

“N-no, I didn’t mean it like that. When I say front-line players, I mean organized parties like the guys in green and blue earlier. You can’t tell someone’s like that unless they have some visual identifier–I bet Nezha didn’t think I was a top player, either. And who’s to say he wouldn’t be right?”

“Are you kidding? Aren’t you getting ready to fight the next floor boss?” Asuna shot back. I nodded out of habit but needed to clarify a bit.

“W-well, I’d like to...but if Lind or Kibaou say they don’t want me, that’s that. In fact, I feel like there’s a high probability of that happening...”

Her eyebrows shot up at an extremely dangerous angle; fortunately, they soon returned to normal. Her voice was troubled, but fairly calm.

“I don’t know about Lind, but Kibaou has to understand how crucial your strength and knowledge are in defeating the boss.”

“Huh? Really?”

“He sent me a message after we beat the kobold lord. It said, ‘ya really saved my ass today.’”

I tried not to smile at her faithful recreation of his Kansai accent, and decided I should join in. “Yeah, but he also said, ‘I still can’t get along with ya. I’m gonna do things my own way...’”

“‘...to beat this game.’ If that’s his ultimate goal, then he won’t let his petty pride get in the way of beating a floor boss.”

“Let’s hope not,” I muttered, unable to shake the image of the chaotic, frantic scene at the battle against the Bullbous Bow.

I had only talked once to the scimitar-wielding Lind, leader of the blue squad, at the end of the kobold lord battle–and it wasn’t a conversation as much as an excoriation. But I could easily imagine what he wanted. He sought to lead his fellow companions of Diavel and raise them into the greatest force in the game. His strength of will was apparent from his fixation on scoring the LA bonus, even against mid-bosses. I had no doubt that when we reached the third floor, he’d be the first to complete the guild establishment quest and start his own guild, decked out in Diavel’s silver and blue.

The more complicated matter was Kibaou, who I’d spoken to on several occasions.

There was no doubt that the engine driving him was a hatred of all former beta testers. He’d singled me out as an enemy immediately and supported Diavel for taking charge as a non-tester. He might have even hoped to join Diavel’s party ranks after that boss battle.

But even if Diavel had survived, that wish would not have come true. Diavel was secretly a former tester himself. It was possible that Kibaou realized it when he saw Diavel’s drive to seize the boss’s LA bonus.

And when the battle seemed on the verge of breaking down, it was I, with my “dirty” beta knowledge, who set things right again.

So Kibaou followed his determination not to rely on the help of testers, and started his own group, rather than seeking to join Lind and the other companions of Diavel. That team was the one wearing moss green. He must have put a lot of work into it, because they seemed to be about equal strength during the fight against the bull. But they would never see eye-to-eye.

The top two teams–let’s just call them guilds–would clash and compete, thereby raising the pace and power of all the frontier players, but that competition would also wreak havoc during the raid battles, when teamwork was paramount. It was just a question of whether the good would outweigh the bad. And the next question was how Orlando and the Legend Braves would affect the makeup of the front line...

“Oh, speaking of which,” I said to Asuna, who was watching the blacksmith work, “did Lind and Kibaou’s parties have names yet?”

“Um...I’m not sure about Lind’s. But I did hear a name for Kibaou’s group.” She grinned. “It’s kind of crazy. The Aincrad Liberation Squad.”

“W-wow...”

“In fact, they’ve got some grand plans.”

“Is that so?”

“He said they were going to set up base in the Town of Beginnings on the first floor and aggressively canvass for more members out of the thousands still down there. He’ll provide them with equipment, give them organized battle training, and hopefully increase the number of frontline players as a result.”

“...I see. So that’s what he means by his own way.” I nodded, and pondered this idea.

It was a valid choice. The more players there were advancing the front line, the quicker we’d progress through the game.

But that also created a massive dilemma. An increased number of people also unavoidably increased the chance of fatalities...

“There’s something else that bothers me,” Asuna said suddenly. I blinked.

“Huh? What is it?”

“The term. Everyone has their own version: front-line players, frontier players, clearers. I get what they mean, but it’s all so arbitrary. Lind’s group were calling themselves ‘top players.’”

“Oh...yeah, it’s true. Argo likes to call them ‘front-runners’...Oh, crap!”

I hurriedly opened my window and checked the time. I was supposed to meet Argo the Rat in just two and a half minutes.

“Um, so...you’re coming too, Asuna?”

“Yes, I am. Why?” she responded coolly. I took one last look at the small blacksmith, swinging his hammer.

“Let’s make the visit with Argo as short as possible so we can watch Nezha a bit longer. Maybe we’ll figure out how his trick works.”

 

 

9

“Hmmm” said Argo.

“It’s not like that,” I replied.

If the unspoken parts of those statements were to be filled in, they would look like this:

Hmmm. Kirito the former tester and Asuna the solo player are working as a team. How much can I sell that nugget for?

It’s not like that. We’re only temporarily traveling together, and not as a team or whatever.

Of course, denying the intent or definition did not change the fact that we were indeed working together. And that activity had begun when we met at the east plaza of Urbus the previous afternoon–twenty-seven continuous hours of companionship.

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 level 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-bou. 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 casted 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.

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-bou over her rules of business.”

Again, I felt a burning sensation emanating from the right, and froze 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 casted 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 streamed 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 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 from.

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.

“Do you know that guy’s name from the Lind team?” I asked. Asuna thought it over. “I think his name is Shivata.”

“With a V? Not Shibata?”

“It was spelled ‘S-h-i-v-a-t-a.’ Seems pretty clear to me.”

“...All right, then.”

We both practiced the foreign sound of the letter V by biting our lower lips. Meanwhile, Nezha and Shivata had finished their negotiation, and the Stout Brand changed hands, sheath and all.

This was the important point. We craned as close as possible to the window without being visible from the plaza and focused on the blacksmith’s hands. Inevitably, our shoulders and even hair brushed up against each other, but the proud fencer would certainly understand, given the circumstances.

If it was a maintenance request, Nezha would remove the sword and place it against the small grindstone affixed to the side of his anvil. But he turned away from his client and reached out with his right hand to one of the many leather sacks on the carpet. Those sacks presumably contained different types of crafting materials. Meaning...

“An upgrade!” I hissed.

Asuna nodded vigorously and whispered, “The left hand! Keep your eyes on his left hand!”

She didn’t have to tell me. I kept my eyes fixed on that left hand, fighting the natural urge to follow the movement of his right.

Shivata’s broadsword hung from Nezha’s hand, still in the sheath. There was nothing unnatural about the position or angle of his arm.

Very close to the sword was a display of premade weapons for sale, but there was no way he could switch them. All of the display weapons were common iron weapons; there was not a single rare weapon among them, and certainly not another Stout Brand. Besides, dropping the sword onto the carpet and lifting a nearby weapon would draw too much attention. I couldn’t imagine that we’d have missed such an action when the Wind Fleuret was nearly stolen...

Nezha’s left hand was completely still, holding the broadsword, while the right hand did all the work. He picked out all of his materials from the leather sacks and tossed them into the forge next to the anvil The dozen or so items burst into flame and eventually melted into one big lump–I assumed. I wasn’t actually watching. At any rate, it was the highlight of the upgrading process. For an instant, the deep red light that signified a Heaviness upgrade shone from the forge, then subsided into the waiting state.

“...!”

Every muscle in my body twitched.

At the same moment the red light flared, Nezha’s left hand did something. Asuna must have sensed it as well, because our shoulders jumped.

“Did he...?”

“The sword...”

We kept staring but couldn’t finish our sentences. That brief flash of light, barely half a second, was enough to blind us from the exact sight we needed to witness.

As I watched, teeth grinding, the blacksmith gingerly raised the Stout Brand. If he had indeed done something to it, the sword looked absolutely identical to the one Shivata gave him.

 

He grabbed the hilt with his right hand and slowly pulled the sword out, then placed the thick blade into the red flames of the forge. After a few seconds, all of the light transferred to the weapon. He placed it on the anvil, picked up his smithing hammer with his right hand, and began striking the sword. Five. Eight...Ten.

Just as we feared, the dark gray blade of the Stout Brand shattered into pieces. This time, neither of us missed it.

“...What now?” Asuna asked, watching the quiet plaza from the windowsill.

It was clear what she was referring to. Shivata showed remarkable restraint in bottling up his anger and disappointment, and left with minimal complaint to Nezha. Asuna was wondering if we should track him down and reveal the existence of the deception.

From a sympathy standpoint, I wanted to tell him, because within an hour, he could use the MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS button to retrieve his sword. But from a more practical standpoint, Shivata would not be happy just to get his sword back. He would surely return to the plaza and confront Nezha with this evidence, and I could not predict what would happen after that.

Nezha’s actions were evil–of that there was no doubt. He ought to suffer proper punishment for his misdeeds. But without a GM holding court in this virtual world, who would determine what was “proper”?

Even a crafter could not just hang out in town all the time. What if, when he left the safety of the village limits, some player attempted to punish him through means within their control? What if they took it to the ultimate conclusion?

If we told Shivata now, it could ultimately lead to the very first in Aincrad. That concern was the driving force behind Asuna’s question, and I did not have an easy answer in mind.

As I sat wracked by indecision and unease, I heard the calming ringing of bells. It was eight o’clock. At the same moment, the hammering outside stopped.

I moved next to Asuna and looked to see that Nezha was closing up his shop. He extinguished the forge, put away the tools and materials, folded the sign, and began laying them all on top of the carpet. His back looked so very small and unassuming.

“Why did Nezha and the Legend Braves decide to start doing this fraud, anyway...? And how?” I murmured to myself. Asuna shrugged. “I mean, even if they came up with the idea to switch the weapons, there’s a huge hurdle between something that is theoretically possible within the system, and actually doing it. SAO’s not just a normal VRMMO. Our lives are on the line now. Surely they have to realize what might happen if they steal other people’s weapons...”

“Maybe they do realize...and decided to kick over the hurdles anyway.”

“Huh?”

“Ignoring the ethical side of it, the actual hurdle is just knowing that you could risk your life if you get exposed, right? So they can eliminate that issue if they just get far stronger than anyone else before anyone finds out what they’re doing. That way they can fight off any attempts to take their lives in the wilderness. The six–er, five members of the Legend Braves probably aren’t that far off from their goal.”

When Asuna’s words sank in, I felt my virtual skin crawl

“C-come on, don’t tell me that. A team of guys that doesn’t shy away from wicked acts, strong enough to destroy any front-line players? I mean...”

My throat became so constricted that even I could barely make out the next words I said.

“...They’d rule the world.”

While I wasn’t inclined to think that this weapon scam wasn’t my problem in any way, I also assumed that I wouldn’t have to suffer from it. I just had to make sure I didn’t ever give Nezha my sword.

But that was a terribly shortsighted view of the situation.

Thirty-three days before, the moment we were trapped in this game permanently, I left behind my first and only friend in the game, Klein, and abandoned him back in the Town of Beginnings. I avoided the wilderness zones, which I expected to be bled dry in no time, and headed straight for Horunka, the next town. In other words, I prioritized the quickest and most efficient way to upgrade my equipment and stats so that I could maximize my chance of survival.

Using all the knowledge from my beta experience, I tore through countless quests and mobs, racing onward and onward. From the moment I chose to sprint out of the gates, I’d never slowed in my progress.

But the speed of my advancement was always based purely on the rules of the game (if not personal morals). If I were to ignore those rules, there were far more efficient ways to advance than what I did now–for example, monopolizing the best hunting grounds, or stealing rare loot from other players.

Of course, swindling weapons only earned them cor and the item itself, not experience or skill points. But as Asuna had said, with enough money, there was no limit on how much you could power up your gear.

I had bumped my main weapon up to +6, but my armor was currently averaging around +3. Against a player with fully upgraded armor, even at a lower level, there was no way I could win.

In other words, allowing the Legend Braves to continue in their weapon fraud would be tantamount to allowing the creation of a group of players stronger than me and unbound by rules or morals.

“...I’m sorry. It took me until just now to realize how serious this is,” I murmured. The fencer looked at me suspiciously.

“Why would you say sorry?”

“Well, you almost had your sword stolen, right? And this whole time, I’ve only been half-concerned, as if it was someone else’s problem...”

The words emerged naturally, without thinking, but for some reason, Asuna scowled even harder, blinked a few times, then yanked her head in the other direction, angrily.

“There’s no need to apologize. It’s not as though you and I are total strangers...I mean, um, we know each other and we’re party members, but there’s nothing more than...arrgh! Look what you did! You’re acting so weird, I’m all confused!”

I thought I was more confused than she was, but before I could respond, she looked out the window and her eyes narrowed. “That carpet...”

“Huh...?”

“So keeping your items from wasting away isn’t its only function.”

I turned to look at the east plaza of Taran. In the northwest corner, Nezha had finished packing away all his tools and was now fiddling with the pop-up menu on his Vendors Carpet. It started rolling itself up, and the assortment of objects on top of it was automatically sucked into storage.

“Hey...Do you suppose he’s using that function to switch the weapons?”

I shook my head instantly. “No, that’s not possible. The carpet’s absorption ability has to be activated via the menu, like he’s doing now, plus it swallows up everything on top of the carpet. You couldn’t have it take just one sword and spit another one out...in...exchange...”

I trailed to a stop.

The Vendor’s Carpet’s ability to store items could not be used to exchange them.

However, what if he used his own storage...meaning, the inventory tab of his main menu? I rolled away from the window and slumped to my knees.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Asuna asked. I didn’t reply. I brought up the menu with my right hand and switched to the item list. As I had done the last night when I showed Asuna the equipment mannequin, I tapped the top and bottom edges of the window to make it adjustable, then lowered it down until it was almost stuck to the floor–right below where my left hand would dangle if I let it hang.

Lastly, I pulled the Anneal Blade, sheath and all, off my back and held it in my dangling left hand. I didn’t have a folding chair, but I was about the same distance off the ground as Nezha was when he accepted the weapon from his customer.

Asuna held a deep breath, understanding what I was about to try. I looked up at her face and said, “Watch close and count the time.”

“Okay.”

“Here goes...Three, two, one, zero!”

I dropped the sword directly onto the window. Just as it touched the surface, the sword vanished in a puff of light and turned into text in the menu. I promptly touched the item name. When the sub-menu appeared, I selected materialize.” With another splash of light, the sword reappeared and I picked it up again.

“...How was that?”

I looked up and met the fencer’s wide-eyed gaze. Her hazel eyes blinked slowly, moved to my left hand...and she shook her head.

“It was a similar sight. But much too slow to be the same thing. It took well over a second for the sword to disappear and reappear.”

“Maybe if I practice, I can do it faster...”

 

“There were other differences. There are big fancy effects when you put it in and take it out of the menu. Even timed to happen at the same time the upgrading materials flash in the forge, you can’t hide that kind of effect. Plus, it shines twice.”

“...I see...” I sighed, and tapped the window on the floor to make it disappear. I stood up and slung the sword back into position.

“I thought I was onto something. I figured all the stuff stacked on the carpet could hide his menu...”

“Wouldn’t that be impossible, too? I mean, if you put something on top of a window set to the inventory tab, wouldn’t it all sink into it?”

“...Urgh.” She was right. I nodded and looked out the window again. Nezha was just leaving the plaza, rolled-up carpet balanced on his shoulder. His head was down, as though feeling the weight on his shoulder, and plodded heavily away. It was not the image of a man who had just scored himself a rare and valuable Stout Brand.

“If we can’t expose the trick he’s using, I suppose we’ll just have to go reveal the truth to Shivata,” she said.

“If the sword returns to him, that will prove that there was a deceptive attempt to steal it. But if that happens, all the blame will fall on Nezha’s shoulders, and the other five Braves could get away scot-free. Obviously, what he’s doing is wrong. But...I just get this feeling...”

I trailed off. Asuna fixed me with a direct stare. For a moment, it seemed as if the powerful light in her eyes softened just a bit.

“You can’t imagine that Nezha is doing all of this entirely of his own volition...Am I right?”

“Huh...?”

My eyes widened. She’d hit the nail on the head. Asuna turned away and leaned against the wall, looked up at the dark ceiling and spoke in a slow cadence.

“Do you remember what he said yesterday, when I went to ask him to upgrade my Wind Fleuret? He asked if I wanted a new weapon or to repair my old one. It was as though he left out the option of upgrading, hoping he didn’t have to do it...”

“I see...Good point. That would explain why he made such a sour face when you asked him to upgrade.”

“Honestly, if Shivata was able to expose his fraud and all the Legend Braves stood up for Nezha and said they were false charges, I wouldn’t mind that much. But...if they abandoned him and tried to pin all of the responsibility on his shoulders...”

In a worst-case scenario, all the rage of the player population would be focused on Nezha, and he might be executed. In fact, the probability was fairly high. After all...

“The five warriors all took the names of legendary soldiers and heroes, and they didn’t include Nezha the crafter in that pattern...”

“Oh, about that.” Asuna held up a finger as though just remembering something.

“What?”

“Something’s been bugging me ever since you told me he was a member of the Legend Braves. His name...Nezha. So I asked Argo...”

At that precise moment, a purple icon started blinking on the right side of my vision, and I held up a hand to cut her off. I clicked the icon and it opened a long private message. Speak of the devil–it was from Argo.

FIRST REPORT

Beneath that header was all the information I’d requested about the Legend Braves: names, levels, rough character builds. It was an impressive amount of info to compile in such a short time.

I set my window to visible mode and beckoned Asuna over to look at the message. At the top was Orlando, their leader. Level 11, used a longsword and shield, heavy armor.

Along with these data was a simple sentence explaining the source of his name. That part was requested by Asuna. As my uncertain memory recalled, he was indeed based on one of the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne, his paladin knights. But Orlando was the Italian styling of his name, while in the original French, he was Roland.

“Where do you suppose Argo got this information?” I noted wryly. Asuna giggled.

“She must know someone who’s a major history buff...So Beowulf was Danish, not English. Cuchulainn was from Celtic Mythology, like we guessed.”

We went down the list, ignoring the character info and reading the sources of their names. When we reached Nezha’s name at the bottom, I let out a long breath.

His level was 10, a fairly high number thanks to the fact that crafting gave experience points on its own. But it didn’t help his combat skill proficiency, which would make fighting on the front line difficult for him. Naturally, his player build was tuned to be a blacksmith. And at the end, the source of his name...

“Huh?!”

“What...?”

We yelped together. The answer was totally unexpected.

“Does this mean...we were pronouncing it wrong?”

“B-but I remember the other Braves were calling him Nezuo...”

We looked at each other, then back to the message. If what was written in his lengthy name background was true, I had terribly misunderstood him.

A moment later, several pieces of information stored in my brain as separate clumps suddenly began to rearrange themselves, linking together and shining bright.

“Oh...!”

I lifted my left hand and squeezed it, watching closely. Opened again, and closed.

In that instant, I knew that I had finally grasped the secret of Nezha’s weapon-switching trick for good.

“Of course...That’s what it was!!”

 

 

10

“Upgrade, please.”

I roughly thrust my sword and scabbard forward. Nezha the blacksmith looked up at me doubtfully.

He was suspicious because he wasn’t looking at my face, but the great helm that completely covered it. The only thing it featured were narrow slits at the eyes. Such helmets were excellent in terms of defense but terribly limited the player’s vision. It was one thing for a tank in the midst of a group battle to use it, but hardly any player would bother to wear such a thing in town.

As I was a vowed disciple of light, versatile armor, the only reason I’d ever wear this great helm was for disguise. And because I’d been present for the destruction of Asuna’s Wind Fleuret three days earlier, I couldn’t use my favorite bandanna instead, or Nezha would recognize me.