Perhaps this disguise was not that much better, but Asuna insisted that if I didn’t want to stand out because of the funny helm, I should commit to the full outfit and simply play one of those people.

So the great helm was only part of the costume, I was covered in thick plate mail all over and held a tower shield the size of an entire door. All the items were the cheapest of that type available at NPC shops, and the equipment weight was just light enough not to send me into the red, but the cramped, closed-in sensation threatened to make me go claustrophobic within half a day.

Feeling a newfound sense of appreciation for those tanks who’d taken part in the boss raid, I handed over my sword–the Anneal Blade, my only truly rare piece of equipment right now.

“I’ll take a look at its properties,” he said quietly, tapping the hilt. When he saw the contents of the window, his downcast eye-brows shot upward.

“Anneal plus six...two attempts left. And its upgrades are S3, D3. A challenging sword, but a very good one...”

I watched his lips creep into a tiny smile, and I confirmed that my initial suspicions about him were correct. This blacksmith wasn’t an irredeemably evil person.

But just a second later, Nezha’s smile of admiration disappeared, replaced by a grimace of pain. Through gritted teeth, he murmured, “...Which value did you want to upgrade?”

Sunday, December 11, just before eight o’clock in the evening.

A chill wind blew through the eastern plaza of Taran. There were no other players or NPCs in sight. There were only Nezha the blacksmith, just before he closed up his street side shop, and me, his mystery customer. Somewhere in the empty houses lining the plaza, Asuna was watching our encounter, but I couldn’t feel her gaze for all the thick metal armor.

It was the preceding Sunday that we defeated the first-floor boss and opened the teleport gate to the main city of the second floor, so today marked a full week since then. I had run into Asuna in the eastern plaza of Urbus three days ago, and it was two days before that I had discovered the truth behind Nezha’s upgrade fraud.

Technically, I hadn’t identified the trick, only been “certain” that I had, but there was a reason that I’d waited a full two days to attempt to ascertain the truth of the matter. I needed to master the technique Nezha was using to switch out weapons.

Of course, this all depended on Nezha accepting my work request. Telling myself that the hassle of all this full plate armor had succeeded in convincing him, I murmured an answer to the blacksmith.

“Speed³⁵, please. I’ll pay for the materials. Enough for a ninety percent chance.”

Nezha had heard my voice three days ago, but the distorting effect of the great helm helped disguise it enough to keep him from realizing that I’d been the companion of the woman with the Wind Fleuret.

“Very well. For enough to boost the chances to ninety, that will be...two thousand seven hundred cor, including the cost of labor,” he explained, his voice tense. I agreed in as flat a tone as I could muster.

Beneath the thick breastplate, my heart was already racing, and my gauntlets were clammy with sweat. If my suspicions were all entirely wrong, and Nezha wasn’t in fact a fraudster, and weapon destruction had indeed been added as a possible failure state, then my beloved Anneal Blade +6 might be gone forever in a manner of minutes.

No.

That was not all. After all, we had retrieved Asuna’s Wind Fleuret through the use of the MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS command. Even my theory about the trick was wrong, I could still get the sword back within an hour by using that button.

So all I had to do was stay calm, watch everything that happened, and hit one icon at the proper moment. Nothing more.

I waved my left hand to bring up the menu, flipped to the trade tab, and paid Nezha his price. Normally I might have closed it after that, but this time I left it open on the top screen. Fortunately, Nezha did not seem to find this suspicious.

“Two thousand seven hundred cor, paid in full,” he muttered, and turned to the forge. Very naturally, he let the end of the sword in his left hand dangle just inches above the many products crammed on top of his carpet.

It all started here.

My concentration had been sucked toward the portable forge the last time, so I kept my gaze directly fixed on his left hand.

My field of view was greatly limited by the helms eye-slits, but that helped me ignore any misdirection he attempted through the flashy forge display.

Nezha must have tossed the upgrade materials straight from his stock into the forge, because everything flashed bright green for a second. If I’d had a view of the forge, my eyes would have been dazzled by the light for just a second.

But the next moment, Nezha’s left index finger stretched and lightly tapped between two swords on the carpet. For just the briefest of instants, the Anneal Blade blinked.

That was it. The switch was complete. Such a brilliant, perfect trick. He could do this in front of a crowd of a hundred in broad daylight, and not a single one would notice.

Like Nezha when he saw the detailed properties of my sword, I let out a sigh of admiration. But I said nothing–I let the blacksmith finish his upgrading process.

Once the green light filled the forge like a liquid, Nezha lifted the sword in his left hand and pulled it from the scabbard with his right. The blade was the darkened steel color unique to the Anneal Blade. But to my eye, its shine was just a bit duller than usual.

The sword Nezha was holding right now was not my +6 sword, but the spent +0 blade he had bought from Rufiol three days before. It was only a guess, but I was sure of it.

The blacksmith laid the weapon in the portable forge, suffusing the blade in its green glow. He moved it to the anvil and started striking it with his smith’s hammer. Clang, clang, the same crisp sound I heard when he upgraded Asuna’s fleuret.

When the fleuret broke and Nezha offered to return the cost of his labor, I’d said, “It’s all right, you did your best. 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”

However, the reason these strikes sounded so heartfelt was not because he was praying for the operation to be a success through them. Nezha was mourning the loss of the weapon he was about to break for the sake of his deception.

Once a piece of gear was spent–no more upgrade attempts left–it would break without fail when the process was initiated again. Argo had confirmed that for us two nights ago. That phenomenon was about to happen right before my eyes.

...Eight, nine, ten.

The last hammer strike rang loud and high.

 

The sword burst into shards atop the anvil. Nezha’s back shivered and shrank. His right hand with the hammer slumped downward, and the sword-bound sheath in his left hand disappeared.

Hunched over, Nezha took a deep breath, screwed up his face, and was about to shriek an apology–until I cut him off.

“No need to apologize.”

“...Huh...?”

He froze. I went up my equipment mannequin from the bottom, switching out armor. Giant ski-boot greaves, plate leggings, gauntlets, plate armor, heater shield...The items that made up my disguise vanished one by one.

When the great helm came off, my bangs flopped down over forehead I pushed them back and heaved a deep breath.

Finally, I equipped the Coat of Midnight, its black hem swaying. Nezha’s narrow eyes went wide.

“...Y...you’re...the guy...from...”

“Sorry for dressing in disguise. But I figured you would refuse my request if you recognized me.”

I meant to say this in my most friendly, understanding tone of voice, but the moment he heard it, Nezha’s shock morphed into fear. In that moment, he knew that I’d discovered the existence of his scam and even how it worked.

Without taking my eyes off the frozen blacksmith, I pushed an icon on my main menu–the weapon skill mod activation button. With a quiet swish, another sword appeared in my right hand, heavy and wrapped in a black leather sheath. It was my partner in battle since just after this game of death began; my Anneal Blade +6.

 

Nezha grimaced. It almost pained me to see that expression.

“No one would suspect another player of having the Quick Change mod so early, especially not a blacksmith...And hiding the menu to use it between the wares lined up on your carpet? Brilliant. Whoever thought that up is a genius.”

Nezha’s shoulders slowly sank, until he finally slumped over and hung his head.

A skill mod–short for modification–was a skill power-up available to the player at certain intervals of proficiency in a particular skill.

For example, when the Search skill reached a level of fifty, the first mod became available to the player. You could then choose from a number of options, such as a bonus to search for multiple targets, a bonus to increase search range, or the optional augmentation ability of Pursuit. There were tons of useful mods, and choosing between them was as hard as it was enjoyable.

Mods could also be applied to the numerous weapon skills in the game. Quick Change fell into that category. It was a common mod available at the very first choice for most one-handed weapons, but very few players ever picked it first. There was no need for anyone to make use of it until at least the fifth floor of Aincrad.

Following that theory, when my One-Handed Sword skill reached fifty halfway through the first floor, I chose the “shorten sword skill cooldown” mod. When I reached one hundred, I would choose “increase critical hit chance,” and only at one fifty would I go for Quick Change.

Quick Change was an active mod, not a passive one. By pressing a shortcut icon on the front page of the menu, my equipped weapon would switch out instantly.

The regular method of changing weapons was a five-step process: (1) opening the window, (2) tapping the right-(or left-)hand cell in the equipment mannequin, (3) selecting “change weapon” from the list of options, (4) selecting the desired weapon from the available items in storage, and (5) hitting the OK button. When faced with a monster that had the Snatch ability, it was a long enough process that anyone would take at least one defenseless hit while trying to equip a backup weapon.

But with Quick Change, several steps were removed: (1) opening the window, and (2) hitting the shortcut icon. With enough practice, it could be done in half a second. The instant after you lost your weapon, you could have another one in hand and ready for battle.

On top of that, Quick Change had a great variety of options to specify exactly which hand received exactly which weapon when the icon was hit. You could set it to pull up a specific weapon, tell it to make you empty-handed–even allow you to automatically pull the same type of weapon as the one you were equipping, if you had a spare.

That last part was the secret at the heart of Nezha’s weapon-switching trick.

He held the customer’s weapon in his left hand temporarily creating the condition in which it was “equipped” there. The ownership right was still with the client, but it was the same as the hand-over feature that made it possible to toss weapons to each other in the middle of battle. He could still use that weapon to activate sword skills...even Quick Change.

Next, Nezha extended the pointer finger of the hand holding the weapon to touch the shortcut icon on his window, which was cleverly hidden beneath his tightly packed wares.

At that instant, the client’s sword in his hand went into his storage, and a sword of the same type was automatically pulled out. Except this weapon was spent, guaranteed to break into pieces as soon as he attempted to upgrade it.

The only outward signs of this elaborate trick were a momentary blink of the weapon and a faint swishing sound. Given that it happened at the exact same time that he tossed the upgrading materials into the forge with a bright flash and bang, you’d have to be watching for that precise action to even notice he was doing it.

And if the customer realized he was switching weapons and tried to confront him about it, Nezha could simply employ the same trick just as quickly and get the client’s original weapon back. Plus, once he shattered the spent weapon on his anvil, there was no proof of anything.

In other words, to prove Nezha’s upgrade fraud was happening, I either had to utilize the MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS command to spill all of my belongings onto the ground here, or use Quick Change myself, thus pulling the sword directly out of Nezha’s storage whether he liked it or not.

It was following the latter choice that had taken me two days from the time I noticed the trick to actually attempting it myself. I had spent all of the previous day and today in the second-floor labyrinth fighting endless hordes of half-naked bull-men tauruses to get my One-Handed Sword skill to one hundred so that I could take the Quick Change mod earlier than planned.

As a side benefit of this activity, I got some rare loot and mapped much farther into the twenty-level labyrinth. As usual, I offered the map data to Argo at no cost, and this generosity was apparently rankling both the Lind and Kibaou squads.

They were upset because someone else was always one or two levels ahead of them in the tower, but they hadn’t realized yet that it was Kirito the evil beater. It was only a matter of time before they knew the truth. If there was one reassurance, it was that our relationship couldn’t possibly get any worse.

At any rate, the two days of trouble were worth it, as I had finally uncovered and proven Nezha’s upgrade fraud trick. I looked down at the curled-up blacksmith and sighed in satisfaction.

My goal was complete. It was not a quest, so there was no reward or bonus experience. On the contrary, it had cost me the 2,700 cor for labor and ingredients, but all I really cared about was making sure that Nezha didn’t attempt this dangerous scheme anymore.

The trick itself was brilliant, but if he kept filching valuable weapons from other players, someone was going to notice. Depending on who that person was, Nezha might find himself on the wrong end of an ugly lynch mob.

The worst possible outcome was if all the players decided he ought to be executed and it became a precedent for how to deal with such crimes.

I wasn’t of the mind that Nezha should be forgiven for his part in this. Rufiol and Shivata had lost their beloved swords...and even though it was returned in the end, Asuna cried at the loss of her Wind Fleuret. They deserved to see some kind of justice.

But that punishment must not be the murder of another player. If that was allowed once, it would lead to pure anarchy–squabbles over hunting grounds and loot would be solved with violence rather than words. I’d taken on the scarlet letter of the beater to prevent the retail players from purging the former beta testers. That sacrifice couldn’t go to waste.

My solution to this was to demand that Nezha either function as a proper, honest blacksmith from now on, or to give up his smithing hammer and become a warrior. Asuna and I had talked it over and decided on this choice. Once the source of their ill-gotten wealth dried up, the Legend Braves would sink back to a level appropriate to their skill.

I stood there, lost in thought, sword dangling from my right hand, when the blacksmith spoke in a tiny voice.

“...I suppose this isn’t something that a simple apology will atone for.”

Nezha’s body and voice were scrunched up in such a compact form that it seemed as though he were trying to disappear entirely.

“...It would be nice if I could return the swords I stole from all those people...but I can’t. Nearly all of them were turned into money. The only thing I can do now is...is this!”

His voice reached a shriek by the end. He unsteadily got to his feet. The smithing hammer fell from his hand, and he took off running without a backward glance.

But he didn’t get farther than a few feet. A new player descended upon his exit path, long hair gleaming in the streetlamps beneath a wool hood: Asuna the fencer.

She’d jumped out the second-story window of an empty house and blocked his path, lecturing sternly. “You won’t solve anything by dying.”

This time, Nezha recognized the face within the hood immediately. She was the female fencer whose Wind Fleuret he’d (temporarily) stolen three days earlier.

 

His already-timid face crumpled even further. I was the very model of an imperceptive dunce, and even I feel the powerful guilt, despair, and abandon raging within him.

Nezha turned his face down and away from Asuna, as though trying to escape her gaze. His voice was strained.

“...I decided right from the start...that if someone discovered my fraud, I’d die in atonement.”

“Suicide is a heavier crime than fraud in Aincrad. Stealing weapons might be a betrayal of your customer, but suicide is a betrayal of every player working to defeat this game.”

Her eloquence was every bit as sharp and piercing as her Linear. Nezha trembled and tensed–and his face shot upward as though on a spring.

“It’ll happen anyway! I’m such a slow, clumsy oaf, I’ll die eventually! Whether I get killed by monsters or kill myself, the only difference is whether it happens sooner or later!”

I couldn’t stifle a small chuckle at those last words.

Asuna glared daggers at me, Nezha’s teary face looked hurt among the desperation, so I put up both hands and tried to apologize.

“Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that it was the exact same thing this lady here said just a week ago...”

“Huh...?”

Nezha, wide-eyed and bewildered, looked at Asuna again. He took several breaths, then finally worked up the will to ask, “Um...are you...Asuna, from the front-line fights?”

“Huh...?” Now it was Asuna’s turn to blink in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Well, the fencer in the hooded cape is pretty well-known around here. You’re the only female player on the frontier...”

“...Oh...I see...”

She sounded very conflicted and shrank back beneath her hood. I took a few steps closer and offered some advice.

“Sounds like your disguise is actually starting to identify you. Maybe you should try something else, before you get stuck with a nickname like Little Gray Riding Hood.”

“Mind your own beeswax! I happen to like this hood! Besides, it’s nice and warm!”

“Oh...I see.”

I wisely chose not to ask her what would happen when the weather got warm again. Instead, I glanced at the stunned Nezha. I couldn’t overcome the urge to ask him a follow-up question.

“So, erm...Do you know who I am...?”

It wasn’t because I was interested in finding out how famous I was around the game. This was purely research to see how far the stories about “the first beater” had spread from that initial front-line squad.

“Um, well...I-I’m afraid I don’t...”

My reaction was equal parts relief and shock. That conflict must have showed on my face, for Asuna patted me on the shoulder. “There, what have I always told you? Stop worrying about it so much.”

“But...I really like that bandanna.”

“Tell you what–I’ll give you your own nickname, How about the Ukrainian Samurai?”

“Wh...why Ukrainian?”

“That bandanna’s got blue and yellow stripes, just like the Ukrainian flag. I guess you could also be the Swedish Samurai, if you prefer.”

“Sorry, can I choose neither?”

Nezha listened to our back-and-forth in timid silence, then worked up the nerve to interject.

“Um, pardon me...Is what you said true? Did Asuna really say she would die eventually...?”

It was obviously a difficult thing for her to answer. I tried to smooth things over by answering for her in as light and breezy a tone as I could

“Oh, yeah, yeah. It was wild, she just passed out right in front of me during a four-day camp-and-hunt expedition in the labyrinth. I couldn’t just leave her there, and I didn’t have the strength level yet to carry a player, so I had to take a sleeping bag and–”

Shunk.

Asuna slammed her heel down hard on my toes to shut me up. She composed herself and said quietly, “To be honest that feeling hasn’t disappeared. We’re only on the second floor, and there are a hundred. There’s a constant conflict inside me between my desire to get that far, and resignation that I’ll probably fall along the way. But...”

Her hazel eyes shone bright from the shade of her hood. While the brightness of that shine was no different from what I saw that first day in the labyrinth, it seemed to me that the nature of it had changed.

“...But I’ve decided that I’m not fighting in order to die. Maybe I’m not quite optimistic enough to say that I’m doing it to live, to beat the game...but I’ve found one simple goal to strive toward. That’s what I’m fighting for.”

“Oh...really? What’s your goal, to eat an entire cake of that Tremble Shortcake?” I asked earnestly.

Asuna sighed for some reason and said, “Of course not.” She turned to Nezha again.

“I’m sure you can find your own reason. It’s already inside of you. Something you ought to fight for. I mean, you left the Town of Beginnings on your own two feet, didn’t you?”

Nezha looked down, but his eyes were not closed. He was staring at the leather boots on his feet. I realized that they were not non-functional shoes for wearing in town, but actual leather armor.

“...It’s true. There was something,” he mumbled. Amid the resignation, it sounded like a tiny kernel of some kind, a burning ambition. But he shook his head several times, as if trying to extinguish the flame. “But it’s gone now. It was gone before I even got here. That happened the day I bought this NerveGear. When I...when I tried the first connection test, I got an FNC...”

FNC. Full-Dive Nonconformity. The full-dive machine was an extremely delicate apparatus that sent signals back and forth to the brain with ultra-weak microwaves. It had to be finely tuned to work with each individual user.

But of course, they were producing thousands and thousands of units for mass-market use, and they couldn’t spend ages of time on fine maintenance.

 

The machine had an automatic calibration system that went through a long and tedious connection test on first use. Once that was done and it knew the player’s settings, you could dive in just by turning on the unit.

But on very rare occasions, a person received a “nonconforming” response during that initial test. Perhaps one of the five senses wasn’t functioning properly, or there was a slight lag in the communication with the brain. In most cases it was merely a slight obstacle, but there were a few people who simply could not dive at all.

If he was here in Aincrad, Nezha’s FNC couldn’t have been that serious–but he would have been luckier if it had prevented him from playing. He wouldn’t be trapped in this game of death.

We packed up all the tools and items into the carpet and moved to an empty house near the plaza to continue hearing out Nezha’s story.

“In my case, I have hearing, touch, taste, and smell, but there’s an issue with my sight...”

As he spoke, Nezha reached out to the cup of tea Asuna left for him on the round table. But he did not immediately grab it一he reached his fingers closer, and only when his fingertip brushed the handle did he carefully lift it up. “It’s not that I’m entirely blind, but I have a binocular dysfunction. It’s hard for me to grasp distance. I can’t really tell how far my avatar’s hand is from the object.”

For an instant, I thought this didn’t seem so bad...but I soon reconsidered.

If SAO was an orthodox fantasy MMORPG, Nezha’s disability wouldn’t be such a big deal. There were classes that had autohitting long-range attacks–a mage, for example.

But SAO didn’t even have archers, much less mages. Every player who fought in the game did so with a weapon in his hand. And whether sword, axe, or spear, the ability to judge distance, to tell exactly how far away the monster was, made all the difference in the world. The very cornerstone of combat here was understanding, on a physical level, how far your weapon could reach.

Nezha took a sip of tea and carefully returned the cup to the saucer. He smiled hollowly.

“Even hitting a stationary weapon on top of an anvil with my short little hammer is extremely difficult...”

“So that was why you carried out the steps of the process so painstakingly.”

“Yes, that’s why. Of course, I did also feel apologetic toward the swords I was breaking...but...” He looked back and forth at me and Asuna, smiling weakly. “It might not be right for me to say this, but...I’m impressed that you saw through my switching trick. But it wasn’t just today...you remotely retrieved Asuna’s Wind Fleuret plus four three days ago. So you must have known then...”

“Oh, at that point it was just a suspicion. At the time I noticed, the hour limit to maintain ownership was nearly up, so I had to burst into Asuna’s bedroom and force her to use the MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS command, then–”

I felt a piercing stare from the right and narrowly avoided spilling the beans on what her inventory contained.

“–the Fleuret came back. That was when I knew you’d committed fraud...but it was two days ago that I figured out you were using Quick Change to pull it off. The key was in your name, Nezha...or should I say, Nataku.”

Nezha (or Nataku) sucked in a sharp breath. His fists clenched and he even lifted up out of his seat for a moment. When he sat again, he looked straight down in shame.

“...I had no idea you’d figured that out, too...”

“Well, that required an information dealer to discover. I mean, even your friends in the Legend Braves were calling you Nezuo. It means they didn’t know either, did they? Why you’re named after Nataku.”

“Just call me Nezha. I picked that spelling because I wanted people to call me that,” the blacksmith said. He nodded and began to explain. “Yes, you’re correct...”

Nataku. Also known as Na-zha, or Prince Nata.

He was a boy god in the Ming period fantasy novel, Fengshen Yanyu. He used a variety of magical weapons called paopei and flew through the sky on two wheels. He was every bit the legendary hero as Orlando or Beowulf.

In the Western alphabet, the Chinese name was transliterated to “Nezha,” but only a true fanatic of Eastern mythology would recognize that as a reference to Nataku. It would be especially difficult here in Aincrad, without any Internet search engines.

I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of brain trust Argo had in her network of contacts. At any rate, when I saw the blacksmith’s true name at the end of her write-up on the Legend Braves, I finally had an epiphany.

He did not join this game intending to be a crafter. He tried to be a fighter, but due to his circumstances, he was eventually forced to become a blacksmith.

However, that meant that despite playing as a smith now, his weapon skills might already be above a certain level. Following that line of logic, I eventually hit upon the possibility that he was using the battle skill mod Quick Change to switch out weapons, and the rest was history.

“The Legend Braves are a team we formed for a different Nerve-Gear action game, three months before SAO came out,” Nezha explained after another sip of tea. “It was a very simple game, where you used swords and axes to fight off monsters in a straight-line map, and tried to get the high score...but even that was difficult for me. Because I had no perspective, I’d swing when the monsters were too far away, and then they’d come in close and hit me. The team could never get into the top ranks because of me. It wasn’t like I knew Orlando and the others in real life, so I probably should have left the team or quit playing the game...but...”

He clenched his fists again, his voice trembling. “...No one told me to leave the team, so I used that as an excuse to stick around. It wasn’t because I liked that game. It was because we decided that we’d all switch over to the very first VRMMO, Sword Art Online, when it came out in three months. I really, really wanted to try out SAO. But because of the FNC, I didn’t have the guts to start it up on my own. I was...weak. I figured, if I got to be in Orlando’s party in SAO, I might be able to grow stronger...even if I still couldn’t fight that well...”

We could only sit in silence as we listened to his painful confession. It would be easy to say that I understood how he felt.

The moment I saw the very first trailer for SAO, I swore to myself that I would play this game. Even if I’d had a worse FNC than Nezha, I’d have gone in headfirst, as long as I was able to dive.

But I couldn’t say that aloud. I abandoned my very first friend back in the Town of Beginnings–someone seeking help, just like Nezha.

However he interpreted my silence, the blacksmith smirked in self-deprecation and continued his tale.

“I went by a different name in the previous game...I used a name that anyone would recognize as a hero, like Orlando or Cuchulainn. The reason I changed it to Nezha was a sign of humility, or flattery. I was trying to say, ‘I won’t call myself a great hero like you guys, so can I still stick around?’ When they asked what it meant, I said it was based on my real name–that was a lie, of course. Every time they call me Nezuo, I want to say that it’s still a hero’s name. I don’t know...It’s silly...”

Neither I nor Asuna denied or agreed with Nezha’s self-flagellation. Instead, a quiet question emerged from her hood, which was still up, even indoors.

“But then things changed when we got trapped in here, didn’t they? You stopped venturing into the fields and switched to crafting. As a blacksmith, you can still support your friends without fighting. But...why would you make the jump to swindling people? Whose idea was it in the first place? Yours? Orlando’s?”

She leapt to the point as quickly and accurately as if she were in battle. Nezha had no response. When he did answer, it was a surprise.

“It wasn’t me, or Orlando...or any of us.”

“Huh...? Then, who?”

“For the first two weeks, I tried to cut it as a fighter. There’s one skill, just one, that allows you to fight remotely...I thought I might be able to hack it that way, even without being able to judge distance...”

That didn’t seem like it would work to me, but I explained for Asuna s sake. “Ahh, the Throwing Knives skill. But that’s kind of...”

“Yes. I bought as many of the cheapest throwing knives as I could in the Town of Beginnings, hoping to train up my skill, but once I used up my stock, there was nothing I could do. Plus, the stones out in the field you can throw hardly do any damage. So it wasn’t really much use as a main weapon skill...I gave up once my proficiency reached fifty or so. And because the other Braves stuck around to help me with that, we ended up getting off to a slow start...”

The Legend Braves’ slow start was probably not due to them helping Nezha train with throwing knives, but because the other beta testers and I rushed off at top speed on the very first day and left everyone in the dust. I had a feeling Asuna would throw me some very dirty looks if I mentioned that, however, so I kept it to myself.

“Things got very...tense when I said that I’d give up on learning how to use throwing knives. No one said it out loud, but I’m sure they were all thinking that the guild got off to a slow start because of me. Even after becoming a blacksmith, training a crafting skill takes a lot of money...It seemed like the other guys were just waiting for someone to suggest that they cut me loose and leave me back in the Town of Beginnings.”

He bit his lip before continuing, “Really, I should have offered on my own...but I just couldn’t say it. I was afraid of being alone...Anyway, in the corner of the bar where we were talking, someone I thought was just an NPC came up and said, ‘If you’re going to be a blacksmith with some weapon experience, there’s a really cool way to make more money.’”

Asuna and I shared a look. It hadn’t occurred to us that the idea for the Quick Change weapon trick came from someone outside of the Legend Braves altogether.

“Wh-who was it ...?”

“I don’t know the name. They only told me how to switch the weapons, and left immediately after that. Haven’t seem ‘em since. It was a very...strange person, too. Funny way of talking...funny outfit. Wore a hooded cape like a rain poncho-glossy and black...”

“Poncho...?” Asuna and I repeated together.

Hooded capes were a fairly common item in fantasy-styled RPGs like SAO–practically a staple of the genre. Asuna herself was wearing one of her own at this very moment, though it was on the shorter side.

Just minutes earlier, she had claimed she wore it for its warmth, but the real reason for those hoods was not the ability to keep out the cold and rain but to hide her face. And whoever this man in the black poncho was, he likely wore it for the same reason...

Asuna seemed to read my mind, and she pulled back her gray hood with a snort. Even in the empty room, lit only by a single lamp, her gleaming chestnut-brown hair and pale skin seemed to give off a light of their own.

Upon seeing her face clearly, Nezha’s wide eyes squinted, as though staring into the sun. Given that player names were not displayed by default in SAO, the main means of recognizing a person was the face, followed by the body. Eventually, the equipment and fighting style of a player might become part of their persona, but at this point in the game, everyone was rapidly switching to newer gear and even changing their main weapon skill. Someone playing a knife-wielding thief in leather armor one day might be a heavy warrior decked out in full plate armor the next.

Essentially, with an average build and a concealed face, pretty much anyone could pass anonymously. Even voices could be altered using a few special means, such as the great helm I was wearing when I approached Nezha.

But there might be a way to learn more identifying features of this man that taught Nezha how to swindle others. He was still staring at Asuna, so I brought him back to the topic at hand. “About the guy in the black poncho...”

“Ah...y-yes?”

“How did he demand the margin be paid? I mean, how did he want you to hand over his share of the money you made?” I asked. Asuna nodded in understanding. If they were making cash handoffs, we could stake out the place and catch a glimpse of the man.

But Nezha’s answer blew that possibility to smithereens. “Um, actually, he didn’t really say anything...”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

 

“Well...like I said, he taught me how to use Quick Change and the Vendor’s Carpet to pull off the weapon-switching trick, but he didn’t say a word about a share, or the payment for his idea, or anything.”

Asuna and I stared at each other again, dumbfounded.

The trick was brilliant and nearly flawless. I made sure Nezha knew my opinion of it. The trick was certainly possible back in the beta test, but not one of the thousand testers had come up with the idea. Whoever devised it was a creative genius. If Nezha had chosen a player handle based on his own given name, or Asuna hadn’t asked Argo for info on “Nataku,” I would never have figured the trick out.

But because of that, it was very jarring to hear that the poncho man who devised this brilliant idea would hand it over without asking for anything in return. If he hadn’t asked for cor...what did he stand to gain from giving his idea to the Legend Braves?

Clearly it wasn’t out of sheer altruism. It was fraud, a means of ripping off other players.

“So you’re saying...he just butted into your conversation, explained how to switch weapons like that, and then disappeared?” Asuna asked. Nezha was about to agree, but he stopped before committing.

“Well...Technically, he did say a bit more. A scam is a scam, so Orlando and the others weren’t into the idea at first. They knew it was a crime. But then he just laughed. It wasn’t put on or menacing. It was just a really pleasant laugh, like out of a movie.”

“Pleasant...laugh?”

“Yes. It was like–like just hearing it made everything seem so unimportant anymore. The next thing I knew, Orlando, Beowulf, all of us were laughing with him. Then he said, ‘We’re in a game, don’t you know? If we weren’t supposed to do something, they’d outlaw it in the programming, right? So anything you can do...you’re allowed to do. Don’t you think?’”

“Th-that’s total nonsense!” Asuna exploded before Nezha had barely finished. “That would mean you could butt in and attack someone else’s monster, or create a train that attacks someone else, or any other thing that’s completely against proper manners! In fact, since the anti-crime code is turned off outside of towns, that would mean it’s totally okay to –”

She stopped mid-sentence as if afraid that saying it out loud might cause it come true.

Without thinking, I reached out and brushed Asuna’s arm, the white skin even paler than usual. In most cases, she would pull several feet away in disgust, but now, that contact grounded her emotions and the tension drained out of her.

I pulled my hand away and asked Nezha, “Was that all the poncho man said?”

“Er...yes. We nodded to him, he stood up, said ‘good luck’ and left the bar. I haven’t seen him since,” he said, his eyes wandering as though searching his memory banks. “Now it all seems very mysterious...After he left, the guild most certainly changed.

Everyone seemed very gung ho on the idea. I’m ashamed to admit that I decided I would rather be the centerpiece of the money-making scheme than be relegated to useless baggage, dragging everyone down. But...”

Expression flooded back into Nezha’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.

“But...the first time I tried the trick...when I broke that substitute weapon and saw the look on the customer’s face, I knew. Just because it was possible within the game didn’t make it right. I should have given the real sword back and explained everything...but I didn’t have the guts. When I went back to the hangout bar, I was going to say we should call it quits but...but when they saw the sword I stole...they were so, so happy, and they said how great I was, and...and...and I just couldn’t–!”

Wham! He suddenly slammed his forehead down straight onto the table. Purple light flashed off the walls of the room. He did the same thing again, then again, but his HP were protected by the game code in town.

He didn’t know what to do. We’d prevented him from attempting suicide, he had no means of replacing the victims’ belongings, and he couldn’t even return to his friends.

If there was one way to atone for his sins, it would be to publicly admit his actions and apologize to the player base. But I couldn’t demand that he do it. I couldn’t guarantee that all of the honest, upfront players fighting to free us all from Aincrad, some of whom were his victims, would forgive Nezha for his actions. And I couldn’t imagine the punishments they might devise for him if they didn’t.

The only realistic solution I could come up with was to have him go through the teleporter back to the Town of Beginnings and hide himself in that vast city. Or perhaps he could reverse course, going back to fighting, and find some way to contribute through battle. The problem with that was that throwing knives were a total sub-skill, better for nothing more than distracting enemies...

But then I remembered a rare piece of loot I had gotten from a difficult Taurus Ringhurler in the labyrinth just earlier that day.

It was rare but not particularly valuable, and of no use to me–something very eccentric and long-ranged.

“...Nezha.”

He raised his forehead off the table an inch. I saw cheeks wet with tears.

“What’s your level?”

“...I’m level 10.”

“Then you’ve still only got three skill slots. What are you using?”

“One-Handed Weapon Crafting, Inventory Expansion...and Throwing Knives...”

“I see. If I told you that I had a weapon you could use...would you be prepared to give up on crafting? On your Blacksmith skill?”

 

 

11

Wednesday, December 14, 2022.

 

The tenth day since we had beaten the boss of the first floor, and the thirty-eighth day since we’d first been trapped inside this game of death.

The collective “front-line players” including me and Asuna, had finished progressing through the massive labyrinth tower brimming with muscled bull-men, and finally reached the chamber of the second-floor boss.

Our raid, made up of eight different parties, was at a total of forty-seven, just under the limit allowed by the game. Despite the loss of Diavel the knight and those too shocked by his death to take part, the group had grown, thanks to the addition of the five warriors from the Legend Braves.

Lind the scimitar user, formerly Diavel’s right-hand man, led his blue group with three parties totaling eighteen members. Once we’d cleared the second floor and they initiated the guild quest on the next floor up, they were planning to establish the Dragon Knights guild. The knights part was clearly an homage to the spirit of their fallen leader, but I didn’t know where the “dragon” came from.

With another eighteen was the green group, gathered around their opposition to beta testers. Led by Kibaou, who swung a one-handed sword just like me, they’d already decided on their own guild name: the Aincrad Liberation Squad.

That accounted for six parties and thirty-six members. Next was Agil, the massive axe-wielder and his three friends (all muscled like he was, for some reason), Asuna the fencer, the only female in the group, and then Kirito the evil beater. That made forty-two. With the five added members of the Legend Braves, that made a total of forty-seven, just one under the limit.

I sat in the corner of the large safe zone just outside the boss chamber, watching the separate groups check their equipment and distribute potions. I leaned over to Asuna, who was once again wearing her trademark hood, and whispered, “Just one more and we’d have a full raid.”

“True...I guess he didn’t make it in time.”

“We got to the boss chamber a lot faster than I expected...It’s a tough quest to beat in just three days,” I bemoaned. Asuna shot me a dirty glare.

“Well, from what I hear, it even took a certain someone three days and two nights to finish it.”

Three days earlier, in the village of Taran near the labyrinth, I had given Nezha a special kind of ranged weapon and a map.

The map pointed out the location of an NPC hidden in the rocky mountains along the outer perimeter of the second floor, and the secret passageway to reach him. This NPC was none other than the bearded Martial Arts skill master who had drawn the whiskers on my cheeks that turned me into Kiriemon.

I asked Nezha if he was prepared to give up on the weapon-crafting skill he’d spent so much time on, and take up Martial Arts instead. The weapon I’d picked up in the second-floor labyrinth required both the Throwing Knives and Martial Arts skills to use.

Abandoning a skill was not an easy decision to make, even when it was only a day or two of experience being lost in the case of a blacksmith, working the skill upward was both a matter of time and considerable money. In other MMOs, it was as easy as rolling an alternate character, but now that SAO was a “one character per account” system by virtue of our predicament, that wasn’t an option. The most rational choice was to wait until he reached the level that would open up another skill slot. Another choice might be to remove the Inventory Expansion skill that gave him extra room for items.

But instead, in exchange for the weapon and map, I demanded that Nezha remove his blacksmithing skill.

In SAO’s current state, attempting to balance crafting and combat was too dangerous. A player venturing into the field needed to focus everything under his control on maximizing the chances of survival, from his skill choices, to his equipment, to his inventory. Plenty of even the most well-prepared players had lost their lives because they were missing that last bit of attack strength, or armor value, or one more potion. Nezha took just one deep breath before accepting my harsh demands.

“As long as I can be a swordsman here, I don’t need anything else,” he said, then smiled and added, “but I suppose using this thing won’t make me a swordsman.”

Surprisingly, it was Asuna who answered, “Everyone fighting to help beat this game is a swordsman. Even a pure crafter.”

We had guided Nezha past the battles to the entrance of the secret passage and left him there. His level was high enough, and I considered inviting him to join the boss battle if his Martial Arts training finished in time, but it seemed three days wasn’t enough for him to break that rock. There was no need to rush.

Nezha wouldn’t be risking danger by attempting weapon fraud again.

“He’ll be a big help in beating the third floor, I’m sure. It’s a pretty good weapon if you can master it, and he’ll be able to find a spot in some guild or other. One aside from the Braves, I’m guessing...”

“Yes...I hope so,” Asuna agreed. We looked across the safe zone at a group of five. Orlando was wearing his usual pointed bascinet helm and Anneal Blade. Beowulf was the short man with the double-handed sword next to him, and the skinny spearman was Cuchulainn. There were also two others that weren’t present during the battle against the Bullbous Bow: Gilgamesh, who fought with a hammer and shield, and Enkidu, who was outfitted with leather armor and daggers.

At this morning’s meeting, I detected a mixture of unease and discontent among the Legend Braves. I had to assume it was the disappearance of Nezha, their sixth member. If they had been an established guild, they could use location trackers to find him, but here on the second floor, guilds were nothing but names.

I could understand their concern, but I was under no obligation to explain the situation to them. After all, they’d forced Nezha to undertake a weeklong string of dangerous scams that easily could have led to his execution if anything was exposed to the public.

“That’s all nice and good, Kirito, but we shouldn’t be spending our time worrying about the state of other parties.”

“Oh? Why?” I blinked. She sighed in exasperation.

“Lind said we’d put the raid group together just before the boss fight, but think about it. There are three parties for the blue team, three parties for the green team, one for the Braves, and probably one last one for Agil’s group. That makes eight.”

“Oh...g-good point.”

I hadn’t given it any thought since she mentioned it, but eight parties was the maximum for a raid. In the first boss fight, we’d had a lower number, and Asuna and I got to be in our own leftover party, but that wouldn’t be an option this time.

Without any magic, SAO didn’t have the usual full-raid heals and buffs, so it was quite possible for extra people to take part in the battle outside of the raid. The problem was that being outside the group meant you couldn’t see the HP of the other members, and they couldn’t see yours. It made gauging the proper timing of potion rotation very tricky.

I had to make sure that Asuna at least made her way into Agil’s party. I looked around for the axe-warrior’s distinct shape.

“Hey, you two. Good to see you again,” came a baritone voice from behind me. I turned around to see the very man I was looking for.

His craggy face split into a grin, the light shining off his bald head. “I hear you two have paired up. I guess I should congratulate you.”

“Um...we’re...”

Not a pair, I tried to say, but Asuna set the record straight. “We’re not a pair. It’s just a temporary partnership. Nice to see you, Agil.”

Agil smiled again and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. It was a cool gesture, but it felt as though he meant it in a consoling way. I hastily cleared my throat.

“Y-yes, well, um...that’s right. So I’m guessing we’re about to finalize the raid structure, since we’re almost at the absolute limit for eight parties...”

I was planning to ask them if they would take Asuna in their party, but again, I didn’t get the chance to finish. “Yeah, that’s what I came to ask you about, There are four of us, so why don’t you two join our group?”

It was such a breezy, careless invitation that I couldn’t help but hesitate.

“Um...well, that’s really generous of you, but are you sure? I mean, given my standing...”

Asuna sighed and Agil shrugged his shoulders and threw his hands. That gesture, combined with his appearance, was clearly not Japanese, but his command of the language was perfect, so there was a strange mixture of exoticism and familiarity about the man that made him both fascinating and charismatic.

“What do they call you, a beater? It’s only a tiny percent of people who actually call you that.”

Even the word beater sounded fresh and new coming from his lips. Most people, including me, pronounced it with a flat intonation, like cheater, but he stressed the bee and softened the ter, which made it almost sound like a cool title to have.

“We actually have our own nickname for you.”

“Really? What is it?” Asuna asked. Agil glanced at her and grinned.

“The Man in Black. Or Blackie.”

She snorted. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that epithet–I hadn’t chosen the color of the coat I looted from the kobold boss–but even more startling to me was that she’d actually laughed. I peered into her hood in curiosity.

Asuna quickly composed her expression and gave me a familiar glare before continuing, “Thanks for the offer, Agil I suppose we’ll take you up on it–me and Blackie-san.”

“Oh, come on, you’re not going to run with that, are you?” I protested.

Asuna replied, “Blackie, as in, the prompters who wear all black during a play, right? Sounds perfect for a guy who hates being in the spotlight.”

“...Oh...I see. But that’s not exactly the same...”

“I mean, if you’d prefer that I just call you Kirito-kun all the time, I can do that.”

“...Like I said, that’s not exactly the same...” Agil, who grinned as he watched our bickering, burst out laughing at that point. “If you two are that in tune, then I’m leaving the switch timing up to you. The four of us will focus on tanking, so you guys do the damage.”

He held out both hands, and Asuna shook his right, while I took the left. I bowed briefly to the other three behind him and received waves and thumbs-up in return. I hadn’t talked with them much at the first-floor boss battle, but they all seemed to be as good-natured as Agil.

I accepted Agil’s party request and noted the six HP bars lined up on the left side of my view, just as we hit fifteen minutes until the battle would begin. The noise of conversation died down toward the front, so I turned to see that two players were now standing before the massive doors to the boss’s chamber.

One of them was Lind, decked out in silver armor, blue cape, and scimitar at his waist. The other was Kibaou, with his dark armor and moss-green jacket. “Ugh, not another double-leader situation,” I groaned. “Isn’t there only one leader by definition within the system?” Asuna asked.

“That’s a good point...”

As if sensing our confusion, Lind raised a hand and spoke loudly to the group. Unlike the area outside the first-floor boss chamber, this was a safe zone, so there was no fear of tauruses coming to investigate the noise.

“Well, it’s time. Let’s start forming the raid! First, an introduction: I’m Lind, chosen to be your leader today. Greetings, everyone!”

Before I could even wonder how Kibaou would willingly give up control, the cactus-headed man interjected, “Only chosen ‘cuz ya won a coin flip.”

Half the gathering laughed at this, while the other half looked upset. Lind shot Kibaou a dirty glare, but he did not respond to the bait.

“...The fact that we’re already here, just ten days after opening this floor, is a testament to your skill and dedication! If you lend me your help, there’s no way we can fail to beat this boss! Let’s finish the day on the third floor!”

He raised a fist, and all of those who didn’t laugh at Kibaou’s jibe roared in approval.

With his rousing speech and long hair, formerly brown but now dyed blue, Lind seemed to be fully accepting the role of Diavel’s heir. I couldn’t help but feel that here and there, hints of self-consciousness that his predecessor never displayed peeked through the facade.

 

“Now let’s form the raid! Of the eight parties, the Dragon Knights will form teams A, B, and C. Kibaou’s Liberation Squad will make up teams D, E, and F, and team G will be Orlando’s Braves. And team H...”

He looked to us in the very back. For an instant, his breezy smile seemed to vanish when his eyes met mine, but he looked past me just as quickly.

“...will be the rest of you. Teams A through F will concentrate on the boss, while G and H handle the mobs...”

This news did not come as a surprise to me. What was surprising, however, was the voice that spoke up in response.

“Hang on just a moment.”

It wasn’t Agil and certainly wasn’t Asuna. It was the leader of the group of five on the far wall: Orlando.

When he spoke, the eyes staring out from beneath his bascinet visor were just as piercing as when they’d nearly seen through my hiding ability outside the bar.

“We’re here to fight the boss. If you want us to rotate around, I might understand, but we’re not going to just hang back and deal with mobs.”

His brassy voice echoed off the walls and died out, the ensuing lull filled by the fevered murmuring of the blue and green players. I could make out mutters of “Who do they think they are?” and “Bloody newcomers.”

Then it all clicked into place for me.

With the disappearance of Nezha, Orlando and his team had just lost a huge source of income. This was their chance to leap out to the head of the clearers. The money earned by the raid party was equally shared between all members, but the experience points and skill boosts were not.

 

The enormous store of experience points the boss was worth would be distributed by the amount of damage done (or blocked), and the skill proficiency gained by attacking a powerful enemy was far beyond that of a normal foe. None of that went to them if they didn’t attack the boss directly.

The five Braves had upgraded their equipment to about the maximum it could be at this point, but their player levels were below the average of the raid. They probably saw this boss battle as the best chance to close that gap.

And yet, disagreeing with the raid leader’s orders wasn’t going to get them anywhere. The scene could have easily turned into an ugly shouting match, but the blue and green players didn’t let it get any worse than whispers.

I suspected that was due to the powerful aura the Legend Braves were exuding. Level, stats, and skill proficiency were all hidden variables not exposed to the public–but equipment power was different. Weapons and armor augmented close to the limit began to glow with a depth that reinforced their value.

At the present moment, the best any player–including me–could do was upgrade their weapon, and perhaps their shield, to that glowing state. But the Braves were a different story. With the massive sum of cor they reaped in the past week, they’d been able to buy full sets of excellent equipment and power it all up. All of their gear was glowing as if under a powerful buff spell, and it created the strong impression that these five men were not to be trifled with.

Of course, equipment strength was not all there was in the game. More important than anything in SAO was personal experience and the ability to react and adjust. But in the battle ahead against Baran the General Taurus, every value was important–especially armor strength.

This was because General Baran used an elite version of the taurus races special attack...

“All right. In that case, team G can join the fight against the boss,” Lind said stiffly. I looked up and found myself staring right into the blue-haired man’s eyes again.

While his hairstyle might have been the same as the one worn by breezy affable Diavel, Lind seemed to have a significantly more obstinate side to him. He held my gaze this time and said, “According to our prior intelligence, the boss only has one accompanying mob that does not re-pop. I trust team H will be able to handle that alone?”

Asuna and I sucked in a sharp breath, our hackles raised, but team leader Agil waved a hand to calm us. His voice and manner stayed perfectly calm.

“It might be one monster, but the intel says that it’s not your average mob, but more of a mid-level boss on its own. Plus, maybe it’s only the one, but we don’t know that for sure. That’s a lot to ask of a single party.”

The prior intelligence they were referring to was, of course, the second-floor boss edition of Argo’s strategy guide, which appeared just yesterday in Taran. It held the attack patterns and weak points of the boss and its attendant mob, but as the disclaimer on the cover said, all information was based on the beta test.

The first-floor boss used katana skills that hadn’t been there in the beta, and it led to the death of Diavel the knight. We had to assume that there were alterations since the beta here, as well. In a worst-case scenario, there might be two or more of “Nato the Colonel Taurus” accompanying Baran instead of just one.

But Lind actually agreed with Agil’s rebuttal.

“Of course, I have no intention of repeating the mistakes of the first floor. If we spot any difference in the patterns listed in our prior intelligence, we will immediately retreat and rethink our plan. If the attendant mob is too much for one party to handle, we’ll send another team to help. Will that do?”

It was about as much as we could hope for at this stage. Agil murmured in the affirmative, and Asuna and I let out the breaths we’d been holding in.

Next came a review of the boss’s attack patterns and a final check of each team’s individual strategy, leaving just two minutes until the scheduled fight time of two o’clock. That was only a general guideline, so nothing was stopping us from beginning the fight slightly before or after the hour.

Lind raised his hand and said, “All right, it’s a bit early, but...”

Suddenly, he was cut off by a familiar phrase from Kibaou, who had, somewhat surprisingly, kept quiet this entire time.

“Now, hang on just a sec!”

“...What is it, Kibaou?”

“You been basin’ everything on this strategy guide so far, Lind. Now, all this info is comin’ from the info dealer who ain’t even been in the boss room, right? Is that really good enough for us?”

Lind’s mouth twisted in displeasure. “I won’t claim that it’s perfect, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? What’s your alternative? Are you going to walk in there to check out the boss for yourself?”

Now it was the green-clad Liberation Squad that bristled in anger, but Kibaou simply smiled confidently.

“What I’m sayin’ is, we know we got at least one person here who’s seen this boss for himself. So why don’t we get his take on it?”

What?

I took a step back and to the left, to hide behind Asuna. But Kibaou lifted his right hand and pointed straight at me. Dozens of eyes turned in my direction, and Asuna callously stepped aside to avoid them.

“Whaddaya say, Black Beater? Why don’cha offer us some advice on this boss battle?” he bellowed. I couldn’t read his expression to see what he was really thinking.

“...What does he think he’s doing?” I muttered quietly, but Asuna could only shrug.

I’d heard that Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad rallied around a resistance to the former beta testers. As a means to compete with the testers who rushed out to monopolize the game’s best resources, they aggressively recruited new members from the thousands left down in the Town of Beginnings, distributed money and items fairly, planned to conquer the game through sheer numbers. At least, according to Kibaou’s theory.

So what did he stand to gain by giving a known ex-tester a platform? You’d think it was clearly some kind of trap...but there was something in the cactus-haired swordsman’s eyes that could be taken as honest fervor.

If that look’s an act, yer one helluva actor, I muttered to myself. One, two, three steps forward, and I had a proper view of every face in the raid.

“Let me just make this dear. I only know the boss from the beta test as well. So it’s totally possible that something...or everything about this boss has been changed.”

As I spoke, the muttering players eventually fell silent. Even Lind, who I figured would interrupt, did not speak.

“But I can say that the regular tauruses in the labyrinth use the exact same attacks that they did in the beta. So I think it’s a certainty that the boss will use sword skills that are an extension of that pattern. As you just discussed, you want to evade when he goes into his motion, but what’s most important is how to react when you take the first hit. Avoid getting hit with double debuffs at all costs. In the beta, every player that got stunned and then paralyzed...”

Pretty much died, I stopped myself from saying.

“At any rate, if you stay calm and watch his hammer, you can avoid the second hit. As long as we all take that into account, this lineup can beat the boss without any casualties.”

Nothing I said couldn’t be found in Argo’s guide, but virtually all the players present nodded in understanding when I was done.

As usual, Kibaou’s expression was a cipher to me, but Lind had a look of surprise. He clapped his hands briskly. “All right, everyone: Avoid the second hit! Now let’s get started!”

He turned around and faced the giant set of doors and loudly drew his scimitar, holding it aloft.

“We’re going to crush the second-floor boss!!”

The dim corridor shook with the roar of the gathering.

Blue hair waving, his left hand pushing the door open, Lind looked very much like Diavel had in that same exact moment back on the first floor.

 

 

12

Monster attacks against players fell under two general categories. One was direct attacks that dealt HP damage.

The other was indirect attacks that did not cause direct damage but occasionally posed a significant threat, in other words, debuffs.

Akihiko Kayaba, the designer of this game of death, at least had a minimum of sympathy for new players, for he did not grant any of the kobolds in the first-floor labyrinth debuff attacks. The delay effect that led to Diavel’s death was a debuff, in a way, but it was an effect that occurred at a high likelihood when suffering multiple consecutive attacks, and wasn’t a special skill that the kobold lord could use at will.

Which meant that the tauruses that dwelt in the second-floor labyrinth were the player’s first real experience with serious, regular debuffs.

“Here it comes!” I cried, recognizing that the double-handed hammer was being lifted straight aloft.

The rest of my party called out their acknowledgment and jumped backward. The hammer stopped high overhead for an instant, its wide surface glowing with brilliant yellow sparks.

“Vrrroooooo!!”

With a roar so fierce, it might as well have been a long-range attack of its own, the beast brought down the hammer. The mass of metal, rippling with lightning, slammed against the dark stone floor. It was the taurus face’s special debuffing skill, Numbing Impact.

No one was standing within the direct damage range of the blow, of course, but there were also narrow sparking tendrils that extended out from the impact point.

One of them shot toward me along the floor, fading out, until it just barely licked the end of my boot.

Instantly, I felt an unpleasant prickle at my toes. Fortunately, I was just outside of the debuff range, so there was no stun icon showing beneath my HP bar. Everyone else kept farther away from the shockwave, so none of them were affected.

“Full-power attack!” I shouted, and the six of us fanned out in a semicircle around the taurus and closed. Each person unleashed the strongest sword skill in their weapons repertoire. Agil’s two-handed axe, his crewmates’ similar weapons, Asuna’s Wind Fleuret, and my Anneal Blade blasted the beast with an array of colored lights. The bull-man’s three-part HP gauge finally emptied its first bar and opened the second.

“I think we can do this!” Asuna shouted from her familiar position to my left.

“Yeah, just don’t get overconfident! Once we get to the third bar, he’ll start using consecutive numbing attacks! Plus,” I raised my voice to ensure that Agil’s group heard me, “based on the first-floor battle, we should assume there might be a new attack when we hit that last bar! If that happens, we all pull back!”

“Got it!”

The taurus recovered from its delay at the same time our skill cooldown ended. Agil’s tanks recognized that the next attack would be a sideways blow and took defensive stances along its trajectory. Asuna and I hung back, waiting for the right moment to counter.

Just over five minutes had passed in the battle against the boss.

So far, our team was performing well. None of us had suffered the Numbing Impact effects yet, and none had taken heavy damage.

The four tanks were losing HP with each attack they blocked, of course, but the pace of damage was slow enough that we were making do with just a one-man pot rotation so far.

And yet, the fact that our battle was going well meant hardly anything.

The blue-skinned, bull-headed beast that team H faced right now was only Nato the Colonel Taurus, an extra thrown into the boss monster fight...a distraction at worst.

“Evade! Evaaaade!” came a somewhat panicked scream from the other side of the vast boss chamber. When I had the chance, I glanced over the heads of the dozens of players to see a frightfully large shadow.

A bristly, crimson red pelt enveloped rippling muscles. His waist was covered with a luxurious golden cloth, but in keeping with taurus tradition, his upper half was bare. The chain dangling over his shoulders was also made of gold. To top it off, the golden battle hammer in his hands shone with a dazzling brilliance.

Coloring aside, Colonel Nato might as well have been a body double of Baran, but there was one other major difference: size. General Baran, the boss of the second floor, was at least twice the size of Nato.

Because of the physical height limit of the ceilings in the labyrinths of Aincrad, Baran was not as tall as the mammoth Bullbous Bow that prowled the landscape, but there was no escaping the primal fear inspired by a sixteen-foot beast man. Even the kobold lord from the first floor felt huge, and he was only seven feet tall and change.

Naturally, General Baran’s golden hammer was massive as well, its powerful head the size of a barrel. When he lifted it, the surface shot golden sparks. The tanks and attackers pulled back as one, in accordance with Lind’s order.

“Vrruuuuvraaaaa!!”

Baran’s roar was appropriately twice as fierce as Nato’s, and he smashed the floor. Even at our distance, we could feel the shockwave, which was followed by a burst of sparks.

Again, the effective range was twice that of his subordinate. It was Baran’s unique skill, Numbing Detonation.

The queuing-up motion was very easy to identify, but the blast Radius was so wide that two members failed to get to a safe distance, and their feet were swallowed by the golden sparks. The lightning wrapped around their limbs and demobilized them–the stun effect, one of the most common debuffs of the many in the game, though not one to be overlooked. The stun effect caused by the taurus’s numbing attacks lasted three seconds, and unlike many debuffs, it wore off automatically.

But while three seconds might not feel long against garden-variety mobs, it was a lifetime against a deadly floor boss. Even at this distance, I was keenly aware of the fear and panic those stunned warriors were feeling.

One second, two seconds...and just before the third, one of the stunned fighters dropped his short spear to clatter onto the ground. It was a fumble, a secondary debuff that sometimes occurred in the midst of a stun. In the next instant, the soldier was free, and the blue-shirted member of Lind’s group bent over to pick up his weapon.

“No–”

Get back, here comes the next one! I wanted to yell, but I held it in. He wouldn’t hear me at this distance, and my companions in team H would confuse it for an order directed at them. After a brief but powerful Slant to Colonel Nato’s ribs, I looked to see General Baran raising his hammer again.

Thwam! A second Numbing Detonation.

The hammer struck the same spot as the last one, and more yellow lightning shot forth. Again, they swallowed the spearman attempting to pick up his weapon.

But while he’d been standing upright last time, he fell down to the floor in this instance.

The visual effect that surrounded his avatar was not yellow, but pale green. This was not a stun but a more powerful and dangerous debuff, paralysis.

It was the true terror of the tauruses’ numbing skills–the second hit in succession would turn the stun to a paralyzing effect.

Unlike a stun, paralysis did not disappear after a few seconds. It wasn’t indefinite either, but even the weakest effect would last ten minutes...a full 600 seconds. Obviously, no one could survive a battle while prone for that length of time, so healing items were necessary.

The main methods of recovery were healing potions or purification crystals. The latter were impossible to find until later in the game, so potions were the only choice. However, paralysis left only the dominant hand of the player able to move–and slowly, at that–so even pulling a bottle out of a pouch was a trial. Crawling out of the boss’s attack range was completely out of the question.

I told them not to pick up their weapons but wait until they were sure the boss wasn’t going to attack twice!

But there was no use complaining to myself. Besides, picking up a dropped weapon was just human instinct. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d done the same thing and suffered additional hits during the beta. I only learned to deal with that particular challenge with a cool head once I gained the Quick Change mod so that I could call up a replacement from my inventory.

Baran callously targeted the paralyzed spearman and prepared to stomp him with a massive foot. Fortunately, his party members quickly intervened to pull him out of harm’s way.

I heaved a sigh of relief, but when I saw where they were taking him, my eyes bulged.

Lined up along the back wall were already seven or eight players, clutching green potions in their stiff hands and waiting for the effect to wear off.

The entire time that we’d been carefully chipping away at Colonel Nato, a large number of the main force was suffering from secondary numbing.

“Things aren’t going well in the main fight,” Agil rumbled as he returned from his potion rotation.

I quickly responded, “Yes, but the more they fight, the more they’ll get accustomed to the rhythm. I haven t seen any differences from the beta yet, so I think–”

We’ll be all right, I was about to finish, but Asuna cut me off with a sobering note.

“But Kirito, if any more of them get paralyzed...it’ll make a temporary retreat much harder.”

“...!”

I tensed and clenched the handle of my Anneal Blade. The weapon wouldn’t fall unless I intentionally dropped it (or an external factor caused me to fumble it), but my subconscious was working in overdrive after witnessing the prior scene with the spearman.

The boss chambers in Aincrad, at least as far as I’d seen, did not lock the players inside once the battle had begun. If things got hairy, it was always possible to beat a hasty retreat. That didn’t mean it was a simple matter, of course; there was a considerable distance between the battle zone and the door, so if everyone took off running at once, the boss would catch up to us in no time and cause delays, stunning, and ultimately, death.

So in a way, escaping from the boss chamber required a trickier coordinated effort than actually fighting the adversary. Could we even pull it off, burdened by a large number of paralyzed fighters?

For one thing, lifting an immobile player in your arms to carry them out required a significant strength value. I couldn’t lift

Asuna up with my skinny arms when she had passed out in the first-floor labyrinth, so I had had to drag her out using a sleeping bag–an emergency measure still fresh in my memory.

From what I could see, about four-fifths of Lind and Kibaou’s forces were balanced or speed-first fighters, with only a few pure strength tanks. As Asuna pointed out, if many more players got paralyzed, it would be much harder to disengage.

“We might need to refocus and prioritize dealing with the numbing,” I said, stepping out of the way of a three-part hammer combo from Nato. Asuna nimbly matched my steps beside me.

“I agree. But if we start calling out orders for the main force, it’s only going to confuse the chain of command. We need to get our ideas to Lind’s ears.”

Her hazel eyes darted over the HP of team H, and then Colonel Nato.

“We can handle him with just five. Go and talk to Lind, Kirito.”

“Um...a-are you sure?”

“Yeah, no problem!” boomed Agil, who must have overheard. “The four of us can handle guarding for now! You’ve easily got two or three minutes to go talk with him!”

I turned back to look at the chocolate-skinned warrior and his friends, who seemed resolute, and I made up my mind. The key to defeating Baran was to keep his paralysis out of the equation. The battle was holding up for now thanks to our large number and high average level, but if this was the same party that tackled him in the beta, we’d be wiped out by now.

“All right, just for a bit! I’ll be right back!”

Before I left, I unleashed a Vertical Arc into Nato’s back as he stood frozen after missing with a big attack, and sped off for my target.

I shot across the coliseum-styled chamber, more than a hundred yards across, and headed for the main battle in the back.

 

My pasty, skinny real body back home would be lucky to break fourteen seconds in the hundred-meter dash, but the agility-heavy Kirito crossed the space in ten flat. My boot heels screeched to a halt as I lined up next to a blue cape at the rear.

For a moment, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d ever been face-to-face with Lind, leader of this raid and former confidant of Diavel the knight.

Ten days earlier, just after we defeated the previous boss, he’d screamed, Why did you abandon Diavel to die? You knew the moves the boss was using! If you’d told us that information to start with, Diavel wouldn’t have died!

I hadn’t apologized. I’d met him with a cold smile.

I’m a beater. Don’t you ever insult my skill by calling me a former tester.

And having said my piece, I had put on the Coat of Midnight I was still wearing, and left the first-floor boss chamber. I hadn’t interacted with Lind since that very moment.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that when I sidled up next to him, Lind’s first reaction was a grimace of disgust. His narrow eyes went wide, his blade-sharp chin trembled, and his thin lips went even thinner.

But that manifestation of his true emotions soon sank back beneath his skin. It bothered me that both he and Kibaou were attempting to mask their true feelings about me–though it also wasn’t my business to care about it–but now was not the time to worry about feelings.

“I ordered you to handle the sub-boss. Why are you–” he growled before I interrupted with the line I’d prepared,

“Let’s regroup. If any more members get paralyzed, it’s going to make escape nearly impossible.”

The raid leader looked back at the seven or eight players waiting to recover, then at the state of the fight itself.

Following his lead, I checked the HP bar of General Baran. Out of his five bars, they’d lowered the third to the halfway point–we were already half-done with the boss.

“We’re halfway there. Why would we need to retreat now?”

I had to admit, there was a part of me that thought it would be a waste to give up now. In the ten minutes since we had started the battle, several people had been paralyzed, but no one’s HP had fallen into the red zone, and the pace of our damage against the boss was better than expected. There was more than a small chance that we could continue to press on, and make it through...But as if seeing through my hesitation, a voice rang out from behind us.

“How’s about we pull back if one more person gets paralyzed?” I turned around to see Kibaou’s familiar, light-brown spikes of hair. No doubt he was also filled with a powerful disgust at me for being a tried-and-true beta tester, but the look on his face was honest and forthright.

“Everyone’s got the hang of the numbing range and timing. They’re focused, an’ morale is high. We been poundin’ paralysis and healing potions, so if we stop now, we might not have the supplies ta give it another shot until tomorrow.”

“...”

Again, I let my mind race for half a second before reaching a conclusion.

The most important thing here was not the number of tries or the sum of spent resources but human life. We had to succeed without losing anyone. That was the first rule of any boss battle in Aincrad.

But Lind and Kibaou already knew that. And if the leader and sub-leader of the raid decided that we could still win, the only thing that a single fighter from an outlying party would do by disagreeing was sabotage the chain of command–obviously, a bad decision.

And on top of that, my own instincts were telling me that if we could just maintain our current progress, we could defeat Baran without any casualties.

“All right, one more. Just be careful when we get down to the last HP gauge,” I said. Kibaou growled in acknowledgment and turned back to his station. Lind nodded silently and resumed his command.

“Team E, prepare to retreat! Team G, prepare to advance! Switch at the next stagger!” he ordered as I turned back and crossed the coliseum to rejoin team H.

Asuna wasted no time in asking, “What happened?!”

“We’ll pull back if one more person gets paralyzed! But at our current pace, we can probably make!”

“I see...” She briefly looked upset and glanced over at the main battle, but grudgingly agreed with the decision.

“All right. In that case, let’s finish off this blue guy quick, so we can join the others.”

“Yeah!”

Having reached a rapid consensus, we turned back to see that Colonel Nato had just unleashed a massive attack that was expertly blocked by Agil’s group. There was just a bit over one full HP bar left. With perfect precision, we hit the beast with sword skills to either flank.

That attack brought Nato to his final HP bar, and the blue skinned minotaur bellowed up at the ceiling. He stamped the ground with hooves as big as buckets, then hunched over to expose his horns and tensed like a coiled spring. It was a new pattern to this fight, but not one I’d never seen before.

“He’s gonna charge! Watch the tail, not the head! He’ll go along that diagonal!”

Nato turned to his left and charged right for Agil. But the axe-warrior, poised and prepared, easily dodged out of the way and unloaded his double-handed combo, Whirlwind. He stepped back, and Asuna and I switched in to continue the onslaught. The damage was so great that spinning yellow rings appeared over the colonel’s head, and he began to wobble. We’d inflicted our own stun status on him.

“Now’s our chance! Everyone use two full-power attacks!!”

“Raaah!!”

All six of us surrounded the taurus and pummeled him with flashes of light in red, blue, and green. His HP bar lost refreshingly large chunks in quick succession and soon plunged into the yellow zone that signified less than half remained.

Our full attack a success, we held distance once more, and the taurus’s skin turned purple as he raged even louder. This berserk state before he died was, again, the same as in the beta. His attack speed was half again as fast as before, but with a calm head, this was not an issue.

On the other side of the chamber, the players let out a roar. I nearly lost my balance for a moment before I realized it was a cry of high spirits. General Baran’s final HP bar had gone yellow as well. Meanwhile, the number of paralyzed along the wall had not risen but had shrunk to five.

“It’s a good thing there weren’t any surprises since the beta,” Asuna opined to me while we waited for our skills to cool down behind Agil’s protective wall. I looked back to the battle at hand and nodded.

“Yeah. But if we’d been paying attention against the kobold lord, we’d have noticed that the weapon on his back was a katana, not a talwar. And General Baran hasn’t changed an inch from the beta. So...”

I suddenly realized that a shadow had passed across Asuna’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“...Um...nothing. I’m just overthinking things...I was just noticing that it’s weird the first-floor boss was a lord, but the second one is only a...”

Ga-gong!      

A sudden crash interrupted our conversation. We all turned as one to the source of the sound–the center of the coliseum chamber.

But there was nothing there. Only a series of concentric floor rings made of blackish stone...

No. It was moving. The three circles of paving stones were sliding, rotating counterclockwise and slowly picking up speed. The stones were rising from the floor before my eyes, elevating into a three-step stage at the center of the room.

Suddenly, the view of the far wall over the center platform began to waver.

“Uh-oh...” I grunted. That was the visual effect that signaled a very large object being generated into the map. As I feared, the wavering in the air rapidly spread and began to generate a thick, menacing shadow at the center.

The shadow soon coalesced into a humanoid form and grew legs thick as tree trunks that thudded heavily onto the stage.

Sturdy, dark chainmail covered the figure’s waist, but its torso was, as usual, bare. This one had a long, twisted beard that hung down to its stomach. The head was that of a bull, but it had six horns instead of two, and atop the center of its head was a round accessory of silvery platinum–a crown.

The mammoth figure, so black it might as well have been painted with ink, reared back, and the third and largest of the tauruses let out a roar. Flashes of lightning spread around the minotaur, filling the chamber with blinding light.

Finally, a six-part HP bar appeared so high in my field of view that it seemed to be stuck to the ceiling. I gazed dully at the letters that appeared.

ASTERIOS THE TAURUS KING.

Keep your mind moving! Think! I told myself so hard that if I wasn’t gritting my teeth, I’d have spoken the words aloud.

It was clear what had just happened. General Baran, whom every player present, including me, had assumed was the second-floor boss, was just as much an opening act as Colonel Nato.

Baran’s final HP bar turning yellow must have been the trigger to generate the true boss pitch–black King Asterios. But speculation about the origin of the creature was pointless. What mattered was what we did next.

There was no need to think. We had to retreat out of the chamber. We didn’t even know how this monster would attack...and the risks of fighting this taurus king were clearly far greater than that of the general.

The problem was that Asterios had spawned in the center of the chamber, and the raid party was fighting in the back of the room. The group would need to charge through his attack range in order to reach the exit. Team H, fighting Colonel Nato, was the closest to the exit, and we could probably make it out safely now, if we broke for it...but if we did that, and teams A through G were wiped out by the king, our chances of beating this game of death disappeared along with them.

How to evacuate a forty-seven-man raid party? The first step was eliminating our present foes as quickly as possible.

Time seemed to spring back into motion once our path became clear, and I promptly raised my sword high and shouted, “All units, all-out attack!!”

I tore my eyes away from Asterios atop his three-step stage, and fixed a gaze on the berserk Colonel Nato. I leapt as hard as I could, following the path of his hammer as he raised it behind him.

As a speed-focused swordsman with no heavy metal armor, I could jump about six feet from a standing position. Nato was closer to seven or eight feet, but with the added reach of my sword, I could easily get to his head.

My Slant skill hit the shining black horns directly. Nato’s attack motion stopped partway, and he reared back and roared. The tauruses of the second-floor labyrinth, excepting only a few (say, the Taurus Ironguard, which wore a heavy metal helm), were weak to blows to the horns. I hadn’t tried to strike their foreheads at any point until now because jumping attacks were inherently risky, and even a clean hit from a sword skill was no guarantee that the opponent would suffer a movement delay. But this situation called for desperate measures.

At the exact moment I landed, Asuna and Agil’s team followed up with attacks of their own, knocking Nato’s HP into the red zone. His delay wore off, and the minotaur roared and began his motion for a numbing skill. In any other case, now was the time to pull back, but I pushed forward.

“Raaah!”

With a roar of my own, I unleashed my very best Horizontal. Even if I hit the beast’s weak point, I couldn’t stagger the creature on consecutive attacks, but it wasn’t the forehead I was aiming for–it was Nato’s giant hammer. The timing window was extremely short, but if I hit his sword skill with one of my own just before he fired it off, it was possible to cancel the attacks out.

There was a piercing clang that seemed to strike directly into the center of my brain, and my sword shot backward. Meanwhile, the hammer was pushed back overhead. Without missing their chance, my five companions proceeded to launch another wave of attacks. Only a few pixels of HP remained.

Under normal circumstances, chaining sword skills together was impossible. But I knew from our hunting of the Windwasps the other day that you could get past that limitation if you used weapons of different categories. I curled up in midair and kicked out with my left foot. The resulting Crescent Moon, a vertical kick attack as I spun backward, caught Nato right on the forehead.

The taurus hurtled backward and let out a high-pitched screech before freezing stiff, then exploding into a massive cloud of polygons. It must have been treated as a proper sub-boss, not just a typical mob, because I promptly saw a Last Attack bonus read-out. I didn’t have time for that, however; I spun around as I hit the ground.

The first thing I saw across the room was a towering ebony back. King Asterios was on the move. Fortunately, he hadn’t targeted any of the five paralyzed along the east wall, but his destination was the thirty-six remaining fighters of the main party–who were still busy with General Baran.

My worst fear was that the main force would fall into total panicked chaos and retreat if faced by a boss on either side. Fortunately, that was not happening. But very soon, his lumbering steps would take him within attack range of the raid. We had to defeat the general before then.

“Let’s go, Kirito!” said Asuna, her voice tense. But I wasn’t sure if I should agree. It wasn’t that I was afraid for my own life–for some reason that I couldn’t explain, I was gripped with a sudden feeling that once I set foot into the battle ahead, I could not guarantee that she’d survive,

I knew damn well just how good Asuna was. I wasn’t even sure if I could beat her in a one-on-one duel. But there was no denying my urge to force her to escape right there and then.

After I had abandoned my first and only friend at the start of this game, and was nearly killed by a fellow beta tester just hours later, I had sworn to live as a solo player, relying on no one but myself.

The week that we had just spent as a partnership-of-sorts was only a means to uncovering and stopping Nezha’s fraud. Nothing more.

So why was I being ruled by this emotion...this sentimentality?

Why was I so desperate to keep Asuna from dying? “Asuna, you need...”

To run, I wanted to say–but I saw the powerful light in her hazel eyes. They told me that she knew full well what I was thinking. Her eyes were full of an emotion that was neither anger nor sadness but something even purer. Again, she said, “Let’s go.” There was enough strength in that voice that it bottled up the fear that had overtaken me.

“...All right,” I said, and looked back at Agil’s party. The axe-warrior nodded at me, not frightened in the least.

“We’ll swing around the right flank and defeat Baran first. If the king attacks before then, we’ve got to pull him away as best we can to help buy them time.”

“Got it!” the others shouted. Bolstered by their courage, I leapt forward. By the time I reached full speed, my hesitation was gone.

The monster’s reaction zone, also called its “aggro range” was invisible to the naked eye. But the more experience one built, the more it felt like a tangible thing. I followed my instinct and circled around the right side of the plodding King Asterios toward the main party.

Baran’s HP bar was already down into the red zone. But as with Nato when he was nearly dead, Baran had gone into a berserk state and was using his Numbing Detonation at every possible chance, slowing the group’s attack progress.

We had thirty seconds until the king started to attack, I gauged.

I darted right between the wide-eyed Lind and Kibaou, directly in front General Baran, and leapt high into the air, aiming for his blazing orange horns. But the general was nearly twice the size of the colonel. Even my highest jump combined with my longest reach couldn’t make it all the way.

“Rrraah!”

At the apex of my jump, I took pains to hold my stance and just barely managed to throw off a sword skill. My Anneal Blade glowed green, and my body sped back into motion as though pushed by invisible hands: Sonic Leap, a one-handed sword charge skill.

This desperate attack hit him right in the weak point, and the general’s body arched backward. This staggering was our final chance.

Asuna and the other four didn’t need my order to know what to do. They raced in to land blows, then pulled back. The rest of the raid followed their lead, and General Baran was enveloped in flashing effects of every color.

But once again, it wasn’t quite enough. There was still a pixel or two left on his HP bar.

“Not again!” I cursed, clenching my left fist. Coming out of a major sword skill off-balance, my only option was a simple attack. I roared and swung forward with a Flash Blow, hitting him square in the chest. It was just enough damage to do the job, and that tiny little jab sent the massive body expanding...and exploding.

I landed hard, ignoring the LA bonus readout entirely, and took a deep breath to command everyone to retreat back against the wall. There was no time to worry about whether I was overstepping my bounds or not.

But my breath caught in my throat before I could speak.

The onyx taurus king, who should have still been ten seconds away, was leaning backward, his massive chest bulging like a barrel. That looked like...

A breath attack. Long range.

And right in his path, back to him, her eyes fixed straight at me, was Asuna.

If she didn’t move now, there would be no escape. I couldn’t waste time racing over to her. But that kind of logical reasoning went out the window.

“Asuna, jump to your right!” I shouted as I dashed toward her. There were other players in the breath range, of course, but my tunnel vision was fixed on no one but the hooded fencer. She must have sensed the danger approaching from behind in my voice and expression. She leapt as I commanded, not bothering to turn around.

 

As soon as her boots left the black paving stone, I reached her and slipped my left arm around her slender body, leaping in the same direction to add to our momentum. Even at full strength, the jump speed was unbearably slow. The arabesque pattern in the floor flowed past, glacial in pace...

The right side of my vision went pure white.

The dry shockwave that hit me was exactly a clap of thunder. Asterios the Taurus Kings breath attack was not poison or fire but lightning. And by the time we realized it, the both of us, and over twenty other players in the raid, were enveloped in its white blaze.

There was no such thing as attack, healing, or support magic in Sword Art Online. But that didn’t mean that all traces of magic were absent from the game world. There was an infinite variety of magical items to be found that raised stats or provided buff effects, and the blessing of an NPC priest at a church in one of the bigger towns granted a player’s weapon a temporary holy effect.

But those supernatural effects did not exist solely for our benefit. In fact, the majority were a detriment. For example, the many special attack skills employed by monsters: poison, fire, ice, and lightning breath.

The most powerful breath attack in terms of damage was fire, but lightning was no joke. For one, it was instantaneous–it traveled the full length of its range in the instant it was unleashed.

Worse, it had a very high chance of stunning its victims, with the worst-case scenario involving an even more dangerous debuff.

Asuna and I took Asterios’s lightning breath to our legs, and we both lost close to 20 percent of our health in one go. A green border began to blink around the gauge, and a debuff icon of the same color appeared as well.

 

Instantly, I felt my physical senses growing distant I couldn’t move my legs to land upright, even if I tried. Asuna and I slammed into the ground on our backs. This was no mere tumble effect–after all of my warnings, we were now paralyzed.

“Asu...na,” I rasped. She was laid across my chest like an immobile plank. “Heal with...potion.”

I tried desperately to move my stiff hand. There were two red HP potions and one green paralysis antidote in the belt pouch on my right side. Somehow, I felt around and grabbed the green one, popped the cork and held it up to my lips, even as the rumbling footsteps grew closer.

Once I finished the minty liquid, I hesitantly looked up to see that the massive taurus king was barely ten yards away. His attack had hit several other players with paralysis, and over a dozen of them littered the ground between us and him.

The other thirty players who escaped the lightning breath were making their way around the slowly moving boss, but they weren’t sure how to react. The reason why was clear: The raid’s leader and sub-leader, Lind and Kibaou, were both paralyzed, and the closest to the boss’s position. They were desperately trying to give orders, but a whisper was the best anyone suffering from paralysis could produce. None of the players outside Asterios’s attack range could hear them.

But very close to my ears came the sound of a fragile, beautiful voice.

“Why...did you come?”

I looked back to see two very large hazel eyes right in front of my face. Asuna was collapsed directly on top of me, empty potion bottle clutched in her hand. She repeated herself. “Why...?”

She was asking me why I’d run toward her when I realized the taurus’s breath attack was coming, rather than darting directly out of harm’s way. I wondered what the answer was myself, but it did not become apparent All I could say was “I don’t know.”

And for reasons that were once again a mystery to me, she smiled gently, closed her eyes, and set her hooded head against my shoulder.

I looked over Asuna’s back to see Asterios raising his massive hammer high overhead. The crushing implement, twice as large as even Baran’s, was aimed right at Lind and Kibaou.

So this is it, I told myself.

If our two leaders died, the rest of the raid party would flee out of the boss chamber, leaving behind the ten or so paralyzed, including me and Asuna, to die...But at some later point in time, they would be able to use the information gleaned from Asterios’s appearance and attacks to launch a second attempt The worst regret of all this was that I wasn’t able to save Asuna and her limitless potential. As I’d told her after the first-floor boss, she could have one day led an enormous guild and been a leader to the player population. Like a shooting star, endlessly lighting up the sky of this dark, hopeless game of death.

I hallucinated a strange light, passing across the ceiling of the dim chamber.

But even after opening my eyes wider, the shining arc did not disappear. It reached an apex and began to fall, heading right for the crown on Asterios’s brow as he was preparing to swing his hammer...

It wasn’t until a high-pitched squeal of metal rang through the coliseum and Asterios lurched in pain that I realized the light wasn’t a trick of the eye.

That was a long-range attack that shouldn’t have been possible at this point in SAO, a sword skill under the Throwing Knife category. But the thrown weapon didn’t simply fall to the ground after hitting the boss’s weak point; it spun around and flew back across the room, as though pulled by an invisible string.

Asterios recovered from his delay and roared in anger, making a slow turn back to his attacker. That was the first actual hit on the boss, so it automatically drew the enemy’s attention.

Suddenly, a powerful set of arms pulled me and Asuna off the floor. The mighty warrior, holding two people aloft without any help, spoke in a deep baritone.

“Sorry about that! I actually got a little spooked!”

Agil the axe-warrior carried us over to the eastern wall. His three companions were also busy moving paralyzed party members to a safer position. As if brought to their senses, the remainders of the blue and green teams raced over to the other immobilized fighters.

I tried to crane my neck up so I could see as he ferried us under his arms like suitcases. As we moved, the southern side of the coliseum came into view behind the boss’s massive bulk.

About thirty feet from the entrance, a small figure clutching a bizarre weapon was staring up at the looming giant with a resolute look on his face.

“Isn’t that–?!” Agil cried in surprise as he dropped us on the floor against the wall. And it wasn’t just him–virtually everyone in the chamber was staring with shock at this new, forty-eighth player.

Not because he had suddenly appeared just before the boss routed us, or because he used a strange and unfamiliar weapon. It was because we had all seen this man hammering away at an anvil in the eastern plaza of Taran just a few days ago. It was Nezha the blacksmith.

He was dressed much differently now, of course. The brown leather apron was replaced by a bronze breastplate, gauntlets of the same material, and an open-faced helmet. But the image of a beardless dwarf that his short, stocky build and round, dour face created hadn’t been neutralized by this new look; if anything, his accentuated it.

The entire raid was shocked that a blacksmith would be here, participating in the boss raid, with only two exceptions: Asuna and me, the ones who’d convinced him to change careers in the first place. I was surprised as well, of course, but only because I hadn’t expected him to be able to charge straight through the labyrinth alone, after just three days of training.

But there were others here who would be shocked in a much different way from the rest of us. As soon as the thought occurred to me, a group rushed forward from the raid party in the center of the room. They came to a stop once they reached an angle that gave them a clear view of Nezha’s face around the side of the boss. It was team G...the Legend Braves.

“Nez...”

Orlando started to call the name of his missing partner, but he held back at the last instant. It seemed the Braves were still trying to hide the fact that Nezha was part of their guild.

For an instant, Nezha looked back at his silent former companions with a pained look, but he composed himself and yelled, “I’ll draw the boss away! Get everyone back on their feet now, while you can!”

Asterios’s walking speed–for the first of his many HP bars, at least–was quite slow. If Nezha used the hundred-yard hall effectively, he could probably continue to occupy the enemy’s attention all by himself. If he held out until all of the paralyzed had recovered, we might be able to evacuate the entire raid group safely...

But no. It wouldn’t work. The boss moved slowly, yes, but he had that instantaneous lightning breath to make up for it. There was no way to dodge that onslaught on your very first encounter with it. And based on the moment of Nezha’s appearance, he probably hadn’t seen Asterios’s first attack.

“Agil, warn him about...”

The breath attack, I wanted to say, but I was already too late. Asterios stopped still and pulled his head back again, sucking in breath. His chest puffed up into a round ball, and little sparks crackled out of his nostrils. Nezha was standing still, looking up at the boss’s head.

“Move...” I rasped.

“Get out of the way!!” someone in the raid shouted. But Nezha nimbly leapt aside before the words were even out of his mouth. The next instant, a brilliant cone of white lightning shot from the boss’s gaping mouth. The breath attack reached nearly to the exit of the room, but Nezha was clear of its path by a good six feet.

The way he moved...Did he know exactly when to dodge?

My eyes went wide, and I suddenly heard a very familiar voice...but not one I would have expected to hear here, of all places.

“The boss’s eyes glow just before the breath attack.”

I looked up from the floor, stunned, to see the tile pattern on the wall warp out of place. An even smaller figure than Nezha appeared out of thin air. My mouth fell open (as did Asuna’s and Agil’s, if I had to guess) as I stared at that familiar whiskered face–Argo the Rat, the information dealer.

It was only afterward that I learned that she’d undertaken a series of quests beginning in the jungle outside the labyrinth that eventually earned her information on Asterios the Taurus King, the true boss of this floor. She learned not just his attack patterns, but the best way to counteract him–such as staggering him with a thrown weapon to the crown atop his head.

When Argo discovered that quest, she zipped around turning in objectives, and only finished just after the raid party entered the labyrinth. Messages couldn’t reach anyone in a dungeon, and it was a question whether Argo and her agility-heavy build could make it through the labyrinth alone.

As she wavered with indecision outside the tower, she happened across Nezha, who was also preparing to brave the dangers of the labyrinth alone. They worked together–using Argo’s Hiding skill and Nezha’s throwing weapons to avoid or lure mobs out of their way–and reached the boss chamber just before Asterios appeared and threw the battle into chaos.

“Why are you still lying around? You’re not paralyzed anymore,” Argo said. I finally noticed that the paralysis icon beneath my HP bar was gone. I sprang to my feet and sprinted over to the Anneal Blade where it lay after I was hit by the breath attack. Asuna’s Wind Fleuret was also nearby so I brought them both back to the wall. I considered whether or not to address what Asuna said while we were on the ground, then decided it wasn’t the right moment.

A quick look around told me that nearly everyone else had recovered from their paralysis. Lind and Kibaou were on their feet, but I saw Argo marching over toward them. For an instant, I even forgot that Nezha was single-handedly keeping the boss occupied.

Argo the Rat was, along with me, one of the most prominent publicly known beta testers in the game, and Lind and Kibaou were leaders of the anti-tester movement. As I expected, Lind didn’t even pretend to hide his disgust, while Kibaou’s expression was more uneasy and uncertain.

“Hey, spiky. Long time no see,” Argo greeted Kibaou, ignoring Lind entirely. That’s when it hit me.

Kibaou was the very man who’d attempted to buy my Anneal Blade through Argo. It was the kind of shady dealing that no leader would want associated with him, and Argo could sell the details to anyone who paid the price.

He didn’t respond to her greeting, so she continued, “If you’re gonna pull out, better do it now. But if you want info, I can sell it to you. For the low, low price of...nothing.”

The moment Asterios’s lightning breath hit Lind and Kibaou, they were at the greatest risk of dying of anyone in the raid. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that after just a few seconds of deliberation, they chose to continue the fight. Of course, we wouldn’t know if that was the right choice or not until the end of the fight. But the tables had turned significantly since the moment just after the boss appeared. Nezha had successfully pulled Asterios’s aggro for over two minutes, giving the rest of the raid enough time to recover from paralysis and refill their HP. On top of that, now we had the details on the boss’s patterns.

“All right, let’s begin the attack! Teams A and D, forward!” Lind ordered. The heavily armored tanks rushed in at King Asterios. Their body-blow charge hit him in the legs, finally drawing his attention away from Nezha.

Instantly, he started to sway, as though all of the tension keeping him upright had snapped. Asuna and I raced over.

“Nezha!”

The former blacksmith looked up, his expression as weak as usual...but with a new core of strength behind his smile. He held up the throwing weapon in his right hand.

It was the weapon I’d given him–a thick, bladed, circular throwing tool about eight inches across. The only way to get it at this point was as a rare drop from the Taurus Ringhurler enemies in this labyrinth. It fell under the Chakram subcategory of throwing knives, but unlike the actual chakrams from ancient India, this one had a leather grip along part of the circle. The grip made it useful for both throwing like a disc, or augmenting a punch like a set of brass knuckles.

Because of that versatility, chakrams in SAO couldn’t be used with the Throwing Knives skill alone. They also required the mastery of Martial Arts, the extra skill that could only be learned from the bearded master hidden deep in the mountains.

As he said himself three days ago, he could hit monsters with a thrown weapon without having to worry too much about his perspective issues. But orthodox throwing knives were a quantifiable weapon that ran out over time and weren’t suited for a main weapon. But the chakram was like a boomerang: It returned to the thrower’s hand automatically. Thanks to that, he didn’t need to worry about ammunition.

Nezha steadied his weary legs and held up his chakram. The was glowing yellow. Even though I was the one who’d given him the weapon, I didn’t know the name of this sword skill.

“Yaah!”

With a powerful cry, his hand flashed, and the sparkling ring flew high in the air. It raced across the ceiling, a brilliant burst of light, and hit Asterios on the crown with perfect accuracy as he raised his giant hammer. There was another high-pitched clang, and the boss’s muscled torso writhed. One of the attackers in Kibaou’s team shouted, “Nice!” from the taurus king’s feet.

The chakram hurtled back with alarming speed and smacked right back into Nezha’s hand, thanks to the assistance of the game engine. He turned to me and Asuna and smiled again as though he were about to burst into tears.

“It’s like a dream come true. Here I am...in the boss battle, playing a role...”

His voice quavered and died out there. Nezha swallowed and tried again.

“I’ll be fine! Go ahead and join the battle!”

“All right. Do your best to read his lightning breath ahead of time and stagger him before he uses it. You’re the key to our victory!”

I turned around and not just Asuna but Agil and his band of hearty toughs, ready for action.

Wasn’t Agil supposed to be the leader of this team? I’ll have to apologize to him later for taking over. I shouted an order to the group. “Let’s go!”

They echoed my call, and we headed for the unceasing series of sword flashes centered around our foe.

The true boss of the second floor of Aincrad, Asterios the Taurus King, was a third bigger than even Baran the General Taurus. His paralyzing lightning breath had terrified us momentarily, but with Argo’s knowledge of his patterns, the group had devised a safe and steady strategy that was chipping away at his health.

The greatest role in the battle was undoubtedly Nezha and his throwing weapon, but it soon became clear that the single strongest group was team not Lind or Kibaou’s forces, but the Legend Braves.

Like General Baran, Asterios used the area-effect skill Numbing Detonation, but Orlando and his team were able to take the numbing effects at very close range without ever being stunned.

When the king lifted his mighty hammer, the other groups had to evacuate to safety, but team G stayed right on him, continuing their assault without fear of his detrimental attacks. Even Lind had no idea when to give the order for them to retreat.

All of the Braves had high debuff resistance, thanks to their heavily upgraded gear. The unfortunate truth was that they’d “earned” the money for that herculean task through Nezha’s upgrading scam, but now that Nezha was no longer a blacksmith, there was no longer any chance that they’d take the heat for it.

“...It’s a complicated feeling, isn’t it?” Asuna mumbled when we retreated temporarily to drink healing potions.

“Yeah. But at least they shouldn’t be able to do it anymore,” I replied, referring to the weapon-switching fraud. “If they’re able to help us advance through the game like this, we’ll just have to accept it. I still feel bad for those who lost their weapons, though.”

“Yeah...”

She still looked conflicted, so I took her mind off things by leaning in close and sharing an idea.

“Y’know, I don’t really feel like letting them win the battle MVP, so how about we fight back a little bit? If the timing permits it, of course.”

“Fight back...?”

I lifted the edge of her hood and whispered into her ear. Asuna’s eyes looked skeptical and exasperated, but she nodded in agreement. When she pulled the hood back up over her head, I thought I detected a hint of a smile on her lips, but I couldn’t peer in close for a second look.

“Hey, Kirito,” Agil rumbled from behind, with an odd tone in his voice and an empty bottle in his hand, “You said you weren’t a pair, right?”

Asuna straightened up and pivoted on her heel. Her voice was frosty.

“We are not.”

Fortunately, I didn’t need to weigh in on the topic, because a cheer broke out from the direction of the battle. Asterios’s last HP bar had gone red. Our team’s HP had just hit maximum again, which was perfect timing.

“Team E, pull back! Team H, up forward!” Lind commanded.

I held up my free hand and clenched my Anneal Blade +6. Even if it was our turn in the rotation, it spoke to Lind’s fairness as a leader that he didn’t try to hold me back.

“Okay, hang on,” I said, waiting for the right timing. “Go!”

We darted in to take the place of green team E along the boss’s left flank. First, Asuna and I traded off with single skills against those tree-trunk legs. The monster roared in rage and swiped at us, which Agil and his friends blocked as they switched in.

Asterios’s size was certainly frightening, but on the other hand, the larger a monster was, the more people could attack it at once. One full party was all that could fight Colonel Nato at a time, while two could tackle General Baran, and King Asterios was large enough for three at once.

Team H took the left side, blue team B handled him front and center, and Orlando’s team G was still tearing away at his right flank. The king’s black skin was burning through like coal, a sign of his berserk state, but we were on pace to finish him off with this set.

“Vrrruaaraagh!!”

With a terrible, primal roar, Asterios began to suck in air again.

I didn’t t need to see the sparks around his mouth to know he was preparing his breath attack. But just as quickly as he started, the chakram flew in and struck him on the crown. Lightning exploded harmlessly from the king’s nostrils.

If this was a normal MMO, that 100-percent-guaranteed stagger from the chakram would get nerfed to oblivion, I thought to myself, referring to the practice of reducing its power to restore proper game balance.

Floor bosses in SAO were a one-time affair–once defeated, they would never return. If Akihiko Kayaba was indeed watching over the battle from afar, would he be gnashing his teeth at the sight of his guardian, unable to stay poised long enough to unleash its best attack? Or would he be applauding the ingenuity (and luck) of the players who hit upon this unlikely strategy?

We’re going to beat your second floor in just ten days, Kayaba! I thought triumphantly. A glance at the king’s HP bar showed just a tiny sliver of red about to disappear. He raged even harder, stomping three times in succession before raising his hammer! Team B pulled back, recognizing the Numbing Detonation motion, while team G readied their best sword skills.

If the Legend Braves seized the Last Attack bonus here, they’d go from the backup force during the Bullbous Bow fight to the best fighters in the game. But I wasn’t charitable enough to sit back and let them reap those rewards. I had a beater reputation to uphold. “Now, Asuna!”

I leapt as high as I could. The fencer kept right up with me–in fact, her jumping speed was faster than mine. The force ripped the hood off of her head, and long chestnut-brown hair flowed through the air.

“Vraaaah!!”

Asterios brought down the hammer. A circular shockwave spread from the impact point, followed by bursts of sparks. Two of the Braves couldn’t fully resist, succumbing to the stun effect of this final attack. Numbing Impact was weaker, but Detonation couldn’t be avoided just by jumping, so Asuna and I would suffer the same effects once we touched the ground.

But...

“Sey-yaaaa!”

Asuna unleashed a fierce cry and shot off the rapier charge attack Shooting Star in midair.

“Rrrmaaah!”

I followed her with the one-handed sword charge attack Sonic Leap. We both shot up vertically, followed by trails of blue and green light. We were headed straight for the forehead of King Asterios, which was protected by his metal crown.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flashing of the three mobile members of the Legend Braves firing off their own sword skills.

The next instant, our Anneal Blade and Wind Fleuret pierced the crown entirely and sank deep into the enemy’s head. The crown splintered and cracked into pieces.

The massive body of King Asterios burst in an explosion that filled the entire coliseum chamber.

 

 

13

“Congratulations,” came a familiar voice, making a familiar statement in English with a familiar native accent. Asuna and I turned, exhausted after the long battle, to see Agil’s smiling face. His meaty hand was curved into a thumbs-up, which I returned. Asuna didn’t bother with that, but there was a rare smile on her beautiful face.

Agil lowered his hand and let his eyes gaze into the distance.

“Your skill and teamwork are as brilliant as ever. But this victory doesn’t belong to you...it’s his.”

“Yeah. If it wasn’t for him, we’d have lost at least ten people in this fight,” I replied. Asuna nodded in agreement.

Standing done on the far side of the celebrating mass of players was the small figure of Nezha the former blacksmith. He stared up at the ceiling, watching the vanishing fragments of the boss, golden ring clutched in his hand.

I was distracted by a sudden cheer that rose from the group. At the center, Lind and Kibaou were locked in a bracing handshake. The blue and green squads were applauding wildly, and I joined in by clapping.

“Sheesh. They’re best friends after all...”

“At least until we reach the third floor,” Asuna noted sardonically. I got to my feet, whispered thanks to my Anneal Blade for its duty, and returned it to the sheath. After pulling Asuna up to a standing position and sharing a brief fist bump, I finally felt the satisfaction of the victory...of winning safe and sound.

We’d finished the second floor of Aincrad. It had taken us ten days, and there were zero fatalities in the boss battle.

 

After taking an entire month on the first floor, and losing our promising leader Diavel in the fight, this was better than I could have hoped for. But I reminded myself that we were a hairs-breadth from being wiped out entirely. The sudden and surprising appearance of King Asterios nearly killed Lind and Kibaou, not to mention Asuna and me.

We learned two lessons from this battle.

One, fulfill every quest around the last town and the labyrinth, because they might impart info on the boss.

And two, we had to assume that every boss from this point on had been changed in some way from the beta test. Of course, we’d only made it to the ninth floor in the beta, so once we reached the tenth, it was all new to us regardless.

Not only did gathering info through quests become important, but so would scouting out the boss first. The latter would not be easy, however. Most boss monsters didn’t appear until you reached the back of the chamber and destroyed some key object, so there was no guarantee that a reconnaissance party would escape safely. There were a fair number of speedy scout types among us, but very few that could use throwing tools.

From this point on, the role of Nezha the chakram-thrower, as well as Argo, would become even more crucial.

I took a quick look around the room and didn’t see the Rat, even with my Search skill–she must be hiding again. I nudged Asuna and we made our way over to Nezha.

When the ex-blacksmith saw us, he smiled radiantly, as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Nezha bowed and said, “Great work, Kirito and Asuna. That last midair sword skill was incredible.”

“Well, actually...”

I scratched my head uncomfortably. I didn’t want to tell him that it was just me trying to make sure I beat Orlando’s group to the prize. Instead, Asuna answered for me.

“Incredible? That was your appearance. How did you manage to use a brand-new weapon with such skill? You must have practiced quite a lot.”

“No, it didn’t seem hard to me. I mean, I finally got to be what I’d always wanted. Really...thank you so much. Now I have...”

He trailed off and bowed deeply one more time, then turned back to face the center of the room. I followed his gaze and saw a group of five about twenty yards from the crowd. They were lined up and exchanging handshakes–Orlando with Lind, Beowulf with Kibaou, and the three others with other leading players. They wore the proud smiles of true heroes.

If you looked at the results screen for the battle against Asterios, the score based on damage defended and caused by the Legend Braves would easily outclass any other team. They’d found their place front and center among the best players in the game. I didn’t know if they’d end up joining Lind’s Dragon Knights or Kibaou’s Liberation Squad, or if they’d start their own guild. But...

“Nezha, shouldn’t you be there with them?” I asked.

But the single most important person in the fight simply shook his head.

“No, it’s fine. There’s something else I still need to do.”

“Huh? What’s that?” I asked. Nezha looked at me and then at Asuna, whose brows were furrowed in apparent understanding. He bowed once more, then lovingly traced the surface of his chakram’s blade with a finger, and began to walk away.

That’s when I noticed that three players from the raid were coming this way. At first, I assumed they were coming to thank and congratulate Nezha, but their faces were hard.

 

After examining the tall man in front with the broadsword, I finally realized why. This man, now wearing a breastplate over the blue doubly of Lind’s group, was none other than Shivata, the man who’d asked Nezha to upgrade his sword five days ago. Next to him was another man in blue, and the third wore the green of Kibaou’s team. They were all scowling.

Shivata pulled up in front of the Nezha and growled, “You re the blacksmith who was working in Urbus and Taran just a few days ago, aren’t you?”

“...Yes,” Nezha replied.

“Why did you switch to a fighter? And how’d you get that rare weapon? It’s a drop-only item, isn’t it? Did you make that much money from smithing?”

Oh, no.

Shivata’s tone of voice said that he already suspected Nezha of shady dealing. Even if he didn’t have a clue about the weapon switching trick, he was clearly guessing that some kind of foul play had occurred.

In truth, Nezha’s chakram was a rare weapon, but not particularly valuable. After all, it required both the Throwing Knives supplementary skill and the Martial Arts extra skill to use. But explaining all of that wouldn’t remove the suspicion from Shivata’s mind.

Eventually, all of the celebrating players fell silent, including Lind, Kibaou, and the Legend Braves, watching this new turn of events. Most had looks of grave concern, but even at a distance, the panic and tension on the faces of the Legend Braves was written plain as day.

In the moment, neither I nor Asuna knew what to do.

It would be easy to speak up and say that I gave him that chakram. But was deflecting the brunt of Shivata’s anger and forcing him to back down really the right choice?

It was undeniable truth that Nezha had seized Shivata’s precious, treasured Stout Blade and broken a spent weapon in exchange.

Shivata used all of his willpower to control himself at that moment. He left without insulting or blaming Nezha. The broadsword he wore now was two ranks below his old Stout Blade. Shivata had done his best to power it up in the five days between then and now, and had managed to survive through this terrible battle. Did we really have the right to trick him again, to lead him way from the truth?

Nezha sidestepped my indecision entirely. He laid his chakram on the ground and got down on his knees, then pressed his hands to the ground and lowered his head.

“I deceived you, Shivata, and the two others with you. I switched out your swords before attempting to upgrade them, replacing them with spent weapons that I broke instead.”

The coliseum was full of a silence even heavier than the one before the battle, ear-piercing and thick.

Sword Art Online had an astonishing system of recreating players’ emotions on their virtual avatars, but if there was one glaring weakness, it was a tendency to exaggerate for effect. I hadn’t seen it for myself, but from what others said, it took very little time for sadness to manifest as tears. A happy feeling translated to a wide smile, and anger was represented by a reddened face and a bulging vein on the forehead.

So the fact that Shivata’s only response was a furrowed brow was a true testament to his self-control. By contrast, the two men at his sides looked as though they were ready to explode, but they held it in as well.

I looked over at Asuna and saw that she was trying to suppress her feelings as well, but her face was visibly paler than usual. I must have looked the same way.

Shivata’s hoarse voice finally broke the painful silence.

“Do you still have the weapons you stole?” Nezha shook his head, hands still firmly on the floor.

“No...I already sold them for money,” he rasped.

Shivata clenched his eyes shut at the answer, but he knew it was coming. He only grunted and then asked, “Can you pay me back the value?”

This time, Nezha had no immediate answer, Asuna and I held our breath. Far behind Shivata, standing at the left edge of the raid, Orlando’s group was visibly uncomfortable.

In terms of simple feasibility, the sum of money that he’d taken from them was far from impossible to raise again.

Only ten days had passed since Nezha and the Legend Braves had started their fraud. The market prices for those items couldn’t have changed that much, so if they sold off the assets they’d bought with the money they received, it should turn back into roughly the same amount.

But that was where the problem lay.

It wasn’t just Nezha who had spent the money they’d unfairly earned, but the entire Legend Braves. The brightly gleaming armor covering their bodies was that very sum of money in physical form. In order to pay back their victims in cor, Orlando and his group would have to sell off their equipment. After they’d just played a major role in this boss battle, would they really just give up the source of their power? And more fundamentally, how did Nezha plan to get out of this situation?

As I watched, holding my breath, the short ex-blacksmith answered, forehead still scraped against the floor tiles.

“No...I cannot repay you now. I used all of the money on all-you-can-eat meals at expensive restaurants, and high-priced inns.” Asuna sucked in a sharp breath.

Nezha wasn’t trying to weasel his way out of anything.

He was going to take responsibility for all of the crimes, and force Shivata and the others to focus their anger and hatred solely on him. He was covering for his companions, the ones who treated him like a nuisance and egged him into committing those acts.

The large member of Lind’s team to Shivata’s right finally snapped.

“You...why, you filthy–!!” He raised a clenched fist and stomped his right foot on the ground multiple times. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to see your favorite, beloved sword smashed to pieces?! And you sold it off...to have yourself a feast?! To stay in deluxe hotels?! Then you use the rest to buy yourself a valuable weapon, barge into the boss battle, and fancy yourself a hero?!”

Kibaou’s companion on the left shrieked, “When I lost my sword, I thought I’d never fight on the front line again! But my friends donated some funds to me and helped me gather materials...You didn’t just betray us, you stabbed everyone fighting to complete this game in the back!” And like a lit fuse, those shouts caused all the other players who’d been silently watching this scene to explode.

“Traitor!”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”

“You caused our pace to slow down!”

“Apologizing isn’t going to fix anything!”

Dozens of voices overlapped into one mass of angry noise. Nezha’s lonely back shrank, as though succumbing to the pressure of all that rage.

When the crowd’s anger at beta testers threatened to explode during the planning for the first-floor boss battle, Agil had been the voice of reason. But there was nothing he could do here. He and his companions stood off at a distance, watching pensively.

Orlando’s group was equally quiet. The five of them were whispering to each other, but it was inaudible over all the angry bellowing.

I couldn’t do anything but watch, either. There was no magic word to solve the situation at this point. Now that the truth of Shivata’s weapon was open knowledge, the only thing that could mend the wrongdoing was an equal sum of cor, or something similarly heavy...

Suddenly, I remembered something Nezha had said minutes before.

I finally got to be what’d always wanted. Really...thank you so much. Now I have...

...nothing left to regret.

Those were the final words he’d said, the ones I couldn’t hear.

“Nezha...you can’t mean...” I mumbled.

One of the two people who had the power to bring this scene to a close strode forward, his hand held high. Blue hair and blue cape. A shining silver scimitar at his waist. Lind, the leader of the raid.

Shivata’s trio stepped back to give him the stage, and the furious shouts that filled the chamber gradually died down. When it was at least quiet enough to have a conversation, he spoke.

“Will you tell us your name?”

At that point, I realized that Nezha was never a part of the raid party as classified by the system. It was one thing for Argo, who passed on her info and split, but Nezha took on a crucial role in hitting the boss’s weak point. He deserved to be part of the raid, and we’d been one short of the limit, anyway. The only team with five members was G...the Legend Braves.

 

Something rubbed me wrong about the fact that Orlando hadn’t extended a party offer to Nezha, a friend since before the days of SAO. But more important than that was how Lind decided to rule on this situation.

“...It’s Nezha,” the ex-blacksmith said, still prostrate on the ground. Lind nodded a few times. His features were sharp by nature, but he looked more nervous now than he did in the midst of the battle. He cleared his throat.

“I see. Your cursor is still green, Nezha...but that speaks to the severity of your crime. If you’d committed a properly recognized crime and turned orange, it would be possible to return it to green through good karma quests. But no quest will wipe your sins clean now. If you cannot repay what you owe to others in the game...we will have to find a different means of punishment.”

He can’t, I thought to myself, teeth gritted. Lind’s thin lips grimaced, then opened again.

“It was not just swords that you stole from Shivata and others. It was a great amount of time that they poured into those blades. Therefore...”

Some of the weight lifted off my shoulders. Lind was about to demand that Nezha pay back his crimes by contributing to the game’s advancement, and most likely regular payments over a long-term period. It was the same punishment that Diavel would have meted out if this had happened ten days earlier.

However...

Before Lind could finish, a high-pitched voice drowned him out. “No...it wasn’t just time that he stole!”

A green-clad member of Kibaou’s team ran forward. His skinny body shook left and right as he screeched–

 

“I...I know the truth! There are plenty more players he stole weapons from! One of them had to use a cheap store-bought weapon, and ended up getting killed by mobs he’d handled just fine before!!”

The vast, masterless chamber fell silent once more.

After a few seconds, the blue-clad man next to Shivata spoke again, his voice hoarse.

“If...if someone died because of this...then he’s not just a swindler anymore. He’s a puh...puh...”

The scrawny green man jabbed a finger forward and said what the other one couldn’t.

“That’s right! He’s a murderer! A PKer!!”

It was the first time I’d heard the term PK in the open since we’d been trapped in the flying castle.

It was one of the most well-known terms among all the many MMOs out there. It wasn’t short for “penalty kick,” or “psychokinesis,” or anything like that. It stood for “player kill,” or “player killer”–the act of killing another player, rather than a monster.

Unlike most MMORPGs made these days, PK-ing was possible in SAO. There was absolute safety within any town, thanks to a stringent anti-crime code, but that protection disappeared outside of town limits. The only things that protected players then were their own equipment, skills, and trusted companions.

In the month-long beta test, a thousand players cooperated and competed in a race upward, sometimes erupting into combat where players crossed swords with one another. But PK did not apply to honest duels between two willing combatants. A player killer was someone who set upon unsuspecting adventurers in the wilderness or dungeons, a pejorative term slapped on those who killed for fun and profit.

Several times during the beta, I’d been attacked by PKers, but not once since the full game launched. On the very first night, I was nearly killed by another former tester who formed a party with me, via MPK: a monster player kill, using monsters to do his dirty work. But that was a passive means of killing and done in an attempt to win a quest item to further his own survival.

Now that the chaos of that initial starting dash had died down, it was impossible to imagine someone committing a true PK for the purpose of sick pleasure.

With the linking of our virtual and physical fates, PK-ing was out-and-out murder. In a normal MMO, engaging in such behavior was a form of roleplay, but that excuse didn’t fly anymore. After all, killing players–in particular, players who showed enough willpower to venture into the wilderness and fight for themselves–only prolonged the possibility of our eventual freedom.

The day I met Asuna again in Urbus and we went Windwasp-hunting together, I said that wearing a burlap sack for a mask would make me look like a PKer. The only reason I made a joke like that was my belief that no one in Aincrad would actually stoop to such a thing. But here we were, and that ugly term was out in the open.

The skinny dagger user from Kibaou’s team kept shrieking, his finger still pointed at Nezha’s head.

“A few bows and scrapes can’t make up for a PK! No amount of apologizing or money is going to bring back the dead! What’s your plan? How are you gonna make this right? Well?!”

There was a painful edge to his voice, a screech like the point of a knife scraping against metal. Within a cold, sobered corner of my mind, I wondered where I’d heard it before. The memory came within an instant.

 

This dagger-wielding man had leveled a similar charge against me, right after we beat the first-floor boss. “I know the truth! He’s a beta tester!” rang the voice in my ears. I’d shut him up haughtily demanding that he not lump me in with the other testers, but that trick wouldn’t work here.

Nezha’s tiny back absorbed all of the accusations hurled at it. He clenched his fists atop the stones and spoke, his voice trembling.

“I will accept...whatever judgment you decide upon.”

Another silence.

I felt like every person present understood the meaning behind the word “judgment.” The air in the coliseum grew even colder and pricklier than before. That invisible energy reached a critical point, everyone waiting for the one person who would break the tension.

Eventually, I succumbed, ready to tell everyone to just wait a moment, even though I didn’t have any ideas of how to follow it up.

But I was half a second too late. One of the dozens of raid members who’d been inching up on Nezha finally uttered a short burst.

“Then pay the price.”

It was just four words, a statement that didn’t hold any specific meaning of its own. But it was like a pin that burst an overinflated balloon.

Suddenly the chamber was full with a roar of noise. Dozens of players were shouting all at once: “Yeah, pay the price!”

“Go apologize to the ones who died!”

“Live by the PK, die by the PK!” Their cries grew more and more overt until spilling into direct threats.

“Pay with your life, fraudster!”

“Settle your account by dying, you PK-ing bastard!”

“Kill him! Kill the filthy scheming scum!”

I couldn’t help but feel like the rage on their faces wasn’t entirely anger at his crime. There was fury and hatred for the game of Sword Art Online that had trapped them here, as well. It was the thirty-eighth day since we’d been locked in this flying fortress. Ninety-eight floors remained to conquer. The overwhelming, desperate pressure of those astronomical odds had finally found an outlet, a target ripe for punishment: a swindler and murderer among our ranks.

Neither Lind nor Kibaou had the means to resolve this situation now. Even I’d just been sitting on my heels the entire time, watching the scene unfold, since Nezha had admitted to his crimes. My eyes wandered until they happened across the five Legend Braves standing at the side of the raid. They weren’t shouting like the others but staring down at the ground, avoiding looking at Nezha.

You should have known this could happen someday, Orlando...Didn’t you ever see it coming? I asked silently, but there was no answer. In fact, if I was making accusations, the same went for the man in the black poncho who’d taught them the trick. If he was generous enough to show them a fancy trick for free, why didn’t he explain the potential dangers to them?

Unless...

What if this situation–the group turning on Nezha, demanding his execution–was exactly what the black poncho was hoping for in return?

In that case, what he wanted was not the help of the Braves, but the opposite. He wanted Nezha to be killed at the express desire of all the top players in the game for his direct role in the scam. That would create a precedent for direct player-on-player killing and lower the mental hurdle to reaching the act of murder across Aincrad.

If my fears were correct, that man in the black poncho was the real PKer here. But rather than soil his own hands with the act, he set up other players to do the dirty work for him, dragging them down to his level.

This was bad. We couldn’t allow his devious plan to work. We couldn’t have Nezha publicly executed. After all, I was the one who recommended that Nezha switch to a combat role and make up for his crimes by helping advance the game. In effect, I brought him here to this situation. I had a responsibility to prevent his death.

Amidst the hail of jeers, someone finally moved into action. Not Lind, not Kibaou, not even Nezha–but the Legend Braves. They slowly crossed the vast room, metal armor clanking, toward the prostrate Nezha. Orlando’s bascinet visor was half-down, so I couldn’t see his face. The other four marched in step with him, their faces downcast.

The semicircle of Lind, the dagger user, and Shivata sensed that something was happening, and they stepped back to make room for the newcomers.

The group came to a halt with heavy footsteps. Nezha must have sensed the approach of his former comrades, but he did not look up. His fists were still balled on the floor, his forehead pressed to the tile. Orlando stopped directly across from Nezha, the chakram placed on the floor in between. His right hand moved to his left side. Asuna gasped.

His gauntleted hand gripped the hilt of his sword and pulled. Orlando’s weapon was, like mine, an Anneal Blade. It appeared to be powered up to a similar level. If he was going to strike Nezha’s unprotected back, it would only take three or four hits to finish the job.

“Orlando...”

I called out the name of the paladin who had just helped defeat the boss monster minutes ago.

You spent far more time with Nezha than I ever did. But I can’t stand here and watch you kill him–no matter what that does to my reputation.

I put all of my weight into my right foot, preparing to dart forward the instant he raised his blade. At the same time, I sensed Asuna shifting position as well.

“Don’t do anything, Asuna.”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Don’t you get it? If you interfere with this, you won’t be allowed among this group anymore. You might even be labeled a criminal.”

“I still won’t stop. Don’t you remember what I said the first time we met? I left the Town of Beginnings so that I could be myself.”

“...”

I didn’t have any time or arguments with which to convince her. Instead, I merely signed in resignation and nodded.

Somehow, the angry shouting that filled the coliseum had turned to silence again, everyone watched wide-eyed, waiting with bated breath for the fateful moment.

And perhaps because I was concentrating so hard...I picked out the quiet voice from Orlando’s helmet, even though I was nowhere near close enough to hear it. “I’m sorry...I’m so sorry, Nezuo.”

The paladin laid down his sword next to the chakram on the ground. He took a few steps and got down on his knees next to Nezha, facing the same direction, removed his helmet, and put his hands flat on the tile.

Beowulf, Cuchulainn, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu followed his lead, setting down their weapons and helmets and getting into a line with Nezha at the center.

Amid dead silence, the five–no, six Legend Braves bowed in apology to the rest of the raid.

Eventually, Orlando spoke up, his trembling voice the only sound in the coliseum,

“Nezuo...Nezha is our partner. We’re the ones who forced him to commit that fraud.”

 

14

“So why do we have to be the errand-runners here?” Asuna grumbled as she trudged along.

I shrugged and answered, “What can you do? It’s just the way it is.”

“No, not that! We were a party of two during the first boss fight, but this time we had a full six!”

“Only because Agil was considerate enough to let us join him. We’ll need to thank him when this all blows over.”

Asuna raised an eyebrow at me. “W-what?”

“Nothing. I’m just wondering if your skill at getting along is earning a few proficiency points.”

“That’s...” my line, I wanted to say, but I held it in. “That should be clear, since I have a gift for him, too.”

“Oh? What’s that, the Mighty Straps you found in the labyrinth?”

“...Ooh, good idea. I’ll have to give those to him, too.” I patted my fist into my palm.

Asuna looked at me doubtfully, then her eyes went wide with understanding.

“Oh, I know! You’re going to foist that thing you’ve been keeping in the inn chest off on Agil!”

“Indeed.”

She was referring to the large Vendor’s Carpet that Nezha left with me when he abandoned his blacksmithing and went off to learn the Martial Arts skill. It was an expensive and useful item, but offered little benefit to a combat-focused character. Plus, it couldn’t be placed in one’s inventory, so it had to be rolled up and hoisted around by hand.

“Agil might be a warrior, but he seems likely to know some promising future blacksmiths, wouldn’t you suspect? I’m sure Nezha would be happy knowing that it went to good use.”

“But what if Agil himself wakes up to the lures of running his own business?”

“...Then I’ll be his first customer,” I answered glibly.

Asuna sighed and glanced ahead. We were walking up the spiral staircase between the second and third floors. But for some unknown design purpose, the stairs spiraled around the entire eight-hundred-foot-wide tower, meaning that we actually had to walk a distance of over 2,500 feet...plus height.

But because there were no monsters on the staircase, it was still a much easier exit from the tower than going from the boss chamber all the way down to the front entrance.

As the roving strikers (or, if you prefer, leftovers) of the raid, Asuna and I had been given our orders by Lind: to leave the labyrinth, which was shut off from all instant messages, and deliver the news of our victory to all the players who were eagerly awaiting an update.

Normally this would be the job–no, privilege–of Lind or Kibaou. But the main raid force could not leave the boss chamber for another hour or so. Not because they were locked inside but because they were too busy talking. The debate raged on about how to deal with Nezha and the Legend Braves.

But I no longer had any concerns about the outcome of that discussion. The instant that Orlando and his partners had laid down their weapons and admitted their sins, the conclusion was foretold. No matter how heated up the group was, they weren’t so bloodthirsty that they would execute a group of six players, and the addition of the Braves to the guilty side changed the equation: Now Shivata and the others could realistically be repaid for their lost weapons.

Orlando explained every last detail of the deception and removed all of his equipment, not just the sword and helm. The other four followed his lead, and produced a small mountain of high-level gear that would fetch a price beyond my estimation.

He told the group that if they turned all of these items into cash, it would surpass the value of the lost weapons–they’d sunk their own honestly earned money into the armor as well–and serve as a repayment for all the victims of their scheme. If there was cor left over, it could be used as a potion fund for the next boss battle.

Now that the damages were able to be repaid, the remaining problem was the player who died because his weapon was stolen.

Under the current configuration of SAO, no amount of money could make up for a lost life. The Legend Braves offered to go find the fellows companions and apologize in person, if that would help in any way. When they asked the dagger user who’d brought this story up, he backed down on his assertion, saying that it was just a rumor and he didn’t know the name.

In the end, the group decided to ask the information agent to discover the truth of the matter. The first controversy over player-swindling in Aincrad was about to reach a close without bloodshed, but there was one problem remaining: how to convert the dozens of pieces of high-powered equipment into cash.

There was always the option of selling them to NPC merchants in town. But the NPC’s prices were always kept below the market rate by the “invisible hand” of the system in order to combat inflation. If we were going to get the maximum value, the transitions had to be with other players.

The people with the most cor and the largest need for good equipment were the front-line players. So Lind and Kibaou considered the possibility of selling that equipment to the few dozen players present in the boss chamber and donating the money to Shivata’s group of three.

 

Of course, there were more victims of the scheme than just the people present here, so proper payment would need to be made once everyone went back to town.

So the delay in leaving the boss chamber was due to a spontaneous auction. Sadly, none of the items was suitable for agile leather-wearers like me and Asuna–and even if there were some, I wouldn’t have been in the mood to buy and equip them. As we stood around feeling relieved that a peaceful solution was found, Lind came over and said, “If you don’t have anything better to do, could you leave the dungeon and tell the newspapers that our conquest was successful?”

I couldn’t find a good reason to decline his request, so I prodded the reluctant Asuna, and we went out the door in the back of the chamber to the next floor. Agil and his friends waved good-bye, but we didn’t have an opportunity to say anything to Nezha the former blacksmith.

As soon as Orlando and his friends lined up around him, his little back trembled and shook with constant sobs.

“Well, it seems like the case of fraud is going to wrap up safely...What do you suppose Nezha and the Braves are going to do next?” Asuna wondered as she climbed the gently sloping staircase.

I mulled it over. “Depends on them. They can’t prevent the tale of the Braves’ shady behavior from spreading around the front line. Either they’ll have to avoid everyone here and go back down to the Town of Beginnings, or start over from scratch and try to reach our level again. Before we left, Lind told me that if they wanted to, he’d allow them to keep a minimum of cor necessary for the equipment they’ll need to hang around. But no matter what they choose, they won’t treat Nezha like a third wheel.”

“Hmm...To be honest, I’m still not sure how I feel about Orlando...But if they do make it back to the front line, I’ll do my best to work with them. I mean, even you did all right with Lind and Kibaou, didn’t you?”

I nearly missed a step.

“I-I haven’t changed my attitude a bit! If anything, they’re the ones who are acting weird. Kibaou’s totally anti-tester, and Lind’s trying to raise an elite fighting force, so solos like me are only an obstacle to his goals. And yet, both of them were being oddly normal...”

Asuna momentarily looked frosty when I uttered the word solo. She sighed and said, “As usual, you’re completely clueless.”

“Huh? How so?”

“If all of the frontier players were under the lead of either Lind or Kibaou alone, they would have been much more open about excluding you. But the blue Dragon Knights and the green Aincrad Liberation Squad are jockeying for power even as they work together, right?”

“Um, yeah...”

“In the current situation, they’re both on edge. They think that if they antagonize you too much, you’ll end up aligning with the other team.”

“Me? With either blue or green?” I came to a standstill and chuckled. “Ha-ha, no way. They’d shut the door in my face, even if I actually wanted to join. I’m the evil beater, right? I mean, even today...”

I shut my mouth and started hopping up the steps. Asuna hurried to catch up, looking skeptical, then raised a finger in sudden understanding.

“Hey, by the way, what happened to the boss’s last attack bonus? On Asterios the Taurus Xing, I mean. I didn’t get the prompt.”

“Uhh, ahh, umm...”

“And now that I think about it, didn’t you win the LA on Colonel Nato and General Baran? You didn’t get the king too, did you...?”

“Um, well, that’s, uh–hey, is that the exit?”

“Oh, no, you don’t! You did win it, didn’t you? What did he drop? Tell me!”

Suddenly we were both jogging up the stairs. At the end of the gently curving staircase was a thick door decorated with a relief. The scene was of two swordsmen facing off among gnarled old trees. The left was dark-skinned, and the right was pale, but both were slender and fragile, with pointed ears.

The picture was meant to represent the theme of the floor ahead, I thought to myself.

Nezha–no, Nataku. You were the real MVP of the second floor. Come on back to us. The front line’s a scary, dangerous place...but it’s where you’ll find what you really wanted. And the front line needs you, too. After all...

“In a way, the third floor is where SAO really starts,” I said aloud. Asuna caught up to me, looking puzzled rather than harassing me more about the LA. “It is? Why is that?”

I started off with my now-familiar, unhelpful refrain: “Um, well...”

And savoring each and every step, I crossed the final thirty feet of the second floor of Aincrad.

 

Afterword

 

Hello, this is Reki Kawahara, author of Sword Art Online Progressive 1.

The word progressive might make you think of video formats, but in this case it is meant in the “incremental increase” sense. I chose this title to represent the task of conquering Aincrad bit by bit, from the very first floor. From this point on, I’ll be using the abbreviation SAOP.

So first of all, I should explain why I decided to start writing this series.

If you’ll permit me to repeat what I said in the afterword of the first volume of SAO, I wrote the story as a submission for the Dengeki Novel Award, so I had to finish the story with the game being beaten, right in the very first installment. Later on, I wrote a number of shorter prequel stories that filled in gaps (see Volumes 2 and 8), but they’re more like little episodes, and don’t focus on the meat and potatoes of the players advancing through game.

So I’ve always harbored a secret desire to write about how Kirito and the others cleared each floor and defeated each boss in the game, it just didn’t really happen until now. Because I’m now trying to write it all over again from the first floor, it creates a number of issues.

Biggest of all is how to deal with Asuna, the heroine. In the previously published series, Kirito doesn’t get to know Asuna until much, much later. If I depicted Kirito as working with Asuna on the first and second floor of Aincrad, it would contradict what I’ve already published.

For a long time, I wavered between two options: avoiding that contradiction by starting off Progressive with a different heroine, or embracing the contradiction and going with Asuna right from the start.

Ultimately, I admitted to myself that it didn’t feel right having anyone but Asuna at Kirito’s side, and I suspect that most of my readers feel the same way. So I decided to have Kirito meet Asuna right away.

Of course, I’m certain that some readers will not be able to accept the contradictions with what I’ve written before, and that’s okay. But I will do my utmost to make sure that the choices I make line up with the established events as best I can. My hope is that you’ll be able to overcome my inconsistency and enjoy this new series for what it is.

Now that I’ve gotten my customary apologies out of the way, let’s go over each of these stories.

“Aria of a Starless Night,” the story of the first floor of Aincrad, picks up right after the story of “The First Day,” which is found in Volume 8 of the main series. We see characters that had only appeared in name before, such as Kibaou, future leader of the Army, and the information dealer, Argo the Rat. Then, of course, there are old favorites like Agil before he became a businessman, and Asuna when she was just a beginner to MMORPGs. It was a very strange mix of the new and familiar as I was writing. Of course, Kirito is still Kirito.

Part of the point of Progressive is to explain the systems of in greater detail, so “Aria” spends a lot of time covering the concept of a “boss raid.” I hope you really got the feel for a great big group of eight parties of six members each. If it didn’t make sense to you, watch the second episode of the SAO anime series, please! Ha-ha.

The story of the second floor, “Rondo of a Fragile Blade,” features a whole host of new faces. It took me quite a while to decide if the character of Nezha should be a man or a woman. Eventually, I got the feeling that having him be a girl would pose a whole new set of problems, so I took the easy route in making him a man.

I meant to have this tale feature the weapon upgrading system, but I let it slip away from me a bit, and the result was more of a mystery story surrounding the concept of upgrade fraud.

Since there wasn’t much fighting in the early part of the story, I wanted to feature a nice, meaty boss battle, and ended up bringing out quite a nasty boss for just the second floor of the game. If that happened in a real MMO, I would totally throw in the towel!

Those two stories made up the first volume of SAOP. I’ve already got the title of the third-floor story picked out: “Concerto of Black and White.” In game system terms, I’m going to focus on the theme of campaign quests.

Well, now that I’ve gone and done a sneak peek for the next volume, I should probably come clean and admit that I don’t think I can write more than one volume of Progressive a year. So if I cover two floors a year, when will I actually get to the seventy-fifth floor...? I’m too scared to consider the possibilities! Hope to see you in Volume 2!

And of course, I’ll be continuing with the main SAO series. Part Three of the Alicization arc, Volume 11, should be coming out in December. Kirito and Eugeo will be tackling the mysteries of the Underworld. Please check it out.

Also, the continuation of SAO means that I’ll need to skip Accel World this time around. Deep apologies! But since Volume 9 and 10 of that came put in quick succession, it should be back to its normal schedule now. I’m not sure how long I will be able to keep up writing a book every other month (in fact, it’s already looking hairy)...but I’ll do my best!

Thanks once again to my illustrator abec-san for eagerly tackling two series at once, to my editor Miki-san for eagerly (I think) tackling this five hundred-page monster of a book, and to my vice editor Tsuchiya-san for dealing with the ulcers (I assume) of waiting for my very late replies to every message. And to those of you who read to the end of this very thick book, the greatest LA bonus of my gratitude!

Reki Kawahara–August 2012

 

 

Credits

 

Translation:³⁶

Black Cats of the Full Moon

Thinklife

Pryun

BeginnerXP

Yen Press: Stephen Paul

Editing:

MySpl33n

Gsimenas

Mttblue2

Illustrations:

http://ruranobe.ru

Mttblue2

Thanks!

Compiled:

Mamue

---

Notes

[←1]

      The tower connecting each floor is referred to as a 迷宮区(Labyrinth district), while regular dungeons are just called ダンジョン (Engrish for „dungeon“). Yen Press also translates迷宮 as „labyrinth“ instead of „dungeon“. Thus the translation has been altered to use „labyrinth“ to refer the tower and „dungeon“ to refer to a dungeon in general.

[←2]

      Argo accents the last syllable in any sentence. This is reflected in the translation by capitalizing the last letter

[←3]

      -shi is a more formal version of the honorific -san

[←4]

      Basically the term for how the education system grades students relative to each other’s grades.

[←5]

      The actual word they use here is 気持ち的, which is difficult to translate into English, but the context of Diavel’s words make “in his heart” the best way to express the meaning in English.

[←6]

      A different pronunciation of the suffix “-san” that is used in the Kansai dialect of Japanese. Kibaou speaks in this dialect, but unfortunately I don’t know how to express it in English

[←7]

      Kibaou refers to the beta testers as ベータ上がりども, which roughly translates as “beta testers”.

[←8]

      The word “Kiba” means “fang” in Japanese and “Ou” means “king”, so his name would translate as “Fang King”.

[←9]

      POTs: Game term, short for healing and various other potions.

[←10]

      100 Cor in the web, 50 in the published version.

[←11]

      The all-capitals ‘INN’ is said in English as a common game term, while the lower case ‘inn’ is said in Japanese

[←12]

      120 Cor in the web, changed to 80 in the published version.

[←13]

      Kanji = 鍵開け(lock opening), furigana = ピッキング (picking)

[←14]

      A tatami is Japanese floor mat made from straw, in this case it was used to describe the size of the room big enough to fit 20 of them (approximately 330 square feet).

[←15]

      A Dungeons and Dragons Tabletop RPG term, for example if someone cast a death spell on you, and your dice roll is sufficient, you won't die.

[←16]

      Mountain bike

[←17]

      Computer display brightness: Gamma correction

[←18]

      A Heater Shield is a form of European medieval shield, developed from the early medieval Kite Shield.

[←19]

      A «Talwar» is a sword or saber with a curved blade. The word talwar literally means sword or dagger in the majority of the languages of the South Asian Subcontinent, where the «Talwar» is from.

[←20]

      GJ means Good Job

[←21]

      Tsumujiguruma: Kanji is旋車, which basically means “whirling wheel”

[←22]

      Nodachi: A curved blade like the katana, but much longer.

[←23]

      Ukifune: Kanji is浮舟, which basically means “floating boat”

[←24]

      Hiōgi: Kanji is緋扇, which basically means “scarlet fan”

[←25]

      By Pryun: In this sentence Kirito is saying that, "for the bud (which refers to Asuna) to perish (ie: be killed) before it blooms (before Asuna grows to reach her full potential), would be an extremely unacceptable situation for any person (Kirito included) who is fascinated by VRMMOs (ie: takes VRMMOs seriously)."

[←26]

      Tsujikaze: The original kanji for this is 辻風, which means “whirlwind”

[←27]

      Iaido is Japanese martial art associated with the smooth, controlled movements of drawing the sword from its scabbard, striking or cutting an opponent, removing blood from the blade, and then replacing the sword in the scabbard.

[←28]

      ”Post-motion” is the English term the author uses in furigana, while the kanji beneath would best describe it as “after technique stiffness”. Basically, it means the temporary delay in movement after using a sword skill.

[←29]

      By intentionally moving my body, it means that the user he has to move his body without the use of the system assist.

[←30]

      Meaning that the chance of failure was 1 in 15 or 16.

[←31]

      Gengetsu: The original kanji for this is 幻月, which means “phantom moon”

[←32]

      Note that this is said in English by Agil.

[←33]

      CBT: Closed Beta Test

[←34]

Kiriemon = Kirito + Doraemon

[←35]

      The "S" in weapon parameters is supposed to mean Sharpness, but it is referred to as Speed here, although it had been written correctly as Sharpness in other instances in the book.

[←36]

      Translation from of Aria from https://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online:Aria_in_the_Starless_Night on March 30, 2014.

Translation of Intermission from http://dreadfuldecoding.blogspot.de/2012/11/sword-art-online-progressive-volume-1.html on May 5, 2016.

Translation of Rondo from the official release https://www.hachettebookgroup.biz/titles/reki-kawahara/sword-art-online-progressive-1/9780316259361/. Thanks to plsnoriperino for providing the digital copy.