“…Thank you, Leafa.”
As Leafa looked into those teary eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that it was just a piece of program code. She put on her most heartfelt smile and stroked Yui’s tiny cheek before turning to Kirito.
“Well, at this point, I suppose it can’t be helped. We’ve just got to do what we can.”
“Do…what exactly?” Kirito blinked. This time, Leafa gave him a confident grin.
“See if we can make it to one of those staircases and up to the surface on our own. The only thing we accomplish by sitting here is wasting time.”
“B-but you said it was impossible…”
“I said it was ninety nine percent impossible. Let’s bet on that remaining one percent. If we pay close attention to the movement patterns and eyelines of the wandering Gods, we might just make it.”
“You’re so cool, Leafa!” Yui piped up, applauding. Leafa threw her a wink and got to her feet. But Kirito grabbed her sleeve and pulled her back down.
“Wh-what?”
She awkwardly fell on her bottom and was about to launch a protest when she saw those black eyes staring into her at close range. He had fixed her with a fierce glare, and his voice lost its earlier frivolity.
“No…I want you to log out. I’ll watch your avatar until it’s gone.”
“Huh? Wh-why?”
“It’s almost two thirty now. Aren’t you a student? You’ve been in a dive with me for eight hours already today. I can’t force you to spend any more of your time here.”
“. . .”
Leafa had no response to this sudden demand. Kirito continued.
“We don’t even know how long it will take to walk there in a straight line. Evading the search radius of those gigantic monsters could double the travel time. Even if we reach the staircase, it’ll be morning by then. I need to get to Alne at all costs, but it’s a weekday for you. I think you should log off.”
“I…I’m fine, I can handle one measly all-nighter,” she protested weakly, trying to put on a brave face.
But Kirito released her sleeve and bowed his head formally, attempting to force the conversation to a close.
“Thank you for everything, Leafa. It would have taken me days and days just to gather basic information about this world without you. It was only because of you that I could get this far in only half a day. I can never thank you enough.”
“. . .”
Leafa clutched her hands together, unable to bear the sudden pain that stung her breast. She didn’t know why she was hurting. But her lips moved automatically, pushing the trembling words out.
“…I didn’t do it just for you.”
“Huh…?”
Kirito raised his head, but Leafa firmly looked away, her voice hard.
“I came this far…because I wanted to. I thought you understood that. What do you mean, ‘force me to spend my time with you’? Did you think I was doing all of this against my will?”
The AmuSphere detected the emotions rising to the front of her mind, and translated them faithfully into teardrops welling in her eyes. She blinked furiously to stifle them. Yui looked at each of them with panic, and Leafa had to stand and face the exit to avoid her gaze.
“Today’s adventure was the most fun I’ve had since I started playing ALO. There was so much excitement and drama. Finally, finally, I was able to believe this world was another reality of its own, but now…”
She vigorously rubbed her eyes with her right arm and turned to run out into the darkness.
But before she could—
An alarming, bizarre sound, neither thunder nor tremor, sounded from very close by.
Brrroooo! It was a howl from the throat of an extremely large monster, no doubt about it. It was followed by thudding, groundshaking footsteps.
Oh no, I just had to shout and draw a Deviant God down on us! I’m so stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought to herself. But if there was one way to make up for her mistake, it was that she could run out into the open and draw the beast away.
Before she could move, Kirito was behind her, holding her arm back.
“Let me go! I’m going to pull the monster away so you can keep going,” she hissed, but he cut her off with a sharp glance.
“No, wait. Something’s wrong.”
“Wrong? What…?”
“It’s not one of them.”
She stopped to focus her ears—he was right. Aside from the low engine rumble of the Deviant God’s roar, there was a whistling sound, like wind through branches. Leafa held her breath and tried to shake his hand off her arm.
“If there are two of them, that makes it even more imperative! If either of them targets you, it’s all the way back to Swilvane to start over!”
“It’s not that, Leafa!” exclaimed Yui from Kirito’s shoulder. “The two approaching Deviant God monsters…are attacking each other!”
“Huh?”
Leafa blinked in surprise and listened again. Indeed, the rumbling footsteps were not the steady gallop of creatures approaching on a run, but the uneven pattern of two beasts circling each other.
“B-but…why would two mobs be fighting each other…?” she muttered in shock, her crushing sadness instantly forgotten. Kirito seemed to have made up his mind.
“Let’s go out and see. This shrine isn’t much of a shelter, anyway.”
“G-good idea…”
Leafa joined Kirito and snuck out into the swirling snows and darkness, her hand on her katana hilt.
It only took a few steps for them to spot the Deviant Gods that were the source of the cacophony. The pair of monsters slowly approached from the east, like two small moving mountains. They were at least seventy feet tall, by any estimate. Both were the bluish-gray color unique to all Deviant Gods.
There was a slight difference in size between the two: The one that rumbled like an engine was larger than the one that whistled like the wind.
The bigger one might charitably have been described as humanoid. It was a giant with three faces stacked vertically, and four arms sprouting from its sides. Each of the faces was sputtering individually, stony and menacing like evil deities, and the combination of their muttering created that odd engine rumbling. The four arms each held a titanic sword, as crude and blocky as steel rebar from a construction site.
The smaller Deviant God was absolutely incomprehensible in design. The large ears and wide mouth were vaguely elephantine, but the body was flattened and round like a dumpling, supported by around twenty clawed legs. It was like a jellyfish with the head of an elephant. It reared up in an attempt to slash at the three-faced giant, but the whirlwind of those swords kept the creature from reaching its target. Each time the tip of one of the swords hit the dumpling body, filthy black liquid sprayed out like mist.
“Wh…what’s going on…?” Leafa wondered in amazement, all thoughts of hiding forgotten.
There were three basic scenarios in which monsters in ALO might fight one another.
The first was if one of the monsters was a pet that had been tamed by a cait sith player, who were known for their taming skill. The second was if a pooka charmed one with their characteristic battle songs. The third was if they’d been confused by illusion magic.
But none of those applied to this battle. A pet could be instantly identified by its light green cursor, but both Deviant Gods’ were the standard-monster yellow. There was no music, only rumbling, whistling, and shuffling footsteps. Nor was there any hint of the visual effects of illusion magic.
The two monstrous creatures continued their battle without a thought spared for their flabbergasted audience. After a few moments, it became apparent that the three-faced giant’s superiority over the jellyphant was decisive. One of its swords caught a clawed tentacle at the base. The appendage flew free and landed close enough to send vibrations through Leafa’s body.
“Um, do you think it’s dangerous to stand here?” Kirito wondered. Leafa agreed, but she was frozen still. She cou
ldn’t take her eyes off the elephantine Deviant God, whose wounds were spurting black blood over the white snow.
The maimed god gave a whirling screech and attempted to disengage again. But the giant had other plans; it leaped onto the dumpling body and swung its blades with wild abandon. The jellyphant was pushed into the ground by the pressure, its cries growing weaker and weaker. Countless ugly gashes were struck into its gray hide, but the giant above showed no mercy.
“Let’s help it, Kirito,” Leafa said. If she was shocked by this sudden thought, Kirito was three times as flabbergasted. He looked back and forth between Leafa and the giants.
“Wh-which one?”
He had a point. The three-faced one seemed at least somewhat familiar with its humanoid shape, while the jellyphant was just plain horrifying. But the choice was clear.
“The one being picked on, of course,” she answered. Kirito’s next question was predictably sensible.
“H-how?”
“Umm…”
She had no response to that one—Leafa had no idea how to help it. But even as they stood there, the giant was slicing deep furrows in the grayish hide of the elephantine creature’s back.
“…Just do something, Kirito!!” she wailed, clutching her hands together. The spriggan boy looked upward in frustration and ran his hands through his black hair.
“But I don’t know what that something should be…”
Suddenly, he stopped moving and gave the beasts a hard stare. His eyes narrowed, light flashing deep within them. She could practically see the high-speed thoughts racing through his brain.
“If there’s a meaning behind that body type…” he murmured to himself. Then he looked around with a start and whispered to the tiny pixie on his shoulder, “Yui, is there any water nearby? Lake or river, anything will do!”
She blinked in surprise, but answered him without question. “There is, Papa! There’s a frozen lake about two hundred yards north of us!”
“Good…Ready, Leafa? We’re going to run there like our lives depend on it.”
“Um…huh?”
When he spoke of body type, was he referring to the three-faced, four-armed giant? What did that have to do with a water surface?
Kirito pushed her lightly on the back and pulled something from his belt that looked like a thick nail. Leafa suspected it was a throwing pick, but she’d never seen anyone use them before. With all the powerful long-range magic in ALO, it was nearly pointless to spend time training up the Throwing Weapons skill.
But with a practiced motion, Kirito spun the five-inch pick within his fingertips and raised it above his shoulder.
“Yah!”
He flicked his hand forward faster than the eye could follow, and the metal nail shot forth in a blue line.
It struck the giant’s top face right between its gleaming, dark red eyes.
To her surprise, Leafa noticed that the massive creature’s HP bar actually went down a single pixel. He couldn’t possibly break through that Deviant God’s powerful armor with such a toylike implement unless his skill level was incredibly high.
It was only a tiny drop in the bucket of the giant’s massive store of HP; the real takeaway was that any damage had been done at all. Because now…
“Bbbrrrooo!”
It roared and turned three pairs of eyes from its previous victim to its new target: Kirito and Leafa.
“Time to run!” Kirito screamed and turned north, spraying snow as he dashed.
H-hey… Leafa mouthed in surprise, then took off after the rapidly shrinking spriggan. A moment later, the ground beneath her feet rumbled and her ears were filled with the sound of bellowing. The giant was chasing them.
“W-wait…Aaaaah!”
Leafa was now running as fast as her legs would go, but Kirito was pulling even farther away, his form as perfect as an Olympic sprinter’s. She’d experienced his running speed before in the Lugru Corridor on the surface world above, but it wasn’t quite so thrilling when he was using it to leave her in the dust.
“Thiiiiis suuuuuucks!” she wailed, as the massive thudding footsteps drew closer behind her. The Deviant God was thirteen times Leafa’s height, so the ground it covered in a single step must be about the same. She could practically imagine those giant rebar swords swinging at her back, and put every ounce of her strength—technically, every ounce of her brain’s commands—into running after Kirito.
Suddenly the figure in black skidded to a halt in front of her with a spray of snow. Arms open wide, Kirito spun around to catch her. Despite the situation, she couldn’t help but feel a little flushed in the face, and turned to look back.
The three-faced giant loomed over them, terrifyingly close. A few more steps and it would be upon them. Just a single blow from its massive swords would easily obliterate lightly armored fighters like Kirito and Leafa.
What in the world is your plan?! she silently hissed at her partner. At nearly the same moment, a monstrous cracking sound echoed throughout the underground clearing.
The giant’s enormous, tree-trunk leg had punctured the ice hidden beneath the snow drifts. Kirito had stopped them directly in the center of the snow-covered lake.
The ground just fifty feet ahead of them cratered in, revealing dark, clear water. The three-faced giant plunged into the hole of its own creation, sending up a towering plume of water.
“P-please, please just sink…” Leafa prayed with all of her being, but it would not be that simple. Almost immediately, a face and a half emerged from the water and began sloshing toward them. It must have been using the pair of arms below the surface like oars, and, despite its rocklike exterior, it indeed proved itself a skilled swimmer. If dropping the beast into the lake was Kirito’s plan, then the gamble had backfired.
She tensed herself for another mad dash, but Kirito held her close and did not budge. His grip was so tight, the game’s antiharassment code could have kicked in at any moment. He stared down the approaching giant.
“…Uh…y-you don’t mean to…”
Does he just want to die here? she wondered instinctually.
Not long ago, she’d suggested that they allow themselves to be killed so that they could respawn at their save point: Swilvane, capital of sylph territory.
That was not an option. Every event, every incident that had occurred throughout this long, long day had told her how urgent it was for Kirito to get to the World Tree looming over Alne in the center of the map. The spriggan boy dove into ALO solely to meet someone atop it. They’d overcome all these challenges just for that purpose.
“No, you can’t—! You have to…” She struggled to free herself from his arms, but her piteous wail was interrupted by another large splash.
Leafa turned her head with a start to see a fresh plume of water behind the approaching three-faced giant. Its whirling, high-pitched roar was that of the elephant-headed Deviant God the giant had been tormenting just moments ago. All this work to pull the attacker away, and it had followed after them.
And as Leafa watched in shock and awe, all other details forgotten, it burst through the surface of the water, stretching out its grasping limbs, nearly twenty in all, and clung to the giant’s faces and arms.
Baroomf! the giant grunted in rage, attempting to swing its heavy iron swords. But the water slowed its movements, and the jellyphant’s grip stayed strong.
“Oh…I see,” Leafa murmured in wonder.
The jellyphant was an aquatic monster by nature. On land, the majority of its many limbs had to be used to support its dumpling body, but now its bulk was floating on the water’s surface, leaving all of those legs free to attack. Meanwhile, the giant had to use two of its arms to paddle, halving its combat ability.
When Kirito was muttering about body type, he’d been referring to the elephantine Deviant God. In retrospect, it seemed perfectly obvious to question why a creature modeled after a jellyfish would be on land. Leafa felt a twinge of disappointment in herself.
Lik
e a fish—well, a jellyfish—taking to water, the wiggler climbed atop the three-faced giant, pushing it down beneath the surface. The water swelled now and then with the struggle of the massive creatures, hitting the lip of the ice to spray through the air.
Suddenly, the jellyphant screeched louder than usual, and its body flashed brightly. The light turned to fine sparks, which shot through its twenty legs and into the water.
“Oh…”
“Yes!!”
Leafa and Kirito exclaimed together. The three-faced giant’s HP bar was quickly plummeting. Leafa used her Identification skill, which displayed a number with six digits trailing downward with every burst of sparks.
There was a series of red flashes beneath the surface that caused several jets of steam to erupt—possibly the three-faced giant’s final struggle—but it had little effect on the jellyphant’s health. Eventually, the rumbling roar slowed down and died away. In the next moment, a mammoth explosion of tiny polygonal shards obscured Leafa’s vision.
She turned away for a moment, and when she looked back, there was only one cursor left.
Hrroooooo, the jellyphant exclaimed in victory, raising its many appendages into the air before proceeding to swim through the lake.
It hoisted itself onto the shore, great waterfalls running off its massive bulk, and began to cross the creaking ice toward them. Leafa watched with apprehension.
The creature’s footfalls shook the ice beneath them as it approached. When it stopped before them, she marveled again at the preposterous size of the thing. Those tentacles, seemingly so thin and fragile when it was fighting the giant, were too large for her to fit both arms around up close. They stretched high like tree trunks, supporting the dumpling-shaped body that was only vaguely visible far overhead.
The face at the front of its wide trunk really did look a lot like an elephant’s. The flappers that were actually more like gills than ears spread to the sides of the round face, and the drooping mouth hung almost as low as those pendulous limbs. It had three gleaming eyes covered in black lenses on either side of the face, which would have been creepier if it weren’t for their humorous triangle shape, which made them look like rice balls.