“…Seriously?”
“Dead serious.”
They traded devious smirks, and Leafa sighed to herself. “Men…”
“Very disappointing, isn’t it?” Yui muttered from her shoulder. The two men exchanged nods of approval at the completion of their transaction, seemingly oblivious to the stares of disgust from the women.
Once the salamander started talking, he wouldn’t stop.
“So earlier this evening, Gtacs—Oh, that’s the leader of our mage squad. Anyway, he sent me a text saying to get into the game. I was eating dinner so I didn’t want to go, but he said it was mandatory. So I come online, and we’re putting together, like, more than a dozen people just to hunt down two? I was like, ‘What kind of messed-up torture is this?’ But then they said it was the people who took down Kagemune yesterday, so I was like, ‘Oh…’”
“Who’s Kagemune?”
“The captain of the lancers. He’s an expert sylph hunter, so it was crazy when he got his butt whooped and had to turn tail and flee yesterday. That was you, right?”
Leafa shared a glance with Kirito, grimacing at the term sylph hunter. He was probably talking about the leader of the salamander squad they’d defeated the previous night.
“And what was this Gtacs doing, going after us?”
“It was an order from above him, apparently. Something about how you were an obstacle to the plan…”
“What plan?”
“I dunno, it’s some big-time business for the big-time ’manders. They don’t explain things to a guy like me way down on the totem pole, but it’s something big, that’s for sure. I saw a huge army of folks flying off to the north when I logged in.”
“North…”
Leafa put a finger to her lips and thought. Gatan, the salamander capital, was on the very southern edge of Alfheim. A line drawn straight north from there would take them right to the very mountain range they were currently beneath. To the west was the entrance to the Lugru Corridor, and to the east was a gap in the mountains called the Dragon’s Valley. Whichever direction they took, the next destination after that would be Alne, then the World Tree.
“Are you trying to conquer the World Tree?” Leafa asked.
He shook his head. “No way. We learned our lesson after the last disaster. We’re saving up yrd to outfit everyone in the raid party with ancient weapons. They’re forcing everyone to raise a huge quota…and we’re not even halfway there yet.”
“Hmm…”
“But that’s all I know. You weren’t lying about our deal, right?” he asked Kirito.
“A real man never lies when it comes to a deal,” the spriggan boasted coolly. The salamander’s face lit up in delight as he saw the stacks of items and cash slide into his trade window.
Leafa had choice words for the man. “Isn’t that your friends’ equipment? You don’t feel guilty about taking it like this?”
He clucked his tongue. “You don’t get it. They show off their rare stuff all the damn time—that’s what makes this even sweeter. I’m not going to wear it, of course. I’ll sell it all off and buy myself a house or something.”
The salamander announced that he’d take a few days on the return trip, just to let the excitement cool down a bit, and took off in the direction they’d come.
Leafa stared at Kirito, who was back to his normal self, marveling at how the desperate battle they’d undergone not ten minutes before seemed to have never happened.
“Hmm? What’s up?”
“Oh, er…That giant demon was you, right?” she asked. Kirito looked up and away, and then scratched his chin.
“Mmm, I guess so.”
“You guess so…? Wasn’t the entire plan to make the salamanders panic when they saw you as a monster?”
“Actually, I hadn’t thought that far ahead…In fact, sometimes I just kind of snap in battle, and I lose all memory of what happens…”
“That’s scary!”
“But I do kind of remember that just now. I used the spell like Yui suggested, and I felt myself getting really huge. And since I lost my sword, I just had to use my hands…”
“You were also chewing on them!” Yui added gleefully from Leafa’s shoulder.
“Oh, right. You know, it was pretty fun getting to act like one of the monsters for once.”
Leafa felt an insatiable curiosity rise inside of her, and she hesitantly spoke her question aloud.
“So, um…did the salamanders have…a flavor?”
“They definitely had the texture of barbecued meat when it gets just a little charred—”
“N-never mind, never mind!” She waved her hands in panic. He abruptly snatched one of them.
“Grarh!” he snarled, opening wide and popping her fingers into his mouth.
“Aaaaaargh!”
The surface of the underground lake rippled with Leafa’s scream and the resulting smack.
“Ugh, oww…”
Kirito mumbled and trudged along, rubbing the cheek that Leafa had smacked with all her strength.
“That was your fault, Papa!”
“Tell me about it. How rude!”
Leafa and Yui were of one mind. Kirito pleaded his case, sulking like a scolded child.
“But I was just trying to make a witty, classy joke to break the ice after that terrifying battle…”
“Next time you’ll taste my sword, not my fingers.” Leafa shut her eyes and turned her face away, quickening her pace.
Before them loomed the massive stone gate, stretching all the way to the ceiling of the cavern. They had reached the entrance to Lugru, the mining city.
The plan was to spend a night here, to restock on supplies and gather intelligence about the latest developments. The unexpected battle on the bridge had eaten a lot of time, and it was nearly midnight in real life.
This was just the start of the busiest stretch of the day in ALO, but Leafa was a student, so she made sure to always log out by one o’clock. When she told Kirito, he thought for a moment, then nodded in understanding.
Through the gate, they were greeted by the clanging of hammers, as well as the lively accompaniment from the NPC musicians that served as game BGM.
The city itself was not very large, but it was an impressive sight; the rock walls lining the main thoroughfare were packed with clusters of stores and workshops hawking equipment, materials, food, and drinks. There was a surprising number of players crammed inside, and parties of relatively unfamiliar races like pookas and leprechauns passed by, laughing and chatting.
“So this is Lugru, huh…?”
Leafa couldn’t help but marvel at the novelty of the bustling underground hub. She wandered over to the row of swords on display at the nearest storefront. Even the least friendly shopkeeper couldn’t keep her from being excited about shopping.
She had just picked up a silver longsword from the stand to appraise it when Kirito spoke up from behind her. “By the way…”
“Hmm?”
“Didn’t you get some kind of message when we were attacked by the salamanders? What was that about?”
“…Oh.” Leafa spun around, her mouth agape. “I forgot.”
She hurriedly opened a window and checked her message history. Even after rereading, Recon’s warning made no sense. It could have just been an issue with his connection that cut off the end of it, but there were no signs of a follow-up.
In that case, she’d just have to ask him what he meant. But when Leafa tried to respond, Recon’s name was grayed out on the friends list. He was already offline.
“Sheesh. Is he asleep?”
“Maybe you could check with him offline,” Kirito suggested.
She didn’t like bringing anything about Alfheim back to the real world with her. She didn’t visit any of the ALO community sites, and she almost never discussed video games with Shinichi Nagata in real life.
But she couldn’t deny that something about that mysterious message was eating away at her.
“Okay, can you wait here while I log off to check? Just watch over my body for a few minutes. And Yui?”
The little fairy was still sitting on her shoulder. “Yes?”
“Watch Papa closely so he doesn’t try any funny business.”
“Aye-aye!”
“Oh, come on!” Kirito wailed, affronted. Leafa gave him a mischievous chuckle and sat down on a nearby bench.
She opened her menu and hit the log-out button, her fourth trip of the day between worlds. Her mind began floating dizzily upward toward the real world far, far above.
“Whew…”
Suguha sighed deeply at the fatigue she felt rising from another long dive.
She rolled over on the bed, AmuSphere still on her head, to look at the alarm clock. Midori would be home very soon. Maybe she should stick around to say hello…
Suguha reached over blindly and fumbled for the cell phone she’d left on the headboard stand above her pillow. The phone’s EL panel was integrated into its exterior finish. It spit out a list of messages that had arrived while she was in the game.
“What in the world?!”
Her eyes went wide. Twelve entries, all voice calls from Shinichi Nagata. The AmuSphere was configured so that calls of a certain priority—family, police, hospital—would automatically log out the player. Since Nagata didn’t fall under that category, she’d missed all of these calls. But what was he calling about at this time of night?
She popped the phone open, preparing to call him back, when his thirteenth call of the evening flashed the shell of the phone bright blue. She hit a button and put the device to her ear.
“Hi, Nagata? What’s going on?”
“Ah! Finally! What took you so long, Suguha?”
“Don’t give me that attitude. Nothin’ happened; I just got caught up in the game, ’s all.”
“L-listen, I’ve got bad news! Sigurd, he sold us out—not just us—he sold out Lady Sakuya, too!”
“Sold us out…? What do you mean? Start from the beginning.”
“Ugh, there’s no time…Okay, remember when the salamanders attacked us in the Ancient Forest yesterday? Didn’t anything strike you as weird?”
Despite his apparent haste, Nagata had returned to his typical dragging speech. When he called her by her first name like that in person, she always convinced him to stop via a physical attack or two, but over the phone, she didn’t have that option and had to put up with it.
The fact that the incident had only happened a day ago was somewhat of a shock to Suguha. It felt like she had met Kirito years and years ago.
“Huh? ‘Weird’…? What happened?”
Kirito’s entrance to the scene had left such an impression on her that the details of the air battle were fuzzy.
“When the group of eight salamanders set onto us, Sigurd said he would be a decoy, and he lured away three of them on his own, right?”
“Oh, now that you mention it…he didn’t get away, did he?”
“He didn’t. But thinking back on it, that wasn’t the way Sigurd usually acts. Whenever he would split up the party, the decoy had to be someone else. He never let anyone else remain to lead the group. Ever.”
“Ahh…good point.”
Sigurd’s leadership skill in battle was unquestionable, but he was also tyrannical and controlling—he always had to be on top. It was utterly unlike him to sacrifice himself for the sake of his party members.
“But then…why would he do that?”
“That’s the thing,” Nagata said sourly. “He’s working with the salamanders. Has been for a while, I suspect.”
“Huh?!”
Now Suguha was well and truly shocked. She clenched the phone in her hand.
The power game conducted among the various races of ALO meant that spoof accounts for the purpose of spying were an everyday occurrence. There was no doubt that several of the sylphs who called Swilvane home were actually fake accounts run by players whose main avatar was a different race—particularly salamanders.
Because of this, natural barriers arose—low-skill, low-contribution, low-activity players were never admitted to the center of power, due to the high likelihood of espionage. It wasn’t that long ago that even Leafa wasn’t allowed into the lord’s mansion behind the Tower of Wind.
But since the dawning of ALO, Sigurd had been heavily active in sylph politics. He had been a nominee in all four of the lord elections to this point. He was always a runner-up due to the overwhelming popularity of the current leader, but even after losing, he played the role of a valuable adviser. In short, he was an irreplaceable piece of sylph power.
It was almost impossible to believe that he could be spying for the salamanders.
“Oh, come on…do you have any proof of that?” she asked, her voice low.
“I had a hunch, so I went hollow this morning and shadowed Sigurd all day long.”
“…You really have nothing better to do, do you?”
He was referring to Hollow Body, an invisibility trick of Recon’s. Only those who had mastered both high-level concealment magic and the Sneaking skill could use it.
Recon took his player handle from the American military shorthand for “reconnaissance”—although he pronounced it “reckon” rather than “ree-con.” He’d designed his character for the purpose of scouting during hunts, which made him suited to tracking as well. He once made use of those skills to follow Leafa back into the inn room where she was staying, claiming that he was only going to leave her a surprise birthday present and leave without drawing any attention. He was beaten half to death for that crime.
Nagata continued, ignoring the exasperation in her voice.
“After the horrible stuff he said to you in the Tower of Wind, I was looking for a chance to poison him dead. And what did I see—”
“Oh my God, you’re crazy.”
“—but Sigurd and his pals putting on invisibility cloaks and vanishing. I knew they were up to something. They can try to sneak off, but mere items can’t fool me.”
“Enough of the bragging. What happened next?”
“They went into the sewers. After about five minutes of walking, there were these two fishy-looking folks waiting for them. They had invisibility cloaks, too, and when they took them off, would you believe it? They were salamanders!”
“What? But those cloaks don’t fool the NPC guardians, right? They would have been cut down the moment they walked into town. Unless…”
“Exactly. Unless they had Pass Medallions.”
Pass Medallions were special items given to individual visitors of another race when entering a home territory, and only after a stringent security check. They were only issued by the highest officers of each race and, once given, were non-transferrable. Who had the ability to give them out? Sigurd, of course.
“I knew I’d caught them red-handed. I listened in and heard the salamanders saying they’d put a tracer on you, Leafa. And not only that…the reason Lady Sakuya was away from home today was because she was meeting with the cait siths in a secret neutral location to discuss an alliance.”
“Ahh…so that’s why the flag at the mansion was down.”
Nagata shouted over her murmur of understanding. “Sigurd’s going to have a battalion of salamanders…attack the signing ceremony!”
“Wha—”
Suguha’s breath caught in her throat. She was prepared to leave it behind forever, but the sylph territory was still her home, and Sakuya was a benevolent leader. She unleashed her rising panic into the speaker.
“Y-you should have said so earlier! This is bad news!”
“That’s exactly what I said when you finally picked up the phone,” Nagata sulked. She cut him off before he kept whining.
“Well, did you tell Sakuya? There’s still time, right?”
“I knew it was big trouble, so I turned around to leave the sewer, and I accidentally kicked a rock…”
“You klutz! You idiot!”
“…You know,
these days it kind of feels good when you yell at me, Suguha…”
“Sicko!! What then? Did you get in touch with her?”
“The salamanders’ searcher stripped away my hiding spell. I wasn’t that worried, because I figured if they killed me, I’d just revive at the tower and run right into the lord’s mansion. But then they hit me with poison darts! Isn’t that messed up?”
This didn’t fly with what he’d said earlier, but she didn’t have time to bother with that.
“So…where are you now…?”
“The salamanders have me held prisoner in the sewer, paralyzed…There was nothing else I could do, so I logged out and tried to call you, but you wouldn’t pick up, and I don’t know how to contact anyone else in real life…Oh yeah, and they said the meeting with the cait sith leader is at one o’clock…Aww man, we only have forty minutes left! Wh-what should we do, Suguha?!”
She sighed deeply and spoke quickly.
“Do you know where the meeting is?”
“Not the precise coordinates…but it’s apparently past the Butterfly Valley on the other side of the mountains.”
“Got it. I’ll find a way to get there and warn them. I’ve got to hang up now to do that.”
“Wait, Suguha!” Nagata’s panicked voice stopped her finger at the button.
“What?”
“Umm, so, what’s going on with you and that Kirito guy?”
Click.
She hung up without answering and tossed the phone back onto her headboard, then closed her eyes and stuffed her face into her pillow. She said the one magic spellword at her disposal in real life, and then headed back into the world of plots and conspiracies.
Leafa jumped back to her feet the instant her eyes opened.
“Whoa, you scared me!!”
The black-clad spriggan nearly dropped the mysterious food he must have bought at a nearby stand—it looked like a skewer of small grilled reptiles—but he caught it in time.
“Hi again, Leafa.”
“Welcome back.”
Leafa didn’t have time to return Kirito and Yui’s greetings.
“Kirito—I’m sorry.”
“Uh, about what?”