Sword Art Online Progressive 4

  There could be three, four…or an entire gang of PKers out there in Aincrad somewhere…

  Could this be it? Was the swordsman, who was using the high-voiced, cloaked player as a spy to gain guild secrets, part of that PK gang Kirito was worried about…?

  In that case, Asuna was in much greater danger at the moment than she’d ever contemplated.

  She had been nervous earlier, but that was just because she was eavesdropping on a private conversation, and she would feel bad about being exposed. If she lied or apologized about it, she might even get them to help her escape the dungeon.

  But if they were PKers—murderers—and their important, secret contact deep in a dungeon was witnessed by someone else, how would they solve the situation? Threats? Bribery? Or…

  Her entire body went as cold as ice, freezing her solid. Meanwhile, the lackadaisical second player continued, “Hmm, that sounds nice. Things got a lil’ toooo soft between Kiba and Lin on the last two floors. We gotta stir things up and get ’em to clash again to keep it from being too boring.”

  “Don’t act like it’s that simple. It’s a hell of a job to manipulate a guild meeting into going any particular direction.”

  “Yeah, I know. But the boss is training us up on that point with that super-coooool conversational technique, you know?”

  “True, true. I think I’m finally getting the hang of the exact point where I’m not bein’ obnoxious by talking too much.”

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha, I’ve given up on that.”

  “Yeah, because the way you talk transcends obnoxious.”

  The first player chuckled and nimbly sat cross-legged atop the stalagmite, rocking back and forth.

  “Still, I just can’t tell what the boss is thinking. I know what he wants to do, but it’s just so twisted…I think he could get around to it in a much more direct way.”

  “Ha-ha, we’re just sowing the seeds now. Get too hasty, and the fun of our little festival will be over in moments.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. Enjoy the process, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  The two chuckled again, and Asuna felt a cold sweat run down her back.

  Boss. That was the word the two were using to refer to some kind of leader. Perhaps he was the man in the black poncho, the very one who led the Braves astray.

  Kirito’s fears were confirmed. At the moment, there was a PK gang of at least three members…and not the kind that just attacked people directly, but one plotting to confuse, agitate, and guide other players and guilds into committing provocation PKs.

  But why?

  That massive question came to Asuna’s mind again.

  What did they have to gain by pitting the DKB and ALS against each other, sowing chaos among the best players in the game? What profit could they derive that was greater or more important than escaping this game of death?

  If she had her Chivalric Rapier in hand, she would leap from her hiding spot and point it at them to demand answers. She would ask them what they were thinking.

  That momentary impulse shifted her avatar’s center of balance forward.

  The imbalance caused her right foot to step forward an inch or two. It was enough to rebalance herself, but the edge of her boot kicked a tiny pebble that happened to be resting on the spot.

  Tak, takak.

  The stone skittered forward, the sound echoing off the cave walls. The chuckles from the room, just fifteen feet away, stopped abruptly. Asuna straightened up, pressing her back hard against the wall.

  “…Did you hear something?” the swordsman whispered.

  The first player replied, “Hmm…maybe it’s a mob?”

  “It wasn’t the sound of a monster popping…What’s the hallway like down that way?”

  “It’s a straight shot for about sixty meters, then a dead end. If anyone snuck in there, we’d see the cursor—it’s a dead giveaway.”

  “Hmm…but in these natural dungeons, even straight passages have little dips and bends. That would suck if someone heard our little secret convo.”

  Oh no, they’re coming to check. Even in this darkness, they’ll get close enough to see me. I can’t win a fight with this starter rapier.

  She had to think. If her brain was sharp enough to imagine the worst-case scenario, she could come up with a plan to get out of this.

  A number of thoughts burned through her brain in the span of a second, like sparks, eventually forming an idea.

  Her right hand shot into her pouch, pulling out the piece of parchment with the failed instructions on it. She wadded it up and tossed it softly at her feet. It made no sound—it was just a rolled-up piece of paper lying on the ground.

  She then turned around and urged, Hurry, hurry, come quick!

  “…I guess I’ll go check it out,” came the swordsman’s voice. She heard him stand. Footsteps approached over the damp cave floor. One, two, three steps. Then…

  “Whoa! What the hell?” the first player shouted, at the same time as the screech of a rodent. A Sly Shrewman had reacted to Asuna’s toss of the sheet of paper, running through the little room from the other hallway.

  “Get the hell outta here!” he yelled, and the swordsman laughed.

  “C’mon, keep that door on the other end closed, please.”

  There was the sound of a sheath ringing, then a sword skill. Blue light briefly shone on the passage, and the shrewman screamed.

  “Stupid ratman, startling me like that. Musta been the sound of it scurrying around.”

  The sword returned to its sheath, and Asuna let out a long, silent breath. She crouched and picked up the paper at her feet. Meanwhile, the two players continued talking.

  “Goddamn annoying little looters…Did they show up in the beta, too?”

  “It was terrible if you ever dropped your weapon. The best part was that every once in a while, you’d lift someone else’s nice gear from one…and what do you know! No sooner are the words out of my mouth!”

  Asuna felt a nasty sensation flooding over her tongue as the swordsman gloated. She heard the sound of an item being materialized, and the smaller player exclaimed in surprise.

  “Ohh, no way! That rapier looks mega-rare!”

  When the full import of this conversation finally permeated her brain a few seconds later, Asuna felt all the blood in her body run cold.

  No, it can’t be, she pleaded, but there was no other realistic possibility. The very shrewman that Asuna had called over to save her from her predicament was the one who had looted her Chivalric Rapier to begin with. The two men had killed it and gotten her weapon.

  Now that she had accepted that ugly truth, she tried to remember what would happen to the item’s ownership and equippable rights now. She heard Kirito’s voice again, repeating his lesson during the second-floor upgrade scam uproar.

  If someone picks up your weapon or you hand it to them, the weapon cell in your menu goes blank. Including situations like the one where you gave the blacksmith your Wind Fleuret. But here’s the thing. The equipment cell might be empty, as though you’re not equipping anything…but that Anneal Blade’s equipper info hasn’t been deleted. And the equipment rights are protected much more tightly than simple ownership rights. For example, if I take an unequipped weapon out of storage and give it to you, my ownership of that item disappears in just three hundred seconds—that’s five minutes. As soon as it goes into someone else’s inventory, it is owned by that player. But the length of ownership for an equipped item is far longer. It won’t be overwritten until either 3,600 seconds have passed, or the original owner equips a different weapon in that slot.

  “The original owner equips a different weapon in that slot.”

  That phrase pounded Asuna’s brain like a hammer. After her Chivalric Rapier was looted, she replaced it with an Iron Rapier from her inventory. At that instant, she had overwritten her equipment rights to the Chivalric Rapier.

  Actually, the chances were high that the shrewman had the Robbing skill, which el
iminated her ownership rights the moment it was looted. And the cloaked swordsman had beaten the shrewman, so the rights to the Chivalric Rapier were clearly his now that it had dropped.

  Devastated, Asuna slumped against the wall. Meanwhile, the first cloaked player was screeching with excitement.

  “Hey, let me see that…Whoa, it’s heavy! Let’s look at the specs…Shwaa, you gotta be kidding! Check out the attack value! It might as well be a double-handed weapon!”

  “Sounds cool.”

  “Seriously? That’s all you have to say? If you’re not interested, then give it to me!”

  “Uhh, but you’re, like, a dagger user. Do you even have enough strength?”

  “If I had a weapon like this, I’d switch to being a fencer! It’s called…a Cilvaric Rapier. Damn, that’s cool!”

  “Look closer—it says ‘Chivalric.’”

  “Who cares what the name is?! Whoa, and it’s already boosted to plus five!”

  Asuna fought desperately against the urge to slump down and cover her ears.

  She’d carelessly fallen into a trap, dropped her sword—the most valuable item she owned—let it be looted by a monster, lost sight of it, then got beaten to the punch by another player. She had no right to that weapon, and she knew it.

  But she couldn’t give up on it now. She just couldn’t.

  If these PK gang members used it, that Chivalric Rapier might take a player’s life…a person’s life. She couldn’t possibly stand that.

  She would emerge from her hiding spot and beg them to sell it back to her. Even if it meant revealing that she’d been eavesdropping on their secrets and they turned their weapons on her—this was to protect others from what they might do with the Chivalric Rapier.

  Asuna took a deep breath, summoning every last ounce of courage. She peeked out a bit from the hollow, looking closely at the players turned away from her, one holding her beloved weapon. She willed strength into her legs, trembling with nerves and fear, preparing to step out into the hallway.

  At that moment, the darkness of the hallway on the north side of the little spring room wavered like a watery surface, producing another figure clad in black.

  “Mwuh?” spluttered the rapier-holding smaller player as the swordsman tensed. But Asuna barely even noticed what the two cloaked players were doing.

  The new member on the scene wore a long black leather coat. A beautifully designed longsword hung across his back. Beneath his long black bangs burned eyes darker than darkness. The sight was so vivid on her virtual retinas that she couldn’t even blink.

  “…Well, well, well…” said the second cloaked player, still as lackadaisical as before but in a much colder tone. “I always seem to run into you in the funniest places.”

  The first cloaked player’s shoulders tensed as he prepared to shout something, but the second one struck him in the chest with the back of his hand to shut him up. He stepped forward to hide his partner’s identity and growled at the newcomer, “Mind if I ask one question…? How long have you been there?”

  “I just got here. Heard you two talking,” said the black-clad swordsman at last, his familiar voice almost causing Asuna to wilt to the ground with relief. But this was not the time to lose her composure. If needed, she might be leaping out of her hiding spot to come to her partner’s aid.

  “Well, wouldn’tcha know it. I thought we were keeping it nice and quiet from the main hallway, but I guess we got carried away once I acquired this nice rare loot, ha-ha-ha.”

  “About that weapon…You said it was a Chivalric Rapier plus five, right? You’re sure about that?”

  “Wow, you seem to have latched onto that detail for just hearin’ it said once. What about it, pal?” asked the second cloaked player, spreading his hands theatrically in challenge.

  The other swordsman in black answered coldly, “My partner was using that rapier.”

  The first player abruptly budged, and again the second one silenced him with the back of his hand. He really did not want his partner to say anything.

  Once he was convinced that the other player would reluctantly remain silent, the second made a theatrical gesture of confusion.

  “Ohh, is that so? Well, I just looted this off of a looter mob. So do I have this situation right? You want me to return your friend’s weapon?”

  “No, I’m not going to get on your case about that. It’s just…I have no way of judging if your words are the truth or not.”

  The black-haired swordsman stepped forward slightly, his voice quiet but chilling. “After all, you could have gotten that sword by duel PK-ing my partner. Right, Morte?”

  Called out by name, the second cloaked player raised his left hand and slowly pulled the hood back. What emerged was a metal coif, its hem ragged. He shook it, clinking the threaded chains, and laughed in a different tone of voice than what he’d been using previously.

  “Ahaaa…All right, I see your tactic here. You mean the way I did to you on the third floor…Kirito?”

  Asuna could sense that once the two men called each other by name, the cave grew very, very tense. Neither had drawn his weapon, but she could practically see the sparks between them.

  Morte.

  The man wearing the coif was the very same duel PKer who had challenged Kirito to a half-finish-mode duel on the third floor and then, just before taking him to the halfway point that would end the duel, attempted a huge critical hit to kill him.

  The swordsmen—one in a black coat, the other wearing a black cloak—stared each other down in silence. Even the raucous, chatty dagger user was bowled back, intimidated into holding his tongue by the scene.

  Asuna was still partnered with Kirito. So he would see, next to his own HP bar, that Asuna still had about 90 percent of her health left. His challenge that she “might have been duel PKed for her sword” was just a bluff, yet the sheer pressure exuding from his entire body made him seem deadly serious. Meanwhile, Morte wielded his own atmosphere of sheer murder, not backing down a single step.

  She was certain that if either of them drew his blade, a battle would result. And not a duel—whoever landed the first hit would become an orange player, unable to enter town until his cursor returned to green status. But both of them had to know that. Each understood the other as a foe whose defeat was worth that heavy cost.

  However.

  By the act of Akihiko Kayaba, creator of Sword Art Online, the game world was no longer normal. It was a cold and cruel game of death, in which the loss of all HP meant the loss of the actual player’s life. PK-ing was no longer just PK-ing, it was true murder.

  She couldn’t let Kirito’s hands be stained with blood over something that began with her own mistake. She had to resolve this situation before they turned to battle.

  There was probably only one thing she could do: retrieve her Chivalric Rapier from the first cloaked player through means other than battle. At the very least, that would remove Kirito’s need to attack Morte, and given that they knew the rapier’s incredible power, they would hesitate to begin a two-on-two fight.

  The first player had his back to her, unaware of her presence. If this was the real world, she could just sneak up and snatch the rapier right out of his hands, but it wasn’t clear if stealing an item that forcefully would work in this world. Plus, just wresting it out of his fingers wouldn’t overwrite Morte’s system-ordained ownership.

  Yes…the floating castle Aincrad was ruled by the absolute laws of the game system, laws that didn’t exist in the real world. The most important tool for survival was to understand the system and make it work for you.

  What could she do to completely and entirely recover her Chivalric Rapier?

  She needed to physically possess the item, then later reset the ownership rights. There was no other way. But she would need to have the item for three hundred seconds for that to work. It was a very long period of time, and it would not be a simple matter to just snatch it out of the first player’s hands.

  Mean
while, Asuna’s right eye and ear took note of two phenomena simultaneously.

  Her eye saw the first player’s left hand searching for a weapon on his left hip.

  Her ear heard the slight swish of a monster popping into being on the south side of the hallway—the direction of the spot where she first fell.

  Those two things combined in a chemical reaction, guiding her to a single strategy. It wasn’t a sure thing, and it would be dangerous, but she couldn’t think of a better idea on the spot.

  Kirito and Morte were staring at each other silently, gauging how the other might react, but the impatient first player would be the first to explode. Then, the battle could not be stopped. If she was going to act, she needed to act now.

  Asuna sucked a cold breath into her lungs and tensed.

  The first player flipped aside his cloak with his left hand, exposing a dagger.

  At that precise moment, Asuna dropped the ball of paper from her hand again. Instantly, little footsteps began approaching from the south.

  In order to free up his right hand, the first player tried to move the rapier to his left. Just as the sheath was about to move from hand to hand, Asuna leaped out of her hiding spot, drew her Iron Rapier, and expended all the air charged up in her lungs into a deafening scream.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!!”

  The scream was so loud, it brought down a patter of sand from the walls. The unnamed cloaked player and Morte both jumped. The Chivalric Rapier slipped out of the cloaked man’s hands and fell to the ground.

  In less than a second, it was not Asuna, Morte, or the cloaked player who darted forth to snatch up the weapon—but the freshly arrived Sly Shrewman. As the rodent tried to turn around and slip away, Asuna hit it with an Oblique, her fastest sword skill.

  The monster’s body burst into blue shards, and the rapier it was carrying disappeared. She jumped as far back as she could and opened her equipment screen. In the main weapon cell, she replaced the Iron Rapier with the weapon that had just dropped. The rapier in her right hand vanished into light, and a reassuring weight appeared on her left waist.

  Just over three seconds had passed from the moment she leaped out from her hiding spot.