Sword Art Online Progressive 4

  “I was afraid of that, too…It was right around the time of the big fuss about the upgrade scam on the second floor, so I was worried about dangerous people following me around,” Liten admitted. It seemed that this was news to Shivata, who had lost his main weapon to that very scam. He turned to her in concern.

  “Licchan, there was a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes with that scam, and I can’t go into specifics, but the people who did it weren’t just plain bad people. They apologized to the victims and compensated them for the loss, so there’s no bad guys anymore.”

  “Oh…Thanks for letting me know, Shiba.”

  If I was a kid in grade school, I might have gotten away with whistling and taunting, “Hey guys, things are looking so hot between you, the South Pole’s gonna melt!” but I was going to be in the third year of middle school next year and needed to be more mature than that.

  Sadly, Shivata’s words were already being proven false. Perhaps it was known only by Asuna and me among the front line, but there was a true group of bad guys, a PK gang, working in the shadows. The entire point of setting up this meeting was to help fight back against Morte’s plot.

  I wanted to get right to the point, but it wasn’t clear yet if Liten could be absolutely trusted. It was a surprise that she was female—and that she and Shivata were like that—but that brought its own suspicions to the plate. I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility of a honey trap in play. At the very least, I needed to hear the story of this steel armor to the end.

  “Then…how did you move the ore?” I asked. Liten straightened up and resumed her story.

  “Ah…well, before the physical transportation even entered into it, I wasn’t sure if I should use the ore. As a tank, I was desperate for it, but it was obviously an infinite supply bug…so I wasn’t sure if I should use armor I got through a glitch, because I was afraid of what would happen if I got banned…So I decided to ask a friend who was helping repair my gear on the first floor for advice.”

  “Repair…? So your friend was a blacksmith?” I asked, envisioning the face of Nezha, the blacksmith at the center of the very upgrading scam we’d talked about a minute ago.

  Liten nodded. “Yes. She’s not really a smith—not with her own shop—she just was putting a bit of work into the weapon- and armor-crafting skills. We got along, both being girls, and so I started asking her for help with maintenance and crafting a bit.”

  “Oooh, a female blacksmith…”

  That alone confirmed that it wasn’t Nezha. It was at this point that I was reminded there were still players in the Town of Beginnings who were taking on the game as best they could.

  “I sent her a friend message about the ores, and she replied at once…She hadn’t had much MMO experience before SAO, but she was absolutely decisive.”

  A little smile appeared on Liten’s lips.

  “She said I shouldn’t hesitate, that the most important thing in this world was to survive, then to beat the game, in that order, so you should use whatever bugs you need to in order to get stronger. And that even if I got banned, it would mean getting out of here, so I shouldn’t be afraid in the least…I realized it was totally true, so I asked her to help me carry the ore, and we got the blacksmith at Marome to turn all of them into steel ingots without being detected by any other players.”

  “So it wasn’t an NPC that made your armor, but a friend of yours?” Asuna asked.

  Liten nodded proudly.

  “Yes! It was just barely within her skill level, and she said I should pay an NPC for it, but I insisted she try…She failed over and over, turning it back to ingots, then pounded away again, throughout the night, until she had made me all five pieces: torso, legs, gauntlets, boots, and helm.”

  “Wow…she must be a good friend and a good blacksmith…” I said admiringly. This time, Liten’s smile was clear and undeniable. That moment was enough to convince me for good that she was not Morte’s saboteur.

  * * *

  The rest of the story was short. With a five-piece set of steel armor that was rare even among the best players, Liten leveled up against the treants of the third floor until the ALS recruited her, which she accepted on her blacksmith friend’s advice. On the fourth floor, she met Shivata from their rival guild, and they ended up hitting it off…And the fine details of that part of the story would be unbearable without alcohol.

  At any rate, as they continued to grow closer in secret, they started planning to bring the guilds together in harmony—the first step of which would be tonight’s countdown party. On the DKB side, Lind was surprisingly enthusiastic about it, and the others seemed to be eager as well. The problem was the ALS.

  Now that the story was finally up to the present, I pulled four little bottles of lime water out of my inventory. Sadly, they weren’t chilled, but they served to quench the dried throats of everyone present before we got to the most crucial part.

  “Umm…first, how much have you told Shivata about the problem within the ALS, Liten?”

  Shivata reacted to this question before Liten did. “Exactly. You sent me that message yesterday saying a problem arose but you were going to handle it, Licchan. I was worried about what that meant…”

  “I’m sorry, Shiba,” Liten said, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

  No doubt the ALS had issued a stern gag warning to all members about their plan to jump the boss early. As a member of the guild, she had a duty to obey, but Liten was also an executive member of the countdown party-planning committee with Shivata. Her distress was palpable.

  “If something happened, why won’t you tell me? I know I’m in the DKB, but more importantly, we’re both SAO players. The ironic thing is, you were the one who helped me realize that…” he pleaded, placing a hand on her armored shoulder, but Liten only stared down at the floor.

  I made eye contact with Asuna and cleared my throat. “If Liten can’t explain it to you, then I will. Listen carefully to what I say, Shivata…The core members of the ALS plan to ditch tonight’s countdown party and attempt the floor boss on their own.”

  Shivata wasn’t the only one who looked shocked. Liten leaned back with a metallic clank, nearly falling out of her chair. Her topaz eyes, close to her orange hair in color, were bulging.

  “K…Kirito, how did you know that…?!”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you yet. But I assure you that it wasn’t a leak from within the ALS, and I didn’t buy it from the info broker.”

  “…Oh…I see…W-well, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure players like you two have your own top-level information gathering abilities…”

  “Y-you’re getting the wrong idea about us,” I pleaded after an awkward look from Asuna. “I’m an outsider within the group, and I just do my own thing, so I’m not in a position to give any orders to the ALS or DKB. But…Asuna and I really, truly want to make sure the two guilds don’t engage in hostilities. Sure, a reasonable rivalry might help advance the pace of conquest…but this act of going behind the other’s back is crossing a line. If they succeed, it will totally ruin relations with the DKB, and if it fails…it could result in the total collapse of the ALS. I mean, they’re going after the milestone fifth boss as a single guild…”

  Shivata had his head in his hands. He groaned, “But…why would this happen? Kibaou is gruff and rude, but he’s not stupid. He should know full well how reckless it is to challenge a floor boss on his own…”

  Asuna and I had come to Mananarena to find an answer to that mystery. With three sets of eyes on her, Liten bit her lip in indecision, then finally made up her mind.

  “…If you already know about that, then I will tell you what I know.”

  The newest tank in the ALS took a sip of lime water, stretched, and began to speak.

  “The ALS stresses equality among members, so meetings are held with full attendance, as a basic rule. But the meeting about the boss strategy in
question was held among only a dozen or so of the oldest members. I was still a fresh new recruit, so I wasn’t called to join. So everything I tell you came from my group leader.

  “The meeting was held three days ago, on the night of the twenty-eighth. One of the senior members got crucial info from a beta tester. Because the topic was so sensitive, Kibaou made the decision to limit attendance to just the senior members.

  “The info was about an incredibly important item dropped by the fifth-floor boss…something that would change things dramatically depending on whether the ALS or the DKB got the drop. My group leader and some other officers argued that if it was that important, they should bring it to the DKB’s attention and propose joint management before the fight. The party would be the perfect setting to hash things out.

  “But joint management of the item in question was apparently impossible by nature. That led to the opinion that they should defeat the boss while the party was happening, to ensure that they got the item…otherwise, the ALS might end up being absorbed into the DKB. Ultimately, Kibaou didn’t have any choice but to approve the boss strategy. That’s everything that I know about this.”

  When Liten finished, Shivata turned to his left, twisting at the waist, and rasped, “Licchan, what in the world is this item…?”

  But she could only shake her head sadly. “Sorry, Shiba. I learned about the boss plan just this morning. I asked my group leader for more information, but that was top secret…The group leader was all for our party, but there was nothing they could do about this. I’m new, so what could I do? I talked with the rest of the group, and we’d just decided we should state our case to Kibaou directly, when I got Shiba’s message.”

  “…I had no idea…” Shivata groaned. He looked up, straight into my eyes; swallowed; and asked, in a deadly serious tone, “You’re a former beta tester—so do you know it? What’s this crucial item the fifth-floor boss drops?”

  “Um…errmm…?”

  I crossed my arms and tilted my head as far to the side as it would go. “Crucial item from the fifth boss…? I took part in that fight, but I think it was a two-handed swordsman who got the centerpiece drop…I mean, any boss drop is going to be great, but I don’t recall something so powerful it would destroy the balance between guilds. Besides, a weapon can just be joint managed…”

  I pulled my head back to a normal angle, shut my eyes, and replayed distant memories.

  The fifth-floor boss in the beta was a huge golem made of blue stone, much like the ruins. Naturally, it had tremendous defense and was nearly tall enough to scrape against the ceiling of the boss chamber—a considerable challenge, but at a time when you could laugh off dying. With the sheer suicidal force of nearly a hundred players, we crumbled the stone golem to dust, and ten or so items dropped for a lucky few. After a brief assessment of the loot, we climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. It was just the usual excitement after beating a boss.

  No…wait.

  There was an odd item that dropped for someone. It looked like a fancy polearm, but it had extremely low attack power, which we all laughed about in puzzlement, so the winner tossed it aside angrily. Someone else picked it up and, within a few days, displayed its true worth to the shock of all—a story that I just barely recalled in the corner of my mind. In any case, it was an item that meant nothing to me, but if my memory was correct, it was…

  “A flag…”

  The other three looked at me.

  “A flag? What about a flag?” Asuna asked. The image of a tricorn pennant flapping over a battle flickered into my mind. I sucked in a sharp breath, clutching my hands together, and I rose slightly out of my chair.

  “Oh…ohhh…Yes, that would be bad!”

  “Wh-what is it, Kirito?! When you say ‘flag,’ do you mean a switch? Some condition that will prompt a change in the game?” Shivata shouted, also out of his chair. It was probably the first time the athlete had called me by name instead of “you,” but I didn’t even register it. I shook my head.

  “No…not a programming flag, I mean a literal flag…”

  “Why would a flag be an ultra-powerful item?”

  “It’s not just an ordinary flag. It’s a guild flag. If you carry it around, every guild member within fifty or sixty feet gets a buff to all their stats…”

  Shivata’s narrow eyes went round. He gaped.

  “Wh…what…?”

  8

  I WASN’T SURE IF IT WAS BASED ON THE SPIRAL structure of the town, but Mananarena’s local specialty was a jumbo roll cake of thin sponge and heaping helpings of banana-flavored cream. I was determined to have one when I got here, but now that the moment had arrived, I’d lost my appetite.

  The eight-inch-long spiral of cake stared me in the face from the middle of the table. Meanwhile, on the other side, Asuna looked deadly serious.

  “…So I wonder if they’re officially a couple.”

  “…Huh?”

  It was not at all what I’d expected her to say. She continued, her manner still completely serious.

  “Shivata and Liten, I mean. How they got together and what’s happened between them since— We missed out on all the important details.”

  “Y-you’ve got a point…”

  I honestly didn’t know how I would be expected to react to a story of that nature, so for my part I was relieved that Shivata abridged the details, but Asuna seemed quite interested. I forked a large piece of banana cake and brought it to my mouth, choosing my words carefully.

  “But…that deadly serious track athlete was calling her ‘Licchan,’ so I’d say they’re going out.”

  “Ohh? Shivata’s on the track team?”

  “No, that’s just what I imagine.”

  “And to think I actually believed you for two seconds!”

  She raised an eyebrow at me skeptically and stuffed a big bite of cake into her cheeks. The miraculous power of the specialty dessert eased the crease between her brows, and I decided it was safe to present a concern of mine.

  “But…what exactly does ‘going out’ entail in this world?”

  “What does it entail? Well, it’s the same as in the regular world,” she said matter-of-factly. I would be lying if I said that didn’t make me more than a little curious about her real-life experience in that field, but I couldn’t very well ask, so I deleted that question from my mind and moved on.

  “Anyway…I would think that doing the same stuff as the regular world is impossible here…”

  “Huh? Oh…right. Because of the protective code,” Asuna muttered, glancing around.

  After the two of us parted ways with Shivata and Liten, we moved to this café, a secret landmark in Mananarena. Unlike the restaurants where the DKB and ALS hung out, it didn’t face the main spiral road, so you had to know where it was first. As I hoped, there were no customers inside, but we were still in the mood to speak in hushed voices.

  The Harassment Prevention Code in question was the most uncomfortable of SAO’s many in-game systems to discuss.

  I knew why it was necessary. Without it, there would no doubt be some male players who exposed enticing female NPCs to unsavory behavior. The system worked in very simple ways: Any inappropriate contact with an NPC or player of the opposite sex over a certain length of time would elicit a warning and a repelling force, and repeat violators would be automatically teleported to the prison within Blackiron Palace in the Town of Beginnings. I myself was momentarily terrified of being spirited away in the workshop of old man Romolo, the shipwright on the fourth floor, when I shook Asuna’s shoulder in an attempt to wake her from a rocking chair.

  Asuna was rubbing her left shoulder and glaring at me, clearly remembering the same situation. She cleared her throat.

  “Well…yes, you might not be able to touch the other person…but you could still be in a relationship.”

  “Ah, r-right. But the conditions of the code are too vague to grasp…How do you know where the fine line is on inappropriate contact? In my case, I
didn’t get a warning or a shock or anything before you got the forced teleportation window…Maybe a bit of research is in order…”

  “So if I’d pressed the YES button, you would have gotten very valuable data.”

  “Er, never mind…” I said, shaking my head. Asuna glared at me again, then thought something over.

  “But on that topic, I didn’t even get a teleport window this last time…”

  “Last time?”

  “You know, after we escaped from those guys in the catacombs, you—”

  She suddenly stopped still, so I looked up from cutting myself a fresh piece of cake. The fencer turned away just before we would have made eye contact, but upon seeing the tinge of red to her cheeks, I remembered.

  “Ahhh, r-right…”

  She had a point there. After Morte and his companion were chased by the swarm of monsters, Asuna was so overcome with the release of her tension that I had to hold her and stroke her head to calm her down. Thinking back on it now, I was impressed with myself. The contact lasted for at least three minutes, much longer than the contact at the workshop. So it was a mystery that Asuna hadn’t received a window prompt to teleport me away.

  “Hmm…Maybe the shoulders are a no go, but the head is okay…?”

  “But if the one being touched doesn’t like it, there’s no difference between the head and shoulders. Besides, you were also touching my shoulder at the time.”

  “Oh, I-I was…? Hmm, it’s a mystery…Maybe it’s because on the fourth floor, you were asleep…”

  “That wouldn’t be it. Why show a window to a sleeping player? They can’t press the buttons.”

  “Very true…Oh! We should just ask Shivata next time.”