“Wh-what?! You’re gonna charge me?!”
“Argo the claw wielder’ll fight the boss with you for free, but Argo the information dealer needs to earn a living.”
“Hrrrgh…”
I gnashed my teeth, wishing that I had done more relic hunting back in Karluin.
“Nya-ha-ha-ha! No worries, I just thought I’d tease you a bit for that lovey-dovey stuff back there,” Argo cackled, and winked at me. “Yes, I mapped the labyrinth, but you won’t need it.”
“Uh…what do you mean?”
“You’ll see when we get there,” she hinted, and turned us to the right.
The fifth-floor labyrinth was in the northeast corner of the floor, and the maze, which was a third of a mile in radius, surrounded it in a semicircle. That meant that at either end, the looming stone wall intersected with the outer aperture of the floor.
Argo was leading us toward the southeast end. It took us off the path, so we ran into a few mobs, but with twelve members, each battle would be over in an instant if we fought full strength. Instead, we used a bit of time to allow for a show of our combination work, and it was about three forty-five when we reached our destination.
“Nice work, everyone. That ends the trekking across the wilderness, at least,” Argo noted, and we gratefully came to a stop.
I stretched and glanced around us, taking in the rather desolate sight. To the north loomed the sixty-foot wall, and to the south and west were barren gray wastelands without a blade of grass on them. Beyond that was the dead forest we’d just traveled through, dyed in monochrome by the lengthening rays of the winter sun.
When my eyes rolled to the east, they beheld an expanse of endless sky through the nearby aperture, but the faded, grayish-blue color struck me as ominous, not the sweeping majesty of the starry sky that Asuna and I saw at Blink & Brink. I turned back to the dark stone wall and looked up.
According to the legend that Argo told the group on our trip, at the middle of the giant maze was the secret development center of the ancient kingdom, and the maze was built to deter outsiders from infiltrating it. That only made the massive wall even more foreboding, but to do anything, first we had to somehow get past it somehow.
“So…where do we go in?” I asked our guide as she chugged lime water, wiped her mouth, and grinned. Argo pulled something shining out of her cloak. It was a giant key about six inches long.
“Whoa…did you get that from the boss quests?”
“’Zactly.”
Argo strode over to the stone wall, spinning the key around her finger with the leather cord it hung on. She leaned close to the rough, weathered blocks, searching for something, then stuck the key into a particular gap and turned it with a click.
Everyone else murmured in admiration. No doubt a part of the wall would open as if by magic, revealing a hidden passage inside.
Instead, the stone wall rumbled, a few of the blocks sank into the wall by six inches or so—and that was it.
“Uh…Argo, where’s the hidden door?”
“There’s no hidden door.”
She stuck the key back into her cloak, put a hand into one of the sunken gaps, then lifted herself, hup-hup-hup, ten feet up the wall. I looked up, stunned, to see that the pattern of sunken blocks continued straight up the wall to the top, like an unconventional ladder.
“W-wait, we have to climb over?” Agil noted in panic. Argo looked down, hanging on by one hand, and grinned cheekily.
“Uh-oh, does this mean the biggest tough guy in the front-runners is actually afraid of heights?”
“I-I’m not saying that…but you can’t laugh off a fall from that height,” Agil retorted, and he had a good point. There were many sources of damage in SAO, and the one that everyone agreed was the scariest was fall damage. Next to me, Asuna trembled, no doubt thinking about her fall through the trapdoor in the catacombs.
The stone wall was over sixty feet tall, and the ground was dirt mixed with gravel. Anyone who fell from the top and had lower amounts of HP was in danger of instant death, I decided, and was about to ask Argo to wait so we could set up a lifeline, but she spoke up first.
“Oh, well, here’s a special little gift, just for you,” Argo said, one eye closed, and she started generating several large items from her inventory. They fell and bounced softly on the ground: large cushions for player homes, which hardly any player was yet rich enough to start bothering with. They were quite light for their size, so she must have packed her inventory with the things.
We stacked the cushions high next to the handhold ladder, and Argo fell backward onto them. She landed with a hearty bafoom, but hadn’t suffered any damage. With the demonstration concluded, she popped up and glanced at me sidelong.
“I’ll go last so I can pick up the cushions before I go. You’re up first, Kii-boy.”
“Uh…m-me? Well, okay…”
I looked over at Asuna, who made a silent You first gesture. The only skirt wearer present certainly was not eager to climb up with all the gentlemen below. I nodded, stepped onto the pile of cushions, and grabbed onto the wall.
Once I got climbing, I noticed the alternately spaced handholds were quite deep and easy to grip, which made the physical process fairly simple. The real problem was the mental pressure that arose once you were halfway up. I knew that with the cushions stacked below, there was no way I’d die if I fell, but that didn’t prevent the cold sweat from forming on my limbs.
I scaled the last of the wall, wondering if that sweat was just a virtual sensation from the NerveGear or if my real body was seeping liquid from my pores, too. On the other side of the wall was a narrow walkway set a bit lower. I hopped over, heaved a sigh of relief, and called down to the group below.
“It’s not that hard, just stay calm and you’ll be fine!”
“A-all right, I’ll go next!” called out Hafner, beginning a ten-minute process that ended with Asuna and Argo. No one ended up falling, but that was probably thanks to the mental reassurance offered by Argo’s cushions—it occurred to me that it was a good idea to keep two or three of those things in my inventory, just in case. I grabbed Argo’s hand as she finally made her way to the top and pulled her over.
With the wall-climbing phase concluded, we traded high fives and turned our gazes north.
“…You weren’t kidding when you said this labyrinth would be a big deal to tackle,” muttered Wolfgang from the Bro Squad. He used the same greatsword category that the DKB’s subleader did, but while Hafner looked like a heavy knight in his metal armor, Wolfgang’s skintight leather gear gave him the air of a veteran mercenary.
As he said, it was hard to imagine an easy route through the massive maze stretching out before us, even with a map. The layout seemed different from the beta, so I couldn’t even use my old memory as a guide.
“And the ALS were going to charge through this place at night, without scouting it first?” Shivata asked Okotan skeptically. The halberdier, who appeared to be the oldest of the group, nodded awkwardly, his whiskered mouth twisted into an abashed smile.
“It’s rather embarrassing to admit, but that is their plan…From what I understand, we have information on the puzzles and traps from a beta tester. The schedule called for the entire process to take an hour.”
Asuna and I shared a look.
It had to be the same beta tester that told them about the guild flag. From the way Okotan spoke, it sounded like this wasn’t a fellow guild member, so it was likely to be one of the cloaked men we ran across in the catacombs: Morte. Which would mean the other man was undercover in the ALS.
Given the circumstances, I really wanted to tell Shivata, Hafner, and Okotan about this plot, to help identify the spy, but that was difficult to do with Argo and Agil’s team present. Not only that, but we had an urgent quest on our plates.
If the boss battle went well, I’d suggest a celebration and find the time to bring it up, I told myself. My eyes swung right, to the massive tower looming over the labyri
nth’s center.
They were always categorized as “labyrinth towers,” but each floor’s tower had a different scale and design. The only unifying feature was the three-hundred-foot height, so while some were fat and squat with uniform width, others were narrow and willowy. The fifth floor’s tower was an orthodox cylinder, about a third as wide as it was tall, which put it on the small side. There was a grand entrance door at the base, but the wall we were standing atop stretched from the very edge of the floating castle all the way to the tower itself, ending in a small door. In other words, we were getting a shortcut that put us 20 percent through the tower just as we entered. Thanks to Argo’s tedious work completing the boss quests, we were going to shave a good two hours off our time.
“Thanks, Argo,” I said softly. Her curly haired head swung toward me, blinking in surprise. But it was quickly replaced by her usual sardonic grin.
“Don’t be silly, we’re only getting started.”
“Good point…”
I took a deep breath, preparing to move the group forward once more.
We traveled in a line down the walkway atop the stone wall and took a short break at a small observation deck where the wall connected with the exterior of the tower. The toughest dungeon on the fifth floor was on the other side of the door, so we needed to prepare ourselves.
“Here you go, everyone.”
Asuna was pulling one of those massive cakes out of her inventory. It was the only famous local confection of Mananarena, but given that you had to know about the secret café, it was new to most of the group. Hafner and the Bro Squad stuffed handfuls of it into their mouths, grunting about how “damn good” it was, while Liten and Shivata got cozy with some forks against the wall. I looked around in alarm for Okotan, but he was already chatting mirthfully with Nezha—which caused a different kind of alarm to fill me, when I imagined the former blacksmith being recruited into the ALS.
With the cake all distributed, Asuna brought me my piece and glanced up at the tower looming overhead as she ate.
“…So it’s time…”
“Yeah…”
I picked up the cake with my fingers and took a bite. The banana flavor, which had been so thick when I ate the same item hours earlier in the café, hardly seemed to register on my tongue this time. That made me realize just how nervous I was.
This was supposed to be our only option to defeat this game of death and escape the electronic prison that bound us. Whether the ALS’s plan to race ahead was successful or not, it would cause a major rift in the group of advanced players and disperse the collection of energy that had been driving our pace and speeding us along. We would slow down, and players like Liten who were doing their best to catch up to us from below would lose hope. Despair would settle upon all of Aincrad. It would be like an eternal night, without glittering stars or the rising morning sun…
I put the half-eaten cake back onto the plate, surrounded by a sudden waft of music. I knew it was an illusion, but I shut my eyes to hear it nonetheless.
An eerie sight appeared on my closed eyelids.
Three dancing silhouettes lurching against a bloodred sunset to a mad, racing, mocking melody. The hems of pitch-black cloaks and ponchos flapped like bat wings. The mouth of the figure on the right turned visible, displaying a familiar, twisted leer.
What if even my own actions here are an intended result of their provocation…?
The sudden thought caused my limbs to freeze to ice.
Here on the milestone fifth floor, we would fight a floor boss that was far harder than any previous. I’d warned Asuna about this again and again, and I believed I was preparing myself accordingly. And no matter how I rationalized my current actions based on what was happening in the game, I was leading a tiny group of twelve against that boss.
There was a way to win. We were going to scout it out vigorously.
If there was a problem here, it was that my choice and actions were not based on absolute, rock-solid belief.
When I left the Town of Beginnings, I prioritized my own survival above all else. Asuna and Argo were with me now, but I hadn’t developed a new, grand ideal like protecting all the captive players of SAO or beating the game with my own two hands.
Meanwhile, the other players here were participating in this impromptu strategy out of their own strongly held beliefs, with full knowledge of the risk.
Hafner, for example, was a man who was moved by the priority of beating the game above all else. He pushed his way brusquely to the front of the line waiting for the gondola ride in Rovia on the fourth floor, but that was surely because he’d been irritated at the tourists. He was the kind of man who would chastise them for having the energy to go enjoy themselves, rather than helping attack the game. I understood that feeling, and his current actions spoke to the strength of his beliefs, given that he was prioritizing this over his guild’s profit.
Then there was Shivata, whom I could only speculate about, but seemed to be here for Liten’s sake. I didn’t know how it was that they had come together, but they had drawn their swords to ensure their guilds did not come to blows. That was an admirable motive itself.
Agil’s group, Argo, and Nezha all had searched their own feelings for their own answers as well. So why was I—the guy who spurned the guilds and prioritized his own personal gain—going against my own beliefs not only by participating in this group, but also by leading it?
The answer to that had to be my antagonism toward Morte and his provocateurs.
They had attempted to duel PK me and put Asuna through a terrible fright, and now I was moved by a furious determination to keep them from continuing their ways.
In that case, I had to admit that it was they who had stoked the fire within me. Was I losing my cool? Was I letting my antagonism and hatred guide me into a reckless strategy that would end up sending me and the people I cared about into certain death…?
I realized I was gritting my teeth and staring down at the half-eaten cake. But suddenly, my cold, numb hand was enveloped in a pleasing warmth.
I looked down to see that in a spot hidden from the rest of the group behind my black leather coat and a silk cape, a small, pale hand was gripping my own. I looked up to catch the side profile of the fencer’s face.
Her expression was the usual aloof, vaguely hostile one, but the undeniable warmth that covered my hand was like touching the spring sunlight. I stood there dumbly until her pursed lips finally opened.
“…That’s for giving me that buff at the camp on the third floor.”
“Uh………oh, right, I forgot about that…”
I recalled the moment when she’d melted down her Wind Fleuret to create her Chivalric Rapier and squeezed her hand back.
Why had Asuna agreed to this plan, anyway? The story about the guild flag and the competition of the two guilds couldn’t have meant this much to her. If she was here out of her own unyielding personal belief, what could that possibly be…?
I wanted to know, but it didn’t seem like the right moment to ask.
If we defeated the boss and made it back to town alive, then I’d bring it up. I would make that my biggest motivation to fight and win.
With that determination in mind, the foreboding music that had been ringing away in the back of my head finally faded, along with the eerie dancing silhouettes.
Without letting go of Asuna’s hand, I lifted the paper plate up to my face and flipped it over to dump the rest of the cake into my mouth. I chewed and looked up at the tower again.
It was a darker shade of the stone that made up all the ruins here, the left side lit by the midwinter sun, gleaming coldly. It was as if the countless monsters inside and the menace of the floor boss was being exuded like frost.
But the heat of Asuna’s hand flowed through all my veins, keeping the chill at bay. I squeezed it one last time, then let go and lowered my face to its normal level.
Immediately, I met the smirking gaze of Argo and had to cough awkwardly and c
lear my throat before I could step forward to address the group.
“…Well, everyone, I think it’s time to announce my idea about our group formation.”
Once the party had finished eating its cake and gathered around, I explained, “A-Team will be Hafner, Shivata, Okotan, Lowbacca, Naijan, and Liten. B-Team will be me, Asuna, Agil, Wolfgang, Nezha, and Argo. What do you think about that split?”
This apparently ran counter to their expected groups, and a murmur ran through the gathering before Shivata cut through to ask, “So…A-Team is the tanks, and B-Team is the attackers?”
“That’s right.”
“That goes against common theory. Why didn’t you split us up evenly?”
“We didn’t quite have enough tanks to pull that off. Shivata and Liten are the only ones with shields, so if we put them in separate parties, they might not hold out long enough for potion rotation. In that case, we should have one party with high defense maintain boss aggro, which should make it easier to manage HP. Of course, that will create a heavier load for our tanks…”
Shivata shook his head at that last statement and said, “Don’t worry about that,” before continuing with his rebuttal. “But if we have all the tanks together, we won’t be able to handle wide-ranging simultaneous attacks. Won’t that be a problem?”
“Well, just going off of the beta, the golem boss of this floor doesn’t have any area attacks like Breath. It mostly punches and stomps, with different timings for either side. So as long as we manage its hate levels, a single party should be able to continually defend for us.”
“Ahh, I see,” Shivata murmured.
I looked around at the other members of the group and added, “Of course, I’m going to scout out the boss first to make sure there aren’t any unexpected attack types. Once we start for real, we’ll make sure there’s a clear escape route for when the boss’s HP gauge changes color, so we can dart out in case of any unknown patterns. Yes, we’re fighting with only two parties, but we’ve absolutely got a chance, and I don’t intend for us to lose a single member. So…to ensure that Shivata and Liten’s countdown party is a success and to ensure that 2023 is a year of hope for all of us…let’s pool our strength together and win this battle!”