“Yes…His name was Morte, right? The one who was plotting something because he was secretly part of both Lind’s Dragon Knights Brigade and Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad…”
Kirito had told her about him just before the battle against the boss of the third floor. It was a very intriguing and troubling story, and Asuna had briefly spotted the man himself in the spider queen’s cave, so she’d been on the lookout for him on the fourth floor. That signature metal coif had never appeared, though.
Her partner nodded and returned his gaze to the fire. There was an unusual tension to his features.
“Morte challenged me to a half-finish duel, whittled my HP down to just above half, and tried to hit me with his ax for massive damage. If he’d been successful, he would have wiped out all my HP and killed me…and having won a duel fair and square, he wouldn’t have become an orange player. That would make it just as legal a PK method as a monster PK…A duel PK, I guess. I’m amazed he thought of that.”
“Don’t start being impressed with him,” Asuna snapped. The swordsman wore a strained smile and agreed.
His expression serious again, Kirito murmured, “The problem is why Morte would do such a thing. Based on the way he showed up, I don’t think he’s a pleasure PKer doing it for fun. The reason he challenged me to that duel was because he wanted to prevent me from completing the quest at the forest elf camp. And while I was held up, the DKB and ALS were closing in on the same camp for different questlines. He wanted them to have a showdown…to fight.”
“Yeah…” Asuna murmured, recalling the event. “When Kizmel and I raced to the camp, it looked like they were ready to draw weapons at any second…If she hadn’t stopped it then and there, the whole frontline group could have fallen apart. But…even if he succeeded, how would that help Morte? What could he have possibly gained that would be worth a months-long delay in beating the game—and obtaining everyone’s freedom?” She asked it mostly to herself, but Kirito was contemplating the very same question.
The DKB and ALS were so large that they represented nearly the entirety of the game’s most advanced players. All the last-attack bonuses from the bosses had been seized by the swordsman in black sitting beside Asuna, but at this point, it was essentially impossible to beat the labyrinth tower without those two guilds.
A motive to make the two guilds fight.
Ordinarily, a good reason would be to ride in during the chaos of the squabble and seize control of both guilds, taking command of the leadership: in short, for glory. Or perhaps looting the money and gear of those players who died in battle, for personal gain.
But was it possible that one’s lust for glory or riches could override their desire to survive? No matter your lofty position in this world, no matter how many col you earned or how much elite gear you equipped, it was all worthless if you lost in a fight just once, be it monster or player. You would simply die in this electronic prison, and never return to the real world.
Something didn’t add up about Morte’s motives. It looked like he was trying to interfere with the efforts to clear the game. But no one should actually think that way. Especially if they were risking death by leaving the safety of town and venturing into the dangerous wilderness.
Asuna’s reason for fighting in the danger zone as one of the game’s top players was to someday escape this floating fortress. She would return to the real world, get back to her old life, and forget all the fear and sadness she’d experienced here…
Without realizing it, she glanced to her right. Her black-haired temporary partner was gazing into the crackling campfire. The way he was lost in thought removed his usual tense demeanor and actually made him look quite young.
Escaping this world. That would mean…
She forced herself to stop mid-thought and straightened her head with considerable willpower. Her eyes settled on the strange greenish fire surrounding the Fossilwood Branch. Compared to a real fire, there was a touch of artificiality in the way the tips of the flames moved, but it was real enough for Asuna and beautiful, too.
Yes…the world they lived in was a cruel prison, but at times it could also be breathtakingly gorgeous. The city on the first floor, the plains of the second, the forests of the third, and the canals of the fourth…And the entire reason she was able to appreciate these things was due to the influence of the partner sitting beside her.
She was struggling to keep her mind off that fact by pondering Morte’s motives further—when Kirito broke his long silence to consider, “Maybe…Morte isn’t the same kind of player as us, in the truest sense…”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Again she looked at Kirito, who was still gazing intently into the campfire.
“If you assume that his motive in interfering with our forward progress itself is an act of sabotage directed by whoever’s running this game of death…it does make a kind of sense.”
“S…sabotage? You’re saying…he’s working with Akihiko Kayaba?”
“Yeah,” Kirito confirmed. However, he quickly shook his head. “But even still, it doesn’t add up. It would be one thing if we were just about to finish the game, but this guy started his activities when we were on the third floor out of a hundred. It’s just too early. No, wait…”
Kirito’s eyes suddenly gleamed.
“…Right now!”
“Huh?! Wh-what?!” Asuna exclaimed, bolting upright at the same moment that Kirito drew his sword.
The sharp tip of the Elven Stout Sword traced a silver line in the darkness. He pierced the campfire with a thrust that was nearly as quick as Asuna’s fencing.
As she watched in bewilderment, a huge storm of sparks floated into the night sky. When he pulled the sword back, something was speared on its tip. It was cooked to a light crisp, emitting savory white steam: a baked yam.
“…Um…Kirito.”
“Yep.”
“When you were staring intently into the fire like that…”
“Yep.”
“…Was it just to monitor how well the yam was cooking?”
“You bet,” he answered, straight-faced. In response, she wavered between yelling at him or punching him.
But before she could put either plan into action, Kirito pulled the tip from the sweet potato and placed the sword in the sheath over his back. He tossed the hot potato from hand to hand and eventually split it into two halves. Another burst of steam issued forth, along with a sweet, fragrant scent.
“Here.”
He offered her one half. Given that six hours had passed since lunch, she decided she was generous enough to shelve her anger for now.
The hot baked yam was not quite the same as a real sweet potato in color and texture, but it was still delicious. Asuna took a bite and let the soft filling melt like cream in her mouth, the flavor rich and sweet.
After a second bite, then a third, she took a drink of tea, sighed in contentment, and finally asked, “When did you buy this? I don’t remember us stopping by a grocer.”
Kirito mumbled and said evasively, “Hmm? I didn’t buy them.”
“…So where did they come from? Don’t tell me you picked this up off the ground in the third-floor forest, too.”
“Ha-ha, no way. These yams are B-level food ingredients—you can’t just find them on low floors like this one.”
“So you got them from someone?”
“Hmm, I suppose you could say that, in a general sense…This is a drop from the half-fish, half-human–looking monsters in the fourth-floor labyrinth.”
“…”
The unexpected answer left her at a loss for how to respond. If he’d said it was “half-fishman meat,” she would have thrown it directly in his face, but a former possession seemed just safe enough to be acceptable. She took another bite quickly, before asking her fourth question:
“…Why would a half-fishman drop sweet potatoes?”
She was counting on one of his usual wry, slippery jokes—but was disappointed.
&
nbsp; “Hmmm…”
He groaned, then hummed for three seconds and set down the half-eaten baked potato. He returned her question with another one:
“Do you know where Satsuma sweet potatoes come from?”
“Huh…? Well, Satsuma was the old name for Kagoshima, right? I feel like I learned this in school. Someone named Aoki Konyo brought the seeds from Satsuma province.”
Once she finished answering, she realized with a start that she nearly admitted she had been in middle school back in real life. She’d hardly ever talked to Kirito about life out there—never, in fact. This was probably the second time ever.
Kirito didn’t seem to think much of the revelation. “Yeah. To be precise, they first came over from Okinawa. But that’s only in Japan…What I mean is, where were they first cultivated in the entire world?”
“The world…?” she asked, slightly relieved. “Hmm…I think I heard that potatoes were originally from Latin America…”
“Correct.”
“Huh?”
“Sweet potatoes originate from around there. Technically, potatoes were cultivated in the highlands of South and Central America, while sweet potatoes were raised in the lowlands around the coast.”
“Ohhh…”
She popped the last piece into her mouth, savored the flavor, then brought the topic back around by asking, “What does that have to do with those fishmen?”
“Well, this is just me trying to force the connection into place,” he replied. With a grin, he tossed the last piece of his baked potato up in the air and caught it in his mouth. “But in the mythology of the Aztecs, the world has collapsed four times already. In the first world, people were eaten by packs of jaguars. In the second, people were turned into monkeys. In the third, they were turned into birds. And in the last world, they were turned into fish…”
“…And the people who were turned into fish were the ones fighting us in the fourth-floor labyrinth?” she responded skeptically. Kirito laughed good-naturedly.
“Ha-ha, maybe, maybe not. But remember what Kizmel said? The various floors of Aincrad were separated from the earth long ago and rose into the sky. There were elves and kobolds and minotaurs in those sections…so who’s to say there couldn’t have been monsters from Aztec legends?”
“Hmmm…what I want to know is…”
Asuna paused while she finished the tea in her teacup, then looked at him with both exasperation and admiration.
“…how do you know so much about Aztec legends and the origin of sweet potatoes?”
“Ahh…” he hedged, and she realized what she had done. She’d gone beyond the proper bounds of this world again.
But her temporary partner only glanced at her briefly. “The place I lived…on the other side…was famous for growing sweet potatoes. When I was in elementary school, I did my summer vacation report on the history of sweet potatoes. Funny how I still remember that stuff.”
“Ohhh…” she mumbled, keeping her face straight while her brain worked away furiously at a new subroutine.
If it was famous for sweet potatoes, that meant either Kagoshima or Ibaraki, but Kirito’s vocabulary and intonation were hardly different from Asuna’s Tokyo Japanese. So it could be some area around Tokyo famous for sweet potatoes—but did such a place exist? If anything was likely, it would be Chiba or Saitama—perhaps to the west of Tokyo. If she had a real-life phone, she could do a search instantly…
After half a second of this rapid thought process, she closed her eyes and cut it short.
If the game of death was ever beaten, everything in this world would vanish—all the equipment, items, and personal connections. She didn’t want that to be a bad thing. It would make her lose sight of her reason to keep pushing onward.
“…Thanks for the potato. And for the potato facts,” she said, clapping her hands to drive that lingering thought from her mind. “Now, as for Morte…”
“Hmm? Oh…right,” Kirito said, blinking and getting his mind back to the important topic at hand. “We were wondering if Morte was working with Akihiko Kayaba or not. Well, I know I brought it up, but I don’t think it’s likely. Morte’s just an exception to the rule for now, a player working off motives that don’t line up with our logic or reason. That’s how we should see him for now. There’s just one thing that bothers me…”
He paused, his eyes staring sharply into the quiet blaze of the campfire. This time, he did not pull out another set of potatoes.
“…We’ve already heard a similar story.”
“Huh…?” she blurted out, then remembered. “Oh…from Nezha!”
Asuna held her breath until Kirito silently nodded.
They’d met the player blacksmith Nezha on the second floor. He’d used the Quick Change mod to secretly steal her Wind Fleuret, a choice forced upon him by his guild, the Legend Braves.
But the trick in question wasn’t his own idea.
“The man who spoke to them in the bar and taught them the trick to that scam for free—the one in the black poncho,” Kirito went on, voice low. “I think his true goal was for Nezha to be judged by the rest of the top players. If it weren’t for the rest of the Braves getting down on hands and knees to beg forgiveness after the second-floor boss fight, they might have executed Nezha. In a way, that would be PK-ing. Carefully toying with the thoughts of various players, guiding them into ultimately killing each other…You might call it a provocation PK…”
Asuna felt her features twist at the ugly nastiness of the idea.
Monster PK-ing (MPK) and duel PK-ing (DPK) were bad enough, but they also involved an amount of risk on the part of the person attempting it. In constructing an MPK, any mistake might cause the monsters to attack the PKer, and in a DPK, you could always end up losing instead.
But a provocation PK (if it were a common enough concept to have its own acronym, it would be PPK) completely removed any direct risk from the one orchestrating it. The perpetrator just stayed comfortable in the center, guiding individuals and groups into direct confrontation around him.
The chances of success seemed lower than an MPK or DPK, but in every world, there were people extraordinarily skilled at manipulating others. Even at the all-girls school Asuna attended, there were students who otherwise didn’t stand out, but could use e-mails, texts, and rumors to manipulate the mood of the class and apply pressure wherever they wanted. They were probably doing it without realizing their skill, but this mysterious man in the black poncho tried to have Nezha killed with clear, malicious purpose.
“…Do you suppose Morte and the black poncho could be the same person?” she asked. Kirito traced the spot between his brows with a finger.
“Hrmmm…Nezha described the black poncho as a man who laughed gleefully. And Morte certainly did enjoy his chuckles, so they could be the same person. If that’s the case, then like I said earlier, Morte might just be a unique, solo PKer who refuses to abide by the common logic of Aincrad. But if they’re separate people, then the situation is more dire than that…”
The campfire, which was finally losing fuel and strength, popped in a burst of sparks. Asuna flinched, then hesitantly turned to her partner.
“What do you mean…by ‘dire’…?”
Kirito took a number of breaths, hesitating to answer, before he finally spoke in a low voice.
“…If they’re separate people, we should assume Morte and the black poncho are working together.”
“…!!”
“Meaning they’re working to commit PKs as a duo…or perhaps there’s even more than two. There could be three, four…or an entire gang of PKers out there in Aincrad somewhere…”
The Fossilwood Branch finally reached the end of its durability and crumbled through the middle, disappearing with a large sheet of sparks. As the tiny lights went out, the darkness of their surroundings crept closer, and Asuna unconsciously moved herself a few inches to the right.
“…But if you kill players in SAO right now, they can’t be revived…The
y’ll die in the real world. Do Morte and his friend not want us to beat the game? Don’t they want to get out of this place…?” she rasped, her voice so hoarse and dry that she had trouble hearing herself.
Nearly ten seconds later, Kirito’s response was just as strained.
“Maybe…they’re not concerned with whether we escape at all…Like you said, when your HP go down to zero, the player dies. So maybe they just want to cause PKs…to commit murder…”
Asuna thought she heard a rustle behind her and spun around.
But the only thing there was a series of dark ruined walls, cold and unfeeling.
2
AFTER SEVEN IN THE EVENING, THE TWO DECIDED to return to town.
The main city of the fifth floor, Karluin, was built in the center of a huge swath of ruins covering the southern end of the floor. It was meant to resemble a settlement of newly arrived people reusing a fallen city of centuries past.
Compared to the crisscrossed canals of Rovia on the fourth floor, there was barely any water here, but thanks to perhaps some busy NPC cleaners, it also wasn’t particularly dusty. The buildings, made of darkened stone blocks, were crumbling here and there, but the center of town was full of leather and canvas tents that bustled with chaotic liveliness.
“…It’s kind of hard to tell where the safe haven boundary is…” Asuna mumbled, after the words appeared abruptly in her view.
When the notice disappeared, she turned back to look at the path they’d taken to get there, which was surrounded by half-crumbled stone walls. But there were no arches or other visual cues that suggested the boundary of town. It would be important to remember the spot by sight so that they could escape into the safe haven if they ever got into trouble with monsters beyond its borders.
Beside her, Kirito nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s the thing. In the beta, people stacked wooden boxes and stuff to serve as the marker, but they’re treated as abandoned objects, so they wear out and eventually disappear…”
“Ahh…Couldn’t you just stack something cheap and durable? Would anything fit the bill?”