Sword Art Online Progressive 4

  “……It’s ‘no’ in Russian.”

  “…Why did you say no?”

  “…Because…erm…I don’t want spoilers,” she finished lamely—a weak excuse, in her opinion—but Kirito nodded seriously, quite convinced.

  “Oh…yeah, good point. Quests necessary to beating the floor are one thing, but it’s more fun to do these one-off quests without knowing the story beforehand…Okay, good idea. From now on, I won’t explain or interject comments about quests. You can take the lead, Asuna.”

  He was so serious and earnest about it that she couldn’t correct him now. She cleared her throat and looked down the stairs.

  “Ah…yes. I-in that case, I’ll go first. Are you all prepared?”

  “Of course.”

  He lifted up his brand-new sword and rattled it at her.

  There were two types of one-handed swords on the list of Viscount Yofilis’s rewards. From what Asuna could see of their properties, the saber seemed stronger, but Kirito chose the Sword of Eventide instead.

  Asuna mentally jotted down a reminder to ask him why at some point, but that wasn’t important now. She took a deep breath, surrendered herself to her fate, and turned for the entrance to the underground graveyard.

  “…Let’s get going, then!”

  “Yeah!”

  At 8:20 AM on December 29, Asuna and Kirito began their conquest of the fifth floor of Aincrad in earnest.

  4

  TO ASUNA’S RELIEF, THE STAIRCASE DOWN did not immediately plunge into eerie, ghostly ambience.

  In fact, there were already several dozen players in the large room at the bottom of the stairs. They were gathered in little groups here and there, having meetings or eating breakfast—some even curled up in sleeping bags along the walls.

  “…Is this a safe room?” Asuna asked, and Kirito turned to her with a baffled look on his face.

  “On the contrary, we’re still in the safe haven. The notice never appeared, right?”

  “Oh…r-right…”

  The tension left her shoulders, and she looked around again. With that fact in mind, she saw that hardly any of the players here were frontline warriors. Most of the parties had gear from the second or third floor, and some were unarmed tourists.

  “So they’re all here to find relics.”

  “That’s what I expect. They’ve probably picked this room clean and are by now heading down into the subterranean ruins nearby…”

  Suddenly, Kirito’s face went stern. She prompted him with a quizzical look, and he shrugged his shoulders and mumbled:

  “The first underground floor was within the safe haven in the beta. So no monsters and no traps. I’m guessing they’ve all come here to gather relics based on the news about that, but…”

  “Is there something wrong with that?”

  “…No, sorry, just overthinking things. C’mon, let’s keep going, too.”

  Kirito started to lead the way, only to stop and motion for Asuna to go first. She swallowed a sigh and looked at the doorways leading out from each wall of the chamber.

  Please let me come across the puppy or kitten quest first, she silently prayed, and chose the hallway on the north wall.

  The room itself was brightly lit by a number of fires, but it was immediately dark and gloomy in the hallway, bringing a grimace to Asuna’s face. Meanwhile, the rain they’d been trying to escape seemed to be seeping down through the walls, dripping here and there and occasionally landing on her head or shoulders.

  With things this quiet, she was going to forget they were within the town’s safe haven, so Asuna looked over her shoulder to start a conversation with Kirito.

  “So I guess it does rain in Aincrad.”

  “Hasn’t it rained a bunch of times before this already?”

  “I don’t recall it. I know there was snow during Christmas, but…”

  “Oh, right. Well, it’s true that it happens only rarely. In MMORPGs before this, rains and storms were a regular occurrence, but it’s just a lot more unpleasant in a VRMMO. Like you saw, it ruins visibility; makes your gear heavy, your clothes stick to you; and it’s real cold…It rained a lot more at the start of the beta, but they lowered the probability when the testers complained.”

  “Ahh, so that’s what happened. It’s too bad…I like watching the rain from the inside.”

  As they chatted, she eventually began to settle down. No matter how it looked, this place was still within the safety of town, and they would never see any monsters. They needed to chip away at the mountain of quests, gain a level, and prepare to tackle the floor for real.

  She clenched the hilt of her rapier, feeling emboldened again.

  Asuna opened her window along the way and checked her largely empty map, taking a side branch off the main hallway en route to the quest destination. They crab-walked sideways through the foot-wide corridor, then crawled through a tunnel only two feet tall (this time, she made Kirito go first) as they approached the marker.

  Eventually they reached a place like a little chapel. There was a line of long pew benches, and next to the wall in the back was an eerie-looking crumbled statue. A number of candles here and there on the floor provided some light, but the corners of the space were plunged into darkness. It looked like the perfect place to find some relics, but there were no other players present.

  Feeling a very bad premonition from the place, Asuna whispered to Kirito, “What quest happens in this spot?”

  “Huh…? You want spoilers now?”

  “Just tell me that much.”

  “Well, if you just want the title…it’s the ‘Thirty-Year Lament’!”

  “…”

  She successfully kept herself from giving away how aghast she was at her terrible luck and checked the quest log.

  The quest story was quite simple. The client NPC was a middle-aged bachelor who had recently moved there from another town on the same floor, but he was disturbed by odd rattling noises and falling silverware late at night in his new home. He wanted help, so Asuna and Kirito had checked his basement, but couldn’t find so much as a mouse. The log ended at a suggestion that they go farther down beneath the town.

  “…So that means this chapel is directly beneath that man’s house?” she asked.

  Kirito grinned.

  “It’ll make sense if you switch your map.”

  “…”

  She did as he said, going to her map tab and pressing the arrow buttons that switched between vertical levels, moving from the first underground level to the aboveground level. As he said, the present location marker underground and the quest NPC marker up in the town overlapped perfectly.

  “…Ah, I see. So this is where the gho…the mystery vibrations are coming from,” she corrected, closing the map and looking around the chapel again. But she didn’t see anything that might have any effect on the home above, biological or not.

  Normally her partner would take over and tell her the answer, but this time, he stayed back, like a teacher observing his pupil during the learning process. It was the result of a complete and total misunderstanding, but it was also true that she needed to be able to finish quests on her own by now. There was no guarantee that their temporary partnership would ever be permanent…

  She made up her mind to solve this one on her own, and went over the information in her head.

  A home in Karluin was suffering from ghos— From supernatural phenomena every night. The cause was believed to be subterranean, so they went to the spot in the underground catacombs beneath the house, where they found an obviously spooky and suspicious chapel. In order to find the source of the phenomenon, they could search all over the chapel for the appropriate object—or cause the phenomenon to happen before their eyes. They couldn’t find anything, so they would need to attempt the latter.

  Once she reached her conclusion, Asuna looked up. “Didn’t that man say the house would rattle at around two in the morning?”

  “He did,” Kirito confirmed.

>   “Then…we’ll need to come here at two o’clock to ascertain the nature of the sound, right?”

  “Good thinking. That’s the orthodox way to solve this. As a matter of fact, many quests are time restricted in this fashion.”

  “Look…I appreciate the compliment, but it’s only nine o’clock right now. Are we just going to stand around here waiting until two in the morning?” she demanded, exasperated.

  Kirito waved a finger theatrically. “We could, but it’s also the case that such quests often have a bit of a shortcut. Just wait, and a hint will come along…ah, speak of the devil!”

  He started to push her back, but she slapped his hand away. “What do you mean, a hint will come along?” she demanded, confused.

  Suddenly, she heard creepy, scraping footsteps from behind her. She desperately held in the scream that nearly erupted from her throat and darted behind Kirito, reminding herself that she was in the safety of town.

  Standing silently in the doorway they’d passed through just minutes before was a small NPC, like a child. Its face was hidden behind the hood of a deep gray coat, but its bare feet were extremely large compared to the rest of its figure and its arms equally extraordinary in their length. In its left hand hung a dirty sack, and in its right, a long candle.

  The color cursor was yellow, which guaranteed that it was an NPC, but she couldn’t be sure as to its humanity. As she watched fearfully over Kirito’s shoulder, the small man (she thought) dragged and slapped its feet across the chapel, approaching one of the little candle piles found here and there.

  It squatted and pulled a fresh candle out of the sack, lighting it from the tiny, nearly spent one and placing the fresh one on the ground. Then it moved to the next pile and repeated the process. It seemed to be a manager of sorts for the underground chapel, but the species of the thing was still uncertain.

  He must have been what Kirito called the “hint.” In that case, she had to be brave and get her information. It might look scary, but that was just a design. It was no more than data. She summoned her courage, stepped out from behind her partner, and strode forward to speak to the little man.

  “H…hello.”

  “…”

  He came to a dead standstill, then slowly, awkwardly turned to face her. The hood was totally dark, but two eyes glowed dully within it.

  “Um…are you the one refilling all the candles here?” she asked for starters. The little man silently nodded. Relieved that they could at least communicate with each other, she continued, “Um, have you ever seen anything strange happen here late at night?”

  “…”

  The little man did not reply, so she wondered if her question was a little too vague, but his long pause was broken by a rasping voice.

  “I don’t come here at night. I wake up in the morning and light candles. During day, I add candles. At night, I put out candles and sleep.”

  He resumed walking away. Once he had put down a fresh candle at the last pile, he shuffled his way out of the chapel.

  Once the little man’s footsteps were gone, Asuna thought it was over. If his words were to be believed, the candles lit the chapel from morning until evening. She had no concrete times, but it suggested that at two o’clock, in the dead of night, the chapel would be pitch-black.

  “Ah…”

  She looked over at Kirito. He didn’t say anything. She went to the nearest pile of candles, crouched, and blew them out. The chapel got about a quarter darker and eerier than before, but she was certain this was the answer.

  “Blow out those candles, Kirito!” she ordered, extinguishing the next pile.

  When he finished the last pile moments later, the chapel plunged into total darkness. It was impossible to move around like that, so Asuna was about to open her window to pull out her own lantern when a pale blue light illuminated her hands.

  “Th-thanks…” she said, looking up to thank her partner for his consideration, but Kirito was at a distance, his hands empty. She looked around, wondering where the source of light was.

  The floor in the center of the room was glowing faintly.

  It wasn’t the glowing moss from the spider’s cave on the third floor, nor was it a magic item with light properties. There was no warmth from it…In fact, the empty light seemed to fill the room with an icy chill.

  “Hyoooo…”

  A sound like the rustling of branches disturbed the chapel air. Asuna bolted upright, her body stiff.

  Something was seeping through the floor and taking shape. It was a pale, transparent, twig-thin hand.

  …Pleasepleasepleaseplease, nononononono.

  Of course, her silent plea did not stop the thing from transforming. It rose from the floor with another wail of hatred—next an arm, then a shoulder. Long, stringy hair, a scrawny body…It was a woman. But where her eyes should have been were only red flickering fires, and sharp fangs jutted from her mouth.

  No matter how hard Asuna focused on it, no cursor appeared. But it clearly wasn’t an NPC or a player. It was a monster—no, a ghost.

  The apparition, which took its sweet time appearing in full to really make the most of its terror, brandished hands with long nails like claws and emitted a third shriek.

  “Hyoooooh…!!”

  Suddenly, the entire chapel rattled violently. The pews fell over, one after the other, and fine pieces of stone fell from the walls and ceiling. She had to stand firm, or she might lose her balance…but her body wouldn’t listen. All her senses grew distant, and her stiff body toppled like a stick—

  “Whoa there,” went a voice in her ear as thin but powerful arms propped up her back. Somehow, Kirito was now standing right next to her.

  “Oh…you didn’t like it? I thought it was kind of a cool haunted house effect…”

  Then he noticed Asuna’s abnormal state.

  “You okay?”

  She tried to reassure her concerned partner, but her mouth wouldn’t work properly. He sensed her predicament, slipped his left arm around to cradle her, walking her over to the wall.

  The ghost continued to wail as he did so, and the chapel only vibrated harder. It was clearly the source of the quest giver’s troubles, but that was as far as Asuna’s mind could work. She shut her eyes as tight as she could in Kirito’s arms, praying that it would disappear soon.

  The next fifteen seconds felt like many times more than that, but at last the rocking began to subside. The ghost’s voice calmed, trailed off, and vanished.

  As silence returned, Asuna let out the breath she’d been holding in. When her numbed senses returned to her, she realized Kirito’s arm was around her, prompting a rise of embarrassment. She opened her eyes to tell him that it was fine, that she could stand on her own…

  About a foot away from her nose was a ghostly face, emitting a pale blue light.

  “Yaaaaaaaah!!”

  Asuna let out an ear-piercing scream that far eclipsed the ghost’s, clutched Kirito with all her might, and buried her face into his black leather coat.

  When had she become so afraid of ghostly things? She didn’t even remember the reason why.

  Asuna wasn’t afraid of anything supernatural. Depending on the type, some kinds of traditional Japanese yokai were even cute, and she tended to like zombie movies. But the ones she couldn’t handle were anything “ghostly”—the things without a body, that could appear and disappear at will, floating through walls and floors. The unease of not knowing if they were truly there was what got to her.

  She’d fought a great variety of monsters since being trapped in SAO but had yet to face a single noncorporeal ghost monster. She’d been hoping this meant they hadn’t been programmed in, but that was clearly a pipe dream. Kirito had mentioned an “evil spirit” earlier, and sure enough, the source of the rattling that plagued the old man’s house was none other than an eerie apparition.

  Now that spiritual creature was floating just inches away, watching Asuna with eerie glowing eyes.

  With that in min
d, there was absolutely no way she could remove her face from Kirito’s jacket. She wanted to do this quest on her own to reduce her dependency on her temporary partner, and it took all of a single instant to blow that determination to shreds. It was all she could do to keep her mouth shut and not scream again.

  After what felt like ten seconds had passed, her partner mumbled, “Um…Miss Asuna…?”

  She kept her face pressed to his jacket so as not to see anything and rasped, “I-is the ghost gone now?”

  “Umm…no, it’s right here…”

  “Yaaaaaah!!”

  She screamed again, but there was no helping it now. She shook her head back and forth rapidly and pleaded with him like a little child: “Make it go away! Drive it off right now!!”

  “W-well, we have to move the quest onward for that…”

  “Then move us onward!!”

  Kirito tried to break free from her, but Asuna only clutched his coat tighter. “No, stay like this!!”

  “G…gotcha.”

  He tried to keep Asuna’s body in place as he turned slightly to speak to the ghost. “Umm, Miss Ghost…why are you rampaging in this chapel?”

  After a few moments came an echoing voice that sounded like whistling wind. Asuna felt a scream seize her throat, but she kept it in, just in time.

  “…Because…I cannot leave…”

  “Why can’t you leave?”

  “…I am locked…inside of this place…”

  It was still scary, of course, but the voice seemed more tinged with sadness than hatred. That recognition helped Asuna’s mind work a little smoother, and even with her face pressed to Kirito’s chest, she realized something.

  When they entered the chapel, the door was a bit out of alignment, but it wasn’t locked. And it was a ghost without a body, so it should be able to just swoop through any door or wall as it pleased.

  Because Kirito shared the same suspicion—well, more like because he knew the proper conversation pattern to complete the quest—he was able to get through the ghostly conversation quite smoothly.

  She (?) had been trapped inside this chapel thirty years earlier, when she was still alive.