Sword Art Online Progressive 4

  “…Geez, how hard is he running?” she grumbled as the back alley joined the main road and the number of people in the vicinity grew. She looked around and exhaled in relief when she spotted a familiar-looking shape up ahead.

  But she didn’t want to yell out to him and draw attention in a crowded place, so she had no choice but to continue her pursuit. Kirito nimbly raced on, avoiding players and NPCs alike, cutting through the teleport square and into the north side of town. When he reached the plaza that contained the entrance to the catacombs, he ran straight into the ruins without stopping.

  “Ah, hey, wait a minute!” she called out belatedly, but he didn’t seem to hear. Less than a minute later, she reached the temple ruins and stopped at the descending staircase that yawned from the floor.

  Briefly, a horrible feeling of anxiety crawled through her chest. But she didn’t have the option of turning back now. She opened her menu, deciding to prioritize meeting up, and sent him a brief message reading, WAIT IN THE B1 ROOM SO I CAN JOIN YOU.

  But the window immediately gave her a curt error message: THIS PERSON IS EITHER IN AN INACCESSIBLE LOCATION OR IS NOT LOGGED IN.

  “Wha…?”

  She gasped, looking up at her left corner, but Kirito’s HP bar was still there, a consequence of being in the same party. So the ominous latter option in the error message was not the case. She sent the message again, just to make sure she hadn’t misspelled his name, but the result was the same.

  The first basement level of the catacombs was treated as inside the town, so she should be able to send him a message. If it hadn’t worked, that meant that in the span of less than a minute, Kirito had reached the second level, which was classified as a dungeon.

  It was hard to believe, but there was no other answer. She would have to give up and return to the inn.

  …No.

  She had told herself she didn’t just want to be a person who was protected all the time. If she turned back now, she would never be an equal partner to him. It would be all right—she’d gained the knowledge and instincts to fend for herself over the last fifty days.

  “…I’ll catch up to you soon,” she swore under her breath, and stepped onto the staircase.

  Even at this time of night, the large entry room serving as base camp for the town’s relic hunters was dotted with players, but Kirito was, of course, not among them.

  She opened her window and checked the map tab. They’d run all over doing quests earlier today, so they’d mapped out about 80 percent of the first level, but there was still some of it grayed out. In particular, they hadn’t set foot through the south door of the room.

  There were no markers for descending staircases in what she’d mapped out already, so if it was anywhere, it would be through that door. She closed her window, crossed the chamber, and pushed the mossy stone door.

  Unlike with the doors to the north, east, and west, there was no hallway. It opened onto a small room with another descending staircase in the middle. The second level of the dungeon had to be down there. No wonder Kirito had been able to pass through the first level in less than a minute.

  As Asuna approached, she noticed a small placard set to the side. It had a handwritten Japanese note reading, Not safe haven below, be warned. It was probably meant to ensure relic hunters didn’t find themselves in trouble.

  For an item, a signboard had a pretty long life span, but even that was just twenty-four hours. Whoever had spent the money on this was probably refreshing it each day, but she was going to ignore that warning.

  After a final check of her gear and confirmation that her potions were easily accessible from her waistpouch, she carefully headed down the darkened stairs.

  Fortunately, the staircase was short, and in just twenty steps she was down on the second basement level. The moment she stepped into the small room below, which was indistinguishable from the one above, a warning reading OUTSIDE FIELD appeared. Beyond this point, the Anti-Criminal Code would not protect her.

  The bluish stone walls and cracked floor looked much the same as the first level. But the chill of the air on her skin and the toughness of the stone floor on the soles of her boots felt undeniably different from the floor above.

  It wasn’t her first experience going into a dungeon alone, of course. She’d spent up to three or four days in sub-dungeons and the labyrinth tower of the first floor alone, battling constantly. And she was much stronger now than she was then.

  The recommended level for this dungeon was about 12, and Asuna was currently 17. As long as she could handle the astral types and remained no more than two staircases from the safety of the town, there was no reason at all to fear.

  Asuna brushed her bare legs to drive away the chill and began to walk.

  The little room had only one exit, so she headed through it into a long hallway. The walls alternated between weak torches that looked ready to go out at any moment and small doors. It was nice to have any light at all, but the thought of checking at least a dozen doors one by one was tiresome.

  But if Kirito was down here to search for Argo, he would be looking through all of them. She was only a few minutes behind him, so the possibility was high that she’d open a door and run smack into him.

  Perhaps if she shouted at the top of her lungs he would hear, but it would also attract the attention of monsters. She decided to search the slow way, walking over to the closest door and listening through the rusted metal before pushing it open.

  The room was darker than the hallway, lit by only a few candles set into nooks in the far wall. She didn’t see any players or monsters in the narrow room, but there was a rectangular box placed near the back. It would be quite large for a treasure chest, but upon closer examination, she was still wrong. It was a coffin. But of course—this entire dungeon was a giant tomb.

  Asuna simply closed the door, knowing that nothing good could come from approaching or opening that box. She exhaled, carefully walked to the next door, and opened it. Another tomb with a coffin inside of it and no people. She shut the door quickly.

  The third and fourth were the same thing. She was beginning to get impatient and was ready to close the fifth door just as fast—when she suddenly froze.

  Something was glowing along the back wall.

  It wasn’t reflecting the light of the candles. The dim white glow was the same as the kind emitted in the temple of Karluin the night before. She checked her HP bar and saw that the buff icon of the eye was lit. She still had some of the Blink & Brink tart effect active.

  That meant the source of the white light was a relic that hadn’t been picked up yet.

  “…”

  After a bout of hesitation, Asuna decided to step into the crypt. The relic-finding bonus lasted for sixty minutes, so it probably didn’t have much longer. It would be a waste to let it drift away without making use of it…

  She snuck across the thirty feet of the crypt, toward the back wall. The glowing object was in a crack in the stone floor, and when lifted up, she found it to be an ancient silver pendant. Asuna wouldn’t know its worth until it was appraised, so she put it in her pouch and turned to leave the room.

  There was a heavy scraping noise.

  Gruk, gruk, like a stone pestle, coming from the right. She glanced aside, overcome by an intense foreboding.

  The instinctual guess of a stone pestle was actually not far off. It was indeed the sound of heavy stone-on-stone scraping—in this case, the lid of a sarcophagus, as moved by its body.

  “~~~!”

  Asuna clamped her lips shut to lock down the scream and pulled the Chivalric Rapier loose from her waist. Meanwhile, a glowing humanoid figure was emerging from the half-opened coffin with a wail like whistling wind.

  It was very similar to the ghost of the vengeful girl from the “Thirty-Year Lament.” The major difference was a pale red cursor hovering over the thing’s head. The HP bar contained the name MOURNFUL WRAITH.

  It was a monster. An angry spirit that coul
d hurt her.

  “Hyoooooh…”

  The wraith wailed, spread its arms, and pounced at her. Even knowing in the rational part of her mind that it was just data on a computer, she wasn’t able to completely overcome her fear. She scurried backward to the right corner of the crypt as she swung her sword at the thing.

  Her boots landed on a particularly large stone, which receded a bit with a tiny click.

  Under normal circumstances, Asuna would notice the aberration and leap away, even without knowing what it was. But she was so focused on controlling her fear of the ghost that her reaction to the change was late.

  Before she knew what was happening, the stone swung downward into a trapdoor. Asuna plunged through the narrow hole and fell without a sound.

  Her first thought was the height.

  In a way, the only thing scarier than a floor boss, universally capable of instantly killing even the hardiest warrior, was fall damage. It varied based on maximum HP, strength, agility, and the terrain of the landing ground, but even at level 17, if Asuna fell over thirty feet headfirst onto hard ground, she could easily die on impact.

  The silver lining was that the hole was narrow, so her body wouldn’t rotate in midair. She just had to pray it wasn’t a long fall, and brace her feet.

  The moment she left the hole, she saw a stone floor much like the one on the second level. It had been about a thirteen-foot fall. She let go of her rapier to brace herself, and when her shoes hit the floor, she bent her legs and rolled. She did two backward somersaults until her back hit a wall, stopping her cold.

  The impact was intense, but her HP loss was just under 10 percent. She stayed frozen for several moments, making sure nothing else would happen.

  The trapdoor had vanished from the ceiling above, and the wraith’s wailing could not be heard. She slowly let out the air trapped in her chest and rearranged her thoughts.

  Asuna thought she had conquered her fear of ghosts—or astral monsters, rather—but she’d totally lost her cool and failed to notice that she wandered into a trap because of it. It was pathetic, but the important thing was to react and recover rather than regret her mistake. She had to assess the situation and take the smartest possible action.

  Her first priority was to return to the second level of the dungeon from the bottom floor. That meant step one was to examine her surroundings anew.

  Asuna slowly got to her feet and looked around in search of the Chivalric Rapier she’d dropped during the fall.

  The silver sword was resting about six feet away.

  But there was also something else there.

  A humanoid creature with bluish skin, just barely a foot and a half tall, with a rodent-like extended snout, and large yellow eyes glowing at her.

  The little monster looked up at Asuna and skittered with mocking laughter. Then it picked up the rapier, which was longer than it was tall; tucked it under its arm; and darted off at unbelievable speed.

  “Hey, wait!” she yelled, but that had never stopped a robber before. The little creature melted into the darkness, leaving behind only a cursor labeled SLY SHREWMAN.

  If she let it pull away until the cursor disappeared, she instantly knew she would never find it again. Asuna tore after the thief.

  As she ran, she noted that her surroundings were less of a man-made structure and more like a natural cave. The only light sources were glowing patches of moss on the rock walls, which made it hard to even see the floor ahead. She’d need to pull a torch out of her inventory and light it to avoid tripping, but that wasn’t possible at a full sprint. She just kept running, praying that luck would keep her from slipping on the uneven, slippery ground.

  Thanks to the Sprint skill that she’d replaced her Tailoring skill with a few days ago, she caught sight of a small silhouette in the darkness ahead after just thirty seconds or so. The Sly Shrewman turned back briefly, then skittered again, a bit more panicked this time.

  “You’re not…getting away…from me!” she shouted just loud enough for the rodent thing to hear, and leaned forward as far as she could, stretching in an attempt to grab the thief’s twitching tail. Her fingertips brushed the tip of the tail, glanced off it, then finally seized it tight on the third try—when her right foot plunged into a puddle.

  The sole of the boot lost its grip and her body toppled forward. She was just barely able to avoid smashing her face into the ground, but she still landed hard on her butt in the water, sending up a large splash. The shrewman darted off.

  The light pink cursor vanished silently from her view. All Asuna was left with was the unpleasant sensation of cold water seeping into her skirt.

  It took a full fifteen seconds for her to get to her feet.

  She made her way to the wall with heavy footsteps, the hem of her skirt and the ends of her hair dripping water. Once she found a dry stretch of ground, she sank down to her knees.

  Her sword was gone…Her lifeline in this world, the Chivalric Rapier +5 that harbored the soul of her old Wind Fleuret.

  The loss and fear of that shock bounced back and forth in her mind, impeding other thoughts. She needed to regain her wits and take the optimum actions now, but her head felt heavy and dull, robbing her of the ability to even identify what she ought to think.

  Her right hand moved slowly in the darkness down her right side, but the only thing the fingers touched was cold rock, and not the partner who was always with her.

  Yes…if Kirito were here, he would tell her exactly what she needed to do. He would track down the shrewman through some means Asuna couldn’t begin to guess and get her sword back.

  “Kirito…”

  He did not answer her plea. She looked up at the cave ceiling, lit faintly by the glowing mosses. Somewhere in that direction on the second floor of the dungeon was Kirito. He might be only a few dozen feet away from her at this very moment.

  Asuna sucked in a deep breath, preparing to shout out the name of her partner with all her strength.

  But when she pulled her lips back to form the “Ki,” they were trembling.

  She wanted to call him. She wanted to scream his name over and over, sobbing like a pleading child. She wanted to cling to the possibility that he would appear out of nowhere and solve her problem like magic.

  But she was in the bottom floor of the catacombs beneath Karluin on the fifth floor of Aincrad. As of December 29, it was literally the front line of player progress. The monsters here would be more powerful than any seen thus far, and yelling to draw attention to herself without a weapon in hand was nothing short of suicidal.

  She pulled her hand up and clamped it over her mouth. The urge to scream and cry was overwhelming, but she held it in, letting only silent tears leave her.

  She was scared. She was alone. She wanted to go back to town right away.

  Asuna had never felt fear like this when she had been alone in the first-floor labyrinth tower. She worked her gear down to the breaking point, and if she happened to die, then that was that.

  Since then, her gear and stats had grown much more powerful. So was her inability to even stand on her own feet now a sign that her heart had grown weaker? Had meeting Kirito and fighting alongside him caused her to lose that solitary strength?

  No.

  That wasn’t true. The only reason that the old her didn’t feel fear was because she had given up. The reason she was so afraid now was because she had found a reason to survive and keep living.

  In fact, Asuna had found a new goal for herself just today: to be as strong as Kirito so she could ask him to be official friends with her. She couldn’t give up on that now. She would make use of the knowledge he’d so liberally given her and return alive. There was no other choice.

  As soon as she swore that oath to herself, she heard her partner’s voice echo in her ears.

  Kirito had told her about a similar situation once—just after she’d lost her Wind Fleuret to that upgrading scam, and he’d recovered it by using the MATERIALIZE ALL ITEMS button. Sh
e could still clearly recall his words.

  —So he finds a spot he thinks is safe, then does the “materialize all items” trick, dumping all his stuff onto the floor at his feet. The problem is, there are looting mobs in that dungeon! All these little gremlins come pouring out of the woodwork to grab everything off the floor, stuff it into their sacks, and scamper off. It takes him five whole hours to hunt down each and every one of those gremlins to get his stuff back…I tell you, it brought a tear to my eye…

  The “little gremlins” in Kirito’s tale had to refer to the shrewman. He’d acted like it was a story relayed to him by another player, but she figured it had to be firsthand experience. Looting mobs had the Robbing skill, which immediately overwrote the owner of an item, so even the MATERIALIZE ALL button wouldn’t bring it back, he’d claimed. Trying that again now would be no use. If she wanted her Chivalric Rapier back, she needed to defeat that shrewman.

  “…Fine. I’ll do it,” she mumbled into her palm, then let go and rubbed her eyes with the back of her other hand.

  The red in the Sly Shrewman’s cursor was quite faint, which meant that its combat ability was much weaker than level-17 Asuna. If she hit it with a single sword skill, that might be enough to wipe it out entirely.

  But she needed a weapon for that.

  Asuna opened her window and switched to her inventory. She touched the SORT button, praying to herself, and organized it to only show her RAPIER category.

  With a little sound effect, it narrowed down and displayed just a single name.

  IRON RAPIER. The very last one of the pile that she’d bought in bulk from the first-floor NPC and used up without bothering to have them repaired. She’d been meaning to get rid of it for ages, but never did.

  She touched the item and selected MATERIALIZE, and a crude wooden sheath appeared above the window.

  She picked it up and stood, put her right hand to the hilt, and slowly drew the blade out.

  It was essentially the very bottom tier of that weapon category, the blade dull, and the knuckle guard essentially just a sheet of curved metal. But in this situation, it was Asuna’s very last lifeline.