Sword Art Online Progressive 4

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t taking good care of you. Please…help me,” she whispered to the sword, put it back into the sheath, and hung it from her left hip. Next, she replaced her normal hooded cape with a silver one she was saving. After that, she equipped her rewards from Yofel Castle the day before.

  On her ears were the Earrings of Ripples, fashioned in the shape of little shells, with a boost to hearing. And on her legs were mid-length boots with over-the-knee socks called Prancing Boots. They gave her a slight jumping bonus and diminished the sound of her footsteps.

  Outfitted in the best gear she had on hand, Asuna looked in the direction of the shrewman’s escape.

  She wanted to go off searching for it, but obviously, moving meant increasing the risk of encountering other monsters. It was already nearly a miracle that she’d chased so far after the thief without running into any other foes along the way.

  On the other hand, it was not going to show up again if she waited in place. Still, there had to be a way to take advantage of a looting mob’s habits to lure it out.

  Asuna pulled up the map tab and closely checked her surroundings. She was in the southern part of the third level of the dungeon, with essentially a straight corridor mapped out from the spot where she’d fallen through the trapdoor. The passage widened where she’d slipped and fallen and seemed to fork just ahead. She had no idea which of the hallway’s two branches the monster had taken.

  Asuna closed her window and reached into her waistpouch to pull out the silver pendant that was the original cause of her fall. She didn’t know what benefits it held, but it was going to serve as a lure now.

  “When the rat thing picked up my rapier, it was barely six feet away…”

  She dropped the pendant into the hateful puddle. As the silver light wavered beneath the shallow water, she took one step away, then two, measuring out the six feet that was the shortest distance necessary to pull off a sword skill. She drew the Iron Rapier and waited for the moment the sneak thief appeared again.

  However…

  “…It’s not coming…”

  A minute had passed, but the shrewman did not show itself. Either she was too close, or the lure wasn’t valuable enough. But from what Kirito said about the “materialize all items” trick in the beta, the shrewmen had appeared from all directions and scooped up every item at his feet. So distance and value didn’t factor into it.

  What was different about him then and her now?

  She thought it over, then looked down at the rapier in her hand. After Kirito had pressed the button in his inventory, he wouldn’t have had a weapon. So maybe it came down to whether you were waiting for battle or not…

  She put the Iron Rapier back in its sheath at her left side.

  Within a few seconds, her boosted hearing detected little scurrying footsteps on the approach.

  There it is!

  All her nerves on edge, she readied to draw the sword at any moment. Perhaps the one that appeared wouldn’t be the one holding her Chivalric Rapier, but she’d just have to depend on her good luck for that.

  But once the footsteps got to what felt like thirty feet away, they stopped moving. It was as if the creature sensed Asuna’s bloodthirsty gaze.

  Actually…couldn’t that be the truth, in fact? There was no way to physically sense a gaze on one’s skin in the real world, but this place was different. The system knew what Asuna was looking at—it was the apparatus sending the image to her brain to begin with. So it was perfectly capable of telling the shrewman that she was looking at it.

  Okay, fine. In that case…

  She steeled herself and slowly turned around on the spot. Now she was relying solely on her hearing. She placed her hands in front of her ears to catch as much sound as possible, training her every nerve on the creature’s steps.

  Plep. Plep, plep.

  As soon as her eyes moved away, the owner of the footsteps moved again. It approached arrhythmically, stopped, approached again—and then she heard it splash lightly into the water.

  “…!!”

  Asuna spun around and drew her rapier.

  Six feet away, the Sly Shrewman had picked up the pendant from the water and was about to flee.

  The rapier skill Asuna knew with the longest reach was Shooting Star, but the motion to initiate it was complex, and the move took too much time to engage. Here, she would use a basic skill, one with short range but the quickest possible burst…

  With a motion she’d performed so many times it was like second nature, Asuna pulled her rapier back. Silver light shone at the tip, enveloping the entire blade. As the system assistance took over, she pushed it forward by launching herself extra hard off the ground.

  Sha-keeen! The one-part lower thrust skill Oblique tore through the darkness of the cave. As the rest of the world moved in slow motion, she saw the glowing white point of the rapier approach the black of the fleeing shrewman, make contact, and just slightly pierce the skin.

  That was all it took for the HP on its cursor to vanish. With a pathetic little crash and a brief squeak, the little humanoid silhouette burst into countless shards.

  Just as she landed and stood up again, a little message popped into view listing her experience points, col, and looted items. The XP and money were no big deal—the items were the point. Shrew Tail, Balloon Mushroom, and the Unknown Necklace she dropped. That was it.

  “…Hahh…”

  There was no stopping that sigh of lament, but she couldn’t give up now. It wasn’t clear how many Sly Shrewmen inhabited an area at the same time, but if she kept hunting them using the same method, she would have to get her rapier back eventually.

  Asuna stretched, then retrieved the pendant from her inventory again, dropped it into the puddle, put away her sword, and turned around.

  Over the next fifteen minutes, Asuna lured in three more shrewmen and dispatched each of them with a single blow. But the only items they dropped were tails and mushrooms, with no sign of the Chivalric Rapier. The third even had a Wad of Paper, just to add insult to injury.

  “Hrrgh…” she snarled, grinding her teeth, as she materialized the paper. She was going to hurl it overhand like a baseball, when— Her arm stopped.

  “Rrrr…rgh?”

  Asuna stopped and held the paper up to her face. It seemed like something was written on it. She carefully unwadded the parchment, making sure not to tear it.

  The standard seven-by-eleven-inch piece of paper did indeed have a line of text written on it. But the cave was too dark to make it out. Even bringing it close to the glowing moss wasn’t enough, so she was about to ball it up again out of frustration when she remembered that Kirito would never give up on the trail like that. She put her fist to her mouth, trying to calm her rising irritation. Eventually, her mood returned to normal, and she exhaled a long breath.

  Suddenly, to her surprise, a warm light appeared near her hand.

  She flipped it over and saw that the stone inset atop the ring on her right hand was emitting a faint but steady light. She heard Kirito’s voice in her ears: Why don’t you equip that? It’ll be handy.

  It was the Candlepower effect of the ring. Breathing on it made it shine a little bit. He was right: It was handy.

  She said a silent thanks to her absent partner for ceding that ring to her, then held it closer to the parchment in her other hand. This time the line of writing was clear to see:

  29, 22:00, B3F (181. 203).

  “…What is this?” she wondered. If it was the start of a quest, the quest log would have chirped with an update the moment she’d read it, but there was no such indicator. So it was a ball of paper a player wrote on and threw away, which a shrewman had picked up and treasured?

  22:00 looked like a time, ten o’clock at night. Which meant 29 was the date, and B3F referred to the third basement floor of the catacombs. But the numbers in the parentheses were still a mystery. While she puzzled it over, the light on the ring faded away, so she breathed on it and held t
he gem back up to the paper. At that point, she realized it wasn’t a period separating the two mystery numbers, but a comma.

  A little light flickered on in her head, and Asuna muttered, “Are these…coordinates?”

  She opened her window and brought up the map of the third underground level of the dungeon. When she tapped the cursor that represented her position on the mostly unfilled map, it popped up her name and the numbers of her coordinates. It said, (181, 235).

  The coordinates in SAO were by meter, with the zero point at the upper left corner, meaning that Asuna was currently 181 meters to the right (east) of the upper left (northwest) corner of the dungeon and 235 meters down (south). Based on the map size, it looked like the dungeon was about 300 meters to a side, so her current location was somewhere near the middle of the level, though in the lower right quadrant. The x-value of the coordinates on the paper was exactly the same, so she’d get to the spot by traveling just about thirty meters north from where she currently was.

  That all added up in her mind, but it did not answer what this was referring to—and why a looting mob would be carrying it.

  She breathed on the ring to recharge the light and held it up to the note. Upon examining the handwritten numbers again, she made a new discovery. In the 203 of the y-coordinate, the 2 looked rather roughly written. It might have been a correction from a mistake, but it also looked a little like a 3. There was a bit of a trick in SAO to writing on parchment with a quill, so it was common for clumsy or unpracticed players to make mistakes.

  “…So it was a player who wrote this, then made a mistake and tried to rewrite it, but failed, balled up the paper, and threw it away…and then a shrewman came along and picked it up?”

  Her partner wasn’t around to answer that question for her, but she was pretty sure she was right.

  The next question was what these coordinates meant.

  If the writer tried to correct the mistake, was unhappy with the result, and used a new parchment anyway, then it wasn’t meant for them. And given that it mentioned a time, it was highly likely that the note was indicating a time and place for a meeting.

  But there were still doubts.

  Why the need to write on a parchment in the first place? That was what instant messages were for. Every mistake could be corrected with the backspace key, and the SEND button would deliver it instantly. So why not use that—was it a love letter? No. Not in a crude, unsentimental way like this.

  She glanced at the time indicator in her window. It was 21:45 on the twenty-ninth.

  “…Fifteen minutes to move just thirty meters,” she justified to herself, putting the parchment into her inventory.

  Asuna headed north down the hallway with her map open, deciding the thief-elimination plan would take a temporary break.

  She crossed about twenty-five meters without encountering any new monsters and began to hear the faint sound of running water. She squinted and saw there was a little room ahead. A rounded stalagmite rose up from the floor like a bench, and water spouted from the east wall, forming a small spring. She felt a sudden thirst and an urge to rush over and scoop up the water to quench it, but she held this in and stood her ground.

  Her current coordinates were 181, 230. The little room was undoubtedly the location of the mystery-note-writer’s meeting. She looked around and found a little hollow in a nearby wall that could serve as a hiding spot and squeezed into it.

  …If a romantic-looking couple ends up coming along, this totally makes me a creepy voyeur, she realized, and briefly wondered what in the world she was doing—but there was no turning back now. She put her Iron Rapier into its sheath and stuck tight to the wall. If she had Kizmel’s invisibility cloak with its 95 percent hiding rate or had at least built up her Hiding skill…But there was no use worrying about it now. Ten minutes passed, leaving just five until the meeting time of ten o’clock.

  She closed her window and lowered the hood of her silk cape, listening intently.

  A minute later, she heard footsteps approaching. It wasn’t the slapping feet of the Sly Shrewman, but the crisp ring of hard-soled boots hitting cavern stone. It most certainly belonged to a player.

  As expected, the steps stopped within the little water cavern. Asuna waited a few moments, then poked her head out of the hollow, glancing at the room fifteen feet away.

  The visitor carried no light, so the only illumination was from the glowing moss, but the room had more of it than the halls so she could at least make out a figure.

  All she could tell was that it was short and thin. A hooded cape covered the figure from head to toe, hiding everything else. There was no shape of a protruding weapon, either, so the person was unarmed or had a small weapon, such as a dagger. Asuna focused hard to bring up a color cursor, but all she saw was that it was green and the HP bar was nearly full.

  Given that the person had reached the third level of the dungeon alone, it was probably someone from the frontline group, but she couldn’t identify their name without a better look. If it was someone she knew, she could ask for assistance in getting out—at least, that was what she’d hoped, until the sound of more footsteps hit her ears.

  A few seconds later, another player entered the room from the north side. This one was also in a hooded cape, but seemed to have a one-handed sword on the left hip.

  The first player made a hand gesture like Fleming’s left-hand rule, with thumb, index, and middle fingers extended, which the other player returned. The fact that they were communicating with hand signs while wearing full cloaks was quite suspicious. At the very least, it was not lovers on a date, and she had no desire to call out and reveal her presence to them.

  Asuna realized her heart had begun beating wildly, and she put her right hand to her chest. She swallowed hard, feeling the sudden onset of nervous energy coursing through her. The sound of her throat was loud in her ears, and she tensed, worried that it might be overheard.

  Naturally, the cloaked figures fifteen feet away did not hear the beating of her heart nor the swallowing in her throat. They sat on the stalagmite bench against the wall, facing each other. The latter to arrive spoke first.

  “Heya, heya, you’re here early today. Waiting long?”

  The total lack of care in the voice and its words nearly caused Asuna to slump to her knees. She clung to the wall, listening hard.

  “Not that long, but it was a pain in the ass to get here,” said the first player. The high-pitched voice seemed familiar, but it was muffled enough by the hood that she couldn’t be sure. The only thing she could tell was that both seemed to be male.

  “Speaking of pain in the ass, writing down that memo by hand is a royal one. I hate using that damn pen. Can’t we just use regular messages?”

  “You know we can’t. That’ll leave the message in your history, y’know.”

  Despite the light tone, the contents of the conversation were incredibly suspicious. But that answered the question of why the meeting point wasn’t just decided with an instant message, at least.

  “I’m lettin’ things calm down and taking a break from both guilds. If they find out I’ve been sending messages around, all this trouble’ll be for nothin’.”

  “Fine, fine, I get it.”

  Based on the way they were talking, the first person seemed to be in a position of higher authority, given that the second spoke with a kind of informal politeness—but for some reason, Asuna got the opposite impression about them. The second player lowered his volume and muttered, “Just in case…you didn’t get trailed, did you?”

  “That’s why we came all the way underground like this, right? Hiding won’t work against the astral types on the second level, so anyone following me would get exposed.”

  “Yeah, good point. Well, let’s get down to business…How did the matter go?” the second person asked, opening his window. He started typing on a holo-keyboard, taking notes.

  “It went pretty well. Our main force is gonna break out early before the orga
nized countdown event two days from now, and try to just sweep through the labyrinth on its own.”

  Countdown? Asuna wondered to herself as she listened. Then it occurred to her that in two days it would be December 31—New Year’s Eve. A countdown event was certainly possible.

  The problem was what they said next. Sweeping through the labyrinth meant beating the floor boss, and there were only two guilds in Aincrad capable of such a feat: either Lind’s DKB or Kibaou’s ALS. Which meant the high-voiced first player was a member of one of the two.

  But a guild’s activities and plans were absolutely top secret. If he was coming down here in secret to reveal those to this outsider, that would make him…

  “…A spy?” she mouthed silently, then bit her lip.

  The first possibility that came to mind was that the first player, the short one who was a DKB/ALS member, was revealing his guild’s information to the player with the longsword, who was a member of the other guild. But based on the way he was speaking, it didn’t seem like the second one was a member of either group.

  But who else could possibly want to go to such lengths for internal information on one of the two big guilds? The only third party she could imagine was Agil and his Bro Squad, but none of them used a single-handed sword, and they had no reason to engage in spying. Agil had shifted to merchant business on the fourth floor when the fifth was already open. It was hard to imagine that he was plotting to sneak past both the DKB and ALS to get to the sixth.

  The only other group was the Legend Braves, who had made great strides on the second floor until their scam was exposed and they broke off from the main force. But since they’d had to make amends by handing over all their high-level gear, they probably wouldn’t go through such elaborate pains to do this. In fact, it wasn’t even they who thought up the trick of the scam, but a mysterious stranger in a bar wearing a black poncho…

  “!!”

  Asuna had to clench her jaw shut to avoid gasping aloud in shock.

  Kirito’s words from the day before echoed in her mind: