I wanted to check with Asuna, but they were standing just thirty feet from the tree we were hiding behind, and I didn’t want them to detect our whispers. I could probably stroll out with a friendly greeting and not get a bunch of swords in my face, but they weren’t going to be happy to see me, either. It was a good place to use my Hiding skill, but if they saw through it, that would only make the situation worse.
Fortunately, they had no idea we were there, and at a gesture from Lind, the five huddled for a meeting. I could only pick up isolated phrases at that hushed tone, but I began to get a sense of the topic.
“…is supposed to be to the north of the forest…we get there, then start on quests…next destination is shared with the guild quest, so we’ll follow that…evening is the first overall meeting at the town, so if we get the guild established by…”
…Aha, I thought.
Based on the way he was talking, it seemed their quest info came from a different beta tester, not Argo. I guessed that it was probably the unidentified fellow with the Anneal Blade. I made a mental note to buy info on him from Argo, then concentrated on the conversation again.
But now they were talking about how to deal with the monsters of the forest, and I didn’t catch anything of note. They raised their fists in salute at the end of their talk, then headed off to the north.
Once the clanking of their heavy footsteps disappeared, I heard a frosty voice command me to let go. I turned and realized that I was still gripping Asuna’s hood tight.
“S-sorr—”
I hastily let go, and she snorted and put her hood back on. Asuna’s expression shifted from angry mode to questioning mode.
“What do you suppose that was about…?”
I wasn’t sure which part of the conversation she was referring to, so I shrugged my shoulders.
“I don’t know. I was certain that we’d see a second version of Kizmel…but it was a totally different person.”
“Even though the forest elf was clearly the same guy…”
“That’s the weird part. If they were both different, it would mean the system rolls different NPCs every time the fight event is generated. That would at least make sense,” I noted, arms crossed. Asuna sent a glance my way from beneath her hood.
“Was it always the same people during the beta?”
“Yeah. I only participated in this particular battle three times, but the forest elf was always a long-haired blond guy, and the dark elf was always a short-haired lady…basically, Kizmel. At least, in appearance.”
“Hmm…”
Asuna thought over my answer for a few moments, then shook her head. “I suppose we can’t say anything for sure until we at least witness this scene one more time. But we should get moving now. The mist is thickening.”
Just as she said, the western end of the little grove was already turning white. If we got lost in the unique mists of this forest, we’d only have a visibility of fifteen to twenty feet, and the monster encounter rate would rise. Fortunately, the staircase we were heading for was to the northeast, so we didn’t have to charge into the mist.
“Gotcha. They said the strategy meeting was tonight, so we’ve got some time. Let’s try to avoid combat where we can.”
I headed away from the tree, and only after several steps did I realize that Asuna wasn’t following.
The fencer was frozen next to the tree, staring at the empty space where the battle event had just taken place. Eventually, she snapped out of it and trotted over to catch up. I was going to ask her what she was looking at but reconsidered. The march over the dark forest floor resumed.
We managed to stay ahead of the tide of mist and ran into only two monsters along the way, so it did not take long at all to reach the staircase.
The shadowy mouth of the passage down to the second floor opened in the middle of the mossy ground. It had been less than a day since we’d come up those stairs, but it felt like several. Asuna stared at the opening, apparently lost in the same thought.
“You don’t think that time flows differently in that elf camp…do you?”
“I don’t think even the NerveGear can affect the passage of time,” I said, laughing it off. She glared at me.
“That’s not what I’m saying. It can send this realistic data to our sensory centers, so maybe it can adjust the way we perceive time. That’s all I’m wondering.”
“The way we perceive it…So even if only one day has actually passed, it feels like three?”
“Yes…Wait, forget I said that. There’s no use for that function.”
“Huh?”
I stared at her in confusion. She blinked a few times, searching for the right words, then murmured, “I just don’t want to rely on false hopes.”
In a flash, I understood what she meant. She’d been hoping that these thirty-nine days in the world of SAO were a shorter period of time in real life—say, ten days. Or just one. Maybe even a single second. How much easier her life would be if that were true.
But sadly, it was clearly impossible for one’s mind and senses to be accelerated to hundreds of times the normal speed during a full dive. I didn’t know the fundamental properties of how the NerveGear worked, but even I could guarantee that.
Instead of agreeing that it would be escapist fantasy, I put words to a thought that rose unbidden from deep in my chest.
“…You said it was all about surviving today—I always thought that was a perfect statement. It never occurred to me to think about stacking each and every day as I go along.”
The fencer looked like she was choosing her words carefully again. She grinned faintly.
“Are you the type of person who has trouble sitting down to study every day?”
“Definitely. I was the type to spend one desperate all-nighter studying before a test, then forget it all once the test was over.”
“I figured. But I suppose you deserve my thanks—you dedicated so much of your personal memory capacity to the SAO beta test, you’ve helped me out in countless ways.”
“…Should I take that as a compliment?”
“Of course. Now let’s get moving for that main town. It’s not far, right?”
“Yep. Just take the east fork at the branch ahead, and it’ll be in sight in no time. It’s called, um…S…Su…It’s s-something.” I groaned at my lost memory.
Asuna sighed. “I take back my compliment.”
We left the staircase behind and walked along the forest path for five minutes until a wall of thick logs appeared, blocking our way. This reminded me that the difference between the camps and the town was that the town was built with lumber from cutting down the forest trees.
The path was swallowed up by a large cast-iron gate. The familiar bustling sound of all the human towns was coming from beyond the gate. In the beta, I felt relieved to go from the elven base to the comfort of town. For some reason, I didn’t get that feeling this time.
When I noticed Asuna hiding farther beneath her long hood than usual, I considered breaking out my favorite bandanna disguise, then thought better of it when I realized that few players were likely to be around at this time of day. At we reached the gate, I hailed the halberd-bearing guards—round eared, of course.
“Um, what’s the name of this town?”
The craggy-faced NPC stared down at me, then growled, “It is the town of Zumfut.”
“Thanks,” I replied and started down the tunnellike passage through the gate.
Asuna noted wryly, “It didn’t even start with an S.”
“Y-you can always ask to find out the name. The important part is where to find stuff within the towns…”
“In that case, can you guide me to your recommended place to sleep?”
“Sure thing. Any particular requests?”
Asuna thought that one over very seriously.
“I’d like to say that I want a bath…but we’ll just be back at the base camp by tonight. As long as the beds are nice, the area is quiet, and it has a n
ice view, anything will do.”
“…I doubt there’s anything else you could even add to narrow it down further,” I grumbled quietly.
As it happened, though, finding quiet places with a good view was quite easy in Zumfut. The town itself was not made of ordinary buildings but three gigantic trees that stood together like monstrous baobabs. Their trunks were a hundred feet wide and well over two hundred feet tall. The insides of the trunks were hollowed out into many-floored structures, so the farther up you went, the better the view, and the more distant from the noise of the surface.
When we exited the tunnel, Asuna’s eyes went wide as she saw the massive, broad trees looming overhead.
“Whoa…They’re like skyscrapers…”
“On the inside, too. I think it goes up to twenty floors? The view from the top is stunning, but there’s just one problem.”
“…Which is?”
“No elevator.”
Asuna said she didn’t mind that, so I pointed her toward the tree to the right—they were arranged in a triangle.
The space between the three trees was Zumfut’s teleporter square. It was already a day since the gate had been activated, but there were still people walking through the blue portal a few times every minute. Those with starter equipment or no gear at all had to be tourists up from the Town of Beginnings. I hoped they wouldn’t venture outside of town, but the fact that those who had chosen to stay safe felt secure enough to come visit was a reassuring sign.
The northern end of the plaza was a semicircular meeting place, like that in Tolbana down on the first floor. Most likely, this was where the strategy meeting Lind mentioned would take place. We approached the southeast baobab with the square to our left.
A wide staircase went up to meet the elevated entrance to the tree. Next to it was a bulletin board of the classic kind: parchment fixed to a flat wooden board. Right smack in the center was a large announcement.
“The strategy meeting starts at five o’clock. That’s going to leave us with plenty of time,” Asuna murmured. I suggested we rent a room before coming up with ideas of how to pass the time.
At the top of the stairs and through the natural knothole in the trunk, the great hall of the first floor filled my view. Players and NPCs chattered happily as they strode over the wooden floor, which had been polished to such a shine that the rings of the tree’s age stood out bright and clear. The outer walls of the hall were lined with shops selling food, and in the center was a large, spiraling staircase that led up to the ceiling.
“Wow,” Asuna exclaimed as she approached the stairs, marveling at how the steps and handrails extended directly out of the grain. “So everything in here is just one giant piece of wood. It must have been incredibly hard to carve it all out.”
I was tactful enough not to point out that everything here was generated digitally and not actually physical in nature. Instead, I nodded in agreement and rapped on the handrail with my knuckles.
“If we go to the baobab in the back—technically, I think they call it the Yew Tree—you can meet the mayor near the top, and he’ll talk your ear off about how hard it was to carve these out. It’s actually where you start the first mission of the guild quest.”
“Ahh…I wonder if the guilds and wood-carvers have any connection.”
“Now that’s a truly long story, but the short version is that long ago, you had three different groups carving out the three trees and getting into all these fights. So some warrior-slash-blacksmith-slash-carpenter guy united the entire town, and in recognition of his feat, some king from another floor gave him the sigil of a guild leader…”
“Ahh.”
“Anyway, that hero’s descendants have been the mayors of Zumfut ever since. The mayor now says that the precious guild sigil has been stolen, and the guild quest is all about getting it back for him.”
“Ahh.”
“…I’m guessing you have no interest in guild-related stuff, Asuna?”
“Not at the moment,” she said flatly. Her attractive lips twisted into a bit of a sneer. “I mean, according to Argo’s book, don’t guilds set it up so that a certain percentage of the money you make gets automatically deducted?”
“Y-yeah, that’s right. In fact, that’s one of the best things about the leader’s sigil…”
“I’m not saying that I’m desperate to keep all of my money. I’m just saying, I don’t like that kind of heavy-handed system, forcing you to participate in that way.”
“I see,” I replied, but I sensed something dangerous in her response.
At the exit of the stairs from the first to the second floor of Aincrad, what seemed like ages before, I’d told Asuna that if someone she trusted invited her to a guild, she should accept. That there was an absolute limit to what she could accomplish alone.
I knew full well that Asuna was not the type of person to swear loyalty and service to someone else. But at the same time, I knew she harbored a special quality that I didn’t possess. She had the talent to inspire others, to lead. It was hard to imagine her leading her own guild, but if she was perhaps a high-ranking officer in a large guild, she might shine brighter than anyone else…
Asuna was still frowning. “What about you? Did you join a guild in the beta?”
“No…I didn’t…” I muttered, trying to avoid the uncomfortable sense of being seen right through. “But it wasn’t because I hated the tax system, or didn’t want to work under someone’s command, or anything like that. It was just…”
“A matter of efficiency?”
Once again, she had me pinned. I raised my hands in surrender.
“I guess. SAO is rare for an MMO in that it’s more efficient gaining experience alone or with a partner than in a large party…at least, in the early stages. In the beta, all I cared about was how far I could get in a month.”
I considered mentioning the theoretical limit of playing solo I’d been thinking about just moments before, but it didn’t seem to be necessary at that point in time.
“I see,” Asuna said, though I wasn’t sure how she’d interpreted my answer. At least the frown was gone. She was about to say something, then reconsidered and turned to the staircase, clicking her boots to change the topic.
“Well, let’s get climbing these stairs. Did you say the tree had twenty floors? Do the lodgings cost different amounts depending on the floor?”
“No, the only factor is the size of the room and whether it has windows or not. You get better views higher up, the only difference is how long it takes to get there.”
“I see. And…just so you know, I’m not racing you up to the top.”
“I-I didn’t say it was a race!” I protested, but Asuna had already leaped over the handrail onto the stairs and was flying upward. I hurried after her and caught up, but as she had seized the advantageous inner position, I needed to run a longer distance just to keep up. As movement speed in SAO was dictated by equipment weight and agility points, speed-oriented Asuna had a distinct leg up on me, a more balanced player. I ended up chasing her all the way to the top floor, wheezing heavily with my hands on my knees, despite there being no point.
Asuna watched my anguish with cool disinterest. “I win. As the winner, that gives me the right to choose a room.”
“Th…that’s not…fair. You said…it wasn’t a…race…”
“It certainly wasn’t. Anyway, where’s the clerk…? Ah, over there.”
I stared at her grudgingly as she strode across the spacious hall.
“…Hmm?”
Something about that last line stuck out to me, but she was already speaking to the NPC with the inn menu open. Normally, check-in happened on the first floor (or what was otherwise the lobby) of any inn, but larger facilities like this one had a special NPC on each—wait, why was I thinking about this now?
For some reason, I snuck up stealthily to where Asuna was earnestly perusing the list of empty rooms. She poked the window when she found one she liked, entered the length
of stay, and paid the fee, then closed the window and turned to me with a very rare smile on her face.
“I got a nice-looking room on the south side. It was a bit expensive, but since we’re each paying half, it’s not so bad. This way!”
She pushed me from behind, jolting me into motion. The center of the circular floor was the staircase hall, and there were two concentric circles of rooms along the sides. Therefore, any room on the inner circle did not have windows to the outside.
Naturally, Asuna had chosen a room on the outer circle. She squeezed the knob on the door reading 2038, and it identified her as the owner and opened accordingly. Two seconds after watching the cape wave through the open door, I made up my mind to follow.
This was easily the best view I’d ever had in any room. Not only was it spacious, but the entire south wall was one glass window, which gave us a two-hundred-foot-high view of the forest and the outer perimeter of the castle beyond that. Asuna pulled back her hood and pressed herself against the window as she looked out through it, then she spun around with a burst of excitement.
“This is amazing, Kirito! We can see the entire Forest of Wavering…Mists…”
Her chatter slowed considerably as the sentence continued, until she finally realized what had happened.
Asuna’s frozen smile wore off, her mouth grew tense, and a red blush started creeping up from the base of her neck. She opened and closed her mouth two or three times, looked left and right as though seeking something, then picked up a strange-looking fruit that had been left on the table for decor.
With perfect overhand form, she pitched the fruit directly at my forehead and screamed at a painful volume.
“What are you doing in here?!”
Now, I might be a careless, thoughtless person in many ways. But in this one instance, I felt my reaction was justified.
This isn’t fair!
The pink-and-purple striped fruit was—fortunately or unfortunately—extremely hard, and rather than exploding into chunks against my forehead split into two clean halves. Because we were in town, I felt the impact but suffered no damage.