“And if I refuse?”
I was getting tired of his slimy, smarmy nature. I wanted this meeting over with.
Morte took the fingers off his mouth and pointed them directly at me instead.
“Why don’t we settle it the way we did in the beta? You remember how guild members would settle disputes, don’t you?”
“…With a coin toss?”
“Ha-haaa, but you wouldn’t accept that result, would you? No, I’m talking about the other way. The cool, exciting way.”
It took me two seconds to realize what Morte was suggesting. For another two seconds, I glared at the swordsman on the far bank. When I spoke, my voice was as low and gravelly as it could go.
“…Are you being serious?”
“Oh, my serious switch is always on, partner.”
He lowered his left index finger and used it to trace the pommel of the Anneal Blade at his waist.
That settled it. Morte was proposing a duel.
The idea of a dueling system itself was not new to MMORPGs. Many games that otherwise removed the ability to PK implemented a dueling system where two players could agree to fight. In SAO, PK-ing was legal outside of towns, but anyone who committed a PK became a criminal, which turned their cursor from green to orange and prevented them from entering town.
Duels, on the other hand, were legal anywhere and invoked no crimes. They happened with wild frequency in the beta, as a test of strength or a means of settling scores.
But once the retail game came out, I had never challenged or been challenged to a duel. Even in a duel, when a player’s HP reached zero, he was dead. Which meant that in today’s Aincrad…
“…If we duel, one of us will die.”
Morte practically squirmed in delight at my observation.
“Well, Kirito, if you insist…Kidding, kidding! I mean, a complete duel would be super-dangerous, right? Oh, but it’s much safer in half-finish mode. That way, the duel ends as soon as one of us gets to the yellow zone. A lot milder, if you ask me, ha-ha-haaa.”
Aside from the “full-finish mode,” in which a duel continued until one player’s HP reached zero, there were a “half-finish mode,” where an HP bar down to 50 percent ended the duel, and a “first-strike mode,” where the first clean hit won the match.
Unsurprisingly, the over-before-you-blinked first-strike mode and the unsatisfying half-finish mode were rarely ever used in the beta; I’d forgotten they even existed. But as Morte said, a half-finish duel would not result in death.
It was dangerous to allow yourself to lose 50 percent of your HP, the very numerical embodiment of life in Aincrad. But if I refused, Morte could make good on his promise to shout and disrupt my quest. Then again, even if I dueled him and won, he could still break his word and shout anyway…
“Is there any guarantee that if you lose, you won’t interfere with me?” I demanded, staring into the darkness beneath the coif. He shook his head in a show of mock affront.
“Oh, I wouldn’t pull a dirty trick like that. If I broke my word, I’d be too Morte-fied to show my face again. But let’s say I lose. Then my HP would be at fifty percent, you know? It’ll take a while for a healing potion to kick in, and I wouldn’t be able to shout, because the long ears in camp might hear, and some other mobs might approach from behind, ha-ha-haaa.”
“…”
It was a weak guarantee.
I had the choice of not exposing myself to needless danger and swallowing Morte’s condition for today. There was no reason I had to complete this infiltration quest tonight. According to the road map Kibaou set up at the strategy meeting, this was the day (now that midnight had passed) that we started on the labyrinth, and in two days, we would be challenging the boss. There was plenty of time for questing.
But if I left the camp then, I would never know Morte’s motive for staking out this location.
It was easy for a beta tester to assume that if I didn’t show up in town, I was busy with the Elf War quest. But it was impossible to predict with such accuracy that I’d be visiting this camp on this night. It would be one thing if he bought that information from Argo, but I had just met her, and she would have offered to sell me the fact that Morte bought my info.
That made it highly likely that Morte was waiting in this spot for hours and hours on nothing more than an assumption that I’d come by. Why would he go to all that trouble just to prevent me from finishing one single chapter in a lengthy quest?
It wasn’t curiosity that made me stay but a feeling of peril, a need to understand before I could leave. I nodded.
“…All right. Let’s have a duel to see who leaves. But you need to throw in another chip on the wager.”
“Oh? Awful pushy of you.”
“Of course. If I lose, I have to call off the quest, but if you lose, you just go home. That doesn’t add up.”
“I see, I see. So what am I supposed to wager, then?”
“I want an explanation that makes sense. I want to know why you did this.”
Morte rocked back and forth like some kind of toy, but he soon nodded in agreement.
“Allll righty. I can’t guarantee that you’ll understand it, though.”
Now that we’d reached a deal, I had no obligation to listen to his prattling. But I couldn’t just tear into him right away, either. If the sound of our sword fight reached the camp above, the elves would wake up and be on alert.
“Let’s change spots, then. There’s a place upstream with some open space.”
“Roger that. Man, I’m getting so nervous thinking about a duel with the Kirito. Can we take a photo to commemorate after the fight? Oh, wait, we haven’t gotten to the point where screenshot items show up yet. Aww, too bad.”
I took my eyes off Morte and his babbling and started walking upstream, to the south. Morte sprang after me on the far bank of the river, dancing along.
After about thirty yards, there was a circular clearing next to the river. Usually such landmarks held something of interest—perhaps this was a good place for fishing—but this wasn’t the time to be peering into the water.
I proceeded to the center of the clearing and turned to my right. Morte turned to me at the same time. The grin was still slapped across his face, but I felt that his concentration was just a bit sharper than before.
“Okeydoke, so I’ll send the request.”
He swept his right hand to open the menu and smoothly tapped a series of commands. A smaller sub-window popped up before me. It read: MORTE HAS CHALLENGED YOU TO A ONE-ON-ONE DUEL. DO YOU ACCEPT? YES/NO.
At least the name Morte wasn’t an alias. Sadly, my knowledge database was woefully inadequate to indicate if his chosen name was supposed to mean anything.
Above the YES/NO prompt was a series of check boxes for the duel mode. The center option, for a half-strength finish, was selected. I looked up.
Across fifteen feet of water, Morte still had his coif on. The more space covered by headgear, the better the defense, but the poorer the visibility and hearing. The chain veil hung down below his nose, so he must have been staring through it like netting. Combined with the darkness of night, his vision must have been severely affected.
My vision and hearing were at maximum efficiency because I wore no helmet, but a good blow to my head would cause tremendous damage. On the other hand, even if I did have a helmet, a clean hit to the head would still cause temporary dazing and stun effects. Such negative status effects were fatal to a solo player anyway, so my thought process was simple: avoid head damage at all cost, and bothersome headgear will only make it harder to avoid, so no headgear.
In that sense, Morte’s coif was baffling. Compared to one of the bucket-like great helms, the coif offered little protection, but it robbed just as much eyesight. There had to be some reason that he wouldn’t remove it, even in a duel.
It belatedly occurred to me that I should have dared him to add the reason for his coif to the bet, but now was the time to concentrate. I flipped my m
ental switch to battle mode.
Without taking my eyes off of him, I slammed the YES button. The sub-window shifted and began a sixty-second countdown.
During the beta, many complained that a full-minute timer before the duel began was overkill. But the development team made no moves to shorten the timer while the test was running.
Despite not having dueled in months, the timer still felt long to me. I drew my Anneal Blade +8, held it up in an orthodox mid-level stance, and spread my legs front and rear.
But Morte showed no signs of drawing his blade, despite the active countdown. He just stood there, watching. Just as I began to wonder what he was up to, it hit me.
I had accepted his challenge without a second thought.
The most important factors for survival in SAO were knowledge and experience.
I had been in countless duels in the beta. I had acute knowledge of which skills were best for a one-on-one fight against a player and how to use them.
But this was different—a duel in the official release of SAO, where the stakes were deadly. And I had never once tried a duel in these circumstances.
Morte probably had been active in dueling since the change. He might have done it dozens of times. He knew something I didn’t know. And based on that knowledge, he was simply staring at me, learning what he could from my stance and location, waiting to draw his sword until the last moment.
Nobody did that in the beta. We groaned over the length of the timer, chatting with any onlookers or waiting with boredom, then unleashing our best sword skills as soon as the timer hit zero. That was the duel I knew.
But after the moment forty-three days before that changed everything, the old way went out the window.
Sixty seconds: a span of time allotted to observe the enemy and formulate a strategy.
I glanced back down at the window hovering in front of my chest. The countdown was around forty-five seconds remaining.
Back to Morte. He stood straight, swaying slightly. I gleaned nothing from his stance. In comparison, I had my Anneal Blade held out in front of me, crouched slightly, center of weight leaning forward. What did he see in my stance? How would he read and react to my first movement? I could change my stance, but would that just give him more information instead?
I checked the counter: thirty-five seconds. That endless timer from the beta seemed to be ticking twice for every actual second now. There was no time for thinking. Could I signal a pause and request a do-over? No, I wasn’t that shameless, and once the timer started, the duel was inevitable. I realized that I was losing my cool and starting to panic, and the first bead of virtual sweat trickled down my forehead.
Twenty-five seconds left. Perhaps I should give up on striking first and see what he did instead. There was fifteen feet of water separating us. It was certainly shallow enough to cross, but I could easily fall into a tumble just from running through it, to say nothing of striking with my sword. Morte wouldn’t just rush across the water…
But hang on. Fifteen feet could be crossed quickly with the Sonic Leap skill. And if used right as the counter ended, there wouldn’t be enough time to escape the accuracy range of the sword skill. Fortunately, Sonic Leap started with a high stance, and I had the blade held neutral, so he wouldn’t know I was going to use it.
Ten seconds left. The countdown started to beep audibly with each second.
Five seconds. Morte finally drew his sword. His Anneal Blade had a slick gleam to it, the sign that he’d put a lot of work into upgrading it.
Four seconds. Morte swung the sword up into a careless high stance. The blade started glowing light green, the sign that he was about to use a sword skill. The stance and color meant…Sonic Leap.
Three seconds. Was his plan the same as mine? But the counter wasn’t over yet. Hitting the opponent during the countdown to a duel outside of the safe haven of town was considered a criminal act. His cursor would go orange.
Two seconds. If I was going to evade, I had to jump to either side now. But I stayed pointed right at Morte and raised my sword to a high position. He probably intended to hold the premotion of the sword skill until the countdown finished, but he’d started far too early. It was going to cancel out before the duel began.
One second.
But just as the counter read 01, Morte leaped off the ground. The high-speed slash screamed across the water, green trail reflecting off the surface.
Then I understood.
There was no need to wait until zero to let the skill fly. If the blade hit the opponent’s avatar and caused damage even a mere 0.001 seconds after the bell, it would not set off the criminal code. Morte understood that well and timed his move perfectly.
Zero.
A purple DUEL!! sign appeared over the river, but I did not see it. Morte’s body, like some dark, monstrous bird, blocked my view.
I was planning to use Sonic Leap when the duel began. But that naive plan of mine was ultimately what saved me from the ignoble result of a defeat simultaneous to the start of the match.
Because I had my Anneal Blade held up, not yet in the motion for the skill, I just managed to turn it flat and absorb Morte’s attack in time. If he’d hit me right on the head, it would have stunned me, if not consumed half my health right in one go, and left me unable to stop a follow-up attack.
A tremendous shock ran through both hands—right gripping the handle, left pushed against the flat of the blade for support.
Player sword skills had a special weight to them that far outclassed monster attacks. He didn’t just rely on the system assistance for speed and power but jumped and swung downward for extra momentum. Orange sparks and green light exploded just inches from my eyes, clouding my vision.
Longswords were among the hardier one-handed weapons, but they had a weakness. If a powerful shock hit the flat side of the blade head-on, there was a chance for the weapon’s durability to drop to zero at once, resulting in the destruction of the item.
My sword creaked unpleasantly as it blocked Morte’s Sonic Leap. But the faithful partner who had held fast since the first day of the game did not give. The blow was so powerful that if I hadn’t just upgraded the durability stat to +4, it might have broken.
“Grrh…”
I grunted and gritted my teeth, waiting for the enemy’s sword skill to finish. If I could withstand the blow fully, Morte would be left in a brief, vulnerable pause. The lights exploding before my eyes grew steadily weaker, bit by bit…
But just before the skill was finished, my right foot, planted in the soft ground of the riverbank, finally gave in to the pressure and slipped. My body sank abruptly, and I had to leap backward to avoid falling. At the exact same moment, the glow left Morte’s blade.
As soon as I landed, I leaped forward.
When his pause ended, Morte lifted his sword again.
“Raaah!”
“Shwaa!”
After the two shouts was a single clash. Twice, then three times, the night forest rang with the eerie, resonant clang of two copies of the same exact blade striking with force.
Even without the benefit of a sword skill, Morte’s talent with the blade was considerable. He wasted no effort with his swings, aiming for my critical points with the shortest possible movements. I had to parry and sidestep desperately just to block these unique attacks, somewhere between slashes and thrusts.
He had the clear upper hand in the number of strikes, but that suited me fine. The more I concentrated on this battle, the quicker the remnants of that ugly panic faded. Once my mind was as honed as a steel trap, I would be ready to counterattack.
“Shuaa!”
Furious at the failure of his surprise attack, Morte emitted a bloodcurdling screech and thrust at my heart. Thrusts were difficult to parry due to the precise timing required, but they were much easier to sidestep. I stepped forward and to my right, tilting sideways, and swept my blade from left to right as I evaded his sword point.
My sword, upgraded to +4 sharpnes
s, cut through the fish-scale armor and knocked down Morte’s HP bar for the first time. It wouldn’t have been enough damage to win even under the first-strike rules, but at least I finally had the advantage.
“Shhhu!”
Morte leaped backward, hissing in anger. Finally, that cocky leer was gone from his lips. If I let him take his distance, he might come back with another unexpected trick. I darted after him, keeping within sword range. Morte attempted more of his thrusting swings, but I calmly dodged or deflected each one.
As Morte retreated, still attacking, his boots hit water. I didn’t have the time to look at the ground, but I knew I’d pushed him against the river. If I put more pressure on him, I could lure him into another major attack. And if I evaded that, I could actually use a sword skill to finish him off…
A large splash sounded nearby, but it was not Morte falling into the water. In fact, he was already quite deep into the river. His right leg had just kicked up a wave of water; a sheet of tiny drops danced before my eyes.
He was using this blinding water attack either to flank me or to launch a counterattack. I retreated quickly, staying away from the droplets and watching Morte closely. Beyond the spray of water, I caught a flash of purple. It was…
…not a sword skill. That was the purple of the menu.
I had no idea what he was doing, opening his menu in the midst of a duel, but that was not possible with his sword in his right hand. I didn’t see it in his left hand, either. Perhaps he had returned it to its sheath—no, not that either. He must have dropped it into the river and had to open his window to get a new one. But I wasn’t kind enough to let this opportunity pass.
“Raaah!”
I held my sword high overhead, screaming with animal aggression. The same instant, a faint swishing hit my ears.
That sound was familiar. But by the time I realized what it was, I couldn’t stop the slash already in progress.
The flying sheet of droplets finally reached its peak and began to fall. On the other side, Morte’s left hand held a round shield that hadn’t been there a second before. It was of a simple, unassuming design, but the spun-metal luster spoke faithfully to its quality as an item.