Sword Art Online Progressive 2

  “Kshaa!”

  It screeched and raced forward—but we weren’t just standing and watching. As soon as the first leg twitched forward, all three of us were off and running. These narrow corridors were no place to fight a foe with movement-disabling attacks.

  After ten seconds of running, the opening to a large empty room appeared on the right. We darted inside and the two women spread out around me in the center. I scraped the torch in my left hand on the floor to light it again, just as the queen spider barreled into the room. It charged directly for me without hesitation.

  I stood and watched the two front legs as they rose high in the air. As long as nothing had changed from the beta, the queen spider used the following attacks: jabs from the front legs, bites from poison fangs, a sticky spray from the rear, and a vertical jump that landed with a shock wave. The webbing attack would stick a player in place if stuck to the feet, and if it touched your head, there was no way to swing a weapon. The shock wave was similar in nature to the one used by the minotaur bosses on the second floor—if you lost your footing, you’d either stumble or fall over.

  Without the time to tell Asuna and Kizmel about these attacks beforehand, I’d just have to instruct them in real time. Watching the spider’s legs closely, I shouted, “When she jabs with her legs, the one that twitches will go first! If you don’t get outside her range, both will hit you!”

  Just as the words were out of my mouth, the right front leg twitched, and I jumped to the left. A giant claw slammed into the spot where I’d just been standing, and the left leg swung forward a moment later but couldn’t follow me because the first leg was in the way. The instant it, too, stuck into the ground, I shouted a command.

  “One sword skill!”

  Uncowed by the unfamiliar boss monster before them, both women immediately brandished their weapons, blades glowing. I noted the glow out of the corners of my eyes and struck at the spider’s legs with a Horizontal. The beast was hit by light and sound in triplicate, screeching hideously as a third of its top HP bar fell away. It had to be Kizmel’s power that made that kind of damage possible.

  At this pace, as long as we played it safe and limited ourselves to single skills, we could finish Nephila off in another six or seven rounds. I didn’t take any chances, watching the spider closely after its delay wore off and it started moving again. She was only queen over a simple two-level dungeon, but she was a boss monster in her own right. I wasn’t going to relax and assume that she hadn’t been altered since the beta, the same way the floor bosses were.

  The queen took a few skittering steps and crunched down with all eight legs.

  “She’s gonna jump! We have to leap out of the way just before she lands. I’ll tell you when!”

  The huge spider leaped upward, shaking the very air of the chamber. Once it reached the ceiling and began to fall, I cried out, “Two, one, jump!”

  We leaped high as the queen spider fell, the shock wave effect passing harmlessly beneath our feet. Just before I landed, I prepared another sword skill.

  In the midst of all the precise judgment and careful observation, I’d completely forgotten that the powerful and trusty elven knight was not a human being, but a programmed NPC.

  It shouldn’t be possible. An NPC didn’t respond to abbreviated commands from a player like this over their preprogrammed algorithms. But nothing about her actions struck me as out of the ordinary.

  Gauging the length of battle was extremely hard in a VRMMO, where all the senses were intensely occupied. It was typical to finish up a fight and say, “That was only a minute long?” or “It took us an entire hour?”

  So when Nephila Regina, the giant spider queen, exploded with a splashy visual effect and we received our rewards, the first thing I did was bring up my menu to check the time.

  Four twenty AM, which meant we’d only spent three minutes on the battle—but more than enough time for Kibaou’s group to grow curious about the absence of the boss and come wandering back. If they did, we could hide with Kizmel’s camouflage cape again, but it would be difficult to stay concealed after the monstrous sound of the spider’s explosion.

  I closed my window and turned to my high-fiving partners to put a finger to my lips. Fortunately, the dark elves were familiar with the sign to be quiet, and so Kizmel and Asuna lowered their hands. Next I gestured to wait and tiptoed over to the room’s entrance. With my back pressed to the wall, I trained my ears on the hallway but didn’t hear any approaching voices or footsteps for now.

  If it was after four in the morning, when the hell did they leave town? Perhaps they’d been up all night working on the guild quest.

  I spent three seconds half-annoyed and half-impressed by the Liberation Squad, but they didn’t seem to be coming. They’d probably drawn the notice of some regular spiders near the cave entrance and got stuck in battle. I heaved a sigh of relief and returned to Asuna and Kizmel.

  “Doesn’t look like Kibaou’s group noticed us. They’ll probably head back in for the second level to finish their guild quest, so we can slip out once they’re past us,” I suggested. Asuna agreed but looked puzzled.

  “How many minutes does it take for that boss spider to come back?”

  “Umm…”

  I started to search through my memory banks for that information from the beta, but Kizmel answered first.

  “At that size, it will take three hours at the minimum for the cave to generate enough spiritual power to give life to a new ruler.”

  So Kizmel had her own interpretation for the phenomenon of mobs respawning. I was tempted to ask how this spiritual energy was different from the magic that had been lost from Aincrad, but this time it was Asuna’s turn to head me off.

  “With that much leeway, Kibaou’s team will have plenty of time to search the second level safely. So we ended up helping them, without them realizing it. That kind of irks me.”

  “Ha-ha-ha. As they say, ‘The forest sees all good deeds, and the insects all the bad.’ The Holy Tree will ensure that you are blessed.”

  “Ah…I see. In the human lands, we say, ‘One good turn deserves another.’”

  “I shall remember it.”

  While they chatted, my brain busied itself with practical matters—it would be a pain to have to leave and deliver the emblem to the commander, only to be told to return to fight the boss spider again. But I soon noticed that something dark was gleaming on the ground nearby. It was a gigantic fang that had come from Queen Nephila’s mouth. I tapped it just to be sure, and a label appeared, reading QUEEN SPIDER’S POISON FANG.

  If everything went properly, we could give the commander the lost scout’s insignia, receive the quest to kill the queen, then show him the fang to complete it immediately. I eagerly stashed the fang in my inventory and checked the clock to find that it was past four thirty. Kibaou’s team would be back in the second level of the cave by now.

  “Well, let’s head back to the base camp,” I suggested. Kizmel and Asuna both turned and nodded to me at the same time.

  They looked totally unalike, especially with Kizmel’s dark skin and pointed ears—but despite one being a human and the other an NPC, I couldn’t shake the sensation that they were like sisters.

  My hopes were rewarded when we made it back to the surface without running into Kibaou. We rushed through the forest to the camp south of us, avoiding battle wherever possible.

  By the time the many rippling flags appeared through the thick fog, there was a faint purple glow to the light coming from the exterior edge of Aincrad that spoke of the eventual morning. The predawn chill of mid-December in the real world required a sweater and down jacket, but after the heat of our fierce battles, it felt good on the skin. Of course, any heat or cold coming through the NerveGear was just mental signals.

  We passed through the thick magical mist created by the Forest-Sinking charm and into the narrow rock passage to the camp. Only then could we heave sighs of relief and undo some of the heavy equipment.


  Kizmel, who had no in-game item storage, remarked with envy on our Mystic Scribing charms, as she called them, and looked to the rear of the camp.

  “Kirito, Asuna, will you deliver the memento you discovered in the cave?”

  “Y-yeah. That’s fine…”

  “Thank you. The scout who died was of the commander’s blood…I do not wish to intrude upon your report. Forgive my selfishness.”

  I didn’t need to ask if she was being reminded about the death of her sister Tilnel. Asuna reached out and brushed the dark elf’s arm to soothe her.

  “We understand. Don’t worry, we’ll give the report. What are you going to do next, Kizmel?”

  “I will rest in the tent. Call upon me if you should need my services.”

  And with a weak smile, Kizmel stepped away. With a forlorn chime, one of the HP bars in the upper left disappeared. A small system message accompanied the change, alerting us to the departure of a member from the party.

  With a clanking salute, Kizmel left and proceeded back to the right corner of the camp. I glanced over at my partner and, as I expected, saw a mixture of loneliness and unease in Asuna’s face.

  “Don’t worry. She’ll join us again, anytime we ask…I think,” I reassured her.

  But rather than turning on me in anger, Asuna simply said, “…Yeah.”

  She pulled the hanging hood up over her head, as though shifting gears, and remarked, “C’mon, let’s go report on our quest.”

  The commander of the dark elven advance forces took the leaf-design emblem without a sign of emotion. It seemed that of all the NPCs here, only Kizmel’s was anywhere near as advanced as she was, but after spending so much time with her, I couldn’t help but imagine there was deep sadness behind the commander’s stoic face.

  A new quest log scrolled by once I had delivered the item, informing me of a new task: to defeat the spider commanding the nest. I hesitantly produced the queen spider’s fang and set it down on the table. Fortunately, that fulfilled the requirements, so we were able to complete the second chapter of the campaign quest without leaving on another journey. Still, with ten chapters just on the third floor alone, there was plenty left to do.

  We gratefully received our col, experience, and item—both Asuna and I chose the magic belt pouch that had a far greater capacity than its appearance suggested—initiated the third chapter of the quest, and left the commander’s tent.

  The night had fully broken by now, and there were more dark elves milling about the camp, but Kizmel was not one of them. I stopped just outside the entrance to the large commander’s tent and turned to my remaining party member.

  “…What next? We can call upon Kizmel to join us at any time…”

  “Hmm…” Asuna looked down in thought, then shook her head. “Let’s do that a bit later. I know this sounds weird, but…I think we should give her some time to herself.”

  “I see. And no, that’s not weird. I mean, yes, she’s an NPC…but more than that, she’s our partner.”

  “I don’t recall ever turning into your partner.”

  “…Yes, ma’am.”

  A tantalizing smell came wafting over from the dining tent. I started to wander off in that direction, but Asuna pulled my sleeve back.

  “We have something to do before eating.”

  “Huh? What’s that?”

  “Come on, you haven’t forgotten overnight. We were supposed to have the blacksmith forge me a new sword once we collected the right materials!”

  The equipment in Sword Art Online could be gained in one of three different ways.

  First was the kind looted from monsters, whether simple mobs or bosses, also known as “monster drops.” When combined with chest drops found in dungeons, this category was “dropped loot.”

  Next were “quest rewards” earned from completing a quest.

  The last category was “shop made,” crafted by a player or NPC blacksmith or leatherworker from special ingredients or material items.

  In the five weeks since the game began, none of the three categories had proven themselves to be inherently better or worse than the others. My Anneal Blade +6 was a quest reward from the first floor, and Asuna’s Wind Fleuret +5 was originally a monster drop. It was likely that as the player population’s level rose, the value of quest rewards and NPC-crafted weapons would fall, meaning the best weapons would either be rare drops or player crafted. But that eventuality could be months and months away…or years, though I prayed it didn’t come to that.

  I trudged along, lost in thought, behind Asuna, her hooded cape flapping in the breeze.

  Despite the seven hours of sleep I’d gotten the last night, after the heavy questing in the dark, the advent of the morning sun brought a fresh wave of fatigue down on me. By contrast, the fencer’s stride was crisp and spry, so either she was that rarest of types among MMO gamers—a morning person—or she was trying to keep her unease away with the heel of her boot.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll go fine,” I mumbled as I rubbed my eyes, barely aware that I’d said it. A few feet ahead, the boots clicked to a halt. I barely stopped myself in time before colliding with her back. A voice made of 70 percent anger and 30 percent something else hit my ears.

  “…I’m not worried about anything at all.”

  Even in my low-functioning brain state, I was aware that I shouldn’t cross her right then, so I answered with a simple “Okay.”

  “Anyway, you’d better have saved up enough materials in battle. I don’t want to have to go farm for more because we’re a bit short,” she said, turning back to me. When she spoke next, her voice was softer than before. “It can’t always…be like this…”

  “Huh? Like what?”

  “I mean…I can’t keep asking you for what kind of materials to make a weapon or how to beat a certain kind of monster. I have to learn how to figure that stuff out for myself.”

  “Ahh…B-but when I met you in the second-floor city, you knew exactly which monsters dropped which upgrade materials,” I replied. Our reunion one week ago seemed like ancient history now. Asuna grinned wryly beneath her deep hood.

  “Only because I memorized the details that were important to me from Argo’s strategy guide. I don’t know anything that isn’t written down in a textbook. It’s the same as I was before I came here.”

  “……”

  This caught me by surprise. I searched for the right answer but could only shake my head.

  “It’s the same for me, too. I still have my beta knowledge to go on, but once that runs out, I’m just as lost…”

  “You’re wrong. The knowledge gained from a book and the knowledge gained from experience are totally different things. The reason I’m so nervous about creating a single weapon is because I’ve never experienced it before.”

  I noticed that my sleepiness had worn off by then. Choosing not to point out that she’d admitted she was worried, I kept my face straight.

  “Then you can experience things starting now. The most important thing is to survive and keep moving forward…that’s all. Use anything you can, as long as it’s for that purpose—whether it comes from Argo’s books or my brain. Each and every day will bring you more experience…and not the kind that comes in points.”

  I felt a bit self-conscious after that serious but uncharacteristic speech and looked away above the big tent. The first rays of the sun, pouring in directly from the outer aperture, caught the bottom of the floor above, dyeing it red.

  “…Good point. It’s the start of another day…” she murmured. Some of the strain had left her voice, to my relief.

  I glanced back at her and added, “Also, there’s one other thing I forgot to say…”

  “Huh?”

  “Unlike with weapon upgrading, there’s basically no fail state for crafting. So there’s really no reason to worry about—”

  She cut me off with a punch to my gut just soft enough not to cause damage and growled threateningly, “You could have mentioned th
at earlier!”

  Asuna stomped off angrily enough to break through the hard ground, and I followed at a careful distance until we came to the crafting section of the dark elf camp.

  There were four tents laid out along the path, each waving its own identifying flag: item shop, seamstress, leatherworker, and blacksmith. The tents displayed their rarest wares up front, and my heart soared at some of the items unavailable in human territory, but the pricing was rough on the wallet, especially since I’d only just reached the third floor. I walked past the shops with considerable restraint and stopped in front of the blacksmith.

  NPC blacksmiths were bearded macho guys as a general rule, but in keeping with the elven theme, this one was a tall and slender man with long hair tied back behind his head. The only visual identifiers that marked him as a blacksmith were the thick black leather apron and elbow-length gloves. But as the excellent smith’s hammer in his hand suggested, this fellow’s crafting skill was much higher than those found in the main town of the third floor. Now that Nezha of the Legend Braves had converted to a chakram warrior, this elf was the best crafter anyone could hope to visit at this point in the game.

  If there was one problem here…

  Asuna and I stopped before the tent. The dark elf blacksmith turned his sharp, tanned face upon us, snorted, and returned to his work. I felt a sudden surge of negative energy from beside me, so I pulled the cape sleeve away. This entire camp was outside of the safe haven zone, so if we did anything criminal, the guards would swarm onto us, beat us to a pulp, and toss us out of the camp—if the tough-looking blacksmith didn’t take care of us first.

  Fortunately, Asuna chose not to comment on the proprietor’s lack of hospitality, throwing a glare at me instead.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” she muttered. I nodded vigorously. There were no guarantees when it came to upgrading, but as I’d said just a minute earlier, absolute failure was impossible when forging a brand-new weapon. Assuming that the crafter had the requisite skill proficiency necessary to create the item, of course.