But I knew that running through waves and waves of monsters by simple torchlight for nearly an hour was wearing on my concentration. The mandible bites and acidic saliva projectiles were a very simple attack pattern, but my reflexes were wearing down. There were gobs of these giant ants, and they weren’t pushovers. They dwelt just three floors below the current frontier, the forty-ninth floor, which made them significantly powerful. The situation was still within my level safety margin, but if I let them surround me and attack undefended for a few seconds, my HP bar would certainly fall into the yellow zone.
There was only one reason to go solo adventuring in an already-cleared floor: This was a popular grinding spot that offered an excellent experience-point rate. The giant ants that spilled out of the many holes in the surrounding cliffs had high attack values but weak defense and HP. As long as you avoided their lunges, it was possible to rack up huge kill numbers in a short period of time. On the other hand, this wasn’t a good solo hunting ground, because as mentioned earlier, getting surrounded and losing your composure was a sure way to get crushed. Yet, as a popular grinding spot, there was a gentleman’s agreement that each party waiting to hunt had to trade off after an hour. I was the only one waiting by myself. At this very moment, familiar guilds were waiting at the entrance of the canyon for my return, their faces no doubt stamped with looks of exasperation. Actually, exasperation was probably a best-case scenario. Most of the players in the big guilds took cooperation and teamwork for granted and called me a “power-crazed lunatic” or “the lone beater.” Not that I cared what they thought.
I checked the timer on the left side of my vision and saw that I’d reached fifty-seven minutes, so I made a mental note to retreat the next time there was a break in the waves of ants. I took a deep breath and tried to summon the last of my concentration for this final spurt.
Ants closed in on the right and left. I froze the right ant with a deftly aimed throwing pick, then dispatched the left one with a clean three-part attack called Sharp Nail. I spun around and finished off the first ant with a Vorpal Strike right into the center of its gaping mandibles. While I waited for the cooldown to wear off, I blocked a flying green glob of acid with my left glove, clicking my tongue in irritation at the slight loss of HP as the leather hissed and smoked. Leaping skyward, I split open the attacking ant’s soft belly while still in the air, then landed and finished off the final two ants with the longest combo I’d currently mastered, a six-attack maelstrom. With all the ants gone for now, I took off running before more could spill out of their nest.
It took me less than five seconds to race through the thirty-meter-long ant canyon, and only when I’d spilled out of the narrow entrance did I breathe again. Gasping for fresh air like that made me wonder if the lack of oxygen was only inside my head or if my flesh-and-blood body back in the real world was also starved for air. Before I could guess at an answer, my stomach convulsed and I heaved several times before falling to the cold midwinter ground.
Several footsteps approached as I lay there. I knew the people around here, but I wasn’t in the mood for greetings. I wearily waved them away, but then there came a heavy sigh and a rusty, rasping voice.
“I’ve opened up a bit of a head start on you guys, so I’ll sit this one out today. Remember, don’t break the circle formation, and always be ready to cover the guy next to you. If you’re in danger at any time, just call out. If the queen appears, clear out at once.”
Six or seven voices responded in the affirmative to those leaderly directions, and the footsteps clomped away through the grass. Once I’d finally regained my breath for more than a few moments, I pushed myself up with a hand and slumped against a nearby tree branch.
“Here.”
I gratefully caught the tossed restorative potion and flipped the cork out with my thumb before downing it greedily. The bitter, lemony taste was the most delicious beverage my lips had ever tasted. When it was emptied, I lobbed the bottle aside. A few seconds later, it glowed faintly and disappeared.
I’d known Klein, the leader of the guild Furinkazan, since the very start of SAO. He still sported that same ugly bandanna and lazy stubble he liked to call facial hair.
“You don’t think you might be pushin’ your luck a bit, Kirito? How long have you been here?”
“Since about…eight o’clock at night,” I said wearily. Klein grimaced outlandishly.
“Oh, come on. It’s two in the morning now. You’ve been at this for six straight hours? If you lose your edge in this hunting ground, it’ll cost you your life, man.”
“I’m fine. When others come and line up, I take an hour or two off.”
“And if no one showed up, you’d just keep going.”
“That’s why I do this in the dead of night. You might have to wait five or six hours in the middle of the day.”
Klein tsked in obvious disgust, then removed the rare katana from his belt and sat down in front of me.
“Look…ever since the very first day of SAO, I’ve known about your strength. How high is your level now?”
A player’s level and other statistics were his lifeline, so it was an unwritten rule within SAO that one never asked or offered those details, but there was no point being so standoffish with Klein. I slumped my shoulders and answered honestly.
“I just went up today. Sixty-nine now.”
Klein stopped rubbing his chin, his half-hidden eyes suddenly wide.
“Are you kidding me? When did you get a whole ten levels higher than me? In that case, this makes even less sense. Your level-raising activities are off-the-charts bonkers, man. Let me guess: You spend your afternoons looking for empty hunting grounds to farm, too, right? I don’t understand what drives you to these lengths, and don’t give me that crap about beating the game faster. You getting tougher on your own means nothing when it’s the big guilds like the KoB that determine the pace of our boss conquests.”
“Gimme a break. I’m a levelaholic. It just feels good gaining EXP.”
I gave him a self-deprecating grin, but Klein brushed it aside, dead serious.
“You can’t fool me with that lame excuse. Even I know how hard it is when you run yourself ragged farming levels. Working solo really takes it outta you. Working a hunting ground like this one without a single partner, even close to Level-70, you might as well not have a safety margin at all. You’re walking a tightrope, and what I wanna know is what you’re getting out of something so reckless.”
Furinkazan was a guild made of friends that Klein had known from before SAO. They were a group of regular vagabonds who detested meddling, and as their leader, Klein was no exception.
He was a good guy, but I suspected that he felt some unspoken pressure to exhibit such concern for a wandering beater like me. I had a feeling I knew why, and I didn’t want to force him to go through this routine, so I let him off the hook.
“It’s all right, you don’t have to make a show of worrying for my sake. You want to know if I’m hunting flag mobs, don’t you?”
Flag mobs were in-game monsters that possessed a programming flag—a switch that would trigger or advance a quest or event of some kind. Most of them appeared intermittently, just once every few hours or days, but some also existed like boss monsters, and thus could only be summoned once and never again. As you might expect, such foes were terribly powerful, and common sense stated that they must be tackled with a full raiding party.
Klein’s face stiffened in guilt, then he turned away, rubbing his chin.
“I…I didn’t mean nothin’ like that…”
“Let’s be honest. You bought some intel from Argo that I’d bought intel about a Christmas event boss…and I bought that intel about you in exchange.”
“What?” Klein’s eyes widened in surprise and confusion, then he clicked his tongue loudly. “Damn Argo…I guess they don’t call her ‘The Rat’ for nothing.”
“She’d sell her own status info for the right price. So now we both know that we’r
e gunning for this Christmas boss. And we’ve also bought all the hints the NPCs have provided to this point. Which means you should know full well why I’m engaging in this insane grinding, and why I’d ignore all the warnings directed at me.”
“Yeah, sorry…I shouldn’t have tried to trick you.” He removed the hand from his chin and scratched the back of his head with embarrassment. “It’s only five days left until the evening of the twenty-fourth…Every guild wants to squeeze in productive last-minute preparations for the boss fight, but I don’t think many of them are stupid enough to do it in the middle of the night when it’s freezing like this. Anyway, listen…we’ve got nearly ten members. This is a boss fight we feel like we can win. A flag mob for a once-a-year event isn’t gonna be doable for a solo, and you know it.”
“…”
I looked down at the dried brown grass, unable to deny it.
An entire year had passed within Aincrad. Now that we were facing our second Christmas within the game, rumors were racing throughout the populace. About a month earlier, NPCs on various floors had started divulging information on the same quest.
They claimed that in the Month of Holly—at the stroke of midnight on December 24, to be precise—deep in a forest somewhere in the game, a monster named Nicholas the Renegade would appear at the foot of a massive fir tree. Whoever defeated it would receive the equally massive riches contained in the giant sack slung over its back.
Even the powerful guilds, which never spared their attention for anything other than conquering the latest labyrinth, salivated at the prospect. This treasure, whether it was a giant mound of col or a bundle of rare weapons, would greatly assist their primary goal, it was clear. Sword Art Online had done nothing but take from its players so far, so who were we to ignore this rare reversal of the trend in the form of a Christmas present?
But as a solo player, I wasn’t drawn to the rumors at first. Klein was right: It probably wasn’t the kind of monster I could hunt down on my own, and through my adventures, I’d earned enough money to buy my own residence if I wanted. Most of all, I didn’t need the notoriety that would accompany my participation in this hotly contested flag-mob hunt.
Until about two weeks ago, that is, when I’d stumbled across some NPC information that changed my perspective 180 degrees. Ever since then, I’d attended the most popular hunting grounds and suffered the chuckles of the crowds in a last-ditch attempt to squeeze in every last level I could.
Klein joined me in silence for a while, but eventually his low rumble returned.
“It’s that other thing, isn’t it? The stories of a resurrection item…”
“…Yeah.”
If he knew that much, there was no use hiding it anymore. I confirmed his suspicions, and the katana-wielder let out yet another long sigh.
“I know how you feel…It’s an item out of our wildest dreams. ‘Inside his sack there is a holy tool that can bring back the souls of the departed.’ But…I agree with the crowd on this one, man. That part’s bound to be fake. Or to be more accurate, it probably was true at the time SAO was developed as an honest VRMMO…but not anymore. I bet it was supposed to be an item that would let you revive a dead player without suffering an experience penalty. But that’s not possible anymore. The ‘penalty’ for dying now is death, period. Remember what that son of a bitch Kayaba said on the very first day?”
In my ears echoed the words from the hooded GM claiming to be Akihiko Kayaba on that tutorial day. When my hit points reached zero, my consciousness would disappear from this world and never return to my physical body.
I couldn’t imagine that he was lying. And yet…
“Not a single person here knows exactly what happens after you die in this world,” I said, as though fighting the possibility. Klein’s nose wrinkled, and he spat cynically.
“What, you think if you die, you’ll just return to your body totally alive, and Kayaba will pop out and go, ‘Psych’? You gotta be kidding me. We resolved that debate a year ago. If this were all a stupid joke like that, the people who died already would have spread the word, and people would have ripped all our NerveGears off. The fact that hasn’t happened is proof the stakes of death are real. The moment our HP hits zero, the NerveGear turns into a microwave and boils our brains from the inside out. Because if that’s not true, then what does that mean for those of us who got wiped out by these damn monsters? The ones who cried out in fear, saying they didn’t wanna—”
“Shut up.”
I cut him off, surprised at the hoarseness in my own voice.
“If you really think I don’t know all of that, we have nothing more to talk about. Yeah, I know Kayaba said that. But you remember what Heathcliff from the KoB said when we worked together on the most recent floor boss: If there’s even a one-percent chance you can save the lives of your partners, you chase that possibility with all you’ve got, and anyone who can’t summon that dedication isn’t worth being in your party. I don’t really like the guy, but he’s right. I’m just talking potential scenarios here. What if dying here means your mind never comes back, but it also doesn’t just go away? What if you get placed in some kind of holding area, waiting and waiting to find out what becomes of the fate of the game? That theory leaves open the possibility of this resurrection item.”
It was a rare speech for me. Once I’d laid bare the slim possibility I clung to, Klein’s anger abated and he looked at me with something resembling pity. When he finally spoke again, it was calm and quiet.
“I see…You still can’t get over your old guild, can you, Kirito? Even though it’s been more than half a year…”
I turned away and mumbled an excuse.
“It’s only been half a year. Of course I can’t forget them. The entire guild was wiped out…except for me.”
“What was it called, the Moonlit Black Cats? They weren’t a front-line guild, yet they ventured damn close to the frontier. Then the thief, of all people, trips an alarm trap. It wasn’t your fault, man. If anyone says anything, it’ll be to praise you for what you did, not bash you.”
“That’s not the point. They were my responsibility. I could have kept them from going up to that floor, could have told them to ignore that chest, could have sprung everyone out of there after the trap went off…”
If only I hadn’t kept my level and skills hidden from them. That was the cruel truth of the matter that I kept a secret from Klein. I kept talking before he could offer some clumsy consolation.
“So maybe there isn’t even a one-percent chance of this working. Maybe the chance that I can find this Christmas boss, the chance that I can beat it all on my own, the chance that this item actually exists, and the chance that the game really does hold on to its victims, all added together…are so miniscule that I might as well be searching for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert. But…it’s still not zero. As long as it’s greater than zero, I have a duty to seek out that possibility to the best of my ability. Besides, Klein…I know you’re not hurting for money, either. Doesn’t that mean your reasons for hunting the boss are the same as mine?”
Klein snorted and reached down to pick up the katana’s scabbard off the ground. “I’m not a dreaming idealist like you, Kirito. But yeah…I’ve lost a friend to this game, too. If I don’t do what I can for him, I won’t sleep well at night…”
He stood up. I grinned wryly.
“It is the same.”
“Nope. That’s just a fringe benefit of all the loot we stand to gain from this…Well, anyway, I’m worried about how the others will manage if one of those bigger ants shows up. I’d better go back there.”
“Sure.”
I hung heavily off the tree branch with my eyes closed. His last words trailed off as he walked away.
“Also, my concern for you wasn’t just part of a mind trick to get that info outta you. If you push yourself too hard and die doing this, I ain’t usin’ that revival item on ya.”
2
“Thank you fo
r your concern. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you up on your offer to guide us to the exit.”
Those had been the first words I heard from Keita, leader of the Moonlit Black Cats.
It had been a spring evening, about five months since the start of the game of Russian Roulette that was Sword Art Online, and I was romping around a labyrinth about ten floors below the current front line, collecting ingredients for a new weapon.
As a beater—a former beta-tester whose knowledge of the game allowed me to burst out of the gate, earn experience efficiently, and handle the toughest monsters on my own—the task was yawningly boring. I’d carefully avoided any other adventurers and reached my quota of items in just two hours. As I prepared to leave, I came across a party running the other direction as they were chased by a swarm of larger monsters.
Even a solo player like me could tell this was a poorly balanced party. Out of the five, only one man bearing a shield and mace was equipped to man the front line. The others were a thief with daggers, one person with a quarterstaff, and two spearmen. The one with the mace was losing HP, but without any partners to alternate with and block blows, it was all he could do to continue backing away from the enemy.
I looked at each of them in turn to check their HP. They had enough to make it to the exit, but if they pulled in another group of monsters along the way, there was no guarantee of their safety. After a moment of hesitation, I leaped out of the hidden pathway and called out to the man with the staff, who I gauged to be their leader.
“Want some help up there?”
He goggled wide-eyed at me for a moment but quickly acquiesced.
“Yes, please. If you feel in danger at any time, go ahead and run for it.”