Sword Art Online Progressive - Volume 01

  “Don’t play dumb with me. Why did you force me to sit here?” Asuna glared at me.

  “Er, um, oh, right. Sorry, just thinking...”

  “Thinking? Weren’t you coming here to have that blacksmith work on your weapon, Kirito?”

  “Um, h-how can you tell?” I asked, startled. She shot me an exasperated look.

  “When we were in Marome two nights ago, you said you were hunting Red Spotted Beetles in the rocky mountains to the east. That must have been for one-handed sword upgrading materials.”

  “Oh ...yeah,” I sighed.

  “What was that reaction for?”

  “Um...I just can’t believe I’m hearing this from the girl who didn’t know how to read her party companions, names just four days ago...in a good way! I’m not being sarcastic.”

  Apparently Asuna believed my sincerity, as her expression softened and she murmured, “I have been studying a lot.”

  For some reason, this admission made me happy. I nodded excitedly. “That’s great, really. In an MMO, knowledge makes all the difference when it comes to getting results. Anything you want to know, just ask. I was a former tester, after all, so I know everything from the items sold in towns up to the tenth floor to the different sounds of all the mobs...”

  At this point, I realized the terrible mistake I was making.

  Just as I said, I was a former beta tester. But at the same time, I’d taken on the persona of a dirty beater who hoarded information and used it solely for his own benefit. Many other high-level players despised me for this, not least of whom were the party members of the fallen knight Diavel. Even with the leather armor and bandanna, someone who knew me would recognize my face close up, and they would assume that Asuna, sitting on the bench next to me must be my partner. It was incredibly reckless of me to be talking about this in a crowded public place.

  “Umm...s-sorry, just remembered something I need to do,” I excused myself clumsily, preparing to stand and rush off.

  The fencer stopped my shoulder with the lightest tap of her index finger and spoke in a low but firm voice.

  “It’s crazy and arrogant of you to think you can bear the burden of all the hatred and jealousy toward the former testers...but that was your choice, so I won’t say anything more on the subject. But I also wish you’d respect my decision as well. I don’t care what other people think. If I didn’t want people to think that I was your friend...your companion, I wouldn’t have spoken to you.”

  “........Aw, geez. You can see right through me,” I muttered and sat back down on the bench.

  She had identified all my motives, from calling myself a beater at the boss chamber to my attempt to get up and flee just seconds ago. No use trying to hide now. I raised my hands in brief surrender and she grinned slightly beneath her deep hood.

  “If you’re a pro at Aincrad, then my all-girls’ academy upbringing makes me a pro at mental battles. As if I couldn’t read your avatar’s face like a page in a book.”

  “W-well...I’m sorry to have doubted you...”

  “So be honest. Why are you hesitating on upgrading your weapon? I was coming here to do the very same thing, in fact.”

  “Wha...?”

  I looked down at Asuna’s fragile blade in surprise. Her green-hilted rapier in its ivory scabbard was called the Wind Fleuret. I’d looted that sword from a monster and given it to her as an upgrade when we first formed our party, preparing for the first-floor boss fight. It was a fairly rare item, with the potential to serve admirably until midway through the third floor if it was upgraded properly.

  “Is that plus four right now?” I asked. She nodded.

  “Did you bring your own upgrade mats? How many?”

  “Umm ...I have four Steel Planks and twelve Windwasp Needles.”

  “Wow, nice work. But...” I did some mental calculation and groaned, “Hmm, but that means the chance of going to plus five is only a bit over eighty percent.”

  “Aren’t those good odds to risk?”

  “Normally, sure. But after what we just saw...”

  I looked back across the plaza at the dwarfish blacksmith, rhythmically pounding away. Asuna looked at him as well and shrugged.

  “The odds of a coin turning up heads is always fifty percent, no matter what happened the last time. What effect does the last person’s consecutive failure have on you or me trying our hand?”

  “Well...nothing...but...”

  I couldn’t come up with a good answer, but my mind was racing. Clearly, Asuna was a person of logic and reason, and she wouldn’t accept my assertion that there were streaks and mojo when it came to gambling. Even my left brain knew that there was no proof behind the “bad feeling” I was getting.

  But on the other hand, my right brain was screaming danger. It claimed that whether Anneal Blade or Wind Fleuret, the next weapon to be given to that blacksmith, regardless of extra boosts and bonuses, would end in failure.

  “Listen, Asuna.” I turned my body to face her directly and put the gravest possible tone in my voice.

  “Wh-what?”

  “You like ninety percent better than eighty percent, right?”

  “...Well, sure, but–”

  “You like ninety-five percent better than ninety percent, right?”

  “...Well, sure, but–”

  “Then don’t compromise. If you already put in the work to get these materials, why not give it one more round and get those odds up to ninety-five?”

  She gave me a very skeptical gaze for several long seconds, then beat her long eyelashes slowly, as though realizing something.

  “Yes, it’s true that I hate compromising. But I hate people who are all talk and no walk just as much.”

  “...Huh?”

  “Since you’re so dead-set on me pursuing perfection, I assume you’re going to lend me a hand, Kirito. The drop rate on Windwasp Needles is only eight percent, after all.”

  “......Huh?”

  “Now that that’s settled, let’s go hunting. I think the two of us together can take down about a hundred before nightfall.”

  Asuna patted my shoulder and stood up, then squinted slightly, her shapely eyebrows knitting together, and delivered the finishing blow.

  “Oh, and if we’ve going to hunt together, you must take off that ugly bandanna. It looks absolutely hideous on you.”

  2

  Because of the “sword arts” that were the greatest selling point of SAO, the game had far more humanoid monster types than any other MMORPG. This tendency didn’t come into focus until the next floor, however, so there was still a wide variety of nonhuman monsters on the first and second floors. The animal and plant mobs that couldn’t use sword skills were much easier for newbies to deal with, but there were exceptions, of course.

  Most notable of those were monsters with dangerous side effects like paralyzing toxins and corrosive acid, but aside from that, flying mobs were surprisingly tricky. After all, there was no magic in SAO. The only means of attacking targets at a distance was throwing knives, and they were more like a complementary weapon, not a primary source of damage.

  I had to admit there was something cool about the idea of sinking all my time into the Throwing Knife skill and terrorizing all the flying mobs, but I didn’t have the willpower to dedicate to such an extreme build now that the game was deadly. On top of that, SAO、’s throwing weapons all had a finite amount, so if you ran out of knives in the midst of battle, tragedy awaited.

  Therefore, when Asuna the fencer called upon–more like forced–me to help her hunt the flying Windwasps in the western zone of the second floor, with our very limited weapon range, there was only one thought on my mind.

  Ugh, this is gonna be such a pain in the ass.

  Once we left the west gate of Urbus, I called up my equipment mannequin and unequipped the yellow-and-blue-striped bandanna. I looked up at the long black bangs hanging below my eyebrows and sighed in relief. My
original SAO avatar had parted hair in an attempt to escape those loose bangs, but now that I’d been living with this for a month, it was the most comfortable and familiar look for me.

  Asuna watched me removing my costume and snorted. “I can’t believe you thought putting on one stupid bandanna made for a disguise. It won’t work unless you hide your entire face or use face paint.”

  “Urgh...”

  The latter term sent a painful shock through my memory.

  My face had been covered in thick black paint until two nights before. And it wasn’t a cool tribal pattern on the cheeks or a reverse cross on my forehead. No, it was something much, much more embarrassing–I thought. I didn’t have the nerve to look for myself. The only human player who saw me described me as Kiriemon,” after the famous robotic cat character.

  My face was marked against my will the moment I accepted a certain quest, and the marks would not come off until I completed that quest. I worked myself to the bone, tears in my eyes, to finish it up after three nights, when the whiskered old martial arts master finally erased the markings. There were no words to describe the joy and satisfaction of that moment. I was so happy, I even forgave him for the fact that cleaning them off was as simple as a wipe of the light brown rag from his robe pocket.

  For that reason, I’d lost a good fifty hours of forward advancement since the opening of the second floor. I rushed to the village of Marome, the current front line of player progress, where I met Asuna for the first time since the boss fight.

  She, of course, had no idea why I would give that odd reaction to her innocent suggestion, and stared at me suspiciously. I cleared my throat in a hurry.

  “Ah, um, g-good point. Maybe I should get one of those hooded capes for myself the next time I go to Urbus. Where did you buy yours?”

  “From an NPC in the western market of the Town of Begi...” She trailed off, and I felt flames pouring from her eyes. “You’d better not buy the same thing! Then people will think we’re a coup...a fixed party! Wear a burlap sack if you want to hide your face!”

  Asuna turned her head away in a blinding huff, opened her menu and tapped the equipment figure. The plain gray wool cape sparkled briefly and vanished, and her long, straight hair glimmered in the afternoon sun.

  It was the first time I’d seen her full face in four days, not since the battle against Illfang the Kobold Lord, and it was indescribably beautiful. It almost made me wonder if Akihiko Kayaba, the ruler of our new world, had made one careless mistake and left her face in its original avatar torn–but if I ever said that aloud, she’d pound me.

  Marome was to the southeast of Urbus, so the southwest road was empty of adventurers. If it weren’t for the whole game-of-death thing, being able to stroll with a beautiful girl in the midst of a video game would be the greatest gift God could give any teenage boy. Even if we were only going to farm wasps for a royal-pain-in-the-ass mission.

  “People might confuse me for a PKer if I wear a burlap sack. Can I at least get the same cape in a different color?”

  “Negative!”

  “...Yes, ma’am.”

  I brought up my equipment mannequin again, removed the leather armor disguise and put on the pitch-black Coat of Midnight I’d looted from the boss.

  Asuna seemed about to say something as she watched the long hem of the coat flap in the wind, but when our eyes met, she turned away in a huff. I started to wonder why I was even helping her gather upgrading materials, then remembered that it had been my own suggestion.

  On the other hand, Windwasps were worth the trouble thanks to their experience value. It would be a good source of points before dinner. Plus, no doubt Asuna would be generous enough to pay for dinner in place of her lodging fee. Sure, she would.

  The path ahead took us through a narrow ravine that split the fields of grazing oxen into north and south. Through that canyon was where we’d find the wasps.

  “As I’m sure you already know, given that you’ve hunted a fair number of them, the wasps’ stingers have a two or three-second stun effect. Let’s keep in mind that if the other gets stunned, we should immediately go in and take over for them.”

  “Got it,” she said, then added, “If you go too far south, you’ll run into Jagged Worms, so watch out for that.”

  “G...got it.”

  Belatedly, I recalled that bit of info from the beta test.

  We crossed the natural stone bridge that spanned the thirty-foot gorge, nervous despite its reasonable width, and sighed in relief once we were across.

  “I wonder what would happen if we fell off,” Asuna asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I doubt you’d die if you’re over level five. But the path out the ravine is way to the south, and there’s plenty of slimy monsters down there, so it’d take a while to get out.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought I detected something other than relief in her face. As though sensing my suspicion, she turned away toward the valley and said, “I was just thinking, if we go up against a boss monster, scouting it out and leveling up, creating a strategy and all that, and still lose, that’s one thing. But dying because you were careless and fell from a tall height would really suck.”

  “Yeah. In a normal MMO, dying from a fall would be a funny story...but not here,” I murmured. “But do you even think there’s a way of dying in the real world that might make you say, “Well, I did my best so I have no regrets’? Whether it’s a disease or an accident, I think all you’d be left with is sadness and frustration...I mean, if there’s any way to die in Aincrad and feel satisfied that you did what you needed to, it would have to be...”

  Sadly, my fourteen-year-old-nerd’s vocabulary failed me; my fingers wriggled and my mouth opened and closed without a sound. Asuna mercilessly watched the entire sorry display, then gave a brief answer.

  “Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. Not that I’m eager to find out what that’s like any time soon.”

  “Y-yeah.”

  “In which case, we ought to put our best effort into defeating the second-floor boss. And helping me Dower up my weapon is part of that process.”

  “Y...yeah.”

  “Since were both in agreement, let’s get started. A hundred in two hours!”

  Asuna drew her rapier and headed in the opposite direction of the stone bridge–a small basin lined with low trees.

  One hundred wasps in two hours. One every seventy-two seconds? For real?

  All I could summon in response was a halfhearted grunt of agreement.

  The Windwasps were black with green stripes and a foot and a half long, easily making them larger than any insects on earth, but among the smallest monsters found on Aincrad. Their HP and attack values were fairly low for second-floor mobs.

  However, it was very difficult to suppress the brain’s primitive signal to flee when a bee larger than your head approached, brandishing a stinger the size of an ice pick. Hunting the wasps therefore became an exercise in mastering one’s instincts.

  It was for this reason that I’d been concerned about Asuna, who did not seem to take kindly to bugs. However–

  “Haah!”

  Her rapier skill Linear burned a silver line through space, unerringly piercing the weak abdomen band of a wasp. screeched metallically and burst into polygonal shards. A list of experience and rewards appeared before my eyes automatically for being in her party.

  “Twenty-four,” she shouted, looking over with what I suspected to be confident glee in her eyes. My juices of rivalry energized, I turned toward a fresh new wasp to my right.

  It had spawned with me inside of its aggro range, so as soon as the curved compound eyes spotted me, it reared up high. The wasp stopped about five yards off the ground, then buzzed down with a heavy, stomach-churning vibration. If the wasps body stayed straight, it would lunge for a bite attack, and if it curved like a hinge, it would use its poison stinger. That was the first step to dealing with the creature
s, but even after my considerable beta experience with these and the more powerful Storm Hornets, I couldn’t help but recoil in fear when they lunged.

  This time, I withstood the terror and noticed the bee had its abdomen exposed, signaling a stinger attack. I stood my ground The wasp charged right before me, then briefly stopped to hover again. The massive poisoned barb was glowing with a faint yellow light. I waited until that moment, then jumped backward. The stinger shot forward with a mechanical clank but found no purchase.

  Once the wasp missed, it would fall under a delay effect for a second and a half Without missing a beat, I unleashed Vertical Arc, a two-part sword skill. The blade carved out a V shape and hammered the wasp with satisfying sound effects. The monsters HP gauge fell nearly 60 percent.

  Fresh out of its delay, the wasp flew up high again. It spun around and began another dive. This time, it hurtled body first, the sign of a bite attack. I sidestepped rather than waiting for the attack, then raced after the bee when it passed by. It stopped and briefly hovered before its next turn, more than enough for me to catch it with a clean diagonal Slant.

  One more Vertical Arc would finish off the monster, but its cooldown icon was still lit at the bottom of my view. A follow-up Slant could do the job if I hit its weak point, but from behind, the wasp’s large wings were in the way. If I didn’t strike a critical hit, its HP bar would still have a bit left. I clicked my tongue in disappointment and launched a regular swing attack before the wasp’s delay wore off. Fortunately, I hit it before its bite started, reducing the wasp to pieces or blue glass.

  “Twenty-two!” I yelled, looking around for a fresh opponent. The fact that I was losing despite the edge in level and equipment was thanks to Asuna’s high rate of critical hits–in other words, she was so accurate that she could hit the wasps in their weak point every single time.

  My Vertical Arc did 60 percent of a wasp’s life bar with a normal hit, whereas Asuna’s Linear did just over fifty for a critical blow. But because that move was a basic skill, it had a very brief cooldown time, meaning she could use it every single time the wasp was vulnerable.