After a few seconds, her fingers eased up and left my own to land on the wooden slats of the bench.
I had to say something, but the more I thought, the tighter my throat shrank. How could I be the same person who had stood before dozens of powerful warriors and proclaimed myself a beater? And not that just that. I was the one who had spoken first when I originally found Asuna deep within the first-floor labyrinth, wearing a much harder expression than she was now. Sure, it had been an emotionless admonishment about overkill, but there was no reason I could say something then and couldn’t now. None at all.
“........Um, so,” I finally began. Fortunately, the words seemed to form themselves after that point. “It’s a real shame about the Wind Fleuret. But once we reach the next town after Marome, they sell a weapon that’s even a bit better. It’s not cheap, of course...but we manage it together. I’ll help you save up...”
If mana points existed in this world, it would have cost me every last one of mine to get those words out of my mouth. Asuna responded so quietly that I could barely hear her, even at this close range.
“...But...” The word melted into the night air as quickly as it had appeared. “But that sword...that sword was my only...”
Something in her voice, some emotional resonance, pulled my gaze directly to her face. Two clear drops ran down her cheeks, glowing with a pale light under her hood.
It wasn’t as though I’d never seen a girl crying up close. But the source of those tears was always my little sister Suguha, and almost all of the instances had occurred years ago, in my kindergarten and early grade-school years.
The last time I’d seen her cry was three months before I fell prisoner to SAO. She’d lost at the prefectural kendo tournament and cried in the corner of our backyard. I had no words to console her, only a bag from the convenience store with ice pops, the kind you sucked from a plastic wrapper. I broke one in two and stuck one of the halves in her hand.
In gaming terms, my proficiency in the Reacting to Crying Girls skill was barely above zero, if I’d even unlocked that skill in the first place. I had to compliment myself on even having the guts to stay there rather than run off.
On the other hand, an objective look showed me in a very pathetic light: frozen still and dumbfounded, watching the tears streak down Asuna’s cheeks one after the other. I ought to speak or move, but I had no ice pops in my inventory, and I wasn’t ready to speak to her when I wasn’t entirely sure what she was crying about.
I understood the shock of seeing her favorite weapon crumble to pieces before her eyes, of course. If my Anneal Blade suddenly vanished, I’d probably get tears in my eyes as well.
But in all honesty, I didn’t peg Asuna as the type to form a deep attachment to her weapon, to see it as an extension of herself and talk to it soothingly as she oiled it...That was my category, if anything.
Asuna seemed like the opposite case. She would see a sword as simply one element of battle power out or several. If she looted a slightly stronger sword from a dead monster, she’d toss aside the one she’d been using without a second thought. The first time I met her, she had a bundle of starting rapiers that she’d bought in town, throwing each one away when it was no longer of any use.
It had only been a week since then. What had changed Asuna’s way of thinking 180 degrees in just seven days?
...No.
No matter the reason, there was no use wondering about it now. She was shedding tears over her partner, the blade she’d used for seven whole days. I could understand her sorrow. What else was there to think about?
“...It’s a real shame,” I murmured. Asuna’s back shivered. She seemed even more doll-like than ever.
“But listen,” I continued. “I know this might sound cold, but if you want to keep fighting on the front lines to help beat this damn game, you’re going to have to keep getting new equipment. Even if that had worked, your Wind Fleuret would be useless by the end of the third floor. I’ll have to replace my own Anneal Blade at the first town on the fourth floor. That’s just what MMOs–what RPGs are like.”
I had no idea if this was actually comforting her, but it was the best I could do.
Asuna did not react for several moments after I finished speaking. Finally, a few weak words trickled out from her hood.
“I...I can’t take that.” Her right hand clenched lightly atop her leather skirt. “I always thought my sword was just a tool...a bunch of polygonal data. I thought that only my skill and determination mattered here. But the first time I tried out that Wind Fleuret you chose for me...I’m ashamed to admit I was blown away. It was as light as a feather and seemed to home in right on the spot I wanted to hit...as if the sword was helping me, out of its own will...”
Her cheeks trembled, and a fleeting smile crossed her lips. For some reason, this seemed like the most beautiful expression I had seen Asuna make yet.
“I thought, I’ll be fine as long as I have her. I’d have her by my side forever. I told myself, even if the upgrading fails, I’ll never get rid of her. I’d take great care of her, for all the swords I wasted before this...I promised...”
Fresh tears dripped onto her skirt and vanished. When things disappeared in this world, they left no trace behind. Swords, monsters...even players.
Asuna quietly shook her head and whispered, her voice barely audible.
“If what you say is true, and I have to keep switching to weapons...then I don’t want to go upward. I feel so bad. We fight together, survive together...I can’t bear just throwing it away...”
Something in Asuna’s words brought back a memory of entirely different scene.
A child’s bicycle with a black frame. Twenty-inch tires, a six-gear shifter. I picked it out myself on the day I entered elementary school. I treasured that junior mountain bike than any child would. I put air in the tires once a week. If it rained, I wiped it off and oiled the moving parts. Perhaps borrowing Dad’s bike care chemicals to waterproof the frame was going a bit overboard.
Thanks to all of that, the bike was still sparkling like new after three years, but that was the root of my predicament. Once I outgrew the bike, my parents said they would buy me a new one with twenty-four inch wheels. But rather than allowing me to keep my precious first bike in storage, they said I had to give it away to a younger boy in the neighborhood.
I was in third grade at the time, and I fought back like I’d never fought before. I claimed that I’d rather not have a new bike at all. I even asked the fellow at the neighborhood bike shop to store it away in secret for me.
Instead, he told me that he’d transfer the soul of my machine to the new bike. Before my stunned eyes, he took out a hexagonal wrench and removed the bolt from the right crank. This bolt was the most important out of all of them, he claimed. So as long as he stuck that on the new bike, its soul would come over with it.
Today, it was obviously a bunch of baloney meant to quiet a child, but that first bolt and another one from my second bike were currently sitting in the saddlebag of my twenty-six-incher.
With this past experience in mind, I told Asuna, “There’s a way to keep a sword’s soul with you when the time comes to say goodbye.”
“...Huh...?”
She raised her just a bit. I help up two fingers.
“Two ways, in fact. For one, you can melt down your inferior sword into ingots, then use them as the base for a new sword. The other way is to just keep your old sword in storage. There are downsides to both cases, but I think there’s merit to them.”
“Downsides, how?”
“Well, when it comes to turning them into ingots, you have to have strong willpower when you loot good weapons from monsters. If you switch over to a looted sword, that ends the bloodline there. You could always melt down the loot and mix them together for your new sword, but it’ll cost a lot. On the other hand, if you keep it in your inventory, that’s using up valuable space. Again, your willpower will be tested wh
en you’re deep in a dungeon and you run out of space for items. In either case, the more practical players will probably laugh and wonder why you’d bother...”
Asuna was looking down, deep in thought, then raised her head and brushed a tear away with her fingertip.
“And do you plan to do either of those...”
“I’m on the ingot side, but I should explain...I do it for my armor and accessories too, not just my sword.”
“...Oh.”
She nodded and smiled again. This one was a bit clearer than the last, but the air of sadness still had not vanished from her face.
“If only I could have kept the shattered pieces so they could be melted down,” she murmured. I could only nod in agreement. The first sword that Asuna had felt a connection to was gone forever without a trace. There was no way to bring that soul back…
I was lost in silence. Eventually, she spoke again.
“...Thanks.”
“Huh...?”
She didn’t repeat herself. Asuna stretched her legs forward and stood up from the bench.
“It’s getting really late. Let’s head back to the inn. Will you help me buy a new sword tomorrow?”
“Um...yeah, of course,” I nodded, hastily getting to my feet.
“I’ll, uh, see you to your inn.”
She shook her head at my offer. “I don’t feel like walking back to Marome. I’ll stay in Urbus tonight. There’s a place just over there.” I turned and saw that indeed, there was a gently glowing sign that said Inn. Upon further reflection, it would be too dangerous to walk through the wilderness between towns without a decent weapon. Leaving her here for tonight and coming back tomorrow to help her buy a weapon seemed like a much better idea.
I walked her to the door or the inn about twenty yards away and watched her check in, waving as she walked up the stairs. I didn’t have the guts to stay at the same inn with her.
Besides, there was one other thing for me to do tonight.
I headed south back down the street toward the eastern plaza of Urbus.
5
When the bell rang out eight o’clock, the tireless clanging of the hammer finally stopped.
I rushed through the gate of the east plaza of Urbus and made my way across the open space, avoiding the lighting radius of the streetlamps. I reached the line of leafy trees planted at the eastern border and put my back against a thick trunk.
In my player menu, there was a shortcut icon at the bottom of the main screen that corresponded to my Hiding skill, which was set in my third skill slot A small indicator appeared in the bottom of the view reading 70 percent–my avatar was now 70 percent blended into the tree at my back. A number of variables affected that number: my armor type and color, surrounding terrain and brightness, and of course, my own movement.
I was risking the exposure of my “evil beater” persona by wearing the Coat of Midnight, but the black leather coat’s bonus to hiding would be of more use than my usual disguise. The area was dark and there was no one else nearby, maximizing my stealth efficiency. The number seventy wasn’t great because my Hiding proficiency was still low. Increasing that skill was a long and boring process, so I wouldn’t max it out for quite a long time.
Even at starter status, the skill was powerful enough to work easily against the mobs on the first two floors (as long as they were sight-dependent), but that number felt awfully low against a human being. A perceptive player like Asuna would probably see through 70-percent camouflage without any trouble. On top of that, hiding in town was considered poor manners, so getting revealed by other players could lead to trouble, especially if it was one of the recent “game police” type who took it upon themselves to uphold proper etiquette.
It wasn’t my style to sneak around and spy on people, but this was a special circumstance. I was about to embark on my very first attempted trail of another player.
As I waited behind the tree, a player-crafter closed up his shop at the eight o’clock bell. It was Nezha, of course, the first blacksmith in Aincrad to sell his wares in the street.
He extinguished the fire in his portable forge and put away the ingots in his leather sack. His hammer and other smithing tools went into a special box. He folded up the sign and set it down on an empty spot on the carpet, then straightened out his display of weapons for sale.
Once every object related to his business had been neatly packed on top of the six-by-six-foot carpet, Nezha tapped the corner to bring up a menu screen and hit the “store” button. The carpet rolled up by itself, absorbing the countless items on top of it. In just a few seconds, the only thing left was a thin, round tube.
The short blacksmith picked it up easily and hoisted it over his shoulder. The magic Vendor’s Carpet was always the same weight, no matter what items were locked within its internal storage. When I first learned about that, visions of unlimited space for potions, food, and loot in the dungeon floated through my head, but reality was not so generous. The carpet only worked in towns and villages. On top of that, it couldn’t be fit into a player’s inventory, meaning that the four-foot-long, four-inch-thick rolled carpet had to be carried everywhere by hand.
Normally, this item bore little use for non-merchants or crafters, but some enterprising people found unexpected avenues for fun. Back in the beta, there was a brief period where pranksters used the “items on carpet cannot be moved by anyone but the owner” rule to block off major streets with large furniture, sowing chaos left and right. This was addressed very quickly in a patch that limited use of the carpets to the corners of public spaces over a certain size.
Magic carpet on his shoulder, Nezha heaved a sigh of exhaustion and started plodding off, head down, toward the south gate of the square.
I waited for him to be at least twenty yards away, then pulled away from the tree. My hide rate indicator dropped rapidly until it hit zero, at which point the hiding icon disappeared entirely. I still stayed in the shadows, trying to cut down on any unnatural footsteps as I trailed him.
Of course, I was not following Nezha home in order to confront him about his failure to improve Asuna’s weapon, or to threaten him away from prying eyes.
If anything, it was that feeling of wrongness.
As far as I knew, he had failed twice–five time–to upgrade a weapon over the course of the day. The destruction of Asuna’s Wind Fleuret and the four consecutive tries on Rufiol’s Anneal Blade, rendering it a “spent” +0. Of course, this outcome was possible from a statistical standpoint, but it struck me as a little too easy. Or a little too hard, depending on how you looked at it.
The only reason I’d visited the eastern plaza of Urbus in disguise in the first place was because I heard rumors in Marome that an excellent blacksmith had set up shop there. I packed up enough materials to boost my chances to 80 percent and was pondering whether to bump up sharpness or durability when I happened across the scene with Rufiol. I would have gone up to him directly afterward to have my weapon upgraded if I hadn’t happened to run into Asuna at that precise moment.
Would my weapon have failed just like theirs? couldn’t help but feel that way, although I had no proof backing my suspicion.
If rumors of his skill had reached Marome, then Nezha’s chances of success must be noteworthy. There was no way to test for myself, but his numbers must surely be better than the standard NPC blacksmith. However, if he was somehow able to fulfill a condition that guaranteed failure, there must be some hidden reason behind it. It was possible that some malicious trick lurked behind this series of events.
This was all personal conjecture–perhaps even paranoid suspicion. Even if there was some kind of knack to what he was doing, I couldn’t possibly guess how it worked. He had put Asuna’s materials into the forge, heated her sword in it, then moved it to the anvil and hammered it–all before my eyes. It was all according to the book, nothing out of place. Besides, what could he possibly stand to gain by downgrading or destroying other play
ers’ weapons...?
Even as the possibilities swirled through my mind, kept a bead on his back as he walked. Fortunately, he seemed to have no idea he was being followed and didn’t spin around or force me to come to an awkward halt. On the other hand, I had no experience trailing another player, so a cold sweat ran down my back the entire time. If I got my Hiding skill higher, I could follow at a much greater distance without trouble, but at this point, the only experience I could rely on was spy movies.
I darted stylishly from shadow to shadow for seven or eight minutes, a certain impossible theme song ringing in my ears. Nezha plodded his way almost to the town walls at the southeast edge of Urbus before stopping at a faintly glowing sign. I stuck close to a tree lining the street to watch. Anyone witnessing this scene would find it extremely suspicious, but I didn’t realize that until later.
The sign clearly said Bar in the light of the oil lamps. Again, I felt a strange suspicion. Nothing was out of place for a hard-working player to settle down with a drink after a long day of work...but something was wrong with Nezha’s demeanor. He wasn’t racing up the steps in anticipation of a nice cold mug of ale. In fact, he stood still outside the swinging door for over ten seconds, as though hesitating to even go inside.
He’s not going to turn around, is he? I thought in a panic. Nezha adjusted the roll of carpet on his shoulder, then set a heavy foot forward. He put out his hand and slowly pushed the door open. His small form disappeared into the bar, the door swinging shut behind him. It only took two seconds–but even at my distance, I could faintly hear what came from inside.
There were a great cheer and applause, and a man’s voice shouting, “Welcome back, Nezuo!”
“...?!” I sucked in a deep breath.
This was not what I expected. My spur-of-the-moment decision to trail Nezha was only meant to find where he was spending the night. Instead, he went to a bar at the edge of town where at least four or five people knew him personally. What could it mean?