“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 when 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 of 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—no, five times—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? I 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.
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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 players’ weapons …?
Even as the possibilities swirled through my mind, I 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 hardworking 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?
After a brief hesitation, I left the shadows and raced up to the swinging door of the inn. Unfortunately, even with my back to the wall next to the door, I could hear nothing from inside. By nature, all closed doors in the game were soundproof; the only way to hear through them was the Eavesdropping skill. Even the swinging door, with its wide-open gaps above and below, was no exception.
I swore under my breath. There were only two options here, and entering the store disguised as a customer was not one of them. I could either give up and leave, or …
I steeled my nerves and reached out to gently push open the door a crack. Five degrees, ten—there was no sound from within. Once I got it to fifteen degrees, the man’s voice from earlier floated up to my ears.
“Might as well chug it, Nezuo! None of the beer in this place actually gets you drunk, anyway!”
In contrast to his statement, he seemed to be plenty drunk already. It was true that you could drink gallons of beer in Aincrad and never take in a single molecule of alcohol, but it was fairly common for players to get “drunk” on the atmosphere of the situation. The excited cheers and yelling that floated through the doorway were no different from what could be heard from groups of college students walking through a nightlife district after a few rounds of drinks in the real world.
I strained my ears and heard a hesitant “okay” in a quiet voice. The chattering died down for a moment, only to be followed by an excited cheer and applause.
Based on the evidence, I assumed that the five or so people waiting for Nezha in the bar were close friends of his. This came as a surprise to me, as in my experience, crafters tended to be lone wolves—or in Nezha’s case, sheep. I was curious as to the player builds of his friends, but there was no way to identify their playstyles based on voices alone.
I decided to take another risk and peer over the top of the swinging door for just an instant. I blinked quickly, like the shutter of a camera, then pulled my head back.
As I suspected, there was only the one group in the cramped interior. If I’d tried to waltz in pretending to be a customer, I would have drawn all of their notice. There were six of them sitting at the table in the far right corner. Nezha had his back to the door. The other five all appeared to be fighters clad in leather and metal armor.
This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It was completely normal for MMORPG guilds to have fighters and crafters mingling naturally. The official guild feature of SAO wasn’t unlocked until a particular quest on the third floor was beaten, but many players had gathered into organized groups already. In fact, solo players like Asuna and me were already in the minority.
Having a crafter or merchant in the group made equipment maintenance and selling loot much easier for the adventurers, and the crafters could get the materials they needed for cheap, if not free altogether. So there was nothing wrong with Nezha having friends who happened to be fighters … but the lump of suspicion in my chest did not show any signs of disappearing.
Just as I was trying to figure out the exact nature of what troubled me, one of the friends who was just entertained by Nezha’s downing of an entire mug of beer said something that caught my ear.
“… So, Nezuo, how was business today?”
“Oh… um, I sold twelve new weapons … and got a few visitors for repairs and upgrades.”
“Hey, that’s a new record!” “We’ll have to scrape together some more ingots!” two other men shouted, and there was another round of applause. It was the very picture of a close-knit band of friends with a network of support. I didn’t recognize any of the other five, which meant they probably weren’t front-line players, but they might rise to that rank soon with a talented blacksmith on their side.
Maybe I really am being paranoid …
I felt ashamed. If Nezha really was using some kind of bug or trick to intentionally downgrade or destroy other players’ weapons, it would have to be planned and supported by his entire group, and I just couldn’t see a logical motive for them doing that.
With considerable pain, I recalled that Diavel the Knight, leader of the first-floor boss raid party, had gone through a secondary negotiator in an attempt to buy my Anneal Blade +6. Only in his final moment of life did I learn that he’d done it to deny me the Last Attack bonus on the boss.
In hindsight, I did score that very last hit on the kobold lord and earned his unique Coat of Midnight for the feat, so there was a kind of logic behind Diavel’s attempt to lower my attack output.
But on the other hand, Nezha and his friends were not even on the front line. They weren’t in any position to be concerned with the boss’s LA bonus. There was no benefit to ruining Rufiol and Asuna’s weapons.
I guess it really was just a series of coincidences …
I sighed silently to myself and was preparing to let go of the swinging door and allow it to close, when something stopped my hand.
“… I don’t think we can keep doing it,” came the sound of Nezha’s frail voice.
The men carousing inside the bar suddenly went quiet. After a short silence, the first man responded, but in a whisper too quiet for me to make out. I pushed the door in again, moving the angle to twenty degrees.
“—ust fine, you’re doing great.”
“That’s right, Nezuo. Nobody’s talkin’ about it in the least.”
I held my breath. I had a feeling they were talking about the failed upgrade attempts, and focused all of my attention on the words. Nezha protested against their apparent encouragement.
“It’s too dangerous to keep up. Besides, we’ve already made ba
ck our cost …”
“Are you kidding? We’re just getting started. We’ve got to rake it in so we can catch up with the top players while we’re still on the second floor!”
Made back the cost? Rake it in…? I leaned forward, unsure of what they were discussing.
Was it really unrelated to the upgrade failures? After all, Nezha should have lost money buying back Rufiol’s spent sword, and he only made the standard fee in Asuna’s case, nothing more. How could that make him any money …?
No … No, there was a way. Perhaps I was looking at this from the wrong viewpoint …
Just then, a suspicious voice arose from the bar.
“… Huh? Hey, look at the door.”
I closed the door as smoothly as I could and immediately jumped off to the right, flattening myself against a nearby tree and employing my Hiding skill. Almost immediately, the swinging door burst outward.
The face that emerged was of the leader-like man who’d been sitting next to Nezha and egging him on. He wore banded armor that made his already hefty form look even more rotund, and a bascinet helm with a pointed top. While the overall effect was humorous, the sharp look in his eyes was anything but. His thick eyebrows squinted, scanning the surroundings of the bar.
The moment his eyes passed over the spot where I was hiding, the indicator dropped to 60 percent. I wasn’t in any physical danger within the safe zone of town, but I didn’t want to alarm them—I was just starting to peel back the curtain on Nezha and his five friends’ plot. The tools at my disposal were poor, but all I needed were answers.
My hide rate dropped continuously while his eyesight was fixed on the tree. If it got down below 40 percent, he would certainly detect something wrong with the tree’s outline. I kept an eye on the number and slowly, slowly tried to rotate around to the back of the trunk. Inch by inch I crawled, trying to keep the fluctuating value from creeping below 50.