Sword Art Online Progressive 1

  So the great helm was only part of the costume. I was covered in thick plate mail all over and held a tower shield the size of an entire door. All the items were the cheapest of that type available at NPC shops, and the equipment weight was just light enough not to send me into the red, but the cramped, closed-in sensation threatened to make me go claustrophobic within half a day.

  Feeling a newfound sense of appreciation for those tanks who’d taken part in the boss raid, I handed over my sword—the Anneal Blade, my only truly rare piece of equipment right now.

  “I’ll take a look at its properties,” he said quietly, tapping the hilt. When he saw the contents of the window, his downcast eyebrows shot upward.

  “Anneal plus six … two attempts left. And its upgrades are S3, D3. A challenging sword, but a very good one …”

  I watched his lips creep into a tiny smile, and I confirmed that my initial suspicions about him were correct. This blacksmith wasn’t an irredeemably evil person.

  But just a second later, Nezha’s smile of admiration disappeared, replaced by a grimace of pain. Through gritted teeth, he murmured, “… Which value did you want to upgrade?”

  Sunday, December 11, just before eight o’clock in the evening.

  A chill wind blew through the eastern plaza of Taran. There were no other players or NPCs in sight. There were only Nezha the blacksmith, just before he closed up his streetside shop, and me, his mystery customer. Somewhere in the empty houses lining the plaza, Asuna was watching our encounter, but I couldn’t feel her gaze for all the thick metal armor.

  It was the preceding Sunday that we defeated the first-floor boss and opened the teleport gate to the main city of the second floor, so today marked a full week since then. I had run into Asuna in the eastern plaza of Urbus three days ago, and it was two days before that I had discovered the truth behind Nezha’s upgrade fraud.

  Technically, I hadn’t identified the trick, only been “certain” that I had, but there was a reason that I’d waited a full two days to attempt to ascertain the truth of the matter. I needed to master the technique Nezha was using to switch out weapons.

  Of course, this all depended on Nezha accepting my work request. Telling myself that the hassle of all this full plate armor had succeeded in convincing him, I murmured an answer to the blacksmith.

  “Speed, please. I’ll pay for the materials. Enough for a ninety-percent chance.”

  Nezha had heard my voice three days ago, but the distorting effect of the great helm helped disguise it enough to keep him from realizing that I’d been the companion of the woman with the Wind Fleuret.

  “Very well. For enough to boost the chances to ninety, that will be … two thousand seven hundred col, including the cost of labor,” he explained, his voice tense. I agreed in as flat a tone as I could muster.

  Beneath the thick breastplate, my heart was already racing, and my gauntlets were clammy with sweat. If my suspicions were all entirely wrong, and Nezha wasn’t in fact a fraudster, and weapon destruction had indeed been added as a possible failure state, then my beloved Anneal Blade +6 might be gone forever in a manner of minutes.

  No.

  That was not all. After all, we had retrieved Asuna’s Wind Fleuret through the use of the Materialize All Items command. Even if my theory about the trick was wrong, I could still get the sword back within an hour by using that button.

  So all I had to do was stay calm, watch everything that happened, and hit one icon at the proper moment. Nothing more.

  I waved my left hand to bring up the menu, flipped to the trade tab, and paid Nezha his price. Normally I might have closed it after that, but this time I left it open on the top screen. Fortunately, Nezha did not seem to find this suspicious.

  “Two thousand seven hundred col, paid in full,” he muttered, and turned to the forge. Very naturally, he let the end of the sword in his left hand dangle just inches above the many products crammed on top of his carpet.

  It all started here.

  My concentration had been sucked toward the portable forge the last time, so I kept my gaze directly fixed on his left hand. My field of view was greatly limited by the helm’s eye-slits, but that helped me ignore any misdirection he attempted through the flashy forge display.

  Nezha must have tossed the upgrade materials straight from his stock into the forge, because everything flashed bright green for a second. If I’d had a view of the forge, my eyes would have been dazzled by the light for just a second.

  But the next moment, Nezha’s left index finger stretched and lightly tapped between two swords on the carpet. For just the briefest of instants, the Anneal Blade blinked.

  That was it. The switch was complete. Such a brilliant, perfect trick. He could do this in front of a crowd of a hundred in broad daylight, and not a single one would notice.

  Like Nezha when he saw the detailed properties of my sword, I let out a sigh of admiration. But I said nothing—I let the blacksmith finish his upgrading process.

  Once the green light filled the forge like a liquid, Nezha lifted the sword in his left hand and pulled it from the scabbard with his right. The blade was the darkened steel color unique to the Anneal Blade. But to my eye, its shine was just a bit duller than usual.

  The sword Nezha was holding right now was not my +6 sword, but the spent +0 blade he had bought from Rufiol three days before. It was only a guess, but I was sure of it.

  The blacksmith laid the weapon in the portable forge, suffusing the blade in its green glow. He moved it to the anvil and started striking it with his smith’s hammer. Clang, clang, the same crisp sound I heard when he upgraded Asuna’s fleuret.

  When the fleuret broke and Nezha offered to return the cost of his labor, I’d said, “It’s all right, you did your best. There are some crafters who say it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you hit the weapon enough times, so they just whack away.”

  However, the reason these strikes sounded so heartfelt was not because he was praying for the operation to be a success through them. Nezha was mourning the loss of the weapon he was about to break for the sake of his deception.

  Once a piece of gear was spent—no more upgrade attempts left—it would break without fail when the process was initiated again. Argo had confirmed that for us two nights ago. That phenomenon was about to happen right before my eyes.

  … Eight, nine, ten.

  The last hammer strike rang loud and high.

  The sword burst into shards atop the anvil.

  Nezha’s back shivered and shrank. His right hand with the hammer slumped downward, and the sword-bound sheath in his left hand disappeared.

  Hunched over, Nezha took a deep breath, screwed up his face, and was about to shriek an apology—until I cut him off.

  “No need to apologize.”

  “… Huh…?”

  He froze. I went up my equipment mannequin from the bottom, switching out armor. Giant ski-boot greaves, plate leggings, gauntlets, plate armor, heater shield… The items that made up my disguise vanished one by one.

  When the great helm came off, my bangs flopped down over my forehead. I pushed them back and heaved a deep breath. Finally, I equipped the Coat of Midnight, its black hem swaying.

  Nezha’s narrow eyes went wide.

  “… Y … you’re … the guy … from…”

  “Sorry for dressing in disguise. But I figured you would refuse my request if you recognized me.”

  I meant to say this in my most friendly, understanding tone of voice, but the moment he heard it, Nezha’s shock morphed into fear. In that moment, he knew that I’d discovered the existence of his scam and even how it worked.

  Without taking my eyes off the frozen blacksmith, I pushed an icon on my main menu—the weapon skill mod activation button.

  With a quiet swish, another sword appeared in my right hand, heavy and wrapped in a black leather sheath. It was my partner in battle since just after this game of death began: my Anneal Blade +6.

  Nez
ha grimaced. It almost pained me to see that expression.

  “No one would suspect another player of having the Quick Change mod so early, especially not a blacksmith… And hiding the menu to use it between the wares lined up on your carpet? Brilliant. Whoever thought that up is a genius.”

  Nezha’s shoulders slowly sank, until he finally slumped over and hung his head.

  A skill mod—short for modification—was a skill power-up available to the player at certain intervals of proficiency in a particular skill.

  For example, when the Search skill reached a level of fifty, the first mod became available to the player. You could then choose from a number of options, such as a bonus to search for multiple targets, a bonus to increase search range, or the optional augmentation ability of Pursuit. There were tons of useful mods, and choosing between them was as hard as it was enjoyable.

  Mods could also be applied to the numerous weapon skills in the game. Quick Change fell into that category. It was a common mod available at the very first choice for most one-handed weapons, but very few players ever picked it first. There was no need for anyone to make use of it until at least the fifth floor of Aincrad.

  Following that theory, when my One-Handed Sword skill reached fifty halfway through the first floor, I chose the “shorten sword skill cooldown” mod. When I reached one hundred, I would choose “increase critical hit chance,” and only at one fifty would I go for Quick Change.

  Quick Change was an active mod, not a passive one. By pressing a shortcut icon on the front page of the menu, my equipped weapon would switch out instantly.

  The regular method of changing weapons was a five-step process: (1) opening the window, (2) tapping the right- (or left-) hand cell in the equipment mannequin, (3) selecting “change weapon” from the list of options, (4) selecting the desired weapon from the available items in storage, and (5) hitting the OK button. When faced with a monster that had the Snatch ability, it was a long enough process that anyone would take at least one defenseless hit while trying to equip a backup weapon.

  But with Quick Change, several steps were removed: (1) opening the window, and (2) hitting the shortcut icon. With enough practice, it could be done in half a second. The instant after you lost your weapon, you could have another one in hand and ready for battle.

  On top of that, Quick Change had a great variety of options to specify exactly which hand received exactly which weapon when the icon was hit. You could set it to pull up a specific weapon, tell it to make you empty-handed—even allow you to automatically pull the same type of weapon as the one you were equipping, if you had a spare.

  That last part was the secret at the heart of Nezha’s weapon-switching trick.

  He held the customer’s weapon in his left hand, temporarily creating the condition in which it was “equipped” there. The ownership right was still with the client, but it was the same as the hand-over feature that made it possible to toss weapons to each other in the middle of battle. He could still use that weapon to activate sword skills … even Quick Change.

  Next, Nezha extended the pointer finger of the hand holding the weapon to touch the shortcut icon on his window, which was cleverly hidden beneath his tightly packed wares. At that instant, the client’s sword in his hand went into his storage, and a sword of the same type was automatically pulled out. Except this weapon was spent, guaranteed to break into pieces as soon as he attempted to upgrade it.

  The only outward signs of this elaborate trick were a momentary blink of the weapon and a faint swishing sound. Given that it happened at the exact same time that he tossed the upgrading materials into the forge with a bright flash and bang, you’d have to be watching for that precise action to even notice he was doing it.

  And if the customer realized he was switching weapons and tried to confront him about it, Nezha could simply employ the same trick just as quickly and get the client’s original weapon back. Plus, once he shattered the spent weapon on his anvil, there was no proof of anything.

  In other words, to prove Nezha’s upgrade fraud was happening, I either had to utilize the Materialize All Items command to spill all of my belongings onto the ground here, or use Quick Change myself, thus pulling the sword directly out of Nezha’s storage whether he liked it or not.

  It was following the latter choice that had taken me two days from the time I noticed the trick to actually attempting it myself. I had spent all of the previous day and today in the second-floor labyrinth fighting endless hordes of half-naked bull-men tauruses to get my One-Handed Sword skill to one hundred so that I could take the Quick Change mod earlier than planned.

  As a side benefit of this activity, I got some rare loot and mapped much farther into the twenty-level labyrinth. As usual, I offered the map data to Argo at no cost, and this generosity was apparently rankling both the Lind and Kibaou squads.

  They were upset because someone else was always one or two levels ahead of them in the tower, but they hadn’t realized yet that it was Kirito the evil beater. It was only a matter of time before they knew the truth. If there was one reassurance, it was that our relationship couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  At any rate, the two days of trouble were worth it, as I had finally uncovered and proven Nezha’s upgrade fraud trick. I looked down at the curled-up blacksmith and sighed in satisfaction.

  My goal was complete. It was not a quest, so there was no reward or bonus experience. On the contrary, it had cost me the 2,700 col for labor and ingredients, but all I really cared about was making sure that Nezha didn’t attempt this dangerous scheme anymore.

  The trick itself was brilliant, but if he kept filching valuable weapons from other players, someone was going to notice. Depending on who that person was, Nezha might find himself on the wrong end of an ugly lynch mob.

  The worst possible outcome was if all the players decided he ought to be executed and it became a precedent for how to deal with such crimes.

  I wasn’t of the mind that Nezha should be forgiven for his part in this. Rufiol and Shivata had lost their beloved swords … and even though it was returned in the end, Asuna cried at the loss of her Wind Fleuret. They deserved to see some kind of justice.

  But that punishment must not be the murder of another player. If that was allowed once, it would lead to pure anarchy—squabbles over hunting grounds and loot would be solved with violence rather than words. I’d taken on the scarlet letter of the beater to prevent the retail players from purging the former beta testers. That sacrifice couldn’t go to waste.

  My solution to this was to demand that Nezha either function as a proper, honest blacksmith from now on, or to give up his smithing hammer and become a warrior. Asuna and I had talked it over and decided on this choice. Once the source of their ill-gotten wealth dried up, the Legend Braves would sink back to a level appropriate to their skill.

  I stood there, lost in thought, sword dangling from my right hand, when the blacksmith spoke in a tiny voice.

  “… I suppose this isn’t something that a simple apology will atone for.”

  Nezha’s body and voice were scrunched up in such a compact form that it seemed as though he were trying to disappear entirely.

  “… It would be nice if I could return the swords I stole from all those people … but I can’t. Nearly all of them were turned into money. The only thing I can do now is … is this!”

  His voice reached a shriek by the end. He unsteadily got to his feet. The smithing hammer fell from his hand, and he took off running without a backward glance.

  But he didn’t get farther than a few feet. A new player descended upon his exit path, long hair gleaming in the streetlamps beneath a wool hood: Asuna the fencer.

  She’d jumped out the second-story window of an empty house and blocked his path, lecturing sternly. “You won’t solve anything by dying.”

  This time, Nezha recognized the face within the hood immediately. She was the female fencer whose Wind Fleuret he’d (temporarily) stolen three days
earlier.

  His already-timid face crumpled even further. I was the very model of an imperceptive dunce, and even I could feel the powerful guilt, despair, and abandon raging within him.

  Nezha turned his face down and away from Asuna, as though trying to escape her gaze. His voice was strained.

  “… I decided right from the start … that if someone discovered my fraud, I’d die in atonement.”

  “Suicide is a heavier crime than fraud in Aincrad. Stealing weapons might be a betrayal of your customer, but suicide is a betrayal of every player working to defeat this game.”

  Her eloquence was every bit as sharp and piercing as her Linear. Nezha trembled and tensed—and his face shot upward as though on a spring.

  “It’ll happen anyway! I’m such a slow, clumsy oaf, I’ll die eventually! Whether I get killed by monsters or kill myself, the only difference is whether it happens sooner or later!”

  I couldn’t stifle a small chuckle at those last words.

  Asuna glared daggers at me. Nezha’s teary face looked hurt among the desperation, so I put up both hands and tried to apologize.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that it was the exact same thing this lady here said just a week ago…”

  “Huh…?”

  Nezha, wide-eyed and bewildered, looked at Asuna again. He took several breaths, then finally worked up the will to ask, “Um… are you…Asuna, from the front-line fights?”

  “Huh…?” Now it was Asuna’s turn to blink in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Well, the fencer in the hooded cape is pretty well-known around here. You’re the only female player on the frontier …”

  “… Oh … I see …”

  She sounded very conflicted and shrank back beneath her hood. I took a few steps closer and offered some advice.

  “Sounds like your disguise is actually starting to identify you. Maybe you should try something else, before you get stuck with a nickname like Little Gray Riding Hood.”