All of my high-speed thinking went to waste. In less than a minute from Diavel’s suggestion, there were seven full parties of six members each. Obviously he already had his own party of six, but I didn’t expect lone wolves like Kibaou and Agil to find their own groupings so fast. I began to wonder if I was seriously the only person who didn’t receive some kind of invitation.
But I wasn’t.
After a quick scan of the crowd, I spotted a familiar hooded cape standing slightly apart from the rest, and slipped over to her side.
“So you got left out too, eh?” I asked, only to be greeted with a stare like molten steel. She muttered an angry response.
“… I’m not a castoff. I just didn’t want to butt in, because it seemed like everyone else already had their own friends.”
I wisely decided not to point out that she had perfectly defined a castoff, and put on a serious face instead. “Why don’t you team up with me, then? A raid goes up to eight parties, so it’s the only way we can participate.”
Basing my suggestion on the properties of the game system was a success, as she looked briefly hesitant, then snorted and said, “I might consider it, if you send me the invite.”
Since retorting “It was my idea first, so you should send the invite” was the kind of childishness that I’d grown out of since being trapped in here last month, I nodded obediently and tapped the fencer’s cursor, sending a party invite. She accepted flippantly, and a second, smaller HP gauge appeared on the left side of my field of vision.
I stared at the list of letters below the bar.
Asuna. That was the name of the strange fencer with the preternaturally swift Linear.
Diavel the knight’s leadership was not limited to his speechmaking. He examined each of the seven full parties that had been formed, and with a minimum of switching members, had tweaked them into distinct groups with their own purpose in the battle. There were two heavily armored tank squads, three groups of attackers with high offensive power, and two support teams armed with longer-range weapons.
The two tank squads would switch off pulling aggro from the Kobold Lord—absorbing his attacks and attention. Two of the attack teams would focus on the boss, while the third was in charge of holding off his followers. The support teams, equipped with long, shafted weapons, would employ delaying and interrupting skills as much as possible to prevent the enemies from attacking.
I thought it was a good arrangement—simple and less likely to fall apart. The knight returned my esteem by examining the leftover party (the fencer and I, of course) for a few long moments before offering some pleasant advice.
“Can you folks back up team E to make sure none of the roaming kobolds gets through?”
Translated, it felt like he was asking if we could hang out near the back and not get in anyone’s way. I could sense the fencer named Asuna preparing to make a very unfriendly gesture, so I held a hand in front of her and smiled.
“Got it. That’s an important role. You can count on us.”
“Thanks a lot.” The knight flashed his pearly whites and returned to the fountain.
An angry voice hissed in my ear. “How is that important? We’re not going to get a single hit on the boss before it dies.”
“W-well, what else can we do? There’s only two of us. We can’t even switch in and last long enough for pot rotation.”
“Switch …? Pot …?”
At her mistrustful murmuring, I stopped to consider. She had left the Town of Beginnings as an absolute newbie with no prior experience, and made it this far on her own, using nothing more than a bundle of five baseline rapiers bought from an NPC and the sword skill Linear.
“I’ll explain everything later. It’ll take too long to go over right here.” I figured there was a more than likely chance she’d shoot back that she didn’t need to know anyway, but to my surprise, she was silent for several moments before nodding meekly.
The second meeting of the boss strategy committee ended with quick greetings from the leaders of teams A through G and an official distribution plan for the cash and items the boss would drop. The large axe warrior Agil was the leader of tank team B, while the antagonistic Kibaou led attack team E. The E-team was the group assigned to stop the roving kobolds, so as the leftovers, it was our job to assist Kibaou. I didn’t really want anything to do with him, but he didn’t actually know that I was a former tester—for now. In the end, Argo the Rat never showed up to the meeting. I wasn’t going to blame her, of course. Her guidebook was more than enough help.
The col dropped by the boss would be automatically split evenly between all forty-four members of the raid, and the items were on a simple finders-keepers basis. Contemporary MMOs had transitioned to a system in which players could elect to claim an item and roll dice to see who would win it, but SAO chose the more primitive method. The items would automatically drop into a player’s storage, and no one would be any the wiser. In other words, if the group decided that all items from the boss should be distributed by dice rolls, all players would have to voluntarily give up those items to the lottery first. As I knew from personal experience in the beta, this was a sore test of one’s willpower. Several times, I’d experienced the nasty breakup of a party when no one stepped forward with loot after a big fight, meaning that someone must be lying about their gains.
It was likely Diavel’s intention to prevent this unsavory outcome by enacting the finders-keepers rule. Our considerate knight in shining armor.
At five thirty, like the day before, we closed with a cheer and the gathering broke apart into small groups to find pubs and restaurants to visit. I rolled my shoulders, which seemed unnaturally stiff, wondering if it was just an illusion or some kind of actual physical tension that was bleeding through to this virtual world.
“So… where will you be giving me this explanation?”
I wondered what she was talking about for a moment, then spun around in nervous surprise. “Oh… I-I can talk anywhere you like. How about a pub around here?”
“… No. I don’t want anyone seeing.”
I was briefly stung by her implication but recovered my pride by choosing to interpret her meaning as “seen with a man” rather than just “seen with me.”
“Okay, how about an NPC’s house? But still, someone could wander in… We could get a room at an inn so we could lock the door, but that’s obviously out.”
“Of course it is.”
This time, I suffered piercing damage from that retort, which was as sharp as the end of her rapier. I could manage a conversation with a female player because this was a virtual world, but just a month before, I had been a terribly awkward and antisocial middle-schooler who could barely talk to his own sister. Wasn’t I supposed to be sticking to my guns as a solo player? Why was I in this situation in the first place? Obviously I wouldn’t be any use in a boss battle without joining a group, but the other seven groups were all men, so I’d have felt much less awkward if I’d just worked my way in with them instead…
As my mind ran in ever more self-pitying circles, the fencer sighed and continued, “Besides, the inn rooms in this place barely live up to the name. They’re like tiny boxes with a bed and table, and they expect you to pay fifty col a night? I don’t care about food, but the sleep you need is real, so they could at least give us better accommodations.”
“H… huh? You think so?” I asked, surprised. “You know there are better places available if you search them out, right? They just cost a little more.”
“How hard do you have to search? There are only three inns in town, and they’re all the same.”
I finally understood. “Oh… I see. You only checked the places with the big INN signs, right?”
“Well … isn’t that self-explanatory? An inn’s an inn.”
“Yeah, but that only refers to the cheapest possible places to spend the night here on the ground floor. The inns aren’t the only place to pay col for a room.”
Her lips suddenly
pursed.
“W-well … why didn’t you say that earlier?” she shot back. I knew I had the upper hand now, so I proudly described my favorite spot in town.
“I stay on the second floor of a farm in town for eighty a night, but it comes with all the milk you want, has a comfy, spacious bed and a nice view, not to mention the bath…”
At that last phrase, she struck. With the speed of the Linear I’d seen deep in the dungeon, her hand leapt out and grabbed the collar of my gray coat, almost hard enough to set off the game’s anti-crime code. Her voice was steely and menacing.
“…What did you just say?”
7
AS SHE’D MENTIONED EARLIER, IT WAS ASUNA’S BELIEF that out of all the actions possible in this virtual world, the only real one was sleep.
Everything else was a sham. Walking, running, talking, eating, and fighting. All of these things were simple digital codes sent to and from the Sword Art Online server. Nothing the in-game avatar did caused a single twitch of a finger on the real-life body, reclining in bed. The only exception occurred when the avatar lay down for the night, and the real brain engaged in what must be sleep. So, above anything else, she wanted to make sure she got a good night’s sleep at the inns in town. It proved to be harder than it seemed.
The constant stress and rhythm of battle in the wilderness and dungeons left no time for reflection, but when she returned to town and lay down in bed, she fell into an endless replay of her actions from a month before. Why had she indulged such a strange whim that day? Why wasn’t she satisfied just by touching the NerveGear? Why did she put the formidable headgear on and say “link start”?
Whenever she fell into a light sleep reflecting on that particular regret, she had nightmares. It was a crucial time for her—the winter of her third and final year of middle school—and because of this stupid game, Asuna’s classmates were no doubt laughing at her failure. Her relatives were pitying her for falling off the career path that had years left to play out. But worst of all, her parents, staring down at her comatose body in some hospital room, their faces hidden…
She’d twitch and wake up with a jolt, then check the clock in the lower left corner of her vision to find that at best, she’d only been asleep for three hours. After that, no amount of lying in bed with her eyes closed would bring sleep back. In a way, if she’d just been able to get a good night’s sleep, Asuna wouldn’t have driven herself to punishing dungeon crawls for three or four days at a time.
So as the col piled up in her purse, Asuna wished more and more for a nice room and bed to spend it on. The inns in this world were cramped and dim, and whatever material the beds were made from, they were noisy and tough. She didn’t need Italian-made high-resistance polyurethane foam… but maybe simple latex would at least lengthen her rest from three hours to four. And beyond that, a bathtub, or at least a shower, would be nice. As far as bathing went, her real-life body was almost certainly being regularly cleaned at the hospital, but this was an issue of comfort. She was ready to die alone in a dungeon if that’s what it came to, but if she could just have the chance, just once, to stretch out her legs and soak in a nice, hot bath…
This fervent wish shot to the forefront of her mind at the black-haired swordsman’s words.
“…… What did you just say?” Asuna repeated, not realizing she’d grabbed him by the collar. Unless she’d just suffered some hallucination, she could have sworn he’d just said…
“A-all the milk you can drink …?”
“After that.”
“C-comfy, spacious bed and a nice view…?”
“After that.”
“W-with a bath…?”
So she hadn’t misheard. Asuna let go of his coat and continued, flustered.
“You said this room was eighty col a night?”
“I … I did.”
“How many extra rooms does this inn have? Where is it? I’ll take a room, just show me the way.”
Finally he seemed to understand the situation. He coughed and solemnly stated, “Um, well, I told you I was renting out the second floor, right?”
“… You did.”
“What I meant was, I’m renting out the entire second floor. There are no open rooms. And they didn’t have any to rent on the first floor.”
“Wha…?” She had to hold her feet firm to keep from slumping to her knees. “Then … the room’s all …”
He seemed to understand what she was trying to ask, and responded regretfully, his eyes wandering. “Well, I’ve gotten a good week’s worth of enjoyment out of the place, so I’d love to switch with you … but I actually bought the maximum length of stay in advance—ten days. And the transaction can’t be canceled.”
“Wha…?” Again, she nearly flopped over but held her ground. Asuna was terribly conflicted. He’d just told her there were places to stay aside from the inns, and some were much nicer. Therefore, if she just searched around Tolbana, perhaps there would be another spot with a bath. On the other hand, there were currently several dozen players around town for the purpose of beating the floor boss. Most likely, any nicer room would already be taken, which was no doubt the reason he’d reserved his for such a lengthy stay.
Should she try checking at the last town before this? But the fields around there were full of dangerous beasts after sundown, and they were meeting at the fountain at ten the next morning. She wasn’t all that jazzed about this group effort to fight the boss, but now that she was participating—however marginally—she was not going to show up late or skip it entirely.
That left only one option.
For several seconds, Asuna’s body and soul were a battleground of conflicting desires. She would never in a million years consider this option in the real world. But everything here was only digital data, not real, including her own avatar. And this was no longer a total stranger. They’d shared bread with cream, they were taking on the same role in the boss battle, and, hang on, hadn’t he just said he was going to explain something to her earlier? That explanation would serve as a good excuse … right? Of course.
The swordsman was still studiously looking everywhere but at Asuna when she lowered her head and said in a voice barely loud enough to reach his ears, “…Let me use your bath.”
The farm at which the swordsman was staying was at the edge of a small field to the east of Tolbana. The building was much larger than she expected; the combined size of the stable and the house itself might even be as large as Asuna’s house in real life.
A pristine stream ran through a corner of the plot of land, pushing a small waterwheel with pleasant creaks. The two-story house was occupied on the first floor by an NPC farming family. When Asuna stepped through the front door, the farmer’s wife flashed her a beaming smile. She couldn’t help but notice the grandmother snoozing in a rocking chair next the fire had a golden ! over her head—the sign of a quest—but decided to let it pass for now.
The swordsman led her up a set of heavy stairs to a short hallway with a single door at the end. He touched the knob and it opened automatically with the clicking sound effect of a lock unlatching. If Asuna had touched it, nothing would have happened. Even lockpicking skills had no effect on the door to a room rented by a player.
“Um…well, come on in.”
He pushed the door open and gestured her in awkwardly.
“…Thanks,” she said quietly and took a step inside—then screamed. “What the—? It’s so big! And … and this is only thirty col more expensive than the place I’m renting? It’s so cheap…”
“Being able to find spots like this is a special skill—it’s just not on your character sheet. Of course, in my case…”
He stopped mid-sentence. She looked at him curiously, but he merely shook his head. Asuna gave the room another once-over and sighed.
The room they were standing in now had to be at least three hundred square feet. If the door on the east wall led to the bedroom, it must be about the same size. On the west wall was another doo
r with a placard reading BATHROOM over it. The oddly decorative script seemed to have a sorcerous suction to it, drawing Asuna closer. While the design of the place was rustic, it was very comfortable and homey. The swordsman removed his sword and boots and sank into the cushy sofa.
After a luxurious stretch, he looked up as though just remembering Asuna was there, and coughed awkwardly.
“Um, well, as you can see, the bathroom is that way, so … b-be my guest.”
“Ah … th-thanks.”
It felt a bit rude to visit someone’s room and plunge right into the bath, but it was far too late to observe restraint now. She accepted his offer and was heading for the door when his voice drifted over her shoulder.
“Oh, just so you’re aware, bathing isn’t quite the same as in real life. The NerveGear doesn’t handle liquid sensations all that well … so just don’t expect too much.”
“As long as there’s plenty of hot water, I’m not asking for anything more,” she said in all honesty, and opened the bathroom door. She slid inside and pulled the knob shut behind her.
Except for maybe a lock, she thought. Alas, when she turned around to check, her wish was unfulfilled. There were no buttons or latches around the door. She tried tapping the door just in case, but as she wasn’t the current owner of the room, Asuna could not call up a menu.
On the other hand, at this point the presence or absence of a lock was largely irrelevant. She was already in the bathroom of a boy she’d met just yesterday, about to use his tub. The black-haired swordsman—whose name she still didn’t know—was hard to gauge in terms of personality and age, but he was not the kind of person to barge into a bathroom without warning … she thought. And if he did try it, they were within the safe limits of town, which meant the anti-crime code was in effect.