“Hey,” came a decidedly unfriendly voice from behind. I spun around.
A man with short brown hair fashioned into spikes stood before me. I flinched backward. Of all the people I expected might talk to me today, Kibaou was the last.
I stood there, dumbfounded. He glared up at me and growled, “Now listen up and listen good—y’all stay in the back today. Don’t forget your role: You’re our party’s support, nuttin’ more.”
“…”
I was already quiet by nature, but no one could have come up with a better response. This was the man who’d tried to buy my weapon for forty thousand col yesterday and hired an agent to ensure his identity stayed hidden, both of which failed spectacularly. Typically, a person under those embarrassing and awkward circumstances would rather stay at least fifty feet away from me.
But Kibaou’s attitude seemed to suggest that I ought to be feeling intimidated. He sneered at me arrogantly one more time and spat, “Be a good lil’ boy and pick off the spare kobold scraps we let drop from the table.”
And with a glob of spittle on the ground for a final flourish, Kibaou turned on his heel and strode back to his party, team E. I was still staring in dull amazement when a voice beside me snapped me back to my wits.
“What’s up with him?”
It was Asuna, the other half of “y’all.” Her stare was about 30 percent scarier than the one that had just been fixed on me.
“D-dunno … I guess he thinks solo players shouldn’t get full of themselves,” I murmured without thinking, then tacked on a silent addendum.
Or perhaps that beta testers shouldn’t get full of themselves.
If that hunch was correct, Kibaou almost certainly suspected that I was a former beta tester myself. But on what evidence? Even Argo the Rat would never use the identity of beta testers as a business product. And I’d never spoken a word of my beta history to anyone.
I watched Kibaou’s retreating back with the same sense of unease I’d felt yesterday.
“… Huh …?”
And without realizing it, I let out a grunt of understanding.
Yesterday, he had tried to buy my Anneal Blade +6 for the massive price of forty thousand col. That was an undeniable fact. He clearly meant to use it in today’s boss fight. Putting aside whether he could handle the extra weight of the points I’d put into durability, his motive seemed obvious enough to me: He wanted to show off a powerful weapon at a crucial moment to add to his influence and leadership qualities.
But if that were the case, he ought to have used that forty thousand col on a different set of weapons or armor when the deal fell through. Today was the big day.
But Kibaou’s scale mail and the one-handed sword on his back were the same as what he’d worn at the planning meeting. It wasn’t a bad weapon, but he had the time and more than enough money to arrange something better. In fact, at my advice, Asuna had upgraded her weapon from the store-bought Iron Rapier to a rare drop weapon, a Wind Fleuret +4. What was the point of keeping forty thousand col in storage when you were about to undertake a battle that could easily be fatal?
I had no more time to follow that line of thinking. Diavel the blue-haired knight was standing in his familiar spot on the lip of the fountain, exercising his clear, loud voice.
“Okay, everyone—first, thanks! We’ve got all forty-four members from all eight parties present!”
A cheer ripped through the square, followed by a spray of applause. I begrudgingly abandoned my musing and clapped along with the others.
With a hearty smile for the crowd, the knight raised a fist and shouted, “To be honest, I was prepared to call off the entire operation if anyone had failed to show up! But … it seems that even entertaining that possibility was an insult to the rest of you! I can’t tell you how happy I am. We’ve got the best damn raid party you could possibly want … except for a few more bodies to round us up to a nice even number!”
Some laughed, some whistled, some thrust their fists just like him.
There was no doubting Diavel’s leadership. But inwardly, I wondered if he was getting the crowd a little too revved up. Just as too much tension could lead to poisonous fear, too much optimism caused sloppiness. It was easy to laugh off a few mistakes in the beta, but failure here would lead to death. Being on the uptight side was preferable in this case.
I scanned the crowd around me and saw the axe-warrior Agil and team B, arms crossed, their faces hard. They could be counted on in a pinch. Kibaou had his back turned to me, so I couldn’t read his expression.
After everyone had gotten out their jeers, Diavel raised his hands in the air for a final cheer.
“Listen up, everyone … I just have one thing left to say!” He reached down and drew his silver longsword, brandishing it high. “Let’s win this thing!!”
I couldn’t help but feel that the roar of excitement that ensued bore more than a little resemblance to the screams of ten thousand I’d heard at the center of the Town of Beginnings four weeks earlier.
10
THE PROCESSION FROM TOLBANA TO THE LABYRINTH tower prickled at Asuna’s memory. After a few minutes of mulling it over, she finally realized what she was remembering.
The school field trip from this January. They’d traveled to Queensland in Australia. Her classmates were thrown into a tizzy by the shift from midwinter Tokyo to blazing midsummer on the Gold Coast. They were rapturously excited, no matter where they went.
There was nothing—not a single thing—that linked the two experiences, but she felt the atmosphere emanating from the forty-odd players marching through the tree-lined path was very similar to her schoolmates’. Endless chattering, frequent bursts of laughter; the only thing that seemed different was the presence of monsters that could burst out of the trees at any moment. But with these confident warriors, they’d be able to dice up any foes in seconds.
Asuna and the swordsman at her side were at the rear of the procession. She turned to him and started up a conversation, choosing to overlook the atrocity that had occurred the night before.
“Hey, before you came here, did you play other … MMO games? Is that what you call them?”
“Um… yeah, I suppose.” He bobbed his head, still a bit intimidated.
“Does traveling around in other games feel like this? You know… like a hike …”
“Ha-ha. I wish,” he laughed, then shrugged. “Unfortunately, it’s not like this at all in other titles. See, if you’re not in a full dive, you have to use a keyboard or a mouse or a controller to move around. You barely have any time to type anything in the chat window.”
“Oh … I see …”
“Of course, there are also games with voice chat support, but I never played any of those.”
“Ahh.”
Asuna tried to imagine a mob of game characters running silently on a flatscreen monitor.
“I wonder … what the real thing would feel like.”
“Eh? Real thing?” He turned a skeptical glance on her. She tried to describe the image in her head.
“I mean… if there really was a fantasy world like this one … and a bunch of fighters and magicians teamed up on an adventure to defeat a terrible monster. What would they talk about on the road as they traveled? Or would they just march in silence? That’s what I mean.”
“……”
The swordsman fell silent for a few awkward moments, and when Asuna finally looked at him, she became aware that the question she’d posed was actually quite childish. She turned away and tried to mumble a brief “never mind,” but he spoke first.
“The road to death or glory, huh,” he murmured. “If the people made a living of doing that, I bet it would be no different from going out to a restaurant for dinner. If you have something to say, you say it. If not, you don’t. At some point, I bet these boss raids will be just as ordinary. Assuming we can do enough of them to make them that way.”
“Heh … ha-ha.”
She couldn’t help but giggl
e at the silliness of that statement, then apologized quickly to cover it up.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to laugh. But … that’s really weird. This place is the polar opposite of ordinary. How can you make anything here become normal?”
“Ha-ha … Good point,” he chuckled quietly. “But today makes it four whole weeks in here. Even if we do beat this boss, there are ninety-nine more floors ahead. I was expecting this to take two, maybe three years. If it lasts that long, even the extraordinary will become ordinary.”
Once, the enormity of those words would have thrown Asuna into shock and despair. But now the only thing that blew through her heart was the dry wind of resignation.
“You’re very strong. I don’t think I can do that—survive in here for years and years … That’s much more frightening to me than dying in today’s battle.”
The swordsman gave her a brief glance, thrust his hands into the pockets of his gray coat, and murmured, “Y’know, there’ll be even nicer baths on the higher floors, if we can get there.”
“… R-really?” she asked without thinking, then gasped. She fought down her rising embarrassment and gave him a quiet warning. “So … you remembered. In that case, I’ll be feeding you an entire barrel of sour milk.”
“Which means you’ll have to survive this battle first,” he shot back, grinning.
11
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK AM, WE REACHED THE LABYRINTH.
At twelve thirty, we were on the top floor.
I was secretly relieved that we at least hadn’t lost anyone so far. After all, the majority of our group’s members were no doubt experiencing their very first raid at near-full capacity. And in this world, every “first” experience was fraught with the possibility of accidents.
I did get the chills on three separate occasions. Teams F and G, who were equipped with long weapons like spears and halberds, were ambushed along their flanks by kobolds in narrow corridors. During close battle in SAO, accidentally grazing another player with a swing caused no damage (and hence no crime), but it acted as a blocking obstacle that canceled out any low-level sword skills. It happened more often to spears, given their long reach, making surprise attacks by close-range enemies quite dangerous.
Diavel made excellent use of his leadership qualities in the face of this predicament. He boldly commanded the other members aside from a single team leader to stand down, used a heavy sword skill to knock the monsters off-balance, then switched out for close-range fighters. It was the kind of strategy that only someone familiar with leading a party could employ so quickly and assuredly.
In that sense, perhaps it was presumptuous for a solo player to be concerned about “too much excitement” before we’d left. Diavel had his own philosophy on how to lead, and as a member of this raid who’d come this far, it was now my duty to put my full trust in him.
Finally, the massive doors were visible ahead. I stood up on tiptoes to see over the rest of the group.
The gray stone surface was adorned with reliefs of terrible humanoids with the heads of beasts. In most MMOs, the kobold was nothing more than a typical starting monster, but in SAO they were fearsome demihumans. They brandished swords and axes, which meant they could use sword skills of their own. Because skills were far faster, stronger and more accurate than simple swinging attacks, even a low-level skill could deal astonishing damage if it landed a critical hit on a defenseless target. The fact that Asuna had made it to the top level of the labyrinth using nothing more than the simple Linear attack proved just how powerful sword skills could be in the right hands.
“Listen up for a sec,” I murmured to Asuna, leaning close. “The Ruin Kobold Sentinels we’re supposed to fight are only like bodyguards for the actual boss, but they’re plenty tough. Like I explained yesterday, their heads and chests are armored, so just hurling Linear at them over and over isn’t going to work.”
The fencer’s glare shot back at me from under her hood. “I know that. I have to hit them straight in the throat.”
“That’s right. I’ll use my sword skills to knock back their poleaxes, and then you switch in and finish them off.”
She nodded and turned to the giant doors. I stared at her profile for a few more seconds.
The only difference is when and where you die, sooner or later, she’d claimed on our first encounter. I couldn’t let her prove that statement. Asuna’s Linear suggested an incredible talent, and she had no idea. Not all shooting stars burned up in the atmosphere. Some of them withstood the fires and made their way to earth.
If she survived today’s battle, I was certain that she would be known all throughout Aincrad as the fastest and most beautiful swordsman in the game. Countless players crushed by fear and desperation could look to her guiding light. I was certain of it. That role was something I could never fulfill myself, with my beta testing past.
I swallowed my determination and faced forward. Diavel had just arranged the seven other parties into perfect formation.
Even our charismatic leader couldn’t simply lead a lighthearted cheer now. Humanoid monsters would detect the shouts and come running.
Instead, Diavel raised his longsword and gave a hearty nod. Forty-three others brandished their weapons and signaled back.
His blue hair waving, the knight put his other hand on the center of the door.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, and pushed hard.
Was it always this vast?
My first thought upon setting foot in the first-floor boss chamber after four months was skepticism.
It was a rectangular room that stretched away from us. It had to be roughly sixty feet from side to side, and closer to three hundred from the far wall to the door. Given that the rest of the floor had been mapped out, the empty space remaining on the map was a good indication of the size of the room, but it seemed much larger in person than it did on the page.
That distance was actually rather troublesome.
The giant doors on Aincrad’s boss chambers did not close during a battle. If all seemed lost, there was always the option of running back to the door to avoid total defeat. However, turning your back to the opponent left a player defenseless against long-distance sword skills that could cause movement delay, if not a total stun effect. Therefore, it was better to retreat backward while still facing the boss. In a vast room like this, that distance might seem endless. Retreat would be easier in the higher-floor boss battles, after players had earned the teleport crystals that allowed instantaneous escape. On the other hand, they were extremely expensive, so using them would be a very costly retreat, indeed.
As I pondered the various scenarios for withdrawal, a crude torch on the right wall of the dark chamber audibly burst into life. One after another, torches lit themselves down the walls.
With each successive source of light, the gamma level in the room increased. Cracked paving stones and walls. Countless skulls of various sizes. An ugly but massive throne at the far end of the chamber, and a silhouette seated upon it …
Diavel brought down his sword in its direction. At that signal, forty-four warriors raised a valiant roar and raced through the chamber.
First down the chamber was a hammer-wielding fighter with a large heater shield like a metal plate, the leader of team A. Just behind them and to the left were Agil the axe warrior and his team B. On the right were team C, made of Diavel and his five party mates, and team D, led by a man with a very tall greatsword. Behind that line were Kibaou’s team E and the two polearm teams, F and G.
And last of all, two forgotten stragglers.
Just as the leader at the head of team A reached sixty feet from the throne, the previously immobile figure leapt up ferociously. It did a flip in midair and landed with an earth-shaking crash, then opened a wolflike jaw and roared.
“Grruaaah!!”
The appearance of Illfang the Kobold Lord, king of the beastmen, was exactly as I remembered it. His burly body was covered in grayish hair and easily over six feet tall. His reddish-g
old eyes glinted menacingly, thirsty for blood. In his right hand was an axe fashioned from bone, and in his left, a buckler of skins and leather. Hanging off the back of his waist was a massive talwar that had to be nearly five feet long.
The kobold lord raised his bone axe and swung it down upon the leader of team A with all of his strength. The thick heater shield took the brunt head-on, and a bright flash and fierce shudder filled the room.
As though that sound was a signal, three heavily armed monsters leapt down from holes high on the side walls. These were the Ruin Kobold Sentinels that accompanied their leader. Kibaou’s team E and their backup team G descended on the three to draw their attention. Asuna and I shared a look and dashed over to the nearest kobold.
And so it was that at 12:40 on December 4, the first boss monster in Aincrad was finally challenged.
Illfang’s HP gauge had four bars. He fought with his axe and shield through the third bar, but at the final stage, he would throw them aside and produce his giant talwar. The change in his attacking patterns was the biggest challenge in his fight, but this transition was detailed fully in Argo’s guide. At yesterday’s meeting, we’d spent plenty of time studying the change in his sword skills once switching to the talwar, and how to counteract them.
As I dealt with the sentinels that slipped away from teams E and G, I kept an eye on the state of the front line. It seemed like the strategy would hold strong. The switches and pot rotation of the tanks and attackers were working smoothly, and the average HP readouts of all the individual parties listed on the left side of my vision showed a solid 80 percent across the board.
Please, please let this hold up, I prayed with all my being—something I never did as a solo player.
12
AT THE POINT THAT HE’D TRANSPORTED HER OUT OF the labyrinth tower (through unknown means), Asuna had a feeling that the black-haired swordsman was talented. But upon properly witnessing him in battle for the first time, she realized just how inadequate that description was.