Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 2 - Chapter 3

3 
MY EYES OPENED AS SUDDENLY AS A BUBBLE POPPING on the water surface. 
It was still night; the only sound was insects. The lute playing as I drifted off to sleep was no more, and neither were the voices and footsteps of the soldiers, or the hammering of the blacksmith’s anvil. 
I shut my eyes, considering going back to sleep, but within a few seconds, I was fully awake. Abandoning my attempt to rest, I sat up. 
Across the tent, the fencer was fast asleep, her posture pristine. But I didn’t see Kizmel in the space between us, where she should have been. 
After my temporary partner had finished her bath, I had slipped in for my own and was out of the water by the count of a hundred. Fortunately, neither of us had grown pointy ears after using it. We moved over to the dining tent with the surprisingly friendly elf soldiers and dined on lightly baked bread, roast chicken, vegetable soup, and fruit. When we returned to Kizmel’s tent, I felt highly satisfied. 
We found the tent’s owner already curled up in the blankets and sleeping peacefully. The moment I saw that, all of my fatigue from earlier came flooding back, and the two of us silently took our corners of the tent and lay down on the furs. I remembered pulling a nearby blanket up to my chin, and nothing after that. 
My menu window said that it was two in the morning. No wonder I felt awake—I’d gotten a solid seven hours of sleep. Taking care not to make any noise, I closed the window and slipped out of the blankets. 
When I passed through the hanging flap of the tent, the night lamps of the camp were mostly out, leaving the area lit by pale moonlight. A quick scan of the area showed no one moving except for two sentries marking the walls. 
So where could Kizmel have gone? Perhaps onward to the next quest on her own? I shook my head—an NPC wouldn’t be that independent, and her HP bar listed next to Asuna’s and mine was still full. 
I thought it over, then decided to head for the one part of the dark elf base I hadn’t visited yet: behind the commander’s tent at the very back of the clearing. 
The moonlight in Aincrad was bright enough in any place open to the sky to make it easy to walk around. The moon itself was out of sight unless you were close to the outer perimeter, of course, so its light was reflecting off the lower side of the floor above, but that just gave the blue glow an even more unearthly beauty. 
I headed east around the great command tent and stopped when the space behind it came into view. It was a tiny, grassy stretch with a single tree. I recalled it being an entirely empty, dead space in the beta. 
But now there were three new objects beneath the long branches of the tree. Three simple but beautiful grave markers carved of wood. 
The woman I’d been searching for was standing before the leftmost grave. She was in a tunic and tights now—not the underwear from earlier, but still without her signature armor. She was downcast, staring at the base of the grave. In the light of the moon, her smoky-purple hair was glowing lilac. 
After a few seconds of hesitation, I slowly approached, stopping several feet away. The dark elf knight noticed my footsteps and looked up at me. 
“…Kirito. The morrow will be difficult if you don’t get your rest,” she whispered. 
“I slept better than I usually do. Thanks for letting us use your tent.” 
“I don’t mind. It is too large for me alone,” she responded, then looked back to the grave. 
I took two more steps and examined the marker. There were small words carved into its fresh, unfinished surface. I squinted and made out the name Tilnel. 
“Tilnel…?” I said aloud and noticed that it sounded very similar in rhythm to Kizmel. 
She paused, then said, “My sister. She lost her life in the first battle after we descended to this floor last month.” 
The phrase descended to this floor indicated that the dark elves—and likely the forest elves as well—understood that the floating castle Aincrad was made of numerous stacked floors. Not only that, they could use their magical charms to sidestep the system of labyrinth stairs and town teleport gates. Perhaps their movement range was limited from this floor up to the ninth. 
I’d had this basic knowledge of the elves since the beta, when I completed the campaign quest for the first time. But I was so preoccupied getting further into the game than anyone else at the time, it never occurred to me that the battle between the elves might tie into the game world itself. 
I was struck by the sudden urge to ask Kizmel how Aincrad came to be, but I held it in with a breath of cool night air. It wasn’t fair to ask such an important question while Asuna was absent, and this wasn’t the time to ask, anyway. 
Instead, I asked about Kizmel’s late sister. 
“Was Tilnel…a knight, too?” 
“No. My sister was an herbalist. Her job on the battlefield was to tend to the wounded. She never carried anything larger than a dagger. She was at the rear vanguard when the forest elves’ falconers ambushed us from behind…” 
“……” 
I grimaced and held my breath. The Forest Elven Falconers were the worst mobs on the third floor after the bosses and event enemies. The dark elves had their own Dark Elven Wolfhandlers, but the falconers were the bigger danger, given that they could attack you from ground and air simultaneously. 
However she chose to interpret my silence, Kizmel’s tense profile eased somewhat. 
“I have no chairs or blankets, but you ought to sit. There’s no need to stand around.” 
“Um…sure.” 
I sat down next to her. The thick, soft grass of this tiny graveyard supported my weight with ease. 
The knight picked up a leather skin sitting next to her, pulled out the plug, and took a swig, then passed it to me. I thanked her and accepted the drink, temporarily forgetting that I was interacting with an NPC rather than another person. 
When I put my lips to the skin, a thick liquid flooded between them. It was slightly sweet and sour, and when I finished, there was a burning like alcohol in the back of my throat that felt fresh and cool. 
I handed back the skin. Kizmel held it out over the grave and poured the rest of the liquid onto Tilnel’s grave marker. 
“This was her favorite: moontear wine made of moontear herbs. I snuck some out of the castle, hoping to bring it to her. In the end, she never had a sip…” 
The empty skin slipped from her hand and plopped lightly on the grass. Kizmel crouched, lining her knees together and hugging them tight. 
“When I accepted the mission to retrieve the Jade Key yesterday, I was prepared to die. Part of me might have hoped for it. At best, I might have taken that forest elf down with me, otherwise I would simply have lost…But fate helped you guide me away from my death. And after I had sworn that no gods existed in this forsaken place anymore…” 
Kizmel glanced over at me. I noticed that her onyx eyes were moist and was at a loss for how to react. Kizmel and her sister Tilnel were residents of this world, risking their lives for the sake of their people, and I was nothing but a temporary visitor, an outsider… 
But in truth, that was not the case anymore. Asuna and I were trapped in this game now. Just like Kizmel, we had only one life to give. And yet, when we inserted ourselves into the fight between her and the forest elf knight, I’d foolishly rested on my laurels, convinced that once we were half-dead, the dark elf would sacrifice herself to let us win. 
It had been wrong of me to draw my sword with that mind-set. Whether I knew what would happen or not, I should have fought with all of my ability. To protect my own life and the lives of Asuna and Kizmel. 
Biting back a sudden flood of regret, I said, “It wasn’t the gods. Asuna and I were there of our own will. We’ll stick with you until the end. Until you get back home.” 
The dark elf knight grinned. “In that case, I will do my best to protect you. Until our paths part.” 
Thursday, December 15, 2022. 
Kizmel, the level-15 dark elf knight; Kirito, the level-14 swordsman; and Asuna, the level-12 fencer and temporary party member, left the base camp for a new adventure. 
The night had not broken yet. It was three in the morning, and the trees of the forest were quietly slumbering in the pale moonlight. When Kizmel and I returned from our graveyard vigil, we found Asuna not sleeping but fully packed and ready to leave. 
When the fencer saw me without my weapon or armor on, she looked annoyed and wondered why I’d left if not to get prepared for the trip. When I was followed into the tent by Kizmel in her thin underclothes, Asuna’s glare turned downright icy. My only choice was to claim that I’d been ready for hours. 
Asuna continually threw me skeptical glares as we walked through the camp clearing, but only until we passed through the narrow canyon out into the Forest of Wavering Mists again. The sight was even more fantastical now that the mossy trees and low, thick mists were lit by pale blue moonlight. I’d seen the exact same thing months before, but I couldn’t help but gasp at its beauty. Asuna was completely bowled over. She murmured, “It’s stunning,” and didn’t move for another thirty seconds. 
Kizmel silently waited along with me, though it was hardly the first time I’d been surprised by her behavior. It would be perfectly ordinary behavior for an NPC waiting for players to react, but it seemed to me that she was choosing to take her time and respect Asuna’s feeling of wonder. 
When my partner came to her senses again, the knight spoke softly. 
“She loved the night forest as well…Come, let us be off.” 
The quest given to us by the commander after completing the “Jade Key” was titled “Vanquishing the Spiders.” 
The forest was exploding with poisonous spider monsters who were sabotaging patrol missions, so it was our job to find the nest. 
I’d done this quest before, of course, but the location of the nest was generated randomly, so my memory was of no use here. We just had to trek through the forest, fighting spiders until we narrowed down their source. 
Poison would be a constant threat on this quest. Damage-causing poison was the most common status effect out of the many negative effects in SAO. Level-1 “weak poison” and level-2 “light poison” weren’t such a big deal—as long as you were prepared to deal with them. 
I made sure to check with Asuna as we hiked through the forest. 
“How many antidote potions do you have?” 
“Hmm…” She brought up her window with a jingle. “Three in my pouch, sixteen in the inventory.” 
“About the same as me. That’ll be enough.” 
Something stuck out to me. Unlike healing crystals, potions couldn’t be used on other people. So if Kizmel got afflicted with poison, she’d need to use her own potion to recover… 
I turned back to the elf knight, who was bringing up the rear. “Um, Kizmel? Do you have any antidote potions…?” 
“I do have a few, just in case, but I do not need them. I have this,” she remarked with what I thought might be a hint of pride, showing off her right hand in its tight leather glove. There was a ring shoved directly over the glove on her index finger. The gemstone gleamed brightly despite the dim light—green, just like an antidote potion… 
“What kind of ring is that?” 
“I received it along with my sword from Her Majesty when I was knighted. It allows me to use a purifying charm once every ten minutes.” 
“…W…” 
Wowzers!! 
I barely kept the word from bursting out of me. In all of my time in the game, I had never seen or heard of an accessory that allowed for unlimited poison curing—even with a cooldown timer. If it actually worked on level-5 “lethal poison,” this was an elite item of the highest quality. 
Kizmel coughed awkwardly, sensing the desire written plain on my face. 
“I cannot give it to you, much as you might like it. For one thing, this ring draws upon what little magic is left in the blood of Lyusula, so you humans would not be able to use it, I suspect.” 
You suspect? I nearly asked but held back. “Wh-why do you say that? I don’t want your ring at all. I’m just checking to ensure that you’re equipped to deal with poison,” I said breezily, denying any greed on my part. 
Asuna grinned. “That’s right. You’re a boy, so you’d never stoop to demanding a ring from a girl.” 
“O-of course…Wait, are you saying that the reverse would be possible?” I grumbled. Asuna’s smile disappeared. 
“I wasn’t saying that! When did I ever beg you for a ring?” 
“I-I wasn’t referring to you specifically!” 
We stopped walking and glared daggers at each other. The elf knight looked on, concerned. 
“Kirito, Asuna. I hate to interrupt your chitchat, but—” 
Grrr. 
“—something is approaching. Based on the footsteps, it is neither elf, nor human, nor beast.” 
Grrrrr. 
“There are two of them, from the front and right. I will leave the one ahead to you.” 
Grrr…rr? 
Asuna and I stopped glaring at each other and looked in the direction of our travel. A shadow was flitting at high speed through the trees. It only came up to our waists, but it was very wide. Many thin legs skittered and scuttled, gliding it along the ground. 
Within a second, a cursor popped into view, partway between pink and red. The name beneath the HP bar read THICKET SPIDER. 
“Prepare for battle, Asuna!” I called, drawing my sword and bracing myself for the fight. Asuna already had her Wind Fleuret in hand. This quest was an opportunity to gather a few more materials to forge herself a new sword back at camp, meaning it was the last time to shine for the fine battle partner she’d fought with since the first floor. 
“Its only direct attack is a bite, but watch out for the thread it shoots from its ass—it’ll slow you down!” 
“Understood!” she shouted back, then briefly shot me a dirty look. I wondered what she was mad about this time, then realized my poor choice of words. 
“S–sorry! I shouldn’t have said ass! It’s not an ass, but more of a, um…” 
“Just stop staying that word!” 
Asuna neatly sidestepped the poisonous spider fangs that came lunging at us, then thrust a furious Linear into its giant eye. 
The venomous fangs and sticky thread were not to be trifled with, but the Thicket Spider was one of the easier insect-type monsters until this point. It didn’t fly or run away, and its hide was not protected by a hard shell. All of its attacks were simple and direct, so it was easy to time when to switch players for combos. 
Asuna knocked down about 40 percent of the spider’s HP with sword skills and regular attacks, then stepped back and glanced at me. I noticed her eye contact and prepared to join the fight. If this was in the open rather than the forest, Asuna could handle the spider all on her own, but the threads the spider shot from its rear would last for close to a minute, which gradually decreased the available space to fight as the battle wore on. It was always possible to move to a fresh location without webs, but there was the risk that you’d snag more mobs on the way—not to mention the treants that looked just like withered old trees. 
The Thicket Spider charged forward with a very spidery hiss—at least, as far as video game spiders went. Asuna released an Oblique, a low thrust skill. Its range was lower than Linear, but with the user’s weight behind it, the power was higher. Her sword hit the spider’s large, gaping fangs, and both of them were knocked back with a flashy visual effect. 
“Switch!” I yelled, striking the large spider on its soft butt. It was only a normal swing, but I hit it right on the weak point of its thread-producing end, and it wheeled around with a painful screech. The cluster of eyes along the front of its head glared at me, poisonous jaw working furiously. 
The Thicket Spider was one of the smallest spiders of its type, but it still made for a menacing sight, several feet across from leg to leg. Anyone afraid of spiders would suffer a tremendous mental debuff, if I had to guess. I was used to spiders of all sizes from the shrine grounds near my childhood home—I’d even gotten stuck face-first in the web of a yellow spider once—so it wasn’t a big enough deal to affect me in combat, but I was surprised at how well the urbane, fastidious Asuna was handling the giant arachnid. 
I got so wrapped up in wonder at that last bit that I glanced away and met her waiting gaze for just a second. As though waiting for its moment, the spider struck. The eight gray, hairy legs tensed, and it bounded into the air. If its jumping attack succeeded in causing a Tumble status, I’d end up bitten several times by its poisonous fangs, so avoidance was the top priority. 
“Fwah…” 
Due to my late reaction, I knew I couldn’t step aside or counterattack with a heavy sword skill in time, so I fell onto my back, waited a split second, then kicked with all my might. The toe of my boot glowed yellow and swung in a semicircle through the air: Crescent Moon, a martial arts kicking skill. It was meant to be used from a standing position into a backflip, but as long as the motion was correct, you could pull it off while lying down. 
So the skill was convenient to throw while lying on my back, but there was a serious drawback: If I missed, I would be hit with both a Tumble status and movement delay. Fortunately, it was worth the frightening gamble, as my foot struck the airborne spider directly at the base of one of its legs. With a satisfying thud, the spider shot away, spinning through the air. 
The follow-through of the kick flipped me back onto my feet. I turned to see the spider upside down at the base of a nearby tree, its legs scrabbling against empty air. Nonwinged insect enemies were generally slow to recover from a tumble, so I calmly and carefully held my Anneal Blade at waist height. The dark blade took on a brilliant blue glow, and my body shot forward. 
“Ryaa!” 
I leaped, sword flashing. The blade swung horizontally from left to right, directly across the Thicket Spider’s bulging belly. As soon as it had passed, my wrists flipped over and reversed path from right to left to complete the Horizontal Arc, a flat two-part skill. 
Its weak spot hit deep from two directions, the poison spider flew through the air, spewing green liquid, and landed upside down again, legs curled inward this time. Its large body exploded into countless fragments. 
The attack left me leaning forward, sword held out to the left and ahead of me. I slowly stood up straight, swishing the blade left and right before returning it to the sheath on my back. When I turned around, Asuna was staring at me, so I instinctively raised my hand for a high five. 
She was not expecting that reaction in the slightest and looked awkward for a moment, but was kind enough not to leave me hanging. After the high five, she wasted no time in getting after me. 
“You were getting distracted during that battle, weren’t you?” 
“…Y-yes, ma’am.” 
“What were you thinking about?” 
I stopped to consider my answer under her withering gaze, then recalled that I was surprised how well she handled the giant spider. However, whether to mention that out loud or not was another quandary. 
“Sloppiness against even weak foes will lead to disaster, Kirito,” came a voice from my right. 
Kizmel was standing to the side, arms crossed, having dispatched the other Thicket Spider well before Asuna and I finished. Like Asuna, her face was hard. It felt like I was being scolded by both a classmate and a teacher at once. I had to make an excuse for myself. 
“I-I wasn’t being sloppy, I was just thinking…” 
“And that’s what I’m asking you about.” 
“Uhh…Umm…” Nothing convenient was coming to mind, so I had no choice but to lay the truth bare. “I was just thinking that it’s surprising you don’t have any issues with the spiders and wasps and such…” 
“Huh?! Were you really wasting your time thinking about that nonsense?!” 
“Y-yes,” I admitted. Her shapely eyebrows went wide with displeasure for a moment, then she sighed. 
“Once they’re that big, the bugs are no different from wild animals. I can’t waste my time being afraid of how monsters look.” 
“Ah, I see.” 
She shook her head in exasperation, and Kizmel chuckled softly. I turned to the dark elf in surprise and saw her looking down at the short fencer with warmth in her eyes. 
“That is very reassuring. My sister Tilnel did not shy away from corporeal monsters, either, whether insects or oozes…” 
She finished at no more than a whisper. Asuna and I both looked away politely. Asuna hadn’t seen Tilnel’s grave, but I’d secretly told her about Kizmel’s sister as we trudged through the forest. 
When she noticed our expressions, Kizmel apologized for bringing that up, then raised her hand to change the topic. 
“What is the meaning of that gesture you just did?” she asked, waving her hand forward. I thought this over—was it right to explain to Kizmel, an NPC of the world of SAO, the significance of a real-world high five? Before I could come to a conclusion, Asuna spoke up. 
“It’s a human gesture meant to congratulate one another for their effort.” 
She held up her own hand and slapped Kizmel’s much more thoroughly than she had bothered to with me, producing a satisfying smack. Kizmel looked down at her palm and squeezed it, as though savoring the sensation. 
“I see. We elves do not make it a practice to touch others often…but this is not unwelcome.” 
She held up her hand again and looked to me this time. I gave her a hearty high five, realizing it would just be awkward to hold back now. There was another crisp smack and an instant of warmth on my hand. 
A memory flooded back into my brain. 
The very first day of this game of death—it felt like ancient history at this point. But in fact, it was before everything turned deadly. I was thinking of the afternoon of Sunday, November 6, thirty-nine days before, when my very first friend in Aincrad, Klein, lazily hunted blue boars with me outside the Town of Beginnings on the first floor. 
Klein was struggling with the initiation of a sword skill, so I taught him the basics of the first motion, then slapped him five when he succeeded in killing his first boar. That was the last time I ever contacted him. 
As soon as Akihiko Kayaba’s cruel tutorial on the new rules of the game finished, I headed for the next village as soon as I could. I left Klein, a helpless newbie, back in the Town of Beginnings. I abandoned him. 
“…Kirito?” 
“What’s the matter, Kirito?” 
I came back to my senses with a start. My hand was still hanging up in the air, so I lowered it and said, “Er, n-nothing.” 
My awkward smile did nothing to remove their concerned looks, but Kizmel soon moved on. 
“I see. Let’s get going. If we follow the direction from which those spiders appeared, we should find the nest eventually.” 
“C-cool. So that means we’re heading…uh…” 
“This way,” Asuna said exasperatedly, pointing to the northwest. We set off again, and after about thirty steps, Asuna pulled level with me to whisper into my ear. “Hey, did Kizmel just say something about ‘corporeal’ monsters?” 
“Eh? Um, yeah.” 
“Which means there are monsters in this game without bodies?” 
“Huh? Yeah, like ghosts and stuff?” I asked in return. She blanched briefly at the word ghosts. 
“Like…like that.” 
“Hmm, I dunno…I didn’t see any in the beta. Besides, I don’t know how you defeat a monster without a body in a game where you can only use swords…” 
“Let’s hope so.” 
I wasn’t sure what she was hoping for, but Asuna didn’t bother to elaborate. She slowed her pace to draw even with Kizmel. I continued my march in the direction of the spider nest. 

* 
After another four battles with Thicket Spiders and their larger cousins, Copse Spiders, slightly adjusting our direction after each encounter, we eventually spotted a small hill rising ahead. 
Highlighted against the side of the moonlit hill was the gaping black mouth of a natural cave. I crouched in the shadow of the trees and saw about fourteen small spiders (still the size of real tarantulas) darting around the entrance. This was the spider nest we were after. 
“…Do we have to get rid of those little ones, too?” asked Asuna, looking at the nest in annoyance. I shrugged. 
“No, those are just critters.” 
“What? Do they jingle?” 
“…?” 
I turned upward to look at her in confusion. She spoke with the bossy tone of a teacher explaining to her students. “Didn’t you just say it was a ‘clitter’? Like clitter-clatter? Do they make lots of noise?” 
“Ummm…no. ‘Critters’ in an MMO are like background animals that aren’t monsters. You can’t interact with them; they’re just for show. Like butterflies or alley cats in town.” 
“You know what? I’m getting tired of asking about every single game term, so why don’t you just create a slang glossary for me?” 
“Ugh…” 
If she didn’t mind being ripped off, she could ask Argo for something like that. Kizmel chuckled from behind us and murmured, “Your words have not been unified yet, it seems. I suppose that is not a surprise, for there were nine nations of humankind when the Great Separation happened.” 
“…” 
Asuna and I shared a look. 
The “Separation” was a term many used to refer to an incident that arose one month before. Many players suffered sudden disconnections and were stuck in limbo for around an hour before they rejoined the game. When it became clear that every player was going to be disconnected in such a way, I stopped my breakneck leveling for a bit and waited around in an inn room so that it didn’t catch me off guard. The mysterious phenomenon caused alarm and chaos at first, but the common assumption that emerged was that it was just our bodies being temporarily disconnected so they could be transferred to a proper hospital. 
But this Great Separation Kizmel spoke of must be something else. She was a resident of this world, not a player diving in through the NerveGear like me and Asuna. It must have something to do with the creation of Aincrad the floating castle… 
I instantly had a number of different questions to ask Kizmel on the subject, but she cut me off before I could open my mouth. 
“Come, let us investigate the hole. We will need more concrete information to bring to the commander about the spiders.” 
According to my increasingly unhelpful beta knowledge, the spider-vanquishing quest had two stages. Part one involved finding an article from one of the dark elf scouts within the nest and bringing it back to the base. In the second part, we had to return to the cave and fight the queen spider in the second level of the nest. 
So even though I knew this opening led right into the spider’s nest, that alone did not fulfill the quest requirements. We’d have to delve into the clammy cave twice. 
“…I don’t like these natural dungeons,” Asuna grumbled, stepping into a shallow puddle with her leather boots. I nodded in agreement. 
“If only it was a bit brighter in there…” 
The man-made dungeons, like the giant labyrinth towers, at least had oil lamps or luminescent stones on the walls to keep the interior lit. But this cave was almost pitch-black; the only source of light was very dim moss that gave off a faint glow in the dark. To counteract the darkness, Asuna and I carried torches in our off hands, but they did not cast very much light and would extinguish if dropped into water. Even worse, I normally fought with one hand free, so the difference made everything feel wrong in battle. Still, it was better than being a shield user who had to do without that valuable defense. And warriors with two-handed weapons would slap us for being spoiled—they had to find a dry spot on the ground to drop the torch before they could fight at all. 
Thankfully, in this situation, we had Kizmel with her special elven ability to see in the dark. Unlike the jumping spiders out in the forest, the ones in the nest were speedy fishing spiders, and Kizmel’s ability to warn us of their presence before they reached the torchlight radius gave us plenty of time to ready our blades. 
We searched each room on the first level of the cave slowly but steadily, occasionally finding chests with treasure, or valuable ores that could be used to craft Asuna’s next weapon. Once we had nearly finished mapping out the entire floor, Asuna raised a belated question. 
“Hey, is this dungeon one of those…instance things? Or is it…?” 
“I believe the antonym of an instanced dungeon would be a public dungeon. This is the public kind,” I murmured quietly into Asuna’s ear, afraid that if Kizmel heard she would give us another lecture about the fractured language of humankind. “The reason I know it’s public is because there are other quests that use this dungeon aside from ours.” 
“Oh? Like what?” 
“Well, there’s a pet-finding quest at the next village past the forest, and another one from the main city of the…” 
My mouth shut with a snap. Asuna’s orange-lit face looked at me curiously, and I tore away to look behind us. 
The way we’d come was almost complete darkness, without a soul in sight…but did I just hear something? A faint, brief scrape of metal? 
“Hey, what’s wrong?” 
“…How many hours have we been on the third floor, Asuna?” 
“After all the sleep we got, I think it’s around fourteen hours.” 
“Ugh…crap, that’s the exact timing.” 
“Exact timing of what?” 
I turned to look back again and whispered quickly, “This is the location of a major quest you can start from the main city. There are a few different patterns to the quest, so it’s not guaranteed, but a solid percentage of players doing that quest are going to be coming here for an item. Depending on the size of the party, it might take between ten to fifteen hours for them to get this far…” 
Just then, I heard another faint clang of metal. Kizmel stopped dead still, a sign that it wasn’t just a trick of my ears. She watched and waited for a tense moment, face sharp, then turned to us. 
“Kirito, Asuna—it would seem there are other visitors to this nest.” 
“Yeah. It must be other pla…human warriors. We have reasons to avoid encountering them, Kizmel.” 
“I do as well,” the elf knight grinned and pointed to a divot in the wall. “Let us hide there for a moment.” 
“Huh? How can we hide with the light of the torches all around?” Asuna asked, wide-eyed. Kizmel smiled again. 
“The people of the forest have their own ways of deception.” 
She pushed our backs, guiding us to the three-foot-deep depression in the wall and up against the surface, then pressing herself against us to hide us from view. Her ample bosom, tight stomach, and smooth thighs were pressed directly against me, and I was afraid that the game’s harassment code would go off, but apparently that did not apply when it was an NPC initiating the contact. Kizmel, of course, had no idea what was running through my mind. 
“Extinguish the torches,” she commanded. I did as she said and dropped my light into a puddle on the floor. Once we were shrouded in darkness, Kizmel stretched out her cape to cover all three of us. 
Oddly enough, while the cape seemed to be woven solid from the outside, it was sheer and see-through from the inside. All I could see was blackness, of course, but there was just enough green glow from the moss across the way to tell that the cape wouldn’t block my sight. 
That wasn’t the only surprise to me. Despite not using the Hiding skill, its familiar hide rate percentage readout appeared on the left side of my view. Even more shocking, the number was at 95 percent. Kizmel’s cape had a magic—er, charm—effect that activated the Hiding skill. Between this and the antidote ring, I was getting very jealous. 
“You were saying earlier, Kirito?” Asuna asked at the lowest possible volume, interrupting my fit of envy. It took me a moment to remember what we’d been talking about. 
“Oh, right. The people coming up from behind us are on that quest. It’s the guild creation quest, the one the other frontier players were desperate to get started.” 
“…!” 
Her eyes went wide in the darkness—she remembered. I was going to continue, but Kizmel gave us a warning first. 
“Quiet. They’ll pass by soon.” 
Asuna and I shut our mouths and swallowed hard. 
Ten seconds later, we heard the rattling of armor on the move. I counted at least two heavily armored fighters, if not three. There were more footsteps, however; the party had to be five or six in total. 
Finally, there came a rough shout, shockingly loud and careless in the midst of a dungeon. 
“What the hell?! All the chests have been ransacked already!” 
It was a very familiar voice, one that felt like I’d heard it just minutes ago. I had last seen him a whole fifteen hours ago, but something about the circumstances—the fact that I hadn’t even been to the town yet or that his booming voice was so memorable—made me think, Not you again! Asuna’s pale face grimaced in the darkness. 
We held our breath for several seconds. The first player passed by us, so close we could reach out to touch him. 
He wore thick scale armor with a chain coif that covered his entire head. It was too dark to make out the color of his tunic and pants, but they would be moss green, without a doubt. In his hands were a round shield and a rare one-handed ax. It was a crude weapon for the front line, but he nimbly spun it around in his fingers. 
The next man to pass by also had a shield with his sword, and the third was unhelmeted. Instead, his hair was fashioned into large spikes that made his head look like a pointed mace. His eyes were sharp and his mouth was twisted in displeasure. He wore a steel breastplate and held a sword in one hand. 
This man’s name was Kibaou, and I’d been running afoul of him since the boss fight of the first floor. As an avowed opponent of the former beta testers, he had plenty of reason to hate me, and if he saw me here in the dungeon, he’d no doubt have a foul word—or two, or three, or four—to say to me. 
The instant he passed by, Kibaou’s beady eyes glanced at the hollow we were hiding in, and the hiding percentage dropped to 90. Fortunately, it did not drop enough to reveal us. Three more players followed him past, their raucous clanking growing fainter and fainter until it finally died out. 
A few seconds later, Kizmel straightened up and returned her cape to its normal position. We heaved sighs of relief as we got to our feet. My partner looked worried. 
“I felt more nervous than when we face monsters.” 
“Yeah. It probably wouldn’t have turned into a battle if they’d seen us, though,” I answered. Asuna’s head waved, not quite a nod or a shake. 
“Well, they might have demanded that we share what we found in the chests.” 
“I dunno. I don’t think even he would go that far…I hope…” 
Kizmel turned away from the direction the party had gone and asked, “Did you know some of those people?” 
“Um, kind of…We’re not exactly on friendly terms, you might say…” 

“Oh? I’d heard that the humans in this castle had maintained a healthy peace for years.” 
“W-we wouldn’t come to blows, of course. And we help each other out when fighting big monsters…but we’re not friends.” 
There was no way to explain the difference between former beta testers and retail players to Kizmel, so my explanation had to be simple, but she seemed to buy the story. She grinned weakly and said, “I see. Then it must be like the relationship between my Pagoda Knights Brigade and the royal Sandalwood Knights.” 
What does she mean, Pagoda? I wondered. Asuna chattered in delight. 
“Oh, that’s lovely! Your knight brigades are named after trees? Are there any others?” 
“There’s the Trifoliate Knights Brigade, the heavy units. We are not on good terms with them, either.” 
“Ahh…In that case, if I get to join any of them, I’ll go with the Pagoda Knights.” 
Kizmel grimaced awkwardly. “I’m afraid that there is no historical precedent for humans being awarded the knight’s sword from the queen of Lyusula. But based on your accomplishments, you might be able to win an audience with her…” 
“Really? Let’s keep it up, then!” Asuna beamed, nothing but optimism on her mind. I, however, had extra knowledge that caused me to avoid her gaze. In the beta, I’d followed this quest all the way up to the dark elf castle town on the ninth floor, but that was as far as I got. When the quest concluded, the gate to the castle remained steadfastly closed… 
“Well, let’s get going!” Asuna bubbled, already an apprentice knight in her own mind, and slapped my back. I gave her a sullen affirmative and picked the two torches up off the ground, handing one to her. Dropping torches in water didn’t affect their ability to light again, as long as they had durability points left. We scraped them against the stone walls to get the flame started again, peered out of the hollow, and trained our ears on the direction the party of six had gone. 
If Kibaou’s team was attempting the quest to establish their guild, they were heading for the second level of the cave. We’d already cleaned out all the spiders on the first level, so they could be at the stairs by now. The mobs down below would be tougher, but not enough to threaten a party of six. 
I brought up my window and checked the map. We’d charted four-fifths of the first level, with only two spots left. One was probably the room with the stairs down, and the other was the room with the item we sought. We needed to head for the room away from the direction Kibaou was moving. 
“Let’s go this way…” I started to say, then caught Kizmel staring at me. I wondered why. Was she confused by the menu screen? Or simply pretending not to see it? 
“…It has been a long time since I saw that human charm.” 
“Huh? Ch-charm?” 
“Indeed. It is the art of Mystic Scribing, one of the few charms left to humankind after its magic was lost, is it not? The one that allows you to record knowledge, even physical items, within your mystic tome…” 
Now that she mentioned it, a glowing purple screen that floated in midair at the wave of a hand was pretty much magic, no two ways around it. I nodded in agreement. 
“Y-yes, that’s it. According to the map in my Mystic…Scribbly book, we haven’t checked this area yet…” 
Behind Kizmel, Asuna tried to hold back a belly laugh at my pathetic answer. 
We easily cleared out the spiders in one of the two remaining rooms, discovering a faint light blinking on the back wall. I sheathed my sword and approached to find a silver decoration carved in the shape of a leaf. At the base was a gleaming white gem like an opal. 
I looked up and checked the fastener of Kizmel’s cape on her left shoulder. The design and coloring were exactly the same. 
“…It is the insignia of the Pagoda Knights. It must have belonged to a scout who was investigating the cave. The owner cannot be alive anymore,” Kizmel remarked gloomily. I offered her the brooch, but she waved her head. 
“You must take that to the commander, Kirito. We ought to return for our report.” 
“…All right. I’ll hold on to it, then.” 
I put the emblem in my pouch, and a message scrolled by on the left side of my view, announcing quest progress. 
When I found this scout’s memento during the beta after a long, hard slog, the entire party cheered triumphantly. But I was in no mood for that this time. It occurred to me that from the moment we rescued Kizmel in the forest half a day before, my mental concepts of quests and NPCs were subtly and steadily shifting. 
Mobs respawned at a much higher rate in dungeons, so the spiders around the entrance were probably back by now. I trained my ears for the sound of many legs, torch in one hand and sword in the other. 
But in a few seconds, what I heard was not the skittering of monsters, but the shouts of men. 
“Crap…It’s coming up the stairs!” 
“Run, run! Back to the entrance!” 
There was the crashing of metal armor and panicked footsteps. Then the screech of a very large monster, like dead wood creaking and cracking. 
“No one said anythin’ about such a freakin’ huge spider! What the hell’s goin’ on?!” Kibaou bellowed. The irritation in his voice from earlier had been amplified into panic. 
I turned to my two companions to confer. 
“What should—” 
“What should we do, Kirito?!” 
“I will leave this decision in your hands!” 
“—we…do…” 
I never volunteered to be the party leader! I wailed internally, but it was too late for that. Now it was up to me to decide how to respond to this unexpected turn of events. 
Ideally, we would hide, Kibaou’s group would succeed at escaping, and the giant spider would return to the second level of the cave once it lost its target. But the likelihood of all these things happening was low. The nimble fishing spiders would have repopped at the entrance by now, so Kibaou’s party wasn’t likely to get out into the forest safely. In a worst-case scenario, they might wind up trapped on both sides. The “freakin’ huge spider” had to be the queen spider, boss of the dungeon, so that would be a terrible situation. 
The next best choice was for Kibaou’s group to stop running and face the queen. From what I recalled, it wouldn’t be too hard for a party of six around level 10 to defeat the spider without casualties. But that was assuming that all of them were calm and dealt with her special attacks properly. Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad were steadfast in their denial of all beta testers, so none of them would have any advance knowledge of this unfamiliar monster. 
That thought process took me two seconds. I spent another half second looking over at Kizmel’s tense face. 
Whether we got along with Kibaou or not, his party was an invaluable force in reaching our shared goal. We couldn’t ignore their plight, but I was also hesitant to butt in directly. There was no way to know how they—particularly Kibaou—would react when the battle was over and they noticed Kizmel. 
They might not attack directly, but I felt a strong aversion to letting them see her. Lately, I’d been trying hard not to let terms like NPC or game be spoken in her presence. 
“We’ll let them pass by and stop the spider as it chases. If we can get it into that big room over there, we should have enough space to fight,” I said quickly. Asuna and Kizmel both stared at me. There were different thoughts behind the hazel-brown and onyx-black pairs of eyes, but both women nodded in agreement before I needed to spend valuable seconds trying to figure out what they were. 
“All right. You can lead the way.” 
“If you have decided to fight, I will follow.” 
Kizmel was one thing, but Asuna’s agreement took me a bit by surprise. There was no time to waste asking why, however; I had to consult my mental map of the dungeon and estimate Kibaou’s route. 
“This way!” 
I waved my torch and started running after the sound of footsteps. 
Within just ten steps, the corridor intersected with a wide cross path. Kibaou’s group should come down that path from left to right, the queen spider on their heels. Once the players had passed, we’d grab her attention and pull her back to the room where the scout’s memento had been. The party would continue running all the way to the entrance, perhaps running across some minor spiders near the entrance, but otherwise convinced they’d outrun the queen. 
We leaned back into another hollow in the wall, Asuna’s torch still lit but mine extinguished. I waited in the thicker darkness, timing when to charge. The ideal method of fishing mobs was through a taunt skill or throwing knives, but I didn’t have either at my disposal yet—my only option was to swing my sword into the intersection and catch the queen as she passed by. And because I’d need to back away immediately, I couldn’t use a sword skill with a movement delay after it. 
I gripped my Anneal Blade and heard the shouts of the group again. 
“It’s an intersection! Which way’s the exit?!” 
“We just went through here! Straight, straight, straight!” 
Six pairs of clanking footsteps approached. I flattened my back against the wall, watching the intersection with laser focus from five yards away. 
Two seconds later, a gang of men raced across my field of vision. The man in the lead was still casually twirling his ax, but the others looked desperate. When running from a dangerous foe, the lightly armored types would always break away from the slower, heavier kind, but Kibaou’s leadership kept his team tightly packed. 
Once the party had rushed past, I heard a roar like scraping sticks again. I couldn’t hear the sound of those thin legs, but the unique vibration of many spider legs hitting the ground traveled through my boots. Three seconds left, two… 
Now! 
I leaped forward silently, Anneal Blade raised for a compact swing. I wasn’t looking for huge damage, but I needed to generate enough hate to make the spider change targets. The moment I started my swing, a giant form crossed the left side of my vision. First there were round, glowing red eyes, then legs the size of tree trunks, and lastly a bulging body. 
“…!!” 
With a silent scream, I struck the giant spider’s flank. It was nothing more than a slightly charged normal swing, but it was enough for the point to pierce the dull purple exoskeleton and send green liquid shooting out. 
“Kishashaa!!” 
The spider bellowed in rage and stopped still as I pulled the sword out. I leaped back and raced for Asuna and Kizmel, not bothering to check if the spider was following. 
When I looked over my shoulder, the queen spider had just finished a ninety-degree turn. My gaze met her many glowing eyes, and I noticed that the first of her two HP bars was slightly decreased. The name listed was NEPHILA REGINA. I knew that regina was Latin for “queen,” which made her Queen Nephila. In that light, the silver patterns on her gleaming purple body did lend her a regal air. 
“Looks like you got her attention,” Asuna whispered, peeling away from the wall. The eight-legged queen crouched down, eyes flashing dangerously, as though displeased with the light of Asuna’s torch. Then— 
“Kshaa!” 
It screeched and raced forward—but we weren’t just standing and watching. As soon as the first leg twitched forward, all three of us were off and running. These narrow corridors were no place to fight a foe with movement-disabling attacks. 
After ten seconds of running, the opening to a large empty room appeared on the right. We darted inside and the two women spread out around me in the center. I scraped the torch in my left hand on the floor to light it again, just as the queen spider barreled into the room. It charged directly for me without hesitation. 
I stood and watched the two front legs as they rose high in the air. As long as nothing had changed from the beta, the queen spider used the following attacks: jabs from the front legs, bites from poison fangs, a sticky spray from the rear, and a vertical jump that landed with a shock wave. The webbing attack would stick a player in place if stuck to the feet, and if it touched your head, there was no way to swing a weapon. The shock wave was similar in nature to the one used by the minotaur bosses on the second floor—if you lost your footing, you’d either stumble or fall over. 
Without the time to tell Asuna and Kizmel about these attacks beforehand, I’d just have to instruct them in real time. Watching the spider’s legs closely, I shouted, “When she jabs with her legs, the one that twitches will go first! If you don’t get outside her range, both will hit you!” 
Just as the words were out of my mouth, the right front leg twitched, and I jumped to the left. A giant claw slammed into the spot where I’d just been standing, and the left leg swung forward a moment later but couldn’t follow me because the first leg was in the way. The instant it, too, stuck into the ground, I shouted a command. 
“One sword skill!” 
Uncowed by the unfamiliar boss monster before them, both women immediately brandished their weapons, blades glowing. I noted the glow out of the corners of my eyes and struck at the spider’s legs with a Horizontal. The beast was hit by light and sound in triplicate, screeching hideously as a third of its top HP bar fell away. It had to be Kizmel’s power that made that kind of damage possible. 
At this pace, as long as we played it safe and limited ourselves to single skills, we could finish Nephila off in another six or seven rounds. I didn’t take any chances, watching the spider closely after its delay wore off and it started moving again. She was only queen over a simple two-level dungeon, but she was a boss monster in her own right. I wasn’t going to relax and assume that she hadn’t been altered since the beta, the same way the floor bosses were. 
The queen took a few skittering steps and crunched down with all eight legs. 
“She’s gonna jump! We have to leap out of the way just before she lands. I’ll tell you when!” 
The huge spider leaped upward, shaking the very air of the chamber. Once it reached the ceiling and began to fall, I cried out, “Two, one, jump!” 
We leaped high as the queen spider fell, the shock wave effect passing harmlessly beneath our feet. Just before I landed, I prepared another sword skill. 
In the midst of all the precise judgment and careful observation, I’d completely forgotten that the powerful and trusty elven knight was not a human being, but a programmed NPC. 
It shouldn’t be possible. An NPC didn’t respond to abbreviated commands from a player like this over their preprogrammed algorithms. But nothing about her actions struck me as out of the ordinary. 
Gauging the length of battle was extremely hard in a VRMMO, where all the senses were intensely occupied. It was typical to finish up a fight and say, “That was only a minute long?” or “It took us an entire hour?” 
So when Nephila Regina, the giant spider queen, exploded with a splashy visual effect and we received our rewards, the first thing I did was bring up my menu to check the time. 

Four twenty AM, which meant we’d only spent three minutes on the battle—but more than enough time for Kibaou’s group to grow curious about the absence of the boss and come wandering back. If they did, we could hide with Kizmel’s camouflage cape again, but it would be difficult to stay concealed after the monstrous sound of the spider’s explosion. 
I closed my window and turned to my high-fiving partners to put a finger to my lips. Fortunately, the dark elves were familiar with the sign to be quiet, and so Kizmel and Asuna lowered their hands. Next I gestured to wait and tiptoed over to the room’s entrance. With my back pressed to the wall, I trained my ears on the hallway but didn’t hear any approaching voices or footsteps for now. 
If it was after four in the morning, when the hell did they leave town? Perhaps they’d been up all night working on the guild quest. 
I spent three seconds half-annoyed and half-impressed by the Liberation Squad, but they didn’t seem to be coming. They’d probably drawn the notice of some regular spiders near the cave entrance and got stuck in battle. I heaved a sigh of relief and returned to Asuna and Kizmel. 
“Doesn’t look like Kibaou’s group noticed us. They’ll probably head back in for the second level to finish their guild quest, so we can slip out once they’re past us,” I suggested. Asuna agreed but looked puzzled. 
“How many minutes does it take for that boss spider to come back?” 
“Umm…” 
I started to search through my memory banks for that information from the beta, but Kizmel answered first. 
“At that size, it will take three hours at the minimum for the cave to generate enough spiritual power to give life to a new ruler.” 
So Kizmel had her own interpretation for the phenomenon of mobs respawning. I was tempted to ask how this spiritual energy was different from the magic that had been lost from Aincrad, but this time it was Asuna’s turn to head me off. 
“With that much leeway, Kibaou’s team will have plenty of time to search the second level safely. So we ended up helping them, without them realizing it. That kind of irks me.” 
“Ha-ha-ha. As they say, ‘The forest sees all good deeds, and the insects all the bad.’ The Holy Tree will ensure that you are blessed.” 
“Ah…I see. In the human lands, we say, ‘One good turn deserves another.’” 
“I shall remember it.” 
While they chatted, my brain busied itself with practical matters—it would be a pain to have to leave and deliver the emblem to the commander, only to be told to return to fight the boss spider again. But I soon noticed that something dark was gleaming on the ground nearby. It was a gigantic fang that had come from Queen Nephila’s mouth. I tapped it just to be sure, and a label appeared, reading QUEEN SPIDER’S POISON FANG. 
If everything went properly, we could give the commander the lost scout’s insignia, receive the quest to kill the queen, then show him the fang to complete it immediately. I eagerly stashed the fang in my inventory and checked the clock to find that it was past four thirty. Kibaou’s team would be back in the second level of the cave by now. 
“Well, let’s head back to the base camp,” I suggested. Kizmel and Asuna both turned and nodded to me at the same time. 
They looked totally unalike, especially with Kizmel’s dark skin and pointed ears—but despite one being a human and the other an NPC, I couldn’t shake the sensation that they were like sisters. 
My hopes were rewarded when we made it back to the surface without running into Kibaou. We rushed through the forest to the camp south of us, avoiding battle wherever possible. 
By the time the many rippling flags appeared through the thick fog, there was a faint purple glow to the light coming from the exterior edge of Aincrad that spoke of the eventual morning. The predawn chill of mid-December in the real world required a sweater and down jacket, but after the heat of our fierce battles, it felt good on the skin. Of course, any heat or cold coming through the NerveGear was just mental signals. 
We passed through the thick magical mist created by the Forest-Sinking charm and into the narrow rock passage to the camp. Only then could we heave sighs of relief and undo some of the heavy equipment. 
Kizmel, who had no in-game item storage, remarked with envy on our Mystic Scribing charms, as she called them, and looked to the rear of the camp. 
“Kirito, Asuna, will you deliver the memento you discovered in the cave?” 
“Y-yeah. That’s fine…” 
“Thank you. The scout who died was of the commander’s blood…I do not wish to intrude upon your report. Forgive my selfishness.” 
I didn’t need to ask if she was being reminded about the death of her sister Tilnel. Asuna reached out and brushed the dark elf’s arm to soothe her. 
“We understand. Don’t worry, we’ll give the report. What are you going to do next, Kizmel?” 
“I will rest in the tent. Call upon me if you should need my services.” 
And with a weak smile, Kizmel stepped away. With a forlorn chime, one of the HP bars in the upper left disappeared. A small system message accompanied the change, alerting us to the departure of a member from the party. 
With a clanking salute, Kizmel left and proceeded back to the right corner of the camp. I glanced over at my partner and, as I expected, saw a mixture of loneliness and unease in Asuna’s face. 
“Don’t worry. She’ll join us again, anytime we ask…I think,” I reassured her. 
But rather than turning on me in anger, Asuna simply said, “…Yeah.” 
She pulled the hanging hood up over her head, as though shifting gears, and remarked, “C’mon, let’s go report on our quest.” 
The commander of the dark elven advance forces took the leaf-design emblem without a sign of emotion. It seemed that of all the NPCs here, only Kizmel’s was anywhere near as advanced as she was, but after spending so much time with her, I couldn’t help but imagine there was deep sadness behind the commander’s stoic face. 
A new quest log scrolled by once I had delivered the item, informing me of a new task: to defeat the spider commanding the nest. I hesitantly produced the queen spider’s fang and set it down on the table. Fortunately, that fulfilled the requirements, so we were able to complete the second chapter of the campaign quest without leaving on another journey. Still, with ten chapters just on the third floor alone, there was plenty left to do. 
We gratefully received our col, experience, and item—both Asuna and I chose the magic belt pouch that had a far greater capacity than its appearance suggested—initiated the third chapter of the quest, and left the commander’s tent. 
The night had fully broken by now, and there were more dark elves milling about the camp, but Kizmel was not one of them. I stopped just outside the entrance to the large commander’s tent and turned to my remaining party member. 
“…What next? We can call upon Kizmel to join us at any time…” 
“Hmm…” Asuna looked down in thought, then shook her head. “Let’s do that a bit later. I know this sounds weird, but…I think we should give her some time to herself.” 
“I see. And no, that’s not weird. I mean, yes, she’s an NPC…but more than that, she’s our partner.” 
“I don’t recall ever turning into your partner.” 
“…Yes, ma’am.” 
A tantalizing smell came wafting over from the dining tent. I started to wander off in that direction, but Asuna pulled my sleeve back. 
“We have something to do before eating.” 
“Huh? What’s that?” 
“Come on, you haven’t forgotten overnight. We were supposed to have the blacksmith forge me a new sword once we collected the right materials!” 
The equipment in Sword Art Online could be gained in one of three different ways. 
First was the kind looted from monsters, whether simple mobs or bosses, also known as “monster drops.” When combined with chest drops found in dungeons, this category was “dropped loot.” 
Next were “quest rewards” earned from completing a quest. 
The last category was “shop made,” crafted by a player or NPC blacksmith or leatherworker from special ingredients or material items. 
In the five weeks since the game began, none of the three categories had proven themselves to be inherently better or worse than the others. My Anneal Blade +6 was a quest reward from the first floor, and Asuna’s Wind Fleuret +5 was originally a monster drop. It was likely that as the player population’s level rose, the value of quest rewards and NPC-crafted weapons would fall, meaning the best weapons would either be rare drops or player crafted. But that eventuality could be months and months away…or years, though I prayed it didn’t come to that. 
I trudged along, lost in thought, behind Asuna, her hooded cape flapping in the breeze. 
Despite the seven hours of sleep I’d gotten the last night, after the heavy questing in the dark, the advent of the morning sun brought a fresh wave of fatigue down on me. By contrast, the fencer’s stride was crisp and spry, so either she was that rarest of types among MMO gamers—a morning person—or she was trying to keep her unease away with the heel of her boot. 
“Don’t worry, it’ll go fine,” I mumbled as I rubbed my eyes, barely aware that I’d said it. A few feet ahead, the boots clicked to a halt. I barely stopped myself in time before colliding with her back. A voice made of 70 percent anger and 30 percent something else hit my ears. 
“…I’m not worried about anything at all.” 
Even in my low-functioning brain state, I was aware that I shouldn’t cross her right then, so I answered with a simple “Okay.” 
“Anyway, you’d better have saved up enough materials in battle. I don’t want to have to go farm for more because we’re a bit short,” she said, turning back to me. When she spoke next, her voice was softer than before. “It can’t always…be like this…” 
“Huh? Like what?” 
“I mean…I can’t keep asking you for what kind of materials to make a weapon or how to beat a certain kind of monster. I have to learn how to figure that stuff out for myself.” 
“Ahh…B-but when I met you in the second-floor city, you knew exactly which monsters dropped which upgrade materials,” I replied. Our reunion one week ago seemed like ancient history now. Asuna grinned wryly beneath her deep hood. 
“Only because I memorized the details that were important to me from Argo’s strategy guide. I don’t know anything that isn’t written down in a textbook. It’s the same as I was before I came here.” 
“……” 
This caught me by surprise. I searched for the right answer but could only shake my head. 
“It’s the same for me, too. I still have my beta knowledge to go on, but once that runs out, I’m just as lost…” 
“You’re wrong. The knowledge gained from a book and the knowledge gained from experience are totally different things. The reason I’m so nervous about creating a single weapon is because I’ve never experienced it before.” 
I noticed that my sleepiness had worn off by then. Choosing not to point out that she’d admitted she was worried, I kept my face straight. 
“Then you can experience things starting now. The most important thing is to survive and keep moving forward…that’s all. Use anything you can, as long as it’s for that purpose—whether it comes from Argo’s books or my brain. Each and every day will bring you more experience…and not the kind that comes in points.” 
I felt a bit self-conscious after that serious but uncharacteristic speech and looked away above the big tent. The first rays of the sun, pouring in directly from the outer aperture, caught the bottom of the floor above, dyeing it red. 
“…Good point. It’s the start of another day…” she murmured. Some of the strain had left her voice, to my relief. 
I glanced back at her and added, “Also, there’s one other thing I forgot to say…” 
“Huh?” 
“Unlike with weapon upgrading, there’s basically no fail state for crafting. So there’s really no reason to worry about—” 
She cut me off with a punch to my gut just soft enough not to cause damage and growled threateningly, “You could have mentioned that earlier!” 
Asuna stomped off angrily enough to break through the hard ground, and I followed at a careful distance until we came to the crafting section of the dark elf camp. 
There were four tents laid out along the path, each waving its own identifying flag: item shop, seamstress, leatherworker, and blacksmith. The tents displayed their rarest wares up front, and my heart soared at some of the items unavailable in human territory, but the pricing was rough on the wallet, especially since I’d only just reached the third floor. I walked past the shops with considerable restraint and stopped in front of the blacksmith. 
NPC blacksmiths were bearded macho guys as a general rule, but in keeping with the elven theme, this one was a tall and slender man with long hair tied back behind his head. The only visual identifiers that marked him as a blacksmith were the thick black leather apron and elbow-length gloves. But as the excellent smith’s hammer in his hand suggested, this fellow’s crafting skill was much higher than those found in the main town of the third floor. Now that Nezha of the Legend Braves had converted to a chakram warrior, this elf was the best crafter anyone could hope to visit at this point in the game. 
If there was one problem here… 
Asuna and I stopped before the tent. The dark elf blacksmith turned his sharp, tanned face upon us, snorted, and returned to his work. I felt a sudden surge of negative energy from beside me, so I pulled the cape sleeve away. This entire camp was outside of the safe haven zone, so if we did anything criminal, the guards would swarm onto us, beat us to a pulp, and toss us out of the camp—if the tough-looking blacksmith didn’t take care of us first. 
Fortunately, Asuna chose not to comment on the proprietor’s lack of hospitality, throwing a glare at me instead. 
“Are you sure this is going to work?” she muttered. I nodded vigorously. There were no guarantees when it came to upgrading, but as I’d said just a minute earlier, absolute failure was impossible when forging a brand-new weapon. Assuming that the crafter had the requisite skill proficiency necessary to create the item, of course. 
I let go of the cape, and Asuna took a step forward. She politely asked the elven blacksmith, “Excuse me, can I ask you to forge me a new weapon?” 
He replied with another snort, but the special shop menu appeared for Asuna. When dealing with players, the negotiation was usually face-to-face, but sometimes NPCs might not understand the meaning of the players’ language, so a menu was provided to facilitate the transaction. 
I wondered if the elf blacksmith also considered this window a type of magic charm. Asuna hit the visibility button in the corner of the window so I could see. She was about to push the CREATE WEAPON button with a slender finger, but stopped. 
“…Oh yeah. There’s something I need to do first,” she murmured. A moment later, I realized what she meant. 
“It’s not a necessary step, though. You can do as you see fit, Asuna.” 
“I know…But I’ve made up my mind,” she announced and turned away from the shopwindow to remove the Wind Fleuret +5, in its familiar green sheath, from her waist. 
From the battle against the first boss to the trials of the second floor and now here to the third floor, the simple but beautifully designed weapon had served Asuna well. She whispered something to the sword that I couldn’t hear, then offered it to the elf blacksmith. She chose to bypass the menu system and make the request herself. 
“Please convert this sword into ingots.” 
I expected the elven blacksmith to respond with a third resounding snort, but instead, he simply held out his hand. 
He couldn’t possibly understand Asuna’s attachment to the weapon, but he did silently take the Wind Fleuret and remove it from its scabbard. The brilliant, mirrorlike polish when it was new had faded, but the blade had taken on a deep luster since. The blacksmith inspected the rapier, nodded, and tenderly placed it in the forge behind him. 
This was an honest, square brick forge, not the portable kind that Nezha carried around. It didn’t have a bellows to power up the fire, but the flames rising from the surface were a mysterious blue green, likely the work of more elvish magic. The fire soon turned the silver blade bright red, and it began to glow from tip to hilt. Asuna clutched her hands over her chest as she watched. 
Eventually, the sword flashed even brighter, then dulled, turning into a rectangular block about eight inches long. 
When the light had fully subsided, the elf reached over with a gloved hand and picked the block out of the fire, handing it to Asuna. It was a single ingot, gleaming silver in the light of the morning sun. There were countless types of metal ingots in Aincrad, from real materials like iron and copper to fantastical ones like mithril, and even I couldn’t identify all of them by sight alone. However, it was clear that Asuna’s beloved weapon had turned into a particularly rare and valuable material. 
“Thank you very much,” she said to the elf, taking the silver hunk in both hands. Asuna held it there for a few moments, as though assessing its weight, then opened her menu and placed it in her inventory. She closed the window, then slid the still-open shop menu over to resume her order. 
She hit the CREATE WEAPON button, then hit ONE-HANDED WEAPON, then RAPIER, then SELECT MATERIAL. A smaller window popped up showing all of the eligible materials she possessed, split into categories. 
When upgrading weapons, the only requirements were base materials and optional additives, but crafting a new one required a core material: the ingot. We could forge an ingot from the ores we’d collected in the spider cave, but those would be the basic materials in this case. Asuna didn’t need my help with this one; she selected a number of materials, leaving for last the core from her Wind Fleuret—which was officially called an Argentium Ingot. Once all the required items were fulfilled, a final YES/NO dialog box appeared, along with the cost of creation. 
Asuna gave the blacksmith another glance, thanked him for the work he was about to do, and hit the YES button. 
With a swooshing sound, two leather sacks and the brand-new ingot appeared on the work platform next to the blacksmith. He silently picked up the two sacks, which were filled with the base, and added materials and tossed them into the forge. The sacks burned away, leaving only the materials within, gleaming red. 
“I-I don’t know about this…He was awfully blunt about doing that,” I muttered to Asuna, who sighed in annoyance. 
“You’re the one who said you couldn’t fail at forging a weapon. We just have to trust in the process now.” 
She’s learned a lot about mental toughness since the time we asked Nezha to power up that Wind Fleuret on the second floor, I thought. The truth was, I hadn’t told Asuna about one thing. 
It was impossible to fail entirely at weapon creation—meaning that all of the materials disappeared and no sword appeared in return. But that didn’t mean that the results were always fixed. The player chose a type of weapon, but what it looked like and what it was called were a mystery until the process was finished. Essentially, there was a wide range of potential stats for the completed weapon. 
But it was impossible for the finished sword to be weaker than the Wind Fleuret it was based on—I hoped. The elven blacksmith might be unfriendly, but his skill was good, we gave him the maximum of basic and added materials, and all of Asuna’s sentiment was poured into that ingot. Superstition or not, I believed that even in this world of digital data, that stuff made a difference. 
As I pondered over these momentary thoughts, the materials in the fire melted together, turning the flames to a bright white color. The blacksmith tossed the ingot in, and the cold metal block began to sparkle. 
“Buff, please,” came Asuna’s voice. I felt the index, middle, and ring fingers of my right hand gripped by a soft palm up to the second knuckle. 
Of course, we had no active buff effects, and even if we did, the benefits wouldn’t transfer through hand-to-hand contact. But instead of mentioning these things aloud, I simply brushed my thumb against the back of her hand, praying for a good sword to emerge. 
The elf paid no mind to our rapt attention. When the ingot was sufficiently heated, he picked it up with his gloved left hand and moved it to the anvil. Smith’s hammer spinning in his hand, the elf struck the metal rhythmically, once every two seconds. The clear ringing echoed through the morning air of the camp. 
The number of strikes to finish the weapon was directly related to the strength of the finished product. A starter weapon like a Plain Rapier or a Small Sword would only take five swings, less than an upgrade attempt. The Wind Fleuret and others of its level required around twenty blows. Therefore, counting up the number of hits as the process continued was both exhilarating and nerve-racking. 
Ten, fifteen. The strikes continued. 
Once the number passed twenty, I slowly let out the breath I’d been holding in. This essentially ensured that the sword would be better than the Wind Fleuret. 
But once the hammer counted twenty-five, I felt the tension return. I stared closely at the spark-laden ingot, unaware that I was clenching Asuna’s hand back. 
My Anneal Blade was a quest reward, but a weapon of a similar quality was worth about thirty strikes. The blacksmith’s hammer breezed past that number, then thirty-five, only stopping after the fortieth hit. 
The shining white ingot slowly morphed into a new form: thin, long, sharp, beautiful. With one last flash, there was a gleaming silver rapier lying atop the anvil. 
As we watched in silence, the blacksmith grabbed it by the ornately decorated hilt and lifted it up. He ran a finger along the slender blade and, to our surprise, commented on his work. 
“…Good sword.” 
He reached back to a rack stuffed with countless sheaths and pulled out a bright gray one, slid the rapier into it, and handed it to Asuna. 
At this point, I realized I was still gripping her hand tight. I hastily let go and shoved my hands into my pockets. She looked at me with a very strange look on her face, then accepted the rapier from the elf and bowed. 
“Thank you very much.” 
This time, he did snort back. 
Asuna grinned and started to hook her new sword to the fastener at her belt, but I grabbed her arm. She looked at me suspiciously, but followed as I pulled her away to an open area within the crafting quarter. 
Once I stopped, she tugged her arm out of my grasp and frowned. 
“What’s the big idea? I got the new sword, safe and sound.” 
“I-I don’t mean to complain about it. Can I just…see it really quick?” I asked, holding out my hand. She pouted but handed over her brand-new weapon. 
The instant its dense weight hit my palm, I understood this was no ordinary weapon. I tapped the sword to bring up its properties, and we examined the results together. 
At the top was the sword’s name: CHIVALRIC RAPIER. That meant…it was a knight’s rapier, I supposed. Its current upgrade level was, of course, +0. Next to it was the number of upgrade attempts remaining—fifteen. 
“Nu-wha…” 
An inexplicable grunt escaped my lips, the only outward sign of emotion, but on the inside, I was screaming, How?! My shock was so great that I felt like I could shoot upward and slam my head against the bottom of the next floor up, then fall back to the ground. 
I didn’t even need to look at the fine details of attack and speed numbers listed below. Fifteen upgrade attempts was about twice that of my Anneal Blade, which had eight. In the most simple terms, this Chivalric Rapier was twice as strong as my weapon. This was the equivalent of a fifth- or sixth-floor weapon. 
It was cause for celebration, without a doubt. A weapon’s stats had a direct correlation on the chances of victory—and in fact, “rate of victory” meant nothing here. In a world where any defeat spelled certain doom, every battle must be won. There was no such thing as too much power. 
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. We weren’t locked in a stand-alone RPG, but a VRMMORPG. 
Looking at her beautiful weapon, with hilt, pommel, and even knuckle guard gleaming silver, I had the premonition—if not dread—that this rapier would change the fate of my partner. 
“…What’s wrong?” 
I snapped back to my senses. Asuna was staring at me, so I hastily shook my head. 
“N-nothing…I-I mean, it’s not nothing. This sword…is ultra-good.” 
“Hmm. Ultra?” 
“Ultra.” 
Suddenly, Asuna let out a little giggle. I didn’t like being laughed at, but at least it got my mind back on the normal track. I coughed and returned her rapier. 
Once she had fixed the gray sheath to her belt, I said, “Um…congrats on getting a new main weapon. If you ask me, your Wind Fleuret is still alive inside of it…but I guess everyone has their own way of seeing it…” 
Her grin turned annoyed at the awkward, hesitant finish, but she thankfully did not cut me down with one of her usual barbs. 
“Thanks. I agree…I feel like I’ll still be able to get by with this new one.” 
“Ah, c-cool.” 
“As you probably remember…” 
She stopped short, then had a wry expression of pain on her lips when she continued. 
“…When I left the Town of Beginnings and headed for the labyrinth, I thought weapons were just disposable tools. I bought tons of those cheap Iron Rapiers, didn’t bother with upgrading or upkeep, and just threw them onto the dungeon floor when they lost their edge. But…that was me, in a nutshell. I figured I’d just charge ahead, as far and fast as I could go…until I couldn’t go any farther and died…” 
She traced the knuckle guard of her new weapon with a fingertip. When she spoke next, it was in drips and drops, as though putting the texture of the silver into words. 
“…To be honest, I still don’t think I can have much hope. A hundred floors is so long…too long. But…once you reached out to me, and I got my Wind Fleuret and learned to power it up, I feel like I started changing, bit by bit. Not in the sense of beating the game and getting back to reality, but…taking each day as it comes. Having the hope of surviving each day. And to do that, I need to take care of my sword and armor, and study hard, and so on…I’ve learned how to do the necessary maintenance on myself.” 
“…Your own maintenance…” 
Asuna was a beginner, not just to SAO, but any MMORPG at all, and at the present moment, I understood much more about the game than she did. But I felt that she had just taught me something extremely important. I looked down at my hand. 
There was probably a part of me that was avoiding thinking about the difficulty of beating the game, despairing that it would never happen. That’s why I took on the mantle of beater, distancing myself from the mainstream group of clearers. Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad and Lind’s Dragon Knights had far more courage and ambition to look up at the hundredth floor than I did. There was only one reason I continued to fight: to make myself stronger. 
Thirty-nine days before, right after Akihiko Kayaba himself descended upon the center square of the Town of Beginnings to herald the arrival of the game of death, I took off running for the next town. But not to get a head start on beating the game. I wanted to get a head start on surviving. 
But even I ended up meeting a few others, getting involved, forming relationships. 
Argo the Rat, information dealer. Agil the ax warrior. Nezha, the former blacksmith. Even Diavel, who perished against the first-floor boss, and Kizmel the NPC. And most importantly of all, the fencer before my eyes, Asuna… 
I did have a responsibility. A responsibility to continue to fight, for the sake of those I’d met. I couldn’t give up and abandon the battle because I was tired of it. The fact that they’d survived along with me was a source of strength and relief. 
“…That’s right,” I said, still staring at my hand. Asuna responded, her voice free of the usual thorns, perhaps even…kindly. 
“You have to learn to take care of yourself. When things are hard or sad, it’s important to tell someone, rather than holding it all in.” 
“Uh…y-yeah…” 
I looked up and saw a gentle smile on her face. 
“And…what will happen if I tell you?” 
Without hesitating, she replied, “I’ll always be ready to treat you to a piping hot Taran steamed bun.” 
“Ah…you don’t say.” 
I almost let my shoulders slump at that answer, then reminded myself not to hope for anything better. Plus, those steamed buns were pretty good—as long as you let them cool down first. 
“Well, if I ever fail in my upgrade attempt, I’ll call on you for a chat session. So anyway, back to the matter at hand,” I said, hoping to change the topic. Asuna’s ultrarare smile melted away like a flower of ice in the hot sun. 
“Huh? Wasn’t the matter at hand how my Wind Fleuret still lives on?!” 
“That’s right,” I noted, pointing to Asuna’s new partner. “Not to repeat myself, but that Chivalric Rapier is unbelievably powerful for the third floor. With a bit of upgrading, a single hit from it will easily eclipse the strength of my Anneal Blade plus six. That’s a great thing, no doubt, but the question will be, how did you get such a powerful weapon?” 
“Umm…” 
She paused to think, then turned back to look at the blacksmith’s tent, a number of yards away on the other side of the hasty fence that surrounded this cramped space. I followed her gaze—the blacksmith himself was invisible from here, but his lazy clanging reached my ears. 
“If you overlook his rudeness, that blacksmith was good at his job, wasn’t he? Wouldn’t every weapon he crafts be about this good? If you overlook his rudeness.” 
“W-well…I doubt that’s the case. We’ve had several fights now on the third floor, and the mobs aren’t really any different from what I fought in the beta. If all of a sudden you’re getting a weapon that’s twice as powerful as it should be, the game balance is totally broken.” 
“So you’re saying that maybe the blacksmiths in the main town are the same, but just this dark elf was updated to make better weapons? If you overlook his rudeness.” 
“Hmmm…” 
I took my eyes off the tent and scanned the entire camp. 
The night had completely worn off now; the deep valley was full of morning light. Beyond the last tendrils of morning mist, the guards, knights, and officers traded easy greetings, and the scent of baking bread wafted from the dining tent. It was exactly as I remembered it from the beta. 
“…Anyone can reach this camp as long as they take on the ‘Jade Key’ quest. In that sense, I don’t think there’s much difference between this place and the main town.” 
“Well, you’re not painting a very convincing picture. And besides, who cares if the game balance is destroyed because I got a way more powerful weapon than I should have? Better that than the reverse case.” 
“Um, yeah, that’s true…” 
Her opinion was absolutely correct. We weren’t here to be gentlemen, to play nicely with the game’s rules. We’d use any bugs or cheats possible to get out. 
But therein was the problem. 
If this Chivalric Rapier was indeed an irregularity in the system, an item that should not exist, there was always the danger that the management—if there were even any GMs other than Kayaba—would take action to deal with it, such as replacing it with a proper weapon or deleting it entirely. 
But perhaps that wasn’t the only issue. When we eventually met up with the other frontline players to tackle the third-floor labyrinth and boss, the others would undoubtedly be stunned by Asuna’s new weapon. And there was no guarantee it would all be in admiration… 
“Let’s do a test, then.” 
“Eh?” 
I looked perplexed, not following her line of thinking. 
“Let’s ask him to create another sword and see if he repeats the phenomenon.” 
“Ahh, I see…wait.” I nodded a few times, then pointed to myself. “When you say ‘create another sword’…you mean me?” 
“Why would I need to forge two swords? I can’t fight with one in each hand.” 
“W-well, sure…but…” 
Without thinking, I reached my hand over my shoulder to grab the hilt of my sword, then realized I’d put it back in my inventory. I put the hand on my head instead and rubbed my hair. 
She was proposing that we test the dark elf blacksmith, if we overlooked his rudeness, to see if he would create a similarly overpowered sword, but that would require recreating the same conditions as with Asuna’s purchase. Not only would I need to provide high-quality base and additional materials, but I’d also need a core ingot made from a powered-up, well-used weapon of my own. Meaning, the Anneal Blade +6 I’d been fighting with for over a month. 
In truth, it was nearing the end of its usefulness as my main weapon. If I managed to use both remaining upgrade attempts successfully and get it to +8, it might last me until the fourth floor. But even here on the third floor, there were weapons better than this at +0, some of which were sold right from NPC vendors—they just didn’t come cheap. 
Ultimately, the Anneal Blade was a quest reward weapon that anyone could earn for themselves. It wasn’t on the level of a rare weapon with only a few copies in existence. 
And yet, there was a part of me that loved that sword and wanted to keep using it until the very end of its life. It wasn’t the specs, appearance, or handling of the weapon. It was the feeling of accomplishment that came with it, when I went straight from the Town of Beginnings to start the quest for this blade, using nothing more than my starter Small Sword. It was the feeling I got when I felt the weight of that new blade, which was nothing like my first sword. Part of the reason I stuck with the One-Handed Sword skill from the beta was knowing that I could get myself an Anneal Blade first thing. 
But on the other hand, everything surrounding us had changed since the beta. We had to complete each floor as quickly as possible under the pressure of knowing that we only had one life to lose. The biggest priorities were efficiency and common sense. Personal attachment to items that needed to be replaced was a total waste of time. I even said this very thing to Asuna in the second-floor inn: If we wanted to survive, we had to constantly get new gear. That’s what MMORPGs are like… 
Looks like this is where we go our separate ways, partner, I told the sword in my item storage. 
It was true that we ought to test the dark elf blacksmith’s skill level, and it was true that my Anneal Blade would soon be useless. The timing was telling. I gritted my teeth and prepared to acquiesce. 
But before I could say anything, Asuna sighed and admitted, “Of course, if you’re not up for it, we should call the idea off.” 
“Uh…huh?” 
“Doesn’t it seem like that would bleed over into the result? Like, if you didn’t want to make a weapon, the finished product might be bad.” 
“Wha…hey?” 
“I mean, I wasn’t sure at first, either, but when it came time to make the deal, I was ready. But it’s clear from the look on your face that you want to go as far as you can with what you’ve got now.” 
“Hoh…” 
“Let’s think of a better way to test this. Plus, I guess just doing one more experiment isn’t really proof of anything. If you’re going to take the process seriously, you’d need all the best materials, enough to make a hundred swords, then watch for the best rate to make an extremely powerful sword…I’m sure the results would be all over the place, though.” 
Asuna stopped for a moment, lost in thought, then turned to look back at the blacksmith’s tent. 
“Then again…maybe we shouldn’t do that to the blacksmith…to the camp as a whole. I mean, he’s doing his best at his duty for the sake of the other soldiers. If we barged in and forced him to make a hundred swords we’re not even going to use, it would probably just be an insult to his profession. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being weird…” 
She lowered her head, embarrassed, and looked up at me with her hazel-brown eyes. I grasped for the right words and eventually came up with “Okay, I won’t do it” like a dumb younger brother following his smart older sister’s lead. 
I didn’t want that to be the entirety of my response, so I kicked my brain into high speed and added, “But we still have business with the blacksmith. We’ll want to get your new rapier up to plus five, and I need to power mine up a bit if I’m going to keep using it.” 
But as usual, big sister had a smarter answer. 
“I’m fine with upgrading it, but won’t we be short on materials? Ignoring my rapier for a second, your Anneal Blade is plus six already, and has eight max attempts, right? We’ll want to use the maximum number of materials to get our chances of success to the top value…Why are you making that weird face?” 
“Erm…Just thinking, you’ve really grown as a player. Perhaps it’s not true that you only have book smarts without experience…” 
I thought I was just putting my honest feelings into words, but she gave me an equally weird look in return, then let out a snort the elven blacksmith would be proud of. 
“Oh, forget about me for a moment. What’s the plan? Going out for more materials?” 
“Actually, that won’t be necessary.” 
I grinned and opened my window, scrolling through the item list until I found what I wanted. What materialized was a perfectly ordinary black leather bag with a single brand on the side. Asuna grimaced when she saw it. 
“Isn’t that the mark of the cow-men from the second floor? It better not be filled with something weird.” 
“Sadly, it is not.” 
I closed my window and grabbed something out of the sack. It was a gleaming black metal plate, about one by four inches. The same cattle mark was stamped onto the surface. 
“Oh, it’s just a metal plank. I don’t recognize the color, though…It’s not iron or steel,” Asuna said, and she was correct. Metal planks were materials smelted from ores collected mostly in natural dungeons. They could be used for upgrading and crafting or combined into a larger, full-sized ingot. But while this was a plank, it wasn’t just any plank. I grinned devilishly and explained the cattle sign. 
“This was the Last Attack reward from Colonel Nato in the second-floor boss battle. This one plank will boost the upgrade success rate of any weapon below plus ten to the max, plus it allows you to choose whichever stat you want to boost…” 
I could see Asuna’s response coming from a mile away. 
“You should have said that even earlier!” 
The talented (if you overlooked his rudeness) blacksmith greeted us with his usual snort when we returned. We made seven attempts at the maximum of 95 percent success, and all seven were good. 
Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier was now +5, and my Anneal Blade went from +6 to +8. 
There were still ten more of the cow-branded planks in the leather sack, but I decided to save them for a rainy day. With the bag back in my inventory, I drew my freshly upgraded weapon, now with four points to sharpness and durability each. There was a fresh, deep shine to the thick blade that gave it a prickly intensity. At this point, it might last to the end stages of the fourth floor, not just the third. 
Satisfied, I snapped the sword back into its scabbard, then heard the same sound from next to me. We glanced at each other and grinned confidently. No true swordsman could resist the excitement of a good upgrade. 
Her rapier back at her left hip, Asuna cleared her throat and said, “I’m going to pay you back for the five planks, just so you know.” 
“Well, I only beat Colonel Nato because of your help, so you don’t need to bother. Either of us could have gotten the LA.” 
“Really…? Then I’ll give you the next rare drop I get.” She lowered the volume of her voice to whisper for my ears only. “But we still don’t know what to think of the blacksmith’s skill. If only there were a way to determine if it’s a bug in the system or not…” 
“Yeah, I know…Hmm.” 
I replaced my sword on my back and crossed my arms. The plan to attempt a mass order was shot down, and we certainly couldn’t ask him ourselves… 
No. 
“Hey…that’s it,” I said, snapping my fingers. “We can just ask someone who knows plenty about this camp.” 
The valley that housed the dark elf base was mostly round, with the amenities such as dining and business on the eastern side, and the barracks and storage on the western side, with a main path through the center. It had the size and detail of a small village on its own; it seemed strange that it would be instanced for every individual party on the quest, given its scope. 
Asuna and I left the business area, crossing the main street for the barracks section and stopping in front of a tent at the southern end. I lifted the familiar black pelt door and called inside. 
“Hello, it’s Kirito. May we come in?” 
A voice immediately responded, “Certainly. I was just about to finish preparing breakfast.” 
We entered the tent, excusing ourselves first. My heart was initially set at ease by a gentle, milky scent, then went into spasms when I saw the elf knight rising from the cushions. 
The five seconds that I witnessed Kizmel’s black bodysuit the last night were stunning enough, and this morning, she was wearing nothing over her brown skin but a sheer gown that was significantly open at the front. 
SAO’s age rating was only twelve and up, right? Or maybe after it turned into a game of death, the usual standards stopped applying. 
I felt a kind of pressure emanating from my right and took my eyes off the elf’s skin as naturally as I could. 
“I hate to bother you during your meal, but we wanted to talk about something…” 
“If you have a new mission, I will gladly accompany you.” 
“That’s great, but we’re not leaving yet. I just want some information first.” 
“Ahh. In that case, we can talk as we eat. Have a seat and I will fix your portions.” 
She gestured to the soft, fluffy furs on the ground and turned back to the stove at the center of the tent. I felt like if I was polite and told her not to mind us, she would take it literally, so I thanked her instead. Asuna pulled her hood back and said, “We’ll happily eat,” showing just as much as interest as I in the smell coming from the pot. 
We sat down on the furs, and I watched Kizmel take the lid off the pot and stir its contents. Asuna hissed into my ear. 
“Stare too long, and you’ll trip the harassment code.” 
“Huh? I thought that was only for physical contact,” I replied, then cursed when I realized I should have denied looking at her at all. 
The harassment code was a part of the game system that activated when certain “improper” activity was continued against an NPC or player for a set amount of time, similar to the anticrime code. The first offense was accompanied by a warning and physical pressure away from the target, but repeat offenders would eventually wind up teleported into the prison beneath Blackiron Palace down in the Town of Beginnings. 
For a time, some of the frontline players tried to see if it could be used reliably as an escape mechanism in the midst of danger. After all, the only way to instantly teleport while in the fields or dungeons was an extremely rare and valuable crystal—and those weren’t even available on the lower floors. 
But the research ended in absolute failure, nya-ha-ha, Argo the Rat had noted when she sold the information to me. 
Not only did the automatic teleportation to the prison involve an unpleasant force like an electric shock knocking the player back—which I’d never felt myself—but it had to be initiated several times, and the other player had to be of the opposite sex. It was easier to simply run away from battle than spend a bunch of time fondling each other, and of course, SAO’s ratio of men to women was frightfully skewed. The phenomenon would work against an NPC, too, but few item-selling ladies bothered to hang out deep in dangerous caves. 
On top of that, it wasn’t easy to get out of the prison once teleported there, and some said that you’d drop items during the teleportation. Thus, the dream of conveniently using the anti-harassment code to escape danger was crushed. It was simple curiosity that led me to buy this intel from Argo, not any intention of turning into a talented harassment artist—but at any rate, a simple stare would not set off the code. 
Yet the whispering from Asuna did not stop. 
“Uh-oh, here it goes. Five seconds, four, three…” 
“H-huh? What…?” 
I panicked, looking back and forth between Kizmel’s legs as they peeked out of the hem of her gown and the steam rising from the stew pot. The countdown continued. 
“Two, one, activated.” 
Thud. 
Asuna carved into my right side with a solid punch. I rolled over in pain, wondering why that didn’t set off the actual code. Kizmel turned back to us and smiled. 
“You two get along so well.” 
The dark elf knight treated us to a dish of some starchy crop between rice and wheat, boiled in milk, and seasoned with nuts and dried fruit. It was firmly Western in style—or at least Aincradian—and yet something about its delightful taste was oddly familiar. The only problem was that the portion was too small. We treasured the small plates of the stuff with the wooden spoons she offered. 
“This is really good,” Asuna said wistfully. “I never thought I’d get to eat oatmeal in this game.” 
“W-wait…this is what oatmeal is?” I asked. I’d only ever heard the name before. 
Asuna nodded. “Yes. The texture’s a bit different, but the flavor is spot-on.” 
“Ohh,” I said, impressed. Kizmel chimed in. 
“Ah, so you eat milk porridge in your human towns as well? I did not know that. Perhaps someday…” She trailed off. Both of us looked at her, but the expression was hard to read. 
Kizmel shoveled down the last of her porridge, or oatmeal, or whatever it was, and returned our gaze. “Kirito, Asuna, you said that you wanted to ask me about something?” 
“Oh…uh, that’s right. Umm, well…” 
I wasn’t sure how to broach the topic, so I decided to simply be straight and ask her opinion of the blacksmith’s skill. 
Kizmel’s reaction was something between praise and unease. Simply put, he was talented but fickle, sometimes creating masterworks, but often outright refusing pushy or misguided orders. 
At that description, Asuna and I looked at each other in understanding. 
The Chivalric Rapier at her waist now had to be one of those masterworks. It was not the product of a bug or error, but a proper result that only occurred at a very rare frequency. 
That part was good news, but the bit about “misguided” orders worried me. After all, what could be more misguided than asking him to craft hundreds of weapons based on the bare minimum of cheap materials? If he only produced crappy weapons in response to such an order, there was no way to test the odds. 
He’d already made Asuna an overpowered weapon and succeeded in perfecting my sword. We didn’t need, and couldn’t ask for, a better set of results—but it just wasn’t that simple. As a member of the frontier force of SAO, I had an obligation to spread the info I learned to other front-runners. They needed to know that the elf camp could produce weapons worthy of the sixth floor—as well as the possibility that you could keep the elf knights alive in the “Jade Key” quest… 
I suddenly realized that I was so lost in thought, my spoon was scraping empty air on my plate, then cursed myself for not savoring the taste more. 
“Thanks for the meal, Kizmel,” I said. “The porridge was good, and you told us what we needed to know.” 
Asuna bowed her head as well. “I thought it was delicious. Thank you for the food.” 
“I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it. I will make much more tomorrow morning,” Kizmel replied with a smile, taking our plates. “Now, what is next? We can spend more time in camp preparing, or we can head out for the next mission.” 
“…Actually,” I said, shaking my head, “Asuna and I need to return to the human town for now.”