5
“WE ARE WELL AWARE THAT OUR REQUEST IS UNREASONABLE,” intoned the scimitar-wielding man, his long blue hair tied into a ponytail—Lind, now the first leader of the official DKB (Dragon Knights Brigade) guild.
“But I need you to understand this. Now that the top players in the game have been split into two camps, it is imperative that our two guilds eternally remain on good terms, working together in the pursuit of defeating the game.”
Compared to the late knight Diavel, who laid the foundation of the DKB, Lind’s expression and speech were stiff and awkward, but there was a certain stateliness to him, as befitting a man who had led his large group for ten whole days.
The spiky-haired Kibaou, leader of the ALS (Aincrad Liberation Squad), the other official guild, was also on the stage. But unlike Lind, he was silent, sitting cross-armed and cross-legged in a chair. Even after Lind’s speech, he sat, mouth twisted but shut tight.
Lind’s words were not meant for Kibaou. The scimitar warrior’s sharp gaze was not pointed at the DKB or ALS, but the true outcast of outcasts left over, the only beater who had publicly admitted to his participation in the beta test.
Me.
About five and a half hours earlier, our energy and motivation refilled after the nap in our lofty (in more ways than one) inn room, Asuna and I descended the long stairs—without racing this time—refilled on food and potions, and started all the single quests available in Zumfut before leaving town. Not to return to the dark elf camp, but to get down to the dirty business of earning experience.
Gaining experience in an RPG was practically a job, and each player had his or own way around it. Most could be categorized as quest first or hunt first. The former raced across the map, completing and turning in quests for bonus experience. The latter found camping spots with the best monster spawn rates, killing them over and over for points.
If anything, I was one of the hunt-first types, but I started changing my way of thinking after the second-floor boss battle. In the beta, the battle ended with Colonel Nato and General Baran, but the advent of King Asterios and his terrible lightning breath nearly brought our raid party to ruin. If Argo the Rat hadn’t cleared out all the local quests and noticed the possibility that a new boss had been added, then most likely Lind, Kibaou, Asuna, and I would all have died. Money, items, and experience weren’t the only things to be gained from a quest.
But of course, farming monsters over and over also gave you something other than just col and experience. It provided the player with actual skill—the experience of practice in battle. In this VRMMO, where combat was fought by moving the avatar like one’s real body, this kind of experience was just as important as the numerical kind, if not more so. Even if the attack speed number was the same in their menus, the initiation speed of an expert in a sword skill and one still new to it was, in fact, subtly different. Also crucial was the player’s ability to gauge distance and sense danger.
So it was that Asuna and I greedily planned to head out into the forest, stopping to battle at particularly effective spots as we worked on fulfilling the various hunting and gathering quests from town. In the five hours until sunset, we slew countless mobs, crushing them into polygonal dust. After turning in seven complete quests each, I had risen one level to 15, and Asuna had earned two to reach 14.
Tired and satisfied, we indulged in a toast at a tavern. At ten minutes until five o’clock, we headed off to the first strategy meeting of the third floor.
There was already a crowd of players crammed into the bowl-like assembly grounds between the three giant baobab trees. I saw the familiar, friendly face of Agil the ax warrior, so I greeted him and got an earful of jibes about how Asuna and I were still a party. I had just promised to give him the Vendor’s Carpet from Nezha, which was still at the inn down on the second floor, when the bells rang five o’clock. The support and tongue of Zumfut’s bells were carved directly out of the baobab trunks, and they had a soft, pleasantly woody sound to them. I sat down in the corner as the wistful melody of the approaching night played out, then applauded along with the group when Kibaou and Lind appeared on the speaking platform together.
Including the two on the platform, I counted forty-two participants at this meeting. There had been forty-seven (actually, forty-eight) at the second-floor boss battle the previous day, so we were down a full party. The six who hadn’t shown up were the Legend Braves.
The reason they’d made such a splash in the battle despite not meeting the average level of the raid group was the effect of their incredibly powerful gear. But they confessed that they’d raised the money for that gear through a scam and donated their equipment to the rest of the group. It would take them some time to regain the strength to join the frontline players, but with enough willpower, they would be back.
Meanwhile, Lind and Kibaou finished their brief introduction, and the real meeting began.
The first order of business was an official announcement that the blue and green teams, the largest groupings of players among the raid, were now real guilds. I was as impressed as everyone else. It took quite a number of errands, hunts, collections, and battle events to get the sigil necessary for the guild—though it was still far less work than it took to complete the elven war campaign quest. I seemed to recall that in the beta, it took twenty hours of play on average to complete the guild quest series. It had only been a day since we opened this floor, so Kibaou and Lind must have foregone food and sleep to finish it. Even Lind must have been surprised that the Liberation Squad had kept pace with the Dragon Knights, given their aversion to beta knowledge.
Next were the unveiling of the official names and acronyms of the guilds, their current member lineups, and a casting call for new faces. However, the only people in the group of forty-two who weren’t already affiliated with one of the two groups were Agil, his three friends, and Asuna and I.
I had no intention of joining either guild, of course, and Asuna said she wasn’t interested either, and I suspected the same went for Agil. When none of the six of us raised a hand, I expected that phase one of the meeting would be over.
But instead, Lind, leader of the DKB, made a most unexpected announcement.
“I would like the doors to my guild to be as wide open as they can be. Our only requirement at this time is that the player be at least level ten.”
Kibaou abruptly stood up next to him and shouted, “Level nine for us!”
A blue vein briefly pulsed on Lind’s forehead, but he regained his cool and continued the speech.
“Everyone participating in this meeting who hasn’t joined either guild should meet the requirements. So if you simply raise a hand, you will be gladly welcomed. However, there is one condition which applies only to certain people. This was decided after discussion between me and Kibaou.”
This time it was Kibaou’s turn to look cross but resigned. At this point, I was still looking around, curious as to who would need special conditions. So when Lind stared straight down at me, I nearly stumbled down the stairs of the assembly grounds.
“Kirito,” he said, voice hard. Finally, I understood what was going on. He wanted to make it clear that I couldn’t join because I was a beater. This didn’t come as a surprise, and I wasn’t planning to join anyway.
“Yeah, I get it,” I started to say. But Lind’s gaze shifted to the left, and he called another name.
“…and Asuna.”
Asuna’s shoulders twitched, her face hidden beneath her hood. Even I couldn’t see her expression from my seat next to her.
Lind watched the two of us sit in silence, then cleared his throat before continuing, “Before you are approved to enter our guild, there is one more condition on top of the level requirement. One of you must enter the DKB, and one must enter the ALS.”
“…One each?” I repeated, not understanding his point. Asuna gave no reaction.
Lind cleared his throat again and explained quickly.
“As was made clear during yesterday’s boss battle, Kirito and Asuna are head and shoulders above anyone else in our general group. The two of you made off with the Last Attack bonuses of all three bosses in that fight, after all. I do not bring this up to criticize you, of course. But it does not benefit any of us to have the both of you join either guild. Our combined strengths are roughly equal for now, and you would cause a severe imbalance by joining either side.”
Kibaou’s forehead took on the bulging vein this time, probably because he took offense at the idea that their teams were equal for now. I listened to the explanation of the first guild leader in SAO without paying it much mind.
“We are well aware that our request is unreasonable. But I need you to understand this…”
My first thought was How serious are they being?
Lind and Kibaou’s demands boiled down to one thing: They wanted me and Asuna to join separate guilds, if we chose to at all. But the “if” conditional was a total nonstarter. I had zero intention of joining either group. Lind must have known that to begin with, and for Kibaou to welcome me into his guild would defy their cause of antagonism to all former beta testers.
They didn’t need to make this grand public display. A simple question of “Do you want to join a guild, yes or no?” would have settled the matter. Instead, the members of both the DKB and ALS whispered among themselves nervously, and Agil had his hands spread, head shaking with the folly of it all. Nothing about this reflected well on Lind. How could this decision possibly benefit them?
My mind was full of nothing but question marks, but Lind seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I felt obliged to stand and speak.
“Umm…I hate to say this after you said we were head and shoulders above the rest, but I have no plans for the future to join either guild. In fact, I figured that both of you would have expected this answer.”
Kibaou snorted theatrically, and Lind seemed to falter self-consciously, but his familiar hard expression was back in a moment.
“I understand. By the way, may I ask your reasoning for explicitly choosing not to enter a guild, under the circumstances?”
“Huh? Um…”
I wasn’t sure what he meant or how to answer.
By “under the circumstances,” was he referring to SAO’s current state? Lind seemed to be assuming that creating a guild was the ideal solution to the current, contradictory aims of “beating the game” and “surviving.” Based on that premise, his point of view did not match mine, but I did not have the time or obligation to explain my entire philosophy to him.
“It’s not based on some grand, explicit choice. It’s just not my style…that’s all.”
“Ahh. So you are stating that you have no intention of joining or leading a guild for the moment.”
Now it was my turn to grimace. “Sure, you could put it that way. If I’m not going to be a guild member, I certainly don’t want the responsibility of being a leader…”
…Aha, so that’s what this is about.
Something in what I said hinted at Lind’s true intentions. He was trying to get me to make that very statement to a public audience. He wanted to crush the creation of a third guild forming before it could begin.
But what a convoluted, silly way to go about that. Who was going to step up and join a guild called the Black Beaters? He could have just asked, “Are you going to make a guild, yes or no?” Hell, if he’d simply ordered me not to start a guild, I would have happily agreed.
On the other hand, I could understand that he was worried about the possibility that if I was excluded from the start, I might create my own guild out of spite. This cautious, roundabout way of doing things reminded me strongly of someone else: the original leader of the blue precursors to the DKB, Diavel.
Three times before we fought the boss of the first floor, I received an offer to buy my Anneal Blade through Argo the Rat. The offers were coming from Kibaou, who’d been a lone wolf at the time, but it was Diavel who was giving him the orders. Diavel wanted the Last Attack bonus on Illfang the Kobold Lord, in order to better grip the reins of leadership. So he sought to remove his biggest obstacle—me—by buying my weapon away from me. Again, it was a very convoluted way to go about it. If he’d just asked me to let him have the LA, I probably would have agreed—for a price, of course.
I didn’t think that Lind was aware of Diavel’s machinations, either at the time or now. It was half coincidence and half imitation of Diavel’s ways that led Lind to pursue this strategy.
Suddenly I realized that he was still staring sternly at me from the podium.
Even though it had been ten days since we first met, I felt like this was the first moment I’d truly looked him in the face. Lind always seemed blander, less distinct when put next to Kibaou, but his sharply slanted eyes had a powerful strength behind them now.
As far as I knew, he had never truly let his ugliest, most basic emotions explode outward in public since that one occasion: when he demanded to know why I let Diavel die, right after the battle with Illfang.
The next time I saw him, Lind had dyed his hair blue and donned silver armor, just like the late knight, and assumed control of the blue group. Perhaps he chose that path out of respect for Diavel, or a feeling of rivalry, of desire to surpass his mentor. Perhaps he actually wanted to be Diavel.
That third option’s gonna be pretty tough, Lind, I thought.
Diavel was a man of contradictions, someone who sought to lead the best players in the game while hiding the fact that he himself was a beta tester. He was playing a role that could easily see him hoisted by his own petard, but that also made him strong and a fascinating individual.
It occurred to me that if SAO had not turned into the deadly trap it was now, he might have been a great PVPer. The name Diavel came from the Italian word for “devil,” Argo told me, but if that was the reason behind his name choice, what drove him to call himself a knight? I didn’t know, of course, and pretending that I did was a disgrace to his memory.
At any rate, Diavel left Aincrad entirely without revealing a number of truths to his friends, and no one could fill his absence.
As though sensing my line of thought, Lind’s stare grew even sharper. He continued, “So you have no intention of being involved in any guild. Do I have that correct, Kirito?”
“Sure, that works. I’ll still take part in the boss fights, of course…assuming you let me.”
The guild leader nodded a few times at my answer. “Understood. We will discuss the matter of the boss at the next meeting. That is all I wanted to know.”
I sighed with relief once his gaze left me and sat back down on the stone steps.
Next, he turned to Agil’s group to ask if they had any intention of joining either guild, but all four of them declined. It seemed to me like they were going to make their own guild, but Lind did not ask about that. In the end, the DKB and ALS both wound up with an even eighteen members. There might be ferocious competition for new members between them, but as long as it swelled the ranks of the frontline clearers, that was a welcome development.
I’m glad that’s over, I thought to myself, then realized something.
I had answered for myself during that public interrogation, but I never checked with Asuna to see how she felt. She had her hood so low and was staying so quiet, it was as if she was testing out her Hiding skill, and I’d totally forgotten about her presence. Lind asked me and Agil; why didn’t he check with Asuna as well?
I turned left to look at her. Her hands and legs were perfectly still and aligned, just as she’d sat during the first meeting down in Tolbana. The profile I saw peeking out from her hood was calm, and she didn’t appear to be upset.
“Um…” I started, then swallowed what I was going to say. There was a pale fire smoldering in her narrowed eyes.
She was more than a little upset.
The one player who could deal the most damage per second out of all forty-two present was burning with a righteous fire that threatened to consume her entire being.
“Let’s head into the next topic. I’d like to ask Kibaou to lead the ceremonies now.”
Kibaou stood up, sensing that it was finally his turn, but I was not watching him. My eyes were frozen at a random spot in space, neither on the stage nor on Asuna’s face.
We’d been party members and travel companions for the last several days. Even I could sense that she was incredibly angry.
But I could not immediately discern why. There must be three potential reasons: (1) me, (2) Lind, (3) Kibaou. But I had no idea which one of the three it was.
Reason (3) was probably out. Asuna did not think much of Kibaou—when we nearly crossed his path in the cave this morning, she made a face of disgust—but all he’d done so far at this meeting was introduce himself, then sit in a chair the entire time.
I wanted to believe that (1) wasn’t true. It was wrong of me to declare no intention of joining a guild without seeing how she felt first, but she would probably have interrupted and made her anger clear if she really felt that way. Plus, the smoldering flames in her eyes were trained at a point directly over the stage several dozen feet away.
Based on the process of elimination, the target of her glare had to be (2) Lind. Most likely, it was something in the DKB leader’s speech that had made her furious.
Even as I considered these options, Kibaou was theatrically gesturing to the crowd.
“Listen up, we’re lookin’ ta finish this floor in the span of a week! That means gettin’ to the labyrinth in four days and beatin’ the boss in another two! Our best option to make that happen is numbers! We can’t keep up this pace with only forty-whatsit folks every time! We gotta get out there and recruit folks what got a bone to pick with this damn game!”
The members of the crowd dressed in green roared with approval at this statement. Increasing the strength of the frontline group was a crucial task, to be sure, but taking on new members and increasing the speed of our conquest were contradictory goals. The harder these two guilds tried to push the frontier forward, the further they left those down in the Town of Beginnings in the dust. Orlando’s Legend Braves had attempted that upgrading scam specifically to close the stark level gap between them and the best players.
But that aside, I had a more pressing duty at the moment. I needed to prevent Asuna from tearing Lind a new one. She was keeping herself under control for now, but the moment the meeting ended, she would leap up and confront him. The other DKB members would be furious, and it would also close the book on her eligibility to join the guilds, which would gladly welcome her if she just asked.
I tuned out Kibaou’s lengthy speech, turned to my left, and steeled myself to speak. But before I could get the words out, her voice emerged from the hood, strained and gravelly.
“You can’t stop me. I’ve been able to resist what he says before, but this time he’s crossed the line, and I’m going to speak my mind.”
“…By ‘this time,’ you mean how we’d have to join separate guilds?” I asked, just to be sure, but Asuna did not respond with a yes or no—probably because she thought it went without saying—and pressed on, her voice even harder.
“Whether I join a guild or not and who I hang around with or not are my choice. I might be able to put up with his pushy attitude and speeches, but I can tell that deep down, he believes it’s his job to guide others and tell them what to do. He believes that giving people hard orders will ultimately be to their benefit. He even believes that what he’s doing is some kind of self-sacrifice.”
“…”
I felt a cold sweat break out on my back, even though I knew she wasn’t talking about me. If I ever caught wind that someone said these things about me, the withering criticism would made me sulk in an inn room for a week.
But if Asuna’s remarks were accurate, then Lind’s convoluted scheme to prevent me from making my own guild wasn’t meant to firm up his own leadership of the playerbase, but as an attempt to guide me into my proper place as a player. He thought that wearing a blue uniform and taking part in the frontline community would reform me. I would be reborn from shunned beater to respected member.
That would indeed be overstepping the boundaries of his responsibility, but on the other hand, I felt like Asuna might be overthinking things. She continued on as if hearing my thoughts aloud.
“I know how it goes. I’ve been hearing those words on the other side ever since I was a kid.”
“…!”
I held my breath. Asuna almost never talked about her life back in the real world—in fact, this might be the first time.
She’d described her motive for picking up her sword and leaving the Town of Beginnings: “For me to be myself.” I probably didn’t fully understand what that phrase meant yet, but her resistance to Lind’s orders meant that they would prevent Asuna from being herself. And that had to be more important to Asuna than hanging around in an ambitious guild.
However.
However…
Even as I was lost in thought, Kibaou’s impassioned speech was reaching its climax onstage. He challenged us to set the next town as our goal for tomorrow and read the most important pieces of information from the latest edition of Argo’s strategy guide. Even anti-tester Kibaou was just barely able to accept the guides as “trusted secondary sources.” It felt awfully convenient to me, but if that helped justify Argo’s position in being independent from the frontline crowd, that was a good thing.
Still, it was important to prevent any situation in which Asuna might draw the ire of the others. Kibaou’s speech was about to end, and she was preparing to go after Lind as soon as it finished.
Asuna had qualities that I didn’t possess. She had the qualities of a leader meant to guide a great number of players. I didn’t want to let her dash that possibility on the rocks by antagonizing the majority here at the very start of the game. Then again, I’d done that very thing right after the first boss fight…
Suddenly I realized one very important truth and held my breath again.
It wasn’t a coincidence. This clash with Lind, the self-professed leader of the top players in the game, was inevitable. As long as Asuna worked with me, it was bound to happen at some point. I was a beater, and I used my store of knowledge from the beta to help myself, and Asuna as my partner, gain a lead over the other frontier players. What was the Chivalric Rapier at her waist if not proof of that fact?
I felt disappointment and anger that I had just now realized this obvious truth, as well as a powerful doubt and hesitation. I bit my lip.
Up onstage, Kibaou theatrically gazed in a full circle around the meeting grounds and prepared to finish up.
“…And that’s why, from now on, whichever guild spots the boss chamber first gets ta call the shots in the battle. If there ain’t no further questions…which I assume there ain’t, then that brings our first strategy meetin’ of the third floor to a close. Let’s finish it out with a cheer!”
Seeing that Kibaou had raised a defiant fist in the air, Lind reluctantly got to his feet. At the same time, Asuna leaned forward. Her skinny legs tensed, preparing to leap forward.
“…We’re gonna crush this boss within a week!!”
“Yeah!!” the crowd roared in response. I held out my left hand and clutched her wrist.
Her hood turned to me and she growled, “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Sorry, I have to.”
“I don’t care if he…I don’t care if all of those guild people hate me. I have no intention of joining them. I’d rather go back down to the Town of Beginnings than sit here and take that nonsense,” she claimed boldly. A breeze ruffled her hood and the red light of the sunset caught her hazel eyes, shining like two shooting stars.
I stared right back into those burning pits of fire and shook my head.
“Don’t do it, Asuna. You can’t antagonize them.”
I sucked in a deep breath, preparing to tell her that we ought to split apart.
I knew full well that this was the kind of thing Asuna hated most: a pushy, heavy-handed act supposedly done for the sake of the other person. But at this point, I had no other words to use. I couldn’t let Asuna make herself the enemy of the main player force in the game, even if it meant that she hated, shunned, and insulted me, never to adventure at my side again.
It was the absolute limit of a solo player.
The fact that no one could save you.
SAO was programmed with a depressing number of negative status effects. Stunning, paralysis, poison, bleeding, blindness, dizziness, et cetera…These things could be overcome with the help of friends in a group, but they all threatened the life of any solo adventurer. In a normal game, where a player could be revived at any time, it might be worth the risk to play solo. But in this extremely deadly game, where a single mistake could be the end of everything, the only reason I was able to play alone in the first two floors was my stock of knowledge from the beta test.
That lifeline would last me to only the tenth floor. Eventually, I’d be forced to survive in unfamiliar maps against unfamiliar monsters. Already, the things I knew about the boss monsters had been proven insufficient. As the dangers increased exponentially, working with a full party or a guild would be crucial. But the longer she spent with me, the more Asuna risked falling into my position—or one even more perilous.
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