Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 3 - Chapter 1

1 
1:32 PM ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2022. 
After a few minutes lost in discussion before passing through the door, I—Kirito the level-16 swordsman—and my temporary partner, Asuna the level-15 fencer, were the first in the entire game to set foot on the fourth floor of the floating castle Aincrad. 
If the fourth floor of the game at the point of the beta test had a theme, it would be “desert canyons.” As I’d explained to Asuna, the entire map of the floor was a spiderweb of narrow intersecting canyons that were impossible to scale, meaning that all travel had to go through those canyons, which were slow and tedious to traverse, not to mention easy to get lost within. 
But what I saw couldn’t have been more different from what I remembered. 
The pavilion into which the staircase exited was at the top of a steep hill. The terrain itself looked the same as what it had been before, but the gravelly, reddish-brown land was now covered in lush greenery. I looked in all directions around the wall-less pavilion and saw only a single tree growing behind us and no monsters or NPCs in sight. 
The hill, about ninety feet across, was surrounded by cliffs that loomed over the nearby area, but two slender paths heading to the southeast and southwest led to separate canyons. Water rushed vigorously from the southwest canyon and circled around the hill until it eventually left via the southeast canyon. In other words, what had once been a simple hill was now effectively an island. 
We were already painfully aware that the retail version of Sword Art Online , which its creator Akihiko Kayaba had turned into a deadly, inescapable trap, was different from the beta test in many ways. But nothing had changed the look of the terrain in such a dramatic way before. It was not the desert canyon floor anymore. 
In fact, the canyons were the only means of getting out of this area during the beta. If they were now filled with rushing white-water rapids, that meant— 
“So how long are you going to stand there?” Asuna asked, jabbing me with an elbow. I recovered from the mental stun effect and apologized to my partner. 
“Er…my bad. I was spacing out.” 
“I wasn’t asking for an apology, but there are plenty of people waiting for us to reach the main city and activate the teleporter.” 
“Oh, right. Well…first, we should inform Argo that we defeated the boss.” 
Nerius the Evil Treant, the tree-shaped boss of the third floor, had been dispatched without a single casualty just twenty minutes before, but there was no way to send an instant message from within a dungeon, so no one aside from the members of the raid party knew that the boss was dead. As we were the first to reach the next floor and exit the dungeon, we needed to inform Argo the Rat, the game’s preeminent information agent, that the boss was dead, so the rest of the population could be informed. 
I raised my hand to open my game window, but Asuna caught it. 
“I already contacted her while you were off in la-la land.” 
“Ah, th-thanks. Very considerate of you…” 
“Now let’s get going to that main city. Whether there’s water in the canyons or not, the route is still the same as before, right?” 
“Um, well…I think so…” 
“Then lead the way!” 
She slapped me on the back, and I had no choice but to proceed. 
We left the stone pavilion and headed down the damp, mossy south face of the hill. I stopped at the edge of the water and watched it race by. 
The stream itself was very clear, which meant I could see all the way down to the white sand at the bottom of the waterway, but it was quite deep. By eye, I judged it to be at least six feet, if not more. There was no way for us to walk through it. 
Asuna stopped next to me and looked into the river as well, then seemed to understand my consternation at last. 
“Wait…why is it so deep? We can’t cross to the other side like this.” 
“That’s right…In fact, I don’t think there is an other side.” 
“…What do you mean?” 
“Exactly what I said. In the beta, these canyons were the only way to get to the towns and dungeons on the floor. I bet they’re all deep rivers at this point—the entire floor.” 
The fencer’s brow furrowed deeper. 
“Meaning…there’s no path at all now?” 
“Indeed.” 
“…” 
When I realized this fact at the top of the hill, I took a good three minutes to think over the challenge ahead of us, but Asuna required only five seconds to get her head in gear again. She glanced around. 
“What’s it like on top of those cliffs?” 
I followed her gaze to the sheer walls that surrounded the circular hill. The gleaming wet rock proceeded vertically upward for at least ninety feet, the top of the cliff shrouded in white mist. 
“I don’t know. Nobody was able to climb it in the beta.” 
“So it’s basically a system-designated barrier?” 
“Not explicitly, but the rock was too fragile—everyone fell down partway, including me. And once you fell from above the halfway point, pretty much every landing was fatal.” 
“…That sounds too dangerous to test out, even if the landing below is in water now,” Asuna murmured. I nodded silently. No one was going to risk their lives for a trial-and-error attempt at scaling those cliffs. 
Next, she looked down into the water again. 
“Then I suppose our only option is to swim the river.” 
I couldn’t immediately agree. I glanced at her equipment of dark red hooded cape over breastplate and leather skirt. 
“Um…have you ever swum here in SAO , Asuna?” 
“…” 
She covered her body with her left arm for some odd reason and shook her head. 
“N-no.” 
“I see. Then let me just explain that the way you use your body to swim in SAO is completely different from real life. It takes a lot of practice to be able to swim properly, and even practice doesn’t prevent the danger of drowning.” 
“What happens…if you drown?” she asked, her face tense. My answer was simple. 
“When your body is submerged in water above the head, your HP begin dropping. So if you don’t emerge from the surface of the water, you die.” 
Even after that, Asuna did nothing more than bite her lip. She glanced at the blue water again and summoned her courage. 
“How much practice are we talking about?” 
“Well…it depends on the person, but it took me over an hour. And that was in the shallows, just three feet deep. It’s too dangerous to practice in a deep, rushing river like this.” 
“I see…In that case, we should go back to an earlier floor and find a safe place to practice, I suppose,” she muttered, looking down. I was still searching for the right answer when she nodded and continued. 
“Let’s do this, then. You swim from here for the main town. I’ll take the stairs back down to the third floor. I recall the perfect lake on the north side of the floor that I can use to practice. Once I’m ready, I’ll use the teleport gate to the fourth floor. That means the party breaks up for a bit,” she chattered, faster than her usual speed, and raised her hand for the menu screen. 
This time it was my turn to grab her arm. 
“…” 
Her hazel-colored eyes stared right back at me. The reflection of the light off the surface of the river danced against her pupils, hiding the emotion within them. 
Even a complete idiot like me, when it came to personal communication, could see that Asuna would refuse an offer to go back together and help her practice. The proud fencer would refuse to accept the idea of the teleport gate being late to open on her account. It would probably be useless to point out that if we didn’t do it, Lind or Kibaou would activate the teleporter or that it would automatically turn on two hours after the third-floor boss’s defeat. 
Instead, I finally put the feeling of wrongness I’d been grappling with since seeing the fourth floor’s dramatic change into words. 
“Umm…I don’t think I like that.” 
“…What about it?” she asked quietly. I looked away toward the flowing river. 
“Like I said earlier, swimming in SAO is quite dangerous. And now that dying is permanent, it’s insane to imagine that they would just toss us into a map that requires you to swim to advance. We must have missed something. Maybe there’s not another path, but some kind of insurance, a backup method somewhere on this island…” 
By the end I was more talking to myself than anything. I looked up at the island behind us. The circular hill, barely ninety feet across, had no other monsters or NPCs on it. The only objects of any interest were the pavilion that housed the staircase and the deciduous tree at the north end beyond it… 
“…Hmm?” 
My eyes shot back about six feet in the previous direction. I squinted and glared at the spot that caught my attention. 
“What is it?” Asuna asked, looking curious. I took a step up the hill, then another, still holding on to her hand. As soon as I was certain of what I saw, I took off running at full speed. 
“Whobful!” 
I dragged her straight up the side of the hill, as she blurted out what was probably supposed to be “ Whoa, be careful! ” I rounded the pavilion and stood at the root of the large tree, looking up at the branches far above. 
“See that?” 
I removed my grip on her hand to point up above. She pointedly took her time to straighten her skirt before indulging my request, and her grumpy expression got about 20 percent brighter. 
“Oh, it’s growing fruit. And they look so cute!” 
As she noted, near the top of the broadleaf tree hung a number of small fruit in a variety of colors. Most striking of all was their shape, which was circular with a hole in the middle—essentially, donuts. Even in the beta test, I had never seen a fruit shaped like that. 
But the pale smile on Asuna’s lips disappeared just as quickly as it formed. 
“They look tasty…but this isn’t time to be enjoying a snack. Lind’s group will be done divvying up their items soon. If we need to practice our swimming to get to the main city, we ought to go and let them know before they come all the way up here…” 
“Let’s try knocking down some of the fruit first,” I said, reaching up with both hands to grab a branch that was a good foot and a half around. I lowered my waist and tensed my legs, using all of my strength in an attempt to shake the branch. The tree didn’t budge an inch, and needless to say, none of the fruit fell. 
The bark of the tree was smooth and sleek, and without the Acrobatics skill, there was no way for me to climb it. I thought about tossing a pebble, but without the Throwing Knives skill, I wouldn’t be able to hit it. 
“Argh, if only I had three…no, five more skill slots!” 
It was a desire that every player in SAO felt. I smacked the branch with my balled-up fist in frustration. Somehow, the basic martial arts technique Flash Blow activated, and my fist glowed red as it struck the branch. The resulting shock wave set the entire massive tree rattling. 
“…Ah.” 
Asuna grunted and two of the donut-like fruit fell without a sound. I caught one in each hand and smiled confidently, trying to hide the fact that it was nothing more than a lucky coincidence. 
She sighed exasperatedly and shrugged. 
“Okay, fine, it turned out all right, but what if you’d broken the tree in half? We’re still technically part of the Dark Elf team, so we have to respect nature.” 
“Of course. Sorry…” 
I thought of the Dark Elf knight Kizmel, who was somewhere out there on this floor. Was she stuck like us now that the canyons were rivers? Or was she using her elven magic to walk on the surface of the water? 
Asuna was quiet for a time just like me, thinking about Kizmel, but she came back to her senses quicker. 
“So what’s the plan with the donut fruit? If we’re eating them, I’d prefer the yellow one.” 
One of the fruits in my hands was a brilliant cobalt blue, while the other was a pale lemon yellow. The blue one did not pique my hunger in the least, but fortunately, eating them wasn’t the plan. 
“I don’t think these are meant to be shaped like donuts.” 
“…What are they shaped like, then?” 
Rather than answering her, I brought the blue one up to my mouth. Asuna made a face like, I knew you were eating it , but I shot her a look of warning and popped the fruit’s stem, a small protuberance half an inch long, into my mouth. 
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and blew as hard as I could into the tube stem. There was a powerful resistance at first, but then, as though a valve had opened, the air flooded into the fruit. 
Bomp! The blue fruit instantly erupted into a much larger size. The three-inch-wide fruit suddenly measured a good three feet. It was no longer a donut. 
“Y-you mean…it’s an…inner tube?” Asuna marveled. I grinned and handed her the yellow fruit. 
“Try it out, Asuna.” 
“Um…okay,” she replied, and popped the stem into her pursed lips. She sucked in a deep, arching breath and closed her eyes to blow. 
There was another high-pitched pop, and an inner tube appeared. Her surprise at how light it was for its size caused her to bobble it, and she jogged along, batting it up into the air like a volleyball before she could grab it tight with both hands. 
“Good grief…I do not know what’s going on here,” she sighed. 
“You donut know,” I replied on instinct before I could stop myself. A gaze well below the freezing point pierced the spot between my eyebrows. 
“You were the one who said they weren’t donuts,” she snapped. “If you want to stand around cracking jokes, feel free to go do some stand-up at the teleport gate plaza.” 
“Wait…you mean you’ll be my comedy partner?” 
“Of course not!! Why not team up with Kibaou?!” 
“…” 
For an instant, I imagined myself onstage with Kibaou, who cut into me with a fierce “ Whaddaya mean?! ” I quickly shook my head to clear the thought. 
“Uh…no, thanks.” 
I brought up my menu to check the time. Fifteen minutes had already passed since we emerged on the fourth floor, thirty-five since the boss was killed. 
After producing a blank scroll of parchment, I began writing a quick message. Inside, I mentioned using an impact-type skill to drop the fruit and the way to inflate them. A quick tap on the scroll made it automatically roll up, and I placed it on the ground next to the pavilion. 
Left on the ground like that, its durability would eventually dwindle and cause the item to vanish, but it would last at least until Lind and Kibaou made it up the stairs. 
“Well, now that we’ve got our floaty tubes, that changes our plan of action, doesn’t it?” I noted. Asuna looked down doubtfully at the massive tube in her hands. 
“…You mean that even a beginner can swim with one of these?” 
“I’ll try it first, of course, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine. As long as your head doesn’t go underwater, you won’t lose HP while swimming. We’ll make it to the main town by going through the canyon just to the south and then east. The only thing is…” 
“…Is what?” 
“We should probably remove our heavy equipment, just in case.” 
“How heavy are we talking?” 
I looked her over from head to toe several times, doing some quick weight calculations before answering. 
“Let’s see…You should probably take off the hooded cape. The rapier and the breastplate as well, obviously, and the boots and gloves, too. Probably the vest, too…And that leather skirt’s a lot heavier than you’d think. As for the tunic, well…” 
“…If I take all of them off, I won’t be wearing any equipment at all!” 
Asuna threw the inner tube smack against my face. It bounced upward with a giddy poing and landed right around my neck. 

“I assume you’re going to follow your own advice and take off your black thing, the other black thing, and the black thing aside from that!” 
“Um…I’m only thinking of what will make it safest for you to swim…” 
As a matter of fact, leather and cloth clothing were just as bad as metal—they took on water that added to the weight penalty. Even with our inner-tube secret weapon, it was too risky not to be able to maneuver adequately in a pinch. A pool or lake was one thing, but on a rushing river, we might easily miss our disembarking point and get washed well downstream. 
Whether that honest concern of mine registered to her or not, Asuna’s anger cooled, and she reached out her right hand. I tossed the yellow tube back so that the hole landed on her outstretched hand, spinning the tube round and round on her arm. 
“Fine…We need to go light. I get that. So…am I good with the tunic, at least?” 
“Huh? Uh, yeah, I think that should work,” I nodded. 
She shot me one last glare. “Then let’s get going.” 
Asuna stomped off down the hill. I hurried after her, and within moments, we were back at the riverside to the south. 
Asuna stopped and turned for one last look at the pavilion on the hilltop—probably to check that no one was emerging—then opened her window. She worked quickly, turning her back so I couldn’t see. First the rapier disappeared, then the cape, armor, and vest. 
When the leather skirt vanished into her inventory, only the white tunic was left. It hung low in the front and back, hiding her underwear, but something about that look only seemed to add to its destructive allure… 
Lost in thought, I sensed that Asuna was about to turn around, so I quickly spun ninety degrees and hit my REMOVE EQUIPMENT button twice. All of my gear, including my sword, went into storage, leaving me with a single set of underwear trunks. 
I was embarrassed to be in such a revealing outfit in front of a very pretty girl around my age, but the dark red boxers almost looked like a short set of swimming trunks. I told myself that anything I felt was entirely in my own head and that it wasn’t even my own body. 
As I closed the window, I heard a mysterious pflrt sound. Turning my head carefully over my shoulder, I saw Asuna with her hand over her mouth, her eyes upturned and wandering. It seemed like a very strange gesture to be making. 
“Pff…peh-heh…kaha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” 
The cool, cynical, mysterious fencer burst into uncontrolled laughter. I automatically covered my undies with the inner tube. 
“Y-you don’t have to laugh that hard! Besides, you already said you expected I would be taking everything off,” I argued, hurt. Asuna bent over double, holding her sides. 
“Ah-ha-ha-ha…I-I mean…seriously, that’s just not fair, ha-ha- ha-ha!” 
“N-not fair? Look…I know it’s a bright color, but…” 
“N-no, I’m not talking about the color…pff-hff-hff…Do you really not know what I mean? You should really take a look at your butt!” 
“Wh-what…?” 
I twisted around in a hurry to check the back of the boxers, but even at the peak flexibility of my avatar’s back, I couldn’t see my own butt. Struck by a sudden idea, I rushed to the water’s edge and stuck my butt over, hoping to catch sight of the reflection through my legs. 
“Wh…what the—?!” I yelped. 
The rear end of the crimson red trunks was printed with a large, flashy gold bull symbol. 
I froze in shock, still in that embarrassing pose, while Asuna finally got her laughing fit under control—down to a simple chuckle. 
“So where did you get that underwear? I don’t remember ever seeing a pair with such a cool pattern on it at the NPC shops. Or was that your own custom design?” 
“…I didn’t buy it or design it,” I grumbled, regaining my poise after the terrible shock. “This was the Last Attack bonus from the second-floor boss…Actually, the sub-boss boss, General Baran. I just assumed it was a plain design. Never occurred to me that there might be a design on the ass…” 
“So if it was a bonus, does that mean it has some special effect?” 
“Yep. It has a good boost to strength and a little bit of a resistance to debuffs like disease and curses…” 
“Ahhh. You know, it’s dreadfully boring that you win all of the LA bonuses, but I’m glad I didn’t wind up with that underwear. I don’t want to have to choose between wearing a stupid cow-print man’s boxers for the bonus effects or not.” 
“You never know—if it dropped for you, it might have been proper lady’s underwear. Still with the cow design, though, I bet.” 
As I inevitably started to imagine the fencer wearing cow panties, she wound up to hurl the inner tube at me again. I shook my head and snorted my nose, and she paused mid-windup. 
I sighed to clear my head of that nonsense and knelt down to stick my hand in the river. The water was extremely cold, but I just had to suck it up and deal with it. 
Asuna tested the water for herself and murmured, “Didn’t you say that some floors of Aincrad are synced up to the actual season outside?” 
“That’s what it said in a magazine. But that article was obviously before it took us all prisoner, so I have no idea what’s going on with Aincrad now…” 
“Well, at the very least, this floor doesn’t seem to be stuck in midwinter. I was thinking it was boring that there wasn’t a more seasonal feeling here, but now I’m glad of it. So, shall we?” 
Asuna put the lemon-yellow inner tube on, and I stuck the cobalt blue over my own head. With it fixed firmly in place with both hands, I told her, “Hang on for a moment while I test it out.” 
I stuck my right leg into the water. Once I was sure that the current right at the shore wasn’t too strong, I let my body sink in. 
As I suspected, the inflated donut fruit was quite buoyant, and it easily kept my body at the surface of the water. It didn’t take too much pressure from my legs to hold my position in the current, either. 
“I think it’ll be fine,” I said, looking up and beckoning her in. Asuna nodded nervously and very carefully entered the water. As soon as she did, the cloth tunic took on a bit of transparency and I hastily looked away, but Asuna didn’t seem to notice. When her weight was supported by the inner tube, she even smiled. 

 

“Wow, this takes me back!” 
“I-it would have been nicer to swim at the beach.” 
“Who knows, maybe there is an ocean here. If there is, I’ll make an actual swimsuit.” 
“That’s right, you’re still working on your Tailoring skill. Will you make me one without a bull design? Like…as soon as we get to town?” I added, realizing that we might be forced to use this inner-tube travel for a while. 
She grinned devilishly. “Sure. I’ll even give you a choice between bear, cat, and frog designs.” 
“…I’ll…think it over. Ready to go?” 
“Yep.” 
We both spun around to join the flow. 
The circular area surrounded by cliffs had two exits. One of them was the source of the powerful flow of water, so our inevitable destination was out the other end. I started kicking my legs, keeping a firm grasp on the secret-weapon floaty tube. 
After about ten feet, Asuna called out from behind. 
“Um…something feels weird.” 
“The water pressure and texture feels different, doesn’t it? That’s why you have to practice before you go swimming without a floatation device. Still, it feels like they’ve made a lot of improvements since the beta.” 
“I see…This does require practice, I can tell…” 
“An hour of swimming, and you’ll get used to it. Here’s the exit—the current will get a lot stronger here, so take care not to drift too far away.” 
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I felt Asuna jam her hand between my torso and the swim tube. 
“That should keep me secure.” 
I turned around and asked, “Should I do the same?” The fencer thought it over for two seconds and made a face that said it was special circumstance. 
“Here goes, then…” 
I stuck my left hand into Asuna’s tube and pulled it close. Unless something really drastic happened, there was no way we’d get separated like this. 
We entered the ten-foot-wide canyon, firmly docked. The curves made it impossible to see what lay ahead, but I knew from my beta experience that we’d be heading into a larger canyon soon, one of the main paths of the floor. 
As we picked up steam, sure enough, a much wider surface appeared ahead. It was a grand river flowing from west to east. The steep cliffs at the sides were the same, but there was a sense of liberation as the span of the water increased to over thirty feet. The speed of the flow wasn’t as rapid as I feared, either. 
Once we were out into the center of the river, we stopped kicking and let the water push us along. 
“…The landscape really is exactly as it was in the beta. I even remember that rock there,” I murmured to myself. Asuna looked around. With her every movement, I felt a pleasurable sensation on my left hand, but the iron wall that was my self-control shut it out of my thoughts. 
“Hmm…I wonder why the dusty old canyons are full of water now?” 
“Well, if I had to guess about things I have no way of knowing, maybe their water simulation process wasn’t quite up to snuff back during the beta. If they were able to get it to a satisfactory level in the three months after that, they might have decided to change it to these rivers, I guess…” 
“That makes sense, but it’s a boring answer.” 
“S-sorry.” 
Asuna shrugged her shoulders, clad in the white fabric of her tunic. The way her skin was visible through the wet material wasn’t in the beta, either. I hoped that I wasn’t seeing the personal touch of Akihiko Kayaba, the mad director of SAO who had trapped all ten thousand of us in his deadly game. 
She took another look around the area and wondered, “If all the canyons are filled with rivers now, shouldn’t there be other things that have changed aside from the landscape?” 
“What do you mean?” 
“Things like what the quest NPCs say or the materials you can gather…oh, and the types of monsters you face.” 
She suddenly stopped, silent. I understood why. If we happened into a monster encounter right now, we were both without any kind of battle equipment on. I quickly shook my head to put her at ease. 
“No, we’re fine. In the beta, there were hardly any monsters along the route from the staircases to the main city of the next floor…” 
“Really?” 
“B-besides, the pop rate on monsters in the thirty minutes after the boss is defeated is drastically reduced…” 
“Drastically?” she repeated, looking skeptical. “Well, it’s certainly been at least thirty minutes.” 
“Oh, g-good point. But so far we haven’t even seen a single fish, much less any monsters. I guess that might mean a real big one gobbled them all up,” I added, trying to laugh it off. Suddenly, I heard an irregular kerplunk . Asuna heard it, too, as we turned around simultaneously. 
About ten yards behind us, something had emerged from the water. 
It was a smooth, sleek, triangular fin. There was at least a foot of it sticking out from the surface of the water. The color cursor that appeared was bright red to indicate an enemy, as if that wasn’t obvious already. I heard an old familiar movie soundtrack lurch ominously into motion in my head. 
“Um, is it just me, or is that…?” Asuna rasped. I didn’t wait for the answer—I turned my body back around and tensed my legs for full-power kicking. 
“Let’s hurry,” I suggested. For once, she didn’t argue. 
“Agreed.” 
“On the count of three…” 
I looked back briefly to check that the menacing fin wasn’t closing in yet, then took a deep breath. 
“…two, three!” 
With a silent roar echoing in my head, I kicked my feet as hard as I could. An enormous splash erupted behind us, and we started racing away downstream, hard enough that the swim tube was tilted nearly vertical. 
If my memory was correct, the side path—er, tributary—that led to the main city was maybe a hundred yards off. The canyon twisted right, then back to the left, and I saw an aperture in the vertical cliff face to the right, just as I expected. 
“There, Asuna!” 
“Got it!” 
I doubled my kicking speed for the final spurt and looked back again. Fortunately the terrifying fin was no longer in… 
“Eeeeep!” I screeched. The gray fin splitting the surface of the water was barely a dozen feet away. If the body of our underwater pursuer matched the size of the fin, its rows of jagged teeth could be bearing down on my legs right now. 
If it caught my toes, I would have to use my Quick Change mod to equip my sword and fight in the water. Meanwhile, I got my legs working up to 120 percent capacity. 
“H-hey, what’s going on behind us?!” Asuna croaked, too exhausted to even turn around and look. 
“D-don’t think about that! Just swim as fast as you can!” 
“All right!” 
We kept our grips on each other’s inner tube and paddled madly with our free hands. The entrance ahead grew closer, but I could sense the fin behind us closing faster. 
“P-prepare for a hard right!” 
“All right!” 
I gritted my teeth and flopped to the right. The moment my speed slowed with the turn, I thought I sensed something touching my foot, but our only choice at this point was to race for the goal. I put my full faith in the strength-raising effect of my bull-butt boxers as I stretched for the five-yard-wide tributary. 
The side path ended in a small shoreline just twenty-five yards ahead. In the beta, it was another hill, at the top of which lay the gate to the main city. If we could just get to that white sand, we’d win this little game of tag. 
“Raaaaah!!” 
Roaring with about the seventh-fiercest shout I’d made in the last month and a half, I raced—er, swam—through the remaining distance. The instant my toes touched the sand of the river bottom, I bolted upright and started running, pulling Asuna by the hand. Even when the ground under my feet went from the soggy edge of the water to white, dry sand, I still kept going for another dozen paces before I finally turned back to look. 
The dorsal fin that had been chasing us was leaping high above the water. Our fishy foe thought it could tackle us in a land battle. I was ready to oblige and just about to hit the QUICK CHANGE shortcut icon on my menu, when— 
“…Hwuh?” Asuna muttered foolishly as she dangled from the swim tube I still clutched with my left hand. 
There was no wonder. Beneath the splendid, foot-long fin was a pop-eyed tadpole-like creature just a few inches across and maybe a foot and a half long. 
It landed on the wet sand and flapped around. Apparently its dorsal fin was so large and heavy that its tiny limbs couldn’t balance properly. 
But a large wave rolled in and swallowed the tadpole, pulling it back into the water. Soon the fin poked out of the river again and glided back toward the main current. 
“…The hell was that…?” 
I fell to my knees in the sand with the disappointment of it all. The inner tube under my left arm came loose and fell, dropping Asuna face-first into the sand. She eventually got up and sat in the sand, seemingly too exhausted to be angry with me this time. The sand stuck to her wet skin, strands of hair plastered across her forehead and cheeks, with the soaked tunic sticking tight to her torso to complete the picture-perfect image of a model at an oceanside photo shoot. The only thing out of place was her empty gaze, which followed the triangular fin. 
“…I’ve just decided. The next time we see that monster, I’m going to kill it, cook it, and make you eat it,” she said, her manifesto delivered in a flat voice. 
“Why don’t… you eat it?” I asked. 
“It looked gross.” 
“…” 
“Probably poisonous, too.” 
“…” 
Well, as long as you cook it, I’ll happily dig in. Maybe it’ll taste like shark fin soup, I thought magnanimously, getting to my feet. I extended a hand to Asuna. 
“Let’s put our gear back on and go into town. I don’t think you’ll catch a cold sitting like that, but it’s doing us no good,” I noted. Suddenly, she froze solid, still clutching my hand. Her face, which was pointed down at her outfit, grew much redder. I began to back away, struck by a foreboding premonition much like the one I got upon first seeing that dorsal fin. 
But her right hand struck, quick as lightning, and grabbed my left. She pulled until she was on her feet, and with that familiar surgical precision just light enough not to cause damage, she drove her knee into my stomach in the Muay Thai style.