8
“FROM THE LEFT, KIRITO!” ASUNA SHOUTED.
I gritted my teeth and plunged the oar to the left. The Tilnel was maneuverable thanks to its small size, but it had its limits. The turning radius of the gondola at high speed was about twice the length of the boat, a full fifty feet, and required foresight at all times.
“Nuaaaah!”
I rowed with all of my strength. A large brown boat plunged into the corner of my vision. Though it was hidden behind the boat’s spray, the prow was equipped with an enormous ram, and even with its excellent defensive ability thanks to our choice of fine materials, the Tilnel was not likely to emerge unscathed.
A Forest Elf soldier standing at the prow brandished a ten-foot spear.
“I’ve got him!” Kizmel shouted from the center of the boat, raising her saber. With a brilliant, speedy swing, she lopped the tip off of the spear as it plunged toward me.
It was worth trusting in Kizmel’s assistance and staying the course, as it ensured the Tilnel just missed the ram and slipped past the large ship’s port side.
The enemy ship began to turn, but once we were at their rear side, there was nothing they could do. Our foes’ defenseless stern came into view as the two ships circled around each other.
“Asuna, Kizmel, here we go!”
“All right!”
“Ready!”
They crouched and clutched the sides of the ship as we charged at full speed. The Fire-Bear’s Horn affixed to the Tilnel ’s prow crunched directly into the sturdy Forest Elven ship’s sole weak point, its rear end. The red-hot ram split the thin wood and evaporated the water around it, causing an explosion that blew up the rear half of the ship.
Even as we used that backward pressure to reverse the Tilnel , the enemy ship began taking on water and sinking from the stern end. The eleven Forest Elves aboard the ship were thrown into the lake, screaming, and immediately began to swim away.
“Yes, that’s two!” I crowed.
Meanwhile, Asuna shouted on lookout. “Enemy ship to the rear left! They’re facing away from us, so this is our chance!”
“R-roger!”
I regripped the oar and plunged it to the right this time.
It was Tuesday, December 27. Just as the Fallen Elf General N’ltzahh had proclaimed, “five days later” was right on the money: A small fleet of boats carrying Forest Elves plunged into the lake around Yofel Castle just after noon.
We were ready for them, as our Dark Elf scouts warned us three hours in advance, but I couldn’t prevent a chill from running down my back when the enemy ships appeared, horns blaring. They showed up sixteen strong, much more than my initial estimation of ten ships.
That was twice the number of ships for the Dark Elves at Yofel Castle. That meant that, assuming the ships on either side had the same battle power, our little Tilnel had to sink eight ships on her own.
I had never expected to experience a large-scale naval battle in Aincrad, but here we were, two lines of brown-and-black ships charging each other like ancient Greek fleets. Two Forest Elf ships and one of the Dark Elven boats took on holes and sank in the first clash. That left fourteen enemy ships against seven.
But as a roving wild card, the Tilnel had no obligation to line up properly. Instead, I utilized a tactic from the Battle of Salamis and surprised them on their flanks.
Of course, in a giant circular lake, there was no place to hide. But we did have the very useful Argyro’s Sheet on our side. With Asuna’s Tailoring skill and some patience, we even managed to repair some of its lost durability.
Safely hidden from sight at the east end of the battle area, we carefully timed our first strike for the exact moment both sides had stopped and sank the first boat with a perfect blow. After that, things got chaotic, but we had just sunk our second, which meant the Forest Elves should be down to twelve ships.
“Kizmel, count up the number of surviving ships!” I shouted as I rowed frantically. It took all of two seconds for her reply.
“Six on our sides, twelve for the enemy!”
“Ugh…”
The enemy number was right where I expected it to be, but we’d lost another ally.
As one might expect from ships hastily cobbled together from wood acquired from dismantled boxes, the Forest Elf ships had ugly, squarish prows and sterns. They were slower and less maneuverable than the Dark Elves’ elegant gondolas, but much sturdier.
On top of that, as Kizmel had feared, the Dark Elf discipline and morale were lower than the enemy’s. A few ships were lined up and locked in furious on-board combat, but more Dark Elves were falling to enemy blades and plunging into the water than the other way around.
“Valiant warriors of Kales’Oh!” bellowed a large knight who had the look of an enemy commander, at the center of a ship bearing a green flag with golden shield and sword. “Send these cowardly Dark Elves to sleep at the bottom of this lake! They have allied with humankind and built ships for the purpose of bringing down our castle! Fortunately, their plot was foiled, and we claimed their ships for ourselves! We must not miss this opportunity!!”
…Whut?
I puzzled over that one as I rowed with all my strength. Did the enemy commander just say that the Dark Elves were allied with the humans? Did that mean that the Dark Elves hired humans to build ships and the Forest Elves stole those ships? As far as I knew, that wasn’t true. At the very least, I knew that the Fallen Elves had built those ships the Forest Elves were using now, at their behest…or so I thought.
“They’ve spotted us, Kirito!”
Asuna’s shout brought me back to the scene unfolding before my eyes.
The oarsman of the Forest Elf ship we were aiming for was attempting to make a right turn as he stared at us. I pushed our boat left, then waited for the right moment to make a sudden right turn. Predicting the location the enemy ship would pass through ten seconds from now, I started rowing madly.
With two swift strikes faster than the eye could follow, Asuna disarmed two enemy spears, and in the next moment, the Tilnel ’s ram burst through the enemy’s rear starboard hull. Kizmel had to lean over and pull Asuna back before she fell over with the impact.
There was another blast of steam, and the enemy ship was destroyed. That made…
“Three!”
I ignored the enemy soldiers falling into the water and searched for our next target. On the north side of the lake where the main fight was taking place, the Dark Elves continued to fall behind. The six remaining ships were lining up to prevent entrance to the castle and engaging the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, but more Dark Elves were falling into the water than Forest Elves.
Meanwhile, the enemy still had eleven ships active, and three of them were spinning off the main fight to approach the castle dock from the west.
“That’s not good,” Kizmel murmured, just as the Dark Elf commander in the midst of their fleet raised a scimitar and bellowed at us.
“You there, the little boat! Stop wasting time and stop the enemy swing force!”
“H-how can he speak to us like that?” Asuna demanded, outraged. This was coming from the same commander who haughtily informed us that we wouldn’t be a factor in the battle and to stay out of the official navy’s way.
But in this case, we had no choice but to obey. There were only six guards left at the castle gate, and if the thirty Forest Elves on those three ships disembarked, they would easily break through those defenses.
“Damn! We just have to do it!” I growled, paddling furiously. I futilely wished that I had raised my strength a bit more, but even as it was, I had to be thankful that it wasn’t real life, where my arms would be useless for all the lactic acid buildup by now.
The three swing-force ships in side-by-side formation were pointed away from us. We could sink one of them with a rear charge, but the problem was what came after that. For the battering ram to work properly, we had to be going at full speed, and the enemy wasn’t going to sit there and wait for us to back up so we could charge again.
Kizmel could tell what I was worried about, so she turned back and shouted, “Don’t worry, Kirito, just charge the center ship!”
“R-roger!” I had to respond. I set sights on the middle ship and adjusted our course. The spearmen at the rear of that ship had already noticed us, but they didn’t seem inclined to stop their progress toward the castle.
“Gooooo!”
I plunged the oar one last time, roaring like every anime or movie hero making his last suicidal charge. Once again, Asuna defended against the enemy spears, and our burning ram broke right through the flat stern of the ship.
Our fourth target sank in moments, and the Forest Elf soldiers aboard swam away for safety. I watched them go and started to back the Tilnel up, but then the two remaining ships abruptly cut us off from both sides.
The Tilnel ’s stamina gauge just below Kizmel’s HP bar dropped about 5 percent. But the damage didn’t stop there; it continued to fall bit by bit. The two oarsmen were rowing madly perpendicular toward our facing sides, trying to crush the boat between them.
On top of that, the spearmen on either side were jabbing their sharp weapons at me. I hurriedly drew my sword and knocked the points away, but it was only prolonging our decline.
Kizmel calmly suggested, “Kirito, Asuna, leap onto the right ship and strike down the oarsman! I will handle the left!”
“Whuh?!”
I was not expecting that command, but it was clearly the only way out of our pinch. Asuna and I made eye contact, then leaped recklessly over to the other ship.
“Filthy human rats!” an elven spearman spat, but those ten-foot-long spears were meant for naval battle, not close combat. I struck him directly with a Slant sword skill, not even bothering to feint. The elf flew overboard. On the left, Asuna overpowered another spearman with a two-part Parallel Sting, her special silk cape waving.
The fearsome Forest Elven Hallowed Knight we fought at the start of the third floor was quite memorable, but he was a high-level elite mob like Kizmel. But the Forest Elven spearmen and Forest Elven swordsman on board these ships were no different from the average fourth-floor monster in terms of power. This brief sparring reminded me that in a one-on-one fight, they posed nothing to worry about.
Still, there was no point getting careless. In a ship battle, the ship’s hull absorbed the damage, but when fighting the sailors on board, our HP was at risk again. Even in the midst of this dramatic, climactic story event, it was imperative that we remember our lives were on the line in this cruel game of death.
Asuna pushed the spearman overboard with a knock back–heavy combo of attacks, and the swordsman behind him approached.
“No need to actually defeat him! Just use him as a wall to keep the guys in the back from getting closer!” I ordered my partner, stopping the blow of the swordsman attacking on my end. The oarsmen—officially named a Forest Elven rower—was on the other side of this fighter.
Though the Fallen Elf–built wooden crafts could hold ten in all, the deck only left room for two to stand abreast. If Asuna and I fought shoulder to shoulder, the rear enemies wouldn’t be able to reach us. This kind of locational placement was a big part of playing a VR game, and we could use the enemies’ bodies as blockades of their own in a tight space like this.
Asuna switched up to a defensive strategy, but in order to reach the rower, I needed to eliminate the swordsman in my way. There was a big gap in our power levels, so I could easily cut down his HP through sheer force. But suddenly I realized that I had an inner desire to avoid killing the Forest Elf soldiers. Thinking back on it, I had knocked all of the enemies I’d defeated so far into the water rather than wiping them out.
But this hesitation wasn’t a product of just the last day or two. When I was tasked with stealing the top-secret orders from the Forest Elf camp on the third floor, I tried to sneak in and remove it with stealth, avoiding combat altogether. That feeling must have been on my mind then, too. I didn’t want to invade their camp at night and slaughter them all, and I didn’t want Asuna or Kizmel to do that, either.
The emotion itself was probably meaningless. Asuna and I started off the “Jade Key” quest that began this whole story line by killing a Forest Elf knight. Kizmel’s beloved sister was killed by a Forest Elf falconer. Whether we killed the soldiers or not would have no effect on the progress of our quest. But…
“Cowardly humans!”
The elven warrior lunged at me, his skin and hair pale and his voice young—though he was probably far, far older than me. I stopped his blow with my Anneal Blade +8. My familiar blade, nearing the end of its usefulness now that it was fully upgraded, deflected back his attack with a pleasing weight and toughness. Staggered by my deflection, the elf lurched backward, and I kicked him in the side with a left roundhouse. The Martial Arts skill, Water Moon, left a trail of pale light streaming from my foot.
“Aaaah!”
I saw the elf fall into the lake screaming out of the right corner of my vision, but I was already moving forward. There was another enemy just to the left, but Asuna had his full attention and was focusing on parrying, so he wouldn’t bother me.
Just ahead was the elven rower, his oar completely flat in an attempt to squash the Tilnel with the full force of the large ship.
“That’s far enough!” I warned and split the oar in two with a swing of my sword, following it with a swift kick of the unarmed oarsman overboard. I didn’t even wait to watch him knock over a few fellows on his flight—I was too busy turning around and knocking out the soldier attacking Asuna with a good Flash Blow punch.
“Let’s go back!”
We both leaped onto the Tilnel again and found that Kizmel was returning at the same moment. I wondered what she had done with the enemy soldiers and was surprised to see not a single soul aboard the gondola on our left.
Kizmel noticed my stunned silence and said matter-of-factly, “I knocked them all into the lake and broke their oars.”
A quick examination of the water around the ship showed a fair amount of splashing indeed, as the soldiers swam away for safety. Clearly, the soldiers knocked into the water were following an algorithm that told them to withdraw. After a while, they all began swimming away to the north.
There were still five or six enemies left on the right ship, but there was no way to move it anymore. I put my sword away and picked up the Tilnel ’s oar, guiding it between the enemy ships and back to a point where we could see the main confrontation.
At this point, there were six ships standing for the Dark Elves, and eight in an active state for the Forest Elves. Not only were the overall numbers much closer, but with most of them engaged in shipboard combat now, there was little threat to the Dark Elf ships themselves.
“Good…Let’s sink the enemy flagship before we get into another battering ram battle!” I urged Asuna and Kizmel, turning the Tilnel hard starboard.
About a hundred yards from the castle deck, where most of the naval combat was happening, the six remaining Dark Elf ships and an equal number of Forest Elf ships were lined up east to west, their sides pressed together so that fighters could engage in battle. The Dark Elves were clearly on the losing end, but they would hold up for a little while yet.
The two remaining Forest Elven ships were situated to the rear. At the head of the flagship stood the commander in glorious silver armor and flowing white cape, his arms crossed. He didn’t seem concerned with us, despite the fact that we’d neutralized his three-ship swing force.
If he assumed that his forces were going to emerge triumphant, we could use his carelessness to ram the ship successfully.
“Asuna, Kizmel, let’s do the usual,” I suggested, and pulled the folded Argyro’s Sheet from the rear of the boat. I didn’t know if the same trick would work again, but there was no harm in being prepared. When the three of us spread the sheet over the Tilnel , it plunged the interior into darkness, but enough light got through the thin fabric to give us a view of the outside.
“…Gonna approach nice and slow,” I whispered, moving the oar gently. I was afraid of the sheet being ripped off if we went too fast, so I sent us toward the flagship as quickly but carefully as I could manage.
Another twenty yards closer, and we’d take off the sheet and charge. We inched closer, closer…
But just when we were within five yards of the ambush point, the Forest Elf commander pulled his sword from his waist.
“Crap!”
“Did he spot us?!”
Asuna and I tensed up, and Kizmel carefully placed her hand on the hilt of her saber. But the commander’s longsword was pointed not at the concealed Tilnel .
“Now! Ships one and two, begin the charge! Ships five and six, clear a path!!”
His voice echoed over the lake like thunder. Suddenly, out of the six Forest Elf ships engaged in combat, the two middle ones split to the sides.
That left two Dark Elf ships with their sides completely exposed, including the flagship.
“Oh no!” I exclaimed, quickly tearing the Argyro’s Sheet off the boat and stuffing it into the space at the stern. Even as I did that, two Forest Elven ships were plunging toward the helpless Dark Elf boats.
“Stop that at once!” Asuna fumed as I rowed madly. The Tilnel sent up white wake in pursuit, but the Forest Elf flagship had at least a twenty-yard head start on us.
“We’re not going to make it in time,” Kizmel commented.
Two seconds later, the enemy flagship’s crude ram crushed a hole in the Dark Elven flagship’s beautiful hull in a deafening crash.
Just an instant later, the second enemy ship collided with the other Dark Elf boat. The two victimized ships took on water through the massive holes in their sides and began to sink.
“Damn youuuuuu!!”
The Dark Elf commander roared with sheer loathing as he fell into the water. Upon a second glance, the Dark Elves who had fallen into the water over the course of the battle were all treading water in place. Unlike the Forest Elves, they were not swimming toward a particular place, but it seemed to expose a similar rule: Once they had fallen into the water in this battle event, the system did not allow them to rejoin the fight.
Even after his perfectly timed maneuver had destroyed the Dark Elf flagship and its cohort, the Forest Elf commander did not rest. He raised his sword again.
“Ships one and two, forward! All soldiers, prepare for landfall!”
“Ugh,” I grunted. I used all of my strength to row, but the two enemy ships were already proceeding through the new hole in the formation before the Tilnel could catch up. Nothing stood in their way to the castle pier now.
“Damn! We’ve got to make our way through that hole, too!” I announced, but the Forest Elf ships that had made way for their flagship to pass through were now returning to their positions in the line. The gap grew smaller by the moment, but it was too late for us to pull back now.
“ Nuaaah! ” I roared, using 120 percent of my strength to paddle. The tip of the Tilnel plunged into the tiny space remaining.
The keels of the enemy ships and the port and starboard sides of our boat made contact with an ugly scraping sound. In the upper left, the ship’s durability gauge dropped from 80 percent to 70. But with its expensive materials that had cost Asuna and me our willpower and stamina to collect, and the best skills of old man Romolo, the Tilnel pried its way through the blockade of the much larger gondolas and pushed onward.
“We’re through!”
“You can do it, Kirito!”
Asuna and Kizmel’s encouragement gave me a second wind of energy that put a snap back into my rowing. Now that we were moving quickly again, the two ships ahead of us were a good fifty yards away. It wasn’t clear that we’d be able to catch up to them in time.
Under a minute later, my fears were confirmed. The two ships made contact with the dock while we were still twenty yards behind.
Twenty soldiers, including the commander, leaped onto the dock with a roar. Ahead of the mass of Forest Elves was a group of just six Dark Elf guards at the castle gate. It seemed like they ought to be able to just lock the gates and stay inside, but even those sturdy-looking doors wouldn’t last long in these circumstances.
“Can’t the priests help, Kizmel?! Don’t they have magic…er, charms they can cast?!” Asuna asked in a panic, but the Dark Elf only shook her head.
“I’m afraid the priests stationed in the castle are merely officials with no combat experience. They must be locked up in secret rooms underground, trembling with fear by now.”
“No…”
Asuna bit her lip. I kept up my rowing at max power and asked a different question.
“What about the viscount and children?! Are they in hiding with the priests?!”
“…I do not know…After all, Yofel Castle has never fallen since ancient times. I cannot guess what decisions the viscount will make.”
Though it was easy to forget, if Asuna and I were progressing through the “Elf War” questline properly, Kizmel shouldn’t have been present. So unlike the other soldiers here, she wasn’t given a specific role in the fight and could therefore act freely with us.
But what about Viscount Yofilis?
He was a master with the rapier, but couldn’t be exposed to strong sunlight due to his illness, so he was stuck in his pitch-black office during the daytime. I had figured that piece of background was unrelated to this event, because it seemed apparent that the moment the Forest Elves touched down on the castle dock, we had failed the battle event.
But as a matter of fact, the battle wasn’t over when the twenty elves reached the dock. The four remaining Dark Elf ships were fighting hard to prevent any further units from breaking through, and the six guards at the gate ahead were bravely brandishing their spears.
There had to be a way to find victory yet within these dire circumstances.
Though I had no proof, I couldn’t help but feel that Yofilis was that key to victory. There were too many mysteries surrounding him. Enough that they could easily support a longer questline…
“Asuna, Kizmel!” I called to my companions. “We’re going to cut the Forest Elves off!”
“All right!”
“It’s in your hands!”
I sent the ship racing along the pier. We passed the ranks of advancing elven soldiers and put on the brakes once the Tilnel was just near the castle gate. I leaped onto the pier—no time to drop anchor.
The six ally spearmen were standing firm before the gate in a straight line that was as wide as the pier. The enemy had formed three similar lines of six, with the commander in the rear and a caped swordsman who appeared to be his aide. I stared at the ranks of marching soldiers with their longswords and shields, and a color cursor popped up.
The cursor that popped up was redder than those of the swordsmen and spearmen we’d fought until now. Their title was F OR EST E LVEN L IGHT W ARRIOR —a bit more imposing. It seemed the soldiers aboard the flagship and its companion vessel were a rank higher than the norm.
On the other hand, our castle guards were Dark Elven gatekeepers. I didn’t know if that was higher or lower than a light warrior, but our inferiority in numbers was apparent. The three of us lined up certainly couldn’t block the entire pier, and we couldn’t prevent the guards from being overwhelmed by three times their number of Forest Elves. On top of that, the naval battle wouldn’t hold out much longer. If the four remaining Dark Elf ships crumbled, the enemy would have reinforcements soon.
Did we trust that we could persevere and fight here?
Or follow my baseless instinct?
After an instant of indecision, I made up my mind.
“You two, hold out here for just five minutes!”
“What about you, Kirito?!” Asuna asked, looking worried. I wasted no time in reassuring her.
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to call for backup. Don’t push it, though. If you’re in danger, run away for safety at once!”
I struck their shoulders bracingly and passed between them to run toward the back. As I approached the compact line of Dark Elf guards, I held the sparkling sigil ring high in the air.
“Let me through!”
The miracle power of the Sigil of Lyusula caused the guards to part down the center and the gate behind them to crack open just a bit. When rowing the gondola, I was using all of my strength stat, but now I let my agility number do the talking and raced through the castle gate and the front garden as the doors rumbled shut behind me.
Once I had pushed my way through the castle door, the interior was dead silent. Even the maids and nobles had gone into hiding.
If the viscount himself had evacuated for another location, this was all for nothing. But I could do nothing but trust that it would work out. I raced through the entrance hall to the great stairs and up to the top floor.
By the time I reached the fifth floor of the castle, one of the five minutes I had promised Asuna and Kizmel was gone. I took a hard right corner with my body tilted over and saw the great door at the end of the hall, but the guards were no longer there. I put on the brakes just in front of the door, a sinking feeling in my chest.
“My lord, I wish to enter!” I shouted. After several endless seconds, that odd voice sounded from behind the door.
“Come in.”
I pushed the door open and stepped into the spacious office. As usual, the only light was the tiny lamp on the desk, and I couldn’t see where I was stepping. But given that I had passed through here several times to turn in quests, I was familiar enough with it to quickly cross the room and stop before the desk.
I ran all the way to this spot on a hunch, but I had no idea what to say when the moment came. For one thing, the viscount was not an NPC with a high-functioning AI like Kizmel. He probably wouldn’t even respond properly unless I used terms that matched his database…and yet, before I could even speak, his calm voice sounded from the darkness beyond the lamp.
“It seems the battle is going poorly.”
I nodded and explained the situation. “Y-yes, my lord. Four of our ships have been sunk, including the flagship, and the enemy forces are on the castle pier.”
“I see…Then it is only a matter of time until the enemy reaches this point.”
“…At this rate, it could be twenty…no, fifteen minutes.”
“Then I shall wait for them here. Warrior of humankind, your assistance is appreciated. Take your companions and leave this castle.”
Two minutes had passed. If I was going to keep my promise to Asuna, I had to be out of this room and heading downstairs within another two minutes. I clenched my fists, trying to quell my rising panic.
“From the very start, the Dark Elven morale has been inferior to the Forest Elves’. I believe this stems from the lack of their true battle commander.”
“Ahh. And who would their true commander be?”
“You, my lord.”
I thought I detected a self-deprecating smile at my blunt answer, but that could have been my imagination.
His right hand extended from the darkness and tapped the blackwood desk twice.
“…I’m afraid that is not possible. It might be hard for a young human like you to understand, but if you fight eternally, defeat is guaranteed to arrive eventually. If Yofel Castle is fated to fall today, and I to the enemy’s blades, then such is the guidance of the Holy Tree. The people of Lyusula must accept that fate.”
There was such deep resignation in his sonorous voice that I could not believe it was a prewritten line of dialogue.
I unclenched my balled fists and stretched the fingers, then clenched them again with all of my strength.
“My lord, your soldiers are still fighting now! They must be waiting to hear the voice of their liege. Kizmel explained your illness to me. If you are going to wait for death in the darkness, why not venture outside so that you can deliver a final message to your guards?!”
I expected my plea would go in vain. I must have missed some kind of quest related to the viscount’s illness. Maybe if I’d completed it, he could have overcome his aversion to powerful light and gloriously led the Dark Elven troops into battle, rather than leaving it to that haughty, useless commander…
As I expected, the castle’s master had no response for quite some time. When the three-minute mark passed, I realized that my instincts were wrong and started to turn to leave the room.
But then—
“Young human. Answer just one question.”
I turned to see that a golden ? mark was floating in the darkness. Some kind of quest had just begun. As I held my breath, I felt a clear, colorless gaze with a hidden strength pierce my soul.
“Why do you lend your aid to the people of Lyusula and not Kales’Oh?”
It was such a simple question that I had no immediate answer. Telling him that it was “because we were playing the Dark Elf faction of the campaign” wasn’t a real answer.
When faced with the opening of the “Jade Key” quest on the third floor, Asuna and I chose the Dark Elf champion—Kizmel—without much debate. It was because I had done that in the beta. At the core, that’s all it came down to.
“At first…I didn’t have a real reason,” I started to explain, no plan or certainty in mind. “But that’s not true anymore. Both I and Asuna love Kizmel. So I want to help her protect her people and her nation.”
Another long silence filled the darkness of the chamber.
Later—much, much later—I learned that the program that controlled the world of Sword Art Online was able to monitor the emotions and mental states of its players. In other words, if I’d lied to flatter Viscount Yofilis, the system would have seen that and possibly failed the quest.
When she heard that, Asuna beamed and said, “It’s a good thing you answered honestly because you’ve always been a terrible liar.”
Just before the timer hit four minutes, the golden quest marker disappeared without a sound. There was no little bleep to signal it had been completed; instead, the viscount spoke with a stronger tone than I’d heard yet.
“I shall take your words for truth. Therefore, I will answer you with truth. Young swordsman, the tale about my illness that you heard from Kizmel…”
The chair creaked as he rose. Faint footsteps circled around the desk and to my side. A scent of forest floated in the air, and a voice of merriment reached my ears.
“…is a lie.”
“…Huh?!”
“Follow me.”
The footsteps led away, and there was a thunking sound somewhere on the north wall. Midday sunlight pierced the darkness filling the room. Standing in the middle of the rectangle of pure white cut out of the wall was a slender silhouette, its long hair streaming in the wind.
It must have been a secret door along the wall. But this was the fifth floor of the castle. We had to be a good fifty feet above the ground. There was no way to jump down.
But the viscount’s figure was suddenly gone. I raced to the opening in shock and looked down to see window frames jutting just two inches from the wall, forming a staircase that descended down to the first-floor entrance. The viscount was leaping nimbly down the series of ledges.
A chill shot up my back when I looked down, but there was less than a minute left. I could hear frantic clashing and the sound of sword skills coming from beyond the closed gate. The HP bars for Asuna and Kizmel had both lost over 20 percent since I left.
“…I can do this,” I told myself, and stepped onto the ledge just below the opening. All I had to do was leap to each successive window ledge, five feet below the one above. That was a much smaller jump than the daredevil gondola jumping I’d attempted in Rovia.
When I reached the ground about ten seconds after the viscount, I let out a huge heave of relief.
Finally, I was able to take an accurate measure of Viscount Yofilis. His clothes were fittingly noble: a rococo-styled frock coat covered with moiré and buttons, a vest, pants that stopped below the knee and white tights. A white tie packed with frills sat on his chest, and his long black hair was tied behind him. At his waist was a fragile rapier, even thinner than the standard size.
The viscount raised a white-gloved hand and brushed the left side of his face, where I couldn’t see. When he turned to face me and I saw his face in full, I forgot my panic about the situation for a moment and stared in shock.
An old vertical scar ran across his beautiful features, which looked just a bit older than Kizmel’s. The scar ran from his hairline to his chin, clearly the result of a sharp blade.
Yofilis fixed me with a stare from his remaining green-gray eye, a sardonic twist in his cheek, which was rather light skinned for a “Dark” Elf.
“This scar is the greatest shame in a long life of regrets. I have hidden in the darkness for many years, hoping to spare my children from inheriting its disgrace…but it seems the time has come to expose it to humankind.”
“Uh…s-sorry,” I stammered, looking away. The viscount chuckled.
“No need to apologize. Perhaps I made a fool of myself by trying so hard to hide my shame. Let us go to where my soldiers and your friends are fighting.”
His short boots clicked, and the viscount began striding quickly toward the closed gate. As he walked, he raised his hand and shouted, “Open!”
The giant doors began to rumble open, just as the sub-window I’d left open in the lower right corner of my vision hit five minutes.
Of the eighteen Forest Elf warriors on the pier (excluding the commander and his aide), only ten were left, but the defending Dark Elf spearmen had been halved from six to three. Asuna and Kizmel were fighting their hardest to make up the difference, but that rapier, a thrust-only weapon, had limited ability to hit multiple targets.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than one of the Forest Elves broke through the horizontal blockade. I drew my sword and intercepted him, overpowering the elf with our hilts clashing. Once I’d pushed my way up next to Asuna, I shouted an apology.
“Sorry, it took a little longer!”
“We’re fine here! But the ships…”
I looked far ahead to the naval battle and saw that the four Dark Elf ships were still afloat, but the crew of each one was down to three or four. Once that line of defense was broken, we would have at least fifty fresh foes descending upon the dock.
“How’d it go with you, Kirito?!” she asked. For an instant, I wasn’t sure of what to say. Ultimately, I didn’t need to say anything.
A voice like a bracing wind blowing across the lake rang out behind our backs.
“I am knight of Lyusula and master of Castle Yofel, Leyshren Zed Yofilis!!”
Kizmel gasped from the other side of Asuna, but she kept fighting without turning around. The slick ringing of a blade was undoubtedly the sound of Yofilis drawing his blade. He shouted again.
“Warriors of Lyusula! I apologize for my long absence and beseech your strength! The future of our kingdom rests on this battle! For the sake of queen, friend, and family, stand strong and fight with me!”
For just a moment, the clashing and roaring of battle died out, and silence fell upon the lake. It was broken by a roar of such incredible volume that it seemed to be rising from the very depths of the fourth floor.
The soldiers on the dock, on the ships, and even floating in the water all raised their swords and fists as they bellowed. Ripples formed in the placid lake, melding together into larger waves that spread outward.
A bracing sound effect hit my ears, and I instinctively looked up to my left to a number of new icons above our HP bar readouts.
The upward arrow over the sword mark meant an increased attack buff. The arrow over a shield meant increased defense. The yellow explosion mark was an increased knock-back buff. The four-leaf clover was a bonus luck buff.
If these bonuses had been granted to every Dark Elf in the battle, then Viscount Yofilis’s presence was worthy of worship, but we couldn’t afford to waste a second of the precious boosts.
He splashed into the water with a splendid water spout. I blocked the spray with my arm and examined the lake surface.
The commander’s aide sank face-first a foot or two, then released his broadsword and round shield and began to paddle up to the surface. He glared back at us ruefully, then turned and began to swim away. I was surprised that he could even swim with that plate armor on, but it was probably yet another elven charm at work.
Our buffs vanished at last, and I turned my empty-feeling view back to the dock. My partner recovered from her delay and walked over for a celebratory fist bump.
Though we had finally won the exhausting battle, Asuna didn’t look very happy. I knew why, and I stroked the hilt of my sword to explain.
“It was about time for it to go…If anything, I’m glad it held out this long.”
I lowered my hand and patted my partner’s arm. We turned to look out beyond the end of the pier. The soldiers on the remaining Forest Elf ships were abandoning their posts and leaping into the lake. They swam over to join the commander and his aide and formed a long line swimming toward the canyon exit of the lake.
Meanwhile, the Dark Elves treading water climbed up onto the dock and assumed formation, while the soldiers on the four gondolas brought them back to their positions. While there was no way to know how many soldiers on both sides had died in the conflict, it was obvious that many of them had already been knocked out of the battle by falling into water.
Was this the best way for it to end? Given the possibility that the Forest Elves could attack again, perhaps we ought to have been more ruthless in seeking fatalities.
As the last line of the Forest Elves disappeared into the distant mist, a familiar voice called my name.
“That was brilliant fighting, Kirito.”
I turned slowly and fixed the smiling knight Kizmel with a steady gaze.
“Do you think…this was the right choice?” I murmured, looking down. Kizmel strode right up before me and bracingly smacked my shoulder.
“Hold your head high. You were the one who warned us of a Forest Elf attack, helped even the scales, and defeated the enemy commander in one-on-one battle, Kirito. Most important of all, you safely protected the two keys in the castle. What more could we ask for?”
Given that this was coming from Kizmel, whose beloved sister was killed by Forest Elves, I could only nod silently.
As though it had been waiting for that gesture, my quest log popped up and announced that the quest had been completed—specifically, the “Laketop Fortress” quest that followed the “Shipwright of Yore.” A huge amount of experience poured in.
I closed the window, unsure of how I really felt about it. Meanwhile, Asuna whispered, “I’m going to leave the lake for a bit and check for messages from Argo.”
“Oh…thanks, do that.”
Yofel Castle and its lake were an instanced map created for Asuna and me, which meant that, like dungeons, we couldn’t send or receive instant messages here. We’d been spending most of our time out questing as we hung around the castle, so we’d been buying updates on the progress of the floor from Argo, but the Forest Elf attack had kept us busy and unable to receive the midday message.
Asuna hopped onto the Tilnel and handled the oar somewhat awkwardly, sending the little boat gliding across the now-quiet lake. As I watched her go, Viscount Yofilis approached.
“It is a shame, what happened to your sword.”
I spun around and shook my head rapidly. “N-no, I put it through too much…”
The viscount’s scarred but beautiful features crinkled into a grin.
“It is good that you do not blame your weapon. Within most of the blade remaining, the castle’s blacksmith should be able to repair it.”
“Mmm…” I shook my head. “No, I’ll melt this one down and have it turned into a new weapon or piece of armor.”
“I see. In that case…”
Yofilis raised his hand. Two soldiers trotted up from the gate, bearing an enormous chest at least six feet wide. They lowered the heavy-looking chest next to their master and bowed before running back to resume their places among the troop formation.
“What’s this?” I asked, curious. Yofilis pulled a golden key from his pocket—not one of the six secret keys, of course—and unlocked the chest, pulling it open. A shine several times brighter than the afternoon sun filled my eyes.
The enormous chest was absolutely stuffed with weapons, armor, and accessories that had been buffed to a mirror shine. As I stared with shock, a dialog window appeared offering a choice of quest rewards.
Yofilis stood and smiled. “These are the treasured heirlooms of the Yofilis family. Human warrior, please accept any one of them as a personal gift from me and another as a reward for your valor in combat.”
“Huh? Er, but—”
The viscount’s stunning generosity completely obliterated the leftover gloom shrouding my mind after I hadn’t been able to finish off the Forest Elf knight.
“T…two? Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“For me and my partner? Two each?”
“Naturally.”
“Th…thank you, my lord!”
I excitedly gave a Dark Elf salute, to which Kizmel smiled and rolled her eyes. But I couldn’t be blamed for my reaction. Countless times I’d been greeted with quest reward options and thought, If only I could pick two! It was a credit to my phenomenal self-control that I hadn’t thrust my fists into the air and screamed with triumph.
“W-well, if you say so,” I finished, tapping each of the items in the lengthy rewards list in turn to check out their properties—the greatest pleasure to be found in Aincrad.
Five minutes later: If only I could pick three!
I was still agonizing over which to pick when I heard a loud splash next to me. It was Asuna dropping the anchor of the Tilnel as she returned. I looked up from the list and beckoned my partner over.
“Hey, Asuna, check it out! We get two this time— two! ”
Her face was grave as she leaped onto the pier and raced over. I couldn’t blame her—two items was serious news.
“And not two between the both of us, I mean two each! ”
“Enough about tutus, Kirito!” she yelled, sparks flying from her boots with the impact of her sliding stop. She grabbed my shoulder and sucked in a deep breath. “This is important! They just left already!”
“Who did?”
“Who do you think?! The floor boss raid!!”
“…Wha…?”
Whaaaaat?! Kizmel and Yofilis blinked in surprise at my scream.
“B-but…this morning’s info said that the boss battle would be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest…”
“That’s right, but they found the boss chamber earlier than expected this morning, and they scouted it already. So they took a break at the nearby village to resupply and decided that they should just ‘git on with the battle already’ this very afternoon!”
“…You don’t have to elaborate on who said that one,” I groaned, summoning a mental image of the fourth-floor map. Yofel Castle was in the lower right of the circular map—the southeast. The Forest Elves’ castle was on the plateau to the southwest. And the labyrinth tower was just between the two, at the very southern tip of the floor.
The nearest village to the tower was barely a few hundred yards away, as I remembered it. And the layout of the labyrinth was quite simple on this floor. If they already had the route to the boss chamber mapped out it would take two…no, one and a half hours to get there from town.
“Do you know the exact time the raid left?!” I demanded.
Asuna looked back at her message. “Fifty-five minutes ago!”
“Then they’re already in the tower now…Hmmm, I guess we have no choice but to leave it to them this time…”
“Yeah…maybe you’re right…”
With the quick pace the DKB and ALS were making, I was sure they could defeat the floor boss at first glance without suffering any casualties. I just had to swallow my concerns in this case. Meanwhile, Kizmel approached the two of us.
“Kirito, Asuna, will you be challenging the guardian of the Pillar of the Heavens?”
“Uh…yeah, but it seems that our other companions have already begun climbing the tower…”
A faint shadow fell over her face.
“I see. If you trust them, then there is no reason to worry…but from what I understand, the beast of this floor…”
She trailed off, and the viscount filled in for her.
“We only know based on the legend, but it is said that the guardian beast who lurks in the tower of this floor wields some eerie power.”
“Eerie power…?” I wondered.
The floor boss we fought in the beta was known as a hippogriff—half eagle, half horse. Its beak was powerful, but in an internal chamber with a ceiling, all its wings could do was cause wind. I didn’t remember much challenge or any kind of special “eerie” power.
But in the next moment, I was reminded that my knowledge of the beta meant nothing anymore.
“The guardian beast of this floor is called a hippocampus—a cross between horse and fish. It causes water to spring from even the driest earth and can flood one’s feet from beneath him,” Yofilis announced, then added, “Any who fight the beast will need a charm to float in water, it is said.”
“…!”
Asuna and I held our breaths.
If we interpreted his words directly, the hippogriff-turned-hippocampus had the ability to fill the entire boss chamber with water. Therefore, we needed the means to float. But there was no way Kibaou and Lind would have their men hauling gondolas by hand up that tower. The system wouldn’t even allow us to do that.
What struck me as even worse was the possibility that in order for the room to fill with water, there must be no leaks—meaning that they might force the exits shut. If an inescapable boss chamber filled with water, the entire raid would be wiped out.
“W-we need to send them a message!” Asuna shouted, racing for the Tilnel . I quickly stopped her.
“No, the message won’t reach the players inside the labyrinth!”
“What should we do, then?!”
“We have to go ourselves. If we’re lucky, at least half of the raid members will still have their inner-tube fruit from the trip to the main city. As long as they can hold out with those, we’ll have time to reach the chamber and open the door from outside!”
I chose not to mention what would happen if we couldn’t open the door from the outside. It was too disastrous a possibility, and I didn’t want to believe that they’d set up such a lethal trap so close to the beginning of the game.
Asuna’s reaction was quick. She nodded with conviction and turned to Kizmel.
“I’m sorry, Kizmel—we need to go. But we’ll be back, I swear!”
But the Dark Elf knight’s shoulders simply shrugged, her expression one of affront.
“What do you humans call this? ‘Being distant’? I will join you, of course.”
“Wha—?” both Asuna and I uttered simultaneously. But that surprise was nothing compared to the shock that came two seconds after.
“And so shall I,” pronounced His Lordship Viscount Yofilis, master of Yofel Castle, as though it were perfectly ordinary. Asuna and I stared at him.
“Whaaaaaaat?!”
To fill in for my broken Anneal Blade +8, I called upon the services of the longsword the Forest Elf commander left on the pier. Asuna and I headed out into the lake in the large Dark Elven gondola, not the Tilnel , leaving the selection of quest rewards as a treat for afterward. And with the viscount, Kizmel, and two other stout guards, we had a full party of six.
With the soldiers managing the oars, the gondola raced through the empty lake and plunged into the canyon. A single terrific blow from its battering ram was enough to take care of any aquatic monsters in our way, and when we reached a branch in the river, we headed south.
Every time I looked at one of the labyrinth towers that stretched up to the floor above, I was overwhelmed by the scale, but as a representative of humanity in the presence of impassive Kizmel and Yofilis, I couldn’t afford to show fear. We raced up the brief path from the end of the canyon to the foot of the tower.
Argo was there at the entrance, ready with the map data. While her face went pale when she saw the cursors of the Dark Elves, she valiantly announced that she would join us.
We never stopped running, even inside the tower. The raid party ahead of us had cleared out nearly all the monsters on the way, and the few we saw were dispatched instantly by the viscount.
Sadly, unlike Kizmel, Viscount Yofilis never actually officially joined our party. If he had, then I could have learned what his level was—but perhaps that was something I didn’t really want to know. After all, depending on our choices in the campaign, the possibility was there that we might have fought him instead.
After a mad rush, we reached the entrance to the boss chamber just forty-five minutes after leaving the lake. That meant we were just ten minutes behind the raid.
The thick granite doors were shut tight. And through the narrow gap where the doors met trickled a tiny stream of water.
“…Kirito!” Asuna cried. I nodded and we leaped to the doors. I forced the Dark Elves behind us, then gripped the rusty handle with both hands, braced my feet, and pulled with all my strength.
But ultimately, there was no need to have pulled with much force. The giant doors were just barely holding put against enormous pressure from inside, and they burst open the instant I pulled.
“Whoaaa?!”
The shout came not from me or Asuna, or the four Dark Elves, or even Argo.
Along with a wave of water rushing through the doors came a large, shaven-headed man with an ax—Agil. He slid into the corridor on his belly and looked up at me, trying to get a smile across his lips.
“Hey, you showed up.”
“S-so you did get flooded!”
I pushed against the current and helped him up. More and more players washed out after Agil, but they were being caught by a fence surrounding the circular hall before the boss chamber. The water passed through the fence and drained down the stairs in a waterfall.
“Yeah. I told ’em it might be trouble, since the boss looked different than what the strategy guide said,” Agil grumbled. On the other side of the room, Asuna was clinging to the fence.
“Agil, are there victims?!”
“Don’t worry, no one’s died. Someone greedy picked all the little floaty-tube fruits they could back at the staircase…so thanks to those, nobody’s drowned, at the very least. We’ve just been trying to avoid the boss’s attacks and get this door open, but it was made so that it couldn’t be opened from inside.”
“Y-yeah, I see…”
Meanwhile, all of the water that had filled the boss chamber had drained away. Nearly forty players wearing inner tubes were piled up in the front hall, groaning and moaning.
I peered around the door into the chamber, still holding onto the door ring.
It was very spacious. The rectangular room was at least fifty yards deep. There were no windows, and the floor and walls were gray granite. The only light was the blue tips of an eerie series of pillars.
In the center of the soggy floor was an enormous silhouette.
Just as Yofilis had told us, its front half was a horse, and its back half was a fish. But instead of hooves on its front legs, the beast had clawed flippers, and its mane was a mass of wriggling tentacles. The color cursor told me its name was W YTHEGE THE H IPPOCAMPUS .
The six-part HP bar of the wetly snickering boss was almost at the end of its first bar. So even as they dealt with the unexpected flooding, the raid party had managed to keep up some offense on the beast.
Just as I began wondering how to start tackling the boss, a loud, crude voice erupted from the mass of players behind me.
“Well, if you were gonna show up, ya might as well have done it on time!”
Next came a pained voice at the bottom of the pile. “Get these people off of me, Kibaou! Everyone off the pile, start taking potions!”
“Y-you don’t mean ta keep goin’, Lind!”
“Of course I do! We know its attack patterns, and we’ve already taken down one gauge; no use wasting that hard work!”
“Don’t act like yer in charge! If it weren’t for my inner-tube fruit, y’all would be drowned by now!”
“You were simply hogging community resources for yourself! Don’t act like you were being generous!”
Either way, if you don’t make up your mind now, we’ll lose the boss’s aggro and his HP will recover, I thought.
I was about to speak up and try to get the guild leaders on the same page, but—perhaps fortunately—I didn’t need to. The moment they saw Kizmel and Yofilis walk up, the entire raid party went silent, not just Kibaou and Lind.
To them, the Dark Elf viscount’s cursor must have gone beyond black into the color of pure darkness. The nobleman spun around to view the group as a whole.
“Warriors of humankind, if you intend to fight, then stand at once. If not, be quiet. In either case, through my pact with Kirito and Asuna, I will dispatch the summon beast.”
And Yofilis drew his rapier and held it forward, the metal ringing.
“In my name, Yofilis, knight of Lyusula, I command all who can stand to follow my lead!”
A conical aura emerged from the tip of his weapon, and upon touching it, the four buff icons blinked into existence above my HP bar again.
It wasn’t long until all the raid members were on their feet, raising their weapons and roaring mightily.
At 2:32 PM on Tuesday, December 27, 2022, Wythege the Hippocampus was defeated by a seven-party, forty-man raid, plus one extra party.
The boss’s special ability, Water Inflow, deluged the entire chamber with water, but the means of counteracting it was quite simple. The boss’s power caused the door of the chamber to shut, making it impossible to open from within, but if it was pulled from the outside when a certain level of water pressure was pushing against it, the door would swing open like a charm. We had Argo wait outside with simple instructions to open the door if water started trickling out through the crack. That essentially nullified the special ability.
Then again, Viscount Yofilis might not have needed such a specialized strategy to begin with. Through his magical charm, he was able to run about on the surface of the water and continue to attack the boss, even when the room was flooded.
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