Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 3 - Chapter Pr

I STARED SILENTLY AT THE BLUE-TINGED STONE DOOR. 
It was the end point of the spiral staircase that connected the fourth floor of Aincrad to the lair of the third-floor boss monster. Through this door was the virgin territory of the fourth floor. As a front-runner among the game’s population, being the first to venture into new, unspoiled lands was supposed to be one of my greatest joys. 
But just three steps from the final landing, I stopped still. After a few dozen seconds, my brown-haired fencer companion grew tired of waiting on the next step up. 
“So how long are you going to just stand there? You’ve spent enough time examining the carved relief on the door. Or are you afraid because it’s the fourth floor?” 
Just before that question could pass straight from my right ear through to the left, my brain latched onto it, and I turned to look at her. 
“…What do you mean, because it’s the fourth floor?” 
The fencer looked down at me with half-irritation and half-mischief in her eyes. 
“You know how some people are. They don’t want a room on the thirteenth floor of the hotel or the fourth because it’s associated with death. Are you one of them?” 
I finally understood what she was saying and quickly shook my head. “N-no way. Look at this all-black outfit. Would I really wear this color if I believed in omens and stuff like that?” 
“Well, why are you just standing there, then?” 
“Um, because…” I mumbled, looking to the massive door again. 
The ten-foot-tall double door was carved with detailed reliefs. The designs were different for each and every floor and typically made some reference to the theme or story of the floor to which they led. For example, there was a bull’s-head relief on the door before the second floor, which was commonly known as the “Cow Floor.” The door to the “Forest and Elf Floor” depicted two knights dueling beneath a massive tree. 
In the center of the massive door before me now was a carving of a traveler rowing a small boat that looked like a gondola. 
“Is there something about that picture? Didn’t you see this in the beta test?” she asked, her irritation rising to 60 percent now. I slowly shook my head. 

“No…not this. I saw the door, all right…but not this relief.” 
“Huh? What do you mean?” 
“The picture’s different. In the beta, it was a traveler wandering through a desert canyon. But in this one, he’s on a boat…” 
She tilted her head in confusion. Her long hair shook, scattering pale light in the dim stairway hall. 
“What was the fourth floor like in the beta?” 
“Um…the entire floor was a crisscrossing web of canyons that were sandy at the bottom, and you had no choice but to travel through those canyons, only the sand made it really hard to walk.” 
“Hmm…Sounds appropriate for the picture of the man in the desert canyon. So if the picture’s been changed, then…” 
She continued up to the top of the stairs and put her hand on the gondola relief at the center of the door, then pushed. 
With a heavy thunk , the two halves of the massive stone door began to part to the sides. I quickly raced up the stairs to draw even with the fencer. 
As the doors opened ever so slowly, brilliant afternoon light flooded out, blinding me with pure white. I squinted to shut out the glare, but I heard the sound before my vision returned. 
It sounded like a low, deep roiling and a high-pitched leaping intertwined. 
Water. 
When my eyes had finished adjusting to the level of light, I found not the dried-out canyons I remembered, but a fierce, rushing mountain stream. 
A hand clapped me on the shoulder. 
“Well, that’s that,” said the fencer, sounding proud for some reason.