Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 4 - Chapter 12

12 
“TENNN, NIIINE, EEEIGHT, SEEEVEN…” 
Karluin, main city of the fifth floor, rocked with the voices of over a thousand players chanting in unison. 
“Siiix, fiiive, fooour, threeee…” 
There was no screen showing the numbers or an MC leading the crowd through a mic, but the countdown continued in perfect harmony regardless. 
“Twooo, ooone…” 
A number of flames leaped up from the teleport gate at the center of town, toward the bottom of the floor above. 
As the crowd chanted “Zero,” a huge circle of flowers bloomed in the dark sky. 
The cheers of the players blended into the booming of the fireworks. Calls of “Happy New Year” and “Congratulations” echoed off the buildings, and several players celebrated the moment by firing colorful sword skills against walls here and there. 
We were standing on the terrace of the ruined old castle on the east end of Karluin, which offered us a view of both the fireworks display and the celebration below. It was a hidden spot, so no one else would bother us. I was absorbed by the show of light and sound, but my partner nearby was not. 
“Happy New Year, Kirito!” she bubbled, holding out a narrow glass with a smile. 
“Happy New Year,” I replied, clinking it with my own glass. We drank the Champagne—if you could call it that; at the most it was bubbling golden wine—and shared a smile, then looked back into the sky over town. 
“I didn’t realize they had fireworks…Where do they sell them, I wonder?” I murmured, squinting as I watched the colorful bursts. Asuna was on the fireworks team of the party-planning committee, so she had the answer. 
“Liten told us there was a fishy item shop in a little corner of the Town of Beginnings. They spotted the fireworks there first, and that was what gave them the idea for the countdown party.” 
“Oooh…I wonder if those fireworks cause damage if they hit a monster…” I suggested, which earned me the first look of exasperation of the year from Asuna. 
“I’m sorry to inform you that they are only usable in town.” 
“Oh, I didn’t realize…” 
“More importantly, it’s almost over. Go on, watch those fireworks properly before they finish.” 
At her suggestion, I looked over the town, where the highest number of flames yet were rising from the ground. Da-da-da-da-doom! They exploded at the same time the colorful flashes appeared, filling the night sky and sparkling like rain before they vanished. Another cheer rose from the town, and when it died down at last, I turned to Asuna. 
“So it’s 2023…” I mumbled, trying to grapple with the concept that a new year had actually begun. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for two months…” 
“Yeah. When I was hiding in that inn room in the Town of Beginnings, each day was like an eternity, but once I started helping out, they started passing in a blink.” 
“Well, sure. When you start doing quests, raising skill levels, gathering ingredients, and so on, there aren’t enough hours in the day to manage it all. Still…” 
I paused, and Asuna looked at me expectantly. I turned to the sky, which was dark again, gazed at the massive lid of steel and rock, and shook my head. 
“…Just thinking, 2023’s going to be a very long year. We’ve got twelve whole months, after all.” 
“Well, of course we do!” 
She jabbed my shoulder, and I made an exaggerated display of falling over. 
In all honesty, I was wondering how long we could maintain our current pace of advancement. 
It took one week to beat the third floor. Six days for the fourth. And this floor took only four days to finish. But the reason that kind of power playing worked was because we were maintaining a margin safely above the recommended level for each area. Since the monsters were comparatively weak, we could cruise through quests and raise our skill levels and gather ingredients without stressing about it. 
But that would not last forever. It would get harder and harder to maintain the safety margin, until the point that we were spending every waking hour of the day farming monsters. And because we would need to fight tougher monsters for better experience gain, that would involve a heavy mental toll as well. By the time we got to the tenth floor, the spot where we ended the beta, the difficulty of beating each floor would be much worse than it was now. 
But bringing that up now wouldn’t change a single thing about it. 
The point was, we’d survived to see a new year. No doubt the news that the fifth floor had been beaten on the very day of the countdown party would be a huge morale boost. It gave the DKB a nasty surprise, but tomorrow—er, later today—I would join Shivata and Hafner in properly explaining the situation of the guild flag to them. 
For now, I was going to enjoy the biggest festival ever held in Aincrad. That would help create energy to fuel our conquest of the next floor. 
I started to pour a fresh glass of Champagne for myself, then realized the bottle was running low. I turned to Asuna, who was nibbling on some cheese, and said, “I’m going down to get a fresh bottle and some food. Wait for me here.” 
“Thanks. Be careful.” 
I waved at her and went back into the castle. 
The terrace was a special hidden spot, but the front courtyard of the castle was the main party area, where Agil was set up as a food vendor. He had an assortment of specialty foods from all five floors available, so I charged through the castle, thinking excitedly about which items would give Asuna the creeps. 
I raced down the steps from the fourth floor of the castle to the third and headed through a secret door down a dusty passage. Past a long row of pillars, I made my way to the main stairway of the castle. 
Just then, I felt a powerful chill at the nape of my neck. I instinctively leaped sideways, but a sharp object pressed against my back, through my coat. 
Someone hiding in the shadows of the pillars had jabbed the point of a blade against my back. 
This was not a prank from a familiar person. If this individual had been hiding for fun, even swept away by the celebratory mood as I was, I would have noticed. The mystery person had been concealed with the Hiding skill…one proficient enough that even my Search skill did not detect it. 
I felt the person’s face approach my frozen ear. It breathed softly and whispered, 
“It’s showtime.” 
It was a cold, deep voice, one I’d never heard before. It had more inflection than was necessary, yet there was not a hint of emotion in it. 
“…Who are you?” I demanded in a rasping voice, measuring the timing it would take me to leap away. But the pressure of the point against my back increased only a bit. 
“Whoopsie—stay still, now. Wouldn’t want you to move and get stabbed by my knife.” 
The only person I could imagine doing such a thing to me was Morte, the duel PKer whom I already had a history with. But this voice and the way it spoke was utterly different from his. 
I contained my breathing and whispered back, “We’re in town. You can’t threaten me with that thing here.” 
I was absolutely certain of that fact. 
But the mugger at my back ruled that defense out. 
“Come on, Blackie, get it right. Only the front courtyard of the castle is in town. The interior is a dungeon, remember?” 
“Wha…?” 
I fell silent, frantically searching through my memory. 
There were indeed a number of quests set around this ruined castle, and the secret doors here and there made it like a dungeon. But there weren’t any monsters—plus, there was no OUTSIDE FIELD notice when I entered the castle. 
But it was also true that Karluin was more vague than normal when it came to the boundary between the safe and unsafe areas. I couldn’t deny the possibility that I was so carried away with the party atmosphere that I simply missed the message. 
But even then… 
“This isn’t the real world. That’s just one knife. Even an ultra-powerful boss drop wouldn’t have enough power to wipe out my HP with one hit. And it would make you an orange player…You don’t think I’d just stand there and take it, do you?” 
“Oooh, very brave of you. Sure, it won’t do much HP damage…but what if I told you this blade has level-five paralyzing venom and level-five damaging poison applied to it?” 
“…!!” 
The fierce point of the weapon poked me twice again, teasing now. 
It was impossible. Even monsters were using only level-2 poison at this stage, and the poisons a player could make with the Mixing skill were only level 1, due to the materials available. But that was all I knew from the beta…and I’d been shown time and time again that my memory did not guarantee anything in Aincrad anymore. 

 

If his threat was true, then I would collapse on the spot for at least ten minutes if I was pricked, plenty of time for my HP to run out. 

I sucked a tiny breath into my stiffening chest and expelled it in words. 
“…What do you want?” 
The voice chuckled just behind my ear. It was a theatrical laugh; quite joyful by the sound of it, yet clearly containing no true emotion within it. 
“Isn’t that obvious, bro? I want to have fun.” 
“Fun…?” 
“That’s right; I wanna have a good time. They built this incredible stage for us, you know? I want to throw a wrench into the works and really make it dramatic.” 
After that statement, I finally understood who the man standing behind me was. 
I didn’t know his name or face, of course. But I knew him. 
“You’re…Morte’s boss. The one who taught the Legend Braves about the upgrade scam, and the one trying to making the ALS and DKB fight…The Man in the Black Poncho,” I accused, voice rasping. He whistled in admiration. 
“Ooh, I like that nickname…nice John Wayne Gacy vibe to it. So…shall we find somewhere else to go?” 
“…Where do you intend to take me?” 
“Underground, of course. Killers always go down in the basement, right?” 
There was indeed an underground floor in this castle. It would all be over if I went there. No one would hear my screams. And the basement had monsters in it—that was unquestionably out of the safe haven. It would be suicidal to do as he said, but given that I couldn’t rule out the level-5 poisons on his knife, I had no choice but to obey… 
…No. 
If he really had level-5 paralysis at his command, he didn’t need to threaten and order me around. He could just poke me with it and carry me anywhere he wanted. It would be easy to drag my body into the basement. 
The paralysis was a bluff. 
And I guessed—no, I knew —we weren’t out of town. 
Morte and this man were PKers using provocation. The one tool someone used to provoke others was language. He was trying to convince me that I was already in a dangerous area to make me move to a place that actually was. 
“…Got it,” I said, and stepped forward. 
The moment a tiny space opened between my back and the tip of the knife, I leaped back hard. The knife slammed into my back, of course, the sharp tip tearing through the leather coat and shirt, then— 
—Filling the hallway with a purple flash. A shock hit my back. The Anti-Criminal Code kicked in, generating an automatic wall that pushed me and the knife apart. 
“Shit!” the man swore. I held strong against the impact and pulled my sword free as I spun around. 
“Raaaah!” 
I unleashed the Slant sword skill. It wouldn’t damage my opponent, of course, but my intention was to temporarily pause him with the knockback effect and hopefully alert Agil’s group in the courtyard below with the flash and sound. 
I caught sight of a black figure attempting to leap away. 
It was quite tall. The thin body was shrouded in a black, hooded short coat that shone with a reflective finish—a poncho. I couldn’t see the face under the hood, but there were black curls at the base of his neck. 
My system-accelerated blade bore down on his breast. If I could force him to fall over, I could keep him in a pseudo-stunned state by continually hitting him with sword skills. 
But the man’s airborne body retreated with impossible speed for a jump, and my sword hit only empty air. 
“Not done yet—!” 
I drew back my blade for the charging skill Rage Spike, hoping to time it for when he landed. The poncho man had to have a very high Acrobatics skill, but even he couldn’t jump back faster than a charging skill. 
The moment I lurched forward on my left foot and broke out of the post-skill delay, my sword began to glow brightly. 
But once again, the man in the poncho betrayed my expectations. 
Right before he landed, he tossed a small sphere onto the ground. It exploded on impact, throwing up a thick black smoke that filled the hallway. 
A smoke screen?! 
I had never seen that item in SAO , either now or in the beta, but I executed the sword skill anyway, in the direction I expected my adversary to be. 
The special metallic sound unique to charging skills rang out, and the sharp tip of the Sword of Eventide ripped through the smoke. I felt it graze something, and there was a small flash of that purple system effect again. 
That was all. When I landed, I slipped out of the smoke and quickly scanned my surroundings. 
But the man in the black poncho was nowhere to be seen. I tried to make full use of my Search skill, concentrating hard on my vision and hearing, but I caught neither moving shadow nor footstep. 
“…Until we meet again, Blackie.” 
I turned around in the direction I thought I heard the message come from, but the clearing smoke sitting in the dim hallway just mocked my solitude. I ground my teeth together, realizing I hadn’t even caught sight of his face—but then I spotted something. 
A midsized knife, lying on the ground on the side of the hall. 
I walked over to pick it up. It was all black with a simple design, but even in my level-19 hands—I’d gained a level in the boss fight—it felt quite heavy. 
I tossed the nonpoisoned weapon into my inventory, then realized I shouldn’t be hanging around. The man might not have been acting alone. Morte, the other cloaked man in the catacombs, or even more companions could be lurking around any corner. 
“…Asuna,” I muttered, and turned around to sprint at full speed. 
What if they used the same methods to lure Asuna out into the open? 
In terms of power, she was in no way inferior to Morte, but she didn’t know much about PvP combat yet. She asked for instruction when we first got to this floor but had backed down at the last moment. She wouldn’t be able to handle these tricksters and their unpredictable ways. 
I raced back up the hallway, used a switch in the little dead-end room to open a secret door, then took the stairs up to the fourth floor, three steps at a time. All that was left was to spring down the hall and make a hard turn onto the terrace. 
“Asuna!!” I bellowed. The fencer turned away from her view of the bustling town and looked back at me in surprise. 
“Wh…what’s the matter, Kirito?” 
“…” 
In the moment, I had no answer. I just stood in the doorway to the terrace for a while before walking over to her. 
“H-hey, what are you—” 
I held out my arms, circled them around her slender body, and pulled her close. 
Only when I felt the warmth and pressure of her avatar, her body, did I exhale with relief. In the morning, I would give her a proper dueling lesson this time. For now, I just held her close to me. 
After a while, she moved her hands and patted my back, like I was a child. 
Her gentle whisper sounded in my ear. 
“Will you let go now? I’m going to hit you with a sword skill.” 
“Ah…uhmm…this area might be outside of town…?” 
“Of—course—it’s—in—town!!” 
Her left hook slammed into my gut, resulting in a heavy shock wave and a shower of purple sparks. 
(End)