Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 5 - Chapter 5

5 
JANUARY 2, 2023. 
Unlike yesterday, the morning sky was gloomy and dark—though only visible through the strip of the outer aperture, of course. Our day’s activities started with a bit of inventory housekeeping. 
After we ate breakfast at the inn’s restaurant, we returned to the fourth-floor suite and materialized the items earned over the previous day onto the table. The majority of items were materials of uncertain use dropped by the muriquis, like Spider Monkey Pelts and Fluffy Tails, but the real problem was what the late Cylon had dropped. The gold and jewels had been picked up by the Muriqui Snatchers before we retrieved them, so they were mixed among our cash now, but we weren’t really sure if it was right to use or sell off the equipable items he’d dropped. 
“…I wonder if Cylon has any family,” Asuna murmured, lifting up a gaudy golden pendant. 
I shook my head. “No…I don’t recall there being a wife or children in that mansion of his.” 
“I see…But the bigger question is: Does this mean Cylon’s just gone from Aincrad forever? Wouldn’t that mean nobody else can start the ‘Curse of Stachion’ quest…?” 
Again, I shook my head. “No…I doubt it’ll come to that. My guess is that when he showed up at the hideout in Suribus, there was already a different Cylon back at the mansion in Stachion. The one that Morte killed was just ‘our’ Cylon. I bet that it won’t have any effect on other players who are going to start the quest after us.” 
Asuna pressed her fingers to her left temple and groaned, “Ugh…I just can’t wrap my head around that idea. The instanced maps are hard enough, but having the same person in multiple places at once is just…” 
“I know how you feel,” I said with a laugh. I poured the pitcher of lemonade-ish juice into two glasses and gave one to her. I took a sip of the sugary liquid and continued, “During the ‘Elf War’ quest on the third floor, I’m pretty sure I mentioned how, in order to get the Anneal Blade on the first floor, you have to do a quest to gather medicinal ingredients from the forest for a sick girl. When she drinks the finished potion, she gets better, but only while you’re in their cabin. Once another player enters the place to start the quest, they’ll just see a sickly, suffering girl again. It’s unavoidable, you see…People would be losing their minds if only the single earliest party could ever fulfill a certain quest. Still, there’s just something jarring about it…” 
“…Yeah, I know…” 
Asuna took a sip of her juice, too. She puckered her lips, then sighed. 
“…I feel like Cylon was in pain, too, deep down. He was Pithagrus’s first apprentice, but his master said he couldn’t inherit the title, so he got mad and killed him and then had to bear that secret for an entire decade, right? Plus, someone made off with the golden cube that had his bloody handprint on it, so he knew at least one person was aware of the truth…I have to believe that he was on edge for all ten of those years.” 
She was conjecturing as though Cylon were a real person. 
As an NPC, I doubted he would feel any guilt at all because he wasn’t programmed to. But thinking about it…Unlike in the beta, the current version of Aincrad featured multiple NPCs that had so much intelligence and emotion, they were almost indistinguishable from people. Kizmel, Viscount Yofilis…and perhaps Cylon, too. 
Asuna leaned back against the sofa, exhaled, then continued, “I thought…that maybe at the end of the quest, Cylon would repent for his crime and accept his punishment…and perhaps even find forgiveness…but so much for that. Hey, Kirito.” 
“Hmm?” 
“If we go back to Stachion, and we actually meet another Cylon in the mansion there, the quest won’t actually continue where we left off, right?” 
“No…I don’t think it will. We didn’t actually finish that crucial event, for one thing. I bet the quest log is still stuck partway through that…” 
I had my inventory window open already, so I switched it to the quest tab and tapped on the ‘Curse of Stachion’ entry to make it the active quest. The final line of the quest read… 
“Let’s see…CYLON, LORD OF STACHION, HAS BEEN KILLED BY BANDITS. YOU MUST FIND THE PROPER PLACE TO USE THE TWO REMAINING KEYS.” 
We stared at each other in silence. Then we both looked down at the table. Among the various articles there were two keys, one made of gold and one of iron. 
“Wh-wha…? Hang on, was Cylon getting killed part of the story of this quest…?” Asuna asked, but I shook my head several times. 
“N-no, that’s not possible. Morte and his buddy weren’t NPCs, they were other players. It says they’re bandits, but it’s not like the SAO system was controlling them and making them do that.” 
“Then why does the quest log say that?” 
“Um…ummmm…The only thing I can think of is that they considered the possibility that Cylon might be killed by another player when the event goes in between towns and prepared that message…maybe…?” 
“Really?” she said, giving me a look of disbelief. “If they were going to go to that much trouble, couldn’t they just make Cylon so super-tough that nobody could kill him?” 
“Well, that’s true…but then you’d have to wonder why someone who wasn’t a fighter would be so strong, right? That’s the kind of thing that SAO is really picky about…” 
“True. I mean, they go to the lengths of printing the entire contents of all the books in the world, even if we can’t read them,” Asuna admitted. She put her glass of lemonade on the table and picked up both gold and iron keys. “This golden key is the one we found at the hideout, right? So…where do we use this iron key?” 
“Dunno…The golden key goes to the dungeon underneath the lord’s mansion, but I’ve never actually seen the iron one before…” 
“Dungeon…? Is that where you find the golden cube?” 
I wasn’t sure if I should answer that question or not, but then I decided that since we’d already completely branched off the story line I was familiar with, it couldn’t hurt, after all. 
“Yeah,” I admitted, “the one who took the cube from the site of Pithagrus’s murder and hid it beneath the mansion was the former maid we talked to first. Her name was…Theano, I think. She was actually a puzzle genius herself, and Pithagrus wanted to make her his heir to the title.” 
“Oh, really…? But Theano saw Cylon murder Pithagrus, right? Why did she hide the murder weapon, rather than accusing him as a witness?” 
“See, the thing is, Cylon and Theano were lovers.” 
“Oh, my…ooh, aah,” Asuna murmured as she took this in, gazing at the keys in her hands. “Ten years ago…Cylon would be in his late thirties, and Theano would’ve been around twenty-five, I think. So maybe she didn’t feel like accusing her lover of murder, but her conscience didn’t allow her to stand by and do nothing…” 
“That’s about how it went, I think. Theano locked the golden cube beneath the lord’s mansion, then placed the key to it in the hideout in Suribus. She wanted Cylon to admit to his sin and atone for it.” 
“…What do you mean?” 
“The dungeon under the mansion is a string of super-hard puzzles, and you can’t even get to the last part without a hint from one of the books in the study of the hideout. For ten years, Theano waited for Cylon to admit to his crime and seek her help. She was going to tell him the location of the second home if he did. In order to get back the golden cube, Cylon would need to study the books in the hideout as hard as he could and solve the puzzle dungeon. And in fact, that’s the test that’s meant to determine if you’ve got what it takes to inherit the title of puzzle king and lord of the mansion.” 
“Aha…but Cylon didn’t attempt the test himself, he just kept hiring people to do it…” 
“And paralyzing and abducting the people he hired, to boot,” I noted. 
Asuna let out a long breath. “If Morte hadn’t interfered…what would’ve happened to us?” 
“Cylon was going to lock us in the mansion dungeon to make us retrieve the cube for him. But Theano found out, and she would help us in the backstreets of Stachion, and from that point on, we’d work with her on the quest, in the main route…” 
“Hmm. Maybe we should ask Theano what to do with this key, then,” Asuna suggested, holding up the iron one. 
I tentatively agreed. “That would be…the orthodox idea. We could also ignore Theano, use the golden key to go into the dungeon and get the cube on our own. But I can’t predict how the story will proceed in that case.” 
“Well, no use wasting any time, then.” Asuna straightened up with the keys still in hand, but I grabbed her sleeve and forced her back into a sitting position. 
“Hang on. We still haven’t finished the most important investigation.” 
“Huh? But the rest of this is Cylon’s stuff, right? Wait, you’re not going to sell them, are y—?” 
“No, no, no, I’m not. Although I bet this gas mask would go for a pretty good sum…” 
I briefly lifted the rather ugly leather mask Asuna had worn last night when she’d snuck up on the dagger user, then put it back on the table. Then I put all the equipment into the special hotel-room item storage, clearing off the table so I could materialize the dark metal throwing pick and the much-used dagger. 
Asuna grimaced when she saw them. “Oh, right…You were very fixated on them. That reminds me, another one of them dropped for me.” 
“What?” 
To my disbelief, Asuna opened her window and quickly produced a new pick. Laid side by side, it was clear that in color, texture, and curving hexagonal design, it was identical to the first. Although this was surprising, I quickly realized that the first pick of the set of three had missed me and vanished into the trees when Morte threw it. A Muriqui Snatcher must have picked it up, and when Asuna defeated it, the pick would’ve dropped into her inventory. 
“Ooh, nice combo work, monkey and Asuna.” 
“That…doesn’t sound like a compliment,” she muttered, grimacing again. “But…hang on…” She put a finger to her cheek and remarked, “All the items we got from the muriquis went straight into our item storage, right?” 
“Yeah,” I said, wondering where she was going with this, but I found that I had no answer to her next question: “Then why did all of Cylon’s items fall to the ground when Morte killed him…?” 
“Uh…mmm……” 
She had a very good point. We’d survived because Cylon dropped his Namnepenth’s Poison Jar within breathing range of us. But shouldn’t it automatically have gone into Morte’s inventory? 
“Well, there are two possibilities I can see. Either Morte had barely any space left in his inventory…or the rules for dropping items is different when a player kills another player or an NPC.” 
“…Morte’s probably very high-level, so I have my doubts about the former.” 
“That’s true. He’s bound to be limited in space because he switches between sword and ax, but even then, I can’t imagine that he planned to come attack us while being just under the weight limit. So it might be a special set of rules…but there’s no way for us to test that out.” 
“How did it work in the beta?” 
“I feel like it was the same as when hunting monsters…but I didn’t PK, so I can’t tell you for sure…If we run into Argo somewhere, we should ask her,” I said, putting a hold on the topic of item drops and returning to the black pick on the table. 
We’d gotten two of the three poisoned picks, but the real issue was where they’d come from. I prayed there would be a hint to the answer in the item properties and tapped one of them. Asuna and I leaned closer to read the information. 
“Um…it’s called a…Spine of…Sh…Shmargor…? I think?” she hedged. 
“What does that mean?” I asked. I’d been feeling like I was using my partner as a walking English-Japanese dictionary, but Asuna didn’t seem to be annoyed. 
“Spine is probably like ‘thorn’ in this case. I’d assume Shmargor is a given name, but I’ve never heard of it in the real world or in Aincrad.” 
“Mmm…” 
I continued reading. The attack and durability ratings were a bit higher than what you could buy at a store—but nothing shocking. The real issue was the special effect below that. 
“PARALYSIS ( THREE ): WHEN THIS WICKED SPINE STRIKES, IT CONFERS A LEVEL-TWO PARALYZING POISON EFFECT. THE POISON WILL WEAR AWAY AFTER THREE USES…Wow, level two? We haven’t even gotten level-one paralyzing poison yet. That means a level-one cure potion from an item store probably won’t even work on this.” 
“Then…what can you do?” 
“Either level up the Mixing skill so you can craft level-two cure pots or use a Purify Crystal…but…” 
Asuna’s brow knotted. “How much proficiency do you need to craft level-two potions?” 
“About one hundred, I think.” 
“Ugh.” 
That reaction was so perfectly in line with what I would say that I couldn’t help but side-eye her. Asuna recognized what she’d done and turned a bit red, stammering, “A-and we’re not getting any crystal items yet at this stage. So at the moment…there’s no way for us to counteract the paralysis of this pick?” 
“Um…well…” 
The primary way to undo damaging or paralyzing poison was by using potions or crystals, but that wasn’t the entirety of it. Among the seemingly unlimited types of food and drinks of this world were some with debuff-curing effects, and there was a good variety of material items that provided curative and healing benefits when used on their own. Then there were armor and accessories that boosted poison resistance, and… 
My mind was completely off on this tangent when Asuna sucked in a sharp breath. She’d been reading the flavor text at the bottom of the properties window. 
“Oh…” 
“Wh-what is it?” 
“THE SUNKEN ELF GENERAL N’LTZAHH FACED THE DREAD DRAGON SHMARGOR AND CUT OFF EVERY LAST ONE OF ITS SPINES, WHICH DRIPPED WITH DEADLY POISON,” she recited, as I followed the text. Apparently Shmargor was a dragon with poisonous spines. But that wasn’t the crazy part. 
The “sunken elf” was clearly referring to Fallen Elves. And the individual named General N’ltzahh was someone Asuna and I had witnessed in person. 
“H…hang on. You mean this pick is a spine that General N’ltzahh chopped off a dragon?” 
“That’s what it says here…” 
“B-but…why…?” 
I had to pause there to get down the rest of my lemonade. “Why does Morte have something like that?” 
“You don’t think…he actually defeated General N’ltzahh…do you?” Asuna wondered. 
I thought it over and shook my head. “No…I can’t believe that. You saw the general’s color cursor, didn’t you?” 
“……Yeah.” Her cheeks went paler than usual. 
We had witnessed General N’ltzahh in the Fallen Elf base hidden deep in the submerged dungeon on the fourth floor. I was level 16 at the time, and his cursor had looked pure black to me. I wasn’t taken by even an instant’s desire to leap out of my hiding spot and challenge him to a fight. Even now, ten days later and level 19, I was certain that if I’d done so, both I and Asuna would’ve been dead in less than a minute. 
The Fallen Elf had been surrounded by an aura cold as ice, and even expert player-battlers like Morte and the dagger user wouldn’t stand a chance against him. In other words, if they were tough enough to beat N’ltzahh, they could’ve easily killed us both without needing to take advantage of that paralysis event. 
“If anything…they’d either have to sneak into the Fallen Elf hideout and steal them, or they got a very rare drop from one of the lower Fallen Elves—the kind we were fighting…I think…” 
I myself wasn’t certain about this at all. I decided to tap the dagger next to the picks. When I read the properties that appeared, my voice caught in my throat. 
It was called the Dirk of Agony. Its special bonuses included better poison and frost resistance, and a low chance of causing bleeding damage to any target. The flavor text described it as “a dagger given as a prize from the Fallen Elf Commander.” 
“…A Fallen Elf prize?” I muttered. Asuna pushed my head out of the way with her own to read the text, and she was similarly shocked. 
“Does this mean…it was a quest reward?” 
“…” 
I didn’t have an immediate answer for her question. The item description didn’t suggest any other interpretation, but if true, it would mean the dagger user received a quest from the Fallen Elf Commander, finished it, and got this dagger as a reward. 
And if that was the case, then Morte’s poison picks weren’t stolen from a Fallen Elf, either, but they were likely given to him. It was one thing if it was a quest that could only be performed once, but in the off chance that it was a reward for a repeatable vanquishing or gathering quest…that would mean the paralyzing picks we’d worked so hard to steal were in practically limitless supply. 
“Hey, Asuna—” I said, right at the exact same instant that she said, “Say, Kirito…” 
We each used our eyes to motion the other to start, until Asuna, who was slightly less patient than I was, finally gave in and continued, “Well…I’m curious about the Stachion quest, but for now, I think it’s smarter to investigate these picks a little more.” 
“I was just about to say the exact same thing,” I said, which brought a bit of a smile to her lips before they tightened up again. 
“If they can keep getting these weapons, as many as they want, that’s major trouble. They might not only go after us, and we’d have to make sure that every last player fighting out in the wilderness has resistance against paralysis…” 
“I completely agree,” I said, “but like I mentioned before, we have very few options for dealing with level-two paralysis poison as it stands…so I think we should ask about that, too.” 
“Ask…whom?” Asuna wondered. 
I gave her a sly grin. “A knight who would know something about the Fallen Elves and poisons.” 
The circular map of the sixth floor of Aincrad was split into five equal slices by steep lines of mountains, with a star-shaped lake in the center. 
Stachion and its neighbor Suribus were in the northeast slice, and the labyrinth tower was in the adjacent southeast area, but the rocky mountains in between were so tall they nearly reached the underside of the seventh floor and blocked all passage. 
Therefore, players needed to go around the floor in counterclockwise fashion. The mountains were about a hundred yards wide at their base, and the dungeons that served as the passageway were fairly short. But they were packed with annoying puzzles in each room, with a mid-boss waiting at the exit of each area. 
The DKB and ALS, the two main guilds on the frontier, had switched from Stachion to Suribus on the very first day of the floor. After half a day of leveling and updating equipment, then a good rest at the puzzle-less inn, they were now planning to tackle the cave in the adjacent northwest area—at least, according to the message I got from Agil, leader of the Bro Squad. 
At the time of that message, Asuna and I had been eating breakfast at the restaurant and planning to go back to Stachion before noon to finish the multi-part quest, after which we’d head for the northwest area. But because of the weapons Morte and his friend had dropped, our priorities had changed. We put our stuff away, checked out of the Jade and Kingfisher, and headed for the dungeon at the very south end of the area. 
Although we left late and encountered a couple monsters along the road, the two of us were still faster than a full raid party of several dozen, so we could still see three groups milling outside the dungeon entrance in its deep valley by the time we got there. 
“Darn, I was hoping they’d have cleared out the dungeon already, so we could just walk right through it,” Asuna grumbled as she waited in the shade of the trees. 
I considered this and suggested, “Wouldn’t it be the same thing if we wait for them to go in, then sneak after them as they go?” 
“There’s a huge difference between ‘We rushed but didn’t make it in time’ and ‘We chose not to rush to make it there.’ Plus, Agil’s group is over there already.” 
Indeed, resting outside the dungeon were the eighteen members (in three parties) from the blue-clad DKB, another eighteen from the green-dressed ALS, and the four members of the Bro Squad who wore varying armor but held exclusively two-handed weapons. At the end of Agil’s message, he’d said If you have time, you can help us get through the dungeon, so the thought of complaining about our own problems made me feel guilty. 
“All right, I guess we should go,” I said, straightening up and patting Asuna on the back. We headed into the narrow crevice that led to the dungeon. As we walked past the sheer rock wall with its odd relief carvings, I made sure to step as loudly as possible to announce my entrance—and then waved to the Bro Squad, who were closest to us, huddled around a small campfire. 
“Yo—hey, guys,” I greeted. 
“Good afternoon, Agil, Wolfgang, Lowbacca, and Naijan,” added Asuna. 
The tough guys greeted us in return, although they only smiled at Asuna. 
Silently cursing them, I sat down next to Agil. A quick glance down the way showed me that Kibaou’s ALS and Lind’s DKB were watching us with disgruntled expressions. I gave them a two-finger salute and turned back to the fire. 
Unlike the real world, you didn’t need to know anything to start a fire here, but finding high-quality logs for fuel was surprisingly difficult. There were fallen branches all over in the wooded areas, but if you wanted to make a good fire, you had to tap them to make sure their item name was Dead Tree Branch. A Living Tree Branch or Damp Branch would produce lots of smoke and a weak, unstable flame. They sold bundles of good firewood at the general store in town, but these were quite heavy and took up space, so you couldn’t lug many around. 
But thanks to the overall high Strength stat of the Bro Squad, they had plenty of carrying capacity, and they were using nice, store-bought logs. A metal tripod was set up over the fire, with a kettle hanging from the top and emitting the scent of tea. 
“How long is this break lasting, Agil?” Asuna asked. The man said it would be about ten minutes, so I judged I had just enough time and opened my menu to pull out a stash of sweet potatoes—the proper item name was Ichthyoid Potato—I’d been keeping since the fourth floor. I tossed three into the fire. 
These food items were around in the beta, too, but they were originally sold off at bargain prices, probably because it was the half-fish monsters who dropped them. Since the fourth floor in the beta was a place of dry, dusty canyons, the presence of fishy creatures made them even creepier. 
But once people found out that cooking them in a campfire made them tastier than any store-bought sweets, the price shot through the roof, and there was a potato rush as players slaughtered the half fish for their starchy loot. Information wasn’t getting around as quickly in the current form of Aincrad, so I made a mental note to head back down to the fourth floor and stock up soon. 
The next thing I knew, it had been five or six minutes, and a sweet smell was issuing from the campfire. 
Asuna and the Bros paused in their chitchat, nostrils twitching, but I let the sweet potatoes sit in the fire as long as possible—the moment just before they got burnt for good was when they tasted best—and with perfect timing, I pulled out my sword and jabbed three quick times into the fire. 
Sparks flew with the disturbance, but when I pulled out my sword, there were three perfectly cooked sweet potatoes skewered on its end. All five teammates held out their hands in silence, so I cut each of the potatoes in half and handed them out. 
The green-tea-style liquid that Agil had brewed went very well with the half-fish potato. My hometown of Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture was a well-known area for sweet potatoes, and I’d eaten them all the time since I was a kid. Therefore, I was both picky about the taste and texture as well as a bit tired of eating them, but even digital, I would give these sweet potatoes at least ninety-five out of one hundred. 
The potato halves soon vanished into virtual stomachs, and six contented sighs escaped in unison. Wolfgang, who was planning to open a steak house on the second floor in the future, asked me where to get them. To avoid disillusioning him with the facts, I simply said, “I’ll sell them to you for cheap,” and finished my tea. The Bro Squad had surely fought some of the half-fish monsters in the fourth-floor labyrinth tower, but the Ichthyoid Cultivators that dropped the potatoes didn’t appear alone, and they ran away once they got down to 50-percent HP, so the only reliable way to beat them was to use a major skill at the right moment. 
Thirty seconds before the end of the break, the campfire was tidied up, and Agil let us into his party. The Bro Squad was just four members at the moment, so Asuna and I could fit into the maximum of six, but sooner or later they’d get more members, and we couldn’t assume there’d always be a place for us. It was occurring to me that I’d need to think about what to do when we inevitably got bumped out of the raid group…when Asuna sidled up next to me with a question out of nowhere. 
“Hey, Kirito. How does a player with an orange cursor get it back to green again?” 
“Eh?” 
Why would she ask that now? 
I blinked but soon understood where she was going with it: 
Morte and his comrade had slipped into the ALS and DKB by hiding their identities, and they were using various tricks to pit the guilds against each other. By the time I saw through their scheme on the third floor, Morte had already left the guild, but my guess was that the dagger user was still in the ALS. 
But yesterday, he had attacked the NPC assisting Cylon, turning his color cursor orange. So he couldn’t enter any town, and it would make it very difficult for him to meet his guildmates. That meant if there was any player among their ranks who had abruptly vanished last night or who was still among the group with some excuse for why he was orange, that was our man. But only if he hadn’t gotten his cursor back to green at some point over the course of the night. 
“To go from orange back to green, you need to complete something called an ‘Alignment Recovery’ quest. I don’t know exactly how it works, but if your cursor turns orange, you’ll occasionally come across NPC travelers or wanderers in the wilderness, and they’ll give you a kind of trial quest…I think,” I murmured, not entirely sure of my memory on the matter. 
Asuna pondered this. “Is that something you can do in a night?” 
“Apparently the difficulty and length of the quest changes depending on your crime. Stealing something cheap from an NPC might not need a very long quest, but if you attacked or killed someone, that would be much more serious. And if you commit the same crime again, the second time, the quest is harder than the first, and the third time is harder than the second. I seem to recall people saying that if you PKed about five players in the beta, it was essentially impossible to be restored to green again.” 
After all that, I realized I hadn’t actually solved Asuna’s concern, so I added, “I don’t know how much it would take to repair the dagger guy’s alignment, to be honest…Plus, he attacked the big man, but he didn’t kill him…” 
“Yes…and another problem is that only half of the ALS is here…” 
“I kind of doubt they’d take us seriously if we explained the truth, too…” 
We were interrupted from our hushed conversation by a loud, booming voice coming from the dungeon entrance. 
“Hey, if you wanna tag along, yer welcome! But if you join the raid, you gotta follow our commands!” 
It was a voice I’d never mistake for anyone other than the leader of the ALS with the morning-star hair spikes, Kibaou. I flashed him an okay sign, and he snorted and turned back to the entrance. Among his three parties were some familiar faces: Okotan the halberdier and Liten the full-plate girl who had helped us with the last boss fight. They made little motions to catch our attention, and Asuna and I bowed back. 
Clearly, it had been decided that the ALS would take the lead on this dungeon, as DKB’s Lind, Shivata, and Hafner led their parties behind the other guild without a word of complaint, and the Bro Squad, with their two extras, brought up the rear in similar fashion. 
Kibaou confirmed that all parties were in order and boomed, “Let’s get through this place an’ eat lunch at the next town!” 
The ALS members cheered heartily—the rest of us at half the volume—and the forty-two-man group of conquerors headed into the dungeon that split the mountain range. 
In less than twenty minutes, we were infighting. 
The dungeon itself was very simple, made up of large rooms and the hallways that connected them. We cleared out the ten Living Statue monsters that appeared in the first chamber without much trouble. 
The problem arose when we reached the puzzle lock on the door at the back of the room. 
It looked like a sliding puzzle—in Japan, these are often called daughter-in-the-box puzzles—with blocks in large, medium, and small sizes that could be slid around. To beat the puzzle, you had to maneuver the large block placed at the very top of the puzzle all the way to the exit at the bottom. But while in the beta test there was one large block, four vertical blocks, one horizontal block, and four small blocks—a fairly easy orthodox example—the puzzle on the door now was longer—with eight small blocks in total. 
Naturally, it was Kibaou who confidently made the first attempt. But after five minutes, and at least three hundred moves, he was nowhere nearer to solving it, and Lind, who was getting tired of waiting, suggested he give up and let someone else try. Kibaou yelled at him to stay out of it, and eventually the DKB and ALS had taken sides across the room in a glaring contest. 
“Well…this certainly looks familiar.” Asuna sighed in exasperation as she leaned against a distant wall. “Say, isn’t there a simple and reliable way to solve that, like with the fifteen puzzle?” 
“Unfortunately, there isn’t…I remember that the shortest solution to the original version was eighty-one moves, but this one has four extra blocks on it. I don’t think I’d be able to step in and do it smoothly.” 
As we spoke, Kibaou was busy clattering the metal blocks as he slid them back and forth. But he was merely finding himself back in the same spots he’d been in minutes earlier, and he was getting no closer to a solution. 
“By the way, Kirito, the puzzles in Stachion were some curse from the lord of the town, right? We didn’t do that quest, so I don’t know the fine details,” said Agil, joining our conversation. 
I looked up at his craggy face and nodded. “Someone died at the lord’s manor, and now the place is cursed.” 
“Then why are there puzzles in this dungeon that’s miles away from the town? There wasn’t a single one in Suribus.” 
“…That’s a good point.” 
I’d always known the sixth floor as the one with puzzles, so I never thought further about it, but now that he mentioned it, if the curse didn’t even extend to Suribus, it didn’t make much sense that it was afflicting this dungeon farther away. In fact, the puzzles spread to the south area across the lake and to the labyrinth tower as well, and I didn’t recall anything in the beta that rationalized this. 
Well…it’s all just a setting someone made up, I concluded lamely, and I was gauging if I should say it aloud when someone’s voice interrupted me. 
“Hey, you just reset it to the beginning!” Lind bellowed, drawing our attention. 
Indeed, on the massive sliding puzzle that opened the stone door, the large block that was meant to escape from the bottom of the puzzle was back to its starting position at the top. As he fiddled with the long vertical blocks below it, Kibaou grunted, “When you get stuck, you start over! It’s common sense!” 
“You just admitted you got stuck! So let someone else have a go!” 
“I didn’t say that!” 

“Yes, you did!” 
Exasperated with their bickering, Asuna commented, “Sometimes I get the feeling that they’re actually best friends.” 
“You might be right about that…” 
“Oh, just go over there and solve the puzzle for them already, Kirito.” 
“L…listen, there’s a whole extra row added to what was there before. I can’t beat it with the moves I remem…” 
But then I came to a realization: Yes, there was an extra row of blocks, but the difference was just four new single-size blocks at the bottom that were the most maneuverable type, so in fact, they could largely be ignored. All you had to do was get the large block down to the spot where it was originally supposed to go and then slip two of the small blocks around the sides of it, creating a path to the exit. 
“Um…” 
Asuna was grinning. 
“…Well, I guess I’ll give it a try.” 
Agil smirked. 
Leaving the pair behind, I crossed the large chamber to the locked door. Kibaou and Lind both noticed my footsteps and turned to me, ready to object, but I held up my hands to cut them off. 
“Listen, there’s no trick to this puzzle other than memorizing the moves. I’ll do this one, and if you can remember how I do it, then you should be able to do it in a snap if you come across the same thing.” 
The two clamped their mouths shut, then shared a quick glance. Lind nodded, while Kibaou turned his back on me. 
“Well, if you say so, then I’m willin’ ta let you try.” 
“Then if you’ll pardon me…” 
I approached the puzzle that Kibaou had just reset and started working on it, relying on memory. I’d said there was no trick to it other than memorization, but in general, the quickest method was to gather the long vertical blocks on either the left or right side, then eventually get them to take up the top rows. Thankfully, I managed to inch the largest block downward without getting stuck, until it was at the original exit position. As I theorized, once the block was there, it only took a few moves to adjust the new blocks out of the way and slide that large block to the bottom spot. 
“Ooooh,” the crowd of players murmured, as the massive door sank into the floor, offering us passage into the hall beyond. 
“Let’s get movin’!” Kibaou said triumphantly, leading his guildmates through. 
Part of my showing off was on Asuna’s request, but there was another purpose for it, too. As the ALS passed, I casually began strolling with them until I could approach a mustachioed dandy in their back row. 
“Hiya,” I whispered to Okotan, the captain of the ALS’s recruitment team. He glanced at me and murmured, “Nice work.” 
“Thanks. Listen…I hate to ask this out of the blue,” I began, prompting a curious look from him, “but of the members originally slated to participate in this dungeon, did anyone drop out abruptly just beforehand?” 
But the truth was that I was already expecting to hear a certain name as Okotan’s answer. 
The man who gave me the nickname of Beater after beating the first-floor boss, the man who tried to have Nezha crucified for his part in the weapon-upgrading scandal, the man who claimed Asuna and I were trying to monopolize the “Elf War” questline on the third floor, the man who stayed away on the fourth floor but accused me of trying to get the guild flag for myself at the fifth-floor boss, the man with the catchphrase “I know the truth”—the man named Joe. I’d found myself suspicious of him on a few separate occasions, and when he wasn’t among the ALS members in this dungeon, my suspicions grew deeper. 
The only things Joe shared in common with Black Hood Number Two were that they both used daggers and were about the same height. Number Two had his hood pulled low last night and also when I spotted him in the catacombs—and Joe always wore a leather mask that hid his face, so neither of them actually showed off his features. Their high-pitched voices were similar, too, but masks could change that, so it wasn’t a reliable detail. 
But on the fifth floor, Kibaou had said to Joe that the information he’d brought about the guild flag was accurate. That meant that at the very least, Joe had access to beta information, which could have come from Morte, who was a tester. The ALS had a few other dagger users, and much like Morte, there was no guarantee that Number Two wasn’t switching his primary weapon while he was working with the ALS—but if Okotan mentioned Joe’s name, my suspicion would turn almost to conviction. 
“Well…” Okotan started, seemingly without any suspicion and with his eyes darting up to the left, where the list of his raid members would be. He shook his head. “No, nobody changed their plans. Everyone who signed up at yesterday’s meeting is present here.” 
“Oh…I see,” I said, without any visible reaction. On the inside, however, I was taken aback. 
Morte and his pal must’ve known, in planning last night’s attack, that they would become orange players because of it. Even if their plan was to complete an “Alignment Recovery” quest overnight to get back to green, Number Two had lost his special Dirk of Agony in the act of saving Morte. If he hadn’t thrown it to distract me, I would have smashed the smoke bomb away with my sword in the instant before it exploded. 
Losing the powerful weapon he’d received from the Fallen Elf would be a major blow to his battle power, and such a loss might affect his ability to complete the recovery quest before morning. I had assumed that if Number Two was Joe, he would come up with some excuse for why he suddenly couldn’t take part in today’s activity—but it turned out that Joe was never scheduled to be here. 
I needed to get as much information as I could while I had the opportunity. “Um, what time of day did you have that meeting, exactly?” I asked. 
“It was after dinner, so probably around eight thirty in the evening,” Okotan said. At last, he seemed to find something suspicious about my questioning. “Why would you want to know something like that?” 
“Er…well…Late last night, we saw someone who looked like they were in the ALS fighting out in the woods, and they were struggling. I was just concerned, that’s all…” 
I knew it was a weak explanation, but in fact, I wasn’t really lying—I just wasn’t going to reveal that his opponents were me and Asuna. 
Okotan took this at face value, however; in fact, he even bowed a bit. “Oh, I see. Thank you for your concern. I didn’t hear anything about any members being in trouble last night, so I don’t believe there was a problem.” 
“Oh, good,” I replied, pondering this. 
If the meeting was at eight thirty, it would’ve been after nine when they finished. The attack on us happened after nine; if our second attacker was, in fact, Joe, he couldn’t have been at the meeting. 
I wanted to know if Joe was there or not, but asking as much would be fishy at this point. And even if Joe wasn’t at the meeting, that merely increased my suspicion without giving me any hard evidence. 
If only I could figure out the reason why Joe wouldn’t be taking part in this dungeon run today, when he’d been in every single boss fight thus far… 
“Yo, the next room’s up ahead! All members prepare fer combat!” Kibaou shouted from the head of the line. His ALS followers brandished their weapons. I decided there wasn’t much point trying to talk further and thanked Okotan before I drifted back. 
Once the DKB had filed past and I was in the rear again, Asuna zeroed in on me. “What were you talking with Okotan about?” 
“I was asking if any of their members backed out from this at the last minute.” 
Asuna instantly understood where I’d been going with that. She leaned closer. “And…?” 
“Sadly, he said there weren’t any.” 
“……Oh…I guess it wasn’t going to be that easy to catch him by the tail…” 
“Yeah. At this rate, we should keep our wits about us all throughout the day.” 
“What do you mean?” 
I leaned over. “The truth is that it’s not actually too hard to cover up the reason you went orange. He could have said he used an area attack that accidentally hit an NPC—and gotten his guildmates to help him do the ‘Alignment Recovery’ quest. The reason he didn’t is probably because he considered the possibility that the attack last night wouldn’t work. He could trick his guildmates, but if you or I survived and learned that someone in the ALS turned up orange, we could confirm that he was our PKer…And if they’re savvy enough to plan that carefully, they could have decided that we’d let our guard down, thinking they won’t attack again the next day, making us easier targets this time.” 
“…When you put it that way, it seems likely. So assuming that we’ll be watching our backs more carefully from now on,” Asuna contemplated, leaning in very close with an angry glare, “I’d like a correction to your quote just now about ‘if you or I survived.’” 
“Wha…?” 
“Why would you think that if one of us was killed, the other one would run away? Say it again, but correctly: ‘if you and I.’” 
“O-okay…” 
I wasn’t planning to abandon Asuna and run away, of course, but I did think it possible that I might need to use myself as a shield to help her get away…and if I dared to suggest it out loud, I’d get more than an angry glare in return. So I agreed with her and started to correct myself—when I heard a crude whistle from behind us. 
“Things are getting steamy over here!” 
“They’re melting the North Pole!” taunted Lowbacca and Naijan of the Bro Squad. Almost instantaneously, Asuna and I were no longer touching shoulders and leaning our heads in, but keeping a healthy distance. 
I couldn’t help but think, I didn’t taunt Shivata and Liten that way, because I told myself that being in ninth grade meant I was too old for that! 
We managed to get through four of the large rooms—each of the door puzzles being the same type, in increasingly complex arrangements, but we got through them all despite Kibaou and Lind’s bickering—until the final chamber greeted us with a huge, vine-plant boss. It rapidly grew pods that hurled explosive peas at us, until Agil and Lowbacca charged in with their battle-axes to cut it free from the roots, at last. 
I didn’t get the Last Attack bonus, as I was busy dodging the explosives, but according to Agil, all he got for it was a huge bunch of peas. With great sympathy, I suggested that maybe they’d be sweet if boiled. Once out of the dungeon, we split off from the rest of the frontliners. 
The ALS, DKB, and Bro Squad headed over the western horizon toward the faint silhouette of the next town, but Asuna and I had another destination in mind: The dark elf fortress on the sixth floor was located in this northwest slice of the map. 
“…I don’t think there’s much use in complaining about the map design of Aincrad at this point,” Asuna said after a few minutes of walking off the path through the wilderness, “but when there’s only a single line of mountains between us and the first area, it really shouldn’t be this different.” 
“No arguments from me,” I replied. 
The northeast area that contained Stachion and Suribus was mostly thick forest, like the third floor, but adjacent to it on the map, the northwest area was burnt-red desert, just like a western movie. There was no verdant plant life on this rolling terrain, just weathered rocks and the oddly shaped cactus here and there. When a particularly strong breeze started, it kicked up sand into little whirlwinds that impeded your vision. 
Hunger and thirst couldn’t kill you in Aincrad, but in the real world, you’d never set foot in a place like this without more than a few bottles of water. Our destination was near the aperture directly north, after a hike of about two and a half miles. And there was no path to take, so we had to avoid dried riverbeds and rocky outcroppings along the way, while battling the many monsters that appeared. 
Fortunately, my partner failed to find the giant scorpions, giant centipedes, and giant camel spiders to be quite as icky as the astral monsters, despite the fact that most girls would absolutely hate them. And just when my inventory was getting close to full with unappetizing ingredient items like scorpion tails and camel spider jaws, I finally hit the milestone of level 20. 
“Yahoo!” 
The moment the level-up light surrounded me, I raised my right fist and leaped into the air in celebration. Asuna, who had reached level 19 not that long ago, backed away a foot. 
“S-since when did you start acting like that?” 
“I also did this when I reached level six and level twelve,” I insisted. 
At last, Asuna recognized the occasion. “Oh, so you got another skill slot…In that case, some congratulations are indeed in order.” 
“Yahoo!” 
“Sure, sure, sure. So what are you taking for your fifth skill?” 
“Mamma mia!” I cried, realizing I was getting a bit carried away just as my partner abruptly hit me with an ice-cold stare. I cleared my throat in embarrassment. 
“Currently, I’ve got one-handed longswords, martial arts, Search, and Hiding…so I think I’ll either go with Throwing Knives or Sprint…” 
“I recommend Sprint,” she said. “It cuts down on movement time, and it just feels good to run.” 
“Yeah, I like that skill, but…” 
I considered that it had been a month since we started working together, and that it was probably okay to ask by now, but even still, I felt hesitation. 
“Say, Asuna…you’ve got rapiers and Light Metal Armor and Tailoring and Sprint, and what’s the other one?” 
At level 19, Asuna only had four slots still, but thanks to the ultra-megaton rare item that was likely unique among the entire world, the Crystal Bottle of Kales’Oh, she could effectively use a fifth skill. From what I knew, she was using the bottle to switch between Tailoring and Sprint, so whatever she had in the final slot had been a mystery all this time. 
Asuna blinked three times at the question, and to my surprise, she looked up and away from me, pursing her lips. That only made me more curious, but I never would have predicted her reply. 
“Um…it’s a secret. I don’t want you to get mad at me.” 
“H-huh?! Get mad? …Me? Hang on, I’m not going to get mad…Though, I mean, whatever skills you choose are your own business…” 
“The teachers who say that are the ones who get the angriest.” 
“T-teachers…” 
Well, she might be right about that. But I’m still not a teacher. 
Asuna took advantage of my silence to jab her finger at me. She continued, “We’re not talking about me right now. I was asking you what skill you’re going to take.” 
“Uh, r-right…Well, I think it’ll either be Throwing Knives or Sprint, but I’ll hold off for now…” 
“I see. Well, let’s keep moving,” she commanded, turning her gaze to the north without chastising my lack of decisiveness. I guess she really didn’t want to talk about her fifth skill. 
For the last few minutes, we’d been walking in sandy canyons that reminded me of the American state of Utah—based on movies, not any personal experience, of course. The terrain was monotonous but complex here, and consulting the map didn’t tell you much except for which direction you were traveling, but the only way to reach our goal was to get through this natural maze. 
As long as we knew the proper route, we could run straight there and avoid all the monsters, but even a beater like me, who’d only run the maze once several months ago, didn’t have the layout memorized. We just had to keep pressing forward, slaughtering all the scorpions, centipedes, and Mongolian death worms that crawled out of cracks in the dusty canyon walls. The light trickling into the canyon was getting darker and thicker by the time we finally came across a sign of civilization. 
Suddenly, the canyon floor was wider, and many stone pillars lined the way, with stone blocks placed like a bridge over the fine sand. There was a large gate ahead of us, atop which streamed a multitude of banners with a familiar insignia of scimitars and horns. 
“…Wow, that is huge…” 
Asuna was tiring from all the constant battle, but even she couldn’t hide her reaction to the distant castle gate. Level-wise, she was still plenty strong for this area, but the combination of all these poisonous monsters and the wariness of fresh PK attempts had only amplified the mental toll. 
We couldn’t just stay on guard for these PKers all the time. We had to think of proactive ways to remove the threat they posed, I told myself as we headed over the stone bridge. 
“Castle Galey up there is the largest of the dark elf fortresses. The building itself isn’t as posh as Yofel Castle, but they’ve got a dining hall and a bath.” 
“Wait, you mentioned a bath?” 
Asuna didn’t jump into the air with a “Yahoo!” but the change in her expression suggested her energy meter had shot from 30 percent up to 70 or so. She picked up her pace, and I hurried to match her, eventually deciding I ought to elaborate. 
“The thing is…the dining hall is great, but there’s something about the bath that might be a problem…or might not…” 
“……What is it?” 
“Wellll, it’s, uh, actually…public…” 
Asuna didn’t understand what I meant at first. She repeated “Public…?” a few times, then scowled. “Is this like the antonym of instanced? So it’s not a space that’s just for us? Other players can come in?” 
“That’s right. Out of all the dark elf spots, only the queen’s castle on the ninth floor and Castle Galey up there are public…I’m guessing they found it difficult to have a whole bunch of these fortresses and castles all existing in the same space at the same time…” 
“Well, Yofel Castle was plenty big, too. But I guess I can’t complain…So your point is that other players might enter the dining hall and bath and stuff,” she said. I could practically hear the effervescence of her energy meter decreasing, so I hastened to clarify. 
“In theory, yes, but the only people who can pass through that gate are ones doing the ‘Elf War’ questline with the dark elf faction, who are at least as far along as we are. I don’t think there’s a single other player who qualifies at this point, so go ahead and bathe to your heart’s content…I could even stand guard outside, like I did on the third floor…” 
Asuna appeared to grapple with this idea but abruptly shifted into dead seriousness. “And the dark elf castle is definitely not a safe haven, right?” 
I was briefly taken aback, and I glanced up at the gate, which was much closer now. The anti-criminal code that promised absolute protection over a player’s HP and life was invisible, but there was something different about the air surrounding the castle when compared to human towns. I looked back at her and nodded. 
“Yeah…I believe so. It’s theoretically possible for Morte’s gang to get inside and attack us somehow. But like I said, they’ll need to be involved with the dark elf faction to do that. I don’t think they had that much time to work with…and at the very least, it would be impossible for J—for the dagger user infiltrating the ALS.” 
Asuna’s eyebrow twitched when I started to say the name, but her reaction didn’t go beyond that. Her suggestion involved an unexpected character. “Do you think…Viscount Yofilis would tell us if we asked? Could he say if Morte or his friends were working for the dark elves?” 
“Hmm…” 
I came to a stop without realizing it, crossing my arms. Eventually, I shook my head. “No…Yofel Castle is an instance, so Viscount Yofilis should exist in different states for each party working on his quests. According to our Viscount Yofilis, he’d probably say we’re the only humans assisting the dark elves in their struggle.” 
“Oh…Once again, I have to say, I don’t like that system,” Asuna opined with a shrug. She turned to the tall castle gate. “We’d better be on guard in the castle, then. C’mon, let’s go.” 
“Yeah,” I agreed, and my partner and I crossed the last bit of the stone bridge to approach the huge gate, which appeared to be carved out of one single, giant rock formation. 
In all previous camps and forts, there had always been guards at the entrance, but there was a special reason that Castle Galey’s elves almost never ventured outside. Instead, sharp voices issued forth from the bay windows atop the gate. 
“Begone!” 
“This gate does not open for the likes of humankind!” 
These warnings were even harsher than those at Yofel Castle. But by holding high the Sigil of Lyusula ring that Viscount Yofilis gave me, I caused the guards at the bay windows to turn around and signal behind them. A clear, crisp bell began clanging from somewhere within the castle, and the gate slowly opened. 
It would take nearly a full minute for the gate to open all the way, so once there was space enough for a person to get through, I prodded Asuna to go on, then followed after her. The instant we crossed the threshold, the gate reversed motion and began to rumble closed. 
Asuna took three steps before she stopped and exclaimed, “Ooooh…!” 
Castle Galey was built—more like sculpted—out of a circular basin over six hundred feet across. The three-story castle curved along the inside walls of the basin, but rather than being built of stone or wood, it was carved directly out of the natural rock formation like some ancient ruin. 
Surrounding the castle in a C shape from east to west along the north side was an open area covered in tile mosaics, with dark elf guards and servants quietly coming and going. I didn’t see any players at the moment. 
Standing in the center of this open space was one massive hardwood tree. The desert and canyons we’d walked through to get here featured no plants aside from brown cacti, but the branches of this tree burst with vivid green leaves. A natural spring welled up with crystal-clear water at its roots, sparkling golden where the sun dripped through the branches. 
Near the base of the tree was a large hollow knot, and if I squinted, I could see a faint, pulsing blue light inside it. When Asuna noticed it, she whispered, “Oh…is that…a spirit tree…?” 
“Yeah. There’s a spirit tree in the castle here.” 
The spirit trees were like teleporters that the dark elves and forest elves used to get from floor to floor, much like the gates we players had. But while our teleport gates could always be found in the biggest town on any floor, many of the spirit trees were placed far from any elven fort or castle, which I found curious at first. 
Apparently, the spirit trees had a life span and grew anew every hundred years or so, but even the elves didn’t know where they would sprout. The spirit tree on the sixth floor, however, was an outlier in its longevity and had been living for centuries even at the time they built Castle Galey around it. 
I was explaining all this background information to Asuna when the door on the west wing of the castle opened loudly. Suddenly, Asuna’s face burst into a brilliant smile. 
“Asuna! Kirito!” 
Greeting us and rushing over was a female knight wearing black-steel armor and a dark cloak, with a curved saber on her left hip. Her skin was a brilliant brown, and her short-cropped hair was grayish-purple. 
Asuna walked forward and threw her arms wide. The knight leaped into them and circled her hands around the fencer’s back. After more than five seconds of this embrace, she turned to me with open arms. I’d been going in for a handshake, so I had to stifle my shyness and accept her bear trap. Somewhere in my head was the mysterious statement that It’s through heavy metal armor, so it’s okay. 

The knight’s embrace lasted another five seconds before she let go, stepped back, and clapped my shoulder. It was only three days ago that we parted, but it felt like it had been so much longer. I greeted the member of the Pagoda Knights Brigade of Lyusula, the beautiful dark elf who was our good friend. 
“Kizmel, it’s good to see you.” 
“It is indeed, Asuna and Kirito. I’m glad you’ve come…It must have been difficult to cross this arid land on foot,” she said. 
Asuna beamed. “It was nothing, knowing we’d see you at the end.” 
“I’m happy to hear you say that. Please, come inside and clean off the dust of your journey…but only after you’ve paid your respects to the liege of the castle. I’m sorry to delay your rest…” 
“No, if we’re going to enjoy the hospitality here, we must show our appreciation,” I said. Kizmel looked apologetic but proceeded to escort us across the open square. 
Reflecting on it now, between the camp on the third floor, Yofel Castle on the fourth, and Shiyaya Village on the fifth, the dark elf NPCs had never been openly hostile to us, but they’d been standoffish in general. It seemed that the quests we’d been doing for them had begun to affect their attitude, because as with the camp when we visited yesterday, the various guards and servants we passed in the open area gave us polite salutes. It could’ve just been because we had the elite knight with us, but I returned the gestures all the same. We headed to the left of the spirit tree—to the front gate of the castle. 
The main body of the castle was a story taller than the wings and jutted about fifteen or twenty feet above the cliffs that surrounded the basin. I visited this place during the beta, but I merely accepted the main quest and reported back when I was done, so I didn’t have strong memories of it. 
But when I passed through the guarded doors into the main hall, I couldn’t help but join Asuna in her admiration. 
The exterior of Castle Galey was carved from the reddish rock, with detailed design but a uniform texture that didn’t convey the same beauty that Yofel Castle did. But on the inside, it had finely laid black-and-ivory tiles and no hint at all that it was some archaeological ruin. I felt as though the interior was decorated in a simpler fashion during the beta, so either Argus’s designers put hard work into spiffing up the place, or the dark elves had. 
We crossed the perfectly clean hall—not a speck of dust to be seen—and ascended the double-spiral staircase to the lord’s office on the third floor. The castle’s master, Count Melan Gus Galeyon, was the extremely rare elf who was large and hearty, with a splendid beard. But he did not possess the same humanity (elfanity?) as Viscount Yofilis, and his dialogue was rather generic as he welcomed us with a main quest and three sub-quests. 
When we left his chamber, Kizmel joined us in exhaling with relief. I stared at her profile without realizing what I was doing, and she gave me a guilty smile. “I am of common birth. Since receiving the duty of recovering the hidden keys, I have had more interactions with nobles, but it is not something one gets used to.” 
“Ha-ha, I’m a commoner, too. I get nervous around important people. I don’t know about Asuna, though.” 
I had suspicions that Asuna was quite a pampered rich girl—despite her propensity for instant violence—and the fencer gave me a jab to the side, sure enough. “Of course I’m an ordinary civilian, and yes, I get nervous!” 
“Ha-ha-ha. You two get along so well. Well, let me show you to your room.” 
Kizmel placed a hand on each of our backs and pushed us west, down a windowless hallway. We soon reached a guest chamber on the third floor of the west wing. On the opposite wall from the door was a lattice window, through which the sun setting over the horizon—make that the outer aperture of Aincrad—was bright red. 
“Ooh, it’s such a lovely room!” exclaimed Asuna, doing a full turn at the center of it. 
“It’s a bit smaller than the guest room at Yofel Castle, I know,” Kizmel began, “but it’s actually the second-best in all of Castle Galey.” 
“No, it’s not cramped at all! I bet you could fit five people on this sofa alone!” 
Asuna was showing signs of furniture obsession. She undid her equipment and plopped herself onto a long, wood-framed sofa with an elegant curved design. Kizmel grinned, removed her saber, and sat next to her. I got rid of my sword and armor and sank into an armchair across from them. 
The suite at the Pegasus Hoof, where we talked to Lind about the guild flag, had been quite deluxe, too, but the castle of a count was quite naturally a level or two above in terms of quality furnishing and plushness of cushions. It seemed like a waste that Asuna and I were the only players stopping at this castle…and then I realized I had something to confirm first. 
“Listen, Kizmel.” 
“What is it?” asked the knight, who was reaching for the plate of fruit on the coffee table between us. I chose my words carefully. 
“Well…are there any other humans aside from us at Castle Galey, do you know?” 
Suddenly, the smile vanished from Asuna’s face. But Kizmel simply said, “No, there aren’t.” 
“Oh, I see. Sorry for being weird,” I said, relaxing. I picked up a star-shaped fruit from the dish. 
“But I have heard of other human swordsmen assisting the people of Lyusula,” she continued. “Perhaps you will come across them someday.” 
I froze in an awkward position, fruit held just before my open mouth. 
Nearly two months had passed since the start of this game of death—and over two weeks since we opened up the third floor—so it wasn’t strange at all that there would be other players undertaking the “Elf War” quest on the dark elf side. But if that just happened to be Morte and his friends, there was no protection here at Castle Galey against their malice. 
Morte slaughtered Cylon, lord of Stachion, without a moment’s hesitation. So if they wanted to, they would try to do that to the dark elves in this castle…and to Kizmel, too. In pure fighting power, Kizmel was overwhelmingly stronger than them, but there was no overlooking the wicked creativity of a motivated PKer. 
We would need to fulfill our purpose for being at this castle as quickly as we could, I decided. I made eye contact with Asuna, then tossed the fruit in my mouth and opened up my game window. 
What I pulled from my item storage, which the elves called Mystic Scribing, were the double-sided dagger and the two throwing picks, which shared a certain kind of cruelty in their design. As soon as she saw them arranged on the table, Kizmel’s face tightened. 
“…Kirito…what are those…?” 
“Um…we were attacked by two fellow humans last night. They dropped these weapons in the attempt…” 
Kizmel was already on her feet. “You were attacked?!” she yelled. “Was it just attempted robbery, or…?” 
“Uh…I think they were trying to kill us…” 
“……My word…!!” 
The dark elf’s onyx eyes glowed with pale flames—or so it seemed to me. She stood up straight, grabbing the saber she’d left standing against the side of the sofa, and shouted, “If I were there, I would have lopped their heads from their shoulders! Kirito, Asuna, you must not return to your human towns! You must stay with me…” 
“No, no, no, we’re fine,” I assured the furious elf, getting her to sit back down. I pointed at the weapons on the table again. “We managed to drive them off without suffering much dam…er, any wounds. But they’re very persistent, so there’s no question they’re still out to get us. The problem is the weapons they were using…Especially these, which are poisoned throwing needles. Can you tell us anything about this, Kizmel…?” I finished, all in a single breath, sliding one of the picks over to the knight. 
“……” 
Kizmel stood her saber against the sofa and lifted the pick high over her head, so that it caught the light from the window. 
“…This isn’t steel. It was fashioned from the spike of some living thing,” she said. 
Asuna leaned forward and tapped the other pick. She read the flavor text on its item properties out loud. “Kizmel, these human words say, THE SUNKEN ELF GENERAL N’LTZAHH FACED THE DREAD DRAGON SHMARGOR AND CUT OFF EVERY LAST ONE OF ITS SPINES, WHICH DRIPPED WITH DEADLY POISON…” 
“N’ltzahh…Shmargor…?!” she repeated, rising again and initially hurling her hand with the pick away from her, before she regained her composure and placed the weapon on the table. She gave us both a look, then began to speak in an officious tone. 
“…Shmargor is an evil dragon spoken of in elven legend. Long in the past, when the elves and humans and dwarves still lived on the earth, a wicked little snake snuck past the priestess and climbed the black Holy Tree to take a bite of the single fruit that grew at the tip of one of its branches. The snake gained eternal life, but it was cursed so that everything that entered its mouth turned to poison. Every time it ate, the snake suffered and died, only to come back to life through the fruit’s holy power. After several centuries, the snake had evolved into a massive, ugly poison dragon that attacked towns and villages. But the human hero Selm defeated it, and it fled to the land of ice far to the distant north…” 
Kizmel’s rich voice faded out, prompting both me and Asuna to exhale. Her smooth and lyrical delivery was so pleasant to listen to, we wanted to ask her to tell us more, even though we knew she couldn’t. 
“…Hmm, that’s kind of a sad story…I doubt the snake wanted to bite the Holy Tree’s fruit out of malice…” Asuna said, shaking her head. 
Kizmel nodded deeply. “The fruit of the Holy Tree is said to give eternal life, and its sap provides invulnerable flesh. Many tragic tales revolve around such fruit. There is this story, for example: At the end of the Month of Holly, which humankind designates as December, there is a holy sage tasked with the duty of giving gifts to children. One year, he learned that the gift he was to give to a sickly little human girl was actually a piece of the Holy Tree’s fruit. Unable to stifle his curiosity, he opened the present box and found an unbearably gorgeous crystal. The sage desired this crystal, and of all the thousands of children, he only failed to deliver that one little girl’s gift. Without the protection of that crystal, the girl did not live to see the new year as she was meant to, and so the holy sage went mad, cursed to wander forever through a night that never ends…” 
“…Do the other stories have similar endings?” Asuna asked. 
Kizmel shrugged. “Most of them do. The gifts of the Holy Tree are not to be coveted.” 
“And from what I remember, the Fallen Elves were banished because they tried to harvest the sap of the Holy Tree,” I interjected, which caused Asuna to gasp. 
“Oh, right! The Fallen Elves were sent to the far north, too. So it would make sense that he encountered Shmargor up there…But wait, does that mean General N’ltzahh has been around since before Aincrad was created…?” 
Kizmel frowned in silence while we talked, so I cautiously asked her, “Um, in fact…how many years ago did Aincrad come into being…?” 
“…Actually, we royal knights do not know the details. As I believe Lord Yofilis told you, only Her Royal Majesty possesses all the legends surrounding the Great Separation and the six sacred keys. All we are told is that this floating castle was created long in the past.” 
She paused for a moment there, brushing the clasp of her cloak before continuing, “However, I have heard that Her Majesty and the forest elf king are very long-lived. So perhaps the man who leads the Fallen is equally ancient. Not that he frightens me.” 
That was a heartening attitude, but I didn’t want Kizmel to end up fighting General N’ltzahh. I had no doubt of her skill as a knight, but even remembering the sight of N’ltzahh up close left me short of breath. He would be worse than anything we’d faced so far, including the five floor bosses. 
Though Kizmel couldn’t have known what I was thinking, she fixed me with a long look from her dark eyes and reached for the table again. This time, she picked up the black dagger that Number Two had dropped—the Dirk of Agony. 
Unlike with the pick, Kizmel merely gave this a once-over, then stated, “Indeed. This is a Fallen weapon.” 
“You can tell just by looking?” Asuna asked, wide-eyed. 
The knight indicated the base of the thin blade. “Do you see the symbol carved faintly down here?” 
“Huh?” I yelped. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t noticed it when I examined the weapon at the inn in Suribus, but sure enough, just above the hilt, there was a very fine carving that glinted orange in the sunlight. The design was of two folding lines that created a pattern of three diamonds, but I had no idea what it meant. 
“What is this…?” Asuna wondered. 
“It apparently represents ice and lightning,” Kizmel answered. 
“Ohhh,” cooed two humans in unison. 
The dark elves had a scimitar and horn, the forest elves had a shield and longsword, and the Fallen Elves had ice and lightning. In a different game, you’d figure the Fallen were masters of ice and lightning magic, but sadly—well, luckily, really—there was no magic in SAO. 
Kizmel put the dagger back on the table and crossed her slender arms over her chest. “These are, indeed, weapons of the Fallen. The same mark was on the blades of those we fought on the third and fifth floors. But I seem to recall that the sigils I saw were not simple carvings, but cast silver.” 
“Now that you mention it, I think that’s right…” Asuna agreed, but I couldn’t honestly remember. I found it hard to believe that an AI like Kizmel would be mistaken, so I moved on from there. 
“You’re saying…this dagger is cheaper than the weapons of the Fallen we’ve fought to this point?” 
“I would say so, but that is not all of it. I suspect these are weapons given to collaborators of other races…Meaning that those human vagabonds who attacked you did not steal that dagger from a slain Fallen, but they were given them for their assistance.” 
“……” 
Asuna and I had discussed that very possibility based on the flavor text of the Dirk of Agony this morning. I felt like Kizmel’s statement turned that vague suspicion into almost verifiable truth. 
Morte and his buddy had found a quest route that involved collaborating with the Fallen Elves, rather than fighting against them. So we ought to assume there would be a way to regain those highly deadly poisoned picks. If we were going to keep fighting them, we needed a way to counteract level-2 paralyzing poison as soon as possible. 
I drew in a breath to explain this, but I was beaten to the punch. 
“Do not worry. As I told you earlier, as long as I am at your side, no vagabonds will threaten you,” Kizmel stated flatly. She patted Asuna’s knee lightly and stood up. 
“Uh, K-Kizmel, we’re not…” I started to say, but she only sat back down to motion us to stand with her. 
“Why don’t we wash off the dust of your travel first? You must have taken on quite a bit of sand during your trip to this castle.” 
Those words turned Asuna’s eyes into hearts—or more accurately, into the symbol for hot springs. Nobody would be able to stop her now. 
I quickly stashed the weapons back in my inventory and hurried after the women. 
When I visited Castle Galey in the beta, I took a tour of the building. A stint in the baths wasn’t on the tour, but I did remember the location of the facilities. 
But Kizmel didn’t head to the second floor of the east wing, where I remembered it. She descended the stairs in the center of the west wing. I found this confusing—but not as much as when we continued descending even past the ground floor. Weren’t we going to the bath? Was there even a basement in the beta…? But the knight’s pace was utterly confident. 
The stairs ended on the basement level, turning into a tiled-floor hallway lit by oddly colored lamps. As we walked, the chilly air gradually grew warmer and warmer. 
Eventually, there was a large door on the right-hand wall. It wasn’t adorned with a hanging curtain with the word for bath on it, like in Japan, but the open doorway was exuding white steam, so it was definitely the right place. In the real world, a place that steamy underground would get as moldy as you could possibly imagine, but we didn’t have to worry about microorganisms or viruses in the virtual world—I hoped. 
When Kizmel and Asuna passed through the door, I stopped and called out, “Okay, I’ll wait for you here.” 
The knight swung around and beckoned to me, looking hurt. “Don’t be silly, Kirito. Come in with us.” 
“Um…I’d feel bad if I forced you two to wear swimsuits like at Yofel Castle…Plus, on the one-in-a-million chance that those vagabonds attack again…” 
Asuna looked exquisitely conflicted, trapped between her guilt at being the only one bathing and her desire to bathe properly in the buff, but Kizmel had no hesitation whatsoever. 
“Do not worry about an attack,” she said. “This castle can only be entered through the gate to the south, and when it opens, the bells can be heard all throughout the castle. And you need not worry about the other matter.” 
“Huh…?” 
“Here, come and see.” 
She grabbed my arm and yanked me through the doorway. 
It was a kind of rest lounge, decorated all over with attractive, leafy plants and tables with rattan chairs on either side wall. There were also pitchers and glasses for water. There were no other dark elves here, probably because it was still early. There were also two rattan doors on the far wall that likely led to the bath. There was a circle on the left door and a square on the right. 
“The bath in this castle is very large, so there are separate entrances for men and women. You will not need your ‘swemsoots’ here, Kirito and Asuna.” 
“Oh…th-that makes sense…” I said, relieved. In that case, I wasn’t opposed to relaxing in a nice huge bath. I didn’t have anything against baths. 
“We will see you later, then.” Kizmel grinned. She and Asuna vanished through the circle door, waving, so I pushed my way through the square entrance. As I expected, there was a changing room next. It seemed appropriate to the fantasy genre that in addition to wicker baskets for holding clothes, there were also armor hooks. But thanks to my art of Mystic Scribing, I could just hit the UNEQUIP ALL button to have my clothes spirited away into storage. After a quick check to make sure no one else was around, I removed the last piece, too. 
Using the provided white towel for the minimal level of defense, I headed through the next door. The tiled hallway turned left, leading toward… 
“Ooh…” 
It was a fantastical enough sight to elicit a murmur from me. The space was a massive dome with a radius of probably thirty feet. The gently curved walls and ceiling were clearly carved straight from the bedrock, but that just accentuated the natural hot spring feel. There were niches in the walls at even intervals, containing lamps that provided soft light to the chamber. 
Under the dome was milky liquid of an opal-white color, and something that looked like a thick vine hung directly from the middle of the ceiling all the way down to the water. This dome was probably located right beneath the open plaza on the surface, which would mean the vine was a root of the spirit tree. 
I put the towel in my inventory and set foot on the first step of the bath, allowing the heat to fill me up to the top of my head. This time, it elicited a “Fwaaa…” from my mouth. It was too shallow to get my whole body in, though, so I headed toward the center, parting the lingering steam as I went. 
Near the root, it was as deep as my waist, so I finally dunked down into the water. 
Just then, the white steam in front of me gave way, revealing another figure at startling proximity. It was too deep for me to leap out of the way, so all I could do was stare. 
In general, I was not a person with a lot of reliance on regulations, self-control, or personal rules—but even I had a few things I demanded of myself. 
One was never to think If only I had (not) done this or that. It was important to understand the reason things happened to ensure I didn’t repeat my mistakes, but I considered worrying about Why did you say that, or If only I’d realized this, or If I’d just started my homework earlier to be nothing more than a waste of my limited mental resources over time. 
But even I, in this one instant, couldn’t help but consider a whole cornucopia of possible actions that I’d failed to take: 
If only I’d been satisfied with the edge of the bath. If only I’d realized why the huge bath was a dome. If only I’d more closely considered Kizmel’s description: There are separate entrances for men and women. If only… 
If only I’d instantly closed my eyes, turned around, and claimed “I didn’t see anything!” maybe there would have been a different result. 
But what I actually did was stare, dumbfounded, for about three whole seconds at the female player standing barely two feet away with all her equipment removed. My eyesight auto-aim kicked in, going first from the collarbone down to the pelvic bone submerged in the water, then back up, until I finally saw her face. 
At this moment, there was only one other player in Castle Galey aside from me. So naturally, this person staring equally dumbfounded back at me was my partner of about a month, Miss Asuna the fencer. 
Wow…after all that trouble, we’ve beaten five floor bosses in a month. At this rate, we could be on the tenth floor by mid-January, I thought, my mind grasping for anything other than the reality I was facing: Asuna’s neck, jaw, and then nose turning fiery red. When the color reached her hairline, she grunted “Nngh!” and raised her arm with a violent splash. Upon seeing her clenched fist, I thought, Well, I suppose I’ve earned this one, fair and squa— 
No, no, no, wait! 
I couldn’t accept that punch. This castle wasn’t under the anti-criminal code. If level-19 Asuna hit me with a full-power punch while I was unarmored, she would do damage to my HP, and that would change her cursor color to orange. Normally, when we were out of town, she carefully adjusted her jabs to play nice, but the gloves were literally off now. 
“W-wait, no!” I yelled, but the God of Fury before me could hear no human words. 
“Hnnngggg!” she roared, and before she could unleash her fists, I took the one option that would avoid her being designated a criminal player. 
I toppled forward, not backward, and folded my arms around her body, then pushed her into the water, sending up a glorious plume of hot water. We sank nearly three feet into the cloudy bath. 
I clutched the struggling girl, who continued trying to scream even under the water. I wanted to yell “You’re going to turn orange!” but the only sound that came out of my mouth was “Bwuh-bubbu-ba-beww-bowah-glurble-gurlurgle!” 
Naturally, the Drowning icon showed up above our HP bars, and with the way the air was escaping our mouths, HP loss wasn’t far off. We couldn’t let ourselves die for such a pathetic reason, so I pulled us up enough for our heads to breach the surface, still holding Asuna. This would be my final chance to warn her about going orange… 
Then a deluge of freezing-cold water poured onto us from above, literally cooling our heads. I froze in place, completely bewildered. It was Kizmel, who had no doubt come to the bath later due to the process of manual armor removal, looking down on us. “Well, well, aren’t we friendly?” she commented. 
Naturally, she had not a single piece of equipment on, but by this point, I didn’t have any mental power left to reflect on it. 
Later on, I was told that the spirit tree at Castle Galey was constantly sucking up the natural hot spring water through its roots to support its branches and leaves, occasionally becoming so quenched that it dripped like rain to form the pool at its base. The cold pool steadily seeped into the bedrock, and every hour or so, it poured into the underground spring like a waterfall. 
It made a certain kind of sense—and also made no sense at all—but the point was, it saved us from a variety of potential troubles. Asuna’s class temporarily changed from Fencer to God of Fury, but when she remembered that we weren’t in a safe haven, she realized what my actions were meant to do. She cycled through five or six different facial expressions before she said, “I apologize for doing that” and went back to being human again. 
I sank down to my shoulders and considered what to do now. The water itself was almost completely opaque, so if you stayed five feet apart, you couldn’t see the other person’s body whatsoever, but I didn’t have the willpower to sit back and enjoy my bath, even under those circumstances. It seemed that I should just equip the swimsuit Asuna made for me on the fourth floor, but for some reason, she was just soaking in a daze without doing the same, so I felt a bit hesitant to open my window. 
In the end, I decided that simply finding a way to peel off and get out of there was best, and I was scooting off to the side when Kizmel, who was soaking on the other side of Asuna from me, started speaking. 
“You know, about those throwing picks…I think I may know a way to counteract the poison that seeps from them.” 
“Wha…?” 
That was exactly what I’d been hoping to ask her about. I scooted several inches closer out of sheer fixation—until a hard stare from Asuna held me at bay. 
“If those throwing picks are indeed fashioned from the spikes of the dragon Shmargor, then the story of the human hero Selm fighting the dragon should be useful to consult. As I recall, Selm gained the assistance of an elven sage and constructed a tool to stop the dragon’s poison…” 
“Ooh…and how do you create that item?” I asked, leaning forward again. This time, Asuna was paying attention to Kizmel, so I didn’t attract her ire. 
“Was the sage a dark elf or a forest elf?” 
Kizmel replied to these questions with a short shrug. “I heard the story from my grandmother when I was a child. I’m afraid I don’t recall the finer details. But I believe a dark elf storyteller would have a full and proper recollection of the story of Shmargor.” 
“S-storyteller? Where can we go to meet such a person?” 
Please, please, let it be somewhere on a floor we’ve already cleared out, relatively close to the main town! I prayed. It was answered with surprising helpfulness. 
“There is a storyteller in this very castle. But as a general rule, they are very old and spend most of the day sleeping, so you will need to visit the library around the middle of the day.” 
“Nice!” 
I just barely held back from throwing in a “Sweet!” as well. It wasn’t confirmed yet that we’d be able to craft an antidote, but even the possibility was welcome. 
As for Asuna, she found her interest drawn to something else. She turned to face Kizmel, rippling the surface of the bath. 
“I’ve never seen an elderly elf before…Are they youthful in appearance, too?” 
“Our elders rarely venture outside the city; that is why. As for their appearances…Well, I find that a difficult question to answer.” 
“Oh. Of course. I’ll just look forward to finding out in person.” 
“That is a good idea. I think I’ll get out now. What about you two?” the knight asked. We looked at each other for the briefest of moments, then agreed that we were done, too. I turned around, still crouched, and headed for the men’s dressing room—though it didn’t make sense to me why you’d have separate dressing rooms that led into the same bath. But before I left, one last question crossed my mind, and I turned back around. 
“Oh yeah, Kizmel—” 
Into my line of sight leaped the upper half of the standing knight—and Asuna desperately using both hands to cover her up. I quickly averted my eyes. 
“Hmm? What is it, Kirito?” 
“Uh…I-I’ll ask in the lounge! Um, s-see you later!” 
I quickly beat a breaststroke retreat across the bath for the stairs before any further attacks could come my way. 
One of the nice things about SAO was that wet hair and skin dried very quickly upon leaving the water. So I didn’t need to towel off as I headed down the dark hallway to the changing room, equipped a black shirt and pants, and entered the lounge. The women weren’t back yet, and no one else was visiting the place, so I slumped lazily into one of the rattan chairs along the wall and heaved a deep sigh. 
I had no issues with bathing in general, but it had been the source of trouble more than once or twice since I partnered up with Asuna: I had to wear a skimpy suit with a bear logo on it in Yofel Castle, and there, I got my head dunked. I had to guard Asuna while she bathed at the dark elf camp on the third floor, where Kizmel barged in on me. Nothing much happened on the second floor, but on the first… 
“Actually…I think bathing was the start of all this…” I muttered, pouring water from the pitcher on the table into a glass and drinking it all down. 
As a matter of fact, when we first met, Asuna hadn’t removed her red riding hood for anyone, and the moment when it first felt like the distance between us was closing the tiniest bit was when she came to the place I’d been renting out in Tolbana on the first floor of Aincrad. Her visit was to use my bath. 
With exquisitely poor timing, Argo the info dealer arrived while she was bathing, having run across her while trying to slip into the bathroom to change equipment. But if I hadn’t been renting out a place with a deluxe bath in the first place, we might not have ever found ourselves working together. 
So no matter how many times it led to incidents, I couldn’t hold ill will against the baths of Aincrad…I just needed to make sure I knew the men’s and women’s baths were fully separate next time. 
The swinging door with the circle mark on it opened, and Asuna and Kizmel returned. The fencer was wearing a yellow tunic I’d never seen before, while the knight was in a shimmering purple gown—both noticeably more sheer than their usual clothes, which flustered me at first (even though it seemed unnecessary to get worked up about, after what had just happened in the bath). 
Fortunately, Asuna’s memories of that disaster had been overwritten by the pleasure of her first Aincrad bath in a natural hot spring. She threw herself into the rattan chair on my right, a look of bliss on her face, and said, “Ahhh…that was good…” 
I handed her a cup of cold water, which she gulped down. “Pweeh!” 
Kizmel sat in the chair on my left, elegantly folding her long legs, and said, “It is indeed quite a splendid bath we have here. It is a shame I will have to move again, once my duty on this floor is over.” 
“I see. You’ve got a busy life, Kizmel…You’ve got the, um…Jade and Lapis and Amber Keys stored in a safe location, right?” 
“But of course. They are in the treasure repository on the fourth floor of the central hall.” 
“T-treasure repository, huh…?” 
I’d sure like to see that. But I bet it’s the type of place where I’ll get yelled at, I wondered selfishly, but Asuna had a much more practical thought in mind: 
“Kizmel…aren’t you worried that the forest elves might attack in search of the keys again, like they did at Yofel Castle?” 
This was a very good question. Thick stone walls and massive gate aside, this place would make a significantly easier target than Yofel Castle, which was surrounded by water on all sides. The forest elves had put so much effort into seizing the keys back, it was hard to imagine them giving up after one defeat. 
There could be enemy soldiers sneaking up outside the gates even as we sat here. The disquieting thought nearly got me up out of my seat. 
“…No. You need not worry about that,” Kizmel stated. Both Asuna and I stared at the side of her face. Something in the faint gloom of her expression told me the source of her certainty. 
“Oh, I see. The area outside this castle…” 
“That’s right. The wasteland that surrounds us is so desolate and dry…that neither dark elf nor forest elf can last within it for long. Inside the castle, we are protected by the blessings of the spirit tree, but if that tree was to die out, we would be forced to abandon this place.” 
When I visited Castle Galey in the beta, the dark elf who gave me the quest—neither Kizmel nor Count Galeyon, just a nameless commander—told me the same thing. I took it at face value at the time, but now it only brought fresh questions. 
“But then, how will you get the key on this floor back? You can telep…er, travel through the spirit trees at the castles on the fifth and seventh floor, but the key is still far from this place, isn’t it?” 
“That’s correct,” she admitted. There still seemed to be a faint note of mourning on her features, but when she turned to us, she was wearing her usual languid smile. “But do not fear. This castle is equipped with a means to leave in the case of a sudden emergency. It will allow us to cross the arid wastes.” 
At that, my partner and I shared a meaningful look. We didn’t need to speak aloud to understand each other. 
“Kizmel,” Asuna said, “Kirito and I will retrieve the hidden key on this floor. We might not be as strong as you, but we’re much tougher than we used to be.” 
“I do not doubt that,” the elf replied, looking hesitant, “but I cannot expect you to do the job for me. The friction with the forest and Fallen Elves is our problem…And think of it this way. If you had not saved my life in the Forest of Wavering Mists, I would have been killed by that forest elf—or we would have fought to our mutual deaths, at best. How can I be allowed to stay safe and sound in a castle while allowing you two to do all the dirty, dangerous work?” 
“Just like this, that’s how!” I wanted to shout, but the look on the proud knight’s face prevented me. Asuna appeared to have more to say on the matter, but I waved her back and said, “All right…then let’s go and get the key tomorrow. But don’t take unnecessary risks. If any of it seems tough, you must promise to tell us at once.” 
I held out my left pinkie finger, which Kizmel stared at. 
“What is wrong with your finger?” 
“Oh, uh…It’s a human custom. When you make a promise, you intertwine your pinkies.” 
“Ah. Like this?” 
Kizmel hooked her right pinkie around mine and moved her hand up and down. Asuna got up from her chair saying “Me too!” and held out her right hand to Kizmel, who used her free hand to do the same, smiling awkwardly. 
“It is a strange custom, but it feels fun. I promise not to take unnecessary risks, if you promise to prioritize your own safety.” 
“Of course!” Asuna and I replied in unison. The knight beamed. 
After the underground bath, she led us to the dining room on the second floor of the central hall. 
It was dinnertime, and many elves were present. There was even a small stage, upon which two elves in fanciful costumes were playing a lute and flute. Some of the soldiers were even singing quietly along to the tune. 
The food itself was noticeably simpler than the full-course meal at Yofel Castle, but this way suited my taste better, and the stew of tubers and meat on the bone was good enough that I asked for seconds. 
After deciding when we’d meet in the morning, we said good-bye to Kizmel at the third-floor hallway of the west wing—even though the knight’s room was just next to ours—and returned to our guest chamber. We let out heavy breaths and found ourselves glancing at each other. 
It felt like I needed to apologize for my scandalous behavior in the bath, but Asuna was sending a silent signal for me not to say anything at all. My game window said it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, which, on a typical day, meant I’d head back out for some night activity, but we were tired from the dungeon spelunking and crossing the wasteland today and agreed that we should get an early bedtime. 
But we failed to realize that we hadn’t yet faced the greatest peril of the day. 
This guest chamber was another suite, where the living room was located in a separate area from the sleeping area. But unlike the place we stayed the night before, there was only one bedroom door. 
We looked at each other again, then crossed the living room and opened the door. The bedroom was equally decadent, but there was just one queen-sized bed in the center of the room. 
Last night, I’d slept on the sofa rather than my bed, so I could just do the same thing—except that was because Asuna had fallen fast asleep first. Knowing how my partner hated to be given special treatment, I suspected… 
“Um…I’ll just sleep on the sofa, okay…?” 
“You’re not going to get a good night’s sleep that way.” 
I would’ve protested, but she was actually right, and she knew it. 
While sleeping in SAO, the player’s real-life body was in a sleep state as well, but the NerveGear kept faithfully sending virtual bodily signals all the while. If you slept on a fancy bed, you would feel the softness envelop your back. If you slept outdoors on the ground, it would be rough and uncomfortable. Naturally, the latter would provide shallower sleep, often failing to result in anything more than a surface-level snooze. 
The sofa in the living room was large enough, and its mattress was nice and thick, but because the seat cushions were mounded, it wasn’t suitable for lying down on. When I was soloing on the first floor, I camped out all the time—with a blanket, at least—so I could sleep on this, but whether Asuna accepted that or not was a different matter. 
“Listen, I can sleep anywhere. Don’t mind me, just take the bed and—” 
“We are game partners, aren’t we?” Asuna interrupted. 
She was correct, of course. 
“Y-yeah?” 
“So it would be wrong to place all the burden on one of us.” 
Again, she was absolutely correct. 
“…Y-yeah.” 
“Then this is the only option.” 
She dragged me by the sleeve into the bedroom and peeled back half the covers on the large bed. Right in the center of the perfectly pristine white sheets, she drew a line two feet long down the middle with her finger. 
“This is the border.” 
I hadn’t heard that word since the time we slept in Kizmel’s tent in the dark elf camp on the third floor, and the surprise brought a burst of laughter to my lips—and a fierce glare from Asuna. 
“A-all right…I get it. I understand. Capisce.” 
Asuna gave me a scowl back, but she indicated this was sufficient and put the covers back. 
While we’d landed on a compromise for the bed issue, the circumstances were a little—no, a lot—different from the tent. Sleeping on the ground there meant excusing a lot of potential contact under the general experience of “roughing it.” But in a proper building, a proper bedroom, a proper bed, there could be no excuses. The border drawn on the sheets was as fragile and perilous as the Line of Control in Kashmir. 
But for being so susceptible to spontaneous accidents, the fencer exhibited surprising fortitude toward this situation. 
“Well…I’ll sleep on this side,” she said, taking the half farther away from the window and slipping under the blanket. With her back to me, she opened her window, pressed a button or two, then closed it. I heard a swishing sound under the covers, which was probably her changing into pajamas. 
Then she wriggled down deeper until only the back of her head was visible. It seemed her strategy was to fall asleep as soon as possible, which seemed like the right call to me, so I tapped the wall and turned off the lights in the bedroom and living room. 
There was a window on the west bedroom wall, and gauzy moonlight trickled through the lace curtains. The day started off cloudy but cleared up in the afternoon. Hopefully the weather will be nice tomorrow, I thought, trying to distract myself as I entered the side of the bed opposite Asuna. 
The bed was about six feet across, so as long as I stayed on the very left edge, far from the border, I didn’t need to be conscious of my partner’s presence, physically speaking. Whatever the mattress was made of, it had just the right mixture of support and softness, and the blanket was light and as warm as a down comforter. I had to admit that Asuna was right; the sofa out there and my heavy-duty camping blanket were a far cry from this kind of comfort. 
My head sank into the massive pillow, and my eyelids closed, and despite the situation, I felt the sleep fairy sneaking up on me. There we go—fall asleep, fall asleep, and get an extra room tomorrow… 
“Are you still awake, Kirito?” 
“………Ayup.” 
The fairy had scampered away. If she said “Just checking,” what kind of a snappy response should I have? But the follow-up from over the border was not what I was expecting. 
“You know how there’s that anti-harassment code? The thing that came up in Mr. Romolo’s workshop on the fourth floor when you tried to wake me up?” 
“Y…yes.” 
This ominous topic dispelled my sleepiness entirely. Now I had no idea where she was taking this. 
“I was just thinking…you pushed me over when we were in the bath.” 
“N-no…I was keeping you from going orange.” 
“But you pushed me over.” 
“………Ayup.” 
“So why didn’t the anti-harassment code activate?” 
Why didn’t it…? 
I didn’t have an answer on the tip of my tongue. I had to think about it. 
“Um…Does it not show up if you’re in a party together…? No, because we were partied up on the fourth floor…Maybe it depends on the time of contact…? But no, I don’t remember touching you for very long on the fourth floor, either…” 
“It’s not an issue of how you make contact. When you tried to wake me up, you just touched my shoulder, and it went off, but it didn’t happen when you pushed me over naked.” 
“P-please don’t say it like that…” I begged. 
Indeed, it wasn’t logical that the code activated just from touching her shoulder, and yet, pressing against her without any equipment on didn’t do a thing. Was there any other condition that was different between the workshop and the underground hot spring, aside from party configuration and time of contact? 
“Mmm-hmmmm…” 
I chased away the sleep fairy, who was trying to sneak back into my mind. But the soft, fluffy bed was just so soft and fluffy, and if it was any softer and fluffier, it would soft…fluff… 
“……Ah.” 
The instant I began tumbling off the precipice into sleep was the hint I needed. 
“When it happened…you were sleeping.” 
She must have been nodding off, too, because her reply came at a delay. 
“…What? The code activated because I was sleeping? You mean it won’t go off if you’re awake…?” 
“…No, I don’t think that’s it…But that’s the only thing I can think of…” 
“Hmm……” 
After another silence of many seconds, my temporary partner surprised me once more. 
“Pinkie…” 
“Eh?” 
“Hold out your pinkie.” 
I wriggled my little finger through the blanket, then remembered the invisible line. 
“But the border—” 
“One finger’s worth of trespassing can be overlooked. Hurry it up.” 
“Okay…” 
Hesitantly, I stretched my arm, sticking out my pinkie near the centerline of the bed. After a few moments, what I assumed was Asuna’s pinkie brushed mine and grabbed it. On instinct, I squeezed back. 
“So, um…what are we doing?” 
“Just be quiet.” 
“……” 
“…The window for the code isn’t popping up. So if we fall asleep like this, and it’s showing when we wake up, that would indicate that your theory is correct, to a degree.” 
“……Ah, I see…” 
The tension drained out of my body. Asuna’s pinkie pressure eased a little bit, and she whispered, “Well, good night…” 
“If the prompt does show up, don’t hit the button in your sleep.” 
“Yeah…I…know…” 
“Good night.” 
From that point on, silence fell on the land of the blankets, and the only thing coming over the border was the faint sound of sleeping. I closed my eyes again, but the gentle warmth of that pinkie contact prevented my wits from dispersing to all corners. 
I was curious about the workings of the anti-harassment code, of course, but there were still many things for Asuna and me to do on this floor yet. We hadn’t finished the “Curse of Stachion” quest, we had to help advance progress through the floor, the handling of the guild flag was still up in the air, and tomorrow, we’d be helping Kizmel with the quest to retrieve the Agate Key. And the biggest problem of all was the PKers. 
 

I’d told myself on numerous occasions that it was pointless trying to decipher their way of thinking, but I still couldn’t help myself. 
Why were Morte, the dagger user, and the man in the black poncho trying to make the DKB and ALS fight? Especially when it was obvious that it would only harm our chances of beating this game and finding freedom from its electronic prison? 
No matter their reasons, I would never forgive them for the act of attempting to kill Asuna. I would never let their wicked blades anywhere near her again. 
For an instant, I was seized by a shockingly powerful urge. 
I didn’t want this pinkie. 
I wanted to grab her hand, pull her close, and wrap my arms around her. I wanted to make it clear that I was going to keep her safe. 
But I couldn’t do that. Our partnership probably wasn’t going to last forever, and it shouldn’t. Until the day she stood at the lead of our best and brightest, standing as a symbol of hope for all the players of the game, I would continue providing her with whatever help I could, as a beta tester. That was my role. 
I let the tension slowly drain out of my body, exhaled, and tensed my finger one more time, just to feel that the sensation was still there. 
…Good night, I whispered in my mind, and I gave myself up to sleep at last. 
(To be continued)