Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 10

10 

UNFORTUNATELY, WE DID NOT FIND THEANO UNDERNEATH the lord’s mansion. 

And she was not the only one we missed. There was something else—not a person but an object—that was incredibly important but gone from the building. 

Because Lord Cylon was dead—or missing, as the official word went for now—most of the servants were gone, and the mansion greeted us in a desolately quiet state. Our party of four headed first to the entrance of the dungeon on the second basement floor, but Theano was not there, and the marble door was shut tight, so we went outside to look for Terro the gardener. 

When we found him in the corner of the yard, Terro refused to answer any of our questions, claiming he didn’t know or understand—and it wasn’t clear if he even remembered Asuna and me or not. But when Myia, still wearing the gas mask, demanded he explain what he was hiding, the big man spilled the beans at once. 

The day after Cylon’s death—the morning of January 2— Theano showed up out of nowhere and got Terro to help her open the secret back door to the underground maze. This time, I did not hold back from shouting “Th’ellman?!”—a contraction of “What the hell, man?” 

A back door. If that existed, then the key to get into the dungeon was completely pointless. Cylon could have just gone in there and whisked out the golden cube himself. I was so stunned that I fell into a sitting position with my arms around my knees. 

Asuna knelt down to whisper in my ear, “Don’t dungeons usually have some hidden passageway or door in the very last room that you can use to get out?” 

The fencer hadn’t really played an RPG before being trapped in SAO, so if even she was calling me out with basic knowledge like this, I had to suck it up. And upon closer reflection, only a person who had been through the dungeon before would know about the secret back door, and given that this was under the mansion, that would leave only Pithagrus and Theano; and the former was dead. I’d been through it in the beta, but I recalled being teleported back to the entrance after I got the golden cube. 

Thinking back on it, there were very frequent uses of teleportation in the beta outside of teleport gates and activation of the anti-harassment code—but it seemed like nearly all of them were removed in the final release. Including, of course, teleporting to Blackiron Palace when you died. 

It was with this in mind that I stood up, composed myself, and allowed Terro to lead us to the dungeon’s back door. The large man used his considerable strength to shift the entire base of a stone statue in a corner of the yard, revealing a staircase below. The four of us filed through into the final chamber of the dungeon, bypassing all the puzzles and ghosts and boss monsters in the process. 

As I expected, there was no sign of a bloodied golden cube or Myia’s mother, Theano. We left the mansion without much to show for it and came to a stop about ten meters from its stately gates. Silence dominated the group. 

“…Shall we just find a quiet place where we can reexamine the situation?” Asuna suggested, to Kizmel’s and Myia’s agreement. I was with them, of course, but I knew that two players and two NPCs, three of us hooded, would attract attention, and we’d already been attacked inside a locked house, so there probably wasn’t anywhere safe to go inside the town. 

“…You know, maybe the open terrace seats along the main road with all its traffic are less likely to get us attacked…” I proposed, thinking we should just accept the visibility and focus on safety. 

But before Asuna could say anything, it was Kizmel who said, “Do you—and Myia—still have any reason to be in this town?” 

“Huh…?” Asuna and I shared a look, then went back to Kizmel. 

We did have plans here. After we did what we could about the quest, we were going to use Stachion’s teleport gate to visit the first floor and show Kizmel the Town of Beginnings. But in this situation, we’d have to be prepared for an attack while sightseeing—and was it right to drag Myia along with us? 

“Well…um…” I stammered, which was all Kizmel needed to hear. I could see her smiling under the deep hood. 

She turned to my partner and said, “Asuna, I am very touched to learn that you planned many things for us to do together. But I cannot ignore Myia and her Fallen attackers and go on a sightseeing vacation. The old me might not have cared at all about the squabbles of humankind…but much as you two saved me, now I wish to save Myia.” 

Asuna closed her eyes slowly and opened them again with a smile that was breathtakingly gentle, even loving. “Our plans can wait. We have all the time in the world. I can set up something else once we’ve solved all these problems. And both Kirito and I aren’t in any mood to abandon Myia, either.” 

She rested her hand on Myia’s shoulder. I was sure that Asuna had seen the girl’s level, but she didn’t seem to be viewing the situation through that particular lens. And for Myia’s part, she didn’t hold her own considerable skill in any kind of high esteem. 

She bowed deeply to us. “Thank you…I cannot imagine where my mother is now or what she is doing. Please, I would appreciate your help.” 

“But of course,” Kizmel said at once, before looking to me. “Now, I have a suggestion…Why don’t we take Myia back to the castle? There is no concern of the Fallen attacking her there, and we will find plenty of places to relax and speak openly.” 

“Whaaat?!” I yelped. 

But it was true: If the Anti-Criminal Code wasn’t going to help us now, then no place could be safer for us than Castle Galey. The only issue was whether Myia would agree to leave her home of Stachion and travel that far… 

So I explained about Castle Galey to Myia. Behind the ports of the gas mask, her eyes were big and sparkling. In a rush, the words came tumbling out. 

“Of course I want to go see an elf castle.” 

We left Stachion, taking the short route back through the woods, and used the rapidly dwindling stock of Droplets of Villi on our soles to cross Lake Talpha. While crossing the wasteland of the second area north, we found another fruiting cactus and took a short break to pick it clean. Myia took off her mask for the first time in hours to eat and exclaimed that she had never tasted such delicious fruit before. Kizmel proudly explained to her that a cactus fruited for only thirty minutes throughout an entire year. 

The giant scorpions of the canyon area were as tough as always, but we made quick work of them with the addition of not one, but two high-powered NPCs. The gamer in me wanted to just hang out and farm for half a day, but my conscience got the better of me, and I knew it wasn’t right to use a ten-year-old girl as a power-leveling tool. Still, with what we earned in the south-area dungeon yesterday and the reward bonus for the “Agate Key” quest, I got to level 21, and Asuna reached level 20. Kizmel and Myia gave us both a round of applause when it happened. 

A few minutes after one o’clock, we reached the canyon just before Castle Galey. 

“Ooooh…!” Myia marveled at the massive castle in the distance. She hadn’t been out of Stachion in ten years, so the wonder of seeing the stately dark elf building had to be far beyond when I first saw Kawagoe Castle in the real world. For that matter, Kawagoe Castle didn’t even have any towers, so its profile was much less impressive. 

A little while ago, I would have agonized over the question of “What does a sense of wonder really mean to an NPC?” but my view of NPCs (of AIs in general) had been updated many times in recent days. I couldn’t just assume that only Kizmel and Viscount Yofilis were special NPCs above the rest. 

As we approached the castle over the stone bridge that was apparently once an aqueduct, the bells began ringing, and the heavy gates started to open. Only then did it occur to me that Myia was a human and had not accepted any dark elf quests, but the guards did not seem interested in accosting her, perhaps because of Kizmel’s presence. I made a mental note to ask about getting the girl another one of the sigil rings as we trotted through the half-open gates. 

Myia exclaimed again as she looked up at the vast branches of the spirit tree and the looming castle behind it. Castle Galey ran in an arc along the curved cliff, which had to be a delightful change from Stachion and all its relentless straight angles. Once this was all done, we could take her to see Karluin on the fifth floor, Yofel Castle on the fourth, and Zumfut on the third. Meanwhile, Kizmel lowered the hood of the Greenleaf Cape and said, “Shall we speak in your room, Asuna? Or in the dining hall?” 

The fencer lowered her own hood and said, “The bath.” 

I knew I didn’t have the right to refuse her, and my only hope in getting out of it was little Myia, who happily accepted, so I had no choice but to follow the three women. We used the west-wing stairs to go underground and arrived at the changing rooms for men and women. Sulking, I decided that I wouldn’t wear a pair of swim trunks for defense, just to spite them, and headed into the hot spring for the indented part below the spirit tree’s hanging roots. 

Once I sank into the cloudy hot water up to my shoulders, I accidentally let out a wheeze of exhilaration. I hated to admit it, but after marching to Stachion and back, and all the fighting in that dusty canyon valley, a good soak in a hot bath was like nothing else. I leaned back against the spring roots and closed my eyes, letting my mind relax and expand. In the real world, falling asleep in a hot bath put you at risk of dehydration or drowning. But in the virtual world…well, if you fell asleep and went under the water here, you’d probably wind up in a drowning status and lose some HP. And yet, it was impossible to resist the pleasure of all my muscles relaxing amid the pleasant, musky plant smell… 

“I wonder if he’s still back in there,” said a voice not too far away, but I was nearly 70 percent of the way to being asleep and didn’t react in the moment. 

“He must have various things to prepare,” said a different voice. 

Then the first voice said, “I can’t imagine what he would possibly need to get ready…But anyway, let’s wait for him near the roots. Yesterday, I found a dent in them that was almost shaped like an easy chair…” 

Suddenly, something soft rested itself on top of me. No amount of serenity could prevent me from reacting to this, however. “Hwhoa—?!” 

It took over two minutes to defuse the crisis that ensued after that. 

“I could have sworn that we had a deal to stay on opposite sides of the center line,” said a voice so cross that I could practically visualize the puff of steam coming off it. 

Without hope of winning, I argued, “But I thought that seat position was just about at the border line…” 

“No! You were nearly four centimeters on the women’s side of the bath!” Asuna claimed. She was sitting right in the little cocoon space she stole from me, with Myia resting on her lap. Kizmel sat on a thick root nearby, but the steam from the bath here was so thick that I couldn’t even see their silhouettes. The only reason I knew where the ladies were was from the green and yellow cursors. 

“And for one thing, if you’re already in the water, you should at least let us know. When you’re hiding in this spot the way you were, of course I’m going to assume you have something devious in mind,” Asuna continued, still grumpy. 

Myia innocently chimed in, “I thought you and Kirito were either brother and sister or boyfriend and girlfriend.” 

“W…well, you’re wrong! He’s just a party mem…er, a partner, or a sidekick, or an attendant, or what have you!” Asuna protested with fantastic awkwardness. 

Idly, I wondered if Myia thought I was the older brother or Asuna was the older sister. Given the price of the NerveGear and the difficulty of buying a copy of SAO at launch, it seemed unlikely that Asuna was any less than fourteen years old, and her wide knowledge and general bossiness gave her an older-sister air. But every now and then, she showed a glimpse of childishness that made it much harder to tell. In any case, attendant was a cruel word to use. Maybe sidekick really was a better fit… 

My thoughts were really going free-form when I was brought back to attention by Kizmel’s vivid, delighted voice rippling the surface of the water. “Ha-ha-ha…I have been around you for quite a while, and even I have trouble ascertaining the particular nature of your connection. You seem to act with one mind in battle, but you fight three times a day. That was the second, by the way.” 

“What? No, we’ve only fought the one time.” 

“You were angry at Kirito for coming back to the room after taking a walk this morning, weren’t you?” 

“Oh, that wasn’t a fight. I was just giving him a warning.” 

If you’re going to break it down that way, I can’t even remember being angry or upset at Asuna, so none of these count as a fight. Of course, part of that is because I’m the one who’s always making a mess of things. 

At any rate, if I kept listening to them talk, my nerves were going to sweat me into a dry sponge, so I cleared my throat and called out from the other side of the roots. “So, uh, shall we talk about what to do?” 

There was a little splash, and I was keenly aware of three people concentrating on my presence. 

“I suppose so. But I do feel like there aren’t many hard facts that we can go off of…” Asuna said, so I decided to go ahead and list off what we knew, which I’d been arranging and mulling over in my head on the trip to the castle. 

“Let’s look at it in chronological order. First off, ten years ago, before the incident started: Stachion’s lord was Pithagrus, the genius and so-called puzzle king, while his primary apprentice Cylon and serving woman Theano lived at his mansion. At that time, Cylon and Theano were lovers…” 

“I wonder if Pithagrus was aware of that,” Asuna murmured. 

“No…” Myia piped up, “Mother didn’t speak often of her time living at the lord’s mansion, but she did say that no one else there knew about her and my father.” 

“Ah, I see…” 

“And just before the incident, I’m guessing, Theano became pregnant with Myia,” I said, trying to be as mature as possible for a middle-school boy talking about the concept of pregnancy. But that statement made me wonder, on a whim, how the game system handled the concept of babies and birth. Then I changed my mind, realizing that NPCs wouldn’t go off and create children of their own accord. After all, this murder case from ten years ago wasn’t some actual event that happened in Aincrad; it was just a series of memories given to these NPCs to build the story for the player…I thought. I was pretty sure. 

I cleared my throat and continued, “So…one day ten years ago, Pithagrus tells Cylon that he is choosing another apprentice to be his successor, and in a rage, Cylon beats Pithagrus to death with the golden cube that is the symbol of the town lord. Theano, who witnessed it, couldn’t bring herself to publicly accuse Cylon, her lover and the father of her unborn child, of murder. While Cylon was out of the room, she snuck in and removed the golden cube and golden key. She locked the cube in the dungeon beneath the mansion, and she hid the key in Pithagrus’s secret second home in a nearby town. Then she left her job at the mansion.” 

I’d explained this all to Asuna on multiple occasions, but I had beta knowledge that might have been filling in gaps where details had changed in the final release. Myia did not correct me at any point, however, which told me that I had the broad details correct. 

“After Pithagrus was killed, one cursed puzzle appeared in the town of Stachion each day. Theano went back to her original home, focused on raising Myia, and waited for Cylon to come to her and admit his crime. But Cylon invented a fictional traveler who had been killed, took the position of lord, and asked any adventurer who came to the mansion to seek the golden cube. After ten years, Asuna and I came along and went to the separate home in Suribus on Cylon’s request, where we found the golden key.” 

That made it sound like we were just that much better than anyone else who tried, but it was inevitable, because that was just how the story of the quest was set up. The problem was the next part. 

“…Then Cylon appeared, paralyzed us with poison gas, stole the key, and had Terro help take us back to Stachion. But on the road there, thieves attacked and killed Cylon. Terro fled to Stachion alone, visited Theano’s house, and explained what had happened. The next morning, Theano left Myia a note and the iron key she always kept on her, went into the dungeon below the mansion via a secret back door, took the golden cube, and vanished. That same night, a burglar got into Myia’s house, trying to steal the iron key, but failed…I think I have all that correct,” I finished. 

From across the steamy water, I heard Asuna groan. “Hrrrmmm… Putting it all together raises more questions than it answers, I feel. Mostly about Theano…I just don’t understand why she would leave the iron key at her house. Cylon and Theano lived apart for ten years, but they kept the keys that were their remembrance of the relationship for all of those years. I would assume it was something very precious to Theano…” 

“Ha-ha. You have the most romantic opinions, Asuna.” Kizmel chuckled, drawing a hurried defense from Asuna. 

“I—I don’t mean it that way. I’m just being realistic and rational about it…” 

Personally, I was more concerned about the way Kizmel had actually used the English word romantic—probably an example of Asuna’s vocabulary infecting her own—but it was a reasonable question. Given that the keys attracted each other and could lead Cylon’s killer right to the other, it was much too dangerous to leave it behind with Myia. And now they had come for the key twice. Myia might have received Theano’s excellent sword training, but that didn’t seem like a good reason to expose your own young daughter to danger. 

“Speaking of which,” I prompted across the wall of roots, “where is your mother’s key now, Myia?” 

“It’s right around my neck,” she said. 

“Oh, that’s good.” 

I exhaled. It was impossible for the fallen elves to sneak into this castle, but it was also a bit scary to think about it being left unattended in the changing room. 

“And where is your key, Kirito?” she asked. 

I was going to say it was “in my inventory” but realized I couldn’t do that. “It’s, uh, in my book of Mystic Scribing.” 

That was the elvish term for it, but fortunately, Myia seemed to understand. “Oh, you mean that ancient charm that only adventurers can use.” 

Ooooh, I see, I thought. Then another thought occurred to me, and I asked the girl, “Say, is it all right with you that I’m holding that key? That was Cylon, your father’s key, so shouldn’t you have both…?” 

“No,” she said without an instant of hesitation. “If it’s not too much trouble, I want you to have it. I think there is a reason there were two keys and that each of my parents kept one. I feel it is best to keep them from being too close, until we discover the proper use for them.” 

“Oh…okay.” 

For a ten-year-old, she had a very good head on her shoulders. But was it appropriate to think about an NPC on those terms? 

Just then, there was the sound of squirting water—quite literal, I was certain—and Asuna said, “So if we don’t know where to use the two keys, and we don’t know why Theano took the golden cube out of the mansion, then we’re kind of stuck. I have no idea where we should go and what we should do next.” 

“About that,” said Kizmel, who finally broke her silence. Her voice echoed softly off the rocks. “Why don’t we show the keys to the storyteller? It is clear they are under some magical charm. I am not an expert, but the storyteller might be able to tell us something. And if I am not mistaken, Kirito and Asuna, you wanted to ask the elder how to defend against the evil dragon’s poison, yes?” 

Once we were done in the hot spring and met up in the lounge room, it was two o’clock. The four of us downed glasses of cold water together, then headed for the library on the third floor of the castle’s east wing. As I walked behind our guide, Kizmel, and Myia, who had put her gas mask on again, I found myself filled with both excitement and worry. 

If we got new information on the iron keys, it could propel us forward on this stalled quest. But I was fairly certain that the storyteller Kizmel mentioned was none other than Bouhroum, the eccentric old man I met in the outer mountain ring early this morning. I didn’t dislike the steak-loving old coot, but I still didn’t know how to use the Awakening skill—not actually a skill but a modification for the Meditation skill—that I’d worked so hard to get, and he didn’t give me a single bite of hamburg steak, either. I had a hard time imagining him giving us honest answers about the keys. And on top of that, how should I act around him when we met him in the library? 

“Hey, Kirito,” said Asuna quietly into my ear. I quickly looked in her direction. 

“Wh…what’s up?” 

“When do you think Qusack will return?” 

“Oh…” 

Until she said that, I had completely forgotten about the other group of players. My eyes wandered for a moment. “Um…they said they were going for the ‘Agate Key’ quest today, so it might be as late as this eve…no, wait. They can’t take the shortcut across Lake Talpha, so they have to go from the northwest area where we are, counterclockwise, through the west and then south. That’s a long journey…I’m guessing they’ll spend the night at Goskai on the southern end, then be back by tomorrow afternoon.” 

“I see. So they won’t happen across Myia until that point.” 

At last, I understood what Asuna was worried about. We were able to explain Kizmel’s presence because she was our bodyguard NPC for the “Elf War” questline. But it was clearly abnormal for a human NPC to be hanging out in Castle Galey. I could easily imagine, given his status as an expert on quests, that Gindo would ask all sorts of questions to satisfy his curiosity. 

“Hmm…Well, I suppose we ought to come up with some kind of story that seems natural enough…” I muttered. 

But Asuna frowned. “I don’t want to lie to people who are really taking their quests seriously, but if they find out that the ‘Curse of Stachion’ quest is still ongoing, they’ll definitely be curious about it.” 

“And if things get messy, they might end up targeted by the fallen elves, too. The Unknown Burglars in Stachion were definitely tougher than the fallen elf soldiers we’ve dealt with in the ‘Elf War’ campaign quest, and if they use paralysis needles, they’re even deadlier. Depending on the circumstances, we might want to leave the castle before they return tomorrow…” 

On the other hand, we needed a destination before we left. Without any idea about Theano’s current whereabouts or goal, our only hope was old Bouhroum’s knowledge and item appraisal. 

A moment later, Kizmel spun around, her long cape twirling. “This is the library. The storyteller should be within…” 

She opened the heavy door there, on the left side of the hallway. A scent came flooding out of the doorway, like dried plant matter but not unpleasant at all. 

Beyond the threshold was a very spacious room filled with huge bookshelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling. I’d been imagining a library like the kind in school, but the crimson carpets running along the aisles and the huge oil paintings on the walls were even more posh than the decorations in Pithagrus’s secret home. I reached out to one of the polished and heavily decorated bookshelves in order to remove one of the leather-bound books, but as usual, the contents belonged to a text from some European country and were completely illegible to me. 

I put the book back and hurried after Kizmel. We did a one-eighty around one aisle and found a small room-sized open space ahead with a table, sofa, and large resting chair. The space seemed empty at first, but as we approached, I noticed that the easy chair, which was pointed toward the far wall, was making an odd noise. 

Kizmel and Myia came to a stop, so I went past them to get a view of what was in the chair. Peacefully asleep was an old man with a black robe, black hat, long white beard, and little round glasses on his nose: none other than Bouhroum, the self-styled sage. 

“Well…it would seem the storyteller is resting now. So what should we do…?” Kizmel wondered, looking troubled. I gave her a glance, then grabbed the backrest of the easy chair and began to hurtle it back and forth. 

“Whaaaa—?! What is it?! What’s happening?!” shouted the old man instantly, leaping upward. He then saw me, his glasses askew, and shouted again. “Y-you! The potato boy! Why are you here?! I already told you—you can’t have any of my fricatelle!” 

An NPC, sleeping on the job. Disappointed, I told him, “I’m not ‘potato boy’—my name is Kirito. And I’m not here to eat any fricatelle.” 

“Hrmm…?” The old man hummed, fixing his glasses. He looked around and finally noticed Kizmel, Asuna, and Myia standing behind me. He leaped immediately to his nimble feet, rubbing his long beard into place and clearing his throat. 

“Ahem! Ahhh-hem! Beautiful knight of Lyusula and human swordswoman, how may this old man help you?” 

Wow, that’s not the welcome I received, I couldn’t help but notice. Since the women were too stunned to respond, I decided to pick up the mantle instead. 

“We came because we need your help with something, Grandpa Bouhroum. I was hoping you could tell us a few things.” 

I explained our early-morning meeting in as abbreviated a form as possible, glossing over the secret chamber and hamburg steak, then went into my game inventory to pull out one of the iron keys. I dangled it before the old man’s eyes and asked, “Gramps, do you know what this key goes to?” 

“Hmm…?” Bouhroum took the key, scrutinized it closely, then tilted his pointed hat to the right. “Well, now…it appears to have an odd charm placed upon it, but I do not recognize it.” 

“L-look closer. You’re our only hope now, Gramps…I mean, Master Sage.” 

“Ah, so you only suck up to me with the ‘Master Sage’ routine when you need something,” the old man muttered, resting in the easy chair again. He glanced at the women, who still looked stunned, and gestured to the sofa with a wrinkled hand. “Ah, forgive me for keeping you standing. Please, young ladies, have a seat. There is tea and some cups on that table, boy, so go and do the thing.” 

I decided to swallow my complaint and went to the table. If I had to grind it from whole leaves, it would be beyond my means, but fortunately, the large glass pot was already full of reddish-brown liquid. I set the four cups on the silver tray and carefully poured out the tea, then took it over to the low table. 

I put one cup each before the women on the three-cushion couch and started lifting the fourth one to my lips when a hand stretched from the easy chair and snatched it away. The old man sipped the tea noisily and looked up from the dangling key to my face. 

“You have another one just like this, don’t you?” he gruffed. 

“Uh, yeah…How did you know?” 

I almost wanted to remark that I thought he was just some steak-loving old coot. Over on the couch, Myia silently pulled the other key from her shirt and held it out, only silence emanating from her gas mask. The old man took it and let it hang so he could inspect it. 

“Hrmm, hrmm…” 

Bouhroum returned his teacup to the table and moved the key closer to mine. A high-pitched ringing echoed off the high library ceiling, and each time the keys were directly facing each other, they shook as if alive. The old man pushed the keys even closer together. 

You know, I don’t think we ever actually stuck the keys together. Which is funny, because usually these things don’t take their true form until you combine them… 

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than there came a silver flash and a bzak!! sound. The keys hurtled out of our hands and struck a wall and bookshelf. 

Neither I nor any of the women could react in the moment. The only sound came from Bouhroum himself. 

“Fwaaah?!” 

“Hey, you were the one who did it!” I shouted, going to look for the key that flew out of my hand. I saw it hit the wall and bounce off, but after that…It was probably around the tea table in the corner… 

“Ah…found it.” The string had snagged around the tall teapot. The other key flew toward the bookshelf, and Asuna got up to retrieve it from between shelves. She gave it back to Myia, and then, having apparently adjusted to Bouhroum’s personality, finally addressed him in her usual way. 

“Mr. Bouhroum…what just happened? It looked like the keys repulsed each other…” 

“Ah yes…That is because they did. There is a powerful charm placed upon the keys that prevents them from making contact.” 

“Placed upon…?” I asked. “In other words, it didn’t already exist until someone cast the charm on the keys?” 

“Well, obviously,” he said, about three times ruder to me than he had been to Asuna. 

Undeterred, I pressed, “Who would do such a thing? And why?” 

“How would you expect me to know that?” he snorted, infuriated. 

Next, it was Kizmel’s turn: “But, Storyteller, you are said to be one of greatest minds in all of Lyusula. Do you not have any deductions, any hunches? We will take any clue we can get at this point.” 

“I can certainly do that much,” Bouhroum admitted. He glared at the key in my hand. “From what I can see, those two keys were originally meant to be combined before use. The head and teeth of the keys are carved to align perfectly.” 

“Huh? Really…?” 

I looked back and forth from my key to Myia’s, but I couldn’t tell from their appearance. And I couldn’t test it, because they would hurtle away from each other. But I also couldn’t imagine that the self-styled sage would just make something up off the top of his head, so I assumed that my hunch that they combined to take their true form was actually not far off the mark. 

In that case, if we could undo the charm on the keys and combine them, we might gain some new clue or bit of information. 

“Undo the charm, Gramps,” I said promptly. He glared at me. 

“It is not that simple. I just told you it was a powerful charm…I suspect that only the one who placed this charm can undo its effect.” 

“Aww…then tell us who put the—” 

“Kaaaah!” he snapped, the familiar noise I heard multiple times during my Awakening training. Without getting out of the chair, he brandished a fist at me. “Just because I am a great and wise sage does not mean I know everything! I’ve told you all that I know about those keys!” 

Or that you know anything, I snapped from the safety of my innermost thoughts. Once again, I considered the keys. Even Bouhroum’s wisdom did not bring us much new insight, but on the other hand…without Morte’s interference in killing Cylon, this was not an item that was officially meant to fall into player hands. So I couldn’t complain too much about a lack of explanation. 

Hopefully, the old man could at least live up to his billing with the other topic we wanted to hear about—but that remained to be seen. I grabbed Asuna’s half-finished tea, downed the rest, and broached the second topic. 

“By the way, Gramps…we’d like to ask you about a wicked dragon by the name of Shmargor…” 

Ten minutes later, I left the library alone. Asuna, Kizmel, and Myia remained behind to train under the old man. 

Our mission to ask about a means to counteract the fallen elves’ poisoned needles was a success, if in a different form than what I expected. Bouhroum did not know how to craft the Platinum Shield that the ancient hero Selm supposedly used to protect against Shmargor’s spikes, but he was able to suggest a substitute means of knowing. It was, in fact, through using the Meditation skill. 

Training for Meditation was not as difficult as breaking the rock for martial arts. All you had to do was hold the pose that activated the skill for one continuous hour. In the beta, the sitting place was atop a pillar no more than fifteen centimeters wide, so it was difficult to get the hang of it. 

But this time, when the ladies suggested learning the skill, Bouhroum’s method of training was to stay still for an hour atop some soft, poofy cushions on the floor. I couldn’t help but yell about that one. But there was no point ranting about how “the beta was different.” I wanted to observe this alternate training, but Asuna kicked me out of the room, claiming that it was embarrassing to have me watching. 

Certainly, holding a Zen-like meditative pose wasn’t exactly glamorous or cute, but if you wanted to use it in battle, you had to do that pose, regardless of location. I told her she needed to get used to the idea of people watching, but she shut me down and booted me out of the library. 

At least I knew, given the cushy setting, that all three of them should pass the test on the first try. It seemed unprecedented that NPCs could pick up Extra Skills, but the bar for surprising me had risen considerably over the last few days. Nothing was going to truly shock me anymore unless you told me that, say, Kizmel and Myia were actually being controlled by human players. 

But enough about that. I shook my head to clear it and headed for the windows on the southern side of the hallway. It was still before three o’clock, meaning the sunlight filling Castle Galey’s courtyard was growing just a faint tint of gold, but there was still time until sunset. I wanted to put this extra hour to good use, but I didn’t want to go grinding outside the castle, in case Asuna noticed my HP bar going down, and she got distracted by it. 

“So my options are…nap or a snack…” 

Three seconds later, I settled on snack. My store of sweet treats was rather lonely, but I could probably find something good if I went to the dining hall. 

I walked west down the hall and went to the second floor of the center building. The dining hall was quite empty, because it wasn’t mealtime, but when I sat down in a sofa along the wall, a servant approached at once. I asked for the dessert lineup, then selected a chestnut-and-walnut tart and an herbal tea. 

The tart was a luxurious one, with sweet boiled chestnuts, fragrant cooked walnuts, and a heap of smooth sweet cream, and it quickly vanished into my virtual stomach. I sipped the sour tea and was considering ordering another tart when a strong desire to sleep hit me like a ton of bricks. 

Suddenly, I recalled that I’d forced myself awake at two in the morning, went exploring around the rim of the castle, and completed Bouhroum’s Awakening training in his little hidden room. Then I marched all the way to Stachion and returned not long after. After that hard schedule, it was no wonder that sitting on a comfortable couch and eating a piece of cake made me sleepy. I tried to resist, but the weight on my eyelids accelerated with each blink. 

There would be another thirty…no, forty minutes until their Meditation training was over. Surely I was allowed to get a bit of a nap until then. If this was a restaurant in the real world, a stern waitress would be by to ask if I wanted anything else, but certainly the dark elf stewards would be nice enough to let me sleep…… 

Clang…clang…clang. 

The sharp sound of the bell pulled me out of my comfortable slumber. 

I tensed up at first, then realized it was just Qusack returning from their quest. I imagined it would have been tomorrow, but maybe they’d just rushed through the steps without any stops or side-questing along the way. 

There I sat, pondering that idea with my eyes closed, half-asleep—when suddenly the speed and intensity of the ringing jumped in pitch: Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!!