Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 11

11 

I LEAPED UP FROM THE SOFA AND SPRINTED ACROSS the dining hall to the door, almost entirely on autopilot. 

The chilly air of the hallway helped to banish the last lingering embrace of sleep. I pounced toward the window across the hall and stared through the glass down into the courtyard. 

The first thing I saw was the wide-open gates of the castle. The flickering white flashes I saw intermittently coming from there were definitely the visual effects of a battle. 

I pushed open the window, hardly thinking about what I was doing, and the sound of sharp clanging and shouts rose in volume. The servants gathered at the doorway behind me shrieked. 

Fighting at the inside of the gates were the familiar dark elf castle guards against a group of black-clad warriors with similar features but who sported distinctive face-covering masks. I squinted, focusing on the group, and saw a bright-red cursor appear with the subtitle FALLEN ELVEN WARRIOR. 

Fallen elves! 

I had an inkling it was them when I first saw them, but to have it spelled out officially by the system made the shock bigger. They’d led small ambushes and sneak attacks in the wilderness and dungeons before, but no large-scale assaults like this. They’d kept to the shadows in the background of the struggle between forest and dark elves. So why would they lead a head-on invasion of Castle Galey, perhaps the best-defended of the dark elf strongholds? How had they gotten the guards to open the gates? And I thought the elves weren’t supposed to be capable of getting through that barren valley without help… 

The questions came hard and fast, but they weren’t going to answer themselves if I just stood here and watched. I had to make a decision about what to do. 

For the moment, the invasion seemed to be contained between the castle gates and the spirit tree’s pool, but more and more fallen elves were pouring through the open gates by the moment. There had to be twenty at this point, possibly thirty. More guards were rushing forth from the palace to defend it, of course, but the Fallen seemed more powerful individually. I had a feeling that relying upon the guards to defend the castle might not be a winning strategy. 

But my highest priority at this moment was the lives of Asuna, Kizmel, and Myia. 

Working backward from that conclusion, I supposed we should try to escape the castle while the guards were still holding back the fallen elves. On the other hand, proud knight Kizmel would never flee and abandon her comrades, and Asuna would surely want to fight at Kizmel’s side. 

In any case, the first step was to regroup with them in the library. I pulled away from the window and began to run. 

“Ah…!” I heard myself gasp. 

The dark elf guards fighting at the courtyard line of defense faltered, three of them dropping at once. Their cursors showed their HP at still over half full. I was stunned, until I noticed a certain ominous icon blinking below the bars. Paralysis. 

Some distance away, along the side walls of the castle, a number of enemy elves labeled FALLEN ELVEN SCOUTS were throwing something at the guards. I couldn’t see it from here, but I understood instinctually that it was those poison needles again. 

The dark elf guards had metal armor on, but it was not full plate. Much of their arms and legs was uncovered, making for easy targets. The hole in the defensive line reformed with new guards, and the collapsed members were pulled back to safety, but it was clear that if too many more got paralyzed, the line would quickly crumble. 

To regroup with Asuna or to rush to the aid of the guards? I myself was paralyzed with indecision for a moment, until at last I sucked in a sharp breath and broke into action. 

I opened my window and plopped down onto the ground of the hallway. First, I sent a brief (possibly unnecessary) message to Asuna to FINISH THE TRAINING, then folded my legs into the Zen lotus position. In real Zen meditation, I was supposed to form an elliptical sigil with my hands, but in this world, I simply had to stretch out all my fingers and place my palms atop my upturned feet. This was the activation pose of the Meditation skill. 

In the beta, you had to hold this pose for sixty whole seconds before the buff would take effect. Since there was no way to make that kind of time once battle started, it was quickly labeled a worthless skill, but now I had it leveled up to 500. That probably lowered the pre-activation time. 

Please let me be right about that! I prayed. The system didn’t respond, of course, but by the time I silently counted to twenty, an icon that I hadn’t seen in several months appeared on my HP gauge. It was the silhouette of a person in a Zen pose: the Meditation buff. 

If I was to take Bouhroum at his word, this buff could nullify level-2 paralyzing poison. If it didn’t, that would be very bad news for me, but if I stood here and watched, the same thing would happen anyway. All I could do was trust the old man and act. 

I undid the lotus position, stood up, and commanded the servants behind me, “Go to the storeroom and bring all the healing and antidote potions you can to the courtyard!” 

Most of the servants shrank back toward the dining hall, looking terrified, but the oldest-looking of them all said bravely, “I understand. Come, you lot, let’s go!” and lifted up her long skirt to run for the east wing. Her younger coworkers, properly chastised, shared a brief look before rushing after her. 

I started running without a backward glance. I would have loved to jump down into the courtyard from the window, but the Fallen scouts would spot me. I wanted to get at least one by surprise. 

I sprinted for the end of the west wing, sending a second message to Asuna in the meantime. MAKE SIRE ALL THREE OF YUO HAVE MED BUFF BEFORE GOING DOWN TO CORTYARD, I sent, too quickly to bother correcting my typos. Based on the present time, it had been about fifty-five minutes since they began Meditation training. 

If the training was over the moment the bell started clamoring, then none of these instructions mattered, but the fact that there had been no response was a sign that the training still continued—I assumed. I had a feeling that the matter of whether Asuna’s group gained the Meditation skill or not, and whether they could utilize it in time for the fight or not, would be the key to victory or defeat. 

On I rushed from the main building to the west wing, leaping down the stairs ten at a time, when all of a sudden I heard a memory of my partner’s voice in my head: 

You’re not going to rush off without a word to me again! You must be within my sight for all twenty-four hours. Is that understood?! 

That had been three days ago…after we talked with the DKB officers in the inn room in Stachion. I’d kept to her command since then, excepting only unavoidable situations like the hot spring’s changing room, but I’d assumed Castle Galey was safe and apparently let down my guard. Asuna told me not to watch them training, but there were all those bookcases in the library. I could have just waited around the corner of one. 

And right during that lax hour, as if specifically timed, the fallen elves attacked. It was a coincidence, of course, but it felt like a sign. I picked up speed, trying to outrun my foreboding, and blazed through to the side door at the end of the west wing’s first floor. 

I had to put on the brakes, as satisfying as it would have been to kick down the door and rush through it. Instead, I opened it just a bit to check for the presence of nearby enemies. Because the side door was quite close to the interior wall, if I went out and headed along the wall, I should reach the scouts throwing the poisoned needles soon. But it was only half-past three in the afternoon, and there was little darkness that would hide my presence. 

I couldn’t wait until nightfall for cover, obviously. I just had to draw my blade and head out into the open. 

A wall of sound met me there, swords clashing and bellows of combat and rage. I hunched against the noise and ran along the wall to my right. 

The round hollow that entirely swallowed Castle Galey was a bit over two hundred meters across, and the spring that fed the spirit tree in the middle of its grounds was about thirty meters wide, so that made about eighty meters from the castle wall to the hot spring. The defensive line of the castle guards had already been pushed back over half of the way. If they managed to break into the castle, it would be very difficult to prevent the Fallen from reaching the treasure room on the fourth floor of the main castle building, where the four sacred keys were currently held. 

We had to stop them in the courtyard. And eliminating the Fallen Scouts throwing their paralyzing needles was paramount. 

As soon as I saw the first scout ahead of me, I went from staying low and quiet to a full-on spring. The scout sensed me and turned, wearing a mask with only holes for the eyes. He pulled a black pick from his belt and wound his arm back. 

When I saw the glint of the throwing needle, a memory of three nights ago flashed back in my head. The feeling of being helpless on the ground, unable to move a finger, staring up at the horrifying sight of Morte approaching, became a liquid colder than ice that shot through my veins. 

But I gritted my teeth, withstanding the fear, and readied my Sword of Eventide on high. 

The Fallen Scout’s hand blurred. A Spine of Shmargor coated with level-2 paralyzing poison rushed for my chest, whistling faintly. It was too late to dodge or defend. 

If my Meditation buff didn’t protect against this paralysis, I was going to land helpless on the ground in the midst of a chaotic battle. 

There was a light impact below my left collarbone. A dark blot appeared out of the lower corner of my eye. But I cut off my sense of touch and sight, focusing my entire mind on the sword in my hand. 

The blade shone blue. The invisible hand of system assistance pushed my body. 

No paralysis! 

“Go!” I shouted, the word trapped behind closed lips, and I activated the four-part slash skill, Vertical Square. 

The scout’s eyes widened just a bit when he realized I wasn’t paralyzed. He reached behind his waist for a dagger, but it was too late. My first blow struck the scout’s left shoulder, leaving a shining vertical line in the air. 

In a single moment, my sword bounced back upward, completing slashes straight down and straight up, leaving parallel visual effects from head to toe. These three slashes took down nearly 60 percent of the scout’s HP. 

Then my sword returned to its original position and arched farther, nearly to my back, before unleashing the devastating fourth strike. Once again, I felt the hilt of the Sword of Eventide trembling in the palm of my hand. But rather than fighting against the sword’s will, I added a boost of force to its adjusted course. 

Zumm! The elf-upgraded blade dug itself heavily into the Fallen Scout’s breast. The weak-point critical blow obliterated his remaining 40 percent. The completed square of blue light flashed brighter and dispersed, and a moment later, the scout’s body shattered into countless pieces, too. 

I’d killed over ten fallen elves since the start of the “Elf War” campaign quest. It was a simple matter, of course, as I had to do it to finish the quests—or so I had always assumed, but that probably still counted as a kind of murder. 

Regardless, I couldn’t stop now. I was helping the dark elves, and I had to protect Asuna, Kizmel, and Myia from harm. Asuna treated the NPCs as even more human than I did, and she wouldn’t hesitate at all to fight against the Fallen. 

Through the polygons melting into the air, I saw the other two Fallen Elven Scouts throwing their needles at the guards from the other side of the castle gates. I couldn’t imagine that they hadn’t noticed my attack, but for now, they prioritized helping their comrades fighting farther in. 

For just an instant, I glanced left and saw that there were now slightly more red cursors for Fallen Elven Warriors than yellow cursors for the castle guards. 

“…?!” 

Before my gaze could return to the two scouts, I noticed something and squinted. 

The fallen elf combatants, dressed all in black and fighting with their backs to me, had something odd tucked into their sword belts. They were narrow rods with brilliant-green shards of something tied to the top…No, those were not artificially fashioned objects. They were tree branches. 

The branches were about a third of a meter in length with leaves on the end, as though broken off of any nearby tree. I wouldn’t think twice of any player carrying the same thing around. 

But the fact that these were fallen elves changed the situation. They, like all elves, could not harm living trees. I remembered General N’ltzahh saying as much in the submerged dungeon on the fourth floor, where the fallen elves were secretly buying lumber from humans. Eons since we were removed from the blessing of the Holy Tree, yet, we are still bound by the taboos of the elven race. 

The secret of how the Fallen had moved through the canyons was probably—no, definitely—contained in those branches. However they had circumvented the taboo, they seemed to be protected by a kind of personal barrier cast forth by the branches. Which meant their next likely move was… 

“Gaaah!” 

A scream from the courtyard distracted me. A dark elf guard at the front line of combat collapsed on the ground, struck down by a Fallen Elven Warrior’s curved blade. Before his companions could reach out to him, his body turned to blue shards and vanished. 

“Damn…!” I swore, banishing the mystery of the branches from my head. Our first priority was to turn back the tide of battle. My Meditation buff would eventually wear off. I had to eliminate the other two scouts before it did. 

I switched my sword to my left hand and pulled out the paralyzing needle stuck under my collarbone. It was still usable, so I wound up and threw it at one of the scouts located near the right-gate tower. 

Until I used Meditation in my fifth skill slot, I’d been considering putting Throwing Knives in there. Thankfully, even without it active, the needle still managed to land in the left leg of the scout, who was a nice stationary target. He didn’t seem to have any paralysis defense himself, and he collapsed without a sound after a green border appeared around his cursor. The other one rushed to give his partner a potion, but I was already charging at full speed again. 

The last scout gave up on curing his partner and readied a dagger. I gave him a simple high slice. He evaded with a backstep rather than guarding it, but I was expecting that. When I froze briefly following my big swing, the scout deftly darted forward and whipped his dagger at me. 

This fierce blow was a fair bit sharper than any I’d seen from the Fallen thus far, but I was already lunging into his range so I could pull off Flash Blow, the basic Martial Art skill I used against Morte. 

The dagger grazed my right shoulder while my left fist slammed into his side. The NPC and monster algorithms, whether intended or not, had a habit of responding just a bit slower to sudden use of a different type of attack skill. 

“Oogh…” 

Flash Blow’s damage wasn’t much to speak of, but the scout grunted and froze. This would be my chance to use a sword skill…but instead, I reached around the scout’s back with my free hand. As I expected, my fingers brushed what felt like a tree branch. I grabbed it and pulled it out of his belt. 

I didn’t expect this to cause the fallen elf to immediately collapse. After all, we were in the courtyard beneath the spirit tree’s protection. They wouldn’t need the branch unless they went back out the gate. 

But the scout’s eyes bulged behind the mask, and he shouted hoarsely, “Give it back!” 

Before he could scramble and lunge for it, I held the tip of the Sword of Eventide to the elf’s throat and demanded, “How did you get this branch?!” 

“…That is nothing you need to know, human!” the elf spat, lowering his weapon in favor of dialogue. There were fires of hatred in his eyes. “And what business does your kind have in this fight?! The enmity between elves has nothing to do with humankind!!” 

“‘Your kind…?’” I repeated, sensing something off about this. I glanced around—but the only figure nearby was the third scout, paralyzed. Asuna and Myia had not joined the battle. 

The scout clicked his tongue, angry that he had apparently spoken too much. He leaped backward to get away from the tip of my sword and readied his dagger again. Sensing that I wouldn’t get any more information out of him, I held the branch high in my free hand. The moment his gaze traveled upward to follow it, I tossed it to the side and lunged. 

The scout looked back, but it was enough to delay his reaction. I took advantage by using the close-range three-hit skill Sharp Nail. Three slashes of red light, like the claws of a fierce beast, glowed on the scout’s chest, and he flew backward, slamming against the castle wall. When he bounced back to me, I added the single-strike Horizontal. 

His torso cut in two, the scout silently came to an unnatural stop in midair and dispersed. I turned around as the shards enveloped me and ran. 

The paralyzed scout had another branch behind his back, too. The paralysis status wasn’t wearing off anytime soon, but the eye that was visible from this angle speared me with a look sharper than any throwing needle. 

He would eventually recover, so I couldn’t just leave this Scout untouched. If I simply pierced him through the heart while he was immobile, the continual piercing damage would be enough to kill him. 

Instead, I stopped myself from raising my sword any farther. Perhaps it was a pointless fixation, perhaps even a harmful emotion, but I just couldn’t bring myself to execute a helpless enemy like it was some kind of insect. 

The scout had pockets for throwing needles on either side of his leather belt, and there were nearly ten Spines of Shmargor still inside them. I removed them all, stuck them in my own carrying pouch, took away his branch and black dagger, and tossed them into my inventory. I also found the other branch I’d tossed—and turned to inspect the battle. 

The paralyzing needle sabotage was over, but the defensive line was pushed back to barely fifteen meters from the hot spring. If the guards fell into the water, the line would collapse, and the enemy could rush through. Once that happened, they could be at the castle entrance in moments. 

There were about twenty-five Fallen Elven Warriors in combat and not even twenty castle guards fighting them back. About ten were paralyzed and dragged to the rear, and there were no more guards rushing out of the castle. 

This was the full combat force of Castle Galey, because, sadly, I didn’t expect that Count Galeyon himself would come rushing down to turn the tide of battle. 

A few seconds later, I had the lay of the battle and pulled the paralyzing needles out of my pouch, intent on making good use of them. There were nine needles, plus the two I recovered from Morte and the two that the Fallen who attacked Myia’s home left behind, for thirteen in total. If I could knock out ten warriors with those, we could turn this battle around. I aimed for the back of the closest target and threw. 

The needle landed right on target, in the gap between armor pieces. The warrior froze for a moment…then continued swinging his scimitar as though nothing had just happened. 

“Wha…?” 

I held my breath, then noticed an unfamiliar icon on the warrior’s HP bar. It looked like a black leaf; perhaps it was a paralysis resistance buff. I supposed that with all the needles the scouts were throwing from behind, a few might hit their own side. So it would make sense for them to have some kind of safety measure against that…but it also felt like a very clever strategy, almost too clever for NPCs. 

And for another thing, I still didn’t know how the fallen elves had gotten through the gates. 

I was sleeping in the dining hall when the bell woke me up. But I recalled first hearing the normal tolling for the opening of the gates; only after a few moments did it turn into a rapid alarm bell. Did that mean the guards had opened the gates for someone who was allowed in, and then the Fallen rushed through? But there was no place to hide in the long, dusty canyon leading up to the gates. If dozens of enemies were running from the start of the canyon, there would still be time to let the guest in and close the gates before they arrived. 

There was only one possibility. 

Whoever got the gates to open was in cahoots with the Fallen…and at this moment, there was only one group of players this far along in the “Elf War” campaign quest: Qusack. If they went into the castle and took over the tower-gate room, they could ensure the gate remained open long enough for the fallen elves to arrive. 

“…Is that really it…?” I asked myself, unable to believe it. I turned and raced to the nearby gate tower and opened the metal-reinforced door. I thrust my sword into the open space, but there was no one inside. If the dark elf who would have been here was murdered, there was no way for me to search for evidence. 

I looked up to see that the tower chamber was packed with gears and weights and such over my head. On the wall straight ahead was a wooden lever that I yanked with all my strength. 

With a heavy rumble, the gears overhead began to turn. That should at least close the gate and ensure that any potential Fallen reinforcements outside couldn’t get in. I was worried about where Qusack might have gone, but the battle in the courtyard was the most pressing matter at the moment. 

I leaped out of the tower and raced for the line of battle. If the paralyzing needles weren’t going to work on those Fallen Elven Warriors, my trusty sword would have to do. 

“Raaaaah!!” 

I roared, power surging from deep in my gut, giving up my back-attack advantage. Three nearby enemies turned around and closed the gap. I hurtled into the middle of them, getting as close as I possibly could before activating the sword skill Horizontal Square. It didn’t do as much damage to a single target as Vertical Square did, but it had a better accuracy and wider range. 

The sequence of four horizontal slashes hit all three warriors, taking two-thirds of their health and hurling them backward. If I could use this newly learned skill over and over, I could probably take them all down, but it sadly had a cooldown timer to match its considerable strength, and I wouldn’t be able to use it again for a bit. I would have to make full use of all the sword skills I’d learned so far. There were over twenty foes here, and if I got surrounded, I was instantly dead meat. 

Two more enemies noticed my presence behind them. I used the long-range jumping attack Sonic Leap on one of them. That warrior guarded the attack, but his scimitar was weaker than the Sword of Eventide, and he faltered, unable to withstand the full brunt of my charge. 

The instant that hateful post-skill delay let up, I used the martial arts kick Water Moon on the faltering warrior. My instinct measured the distance of the other enemy behind me—I spun and activated the two-part Horizontal Arc. The slashes left a sideways V in the warrior’s chest. He flew through the air with a grunt. 

It was too bad that I couldn’t deliver him a finishing blow, but if I spent too much time on one foe, I would get surrounded. The three knocked down by my Horizontal Square were getting up now, I noticed, and so I used the low-to-the-ground charging attack Rage Spike on one of them. 

My sliding dash was so close to the ground that it practically army crawled. The warrior tried to use the basic scimitar skill Reaver to fight back. If it hit me, not only would my skill fail, but I’d be put in a mild-stun status. So I twisted as I ran, trying to escape the path of the Reaver. On the other hand, if I strayed too far from the right motion, I would automatically fumble my sword skill. The pale-blue shine coating my sword flickered, letting me know that the technique was in danger of running out. 

“Jyaaa!” the warrior roared, swinging down his blade that glowed a sinister orange. The sharp tip grazed my chest, taking away about 5 percent of my HP with it—but in return, my sword severed his left leg from the base. The warrior’s remaining HP were gone, and his slender form crumbled like fine glass. 

The beautiful, horrendous sound effect seemed to draw the attention of all the other Fallen fighting in the vast courtyard. One especially large one in the center of the fighting, who seemed to be the commanding officer, pointed his scimitar—more like a long saber—and shouted, “Get rid of that impediment first! Surround him on four sides and crush him!” 

Instantly, four virtually unharmed warriors peeled off the line and came rushing for me. That opened a hole in their line, of course, but the Fallen still had the higher number. 

One of the guards shouted “Protect the swordsman!” but it would be difficult for them to break through the Fallen line even with the hole. I had to deal with these four by myself—in fact, if I could just get through this oncoming rush, it would turn the numbers in our favor and make victory a possibility. 

The fallen elves slid smoothly around me on either side. I still couldn’t use Horizontal Square, my one good wide-range attack, so I backed off, looking for the right target to strike, but they were all dressed in matching black gear and hoods, with about the same remaining HP, so it was impossible to choose an obvious answer. 

Behind the four, the warriors whose HP I’d halved were now retreating to the wall and drinking what appeared to be healing potions. If they got back to full health, and the four surrounding me turned to eight, it would be difficult to even escape, much less wipe them out. 

The worst mistake to make in this situation was to be too hasty in knocking down the enemy numbers and to stop moving. As with monsters, the common wisdom was to keep moving, avoid being surrounded, and grind down the enemy HP, bit by bit. If this happened in a dungeon, other players might get mad, because you could easily build a “mob train” by drawing the attention of more and more monsters, but manners didn’t mean anything here. 

“…!!” 

I sucked in a sharp breath and pounced off the stone ground, sprinting after the target I chose on pure instinct. The enemy raised his scimitar diagonally in a defensive position, while the other three rushed to get behind me. Their reaction speed and teamwork were much better than monsters’, though one should expect that much. 

The only plus, for whatever it was worth, was that none of the Fallen Elven Warriors had heavy gear or shields. Such fighters were very difficult to break down, but these ones only had metal light armor and their curved swords, which meant I could get past their defenses. 

I charged straight ahead, sword hanging from my right hand. The warrior’s eyes seemed to waver, losing their nerve. Perhaps he intended to defend my first blow, but charging without an attacking stance was introducing an element of uncertainty to the AI’s algorithm. 

When I was two meters away, the warrior finally entered an attacking stance. I accelerated as best I could and thrust out my open hand with my fingers formed in the shape of a capital C. I made sure to let the enemy’s scimitar slip through that narrow gap and dispelled the primal fear of losing my fingers as I clenched down hard. 

There was a silver flash in my hand, and I felt my grip and the warrior’s sword become fused into one. I yanked the weapon out of the enemy’s hand and flipped it around to grasp the hilt. This was the weapon-snatching skill, Empty Wheel, which I acquired when my martial arts skill reached a proficiency of 100, right in the middle of this very battle. Naturally, it was my first time using it, and if I hadn’t ponied up the dough for Argo’s info on martial arts, I might not have realized I had it available until the battle was over. 

“How dare you, knave?!” snarled the warrior, who lunged for his weapon. I swiped at his arm with the Sword of Eventide and scored a severed part bonus. The warrior moaned, clutching his partially missing arm. I kicked him over and spun around. 

The other three warriors showed no sign of slowing down after seeing my weapon-snatching trick. 

“Shyaaa!” 

I blocked a black-traced diagonal slash with the scimitar in my off-hand. The sparks of that impact splashed off my face as I slammed my sword into his side. 

Sensing another attack to my right, I used the sword to block a horizontal strike. The warrior faltered, and I slashed at his neck with the scimitar I’d captured, then rushed through the gap between the two. 

As long as I had the Sword of Eventide in my right hand and the fallen elf scimitar in my left, I was in an irregular equipping state, which meant I couldn’t use any sword skills. But in a one-on-four battle, I didn’t want to use any major skills that might lead to a significant movement delay afterward. On the contrary, having a sword in each hand gave me more options for defense. 

I couldn’t help but think that if I was going to go to these lengths, I could’ve just kept a shield around for my Quick Change mod, but I was still just good enough to block the quick, light slashes of the Fallen with a sword. Plus, I just felt like it suited me, having two swords so I could pull off a block-and-counter move with either hand. 

Spinning around, I told myself that if I got through this fight, I should seriously think about practicing with two swords. 

I found the unharmed fourth warrior in front of me, with two more damaged but fairly healthy warriors coming behind him. The one whose scimitar I stole rushed back toward his healing comrades, perhaps to borrow a weapon. 

According to their cursors, their HP was already healed back up close to 70 percent. There was maybe a minute left until they were fully healed—I had to beat these three before then. But could I do that without sword skills? I’d already shown them everything I had. 

It wasn’t a question of whether I could do it or not. I just had to do it. 

Standing still would only get me surrounded, so I focused on the warrior on the right and charged. They must have learned from my tendency to attack the sides, however, as they changed directions, too, to ensure that they were always coming head-on. But if I kept turning to the right, eventually I would get trapped against the castle wall. 

Do I pull back? No, I don’t have the time. I have to go straight through, into the melee, and hope I find the route to victory… 

I was just about to launch into an all-or-nothing gamble when I heard a voice. 

“Kirito, watch out!!” 

For an instant, I thought I was just hearing things. But my body reacted on instinct, hurtling me to the left. 

Crimson red shone past my eyes. 

The brightest visual effect I’d seen yet barreled down on the Fallen Elven Warriors from behind with breathtaking speed. There was a silhouette in the midst of that light that I couldn’t make out from the brightness. The very air roared, and the stones beneath my feet trembled. 

The three warriors turning to follow me noticed the abnormality and spun around. But by then, the red light was upon them. 

“N’wah!” shouted the center warrior, lifting his scimitar. The other two took similar guarding positions. 

Kabooom! With an explosive eruption, the center warrior rose high in the air. The two at his sides were thrown flat on the ground, and one tumbled all the way to my feet. Out of sheer reflex, I struck him with my right-hand sword, whittling away the last bit of his red HP bar. 

I looked up through the exploding blue particles to see the intruder, blowing past like a runaway freight train, come to a stop in a whirlwind of dust about six or seven meters away. 

A red hooded cape. A pleated skirt of the same color. Long, chestnut-brown hair. I didn’t need to check her cursor to know that this was Asuna, my temporary partner. 

But what sword skill was that just now…? I didn’t recall any charging attacks that flashy in the Rapier category. The force and range of it were off the charts in comparison to her favorite, Shooting Star… 

“Huh…?!” 

The instant I saw it through the dissipating cloud of dust, I gasped. 

The weapon Asuna had in her hands was not the Chivalric Rapier she used but an enormous lance that looked to be at least two meters long. It had a dark-green leather grip, the body itself was a brilliant silver, and there was fanciful decoration around the base. It was clearly quite an excellent weapon based on the design, but my question was not where she got it, but how she was able to wield it so well. 

At present, there were four skills involved with handling spear-type weapons. One-handed spears, two-handed spears, one-handed lances, and two-handed lances. Out of those, two-handed spears were the most typical. There were few spear users overall, but I could name Cuchulainn of the Legend Braves; Okotan the halberdier and Hokkai Ikura the trident user from the ALS; and Qusack’s Highston, who used a glaive. All of those landed under the two-handed spear skill. There were even fewer one-handed spear users—aside from Schinkenspeck of the ALS, I could only think of one or two in the front-line group. 

But the Lance skill was far rarer in the wild than even those. I had never yet seen a player on the frontier using a lance. 

The reason for this was the small selection of weapons and how difficult they were to use. The only things that operated under the Lance skill were lances and guard lances, which had a larger hilt—both of which could only thrust. Not only were they difficult to wield in battle, but whether solo, in a party, or in a raid, there were no situations where a lance was crucial. So in the present SAO, where there was no room for picking hobby skills, they were a waste of a good slot…in my opinion. 

“Why…? Where…? What…?” 

That was all I managed to get out of my mouth from the rapid series of questions: Why do you have that? Where did you get it? What is going on with your skills? But Asuna seemed to catch the general gist of my shock, and when her long delay wore off, she turned to me and shouted, “I’ll explain later! Watch my back!” 

Indeed, with a two-handed lance that was longer than she was tall, turning around would be difficult. I rushed up toward her, then remembered that two of the three warriors she’d bowled over were still alive. 

But I didn’t need to finish them off. 

I heard two crystalline ruptures behind my back, nearly in unison. Looking over my left shoulder through a cloud of texture shards, I saw Kizmel with her saber and Myia with a rapier. 

“Sorry for being late, Kirito!” Kizmel shouted, while Myia nodded her head, still covered in that leather mask. The side door to the east wing was in the distance behind them, so they must have come from that direction. I assumed the skill training had gone well, because I could see the Meditation buff on their HP bars. 

I’d cleaned up the three Fallen Elven Scouts who’d been throwing their paralyzing needles with abandon, but I couldn’t guarantee that none of the remaining swordfighters had their own supply of needles. For the rest of this battle—and every other potential fight against the fallen elves—we had to have defensive measures against paralysis. 

But these powerful allies coming to our aid at least made this an even fight. If Asuna could drive one or two of those heavy-charge attacks into more clumps of enemies, we’d win. I just had to watch my partner’s back in the meantime. 

“How many more seconds on the cooldown, Asuna?!” I yelled, sword in each hand. 

Over my shoulder, I heard her say, “A hundred!” 

“Got it!” 

Twenty seconds had passed since her charge, so that meant the cooldown on the skill was two minutes, which was reasonable for a huge attack like that one. The guards should be able to hold out that long, plus five or six waitresses from the castle were coming out and giving potions to the paralyzed and injured guards who weren’t fighting anymore. Sadly, their medicine didn’t seem capable of instantly curing level-2 paralysis, but as long as we could hold the line where it was now, they would eventually recover. 

“Coming from the south, Kirito!” 

Kizmel’s voice snapped me back to attention, where four Fallen Elven Warriors who’d been healing up were heading this way, though their HP was only at 70 percent or so. The one whose scimitar I’d stolen was also there, with a borrowed dagger, bringing up the rear. 

“Kizmel, Myia, swing around from the sides! Kirito, handle the foes coming from the north!” Asuna directed. The elf knight and girl warrior rushed off. After watching them go, I turned around and saw two Fallen Elven Warriors peel off from the battle in front of the hot spring pool and race toward us. They were working with the five to the south in an attempt at a pincer attack. 

It was seven on four, but I knew we couldn’t lose. Whittling down the enemy numbers meant that the defensive line was steadily recovering strength and pushing back. 

“Stay out of this, humans!!” 

Two warriors leaped at us, their voices full of rage. I blocked their perfectly timed slashes with each of my swords. Yellow sparks burned my eyes, and jolts ran from my elbows to my shoulders, but I summoned all the strength in my body to resist that pressure. I promised to watch Asuna’s back, and I would not give a single step. 

As soon as I sensed that I’d withstood the full force of the swings, I used the martial arts leg skill Water Moon, which was the only skill I could use while holding two one-handed swords. One of the warriors I kicked in the stomach stumbled but held his ground, while the other flew off his feet and crashed to the dirt. 

On a sudden inspiration, I jammed the scimitar into the earth, undoing the irregular wielding status, and used my longsword to activate the Vertical Square sword skill, which had just cleared its cooldown period. The warrior before me took all four slices and exploded after being thrown to the ground. 

When I could move again, I pulled out the scimitar and performed a series of consecutive swings on the other warrior as he rose to his feet. 

Of course, back in the beta, there had been players who tried dual wielding one-handed swords. A major counterweight to the drawback of being unable to use sword skills was the fact that magical bonuses from both weapons would still apply. So if, for example, I somehow had two copies of my Sword of Eventide, I would receive a +14 bonus to agility, giving me a huge upgrade in mobility. 

But as far as I knew, by the final day of the beta test, not a single player had emerged as a master of the art of fighting with two swords. I’d tried it out, but I found the experience of a sword in each hand to be jarring, like each half of my body was its own independent being. 

Ultimately, the common understanding in the beta was that, at best, you could use one sword to defend while using the other to attack, and at that point, you might as well use a shield instead. And on the front line in the finished game, I had never seen anyone using two swords—if you excluded Argo, whose claws were really two weapons in one. Even in the case of claws, you would only be able to use them both within the confines of a sword skill. 

But in this moment, I had unleashed a string of five or six swings before I finally realized that I was executing those forbidden simultaneous attacks. Immediately, I was plagued by that dissociative feeling again, and I accidentally dropped the scimitar from my left hand. 

Fortunately, the last swing was enough to reduce the warrior’s HP to zero. On instinct, I turned my face away from the exploding blue shards. 

That made a total of six fallen elves I’d killed since the start of the battle. I would think nothing of killing demihuman monsters like kobolds and ichthyoids by the dozen, but in this case, I felt a kind of strange pressure weighing on me. I shook my head, dispelling the feelings of both dissociation and faint guilt, and looked to the south. 

Asuna was just about to activate a new sword skill. Her two-handed lance, glowing green, plunged toward the five fallen elves whom Kizmel and Myia had maneuvered into one tight bunch. It wasn’t as powerful as her earlier charge, but her tremendous reach and sharp point pierced the Fallen anyway. Then she pulled the spear back and darted it forward again. One more time…a three-part attack. 

Once the last metallic sound finished echoing, three of the five fallen elves were down and bursting apart. The power was devastating; in a one-on-one fight, the nimble fallen elves would be a formidable enemy, but in a large group-on-group battle, when you had the option of trapping your enemy, no weapon could be more effective, it suddenly seemed to me. 

But there was no way she’d learned a two-handed spear skill since the start of the battle. Based on the power and number of sword skills she was using, her proficiency with it had to be at least 100. And now that I thought of it, when we were talking about gained skills the other day, Asuna had said something odd… 

That brief thought was interrupted by a new bursting sound. With blindingly quick attacks, Kizmel and Myia dispatched the remaining two foes. The warrior whose scimitar I stole never had the chance to use the dagger he borrowed. He had turned into fragments of data and been deleted. 

We had defeated all seven of the warriors who peeled off to attempt that pincer attack. I turned back to count the number of living enemies, and a fresh bellow rang across the open courtyard. 

“Sulaaaaaa!!” 

I panicked at first, but this was not a fresh new batch of enemies, nor was it more guards coming to the rescue. The dozen-plus dark elf guards holding a desperate defense in front of the spirit tree’s spring had all raised a yell together. I could see now that the numbers were roughly equal in the battle of the defensive line—and if you added the guards getting healed in the back, we actually had more. The Fallen commander bellowed to rally his warriors, too, but none responded in kind. 

“Okay, let’s beat that commander and break their…” I started saying to Asuna when something whizzed past my eyes. Then another…and another. 

“Wha…?” Kizmel gasped and pointed into the sky. 

When I followed her finger, I lost all speech. 

Against the backdrop of the golden-blue base of the floor of Aincrad above us, countless little flakes spun and danced through the air. They were…leaves. The leaves of the spirit tree, which stood over the courtyard, were withering and falling off the branch. 

I automatically reached out and grabbed one before it hit the ground. It was light brown and desiccated, and it crumbled in my fingers before melting into thin air. 

I looked up again and stared closer at the tree itself, thirty or so meters above. There was no change to its trunk at this moment, but the leaves continued falling from its branches in all directions. 

This couldn’t be a natural phenomenon. It was January, too late in the season for the leaves to fall, and the spirit tree had never withered because it received constant life from the hot spring at its roots for centuries… 

It was then that my eyes gaped, and I had a terrible premonition. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence that the fallen elves were attacking right as the leaves started falling off the spirit tree. If all the leaves fell, the “protection of the spirit tree,” as Kizmel called it, would be lost, and Castle Galey would be the same as the dusty canyon outside its walls. A weakness debuff would affect all the dark elves in the castle, and the guards would obviously be unable to fight. But the fallen elves had those fresh-cut branches on their belts and could keep going. 

That had been their plan all along. And the most likely way they could harm the spirit tree was… 

“Kizmel, do you have your Greenleaf Cape?!” I shouted. 

The knight looked back at me, startled out of her shock, but shook her head. “No…I returned it to the treasure room. Oh! If the spirit tree withers, then…” 

“Right, that’s what they’re after. Here, Kizmel, take this,” I said and, as quickly as possible, opened my window and took out the branch I had removed from the Fallen Elven Scout. Kizmel had noticed that the Fallen were wearing these things, and she looked slightly evasive. 

“Did they cut those branches off of living trees…? But how…?” 

“I don’t know. But this is the only option you have…If all the spirit tree’s leaves fall, I don’t think the guards will be able to fight anymore.” 

I pressed the leafy branch into the knight’s hand, then turned to Asuna with her huge lance and Myia in her gas mask. I couldn’t help but feel very worried about Asuna being here. But Kizmel wouldn’t abandon her comrades, and in any case, Asuna would not run away. 

“Just hang in there…I’ll be right back!” 

“Where are you going, Kirito…?!” 

“Underground!” I shouted as I ran off. 

In moments, I was at full speed, racing through the falling leaves. The guards had paused when the abnormal phenomenon started and were starting to fight again, but the leaves would be gone within three minutes. There were still fifteen Fallen Elven Warriors, including their commander, and even with the three women present, it would be tough to eliminate them all within three minutes. I had to stop the withering of the spirit tree before then. 

I readied my sword above my right shoulder, hoping to add at least one blow before I left. I steadied my aim, hearing the start-up sound of the sword skill, and activated Sonic Leap. It scored a clean hit on the back of a warrior standing apart from his group, sending him tumbling. I grabbed the branch from his belt. 

“Aim for the branches on the Fallen’s backs!” I shouted to the guards—and so that the Fallen would hear me, too—and rushed past the fighting toward the front entrance of the castle. No doubt it would be difficult to aim for the branches on the enemy’s backs in the midst of battle, but at the very least, it should put some mental pressure on the Fallen. If they lost those branches, they would be just as susceptible to weakness when the spirit tree died. 

I reached the entryway in seconds and handed over the branch I just stole to the waitresses helping the injured and paralyzed right next to the door. “If the spirit tree withers, gather everyone close around that branch!” 

The range of the branch’s effect would be very short, I was certain, but still enough to make a difference. Once the waitresses nodded, stunned, I rushed inside. 

The first-floor entry hall was empty. Most likely, Count Galeyon and the high priests were barricading themselves up on the top floor. I didn’t think they were going to hear out some human wanderer the way that Viscount Yofilis did, and if the tree withered, the count would be just as helpless as the rest of them anyway. 

The stairs down to the underground hot spring were a little ways down the west wing hallway. I curved to the left and was speeding up again when I heard a familiar voice. 

“Hey! Boy! Slow down!” 

“…?!” 

I went into a double-footed brake and looked up in the direction of the voice. On the second-floor terrace of the stairs in the atrium-style entry hall was a figure in a black robe, hands waving wildly. 

“G…Gramps?! What do you want? There’s no time for…” 

But Bouhroum, the self-styled “great sage,” cut me off with a desperate “I know that! I suspect the Fallen have dumped poison in the spring, and I know you’re going down there! But you cannot fix it by yourself!” 

“Th-then what can we do…?” 

“Pour this into the spring!” he said, tossing something that looked like it was made of glass from the terrace. 

If this was a quest with a proper storyline, then failing to catch the object would immediately fail the quest, I knew, so I dropped my sword and used both hands to catch the ball of glass. 

It turned out to be a round-bottomed flask about ten centimeters across. There was a cork plugged tight into its short neck, and it was full of a deep-green liquid. Based on appearances, it was very poisonous. 

I wanted to ask him if this was really safe, but there wasn’t a second to waste. Deciding to take the word of the sage for properly training Asuna and the others in the Meditation skill, I picked up my sword and made to leave. 

“All right, I’ll do it!” 

“Very good, boy!” 

With that, I resumed running. A downward staircase appeared on the right side of the hall, and I practically tumbled down the steps to the basement. I had to be as cautious as possible while running down the hallway with its reddish lamps. The Fallen could be lurking anywhere from this point on. 

At the end of the curving corridor was the large door to the underground hot spring. White steam wafted out from the open door. 

“Ooh…” 

I covered my mouth with my sword hand on instinct. Before, it had only smelled like spring water, but now there was an unpleasant odor mixed in. Something like drying mud—a musty, moldy smell. 

I stopped at the entrance, listening closely before I entered. There was no one in the spacious lounge area, but the stench was sharper here. If the smell was coming from the pool the spirit tree’s roots drank from, there wasn’t a moment to waste. I threw open the far door, raced through the empty changing room, and went into the great subterranean dome… 

“…!!” 

I clenched my jaw when I saw it. 

The pure, milky-white water of the spring was tainted and black. Thick, sticky bubbles rose to the surface, emitting a gray miasma when they burst. The roots hanging from the domed ceiling were nearly four-fifths black, no doubt due to sucking up the polluted water. If I didn’t purify that water now, that centuries-old tree was going to die within a minute. 

But I couldn’t move forward. 

Ahead of me on the stone tile walkway, near the lip of the water, stood a man. 

He wore full-metal armor, a shortspear in his right hand, and a tower shield in his left. His face was aged, and his chin sported a short beard. 

It was the leader of Qusack, Gindo. 

The spearman eyed me warily. 

“Get out of the way,” I said. 

But Gindo just pointed his large shield in my direction and rasped, “No…I can’t move until those roots have completely rotted away.” 

That made it essentially certain that Gindo had dumped the poison into the hot spring. But the color cursor over his head was green. So whoever went into the gate room of the tower and either killed or drove out the dark elf guard so that the gate would stay open, it wasn’t him. It must have been one of his three other companions. 

In any case, Qusack had me fooled entirely. Bitter regret and sour hate flooded my mouth. “Are you…helping the fallen elves? Or are you part of that PK gang…?” 

Whatever I expected out of Gindo, it wasn’t this. “No way…neither! I…we didn’t even know that people were PKing in Aincrad. So I…I never suspected him of…” 

“…Him? Who…?” 

But I didn’t have time to keep talking. There wasn’t a second to waste. In the courtyard just above us, Asuna, Kizmel, Myia, and the guards were fighting desperately to save the castle. From what I could see on their HP bars, they hadn’t lost too much, but if the spirit tree died, and the guards could no longer fight, my party members would be in grave danger. 

“…I don’t have time to talk with you. If you don’t move now,” I said, lifting my sword and pointing it at the man who stood five meters away, “I will move you by force.” 

If I attacked Gindo, who had a green cursor, mine would turn orange. But I would do the alignment recovery quest as many times as it took to keep Asuna and the others alive. 

In response, Gindo adjusted his tower shield, which stood over one meter tall. He wasn’t going to budge until that tree had withered up. It wouldn’t be easy to break through his defense, but if it came down to it, I could use a series of sword skills to smash the shield… 

An idea popped into my head, and I looked at the sword in my right hand. 

I returned it to the sheath over my back without a word, opened my window, and put the flask in my inventory. When he saw me barehanded, Gindo let a flash of uncertainty cross his face that I did not miss. 

Instantly, I was flying. Gindo frantically tried to raise his shortspear, but I jumped to the right, hunching into the blind spot his large shield created. Then I darted forward again, putting both hands on the shield and pushing with all my might. 

Within the Anti-Criminal Code zone, even the strongest player could not force other players or NPCs out of their personal space. The action of planting your feet in place fixed your personal coordinates and made the game treat you like any other immovable object. 

But outside the safe-haven area, that system did not apply. And even I did not know where the line between simply pushing a person and committing a crime lay. If you pushed someone off a high ledge and caused fall damage, you would definitely turn orange, but this seemed safe to me… 

“Yaaaah!” 

I bellowed, summoning all the power from my gut, and pushed on the heavily armored warrior, whose gear had to be twice the weight of my own. Out of a difference of strength or simple surprise, Gindo faltered backward and couldn’t recover, sliding bit by bit. He put up a brief moment of resistance at the lip of the walkway, then fell back first into the filthy black water. 

A huge plume of liquid shot up, and then Gindo’s face emerged from the water. 

“Bwah!” 

He spat and flailed his hands, but because of the weight of his plate armor and tower shield, he couldn’t keep himself afloat. Fortunately (I supposed), the blackened water was smelly but apparently not poisonous to players, because no debuff icon appeared on his cursor. Belatedly, I realized that if his HP ended up going down, I could have gone criminal, but at least for now, I wasn’t suffering any alignment loss. 

I ran my fingers across my open window and materialized the flask I’d just placed in it. Quickly, I popped the cork out and poured the green liquid into the hot water. 

White smoke practically exploded out of the water where it landed, causing me to turn my face away. Gindo’s struggling figure was engulfed in the smoky steam. The reaction quickly spread across the vast pool of water, painting white over my entire field of view. 

It reminded me of a prank I played as a kid with my little sister Suguha, when we dumped a huge block of dry ice into the bathwater. 

“…I hope you know what you’re talking about, Gramps,” I muttered. 

There was no response, of course, but a few seconds later, the first change I noticed was not in the sight of the spring, but the smell. The stench hanging thick in the dome rapidly began to reverse, replaced by a fresh, woody smell, like a forest after the rain. Eventually, the white cloud dispersed, allowing me to see once again. 

Within moments, the poisonous swamp of the hot spring underwent a dramatic transformation. The greenish water was now clear again, the paved stone floor crisply visible, and the nasty smell was completely gone. The bundles of hanging roots from the ceiling were still blackened at the top, but even that was slowly fading. It seemed that we had avoided the nightmare scenario of the spirit tree withering away completely. 

I checked the HP bars of my party members again and, satisfied they were still holding out at around 70 percent, breathed a sigh of relief. A dark elf victory was surely guaranteed at this point, but with other players involved, there was no telling what might happen next. I had to return to the courtyard and help eliminate the Fallen. 

I turned on my heel, then paused and looked back to Gindo, who was no longer struggling. The heavy warrior, resting on his knees in the water, turned his face up toward mine, and at the bare minimum of volume needed to be audible, muttered, “Now…they’re all going to die.” 

“What…? Who is?” I asked. 

His face was sunken, like the soul had drained out of it, with just a touch of anger and despair. 

“Who do you think? My friends. Lazuli, Temuo, Highston…They’ve been given poison. They’re being held prisoner.”