Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 12

12 

BY THE TIME I GOT BACK TO THE COURTYARD OF Castle Galey, there were only three Fallen Elven Warriors left. Unsurprisingly, one was the commander with the long saber. The actual surprise was who I saw them fighting with. 

Decked out in shining silver armor and a blue cape, swinging a slender longsword, was none other than the master of the castle, Count Melan Gus Galeyon. He’d lost nearly 20 percent of his health, and his swinging was rusty, but the Fallen commander was down in the red, and I wasn’t worried about a comeback. The other two enemies were surrounded by guards. The majority of the spirit tree’s leaves had fallen from overhead, but at least the damage had stopped. 

A quick scan of the courtyard showed me that Asuna, Kizmel, and Myia were helping the servants tend to the wounded. I also saw Bouhroum nearby. 

When I rushed over, the sage was as self-important as ever. “It’s good to see you know how to follow directions, boy. I had to break into little Melan’s bedchamber to rouse him from his hiding place and shame him into joining the battle.” 

I watched the old man cackle, then looked to Count Galeyon fighting bravely—and back. “Actually…since you’re wiser and greater than the master of the castle, I have a request of you…” 

“Hmm? And what would that be?” Bouhroum asked suspiciously. 

I leaned over to his long ear, partially hidden behind his white whiskers, and whispered, “Give me the four keys you’re keeping in the treasure room.” 

“Wha…?!” the old man started to shout, until I covered his open mouth with my hand. 

“Please! My friends…er, more like some acquaintances, are in mortal danger. I’ll give them back once I’ve saved them!” 

In the moment, I completely forgot that the old man in front of me was an NPC. 

If I had been thinking straight, I would know that an NPC acting along rules laid out for him would never assist in an act of thievery. But the last few days, the actions and statements of the NPCs we’d met didn’t have that same sense of programming. There was something too human about the way they acted. 

Count Galeyon, who was fighting the commander of the Fallen now, had seemed like nothing more than a quest-giving NPC when we first met him, reciting canned lines as directed. But watching him now, the way he fought awkwardly but with hints of desperation, painted a vivid portrait of a man with a pampered upbringing doing his best to live up to his lordly role, inexperienced at combat but spurred on by his stern elderly teacher. Earlier, I had thought that Kizmel and Viscount Yofilis were the only special NPCs I’d met, but after Bouhroum and Myia, it began to feel as though all the NPCs living in Aincrad were actually like that. 

Bouhroum answered my plea with a fierce glare and a grumble. “Hrrrmmmm…” 

“Look, I know it’s a crazy request. But it’s the only way…” 

“Hmm. Very well, then.” 

Huh?! 

It was that simple, apparently. He glanced at Asuna, who was feeding a guard a potion, and muttered, “The lance I lent to that young lady came from the treasure room, too. Wait right here.” 

Bouhroum turned, black robes twirling, and began running for the front entrance. Gindo had been watching from the shadow of the massive door and pulled his face back in a hurry, but the old man paid him no mind and disappeared into the castle. 

Just then, there was a great cheer across the courtyard. Count Galeyon had defeated the enemy commander. At last, the two remaining warriors threw down their scimitars and surrendered. 

We had successfully avoided the collapse of Castle Galey, but the fight wasn’t over yet. The unnamed man who had abducted three members of Qusack and threatened the remaining one into opening the gates needed to be dealt with, once and for all. 

I took a deep, slow breath, let it out, and headed toward Asuna to explain the situation to the others in my party. 

Five minutes later, I was rushing quickly through the dusty canyon outside Castle Galey with Asuna, Kizmel, and Myia in tow. 

Thirty meters ahead was Gindo, lighter now that he had removed his tower shield and plate armor. I warned him that he’d be in great danger if the monsters attacked him while alone, and therefore he shouldn’t run, but his pace was clearly picking up. The giant arthropods that populated the canyon used vibration for targeting more than sight, so you could avoid them by being quiet and careful, but he was beyond caring about that. 

I understood how he felt, but if he drew the attention of monsters, we’d have to step in to save him, and that would cause trouble if the enemy saw us. I didn’t see anyone scouting out up ahead, but there were dozens of little hollows and shadows that a player could be hiding in. 

“…By the way, whatever happened with that dark elf escort that Qusack had around?” Asuna wondered. 

I repeated what Gindo had told me. “He died in battle when they got attacked by monsters in this canyon, apparently…That’s when an unfamiliar man showed up and saved them, according to him, but I’m betting that he rounded up those monsters and set them on Qusack in the first place.” 

“Is this the same man who killed Myia’s father and tried to kill you and Asuna?” Kizmel asked. 

Without thinking, I put a hand on Myia’s shoulder and nodded. “Technically, I’m thinking of the boss of the people who killed Cylon. Asuna and I call him the man in the black poncho. He usually doesn’t fight for himself but plots in secret and sets people and groups against one another.” 

“Ah…He sounds like one of the demons of the ancient myths.” 

“D…demons?” 

That reminded me that I still hadn’t seen any real demonic-type monsters yet in Aincrad. I glanced over at Kizmel, and she nodded and continued, “Deep underground in the earth of old, there was a subterranean realm where wicked demons and devils were said to live. Occasionally, they would rise to the surface, disguising themselves as beautiful humans and elves, and, by taking the places of nobles or military leaders, would then sow discord among the innocent.” 

“Yikes…that sounds exactly like the black-poncho man,” Asuna, on my left, remarked with disgust. “I…I hope he’s not a real demon…” 

I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the man in the black poncho being not a player but an NPC from some long-dormant demon race of Aincrad, or if she was suggesting he might be a real-life demon wearing a NerveGear and logging in to SAO. Obviously, I wasn’t going to ask, so I focused on Gindo’s back far ahead of us. 

“Once we pull that poncho’s hood off, we’ll know,” I said, half-joking. 

To my surprise, Myia nodded and said, “When I was little, Mother read me a story that had a demon in it. I think that if he has pointy horns on his head, he is a demon.” 

It sounded like an innocuous comment, but she was talking about the boss of the people who killed her father. And I had to repay him for sticking a knife to my back in the streets of Karluin. It was tough enough just trying to beat these floors; we didn’t need to deal with a bunch of PKers trying to stir up trouble on top of that. If the man in the black poncho had kidnapped the rest of Qusack on his own, then this would be the perfect chance to settle the score with him—once the other three were safe, of course. 

“Whether demon or human, he’s a dangerous foe. I’m looking forward to your help, Myia, even though I know you’re tired.” I patted her on the shoulder and let go. The little girl in the gas mask nodded, as did Kizmel and Asuna. 

In all honesty, what I really wanted to do was take Asuna aside and ask her about the two-handed lance skill, but it was hard to talk about game systems in front of the NPCs. When I came back from the hot spring to the courtyard, there was no sign of the giant lance that Bouhroum had supposedly taken from the treasure repository, but I bet it was in Asuna’s inventory, so there would be another chance to ask. Everything could wait until we’d rescued Lazuli, Temuo, and Highston. 

According to Gindo, after the swarm of monsters attacked and the dark elf bodyguard died, a cloud of odd-smelling smoke had swept through, along with a voice that said “This way.” They ran in that direction to escape, where they saw a “handsome player with a charming smile,” who then guided them to a cave at the end of the canyon. Once they’d relaxed, knowing they were safe, the man had handed them potions, which paralyzed them. 

Then he dragged Gindo out of the cave, and with the same smile, told him the conditions he needed to fulfill to recover his guildmates. Gindo would return to Castle Galey alone and poison the underground hot spring. Then, once all the dark elves in the castle died, he could return. Alternately, if the fallen elves all died in the attack, he could steal the four sacred keys from the treasure chamber during the chaos of the battle and deliver them to the cave. Only when one of those conditions was fulfilled would his friends be returned to him alive… 

When Gindo finished explaining the situation, my first thought—recollection, really—was of the former blacksmith and chakram user of the Legend Braves, Nezha. 

He had described the man in the black poncho who brought the upgrade-scam idea to the Legend Braves as a movie star–beautiful man with a pleasant smile. I’d never seen his face myself, but it seemed obvious that Gindo’s “handsome player with a charming smile” was the same person. How charismatic did this guy have to be to get so many players to drop their guard around him? 

Maybe he really was a de— 

But I had to stop myself from thinking that. Whether demon or human, if he had an HP bar, he could be defeated. I had hesitated when I fought Morte, but I wouldn’t make that mistake twice. I’d killed six fallen elves in the battle at Castle Galey, even knowing that there was no fundamental difference between their lives and the lives of players in this world. 

Up ahead, Gindo pointed his shortspear upward and changed course. That was the signal that the destination was close. It had only been ten minutes since leaving the castle, and even avoiding battle, we hadn’t covered much more than half a kilometer. A giant scorpion plodded along the right side of the ravine, so we snuck past it, hugging the left wall, and came to a stop at the branching path Gindo had gone down. 

We peered in, hunched together, and saw that the path came to an end just twenty meters or so in, with a yawning cave mouth in the middle of the rock face. That would be where the other members were held captive. Gindo opened his window outside the entrance, equipped his plate armor and shield, and started walking in. 

If the man in the black poncho or his friends were near the cave’s entrance, he was supposed to raise his spear to point up again, but it was still dangling toward the ground. Our plan was for Gindo to exchange the four keys for his companions, and once the other three emerged safely from the cave, we would charge inside. The cave was a dead end, too, so we didn’t have to worry about the poncho man escaping. 

It was possible that the black assassin would take the keys and immediately break his promise, but if so, we would rush in immediately. Gindo was registered in our party now, so I could see his HP in real-time, and given his defensive focus, even an enemy over level 20 couldn’t kill him in a single instant. 

Gindo slowly approached the cave. As soon as he crossed the threshold between orange sunset-lit sand and the shadow from the tall cliffs, the spearman sank into dark gray. 

“…Hey, Kirito,” murmured Asuna to calm her nerves as she crouched below me, “I’ve been wondering…it’s the fallen elves who want the hidden keys, and the man in the black poncho is helping them with that, right?” 

“Hmm…I suppose so. He shouldn’t have any particular interest in the warfare between the two groups of elves. Maybe in exchange for helping the Fallen, he and his buddies have been getting those daggers and paralyzing needles?” 

“But the fallen elves who attacked at Myia’s house in Stachion were after the iron keys that you and she carry. They’re only related to Stachion’s curse, so why would the Fallen want them? You don’t think those iron keys are the two remaining sacred keys, do you?” 

“No…that can’t be the case,” said Kizmel, who was practically leaning onto my back to peer down the canyon tributary. “The Ruby Key and Adamantine Key are safely contained in the shrines on the seventh and eighth floors. No human would know the location of the shrines or what to do with the keys should they find them.” 

“Yeah…good point,” I said, choosing not to point out that the first half of her statement was definitely untrue. Any player who beat the “Elf War” campaign quest in the beta would know where the seventh- and eighth-floor shrines were—like me. 

But the two iron keys had been in the possession of Myia’s mother, Theano, and Lord Cylon, not players, and only elves could go up floors while the labyrinth tower of the sixth floor was still unconquered. So if the keys Myia and I had were not the sacred keys, but the fallen elves wanted them for some reason, that meant… 

Just then, Myia piped up from below Asuna. “Oh…look, everyone…” 

I returned my attention to the back of the canyon. Gindo still wasn’t in the cave; for some reason, he was standing still a few meters from the entrance. Either he’d spotted something, or… 

But the premonition I felt was immediately disproved—a familiar bunch of faces emerged from the darkness of the cave. 

The ponytailed woman was Lazuli. The shaved-headed one was Temuo, and the long-haired one was Highston. Their weapons were taken away, but their armor was the same. The awkward wobbling in their steps wasn’t an effect of the paralyzing poison but probably a mental thing. 

I was relieved at first that the other three were safe, but then I became very suspicious. 

Gindo hadn’t given the man in the black poncho the four keys yet. Why were the hostages released? Were the keys just an excuse, and all he really wanted was the gate of Castle Galey opened? 

But the fallen elves were defeated, and the spirit tree had just barely survived. Nearly ten of the guards had perished, but I doubt that was the extent of what he wanted to achieve. 

It didn’t add up, but at least the rest of Qusack were safe. Gindo tossed his shield aside and rushed to them, taking their hands. After rejoicing in their reunion, he turned and waved to us. 

“…I suppose there’s no reason to hide anymore,” Asuna said. I agreed and straightened up. Once Myia had stood up from the gravel, we headed into the branching path. At the end of the little ravine, Gindo greeted us with a teary smile. 

“Thank you…thank you so much. Because of you, we’re all alive and well.” 

“No…we didn’t do anything…” I said, scratching my head. 

Highston, who looked a bit on the pale side but had nearly full HP, said, “The man who poisoned us left the cave about five minutes ago. I think he knew you guys were trailing Gin, and he ran off. So you see, it is thanks to you.” 

“…Well, if he knew we were following, that’s a problem in itself,” I muttered, looking around. Five minutes was a tricky amount of time—enough to cover a good distance at a sprint, but at walking speed, he might still be close. Then again, the cave and the branching path were a dead end, so if he’d taken a leisurely exit, we would have seen him. 

“Did it seem like the black-poncho man got a message before he left?” Asuna asked. Lazuli shook her head. 

“No, he was totally quiet after he took Gin out, and he pricked us with these poison needle things every now and then…then, a little while ago, he just stood up and left the cave. When the paralysis wore off, and we stepped out, there was Gin…” 

“……Oh…” 

But there was still suspicion in Asuna’s features. Kizmel and Myia were looking around a slight distance away, as if they didn’t feel entirely safe. If the black-poncho man was using his Hiding skill nearby, it should be impossible for him to sneak up on us in this place without drawing attention, but there were no sure things in this world. 

Meanwhile, Gindo seemed totally relieved and relaxed. He walked over to me, blinking rapidly, and bowed. “I owe you all so much for this. This experience has been a painful lesson…We weren’t ready for the front line yet. We’ll go back to the fifth floor, finish up the quests that are left, and build ourselves up from scratch again…Oh, right. You can have these back.” 

He opened his window and produced a small leather bag. I peered inside and saw the green, blue, yellow, and black sacred keys. 

“All accounted f…” 

I paused. If he had switched the keys out for fakes in his inventory, there was no way for me to discern the difference. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that they were aligned with the man in the black poncho and that this was all a big act to steal the keys from us. 

“…Um, hang on. Sorry, can I just check something?” I asked, but Gindo didn’t seem upset at all. 

“Sure, of course.” 

“Okay…” I said, then beckoned Kizmel over and showed her the bag. “Can you check to see if these are the real keys or not?” 

“I can do this, but as I said earlier—” the knight began with a shrug—when just to our left, the sand erupted upward from the ground. 

“…?!” 

I leaped back to see the reddish-brown sand being sucked up into a little vortex. A whirlwind? But I’d never seen that happen in these canyons before… 

The moment I saw the dull shine in the midst of the two-meter-tall sandstorm, I shouted “Defense!!” and pulled out my Sword of Eventide, gripping it with both hands. 

I held the sword in front of me and positioned Asuna behind my back; at my side, Kizmel drew her saber and took position in front of Myia. The members of Qusack were farther away—all I could do was hope that Gindo used his huge shield to protect his friends. 

The sand whirlwind split top and bottom without a sound, and crimson light shot forth. 

It was a sword skill. A rotating area attack—the scimitar’s Treble Scythe…except, it wasn’t. 

No, this was the heavy area attack of the Katana skill, Tsumuji-guruma. 

Deep, almost unprecedented shock shattered what few thoughts I could manage. I held my sword in both hands but couldn’t brace myself. Sparks burst before my eyes, an incredible jolt ran from my wrists through my shoulders, and my back collided with Asuna as we flew a good six meters and sprawled onto the gravel. 

I rolled several times and managed to stop on my knees. I’d guarded the attack itself but still lost about 20 percent health, and on the ground nearby, Asuna was down 10 percent. Kizmel managed to stay on her feet, but she’d been pushed back a good distance in her defensive position, and Myia had fallen onto her bottom behind her. 

A glance over my left shoulder showed me that Qusack had fallen back but was otherwise fine…except that the top quarter of Gindo’s tower shield was gone. 

Ahead, the sand had fallen back to earth, revealing our attacker. 

It was not the man in the black poncho. 

The figure’s body was thinner than Kizmel and wrapped in studded dark-gray leather. A hood of the same color covered shoulder to head, but the figure was clearly feminine. Her weapon, outstretched after the swing, was indeed a katana. It was only the second time I had seen that rare weapon type in the launch version, after the huge nodachi used by the first-floor boss, Illfang the Kobold Lord. 

The attacker straightened up from her deep kneeling position with feathery lightness and pulled the hood off with her free hand. Ash-gray hair fell over her forehead, shining brilliantly in the setting sun. 

Her bangs were longer on the left side from my perspective, hiding nearly half her face but not her stunning beauty. I searched for her color cursor. 

It was…a blackish-red the color of dried blood. Her name was Kysarah: Fallen Elven Adjutant. 

I recognized that name. It was the woman elf who had been with Fallen General N’ltzahh when we saw him in the submerged dungeon on the fourth floor. And it was only at this point that I realized I’d left one big mystery unsolved until now. 

Gindo had fallen into the black-poncho man’s trap with his companions held hostage and returned to Castle Galey alone as ordered. The guards had opened the gate for him without skepticism, because he had the sigil ring. That was the moment the ordinary gate bell had woken me up in the dining hall. I recalled that it turned into the rapid warning bell barely ten seconds after that. 

It was impossible for a whole battalion of fallen elves to race all the way through the canyon to the castle gate in ten seconds. As I initially supposed, someone must have passed through the gate with Gindo and killed the dark elf in the gate room. But that person never made an appearance during the battle, leaving me guessing to the end. 

Now I knew that this katana-wielding woman was the one who had attacked the gate room. I didn’t know why she hadn’t taken part in the battle in the courtyard, but it was quite possible that if she had, the Fallen would have won. 

The elf looked around with bluish-purple eyes like ice in darkness, then stuck the end of her black katana into the sand nearby. When she raised it again, it lifted up the leather bag that fell from my left hand when we were attacked. She flipped it up into the air and caught it, four sacred keys still contained within. 

“……Thirty of my brethren died so I could gain these…” 

The voice that came from her thin lips contained a sweetness in the midst of its harsh bite. The moment she heard that, Kizmel recovered from her frozen shock and brandished her saber. 

“You…you’re General N’ltzahh’s aide, Kysarah the Ransacker!” she shouted. “Return that bag to the ground! It is not meant to be touched by the likes of you!” 

But Kysarah did not bat an eyelash. She fixed Kizmel with that icy gaze and answered in a flat affect, “Knight of Lyusula, I am afraid I do not know your name. And I will not be returning the keys…They are necessary for the sake of our great desire.” 

“Then I will force you to return them…by my sword!” Kizmel said, already charging. In my head, I knew I should be attacking at this same moment, but my avatar wouldn’t listen to me. 

Kizmel’s attack was tremendous, worthy of the title of royal guard. It wasn’t a sword skill, yet the tip of the saber as it cut through virtual air shone silver, and the breeze it created brushed my face, many meters away. 

Claaang! There was a nasty ringing, along with a sound like metal screaming. 

“…!” 

I heard Asuna gasp into my left ear. The moment Kysarah lifted her katana with one easy motion to block the attack, a crack ran down the length of Kizmel’s saber blade. It was a sign that a weapon’s durability was just about to run out. 

Kizmel floated backward, gnashing her teeth. She still had the saber at the ready, but one more good blow would easily shatter it. 

Kysarah, meanwhile, lowered her katana with nary a care and stuck the bag of keys into her waist pouch. Her gaze traveled from Kizmel to Asuna and me, then to the members of Qusack. At the foot of her knee-high boots, another little dust devil kicked up…and then she moved with alarming speed, stopping right next to Gindo’s group. 

“Aaah! Aaaaaaah!” screamed Temuo. Kysarah grabbed him by the back collar of his breastplate with her free hand and easily hoisted him up. He swung his arms around, struggling to break free, but went absolutely still the moment she pressed the tip of her katana to his throat. 

“…I can kill you all right now, but I do not have a taste for murdering children, and my branch is about to run out of life.” 

Belatedly, I realized that Kysarah had one of those tree branches behind her back, too. If I could steal that, then Kysarah would suffer the weakness debuff and be unable to move, since she did not have a Greenleaf Cape like Kizmel did. 

But I also couldn’t move with the katana at Temuo’s neck. If he were a player of Kysarah’s level, his HP couldn’t be reduced to zero in a single instant, even if she attacked a vital point. But based on the strength of the katana, which nearly destroyed Kizmel’s saber in one hit, and the fact that to my level-21 eyes, her cursor was nearly black, she might indeed be able to inflict an instantly fatal blow. 

“Among you, there are two other keys, not sacred but made of iron, that fit together as one,” Kysarah said, still dangling Temuo in the air. It took me an extra second to understand what she meant. My shoulders twitched inadvertently, and Kysarah turned her visible blue-purple eye right on me. “You will give them to me, too. For every ten seconds that I do not have them, I will kill one of your acquaintances.” 

Temuo promptly struggled again, and Lazuli uttered a quick scream. Highston, who was sitting on his knees in the sandy gravel, looked from Kysarah to me and back and said in a tremulous falsetto, “This…this is a forced event from the “Elf War” quest, right?! Someone’s…someone’s gonna save us, right?!” 

I wanted to believe so. But I was pretty sure—no, dead sure—that this attack did not have anything to do with the proper story scenario of the campaign. It was an irregular outcome as a result of the black-poncho man and his PK gang making contact with the elves. It was an incident. 

…Seven…Eight. 

When the count inside my head reached nine, I bolted to my feet. “All right. I’ll give you the keys.” 

Once I said so, I realized that Kysarah was an NPC, and she might carry out the ten-second limit in a very literal sense. If she didn’t receive the keys within ten seconds and have their ownership transferred to her in the system, she might slaughter Temuo without mercy…At least, if this were a fully scripted event. 

But ten seconds had already passed by the time I told her I’d give her the keys, and she merely nodded and didn’t move her katana. Convinced anew that this was not some pre-scripted event, I moved as quickly as I could in pulling the iron key out of storage anyway. 

I tossed it into the sand at Kysarah’s feet, and another one flew forward from behind me, sticking into the surface near the first. That was the key Myia got from her mother. The keys faced each other at a distance of about a third of a meter, ringing and reverberating. 

Kysarah glanced down, then tossed Temuo toward his friends with one hand. Gindo opened his arms but failed to catch the man, and they crashed backward onto the ground. There was no HP loss, fortunately. 

The fallen elf crouched, all interest in her hostage lost, and reached out for the closer of the two keys. Suddenly, I was keenly aware of the weight of the sword in my right hand. 

If Kysarah picked up the two keys with one hand, there would be a repelling reaction between them, like we saw in the castle library, and they would forcefully hurl each other apart. That would be our only chance at a counterattack. I could hit her with every blow of a Vertical Square and not take her out, but if I could get one good blow in and throw her off-balance, there should be a chance to steal the branch from her backside. 

Kysarah scooped up the first key. I adjusted my center of gravity just a bit forward. 

Right at that moment, someone grabbed my ankle. 

“…?!” 

I spun around and looked directly into Asuna’s wide eyes. She didn’t say a word or make any other kind of gesture, but it was very clear that my temporary partner was warning me not to move. 

I looked forward again. As I expected, Kysarah had picked up one key and was reaching with the same hand for the other. The resonating ring grew much louder, but the fallen elf paid it no heed and grabbed the second key, too. 

Bzak!! That odd sound happened again, and a silver light shot from Kysarah’s hand—but the two keys did not fly in opposite directions. Kysarah squeezed them tightly in her palm, as though she had been expecting that to happen. 

Her ash-gray hair rippled with the force of the light shooting between her fingers. The bangs that covered the right side of her face were pushed away briefly, too, enough that I could see for the first time that she had a small eyepatch over her right eye, but my mind snapped right back to that hand. 

Her lips clamped shut, Kysarah continued to clench the two keys together with astonishing force. In the meantime, she had her katana pointed toward us, so there was no chance for us to sneak attack her. 

Eventually, there was a larger sparking sound, and the silver light faded and went out. 

Kysarah rose to her feet, holding what was now a single iron key. She hadn’t fused them together physically from sheer hand strength, of course; as Bouhroum said, the teeth and heads of the two keys were meant to align perfectly. 

“I had heard that there was a strange charm placed upon them…” she muttered, tossing the key into the bag with the four others. Then she straightened out her disheveled hair and turned to us. “Now my business here is done. Human warriors…” 

She paused then, her slender brows twitching just the tiniest bit. 

“Do not involve yourself in elf matters any further. Let them be the only ones to bring trouble into this,” she huffed, placing the black katana into the sheath on her left hip and spreading her arms. The wind whipped up from her feet and formed a little sand whirlwind that swallowed her whole. 

I turned my face away from the stinging wind for just a second, and the swirling dispersed, dropping the sand to the ground. The katana-wielding fallen elf was gone. 

“…I think we’re giving up on the elf quest. If that sort of stuff is going to happen farther down the line, I can’t imagine us getting all the way to the end,” Gindo said. 

And with that, the members of Qusack left for the exit of the dusty ravine. They were going to use the teleport gate in Stachion to go back to the fifth floor, where they would discuss their plans for the future, they explained. Temuo, Lazuli, and Highston had lost their weapons to the man in the black poncho, but they said they had backup weapons in their inventories, so they could get safely back to town. 

As for me, I wanted to apologize to Qusack for suspecting them of being aligned with the fallen elves during the battle to defend Castle Galey. I was hoping to exchange more info with them and didn’t want to say goodbye just yet, but Lazuli said, “Thank you for saving us. We’ll find a way to make it up to you once things have settled down,” so I had a feeling we’d meet again. 

Once the four were out of sight, I walked over to Kizmel, looked her in the face up close, and bowed deeply. “I’m sorry, Kizmel. You did all that work to gather the keys…” 

But that was all I was able to get out. Kizmel bent over at the waist, too, and said gravely, “Kirito, Asuna, forgive me. It was my job to keep you two safe…” 

Our heads brushed together, and we awkwardly snapped upright again. Asuna giggled. 

“There’s nothing for you to apologize about, Kizmel. Besides, I don’t think you came up inferior to that fallen elf. She just had a much fancier weapon than you.” 

Kizmel looked up and grimaced. “The official swords of the Pagoda Royal Knights are not cheap trinkets…but mine nearly broke from trading a single blow with her. That comes down to the inferiority of my technique.” 

“Don’t say that,” I reassured. “I wasn’t able to attack her, either.” 

Then it was Asuna’s turn to look apologetic. “Sorry about grabbing your ankle, Kirito. You were waiting for a chance to strike back, weren’t you?” 

“Oh…Actually, you made the right choice. I was going to leap at Kysarah the moment she picked up the keys, but it was like she knew they were going to push each other apart…so if I’d jumped in, she would have sliced me up instead.” 

“I see…But how did she undo that charm on the keys anyway? Bouhroum said it was a powerful bit of magic, and only the person who placed it could undo it,” wondered Asuna. 

Her answer came from Myia, who took off her gas mask at last to drink some water. Once she was done and put the cap on the canteen again, the girl said, “It looked to me like she simply crushed the charm out of existence with sheer strength alone.” 

“B-but if that’s true…this is just getting ridiculous,” I said, then suddenly hunched my neck and realized I owed the girl an apology. “Oh, right…I guess that wasn’t very nice of me. I gave away the key your mother kept safe for so long, just to save some people I know…” 

“If you hadn’t done that, I’m certain she would have killed me, too,” she replied with a calmness beyond her years, only to then pull the gas mask back over her little face. With her voice a bit muffled now, she continued, “Plus, based on the way she spoke, I think what she really wanted was the first thing, the…sacred keys? The keys she got from you and me were more incidental, it seemed. Maybe someone just asked her for them.” 

“Oh, I got that feeling, too…” said Asuna. She rested her hands on Myia’s thin shoulders from behind. 

I frowned, wondering who might have asked for such a thing. But before I could come up with any potential answers, the incoming instant message icon popped up. It was from Argo. And it read… 

DKB AND ALS JUST FOUGHT CENTIPEDE BOSS IN SOUTH AREA. IT WAS A TOUGH FIGHT UNTIL AN NPC WOMAN RUSHED IN AND BEAT THE BOSS. SHE HAD A GOLDEN BOX IN HER LEFT HAND, AND WHEN SHE RAISED IT UP, THE CENTIPEDE’S ARMOR TURNED INTO LITTLE BLOCKS AND CRUMBLED APART. LIN-KIBA HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANS, EITHER. INFORMATION WANTED. 

“………Huh?” 

Kizmel and Myia glanced over at me, wondering what I was yelping about. 

“Oh, er, it’s just…I got some weird information from an instant…er, my Art of Far Scribing…” 

“You did? From whom?” wondered Asuna, who left Myia’s side and came over to see. I switched the window to make it visible to party members and pondered what this meant. 

A “golden box” might possibly be the golden cube that had been removed from the lord’s mansion in Stachion. Would that make the NPC who barged into the fight Myia’s mother, Theano? What did it mean that she held up the cube, and the centipede’s armor crumbled? The golden cube was just supposed to be a quest item that signified the master of the town and not have any intrinsic power of its own. Plus, what was Argo doing with this Lin-Kiba business? If Lind and Kibaou found out about that, they’d be furious… 

At that point, having lost my train of thought down a side alley, I glanced over at Asuna. My partner lifted her head, and we shared a look for a couple seconds before nodding together. 

As I closed my window, Asuna turned to Myia and said, “You know…I think we might have found Theano.” 

“What…?!” The girl’s back went straight as an arrow, and she took a step toward Asuna. “Wh-where…? Where is my mother?!” 

“Well…supposedly she was seen in the caves in the southern area…” 

“Southern…area?” the girl asked, confusion radiating through her mask. Only then did I recall that the girl had never been out of Stachion. Asuna crouched down and drew a simple map in the sand. 

“See, this is how the sixth floor, which is where we are, is split into five areas…There’s a star-shaped lake in the middle, and the south area, or fourth area, is right here. We’re in the northwest area, so it’s all the way on the other side…” 

“But…that’s so far away. What is my mother doing there…?” Myia mourned. In fact, the straight-line distance from Castle Galey to the Cave City of Goskai in the south area was only a little over five kilometers. In the real world, that would be the distance from the center of Kawagoe City to the center of neighboring Sayama—but I didn’t think Myia or even Asuna would understand what I meant by that. 

To the people who essentially spent their entire lives where they were programmed to stay, however, the place on the other side of the map might as well be another country. In fact, the first time I left the Town of Beginnings, the labyrinth tower felt like it was across the entire world from me. 

“…I don’t know what Theano’s ultimate purpose is,” I said, “but based on her actions, it seems like she’s trying to take the golden cube she removed from the mansion to some other place.” 

Asuna nodded. “I agree…and I doubt the south area is her destination.” 

“It is probably the Pillar of the Heavens,” said Kizmel, her first words in quite some time. The other three of us focused on her. 

“Do you know something, Kizmel?” 

“Not specifically…When I visited Stachion with you, a memory came to my mind. Though I have not seen it myself, I understand that the Pillar of the Heavens on this floor is built of those same stacked cubes of rock.” 

“Oh, that reminds me,” I nearly said out loud, only stopping myself at the last moment. In the beta, I’d gone up the labyrinth tower of the sixth floor, of course, but I couldn’t explain that to Kizmel and Myia. I did recall the tower’s exterior incorporating blocks that were similar to Stachion’s. 

“Which means…we should probably hurry. I don’t know what Theano means to do at the tower, but there will be a fearsome guardian beast there,” Asuna noted, throwing me a knowing glance. 

I nodded. “Yeah…good idea. But…hang on, let me check something.” 

My window was still open, so I typed a response at the speed of light to Argo, feeling Myia’s fascinated gaze on my skin the whole time. It occurred to me only just then that human NPCs couldn’t use an inventory or menu window, either, but obviously, I couldn’t explain that to her. 

The info broker was waiting for my response and had a new message for me in less than a minute. 

NPC RAN NORTHEAST THROUGH THE CAVE WITHOUT A WORD AFTER BOSS DIED. LIN-KIBA EACH SUSPECT SHE WAS AN NPC FROM THE OTHER’S QUEST. ONCE FR REFUEL IN GOSKAI, THEY’LL PROBABLY HEAD STRAIGHT TO FIFTH AREA. 

That one sent me grumbling. On the third and fifth floors, the PK agitators had set Lind’s DKB and Kibaou’s ALS against each other, but this time, the one making them paranoid about each other was Theano—a person from my quest. We couldn’t let the matter go unaddressed, both to set Myia at ease and to ensure there wasn’t needless discord between the two big guilds. 

I let Argo know I’d tell her more in person and closed my window. After another bit of eye contact with Asuna, I crouched down to speak to Myia. 

“It sounds like your mother is heading for the fifth area, after all. We’re going to rush after her, but…” 

I wanted to tell her that she should go back to Stachion and wait, but Myia exhibited an extremely curious reaction for an NPC: She cut me off. 

“No, I want to go with you. If my mother is doing something dangerous, I cannot simply stay at home and wait.” 

The girl had already lost her father. If she was this insistent, I really couldn’t stop her. Not to mention that Myia was a higher level than me or Asuna. 

“…All right,” I said, straightening up again. 

“I would like to as well,” said Kizmel with a crestfallen tone, “but I must report to the storyteller and castle lord that I allowed the fallen elves to steal the four sacred keys. My sword is damaged, too…” 

“But…aren’t they going to blame you for that, Kizmel? It was our fault that the keys were stolen, so we should be the ones to go…” Asuna said, looking nervous. 

“Yeah,” I piped up. “I’ll go and make a proper apology to old Bouhroum and Count Galeyon…” 

But the knight just smiled. “Do not worry. I am one of the queen’s own Pagoda Royal Knights. Only Her Majesty and the knight commander have the right to formally rebuke me. The priests might complain, but the simple truth of the matter is that I could not match Kysarah the Ransacker…I shall have to focus myself anew and regain the keys myself.” 

“…Oh…But when you do, we’re going to be fighting at your side,” Asuna proclaimed, grabbing Kizmel’s right hand with both of hers and squeezing. I walked up to the knight and shared a firm handshake with her. 

“Kizmel, tell old man Bouhroum that I’m going to go back and apologize to him. And if you want, until your sword gets fixed, take this…You might not like it, since it’s an enemy blade, but…” 

I had pulled out a weapon from my inventory for this purpose: the Elven Stout Sword I received from fighting the forest elf captain on the fourth floor. Even in its base, non-upgraded state, it was nearly as strong as my old Anneal Blade +8. 

“Ooooh…” Kizmel murmured as she took it and pulled the mirrorlike blade out of the silver-decorated sheath. 

Unfortunately, I immediately regretted my action. Kizmel’s long saber was in the Curved Blade category, and the Stout Sword was under the one-handed sword skill. Using a weapon with a skill you hadn’t learned meant you couldn’t make use of its stats, nor any of its sword skills, of course. 

But Kizmel just smiled, slid the sword back into the sheath, and said, “It is a good sword, and I will gladly use it. The forest elves may be our longtime foes, but their blacksmiths’ work is undeniable…And also…” 

For a moment, it seemed like she was going to say something more, but the knight just shook her head and hung the Stout Sword from her side instead of the cracked saber. She put that weapon over her back, then reached into her pouch. 

“It is not much of a trade, but you may have this from me.” 

She handed me a small bottle that was carved like a crystal. It was only the size of a thumb, but I knew it contained something unfathomably valuable, and so I stared her straight in the face. “Are…are you sure? Isn’t this a great dark elf treasure…?” 

“If not for you and Asuna and Myia, the Fallen would control Castle Galey at this moment, and all the contents of the treasure chamber would be lost. In that sense, this is a meager reward…and with it, you can cross the lake directly rather than taking the long left path, correct?” 

She was right, of course. Going the normal route from the second area to the labyrinth tower in the fifth area would take nearly an entire day, even avoiding combat with monsters. In order to catch up to Theano, who was already in the fourth area, the Drops of Villi in this bottle were not just useful, they were vital. 

“…Thanks. This will really help us,” I said, accepting the gift. 

Kizmel stepped back and looked at Asuna and Myia. “I suspect that once I finish reporting to the lord of the castle…I will be moving to the seventh floor. We shall part ways for a time, but I believe I will see you again soon enough.” 

“Yes, of course!” Asuna said, embracing Kizmel. Myia reached up a small hand for a shake. The four of us walked to the exit of the dead-end canyon and went our separate ways, waving all the while. 

Several times after we started walking south, I turned around to look and saw that Kizmel’s back was hidden against the reddish cliffs as she returned to Castle Galey. Within a minute, the knight’s HP bar silently vanished from the upper-left corner of my view.