Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 13

13 

WE GOT THROUGH THE DRY CANYON WITH A MINIMUM of battle and crossed the wasteland without being tempted by any sudden cactus fruiting, eventually reaching the bank of Lake Talpha before it got dark. 

It was after five thirty in the afternoon, and the navy-blue lake shone and flickered with the light of the flame-like setting sun. Myia stood at the edge of the water, lifted her gas mask up, and exclaimed in wonder: 

“Wow…I’ve never seen so much water in my life. Is this the ocean…?” 

Asuna stood behind Myia—she seemed to like that position—and held her shoulders as she said, “This is Talpha…It’s a lake, Myia. An ocean is much, much bigger…hundreds and thousands of times bigger than this.” 

“Thousands of times…? Bigger than this entire floor of the castle…?” 

“Yeah, that’s right…The real ocean is something you can only see down on the earth that’s far below Aincrad, I suppose…” 

As they chatted, I popped open the bottle Kizmel gave me, lifted my foot behind me rather than in front this time, and carefully dripped it onto the soles of my boots. Once the buff was active, I approached the girls and performed the same process. The level of the bottle was much lower than the first time I saw it used, but it looked like we still had a few doses left. 

I put the little bottle back in my inventory and carefully stepped into the water. After a few strides, I felt the familiar pushback on my soles, and the surface of the lake began to behave like a layer of rubber. 

Behind me, Asuna and Myia were slowly following, holding hands. We had to explain the threat of the giant starfish Ophiometus that lurked in the depths of the lake, so there was definitely an element of fear in Myia’s uncertain steps. But because she was so small and light, I figured she was in less danger of breaking through the surface by stepping roughly. Asuna and I were about the same height, and I couldn’t be sure which of us had heavier equipment, but that sort of thing was hard to ask a person about. 

The topic of personal questions reminded me that I still hadn’t asked her about the mystery of the two-handed lance skill. This seemed like a good opportunity to chat, since there wasn’t anything else to do but walk, but the memory of Asuna charging with that lance was so shocking and vivid, I was finding it difficult to broach the topic. I silently promised myself Next time and focused on the sensations in my feet instead. 

When going to the fourth area to retrieve the hidden key, we went almost directly south, but going to the fifth area meant cutting across the lake to the southeast. The far bank was shrouded in fog and hard to see, so I made sure my map was open as we walked. It wasn’t much more than a kilometer, but being forced into a slow sneaking walk meant it took time. The reddish light of the sunset on the base of the floor above us passed with shocking speed, and dark-blue dusk soon followed. 

Suddenly, the winds blowing across the lake grew colder, and I hunched my shoulders. The chill rising from my feet began to tickle the back of my nose. Then another chill, something entirely unrelated to the cold, assaulted my body. 

Oh no. 

I need to sneeze. 

I came to a stop, covering my mouth in an attempt to make the itchiness subside, but it was only getting stronger. My lungs filled on their own as I sucked in mouthfuls of air. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t resist. 

“…Ehh-shoo!” 

Having my mouth covered killed some of the sound, but I couldn’t stop my body from jerking. My weight pressing against the water broke the heightened surface tension, and my right foot loudly plunked through the top of the lake. Naturally, I tried to force my left foot down stronger to push myself up, but that, too, sank. But right before I was sure I would topple fully into the water, I felt my outstretched arms pulled on either side. I looked up to see Asuna with my right hand and Myia with my left, the two trying to hold me up. 

“Slowly! Slowly pull your feet up!” Asuna ordered. I relaxed my muscles as best I could, balancing my weight evenly between my left foot and my hands, then carefully extracted my right foot from the water, resting it on the surface again and exhaling. 

“Th-thanks, you saved…” 

But before I could fully thank her, Asuna thrust out her hand. 

“Shh! Do you hear that…?” 

I clamped my mouth shut and focused my attention—on what felt like a deep bubbling sound rumbling up from the center of the lake. I looked over, terrified at what I would find, and saw large bubbles rising and popping here and there over the water. 

“What…? Just from that…?” I groaned. All I did was break through the surface for a second! 

But the bubbles didn’t stop. The water wasn’t translucent with the setting sun shining off it, but I could sense something unfathomably huge rising up from the bottom of the lake. 

Eventually, about thirty meters away, three cursors appeared on the surface in a row. The name displayed on all of them was TENTACLE OF OPHIOMETUS. Their color was a deep red, if not as dark as Kysarah’s. They were located approximately in the center of our route, and whether we turned back or pushed on, there would be no escape at our walking speed across the water. 

I was almost about to get desperate and suggest letting the tentacles grab us so they would drag us down to the starfish’s mouth where we might stand a chance at a last counterattack—when Asuna shouted, “Kirito, Myia, let’s run!” 

“B-but if we run, won’t it break the effect of the Drops of Villi…?” I stammered. 

“Shorten your strides and put out your left foot before the right starts sinking! With the buff the drops confer, you should be able to pull it off!” 

It sounded like something a ninja would do, but before I could complain, she was pushing me onward. I had to stick out my right foot before I toppled over, and although it felt like I was going to break through again, I made sure not to try pulling back but quickly took a step with my left foot before the resistance completely broke. Then my right foot, then left, right, left…My first few steps were awkward, but once I got the idea of quick steps at high speed, I soon realized that I was running across the water. 

“Whoa…this actually works,” I murmured, trotting quickly. Soon Myia passed me on the left side. She almost seemed to be having fun, making crisp little spak-spak-spak-spak sounds as she went, probably because she got better resistance being lighter. On my right, Asuna followed with a smooth, gliding run. She seemed very practiced at this somehow—and then I recalled something she had said yesterday: “If the starfish does show up, I have an ace up my pant leg.” 

She was probably referring to this running technique, but the only reason I was able to just barely pull it off at my first attempt was because of the protection of the Droplets of Villi. I could easily imagine myself sinking before my third step without the buff. The same would be true for Asuna, so how did she come up with this ninja-like technique? 

These thoughts only used a tenth of my brain, though. Six parts went to the control of my legs, and the remaining three were focused on the watery sounds behind us. I couldn’t stop to ascertain the nature of the splashing, but it was very easy to imagine those starfish tentacles breaching the surface and chasing after us. I got the feeling that they were drawing closer, but we didn’t have any other recourse than to keep running as fast as we could. 

After one, two, then three bands of mist hovering over the lake, the beach of the far bank, orange in the sunset, came into view. It looked to be about a hundred meters to the part of the land that jutted farthest into the lake. 

“Nrraaaaah!” I bellowed, shuffling along the top of the water as close to the red zone as I could manage. Normally, I ran with long, leaping strides, so this kind of running was hellishly alien to me, but if I took steps any longer than this, I wouldn’t be able to safely pull them back above the water in time. 

I bet that Argo would be good at this sort of thing. Maybe I should bump up my AGI a bit, too, I thought as I sped across the remaining distance and reached the bank two seconds behind Myia. I kept my scampering speed even after it was sand beneath my boots and waddled onward as I slowed my pace. 

Only when the ground underfoot turned from beach sand to grass did I finally come to a stop, panting. When I turned around, there were three red cursors floating about ten meters onto land past the water’s edge. Writhing like snakes beneath the cursors were dark-gray tentacles. Their ends were extremely sharp, but they widened to about a third of a meter across where they went back into the water. How wide they were at the base, and the total span of the body, were too frightening to consider, and I had no interest in finding out. 

The tentacles waved through empty air for ten seconds, frustrated, before giving up and slithering back into the water. The cursors trailed away into the body of the lake and vanished, at which point I finally let out the breath I’d been holding. 

At my sides, Myia and Asuna were staring at the water in silence. The beach faced west, so the sun shining through the aperture at the far side of the floor blazed red against the surface of the lake. It was a beautiful sight, even when you considered that there was a monstrous giant starfish lurking just underneath it. 

As I gazed upon the sunset of January 4, I suddenly felt a powerful fatigue. 

After all, I’d started at two AM, gotten up to explore the outer rim of Castle Galey, gained the Awakening skill while being taunted by Bouhroum’s steak, then gone to Stachion in the morning, met Myia, gotten attacked by fallen elves, returned to the castle in the afternoon, started to nap but was awakened by a major Fallen invasion, fought that off, then went out to rescue the Qusack hostages, lost our sacred keys and iron keys to Kysarah, split off from Kizmel with barely a moment to reflect on it, crossed Lake Talpha, ran away from a giant starfish, and here we were. That might be a record for the most I’d ever experienced in a single day since the game’s official launch. 

My batteries were pretty much drained, and I was more than ready to eat my fill at a fancier-than-usual inn and dive into bed, but that wasn’t in the cards. If Myia’s mother, Theano, was heading for the labyrinth tower, our only chance to catch her was while she was moving across the map. If she entered the intricate dungeon inside the tower, it would be very hard to find her. 

“…Ready for just a bit more?” I asked the two girls. Asuna and Myia spun to face me. 

“Of course. I’m perfectly ready,” said Asuna. 

“I’m good, too,” said Myia in her gas mask. “I can still go.” 

That ruled out any possibility that I could plead for a break. “Then let’s head for the nearest town. This area’s basically just a straight shot down the road, so that’s what Theano and the front-running group will travel down.” 

When I turned my back on the lake, I was faced with a new sea: one of sand. 

The five distinct areas of the sixth floor, separated by tall, jutting rock formations, were each wildly different. The first (northeast) area, which contained the main town of the floor, featured forests and fields. The second (northwest) area, which contained Castle Galey, was a rocky, arid wasteland. The third (southwest) area, which we skipped, was swampland. The fourth (south) area, with the dungeon containing the elves’ sacred key, was themed after caves, and the fifth (southeast) area, where we stood now, was desert. 

It was a classic RPG terrain theme, but facing a real desert in a VRMMO presentation, I was stunned at the overwhelming scale of it. Massive sand dunes stretched as far as the eye could see, and there were no landmarks to define the distance. There were even heat mirages that served as visual traps, appearing like an oasis but vanishing just before you reached it. On top of all that, the far distance was blurred out by a wind-and-dust effect that meant we couldn’t even see the labyrinth tower until we were within a hundred meters of it. 

Worst of all, the handy map screen on my window was given the same treatment as the Forest of Wavering Mists on the third floor, graying out sections at random. The only thing you could trust was the narrow redbrick road that ran through the desert, visible only at certain sections. 

Even the little bit of grass we were standing on faded out within ten or fifteen meters, transitioning into sand that was of a different texture than the stuff at the lakeside. A lonely trail that looked ready to fade away in the wind stretched onward. 

“…And we just follow that path?” Asuna asked. 

I nodded. “Yep, that should lead us to the final resting point of this floor, the village of Murutsuki.” 

“Any bosses out there?” 

“If you’re coming from the fourth area, there’s a carnivorous plant–type boss right before Murutsuki, but from our direction, it should be all clear.” 

“I’m hearing a lot of shoulds,” she noted drily, which elicited a giggle from Myia. 

“Kirito, have you been to this desert before?” 

“Yeah…” I said automatically, before reconsidering and holding myself to the bare minimum of an answer, lest I start telling Myia about the beta test. “Just once before, a long time ago. I…should remember where the village was, at least.” 

“Then let’s go and leave a trail of breadcrumbs, in case we get lost,” the girl said, presumably joking—until I realized she wasn’t. It made me wonder if Theano had read her fairy tales like that one. 

“Hmm. Well, I think in a desert, the wind would blow the bread crumbs away. As long as we don’t lose sight of the brick road, we should be fine. And if we get lost, we can always come back here.” 

“Then I’ll make sure we’re always on the path!” Myia said, starting to walk and forcing Asuna and me to catch up. My partner leaned over to me and whispered, “You seem to be surprisingly adept at dealing with little girls.” 

“Wh-what…? I’m ultra-bad at it! Just as bad as girls my age and older girls, too.” 

“…Uh-huh,” said the fencer, pulling away with a look that might have been exasperation or possibly pity. 

After just five minutes of walking in the desert, Lake Talpha was out of sight behind the huge sand dunes. All that I saw over my shoulder was faded-purple sky and dark-red sun, and ahead of us and to the sides, everything was shrouded in a sandy haze, with even the pillars of the outer perimeter hidden from sight. I could make out the rocky floor above us, but the details were fuzzy. 

Even our trusty brick road was covered by sand or crumbled away in parts. Now and then, desert monsters like lizards and snakes attacked from the nearby sands. If you had to look for a positive feature, at least this place was without the “blessing of the green,” like the wasteland area, so there shouldn’t be any danger of a fallen elf attack…except for those darn branches they had. Then again, after Kysarah took the iron keys away from us, maybe we didn’t need to worry about them bothering us anymore. 

Still, I kept my guard up as we walked. After about thirty minutes with Myia in the lead, we arrived at Murutsuki just as the last rays of light vanished behind us. 

It wasn’t a big place at all, but it did have a large oasis spring in the center of town, with palm trees and cycads spreading their long, narrow leaves along the edge of the clear, crisp water. The buildings were made of sand-colored stone with the same rough texture as Castle Galey, but without any kind of ornamentation whatsoever. The short main street was lit with simple fires, and there were sad, lonely strings playing from somewhere. 

“This kind of Arabian-sounding instrument…” I whispered to my partner. “I remember wanting to look up what it’s called back in the beta.” 

Asuna inclined her head briefly. “I’m pretty sure it’s…an oud.” 

“Oh…well,” I said, impressed at her worldly knowledge. I lowered my voice further. “If I don’t forget by the time we beat this game, I’ll have to look that up when we get back.” 

“Since you’re here, why don’t you try practicing with it?” 

“I, uh, I don’t think the Musical Instrument skill is going to be of much use here…” I said, shaking my head. This actually seemed like the perfect time to bring up the two-handed lance skill, but before I could broach the topic, Myia turned back from up ahead and called out to us. 

“There’s a…very strange horse over there!” 

She was pointing at one of the palm trees on the north end of the spring, where a large four-legged creature with brown shaggy fur was tied up. I recognized its distinctive back and curved neck from the real world—pictures and videos, if not personal experience. 

“That’s not a horse, Myia. It’s a camel,” said Asuna, walking up to the girl and pointing at the animal’s back. “See those big humps on its back? If it has one, it’s called a dromedary. If it has two, it’s a camel.” 

“But that camel has more than that.” 

“Huh?” 

Asuna and I looked closer and saw that the camel indeed had three humps on its back. It wasn’t a shock to me, because I’d seen it in the beta. But Asuna just paused, and a bit awkwardly, she said, “That’s…called a three-humped camel…” 

“Frmphs!” went the sound that escaped my throat. Asuna shot me a nasty glare, then trotted off with Myia to get a closer look. 

Upon closer examination, while the center area of Murutsuki was smaller than the courtyard of Castle Galey, they were similar in layout. In the center was the natural spring, about twenty-five meters across, with palm trees lining the edge. Along the outer edge of the doughnut-shaped plaza were shops, inns, and restaurants. 

Theano would surely pass through this plaza on her way to the labyrinth tower, so as long as we took a seat on an open terrace along the north side, where the path began again, we wouldn’t miss her. The oud-playing NPC was on the south side of the spring, so I couldn’t see them, but the distance made for just the right volume for dinner background music. 

As I pondered what to eat, I gazed out at the row of buildings. The restaurants I could see—really more like fancy food carts—were only two. One was kebab-like roasted meat, while the other served a soup that resembled curry. There were few restaurants that served curry in the game, so in the beta, more than a few players made the trek from Stachion to distant Murutsuki, but I found it a bit underwhelming. For one thing, there was no rice on the menu. The Arab-style curry with Aincrad’s traditional flatbread was fine, but as a growing teenage boy, I just wanted a huge dollop on top of a steaming mound of white rice. So tonight it would be kebabs. 

“Hey, I’m gonna order some food now,” I called out to the camel watchers. 

“Okay,” they said, waving. That meant I was in charge of the order. I turned away, determined to put every meat dish on the table. No space to waste on measly salads or steamed vegetables! 

I had gone about three steps, clutching my empty belly, when a short player came tearing across the open area from the south and darted to the counter of the kebab shop. Once I saw the green cursor, I hurried to stand next to them. 

“Hey, pal, I’ll take a shish kebab and an Adana kebab!” 

“Hey, mister, I want three doner sandwiches, three urfa kebabs, and…” I shouted, jostling for space—until I recognized the unique sound of the other customer’s voice. The high-pitched, coquettish voice and rising nasal inflection… 

“A-Argo?!” 

“Oh, it’s you, Kii-boy,” said Argo the Rat, whisker-painted cheeks breaking into a grin when she saw me. “Ah, yer already at Murutsuki, huh? That was quick.” 

“Y-you’re gonna talk to me about being quick?! I thought it was gonna take five hours to get through the cave of the fourth area…” 

The bearded cook shouted “Food’s up!” and we received our dishes in short order. Argo could carry her two skewers in her hands, but I had three round sandwiches of seared meat and three skewers on the counter, so it required some cradling and delicate pinching between fingers to get them all. 

“H-hey…you wanna sit down at that table over there?” I suggested, glancing at one of the open-seating spots in front of the business. But the info dealer scowled and shook her head. 

“I don’t think we’ve got the time.” 

“Huh…? Why?” 

“Because if I’m here, that means…” 

At last, I picked up on her implication. If Argo had just arrived at Murutsuki during her chase of Theano, that meant… 

“Ugh…so Theano—that’s the NPC with the golden cube—already passed through this village…?!” 

“I checked with the guide NPC at the entrance, and they said a woman went through here on her own about thirty minutes ago.” 

“…Thirty minutes…” I repeated, pulling up a mental map of the fifth area. 

Murutsuki was in the center of the fan-shaped area. The labyrinth tower in the northeast corner was about a kilometer away. But going along the twisting path made the journey over twice as long. If we walked quickly, it was still less than two hours—and even shorter at a run. We should assume that Theano had a healthy head start on us. 

“…Where are the ALS and DKB?” 

“They should be on their way, but they said they were gonna stop in Goskai and resupply first…I’d bet they’re about thirty minutes behind.” 

“Hrmm…” 

Somehow, I had to think through the delicious smell of the doner kebabs cradled in my left arm and the even-better-smelling urfa kebabs in my right. 

The reason for Theano’s actions was still unclear. But if she was heading for the labyrinth tower, it was quite possible that her final destination was the boss chamber. If Asuna, Myia, Argo, and I chased after Theano and had to fight the boss by ourselves, it would be nearly impossible to win. We would all die. The right decision was to wait for the big group to arrive in Murutsuki. 

…But. 

Now the “Curse of Stachion” quest was completely off the original rails. Theano was most likely acting on what you might consider her own will. She was going to end up choosing some action that ultimately cost her her life. It would mean the loss of both parents for Myia, who trusted us enough to follow us around. 

In no more than three seconds, I had made up my mind. I ushered Argo away from the kebab shop. At the north end of the oasis area, the two girls were petting the three-humped camel. I called out, “Hey! We’re heading out soon!” 

Asuna wasn’t happy about the idea of eating as we walked—make that trotted—but only until she heard what Argo had to report. As soon as she knew Theano was still ahead of us, she eliminated the food in her hands as quickly—and gracefully—as possible. 

“You said she passed through the village thirty minutes ahead of us, but what about the field boss?” she asked the info dealer. “Theano might be tough, but that’s a monster that you can’t beat on your own, surely.” 

“That’s true…but lookit this,” said Argo, who had finished her two kebabs as fast as me. She went to her window and pulled out an odd-looking thing. It was a greenish-brown object about twenty centimeters across in all directions. 

“There were tons of these scattered across the ground by the time I showed up to the field boss’s lair.” 

“What is that…?” I asked. Argo tossed it to me without warning. I caught it, alarmed, and was stunned again when I got a good look at it. It felt like balsa wood, and there was a fine fibrous pattern on its surface. 

“Wait, is this…the carnivorous plant’s body?” 

“Prob’ly. When she charged into the fight against the centipede boss in the fourth area, that Theano lady broke down its armor into cubes the same size. It was only the armor, not what was underneath, but its defense plummeted, so the FRs beat it easy with an all-out attack. The centipede—it was called Basalt Morpha—didn’t have normal plates of armor but damn tough rock. Maybe that cube Theano had can break down any kind of mineral or plant…?” 

True to her reputation, the info dealer’s conjecture seemed very accurate. In my head, I was looking at distant Stachion, the main town of the floor. 

Every building in that place was built with blocks of rock or wood. To this point, I just assumed the golden cube, sign of the town lord, was merely the standard to which all the construction blocks were made. In fact, that was how it was explained in the beta. But maybe that wasn’t actually the case. Maybe, like Argo said, the cube had the power to turn all minerals and plants into blocks, and it was responsible for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of blocks in Stachion… 

“Hey, Asuna, how many blocks do you think there are total making up all of Stachion?” I asked, pausing my thought process. 

The fencer frowned and said, “Is that something we need to know right now?” 

“I…I think so.” 

“Well…to break it down exactly, the town was two thousand feet from north to south, and one thousand feet from east to west. So divide twenty-four thousand by eight to get three thousand, then multiply by fifteen hundred for a total of four and a half million.” 

“Uh…thanks…” 

Asuna then jabbed my arm, and Argo snorted with annoyance on the other side of me. Up ahead, Myia nimbly turned around while running with a half-eaten sandwich and skewer in her hands. “Kirito, that is only the number of stones forming the ground. But the buildings rise up above the ground, so…” 

“Oh, r-right. Um…” I stammered, starting to envision all of Stachion. 

Asuna got the point quicker. “Look, why don’t we just estimate that it’s three times the base total? So that would be somewhere around thirteen and a half million blocks.” 

“Ooh, thanks a million,” I said, but Asuna didn’t seem satisfied yet. 

“So what do you need that number for?” she pressed. 

“Oh…I was just thinking, what if the wood and stone blocks that make up Stachion weren’t cut individually with saws and chisels, but they were broken down from nearby mountains and forests with the power of that golden cube…?” 

“Ah, I see…Well, I just came here after witnessin’ a whole pile of blocks dropped by the carnivorous plant boss, so yer crazy idea’s got some real legs to it.” Argo grinned. But just as quickly, she looked pensive. 

We’d long ago left Murutsuki behind and were back on the desert path. The sun had set entirely by now, and though the desert dust clouds blocked the moonlight, there was fortunately a pale-blue environmental light that glowed against the slopes of the dunes. At this rate, we could have rented some camels in Murutsuki and enjoyed a nighttime trek through the desert…if only we had the time, and if only I knew where exactly on a three-humped camel to sit. 

In the chilly night air, Argo’s voice was more serious than earlier. “You know…if that’s true, we might have some trouble on our hands.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“If she can break down all kinds of rock and wood, couldn’t she jus’ bust through all the walls of the dungeon? Make a straight run all the way ta the boss, forget all the traps an’ tricks. The ALS and DKB probably think it was Theano’s power that broke up the centipede’s armor. But if they find out it was the cube that did it, they’ll be on the hunt for it.” 

“Oh…good point…” 

A little imagination pointed out that the golden cube’s uses went far beyond dungeon shortcuts. Aincrad was full of plant monsters like treants and nepenthes, and stone-based monsters like golems and gargoyles, which could theoretically be dissolved into blocks in an instant. If you could get experience points for that? You’d be able to level at incredible speed. The guild flag in my inventory had nothing on this cube when it came to potential game-breaking effects. 

If the “Curse of Stachion” questline proceeded ordinarily, Cylon would have survived and reformed, the cube would be buried in Pithagrus’s grave again, and the player would never know its true power, much less actually possess it. But the night that Morte and the dagger wielder killed Cylon, the quest began to shift dramatically. I had a feeling that we could seize the cube if Theano were killed, too… 

“…I think that Argo is correct,” said Myia, who had finished her food and put the gas mask back on. Argo, who thought of her as a simple quest NPC, blinked in mild surprise. 

The girl continued in a very natural manner, “My mother told me once that Stachion is a town ‘built of magic and curse.’ She didn’t tell me what that meant when I asked…but perhaps it was because she knew that the golden cube had a terrible power within it.” 

“Y-you mean Theano is heading for the Pillar of the Heavens to do something with the cube’s power?” I prompted. 

“We don’t know that yet,” answered Asuna. “Maybe she’s just trying to do something to the cube…But for now, we just need to catch up to her.” 

“Yep, that sounds right,” agreed Argo, who looked forward. Like always, the narrow path wove through the sand dunes, but I could sense that a huge structure was approaching through the deep-blue darkness somewhere ahead. 

“…Let’s hurry,” Asuna said, and we picked up our speed once more. 

It was worth putting in the effort not to stray off the brick path, as we only ran into monsters a total of four times, but we did not spot Theano while in the desert. 

If she wasn’t acting in accordance with a script, the monsters should attack her, too, and lizards and snakes weren’t trees or rocks, so the cube couldn’t deconstruct them. On top of that, this being the last area on the sixth floor, all the monsters were tough. If she could beat them all herself, Theano would be on Kizmel’s level—at the very least, far tougher than Cylon, whom Morte easily killed. 

With Myia present, all I could do was pray that no matter how things shook out, we wouldn’t have to fight Theano. 

There was an especially large dune ahead that we raced up, with Asuna and Myia reaching the peak a few seconds before me. There, they came to a stop and stared upward. 

When I crested the hill, I saw it too: Just a hundred meters away, a mammoth structure stood darker than the night. It was the labyrinth tower of the sixth floor. Four days after we started this floor on January 1, we had finally reached it. 

The normal plan, prioritizing safety, would call for the full help of the front-line group in mapping out the interior of the tower, taking a day or two to discover the boss chamber, another day to scout out and strategize against that boss, and one more day for the battle itself. But in this case (as in others before), we couldn’t sit back and take our time. Like the fifth floor, where we needed to complete the tower and beat the boss in a single day, this was one where we’d need to rush through it, careful mapping be damned. 

“…We didn’t catch up to Theano after all, and the ALS and DKB didn’t catch up to us…” I murmured, looking over my shoulder from the top of the dune. 

“The tower is one thing, but I don’t know if I like us heading to the boss chamber with a group this small,” Asuna said, her tone worried. “Let’s just hope that’s not where Theano’s going.” 

“Yeah…but there’s usually not much else to do in a labyrinth…” 

“Then we just gotta catch up before the boss chamber,” said Argo. I turned back, and she tossed long, thin bottles to both Asuna and me. I caught mine, popped the lid off, and put it to my lips. Chilled lime flavor with a hint of carbonation refreshed my tongue. It didn’t seem to be a type of potion, but it tasted great after a run across the dry, dusty desert. Myia was drinking one, too, holding it with both hands. 

Refreshed by Argo’s gifts, we rushed down the last sand dune toward the tower. The layout of the sixth-floor tower was not circular, or square, but pentagonal. It was so huge, however, that it was difficult to tell just from looking up at it; I recalled only figuring it out in the beta once I went inside to map it. At the time, there was debate among the testers as to whether or not the five-sided shape meant something, but we never arrived at a satisfactory consensus. 

The blackish stone walls of the tower, once seen up close, were indeed run through with lines every twenty centimeters, like the buildings in Stachion. The huge doors at the front of the ground floor were closed tight, and there didn’t seem to be another soul around. We were only assuming that Theano was coming here, so there was always the possibility that we were completely off the mark, but I had to trust my gut on this one. 

“…Let’s open it up.” 

With that warning, I placed my hands on the bronze doors and pushed hard. They rumbled heavily as they parted to the side, and a gust of cold air rushed out of the structure past me. 

Once the doors were completely open, I beckoned the other three into the tower. Like the other towers, it wasn’t completely darkened; pale-blue lights high above cast down a faint glow to see by. If the layout was the same as in the beta, there would be a large triangular hall beyond the entrance, with one door on each side wall… 

“Oh, look up there!” said Myia, who apparently had better eyesight than the three players she accompanied. She was pointing ahead and to the left. When I saw it, I gasped awkwardly, “Uwha…” 

The metal door was in the place I remembered, but there was now a huge hole in the stone wall just to the right of it. It wasn’t split or smashed open; it looked like the cohesive force of the blocks that made up the tower had been lost, causing them to collapse. 

I walked up to the hole, lifted one of the stone blocks, and said, “So…Theano used the golden cube to break down the wall…I suppose.” 

“But why didn’t she go through the door…?” Asuna asked. “Is it locked?” 

I glanced farther into the room and said, “See how there are stone pillars growing up from the floor there? You’re supposed to solve the puzzles on the pillars, then beat the monsters that appear…I’m pretty sure,” I said, trying my best not to be too suspicious with information around Myia. 

The fencer seemed satisfied and nodded. “Ah, so she just cut out that step. Then if we follow the path she’s taken, we won’t have to do the puzzles, either…” 

“Probably not. But we’ll still have normal wimpy monsters to deal with,” I said, tossing the stone block aside. Just then, as if drawn by the sound of the stone—in fact, it almost certainly was—there was a hissing roar from beyond the hole. 

“Here it comes!” 

I drew my sword and had the other three back away. Asuna and Myia removed their rapiers, and Argo readied the claws that were attached to the back of her hands. 

Seconds later, a humanoid creature emerged from the hole with a wide, thin reptilian head like a cobra’s, a long, slender torso, and human limbs. It was an ophidian, one of the snakemen that appeared all throughout this tower. It was similar to the lizard-like reptoids and fishy ichthyoids we’d fought already, but with its long arms and spear, it had a fearsome range, as well as poison fangs, if you could get past its reach. And it wasn’t just one—here came a second…and a third. 

I realized that we should have activated the Meditation buff before entering the tower, but it was too late for that now. Fortunately, the ophidians’ fangs were damaging poison, not the paralyzing kind, so we could handle the effects. 

“They’ll poison you if they bite! Don’t rush in; aim for the arms and make them drop the spears! Argo, team up with Myia!” I commanded. 

They reacted quickly. Without Kizmel, the highest level in our party actually belonged to Myia, but she was a child and had a very short reach. Argo had the same problem—due to her weapon, not size—so I thought it best for them to team up and wreak confusion. 

Of the three ophidians, two had spears, and the third used a glaive. Based on the armor ornamentation, I judged the glaive user to be the leader and charged at it. 

“Shrrrrl!” hissed the creature, flickering its tongue and jabbing with the glaive. I sidestepped it, struck a shallow blow to the arm holding the spear, and withdrew. Asuna, Argo, and Myia took their own targets and spread out across the spacious room. 

That reminds me. I guess Asuna’s not using that lance anymore…? 

Taking advantage of my moment of distraction, the leader snake used the sword skill Swift Lunge. It was a simple, single thrust, but being at the very fastest level of all the sword skills in the game, it was very tricky to deal with. If you didn’t sidestep the moment you saw the visual light effect, you wouldn’t avoid it in time. 

Instead, I stood my ground. I’d ordered the others to focus on disarming, but accumulating damage bit by bit on the scaled arms of the snakemen took time. We needed to catch up to Theano; we couldn’t stop and drag out the very first fight in the tower. 

I focused hard on the shining crimson tip of the spear, preparing a Vertical skill with precise aim, angle, and timing, like I was threading a needle. I wanted the body of the sword to press against the spear as it dropped; if the angle was too weak, I couldn’t push aside the skill, and if it went too deep, it would block the attack but knock my sword back, too. Only when I scraped the spear at the optimal angle would it change the thrust angle and still strike my target—the Counter Parry technique. 

The ophidian’s glaive nicked the left side of my chest as it passed me, and my Vertical smashed the hand holding the spear. Triangular scales flew into the air, and the snake arm fell clean off and shattered. 

“Jyashhh!” the snakeman snarled, trying to counterattack with its other hand. But held with only one arm, the heavy glaive was much slower. It had only just pulled back the spear for full momentum when I recovered from my skill delay. I stepped farther forward, putting myself into its poison fang range. 

The ophidian curled its head back, going into the biting motion as if it were hoping for this. 

But I’d done it on purpose. As the cobra head swooped forward, I gave it a three-part Sharp Nail skill. 

The large fanged head of the ophidian was its greatest weapon and weakness in one. The three slanting slashes all hit the snakeman’s snout. It curled back abruptly, froze in place, then exploded into pieces. I rushed through the expanding particles, saving my fist pump for later, and plunged toward the side of the ophidian Asuna was fighting. 

We finished our fight against the three powerful ophidians in a bit over two minutes, made sure we applied the Meditation buff this time, then leaped through the hole in the wall. Asuna told me to face away while we did it, and Argo, ever the businesswoman, offered to buy the info about the skill. I told her “Later!” because we were in a hurry. 

Soon, we found more and more holes Theano made in walls, but we never seemed to be any closer to her. She had to be fighting the ophidians alone—and the golden cube’s effect shouldn’t work on the snakemen—but she was clearing them out faster than our party of four could. 

I remembered that the ophidians in the tower took about five minutes to re-pop, so if we stopped seeing monsters along the route, we could assume we were within five minutes of catching up to Theano. Yet, the ophidians, beetles, and magical monsters kept coming strong. Within two or three battles, my other party members got the hang of combat in this dungeon, and we started winning our fights within a minute or less, but the fact that we didn’t seem to be getting any closer was proof that Theano was very powerful, with or without the cube. 

Between her and Kysarah, who had taken all of our keys, if we were going to see more and more ultrapowerful and freethinking (at least in appearance) NPCs in the future, then, for better or for worse, they were going to play a major role in getting through this deadly game. They could be powerful allies or terrifying enemies—though not that this was anything new. 

At any rate, thanks to Theano providing us with a minimum-length route skipping all the puzzles and traps, we were racing up the one hundred meter tower with incredible speed. On the fifth floor, the midpoint of the dungeon, there was supposed to be an ophidian boss and some underlings, but when I peered into the chamber, all I saw was a scattering of various loot items. For a moment, I was terrified that some of Theano’s belongings would be among them, but the far door was wide open, so I assumed she had passed through safely. 

“…At this rate, she might just beat the floor boss while she’s at it,” murmured Asuna as she stared at the mountain of treasure. Argo gulped down her potion and said wryly, “In that case, maybe she could go on up the stairs and unlock the next floor, too…Still, even I couldn’t see all’a this comin’. How’s this Theano so tough?” 

Theano’s own daughter answered her. “My mother never ever skipped on her daily training, and sometimes she would go out of town by herself in the middle of the night and come home all bruised in the morning. I think she was fighting monsters in the woods to the south.” 

“But…why would she do that…?” Asuna asked. 

The girl in the gas mask shook her head. “I asked her many times, but she wouldn’t tell me. But…now I wonder if all of that was in preparation for this day.” 

“Now that’s just ridiculous!” I wanted to shout. The “Curse of Stachion” quest had gone off the rails because Morte had killed Cylon. If it weren’t for that unpredictable event, it would have proceeded like in the beta: Theano would rescue us from our paralysis, we’d sneak into the mansion and convince Cylon, recover the golden cube from the basement dungeon, calm the vengeful ghost of Pithagrus, and finish the quest. 

Theano wasn’t weak when I fought alongside her in the beta, but her level and stats weren’t far off from mine, and definitely not enough that she could blaze through the labyrinth tower solo like this. If Myia was to be believed, the official release version of Theano had been leveling up for ten years, long before Cylon was killed, for a different purpose than what I saw during the beta. 

“Welp, let’s loot this stuff and get goin’,” said Argo, bringing me back to my senses. 

I glanced at the items lying around. “Huh…? We’re going to loot this?” 

“Well, it’s either gonna go bad just sittin’ around, or the other guilds are gonna snatch it up when they get here.” 

“I guess…but it was Theano who beat the mid-boss,” I said, trapped between courtesy and desire. 

Myia looked at me, perplexed. “Mother left these behind because she just couldn’t carry them, I think. If you use your Mystic Scribing art to collect them, I’m sure she would appreciate it.” 

“Ah, g-good point…I’ll do that, then…” 

I promptly opened my window and tossed the weapons, armor, materials, and other sundry items into my inventory. Argo picked up the slack quickly, and even Asuna hesitantly joined in. 

In less than a minute, we’d cleared out all the loot, and our HP was back to full. “Okay, let’s…” 

“Go,” I was going to say, but Asuna stuck her index finger against my lips. 

“Wait. I just heard something.” 

“Huh…?” 

I shut my mouth and focused on my ears. It did seem like I was hearing very faint yelling and clanging. But it was from below, not above. 

“…Sounds like Lin-Kiba are catchin’ up…” whispered Argo. She listened two more seconds, then added, “But they’re still far off. We’re only hearin’ the sounds of combat because of all the huge holes in the walls. It’s gonna take ’em a good ten minutes or so to get here…Whaddaya think? Should we wait?” 

“No, let’s go,” I said promptly. “Catching up to Theano is a higher priority than grouping up with the rest of them.” 

“I agree,” said Asuna. 

Myia lowered her head. “I just…I don’t know what to say…” 

I placed my hands on her shoulders and spun her around. “You can figure that out once everything is settled. C’mon, let’s run!” 

“…Okay!” 

The group headed for the open door. In the second half of the labyrinth, the level of the random enemies rose noticeably, but checking the mid-boss’s loot as we ran, I found an excellent rapier (if not as good as the Chivalric Rapier) and a set of claws that was +5 to agility, which I gave to Myia and Argo, respectively. We continued upward at about the same speed as we had through the lower half of the dungeon. 

The next thing I knew, it was after eight o’clock, but oddly, the crushing exhaustion I felt on the shore of Lake Talpha did not return. I was certain that the next time it happened I wouldn’t be able to recover, but for now, all I could do was keep running. Asuna should have been just as tired, but she wasn’t complaining one bit. 

“Hey…” she murmured, drawing a glance from me. 

“Hmm…?” 

“Have you noticed it’s been a while since any enemies showed up?” 

“Oh, now that you mention it…” 

She was right. The ophidians and other monsters that had persistently shown up even past the mid-boss chamber had been rather quiet the last five minutes. Not because their pop pattern had changed, but because someone ahead of us was clearing them out, and they hadn’t re-popped yet. We were within five minutes’ distance of Theano. 

Our present location was in the middle of the tower’s eighth floor, and the boss chamber was on the tenth. At our current pace, we might still be a bit too late to catch her before she reached the chamber. 

“This is a gamble…but I think we should throw caution to the wind and just sprint,” I suggested. Asuna agreed, and even Argo and Myia looked back at us and nodded. 

Before, we had been carefully monitoring for the growls or shuffling of monsters, or the glimpse of red cursors out of the corner of the eyes, but now I jumped ahead at full speed. I often conserved my top speed while working with the front-line group, but I had the lowest agility of the four present, and now I raced with all of my ability. The textures and joints of the walls and floor turned to a blur, and dry air buffeted my face. 

When sprinting within a dungeon, your ability to turn—your cornering, if this were a racing game—was crucial. Without shoes with excellent grip or a high proficiency in the Sprint skill, you might fail to rotate your momentum and crash into the far wall on a turn. So I gave up on ordinary turning and went back to Wall-Running for a few steps first, like I’d done when Asuna and I raced down the stairs at the inn in Stachion. 

Asuna and Argo had mastered this style of turning, too, so I went to a Wall-Run on the next left turn. Only when I dropped back to the floor did I mentally kick myself. We had Myia the NPC with us. There was no way she could pick up this sort of outside-the-box hack that defied common logic. 

I glanced over my shoulder as I slowed down—and found that I was worried for nothing. Myia, who was in front of Asuna, nimbly ran five steps along the wall, as though gravity meant nothing to her, before transitioning back to the floor. I had to face forward and speed up, lest she overtake me. Apparently, swordfighting wasn’t the only thing Theano had taught her daughter. 

Knowing that there was no point to going slower now, I went back to the spring and Wall-Ran around the next turn. Obviously, we had to stop and determine the direction when it came to T-intersections and crossroads, and we always chose the route that did not suggest the presence of monsters or that had loot strewn across the floor. At a dead-end, we found yet another hole in the wall, through which there was a staircase on the right. We took it at full speed. 

The tenth floor of the labyrinth was almost entirely taken up by the boss chamber, so the ninth was the last floor of actual dungeon. Normally, this was an extremely dangerous place with vicious monsters blocking the way, but Theano’s path left behind nothing but treasure—not even a single scarab scurrying along. We didn’t have time to stop and inspect the ordinary monsters’ loot, but Argo keenly identified just the rare goods as we ran, hooking them with her claws and tossing them into her window. Even I couldn’t mimic that kind of dexterity and opportunism. 

After three minutes of running down hallways and through giant holes, skipping all the terrain and gimmicks of the dungeon’s ninth floor, we came to an elevated walkway with a stately design, leading to a huge set of stairs. Those would lead to the tenth floor, but there was no one on the walkway or the stairs yet. 

I bit my lip. It seemed like Theano must have already gone into the boss chamber… 

“Mother…!” Myia wailed, lifting her gas mask and racing past me. 

“H-hey!” I shouted, going after her, until I noticed something. There were faint footsteps approaching from ahead, though the person making them was unseen. There were two sets of stairs that met in a landing in the middle before turning back around. Someone—no, definitely Theano—was climbing the stairs after the turnaround, where we couldn’t see. She was less than thirty meters away, but the boss chamber was just above us. 

Myia crossed the elevated walkway with a speed even Argo couldn’t match and flew up the left-hand set of stairs. At this rate, Theano and Myia might jump into the chamber alone and cause the door to shut behind them. I had no other choice but to draw my sword and rest it on my shoulder. 

“Nwaaah!” I shouted, launching off the floor with the Sonic Leap sword skill, zooming across the other half of the walkway to the stairs, and intentionally missing the landing. I lost a few pixels of HP, but it kept me rolling directly up the stairs to the landing, where I caught up to Myia. 

My skill delay wore off while I was tumbling, so I kicked back off the wall toward the second flight of stairs, looking up to a figure rushing up the steps ahead. It was a woman with golden blond hair, rapier in her right hand and a large cube in her left. The yellow cursor hanging above her head said THEANO. 

“Theano!!” 

“Mother!!” 

But the woman took three or four more steps and only stopped one stair before the tenth floor. She spun around, ponytail and long deep-green skirt whirling. She looked down on us with ash-green eyes the same shade as Myia’s. 

This wasn’t my first time facing Theano, even in the official release. When we got the quest from Cylon at the mansion in Stachion, the first person we went to talk to was Theano the former servant. But she was dressed in a plain apron dress and looked like any other housewife NPC. Now she was dressed in gleaming, fine leather armor and held a rapier. She looked like a veteran swordfighter. 

Her regal beauty softened somewhat, and in a soft but clear voice, she said, “Myia…Kirito. I expected that you would follow after me, but I did not think you would catch up.” 

“Mother…” Myia repeated, unable to do anything but clutch the handle of her rapier with both hands. 

Instead, I spoke for the both of us, choosing my words carefully. “Theano, I don’t know what you’re trying to do. But please don’t charge ahead alone. Stay here and talk with us first…with Myia.” 

Just then, Asuna and Argo caught up and stood to our sides. Theano looked at all four of us in turn and spoke to her daughter again. 

“You’ve gotten so strong, Myia. I’m sorry for disappearing without a word…but this is my role. As long as this cube exists, the cursed puzzles of Stachion will never disappear, and the bloody battle over the inheritance will continue. With Cylon dead, there is no one to hold back the curse…It must be destroyed.” 

“But how…?!” I asked her desperately. “What are you going to do with it?!” 

Theano’s response was to stare right at me. “The cube cannot be destroyed in this state. But if returned to the place where it originally belonged, the power that protects it will vanish.” 

“The place where it belonged…?” Asuna mumbled. She leaned forward a few centimeters. “Is that the boss chamber…the room where the guardian of the Pillar of the Heavens resides?” 

“Not quite, Asuna,” Theano said, perfectly recalling and pronouncing the name of the fencer whom she’d only briefly met three days earlier. “The place where it belongs is not in the room but in the creature itself. This cube was originally part of the guardian. Long, long ago, Master Pithagrus pulled it out himself and brought it back to Stachion…Well, at the time, it was just a nameless little village. It was the cube’s power that helped the town grow into the splendid form it has today, but it was never meant to fall into human hands…” 

Theano paused there, then gazed at the golden cube in her left hand. 

That’s a part of the boss’s body? And the previous lord, Pithagrus, separated it from the boss and used its power to create the town of Stachion…? 

I struggled to digest this new information that I had never learned in the beta. 

The boss of the sixth floor in the beta was a large cube with each face split into three-by-three sections of red, blue, yellow, green, white, and black—essentially a giant Rubik’s Cube with hands and feet. If you struck the edges with your weapons, they rotated ninety degrees in that direction. As you repeated it and matched up the colors, the little cubes would scatter and spill off, revealing a core that could be damaged—but I didn’t remember any golden cube. 

Then again, it wasn’t rare at all for the floor bosses to have been altered between the beta test and the official release. In fact, all of them from the first to fifth floor had been updated in some way, large or small, so the sixth could easily be different, too. The question was, what effect would it have to return the golden cube that Pithagrus removed? The first possibility that popped into my mind was that it would recover its original power, i.e. become superpowered. We had to beat the boss and move on to the seventh floor, so that was something to be avoided. 

“Listen, Theano,” said the info dealer, who never broke character. “The name’s Argo—I’m tight with Kirito and Asuna. I was hopin’ you might tell me something. What exactly happens if you return that cube to the guardian beast’s body? You don’t think it might get so super-tough, even you can’t defeat it, do ya?” 

Will she understand what the term tight with means? I wondered, my mind straying. Theano didn’t seem bothered by it, though. 

“You adventurers are hoping to defeat the guardian in battle to move on to the next floor, I presume…I don’t know the full details, but I am certain that returning the cube will cause the guardian to move and attack. But this is not a bad thing for you. While the cube is out of the guardian’s body, the guardian is protected by an unseen power that makes it impossible to harm.” 

““Whaaaa—?!”” Argo and I exclaimed in unison. We looked at each other, then Theano, then each other again. 

If what she said was true, the golden cube was absolutely necessary to beating the floor boss at all. But where had that ever been hinted at…? 

And yet, I had to remind myself: The “proper” route for the “Curse of Stachion” test was just what I knew from the beta test. Cylon’s death certainly twisted its path, but if it had passed normally, there could certainly have been some information relating to the floor boss at the end—and a hint that the cube would be key to the battle. 

“…Meaning that when the cube is put back, and the guardian moves again, we can attack it, and beating it will destroy the cube?” Asuna asked. Theano said nothing but nodded firmly. 

“Then, Mother—!” Myia cried, breaking her long silence. “Let me help you! I know the guardian beast is terribly dangerous, and I know you are worried about me…but if you go into the chamber alone and never come back, I won’t be able to survive on my own!” 

I didn’t miss the powerful look of conflict and indecision on Theano’s features. This wasn’t just some pre-written story event—Myia and Theano had their own independent personalities and were acting in ways perfectly faithful to them. 

Seconds later, Theano clenched her eyes shut, thought a moment, then opened them again. She put the rapier from her hand into its sheath on her left side and smiled. “All right, Myia. You’ve become so, so much stronger than I ever realized…I taught you the sword so you could survive on your own, even without me around, but that was all my own selfish idea. Thank you…please lend me your strength, Myia.” 

“I will!” Myia exclaimed, casting aside the strangely grown-up air she’d always worn and leaping up the steps to embrace her mother. Theano brushed her daughter’s head and looked at us. 

“Kirito, Asuna, Argo, I’m grateful to you for protecting my child.” 

It was your child who was protecting us, I thought, nodding back to her. The three of us ascended the steps and stood at the entrance to the tenth floor with Theano. With her left arm around her daughter, Theano extended a silent hand toward us, which we shook in turn. A fifth HP bar appeared in my view. Hesitantly, I checked the level: 32. 

Hrrmm…? I wondered, taking a quick step back. It was a high number, especially to me, a newly made level-21 swordsman. But it didn’t seem so high that she should have been able to destroy monsters on her own that much faster than the party of me, Asuna, Argo, and level-23 Myia. Her gear was fine, to be sure, but nothing fancier than what was sold at the stores. 

But there was no use second-guessing Theano’s power now. If we waited a few minutes, the main body of the front-line group would reach us, too. Surely Theano would agree to fight with the rest of them, knowing it would make Myia safer. 

I whispered a request to Asuna to explain the situation to them. She gave me a glance that said Honestly? Good grief…before approaching Theano. I exhaled and looked around. 

A menacingly decorated hallway continued on from our position for about ten meters, ending in a massive set of bronze double doors. I took a few steps closer to examine them and saw a decorative relief modeled after the exterior of the tower—or of Stachion itself—in a nine-by-nine grid of squares. Beyond this point, the sixth-floor boss awaited, its name and form still unclear. 

Normally, you would want at least three trips for scouting, but according to Theano’s explanation, you couldn’t attack the boss until the golden cube was placed back into it, and it probably couldn’t be removed twice, once it was there again. I had a suspicion, based on that activation trick, that the doors to the boss chamber would stay closed until the fight was over. 

But in any case, we were here. It had been a string of unexpected developments, but…this wasn’t a single-player RPG, it was a VRMMO with eight thousand players trapped inside. There would surely be more and more unexpected things happening to us, and we had to solve and overcome them as we made our way upward. Up to that far-distant hundredth floor. 

I spun around forcefully and returned to my party members’ side. 

Fifteen minutes later, the rest of the player group charged noisily up the stairs—and got an awkward smile in greeting from me. With the help of Asuna and Argo, I gave the skeptical Lind and Kibaou as much of an explanation of why we were here as was possible. 

“Oh, so that NPC was with y’all, then?” grumbled Kibaou, but when we told them that the golden cube was a necessary item to beat the boss, there was no more bickering from the two guilds. 

After a meeting and cooldown period, we got down to arranging the raid party for the boss fight. Teams A, B, and C went to the three parties of Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad. Teams D, E, and F were made up of Lind’s Dragon Knights Brigade. Team G was Asuna, Argo, Myia, Theano, and me. Sadly, members of Agil’s Bro Squad were all low in agility and not suited for long sprints, so they hadn’t taken part in the chase. 

So we were a bit low on the tank quotient, but we’d have to make up for it with mobility, I thought as I leaned against the wall a distance away from the rest of the group. Just to be certain, I scanned the faces of the ALS and DKB present. There were a few new members in the mix, but again, I didn’t see Morte or Joe. 

That was a good thing, of course, but it also meant we hadn’t solved the question of what the man in the black poncho and his friends were doing, allying themselves with the fallen elves. Was it to get the Spines of Shmargor, those paralyzing throwing needles? They were very powerful weapons, but would they really kidnap the members of Qusack and force them to poison the spirit tree for something as minor as getting a good weapon? 

“…I wonder if they’ll try something else this time,” said a voice next to me. It was Asuna, staring down the stairs with a hard expression. She’d been on the same train of thought. 

“Hmm…If they are, I don’t think Morte and Joe alone could climb this tower to do it. If they’ve got some plans in mind, it’ll be from the seventh floor, right?” 

“I…I suppose,” she said, but the note of unease was still there in her profile. Between nearly dying along with Cylon and the attack on Castle Galey, the PK gang had us on the defensive all throughout this floor. I understood why she didn’t want to let her guard down, lest it happen again. 

I glanced around, hesitated, then worked up the courage to move my left hand to the side. My fingers searched for Asuna’s hand, and…didn’t grab it entirely, but I did squeeze the joints of our pinkies. Her delicate hand twitched, but she didn’t yell at me or pull it away. A few seconds later, Asuna’s hand moved in return, enveloping my fingertip in her palm with an awkwardly reserved pressure. 

It was nine PM on January 4, 2023. 

The raid party, all preparations complete, lined up in front of the double doors. At the front, Kibaou barked a short but forceful encouragement to the group and pushed the doors open.