Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 15

15 

“WHEW…WE FINALLY MADE IT BACK…” 

Asuna stretched luxuriously as I opened my menu window. But I couldn’t even be bothered to keep my hand lifted, and so I let it dangle. It was 12:40 AM on January 5. 

I waved my left hand to dispel the window and surveyed my surroundings. 

Despite it still being early in the night by online gamer standards, the teleport square of Stachion, main town of the sixth floor, was nearly devoid of people. There were two reasons, by my reckoning: The gate on the seventh floor had been activated, so the tourists were up above, and all the sudoku puzzles that had filled the square were completely gone now. 

There was little lingering affection for the puzzles in me, but Theano, who stood on the far side of Asuna, looked out at the blank tiles with a reflective expression. Resting on her back was Myia’s adorable sleeping face, with the gas mask sitting atop her head. 

Only two hours had passed since the defeat of the Irrational Cube, the sixth-floor boss, and in that time, the trek back through the desert of the fifth area, the passage over Lake Talpha, and the shortcut through the woods of the first area had taken…no time at all, actually. Instead, we climbed the spiral stairs that descended from the ceiling of the boss chamber up to the seventh floor, walked to the main town there, activated the teleporter, and took it back here. 

That made Myia and Theano, as far as I was aware, the first quest NPCs to use a teleport gate to travel between floors. In fact, I was even worried that the two might not make it through and would simply be stuck on the seventh floor, but the SAO system was more generous than I imagined. Though there was always the chance, like Liten’s infinite ore bug, that it would be patched out later. 

As for Theano, she had no particular interest in the magical gateway she’d walked through. Instead, she stared at the square and the town in the distance in silence. Eventually, she walked over to Asuna and me and gave us a bow, with Myia still being carried on her back. 

“…Kirito, Asuna, you have truly saved me…Not only did you keep Myia safe, but I am certain that I would not have been able to defeat that guardian beast and destroy the golden cube on my own.” 

Um, you know Myia’s a higher level than us, right? I wanted to ask her but wisely refrained. Instead, I shook my head and said, “Please…if you and Myia hadn’t solved the puzzles on the door, we would have been trapped inside the chamber and died there.” 

“He’s right,” added Asuna. “I think I’m pretty good at those puzzles, but I could never manage one in ten seconds.” 

Theano smiled weakly. She readjusted her sleeping daughter’s position and turned around to view the rising stair-step layout of Stachion. At the end of the main street, the lord’s mansion shone in the moonlight. There was no light in the windows, making its lack of a resident clear. 

“Um…what’s going to happen to the mansion—er, to the entire town?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. 

In a sense, the town in an RPG was operated by the game system, not by the mayor who lived there, so Cylon’s absence shouldn’t actually have any effect on the town itself. But I couldn’t miss the indescribable sadness in Theano’s face as she stared up at the mansion, which prompted my question. 

Without turning back to us, she whispered, “I think…nothing will change, except for the puzzles being gone. It was Lord Pithagrus who built up Stachion and saw to its management. He challenged that fearsome guardian beast alone, extracted the golden cube, and used its powers of Break—reducing all stone and plant matter to cubes—and Bind—to stick those cubes together with unbreakable force—to build this great settlement…” 

“What…? So Bind was supposed to stick the cubes together?” Asuna asked, startled. 

The lady swordfighter looked back and nodded. “That is its intended use. But when a living thing is within its radius, that being will be bound as well. According to Lord Pithagrus, the golden cube was a prototype tool of war fashioned by the mages of the Alliance of the Nine that once existed in the lost lands.” 

“…” 

I looked at Asuna. Kizmel told us the story of Aincrad’s creation myth, the Great Separation, but I assumed it was just the elven legend. Who was this Pithagrus guy anyway? I wondered, well after the fact, but I wasn’t in the mood to dig up the “Curse of Stachion” quest now that we’d finished it. There were plenty of other things to worry about. 

For example, the fact that the fallen elf Kysarah had stolen the four sacred keys we collected. And even worse, the mysterious Buxum, who used the golden cube to immobilize us all in the boss chamber and tried to kill Theano at the very least—and possibly the rest of the raid party as well. The ALS and DKB were going to hold an emergency meeting in that chamber, but Asuna and I didn’t want Theano and Myia to hear about our death-game predicament, and so we escorted them directly to the seventh floor. The situation couldn’t be ignored, however, so I knew that soon I would need to gather the principal members of both guilds and explain everything I knew about the man in the black poncho and his cohorts. After they had witnessed Buxum’s deeds for themselves, it shouldn’t be hard to convince them that there was a gang of PKers on the loose. 

“Ten years it has been since Lord Pithagrus died…” Theano said, picking up where she left off. I had to switch gears to focus on her story. “In that ten years, the mysterious power that protected the cube seeped into the town, bit by bit, growing puzzles on every door in Stachion, just like in the Pillar of the Heavens. I do not know how Lord Pithagrus was holding the power of the cube back, but I always hoped to work with Cylon to discover it, so that we could remove the puzzles that tormented the townsfolk. But…” 

She hesitated, darkness blotting her features. In a quieter voice, she continued, “But I could not forgive Cylon for killing Lord Pithagrus in that fit of anger. We had promised to share our future together…which is why I wanted him to admit his sin, to repent, and think about what one must do to truly become the town lord. For ten long years, I waited for the day he would come to visit me…” 

As I watched her shake her head, I felt a frequent question come to mind, and without really thinking, I gave voice to it. 

“Um, Theano…what was it about Cylon that made you—?” 

Asuna elbowed me in the side, which made me realize I’d been asking a potentially rude question. But Theano just smiled wistfully and looked somewhere far off. 

“Ever since childhood, he was weak-willed, suspicious, yet proud, and always fighting with the other children…” 

Since childhood? They were childhood friends? I wondered, then realized it had to be true. The biggest city on the sixth floor was only six hundred meters north to south and half as wide. Every single child of the same generation would have known one another. 

“But really, he was very kind. From early on, it had been arranged for me to serve at Lord Pithagrus’s mansion. I was worried, but in order to cheer me up, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll pass Lord Pithagrus’s test and become his apprentice. Just hang in there.’ He kept his word and dreamed that eventually he would become the next lord of the town, marry me, and we would live in that mansion together. But…when he learned that he would not be chosen, the shock and disappointment must have been great…” 

“…Huh? But…” I stammered, glancing briefly at Asuna. “I thought Pithagrus was going to choose you to be the next master of the town. So Cylon shouldn’t have been quite so devastated…” 

Theano looked bewildered for a moment, then shook her head rapidly. Over her shoulder, Myia murmured in her sleep, and her mother gently rocked her back to a peaceful state. Then she focused on us again and gave another shake of her head. 

“No…Lord Pithagrus did teach me, a servant, all about puzzles, but that was more of a game to him. He did not need an heir. Lord Pithagrus was immortal; he had lived for centuries before the town of Stachion was ever built.” 

“Wh…what?!” I yelped, clamping my mouth shut. Once I was sure that Myia hadn’t woken up, I resumed in a much quieter voice, “He…he couldn’t die…?” 

I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Pithagrus hadn’t been murdered but was still alive out there somewhere, but Theano made a negative gesture. 

“No, I suppose I should say he had everlasting life. He couldn’t die of old age. When I came to the mansion, he was already a wizened old man with white hair, but the butler, who was the eldest of all the servants, claimed that Pithagrus already looked that way when he was a boy, too.” 

“…So…when Cylon learned the truth…” Asuna mumbled, and Theano nodded. 

“He discovered that Lord Pithagrus would not die of old age, and there would be no handing down of the position…it was the anger, disappointment, and perhaps even fear he felt that drove him to that terrible act. Much like this town itself, Lord Pithagrus was a man unbound by human reason…” 

Theano stopped there, a lucid gaze in her eyes, and I sensed that I did not need to pry any further about Cylon. Instead, I felt in my belt pouch for the item I picked up at the end of the boss fight—a dull metal key. 

“Um…you should have this, Theano,” I said, handing it over. She looked at it for a moment before accepting it. Holding up the key that was once two in the moonlight, she said, “So this key was always meant to be one…Lord Pithagrus gave Cylon and me those keys in the last days of our eighteenth year, but he did not say what they were for. I could never have guessed that they made the key to remove the cube from the guardian beast’s body…Why would he give such a thing to us…?” 

Neither Asuna nor I had the answer to that question. 

At the end of the “Curse of Stachion” quest in the beta, the ghost of Pithagrus bestowed his forgiveness upon Cylon for killing him, told him to work with Theano to protect the town, and vanished. In other words, the Pithagrus of the beta named Cylon and Theano together as his successors. 

I wondered if perhaps the same thing would be true of this immortal version of Pithagrus, but I couldn’t bring that up. 

Instead, Asuna took it upon herself to say, “I am sure that he loved you—and Cylon.” 

Without a word, Theano looked at the distant mansion again. I felt as though a little glimmer of light may have appeared on the side of her face, but when she turned back to us again after a good long while, all I saw was the same little smile. 

“…You might be right.” 

Theano placed the key inside the collar of her armor, then reached back to stroke her sleeping daughter’s head. 

She demanded that we come and visit again someday, before taking her daughter out of the square. When their HP bars vanished, a system message appeared in the center of my vision, telling me that a quest had been completed. 

Unlike in the beta, we got no col or items, but there were more than enough experience points to make up for it, and both Asuna and I received the level-up effect at the same time. I was level 22 now, and Asuna level 21, but I wasn’t in the mood for my usual “Yahoo!” leap. 

We shared a look, said “Congrats” in unison, and shook hands. 

That seemed to help compose Asuna’s feelings for the time being, and she seemed more like herself when she asked, “So…what now? Do we go back to the seventh floor?” 

“I’m shot.” 

“…Huh?” 

“My energy gauge is completely shot. In about three minutes, I’m going to pass out and sleep for ten hours straight.” 

That earned me one of Asuna’s usual annoyed looks. She sighed. “That’s because you were wandering out and about last night. Oh…we need to go back to Castle Galey, too. That old man needs an apology for the keys.” 

“You’re right…but for now, I need to sleep…” 

“Then let’s stay at an inn here tonight. Will the Pegasus Hoof do?” 

“As long as there’s a blanket and pillow, I don’t care…” 

Asuna shook her head again, then grabbed my left hand and started walking. She pulled me to a large inn just on the north side of the open square, and we walked up to the check-in counter. I was halfway asleep as I heard her order the third-floor suite, after which she pulled me up the stairs. 

When we approached the door at the very end of the long hallway, Asuna let out a faint murmur. I lifted heavy lids to see that my partner was staring at a niche in the wall next to the door. 

It reminded me that this was the room where we talked with the DKB members about the guild flag on the day we arrived at the sixth floor. Lind and Shivata had struggled with the cast-metal puzzle set into the niche, but now it was gone. 

Asuna reached out and brushed the empty alcove with her fingers. Then she pulled them back and turned the doorknob. It made a little click, and the door swung open. 

We shared a look, then grinned and entered the room. 

The suite room of the Pegasus Hoof was as gorgeous as I remembered. There was a four-seat table and a sofa set in the rather deep living room, with doors to separate bedrooms on either side wall. Asuna asked me which room I wanted. I could’ve honestly just slept on the couch, but I knew she’d snap at me, so I said, “The left one…” 

“Then I’ll take the right. Good night…and remember to unequip your gear before you fall into bed.” 

“Hyep…goo-nye…” 

I crossed the living room diagonally, essentially on autopilot at this point, and turned the knob of the door on the left wall. Inside the dark bedroom, I opened my window and tapped the UNDO EQUIPMENT button twice on feel alone. Now in just my underwear, I flopped face-first onto the bed. 

As I felt my weight sinking into the soft comforter, I reminded myself that the night was cold, and I needed to get under the covers, but my body wouldn’t listen. 

When I was soloing on the first floor, it wasn’t uncommon for me to level grind for twenty-four hours at a time once I spotted a good hunting location. But today’s fatigue was far beyond any of that. This hadn’t been a monotonous hunting session, where memorizing repetitive combat patterns allowed my mind to go empty for long stretches of time. Today I had racked my brain continuously to adapt to varied situations and threats that popped up one after the other. But the same should have gone for Asuna, too. Was she in better spirits because she was used to using her brain more often than me? If that was the case, then maybe I needed to learn how to think smarter, if I wanted to continue protecting her. As her temporary partner, of…course… 

My thoughts expanded, sinking my conscious mind below the depths into infinite darkness… 

“I got it! Kirito, I got it!” 

The door to my bedroom flew open, and an obnoxiously loud cry of triumph echoed throughout the room. The room lit up, and through eyelids that rose only a fraction of a centimeter, I saw Asuna in her nightwear leap inside. 

“…Y-you got what…?” 

“The number! And more than just that, but the number!” she exclaimed, pounding her hands onto the side of the bed across from where I was lying. I wanted to tell her to save it for tomorrow, but she was too fired up for that, so I managed to roll onto my side and ask, “What number…?” 

Asuna leaned over closer, her hazel-brown eyes glittering with excitement. “The door to Pithagrus’s secret home in Suribus! Remember the six-digit number on the dial lock? It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t figure out what it meant!” 

Now that she mentioned it, when I told her the code to undo the lock, she had said something to that effect. That it was familiar to her somehow… 

“What was it…six, two, eight, four, nine, six…?” I said, wringing the numbers loose from memory. 

She nodded twice. “That’s right. That’s not just a random string of numbers. They’re the first three perfect numbers.” 

“…P-perfect numbers…?” 

It sounded like something I might’ve learned about in school. Curiosity drove sleep away just enough for me to prop up my head with my left arm. “What’s so perfect about them?” 

“A perfect number is defined as an integer that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors. See, the factors of six are one, two, and three, right? If you add them up, they make six. And the factors of twenty-eight are one, two, four, seven, and fourteen…which add up to twenty-eight. And four hundred ninety-six is the next one.” 

“Ohhh…I see…” 

It was an interesting discovery but didn’t seem like more than a curiosity. It just meant that whoever wrote the story for the “Curse of Stachion” quest picked out the first three perfect numbers on a whim for that lock. 

But Asuna already knew what I was thinking. “That’s not all of it! So, um…when you did the beta, you saw the cursor for the ghost of Pithagrus, right?” 

“Y-yeah, I did.” 

“What was his name? How was his name spelled?” 

“Uh…actually, I think it was just a generic title like Restless Soul, without an individual name attached to it…” 

“Ah. So they were hiding it, then,” she replied seriously. Then, without warning, Asuna hopped onto the bed. She rolled onto her side next to me and opened her window so I could see. Without showing any recognition of how stunned I was, she went to the MESSAGES tab and used a blank message field as a notepad to type in the Western alphabet. 

“You see, I think the proper spelling of Pithagrus’s name is probably this. We just never saw it written down this way, only heard it spoken.” 

“O-okay…?” 

I laid my head back down on the pillow to see the window, which contained the following string of letters. 

PYTHAGORAS. 

“P…Pie…tha…What? Is that how his name is supposed to be spelled?” 

“Yes, going by the English spelling. But this might not ring a bell for you yet. You’d be much more familiar with the Japanese pronunciation…or proper Greek.” 

“The Japanese pronunciation…?” 

Truly confused now, I looked at the window again. I tried to sound out the letters in the way that foreign sounds were represented in Japanese. 

“Pi…sa…goras? Pisa…Wait, no…should it be a T? Pitagoras?! Wait, is this the famous—?!” 

Ninety percent of my sleepiness was gone, shot through with adrenaline. 

I wasn’t the most attuned student at school, but even I knew this name. In the second semester of my second year of middle school, just before I got trapped in SAO, I had learned about Pythagoras, the ancient Greek mathematician whose name was associated with the theorem about the sides of a right triangle. He was the founder of some kind of math club named after himself, too, and discovered a whole bunch of mathematical properties and concepts. So he would have been the one who named them “perfect numbers.” 

“…So why didn’t they just make it clear that he was Pythagoras from the start…?” I grumbled, earning a chuckle from Asuna. 

“They probably wanted to put a little distance between the character and the historical figure, and that’s why they hid the alphabetical spelling. He would’ve only been the model for the character, after all…” 

“Ah…Was the real Pythagoras good at solving puzzles, too?” 

“No, I’ve never heard anything to that effect. And he’s never been called the king of puzzles or whatever. Although, I do think his focus on the harmony and integrity of numbers bears some connection to the concept of puzzles.” 

“Uh-huh…” 

I rolled onto my back and thought back dully on the events of the past four days. 

“And the real Pythagoras was killed by his own follower,” Asuna muttered. 

“Huh…he was…?” 

“Technically, it was a person who wanted to join his scholastic order, whom Pythagoras rejected. So the man whipped up the people of the town to attack the order out of revenge…Although, I don’t remember if his name was Cylon or not…” 

“Whipped them up…” I repeated, thinking not of the quest but of the man in the black poncho and his friends. The man named Buxum who infiltrated the DKB and tried to steal the golden cube somehow knew where to use the iron key, when even Theano didn’t. And beyond that, he even knew how to utilize the terrible Bind powers of the cube. 

How did Buxum get the iron key that Kysarah the fallen elf stole from Myia and me? And how did Buxum and the black-poncho man arrange their relationship with the Fallen in the first place? 

The curse quest was over, and we beat the boss of the sixth floor without any casualties, but the mysteries and unaddressed problems were everywhere. If I wanted to solve those issues, and ensure that I could protect Asuna from harm, I had to be stronger. Strong enough to fight Kysarah one-on-one. 

“Oh, right, Kirito.” 

The mention of my name caused my half-closed eyelids to rise again. Asuna sat up and looked straight down at me. 

“Wh-what…?” 

“Let me see your eyes.” 

“H-huh…?” I blinked, unsure of what my partner wanted to do. 

To my surprise, she said, “In the boss chamber, when you broke through the Bind, I felt like your eyes were shining gold.” 

“What…really? They were? Are they now?” 

“No, they’re black.” 

“Oh…” 

Relieved, I relaxed and let my gaze lock with Asuna’s hazel-brown eyes. Instantly, I felt something leaving my body and knew that I was really at the limit of my wakefulness now. 

Asuna’s little smile melted into darkness, and through fading wits, I heard her faint whisper: 

“Good night, Kirito.” 

“Good night, Asuna,” I said, although I couldn’t be sure if it ever left my lips. 

(End)