Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 6

6 

I AWOKE TO MOVEMENTS THAT WEREN’T MINE, warmth that wasn’t mine, and breathing that wasn’t mine. 

Through cracked eyelids, I saw the faint, white-gray light of morning. Based on the color, I gauged it to be around five in the morning. Normally, I’d still be asleep at this hour, but I’d gone to bed very early and had already gotten nine hours of sleep. We were set to meet with Kizmel in the mess hall at seven, so there was still time to relax, but I decided it was better not to be lazy. 

And yet, my eyes closed again. The chilly air of the early January morning versus the absolute comfort and warmth of the bed was simply an unfair fight. My partially awakened mind sank back down into the darkness. 

Just thirty more minutes…No, twenty, I thought like a middle schooler on a Monday morning and then tried to turn off my brain. 

But then there was a faint “Mmh…” and a sensation of wriggling next to me. At first, I thought I was having a dream about owning a cat, but then I realized it was neither a cat nor a dream. 

My eyelids were so heavy that they felt like they’d been glued together; even though the virtual world didn’t make use of your actual eyes, the way it made it impossible to focus when in a half-asleep state was oddly true to life—probably an issue between the brain and the NerveGear. I blinked repeatedly until the gray blur sharpened into a proper image. 

The upper half of my field of view was dominated by a large pillow, while the bottom half was a light-brown something. I was resting on my right side, I could tell, and my right arm was extended forward, trapped between the brown object and the pillow. 

My left arm was resting on a soft object, and my legs felt intertwined with something, as well. They were either trapping it or being entrapped themselves; it was hard to tell for sure. I blinked some more, using my free arm to try to push away the enigma stuck to my body… 

“Nnuh…” came another murmur, from somewhere under my chin. The soft object my left hand was touching suddenly wriggled. 

It wasn’t a cat or any other small animal. It was a large animal, about my size—a human. A player. Specifically, it was my temporary partner, Lady Asuna. The brown object resting on my right arm was Asuna’s head. 

The instant the situation registered in my mind, it accelerated from a dazed state past normal attention into hyper-focus. As my mind got up to speed, I chose my course of action. 

Apparently, I had offered my arm as pillow space and had my free hand holding her shoulder. I was on my right side, and Asuna was on her left, meaning that our fronts were nearly in total contact, and I couldn’t tell what was going on with our legs. I moved my eyes without craning my neck to glance up at the headboard. I was firmly on the left side of the bed—meaning that I was the one violating the territorial treaty. We were only holding pinkies when we went to sleep, so during the night I had somehow advanced all the way from east to west. 

“Uyu…” 

Asuna budged again. The intervals of her activity were getting shorter, and within minutes…perhaps less than a minute, she would likely awaken. I had to retreat to my territory on the right side of the bed before that happened. 

Carefully, I let go of Asuna’s shoulder and let my hand hover in the air. But my right arm was still trapped between her head and the pillow, and removing it would prove difficult. Not to mention our legs, which were all tangled. At this point, the only way to free myself without disturbing Asuna would require a teleport crystal, but those only allowed for teleport to the various town teleport gates—and more importantly, they weren’t available on the sixth floor. 

Still, I had time to attempt it, should I believe in miracles—and I didn’t have much other choice. I tried to use my left hand to lift up Asuna’s head. If I could get my right arm free, I might be able to undo our legs and escape. 

“Mmmh…” 

The moment my fingers brushed the back of her head, Asuna grimaced. I quickly moved my hand away. She wriggled for a few more seconds, then unfolded her hand right in front of her and clenched my shirt collar. 

I’m so dead. 

At this point, all I could do was let my muscles go limp and wait for the fateful moment to occur. 

Two hours later… 

“…Why are you putting your fish on Asuna’s plate, Kirito? Do you not like fish?” Kizmel asked me. We were in the dining hall. 

With a sad, secretive smile, I replied, “No, I love fish,” in the dry tone of a sample sentence in a language textbook. 

“Then why are you giving it all away?” 

“Um…” 

I was at a loss for an appropriate response. Instead, Asuna stuck her fork into the fried fish I was offering her and happily explained, “Kirito did something bad, so he’s paying for his crime.” 

“Oh…What did he do?” 

“Well…” Asuna started, but before she could detail the entire incident, I interjected. 

“You see, I kind of invaded Asuna’s personal space…er, meaning that I got a little too physically close for her comfort,” I said, to explain the English terminology of personal space. I got a cold glare from the fencer for my comment. Yes, the act of embracing someone in a bed was beyond the level of “violation of personal space,” but if Kizmel was going to be disgusted with me, too, I might as well spend the entire day doing squats in the corner of the castle by myself. 

I prayed she would understand and accept this explanation, assuming that she actually wouldn’t. But to my good fortune, Kizmel nodded deeply and earnestly. “I see. It is the first time I have heard this term, but I understand your meaning. In elf society, too, it is considered to be a violation of norms to approach another too closely.” 

“Oh, really?” asked Asuna to my right. She set down her cup of herbal tea and wondered, “But…when you’re around us, you don’t seem to keep your distance, Kizmel…In the queen spider’s dungeon on the third floor, you ushered us under your cape of hiding, for example.” 

Indeed, I recalled being rather flustered at how much contact there had been with her arms and legs and other body parts. The elf knight smiled wistfully and glanced at her own hands. 

“…Yes, I do recall that. It would seem that, compared to other dark elves, my persi…personal space…is rather narrow. Tilnel did like to cling to me, after all…We were practically joined at the hip when we were children, so I suppose I became used to the feeling.” 

I could sense Asuna’s eyes widening when Kizmel mentioned the name of her late sister, who had died in battle with a Forest Elven Falconer on the third floor. 

Asuna and I never met Tilnel. In fact, I was under the assumption that there had never actually been a dark elf NPC in Aincrad named Tilnel. Kizmel’s childhood with her beloved sister, the point at which she became a knight and Tilnel became an herbalist, and Tilnel’s death during the mission to recover the sacred key…All these things had to be backstory, details invented and placed in Kizmel’s memory. For one thing, elves were long-lived, so Kizmel was older than she appeared, perhaps fifty or sixty, or even older than that. Yet, the world of Aincrad itself had only been around since November 6, 2022, less than two months ago in the real world. 

But after all my interactions with Kizmel, Viscount Yofilis, and even old Romolo and the camp blacksmith, that way of thinking was slowly evolving. These things seemed too rich and complex to just be simple generated memories that were implanted to define the characters and give them individuality. 

In the present day of 2022—er, no, it was 2023 now, I had to remind myself—humanity had yet to develop a properly functioning AGI, or artificial general intelligence. 

Artificial intelligence itself had made great strides in the five years since 2017, which was now considered the first year of the AI era. There were shogi and go apps you could install on your smartphone that were tougher than any pro players, programs for stock and currency trading that could perform thousands of transactions per second for efficient gains, and hospitals now had tools to automatically perform diagnostics with high-res imaging. It wouldn’t be long now before we reached level 5, the point where fully automated cars were driving around on public streets. 

But compared to the rapid advancements of these “narrow AI,” which were focused on specific tasks, we still had a long way to go to develop a “general AI” that was capable of learning on its own and communicating on the same level as a human being. Once that level of intelligence had been achieved, the AI could then be applied to a wide variety of areas. Smart speakers were found in homes all over the world, helping with schedule management, home appliances, and information searches, but they were clearly unable to contribute meaningfully to conversation. 

For one thing, AI are good at learning about things with clear outcomes—winning and losing, correct and incorrect—but struggle greatly when there is no correct answer to discern. The concepts of winning and losing don’t apply to normal conversation. 

Yet, here before me, sipping her herbal tea with a pensive, thoughtful look, was a dark elf NPC in a video game—not exactly the pinnacle of cutting-edge AI development—who had never once given us a nonsense response to any statement. Perhaps that was partly because we’d been avoiding bringing up any topics that Kizmel would not understand, but even then, her ability to make conversation was essentially at a human level. 

How had Argus—had Akihiko Kayaba—managed to implement such a high-functioning AI in a video game? There was only one way I could imagine: to build up an enormous text corpus of conversations between a vast number of humans and AI on specific topics and then reduce statistical noise and computational stress. That would not be easy, of course. It would be hard enough just to get hundreds of people to participate and explain what was allowed to discuss and what was off-limits. And there would be the issue of how to recruit them and how to pay them for their time and efforts. 

But in a VRMMO world… 

Players would generally only speak about in-game topics and quests, and who needed to pay them when they would happily log in and spend hours in the game at a time? If a thousand players spoke with AI over the course of a month, you would accumulate the kind of data that no company or researchers had ever gotten their hands on before. 

Then, using that text corpus, they could have AIs talk to one another. Once actual humans were out of the picture, that conversation could be simulated much, much faster. In two months, you could simulate centuries or more of dialogue between individual AIs. 

Meaning that it was possible that Kizmel and the dark elves…and forest elves, and fallen elves, and human NPCs…had all built up an actual history that started from the creation of Aincrad before SAO officially launched. And among them were special AIs with conversational abilities close to a general intelligence, such as Kizmel and Viscount Yofilis. 

If my imagination—no, my daydream—was even in the vicinity of the truth, then SAO’s AI capability was already in that “near-future” realm. 

Now you had ten times as many players as in the beta, a full ten thousand in Aincrad, all trading words with AIs every day. Could that data be accumulated, refined, and polished enough to lead to the production of a crown jewel of true artificial intelligence? I certainly couldn’t categorically rule it out… 

“…Um, Kirito.” 

A poke at my elbow brought me to a rapid series of blinks. 

“Hweh? Wh…what?” 

“Don’t what me. Was it that much of a shock that I took your fish? You’ve barely eaten a bite so far.” 

“Oh…” 

I looked down at my plate, where I still had two pieces of fried fish after the one I’d offered to Asuna, and I hadn’t even touched my salad or toast. The day’s adventure was expected to be a long one, so I needed to fuel up while I could—even if the calories weren’t real. I stabbed a piece of fish with my fork and shoved the whole thing in my mouth. The crisply fried portion crumbled apart, giving way to a juicy chunk of white meat. As I cleaned my plate, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kizmel and her kind felt the same sensations of taste and contentment. Once I had polished off my food, I gulped down my herbal tea. 

“I wasn’t asking you to inhale it, you know,” Asuna muttered. I leaned over and bit down on the elliptical baby tomato stuck on the end of her fork, pulling it off. “Aaah! What was that for?!” 

Asuna raised her fork to swing, and I held my knife to defend against it. Kizmel only shook her head, a big-sister gesture if I’d ever seen one. Asuna noticed it and lowered her arm. 

“Hey, Kizmel, can you tell us more about Tilnel?” 

“Hmm…? Why, yes, of course. I shall tell you some stories on our travels today.” 

“Great. I can’t wait to hear them.” Asuna beamed, earning her a grin from the dark elf. There was no hint of shadow in her expression this time. 

After our meal, Kizmel guided us to the supply station of Castle Galey. They were very generous, offering us five healing potions, five antidote potions, and a bag with rations and snacks, once per day, for free. Sadly, the antidotes were only level 1, so they couldn’t counteract the level-2 paralyzing poison from Morte’s Spine of Shmargor throwing picks. 

The prospect of finding an antidote that was effective against the poision had me excited to hear from the storyteller that Kizmel had mentioned last night, but unfortunately, we could only meet them in the library between noon and three o’clock. 

I didn’t like the idea of continuing our questing without a means to neutralize the poison picks, but we would probably be fine as long as Kizmel was with us. She had a ring with magical antidote charms, and I couldn’t imagine that Morte’s gang would attack an elite knight whose level was so high that her color cursor must seem black. Based on the way the dagger user, aka Black Hood Number Two, had given up his main weapon to try to save Morte—or Mamoru, as he called him—they hadn’t engaged in that stunt expecting to sacrifice their lives. 

But that just meant that when they tried to attack us again, it would be under even more advantageous circumstances than the other night. The next time, they would do whatever it took to kill us; and they were probably working on their diabolical plan at this very moment. 

I felt a fresh wave of apprehension about the idea of just waiting for them to make their next move, but I couldn’t think of a way we could strike them first; and even if I did have a plan, I would need willpower on a different level than what I was working with now. For one thing, assuming we knew where their hideout was, there was no surefire method for apprehending a player in Aincrad for long periods of time. The only way to prevent them from committing any more evil would be to permanently log them out of the game. 

And the only way to do that for sure at this point in time was to reduce their HP to zero. Which would bring about the death of the player in real life… 

“Hey, Kirito, we’re going to head out!” 

“Don’t make us leave you behind!” 

I lifted my gaze from the tiles on the floor to the distance, where I saw the knight and fencer beckoning me toward the spring at the roots of the spirit tree. 

The branches and leaves of the massive tree, which emerged from the center of the pool, glistened dazzlingly with countless droplets of dew that caught the morning sun and dripped down like golden threads. The sight of the two women against this backdrop was astonishingly beautiful. 

Kizmel was Kizmel, of course, but at this point, Asuna might be stronger than me in pure fighting prowess as well. Even still, I felt a powerful urge to protect the two of them surge up from my heart as I trotted over to join them. 

We were ushered out of the castle gates by the sound of the light bells and the silent gazes of the guards. After barely a minute of walking across the bridge built over the sandy valley floor, devoid of so much as a blade of grass, an unfamiliar debuff icon appeared on Kizmel’s HP bar. 

The symbol of a person hanging their head was the status icon for weakness, I recalled. I only suffered it once in the beta, fighting against the snake priests in the Castle of a Thousand Serpents on the tenth floor. It wiped out a large portion of my strength and agility stats, which put me in an encumbered state. Unable to run away to safety, I was killed soon after that. 

Kizmel didn’t look to be that bad, but I could tell in the brief time it had been that her rich, coffee-brown skin was looking noticeably paler now. Asuna called out her name in concern and tried to offer her an arm, but the knight boldly pushed her away and removed a thin cape from a pouch she kept fixed to her back. 

“…I thought…that I could last longer…but this is merely a reminder that we elves are powerless without the bounty of the forest and water,” she grunted, switching out her usual hiding cloak for the cape. 

Like Asuna’s, this cape was hooded, and it was a mysterious shade of green with silver tinting—I could even make out a pattern that looked like leaf veins. The moment she pulled the hood over her head, Kizmel’s weakness icon disappeared and was replaced by a new buff icon. 

“Whew…” Already the color was returning to her face. Asuna and I were so stunned by the immediate improvement that the knight gave us a proud little grin. “This cape is a special treasure that has been kept within the kingdom since before the Great Separation. It is carefully sewn together from the precious leaves of the Holy Tree, which hardly ever fall, even in midwinter…Among all the castles and fortresses together there are no more than ten of these capes remaining.” 

“Ooooh…That’s fascinating,” Asuna whispered, examining the cape itself. “So it’s made from the leaves of the Holy Tree…” 

Meanwhile, I was more curious about the effects of the new leaf icon—but I couldn’t just go tapping Kizmel’s cape while she was wearing it. I made a mental note to ask her permission to examine it once we got back to Castle Galey and opened my main menu to check the quest log. 

We were about to tackle the main story for the “Elf War” campaign quest on the sixth floor, known as the “Agate Key.” The format of the quest itself was simple—collect the key from the dungeon in the south area and return it to the castle—but the problem was that out of the five radial areas around the center of the sixth floor, we were in the northwest, meaning we’d have to get through the west area just to get to the south. 

That meant getting through two of the boundary dungeons that separated each area—the first of which was a decent challenge for a full raid party with the ALS and DKB, plus the Bro Squad for backup. Even with Kizmel, that was not going to be easy…Just in case, I checked our route there. 

“Um, Kizmel, about our destination…I presume we’re heading for the Key Shrine at the southernmost part of the sixth floor?” 

“That is correct. I am impressed you knew the shrine was in the south,” Kizmel said with marvel. Obviously, I couldn’t tell her I’d been there in the beta test, so I gave her a pat answer about understanding as much with my book of Mystic Scribing. As a matter of fact, the quest log did include the location of the dungeon, so it wasn’t really a lie. 

“I see. Your human magical charms are powerful, indeed,” the knight remarked. I walked up to show her the full map of the sixth floor, which Asuna examined from the opposite side. They traced the pathway to our destination with a finger. 

“Our present location is here, and the shrine with the key is somewhere around here. That means we have to get through the passageway under the mountains both here and here…That’s going to be a serious challenge if we attempt to tackle them head-on, but if there happens to be some kind of secret shortcut known only to dark elves, then…” I prompted. Asuna elbowed me in the side. 

“Now, don’t be tacky. I’m sorry, Kizmel, please ignore him.” 

“Hrmm. I do not remember hearing anything about a shortcut,” the knight replied. She looked up and grinned. “But there is no need to cross the mountains at all.” 

“Uh…why not?” 

“We can save that surprise for later. Let’s head to the center lake first.” 

Kizmel put a hand on my back and Asuna’s and pushed us onward, so I had to close my window and start walking. 

The star-shaped body of water in the center of the floor was named Lake Talpha, and it would indeed cut down on travel time significantly if you could cross it. In the beta, many players did use buoyant materials in an attempt to swim across it, but the lake was home to a devastatingly powerful giant starfish monster that grabbed every person attempting to cross and dragged them down to watery graves. 

That would be a thrilling bit of entertainment in a normal game, but encountering that starfish in SAO now was nothing short of suicide. The thought of Kizmel’s intentions was troubling, but I had no choice at present other than to trust her. 

The three of us crossed the stone bridge and headed into the labyrinth of canyon walls. Sandy monsters promptly began to spawn around us, but Kizmel was even stronger than when we worked with her on the sacred key quest of the fifth floor, and with ease, she dispatched the desert spiders and death worms that gave us so much trouble. 

In terms of leveling efficiency, SAO was a lonely game in which the best way to level was going solo, but for now, there was no experience-point adjustment based on the level gap between monster and player—meaning that power leveling, where one or two over-leveled players could boost a party by taking down huge numbers of monsters by themselves, was surprisingly easy. This was exactly the present case, so I wished we could find a good high-frequency monster area and hang out for two or three hours—maybe even half a day or a full day—to gain levels. But given that we were on an important quest to recover the sacred keys, I couldn’t ask Kizmel to do that. (In fact, didn’t I consider that very idea on the third floor already?) 

To my disappointment, we mostly avoided combat as we proceeded southward through the sandy canyons, and we reached the hills on the other end of the area by ten o’clock. 

The five equal-sized areas of the sixth floor were spread out like a fan, so the closer you got to the lake in the center, the narrower the band of terrain became. About five hundred meters to our left was a sheer rocky cliff face, and if I squinted, I could see the entrance to the cave path we came through yesterday at the base of the rocks far ahead. 

There was a similar rock wall on the right side, but the tunnel through that range was located toward the outer perimeter of the floor—and not visible from here. The walls would steadily close tighter and tighter until we hit star-shaped Lake Talpha at the center. 

“Whew…Finally, we’ve made it through the dry valley,” remarked Kizmel, pulling off her green hood. 

“H-hey, is it safe for you to take that off yet?” I balked. 

“It is. There are at least a few plants in this region, with the occasional spring of water.” 

But as far as I could see, the surrounding wasteland was just barren, reddish-brown ground, with the only visible plants being spiky cacti and succulents. It did not seem to be overflowing with the “bounty of forest and water,” but the knight removed her cape anyway. 

The debuff icon did not reappear, but even after two hours under the cape, her face still looked pale and uncomfortable. Asuna noticed it, too, and asked, “Are you sure you shouldn’t keep it on until we reach the lake?” 

“Yes…As I said earlier, this Greenleaf Cape is very precious. It would be a disgrace to our ancestors if I wore it where it was not necessary and damaged it in combat,” Kizmel replied, folding the cape carefully and storing it in a pouch. She removed her cloak of hiding with a long exhale and put that on instead. 

I opened my inventory and materialized a bottle of water for her, which she accepted gratefully. Then I retrieved two more for Asuna and me, and the three of us quenched our thirst standing in a row. For some reason, I felt like striking a pose with my left hand on my waist, but I didn’t, out of fear that my companions wouldn’t join in. 

When the bottle was half empty, I stowed it. A player could carry as much food and water as the carrying limit would allow, but the elves didn’t have fancy player inventories and had to carry around all their belongings by hand. 

The same went for human NPCs, which meant that when Morte killed Cylon, all the gold and silver coins that he dropped were stored somewhere under his robes. 

I bet the lord of the town has a pretty heavy purse, I thought, which was neither here nor there, but the thought gave me pause. When Cylon died, he dropped both the golden key he stole from us and an iron key. By this logic, he either carried it around with him at all times, or he took it out of his mansion to use it. If the latter, it would only make sense that wherever Cylon intended to take Asuna and me while we were paralyzed, the iron key would be needed. 

When I finished the paralysis event by myself in the beta, Pithagrus’s servant and secret protégé, Theano, had saved me in the back streets of Stachion, so I didn’t know where the carriage was supposed to end up. And I didn’t recall any iron key being involved in the series of quests that followed. So if Morte hadn’t killed Cylon, I doubted we would have seen any iron keys this time, either. 

Meaning that the key I had in my inventory now was an item the game only generated when Cylon died in the middle of the quest…and that there was an alternate “dead Cylon” route to the “Curse of Stachion” quest, most likely. 

Without thinking, I was scrolling through my open inventory window looking for the iron key. I had to grab my wrist with the other hand to stop it. Now was the time to focus on the “Agate Key” quest, not the “Curse of Stachion.” We could return to Stachion at any time, and more importantly, if Kizmel could help us cross Lake Talpha, we could probably jump ahead of the other frontier players making their way counterclockwise around the map. 

“Okay, let’s go—” I started to say, but then I noticed that Asuna and Kizmel were busy with their backs to me, facing a rather large cactus. I walked over to check what they were doing and saw that they were plucking something red from between the cactus spikes and lifting it to their mouths. 

“Hey! You’re eating something!” I shouted. Asuna glanced at me briefly before returning to her harvest. She was even doing it two-handed now, popping the red objects into her mouth at twice the speed. 

Determined not to be left out, I circled around to the other side of the cactus and examined the base of the nearly ten-centimeter long spikes of the red object there. Gingerly, I reached in and plucked out a round fruit less than three centimeters across. When I hesitantly bit down on it, juice burst forth that was sweet and cold and sour and fizzy, numbing my mind with pleasure. 

Immediately certain that the flavor was greater than even the B-rank half-fish sweet potatoes, I went in for another one, but perhaps because my hands were bigger than theirs, I couldn’t pick the fruit as quickly. By the time I had pulled off a third fruit, Asuna was already rotating her way around from the other side. 

She’s going to eat my share! I fretted, and in my haste to grab a fourth fruit, my hand slipped and embedded itself onto a cactus spike. 

“Yeow!!” 

Like with the sensations of combat, it wasn’t real pain, but I snatched my hand away out of sheer instinct anyway. Asuna took the opportunity to snatch the fruit and pop it into her mouth. 

In the end, I only got about ten of the fruit by the time the entire cactus was picked clean. I looked at my two satisfied companions and grumbled. “I can’t believe this. You could have told me before you started eating them…” 

“Ha-ha, I am sorry for that, Kirito.” Kizmel, who seemed to be in much better spirits, laughed. Perhaps the cactus fruit had some healing properties. “These Celusian Fruit have the most exquisite taste, but the flowers bloom and produce fruit only once a year. And what’s more, the fruit can appear during any season, because the fruits fall just thirty minutes after they grow. So when you see them, you must eat them as quickly as you can.” 

“Th-thirty minutes…?” I repeated, looking out on the desert wastes. There were over a hundred cacti dotting the landscape just from what I could see, but a year would be 8,760 hours long, meaning 525,600 minutes, only thirty of which would feature any fruit on an individual cactus. The odds of actually happening across a fruiting cactus had to be devastatingly low. It wouldn’t be worth wandering across the desert in search of them, no matter how tasty they were, so that might be the first and last time I would ever get the chance. I turned to my temporary partner, who still seemed to be basking in the afterglow of her meal. 

“Um, Asuna?” 

“Ahhh…what?” 

“How many of those cactus fruits did you eat?” 

“Around forty or fifty. I could go for more, though…Just give me a whole bathtub full of them.” 

“Hrrr…!” I moaned, swearing to myself that I would have to come back to search for them after all. 

Kizmel clapped me on the shoulder. “Let us be on our way now. At this point, those pesky insect monsters will not bother us anymore.” 

As she said, the monsters that popped up in the hilly region mainly resembled coyotes and lizards, and neither had venom, making them much easier to dispatch. Instead, we spent the last kilometer or so listening to Kizmel tell us stories about her sister Tilnel, which had been a focus of Asuna’s curiosity. 

The story about how she took out a rowboat into the lake near the royal city on the ninth floor, all by herself as a child, and got lost for a full day. The story about how she put too much extract of juniper into the bath and smelled like a tree for a week. The story of how she gave Kizmel an experimental tonic during her herbalist studies that turned Kizmel’s hair as green as a dryad’s. 

Asuna giggled at all the stories, and they reminded me of the experiences I had with my sister Suguha years ago, but I couldn’t help entertaining one unsettling thought in the back of my mind. If all of Kizmel’s memories of Tilnel were just “backstory,” implanted memories, then they were all things that the staff of Argus, some scenario writer, had come up with originally. 

But would they really give such a rich backstory to Kizmel, who was just one of potentially countless NPCs that populated Aincrad? There seemed to be no end to the knight’s stories; it was as though she recalled every single day that she had spent with her sister Tilnel. If it wasn’t just special NPCs like Kizmel and Viscount Yofilis who had such richness of memory, but every single NPC in the game…it would be impossible for even a team of writers to come up with so much material. 

For close to an hour we walked, Kizmel’s stories entering my left ear and smoke from my overheating brain exiting the right. At last, the gap between the two mountain walls ahead reached barely half a kilometer, with the shining blue surface of the lake visible beyond. 

We shared a glance, then sprinted the rest of the way until we reached the water. 

“Ooooh, wow!” Asuna exclaimed, and I couldn’t blame her. The sharply curved water’s edge was a pure-white beach with stunningly clear water lapping at its sand. The surface was dazzling in the sunlight, the water transitioning from emerald green to cobalt blue as it deepened. Even the air seemed a bit warmer here. 

Compared to the ten-kilometer diameter of the first floor, Lake Talpha was not all that big, but it was still over half a kilometer across, the far bank fading into the distance. However, the rocky walls that split the floor into five equal sections were clearly visible on the far right and left—and straight ahead of us. It was clear at a glance that this was the center where the five areas met. 

“Hey, can I go in the water for just a bit?” Asuna asked. She was inching closer and closer to the sand. I was going to warn her, but Kizmel beat me to it. 

“No, you must not. This lake is home to a dreadful starfish monster…I have never seen it for myself, but they say its tremendously long arms can reach the shore all the way from the depths of the lake.” 

Asuna immediately shrank away. 

So the giant starfish, which went by the name Ophiometus, was still in place at the bottom of the lake in the release version. Now I was really curious and worried about Kizmel’s plan to get to the far bank. 

The knight sensed my eyes on her and smiled confidently. She pulled a new item out of her carrying pouch: a small glass bottle no bigger than her thumb. There was a pure-blue liquid inside it. 

“Kirito, show me the bottom of your boot.” 

“O…kay,” I agreed, but even in a virtual world, lifting my leg high enough for the sole of my shoe to be visible was easier said than done. I managed to get my right leg up, trying to stretch my ankle and pelvis as far as they could go, but about when I had the leg perpendicular to the ground, I lost my balance, yelped, waved my arms, and toppled onto the sandy beach. 

Asuna’s spontaneous laughter was stifled with a muffled Poom! 

Embarrassed, I wanted to jump back to my feet, but Kizmel said “Perfect, that will do,” and she had me lie back with my feet sticking straight up into the air, which didn’t make me feel any better. 

She carefully unstopped the bottle and put a single drop each on my soles. The shoes began to glow blue all over, and another unfamiliar icon lit up over my HP bar. I could guess what it meant, given the illustration of a shoe standing on water, but I waited for Kizmel to explain it anyway. 

“You may stand,” she said. I pulled my legs back over the position of my head, then snapped them forward to jump up to my feet in one motion. I needed to be in the best possible vantage point to witness my partner’s sense of balance, after she had so kindly laughed at me falling on my butt. 

Asuna shot me a glare, said “Go ahead, Kizmel,” and lifted her right leg, not forward, but behind her, propping her ankle up with a hand. Of course, that was a much easier way to expose the bottom of one’s foot without any awkward strain on the joints. In fact, probably nine out of ten people would do the same thing. I was both impressed and disgruntled by the idea. “No fair,” I groused. 

After sprinkling her own boots at the end, Kizmel put the cork back in the bottle and returned it to her pouch. Then she crossed the sand and gingerly stepped onto the clear water where it ebbed and flowed against the shore. The first few steps went through the surface, but around the fourth, a strange ripple ran across the water, and the fifth and sixth steps were clearly on top of it. 

“Ooooh,” Asuna and I said, marveling. 

The knight turned and beckoned us forward. “Come, you two. Step slowly onto the water.” 

We bobbed our heads and proceeded to the lapping edge of the lake. Just to be sure, I grabbed my partner’s shoulder and held her still. 

“So, Kizmel, if we walk on the surface of the water, the starfish won’t appear?” 

“I guarantee it. However…” 

“However?” 

“The Droplets of Villi charm on your boots will only take effect when stepping softly. If you run or leap, you will break the surface and lose the effect. Then the starfish will notice you…so do take care not to lose your cool.” 

I got the feeling that last part was directed solely at me but decided it was just my imagination. The bigger question was whether or not we could entrust our lives to magic—er, a “charm”—that could lose its effect just by running. After all, Ophiometus’s body never surfaced. It only sent its long, long hands up to grab players and drag them down, so it was impossible to beat by fighting. And unlike in the beta, if we died on the lake floor, we would not be respawning in Blackiron Palace in the Town of Beginnings. 

I wanted to say Kizmel, we really can’t afford to die but caught myself. That statement was just as true of NPCs like Kizmel as it was to us. Even if another dark elf with the same name and appearance was generated in the forests of the third floor after her death, it would not be the same Kizmel. How could I possibly say to her “It’s all right if you die, but we’re more important”? 

“It’s okay, Kirito,” whispered Asuna, seemingly reading my mind. She reached out to grab the fingers of my right hand and murmured, “We just have to walk. And even if we do fall, I have an ace up my sleeve. Or up my pant leg.” 

“Your…pant leg…?” 

I had no idea what the fencer was insinuating, but it didn’t seem like it should be that hard to do this without running or jumping. At the very least, it should be way more manageable than maneuvering the difference between walking and jumping in a traditional video game, where the only distinction was in the exact angle your thumb tilted an analog stick. 

“…Well, all right. Just be careful and keep what you’re doing in mind at all times.” 

“Speak for yourself,” she shot back, and we stepped forward. At first, our shoes just splashed the water, but soon there was buoyancy underfoot. We stood atop the water, which felt like stepping on a thick layer of rubber. 

Once we reached Kizmel, who had been patiently waiting, she favored us with a reassuring smile and turned away. Then she started splashing atop the water for the far bank. We followed. 

Once we’d walked about twenty meters out, Asuna said, “Oh yeah…when we fought Wythege the Hippocampus on the fourth floor, was this charm the reason that Viscount Yofilis didn’t sink into the water?” 

“Ohhh…But hang on, wasn’t he running like crazy over the surface?” 

“Asuna’s guess is half correct,” Kizmel said, turning her head just over her shoulder to look at us. “The liquid I dripped on the soles of our shoes is a valuable elixir that can only be made by villi—water spirits, undine maidens. But Viscount Yofilis’s shoes are woven with villi hair and will never sink into the water.” 

“Hair…? Y-you don’t mean that he killed the spirit and chopped off its hair, right…?” I asked, envisioning some tragic drama, but Kizmel vehemently shook her head. 

“Never!” 

A bit of water splashed at her feet, and the knight hunched her neck. Fortunately, it was not enough to break the charm itself, and she resumed quietly, “To us elves, the undines, including the villi, are just as sacred as the dryads of the forest. They are our neighbors and our protectors…If we consider cutting down a living tree or despoiling a clear brook as breaking taboo, then killing a villi herself would be calling down a curse upon all elfkind.” 

“I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have suggested such a thing…But then, how did the viscount get such valuable shoes?” 

Price was an unknown value in this case, but fantasy RPGs always treated equipment for feather-falling and water-walking as precious artifacts. By this point, we were near the center of the lake, and the titanic, deadly starfish lurked just a few meters below us, but I was so absorbed by this topic that I nearly forgot it as I awaited her answer. 

Kizmel faced forward and shook her head again, almost imperceptibly this time. She whispered, “I do not know the details. But if rumor is to be believed…in the long-distant past, the viscount and a villi maiden…no. I should not speak of uncertain things. Please pretend you did not hear this.” 

Asuna, who was about a thousand times more interested than me in that sort of topic, sighed. But she did not persist—and held her silence as she walked. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if the blade scar on the viscount’s face might have something to do with this story, but there was probably no way of ever knowing that. At the very least, Yofilis’s water-walking boots were not meant to go to any player, so I could give the idea up for lost. 

Up ahead, the far bank that started off hazy in the distance was coming much closer. We had maybe two hundred meters to go, and its white beach and the looming rock wall behind it were clearly visible. 

Of the five areas that made up the sixth floor, the first area in the northeast, containing the main town, was forest; the second area in the northwest, containing Castle Galey, was barren wasteland; the third area to the west was swampland; and the fourth area to the south, where we were currently heading, was designed to be caves. It was not a man-made dungeon, but a natural cavern formation, and there were few places where you could actually see the sky—or the bottom of the seventh floor, as the case may be. So it was not necessarily a fun strolling place, but it was certainly better than the western area we were skipping, with its muddy slog and deep sludge just off the beaten path. 

Once we got the sacred key, we had to return to Castle Galey, but having the lake shortcut would be a huge help when it came time to tackle the floor’s labyrinth, if we could make use of it. But these Droplets of Villi were clearly extremely valuable, so I couldn’t just ask her for more—not when it was mere convenience’s sake. 

In the meantime, the far bank was growing close, and the view under the surface was clearer again, with little schools of fish swimming underfoot. At times, there were glints of what looked like coins or jewels in the sand down there, which made me want to reach in and grab them, but that was clearly a trap. I’d have to wait until we had a means of defeating the starfish first. 

Our usual pattern of activity called for one of the two of us—usually me—to screw up and get into major trouble just before we reached safety, but there were no sudden splashes into the water this time. We stood on firm ground again, walked up the white beach a ways, then came to a stop with a sigh of relief. 

“Well…there’s a first for everything. That was rather exhilarating,” the knight said. 

I turned to her in surprise. “Wait, that was your first time walking across the lake, too, Kizmel?” 

“But of course. I have never even set foot outside of Castle Galey here.” 

“Then you’re saying…you don’t know the location of the underground maze that holds the key…?” I asked, thinking this might be the rare occasion when we led Kizmel around instead of the reverse. But the knight took a scroll of parchment out of the long, thin case on her belt and said proudly, “I have not been there, but I know the way. See?” 

I peered at the paper. It was a map of the southern area drawn in considerable detail. A red mark was placed within the twisting cave complex, and a red line indicated the route there directly from the lakeside. 

“Oh, so you do have a map. So this is the lake, and this is our destination…and what’s this mark for? It looks like an insect head,” Asuna said, pointing at a spot near the bottom of the map. 

“That’s correct,” Kizmel replied with a nod. “Lurking in the caverns is a giant centipede covered in rocky armor. Fortunately, we need not cross its path, but I hear tell of many humans who have wandered into its lair and paid the ultimate price.” 

“Sheesh…Starfish, centipedes—this place has everything. I just hope there are no millipedes or ganymedes.” 

I could have been a snob and pointed out that the last one was the name of a moon, not a creature, but I kept it to myself. 

In the beta, there wasn’t a centipede-type field boss in the southern area of the sixth floor. Instead, there was a plant boss in the labyrinth tower located in the fifth and final area, and the unbeatable starfish in the lake, but that was all I remembered. 

Some of the field bosses had been changed in previous floors—like the giant tortoise boss on the fourth floor becoming a two-headed sea turtle—but there were no newly added bosses so far. The advancement group was tackling the game under that premise, so if the ALS or DKB, in their competitive haste, ran into a centipede boss in the cave that they weren’t prepared for, there was the possibility for disaster lurking ahead. 

“Sorry, give me a moment,” I asked the two women, who were still examining the map, and went to the MESSAGES tab of my main menu. I fired off a brief message to Argo the information dealer. 

WHERE’S THE FARTHEST FR NOW? 

FR was shorthand for front-runner, Argo’s preferred nickname for the group pushing us ahead into Aincrad. She must not have been in combat or spying, because I got a response within ten seconds. 

THEY’LL BE TRYING THE DUNGEON LEADING INTO THE THIRD AREA TONIGHT. 100C, her message said, with the cost of the information indicated at the end. Fortunately, she kept a running tab for me, but the bill wasn’t what made me grimace. 

“Too fast,” I muttered, checking the MAP tab. The lead group moved from the first area to the second yesterday afternoon, January 2, so they were moving on to the next area after just a single day. 

The second area had just one small town by the name of Ararro—the dark elves’ Castle Galey was meaningless if you weren’t doing the “Elf War” quest—and the monsters outside of the ones in the dry valley leading to the castle weren’t that tough. So I figured it wouldn’t take them long, but this was still very quick. Most likely, Kibaou and Lind calculated they could take one area per day, finishing the sixth floor in just five days total. Given that we had finished the fifth floor in four days, it wasn’t outrageous, but the last labyrinth tower was on a straight line if you avoided detours. This one required far more travel to reach. 

At any rate, it was clear that we needed to assume the swampy third area would be finished by tomorrow afternoon, at which point the front-line group would reach this, the fourth area. I returned to Kizmel’s side to examine the map; the giant centipede’s lair was located a bit before Cave City of Goskai, the biggest town in the area. If the group was rushing along the path, tired after clearing out the dungeon passageway, there was a greater chance of them stumbling across the centipede’s cave with little or no preparation than I wanted to admit. 

I opened my window again and sent a second message to Argo. 

GOT INTEL ON A NEW FIELD BOSS LOCATED BEFORE GOSKAI IN THE FOURTH AREA. 

GOT IT, she immediately wrote back, I’LL WIPE OUT THE COST OF YOUR LAST TIP. 

That should be enough to keep the DKB and ALS from running across the centipede boss without a clue that it was coming. However, not that I didn’t trust them to hold their own, but I wanted to take part in that boss battle, too. 

The real question was, could we finish up the “Castle Galey” quest by tomorrow afternoon and catch up with the group again? 

“That charm of Far Scribing you humans can use is a very handy thing,” said Kizmel, impressed. She’d been watching me send messages to Argo. 

Asuna piped up to say, “The elves have to send scouts to hand over letters, don’t you? Even with your spirit trees, that seems like a lot of hard work.” 

“That is right. We dark elves and forest elves have thought little of your human charms, but seeing what you are capable of doing, I suspect that your Mystic Scribing and Far Scribing alone might surpass all the magic we elves still possess.” 

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her. She recognized them as a form of magic, but the player menu and instant messages were game features, and I couldn’t very well explain that. Also, that human players could use that “magic,” but NPC humans could not. 

But Kizmel didn’t show any further interest in the art of Far Scribing. Instead, she brought up a point I hadn’t thought about in a while. 

“What was it that N’ltzahh the fallen elf said on the fourth floor? When they have all the keys and open the door to the Sanctuary, the greatest magic of humankind will vanish, correct?” 

“Oh…he did say that,” said Asuna, her cheeks flushing a little bit. I wondered why and tried to recall the circumstances of that scene. 

We had taken a gondola trip down the river out of Rovia on the fourth floor and were at the very end of the watery dungeon when the two of us overheard the Fallen having a discussion. 

In addition to N’ltzahh, the masked general, there was also Eddhu, a foreman, and a woman elf who seemed to be the general’s aide. The statement was from N’ltzahh to his aide, whose name I recalled being Kysarah. 

Once we have all the keys and open the door to the Sanctuary, even the greatest magic left to humankind will vanish without a trace. 

And in response, Kysarah had said Of course, Excellency. The moment of our triumph grows ever closer. 

If we couldn’t use our Mystic Scribing and Far Scribing anymore, that would be a huge deal. But it seemed impossible in a practical sense. Instant messages were one thing, but not being able to use the main game menu? No choosing skills, storing items away, or viewing the map—the game would be impossible to beat that way. 

So did that mean the “greatest magic” N’ltzahh spoke of was something else? Something the loss of which would tie in to some great wish of the fallen elves? What kind of desire would that actually be…? 

My imagination ran into a brick wall at that point. My right hand opened and clenched repeatedly in frustration. Then Asuna came marching over to me and stepped on my left foot with the toe of her boot, hard. 

That sensation was the trigger that brought forth a new flood of memories. When N’ltzahh had said those things, Asuna and I had been hiding in a small wooden box, squashed and immobile. My hand had gotten stuck under Asuna’s breastplate, and… 

“I believe we’ve had enough of a rest. I’d like to finish and return to the castle while it’s light out,” announced Kizmel, pulling me out of my flashback. I lowered my hand and silently shook my head at Asuna. She snorted and gave me a glance that ordered me to erase that memory forever, then began walking alongside the knight. There was a tall rock face before them, with a yawning cave mouth in the center. 

Say, the harassment-prevention code didn’t go off that time, either…I thought as I hurried after them. I wonder if she saw the window for it open when she woke up this morning? 

The majority of the cave area was not pitch-black like an interior dungeon; instead, open areas here and there allowed light in from the ceiling, and even at its gloomiest, there was still enough natural light to see by. We didn’t need to carry torches or lanterns. 

Fortunately, the monsters here were not insects but primarily bat and aquatic types. The most troublesome were the slimes, making their first appearance in Aincrad here. Japanese RPGs were famous for characterizing slimes as the weakest intro monsters, but that was not true in SAO at all. For one thing, there was no fire or ice magic in the world to effectively counter that jiggly slime body. 

So we’d have to make do with our weapons. Even then, slashing and thrusting attacks were weak against the slime, with only blunt weapons having any decent effect. And for our party of three, Kizmel and I had slashing weapons, and Asuna used a thrusting weapon. Slimes were uniquely tough for us. 

So… 

“Aaaaargh! Jeeeez!” 

Asuna made no attempt to hide her frustration as she activated the sword skill Oblique. Her rapier lit up the dim surroundings with a lightning-fast downward thrust. It struck the brown-colored Covetous Ooze on the cave floor before her. 

A large hole appeared in the center of the roughly one-meter-wide slime, and while it looked as though it might be spraying apart to pieces, there wasn’t much effect on its HP. When the visual effects of the skill faded, the bits of ooze squirmed back together to take their original flat, jiggly form. 

I noticed that a part of it was bulging outward, so I warned Asuna, “Take evasion!” 

The fencer leaped away when she was able to move, just as the bulging part of the ooze emitted a little whiplike tentacle. It tried to snake around the Chivalric Rapier but closed on air by mere centimeters when Asuna pulled her weapon back. 

If it caught hold, it would yank with tremendous force, and if pulled free, the weapon would be absorbed into the slime’s center mass. That made it difficult to retrieve, and the weapon suffered major durability loss in the meantime. Even I didn’t know what might happen if it grabbed the player, and they were wearing, say, cloth armor. 

The Covetous Ooze—so named for the way it greedily stole things—retracted its tentacle and wobbled, practically mocking Asuna. 

“Grrrr! What do we do about this thing, Kirito?!” she pleaded. I glanced behind me, where a few meters away, Kizmel was dealing with two vampire bats. Her HP hadn’t dropped at all, so she was probably fine on her own. I looked back to Asuna and said, at a safe volume that wouldn’t call down more nearby monsters, “First, guide it into the light!” 

“I…I’ll try!” 

Asuna slowly moved back to her right, until the jiggling ooze followed into a ring of natural light coming through a hole in the ceiling. The dirty yellow-brown body in the darkness turned a brilliant gold in the light—but that was it. It didn’t take any damage from the light or seem distressed or try to run away from it. 

“…Nothing happened!” Asuna wailed, so I gave her the next hint. 

“Look closely at the slime’s whole body while it’s translucent in the sunlight!” 

“Huh?! Oh…there’s something there.” 

As sharp as ever, Asuna found what she was looking for in just two seconds of squinting. Not in the center of the ooze but along the outer edge of what constituted its “legs,” there was something shiny and reflective, like an eyeball, or a fish-egg pouch, or one of those clear raindrop cakes. 

“That’s the slime’s core! Crush that little thing with a sword skill, and you’ll kill it in one blow!” I shouted. As if on cue, the ooze curled itself inward into a ball shape. It wasn’t frightened, but it was tensing itself to jump high off the ground, where it spread itself out thin and wide. If it wrapped itself around your head, you’d take continuous acidic damage and start to suffocate. 

But instead of backing away, Asuna used another sword skill. It was even easier to see the core with the slime’s body all spread out in the sun, making it the perfect target for the single thrust skill, Streak. The tip of her rapier left a silver streak as it struck the two-centimeter-wide core. The translucent sphere resisted for a brief moment before it burst with a little popping sound. 

When its HP reached zero, the slime lost its internal cohesion and flew apart into many tiny bits. They splattered against the fencer’s face and body, covering her in dark-yellow jelly. She probably would have shrieked, if not for the fact that the ooze turned into little blue polygonal textures that drifted away. 

Asuna stood there, rapier still outstretched, until Kizmel returned from dispatching the two bats and said cheerily, “Ah, well done, Asuna. Not many elves are skilled enough to defeat a slime with a single rapier thrust.” 

“…Thank you…” the young woman muttered. Were her lips twitching because some of the ooze had flown into her mouth? I was quickly becoming a master of the most freakish foods of Aincrad and wanted to ask her how it tasted, but my survival instincts told me now was not the time. 

I wanted to say “Nice job!” with a smile instead but had to hold off on that, too. There were more faint sounds of jiggling and wobbling in the distance. I put a finger to my lips to hush the other two and listened closely. The unique sound of slime wriggling was getting closer and louder, but I saw no cursor around. When that happened in the beta, it was usually because… 

“Above!” I shouted. 

Overhead, an amorphous shape was dropping down from between thin, icicle-like stalactites on the ceiling of the cave. 

Asuna noticed it belatedly and tried to jump back as she watched it fall, but she unluckily tripped over a low stalagmite that was directly behind her and fell flat on her bottom. Kizmel raised her saber to protect Asuna, but if she simply slashed at the falling slime and didn’t happen to strike the core on the way through it, the liquid creature would take little damage and attack the two of them directly. 

I lifted up my sword on pure instinct to queue up the sword skill Sonic Leap. I would jump up at as hard an angle as the system would allow and strike the falling slime with it. Because it was just off the hole in the ceiling, the slime didn’t catch the sun, and it only looked like a dark smudge. There was no way to tell where the core was at this point. 

But I kept my eyes as wide as I could and smashed the amorphous creature with my Sword of Eventide +3. Normally, I would take the power boost of adding my own swing to the system’s auto-assistance, but this time, I purposefully slowed it down just enough to keep the sword skill from fumbling. 

When the blade cut through the sticky substance, I felt it catching on the denser little orb. Promptly, I stopped pulling back and let it follow through, hearing the burst of the core shattering. The slime’s HP were gone in an instant, the creature obliterated before I could even read its name on the cursor. I’d get a good taste of its flavor if I caught some flying jelly in my mouth, but a sudden premonition told me to block my face with my arm. When I landed, all the pieces were disintegrating into blue light. 

It was quite an impressive feat, if I said so myself, so I turned with a flourish and asked, “Are you two all right?” like a manga character. 

For some reason, Asuna glared at me balefully from the floor. 

“It…It got in my mouth again.” 

“…What’d it taste like?” I asked, unable to fight my curiosity this time. She said that the bits of Covetous Ooze tasted “hellishly sour, like sour plums pickled in lemon juice.” The second one dropped an item called Ooze Jelly, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of sour flavors and decided to let it sit in my inventory to rot. 

As soon as Asuna was back on her feet, she pressed me for answers. “Kirito, I’m going to set aside the fact that you could have started by telling me slimes have cores—and how to find them. When you cut the second one, there was no light shining on the slime. Did you just hit the core by getting lucky?” 

“No way. I don’t have that kind of actual luck.” Even if I did, I would have used it all up getting these two particular party members, putting me well into the red to do so—a thought I kept to myself, of course. 

“Natural light is the best way to find a slime’s core, like you just did,” I explained, “but it also works with torches or lanterns in very dark environments. But once you’ve hunted enough slimes to get the hang of it, you learn how to find the core from other light sources, too.” 

“Other light…?” she repeated skeptically. But Kizmel suddenly clapped her hands in epiphany. “Oh, of course! You can use the flashing of your sword technique to illuminate the core.” 

“Correct!” I said, giving her a round of applause. But then I paused. It was a known fact that NPCs could use sword skills—but should I talk about the “extracurricular” tricks involved in this case? Kizmel’s expression of excitement and anticipation sealed the matter, however. Asuna, meanwhile, looked skeptical. 

“What? Sword skills give you less than a second between flashing and landing on the target…Can you really find a slime’s core in that amount of time?” 

“Well, it comes down to experience…and slowing down the sword skill. Slimes aren’t very mobile, so if you slow the skill down as much as you can, it gives you more time to spot the core.” 

“Slow it down…” Asuna muttered with equal parts wonder and exasperation. She dropped her rapier back into its sheath. “I’ll admit…I think that technique’s incredible, but it’s going to take me quite a while to learn it, so for now, I’ll count on you to take care of all the slimes in the dark.” 

“Uh…s-sure thing,” I said, the only thing I could say. 

Kizmel added, “Don’t worry, I will learn this skill as well.” 

“Y-yeah…I’m looking forward to that,” I said, also the only thing I could say. 

After that, we saw not just the dark-yellow Covetous Ooze but blue slimes, red slimes, and even some familiar-looking black slimes. As she proclaimed, within three battles, Kizmel had effectively grasped the trick of the so-called skill-lighting ability. From that point on, we didn’t have much trouble reaching the entrance to the dungeon, deep inside the cave, before lunch. 

If possible, I was hoping to make the slight extra walk to the Cave City of Goskai not too far off in order to eat and recover supplies, but Kizmel wouldn’t want to venture into a human city, I assumed, and if any players were there on the forest elf faction of the quest, they would see Kizmel’s cursor transcend red straight into black. 

So we sat down at the entrance to the dungeon, partaking in some of the rations we got from Castle Galey. To my surprise, the baked treat full of nuts and dried fruit was fantastically good. Even Asuna, the snooty gourmet, seemed satisfied. Our spirit recovered, we then plunged into the dungeon, tearing deeper and deeper into it, and fighting an abruptly different set of monsters—until just after one o’clock, when we ran into an obstacle I never imagined I would see. 

“Huh…? This was a dungeon the elves built ages ago, right?” Asuna murmured as she stared up at the thing. Kizmel’s head bobbed in agreement. 

“That is correct. According to legend, in the olden days just after the Great Separation, the six keys were split across six floors and placed within six different labyrinths to keep them hidden and safe.” 

“Then why would that be there…?” 

“………I do not know.” 

Kizmel stepped forward and reached up to the square stone panel that blocked the great doors before us, to touch the numbered pieces lined up on it. 

It was clearly a 15 puzzle—except that, in this case, they were lined up six by six, so it was actually a 35 puzzle. At any rate, it was one of those cursed puzzles found everywhere in Stachion. 

Kizmel carefully clicked the tile next to the open space and turned back to me. “This…is not anything made by the dark elves, or the forest elves, either, I believe. Count Galeyon said nothing about there being such a contraption in this labyrinth, either.” 

“No…this one was created by humankind,” I said, which made Kizmel wince. 

“What…? Meaning, some human snuck into this labyrinth before us and placed this device upon the door? Does that mean…the key’s already been taken out…?” 

“N-no, no, not necessarily. Besides, this puz—this seal might not have been literally placed by the human who snuck in here…” 

“What does that mean?” Kizmel asked suspiciously. Asuna and I explained—with difficulty, because we couldn’t explain that these were all “quests” in a “game”—the murder mystery in Stachion, and the ensuing puzzle curse it had spawned. 

The elf knight was silent for several moments when we were done and finally said, “So the curse of this human lord being murdered ten years ago has spilled out of the town of Stachion and has produced this number puzzle on the door of this distant labyrinth?” 

“Yep…that’s the only way to describe it at this point. Not that I think old Pithagrus has any reason to curse an elf maze, specifically.” 

“You never know. Curses are truly terrifying and unpredictable things. Especially when they are curses set by the dead…The dark elves have a number of stories about those unfortunate enough to have come into contact with curses unrelated to them. To say nothing of the famous tale of how the wicked dragon Shmargor came under the Holy Tree’s curse and tormented the humans who did nothing to it.” 

“Ah yes…You do have a point…” 

In a sense, the entire floating castle of Aincrad was like the curse of the mad genius, Akihiko Kayaba. And we were the ones unfairly trapped inside it…although, as a beta tester as well, I suppose it was inevitable that I would become a victim. 

There was no point lamenting my plight at this point, however. All I could do was trust that I would one day beat this deadly game—and keep moving forward each day toward that goal. 

Asuna’s gaze was distant, suggesting to me that she was thinking much the same thing. Kizmel gave the two of us a glance, then turned to the door again and said, “If this puzzle is the work of a curse, then I suppose no sword can destroy it.” 

“Huh…? Oh y-yeah, it’s indestructible.” 

“Then we shall have to solve it,” the knight said simply. 

I rushed to ask her, “H-hey, do dark elves solve puzzles, too?” 

“Hmm? Well…as children, we solve picture-matching boards and tangle rings, but I have never seen a puzzle of numbers like this. Are we meant to reorder the boards in numerical order?” 

“Yes, starting from the top left and moving in rows,” I explained, though on the inside, I was starting to panic. 

One of these sliding puzzles with fifteen pieces was hard enough if you didn’t know the trick, but this one had thirty-five to deal with. I figured it would be too tough for Kizmel at her first shot—and that was without knowing if NPCs had the AI power to solve puzzles like this. From what I recalled, N × N grid puzzles like this one were called NP-hard problems in computational theory, meaning that normal computers found it difficult to compute the lowest number of moves possible. 

“Kizmel, maybe I should…” I started to say, but then my mouth hung open. 

After just three seconds of staring at the randomly placed numbers, Kizmel was now tearing through them. The rapid clicking of tiles sliding into place filled the dark corridor, and before my eyes, the thirty-five tiles began to line up in order from the top left. To our shock, soon the thirty-fifth and final tile snapped into place. 

The entire stone board momentarily glowed, and the door behind it slowly rumbled open. Kizmel looked over her shoulder at us and grinned. 

“Ah, I see now. Your human puzzles are quite refreshing.” 

It was virtually a direct path through once the door was open, with hardly any monsters inside, so we reached the final room quickly. It was the same key-dungeon boss as on the fifth floor, a headless dullahan, but much stronger. Fortunately, we’d leveled up, too, and Kizmel’s presence was positively unfair, so while we did make use of the healing potions from Castle Galey, the fight was won with little difficulty. 

In the rear of the boss chamber was a stately little shrine. Resting on the altar in the middle of it was a pitch-black object—the Agate Key. Recovering it was pretty much the end of the mission. There was no teleportation in SAO aside from the gates and crystals, so without a means of fast travel, we had no choice but to return to Castle Galey on foot. It helped to know that this just meant more time together with Kizmel. 

We returned to the entrance of the dungeon in half the time and made our way out of the caves altogether, avoiding slimes wherever we could. At last, the brilliant blue of Lake Talpha greeted us back. After a brief break on the monster-less beach, we walked back across the lake and returned to the northwest area. 

There were no fallen elf ambushes on the road back this time across the wasteland—but no fruiting cacti, either. Kizmel sheltered herself under the Holy Tree cape again, and we protected her through the dusty canyon. By the time the great gate of Castle Galey came into view again, the bottom of the floor above us was dyed the colors of sunset. 

As we walked through the gate, accompanied by the ringing of bells, I checked the time in my game window. It was 4:20 PM. Sadly, we’d missed the period that the old storyteller would be in the library, but for a major floor-spanning quest like that, it was very good time. I stretched, feeling the pleasant ache of fatigue, and Kizmel slapped me on the back with a smile. 

“Nice work today…but there’s more of it yet to do. We must deliver the key we recovered to Count Galeyon.” 

“Oh…yes, that’s right,” I said, but in all honesty, I wasn’t in the mood to rush off to see the count just now, and I didn’t think Asuna was, either. Once we delivered the key and completed the quest, Kizmel was probably going to use that spirit tree to leave for the seventh floor this time. 

The royal city where the dark elf queen lived was on the ninth floor. That was where the “Elf War” questline would reach its grand finale. It felt like such a long way to go when we started the quest on the third floor, but here we were, about to cross the halfway point. 

After the campaign was over, I had no idea what would happen to Kizmel and us. Perhaps we could see her whenever we went back to the royal city, or perhaps not. But at the very least, I felt certain we would never fight side by side with her again. Kizmel was just too strong for me to optimistically imagine that we would be allowed to take her along on totally unrelated quests and grinding sessions. 

“Um…Kizmel,” Asuna said, speaking in my stead, “when we give the count the key, are you going to leave for the next floor?” 

She was a hundred times more honest with herself than I was. The elf knight appeared to be holding something back—or so it seemed to me, trick of the eyes or not—but put on her usual pleasant smile soon enough. 

“That’s a good question…It depends on the determination of the priests sent from the royal city. Most likely, I will be ordered to deliver the four keys to the fortress on the seventh floor.” 

“I see…It’s a very important mission, after all…” Asuna murmured, looking up at the spirit tree ahead of us. Then she turned to the knight, took a big step forward, and asked in hushed tones, “But in that case, why does it have to be just you who goes around gathering these keys? We’ve gotten four of the six back…Why can’t the knights from the castle or those darn priests themselves go and get the last two?” 

“I don’t think of this mission as being difficult or unpleasant.” Kizmel grinned. She stroked Asuna’s chestnut-brown hair lovingly, like an older sister would. “As Her Majesty’s knight, I have a duty to uphold, and I have you two helping me…Sometimes I wish it was not six keys, but ten or twenty instead.” 

“……Kizmel…” 

Asuna hunched over, looking ready to cry. Kizmel moved her hand to the girl’s back and beckoned me over with the other. She offered quietly, “Also, in the background of this mission are a host of troublesome political calculations and squabbles. As I told you a while ago, my Pagoda Knights Brigade, the palace security Sandalwood Knights Brigade, and the heavily armored Trifoliate Knights Brigade are often at odds…Our leadership, especially, has always been competitive with one another. When the word came that the forest elves were going after the hidden keys, there was considerable argument over which brigade should respond…” 

“And they weren’t trying to foist off the responsibility on one another, but just the opposite, of course,” I conjectured. 

Kizmel nodded seriously. “That is correct. It has been over a century since knights of Lyusula left the castle for a practical mission, rather than training…and against the forest elves of Kales’Oh, no less. The three brigades fought for the honor of this duty, and ultimately, it was given solely to the Pagoda Knights Brigade, for our light armor and fleet movement. A vanguard of sixty was sent down to the third floor, but there is no dark elf fortress there. We were to build a camp for our base and scout the labyrinth that contained the key. There was not supposed to be any combat…” 

She exhaled heavily. I knew where the story went from that point and wanted to tell her she didn’t need to bother, but I was too late to interrupt. 

“…But on our first scouting mission, which split the vanguard into two groups, we suffered a forest elf ambush. The scout group was virtually wiped out by an attack from the rear, and that was when Tilnel lost her life. The commander of the vanguard requested more members from the brigade’s headquarters, of course…but the request was refused. They probably knew that if it was revealed that the group freshly descended to the third floor was already half gone, the other brigades would swoop in to steal our glory…” 

“No…! You fought as hard as you could! They can’t just…” Asuna started to shout. Kizmel glanced around and led us to a bench placed along the wall of the castle. She sat between Asuna and me, crossed her fingers over her stomach, and looked up at the spirit tree looming over the open courtyard. 

“We fought hard…” she repeated peacefully. “That is correct. But fighting hard, by itself, is not enough when you are the queen’s knight. When you fight, you must win…so I do not curse our headquarters for refusing our request. If anything, I am grateful that they allowed me the opportunity to regain my honor.” 

But Asuna didn’t seem fully convinced by that answer. She balled her fists where they rested atop her knees, and her head pointed downward. 

“…But…that doesn’t mean…you need to do this…all on your own…” 

“Asuna, it is true that I alone am on the mission to retrieve the keys, but that is not because the other knights are sitting around, doing nothing. The vanguard’s commander put together a new plan to complete our mission with a much smaller number. About ten knights would take turns harrying the forest elves and drawing their attention; meanwhile, one knight skilled in stealthy matters would get the keys from the labyrinths…I nominated myself for the retrieval. Tilnel and I played tag and hide-and-seek in our youth, so I am confident in my sneaking.” 

I wonder, when elves play tag, and they envision “it” as being a monster, what do they think of? Probably an ogre type… I considered this briefly before snapping back to attention. 

I remembered how Kizmel said she elected to do the mission alone, when we stood before Tilnel’s makeshift grave at the third-floor camp. Diversion, infiltration—it was a very skillful plan, I was sure, but one that exposed Kizmel to great danger. She got the key on the third floor safely, but the elite Forest Elven Hallowed Knight gave chase, and they nearly killed one another in the ensuing duel. 

Before her sister’s grave, Kizmel told me she took on that mission expecting that she could very well die. That a part of her might have even wanted to. 

But looking at her peaceful smile in profile now, I could no longer see the deep sadness I witnessed in that lonely moment. I turned to the left, looking past the knight to my partner, who was still clenching her fists. 

“Asuna, Kizmel’s mission is a very tough one. But she’s not doing it alone…She’s got us helping her out.” 

“Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly right,” Kizmel said, nodding deeply. She caressed Asuna’s head. “Since you and Kirito began helping me, I have never thought of this mission as a painful one, and I have no intention of dying without completing my task. We’ll recover all six keys and go to the palace on the ninth floor together…I think you will like it, Asuna.” 

“………Yeah,” she squeaked, quiet but firm, placing her head on Kizmel’s shoulder. 

We sat there on the bench in silence, watching as the color of sunlight reflecting off the floor above grew darker and deeper with the approach of the night.