Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 7

7 

WITH OUR REPORT TO COUNT GALEYON, THE “AGATE Key” quest was over. Asuna and I received a huge amount of experience, and as on the fourth floor, we had our choice of item rewards. 

That was fantastic, of course, but what made us even happier was learning that Kizmel was given a full day of downtime. She could do whatever she wanted tomorrow, January 4, and she didn’t need to go to the seventh floor until the morning of the fifth. I was still worried about the front-line group reaching the south area by tomorrow afternoon, but I did pass along the info about that new centipede boss through Argo, so I didn’t think there was any danger of them fighting it unprepared. 

We had to take part in the labyrinth tower and floor-boss fight, of course, but if Kizmel gave us more of those Droplets of Villi, we could go straight from the second area to the fifth one. And if not, we could still probably catch up with the group using the normal route in about half a day, assuming the pathway dungeons had been cleared out. I said as much to Asuna after we returned to the room on the third floor of the west wing, and we agreed that we would spend tomorrow taking it easy. 

When we returned to the hallway to meet Kizmel, we went to the basement bath to wash off the imaginary sweat and grime of the day. In order to avoid repeating yesterday’s tragedy, we agreed beforehand to keep each half of the bathing area separate between the sexes. But hearing the two women chatting and laughing on the other side of the spirit tree’s roots did not make the process any easier for me. 

When we were done bathing, we relaxed in the waiting area for a while before heading to the dining hall. The main course today was grilled fish. Not only did it not have the strangely spiced sauce that the game’s human cooks liked to use, the fish’s skin was crispy and fragrant, and I had to go ask for seconds. 

We enjoyed some tea after the meal, chatting and reminiscing about the events of the fourth and fifth floor. I left the dining hall feeling extremely satisfied. Kizmel left briefly to return the Greenleaf Cape to the treasure repository she’d borrowed it from, so Asuna and I decided to explore the castle a bit. We started walking toward the east wing, which we hadn’t seen yet in our time here. 

Just then, there was a bell ringing in the darkened courtyard. We stopped, noting with muted interest that they still rang the bells after bathing and dinnertime…and then I recalled that this was not actually a time for zoning out. 

Hadn’t Kizmel said that the bell only rang when the south gate opened…? And as a basic rule, the dark elves in the castle did not leave it. The bell was alerting us to the fact that players aside from ourselves had shown up at Castle Galey. 

Asuna figured it out at the same time I did. We shared a look, then dashed to a window. When we looked down at the courtyard, pressed against the glass, we saw that the mammoth gates were indeed very slowly opening. 

My first thought was that this visitor was Morte or the dagger user, or even both at once. Castle Galey was outside the safe-haven zone, so nothing would stop them from coming in with criminal orange cursors. All they needed to open the gates were the same Sigil of Lyusula rings that we had. Last night, I surmised that it would be difficult for them to get through the dark elf side of the campaign in time, but there was no absolute evidence of that. 

“We need to figure out who just showed up,” Asuna murmured, her voice tense. 

I pushed away my brief moment of indecision and said, “Yes, let’s go down. Make sure you’re geared up.” 

“Got it.” 

We turned and started running for the stairs, both opening our game menus. We switched from my indoor wear to my usual combat gear and equipped our beloved weapons. I barely registered the steps as we flew down to the first floor of the west wing. Rather than the main doors to the castle, we rushed to a side door at the end of the hallway and opened it a crack to peer out into the courtyard. 

The bell was still ringing, but the front door was already in the process of closing. If the visitor had already vanished into the spacious castle, it would be very difficult to find them. 

But even then, we could probably ask the soldiers near the door what the player looked like. I steeled my courage and went into the open, heading toward them along the sheer wall cut into the rock. 

After about five steps, Asuna reached out and grabbed my collar. I let out a strangled yelp and came to a stop. 

“Wh-what was that for?” I whispered. 

“Look, Kirito,” she whispered back, pointing in the direction of the courtyard’s spirit tree, rather than the gate. As soon as I looked that way, I blinked. There were four people gathered around the spirit tree’s spring, their backs toward us. Their cursors were the very same green as ours. 

Based on their number, it probably wasn’t Morte’s group. And for one thing, Morte and I had an official duel on the third floor, so our names would display for each other, making one of those four cursors read MORTE—but all I could see were HP bars and guild tags. 

Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad had a tag of a gray sword and shield on a green background. Lind’s Dragon Knights Brigade used a silver dragon on a blue field. But this guild tag was neither of those; it was an unfamiliar mark like the letter Q in gold against a black background. 

“…Have you seen that insignia before, Kirito?” Asuna whispered. I shook my head. 

“No. Do you…? Well, I guess you wouldn’t have asked if you did.” 

She did not reply, but I sensed her head bobbing. The system had confirmed that Morte was not among the four, and it didn’t seem likely to me that the PK group led by the man in the black poncho would form a guild and register it with such a distinct, memorable logo—but it wasn’t confirmed yet that the two things were unrelated. This castle was not a safe haven, so we had to be careful at all times. 

I was standing there, plastered against the rough rock face, wondering what to do now, when Asuna whispered, “Hey. Let’s say that some humans…er, players get into a fight inside the castle, and their cursors go orange. How do you suppose the dark elves would react? Would they ignore it, or…” 

“Ummm…” 

I didn’t have an immediate answer to that one. The reason that orange (criminal) players couldn’t get into human towns with the Anti-Criminal Code active wasn’t because of some magical barrier that repelled anyone who was evil. It was because you’d get attacked by tremendously powerful NPC guards. In the beta, there were people who intentionally went orange, then stepped into town so they could try to fight and defeat the guardians. They called themselves Guardlers—apparently that was short for Guard Killers—but unlike the sudokers in Stachion, from what I heard, no one had succeeded by the end of the beta test. 

Most likely, the dark elf soldiers in Castle Galey were not as unfairly powerful as the guardians of the peace in player towns, but I felt like they would not simply ignore humans running around with swords inside their castle, either. I could say for certain that if those four players attacked us, Kizmel at the least would come to our aid, and if she ordered them to, the castle guards would get involved, too. 

I condensed all that logic into a simple “I don’t think they’d ignore the entire thing.” 

Asuna agreed. “Exactly. So let’s just talk to them.” 

“Yeah…I guess that’s the only real choice,” I admitted. Unless we simply left the castle altogether, there was no way we could lurk around the place without being spotted, and we had still too much to do around here. 

We walked away from the darkness of the wall, ready to draw our swords if need be, toward the four players who still gazed at the spring water before them. Neither of us was particularly trying to hide our footsteps, but even within ten meters, none of the players with their backs to us reacted at all. They were probably too engrossed in their conversation. 

“…You’d better not. You’ll get yelled at.” 

“Yeah, but I at least wanna try it once. Nobody’s ever confirmed if the blelfs are the only ones who can teleport from the spirit trees.” 

“Fine, test it out, but if you vanish, we’re not going after you.” 

“If the guards get mad, we’re running and leaving you behind.” 

It sounded like the group was three men and one woman. Based on the content of their conversation, they were definitely running the campaign quest on the dark elf side. The term blelf was a mystery to me, though. 

We stopped two meters behind them, and they still didn’t notice, so I sent Asuna a telepathic message to take it away and took a half step back. Her look went from exasperated to ultra-sociable before she called out pleasantly, “Good evening!” 

The group of four was shocked, whirling around on the spot, but no one reached for their weapons. They all stared at Asuna for about five seconds, stunned, before their eyes traveled a bit higher. That was probably a sign that they were examining her color cursor. Then they looked at her again for three seconds, before finally noticing me over her shoulder. 

The first to speak was the woman, who used a large scimitar and smallish buckler. 

“G…good evening. I’m sorry—you startled us.” 

“Oh no. I apologize for shouting like that out of nowhere,” Asuna said with a smile, and the apprehension in the other party’s faces instantly vanished. If I had spoken to them instead, it would have taken ten times as long to get them to soften up. 

“Wow, you really got me jumpy. I never expected to actually see another player here.” 

That was the small man with the two-handed sword who talked about wanting to test the spirit tree’s teleportation earlier. Now he was rubbing his breastplate instead. Next to him was a tall and skinny fellow with a glaive, who shrugged. 

“Of course there will be players here. The castle’s public.” 

Last was a man with the odd combination of a tower shield thick as a metal slab and a slender shortspear. He had a stubby beard and an affable smile as he offered his hand. 

“Hi there. We’re in a guild called Qusack. We’re going through the blelf…er, dark elf campaign right now.” 

So apparently, blelf was their nickname for dark elves. As Asuna and I shook the shield man’s hand, I idly wondered what their nickname for the forest elves was. 

Then came the introductions. The scimitar woman, who seemed smart and sensible, was Lazuli. The lackadaisical guy with the two-handed sword was Temuo. The rather sharp, tall glaive user was Highston. Lastly, the hardy and bold shield bearer was Gindo. 

I didn’t recognize any of their names—or the Qusack guild. Neither did Asuna. 

There were eight thousand players currently trapped on this floating fortress, so of course nobody could memorize the names of them all. In fact, I probably knew less than a hundred players by name. If we’d crossed paths at one of the main towns on another floor, I wouldn’t think twice about them, but Castle Galey was the wild frontier as of January 3. They had to beat many of those nasty poisonous monsters in the canyon on the way here, and they didn’t even have a full six-person party. They had to be pretty close to us in level—so how was it possible that I’d never even seen them before? 

I almost wanted to be rude and ask if they definitely weren’t NPCs. But another glance at their cursors revealed pristine green. While I was on the mean streak, I glanced at their armor and attempted to price it all. Two had light metal armor, and the other two had heavy; and they all had the deep, rich shine of expensive quality. And despite just having come through a deadly map to get here, their gear looked fresh and unharmed, outside of Lazuli’s and Gindo’s shields. 

Perhaps they were players who didn’t burst out of the gate when the game started two months ago but had the talent to catch up to the front-line players afterward. If so, that was a heartening thought. It seemed likely that the ALS would recruit them before too long, I thought. 

“Are you two doing the elf quest on your own?” asked Lazuli, the scimitar girl, stepping forward. Her dark-green hair was tied into a ponytail, and her proud features and husky but piercing voice gave her an air of vitality and activity. 

I gave Asuna another Take it away! psychic message. She looked at me sidelong before smiling again and replying, “Yes, that’s right. We just got to this castle yesterday, in fact.” 

“Um…does that mean you’re in the advancing group?” 

“W-well, technically…” Asuna shrugged. 

Lazuli’s big eyes got even bigger. “Wow, I’ve never met one of them before! And you’re so pretty! I can’t believe it.” 

There was nothing but honest surprise and delight in her voice, but for just a brief moment, the three men behind her shared an uncomfortable look. 

What was that about? I wondered instantly, but I couldn’t read their minds from their expressions alone. After constantly being around Asuna for so long, I was only just now starting to understand the way she thought about things…possibly. 

Asuna would have noticed the men’s reaction, too, but she continued speaking with Lazuli without betraying any hint of suspicion. She talked about how we were part of the front-line group, but not in any guild, and Lazuli mentioned that the Qusack four only left the Town of Beginnings four weeks ago. At that point, Asuna suggested we continue talking in the dining hall. 

The hungry adventurers immediately agreed, and we headed through the entrance hall of Castle Galey to the second floor. Kizmel’s task at the treasure repository would be done by now, but I didn’t see her in the dining hall. In all honesty, I couldn’t anticipate what might happen when she interacted with players other than us, so I decided it wasn’t worth searching for her. The six of us sat down at a table by a window. 

A steward came over, so Asuna and I just asked for tea, while Gindo’s group ordered the meal course plus bread—and they got seconds of the fish, too. Only Highston the glaive user stuck to his one plate. When he finished first, there was an apologetic look on his gaunt face. “You’ll have to excuse them. We’re broke as a general rule, so now that we’re here at the dark elf base, and the food is free, they can’t help themselves.” 

Temuo, whose head was shaved like a high school baseball player’s, chomped down on a fish headfirst and butted Highston on the shoulder. “Don’t act all smooth and in control in front of the pretty girl! In the fifth-floor elf village, you were double fisting those skewers!” 

“And you had three in each hand!” 

They were a jolly bunch. But once again, something about them seemed off to me. Highston said they were broke, but they had very expensive equipment. And if they had the skill to get this far—and assuming they weren’t pouring their funds into sketchy items or gambling—they should at least have enough col to spend on decent food. 

But obviously, I wasn’t going to pry into the financial situation of a guild I’d just met, so I sat back and sipped my tea. Then, with the most effortlessly natural smile and tone of voice imaginable, Asuna asked, “So how do you all know each other?” 

Considering that she was like a prickly hedgehog when we first met at Tolbana on the first floor, Asuna’s transformed into quite the pleasant socialite… 

The thought sent a little snort out through my nose, rippling the liquid in my teacup. Sensing my thoughts, the fencer gently stepped on the top of my left foot, sending a very clear signal not to say anything out of line. 

Unaware that this act of intimidation was happening under the table, the four exchanged another look, including Lazuli this time. Gindo the bearded dandy—though of a different sort than Okotan from the ALS—wiped his mouth politely with a napkin before responding. 

“We met in the Town of Beginnings. But we never planned to actually leave the town at first…We were more like an information-exchange fraternity.” 

“Information exchange…?” Asuna repeated. 

Gindo could sense the suspicion in her voice and explained, “I know this will sound pathetic to you, given your place in the game, but the ‘waiters’ back in the Town of Beginnings who choose to stay safe until the game is beaten still get hungry and sleepy every day. You won’t die without food here, of course, and you can sleep on the street, but everyone wants a hot meal and soft bed. That means you need money for food and lodging each day.” 

This was true. And though I hadn’t been back to the first floor in quite a while, I knew that it was much harder than it sounded. The quickest way to earn col was to beat monsters. SAO wasn’t the kind of game that said “Bugs and animals wouldn’t be carrying gold coins!” so even the weakling worms and boars right outside the Town of Beginnings dropped a few col. Kill ten a day, and you could afford a decent meal and a place to sleep—but even against boars, there was no way to eliminate the possibility of an accident happening. 

Focus too much on one monster, and you might miss the sound of another one popping into existence nearby and end up linking the two in combat. Through repetition of little mistakes or lapses in judgment like this, one gained knowledge, experience, and ultimately, strength. But in this world, you had only one life that could pay the price of a mistake. Most likely, the majority of the two thousand players who’d already dropped out of the deadly game did so not far from the Town of Beginnings. And according to Argo’s rough calculations, that included a few hundred beta testers. One mistake, one accident leading to panic, was all it took to deplete your hit points, no matter how much you knew about the game… 

“…But we didn’t earn our money by going out into the wilderness and beating mobs. As a matter of fact, there are lots of quests in the Town of Beginnings if you look for them,” Gindo said. 

It was my turn to repeat his words. “Quests?” 

“Yes. Of course, we couldn’t mess with the ones like ‘Go out of town and get this thingy’ or ‘Beat X number of monsters,’ but within the city, you can do stuff like errands, finding lost objects, and even some rare ones like housecleaning and pet walking…” 

“Oh, right, right!” said Lazuli, who was picking at the side of pickled veggies that came with the grilled fish. “The one where you had to clean up the hoarder house? That was a tough one…There were piles and piles of items all throughout the house, and you had to separate them into these huge wooden boxes out in the yard. You had to sort every last item perfectly to beat the quest, and lots of them you couldn’t really tell if they were toys, or practical items, or…” 

“Did you know that if you pilfer the coins and jewels and stuff that pop up in those piles, you get locked in the basement of that mansion for like half a day?” Temuo added. 

Highston sighed. “Only you would attempt something like that.” 

The bickering made Asuna giggle. Their erstwhile leader, Gindo, smiled wryly and spread his hands. “The point is, there are lots of quests that give you safe earnings. But since they don’t endanger your life, they’re all tedious instead. We started running into each other so much at the various quest spots that we naturally got to trading information.” 

“That’s right. At first, I tried to keep my distance from this fishy old guy,” said Lazuli, pointing her fork at Gindo. He whined, “I’m not that old…” 

Although his looks and manner were completely different, I saw a similarity in Gindo’s gestures to the scimitar-wielding man named Klein whom I’d spent a few hours hunting boars with on the first day of the game. 

He’d stayed behind in the Town of Beginnings to be with his friends. Was he hard at work leveling up now, so he could reach the frontier? Or was he staying put to focus on his safety? His name was still in my friends list, so I could write him a message whenever I wanted, but the last two months had passed without any communication between us. I suppose I felt guilty about abandoning him and chose not to draw attention to it by reaching out now. 

Mentally speaking, the Town of Beginnings felt endlessly distant, but with a teleportation gate, it was, in fact, just a step away. If we had an opportunity to go to Stachion, maybe it would be nice to visit the bottom floor again. 

Just then, Lazuli said, “Still, as a general rule, there’s no downside to the rewards when doing quests as a group. If you work together, you get it done quicker, and you can use the extra time to search for Japanese books to read. Pretty soon, our little info-trading group became a cooperative strategy group.” 

“Oh, I see…” murmured Asuna, who was satisfied with that answer. She lifted the toe of her boot off my foot under the table. 

It seemed perfectly natural that people would work together to clear out city quests in the Town of Beginnings, but this was Castle Galey, right on the frontier. There was a huge mental leap involved in going from a group that banded together to avoid the danger of fighting monsters to an official in-game guild—meaning they completed the tricky and dangerous guild quest on the third floor—with fancy gear that could knock out the scorpions in that dusty canyon on the way to this castle. 

Highston sensed my suspicion and turned to look me square in the face, his long purplish hair waving. 

“…Now that we’ve gotten to this part of the story, we might as well see it through to the end. When we started the group, we were making pretty solid income for a while…However, the Town of Beginnings might be big, but it doesn’t have an endless supply of quests. Some are daily quests that can only be done once a day, but when the word got around about them, so many people tried them that you had to wait half a day just to be able to undertake them…” 

“Oh…that makes sense,” I said. 

Gindo the bearded dandy picked it up from there. “The city quests got picked clean before the first floor was cleared out, so we were in trouble. Uh, not that I’m criticizing you folks in the front-line group—just the opposite. We’re very grateful for your hard work, and we feel bad that you’re doing all of this for our benefit. We couldn’t even imagine trying what you do, clearing out labyrinths and beating floor bosses…” 

“Huh? That’s not true, though,” I said, a bit more blunt than I probably needed to be. “You appear to have some high-grade gear, and if you can get to this place, then I would imagine you can fight in the labyrinth towers without too much trouble…” 

I wanted to ask them if they’d help out by joining the raid group, but all four suddenly began shaking their heads. 

“No, no, no way—we can’t. We’re not like that…” Lazuli started to protest, but Gindo cut her off. 

“Let’s explain it in order. So, um…I told you how the quests in the Town of Beginnings ran dry. Well, at that point, we had some decent savings, so we weren’t going to go hungry anytime soon…but even staying at the cheapest inn, that wallet was eventually going to empty out. So the four of us talked it over and weighed two options: Ration our money for as long as it can go in the safety of town? Or blow it all out to buy gear and potions—and leave the town?” 

“Huh…?” 

If you had that option, you should’ve just picked it from the start, I thought, before I realized something. 

“Oh, right. If you beat quests, you get more than just money. You get experience points.” 

“’Zackly,” said Temuo, fish tail sticking out of his mouth. He worked his lips to pull the rest of it inside and crunched away with a smile. “By the time we beat all the interior quests in the Town of Beginnings, we were all at level five.” 

“Fi…?” I gaped. Asuna and I shared a look. 

I left the town at level one after Akihiko Kayaba’s tutorial speech, but I remembered that when I got the Anneal Blade at the town of Horunka, I was still only level four. A team of four level-five players with good gear would need a disastrous anti-miracle to lose to the worm and boars around the starting town. 

But the thing about MMORPGs was that the possibility of disaster was always present. For players who’d stayed in the safety of town for nearly a month to finally leave that safe zone, there had to be some other motive that pushed them along. 

“We did feel reassured that our levels were higher…but the reason I argued we should go out into the world was a simpler one than that,” said Highston shyly, holding his teacup with both hands. “I just wanted to do more quests…SAO’s quests tend to be detailed, but many also feel like they were written by a child. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen in them. It feels like the moments when we’re thinking hard about the clue that will solve the riddle, or running around town looking for that one missing item, are the only moments when we can actually forget we’re playing a game that’s trying to kill us…” 

“Huh?! Is that seriously what you were thinking?!” Lazuli yelped, grumpily bopping Highston on the shoulder. The scowl turned into a grin very soon, though. “You should have just said that instead! Then we wouldn’t have had to argue and argue over it for all those hours.” 

“Yeah. We all knew you were the biggest quest lover of the bunch already,” Temuo pointed out. Highston flushed and tried to argue that he wasn’t that obsessed. 

Gindo smirked again at the way his companions bickered and got the discussion back on track. “Anyway…we decided to use just about all of our col to buy gear and went out of town. First, we went through all the extermination and harvesting quests that we couldn’t do before, then we all got to level 6 and earned a new skill slot. At that point, I even started to think that at the rate we were going, we’d catch up to the top group before too long…” 

Suddenly, the smile left his lips, and he clenched his hands into fists. “We finished all the quests in Horunka and Medai with ease, then tried to take a shortcut through the swamp to Tolbana. In the week since leaving town, we thought we’d gotten good at fighting, and the kobolds around there were easy enough, so we got cocky. We came across a group of three kobolds in the swamp and didn’t realize that one was new to us…” 

“Was it a Swamp Kobold Trapper?” I asked. 

Gindo looked surprised but nodded. “Yes, I believe that was the name. At the time, I used a one-handed sword, but the snare the kobold threw tangled up my blade, and it fell into the swamp…I tried to pick it up, but while I was reaching in the muck for it, another kobold attacked me…” 

“You didn’t read the strategy guide?” Asuna asked, her voice just a little bit harder than before. “I’m pretty sure it was being distributed for free in Medai by that point.” 

“Oh…uh…” 

Gindo turned uncomfortably to look at his friends, then sighed. “We made use of it when leaving the Town of Beginnings, of course. It’s just, those guides are mainly about monsters and items, and their quest info is limited to the big ones and the combat ones…We were proud—arrogant, even—about having completed all the quests in the Town of Beginnings. We began thinking that we knew more than the book did, so we only flipped briefly through the updated version in Medai. And when we read it closely afterward, we saw that it had a full breakdown of the Swamp Kobold Trapper and warnings about the danger it posed…” 

“…” 

I opened my mouth to say something but realized I didn’t know what I would actually say. The contents of Argo’s strategy guides naturally skewed toward safety information. That was the reason she made and distributed them in the first place, and she was going to need a full writing staff to actually cover all the quests that didn’t have the potential to be deadly. 

“…At the time, I was close to dying, and Temuo and Lazuli were in the yellow, too,” Gindo said, head downcast with shame. “I was in a full-blown panic. I just wanted to run away, but it was a swamp, so running was hard…All I knew was that I was going to die. We ran and ran like people possessed and finally threw them off, but at that point, our spirit was broken…” 

I’d been fighting at the front line of player progress since SAO officially launched, but the number of times I’d felt the Grim Reaper reaching for my neck was surprisingly few. But I understood exactly what he meant when he spoke of broken spirits. I still felt a vivid chill run down my spine when I recalled that moment fighting Asterios the Taurus King on the second floor, when I’d been paralyzed after his lightning attack, helpless to do anything but to look up at the approaching boss. 

The fact that I didn’t drop out of the advancing group and hide in the safety of town after that was probably because I was with Asuna, I supposed. She would say something like “I’d rather die than give up,” and I couldn’t possibly leave her to her own devices and return to the Town of Beginnings. 

I imagined that these four had probably stuck through it because of their personal bonds. 

Meanwhile, Gindo continued, “When we returned to Medai, battered and broken, there were about ten players in the town square shouting about something. When we asked what happened, they said that the first-floor boss had been beaten while we were out adventuring. That was exciting and wonderful, and we were grateful to the players who did it, but we honestly felt conflicted.” 

Gindo sighed, and the close-shaven Temuo stepped in. “It’s like, there we were, defeated and miserable, and then we hear that news? It just pointed out how unfit we were…Like, I played in a youth baseball league until middle school…” 

“Huh?!” I yelped. Only half of that was surprise that he was actually a baseball player like I’d imagined, and the other half was that he willingly divulged real-world details about himself to strangers. Temuo seemed surprised by the reaction, but Highston shook his head in annoyance. 

“We always tell you, don’t dredge up talk of the outside.” 

“So what? I can talk about my own life if I want to. Right?” he asked, turning to me for validation. I awkwardly agreed. 

“Er, uh, yeah.” 

“See, in baseball, it’s really easy to tell when you’re outclassed. It’s true of all sports, of course…but there’s always at least one guy on your team that you realize you’ll never be better than, and when you play in a tournament, you find monsters that even he can’t overcome in competition. Only the people who keep at it and don’t let that discourage them will reach the top, but I couldn’t hack it. When I heard the boss was beaten, I remembered that feeling again. That feeling of being in the stands at the park, yelling myself hoarse, and sensing just how far away it all felt…” 

He trailed off, his eyes gazing into space. It was like he was watching the heat haze over the baseball field in midsummer. 

As someone who was actually present at the battle against Illfang the Kobold Lord, the first-floor boss, I should’ve said something, but I couldn’t find the words. Temuo was talking about being outclassed and feeling like we were so distant, but I didn’t share that sensation at all. The only thing that defined the current front-line group was a successful sprint off the starting line, nothing else. None of the floor bosses had been easy. When they were in Medai marveling at our victory over Illfang, we were mourning the loss of Diavel, our raid party leader. 

“So…why didn’t you go back to town after that?” Asuna asked, wasting no breath. 

Temuo blinked a few times at how direct her question was. 

“Well, if I had to use a single word, I guess it was…stubbornness?” He looked to his sides, where Lazuli, Highston, and Gindo all nodded. “We knew that we weren’t going to get into the frontier group…but we were still stubborn in thinking that we knew more about quests than anyone else. So we said to ourselves, before we give up and run back to the safe zone, let’s test out how far we can get with quests alone.” 

“Q-quests alone…?” I asked, while next to me, Asuna gasped. 

“Oh! Does that mean the Q from Qusack is for…?” 

“Yep! Very astute, Asuna!” Lazuli remarked, snapping her fingers. 

At this, thinking he was being called, the dark elf steward rushed over to the table, much to Lazuli’s panic. But Asuna took the opportunity to order some honey ale, and as the waiter left, Highston took over the explanation. 

“You’re correct—the Q is short for quest. And sack came from our baseball-playing friend here, to refer to the sacks of gold we would come away with.” 

Asuna burst into cute laughter, and I added a stifled gurgle of my own that was much less cute. Since all the guilds we knew had cool, flashy names like Dragon Knights Brigade and Legend Braves, the sheer simple honesty of Qusack being short for questing for sacks had tickled our funny bones. 

The honey ale was conveniently brought out at that moment, and I took a swig of the sweet, refreshing liquid to quench my thirst. “I see…I’ll be honest, I thought you folks were a little fishy at first, but the riddles are being answered for me. So the reason your gear is so good, despite you being broke, is because it’s all quest rewards.” 

And the reason you looked so uncomfortable when we admitted we were in the front-line group was because you felt guilty about dropping out, I mentally added. But something in the way Gindo tugged his short beard told me he understood my meaning. 

“Yes, that’s right. You tend to get more experience than money for quests…and between all the rewards with a selection of loot to take, you can assemble a pretty good set. Unfortunately, you need to go hunting to get those sacks of coins, though.” 

“Now that you mention it, that’s true,” I admitted. But there was still one question on my mind. For being a quest-focused guild, how was it that they seemed so fresh and clean even after reaching Castle Galey? The giant insects and arthropods in the barren canyons outside were about the toughest of the generic monsters you could find at this point. 

“So…you’re telling me…that you started the dark elf faction of the “Elf War” campaign quest on the third floor, and you came here to Castle Galey to continue the hidden key quests?” I wondered. 

The four members of Qusack nodded. “That’s right. Didn’t you? Have you already recovered the key from this floor?” Highston asked. I glanced at Asuna before replying. 

“Yeah, we just got back from finishing it. If you’d like, we can tell you the main points to watch out for.” 

“That would be much appreciated.” He smiled, inclining his head. Then he turned toward the water. 

“But I suppose the random mobs along the path were tougher than the actual riddle solving…Did you have trouble with the giant bugs on the way to the castle?” I asked, a very smooth leading question by my standards. My partner saw through this attempt, though, and cleared her throat uncomfortably. The four were as straightforward as their guild name suggested, though; none appeared skeptical of my question. 

“Oh, we just left the attacking to our escort and focused on guarding the whole time…” Gindo said, which didn’t immediately make sense to me. 

“…E-escort? You hired another player…?” 

“Oh no. We don’t have the money for that. I mean the dark elf NPC…Don’t you have one, too?” he asked. I glanced at Asuna again. 

The first thought in my head at “dark elf NPC” was Kizmel, but she wasn’t our guard or escort, and we didn’t reunite with her until we arrived at Castle Galey. Or did that mean they had their own “Kizmel”? Like us, did they manage to beat the Forest Elven Hallowed Knight in the Forest of Wavering Mists, avoiding Kizmel’s death and giving them a companion…? 

I glanced around the dining hall but saw no one that fit the bill. Perhaps they had already broken up the party at the time they arrived, but that might mean that our Kizmel in the treasure repository might run across their Kizmel somewhere in the castle. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if that came to pass. 

Asuna filled in the silence I was leaving. She asked hoarsely, “What is…your escort’s name…?” 

“Name?” repeated Gindo, taken aback. He looked at his companions. “You guys know that blelf’s name…?” 

The other three shook their heads. Lazuli said, “The cursor just says Dark Elf Scout. Wouldn’t that be the name?” 

Now it was our turn to glance at one another. Kizmel was a knight, not a scout. Her official title was Dark Elven Royal Guard. That made it much less likely that Qusack’s escort was another Kizmel, but I had to be sure. 

“By the way, what’s the gender of your escort…?” 

“A man. He’s a real dick,” said Temuo. Both Asuna and I exhaled. 

Upon further inquiry, we learned that, as initially designed, their entry event to the quest featured the dark elf and forest elf both dying. The four managed to complete the camp commander’s quests somehow, but at the final mission on the third floor, “Retrieving the Key,” they were given a Dark Elven Scout to serve as their escort and fifth party member. Apparently, he vanished at the entrance of human towns, then reappeared when they left them. If they undertook unrelated quests or hunted in any one spot, he would disappear again. He was exceedingly cold, as befitted a dark elf, and did not engage in any kind of personal or small talk. 

When I did the “Elf War” campaign quest in the beta as a solo player, I didn’t get an escort; what they were experiencing was probably a support measure added to the official release, but if that elf was anywhere near as strong as Kizmel, I could see how these four quest-centric players had gotten to Castle Galey without any damage. 

But at the same time, I sensed danger. This questline continued to the ninth floor. That scout escort would vanish there when the quest was over. Would they be able to keep up after that point without someone to do the heavy damage for them? 

I wondered these things and more as I sipped at my honey ale but decided that it wasn’t really my business. They’d done their other quests outside of the elf campaign without a bodyguard, and Asuna and I certainly received a great amount of tactical and emotional benefit from Kizmel’s presence. Given that the scout was just a simple bodyguard NPC to them, Qusack might find it easier to move on when the campaign was done without losing motivation. 

“…Gosh, look at the time,” Gindo said, rousing me from my thoughts. The plates on the table had been cleaned off, and Temuo and Lazuli looked sleepy. Gindo closed his window, got to his feet, and patted Temuo on the head. 

“Kirito, Asuna, it was a pleasure to chat with you. We’re going to get our quest from the lord of the castle, so we’ll take our leave for today…” 

“No, thank you for letting us take up your time,” said Asuna, getting up from her chair. I inclined my head, too. We agreed to meet up again in the morning and watched the four of them leave the hall. 

When the doors closed and their cursors vanished from view, I gave my temporary party member a look. After a long few seconds, Asuna muttered, “I guess there are also people like them up near the front line, too.” 

“I never considered the possibility of a quest-focused guild…Even without grinding for levels, you can get this far on quest loot alone, I guess.” 

“Not that we do that much grinding, either,” she pointed out. 

“That’s true.” 

A lull followed, and eventually, we exhaled simultaneously. It was a good thing that more players were becoming focused on leaving the towns and reaching the frontier—and being quest-centric opened up new possibilities for that. Our meeting with Gindo’s group was a welcome development—but there was something in my chest that itched about it and refused to go away. 

Perhaps it was just some infantile irritation that others had intruded on our supposed private relaxation time around the castle with Kizmel. Castle Galey was a public location, so all players had the right to visit. In SAO, as in any MMORPG, it was a classic violation of manners to “claim” a public space and refuse others the right to be there. 

As fellow members of the dark elf faction of this questline, this was actually a place for us to trade useful information. I told myself to stop being childish and selfish—and to follow Asuna’s example in the way she had cordially interacted with Qusack. And yet… 

“…Earlier, I said I wasn’t a fan of instances. Now I take that back,” my partner said out of the blue. I stared at her. 

“Wh…why?” 

“Because! Anyway, where has Kizmel gone off to?” she snapped, clearly trying to change the subject and looking around the dining hall for no good reason. Virtually all the other dark elves had continued on their way, and of course, Kizmel wasn’t here. 

“M…maybe she went back to her room…” 

“Well, we should go back, too, then.” 

“Y-yeah, good idea.” 

The fencer promptly strode away, and as I followed her, I wondered if I would ever fully understand the way her mind worked… 

No, I decided with a sigh, that day would probably never come.