Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 6 - Chapter 9

9 

AFTER SEEING OFF QUSACK ON THEIR QUEST TO recover the Agate Key, Asuna and I shared a silent look for a good five seconds. 

“……Is the reason Cylon vanished…because Morte’s group killed him…?” 

“……He said it happened the night of the first. It matches the time of Morte and the dagger user’s ambush. But…is that even possible…? I would assume that our Cylon is dead, but everyone’s Cylon is still alive and well at the mansion…” I muttered. 

Kizmel looked over, curious. “What are you talking about?” 

“Oh, it’s a quest we were doing in Stachion…Or, er, when we say quest, that’s just a human word, like request or duty…” I explained, before launching into a brief explanation of the Curse of Stachion. 

A murder that took place ten years ago and a missing golden cube. Lord Cylon hired us to find it, and he made us search an abandoned home in the nearby town of Suribus. The lord himself showed up there and paralyzed us—but while on the ride back, loaded into his carriage, Cylon was abruptly, shockingly murdered… 

By the end, Kizmel’s brows were low. She murmured, “So you went through all of that before arriving here…And the ones who killed this lord were the brigands who attacked you? You claim they had the poison needles of the Fallen…” 

“That’s right.” 

“Then this cannot be overlooked. Asuna,” she said, turning to her right toward the fencer, “I am very eager to learn how you planned for us to spend my day of rest, but should we not investigate this first? To find out how to use the two keys you have acquired.” 

“Wh…what?” Asuna blurted out. We were both wide-eyed at this. 

I’d been concerned about the “Curse of Stachion” questline, since we’d left it hanging, and I wasn’t against the idea of taking this time to move it further along, but if Kizmel was going to join us, she’d have to set foot inside the town of Stachion. I opened and closed my mouth several times before I figured out what to ask the knight. 

“Well…your presence with us would give us the strength of a thousand, but are you sure you want to go walking into a human town…?” 

“It is not as if an elf fails to draw breath within the town limits, correct? I have never been within one, but there are more than a few stories of my comrades sneaking into towns out of curiosity or for some secret mission or another. And before the Great Separation, it was common for humans and nonhumans to come and go from one another’s villages. If I wear a hood, they might not even notice my long ears.” 

“Th-that may be true, but…” 

Even with your ears hidden, they’ll see the NPC cursor that says DARK ELF ROYAL GUARD, I thought, sending my partner a look. For some reason, though, Asuna beamed at Kizmel. 

“Yeah, let’s go! As a matter of fact, I was planning to give you a tour of Stachion today, Kizmel.” 

“Wh-whaaat?!” I yelled. “That was your plan…?” 

“Technically, the teleport gate in Stachion. The elves’ spirit trees only start at the third floor, right? So I figured that neither Kizmel nor the other dark elves have ever seen the first or second floor of Aincrad,” she said, turning to the woman. 

“That is correct. Some elves have explored the Pillar of the Heavens towers that connect the floors vertically, but only from the third floor upward. As far as I know, not a single elf has set foot on the first two floors since ancient times. I will be able to boast to my relatives and comrades on the ninth floor that I passed through a human gate to the first floor. I can even tell Tilnel, whenever we are fated to meet again…” 

Smile never breaking, Asuna reached out and brushed the knight’s back with her hand. I, too, felt a bit teary over this, but I couldn’t stop myself from considering the logistics of it all. 

There were hundreds of NPCs in Stachion, and the players weren’t going to go inspecting the cursor name of every last NPC that wandered through the streets. But that didn’t clear up all of my concerns. Could an NPC even travel through a teleport gate? Of all the main towns I’d been through in the game, I had never once seen an NPC use the gates. 

What if the three of us walked through the gate, but Kizmel failed to travel and was left behind? Well, then Asuna and I could just go right back. But more seriously…what if some system error caused Kizmel alone, or even all three of us, to be sent to some random coordinates? In a worst-case scenario, perhaps Kizmel herself could be entirely deleted from the system. I couldn’t rule out that possibility. 

“No…wait.” 

A sudden idea came to mind, and I opened my window over the table. In my message inbox, I still had an instant message I received outside the cave in the fourth area yesterday. I tapped it and used the REPLY button to send a new question. 

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GO THROUGH A TELEPORTER WITH AN NPC IN THE PARTY? 

It took Argo the informant no more than thirty seconds to send a reply to this abbreviated query. 

A QUEST NPC GETS REMOVED FROM THE PARTY. GUARD NPCS YOU’RE HIRING WITH MONEY STICK WITH YOU. 100C—AND AS A BONUS, FR ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRD AREA. 

So I’d run up my tab again, but at least I got the information I wanted. In the larger towns were guard barracks and facilities of that sort, where you could hire bodyguard NPCs for a certain amount of col per hour. I’d never made use of the service and had hardly ever seen parties with such NPCs, either, so I simply didn’t know what happened to those guards when you went through a teleport gate. 

Asuna and I weren’t paying Kizmel for her companionship, of course, but our quest for the hidden key on the sixth floor was already finished. At this moment, Kizmel was accompanying us of her own will, so it was hard to tell which of Argo’s two outcomes this fell under. 

At the very least, it seemed that the system was prepared for the possibility of NPCs stepping into teleport gates, and we wouldn’t have any accidents with being teleported to random variables or Kizmel becoming corrupted and deleted. I looked up and interrupted the women, who were now talking about the ninth floor. 

“I’m thinking that Kizmel can use the teleport gate, too. So with that settled, let’s get going. It’ll take a while for us to get to Stachion from here…” 

“Indeed. I am ready to leave at any time.” 

“Me too!” 

With my female companions on board, I leaped to my feet and stuffed the last bit of Asuna’s toast into my mouth, chewing as I walked. I heard a complaint about my poor manners over my shoulder and hunched my neck downward. Both Kizmel and the elf women at the nearby table giggled. 

I expected that the trip from Castle Galey to Stachion would take at least four hours, no matter how we traveled. Even avoiding battle wherever possible in the open, the dungeon that separated the first and second areas was a straight shot with nowhere to hide. The thick forest that covered the center of the first area was an unmapped zone, so we’d have to swing far west to travel through Suribus instead. 

But ultimately, despite taking ten minutes for Kizmel to receive approval to borrow the Greenleaf Cape again, we ended up nearly halving the four-hour time I expected. 

The primary reason was that Kizmel gave us the Droplets of Villi again, allowing us to walk over the lake to the first area, rather than going through the tunnel dungeon. The second reason was that when we approached the forest of the first area, Kizmel regained her energy with extra to spare, proclaiming that we would go directly through the woods and then guiding us the whole way. We even found a small ruin deep in the forest, beat its boss, and got some treasure—if not for that, it might have only taken an hour and a half, not two. And the third reason, of course, was having Kizmel’s tremendous fighting ability on our side. 

When the trees started thinning out, and brilliant-white Stachion appeared in the distance, Asuna marveled, “Wow, straight ahead…How did you know the way without a map, Kizmel?” 

“You should not underestimate my ability, Asuna. We elves are never lost in a forest.” 

“That’s incredible!” she said with delight. On my own, I wondered cynically if she was accessing the game’s map data. Right on cue, a scene from yesterday’s adventure replayed in my mind: 

In that dungeon housing the Agate Key in the fourth area, we’d been faced with a sliding puzzle with thirty-five tiles—and Kizmel had solved the entire thing in a minimum number of moves without even taking much time to think about it. 

This was not something you could explain away as “the brainpower of an AI.” Traditional computers attempting to solve NP-hard problems like N × N grid puzzles in the most efficient number of moves required a vast amount of CPU power. On the other hand, the SAO system itself generated that puzzle for the dungeon door, so the system, at least, had to know the quickest solution. What if Kizmel, without being conscious of it, accessed the system’s stored solution? The same way that elves could travel the forest without getting lost because they had the map data there at their fingertips. 

Deep in thought, I followed the two women out of the forest, my head tilting left and right. There was an open field before us, slightly brown in the winter chill, beyond which lay Stachion with its odd stepped layout. 

Kizmel stretched in the soft sunlight and lowered the hood of her navy-blue cloak—the precious Greenleaf Cape long ago stashed away in her pouch. Then she swept the back of her cloak around the front and tied a rope around the Pagoda Royal Knights emblem so no one could tell she was a dark elf by appearance alone. 

Asuna pulled her own dark-red hood up, which made me want to join in, but I thought a group of three all hiding their faces would be suspicious. The main group was out fighting giant frogs and water bugs in the distant swampland of the third area, so it was unlikely we would run across anyone we knew in Stachion at this hour. 

We cut straight across the field, eventually meeting up with the main path, and paused just south of the town limits when Kizmel stopped to gaze up at the white-colored town. “It is beautiful…” she murmured, “but what an odd place…” 

Asuna and I were used to it by now, but it was indeed true that Stachion and its uniform construction of fifteen-centimeter blocks was very strange. 

“Are all large human towns built this way?” 

“N-no! It’s only this town that’s especially weird,” Asuna quickly explained. “Remember when we told you about the golden cube disappearing from the town lord’s mansion? This entire town is constructed of blocks of wood and stone cut to the exact dimensions of that cube.” 

“Ah…” 

“But let’s not stand around and chat here,” Asuna said. “I’m hungry.” 

Thanks to Kizmel’s help with the shortcuts, it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but I felt a little hungry, too. I was just thinking that it would be nice to show Kizmel what human-style cakes were all about before we got to tackling the curse quest in honest. 

I was a bit nervous walking through the gate, but nothing about Kizmel changed after the SAFE HAVEN sign appeared in my vision as we crossed the boundary. She didn’t seem to see the same visual marker as us. I recalled that she must have snuck into Zumfut on the third floor, too. 

There were more than a few players on the wide main street of town, but most were just tourists coming up from the lower floors to check it out. As I expected, nobody stopped to examine Kizmel’s yellow cursor. Relieved and relaxed, I suggested, “Should we stop for some tea nearby? We can spend the rest of the morning investigating the lord’s disappearance, and then we can take the teleport gate down after noon.” 

“Agreed!” 

“I believe that will be acceptable,” Kizmel added. 

So I steered us toward a restaurant with an ample sweets menu not far from the southern gate. We turned west off the main road and down a smaller one. After a while, Kizmel came to a stop and rubbed one of the dark-brown wood blocks used for the buildings. 

“…You cut the trees down to this size and then stack them up again…Humans do the strangest things…” 

Asuna and I shared a look. The elves—dark elves, forest elves, even the fallen elves—would never cut down a living tree. If they used any wood in their buildings and furniture, it would only come from trees that had fallen at the end of their life span. 

In that sense, the lower part of Stachion on the south side was perhaps the biggest waste of wood in any major human town. Maybe this wasn’t the best place to have chosen as a destination. But despite my concern, Kizmel just gave us a glance and blinked in surprise. 

“Oh, I am not complaining,” she said, smiling. “Elves have their way of life, as do humans. The old me…in fact, all dark elves, since the long distant past, have scorned other races as foolish and below us, but since meeting you, and accompanying you at times, I have learned that humankind possesses many virtues as well. For one thing, we first met when you saved my life from the forest elf who was about to defeat me. I suppose having my life saved by humans is bound to change my mind…” 

Asuna and I shared another glance, then looked bashful. When we saw the two elf knights fighting in the woods, the biggest reason that I chose Kizmel over the Forest Elven Hallowed Knight was because it was what I did in the beta. I just picked the familiar route. 

So why did I choose her in the beta? At the time, I wasn’t a solo player but was hanging around in a four-person party of strangers, so it wasn’t my decision alone, but no one else had protested, and I seem to remember that we reached the consensus in just a matter of seconds. 

Perhaps it was because the other three were also guys, and Kizmel was a beautiful older woman. But it was often the case in other games and novels that the dark elves were antagonists. The forest elf looked every bit the heroic, shining knight, and we could have cast our allegiance with him for that reason. 

Had I felt something in that moment, besides the fact that Kizmel was a woman? 

“Um, Kizmel,” Asuna mumbled, stepping closer to the knight, “the truth is, when we stepped in to help you on the third floor…” 

I briefly panicked, unsure of what she was about to say, but there was no chance to step in or hear the rest—because Kizmel grabbed Asuna’s shoulders and pulled her closer, while looking over my shoulder and shouting, “Who goes there?!” 

The tone of alarm in her voice made me spin around to look. 

There was no one in the three-meter-wide street. We weren’t in the shopping area, so the only buildings lining the road were homes with their doors shut tight. I looked about but saw no hint of green, yellow, or even (impossible in this place) orange cursors… 

But just then, a small silhouette practically melted out of the shadows of a building. It was dressed in a full gray hooded cloak, hiding its identity. The cursor over its head was yellow, indicating an NPC. 

Kizmel promptly grabbed the hilt of her saber, and I reached backward for the sword over my shoulder. However, the figure shook its head and, just loud enough to hear, said, “I mean you no harm.” 

The voice belonged to a very young girl—and it was familiar somehow. 

Where had I heard it, I wondered…but could not arrive at an answer. The name under the cursor was MYIA, but that did not immediately ring a bell for me, either… 

Kizmel repeated her question. “Who are you? Why were you following us?” 

She had her own black hood pulled low, so in clothing, the two looked very similar, except for the issue of height. Kizmel was a fair bit taller than me, but the gray-cloaked woman across from us seemed more the size of a child. 

“I merely wish to speak with that swordsman over there,” the NPC said, pointing at my face with a skinny hand. 

“Huh…? Me?” 

“Sir Swordsman, do you have one of these?” she said, opening her hand to reveal a small key hanging from a little string. Now, this item I recognized. 

“Kirito, isn’t that…?” Asuna whispered, and I nodded. I opened up my inventory and materialized the same item that I’d just gotten three days earlier. It was the iron key, one of two that dropped when Morte killed Cylon. 

I lifted the key up, which also was strung on a little loop, closed my game window, and let it dangle like the NPC girl was doing. 

Then something very strange happened. The completely ordinary gray key began to thrum with a faint ringing, vibrating gently. Across from me, the NPC’s key was exhibiting the same reaction. 

“…Who are you? And what does that key do…?” I asked. The gray-cloaked NPC stashed away the key and approached. Kizmel kept her hand on the hilt of the saber but did not draw it. 

“As long as we have these keys, we are not safe, even in town. Let’s go somewhere else,” said the NPC named Myia. I shared a look with Asuna and Kizmel. We couldn’t discount the possibility of a trap. But we had come to this town to investigate the mystery of Cylon’s two keys, and here was a major clue, so there was no point backing away now. 

“All right,” said Asuna. “Where should we go, then?” 

The NPC nodded, glanced around, and whispered, “Follow me.” We followed the cloaked woman to the western end of the south half of Stachion, where the construction was the most dense. She used yet another key, one colored bronze, to open the door to a small house there, ushered us inside, then peered around outside to make sure the coast was clear before shutting and locking the door again. 

There was a living room at the end of a short hallway. Despite it having just passed ten in the morning, it was quite dark inside. The shutters were down over the largest window, so the sunlight could only get in through the few smaller windows around the room. The NPC lit a lamp hanging on the wall, then turned around to apologize. 

“I’m sorry that I can’t open the window for you. Hang on, I’ll put on some tea,” she said, heading for the kitchen, but Asuna pulled her back. 

“No, there’s no need. Please, tell us what you have to say.” 

“…Oh. I see.” 

The NPC paused, then motioned to the sofa in the middle of the living room, so the three of us sat down on it. She took an armchair across from us and lowered her hood. 

Asuna gasped. I felt stunned, too. Based on her height, I assumed the woman was very young, but seeing her features in the light now, she was actually just a child—perhaps no more than ten years old. Just in case, I glanced at the ears under her neatly bobbed blond hair, but she was not an elf. 

“My name is Mee-a,” she said, and all of a sudden, I understood how the name Myia was meant to be pronounced. It was a simple name but somehow mysterious. 

“I am Kizmel, a knight,” said the elf, who kept her hood on. Asuna and I followed her lead. 

“I’m Kirito…a swordsman, I guess.” 

“And I am Asuna. I’m a swordswoman.” 

“Kizmel, Kirito…and Asuna. Do I have that right?” she asked, using the familiar NPC routine for checking pronunciation. She looked right at me with grayish-green eyes. “Kirito, the iron key that you possess came from Lord Cylon of Stachion, correct?” 

“Y…yes,” I agreed, then realized I might be creating a dangerous mistaken impression. “Oh, b-but I didn’t take it from him by force. Technically, I, uh…picked it up off the ground…” I stammered. 

Asuna calmly asked, “Myia, do you…know what happened to Cylon?” 

“……Yes.” The girl nodded, her long-lashed eyes downcast. “I heard from Terro, the gardener at the mansion. Cylon…my father was attacked by brigands outside of town three nights ago and died…” 

…Gardener? 

…Father? 

The two words collided in my brain, and it took a while for them to fall into the proper places. 

The only ones who knew Cylon was dead were me, Asuna, Kizmel, Morte and the dagger user, and the large NPC man who served Cylon. That would mean the large man who rode off in the carriage was the gardener named Terro. 

That was all well and good…but the girl also called Cylon her father. Taken at face value, it would mean she was the daughter of the late lord. 

The morning after Morte’s attack, Asuna asked me if Cylon had any family, and I said that I didn’t recall any wife or children at his mansion. I had never seen Cylon’s family in the beta or this time around, but that wasn’t proof that Cylon had no family at all. 

“Myia…you’re Cylon’s daughter?” Asuna asked, getting to the root of everything I was thinking. Myia acknowledged she was. Asuna hesitated for a brief moment before she offered, “I…I’m sorry, Myia. We were present when those brigands attacked your father. In fact, the truth is, the bandits were after Kirito and me. Cylon was just a victim…” 

I felt as though my head were splitting in two. Myia was an NPC, and the conversations with her had to be a part of the “Curse of Stachion” quest. But Morte killed Cylon, and he was a player—it was a spontaneous event, not a programmed step of the quest’s story. How was it that in just three days, it had been incorporated into the quest scenario? I was certain that after we saw Cylon die, another identical Cylon would pop up in Stachion, so that the quest proceeded for all other players regardless… 

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” Myia said, mature beyond her years. I lifted my head. “I heard about everything from Terro. How Father gave you poison and abducted you…and was going to lock you in the maze beneath the mansion, forcing you to perform the duty, no, the atonement he was meant to bear…” 

“Atonement…” I repeated without realizing it. Myia turned her mysterious green eyes on me. I summoned my courage and asked the NPC girl, “Do you know…what your father did…?” 

“……Yes,” Myia said, looking down. “Mother told me everything the other day.” 

“M-Mother…?” I parroted back again. Myia’s mother would have to be Cylon’s wife, I assumed, when Asuna jabbed my arm with her elbow. The shock helped my synapses finally fire properly. I had already explained, to Asuna no less, that Cylon had a lover ten years ago. 

“Um…Does that mean your mother is the previous lord’s app…I mean, servant…?” I said, nearly saying the word apprentice by mistake, based on my knowledge from the beta. Fortunately, Myia didn’t seem to notice or find it suspicious. 

“Yes,” she said, “my mother’s name is Theano, and I’ve heard that she served Pithagrus, the previous lord of Stachion, until ten years ago.” 

Theano. 

I met her four months ago, during the SAO beta test. But she left a strong impression, and if I closed my eyes, I could summon the image of her handsome face right away. If I tried, I could see some of those details in Myia’s features, too. 

In the “Curse of Stachion” quest, on the correct route—well, at this point there was no telling what was correct, so let’s call it the beta route—I was paralyzed by Cylon in the house in Suribus, stuffed in a bag and taken back to Stachion, then saved in the backstreets by none other than Theano. 

She was once a servant at the lord’s mansion, a puzzle expert who earned Pithagrus’s admiration, as well as a skilled fighter with the sword. One night ten years ago, she witnessed a furious Cylon bludgeon Pithagrus to death with a golden cube. 

She should have told a guard at once, but after much anguish, Theano decided to keep her silence. This was because Cylon was also her lover, and while Cylon killed Pithagrus for not naming him as the successor, in fact, Pithagrus’s plan was to name the next lord of the town the person he was secretly training: Theano. When Cylon left the room, she slipped in and took the bloody cube, then locked it in the deepest part of the Dungeon of Trials beneath the mansion. She then placed the key to open the dungeon in the hideout in Suribus and quit her job as servant. 

Theano hoped that Cylon would regret his sin and reveal all that he had done to her. Only then did she plan to tell Cylon where to find the key. But Cylon claimed the body, whose face was crushed beyond recognition, belonged to a nameless traveler and that it was Pithagrus who killed the traveler. The result was a curse of puzzles that befell Stachion—and was steadily expanding beyond the town to this day. 

In the beta test, Theano and I snuck into the mansion, convinced Cylon to see the error of his ways, and used the golden key to go into the dungeon beneath the building. The three of us completed many puzzles and blazed through the astral-type monsters that shouldn’t have appeared there, until we reached the end of the dungeon. There, we beat Pithagrus’s vengeful ghost in a puzzle battle, retrieved the cube, purified it with holy water, then offered it to the grave of the traveler (actually Pithagrus). Then his ghost appeared again and forgave Cylon, bringing the story full circle. 

But this time, Cylon couldn’t atone for his sin and undo the curse, because he got killed by Morte the PKer. This event, which should have only affected the quest for Asuna and me, somehow now applied to all players. Cylon had seemingly vanished off the face of Aincrad altogether. 

There was no longer a way to complete the quest in the same order of events that I used in the beta. I had the golden key in my possession, so we might be able to get into the dungeon and retrieve the cube, but would that alone undo Pithagrus’s curse? And why weren’t we being visited by the crucial Theano herself, but by her daughter Myia? 

“Theano…Where is your mother now…?” I asked gingerly. The girl’s lips pursed, and she shook her head. She pulled the iron key out of her shirt and stared at it. 

“…I don’t know. The morning after she learned that Father had been killed, she left a note and this key behind and vanished.” 

“What did the note say?” 

“It had an apology to me, the truth of the traveler’s murder at the mansion ten years ago, and a reminder to visit Barro if she never came back…” 

“Who’s Barro…?” I asked, thinking that name sounded familiar, too. To my surprise, it was Asuna rather than Myia who answered. 

“The gardener at the mansion at the time Theano worked there. Remember, we talked to him three days ago?” 

“Oh y-yeah…” I mumbled. 

Myia nodded and explained, “Barro is the father of Terro, who tends the gardens now. Ten years ago, my father killed Pithagrus, the previous lord…although he made it sound as though a traveler was killed, and Pithagrus went missing. After that, many of the servants left their jobs there, including my mother and Barro. But Terro was having trouble learning his words, and they said he wouldn’t be able to support himself in town, so my father, the new lord Cylon, agreed to take him in.” 

“…Oh, I see…” I said, recalling the silence and obedience of the large man who showed up at the secret hideout. It seemed like perhaps Cylon wasn’t utterly evil to his core after all. I sighed. 

A heavy silence settled upon the scene. It was broken by the soft voice of Kizmel. 

“Myia. You said that as long as we had the key, we were not safe in town. Why is that?” 

That was a curious point, it was true, but more interesting and nerve-wracking to me was that two NPCs were interacting in a way that could not have been pre-scripted into the story. I wondered if they would actually hold a logical conversation, when… 

“The night that Mother left this key and letter behind, a thief broke into the house where we lived for years, right near the town square. I was awoken by the sound and went into the living room, where a brigand dressed in black was holding this key and drew his dagger to attack when he saw me…I managed to fight him off and take back the key, but I realized it was dangerous to remain in the house, and so I moved here as soon as I could.” 

“Oh? Whose house is this?” 

“My father’s. This is where Lord Cylon lived before he went to dwell in the mansion as Lord Pithagrus’s apprentice. My father never returned, but my mother would bring me here to clean the place every once in a while.” 

“I see,” Kizmel said, crossing her arms. “So the brigand does not know about this house yet.” 

Next to her, I hummed to myself. I see. So this is the original home of Cylon. If we look around, we might find some clues to—no, wait. Before that. Didn’t Myia say something odd? 

“W-wait just a moment, Myia. You said that a thief with a dagger came to steal your key…Did you fight him off by yourself?” Asuna asked while I was trying to recall just what she had said. 

But yes, that was the part. Myia had said she had fought him off, but how could a girl of only ten years or so do such a thing? 

With new eyes, I stared at the bob-haired girl. Even with the gray cloak on, it was clear at a glance that she was incredibly thin. Resting atop her knees, her hands looked like a doll’s. Could she even swing a knife, much less a sword? 

Myia nodded to Asuna and said, without changing expression, “Yes, from a very young age, my mother…” 

But we didn’t get to hear the end of that. There was a loud, hard crash, and a small window at the back end of the living room shattered. 

“What was that?!” I shouted, rising to my feet. Bouncing our way along the ground was a black sphere. As soon as she saw the baseball-sized object, Kizmel shouted, “Everyone, hold your breath!” 

I sucked in as much air as my lungs could handle and closed my mouth. The ball split in two and began to emit a thick purple smoke. 

Not more poison gas! I swore in my head, drawing the Sword of Eventide +3 from my back. I didn’t know what kind of poison it was, but no events of this nature were going to end with just the gas. 

At my side, Asuna had her window open, materializing a masklike object. The leather-made item was the gas mask that Cylon dropped when he died. I thought she was going to put it on herself, but instead, she leaped over the table and stuck it over Myia’s face. 

More glass broke. This time, the large double windows shattered, shutters and all, and two dark figures leaped into the room. They tumbled smoothly over the floor and popped to their feet, drawing short, curved blades in unison. The cursors above their heads were yellow, the text reading UNKNOWN BURGLAR. They were NPCs, not players. 

As soon as the blades pointed our way glinted like razors, I finally remembered that we were inside town. This was a quest-event battle (I assumed), but this house was within the Anti-Criminal-Code safe haven of town. No monsters could get inside the zone, and players’ HP were protected from harm and would not lose a single pixel, no matter what. That was one of the ironclad rules of SAO, as I understood it. 

But wait… 

A player attacking a player was a crime, but would it be a crime if an NPC acting according to the story attacked a player? I’d never experienced this for myself. Was it possible that if a story battle occurred within town, the safety code might not actually protect us? 

I wanted to shout to Asuna and Myia to get back, but I couldn’t do that with my breath held. The purple smoke, half-translucent, was already up to face level, and as soon as I breathed it in, I was going to suffer some kind of debuff. If the code didn’t work, and I took continuous damage, for example, I could chug potions to stay safe, but if this was paralyzing poison again, I had no means of counteracting it. I gave a hand signal, hoping the message got across, and held up my sword. 

Just to my right was Kizmel, saber drawn. She had that ultrarare antidote ring on, but that didn’t mean much in the midst of a gas. 

The black-clad attackers had their faces entirely wrapped in cloth, plus they had gas masks on that were different from Cylon’s, hiding their features from view. They held up their gleaming curved blades—but failed to attack. 

They simply didn’t need to: We would run out of breath in just thirty or forty seconds. 

In other words, we had to eliminate our enemies in that time frame. 

Kizmel and I made the briefest of eye contact before charging together. The black-masked burglars leaped, too, a split-second later. 

The instant our blades crossed, the enemy cursors turned to brilliant red. Even for me, at level 20, the color looked dark. The power they exhibited was about the same as the deadly Forest Elven Inferior Knight at Yofel Castle on the fourth floor. 

I gritted my teeth and pushed hard against the enemy, but my breath was already running out. Sparks were flying from Kizmel’s saber where she pushed, too, but even the elite knight’s arm strength was not enough to bowl back this foe. We had to break the stalemate somehow, before the poison got us…… 

“Kirito, Kizmel, pull inward!” shouted a brave-yet-young voice from behind us. I leaned to my right and saw a bright-red flash shoot past my left side. 

Kra-ka-kam! went a series of shocks, and the brigand in black flew backward, bearing three damage-effect lines on his chest. A moment later, Kizmel’s opponent suffered the same fate and slammed against the far wall. 

It was Asuna who had helped Kizmel out, and my own rescuer was…Myia. Like Asuna, she used the three-part rapier thrust skill, Triangular. 

Stunned, I looked down at the masked girl and her short but fancy-looking rapier. But not for long—we couldn’t let this opportunity pass. Kizmel and I bounded forward to deliver the finishing blows to our tumbling foes. 

But the burglars each put a hand to their waists, pulled something from their belts, and threw. I just managed to deflect it with my sword, but they used the opportunity to stand and essentially backflip out through the broken window. 

Their footsteps rapidly scurried away. You’re not going anywhere! I thought, leaping through the window to the backyard. With fresh air finally flooding into my lungs, I swept through the wooden gate and looked left and right, but there were no people in the midday back alley—and no red cursors. 

“…They got away,” said a voice behind me. I spun around to see the dark elf knight looking severe. I nodded to her and went back into the yard, pulling the wooden gate shut. 

“They were pretty tough—and speedy, too,” I said. “It’s a good thing you were with us, Kizmel. Of course, I’m sorry—you didn’t sign up for all this.” 

But she did not change her expression. “That might not be entirely true.” 

“Huh…?” 

The Curse of Stachion was an incident that happened entirely between humans and had no relation to the elves at all, I wanted to protest—until Kizmel thrust a long, narrow object toward my face. It looked like the throwing picks the burglars threw as they escaped, but when my gaze brought it into focus, my jaw dropped. 

Held between her fingers was a wicked poison needle with a spiral hexagonal shape: a Spine of Shmargor. 

At first, I wondered if the masked attackers were none other than Morte and his dagger-using friend. But that was impossible, of course. Their cursors were as yellow as Kizmel’s before they turned red, and if they were players, they would turn orange, rather than red. 

But then, who were they…? 

“I recognized the thin crescent blades they used,” she said softly. “Those are the weapons of the Fallen’s assassins.” 

“……You mean the fallen elves?” I asked, perhaps unnecessarily. 

The elf knight arched an eyebrow. “Gather your wits, Kirito. Have you ever heard of fallen goblins or fallen orcs in Aincrad?” 

Actually, I would prefer those, I thought to myself. “Er…right. Of course. But…what are fallen elves doing here? The elves have nothing to do with this que…this incident…” 

“Yes, indeed. It’s possible I was followed leaving Castle Galey, but in that case, they could have attacked us in the wilderness or forest at any time, rather than waiting until we entered this human town,” Kizmel pointed out. 

She was absolutely right about that. Which meant the target was… 

I spun around, just as Asuna and Myia emerged from the back door to the right of the broken windows. Asuna was in maximum alert mode, surveying the area with her Chivalric Rapier in hand, while Myia still wore her gas mask. The rapier she’d used to execute a Triangular was now encased in its sheath, hung on the inside of her gray cloak. 

The girl trotted over, remarkably calm in the immediate aftermath of the dramatic attack. She seemed to have heard the conversation between Kizmel and me, and when she spoke, her voice was muffled by the mask, but not enough to be indecipherable. 

“They were dressed the exact same way as the thieves who snuck into my house two days ago. Like the last time, I think they were after my mother’s key.” 

“…I…I see…” 

In other words, this girl of no more than ten fought off not typical burglars, but fallen elf spies or assassins of some kind, all by herself. After witnessing how her sword skill was just as sharp as Asuna’s…I still had a hard time buying it. She couldn’t be more than a year or two older than poor sickly Agatha, whose quest I completed to earn the Anneal Blade back on the first floor. 

But something was more important right now than solving that mystery. I took the iron key out of my waist pouch and held it up at the height of Myia’s leather gas mask. The key around her neck reacted, the two resonating faintly. 

I asked, “Myia, what are these keys? Do you know where they’re supposed to be used…?” 

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “All my mother’s letter said was that it was a memento of her time with Father, so she wanted me to take good care of it. If she knew that dangerous people would come after it, I don’t think she would have left it in my care.” 

“I see…” 

This appeared to suggest that we wouldn’t know the truth until we found the missing Theano. Kizmel bent down and said to the girl, “Myia, how did you find us? You were following us before I detected you in the alley, weren’t you?” 

“Yes…I’m sorry for having done that, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t with the burglars…” 

“No, I am not blaming you,” Kizmel said kindly. “It only makes sense that you would do this, considering the circumstances.” 

The girl in the gas mask nodded and pressed her tiny hand over her chest. “The key my mother left me and the key that Kirito holds, belonging to my father, are drawn to each other. Even when separated by great distances, they always vibrate faintly, trying to point to the other.” 

“Huh? Really…?” 

I shifted the height and angle of the key I held to point directly at the key hanging from Myia’s neck. Indeed, the key vibrated subtly at the end of its string. Myia twitched, feeling the same sensation from her key. 

So the keys used vibration to indicate direction and sound resonance to indicate distance to each other. Once you knew that, it wouldn’t be hard to find us, even in the crowded, complex interior of Stachion. Still, that didn’t answer the question of what locks these keys were meant to open—and why the unrelated fallen elves would want to steal them. 

As I stared at the fine detail of the key Cylon left behind, Asuna, who still had a hand on Myia’s shoulder, seemed to figure something out. “Say, Kirito…does the golden key we found at the hideout in Suribus react to the iron key at all?” 

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know…” 

I opened my window and pulled the golden key out of the KEY ITEMS tab and checked my quest log, too, just in case, but the latest hint hadn’t updated yet: LORD CYLON OF STACHION HAS BEEN KILLED BY THIEVES. YOU MUST FIND THE RIGHT PLACE TO USE THE KEYS HE LEFT BEHIND. 

Ignoring the question of who actually wrote that synopsis, I closed the window and hung the iron key from my right hand. The golden key didn’t have a string, so I held it directly in my left hand and pointed them at each other, moving them closer and farther apart, but they produced no vibration or sounds. 

But on closer inspection, they were very similar outside of the color. The keys in Aincrad were all old-fashioned ward-lock keys, in keeping with the medieval fantasy style, so while they all kind of looked alike, I could see many shared elements in the head design and teeth of these keys. 

“Is that…?” prompted a soft voice, and I looked up from my examination. Myia had taken a step forward and was looking closely at the golden key through her mask. “Is that golden key the same one that my mother took from the mansion ten years ago?” 

“Uh…yes, I think so. We found it at Pithagrus’s hideout in the town of Suribus.” 

“Then maybe,” Myia said, looking briefly gloomy, “maybe my mother went to search for that key.” 

“Huh…?” I grunted. 

But Asuna seemed to understand. “Yes, I think that’s possible. Terro the gardener was following Cylon’s orders, but while he knew he was supposed to paralyze us and locked us in the dungeon beneath the mansion, I don’t think he actually knew the purpose of that mission. So I don’t think that he would’ve been able to explain what happened to the golden key to Theano…” 

“Yes, when Terro visited the night before Mother disappeared, I was there, too. But he didn’t mention anything about a key.” 

“So…did Theano go to the hideout in Suribus? But the basement dungeon won’t open without this key, so she would have known the key was removed. After Cylon was killed, only the brigands and our group could have the key…so has she been searching for us for the past three days…?” I wondered. 

Kizmel said, “No, that is not probable. The one with the golden key would likely have an iron key, and Theano knew that the two iron keys reacted, so if she wanted to find the current holder, she wouldn’t leave her own iron key at home like that.” 

“Oh…yeah. Good point…” 

Trying to find the other keyholder without bringing her own key would be like trying to find the seven somethingballs without the so-and-so radar. So where was Theano, then…? 

“Think carefully, Kirito,” Kizmel said, like a big sister or teacher. I gaped. “Huh? About what?” 

“A key does nothing on its own. For a key to be stolen, there must be a place where it is used.” 

“Oh…I—I get it now,” I mumbled, looking to the northern sky. Over the roofs of the wood-block houses lining the little alley, the chalk-white mansion could be seen at the far north end of town. 

After she heard the story from Terro, Theano must have deduced that the purpose of the brigands who attacked Cylon was to steal the golden key. Of course, Morte’s real aim was not the key, but our lives; yet, there was no way Theano could have known that. 

If she was looking for the brigands who stole the golden key, she wouldn’t need the iron key, and in the low probability that different people had the golden and iron keys, it would be a waste of time. More importantly, as Kizmel said, a far better choice would be to stake out the place where the brigands would need to use that key. 

When we fought together in the beta, Theano was a clever and patient warrior. It was quite possible that she was hiding out near the entrance to the basement dungeon for the thieves to arrive. Unfortunately, that was the biggest waste of time of them all. I still had the golden key, and Morte’s gang seemed to have no interest in keys or cubes. 

“…If Theano’s at the mansion, we should go find her and explain the situation…” I suggested. Kizmel and Asuna agreed, but Myia said nothing. 

A few seconds later, her masked face rose, and as quietly as was still audible, she said, “Kirito, Asuna…My father deceived you, poisoned and abducted you, and hoped to force a dangerous duty upon you. Evil acts only beget more evil…It was divine punishment when he was attacked and killed by those brigands. If my mother is trying to avenge his death, you have no obligation to help her. I only wanted to warn you of the danger around…so why are you going to these lengths?” 

“Um…well…” 

Her question was perfectly reasonable, but I had no answer. Theano had saved me—but only in the beta test. She didn’t know my name or face in this version of the world, so she had no reason to help avenge the death of Cylon, who had paralyzed Asuna and me and stuffed us into sacks. The “Curse of Stachion” quest was still ongoing, of course, but Myia wouldn’t understand what that was, and I was rapidly losing interest in whatever the “correct” route for this quest was. 

I just didn’t know how to actually explain all this. But luckily, instead, Asuna circled around Myia’s front and bent down. “It’s not about logic or reason. You tried to warn us about the danger we were in. If you’re in trouble, too, then of course we’ll help. You’re worried about your mother, aren’t you?” 

“……” 

Myia said nothing for many seconds, before finally nodding her head. 

“…Yes. Um…thank you, Asuna, Kirito, and Kizmel.” 

“It is no matter. I have my own meaningful connection to those ones who attacked us, too,” said Kizmel with a smile. Then she asked, “But, Myia, how long are you going to continue wearing that mask? The poison is long gone.” 

“Oh…uhhh…” Myia lifted her hands up to the side of the mask before turning to look at Asuna. “Um, do you mind if I borrow this mask just a bit longer?” 

“Huh…? It’s all right, of course. But isn’t it stuffy?” 

“I’m fine. I feel more secure when I have this on.” 

“Oh…” 

Asuna looked skeptical still—but then she froze. I understood what she was thinking. The gas mask Myia had on belonged to Cylon. They’d been apart for ten years—possibly she had never actually met him—but now the young girl was able to smell her father in that mask. If it put her at peace, how could we demand she take it off? Even if it meant the pretty young swordgirl’s looks were diminished. 

My partner straightened up again and put her hand on Myia’s back. “In that case, let’s go to the lord’s mansion together. I bet we’ll find your mother there.” 

“Okay!” Myia said brightly. 

Just then, a fourth HP bar appeared under the three already present in the upper-left corner of my view. When I saw the little number next to the name MYIA, I very nearly shouted “Whuzmeen?!”—an abbreviation of “What does that mean?” 

Currently, my level was 20, and Asuna’s was 19. After splitting off on the fifth floor, Kizmel passed us to reach 21—and Myia’s level was 23. 

Kizmel was an elite-class NPC whose stats were higher than other NPCs or monsters of her same level, so the comparison wasn’t direct, but at the very least, this meant Myia had battle power to match Kizmel’s. 

I’m glad she didn’t suspect me of killing Cylon, I thought. In fact, at this rate, we’re going to end up with more NPCs than party members soon. 

Feeling a bit awkward and self-conscious, I trudged through the gate into the alley.