Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 7 - Chapter 1

1

“IT’S HOT!”

That was the first thought that escaped the lips of my current combat partner upon teleporting to the seventh floor.

“So hot?!” she repeated for emphasis, scowling upward. For structural reasons, we couldn’t see the blue sky or the sun itself, but the light that radiated down from the bottom of the floor above us was undeniably stronger here than on the sixth floor.

“It’s supposed to be midwinter here…so why is it so hot? In fact, when we stopped by for a bit last night, wasn’t it a lot cooler than this?” she asked, turning back to me.

I shrugged. “I feel like I mentioned somewhere along the way that it depends on the specific floor whether they model the real-world season or not…This one probably just ignores the season entirely. It was cool last night, but it wasn’t cold, right?”

“I know, but it’s January 5. It feels like it’s eighty-one degrees here,” she said, an oddly specific number to quote. Elsewhere around the teleport square, there was only a handful of other players, but all the same, she hurried over to the shade of the broadleaf trees at the edge, then opened her player menu.

After a quick manipulation of her equipment mannequin, she removed her red hooded cape. Underneath it were a thin breastplate and a leather skirt that stopped just above the knees.

With a shake of her lustrous chestnut-brown hair and an yequally long sigh, my partner, the level-21 fencer Asuna, looked me over with a grimace.

“Kirito, why don’t you take off that coat? It’s making me sweat just looking at it.”

“Uh, I dunno…” I said, looking down at my avatar. “Your hooded cape is more or less a cosmetic item, but my coat is my primary source of armor…If I take this off, I’ll lose most of my defense.”

“Not in the safety of town, you won’t.”

“True…”

Logically, she was correct, but the memory of being attacked by an NPC assassin in the midst of the sixth-floor town was still fresh in my mind. I at least wanted to stay fully equipped outdoors, but it was true that the interior of my black-leather coat was rising on the sweat index.

The town attack was part of a forced event, so I shouldn’t have to worry about it happening again, I told myself, and I went into my menu to return the Coat of Midnight to my inventory. Underneath, I wore a breastplate similar to Asuna’s, a thin shirt, and long pants. That would be much cooler to wear—I thought.

“Doesn’t really change much…” murmured the fencer, staring me up and down. “I think it’s the all-black thing. It just looks hot. Don’t you ever feel like wearing a different color, Mr. Black?”

“W-well…you’ve been wearing red ever since I first met you,” I argued back.

Asuna glanced at the red tunic she was wearing and looked up with a smirk. “I wear other colors here and there.”

“Uh…you do…?”

“When I’m relaxing at the inn, yes. But when we’re outside, I have no choice. I have to wear what gives me the best defense.”

“Y-yeah, well, that’s what I was saying!” I argued, but the truth was, defensive numbers weren’t the only reason I wore nothing but black. My main coat was the Last Hit bonus prize for beating the first-floor boss, so the color wasn’t my choice, but the shirt and pants were regular store-bought clothes, and I could choose a different look if I felt like it.

Technically, I could claim another practical reason—that dark-colored gear offered a bonus to Hiding—but that could also backfire, depending on the terrain and brightness. I’d chosen dark blue when I created my character, and I didn’t consider myself to have always been enamored with black or anything like that. Maybe there was some connection to the fact that my middle school uniform was the stuffy, traditional gakuran, a long-sleeved, high-collared jacket, that made me feel comfortable in dark colors…

I was pondering this very belated topic when Asuna snuck up and patted me on the back. “Well, I’d feel weird if you started wearing white or orange, so I guess I’ll put up with you looking sweaty. Anyway, let’s get moving.”

“Moving…Where?”

“It’s our first time in this town, right? Well, second…But obviously, I’m talking about lunch. Do you have any recs?”

“Ah…Let’s see…”

I blinked and turned to survey the square.

Lectio, the main town of the seventh floor, had a very orthodox design by the standards of Aincrad. At the edges of the teleport square were homes and shops built from stone, wood, and plaster in the half-timbered style.

In contrast to the board-game-like town of the sixth floor, Stachion, the roads leading outward from the circular plaza here were complex and confusing, and I spent several days based out of this town during the beta test. I tried out a number of restaurants in that time, of course, but my memory of them was oddly faint.

“Lectio, Lectio…The best dish of Lectio was…”

I tried to summon my memories, but they were proving stubborn. It was as though someone had clamped a lid down on my mind…

“Ah…”

I gasped, at last realizing why my memories of this place were hazy.

I was the one who put that lid on them. It was a place where I’d experienced great sadness.

Recalling those tragic memories was the icebreaker that made them all come flooding back in miserable detail…

But for now, I let them run off into a side tributary and focused on Asuna’s question.

“Sadly, there wasn’t really anything in the beta that I’d call a great specialty here. For one thing, Lectio isn’t the main encampment of the seventh floor.”

“Huh? But it’s the main town, isn’t it?”

“On paper, yes. Anyway, I can explain that part later. Let’s get to a restaurant first. Umm…I think that one over there sells pita-ish sandwiches, the one in that direction has chicken-ish rice, and the one that way serves some spicy-ish stew.”

“…What’s with all the -ish foods?” Asuna asked suspiciously. Then she followed it up with, “When you say chicken and rice, is that Japanese style or Singaporean style?”

“Huh…? What’s the difference…?”

“Japanese-style chicken and rice is kind of like an omurice. It’s basically fried rice with chicken, flavored with ketchup. Singapore-style chicken and rice is thin-sliced poached chicken over ginger-flavored rice. It’s called Hainan chicken, or khao man gai,” she explained smoothly. I just stared at her.

When I met her on the first floor, she said stuff like “I didn’t come to this town to eat good food,” but now that we’d been working together all the way up to the seventh floor, I could say with certainty that Asuna’s knowledge of food outclassed the average SAO player’s by far. I would have thought that meant she liked to cook food as much as she enjoyed eating it, but the five skills Asuna currently owned were Rapiers, Light Metal Armor, Tailoring, Sprinting, and most likely, Two-Handed Lances. It was too early to have two crafting skills at this point, but why did she pick Tailoring instead of Cooking? And why was she working on Two-Handed Lances, a skill with hardly any use for her…?

We’d been partners for over a month at this point, but there were still so many things I didn’t know about her, I realized.

“It was probably more on the Singaporean side. I don’t remember if the rice was ginger flavored, though.”

“Why are you so fuzzy on this one…? Regardless, let’s go to that one.”

“You like Hainan gai?”

“You’re mixing them up. It’s Hainan chicken or khao man gai!” she snipped. Then she added, “It’s not me, it’s my br…my family that likes it. I just felt like having it, since it’s been a while.”

“…Oh.”

I grinned to hide my surprise. It was extremely rare for Asuna to speak about her real family. The last time I could remember her doing so was in Yofel Castle on the fourth floor, when she’d told me that her Christmases on the other side were spent eating cake all alone, waiting for her father and mother to come back home.

Be that as it may, I had no problem with having chicken and rice for our first meal on the seventh floor.

“Let’s go, then. Right this way, madam,” I offered, bowing obsequiously and pointing an upturned hand in the right direction. Asuna sniffed smugly and took the lead.

We headed down a path southwest from the teleport square and, following vague memories, turned right once and left once. A pleasant smell hung in the area. Asuna’s nose started twitching, and she smiled.

“Yes, this does have the smell of some proper chicken and rice.”

“Just don’t expect the exact thing,” I replied, although my hunger gauge was nearly at its maximum, too.

The Irrational Cube, boss of the sixth floor, went down around eleven o’clock last night. Asuna and I went up the staircase from the boss chamber to the seventh floor and activated the teleporter in the main town there, then returned to Stachion to escort the NPCs Theano and Myia home after their help in the fight. We stayed at an inn in Stachion because we were utterly exhausted, and I slept a dead, dreamless sleep until nine in the morning.

The bulk of the frontline players would have been busy working on the seventh floor by then, so we spent an hour relaxing around the place before checking out, then teleported back to Lectio through the gate. So looking backward, the last time I ate anything was before entering the sixth-floor labyrinth tower. And that had only been an informal meal of a doner sandwich from a cart. I couldn’t even remember the last time we sat down and took our time eating at a table.

Clearly she was thinking the same thing, because Asuna’s pace picked up as we rounded the last corner and came to the restaurant on the right side.

It was a very simple business with a round wooden sign hanging over the open doors. The relief carving on the sign said in English: MIN’S EATERY.

“Min’s Eatery…? What’s an eatery?” I asked, unfamiliar with the word.

Asuna explained, “It’s like a casual restaurant or a café. This place looks small…I hope there’s an open table.”

Her prayers were answered—there was no one in the place. It was a bit too early for lunch, and the way to get here was convoluted and out of the way, so if I had to guess, I’d say hardly any players knew this even existed yet.

The smaller-scale eatery term was accurate: There were six spots at the counter and a pair of tables for two, nothing more. We sat down at one of the tables, and before we could even look at a menu, a voice from behind the counter bellowed, “Welcome! What’ll it be?”

“H-hey, give us a second!” I protested to the plump woman there, whom I took to be Min herself. I opened the wooden menu on the table so we could look at it. As a general rule, the menus and signs for NPC shops in Aincrad were written in English. At first, I found it difficult to read and decipher them, but over time you started to figure it out—or at least get used to the concept—and so lately I felt like just glancing over the letters was enough to tell me what they were. Maybe.

Fortunately, the folding menu had only two starters, two main dishes, and four drinks. At a glance, the starters looked like salad and soup, and both of the main dishes were rice-based. One was chicken, as I remembered, and the other one looked like basil rice. Both dishes were forty col for a large portion and thirty for the regular size. That was a reasonable price for the seventh floor, considering it was meant to be a light meal. However…

“…Basil rice? Is that the same basil that comes on pizzas and stuff?”

“…I would assume so. It’s spelled the same,” agreed Asuna.

Under my breath, I complained, “But…basil’s just a leaf! They’re going to charge the same price for leaves and rice as they do for chicken and rice? That’s crazy!”

“I don’t know why you’re complaining to me………Ah!” She blinked with surprise, then smiled. “I get it! I don’t think this is just leaves on rice. It must be kaphrao.”

“Ka…kaphrao? Have I heard of that before…?” I wondered.

She patiently explained, “I was just telling you that the name of Singaporean chicken and rice is khao man gai, right? That comes from Thai. And the two biggest rice dishes in Thailand are khao man gai and kaphrao.”

“Ohhh…and what is kaphrao?”

“It’s often just called kaphrao rice in Japan. You stir-fry chicken or pork with basil, then serve it with rice.”

“Ohhhh…I don’t think this place served that during the beta, though.”

“Maybe the owner went to study in Thailand before the game launched,” she said with a very serious expression; I couldn’t tell if she was joking. Asuna then sighed and said, “I can’t keep waiting. If you don’t decide what to order in the next five seconds, I’m making the decision.”

“Ah! W-wait a sec!” I cried, staring at the two items on the menu. Do I go with the safe choice of chicken and rice? Or live on the wild side and try the unknown kaphrao rice? I let myself waver for four seconds, until inspiration struck.

“…Wanna order both and share them?”

“That’s a good idea,” agreed Asuna. Then she added quietly, “Make them both larges.”

That time spent studying in Thailand must have served her well, because Min’s chicken rice and kaphrao rice left nothing to be desired. Maybe the “secret sauce” of coming in absolutely famished helped, but I was certain that the chicken was nothing at all like the beta test dish of simple boiled chicken on rice. The kaphrao rice was a new taste for me, spicy and delicious.

Asuna and I finished off our shared dishes in less than three minutes, washed it down with vanilla-scented tea, and sighed with great satisfaction.

“…Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“You said this town wasn’t really famous for any food. I’d say this was quite the find, wouldn’t you?” Asuna asked, arching her eyebrow.

I replied with what I’d been thinking about as I ate: “It wasn’t this good in the beta. It was like…dry, lonely rice with underwhelming pieces of chicken…”

“But it was definitely rice, right? Isn’t this the first place in Aincrad we’ve seen that sells a proper rice dish?”

“Oh…”

She might have been right about that. I’d eaten some porridge gruel in the dark elf camp on the third floor, but that was closer to barley boiled in sweet milk, with nuts and dried fruits sprinkled on top. I wouldn’t have called that a rice dish, by any means.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “But the rice here is long-grain rice, isn’t it? That’s good, too, but it doesn’t give you that good ricey feeling after a full meal that short-grain rice does.”

“…How do you know about long-grain and short-grain rice but have never heard of khao man gai and kaphrao?” Asuna asked in disbelief.

“Uhhh…because I went on a field trip in elementary school to try out planting rice in a paddy…?”

“Ohhh, that’s nice. We didn’t get to do that…Although I did go catching bugs in a paddy once,” Asuna said with a smile. She quickly composed herself and cleared her throat, feeling like she’d been talking too much about the real world.

“At any rate,” she continued, “this was really delicious. Thank you for showing me to this wonderful place.”

“Y-you’re welcome. Doesn’t feel like we’re celebrating a New Year’s meal, though.”

“First of all, it’s already January 5, and it’s sweltering outside. They could serve a traditional New Year’s dish here, and it still wouldn’t feel right,” she said with a shrug, finishing her iced tea and looking out the window. The interior had good ventilation, so it was fairly cool, but the sunlight flooding through the noontime window was as full and suffocating as a midsummer’s day.

Because the beta test had occurred in August, every floor felt warm and summery, but none had been so bad that it felt uncomfortable. Maybe the heat of the seventh floor had been amped up, just like the flavor of the chicken and rice here. If so, given how unpleasant it already was for Asuna and me in our light armor, it was going to be hell for the tank players decked out in full-metal plate armor. The same could be said for the dark elves, who didn’t seem to enjoy the heat.

Asuna was thinking the same thing. “I hope Kizmel’s all right,” she murmured.

“Hmm…Well, it might be hot here, but there’s plenty of greenery and water. I don’t think she’ll have as much trouble as in the dusty desert of the sixth floor,” I explained.

The fencer looked surprised by my comment. “No, I’m not talking about the heat. I mean about the keys.”

“…Oh, r-right.”

That should have been the primary concern.

Asuna and I were in the midst of the “Elf War” questline, on the side of the dark elves. We helped Kizmel, knight of Lyusula, with a sequence that saw us recovering one of the sacred keys on each floor. We’d found the Jade Key on the third floor, the Lapis Key on the fourth, the Amber Key on the fifth, and the Agate Key on the sixth, with two remaining. But an unforeseen event had caused all four sacred keys to fall into the hands of Kysarah, the adjutant of the enemy Fallen Elves.

The big problem was that it was unlikely to have been a preprogrammed part of the quest story.

There was a gang of player-killers out there in Aincrad, led by a mysterious man in a black poncho. At some point, they’d joined up with the Fallen and helped them steal the keys. All six keys were recoverable in the beta test, but we’d just lost them all partway through. This couldn’t have been part of the original questline story, because it happened through the interference of another player.

We parted ways with Kizmel just after it happened on the sixth floor. Kysarah broke her favorite saber, but I’d offered her an Elven Stout Sword as a replacement—it was my backup weapon—so I wanted to believe that our connection wasn’t permanently severed. But Kizmel had to report to the dark elf high priest or some other important figure to explain how she lost their sacred keys. There was a price to be paid for her failure.

Hoping to cheer Asuna up, I did my very best to enunciate loudly and clearly. “Remember what Kizmel said when we left her? I am one of the queen’s own royal Pagoda Knights. Only Her Majesty and the knight commander have the right to formally rebook me. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Once we get started on the next chapter of the quest on this floor, we’ll see her soon after.”

“…Rebuke.”

“What?”

“It’s rebuke, not rebook. It means to punish someone for their failure,” Asuna explained, her worry replaced by annoyance. She exhaled and looked me in the eyes. “Yes, you’re right. If I have enough time to sit around moping, it would be better spent doing something. Now that we’re full again, shall we get started on the seventh floor?”

My temporary partner extended her fist across the table. I smirked.

“You bet. First things first, though—we gotta upgrade our equipment.”

I pounded her knuckles, and we got to our feet.