Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 7 - Chapter 10

10

THE SOUND OF THE CELL CLOSING WAS SURPRISINGLY soft.

It wasn’t due to the fact that the dark elf soldiers who took us to the cell were particularly gentlemanly. It was because the entire structure, as sturdy as it looked, was built of wood.

When the captain and his four soldiers left for the hallway and marched out of earshot, I took a look around the prison cell.

It was a small space, with two simple beds and one table. There was a pitcher of water and cups on the table. Instead of a lantern, a bonfire shroom glowed from a fixture on the wall.

I went over to the table and picked up the pitcher to examine it. The body was made of glass, but the handle was wood; the cups, meanwhile, were entirely wooden. The table and beds were constructed of complex tongue-and-groove joints, without a single visible nail. It seemed that the prison—and likely the entire palace—was made without any metal at all. The only exceptions were the weapons and armor the dark elves used.

Out of sheer habit, I lifted my hand to my left side, but there was no sword to touch. The Sword of Eventide, Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier, and both of our Sigils of Lyusula had been confiscated when they took us here and put in a small storage room of some kind.

I stifled a sigh, grabbed a cup, and poured some water, sniffing it just in case before I drank it. No poison or paralysis debuff icons appeared, so I poured more water into the other cup and handed it to Asuna, who stood still in the center of the cell.

“Come on, drink up. It’s just water.”

“……Okay,” she said, taking the cup with both hands and drinking it rather slowly. It wasn’t very cold water, but it had the effect of calming her down a little; some light returned to her empty eyes. She blinked twice, then once more, and looked at me.

“…I wonder if Kizmel’s being held in the cells here, too.”

It was the question of the moment. I considered it briefly before replying, “If so, it’s not anywhere near us. If she were close by, she’d have called for us already. Let’s see…I wonder if it’ll show up on the map…”

I opened my window and switched to the map tab. Fortunately, it displayed a map of Harin Tree Palace, so we examined it together. Most of it was still grayed out, but we could at least take a guess at the structure of the prison.

“This cell we’re in now is on the west side of the second basement level. The stairs and the guard station are in the center. That tells me there’s probably cells on the east side, too.”

“And Kizmel is there?”

“It’s possible,” I said.

Asuna bit her lip. Eventually, through a voice hoarse with concealed pain, she said, “You remember what Kizmel said…when we asked her about having to take responsibility for losing the sacred keys on the sixth floor.”

“Yeah…She said, ‘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 mean, rebuke me.”

“And like she said, I don’t think Kizmel was punished in Castle Galey. If that were going to happen, she would’ve been put in the cells there. So…why did they lock her up here, on the seventh floor…?”

“Hmmm…”

Asuna’s question was a good one. I stared up at the wood-paneled ceiling and mulled aloud, “If you interpret things as strictly as possible, that would mean that someone here at Harin Tree Palace has the authority to imprison Kizmel…either the commander of the Pagoda Knights or the dark elf queen herself. But I don’t think that’s actually possible. Those two don’t leave their castle on the ninth floor. Which means…there’s someone else here at this base that Kizmel doesn’t know…someone with the same power as her commander?”

“Who would that be, for example?”

“For example, a different knights brigade, like…uhhh…”

When I got lost, Asuna was there to fill in the blanks in my memory.

“The Sandalwood Knights and Trifoliate Knights.”

“Right, one of their commanders.”

“But if the Pagoda Knights’ commander doesn’t leave the castle, wouldn’t the same be true for the others?”

“…Good point,” I had to admit. I hesitated, then added, “I’m going to spoil you a bit here…but when you get to the castle on the ninth floor, you end up taking some pretty long fetch quests for each of the three knight commanders. If any of them aren’t present at the castle anymore, you wouldn’t be able to take their quest or turn it in.”

“I see…”

Asuna’s brows creased, and she looked down, thinking hard. Then her head shot up.

“Oh…that’s it! That’s what we need to check! The quest log!”

“Oh.”

I stared into her hazel-brown eyes, then quickly ran my finger along the open player window, switching from the map tab to the quest tab, then opening the “Elf War” campaign quest tree. There was a list of the completed quests from the previous floors—the “Jade Key,” the “Lapis Key,” the “Amber Key,” the “Agate Key”—and then, at the bottom, a new title: the “Ruby Key.”

I tapped the words to expand the tree further, bringing up the title of the first of the latest string of quests, presumably. It was “Prisoners of the Tree Palace.”

Asuna and I put our heads together to read the tiny font on the quest log.

YOU HAVE BEEN SUSPECTED OF WORKING WITH THE FALLEN ELVES AND IMPRISONED IN THE CELLS OF HARIN TREE PALACE. TO CLEAR YOUR CHARGES, YOU MUST FIND A WAY TO REJOIN KIZMEL. START BY ESCAPING YOUR CELL AND RECOVERING YOUR CONFISCATED WEAPONS.

“…”

We were silent for three seconds, then we opened our mouths at the same time.

I made a You first gesture, so Asuna said quietly, “Does this mean that the Fallen Elves stealing the four keys was all part of the story? Or is this like what happened with Cylon…?”

“And someone—or something—has happened that was outside the expected bounds of the story line, so the quest has been altered to reflect that,” I finished for her.

When the ax warrior Morte killed Cylon, the lord of Stachion on the sixth floor, I assumed it meant the “Curse of Stachion” quest was unfinishable. But the story absorbed the fact that another player had killed Cylon and guided us down a new path. The same thing was probably happening again here.

“…If so, we should probably assume that if the guards spot us escaping, they’re not just going to put us back in here.”

“That’s true…It might even lead to them executing us. What should we do? Stay here and wait?”

“No,” Asuna said at once. She stared at me with firm intent in her eyes. “The keys were stolen because Kizmel was trying to save us. If she’s being tried for a crime because of that, we need to clear her charges and restore her honor at once.”

“…Agreed,” I said, closing my window. “So that means our first step is escape. Those bars are wood, from what I can tell, and I could probably break them with a sword skill from my sub-weapon, but it’ll make a ton of noise…”

“Hmm…It would be one thing if we just had to run outside to freedom, but we need to get our weapons back and find Kizmel, too,” Asuna grumbled. She walked up to the bars that separated the cell from the hallway.

I stood next to her, looking thoroughly. The wooden bars, with eyes and wood grain and all, were not rounded but rectangular. It was much like the prison bars in classic Japanese samurai movies. Each side was about an inch across, and they were placed at intervals of about six inches, vertically and horizontally. Even the Rat couldn’t get through these bars.

That idea brought me back to our other duty. We were supposed to be gathering twenty ripe narsos fruits and delivering them to Nirrnir’s room in Volupta by noon—or one o’clock at the latest.

The time was 5:40 AM. There was still lots of time, but at this point, Asuna’s idea to leave three hours early was a brilliant one. In order to make use of this good fortune, we needed to meet up with Kizmel as quickly as possible and escape Harin Tree Palace.

I gripped one of the shining wooden bars and squeezed hard. I believed that my strength stat was among the higher levels in the frontline group, but this bar wasn’t even creaking, much less breaking in half.

Next, I pulled a knife out of my inventory to see if I could cut the wood. But it was as though the bar had been finished with some kind of oil. The blade just slipped off the surface and couldn’t find purchase.

I was thinking that it might be impossible to break the bars without making noise, when Asuna came over to me after examining the lock part of the door.

“I don’t think we can get out with the Lock-picking skill.”

“That figures…but we don’t have time to put that into one of our slots and level it up from nothing…”

“I’m thinking that the wood material is the key to this. You don’t have a saw, do you?”

“I do not…If I’d known it was going to come to this, I would’ve made off with one of that old shipbuilder’s saws from the fourth floor.”

“Or bought it, like a normal person,” Asuna said, side-eyeing me. She traced the cornered wood with her finger. “I suppose…we could get a rat to chew through it…”

She was referring to a real rat, not Argo, of course. But the cell was clean, and I didn’t see any holes in the baseboard where a family of rodents might be living.

“Or maybe…dump water on it and soften it up…”

We did have plenty of water, but it would probably take an entire month to rot away the wood enough to break it apart.

I scolded myself for only cutting down Asuna’s ideas and not coming up with any of my own. But no matter how hard I thought, I wasn’t reaching any brilliant conclusions. I was starting to think of desperate gambles like setting fire to the cage and using a sword skill in the chaos that ensued…when an idea arrived fully formed.

“…Fire,” I muttered.

Asuna looked at me in surprise. “Fire…? You’re going to start a fire in here?”

“No, not to burn the bars. To char them. If we cook them from a proper distance, it should drastically reduce their structural strength.”

“But…it can’t just be one spot. If we want to make a hole large enough for us to crawl through, we’ll need to burn at least ten different spots on the bars…”

“Nope. Just one.”

I pressed Asuna to move her out of the way, then stood in front of the door. It was also made of the same series of bars, except for the lock, which was enclosed inside a sturdy-looking box. And the mechanisms inside were probably—no, definitely—made of wood, too. If we toasted it for long enough from the outside, it should carbonize the insides.

Asuna’s face lit up with surprise, and I opened my inventory to remove a torch. I was just about to light it when I realized something very important.

“Oh…”

“Wh-what’s wrong?”

“Dammit! If we light it here, all the bonfire shrooms in the prison are going to go out in a chain reaction. If the shrooms in the guard station go out, too, they’ll know we’re using fire…”

I was so disappointed that I nearly threw the torch on the floor, but Asuna gripped my arm. “It’s too early to give up. All we have to do is put out the fire before the chain reaction gets to the guard station, right?”

“Well…technically…”

“I’ll watch the shrooms in the hallway from here. When I give the signal, put out the fire immediately.”

“……”

It was a real tightrope act. But it didn’t feel like we’d come up with a better plan or have the time to try.

“Fine…Uhhh…”

I pressed my face to the bars and looked down the hallway. There were bonfire shroom candlesticks on the walls between the cells, a line of green light that extended to the center of the second basement level, where the guard station would be.

“Let’s say the one closest to us is number one. Tell me when…two, three, four, five…six of them go out.”

“Got it. I’ll tap your shoulder,” said my partner. With the plan set, I crouched in front of the lock.

Taking up one square of the bar pattern—meaning a space six inches to a side—was a box containing a lock intricate enough that even dexterous Asuna would give up trying to solve it. But to be that delicate, it had to have low durability. I checked one more time to see that no one was patrolling the hallway, then tapped the torch and hit the IGNITE button.

A second after the orange flames appeared, the bonfire shroom lighting up the cell went out. Next, the mushrooms lining the hallway would go out. Keeping my panic in check, I lowered the flames toward the lock. The dark-brown wood did not change in any way at first, but eventually its surface got a little bit darker, and a tendril of smoke rose from it.

I felt a smack on my shoulder, and I quickly pressed the EXTINGUISH button on the pop-up window, which I’d left open for this purpose.

The torch instantly went out, plunging the cell into darkness. I waited, holding my breath, until the bonfire shroom on the wall behind us began to glow again. Every few seconds, one of the lights in the darkened hallway came back on.

“…Did that timing seem like it worked?” I whispered.

After a moment, Asuna replied, “Yes, I don’t hear anyone coming from the station. I just realized, though…if there were any prisoners in the other cells around us, they would have made some noise…”

“True…Well, I guess that means it worked. Let’s try it again. Keep watch!”

“On it.”

Asuna took her position again, and I lit the torch. Each round of this gave me about ten seconds of time. Considering the possibility that soldiers might be patrolling the hallways in addition to waiting in the station, we couldn’t take too long at this. I had to judge the exact effective distance that wouldn’t light the lock on fire but would still carbonize it as quickly as possible.

The second heating burned the center of the wooden plate black. The third turned it red and heated, and the fourth caused cracks to spiral outward. In the real world, it would probably take significantly more powerful flames a longer amount of time to have the same effect, but dried wood in Aincrad was especially susceptible to fire.

On the fifth attempt, I nearly set it on fire and quickly batted it out with my bare hand. It felt hot, and it took a tiny bit of HP, but that didn’t matter. Asuna focused on her watch and was considerate enough not to say anything.

On the sixth attempt, the center of the wooden plate turned to ash and crumbled, revealing the gears and deadbolt inside. As I suspected, they were all made of wood. The craftsmanship was extremely fine—it was a work of art. With a silent apology to the dark elf master who created it, I brought the flames close for a seventh time.

A number of gears carbonized before my eyes and crumbled away, followed by some faint sounds from the deadbolt attached to the doorframe as it came loose from the contraption. I put out the torch at once and got to my feet.

“It’s open!”

“GJ!” Asuna said in a rare instance of gamer lingo, and we did a quick fist bump. I pushed the door gently, and it briefly pushed back but then came loose as flecks of charred wood were scraped free. Once we were sure there was no one in the corridor in either direction, we snuck out of the cell.

“First things first, we need to get our weapons,” I murmured.

Asuna looked worried. “The room where they took our swords was next to the guard station. Can we even get inside without them noticing?”

“It’ll be devastating if the room is locked. Still, we just have to figure it out.”

“True.”

We stopped talking and snuck along the hallway, checking at each set of cells on either side to ensure they were empty before proceeding. After we moved about sixty feet forward, a rectangular hall came into view ahead. That was the center of the second basement level. There was supposed to be an ascending staircase on the south side of it, with the guard station and storeroom side by side on the north end. We kept moving, even more carefully this time, until we could look around the corner of the hallway toward the station.

Just as I remembered, there were two doors side by side on the wall. Near the left door was a barred window. Bonfire shroom light much brighter than in the cells shone through it, accompanied by voices.

I made eye contact with Asuna, then crossed the hall in a crouch, until I was pressed against the wall just under the window. The volume of the voices increased, so that I could make out what they were saying.

“…sn’t been a new prisoner in those cells in thirty years.”

“And humankind, no less.”

“They were fools for helping the Fallen.”

“I presume they offered longer life, like usual.”

“Humans always fall for that one.”

Asuna’s nostrils flared with indignation. I felt the same way, but it was imperative that we stay calm and careful right then.

Based on the voices, there were two guards in the station now. There were occasional sounds of tableware clattering, so they were probably eating breakfast. They didn’t seem likely to leave the room for a little while.

We left the window and headed over to the door of the adjacent storage room. Praying that it wasn’t locked, I examined the door—no lock at all. I quickly held the handle down, then pushed very slowly so as not to make any noise, and slipped inside through the crack.

As soon as Asuna was inside, I closed the door, and we shared a sigh of relief.

The dividing wall seemed thin, because we could still faintly hear the guards talking. We couldn’t hold a normal conversation in here.

I gestured and said “Let’s look for the weapons,” then stood up to look around the storeroom. It was about the size of the cells, with three walls taken up by shelves and stands for swords and armor.

There were tons of wooden boxes and leather gloves and such stacked up on the shelves, and there were swords of all sizes stuck into the holders. If not for the situation, I would be jumping for joy, thinking it was a mountain of treasure, but the priority now was to recover our swords—and hopefully the rings, too.

I started by examining one of the sword stands, which was built much the same way as an umbrella holder from the real world. All the swords jammed into it were on the verge of falling apart, as though they’d been there for decades. If I treated them too roughly, I could easily knock off their hilts and knuckle guards.

For a minute or so, I picked through them with my fingertips. Annoyingly, I finally found some sheaths with a familiar color and shape, all the way in the back, as though they had been placed there as a prank. Still, this was a relief.

Not far away, Asuna waved to say Found it! But she was pointing at a different sword stand, of course.

I pulled the Sword of Eventide and Chivalric Rapier free, then looked over to where Asuna was pointing. It was a longsword with details that were slightly different from the usual dark elven make, along with a saber in a black-leather sheath.

That settled it. The longsword was the Elven Stout Sword we’d taken from the forest elf captain. And the saber was Kizmel’s weapon, which had been snapped by Kysarah, the Fallen Elf adjutant. We’d given Kizmel the forest elf sword to use after her saber was broken. That all but confirmed that Kizmel was somewhere in this prison.

I handed Asuna her rapier and mounted my sword on my back, then pulled the stout sword and saber out of the stand together. But something in my haste must have caused my hands to slip. An old-fashioned sword stuck in the same hole as those two wobbled and started to lean toward the adjacent hole.

Aaaaah!

I screamed silently. If the sword smacked against another, which pushed the next one, and so on, like a stack of dominoes, it would make a tremendous clatter. I wanted to grab the sword to stop it, but my hands were full. I’d have to stop it with my mouth or use psychic powers to keep it in place…

A hand shot forward and blocked it just in the nick of time. Asuna was leaning over as far as she possibly could, propping up the old sword by her fingertips. I started to relax with relief, but then it was Asuna who was losing her balance.

Oh, dear God! I prayed, sticking the arm holding Kizmel’s saber under her body. I didn’t have time to get the right spot, so it ended up taking the brunt of her chest. Through my arm, I felt the toughness of her breastplate—and the resiliency of what was behind it.

Much, much later, Asuna would wistfully say, “If we hadn’t been working together for a month already by that point, I would have tossed the swords and yelled my head off.”

Fortunately, Asuna’s avatar simply went as stiff as a board. She did not yell or rage.

With my right arm, I pushed the Asuna statue upright, bit by bit. Then I took a step back, and we looked at each other.

“…This sword is really heavy,” she murmured quietly. In her left hand was the aged sword that had nearly fallen.

“Hang on,” I whispered back at the same volume, putting the stout sword and saber into my inventory. With my hand free, I accepted the sword from Asuna; it was indeed quite hefty, much more so than my Sword of Eventide.

There was a large knuckle guard attached to the hilt, and its white-leather sheath was slightly curved. This wasn’t a longsword, but it was a saber like Kizmel’s. The whole thing was dirty, and there was even a spiderweb on the inside of the guard, so it didn’t look like a luxury item. Nevertheless, I put it into my inventory, too, just in case Kizmel found it easier to use.

That had been nerve-racking, but we completed our initial objective and got back our swords. Next up, I wanted the rings, but with the number of boxes and bags in the room, we’d need way more than just five or ten minutes. Of course, the purpose of the sigil was to allow you free entrance to any dark elf base, so the fact that we’d been arrested probably nullified that privilege.

I quietly explained as much to Asuna. She looked around the multiple stacked shelves at all the metal and wooden boxes—and leather and cloth bags.

“In that case,” she whispered, “couldn’t we just stick the boxes and bags into our inventories and look through them later? At least some of them, if not all.”

“……”

Her bold idea left me speechless. Time-limited item searches were a common event in RPGs, but taking the containers themselves out of the room had to be outside the bounds of the scenario writer’s intention.

On the other hand, all those boxes weren’t fixed to the shelf. If there was any worry, it was that taking them would be identified as theft and turn us into orange players, but if so, I should have received a warning at the point I put that antique saber into my item storage. We were outside the anti-criminal code area of town, so the only punishment we could suffer for stealing was through dark elf law, not the game system itself.

I reached out to the shelf and carefully lifted the wooden box that was placed on top of the pile of varied containers. There were no anti-theft alarms. The box was not especially heavy. I placed it atop the inventory window, and it vanished with a little flash of blue-light particles.

“……”

“……”

We shared a silent look, then began shoveling the boxes and bags into our inventory. Because our levels were significantly higher than the recommended number for this area, and the fact that we weren’t carrying a bunch of heavy weapons around, we had plenty of space. By the time we had both reached 90 percent of our carrying capacity, the number of containers had dwindled to under a third. The Sigils of Lyusula might be in one of the containers we didn’t grab, of course, but we didn’t want to load up to the maximum, in case our weight limit was crossed at an inopportune time and left us immobilized.

When our box thievery was complete, I closed my window and concentrated on my ears. The guards in the station next door were still talking. Even in an underground prison, the dark elves’ love of tea and chatter held true.

We opened the door again and headed into the open hall. On the wall opposite us was the stairway we’d been taken down less than an hour ago. On the right was the hallway leading to the cells on the west side. And as I expected (or hoped), there was a hallway leading to the east on the left. If Kizmel was a prisoner here, she would be that way.

I glanced at Asuna, then snuck down the eastern hallway.

Using the bonfire shroom light, we looked into each set of cells lining the corridor. The actual amount of light from the mushrooms was meager, but they stayed on, even in cells with no occupants, so a mere glance showed us the contents of each one as we passed.

But because of that, we rapidly ran lower and lower on cells to check. We were already halfway down the corridor and still hadn’t seen Kizmel yet.

There were eight cells on either side of the sixty-foot hallway, sixteen in total. Eight cells left to check…seven, six, five. Each of them was empty—and didn’t look like they’d been used in years, if not decades.

Our feet felt heavier and heavier as we neared the end. But we had to keep checking. Four more, three, two…

“…!!”

The instant we looked into the last cell, we both sucked in a sharp breath.

It took all of two seconds for our hopes to deflate. One of the two beds was occupied by a figure lying on its side, but the silhouette very obviously did not belong to Kizmel. The body was large for an elf and clearly male.

I held my gaze on him until a yellow cursor appeared. The name was DARK ELVEN PRISONER. That didn’t tell us who it was, but if he wasn’t Kizmel, we had no reason to talk to him. We’d just be ruining ourselves if he raised a fuss and brought the guards running.

I motioned for Asuna to back away, and I inched backward on my heels. The prisoner’s back was toward us, so he wouldn’t notice us unless we made noise.

Or so I thought. I hadn’t moved more than a foot when the prisoner said quietly, “You’re not elves. Who are you?”

We froze with shock, and the figure rose and turned to face us.

He was wearing a simple outfit of a cotton shirt and pants that had once been black but had faded to gray. His hair and beard had grown out to the point that I couldn’t even discern his features. Behind his hanging black bangs, I could see gleaming, intense eyes.

“W-we’re nobodies. We’ll just be leaving,” I managed to stammer, resuming my retreat.

“If you don’t answer me, I’ll call the guards,” his rusty voice said, nailing me down on the spot.

“Umm…I’m the human swordsman Kirito, and this is Asuna.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We’re looking for someone…”

“Who?”

His questions were short and direct, leaving me no time to think about lying to him. I just had to steel myself and tell the truth.

“A knight by the name of Kizmel. She was brought here within the last day, we believe…”

“Kizmel…from what family?” he asked, to our surprise. I looked to Asuna, but the fencer just shook her head.

I turned back to him and said, “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Hmm…Then I don’t know, either,” said the prisoner, reaching for his side table and pouring water from the pitcher to his wooden cup; they were the same things we had in our cell. He finished the water in one gulp and set down the cup, then asked, “And you were the ones who were brought here a little while ago?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then this knight Kizmel is not being held on this floor. I have been imprisoned here for thirty years, and you are the first prisoners since my arrival.”

“Thirty years…” I repeated, stunned.

A month ago, I would have assumed this was just the background for his story. After all, in 1993, thirty years before 2023, there was no SAO. There wasn’t even a single VRMMO with old-fashioned head-mounted displays.

But after meeting Kizmel and learning about the long history of war between the forest elves and the dark elves, my way of thinking had begun to change. If not for the human players diving into this server, they could run time in this world as fast as the server specs allowed, so it was possible that before SAO launched, they had compiled a history of the centuries since the Great Separation of Aincrad, if not even further into the past.

“Um…why are you in this cell?” asked Asuna over my shoulder, her voice hoarse.

The bearded man’s eyes fixed on Asuna. “For no reason that you need to know, human girl.”

He was lying on his side again, sending the message that our conversation was over.

But I persisted. I didn’t want to leave without learning something useful.

“Um, are there other cells here in Harin Tree Palace?”

The man didn’t say anything for several seconds, until at last I heard him snort. Something struck me as strange…but I couldn’t hold on to the thought, because he started speaking into the mushroom-lit gloom.

“There is also a prison in the priests’ living quarters on the seventh story. If the crime this Kizmel committed has to do with them, she may have been taken there.”

“B-but…Kizmel’s sword was in the storeroom down there…” I blurted out. The man rose up again.

“You got into the storeroom?”

“W-well, yes.”

“Hmm…And how did you get out of your cell without the guards noticing?”

“Uh…I used a torch to burn the lock on the door…”

“……”

The man’s broad shoulders trembled. A few moments later, I heard him uttering short, quiet sounds and realized at last that he was laughing.

Please don’t start screaming with laughter, I prayed. Fortunately, the chuckles got softer and softer until he was done. He shook his head, then said dryly, “I see…your human Art of Mystic Scribing. The guards certainly cannot inspect that.”

“Uh, y-yeah…” I replied, my mind racing.

We could use the same method to break the lock on this man’s cell, too. Following quest logic, if we freed this man, he would presumably help us. Assuming this story development was written by someone employed by Argus, that would be the proper answer.

But more than likely, our trip through the “Elf War” campaign questline was far off the track of its original scenario. Now that Akihiko Kayaba had turned SAO into what it was, and Argus was no longer managing the game, it was impossible to imagine a flesh-and-blood person carefully modifying quests for every living player. And if the game system itself was rewriting the quest in real time, I had to assume that the typical expectations were out the window.

This prisoner was a living human being—er, dark elf. Could he be trusted or not? That was the real question.

A thirty-year sentence in this underground prison meant he must have committed quite a crime. So what was it? He’d just said, “Nothing you need to know about, human.” So maybe there was another clue…

“Um, do you have any brothers?” Asuna asked out of the blue. I turned to look at her, stunned.

The man was surprised, too, it seemed. He blinked in silence, then replied, “What made you ask that?”

“Because I know a dark elf who looks very similar to you.”

In my head, I was thinking Whaaaaat? If Asuna knew him, then I knew him, too, presumably. But what dark elf did I know who looked like this prisoner with scraggly hair and a grown-out beard…? And speaking of male dark elves, the only ones I really “knew” to any extent were Viscount Leyshren Zed Yofilis at Yofel Castle, old Bouhroum at Castle Galey, and maybe Count Melan Gus Galeyon. The only thing any of them shared in common with this man was the color of their skin…

I felt another crackle of electricity run through the center of my brain. My eyes shot open.

No. There was another dark elf I knew—if you could use that verb.

Asuna waited until she was certain I’d figured it out, too. “He did not tell us his name, but he works as a blacksmith in a camp on the third floor. He strengthened this sword of mine.”

She walked closer to the cell, squeezing the grip of the Chivalric Rapier. She pulled it out of the sheath backhanded, then extended the pommel through the bars.

I would have taken several seconds to mull this one over before I acted. But there wasn’t a single ounce of hesitation in Asuna’s expression.

The prisoner stared at us through his long bangs, then abruptly stepped out of the bed. He stuck his feet into sandals that were barely more than scraps of material, then walked up to the bars. He grabbed the hilt of the rapier Asuna was holding toward him and pulled it into the cell.

He held it up near his forehead, allowing the light from the bonfire shroom on the wall behind him to illuminate the shining blade, then said, “Yes, I can see that Landeren tempered this sword. He produced nothing but junk before…but after thirty years, I suppose the bungler has learned a few things.”

Assuming Landeren was the name of that exceedingly unfriendly blacksmith, I was afraid to even imagine how he would react to being called a bungler. At the very least, I knew he’d do more than snort…and that was when I realized what had been setting off my déjà vu earlier. The way he exhaled through his nose was exactly the same as how the blacksmith had.

The man spun the rapier around, then stuck the hilt back through the bars. Asuna grabbed it, then took a step back.

“If you’ve done a service for my brother, then I should thank you. I will help you search for Kizmel the knight.”

I didn’t even have time to marvel over this sudden change in attitude when Asuna pointed out, “That’s very kind of you, but he was the one who did a service for us…”

“An elf blacksmith will only see the chance to work on a sword that fine a number of times in his life. I’m certain that the experience will have helped my little brother grow.”

“Are you a blacksmith, too?”

“……No,” the prisoner said, the bangs that hung to his nose swaying. “I did not have the talent. My brother had the blacksmith’s blood in his veins, like my father and grandfather…but I did not even have that…”

He stopped there, returning to the bed. I started to worry that he’d changed his mind about helping us, but instead of rolling back onto the mattress, he grabbed the faded sheet and carefully tore a strip from the corner. Then he used the makeshift rope to tie his long hair behind his head.

Revealed at last, the man’s face had all the sternness of a typical dark elf, despite his overgrown facial hair. By human years, he looked like he was in his late thirties. He was indeed quite similar to the blacksmith on the third floor—but there was one other feature that caused me to gasp.

Running across his face from cheek to cheek, about an inch under his eyes, was a sword scar. It was not a new wound, but it stood out starkly against his dark skin. It must have been quite deep when it was inflicted.

Sensing our eyes, the man ran his thumb along the mark and snorted. He strode up to the bars and eyed the direction of the guard station. Asuna and I glanced down the hallway. There was no sign of the guards leaving the room yet, but they would probably come patrolling once their meal was over. My intuition told me we had a few minutes at most.

“I’m going to burn the lock. Step back, please,” I said, but the man shook his head.

“Do not bother. Instead, go to the storeroom next to the station and bring back my sword.”

Really? You want us to search through all those swords?! I thought, keeping it to myself. “What…kind of sword is it?”

“A saber. Its hilt and guard are silver, while the handle and sheath are white leather. You might not recognize it by those details, because it’s surely covered in thirty years of dust…”

““……””

Asuna and I stared at each other.

I opened my inventory, sorted weapons by most recent, then tapped the first name on the list, the Saber of Santalum Knights, and materialized it.

The large saber appeared with a soft sound. I used both hands to lift it up.

Dirtiness effects were supposed to disappear after a short period of time in this world, but the grime fixed to the hilt and the spiderweb inside the knuckle guard were as I recognized them earlier. They would probably clean up some if I used a cloth, but it seemed like a strange thing to do, so I stuck the handle through the bars.

The man hesitated for just an instant, then grabbed the saber and pulled it through to the cell, sheath and all.

When he noticed the spiderweb, he snorted, then grabbed his bedsheet again and quickly but carefully rubbed the entire saber with it. It regained its sheen and looked good as new—or at least, not quite as old. He stuck the sheath onto his belt on the left side, then drew the weapon.

The finely curved blade gave off a dull shine in the light of the bonfire shrooms. That wasn’t because of any grime on the weapon, though. It was the quality of a fine weapon, one that had seen many years of combat and upkeep. My Anneal Blade +8, which had broken in the battle against the forest elf knight, had the same sheen to it.

I thought back to my old trusty weapon, which still slumbered in the depths of my inventory in its broken state. The man glared at me and warned, “Step back.”

“Ah, r-right.”

Asuna and I backed away from the bars. The man moved to the door, then held the naked saber overhead.

I didn’t even have time to cry Whoa, wait! The blade took on a silver shine, then rang like a piece of struck glass. It was the warm-up effect of a sword skill.

If he knocked down the door with sheer strength, it would make an incredible racket and bring the guards down on us immediately. After all the trouble we’d gone to silently carbonizing the lock, this was going to ruin everything.

A silver light flickered in the darkness. Two or three tiny sparks appeared in the gap between the door and the next bar.

That was it. No deafening crash, not even as much sound as a cup being placed on the table. The saber was back to its spot over the man’s head, which made me wonder if he’d even used the sword skill at all. But there was no denying the perfectly vertical silver line he’d created.

He returned the saber to its sheath, stepped forward, and pushed the door with his thumb. It made the slightest of creaks and swung open, easy as that. The part of the lock bolt left on the door was cut through so cleanly that it looked like it had been polished that way.

“…Wh-what was that technique?” I asked without thinking.

The man shrugged and said, “It is called Slashing Ray…I believe.”

I’d never heard of that skill. Most likely, it was an elite skill in the Curved Blade category. I was tempted to ask to see his stats, but I didn’t even know how to open up an NPC’s status window. Maybe if you tapped on their hair whorl, it would open a properties window. I certainly didn’t have the courage to attempt that with this old ma…er, young man.

The man exited the cell into the hallway, then stretched and cracked his neck from side to side. If he’d really been trapped in that cell for thirty straight years, then he had to be experiencing a bewildering sense of freedom, but a few mere stretches and cracks had him satisfied, apparently. His steel-gray eyes fixed the two of us with a glare.

“What did you say your names were?”

“Uh, I’m Kirito…”

“And I’m Asuna.”

The man repeated, “Kirito and Asuna.” His pronunciation was perfect, and of all the NPCs we’d met, his check was the shortest. We confirmed that he was right, and then he said, “I am Lavik.”

That was the indication that he was joining the party. A new HP bar appeared underneath ours in the upper left of my view.

It also showed me the name that had been on his cursor. It went from DARK ELVEN PRISONER to LAVIK, DARK ELVEN FUGITIVE. The English word fugitive did not have an entry in my mental dictionary, but I could ask Asuna later. First, I asked Lavik which way we were going now.

“So…how do we get up to the seventh story to find Kizmel?”

“She might be on the seventh story,” Lavik corrected brusquely. “First, we need to get information from the guards.”

“Huh?! A…are you going to bribe them?”

“Only if you have enough money to buy a lakeside mansion on the ninth floor.”

We shook our heads. The bearded dark elf snorted yet again.

“Then we’ll use swords.”