Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 7 - Chapter 2

2

AS OF JANUARY 5, 2023, THIS WAS WHAT ASUNA AND I had in terms of skills and equipment:

Kirito, level-22 swordsman, skill slots: 5

Skills in use: One-Handed Swords, Martial Arts, Search, Hiding, Meditation

Equipment: Sword of Eventide +3

Coat of Midnight +6

Fortified Breastplate +4

Skintight Shirt +2

Trousers of Shadowthread +5

Spiked Short Boots +3

Ring of Brawn

Sigil of Lyusula

Asuna, level-21 fencer, skill slots: 5* (6)

Skills in use: rapiers, Light Metal Armor, Tailoring, Sprinting, two-handed lances

* (Meditation)

Equipment: Chivalric Rapier +7

Woven Hooded Cape +2

Thinly Made Breastplate +6

Fencer’s Tunic +4

Pleated Leather Skirt +4

Prancing Boots +3

Earrings of Ripples

Ring of Luminescence

Sigil of Lyusula

* Skill in parentheses is from Crystal Bottle of Kales’Oh.

The recommended challenge level, accounting for the safety margin, was typically the floor number plus seven, so neither Asuna nor I had any reason to hold back on tackling the seventh floor, statistically speaking. Half our gear was rare quest rewards or boss drops, but that was far from all of it. In my case, the breastplate, shirt, and boots were ordinary store-bought items, and so were Asuna’s cape, tunic, and skirt. They were powered up, but their absolute numbers were still far short of the rare loot, so the first thing to do when we reached a new floor was to check out the NPC shops and see if we could buy anything that was an improvement on those items (preferably at a bargain price).

It was a crucial part of survival in this deadly game, but it was also part of the fun of playing an RPG.

But after observing the shelves of the first armor shop we went into, Asuna muttered “This selection isn’t exactly inspiring…and it’s the biggest shop in the main town” just quietly enough so the shopkeeper couldn’t hear.

I nodded. “Yeah…Unlike the eatery, this place hasn’t been upgraded, it seems.”

“I take that to mean it wasn’t impressive in the beta, either?”

“My memory is hazy, but that is the impression I recall.”

“You had such vivid and detailed memories of Stachion. Why is your knowledge of Lectio so vague?” she asked, pointing out my failing again. I pursed my lips.

In order to explain why, I’d have to touch upon the tragedy that befell me—that befell nearly every beta tester—on this floor. I would have preferred to keep that memory locked deep in my mind, never to be spoken of again, but Asuna was too sharp. I wouldn’t be able to hide it from her.

I cleared my throat and said, “In order to explain why, we will need to get to the town’s exit.”

“…That’s fine. There’s nothing much to buy here anyway.”

“Let’s go, then.”

I led a skeptical Asuna back to the teleport square. There were still few players to be seen, either because of the heat or because there wasn’t much to see and do here.

I wanted to take off both my coat and breastplate, but I told myself the heat was only virtual, and I concentrated on crossing the square, taking the east-west main street through the town to the west to do so. It wasn’t a very big town, so just a few minutes of walking brought into view the wall that separated the safe zone of town from the dangers of the wilderness.

“…Huh?” Asuna murmured to my right. “Why are there two gates?”

As she said, at the end of the main street were two large gates with a nearly identical design. The only difference between them was the marble sculpture atop each one.

The sculpture on the right was a miserable-looking man, his back hunched over a cane, as though walking against the elements in a storm.

The sculpture on the left was of a decadently dressed man, his back arched, holding an enormous wine glass.

Each gate was open, offering a clear view of the terrain on the other side. Beyond each gate was a path surrounded by green grassland. There was nothing in between the paths on the far side of the wall, so there was nothing stopping you from going out one gate and taking the other path instead. So the meaning of the two gates was…

“…To put it dramatically, I suppose they reflect the fates that await players beyond the gates.”

“Fates…?” Asuna repeated, clearly thinking this was overly dramatic. She glanced at the gates again. “Then…the path out of the right gate offers hardship, and the path out of the left gate is the easy road, this would suggest.”

“That’s mostly right,” I replied as we reached the open space just before the gates. There were no players here, either. Most likely, the two big guilds, the Dragon Knights Brigade (DKB) and Aincrad Liberation Squad (ALS), had already chosen a gate and headed onward.

Once we were there, the perspective effect on our visibility changed, making it possible to see clearly out into the wilderness. In the distance through the right gate, under the statue of the man with the cane, was a thick forest and a craggy, bald mountain. On the left gate side, under the man with the wine, the path seemed to sit on flat plains as far as the eye could see.

“So um…Lectio’s on the eastern edge of the seventh floor, right? Meaning the labyrinth tower is on the western edge?” Asuna asked.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“And where’s the starting point for the ‘Elf War’ quest here?”

“Should be in the center of the floor. It’s roughly equidistant from whichever path we take.”

“…So we should probably take the easy path then, right?”

“I suppose so. But only if you have an ironclad will, Asuna.”

“All right, what’s going on with you and these cryptic statements? What do the two paths have to do with your memory of this floor?” she snapped. I could tell that her irritation gauge was rising, so I resigned myself to the difficult conversation ahead.

“Well, uh…The right path has lots of monsters and treacherous terrain, which is tough, but that’s the normal game-type route. The path on the left has few monsters and flat land…but there’s a huge town along the way. It’s about two or three times bigger than Lectio.”

“A huge town…? Is it a dungeon?”

“No, it’s a human town. Safe zone, inns, shops, the whole deal. Good food, too.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is…there’s a huge casino in that town.”

“Huh…?” Asuna’s mouth hung open. She looked up at the sculpture of the man with the wine glass, then back down at me again. “A casino, like…a casino-casino? Like in Las Vegas or Macau?”

“Like in Las Vegas or Macau. Not that I’ve been to either,” I said, gazing through the left gate. Like it or not, the bitter memories of the past were flooding back into my mind. “Out of the thousand players in the beta test, I’d estimate that over eighty percent of them took the left path. And the majority of them got hooked on the casino, and the majority of them got taken for all they had. Rumors said that half the beta testers dropped off after playing on the seventh floor.”

“……”

Asuna was silent for a good five seconds, then walked around to face me directly, blocking my view.

“And what happened to you?”

“……I lost everything,” I said, grimacing bitterly. “All the col I’d saved up from adventuring, all my rare items, everything. I only had my sword left…but I didn’t give up. I got back on my feet again from there and headed for the next floor. I might have lost at the casino, but I didn’t lose at the game. No, I didn’t lose at the ga—”

“Right.”

“Wh-what?”

“We’re going right,” Asuna declared, cutting off my heroic saga, and she began to walk toward the gate under the man with the cane.

I didn’t argue with her choice; it wasn’t like I wanted to make the same mistake twice. Particularly because, in the beta test, dying just meant coming back to life on the first floor, but there would be no starting over in your underwear this time. If I lost all my money and equipment, I’d have to wait around in the Town of Beginnings for someone else to beat the game for us.

But…

Something inside me—perhaps my gamer’s soul—refused to let me stay a loser. I faced Asuna’s back and said something she didn’t expect to hear.

“The beach.”

“…Huh?” She turned around.

I told her gravely, “Didn’t I mention this before? On the south side of the seventh floor, there’s a beach with white sand and palm trees. That’s part of the casino town in question…Volupta. Of course, it’s not a real sea, just a bit of a lake that reaches the edge of the floor. But the water itself is salty.”

“A beach……”

She repeated the word, very conflicted. She glanced up at the bottom of the floor above, which was radiating sunlight and heat, then looked at me again.

“But…with this heat…the beach should be packed with people, right?”

“Actually, in order to earn the pass with beach access, you have to win a ton of chips at the casino. And I doubt the DKB or ALS are going to get sidetracked with gambling,” I said, thinking of the stern expressions of Lind, leader of the DKB, and Kibaou, leader of the ALS. Asuna took a step closer to me, wearing a very similar expression.

“But that means we can’t visit the beach without betting at the casino, either.”

“W-well, yeah…But when I was telling you about that, do you remember what you said, Asuna? That if the seventh floor is eternally summer, you were going to do something at the beach…”

“……”

Asuna just blinked, taken aback. Then her eyes darted away in a very awkward, unnatural way, and she grunted, “Ummm.”

“Ummm?”

“Uuuuhhh…”

“Uhhhh?”

She jabbed me in the side. So apparently she wasn’t speaking in some nonhuman tongue, after all.

“…How much does that pass cost, if you converted it to col?”

“Uhhh…If it’s the same price as in the beta, one casino chip is worth a hundred col, so it’d be…thirty thousand col?”

“Thirty K!” she shouted. I couldn’t blame her. My current net worth was about ninety thousand col, and I guessed Asuna’s was around the same. It would be insane to spend nearly a third of that for a chance to play on the beach. And yet…

“N-no, not so fast. The beach pass isn’t bought with three hundred chips. You get it from the casino once you’ve won three hundred chips’ worth of games. So it’s kind of like, uh, a VIP benefit…”

“…Meaning that once we’ve got the pass, we could cash in all our chips back to col?”

“Unfortunately, you can’t convert chips into col, but you can trade them for items with a high resale value, so you can sell them and make back the money,” I said, silently adding in my mind, Assuming you can actually win three hundred chips!

“Hmmm…”

Asuna folded her arms and considered this information. After all this, if she decided she still wanted to go right, I was prepared to go along without a fuss.

Ten seconds later, the fencer unfolded her arms, looked up at the sculpture of the man with the cane, then examined the man with the wine glass.

“…Even if I won thirty thousand chips, I still wouldn’t lord it over anyone like he’s doing.”

“…Uh-huh.”

“Well, let’s go,” my partner said, briskly walking toward the left gate. I followed her without a word.

Of the two paths that extended from the Gates of Choice in Lectio, the NPC residents called the right (northern) path the Headwind Road. The left (southern) path was the Tailwind Road.

Of course, that wasn’t a literal reference to the direction of the wind but a figurative one. The left path that we chose was pristinely paved with bricks, with flowery fields on either side. The road was ever so slightly tilted downward the entire way, and we saw virtually no monsters.

“…If only it were a little bit cooler, this might be the most pleasant trip I’ve had yet in this place,” Asuna commented.

I stifled a yawn and agreed. “The meadows on the second floor were nice, but only if you ignore the occasional runaway bull…”

“Ah yes, the cow floor. I’d enjoy a chance to eat that enormous shortcake again.”

“The Tremble Shortcake? Hmm, maybe I should have teleported back to Urbus, eaten the shortcake and gotten the luck bonus, and then tried the casino,” I commented ruefully.

“That buff only lasts for fifteen minutes,” she pointed out. “You’d never make it in time.”

“You never know! If I sprinted for all I was worth, I might have enough time to play one game with it active.”

“You really just wanted to gamble, didn’t you…?” Asuna said, right as a deep buzzing of wings sounded nearby. We drew our swords and took a stance with our backs to each other.

Monsters hardly ever appeared on Tailwind Road, but that didn’t mean the few that did were pushovers. Their stats were par for the seventh floor, and their attacks were complex, so you had to be on your guard.

Asuna scanned the northern side of the road, while I looked on the south side. When the wings picked up again, I heard her cry, “Get down!”

I ducked as far as I could, resisting the natural urge to turn and sneak a peek. Something passed just over my back at a ferocious speed. I looked up and saw a green shape hovering in the air about thirty feet away.

It was an insect about twenty inches long, with translucent wings. The silhouette was squat and round, but there was a long, sharp horn extending nearly the entire length of its body from its head. The pale-red cursor displayed the name VERDIAN LANCER BEETLE.

“…What’s Verdia?” Asuna whispered.

“The name of these plains, I think?” I murmured back. “Uh-oh, it’s coming again!”

The hovering insect lifted its sparkling emerald carapace. Vmmm! It buzzed the air and darted directly toward us.

The horn of the lancer beetle, which first appeared on this floor, was powerful enough to punch a hole through plate armor at full speed. It was nearly impossible to parry with a one-handed weapon; the only way to guard against it was with a sword skill, but even then, it wasn’t easy to hit that sharp horn when it came blazing at you so quickly. If you failed, it would go through your chest or head, and a critical hit counter could prove instantly fatal.

Asuna and I crouched to avoid the lancer beetle’s charge. I got to my feet immediately, turning around and staring at the insect as it took a gentle turn over the field.

“Well, we can avoid it…but this seems endless to me,” Asuna murmured.

I shrugged. “It’s not endless. As you avoid its charges, their angle gets lower and lower. So eventually, we won’t be able to duck under it anymore.”

“Then what should we do?” she asked. As a beta tester, it would be easy for me to simply give her the answer, but by this point, I wanted her to develop the observational skills and instincts to put together a strategy against an unfamiliar monster type. I wasn’t necessarily going to be there to help her forever.

“Can you tell what its weak point is?”

“…Underneath its body?” Asuna replied at once.

Should’ve known, I thought, impressed. “Technically, it’s the ganglion right in the middle of the place where all six of its legs meet. The brain’s a weak point, too, but they’re usually heavily armored, and that giant horn makes it hard to aim at it.”

“But how do we attack its undersi—” Asuna started to say, but the lancer beetle lifted its wing sheaths as high as they could go, the sign that it was about to charge again.

When a lancer beetle charged, only its head, prothorax, and wing sheaths were visible. Each part was covered in tough armor that was highly likely to deflect any normal attack. If you attempted a sword skill and failed, it could deliver a fatal counterattack.

But by way of a hint, I started the motion for the single-hit skill Vertical. Next to me, the tip of Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier wavered with indecision.

But then it went perfectly still, and she assumed the stance for the charging skill Linear. Our swords took on a high-pitched whine and faint glow.

Right on cue, the lancer beetle started its third charge. I resisted the urge to duck, waiting for the right moment. Asuna kept perfectly still, holding her active sword skill in wait. With just the barest of hints, she’d figured out the tactic that took me two deaths in the beta to figure out.

The deep buzzing of its wings immediately growled louder, a sound that summoned a kind of primal fear. The wickedly sharp point of the horn was just ten feet away when the two of us fell to the ground—but on our backs this time.

The lancer beetle’s less-armored belly passed right over our faces. A normal swing would do almost no damage while we were lying on our backs, but a sword skill was different. As long as you maintained the right distance and angle between body and sword, the skill would activate, even if you were on the ground. Unfortunately, you couldn’t get that extra boost of power from pushing off the ground, but that wasn’t necessary to hit the belly of an insect-type monster.

““Haaah!”” we exhaled in unison, unleashing Vertical and Linear.

Blue and silver light flashed, and two swords struck true at the base of the lancer beetle’s legs, cutting it deeply.

They made a terrific wham! sound, the sign of a successful critical hit. The monster’s squat body shot upward, spraying crimson damage effects, and went into a tailspin. It took three or four of these attacks to defeat one in the beta, but my level and sword were considerably more powerful—and doubled by the presence of my partner. Based on the physical sensation of the hit, I guessed that one more hit would do the job. I pushed off the ground with my free hand and got to my feet.

“That was it! Now let’s do that agai…”

But the spinning lancer beetle fell to the ground, bounced, then went still in the middle of the air, unnaturally. It briefly contracted, then burst into blue particles. Countless shards flew out, then melted into the air, gone forever.

“…Huh?” I gaped.

Asuna almost sounded disappointed. “Oh, it just takes one hit?”

“Well…technically, that was two hits. But even then…I wonder if they nerfed its hit points…”

Or maybe it’s some new death-mimicking skill, I thought, but there was a window that displayed the col, experience, and items we’d earned. Asuna sheathed her rapier and began examining her rewards.

“Oh, this floor is interesting. They’re giving us a ton of money and experience. But the items are…all crafting mats.”

“Hey, don’t look down on insect parts. They can make armor that’s way better than what you find in stores…as long as you don’t mind the look…” I admitted, scrolling through my own items to the bottom of the window.

Then, forgetting that we were out in the dangers of the wilderness, I howled, “Ooooohhh?!”

“Wh-wh-wh…what?!” Asuna shrieked, startled. I hit the ITEM MATERIALIZE button, then grabbed the object that appeared over the window and turned around to face her.

“Ta-daa!!”

I thrust an eight-sided prism crystal under her nose. It was colored a deep-rose pink, similar to garnet.

Sadly, my temporary partner did not seem to understand the value of the item. She just looked at it, then me, then back to the crystal again.

“…And what is that?”

“Umm…it’s called a healing crystal.”

“Oh, is that the thing you were talking about?” she said, her face lighting up at last. She snatched it out of my fingers and held it up in the sunlight. “Ah, so this is what they look like…and this really heals all your HP, all at once?”

“Yep, sure does.”

“How do you use it?”

“Well, obviously, you chew on the end…” I said, then realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to joke about how to use the crucial item that would be our lifeline in conquering this game of death. I cleared my throat and took the crystal back from Asuna. “Okay, I’ll be serious. Using them is very simple, and it’s the same way for all crystal items. First, you tap the surface of the crystal, then select USE from the menu that appears. Second, you hold it in one hand, then touch the other end either to yourself or the person you want to use it on, and then you say ‘Hea…’ Yikes!!”

I hurled the healing crystal. Asuna caught it, shouting, “H-hey! Why did you just throw it at me?!”

“Er…You’re supposed to hold it, and just say ‘Heal.’ But I very nearly used it on you when you already have full HP,” I explained, feeling a cold sweat break out on my forehead.

Asuna sighed deeply. “Didn’t you use these things all the time in the beta? You should know better.”

“Not all the time. Even on the tenth floor, they were a rare and valuable item…And let me tell you, I wasn’t the only tester who was saving them and ended up dying because we didn’t want to waste them.”

“Well, you’d better not do that now. If you or your partner is in danger, don’t hold back, just hea—Yikes!!” she shouted, without warning, and tossed the healing crystal as though it were red-hot. I caught it.

“……”

“……”

We stared at each other without a word. Eventually, Asuna murmured, “You should probably put that away now.”

“G-good idea,” I agreed, opening the belt pouch on my left side, but I stopped there. “No…You should have it, Asuna.”

“What? It was your loot, so it’s yours, Kirito.”

“In our partnership, I’m the vanguard, and you’re the rearguard, right? It’s just good tactics to have the crystals in the possession of the back row, because they have a better vantage point of the battle,” I said intently. I held out the crystal, but Asuna only pursed her lips.

I wasn’t just making that up. Players on the front line had to focus so hard on the enemy up close that they could lose track of their hit points, and usually you were using both hands, so to utilize a crystal in the midst of battle, you had to let go of your weapon or shield.

On that point, I already had my left hand free, so I could hold it in my hand to use it, but to my good fortune, Asuna didn’t point out the hole in my logic; she accepted the crystal.

“…I don’t appreciate being labeled the back row, but I take your point. In that case, I’ll hold on to this.”

“You’re not just holding on to it. Like you yourself said, you’ll need to use it without hesitation when you’re in danger.”

“……Mm.” She nodded, dropping the crystal into her belt pouch.

A sudden thought flickered through my mind: Maybe I should have kept it. That way, I could avoid using it on myself as long as necessary, holding onto it for Asuna’s benefit as much as possible. Wouldn’t Asuna agree?

In that case, both of us should keep the crystals. Healing and purification crystals were very rare in the beta, but we just got one from the first monsters we fought on the seventh floor. Perhaps they revised the drop rates to make them easier to find.

Asuna looked around the field, seemingly having the same train of thought.

“…Hey, are those stag beetles the only ones that drop healing crystals?”

“Not at all. Some monsters drop them more often, but from the sixth floor on, every monster has a tiny chance of dropping one.”

“Tiny chance? Like…how tiny?”

“Umm…Well, this is only according to what was researched during the beta, but they found that the chance was 0.01 percent on the sixth floor, and 0.1 percent on the seventh floor…I think.”

“0.01 percent…? Meaning you might get one for every ten thousand monsters you beat?!” Asuna exclaimed, arching her eyebrows.

I shook my head. “That was for the sixth floor! We beat tons and tons of monsters on the sixth floor and never got a single crystal, right? But on the seventh floor, it’s a tenth of one percent, so…”

“That’s still one in a thousand!”

“Y-yeah, I know…but they might have improved the odds since the beta,” I said hopefully. Only then did the puffs of rage over Asuna’s head calm down.

“…Well, we did get the drop from the first monster. So…since there’s no one else around, want to try hunting more stag beetles?”

“Sure…”

I glanced at the clock readout in the corner of my view. It was one fifteen in the afternoon. Even at a casual pace, it wouldn’t take us two hours to get to the gambling city of Volupta, so we could kill an hour or so hunting before we continued on, and it still wouldn’t be dark yet.

“…Then let’s do a little monster farming and practice beating lancer beetles.”

“Roger that!” said Asuna with a grin. She stepped off the path into the field to the north.

Over an hour and a half, Asuna and I beat about fifteen Verdian Lancer Beetles; about ten Verdian Poison Wasps, a powered-up version of the wasps from the second floor; and about five Greasy Worm Lizards, creatures that oozed up out of the earth like a cross between a snake, an earthworm, and a lizard.

One monster every three minutes was a significant pace on the Tailwind Road, where monsters were few and far between. Asuna quickly mastered the tactic of using sword skills as you fell, the trick to beating the lancer beetles. Aside from the one time she fell to the ground using the new tactic, only to freak out when she saw a Greasy Worm Lizard wriggling up from the dirt right beside her, our hunting went very smoothly.

We got plenty of money, experience points, and materials, but unfortunately, not a single extra crystal. Thirty monsters, of course, was not nearly a large enough sample size to gauge whether they’d adjusted the rates, but at the very least, it didn’t seem like they’d be dropping all over the place.

“…What should we do? Keep trying a bit longer?” asked Asuna, holding her rapier.

I considered the question and then replied, “No, we should wrap it up now. If we keep trying, we’re not going to be able to reach Volupta before it gets dark.”

“Is that a particularly bad thing?” she asked.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t come right out and tell her it was because Volupta was an enchanting sight in the sunset. Instead, I looked up and offered weakly, “Well, it’s our first time down this road, so we might get lost in the dark, you know…”

It wasn’t even three o’clock yet, but the light around us was already starting to turn rich and golden, and you could tell the temperature had dropped a fair bit.

“How could we get lost? It’s a single path…But fine,” Asuna agreed, sheathing her sword. I placed my own in the container on my back and walked us toward the brick road.

“It’s funny…We’ve been hunting for an hour and a half, and not a single other player has come this way…I wonder why?” I asked.

Asuna looked down the road both ways, seemingly realizing it for the first time herself. “I suppose you’re right…Do you think the DKB and ALS and Agil’s group all chose the Headwind Road?”

“Huh? The only benefit of that route is that you eliminate the risk of going bankrupt.”

“…That just makes it sound like we’re at risk of going bankrupt.”

I hunched my shoulders, ruing the mistake of saying anything at all, and pointed to the southwest. “W-well, let’s just get going. Once we get to Volupta, you’ll see that there’s plenty to do aside from the casino.”

Despite her skeptical expression, Asuna said nothing more on the matter, and we hurried down the brick road as the hints of nightfall crept closer.