Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 7 - Chapter 5

5

WE CLEANED UP THE DISHES ON THE TABLE, THEN washed off the dust and sweat of the day in the suite’s bath. Not all at once, of course; I went first, followed by Asuna and Argo. Although I finished my bath in just three minutes, the girls took over thirty, which was long enough for me to gain a point in my Meditation skill while waiting.

I’d gained the Meditation skill from Bouhroum, the old man with the hamburg steak in Castle Galey on the sixth floor, but it was still largely a mystery to me. The effect of Meditation itself was simple—if you maintained a kind of Zen meditation pose for a certain period of time, you gained an HP regeneration buff and a mild resistance to all negative status ailments. It was a very useful thing, but when you started at zero proficiency, it took sixty seconds of Zen meditation to go into effect. That wasn’t viable in battle.

On the other hand, I couldn’t have counteracted the paralyzing throwing darts of the Fallen Elves who attacked Castle Galey without the Meditation effect. It was going to be a crucial skill when I knew I was going up against them again—or certain PKers who used similar weapons. That was all fine and good; the problem was the Awakening mod on the Meditation skill.

Skill mods were extra effects you could earn at certain milestones for each skill, and normally they were very easy to understand. For weapon skills, you had things like Sword Skill Cooldown Reduction and Critical Rate Increase. For the Search skill, you got effects like Increased Simultaneous Tracking and Search Distance Increased. In most cases, you didn’t even need a description.

But the name Awakening didn’t tell you anything. Even the description only said: FOCUSES CONCENTRATION TO THE EXTREME AND DRAWS OUT HIDDEN STRENGTH. The thought of using up a valuable skill slot just for the sake of this mystery mod gave me pause, but Awakening was a mod that was only available at a Meditation skill proficiency of 500, so if I took Meditation out of its slot now, I would probably never see it again.

I had some ideas about what Awakening might do, however.

At the very end of the fight against the Irrational Cube, the boss of the sixth floor, a PKer named Buxum made his move. He snuck up behind the nearly dead boss, pulled out the golden cube that had Break and Bind powers, then used them to freeze every last player in the chamber aside from himself.

When I saw Buxum about to kill Myia’s mother, Theano, I screamed at myself to “move” with all the willpower I had, feeling the neurons burning in my brain. That was when I saw, next to the paralysis icon, a new buff icon that looked similar to Meditation. It was a person in a Zen pose, with a ring of golden light in the background.

The moment that icon appeared, my freezing debuff was gone, and I charged at Buxum. I sliced through his longsword and arm with a simple swing, not even a sword skill. Unfortunately, he managed to escape, but if I hadn’t broken through the debuff, not only would Myia and Theano be dead, but probably Asuna and I would be, too.

Was that the effect of the Awakening mod? Had I “focused to the extreme” and “drawn out hidden strength” to break the curse of the golden cube?

But Aincrad was just a VR world generated by the NerveGear. There were no real miracles or magic spells in this world, so how would they measure something immeasurable like “concentration”? Was Akihiko Kayaba’s NerveGear somehow capable of not only receiving the brain’s movement commands to manipulate the avatar—but reading a person’s thoughts as well?

And speaking of mysteries, Buxum’s identity was one, too. He wore a sallet helmet that covered everything from his nose on upward, so I couldn’t make out his facial features, but if he’d been undercover in the DKB, the rest of his guild must have seen his face. The DKB and ALS held an emergency meeting in the boss chamber about him after the fight, but I still hadn’t heard what came of that discussion. I was thinking I’d have to drop Shivata a line about that as the girls emerged from the other room.

Asuna wore a puffy-sleeved mini one-piece with leggings that went down past the knee, while Argo had a very odd look by her standards, with a simple sleeveless shirt and shorts. I couldn’t help but stare. It put the biggest smirk I’d ever seen on Argo’s face.

“What’s up, Kii-boy? Entranced by Big Sis’s beautiful legs?”

“I-I’m not entranced by anything!” I shot back, sounding like a fourth grader. Then I added, “I was just thinking, that must be nice to wear.”

“Then why don’t you change into something more summery?” Asuna pointed out immediately. I looked at my outfit.

I’d taken off the coat and breastplate, so I was only wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and black pants now. It was anything but “summery.” However, the Skintight Shirt’s material was thin, and the Trousers of Shadowthread were a rare drop—and very breathable, considering how good their defense was. But the most important thing of all was…

“…If I take these off, I’ll be in my underwear.”

Asuna’s eyebrows shot upward. “Nobody asked you to strip! I said, why don’t you change!”

“Uhhh, but I don’t have any other clothes to wear…”

Asuna and Argo exchanged a knowing look and then shared a heavy sigh. I could practically hear them thinking, Boys…

Fortunately, they didn’t bug me about clothes after that. Instead, we went down to the first floor and headed outside.

It was after eight o’clock. That was usually when the night session of game play began, but we had no plans to leave town tonight. I assumed I wouldn’t need my sword, but just in case, I kept my backup shortsword equipped at my left side, rather than gathering virtual dust in my inventory.

The coastal street greeted us with a tropical scent. From there, we walked leisurely up one of the three staircase streets, the western staircase. It was only half as wide as the great stairs, but there were sketchy-looking item shops and pubs along the way, giving it a real “RPG back alley” vibe.

I recalled that a number of quests started here, but we ignored them all as we climbed the worn steps. Eventually, a very large and brightly illuminated building came into view.

Minarets split the night sky above its navy-blue dome. Three-point flags of red and black snapped in the breeze. That was the Volupta Grand Casino, a place of joy and despair.

I suddenly noticed that despite the cooling temperature, both of my palms were slick with sweat. I almost played along with the trope and muttered “Am I…actually afraid…?” but I figured the girls would either not get the reference or think I was being stupid.

From the western staircase, we headed into the plaza in front of the casino, where things looked dramatically different. It was a little bit smaller than the square at the center of the town with the fountain, but the tiles underfoot were arranged in detailed and complex mosaics, and the businesses lining the sides were very refined. The most stunning part of all, however, was the stateliness of the casino on the west end of the square. Its white walls were lit by torches, and the pillars were carved into statues that made it look like the home of a king.

In fact, it truly was the castle of Volupta. Whoever owned the Grand Casino—I didn’t know their name or face—was indeed the ruler of this town.

Armed guards stood on either side of the open entrance, through which came the light sound of string music and lively chatter from the dazzling interior. All the NPCs walking inside were dressed in their best clothes. When Asuna noticed them, she leaned over and whispered, “Hey, this casino doesn’t have a dress code, does it?”

“Dress code…?”

At first, I thought she was talking about a code for a DLC (downloadable content) item or something, since she’d used the English term. When I realized she was talking about clothing standards, I waved my hand and shook my head. “No, not at all. I’m sure they’d stop you if you were wearing only underwear, but they don’t care if you’re in your starter gear, or a tattered robe, or full plate armor. You think those slobs in the DKB and ALS have formal wear?”

“…That’s a good point,” said Asuna, buying the explanation immediately.

It was like a summoning spell. No sooner had I mentioned them than I heard a grating, familiar Kansai accent from the other side of the square.

“Awright, let’s win the jackpot and take home that big-ass sword!”

Others replied to his announcement with grunts like “Yeah!” and “You bet!” We quickly backed away and hid under the eaves of one of the businesses so we could watch the east side of the square.

Walking down the main street was a group of about ten players wearing dark green and iron black. We didn’t need to see the spiky hair of the man leading them to recognize the ALS. Apparently they had finished their guild feast, and now the senior members were heading into the casino to enjoy their evening.

Kibaou’s group stomped across the square, with no sign that they were aware we were even there, and went through the casino entrance. They were probably planning to bet big on the Battle Arena that would be starting again at nine.

“…What big-ass sword?” I wondered. I couldn’t remember anything like that during the beta. Argo just shrugged and whispered back, “Go and see for yerself.”

“Fine…Well, let’s go,” I said, pulling off of the wall—but Asuna pushed me back. Before I could protest, I heard approaching footsteps.

Another group, about the same size but in dark blue and silver, took the exact same route as the ALS. In the lead was Lind, the calligraphy club member; to his right was Shivata, the track-and-field runner, and to his left was Hafner, the soccer player. It was the DKB, the other major guild. Their descriptions weren’t actually true, just epithets I used, but I didn’t have room to be insulting, really. Other players kept calling me nicknames like Master Black, so it was about time I helped their nicknames catch on among the group, too.

In the meantime, Lind’s group crossed the square and disappeared into the casino, too. There was no question they were heading for the night installment of the Battle Arena, just like Kibaou’s gang.

“…How many chips did they win at the arena during the day…?” I muttered to myself, but I didn’t expect Argo to actually answer me.

“I checked up on that. Apparently they both got over a thousand.”

“A thou…”

I had to clamp my mouth shut to keep from screaming. Instead, my throat worked itself out, and I said quietly, “In that case, they should quit while they’re ahead…Wasn’t the grand prize at the casino a thousand chips anyway?”

“Plus, they could get a beach pass,” said Asuna with no small amount of envy.

Argo looked at both of us and smirked. “Sorry, but your info’s old. If you want VIP status and the beach pass that comes with it, you gotta win thirty thousand chips.”

“Thir…ty…” Asuna gasped.

Then Argo looked at me and dropped another bombshell. “And the highest-value prize got updated, too. You’ll need a hundred thousand chips for that one.”

“Hun…dred…” I gasped. In the beta, I gambled for the chance to win a thousand chips and ruined myself. To win a hundred times that much—with each chip converting to a hundred col—would require winnings equal to ten million col.

“Ten million? That’s ten mega-col…Are they really going to bring out mega items on the seventh floor? And do Lind and Kiba think they’re gonna turn a thousand chips into a hundred thousand?” I murmured, feeling light-headed.

Argo just tossed her hands up. “I suppose so. Well, they turned a hundred into a thousand at the daytime coliseum.”

“But even then, that’s just a tenfold profit…This would be a hundredfold on top of that.”

“A hundredfold is just tenfold times tenfold,” she said pointlessly.

Asuna crossed her hands in front of her face, then swung them outward in a decisive gesture. “No way! Thirty thousand chips just for the chance to hang out at the beach for half a day? Three million col! That’s insane! I mean, that’s six million col for the two us—and nine million if we include Argo! If we had that much money, we could just buy an entire house facing the sea!”

“…Again, technically a lake.”

“Whatever—Shut up! My point is: no casino! Never mind! Let’s go to the next town already!” Asuna fumed and started to walk away, but I pinched her puffy sleeve in a hurry.

“Er, w-wait a sec. We don’t have to bet, but we do have to fulfill Argo’s request.”

“……Oh.”

She came to a stop. Argo grinned at her. “Don’cha wanna know how to get a Snow Tree Bud, A-chan?”

“………Urrrr…”

She hummed longer than usual, then turned to Argo.

“What do you want us to do?”

Argo simply said “I’ll explain inside” and started toward the casino, so we had to follow her bouncing curls.

The entrance to the Volupta Grand Casino was diagonal across the tile mosaics. The huge marble facade was like a five-star hotel’s in the real world. Even the shining armor of the guards had been upgraded several levels since the beta.

But Argo was not intimidated in the slightest. Her leather sandals clip-clopped through the doorway. As soon as we passed through after her, we were met with refreshing cool air, then pleasant string music and the smell of sweet flowers.

It was blindingly bright inside the entrance hall, thanks mainly to the massive chandelier. I wondered how many candles and how much oil they used every single night, but there was no point to worrying about that in a virtual world. A statue of a bird-headed goddess stood in the center of the octagonal hall, just like in the fountain square. Behind her was a set of three large doors that headed into the playroom. A staircase on the right wall led upstairs, and the stairs on the left wall descended. The way down was open, but a red rope and an NPC in black blocked the stairs going up. It seemed like the musical performance was floating down from there.

“…What’s up there?” Asuna asked.

Argo said, “If it’s the same as the beta, the second floor’s the high-roller room for VIPs, and the third floor’s the luxury hotel. Even I don’t know what’s on the fourth. You, Kii-boy?”

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head.

Asuna shrugged lightly. “Well, it doesn’t matter, since we’re not gambling. Anyway…Where are we picking up this quest you want us to help you with?”

“Not so fast, A-chan. Even if yer not playing, you can still enjoy the atmosphere,” Argo said with a grin and started off again. She made her way around the goddess statue and toward the three doors in the back.

As soon as we passed through the open doorway, the refined string music was too quiet to hear, drowned out by an enthusiastic clamor.

The playroom was about as big as a high school gym. There were countless tables, packed with visitors enjoying games of chance and skill. They were arranged in a three-sided manner that was open toward us, with roulette on the right, dice on the left, and cards taking up the majority of the space straight ahead. This arrangement, at least, was the same as I remembered it being in the beta.

In the middle of the room was the exchange counter, where you could pay col to receive casino chips, and the prize counter where you could trade those chips for items. There were two more bars where you could order drinks and light food, making four counters in the shape of a square. I leaned over to speak to my temporary partner, who was standing in stunned silence.

“Hey, let’s just go see what you can win. Don’t you want to know what you can get for a hundred thousand chips?”

Asuna blinked several times and looked at me with renewed caution. “Yes…but you’d better not announce you’re going to start betting in the hopes of winning it.”

“Nope, not gonna. C’mon, let’s go,” I said, pushing her toward the counters. Argo tagged along, smirking at us.

I glanced at the sides of the room as we walked, and it seemed that most of the gamblers—in fact, all of them—were NPCs. There wasn’t a single green cursor in sight to indicate a player. If this were the main town of the floor, they would be flowing through the teleport square from below in the hopes of winning a fortune, but there was a reasonable amount of danger in traveling from Lectio to Volupta. Only the guilds involved with pushing our progress forward would be able to get here on the first day.

That thought made me realize that the DKB and ALS weren’t in here, either. They must have gone straight down the stairs in the entrance hall, then. It was currently 8:30. There was still plenty of time before the night arena.

No, no, no! I told myself, cutting off the temptation. I took a right around the exchange counter, passing the bar along the side in order to see the prize counter in the back.

A pillar of marble nearly three meters across, with a splendid display case fixed to it, stood behind a woman in a black vest. There had to be five times as many different items as what they featured in the beta.

On the bottom shelf were the consumable items like potions, which could be won for just a few chips. The shelf above it had useful-looking tools, the one above that had colorful accessories and small pieces of equipment, and on the top shelf, shining brilliantly in the light from the chandelier, was a longsword.

The wide blade was as silver as a mirror, with gold embedded into the bevel line. The brim was golden, too, while the grip was red leather, and a massive jewel adorned the pommel.

“Oof, that’s certainly attention-grabbing,” Asuna murmured, which I had to agree with. The real issue was its specs. If that sword cost a hundred thousand chips, meaning ten million col, I couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of attack power it offered.

I took two steps toward the exchange counter and rose onto tiptoes to see the sword. But you had to tap it with your finger to see the properties window, and there was no way I could do that when the sword was on display over twice my height off the ground.

I had risen up and down off my heels several times when Argo finally noted, “Uh, Kii-boy, you can just get a prize pamphlet at the counter.”

“Y-you could have told me first,” I grumbled, clearing my throat in embarrassment and taking two more steps up to the counter. The NPC woman gave me a very pleasant and professional smile. I said “Pamphlet, please!” and she produced a rolled parchment for me, with nary a nasty look at my casual clothing.

“Here you are, sir.”

“Thanks,” I said, hurrying off to the side to open it up. Asuna peered over my right arm.

It was quite a hefty pamphlet, complete with detailed color illustrations. They didn’t have printing technology in this world, which meant—if you really wanted to go down this rabbit hole—that each illustration was painted by hand. But of course, all this was just the magic of games at work.

Below each illustration, the item names were written in the English alphabet, but fortunately for me, the description text was in Japanese. I passed by the potions, tools, and accessories and went to the back of the pamphlet to check out the gold-and-silver-and-jeweled sword.

The illustration was adorned with the name SWORD OF VOLUPTA. To the right of that, it said 100,000 VC. I remembered that VC was the abbreviation of the official name of the Grand Casino’s chips, Vol Coins. I’d believed Argo the first time, of course, but actually seeing that number on the page made my head swim.

I shook it to clear my mind and examined the text instead. It said: THE SWORD OF THE HERO FALHARI, FOUNDER OF VOLUPTA AND SLAYER OF THE WATER DRAGON ZARIEGHA. IT HEALS THE WIELDER, PURIFIES ALL POISONS, AND STRIKES TRUE WITH EVERY SWING.

“Hmmmm,” I murmured, just as Asuna went, “Rrrmm…”

“It’s hard to say what its properties are,” she muttered. “It sounds very impressive, but unless we can see an actual readout of its specs…”

I pointed toward the counter. “Asuna, if I let you stand on my shoulders, would you try tapping that sword?”

“Absolutely not.”

She wasn’t just being a stick in the mud, though; the moment we crossed the space behind the counter, those hardy men dressed in black would come for us. I returned to the text.

“…Based on this, we don’t know the actual attack power or the number of upgrade attempts it has, but if the additional effects are exactly as the text suggests, I can see why it would be worth ten million col. Equipping it automatically regenerates HP, nullifies damaging and paralyzing poison, and turns every attack into a critical hit, right?”

Saying it out loud really made clear what an absolutely broken item the Sword of Volupta was; it wasn’t meant to exist here, on just the seventh floor. I looked back at the sword on the top shelf of the display case.

The gaudy, eye-catching design wasn’t my style, to be sure, but in our circumstances, appearance was hardly the most important thing. If it increased the chances of survival for my partner and me, I’d use a sword a hundred times uglier than that one.

Or so I told myself, at least. For now, this sword was out of reach, both literally and figuratively. If I converted all my assets into chips, I’d have only nine hundred. To turn them into a hundred thousand, I’d have to bet everything double on the roulette wheel and win seven times in a row. The odds of that were…

“…Asuna, what’s point-five to the seventh power?”

“Huh? Umm…like, zero-point-zero-zero-seven-eight-humde-dumde-dum…Right?”

“Thanks. So that would be about point-eight percent,” I murmured. The fencer looked at me suspiciously for about two seconds, then her brows shot upward.

“Oh! You were asking for the chances of winning seven straight all-or-nothing bets!”

“Uh, yeah. Wow, you figured that out?”

“Of course I did! And you know there’s no way a point-eight percent chance will work out!”

“L-look, you don’t lose anything just thinking about it.”

“But next you’ll be saying ‘I’m just betting a hundred col’!” she shot back.

Stifled laughter met our bickering. I glanced over at the Rat, whose painted whiskers were twitching. She cackled and giggled, writhing back and forth for at least five seconds before she finally looked up.

“I tell ya…I never get bored watchin’ you two. Please, you gotta stick together for as long as possible.”

“Well…we don’t have any plans to break it up,” I admitted, stone-faced.

“As long as someone doesn’t bankrupt us at the casino,” Asuna added.

We left the gaming room while I still had my willpower intact and returned to the entrance hall. It was 8:40 PM now.

I tossed the pamphlet into my inventory so it would stop tempting me and leaned over to ask Argo, “So…what did you want us to do?”

“Ah, right, right, right.”

She snapped her fingers and went through her menu with blinding speed. A party request appeared, and Asuna and I accepted it. A third HP bar appeared in the upper-left corner.

“Now we should be able to share the quest. This way,” she said, heading for the descending staircase toward the first basement level. That’s a bad direction to go, I thought, but I couldn’t argue with the client.

The scarlet-carpeted stairs took us along the octagonal walls three-quarters of the way around the first basement hall. There was another statue in the center of the room, but this was not of a bird-headed goddess but a powerful, lion-headed warrior, standing atop another warrior with a lizard head. Beyond the statue was another set of three doors like above, but it was rather dark beyond it.

So here I am again, I grumbled, following Argo through the doors into the Battle Arena.

Excited voices drowned out the faint string music. The wide room was full of a different kind of enthusiasm than in the gaming room above.

It was lowered in the middle like a bowl, and on the far side was a stage covered by a huge golden cage. Buffet tables with bearing finger foods lined the walls on either side of us, and we saw a ticket counter in one corner.

Between the sides of the stage and the buffet tables, there were over fifty guests present, but I couldn’t make out their faces in the gloom. Instead, I focused on their silhouettes long enough to bring up the player cursors, one by one.

“…Ah, there’s the ALS,” I murmured, just as Asuna whispered, “Found DKB.”

We indicated the locations to each other with our glances. The ALS members were on the right side of the arena, while the DKB took up spots at the buffet on the left. Both groups had large papers spread out on their table and were deep in excited discussion.

“…I wonder what they’re looking at.”

“Those are the odds,” I explained. “They list the names and descriptions of the monsters that are going to fight on the stage, along with the payout if they win. You can get that free from the ticket counter.”

“I don’t want them,” Asuna claimed, fixing me with an uncomfortably firm glare.

“R-right, of course not. Anyway…Hey, Argo, where’s the quest NPC? I don’t see any marks.”

We were now in a party together, so any ongoing quest NPCs should have had a ! mark above their head, even if only Argo had picked up the quest. But no amount of searching turned up any sight of one.

“Of course ya don’t; the quest NPC’s somewhere else,” Argo said, turning to me.

“Huh?” I squawked. “Then why are we here?”

“We’re runnin’ an errand, obviously.”

“……”

As a general rule, quests in SAO fell into four broad categories. There were collection quests that involved gathering materials out in the wilderness; combat quests requiring you to defeat a particular monster; escort quests where you helped an NPC get from one place to another safely; and errand quests, which came in a great variety of forms. Errands got called fetch quests for good reason, because many of them involved getting some item and bringing it back—or delivering an item to someone else. But if that’s what the quest was, there would need to be a quest NPC to receive the item or give it to us here. And since there was no such NPC…

“Is it…a search? Or an investigation?”

“Yep,” said Argo as we walked. I groaned in dismay.

Search and investigation quests were the most troublesome of errands. The “Curse of Stachion” quest on the sixth floor took us all over the place, and it started with a request to find the golden cube. While not everything that happened in it was scripted, it had lasted all the way to the floor boss battle. Praying that this wasn’t going to be a similarly epic quest, I asked, “Do we need to find something that someone lost in here?”

“Nope.”

“Looking for a person?”

“Nope.”

Argo walked down the stairs that went through the lowered part of the floor, cutting down every suggestion I had. When we reached the bottom, she led us right into the ring of NPCs huddled around the battle cage, the covered stage.

The upper-class NPCs lounged on sofas on higher levels that you had to pay for or watched from the buffet tables. The ones gathered directly around the battle cage were rougher, lower-class men. “Whaddaya want?” they grumbled. “Don’t push.” But Argo ignored them and walked right up to the golden cage, then looked at Asuna and me.

“Ten minutes until the first match. I’ve got time to explain what I want yer help with.”

She beckoned me closer, and I leaned my left ear toward her face. Asuna leaned in with her right ear, putting the two of us face-to-face at a very close distance, but it would be too awkward to change stances now. Fortunately, Asuna didn’t seem to mind, so I put on a poker face and listened to Argo’s explanation.

“In a few minutes, two monsters are gonna fight inside this cage.”

“Yeah.”

“According to my quest client, one of them is cheatin’ somehow.”

“Huh?” I said, louder than I needed to. Both girls put a finger to my lips. I turned my internal volume knob a bit to the left and continued, “Cheating…? These are monsters that are fighting, not humans. Do they even have enough intelligence to cheat…?”

“A kobold or shrewman might, don’t you think?” Asuna pointed out.

I shrugged. “Unless things have changed since the beta, there aren’t any demihuman monsters in the arena. Probably because it would feel a little too unsavory…”

“They weren’t in the daytime arena,” Argo agreed, pulling out a piece of folded parchment from her shorts pocket. It was the odds list from the ticket counter. When had she picked that up?

“Here, it’s got the first matchup listed.”

Asuna and I took the paper and stuck our heads together to read it. Argo pointed to a spot that contained the names Bouncy Slater and Rusty Lykaon written in Japanese. The odds were 1.64 for the former and 2.39 for the latter.

“…Huh? Don’t the odds usually change depending on who the people are betting on and by how much?” Asuna wondered suspiciously. That was true, but there was a special trick to this odds table.

“Just watch the numbers,” I whispered as the black numerals on the parchment began to move like living animals. The two numbers changed to 1.62 and 2.40.

“Oh! They changed.”

“…Get it? I bet if Kizmel saw this, she’d call it some ‘strange human charm.’”

The instant I mentioned the dark elf knight’s name, Asuna’s eyelids lowered with concern. It didn’t last long, however.

“I see; so the numerical odds automatically update on the sheet,” she said. “Meaning…there are more people who are betting on Bouncy Slater to win the first match?”

“Not necessarily. Odds are determined solely on the amount of money wagered, so it could just be a few big spenders who tilt the odds in that contestant’s favor.”

“I see…Anyway, I assume that the lykaon has to be a doglike monster, but what would a Bouncy Slater be?” she asked.

Argo answered first. “A slater is another name for a pill bug. One that bounces, in this case.”

“Pill bug…” Asuna repeated, making a sour face.

“Which one is your client suspicious of, Argo?” I asked. “The pill bug or the lykaon?”

“The lykaon.”

“…Meaning your client wants you to figure out what the trick is?”

“Correct,” the info dealer said.

Just then, there was the loud crash! of a gong behind us, followed by an energetic announcement.

“Ladiiiies and gentlemeeeeen! Welcome to the crown jewel of the Volupta Grand Casino, the Battle Arenaaaa!”

I turned around and spotted a booth on the next level above the floor with the cage, where an NPC in a white shirt and red bow tie was standing in a spotlight. It was a primitive spotlight using mirrors and large lanterns, of course, not an electric one. But whether it was actually working on some logical system or just the “magic” of the virtual world, it was plenty bright.

When the crowd’s applause died down, the NPC continued speaking, his voice loud enough for everyone in the arena to hear him, despite the lack of a microphone.

“The first match of our night schedule will be starting shortly! Ticket sales are ending in just five minutes, so get those wagers in now, while you have the chance!”

A number of guests—NPCs, of course—rushed toward the ticket counter. The ALS and DKB did not move from the buffet tables because they had already bought theirs.

“I wonder if they actually bet all one thousand chips they won during the day…” I murmured skeptically.

Argo shrugged. “Probably did, yeah? If they’re serious about turnin’ a thousand into a hundred grand, they gotta bet everything they have on all five matches comin’ up.”

“Umm…”

I glanced down at the odds table again. The odds on the first match had shifted again, to 1.61 and 2.41. The subsequent matches also had payouts that hovered around two or three at the highest, but if you bet everything you had and won all five times, it would indeed be possible to reach a hundred thousand chips, starting from a thousand.

That was the trap, however. I’d won the first four bets in a similar situation during the beta and was just one match away from claiming the top prize at the casino, when…

I sighed, banishing that memory, then smirked at Argo. “Now that we know there’s cheating going on, we should’ve bet everything on the lykaon.”

“Better not! If you buy a monster battle ticket while the quest is active, you fail it,” she said, shaking her head rapidly. The info dealer fixed the two of us with a dead serious look. “And I don’t think this is the kind of quest where you get a do-over. Still, I’m not positive I can spot the tell on my own. Kii-boy, A-chan, I’ll need yer help.”

“You bet!” said Asuna brightly. I added a clumsy “Uh, y-yeah.”

Within moments, the gong crashed again, and the lights in the hall dimmed.

The artificial spotlight hit the golden cage this time. Everyone in the room focused silently on the stage.

The rectangular cage was quite large, twelve feet across on the short side and thirty on the long side. Three sides of the cage were bars, while the far side was the stone wall of the room. Metal bars blocked the roof of the cage, too, and there was a partition on the inside that separated it into two parts. In the beta, the monsters simply popped into existence on either side of the cage, which struck me as lazy programming. This, too, appeared to be another area where the official release had been polished up.

Rumbling heavily, the stone wall receded in two places that subsequently began to rise upward. The NPC with the bow tie announced, “And now! Starting with the first match of the Battle Arena’s night schedule! Our first combatant…a killer insect clad in steel armor! The Bouncy Slaterrrr!”

Just as Argo had described, a pill bug came plodding out of the left doorway—only it was nearly three feet long. Its tough-looking shell was bluish-black and shining.

I’d fought these enemies a few times in the beta. If you tried to slash their shells and let your strength do the work, it would only succeed at wearing down your weapon.

“And in opposition…the red reaper whose jaw can crush iron! The Rusty Lykaooon!”

A deep growl emerged from the right doorway. Out of the darkness proceeded a dog-type monster with a dark-red pelt and black spots. Lykaons were squatter than wolves, with shorter snouts, but they were hardier and had very powerful jaws. Even without the length of the tail, it was notably larger than the pill bug.

Colored cursors appeared above both monsters. They were NPC yellow rather than a shade of red, perhaps to hide the system that displayed an enemy’s relative difficulty based on the tint of its color.

I focused on the lykaon. According to the person who gave Argo the quest, it was engaging in some form of foul play.

Both pill bug and lykaon were monsters that appeared in the latter half of the seventh floor. Between them, it was the pill bug that had been more trouble in the beta. The lykaons weren’t easy by any means, but the danger mainly came from the fact that they appeared in packs of two or three. As long as you could isolate one and deal with it individually, they were a good source of experience. The NPC announcer claimed it could “crush iron” with its jaw, but that was a bit of exaggeration.

As a matter of fact, the odds were higher for the lykaon, meaning that the guests in the hall had put down more money overall on the pill bug. Therefore, if you placed a big counterbid on the lykaon and had some means of cheating so it would win, you stood to make major cash. The real question was how you could help the lykaon win the monster battle while all these people were watching…

“It doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy, visually speaking…I was expecting to see metal dentures or claws attached…”

“Don’t you think people would notice that? This isn’t Battle Bots,” Asuna said archly. “I was thinking that they might have fed it some kind of stimulant, but I’ve never seen this monster before, so I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Can you, Kirito?”

“Hmm…It doesn’t seem like it’s especially agitated or anything. And wouldn’t a drug like that leave an icon over its HP bar? Whether it’s supposed to be a buff or a debuff.”

“Ah, good point,” Asuna murmured.

The bow tie announcer called out, “Will the killer steel insect crush its prey?! Or will the red reaper crack that shell with its jaw?! Let the first match…begiiiin!”

Bwaaash! The gong crashed again, and the fence that separated the two halves of the cage lowered. The pill bug’s elongated abdominal eyes flashed, as did the red irises of the lykaon.

“Help me out here, you two,” Argo whispered as the monsters roared and the crowd cheered.

“Shaaaa!” the pill bug hissed.

“Grrooo!” the lykaon roared. They charged together, the pill bug opening its jaw and scuttling forward on seven pairs of legs while the lykaon leaped to the right on its third step in an attempt to circle around the enemy.

The pill bug could change directions, but much more slowly. The lykaon got behind it on a diagonal and pressed the attack at once, biting one of the insect’s legs.

“Grrr!” It locked its legs and shook its head violently, snapping the leg off at the base and spilling out bright-red damage effects.

“Shhhoo!” the pill bug hissed, something that could not be identified as either rage or a scream. Its HP gauge dropped about 7 percent. Cheers and howls filled the arena.

Belatedly, I wondered which one Lind’s and Kibaou’s groups had bet on. The answer might have been clear from their reactions, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that HP bar.

The lykaon won the first attack, but that didn’t seem to be the effect of cheating. The lykaon was clearly far superior in mobility, so if the pill bug rushed straight for it, of course it was going to circle around the back.

The beast attacked again and pulled out a second leg, increasing the damage to 15 percent. The NPC announcer wailed, “The red reaper scores consecutive attacks! I guess that bug’s just a bug!”

The lykaon reacted as though it understood those words, taking distance and growling, “Grrrl…”

The severed leg in its jaw turned into blue particles that dispersed in the air. There were still twelve legs left. If it removed all of them, the pill bug wouldn’t be able to walk—assuming it was even still alive. If the same thing kept repeating, that would be the result, but I knew from the trouble they caused me in the beta that this pill bug could do more than slowly rotate.

“Shuuu…” the pill bug growled, and it suddenly rolled itself up.

Its head, feelers, and legs all vanished inside the shining black carapace. The lykaon glared warily at the new shape of its enemy, a black ball sixteen inches across. Four or five seconds of silence passed, and someone in the audience lost patience and shouted, “Attack it, pup!”

Right on cue, there was movement—but it was the pill bug. However, instead of returning to its usual form, it flattened its rounded form, then shot up into the air with an explosive bam!

The pill bug launched itself upward like a rocket, first colliding with the ceiling of the cage, then reflecting downward with a shower of sparks. Like a game of three-dimensional pinball, it bounced off the cage wall, the floor, then the wall again, and slammed into the lykaon’s side.

“Gyarp!” The lykaon yelped in pain as it was hurled into the side of the cage. It got to its feet immediately after falling to the ground, but that single blow took out nearly 30 percent of its health.

That high-speed bounce attack was the pill bug’s one big means of offense, and it was a doozy. It was also the reason for the name Bouncy Slater. On a flat, open plain, it was easy enough to avoid a direct charge, but in the forest, it could bounce off trees, making it a two-dimensional attacker rather than one. Even worse, with the floor and ceiling in a dungeon, it became a three-dimensional attacker. I got beaten the hell up from all directions before I mastered the trick to avoiding them.

“And that’s the slater’s killer attack technique! Is the deadly lykaon helpless to counteract this one?!” asked the announcer. His voice was drowned out by a deluge of cheers.

The pill bug flattened its body again. The lykaon sank back, preparing to avoid the attack.

Bam! The pill bug shot off the ground again, this time reflecting off the stone wall behind it to attack its opponent from the side. The lykaon jumped high to avoid the first angle, but the pill bug merely bounced from the cage to the floor and back upward toward the still-aloft lykaon.

The wolflike creature was blasted against the ceiling and fell to the ground. Its HP was in the yellow zone, under 40 percent.

“……Uh, are you sure this thing is cheating?” I muttered reflexively. Neither Argo nor Asuna replied. Like me, they hadn’t spotted anything yet.

Cheers of support arose for the hobbled lykaon, but not many. The majority of the onlookers had bet on the pill bug, it seemed.

One more solid bouncing attack would probably kill the lykaon. And given the small dimensions of the cage and the many surfaces it offered to bounce off, it seemed impossible to avoid such a three-dimensional, high-speed attack.

For the third time, the pill bug squashed itself against the ground.

The black orb shot upward at an angle. Wha-wha-wham! It bounced back and forth from the ceiling to the floor, approaching the wounded lykaon. The battle was over, it seemed to me.

“Graaaooooo!!”

But then the lykaon howled ferociously and leaped straight for the pill bug. A simple body blow couldn’t possibly crack that tough shell; it could shatter a sword. The beast was going to get smashed and die for sure…

Until suddenly, the lykaon began to rapidly rotate around the median line of its body. It opened its jaw wide and spun at a rate that defied the laws of physics. The lykaon rushed forward like a red drill and slammed into the cannonball pill bug in midair.

An earsplitting metallic crash ripped through the air, and a huge spray of sparks issued from the point where they met. Both creatures writhed and struggled aloft, until one HP bar began to drop very rapidly. They were so close together that it was difficult to identify which one it was.

Even I found myself holding my breath, and I didn’t have any money on the match.

Craaash! A huge amount of blue shards burst outward.

The furry red lykaon flew through the cloud and landed on the other side of the cage.

Several seconds of silence was broken by the frantic smashing of the gong. Angry roars, jeers, and cheers exploded from the audience, rattling the arena with their ferocity.

“Ohhhh myyyy goodness! What a huuuuge comeback! The winner is the red reaper, Rustyyy Lykaoooon!” screamed the bow tie.

It was loud enough that I barely heard Argo mutter, “Hang on; do Rusty Lykaons have a special attack like that…?”

“I never saw it during the beta,” I told her, “but plenty of monsters have received new attack patterns since then. Maybe this is one of them.”

“In that case, it’s a good thing we saw it here. Even you’d have trouble perfectly deflecting an attack like that on your first try, Master Black.”

I was tempted to be outraged, but she was right, of course. A canine-type monster performing a high-speed spinning attack was simply beyond the bounds of imagination. Even if I managed to defend, the force of it would snap my sword in two.

The bettors couldn’t have anticipated it, either. The more unsavory NPCs in the standing area swore loudly and furiously, while exclamations of disappointment could be heard from the seats behind us.

The gong crashed again, and the gateway in the stone wall opened once more, but only on the right side this time. The victorious lykaon vanished into the darkness, limping slightly, as the bow tie announcer declared, “That’s the end of our first match! A round of applause for our winner, Rusty Lykaon!”

The audience clapped for the winner, but given that more of them had bet on the loser, there wasn’t much enthusiasm behind it. That didn’t bother the announcer, who continued energetically, “Thank you! Our second match will begin in ten minutes, at nine twenty! There are still tickets available for purchase, so if you want to grow your winnings or make up what you lost, step right up the counter, folks!”

The spotlight on the announcer’s stand faded, and the room got a bit brighter. In the relaxed atmosphere that followed, the people milling around trickled toward the exit or the buffet bars.

That made me wonder how the results affected our fellow players. I stared at the table where the DKB had been seated. Lind, Shivata, and Hafner were raising narrow fluted glasses. Apparently they’d bet on the lykaon and multiplied their winnings by 2.41.

Then I turned to look at the ALS on the other side of the room. I very nearly murmured “No way” when I saw them. Kibaou’s group was raising mugs of ale and having a toast with huge smiles on every face. They certainly didn’t seem to be drinking to mourn a loss.

I turned to the two girls, who were still examining the combat cage, and said, “Seems like Lin-Kiba both won.”

“Eugh, no way,” muttered Argo. Great minds think alike. “I figured that one of the two woulda lost it all there. That means they both got two thousand four hundred chips…What now? What if they both make a hundred thousand, and they both get that big shiny sword? Assuming there’s two of ’em to share.”

“Uh, w-we won’t do a thing. If it speeds up our pace through the game, that’s a good thing…”

I gave the honor student response. But of course, I couldn’t deny that I was just the teensiest bit—maybe half a teaspoon—jealous of the idea. I might have been a prisoner of SAO, but I was also undeniably an online gamer.

Diavel the knight, the man who laid the foundation for today’s frontline group, went through Argo in a scheme to buy my Anneal Blade from me and made a reckless charge against the boss of the first floor in an attempt to win the Last Attack bonus. Now that other players had caught up to us in terms of level and gear, I understood his motivations. Or maybe that was presumptuous of me to say. After all, Diavel had wanted strength in order to save the prisoners of Aincrad, while at the end of the day, I only had interest in my own power.

I was broken out of this rare instance of self-reflection by Asuna, who turned away from the cage to ask, “So the special attack the lykaon used wasn’t cheating?”

To my surprise, she hadn’t employed her usual psychic ability to sense my negative thoughts. “Y-yeah,” I said quickly. “If that was cheating, then the pill bug’s bouncing attack would be, too.”

“True…Sorry, Argo, I’m afraid I don’t have any idea what sort of cheating that lykaon may have been doing,” Asuna said.

Argo shook her head. “Nah, you don’t need to apologize. I didn’t have a clue, either…You notice anything, Kii-boy?”

With the attention on me, all I could do was raise my palms. “No idea. When the lykaon got hit by the pill bug’s reflecting attack and smashed into the cage, I thought it was dead…Has the quest log been updated at all?”

“Let’s see…” Argo leaned over, opened her window, then looked up and shook her head again. “Nope, no difference. It still says FIGURE OUT THE IMPROPER ACTIONS USED ON THE LYKAON IN THE FIRST MATCH OF THE BATTLE ARENA’S NIGHT SCHEDULE.”

“And no hints, huh? We haven’t failed the quest yet, either…”

I glanced at the spot where the lykaon struck the golden cage. It couldn’t have been pure gold, I assumed. Despite the impact, the vertical bars weren’t bent or dented in the least. I guessed they had to be just as indestructible as the building itself. Otherwise, there was the chance that a larger and more powerful monster might smash through and endanger the audience.

Even if such an event happened, we were within the anti-criminal-code zone, so players couldn’t lose HP. But what about the NPCs? And how were they bringing these monsters into town to have them fight anyway…?

There was no end to the questions I could come up with. My mind worked relentlessly as my eyes fixed on the golden cage.

“……Hmm?”

I noticed something. My brows lowered.

A number of the shining, polished golden bars were stained with a reddish something. Right at the spot where the lykaon hit the cage.

Well, if you hit a hard surface with that much force, some blood is to be expected, I thought. But there was no “bloodshed” in SAO at all. I’d never even seen bloodstains left behind after any battles in the game. There was the bloody handprint left on the golden cube from the “Curse of Stachion” quest, where Cylon had beaten his master Pithagrus to death, but that was just part of the quest story…

“…Oh.”

I murmured again and looked down at myself. I’d removed my armor so I was only wearing a black shirt and pants—and my shortsword. There was nothing in my pockets.

“Do either of you have a handkerchief or something else you don’t mind discarding? Preferably a white one,” I asked Asuna and Argo, who were reading the latter’s quest log on party-visible mode. Argo merely rolled her eyes, but Asuna said exasperatedly, “You should have one of your own, Kirito.”

“W-well, I normally keep one in my belt pouch…but it’s not white.”

“Will this do?” she said, pulling a perfectly white handkerchief from the large front pocket of her dress.

“I probably won’t be able to give it back. Is that all right?”

“It’s fine. I can just make more with the Tailoring skill.”

I didn’t even wait for the end of the sentence before I snatched it away and rushed six feet to the left. With a quick glance around to make sure that neither Kibaou, Lind, nor any NPCs were watching, I reached up with the handkerchief and rubbed firmly at the red stain on the bars of the cage.

Once I’d gotten enough, I stepped away and stared at the cloth. The red color looked too vivid to be dried blood to me…but I couldn’t be absolutely positive, because this was a virtual world and all.

“Is that the lykaon’s blood, Kii-boy?”

“If you wanted to rub the cage, you could have asked for a rag.”

Undeterred by the skeptical comments from the women, I lifted the red stain to my nose and sniffed. There was none of the particular iron stink of blood. Instead, it had a very faintly sweet, perhaps floral scent. I suspected it was not the actual smell of the lykaon’s blood, but rather, it was…

“This isn’t blood,” I murmured, drawing looks from Argo and Asuna.

“If it ain’t blood, then what is it?”

“Probably some kind of dye…”

“Dye? Why would it be—?”

Argo paused, then looked to the left—not behind me but to a message on the left side of her line of sight.

“…Quest log just got updated.”

“Huh? What does it say?” asked Asuna, leaning forward. Argo opened her quest window again and pointed. I sidled around and looked over Asuna’s shoulder.

The updated quest log said: YOU HAVE DISCOVERED THE ILLEGITIMATE TACTIC USED ON THE LYKAON. REPORT BACK TO THE QUESTGIVER. Argo grinned, having figured out the trick, and held out her fist. I gave her knuckles, but Asuna still looked confused.

“So the dye was evidence of cheating? Why would that…… Oh!”

She figured it out, too, before I needed to explain it to her. But we didn’t want to talk about it out loud and be overheard. I held a shushing finger to my lips and whispered to Argo, “Is the questgiver nearby?”

“In the hotel on the third floor.”

“Really? The VIP area? Do you have a pass?”

“The questgiver gave me a one-day pass kinda thing. Don’t worry, I can get friends through…I think.”

That last comment left me a little worried, but we were already along for the ride. It was a shame I wouldn’t get to watch the second match, but we weren’t placing bets anyway.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Sure thing. Just be on yer best behavior, Kii-boy,” she said, only to me, and then turned to leave. As we rushed after her, I glanced over and saw Asuna biting her lips, trying desperately not to laugh.