Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 7 - Chapter 9

9

JANUARY 6, 3:10 AM.

My partner and I, back in our usual battle gear, walked side by side up the central stairs of Volupta.

The stores on either side of the street were shuttered tight, and not a single person could be seen walking along nearby. Things were probably still bustling on the western staircase, with all the shady bars, and there might have even been some late-night quest prompts there, but this was not the time for detours.

Despite leaving nearly three hours ahead of time, we were still pushing our luck with the schedule we’d set up for ourselves. First, we’d go to Looserock Forest in the center of the floor, meet up with Kizmel at the dark elf base, then collect twenty narsos fruits while advancing the “Sacred Key” questline. We’d have to return to Volupta by noon. Either we’d have to pause the key quest at that point and ask Kizmel to wait at her base, or else she’d be coming into Volupta with us.

Even with Argo handling the wurtz stone collection, it was a lot to do. Just thinking about it brought the last vestiges of sleepiness forward, and I let out a huge yawn. Asuna, who was walking briskly along, leaned forward so she could look up at me from below.

“You slept three times as much as I did, and you’re still sleepy?”

“It wasn’t three times as much. Maybe two and a half,” I said, because I couldn’t very well say, I couldn’t sleep at all because you fell asleep in my bed. “And how are you so wide awake if you only slept for an hour?”

“Hmm, I dunno. That one hour has me feeling pretty good.”

“…Well, good for you, milady,” I said. Asuna shot back with, “Thank you, manservant.” She was probably feeling hyped up not because of the lack of sleep but from the anticipation of meeting Kizmel very soon.

I was looking forward to that, too, of course. But we were already on the seventh floor of Aincrad. The “Elf War” campaign quest started on the third floor, and it would end on the ninth. We had maybe two or three weeks, at the most, left to go on adventures with her.

But even after the questline, we should be able to see Kizmel anytime, as long as we descended to the ninth floor. So I didn’t need to mention any depressing facts to bring down Asuna. It was hard enough to find things to look forward to in this deadly game; might as well appreciate them while we had them.

For some reason, I heard a phantom version of Argo’s mischievous “nee-hee-hee” laugh, and I shivered. She was still fast asleep in her bedroom, so we left her a note, but I was certain she’d have some teasing to do when we met around midday. I needed to prepare for that and have some witty comebacks ready.

I was simulating that conversation in my immature, eighth-grade mind when Asuna said, “I wonder what Lind and Kibaou are going to do.”

“Do?”

“They didn’t win their bet on the final match and lost everything they had, right?”

“It’s not everything they had,” I said with a chuckle. “According to Liten, the first ALS bet was eleven thousand col. That’s a lot of money, but when the DKB members were trying to buy the guild flag from us, they offered three hundred thousand. The ALS probably has about as much, so if they came out of that losing eleven thousand, well, that’s just the price of a valuable lesson, don’t you think?”

“The price of a lesson…” Asuna repeated, frowning. “So does this mean the NPC man who sold Lind and Kibaou the cheat sheet was actually a scammer?”

“I don’t think I’d call him that…The cheat sheet was only a hundred col, and its suggestions were correct on nine out of the ten matches yesterday. So it was probably intended to build up trust through the first nine matches, then get them to bet as big as possible in the tenth and lose. That wouldn’t make him a scammer—but a plant from the casino, perhaps.”

“Hmmm…” Asuna didn’t seem entirely convinced by my interpretation. She turned her head the other way. “But the monster arena isn’t like the roulette or card tables. The bettors are wagering their money against one another, right? Lady Nirrnir said the only money the casino makes on those is from the ten percent fee on each ticket purchase. So if Kibaou’s group lost tens of thousands of col, it would be the other visitors to the casino who made that money. The casino only gets a small bit of that.”

“That’s exactly correct,” I said, impressed by how quickly she grasped the concept. “So if my imagination is accurate, one or more of those bettors are actually with the casino. They bet on the opposite of Kibaou’s pick, so that if they win, they win big.”

“That’s so dirty!” Asuna blurted out, pulling no punches. “But…that means they can manipulate the outcome of the matches, right? So wouldn’t it be impossible unless the trainers of both monsters…meaning Bardun Korloy and Nirrnir, work together, right…?”

“Not necessarily,” I said, having considered this just seconds earlier. I did my best to explain. “If only one of the two is acting improperly, it might be tricky to guarantee a win, but you can certainly guarantee a loss. You could choose the weakest monster in the specified rank and weaken it further with poison before the fight. Then you write in the cheat sheet that you expect your monster to win—and trick Kibaou into betting big on you.”

“Even still, that doesn’t add up. The cheat sheet had a favorite for each of the nine matches before that, and they were all correct. I assume not all the losers were the Korloys’ monsters. They’d need to win a few……Ah!”

When she gasped, I nodded slowly. “Yes, they probably engaged in some cheating in order to win, too. One of those attempts was the dye trick with the Rusty Lykaon. I bet the other matches that the Korloy family’s monsters won had some kind of cheating in effect—we just didn’t notice it. That way, they not only get the cut from the matches they win, but they also get money when they lose.”

“……So in every one of the matches, it’s uh, what do you call it…? When only one side is cheating…”

“When one side is losing on purpose, that’s called throwing the match. But the Korloys are also cheating in order to win.”

“I see…Well anyway, it’s dirty. Nirrnir’s trying her best to fulfill her role, but the Korloys are cheating for no reason other than increasing their profit,” my partner said, fuming.

I was going to tell her that was just part of the quest background, but I swallowed my words. A month ago, I would have considered this Bardun Korloy to be nothing but a cog in a story written by a game writer in the real world. But Kizmel, Myia, Theano, and even Kysarah, the Fallen Elf adjutant who stole the sacred keys, seemed to be acting of their own free will. It was possible that Bardun was merely placed in a situation and had made all subsequent choices on his own.

Nirrnir said Bardun was gathering as much money as he could to buy a small amount of life, with no other concerns. If that wasn’t just a simple bit of characterization, then what was it that made him fear death so much? And what exactly did she mean by “buying life” with money…?

“Kirito, there’s the exit.”

I looked up and saw a smaller gate ahead of us. At some point, we’d finished climbing the central stairs and reached the square on the northern end of Volupta.

The gate was wide open, despite the hour, and while there were guards on either side, their heads were lolling sleepily. I couldn’t blame them for being bored; whether they took their job seriously or not, the monsters outside the town were physically prevented from getting inside by the game system. In a sense, this had to be the emptiest job imaginable.

Out of an abundance of sympathy, I actually said “Good evening” as we passed them. One of the guards seemed to be sleeping on his feet, but the other one lifted his head and said, “It’s dangerous at night. Be careful.” Asuna smiled and thanked him.

We passed through the elegant but sturdy gate and headed out into the wilderness. The words LEAVING TOWN appeared, then vanished.

I sucked in a deep breath of night air blowing across the plains ahead and stretched as far as I could.

Asuna gave me a funny look and asked, “Did you always used to greet the town guards?”

“No, just…every now and then…”

“Mm-hmm. He totally jumped; did you see that? I bet he thought he was going to get yelled at by his boss for sleeping on the job,” she said with a giggle.

It occurred to me that I should probably greet the guards more often in the future. We set off down the road out of town by moonlight.

Aincrad’s seventh floor was split into flatlands on the southern side and mountains on the north. The roads from the main town to the labyrinth tower both curved their way around through those environs, so hardly any players—or NPCs—bothered to set foot in the center.

Because of that, the road heading directly north from Volupta quickly showed cracks in the paving stones and turned into simple exposed dirt shortly thereafter. When it rained on this surface, the mud could make it easier to tumble, but we didn’t need to worry about that for a while.

We made our way forward carefully, dispatching the moths and stag beetle monsters that replaced the bees and lancer beetles from the day. I was pretty sure that all kinds of rhinoceros beetles were nocturnal in the real world, but these insects were nearly half a meter long, so expecting perfect realism was perhaps beside the point.

After thirty minutes of walking, the environment began to change. The short grass that covered the gentle slopes began to get thicker, and there were more trees about. Eventually, we saw especially large broadleaf trees framing the path ahead.

A clammy headwind blew past us, and the trees rustled loudly. It was practically warning us, “Danger ahead!” You didn’t need to be in a game of death to recognize that this area called for caution.

I opened my mouth to warn Asuna, but she beat me to the punch.

“Aspens.”

“…Wh-what?”

I started looking around, wondering, Was that a monster on the seventh floor? Where are they? But there was no hint of a monster’s presence and no red cursors. I kept looking, until Asuna snapped, “It’s not a monster. It’s the name of those trees.”

“Huh…?” I looked up at the pair of trees that stood watch over the path. “They’re called aspens? Are they real trees?”

“Real trees. Their leaf-cluster density is high, so they make a lot of noise when the wind blows. That’s why they’re also called quaking aspens. And the traditional Japanese name is mountain sounders.”

“Hmm, I may have heard of that before. That reminds me, you guessed the name of the trees at Yofel Castle on the fourth floor, too.”

“That was because Kizmel mentioned they were junipers first. I only knew the Japanese name,” Asuna remarked, smiling very slightly. It disappeared, probably because the thought made her worry for Kizmel again. I wanted to hurry onward, but there was other danger ahead aside from monsters.

“Well, we’re about to enter Looserock Forest, but I need to warn you…”

“About the loose rocks?” she asked. I could only nod.

“Yeah, them.”

“Sorry, sorry!” Asuna chuckled and patted my arm. “What exactly does it mean that the rocks are loose?”

“Well…”

I formed a sphere in the air with my hands, trying to explain with my limited vocabulary.

“The floor of Looserock Forest is wetland, so it’s hard to walk, and here and there the water goes really deep. There’s a path made of these huge boulders, but sometimes they just rock beneath your feet. It’s about five to ten feet from the top of the rocks to the ground, and because the ground is covered in water, you barely take any damage, but it’s really hard to get back up on the rock. Plus, when you walk in the swamp…Well, at any rate, you’ll be able to recognize the loose rocks if you watch closely, so let’s just pay attention, shall we?”

I started to walk again, finished with my explanation, when Asuna grabbed my arm and held me back this time.

“Stop right there.”

“Wh-what?”

“You just skipped over something. When you walk in the swamp…what? What comes after that?”

“……Ummm,” I muttered awkwardly, thinking fast. But I knew well enough by now that I couldn’t pull the wool over my partner’s eyes. “In the marsh water, there are some bottomless holes, like I mentioned, plus some translucent, slimy, frilly guys that look like melibe viridis…Do you know what melibe viridis is?”

“……I do not,” said Asuna very carefully, her face a tapestry of rich emotion.

I rested my hand on her shoulder. “Then you can look it up when we get back to the real world. As long as you don’t fall off the rocks, you won’t have to worry about them.”

“……I’ll do that,” she said. I gave her a quick smile and resumed traveling.

Past the two aspens was a small hill, followed by a dark line of trees. Within that forest was the dark elf fortress. The enemy forest elf base was near the outer perimeter on the northwest part of the floor, beyond some treacherous mountains. It was quite a trek, but of course, we had no reason to visit.

The hour was four o’clock. Lots of time until sunrise.

Following my line of thought, Asuna said, “It’s dark in the forest. Should we get out a torch?”

“No, we won’t need one…I think.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll see when we get inside the forest.”

Asuna made a face at that unhelpful answer, but she changed her expression once we reached the trees.

The boundary line between the Verdian Plains we’d just crossed and Looserock Forest was so sharp and stark that it could never happen in real life. At the other end of the hill, there was a wall of trees nearly seventy feet tall, with a darkened entrance between them so obvious it looked like the mouth of a dungeon. The path wound its way through that gap, and there was no visible light beyond it whatsoever.

“…Are you sure we won’t need light?”

“Just wait,” I reassured her, taking us down the slope and through the gap in the trees. The moonlight behind us got dimmer, and we were soon surrounded by darkness so thick that you couldn’t see more than six feet in front of you. The temperature was dropping significantly, until the summer night humidity completely vanished.

At this point, almost any player would light a torch or lantern. I did that during the beta. But this time, I continued walking through the thick line of trees, grappling with the primordial fear of darkness.

Eventually, our footsteps turned from the dry scraping of earth into the sharper impact of something harder. The ground under our feet turned from dirt to rock. Along with the two sets of footsteps came the sound of running water.

“……Ah,” Asuna gasped. There was a faint green light up ahead. As we got closer, it became clear that the illumination was coming from some mushrooms growing on the trunks of the trees. There were bioluminescent mushrooms in the real world, but these were larger and brighter.

Asuna came to a stop before a glowing fungus, a round cap that looked like a light bulb, and tapped it. The window that appeared displayed the name BONFIRE SHROOM.

“Bonfire shroom…That’s not a real mushroom, right?” Asuna asked, turning to me.

“Not as far as I know.”

“When it says bonfire, is it referring to the big bonfires they light for Obon, to send the spirits of the dead on their way? Like the one in Kyoto.”

“I’m assuming so…”

In other words, this mushroom was glowing to help guide the spirits who’d briefly returned to the living world back to the land of the dead. Not the most auspicious name, but if they weren’t here, it would be instantly three times as hard to get through Looserock Forest.

Asuna straightened up and exclaimed again, softly and wordlessly. Ahead, there were two more green glowing lights that hadn’t been there before.

As she reached them, more lights appeared, as though guiding us along. If you didn’t know what these were, you might think it was a trap, but the mushrooms were not doing anything of their own will or according to any great plan. They simply reacted by glowing whenever a player or NPC approached—and when any other nearby specimens glowed.

For several minutes, we walked alongside the soft green light, until suddenly, the trees gave way on either side. The bonfire shrooms’ guidance ended, too, leaving nothing but utter darkness ahead.

“…Huh? Are we already through the forest? We’ve only been walking a few minutes,” said Asuna with consternation.

I held up my right hand to stop her. “Hang on a moment.”

“Okay…”

We stood still, waiting.

Then, on our right up ahead, a bonfire shroom lit up.

In reaction, a cluster of them shone farther away. Then another group. The chain reaction of luminescence continued without end, until the lights were nearly as numerous as the sky at night. A vast space was lit by a pale green glow.

“Wowww!” Asuna exclaimed, stepping forward. I had to quickly grab the sleeve of her tunic.

Before us was a natural corridor, built of massive trees and their thick foliage. The corridor was roughly a hundred feet tall and across, and it was impossible to tell how far it went. We were standing atop pillars of rock with flat tops, and the ground ten feet below was covered with clear water and aquatic plants. The canopy of so many thick branches overhead dangled a plethora of vines, through which large butterflies flapped lazily.

The rock pillars ran in a line through the center of the passageway of trees and water, twisting and turning as it went. The sight of all this, lit by the unearthly green color of the bonfire shrooms, was nothing short of ethereal.

Once I was sure my partner was standing still with wonder, I let go of her tunic and removed a torch from my inventory. When Asuna noticed that, she seemed almost affronted.

“Wait…It’s so bright now. Do we really need that?”

“Just watch.”

I tapped the torch with my free hand to activate it. The moment the orange flames arose, the light of the nearest group of bonfire shrooms went out. That phenomenon rapidly spread, until the entire tunnel of green was completely dark in the span of under ten seconds. Only deep darkness surrounded us, with nothing but a few meters of light against the rock pillars to guide us.

“I see…So the shrooms don’t activate if there’s other light nearby,” Asuna murmured.

I tapped the burning torch and said, “Exactly. So if you light your torch right at the entrance to the forest, you’ll never find out the mushrooms glow, and you’ll have to work your way through the forest in this darkness. Not that it would be impossible…”

I hit the EXTINGUISH button on the window, and the torch’s flames quickly dwindled, then went out.

Within a few seconds, the nearest batch of bonfire shrooms glowed again. The luminescence spread quickly and quietly, until the entire corridor was again lit a ghostly green.

My demonstration finished, I stashed the torch away and pointed to the string of rock pillars we were standing on.

“These are the loose rocks the dungeon is named after. And you’ll find the loose ones, oh…every seventh rock or so.”

“How loose are we talking here?” Asuna asked, prodding at the rock under her feet with the toe of her boot.

I recalled the general experience from the beta. “Uhhh…it’s not a hurp! More like, somewhere between a wubble and a rumba.”

“……Without using sound effects.”

“Uhhhh…Once you know it’s loose, you can plant your feet and still maintain your balance.”

“How can you tell if it’ll be a loose one?”

“It’s hard to explain with words, so I’ll just point it out to you,” I said, moving to the next rock. Asuna followed, rather timidly.

The circular pillars were all an even ten feet above the water, but there was significant variety in their size. The smallest ones were less than two feet across, while the biggest ones were over four feet. The problem was that the size didn’t necessarily correspond to stability.

“This one’s fine…This one’s fine, too…” I said out loud, crossing from pillar to pillar. Five, six—and I was just about to step on the seventh.

“Aha. Here’s one.”

I pulled back the leg I had extended forward, then crouched down.

“Here, look at this,” I said, pointing out the seam between pillars. The other pillars were completely seamless where they met, but the seventh was just a bit separate from the previous. It was only a few centimeters or so, which meant you might not notice it unless you were focusing on it right as you got there.

“The ones that are just a bit separated from the others are the loose rocks. There are other identifying features, but they’re really subtle, so just looking for the gaps is the best way to go.”

“…Got it.”

“I’ll step on it first. You watch how I keep balance.”

“Y-you’re going to be all right?”

“Totally fine.”

I think, I added silently. I spread out my hands and stepped forward.

The diameter of the loose rock was a bit over two feet. I set my boot down right along the middle and carefully shifted my weight forward. When I was half resting on the rock, I could feel it begin to tilt to the right. It was like standing on a stake that was only lightly struck into soft earth. In fact, that might essentially describe what this rock was.

Carefully adjusting my center of balance, I went ahead and placed all my weight on my right foot. The rock continued to tremble, but it wasn’t leaning far either way. I slowly brought my left foot forward, focusing on balancing with all my concentration, and placed it along the center line, too. Then I transferred my weight to the left foot, lifted the right, and set it down on the next rock.

“There…”

I pulled my left foot forward, then exhaled slowly. I was hopping all over these things in the beta, but four months later, I seemed to have lost the knack of it. There would be plenty of these to cross, so I resigned myself to relearning the basics.

“Ah, I see. Give me room,” Asuna declared from two rocks away, so I moved another rock forward, then turned back to watch.

“Think you can make it?”

“The trick is to keep your weight in the center of the rock, right?” Asuna said. She didn’t sound particularly concerned.

She placed her left foot on the loose rock. That made me wonder if the right foot was my dominant foot, while Asuna’s was the left. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than Asuna quickly alternated feet and crossed the rock without any perceptible wobbling. She stopped in the middle of my rock and grinned.

“What’s my score?”

“I’ll give you ninety-nine points.”

“…Why did I lose one?”

“You showed up the teacher,” I said.

She snorted and looked at the next pillar. “Oh…The next one’s loose, too?”

“Hmm…? Oh, you’re right.”

Down at my feet, there was a very slight gap between our pillar and the next one in the line.

“What happened to the loose rocks being once every seven?”

“I—I was only talking averages. Sometimes you have little clusters of them, and sometimes you don’t see any for a while.”

“I knew that. Anyway, I’ll go first.”

“Be my guest,” I said, taking two steps to the side. I looked at the ceiling of the corridor.

The monster-spawning rate in Looserock Forest was very low, but it wasn’t zero. Every now and then, a giant dragonfly or giant stick bug or giant skyfish floated down from the canopy, and if it happened while you were trying to cross a loose rock, it could cause a brief panic.

But for now, there were only a few giant butterflies floating around, which were neutral mobs that didn’t attack unless you did. I looked forward again and saw Asuna unsteadily crossing a loose rock.

She took four steps to cross a larger rock than the first one and was just hopping to the next one when I noticed something.

“…!”

I had to stop myself from shouting. If it startled her, that would only make things worse. I just had to pray she noticed it herself.

The next rock was also loose.

Asuna landed with a soft thump, then took a big step to the right, probably to make room for me to follow. The rock lurched to the side.

“Asuna!”

This time I shouted, right as she blurted out “Huh?!”

Asuna tried her best to balance, but the rock tilted at least twenty degrees, hurtling her into empty air.

My heart seized up, and my limbs went cold. But she would still be fine—the ground below was merely swamp with a water cover of a foot and a half, so it would absorb the fall damage, and she couldn’t drown in it. As long as she didn’t happen to land on one of the bottomless holes.

Despite the shock of the experience, Asuna did not scream. She maintained bodily control in the air and stretched out her limbs as she landed. There was a deep but quiet splash when she hit the water, knees bent to absorb the impact. The display of her HP bar did not lose a single pixel.

“Whew……”

Relieved, I called out to my partner.

“Asuna, you okay?!”

The fencer was still, not moving from her landing position. Slowly, she straightened up and looked at me. “I’m fine…but my butt got wet.”

“Ah. Well, it’ll dry off once you’re out of the water. Don’t move; I’ll lower a rope.”

“Got it,” she said, scowling but giving me a thumbs-up. I flashed one back, then opened my player menu.

At least three times during the beta, I fell off these rocks. In order to get back up as a solo player, you had to return all the way to the entrance of the corridor and walk up a cramped staircase carved into the rock. But with a party, you could get your companions to lift you up.

I materialized my Nephila-string rope, which was strong enough to hold the weight of three players without breaking, then made a loop on the end so I could toss it down to Asuna.

But at that moment, she uttered a soft “Eek!” and pulled her arms up to her chest, standing stock-still.

“Wh-what’s wrong?!”

“S…something touched my leg…”

I scrambled to the edge of the rock and leaned over to look down at her feet. The light of the bonfire shrooms was strong enough to guide you across the rock bridge, but it couldn’t shine into the water below.

Still, I squinted hard, watching the shifting surface of the water, then saw a shape slip past Asuna’s boot. A moment later, a color cursor appeared. It was a very light shade of pink, and the name was HEMATOMELIBE.

I let out a bit of the breath I was holding and shouted, “Don’t move, Asuna! The monster is gross, but alone, it poses almost no danger!”

“Almost…? Ah, yeep!” she squawked, because the hematomelibe began slithering up her right leg.

It was a long, narrow invertebrate, about twenty inches long. The body was translucent, and you could see a black digestive tract down its center. A number of waving finlike protuberances lined its back, and many long feelers extended from its head.

“Wha…?! No, no, no, I can’t do this!” she screamed, leaning backward for all she was worth—but she didn’t try to peel it off. Or maybe she couldn’t. In any case, she’d just have to bear it for the moment.

After the first time I encountered this monster in the beta, I searched the name hematomelibe. It didn’t turn up any direct matches, but breaking it into separate words gave me the gist of it. Melibe was the name of a genus of sea slugs. Hemato was a prefix meaning blood. So combining the two formed the name blood slug.

Further searching taught me about the actual sea slug called melibe viridis, which I’d mentioned to Asuna earlier. The hematomelibe in Aincrad was clearly named after melibe viridis, and the hemato prefix was very relevant, indeed.

“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t do thiiis!” she screeched as the giant sea slug came to a stop about six inches above her knee. The multitude of feelers on its head writhed against her leg, searching the skin between her tall boots and skirt.

“Hya…!”

“Hang in there a bit longer! It’s only going to suck a little blood!” I reassured her.

This had the opposite of its intended effect.

“M…mnyaaaaaaa!!”

Her scream reached every length of the forest corridor. Asuna grabbed the back of the hematomelibe with her bare hand, then ripped it off with all her strength and slammed it against the rock pillar next to her.

The translucent body burst with a disgusting shplack! The visible digestive tract ripped in two, oozing a reddish-black liquid into the swamp water. The ugly remnants of the creature stuck to the rock surface turned to blue particles and dispersed.

Of all the monsters on the seventh floor, the hematomelibe was by far the weakest. It had almost no defense and just a pittance of hit points. Its only attack method was very slow bloodsucking. If you ignored the fact that they were very gross, there was nothing to fear from them—when they were alone.

“Uh-oh…”

Without a moment’s hesitation, I jumped off the pillar. I landed with a larger splash than Asuna made and called out, “Are you all right, Asuna?!”

“Y-yeah,” she admitted, then blinked twice with surprise and suspicion. “Um…Why did you jump down here, too? Who’s going to get us back up there?”

“Gotta start over from the beginning. Let’s hurry!”

I grabbed her hand and turned, then clicked my tongue with irritation. Three more light-pink cursors were floating above the water, gliding toward us. They belonged to three more hematomelibe, of course.

“Kirito, they’re coming from the right, too…and behind us!” Asuna cried.

I let go of her hand. “They’re drawn by the blood of the one that just died. Forget moving. We’ve got to fight!”

“But if we just beat the three ahead of us…”

“It’s impossible to aim at them while they’re in the water. Once you start struggling, dozens of them will swarm you, until you can’t stay upright from the weight. At that point, you could easily drown, even in this shallow water,” I explained as quickly as possible. Asuna didn’t argue any further; she just said, “Got it.”

We drew our swords and stood with our backs to the line of rock pillars. At least this way, we could limit the slugs’ attack to three sides.

“They go into a frenzy over their own kind’s blood, so they’ll jump out of the water and try to attach to you. You’ve got to take them in order. Only use a sword skill if more than one is striking at the same time.”

“Got it!” she repeated, right as the surface of the water burst on our right.

Two bloodsucking slugs, their back fins spread out like wings, leaped toward us. I hit one with a diagonal slash, while Asuna thrust directly into the other. The weak invertebrates split in two, just from the ordinary weapon attacks, and fell into the water before dispersing into particles.

Another two hematomelibe jumped at us. Again, we easily cut them down. Asuna murmured, “If they’re drawn by the blood of their own kind, then won’t they just keep coming, the more of them we kill?”

“Pretty much…Whoa!”

On my left, two cursors leaped in succession. I carefully identified the locations of the two and lined up the single-slash Vertical skill to dispatch them. Another single slug jumped at Asuna, and she destroyed it with a blindingly fast thrust.

Normally, bludgeoning attacks were most effective against invertebrates like the hematomelibe, and the effect got steadily worse with slashing, thrusting, and puncturing damage, in that order. My Sword of Eventide was a slashing weapon, so it did decent damage, but Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier was piercing, so its lethality with normal attacks was less certain.

But because it was originally a strong weapon and had been boosted to +7 by the dark elf blacksmith, her weapon from the third floor still boasted superlative power here on the seventh. As evidence of that, she turned the bloodsucking slug into a circle with a hole in the middle. And to think the rapier still had another eight upgrade attempts on it.

What would it be like if all eight were successful, and it became a +15 weapon? I wanted to see that, but the thought also made me nervous. Not because I was imagining ever crossing weapons with Asuna, of course. But a weapon with such potentially broken stats would be coveted by the front-runners…not to mention the PK gang…

“Aaahh…Here comes a bunch of them!” Asuna screeched, focusing my attention on the surface of the water again. Over twenty cursors were approaching from the distance.

“It’s the same process! If one of them attaches itself to you, don’t panic; just peel them off and smack them against the wall behind us. As long as we don’t panic, we’ll easily survive this!” I stated authoritatively.

That helped reassure Asuna. “Got it. I wanna talk to you about something after this.”

I didn’t even have time to wonder what it was. The water splashed up ahead, and more bloodsucking sea slugs came leaping toward us. We fought them off with slashes and thrusts.

The mirror-bright rapier left faint zigzag aftereffects in the darkness. Her thrusts were so fast that the reflective light ran together into a solid beam.

Asuna’s strength as a player wasn’t all due to the specs of the Chivalric Rapier. With each floor we traversed, Asuna’s skill in combat evolved dramatically. I was more often in the teaching role simply because of the gap in our relative knowledge about the monsters of SAO—and how its game systems worked—but in a couple of floors, say, the tenth or so, she would have made up that ground.

With each flash of her rapier, another hematomelibe disintegrated in midair as a hollowed tube. There was no way you could cause that effect to a blobby invertebrate unless you pierced them exactly head-on down the middle. It took superb concentration, physical control, and affinity for the full-dive experience to achieve this kind of mastery.

Asuna wasn’t meant to be the partner of an outcast like me. She was destined to shine on a much larger stage.

While that wasn’t necessarily a new feeling, something else rose in me that was. It was a kind of hesitation, perhaps a fixation. I wanted to be able to watch her skill grow right beside me. I didn’t want to let anyone else have her. In the real world, I kept my distance from everyone and even shunned my family to an extent. It was ironic that it took getting trapped in a virtual world for me to feel this for the first time.

A third of my brainpower was occupied by these thoughts, as I cut through hematomelibe up, down, left, right, and center. When I fell into this exact same situation in the beta, I felt my willpower getting ground down by waves of enemies with no sign of letting up, but having gone through the experience, I knew that if you withstood the rush, they would run out eventually. Plus, I had a very reliable partner to help me fight.

For the first few minutes, we called out locations to each other for assistance, but eventually we stopped needing to do that. Asuna and I caught little glimpses of each other’s movements out of the corner of our eyes and listened for the soft sound of our breathing to anticipate the timing of the other’s attack and offer backup, as we steadily fought off invaders on three sides.

Eventually, we grew numb to panic, fear, and even the passage of time. I was swinging my sword in a trance—and the next thing I knew, the color cursors that seemed to have buried the surface of the water were all gone, like a vanished mirage.

Still, I stood with my sword at the ready, allowing my mind to empty for several moments, and finally I relaxed. At my side, Asuna’s eyes had a dazed, far-off look to them. She blinked a few times and focused on me.

“……It’s over?”

“……I think.”

I glanced around several times, just to be sure. The fencer examined the rapier in her hand, then said, “I’m glad they were soft monsters. I didn’t lose much durability.”

“Y-yeah…True. I wonder how many we beat…”

“I stopped counting at fifty.”

There wasn’t much to our conversation, but it was a decent way to let our nerves unwind. I shook my head to clear the trance state from my mind.

“Anyway, nice job. You did great,” I said, holding up my fist. Asuna touched her knuckles to mine.

“Same to you, Kirito. Also…I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not following your instructions. If I’d stayed still like you said with the first one, it wouldn’t have resulted in that huge swarm,” she said, surprisingly deflated.

“N-no, that wasn’t your fault,” I quickly insisted. “If I’d warned you about what the hematomelibe looks like, and what it does…”

Then I remembered what Asuna had said just before the fight started.

“…Wait, is that what you wanted to talk to me about afterward?” I asked. Immediately, the fencer’s regal and gracious attitude evaporated with a puff of steam.

“Oh…yes! That! I’m sure you didn’t say anything because you thought I would find it gross—Well, stop doing that! I’ll admit, I may have no natural resistance to gross-type monsters, but I’m not going to tell you we should turn back on account of it!”

“…Can I tell you about the ghost monsters, too?”

“Nmlp…”

She made a sound like something getting stuck in her throat, but eventually, she gave up and nodded awkwardly.

“Y-yes, you can. It’s better than coming face-to-face without having any advance warning. By the way…do they show up here, too?”

“They…do………”

I held it there for three seconds, then made a giant X with my forearms.

“…not!”

Asuna punched my shoulder—with her left hand—just softly enough that it didn’t cause damage.

With the sea slugs gone, we sloshed through the swamp back to the entrance of the forest corridor. Climbing the stairs carved into the wall, we started the balancing act again upon the rocks.

The number of loose rocks had increased since the beta test. Not only did they come two in a row, every now and then it was three in a row. But as long as we walked down the center of each rock, it wasn’t too hard to maintain balance, thanks to our light weight. When the flying insect monsters came down to harass us, it was easy enough to stand on firm rocks and throw stones at them. After about twenty minutes, our destination was within view.

“Wowwww!!” Asuna exclaimed, even more enthusiastically than the first time she’d seen the corridor lit up.

I couldn’t blame her. If you were making a list of the hundred greatest views in Aincrad, this would have to be one of them.

Our south corridor was converging with others from the north, east, and west, into a rounded dome. In the center of the dome was a proud, mammoth tree, at least a hundred and fifty feet across. The monster baobab trees from Zumfut on the third floor were about a hundred feet, so if you cut them down, the cross section would be nearly three times bigger for this one.

If you told me this tree was a thousand years old, I would believe it. A large knot in the tree yawned near the roots, with a wooden door set just behind it. There were also many, many open holes around the trunk, with greenish light spilling out of them. Like the baobabs in Zumfut, this tree was hollow, with living quarters inside it.

Asuna just stood and stared in wonder. I leaned over and murmured, “That’s the dark elf base on the seventh floor, Harin Tree Palace.”

We crossed the last hundred meters of the rock bridge and jumped to a large cluster of rock pillars clumped together in a honeycomb pattern. At last, we could relax.

On other sides of the platform were other rock bridges that led to the other forest corridors. Ahead of us was the knot hollow that was the main gate to Harin Tree Palace, standing nearly thirty feet high. The gate just behind the opening was made of different types of wood fit into a herringbone pattern like a gigantic work of art.

“And Kizmel’s…in there…” Asuna murmured.

I pushed her lightly on the back. “C’mon, let’s go. I’m sure she’s waiting for us.”

“…Yeah.”

As she walked forward, I checked the time. It was 5:07 AM, nearly two hours after we’d left Volupta. If we turned back at the swamp entrance, then it would be a three-hour round trip, just like Nirrnir said.

Our quest objective, the narsos fruit, was growing somewhere in the wetland here. We had the option of continuing to search for the fruit after we got down and fought those hematomelibe, but Asuna didn’t want any more detours, I figured, and I wanted to see Kizmel, too.

We quickly crossed the rocky platform and stopped at the roots of the tree palace. This close, all you could see when you looked up was a trunk so vast it was like a giant wall—and the branches far, far overhead.

“…I wonder what the widest tree is in the real world and how big it is…” I said absentmindedly.

I didn’t expect an answer, but Asuna immediately said, “It’s the Árbol del Tule in Mexico, if I recall correctly. I’m pretty sure the diameter is close to fifty feet at the base.”

“I…I can’t believe you know that. Fifty feet across is amazing, but I feel like this one is at least three times that size.”

“I agree…If we ask Kizmel, she’ll probably tell us the history, won’t she?”

“Yeah, I bet.”

We shared a brief look, then proceeded onward again.

The rock path led us between roots that were over twice our height, right up to the gate. Fire stands lined the path, but the light coming from the cages at the top was not the orange of flames but a pale green. They were cultivating the bonfire shrooms as a light source.

The trail led us through the hollow in the tree. The herringbone-pattern door was right before us. The two gates were shut perfectly tight, and I suspected they would not open even if we pushed them.

I didn’t see any guards around, and unlike with Castle Galey on the sixth floor, nobody called out to us for identification while we waited outside.

“Hmm, that’s weird…When I came here in the beta, I remember the gates opening just from walking up to them,” I murmured, frowning. Asuna ran out of patience and stepped forward, raising her left hand high to show off the large Sigil of Lyusula ring on her pointer finger.

“We are human warriors assisting Kizmel of the Pagoda Knights Brigade of Lyusula! We have come to this land to see her! Please open the gates!”

This was a proper introduction for following the story of a quest. My partner was growing into quite the VRMMO player.

There was a deep rumble, and the huge gates slowly opened to the sides. We had avoided being shut out at the door, to my relief. As they opened, I watched the gates closely. It wasn’t just the surface; the inner structure was wooden, too, and even the gears that helped them open and close. The elves couldn’t cut down living trees, so they must have collected all this material from dead or fallen trunks. I couldn’t imagine how long that would have taken.

It took ten seconds for the gates to open all the way. I tried to see inside, but there was just a lone orange light flickering weakly in the distance—and only darkness elsewhere.

“Huh…? I remember there being a huge hall here.”

“We’ll see when we get there. C’mon, let’s go!” Asuna urged, tugging my arm. I hurried to keep up with her.

We stepped through the open gates and into the darkness. What little light there was from the bonfire shrooms covered the floor just past the gate, but nothing else could be seen.

For now, we could only head for the small light straight ahead…but that was probably just an ordinary fire. And if you stoked a fire, it would turn off all the bonfire shrooms through their chain reaction phenomenon.

But no sooner had I come to that conclusion than a number of needle-sharp spear points swung toward us from the darkness, prodding our chests.

I see. So that single flame was set on purpose, to keep all the mushrooms inside the hall dark…

My thought was snuffed out by a severe voice bellowing, “Human swordfighters Kirito and Asuna! You are under arrest for the crime of joining Kizmel the knight in stealing the sacred keys and passing them to the Fallen Elves!”