Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 8 - Chapter 20

20

“A SNAKE…?!” ASUNA REPEATED, WIDE-EYED.

I nodded limply. “Yeah. I screwed up…I’d seen the snake when I snuck into the stables earlier and thought it was strange, but I didn’t see its attack coming…”

I downed the glass of water in my hand, but it did nothing to wipe away the bitterness in my mouth.

“Strange how?” asked Argo, who had returned to Room 17 from the casino before we got back. She was trying to keep the conversation going, not because it was in her nature as an info agent, but because she could tell I was devastated. I appreciated her kindness and lifted my head.

“The snake was only an inch or so around. So in the stables, they kept it behind bars that were even smaller—more like a mesh fence, really. But you saw the golden cage they fight in for the arena, right? The bars are about four inches apart there. So it occurred to me when I first saw it that the snake would just slither right out into the audience…”

If only I’d held on to that suspicion and considered what it might mean, I lamented, getting down on myself all over again.

This time, it was Kizmel who said, “Meaning that the Korloy family was keeping that snake not as a combatant in the arena but for the sole purpose of allowing it to attack Lady Nirrnir…and they moved it from its special cage to a normal one before the inspection?”

I looked up, straight at the dark elf sitting across from me, and nodded. “It’s the only answer I can understand. When she was bitten, Bardun Korloy and his butler, Menden, didn’t seem surprised or bothered in the least…”

If anything, I thought I saw a thin smile on Bardun’s lips.

Nirrnir’s collapse put an end to the inspection, and I rushed after Kio, who carried her master back to the room on the third floor of the hotel. I assumed she was going to bring a doctor to the girl, but Kio instead took Nirrnir into the bedroom, and they had not emerged in nearly twenty minutes.

Huazo and Lunnze were outside the door for protection, while the other two members returned to the stable on Kio’s orders. But there was no sign of being able to resume the inspection, so presumably whatever criminal evidence was hidden in that storage space had been moved elsewhere by now.

Was the development of the snake ambush a preordained event within the quest or a spontaneous happening caused by other factors? There was no way to know at this point. If the former, there should still be a way to save Nirrnir, but if the latter…perhaps we might see a repeat of what happened with Lord Cylon of Stachion……

I plunged into a swamp of unease and regret once again—but my left knee suddenly felt warm. I looked up and saw Asuna smiling next to me, her hand resting on my leg. She met my gaze and nodded with purpose.

“It’s all right, Kirito. A little snake venom isn’t going to take out Lady Nirrnir.”

She didn’t present any evidence for that claim, but I decided to agree with her and nodded slowly in return. “Yeah…you’re right.”

“That’s right. We haven’t gotten the quest reward, fer one thing!” added Argo, grinning wickedly. More seriously, she said, “Plus, there’s still more we can do.”

“Huh…? Like what?”

“There might be a cure for the snake venom. Kii-boy, what was the name of the snake that bit Lady Nirr?”

My mind went blank for a moment, and then I realized she was right. I’d read somewhere that only special antibodies called antivenom, produced by humans and other animals, would counteract snake venom, but that was in the real world. A random antidote potion from a street seller probably wouldn’t do the trick—Kio would have used one right away if that were true—but there could certainly be a medicinal item just for that particular snake.

I stared at the surface of the table, willing my memory to cough up the answer. I’d only seen the “Something-or-Other Serpent” on the color cursor for a moment, but if I couldn’t recall it, I was a failure of a top player. I thought not of the word itself but the mental image of it, the visual snapshot I still contained in my memory, and read out the English letters.

“Uh, it started with an A…I think it was Argent Serpent? I don’t know what the first word means…” I said.

Asuna and Argo glanced at each other and then spoke at the same time.

“It’s silver.” “That’s silver.”

“Silver…? Why isn’t it just ‘silver,’ then?” I asked.

It was a very straightforward question, but Asuna glanced at Kizmel with some concern before saying, “Silver comes from German. Argent comes from French.”

“Ah, I see…” I murmured, then realized what Asuna’s concern was about. To Kizmel, this world’s language was, well, Aincradese. There was no distinction between Japanese, English, and German.

Fortunately, Kizmel didn’t seem to be hung up on what she said. If anything, the pensive look on her face said she was hung up on something else, instead.

Before I could ask her what it was, the knight blinked and looked right at me. “You are certain that the snake that bit Lady Nirrnir was called an Argent Serpent?”

“Y-yeah. Are you familiar, Kizmel?”

“Only by name. But if true…this is no trifling matter. At the very least, you will not find the antidote in any town of humankind,” Kizmel claimed with certainty.

I stared at her, distraught, and asked faintly, “Why is that…?”

Now it was Kizmel’s turn to hesitate. After a few moments, she said quietly, “In the old words, Lady Nirrnir is known as Dominus Nocte…a Lord of the Night.”

“Lord of the Night?” the three of us repeated in unison. I’d never heard that phrase in Aincrad before, not even in the beta test.

Asuna, however, gasped after a moment. And Argo, who sat on the other side of Kizmel, murmured to herself. The two of them made eye contact, then Asuna whispered to Kizmel, “Are you saying…she’s a…vampire?”

Whaaaaat?!

Only tensing my jaw could keep me from shouting the exclamation out loud.

Nirrnir? No way…

The thought struck me as ludicrous, but all the supporting evidence suddenly fell into place in my mind. The heavy curtains over the windows, even during the day. Her exclusive beverage of choice, red wine. The heavy cloak she wore before going to the stable. The wall Kio had us make before she crossed the light of the sunset. All these things gave credence to Asuna’s suggestion.

Eventually, Kizmel nodded, almost imperceptibly. “That is another name…but you should not repeat it here. The lords of the night are not ghouls wandering the graveyard at night. They are a proud people. Some of them live far longer than even we elves, from what I hear.”

“Wow…” I murmured. Then I recalled something and asked the knight, “Is that why you knelt when you greeted Nirrnir for the first time? Because you knew she was a Domi…Dominus Nocte?”

“That’s right. I saw one of them at the castle when I was a child, just once, but I could tell from her airs.”

“Ah…”

I exhaled, trying to recollect my stunned wits. I was shocked to learn that Nirrnir was a vampire, or a Lord of the Night, but that did not change the fact that she was my quest client or the fondness that I felt for her. And vampires were an RPG staple; it almost seemed strange that we hadn’t come across one before now.

“And when you say this is no trifling matter, what did you…?”

But I realized the answer before I could finish the question.

The classic vampire weaknesses were garlic, sunlight, and silver. In fact, the very first time we visited this room, Kio pulled my shortsword out of its sheath and said, “Plain steel.” She had been checking to make sure it wasn’t silver.

I didn’t know if she was weak to garlic, but there was no question that walking in the late sun gave Nirrnir a kind of weakened status—in retrospect, the black circle with spikes in the icon was probably supposed to be the sun. So it couldn’t have been a coincidence that the snake that bit her had the word for silver in its name.

“…So is the poison from the Argent Serpent only effective against a Dominus Nocte? And that’s why it’s not easy to find an antidote…?” I asked.

“I do not know for certain,” Kizmel hedged, “but I know that the Argent Serpent lives in deep, deep caves and lives on silver ores. Its scales are made of fine silver and can be sold for a high price. And the silver venom that drips from its fangs, once smeared on a weapon, will provide extra power against ghouls and wraiths. Naturally, a Dominus Nocte is a rare and elite being…But silver is dreadfully poisonous to a Lord of the Night. It is similar to how dry lands sap the strength from elves…”

“…!”

I couldn’t help but clench my jaw. A poison that could augment a weapon had been poured straight into Nirrnir’s veins. If I had remembered the Argent Serpent’s name properly and told Kio or Nirrnir before the inspection, it would not have come to this disaster.

There was a fury setting my blood to boiling, and it was not entirely at my own foolishness.

Bardun Korloy, his butler, Menden, and all their soldiers knew that Nirrnir was a Lord of the Night, not just a regular human. That was why they opened the loading bay door to flood the room with sunlight, just to inconvenience her. And not just that—it might have been to intentionally weaken her so her reflexes were slower. They moved the Argent Serpent to a normal cell and waited for Nirrnir to walk closer before setting it upon her. At the very moment that he demanded she be present for the inspection, Bardun intended to poison Nirrnir with silver.

Of course, this could have been the written scenario for this quest all along. But Bardun had stared down at Nirrnir, collapsed and weakened, and leered at her. He was saying, This is what you deserve.

“…Kizmel, is there any way to counteract the silver poison?” I asked, knowing it was a futile question. But I couldn’t go without asking it.

Amid a pained silence, the knight just shook her head. But then a hard, tense voice spoke, filling the living room.

“There is one way.”

I spun around to see that the door to the bedroom had opened at some point, revealing Kio, the battle maid.

Her face was just as pale as Nirrnir’s had been when she fainted. For an instant, I thought that perhaps Kio was a vampire—or Dominus Nocte—too, but then I remembered that she had been perfectly fine in the midday sun when helping us with the decolorant for the Rusty Lykaon and the healing herbs.

For another thing, Nirrnir was the descendent of the long-dead Falhari, and her parents were dead, too, for all I knew. As long as they didn’t die from accidents or murder, that suggested that her family members were average humans. So did Nirrnir turn vampiric due to some experience in her life, or was she a foster child with no blood relation to her parents?

At this point in time, that was far from important. I stood up from the couch and took a few steps toward Kio. “You said there’s a way…? Is there some medicine that will cure Lady Nirr? More importantly, is she all right now?”

“…Come this way,” Kio said, beckoning with her hand before silently returning to the bedroom. We rushed after her.

The bedroom was almost entirely dark, with only a small lamp at her bedside, glowing a mysterious pale green. It was not a fire shining within the enclosed glass, but a bonfire shroom, like the ones in the hidden passage from the plaza.

In that cool light, Nirrnir was visible on the bed, her eyes closed.

Her eyelids and long flowing hair were absolutely still, which made me nervous that she was no longer alive, but the visible HP bar had about 30 percent left, where it was still. Below the bar were two icons, a silver snake on a black background—silver poisoning, I presumed—and a blue flower on a black background.

With some exceptions, status icons in SAO held to a general pattern: Debuffs had black backgrounds, and buffs were a different color. So it was highly probable that the blue flower icon was also a negative status.

It took all my willpower not to touch her little forehead to check her temperature. There was still a golden ? floating over Nirrnir’s head. As long as the sign of the questgiver remained present, our connection couldn’t be severed, I decided.

“What is this state she’s in?” I asked Kio.

The loyal maid bit her lip in frustration and whispered, “Lady Nirrnir is in a deep sleep induced by medicine…Did you explain to them about her, Lady Kizmel?”

The knight nodded gently. “I did, although I was not certain if it was right to do so of my own accord…”

“No, I thank you for saving me the time,” said Kio, giving her a look of gratitude. She turned to me. “As you heard, Lady Nirrnir is an immortal Lord of the Night. Even I do not know her actual age, only that she has watched over the Nachtoy clan and the Grand Casino for over three hundred years.”

“Three hun…”

I couldn’t find the words.

The moment I’d heard she was a vampire, I had a suspicion she wasn’t as young as she looked, but the truth was an entire digit greater than what I expected. Now it made much more sense that Kizmel had taken a knee. I motioned for her to continue.

“A Lord of the Night is said to have everlasting life, but things that are harmless to us, like sunlight and pure silver, are terrible poison to them. However, a brief moment of direct sunshine, or a small wound from a silver weapon, can be recovered from if treated appropriately. The Argent Serpent’s silver venom, however, cannot be removed from the body once it is inside. If left unattended, it will take only a single night to…”

Kio could not finish that sentence. She reached out and brushed Nirrnir’s golden hair with her fingertips, as though checking that the flame of her life was still burning. Satisfied, she pulled back, then lifted a small blue bottle from the side table. It seemed to be empty already.

“So I used this elixir…no, this poison of the lobelia flower, to put her to sleep.”

“Poison of the lobelia…?!” Kizmel gasped. She looked from Kio to the blue bottle, shocked. “That is a poison that even the Ring of Purification Her Majesty gave to me cannot cure. A single drop of it can kill. You gave her that entire bottle?!”

“Lords of the Night have a powerful resistance to poison—all poison except for silver, that is. In any case, I could not put Lady Nirrnir to sleep without using this much of it.”

“…I see,” said Argo, breaking her silence at last. She looked quite pensive. “Fight poison with poison, eh? So Lady Nirr’s not just sleeping, but she’s in a kind of comatose state, I assume?”

“That is correct. This is how we can keep the effect of the silver poisoning to a minimum.”

“And…if we keep her asleep until the effect of the silver poisoning wears off, Lady Nirrnir should survive…?” Asuna asked, clutching her hands together in prayer.

But Kio let out a long, heavy breath and shook her head. “No…the silver poisoning will not naturally go away. Even as we speak, it is slowly but surely eating away at her body, devouring her life. The sleep may slow it down, but even in this state, she will last two days at most.”

Her voice was calm but tinged with deep anguish, lamentation, and anger. I could tell that the anger was directed at Bardun for setting up the trap and at herself for failing to stop it. I felt the same thing within myself. In fact, I now realized, I was biting my lip with frustration.

“Oh…” Asuna gasped. She opened her window and brought out a crystal colored a deep rose pink. Abruptly, I, too, murmured, “Oh…”

She took a step toward Kio and held out the eight-sided crystal. “Do you think…this could heal Lady Nirrnir?”

“……A crystal of healing? But it is so rare, so valuable…” Kio said, unable to hide her shock.

Asuna shook her head firmly. “No. I’d give this up in a second if it meant saving her life. Right, Kirito?”

I quickly nodded in response. “Yes. We can always get more of them.”

“…Thank you. Your generosity is too kind,” said Kio, bowing her head. But she did not reach out to accept the crystal Asuna was offering. She put her hands on it and pushed away. “But I’m afraid even this will not work. To cure the poison requires a crystal of purification, not a crystal of healing, and because Lords of the Night are so powerfully resistant to poison, they are also nearly immune to the medicines of humans and elves. Crystals are no exception.”

“……No way…”

Asuna lowered her chin, clutching the healing crystal to her chest. I started to reach out for her, then drew my hand away in a hurry. There was a question I needed to ask again.

“But, Kio, you said there was just one way to cure silver poisoning. What is it?”

“…Dragon’s blood.”

“Dragon’s blood…?” I repeated, waiting for her explanation.

But Kio was not in any rush to explain. She just stared at her sleeping master. After a long silence, at least ten seconds, she finally spoke in a hushed whisper.

“…Perhaps you are aware that the Lord of the Night must drink human blood to stay alive.”

“……”

For a brief moment, I was taken aback—but it should have been obvious. She was a vampire. In fact, for all the times I had been in this room, I could not recall seeing Nirrnir drink anything but that red wine.

“Meaning…that red wine…was actually human blood…?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

Kio gave a frail smile and shook her head. “No, that is actual wine. Very fine wine…While it might contradict what I just said, in the ten years I have served her, and most likely long before it, Lady Nirrnir has never drank human blood. This is what she drinks instead.”

She pulled a small black bottle out of the pouch she kept at her side. It was the object she’d offered Nirrnir outside the stable entrance, when Nirrnir walked across the sunset light and collapsed. But she refused to drink it.

“What is that…?”

“It is the one thing that a Lord of the Night can substitute for human blood…dragon’s blood. According to legend, it provides far greater vitality than mere human blood, but it must be diluted by spirits in order to be stored for long periods of time, and it is treated with many kinds of medicinal herbs, so the effect is greatly weakened. Lady Nirrnir drinks one bottle every seven days, and that is how she has lived without human blood.”

“……”

Asuna, Argo, Kizmel, and I were lost in silence once more. We stared at the sleeping girl’s face.

I didn’t know why Nirrnir refused to drink human blood, and I had a feeling I should not ask Kio for the answer. All I knew for certain was that Nirrnir was going to die within two days if we did nothing. I wanted to save her.

“So…if she drinks fresh dragon’s blood that hasn’t been diluted or preserved, Nirrnir can overcome the silver poisoning?”

“That’s right.”

Asuna said worriedly, “But where will we find a dragon? There hasn’t been a single one on any floor thus far.”

She was right. Ever since the early days of tabletop gaming, dragons and fantasy role-playing games had been inseparable. But in Aincrad, they were as rare as vampires. We’d heard of the dread dragon, Shmargor, and the water dragon, Zariegha, but as Asuna said, we’d never encountered a single one.

But that streak would end here on the seventh floor. I shared a look with Argo, and we spoke together. “At the labyrinth tower.” “In the boss chamber.”

“Huh?” Asuna was wide-eyed with surprise. She turned to look in the direction of the tower, blocked by thick stone walls, then swiveled back to me. Her surprise turned into unease. “You mean…the floor boss?” she whispered. “The boss of the seventh floor is a dragon?”

“Yes, finally. Or ‘already,’ if you want to see it that way…”

I was going to name-drop the boss dragon but reconsidered, thinking it wouldn’t be good to present concrete details like that before Kio and Kizmel. We could fool them into thinking our inventories and instant messages were “adventurer’s magical charms,” but we couldn’t explain away advance knowledge from the beta test.

Fortunately, Kio did not seem suspicious that Argo and I knew the floor boss was a dragon. She nodded seriously. “That’s right. In the tower far to the west is a flame dragon known as Aghyellr. If you can defeat it, there should be more than enough blood to save Lady Nirrnir’s life.”

“Agiella…” I repeated, sounding the name out. It seemed off to me. The seventh-floor boss in the beta was definitely a fire dragon, but its full name was something like Aghyellr the Igneous Wyrm in English…

It was only once I mentally examined the letters that I realized “Agiella” was how you pronounced that name. During the beta test, the game did not feature any official guides for how to pronounce monster names—they were written entirely in English—so you either had to hear it out loud from an NPC or guess on your own. There weren’t any NPCs in the beta who mentioned the boss’s name, so mentally, I ended up calling it something like Ahjierre, like it was French. Apparently, I was dead wrong.

Thanking my lucky stars I hadn’t proudly spoken it out loud to Kio, I said, “So the point is: We just need to beat Aghyellr and get its blood, right? We need to pass through that tower to get to the next floor anyway, so we’ll have to fight it sooner or later…”

Belatedly, I realized that later wasn’t an option.

“W-wait. Kio, you said two days?”

“…That’s right,” said the warrior maid. I stared closely at her face.

Volupta was located precisely between the main town, Lectio, and the labyrinth tower. And the difficulty level ahead was going to be much higher than the Tailwind Road that took us to this point. A highly motivated team would still take from morning until night just to get to the tower entrance. It would take another full day to reach the top floor. In other words, if we left as soon as possible—let’s say tomorrow morning—it would be nearly impossible to beat the boss before the evening, two days from now.

Plus, even assuming Kizmel’s assistance, it would be suicide for the four of us to tackle the boss on our own. While the beta team included a majority of the members who’d gone bankrupt—including me—defeating Ahjierre…er, Aghyellr, had required a huge raid party with over fifty members.

The help of the ALS and DKB would be necessary to tackle the floor boss. But neither seemed ready to leave this town before they got the Sword of Volupta. I leaned over to Argo and asked quietly, “Were they taking part in the daytime arena?”

“Of course. Both of ’em seemed ta have brand-new cheat sheets, and they won all five daytime matches.”

“Uh-huh…”

That just meant they were even less likely to be interested in what I had to say before the night matches were finished. And if they lost all their chips at night, they’d probably just go through the same damn thing tomorrow, too.

I hurried back to Kio and tried to explain the situation as briefly and transparently as possible. We needed the cooperation of the adventurers staying in this town in order to defeat Aghyellr the Igneous Wyrm. But they were entranced by the Sword of Volupta, the grand prize at the casino, and they would continue gambling until they got it or were completely broke. I also brought up that there was a questionable cheat sheet they were using for their betting strategy…

When I was finished, Kio gave my tale careful consideration and exhaled heavily.

“…I see. The Grand Casino that the Korloy and Nachtoy founders built for their own enrichment is now ironically endangering Lady Nirrnir’s life…”

“That’s being too pessimistic,” Asuna stated. She put the healing crystal back into item storage and stepped forward, clasping Kio’s hand in her own. “Those brothers who first built the casino might have been thinking of money, but Lady Nirrnir runs the casino fairly and faithfully, to provide a respite for those who come seeking entertainment, doesn’t she? And all those visitors of Volupta provide business to the restaurants and hotels and other businesses here. Lady Nirrnir’s been working hard for centuries for the sake of all the people who live in this town. It’s not right to act like this is all fate…”

I was startled to see that there were tears forming in Asuna’s eyes. I had just assumed she was against the casino’s existence due to her dislike of gambling. She probably still hated it, but maybe she didn’t think the casino was pure evil because it also served as a tourist attraction. It was the long, stable operation of the Grand Casino that brought this town its vitality and loveliness, and it was hard to argue that it wasn’t due to Nirrnir’s skill and nobility.

Asuna’s so much more mature than me, I thought, adding my hand on top of where my partner held Kio’s.

“I don’t think the casino that Lady Nirrnir put so much of her love into would stab her in the back. I’m sure there will be a way for us to get the frontline group…the adventurers…to leave before the end of the night. The point is: We just need one of the two groups to earn a hundred thousand chips through the night arena,” I said, considering this carefully. “I’m almost certain that their cheat sheets are a Korloy trap. Out of the ten matches, only the last one has false information, where they can make off with all the chips the bettors built up to that point. So if they bet the opposite of what the sheet says, they should win…”

Then I remembered we’d talked about the same thing yesterday.

“But that’s working under the assumption that the Korloy family can only lose the match on purpose. Kio, in a match that’s been set up with the intent to lose, do you suppose there’s a way to flip the result into a win?” I asked.

For some reason, the armed maid just made a face and said nothing. Belatedly, I realized I was indirectly holding Kio’s hand through Asuna’s and pulled back with haste. Asuna removed her hands next, and Kio cleared her throat to speak at last.

“It was our failure that we did not realize the Korloy family was distributing these ‘cheat sheets,’ as you call them. Now that I think of it, it seems that every time there is an especially big gambler present, the Korloy monster is more likely to lose in the final match. Lady Nirrnir and I are careful to watch for wrongdoing, but to think that they would lose on purpose…”

She paced around the bedside twice, stared at the sleeping Nirrnir again, then continued firmly, “It would not be too difficult to lose intentionally in a match between monsters of equivalent rank. Each family’s monster trainers have hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge behind them in the area of monster health management. Just as there are medicines that cure wounds and illnesses, other herbs can excite monsters, or weaken them…or kill them. If given an herb—a poison—that slows the monster’s reactions before the match in violation of the rules, that monster would be highly likely to lose. But in order to overturn that into a win, you would have to not only remove the poison’s effect, you would need to give them a medicine that brings out strength. The chip payout rates are determined by numerical charm just before the match, which wouldn’t leave enough time to feed the monster a number of different concoctions…”

“In other words, there’s no way to overturn a match the Korloys are determined to lose?” I asked, feeling somewhat relieved, but I did not get an affirmative answer from Kio.

After a few seconds, she opened her pursed lips and said, “As you saw, Bardun Korloy is a crafty man. While he might be possessed by the fear of death, it has not dulled his wits. There is no way that a man like him would fail to take into account the possibility that his trapped cheat sheet might be discovered. I would assume he has some way of turning a loss into a win that doesn’t involve medicines. I just cannot guess what that is.”

“………I see…”

I thought back on what I’d seen in the monster arena, but with the cage surrounded on three sides by onlookers, I couldn’t imagine any way of tampering with the monsters. At best, I came up with the possibility of shooting something small, like a dart, through the bars to hit the monster. But that was almost certain to be discovered.

So there’s no way to ensure that the ALS and DKB win in the night arena? I thought, crestfallen. But then Asuna gasped.

I glanced at her. The fencer’s hazel brown eyes blinked several times. Her face was slack as she murmured, “It’s so simple. Just have the ALS and DKB bet on different monsters for the final match. Then one of them is guaranteed to win, and they’ll have the hundred thousand chips, right?”

“Oh!” I gasped, too.

She was exactly right. Not even Bardun Korloy could manage to make both monsters win or lose. In fact, if Lind and Kibaou had just bet on different monsters last night, one of them would have the Sword of Volupta already, and they’d have spent the day slicing up the powerful monsters in the second half of this floor with its broken specs.

The problem was how to get them to agree to bet on different monsters…but there had to be a way to do that. I thought of some people who might be willing to hear us out and, just to be sure, asked Kio, “Listen, I’m not doubting it, but…is the stuff in the pamphlet about the sword worth a hundred thousand chips all true? About poison nullification, constant healing, and every attack being a critical hit? Because it’s almost preposterous.”

“That is exactly what ‘doubting’ is,” she pointed out with a smirk before adopting a serious expression again. “The Sword of Volupta is indeed the sword of the hero Falhari, who defeated Zariegha the Water Wyrm, and there is no falsehood in the description, Lady Nirrnir said previously. But it is the treasure of the Nachtoy and Korloy clans and the symbol of the true heir of the family. So one wonders why Falhari’s sons would turn it into a casino prize…and that was a question my lady would not answer…”

“Ahhh…”

That was indeed a good question. It seemed a little too hasty to turn around and use the dragonslayer’s heroic sword, a memento of their ancestor, as a tool for pulling in crowds. But as long as the sword really did have the specs on the listing, that was enough. Aghyellr didn’t have a poison attack, assuming no changes since the beta, but the HP regeneration would help against its flame breath, and a guaranteed critical hit would do wonders against its tough scales. I didn’t know if it was the ALS’s Kibaou or the DKB’s Lind who would wield the sword, but neither was the kind to shrink in fear from the game’s first real dragon boss. If he stood in as the main attacker and allowed the rest of us to focus on support, we’d be able to finish the boss in short order.

But that was assuming we broke through the labyrinth tower before sundown two days from now, the time limit to save Nirrnir’s life. If we couldn’t leave Volupta tonight, then we could go early in the morning and reach the final town of Pramio by night, spend the evening, then tackle the labyrinth the final day…But even that would be cutting it very close…

Then I realized something and gasped, sucking in a sharp breath.

It was impossible for us to match that schedule. Before noon tomorrow, we needed to stake out the shrine of the sacred key on the southwest edge of the floor, then follow the dark elf retrieval team coming to get the Ruby Key, fight off the Fallen Elves who were sure to stage an ambush, and pin down the location of their hideout.

If we missed that event tomorrow, there would likely never be another chance to take back the four sacred keys Kysarah stole. And then Kizmel would eternally be an exile from her own people, nothing more than an escaped convict from Harin Tree Palace and suspected spy.

If we saved Kizmel, we couldn’t save Nirrnir—and vice versa.

It was a dilemma like none I’d ever faced before. I balled my hands into fists and found myself looking to my partner for help.

There was deep anguish in Asuna’s eyes. She must have realized from the moment Kio said that only dragon blood could save Nirrnir, and the dragon was the boss of this floor, that there wasn’t enough time to do both.

We couldn’t bring ourselves to say a word. But Kizmel gently asked, “Asuna, Kirito, why are you hesitating?” She strode over to us and tapped our arms. “I will be fine. There will be plenty of chances to take back the sacred keys. But Lady Nirrnir’s life is in danger now. Let us worry only about saving her. I will assist you in vanquishing the dragon, of course.”

“……Kizmel…” Asuna whispered. She clutched Kizmel’s hand.

Kio watched this interaction with great confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Back in the living room, we put on tea together and had a seat on the couches.

Kio refused to sit on Nirrnir’s long sofa, so the five of us sat on the two smaller couches instead. They might have been subsize in comparison, but they were still three-seaters, so it wasn’t uncomfortable at all.

After moistening my throat with warm tea, I explained to Kio the problem Kizmel was facing—with her permission, of course.

Kio scowled and considered the story for quite a while in silence, then glanced toward the door, as though her brother Huazo and the monster handler Lunnze, both standing guard in the hallway, were in danger of overhearing. She dropped her voice.

“Do any of you recognize the word Neusian?”

Before I could even react, Kizmel’s head shot upward. “Miss Kio, where did you hear that?”

“I will explain in a moment, but first, could you tell me what it means?”

“……”

The knight seemed to hesitate for just a moment, then slowly began to speak.

“It is a very old word. It means ‘One who is with neither’…Neither the Lyusulans nor the Kalessians. In other words, the Fallen Elves. But it is considered the greatest of slurs toward them, so no one uses that word anymore.”

“…I see. As I suspected,” said Kio, suggesting that she was anticipating this answer. She lifted her teacup to her lips for a sip, then looked at Asuna, Argo, and me. “Do you remember Lady Nirrnir saying that Bardun Korloy was gathering a huge sum of money in order to buy a brief extra bit of life?”

We nodded. I’d noticed that, and it bugged me. SAO had an orthodox fantasy aesthetic, but I’d never heard anything about a means to extend one’s life span in exchange for money…yet.

In hushed tones, Kio continued, “I once asked Lady Nirrnir what this meant, exactly. The only thing she said was that it was a ‘wicked Neusian plot,’ and would not tell me anything more. After Lady Kizmel’s explanation, however, it fell into place for me. The Fallen Elves have made contact with Bardun and offered him some kind of a deal.”

“Speaking of which,” Asuna said, throwing a glance my way, “the dark elf guards were saying something about us back at Harin Tree Palace. That they must have offered to extend our lives—and that humans always fell for that…”

“Ohhhh…”

It flooded back to me at last, but to be honest, the more vivid memory in my mind was of the snort of outrage Asuna had made when she heard them say it.

Argo’s cheek twitched with a smirk, as though she were watching it happen before her eyes. She leaned back against the plush cushions. “Aha, I gotcha now. So this is a common trick the Fallen like to play. It does give us hope of a way forward, however.”

“Huh…? What do you mean?” I asked, befuddled.

The info dealer waggled her eyebrows at me rather obnoxiously. “Listen. If the Fallen Elves brought old Bardun a deal, then it’s a real good chance he’s got a means to contact them, too. And with that in our pocket, we might have a way to get to the Fallen hideout without needin’ your complex pursuit plan.”

“Ah!” I cried. Asuna immediately brought her finger to her lips and shushed me, while Kizmel just smiled. She said to Argo, “Your suspicion is most likely correct. The Fallen have many eerie tools and charms, and one of them is the ability to send signals to far-off places. Perhaps they used such a thing to arrange a meeting at an agreed-upon location.”

“Ahhh, wouldn’t that be handy,” murmured Argo enviously. I knew how she felt. We players could send entire messages, not just signals, but it wouldn’t work if one of the two people was in a dungeon, and that was when you wanted communication the most. Even an item that just transmitted light and sound would allow for much better cooperative play.

But if Argo was correct, and the Fallen Elves had given Bardun some kind of item for communication…

“…The problem is how we’re going to get our hands on it…” I murmured, only to be met by a lackadaisical voice from my left.

“We just gotta steal it, obviously.”

“Huh?”

Argo was leaning back, hands behind her head and legs crossed. Her painted whiskers were perked upward in a confident smirk. “Bardun might be a greedy miser, but he wouldn’t sell this thing for thousands upon thousands of col—he probably won’t even admit he’s got it. So we’ll just hafta sneak into his room and steal it, eh?”

“Oh, come on…” I said. Kizmel was an honorable enough knight that she even hesitated to escape from prison in order to restore her unfairly ruined reputation, and Kio was a servant of Nachtoy who had sworn to uphold the order of the Grand Casino. It stood to reason, I thought, that neither would take kindly to a blithe suggestion of burglary under this roof.

But Kizmel just said, “Ah, I believe Argo is correct.”

“Yes, that seems to be the only way to do it,” agreed Kio.

“……R-right. Of course,” I agreed, grimacing. Next to me, Asuna shifted; she was probably biting back a smile. I pretended I didn’t notice and continued, “Still, it’s going to be really hard to sneak into his chambers. We don’t know when he leaves his place…and where does he live anyway?”

That question was for Kio. The battle maid glanced at the door, then looked back at me. “Just over there. In room seven of the Grand Casino Hotel…right across the building from room seventeen here.”

“What?!” I yelped; I couldn’t help myself. Asuna shushed me again. The enemy boss was living right under our noses this whole time? So why did it seem like I’d never seen any Korloys inside the hotel?

Kio could sense my skepticism and pulled a rolled parchment from the drawer of the coffee table. She spread it out on the flat surface.

“This is a layout of the hotel. As you can see, the facilities like the bath, kitchen, and storage area are in the center of the building, while all the guest rooms are on the northern or southern walls…but only the hotel entrance and hallway to the shared facilities offer passage between the north and south sides.”

“Oh, so that’s why there were no windows in the bath!” Asuna cried. I’d passed on the bath, but indeed, it was located on the western side of the center of the building, surrounded by hallways to the north, south, and west—and the wall of a different facility to the east. The hallways split north and south from the entrance, then turned ninety degrees to the west, traveling along the building until they hit dead ends. In other words, passing from one to the other required cutting through the bath or kitchen.

“I see…So the only things the Korloys and Nachtoys share are the entrance, the bath, and the kitchen,” I murmured.

Kio quickly added, “As a matter of fact, only the hotel employees may enter the kitchen or storage room, and the bathing time for each family is strictly divided, so the only times they might come face-to-face are at the front lobby.”

“Uh-huh…And when are the Korloy bathing hours?”

“From nine until midnight. And the Nachtoy hours are from noon until three. Three to nine is the slot for the hotel’s guests to bathe.”

“And what about midnight to noon?”

“Those hours are reserved for cleaning and water replacement.”

“Ah, I see.”

I thought the natural bath beneath Castle Galey had been open twenty-four hours a day, but that might have been the exception to the rule.

“In any case, if we’re going to sneak into Bardun’s room, our only chance will be while he’s in the bath. After nine o’clock, though…That’s a long wait ahead of us…”

It was currently 6:20 in the evening. If Bardun waited until eleven o’clock to take his bath, that was a wait of four and a half hours, and the night matches of the monster arena started at nine; we needed to get working on our plan for the ALS and DKB. It was going to be a tightrope walk.

Across from me, Kio murmured worriedly, “But…Bardun will have guards outside the bath entrance while he bathes. And the door of room seven is visible from there. It will be extremely difficult to sneak in without being noticed.”

“Oh…”

Crestfallen, I let my eyes drop to the hotel layout on the table again. Indeed, the north-facing door of the great bath opened right into the hallway near Bardun’s room. The two doors were not even fifty feet apart. If the guards standing watch so much as glanced to their right, they would have a perfect view of any trespasser. In this situation, the standard thing to do was make noise in the opposite direction to distract the guards, but there was no way to get to the opposite side of the hall. Someone could speak to the guards to occupy them, but they couldn’t hold a conversation long enough for the infiltrator to find the item we needed and escape without seeming extremely unnatural.

I grumbled deep in my throat, deliberating on our quandary. Kio spoke up again.

“When going to the casino or stables downstairs, they don’t put guards up in the hall, I believe…But unless something extreme happens, I doubt Bardun will be leaving this floor tonight.”

“What would count as ‘extreme’?”

“Well…if another phantom thief like you strikes, for example, or if there’s a riot in the casino…”

“I see.”

Maybe I need to slip back down into the Korloy stables again and make off with the Giant Pincer Rat this time, I thought desperately. But I ruled out the idea just as quickly. They’d clearly stepped up their security, and the Korloys had seen my face now, so if I got caught, it would be a total disaster. Perhaps causing a scene in the casino was the only option…

“By the way, what kind of stir would it have to be to get Bardun Korloy to bolt out of his room?” I asked, perhaps a little too innocently.

Kio considered it. “From what I can remember, Bardun has come down to resolve a situation when there was a disagreement between guests about cheating with cards that turned into a big fight, when some rich child saw a monster in the arena and had a screaming meltdown demanding to have it as a pet, and when a guest with astronomically good roulette luck placed a huge bet at the wheel.”

“Aha,” Argo proclaimed. “Kii-boy, A-chan, what if ya go down to the casino and get into a knockdown, drag-out fight on the floor?”

The scary thing was that I couldn’t tell if she was joking or serious, so I replied with a straight-faced, “Maybe you should roll around on the ground in the arena and scream ‘Buy me that monster, buy me that monster!’ instead.”

The info dealer and I traded level gazes, each daring the other to blink. Asuna sighed and interjected, “Neither of those is a sure bet. As for the third possibility.…Kio, the big win doesn’t have to be at a roulette table, right?”

“Right. Bardun’s only concern is the casino losing income…his income, I should say. Whether cards or dice or whatever, he is very uneasy about big rollers putting up thousands upon thousands of chips in wins.”

“Uh-huh…”

Asuna looked to me. I quickly shook my head.

“You’re dreaming if you think we can intentionally win big at any of those casino games. If that were possible, I wouldn’t have…”

I had to catch myself before I started revealing what happened to me in the beta test. But Asuna caught my drift and picked up where I left off.

“I know, I know. But while roulette and card tables might be out of the question, there is one place where you can win up to a certain amount with a sure bet.”

“Huh?” I gaped.

On Asuna’s other side, Kizmel nodded wisely. “Ah, you mean the arena. According to what you said, the first four matches of the night will play out as the sheet said, yes? So if they shove all their money…pardon me, bet all their chips, they might be able to compile winnings alarming enough to bring Bardun out of his chamber.”

“Oh…right…”

It seemed to me that Kizmel’s AI was not just smarter than me with a better memory, but it was also surpassing me in imagination.

“True, that’s a much more practical option than testing our luck at the roulette wheel,” I admitted. “But the ALS and DKB won over fifty thousand chips through the fourth match last night, and Bardun didn’t show up then. So he must be prepared for winnings that big. We’d need to win at least an extra fifty thousand to get him out of his room, I’m guessing…But it’s already going to be hard enough to get Lind and Kibaou to bet on different monsters. How are we also going to get them to add more to the pot?”

Even with communication skills ten times better than my own, I didn’t think my partner was capable of handling this one. But Asuna just shook her head and said, to my utter shock, “We’re not going to force the ALS and DKB to bet more. We’re going to do the betting. How many col do you have right now, Kirito?”

Whaaaat?!

It was all I could do not to scream. Instead, my mouth just hung open soundlessly for a few seconds.

“Er…well…if I sell all my excess items, I might be able to get a hundred thousand col…”

“Same for me, then. So we can combine that for two hundred thousand col, which would convert into two thousand chips, right? The odds in the arena are always between one-point-five and three to one, so if we take the average and assume two-point-three to one, winning four matches in a row betting everything, that should put us at over fifty thousand, just like the others. If there are three people putting huge bets on the final match, wouldn’t you think that’d draw Bardun’s attention?”

“Well, I suppose…”

But despite my agreement, there was no way to know who’d win the final match at this point. If everyone lost, then Lind-Kiba would only lose twentysomething thousand col in total between yesterday and today—but we would be losing all our assets. And even if we won, we’d only be able to buy casino prizes, and it was very unlikely we’d be able to sell those items to recoup the monetary value.

Of course, I didn’t want to skimp out on whatever it cost to save Nirrnir, but if lack of funds made us unable to update our equipment or restock on consumable items, it might ultimately put Asuna’s life in danger…

“I could pay fifty thousand col, too.”

In shock, I turned to face the person who made the offer: Kio.

She mistook my expression, however, because the battle maid looked away and murmured, “I’m ashamed that it’s the best I can do when my lady’s life hangs in the balance…but that is the entirety of my assets, saved after ten years of work. Of course, there is an unimaginable amount locked away in the Nachtoy family’s vault, but only Lady Nirrnir can open that.”

“N-no, no, the opposite!” I insisted, trying to correct her mistake. “I wasn’t thinking that fifty thousand is too little; I was worried that it might be too much…I mean, if we happen to guess wrong on the final battle, we’ll lose everything, and even if we win, you won’t be getting the original amount back…”

“Losing my money means nothing to me. Huazo and I could serve our entire lives for free and still not repay the obligation we owe to Lady Nirrnir.”

I didn’t really understand what she meant by this initially, but the expression on Kio’s face told me she didn’t want to answer any further questions on the subject, so I withdrew my curiosity.

Asuna gave me a little nod of agreement; it seemed ethically questionable to allow an NPC to entrust a player with fifty thousand col, but if we refused, Kio was only going to be more hurt, given that she was already blaming herself for not stopping the poison snake.

“…All right. Your fifty thousand col will be a tremendous help to us. Thank you.”

Asuna and I bowed deeply to show our appreciation, but it seemed to unnerve Kio, who insisted, “Please, raise your heads. I am the one who should be thanking you.”

“But…”

It was like a bowing competition over the coffee table.

“All right, enough already,” said a third party, who tossed a clinking pouch onto the table the size of a fist. “I’ll go in on yer gamble, Kii-boy. That’s fifty thou, right there.”

“Huh?”

She jabbed her finger right at my nose. “But you better win, got that? Then, not only will we lure Bardun out, we’ll also get that sword. Two birds with one stone!”

It’s not going to be that easy! I thought. But I couldn’t say that now that we were all on the same page, so all I could do was nod without a word.