Sword Art Online – Progressive - Volume 8 - Chapter 22

22

“MY GOODNESS…”

Kio’s eyes narrowed when she saw the green fragment I held out to her. She plucked it from my palm, gave it a whiff, then held it before the lamplight. About a third of the rectangular shard was charred, but the rest still held a dull gleam.

I’d picked up this bit among the pieces of the spotlight lens and mirror on the ground before we left the arena. As we climbed the stairs, I tapped it to discover the name KERUMILA INCENSE, along with a simple description: INCENSE CREATED FROM DRIED AND GROUND KERUMILA FLOWERS. That didn’t explain much.

Kio examined the piece for a few seconds before lowering her hand. “This is called kerumila incense. It exudes a scent like nothing else in this world when held above flames, but it also causes the flames to emit a poisonous light. It’s an assassin’s tool that slowly weakens one’s target over time.”

“Ugh, what a nasty concept.” I grimaced. At my side, Asuna had taken off her mask but was still in the black evening dress.

“But now we’ve identified the Korloys’ final trick,” she said coldly. “They had this incense burning over the lamps for the spotlights, and that’s how they were inflicting its weakening light on only the monster they wanted, right?”

“The crafty old man really thought of everything,” I said in admiration, despite myself.

Kio looked away; she was clearly chagrined. “I inspected the arena at regular intervals. To think that I failed to spot such a significant mechanism…I’m not fit to serve Lady Nirrnir…”

“L-look, you can’t be blamed for not noticing. There was nothing special attached to the lights themselves. They just brought out this kerumila incense to put over the lamps when they wanted to weaken the monsters,” I pointed out, but Kio was not heartened by this argument.

“When the Argent Serpent attacked her, I could have dispatched it with a simple thrust rather than a sword technique. Then the snake might not have torn itself loose. In fact, I should have confirmed the contents of all the cages before we started our inspection. Especially after Lady Kizmel pointed out that Bardun’s insistence that Lady Nirrnir be present was likely a trap…”

I’d assumed that she was significantly older than me, but the way Kio was so crestfallen made her look much younger than before. But now wasn’t the time to get distracted with such matters. I had to get her esteem back up again so we could discuss what came next.

“Listen, Kiocchi, the plan worked out in the end, so let’s focus on the plus side, yeah?” said another voice. Over on the sofa, a glass of wine in her hand, was Argo.

By the time Asuna and I had rushed back to Room 17 on the third floor of the Grand Casino as quickly as we could, Argo and Kizmel had already returned from Bardun’s room. The infiltration mission was a success, apparently, but the only thing on the table was an old map, and they hadn’t shown us anything that looked like a means of remote communication.

Kio nodded in response to the curiously relaxing quality of Argo’s voice and lifted her head. She brushed the edges of her eyes with a finger and put on a smile.

“Yes, of course. Asuna and Kirito’s betting plan worked out well, and Argo and Lady Kizmel found the charming tool of the Neusians…er, Fallen Elves. We have all the things we need to save Lady Nirrnir’s life. I shouldn’t be lamenting what could have been.”

She stretched and walked over to the table, picking up the open wine bottle and a fresh glass. She poured it half full of wine and downed the liquid all at once, exhaling heavily.

Relieved that she seemed to have recovered her mood, I took a quick glance at the time readout. It was 10:55 at night—ten minutes after the Verdian Bighorn won the final bout at the arena. Just like last night, Lind and Kibaou lost over fifty thousand chips in one go. Presumably, they were with their guildmates in the basement bar or some nearby tavern, commiserating their loss, before they returned to their inns for the night. We needed to make contact before then, explain the reason the cheat sheet was right this time, and ask for their help in defeating Aghyellr the Igneous Wyrm, boss of this floor.

The big question was: When would Bardun Korloy detect that his communication item was gone? After his debuffing light in the arena had been destroyed, after he’d lost a hundred thousand chips—technically, 142,629—and after he’d lost the means of speaking with the Fallen Elves who promised to extend his life span, there was no telling what he’d do next. Of course, he didn’t have a single bit of evidence that the ones who destroyed his spotlights, won big in the final match, and burglarized his unoccupied room were the four of us—or anyone related to the Nachtoy family. Still, if that was enough for them to back down, they wouldn’t have arranged a rare poisonous snake in an attempt to kill Nirrnir.

Huazo was supposed to warn us when Bardun returned to his room from the arena. There was something we needed to discuss before that happened.

Kio gave back the partially burned piece of kerumila incense, which I returned to my inventory, just in case. I walked over to Argo and asked, “So…what kind of tool was he using to contact the Fallen Elves?”

“It’s right in front of ya.”

“Huh?”

I blinked and looked down at the table. The only things on top of it were the open wine bottle, four glasses, and a parchment map. The map showed the entirety of the seventh floor, which might be useful for a strategy session, but there was no tool in sight—unless…

“Wait, this? The map?”

“Correct.” She smirked, and I gave her a piercing gaze.

“But…how did you know this was the way Bardun was communicating as you searched? I would have passed over it, a hundred percent.”

“You forget, I had Kizucchi on my side,” Argo said, raising her wineglass toward the dark elf knight on the other couch.

Kizmel gave us a proud grin and directed our attention to the bottom-left portion of the map. “Look at this.”

“Um…”

We leaned in closely enough that our heads touched. In the corner of the parchment map, there was a strange mark drawn in dark red ink. It was two interlocking zigzag lines. I thought I’d seen them somewhere before.

“Oh! It’s ice and lightning! The symbol of the Fallen!” Asuna cried. “Ohhh,” I exclaimed. It was indeed the same insignia carved into the Fallen Elf dagger dropped by the PKer on the sixth floor, the Dirk of Agony.

“Where in the room was this?” I asked Argo. She replied, “In the third drawer from the top in a huge desk.” If it wasn’t already placed out in the open, then maybe he wouldn’t notice it was gone right away, but either way, we couldn’t allow any time to go to waste.

“How do you use this, Kizmel?” I asked promptly, but the knight just gave me a brief, knowing smile.

“I understand you’re in a hurry, but I suggest you sit down first.”

“Oh…um, sure.”

I sat down next to Kizmel, and Asuna took the spot next to Argo, with Kio on the other side. The knight cleared her throat and brushed the map with her fingertips.

“This might look like parchment, but it is not. It is created from very rare monsters that appear in abandoned manors and castles named Scyia, which are killed in a particular way, then dried and used like paper.”

“Scyia…”

I’d never encountered such a monster in the beta test, and I didn’t know if the name meant anything. Asuna and Argo looked confused, too, and it would probably take some time to figure out, so I let her continue the explanation without interrupting.

“Scyia always appear in pairs. When you defeat them both and create paper with them, the pieces are bound by a mysterious power. When blood is dripped onto one, the spattering will appear in the same place on the other.”

It still wasn’t making much sense to me, but at that comment, Asuna cried, “Oh! So they drew the exact same map on both pieces of paper, and if the owner of one map drips blood onto the map, they can indicate those coordinates to the owner of the other map!”

“Aha…” I said.

“Very interesting,” murmured Argo.

A moment later, Kio chimed in with, “So if he drips blood somewhere on this map, the stain will appear on the map’s partner, and Fallen Elves will show up at that location…?”

“That would seem to be the case. However,” Kizmel said, frowning, “that would not indicate a time to meet. Perhaps they go to the place and simply wait until the other side appears…”

That did feel like a rather inefficient way of doing things. Would the Fallen Elves, as busy as they were with their various tricks and schemes, really wait around all hours of the day?

“So, if you write on this map in blood, it’ll show up on the other map, Kizmel?” I asked.

The knight shook her head. “No, I have heard that only freshly dropped stains of blood direct from the finger will transfer. Of course, you might be able to write large letters if you spill enough drops…but I believe the stains will fade after some time…”

“Ya don’t say,” I commented, mimicking Argo without realizing it and earning a snort from the girl herself.

“Kii-boy, if you don’t show Big Sis some respect, she won’t teach ya how to tell time with this thing,” she snapped.

“What? You figured it out, Argo?!” asked Asuna, wide-eyed. She slapped her hands together in prayer. “Please! Tell us how! We’ll make Kirito stand out in the hallway for punishment if you want!”

“Awww, come on,” I whined. Kizmel and Kio giggled in unison. If it was what it took to get the maid in better spirits, standing out in the hallway didn’t seem so bad—if it weren’t for the fact that I was curious, too. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll buy you a baked sweet potato to make up for it. Just fill me in on the secret.”

“Why a sweet potato?” Argo replied, pursing her lips with dissatisfaction. She got over it right away, however, and pointed to the right half of the map. It was not on the map itself that she was pointing, actually, but the aperture of Aincrad itself. I suddenly noticed that there were very small dots placed at regular intervals all the way around the perfectly circular floor.

“See how there’s twenty-four of these? I bet they use ’em to indicate the time.”

“Oh…!” Asuna and I exclaimed together. I almost cried out “It’s a clock!” but held myself back because I wasn’t sure if Kio or Kizmel knew what a clock was. It wasn’t that there weren’t any mechanical clocks in Aincrad whatsoever—there was a huge clock tower on the Town of Beginnings on the first floor—but I couldn’t recall seeing any analog clocks in the elven castles.

Kio and Kizmel understood what Argo meant immediately, however.

“I see. Each dot is one hour; is that it?”

“So the daytime hours would be on the right, and the night hours on the left,” they said respectively, at which point I realized that the map’s clock was not a traditional twelve-hour type but a twenty-four-hour clock. That meant the dot at the very top was midnight, and the dot at the very bottom was noon.

“Ah, so they drop blood in two places for location and time,” said Asuna with understanding. She looked up from the map at the rest of us. “So…when and where do we summon the Fallen Elves?”

“Not so fast, A-chan,” said Argo, wincing. She glanced down to her right at the game clock. “If you indicate an hour from now, the Fallen ain’t gonna show up in time, I assume. Plus, we’ve got stuff to take care of first, don’t we?”

“Oh, right…We need to negotiate with the DKB and ALS to convince them to leave first thing in the morning. Kirito, you mentioned you had a plan for that—how are you going to get those guys in line?”

Four pairs of eyes landed on me. I shrugged.

“Should be easy. I’ll just say that if we beat the floor boss by the evening of the day after tomorrow—on second thought, let’s make that by noon of the day after tomorrow—I’ll sell the Sword of Volupta to whoever fought harder, for two hundred thousand col.”

“Huh?!” squawked Argo, the first to react. She swirled the remnants of her wineglass around as she yelled, “Are you serious?! That’s not a bit?! That broken-ass sword’s worth a hundred thousand chips! Ten million col! And you’re just gonna sell it off for two hundred thousand?!”

“Lind-Kiba aren’t going to budge unless I sweeten the pot that much. Besides, two hundred thousand col is the seed money we put into winning the sword in the first place, so it’ll mean we’ve gotten our investment back.”

“Still…you could at least ask fer three…or four hundred thousand…” she insisted, sounding more like the Argo I remembered.

Just then, Kio lifted her hand, which brought us to silence. There was a deep furrow between her brows, despite the fact that she had just looked like she’d overcome her misgivings.

“Asuna, Kirito, Argo, Lady Kizmel. The truth is…there is one thing I should explain to you about that sword…”

Once again, however, she was interrupted. There was a quick, quiet knock on the door, and without waiting for her to respond, the person on the other side opened it a crack, revealing that it was Huazo.

“Bardun’s returned to his room, Sister!”

“Finally!” I said, seething at the long-awaited news. I rose from the sofa and said, “We’ll hear what you have to say later. We’ve got to exchange this first,” as I patted the chest pocket of the tuxedo I was still wearing.

Asuna got to her feet as well. “I’ll join you. We should stock up on food and things anyway.”

Five minutes later, I was placing a shining golden chip worth a hundred thousand VC on the counter. The NPC guests around me broke into hushed murmurs—or so I imagined.

The lady behind the counter seemed to freeze for a moment but regained her bright smile just as quickly.

“Exchanging for a prize? Which item would you like?”

“That one!!” I cried, pointing at the very top of the list on the board, while Asuna yanked on the back of my collar. Through the holes of the butterfly mask, her eyes had the look of an elder sister scolding her foolish little brother. She pulled me back and took my spot at the counter. She opened up the prize pamphlet she was holding, pointing daintily at an illustration of a sword.

“We would like the Sword of Volupta.”

“Of course,” said the woman with a perfect smile, before turning on her heel. The prize display was affixed to the side of the massive pillar at the center of the space behind the four-sided counter, and the hundred-thousand-chip sword shone at the very top, out of reach without a stepladder—or so I assumed.

Instead, she pressed a button or some other contraption hidden on the bottom of the display, causing the entire thing to descend with a heavy rumble. In five seconds, the bottom edge made contact with the floor and came to a stop.

Still, there was nearly seven feet to the sword, and the woman had to stretch for all she was worth, removing the black leather sheath just below the sword first. She handed that to another NPC waiting beside her, then reached for the Sword of Volupta at last.

In my imagination, it was going to be very heavy; fortunately, she removed it from the rack without dropping it, then slid the platinum-and-gold longsword into the sheath her companion was holding. It clicked in at the hilt, at which point she took the sheath and lifted the entire thing.

Then she returned to the counter and held it out. “This is the Sword of Volupta. Please accept your prize.”

Before either of us moved, Asuna shot me a look. Apparently, she was giving me the honors. I hurried forward, slipping my hands under the sheath and carefully putting my strength into them. The sword left her fingers.

It was…not heavy.

Not that it was light, either. But it was hardly any different from the Sword of Eventide +3, my current weapon. According to the crusty blacksmith of the dark elf camp on the third floor, Landeren, it was especially sharp, even among the masterpieces of Lyusula, which meant it was also delicate. I’d put all the points into sharpness, which made it lighter than average among swords of its class.

If anything, the Sword of Volupta was wide and thick, so the fact that it felt nearly the same weight as the Eventide probably meant…

I cut off that troubling train of thought before I could reach a conclusion and took a step back. “Thank you. I accept this item.”

The lady with the bow tie deftly plucked the chip off the counter, and she and her coworker lowered their heads deeply. That was the end of our mission, I assumed—but no sooner had the thought entered my mind than the lady produced a number of black cards from behind the counter and held them out with both hands.

“These are passes to the private beach the casino operates. Please do enjoy.”

I wanted to shout Yessss! but I had a feeling Asuna would grab me by the back of the neck again, so I held it to a gentlemanly smile as I took the cards. They weren’t made of plastic, of course, but it was a rough material that didn’t feel like wood, paper, or metal, either. The black surface was decorated with a logo combining a flower and dragon, which was presumably the symbol of the casino. I counted four of them; we’d earned a hundred and forty thousand chips, so the math checked out.

I slid the cards into my chest pocket and thanked them again. The women bowed once more and replied, in perfect unison, “We look forward to your next visit to the Volupta Grand Casino.”

A huge round of applause rose from around us, catching me by surprise. There were rows of casino guests surrounding the exchange counter, clapping and beaming at us.

Ordinarily, I might get carried away and wave to the crowd, but by now, the Korloys would be receiving word that the Sword of Volupta, the prize that had shone unclaimed at the top rack of the Grand Casino’s prize board for centuries, was now gone. It wasn’t clear if Bardun would be descending from the third floor again, but I certainly didn’t want to encounter him.

“Thanks, thanks,” I said, lifting my right hand to clear the way through the crowd with the sword tucked under my other arm. We headed out to the staircase hall, where I slipped behind a pillar to open my inventory and toss the Sword of Volupta inside.

We’d cleared the most difficult of the night’s series of missions: winning the needed chips to acquire the sword. Part of me wanted to check the properties immediately and see if they were truly as broken as the description said, but there was one more job to do first.

“Where are they now, Asuna?” I asked, looking up.

My partner’s bare shoulders rose and fell. “The ALS and DKB are commiserating at a restaurant a bit to the east of the casino square, they said. Liten and Shivata succeeded at luring them both to the same place.”

“I see. We really owe those two…We’ll need to treat them to dinner at some point.”

“I’d suggest Menon’s, then,” Asuna offered, a smile teasing at the corner of her mouth—surely at the thought of Shivata being forced to carry a great number of plates by the cook. I wanted to see that, too, of course. But in order to see that, we needed to finish an even harder mission: beating the floor boss and taking back the sacred keys.

“All right…let’s go,” I said, mentally preparing myself for the next step, when Asuna tugged on my tuxedo to hold me back.

“I’d like to change clothes.”

“Oh…right.”

Numerically and visually, her dress offered little defense; it made sense that she wouldn’t want to head outside in it. And if I was being honest, I didn’t want those ruffians in the frontline group to see my partner looking like this, either. But it would take too much time to return to the third floor, change outfits, then come back down again.

“Well, uh…I guess I could hide you like this…”

I motioned Asuna over to the wall and blocked her with my body, opening the tuxedo jacket wide to offer a tiny bit more cover.

Behind the butterfly mask, Asuna blinked a few times, then lifted her hand in a most elegant way and clenched it into a fist.

“But then you’ll be able to see me up close!”

It was as the impact of her fist rumbled through the system’s barrier and into my right side that I belatedly realized, Oh, right…