Sword Art Online - Volume 24 - Chapter 10

10

I opened the door to the house, and Suguha was once again waiting for me in the entrance hall.

“Welcome back, Big Brother! You’re late, by the…”

But the same greeting that she gave me last night died before it could finish. I must have had a very strange look on my face. I tried to compose myself and give her a normal greeting.

“I’m home, Suguha.”

“…Welcome back. Did something…happen?”

It did. Almost too many things happened. But they weren’t the kind of things I could explain in a quick chat at the door.

“Yeah…I guess. Is there any food?” I asked, taking off my shoes and straightening them.

Suguha blinked and replied, “Uh, yes. I had practice after school, so I just got home. Mom made some curry, and there’s some fresh cooked rice, too. You can eat right away.”

“That’s good. Yui said the town in the forest…I mean, she said Ruis na Ríg was still fine for the moment. I can tell you what happened while we eat.”

“All right. I’ll go and get it ready.” My sister trotted off to the kitchen in her tracksuit, and I headed upstairs to my room.

My mother’s work schedule started and ended much later than the typical office worker, and she also cooked curry and made sure to air out my blanket. The bed was perfectly made for me.

Your typical teen boy might protest this. Don’t come into my room without permission! But I was thoroughly grateful. My sweet but somewhat bratty sister would come in here on her own, but my mother respected my autonomy, and while my father was home only a few times a year, I respected him greatly. I couldn’t be any luckier.

But as I stood in my room, neatly vacuumed by my mother, the only thing I could think about was getting back to the Underworld as soon as humanly possible. If I closed my eyes, I could vividly envision those powerful green eyes behind Eolyne Herlentz’s mask.

If it was all a big coincidence, great. But until I confirmed it was just a fluke, the disquiet in my breast was not going to go away.

After logging out at 5:11, I didn’t even wait for the STL’s head block to rise before I shouted, “Let me go back inside right now!” But Dr. Koujiro did not allow me to go back in. There were two reasons: The STL’s self-diagnostic programs detected a number of slight mechanical issues, and after reawakening, my pulse and blood pressure exceeded normal levels. I couldn’t do anything about the former, but the latter was undeniably due to mental factors, not physical.

And Dr. Koujiro said that in this Underworld investigation mission, nothing was of a higher priority than the well-being of me and Asuna. I must have seemed very out of sorts, because both Asuna and Alice warned me against it, too. I was totally outnumbered and had to give up on going back into the dive.

We’d fill out a report on the dive at a later date. Asuna and I said good-bye to Alice before the security checkpoint, then got into the taxi Rath called for us. I got off at Shibuya Station, and I must have been off in the clouds during the ride. It was a terrible waste of Asuna’s birthday, but the feeling of urgency never left me.

What if—what if it wasn’t just a crazy coincidence? What if there’s some connection between Commander Eolyne and Eugeo?

That would mean…That might mean………

“Hurry up, Big Brother!” Suguha called from downstairs. I came back to my senses with a start.

“Oh! Sorry! Right away!” I called back and hastily changed from my uniform into my home clothes. It wasn’t like Eolyne or the Underworld had gone away. If anything, I was the one who had vanished before their eyes. It must have been quite an alarming event. I’d have to apologize the next time I saw them.

Our full investigation was scheduled to happen on Saturday, three days from now, lasting from morning until night. I’d just have to manage my anxiety and try to focus on Unital Ring—as well as my schoolwork, of course.

I took my uniform shirt and undershirt into the hallway for the laundry, and caught a whiff of curry floating up from below. The realization of just how hungry I was sped up my feet and took me downstairs in a rush.

The fourth night of Unital Ring arrived with thick, splattering rain.

According to Alice and Yui, there had been brief showers here and there throughout the day, but this was the first time it had rained so hard since the game began. The Seed program’s rain wasn’t quite as unpleasant as the real thing or its simulated counterpart in the Underworld, but there was no denying its effect on one’s eyesight. At least it’s not life-threatening, like that ice storm on the savanna, I told myself as I stared at the dark, intimidating sky from the porch of the log cabin.

Agil emerged from inside, holding a pottery mug in each hand, and scowled at the sky.

“I was going to focus on leveling-up tonight. Not gonna be easy in this weather,” he said, holding out one of the mugs. I thanked him for it.

“You can still hunt in the rain.”

“Nah, I’m a Tokyoite. I don’t do well in the rain.”

“……I’ve never heard of that being a thing with people from Tokyo,” I noted archly, bringing the mug to my lips. The liquid inside was not the red shiso barley tea Asuna had made for me last night but something that tasted like black coffee flavored with ginger and cinnamon. It was a strange flavor, but if I had to choose between the two, this one was a bit more to my taste.

By eight o’clock, everyone except Argo was present, so we ran through our customary meeting, then headed into free time. We could wait until nine to see if the rain stopped, and if it didn’t, we needed to get started on building more town defenses, regardless. An army of a hundred could be rolling into our forest by tomorrow night, after all.

The town of Ruis na Ríg received a major boost in strength from the arrival of the warrior Yzelma and her ten Bashin, but if possible, I didn’t want to just hurl them into the most dangerous roles. Death was final for both players and NPCs here, but we suffered only the loss of access to Unital Ring; NPCs would most likely be erased from existence forever. In SAO, most NPCs would respawn again a certain amount of time after death, and NPCs in ALO were immortal, impossible to damage. There was no such mercy in this place.

So it was our job to face the enemy head-on, but we couldn’t afford losses, either. And complicating matters was the fact that the enemy players didn’t really have a choice but to attack us. They were compelled to do Mutasina’s bidding due to her Noose of the Accursed spell. My initial hope was that they would use our village as a base of operations, not attack it.

Therefore, we spent some time at the meeting discussing how to prevent a battle to the death like the one against Schulz’s team, and it proved to be a very difficult question to answer. Freshly out of the Underworld, I couldn’t help but think ruefully, If only I had the Blue Rose Sword and my Incarnation power. I could bind all hundred of them in an instant and remove Mutasina alone. But in Unital Ring, Kirito had only level-18 stats, an iron longsword, and decay magic. No doubt it would be supremely satisfying to spit a Rotten Shot into smug Mutasina’s face, but it wasn’t going to defeat her for good.

Within less than a minute, it was Sinon who provided the first idea that was actually useful.

She had inherited the ultrapowerful Hecate II antimateriel rifle from GGO. It instantly killed the gigantic dinosaur boss in the west Giyoru Savanna, so it would have to be powerful enough to take out Mutasina the witch in one shot, whether she was level-20 or level-30—assuming the shot was accurate.

“That’s the problem,” Sinon added bitterly.

The Hecate II was as demanding as my Excalibur and Asuna’s Ray Grace in terms of required stats. She couldn’t even lift the gun, much less aim it. Against the dinosaur boss, she had the help of several brave Orniths to steady the barrel, but according to her, it was a miracle that she’d managed to hit the monster’s weak point even with that help.

If we were going to snipe Mutasina, we needed better odds than miraculous. We needed to find a creative solution to firing the Hecate somehow. The simplest answer was to affix it to something heavy, but that would just make aiming it harder.

“If this were the real world, it would be a cinch to go to a hardware store for materials, then whip up a simple rifle stand,” claimed Klein. Whether he could really do that or not, it was true that in this world, you could only make things contained in your skill’s production menu. And there was no rifle stand under the Carpentry, Stoneworking, or Blacksmithing skills.

“If we’re going with Sinon’s idea, I’ll be the carrier,” Agil offered. I glanced at the ax wielder to my right. His avatar looked muscled and powerful, but appearance was not linked to numerical stats in a VRMMO.

I grimaced and said, “It’s a very generous offer, but you’re still level-10, Agil. Silica could beat you at arm wrestling right now.”

“Hmph…”

The large man’s mouth twisted. He’d gained a few levels last night while I was away at the Stiss Ruins, but he was still the lowest of our group of friends. It was unavoidable, since he was the last to convert and had a day job running his café, but I was sure that had to rankle him, having played a stout and sturdy tank who protected his comrades all through SAO and ALO.

“That’s why I was going to focus on leveling-up tonight. But nothing good comes from being desperate on a rainy night…,” he grumbled.

“That’s true,” I said. Compared to traditional video games, sensory information played a huge part of the VRMMO experience. Plenty of things aside from visibility were important in terms of detecting danger: the faint sounds and smells of different monsters, the marks left on floors and walls, even the subtle taste of water could tell you crucial information. I took it so seriously, I even independently studied a phenomenon I called hypersensing, instances where I received a kind of sixth sense warning of enemy attack before it happened.

So a forest at night in the rain, where all five senses were impeded in some way, was at least as dangerous as a dungeon, if not more so. I’d heard many stories of players in Aincrad who had tried to monopolize a good monster spot during perilous conditions and died as a result. I wasn’t going to assume everything in SAO and Unital Ring was the same, but it was true that death was a grave matter in both.

Even the smells get overtaken by the rain, I thought, my nose twitching. Amid the dampness, I caught a whiff of something fragrant. The wind was blowing from the west, so perhaps the Bashin were cooking meat in their gathering area on the west side of Ruis na Ríg. The smell was very faint, despite the log cabin being only sixty feet away, a good example of how heavily the rain could cover up a smell.

“…At last night’s meeting,” I murmured, “Alice mentioned a point along the Maruba River that would be good for grinding during the day.”

“The problem is, time is synced up in UR,” Agil replied. “Maybe I’ll have to close the café again tomorrow…”

“Hey, don’t go getting in trouble with your wife on our account,” I added hastily, but for some reason, he just smirked at me.

Agil’s Dicey Café was an American-style coffee shop during the day and a cocktail bar at night; Agil managed it during the day, and his wife handled the night hours. In the two years that Agil was trapped in SAO, she had kept the business running day and night—and just barely managed to keep things together. That made me worry that Agil’s ongoing VRMMO habit might be presaging trouble of a different kind…

“My little lady’s busy playing during the day,” he said with a grin. My mouth fell open.

“Uh…she is?”

“In fact, she’s been into online gaming longer than me.”

“Wow…but…hang on. Is your wife playing a Seed game? Doesn’t that mean she…?”

I was still speaking when Kuro, who was curled up along the wall of the porch, lifted its head and growled briefly. In the front yard, Aga stopped frolicking happily in the rain to stand still, its pointed snout raised to the east.

“What is it, Kuro?” I asked, walking over to scratch the panther’s neck, but it did not stop growling. I listened closely but could hear only rain…

No.

There was something else. Not a sound. Something coming through the skin on the soles of my feet. A faint but abnormal vibration.

“…An earthquake?” murmured Agil, who noticed it at the same moment I did, keeping his feet firm against the porch.

“Since when did virtual reality have earthquakes…? Not that it can’t…,” I replied, placing a hand on the porch itself.

There was a violent jolt!, a shock wave more than a simple vibration, that shook the entire cabin.

I wobbled, losing my balance and dropping the mug in my other hand. The fragile piece of pottery immediately smashed to pieces, vanishing into blue particles. The sound of its shattering was lost amid the screams of the girls inside and Klein’s shout:

“Agil, the east!”

I leaped out into the downpour. In the real world, it was impossible to tell which direction was the center of seismic activity from your senses alone, but here in VR, I could get a sense of it from the direction my body was wobbling. Kuro and Agil followed me into the yard, and the others quickly rushed out of the house behind us.

I ran into the middle of the open space and turned around, but the cabin and walls were too high to see into the forest. I could hear squealing coming from the other side, presumably from the ratlike Patter.

The ground shook once again. Whatever the source, it was getting closer with each repetition.

“Out of the Four O’Clock Gate!” I called out, rushing onto Inner Perimeter Road and turning left. That put me on Four O’Clock Road, where many Patter were already emerging from their homes to look at the sky with worry.

“Stay inside. It’s too dangerous out here…Er, tell them that!” I asked Yui, who was right behind me, and made a mental note to work on my Patter and Bashin language skills as soon as I got the chance. Right after opening the southeast gate out of town, the third tremor hit. It almost threw me off my feet.

“Aaah…”

“Whoa, there!” Lisbeth held on to my left arm, keeping me upright.

“Th…thanks.”

“You’re good. What should we do, though?! If this isn’t just an ordinary earthquake…,” she remarked. The others looked tense. If this shaking wasn’t some natural phenomenon of the Great Zelletelio Forest but was caused by monsters or other players, it was something devastatingly powerful, on the level of grand magic.

“…Let’s try to figure out what’s causing it first,” I said, to everyone’s approval. Eight was the maximum party size in Unital Ring, and there were ten of us, so we split into two groups of five and linked them as a raid party. Asuna, Yui, Leafa, Klein, and I were Team A, and Sinon, Alice, Lisbeth, Silica, and Agil were Team B. Argo wasn’t going to make it in time, but if she did show up, she’d be in Team A.

I instructed Sinon, the leader of Team B, to head to the left, then I rushed into the dark forest with my four party members and two pets. Team B, which had Misha with them, followed in parallel, thirty feet to the left of us.

The rain showed no sign of slowing. The soggy undergrowth was constantly threatening to make us slip, so we had to be careful as we ran to the east. The moon was behind the clouds, so five yards was the best I could see up ahead, and the rain meant any torch was going to be snuffed out in moments. Thanks to my Night Vision skill, I could barely make out the trees and bushes, so I led the way for the others, running just slow enough that I didn’t trip and fall.

There was no fourth quake yet, but I could still feel intermittent vibrations through my feet. I thought I was picking up faint sounds of cracking and crunching destruction, too.

“What’s ahead in this direction, Kirito?” asked Asuna, just loud enough that I could hear her over the rain, pulling Yui along by the hand.

“We haven’t explored too much this way, but I’m pretty sure there was a big valley over here.”

“Meaning there could be landslides happening because of the rain?!” Klein wondered optimistically, running with long strides.

I couldn’t help but smirk at that one. “If everything fell apart in a VRMMO each time it rained, the whole place would be a torn-up mess.”

“And it’s not like there are construction workers to build public works,” Leafa noted.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Klein grumbled.

Meanwhile, the trees ahead were starting to thin out. If my memory was accurate, there would be two sizable hills soon, with a huge canyon running straight between them. I hadn’t checked to see what was on the other end of the canyon.

“We’re leaving the trees!” I warned my companions, running past an especially large spiral pine.

The forest opened up in a V-shape, giving way to deep grass. Black clouds swirled above, lashing us with their rain and illuminating the ground with the occasional bolt of white lightning.

To the sides up ahead, as I remembered, there were two hills—or probably just one, in the long-distant past, split in two by the huge gash in the earth that now separated it. The canyon was about a hundred feet wide, its floor littered by boulders larger than Misha.

I was anticipating that the source of the earthquake was somewhere in this field, but I couldn’t see anything abnormal at the moment. There were still faint microtremors coming through my feet, but it had been several minutes now since any vertical displacement large enough to knock me off my feet.

Was it truly just some natural phenomenon? I started to relax the tiniest amount.

But then an especially bright flash of lightning lit everything in white, and a mammoth rock formation reaching up from the floor of the canyon, over thirty feet tall, simply shattered into pieces, as though it had exploded from the inside.

The shaking that followed was the greatest yet, and I had to grab Kuro’s shoulder to keep from tumbling over. Asuna, Yui, and Leafa kept one another upright, but Klein toppled spectacularly onto his bottom.

Normally, such a fall would be followed by furious swearing, but in this case, even he didn’t have time for that. A figure had appeared from beyond the shattered boulder, impossibly vast, beyond comparison.

We were at least two hundred yards away, and the bottom of the canyon was well below our current position, but the pressure I felt was overwhelming; it made my breathing quick and shallow. It wasn’t just the size but the shape that was stirring the primordial fear within me.

“What is that…?” Leafa asked.

“What the hell…?” Klein muttered at the same time.

I didn’t have anything insightful to say, either. The shape I’d seen by the lightning’s illumination was too bizarre to even describe.

It was undoubtedly the largest monster I’d encountered yet in Unital Ring. Sinon had said the sterocephalus dinosaur boss she’d fought was thirty feet from head to tail, but the monster I was looking at now was at least twice that length.

Its head was barely within the realm of humanoid, but there were four eyes glowing red, and its mouth was split not just up and down but left and right as well. The back of the head was elongated, and a number of horns jutted out of the sides.

Just below its head were two arms, which featured extremely long forearms that ended in scythe blades. The torso bulged like a barrel, and a vertical mouth yawned in the center of it.

That was as far as the humanoid features went. Its waist bent backward at a ninety-degree angle, connecting to a vast midsection that was segmented like a centipede’s. Multijointed legs proliferated, ending in sharp points similar to the scythe-arms, and the end of the body was a spearlike protuberance.

Its entire body was covered in a gleaming black shell, but what made it even more grotesque was that rippling muscle could be seen under that shell. The shape was insectoid, but the texture of the creature was vertebrate. There was only one word I knew that could encapsulate this creature: demon.

The cause of the tremors that shook Ruis na Ríg was probably that titanic creature smashing through the boulders. If it reached the town, all that work we’d put into construction and repairs for our log cabin would be for nothing, as it crushed the settlement flat.

Watching the creature on the canyon floor, which had momentarily paused in its advance, I muttered to no one in particular, “What is that thing…doing here…?”

The man-faced centipede, all seventy-plus feet of it, didn’t share a single thing in common with the animal monsters of the Great Zelletelio Forest. We’d seen bears in the forest, leopards in the grasslands, and crabs in the river—these all made a certain kind of sense. Why throw away that logic now? The only place a monster like that should exist was in the bottom of a deep, dark dungeon—or hell itself.

But then something sparked to life, tickling the deepest part of my brain.

Had I seen a monster that bore a resemblance to this one before…in some other VRMMO world? But where…?

“Hey, Kirito…”

I looked over and saw that Asuna, who was holding Yui in her arms, wore a blank expression.

“I think…I’ve seen that monster before…”

But before she could elaborate, another voice cried out from the left. “Look at its feet!”

That came from Sinon, the leader of Team B, which had exited the forest a few moments after us. The sniper’s eyesight was just as sharp in this world as in the last, and she’d spotted something we’d missed. I stowed that prickling in my head for now and stared carefully. At the bottom of the canyon, lit intermittently by lightning flashes, were numerous smaller rocks in addition to the wreckage the man-faced centipede caused. And between them…

“Oh…” I gasped when I saw it.

Ten—closer to twenty small shapes moving slowly. They were actually human-sized, only small in comparison to the man-faced centipede, but their silhouettes were not human, either. Bodies covered in hard shell, long horns and chins, six legs. They were insect-type monsters—minions of the man-faced centipede.

Suddenly, the great creature’s four eyes flashed, red and baleful, and it raised its right scythe-arm.

“Jyaaaaa!”

Even at two hundred yards, the force of its roar nearly buckled our legs. The beast swung one of its scythes with terrifying speed. It easily shattered a rock ten feet across, knocking over two or three of the insectoid monsters standing behind it.

The other insects in the vicinity hurried to lift up their overturned kind. The twenty of them then proceeded to run toward the exit of the canyon.

“Jyashaaa!” howled the demon again, lifting both scythe-arms. It slammed them a few times into the earth, the smaller insects just barely avoiding the blow.

“Are they…fighting each other?” I muttered.

“Doesn’t seem like fighting,” Klein said, having gotten back to his feet. “More like the big one’s attacking the itty-bitty ones while they run away. But more importantly…they’re comin’ this way!”

Indeed, the human-sized insectoids were quickly rushing up the gentle slope of the hillside. The man-faced centipede resumed moving, chasing after them. Both would reach the edge of the forest, where we now stood, in less than a minute.

The worst thing that could happen would be for both to target us for attack. Should we hide in the forest and wait for the giant centipede-thing to wipe out the twenty insectoids? The insectoids might slip into the forest and reach all the way to Ruis na Ríg. Perhaps we should attack from a distance to stop their forward progress—and let the centipede kill them. Based on what we’d seen so far, the smaller creatures’ algorithm seemed to include a pattern of helping one another, so we might be able to use that to our advantage.

Monsters or not, I didn’t exactly feel great about that tactic, but if that was what it took to protect the town and its NPCs, so be it. I steeled myself for what had to be done and called out to our two long-distance fighters.

“Yui, Sinon, use your fire magic and musket to stop the insect-type monsters at the front!”

“Right away!” “You got it,” they said, taking a few steps forward.

Sinon pointed her gun, and Yui held out her hands, aiming for the orchid mantis look-alike in the lead. The light-pink body stood out through the rain, giving them an easier target to hit.

Yui performed the activation gesture for her fire magic, then pulled back her right hand. Sinon pressed the rifle against her cheek and put her finger to the trigger. The distance to the orchid mantis was 100 yards, 150 to the man-faced centipede behind it.

They took aim, sucked in deep breaths—and then Agil shouted, “Hold on!!” and leaped in front of them. Sinon was so startled, she lifted the muzzle of the gun, and Yui moved her hands out of the way.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?!” Sinon groused, but Agil could only say a quick “Sorry!” in response. He rushed out into the pouring rain, not even bothering to draw his double-edged ax.

“Wh-whoa…what in the world?!” I shouted, but the man did not turn back. I could only run after him.

The swarm of insectoids was getting closer by the moment. They must have noticed us by now, but in this game, you didn’t see an enemy cursor until you or a party member inflicted or received an attack, so I couldn’t be sure if they’d targeted us yet. I just had to act under the presumption that they had.

“Agil, at least draw your ax!”

I lifted my sword to my shoulder, preparing for a sword skill. But the warrior wouldn’t even reach for his weapon. Agil was always calm under pressure—in some ways, he was the real brains of the team—but it was like he had just lost his mind.

The light-pink orchid mantis was already within thirty yards. Its arms were folded before its chest and ended in nasty-looking scythe blades, although they were tiny in comparison to the demonic centipede’s. If it got off a good hit, it was going to tear away huge chunks of HP, even through iron armor. If Agil wasn’t going to fight, I had to handle this one myself.

With that in mind, I adjusted the angle of my sword to execute a Sonic Leap. Suddenly, the image of young Phercy Arabel’s sad smile from my earlier trip to the Underworld passed through my mind. I had to figure out the reason he couldn’t use sword skills. With that determination riding on my sword, like everything else, I prepared to unleash a truly full-powered skill.

“Stoppp!!” Agil bellowed like a thunderclap, spreading his arms and coming to an abrupt halt. I put on the brakes, too, and the shift in posture caused my sword skill to fizzle out.

Agil’s thick arms were extended in a straight line. He stood in the center of the sodden field, forbidding and intense. Up ahead, twenty insectoids were charging straight toward us. The orchid mantis in the front was close enough that I could see its huge compound eyes gleaming as it raised its scythe to attack.

Then Agil shouted, “Trish?! Is that you, Trish?!”

……Huh?

To my shock, the mantis came to a screeching stop, its scythe arm dropping a little at an awkward, surprised angle—and then it spoke with a human woman’s voice.

“Andy?! What are you doing here?!”

……Huhhh?!

Why is that praying mantis talking? And who is Andy?!

Suddenly, I realized. Agil’s character name was taken from his first and middle names, Andrew and Gilbert. This orchid mantis monster knew Agil’s real name.

“Wait…No way,” whispered Asuna from my right; she’d just caught up to us. I turned my head in her direction and asked, “‘No way’ what?”

“Do you think that praying mantis is…Agil’s wife?”

“………Excuse me?”

My mind ground to a halt again.

Outside the log cabin, I had just heard Agil describe his wife as a VRMMO player, but this praying mantis could not be anything other than a monster. Was she a human who’d been transformed into a monster through magic? Did the same go for all the insectoid monsters behind her…?

It took only a moment for confirmation, thanks to a green stag beetle that came to a stop behind the mantis. Its fierce jaws opened and closed, emitting a man’s voice—speaking fluent English.

“Hey, Hyme, what the hell are you doing?!”

He was followed by a squat rhinoceros beetle that swung their horn to and fro.

“Who are they?! Friends or foes?!”

They were speaking so fast I couldn’t be sure of what I heard, but I was pretty certain I’d gotten the gist of it. And the one who responded to them was not the orchid mantis, who was apparently named Hyme, but Agil himself. The African American burst into English so fast that I couldn’t hope to understand it.

Thankfully, he did seem to convince the stag and rhinoceros beetles that we were not their enemies, because they lowered their horns and jaws. Other insects were catching up quickly; the stag beetle shouted something to defuse their aggression.

For now, we’d avoided battle with the insect army, but that was only half—no, 10 percent of the problem. The gigantic man-faced centipede was still charging through the canyon behind them. If we made the wrong strategic choice, both we and the insects could get wiped out.

Just then, a small light flashed, bursting on the face of the centipede monstrosity. A moment or two later, I heard a small corresponding boom. It was too small to be called an explosion, but even through the rain, I could clearly see poisonous yellow smoke issuing in great amounts; it shrouded the centipede’s head. The monster stopped charging and roared “Jyashaaa!” with irritation.

The insect—errr, person—who threw the smoke-grenade-like object was in the back row of the insect army. Hooded cloak flapping in the wind, the short player raced through the rain with incredible speed and came to a screeching stop right in front of me.

“Sorry, Kiri-boy! Things got bad!”

There was no way I could mistake that distinctive voice.

“Argo?!”

“Is that you, Argo?!” cried Asuna.

I followed that up by stammering, “You—Why—?” which Argo somehow correctly interpreted (probably through telepathy) as Why are you with these insects?

She pulled back her hood and replied, “I’ll explain later! We gotta do something about the big one now!”

“Do something? The only thing we can do is pull it somewhere else far away and hope to escape its range.”

“That won’t work. There’s just no way ta break its aggro. It’s been chasin’ us here almost twenty miles.”

“Twenty miles…?!”

That was indeed absurd. If you traveled the distance from Ruis na Ríg to the Stiss Ruins under continuous pursuit from an enemy, you’d have to assume that outrunning it was simply not possible.

“Can’t you just throw a bunch more of those smoke bombs, Argo?!” Asuna asked, but the woman just shook her head.

“That was the last of ’em. Plus, they might stop it temporarily, but it just keeps chasin’ right after. Terrain makes no difference to it, so it’s gonna catch up to ya somewhere or other.”

“I mean, it was bustin’ right through those huge freakin’ rocks…,” noted Klein.

For once, Argo actually looked regretful about something. “I’m real sorry. I wasn’t planning to run this close to yer base, but once we got into the forest, there was nowhere ta escape aside from the canyon…”

“Hey, it’s way better than you dying off somewhere else without us knowing,” I replied, thinking hard. “Let’s beat it,” I announced. “It’s obvious at a glance that this is an insane boss, but we’ve got everyone here. If we take our time and watch for its patterns as we attack, it should be possible to beat it without losing anyone.”

“That’s exactly the point,” said Alice stridently. The knight’s proud golden hair was full of rain droplets, her bastard sword pointed at the mammoth shape a hundred yards away. “We cannot escape from every threat that exists. No matter how powerful the enemy is, there are times that you must fight. Especially when it means protecting something precious.”

The others at her sides nodded in agreement. Even Kuro, Aga, Misha, and Pina issued brief noises of assent.

The man-faced centipede, shrouded in yellow smoke, resumed moving this way. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye and asked Argo, “We can save the small stuff for later. I assume those insects are friends?”

“Yep. They’re players from the American Seed game Insectsite.”

“Insectsite…”

So they weren’t transformed into bugs by magic—that was just how they looked. Something about a VRMMO where you could play as an insect sounded familiar, now that I thought about it. But I wouldn’t have expected them to look so…realistic. Almost all of them were walking upright on two or four legs, but that was as far as the human similarities went. What about the six-legged ones—or the spiders, with eight legs? How did they control all those limbs?

But I could ponder these questions later. Right now, I had to focus on the biggest challenge yet since I’d been forced into this game.

“What attack patterns does it have, Argo?”

“All physical so far. It swings with its arm hooks and its tail spear, does a body charge, and bites with the mouth on its stomach.”

“So the main attack is the scythes, I assume,” I murmured. Suddenly, the center of my mind went numb again. But there was no time to go digging through memories. “Me, Alice, and Liz will keep it occupied and stop the scythe attacks. The rest of you, attack from the sides. If we can sever its legs one at a time, it should eventually be immobilized.”

“Got it!” they said heartily.

I turned to Agil, the one person who seemed less than enthusiastic, and said, “I’ll need you to tank for us when you’re a higher level. And can you translate the plan for the bugs…I mean, the players from Insectsite?”

“You got it,” Agil said, conveying the instructions in rapid-fire English for the insect warriors. I’d once hoped to study at an American college, so it wasn’t like I had no skill for the language, but the last thing we needed right now was any mix-up in communication.

When Agil finished, the largest of the stag and rhinoceros beetles came forward and spoke.

“We’ll fight at the front, too!”

“Our skin’s gonna be harder than your armor!”

I certainly couldn’t turn down an argument like that.

“I’m counting on you!” I told them in English, and the two raised their claws in what I had to assume was an insectoid thumbs-up.

Again, the ground shook violently; the man-faced centipede had resumed its charge. If we were going to fight something so huge, an open space would obviously be better than the cramped ravine. Our battlefield would be the open square of space a hundred yards to a side, from the exit of the canyon to the start of the forest.

“Hyme, join our raid!” I said in English to the orchid mantis, Agil’s wife, and sent her an invitation. The mantis used the fingers at the base of her right scythe to hit the OK button on the prompt.

Twenty more HP bars appeared in a line on the left edge of my vision. They’d all taken damage, but none of them had dipped under half their HP, and they had TP and SP to spare. The fact that they’d run for nearly twenty miles and experienced only this much wear and tear was either a sign of skill or luck—probably both.

“Do you have any healing methods?”

“You bet!”

Hyme the mantis called out to her companions, and a brown-winged insect came forward. Their overall shape looked like a cicada, but the head had strangely shaped feelers on it. They branched into four parts, each ending in a large sphere that made them look like satellite antennas.

The antlered cicada said, “C’mon, guys!” and the insects promptly rushed over and huddled up. The spheres at the end of their feelers sprayed out a shower of glowing white liquid that fell upon the others.

The twenty insects’ HP rapidly restored itself. That was a helpful power to have, but it didn’t seem likely to work in rapid succession. Meanwhile, we each had two or three “potions”—the pottery jars full of slow-regen tea that Asuna invented—and they couldn’t be relied upon to get us out of every jam. We’d need to focus on defense first and get a total grasp of the enemy’s patterns.

“Here it comes!” I shouted (in Japanese this time) as the man-faced centipede rushed out of the canyon and into the field.

Up close, it was impossibly huge. The head alone was fifteen feet long, and the huge scythes on each arm were ten feet to the blade, while the centipede portion was over sixty or seventy feet. Even the Deviant Gods in ALO’s Jotunheim didn’t have anything on this devastating scale.

But as I had said to Agil earlier, size and appearance were not tied to strength in a VRMMO. Games in the Seed engine had a general inclination to strength rising faster for larger avatars, and higher agility for smaller ones, but if Silica, the smallest member of the group, were at level-100, she could probably beat that giant man-faced centipede in a shoving match.

Of course, our group was only at an average of around level-13 or level-14. Still, if we could pull off perfect cooperative play, we could hold our own against a colossal, horrific demon—I chose to believe.

“Jyashuaaaa!” bellowed the titan, opening its jaws in four directions.

As though one caused the other, lightning rained down from the black canopy above, lighting the mammoth creature.

“Kuro, you attack from the side on Asuna’s order,” I told the panther, rubbing its round head. The predator growled with a hint of reproach, then moved to wait next to Aga. I squeezed the grip of my sword in preparation, making brief eye contact with Asuna.

“Go!!” I shouted, pushing off. With Alice and Lisbeth, my companions at the front, and the new recruits of the rhinoceros beetle and stag beetle, we spread out as we ran. The grass at our feet was thick, but the rain was tamping it down, so it wasn’t tripping us up like I feared. The monstrosity loomed closer, over twenty feet off the ground.

“Jyaaa!”

The man-faced centipede slowly pulled back its right scythe. When the movement was this big, it would be easy to get the timing down.

“It’s coming from the right! Prepare to guard!”

We all steadied ourselves, Alice and I with our swords, Lisbeth with her mace, the rhinoceros beetle with their horn, and the stag beetle with his jaws.

The ten-foot scythe began to swing forward with the sound of a gale. The grass along the ground tore loose and flew into the air, despite not being touched.

It’s okay! We can stop it!! I told myself, practically praying, as I squeezed the grip of my sword. I pressed the flat of the blade against my left arm to augment the defensive positioning.

The gleaming scythe was right before me. I leaned forward, bracing for impact. Alice, Liz, Rhino, and Stag did the same.

The scythe touched my sword.

For a moment, I thought my avatar had exploded.

Not that I’d experienced it myself, but it made me wonder if riding my bicycle at top speed and smashing headlong into a trailer truck would feel the same way. The impact made me feel like my body was disintegrating into pieces. The world spun wildly. For half a second, I didn’t even realize the scythe had knocked me clean off my feet and thrown me through the air.

“Kirito!” called a voice, right before I slammed into someone. I instinctually knew it was Asuna who had stopped me.

“…!”

I heard the breath catch in her throat. She tried to keep her feet steady, but the momentum of my body knocked her down to the wet grass with me.

In the upper left, my HP was dropping at a terrifying rate. I’d started topped off, but now it was at 70, 60, 50, before finally stopping a bit before 40 percent.

“No way…”

I simply couldn’t believe that I’d lost nearly two-thirds of my health in one hit when I was guarding against it. Somehow, my sword had survived the impact, but my chestpiece and left gauntlet were miserably cracked. Nearby, Alice and Liz were splayed out in the grass, and Rhino and Stag were on their backs. Everyone had taken a similar amount of damage.

I focused on the man-faced centipede ahead of us. It had finished the follow-through of its scythe, its side jaws opening and closing in apparent mockery.

By taking damage, I’d gotten the monstrosity’s spindle cursor to appear over its head. The HP readout had three bars. Below them was its name, written in the English alphabet.

The Life Harvester.

The instant I saw that name, I finally understood why I found the man-faced centipede so familiar.

“Kirito…look…,” said Asuna, her voice a tremulous whisper. She’d remembered, just like I had.

The centipede monster known as the Life Harvester was the same boss that’d wiped out half the best players in SAO on the seventy-fifth floor of Aincrad: the Skullreaper. The only difference was that it was covered in flesh and carapace, rather than exposed bone. But the shape, the attack patterns…even its tremendous offensive power was exactly the same.

But why? What was a floor boss from SAO doing in Unital Ring?

My mind was blank. I couldn’t move. In the distance, the freakish demon’s two scythes rose high into the air. Purple lightning crackled through the storm clouds, framing the vicious silhouette in stark black against the light.

(To be continued)