Sword Art Online - Volume 25 - Chapter 4

4

Argo and I left Ruis na Ríg with Kuro at our side, and we made our way carefully through the deep forest around us.

We already knew there were no truly dangerous monsters in this area, but there were still nocturnal animal-type monsters like foxes and bats that bothered us along the way. We weren’t trying to level up, so I intended to avoid them whenever possible and only fight when needed—but to my surprise, a single growl from Kuro sent nearly every one of them fleeing. Apparently, the panther had some kind of intimidation skill.

The original plan was to dedicate half our time tonight to leveling up and skill proficiency, but fortunately for us, that was no longer necessary. Defeating the mega-difficult field boss, the Life Harvester, gave each of us a minimum of two levels.

That put our present level, class, and ability tree status as follows.

KIRITO

Level-20, 1H Swords / Decay Magic / Blacksmith / Carpentry / Stoneworking / Woodworking / Tamer (Brawn)

SINON

Level-18, Gunner / Thief / Stoneworking / Woodworking / Herbalist (Swiftness)

ALICE

Level-18, Bastard Swords / Pottery / Weaving / Tailoring (Brawn)

LEAFA

Level-16, Bastard Swords / Woodworking / Pottery (Brawn)

LISBETH

Level-15, Maces / Blacksmith / Carpentry / Weaving / Pottery (Toughness)

SILICA

Level-15, Short Swords / Tamer / Weaving / Scouting (Swiftness)

YUI

Level-14, Daggers / Fire Magic / Cooking / Weaving (Sagacity)

ASUNA

Level-14, Rapiers / Herbalist / Cooking / Woodworking / Pottery / Weaving / Tailoring / Tamer (Sagacity)

ARGO

Level-14, Short Swords / Scouting / Thief / Herbalist (Swiftness)

KLEIN

Level-13, Curved Blades / Woodworking / Stoneworking (Brawn)

AGIL

Level-13, Axes / Woodworking / Stoneworking (Toughness)

HYME

Level-16, Scythes / Stoneworking / Woodworking / Herbalist (Swiftness)

MISHA

Thornspike cave bear, Level-8

KURO

Lapispine dark panther, Level-7

AGA

Long-billed giant agamid, Level-6

PINA

Feathery dragon, Level-7

The reason the group had so many professions was because simply earning the corresponding skill would make it show up on your status screen. You could earn the Stoneworking skill just by picking up two rocks and smacking them together. I doubted that qualified one to be called a stoneworker, but Argo was guessing that as you racked up skill proficiency, you’d eventually be forced to sort and choose from your skills.

What I found interesting was that Hyme the praying mantis was given the class of scythe-user. According to her, in Insectsite, players’ main weapons were their natural assets, so if you were a stag beetle, you’d use your jaw to perform Great Pincers sword skills, while a rhinoceros beetle’s horn would do Cudgel sword skills, and a praying mantis’s arms would do Scythe sword skills.

Of course, prior to the game conversion, there were no sword skills in Insectsite, so they were still at less than a 50 percent success rate when attempting to execute a skill on the first try. That rate would increase with practice, I assumed, but it was clear that being from ALO gave us the blessing of experience when it came to familiarity with sword skills.

But in fact, the presence of sword skills in ALO was an irregular occurrence already, due to the end of RCT Progress, the original publisher of the game. In truth, the ones who had the biggest advantage in Unital Ring weren’t the ALO players…

I shook my head, dispelling that line of thought. It was time to focus on the task at hand.

We snuck carefully and quietly through the dark of night. Mutasina’s attack was supposed to be tomorrow night, but there was no guarantee that they didn’t have an advance party in place already.

“Hey, Kiri-boy, what about there?” whispered a voice off to the right. I came to a stop, as did Kuro, who was silently stalking on my left, and sniffed the night air.

“Which way is ‘there’?” I asked, taking a step closer to Argo. A pale hand pointed through the darkness beyond the trees. The storm had passed hours earlier, but the sky was still mostly clouded over; if I didn’t have the Night Vision skill, I wouldn’t be able to see more than ten feet ahead.

Squinting through the gloom, I could make out the rushing Maruba River past the trees and the spacious riverbed. We’d picked our way through the trees rather than the easy path of the riverbed to cut down on the chances of encountering any scout parties. If other players were approaching, Kuro would probably sniff them out before Argo or I saw them, but caution was imperative. If the enemy just so happened to spot us, we’d have to rebuild our strategy from scratch.

The three of us were hiding out at a spot close to two miles south of Ruis na Ríg. Another mile, and we’d reach the southern tip of the Great Zelletelio Forest, but leaving was beside the point. We needed to find the right spot inside the woods.

“Hmm, it’s too far to make out well,” I grumbled, straining my eyes.

Argo chuckled. “You oughtta grind out more Night Vision proficiency. The best way to raise it I’ve found is tryin’ to read in darkness.”

“That seems like it would lower your vision instead,” I grumbled, just as a wide, short window popped open in front of my face: Night Vision skill proficiency has risen to 6.

The clarity of my sight rose just a small bit, bringing the landscape through the trees into better relief.

The Maruba River was a majestic one, over a hundred yards across if you included the whole riverbed. My home city of Kawagoe meant “crossing the rivers,” one of which was the Iruma River. Where it ran closest to my house, the riverbed was two hundred yards across, but looking at this one, it felt like it was about the same size.

The spot Argo was pointing out, however, was less than half as wide as elsewhere along the river, because the forest table was pressing inward from both sides. I thought I recalled that we passed this narrow spot going down to the Stiss Ruins with Alice last night, and I had reminded myself to pay close attention, lest we take a tumble into the water due to reduced mobility.

“…Seems good,” I murmured.

Proudly, Argo replied, “Don’t it?” Not that she created that spot, I thought, but she was the one who found it first, so I gave her a begrudging “GJ” and continued forward.

Just before we emerged from the forest, we checked to make sure no other players were nearby. After our eyes and Kuro’s nose and ears turned up nothing, I declared it safe and opened my ring menu.

As in the old SAO, the system window drew a fair bit of attention in the dark. Although no monsters swarmed over to the light of the window, it would stand out to players. So you could use it as a signal to your friends, but it might also give away your location to criminal orange players—so it was common knowledge among solo players that you had to carefully ensure your window’s illumination didn’t travel a long distance.

There should be no players around to notice this light, but even still, I placed the menu behind a tree trunk and quickly opened my map. By holding a long press on my current location, I placed a red X mark on the map there.

With this task complete, I promptly closed my menu and exhaled with relief. A cloth pouch hanging from my belt held some bison jerky, which I gave to Kuro as a treat. “The real problem is time,” I murmured. “If we start too early, it’ll break down before we put the plan into motion, and if it’s too late, it won’t be ready in time…”

“That’s true…,” murmured Argo. “I’m thinkin’ we need to be starting on our idea right around the time Mutasina’s army leaves the Stiss Ruins. It’s a hundred people crossin’ eighteen miles, so it’ll take three hours, even if they run the whole way. In fact, if you run in UR, you’re losin’ TP and SP fast. So considering fuel, it’d be more like a four-hour jog…”

“And if it takes us an hour to set up our trap, that leaves a three-hour gap. I think it should hold up fine for that long…But there’s no saying with these things until you make it.”

“And considering the amount of resources it’ll take, there’s no way to test it out first.”

“Yeah…”

Right now, our friends were working hard around Ruis na Ríg, packing their item storage full of resources. The plan that I envisioned called for a vast amount of materials, so there was no way for us to build one first just to test its durability. I was certain the mechanism itself would work—the question was how many hours it would hold.

If this were the Underworld, I could use Incarnation power to create something that would last ten years without budging, I thought ruefully. The idea put a figure into my mind, someone framed against the evening sun coming through the car window, with a cylindrical uniform cap and wavy flaxen hair…

It took considerable force of will to hold back the sudden flood of emotion. I needed to focus on this world. Thinking too much about the Underworld while in Unital Ring was going to make me accidentally try to block a sword attack with Incarnation, with disastrous results.

“…Now that I’m thinking about it, Argo, we don’t know for sure when Mutasina’s group is leaving the Stiss Ruins, do we?” I pointed out.

The info agent snorted. “Don’t insult me, boy. I’ve already identified about twenty individual social media accounts belonging to members of the Weed Eaters, Absolute Survivor Squad, and Announcer Fan Club, all of whom were assimilated into Mutasina’s army. I’ll know when they’re on the move, because all their accounts’ll go silent at the same time.”

“……Wow…Good thinking…”

I couldn’t hate on that logic. I’d been both bailed out and made a fool of by her incredible information network in the SAO days—so it was good to have her on my side now.

“…By the way, Argo,” I asked incidentally. “I couldn’t help noticing you’re pretty good with English. Where did you learn it…?”

The Rat reached under her hood and rubbed between her nose and lip. “Hmmm, that’ll cost ya about two hundred el.”

“Two hundred…That’s so expensive! A whole shish kebab costs just three dim! And a hundred dim is one el, so I could buy six thousand six hundred and sixty-six kebabs for the cost of that secret!” I shouted, then clamped my hands over my mouth. I would look like the biggest idiot in the world if I got spotted by their scouts for this.

Fortunately, the only response was a cry of hruffoo from a mystery bird in the branches overhead. Much quieter, I added, “If I ever get my hands on some one hundred-el silver coins, I’m gonna buy that intel off of you.”

“Heh-heh, I look forward to it. It’ll be a while yet, though. Monsters in this world don’t drop coins as a general rule.”

“…That’s true.”

As Argo said, the animals we’d been fighting like bears, bison, frogs, and bats dropped plenty of material items, but not a single coin. The NPC shop inside the Stiss Ruins did buy all of my extra, unwanted materials for money, but the total price was three el, seventy-eight dim. If I was acquiring about an el per day, I’d need two hundred days to save up enough.

“And the Life Harvester didn’t drop any money, either…,” I grumbled.

“But it dropped tons and tons o’ stuff,” Argo shot back. “I bet you’d make a pretty good pile o’ cash from selling all of it.”

“I guess…”

As a matter of fact, in addition to so much raw meat we couldn’t possibly use all at once, the Life Harvester also dropped a huge amount of material items. Not just its carapace and bones, but teeth, tendons, secretions, calculi, eyeballs, and other such errata. We placed them in the log cabin’s storage, but we hadn’t yet decided what to do with them. Like Argo said, we could carry them to the Stiss Ruins and sell them off, but my gamer’s instincts raged against the idea of simply selling boss materials to a shop.

“…In other games, you’d eventually need that stuff to make some kind of epic weapon…But I don’t know if that logic holds true here as well…”

“I mean, it’s all bones and eyeballs and stuff. No idea what skill even makes use of ’em, so my guess is that they’ll do ya better if converted to cash than rotting away in your inventory.”

“I’m guessing there’s some NPC somewhere who can make gear out of biological materials,” I commented. But a thought struck my brain. “Wait…Why don’t we just ask an NPC, then? The Bashin are using pelt armor and bone weapons, right? They must know how to refine the materials.”

“…Good point. Well, shucks, shoulda done some intel gathering during the feast…Can’t believe I missed that opportunity…”

“Well, neither of us can speak Bashin.”

“I already got a proficiency of five in the Bashin language—and three in Patter.”

“……Congrats,” I said, making a little pose of resignation before I got to my feet. “Well, let’s head back and join in the harvesting. We don’t know how much we’ll need in the end, after all…”

“True.”

With one last shared bob of the head, the Rat, the panther, and I hurried back the way we’d come, on the animal trail through the woods.