Sword Art Online - Volume 27 - Chapter 9

9

The misty river air whipped passed my ears.

Beneath that sound was the charging footsteps of Kuro and Aga, along with the animals’ breathing. My body was as low as I could make it; I had to trust in Kuro’s footing.

I kept my gaze to the right, watching the far bank of the rushing river with great intensity.

About a hundred feet ahead, there was a humanoid figure leaping along the riverside. The only light was coming from the moon, so I might have lost it in the darkness if not for my Night Vision skill and the flapping white dress in the figure’s arms.

We’d been chasing the monkey-type monster that snatched up Yui for more than two minutes now. I needed to get across the river somehow, but so far there hadn’t been any terrain that made it possible to jump over without landing in the water. Aga might be able to swim across with Asuna on its back, but that would take at least thirty seconds, and the monkey would get far ahead in that time.

The one advantage on our side was that there was a nearly thirty-foot extreme slope on the other side of the far bank. Even a monkey couldn’t climb that angle while carrying Yui, but if the slope ever leveled off, it would easily be able to turn ninety degrees and move directly away from the river until it was out of sight.

Would we make it over to the far bank first, or would the monkey escape the tight section of riverside? It was running downriver, so the width of the water was increasing over time; it looked like it was nearly twenty-five yards across at this point. It seemed like our chances were getting worse over time, and I had to work hard to stifle the onset of panic.

Friscoll said there were multiple villages and towns on the second tier. If people lived here, there would be roads, and where roads met rivers, there were inevitably…

“…Yes!” I hissed with muted triumph.

About a hundred yards ahead was a series of four arches spanning the river: a bridge.

But perhaps it wasn’t currently in use; the structure had fallen through at two points. Even still, it was clear that this was our last chance to catch up to the monkey.

“We’re crossing there, Asuna!” I shouted, looking over my shoulder.

“Okay!” she cried back.

I didn’t know how smart the monkey was, but it surely noticed the bridge, too. It might attempt some kind of sabotage, but at this point, we’d just have to charge right through it.

I pulled Kuro slightly to the left, then yanked it into a hard right turn. The panther whirled sideways, sending up a plume of dust, and zoomed straight toward the half-collapsed bridge with no fear.

Just in case, I glanced up to check on the monkey, thinking that it might attempt to throw a rock or something like that. Instead, I saw it also making a right turn and scampering away at maximum speed.

At the base of the other side of the bridge, the roughly paved road continued onward, splitting the steep hillside that blocked the monkey in and continuing to the northwest. The monkey sped down the road as quickly as it could. If it took us any extra time at all to cross the bridge, it was going to get away.

Please, Kuro! I prayed, just before Kuro leaped.

Despite carrying me in my full armor, the panther bounded right over the fifteen feet or so of collapsed bridge, landing in the center of the structure. There was another gap after that, which it also cleared, without any approach for extra speed.

Once we had crossed the crumbled bridge and reached the far bank, I looked over my shoulder to see Aga jumping over the second gap just behind us. Its distance wasn’t quite adequate, which was briefly terrifying, but it used its sharp claws to clutch onto the collapsed part and scrabble up to the top, where it continued rushing after Kuro and me.

It was too early to shout in triumph, so I settled on a silent thumbs-up for now and clung low to Kuro’s back again.

Up ahead, the ground rose in a very rapid ascent, except for where the road cut through it, heading into darkness. Only by squinting could I just barely make out the form of the speeding monkey.

It had pulled away a little while we crossed the bridge, but at least we were sharing the same route as the monkey now. All we had to do was close the gap—but I could see from the visual indicators that Kuro’s and Aga’s TP were dropping fast. If those numbers went to zero, they would lose HP next.

But the same had to be true for the monkey holding Yui, too. Hang in there, I told Kuro silently, and focused on our target.

The speed of the pursuers and the pursued were virtually at a deadlock. It would come down to whoever ran out of stamina first, it seemed. Asuna pushed Aga up next to us, where she could talk to me over the sound of the wind.

“Hey, Kirito, do you think that’s really a monster?”

“Huh…? I mean, it sure looks like—”

And that was when a thought occurred to me. When it came to appearances, the Sixes like Zarion and Beeming looked much more like monsters than the monkey.

On top of that, its fleeing interval was way too long. The idea of monsters that might capture the smallest member in a group was not unheard of—from what they said, the gilnaris hornets had kidnapped Chett, the Patter—but this monkey had run at least two miles by now. If the situation happened to be some kind of event, this seemed like an excessive distance, and it wasn’t really fair that the monkey could travel just as fast as players with fast mounts.

“If it’s a player…then what is it after…?” I murmured, then thought better of it. “Actually, the motive doesn’t matter. For the moment, we need to figure out a way to catch up under the assumption that it’s a player.”

“…Yeah,” Asuna agreed, gritting her teeth.

The little path, less than six feet across, ran endlessly through a savanna-like grassland. The grass was about a foot and a half tall, so even if the large monkey dived in, it couldn’t totally hide the creature. But this terrain wasn’t going to continue forever, so we had to close the gap while we still had our target in sight.

If the monkey was a player, it probably wasn’t going to react to obvious lures like making loud sounds or attracting it with enticing food smells. On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t have extreme attack power like the Life Harvester, either. In which case…

“Asuna, let’s put our faith in these guys!” I said, rubbing Kuro’s back.

After a pause, she replied, “Got it!”

“We’ll jump off to the rear on zero!”

I stared, feeling out the right timing. Just as the path made a slight curve, I gave the signal.

“Two, one, zero!”

We pushed off our mounts together and landed behind them.

“Go, Kuro!”

“You can do it, Aga!”

Although we gave them no specific instructions, the two animals cried back in response and started running even faster.

Kuro and Aga had been keeping up with the monkey’s speed while carrying me and Asuna on their backs. So without all that extra weight, it stood to reason, they should be able to go much faster. The monkey, meanwhile, could not speed up without letting go of Yui.

The fifty-yard gap between both sides was growing visibly smaller now. Asuna and I ran as hard as we could to keep up with our pets.

The monkey looked back over its shoulder and made a very human grimace. I could practically hear it clicking its tongue in irritation.

Then it took a very unexpected action: It faced forward, then rolled back its free hand, as though tossing something underhand. My Night Vision skill identified two lines of sparks leaving a trail in the darkness.

Suddenly, very high up in the night sky, two lights flared in red and blue. A split second later, I heard two bursts go bang, bang!

The lights—technically, colored flames—hung in the air without dissipating right away. They were thrown flares, then. I didn’t know what the blue and red coloring meant, but it certainly told us that the monkey’s companions were somewhere within sight of the flames.

Kuro and Aga were within ten yards of the monkey now. If they could stop our target for at least five seconds, Asuna and I could catch up, kill the monkey, free Yui, and leave the area. I felt some qualms about killing the creature without finding out its reasoning, but we had to be precise about the order of priorities here.

The monkey looked back again, then came to a stop, deciding it couldn’t escape. With Yui still held in its left hand, it waited without a weapon for Kuro and Aga to arrive. But through their battles, Kuro had reached level-8, while Aga was level-7. Even if the monkey was a human player, these two were not weak enough to be defeated barehanded.

Kuro and Aga started their leaping motions.

Instantly, the monkey opened its mouth wide and arched its back. Its chest puffed up like a balloon as it sucked in air. Then it clacked its jaws together, striking the four sharp canines and creating sparks.

Even I could hear the burst of flame that erupted from the monkey’s mouth, red and menacing.

“Wha…?”

Kuro and Aga were instantly engulfed, even before I could wonder, Why does a monkey have flame breath?!

The pets’ HP bars instantly lost more than a third of their total amount, and a blinking flame icon on the right end was presumably the sign of a burn status effect.

Kuro and Aga screamed and somersaulted before falling to the ground, deathly still. I wanted to help them immediately, but the flame breath was probably the monkey’s best attack. It couldn’t possibly utilize such a powerful technique multiple times in a row, so I had to close the gap now, before the cooldown wore off.

Kuro, Aga, hang on for a bit!

I launched over the two prone animals and drew my sword at maximum speed in midair.

Fifteen feet left to the monkey.

Because it had attacked them, the monkey finally reached hostile status, and its spindle cursor appeared overhead. The color was the magenta-tinged ruby red unique to enemy players. Beneath its full HP bar was the name Masaru. That had to be a bad pun. Saru, as in monkey?

Although I appreciated his style, there was no seeing eye to eye with someone trying to kidnap my daughter.

I was within sword-skill range now, but given the possibility that Masaru, the monkey, might use Yui as a human shield, I decided to feint going into the motion for a skill as I closed in on him.

“Hah!”

Because he had Yui in his left hand, I tried a reverse diagonal to his right side. He easily jumped backward to evade, but that was exactly what I wanted.

With my sword held high, I blocked Masaru’s sight line and rotated right. Asuna had been running just behind me, and grazed my back as she leaped forward. Her weapon cut through the darkness, a clear silver blaze vibrating at a high-pitched frequency.

“Whoa,” Masaru grunted, his first vocalization so far.

Asuna charged with her rapier, moving so quickly that she seemed to have beaten invisible wings to do it: the Shooting Star sword skill. There was no way to avoid the fastest skill in existence when you were already airborne.

Masaru tossed Yui into the grass and crossed his arms.

The silver rapier cut deep into his limbs.

“Gaaah!” he gasped. Lisbeth’s finely honed steel rapier pierced more than four inches into Masaru’s arms, then blasted him backward with a deafening roar. His body was actually taller than mine if he straightened up all the way; he slammed into the ground and rolled violently.

Although his tumble was impressive, he’d lost only about a fifth of his HP. I wanted to rush over to Yui in the grass, but suppressed my impulse and said to Asuna, “Take care of Yui!” while she was on cooldown. I sprinted right for Masaru.

But I had just prepped my sword for the sword skill Vertical when a tremendous bellow filled the night sky.

“Grrrooaaaahh!!”

“…?!”

I looked up, still holding the charge on my skill, and saw three more shadows rushing down the northwest path toward us. They must have been the ones Masaru sent the flares off for.

The option of doubling back, scooping up Yui, and fleeing entered my head, but I struck it down. If these three could run as fast as Masaru, we wouldn’t be able to stay ahead of them as long as Kuro and Aga had the burn Debuff. This wasn’t the time for careful calculations—it was time to overwhelm the enemy with sheer, angry tenacity.

“Rrraaahhh!!” I roared back, and raced past the toppled Masaru.

My eyes were open wide, searching ferociously. The left and right shapes were small, but the one in the middle was much bigger. And it seemed to be holding some kind of large weapon in both hands.

Assuming that one was the leader, I had acquired my target. If I missed, I was almost certain to lose, but that was a risk I’d have to take.

The distance was less than sixty feet. The moonlight and my Night Vision skill brought the enemy leader into focus.

Sure enough, it was not a regular human. While it was running on two legs and wore something like leather armor on its torso, there was black-striped fur on its limbs, and its head was that of a feline predator.

A tiger. A nearly six-foot-tall tigerman.

Belatedly, I realized who the enemy was. These were players from the VRMMO in which all the player avatar choices were anthros—Apocalyptic Date, usually shortened to AD.

But the AD players were supposedly ahead of ALO, so why would they create an ambush for us and kidnap Yui?

Whatever the enemy’s reasons, they didn’t matter now. I wouldn’t survive this peril unless I gave 100 percent of what I had to the flames of pure battle instinct.

The tigerman swung his two-handed ax high overhead.

If I attempted to dodge, I would lose my balance, and if I tried to block it now, my sword would shatter. I had to move forward…to go further beyond the enemy’s expectations.

“Groaaah!!” the tiger roared, swinging the ax down.

“Yaaaa!!” I launched myself under the path of the ax as hard as I could.

The swing I unleashed at the same moment hit the handle of the two-handed ax. White sparks erupted, and a horrendous shock ran through every joint in my body. It was strong enough to tell me that if I had hit the ax’s thick blade rather than the handle, the blow would have cut straight through the sword into me.

But my avatar’s Brawn ability, along with Lisbeth’s fine steel longsword, was enough to stop the two-handed ax and, after an instantaneous stalemate, push it back.

The tiger’s top half was knocked upward, and my sword was deflected as well.

Waiting for this opening, the smaller beastman on the right charged. I couldn’t tell what type of animal it was, but I could make out the curved dagger in its hand. If I were only waiting for myself to recover, I wouldn’t have time to dodge or defend against it.

But from the moment I collided weapons with the ax, I anticipated the angle my sword would be deflected and performed some fine-tuning of my posture. When the sword bounced back, I got it to hover over my right shoulder, enabling another sword-skill motion.

“Rrrrah!!”

The instant the sword took on a blue glow, I unleashed Vertical.

I could feel the dagger graze the right side of my armor, but rather than go for the new attacker, I slammed my sword into the tigerman, who was still in a knockback.

Wham! It felt like a good hit. The meaty blade dug deep into the enemy’s leather armor, then bounced sharply upward when it reached bottom dead center.

“Gaaah!!”

The tigerman, with huge V-shaped damage on his massive body, floated many feet into the air and landed directly on his back.

I was also under a post-skill delay. The third figure rushed me from the left with a short spear. This time, I couldn’t cancel out the delay with a sword skill.

However, I could still move my hands and wrists.

I let go of my sword hilt and brought my ten fingertips together. The moment gray light began to gather between my hands, I let my fingers part, I adjusted my angle, and I clenched both hands.

With a bone-chillingly disgusting sound, a gray mucousy blob shot forth: the decay magic spell Rotten Shot. It hit the onrushing enemy in the chest and splattered.

The enemy yelped like a dog whining. Although Rotten Shot caused no damage, its tremendous stench and taste were unbearable unless you had the strongest of wills (and stomachs).

The instant my delay was over, I flipped my falling sword up with my foot and caught it. I could sense something approaching from behind on the right, but I ignored it and jumped for all I was worth.

Ahead, the tigerman was getting to his feet. His mouth was full of viciously sharp teeth—and my sword, which I plunged into it. The sharp point penetrated his soft throat and went out the back of his neck.

“Guhk!!” the tiger grunted as I landed on his stomach and promptly went into the motion for Rage Spike. If I managed to activate that skill, it would probably take the tiger’s head off. A pale-blue light centered inside the tiger’s mouth as the sword made a high-pitched whine…

“N-no, stop!” said a panicked voice behind me, prompting me to keep the sword skill in a holding state. Bright-blue light illuminated our faces.

“We surrender! We’ll drop our weapons! Please don’t kill him!”

Bold request from the people who kidnapped my kid, I thought, feeling my anger blaze anew. It took a deep breath to calm myself down. Masaru, the monkeyman, had abducted Yui but did not harm her. If she’d lost even a single pixel of HP, you’d all be dead right now, I thought darkly, and spat over my shoulder, “You two in the back, throw your weapons as far as you can into the grass on the right.”

There was a prompt whooshing of air, and I spotted a dagger and short spear hurtling more than ten yards into the grass. The only weapon left was the two-handed ax in the tigerman’s clutches.

“Your ax, too,” I demanded. The tigerman blinked to indicate surrender and dropped the ax onto the path. I kicked it aside with my left foot and slowly pulled my sword out of his mouth.

I also took my foot off the tiger’s stomach and stepped away to the left, until I was standing on the handle of the ax, at which point I turned around.

Side by side, about ten feet away, were what I took to be a raccoonman and a foxman. The fox was still squinting and grimacing, spitting to get the taste out of their mouth.

Behind them, the monkeyman sat on the ground, with Asuna’s rapier and Yui’s short sword pointed at him.

“Well, well…you were every bit the berserker I expected,” said Otto, the tigerman leader of the team of four.

They were seated at the side of the road, tied around the ankles in a chain with Needy’s rope. We’d confiscated their weapons, but that was no guarantee of safety—AD’s anthros had fierce claws and teeth, too.

With my sword in hand for safety, I grunted out, “How was that fighting ‘berserk’? That was totally clever, ingenious combat.”

“Whatever you say,” chirped Ralcas, the raccoonman, in a voice that reminded me of the Patter. Just call yourself Rascal! I thought, thinking of the famous cartoon raccoon, but I had to hold back. A character name was part of the user’s identity, so he probably had his own reasons, which were none of my business.

“Normally in a three-on-one fight, you’d either run away or at least stop. You’ve gotta be crazy to start running even faster into combat,” Ralcas continued.

Next to him, Azuki, the fox, was swishing their tongue around in their mouth unpleasantly. “Euuugh…This gross taste just won’t go away…Ewww, what kind of magic was that…?”

Based on the voice, Azuki seemed to be the sole female player of the group. I went into my inventory and took out a pottery jar. While the fox accepted it, she seemed skeptical of my generosity.

“It’s just water,” I said, and turned to Masaru, the monkeyman, who was farther on the right. “So…is anyone going to tell me why you were trying to kidnap her?”

Masaru glanced behind me to my left, where Asuna stood next to Kuro and Aga, holding Yui in her arms. The pets’ burns had been treated by a salve she made with her Pharmaceutical skill, and some potions fully recovered their HP, but they looked furious enough to pounce on these four at any moment.

“Let’s see, where to begin…?” murmured Masaru, who had a very mellifluous and intelligent-sounding voice for someone whose name was the dumbest-possible monkey pun. “We reached the second tier in the morning two days ago, half a day after Asuka. But they’re in a freezing region of ice and snow, where they have to deal with cold, while we’re in a forest zone with ample water, food, and natural resources, so we should have been able to catch up quickly. We sent an advance team of five parties, totaling forty in all, to clear the first six or so miles, and found a clearing with a fresh spring of water, so we decided to use that as a resupply base.”

“Hold on. If there are forty in your scouting party, how many people in the AD faction have actually reached the second tier?” I interrupted.

Masaru glanced at Otto to his left before replying. “I’ll answer your question, but I have no evidence to back it up.”

“We’ll decide whether it’s true or not.”

“…About two hundred. Of course, not all of them are diving at the exact same time.”

Two hundred?! I nearly screamed.

From the ALO faction, only thirteen people had made it to the second tier so far, including the three of us here. I hoped the two hundred number was just a bluff, but it was impossible to read the expression on Masaru’s monkey face.

I was about to move on when Yui spoke up. “I do not think he is lying.”

How can you tell? I might have asked, but I knew the answer already. She had analyzed Masaru’s tone of voice and emotional register. I couldn’t allow her to mention any of that in front of these four, though.

“I see. In that case, I’ll trust you on it.”

“Also, although it is not foolproof, there is a way to test the hypothesis.”

“Oh?” I asked, surprised. “H-how?”

“If we have Masaru open his menu, we can check the number of people registered in his friends list.”

“Ah…yes, that makes sense…,” I murmured, right as Masaru muttered, “That was an option…?”

Messaging friends was one of the few privileges of convenience that the hardcore realist presentation of Unital Ring afforded to its players. Since you never knew who you might need to reach, there was a good chance he was registered to everyone he knew.

Without waiting for an order from me, Masaru elected to open his menu and hit the COMMUNICATIONS icon. Looking over his shoulder, I saw the number 218 in the upper right portion of his friends list.

“…It checks out.”

“Glad to hear it,” Masaru said, closing his menu. “So in order to build a base in the clearing in the forest, we started cutting down trees. There wasn’t enough empty space there, and there were tons of valuable-looking conifers right around the clearing. And since we have tons of really strong therians like Otto over there, we quickly—”

“What’s a therian?”

“Oh, it’s short for therianthrope. It’s what all the animalpeople in AD are called.”

“Ahhh, I see. Carry on.”

“…So we cut down five or six of those conifers, and we were about to start lumbering the wood to use—when all of a sudden, about twenty NPCs pop out of the woods and start firing arrows at us. Man, they hurt bad…”

“No exaggeration, they hit us a hundred percent of the time,” Otto added, his large frame shivering. “It’s a miracle nobody died—thanks to Casper’s quick order to retreat.”

That was another new name to keep track of, but if I stopped them for notes at every opportunity, they’d never finish their story. I filed it away to remember later.

“So we ran away at the time, but the NPCs just kept chasing us. We ended up having to retreat, like, four miles. They only stopped pursuing once we left the forest, so we camped there, then set up a team of eight of our best stealth therians to make a recon party. Azuki and I were part of that,” Masaru continued, throwing a glance to Azuki, who had finally cleared out the aftertaste of Rotten Shot by drinking enough water.

She noticed his signal and picked up the story. “It was Masaru and me and a weasel, a mongoose, an ocelot—all people who are good at sneaking. Everyone had the Swiftness ability tree, with skills like Hiding and Acrobat, so we assumed that no enemy was going to spot us, no matter who they were. In fact, we got back to the original clearing without any trouble, and from there we went hardcore ninja-mode and searched real carefully for the enemy base. But…”

Her pointed snout drooped with disappointment. Masaru took over again, frustration and fear thick in his voice.

“…We had moved about three hundred yards farther into the forest. Once again, the same NPCs totally surrounded us, without any of us knowing. They pulled their bows on us and said something, but nobody knew what it was…I was so sure that we were dead, and then Mageshima, the mongoose, used Smoke Breath…”

“Wh-what’s Smoke Breath?” I asked, unable to help myself this time.

Masaru shrugged. “Just an inherited skill that deploys a smoke screen. Same thing as the Flame Breath I used earlier.”

“Ohhh…”

An inherited skill was the one thing you could bring over from the game your character was forcibly converted from.

Now that he mentioned it, the monkeyman had blown fire breath at Kuro and Aga. I thought it didn’t make sense that a monkey could blow fire, but if the attack had originally come from Apocalyptic Date, that would explain it. Perhaps Otto, Ralcas, and Azuki could employ some kind of breath, too, but finding that out would have to wait until later as well.

“…We made a plan ahead of time that if Mageshima breathed smoke, we would all run immediately, so I ran like my life depended on it. Arrows were shooting left and right, so I was zigzagging for all I was worth, finally got free of them, and went back to the fallout spot we agreed on…and only five of the eight made it back.”

“…Did the other three die?”

“Nope. Mageshima, Katoko, and Schwein got captured by the enemy.”

“……”

Although they were our enemies at the moment, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy. Capturing and imprisoning players in a VRMMO was about the most devastating thing imaginable, especially in Unital Ring, where dying was the end of the experience for good.

“I’m sorry to hear that…but what does any of that have to do with kidnapping the girl?” I asked, glancing at Yui.

Masaru sighed deeply. “We can’t just give up on them. But we can’t fight the guys in the forest, even with all two hundred of us. The only thing we can do is barter…But as I’m sure you guys know, if you haven’t learned the right language skill, you can’t even tell what the NPCs are saying. The only way to earn the skill is by patiently speaking with those NPCs, but these guys attack as soon as they see us. We set up a hostile situation with our first interaction, and now our bartering method’s been cut off at the knees.”

“Yeah, but—!” Ralcas protested indignantly. “We didn’t even have a chance to be hostile to them! They just started shooting arrows for doing nothing more than building our base in peace! I mean, I know most of the NPCs here are hostile, but what they did just ain’t fair!”

“If that’s what you wanna argue, nothing in UR is fair,” Otto pointed out. I very nearly chimed in with, No kidding, and ended up making a funny grimace. Their story was very interesting, and I was getting invested; I had to remind myself that they were our enemies.

“…I’ve got my own ideas about why they attacked us first…but we can discuss that later,” Masaru said calmly, and glanced briefly at Yui. “It’s impossible to rescue them with force. Peaceful negotiation is also impossible…so the only option left is some kind of backdoor cheat, we decided. For the past two days, we’ve been gathering intel like crazy. As part of that process, some of our members with dormant side accounts converted their characters to a few of the big games…and someone who snuck into the starting area of ALO came back with something really interesting. They said that the famous Black Swordsman had built a huge base just before the entrance to the second tier and had two different kinds of NPCs living there. It’s really hard to make friendly relations with NPCs as it is, but to have two kinds of NPCs moving in with you? That’s remarkable. We sent several more people into the Stiss Ruins, and one of them was lucky enough to hitch a ride with a caravan that was going to Kirito’s town…Ruis na Ríg.”

Friscoll had been saying something about new players showing up at the Stiss Ruins in starter gear and asking lots of questions. He had guessed that they actually belonged to Asuka or AD, and wouldn’t you know it? He was right.

“When they got to Ruis na Ríg and started asking around there, they found out that Kirito was friends with a real intriguing player. Someone who looked like a little girl but could communicate freely with all NPCs, and maybe she was the one who convinced the NPCs to come to Ruis na Ríg…If that were even possible, there could only be one reason why.”

I broke out in a cold sweat, expecting him to say that she was an AI, not a human.

But the reason he looked at Yui was for something I did not expect.

“She inherited some kind of language-type skill, didn’t she? Something that allows her to speak with all species…If that skill works on the UR NPCs, too, then maybe she can communicate with the people who took our folks.”

Masaru tore his gaze away from her and looked at me again.

“Now do you understand why we were trying to abduct her?”

“……”

Yes, I do—not that I forgive you for even the tiniest ounce of your sin, I would have said, if Yui hadn’t spoken up first.

“Then why didn’t you seek us out to hire us on peaceful terms?” she asked.

Masaru looked stunned. Otto held up his hands accusingly.

“If we had asked, would you have actually accepted?”

“Of course!” Yui insisted boldly, albeit from the safety of Asuna’s arms. Pride swelled in my chest.

But that didn’t mean I approved of it, as her guardian. If these NPCs from the western forest were powerful enough to easily subdue forty of the best of these powerful Apocalyptic Date warriors, the thought of putting Yui in front of their arrows made a chill run down my back.

“…Don’t go thinking you can actually hire her for the mission, just because she’s saying this now,” I growled at Masaru and his shocked companions. Then it occurred to me to ask a question I should have asked a while ago. “Besides, what are these NPCs like anyway?”

“Oh, I didn’t mention? They’re elves…and their skin is brown, so I guess they’d be dark elves.”

“Dark…elves,” I murmured, looking upward skeptically.

He added, “Like I said earlier, we couldn’t understand a word, but there was one thing we could make out…their title or their nation or something like that. I think it was…Lusula? Ryusula? Something like that.”