Sword Art Online Progressive 4

“NEW YEAR’S EVE...” I SAID TO NO ONE IN PARTICULAR， lying in the grass and staring up at the bluish bottom of the floor above.

The date was indeed December 31, but it was still the bright daytime, the breeze wasn't particularly cold, and there was no house to clean, so it didn't feel like the end of the year. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what last New Year's Eve had been like.

I had wanted to participate in the New Year's Eve event of the MMO I had been playing at the time, but on my father's orders after his return for the holidays from America, I had to join the huge house-cleaning effort. I remembered the cleaning of the little kendo dojo in the corner of the yard being exhausting, so I had to bow and scrape to my sister Suguha, whom I hardly ever spoke to anymore.

When I returned to the living room, exhausted, my mother had brought out the sweet mochi rice cakes early, which were so tasty they hurt. I gave up on the MMO event and watched TV with my family, ate the special New Year's soba noodles, listened to the bells, then went to the nearby shrine for the customary first visit of the year...

I lifted my eyelids, ending the reminiscence.

All I saw was a lid of steel and rock, looming three hundred feet overhead.

Was my family in the real world cleaning at this very moment? Would Suguha be struggling to wipe the dojo clean without my help?

Fifty-five days ago, when Akihiko Kayaba announced that the game of death had begun, I never imagined that I would spend New Year’s Eve in this world. I didn’t have a vision about how many days it would take in total to clear all one hundred floors of Aincrad. And I certainly didn't expect that nearly two months later, we wouldn't even have beaten the fifth floor.

Assuming our pace remained the same, we would be here for New Year's Eve not just next year, but the year after as well. In fact... that was just a hopeful calculation. If I kept participating in the frontier group, I might not even survive to see the next New Year's Eve.

Until now, a part of me felt that if I died fighting monsters, I would have no regrets. Just after the game began, I left the Town of Beginnings before anyone else to make use of my beta knowledge and experience and up my chances of survival, but that wasn't all. In a way, I was afraid of other players being stronger than me. As a level-based MMORPG, once someone else got ahead of you in level, there was no catching them again. I was pressured by that fear playing on my ego. If I wanted to stay one of the best players, I had to continually risk the dangerous boss fights... It was a paradoxical thought process.

However...

Two days ago, I realized a new motive had appeared within me.

Even relaxed in the safety of the dark elf village, thinking about that moment made my guts churn uneasily. As I was rushing through the second level of the catacombs beneath Karluin to the next staircase in search of Argo the Rat, I saw Asuna's HP bar suddenly drop 10 percent in the upper left corner of my vision.

At first, I had no idea how my temporary partner could have

lost HP while asleep in her bedroom above Blink & Brink. The first possibility that occurred to me was that she accepted someone's duel within the city and was fighting them. But that was unlikely, given that it did not rise or fall any farther for many seconds afterward.
That left only one answer. Asuna had come into the catacombs dungeon after me. I had to overcome the urge to start sprinting madly and force myself to think about where she might be.
The toughest monsters on the second level were the poisonous Moldy Mummy and the astral Mournful Wraith. Both were tricky, but neither could take that much HP from Asuna at level 17 with one hit. Once her HP didn,t change after that, it was most likely from a trap, not combat. This dungeon didn't have any traps that caused direct damage, which meant it was a trapdoor. And the only trapdoor was in one of the crypts right at the start of the second floor.
It would be more direct to go down the same trap to find her, but I was already deep on the second level, and the stairs were closer to me. I raced to the third level, cut down any monsters I saw, and raced straight for the area where the trapdoor let out.
Eventually I sensed people ahead, but all I saw were two unidentified cursors. They were both green, but I hid just in case, approaching the little room in the cave until I saw the two men in black cloaks.
Soon after, I heard one screech about a Chivalric Rapier +5. As soon as I saw the silver sword in his hand, I felt all the blood in my body freeze and boil simultaneously, a sensation I would never forget.
Asuna's HP bar was still displayed in the corner, yet I couldn't stop myself from imagining that they’d PKed her to get the rapier. Perhaps the cyclical updating process of the HP information was behind, and when it refreshed, it would instantly drop to zero. My body trembled at the thought.
At that moment, in the cave on the other side of the little room, Asuna saw me emerge and face the cloaked men, assuming

that it was a bluff on my part, but I was half-serious. When Asuna abruptly emerged from her hiding spot and retrieved the rapier with brilliant aplomb, I thanked the god I assumed did not exist in this world.

It was time that I admitted it. The reason, the motive that I had for fighting at the very edge of human progress, was no longer just a yearning for numerical strength and superiority. The words I'd aptly spoken on the stairs to the fifth floor echoed through my head.

How long are you planning to work with me? Asuna had asked me. I'd responded as soon as the words popped into my head.

Until you're strong enough to not need me.

To my surprise, that had turned out to be a very honest answer. I wanted the fencer, always no more than my temporary partner, to survive through the end of the game... and I wanted to do everything in my power to see that through. It was a true and ongoing sentiment.

If she continued growing at her present rate, Asuna would undoubtedly surpass me in both knowledge and ability in the not-too-distant future. The moment when “she didn’t need me” would come one day. When it did, I could not hold her back. Unlike me, she had the talent to shine in a group. She would eventually grow to be one of the true best players in the game, capable of leading a major guild that would free us from this prison.

My duty was to protect her until that time and give her all the information she needed to know.

That was everything, and nothing more.

Or so I told myself as I got up from the grass and heard a voice calling me from over my shoulder.

“The bath is ready for you, Kirito!”

I turned around and saw that same fencer climbing the little hill in the center of Shiyaya. When she reached the top of the hill next to me, she plopped down on the grass.

Her dark red hooded cape—the hood wasn't down now—and leather skirt were the usual, but there was a slight wetness effect

remaining on her long chestnut-brown hair, shining with the reflection of the midday sun. In the moment, I was seized by a desire to touch it; I didn't, of course. Instead, I looked in the direction of the large bathhouse and asked, “Where’s Argo?”

"She said she was going back to Mananarena. But she said hi to you.”

“Oh...”

Just then, the third HP bar hanging from the left corner of my view disappeared without a sound. Argo had disengaged from the party as she left the village. The Rat hadn't been taking part in the Elf War campaign quest, so we invited her into the village to deliver the appropriate information, and she spent almost all her time in the bath with Asuna.

“That was a real long bath. What did you talk about?” I asked nonchalantly. For some reason, Asuna looked away in a panic briefly.

“Y-you shouldn’t pry into girls’ conversations.”

"Eh...? So you've saying the Argo and the Asuna got together to have a little girl talk...?”

"I just told you not to pry! Besides, what do you mean, 'the' Asuna?!”

“S-sorry， sorry. I was just taken aback..."

“And I'll have you know that we were not engaging in 'girl talk’!" ，She snorted, opening her window to check the time. “Oh， it's already midday... If you're going to bathe, you should be quick about it.”

“Nah， I’ll do it next time. We’ve got to get moving on this...”

I looked to the north, toward the labyrinth tower looming a mile or two away. Asuna followed my lead and nodded.

"You're right. But... do you think the ALS is serious about tackling the floor boss early on their own...?"

“Hey, it was your intel， Asuna,” I pointed out.

“I know, but...” she replied noncommittally.

As I suspected, Asuna had fallen through the trapdoor in the Karluin catacombs, which made her unfortunately fortunate

enough to overhear a massive secret that even Argo didn't know. One of the two best guilds in the game, the Aincrad Liberation Squad, led by the spiky-haired Kibaou, was going to skip out on the expected year-end countdown tonight in Karluin to take on the floor boss by themselves.

At this minute, the ALS and the other major guild, the Dragon Knights Brigade, would be staying at a village called Mananarena, not far from Shiyaya. The village was in the center of the floor, half a days travel from Karluin, but less than two hours if using the underground tunnel. So as I understood it, the guilds planned to return to Karluin by nightfall, preparing food and music, then throwing Aincrad's first New Year's party at nine o'clock.

But if the ALS was heading from Mananarena straight to the labyrinth tower in the northeast, to challenge the boss and head to the sixth floor—and it was the result of the agitation of Morte's mysterious PK gang, that was a development I couldn't ignore.

Asuna, Argo, and I spent much of the previous night discussing how to react to this plan. Ideally, the ALS would give up on their reckless plot and join the New Year's party in Karluin as planned, but they weren't the kind to take such well-meaning advice to heart. More likely, Kibaou would turn on us and demand, "Where'dja hear that info from?!"

We could leak the ALS plans to the DKB on the sly as well, hoping they would also try the tower... but it would mean canceling the big party.

The countdown party had been proposed and planned by the more relatively peaceful members of the DKB like Shivata and Hafner, together with the similarly cooperative officers of the ALS. If it was a success, the guilds would be on better terms in the future. That was what Morte and his cohorts were trying to prevent, so if the party never happened at all, their goal would be at least partially successful.
I sighed, wondering what we ought to do, when I heard Asuna whisper, “If only Kizmel was with us…”

Puzzled by this, I blinked and asked, “Uh... why?”

With a completely straight face, the fencer suggested a rather alarming plan. “Isn’t it obvious? Together with Kizmel，, we could beat the floor boss first. Then the ALS would have no reason to rush ahead of the others.”

"...Uh... right... That is a good point," I hesitantly agreed at first, then switched gears and shook my head violently. "A-actually, no, not a good point at all. Even with Kizmel, that would be insane.”

Kizmel the dark elf knight had visited Shiyaya yesterday to our delight. But unfortunately—if you saw it that way—the fifth-floor chapter of the Elf War quest was quite brief, so after a few short quests and a battle against a Fallen Elf officer, Kizmel moved onward to the sixth floor.

Thinking back on our fun but brief quest with her, I continued, "We were only just barely able to beat the hippocampus on the fourth floor with Kizmel, Viscount Yofilis, and an entire full raid party. And the fifth floor is a milestone floor，, so we’ll have a tougher boss than usual...”

“Oh... What kind of boss was it in the beta?”

"It was a gigantic golem, the guardian of the ancient ruins. However, the area boss in the catacombs was completely different from the beta boss, so they could have totally changed the floor boss as well. We won’t know anything until we scout it out...

"Good point. Speaking of which, Asuna wondered, staring pensively toward the tower, "the ALS haven't done the boss quests, have they? And they're going to attempt the floor boss on the first try without any of Argo's strategy guides? Where are they getting the confidence to try this...?"

Boss quests were a series of quests related to the boss of each floor. Doing them earned you hints about the boss's category, strengths, and weaknesses. But because the quests were heavily story based, time-consuming, and offered poor rewards,

the ALS and DKB preferred to wait for the info to get out—in other words, for Argo to put out the boss issue of her strategy guide.

Asuna and I had been busy enough with the Elf War campaign that we hadn't gotten around to the boss quests yet, so we couldn't act too high-and-mighty about it, but Asuna was right that the ALS was being reckless. Even if an insider from the PK gang was inciting them on, we needed to figure out what sort of criteria was causing this heedless plan to be accepted by the group...

“Hmm. Do we know anyone in the ALS who understands enough to share more information?” I wondered. Asuna looked pensive.

"I don't think so. Most of the current frontline group is made up of Diavel's raid party from the first floor, right? Since he died in that fight, Lind took over and created the DKB. Then Kibaou resisted the hierarchical structure of Lind's style and formed the ALS based around solidarity... Given that history, the DKB members will feel that they are the 'original' group, while the ALS feels like the underdog that has to seize the reins from the DKB.”

"Aha... So it's like majority and minority political parties," I noted, impressed. But Asuna's troubled expression didn't fade.

"It's just that the difference in strength between them is minor. In that sense, the ALS is working really hard. The problem is that you and I are, if anything, members of the Diavel team. The ALS seems to think we're both DKB leaning."

"Uh... what?! Who would believe we're DKB leaning...?" I shook my head, gaping. “In fact, along those lines, wouldn’t Kibaou be considered part of Diavel’s team? He seemed to really look up to Diavel, in fact.”

As I spoke, I recalled the scene of the very first strategy meeting we held in the town of Tolbana on the first floor. That had been December 4, so it wasn’t even a full month ago. Yet the image seemed so distant now.

A blue-haired young man standing at the lip of a fountain. Silver armor gleaming in the setting sun, and a friendly smile.

My name's Diavel, and I like to think of myself as playing a knight!

With that cheerful greeting, Diavel seized the hearts and minds of the players present. And when he met a heroic, fateful end against Illfang the Kobold Lord, boss of the first floor—no matter the circumstances behind the scenes—Diavel the knight became a sort of holy figure to the players of the front line.

Asuna echoed this opinion by saying, "I think that's why. Kibaou really respected Diavel... so he believes that by leading the DKB, Lind is trying to use Diavel's image for his own purposes."

"Yeah, you could be right. Ever since the first meeting, Kibaou expressed his anger with the former beta testers. I'm sure he can't stand the thought of a small percentage of players monopolizing the best resources like in other MMOs, now that SAO is a game of death. In that sense，, you can see why he can’t hang with the DKB, given the stark differences in how they treat their officers and normal members…”

"Uh-huh," Asuna agreed, looking down at the brand-new boots she was wearing. They were magic boots she’d received as one of her rewards from Viscount Yofilis.

They were items that everyone had the chance to earn if they made their way through the Elf War campaign, so it wasn't truly ；a monopoly, but there was clearly a kind of conflict between their gradually growing layout of elite gear and Kibaou's mantra of redistribution.

I reached out unconsciously toward Asuna's knee to break her gaze on the boots below. “It’s true that Kibaou’s assertion that we should share what we gain equally, whether information or items, has a kind of merit. Now that this game is deadly, the most valuable resource of all is player life, so it only makes sense to maximize our protection of it. But in an extreme situation like a boss fight,

it's impossible to treat your own life and others lives equally. First, you protect yourself; then the next closest player... that's why I want you to put the most effort into keeping yourself safe, Asuna. Including equipping yourself with high-level armor."

"..Yeah.”

She nodded timidly, then cleared her throat.

"I get it. You don't have to press so hard. I happen to like these boots; I'm not thinking of giving them to someone else."

"Okay," I said, relieved. Then I noticed that through her socks, I was firmly gripping Asuna's shapely knee.

"Wuhoah!" I yelped, removing my hand at light speed and hiding it in my coat. "S-s-s-sorry! I wasn't doing that to cop a feel or anything, it was your boots...”

“What about my boots?”

“I was trying to… touch your boots...”

“That’s the same thing!”

I withdrew my argument, properly scolded, and fortunately Asuna did not let that distract her from the topic at hand. "At any rate, from the ALS's viewpoint, we are targets for correction. I doubt that any of them are just going to reveal sensitive guild information to us. Actually... wait a second..." She frowned, then glanced at me.

"...It wasn't just the DKB members who planned tonight's countdown party, was it?”

"I think so... Shivata and the DKB led the planning, but the goal was to bring the two guilds closer together, so a member of the ALS was going to cooperate, I think," I said, recalling the instant message that Agil sent us four days earlier.

Asuna thrust her face forward. “So maybe that person on the ALS side will talk to us? I mean, the big party they were planning could be ruined by this sneaky boss plan, right? It might be their guild, but they can't be happy about that."

I was recalling the note about "inviting my partner” at the end of Agil's message, so it was a second later that I finally processed what Asuna was saying. I smacked my knee.

"Ah, good point... If their early boss plan was forced by the hard-line members, then the moderate party planner would have been overruled. They must have some private thoughts about that… but then…” I trailed off.

"But then what?" Asuna asked, suspicious. I avoided meeting her gaze by pulling up strands of grass nearby. When I continued my thought， was in a darker tone.

“Unless I’m just thinking too hard about this... the party could have been just a part of the plan. If they proposed the New Year's event to distract the DKB and keep them tied to the city, that would give them a better opportunity to jump ahead. If that's the case, then we won’t learn anything from the planner on the ALS side. Instead, they'll be suspicious, and it'll make things worse..."
Asuna didn't respond for a while. Her left hand began pulling grass next to mine, starting a little competition. Tiny plants like grass weren't treated as separate items by the game. They disappeared as soon as you pulled them loose, but did not vanish from the ground, so you could keep pulling them indefinitely if you wanted.

For most of a minute, we yanked and yanked on the blades of grass, until Asuna finally spoke.

"...I don't want to imagine that the ALS would go that far. The non-Morte player on the third floor of the catacombs was definitely a spy within the ALS. Even if he's agitating the hard-line faction to give them an edge, there must be players in the guild that want to be on peaceful terms with the DKB.”

Now it was my turn to fall silent.

In all honesty, my “party planner is agent of sabotage” theory and Asuna’s “ALS moderate faction” theory could coexist. If the planner was a secret hard-liner, the plot could have all been happening behind the moderates' backs.

But no amount of thinking in this situation was going to bring us an answer. Ultimately, it came down to whether or not we believed in the good nature of SAO players.

I knew I didn't have the right to believe in that. On the day that SAO began, the moment that Kayaba's welcoming tutorial ended, I was the first to race out of the Town of Beginnings. I couldn't imagine a future in which ten thousand players banded together as one to defeat the game. I sought to make myself more powerful, so I could avoid the malice of some unseen fellow player.

But Asuna was different. She didn't pick up her sword and leave the safety of town to be stronger than others. After we ate black bread with cream in the backstreets of Tolbana, I asked her why she left the Town of Beginnings.

So that... I can be myself. If I was going to just hide back in the first city and waste away, I'd rather be myself until the very last moment.

Asuna was battling herself. She believed in the strength within her and was trying to prove its existence. That strength was radiating out of her now, shining upon me as I sat next to her.

"...Let's go ask," I said, giving the grass a break. I sensed Asuna looking over at me. I glanced into those hazel-brown eyes, feeling the powerful light within them, and continued, "The ALS's plan to jump the boss is too dangerous, and even if they succeed, it will create a huge rift between them and the DKB. If there’s a chance we can stop them, we should act, not sit here. And if he were able to see us now, I'm sure Diavel would scold us..."

"...You're right," Asuna said, a faint smile on her lips. I thought I heard her say "thank you." I stood up without reacting—not knowing how I should respond anyway—and clapped my hands.

“In that case, let’s go back to Mananarena for lunch!”

“Sure thing. But… how will we identify the member of the ALS that was responsible for planning the party?" Asuna asked as she got to her feet, brushing the backside of her leather skirt.

I smirked.

"We could ask Argo for help, but she's probably tackling the boss quests about now... We'll do it the orthodox way."

As befitting an elf village, Shiyaya was full of water and greenery. By contrast, Mananarena was a dusty place built in the remains of an ancient mine. Stores and homes lined the sides of a mortar-like depression that extended down into the earth, with the yawning mouth of a mine-shaft dungeon at the very bottom. In there were ores and fossils, as well as a rich assortment of relics, but for now, Asuna and I headed to the biggest restaurant in town.

If we kept following the downward spiral path, we would eventually arrive at our destination, but we were in a hurry and used staircase shortcuts here and there. At about the middle of the descent, we came into view of a large building exuding lively music and pleasant smells.

The fragrance of cooking meat hit me directly in my empty stomach, but first I had to check the interior through the window. As I expected, the place was full of players, but most were DKB members. The ALS would be staying in town, too, but they were likely congregated within a different restaurant lower in the town.

From what I could tell peeking through the window, the DKB looked cheerful. Even through the window, the jostling of mugs, cheers, and raucous laughter were obvious. The fulfillment of ample money and experience earned from the dungeon and the excitement about the upcoming countdown party in town were bringing those smiles to their faces.

“…I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lind and the others smiling like that..." Asuna noted. I glanced at the table in the center of the restaurant.

The man at the head of the table with the long blue hair tied back and his mug in the air was undoubtedly Lind, leader of the DKB. The man most recognized for the ever-present disapproving wrinkle between his brows was smiling wide.

"Maybe he got hit with a curse that causes him to keep laughing," I suggested. Asuna elbowed me in the side.

“This isn’t the time for stupid jokes.”

“Yes, ma’am...”

I tore my eyes from Lind and continued scanning the room, then found the person I was looking for. A tall, thin man ordering from an NPC at the back counter, standing apart from the rest of the group: Shivata.

“Here we go!”

I opened my menu and moved to the messages tab, typed up a quick instant message made out to the player named Shivata, and sent it.

Through the window, Shivata reacted instantly. With his back toward us, he checked his menu, then glanced around surreptitiously. Once he saw me looking through the window, he made a face of obvious displeasure, but left the counter, said a word to one of the other members, and left.

By the time he got outside, Asuna and I moved away from the window and into the shade of the adjacent building.

“Over here,” I called quietly, and Shivata walked over to us but kept going without slowing down. As he passed, I heard a faint “Follow me," and we let him go before following at a distance.

Shivata climbed the spiral path for one or two hundred feet, then walked into an empty dwelling. Once we were certain no other players were in the vicinity, I opened the same door and set foot inside the dark interior.

As soon as Asuna closed the door behind me, a voice of pure, 100 percent irritation shouted, "What are you playing at?!" from the darkness.

Leaning against the back wall with his arms crossed was Shivata, his eyebrows angled in a way that would be impossible in real life. Asuna prodded me forward and whispered, "What kind of message did you send him?”

“Uh… I just asked which ALS member had been involved in planning the countdown party with them..."

“And that’s why he’s so angry? You didn’t put anything else especially insulting in there?”

“I-I didn’t! I think.”

As if he heard us, Shivata's brows began to change angles. They started at a V for maximum fury, then shot past horizontal and ended in a slight reverse slope of miserable concern.

“...You... you didn’t contact me because you knew about me and my partner?” he asked.

I frowned. "Partner...? We know that tonight's party was joint planned between you and the ALS, but nothing more than that..."

For some reason, Shivata clamped his mouth shut, looking guilty. His eyes started wandering suspiciously over the ceiling, and he cleared his throat evasively a few times.

I had no idea why the DKB officer would need to react in such an inexplicable way, but Asuna had latched onto something. "Oh-ho," she gloated, stepping past me and pulling back her hood.

"It's all right, Shivata. We just want to know how the party was put together. If you simply tell us that, we won't pry into anything else, and we won’t tell anyone what we learned here.”

That seemed to bring some calm to Shivata's nerves, but the suspicion in his eyes hadn’t disappeared entirely. The tall man leaned forward a bit and grunted, “How can I be sure of that?”

"We just want the party to happen as it was planned. Now, I'm just guessing, but... have you perhaps received a foreboding message from the planner on the ALS side?"

“H-how did you know...?” he asked, stunned.

Asuna took a step forward.

“We’ll help you solve the problem. So will you tell us in more detail? With your ALS counterpart, if possible."

I panicked a bit, thinking she had gone too far, but Shivata's athletic features only contorted with indecision. He grunted, “You're certain you’ll keep our secrets?”

“I swear on my blade," Asuna replied theatrically, which seemed surprisingly effective on Shivata. He nodded his head in defeat and opened his window.

While the DKB member tapped awkwardly at his holo-keyboard, I leaned in toward Asuna and asked, "What in the world just happened?”

The fencer chuckled smugly back at me and whispered， “You’ll find out soon.”
However, when the door opened again three minutes later and a smallish ALS member entered, I still hadn't found my answer.

He was probably a tank, outfitted with a full steel plate that was rare at this early floor and a heavy armet helm that covered his whole head. A long mace was slung over his back. Even in town, the helms visor was down, so the face behind the vertical slit was invisible.

If our bad suspicions were true, this man was a hard-line saboteur of the ALS and was in an ongoing play to deceive Shivata. In the worst case, he was the second companion of Morte, infiltrating the ALS. In fact, he might even be the same man Morte was meeting in the catacombs.

If that was the case, he might start swinging that mace any second now. The man glanced in our direction as I went into full vigilance mode—then he turned back to Shivata.

"What's this about, Shiba?"

The mans words were distorted by the metallic effect of the closed helm, so I couldn’t tell if it belonged to the cloaked partner from a few days before.

Shivata scratched at his short hair and gave his excuse. "Sorry for calling you out like this. But they said they're going to help with the party. Plus... I think the fencer's figured it out."

I looked at Asuna in disbelief, but I still had no idea what she
had figured out. The man in plate armor budged, clanking from the joints as he looked up at Asuna.

“...Really? How could you tell?”

Asuna returned a very confident smile and said, "From the way Shivata reacted. It was obvious.”

"..."

After a long silence, the metal helm creaked in Shivata's direction.

“I told you, you let too much show on your face, Shiba.”

"I-I can't help it. The NerveGear just takes your emotions and puts them out there.”

“Then you ought to wear a face-covering helmet, too.”

“C-come on, you know I can't...”

As I listened to the plated man and Shivata talk, an indescribable feeling began to eat away at me. I tugged on Asuna's cape.

Thanks! o/

“Hey... what’s going on here...?”

But the fencer merely grinned back, then took a step forward and said to the plated man, “Listen, I don’t mean you any harm. We're looking forward to tonight's party, and we know there's a problem on the ALS side. We just want to know more so we can help solve the issue."

"..."

After a full five seconds of silence, the man nodded slowly at last.

He lifted his right hand, clad in heavy gauntlet, and opened his window. He placed his finger against the top slot of his equipment mannequin and flicked.

The armet vanished in a brief spray of steel-colored particles.

What emerged was orangish hair cut neatly above the brows and the cute, doll-like facial features of a girl.

No way, you can't determine sex in SAO by the features alone. You can't say for sure that a guy would never look like this...

That thought was cut off by the very cute sound of a female voice nothing like the metallic echo I heard earlier.

"We believe you. I... I have a lot of respect for you, Asuna. Plus, Shiba and I put a lot of work into this party, and we want it to succeed.”

Shivata's track-runner features took on an expression that should've been accompanied by the sound of an angelic chorus.

So that was what it meant. The plate-armored man from the ALS was a plate-armored woman. And she and Shivata from the DKB were more than strangers, though it wasn’t clear when it started...

“...What the hell?!”

It was all I could do to hold my head in my hands and shout.

The woman, whose name was Liten, sat down in an old chair with her helmet off but the rest of her heavy armor still on.

Shivata sat next to her, and Asuna and I took seats across from them. The chairs had been abandoned in the old house long

enough that I was concerned for their sturdiness, but the furniture from NPC houses was all essentially indestructible, so even the weight of full-body armor wasn’t enough to break them.

I leaned across the similarly ragged table and asked the first question.

“So... Liten. How long have you been in the ALS?”

“December twenty-second,” she said instantly, her bowl-cut orange hair totally still. I consulted my mental calendar.

“So the day after the fourth floor was opened... Did you enlist? Or...”

"I was scouted. Because of this."

Liten spoke frankly, glancing down at the suit of armor covering her body.

I'd felt earlier that the type of steel plate armor she was wearing was rather rare for the fourth or fifth floor. NPC shops did not sell the complete set, and I couldn't think of any monsters that dropped it.

Which meant it had to be crafted, but it was a difficult task to commission NPC blacksmiths or players with metal armor crafting skills for something like that. Just seeing a list of the crafting ingredients you’d need would be enough to put you off the task.

Collecting metal materials started with mining ores with a pickax from the walls of caves and the sides of rock boulders.

Once the players inventory was full of the heavy, bulky ores, they needed to return to an NPC smith to have the ores refined and forged into metal planks or larger ingots. It took two ores to make a plank and six to fashion an ingot.

"Iron" in Aincrad was what we would call pig iron in the real world, just a rank above bronze in quality. But iron ingots could be used to produce the more-valuable steel ingots. It was a simple process to melt down iron ingots, but the yield was poor； it took four iron ingots to make one steel ingot, meaning four times the iron ore.

And to create a full set of steel heavy armor required at least

sixty steel ingots. That meant 60 x 4 x 6 iron ores, or... 1,440 in total.

I couldn't imagine how many days it would take to mine that much ore. If things hadn't changed since the beta, ten ores was the maximum extractable from a particular vein, and on the lower floors, such veins were few and far between. So crafting seemed to be ruled out. Then how did Liten get this armor?

Yet that suspicion of mine was flatly denied by the first female voice I’d heard in ages that didn’t belonging to Asuna or Argo.

"This armor was player made. Of course, I didn't make it myself."

“R-really...? Which means you mined out a thousand-plus iron ores? How long did that take you, if you don't mind me asking...?" I said, aghast. Liten only grinned and shook her head.

“You don’t have to be so polite with me, Kirito. You’re my senior among the advanced group.”

“Er, right...”

I glanced beside her, where Shivata was nodding, his athletes mask cracking to reveal some other kind of emotion.

"Yeah, that's fine. You and I are on pretty equal terms, so it would feel weird for you to act formal around Liccha... around Liten.”

“W-well, if you insist...”

I really wanted to bust his balls about the nickname he had nearly given her, but my sense of propriety prevailed.

“So about the topic at hand...” I prompted.

Liten pursed her lips for a moment, then spoke heavily. "Well, this is something I've told only Shiba, so I'd appreciate it if you kept it between us..."

"Of course. That was our promise from the very start," Asuna intercepted. I agreed. Satisfied, Liten resumed her explanation.

"It was about a month ago that I left the Town of Beginnings. Of course, it was my first time playing a VRMMO, but I'd tried online games before, so I didn't want to just wait around in town

for someone else to beat the game. I wanted to join the fight and help out. It was a late start compared to Shiba and Asuna, but I had chosen the Heavy Armor skill just after the game started, and it was a huge task to put together my armor..."

"So you were always planning to be a tank?" Asuna asked.

Liten immediately answered, "Yes. I usually played a defensive role in the other games, too. I hunted the boars and such outside the Town of Beginnings, and when I finally got a store-made Copper Mail, I thought I could finally proceed upward. But then I found that no parties would accept me. I know it's not something I can help, but I kept hearing that they couldn't trust a woman to be a tank.”

“Even though it has nothing to do with your fighting abilities,” Asuna added, incensed.

Liten's eyes narrowed.

"I should have told them that... but instead I got very stubborn and said I'd make the front line as a solo tank and started mining ores for my armor and grinding levels...”
"I know tanks have high strength, and thus high carrying capacity, but mining a thousand ores is still incredible work," I commented, impressed, but Liten looked down for some reason. Meanwhile, Shivata muttered to her that she didn't have to mention it if she didn't want to, but the bowl-cut girl shook her head.
“Yes, I gathered all the ores to make this armor myself. As you said, I had to mine at least fifteen hundred iron ores. But... it's not something to be proud of at all.”
“What do you mean?" Asuna asked in a calm, gentle tone meant to reassure—sadly, a sound I almost never heard from her.
"I was grinding levels near the town of Marome on the second floor," Liten went on. "I found a vein of ore in a little valley, so I switched my mace for a pickax and started chipping away like usual. Normally I would get seven or eight and that would be it, but this spot just kept producing and producing without running out. At first I just thought I had found a lucky spot, and was very

excited, but eventually it got scary... By the time I had pulled out over a hundred, I finally figured it out. That it was...”

“An infinite bug?” I asked, stunned. Liten nodded. Asuna looked confused, so I explained, "It's a bug in the program that causes monsters or items to continue generating past their normal limit. I've never heard of one in SAO... but I guess everything is prone to them..."

"Oooh... so you could just keep mining the same vein for ores as long as you wanted. It’s like winning the lottery or something,” Asuna said innocently. The rest of us grimaced. Shivata spoke as representative for the hard-core gamers.

''It's not that simple, Asuna. Taking advantage of such a bug is called glitching, and whether or not you take advantage of it in a single-player game is up to you. But in an MMO, if the management finds out about it, they can roll back your status or even ban you.”

“So Liten… didn’t give up on it? I mean, you have the armor, after all...”

The short hair bobbed up and down in affirmation. “Yes... I was conflicted, but I couldn't stop myself. With an infinite supply of iron ore, I could skip right past iron armor and go to steel. It was all I could think about…”

"I don't blame you. If I found a spot like that, I'd go crazy mining it," I reassured her.

Shivata said, “I’d do it too!" in an oddly competitive way.

Steeling myself against the look I was certain Asuna would give me, I asked, "And, um, just out of curiosity, this infinite-generating point is still active...?"

“No…" Liten said, shaking her head sideways this time. “I mined it nonstop for about thirty minutes, until suddenly the rock texture seemed to fail. It came back to normal right away, but no ores dropped from it anymore.”

"So the devs noticed the bug and fixed it...? I mean, if there even are any devs..." I wondered.

Shivata shrugged. "Well, the bug was fixed, so what other possibility is there?''

"But none of the Argus staff can tamper with the SAO server now, right? The only person with administrator privileges is Akihiko Kayaba..."

"Then Kayaba fixed it."

At that point, I had no grounds to deny it. I mumbled that maybe he was right and got back to the topic.

"Meaning that you made your plate armor from the ores you mined there. I'm surprised you could carry over a thousand ores, though... I remember that iron ore has a pretty long decay period, but even then, it had to be a monster task, right?"

Liten shook her head again. “No…1 didn’t transport it all myself. In fact, even after I brought it to the village, it wouldn't all fit into the storage at the inn..."

“Oh, good point...”

If you rented out an inn room, it would come with its own chest, which could be used for external storage, but the ones at the budget-rate inns were small in size. Of course, it was enough for extra gear, food, and potions, but not hundreds and hundreds of metal ores. Storage for heavy ores was an issue for everyone and the biggest initial challenge for a player who wanted to be a blacksmith.

"In that case, what if you brought a portable forge to the mining spot and melted them all down? You can carry way more as ingots. And if that wasn't possible, you could go straight to an NPC smith to do the job," Asuna suggested.

I had tried that idea in the beta, a fond memory of my early trial-and-error days. I explained why it wouldn’t work: “Unfortunately, you can only use a portable forge to craft gear and upgrade it. Ingots have to be cast at a large, fixed forge. You could take them to a blacksmith, but that could lead to trouble if other players saw you. A combat-centric player hauling in tons of ore to melt down is practically advertising that there's a huge stack of it outside town..."

"I was afraid of that, too... It was right around the time of the

big fuss about the upgrade scam on the second floor, so I was worried about dangerous people following me around," Liten admitted. It seemed that this was news to Shivata, who had lost his main weapon to that very scam. He turned to her in concern.

"Licchan, there was a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes with that scam, and I can't go into specifics, but the people who did it weren’t just plain bad people. They apologized to the victims and compensated them for the loss, so there’s no bad guys anymore.”

"Oh... Thanks for letting me know, Shiba."

If I was a kid in grade school, I might have gotten away with whistling and taunting, "Hey guys, things are looking so hot between you, the South Pole's gonna melt!" but I was going to be in the third year of middle school next year and needed to be more mature than that.

Sadly, Shivata's words were already being proven false. Perhaps it was known only by Asuna and me among the front line, but there was a true group of bad guys, a PK gang, working in the shadows. The entire point of setting up this meeting was to help fight back against Morte's plot.

I wanted to get right to the point, but it wasn't clear yet if Liten could be absolutely trusted. It was a surprise that she was female—and that she and Shivata were like that—but that brought its own suspicions to the plate. I didn't want to think about it, but I couldn't rule out the possibility of a honey trap in play. At the very least, I needed to hear the story of this steel armor to the end.

"Then... how did you move the ore?" I asked. Liten straightened up and resumed her story.

"Ah... well, before the physical transportation even entered into it, I wasn’t sure if I should use the ore. As a tank, I was desperate for it, but it was obviously an infinite supply bug... so I wasn't sure if I should use armor I got through a glitch, because I was afraid of what would happen if I got banned...

you da real mvp here

now if only i knew how to compile an epub

So I decided to ask a friend who was helping repair my gear on the first floor for advice.”

“Repair...? So your friend was a blacksmith?" I asked, envisioning the face of Nezha, the blacksmith at the center of the very upgrading scam we'd talked about a minute ago.

Liten nodded. "Yes. She's not really a smith—not with her own shop—she just was putting a bit of work into the weapon- and armor-crafting skills. We got along, both being girls, and so I started asking her for help with maintenance and crafting a bit."

“Oooh，, a female blacksmith…”

That alone confirmed that it wasn't Nezha. It was at this point that I was reminded there were still players in the Town of Beginnings who were taking on the game as best they could.

"I sent her a friend message about the ores, and she replied at once... She hadn't had much MMO experience before SAO, but she was absolutely decisive.”

A little smile appeared on Liten's lips.

“She said I shouldn’t hesitate, that the most important thing in this world was to survive, then to beat the game, in that order, so you should use whatever bugs you need to in order to get stronger. And that even if I got banned, it would mean getting out of here, so I shouldn't be afraid in the least… I realized it was totally true, so I asked her to help me carry the ore, and we got the blacksmith at Marome to turn all of them into steel ingots without being detected by any other players.”

"So it wasn't an NPC that made your armor, but a friend of yours?” Asuna asked.

Liten nodded proudly.

“Yes! It was just barely within her skill level, and she said I should pay an NPC for it, but I insisted she try... She failed over and over, turning it back to ingots, then pounded away again, throughout the night, until she had made me all five pieces: torso, legs, gauntlets, boots, and helm."

"Wow... she must be a good friend and a good blacksmith..." I said admiringly.

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>>153182128
I'd rather people didn't. I'll do that myself later.

---------

[insert illustration]

This time, Liten's smile was clear and undeniable. That moment was enough to convince me for good that she was not Morte's saboteur.

* * *

The rest of the story was short. With a five-piece set of steel armor that was rare even among the best players, Liten leveled up against the treants of the third floor until the ALS recruited her, which she accepted on her blacksmith friend's advice. On the fourth floor, she met Shivata from their rival guild, and they ended up hitting it off... And the fine details of that part of the story would be unbearable without alcohol.

At any rate, as they continued to grow closer in secret, they started planning to bring the guilds together in harmony—the first step of which would be tonight's countdown party. On the DKB side, Lind was surprisingly enthusiastic about it, and the others seemed to be eager as well. The problem was the ALS.

Now that the story was finally up to the present, I pulled four little bottles of lime water out of my inventory. Sadly, they weren't chilled, but they served to quench the dried throats of everyone present before we got to the most crucial part.

"Umm... first, how much have you told Shivata about the problem within the ALS, Liten?"

Shivata reacted to this question before Liten did. “Exactly. You sent me that message yesterday saying a problem arose but you were going to handle it, Licchan. I was worried about what that meant...”

"I'm sorry, Shiba，” Liten said, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

No doubt the ALS had issued a stern gag warning to all members about their plan to jump the boss early. As a member of the guild, she had a duty to obey, but Liten was also an executive member of the countdown party-planning committee with Shivata. Her distress was palpable.

"If something happened, why won't you tell me? I know I'm in the DKB, but more importantly, we're both SAO players. The ironic thing is, you were the one who helped me realize that..." he pleaded, placing a hand on her armored shoulder, but Liten only stared down at the floor.

I made eye contact with Asuna and cleared my throat. "If Liten can’t explain it to you, then I will. Listen carefully to what I say, Shivata... The core members of the ALS plan to ditch tonight's countdown party and attempt the floor boss on their own.”

Shivata wasn't the only one who looked shocked. Liten leaned back with a metallic clank, nearly falling out of her chair. Her topaz eyes, close to her orange hair in color, were bulging.

“K...Kirito, how did you know that...?!”

"Sorry, I can't tell you yet. But I assure you that it wasn't a leak from within the ALS ，and I didn’t buy it from the info broker.”

"...Oh... I see... W-well, it doesn't matter. I’m sure players like you two have your own top-level information gathering abilities...”

“Y-you’re getting the wrong idea about us，,” I pleaded after an awkward look from Asuna. “I’m an outsider within the group, and I just do my own thing, so I'm not in a position to give any orders to the ALS or DKB. But... Asuna and I really, truly want to make sure the two guilds don't engage in hostilities. Sure, a reasonable rivalry might help advance the pace of conquest... but this act of going behind the other's back is crossing a line. If they succeed, it will totally ruin relations with the DKB, and if it fails... it could result in the total collapse of the ALS. I mean, they’re going after the milestone fifth boss as a single guild...”

Shivata had his head in his hands. He groaned, “But... why would this happen? Kibaou is gruff and rude, but he’s not stupid. He should know full well how reckless it is to challenge a floor boss on his own...”

Asuna and I had come to Mananarena to find an answer to that mystery. With three sets of eyes on her, Liten bit her lip in indecision, then finally made up her mind.

"...If you already know about that, then I will tell you what I know."

The newest tank in the ALS took a sip of lime water, stretched, and began to speak.

* * *

"The ALS stresses equality among members, so meetings are held with full attendance, as a basic rule. But the meeting about the boss strategy in question was held among only a dozen or so of the oldest members. I was still a fresh new recruit, so I wasn't called to join. So everything I tell you came from my group leader."

"The meeting was held three days ago, on the night of the twenty-eighth. One of the senior members got crucial info from a beta tester. Because the topic was so sensitive, Kibaou made the decision to limit attendance to just the senior members."

"The info was about an incredibly important item dropped by the fifth-floor boss... something that would change things dramatically depending on whether the ALS or the DKB got the drop. My group leader and some other officers argued that if it was that important, they should bring it to the DKB's attention and propose joint management before the fight. The party would be the perfect setting to hash things out."

"But joint management of the item in question was apparently impossible by nature. That led to the opinion that they should defeat the boss while the party was happening, to ensure that they got the item... otherwise, the ALS might end up being absorbed into the DKB. Ultimately, Kibaou didn't have any choice but to approve the boss strategy. That's everything that I know about this.”

When Liten finished, Shivata turned to his left, twisting at the waist, and rasped，“Licchan, what in the world is this item...?” "

But she could only shake her head sadly. "Sorry, Shiba. I learned about the boss plan just this morning. I asked my group leader for more information, but that was top secret... The group leader was all for our party, but there was nothing they could do about this. I'm new, so what could I do? I talked with the rest of the group, and we’d just decided we should state our case to Kibaou directly, when I got Shiba’s message.”

“…I had no idea…” Shivata groaned. He looked up, straight into my eyes; swallowed; and asked, in a deadly serious tone, "You're a former beta tester—so do you know it? What's this crucial item the fifth-floor boss drops?"

"Um... errmm...?？"

I crossed my arms and tilted my head as far to the side as it would go. “Crucial item from the fifth boss...? I took part in that fight, but I think it was a two-handed swordsman who got the centerpiece drop... I mean, any boss drop is going to be great, but I don’t recall something so powerful it would destroy the balance between guilds. Besides, a weapon can just be joint managed..."

I pulled my head back to a normal angle, shut my eyes, and replayed distant memories.

The fifth-floor boss in the beta was a huge golem made of blue stone, much like the ruins. Naturally, it had tremendous defense and was nearly tall enough to scrape against the ceiling of the boss chamber—a considerable challenge, but at a time when you could laugh off dying. With the sheer suicidal force of nearly a hundred players, we crumbled the stone golem to dust, and ten or so items dropped for a lucky few. After a brief assessment of the loot, we climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. It was just the usual excitement after beating a boss.

No... wait.

There was an odd item that dropped for someone. It looked like a fancy polearm, but it had extremely low attack power, which we all laughed about in puzzlement, so the winner tossed it aside angrily. Someone else picked it up and, within a few days, displayed its true worth to the shock of all—a story that I just barely recalled in the corner of my mind. In any case, it was an item that meant nothing to me, but if my memory was correct, it was...

“A flag...”

The other three looked at me.

"A flag? What about a flag?" Asuna asked. The image of a tricorn pennant flapping over a battle flickered into my mind. I sucked in a sharp breath, clutching my hands together, and I rose slightly out of my chair.

"Oh... ohhh... Yes, that would be bad!"

“Wh-what is it, Kirito?! When you say ‘flag,’ do you mean a switch? Some condition that will prompt a change in the game?” Shivata shouted, also out of his chair. It was probably the first time the athlete had called me by name instead of “you,” but I didn't even register it. I shook my head.

“No... not a programming flag, ，I mean a literal flag..."

“Why would a flag be an ultra-powerful item?”

"It's not just an ordinary flag. It's a guild flag. If you carry it around, every guild member within fifty or sixty feet gets a buff to all their stats...”

Shivata's narrow eyes went round. He gaped.

That's chapter 7.
Obviously Kirito and Asuna can't tell people they found the big baddie's secret! That'd be no fun.

>>153182907
Thanks again for the chapter.

Thanks for your hard work, OP.

>>153182385
>making the epub yourself
i love you anon

thanks for the chapter, as usual