Sword Art Online Progressive 6, page 3
part #6 of SAO: Progressive Series
Asuna shot me a glare, said “Go ahead, Kizmel,” and lifted her right leg, not forward, but behind her, propping her ankle up with a hand. Of course, that was a much easier way to expose the bottom of one’s foot without any awkward strain on the joints. In fact, probably nine out of ten people would do the same thing. I was both impressed and disgruntled by the idea. “No fair,” I groused.
After sprinkling her own boots at the end, Kizmel put the cork back in the bottle and returned it to her pouch. Then she crossed the sand and gingerly stepped onto the clear water where it ebbed and flowed against the shore. The first few steps went through the surface, but around the fourth, a strange ripple ran across the water, and the fifth and sixth steps were clearly on top of it.
“Ooooh,” Asuna and I said, marveling.
The knight turned and beckoned us forward. “Come, you two. Step slowly onto the water.”
We bobbed our heads and proceeded to the lapping edge of the lake. Just to be sure, I grabbed my partner’s shoulder and held her still.
“So, Kizmel, if we walk on the surface of the water, the starfish won’t appear?”
“I guarantee it. However…”
“However?”
“The Droplets of Villi charm on your boots will only take effect when stepping softly. If you run or leap, you will break the surface and lose the effect. Then the starfish will notice you…so do take care not to lose your cool.”
I got the feeling that last part was directed solely at me but decided it was just my imagination. The bigger question was whether or not we could entrust our lives to magic—er, a “charm”—that could lose its effect just by running. After all, Ophiometus’s body never surfaced. It only sent its long, long hands up to grab players and drag them down, so it was impossible to beat by fighting. And unlike in the beta, if we died on the lake floor, we would not be respawning in Blackiron Palace in the Town of Beginnings.
I wanted to say Kizmel, we really can’t afford to die but caught myself. That statement was just as true of NPCs like Kizmel as it was to us. Even if another dark elf with the same name and appearance was generated in the forests of the third floor after her death, it would not be the same Kizmel. How could I possibly say to her “It’s all right if you die, but we’re more important”?
“It’s okay, Kirito,” whispered Asuna, seemingly reading my mind. She reached out to grab the fingers of my right hand and murmured, “We just have to walk. And even if we do fall, I have an ace up my sleeve. Or up my pant leg.”
“Your…pant leg…?”
I had no idea what the fencer was insinuating, but it didn’t seem like it should be that hard to do this without running or jumping. At the very least, it should be way more manageable than maneuvering the difference between walking and jumping in a traditional video game, where the only distinction was in the exact angle your thumb tilted an analog stick.
“…Well, all right. Just be careful and keep what you’re doing in mind at all times.”
“Speak for yourself,” she shot back, and we stepped forward. At first, our shoes just splashed the water, but soon there was buoyancy underfoot. We stood atop the water, which felt like stepping on a thick layer of rubber.
Once we reached Kizmel, who had been patiently waiting, she favored us with a reassuring smile and turned away. Then she started splashing atop the water for the far bank. We followed.
Once we’d walked about twenty meters out, Asuna said, “Oh yeah…when we fought Wythege the Hippocampus on the fourth floor, was this charm the reason that Viscount Yofilis didn’t sink into the water?”
“Ohhh…But hang on, wasn’t he running like crazy over the surface?”
“Asuna’s guess is half correct,” Kizmel said, turning her head just over her shoulder to look at us. “The liquid I dripped on the soles of our shoes is a valuable elixir that can only be made by villi—water spirits, undine maidens. But Viscount Yofilis’s shoes are woven with villi hair and will never sink into the water.”
“Hair…? Y-you don’t mean that he killed the spirit and chopped off its hair, right…?” I asked, envisioning some tragic drama, but Kizmel vehemently shook her head.
“Never!”
A bit of water splashed at her feet, and the knight hunched her neck. Fortunately, it was not enough to break the charm itself, and she resumed quietly, “To us elves, the undines, including the villi, are just as sacred as the dryads of the forest. They are our neighbors and our protectors…If we consider cutting down a living tree or despoiling a clear brook as breaking taboo, then killing a villi herself would be calling down a curse upon all elfkind.”
“I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have suggested such a thing…But then, how did the viscount get such valuable shoes?”
Price was an unknown value in this case, but fantasy RPGs always treated equipment for feather-falling and water-walking as precious artifacts. By this point, we were near the center of the lake, and the titanic, deadly starfish lurked just a few meters below us, but I was so absorbed by this topic that I nearly forgot it as I awaited her answer.
Kizmel faced forward and shook her head again, almost imperceptibly this time. She whispered, “I do not know the details. But if rumor is to be believed…in the long-distant past, the viscount and a villi maiden…no. I should not speak of uncertain things. Please pretend you did not hear this.”
Asuna, who was about a thousand times more interested than me in that sort of topic, sighed. But she did not persist—and held her silence as she walked.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the blade scar on the viscount’s face might have something to do with this story, but there was probably no way of ever knowing that. At the very least, Yofilis’s water-walking boots were not meant to go to any player, so I could give the idea up for lost.
Up ahead, the far bank that started off hazy in the distance was coming much closer. We had maybe two hundred meters to go, and its white beach and the looming rock wall behind it were clearly visible.
Of the five areas that made up the sixth floor, the first area in the northeast, containing the main town, was forest; the second area in the northwest, containing Castle Galey, was barren wasteland; the third area to the west was swampland; and the fourth area to the south, where we were currently heading, was designed to be caves. It was not a man-made dungeon, but a natural cavern formation, and there were few places where you could actually see the sky—or the bottom of the seventh floor, as the case may be. So it was not necessarily a fun strolling place, but it was certainly better than the western area we were skipping, with its muddy slog and deep sludge just off the beaten path.
Once we got the sacred key, we had to return to Castle Galey, but having the lake shortcut would be a huge help when it came time to tackle the floor’s labyrinth, if we could make use of it. But these Droplets of Villi were clearly extremely valuable, so I couldn’t just ask her for more—not when it was mere convenience’s sake.
In the meantime, the far bank was growing close, and the view under the surface was clearer again, with little schools of fish swimming underfoot. At times, there were glints of what looked like coins or jewels in the sand down there, which made me want to reach in and grab them, but that was clearly a trap. I’d have to wait until we had a means of defeating the starfish first.
Our usual pattern of activity called for one of the two of us—usually me—to screw up and get into major trouble just before we reached safety, but there were no sudden splashes into the water this time. We stood on firm ground again, walked up the white beach a ways, then came to a stop with a sigh of relief.
“Well…there’s a first for everything. That was rather exhilarating,” the knight said.
I turned to her in surprise. “Wait, that was your first time walking across the lake, too, Kizmel?”
“But of course. I have never even set foot outside of Castle Galey here.”
“Then you’re saying…you don’t know the location of the underground maze that holds the key…?” I asked, thinking this might be the rare occasion when we led Kizmel around instead of the reverse. But the knight took a scroll of parchment out of the long, thin case on her belt and said proudly, “I have not been there, but I know the way. See?”
I peered at the paper. It was a map of the southern area drawn in considerable detail. A red mark was placed within the twisting cave complex, and a red line indicated the route there directly from the lakeside.
“Oh, so you do have a map. So this is the lake, and this is our destination…and what’s this mark for? It looks like an insect head,” Asuna said, pointing at a spot near the bottom of the map.
“That’s correct,” Kizmel replied with a nod. “Lurking in the caverns is a giant centipede covered in rocky armor. Fortunately, we need not cross its path, but I hear tell of many humans who have wandered into its lair and paid the ultimate price.”
“Sheesh…Starfish, centipedes—this place has everything. I just hope there are no millipedes or ganymedes.”
I could have been a snob and pointed out that the last one was the name of a moon, not a creature, but I kept it to myself.
In the beta, there wasn’t a centipede-type field boss in the southern area of the sixth floor. Instead, there was a plant boss in the labyrinth tower located in the fifth and final area, and the unbeatable starfish in the lake, but that was all I remembered.
Some of the field bosses had been changed in previous floors—like the giant tortoise boss on the fourth floor becoming a two-headed sea turtle—but there were no newly added bosses so far. The advancement group was tackling the game under that premise, so if the ALS or DKB, in their competitive haste, ran into a centipede boss in the cave that they weren’t prepared for, there was the possibility for disaster lurking ahead.
“Sorry, give me a moment,” I asked the two women, who were still examining the map, and went to the MESSAGES tab of my main menu. I fired off a brief message to Argo the information dealer.
WHERE’S THE FARTHEST FR NOW?
FR was shorthand for front-runner, Argo’s preferred nickname for the group pushing us ahead into Aincrad. She must not have been in combat or spying, because I got a response within ten seconds.
THEY’LL BE TRYING THE DUNGEON LEADING INTO THE THIRD AREA TONIGHT. 100C, her message said, with the cost of the information indicated at the end. Fortunately, she kept a running tab for me, but the bill wasn’t what made me grimace.
“Too fast,” I muttered, checking the MAP tab. The lead group moved from the first area to the second yesterday afternoon, January 2, so they were moving on to the next area after just a single day.
The second area had just one small town by the name of Ararro—the dark elves’ Castle Galey was meaningless if you weren’t doing the “Elf War” quest—and the monsters outside of the ones in the dry valley leading to the castle weren’t that tough. So I figured it wouldn’t take them long, but this was still very quick. Most likely, Kibaou and Lind calculated they could take one area per day, finishing the sixth floor in just five days total. Given that we had finished the fifth floor in four days, it wasn’t outrageous, but the last labyrinth tower was on a straight line if you avoided detours. This one required far more travel to reach.
At any rate, it was clear that we needed to assume the swampy third area would be finished by tomorrow afternoon, at which point the front-line group would reach this, the fourth area. I returned to Kizmel’s side to examine the map; the giant centipede’s lair was located a bit before Cave City of Goskai, the biggest town in the area. If the group was rushing along the path, tired after clearing out the dungeon passageway, there was a greater chance of them stumbling across the centipede’s cave with little or no preparation than I wanted to admit.
I opened my window again and sent a second message to Argo.
GOT INTEL ON A NEW FIELD BOSS LOCATED BEFORE GOSKAI IN THE FOURTH AREA.
GOT IT, she immediately wrote back, I’LL WIPE OUT THE COST OF YOUR LAST TIP.
That should be enough to keep the DKB and ALS from running across the centipede boss without a clue that it was coming. However, not that I didn’t trust them to hold their own, but I wanted to take part in that boss battle, too.
The real question was, could we finish up the “Castle Galey” quest by tomorrow afternoon and catch up with the group again?
“That charm of Far Scribing you humans can use is a very handy thing,” said Kizmel, impressed. She’d been watching me send messages to Argo.
Asuna piped up to say, “The elves have to send scouts to hand over letters, don’t you? Even with your spirit trees, that seems like a lot of hard work.”
“That is right. We dark elves and forest elves have thought little of your human charms, but seeing what you are capable of doing, I suspect that your Mystic Scribing and Far Scribing alone might surpass all the magic we elves still possess.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her. She recognized them as a form of magic, but the player menu and instant messages were game features, and I couldn’t very well explain that. Also, that human players could use that “magic,” but NPC humans could not.
But Kizmel didn’t show any further interest in the art of Far Scribing. Instead, she brought up a point I hadn’t thought about in a while.
“What was it that N’ltzahh the fallen elf said on the fourth floor? When they have all the keys and open the door to the Sanctuary, the greatest magic of humankind will vanish, correct?”
“Oh…he did say that,” said Asuna, her cheeks flushing a little bit. I wondered why and tried to recall the circumstances of that scene.
We had taken a gondola trip down the river out of Rovia on the fourth floor and were at the very end of the watery dungeon when the two of us overheard the Fallen having a discussion.
In addition to N’ltzahh, the masked general, there was also Eddhu, a foreman, and a woman elf who seemed to be the general’s aide. The statement was from N’ltzahh to his aide, whose name I recalled being Kysarah.
Once we have all the keys and open the door to the Sanctuary, even the greatest magic left to humankind will vanish without a trace.
And in response, Kysarah had said Of course, Excellency. The moment of our triumph grows ever closer.
If we couldn’t use our Mystic Scribing and Far Scribing anymore, that would be a huge deal. But it seemed impossible in a practical sense. Instant messages were one thing, but not being able to use the main game menu? No choosing skills, storing items away, or viewing the map—the game would be impossible to beat that way.
So did that mean the “greatest magic” N’ltzahh spoke of was something else? Something the loss of which would tie in to some great wish of the fallen elves? What kind of desire would that actually be…?
My imagination ran into a brick wall at that point. My right hand opened and clenched repeatedly in frustration. Then Asuna came marching over to me and stepped on my left foot with the toe of her boot, hard.
That sensation was the trigger that brought forth a new flood of memories. When N’ltzahh had said those things, Asuna and I had been hiding in a small wooden box, squashed and immobile. My hand had gotten stuck under Asuna’s breastplate, and…
“I believe we’ve had enough of a rest. I’d like to finish and return to the castle while it’s light out,” announced Kizmel, pulling me out of my flashback. I lowered my hand and silently shook my head at Asuna. She snorted and gave me a glance that ordered me to erase that memory forever, then began walking alongside the knight. There was a tall rock face before them, with a yawning cave mouth in the center.
Say, the harassment-prevention code didn’t go off that time, either…I thought as I hurried after them. I wonder if she saw the window for it open when she woke up this morning?
The majority of the cave area was not pitch-black like an interior dungeon; instead, open areas here and there allowed light in from the ceiling, and even at its gloomiest, there was still enough natural light to see by. We didn’t need to carry torches or lanterns.
Fortunately, the monsters here were not insects but primarily bat and aquatic types. The most troublesome were the slimes, making their first appearance in Aincrad here. Japanese RPGs were famous for characterizing slimes as the weakest intro monsters, but that was not true in SAO at all. For one thing, there was no fire or ice magic in the world to effectively counter that jiggly slime body.
So we’d have to make do with our weapons. Even then, slashing and thrusting attacks were weak against the slime, with only blunt weapons having any decent effect. And for our party of three, Kizmel and I had slashing weapons, and Asuna used a thrusting weapon. Slimes were uniquely tough for us.
So…
“Aaaaargh! Jeeeez!”
Asuna made no attempt to hide her frustration as she activated the sword skill Oblique. Her rapier lit up the dim surroundings with a lightning-fast downward thrust. It struck the brown-colored Covetous Ooze on the cave floor before her.
A large hole appeared in the center of the roughly one-meter-wide slime, and while it looked as though it might be spraying apart to pieces, there wasn’t much effect on its HP. When the visual effects of the skill faded, the bits of ooze squirmed back together to take their original flat, jiggly form.
I noticed that a part of it was bulging outward, so I warned Asuna, “Take evasion!”
The fencer leaped away when she was able to move, just as the bulging part of the ooze emitted a little whiplike tentacle. It tried to snake around the Chivalric Rapier but closed on air by mere centimeters when Asuna pulled her weapon back.
If it caught hold, it would yank with tremendous force, and if pulled free, the weapon would be absorbed into the slime’s center mass. That made it difficult to retrieve, and the weapon suffered major durability loss in the meantime. Even I didn’t know what might happen if it grabbed the player, and they were wearing, say, cloth armor.
