Sword Art Online Progressive 6, page 4
part #6 of SAO: Progressive Series
The Covetous Ooze—so named for the way it greedily stole things—retracted its tentacle and wobbled, practically mocking Asuna.
“Grrrr! What do we do about this thing, Kirito?!” she pleaded. I glanced behind me, where a few meters away, Kizmel was dealing with two vampire bats. Her HP hadn’t dropped at all, so she was probably fine on her own. I looked back to Asuna and said, at a safe volume that wouldn’t call down more nearby monsters, “First, guide it into the light!”
“I…I’ll try!”
Asuna slowly moved back to her right, until the jiggling ooze followed into a ring of natural light coming through a hole in the ceiling. The dirty yellow-brown body in the darkness turned a brilliant gold in the light—but that was it. It didn’t take any damage from the light or seem distressed or try to run away from it.
“…Nothing happened!” Asuna wailed, so I gave her the next hint.
“Look closely at the slime’s whole body while it’s translucent in the sunlight!”
“Huh?! Oh…there’s something there.”
As sharp as ever, Asuna found what she was looking for in just two seconds of squinting. Not in the center of the ooze but along the outer edge of what constituted its “legs,” there was something shiny and reflective, like an eyeball, or a fish-egg pouch, or one of those clear raindrop cakes.
“That’s the slime’s core! Crush that little thing with a sword skill, and you’ll kill it in one blow!” I shouted. As if on cue, the ooze curled itself inward into a ball shape. It wasn’t frightened, but it was tensing itself to jump high off the ground, where it spread itself out thin and wide. If it wrapped itself around your head, you’d take continuous acidic damage and start to suffocate.
But instead of backing away, Asuna used another sword skill. It was even easier to see the core with the slime’s body all spread out in the sun, making it the perfect target for the single thrust skill, Streak. The tip of her rapier left a silver streak as it struck the two-centimeter-wide core. The translucent sphere resisted for a brief moment before it burst with a little popping sound.
When its HP reached zero, the slime lost its internal cohesion and flew apart into many tiny bits. They splattered against the fencer’s face and body, covering her in dark-yellow jelly. She probably would have shrieked, if not for the fact that the ooze turned into little blue polygonal textures that drifted away.
Asuna stood there, rapier still outstretched, until Kizmel returned from dispatching the two bats and said cheerily, “Ah, well done, Asuna. Not many elves are skilled enough to defeat a slime with a single rapier thrust.”
“…Thank you…” the young woman muttered. Were her lips twitching because some of the ooze had flown into her mouth? I was quickly becoming a master of the most freakish foods of Aincrad and wanted to ask her how it tasted, but my survival instincts told me now was not the time.
I wanted to say “Nice job!” with a smile instead but had to hold off on that, too. There were more faint sounds of jiggling and wobbling in the distance. I put a finger to my lips to hush the other two and listened closely. The unique sound of slime wriggling was getting closer and louder, but I saw no cursor around. When that happened in the beta, it was usually because…
“Above!” I shouted.
Overhead, an amorphous shape was dropping down from between thin, icicle-like stalactites on the ceiling of the cave.
Asuna noticed it belatedly and tried to jump back as she watched it fall, but she unluckily tripped over a low stalagmite that was directly behind her and fell flat on her bottom. Kizmel raised her saber to protect Asuna, but if she simply slashed at the falling slime and didn’t happen to strike the core on the way through it, the liquid creature would take little damage and attack the two of them directly.
I lifted up my sword on pure instinct to queue up the sword skill Sonic Leap. I would jump up at as hard an angle as the system would allow and strike the falling slime with it. Because it was just off the hole in the ceiling, the slime didn’t catch the sun, and it only looked like a dark smudge. There was no way to tell where the core was at this point.
But I kept my eyes as wide as I could and smashed the amorphous creature with my Sword of Eventide +3. Normally, I would take the power boost of adding my own swing to the system’s auto-assistance, but this time, I purposefully slowed it down just enough to keep the sword skill from fumbling.
When the blade cut through the sticky substance, I felt it catching on the denser little orb. Promptly, I stopped pulling back and let it follow through, hearing the burst of the core shattering. The slime’s HP were gone in an instant, the creature obliterated before I could even read its name on the cursor. I’d get a good taste of its flavor if I caught some flying jelly in my mouth, but a sudden premonition told me to block my face with my arm. When I landed, all the pieces were disintegrating into blue light.
It was quite an impressive feat, if I said so myself, so I turned with a flourish and asked, “Are you two all right?” like a manga character.
For some reason, Asuna glared at me balefully from the floor.
“It…It got in my mouth again.”
“…What’d it taste like?” I asked, unable to fight my curiosity this time. She said that the bits of Covetous Ooze tasted “hellishly sour, like sour plums pickled in lemon juice.” The second one dropped an item called Ooze Jelly, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of sour flavors and decided to let it sit in my inventory to rot.
As soon as Asuna was back on her feet, she pressed me for answers. “Kirito, I’m going to set aside the fact that you could have started by telling me slimes have cores—and how to find them. When you cut the second one, there was no light shining on the slime. Did you just hit the core by getting lucky?”
“No way. I don’t have that kind of actual luck.” Even if I did, I would have used it all up getting these two particular party members, putting me well into the red to do so—a thought I kept to myself, of course.
“Natural light is the best way to find a slime’s core, like you just did,” I explained, “but it also works with torches or lanterns in very dark environments. But once you’ve hunted enough slimes to get the hang of it, you learn how to find the core from other light sources, too.”
“Other light…?” she repeated skeptically. But Kizmel suddenly clapped her hands in epiphany. “Oh, of course! You can use the flashing of your sword technique to illuminate the core.”
“Correct!” I said, giving her a round of applause. But then I paused. It was a known fact that NPCs could use sword skills—but should I talk about the “extracurricular” tricks involved in this case? Kizmel’s expression of excitement and anticipation sealed the matter, however. Asuna, meanwhile, looked skeptical.
“What? Sword skills give you less than a second between flashing and landing on the target…Can you really find a slime’s core in that amount of time?”
“Well, it comes down to experience…and slowing down the sword skill. Slimes aren’t very mobile, so if you slow the skill down as much as you can, it gives you more time to spot the core.”
“Slow it down…” Asuna muttered with equal parts wonder and exasperation. She dropped her rapier back into its sheath. “I’ll admit…I think that technique’s incredible, but it’s going to take me quite a while to learn it, so for now, I’ll count on you to take care of all the slimes in the dark.”
“Uh…s-sure thing,” I said, the only thing I could say.
Kizmel added, “Don’t worry, I will learn this skill as well.”
“Y-yeah…I’m looking forward to that,” I said, also the only thing I could say.
After that, we saw not just the dark-yellow Covetous Ooze but blue slimes, red slimes, and even some familiar-looking black slimes. As she proclaimed, within three battles, Kizmel had effectively grasped the trick of the so-called skill-lighting ability. From that point on, we didn’t have much trouble reaching the entrance to the dungeon, deep inside the cave, before lunch.
If possible, I was hoping to make the slight extra walk to the Cave City of Goskai not too far off in order to eat and recover supplies, but Kizmel wouldn’t want to venture into a human city, I assumed, and if any players were there on the forest elf faction of the quest, they would see Kizmel’s cursor transcend red straight into black.
So we sat down at the entrance to the dungeon, partaking in some of the rations we got from Castle Galey. To my surprise, the baked treat full of nuts and dried fruit was fantastically good. Even Asuna, the snooty gourmet, seemed satisfied. Our spirit recovered, we then plunged into the dungeon, tearing deeper and deeper into it, and fighting an abruptly different set of monsters—until just after one o’clock, when we ran into an obstacle I never imagined I would see.
“Huh…? This was a dungeon the elves built ages ago, right?” Asuna murmured as she stared up at the thing. Kizmel’s head bobbed in agreement.
“That is correct. According to legend, in the olden days just after the Great Separation, the six keys were split across six floors and placed within six different labyrinths to keep them hidden and safe.”
“Then why would that be there…?”
“………I do not know.”
Kizmel stepped forward and reached up to the square stone panel that blocked the great doors before us, to touch the numbered pieces lined up on it.
It was clearly a 15 puzzle—except that, in this case, they were lined up six by six, so it was actually a 35 puzzle. At any rate, it was one of those cursed puzzles found everywhere in Stachion.
Kizmel carefully clicked the tile next to the open space and turned back to me. “This…is not anything made by the dark elves, or the forest elves, either, I believe. Count Galeyon said nothing about there being such a contraption in this labyrinth, either.”
“No…this one was created by humankind,” I said, which made Kizmel wince.
“What…? Meaning, some human snuck into this labyrinth before us and placed this device upon the door? Does that mean…the key’s already been taken out…?”
“N-no, no, not necessarily. Besides, this puz—this seal might not have been literally placed by the human who snuck in here…”
“What does that mean?” Kizmel asked suspiciously. Asuna and I explained—with difficulty, because we couldn’t explain that these were all “quests” in a “game”—the murder mystery in Stachion, and the ensuing puzzle curse it had spawned.
The elf knight was silent for several moments when we were done and finally said, “So the curse of this human lord being murdered ten years ago has spilled out of the town of Stachion and has produced this number puzzle on the door of this distant labyrinth?”
“Yep…that’s the only way to describe it at this point. Not that I think old Pithagrus has any reason to curse an elf maze, specifically.”
“You never know. Curses are truly terrifying and unpredictable things. Especially when they are curses set by the dead…The dark elves have a number of stories about those unfortunate enough to have come into contact with curses unrelated to them. To say nothing of the famous tale of how the wicked dragon Shmargor came under the Holy Tree’s curse and tormented the humans who did nothing to it.”
“Ah yes…You do have a point…”
In a sense, the entire floating castle of Aincrad was like the curse of the mad genius, Akihiko Kayaba. And we were the ones unfairly trapped inside it…although, as a beta tester as well, I suppose it was inevitable that I would become a victim.
There was no point lamenting my plight at this point, however. All I could do was trust that I would one day beat this deadly game—and keep moving forward each day toward that goal.
Asuna’s gaze was distant, suggesting to me that she was thinking much the same thing. Kizmel gave the two of us a glance, then turned to the door again and said, “If this puzzle is the work of a curse, then I suppose no sword can destroy it.”
“Huh…? Oh y-yeah, it’s indestructible.”
“Then we shall have to solve it,” the knight said simply.
I rushed to ask her, “H-hey, do dark elves solve puzzles, too?”
“Hmm? Well…as children, we solve picture-matching boards and tangle rings, but I have never seen a puzzle of numbers like this. Are we meant to reorder the boards in numerical order?”
“Yes, starting from the top left and moving in rows,” I explained, though on the inside, I was starting to panic.
One of these sliding puzzles with fifteen pieces was hard enough if you didn’t know the trick, but this one had thirty-five to deal with. I figured it would be too tough for Kizmel at her first shot—and that was without knowing if NPCs had the AI power to solve puzzles like this. From what I recalled, N × N grid puzzles like this one were called NP-hard problems in computational theory, meaning that normal computers found it difficult to compute the lowest number of moves possible.
“Kizmel, maybe I should…” I started to say, but then my mouth hung open.
After just three seconds of staring at the randomly placed numbers, Kizmel was now tearing through them. The rapid clicking of tiles sliding into place filled the dark corridor, and before my eyes, the thirty-five tiles began to line up in order from the top left. To our shock, soon the thirty-fifth and final tile snapped into place.
The entire stone board momentarily glowed, and the door behind it slowly rumbled open. Kizmel looked over her shoulder at us and grinned.
“Ah, I see now. Your human puzzles are quite refreshing.”
It was virtually a direct path through once the door was open, with hardly any monsters inside, so we reached the final room quickly. It was the same key-dungeon boss as on the fifth floor, a headless dullahan, but much stronger. Fortunately, we’d leveled up, too, and Kizmel’s presence was positively unfair, so while we did make use of the healing potions from Castle Galey, the fight was won with little difficulty.
In the rear of the boss chamber was a stately little shrine. Resting on the altar in the middle of it was a pitch-black object—the Agate Key. Recovering it was pretty much the end of the mission. There was no teleportation in SAO aside from the gates and crystals, so without a means of fast travel, we had no choice but to return to Castle Galey on foot. It helped to know that this just meant more time together with Kizmel.
We returned to the entrance of the dungeon in half the time and made our way out of the caves altogether, avoiding slimes wherever we could. At last, the brilliant blue of Lake Talpha greeted us back. After a brief break on the monster-less beach, we walked back across the lake and returned to the northwest area.
There were no fallen elf ambushes on the road back this time across the wasteland—but no fruiting cacti, either. Kizmel sheltered herself under the Holy Tree cape again, and we protected her through the dusty canyon. By the time the great gate of Castle Galey came into view again, the bottom of the floor above us was dyed the colors of sunset.
As we walked through the gate, accompanied by the ringing of bells, I checked the time in my game window. It was 4:20 PM. Sadly, we’d missed the period that the old storyteller would be in the library, but for a major floor-spanning quest like that, it was very good time. I stretched, feeling the pleasant ache of fatigue, and Kizmel slapped me on the back with a smile.
“Nice work today…but there’s more of it yet to do. We must deliver the key we recovered to Count Galeyon.”
“Oh…yes, that’s right,” I said, but in all honesty, I wasn’t in the mood to rush off to see the count just now, and I didn’t think Asuna was, either. Once we delivered the key and completed the quest, Kizmel was probably going to use that spirit tree to leave for the seventh floor this time.
The royal city where the dark elf queen lived was on the ninth floor. That was where the “Elf War” questline would reach its grand finale. It felt like such a long way to go when we started the quest on the third floor, but here we were, about to cross the halfway point.
After the campaign was over, I had no idea what would happen to Kizmel and us. Perhaps we could see her whenever we went back to the royal city, or perhaps not. But at the very least, I felt certain we would never fight side by side with her again. Kizmel was just too strong for me to optimistically imagine that we would be allowed to take her along on totally unrelated quests and grinding sessions.
“Um…Kizmel,” Asuna said, speaking in my stead, “when we give the count the key, are you going to leave for the next floor?”
She was a hundred times more honest with herself than I was. The elf knight appeared to be holding something back—or so it seemed to me, trick of the eyes or not—but put on her usual pleasant smile soon enough.
“That’s a good question…It depends on the determination of the priests sent from the royal city. Most likely, I will be ordered to deliver the four keys to the fortress on the seventh floor.”
“I see…It’s a very important mission, after all…” Asuna murmured, looking up at the spirit tree ahead of us. Then she turned to the knight, took a big step forward, and asked in hushed tones, “But in that case, why does it have to be just you who goes around gathering these keys? We’ve gotten four of the six back…Why can’t the knights from the castle or those darn priests themselves go and get the last two?”
“I don’t think of this mission as being difficult or unpleasant.” Kizmel grinned. She stroked Asuna’s chestnut-brown hair lovingly, like an older sister would. “As Her Majesty’s knight, I have a duty to uphold, and I have you two helping me…Sometimes I wish it was not six keys, but ten or twenty instead.”
“……Kizmel…”
Asuna hunched over, looking ready to cry. Kizmel moved her hand to the girl’s back and beckoned me over with the other. She offered quietly, “Also, in the background of this mission are a host of troublesome political calculations and squabbles. As I told you a while ago, my Pagoda Knights Brigade, the palace security Sandalwood Knights Brigade, and the heavily armored Trifoliate Knights Brigade are often at odds…Our leadership, especially, has always been competitive with one another. When the word came that the forest elves were going after the hidden keys, there was considerable argument over which brigade should respond…”
