Aincrad 2

by Reki Kawahara

  But Sachi died in the end.

  Not even a month from that night in the underground sewer, she was cut down by monsters right before my eyes, her body and soul scattering into nothingness.

  That day, Keita was off visiting a real-estate dealer to inquire about a one-story house to use as our guild base—we’d finally scraped together the amount we’d set as our goal. Sachi and I and the three other members sat around the inn waiting for Keita’s return, laughing at the miserable amount of col remaining in our shared guild inventory. Eventually, Tetsuo the macer spoke up with an idea.

  “Hey, let’s go make some money in the labyrinth and buy a set of furniture for the new house. Keita’ll freak out when he sees it.”

  We decided to go to the labyrinth just three floors below the current frontier, a dungeon we’d never visited as a group before. I’d been there before, of course, and I knew that it was a lucrative destination full of dangerous traps. But I didn’t tell them that.

  Level-wise, we were relatively safe within the dungeon, and our hunting was fruitful. We raised our expected quota within an hour and were turning around to leave and shop for our furniture when the guild’s thief found a treasure chest.

  I told him that we should ignore the chest. But when he asked why, I couldn’t tell him that I knew the traps were noticeably more dangerous on this floor. I only gave him a vague excuse, saying I got a bad feeling from it.

  When he opened the chest anyway, an alarm trap clanged noisily, and monsters stormed through the three doorways into the room. I immediately sensed that we were in trouble and commanded everyone to use crystals to teleport out. But when it became apparent that we were also standing in an anti-crystal zone and there was no escape, the entire group fell into a panic—myself included.

  The first to die was the thief who’d set off the trap. Next was Tetsuo the macer, then the spearman.

  I was terrified, and I unleashed a storm of the high-level skills I’d been hiding this entire time, desperately trying to stem the tide of monsters. But there were too many. I didn’t even have enough time to turn around and destroy the ringing alarm that was summoning them.

  Just as Sachi was about to be swallowed by the wave of monsters, she stretched out a hand and opened her mouth, as if to say something to me. All I saw in her eyes was a heartrending, pleading trust, the same light she shone on me every night.

  I don’t remember how I survived. The next thing I knew, the storm of monsters and my four guildmates were gone. And even after all of that, my HP bar was barely less than halfway full.

  I returned to the inn alone, my mind a blank slate.

  Keita was sitting there waiting, the key to our new guild house on the table. He listened to my story—why the others died, why I survived—and when I was done, he looked at me with eyes devoid of all emotion and said just one thing. You’re a beater. You didn’t have the right to get involved with us.

  He stood up and marched his way to the outer perimeter of Aincrad, and before my very eyes, he vaulted over the fence with no hesitation and flung himself into the infinite void.

  Keita had spoken the absolute truth. There was no doubt that my pride, my arrogance, had killed the four—no, five—members of the Moonlit Black Cats. If I hadn’t gotten involved with them, they’d have stayed down in the safe middle zone. They’d never have rashly attempted to disarm a trap far beyond their means.

  The key to survival in Sword Art Online isn’t reflexes, or stats, or weapons—it’s adequate knowledge. I’d given them a quick step up, an advanced course in power-leveling, but I didn’t give them information. That was a tragedy waiting to happen. I swore to Sachi that I’d protect her life, and I ended up killing her.

  I needed to accept whatever word she was going to say in that final moment, even if it was the worst curse she could possibly hurl at me. That was the reason I clung to the slim possibility of that item of resurrection. I had to hear that word.

  3

  In the four days leading up to Christmas, I managed to squeeze in one more level, putting me at 70.

  I literally didn’t sleep a wink during that period. At times I was plagued by headaches that felt as though nails were being driven into my brain. It was probably what I deserved, but I don’t think I could have slept if I’d tried, anyway.

  Klein and the rest of Furinkazan didn’t show up at the ant canyon spot again. I kept lining up between the parties from the major guilds, mechanically slaying ants over and over. With time, the looks I got turned from mocking to hateful. I think some of them might have called out to me, but whenever I met those gazes, I turned away and left.

  The biggest debate among the many hopeful adventurers looking to seize Nicholas the Renegade’s Christmas presents was where exactly to find the giant fir tree he was said to appear beneath. As a matter of fact, between my grinding sessions with the ants, I had arrived at an answer I was certain was correct.

  I’d bought the locations of several major trees from informants and gone to inspect them all in turn. What I found was that they all had the look of a classic Christmas tree, but they were all cedars—not firs. Unlike the spiky-pointed leaves of a cedar tree, fir tree needles are rounded at the end like little ellipses. I knew the difference because we had trees of both types in my backyard growing up.

  Several months earlier, I’d been exploring a random-teleporting dungeon called the Forest of Wandering on the thirty-fifth floor, where I found one giant, gnarled tree. It was so strange and distinct that it had to have a purpose, and I’d investigated the possibility that it might be involved in a quest of some kind, but to no avail. Thinking back on it now, I know the tree had been a fir. I was absolutely certain that on this very night, the flag mob named Nicholas the Renegade was going to appear at the foot of that tree.

  I continued wiping up the ants around me while the fanfare celebrating my level-up to 70 played. When both were finished, I pulled a teleport crystal out of my pouch, then immediately jumped to the town on the forty-ninth floor without bothering to inform any of the waiting players.

  Once in the teleport square, I checked the clock tower to see that barely three hours remained until midnight. The rest of the plaza was filled with people walking in pairs, hand-in-hand or around the shoulder, strolling leisurely. I weaved my way past them and hurried to the inn.

  Inside the building, I raced to the room I’d been using for weeks. First I opened the storage chest and pulled all of the healing and antidote crystals and potions from the item window that appeared and transferred them to my inventory. They represented a fortune in monetary terms, but I was prepared to use every last one of them if necessary.

  I also removed the rare sword I’d been saving for a special occasion, made sure it was in good condition, then switched it out with the sword on my back, which was damn ragged after all the ant-hunting. My leather coat and other pieces of armor were quickly replaced as well.

  I was about to close the window when all my preparations were complete, but my hand stopped when I looked at the top of the item list.

  There was a tab labeled SELF that contained all of my personal items and another tab titled SACHI next to it.

  This was a shared inventory, a setting that players could enable when they were close but not going to get married. Unlike marriage, in which all items and money were shared, only the things either of us placed in this space were accessible to both of us.

  Sachi had never wanted words of love or even a hand to hold, but she had suggested creating this space shortly before she died. When I’d asked her why, she said it would make sharing potions easier—a weak excuse, given that we had a shared guild tab for that very purpose already. But I agreed and set up a tab for us.

  Even after Sachi died, the window remained. Her name was still on my friends list, of course, but now it was grayed out and inaccessible. The potions and crystals left in our shared inventory could no longer be used.

  After half a year, I still couldn’t bring myself to rem
ove that tab, even though I’d mechanically eliminated the guild tab without a second thought. It wasn’t even because I thought there was any way to bring her back. I just couldn’t allow myself to erase that reminder of my guilt.

  I stared at Sachi’s name, lost in thought for nearly ten minutes before I came back to my senses and closed the window. Two hours until midnight.

  On the way from my room to the teleport square, I thought back to the look on Sachi’s face in that final moment, over and over, wondering what it was she was about to say.

  When I walked through the teleporter and onto the thirty-fifth floor, the town was far quieter than on the front line. It wasn’t quite at the epicenter of the mid-level players’ hunting range, and the town itself was a rather unremarkable rural village. Still, there were players here and there, so I flipped up the collar of my coat to avoid their gazes as I sped out of town.

  I had neither the time nor the peace of mind to bother with monsters on the way. I turned around to make sure no one was trailing me, then took off at full speed. The past months’ insane leveling had given a big boost to my agility, so my legs felt light as feathers as I tore across the fields of snow. The usual dull pain throbbed in my temples, but at least that kept sleep from overwhelming my brain.

  After a ten-minute sprint, I reached the entrance to the Forest of Wandering. This dungeon was split into countless square areas, the connecting exits of which jumped about at random, making it virtually impossible to manage without a special map.

  I opened mine and took a hard look at the sector I’d marked beforehand, tracing the route back to the entrance. I burned the directions into my brain, then headed into the black night of the forest.

  I reached the fir tree’s area with a minimum of trouble, only needing to stop for two fights I couldn’t run past. I had thirty minutes left.

  I could easily lose my life doing this; I was going to fight one-on-one against a boss monster that could almost certainly kill me, but I didn’t feel even the slightest hint of fear. In fact, I almost felt as though I would welcome that outcome. If there was one way I was allowed to die, it would be in a quest to bring Sachi back to life…

  I didn’t think of it in heroic terms—that I was “searching for my place to die.” I wasn’t allowed to seek a meaning in my own death. Not when I’d let Sachi and our four friends die without purpose.

  What does it mean? Sachi had asked me. There is no meaning, I’d responded.

  Now I had the chance to make those words reality. Sachi had died a meaningless death within a meaningless death game, created by a meaningless mad genius named Akihiko Kayaba. Now, just like her, I was going to die alone, forgotten by all, bereft of any meaning.

  If I somehow survived and defeated this boss, the rumors of the resurrection item would certainly turn out to be true. I had no proof, but I was certain. Sachi’s soul would come back from the Land of the Dead or the River Lethe or wherever she was, and I would be able to hear her final words at last. Finally, finally, the time had come…

  Just as I began to close the last several meters to the tree, I sensed several players emerging from the warp point behind me. I held my breath and put a hand on my sword, leaping away from them.

  They numbered around ten. Standing at the lead was a man like a samurai, outfitted with light armor, a lengthy blade, and a bandanna tied around his head—Klein.

  The members of Furinkazan looked around nervously as they approached. I stared straight at Klein and growled.

  “You followed me?”

  He nodded, scratching the hair that was splayed upward by his bandanna. “That’s right. We’ve got an expert in Tracking.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I caught a tip that you’d been buying intel on tree coordinates. I had one of us planted in the forty-ninth-floor square watching for you, and he saw you take off for a floor without any of those publicly known coordinates. Listen, I think your talent for battle and your game instincts are off the charts. In my opinion, you’re the best player among the clearers…even better than Heathcliff. Which is exactly why I refuse to see you throw away your life like this, Kirito!”

  He reached out and jabbed a finger right at my face.

  “Forget about tackling this monster on your own! You’re joining our party for this. Whoever gets the resurrection item to drop keeps it, and no hard feelings!”

  “But then…” I couldn’t even believe that Klein’s words stemmed from friendship and honest concern at this point. “Then there’s no point…I have to do it alone…”

  I still clutched the hilt of my sword. My mind was racing, feverish.

  I have to kill them all.

  When this game of death began, I’d abandoned Klein as an utter newb and headed for the next town on my own, an act I deeply regretted for a very long time. When Klein survived the game’s trials and had grown into a powerful warrior in his own right, I was profoundly relieved.

  In this moment, I was honestly considering killing one of the precious few people I could call a friend—sinking to the depths of a criminal to achieve my goal. A tiny voice in my brain cried, Don’t do it, it’s pointless!, but a much louder one drowned it out, bellowing, A meaningless death is exactly what you want.

  If I drew my sword out even an inch, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I was sure of it. My right hand trembled as the two conflicting urges fought for control over me. Klein just looked on, pity in his eyes.

  That was the exact moment that a third party entered the opening.

  And this party was not a mere ten strong. Just at a glance, they had to be at least three times that size. I stared at the throng in astonishment, then muttered to the equally stunned Klein next to me.

  “Guess you guys got followed, too, Klein.”

  “…Guess we did…”

  The newcomers stood at the edge of the clearing about five meters away, staring at Furinkazan and me. I recognized several of their faces from the ant canyon. The Furinkazan swordsman standing closest to Klein leaned over and murmured softly.

  “That’s the Divine Dragon Alliance. They’re not afraid to go orange for the sake of a flag boss.”

  I knew that name. They were the largest of the clearer guilds, just as famous as the Knights of the Blood. Their average level was likely lower than mine, but even I didn’t think I could win against so many.

  But wasn’t that really the same thing, when you got down to it?

  Whether killed by the boss or killed by a guild, I was dying an ignoble death either way, I realized. And it had to be a better way than fighting Klein, right?

  This time, I was going to draw my sword. I was tired of thinking. Better to turn myself into a machine. I swing my sword with all of my being, kill everything in sight, and eventually I’ll wear down and break.

  But Klein’s bellow stayed my hand.

  “Shit! Goddammit!” He’d drawn his weapon even before I did, and he called out to me with his back turned. “Go, Kirito! We’ll hold ’em off! Go and kill that boss! Just make sure you don’t die in the process! You’re not permitted to die before I do! Is that understood?!”

  “…”

  There was hardly any time left. I turned my back on Klein as well, then headed off toward the final warp point without a word of thanks.

  The fir tree was just where I remembered it, and just as gnarled and twisted, too. It stood in the center of the almost empty clearing, sparkling bone-white from piles of snow. It was like a meadow barren of all life.

  When the clock readout in the corner of my vision hit midnight, the air was filled with the sound of jingling bells. I looked up to the top of the tree.

  Amid the black of the night sky—technically, just the bottom of the floor above—two lines of light appeared. When I focused harder, I saw that it was a giant sled being drawn by hideous monsters.

  When it reached the top of the fir tree, a black shadow leaped from the sled, and I stumbled backward several steps.

  The mo
nster that landed in the snow with an impressive splash had to be at least three times my height. It was humanoid, but its arms were freakishly long, and it hunched over in a way that made it appear to drag along the ground. In the darkness beneath its jutting brow, two small red eyes glowed, and scraggly gray whiskers drooped down from the bottom of its head to dangle at its legs.

  What was truly grotesque about it, however, were the red-and-white jacket and pointed cap it wore, and the ax and sack it carried. The designer of this creature likely figured that players would see this twisted caricature of the familiar Santa Claus and either quake in fear and revulsion, or laugh out loud. But facing Nicholas the Renegade alone, the creative intention behind the beast was the last thing on my mind.

  Nicholas opened its mouth, the twisted beard wriggling as it readied to speak its dramatic line of quest dialogue.

  “Shut up,” I muttered, drawing my sword and leaping forward through the snow.

  4

  For the first time in an entire year of play in Sword Art Online, my HP fell into the red zone and stayed there.

  When the boss finally fell and exploded, leaving only his sack behind, I didn’t have a single recovery crystal left. I’d been closer to death than ever before, but despite my slim survival, I felt no joy of victory or relief. It was almost a sense of disappointment. Oh, I’m still alive.

  The sack of presents followed by shattering into fragments of light as I slowly returned my sword to its sheath. All the items the boss dropped would have automatically been added to my inventory. I sighed heavily and raised a trembling hand to call up the window.