Sword Art Online Progressive 4

by Reki Kawahara

  “…What is this buff?”

  “Look at the terrace floor,” Kirito said. She leaned over to look at the stone floor beneath the table. As she scanned it, she noticed something shining dully at the edge of the terrace.

  “…There’s something over there…”

  She stood up and walked toward the glowing object—a small coin.

  The glowing effect stopped once she picked it up, but the shine of the reflected lantern light did not go away. It was an old silver coin.

  But the image stamped on the side wasn’t the familiar icon of Aincrad on the usual hundred-col coin. It was a new symbol of two trees standing next to each other. On the other side was just an odd crest, with no numbers whatsoever.

  She returned to Kirito and held up the coin.

  “It’s just an unfamiliar coin…What is this? Why was it shining?”

  She sat down and clunked the coin onto the table. Kirito snatched it up, gave it a quick glance, and nodded, spinning it in his fingers.

  “These ruins are made up of remains—the buildings and roads that constitute Karluin—and one other very important element. Do you know what that is?”

  She grumbled, feeling like she was being questioned by a history teacher. With her studying mind in gear for the first time in ages, she tried to come up with a reasonable answer.

  “…Artifacts?”

  Kirito flipped the coin with his right thumb and nimbly caught it in his left hand.

  “Close! Well, you’re basically right, but the answer is ‘relics.’ Remains and relics combine to make ruins…By which I mean, Karluin isn’t just these ancient roads and walls—it’s littered with little relics like this. The story hasn’t picked up yet, but within a day or two, there will be hundreds of players from below coming up here to scrabble for relics all over the city.”

  “Ooooh…”

  She couldn’t help but look back down at the floor. There was a fresh glow at the base of the south-facing railing, so she rushed over to scoop it up.

  “…This one’s copper.”

  The double-tree symbol was the same, but the brown coin was a bit smaller when she placed it on the table next to the first. Now she could feel her body itching to look for more of them. Kirito smirked at her.

  “Just be careful of getting hooked on relic hunting. In other games, you’d have a little minimap with the item locations listed, and they’d glow on the screen, but in SAO, they’re just lying on the ground…It was even hard to find that huge Fossilwood Branch, so you can imagine how difficult it will be to find these tiny coins around.”

  “Huh? But it was glowing for me…” she started to say, then realized it was the buff effect of the blue-blueberry tart. “Oh. So this eye icon means…”

  “Yes. That’s a bonus to relic finding, and it only works inside and below Karluin, but it will help you quite a bit by making the coins and jewels glow—”

  “Jewels?” Asuna asked, cutting him off.

  “Er…y-yeah. The gold coins and jewels are super rare, so even with the buff, it’s pretty difficult to find them. Even rarer are the magic rings and necklaces…”

  “Rings? Necklaces?”

  “…Y-yeah.”

  Asuna glanced away from the awkward-looking Kirito and down at the silver and copper coins on the table. After five seconds of internal struggle, she admitted, “I want to hunt for relics, too.”

  It probably wasn’t the most ladylike of actions, but when she was in kindergarten, she remembered attending a building completion ceremony, where she trotted around picking up all the ritual mochi dumplings they scattered to bless the finished construction. That had earned her a vicious scolding from her mother, so picking up items in a virtual world was nothing at this point. Besides, they’d paid money for the tart’s effect, so there was no point in letting it go to waste.

  She stared back at her partner, who was looking more skeptical by the second, and asked, “Is there a problem?”

  “N…no, it’s nothing…”

  “In fact, why do you look so unmotivated to do this? Knowing you, I would have thought you’d recommend snatching them all up before the town got crowded.”

  “H-how rude…and, well, accurate,” the swordsman reluctantly grumbled. “I love doing stuff like this, too, but I have some tragic memories from the beta…Then again, as long as we stick to the town, it should be fine…”

  He came to some kind of internal consensus and got to his feet, pointing at the table.

  “By the way, these Karl Coins can be converted into col at an NPC exchange merchant in town,” he added, scooping up the coins.

  When the NPC waitress came to clean up their dishes, they gave her an automatic “thanks for the meal” and headed back through the big door. There were still no players in sight, but once the buff tart was included in Argo’s strategy guides, that queue from the beta would return.

  “How long does this buff last?” Asuna asked as they departed.

  Kirito put on a face like an adult reassuring a small child. “There’s no need to panic. We have an entire hour.”

  “You mean only an hour! Oh, right…can you order those tarts for takeout?”

  “Unfortunately, the buff only works if you eat it in the restaurant. Just one per customer, thirty made a day.”

  “Ahh…So you couldn’t buy them all up and resell them for a huge profit,” Asuna muttered. Kirito pulled away in mock horror.

  “Wow, even I wouldn’t stoop that low!”

  “I…I didn’t say I would do it! I’m just saying, it’s a good thing that’s impossible!”

  Even as she poked the shoulder of his coat, she was careful not to take her eyes off the ground. For now, she didn’t see any glowing objects.

  “…There were two on that terrace earlier, but I’m not finding any out here…”

  “There aren’t many relics on the pathways. And basically zero in NPC stores and buildings. The places to go are the open plazas here and there, the temples, and the really ruined spots that the residents don’t use.”

  “Ahh…And when you pick up a relic, that’s it?”

  “In the beta, they would come back whenever they took the server down for maintenance…but since they started the game for real, there’s never been any kind of service period where they stop the server…”

  “You know, you’re right…When they take online games like this down for maintenance, what exactly are they doing?”

  This might be a question more on the real-world side, but she figured it was safe to ask. Kirito pressed his fingers to his temples and strained to remember.

  “I feel like I read about this once…They check the software and hardware for damage, then fix or replace it if they find something, update the program with bug fixes, then restart the server…I think?”

  “So there’s lots of stuff they do. And…that’s all necessary, right? How is SAO fine running for two months without maintenance?”

  “Sadly, I do not know,” the swordsman answered, smiling wryly as he looked up toward the floor above. “If they cluster the servers, they can perform rolling maintenance where they switch them out individually without stopping service…but the problem with a game is ensuring that the chronological logic doesn’t get mixed up. But in SAO’s case, Kayaba clearly designed it knowing he would turn it into a deadly trap, so obviously he had a plan for it all along…I just can’t guess how it works from here.”

  She was starting to lose sight of his train of thought, so Asuna quickly took advantage of his break in speech to say, “Th-thanks. Anyway, at the moment, that means it’s possible that any relic that gets picked up will never reappear on the ground.”

  “Potentially.”

  “In that case, it’s even more important we don’t waste our time! Plazas and temples, you said? Let’s go!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. If you turn left up ahead, there’s a pretty good ruined temple to plunder…Ah, ma’am, please don’t run in the halls!”

  But
Asuna had already darted off for the unseen ruins ahead.

  3

  TWENTY-THREE COPPER COINS WORTH TEN COL EACH.

  Nine silver coins worth a hundred col each.

  Two small gold coins worth five hundred col each.

  One large gold coin worth a thousand col.

  Three gems of fairly good quality.

  One necklace that seemed to harbor a magical effect.

  One bracelet of a similar nature.

  Two rings of a similar nature.

  That was the list of items that Asuna and Kirito found at the temple at the edge of Karluin before their buff ran out. They wouldn’t know about the gems and accessories until they had them appraised, but the total had to be well over five thousand col. It was a stunning haul for just an hour’s work.

  Right after they did one last sweep of the empty temple to confirm there were no more glowing objects, the buff icon stopped blinking and vanished.

  “Phew…”

  Asuna heaved a sigh and plopped down on a cracked bench next to Kirito. She looked down at the relics—the treasures—they’d collected, laid out neatly on a folded blanket, and sighed again.

  “Yes, I can see the dangers of getting addicted to this.”

  “Right? In the beta, there were people who gave up on leveling altogether and just turned into expert relic collectors. We called them ‘hoarders’ out of respect.”

  “…I don’t see what makes that term particularly respectful…”

  She picked up a red jewel from the blanket and placed it in her palm. It was fun to crawl around the temple searching for glowing spots, but once the magic effect wore off, she was left with a feeling like guilt tugging at her heart.

  In a way, to those players who chose to go into crafting or never left the Town of Beginnings, this was one of the few methods to make money in the safe zone. If the relics didn’t come back, that made it even worse. They weren’t wanting for food or lodging money, so getting a head start on scooping up all the relics before anyone else was nothing short of selfish greed.

  She put the jewel back on the blanket. When Kirito spoke next, there was none of his usual ironic snark to it.

  “…You’re very kind.”

  He meant it in recognition of her regret, but that message didn’t reach her brain at first. Only after three seconds did she squawk in surprise.

  “H-huh?! Wha—? I’m not— What do you…?”

  Kirito smiled a bit shyly and explained, “You don’t need to feel guilty, Asuna. Compared to all the relics in this town, what we picked up is just a tiny pittance.”

  He awkwardly reached out and very lightly patted the breastplate connector on Asuna’s right shoulder blade.

  Before, she might have socked him a counterpunch and demanded he not touch her like that. But this time, Asuna could only hold her breath as she tried to contain the sudden upswell of emotion within her.

  She felt guilty for having fun collecting the relics without considering the implications. But she also wanted to argue her case, that she, too, was scared when she went out to fight monsters. The combination of these two emotions blew up within her, turning the feelings she’d been trying to suppress into a powerful urge.

  She wanted to bury her face into the chest of her companion, the black-haired swordsman she’d teamed up with for no other reason than to more efficiently make her way through this mortal game, and cry her eyes out. She wanted to cast aside the role of a powerful elite player, an honor she never wanted, to throw out all the limitations placed upon her, and scream and wail like a little child. She wanted to be liberated—and to have that be accepted, forgiven, and consoled.

  But it wasn’t an option.

  She couldn’t cling to Kirito in her weakness. She was already taking too much advantage of his knowledge. How many questions had he answered for her in the single day they’d spent on this floor? And the reverse had almost never happened.

  If she depended on him too much more, they would no longer be game partners—they would be protector and protected. In terms of game knowledge, that was already true. That’s why she had to be his equal in combat and control her emotions.

  On her left side, where Kirito couldn’t see, she clutched her rapier sheath, withstanding the storm of impulses. Eventually, the high tide of emotions began to ebb, returning to the bottom of her heart where she kept them.

  Asuna let out a long, slow breath and turned to smile weakly at her concerned partner.

  “Yes…thank you, I’m fine. I don’t regret it; I had a lot of fun…but I suppose I’m satisfied with my relic seeking for now.”

  “…All right,” Kirito said, grinning and nodding. He took an empty leather bag from his inventory, placed the coins and accessories inside, and said kindly, “When I said you didn’t need to feel guilty, it was true. There are temples and squares like this one all over the city…”

  “…Yeah.”

  “And we don’t know for sure that they won’t come back…”

  “…Yeah.”

  “Plus, finding relics in town is really more like a simple side product of the real treasure hunt of Karluin.”

  “…Yeah…yeah?” she asked, pausing in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Know how we didn’t see anyone from the DKB and ALS around the teleport gate or anywhere else? Well, I feel like they’re the ones who are going to scoop up all the relics to fund their war chest or whatever.”

  “…You may be right…”

  She watched her partner, wondering where this conversation was heading. Kirito extended his index finger and pointed it straight down.

  “I think they’re down below.”

  “…Below?”

  “Yep. There’s an enormous catacomb beneath Karluin…Basically, a dungeon. It’s so wide that it stretches out beyond the boundary of the town, and that’s where the real treasure hunt is. The stuff you find in here is small beans in comparison.”

  “…Wha—?”

  “So there’s no reason at all to feel guilty about this much. Come on, let’s go get these appraised, turned into cash, and split between us. Then we can go to an armory and get our gear souped up…”

  “Huh? Huh?! Huuuuuuh?!”

  Something else ripped up through Asuna from the bottom of her heart—but unlike before, this was more of a bellow of rage. She clenched her right hand into a fist.

  “You should have—! Said that—!! Earlier!!!”

  Her right hook tore audibly through the air and would have walloped Kirito in his left flank, if it weren’t for the Anti-Criminal Code. The purple sparks that resulted shone brightly, briefly illuminating the ruined temple.

  The only way to see the properties of an unidentified item was to take it to a player or NPC with the Appraisal skill. The former wasn’t commonplace yet, so the pair went to an NPC merchant in Karluin to have their jewels and accessories identified.

  The gems were all D-level stones worth barely five hundred col each, the necklace was +3 to the Recitation skill, the bracelet was +4 to Mixing, and one of the rings added a 1 percent boost to stun resistance—not a great haul. But the other ring had an unfamiliar effect: Candlepower.

  As they left the shop, Asuna examined the silver ring with the yellow stone, and Kirito suggested, “Why don’t you equip that? It’ll be handy.”

  “Uh…it will? But…”

  They’d found it together, so she thought they ought to play rock-paper-scissors for the prize, but Kirito cut her off by holding his hands up.

  “Look, I’ve already got rings on both hands.”

  Sure enough, there was a silver shine on the index fingers of each hand. The one on his right hand was +1 to strength, a quest reward from the dark elf commander on the third floor. And the one on the left was the Sigil of Lyusula, given to him by Viscount Yofilis.

  Asuna had the exact same ring on the middle finger of her left hand. When they received them together, she’d put it on her ring finger without thinking. Even recalling the
moment of her belated realization and hasty transfer to the middle finger brought a fresh wave of embarrassment to her cheeks, and she lowered her hand.

  “W-well…If you insist, I will.”

  She put the mysterious Ring of Candlelight on her right middle finger and started to walk off, forgetting to ask him about the magical effect.

  They sold the rest of the relics at an item shop closer to the appraiser, and after converting the Karl Coins at the exchanger next door, they had earned 6,480 col in total. Kirito opened the trade window and sent her exactly half, which she accepted.

  She hadn’t entirely gotten over her guilt at cleaning out a whole temple, but according to him, there were still mountains of treasure around and underneath the town, so the people coming up from below to find relics would have plenty of fun left. Besides, she’d only earned so much in such a short time thanks to the relic-finding bonus effect. Given the limited number of tarts available, the whole town wouldn’t be picked clean for quite some time.

  Asuna decided to use her sudden influx of money entirely for the sake of advancing the game, a decision that made her feel a bit better. Meanwhile, Kirito was already steering them toward an armory.

  “Hey, they said there’s no magic in Aincrad, right?”

  “Hmm? Yeah…that’s what Kizmel said. The elves have their charms from before the Great Separation, but we humans have basically nothing left…”

  “In that case, how does that tart effect work? I mean, it’s basically a magical effect, right?”

  “Ahh,” Kirito murmured, grinning, “I just figured that one out today…I think maybe that’s why it comes in the form of a blue-blueberry tart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know how they say the anthocyanin in blueberries are good for your eyesight? Well, with two blues, there’s twice the anthocyanin, enough to make it possible to see relics better. So you could argue that it’s not exactly magic…”

  “…Hrrm…”

  In that case, she wondered how he would explain the luck bonus offered by the Tremble Shortcake—but decided she’d rather treasure the memory for what it was and held her tongue.