Since the start of this game, I had undoubtedly spent more time with her than anyone else, yet she remained an enigma to me. I wasn’t honestly sure why she kept working with me. There were so few times I felt I truly understood exactly what she was thinking, I could count them on my fingers.
But for whatever reason, I had never felt that sensation—that suspicious “Who are you really?” question—about her, not even once. She always existed in a neutral state at my side, angry, sulking, laughing.
She wasn’t acting out a temporary disguise of herself here. Whether her body was a digital avatar or not, she was herself. Asuna could be more natural with herself than anyone, not because she was a newcomer to MMOs, but because she possessed a firm sense of self.
When I first found her in the labyrinth tower, she was empty eyed and nearly suicidal in her abandon. Now she had found a reason to fight, gained knowledge and skill, and had worked her way to being one of the very best players in the game.
Could I change like that, too?
I returned her glance and resumed facing the group.
My upright stance bent at the waist, and my head lowered into a deep bow.
The vast chamber echoed with startled murmurs. I searched for the right words—not as a speech, but my own true thoughts.
“First, I need to apologize to you all. I should have started discussing how to handle the guild flag first, before we started the fight. We needed to know what to do if the flag dropped and how to confirm if it didn’t. It was my mistake that we didn’t do that until now. And that has caused mistrust among the group…”
I straightened up at last, looking right at the faces of the other eleven.
“But I don’t want the ALS and DKB to fight over the flag…I want both guilds to work together and help us expand our frontier in the game. That’s why I summoned you all here to take part in this boss raid. It was what I believed before the fight, and it’s still what I believe, now that we’ve won.”
I paused, and silently called upon the late knight.
Diavel, what would you have done here? I can’t be your successor. I don’t have the nobility, the leadership that you represented. But the desperate way you went after the Last Attack, the honesty with which you asked your former rival to carry things on—I admire those qualities.
Yes, I had to do everything I could before giving up was an option, just like Diavel did against the first boss. Just like the Legend Braves did against the second boss.
I drew my right foot back to an even position with the left. Straightened my spine, all my fingers, and held my hands at my sides.
From my position standing at attention, I looked directly at a single player, then bent at the waist, lowering my head as far as I could, until I saw nothing but the blocky stone floor.
“…There is no longer any way to determine who got the guild flag using system tools. So I’m begging you. I don’t want you to give it to me…I want you to let the group determine its use. For the sake of the frontline team…For the sake of all those players waiting on the lower floors…And for the day when someone finally beats this game.”
Silence filled the chamber.
The murmurs were gone, as were the clearing of throats, the rustling of equipment, and even breathing.
The silence was so complete that it almost seemed as if the auditory input had been cut off somehow.
A clanking metal footstep broke that illusion.
The footsteps, somewhere between the dull thud of heavy armor and the light pad of leather armor, approached with purpose and stopped right in front of me. From above my bowed head came a calm voice.
“Please straighten up, Kirito.”
“…”
I slowly looked up to see the oldest member of the raid…the head scout of the ALS, Okotan.
I took his outstretched hand and straightened my back. This time, it was his turn to stiffen formally and bow.
“Kirito, my companions, I am very sorry. I was the one who failed to announce that I had earned the guild flag.”
No sooner had his confession and apology ended than a muffled voice came from the back. “Oko…! But why—?!”
The figure stepped forward, raising the visor of the armet helm to continue in a sweet, clear voice, “Remember what you said? That the entire frontline group needed to stick together, that our two guilds shouldn’t be fighting…Why would you do this?!”
When the tear-streaked plea was over, Okotan turned and bowed again to his guildmate. “I’m sorry, Liten. I’m afraid I’ve betrayed your trust.”
He turned back to me and opened his window. After a few taps at his inventory—it seemed to have been hidden in a subfolder, as I suspected—he materialized an item.
With a spray of little dots of light, a ten-foot-long spear appeared, even longer than the halberd slung over the man’s back. In fact, while the end was pointed, it was not a spear. A pure white triangular banner was attached to the upper end, wrapped gently around the mirrored silver handle.
“Ohhh,” someone murmured with awe.
I had never seen it before, either, but it was clear at a glance that this was a very special item. Fine detail adorned the tip and the butt of the slender shaft. The border of the banner and the lustrous material were elegant and filigreed. The sheer presence of the item cast it in a different light altogether from the other items of the lowest floors of Aincrad.
Okotan hefted up the guild flag, witnessed in person at last, and asked gently, “Kirito, you looked directly at me. Could you tell me how you knew I was the one?”
“Ah…yes.” I took my eyes off the flag and looked the halberdier in the face. “Okotan…were you a heavy FPS player before you joined this game?”
He was taken aback by the way I turned the tables back on him, then nodded. “Yes…for a while, I played shooters more than MMOs.”
My suspicions confirmed, I started to explain the detail in his words that stuck in the back of my mind.
“Well, I only tried them a bit…but you know that type of team battle in shooters called CTF: capture the flag. The one where two teams fight over a single flag.”
“Right,” said Shivata, who clearly had no idea where I was going with this. I pressed on.
“In that mode, the player who has the flag in his possession is called the flag carrier or flag bearer—bearer for short. And earlier, you said, ‘Liten would be a bearer—no, a bear for us.’ You changed the word on the fly, but I figured you wouldn’t have thought to use that word at all unless the flag had dropped into your inventory and was already on your mind.”
When I said it aloud, it sounded less like a reasoned, educated guess and more like a nonsensical accusation, but Okotan only nodded his head slowly.
“Ah, I see…I suppose that’s what I get for attempting something I’m not used to.” He looked down at the beautiful flagpole in his hands and smirked bitterly. “Maybe I’m not in a position to say this, but…Kirito, Liten, everyone…I want you to believe me. I did not participate in this raid for the purpose of stealing the guild flag for myself. I have no connection to the inner circle of the ALS. At first, I wanted nothing more than to protect the relationship of the two guilds…That was my only desire. But…”
Okotan’s finely whiskered mouth twisted, and his eyes clenched shut. His hoarse voice echoed through the stone chamber.
“When this flag…the Flag of Valor, dropped into my inventory, and I realized nobody had noticed and that I could hide it if I wanted—the thought entered my mind. The thought that I could use this as a bargaining chip to have the two guilds united into one…”
Hafner’s armor clattered faintly, but he bit his lip and maintained silence. Shivata and Liten looked at each other but also said nothing.
When Okotan opened his eyes again, the self-mocking smile returned, and he shook his head. “But that would never happen. If the guild flag appeared in the hands of an ALS member, then the rest of you would know that I had kept it. How could we have a
good-faith negotiation like that? It was a stupid dream. Once again, I apologize to all of you for my foolish actions.”
Still holding the flag, Okotan bowed deeply again. Hafner clanked forward a step, his fists clenched.
“Yes, that was a stupid thing you did! So stupid, in fact, that it could have led to open war between our guilds! But…your dream wasn’t stupid at all!!”
Okotan’s shoulders twitched. The DKB’s subleader took another heavy step forward and, in a slightly quieter tone, continued, “I had a little dream of my own during that battle. If me, Shivata, you, and Liten could fight together so well, being in a party together for the first time, then maybe there was no use to all our bickering…Maybe we shouldn’t split into two squabbling guilds, but form our ideal parties. And I’m not gonna give up on that dream. Maybe it won’t lead to our guilds merging…but I’m not going to stop thinking about what-ifs. So…so I forgive you!!”
Hafner’s sudden speech paused, and he surveyed the rest of the group. “If any of you still can’t forgive Oko and want to see him penalized in some way, raise your hand now!”
Agil spread his hands wide and smirked. “C’mon, Haf, you know that when you put it that way, nobody’s going to raise their hand.”
The Bro Squad all nodded agreement, while Asuna, Argo, and Nezha smiled. Okotan’s back trembled, his head still lowered toward the ground.
“…Thank…you.”
His voice was halting and raspy, but with the echoing of the stone chamber’s floor and walls, everyone heard it loud and clear.
11
“WELL, I WOUND UP WITH THE THING…so what do I do now?”
Holding it in my hand, I looked up at the mirrored silver pole, which stood planted in the stone floor.
I was the only person remaining in the boss chamber of the fifth floor. I’d sent the rest of the team up the spiral stairs, reassuring them I’d follow in minutes.
The stone-built chamber was utterly silent now, without a trace of the ferocious battle with the golem just minutes earlier. With the tension gone, I was now heavy with fatigue. I hobbled over to the wall, using the flagpole as a cane, and sat down with a spoken “There we go.”
The solitude was for me to think about a few things.
First, Hafner had taken a vote, and the unanimous opinion was that I should be forced— Er, allowed to keep the guild flag. I tapped the side of the heavy pole with my left thumb to bring up the property window.
At the top was the item name, FLAG OF VALOR.
It was categorized as a long spear, but according to the info from the beta, the attack power was extremely low. It was the magical effects that were truly extraordinary. That was the same as before, too—so long as it was planted in the ground during battle, any guild members within fifty feet of the flag would receive its benefits. This chamber was about a hundred feet across, so if the flag bearer stood right in the middle, the whole interior would be covered by the effect.
To register the flag to a guild, all it took was for a player with guild leader status to hit the REGISTER button at the bottom of the property window. The pure white banner would automatically change to the colors of the guild, and the flag could not be reregistered with a different guild. In other words, if Kibaou registered the flag and the ALS later merged with the DKB into a new guild, the flag would be useless to them. That could be circumvented by disbanding the DKB and having all its members join the ALS, but that would never happen.
In that sense, Okotan’s idea to use the flag as a tool to merge the two guilds wasn’t technically wrong, just realistically very unlikely. Hafner and Okotan had reached a sort of mutual understanding, but that was a miracle brought about by the success of our tremendous mission to defeat the worst boss yet with a tiny group. Once we started on the sixth floor, they would return to their guilds and resume status as rivals.
But surely today’s events would not go to waste. They had been implanted deep into the memories of those involved and would someday bear flowers, I told myself.
I opened my window and placed the guild flag onto it. With a little bling, the massive flagpole vanished into the inventory window.
All I could do for now was stash it, but it took an act of will to put away an item with such incredible stats. It was imperative that I find an ideal use for it.
The clock on my window said it was past eight thirty. The ALS could come charging up the stairs at any moment.
The second thing on my mind was how to handle them.
I had the option to race up the spiral staircase and take the teleport gate on the sixth floor back down to Karluin. But if I did that, Kibaou’s group would not know what happened. They might go crazy looking for a way to summon the boss. That wasn’t something I wanted on my conscience.
I supposed I had a responsibility to explain that I had jumped the gun on their plan to jump the gun. So I leaned back against the wall and shut my eyes, waiting for the ALS to arrive.
After a while, I heard the sound of footsteps.
It seemed rather early for them, but then I grew suspicious. There was only one set of steps, and it was coming from above, not from below.
When I opened my eyelids, I saw a fencer in a light purple cape descending the spiral staircase from the sixth floor.
“Asuna…” I willed the strength into my legs to stand. “What is it? Didn’t you go to the city up there?”
She shrugged her caped shoulders as she stepped off the staircase and approached.
“I heard an interesting story as we were climbing the stairs, so I thought I’d tell you about it.”
“Oh…? Wh-what kind of story?”
Asuna stopped next to me and turned around so she could lean back against the wall.
“It’s about the source of Okotan’s character name. What do you suppose it is?”
“Huh…? W-well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be quick to anger, as the ‘oko’ would imply…Hmm. Does he like o-kotatsu, those low tables with the heater underneath?”
“Bzzzt!”
She crossed her index fingers in an X and grinned. “It’s the name of a river that flows into Lake Shikotsu in Hokkaido. He grew up near there and had a soft spot for the place.”
“Ohhh…Now that you mention it, Kotan sounds like an Ainu-ish name…But did you really come back here just to tell me that?”
“Of course not,” she said, contradicting her earlier statement, but didn’t elaborate.
It was a reminder to me that she was truly an enigma. But before I could come up with a reply, she suddenly asked, “You stayed behind to negotiate with the ALS squad, didn’t you?”
I tilted my head at an awkward angle, neither a nod nor a shake.
“Er, I wouldn’t…say that…necessarily…”
“I wouldn’t have anything to do up in town anyway. I’ll join you,” she declared.
“Uh…”
The ALS would be furious when they learned we had beaten them to the punch, of course, but it wouldn’t turn dangerous…I thought. But that depended on how serious they were about getting the guild flag. Did they just want to ensure the DKB didn’t get their hands on it—or were they determined to seize it at any cost?
Even if it was the latter, I couldn’t believe they would turn their weapons on a fellow player outside of town. They were game clearers, not bandits. On top of that, I knew that Asuna would not listen to any orders to leave.
“…Thanks. Just don’t provoke them, please…” I pleaded. Asuna murmured that she understood.
For the next five minutes, we waited along the wall, chatting about mindless subjects.
Eventually, the sound of many clanking footsteps approached from the descending staircase. Two, no, three—it had to be the ALS scout party.
The lightly armed fighters raced into the room in a triangle formation, looking around sharply. From my spot on the wall, I called out, “Hi, guys.”
The men all looked
in my direction, and their eyes and mouths went huge. The captain type lowered his sword and gasped. “B-Blackie?! What are you doing here?! Where’s the floor boss…?”
“Sorry. Already beat him.”
“…”
After a full five seconds of silence, the captain sighed and shook his head. One of the two in the rear mumbled, “Y’know, I just had a feeling…”
One minute later, the full, twenty-four-man ALS core group and the duo from the true pioneer group faced one another across the descending staircase.
Some of the men dressed in matching moss-green and dark metal gear whispered among one another in the back, but the spiky-haired guild leader Kibaou stood boldly in the center, his arms crossed, eyes and mouth shut tight, maintaining his silence.
Figuring it was a good opportunity to refresh my memory on the names and faces of the main ALS members, I turned to Asuna and whispered, “Do you know any of their names aside from Kibaou?”
“Umm…the one to the right of Kibaou with the trident is Hokkai Ikura. The one with the scimitar on the left is Melonmask. And to the left of him with the short spear is…Schinkenspeck, I think…?”
“…Well, I’m glad they’re not all named after food,” I muttered, suddenly struck by a pang of hunger.
Asuna promptly added, “Schinkenspeck is a type of Austrian smoked ham. It’s well spiced and quite delicious.”
“…When we get back, we have to eat dinner…”
Before Asuna could reply to that suggestion, Kibaou’s eyes flashed open, and arms still crossed, he shouted, “At any rate! It seems clear y’all beat the boss, so I will tell you congratulations! But if you don’t explain a few things right here an’ now, we won’t be able to go traipsin’ back to town!”
“Uh…yeah, I get it. I’ll explain whatever I can,” I said. Kibaou thrust out his hand, index finger upright.
“First! You ain’t gonna tell me it was just you who beat the boss all on yer own. Where’d you get the muscle?!”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” I replied. Kibaou’s eyebrow arched, but he withheld comment and straightened another finger.
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