“Second! It ain’t a coincidence that ya beat the boss just before we showed up! How’d ya know we were gonna tackle the boss tonight?!”
“Sorry, can’t tell you that, either.”
His eyebrow twitched again. Half the members with him looked ready to explode with anger, while the other half shook their heads in disbelief or resignation. I heard one of them yell to take the questions seriously, but Kibaou silenced him with his hand and held up a third finger.
“Those were just the warm-up. But this one you can’t back out of answerin’…The floor boss musta dropped an item called a guild flag. What happened to it?!”
“…”
Now it was my turn to fall silent.
Not because Kibaou had caught me in a trap, but because I knew it was necessary for me to be honest about it. There was a danger to doing that, however slight. In the worst-case scenario, the twenty-four players could draw their swords to PK me. If that happened, I needed Asuna to escape up the spiral stairs.
Simulating how that reaction would play out inside my head, I nodded.
“Yeah…it dropped.”
The ALS members murmured, stunned. I held up the index and middle fingers of my right hand and swiped them straight down.
My menu appeared with a bell chime, and I used it to materialize the item I’d just placed inside it.
The murmuring increased when they saw the ten-foot-long silver flagpole appear in a shower of light. I gripped the pole around the middle, closed the window, and loudly stomped the butt of the Flag of Valor onto the stone floor of the boss chamber.
“This is the guild flag. As I’m guessing you already know, planting it on the ground like this provides four buffs to all guild members within fifty feet of the flag. It’s an extremely helpful item against bosses, but once registered to a guild, it can never be changed.”
My explanation was rather abbreviated, but even then, the ALS members were stunned into muttering for a third time. Some of them looked up at the pure white banner, clearly envisioning it dyed with the color and logo of the ALS.
But Kibaou had the presence of mind to hold steady. He snorted and got to the business at hand.
“Well, well, well. You got yer prize, just like a true beater. So, since you refuse to join any guild…whatcha gonna do with that thing?”
This was the centerpiece of the conversation.
I sucked in a deep breath, tensed my stomach, raised the guild flag—and slammed the butt against the ground with a crack.
“I am not opposed to leaving this flag in your care, Kibaou. However, I have two conditions.”
“Let’s hear ’em.”
“While there are two, I need only one to be satisfied. The first is if a future boss drops the same item. In that case, I will offer this flag freely to the guild that does not receive it, so that the ALS has one and the DKB has one.”
I heard cries of “When will that happen?” and “That’s just wasting time until then!” from the back. But Kibaou only nodded, prompting me to continue with a glance. I took another deep breath and delivered my second condition.
“Or if the ALS and DKB join forces to form a new guild. In that case, I will give you this flag instantly and without further requirements.”
Over three seconds of heavy silence passed.
It was torn to shreds by a cavalcade of bellowing voices.
“We…we can’t do that!!”
“Merge with those elitist pricks?! You’re joking!!”
“Go and suggest the same thing to them! They’ll tell you you’re crazy!!”
Two dozen angry men inched forward. At my side, Asuna grew noticeably stiffer. I continued to stand tall against the shouts, mentally measuring the distance to the staircase.
Just then, a high-pitched shriek cut through the rabble.
“I…I know the truth!! They’re not planning to give us the flag from the start!! They’re demanding the impossible from us so they can keep it and start their own guild!!”
That ugly, eardrum-piercing voice was familiar to me.
It was the voice that revealed I was a former beta tester in the first boss chamber.
The voice that suggested the Legend Braves’ scam had caused a fatality in the second boss chamber.
The voice that claimed Asuna and I were trying to monopolize the Elf War campaign quest in the third boss chamber.
Breaking through the crowd was the dagger user, whose name was Joe, I recalled. He wore a leather mask with holes for his eyes and mouth, which made him look ridiculous but also hid his facial features.
Joe pointed a finger at me, bent like a claw, and shouted, “We don’t gotta listen to their nonsense, Kiba! There’s only two of ’em! There are plenty of ways we can take that flag back!!”
Wait.
I’d heard that screeching voice somewhere else, too. Not in a big group like this…but in town, or the wilderness, or a dungeon…
Just as my mind was about to seize on some kernel of understanding, a deep, threatening voice growled, “You mean by force, Joe?”
“Exactly!! We got four full parties here, and there’s only two of ’em. It would be easy to…”
“You idiot!!” Kibaou thundered, grabbing Joe by the shirt. He lifted the smaller avatar and practically head-butted the leather mask. “Yeah, the info on the guild flag you brought us was accurate, but no matter how important it is, if we draw swords on another player, that makes us nothin’ but a buncha thugs and criminals! Sit yer ass down and think about why the ALS exists again!”
He thrust Joe away and turned back toward us, lowering his head despite the grimace on his features.
“Sorry about forcin’ you to hear that nonsense. As far as those conditions go…can I assume you’d tell the DKB the same things?”
“Uh…yes, of course.”
“Then I’ll let you hold the flag for now. Wouldn’t hold out hope for that merger, though.”
By Kibaou’s standards, it seemed like a rather easy resignation, but I suspected that it was just a sign that he, too, thought of the flag like an unstable bomb.
While not all of them looked entirely satisfied, the other members had no choice but to fall silent at their leader’s order. Joe glared at us briefly before returning to his position.
Kibaou crossed his arms again, puffed out his chest, and barked, “We’re goin’ back now! Nice work, y’all!” He started for the stairs leading down. I was in the process of putting the guild flag back into my inventory and looked up with a start at the spiky head.
“Actually, they should have activated the sixth-floor gate already, so if you want to return to Karluin, it might be faster that way.”
“I see.”
Kibaou spun around on his heel and headed for the spiral stairs instead. When he passed by me, I thought I saw his lips quietly form the word thanks, but that was probably my mind playing tricks on me.
It took a while for twenty-four sets of feet to disappear up the stairs. When silence arrived at last, I felt the tension within me finally snap, and I let out a long breath.
“Ahhh…Well, out of all the possible outcomes I considered, that was definitely one of the better ones. I still have to tell the DKB about this, but for now—nice work, Asuna. Let’s take a little rest and then…”
“Go back,” I was going to finish, but the words caught in my throat.
The fencer had been standing there and listening during the entire conversation with Kibaou, her presence regal and confident.
But now two tears trailed silently down her pale cheeks. They formed drops under her slender chin—glittering as they collected the light from the vast chamber—then fell, one and then the other.
“A…Asuna…?” I whispered, completely dumbfounded by why she would be crying.
There’d been some tension in the showdown with the ALS, but Kibaou had kept a cool head, so I’d never felt in danger for my life. The boss battle before that had been a much more terrifying ordeal. And Asuna had never raised a peep of conce
rn during the long fight, so why cry now?
Eventually my mind ran out of steam and went blank. She looked straight at me, not bothering to hide her tears. Despite the situation, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that those wet hazel-brown eyes were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in the world.
Her pale lips parted, vibrating the virtual air.
“Why…why…”
She clenched her eyes shut, dripping large orbs of fluid, then raised her voice.
“Why do you have to be talked to like that…? After how hard you worked…After you risked your life to fight for the sake of the group, for the sake of everyone trapped in here…After you bowed to them and apologized…Why do you deserve this?”
It took some time for those words, spoken in a voice like a tiny silver thread pulled to its absolute tautest, to form meaning in my head.
Asuna was crying for my sake.
But that understanding did not tell me how I should have reacted. Her wet cheeks scrunched up.
“This is wrong. They make their guilds, pull all their friends in, do whatever they want, bicker with each other…and you ran yourself ragged for their sake, only to get accused like that…It’s wrong. It’s absolutely wrong,” she protested, shaking her head. Asuna looked up at the ceiling and pursed her lips, helpless to stop the streaming tears.
Finally I succeeded in sucking in a breath. I took a step toward my partner and managed to put my thoughts into words.
“…That’s what I chose to happen. I chose not to join a group. I’m not fighting because I want people to recognize me…or praise me. As long as I can protect myself and those around me, the rest doesn’t matter to me.”
I had kept that ugly bit of ego hidden from Asuna all this time. I didn’t have a shred of dedication to others or self-sacrifice. The reason I avoided joining either of the two big guilds, and formed my own boss party, and nearly killed myself fighting, and apologized to the group afterward was for no other reason than my own survival.
“So…I don’t have the right to be recognized or praised. You don’t need to cry for…”
An impact against my right shoulder cut me off. Asuna was clenching her fist.
“I’m the one who decides who I should cry for!” she shouted, her face a mess. She used her other hand to rub at her eyes and attempted a smile. The hand still pressed against my shoulder opened up and grabbed the surface of my coat instead.
“In that case…I’ll be the one to praise you, Kirito. I’ll do whatever I can for you…whatever you say.”
Later—much, much, much later—Asuna would confide to me, “A part of me was worried about the possibility that you would say something really crazy,” with a gentle, beaming smile.
But at this moment, I wasn’t capable of saying anything crazy. The best I could do was offer her a very awkward smile.
“…Just you saying that is enough for me. I don’t want you to do anything for me…”
“Then, sit down!” she ordered abruptly, pushing hard. I gave in to her force and lowered myself to one knee.
Suddenly, her hand left my shoulder. It circled behind my head and pulled me against the light steel plate covering her chest.
Her left hand slowly, gently, tenderly stroked my hair. She repeated the motion over and over and over.
The softness of her hand. The scent like spring sunshine. The warmth of her body touching mine.
As I soaked in these sensations, I eventually came to the realization that tears were brimming in my own eyes.
The exhaustion that had set in over the fifty-five-day battle that had taken me from the first floor through the fifth.
And the support, healing, and courage that the fencer’s presence had brought me throughout that time.
These things kept me locked in place, submitting to Asuna’s embrace for a long, long time. And throughout, the movement of her hand never, ever stopped.
12
“TENNN, NIIINE, EEEIGHT, SEEEVEN…”
Karluin, main city of the fifth floor, rocked with the voices of over a thousand players chanting in unison.
“Siiix, fiiive, fooour, threeee…”
There was no screen showing the numbers or an MC leading the crowd through a mic, but the countdown continued in perfect harmony regardless.
“Twooo, ooone…”
A number of flames leaped up from the teleport gate at the center of town, toward the bottom of the floor above.
As the crowd chanted “Zero,” a huge circle of flowers bloomed in the dark sky.
The cheers of the players blended into the booming of the fireworks. Calls of “Happy New Year” and “Congratulations” echoed off the buildings, and several players celebrated the moment by firing colorful sword skills against walls here and there.
We were standing on the terrace of the ruined old castle on the east end of Karluin, which offered us a view of both the fireworks display and the celebration below. It was a hidden spot, so no one else would bother us. I was absorbed by the show of light and sound, but my partner nearby was not.
“Happy New Year, Kirito!” she bubbled, holding out a narrow glass with a smile.
“Happy New Year,” I replied, clinking it with my own glass. We drank the Champagne—if you could call it that; at the most it was bubbling golden wine—and shared a smile, then looked back into the sky over town.
“I didn’t realize they had fireworks…Where do they sell them, I wonder?” I murmured, squinting as I watched the colorful bursts. Asuna was on the fireworks team of the party-planning committee, so she had the answer.
“Liten told us there was a fishy item shop in a little corner of the Town of Beginnings. They spotted the fireworks there first, and that was what gave them the idea for the countdown party.”
“Oooh…I wonder if those fireworks cause damage if they hit a monster…” I suggested, which earned me the first look of exasperation of the year from Asuna.
“I’m sorry to inform you that they are only usable in town.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize…”
“More importantly, it’s almost over. Go on, watch those fireworks properly before they finish.”
At her suggestion, I looked over the town, where the highest number of flames yet were rising from the ground. Da-da-da-da-doom! They exploded at the same time the colorful flashes appeared, filling the night sky and sparkling like rain before they vanished. Another cheer rose from the town, and when it died down at last, I turned to Asuna.
“So it’s 2023…” I mumbled, trying to grapple with the concept that a new year had actually begun. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for two months…”
“Yeah. When I was hiding in that inn room in the Town of Beginnings, each day was like an eternity, but once I started helping out, they started passing in a blink.”
“Well, sure. When you start doing quests, raising skill levels, gathering ingredients, and so on, there aren’t enough hours in the day to manage it all. Still…”
I paused, and Asuna looked at me expectantly. I turned to the sky, which was dark again, gazed at the massive lid of steel and rock, and shook my head.
“…Just thinking, 2023’s going to be a very long year. We’ve got twelve whole months, after all.”
“Well, of course we do!”
She jabbed my shoulder, and I made an exaggerated display of falling over.
In all honesty, I was wondering how long we could maintain our current pace of advancement.
It took one week to beat the third floor. Six days for the fourth. And this floor took only four days to finish. But the reason that kind of power playing worked was because we were maintaining a margin safely above the recommended level for each area. Since the monsters were comparatively weak, we could cruise through quests and raise our skill levels and gather ingredients without stressing about it.
But that would not last forever. It would get harder and harder to maintain the safety margin, until the point that we were spending every wakin
g hour of the day farming monsters. And because we would need to fight tougher monsters for better experience gain, that would involve a heavy mental toll as well. By the time we got to the tenth floor, the spot where we ended the beta, the difficulty of beating each floor would be much worse than it was now.
But bringing that up now wouldn’t change a single thing about it.
The point was, we’d survived to see a new year. No doubt the news that the fifth floor had been beaten on the very day of the countdown party would be a huge morale boost. It gave the DKB a nasty surprise, but tomorrow—er, later today—I would join Shivata and Hafner in properly explaining the situation of the guild flag to them.
For now, I was going to enjoy the biggest festival ever held in Aincrad. That would help create energy to fuel our conquest of the next floor.
I started to pour a fresh glass of Champagne for myself, then realized the bottle was running low. I turned to Asuna, who was nibbling on some cheese, and said, “I’m going down to get a fresh bottle and some food. Wait for me here.”
“Thanks. Be careful.”
I waved at her and went back into the castle.
The terrace was a special hidden spot, but the front courtyard of the castle was the main party area, where Agil was set up as a food vendor. He had an assortment of specialty foods from all five floors available, so I charged through the castle, thinking excitedly about which items would give Asuna the creeps.
I raced down the steps from the fourth floor of the castle to the third and headed through a secret door down a dusty passage. Past a long row of pillars, I made my way to the main stairway of the castle.
Just then, I felt a powerful chill at the nape of my neck. I instinctively leaped sideways, but a sharp object pressed against my back, through my coat.
Someone hiding in the shadows of the pillars had jabbed the point of a blade against my back.
This was not a prank from a familiar person. If this individual had been hiding for fun, even swept away by the celebratory mood as I was, I would have noticed. The mystery person had been concealed with the Hiding skill…one proficient enough that even my Search skill did not detect it.
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