Sword Art Online Progressive 4

by Reki Kawahara

  I felt the person’s face approach my frozen ear. It breathed softly and whispered,

  “It’s showtime.”

  It was a cold, deep voice, one I’d never heard before. It had more inflection than was necessary, yet there was not a hint of emotion in it.

  “…Who are you?” I demanded in a rasping voice, measuring the timing it would take me to leap away. But the pressure of the point against my back increased only a bit.

  “Whoopsie—stay still, now. Wouldn’t want you to move and get stabbed by my knife.”

  The only person I could imagine doing such a thing to me was Morte, the duel PKer whom I already had a history with. But this voice and the way it spoke was utterly different from his.

  I contained my breathing and whispered back, “We’re in town. You can’t threaten me with that thing here.”

  I was absolutely certain of that fact.

  But the mugger at my back ruled that defense out.

  “Come on, Blackie, get it right. Only the front courtyard of the castle is in town. The interior is a dungeon, remember?”

  “Wha…?”

  I fell silent, frantically searching through my memory.

  There were indeed a number of quests set around this ruined castle, and the secret doors here and there made it like a dungeon. But there weren’t any monsters—plus, there was no OUTSIDE FIELD notice when I entered the castle.

  But it was also true that Karluin was more vague than normal when it came to the boundary between the safe and unsafe areas. I couldn’t deny the possibility that I was so carried away with the party atmosphere that I simply missed the message.

  But even then…

  “This isn’t the real world. That’s just one knife. Even an ultra-powerful boss drop wouldn’t have enough power to wipe out my HP with one hit. And it would make you an orange player…You don’t think I’d just stand there and take it, do you?”

  “Oooh, very brave of you. Sure, it won’t do much HP damage…but what if I told you this blade has level-five paralyzing venom and level-five damaging poison applied to it?”

  “…!!”

  The fierce point of the weapon poked me twice again, teasing now.

  It was impossible. Even monsters were using only level-2 poison at this stage, and the poisons a player could make with the Mixing skill were only level 1, due to the materials available. But that was all I knew from the beta…and I’d been shown time and time again that my memory did not guarantee anything in Aincrad anymore.

  If his threat was true, then I would collapse on the spot for at least ten minutes if I was pricked, plenty of time for my HP to run out.

  I sucked a tiny breath into my stiffening chest and expelled it in words.

  “…What do you want?”

  The voice chuckled just behind my ear. It was a theatrical laugh; quite joyful by the sound of it, yet clearly containing no true emotion within it.

  “Isn’t that obvious, bro? I want to have fun.”

  “Fun…?”

  “That’s right; I wanna have a good time. They built this incredible stage for us, you know? I want to throw a wrench into the works and really make it dramatic.”

  After that statement, I finally understood who the man standing behind me was.

  I didn’t know his name or face, of course. But I knew him.

  “You’re…Morte’s boss. The one who taught the Legend Braves about the upgrade scam, and the one trying to making the ALS and DKB fight…The Man in the Black Poncho,” I accused, voice rasping. He whistled in admiration.

  “Ooh, I like that nickname…nice John Wayne Gacy vibe to it. So…shall we find somewhere else to go?”

  “…Where do you intend to take me?”

  “Underground, of course. Killers always go down in the basement, right?”

  There was indeed an underground floor in this castle. It would all be over if I went there. No one would hear my screams. And the basement had monsters in it—that was unquestionably out of the safe haven. It would be suicidal to do as he said, but given that I couldn’t rule out the level-5 poisons on his knife, I had no choice but to obey…

  …No.

  If he really had level-5 paralysis at his command, he didn’t need to threaten and order me around. He could just poke me with it and carry me anywhere he wanted. It would be easy to drag my body into the basement.

  The paralysis was a bluff.

  And I guessed—no, I knew—we weren’t out of town.

  Morte and this man were PKers using provocation. The one tool someone used to provoke others was language. He was trying to convince me that I was already in a dangerous area to make me move to a place that actually was.

  “…Got it,” I said, and stepped forward.

  The moment a tiny space opened between my back and the tip of the knife, I leaped back hard. The knife slammed into my back, of course, the sharp tip tearing through the leather coat and shirt, then—

  —Filling the hallway with a purple flash. A shock hit my back. The Anti-Criminal Code kicked in, generating an automatic wall that pushed me and the knife apart.

  “Shit!” the man swore. I held strong against the impact and pulled my sword free as I spun around.

  “Raaaah!”

  I unleashed the Slant sword skill. It wouldn’t damage my opponent, of course, but my intention was to temporarily pause him with the knockback effect and hopefully alert Agil’s group in the courtyard below with the flash and sound.

  I caught sight of a black figure attempting to leap away.

  It was quite tall. The thin body was shrouded in a black, hooded short coat that shone with a reflective finish—a poncho. I couldn’t see the face under the hood, but there were black curls at the base of his neck.

  My system-accelerated blade bore down on his breast. If I could force him to fall over, I could keep him in a pseudo-stunned state by continually hitting him with sword skills.

  But the man’s airborne body retreated with impossible speed for a jump, and my sword hit only empty air.

  “Not done yet—!”

  I drew back my blade for the charging skill Rage Spike, hoping to time it for when he landed. The poncho man had to have a very high Acrobatics skill, but even he couldn’t jump back faster than a charging skill.

  The moment I lurched forward on my left foot and broke out of the post-skill delay, my sword began to glow brightly.

  But once again, the man in the poncho betrayed my expectations.

  Right before he landed, he tossed a small sphere onto the ground. It exploded on impact, throwing up a thick black smoke that filled the hallway.

  A smoke screen?!

  I had never seen that item in SAO, either now or in the beta, but I executed the sword skill anyway, in the direction I expected my adversary to be.

  The special metallic sound unique to charging skills rang out, and the sharp tip of the Sword of Eventide ripped through the smoke. I felt it graze something, and there was a small flash of that purple system effect again.

  That was all. When I landed, I slipped out of the smoke and quickly scanned my surroundings.

  But the man in the black poncho was nowhere to be seen. I tried to make full use of my Search skill, concentrating hard on my vision and hearing, but I caught neither moving shadow nor footstep.

  “…Until we meet again, Blackie.”

  I turned around in the direction I thought I heard the message come from, but the clearing smoke sitting in the dim hallway just mocked my solitude. I ground my teeth together, realizing I hadn’t even caught sight of his face—but then I spotted something.

  A midsized knife, lying on the ground on the side of the hall.

  I walked over to pick it up. It was all black with a simple design, but even in my level-19 hands—I’d gained a level in the boss fight—it felt quite heavy.

  I tossed the nonpoisoned weapon into my inventory, then realized I shouldn’t be hanging around. The man might not have been acting alone. Morte, the other cloake
d man in the catacombs, or even more companions could be lurking around any corner.

  “…Asuna,” I muttered, and turned around to sprint at full speed.

  What if they used the same methods to lure Asuna out into the open?

  In terms of power, she was in no way inferior to Morte, but she didn’t know much about PvP combat yet. She asked for instruction when we first got to this floor but had backed down at the last moment. She wouldn’t be able to handle these tricksters and their unpredictable ways.

  I raced back up the hallway, used a switch in the little dead-end room to open a secret door, then took the stairs up to the fourth floor, three steps at a time. All that was left was to spring down the hall and make a hard turn onto the terrace.

  “Asuna!!” I bellowed. The fencer turned away from her view of the bustling town and looked back at me in surprise.

  “Wh…what’s the matter, Kirito?”

  “…”

  In the moment, I had no answer. I just stood in the doorway to the terrace for a while before walking over to her.

  “H-hey, what are you—”

  I held out my arms, circled them around her slender body, and pulled her close.

  Only when I felt the warmth and pressure of her avatar, her body, did I exhale with relief. In the morning, I would give her a proper dueling lesson this time. For now, I just held her close to me.

  After a while, she moved her hands and patted my back, like I was a child.

  Her gentle whisper sounded in my ear.

  “Will you let go now? I’m going to hit you with a sword skill.”

  “Ah…uhmm…this area might be outside of town…?”

  “Of—course—it’s—in—town!!”

  Her left hook slammed into my gut, resulting in a heavy shock wave and a shower of purple sparks.

  (End)

  AFTERWORD

  Thank you for reading the fourth volume of Sword Art Online Progressive, “Scherzo of Deep Night.”

  Since I started the SAOP series by calling the first-floor story “Aria of a Starless Night,” I have named the various subtitles after the names of musical pieces. The “Scherzo” of the fifth floor means “joke” or “jest,” and refers to a piece of music that is fast and playful. There is a very famous scherzo called “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” You might have heard it in the Disney animated film Fantasia, but I personally feel that this song is well suited to the PK gang Laughing Coffin…The “Deep Night” descriptor was an attempt to represent the general mood of the fifth floor, but looking at it now, it comes across as rather juvenile (laughs).

  Anyways. In each volume of SAOP, I try to operate on a general theme. The theme of Volume 4 would be “the squirming of Laughing Coffin,” while the hidden theme would be “Kirito and Asuna’s relationship.” I intended to depict the plotting of Laughing Coffin (their name has not yet appeared in the story, of course), who will emerge from obscurity to lead a long, long fight against Kirito—while on the other hand, attempting to show the current relationship status of Asuna and Kirito, who have been temporary partners up through the fifth floor now. That was how the first half of this volume ended up being from Asuna’s viewpoint. As a matter of fact, I have a difficult time writing Kirito from the eyes of other characters (he tends to end up looking cooler than necessary), but I feel like Asuna provides the most natural view of him. Of course, he does inevitably end up preening here and there.

  In Kirito’s half of the story, I really delved into the boss fight for the first time since the second floor. I tried depicting not just a bunch of attack patterns, but the boss chamber’s tricks itself, and just coming up with the ideas really took it out of me (laughs). The designers who come up with real bosses in MMOs and the programmers who implement them into the game are something else, I tell you…Instead, you got the fifth-floor boss from the mind of an amateur; I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

  To my poor editor Mr. Miki and illustrator abec, who suffered through the most exquisitely terrible scheduling in Kawahara history, my deepest apologies! Mr. Miki’s own book comes out in Japan on December 10, the same day as this volume, and abec’s SAO art book will be released in January 2016! Please check them out if you get the chance!!

  Reki Kawahara—November 2015