I stared silently at the blue-tinged stone door.
It was the end point of the spiral staircase that connected the fourth floor of Aincrad to the lair of the third-floor boss monster. Through this door was the virgin territory of the fourth floor. As a front-runner among the game’s population, being the first to venture into new, unspoiled lands was supposed to be one of my greatest joys.
But just three steps from the final landing, I stopped still. After a few dozen seconds, my brown-haired fencer companion grew tired of waiting on the next step up.
“So how long are you going to just stand there? You’ve spent enough time examining the carved relief on the door. Or are you afraid because it’s the fourth floor?”
Just before that question could pass straight from my right ear through to the left, my brain latched onto it, and I turned to look at her.
“...What do you mean, because it’s the fourth floor?”
The fencer looked down at me with half-irritation and half-mischief in her eyes.
“You know how some people are. They don’t want a room on the thirteenth floor of the hotel or the fourth because it’s associated with death. Are you one of them?”
I finally understood what she was saying and quickly shook my head. “N-no way. Look at this all-black outfit. Would I really wear this color if I believed in omens and stuff like that?”
“Well, why are you just standing there, then?”
“Um, because...” I mumbled, looking to the massive door again.
The ten-foot-tall double door was carved with detailed reliefs. The designs were different for each and every floor and typically made some reference to the theme or story of the floor to which they led. For example, there was a bull’s-head relief on the door before the second floor, which was commonly known as the “Cow Floor.” The door to the “Forest and Elf Floor” depicted two knights dueling beneath a massive tree.
In the center of the massive door before me now was a carving of a traveler rowing a small boat that looked like a gondola.
“Is there something about that picture? Didn’t you see this in the beta test?” she asked, her irritation rising to 60 percent now. I slowly shook my head.
“No...not this. I saw the door, all right...but not this relief.” “Huh? What do you mean?”
“The picture's different. In the beta, it was a traveler wandering through a desert canyon. But in this one, he’s on a boat...”
She tilted her head in confusion. Her long hair shook, scattering pale light in the dim stairway hall.
“What was the fourth floor like in the beta?”
“Um...the entire floor was a crisscrossing web of canyons that were sandy at the bottom, and you had no choice but to travel through those canyons, only the sand made it really hard to walk.”
“Hmm...Sounds appropriate for the picture of the man in the desert canyon. So if the picture’s been changed, then...”
She continued up to the top of the stairs and put her hand on the gondola relief at the center of the door, then pushed.
With a heavy thunk, the two halves of the massive stone door began to part to the sides. I quickly raced up the stairs to draw even with the fencer.
As the doors opened ever so slowly, brilliant afternoon light flooded out, blinding me with pure white. I squinted to shut out the glare, but I heard the sound before my vision returned.
It sounded like a low, deep roiling and a high-pitched leaping intertwined.
Water.
When my eyes had finished adjusting to the level of light, I found not the dried-out canyons I remembered, but a fierce, rushing mountain stream.
A hand clapped me on the shoulder.
“Well, that’s that,” said the fencer, sounding proud for some reason.
1
1:32 PM on Wednesday, December 21, 2022.
After a few minutes lost in discussion before passing through the door, I–Kirito the level-16 swordsman–and my temporary partner, Asuna the level-15 fencer, were the first in the entire game to set foot on the fourth floor of the floating castle Aincrad.
If the fourth floor of the game at the point of the beta test had a theme, it would be “desert canyons.” As I’d explained to Asuna, the entire map of the floor was a spider web of narrow intersecting canyons that were impossible to scale, meaning that all travel had to go through those canyons, which were slow and tedious to traverse, not to mention easy to get lost within.
But what I saw couldn’t have been more different from what I remembered.
The pavilion into which the staircase exited was at the top of a steep hill. The terrain itself looked the same as what it had been before, but the gravelly, reddish-brown land was now covered in lush greenery. I looked in all directions around the wall-less pavilion and saw only a single tree growing behind us and no monsters or NPCs in sight.
The hill, about ninety feet across, was surrounded by cliffs that loomed over the nearby area, but two slender paths heading to the southeast and southwest led to separate canyons. Water rushed vigorously from the southwest canyon and circled around the hill until it eventually left via the southeast canyon. In other words, what had once been a simple hill was now effectively an island.
We were already painfully aware that the retail version of Sword Art Online, which its creator Akihiko Kayaba had turned into a deadly, inescapable trap, was different from the beta test in many ways. But nothing had changed the look of the terrain in such a dramatic way before. It was not the desert canyon floor anymore.
In fact, the canyons were the only means of getting out of this area during the beta. If they were now filled with rushing white-water rapids, that meant–
“So how long are you going to stand there?” Asuna asked, jabbing me with an elbow. I recovered from the mental stun effect and apologized to my partner.
“Er...my bad. I was spacing out.”
“I wasn’t asking for an apology, but there are plenty of people waiting for us to reach the main city and activate the teleporter.”
“Oh, right. Well...first, we should inform Argo that we defeated the boss.”
Nerius the Evil Treant, the tree-shaped boss of the third floor, had been dispatched without a single casualty just twenty minutes before, but there was no way to send an instant message from within a dungeon, so no one aside from the members of the raid party knew that the boss was dead. As we were the first to reach the next floor and exit the dungeon, we needed to inform Argo the Rat, the game’s preeminent information agent, that the boss was dead, so the rest of the population could be informed.
I raised my hand to open my game window, but Asuna caught it.
“I already contacted her while you were off in la-la land.”
“Ah, th-thanks. Very considerate of you...”
“Now let’s get going to that main city. Whether there’s water in the canyons or not, the route is still the same as before, right?”
“Um, well...I think so...”
“Then lead the way!”
She slapped me on the back, and I had no choice but to proceed.
We left the stone pavilion and headed down the damp, mossy south face of the hill. I stopped at the edge of the water and watched it race by.
The stream itself was very clear, which meant I could see all the way down to the white sand at the bottom of the waterway, but it was quite deep. By eye, I judged it to be at least six feet, if not more. There was no way for us to walk through it.
Asuna stopped next to me and looked into the river as well, then seemed to understand my consternation at last.
“Wait...why is it so deep? We can’t cross to the other side like this.”
“That’s right...In fact, I don’t th
ink there is an other side.”
“...What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. In the beta, these canyons were the only way to get to the towns and dungeons on the floor. I bet they’re all deep rivers at this point–the entire floor.”
The fencer’s brow furrowed deeper.
“Meaning...there’s no path at all now?”
“Indeed.”
When I realized this fact at the top of the hill, I took a good three minutes to think over the challenge ahead of us, but Asuna required only five seconds to get her head in gear again. She glanced around.
“What’s it like on top of those cliffs?”
I followed her gaze to the sheer walls that surrounded the circular hill. The gleaming wet rock proceeded vertically upward for at least ninety feet, the top of the cliff shrouded in white mist.
“I don’t know. Nobody was able to climb it in the beta.”
“So it’s basically a system-designated barrier?”
“Not explicitly, but the rock was too fragile–everyone fell down partway, including me. And once you fell from above the halfway point, pretty much every landing was fatal.”
“...That sounds too dangerous to test out, even if the landing below is in water now,” Asuna murmured. I nodded silently. No one was going to risk their lives for a trial-and-error attempt at scaling those cliffs.
Next, she looked down into the water again.
“Then I suppose our only option is to swim the river.”
I couldn’t immediately agree. I glanced at her equipment of dark red hooded cape over breastplate and leather skirt.
“Um...have you ever swum here in SAO, Asuna?”
She covered her body with her left arm for some odd reason and shook her head.
“N-no.”
“I see. Then let me just explain that the way you use your body to swim in SAO is completely different from real life. It takes a lot of practice to be able to swim properly, and even practice doesn’t prevent the danger of drowning.”
“What happens...If you drown?” she asked, her face tense. My answer was simple.
“When your body is submerged in water above the head, your HP begin dropping. So if you don’t emerge from the surface of the water, you die.”
Even after that, Asuna did nothing more than bite her lip. She glanced at the blue water again and summoned her courage.
“How much practice are we talking about?”
“Well...It depends on the person, but it took me over an hour. And that was in the shallows, just three feet deep. It’s too dangerous to practice in a deep, rushing river like this.”
“I see...In that case, we should go back to an earlier floor and find a safe place to practice, I suppose,” she muttered, looking down. I was still searching for the right answer when she nodded and continued.
“Let’s do this, then. You swim from here for the main town. I’ll take the stairs back down to the third floor. I recall the perfect lake on the north side of the floor that I can use to practice. Once I’m ready, I’ll use the teleport gate to the fourth floor. That means the party breaks up for a bit,” she chattered, faster than her usual speed, and raised her hand for the menu screen.
This time it was my turn to grab her arm.
Her hazel-colored eyes stared right back at me. The reflection of the light off the surface of the river danced against her pupils, hiding the emotion within them.
Even a complete idiot like me, when it came to personal communication, could see that Asuna would refuse an offer to go back together and help her practice. The proud fencer would refuse to accept the idea of the teleport gate being late to open on her account. It would probably be useless to point out that if we didn’t do it, Lind or Kibaou would activate the teleporter or that it would automatically turn on two hours after the third-floor boss’s defeat.
Instead, I finally put the feeling of wrongness I’d been grappling with since seeing the fourth floor’s dramatic change into words.
“Umm...I don’t think I like that.”
“...What about it?” she asked quietly. I looked away toward the flowing river.
“Like I said earlier, swimming in SAO is quite dangerous. And now that dying is permanent, it’s insane to imagine that they would just toss us into a map that requires you to swim to advance. We must have missed something. Maybe there’s not another path, but some kind of insurance, a backup method somewhere on this island...”
By the end I was more talking to myself than anything. I looked up at the island behind us. The circular hill, barely ninety feet across, had no other monsters or NPCs on it. The only objects of any interest were the pavilion that housed the staircase and the deciduous tree at the north end beyond it...
“...Hmm?”
My eyes shot back about six feet in the previous direction. I squinted and glared at the spot that caught my attention.
“What is it?” Asuna asked, looking curious. I took a step up the hill, then another, still holding on to her hand. As soon as I was certain of what I saw, I took off running at full speed.
“Whobful!”
I dragged her straight up the side of the hill, as she blurted out what was probably supposed to be “Whoa, be careful!” I rounded the pavilion and stood at the root of the large tree, looking up at the branches far above.
“See that?”
I removed my grip on her hand to point up above. She pointedly took her time to straighten her skirt before indulging my request, and her grumpy expression got about 20 percent brighter.
“Oh, it’s growing fruit. And they look so cute!”
As she noted, near the top of the broadleaf tree hung a number of small fruit in a variety of colors. Most striking of all was their shape, which was circular with a hole in the middle–essentially, donuts. Even in the beta test, I had never seen a fruit shaped like that.
But the pale smile on Asuna’s lips disappeared just as quickly as it formed.
“They look tasty...but this isn’t time to be enjoying a snack. Lind’s group will be done divvying up their items soon. If we need to practice our swimming to get to the main city, we ought to go and let them know before they come all the way up here...”
“Let’s try knocking down some of the fruit first,” I said, reaching up with both hands to grab a branch that was a good foot and a half around. I lowered my waist and tensed my legs, using all of my strength in an attempt to shake the branch. The tree didn’t budge an inch, and needless to say, none of the fruit fell.
The bark of the tree was smooth and sleek, and without the Acrobatics skill, there was no way for me to climb it. I thought about tossing a pebble, but without the Throwing Knives skill, I wouldn’t be able to hit it.
“Argh, if only I had three...no, five more skill slots!”
It was a desire that every player in SAO felt. I smacked the branch with my balled-up fist in frustration. Somehow, the basic martial arts technique Flash Blow activated, and my fist glowed red as it struck the branch. The resulting shock wave set the entire massive tree rattling.
“...Ah.”
Asuna grunted and two of the donut-like fruit fell without a sound. I caught one in each hand and smiled confidently, trying to hide the fact that it was nothing more than a lucky coincidence.
She sighed exasperatedly and shrugged.
“Okay, fine, it turned out all right, but what if you’d broken the tree in half? We’re still technically part of the Dark Elf team, so we have to respect nature.”
“Of course. Sorry...”
I thought of the Dark Elf knight Kizmel, who was somewhere out there on this floor. Was she stuck like us now that the canyons were rivers? Or was she using her elven magic to walk on the surface of the water?
Asuna was quiet for a time just like me, thinking about Kizmel, but she came back to her senses quicker.
“So what’s the plan with the donut fruit? If we’re eating them, I’d prefer the yellow one.”
One of the fruits in my hand
s was a brilliant cobalt blue, while the other was a pale lemon yellow. The blue one did not pique my hunger in the least, but fortunately, eating them wasn’t the plan.
“I don’t think these are meant to be shaped like donuts.”
“...What are they shaped like, then?”
Rather than answering her, I brought the blue one up to my mouth. Asuna made a face like, I knew you were eating it, but I shot her a look of warning and popped the fruit’s stem, a small protuberance half an inch long, into my mouth.
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and blew as hard as I could into the tube stem. There was a powerful resistance at first, but then, as though a valve had opened, the air flooded into the fruit.
Bomp! The blue fruit instantly erupted into a much larger size.
The three-inch-wide fruit suddenly measured a good three feet. It was no longer a donut.
“Y-you mean...It’s an...Inner tube?” Asuna marveled. I grinned and handed her the yellow fruit.
“Try it out, Asuna.”
“Um...okay,” she replied, and popped the stem into her pursed lips. She sucked in a deep, arching breath and closed her eyes to blow.
There was another high-pitched pop, and an inner tube appeared. Her surprise at how light it was for its size caused her to bobble it, and she jogged along, batting it up into the air like a volleyball before she could grab it tight with both hands.
“Good grief...I do not know what’s going on here,” she sighed.
“You don’t know,” I replied on instinct before I could stop myself. A gaze well below the freezing point pierced the spot between my eyebrows.
“You were the one who said they weren’t donuts,” she snapped. “If you want to stand around cracking jokes, feel free to go do some stand-up at the teleport gate plaza.”
“Wait...you mean you’ll be my comedy partner?”
“Of course not!! Why not team up with Kibaou?!”
For an instant, I imagined myself onstage with Kibaou, who cut into me with a fierce “Whaddaya mean?!” I quickly shook my head to clear the thought.
“Uh...no, thanks.”
I brought up my menu to check the time. Fifteen minutes had already passed since we emerged on the fourth floor, thirty-five since the boss was killed.
Sword Art Online Progressive Page 1
