We ran across several crabs and turtles and such on the trip back, but the Tilnel's Burning Charge–as I liked to call it–made easy work of them, and we escaped the dungeon at last.
The moment we left the cave for the black predawn river, the quest log dinged to alert us to an update.
I kept one hand on the oar while I called up the window. The new instruction said to alert the appropriate person of the information gained.
Asuna read the same instruction as she watched the space ahead of the gondola. She turned back and asked, “When it says ‘appropriate person,’ does that mean Mr. Romolo?”
“Maybe, but the previous instructions always called him the ‘shipwright,’ so maybe not...”
“Someone important at the Water Carriers Guild, then?” “Hmm. Something tells me they wouldn’t have a very friendly reaction to us...”
“Well, who, then?”
“Let’s figure that out once we get back to town,” I suggested. Asuna accepted, although reluctantly. She started to face forward but turned back to add, “Oh, right. Do you want to change inns? The place next to the teleport gate wasn’t bad, but I don’t want another ruckus raised at that dock.”
“Oh, good point. We can look for someplace a little more out of the way. Plus, we need to let the blue team and green team know about the quest soon,” I murmured, then stopped in my tracks.
If Lind and Kibaou managed to build their ships and finish the quest, great. But what if they kept going like we were now? What if they heard out Romolo’s story, spotted and followed the mysterious ship back to the submerged dungeon, then snuck into the Fallen Elf hideout...and just so happened to get in a battle with General N’ltzahh and his men? I trusted in Lind and Kibaou’s strength, but could they really tackle the general, who might be as powerful as a floor boss, without suffering any fatalities?
I thought back to N’ltzahh’s pitch-black cursor and trembled. No, defeat was certain if that event ended in battle. Perhaps there was a built-in failure prevention aspect, such as with the battle between the Dark Elf and Forest Elf champions at the start of the “Jade Key” quest on the third floor. But if not, that could result in the death of a full party of six.
“Maybe we should discuss with Argo first about how much info to reveal,” I murmured, rowing slowly. Up ahead, the looming sight of Rovia’s south gate came into view.
We ended up picking out a tiny inn in the corner of the southwest quadrant for our new base of operations, our choice clinched by the small shack we could use to keep the gondola inside. We collapsed in one of the two rooms we rented, me in the rocking chair and Asuna on the bed.
After sharing a long, luxurious sigh, I lazily lifted a finger to return my weapon and armor to storage. It was three thirty in the morning. We made it back earlier than the previous day, but the ten hours of adventuring threatened to shut off my brain with fatigue.
I couldn’t sleep now, though. I needed to put together the information while it was still fresh in my mind, and besides, this was Asuna’s room, not mine.
“Well, let’s start with the wooden boxes,” I began, stifling a yawn. Asuna didn’t respond. I sat up and looked over at the bed. She was lying face down with her face stuffed into the pillow, entirely still. Her menu window was still displayed right above the pillow, too.
For someone who complained about not being able to sleep, she’s doing a good job of it now, I thought. I got up from the rocking chair and stood next to the bed.
“Hey, you left your window open,” I called out, softly shaking her shoulder. She didn’t wake up. The window was set to private mode by default, so it was just a blank board to me, but it still felt a little careless.
“Miss Asuna, wake uuup.”
No response. If I kept shaking, she was going to get another harassment notice. Speaking of which, I needed to figure out what was up with the warning order. But for now, it was more important to get her to close her menu.
After thinking it over for a bit, I picked up her right hand from its spot splayed out on the bed. The main menu would disappear with a good, long flick from the top, so I moved her finger to the right spot and pulled down. On the third try, it took for good, and the window disappeared. I set her hand back down at once with relief.
“We can have the meeting later. Good night,” I murmured, and left the room as quietly as I could.
6
3:00 PM, Saturday, December 24–The next day.
I was really getting used to controlling the Tilnel and wound the oar around adeptly, exclaiming in wonder.
“You know...It’s truly impressive, how much you built...”
A gravelly, deep voice came from the midsize boat moored just to the right.
“Ha-ha! You should have seen the Bear Forest yesterday. We had two axmen with us, so the material gathering didn’t take long at all. Then again, we focused on the normal wood, so it’s nothing to brag about.”
The voice belonged to a large man with a shaved bald head and short beard stubble. He’d been practicing his ship steering until late in the night, so his oarsmanship was quite impressive.
“So you didn’t have to line up at the old man’s place, then?”
“Nope. We were the first there after the guide came out. Boy, the DKB didn’t like it when they showed up second, five minutes later. You were the ones who collected that data, right? I gotta thank you for that.”
“N-nah, no big deal,” I mumbled, feeling guilty about the fact that we were still covering up half of the quest-related info. He smirked at me knowingly.
The man’s name was Agil, and he was the leader of a four-man party that maintained a neutral position among the frontline players between the twin powers of the Dragon Knights Brigade and Aincrad Liberation Squad guilds.
He and his three companions with their double-handed heavy weapons sat in a midsize gondola painted a calm brown shade. Due to the haste of their construction, the boat didn’t have any options such as the battering horn, but the passengers’ imposing weapons seemed capable of making up for that. The name Pequod was written in black ink along the side.
I didn’t recognize the source of that name, but Asuna in her red hood noticed it at once.
“The Pequod isn’t a very optimistic name for a boat like that.”
Agil roared with laughter, and one of his companions bearing a two-handed hammer grumbled, “That’s what we told him.”
Asuna noticed the giant question mark hanging over my head and turned around to explain.
“The Pequod was the name of Captain Ahab’s ship. It gets sunk by Moby Dick in the end.”
“I-I see...And why did you choose that name?” I asked the bald man, who grinned again.
“Think of it this way: It can’t sink until we fight that big white whale, right? And from what I hear, you don’t fight a whale here, but a turtle.” He pointed a thick finger ahead.
The Tilnel and Pequod were moored at the entrance to a caldera lake just north of the center of the fourth floor. The pure blue lake, over three hundred yards across and surrounded by sheer cliffs, had to be passed to reach the south half of the floor. In other words, we were waiting here to take part in a battle against the field boss who guarded the path ahead.
In the beta test, this was the mouth of a volcano with red glowing magma bubbling up from cracks in the earth. It was many times more beautiful now that it was filled with water, but I was uneasy about fighting a boss on a boat. After all, if the player steering the boat fell into the water, it could no longer be maneuvered.
The crashing of a gong interrupted my thoughts. The sound was coming from one of the many other boats that I had praised just moments earlier.
Ahead and to the right of the Tilnel were three gondolas pointed away from us, their bodies painted blue with white trim. The one in the center was a ten-seater, the largest kind Romolo could make. The other two were four-seaters like Agil’s. Each one had an extra space for a gondolier, so in all, they could carry twenty-one. A
s the blue color suggested, they belonged to the Dragon Knights Brigade.
On the left were three more gondolas, the bodies moss green, with the broadsides dark gray. Each of the three were sized for six, once again totaling twenty-one when boatmen were added. These were the ships of the green-themed Aincrad Liberation Squad.
On the third floor, each guild had numbered eighteen, so they must have both picked up three more over the course of this floor. If I didn’t get a registry from Argo soon, I wouldn’t be able to keep track of their faces and names anymore. I searched closely for Morte, the mysterious swordsman/axman who I’d dueled against in the dead of night, but his trademark coif was nowhere to be seen.
Even with all the available manpower they had, it was incredible that both guilds had managed three gondolas each in the span of a single day. It took three hours to build one boat, so the final one must have been finished just barely before our meeting time. NPC or not, old man Romolo must have been exhausted from working around the clock.
The clanging of the gong was coming from the DKB mother ship, the largest present. The gong right at the prow must have been an option for the larger size. The ALS looked on with distaste at what they hadn’t been able to procure, as Lind held up a hand to stop the gong and address the crowd.
“It’s time! We are about to begin our battle against the Biceps Archelon, field boss of the fourth floor! None of us have any experience with a major water battle aboard ships, but there’s nothing to fear! As you’ve seen in fighting ordinary monsters, their attacks are almost entirely absorbed by our ships!”
Easy for you to say, in that giant cruise ship, I grumbled mentally. He raised his right hand high in the air and clenched it into a fist.
“As I explained in our prebattle meeting, the Archelon’s attacks are quite simple! As long as we watch out for the direction its two heads are facing, we can avoid taking any charges! We will use this gong to signal the timing of evasion, so please keep an ear out for it!”
And we were the ones who found out that info for you, I grumbled again. Naturally, there was a price for sneaking ahead of everyone to get our ship first, so as a member of this community, I supposed it was my duty to scout ahead and learn what I could.
I figured they might as well saddle us with the duty of charging front and center in the fight, but that role went to the DKB and ALS. In this fight, the minor parties–Asuna and I and Agil’s group–had to attack the boss’s sides, which were virtually impervious thanks to the creature’s thick shell.
“Let’s move out! Take formation when the boss appears! Dragon Knights fleet, forward!!” Lind cried, swinging his arm forward. The DKB mother ship Leviathan and its two escorts began to move. Kibaou growled to his guildmates on the left side, not wanting to be left behind.
“C’mon, let’s get goin’! All ships at top speed, Liberation Squad!!”
With an “Aye-aye, sir,” the helmsman of the Unleash rowed onward, and their consorts joined in.
“Welp...guess we should get going,” I said lifelessly, while Agil smirked and thrust out a heavy fist.
“Let’s show ’em that we’re not playing second fiddle here!”
His trio of teammates roared in approval, and Asuna nodded with serious intent. It wouldn’t do for me to be left out of the group, so I lamely raised my hand and joined in the cheer.
*
The field boss of the fourth dungeon was a huge water monster named Biceps Archelon, and true to the name, it was an ancient, two-headed turtle. It had three attacks: a bite attack from both heads, a watery smack from its side fins, and a charge making use of its sixty-foot length.
As Lind had reassured us, the bite and fin attacks weren’t that powerful, so letting the ship absorb the damage if necessary was a valid option. The charge attack was the real problem, and it would probably be enough to capsize our ships if it struck true.
According to Lind’s report, a capsized boat recovered automatically after thirty seconds, but until then, the crew had no choice but to cling to it, leaving them vulnerable to the bites and fin slaps.
Fortunately, a few seconds before it started one of its massive charges, both heads would point in the same direction. If we watched for that motion and made sure to avoid their line of sight, it shouldn’t be hard to avoid the charge.
Bwong, bwong! The Leviathans gong crashed, and Lind shouted.
“Evade!”
Up ahead, four gondolas split left and right from their position directly before the Archelon. We were on the left flank of the turtle, but I backed up the Tilnel just in case.
A moment later, the draconic heads of the Archelon rose high in the air, and its sixty-foot-long bulk tore forward.
Spray showered down on us, and the waves in the wake of its passing rocked the boat. I stood the oar up to balance against the rocking so I could look around; none of the other ships had capsized. The boss’s HP gauge was nearly halfway gone, and at this rate, the battle would be over in less than twenty minutes.
I sent the gondola after the Archelon’s new location, and Asuna turned back to me, rapier in her hand.
“Hey, what kind of boss was here in the beta?”
“Well...It was still a turtle, but more of a giant tortoise. Very tough but slow, and I don’t remember us having much trouble.”
“Hmm...so I suppose it must have gotten an update along with everything else when they decided to soak this level in water.”
“Well, of course. I mean, it’s to be expected–all the doors to the buildings in town were on the second floor to start with...Whoa!”
One of the ALS’s six-man gondolas raced past, knocking the tiny Tilnel off-balance. As they passed us, the riders left us a heartwarming message: “Even the great beater ain’t gonna win the LA today!”
After it left, Asuna stomped her foot in indignation.
“What’s the big idea? This formation was their idea to begin with.”
“Now, now. As long as we stay to the side, we don’t have to worry about the boat getting damaged,” I said soothingly, moving us back into position at the Archelon’s left flank.
The attacks and the damage caused were fiercest at the heads, where the DKB and ALS kept two ships each. The third ships from both guilds were at the tail, which also suffered some damage–this was all according to our plan. We and Agil had to take the sides, sheer walls of dark, gleaming shell. Even Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier +5 could barely scratch the boss’s HP.
I watched her shoot off the Parallel Sting two-part combo out of sheer frustration and used half my brain to engage in some idle thinking.
The latter stages of the shipbuilding quest were not mentioned in Argo’s strategy guide when the guide appeared in the afternoon yesterday. This was both because of the unknown nature of N’ltzahh’s strength and the fierce rivalry between the two main guilds.
There was very nearly open warfare outside the Forest Elf camp on the third floor between the DKB, who were undertaking the Forest Elf side of the campaign, and the ALS, who were aligned with the Dark Elf faction. My arguments fell on deaf ears, and we nearly had player-on-player violence–only the advent of the powerful knight Kizmel succeeded in staying their blades.
After some discussion, both guilds agreed to put the campaign quest on hold, thus averting a collapse of the frontline collective. However, the latter part of this shipbuilding quest seemed to be related to the campaign. If we publicized that information, they might take the teleporter back to the third floor to renew the quest. We had to ensure that the two guilds did not resume butting heads again.
So after discussion with Argo, Asuna and I decided not to release the connections to the Fallen Elves. But Lind and Kibaou weren’t leading their guilds for show. It was very possible they would discover the continuation of the quest on their own, and if that happened, there was nothing we could do. Then again, with their great numbers, massive ships, and apparently reckless boating, they might not even succeed at trailing the guild’s transport ship
.
It was a fact that the pitched competition between the two guilds was speeding our progress along through the game. But the lack of any kind of stopping force, if their competition crossed a healthy line, was terrifying to me.
We needed a third power. It could be small in scale, but something with enough influence and leadership qualities that Lind and Kibaou couldn’t overlook it–a linchpin to the frontline force as a whole.
At present, the closest thing to that third power was Agil the ax warrior, currently fighting on the opposite side of the giant turtle shell. But he and his three companions intended to maintain their position as a free-roaming, neutral force. They only joined the group for field and floor bosses and barely ever appeared otherwise.
The only other person with the capability of being that linchpin was Asuna the fencer, with her flashing silver rapier.
After we fought Illfang the Kobold Lord on the first floor, I told her that she could be strong, and if anyone she trusted invited her to a guild, not to refuse. That there were limits to what could be accomplished in solo play.
My instinct wasn’t wrong. If anything, I was underestimating her potential. If she got more accustomed to this world and learned more of the game’s rules and quirks, Asuna could easily lead a guild of her own. That guild could admirably serve as a third power to balance out the ALS and DKB.
But as long as she was with me, the beater, she would be shunned within the group. She would never be seen as anything other than a willful outsider, showing up where she pleased and leeching hard-earned items and information from more worthy people.
If the sake of the front line as a whole, and Asuna as an individual, were to be taken into account...then maybe we shouldn’t be a duo forever. But the existence of Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier, with its absurdly good stats, and the Bottle of Kales’Oh that granted her an extra skill slot filled me with unspoken dread. I wanted to prioritize her safety above all else.
Yes, I was concerned for her well-being, but the truth was, there was another bigger reason that drove my choices...an egotistical one.
Sword Art Online Progressive Page 13
