“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 donut 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.
After producing a blank scroll of parchment, I began writing a quick message. Inside, I mentioned using an impact-type skill to drop the fruit and the way to inflate them. A quick tap on the scroll made it automatically roll up, and I placed it on the ground next to the pavilion.
Left on the ground like that, its durability would eventually dwindle and cause the item to vanish, but it would last at least until Lind and Kibaou made it up the stairs.
“Well, now that we’ve got our floaty tubes, that changes our plan of action, doesn’t it?” I noted. Asuna looked down doubtfully at the massive tube in her hands.
“…You mean that even a beginner can swim with one of these?”
“I’ll try it first, of course, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine. As long as your head doesn’t go underwater, you won’t lose HP while swimming. We’ll make it to the main town by going through the canyon just to the south and then east. The only thing is…”
“…Is what?”
“We should probably remove our heavy equipment, just in case.”
“How heavy are we talking?”
I looked her over from head to toe several times, doing some quick weight calculations before answering.
“Let’s see…You should probably take off the hooded cape. The rapier and the breastplate as well, obviously, and the boots and gloves, too. Probably the vest, too…And that leather skirt’s a lot heavier than you’d think. As for the tunic, well…”
“…If I take all of them off, I won’t be wearing any equipment at all!”
Asuna threw the inner tube smack against my face. It bounced upward with a giddy poing and landed right around my neck.
“I assume you’re going to follow your own advice and take off your black thing, the other black thing, and the black thing aside from that!”
“Um…I’m only thinking of what will make it safest for you to swim…”
As a matter of fact, leather and cloth clothing were just as bad as metal—they took on water that added to the weight penalty. Even with our inner-tube secret weapon, it was too risky not to be able to maneuver adequately in a pinch. A pool or lake was one thing, but on a rushing river, we might easily miss our disembarking point and get washed well downstream.
Whether that honest concern of mine registered to her or not, Asuna’s anger cooled, and she reached out her right hand. I tossed the yellow tube back so that the hole landed on her outstretched hand, spinning the tube round and round on her arm.
“Fine…We need to go light. I get that. So…am I good with the tunic, at least?”
“Huh? Uh, yeah, I think that should work,” I nodded.
She shot me one last glare. “Then let’s get going.”
Asuna stomped off down the hill. I hurried after her, and within moments, we were back at the riverside to the south.
Asuna stopped and turned for one last look at the pavilion on the hilltop—probably to check that no one was emerging—then opened her window. She worked quickly, turning her back so I couldn’t see. First the rapier disappeared, then the cape, armor, and vest.
When the leather skirt vanished into her inventory, only the white tunic was left. It hung low in the front and back, hiding her underwear, but something about that look only seemed to add to its destructive allure…
Lost in thought, I sensed that Asuna was about to turn around, so I quickly spun ninety degrees and hit my REMOVE EQUIPMENT button twice. All of my gear, including my sword, went into storage, leaving me with a single set of underwear trunks.
I was embarrassed to be in such a revealing outfit in front of a very pretty girl around my age, but the dark red boxers almost looked like a short set of swimming trunks. I told myself that anything I felt was entirely in my own head and that it wasn’t even my own body.
As I closed the window, I heard a mysterious pflrt sound. Turning my head carefully over my shoulder, I saw Asuna with her hand over her mouth, her eyes upturned and wandering. It seemed like a very strange gesture to be making.
“Pff…peh-heh…kaha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
The cool, cynical, mysterious fencer burst into uncontrolled laughter. I automatically covered my undies with the inner tube.
“Y-you don’t have to laugh that hard! Besides, you already said you expected I would be taking everything off,” I argued, hurt. Asuna bent over double, holding her sides.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha…I-I mean…seriously, that’s just not fair, ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“N-not fair? Look…I know it’s a bright color, but…”
“N-no, I’m not talking about the color…pff-hff-hff…Do you really not know what I mean? You should really take a look at your butt!”
“Wh-what…?”
I twisted around in a hurry to check the back of the boxers, but even at the peak flexibility of my avatar’s back, I couldn’t see my own butt. Struck by a sudden idea, I rushed to the water’s edge and stuck my butt over, hoping to catch sight of the reflection through my legs.
“Wh…what the—?!” I yelped.
The rear end of the crimson red trunks was printed with a large, flashy gold bull symbol.
I froze in shock, still in that embarrassing pose, while Asuna finally got her laughing fit under control—down to a simple chuckle.
“So where did you get that underwear? I don’t remember ever seeing a pair with such a cool pattern on it at the NPC shops. Or was that your own custom design?”
“…I didn’t buy it or design it,” I grumbled, regaining my poise after the terrible shock. “This was the Last Attack bonus from the second-floor boss…Actually, the sub-boss boss, General Baran. I just assumed it was a plain design. Never occurred to me that there might be a design on the ass…”
“So if it was a bonus, does that mean it has some special effect?”
“Yep. It has a good boost to strength and a little bit of a resist
ance to debuffs like disease and curses…”
“Ahhh. You know, it’s dreadfully boring that you win all of the LA bonuses, but I’m glad I didn’t wind up with that underwear. I don’t want to have to choose between wearing a stupid cow-print man’s boxers for the bonus effects or not.”
“You never know—if it dropped for you, it might have been proper lady’s underwear. Still with the cow design, though, I bet.”
As I inevitably started to imagine the fencer wearing cow panties, she wound up to hurl the inner tube at me again. I shook my head and snorted my nose, and she paused mid-windup.
I sighed to clear my head of that nonsense and knelt down to stick my hand in the river. The water was extremely cold, but I just had to suck it up and deal with it.
Asuna tested the water for herself and murmured, “Didn’t you say that some floors of Aincrad are synced up to the actual season outside?”
“That’s what it said in a magazine. But that article was obviously before it took us all prisoner, so I have no idea what’s going on with Aincrad now…”
“Well, at the very least, this floor doesn’t seem to be stuck in midwinter. I was thinking it was boring that there wasn’t a more seasonal feeling here, but now I’m glad of it. So, shall we?”
Asuna put the lemon-yellow inner tube on, and I stuck the cobalt blue over my own head. With it fixed firmly in place with both hands, I told her, “Hang on for a moment while I test it out.”
I stuck my right leg into the water. Once I was sure that the current right at the shore wasn’t too strong, I let my body sink in.
As I suspected, the inflated donut fruit was quite buoyant, and it easily kept my body at the surface of the water. It didn’t take too much pressure from my legs to hold my position in the current, either.
“I think it’ll be fine,” I said, looking up and beckoning her in. Asuna nodded nervously and very carefully entered the water. As soon as she did, the cloth tunic took on a bit of transparency and I hastily looked away, but Asuna didn’t seem to notice. When her weight was supported by the inner tube, she even smiled.
“Wow, this takes me back!”
“I-it would have been nicer to swim at the beach.”
“Who knows, maybe there is an ocean here. If there is, I’ll make an actual swimsuit.”
“That’s right, you’re still working on your Tailoring skill. Will you make me one without a bull design? Like…as soon as we get to town?” I added, realizing that we might be forced to use this inner-tube travel for a while.
She grinned devilishly. “Sure. I’ll even give you a choice between bear, cat, and frog designs.”
“…I’ll…think it over. Ready to go?”
“Yep.”
We both spun around to join the flow.
The circular area surrounded by cliffs had two exits. One of them was the source of the powerful flow of water, so our inevitable destination was out the other end. I started kicking my legs, keeping a firm grasp on the secret-weapon floaty tube.
After about ten feet, Asuna called out from behind.
“Um…something feels weird.”
“The water pressure and texture feels different, doesn’t it? That’s why you have to practice before you go swimming without a floatation device. Still, it feels like they’ve made a lot of improvements since the beta.”
“I see…This does require practice, I can tell…”
“An hour of swimming, and you’ll get used to it. Here’s the exit—the current will get a lot stronger here, so take care not to drift too far away.”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I felt Asuna jam her hand between my torso and the swim tube.
“That should keep me secure.”
I turned around and asked, “Should I do the same?” The fencer thought it over for two seconds and made a face that said it was special circumstance.
“Here goes, then…”
I stuck my left hand into Asuna’s tube and pulled it close. Unless something really drastic happened, there was no way we’d get separated like this.
We entered the ten-foot-wide canyon, firmly docked. The curves made it impossible to see what lay ahead, but I knew from my beta experience that we’d be heading into a larger canyon soon, one of the main paths of the floor.
As we picked up steam, sure enough, a much wider surface appeared ahead. It was a grand river flowing from west to east. The steep cliffs at the sides were the same, but there was a sense of liberation as the span of the water increased to over thirty feet. The speed of the flow wasn’t as rapid as I feared, either.
Once we were out into the center of the river, we stopped kicking and let the water push us along.
“…The landscape really is exactly as it was in the beta. I even remember that rock there,” I murmured to myself. Asuna looked around. With her every movement, I felt a pleasurable sensation on my left hand, but the iron wall that was my self-control shut it out of my thoughts.
“Hmm…I wonder why the dusty old canyons are full of water now?”
“Well, if I had to guess about things I have no way of knowing, maybe their water simulation process wasn’t quite up to snuff back during the beta. If they were able to get it to a satisfactory level in the three months after that, they might have decided to change it to these rivers, I guess…”
“That makes sense, but it’s a boring answer.”
“S-sorry.”
Asuna shrugged her shoulders, clad in the white fabric of her tunic. The way her skin was visible through the wet material wasn’t in the beta, either. I hoped that I wasn’t seeing the personal touch of Akihiko Kayaba, the mad director of SAO who had trapped all ten thousand of us in his deadly game.
She took another look around the area and wondered, “If all the canyons are filled with rivers now, shouldn’t there be other things that have changed aside from the landscape?”
“What do you mean?”
“Things like what the quest NPCs say or the materials you can gather…oh, and the types of monsters you face.”
She suddenly stopped, silent. I understood why. If we happened into a monster encounter right now, we were both without any kind of battle equipment on. I quickly shook my head to put her at ease.
“No, we’re fine. In the beta, there were hardly any monsters along the route from the staircases to the main city of the next floor…”
“Really?”
“B-besides, the pop rate on monsters in the thirty minutes after the boss is defeated is drastically reduced…”
“Drastically?” she repeated, looking skeptical. “Well, it’s certainly been at least thirty minutes.”
“Oh, g-good point. But so far we haven’t even seen a single fish, much less any monsters. I guess that might mean a real big one gobbled them all up,” I added, trying to laugh it off. Suddenly, I heard an irregular kerplunk. Asuna heard it, too, as we turned around simultaneously.
About ten yards behind us, something had emerged from the water.
It was a smooth, sleek, triangular fin. There was at least a foot of it sticking out from the surface of the water. The color cursor that appeared was bright red to indicate an enemy, as if that wasn’t obvious already. I heard an old familiar movie soundtrack lurch ominously into motion in my head.
“Um, is it just me, or is that…?” Asuna rasped. I didn’t wait for the answer—I turned my body back around and tensed my legs for full-power kicking.
“Let’s hurry,” I suggested. For once, she didn’t argue.
“Agreed.”
“On the count of three…”
I looked back briefly to check that the menacing fin wasn’t closing in yet, then took a deep breath.
“…two, three!”
With a silent roar echoing in my head, I kicked my feet as hard as I could. An enormous splash erupted behind us, and we started racing away downstream, hard enough that the swim tube was tilted nearly vertical.
If my memory was correct, the side path—er, tributary
—that led to the main city was maybe a hundred yards off. The canyon twisted right, then back to the left, and I saw an aperture in the vertical cliff face to the right, just as I expected.
“There, Asuna!”
“Got it!”
I doubled my kicking speed for the final spurt and looked back again. Fortunately the terrifying fin was no longer in…
“Eeeeep!” I screeched. The gray fin splitting the surface of the water was barely a dozen feet away. If the body of our underwater pursuer matched the size of the fin, its rows of jagged teeth could be bearing down on my legs right now.
If it caught my toes, I would have to use my Quick Change mod to equip my sword and fight in the water. Meanwhile, I got my legs working up to 120 percent capacity.
“H-hey, what’s going on behind us?!” Asuna croaked, too exhausted to even turn around and look.
“D-don’t think about that! Just swim as fast as you can!”
“All right!”
We kept our grips on each other’s inner tube and paddled madly with our free hands. The entrance ahead grew closer, but I could sense the fin behind us closing faster.
“P-prepare for a hard right!”
“All right!”
I gritted my teeth and flopped to the right. The moment my speed slowed with the turn, I thought I sensed something touching my foot, but our only choice at this point was to race for the goal. I put my full faith in the strength-raising effect of my bull-butt boxers as I stretched for the five-yard-wide tributary.
The side path ended in a small shoreline just twenty-five yards ahead. In the beta, it was another hill, at the top of which lay the gate to the main city. If we could just get to that white sand, we’d win this little game of tag.
“Raaaaah!!”
Roaring with about the seventh-fiercest shout I’d made in the last month and a half, I raced—er, swam—through the remaining distance. The instant my toes touched the sand of the river bottom, I bolted upright and started running, pulling Asuna by the hand. Even when the ground under my feet went from the soggy edge of the water to white, dry sand, I still kept going for another dozen paces before I finally turned back to look.
The dorsal fin that had been chasing us was leaping high above the water. Our fishy foe thought it could tackle us in a land battle. I was ready to oblige and just about to hit the QUICK CHANGE shortcut icon on my menu, when—
Sword Art Online Progressive 3 Page 2
