But we didn’t need to follow them anymore.
Before our eyes, seated silently on one of the benches, was a frail figure. It was barely more than a silhouette from our location, but there was no need to get closer for a better look or callout or squint to bring up a color cursor for identification.
As soon as I took the first step forward, pulled toward the figure, it noticed us and stood up, leaping over the planter next to it with all the force of a thrusting sword skill.
The person landed lightly in front us and embraced us with open arms.
“Kirito! Asuna!” the familiar, silky voice sounded.
Doing my best to withstand the rib-cracking hug attack delivered with elite-level strength, I managed to grunt, “Good to see you again, Kizmel.”
7
EVEN AFTER I WAS RELEASED, Asuna continued to hug the Dark Elf knight for another five seconds. When they let go at last, she traced the side of her eye with a finger and put on an enormous smile.
“…I always believed we’d see you before long…but I’m still so happy to see you.”
Kizmel smiled. “So am I. Even after coming here through the spirit tree, I found that I was always thinking of you two.”
The Dark Elf seemed to be savoring those words as she said them. I understood right away what made her seem different from before. She was wearing only a long dress of deep purple to cover her slender form, and her usual armor, saber, and cape were gone.
She had never removed equipment in the third-floor camp except for when she was in her own tent, I remembered. Kizmel’s gaze moved from Asuna to me, the smile still stuck on her face.
“I’m surprised that you knew to find me here. Isn’t this your first visit to this castle?”
“Y-yeah. Just a…lucky guess,” I stammered. Of course, I knew this spot because it had struck me deeply during the beta test. At the time there was no thorny hedge maze, just a dusty stone path with a single, dried, dead tree in the middle. But there was obviously something more to the place, and thus it stuck in my memory.
Her smile deepened at my answer, and she looked up at the massive tree stretching over our heads.
“My sister loved the oil refined from this juniper. Perhaps that’s why I found myself here…”
“Ahhh…”
I looked up at the tree and breathed a deep breath in through my nose. My lungs filled with a cool, pure woody scent.
“So this is a juniper tree,” Asuna noted, sniffing the same smell. “In the world we come from, it’s also used as a flavoring for alcohol.”
“Is that so? I shall have to try it sometime…At any rate, thank you for coming. I suppose you vanquished the guardian beast in the Pillar of the Heavens without trouble.”
“Yeah. It helped that the base commander warned us about its poison attacks.”
Kizmel nodded sagely. “Yes, he is a trustworthy man. I wish to rejoin the advance party down on the third floor as soon as I can, but…”
She looked down at the dress she was wearing and squinted. The smile came back just as quickly, though, and she patted Asuna on the back.
“Let’s go back inside. You must be hungry after rowing all this way, yes?”
“Very hungry,” she responded. They started walking for the door.
As I trotted after them, I couldn’t help but think, You know, I was the one doing all the rowing.
Just as I remembered, the dining hall of Yofel Castle was on the second floor of the west wing.
Inside, there were drool-inducing smells and pleasant chatter atop the gentle strains of string music. All of this had been upgraded since the beta, so I couldn’t help but look around with curiosity.
Nearly everyone eating at the pristinely set tables was a soldier in leather armor, but there was also a group of what looked like mages in long robes and even a few small children. That seemed strange—I thought that the power of magic had been lost in the creation of the floating castle Aincrad, according to legend.
As we walked toward an empty table to sit down, Kizmel noticed my stare at the robed figures and leaned in to whisper, “They are priests who serve the Holy Tree. They were dispatched from the palace on the ninth floor to oversee our operation to retrieve the keys.”
“Priests…”
I ran a mental search on the term, thinking it was unfamiliar within Aincrad—sure enough, I had no memory of it during the beta. I made a note to look into them more in the future. Asuna asked the next question.
“And the kids?”
“They are the children of the castle’s master. Such bright young spirits,” Kizmel explained, beaming as she guided us to a table in the back.
NPC maids—Dark Elves, of course—brought us out a full-course meal, starting with soup and appetizer. When they brought out roasted chicken for the main dish, Asuna and I couldn’t help but share a look.
I didn’t think elves had any reason to celebrate Christmas, but the dish was a little too close to tradition; perhaps it was part of the game’s holiday event.
While they didn’t follow it up with a cake, we had an excellent view of the snow-covered juniper tree in the courtyard through the hall’s large window, which made the meal plenty festive.
Our main topic of conversation during the meal was the waterways that were central to the fourth-floor experience. Kizmel was most interested in our stories about the inner-tube swim from the staircase to the main town and the battle against the Fire-Bear for shipbuilding materials.
During that discussion, I asked and discovered that the Dark Elves did not cut down living trees, either, but it was not out of any restrictive law, but rather respect for an aged plant. That made them different from the reluctantly obedient Fallen Elves.
Fortunately, she said that collecting wood from trees destroyed by monsters was allowed. I was glad that we’d taken the trouble to get the high-quality material.
Once we finished our fruit dessert, Kizmel took us to the officers’ room on the fourth floor of the east wing. It was quite a grade up from the second-floor ten-man barracks of the beta. But this was a suite room, with two bedrooms and a shared living room. Which meant…
“Use this room while you are staying at the castle,” Kizmel offered.
“Oooh, what a lovely place!” Asuna cried, racing to the large window in the back and only belatedly realizing the presence of the doors on either wall. She looked left and right, then back in confusion, but was hesitating on immediately demanding a different room.
I had the option of requesting it as well, but I was afraid of the significant downgrade to the barracks, and Kizmel spoke up before I could say anything, either.
“In that case, I will be in the adjacent room to the left. Knock on the door if you need anything. Enjoy your rest tonight; you must be tired.”
She shut the door, and quiet footsteps faded away.
“…”
Left alone in the gorgeous suite, we could only stare at each other in silence.
“…Well, hey, at least it’s not the first time for this,” Asuna started off.
I nodded eagerly.
“It’s pretty much unavoidable if we want to prioritize beating the game.”
Nod, nod.
“But…I will say just one thing.”
Nod?
“Your Christmas present was reuniting us with Kizmel, right? That was a wonderful present. Thank you.”
I nodded one last time and mumbled uneasily, “Um, yeah, uh, you’re welcome…But in all honesty, I’m glad we saw her again. She seems a little subdued, though.”
“Yeah…”
That seemed to have shifted her mind from the sudden suite dilemma to Kizmel’s current state, as she wore a slightly different look of concern now.
“The dress looked very nice on her, but I don’t think she was wearing it out of choice. I wonder why she wasn’t in her armor?”
“Didn’t have her sword, either…Perhaps there’s some state of affairs forcing her to stay here. Wonder if s
he’ll tell us, if we ask…”
I glanced over at the neighboring room that housed the elf knight.
While I’d never spoken of this with Asuna, I knew that Kizmel was different from the other NPCs. While Romolo the shipwright, for example, had engaged in very natural conversation with us, that was because we were careful never to say anything unrelated to the shipbuilding questline. But Kizmel had started talking about why she loved that tree in the courtyard, just from seeing me look up at it. That was far out of the norm for an NPC’s conversational ability, which only responded properly when it heard statements that fit its content parameters.
But I wasn’t so sure if Kizmel had been special from the very start. When we first met her in the third floor’s Forest of Wavering Mists, Kizmel said, “Do not interfere! Begone from this place!”—exactly the same thing she started with in the beta, down to the word.
Through some reason I didn’t understand, the quest story, which said that both she and the Forest Elf knight would die, had been overwritten. In that instant, something happened to Kizmel, and she stopped being a normal NPC. Did the fact that she’d been given memory and thoughtfulness beyond the bounds of an NPC mean…she was a high-functioning AI?
If that guess was correct, it gave birth to a new mystery. Was it the real-life GM who changed her, or was it the system that controlled SAO?
In the retail version of SAO, the cage that housed this shocking and unprecedented incident, only Akihiko Kayaba controlled the reins. I had no idea where he was or what he was doing now, but I couldn’t imagine him taking the time to alter the specifications of a single NPC by hand. But neither could I imagine why he would turn it into an AI.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t even say if the game system was advanced enough to allow for such a function. If it was true, the system that kept this virtual world running was far more than just a program…it was equipped with a level of autonomy that encompassed artificial intelligence on its own…
A suspicious voice reached my ears as I stared at the plaster wall, completely lost in thought.
“…Um, hello, Kirito?”
“Whu—ah! S-sorry, what did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Asuna was leaning against the window with her arms folded, pointing out the two doors with a look. “Which bedroom did you want?”
“E-either one is fine.”
“I’ll use this one, then,” she announced, pointing to the door on the east wall. Then I realized that the main room had two other small doors aside from the ones to the bedrooms. One was to the bathroom, and the other looked like a closet. The bathroom was next to the eastern bedroom—she probably didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of bathing while I was sleeping on the other side of the wall.
I told her to go right ahead, of course, then added something that popped into my head. “But on the third floor of the castle, there should be a super-huge bathing room.”
“…Super?”
“Yeah, super.”
“…With separate baths for men and women?”
“Yeah…er, wait…”
According to my memory, the bathing hall was at the very tip of the west wing on the third floor. But I didn’t remember if it had separate baths for men and women. Back in the beta, I preferred to kill as many monsters as possible rather than waste time relaxing in the bath.
“Sorry, I don’t know for sure,” I admitted, throwing up my hands.
Asuna sighed. “I have a bad feeling about this. Come on, let’s go.”
“Let’s…? Me, too?”
“Well, I don’t know where it is.”
This was a castle, not a labyrinthine dungeon, so I could probably explain the directions to her, but she spoke with such direct conviction that I didn’t have any option but to accept her command.
We left the suite and used the grand stairs at the center of the castle to descend to the third floor. I had to fight the urge to open and inspect the contents of the countless doors we passed in the hall, but finally we reached the far end of the west wing.
There I saw a familiar arch. Through that threshold, the red carpet turned to white marble tiles—I was relieved to see that the bathhouse hadn’t disappeared in the redesign. Beyond the arch, I turned us to the right.
The hallway came to an abrupt end, with another arched entrance to the left, through which floated the echoing sounds of water. We shared a look and peered through the arch at the same time to see a single, grand changing room.
“…They don’t split the bath,” my partner said. I coughed awkwardly.
“W-well, I guess that was the same for the bathing tent on the third floor. Perhaps that’s just how elves do things.”
It’s probably just a data volume issue, though, I silently added to myself.
“A-anyway, I’ll just use the bath back in the room; you should enjoy yourself here, Asuna. I’ll see you in a while…”
As soon as I turned around to flee, a hand caught my back collar. I timidly turned around to see the fencer glaring up at me, a conflicted look on her face.
“Rrrh,” she grunted. I wondered what kind of nuance I was meant to take away from that, then recalled a similar situation occurring at the bathing tent back in the camp.
Back then, Asuna was afraid of a male Dark Elf wandering into the tent while she was bathing, so I stood outside on watch. That meant she probably wanted the same thing now.
“Umm, it’s gonna be pretty hard for me to warn you from the outside of a huge bath like this. Plus, I can’t just block the NPCs from going in…”
“Rrrh,” she grunted again, looking at the changing room with longing.
It didn’t seem like there was anyone in the bath now, but there was no saying how long that would be the case. In this instance, Asuna the bathing enthusiast would just have to give up, it seemed clear to me.
“Rrrh…oh, I know!” she suddenly piped up, leaping into the changing room and sitting in one of the many wicker chairs. She popped up her window and started taking out items left and right.
A lot of colored cloth and a small box of sewing tools ended up clattering onto the long marble table. I was baffled as to what she was going to do and walked through the arch for a better look.
Just the changing room itself was huge. The floor and walls were covered in pure white tiles, a shining chandelier hung from the ceiling, and large potted plants sat in the corners. There were no automatic dryers or massage chairs, but there was a pitcher of iced water and several kinds of fruit on the table in the center.
I nibbled on what looked like a big grape, then tossed the rest into my mouth to watch Asuna work. She used the Crystal Bottle of Kales’Oh to reequip her Tailoring skill and was about to make something with the items she’d just produced.
As a matter of fact, it might have been the first time I’d ever seen the Tailoring skill at work. Asuna selected a plain white piece of cloth out of her mountain of textiles, then pulled a large pair of scissors out of the box.
She tapped the scissors next to pull up a list of items she could create. She made her choice, set the scissors to the cloth, then ripped them through with a brilliant metallic shwing! Suddenly, the exact same way as with ingots struck by a blacksmith’s hammer, the cloth started glowing and changing shape. What emerged was two pieces of cloth in exactly the same shape.
Asuna put the scissors back into the box and placed the two pieces together, then started poking the hem of the cloth with a silver needle. That action had to be analogous to the striking of the ingot with the smithing hammer. Her handiwork was quick and sure, and the sewing was done in moments.
The cloth started glowing again, then bloomed from its flat state into something properly clothing-like, with actual volume. It was an ordinary one-piece swimsuit.
“Done!” she exclaimed proudly, holding the swimsuit up.
“Um…are you going to wear that…into the bath?”
“That’s not against the rules, is it? Or is my wearing
this swimsuit in the bath going to inconvenience you in some way?”
“Not in the least,” I finished, shaking my head. With the kind of massive bath a castle like this would have, a person could probably treat it like a pool. In fact, it might even be fun.
I wasn’t particularly attached to bathing in Aincrad, but I had to admit I was a little jealous in this situation. But the only swimwear I had on hand was the pair of bull-logo boxers I got as the Last Attack bonus from General Baran, and I didn’t want to wear those unless it was an emergency.
I side-eyed the swimsuit my tailor partner was holding up happily against her body and groaned with envy when she looked back briefly and put on a foreboding grin. I had a bad feeling about the pleased smile on her face.
“By the way, I haven’t given you a present in return yet, have I?”
“Er…n-no need for that. I didn’t give you a physical present to begin with, after all…”
“No, but it made me much happier than any store-bought item. So I want to give you back something good. And it is Christmas Eve, after all.”
“Um, w-well, if you’re offering, I’ll happily accept anything you give me,” I said, shivering inside at her suddenly gentle tone and smile. Asuna sat back down on the chair and pulled out a black piece of cloth from the pile.
She cut up the smaller cloth with the scissors and sewed it up. When the light subsided, she was holding a pair of surf shorts—black, just the way I liked them.
“Oooh, cool!”
I wasn’t afraid to wear these in front of others. I took a step forward in delight, but she held up her right hand to stop me. With that same hand, she selected a brilliant orange scrap from the cloth pile. The three steps of settings, cutting, and sewing took place in an instant, and the swimsuit glowed again.
From what I could see, nothing had changed. She met my confusion with a smirk, then smartly flipped around the black surf shorts to expose the rear.
“…Wh-what the hell is that?!”
There was a brilliant bear-shaped patch on the bum of the shorts, glowing a flaming orange.
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