“You go first, Kirito.”
“Got it.”
I knew that the order we walked in wasn’t going to matter for what happened next, so I stifled my mad grin and started walking back the way we’d come. We passed through the maze of shelves and reached the doorway. Now back in the darkened hallway, I glanced over my shoulder at Asuna’s nervous expression, then proceeded toward the distant front door.
On the left, we passed the doors of all the rooms we’d already searched. Soon, the light from the lantern in my left hand reached the entrance hall. It was practically a room of its own, so the light didn’t catch every last corner from the hallway. Even knowing that we were safe, and that this was the second time passing through this location, I couldn’t help but feel my nerves activating as I stepped into the entryway.
Suddenly, there was a pshooo! sound, and a cloud of venomous green smoke ascended to block my vision.
Normally, you’d stand a chance at avoiding a poison mist trap like this if you caught your breath in time, but since this was a forced event, that didn’t matter. Behind me, Asuna screamed, and I reached out to grab her hand and keep her calm. The smoke soon reached the level of our faces. The moment I sensed the acrid scent, I felt my legs go numb, and we toppled to the floor.
In the upper left corner, our HP bars were surrounded by borders the color of the smoke. It indicated a paralysis state…but while under normal paralysis you could still use your right arm (barely), now we were completely unable to move—or even speak. Fortunately, the sense of touch was still intact, so through our skin contact, I willed Asuna not to worry.
In thirty seconds, the gas was completely gone without a trace, and the source of it became visible in the light of the lantern, which now lay on the floor. It was a small pot, with a helpful skull symbol on the side. Then there were two sets of approaching footsteps.
In the corner of the entrance hall appeared two men in matching hooded cloaks, large and small—only identifiable as men because I already knew who they were. Beneath their deep hoods, they wore odd leather masks that covered their entire faces.
The large man stopped in the middle of the floor, but the smaller one approached us, then picked up the pot. He put it away in his cloak, then pulled back the hood and removed the mask, which clearly kept him safe from the gas.
“…!!”
I heard Asuna’s gasp.
Visible in the orange lantern light were the sunken cheeks, balding head, and impressive beard of the lord of Stachion, Cylon.
“Well, well…I’m quite surprised, swordsman. I did not think you’d find Pithagrus’s hideaway so soon. It took me many years to find it…because I never expected it would be in Suribus, rather than Stachion.”
He shook his head theatrically, then glanced past me down the hallway. “I am curious about the hidden formula behind his puzzles that he kept so secret…but I’ll start with this first.”
He walked past me, his oddly upturned shoes clacking against the floor, and reached for Asuna. Through some kind of sleight of hand—or probably just to make the story scene work—the golden key appeared in his palm, when it should have been safe in her inventory. He examined its fine details and exhaled heavily.
“Ahhh…I’d been hoping I would find the cube itself here…but I do have an idea of where I might find the door for this key. Surely, the item I seek will be there,” he said, his dejection morphing into a pleasant smile. He tucked the key away into his cloak and stroked his long beard.
“You did very good work for me, swordsman. Normally, this is where I would say farewell…but in fact, I have another job for you to do. Do you mind if I ask for your cooperation once more…?”
He extended his left hand and snapped his fingers. The large masked man, who hadn’t said a word, walked over and pulled a large sack from his cloak. He knelt down and grabbed my collar with an abnormally thick fist, easily lifted me up, and tossed me into the sack. I’d experienced this before, but in the beta, I beat the quest on my own. When in a group of two, would they bring out two sacks, or just…?
My question was answered when the mouth of the sack opened again, and my partner landed on top of me. I would’ve grunted with the impact, if I was able to use my voice yet. Surely, Asuna would not be happy about this, but she’d have to deal with it for the sake of our quest XP.
Over her shoulder, I saw the large man peering into the bag. Then he closed the opening, and we could see nothing.
I could feel the big man hefting us up and over his back. Our sack swayed in rhythm with each plodding footstep. There was the sound of a door opening and closing. Through the heavy burlap, I heard the faint sound of the river and the distant music from NPC musicians.
At this hour, many players would still be eating and shopping in Suribus. And we were being abducted and carried right through all of that—a rather daring setup for a quest. The sack was big enough with the two of us in it; what would happen if it was a full six-man party…? Before I could imagine the possibilities, there was a heavy thump, and we stopped swaying. I could hear sounds of exhaust close by—a horse breathing—and then we were loaded onto a carriage bed.
In moments, the carriage rocked again, probably as the large man and Cylon got into the box seat. There was the sound of a whip cracking, then clopping hooves and rattling wheels. The carriage was slowly making its way down the riverside path.
The paralysis still prevented me from moving or speaking, but knowing that we were getting a free taxi back to Stachion made the experience bearable. The bigger problem was that I had no idea how Asuna—who was resting on top of me—felt about all this. Once we were free to move again, she’d probably scream at me to warn her what was going to happen first, but for now I wanted to believe that she’d understand I was just trying to save the surprise and fun of this climactic scene for her to enjoy.
Within minutes, the carriage was out of town, and the road beneath the wheels turned from paving stone to dirt. It was a mile to Stachion, with no monsters along the way, meaning the trip would be just five minutes long. Naturally, the event would continue after reaching the town, so it would probably be another thirty minutes or so until we fully regained our freedom. At this rate, we’d be spending the night in Stachion, rather than Suribus…
“Bree-hee-hee!!”
The carriage came to a violent stop as the horse whinnied. I opened my eyes wide, which was about the only thing I could control, but there was no way to see what was happening outside the sack.
“Who goes there?! I am Cylon, lord of Stachion!” he shouted. It was followed by the sound of metal striking metal.
The horse whinnied again, and the cart tipped over. I would have shouted if I could. The sack tumbled away with us inside it and landed on a short patch of grass. The impact knocked the mouth of the sack slightly open, giving us a better view of the outside.
On top of the carriage, Cylon and a bandit in a black hood were fighting with swords, and a short distance away, the large man in the leather mask was in combat with a similar bandit. Cylon and his assistant’s cursors were yellow, while the bandits’ were orange.
This event had not happened in the beta. It wasn’t that unusual for the quests in the full release to be different, but it did mean that my prior knowledge wasn’t going to help anymore. We’d still have to wait for the paralysis to wear off, but once it did, we might be asked to choose between siding with Cylon or the bandits—or just to run away…
“…!!”
I thought I felt Asuna tense and breathe harder than usual.
A moment later, I understood why.
We’d fought a number of forest elves who were treated like NPCs. Their color cursors were red, just like monsters. But the black-hooded bandits fighting Cylon had orange cursors. The color of criminals.
They weren’t NPCs. They were players.
Just as this dawned on me, the bandit fighting in the bed of the carriage used a sword skill and mercilessly cut down Cylon. The force of th
e momentum pulled the attacker’s hood back, exposing his face.
Glinting in the pale moonlight was a silver chain coif with the ends tattered and hanging—and a large, leering grin underneath.
I knew that face. He had a sword now, but I would never mistake him for anyone else. It was the axman who challenged me to a duel on the third floor with the intent of killing me…
It was Morte.
Cylon’s paralyzing poison only immobilized the body and had no effect on the mind of the player—but I couldn’t think for several moments.
At last, a question floated into my head—and then the answer. They were as fleeting as bubbles rising and popping.
What in the world are Morte and his friend doing?
…That should be obvious. They’re not saving me and Asuna from Cylon. Just the opposite: They’re taking advantage of our paralysis to kill us.
Then how did they know that we would be paralyzed and passing through this spot at this exact time?
…Did they trail us the whole way? No. Morte was a beta tester like me. He would probably know all about the “Curse of Stachion” quest, and he would know that if he staked out Pithagrus’s hideout, he would see me and Asuna show up eventually.
So how do we escape?
………
But no amount of waiting brought the answer to the third question to my mind.
It was perfectly possible to interfere with another player’s quest if it was happening out in the open, and I’d experienced that in other games before SAO. But it never even occurred to me that something like this could have happened.
Cylon was slumped on the floor of the carriage bed, his now-empty sword hand thrust up toward his attacker. “Killing a lord is a grave and terrible crime!” he shouted. “You will never be allowed in Stachion—or through the gates of any other town again!”
I couldn’t tell if this line was part of one of Cylon’s dialogue patterns or something spontaneous that he came up with when faced with unexpected death. In either case, his threat had no effect on Morte. The axman took two steps forward, still grinning, transferred to a one-handed ax with the Quick Change ability, and brought it down on Cylon’s head.
The HP bar underneath the cursor name CYLON went to zero, and the lord of Stachion slowly rocked backward, right hand still outstretched, and tumbled from the cart. His body bounced right near our feet on the ground and came to an unnatural stillness before shattering into a swarm of tiny blue shards.
Like you might expect from a lord, he dropped a number of items among the hoards of gold and silver coins, causing them to jangle and clatter on the ground. It was the kind of profit you’d turn into an orange player to make, but Morte paid it no mind. He gazed down at us from the carriage. His eyes were hidden under the edge of the coif, but the smile on his thin lips grew wider.
Just then, the other hooded bandit fighting the larger man on the other side of the carriage screeched, “Hey, if you’re done with the old man, help me out! This fat-ass is pretty high-level!”
I craned my eyes as far as they could go and saw the large man, his huge fists wrapped in leather straps studded with metal, swinging at the smaller hooded player nimbly darting around. The bandit had a thin dagger in his hand, which told me he must be the one who was meeting with Morte in the underground catacombs on the fifth floor. If these two were around, then it was possible that the boss of the PK gang was nearby—the man in the black poncho who tried to kill me during the fireworks show—but I didn’t sense him yet.
The dagger user darted around the large man’s punches and struck back deftly, but he maintained his distance and wasn’t getting close enough to do big damage. At this point, our only hope was to rely on the man who had stuck us in this sack in the first place. If he could hold out for a few minutes, even with Morte involved, Asuna and I might recover from our paralysis.
But…
“Sorry, I’m busy right now. If you can’t take him out, then pull him into the forest and lose him there, please,” Morte commanded, then turned back to us. His partner protested, but it seemed clear that Morte held a higher position in their gang. Instead, he yelled at the large man to follow him and raced into the thick woods on the south side of the road. The man in the leather mask issued a muffled roar and pounded after him.
When the two pairs of footsteps had vanished, there was a deafening silence left behind. For some reason, the usual calls of the night insects and owls hooting were completely gone.
Into that silence landed the sound of light feet. Morte had jumped from the bed of the carriage. The ax he’d used to kill Cylon rested on his shoulder, and he stepped carelessly over the scattered coins on the ground as he approached me and Asuna where we lay.
“…Well, well, well. I’ve been awaiting you, Kirito. I had a feeling you’d accept the lord’s quest, but I wasn’t so positive that I was gonna follow you the whole way from the start. Instead, I just sat watching Py-whatsit’s hideout from an inn starting last night…Oh! Whoopsie.”
His leer turned a bit embarrassed, and he scratched the side of his head with the back of the ax.
“Boss always tells me I oughta watch out about talkin’ too much, but it doesn’t look like that’s ever going to change, does it? On the other hand, it’d really suck if you recovered from your paralysis while I’m just chatting on and on, so I’m afraid this is where we say good-bye.”
He spun the ax in his fingers, twirling it audibly, then gripped it straight and began to walk again.
Just at that moment, the green border around my and Asuna’s HP bars began to blink. Thirty seconds until the debuff wore off naturally…but five seconds was all he’d need to kill a defenseless player.
Asuna was sprawled on her side with her back to me, so I couldn’t see her face. I couldn’t say a word to her or hold her hand.
I let this situation come about due to my own lack of caution. I knew we’d be carried out of town in a totally helpless state, and I should have realized that this would leave us vulnerable to possible PKers. And even if I hadn’t figured it out, perhaps Asuna would have been observant enough to spot my folly, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my precious story surprises.
I had to find a way to get Asuna out of this death trap, even if it required sacrificing myself.
The boots crunched closer.
The debuff wasn’t gone yet.
My heart jackhammered.
This wasn’t a virtual signal. I knew that wherever I was in the real world, my heart was racing there, too. My mind was compressed, time passing slower than it should, as my brain sped through all possible choices.
I could see Asuna’s chestnut-brown hair, the green grass, and the navy forest in the background…as well as the assortment of items Cylon dropped upon his death. Gold coins, silver, mysterious pouches, a rather expensive-looking longsword, his leather mask, an iron key, a golden key, a small jar, and those shoes with the upturned toes.
A possibility shot through my mind, as instantaneous as lightning.
I couldn’t move my arms or legs at the moment. But there were two things I could do.
One was look. The other was breathe.
Morte came to a stop just a foot and a half behind me; I was lying on my side. While I couldn’t see him directly, his shadow was black on the ground, silently raising the ax high over his head.
At that moment, I expelled the lungful of air I was holding through pursed lips.
I was aiming for the small jar, which was standing upright about three feet away. It had a skull mark on the side—it was what Cylon had used to paralyze us. It must have reinitialized in its default state when it dropped, because it was stopped up closed rather than open and empty.
The jar was only two inches tall, and exhaled breath here tended to be exaggerated—we’d been able to blow up the inner-tube fruits on the fourth floor with a single breath—but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to knock it over. To my surprise, however, another gust of air descended upon it at th
e same time. Asuna had come to the same conclusion and attempted the same trick.
The little jar lurched sideways with the force of two breaths at once. It tilted back, lurched forward—and toppled. The lid, which was simply resting in place, rolled off onto the ground, and that vicious green smoke shot out with startling force. I sucked in a huge, deep breath of clean air and held it.
Instantly, the smoke enveloped us, turning everything green. I heard the clicking of a tongue and sensed Morte scurrying away. The blinking of the green border around my HP gauge grew quicker and quicker.
In Aincrad, raising two different kinds of stats could allow you to exhibit physical strength and speed that were impossible in real life. But there were a few scant things in a full-dive VRMMO that were still derived from your actual physical body.
One of those things was lung capacity. If water covered your head, the game registered you in the Drowning state, but as long as you held your breath, there would be no HP loss. Since that breath was not only the avatar’s, but your physical body’s, that meant that players who had higher lung capacity in the real world could move around longer underwater. The same property applied to holding your breath against poison gas.
I didn’t get much exercise in elementary or middle school, so my confidence in my lung capacity was low, but Cylon’s gas had only lasted for thirty seconds at the haunted house, and I knew I could at least hold it that long. The problem was whether the paralysis still had that much time left…and if Morte would stay clear for the full thirty seconds.
It had been five…six…seven seconds since the gas started—and the HP bar border and debuff icon were gone. Instantly, feeling returned to my body, and I pushed myself up with my left hand, reaching for my sword with my right.
That was when Morte came charging through the curtain of poison toward me.
The gas was so thick that I could only see a vague outline of the enemy’s shape. The same was true for Morte, but the blow he hurled, cutting through the smoke, was perfectly aimed at my face.
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