Sword Art Online Progressive 5

by Reki Kawahara

  “Hmm. Maybe we should ask Theano what to do with this key, then,” Asuna suggested, holding up the iron one.

  I tentatively agreed. “That would be…the orthodox idea. We could also ignore Theano, use the golden key to go into the dungeon and get the cube on our own. But I can’t predict how the story will proceed in that case.”

  “Well, no use wasting any time, then.” Asuna straightened up with the keys still in hand, but I grabbed her sleeve and forced her back into a sitting position.

  “Hang on. We still haven’t finished the most important investigation.”

  “Huh? But the rest of this is Cylon’s stuff, right? Wait, you’re not going to sell them, are y—?”

  “No, no, no, I’m not. Although I bet this gas mask would go for a pretty good sum…”

  I briefly lifted the rather ugly leather mask Asuna had worn last night when she’d snuck up on the dagger user, then put it back on the table. Then I put all the equipment into the special hotel-room item storage, clearing off the table so I could materialize the dark metal throwing pick and the much-used dagger.

  Asuna grimaced when she saw them. “Oh, right…You were very fixated on them. That reminds me, another one of them dropped for me.”

  “What?”

  To my disbelief, Asuna opened her window and quickly produced a new pick. Laid side by side, it was clear that in color, texture, and curving hexagonal design, it was identical to the first. Although this was surprising, I quickly realized that the first pick of the set of three had missed me and vanished into the trees when Morte threw it. A Muriqui Snatcher must have picked it up, and when Asuna defeated it, the pick would’ve dropped into her inventory.

  “Ooh, nice combo work, monkey and Asuna.”

  “That…doesn’t sound like a compliment,” she muttered, grimacing again. “But…hang on…” She put a finger to her cheek and remarked, “All the items we got from the muriquis went straight into our item storage, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering where she was going with this, but I found that I had no answer to her next question: “Then why did all of Cylon’s items fall to the ground when Morte killed him…?”

  “Uh…mmm……”

  She had a very good point. We’d survived because Cylon dropped his Namnepenth’s Poison Jar within breathing range of us. But shouldn’t it automatically have gone into Morte’s inventory?

  “Well, there are two possibilities I can see. Either Morte had barely any space left in his inventory…or the rules for dropping items is different when a player kills another player or an NPC.”

  “…Morte’s probably very high-level, so I have my doubts about the former.”

  “That’s true. He’s bound to be limited in space because he switches between sword and ax, but even then, I can’t imagine that he planned to come attack us while being just under the weight limit. So it might be a special set of rules…but there’s no way for us to test that out.”

  “How did it work in the beta?”

  “I feel like it was the same as when hunting monsters…but I didn’t PK, so I can’t tell you for sure…If we run into Argo somewhere, we should ask her,” I said, putting a hold on the topic of item drops and returning to the black pick on the table.

  We’d gotten two of the three poisoned picks, but the real issue was where they’d come from. I prayed there would be a hint to the answer in the item properties and tapped one of them. Asuna and I leaned closer to read the information.

  “Um…it’s called a…Spine of…Sh…Shmargor…? I think?” she hedged.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. I’d been feeling like I was using my partner as a walking English-Japanese dictionary, but Asuna didn’t seem to be annoyed.

  “Spine is probably like ‘thorn’ in this case. I’d assume Shmargor is a given name, but I’ve never heard of it in the real world or in Aincrad.”

  “Mmm…”

  I continued reading. The attack and durability ratings were a bit higher than what you could buy at a store—but nothing shocking. The real issue was the special effect below that.

  “PARALYSIS (THREE): WHEN THIS WICKED SPINE STRIKES, IT CONFERS A LEVEL-TWO PARALYZING POISON EFFECT. THE POISON WILL WEAR AWAY AFTER THREE USES…Wow, level two? We haven’t even gotten level-one paralyzing poison yet. That means a level-one cure potion from an item store probably won’t even work on this.”

  “Then…what can you do?”

  “Either level up the Mixing skill so you can craft level-two cure pots or use a Purify Crystal…but…”

  Asuna’s brow knotted. “How much proficiency do you need to craft level-two potions?”

  “About one hundred, I think.”

  “Ugh.”

  That reaction was so perfectly in line with what I would say that I couldn’t help but side-eye her. Asuna recognized what she’d done and turned a bit red, stammering, “A-and we’re not getting any crystal items yet at this stage. So at the moment…there’s no way for us to counteract the paralysis of this pick?”

  “Um…well…”

  The primary way to undo damaging or paralyzing poison was by using potions or crystals, but that wasn’t the entirety of it. Among the seemingly unlimited types of food and drinks of this world were some with debuff-curing effects, and there was a good variety of material items that provided curative and healing benefits when used on their own. Then there were armor and accessories that boosted poison resistance, and…

  My mind was completely off on this tangent when Asuna sucked in a sharp breath. She’d been reading the flavor text at the bottom of the properties window.

  “Oh…”

  “Wh-what is it?”

  “THE SUNKEN ELF GENERAL N’LTZAHH FACED THE DREAD DRAGON SHMARGOR AND CUT OFF EVERY LAST ONE OF ITS SPINES, WHICH DRIPPED WITH DEADLY POISON,” she recited, as I followed the text. Apparently Shmargor was a dragon with poisonous spines. But that wasn’t the crazy part.

  The “sunken elf” was clearly referring to Fallen Elves. And the individual named General N’ltzahh was someone Asuna and I had witnessed in person.

  “H…hang on. You mean this pick is a spine that General N’ltzahh chopped off a dragon?”

  “That’s what it says here…”

  “B-but…why…?”

  I had to pause there to get down the rest of my lemonade. “Why does Morte have something like that?”

  “You don’t think…he actually defeated General N’ltzahh…do you?” Asuna wondered.

  I thought it over and shook my head. “No…I can’t believe that. You saw the general’s color cursor, didn’t you?”

  “……Yeah.” Her cheeks went paler than usual.

  We had witnessed General N’ltzahh in the Fallen Elf base hidden deep in the submerged dungeon on the fourth floor. I was level 16 at the time, and his cursor had looked pure black to me. I wasn’t taken by even an instant’s desire to leap out of my hiding spot and challenge him to a fight. Even now, ten days later and level 19, I was certain that if I’d done so, both I and Asuna would’ve been dead in less than a minute.

  The Fallen Elf had been surrounded by an aura cold as ice, and even expert player-battlers like Morte and the dagger user wouldn’t stand a chance against him. In other words, if they were tough enough to beat N’ltzahh, they could’ve easily killed us both without needing to take advantage of that paralysis event.

  “If anything…they’d either have to sneak into the Fallen Elf hideout and steal them, or they got a very rare drop from one of the lower Fallen Elves—the kind we were fighting…I think…”

  I myself wasn’t certain about this at all. I decided to tap the dagger next to the picks. When I read the properties that appeared, my voice caught in my throat.

  It was called the Dirk of Agony. Its special bonuses included better poison and frost resistance, and a low chance of causing bleeding damage to any target. The flavor text described it as “a dagger given as a prize from the Fallen Elf Commander.”

  “…A Falle
n Elf prize?” I muttered. Asuna pushed my head out of the way with her own to read the text, and she was similarly shocked.

  “Does this mean…it was a quest reward?”

  “…”

  I didn’t have an immediate answer for her question. The item description didn’t suggest any other interpretation, but if true, it would mean the dagger user received a quest from the Fallen Elf Commander, finished it, and got this dagger as a reward.

  And if that was the case, then Morte’s poison picks weren’t stolen from a Fallen Elf, either, but they were likely given to him. It was one thing if it was a quest that could only be performed once, but in the off chance that it was a reward for a repeatable vanquishing or gathering quest…that would mean the paralyzing picks we’d worked so hard to steal were in practically limitless supply.

  “Hey, Asuna—” I said, right at the exact same instant that she said, “Say, Kirito…”

  We each used our eyes to motion the other to start, until Asuna, who was slightly less patient than I was, finally gave in and continued, “Well…I’m curious about the Stachion quest, but for now, I think it’s smarter to investigate these picks a little more.”

  “I was just about to say the exact same thing,” I said, which brought a bit of a smile to her lips before they tightened up again.

  “If they can keep getting these weapons, as many as they want, that’s major trouble. They might not only go after us, and we’d have to make sure that every last player fighting out in the wilderness has resistance against paralysis…”

  “I completely agree,” I said, “but like I mentioned before, we have very few options for dealing with level-two paralysis poison as it stands…so I think we should ask about that, too.”

  “Ask…whom?” Asuna wondered.

  I gave her a sly grin. “A knight who would know something about the Fallen Elves and poisons.”

  The circular map of the sixth floor of Aincrad was split into five equal slices by steep lines of mountains, with a star-shaped lake in the center.

  Stachion and its neighbor Suribus were in the northeast slice, and the labyrinth tower was in the adjacent southeast area, but the rocky mountains in between were so tall they nearly reached the underside of the seventh floor and blocked all passage.

  Therefore, players needed to go around the floor in counterclockwise fashion. The mountains were about a hundred yards wide at their base, and the dungeons that served as the passageway were fairly short. But they were packed with annoying puzzles in each room, with a mid-boss waiting at the exit of each area.

  The DKB and ALS, the two main guilds on the frontier, had switched from Stachion to Suribus on the very first day of the floor. After half a day of leveling and updating equipment, then a good rest at the puzzle-less inn, they were now planning to tackle the cave in the adjacent northwest area—at least, according to the message I got from Agil, leader of the Bro Squad.

  At the time of that message, Asuna and I had been eating breakfast at the restaurant and planning to go back to Stachion before noon to finish the multi-part quest, after which we’d head for the northwest area. But because of the weapons Morte and his friend had dropped, our priorities had changed. We put our stuff away, checked out of the Jade and Kingfisher, and headed for the dungeon at the very south end of the area.

  Although we left late and encountered a couple monsters along the road, the two of us were still faster than a full raid party of several dozen, so we could still see three groups milling outside the dungeon entrance in its deep valley by the time we got there.

  “Darn, I was hoping they’d have cleared out the dungeon already, so we could just walk right through it,” Asuna grumbled as she waited in the shade of the trees.

  I considered this and suggested, “Wouldn’t it be the same thing if we wait for them to go in, then sneak after them as they go?”

  “There’s a huge difference between ‘We rushed but didn’t make it in time’ and ‘We chose not to rush to make it there.’ Plus, Agil’s group is over there already.”

  Indeed, resting outside the dungeon were the eighteen members (in three parties) from the blue-clad DKB, another eighteen from the green-dressed ALS, and the four members of the Bro Squad who wore varying armor but held exclusively two-handed weapons. At the end of Agil’s message, he’d said If you have time, you can help us get through the dungeon, so the thought of complaining about our own problems made me feel guilty.

  “All right, I guess we should go,” I said, straightening up and patting Asuna on the back. We headed into the narrow crevice that led to the dungeon. As we walked past the sheer rock wall with its odd relief carvings, I made sure to step as loudly as possible to announce my entrance—and then waved to the Bro Squad, who were closest to us, huddled around a small campfire.

  “Yo—hey, guys,” I greeted.

  “Good afternoon, Agil, Wolfgang, Lowbacca, and Naijan,” added Asuna.

  The tough guys greeted us in return, although they only smiled at Asuna.

  Silently cursing them, I sat down next to Agil. A quick glance down the way showed me that Kibaou’s ALS and Lind’s DKB were watching us with disgruntled expressions. I gave them a two-finger salute and turned back to the fire.

  Unlike the real world, you didn’t need to know anything to start a fire here, but finding high-quality logs for fuel was surprisingly difficult. There were fallen branches all over in the wooded areas, but if you wanted to make a good fire, you had to tap them to make sure their item name was Dead Tree Branch. A Living Tree Branch or Damp Branch would produce lots of smoke and a weak, unstable flame. They sold bundles of good firewood at the general store in town, but these were quite heavy and took up space, so you couldn’t lug many around.

  But thanks to the overall high Strength stat of the Bro Squad, they had plenty of carrying capacity, and they were using nice, store-bought logs. A metal tripod was set up over the fire, with a kettle hanging from the top and emitting the scent of tea.

  “How long is this break lasting, Agil?” Asuna asked. The man said it would be about ten minutes, so I judged I had just enough time and opened my menu to pull out a stash of sweet potatoes—the proper item name was Ichthyoid Potato—I’d been keeping since the fourth floor. I tossed three into the fire.

  These food items were around in the beta, too, but they were originally sold off at bargain prices, probably because it was the half-fish monsters who dropped them. Since the fourth floor in the beta was a place of dry, dusty canyons, the presence of fishy creatures made them even creepier.

  But once people found out that cooking them in a campfire made them tastier than any store-bought sweets, the price shot through the roof, and there was a potato rush as players slaughtered the half fish for their starchy loot. Information wasn’t getting around as quickly in the current form of Aincrad, so I made a mental note to head back down to the fourth floor and stock up soon.

  The next thing I knew, it had been five or six minutes, and a sweet smell was issuing from the campfire.

  Asuna and the Bros paused in their chitchat, nostrils twitching, but I let the sweet potatoes sit in the fire as long as possible—the moment just before they got burnt for good was when they tasted best—and with perfect timing, I pulled out my sword and jabbed three quick times into the fire.

  Sparks flew with the disturbance, but when I pulled out my sword, there were three perfectly cooked sweet potatoes skewered on its end. All five teammates held out their hands in silence, so I cut each of the potatoes in half and handed them out.

  The green-tea-style liquid that Agil had brewed went very well with the half-fish potato. My hometown of Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture was a well-known area for sweet potatoes, and I’d eaten them all the time since I was a kid. Therefore, I was both picky about the taste and texture as well as a bit tired of eating them, but even digital, I would give these sweet potatoes at least ninety-five out of one hundred.

  The potato halves soon vanished into virtual stomachs, and six c
ontented sighs escaped in unison. Wolfgang, who was planning to open a steak house on the second floor in the future, asked me where to get them. To avoid disillusioning him with the facts, I simply said, “I’ll sell them to you for cheap,” and finished my tea. The Bro Squad had surely fought some of the half-fish monsters in the fourth-floor labyrinth tower, but the Ichthyoid Cultivators that dropped the potatoes didn’t appear alone, and they ran away once they got down to 50-percent HP, so the only reliable way to beat them was to use a major skill at the right moment.

  Thirty seconds before the end of the break, the campfire was tidied up, and Agil let us into his party. The Bro Squad was just four members at the moment, so Asuna and I could fit into the maximum of six, but sooner or later they’d get more members, and we couldn’t assume there’d always be a place for us. It was occurring to me that I’d need to think about what to do when we inevitably got bumped out of the raid group…when Asuna sidled up next to me with a question out of nowhere.

  “Hey, Kirito. How does a player with an orange cursor get it back to green again?”

  “Eh?”

  Why would she ask that now?

  I blinked but soon understood where she was going with it:

  Morte and his comrade had slipped into the ALS and DKB by hiding their identities, and they were using various tricks to pit the guilds against each other. By the time I saw through their scheme on the third floor, Morte had already left the guild, but my guess was that the dagger user was still in the ALS.

  But yesterday, he had attacked the NPC assisting Cylon, turning his color cursor orange. So he couldn’t enter any town, and it would make it very difficult for him to meet his guildmates. That meant if there was any player among their ranks who had abruptly vanished last night or who was still among the group with some excuse for why he was orange, that was our man. But only if he hadn’t gotten his cursor back to green at some point over the course of the night.