Copyright

SWORD ART PROGRESSIVE Volume 1

© REKI KAWAHARA

Translation by Stephen Paul

Cover art by abec

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the
authorÙs imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is coincidental.

SWORD ART ONLINE PROGRESSIVE

© REKI KAWAHARA 2012
All rights reserved.
Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS
First published in Japan in 2012 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori
Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

English translation © 2015 by Yen Press, LLC

Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of
copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

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First Yen On eBook Edition: June 2017
Originally published in paperback in March 2015 by Yen On.

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ISBN: 978-0-316-47458-0

E3-20170502-JV-NF
 Contents

Cover
Insert
Title Page
Copyright

Sword Art Online Progressive: Aria on a Starless Night

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15

Sword Art Online Progressive: Interlude

Sword Art Online Progressive: Rondo for a Fragile Blade

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14

Afterword
Yen Newsletter
 1

JUST ONCE, I SAW AN ACTUAL SHOOTING STAR.

It wasn’t on a camping trip under the stars, but from my bedroom window. This wouldn’t be such
a rare thing to those who live in places with clear skies or that are properly dark at night, but my
home of fourteen years, Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture, was neither of those things. Even on a clear
night, you could only see the brightest of stars with the naked eye.
But one midwinter night, I just so happened to glance out of the window and caught a glimpse of a
momentary brilliance falling vertically through a starless night sky pale with the light of the city. I
was in fourth or fifth grade at the time, and in my innocent youth, I decided to make a wish … only to
squander it on the most pointless thing imaginable: “I wish the next monster would drop a rare item.”
I was in the middle of grinding for a level-up in my favorite MMORPG at the time.
I saw another shooting star of the same color and speed three (or perhaps four) years later.
But this was not with the naked eye, and it did not flash against the gray night sky. It happened
within the murky depths of a labyrinth created by the NerveGear—the world’s first full-sensory
immersive VR interface.

The way the fencer fought brought the word “possessed” to mind.
He darted out of the way of the level-6 Ruin Kobold Trooper’s crude axe so tightly, I felt a chill
run down my back. After three successful evasions, the kobold’s balance was entirely lost, and he
unleashed a full-power sword skill into the helpless beast.
He used Linear, a simple thrust that was the first attack anyone learned in the Rapier category. It
was a very ordinary attack, a twisting thrust straight forward from a centered position, but his speed
was astonishing. It was clearly not just the game’s motion-assistance system at work, but rather the
product of his own athletic skill.
I’d seen party members and enemy monsters use the same skill countless times during the beta test,
but all I could catch this time was the visual effect of the sword’s trajectory, and not a glimpse of the
blade itself. The sudden flash of pure light in the midst of the dim dungeon brought the memory of that
shooting star to my mind.
After three repetitions of the same pattern of dodging the kobold’s combo and responding with
Linear, the fencer had dispatched the armed creature—one of the toughest in the dungeon—without
taking a scratch. But it was not a lazy, easy battle. Once the final thrust had ripped through the
kobold’s chest and sent it bursting into empty polygonal shards, he stumbled back and thudded against
the wall, as though the creature’s disintegration had pushed him backward. The man slid down the
wall until he sat on the floor, breathing heavily.
He hadn’t noticed me standing at a tunnel intersection about fifteen yards away.
My normal activity at this point would be to silently slink away and find my own prey to hunt.
Ever since I’d made the decision one month ago to work as a self-interested solo player, I had never
gone out of my way to approach another person. The only exception would be if I saw someone
battling and in mortal danger, but the fencer had never dipped below full health. At the very least, he
didn’t seem to need anyone barging in and offering to help.
But still …
I hesitated for five seconds, then made up my mind and strode forward in the direction of the
sitting player.
He was skinny and undersized, wearing a light bronze breastplate over a deep red leather tunic,
tight-fitting leather pants, and knee-high boots. His face was hidden beneath the hooded cape that hung
from head to waist. Everything aside from the cape was proper light armor for a nimble fencer, but it
was also similar to my swordsman’s wear. My beloved Anneal Blade, a reward for a high-level
quest, was so heavy that I needed to cut down on bulky equipment to keep my moves sharp—I didn’t
wear anything heavier than a dark gray leather coat and a small breastplate.
The fencer flinched when he heard my footsteps but didn’t move farther. He would have seen the
green color of my cursor to reassure him that I was no monster. His head stayed hung between his
upturned knees, a clear sign that he wanted me to keep walking past, but I stopped a few feet away.
“A little bit overkill, if you ask me.”
The slender shoulders under the thick cape shrugged again. The hood shifted back just an inch or
two, and I saw two sharp eyes glaring out at me. All I could see were two light brown irises; the
contours of his face were still shadowed.
After several seconds of a glare just as piercing as those rapier thrusts, he tilted his head slightly
to the side. It seemed to suggest that he didn’t understand what I meant.
Inwardly, I heaved a sigh of resignation. There was one massive itch in the back of my mind that
kept me from continuing on my solitary way.
The fencer’s Linear was chillingly perfect. Not only were the pre- and post-motions extremely
brief, the attack itself was faster than I could see. I’d never been in the presence of such a terrifying
and beautiful sword skill before.
At first, I assumed he must have been another former beta tester. That speed had to have come
from plenty of experience gained before this world had plunged into its current deadly state.
But when I saw that Linear a second time, I began to question my assumption. In comparison to the
excellence of his attack, the fencer’s battle flow was downright perilous. Yes, the defensive strategy
of dodging enemy strikes with a minimum of movement led to quicker counterstrikes than blocking or
parrying, as well as saving wear and tear on equipment. But the consequences of failure far
outweighed those positives. In a worst-case scenario, a successful hit by the enemy might be treated
as a counterattack that included a brief stun effect. For a solo fighter, getting stunned was a kiss of
death.
It didn’t add up—brilliant swordplay combined with downright reckless strategy. I wanted to
know why, so I approached and wondered out loud if it might be overkill.
But he didn’t even understand that extremely common online term. The fencer sitting on the floor
here could not be a beta tester. He might not have even been an MMO player before coming to this
game.
I took a quick breath and launched into an explanation.
“Overkill is a term used when you do way too much damage for the amount of health the monster
has left. After your second Linear, that kobold was nearly dead. It only had two or three pixels left on
its HP bar. You could have finished it off easily with a light attack, rather than going for a full sword
skill.”
 How many days had it been since I’d said so many words at once? How many weeks? For being a
poor Japanese student, my explanation was as elegant as an essay, but the fencer showed no response
for a full ten seconds. Finally, a soft voice muttered from the depths of the hood.
“Is there a problem with doing too much damage?”
Finally, at long last, I realized that the squatting fencer was the rarest of encounters in this entire
world, to say nothing of deep in a dungeon—not a male player, but a woman.

The world’s first VRMMORPG,Sword Art Online, had opened its virtual doors nearly a month
before.
In your average MMO, players would be hitting the initial level cap and the entire game world
would have been thoroughly explored from end to end. But here in SAO, even the best players in the
game were barely around level 10—and no one knew what the cap was. Barely a few percent of the
game’s setting, the floating castle Aincrad, had been mapped out.
SAO was not quite a game anymore. It was more of a prison. Logging out was impossible, and the
death of the player’s avatar resulted in the death of the player’s body, period. Under those stark
circumstances, few people dared risk the danger of a dungeon’s monsters and traps.
On top of that, the game master forced every player’s avatar into their real-life gender, which
meant there was a massive shortage of females in the game. I’d assumed that most of them were still
camped out in the safe haven of the Town of Beginnings. I’d only spotted women two or three times in
this massive dungeon—the first-floor labyrinth—and they were all in the midst of large adventuring
parties.
Thus it never occurred to me that this solitary fencer at the edge of the unexplored territory deep in
the dungeon might actually be a woman.

I briefly considered mumbling an apology and leaving in haste. I wasn’t on a crusade against the men
who always made it a point to talk to any female player they saw without hesitation, but I most
definitely did not want to be identified as one of them.
If she’d responded with a “mind your own beeswax” or “I can do what I want,” I’d have no choice
but to agree and move along. But the fencer’s response seemed to be an honest question, so I stopped
and tried to come up with a proper explanation.
“Well … there’s no penalty in the game for overkilling—it’s just inefficient. Sword skills take a
lot of concentration, so the more you use them, the more exhausted you get. I mean, you’ve still got to
get back home, right? You should try to conserve more energy.”
“… Get back home?” the voice from the hood questioned again. It was a ragged monotone,
seemingly exhausted, but I thought it was beautiful. I didn’t say that out loud, of course. Instead, I tried
to elaborate.
“Yeah. It’s going to take a good hour to get out of the labyrinth from this spot, and even the closest
town is another thirty minutes from there, right? You’ll make more mistakes when you’re tired. You
look like a solo player to me; those mistakes can easily turn fatal.”
As I spoke, I wondered to myself why I was lecturing her so earnestly. It wasn’t because she was
a girl, I thought. I’d started this conversation before realizing her gender.
If the roles were reversed and someone was haughtily lecturing me about what I should do, I’d
certainly tell them to go to Hell. Once I realized how contradictory my actions were to my
personality, the fencer finally reacted.
“In that case, there’s no problem. I’m not going home.”
“Huh? You’re not … going back to town? But what about refilling on potions, repairing
equipment, getting sleep …?” I asked, incredulous. She shrugged briefly.
“Don’t need potions if I don’t take damage, and I bought five of the same sword. If I need sleep, I
just get it at the nearby safe area,” she said hoarsely. I had no response.
The safe area was a small room located inside the dungeon that was never in danger of spawning
any monsters. It was easily distinguished by its colored torches in each corner of the room. They were
useful as a foothold when hunting or mapping out a dungeon, but they weren’t meant for more than an
hour-long nap. The rooms had no beds, only hard stone floors, and the open doorway didn’t keep out
the incessant sounds of monstrous footsteps and growling in the corridor outside. Even the stoutest of
adventurers couldn’t get honest sleep under such conditions.
But if I was to take her statement at face value, she was using that cramped stone chamber as a
replacement for a proper inn room in order to camp out permanently inside the dungeon. Could that
possibly be right?
“Um… how many hours have you been in here?” I asked, afraid to know the answer.
She exhaled slowly. “ Three days … maybe four. Are you done? The next monster’s going to
spawn soon, so I need to get moving.”
She put a fragile, gloved hand against the dungeon wall and unsteadily climbed to her feet. With
the rapier dangling from her hand as heavily as a two-handed sword, she turned her back to me.
As she walked forward, I saw ragged tears in the cape that spoke to its poor condition. In fact, it
was a miracle that after four days of camping out in a dungeon, the flimsy cloth was intact at all.
Perhaps her statement about not taking any damage wasn’t an idle boast …
Even I didn’t expect the words that tumbled out of my mouth at her receding back.
“If you keep fighting like this, you’re gonna die.”
She stopped still and let her right shoulder rest against the wall before turning around. The eyes
I’d thought were hazel under that hood now seemed to flash a pale, piercing red.
“…We’re all going to die anyway.”
Her hoarse, cracking voice seemed to deepen the chill of the dungeon air.
“Two thousand people died in a single month. And we haven’t even finished the first floor.
There’s no way to beat this game. The only difference is when and where you die, sooner … or later
…”
The longest and most emotional statement she’d uttered so far passed her lips and hung in the air.
I instinctively took a step forward, then watched as she quietly crashed to the floor, as though hit
by an invisible paralysis.
 2

THE MOMENT SHE HIT THE FLOOR, THE ONLY thought that passed through her brain was t
mundane question “I wonder what happens when you pass out in a virtual world?”
Falling unconscious was a momentary shutdown of the brain, caused by the stoppage of blood
flow. Blood might stop flowing for a variety of reasons—heart or blood vessel malfunctions, anemia,
low blood pressure, hyperventilation—but under a VR full dive, the physical body was already
utterly stationary in a bed or reclining chair. On top of that, everyone stuck in this particular game of
death had presumably been transferred to a nearby medical facility, where they’d be undergoing
regular monitoring and the administering of necessary drugs and fluids. It was hard to imagine
someone passing out from purely physical reasons.
These thoughts ran through her fading consciousness and eventually coalesced into a simple
statement: I just don’t care anymore.
Nothing mattered. She was going to die here. If she passed out in the middle of a labyrinth guarded
by deadly monsters, there was no way she’d emerge safely. There was another player nearby, but he
wouldn’t risk his own life just to save a stranger.
Besides, how would he save her? The weight that a player could carry in this virtual world was
strictly controlled by the game system. Deep in a dangerous dungeon like this, any player would be
heavily laden with potions and emergency supplies, not to mention all of the loot they’d procured
along the way. It was impossible to imagine anyone carrying another human being on top of all that.
Then she realized something.
For fleeting thoughts escaping her brain just before she fell unconscious, they were certainly
lasting quite a while. Plus, it was only hard stone beneath her body, so why did she feel something so
soft and gentle pressing against her back? She felt warm, somehow. There was even a light breeze
tickling her cheek.
With a start, her eyes snapped open.
She wasn’t in a dank dungeon surrounded by clammy stone walls. It was a clearing in the midst of
a forest, surrounded by ancient trees engraved with golden moss and thorny bushes bearing small
flowers. She’d passed out—no, been sleeping—on a bed of grass as soft as carpet in the middle of
the round clearing, measuring roughly eight yards across.
But … how? She’d lost consciousness deep in that dungeon, so how could she have traveled all
the way to this outdoor area?
The answer was ninety degrees to her right.
There was a gray shadow huddled at the foot of an especially large tree at the edge of the open
space. He cradled a large sword with both hands and had his head resting on the scabbard. His face
was hidden beneath longish black bangs, but based on the equipment and profile, it had to be the
player who’d been talking to her moments before she passed out.
He must have found some way to carry her out of the dungeon and to this forest. She scanned the
line of trees, until on her left she finally spotted a massive tower stretching upward to the roof, a few
hundred feet away—the labyrinth of the first floor of Aincrad.
She turned back to her right. Perhaps sensing her movement, the man’s shoulders twitched beneath
the gray leather coat, and his head rose slightly. Even in the midst of the midday forest sun, his eyes
were as black as a starless night.
The instant she crossed gazes with those pitch-black eyes, a tiny firework went off deep in the
back of her mind.
“You shouldn’t … have bothered,” growled Asuna Yuuki past gritted teeth.

From the moment she’d been trapped in this world, Asuna had asked herself the same questions
hundreds of times, if not thousands.
Why did she decide to play with that brand-new gaming console, when it wasn’t even hers? Why
did she put the helmet on her head, sink into the high-backed mesh chair, and utter the start-up
command?
Asuna hadn’t bought the NerveGear, VR interface-of-dreams-turned-cursed-tool-of-death, or the
game card for Sword Art Online, vast prison of souls—that had been her much-older brother,
Kouichirou. But even he’d never been one for video games, much less MMORPGs. As the son of the
representative director of RCT, one of the biggest electronics manufacturers in the country, he
underwent every kind of education necessary to be their father’s successor, and everything that didn’t
fall under that duty was eliminated from his life. Why he became interested in NerveGear—why he
chose SAO—was still a mystery to her.
But ironically, Kouichirou never got a chance to play the first video game he’d ever bought. On the
very day that SAO launched, he was sent on a business trip overseas. At the dinner table the night
before, he’d tried to laugh off the frustration, but she could sense that he really was disappointed.
Asuna’s life hadn’t been quite as strict as Kouichirou’s, but she too had little experience with
games aside from free downloads on her phone, even up to her current age in ninth grade. She was
aware of the presence of online games, but the entrance exams for high school were fast approaching,
and she had no reason or motive to seek them out—supposedly.
So even she had no explanation why, on the afternoon of November 6, 2022, she’d slipped into her
brother’s vacant room, put the already prepared NerveGear on her head, and spoken the “link start”
command.
The only thing she could say was that everything had changed that day. Everything had ended.
Asuna locked herself inside an inn room in the Town of Beginnings, waiting for the ordeal to be
over, but when not a single message had made its way through from the real world in two weeks, she
gave up hoping for rescue from the outside. And with over a thousand players already dead and the
first dungeon of the game still unbeaten, she understood that defeating the game from the inside was
equally impossible.
The only choice left was in how to die.
She had the option of waiting for months, possibly years, within the safety of the city. But no one
could guarantee that the rule that monsters couldn’t invade towns would never be broken.
Asuna preferred to leave the city rather than curl up into a ball in the dark, living in fear of the
future. She’d use all of her instincts to fight, learn, and grow. If she ultimately ran out of steam and
perished, at least she didn’t spend her remaining days regretting the decisions of the past and
mourning her lost future.
Run, thrust, and vanish. Like a meteor burning up through the atmosphere.
Such was Asuna’s mindset as she left the inn and headed out into the wilderness, totally ignorant
of a single MMORPG term. She picked out a weapon, learned a single skill, and found her way deep
into the labyrinth that no one else had successfully conquered.
Finally, at four in the morning on Friday, December 2, the accumulation of so many battles caused
her to black out with exhaustion, and her quest should have ended. The name ASUNA carved into the
Monument of Life beneath Blackiron Palace would be struck through, and everything would come to a
close.
It would have. It should have.

“You shouldn’t have,” Asuna repeated. The slumping, black-haired swordsman dropped his eyes dark
as night down to the ground. He seemed to be slightly older than she, but the surprising naiveté of his
gesture surprised her.
A few seconds later, her original suspicion returned as a cynical smile crossed his lips. “I didn’t
save you,” he said quietly. It was the voice of a boy, but something in it disguised his actual age.
“… Why didn’t you leave me back there, then?”
“I only wanted to save your map data. If you spent four days at the front line, you must have
mapped out a good chunk of unexplored land. It would be a waste to let that disappear.”
She sucked in a breath at the logic and efficiency of his explanation. She was expecting the same
answer that most people she’d met had given her, some claptrap about the importance of life, or the
need for everyone to band together. She’d been prepared to cut through all of that nonsense—
verbally, of course—but the practicality of his answer left her speechless.
“… Fine. Take it,” she muttered, opening her window. She’d finally gotten used to the menu
system, tabbing over to access her map info and copying it to a scroll of parchment. Another button
command materialized the scroll as an in-game object, and she tossed it at the man’s feet. “Now
you’ve got what you wanted. So long.”
She put a hand in the grass to get to her feet, but her legs wouldn’t stay steady. The clock in her
window showed that she’d been out almost a full seven hours, but her exhaustion hadn’t entirely worn
off yet. She still had three more rapiers, though. She’d told herself before she left that she’d stay
inside the tower until the last one’s durability level was below halfway.
There were still a few suspicions lurking in the back of her mind. How had the swordsman in the
gray coat managed to bring her out of the dungeon to this forest clearing? And why did he take her all
the way outside, rather than just to the nearby safe zone within the tower?
They weren’t worth turning back to ask him about, however. So Asuna turned to her left, in the
direction of the black, looming labyrinth, and started to march off.
“Hang on, fencer.”
“…”
She ignored him and kept walking, but what he said next made her stop in her tracks.
“You’re doing all of this for the purpose of beating the game, right? Not just to die in a dungeon.
So why don’t you come to the meeting?”
“…Meeting?” she wondered aloud. The swordsman’s explanation reached her ears on the gentle
forest breeze.
“There’s going to be a meeting tonight at the town of Tolbana near the tower. They’re going to
plan out how to beat the boss of the first-floor labyrinth.”
 3

AINCRAD WAS BROADLY CONICAL IN SHAPE, SO THE lowest floor was therefore the large
The circular floor was about six miles across with a surface of over thirty square miles. In
comparison, the city of Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture, home to over three hundred thousand, was a
little over thirty-eight square miles.
Because of its size, there was actually a considerable variety of terrain to be found. At the
southern tip of the landmass was the Town of Beginnings, a city over half a mile across, surrounded
by a semicircular wall. Outside of the city were rippling plains filled with boars and wolves, as well
as insect monsters such as worms, beetles, and wasps.
Across the field to the northwest was a deep forest, while the northeast held swampy lowlands
dotted with lakes. Beyond these regions lay mountains, valleys, and ruins, each full of appropriate
assortments of monsters. At the northern end of the floor was a squat tower three hundred yards
across and a hundred yards tall—the first-floor labyrinth.
Aside from the Town of Beginnings, the floor was dotted with a number of other settlements of
various sizes, the largest of which—though only two hundred yards from one end to the other—was
Tolbana, a valley town closest to the floor’s labyrinth.
The first visit by a player to this tranquil town lined with massive windmills was three weeks
after the official launch of Sword Art Online.
By that time, over eighteen hundred players had perished.

The mysterious fencer and I left the forest—not together, but at an awkward distance—and passed
through the northern gate of Tolbana.
A purple message in my field of vision stating SAFE HAVEN indicated that we were within town
limits. Instantly, I felt the exhaustion of the long day settle onto my shoulders. A sigh escaped my lips.
If I felt this bad after only leaving the town that morning, the fencer behind me must have felt much
worse. I turned back to check on her, but her knee-high boots did not falter. A few hours of sleep
couldn’t have erased the fatigue of three days of straight combat, so she must have been putting on a
brave front. It seemed like returning to town ought to be cause for relaxing both mind and body (and in
this virtual setting, they were the same thing), but she didn’t appear to be in the mood for suggestions.
Instead, I kept things short and sweet. “The meeting’s at the town square, four in the afternoon.”
“…”
The face within the hood nodded slightly, but she kept walking right past me.
A slight breeze running through the valley town rippled her cape as she passed. I briefly opened
my mouth but found nothing to say. I’d spent the last month vigorously avoiding all human contact as a
solo player; I had no right to expect anyone to welcome me with open arms. The only concern I’d had
was in saving my own life.
“Strange girl, yah?” a voice muttered from behind me. I tore my gaze away from the fencer and
turned around. “Seems to be on death’s door, but never dies. Clearly a newbie, but her moves are
sharp as steel. Who can she be?”
 The voice, a high-pitched wheedle that rose into an odd nasal whine at the end of each sentence,
belonged to a slippery little player an entire head shorter than me. Like me, she wore only cloth and
leather armor. The weapons on her waist were a small claw and some throwing needles. It didn’t
seem like the kind of stuff that would get her out to this dangerous zone, but this person’s greatest
weapon did not have a blade.
“You know that fencer?” I asked her automatically, then grimaced, anticipating her answer. Sure
enough, the little woman held up a hand, all five fingers extended.
“I make it cheap. Five hundred col?”
The smiling face had one very distinct feature. She’d used a cosmetic item to draw three lines on
either cheek in the style of animal whiskers. Combined with her short mousy-brown curls, the overall
effect was unmistakably rodent-like.
I’d asked her why she chose that appearance before, but her only response was “You don’t ask a
girl the reason she puts on make-up, do ya? I’ll tell you for one hundred thousand col.” So the answer
was still a mystery.
I silently swore to myself that one day, I’d actually cash in a rare item and pay the exorbitant fee,
just to force an answer out of her.
“I don’t feel comfortable trafficking in a girl’s private information,” I muttered sternly.
“Nee-hee! Good mindset to have,” she said smarmily. Argo the Rat, the first information trader in
Aincrad, chittered with laughter.

Watch out. Five minutes of chatting with the Rat, and she’ll have worked a hundred col outta you,
someone had warned me once. But according to Argo, she’d never once sold a piece of information
whose verification was unclear. She always paid a source for info she considered worth something,
and only turned it into a product to sell once she’d made sure the story was solid. It seemed clear to
me that a single piece of poor intel sold for cash would ruin her reputation, so while it wasn’t exactly
the same as farming ingredients in dungeons and selling them to NPCs, as a business, it had its own
set of perils.
Although I knew my skepticism was sexist, I couldn’t help but wondering why a female player
would choose to dabble in such dangerous work. But I knew that if I asked, she’d quote me another
price of one hundred thousand col, so I cleared my throat and asked a different question.
“Well? Is it the usual proxy negotiation today, rather than your main business?”
Now it was Argo’s turn to scowl. She looked back and forth, then prodded my back with a finger,
guiding me to a nearby alleyway. With the boss meeting a full two hours away, there were few
players milling about the town, but it seemed to be important that she not be overheard—probably
something to do with her reputation as a guardian of secrets.
Argo came to a stop in the narrow alley and rested her back on the wall of the house (inhabited by
an NPC, of course) before nodding.
“Yeah, that’s right. They’ll go up to twenty-nine thousand eight hundred col.”
“Twenty-nine, huh?” I grimaced and shrugged. “Sorry … my answer’s the same, no matter the
number. Not gonna sell.”
“That’s what I told the client, but what can ya do?”
Argo’s main business was selling information, but she used her excellent agility stat to moonlight
as a messenger. Normally she simply passed along brief verbal or written messages, but for the past
week, she’d been a pipeline to me from someone very insistent, if not downright pushy.
He (or she) wanted to buy my Anneal Blade +6 (3S3D).

The weapon-strengthening system in SAO was relatively simple for a modern MMORPG. There were
five parameters: Sharpness, Quickness, Accuracy, Heaviness, and Durability. For a price, an NPC or
player blacksmith could attempt to raise a particular stat for you. The process required specific
crafting materials depending on the stat, and there was always a probability that it would fail. This
was similar to the way it worked in other games.
Each time a parameter was successfully raised, the weapon name gained a +1, or +2, and so on,
but the actual statistic being affected wasn’t clear until you tapped on the item properties directly.
Since it would be a pain to say “plus one to accuracy and plus two to heaviness” each time when
trading with other players, it was common to abbreviate the information instead. Therefore, a +4
weapon with 1 to accuracy, 2 to heaviness, and 1 to durability would be labeled “1A2H1D.”
My Anneal Blade +6 (3S3D) increased sharpness and durability by three points each. It took quite
a lot of persistence and good fortune to improve it that much on the first floor. Few players bothered
to work on the Blacksmithing skill—which had no bearing on your odds of survival—and despite the
dwarfish appearance of the NPC blacksmiths, their actual skill was sorely disappointing.
Even the base weapon was the reward of an extremely tough quest, so the sword’s current values
had to be about the maximum a player could expect to find on the first floor. But it was still starter
equipment. I might pump it up a few more times, but I’d find a better sword on the third or fourth
floor, and the process would begin all over again.
For that reason, I had a hard time fathoming the motive of Argo’s client to pay the massive sum of
29,800 col for such a weapon. In a face-to-face negotiation, I could simply ask the buyer, but without
a name to track down, there was no way to find out about them.
“And how much are they paying you to keep quiet? A thousand?” I asked. Argo nodded.
“Yeah, I’d say so. Feel like upping the ante?”
“Hmm… one k, huh? Hmmmm.”
This “hush money” was a fee that Mystery Bidder X was paying Argo to keep their identity
hidden. If I offered to pay 1,100 col, Argo would pass that along via instant message, until they came
back with 1,200 col. Then I’d be asked to pony up 1,300, and so on. If I ended up winning the bidding
war, I’d learn who wanted to buy my sword, but I’d end up losing a significant amount of cash. That
would clearly be an idiotic outcome.
“Great … So you’re an information broker who makes money even when you don’t sell? Gotta
admire your dedication to your business,” I grumbled. Argo’s whiskered face broke into a grin and
she hissed with laughter.
“That’s the best part about it, see? The moment I sell a piece of intel, I’ve got a brand-new
product to sell: So-and-so just bought such-and-such information. It’s twice the profit!”
In real life, an attorney would never reveal the name of her client, but given the Rat’s motto of “all
information has a price,” she didn’t seem to honor that taboo. Anyone who wanted to make a deal
with her needed to know beforehand that their own information could be sold, but when her product
was so excellent, who could complain about the price?
“If any female players want my personal information, let me know so I can buy theirs first,” I said
wearily. Argo cackled again, then put on a serious expression.
 “Okay, I’ll tell the client you refused again. I’ll even throw in my opinion that they won’t get
through to ya. So long, Kii-boy.”
The Rat turned and waved, then darted back out of the alley as nimbly as her namesake. After a
momentary glimpse of her brown curls vanishing into the crowd, I felt sure she’d never get herself
killed.
I’d learned several things over the first month of SAO, the game of death.
What separated a player’s likelihood of life or death? There were an infinite number of variables
—stock of potions, knowing when to leave a dungeon, and so on—but somewhere at the center of
those swirling factors was the presence of a person’s core, something they could believe in
unconditionally. You might call it one’s greatest weapon, a tool necessary for survival.
For Argo, that was information. She knew everything crucial: where the dangerous monsters were
and the most efficient places to hunt. That knowledge gave her confidence and a cool head, which
raised her chances of survival.
What was my core? It had to be the sword on my back. More precisely, it was the feeling I got
when my blade and I became one. I’d only managed to reach that mental zone a few times, but it was
the desire to control that power at will, to be the unquestioned ruler of that realm, that drove me to
stay alive. The reason I’d put points into sharpness and durability rather than quickness or accuracy
was simple: the former were pure numerical increases, but the latter adjusted the system itself. They
changed the sensation of swinging the sword.
But in that case …
What about the fencer on the frontier of the labyrinth? What was her core? I’d transported her
outside of the dungeon (using means I could never tell her), but if I hadn’t been there, would she
really have died? I could easily imagine her unconsciously getting to her feet as the next kobold
approached, using her shooting-star Linear to dispatch the beast.
What drove her to undergo such a ferocious string of battles? What had kept her alive up to this
point? She must have some source of strength I could only imagine.
“Maybe I should have paid Argo the Five hundred col,” I muttered, then shook my head and
looked upward.
The white-painted windmills that were the defining symbol of Tolbana had just a tinge of orange
to them. It was a bit past three o’clock—time to grab a bite to eat before the undoubtedly long and
tedious boss raid meeting.
When the meeting started at four, things would get ugly.
Today, for the first time, one hidden fissure between SAO players would come into clarity: the
unbridgeable gap between new players and beta testers …
There was only one piece of information that Argo the Rat refused to sell to others, and that was
whether a person had been a beta tester or not. She wasn’t alone in that philosophy. All the former
testers, who could recognize one another by name or voice, if not by face, intentionally avoided
reaching out to each other. The previous encounter was no different. Both Argo and I knew the other
was a beta tester, but we went light-years out of our way to never discuss it.
The reason was simple: Being publicly outed as a beta tester could be fatal.
Not because of monsters in a dungeon. Because if you wandered alone in the game map, you could
be executed by a lynch mob of new players. They believed that the deaths of two thousand players
within a month could be laid at the feet of the beta testers.
And I couldn’t totally deny that charge.
 4

FOR HER FIRST MEAL IN THREE OR POSSIBLY EVEN four days, Asuna chose a heel of
cheapest black bread the NPCs in town sold, as well as the free water available at the many fountains
around the place.
She’d never particularly enjoyed eating in real life, but the total emptiness of eating in this world
was hard to describe. No matter how gorgeous the feast might appear, not a single grain of sugar or
salt reached her real body. It seemed to her that they should have eliminated the concept of hunger and
fullness altogether, but the virtual body craved food three times a day, and the pangs did not
disappear unless virtual food was eaten.
She’d learned how to shut out the feeling of hunger through sheer willpower while lurking in the
dungeon, but there was no hiding the need once back in town. As an act of protest, she always chose
the cheapest possible option, but it made her angry, in a way, that even the rough black bread eaten a
scrap at a time actually tasted pretty good.
Asuna was sitting on a simple wooden bench next to the fountain square at the center of Tolbana,
chewing away with her hood pulled low. For only costing a single col, the bread was fairly large.
Just as she’d finished half of it—
“Pretty good, isn’t it?” came a voice from her right. Her fingers stopped in the act of ripping
another piece free, and she threw a sharp glare in that direction.
It was the man she’d just left behind at the town entrance a few minutes ago, the black-haired
swordsman in the gray coat. The meddlesome stranger who’d somehow transported her unconscious
body outside of the dungeon, keeping her journey going when it should have ended.
Her cheeks suddenly grew hot at the thought. After all of her bold statements about dying, not only
was she alive, but he’d seen her chowing down on a meal. Her entire being was wracked with shame,
and she froze with the crescent of bread in her hands, uncertain of how to respond.
The man eventually coughed politely and asked, “May I sit next to you?”
Normally, she would silently stand up and leave without a second glance, but in this unfamiliar
situation, she was at a loss. Taking Asuna’s lack of response as silent permission, he sat down on the
far right corner of the bench and rummaged in his pocket, giving her as much space as possible. When
his hand reappeared, it was holding a round, black object—a one-col roll of black bread.
For an instant, Asuna forgot her shame and confusion and looked up at him in simple astonishment.
If he was good enough to have reached that deep a spot in the labyrinth, and have such excellent
equipment, this swordsman must have enough money to afford a full-course meal at a nice restaurant.
Was he just a cheapskate? Or …
“Do you really think that tastes good?” she asked, before she could stop herself. His eyebrows
took on an expression of hurt dignity, and he nodded vigorously.
“Of course. I’ve eaten one every day since I got to this town. Of course, I throw in a little
wrinkle.”
“Wrinkle …?”
She tilted her head in confusion beneath the hood. Rather than explain out loud, the swordsman
reached into his other pocket and produced a small porcelain jar. He set it down on the bench
between them and said, “Use this on your bread.”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure what he meant by “use it on the bread,” then realized that it was a
common video game phrase. Use the key on the door, use the bottle on the spring, and so on. She
reluctantly reached out and touched the lid of the jar with a fingertip. She selected “use” on the pop-
up menu that appeared, and her finger started glowing purple, the signal for “target selection mode.”
By touching the black bread in her left hand, the objects would interact.
With a brief jingle, the bread was suddenly white, coated—no, covered—with a thick substance
that appeared to be—
“… Cream? Where did you get this?”
“It was the reward for the ‘Revenge of the Cows’ quest in the last town. It takes a long time to
beat, so I don’t think many people have bothered to finish it,” he said seriously, using the jar on his
bread with a practiced motion. It must have been the last of the container, because the jar flashed,
tinkled and disappeared. He opened his mouth wide and took a large bite of his cream-slathered
bread. His chewing was so vigorous she could practically hear the sound effects, and Asuna realized
that for the first time in ages, her stomach pangs were not an unpleasant pain, but the healthy sign of
honest hunger.
She took a hesitant bite of the creamy bread in her hand. Suddenly, the rough, dry bread she’d been
eating had turned into a heavy, rustic cake. The cream was sweet and smooth, with a refreshing
tartness like yogurt. Asuna took a few more rapturous bites, her cheeks packed full with a numbing
sense of contentment.
The next thing she knew, there was not a single crumb left of the item in her hands. She looked
over with a start to see that she’d finished her food just two seconds before the swordsman.
Overcome with shame again, she wanted to get up and run off but couldn’t bring herself to be so rude
to the man who’d just treated her to a tasty meal.
Breathing heavily, attempting to get her mind in order, Asuna finally managed to squeak out a
polite response.
“……… Thanks for the food.”
“You’re welcome.”
Done with his meal, the swordsman clapped his fingerless-gloved hands together and continued.
“If you want to do that cow quest I mentioned, there’s a trick to it. If you’re efficient, you can beat it
in just two hours.”
“…”
She couldn’t deny the temptation. With that yogurt cream, her cheap black bread turned into a
proper feast. It was only an artificial satisfaction created by the game’s flavor modeling system, but
she wanted it again—every day, if possible.
But …
Asuna looked down and quietly shook her head. “I’ll pass. I didn’t come to this town in order to
eat good food.”
“I see. Why, then?”
While the swordsman’s voice wasn’t particularly melodious, there was a boyish inflection to it
that was not displeasing to her ears in the least. It was perhaps this feature that led her to speak what
was on her mind, something she hadn’t done with anyone else in this world.
“So that … I can be myself. If I was going to just hide back in the first city and waste away, I’d
rather be myself until the very last moment. Even if it means dying at the hands of a monster … I don’t
want to let this game beat me. I won’t let it happen.”
The fifteen years of Asuna Yuuki’s life had been a long series of battles. It started with the
entrance exams to kindergarten and followed with an endless succession of tests big and small. She’d
beaten them all. Losing in a single instance would mean that her life was no longer of any worth, and
she’d successfully shouldered that pressure since the very start.
But after fifteen years of winning, this test, Sword Art Online, would likely be the end of her. It
was too mysterious to her, a culture steeped in foreign and unfamiliar rules, and it was not the kind of
battle that could be won alone.
The only means of victory was reaching the very top of the giant floating castle, a full hundred
floors above, and beating the final enemy. But a month after the start of the game, one-fifth of the
players were already gone, and most of them were experienced in the ways of these things. The forces
left behind were too weak, and the path ahead was so very, very long…
As though the faucet holding her innermost feelings had been opened the tiniest bit, the words
trickled drop by drop out of her mouth. The confession came in fragments, pieces of logic that didn’t
add up to full sentences, but the black-haired swordsman sat and listened in silence. When Asuna’s
voice had died away in the evening breeze, he finally spoke.
“… I’m sorry.”
A few seconds later, Asuna skeptically wondered why he would say that.
She’d only met him today. He had no reason to apologize to her. She peered to her right and saw
that he was hunched over on the bench, his elbows on his knees. His lips shifted, and more faint
words reached her ears.
“I’m sorry … This current situation—the reason you feel so pressured—is my…”
But she couldn’t make out the rest. The especially large windmill in the center of town started
ringing its wind-powered clock bell.
It was four o’clock, the time of the meeting. She looked up and saw that a large number of players
had gathered across the fountain square.
“Let’s go. You invited me to this meeting, after all,” Asuna said, getting to her feet. He nodded and
slowly rose. What was he going to say? It ultimately didn’t matter, because she was never going to
speak with him again, but the thought dug into her side like a tiny thorn.
I want to know. I don’t want to know. Even Asuna didn’t know which desire was stronger.
 5

FORTY-FOUR.
That was the number of players who gathered at the fountain in Tolbana.
I had to admit, it was well below my expectations—my hopes. An official party in SAO could be
up to six players, and a throng of eight of those, forty-eight people in total, was a full-size raid party.
My experience in the beta test had taught me that the best way to tackle a floor boss without any
casualties was two raid parties trading off, but this wasn’t even enough for one.
I sucked in a deep breath for a sigh, but held it in when a voice came from behind me.
“There are … so many …”
It was the fencer in the hooded cape. I turned and shot back, “Many …? You call this many?”
“Yes. I mean, they’re all here for the first attempt at this floor’s boss monster, right? Knowing that
they could all die in the process …”
“… I see.”
I nodded and gazed around at the small groups of fighters huddled throughout the square.
There were five or six players I knew by name, and another fifteen or so were familiar faces I’d
come across along the frontier. The remaining twenty-something were all new to me. Naturally, the
gender balance was extremely uneven. As far as I could tell, the fencer was the only woman in the
group, but with her hood pulled so low, it wasn’t quite apparent, and I was certain that anyone else
observing would assume it was all men. Across the square, Argo the Rat was perched upon a high
wall, but she would not take part in the battle.
The fencer was right—they were all going to face the first floor boss, an enemy no one had seen
before, at least in the official Aincrad. Of all the battles one could tackle on the first floor, this would
carry the highest risk of death. That meant that every player here was prepared for the possibility of
death, in order to serve as a stepping-stone for those who came after them. However …
“I’m… not so sure,” I muttered. She turned to me, her eyes flashing doubtfully within the hood. I
chose my words carefully.
“I don’t think it applies to everyone, but I think a fair number of them aren’t doing it out of self-
sacrifice, but because they just don’t want to be left in the dust. If anything, I’d be one of the latter,
myself.”
“Left in the dust? Behind what?”
“Behind the frontier. The thought of dying is frightening, but so is the idea that the boss is being
defeated without you.”
The cloth hood dipped slightly. I figured that being a total beginner at MMOs, she wouldn’t
understand what I was saying. But I was wrong.
“Is that the same kind of motivation… like when you don’t want to fall below the top ten of the
class, or you want to stay above the seventieth percentile, or whatever?”
“…”
Now it was my turn to lose my voice. Eventually, I agreed. “Yeah … um … I think so …”
The shapely lips visible through the hood crinkled into a tiny smile, and I heard a few quiet snorts
of breath. Was she … laughing? The wielder of that ultra-precise Linear, who told me to mind my
own business when I brought her out of the dungeon?
I was almost about to rudely stare directly under the hood, but I was saved from that faux pas by
the sound of loud clapping and a shout that echoed across the square.
“All right, people! It’s five minutes past already, so let’s get started! Gather ’round, folks—you
there, three steps closer!”
The speaker was a swordsman clad in glimmering metal armor. He leapt nimbly up onto the lip of
the fountain at the center of the square from a standing position. A single jump of that height wearing
heavy armor made it clear that he had excellent strength and agility.
Some within the crowd of forty-odd began to stir when he turned to survey the group. It made
sense—the man standing on the lip of the fountain was so brilliantly handsome that you had to wonder
why he would bother playing a VRMMO in the first place. On top of that, the wavy locks framing his
face were dyed a brilliant blue. Hair dye wasn’t sold at NPC vendors on the first floor, so he must
have gotten it as a rare drop from a monster.
If he’d gone to all this trouble just to look good in front of the crowd, I assumed he must be
disappointed, given that there was only one woman in the group (and it wasn’t clear she was one,
given the hood), but the man flashed a dashing smile that suggested he would never stoop to thinking
such a thing.
“Thank you all for heeding my call today! I’m sure some of you know me already, but just in case,
my name’s Diavel and I like to think of myself as playing a knight!”
Those closest to the fountain started jeering and whistling, and someone cried, “I bet you wanted
to say you’re playing a ‘hero’!”
There were no official character classes in Sword Art Online. Every player had a number of skill
slots, and they were free to choose which skills to equip and advance. As an example, players who
focused on crafting or trading skills might be referred to as blacksmiths, tailors, or cooks … but I’d
never heard of anyone called a knight or hero.
Then again, if someone wanted to be known by that title, that was their prerogative. Diavel had
bronze armor on his chest, shoulders, arms, and shins, as well as a longsword on his waist and a kite
shield on his back. Added up, they certainly made a proper knight’s outfit.
Watching his proud display from the back row, I quickly consulted my memory. The equipment
and hair were different, so it was hard to tell, but I could have sworn I’d seen that face a few times
before in towns around the first floor. What about before, in the other Aincrad? I didn’t recognize the
name …
“Now, you’re all top players in the game, active around the front line of our progress, and I hardly
need remind you of why we’re here,” Diavel’s speech continued. I stopped trying to remember and
focused on his words. The blue-haired knight raised a hand and gestured to the massive tower—the
labyrinth of the first floor—outside the town limits.
“Today, our party discovered the staircase that leads to the top floor of that tower. Which means
that either tomorrow or the day after, we’ll finally reach … the first-floor boss chamber!”
The crowd stirred. I was surprised as well. The first-floor labyrinth was a twenty-level tower,
and I (and the fencer) had been just around the start of the nineteenth level today. I had no idea that
others had mapped so much of that floor already.
“One month. It took an entire month… but we still have to be an example. We have to beat the
boss, reach the second floor, and show everyone back in the Town of Beginnings that someday we
can beat this game of death. That’s the duty of all the top-level players here! Isn’t that right?”
Another cheer rose. Now it wasn’t just Diavel’s friends but others in the crowd who applauded.
What he said was noble and without fault. In fact, anyone seeking fault in it had to be crazy. I decided
the knight who stood up and took on the role of uniting the scattered players at the frontier deserved
some applause from me, when—
“Hang on just a sec, Sir Knight,” the voice said calmly.
The cheers stopped and the people at the front stepped aside. Standing in the middle of the open
space was a short but solid man. All I could see from my position was a large sword and spiky
brown hair that conjured the image of a cactus.
The cactus took a step forward and growled in a rasp totally unlike Diavel’s smooth voice, “Gotta
get this offa my chest before we can play pretend-friends.”
Diavel didn’t bat an eye at this sudden interruption. He beckoned to the squat man with a confident
smile. “What’s on your mind, friend? I’m open to opinions. If you’re going to offer yours, however,
I’d ask you to introduce yourself first.”
“… Hmph.”
The cactus-headed man snorted, took a few steps forward until he was right in front of the
fountain, then turned to the crowd. “The name’s Kibaou.”
The spiky-haired swordsman with the fierce name glared out at the gathering with small but
piercing eyes. As they swept sideways, I had the fleeting impression that they stopped on my face for
a moment. But I’d never heard his name and didn’t remember meeting him before. After his lengthy
survey of the gathering, Kibaou growled again.
“There gotta be five or ten folks in this midst what owe an apology first.”
“Apology? To whom?”
Diavel the knight, still standing on the edge of the fountain behind him, grandly gestured with both
hands. Kibaou spat angrily, not bothering to turn around. “Hah! Ain’t it obvious? To the two thousand
people who already died. Two thousand people died because they hogged everythin’ to themselves!
Ain’t that right?!”
The murmuring crowd of forty or so suddenly went dead silent. They finally understood what
Kibaou was trying to say. I did, too.
 The only sound through the heavy silence was the distant strains of the NPC musicians playing the
evening BGM. No one said a word. Everyone seemed to understand that if he spoke up, he would be
branded one of them. It was certainly that fear which gripped my mind at the moment.
“Mr. Kibaou, when you refer to ‘them,’ I assume you mean…the former beta testers?” asked
Diavel, arms crossed, a look of grave severity on his face.
“Obviously,” Kibaou said to the knight behind him with a glance, the thick scale mail sewed to a
leather frame jangling as he turned. “The day this goddamn game started, all them beta testers up an’
ran straight outta the first town. They abandoned nine thousand folks who didn’t know right from left.
They monopolized all the best huntin’ spots and profitable quests so’s they could level up, and didn’t
spare a backward glance for no one. I know there must be more’n one or two standin’ here right now,
thinkin’ they can get in on the boss action without anyone knowin’. If they don’t get down on hands
and knees ta apologize, and donate their stockpile of col an’ items for the cause o’ fightin’ this boss, I
ain’t gonna put my life in their hands, is what I’m sayin’!”
Just as the “kiba” in his name—the word for fangs—suggested, he ended with a snarl of bared
teeth. Unsurprisingly, no one spoke up. As a former beta tester myself, I clenched my teeth, held my
breath, and didn’t make a sound.
It wasn’t as though I didn’t want to shout back at him, to ask him if he thought no beta testers had
died yet. A week earlier, I bought a piece of intel from Argo—technically, I had her look into
something for me. I wanted a total of dead beta testers.
The SAO closed beta, which ran during summer vacation, only had a thousand open slots. Every
member also got exclusive first rights to buy the official package edition when it was released. Based
on the number of people logged in at the end of the beta, I estimated that not every person was going
to keep playing when the game was released. It would probably be seven or eight hundred—that was
my guess as to the total number of beta testers present at the start of the game of death.
Finding out who was a beta tester was the tricky part. If there was a β mark next to the player’s
color cursor, that would clear up the matter at once, but (fortunately) that was not the case. And
physical appearance was not a factor either, as the GM Akihiko Kayaba had ensured that every player
was now modeled after their own real-life appearance. The only hint to go on was player name, but
many of them could have changed names between the beta and the full release. The reason Argo and I
recognized each other as beta testers had to do with the circumstances of our first meeting, but that’s a
story for another time.
At any rate, Argo’s investigation should have been incredibly hard. Yet she came back to me with
a number after just three days.
In her estimation, the total number of beta testers who were now dead was about three hundred. If
that figure was correct, it meant that of the two thousand dead, seventeen hundred were new players.
Put into percentages, that meant the death rate of new players was 18 percent—but the death rate of
beta testers was closer to 40.
Knowledge and experience did not always translate to safety. At times, they could be one’s
downfall. I myself nearly died on the very first quest I followed after the game of death began. There
were external factors as well. The terrain, items, and monsters were virtually the same in the finished
game as in the beta, but just the slightest little difference could pop up, as small and deadly as a
poison needle …
“May I speak?”
 A rich baritone voice echoed throughout the evening square. I looked up with a start to see a
silhouette proceeding from the left end of the gathering.
He was large, easily over six feet tall. The avatar’s size was supposed to have no effect on stats,
but he made the two-handed battle axe strapped to his back look light. His face was just as menacing
as the weapon. His scalp was completely bald and chocolate brown, but the chiseled features on his
face fit that bold look quite well. He didn’t even look Japanese—for all I knew, maybe he was of a
different race.
As the burly man reached the edge of the fountain, he turned and bowed to the crowd of forty
before turning his attention to the woefully outsized Kibaou.
“My name’s Agil. If I have this right, Kibaou, you’re claiming that many newbies died because the
former beta testers didn’t help them, and therefore they ought to apologize and pay reparations? Is that
correct?”
“Y… yeah.”
Kibaou was momentarily taken aback, but he recovered and stood straight, glaring back at the axe
warrior Agil with his glinting eyes. “If they didn’t abandon the rest of us, that’s two thousand
wouldn’t be dead right now! And that ain’t just two thousand random folks, that’s the best of the best
from other MMOs that we lost! If those beta assholes had the decency ta share their loot and
knowledge, we’d have ten times as many folks here … In fact, we’d be on the second or third floor by
now!”
Three hundred of the people you’re mourning are those “assholes,” jerk! I wanted to yell, but I
held back the impulse. I didn’t have any proof backing that number, and in more self-centered terms, I
just didn’t want to be singled out. This much was clear: Outing myself as a former tester could not
possibly help my situation.
The four or five hundred testers left were hiding among the players new to the game. In terms of
level and equipment, they likely weren’t any different from the other top players. But if I stood up and
revealed my background, not only would it fail to smooth over tensions between the two groups, it
would probably just end with a witch hunt. The worst possible outcome was in-fighting between new
players and testers among the elite players on the frontier. We had to avoid that outcome at all costs.
Whether in the fields or the dungeons, the “outdoor” areas of SAO were free rein for attacking other
players.
“So you claim, Kibaou. While I can’t argue with the loot, we’ve certainly had the information out
there,” Agil spoke in his rich baritone while I hung my head pathetically. He reached into the pouch
on the waist of the leather armor stretched over his rippling muscles and produced a simple book
made of bound sheets of parchment. On the cover was a simple rat icon with round ears and three
whiskers on either side.
“You got one of these guidebooks too, didn’t you? They were handing them out for free at the item
shops in Horunka and Medai.”
“F-for free?” I murmured. As the icon on the cover suggested, it was a guide to the area that Argo
the Rat sold to other players. It contained detailed maps and lists of monsters, their item drops, and
even quest information. The large splash text on the lower half of the cover that said “Don’t worry,
this is Argo’s guidebook” wasn’t just a cheeky bit of fluff. Admittedly, I’d bought the entire set myself
to keep my memory fresh—but from what I recalled, they went for the hefty price of five hundred col
a book …
 “I got one, too,” the hitherto silent fencer whispered. When I asked if it had been for free, she
nodded. “It was stocked at the item store on consignment, but the price was listed as zero col, so
everyone took one. It was really helpful.”
“But … what the hell …?”
The Rat—a scheming dealer who would sell her own status numbers for the right price—giving
away information for free? It was unthinkable! I shot a glance back to the stone wall where she’d
been sitting minutes ago, but there was no one there. I made a mental note to ask her the reason the
next time I saw her, then reconsidered when I heard her voice inside my head saying, “That’ll cost ya
a thousand, dig?”
“Yeah, I got one. What of it?” Kibaou snarled, bringing me back to the present scene. Agil put the
strategy guide back in his pouch and crossed his arms.
“Every time I reached a new town or village, there was always one of these books at the item
shop. Same for you, right? Didn’t it strike you as too quick for the information to have been compiled
already?”
“What’s the point if it’s too quick?”
“I mean that the only people who could have offered this information and map data to the informer
are the former beta testers.”
The crowd stirred. Kibaou’s mouth shut, and Diavel the knight nodded in agreement. Agil looked
at the group again and spoke in his loud baritone. “Listen, the information was out there. And yet
people still died. I’m thinking it’s because they were veteran MMO players. They assumed thatSAO
worked on the same principles and standards as other titles, and failed to pull back when they needed
to. But now’s not the time to be holding anyone responsible for this. It seems to me that this meeting is
going to determine whether we meet the same fate or not.”
Agil the axe warrior’s tone was bold but reasonable, and his argument was so sound that Kibaou
had no immediate retort. If anyone other than Agil had argued the same thing, Kibaou would likely
have accused him of being a beta tester himself, but in this case, he could only stare daggers at the
large man.
Behind the two silent debaters, standing on the edge of the fountain with his long flowing hair
almost purple in the light of the setting sun, Diavel nodded magnanimously.
“Your point is well taken, Kibaou. I myself nearly died on several occasions due to my ignorance
of the wilderness. But as Agil says, isn’t this the time to look forward? If we’re going to beat the
floor boss, we’ll even need the former testers … no, especially need the former testers. If we exclude
them and get wiped out, then what was the point of it all?”
It was a sweeping speech more than worthy of a noble knight. Many in the crowd nodded in
agreement. As the mood seemed to tilt toward forgiveness for the testers, I sighed with relief and not
a small amount of shame. Diavel continued.
“I’m sure you all have your own thoughts on the matter, but for now, I would like your help in
clearing the first floor. If you simply can’t bear the thought of fighting alongside beta testers, then
we’ll miss you, but I won’t force you to participate. Teamwork is the most important part of any
raid.”
His gaze slowly swept across the crowd until it fixed on Kibaou. The cactus-headed swordsman
met the gaze for several long moments, then he snorted loudly and growled, “Fine … I’ll play along
for now. But once the boss fight’s over, we’re gonna settle this once and for all.”
 He turned, scale mail rattling, and walked back to the front row of the crowd. Agil spread his
hands, signaling he had nothing else to say, and returned to his spot.
In the end, this scene was the highlight of the meeting. There was only so much detailed planning
to be done for a battle when we’d only just reached the floor the creature was on. How does anyone
plan a boss fight when no one’s even seen it yet?
Well, that wasn’t quite true. I knew that the first-floor boss was an enormous kobold, that he
swung a huge talwar, and that he was accompanied by a retinue of about twelve heavily armored
kobolds.
If I revealed that I was a former beta tester and offered my knowledge of the boss, our odds of
success might rise. But if I did that, people would ask why I hadn’t spoken up before, and it might
inflame the undercurrent of anger against the testers again.
Plus, my knowledge was only of the previous incarnation of Aincrad, and there was always the
possibility that the release version of SAO had a redesigned or rebalanced boss. If we formulated a
plan based on the beta information and charged into the room only to find it had a different
appearance and pattern of attack, the ensuing confusion would be the downfall of the raid. Ultimately,
until someone opened the door to the boss chamber and got him to pop into the world, we couldn’t
begin to plan.
This was the excuse I told myself to hold my silence.
At the end of the meeting, Diavel led an optimistic cheer and got the rest of the gathering to shout
in approval. I raised a fist in solidarity, but the fencer beside me did not even pull a hand out of her
cape, much less join in the cheer. She turned around to leave even before the call of “Dismissed!”
rang out. Before she went, she spoke in a whisper that only I could hear.
“Whatever you were about to say before the meeting … Tell me, if we both survive the battle.”
As she headed into a dim alley, I silently answered.
Yes, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I left everything else behind for the sake of keeping myself
alive.
 6

THERE WAS NO DISCUSSION OF ANY STRATEGIC MERIT at the meeting, but it had apparen
served the valuable purpose of bolstering morale, as the twentieth level of the labyrinth was mapped
with unprecedented speed. On Saturday, December 30, the day after the meeting, the first party (again,
Diavel’s band of six) discovered the double doors of the boss chamber. I knew when it happened
because I was solo adventuring nearby and heard the cheers.
Boldly enough, they opened the door to catch a glimpse of the resident within. At the fountain-side
meeting in Tolbana that evening, the blue-haired knight proudly announced his findings.
The boss was an enormous kobold that towered over six feet tall. His name was Illfang the
Kobold Lord, and his weapon fell into the Curved Blade category. He was attended by three Ruin
Kobold Sentinels with metal armor and halberds.
This much was the same as the beta. From what I recalled, the sentinels respawned with each of
the four stages of the boss’s HP bar, making a total of twelve over the course of the battle, but as
usual, I didn’t have the guts to say this out loud. It would become clear as they tried a few test
skirmishes, I told myself. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried, because something cleared it all up
in the midst of the meeting.
Coincidentally, the NPC shop stall in the corner of the fountain square began selling a very
familiar item. Three sheets of parchment bound together, more of a pamphlet than a book. It was
Argo’s First-Floor Boss Guidebook. Price: zero col.
The meeting was temporarily adjourned so that everyone could “purchase” a copy from the NPC
and pore over the contents.
As usual, the amount of information was impressive. The first three pages were stuffed with all
manner of details: the just-revealed boss’s name, estimated HP, the reach and speed of its talwar,
damage, even sword skills. The fourth page covered the accompanying Kobold Sentinels, including a
note that they spawned four times, making a total of twelve.
On the rear cover of the book was a message in a red font that had not been present on any of
Argo’s other guides. It read: This information is from the SAO beta test. Details may not match the
current version of the game.
When I saw this, I looked up, searching for Argo around the square. But I saw no sign of the Rat or
her plain leather armor today. I looked back down and murmured, “She’s really going out on a limb
…”
This red warning was going to topple Argo’s usual stance of “this is just information I bought from
some former beta tester, identity unknown.” Anyone who read this warning would suspect that the Rat
herself was a former tester. There was no proof, of course, but with the widening gap in sentiment
between the new players and beta testers, she was clearly putting herself at risk of being the first
hunted down.
On the other hand, it was clear that this guidebook would remove the need for tiresome and
dangerous scouting missions. Once all forty-plus players had finished reading, they looked once again
to the blue-haired knight standing on the lip of the fountain, as though putting their decision in the
hands of a leader.
 Diavel’s head stayed down for many long seconds, deep in thought, before he finally straightened
up to address the crowd.
“Let us be grateful for this information, my friends!”
The crowd murmured. This was clearly a call for peace with the beta testers rather than
antagonism. I thought Kibaou might leap up to protest, but the brown cactus hair near the front the
gathering stayed firmly in place.
“Regardless of its source, this guide is going to save us two or three days of scouting out the boss.
I’m actually quite grateful for this. It’s the reconnaissance missions that carry the greatest risk of
fatalities, after all.”
Heads of various colors nodded throughout the square.
“If these figures are correct, the boss’s numerical stats aren’t too dangerous. If SAO was a normal
MMO, we could probably take it out with an average level three—no, five levels below the enemy’s.
So if we work on our tactics and come equipped with plenty of pots for healing, it should be possible
to win without any deaths. No, let me rephrase that: We’re not going to have any deaths, period. On
my pride as a knight, I swear this to you!”
Someone in the crowd raised a cheer, and a round of applause followed. Even as a twisted solo, I
had to admit that Diavel had a gift for leadership. The guild function didn’t unlock until the third
floor, but he would certainly have his own on the day we reached that far.
But my breath caught in my throat at his next words.
“All right, now I think it’s time to actually start planning out the battle! After all, we can’t start
taking roles until we’ve formed a proper raid party. First off, form into parties with your friends and
others around you!”
……… What?
He sounded like a PE teacher at an elementary school. I did some quick calculations. A full party
in SAO was six members, and there were forty-four present, so … that made seven parties with two
left over. Should we shoot for average, and have four parties of six and four parties of five? But that
was unlikely to happen on its own if our leader didn’t make the order …
All of my high-speed thinking went to waste. In less than a minute from Diavel’s suggestion, there
were seven full parties of six members each. Obviously he already had his own party of six, but I
didn’t expect lone wolves like Kibaou and Agil to find their own groupings so fast. I began to wonder
if I was seriously the only person who didn’t receive some kind of invitation.
But I wasn’t.
After a quick scan of the crowd, I spotted a familiar hooded cape standing slightly apart from the
rest, and slipped over to her side.
“So you got left out too, eh?” I asked, only to be greeted with a stare like molten steel. She
muttered an angry response.
“… I’m not a castoff. I just didn’t want to butt in, because it seemed like everyone else already
had their own friends.”
I wisely decided not to point out that she had perfectly defined a castoff, and put on a serious face
instead. “Why don’t you team up with me, then? A raid goes up to eight parties, so it’s the only way
we can participate.”
Basing my suggestion on the properties of the game system was a success, as she looked briefly
hesitant, then snorted and said, “I might consider it, if you send me the invite.”
 Since retorting “It was my idea first, so you should send the invite” was the kind of childishness
that I’d grown out of since being trapped in here last month, I nodded obediently and tapped the
fencer’s cursor, sending a party invite. She accepted flippantly, and a second, smaller HP gauge
appeared on the left side of my field of vision.
I stared at the list of letters below the bar.
Asuna. That was the name of the strange fencer with the preternaturally swift Linear.

Diavel the knight’s leadership was not limited to his speechmaking. He examined each of the seven
full parties that had been formed, and with a minimum of switching members, had tweaked them into
distinct groups with their own purpose in the battle. There were two heavily armored tank squads,
three groups of attackers with high offensive power, and two support teams armed with longer-range
weapons.
The two tank squads would switch off pulling aggro from the Kobold Lord—absorbing his attacks
and attention. Two of the attack teams would focus on the boss, while the third was in charge of
holding off his followers. The support teams, equipped with long, shafted weapons, would employ
delaying and interrupting skills as much as possible to prevent the enemies from attacking.
I thought it was a good arrangement—simple and less likely to fall apart. The knight returned my
esteem by examining the leftover party (the fencer and I, of course) for a few long moments before
offering some pleasant advice.
“Can you folks back up team E to make sure none of the roaming kobolds gets through?”
Translated, it felt like he was asking if we could hang out near the back and not get in anyone’s
way. I could sense the fencer named Asuna preparing to make a very unfriendly gesture, so I held a
hand in front of her and smiled.
“Got it. That’s an important role. You can count on us.”
“Thanks a lot.” The knight flashed his pearly whites and returned to the fountain.
An angry voice hissed in my ear. “How is that important? We’re not going to get a single hit on the
boss before it dies.”
“W-well, what else can we do? There’s only two of us. We can’t even switch in and last long
enough for pot rotation.”
“Switch …? Pot …?”
At her mistrustful murmuring, I stopped to consider. She had left the Town of Beginnings as an
absolute newbie with no prior experience, and made it this far on her own, using nothing more than a
bundle of five baseline rapiers bought from an NPC and the sword skill Linear.
“I’ll explain everything later. It’ll take too long to go over right here.” I figured there was a more
than likely chance she’d shoot back that she didn’t need to know anyway, but to my surprise, she was
silent for several moments before nodding meekly.

The second meeting of the boss strategy committee ended with quick greetings from the leaders of
teams A through G and an official distribution plan for the cash and items the boss would drop. The
large axe warrior Agil was the leader of tank team B, while the antagonistic Kibaou led attack team
E. The E-team was the group assigned to stop the roving kobolds, so as the leftovers, it was our job
to assist Kibaou. I didn’t really want anything to do with him, but he didn’t actually know that I was a
former tester—for now. In the end, Argo the Rat never showed up to the meeting. I wasn’t going to
blame her, of course. Her guidebook was more than enough help.
The col dropped by the boss would be automatically split evenly between all forty-four members
of the raid, and the items were on a simple finders-keepers basis. Contemporary MMOs had
transitioned to a system in which players could elect to claim an item and roll dice to see who would
win it, but SAO chose the more primitive method. The items would automatically drop into a player’s
storage, and no one would be any the wiser. In other words, if the group decided that all items from
the boss should be distributed by dice rolls, all players would have to voluntarily give up those items
to the lottery first. As I knew from personal experience in the beta, this was a sore test of one’s
willpower. Several times, I’d experienced the nasty breakup of a party when no one stepped forward
with loot after a big fight, meaning that someone must be lying about their gains.
It was likely Diavel’s intention to prevent this unsavory outcome by enacting the finders-keepers
rule. Our considerate knight in shining armor.
At five thirty, like the day before, we closed with a cheer and the gathering broke apart into small
groups to find pubs and restaurants to visit. I rolled my shoulders, which seemed unnaturally stiff,
wondering if it was just an illusion or some kind of actual physical tension that was bleeding through
to this virtual world.
“So… where will you be giving me this explanation?”
I wondered what she was talking about for a moment, then spun around in nervous surprise. “Oh…
I-I can talk anywhere you like. How about a pub around here?”
“… No. I don’t want anyone seeing.”
I was briefly stung by her implication but recovered my pride by choosing to interpret her meaning
as “seen with a man” rather than just “seen with me.”
“Okay, how about an NPC’s house? But still, someone could wander in… We could get a room at
an inn so we could lock the door, but that’s obviously out.”
“Of course it is.”
This time, I suffered piercing damage from that retort, which was as sharp as the end of her rapier.
I could manage a conversation with a female player because this was a virtual world, but just a month
before, I had been a terribly awkward and antisocial middle-schooler who could barely talk to his
own sister. Wasn’t I supposed to be sticking to my guns as a solo player? Why was I in this situation
in the first place? Obviously I wouldn’t be any use in a boss battle without joining a group, but the
other seven groups were all men, so I’d have felt much less awkward if I’d just worked my way in
with them instead…
As my mind ran in ever more self-pitying circles, the fencer sighed and continued, “Besides, the
inn rooms in this place barely live up to the name. They’re like tiny boxes with a bed and table, and
they expect you to pay fifty col a night? I don’t care about food, but the sleep you need is real, so they
could at least give us better accommodations.”
“H… huh? You think so?” I asked, surprised. “You know there are better places available if you
search them out, right? They just cost a little more.”
“How hard do you have to search? There are only three inns in town, and they’re all the same.”
I finally understood. “Oh… I see. You only checked the places with the big INN signs, right?”
“Well … isn’t that self-explanatory? An inn’s an inn.”
“Yeah, but that only refers to the cheapest possible places to spend the night here on the ground
floor. The inns aren’t the only place to pay col for a room.”
 Her lips suddenly pursed.
“W-well … why didn’t you say that earlier?” she shot back. I knew I had the upper hand now, so I
proudly described my favorite spot in town.
“I stay on the second floor of a farm in town for eighty a night, but it comes with all the milk you
want, has a comfy, spacious bed and a nice view, not to mention the bath…”
At that last phrase, she struck. With the speed of the Linear I’d seen deep in the dungeon, her hand
leapt out and grabbed the collar of my gray coat, almost hard enough to set off the game’s anti-crime
code. Her voice was steely and menacing.
“…What did you just say?”
 7

AS SHE’D MENTIONED EARLIER, IT WAS ASUNA’S BELIEF that out of all the actions possi
in this virtual world, the only real one was sleep.
Everything else was a sham. Walking, running, talking, eating, and fighting. All of these things
were simple digital codes sent to and from the Sword Art Online server. Nothing the in-game avatar
did caused a single twitch of a finger on the real-life body, reclining in bed. The only exception
occurred when the avatar lay down for the night, and the real brain engaged in what must be sleep.
So, above anything else, she wanted to make sure she got a good night’s sleep at the inns in town. It
proved to be harder than it seemed.
The constant stress and rhythm of battle in the wilderness and dungeons left no time for reflection,
but when she returned to town and lay down in bed, she fell into an endless replay of her actions from
a month before. Why had she indulged such a strange whim that day? Why wasn’t she satisfied just by
touching the NerveGear? Why did she put the formidable headgear on and say “link start”?
Whenever she fell into a light sleep reflecting on that particular regret, she had nightmares. It was
a crucial time for her—the winter of her third and final year of middle school—and because of this
stupid game, Asuna’s classmates were no doubt laughing at her failure. Her relatives were pitying her
for falling off the career path that had years left to play out. But worst of all, her parents, staring down
at her comatose body in some hospital room, their faces hidden…
She’d twitch and wake up with a jolt, then check the clock in the lower left corner of her vision to
find that at best, she’d only been asleep for three hours. After that, no amount of lying in bed with her
eyes closed would bring sleep back. In a way, if she’d just been able to get a good night’s sleep,
Asuna wouldn’t have driven herself to punishing dungeon crawls for three or four days at a time.
So as the col piled up in her purse, Asuna wished more and more for a nice room and bed to spend
it on. The inns in this world were cramped and dim, and whatever material the beds were made from,
they were noisy and tough. She didn’t need Italian-made high-resistance polyurethane foam… but
maybe simple latex would at least lengthen her rest from three hours to four. And beyond that, a
bathtub, or at least a shower, would be nice. As far as bathing went, her real-life body was almost
certainly being regularly cleaned at the hospital, but this was an issue of comfort. She was ready to
die alone in a dungeon if that’s what it came to, but if she could just have the chance, just once, to
stretch out her legs and soak in a nice, hot bath…
This fervent wish shot to the forefront of her mind at the black-haired swordsman’s words.

“…… What did you just say?” Asuna repeated, not realizing she’d grabbed him by the collar. Unless
she’d just suffered some hallucination, she could have sworn he’d just said…
“A-all the milk you can drink …?”
“After that.”
“C-comfy, spacious bed and a nice view…?”
“After that.”
“W-with a bath…?”
 So she hadn’t misheard. Asuna let go of his coat and continued, flustered.
“You said this room was eighty col a night?”
“I … I did.”
“How many extra rooms does this inn have? Where is it? I’ll take a room, just show me the way.”
Finally he seemed to understand the situation. He coughed and solemnly stated, “Um, well, I told
you I was renting out the second floor, right?”
“… You did.”
“What I meant was, I’m renting out the entire second floor. There are no open rooms. And they
didn’t have any to rent on the first floor.”
“Wha…?” She had to hold her feet firm to keep from slumping to her knees. “Then … the room’s
all …”
He seemed to understand what she was trying to ask, and responded regretfully, his eyes
wandering. “Well, I’ve gotten a good week’s worth of enjoyment out of the place, so I’d love to
switch with you … but I actually bought the maximum length of stay in advance—ten days. And the
transaction can’t be canceled.”
“Wha…?” Again, she nearly flopped over but held her ground. Asuna was terribly conflicted.
He’d just told her there were places to stay aside from the inns, and some were much nicer.
Therefore, if she just searched around Tolbana, perhaps there would be another spot with a bath. On
the other hand, there were currently several dozen players around town for the purpose of beating the
floor boss. Most likely, any nicer room would already be taken, which was no doubt the reason he’d
reserved his for such a lengthy stay.
Should she try checking at the last town before this? But the fields around there were full of
dangerous beasts after sundown, and they were meeting at the fountain at ten the next morning. She
wasn’t all that jazzed about this group effort to fight the boss, but now that she was participating—
however marginally—she was not going to show up late or skip it entirely.
That left only one option.
For several seconds, Asuna’s body and soul were a battleground of conflicting desires. She would
never in a million years consider this option in the real world. But everything here was only digital
data, not real, including her own avatar. And this was no longer a total stranger. They’d shared bread
with cream, they were taking on the same role in the boss battle, and, hang on, hadn’t he just said he
was going to explain something to her earlier? That explanation would serve as a good excuse …
right? Of course.
The swordsman was still studiously looking everywhere but at Asuna when she lowered her head
and said in a voice barely loud enough to reach his ears, “…Let me use your bath.”

The farm at which the swordsman was staying was at the edge of a small field to the east of Tolbana.
The building was much larger than she expected; the combined size of the stable and the house itself
might even be as large as Asuna’s house in real life.
A pristine stream ran through a corner of the plot of land, pushing a small waterwheel with
pleasant creaks. The two-story house was occupied on the first floor by an NPC farming family.
When Asuna stepped through the front door, the farmer’s wife flashed her a beaming smile. She
couldn’t help but notice the grandmother snoozing in a rocking chair next the fire had a golden ! over
her head—the sign of a quest—but decided to let it pass for now.
 The swordsman led her up a set of heavy stairs to a short hallway with a single door at the end. He
touched the knob and it opened automatically with the clicking sound effect of a lock unlatching. If
Asuna had touched it, nothing would have happened. Even lockpicking skills had no effect on the door
to a room rented by a player.
“Um…well, come on in.”
He pushed the door open and gestured her in awkwardly.
“…Thanks,” she said quietly and took a step inside—then screamed. “What the—? It’s so big!
And … and this is only thirty col more expensive than the place I’m renting? It’s so cheap…”
“Being able to find spots like this is a special skill—it’s just not on your character sheet. Of
course, in my case…”
He stopped mid-sentence. She looked at him curiously, but he merely shook his head. Asuna gave
the room another once-over and sighed.
The room they were standing in now had to be at least three hundred square feet. If the door on the
east wall led to the bedroom, it must be about the same size. On the west wall was another door with
a placard reading BATHROOM over it. The oddly decorative script seemed to have a sorcerous suction
to it, drawing Asuna closer. While the design of the place was rustic, it was very comfortable and
homey. The swordsman removed his sword and boots and sank into the cushy sofa.
After a luxurious stretch, he looked up as though just remembering Asuna was there, and coughed
awkwardly.
“Um, well, as you can see, the bathroom is that way, so … b-be my guest.”
“Ah … th-thanks.”
It felt a bit rude to visit someone’s room and plunge right into the bath, but it was far too late to
observe restraint now. She accepted his offer and was heading for the door when his voice drifted
over her shoulder.
“Oh, just so you’re aware, bathing isn’t quite the same as in real life. The NerveGear doesn’t
handle liquid sensations all that well … so just don’t expect too much.”
“As long as there’s plenty of hot water, I’m not asking for anything more,” she said in all honesty,
and opened the bathroom door. She slid inside and pulled the knob shut behind her.
Except for maybe a lock, she thought. Alas, when she turned around to check, her wish was
unfulfilled. There were no buttons or latches around the door. She tried tapping the door just in case,
but as she wasn’t the current owner of the room, Asuna could not call up a menu.
On the other hand, at this point the presence or absence of a lock was largely irrelevant. She was
already in the bathroom of a boy she’d met just yesterday, about to use his tub. The black-haired
swordsman—whose name she still didn’t know—was hard to gauge in terms of personality and age,
but he was not the kind of person to barge into a bathroom without warning … she thought. And if he
did try it, they were within the safe limits of town, which meant the anti-crime code was in effect.
Asuna tore her gaze away from the door and looked to the south.
“…Wow …” she murmured.
Even the bathroom was large. The northern half was the changing area, complete with a thick, soft
carpet and shelves of untreated wood on the walls. The southern half was polished stone tile, most of
which was covered by a large white bathtub in the shape of a boat.
High on the brick wall was a faucet in the shape of a monstrous face, and clear liquid was
shooting out of it with terrific force. The hot water and its thick white steam filled the bathtub up to
the very lip and cascaded onto the tile floor, where it ran down into a drain in the corner.
Common sense said there was no way the medieval European manors this building was modeled
after contained such deluxe hot-water plumbing. Asuna was not going to fault the design inaccuracies
of this virtual world, however. Weak-kneed, she opened her menu window and hit the equipment
removal button on the mannequin that took up the right half of the screen.
All the things she’d been wearing for days and weeks—the hooded cape, the bronze armor that
covered her chest, the long gloves and boots, and the rapier at her waist—disappeared instantly, and
her long chestnut hair fell across her back. All that remained were a woolen three-quarter-sleeve
tunic and tight leather pants. The equipment button now read REMOVE ALL CLOTHES , so she pressed it
again. The top and bottom disappeared, leaving only two pieces of simple underwear.
Asuna gave the door another quick glance, then pressed the button one last time, which now read
REMOVE ALL UNDERWEAR . With just three button presses, her virtual avatar was completely
unequipped, and she felt a chill on her virtual skin. The floating castle with the odd name of Aincrad
did seem to follow the concept of seasons, and the room was quite chilly, in keeping with the early
December date.
She quickly crossed the room and straddled the ceramic tub. When her left foot sank into the
water, the sensory signals hit her brain like a wall. She stuck her head into the flow of water from the
faucet, resisting the urge to slide entirely under the surface just yet. Only when the warmth covered
her entire body and took the chill of the air off did she slip down into the hot water on her back with a
splash.
“… Aaaaahh…”
There was no holding in that sigh of contentment.
As the black-haired swordsman had warned her, it wasn’t a perfect representation of a bath. Most
of the details were just slightly off—the connection between skin and water, the pressure on the body,
the glimmering reflection of light on the underside of the face.
But as with eating, there was enough preset “bathing sensation” programmed into the system for
her to be able to close her eyes, stretch her limbs, and relax. It was a bath. And not just any bath, but a
deluxe one nearly six feet long and full to the brim.
She sank up to her lips, eyes closed, letting every muscle relax, and thought, I can die happy now.
I have no regrets left.
 Ever since she had left the Town of Beginnings two weeks earlier, Asuna’s thoughts had followed
one stark philosophy: As long as this deadly game was effectively impossible to beat, all ten thousand
players would eventually die. In a world where everything was false, dying sooner or later made no
difference, in which case she’d rather keep moving forward as fast as she could, until she could no
longer go on.
At the strategy meetings the last two days, Asuna had observed the scene with cold disinterest.
Who was a former beta tester (whatever that was), how the loot would be distributed—these things
didn’t matter. Tomorrow morning, they would attempt the greatest challenge of the first floor of
Aincrad, which had already claimed two thousand victims. A mere forty-something people would
never overcome such a hurdle on the first try. There was a very high possibility that they would all
die, if they didn’t retreat in ignoble defeat first.
The reason Asuna was so willing to go out of her normal comfort zone for this bath was because
she just wanted one more before she died. Now that her wish had been fulfilled, she was completely
prepared to disappear from this world forever at tomorrow’s boss battle …
That black bread with cream on top.
What I wouldn’t give for one more of those before I die …
Asuna was disturbed by the desire that suddenly rose within her. She opened her eyes and sat up
slightly.
That flavor wasn’t bad. But it was an absolute fake. It was a polygonal model attached to some
simple variables that dictated its taste. But then, the same could be said of this bath. What looked like
hot water was simply an in-game boundary with transparency and refraction numbers calculated to
look real. The warmth that enveloped her body was just a string of numbers being sent to her brain by
the NerveGear.
But …but.
Even back in the real world, the world in which she’d lived her entire life up to a month before,
had she ever wanted to eat something as badly as she did now? Had she ever wanted to take a bath as
badly as she did before this very moment?
The full-course menus of organic food that she’d dutifully but mechanically eaten as her parents
commanded, or the virtual roll of bread her body craved so much it made her drool: Which was the
“real” thing?
Sensing that she was considering something very, very important, Asuna held her breath.
 8

WHO KNEW THAT JUST KEEPING MY GLANCE FROM drifting toward the bathroom do
required such a difficult saving throw against temptation?
I was lying deep in the sofa, training all of my concentration on the copy of Argo’s First-Floor
Boss Guidebook I’d received earlier that day. But no matter how many times my eyes passed over the
simple, easy-to-read font, none of the contents stuck in my mind.
Well, it’s still better than it would be in real life.
Let’s say this was my house in Kawagoe, Saitama, and my mother and sister were away, and a
female classmate of mine came in to take a bath for some reason. What would I do? The answer was
obvious. I’d silently sneak out of the front door, hop onto my beloved mountain bike, and take off
down Prefectural Route 51 toward Arakawa.
Instead, fortunately, I was upstairs in a large farmhouse on the outskirts of Tolbana on the first
floor of the floating castle Aincrad, and I was not a geeky teenage MMO fanatic but Kirito the
swordsman. As long as my body was this virtual avatar, nothing would happen to me, even after
Asuna the fencer exited from the bathroom. Of course, there was always the possibility that this was a
clever trap, and that while I was taking my bath, she’d empty the chest in this main room and
disappear, but the most she’d find in there were some low-level ingredients from wimpy monsters. In
fact, there was no need to take my turn after her. She’d emerge and I’d say, “Good luck tomorrow,”
and send her on her way. The end.
I shook my head rapidly and was setting the guidebook down on the coffee table when I heard
something.
There was a rhythmic sound at the door—to the hallway, not the bathroom—tap, tap-tap-tap.
Someone was knocking, but it was not the farmer’s wife. That particular rhythm was the signature of
someone else.
I leapt up with a start and nervously turned around to stare in the direction of the thick oak door
and the person standing on the other side—Argo the Rat.
Out the south-facing window into the front yard, onto the donkey tied up outside the stable,
then down the path through the forest and to the labyrinth, the thought occurred to me, however
briefly. But riding mounts in SAO was an extremely difficult task. They would behave better as the
Riding skill increased, but I didn’t have the slot space to waste on a hobby skill like that.
Instead, I hopped off the sofa and went to check on the bathroom. Lady Asuna would be in the
midst of her luxurious bath right now. If Argo caught even a hint of this fact, there would be a new
piece of information in her book of secrets: Kirito is the kind of man who entices a girl into his
bedroom on their first meeting. I couldn’t possibly serve as a model for solo players if news like
that got out.
But fortunately, all doors in this world were totally soundproof, with certain exceptions. As far as
I knew, there were only three things that could travel through a door: shouts, knocks, and battle SFX.
Normal conversations and the sounds of the bath would not leak through, even with an ear to the door.
So I could let someone into the room, and they would have no idea that anyone was bathing in the
tub. And if the fencer happened to open the door while Argo was here—well, there was always that
donkey.
The above thoughts flashed through my brain as quick as combat reactions, and I approached the
hallway door, steeled myself, and opened it. Once I confirmed who it was, I gave her my prepared
line. “Strange for you to come visit my room directly.”
Argo the Rat’s whisker-drawn face looked suspicious for a moment, then she shrugged.
“I guess. The client says I have to get an answer out of you before the end of the day.”
She strode comfortably across the room and thumped down into the exact spot on the sofa I’d just
been using. I closed the door and turned to the tray in the corner to pour two glasses of fresh milk
from the large pitcher there, very carefully keeping myself from glancing at the bathroom door as I
returned to the sofa and set the milk on the table. Argo raised an eyebrow and smirked.
“Seems almost too considerate for you, Kii-boy. Slipped a little sleeping powder in there, didja?”
“You know that stuff doesn’t work on players. Even if it did, we’re inside town limits.”
Argo paused a moment to reflect, then admitted I had a point. She raised the glass and downed the
entire thing in one swallow.
“That was good. Pretty high taste settings for being all-you-can-drink. Think you could bottle it up
and sell it?”
“Unfortunately, it’s only valid for five minutes after leaving the building. Even worse, it doesn’t
just disappear, it turns absolutely disgusting …”
“Ooh, I didn’t know that. Nothing scarier than free food.”
I kept praying that she’d get to the damn point, but there was no telling what would happen if she
sensed my impatience. With a straight face, I picked up the guidebook I’d left on the table and
smacked it.
“Speaking of free stuff, what about this? Now, I’m a happy customer of your work, but I was
buying these books for five hundred col each. Then at yesterday’s meeting, Agil the axe-warrior says
you’re giving them out for free?” I said sourly. She hissed with laughter.
“It was thanks to you and the other front-runners purchasing the first batch that I was able to make
a second printing to distribute for free. But don’t worry, all the first printings have an authentic Argo
signature inside.”
“… I see. Well, that’s a great reason to keep buying.”
This free distribution must have been Argo’s way of taking responsibility for her beta tester
background. I wanted to open up and ask her about it directly, but even between us, there was an
unspoken taboo about discussing the beta. Plus, as a former tester who’d never lifted a finger to help
the player population, I didn’t have the right to ask.
Argo swung her brown curls and cut through the heavy silence.
“Welp, do you mind if I cut to the chase?”
Please, please, please, I silently screamed, nodding politely.
“As you can probably guess from the fact that I mentioned a client, this regards the potential buyer
of your sword. If you accept today, the offer will be thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred col.”
“… Th …”
Thirty-nine?! I nearly screamed, but held it in. After a deep breath and several seconds, I finally
spoke.
“… I don’t mean to disrespect you … but are you sure this isn’t a scam of some kind? Forty
thousand is more than this weapon is worth. The basic Anneal Blade costs about fifteen thousand col,
right? With another twenty thousand, you can buy all the materials to augment it up to plus six without
any trouble. It might take a little time, but with just thirty-five thousand col, you could get the same
weapon as mine.”
“I said the exact same thing three times, just to be sure!”
Argo spread her hands, a rare expression of disbelief on her face. I crossed my arms and leaned
back into the sofa, all thought of the situation in the bathroom forgotten now that this new topic
demanded my attention. The idea of losing money from this situation burned me up inside, but I felt
worse letting my curiosity go unanswered. It took an act of will to make a counteroffer to Aincrad’s
first information dealer.
“Argo… I’ll pay one thousand five hundred col for the name of your client. Check with the other
side to see if they’ll add to that.”
“…All right,” Argo nodded, opening her window and shooting off an instant message with fingers
flying.
When the response arrived a minute later, she twitched an eyebrow and shrugged broadly.
“It says they don’t mind telling you.”
“…”
I was now thoroughly baffled, but I opened my window and extracted 1,500 col anyway, stacking
the six coins on the table in front of Argo.
She grabbed them and flipped them one-by-one into storage with her thumb, nodding to signal the
completion of the deal.
“Actually, Kii-boy, you already know his face and name. He caused quite a scene at the strategy
meeting yesterday.”
“… You mean… Kibaou?” I whispered. She nodded.
Kibaou. The man who burned with a righteous fury toward former beta testers. He was the one
paying forty k for my sword?
I did recall that the weapon hanging across his back was a one-handed sword, just like mine. But
yesterday was the first time we’d been face-to-face. And it was over a week ago that Argo had
brought the first offer from this particular client to me.
The information that I’d paid 1,500 col for left me even more confused than before. I crossed my
legs on the cushion to think over this development. Just to be certain, Argo asked me, “I take it
there’ll be no deal on the sword again?”
“Nope …”
I was not going to part ways with my favorite sword for any sum of money. I nodded my assertion
and sensed the Rat getting to her feet.
“Welp, I better be off, then. Make good use of that guide, hear?”
“Yeah …”
“Oh, and before I go, I’m gonna borrow your other room. Gotta change into my night equipment.”
“Yeah …”
As I scanned my memory, I did recall that when Kibaou had stood in front of the crowd and glared
at everyone, his eyes stopped on me for a moment. Did that mean he wasn’t suspecting me of being a
beta tester, but that he was scoping out my sword? Or could it be both …?
Hang on a second. What did Argo just say?
I looked up, 80 percent of my mind still concentrating on the topic of Kibaou. Out of the corner of
my eye, I saw Argo turning the doorknob. Not the main door to the upstairs hallway or the bedroom
door on the east wall—the one beneath the plate proclaiming BATHROOM.
And as I watched, stunned, the Rat disappeared into the bathroom.
Three seconds later—
“Whoa—?!”
“… Eeyaaaaaaa!!”
A tremendous scream shook the building. The next thing I saw was a player that was not Argo
burst out of the door.
No memory remains of what happened next.
 9

10:00 AM, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4.

The game had launched at one o’clock PM on Sunday, November 6, so in three hours, it would be
exactly four weeks since it all began.
When I first noticed the lack of the log-out button, I assumed it was simply a system error, and at
worst, it would be a matter of minutes before order was restored and I could leave. But before long,
Akihiko Kayaba, in the guise of a faceless GM, assigned us to the task of clearing all one hundred
floors of Aincrad. At the time, I foresaw an imprisonment lasting a hundred days. In essence, I
expected that we’d average about a floor a day.
Now it had been four entire weeks—and we hadn’t even finished the first floor yet.
I could only laugh at how optimistic I’d been, and depending on the outcome of today’s boss
battle, it could become brutally clear that time wasn’t the real issue with our escape. The forty-four
players in the fountain square of Tolbana were the best of the best in the game at the present time. If
this squad fell entirely or even lost half of its members, the news would spread throughout the floor,
and a prevailing view would form: SAO was unbeatable. No one could say how long it would take
for a second raid party to be formed—there might never be another attempt at the boss. Even grinding
for levels wasn’t an option, as the effective experience gain from the monsters on the first floor had
long passed its peak.
Everything rode on whether or not the stats of Illfang the Kobold Lord, boss monster of the first
floor, had been altered since the beta. If the king of the kobolds was only as tough as I remembered
him being, it shouldn’t be impossible to get through the fight without any fatalities, even with our
limited levels and equipment. It just depended on whether or not everyone could remain calm and
perform their duties knowing their lives were on the line …
My brain overheating with all the mental calculations, I looked to the player at my side, took a
short breath, and let it out with an awkward smile.
Asuna the fencer’s side profile, half-hidden by her deep hood, seemed no different from the time
I’d first seen her in the labyrinth, two mornings before. It was both as fleeting and fragile as a
shooting star, and as sharp as steel. Compared to her calm manner, I was a nervous wreck.
I continued staring until she suddenly turned and shot me a cold glare.
“…What are you looking at?” she whispered, voice quiet but full of menace. I shook my head
rapidly. She’d warned me this morning that if I so much as recalled the reason why she was furious,
she’d force-feed me an entire barrel of sour milk. Whatever happened, it was a blank blur in my
mind.
“N-nothing,” I tried to say nonchalantly. She flicked me another glare as sharp as the tip of her
rapier and turned away. I began to wonder if this foul mood might affect today’s battle. True, no one
else was relying upon us for help—we were practically extras—but still.
“Hey,” came a decidedly unfriendly voice from behind. I spun around.
A man with short brown hair fashioned into spikes stood before me. I flinched backward. Of all
the people I expected might talk to me today, Kibaou was the last.
I stood there, dumbfounded. He glared up at me and growled, “Now listen up and listen good—
y’all stay in the back today. Don’t forget your role: You’re our party’s support, nuttin’ more.”
“…”
I was already quiet by nature, but no one could have come up with a better response. This was the
man who’d tried to buy my weapon for forty thousand col yesterday and hired an agent to ensure his
identity stayed hidden, both of which failed spectacularly. Typically, a person under those
embarrassing and awkward circumstances would rather stay at least fifty feet away from me.
But Kibaou’s attitude seemed to suggest that I ought to be feeling intimidated. He sneered at me
arrogantly one more time and spat, “Be a good lil’ boy and pick off the spare kobold scraps we let
drop from the table.”
And with a glob of spittle on the ground for a final flourish, Kibaou turned on his heel and strode
back to his party, team E. I was still staring in dull amazement when a voice beside me snapped me
back to my wits.
“What’s up with him?”
It was Asuna, the other half of “y’all.” Her stare was about 30 percent scarier than the one that had
just been fixed on me.
“D-dunno … I guess he thinks solo players shouldn’t get full of themselves,” I murmured without
thinking, then tacked on a silent addendum.
Or perhaps that beta testers shouldn’t get full of themselves.
If that hunch was correct, Kibaou almost certainly suspected that I was a former beta tester myself.
But on what evidence? Even Argo the Rat would never use the identity of beta testers as a business
product. And I’d never spoken a word of my beta history to anyone.
I watched Kibaou’s retreating back with the same sense of unease I’d felt yesterday.
“… Huh …?”
And without realizing it, I let out a grunt of understanding.
Yesterday, he had tried to buy my Anneal Blade +6 for the massive price of forty thousand col.
That was an undeniable fact. He clearly meant to use it in today’s boss fight. Putting aside whether he
could handle the extra weight of the points I’d put into durability, his motive seemed obvious enough
to me: He wanted to show off a powerful weapon at a crucial moment to add to his influence and
leadership qualities.
But if that were the case, he ought to have used that forty thousand col on a different set of
weapons or armor when the deal fell through. Today was the big day.
But Kibaou’s scale mail and the one-handed sword on his back were the same as what he’d worn
at the planning meeting. It wasn’t a bad weapon, but he had the time and more than enough money to
arrange something better. In fact, at my advice, Asuna had upgraded her weapon from the store-bought
Iron Rapier to a rare drop weapon, a Wind Fleuret +4. What was the point of keeping forty thousand
col in storage when you were about to undertake a battle that could easily be fatal?
I had no more time to follow that line of thinking. Diavel the blue-haired knight was standing in his
familiar spot on the lip of the fountain, exercising his clear, loud voice.
“Okay, everyone—first, thanks! We’ve got all forty-four members from all eight parties present!”
A cheer ripped through the square, followed by a spray of applause. I begrudgingly abandoned my
musing and clapped along with the others.
With a hearty smile for the crowd, the knight raised a fist and shouted, “To be honest, I was
prepared to call off the entire operation if anyone had failed to show up! But … it seems that even
entertaining that possibility was an insult to the rest of you! I can’t tell you how happy I am. We’ve
got the best damn raid party you could possibly want … except for a few more bodies to round us up
to a nice even number!”
Some laughed, some whistled, some thrust their fists just like him.
There was no doubting Diavel’s leadership. But inwardly, I wondered if he was getting the crowd
a little too revved up. Just as too much tension could lead to poisonous fear, too much optimism
caused sloppiness. It was easy to laugh off a few mistakes in the beta, but failure here would lead to
death. Being on the uptight side was preferable in this case.
I scanned the crowd around me and saw the axe-warrior Agil and team B, arms crossed, their
faces hard. They could be counted on in a pinch. Kibaou had his back turned to me, so I couldn’t read
his expression.
After everyone had gotten out their jeers, Diavel raised his hands in the air for a final cheer.
“Listen up, everyone … I just have one thing left to say!” He reached down and drew his silver
longsword, brandishing it high. “Let’s win this thing!!”
I couldn’t help but feel that the roar of excitement that ensued bore more than a little resemblance
to the screams of ten thousand I’d heard at the center of the Town of Beginnings four weeks earlier.
 10

THE PROCESSION FROM TOLBANA TO THE LABYRINTH tower prickled at Asuna’s memo
After a few minutes of mulling it over, she finally realized what she was remembering.
The school field trip from this January. They’d traveled to Queensland in Australia. Her
classmates were thrown into a tizzy by the shift from midwinter Tokyo to blazing midsummer on the
Gold Coast. They were rapturously excited, no matter where they went.
There was nothing—not a single thing—that linked the two experiences, but she felt the
atmosphere emanating from the forty-odd players marching through the tree-lined path was very
similar to her schoolmates’. Endless chattering, frequent bursts of laughter; the only thing that seemed
different was the presence of monsters that could burst out of the trees at any moment. But with these
confident warriors, they’d be able to dice up any foes in seconds.
Asuna and the swordsman at her side were at the rear of the procession. She turned to him and
started up a conversation, choosing to overlook the atrocity that had occurred the night before.
“Hey, before you came here, did you play other … MMO games? Is that what you call them?”
“Um… yeah, I suppose.” He bobbed his head, still a bit intimidated.
“Does traveling around in other games feel like this? You know… like a hike …”
“Ha-ha. I wish,” he laughed, then shrugged. “Unfortunately, it’s not like this at all in other titles.
See, if you’re not in a full dive, you have to use a keyboard or a mouse or a controller to move
around. You barely have any time to type anything in the chat window.”
“Oh … I see …”
“Of course, there are also games with voice chat support, but I never played any of those.”
“Ahh.”
Asuna tried to imagine a mob of game characters running silently on a flatscreen monitor.
“I wonder … what the real thing would feel like.”
“Eh? Real thing?” He turned a skeptical glance on her. She tried to describe the image in her head.
“I mean… if there really was a fantasy world like this one … and a bunch of fighters and
magicians teamed up on an adventure to defeat a terrible monster. What would they talk about on the
road as they traveled? Or would they just march in silence? That’s what I mean.”
“……”
The swordsman fell silent for a few awkward moments, and when Asuna finally looked at him,
she became aware that the question she’d posed was actually quite childish. She turned away and
tried to mumble a brief “never mind,” but he spoke first.
“The road to death or glory, huh,” he murmured. “If the people made a living of doing that, I bet it
would be no different from going out to a restaurant for dinner. If you have something to say, you say
it. If not, you don’t. At some point, I bet these boss raids will be just as ordinary. Assuming we can
do enough of them to make them that way.”
“Heh … ha-ha.”
She couldn’t help but giggle at the silliness of that statement, then apologized quickly to cover it
up.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to laugh. But … that’s really weird. This place is the polar opposite of
ordinary. How can you make anything here become normal?”
“Ha-ha … Good point,” he chuckled quietly. “But today makes it four whole weeks in here. Even
if we do beat this boss, there are ninety-nine more floors ahead. I was expecting this to take two,
maybe three years. If it lasts that long, even the extraordinary will become ordinary.”
Once, the enormity of those words would have thrown Asuna into shock and despair. But now the
only thing that blew through her heart was the dry wind of resignation.
“You’re very strong. I don’t think I can do that—survive in here for years and years … That’s
much more frightening to me than dying in today’s battle.”
The swordsman gave her a brief glance, thrust his hands into the pockets of his gray coat, and
murmured, “Y’know, there’ll be even nicer baths on the higher floors, if we can get there.”
“… R-really?” she asked without thinking, then gasped. She fought down her rising embarrassment
and gave him a quiet warning. “So … you remembered. In that case, I’ll be feeding you an entire
barrel of sour milk.”
“Which means you’ll have to survive this battle first,” he shot back, grinning.
 11

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK AM, WE REACHED THE LABYRINTH.

At twelve thirty, we were on the top floor.
I was secretly relieved that we at least hadn’t lost anyone so far. After all, the majority of our
group’s members were no doubt experiencing their very first raid at near-full capacity. And in this
world, every “first” experience was fraught with the possibility of accidents.
I did get the chills on three separate occasions. Teams F and G, who were equipped with long
weapons like spears and halberds, were ambushed along their flanks by kobolds in narrow corridors.
During close battle in SAO, accidentally grazing another player with a swing caused no damage (and
hence no crime), but it acted as a blocking obstacle that canceled out any low-level sword skills. It
happened more often to spears, given their long reach, making surprise attacks by close-range
enemies quite dangerous.
Diavel made excellent use of his leadership qualities in the face of this predicament. He boldly
commanded the other members aside from a single team leader to stand down, used a heavy sword
skill to knock the monsters off-balance, then switched out for close-range fighters. It was the kind of
strategy that only someone familiar with leading a party could employ so quickly and assuredly.
In that sense, perhaps it was presumptuous for a solo player to be concerned about “too much
excitement” before we’d left. Diavel had his own philosophy on how to lead, and as a member of this
raid who’d come this far, it was now my duty to put my full trust in him.
Finally, the massive doors were visible ahead. I stood up on tiptoes to see over the rest of the
group.
The gray stone surface was adorned with reliefs of terrible humanoids with the heads of beasts. In
most MMOs, the kobold was nothing more than a typical starting monster, but in SAO they were
fearsome demihumans. They brandished swords and axes, which meant they could use sword skills of
their own. Because skills were far faster, stronger and more accurate than simple swinging attacks,
even a low-level skill could deal astonishing damage if it landed a critical hit on a defenseless target.
The fact that Asuna had made it to the top level of the labyrinth using nothing more than the simple
Linear attack proved just how powerful sword skills could be in the right hands.
“Listen up for a sec,” I murmured to Asuna, leaning close. “The Ruin Kobold Sentinels we’re
supposed to fight are only like bodyguards for the actual boss, but they’re plenty tough. Like I
explained yesterday, their heads and chests are armored, so just hurling Linear at them over and over
isn’t going to work.”
The fencer’s glare shot back at me from under her hood. “I know that. I have to hit them straight in
the throat.”
“That’s right. I’ll use my sword skills to knock back their poleaxes, and then you switch in and
finish them off.”
She nodded and turned to the giant doors. I stared at her profile for a few more seconds.
The only difference is when and where you die, sooner or later, she’d claimed on our first
encounter. I couldn’t let her prove that statement. Asuna’s Linear suggested an incredible talent, and
she had no idea. Not all shooting stars burned up in the atmosphere. Some of them withstood the fires
and made their way to earth.
If she survived today’s battle, I was certain that she would be known all throughout Aincrad as the
fastest and most beautiful swordsman in the game. Countless players crushed by fear and desperation
could look to her guiding light. I was certain of it. That role was something I could never fulfill
myself, with my beta testing past.
I swallowed my determination and faced forward. Diavel had just arranged the seven other parties
into perfect formation.
Even our charismatic leader couldn’t simply lead a lighthearted cheer now. Humanoid monsters
would detect the shouts and come running.
Instead, Diavel raised his longsword and gave a hearty nod. Forty-three others brandished their
weapons and signaled back.
His blue hair waving, the knight put his other hand on the center of the door.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, and pushed hard.

Was it always this vast?

My first thought upon setting foot in the first-floor boss chamber after four months was skepticism.
It was a rectangular room that stretched away from us. It had to be roughly sixty feet from side to
side, and closer to three hundred from the far wall to the door. Given that the rest of the floor had
been mapped out, the empty space remaining on the map was a good indication of the size of the
room, but it seemed much larger in person than it did on the page.
That distance was actually rather troublesome.
The giant doors on Aincrad’s boss chambers did not close during a battle. If all seemed lost, there
was always the option of running back to the door to avoid total defeat. However, turning your back
to the opponent left a player defenseless against long-distance sword skills that could cause
movement delay, if not a total stun effect. Therefore, it was better to retreat backward while still
facing the boss. In a vast room like this, that distance might seem endless. Retreat would be easier in
the higher-floor boss battles, after players had earned the teleport crystals that allowed instantaneous
escape. On the other hand, they were extremely expensive, so using them would be a very costly
retreat, indeed.
As I pondered the various scenarios for withdrawal, a crude torch on the right wall of the dark
chamber audibly burst into life. One after another, torches lit themselves down the walls.
With each successive source of light, the gamma level in the room increased. Cracked paving
stones and walls. Countless skulls of various sizes. An ugly but massive throne at the far end of the
chamber, and a silhouette seated upon it …
Diavel brought down his sword in its direction. At that signal, forty-four warriors raised a valiant
roar and raced through the chamber.

First down the chamber was a hammer-wielding fighter with a large heater shield like a metal plate,
the leader of team A. Just behind them and to the left were Agil the axe warrior and his team B. On
the right were team C, made of Diavel and his five party mates, and team D, led by a man with a very
tall greatsword. Behind that line were Kibaou’s team E and the two polearm teams, F and G.
And last of all, two forgotten stragglers.
Just as the leader at the head of team A reached sixty feet from the throne, the previously immobile
figure leapt up ferociously. It did a flip in midair and landed with an earth-shaking crash, then opened
a wolflike jaw and roared.
“Grruaaah!!”
The appearance of Illfang the Kobold Lord, king of the beastmen, was exactly as I remembered it.
His burly body was covered in grayish hair and easily over six feet tall. His reddish-gold eyes
glinted menacingly, thirsty for blood. In his right hand was an axe fashioned from bone, and in his left,
a buckler of skins and leather. Hanging off the back of his waist was a massive talwar that had to be
nearly five feet long.
The kobold lord raised his bone axe and swung it down upon the leader of team A with all of his
strength. The thick heater shield took the brunt head-on, and a bright flash and fierce shudder filled the
room.
As though that sound was a signal, three heavily armed monsters leapt down from holes high on
the side walls. These were the Ruin Kobold Sentinels that accompanied their leader. Kibaou’s team
E and their backup team G descended on the three to draw their attention. Asuna and I shared a look
and dashed over to the nearest kobold.
And so it was that at 12:40 on December 4, the first boss monster in Aincrad was finally
challenged.
Illfang’s HP gauge had four bars. He fought with his axe and shield through the third bar, but at the
final stage, he would throw them aside and produce his giant talwar. The change in his attacking
patterns was the biggest challenge in his fight, but this transition was detailed fully in Argo’s guide.
At yesterday’s meeting, we’d spent plenty of time studying the change in his sword skills once
switching to the talwar, and how to counteract them.
As I dealt with the sentinels that slipped away from teams E and G, I kept an eye on the state of the
front line. It seemed like the strategy would hold strong. The switches and pot rotation of the tanks
and attackers were working smoothly, and the average HP readouts of all the individual parties listed
on the left side of my vision showed a solid 80 percent across the board.
Please, please let this hold up, I prayed with all my being—something I never did as a solo
player.
 12

AT THE POINT THAT HE’D TRANSPORTED HER OUT OF the labyrinth tower (through unknow
means), Asuna had a feeling that the black-haired swordsman was talented. But upon properly
witnessing him in battle for the first time, she realized just how inadequate that description was.
He was strong.
In fact, there was something within his fighting that couldn’t simply be summed up by strength.
Something that transcended power or speed, something that suggested the next dimension.
Asuna had no experience with online games or full-dive systems, so she didn’t know how to put
this idea into words. If she had to describe it, he was “optimized.” There was no wasted movement in
anything he did. His skills were precise and his strikes were heavy. With a quick swipe, he knocked
the kobold warrior’s frightening halberd high up into the air, shouted a “switch” command, and
floated backward. When Asuna leapt in to take his place, the kobold was still in the process of
recovering its balance, leaving her enough time to unleash a Linear thrust into its weak throat. It was
all very simple.
She thought back to what he’d said on their very first meeting: “Your attacks are overkill; they’re
inefficient.” To which she’d asked what was wrong with being thorough. At this point, she understood
that there was plenty wrong with that. Eliminating waste created better poise, and poise widened her
viewpoint. These Kobold Sentinels were supposedly much tougher than the Kobold Troopers she’d
been fighting back then, but she could clearly see the creatures’ every swipe and kick.
After her Linear struck its critical weak point, the kobold only had a sliver of life left. The old
Asuna would have evaded the enemy’s attack by a hair, then unleashed another Linear, but that would
have been overkill. As soon as the pause after her sword skill had worn off, she jabbed the same spot
with minimal effort. That was enough to reduce the enemy’s HP to zero. It burst into blue shards and
disappeared.
“GJ,” came the swordsman’s voice from behind her. She didn’t know what that was short for, so
she offered him a neutral “You too.”
At this point, the boss kobold’s first HP bar had just emptied. Diavel cried, “On to the second,”
and more Kobold Sentinels poured out of the holes in the walls.
Briefly forgetting that they were supposed to be sheer backup, Asuna joined her partner in dashing
after the nearest kobold. The sword in her hand was brand-new to her, but it already felt familiar and
precise in the palm of her hand. It was as though everything in the sword, from its leather handle to its
sharp, glimmering point, was an extension of her own arm.
If this is what constitutes a true battle in this world, then what I was doing before today was
something similar, but very different. There must be something more. This swordsman is far, far
ahead of me down that path. This is a virtual, illusionary world, and everything I do here is false
… but … this feeling, at least, is truth: that I want to see what he sees.
The swordsman knocked the sentinel’s axe high overhead. The next moment, Asuna shouted the
command to switch on her own, and leapt in with her new favorite blade.
 13

THE BATTLE OF THE KOBOLD LORD AND HIS COHORTS against forty-four players was go
far smoother than I ever expected.
Diavel’s team C took down the first HP bar, team D was responsible for the second, and now
teams F and G were the main attack force halfway through the third bar. The worst that had happened
so far was the tanks in teams A and B going down to the yellow zone on their HP. No one had fallen
into the red danger zone yet. Team E and the two extras had made such easy work of the kobold’s
helpers that team G, the other backup group, was able to switch over to the main boss.
What stood out to me most was the effort of Asuna the fencer. Her Linear skill had already
impressed me on our first meeting, and with a better weapon, it was even sharper, piercing the throats
of the Kobold Sentinels with ease and precision. The amount of time it took from initial motion to
damage infliction had to be half of the ordinary time when allowing the automatic system assistance to
take over. I’d been studying and practicing ways to intentionally boost my sword skills since the beta,
and even I wasn’t sure if I could match that speed.
And this was from a total newbie who only knew one skill. A shiver ran down my back at the
thought of her limitless potential if she added more knowledge and refined her instincts.
If possible, I wanted to see that transformation happen with my own eyes—but I quickly stashed
that idea away. When I’d taken the path of a self-interested solo player one month ago, I’d lost any
right to connect with others. My very first friend in this world, Klein, was probably still busy leveling
up around the Town of Beginnings, trying to keep all of his party members alive …
Unrelated to my own bitter reminiscence, Asuna was just finishing off her second victim. Ruin
Kobold Sentinels were rare monsters that did not spawn anywhere else, so even if they weren’t as
lucrative as the boss itself, they still dropped plenty of experience, col, and items. The money was set
to automatically divide between all the raid members, but the experience belonged only to Asuna and
me for our direct effort in defeating the creature, and the looted items were her bonus for inflicting the
killing blow.
For that reason, if Kibaou was being perfectly honest, he wanted team E to do all of the killing
itself. But the two of us, the supposed “leftovers,” were dispatching our targets much faster than their
full party of six. Surely he couldn’t complain about that.
But just as the thought passed through my mind, Kibaou’s gravelly rasp issued from behind me.
“Yer plan backfired, eh? Serves ya right.”
“…What?”
I turned around, confused. Only two of the three sentinels that spawned in the third stage of the
battle were left, and they were nearly dead. We had enough time for a brief conversation before more
of them showed up. The cactus-headed swordsman squinted hard at me and raised his voice.
“Drop the lame act. I already know exactly why y’all slipped yer way into this boss fight.”
“ ‘Why’? You mean… to defeat the boss? What other reason could there be?”
“Oh, so you’re gonna deny it? You know what you’re after!”
We clearly weren’t seeing eye to eye about the substance of the conversation. I clenched my teeth
in frustration and anger. Kibaou finally came out and said what was on his mind.
 “You think I don’t know? I’ve heard all about yer style … how you’ve always used dirty tricks ta
steal the LA on all the bosses!”
“Wha…?”
LA. Last Attack.
In a way, he was right. I’d made a solid practice of trying to leave the smallest amount of health
possible and then unleashing my most powerful sword skill in order to gain the largest LA bonus
possible. But that had nothing to do with our current circumstances—it was only during the Sword Art
Online closed beta that had ended long ago.
Kibaou knew that I was not only a beta tester, but the way I’d played. But … hang on. He’d just
said he had “heard about” my style. Which meant it must have come from someone else. But who
would have …?
A second burst of understanding shot through my brain.
Kibaou had been attempting to buy my Anneal Blade +6 for a preposterous price through Argo the
Rat. Yesterday, he’d finally upped his offer past the market rate to forty thousand col. However, when
I refused his offer, he did not spend that money elsewhere.
No. He couldn’t spend that money. It wasn’t his.
Kibaou was just another proxy, like Argo after him. That’s how he was able to talk to me the next
day as though nothing had happened. The true buyer was someone else, and that was the source of the
forty thousand col. By placing another person between them and Argo, no amount of money I paid
back up the line could buy the true purchaser’s name.
This conspirator had given Kibaou beta information, manipulating him and inciting his hatred of
former testers. Which meant that this mystery buyer’s intention was not to gain the Anneal Blade +6
for improved attack points. Perhaps that was a side benefit, but the real point was something else.
They wanted to drive down my attack power, to prevent me from making use of my skill at earning
LA bonuses …
“Kibaou… Whoever told you that story, how did they gain that information about the beta test?”
“Ain’t it obvious? They put up a grip of cash to buy the info from the Rat. All so’s they could sniff
out the hyenas among the raid party.”
That was a lie. Argo might sell her own status numbers for the right price, but she would never
sell beta test information.
I ground my teeth in fury but was momentarily distracted by a shout of triumph from up ahead. The
boss’s lengthy, four-stage HP bar was finally on its last step. I couldn’t help but watch. After they’d
eliminated the third bar, polearm teams F and G retreated, leaving the fully recovered team C to
charge in and clash with the boss. Diavel the blue-haired knight, party leader and commander of the
raid, sparkled dazzlingly in the darkness of the grimy dungeon.
“Ugruoooaaah!!”
Illfang the Kobold Lord roared, his loudest and fiercest yet. The final trio of Ruin Kobold
Sentinels appeared from the holes in the walls.
“Go ahead, take one o’ them lil’ kobolds. Get your LA in,” Kibaou snarled, his voice dripping
with scorn, and ran back to his team E partners.
I hadn’t recovered from the shock and confusion of our conversation, but I had no choice but to
turn back to find Asuna.
“What were you talking about?” she asked quietly, but I had no time to do anything but shake my
head.
“Nothing… Let’s just take down those enemies.”
“… Okay.”
We turned our blades on the closest approaching sentinel.
The next instant, I sensed something, and looked back to the main battle as briefly as I could.
The Kobold Lord had just thrown aside his bone axe and leather buckler. He roared once again
and reached back behind his waist, gripped a handle wrapped in crude rags, and pulled out the long,
malevolent talwar.
I’d seen this transition in attack patterns many times during the beta. From this point until he died,
Illfang would use only Curved Sword skills. He made a terrifying sight in his berserk rage, but was
actually easier to deal with than before, if you just knew how. His attacks were all vertical, long-
range slices, so as long as you identified where he was aiming when he attacked, it was a snap to
evade, even at close range.
On Diavel’s orders, the six members of team C spun into a circle surrounding the boss. This
formation would not have worked against his wide horizontal swipes with the bone axe. The order
was so precise and confident that you’d never guess he had nothing more to go on than a flimsy little
strategy guide. Now the six could continue attacking and evading the talwar’s swings until the battle
was …
“…Hgk…?”
A small grunt escaped my throat.
In giving Kibaou forty thousand col and attempting to buy my weapon from me, Player X was
attempting to prevent me from scoring the last hit for personal gain—or so I presumed. While I still
had my sword, X’s goal was essentially fulfilled at this point. I was a straggler at the very fringe of
the raid, taking on these wimpy sentinels. I wouldn’t get within twenty feet of the boss.
But in that case …
Would the identity of Player X be whoever was poised to land that LA now? It made no sense to
pony up so much money just to keep me from being successful. The only way that kind of expenditure
made any sense was if the spender wanted to finish off the boss himself.
Meaning … the mystery player who was manipulating Kibaou and knew of my beta-tester past
was none other than—
“Here it comes!” Asuna cried, snapping me out of my train of thought. The Kobold Sentinel lunged
forward with its halberd, and only an instant reaction with the Slant sword skill was able to parry the
blow.
“Switch!”
I leapt backward and Asuna took the front line. Again, I glanced back at the main battle, a good
twenty yards to our left.
The boss’s invincible transition animation finished, and the combat was set to resume. First to
catch his attention was the blue-haired knight, who prepared to deflect the boss’s initial attack.
Was it you?
Diavel the knight … did you arrange all of this?
There was no answer to my silent question, of course. Illfang bellowed and lifted his curved blade
high overhead.
Again, something flickered through my mind.
 It was alien. Something was wrong. There was a difference between the Kobold Lord I knew and
this boss monster. It wasn’t his color, nor his size, nor his face or voice. The difference was not in the
creature … but the weapon he held.
From my position, I could only see a vague silhouette of the blade … but was it always that
slender? The gentle curve was the same shape I remembered, but the width and its luster were both
different. That texture wasn’t crude cast iron. It was the tempered, sharpened look of steel. I’d once
seen a weapon like that … on the tenth floor of Aincrad. A weapon carried by the most fearsome of
foes I encountered in the beta, clad in their red armor. That was a monster-exclusive weapon,
something not available to any player …
“Ah … aaah!” I gasped, forcing more air into my tense lungs so I could scream with all of my
voice.
“No, get back!! Everyone, jump back as far as you can!!”
But my warning was drowned out by the sound effect of Illfang’s sword skill. The kobold’s
massive bulk pounced low on the ground and leapt upward. He twisted his body in midair, building
momentum for his strike. As he fell, all of that accumulated power burst outward in a crimson
whirlwind.
Plane: horizontal. Angle: 360 degrees.
A wide-area katana skill called Tsumuji-guruma—“Spiral Wheel.”
The six lights that spun out from Illfang were red as sprays of blood. The readout of team C’s
average HP on the left side of my vision instantly plunged below halfway, into the yellow zone. I
could see individual totals if I touched that bar with my finger, but there was no point to doing that.
They’d clearly all suffered the same amount of damage.
It was bad enough that a wide-area attack took more than half of a player’s full health, but this
attack’s effects did not stop there. The six members lying on the floor had blurry yellow circles
around their heads. They were afflicted with temporary paralysis—a stun effect.
Among the dozen or so negative status effects in SAO, nothing was worse than paralysis or
blindness. At most, the effects lasted only ten seconds. But because of that short span, there were no
recovery methods. If a front-line member got stunned, his partners had to jump in without waiting for
the switch call and try to draw the enemy’s attention.
However, they were all stunned. The fight strategy had been meticulously planned out beforehand.
All seemed to be proceeding well. And Diavel, the trustworthy and capable leader, was knocked flat
on the ground. All of these reasons combined kept the other teams in the raid rooted to the spot.
Amidst that eerie silence, the Kobold Lord recovered from his massive attack and prepared to resume
fighting.
Finally I came to my senses.
“Watch out for the follow-up—” I tried to scream, as Agil and his party moved in to help. But they
were not quick enough.
“Urgruaah!!” the beast howled, and swung its double-handed blade straight upward from its
resting position near the floor—the sword skill Ukifune, or “Rising Ship.” It was aimed right for
Diavel, who was still lying prone on the floor. His silver-mailed body rose off the ground, as though
pulled upward by the pale red arc of light. This move’s damage was not so bad, but it was also not
the end of the kobold’s assault.
Its large wolflike mouth open in a fierce grin. The sword blade glowed red again. Ukifune was
merely the initial move of a skill combo. The best response when lifted into the air like that was to
curl into a ball and focus on maximizing defense, but it was impossible to know that upon facing it for
the very first time.
Diavel pulled back his longsword in midair, hoping to fire back a sword skill. But the system did
not recognize his flailing motion as the initiation of a skill. Illfang’s giant sword caught the knight
dead-on.
Two strikes up and down faster than the eye could follow, then a brief pause and a thrust. If I
recalled correctly, this three-hit combo was called Hiougi—Scarlet Fan.
The blows landing on the knight’s body burst with brilliant color and crashing sounds, the
indicators of critical hits. His avatar flew sixty feet through the air, well over the raid party’s heads,
until he came crashing down right next to me. His HP gauge was down in the red and decreasing
rapidly.
“… !!”
An odd squeak gurgled up from my throat. I hit the oncoming sentinel’s halberd with a powerful
Slant. It caught the haft of the weapon, breaking it in two and stunning the kobold. Asuna quickly
darted in and delivered the fatal blow to its throat.
I spun around, ignoring the monster’s explosive death animation to look at Diavel. Once I’d finally
locked eyes with him at a distance of mere feet, sparks went off in my brain.
I know this player.
The name and appearance were different, but I was certain that in the old Aincrad, I had seen this
player, perhaps even spoken with him. Diavel was a former beta tester, just like me. And like me,
he’d kept his past hidden. In fact, he’d found himself partners, so the pressure to keep that secret
hidden had to be much worse than mine.
But that former tester knowledge was poisoning him, with the crucial juncture of the end of the
first floor in sight.
I didn’t recognize him, but he knew me, and knew that I scored LA bonuses by the dozens in the
beta test of Aincrad. He suspected I would do the same thing again this time. It was highly likely the
floor boss would drop unique items, which would vastly increase anyone’s stats. Now that SAO was
deadly, increased power meant increased survivability. Diavel wanted to do anything in his power to
get Illfang’s rare loot in order to survive the trials of SAO—not as a selfish solo player but the leader
of a group.
Diavel seemed to understand my conclusion. His eyes, blue as his hair, squinted angrily for a
moment, then took on a serene light. His lips trembled and parted to speak words that only I could
hear.
“… You have to take it from here, Kirito. Kill the … b—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence.
Diavel the knight, leader of the first raid party in Aincrad, turned to blue glass and shattered.
 14

A ROAR—OR PERHAPS A SCREAM—FILLED THE BOSS chamber.

Nearly every member of the raid party was clutching his weapon as though desperate for
something to cling to, eyes wide. But no one moved. The idea that their leader would the first to fall,
to die, was so far out of expectations that no one knew how to react.
I was no different.
Two options alternated within my head. To run or to fight?
We’d suffered two major blows: The boss’s weapon and skills were not what we’d expected, and
our leader was down. The group ought to retreat from the boss chamber immediately. But if we turned
our backs to Illfang to run, his long-range katana skills would stun at least the ten closest to him, if not
more, and lead to many more deaths at the hands of the combo that killed Diavel. On the other hand, it
would be difficult to retreat while trying to face the beast and defend against unknown skills. Because
of the extra time that travel would take compared to turning and sprinting, the gradual loss of HP
might eventually claim just as many victims.
Most importantly of all, if we suffered that many fatalities, including our leader, and the battle
ended in defeat, we might never be able to arrange a raid party of this scale again. It could spell
disaster for our possibility of defeating SAO. The eight thousand survivors would be permanent
prisoners rather than warriors, trapped on the first floor until some ultimate, unknown conclusion…
Two simultaneous sounds jarred me out of my hesitation.
One was the sound of Illfang, fresh out of his combo cooldown, beginning another attack: clanging
and screaming, the sound of damage ringing through the darkness.
The other was the voice of Kibaou, slumped to his knees next to me. “Why … why? You were our
leader, Diavel. How can you be the first ta go …?”
It would be all too easy to say because he was greedy and tried to get the LA. But I couldn’t do
it.
I thought back to that scene where Kibaou railed against Diavel during the first planning meeting.
Kibaou demanded that the former beta testers apologize and offer up their ill-gotten loot or face
ostracization. Diavel did not override his opinion—he allowed it to be discussed openly.
Perhaps that little act was Diavel’s offer to Kibaou, his price in exchange. For taking on the task
of negotiating the sale of my sword, Diavel granted Kibaou a public stage to air his grievances with
the former beta testers. It didn’t pick up steam, thanks to Agil’s levelheaded response, but if all had
gone to plan with this boss battle, Kibaou no doubt planned to bring up the topic again. Clearly, he
didn’t have a single ounce of suspicion in his mind that Diavel might actually be one of those beta
testers himself. He trusted in Diavel, thinking him to be the model of an upstanding retail player,
someone who would stand in contrast to the underhanded testers. Could there be a more devastating
scene for him to witness?
I had to be the one to put a hand on his shoulder and force him to his feet.
“No time for disappointment!” I growled. His eyes glittered with that familiar hatred.
“Wh…what?”
“You’re the leader of team E! If you lose your cool, your party will die! There might still be more
sentinels on their way … In fact, I’m sure of it. You have to take care of them!”
“Well … what about you, then? You just gonna up an’ run for it?!”
“Of course not. That should be obvious …”
I leveled the Anneal Blade in my right hand menacingly.

“I’m going to score the LA on the boss.”

Every choice I’d made in the last month since being taken prisoner by this realm was for the sake
of my own survival, nothing more. I didn’t share the vast store of knowledge I’d gained in the beta
test. I reaped the rewards of all the best hunting grounds and quests. I focused only on strengthening
myself.
If I was going to uphold that principle, this was my chance to make a break for the exit, while
many other people stood between me and the boss. I ought to secure my own safety, letting the mad
Kobold Lord sacrifice my fellows, using them as shields.
But there was not a shred of that idea running through my mind now. Something like fire shot
through my veins, pushing my feet onward toward the precipice between life and death. Perhaps my
source of inspiration was Diavel’s final message.
“Kill the boss,” he was trying to say. Not “help everyone escape.” He’d died because he tried to
tweak the odds to give him the best chance of getting that coveted last attack on the boss, but there
was no doubting the excellence of his leadership. His final order was not retreat but battle. As a
member of the raid, I had to follow his plan … his last will.
There was only one concern I couldn’t erase.
Before the battle, I swore to myself that no matter what happened, I would protect Asuna’s life.
She’d shown a glimmer of talent beyond even my own. As a fan of the VRMMO genre, I couldn’t
stand to see potential like that plucked before it had the chance to bloom.
I turned to Asuna, preparing to warn her to stay back and make a break for it if the front line broke
down. But as though she knew what I was going to say, she cut me off first.
“I’m going, too. I’m your partner.”
I didn’t have time to shut her down or explain why she shouldn’t. I had to simply ignore my
indecision and accept.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
We started running toward the far side of the chamber. Roars and screams washed over us. None
aside from Diavel had died yet, but the fighters at the front were all below half of their HP, and the
leaderless team C was down to 20 percent. Some players had fully panicked and abandoned their
positions. It would be less than a minute before the group completely lost control at this rate.
The first step was calming down the party. But a halfhearted command would be swallowed by
the chaos. I needed something short and powerful, but I had no experience leading a group, and had no
idea what to say …
To my surprise, Asuna irritatedly grabbed her hooded cape and ripped it off.
She shone as though all the torches hanging on the walls had been condensed into one source of
light. Her long brown hair seemed to blast away the gloom of the chamber with a deep golden light.
The image of Asuna racing, hair rippling in the wind, was like a shooting star in the midst of the
dungeon. Even the panicking players were stunned into silence at her otherworldly beauty. I seized
upon this miraculous instant of silence and screamed out an order with all of my strength.
“Everyone, ten steps toward the exit! The boss won’t use an area attack if he’s not surrounded!”
When the last echo of my voice died out, time seemed to flow once more. The players at the front
parted to the sides to let me and Asuna through. As though following this train of thought himself,
Illfang turned to face us.
 “Same order as we used against the sentinels, Asuna! Here we go!”
The fencer shot me a glance when I called her by name, but she looked back ahead just as quickly.
“All right!”
The kobold lord took his left hand off the long katana and put it to his waist. That looked like the
animation for—
“… !!”
I held my breath and initiated my own sword skill. My right hand and the sword went across my
body to the left side of my waist, and I bent over forward until I might flip over. If the angle wasn’t
sharp enough, the game system would not recognize it as the start of the skill. I pounced with my right
leg from a starting stance so low I was nearly crawling, my body shining blue. It took only an instant
to cross the thirty feet to the boss. This was Rage Spike, a one-handed sword charging skill.
The boss’s katana took on a slick green shine and bit faster than my eye could follow in a direct,
long-range katana skill: Tsujikaze, or “Cyclone.” It was an instantaneous attack that struck as soon as
it began, so there was no way to react once it started.
“Aaahh!!” I howled, bringing my sword up from the left into the path of Illfang’s blade. Sparks
exploded with a high-pitched clanging, and we were both knocked back several feet by the force of
the collision.
Asuna, who’d been following close behind my burst of speed, did not miss this opportunity.
“Seyaa!!”
Her Linear landed deep within the kobold lord’s right side. His fourth HP bar shrank—not by
much, but it was enough.
Even as I felt the shudder of the impact in my right hand, I tried to calculate the risk of our
situation.
When I had faced Illfang’s talwar skills in the beta, I wasn’t strong enough to cancel his attacks
with my own. But because this katana was lighter than the talwar, I hadn’t lost any HP in our clash.
The tradeoff was that his moves were now much faster. Was it even possible to deflect and parry his
ensuing rush without slipping up at any point?
There was one other thing. Asuna’s Linear could dispatch a Kobold Trooper with three hits and a
Sentinel with four, but this boss monster’s HP were far, far beyond a simple enemy’s. I couldn’t guess
how many hits it would take her to finish off his final HP gauge. One of the advantages to players
fighting a boss was that the enemy’s massive size made it easier for many people to attack it at once,
so ideally we’d have one more damage-dealer on either side. But all of teams A through G were
heavily damaged at the moment. We couldn’t call for assistance until they had healed themselves with
potions.
Asuna and I had to hold out on our own. And wasn’t I originally expecting to attempt it all by
myself? Well, now I had double the help, so what more could I ask for?
“Here he comes again!” I cried once I was out of my post-skill delay, concentrating with all my
willpower on the boss’s massive blade.

In the thousand-man Sword Art Online closed beta test the previous August, I made it as far as the
tenth floor of Aincrad but never saw the boss there.
The labyrinth of that floor was nicknamed the Castle of a Thousand Serpents, and I simply
couldn’t get past the spot guarded by a particularly tough kind of samurai monster called Orochi Elite
Guards. They used bewildering, free-form katana skills that no player could wield. Each attack I
suffered added the skill names and descriptions to my reference menu, which I consulted desperately
in order to memorize the information. By the time I could finally recognize the initiation of each skill,
it was August 31, the end of the test.
The Orochis and Illfang were completely different in shape and size, but they were both humanoid
and their attacks were, as far as I could tell, the same. I was able to follow my memory from four
months ago to cancel out all of the attacks, even the instant ones.
Needless to say, it was a high-wire act. The boss’s slash attacks had a high enough basic damage
that just tossing up Slant or Horizontal with the system assist would get me knocked backward. I
needed to use them while pushing my body along the thrust of the skills to boost their power to the
point that I could actually stop the blows.
This kind of system-independent technique could be very powerful if successful, but it was not
without its risks. One wrong move might interfere with the system’s automatic assistance, perhaps
even cancel out the sword skill entirely.
In the two months I’d played SAO, both beta and release, I’d never used so much concentration for
so long until now.
And after the fifteenth or sixteenth parry, I finally slipped.
“Damn!” I hissed, and tried to cancel out of my half-initiated Vertical skill. I’d read Illfang’s
swing as an overhead slice, but he spun it around in a half-circle to come up from below instead. This
was Gengetsu, or “Phantom Moon,” an attack that either landed high or low on a random chance,
despite starting with the same animation. I brought back my Anneal Blade in a hurry, but it was too
late. An unpleasant shock struck my body and knocked me still.
“Ah!” Asuna shouted next to me, but the striking katana had already caught me directly on the front.
There was a sharp shock, cold as ice. My entire body went numb, and my HP bar lost nearly a third of
its points.
While I fell to my knees with the impact of the blow, Asuna plunged toward the kobold king. I
tried to tell her not to—Gengetsu had a very quick recovery period. The blade ended up high in the
air after his attack on me, and now began to glimmer again. It was Hiougi, the three-part combo that
had killed Diavel …
“Nnnraaah!!”
A bellow rumbled forth just before the katana hit Asuna. A massive, glowing green weapon swung
just barely over her head, utilizing the two-handed axe skill, Whirlwind.
The katana and the whirling axe clashed. Their impact rocked the entire chamber, and Illfang was
blasted backward. On the other hand, the attacker had held firm with nothing more than leather
sandals and slid back only a few feet.
It was the brawny, brown-skinned leader of team B, Agil. He shot a grin at me over his shoulder
while I scrambled in my coat pockets.
“We’ll back you up until you finish your pots. Can’t keep forcing a damage dealer to do a tank’s
job.”
“…Thanks, man,” I replied, pushing down the strange feeling that was rising in my chest with a
healing potion.
Agil wasn’t the only one who came forward. Several other players, mostly from team B, had
finished recovering and were ready to resume combat. I sent Asuna a look that said I was okay, and
shouted as loud as I could to the rest of the group.
“If you surround the boss all the way, he’ll unleash his full-circle attack! I’ll warn you about the
trajectory of his attack, so whoever’s in front can prepare to block it! You don’t need to cancel it with
a sword skill; just deflecting it with a shield or weapon should cut down most of the damage!”
“Okay!” the others roared in response. The Kobold Lord added his own bellow to the fray. It
seemed as though there was a hint of irritation to it.

I checked on the rest of the party as I slumped back to the wall and recovered with some low-level
healing potions.
As I feared when I noticed the boss’s weapon had been altered, they had added extra Ruin Kobold
Sentinels to the battle as well. Kibaou’s team E and the relatively unharmed polearm team G were
dealing with four of the creatures now. They hadn’t suffered too much so far, but I had a feeling that
groups of four sentinels would continue to pop at regular intervals as long as Illfang was alive.
Without any help, the two parties would eventually have their hands full.
Between the back line and the front, the most grievously wounded party members, such as the
survivors from team C, were working on healing. Frustratingly, potions in this game worked on a
heal-over-time basis. Rather than instantly recovering, the gauge would fill up pixel by pixel. On top
of that, once the potion was empty, a cooldown icon appeared at the bottom of the player’s view,
meaning that until the effect wore off, any extra potions would provide no benefit. To add insult to
injury, the weak potions from the first-floor NPCs tasted disgusting.
Because of that cooldown timer, it took a significant amount of time to recover from heavy
damage. The common strategy was therefore to switch with another member once you’d suffered a
full potion’s worth of damage—also known as “pot rotation”—but that pattern broke down when
there were too many injured to stand in and fight. On higher floors, there would be valuable healing
crystals that acted instantaneously as long as you didn’t concern yourself with the astonishing price,
but those weren’t an option for us down here.
So the battle would be determined by how long Agil’s group of six could hold out in the face of
Illfang’s fierce attacks. And in order to give them a fighting chance, I had to identify his skills as soon
as the tell appeared.
I took a knee and focused all of my senses on the boss kobold, shouting out warnings like “flat
slice from the right,” or “downward from the left” as soon as I recognized them.
Agil’s group followed my instructions, prioritizing guarding with their shields or large weapons,
rather than gambling on a neutralizing counterstrike. As tank builds, they had excellent defense and
HP, but not enough to hold the boss’s sword skills to zero damage. Their HP bars shrank bit by bit
with every crashing sound effect.
And between them all, one fencer danced spryly here and there: Asuna. She was careful never to
pass by Illfang’s front or rear, and whenever there was any delay in his movement, she delivered a
powerful Linear. Over time, that would raise his aggro level toward Asuna, but the six tanks regularly
performed aggro skills like Howl to draw the enemy’s attention.
For nearly five minutes, this dangerous, delicate game continued, threatening to fall apart as soon
as a single step of the process failed. Finally, the boss’s HP fell below 30 percent, and his last bar
turned red.
In a moment of relief, one of the tanks lost focus and stumbled. He lurched to the side and only
caught himself when he was directly behind Illfang.
“Move!” I screamed, but I was a fraction of a second too late. The boss sensed that he was
surrounded, and unleashed a terrible roar.
The large body sank to the ground, then launched itself directly upward into the air. His body and
katana spun around and around, becoming a single vortex—the deadly full-circle Tsumuji-guruma …
“Aaah!” I howled, and forgetting that my HP hadn’t been entirely healed yet, leapt from the wall.
I slung my sword over my right shoulder and pushed hard with my left foot. My back was hit with
a sense of acceleration that shouldn’t be possible based on my agility as my body flew like a rocket
diagonally through the air. The one-handed sword thrust skill Sonic Leap had a shorter range than
Rage Spike, but it could be aimed upward into the air as well.
The sword took on a brilliant neon green glow. Ahead of me, Illfang’s katana was a fiery crimson.
“Get there …in … time!!”
I swung, stretching my arm as far as it would go. The tip of my Anneal Blade +6 followed a wide
arc and just barely caught Illfang’s waist before he could unleash his Tsumuji-guruma.
There were a heavy, sharp sound and the powerful, unmistakable flash of a critical hit. The
kobold’s large body slumped in midair, and he fell to the ground without producing his deadly
whirlwind.
“Gruhh!” he growled, and flailed wildly in an attempt to get to his feet. I’d inflicted him with the
Tumble status that was unique to humanoid monsters.
Somehow, I managed to land in balance and, without missing a beat, pushed every last ounce of
air out of my lungs.
“Full attack, everybody!! Surround him!!”
“Raaahh!!”
Agil’s gang of six unleashed all the frustration of their long defensive shift. They spread out
around Illfang and tore into him with Vertical sword skills. Axes, maces, and hammers flashed in a
spectrum of color and pounded the kobold’s body. The explosion of light and sound began to bite
serious chunks out of the enemy’s HP gauge, which was fixed at the top of every player’s vision.
It was a bet. If we could lower the Kobold Lord’s remaining HP to nothing before he got back to
his feet, we won. But if he recovered from his status and instantly performed another Tsumuji-
guruma, he would slice everyone for certain this time. My Sonic Leap was on cooldown. I couldn’t
attack him in midair again.
Agil’s group finished their skill animations and initiated the preliminary motions for the next
round, when suddenly Illfang stopped struggling and abruptly sat up.
“We didn’t make it in time,” I hissed, when I noticed that Asuna was standing right next to me.
“Asuna, get ready to do your final Linear with me!”
“Okay!”
I had to grin at how quickly her response echoed my command.
Six weapons snarled at once, and the boss was swallowed by a whirl of flashing lights again. But
he did not wait for their onslaught to die down. Illfang roared and got to his feet. There was barely 3
percent left of his HP bar, but there it shone, red and prominent.
Agil was under a delay and couldn’t move. Illfang was impervious to stunning or knockbacks now
that he’d recovered from the tumble—he transitioned smoothly into his jumping motion.
“Gooo!!” I screamed. Asuna and I leapt together.
 She slipped between the tanks and unleashed a furious Linear directly into the boss’s left flank. A
second later, my blue-lit sword ripped from the kobold king’s right shoulder to his belly.
Only a single pixel remained on his HP bar.
The beastman seemed to grin. I returned a ferocious smirk of my own and flipped my wrist back.
“Raaaahh!!”
I raised my sword with a soul-shattering roar. The blade, pitted here and there after the fierce
ordeal, tore upward to Illfang’s left shoulder to complete a V shape: a two-part sword combo,
Vertical Arc.
The kobold’s great form suddenly shuddered weakly and faltered backward. His wolflike face
turned up to the ceiling and emitted a keening wail. Countless tiny cracks appeared all over his body.
His grip loosened, and the katana clattered to the floor.
Illfang the Kobold Lord, boss of the first floor of Aincrad, shattered into a million tiny pieces of
glass.
As I slumped to the floor beneath some unseen pressure, a silent message in the purple system font
read, You got the Last Attack!!
 15

THE REMAINING SENTINELS WERE OBLITERATED AT the same time as their boss. T
torches on the walls shifted from a dim orange to bright yellow, removing the gloom that shrouded the
chamber. A cool breeze swept through the room, carrying the heat of the battle away with it.
No one wanted to break the silence that descended. Teams E and G stood in the back, the center
groups of A, C, D, and F were kneeling in recovery mode, and Agil’s team B, the last line of tank
defense, sat on the floor, all staring around warily. It was as though they were all afraid the beast lord
might come back to life at any moment.
Even I was dead still, my sword still raised at the end of the final slash.
Was it truly the end? Or would there be another surprise, another alteration from the beta?
A small pale hand touched my arm, gently pulling the sword down. It was Asuna the fencer. Her
chestnut-brown hair rippled in the breeze as she stared at me.
Only now, with her familiar hooded cape removed, did I realize just how beautiful she was. No
player could truly be this gorgeous. Asuna accepted my dumbstruck gaze without a complaint—
something that would probably never happen again—for several moments, then quietly said, “Nice
work.”
Finally, it hit me. It was over … We’d finally removed the barrier that might have trapped eight
thousand players on the first floor forever.
As though the game was waiting for me to make that realization, a new message suddenly popped
into existence. Experience gained, col distributed … and loot.
The faces of the other members finally returned to normal as they received the same message. A
rousing cheer broke the silence.
Some roared with their fists in the air. Some hugged their partners. Some put on absurd dances.
Amid the storm of celebration, one man stood and approached. It was Agil.
“That was brilliant command, and even better swordsmanship. Congratulations—this victory
belongs to you.”
I couldn’t help but notice that he spoke the word “congratulations” in English with perfect
intonation. The big man grinned widely and extended a thick fist.
I thought about how to respond to this and sadly couldn’t come up with anything better than a
muttered “Nah…” I lifted my own fist to at least give him a bump when someone bellowed behind
me.
“Why?!”
The entire room fell silent again at the agonized, tearful shriek. I tore my gaze from Asuna and
Agil to look at a man with light armor and a scimitar. I didn’t recognize him at first, but when the next
words poured from his twisted lips, I finally understood.
“Why did you abandon Diavel to die?!”
He was from team C, one of the perished knight Diavel’s friends. Behind him, the other four
members were standing, their faces red and miserable. Some were even crying.
“Abandon…?”
“You know what you did! You… you knew the moves the boss was using! If you’d told us that
information to start with, Diavel wouldn’t have died!”
The other raid members stirred at these words, murmuring among themselves.
“Now that you mention it …”
“How did he know? That stuff wasn’t in the strategy guide …”
To my surprise, Kibaou did not follow up these suspicions. He was standing to the side, his lips
firmly closed, as though grappling with indecision. Instead, another member of team E stepped
forward and jabbed an accusing finger at me.
“I … I know the truth! He’s a beta tester! That’s how he knew the boss’s patterns! He knows all
the best quests and hunting grounds! He’s hiding them from us!!”
There was no surprise on the faces of team C. I doubted Diavel had told them himself—he would
not bring up the topic of the beta test on his own, as he was hiding his involvement in it—but they’d
no doubt all had the same suspicion when I identified those katana skills.
The scimitar man’s eyes boiled over with hatred, and he prepared to level another accusation at
my feet when a mace warrior in Agil’s tank party raised his hand and spoke calmly.
“But the strategy guide we got yesterday said it was based on the boss’s attack patterns in the beta.
If he’s really a beta tester, wouldn’t all of his knowledge be based on what we learned from that?”
“W-well …”
The scimitar-wielder pressed on in anger, speaking for the rest of his teammates. “That strategy
guide was all fake. Argo sold us a bunch of lies. She’s a former beta tester too; there’s no way she’d
give away the truth for free.”
Uh-oh. This was heading in a bad direction.
I held my breath. I could take whatever criticism was directed my way, but we had to avoid an
outright witch hunt of Argo and the other beta testers. But how to prevent their hatred from running out
of control …?
I looked down at the dark floor, where the system messages hanging in view came into sharper
relief. My experience, col and items …
An idea abruptly popped into my head, followed by a terrible indecision. If I made this choice,
there was no telling what might happen to me. I might even be assassinated when I least expected it,
as I once feared. But at the very least, it might redirect the anger away from Argo …
Agil and Asuna had finally heard enough. They spoke up simultaneously.
“Oh, come on …”
“Listen …”
I cut them off with a gesture and stepped forward, assuming an arrogant look and staring coldly
into the scimitar-wielder’s eyes. I slumped my shoulders and spoke in as emotionless a voice as I
could manage.
“A former beta tester? Please… don’t treat me like those amateurs.”
“Um…what …?”
“Think back. The odds were stacked against anyone trying to get into the SAO closed beta. How
many of the thousand who made it in do you think were true MMO fans? They were all noobs who
barely understood how to level. You guys are way smarter about this game than they ever were.”
Forty-two players silently took in my disdainful words. There was a chill in the air, an unseen
blade that traced the skin, just as it had before we tackled the boss.
“But I’m not like them.” I grinned snidely. “I made it to a floor that no one else in the beta reached.
I knew the boss’s katana attacks because I’d fought mobs on a way higher floor who used the same
moves. I know plenty about this game—way more than Argo.”
“What … do you mean…?” rasped the man from team E who had first labeled me a beta tester.
“You’re … you’re worse than a beta tester … You’re a cheat! A cheater!”
Calls of cheater and beta cheater rang out from me. Eventually they blended together into a
strange new word, “beater.”
“A beater? I like the sound of that,” I proclaimed loudly for the entire group to hear, fixing them
all with a level stare. “That’s right, I’m a beater. Don’t you ever insult my skill by calling me a
former tester.”
 It was for the best.
Now the four to five hundred beta testers still out there in the game could be broadly divided into
two categories. The vast majority were “simple, amateur testers,” and a select few were “filthy
beaters who hoarded their information.”
The hostility of the retail players would be turned upon the beaters. Anyone being outed as a beta
tester wouldn’t necessarily have to be afraid of retribution.
In exchange, I’d never be invited to join any front-running guilds or parties … but that was no
different from the way I already played. I’d been a solo player, and I would continue to be one. It was
that simple.
I looked away from the pale-faced scimitar wielder and the others from teams E and C, opened my
player window, and fiddled with my equipment mannequin.
Instead of the familiar old dark gray leather coat, I put on the new unique armor I’d just received
from the boss, the Coat of Midnight. Tiny lights covered my chest and the faded old gray material
turned into sleek black leather. It was a long coat, too; the hem hung down below my knees.
With a flourish of my new coat, I spun around and faced the small door at the back of the boss
chamber.
“I’ll go activate the teleport gate on the second floor. There’s a bit of a hike through the
wilderness to reach the main city once you leave the exit above, so you can tag along—if you’re not
afraid of being slaughtered by unfamiliar mobs.”
Agil and Asuna gave me appraising looks as I strode forward. Their eyes said they knew what I
was doing. That, at least, was some small comfort. I gave them a hint of a smile, picked up my pace,
and pushed open the door on the back wall behind the empty throne.

At the top of a narrow, spiraling staircase, there was another door. I opened it gently and was met by
a stunning sight. The door opened directly from the middle of a sheer cliff, with a narrow terrace-
styled downward staircase carved out of the rock to the left. For the moment, I simply drank in the
sight of the second floor.
Unlike the varied terrain of the first floor, the second was a series of rocky mesas from end to end.
The upper areas of the mountains were covered in soft green grasses, grazing land for large cattle
monsters.
Urbus, the main town of the second floor, was carved directly into the top of one of those mesas.
All I had to do was descend these stairs, walk half a mile to reach Urbus, then touch the teleport gate
in the center of the city to activate it. At that point, it would be connected to the teleporter in the Town
of Beginnings below, and anyone could travel between the two.
If I actually did die on the short journey—or just sat here and did nothing—the teleporter would
activate automatically anyway, two hours after the boss’s destruction. But word had no doubt spread
to the Town of Beginnings about today’s attempt on the boss, and I could imagine a crowd of players
standing in the town center, waiting for the moment that blue warp gate appeared. I wanted to get to
Urbus and open it up for them… but I had the right to stop and enjoy the scenery for a minute first.
I walked forward and sat down at the edge of the terrace carved out of the rock face. Beyond the
many craggy mountains was a tiny sliver of blue sky at the outer perimeter of Aincrad.
How many minutes did I sit there? Eventually I heard petite footsteps coming up the spiral
staircase behind me. I didn’t turn around. The owner of the steps reached the door and stopped, then
sighed and came to sit next to me.
“… I told you not to come,” I muttered. She looked affronted.
“No, you didn’t. You said to tag along if I wasn’t afraid of dying.”
“Oh … right. Sorry.”
I ducked my head in embarrassment and glanced over at Asuna, whose face was beautiful from any
angle. Her light brown eyes looked back at me briefly, then returned to the scenery below. She
exhaled and said, “It’s so pretty.”
After a minute of silence, she spoke again.
“I have messages from Agil and Kibaou.”
“Oh…what did they say?”
“Agil said we should tackle the second floor boss, too. And Kibaou said …”
She cleared her throat, expression serious, and clumsily attempted to re-create his Kansai accent.
“… Ya saved my ass this time, but I still can’t get along with ya. I’m gonna do things my own way
to beat this game, y’hear?”
“… I see.”
The words echoed in my head a few times. Eventually Asuna coughed again and pointedly turned
her head away.
“Also… I have a message from me.”
“Um…yes?”
“You called out my name during the battle.”
It took me a moment to remember. Yes, perhaps I had given her an order directly by name.
“S-sorry, I didn’t meant to disrespect you, if that’s what you think…Or … did I pronounce it
wrong?”
Now it was Asuna’s turn to look skeptical.
“Pronounce it wrong …? How did you even know it in the first place? I never told you my name,
nor did you tell me yours.”
“Huh?!” I yelled. What did she mean? We were still registered in a party, so there were two HP
bars to the upper left of my vision. Beneath the lower of the two was a little label reading “Asuna” …
“Wait … are you saying… this is your very first time being in a party?”
“Yes.”
“… I see.”
I reached up with my right hand and pointed to the left side of Asuna’s face. “Do you see an extra
HP bar over here, in addition to your own? Is anything written beneath it?”
“Um…”
Asuna turned her head, so I reached out and stopped it with my fingers.
“No, if you turn your face, the readouts will move with it. Keep your head still and look to your
left.”
“Like … this?”
Her brown eyes awkwardly rolled left, finding a string of letters that I couldn’t see. Her graceful
lips sounded out three syllables.
“Ki … ri … to. Kirito? That’s your name?”
“Yep.”
“Oh … so it was written here the entire time …”
 Suddenly Asuna twitched in surprise. I realized that I’d been holding my hand to her cheek for
several seconds, almost as though I was initiating the motion for a skill.
I pulled my hands back so fast, they almost made a zooming sound. After a few seconds, I thought I
heard a soft giggle. Was she laughing? Asuna the kobold overkiller, master of the perfect Linear
thrust? That was a sight I wanted to see, but I resisted the urge to turn.
The laughing ended all too soon, and she followed it with a soft statement.
“… Actually, Kirito, I came up here to thank you.”
“For … the cream bread and the bath?” I asked without thinking. She denied it in a mildly
terrifying way, then gave it some thought and agreed that they were part of it.
“It’s for … a lot of things. Thanks for everything. I think … I’ve finally found something here that I
want to do, a goal I want to reach.”
“Oh? What’s that?” I glanced at her. Asuna grinned for just an instant.
“It’s a secret.” She stood up and took a step back. “I’m gonna keep trying. I’ll try to survive, to be
stronger. Until I can reach the place I want to be.”
I nodded without turning around.
“I know… You can be stronger. Not just in terms of your fighting skill, but in a much more
important, personal sense. So take it from me … if someone you trust invites you to a guild, don’t turn
them down. There’s an absolute limit to what you can accomplish playing solo …”
For several seconds, the only sound was Asuna breathing. When she did speak, it was not what I
expected to hear.
“The next time we meet, tell me how you took me out of that labyrinth.”
“Sure …” I was about to say it was simple, then stopped myself and added, “You bet. In fact …
there’s one more thing I ought to tell you. What I was about to say before the meeting two days ago
…”
That’s right. I owed her an explanation. She ought to know that the deaths of two thousand and her
terrible despair were at least in part my responsibility for being a self-interested beta tester … a
beater.
But just as I was about to tell her this, Asuna waved it aside.
“It’s fine. I get it. I know what you’ve been through to get here … and where you’ll go on your
own from here. But … someday, I’ll …”
She broke off there in a whisper. After a brief silence, her voice was calm but firm.
“See you around, Kirito.”
There was the creak of a door opening. Footsteps. The thump of it closing.
I stayed sitting on the edge of the terrace jutting from the mountain until the sensory information of
Asuna’s scent disappeared from the virtual air. I tried to figure out what she meant, but decided I
didn’t need to know that right now.
With a deep breath, I got to my feet, looked at the door Asuna had just passed through, then turned
and started descending the steps.
As they wound down the side of the slope, I found myself counting the stairs. Every forty-eight
steps, they turned back the other way in a zigzag pattern. Eventually, the meaning behind that became
clear. Forty-eight was six times eight—the number of people in a full raid party. If we’d had a full
complement and beaten the boss without any fatalities, we could have filled an entire flight from
landing to landing, with a step for each member.
 I doubted the designer of this feature imagined just a single player descending these steps. The
path seemed to be foretelling my travels ahead. Looking forward or back, there was not a soul in
sight. I walked on, down and down, entirely alone …
But, after the umpteenth landing of the endless staircase, I noticed a small envelope icon flashing
on the right side of my view. It was a friend message, a form of communication that could bridge any
floor of Aincrad. There were only two players on my friend list. My first friend, Klein—and Argo the
Rat.
I opened the message to discover that it was from the latter.
Sounds like I really put you through the wringer, Kii-boy, it said. I marveled at how fast she
worked. I scrolled down to read more, but the message was very short.
I’ll make it up to you by giving you any single piece of info on the house.
Oh? I grinned devilishly and popped up the holo-keyboard as I continued walking down the steps,
typing my reply.
Why the whiskers?
I hit the send button, smiled again, then finally set foot on the soil of the second floor of Aincrad
and started walking in the direction of Urbus.
URBUS, THE MAIN CITY OF THE SECOND FLOOR OF Aincrad, was carved directly into the
top of a three-hundred-yard wide mountain, with only the outer perimeter left standing.
Once I was through the southern gate, a notification reading SAFE HAVEN appeared, and the sound
of a slow-paced town BGM hit my ears. Unlike the strings-heavy music from the first-floor towns,
this was played by a wistful oboe. The style of clothes worn by the NPCs milling about was subtly
different, reinforcing that sense of having come to a new floor.
About ten yards past the gate, I took a look around me and didn’t find a single green player cursor
—as it should be. I’d just defeated Illfang the Kobold Lord, boss of the first floor, barely forty
minutes before. All the other raid party members who had taken part in the fight had turned back to the
first floor rather than follow the spiral staircase up to the second.
Which meant that there was only one solitary player on this entire, vast floor: Kirito, former beta
tester, beater.
It was a luxurious feeling, but it would not last for long. Two hours after the death of the floor
boss, the teleport gate in the center of the floor’s main town (Urbus, in this case) would automatically
activate, linking up with the gate of the floor below. As soon as that happened, an entire flood of
excited players would burst through the portal.
On the flip side, that meant that if I felt like it, I could monopolize this floor for another hour and
twenty minutes.
With that much time, I could complete two or three “slaughter” quests to kill a certain number of
monsters without having to jostle with other players. It was a tempting idea for a truly self-interested
solo adventurer, but I didn’t have the guts to hold out on the hundreds, if not thousands of players
below who were waiting for the gate with bated breath.
I trotted through the main street of Urbus directly north, climbing a wide staircase to the open town
center, which featured a large gate in the middle. It was not really a gate so much as a standing stone
arch with no door or fence connected to it. Only by standing close to the structure was it possible to
see that the space beneath the arch was gently rippling somehow. It was like a very thin, vertical film
of water suspended in the air.
Only after scanning the perimeter for a convenient escape route did I reach out to the shifting,
transparent veil. My fingertip, covered by black leather, brushed the water surface.
In the next instant, my vision burned a brilliant blue.
The light pulsed outward in concentric circles until it filled the fifteen-foot arch. Once the entire
space was full, the teleport was complete, and the town had been “opened.” The exact same
phenomenon was happening at the same time down on the first floor. The players below would be
preparing to dash through the finished portal, now that they realized they wouldn’t need to wait the
full two hours.
But I didn’t wait to witness the entire show. I turned and sped toward a church-like building on the
east end of the square, bursting through the door and scrambling up the stairs inside. Eventually I
made my way into a small room on the third floor and set my back against the wall next to a window
so I could see down into the clearing.
At that precise moment, the interior of the gate flashed, and the NPC musicians set up in the corner
of the square began to play the bright and cheery “Opening Fanfare.” A second later, countless
players spilled out through the blue light in a jumble of colors.
Some stopped in the middle of the clearing and looked around. Some held parchment maps bought
from information dealers and took off running. Some jammed fists into the air and shouted, “We made
it to the second floor!”
A similar town opening had occurred nine times in the SAO beta test, and in each case, the raid
members who had dispatched the previous floor’s boss lined up facing the new teleport gate, soaking
in the applause and congratulations of those who traveled upward to see the new environment. But in
this case, I was the only person who had stuck around to open the town, and I’d taken off running.
There would be no grand celebratory event. Perhaps those looking curiously around the square were
searching for me, but I could not step forward to name myself.
Just minutes earlier, after we defeated the boss, I made a proclamation to the forty-some raid
members that I, Kirito, was not just some beta tester, but a “beater” who had ascended further than
any of the thousand other testers, accumulating more information about the game than anyone else.
It wasn’t out of a desire to play the villain. I did it to avoid having the wrath of the new retail
players focused on the former testers, but the end result was that, soon, every high-level player in the
game would know of my infamy. Appearing in public would not provoke cheers but ugly booing. I
didn’t have the willpower to withstand that kind of open hostility.
So I decided to hide out in the third floor of this chapel until the excitement in the town square
subsided. However …
“… Huh?”
I noticed something odd down in the square. One female player who traveled through the gate ran
pell-mell straight to the west end of the square. She might have been rushing to find a weapon shop or
quest-giving NPC, but the real issue were the two men who showed up after her. They stopped briefly
and looked around for the retreating player, then raced after her. They were clearly chasing the
woman.
The safe haven of town was under the anti-crime code, so normally I’d pay no attention to
something like that, but it was different when the person being chased was someone I knew. Those
brown curls and the plain leather armor belonged to none other than Argo the Rat.
Plenty of people hated her and her motto of “selling any information with a price,” but something
was wrong if they were hurtling around at that speed. I pondered the situation for a moment, then put a
foot on the windowsill and leapt down to the short roof below.
I dashed across the tiles and leapt onto the next roof over, making good use of my high agility stat
before anyone could spot me, and continued along the rooftops in the direction of the chase. This feat
was only possible thanks to the uniform height of the buildings in Urbus.
I waved my hand to call up my menu as I ran after them, clicking the Search button in my skills tab.
When a sub-menu followed, I selected “Pursuit,” then entered the name “Argo” into the field. A set of
green footsteps suddenly glowed on the path below me.
Pursuit was a modifier effect on the Search skill once its proficiency level was high enough. It
was designed to increase the efficiency of monster hunting, but it could also be used to track a player
on your friends list. My level was still fairly low, so I could only see footsteps up to a minute old. I
raced alongside the trail, trying to keep up before they vanished.
If Argo, with her incredible agility, couldn’t shake the two men, they were bad news. I didn’t
recognize them from the boss raid, but they had to be among the top players by level. Moreover, the
chase was proceeding straight down the westward route and through the town gate carved into the
outer perimeter of the flat-top mountain in which Urbus was nestled.
 The plains to the west of town were a dangerous zone populated with large cattle monsters. The
situation was looking downright grim now. I bit my lip and raced out into the virtual savanna.
The wasteland beyond the plains was deadly enough that even at my level it was too risky to go in
there alone. Fortunately, the footsteps in the grass were growing brighter, meaning that Argo’s pace
was slowing and I was getting closer. Eventually I reached a small canyon between two rocky hills
and heard a familiar voice.
“… told you a hundred times! I wouldn’t sell that info, no matter the price!”
The nasal inflection was undoubtedly Argo’s, but it was fiercer and angrier than I’d ever heard her
before. Next was a similarly furious man’s voice.
“You do not intend to monopolize the information, but neither will you reveal it. One can only
assume that you seek to inflate the value of it in order to sell!”
His way of speaking was oddly archaic. I slowed down and began to climb the rock face at the
side of the canyon. Even the most forbidding terrain in SAO could be climbed with enough persistence
and cleverness. It was a secret ambition of mine to one day attempt to scale the enormous pillars that
separated the floors of Aincrad in the hopes of bypassing the labyrinths altogether. But my clandestine
climb in this case was not done for want of a good challenge, but to guarantee my own safety.
After about fifteen feet, I reached a narrow flat space that overlooked the canyon. I crawled
forward on hands and knees. The shouting voices were almost directly below me.
“It’s not a matter of price! I’m saying that I don’t want to sell something if all it gets me is hatred
in return!”
The second man responded, “What quarrel would we have with you? As we said, we will pay the
asking price and be grateful for your service! Just sell us the information on this floor’s special quest
that grants the Extra Skill!”
…What?
Now I held my breath entirely. Extra Skills were hidden abilities that could not be chosen without
meeting special conditions. Only one had been discovered in the beta: the Meditation skill, in which
assuming a pose of concentration increased the HP recovery rate and decreased the infliction time of
negative status effects. Because of its tricky usage and very uncool look, few bothered to earn it. I had
my suspicions that the katana skill used by the kobold lord and the samurai monsters on the tenth floor
might be an Extra Skill as well, but the means to unlock it were still a mystery.
At any rate, Argo and the two wannabe actors were clearly not talking about Meditation. The NPC
that taught that skill was up on the sixth floor. No, this was about some hidden quest on the second
floor that even I didn’t know about (and neither did almost any of the former testers) that unlocked an
Extra Skill, and the two strange men were pressing Argo for that information.
The men’s voices grew louder.
“We are not backing down—not today, you see!”
“That Extra Skill is necessary for us to complete our characters, you see!”
“You just don’t get it! I’m not going to sell it to anyone, you see—I mean, I’m not going to sell it,
period!”
The tension in the air turned electric, crackling tangibly. I leapt to my feet on the rocky ledge and
jumped down the fifteen feet to the ground below, landing perfectly between Argo and the men. I
didn’t have quite enough agility points to jump that distance without damage, so I had to tense my
knees to cushion the shock.
 “Who goes there?!”
“An interloper from an enemy province?!”
A single glance at their outfits sent a powerful shock through my memory. They wore full-body
cloth armor in dark gray, with light chainmail on top. I noticed small scimitars draped over their
backs, and dark gray bandanna caps and pirate masks to match the armor.
Taken as a whole, these outfits could be interpreted as a creative attempt to re-create a classic
“ninja” costume. I couldn’t help but feel as though I’d seen people dressed in this style during the beta
as well.
“Oh! You’re, um, you’re… let’s see, the F, Fu… Food? No, Fugue—no, not that either…”
“It is Fuma!”
“We are Kotaro and Isuke of the Fuma Ninja Force!!”
“Right! That was it!”
I snapped my fingers, satisfied that my memory had been corrected. These two were members of a
ninja guild feared for their incredible speed during the beta test. As to why they would be “feared”—
like Argo, they raised their agility as high as possible, forming a wall of eye-popping speed on the
front line, then running off when the battle grew too dangerous. When the monsters followed in
pursuit, they usually wound up targeting a different party when the ninjas escaped, which earned them
a very bad reputation indeed.
I didn’t realize that they’d continued their adherence to the way of the shinobi even after SAO had
become a game of death, but I didn’t have any issue with their choice—for now. But chasing down a
female player, ganging up on her, and demanding her trade secrets was crossing a line.
I reached back to make sure Argo was safely behind me and ran a finger along the hilt of my
Anneal Blade +6.
“As a spy for the shogun, I cannot overlook the wicked deeds of the Fuma.”
Instantly, Kotaro and Isuke’s eyes flashed beneath their knockoff ninja hoods.
“You Iga dog!!”
“Huh?!”
It seemed my half-assed joke had struck a nerve, and they’d confused me for a member of a rival
school. In perfect rhythm, they reached over their shoulders to remove the scimitars that passed for
ninja blades.
They weren’t going to draw on me, were they? Then again, we were out in the open, where the
anti-crime code had no effect. If a player attacked another player, damage would be done. At the same
time, the aggressor’s cursor would turn orange, signifying them as a criminal and keeping them from
entering town. Even ninjas could not fool the god that presided over this game.
I briefly considered resolving the argument with the preposterous claim that I wasn’t an Iga ninja
but a Koga ninja like them, when the situation was resolved in a most unexpected way.
When I snuck into the canyon, I scaled the walls in order to eavesdrop on their conversation rather
than standing around near the entrance. I did this because we were out in the wilderness, not in town,
and standing around in place long enough always led to one thing happening.
I took a careful step backward and murmured, “Behind you.”
“We will not fall for your trickery!”
“It’s not trickery. Look behind you.”
Something in my voice convinced the skeptical ninjas. Kotaro and Isuke turned their heads and
abruptly leapt backward. Right before their eyes, someone had joined the group. No, something.
It was a Trembling Ox, a giant cattle monster unique to the second floor, standing over eight feet at
the shoulder. Its attack power and toughness were obvious at a glance, but what made them so
dangerous was their extremely long targeting range, both in time and distance. I’d climbed the
inaccessible boulders specifically to avoid drawing the notice of these fearsome beasts.
“Brooooh!!” the ox roared.
“G-gaaah!!” the ninjas screamed in unison. With stunning speed, two gray-clad blurs shot back
toward town away from the canyon, but the ox showed surprising agility for its size. In no more than
five seconds, the rumbling footsteps and screams disappeared over the horizon. Kotaro and Isuke
would likely be in a footrace all the way back to Urbus.
The great ninja war averted for now, I sighed in relief and looked down at my body. Until an hour
ago, I’d been wearing a boring outfit of black leather pants, cotton shirt and a dark gray leather coat.
However, with the unique Coat of Midnight I’d looted from Illfang the Kobold Lord, I was dressed in
full black to match my hair and eyes. It seemed like a good way to reinforce the dirty beater persona
I’d developed, but I had to admit it also made me look a bit like a ninja. I started to wonder if I
should put on a different color undershirt just to avoid any rumors about “Kirito the Iga Ninja” from
now on.
Once again, I was broken out of my thoughts by a very unexpected event.
Two small arms reached out and squeezed around my midsection from behind. I felt a soft warmth
on my back, and heard a faint whisper.
“That was a little too much showing off, Kii-boy.”
It belonged to Argo, who had been silent since I leapt from my perch. But it felt as though the
sound of her voice was different somehow from the snide, obnoxious Rat I knew.
“Keep that up, and you might force Big Sister to break the very first rule of the information
dealer.”
… Big Sister? The first rule of the information dealer?
They were very intellectually curious words, but as a middle school game addict with zero
personal skills, I had no idea how to react to the situation. I froze up, my mind racing, and eventually
found my answer.
“… You owe me one, remember? I can’t have anything happening to you until you explain the
reason for your whiskers.”
Argo the Rat had three thick black whisker lines drawn on either cheek with face paint. They were
the source of her nickname, but no one knew why she painted them in the first place. She claimed the
answer would cost the astonishing price of one hundred thousand col.
But in the recent boss battle, I had taken on the mantle of a “beater,” distinguishing myself from the
majority of beta testers, including Argo, and drawing the ire of the new retail players away from
them. After that, she sent me a message of thanks, offering a single piece of information for free. I’d
told her I wanted to know the reason for her whiskers.
 I’d meant it to be a lighthearted joke to ease the gravity of the situation, but that only made Argo
press her face harder into my back.
“… Okay, I’ll tell you. Just wait so I can get the paint off…”
Huh?
The paint … meaning her whiskers? So she was going to show me her plain face, something she’d
never shown anyone in-game? Was this meant to be a symbolic act with a deeper meaning?
My social anxiety rose to a dangerous peak. Before she could let go, I shouted out, “N-never mind,
I’ve got a better idea! How about you tell me the details of that hidden skill those guys were going on
about?!”

When Argo let go and came around to my front, she fortunately still had the three big whiskers on
either cheek. I could have sworn that just before she let go, she’d muttered a faint “coward.” Or was
that my imagination?
Back to her usual impertinent glare, the Rat crossed her arms and grunted, “Well, I said I’d tell
you any one thing, and a deal’s a deal. But you need to promise me something as well, Kii-boy. You
can’t blame me for what happens, no matter what!”
“You said the same thing to those ninjas earlier. What do you mean by that? Why would someone
bear a grudge against you for selling information on an Extra Skill that everyone wants?”
Argo answered my question with her familiar wry grin. “That one’ll cost ya, Kii-boy.”
I stifled a sigh. “All right, I promise. Swear to God—I mean, swear to the system, no matter what
happens, I won’t hold it against you.”
Even if this quest for an Extra Skill was potentially deadly, I could determine that on my own.
Argo nodded and beckoned me to follow.
The route we traveled from there would never have occurred to me without a map item, or infinite
curiosity and persistence.
She took me up the side of one of the many flat-topped mountains that dotted the second floor—
which was the same size as the first—then into a small cave and down an underground river like a
water slide. We ran into three battles along the way, but with my careful leveling in preparation for
the first-floor boss, they were no big deal. The trip took about thirty minutes, all told.
Based on our map location, it seemed we had nearly scaled the rocky mountain that loomed over
the eastern edge of the second floor. We were in a small clearing surrounded by sheer rock walls all
around, with nothing else but a spring of water, a single tree—and a tiny shed.
“… Is this it?”
Argo nodded. I strode up to the building. It seemed there was no danger, at least so far. Suddenly,
the door before me flew open.
Inside there were a few pieces of furniture and one NPC. It was a large, elderly man, all muscle
and bone, bald as a cue ball, with a magnificent beard. There was a golden exclamation mark above
his head, the sign of a quest.
I looked back at Argo and she nodded.
“That’s the NPC who gives you the Extra Skill, Martial Arts. This is all I can tell you. It’s up to
you whether to accept the quest or not.”
“M…Martial Arts?”
I’d never heard that term in the beta. Argo offered a few extra tidbits, claiming they were on the
house.
“Martial Arts is the catch-all term for attacks using just the hands, no weapons, I expect. It’ll be
useful when you drop your weapon or it runs out of durability and breaks.”
“Whoa … Yeah, that actually seems useful, unlike Meditation. In that case … I guess I can see
why those ninjas were so set on getting it for themselves.”
Argo looked quizzical, so I shot back an explanation of my own, “on the house.”
“People think ninjas use a ninja blade and shurikens, but it’s a bit different in the gaming world.
One good wrist chop at the neck, and the head flies off. For whatever reason, that’s been the pinnacle
of any video game ninja’s style. So Kotaro and Isuke wanted the Martial Arts skill to round out their
perfect image of a ninja. But in that case … if they didn’t know where to find this place, how did they
know it involved the skill, and that you knew about it, too?”
“…This one’s double on the house. At the very end of the beta, an NPC on the seventh floor
revealed some info about the ‘Martial Arts master down on the second floor.’ I’d found him long
before that, of course, but I’m guessing the ninjas heard it from this fellow on the seventh floor. So
once I started getting into the strategy guide business here, they came to me for details on the Extra
Skill.”
“Then … why didn’t you just say you didn’t know? Then they wouldn’t be harassing you so much
…”
She grimaced at my straightforward question.
“I think my pride as an information merchant prevented me from simply saying ‘I don’t know.’ ”
“… So you said you did, but that you wouldn’t sell it. Well … I guess I can see why you’d make
that statement …”
I stifled a sigh and looked back to the NPC, who had assumed a Zen position on a little tatami-like
mat in the center of the shack.
“And you didn’t sell it because you were afraid your buyer would blame you for it. Well, if you
ask me, it seems like you’ve made more than a few enemies already …”
“Any grudge over information sold or bought only lasts three days! But this one’s different! It
could last a lifetime …”
Argo’s petite body shivered. I pondered for several seconds, then came to a conclusion.
“So I guess I just have to find out what happens after this point for myself. All right, you’ve got a
deal: Whatever happens, I won’t hold it against you.”
I stepped into the shack and stood in front of the meditating man. He was wearing a tattered outfit
that looked like a robe.
“You want to follow my school?”
“…That’s right.”
“The road of training is long and fraught with peril.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
The exclamation mark over his head turned into a question mark, and the quest acceptance log
scrolled before my eyes.
My new master escorted me out of the shack to a massive boulder at the edge of his stone-lined
garden. He walked over and patted the stone, a good six feet tall and five across, then rubbed his
whiskers with the other hand.
“Your training is simple: Split this stone with your two fists. If you succeed, I will teach you all of
my secrets.”
“… … Um … timeout.”
Startled by this unexpected challenge, I gave the large rock a light tap. Once you got used to the
game, you could tell the durability of a target based on the physical sensation. What I felt was an
ultra-hard surface just one notch below an “immortal object.”
Yep. Can’t do this.
I turned back to the teacher, ready to cancel the quest. But before I could speak—
“You are not permitted to descend this mountain until you break the stone. I will put the sign upon
you now,” the teacher said, pulling out two objects from his robe pockets. In his left hand was a small
jar. In the right, a thick and magnificent paintbrush.
Suddenly I had such a bad feeling about this that the words “a bad feeling” practically popped into
existence over my head. Before I could announce that I was quitting the school of martial arts, the
master’s hand shot out with terrific speed. He plunged the tip of the brush into the pot and whipped it
across my face.
It was at that precise moment that I understood where Argo’s whiskers came from.
She had found this old man on her own during the beta, and accepted his quest. Who wouldn’t? He
ordered her to break the stone and drew on her face—three thick whiskers on either cheek.
“Wh-whaaa?!” I shrieked pitifully and fell back. My glance met Argo’s. Her ratty face was full of
deep sadness, empathy—and the tension of one holding back the biggest gut laugh she’d ever had.
Freed from the brush attack, I tried to rub my face with my hands. But the ink was ultra quick-
drying, and none of it came off on my fingers. The master nodded in satisfaction at his work, then
delivered a shocking but sadly predictable proclamation.
“That sign will not vanish until you break this rock and complete your training. I have faith in your
potential, my apprentice.”
And he plodded back to his shed and through the door.
After a good ten seconds of standing in place, I looked at Argo, whose face was still a subtle
mixture of emotions.
“I see … So you took on this quest during the beta … and had to give up. You played to the very
end of the beta with those whiskers still drawn on your face. Ultimately, that helped you develop the
persona of ‘The Rat,’ so you kept up the tradition of the paint when the retail game shipped … It all
makes sense.”
“Brilliant deduction!” she applauded. “Aren’t you lucky, Kii-boy? You got both the reason for my
whiskers and the details of the Extra Skill, packaged into one! In fact, I’ll even let you in on one more
nugget. That rock … is hard as hell!”
“… Figures.”
I resisted the urge to fall to the ground and asked Argo one last question, my final hope.
“Hey … did he paint whiskers on my face just like yours?”
“Hmm, they’re not the same.”
“Oh …? Wh-what are they like?”
If they weren’t too obvious, or even looked kind of cool, I’d have the option of going back to my
regular life with a slightly different look. I didn’t have the guts to go look at my reflection in the pond,
so I let Argo stare for another three seconds.
“If I had to describe you in one word, it would be … Kiriemon.”
 That was the last straw for her. She fell to the ground, flailing her feet back and forth and
screeching with laughter. Over and over and over.

After three solid days on the mountain and countless painful attempts, I broke that rock. I’m just glad I
didn’t have to hate Argo for the rest of my life.
 1

“S … S-SCREW YOU!!”

My feet stopped when the high-pitched shriek hit my ears.

I took a few quick steps to the side and pressed my back against the wall of the NPC shop. Up
ahead, the path opened into a wider plaza, from which the disturbance was coming.
“P-put it back! Back to the way it was!! That was a plus-four … P-put it back to what it was!”
Another shriek. It sounded like an argument between two players. Given that we were in the
protected zone of Urbus, the main city on the second floor of Aincrad, the disagreement was unlikely
to lead to physical harm to either player. I certainly had no reason to hide, given that it had nothing to
do with me.
But even though I understood that well enough, I couldn’t help but be more cautious than usual
these days. After all, Kirito the level-13 swordsman was the most hated solo player in Aincrad—the
first man to be known as a beater.

Thursday, December 8, 2022, was the thirty-second day of Sword Art Online, the game of death.
Illfang the Kobold Lord, master of the first floor, was dead. Four days had passed since the
teleport gate of Urbus went active.
In those four days, the story of what happened in the boss chamber had spread among the game’s
top players, albeit with wings of its own.
A boss monster with the Katana skill, a piece of information that wasn’t previously known. The
death of Diavel the Knight, leader of the raid. And one beater, a beta tester who got further than
anyone and used his knowledge to steal the last hit on the boss and reap the rewards.
Fortunately for me, while the name Kirito had spread like wildfire, only forty or so players had
actual knowledge of my physical appearance within the game. And in SAO, the names of strangers did
not appear on their in-game cursors. That was the only reason I could walk through town without fear
of being pelted by stones. Then again, even if that happened, a purple system wall would deflect the
projectiles.
Even still, I felt ashamed that I was removing my signature Coat of Midnight—my prize for
defeating the boss—and wearing a wide bandanna to escape notice. It wasn’t that I was so desperate
for human contact that I would sneak into the city in disguise; I just needed to refill on potions and
rations as well as perform maintenance on my equipment. There was a small shop at the village of
Marome about two miles southeast of Urbus, but its selection was poor, and there were no NPC
blacksmiths I could pay to repair my weapon.
Due to these factors, I was busy in the market on the south side of Urbus, filling my item storage
with sundry goods and supplies, then making my way along the side of the street toward my next
errand when I heard the shouts.

Out of reflex, I had to check to make sure the angry screams weren’t directed at me first, then
sighed in disappointment at my own timidity. Satisfied that it wasn’t me, I resumed my trip to the
eastern plaza, which was both my destination and the source of the argument.
In less than a minute, I arrived at a circular, bowl-like open space. It was relatively crowded for
three o’clock in the afternoon, which was normally prime adventuring time. Most likely, the foot
traffic was due to the recent opening of the town—there were plenty of players coming up from the
Town of Beginnings on the first floor to visit the new city.
The flow of pedestrians slowed down in a corner of the plaza, and I could hear the same shouts
coming from that area. I slipped through the crowd and craned my neck, trying to detect the source of
the argument.
“Wh-wh-what did you do?! The properties are all way down!!”
I vaguely recognized the red-faced man. He was a proper frontier player, not a tourist. He hadn’t
taken part in the first-floor boss raid, but his full suit of metal armor and large three-horned helmet
spoke to his level.
What truly drew my eye, however, was the naked longsword clutched in the three-horned man’s
right hand. The edge couldn’t hurt anyone inside of town, but the idea that he would wave it around in
the midst of a crowd was distasteful. He was too furious to think straight, however, so he stuck the tip
into the pavement stone and continued bellowing.
“How could you possibly fail four times in a row? You can’t have reduced my sword to plus zero!
I should have left it with a damn NPC! You owe me for this, you third-rate blacksmith!”
Standing quietly in a plain brown leather apron and looking guilty through the minutes of raging
insults was a short male player. He’d set up a gray carpet at the edge of the plaza with a chair, anvil,
and shelf crowded together. The rug was a Vendor’s Carpet, an expensive item that allowed a player
to set up a simple shop in the middle of the town—a necessity for any enterprising merchant or
crafter.
You could display your wares without a carpet, of course, but when left abandoned in the open
like that, the items would lose durability bit by bit as time wore on, and there was no defense against
thievery. In the beta test, I’d seen lively player markets along the main streets of all the major cities
with carpets of every color, but this was the very first I’d noticed since SAO’s retail version had
turned deadly. In fact, it was very first non-NPC blacksmith I’d seen.
Now that I recognized the circumstances, the reason for the uproar was clear.
The man repeatedly slamming his sword against the ground had paid the silent, drooping
blacksmith to fortify the blade. In general terms, a player of the same level would be better at
augmenting weapons than an NPC. The requisite production skills had to be at a certain level, of
course, but that could generally be recognized at a glance. The crafting tools used—in this case, the
blacksmith’s hammer—were all grouped into tiers that could only be equipped with the right level of
skill proficiency. The Iron Hammer resting on the silent blacksmith’s anvil required a higher level
than the Bronze Hammers this town’s NPCs used.
So this blacksmith should have better odds at strengthening weapons than the NPCs of Urbus—in
fact, he couldn’t run a business without them—which was why the three-horned man had entrusted
him with his beloved sword.
Unfortunately, however, weapon augmenting in SAO was not a surefire success unless one’s skill
proficiency was quite high. With a failure rate of 30 percent, there was a 9 percent chance of failing
twice in a row and a 3 percent chance of three failures. Even the tragic outcome of four consecutive
failed attempts had a 0.8 chance of occurring.
The terrifying thing was that in a vast online RPG world, these odds were just high enough to
happen every now and then. I played games before this that featured rare items with drop rates like
0.01 percent that made you want to scream, “You’re joking!” And yet plenty of lucky players wound
up with them. I prayed that such cruelly rare items did not exist in SAO, but a part of me knew they
must and that I would spend days and days in the dungeons looking for them…
“What’s all the ruckus about?” someone muttered in my ear, startling me out of my thoughts.
It was a slender fencer. She wore a white leather tunic, pale green leather tights, and a silver
breastplate. Her facial features were so pristine and graceful that you might wonder how an elf
wandered into the world of Aincrad, but the crude gray wool cape from her head to her waist ruined
that effect.
But she didn’t have much of a choice. If she’d taken off the cape and let her luscious brown hair
and elven beauty catch the sun, she’d never escape the attention of the crowds again.
I took a deep breath to calm my head and responded to this person I might actually call a “friend”
… one of the very few I had in this world.
“Well, the guy with the horned helmet wanted the other one to power up his …”
At this point I realized that I, like her, was in disguise. I didn’t want to believe that my nondescript
costume of plain leather armor and a yellow-and-blue striped bandanna was that easy to see through.
Perhaps I ought to pretend that I did not know her.
“Er, well … have we met before?”
The look I got in response was like twin rapier thrusts burning holes through the center of my face.
“Met? Why, I believe we’ve shared meals and been in a party together.”
“… Oh … Now I remember, of course. I believe I lent you the use of my bath—”
Thunk. The sharp heel of her Hornet Boots slammed down on the top of my right foot. A piece of
my memory disintegrated.
I cleared my throat, pinched the edge of her hood, and walked her a few yards away from the
crowd so we could have a proper conversation.
“H-hi, Asuna. Long time no see … if two days counts.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Kirito.”
Two days ago, when I’d met her on the front line, I claimed that there was no need for formality
between avatars. But as this was her first VR game, she seemed to have difficulty getting over that.
And when I’d offered to call her “Miss Asuna” in return, she said it was a pain in the neck and totally
unnecessary. I didn’t understand women.
At any rate, once the pleasantries had been peacefully exchanged, I turned back to the
unpleasantness with the blacksmith and gave her a brief explanation.
“It seems the guy in the three-horned helmet asked the blacksmith to strengthen his weapon, but the
process failed four times in a row, returning it back to a plus-zero state. So he’s furious about it—
which I can understand. I mean, four in a row …”
Asuna the fencer, the fastest and most coolheaded player I knew in Aincrad (I’d add “most
beautiful,” but I didn’t want to cross the line of my personal harassment code) shrugged her shoulders
and said, “The one who asked the other had to be aware of the possibility of failure. And doesn’t the
blacksmith have the rates of success for different weapons posted? Plus, it says that if he fails, he’ll
only charge the cost of the upgrade materials, and not the labor.”
 “Uh, really? That’s quite considerate,” I muttered, recalling the image of the short blacksmith
bowing and scraping repeatedly. Forty percent of my sympathy had been for the three-horned man
whose weapon had been ruined, but now it dropped to closer to twenty.
“I’m guessing that after the first failure, the blood rushed to his head, so he kept demanding another
attempt to make it up. Losing your self-control and paying a terrible price for it is a constant feature of
any form of gambling…”
“That almost sounded like it had personal experience behind it.”
“N-no, just a common-sense observation.”
I avoided looking at her, sensing that telling her I’d lost all of my money at the seventh-floor
monster coliseum during the beta test was not going to win me any points. Asuna gave me a piercing
look for several seconds before mercifully returning to the topic at hand.
“Well … I can’t say I don’t feel a little sorry for him, but that kind of rage doesn’t seem necessary.
He can just save up the money for another attempt.”
“Um…well, it’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. I jabbed a thumb at the Anneal Blade +6 strapped over my back.
“The three-horned guy’s sword is an Anneal Blade, just like mine. He must have gone through that
terrible quest on the first floor to get it, too. On top of that, he’d gone to the trouble of having an NPC
bump it up to plus four. That’s not too hard to reach. But once you get to plus five, the odds really
start to drop—that’s why he had a player blacksmith try it. But the first attempt failed, so now it’s
back to plus three. He asks for another attempt, hoping to get it back to where he started, but it fails
again, down to plus two. Then the process repeats. The third and fourth attempts fail, so now he ends
back at zero.”
“But … there’s no way to fall further from zero. Can’t he just try to get it up to plus five again…?”
At this point, Asuna seemed to understand where I was going with this. Her hazel eyes widened in
the shade of her hood. “Oh… there’s a maximum limit to attempts. And what’s the limit for an Anneal
Blade?”
“Eight times. He got four successes and four failures, which put him at even and used up all his
attempts. That sword can’t be smithed anymore.”
It was the trickiest part of SAO’s weapon upgrading system. Every piece of equipment that could
be powered up had a preset number of possible attempts. It wasn’t the maximum level you could
reach with the weapon, but the number of attempts. For example, a Small Sword, the starting weapon
at the beginning of the game, only had a single potential attempt. If the process failed, that sword
could never be a Small Sword +1.
Even worse, the success rate could actually be affected by the effort of the owner. Obviously,
finding the best blacksmith possible was a major part of that—and ultimately, one could master the
Blacksmithing skill themselves, though at this point in the game, it was an unrealistic option. One
could also increase the chances of success through better materials, either in quality or quantity.
Most player blacksmiths set their upgrading fees based on a success rate of around 70 percent. If
the client wanted a better chance, they could pay extra to have more crafting materials added, or
simply provide them directly to the blacksmith.
Which meant the biggest fault of the three-horned man was that he’d gotten worked up and
gambled on more attempts. He should have taken a deep breath after the first failure, then paid (or
provided) extra to improve his chances the next time. That would likely have prevented his tragedy of
an Anneal Blade +0 with no remaining attempts.
“I see … Well, I can understand why he’d be upset. Just a little.”
I nodded in agreement and offered a moment of silence to the fateful blade. Suddenly, the
screaming man ceased his rage. Two of his friends had raced over and put their hands on his
shoulders, offering support.
“C’mon, Rufiol, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll help you try the Anneal Blade quest again.”
“It’ll only take a week to get it back, then we can push it all the way up to plus eight.”
Wow, now it takes three players a week to get it? Glad I got mine early, I thought. And you guys
… take care of your pal. Don’t let him gamble it away again.
Rufiol seemed to have recovered his cool. He trudged off out of the plaza, shoulders slumped.
The blacksmith, who’d withstood the insults in silence the entire time, finally spoke up.
“Um… I’m truly sorry about this. I’ll try much harder next time, I swear … I mean, not that you’d
want to bring me again…”
Rufiol stopped and looked back at the blacksmith. When he spoke again, it was in an entirely
different voice.
“… It’s not your fault. I’m …I’m sorry for ripping you apart.”
“No. I failed at my job …”
I looked closer at the blacksmith, who was still bowing, hands clasped in front of his leather
apron. He was quite young, still in his teens. His slightly drooping eyes and plain parted bangs made
him look, I hated to admit, like a perfectly typical crafter. A little shorter and thicker, and he’d be the
perfect dwarf. Or perhaps a gnome—he didn’t have the beard.
The blacksmith stepped forward and bowed deeply yet again.
“Um, I know it’s nothing in return … but do you think I could buy back your spent plus zero
Anneal Blade for 8,000 col?”
The onlookers murmured in surprise, and even I grunted at the offer.
The current market price for a fresh new Anneal Blade +0 was about sixteen thousand col. So the
offer was only half that, but Rufiol’s weapon was “spent,” fresh out of upgrade attempts. The market
price for a weapon like that was probably halved again, down to four thousand col. It was an
extremely generous offer.
Rufiol and his two friends were stunned, but after a moment’s conferral, they all nodded.

The incident was over. The three partners and the crowd of onlookers were gone, and the rhythmic
clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer echoed through the plaza. The blacksmith—not dwarf—was
producing a weapon on his anvil.
Asuna and I took a seat on the bench across the circular plaza, listening to the hammering.
Normally, I wouldn’t spend this much time here—I’d get my business done and zip back outside of
the Urbus town limits. There were two reasons my plans had changed. For one, the presence of
Asuna, one of the few people in Aincrad who wouldn’t call me a dirty beater, meant that I could
actually have a conversation and practice my increasingly rusty Japanese. The other reason was on
my back: I’d come to power up my Anneal Blade +6.
I’d overhead someone talking about a talented player blacksmith setting up shop in the east plaza
of Urbus over in the small town of Marome just yesterday. I’d been thinking it was about time to give
that +7 a shot, so I got the crafting materials in order and changed into my disguise for a trip into
Urbus. The previous scene had given me pause, however.
In truth, it would be as easy as standing up and walking over to the dwa—er, blacksmith, and
asking him for an upgrade. We’d never met before, and I doubted he would say, “My hammer isn’t
meant to work on the swords of a dirty beater!”
But the prior squabble had put some pressure onto my decision. Another Anneal Blade had gone
from +4 to +0 despite a 70 percent success rate. It was mathematically possible, but a tragedy of the
highest order for such a fine weapon. If the same fate befell my attempt, I might not lose my cool the
same way, but I’d definitely be sulking in my inn room for a good three days.
Something told me that embarking upon my attempt with this pessimistic view would ensure that I
wound up with an Anneal Blade +5. Then I’d panic, try again without providing more materials, and
finish with a +4. There was no logical reason for my suspicion, but the gamble of attempted upgrades
in MMOs was a topic that often defied logic …
“…Well?”
I looked over at the questioning voice, still lost in thought. “Huh? What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Why did you force me to sit here?” Asuna glared at me.
“Er, um, oh, right. Sorry, just thinking…”
“Thinking? Weren’t you coming here to have that blacksmith work on your weapon, Kirito?”
“Um, h-how can you tell?” I asked, startled. She shot me an exasperated look.
“When we were in Marome two nights ago, you said you were hunting Red Spotted Beetles in the
rocky mountains to the east. That must have been for one-handed sword upgrading materials.”
“Oh… yeah,” I sighed.
“What was that reaction for?”
“Um… I just can’t believe I’m hearing this from the girl who didn’t know how to read her party
companions’ names just four days ago… in a good way! I’m not being sarcastic.”
“…”
Apparently Asuna believed my sincerity, as her expression softened and she murmured, “I have
been studying a lot.”
For some reason, this admission made me happy. I nodded excitedly. “That’s great, really. In an
MMO, knowledge makes all the difference when it comes to getting results. Anything you want to
know, just ask. I was a former tester, after all, so I know everything from the items sold in towns up to
the tenth floor to the different sounds of all the mobs …”
At this point, I realized the terrible mistake I was making.
Just as I said, I was a former beta tester. But at the same time, I’d taken on the persona of a dirty
beater who hoarded information and used it solely for his own benefit. Many other high-level players
despised me for this, not least of whom were the party members of the fallen knight Diavel. Even with
the leather armor and bandanna, someone who knew me would recognize my face close up, and they
would assume that Asuna, sitting on the bench next to me, must be my partner. It was incredibly
reckless of me to be talking about this in a crowded public place.
“Uh… s-sorry, just remembered something I need to do,” I excused myself clumsily, preparing to
stand and rush off.
The fencer stopped my shoulder with the lightest tap of her index finger and spoke in a low but
firm voice.
“It’s crazy and arrogant of you to think you can bear the burden of all the hatred and jealousy
toward the former testers … but that was your choice, so I won’t say anything more on the subject.
But I also wish you’d respect my decision as well. I don’t care what other people think. If I didn’t
want people to think that I was your friend… your companion, I wouldn’t have spoken to you.”
“… … Aw, geez. You can see right through me,” I muttered and sat back down on the bench.
She had identified all my motives, from calling myself a beater at the boss chamber to my attempt
to get up and flee just seconds ago. No use trying to hide now. I raised my hands in brief surrender
and she grinned slightly beneath her deep hood.
“If you’re a pro at Aincrad, then my all-girls’ academy upbringing makes me a pro at mental
battles. As if I couldn’t read your avatar’s face like a page in a book.”
“W-well … I’m sorry to have doubted you …”
“So be honest. Why are you hesitating on upgrading your weapon? I was coming here to do the
very same thing, in fact.”
“Wha…?”
I looked down at Asuna’s fragile blade in surprise. Her green-hilted rapier in its ivory scabbard
was called the Wind Fleuret. I’d looted that sword from a monster and given it to her as an upgrade
when we first formed our party, preparing for the first-floor boss fight. It was a fairly rare item, with
the potential to serve admirably until midway through the third floor if it was upgraded properly.
“Is that plus four right now?” I asked. She nodded. “Did you bring your own upgrade mats? How
many?”
“Umm… I have four Steel Planks and twelve Windwasp Needles.”
“Wow, nice work. But …” I did some mental calculation and groaned, “Hmm, but that means the
chance of going to plus five is only a bit over eighty percent.”
“Aren’t those good odds to risk?”
“Normally, sure. But after what we just saw…”
I looked back across the plaza at the dwarfish blacksmith, rhythmically pounding away. Asuna
looked at him as well and shrugged.
“The odds of a coin turning up heads is always fifty percent, no matter what happened the last
time. What effect does the last person’s consecutive failure have on you or me trying our hand?”
“Well … nothing … but …”
I couldn’t come up with a good answer, but my mind was racing. Clearly, Asuna was a person of
logic and reason, and she wouldn’t accept my assertion that there were streaks and mojo when it
came to gambling. Even my left brain knew that there was no proof behind the “bad feeling” I was
getting.
But on the other hand, my right brain was screaming danger. It claimed that whether Anneal Blade
or Wind Fleuret, the next weapon to be given to that blacksmith, regardless of extra boosts and
bonuses, would end in failure.
“Listen, Asuna.” I turned my body to face her directly and put the gravest possible tone in my
voice.
“Wh-what?”
“You like ninety percent better than eighty percent, right?”
“…Well, sure, but—”
“You like ninety-five percent better than ninety percent, right?”
“…Well, sure, but—”
 “Then don’t compromise. If you already put in the work to get these materials, why not give it one
more round and get those odds up to ninety-five?”
“… …”
She gave me a very skeptical gaze for several long seconds, then beat her long eyelashes slowly,
as though realizing something.
“Yes, it’s true that I hate compromising. But I hate people who are all talk and no walk just as
much.”
“… Huh?”
“Since you’re so dead-set on me pursuing perfection, I assume you’re going to lend me a hand,
Kirito. The drop rate on Windwasp Needles is only eight percent, after all.”
“… … Huh?”
“Now that that’s settled, let’s go hunting. I think the two of us together can take down about a
hundred before nightfall.”
“… … … Huh?”
Asuna patted my shoulder and stood up, then squinted slightly, her shapely eyebrows knitting
together, and delivered the finishing blow.
“Oh, and if we’re going to hunt together, you must take off that ugly bandanna. It looks absolutely
hideous on you.”
 2

BECAUSE OF THE “SWORD ARTS” THAT WERE THE greatest selling pointSAO, of the game
had far more humanoid monster types than any other MMORPG. This tendency didn’t come into focus
until the next floor, however, so there was still a wide variety of nonhuman monsters on the first and
second floors. The animal and plant mobs that couldn’t use sword skills were much easier for
newbies to deal with, but there were exceptions, of course.
Most notable of those were monsters with dangerous side effects like paralyzing toxins and
corrosive acid, but aside from that, flying mobs were surprisingly tricky. After all, there was no
magic in SAO. The only means of attacking targets at a distance was throwing knives, and they were
more like a complementary weapon, not a primary source of damage.
I had to admit there was something cool about the idea of sinking all my time into the Throwing
Knife skill and terrorizing all the flying mobs, but I didn’t have the willpower to dedicate to such an
extreme build now that the game was deadly. On top of that, SAO’s throwing weapons all had a finite
amount, so if you ran out of knives in the midst of battle, tragedy awaited.
Therefore, when Asuna the fencer called upon—more like forced—me to help her hunt the flying
Windwasps in the western zone of the second floor, with our very limited weapon range, there was
only one thought on my mind.
Ugh, this is gonna be such a pain in the ass.

Once we left the west gate of Urbus, I called up my equipment mannequin and unequipped the yellow-
and-blue-striped bandanna. I looked up at the long black bangs hanging below my eyebrows and
sighed in relief. My original SAO avatar had parted hair in an attempt to escape those loose bangs, but
now that I’d been living with this for a month, it was the most comfortable and familiar look for me.
Asuna watched me removing my costume and snorted. “I can’t believe you thought putting on one
stupid bandanna made for a disguise. It won’t work unless you hide your entire face or use face
paint.”
“Urgh …”
The latter term sent a painful shock through my memory.
My face had been covered in thick black paint until two nights before. And it wasn’t a cool tribal
pattern on the cheeks or a reverse cross on my forehead. No, it was something much, much more
embarrassing—I thought. I didn’t have the nerve to look for myself. The only human player who saw
me described me as “Kiriemon,” after the famous robotic cat character.
My face was marked against my will the moment I accepted a certain quest, and the marks would
not come off until I completed that quest. I worked myself to the bone, tears in my eyes, to finish it up
after three nights, when the whiskered old martial arts master finally erased the markings. There were
no words to describe the joy and satisfaction of that moment. I was so happy, I even forgave him for
the fact that cleaning them off was as simple as a wipe of the light brown rag from his robe pocket.
For that reason, I’d lost a good fifty hours of forward advancement since the opening of the second
floor. I rushed to the village of Marome, the current front line of player progress, where I met Asuna
for the first time since the boss fight.
She, of course, had no idea why I would give that odd reaction to her innocent suggestion, and
stared at me suspiciously. I cleared my throat in a hurry.
“Ah, um, g-good point. Maybe I should get one of those hooded capes for myself the next time I go
to Urbus. Where did you buy yours?”
“From an NPC in the western market of the Town of Begi …” She trailed off, and I felt flames
pouring from her eyes. “You’d better not buy the same thing! Then people will think we’re a coup …
a fixed party! Wear a burlap sack if you want to hide your face!”
Asuna turned her head away in a blinding huff, opened her menu and tapped the equipment figure.
The plain gray wool cape sparkled briefly and vanished, and her long, straight hair glimmered in the
afternoon sun.
It was the first time I’d seen her full face in four days, not since the battle against Illfang the
Kobold Lord, and it was indescribably beautiful. It almost made me wonder if Akihiko Kayaba, the
ruler of our new world, had made one careless mistake and left her face in its original avatar form—
but if I ever said that aloud, she’d pound me.
Marome was to the southeast of Urbus, so the southwest road was empty of adventurers. If it
weren’t for the whole game-of-death thing, being able to stroll with a beautiful girl in the midst of a
video game would be the greatest gift God could give any teenage boy. Even if we were only going to
farm wasps for a royal-pain-in-the-ass mission.
“People might confuse me for a PKer if I wear a burlap sack. Can I at least get the same cape in a
different color?”
“Negative!”
“… Yes, ma’am.”
I brought up my equipment mannequin again, removed the leather armor disguise and put on the
pitch-black Coat of Midnight I’d looted from the boss.
Asuna seemed about to say something as she watched the long hem of the coat flap in the wind, but
when our eyes met, she turned away in a huff. I started to wonder why I was even helping her gather
upgrading materials, then remembered that it had been my own suggestion.
On the other hand, Windwasps were worth the trouble thanks to their experience value. It would
be a good source of points before dinner. Plus, no doubt Asuna would be generous enough to pay for
dinner in place of her lodging fee. Sure, she would.
The path ahead took us through a narrow ravine that split the fields of grazing oxen into north and
south. Through that canyon was where we’d find the wasps.
“As I’m sure you already know, given that you’ve hunted a fair number of them, the wasps’
stingers have a two- or three-second stun effect. Let’s keep in mind that if the other gets stunned, we
should immediately go in and take over for them.”
“Got it,” she said, then added, “If you go too far south, you’ll run into Jagged Worms, so watch out
for that.”
“G … got it.”
Belatedly, I recalled that bit of info from the beta test.
We crossed the natural stone bridge that spanned the thirty-foot gorge, nervous despite its
reasonable width, and sighed in relief once we were across.
“I wonder what would happen if we fell off,” Asuna asked. I shrugged my shoulders.
 “I doubt you’d die if you’re over level five. But the path out of the ravine is way to the south, and
there’s plenty of slimy monsters down there, so it’d take a while to get out.”
“Oh.”
I thought I detected something other than relief in her face. As though sensing my suspicion, she
turned away toward the valley and said, “I was just thinking, if we go up against a boss monster,
scouting it out and leveling up, creating a strategy and all that, and still lose, that’s one thing. But
dying because you were careless and fell from a tall height would really suck.”
“Yeah. In a normal MMO, dying from a fall would be a funny story … but not here,” I murmured.
“But do you even think there’s a way of dying in the real world that might make you say, ‘Well, I did
my best, so I have no regrets’? Whether it’s a disease or an accident, I think all you’d be left with is
sadness and frustration … I mean, if there’s any way to die in Aincrad and feel satisfied that you did
what you needed to, it would have to be …”
Sadly, my fourteen-year-old-nerd’s vocabulary failed me; my fingers wriggled and my mouth
opened and closed without a sound. Asuna mercilessly watched the entire sorry display, then gave a
brief answer.
“Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. Not that I’m eager to find out what that’s like any time soon.”
“Y-yeah.”
“In which case, we ought to put our best effort into defeating the second-floor boss. And helping
me power up my weapon is part of that process.”
“Y … yeah.”
“Since we’re both in agreement, let’s get started. A hundred in two hours!”
Asuna drew her rapier and headed in the opposite direction of the stone bridge—a small basin
lined with low trees.
One hundred wasps in two hours. One every seventy-two seconds? For real?
All I could summon in response was a halfhearted grunt of agreement.

The Windwasps were black with green stripes and a foot and a half long, easily making them larger
than any insects on earth, but among the smallest monsters found on Aincrad. Their HP and attack
values were fairly low for second-floor mobs.
However, it was very difficult to suppress the brain’s primitive signal to flee when a bee larger
than your head approached, brandishing a stinger the size of an ice pick. Hunting the wasps therefore
became an exercise in mastering one’s instincts.
It was for this reason that I’d been concerned about Asuna, who did not seem to take kindly to
bugs. However—
“Haah!”
Her rapier skill Linear burned a silver line through space, unerringly piercing the weak abdomen
band of a wasp. It screeched metallically and burst into polygonal shards. A list of experience and
col rewards appeared before my eyes automatically for being in her party.
“Twenty-four,” she shouted, looking over with what I suspected to be confident glee in her eyes.
My juices of rivalry energized, I turned toward a fresh new wasp to my right.
It had spawned with me inside of its aggro range, so as soon as the curved compound eyes spotted
me, it reared up high. The wasp stopped about five yards off the ground, then buzzed down with a
heavy, stomach-churning vibration. If the wasp’s body stayed straight, it would lunge for a bite attack,
and if it curved like a hinge, it would use its poison stinger. That was the first step to dealing with the
creatures, but even after my considerable beta experience with these and the more powerful Storm
Hornets, I couldn’t help but recoil in fear when they lunged.
This time, I withstood the terror and noticed the bee had its abdomen exposed, signaling a stinger
attack. I stood my ground.
The wasp charged right before me, then briefly stopped to hover again. The massive poisoned
barb was glowing with a faint yellow light. I waited until that moment, then jumped backward. The
stinger shot forward with a mechanical clank but found no purchase.
Once the wasp missed, it would fall under a delay effect for a second and a half. Without missing
a beat, I unleashed Vertical Arc, a two-part sword skill. The blade carved out a V shape and
hammered the wasp with satisfying sound effects. The monster’s HP gauge fell nearly 60 percent.
Fresh out of its delay, the wasp flew up high again. It spun around and began another dive. This
time, it hurtled body first, the sign of a bite attack. I sidestepped rather than waiting for the attack, then
raced after the bee when it passed by. It stopped and briefly hovered before its next turn, more than
enough for me to catch it with a clean diagonal Slant.
One more Vertical Arc would finish off the monster, but its cooldown icon was still lit at the
bottom of my view. A follow-up Slant could do the job if I hit its weak point, but from behind, the
wasp’s large wings were in the way. If I didn’t strike a critical hit, its HP bar would still have a bit
left. I clicked my tongue in disappointment and launched a regular swing attack before the wasp’s
delay wore off. Fortunately, I hit it before its bite started, reducing the wasp to pieces of blue glass.
“Twenty-two!” I yelled, looking around for a fresh opponent.
The fact that I was losing despite the edge in level and equipment was thanks to Asuna’s high rate
of critical hits—in other words, she was so accurate that she could hit the wasps in their weak point
every single time.
My Vertical Arc did 60 percent of a wasp’s life bar with a normal hit, whereas Asuna’s Linear
did just over fifty for a critical blow. But because that move was a basic skill, it had a very brief
cooldown time, meaning she could use it every single time the wasp was vulnerable.
I could try to follow her lead and aim for crits with my basic attacks like Slant and Horizontal, but
I just didn’t have the confidence in my own accuracy. If I had an excuse, it was that my Anneal Blade
+6 was specced “3S3D,” meaning three points to sharpness, three to durability. On the other hand,
Asuna’s Wind Fleuret +4 was 3A1D, meaning three points to accuracy, one to durability. That gave
her an excellent bonus to critical hits, no doubt.
But even taking that into account, an extremely high level of player skill and calm concentration
was necessary to land every single hit as a critical attack—to say nothing of experience.
I suspected that Asuna had spent a considerable amount of time fighting these giant wasps since
reaching the second floor. Much of that had to do with farming the materials to upgrade her Wind
Fleuret, but I thought there was something bigger behind that. It was about strengthening herself as a
player, not just her stats. If she learned to jab the weak points of the nimble flying enemies, landbound
monsters would seem slow as molasses in comparison.
I recalled what Asuna said to me on our first encounter deep within the first-floor labyrinth.
We’re all going to die anyway. The only difference is when and where, sooner … or later.
Her eyes had shone with a dim light that saw not hope but despair at the end of her battle. That she
was able to strive in search of true strength now filled me with joy. I could only hope that someday
she’d stand atop the entire population, a shining example and beacon of light to all.
But having said that … I was not about to lose our competition to see who could kill fifty wasps
first.
Before we began battle, Asuna had proposed a chilling bet. She would provide the dinner for
tonight, but whoever could hunt fifty wasps first would also get a free dessert, courtesy of the loser.
I’d accepted the challenge without thinking, and it wasn’t until after we started that I realized what
she was after. One of the NPC restaurants in Urbus sold a shortcake with an astonishing amount of
sweet cream made from giant cow’s milk, the local delicacy. And it was delicious—enough to make
one forget about my favorite black bread with cream from the first floor. It was also expensive—
enough to use the majority of the col I’d earn in the hunt.
That’s what Asuna was after. If she bought the meal and I bought the dessert, I’d come out way,
way behind. I had no choice but to emerge victorious!
“Raaahh!!”
I raced after the freshest new wasp, a bellow ripping through my lungs.
But the next moment, all the wind went out of my sails when I heard her call out, “Twenty-five!”
A three-point margin. That was bad news at the halfway mark. If we both continued at this pace,
she’d pull away and leave me in the dust. If I couldn’t find a way to kill them in two moves like
Asuna, I would never make up the difference.
I didn’t have any other choice.
After turning back to ensure that Asuna was looking the other way, I gave my target an appraising
stare.
The black-and-green wasp hovered high, then plunged down at me. Its body was bent, the
gleaming stinger extended.
I followed the proper pattern, stopping in my tracks and inviting the enemy to strike and miss
before employing a Vertical Arc. Two pleasing slashes rang out, but as usual, they only did 60
percent of its health. If the wasp pulled away, I couldn’t finish it off in two moves, short of a lucky
critical hit.
“… … !!”
I clenched my left fist with a silent scream.
Normally, I’d suffer a brief delaying effect at the end of my sword skill, but my left fist began
glowing with a red visual effect when I held it to my side. Largely automatically, my body jutted
forward and pounded the wasp, which was already in a knockback state from the sword attack.
The meaty thud that resulted was unlike the sound of any blade. My fist shot forward and caught
the wasp in its round, bulging abdomen: Flash Blow, a basic Martial Arts skill. The wasp lost
another 20 percent of its HP.
Poised again, the wasp zipped upward and out of reach. Its second dive was another stinger lunge.
I had already recovered from my delay, and I easily evaded the wasp and dispatched it with a simple
Slant. The time it took to defeat this wasp was nearly the same as two hits.
At this point, depending on how quickly I could find the next monster, I had a chance. I had a
chance.
Eyes wide, I scanned for the formation of a polygonal blob that signaled a new monster being
generated into the environment, and raced after it.
One hour later, I sat on the grass, fifty wasps killed, burnt to a crisp by sheer exhaustion. Asuna
walked over and patted me on the shoulder.
“Nice work, Kirito.”
There wasn’t a hint of fatigue in her voice. She circled around the front and smiled. “Well, let’s go
back to Urbus for our dinner. And when you buy me dessert, I’d like to hear all about that bizarre
punching skill you were using.”
“… …”
I had no response. The beautiful fencer leaned in for the critical finish.
“I can’t wait to finally try that cake. A win’s a win, even if it was only by one point. A boy must
keep his promises, after all.”
 3

JUST AS WE ARRIVED BACK AT URBUS, BELLS RANG crisp and clear from all over the tow
signaling the arrival of night. It was a calm, slow melody with a hint of longing. Seven o’clock was
about the time for the players out adventuring in the wilderness to make their way back home.
In the MMORPGs I’d played beforeSAO, seven o’clock was just when the game was getting
going. People would begin to log in to the server around then, hitting peak traffic at about ten, with the
hardiest of souls lasting all through the night until morning.
As a student of mandatory schooling age, I always logged out by two in the morning at the latest. I
remembered looking on in jealousy at those who were preparing to race out for yet another round of
hunting.
Ironically, now that all I wanted was to be able to go back to school, I could stay out well past
two, until five or eight o’clock in the morning if I chose. And yet once it got dark outside, I always
found my way back to town.
Many times, it was just to eat dinner and fill up on supplies before trudging out for another round
of adventures until sunrise—the night I met Asuna in the labyrinth was just such an occasion. But
every time I saw that red, sinking sun through the outer perimeter of Aincrad, the sky changing from
purple to navy blue, I couldn’t sit still. I had to walk back to civilization.
As proof that this urge was not solely in my own mind, there were a number of players walking the
main street of Urbus, all wearing smiles of relief. Lively cheers erupted from the restaurants and bars
on the sides of the street, with the occasional toast or song dedicated to another day of survival.
This same scene occurred at the towns and villages of the first floor. But it had been quite a while
since I’d heard such unreserved laughter—perhaps never—since we’d been trapped in Aincrad.
“This is the first time I’ve come back to Urbus at this time of day. Is it always like this? Or is
today a special day?” I asked Asuna. December 8 wasn’t a holiday. She shot me a quizzical look, her
beauty hidden beneath the wool cape once again.
“Both Urbus and Marome have been like this for several days. Have you been in hiding both day
and night?”
“Um … well …”
She was probably asking if I really cared that much about being seen. As a matter of fact, I
couldn’t visit Urbus even if I wanted to. If I was going to tell her about my Martial Arts skill over
dinner, I’d eventually get to this topic, but it was not something that could be summed up briefly.
“You could say I was hiding. Or maybe I wasn’t,” I stammered. Asuna’s stare grew even more
incredulous.
“Didn’t I tell you you’re being paranoid? We’ve passed by dozens of people so far, you’re not in
disguise, and not a single one has bothered you in the least.”
She was correct: My awesome striped bandanna was not on display. My face and hair were just
like normal, though the black coat was stashed away, too. But I had a feeling that it was not a case of
players recognizing me as “Kirito the Beater” and choosing to leave me alone, but that they were
simply too full of relief and anticipation of dinner to bother spending any time examining one gloomy-
looking swordsman out of many.
 I coughed lightly, subtly maneuvering myself to use Asuna as cover.
“Ahem … w-well, perhaps. Anyway, back to the topic—is this place always this lively at night?
For no particular reason?”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s a reason.”
I shut my mouth. She shot me another look.
“… In fact, you’re responsible for about three-quarters of that reason.”
“Huh? M-me?!” I sputtered. She sighed in total exasperation.
“Look … Isn’t it obvious why everyone is smiling and laughing? It’s because we’re on the second
floor.”
“… Which means?”
“It wasn’t a riddle. Everyone was much more nervous for the entire month we were trapped on the
first floor. They were terrified that they might never see the real world again. I was one of them. But
then the boss raid came together, we won on the first try, and opened up the second floor. Everyone
realized that maybe we can beat this thing. That’s why they’re smiling. I’m just saying … we
wouldn’t be seeing this phenomenon if a certain someone hadn’t stood strong during that battle.”
“… …”
Finally I understood the point Asuna was making, but I was no closer to knowing how to react to
that. I coughed again and grasped for something to say.
“Uh, I g-guess. Well, if you ask me, that certain someone did a good enough job to deserve a free
shortcake,” I finished hopefully.
“That was that; this is this!”
It was worth a shot.

We turned onto a narrow path leading north from the east-west main street, then made another right
and a left to reach the restaurant.
I knew about this establishment (and its infamous shortcake) from my tireless exploration of Urbus
during the beta test, so I was a bit surprised that Asuna knew about it after just a few days on the
second floor. We took a table near the back and ordered our food, at which point I decide to ask her
how she knew.
“So let me guess, Asuna: the smell of the sweet cream—”
Those brown eyes went sharp beneath her hood. I instantly changed course.
“—did not guide you here. So was it coincidence? It’s got a small storefront with a tiny sign. I
think it would be difficult to pick this place out at random.”
There wasn’t anything to be lost by wandering into a business at random in Aincrad, as there were
no rip-off bars that bullied you into paying up just for entering (as far as I knew), but there were some
that automatically initiated an event-type quest when you walked in the door. There was no danger to
one’s HP within town (again, as far as I knew), but such events might come off as a nasty surprise to
someone not familiar with MMOs. I figured Asuna was not the type of person to appreciate or desire
unexpected thrills, but her answer surprised me.
“I asked Argo if there were any low-traffic NPC restaurants in Urbus and bought the answer from
her.”
Sure enough, there was no one else in the restaurant. Asuna opened her menu and unequipped the
cape, letting her hair swing free with a sigh.
 “Oh … I see. That makes sense …”
On the inside, I broke out into a cold sweat. I was the one who brought Asuna and Argo together.
Technically, it was when Asuna borrowed the use of my bath at the farmhouse near Tolbana, and
Argo had visited with perfect timing. Despite my best efforts, they ran into each other in the bathroom,
much to Asuna’s shock. She screamed and ran out into the main room, where I was sitting—
“You’re not remembering something you shouldn’t, are you? If so, I might need two cakes instead
of one.”
“No, not remembering a thing,” I replied instantly, vigorously shaking my head clear. “Anyway,
Argo might be quick and accurate with your information, but be careful around her. There’s no entry
for ‘client confidentiality’ in her dictionary.”
“Meaning … I could ask her to sell me all the information she has about you?”
It was too late to regret my slip of the tongue now.
“W-well, yeah … maybe … but it’ll cost you a lot. I’m sure the whole bundle would cost you at
least three thousand col.”
“That’s actually not as much as I expected. I bet I could raise that amount without much trouble
…”
“N-n-no! I’d buy all of yours in return! After all, she saw your—”
I shut my mouth so hard my teeth clicked. She grinned at me.
“My what?”
“Umm, er … what I meant to say is …”
At that moment, a miracle occurred and the NPC waiter returned with dishes of food, saving me
from certain catastrophe.
The menu was simple salad, stew, and bread, but this was the finest to be found on the second
floor. Asuna’s eyebrows emitted a threatening aura as we ate, but it disappeared by the time the long-
awaited dessert arrived.
As we agreed, Asuna paid for the dinner, while the cost of the dessert came from my own wallet.
The terrifying thing was the cost of that one dish easily exceeded the three-piece dinner for two. But
given that I’d busted out my secret Martial Arts skill and still lost the bet, I wasn’t in any position to
complain. My only option was to rue the lack of my own skill.
The triumphant winner, seemingly oblivious to my inner turmoil, looked at the green plate piled
high with a mountain of cream, her eyes sparkling.
“Oh my gosh! Argo’s info said you just have to try the Tremble Shortcake once. I can’t believe the
moment has finally come!”
The “tremble” in the name was clearly derived from the Trembling Cows, the female versions of
the terrifyingly huge oxen that roamed the second floor. The cows were nearly twice the size of the
oxen, practically bosses in their own right. The cream piled atop the shortcake came from their milk
(supposedly), but now was not the time to mention that.
There was another angle to the “trembling” moniker, however: the cream was piled so high atop
the dish that it shook on its own. The piece was a triangular slice from a full-size round cake, seven
inches to a side, three inches tall, about sixty degrees of the whole.
That meant the total volume of the cake was (7 x 7 x 3.14 x 3) / 6 … totaling seventy-seven cubic
inches of pure heaven. There had to be almost an entire quart of cream on that thing.
“So … what about this cake qualifies as ‘short’?” I whined.
 Asuna picked up the large fork that came with the cake and said, “You don’t know? It’s not called
shortcake because it’s short in stature.”
“Why, then? Was it invented by a legendary big-league shortstop?”
She effortlessly ignored my killer joke. “It’s because the crispy texture of the cake is achieved
through shortening. In America, they use a tough, crispy biscuit-like cake as the base, but we have soft
sponge cake in Japan, so it’s not really accurate to the original meaning. Let’s see which kind this is
…”
She put her fork to the top of the triangular wedge and carved out a good five cubic inches,
exposing golden sponge cake. It was a four-layer cake, going sponge, strawberries and cream,
sponge, strawberries and cream. The top of the cake, of course, was covered in a stunning amount of
strawberries—or more accurately, some kind of in-game fruit that resembled strawberries.
“So it’s sponge cake. I like this style more, anyway,” Asuna said. Her smile was so radiant that it
was almost worth losing the bet and being forced to pay a massive dessert bill just to see it.
In truth, it didn’t matter whether I came out ahead or behind. The fact that she’d gone from pale-
faced despair in the depths of the labyrinth to a full-faced smile under these warm oil lamps was a
very good thing, indeed.
If there was one very bad thing here, it was that there was only a single slice of cake on the table.
I’d been planning to live dangerously and order two servings outright, but the price on the menu was
like a bucket of ice water dumped over my enthusiasm.
I summoned up every last point of my Gentleman statistic and waved a magnanimous hand, smiling
as naturally as I could. “Please, dig in. Don’t mind me.”
She smiled back. “Oh, I won’t. Here goes.”
Two seconds later, she cracked with laughter, then reached into the cutlery basket at the side of the
table and handed me a fork. “I’m just kidding—I’m not that mean. You can have up to a third of it.”
“… Um, thanks,” I replied, a relieved smile on my face. On the inside, my brain was doing rapid
calculations.
One-third means I can eat … twenty-seven and a half cubic inches of cake!

When we left the restaurant, the town was wreathed in the dark of night. Asuna sucked in a deep
breath and let out a deep sigh of contentment.
“… That was good …”
I knew how she felt. That cake was probably the first honest dessert she’d tasted since we’d been
trapped in this place. It was the same for me. I sighed happily as well and murmured, “It feels like
that tasted even better than in the beta test … The way the cream melted in your mouth, the perfect
level of sweetness that wasn’t too heavy, but still satisfying …”
“Don’t you think that’s just your imagination? Would they really bother with such fine-tuning
between the beta and the retail release?” she asked. I answered her skepticism with all seriousness.
“It wouldn’t be that hard to update the data in the taste engine. Besides, even ignoring the
difference in flavor, we didn’t have this in the beta.”
I pointed just below my HP bar, in the upper left portion of my view. There was a buff icon
displayed that hadn’t been there before, a four-leaf clover that signified an increased luck bonus. That
effect could only be gained by making an expensive offering at a church, equipping an accessory with
that particular bonus, or consuming a special food item.
 SAO kept its main stats exceedingly minimal, showing only values for strength and agility.
However, there were a number of hidden stats affected by equipment properties, buffs and debuffs,
even terrain effects. Luck was one of those stats, and a pretty important one—it affected resistance to
poison and paralysis, the probability of weapon fumbling or tripping, even potentially the drop rate of
rare items.
No doubt someone on the Argus development team had taken a look at the exorbitant price of the
shortcake and decided that it was enough to warrant a bonus effect when the retail game launched.
The effect would last for fifteen minutes. That would be a handy amount if eaten as a snack in the
middle of a dungeon, but …
“Unfortunately, it’s not enough time for us to make good use of it out in the fields,” Asuna said,
clearly following my line of thought. Even if we ran out searching for monsters, we’d barely find a
handful before the buff wore off. Plus, the monsters around the outskirts of the town didn’t drop any
decent loot.
“Too bad … What a waste of a good buff.”
I stared at the icon timer ticking away precious seconds, wracking my brain for a way to make
good use of the bonus while it lasted.
We could get down on hands and knees in the street—coins and fragments of gems could be found
on very rare occasions—but I didn’t think Asuna would like that. We could gamble big at a casino,
except that they didn’t start showing up until the seventh floor. The more I pondered, the less of the
effect remained. Wasn’t there anything we could do to test our luck? I supposed I could turn to the
fencer and ask if she’d go out with me, but I had a feeling the system’s luck bonus had no bearing on
my chances there …
Just as the steam was about to pour from my ears in frustration, I heard a sound.
It was the distant, rhythmic clanging of metal. Clank, clank, went the hammer.
“Ah …”
I snapped my fingers, finally having spotted a use for the twelve remaining minutes of good luck.
 4

FIVE HOURS AFTER OUR LAST VISIT TO THE EASTERN plaza of Urbus, there were virtua
no people wandering around. The only souls left were a few players standing around the NPC shop
stalls that opened only at night, and two or three couples seated on benches. Of course, I hadn’t
brought Asuna here to sit on a bench and stare up at the bottom of the floor above in lieu of stargazing.
The short player was still there in the northeast corner, his small anvil and display case sitting
atop the vendor’s carpet. This was who I came to see: the blacksmith, likely the very first committed
crafter since the start of SAO.
“Asuna, you met your quota of upgrading materials for your Wind Fleuret during our hunt, right?” I
asked. She gave me a brief nod, her hooded cape back on.
“Yes. I’m a bit over, in fact, so I was planning to sell the rest and split the money with you.”
“We can do that tomorrow. Why don’t you try getting it to plus five right now?”
She looked upward, thinking it over. “I see. But does the good luck bonus affect weapon
augmentation attempts? Isn’t it the blacksmith who does the attempt, not me?”
“True. But we can’t give the blacksmith some of that cake, for obvious reasons …”
Obvious meaning financial reasons. I shrugged and continued, “So I can’t claim that the effect will
work, but you are the weapon’s owner, so maybe there’s a boost to the chance of success. I’m certain
it won’t have a negative effect, so you might as well give it a shot.”
The explanation had wound the buff timer down to seven minutes. Asuna nodded again and said,
“All right. I was going to do it today, anyway.”
She pulled the rapier from her waist and strode directly over to the blacksmith’s display. I
followed her without comment.
Up close, the diminutive blacksmith reminded me even more of a dwarf. He was short and squat,
with a young, honest face. It really was a shame that he didn’t have any whiskers. Hairstyles and
facial hair were easily customizable with cosmetic items from NPC shops, so it seemed like he could
draw in more customers by going with the classic look.
Asuna’s voice broke me out of my pointless reverie.
“Good evening.”
The blacksmith looked up from his anvil and gave a hasty bow.
“G-good evening. Welcome.”
His voice was young and boyish, a far cry from that dwarven baritone. Every avatar’s voice was
sampled from the player’s real-life voice, so while it seemed slightly different from his face, it didn’t
change his overall impression. As I suspected the first time I saw him, he might be a teenager close to
my age.
Atop the signboard with his list of prices, it said Nezha’s Smith Shop. Under Japanese rules, I
supposed that to be pronounced “Nezuha”—it must have been his name. Sometimes it was difficult to
tell with the alphabetized display of Sword Art Online player names. In our first-floor raid party,
there was a trident user with the handle Hokkaiikura. After much deliberation, I concluded that it must
be “Hokka Iikura,” only to find out later that he called himself “Hokkai Ikura.” Nezha itself could
have some different pronunciation, but it seemed rude to ask him that on our first meeting.
 At any rate, Nezha the blacksmith got to his feet and bowed again nervously.
“A-are you looking for a new weapon or here for maintenance?”
Asuna held up the rapier in both hands and answered, “I’d like you to power up my weapon. I
want this Wind Fleuret plus four boosted to plus five, bonus to accuracy. I’ve got my own materials.”
Nezha took one glance at the fleuret and his already-drooping brows looked even more troubled.
“A-all right … How many materials do you have …?”
“The upper limit. Four Steel Plates and twenty Windwasp Needles,” she answered promptly. I
recalculated everything in my head.
Equipment upgrade materials came in two categories: base materials and additional materials.
Every attempt had a fixed, mandatory cost of base materials, but the additional materials were
optional. The type and number of additional mats would have a wide effect on the chance of success.
Windwasp Needles were an accuracy-boosting additional material, which meant that they would
increase her critical hit chance even more. If my memory was correct, a full twenty needles would
max out the success rate of the upgrade attempt at 95 percent.
In other words, this should have been a very good thing for the player actually performing the
upgrade attempt. The best customers of all would pay the blacksmith for the materials themselves, but
it still had to be much better than failing with no additional mats.
And yet, Nezha looked terrified after hearing her answer. He was clearly unsettled by the request,
but he couldn’t find a reason to turn her down.
“All right. I’ll take your weapon and materials.” He bowed again.
Asuna thanked him and handed over the Wind Fleuret first. She then opened her window and
materialized a sack in which she had placed all of the goods. She handed them over to the blacksmith
through a trade window. Finally, she paid him the cost of the upgrading attempt.
At this point, the luck bonus effect had only four minutes left. That would not be much help in
battle, but it was more than enough for a single weapon upgrade. Whether or not it actually worked in
the way we hoped was another question, but that was one expensive piece of cake. Surely they could
afford to bump us from 95 percent to 97.
I said a silent prayer to the god of the game system. Asuna took two steps back and sidled right
next to me. She muttered, “Finger.”
“Huh?”
“Stick out your finger.”
Baffled, I lifted my left hand and extended the index finger. Asuna reached out with her brown
leather gloves and gripped my finger in two of hers.
“Um… what is this …?”
“If I do this, maybe your buff effect will be added to mine.”
That seemed stupid. “W-well, in that case … shouldn’t you hold my entire hand …?”
I felt an icy stare emanating from her hood.
“Since when were things like that between us?”
Since when were they like this?! I wanted to yell, but the blacksmith signaled that he had counted
all of the materials and found them satisfactory, so I had to stay quiet and let her squeeze my fingertip,
draining away all of my valuable good luck.
Asuna and I watched over the sign as Nezha the blacksmith turned and reached for a portable
furnace set next to his work anvil. The number of ingots it could melt at once was very low, meaning
he couldn’t create large polearms or suits of metal armor, but it did the job for a simple streetside
business.
On the furnace’s pop-up menu, he switched it from creation mode to strengthening mode, then set
the type of augmentation. Nezha then tossed Asuna’s materials into the furnace.
Four thin sheets of steel and twenty sharp stingers turned red and burst into flame in seconds, and
soon after, the furnace began burning with a blue flame that signified the accuracy stat. All
preparations complete, he removed the Wind Fleuret from its sheath and set it down within the
brazier-shaped furnace.
The blue flames enveloped the slender blade, and the entire weapon was soon glowing azure.
Nezha quickly pulled the rapier out and laid it on top of the anvil, then gripped his hammer and
held it high.
At that exact moment, something prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. It was the same
sensation that I’d felt earlier that afternoon, when I decided to hold off on upgrading my Anneal Blade
+6.
I opened my mouth, preparing to yell, “Stop!” But the blacksmith’s hammer had already made its
first strike.
Clang! Clang! The rhythmic pounding echoed throughout the square, orange sparks flying from the
anvil. Once the upgrade attempt had begun, there was no stopping it. Well, I could grab his hand and
force him to stop, but that only guaranteed that it would end in failure. All I could do now was watch
and pray for success.
There was no foundation for my panic; it was a manifestation of my inner worrywart, nothing
more. All the materials had been invested, the blacksmith represented better odds than an NPC, and
we had two players’ worth of luck bonus. We couldn’t possibly fail.
I held my breath and watched the hammer go up and down. Unlike with weapon creation, only ten
strikes were necessary to upgrade a weapon. Six, seven—the hammer smacked the blue rapier at a
steady pace. Eight, nine … ten.
The process complete, the rapier flashed brightly atop the anvil.
There’s no way it can fail, I repeated to myself, gritting my teeth.
The result was far, far worse than my bad premonition could possibly have signaled.
With a fragile, even beautiful tinkling, the Wind Fleuret +4 crumbled into dust from tip to hilt.

No one reacted for several seconds, from Asuna, the sword’s owner; to me, the emotional and luck
bonus support; to Nezha the blacksmith, the one who had caused it to happen.
Perhaps if a single passerby had been watching, they might have broken the ice. But for now, all
the three of us could do was stare emptily at the anvil. As the third party in this transaction, perhaps I
was best suited to smooth over the situation, but my mind was occupied by one massive question, not
to mention the sheer shock of what had transpired.
This is ridiculous!
The phrase echoed through my head over and over. All I could do was stare.
It was impossible. As far as I knew, there were only three negative outcomes of a weapon upgrade
attempt in SAO: the materials disappeared and left the already-upgraded values where they were, the
properties of the bonus got switched around, or the upgraded value decreased by one.
In the worst case scenario, Asuna’s Wind Fleuret +4 should have decreased to +3, and that was, at
most, a 5-percent chance. Of course, 5 percent put it well within the bounds of possibility for an
MMO… but it should never result in the weapon just completely disintegrating.
But there was no getting around the brutal truth that the glittering shards of silver scattered about
the anvil had been, until a few seconds ago, Asuna’s precious sword.
I watched the entire series of events. Asuna removed the rapier from her waist and handed it to
Nezha. He picked it up in his left hand and manipulated the portable furnace with his right, then pulled
the sword from its scabbard and put it in the fire. Nothing in that sequence of events was out of the
ordinary.
As we watched in silence, the scattered pieces around the furnace melted into the air. The
weapon-damaging skills that some monsters used might melt, warp, or chip a blade but leave it in a
repairable state. A weapon that had shattered into pieces represented the loss of all durability and
was irretrievably gone. Asuna’s sword wasn’t just visibly destroyed—it had been deleted from the
SAO server’s database entirely.
As the final fragment disappeared, it was Nezha the blacksmith who moved first.
He threw aside his hammer and bolted to his feet, bowing to the both of us over and over, his
parted bowl cut waving in the air. He squeaked and wailed, trying to trap the screams in his throat.
“I … I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll return all of your money … I’m so, so sorry!”
Asuna couldn’t react to the repeated apologies. She just stood there, her eyes wide. I eventually
stepped forward to speak.
“Look, um… before we talk about money, I want an explanation. I thought that weapon destruction
wasn’t a possible failure state of upgrading in SAO. How did this happen?”
Nezha stopped bobbing his head and finally looked up. The angle of his hanging eyebrows was
extreme, his round, honest face screwed up in agony. It was as though his face had been designed as
an expression of pure apology. I felt extremely uncomfortable, but there was no way I could tell him
that it was “all right.” Instead, I tried to keep my voice as calm as humanly possible.
“Listen … I played in the beta test, and I remember the player manual they put on the official
website. It said there were three possible penalties for failure: lost materials, property alteration, and
property downgrade. That’s a fact.”
As a publically outed “beater,” I had no desire to bring up the beta. But this was not the time for
self-preservation. I stopped there and waited for his answer.
Nezha was no longer bowing and scraping, but his eyesight was fixed firmly downward as he
spoke, his voice trembling.
“Um… I think that maybe … they added a fourth penalty type for the launch. This happened to me
… once before. I’m sure the probability is very low, though…”
“… …”
I had no argument left. If Nezha’s claim was false, then he’d somehow just accomplished a
destruction penalty that did not exist in the game. That was far more unlikely.
“… I see,” I murmured lifelessly. Nezha looked up and mumbled again.
“Um… I’m truly sorry. I don’t know how to repay you. I’d give you a replacement Wind Fleuret,
but I don’t have any in stock. I’d hate to leave you without an option, so I can give you an Iron Rapier,
if you don’t mind the downgrade …”
That wasn’t my choice to make. I looked to my left at the still-silent Asuna.
Her face was almost entirely hidden by the gray hood, but I could still make out her delicate chin
moving side to side. I answered Nezha for her.
“No, thanks … We’ll make do on our own.”
With all due credit to Nezha’s offer, the Iron Rapier was sold as far back as the Town of
Beginnings on the first floor, and wasn’t going to be very helpful up here. If he couldn’t give us a
Wind Fleuret, the Guard’s Rapier that was one rank below it was the only thing that came close to a
replacement.
Besides, the risks of failing in an augmentation attempt should fall upon the shoulders of the client,
not the blacksmith carrying the job out. Nezha’s shop sign had a list of the success rates for various
jobs at his current skill level. Being unlucky enough to hit the 5-percent chance—probably less than 1
percent for this worst of all outcomes—of failure was our problem, not his. Even Rufiol, he of the
Anneal Blade +0 disaster this afternoon, had eventually given in and accepted his fate.
Nezha’s shoulders slumped even lower at my answer. He murmured, “I see. Well … at least let
me return your fee …”
He moved his hand to start the transfer, but I cut him off. “It’s all right, you did your best. You
don’t need to do this. There are some crafters who say it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you
hit the weapon enough times, so they just whack away …”
I didn’t mean anything by that, but for some reason, he shrunk his head even farther. His arms were
held as close to his body as possible, trembling fiercely. Another apology shuddered out.
“… I’m sorry … !!”
After that painful, heart-rending apology, there was nothing more to say.
I took a step back, nodded to Asuna, and started to move her away.
It was only at this moment that I noticed that her hand, which had been pinching my index finger
originally, was now fully gripping my palm.

I pulled the silent Asuna away from the blacksmith and out the northern entrance of the plaza. There
were few NPC shops or restaurants along this stretch, only a number of buildings of unknown utility
—perhaps they would be available as player homes after some later point in the game. At any rate,
the street was nearly empty.
We walked on and on, the only points of interest the occasional signboard of an inn. There was no
destination, not even a general direction. The cold grip of her hand on mine told me of how heavily
the loss of her favorite sword was weighing on her, and the shock of its abrupt disappearance after a
single upgrade attempt. But I had no idea how to react or console her. My meager life experience as a
middle-school gamer left me unprepared for this. All I knew was that pulling my hand free and
running away was the worst possible choice. I wanted to pray for the advent of some sudden
salvation, but the good luck bonus icon below my HP bar was long gone.
First, let’s stop walking.
I noticed a wider space ahead with a bench and started off for it. After a few dozen steps, I
stopped and awkwardly said, “L-look, here’s a bench.”
The voice inside my head screamed at me for being an idiot, but Asuna sensed my intentions and
turned to sit down without a word. She was still holding my hand, so I automatically took a spot
beside her.
After a few seconds, her fingers eased up and left my own to land on the wooden slats of the
bench.
 I had to say something, but the more I thought, the tighter my throat shrank. How could I be the
same person who had stood before dozens of powerful warriors and proclaimed myself a beater?
And not that just that. I was the one who had spoken first when I originally found Asuna deep within
the first-floor labyrinth, wearing a much harder expression than she was now. Sure, it had been an
emotionless admonishment about overkill, but there was no reason I could say something then and
couldn’t now. None at all.
“… … … Um, so,” I finally began. Fortunately, the words seemed to form themselves after that
point. “It’s a real shame about the Wind Fleuret. But once we reach the next town after Marome, they
sell a weapon that’s even a bit better. It’s not cheap, of course … but we can manage it together. I’ll
help you save up …”
If mana points existed in this world, it would have cost me every last one of mine to get those
words out of my mouth. Asuna responded so quietly that I could barely hear her, even at this close
range.
“… But …” The word melted into the night air as quickly as it had appeared. “But that sword…
that sword was my only …”
Something in her voice, some emotional resonance, pulled my gaze directly to her face. Two clear
drops ran down her cheeks, glowing with a pale light under her hood.
It wasn’t as though I’d never seen a girl crying up close. But the source of those tears was always
my little sister Suguha, and almost all of the instances had occurred years ago, in my kindergarten and
early grade-school years.
The last time I’d seen her cry was three months before I fell prisoner to SAO. She’d lost at the
prefectural kendo tournament and cried in the corner of our backyard. I had no words to console her,
only a bag from the convenience store with ice pops, the kind you sucked from a plastic wrapper. I
broke one in two and stuck one of the halves in her hand.
In gaming terms, my proficiency in the Reacting to Crying Girls skill was barely above zero, if I’d
even unlocked that skill in the first place. I had to compliment myself on even having the guts to stay
there rather than run off.
On the other hand, an objective look showed me in a very pathetic light: frozen still and
dumbfounded, watching the tears streak down Asuna’s cheeks one after the other. I ought to speak or
move, but I had no ice pops in my inventory, and I wasn’t ready to speak to her when I wasn’t entirely
sure what she was crying about.
I understood the shock of seeing her favorite weapon crumble to pieces before her eyes, of course.
If my Anneal Blade suddenly vanished, I’d probably get tears in my eyes as well.
But in all honesty, I didn’t peg Asuna as the type to form a deep attachment to her weapon, to see it
as an extension of herself and talk to it soothingly as she oiled it … That was my category, if anything.
Asuna seemed like the opposite case. She would see a sword as simply one element of battle
power out of several. If she looted a slightly stronger sword from a dead monster, she’d toss aside the
one she’d been using without a second thought. The first time I met her, she had a bundle of starting
rapiers that she’d bought in town, throwing each one away when it was no longer of any use.
It had only been a week since then. What had changed Asuna’s way of thinking 180 degrees in just
seven days?
… No.
No matter the reason, there was no use wondering about it now. She was shedding tears over her
partner, the blade she’d used for seven whole days. I could understand her sorrow. What else was
there to think about?
“… It’s a real shame,” I murmured. Asuna’s back shivered. She seemed even more doll-like than
ever.
“But listen,” I continued. “I know this might sound cold, but if you want to keep fighting on the
front lines to help beat this damn game, you’re going to have to keep getting new equipment. Even if
that had worked, your Wind Fleuret would be useless by the end of the third floor. I’ll have to replace
my own Anneal Blade at the first town on the fourth floor. That’s just what MMOs—what RPGs are
like.”
I had no idea if this was actually comforting her, but it was the best I could do.
Asuna did not react for several moments after I finished speaking. Finally, a few weak words
trickled out from her hood.
“I … I can’t take that.” Her right hand clenched lightly atop her leather skirt. “I always thought my
sword was just a tool … a bunch of polygonal data. I thought that only my skill and determination
mattered here. But the first time I tried out that Wind Fleuret you chose for me … I’m ashamed to
admit I was blown away. It was as light as a feather and seemed to home in right on the spot I wanted
to hit … as if the sword was helping me, out of its own will …”
Her cheeks trembled, and a fleeting smile crossed her lips. For some reason, this seemed like the
most beautiful expression I had seen Asuna make yet.
“I thought, I’ll be fine as long as I have her. I’d have her by my side forever. I told myself, even if
the upgrading fails, I’ll never get rid of her. I’d take great care of her, for all the swords I wasted
before this … I promised…”
Fresh tears dripped onto her skirt and vanished. When things disappeared in this world, they left
no trace behind. Swords, monsters … even players.
Asuna quietly shook her head and whispered, her voice barely audible.
“If what you say is true, and I have to keep switching to new weapons … then I don’t want to go
upward. I feel so bad. We fight together, survive together … I can’t bear just throwing it away …”
Something in Asuna’s words brought back a memory of an entirely different scene.
A child’s bicycle with a black frame. Twenty-inch tires, a six-gear shifter. I picked it out for
myself on the day I entered elementary school. I treasured that junior mountain bike more than any
child would. I put air in the tires once a week. If it rained, I wiped it off and oiled the moving parts.
Perhaps borrowing Dad’s bike care chemicals to waterproof the frame was going a bit overboard.
Thanks to all of that, the bike was still sparkling like new after three years, but that was the root of
my predicament. Once I outgrew the bike, my parents said they would buy me a new one with twenty-
four inch wheels. But rather than allowing me to keep my precious first bike in storage, they said I
had to give it away to a younger boy in the neighborhood.
I was in third grade at the time, and I fought back like I’d never fought before. I claimed that I’d
rather not have a new bike at all. I even asked the fellow at the neighborhood bike shop to store it
away in secret for me.
Instead, he told me that he’d transfer the soul of my machine to the new bike. Before my stunned
eyes, he took out a hexagonal wrench and removed the bolt from the right crank. This bolt was the
most important out of all of them, he claimed. So as long as he stuck that on the new bike, its soul
would come over with it.
 Today, it was obviously a bunch of baloney meant to quiet a child, but that first bolt and another
one from my second bike were currently sitting in the saddlebag of my twenty-six-incher.
With this past experience in mind, I told Asuna, “There’s a way to keep a sword’s soul with you
when the time comes to say goodbye.”
“… Huh…?”
She raised her head just a bit. I held up two fingers.
“Two ways, in fact. For one, you can melt down your inferior sword into ingots, then use them as
the base for a new sword. The other way is to just keep your old sword in storage. There are
downsides to both cases, but I think there’s merit to them.”
“Downsides, how?”
“Well, when it comes to turning them into ingots, you have to have strong willpower when you
loot good weapons from monsters. If you switch over to a looted sword, that ends the bloodline there.
You could always melt down the loot and mix them together for your new sword, but it’ll cost a lot.
On the other hand, if you keep it in your inventory, that’s using up valuable space. Again, your
willpower will be tested when you’re deep in a dungeon and you run out of space for items. In either
case, the more practical players will probably laugh and wonder why you’d bother …”
Asuna was looking down, deep in thought, then raised her head and brushed a tear away with her
fingertip.
“And do you plan to do either of those …?”
“I’m on the ingot side, but I should explain… I do it for my armor and accessories too, not just my
sword.”
“… Oh.”
She nodded and smiled again. This one was a bit clearer than the last, but the air of sadness still
had not vanished from her face.
“If only I could have kept the shattered pieces so they could be melted down,” she murmured. I
could only nod in agreement. The first sword that Asuna had felt a connection to was gone forever
without a trace. There was no way to bring that soul back …
I was lost in silence. Eventually, she spoke again.
“…Thanks.”
“Huh…?”
She didn’t repeat herself. Asuna stretched her legs forward and stood up from the bench.
“It’s getting really late. Let’s head back to the inn. Will you help me buy a new sword tomorrow?”
“Um… yeah, of course,” I nodded, hastily getting to my feet. “I’ll, uh, see you to your inn.”
She shook her head at my offer. “I don’t feel like walking back to Marome. I’ll stay in Urbus
tonight. There’s a place just over there.”
I turned and saw that indeed, there was a gently glowing sign that said INN. Upon further
reflection, it would be too dangerous to walk through the wilderness between towns without a decent
weapon. Leaving her here for tonight and coming back tomorrow to help her buy a weapon seemed
like a much better idea.
I walked her to the door of the inn about twenty yards away and watched her check in, waving as
she walked up the stairs. I didn’t have the guts to stay at the same inn with her.
Besides, there was one other thing for me to do tonight.
I headed south back down the street toward the eastern plaza of Urbus.
 5

WHEN THE BELL RANG OUT EIGHT O’CLOCK, THE tireless clanging of the hammer fina
stopped.
I rushed through the gate of the east plaza of Urbus and made my way across the open space,
avoiding the lighting radius of the streetlamps. I reached the line of leafy trees planted at the eastern
border and put my back against a thick trunk.
In my player menu, there was a shortcut icon at the bottom of the main screen that corresponded to
my Hiding skill, which was set in my third skill slot. A small indicator appeared in the bottom of the
view reading 70 percent—my avatar was now 70 percent blended into the tree at my back. A number
of variables affected that number: my armor type and color, surrounding terrain and brightness, and of
course, my own movement.
I was risking the exposure of my “evil beater” persona by wearing the Coat of Midnight, but the
black leather coat’s bonus to hiding would be of more use than my usual disguise. The area was dark
and there was no one else nearby, maximizing my stealth efficiency. The number seventy wasn’t great
because my Hiding proficiency was still low. Increasing that skill was a long and boring process, so I
wouldn’t max it out for quite a long time.
Even at starter status, the skill was powerful enough to work easily against the mobs on the first
two floors (as long as they were sight-dependent), but that number felt awfully low against a human
being. A perceptive player like Asuna would probably see through 70-percent camouflage without
any trouble. On top of that, hiding in town was considered poor manners, so getting revealed by other
players could lead to trouble, especially if it was one of the recent “game police” type who took it
upon themselves to uphold proper etiquette.
It wasn’t my style to sneak around and spy on people, but this was a special circumstance. I was
about to embark on my very first attempted trail of another player.

As I waited behind the tree, a player-crafter closed up his shop at the eight o’clock bell. It was
Nezha, of course, the first blacksmith in Aincrad to sell his wares in the street.
He extinguished the fire in his portable forge and put away the ingots in his leather sack. His
hammer and other smithing tools went into a special box. He folded up the sign and set it down on an
empty spot on the carpet, then straightened out his display of weapons for sale.
Once every object related to his business had been neatly packed on top of the six-by-six-foot
carpet, Nezha tapped the corner to bring up a menu screen and hit the “store” button. The carpet
rolled up by itself, absorbing the countless items on top of it. In just a few seconds, the only thing left
was a thin, round tube.
The short blacksmith picked it up easily and hoisted it over his shoulder. The magic Vendor’s
Carpet was always the same weight, no matter what items were locked within its internal storage.
When I first learned about that, visions of unlimited space for potions, food, and loot in the dungeon
floated through my head, but reality was not so generous. The carpet only worked in towns and
villages. On top of that, it couldn’t be fit into a player’s inventory, meaning that the four-foot-long,
four-inch-thick rolled carpet had to be carried everywhere by hand.
Normally, this item bore little use for non-merchants or crafters, but some enterprising people
found unexpected avenues for fun. Back in the beta, there was a brief period where pranksters used
the “items on carpet cannot be moved by anyone but the owner” rule to block off major streets with
large furniture, sowing chaos left and right. This was addressed very quickly in a patch that limited
use of the carpets to the corners of public spaces over a certain size.
Magic carpet on his shoulder, Nezha heaved a sigh of exhaustion and started plodding off, head
down, toward the south gate of the square.
I waited for him to be at least twenty yards away, then pulled away from the tree. My hide rate
indicator dropped rapidly until it hit zero, at which point the hiding icon disappeared entirely. I still
stayed in the shadows, trying to cut down on any unnatural footsteps as I trailed him.
Of course, I was not following Nezha home in order to confront him about his failure to improve
Asuna’s weapon, or to threaten him away from prying eyes.
If anything, it was that feeling of wrongness.
As far as I knew, he had failed twice—no, five times—to upgrade a weapon over the course of the
day. The destruction of Asuna’s Wind Fleuret and the four consecutive tries on Rufiol’s Anneal
Blade, rendering it a “spent” +0. Of course, this outcome was possible from a statistical standpoint,
but it struck me as a little too easy. Or a little too hard, depending on how you looked at it.
The only reason I’d visited the eastern plaza of Urbus in disguise in the first place was because I
heard rumors in Marome that an excellent blacksmith had set up shop there. I packed up enough
materials to boost my chances to 80 percent and was pondering whether to bump up sharpness or
durability when I happened across the scene with Rufiol. I would have gone up to him directly
afterward to have my weapon upgraded if I hadn’t happened to run into Asuna at that precise moment.
Would my weapon have failed just like theirs? I couldn’t help but feel that way, although I had no
proof backing my suspicion.
If rumors of his skill had reached Marome, then Nezha’s chances of success must be noteworthy.
There was no way to test for myself, but his numbers must surely be better than the standard NPC
blacksmith. However, if he was somehow able to fulfill a condition that guaranteed failure, there
must be some hidden reason behind it. It was possible that some malicious trick lurked behind this
series of events.
This was all personal conjecture—perhaps even paranoid suspicion. Even if there was some kind
of knack to what he was doing, I couldn’t possibly guess how it worked. He had put Asuna’s
materials into the forge, heated her sword in it, then moved it to the anvil and hammered it—all
before my eyes. It was all according to the book, nothing out of place. Besides, what could he
possibly stand to gain by downgrading or destroying other players’ weapons …?
Even as the possibilities swirled through my mind, I kept a bead on his back as he walked.
Fortunately, he seemed to have no idea he was being followed and didn’t spin around or force me to
come to an awkward halt. On the other hand, I had no experience trailing another player, so a cold
sweat ran down my back the entire time. If I got my Hiding skill higher, I could follow at a much
greater distance without trouble, but at this point, the only experience I could rely on was spy movies.
I darted stylishly from shadow to shadow for seven or eight minutes, a certain impossible theme
song ringing in my ears. Nezha plodded his way almost to the town walls at the southeast edge of
Urbus before stopping at a faintly glowing sign. I stuck close to a tree lining the street to watch.
Anyone witnessing this scene would find it extremely suspicious, but I didn’t realize that until later.
The sign clearly said BAR in the light of the oil lamps. Again, I felt a strange suspicion. Nothing
was out of place for a hardworking player to settle down with a drink after a long day of work … but
something was wrong with Nezha’s demeanor. He wasn’t racing up the steps in anticipation of a nice
cold mug of ale. In fact, he stood still outside the swinging door for over ten seconds, as though
hesitating to even go inside.
He’s not going to turn around, is he? I thought in a panic. Nezha adjusted the roll of carpet on his
shoulder, then set a heavy foot forward. He put out his hand and slowly pushed the door open. His
small form disappeared into the bar, the door swinging shut behind him. It only took two seconds—
but even at my distance, I could faintly hear what came from inside.
There were a great cheer and applause, and a man’s voice shouting, “Welcome back, Nezuo!”
“…?!” I sucked in a deep breath.
This was not what I expected. My spur-of-the-moment decision to trail Nezha was only meant to
find where he was spending the night. Instead, he went to a bar at the edge of town where at least four
or five people knew him personally. What could it mean?
After a brief hesitation, I left the shadows and raced up to the swinging door of the inn.
Unfortunately, even with my back to the wall next to the door, I could hear nothing from inside. By
nature, all closed doors in the game were soundproof; the only way to hear through them was the
Eavesdropping skill. Even the swinging door, with its wide-open gaps above and below, was no
exception.
I swore under my breath. There were only two options here, and entering the store disguised as a
customer was not one of them. I could either give up and leave, or …
I steeled my nerves and reached out to gently push open the door a crack. Five degrees, ten—there
was no sound from within. Once I got it to fifteen degrees, the man’s voice from earlier floated up to
my ears.
“Might as well chug it, Nezuo! None of the beer in this place actually gets you drunk, anyway!”
In contrast to his statement, he seemed to be plenty drunk already. It was true that you could drink
gallons of beer in Aincrad and never take in a single molecule of alcohol, but it was fairly common
for players to get “drunk” on the atmosphere of the situation. The excited cheers and yelling that
floated through the doorway were no different from what could be heard from groups of college
students walking through a nightlife district after a few rounds of drinks in the real world.
I strained my ears and heard a hesitant “okay” in a quiet voice. The chattering died down for a
moment, only to be followed by an excited cheer and applause.
Based on the evidence, I assumed that the five or so people waiting for Nezha in the bar were
close friends of his. This came as a surprise to me, as in my experience, crafters tended to be lone
wolves—or in Nezha’s case, sheep. I was curious as to the player builds of his friends, but there was
no way to identify their playstyles based on voices alone.
I decided to take another risk and peer over the top of the swinging door for just an instant. I
blinked quickly, like the shutter of a camera, then pulled my head back.
As I suspected, there was only the one group in the cramped interior. If I’d tried to waltz in
pretending to be a customer, I would have drawn all of their notice. There were six of them sitting at
the table in the far right corner. Nezha had his back to the door. The other five all appeared to be
fighters clad in leather and metal armor.
 This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It was completely normal for MMORPG guilds to have
fighters and crafters mingling naturally. The official guild feature of SAO wasn’t unlocked until a
particular quest on the third floor was beaten, but many players had gathered into organized groups
already. In fact, solo players like Asuna and me were already in the minority.
Having a crafter or merchant in the group made equipment maintenance and selling loot much
easier for the adventurers, and the crafters could get the materials they needed for cheap, if not free
altogether. So there was nothing wrong with Nezha having friends who happened to be fighters … but
the lump of suspicion in my chest did not show any signs of disappearing.
Just as I was trying to figure out the exact nature of what troubled me, one of the friends who was
just entertained by Nezha’s downing of an entire mug of beer said something that caught my ear.
“… So, Nezuo, how was business today?”
“Oh… um, I sold twelve new weapons … and got a few visitors for repairs and upgrades.”
“Hey, that’s a new record!” “We’ll have to scrape together some more ingots!” two other men
shouted, and there was another round of applause. It was the very picture of a close-knit band of
friends with a network of support. I didn’t recognize any of the other five, which meant they probably
weren’t front-line players, but they might rise to that rank soon with a talented blacksmith on their
side.
Maybe I really am being paranoid …
I felt ashamed. If Nezha really was using some kind of bug or trick to intentionally downgrade or
destroy other players’ weapons, it would have to be planned and supported by his entire group, and I
just couldn’t see a logical motive for them doing that.
With considerable pain, I recalled that Diavel the Knight, leader of the first-floor boss raid party,
had gone through a secondary negotiator in an attempt to buy my Anneal Blade +6. Only in his final
moment of life did I learn that he’d done it to deny me the Last Attack bonus on the boss.
In hindsight, I did score that very last hit on the kobold lord and earned his unique Coat of
Midnight for the feat, so there was a kind of logic behind Diavel’s attempt to lower my attack output.
But on the other hand, Nezha and his friends were not even on the front line. They weren’t in any
position to be concerned with the boss’s LA bonus. There was no benefit to ruining Rufiol and
Asuna’s weapons.
I guess it really was just a series of coincidences …
I sighed silently to myself and was preparing to let go of the swinging door and allow it to close,
when something stopped my hand.
“… I don’t think we can keep doing it,” came the sound of Nezha’s frail voice.
The men carousing inside the bar suddenly went quiet. After a short silence, the first man
responded, but in a whisper too quiet for me to make out. I pushed the door in again, moving the angle
to twenty degrees.
“—ust fine, you’re doing great.”
“That’s right, Nezuo. Nobody’s talkin’ about it in the least.”
I held my breath. I had a feeling they were talking about the failed upgrade attempts, and focused
all of my attention on the words. Nezha protested against their apparent encouragement.
“It’s too dangerous to keep up. Besides, we’ve already made back our cost …”
“Are you kidding? We’re just getting started. We’ve got to rake it in so we can catch up with the
top players while we’re still on the second floor!”
 Made back the cost? Rake it in…? I leaned forward, unsure of what they were discussing.
Was it really unrelated to the upgrade failures? After all, Nezha should have lost money buying
back Rufiol’s spent sword, and he only made the standard fee in Asuna’s case, nothing more. How
could that make him any money …?
No … No, there was a way. Perhaps I was looking at this from the wrong viewpoint …
Just then, a suspicious voice arose from the bar.
“… Huh? Hey, look at the door.”
I closed the door as smoothly as I could and immediately jumped off to the right, flattening myself
against a nearby tree and employing my Hiding skill. Almost immediately, the swinging door burst
outward.
The face that emerged was of the leader-like man who’d been sitting next to Nezha and egging him
on. He wore banded armor that made his already hefty form look even more rotund, and a bascinet
helm with a pointed top. While the overall effect was humorous, the sharp look in his eyes was
anything but. His thick eyebrows squinted, scanning the surroundings of the bar.
The moment his eyes passed over the spot where I was hiding, the indicator dropped to 60
percent. I wasn’t in any physical danger within the safe zone of town, but I didn’t want to alarm them
—I was just starting to peel back the curtain on Nezha and his five friends’ plot. The tools at my
disposal were poor, but all I needed were answers.
My hide rate dropped continuously while his eyesight was fixed on the tree. If it got down below
40 percent, he would certainly detect something wrong with the tree’s outline. I kept an eye on the
number and slowly, slowly tried to rotate around to the back of the trunk. Inch by inch I crawled,
trying to keep the fluctuating value from creeping below 50.
Once I was around the backside of the tree, he must have looked away, because the hide rate
jumped back up to 70. A few seconds later, I heard the creaking of the door swinging shut, and dashed
through an alley until I was a block away from the pub.
“Whew …”
I leaned against the wall and wiped away a cold virtual sweat with the sleeve of my coat. If this
was what Argo the Rat did every day in her profession, then I was in no mood to follow that line of
work.
I might have made a poor spy, but at least I’d succeeded at my mission. I found Nezha’s base of
operations—probably the second floor of that bar—discovered the existence of his partners, and even
gained a little fragment of information about the mysterious trick behind the failed weapon upgrades.
That was assuming that the snippets of conversation I overheard were in fact related to such a
trick. If it was true, they were somehow profiting from forcing other players’ upgrade attempts to fail.
Profiting enough that they were even staying in the black by buying a spent +0 weapon at twice the
going rate.
If that was possible … was someone else paying them money to intentionally sabotage the orders
of specific players? That was hard to imagine. It was such a roundabout way to get back at someone,
and there was no guarantee that the target would ever come to Nezha for his services. If this mystery
client was going to spend money, they’d be much better served following Diavel’s plan and
contacting the target directly.
But if that wasn’t the case, what other explanation could there be?
The thoughts raced through my head so fast, I could practically feel the steam shooting from my
ears. The scene from less than an hour ago replayed in my head.
Nezha taking the Wind Fleuret from Asuna. Accepting the materials and putting them into the forge
with his right hand, sword in the left. When the forge was full of blue light, he pulled the sword from
the scabbard and laid the blade into the fire. Once infused with that blue light, he moved it to the anvil
and struck it with his hammer. A few seconds after that, the sword shone like a death scream, then
shattered and disappeared.
I watched the entire string of events. I couldn’t believe that there had been some sleight of hand
there. If I had to assume that deception had occurred, perhaps it was in the materials. But there was no
way to mimic the bright blue light that flashed out of the forge—
“Ah …”
Wait. Wait … I thought I had seen the entire thing, but there was one moment. One spot, invisible
to both me and Asuna …
That meant it wasn’t the materials that he’d falsified.
“Gah … !!”
My mind jumped over several logical steps and landed at a conclusion. I grunted and slapped my
main menu open, checking the time readout in the corner.
The digital clock said 8:23.
There’s still time!
My right hand flashed to the instant message tab, but I reconsidered and brought it down, closing
the window. It was impossible to describe what I was about to do in text. I had to state it directly in
person.
“There’s still enough time to pull this off!” I said aloud this time, bursting out of the alleyway and
racing north down the street.

The route that took eight minutes to cross during my attempt at spywork was less than three in a
blazing sprint. I reached the familiar eastern plaza of Urbus but shot straight through it to the north
without stopping and back into the streets of the town. Past the bench where Asuna had cried, then a
hard turn shortly after. I burst through the door of her inn and raced upstairs, taking three steps at a
time.
Thanking my lucky stars that I’d asked for her room number, I charged over to room 207 and
slammed on the door as if to break it down. It followed the same physical rules as any other closed
door, but several seconds after knocking, it would allow voices to pass through.
“Asuna, it’s me! I’m coming in!”
I turned the knob without waiting for an answer and practically pushed the door down. Instantly,
my eyes met those of a figure who leapt from the bed inside like a shot. Her hazel eyes were wide,
and she was sucking air through her lips when I slammed the door shut.
“Eeyaaaa!!”
The scream was completely smothered by the closed door. I felt almost like a criminal—what I
did was practically a crime—but this was all for Asuna’s sake.
She clenched her fists over her chest and continued to scream. She wearing a white sleeveless
shirt on top, and some kind of poofy, rounded shorts below. This didn’t seem to be underwear, so I
gauged that it was safe to walk over and grab her shoulder.
“Asuna, this is an ultra-emergency! There’s no time, just do as I say!”
 She finally stopped screaming, but I could see in her face that she was simply deciding whether to
resume screaming even louder, or to start attacking me directly. But there was truly no time for
anything else—I had to get to the point immediately.
“First, call up your window and set it to visible mode! Now!”
“Wha… wha …?”
“Just do it!”
I grabbed her hand, still clutched in front of her chest, and moved it in the appropriate motion,
pushing out two of her fingers and sliding them through the air. A purple window materialized with a
soothing sound effect, but it only looked like a blank, flat board to me. I guided her finger over to the
general location of the button that would display the contents of the window to other players.
“But, um, I … I thought I locked the door …” she murmured. I answered without thinking.
“You’re still partnered up with me, remember? The default setting on inn room doors is to allow
guild and party members in.”
“Wh… what? Why didn’t you tell me that—”
I swiveled around next to the fencer, peering at the now-visible contents of her main menu. It was
arranged just like mine but with a floral pattern skin selected. For a moment, I was surprised,
remembering that my own window was still in the default setting, then scolded myself for getting
distracted.
The right side of the window featured a familiar equipment mannequin. It was mostly empty, as
she was not wearing any armor. I scrolled past the something-or-other camisole and whoopty-doo
petticoat to look at the right-hand cell: no item selected. Meaning that Asuna had not equipped a new
weapon since giving her Wind Fleuret to Nezha.
“Okay, first condition complete! Now the time …”
The clock in the bottom right corner read 20:28, despite how fast I’d run.
Asuna and I had returned to Urbus after our Windwasp hunt at 19:00. We had finished eating
dinner around 19:30. Immediately afterward, we had moved to the plaza and asked Nezha to upgrade
her weapon… meaning there was only a minute or two to spare!
“Crap, we gotta make this quick. Just hit the buttons as I tell you. Move to the storage tab!”
“Uh … um, okay …”
Asuna faithfully followed my order, perhaps so confused by the sudden turn of events that she had
no time to resist.
“Next, the settings button… search button … now there should be one that says Manipulate
Storage …”
Her slender finger flashed over the buttons, diving deeper and deeper into the menu. After three or
four selections, we finally reached the button I wanted.
“There, that’s it! Materialize All Items! Hit it!!” I screamed. She hit the tiny button, bringing up a
yes/no prompt. At maximum volume,
“Yesssss!!”
Click.
Asuna muttered to herself as she hit the button. “Hmm… mm? Materialize all items …? When it
says all items … does it mean …?”
With the satisfied smile of a man who did his job, I replied, “All, everything, the entire shebang,
the whole nine yards.”
 The next moment, all of the rows of text in Asuna’s inventory vanished.
And then—
Clunkclankthudwhamwhudclinkflopflipfwapswishfwuf came a cavalcade of sound from hard and
heavy to light and airy. Every single item contained in Asuna’s player inventory had been
materialized into the game world to fall onto the floor in a great messy pile.
“Wha …wha… wha-wha-wha?!”
The mess’s owner couldn’t contain her shock at what had just happened, but I knew it was coming
—this was what I’d run all the way from the other side of Urbus to do. The only hitch was my slight
underestimation of the volume of her inventory—just a mere two or three times what I’d expected.
The amount of space for storage varied depending on the player’s strength, Expansion skill, and
the presence of certain magical items. For a moment, I marveled at how Asuna, a low-level player
with no Expansion skill and an agility-heavy fencer build, could have packed so many items in. The
answer soon became apparent.
Capacity was determined not by volume, but weight. Metal armor and weapons, liquids such as
potions, and stacks of coins all put a major dent in item storage. On the other hand, lighter items such
as leather armor and accessories, rolls of bread, and parchment scrolls could be packed in there with
ease. The majority of Asuna’s inventory was taken up with those loose effects, big and small …
meaning clothes and undergarments.
I stared at the four-foot-tall pile of stuff, feeling slightly self-conscious. The heavier items had
fallen out first, so the metal equipment was on the bottom, followed by leather goods, then various
clothes and finally, resting on top, a small mound of frilly white and pink underwear. What was the
point of keeping so many of them? Avatars in Aincrad had no bodily waste functions, and the only
thing that took durability damage in battle was the outer armor. You only truly needed one set of
underwear. I had three, for battle, everyday use, and sleeping, but that was probably on the high side
for a male player.
And yet.
I couldn’t stop here. If my suspicion was correct, and we’d hit the command in time, it would be
here … piled at the bottom of this mountain.
“Pardon me!” I said, ever the gentleman, and started shoving the piles of cloth out of the way. I
heard a trembling voice over my shoulder.
“Um, excuse me … Do you have a death wish? Are you one of those people who dream of dying
in battle …?”
 “No way,” I said in all honesty, still scrabbling through the pile. I got through the clothes to the
leather armor, gloves, and small boxes, and finally reached the metal layer at the bottom.
With great effort, I pushed them aside and got to the very last section of the little mountain. The
heaviest item Asuna owned—though light as a feather compared to what I had slung over my back—a
single rapier.
Wind Fleuret +4.
I grabbed the green scabbard and lifted it out of the pile, then turned around to face Asuna. Her
eyes had the look of one deciding a suitable means of execution, but they grew wide when she saw the
sword she’d thought was gone forever. Her lips trembling, a tiny little squeak escaped her throat.
“… … No way …”
 6

LATER—MUCH, MUCH LATER—ASUNA SMILED ANGELically and told me that if I had

found her sword at that moment, she would have thrown me through the window of the inn.
In truth, I hadn’t spared a single thought for what might have happened if my suspicion had been
false. It wasn’t confidence in my logic as much as it was panic, knowing that there were only seconds
to spare before the time limit hit. So when I barged into Asuna’s room without asking, forced her to
open her window, and yelled at her to press those buttons and eject all of her stuff, I wasn’t acting in
my right mind. At least, I hoped I wasn’t.

Order finally returned out of chaos three minutes after I held out the Wind Fleuret +4 to Asuna.
All of the many items spilled over the inn room floor were back in item storage. Asuna sat on the
side of her bed, dressed in her normal tunic and leather skirt. She silently cradled her precious,
miraculous weapon in her hands, her face a mixture of emotion—probably caught between the polar
extremes of joy and rage.
As for me, I sat in a guest chair in the corner of the room, breaking into a cold sweat as I reflected
on what I’d actually just done. There was no time to explain anything until I got her to press that
Materialize All Items button several layers deep in the menu. But once that step was complete, there
was no more time limit, which meant I had no reason to search for the sword myself.
Perhaps I had gone a step too far by ransacking the crown of delicate snow that was Asuna’s
undergarments on top of the pile. On the other hand, I still couldn’t fathom why she would need so
many of them. If my hazy memory served, there were enough of them that she could change every day
for two weeks without reusing any. Yes, they were light enough that you could store a nearly infinite
supply, but those weren’t cheap. The silky smooth ones cost quite a pretty penny at the NPC shops,
and surely that kind of scratch was better spent raising one of the properties of her armor—
“So, I’ve done some self-examination,” came a voice from the other side of the room. I hurriedly
sat up straight.
“Y-yes?”
“If the anger I’m feeling represents ninety-nine g, then my joy is a hundred g. Therefore, the one
leftover g represents my gratitude to you,” she said, light flashing in her eyes.
“So, um… why is it represented in g?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? If my anger had been the greater force, I would have pummeled you to make up
the difference.”
“Oh… so you’re talking about g as in gravity, not gold? I … guess that makes sense.”
“I’m glad you understand. Now, will you please explain? Why was my supposedly shattered
sword left in my inventory … and why did you barge into my room like this?”
“O-o-of course. But it’s a very long story. And I’m not even sure exactly how it works, myself …”
“I don’t mind. We’ve got all night.”
And the fencer, her beloved sword back in hand, finally cracked a menacing smile.
I went down to the check-in counter and bought a small bottle of herb wine and a mysterious bag of
assorted nuts. When I got back to the door to room 207, I politely knocked and waited for an answer
before opening.
Once the wine was poured, we shared a toast to the recovery of her fleuret, though there was still
a dangerous air to her attitude. I moistened my tongue with a sip of the sweetly sour nonalcoholic
wine and decided that getting right to the point was in my best interest.
“A minute ago, you asked why your shattered sword was in your item storage.”
“Yes … and?”
“That was the hitch … the trick … the centerpiece of an upgrading scam.”
Her eyes narrowed at the clear direction of the conversation after that last word. She nodded
silently, pressing me onward.
“It might be faster to show you than to explain,” I said, swinging my hand to call up my own menu
and hitting the visibility button. I touched the top and bottom of the screen and flipped it around until I
got it to an angle that was easily visible to the both of us, then pointed out a spot.
“Right here. See how the right-hand cell in my equipment mannequin has an icon for my Anneal
Blade plus six?”
Her hazel eyes glanced at the sword grip poking out over my back, and she nodded. I reached
backward and removed the entire scabbard, which was affixed to my coat, and dropped it to the floor
with a heavy thud. A few seconds later, the icon on my menu was grayed out.
“This indicates that the equipped weapon has been dropped. It happens if you fumble the weapon
in battle, or an enemy uses a disarm attack on you.”
“Yes, I’m familiar. It can be quite alarming if you’re not used to it.”
“You can always stay calm and pick it up once you evade the next attack, but it’s tricky at first.
The Swamp Kobold Trappers in the middle of the first floor were the first to use disarms. I hear there
were quite a few casualties around then …”
“In Argo’s strategy guide, she warns not to attempt to pick it up right away … When I had to fight
them, I dropped a spare rapier first, almost like a good luck charm.”
“Ahh… that’s a good idea. You can do that if you’ve got plenty of the same weapon.”
I was impressed. It wasn’t the kind of idea you expected a new player to implement … although
maybe her lack of experience gave her greater creativity in tackling the game’s challenges.
“But I digress. If you don’t pick up the dropped weapon, it eventually goes into an Abandoned
state, which gradually decreases its durability rating. Asuna, go ahead and pick up that sword.”
She raised an eyebrow but dutifully stuck the Wind Fleuret onto her waist attachment point and
bent down to my scabbard. Asuna lifted the simple one-handed longsword with both hands, grunting,
“This is heavy. Am I doing it right?”
“That’s good. Now take a look.” I poked at my window, still floating above the table. The cell
with my Anneal Blade grayed out had gone empty the moment Asuna picked it up.
“In combat, this is called weapon-snatching. Unlike a disarm attack, snatching enemies don’t show
up until much later in the game. For a solo player, that can be deadly. There’s a weapon skill
modification called Quick Change that you’ll have to get before you fight them… but that’s not the
point.”
I cleared my throat and attempted to get back on topic again. “You can give your equipped weapon
to your friends, even when you’re not in battle. Instead of a ‘snatch,’ that’s called a ‘hand-over.’ So
anyway … if someone picks up your weapon or you hand it to them, the weapon cell in your menu
goes blank. Including situations like the one where you gave the blacksmith your Wind Fleuret.”
“… !”
She must have seen where I was taking this at last. Her eyes went wide, then filled with a sharp
light.
“But here’s the thing. The equipment cell might be empty, as though you’re not equipping anything
… but that Anneal Blade’s equipper info hasn’t been deleted. And the equipment rights are protected
much more tightly than simple ownership rights. For example, if I take an unequipped weapon out of
storage and give it to you, my ownership of that item disappears in just three hundred seconds—that’s
five minutes. As soon as it goes into someone else’s inventory, it is owned by that player. But the
length of ownership for an equipped item is far longer. It won’t be overwritten until either three
thousand six hundred seconds have passed, or the original owner equips a different weapon in that
slot.”
Asuna’s eyelashes dropped as she mulled over this information. Her response caught me by
surprise.
“Meaning that if your main weapon gets snatched and you do a Quick Change to a backup weapon,
you should put it in your left hand rather than your right?”
“Eh …?”
I was momentarily taken aback, but I eventually understood her point. It was indeed true that if a
monster stole the player’s weapon and they put a backup in the same hand, the equipment right of the
stolen weapon would vanish. If the player had to retreat for survival and couldn’t immediately kill the
monster to retrieve the weapon, the results could be disastrous. Once the player was back in the safe
haven of town, there would be virtually no way to get it back.
“Ah, I see … Yes, that’s a good point. But it’s a lot harder to swing a sword with your non-
dominant hand.” Even as I said it, though, I made a mental note to practice sword skills with my left
hand.
“And one other thing. When you barged into my room and forced yourself a peek at my equipment
mannequin, that’s what you were checking, yes? That I hadn’t equipped another weapon in its place.
So if that was the very first condition…”
I nodded slowly as she stared directly into my eyes. “Yes, that’s right. The second condition was
that it had to be within three thousand six hundred seconds of letting go: one hour. As long as those
two conditions were fulfilled, we had a shot—one ultimate method of pulling back your equipment,
no matter where it happened to be. Remember that you asked me how your supposedly shattered
sword was in your item storage?”
“In reality, my sword wasn’t shattered, and it wasn’t in my inventory, either. So that’s why …”
She took a deep breath and resumed glaring up at me. “And your last-ditch method of bringing back
my sword was the Materialize All Items command. And because there was not a second to spare, you
had no choice but to invade my room and force me to flip through my menu. Is that what you’re
claiming?”
“Umm, I think that sums it up… I guess?” I trailed upward at the end in an attempt to sound
innocent, but Asuna only snorted, unconvinced. Fortunately, she seemed more interested in getting to
the bottom of the situation than holding me responsible. She handed back the Anneal Blade and
changed topics.
 “So anyway … why was that materialize button buried so deep in the menus? It’s almost like they
don’t want you to use it … And why does it have to be all of the items? If you could just select the
items that aren’t on hand already, there would be no need for that pile of my und… my other
equipment.”
“You just said the answer yourself. They want to make it harder to use.”
“Huh…? Why would they do that?” she asked, shapely eyebrows squinting in suspicion. I
shrugged.
“It’s basically a last-resort option. If you drop your weapon, leave it behind, or lose it to a
monster and have to run away, those are all the player’s fault. In a sense, you should probably just
accept your loss and move on. But they probably decided that it would make the game a bit too hard,
so they added this option in case of an emergency. They just made it less convenient so you can’t use
it like a crutch. Hence, it’s stuck under a pile of menus and you can’t just pick and choose what to
materialize. Boy, you should hear this story from the beta test …”
I grabbed a star-shaped nut from the dish on the table, flipped it into the air, and caught it in my
mouth. Even this trifling action was affected by agility, the brightness of the surroundings, and the
hidden influence of luck.
“So, the first snatching mob appears in the fifth-floor labyrinth. A guy loses his main weapon and
doesn’t have a backup for a quick change. So he turns tail and manages to escape the monster.
However, he doesn’t feel like trekking all the way back to a safe room. Instead, he finds a spot he
thinks is safe, then does the Materialize All Items trick. Sure enough, in the pile is his stolen sword.
The problem is, the snatch mobs aren’t the only guys to watch out for there … there are also looting
mobs! All these little gremlins come pouring out of the woodwork and grab everything off the floor,
stuff it into their sacks, and scamper off.”
“That does sound awful … But couldn’t he just find an actual safe haven and do that same trick
again to get it all back?”
“That’s the thing. Most looter mobs have the Robbing skill, which immediately rewrites the item’s
ownership. Fortunately for him, nobody else had been to that area yet, so he crawled the entire
dungeon to hunt down all the gremlins and managed to get his stuff back by hand. I tell you, it brought
tears to my eyes …”
I flipped another nut into the air, sighing in exasperation.
“That story sounded like there was some personal experience behind it,” Asuna noted wryly. My
internal panic system must have kicked in, because the nut landed in my hair rather than my mouth. I
shook my head and tried to look aggrieved.
“It’s … just a story I heard, nothing more. Anyways, where was I …”
“You were explaining how the Materialize All command is useful but has its limitations,” she
sighed, and reached out to pluck the star-shaped nut off my head. Before I could ask what she planned
to do with it, she flicked it with a finger directly into the open crack of my mouth. I crunched it with
my teeth, marveling at her accuracy.
“At any rate, now I understand the logic of how my sword came back,” she said, taking a sip of
her wine. When the glass left her lips, that dangerous light was back in her eyes. “But that’s only half
of the story, isn’t it? After all, I saw the sword I gave the blacksmith shatter on top of that anvil. If the
Wind Fleuret that came back was my original sword… what sword was it that broke into pieces?”
A very good question. I nodded slowly, trying to piece together the fragments of information and
suspicion into an easily explainable form.
“To be honest, I don’t have a full explanation of that train of logic. What I can say for certain is
this: At some point from the time you handed your Wind Fleuret to Nezha, to the time it shattered into
pieces, he switched it out for another item of the same type. At first, I suspected that he’d found a way
to intentionally destroy other players’ weapons, but that wasn’t it. He’s the first blacksmith in
Aincrad, and the first upgrade scammer …”

Upgrade scams, enchantment scams, forging scams, refinement scams.

The name varied depending on the title of the game, but it was a classic, traditional means of
deception that had been around since the early days of MMORPGs.
The method was simple. The blacksmith (or other type of crafter) put out a sign advertising his
weapon upgrade service, charged his clients expensive fees, then embezzled the funds by pretending
the upgrade attempt destroyed the item. In games where weapon destruction wasn’t one of the failure
states, they had a variety of other options to fool clients, such as replacing the item with the same one
a single level lower, or just keeping the crafting materials for themselves without attempting to
upgrade.
In the original pre-full-dive games played on a monitor, the player’s weapon was completely lost
from view as soon as they handed it over to the blacksmith. The entire process happened on the other
player’s screen, so there was no means of telling whether any fraud had taken place.
Leaning too heavily on such deception would quickly lead to the kind of bad reputation that kept
any more players from using their services, but rare gear in MMOs could be incredibly valuable.
Even the occasional bit of trickery might reap huge benefits. There were almost no bad rumors about
Nezha, so the rate of his fraud must still be quite low. However …

“The problem is, this is the world’s first VRMMO. Even after handing over the weapon, we can
see it. It can’t be easy to switch it out—in fact, it must be incredibly hard.”
My long explanation finally concluded, Asuna frowned and murmured, “I see … I thought I kept
the sword in my sights the entire time after giving it to him. The blacksmith held my sword in his left
hand and did all of the controls and hammering with his right. He couldn’t possibly have opened a
window, put my sword into storage, and brought out a fake.”
“I absolutely agree. He had a number of pre-forged weapons on his store display, but the best ones
were Iron Rapiers, and none were Wind Fleurets. So he couldn’t have just switched them like that.
However …”
“However?”
“However, there was a brief point where my eyes left the sword. The time when Nezha tossed
your materials into the forge and it started glowing blue. It was three seconds at the most. I wanted to
make sure that he used all of the materials we spent so much time collecting …”
I trailed off. Asuna’s hazel eyes went wide.
“Oh! I … I think I was watching the furnace the entire time … but only because I thought the blue
flames were pretty.”
“Um, okay. Anyway, we weren’t watching the sword in his hand while it happened. I think anyone
would be staring at the flames. The materials burn and melt and change into the color of the property,
so it’s a big show to those watching. I think he might be using that as misdirection, the way a magician
would…”
“So he switched out the sword in the three seconds we were watching the forge? Without opening
his menu?” She started to shake her head in disbelief but stopped just as quickly. “On the other hand,
that’s the only moment it could have happened. He must have pulled off some kind of trick in those
three seconds. I can’t imagine what it is, but if we can just witness him doing the same thing again …”
“Agreed. Then we can watch his left hand the entire time. But that’ll be difficult …”
“Why?”
“Nezha must have noticed by now that the Wind Fleuret plus four he supposedly stole is gone.
Meaning that the player he tricked—in this case, you—utilized the Materialize All command, because
you probably saw through his deception. He’ll be spooked, and either not set up his shop for a while,
or if he does, he won’t attempt that scam again.”
“… I see. He didn’t seem to be that excited about it to begin with… In fact …”
Asuna paused, but I knew exactly what she was about to say. In fact, he didn’t seem like the kind
of person to commit fraud.
“Yeah … I agree,” I said. She glanced over at me and smiled shyly. I went on, my voice quiet.
“We’ll lay low and gather information. Both on the switch-out trick and on Nezha himself. Either
way, we’ve got to get back to the front line tomorrow.”
“Yes, you’re right. From what I heard in Marome today, they’re going to challenge the last field
boss tomorrow morning, then enter the labyrinth in the afternoon.”
“Wow, that’s quick … Who’s leading the battle force?”
“Kibaou and someone else … named Lind.”
I recognized the first name she said, of course, but the second was unfamiliar.
“Lind was in Diavel’s party during the first-floor boss fight. He used a scimitar.” Her words
seemed to be coming from miles away.
The instant the words hit my brain, I heard his tearful scream in my ears. Why did you abandon
Diavel to die?!
“Oh … him.”
“Yes. It seems like he took over in Diavel’s place. He even dyed his hair blue and his armor
silver, just like Diavel’s.”
I shut my eyes, envisioning the dead knight in his blue-and-silver finery.
“Between Kibaou and the other guy as leader, I’m guessing they won’t save a space for me in the
boss fight. Will you participate, Asuna?” I asked her. She was a solo player, just like me. Her long
brown hair shook left and right.
“I took part in the scouting of the boss, but it was just a big bull. Didn’t seem like it needed too
many, as long as they were well coordinated. Plus they started getting really bossy about who would
get the last attack bonus, so I told them straight out that I wouldn’t be in the battle.”
I grimaced to myself; I could practically see the scene floating before my eyes.
“I see. You’re right; that boss isn’t anything to worry about. The real problem is the floor boss …”
“It’s a problem?” she asked, to the point. I grimaced again.
“Of course. I mean, it stands to reason that the second-floor boss would be tougher than the first.”
“Oh … right. Of course.”
“His attack isn’t all that high, but he uses special skills on you. It’s possible to practice a
defensive strategy on the auto-generating mobs in the labyrinth, but …”
 If Diavel—secretly a beta tester—was still alive, he’d make sure that information made it to all
the other front-line players. But without him, the only reliable source of beta info was Argo’s strategy
guides, and that was a problem. As we learned in that terrible battle four days ago, the boss’s attack
patterns could have been altered since the beta.
“Let’s ignore the blacksmith for now and spend tomorrow on practice,” she suggested.
I nodded automatically, lost in thought. “Yeah, good idea …”
“South gate of Urbus, seven o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“Sounds good …”
“And make sure you get a full night’s sleep tonight. If you’re late, you go back to a full hundred g.”
“Yeah, I know—wait, what?”
I tuned back in to the conversation and raised my head. Across the table from me, her normal
spirits recovered with the return of her sword, Asuna set her morning alarm.
 7

SCATTERED IN THE WILDERNESS OF EACH FLOOR OF Aincrad were unique named monst
called “field bosses” that acted as gatekeepers of sorts along the route to the labyrinth.
Field bosses were always found in tight areas adjacent to sheer cliffs or river rapids, natural
chokepoints that couldn’t be passed without defeating the guardian. What this meant, in practice, was
that while each floor might be circular in shape, it was broadly divided into multiple discrete zones.
The second floor was split into a wide northern area and a cramped southern area, which meant
there was only one field boss on the entire floor. It was named the Bullbous Bow, a combination of
“bull” and “bulbous bow,” the protruding bulb at the front of many large ships. As the name
suggested, it was a massive bull with a bulging, rounded forehead that it used for powerful and
deadly charging attacks.
I watched the distant, twelve-foot-tall monster paw at the ground with powerful legs and lower its
four-horned head. “Since his fur is black and brown, does that make him a Black Wagyu?” I
wondered.
“You’ll have to ask them to share any meat it drops in order to find out,” Asuna responded,
disinterested.
“Hmm …”
I actually gave that option serious thought. Many of the animal-type monsters in Aincrad dropped
food items like “so-and-so meat” or “so-and-so eggs” that could actually be cooked up into meals.
The flavors varied far more widely than the offerings available from the NPC restaurants in town—
meaning that some of them tasted much better than what you could buy, while some were much worse.
The Trembling Oxen that roamed the second floor had such unfortunately tough meat that you could
chew it forever without softening it up. On the other hand, the Trembling Cows weren’t bad at all.
Therefore, you’d expect the boss of all the cattle on the level would taste better than any of them. I
rued my lack of foresight in not testing that theory during the beta.
“Forget about that. They’re starting.”
Her elbow snapped me out of my reverie, and I concentrated on the sight below. I, Kirito the
swordsman, and my companion for the last two days, Asuna the fencer, were in a position atop one of
the mesas that looked down on the field boss’s lair. Some low trees growing right at the lip of the
mountaintop made for excellent camouflage that kept us hidden from those below.
The basin was about two hundred yards long and fifty yards wide. The Bullbous Bow stood its
ground, ready to turn aggro at any moment, as a neatly organized attack party inched toward it. The
group was made of two full parties and three reserves—fifteen players in total.
It didn’t seem that impressive in comparison to the forty-some warriors that tackled the kobold
lord on the first floor, but field bosses were generally designed so that even a single party of a decent
level could emerge triumphant. Fifteen was more than enough to do the job, but that depended on their
knowledge of the boss’s patterns and their ability to work seamlessly as a team.
“Hmm?” I muttered to myself, watching the raid closely.
Asuna whispered, “Which ones are the tanks, and which ones are the attackers?”
“I was just noticing that … Both parties look awfully similar from up here.”
 The Bullbous Bow was the size of a small mountain, but its attack pattern was quite simple:
charge, turn, charge, turn. With two parties, the orthodox strategy said that the tanks should hold its
attention and absorb its charges, while the attackers did all the damage at its flanks.
But from what I could tell, there was no real difference in the equipment of the two parties of six.
Both had roughly the same number of heavily armored tanks and lightly armored attackers.
I continued to squint down at them from our height of three hundred yards and eventually noticed a
subtle detail.
“Wait … look at the cloth they’re wearing under their armor.”
“Huh? Oh, you’re right. Each party has its own color.”
It was hard to tell beneath all the metal and leather armor, but Asuna was correct. The right-hand
part wore royal blue doublets, and the six on the left were clad in moss green.
If the colors were meant for easy visual identification of either party, it made more sense to wear
brightly colored sashes on top of the armor. Also, blue and green weren’t the most distinct opposing
colors. No, those were not temporary colors arranged for this fight—they were probably the original
uniform designs of their parties.
“They didn’t reform into new parties based on battle roles,” Asuna noted, her voice hard. “The
blue party on the right is Lind’s—they’re all Diavel’s friends. And the green party on the left is
Kibaou’s. I suppose they weren’t the type to get along …”
“Maybe they just figure that they’ll perform better if each team is made up of familiar faces.”
“But that will make coordination across the parties worse. It seems obvious that against that boss,
you want one team to pull aggro from him, and another to deal all the damage.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. The slowly advancing twelve below had finally breached the
boss’s reaction zone.
“Bullmrooooh!!” it roared. Even the ground up here seemed to shake. White steam puffed out of
the Bullbous Bow’s nostrils, and it lowered its four horns and began to charge.
There were still nearly five hundred feet between the boss and the raid party, which left plenty of
time to react before it reached them, but that was easy to say from my safe vantage point. Those
fighters down on the ground no doubt felt like the bull would reach them in no time at all.
After a pause long enough to make me feel nervous, the two leaders finally issued commands to
their companions. I couldn’t make out their voices from here, but the orders were obvious. On either
side, heavily armored fighters stepped forward, raised their shields, and roared.
That was not bluster but a skill called Howl that increased the target’s aggression and made it
focus attacks on the user. At least, it was supposed to.
“Wait a second…why are they both trying to pull aggro?” I wondered. The Bullbous Bow looked
back and forth between the two in indecision, then ultimately settled on the blue party. The fighter
who had howled and one other shield user inched forward and stood their ground, crouching.
Two seconds later, thwam! The giant bull collided with the two fighters. If their defense was not
up to the task, they’d be thrown into the air and take massive damage, but fortunately they managed to
stay on their feet, despite being knocked ten yards backward. The other four members of Lind’s party
descended on the beast, unleashing sword skills on its open flanks.
“I feel nervous watching them… but it seems like they might manage to win,” Asuna murmured,
unimpressed. I hesitantly agreed.
“Yeah, I guess. It’s supposed to be beatable by a single party. But …”
 Kibaou’s green party was standing off to the side rather than joining the fray. In fact, the tank was
still up front, tensing himself for another Howl once the cooldown timer expired.
“Seems to me like there was no point to forming a raid party in the first place. They’re more like
parties competing for the same mob. Maybe it’s working for now, but who can say if that will last?” I
sighed.
At this point, I began to wonder about the three reserve members who weren’t in the equal camps
of Lind and Kibaou’s men. Were they aligned with either side? I took my eyes off the fight and
examined the backup adventurers standing far to the rear.
“Hng—?!” I grunted. Asuna gave me a questioning look, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to
answer her. I leaned forward.
Standing at the center of the three was a burly swordsman. He wore dark banded armor and a
pointed bascinet helm that look like an onion sprout—the leader of the five men I saw last night after
trailing Nezha to the bar.
His outfit was humorous, but I would never forget the sharpness in his eyes when he noticed me
listening in on them. It seemed likely that the other two reserve members with him were also in
Nezha’s party.
“What are they doing here?!” I muttered. Asuna shot me another suspicious look. I pointed down at
the rear of the battleground. “Do you know the names of those three guys on standby? Particularly the
middle one in the bascinet.”
“Bassinet …? Aren’t those baby cribs?”
“Huh? N-no, I mean the guy in the pointy helmet with the visor that looks like a duckbill. That’s
called a bascinet helm…”
“Oh. Maybe they’re spelled differently. You know, it’s really irritating that being stuck in this
world means I can’t open a dictionary. Maybe someone will make one.”
“I think it would be nearly impossible to craft an E-J dictionary, writing by hand. On the other
hand, Argo did say that some folks were looking to create a simple game encyclopedia of sorts. Wait,
why are we talking about this?”
I pulled us back to the topic at hand by pointing down at the rear of the basin. “That round guy in
the middle of the reserve members. Ever seen him before?”
“I have,” she said easily. I froze for a moment, then turned on the fencer, the questions flowing out
of me.
“W-when did you see him? Where? Who is he?”
“Yesterday morning, exactly where he’s standing now. He was at the Bullbous Bow scouting
session. Remember how I told you about that? His name is … Orlando, I think …”
“Orlando…? First a knight, now a paladin,” I muttered to myself. Asuna raised a questioning
eyebrow. I added a quick explanation as the three men continued to survey the battle before them.
“Orlando was the name of a knight who served King Charlemagne of France and bore the legendary
blade Durendal. He was an invincible hero.”
“A knight … I see.”
Something in her voice made me curious, and it was my turn to cast her a quizzical look. She
extended a slender finger to point to the short warrior with the two-handed sword to the right of the
onion-headed paladin.
“When we did introductions, he called himself Beowulf. That’s another legendary hero, right?
From England. And the skinny spearman on the other side was Cuchulainn. That name sounded
familiar, too …”
“Ohh… Yes, that’s another legendary hero. I think he’s Celtic,” I added. Asuna shrugged her
shoulders.
“Apparently they already decided on their guild name. I think it was Legend Braves.”
“… I see … Hmm…Hmmmmmm!” I couldn’t think of anything better to say.
A player was free to choose any name they wanted to attach to their MMO avatar—as long as it
didn’t violate the game’s terms of service, that is. If they wanted to name their guild Legend Braves
and pretend they were all legendary heroes, that was their right. In fact, it was probably fairly rare for
names like those to go unclaimed in an MMO.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a much harder sell in a VRMMO, where you literally
became your avatar. That took guts. But … what if their choice of names was a statement of intent?
Perhaps they meant to grow into the heroes their names suggested. You couldn’t just write that off
as youthful exuberance. Orlando, Beowulf, and Cuchulainn were currently standing just behind the
front line of player progress in SAO. In terms of pure distance, they were two hundred yards closer
than I was.
Before I could ask the question, Asuna said, “They just showed up in Marome yesterday morning,
where all the frontier players were gathering, and asked to take part. Lind checked out their stats and
said their levels and skill proficiency were a bit below average for the group, but their equipment
was good and powered up. So instead of putting them in the main force, he let them join as reserve
fighters. Part of the reason I didn’t join in is because they showed up to round out the group.”
“I see … That makes sense.” I nodded slowly and gazed down at the three heroes, feeling
conflicted.
I hadn’t explained to Asuna yet that they were Nezha’s friends. Based on this new information, he
must be another member of the Legend Braves. Perhaps the reason he had the name Nezha and not
another knight or hero was because he was a crafter, not a fighter.
This also led me to a new conjecture. One that explained how three men that neither of us had seen
until a day ago, who hadn’t taken part in the first-floor boss raid, could be right here with the other
front-line warriors …
“Bullmrrrroooh!!”
Another ferocious roar redirected my attention to the far end of the basin. For the second time, I
was stunned.
Now both Lind and Kibaou’s parties, a confusing mish-mash of blue and green, were tangled
together in one unorganized mass. They’d been squabbling over who was drawing the Bullbous
Bow’s aggro and collided in an attempt to get into the proper position to defend his charge. The
shield-carrying tanks had lost their balance—it took quite a long time for heavy warriors to recover
from a Tumble status—and no one was able to defend.
“Watch out!” Asuna hissed.
“Attackers, dash outta the way!” I shouted. They couldn’t hear me, of course, but Kibaou and Lind
finally raised their hands and the eight light warriors darted left and right.
But they weren’t quite fast enough. The raging ox passed right through the line of shield-bearing
warriors, who were only just now getting back to their feet, and caught two swordsmen with his four
horns. With a vicious toss of his head, they flew high into the air.
 “… !!”
Asuna and I both gasped. I had a momentary premonition of both men shattering into glass, either
in midair or when they crashed to earth. Fortunately, perhaps because of the soft grass, they recovered
and got their feet after only a few bounces. They had trouble keeping their footing, however; they’d
suffered quite a mental shock.
Lind swung his arm again—probably the signal for retreat and potion recovery—and at the same
moment, Kibaou looked back to the rear of the battleground and waved his sword.
As the bull dashed back to the far end of the basin, the two wounded members retreated, and two
of the reserves stepped forward to take their place: Orlando the bascinet-wearing paladin and
Beowulf with his two-handed sword. They ran forward a few yards, then stopped in apparent
hesitation. The pair unleashed roars so loud that even Asuna and I could hear them, and resumed
dashing toward the battle.
Orlando reached behind his round shield and pulled out a longsword of black iron that was
unmistakable to me—the very same rare Anneal Blade that was only available as a reward for a quest
on the first floor. The paladin brandished his sword high, glowing with the light of a highly upgraded
weapon, and valiantly charged at the massive boss.

The Bullbous Bow, the only field boss on the second floor of Aincrad, exploded into a small
mountain’s worth of polygonal shards about twenty-five minutes after the start of the battle.
Based on the scale, level, and gear of the raid party, that was quite a long time, but it was easy to
say that from my vantage point, safely removed from danger. And above all, there was one new,
ironclad rule that never existed in the beta: Even a single fatality was an unacceptable result.
In that sense, the three from the guild (technically, still just a team) Legend Braves performed
admirably. Compared to the first-string members who had fallen into the yellow danger zone, their
movements were a bit awkward, but they upheld their duty well.
“Well, that was nerve-wracking … but at least it all ended safely,” Asuna said. She took two steps
back from the lip of the flat mountaintop, sat down on a rock, and looked up at me, crossing her legs.
“Well? What is it about those heroes?”
I nervously looked back down at the far end of the basin, where the fifteen combatants were
gathered together and raising a victorious cheer. However, there seemed to be differing degrees of
celebration—Lind’s royal-blue team and the colorless Braves were truly rejoicing, while Kibaou’s
moss-green team was a bit muted. Probably because it was Lind’s scimitar, Pale Edge, that had
scored the last attack on the boss. I couldn’t tell how much it was powered up at this distance, but the
strength of its glow suggested that a considerable amount of work had gone into it.
I fixed Orlando the paladin with another gaze before I turned back to Asuna. He was standing
boldly right next to Lind, sword raised in the air.
Asuna’s cape hood was off, and the morning light shone dazzlingly in her light brown eyes. It was
as though they stared right through my avatar and into my soul. There was no use hiding anything at
this point. I summoned my courage and began to explain.
“… Nezha the blacksmith is one of the Legend Braves.”
“Wha…? So … you mean …”
I nodded. “Nezha’s upgrading fraud was done at the order of their leader, Orlando. I think. Do you
know exactly when Nezha’s Smith Shop first set up in Urbus?”
 “Umm … I think it was the very day that the second floor was opened.”
“So it’s only been a week. But even bilking one or two high-powered Wind Fleurets or Anneal
Blades a day would make them a ton of money. At least ten—no, twenty times what you’d make in a
day from farming monsters. Remember what you said earlier? Orlando’s group was weak, but they
made up for it with good gear. Weapon skills have to be raised through experience in battle, but
weapon upgrades …”
“… are easy if you’ve got the money. So that’s what’s going on,” she said, her voice hard. Asuna
bolted to her feet and glared down at the battlefield, then turned to the path that wound down the
mountainside. I rushed to stop her.
“W-wait, hang on! I know how you feel, but we have no proof yet.”
“So you’re just going to let them get away with it?”
“If we don’t at least figure out how exactly they’re performing the trick, people will accuse us of
defamation. There are no GMs in this world, but you don’t want the majority of people treating you
like an enemy. It’s too late for me, but I’d hate to see you slapped with the beater tag and—”
A finger jabbed right at my face stopped me mid-sentence.
“We’re about to go adventuring in the dungeon together, and that’s what you’re trying to protect
me from? Anyway, your point is taken. If we don’t have any proof or explanation, the only thing we’re
producing is empty accusations …”
She pulled her finger back to her chin and looked down, her voice softening. “I’ll try to come up
with some ideas of my own. Something that won’t just expose how their weapon-switching trick
works but also give us solid proof.”
There was a different kind of fire blazing in the fencer’s eyes now, and I had no choice but to
agree with her.

Once the victorious battle party turned and headed back to Marome to restock supplies, we
descended the mountain and stealthily raced across the narrow basin. The right to set the first
footprint on the southern side of the second floor belonged to Lind or Kibaou, but we didn’t have the
patience to sit around and wait for them. Plus, they seemed competitive enough that they’d waste time
arguing about who got there first.
The far end of the basin turned into a narrow, winding canyon. The walls were nearly vertical and
so sheer that not a single handhold could be seen. There was no climbing them.
We took a breather in the empty gorge after our sprint, then headed through the exit to a brand-new
sight—well, for Asuna, at least.
The flattop mountains with two or three levels were the same, but the gentle grasslands of the
northern area were replaced by thick jungle. Vines and ivy crawled up the sides of the mountains, and
clumps of fog here and there made visibility poor.
There was one thing clearly visible through all of the fog, however, looming over everything on
the far side of the jungle. The labyrinth tower of the second floor stretched all three hundred feet to
the bottom of the floor above. It seemed thinner than the first-floor labyrinth, but it was still a good
eight hundred feet across. It was really more like a coliseum than a tower.
We stared at the shape in the distance until Asuna finally broke the silence.
“…What’s that?”
I suspected that she was referring to the two protuberances extending from the upper half of the
tower.
“Bull horns.”
“B-bull—?”
“When we get closer, you’ll see a huge relief of a bull on the side of the tower. It’s kind of the
theme of the second floor.”
“I just figured that giant one they killed was the last of the ox things …”
“Not even close. The Moo-Moo Kingdom is only getting started. The ones ahead are certainly
beefy, but they don’t look very tasty.” I coughed to hide my embarrassment at that terrible pun and
clapped my hands to switch gears. “Well, let’s get going. The last village is about half a mile to the
southeast, and beyond that is the labyrinth. We could do all the quests in the village and still reach the
tower before noon. It’s actually safer and quicker to take the detour to the left, rather than going
straight through the forest.”
Just as I was getting ready to start hiking, I noticed that Asuna was watching me with a strange
expression.
“…What is it?”
“Nothing…” She coughed as well, then looked serious again. “This isn’t meant to be sarcastic, it’s
an honest opinion.”
“… Y-yes?”
“With all that knowledge, you’re very handy to have around. Everyone should have one of you.”
I had no idea how to respond to that comment. Asuna strode past me and turned her head.
“Come on, let’s go. I want to get into that tower before Lind’s group catches up.”
 8

“EEK… NO! STAY AWAY!”

The beautiful girl’s eyes were wide with fear as a menacing silhouette plodded closer.
It sounded like a scene from a suspenseful horror film, but it would not be following the
Hollywood template for much longer.
“I told you… to stay the hell away!” she roared, and dashed forward rather than backward. The
large attacker reacted by waving its crude two-handed hammer, but her right hand shot forward like
lightning before it could hit the target.
The rippling thrust caught the attacker directly on its exposed chest. Brilliant beams of light
exploded outward, and the hammer’s progress slowed. Normally at this point, the player should dart
backward and evade, but the girl plunged farther onward, pulling her rapier back and unleashing
another attack. Two strikes hit the thick chest high and low, and the half-naked body writhed in pain.
“Brmooooh!!”
It leaned back and emitted a death cry, short horns and ring-pierced snout in clear profile. The
massive body tipped backward, then stopped in mid-fall. The rippling muscles turned to hard glass
and cracks trickled down the surface, emitting blue light until it finally exploded.
The combo was Linear and the two-strike Parallel Sting, and the creature was a Lesser Taurus
Striker, a humanoid with the head of a bull. The fencer bent over, panting heavily, and turned to fix
me with an angry look.
“That … was not a bull!”

Two hours had passed since Asuna and I reached the second-floor labyrinth, the first players in
Aincrad to set foot inside of it. Kibaou and Lind’s parties were probably down on the first level of
the tower, gnashing their teeth over the ransacked chests they found, but if I had to be stuck with the
“evil beater” role, I might as well reap the benefits. The initial locations of the treasure chests were
about 80 percent unchanged from the beta, so I steered us from one to the other, with the occasional
battle in between. Once we reached the second floor, we finally met one of the true masters of the
labyrinth—a Taurus.
“Well, I guess they’re closer to human than bull,” I admitted. I had no idea why Asuna was so
upset about this. “But this is pretty much what minotaurs are like in every MMO. So people call them
‘bulls’ or ‘cows’ as a nickname …”
“…Minotaurs? Like from Greek mythology?”
The anger in her eyes subsided slightly. It seemed that she had a fondness for topics related to
studying and learning. I wasn’t particularly well versed in mythology, but my little sister had always
liked the stories, and I had read them to her when she was young. I nodded and tried to recall some
nuggets of information.
“Y-yeah, that’s the kind. The legendary minotaur lived in a dungeon on the island of Crete—they
called it the labyrinthos in Greek. Anyway, the hero Theseus delves into the dungeon and kills the
minotaur. It’s a very game-like scenario, so the minotaur has been a classic RPG enemy type for years
and years. In this game, they take out the ‘mino’ part and just call them tauruses.”
“Well, that makes sense. Isn’t the mino in minotaur from King Minos of Crete?”
“Huh? So you’re saying that calling it a ‘mino’ for short would be incorrect?”
“Of course. After Minos died, he became the judge of the dead in Hades. So it’s probably best that
you don’t call them that.”
This discussion seemed to have taken the edge off of Asuna’s anger, so I tried to take advantage of
the opportunity.
“So, erm… Miss Asuna, what was it about that mino—I mean, taurus, that didn’t meet your
approval …?”
She glared at me side-eyed. “It wasn’t wearing, well … hardly anything at all! Just a tiny little
scrap of cloth around the waist. It was practically sexual harassment! I wish the harassment code
would kick in and send it to the prison of Blackiron Palace.”
“Ah … I see.”
The lower tauruses did indeed feature minimal clothing compared to the kobolds and goblins of
the first floor. If you removed the bull head, they were basically nearly naked muscle men—quite a
shock to (I assumed) a pampered rich girl from an all-girls’ school.
But that left one big problem. One of the chests I’d just opened had a set of armor called Mighty
Straps of Leather. Not only did it have excellent defense, it also granted a strength boost. However,
when equipped, it turned the wearer’s torso naked except for a few strategically placed leather
straps. No other clothes or armor could be worn over or under it. I figured the dungeon was a discreet
enough place for it, and was planning to change the next time we found a safe room, but Asuna’s
reaction to the taurus was causing me to reconsider. Still, it was a shame to waste such a great piece
of loot. Should I offer it to her, or banish it for having no value to the party?
“Hey, Asuna … I got a strap-style armor with magical effects from a chest back there.”
Suddenly, her eyes were three times as frosty as when she had dispatched the taurus.
“Yes, and?”
“… … Um … Just thinking, not many people will look good in that. Maybe he would. You know,
the tank leader from the first boss raid …”
“Agil? Yes, I suppose he would look the part. I met him at the reconnaissance mission for the
Bullbous Bow yesterday.”
I hid my surprise with an expert poker face, secretly relieved that I had avoided stepping on a
landmine.
“O-oh really? But he wasn’t in the actual battle today, was he?”
“I don’t think he really gets along with Lind or Kibaou. But he did say he’ll be there for the floor
boss, so you’ll see him there. Why don’t you give it to him then?”
“G-good idea. So anyway, do you think you can handle the mino … I mean, taurus’s Numbing
Impact?”
“Oh, just call them minos already. I think I’ll be fine after another two or three encounters.”
“Okay. The boss’s numbing effect is way wider than the normal ones, but the timing works the
exact same way. Anyway, shall we go to the next block?”
She nodded without a hint of fatigue, got to her feet, and started marching off toward the exit.

We defeated four more tauruses after that, but they were timed to pop at set intervals, so you couldn’t
hunt tons of them even if you wanted. Our inventories were bulging with loot from the monsters and
chests we’d run across, and luckily for us, we were able to leave the labyrinth without running into
any other players.
At a safe zone near the entrance, I flipped open my map tab and found that we’d almost entirely
filled in the blank space for the first two levels. If I turned that data into a scroll and sold it, I could
make some pretty good cash, but the evil beater wasn’t enough of a merchant to make a business out
of map data. I decided to offer it to Argo the Rat free of charge.
In a way, it didn’t seem fair. By tomorrow, Argo would be selling the latest strategy guide out of
the nearest town, based on intel provided by me and the other former beta testers, and I’d have to
spend five hundred col for it. But I couldn’t complain too much. She claimed that the funds she earned
selling the guide to the top players went into producing a free version for middle-zone folks who
were still catching up.
I switched tabs and shot her an instant message with the map data, then yawned widely and looked
up at the sky. Looming over the overgrown jungle was not actual sky, but the bottom of the third floor.
Yet the sunset rays coming from the outer perimeter of Aincrad cast that lid overhead in a brilliant,
beautiful orange.
“Today is December ninth… a Friday. It’s got to be winter on the other side by now,” Asuna
murmured. I gave that some thought.
“I read in some article that, depending on the floor, some places in Aincrad are actually modeled
after the current weather conditions. Maybe if we climb a little bit higher, it’ll really be winter.”
“I don’t know whether I want that or not. Oh, but …” She trailed off. I turned to look at her. Her
lips were pursed, but I couldn’t tell if she was feeling angry or shy. “It was just an idea. What if we
reach a floor with proper seasons by Christmas, and it snows that day?”
“Oh… good point. It’s already December. By Christmas would mean … fifteen days left. I sure
hope we finish this floor by then …”
“Well, that’s not very ambitious of you. I want to be through here within a week—no, five days.
I’m exhausted from all these cows.”
“Oxhausted?”
I couldn’t help it. She stared at me blank-faced for several seconds, then her cheeks went bright
red, and she stomped on my foot just softly enough not to cause damage. The fencer promptly turned
and stormed off toward the town, forcing me to run after her.

We walked for twenty minutes down the stone path through the jungle, evading battles whenever we
could, and only stopped for breath once we reached the limits of Taran, the village that would serve
as base for the boss raid.
As I suspected, the main street was already packed with players. Once the Bullbous Bow that
blocked the path was defeated, many who’d been staying in Marome made their way here. I carefully
removed my black leather coat and covered half my face with the bandanna that Asuna loved to hate.
She couldn’t complain, though; she was wearing her own hooded cape low over her face.
Unfortunately, her reason and mine were almost polar opposites.
“So, um… I’m going to go meet Argo in a little bit,” I muttered as we walked along the side of the
street. Asuna’s nod was barely visible beneath her hood.
“That’s perfect. I have my own reason… my own business to do with her. I’ll join you.”
 “A-ahh.”
I had no reason whatsoever to be afraid of Asuna and Argo in the same place, which made it very
strange that I felt a sudden panic. I tried to hide the shiver that ran down my back by showing her to
the bar where we’d meet up.
But before I could, a sound hit my ears. I nearly missed it at first, so I focused and caught it
directly.
The regular clanging of metal on metal. Not as melodious as a musical instrument—tough and
hardy, like a tool.
“—!!”
Asuna and I shared a look and turned together in the direction of the sound: the eastern plaza of
Taran. We proceeded quickly toward the plaza, stifling the urge to sprint. When we got there, our
expectations were not betrayed.
A carpet was laid out with an array of metal weapons and a simple wooden sign. A portable forge
and anvil. Seated on a folding chair, swinging away with his hammer, was a short blacksmith. It was
Nezha. A member of the Legend Braves, and Aincrad’s first upgrade scammer.
“The nerve he’s got. You saw through his deception yesterday, and instead of laying low, he’s set
up in the latest town,” Asuna whispered with distaste from the shadow of a pillar. I was going to
agree but changed my tack at the last second.
“Actually … Maybe the fact that he’s here in Taran is a sign of caution. I mean, he has no way of
knowing that we’d be here at the same time. Maybe he’s just avoiding Urbus for now, since that’s
where his fraud was discovered.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that he’s got nerve. I mean, if he’s going to change towns just to set up
shop again… it means he’s still going to do his weapon-switching trick, right?”
She silently mouthed the words “weapon-switching,” then bit her lip. There was anger in her face,
of course, but also a number of other emotions. My skill at reading expressions was near zero, so I
had no way of knowing exactly what was on her mind. But it seemed to me that there was something
like sadness shining in those eyes, within the darkness of her hood.
I turned to look back at Nezha, who was a good sixty feet away, and said, “He probably will.
He’ll just be more careful about choosing his victims …”
“What do you mean?”
“If the Legend Braves are trying to leapfrog their way up to the ranks of the front-line players,
they’re not going to target those players for their scam. There’s no point trying to reach that rank if no
one else trusts you.”
But then I gave voice to a suspicion that had just popped into my head.
Unless Orlando and his friends intend to cut Nezha loose.
After all, they might be friends in the same party, but the guild feature hadn’t been unlocked in the
game yet. There was no guild emblem showing up on his player cursor to identify him, no proof that
he was connected to Orlando and Beowulf. They might be forcing him to use his sleight of hand to
bilk other players out of money and equipment, and if the word got out that he was cheating
customers, they could cut him out of the team and avoid any blowback.
“But … no …”
I dispelled that depressing thought with a sigh.
The camaraderie I had witnessed after trailing Nezha back to that bar did not signify a group that
met in an online game for the first time. They seemed to have been friends since long before SAO
came along.
So that theory was impossible … I didn’t want to believe it could happen.
I felt a gaze on my cheek and turned to see Asuna staring at me. If she was annoyed by my solitary
muttering, she did not dig deeper for clarification.
“So I suppose that means they didn’t classify me as one of the top players, since they weren’t
afraid of stealing my sword,” she said bitterly. I hastily tried to do some damage control.
“N-no, I didn’t mean it like that. When I say front-line players, I mean organized parties like the
guys in green and blue earlier. You can’t tell someone’s like that unless they have some visual
identifier—I bet Nezha didn’t think I was a top player, either. And who’s to say he wouldn’t be
right?”
“Are you kidding? Aren’t you getting ready to fight the next floor boss?” Asuna shot back. I
nodded out of habit but needed to clarify a bit.
“W-well, I’d like to… but if Lind or Kibaou say they don’t want me, that’s that. In fact, I feel like
there’s a high probability of that happening …”
Her eyebrows shot up at an extremely dangerous angle; fortunately, they soon returned to normal.
Her voice was troubled, but fairly calm.
“I don’t know about Lind, but Kibaou has to understand how crucial your strength and knowledge
are in defeating the boss.”
“Huh? Really?”
“He sent me a message after we beat the kobold lord. It said, ‘ya really saved my ass today.’ ”
I tried not to smile at her faithful re-creation of his Kansai accent, and decided I should join in.
“Yeah, but he also said, ‘I still can’t get along with ya. I’m gonna do things my own way …’ ”
“‘… to beat this game.’ If that’s his ultimate goal, then he won’t let his petty pride get in the way
of beating a floor boss.”
“Let’s hope not,” I muttered, unable to shake the image of the chaotic, frantic scene at the battle
against the Bullbous Bow.
I had only talked once to the scimitar-wielding Lind, leader of the blue squad, at the end of the
kobold lord battle—and it wasn’t a conversation as much as an excoriation. But I could easily
imagine what he wanted. He sought to lead his fellow companions of Diavel and raise them into the
greatest force in the game. His strength of will was apparent from his fixation on scoring the LA
bonus, even against mid-bosses. I had no doubt that when we reached the third floor, he’d be the first
to complete the guild establishment quest and start his own guild, decked out in Diavel’s silver and
blue.
The more complicated matter was Kibaou, who I’d spoken to on several occasions.
There was no doubt that the engine driving him was a hatred of all former beta testers. He’d
singled me out as an enemy immediately and supported Diavel for taking charge as a non-tester. He
might have even hoped to join Diavel’s party ranks after that boss battle.
But even if Diavel had survived, that wish would not have come true. Diavel was secretly a
former tester himself. It was possible that Kibaou realized it when he saw Diavel’s drive to seize the
boss’s LA bonus. And when the battle seemed on the verge of breaking down, it was I, with my
“dirty” beta knowledge, who set things right again.
So Kibaou followed his determination not to rely on the help of testers, and started his own group,
rather than seeking to join Lind and the other companions of Diavel. That team was the one wearing
moss green. He must have put a lot of work into it, because they seemed to be about equal strength
during the fight against the bull. But they would never see eye-to-eye.
The top two teams—let’s just call them guilds—would clash and compete, thereby raising the
pace and power of all the frontier players, but that competition would also wreak havoc during the
raid battles, when teamwork was paramount. It was just a question of whether the good would
outweigh the bad. And the next question was how Orlando and the Legend Braves would affect the
makeup of the front line …
“Oh, speaking of which,” I said to Asuna, who was watching the blacksmith work, “did Lind and
Kibaou’s parties have names yet?”
“Um… I’m not sure about Lind’s. But I did hear a name for Kibaou’s group.” She grinned. “It’s
kind of crazy. The Aincrad Liberation Squad.”
“W-wow …”
“In fact, they’ve got some grand plans.”
“Is that so?”
“He said they were going to set up base in the Town of Beginnings on the first floor and
aggressively canvass for more members out of the thousands still down there. He’ll provide them
with equipment, give them organized battle training, and hopefully increase the number of front-line
players as a result.”
“… I see. So that’s what he means by his own way.” I nodded, and pondered this idea.
It was a valid choice. The more players there were advancing the front line, the quicker we’d
progress through the game. But that also created a massive dilemma. An increased number of people
also unavoidably increased the chance of fatalities …
“There’s something else that bothers me,” Asuna said suddenly. I blinked.
“Huh? What is it?”
“The term. Everyone has their own version: front-line players, frontier players, clearers. I get
what they mean, but it’s all so arbitrary. Lind’s group were calling themselves ‘top players.’ ”
“Oh… yeah, it’s true. Argo likes to call them ‘front-runners’ … Oh, crap!”
I hurriedly opened my window and checked the time. I was supposed to meet Argo the Rat in just
two and a half minutes.
“Um, so … you’re coming too, Asuna?”
“Yes, I am. Why?” she responded coolly. I took one last look at the small blacksmith, swinging his
hammer.
“Let’s make the visit with Argo as short as possible so we can watch Nezha a bit longer. Maybe
we’ll figure out how his trick works.”
 9

“HMMM,” SAID ARGO.

“It’s not like that,” I replied.
If the unspoken parts of those statements were to be filled in, they would look like this:
Hmmm. Kirito the former tester and Asuna the solo player are working as a team. How much
can I sell that nugget for?
It’s not like that. We’re only temporarily traveling together, and not as a team or whatever.
Of course, denying the intent or definition did not change the fact that we were indeed working
together. And that activity had begun when we met at the east plaza of Urbus the previous afternoon—
twenty-seven continuous hours of companionship.
I couldn’t blame her for assuming there was something deeper going on, but in my personal
dictionary, a “party of two” and a “team” were very different things.
A party could come together spontaneously for the sake of a battle or two, then be disbanded and
never return, but a proper team was designed to work together, each player fine-tuning their skills
based on the presence of the other. This translated to choosing a particular equipment loadout and
skillset that made up for the weaknesses of the other player so as to create attack combos that could
take down difficult mobs—not so we could each attack our own targets (as Asuna and I did against
the wasps).
It was only once you reached that step that I considered it to be a team, and by that definition,
Asuna and I would probably never be a team. Even ignoring all of the beater baggage, Asuna put an
incredible amount of craft and pride into her fencing skills, and I couldn’t see her abandoning that
fine-honed technique to prioritize her teamwork with me.
I had no idea how much of that explanation—more like excuse—got through, so I sat down across
from Argo with an innocent look on my face, waited for my temporary party companion to sit down,
then ordered a black ale. Asuna ordered a fruit cocktail cut with soda water, and the NPC waiter left
for ten seconds before returning with the drinks. With that kind of speed, it felt as though they should
dispense with the employee altogether and have the glasses just appear on the table, but I supposed
the game’s creator felt it was a necessary touch. NPC employees didn’t cost real money, anyway.
We lifted our drinks, as did Argo, who shot me an encouraging look. I cleared my throat and
announced, “Erm… to reaching the second-floor labyrinth!”
“Cheers!”
“… Cheers.”
The enthusiasm was not quite shared by all, but at least we were on the same page. I drained half
of my mug of beer—they called it ale in the game, but I didn’t understand the difference. It was the
same sour, bitter carbonated drink I remember tasting at my mother’s permission in real life, but it
was strangely satisfying after a long day of racing around the wilderness and dungeons. Though from
what I understood, the adult players of SAO thought there was no reason for alcohol that didn’t get you
drunk.
In that sense, it seemed obvious that Argo, who gulped down her entire mug of foamy yellow
liquid and exhaled with satisfaction, was probably another teenager who wasn’t fixated on the
alcohol part of the drink. But there was no way to be sure. In fact, it was nearly impossible to guess
her age, even if there were no familiar whisker stripes painted on those cheeks.
Argo slammed her empty cup onto the table and immediately ordered another.
“Five days from the opening of the gate to reaching the labyrinth. That was quick.”
“Compared to the first floor, sure. Plus, we had lots of players over level 10 because it took so
long the first time. The original level required to beat the second floor was more like 7 or 8, right?”
“Well … maybe from a numerical standpoint. But that’s just the point at which it becomes
beatable.” She lifted the second mug of ale to her lips, and Asuna filled the silence.
“How many attempts did it take to defeat the second-floor boss in the beta?”
“Hmm. We got wiped out at least ten times, and that was only the attempts that I participated in…
But the first time was pure recklessness. I was only level 5.”
I didn’t mention that I did it hoping to score the LA bonus.
“I think when we actually did succeed, the raid’s average level was over 7.”
“Ahh… But this time, it’ll be at least 10.”
I checked the party HP gauge. I’d earned a level-up thanks to our hunting of the minos—er,
tauruses—in the labyrinth, so I was up to fourteen. Asuna claimed to be twelve. Most likely Lind and
Kibaou’s teams, the main muscle of the raid party, would be about the same.
“Yeah … I bet it’ll be over 10. Statistically, that’s a high enough level … but floor-boss battles
don’t follow the same rules as wimpy mobs.”
The battle against Illfang the Kobold Lord seemed like it had happened ages ago by now. Our
average level was far higher than it had been during the beta test. Our leader, Diavel the knight, was
level 12, just like me.
That did not stop the kobold king’s katana skills from draining all of Diavel’s HP. The sheer
firepower of a boss’s attacks rendered the “safe range” of levels meaningless.
Asuna and I thought in silence as Argo emptied three quarters of her second mug and said, “Plus,
this boss is more about having good equipment than a high level.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” I agreed with a sigh. The second-floor boss had a special sword skill
called Numbing Detonation that wasn’t primarily about dealing damage. But because of that,
increasing the player’s HP wasn’t an adequate defense. Careful raising of debuff prevention via
equipment upgrades was crucial.
That would all be covered in the next edition of the info dealer’s strategy guide series, no doubt.
All the front-line players would eagerly delve into the upgrading system, and Nezha would do a
booming business here in this town.
“… Ugh…” I grunted without realizing it.
What if Nezha hadn’t moved from Urbus to Taran in order to wait out the storm… but because he
foresaw that there would be high demand for his services here? He might bilk players out of their
hard-earned rare gear without a care for his reputation, making the Legend Braves the top guild in the
game, surpassing even Lind and Kibaou’s teams. And what would happen to Nezha the blacksmith?
“… Argo.” I brushed off the crawling sensation going up my arms and opened my window over
the table. “Here’s the map data for the first and second level of the labyrinth.”
I turned it into a scroll and plopped it down before her. She picked it up and made it disappear
faster than a parlor magician.
“Thanks again, Kii-boy. Like I always say, if you want the proper value of this information…”
 “No… I’m not trying to make a business out of map data. I couldn’t sleep at night if I knew players
were dying because they couldn’t afford maps. However, I do have a job with a condition I want you
to do for me in return.”
“Ohh? Why don’t you tell Big Sister what you want?”
She cast a sidelong glance at me. I could feel some kind of waves radiating off of Asuna, but I was
too afraid to look, so I focused my eyes on Argo.
“I’m sure you’re aware of them already …” I lowered my voice and looked around the bar. The
entrance was at the end of a narrow alleyway, and no other players had come in. “I want info on a
team called Legend Braves that took part in this morning’s fight against the Bullbous Bow. All their
names and how they got together.”
“Ahh. And … your condition?”
“I don’t want anyone to know that I’m looking for information about them. Especially the people in
question.”
The scariest thing about Argo the Rat is that not only did she not practice client confidentiality, she
actually made it her motto that every buyer’s name was another product to sell. So normally, there
was no way I could buy information on the Legend Braves in total secrecy. Argo would follow her
own rules and go straight to the Braves, asking if they wanted to buy the name of the person snooping
into their business. Of course, I could pay her more than what they offered in order to keep my name
out of it, but it would still let them know that someone was asking about them. That was what I
wanted to avoid.
My condition was that I wanted her to collect information on the Braves without making any kind
of contact. It was in direct conflict with Argo’s motto and principles.
“Ahh…Hmmmm.”
She twisted her curly hair with a finger as she mulled it over, then shrugged and said okay with
surprising ease. But my relief only lasted a split second.
“Just remember this: Big Sister prioritized her feelings for Kii-boy over her rules of business.”
Again, I felt a burning sensation emanating from the right, and froze solid. Argo never let the smile
leave her face.
“Now, what did you want with me, A-chan?”

Ten minutes later, Asuna and I were back at the eastern plaza of Taran.
As a village, the scale of Taran was much smaller than the main town of Urbus. However, it
shared the same basic construction in being carved down out of a flat mountaintop, with only the outer
walls left standing. Therefore, it had at least twice the vertical space of any village built on flat
plains.
The circular plaza was no exception, surrounded by tall buildings in every direction. But most of
them were not NPC shops like inns or item stores, and there were no player-owned homes yet, so
anyone could walk in or out.
More than a few players used these empty houses as squats instead of paying for an inn. The
biggest difference was that an NPC-run inn offered full system protection on its rooms.
Of course, while it was impossible to hurt anyone in one of these places, there was always that
uncertainty about sleeping without a lock, and the beds were painfully hard. I’d tried them out a few
times when trying to skimp on expenses, and barely got a wink of sleep—I bolted to my feet every
time I heard a noise inside the room or outside in the street. It was truly unfair; my real body was
probably in some safe, sanitized hospital, with all of my senses disconnected from their external
organs, but I was still terrorized by awful beds and outside noise in this virtual world.
After I’d suffered enough, I finally swore off of such frugality, and had been staying in proper inns
or NPC homes ever since.
But there were other uses for an empty home than just sleeping. You could have a meeting in
private, divvy up loot—or spy on someone.

“This is a good angle,” Asuna said from the chair in front of the window, looking down at the plaza
below, but careful not to get too close.
“It’s probably the best spot you can get. Straight behind him, the angle would be too extreme to
have a good idea of what’s happening. I’m gonna set the dinner down here.”
I placed four steamed buns of uncertain filling I’d bought from a street vendor on top of the round
table. Their skin was the usual milky white, and nothing seemed out of order with the scent of the
rising steam. In fact, they looked good. The official item name was “Taran Steamed Bun.”
Asuna turned away from the source of the clanging outside and cast a doubtful look at the steamed
buns.
“What’s … inside of those?”
“Dunno. But it’s a cow-themed floor, so I’d guess it’s probably beef? By the by, in western Japan,
when they talk about steamed meat buns, they mean beef. It’s in eastern Japan that the generic term
means pork.”
“And is this town western or eastern?” she asked exasperatedly. I apologized for my pointless
trivia and pushed the pile toward Asuna.
“Go on while they’re hot.”
“… Very well.”
She removed the leather glove from her hand and took the bun from the top of the pile. I hurriedly
grabbed one of my own.
We’d been in the dungeon since this morning, and hadn’t had time to stop for a snack, so I was
nearly starving. If our avatars exhibited biological processes other than emotion, my stomach would
have gurgled all through our meeting with Argo. I opened my mouth wide and was about to stuff the
steaming treat into my mouth, when—
“Nyaak!”
A strangled shriek hit my ears and I looked over in surprise. Asuna was sitting frozen in her chair,
the steam bun held in both hands. The large, five-inch bun was missing one small bite—and the
opening had squirted a thick cream-colored liquid across her face and neck.
She stayed dead still, properly chewing the bite she already took while resisting the impulse to
cry, then finally spoke in a soft voice.
“… So the filling is warm custard cream… and some kind of sweet-sour fruit …”
“…”
I slowly lowered the Taran steamed bun from its position an inch away from my face, down to the
table. The moment I let go, her voice struck again, sharp as a rapier.
“If … if it turns out you ate this during the beta test and knew what was inside, and intentionally
didn’t tell me what it was … then I may not be able to stop myself from what comes next …”
 “I swear to you that I did not know. Absolutely, positively, categorically.”
I took a small handkerchief out of my belt pouch and handed it to her. Fortunately, “mess” effects
here would disappear in only a few moments, even if left alone, and wiping them with any item
categorized as cloth made them disappear entirely. With each mess, the durability of the cloth would
fall, but I’d heard rumors of a magic handkerchief that could be used forever. Mess effects caused by
mobs or special terrain often contained their own debuff effects, so an unlimited handkerchief would
be really handy to have. If only it weren’t such a rare piece of loot …
“Mm.”
I was shaken from my reverie by the return of my handkerchief. After a few seconds of wiping,
Asuna’s face was free of cream.
She gave me one last glare, turned back to the window, and announced, “I’ll cook my own food
the next time we have a stakeout. I’d rather not have to eat something terrible like this again.”
I felt tempted to point out that with a Cooking skill of zero, she couldn’t make anything that wasn’t
terrible. But even as a fourteen-year-old, I was smart enough to know I shouldn’t. Instead I gave her a
forced smile and opined, “Th-that sounds great.”
Two arrows shot forward and wiped the smile off my face. “When did I say, ‘I’ll cook my own
food… for both of us’?”
“You didn’t,” I admitted sheepishly. When I actually tried the cooled-off Taran steamed bun, it
wasn’t bad … It was pretty good, actually. But only as a dessert.
The outer skin was soft and chewy, and the cream inside was smooth and firm and not too sweet,
the perfect match for the sour, strawberry-like fruit inside. I suspected that the preset flavor values for
the bun were meant to resemble a strawberry cream pastry, but through developer error or some
whim of the system, it was sold heated. Asuna’s mood improved eventually—she even ate two of the
buns.
That was all well and good, but unlike the buns, the actual purpose of our stakeout was turning out
to be fruitless. The entire point of doing this, of course, was to monitor Nezha the blacksmith and
attempt to discover the means of his weapon-switching trick.
His business was thriving, but nearly all of the requests were maintenance repairs, and only two
players in the hour that we watched asked him to upgrade their weapons. Both of those attempts were
successful. I suspected that it was because they were only mid-rank weapons, but it was starting to
make me doubt the possibility that there was any deception at all. What if Asuna’s sword breaking
and then reappearing thanks to the Materialize All Items button were just freakish errors, bugs in the
system…?
“No, that can’t be it,” I muttered to myself, trying to shake aside my self-doubt.
The means of the weapon-switching trick were still a mystery, but we knew how it was that the
Wind Fleuret was destroyed on the first attempt—it was the very piece of information that Asuna
bought from Argo.
When Argo had asked Asuna what her business was, the answer surprised me. She said, “I want
you to find out if destruction is one of the possible penalties for an unsuccessful attempt at upgrading
a weapon.”
Argo’s answer was just as unexpected as the question. “I don’t need to look it up. I already know
the answer.”
We were stunned. Argo said up-front that she’d give it to us for the cost of her drinks, and
explained.
“Strictly as a failure penalty, weapon-breaking will never happen. However, there is one way to
ensure that a weapon will break with absolute certainty: when you attempt to upgrade a weapon that
is out of upgrade attempts.”
Meaning this. Last night, the Wind Fleuret that crumbled to pieces before our eyes was in fact
switched in at some point … and it had already used all of its allotted upgrade attempts. It was a
“spent” weapon. But the Wind Fleuret +4 hanging from Asuna’s waist still had two chances left. So
even if the attempt had failed, it could not have caused the sword to crack.
Now that the spent-weapon concept had entered the picture, I thought back to Rufiol, the fellow
who tried out Nezha before Asuna did.
I couldn’t determine if Nezha had indeed switched out his Anneal Blade with a different one. But
the result was three straight failures, not destruction. Perhaps he couldn’t do his normal trick because
there were so many people around, or perhaps he just didn’t have a spent Anneal Blade to switch it
with.
If that was the case, it explained why Nezha offered the crestfallen Rufiol a sum of money much
higher than the going rate for that spent +0 Anneal Blade. He wasn’t compensating the man for his
loss, but stocking up for the next attempt …
“Kirito.”
I blinked, snapped out of my speculation. My eyes focused and saw that the plaza below was
shrouded in night, and few players were still going to and fro.
One player walked directly across the circular plaza. He wore metal armor that reflected the light
of the lampposts, and a dark blue shirt—clearly the uniform of Lind’s group, the top team among the
front-line players.
Asuna and I watched with bated breath as he approached Nezha’s smith shop and removed his
sword from his waist attachment. Its length and shape identified it as a one-handed longsword.
But it was slightly shorter and wider than my Anneal Blade. I couldn’t be sure because of the
distance and darkness, but the large knuckle guard appeared to be that of a Stout Brand. That was a
broadsword, a sub-category of one-handed swords that prioritized attack strength over speed. It was
about as rare as a Wind Fleuret, if not slightly higher.
“Certainly good enough to be a target for his switcheroo,” Asuna whispered. I was surprised that
she’d identified it at a glance, but I didn’t let it show.
“Yeah. Now, whether he asks for maintenance or an upgrade …”
There was at least fifty feet in between us at the southwestern side of the plaza, and the outdoor
blacksmith shop at the northwest edge. The Search skill’s parameter adjustment brought several
details into focus, but it was much too far to hear a conversation at normal volume.
“Do you know that guy’s name from the Lind team?” I asked. Asuna thought it over.
“I think his name is Shivata.”
“With a V? Not Shibata?”
“It was spelled ‘S-h-i-v-a-t-a.’ Seems pretty clear to me.”
“… All right, then.”
We both practiced the foreign sound of the letter V by biting our lower lips. Meanwhile, Nezha
and Shivata had finished their negotiation, and the Stout Brand changed hands, sheath and all.
This was the important point. We craned as close as possible to the window without being visible
from the plaza and focused on the blacksmith’s hands. Inevitably, our shoulders and even hair brushed
up against each other, but the proud fencer would certainly understand, given the circumstances.
If it was a maintenance request, Nezha would remove the sword and place it against the small
grindstone affixed to the side of his anvil. But he turned away from his client and reached out with his
right hand to one of the many leather sacks on the carpet. Those sacks presumably contained different
types of crafting materials. Meaning …
“An upgrade!” I hissed.
Asuna nodded vigorously and whispered, “The left hand! Keep your eyes on his left hand!”
She didn’t have to tell me. I kept my eyes fixed on that left hand, fighting the natural urge to follow
the movement of his right.
Shivata’s broadsword hung from Nezha’s hand, still in the sheath. There was nothing unnatural
about the position or angle of his arm.
Very close to the sword was a display of premade weapons for sale, but there was no way he
could switch them. All of the display weapons were common iron weapons; there was not a single
rare weapon among them, and certainly not another Stout Brand. Besides, dropping the sword onto the
carpet and lifting a nearby weapon would draw too much attention. I couldn’t imagine that we’d have
missed such an action when the Wind Fleuret was nearly stolen …
Nezha’s left hand was completely still, holding the broadsword, while the right hand did all the
work. He picked out all of his materials from the leather sacks and tossed them into the forge next to
the anvil. The dozen or so items burst into flame and eventually melted into one big lump—I assumed.
I wasn’t actually watching. At any rate, it was the highlight of the upgrading process. For an instant,
the deep red light that signified a Heaviness upgrade shone from the forge, then subsided into the
waiting state.
“… !”
Every muscle in my body twitched.
At the same moment the red light flared, Nezha’s left hand did something. Asuna must have sensed
it as well, because our shoulders jumped.
“Did he …?”
“The sword …”
We kept staring but couldn’t finish our sentences. That brief flash of light, barely half a second,
was enough to blind us from the exact sight we needed to witness.
As I watched, teeth grinding, the blacksmith gingerly raised the Stout Brand. If he had indeed done
something to it, the sword looked absolutely identical to the one Shivata gave him.
He grabbed the hilt with his right hand and slowly pulled the sword out, then placed the thick
blade into the red flames of the forge. After a few seconds, all of the light transferred to the weapon.
He placed it on the anvil, picked up his smithing hammer with his right hand, and began striking the
sword. Five. Eight … Ten.
Just as we feared, the dark gray blade of the Stout Brand shattered into pieces. This time, neither
of us missed it.

“…What now?” Asuna asked, watching the quiet plaza from the windowsill.
It was clear what she was referring to. Shivata showed remarkable restraint in bottling up his
anger and disappointment, and left with minimal complaint to Nezha. Asuna was wondering if we
should track him down and reveal the existence of the deception.
From a sympathy standpoint, I wanted to tell him, because within an hour, he could use the
Materialize All Items button to retrieve his sword. But from a more practical standpoint, Shivata
would not be happy just to get his sword back. He would surely return to the plaza and confront
Nezha with this evidence, and I could not predict what would happen after that.
Nezha’s actions were evil—of that there was no doubt. He ought to suffer proper punishment for
his misdeeds. But without a GM holding court in this virtual world, who would determine what was
“proper”?
Even a crafter could not just hang out in town all the time. What if, when he left the safety of the
village limits, some player attempted to punish him through means within their control? What if they
took it to the ultimate conclusion?
If we told Shivata now, it could ultimately lead to the very first PK in Aincrad. That concern was
the driving force behind Asuna’s question, and I did not have an easy answer in mind.
As I sat wracked by indecision and unease, I heard the calming ringing of bells. It was eight
o’clock. At the same moment, the hammering outside stopped. I moved next to Asuna and looked to
see that Nezha was closing up his shop. He extinguished the forge, put away the tools and materials,
folded the sign, and began laying them all on top of the carpet. His back looked so very small and
unassuming.
“Why did Nezha and the Legend Braves decide to start doing this fraud, anyway…? And how?” I
murmured to myself. Asuna shrugged. “I mean, even if they came up with the idea to switch the
weapons, there’s a huge hurdle between something that is theoretically possible within the system,
and actually doing it. SAO’s not just a normal VRMMO. Our lives are on the line now. Surely they
have to realize what might happen if they steal other people’s weapons …”
“Maybe they do realize … and decided to kick over the hurdles anyway.”
“Huh?”
“Ignoring the ethical side of it, the actual hurdle is just knowing that you could risk your life if you
get exposed, right? So they can eliminate that issue if they just get far stronger than anyone else before
anyone finds out what they’re doing. That way they can fight off any attempts to take their lives in the
wilderness. The six—er, five members of the Legend Braves probably aren’t that far off from their
goal.”
When Asuna’s words sank in, I felt my virtual skin crawl.
“C-come on, don’t tell me that. A team of guys that doesn’t shy away from wicked acts, strong
enough to destroy any front-line players? I mean …”
My throat became so constricted that even I could barely make out the next words I said.
“…They’d rule the world.”
While I wasn’t inclined to think that this weapon scam wasn’t my problem in any way, I also
assumed that I wouldn’t have to suffer from it. I just had to make sure I didn’t ever give Nezha my
sword.
But that was a terribly shortsighted view of the situation.
Thirty-three days before, the moment we were trapped in this game permanently, I left behind my
first and only friend in the game, Klein, and abandoned him back in the Town of Beginnings. I
avoided the wilderness zones, which I expected to be bled dry in no time, and headed straight for
Horunka, the next town. In other words, I prioritized the quickest and most efficient way to upgrade
my equipment and stats so that I could maximize my chance of survival.
Using all the knowledge from my beta experience, I tore through countless quests and mobs, racing
onward and onward. From the moment I chose to sprint out of the gates, I’d never slowed in my
progress.
But the speed of my advancement was always based purely on the rules of the game (if not
personal morals). If I were to ignore those rules, there were far more efficient ways to advance than
what I did now—for example, monopolizing the best hunting grounds, or stealing rare loot from other
players.
Of course, swindling weapons only earned them col and the item itself, not experience or skill
points. But as Asuna had said, with enough money, there was no limit on how much you could power
up your gear.
I had bumped my main weapon up to +6, but my armor was currently averaging around +3. Against
a player with fully upgraded armor, even at a lower level, there was no way I could win.
In other words, allowing the Legend Braves to continue in their weapon fraud would be
tantamount to allowing the creation of a group of players stronger than me and unbound by rules or
morals.
“… I’m sorry. It took me until just now to realize how serious this is,” I murmured. The fencer
looked at me suspiciously.
“Why would you say sorry?”
“Well, you almost had your sword stolen, right? And this whole time, I’ve only been half-
concerned, as if it was someone else’s problem…”
The words emerged naturally, without thinking, but for some reason, Asuna scowled even harder,
blinked a few times, then yanked her head in the other direction, angrily.
“There’s no need to apologize. It’s not as though you and I are total strangers … I mean, um, we
know each other and we’re party members, but there’s nothing more than… arrgh! Look what you did!
You’re acting so weird, I’m all confused!”
I thought I was more confused than she was, but before I could respond, she looked out the
window and her eyes narrowed.
“That carpet …”
“Huh…?”
“So keeping your items from wasting away isn’t its only function.”
I turned to look at the east plaza of Taran. In the northwest corner, Nezha had finished packing
away all his tools and was now fiddling with the pop-up menu on his Vendor’s Carpet. It started
rolling itself up, and the assortment of objects on top of it was automatically sucked into storage.
“Hey … Do you suppose he’s using that function to switch the weapons?”
I shook my head instantly. “No, that’s not possible. The carpet’s absorption ability has to be
activated via the menu, like he’s doing now, plus it swallows up everything on top of the carpet. You
couldn’t have it take just one sword and spit another one out … in … exchange …”
I trailed to a stop.
The Vendor’s Carpet’s ability to store items could not be used to exchange them.
However, what if he used his own storage… meaning, the inventory tab of his main menu? I rolled
away from the window and slumped to my knees.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Asuna asked. I didn’t reply. I brought up the menu with my right hand
and switched to the item list. As I had done the last night when I showed Asuna the equipment
mannequin, I tapped the top and bottom edges of the window to make it adjustable, then lowered it
down until it was almost stuck to the floor—right below where my left hand would dangle if I let it
hang.
Lastly, I pulled the Anneal Blade, sheath and all, off my back and held it in my dangling left hand. I
didn’t have a folding chair, but I was about the same distance off the ground as Nezha was when he
accepted the weapon from his customer.
Asuna held a deep breath, understanding what I was about to try. I looked up at her face and said,
“Watch close and count the time.”
“Okay.”
“Here goes…Three, two, one, zero!”
I dropped the sword directly onto the window. Just as it touched the surface, the sword vanished
in a puff of light and turned into text in the menu. I promptly touched the item name. When the sub-
menu appeared, I selected “materialize.” With another splash of light, the sword reappeared and I
picked it up again.
“… How was that?”
I looked up and met the fencer’s wide-eyed gaze. Her hazel eyes blinked slowly, moved to my left
hand… and she shook her head.
“It was a similar sight. But much too slow to be the same thing. It took well over a second for the
sword to disappear and reappear.”
“Maybe if I practice, I can do it faster …”
“There were other differences. There are big fancy effects when you put it in and take it out of the
menu. Even timed to happen at the same time the upgrading materials flash in the forge, you can’t hide
that kind of effect. Plus, it shines twice.”
“… I see …” I sighed, and tapped the window on the floor to make it disappear. I stood up and
slung the sword back into position.
“I thought I was onto something. I figured all the stuff stacked on the carpet could hide his
menu…”
“Wouldn’t that be impossible, too? I mean, if you put something on top of a window set to the
inventory tab, wouldn’t it all sink into it?”
“… Urgh.”
She was right. I nodded and looked out the window again. Nezha was just leaving the plaza,
rolled-up carpet balanced on his shoulder. His head was down, as though feeling the weight on his
shoulder, and plodded heavily away. It was not the image of a man who had just scored himself a rare
and valuable Stout Brand.
“If we can’t expose the trick he’s using, I suppose we’ll just have to go reveal the truth to
Shivata,” she said.
“If the sword returns to him, that will prove that there was a deceptive attempt to steal it. But if
that happens, all the blame will fall on Nezha’s shoulders, and the other five Braves could get away
scot-free. Obviously, what he’s doing is wrong. But … I just get this feeling …”
I trailed off. Asuna fixed me with a direct stare. For a moment, it seemed as if the powerful light in
her eyes softened just a bit.
“You can’t imagine that Nezha is doing all of this entirely of his own volition…Am I right?”
 “Huh …?”
My eyes widened. She’d hit the nail on the head. Asuna turned away and leaned against the wall,
looked up at the dark ceiling and spoke in a slow cadence.
“Do you remember what he said yesterday, when I went to ask him to upgrade my Wind Fleuret?
He asked if I wanted a new weapon or to repair my old one. It was as though he left out the option of
upgrading, hoping he didn’t have to do it …”
“I see … Good point. That would explain why he made such a sour face when you asked him to
upgrade.”
“Honestly, if Shivata was able to expose his fraud and all the Legend Braves stood up for Nezha
and said they were false charges, I wouldn’t mind that much. But … if they abandoned him and tried
to pin all of the responsibility on his shoulders …”
In a worst-case scenario, all the rage of the player population would be focused on Nezha, and he
might be executed. In fact, the probability was fairly high. After all …
“The five warriors all took the names of legendary soldiers and heroes, and they didn’t include
Nezha the crafter in that pattern …”
“Oh, about that.” Asuna held up a finger as though just remembering something.
“What?”
“Something’s been bugging me ever since you told me he was a member of the Legend Braves. His
name … Nezha. So I asked Argo …”
At that precise moment, a purple icon started blinking on the right side of my vision, and I held up
a hand to cut her off. I clicked the icon and it opened a long private message. Speak of the devil—it
was from Argo.
FIRST REPORT
Beneath that header was all the information I’d requested about the Legend Braves: names, levels,
rough character builds. It was an impressive amount of info to compile in such a short time.
I set my window to visible mode and beckoned Asuna over to look at the message. At the top was
Orlando, their leader. Level 11, used a longsword and shield, heavy armor.
Along with these data was a simple sentence explaining the source of his name. That part was
requested by Asuna. As my uncertain memory recalled, he was indeed based on one of the Twelve
Peers of Charlemagne, his paladin knights. But Orlando was the Italian styling of his name, while in
the original French, he was Roland.
“Where do you suppose Argo got this information?” I noted wryly. Asuna giggled.
“She must know someone who’s a major history buff… So Beowulf was Danish, not English.
Cuchulainn was from Celtic mythology, like we guessed.”
We went down the list, ignoring the character info and reading the sources of their names. When
we reached Nezha’s name at the bottom, I let out a long breath.
His level was 10, a fairly high number thanks to the fact that crafting gave experience points on its
own. But it didn’t help his combat skill proficiency, which would make fighting on the front line
difficult for him. Naturally, his player build was tuned to be a blacksmith. And at the end, the source
of his name …
“Huh?!”
“What…?”
We yelped together. The answer was totally unexpected.
 “Does this mean… we were pronouncing it wrong?”
“B-but I remember the other Braves were calling him Nezuo…”
We looked at each other, then back to the message. If what was written in his lengthy name
background was true, I had terribly misunderstood him.
A moment later, several pieces of information stored in my brain as separate clumps suddenly
began to rearrange themselves, linking together and shining bright.
“Oh … !”
I lifted my left hand and squeezed it, watching closely. Opened again, and closed.
In that instant, I knew that I had finally grasped the secret of Nezha’s weapon-switching trick for
good.
“Of course … That’s what it was!!”
 10

“UPGRADE, PLEASE.”
I roughly thrust my sword and scabbard forward. Nezha the blacksmith looked up at me doubtfully.
He was suspicious because he wasn’t looking at my face, but the great helm that completely
covered it. The only thing it featured were narrow slits at the eyes. Such helmets were excellent in
terms of defense but terribly limited the player’s vision. It was one thing for a tank in the midst of a
group battle to use it, but hardly any player would bother to wear such a thing in town.
As I was a vowed disciple of light, versatile armor, the only reason I’d ever wear this great helm
was for disguise. And because I’d been present for the destruction of Asuna’s Wind Fleuret three
days earlier, I couldn’t use my favorite bandanna instead, or Nezha would recognize me.
Perhaps this disguise was not that much better, but Asuna insisted that if I didn’t want to stand out
because of the funny helm, I should commit to the full outfit, and simply play one of those people.
So the great helm was only part of the costume. I was covered in thick plate mail all over and held
a tower shield the size of an entire door. All the items were the cheapest of that type available at NPC
shops, and the equipment weight was just light enough not to send me into the red, but the cramped,
closed-in sensation threatened to make me go claustrophobic within half a day.
Feeling a newfound sense of appreciation for those tanks who’d taken part in the boss raid, I
handed over my sword—the Anneal Blade, my only truly rare piece of equipment right now.
“I’ll take a look at its properties,” he said quietly, tapping the hilt. When he saw the contents of the
window, his downcast eyebrows shot upward.
“Anneal plus six … two attempts left. And its upgrades are S3, D3. A challenging sword, but a
very good one …”
I watched his lips creep into a tiny smile, and I confirmed that my initial suspicions about him
were correct. This blacksmith wasn’t an irredeemably evil person.
But just a second later, Nezha’s smile of admiration disappeared, replaced by a grimace of pain.
Through gritted teeth, he murmured, “… Which value did you want to upgrade?”

Sunday, December 11, just before eight o’clock in the evening.

A chill wind blew through the eastern plaza of Taran. There were no other players or NPCs in
sight. There were only Nezha the blacksmith, just before he closed up his streetside shop, and me, his
mystery customer. Somewhere in the empty houses lining the plaza, Asuna was watching our
encounter, but I couldn’t feel her gaze for all the thick metal armor.
It was the preceding Sunday that we defeated the first-floor boss and opened the teleport gate to
the main city of the second floor, so today marked a full week since then. I had run into Asuna in the
eastern plaza of Urbus three days ago, and it was two days before that I had discovered the truth
behind Nezha’s upgrade fraud.
Technically, I hadn’t identified the trick, only been “certain” that I had, but there was a reason that
I’d waited a full two days to attempt to ascertain the truth of the matter. I needed to master the
technique Nezha was using to switch out weapons.
 Of course, this all depended on Nezha accepting my work request. Telling myself that the hassle of
all this full plate armor had succeeded in convincing him, I murmured an answer to the blacksmith.
“Speed, please. I’ll pay for the materials. Enough for a ninety-percent chance.”
Nezha had heard my voice three days ago, but the distorting effect of the great helm helped
disguise it enough to keep him from realizing that I’d been the companion of the woman with the Wind
Fleuret.
“Very well. For enough to boost the chances to ninety, that will be … two thousand seven hundred
col, including the cost of labor,” he explained, his voice tense. I agreed in as flat a tone as I could
muster.
Beneath the thick breastplate, my heart was already racing, and my gauntlets were clammy with
sweat. If my suspicions were all entirely wrong, and Nezha wasn’t in fact a fraudster, and weapon
destruction had indeed been added as a possible failure state, then my beloved Anneal Blade +6
might be gone forever in a manner of minutes.
No.
That was not all. After all, we had retrieved Asuna’s Wind Fleuret through the use of the
Materialize All Items command. Even if my theory about the trick was wrong, I could still get the
sword back within an hour by using that button.
So all I had to do was stay calm, watch everything that happened, and hit one icon at the proper
moment. Nothing more.
I waved my left hand to bring up the menu, flipped to the trade tab, and paid Nezha his price.
Normally I might have closed it after that, but this time I left it open on the top screen. Fortunately,
Nezha did not seem to find this suspicious.
“Two thousand seven hundred col, paid in full,” he muttered, and turned to the forge. Very
naturally, he let the end of the sword in his left hand dangle just inches above the many products
crammed on top of his carpet.
It all started here.
My concentration had been sucked toward the portable forge the last time, so I kept my gaze
directly fixed on his left hand. My field of view was greatly limited by the helm’s eye-slits, but that
helped me ignore any misdirection he attempted through the flashy forge display.
Nezha must have tossed the upgrade materials straight from his stock into the forge, because
everything flashed bright green for a second. If I’d had a view of the forge, my eyes would have been
dazzled by the light for just a second.
But the next moment, Nezha’s left index finger stretched and lightly tapped between two swords on
the carpet. For just the briefest of instants, the Anneal Blade blinked.
That was it. The switch was complete. Such a brilliant, perfect trick. He could do this in front of a
crowd of a hundred in broad daylight, and not a single one would notice.
Like Nezha when he saw the detailed properties of my sword, I let out a sigh of admiration. But I
said nothing—I let the blacksmith finish his upgrading process.
Once the green light filled the forge like a liquid, Nezha lifted the sword in his left hand and
pulled it from the scabbard with his right. The blade was the darkened steel color unique to the
Anneal Blade. But to my eye, its shine was just a bit duller than usual.
The sword Nezha was holding right now was not my +6 sword, but the spent +0 blade he had
bought from Rufiol three days before. It was only a guess, but I was sure of it.
 The blacksmith laid the weapon in the portable forge, suffusing the blade in its green glow. He
moved it to the anvil and started striking it with his smith’s hammer. Clang, clang, the same crisp
sound I heard when he upgraded Asuna’s fleuret.
When the fleuret broke and Nezha offered to return the cost of his labor, I’d said, “It’s all right,
you did your best. There are some crafters who say it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you hit
the weapon enough times, so they just whack away.”
However, the reason these strikes sounded so heartfelt was not because he was praying for the
operation to be a success through them. Nezha was mourning the loss of the weapon he was about to
break for the sake of his deception.
Once a piece of gear was spent—no more upgrade attempts left—it would break without fail when
the process was initiated again. Argo had confirmed that for us two nights ago. That phenomenon was
about to happen right before my eyes.
… Eight, nine, ten.
The last hammer strike rang loud and high.
The sword burst into shards atop the anvil.
Nezha’s back shivered and shrank. His right hand with the hammer slumped downward, and the
sword-bound sheath in his left hand disappeared.
Hunched over, Nezha took a deep breath, screwed up his face, and was about to shriek an apology
—until I cut him off.
“No need to apologize.”
“… Huh…?”
He froze. I went up my equipment mannequin from the bottom, switching out armor. Giant ski-boot
greaves, plate leggings, gauntlets, plate armor, heater shield… The items that made up my disguise
vanished one by one.
When the great helm came off, my bangs flopped down over my forehead. I pushed them back and
heaved a deep breath. Finally, I equipped the Coat of Midnight, its black hem swaying.
Nezha’s narrow eyes went wide.
“… Y … you’re … the guy … from…”
“Sorry for dressing in disguise. But I figured you would refuse my request if you recognized me.”
I meant to say this in my most friendly, understanding tone of voice, but the moment he heard it,
Nezha’s shock morphed into fear. In that moment, he knew that I’d discovered the existence of his
scam and even how it worked.
Without taking my eyes off the frozen blacksmith, I pushed an icon on my main menu—the weapon
skill mod activation button.
 With a quiet swish, another sword appeared in my right hand, heavy and wrapped in a black
leather sheath. It was my partner in battle since just after this game of death began: my Anneal Blade
+6.
Nezha grimaced. It almost pained me to see that expression.
“No one would suspect another player of having the Quick Change mod so early, especially not a
blacksmith… And hiding the menu to use it between the wares lined up on your carpet? Brilliant.
Whoever thought that up is a genius.”
Nezha’s shoulders slowly sank, until he finally slumped over and hung his head.

A skill mod—short for modification—was a skill power-up available to the player at certain
intervals of proficiency in a particular skill.
For example, when the Search skill reached a level of fifty, the first mod became available to the
player. You could then choose from a number of options, such as a bonus to search for multiple
targets, a bonus to increase search range, or the optional augmentation ability of Pursuit. There were
tons of useful mods, and choosing between them was as hard as it was enjoyable.
Mods could also be applied to the numerous weapon skills in the game. Quick Change fell into
that category. It was a common mod available at the very first choice for most one-handed weapons,
but very few players ever picked it first. There was no need for anyone to make use of it until at least
the fifth floor of Aincrad.
Following that theory, when my One-Handed Sword skill reached fifty halfway through the first
floor, I chose the “shorten sword skill cooldown” mod. When I reached one hundred, I would choose
“increase critical hit chance,” and only at one fifty would I go for Quick Change.
Quick Change was an active mod, not a passive one. By pressing a shortcut icon on the front page
of the menu, my equipped weapon would switch out instantly.
The regular method of changing weapons was a five-step process: (1) opening the window, (2)
tapping the right- (or left-) hand cell in the equipment mannequin, (3) selecting “change weapon” from
the list of options, (4) selecting the desired weapon from the available items in storage, and (5)
hitting the OK button. When faced with a monster that had the Snatch ability, it was a long enough
process that anyone would take at least one defenseless hit while trying to equip a backup weapon.
But with Quick Change, several steps were removed: (1) opening the window, and (2) hitting the
shortcut icon. With enough practice, it could be done in half a second. The instant after you lost your
weapon, you could have another one in hand and ready for battle.
On top of that, Quick Change had a great variety of options to specify exactly which hand received
exactly which weapon when the icon was hit. You could set it to pull up a specific weapon, tell it to
make you empty-handed—even allow you to automatically pull the same type of weapon as the one
you were equipping, if you had a spare.
That last part was the secret at the heart of Nezha’s weapon-switching trick.
He held the customer’s weapon in his left hand, temporarily creating the condition in which it was
“equipped” there. The ownership right was still with the client, but it was the same as the hand-over
feature that made it possible to toss weapons to each other in the middle of battle. He could still use
that weapon to activate sword skills … even Quick Change.
Next, Nezha extended the pointer finger of the hand holding the weapon to touch the shortcut icon
on his window, which was cleverly hidden beneath his tightly packed wares. At that instant, the
client’s sword in his hand went into his storage, and a sword of the same type was automatically
pulled out. Except this weapon was spent, guaranteed to break into pieces as soon as he attempted to
upgrade it.
The only outward signs of this elaborate trick were a momentary blink of the weapon and a faint
swishing sound. Given that it happened at the exact same time that he tossed the upgrading materials
into the forge with a bright flash and bang, you’d have to be watching for that precise action to even
notice he was doing it.
And if the customer realized he was switching weapons and tried to confront him about it, Nezha
could simply employ the same trick just as quickly and get the client’s original weapon back. Plus,
once he shattered the spent weapon on his anvil, there was no proof of anything.
In other words, to prove Nezha’s upgrade fraud was happening, I either had to utilize the
Materialize All Items command to spill all of my belongings onto the ground here, or use Quick
Change myself, thus pulling the sword directly out of Nezha’s storage whether he liked it or not.
It was following the latter choice that had taken me two days from the time I noticed the trick to
actually attempting it myself. I had spent all of the previous day and today in the second-floor
labyrinth fighting endless hordes of half-naked bull-men tauruses to get my One-Handed Sword skill
to one hundred so that I could take the Quick Change mod earlier than planned.
As a side benefit of this activity, I got some rare loot and mapped much farther into the twenty-
level labyrinth. As usual, I offered the map data to Argo at no cost, and this generosity was apparently
rankling both the Lind and Kibaou squads.
They were upset because someone else was always one or two levels ahead of them in the tower,
but they hadn’t realized yet that it was Kirito the evil beater. It was only a matter of time before they
knew the truth. If there was one reassurance, it was that our relationship couldn’t possibly get any
worse.
At any rate, the two days of trouble were worth it, as I had finally uncovered and proven Nezha’s
upgrade fraud trick. I looked down at the curled-up blacksmith and sighed in satisfaction.
My goal was complete. It was not a quest, so there was no reward or bonus experience. On the
contrary, it had cost me the 2,700 col for labor and ingredients, but all I really cared about was
making sure that Nezha didn’t attempt this dangerous scheme anymore.
The trick itself was brilliant, but if he kept filching valuable weapons from other players, someone
was going to notice. Depending on who that person was, Nezha might find himself on the wrong end
of an ugly lynch mob.
The worst possible outcome was if all the players decided he ought to be executed and it became
a precedent for how to deal with such crimes.
I wasn’t of the mind that Nezha should be forgiven for his part in this. Rufiol and Shivata had lost
their beloved swords … and even though it was returned in the end, Asuna cried at the loss of her
Wind Fleuret. They deserved to see some kind of justice.
But that punishment must not be the murder of another player. If that was allowed once, it would
lead to pure anarchy—squabbles over hunting grounds and loot would be solved with violence rather
than words. I’d taken on the scarlet letter of the beater to prevent the retail players from purging the
former beta testers. That sacrifice couldn’t go to waste.
My solution to this was to demand that Nezha either function as a proper, honest blacksmith from
now on, or to give up his smithing hammer and become a warrior. Asuna and I had talked it over and
decided on this choice. Once the source of their ill-gotten wealth dried up, the Legend Braves would
sink back to a level appropriate to their skill.
I stood there, lost in thought, sword dangling from my right hand, when the blacksmith spoke in a
tiny voice.
“… I suppose this isn’t something that a simple apology will atone for.”
Nezha’s body and voice were scrunched up in such a compact form that it seemed as though he
were trying to disappear entirely.
“… It would be nice if I could return the swords I stole from all those people … but I can’t.
Nearly all of them were turned into money. The only thing I can do now is … is this!”
His voice reached a shriek by the end. He unsteadily got to his feet. The smithing hammer fell from
his hand, and he took off running without a backward glance.
But he didn’t get farther than a few feet. A new player descended upon his exit path, long hair
gleaming in the streetlamps beneath a wool hood: Asuna the fencer.
She’d jumped out the second-story window of an empty house and blocked his path, lecturing
sternly. “You won’t solve anything by dying.”
This time, Nezha recognized the face within the hood immediately. She was the female fencer
whose Wind Fleuret he’d (temporarily) stolen three days earlier.
His already-timid face crumpled even further. I was the very model of an imperceptive dunce, and
even I could feel the powerful guilt, despair, and abandon raging within him.
Nezha turned his face down and away from Asuna, as though trying to escape her gaze. His voice
was strained.
“… I decided right from the start … that if someone discovered my fraud, I’d die in atonement.”
“Suicide is a heavier crime than fraud in Aincrad. Stealing weapons might be a betrayal of your
customer, but suicide is a betrayal of every player working to defeat this game.”
Her eloquence was every bit as sharp and piercing as her Linear. Nezha trembled and tensed—
and his face shot upward as though on a spring.
“It’ll happen anyway! I’m such a slow, clumsy oaf, I’ll die eventually! Whether I get killed by
monsters or kill myself, the only difference is whether it happens sooner or later!”
I couldn’t stifle a small chuckle at those last words.
Asuna glared daggers at me. Nezha’s teary face looked hurt among the desperation, so I put up
both hands and tried to apologize.
“Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that it was the exact same thing this lady here said just a
week ago…”
“Huh…?”
Nezha, wide-eyed and bewildered, looked at Asuna again. He took several breaths, then finally
worked up the will to ask, “Um… are you…Asuna, from the front-line fights?”
“Huh…?” Now it was Asuna’s turn to blink in surprise. “How did you know?”
“Well, the fencer in the hooded cape is pretty well-known around here. You’re the only female
player on the frontier …”
“… Oh … I see …”
She sounded very conflicted and shrank back beneath her hood. I took a few steps closer and
offered some advice.
“Sounds like your disguise is actually starting to identify you. Maybe you should try something
else, before you get stuck with a nickname like Little Gray Riding Hood.”
“Mind your own beeswax! I happen to like this hood! Besides, it’s nice and warm!”
“Oh … I see.”
I wisely chose not to ask her what would happen when the weather got warm again. Instead, I
glanced at the stunned Nezha. I couldn’t overcome the urge to ask him a follow-up question.
“So, erm… Do you know who I am…?”
It wasn’t because I was interested in finding out how famous I was around the game. This was
purely research to see how far the stories about “the first beater” had spread from that initial front-
line squad.
“Um, well … I-I’m afraid I don’t …”
My reaction was equal parts relief and shock. That conflict must have showed on my face, for
Asuna patted me on the shoulder. “There, what have I always told you? Stop worrying about it so
much.”
“But … I really like that bandanna.”
“Tell you what—I’ll give you your own nickname. How about the Ukrainian Samurai?”
“Wh …why Ukrainian?”
“That bandanna’s got blue and yellow stripes, just like the Ukrainian flag. I guess you could also
be the Swedish Samurai, if you prefer.”
“… Sorry, can I choose neither?”
Nezha listened to our back-and-forth in timid silence, then worked up the nerve to interject.
“Um, pardon me … Is what you said true? Did Asuna really say she would die eventually …?”
It was obviously a difficult thing for her to answer. I tried to smooth things over by answering for
her in as light and breezy a tone as I could.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. It was wild, she just passed out right in front of me during a four-day camp-and-
hunt expedition in the labyrinth. I couldn’t just leave her there, and I didn’t have the strength level yet
to carry a player, so I had to take a sleeping bag and—”
Shunk.
Asuna slammed her heel down hard on my toes to shut me up. She composed herself and said
quietly, “To be honest, that feeling hasn’t disappeared. We’re only on the second floor, and there are
a hundred. There’s a constant conflict inside me between my desire to get that far, and resignation that
I’ll probably fall along the way. But …”
Her hazel eyes shone bright from the shade of her hood. While the brightness of that shine was no
different from what I saw that first day in the labyrinth, it seemed to me that the nature of it had
changed.
“… But I’ve decided that I’m not fighting in order to die. Maybe I’m not quite optimistic enough to
say that I’m doing it to live, to beat the game … but I’ve found one simple goal to strive toward.
That’s what I’m fighting for.”
“Oh… really? What’s your goal, to eat an entire cake of that Tremble Shortcake?” I asked
earnestly.
Asuna sighed for some reason and said, “Of course not.” She turned to Nezha again.
“I’m sure you can find your own reason. It’s already inside of you. Something you ought to fight
for. I mean, you left the Town of Beginnings on your own two feet, didn’t you?”
“…”
 Nezha looked down, but his eyes were not closed. He was staring at the leather boots on his feet. I
realized that they were not non-functional shoes for wearing in town, but actual leather armor.
“… It’s true. There was something,” he mumbled. Amid the resignation, it sounded like a tiny
kernel of some kind, a burning ambition. But he shook his head several times, as if trying to extinguish
the flame. “But it’s gone now. It was gone before I even got here. That happened the day I bought this
NerveGear. When I … when I tried the first connection test, I got an FNC …”

FNC. Full-Dive Nonconformity.

The full-dive machine was an extremely delicate apparatus that sent signals back and forth to the
brain with ultra-weak microwaves. It had to be finely tuned to work with each individual user.
But of course, they were producing thousands and thousands of units for mass-market use, and they
couldn’t spend ages of time on fine maintenance. The machine had an automatic calibration system
that went through a long and tedious connection test on first use. Once that was done and it knew the
player’s settings, you could dive in just by turning on the unit.
But on very rare occasions, a person received a “nonconforming” response during that initial test.
Perhaps one of the five senses wasn’t functioning properly, or there was a slight lag in the
communication with the brain. In most cases it was merely a slight obstacle, but there were a few
people who simply could not dive at all.
If he was here in Aincrad, Nezha’s FNC couldn’t have been that serious—but he would have been
luckier if it had prevented him from playing. He wouldn’t be trapped in this game of death.
We packed up all the tools and items into the carpet and moved to an empty house near the plaza to
continue hearing out Nezha’s story.
“In my case, I have hearing, touch, taste, and smell, but there’s an issue with my sight …”
As he spoke, Nezha reached out to the cup of tea Asuna left for him on the round table. But he did
not immediately grab it—he reached his fingers closer, and only when his fingertip brushed the
handle did he carefully lift it up.
“It’s not that I’m entirely blind, but I have a binocular dysfunction. It’s hard for me to grasp
distance. I can’t really tell how far my avatar’s hand is from the object.”
For an instant, I thought this didn’t seem so bad … but I soon reconsidered.
If SAO was an orthodox fantasy MMORPG, Nezha’s disability wouldn’t be such a big deal. There
were classes that had auto-hitting long-range attacks—a mage, for example.
But SAO didn’t even have archers, much less mages. Every player who fought in the game did so
with a weapon in his hand. And whether sword, axe, or spear, the ability to judge distance, to tell
exactly how far away the monster was, made all the difference in the world. The very cornerstone of
combat here was understanding, on a physical level, how far your weapon could reach.
Nezha took a sip of tea and carefully returned the cup to the saucer. He smiled hollowly.
“Even hitting a stationary weapon on top of an anvil with my short little hammer is extremely
difficult …”
“So that was why you carried out the steps of the process so painstakingly.”
“Yes, that’s why. Of course, I did also feel apologetic toward the swords I was breaking … but
…” He looked back and forth at me and Asuna, smiling weakly. “It might not be right for me to say
this, but … I’m impressed that you saw through my switching trick. But it wasn’t just today … you
remotely retrieved Asuna’s Wind Fleuret plus four three days ago. So you must have known then …”
 “Oh, at that point it was just a suspicion. At the time I noticed, the hour limit to maintain
ownership was nearly up, so I had to burst into Asuna’s bedroom and force her to use the Materialize
All Items command, then—”
I felt a piercing stare from the right and narrowly avoided spilling the beans on what her inventory
contained.
“—the Fleuret came back. That was when I knew you’d committed fraud … but it was two days
ago that I figured out you were using Quick Change to pull it off. The key was in your name, Nezha …
or should I say, Nataku.”
“… !!”
Nezha (or Nataku) sucked in a sharp breath. His fists clenched and he even lifted up out of his seat
for a moment. When he sat again, he looked straight down in shame.
“… I had no idea you’d figured that out, too …”
“Well, that required an information dealer to discover. I mean, even your friends in the Legend
Braves were calling you Nezuo. It means they didn’t know either, did they? Why you’re named after
Nataku.”
“Just call me Nezha. I picked that spelling because I wanted people to call me that,” the
blacksmith said. He nodded and began to explain. “Yes, you’re correct …”

Nataku. Also known as Na-zha, or Prince Nata.

He was a boy god in the Ming period fantasy novel, Fengshen Yanyi. He used a variety of magical
weapons called paopei and flew through the sky on two wheels. He was every bit the legendary hero
as Orlando or Beowulf.
In the Western alphabet, the Chinese name was transliterated to “Nezha,” but only a true fanatic of
Eastern mythology would recognize that as a reference to Nataku. It would be especially difficult here
in Aincrad, without any Internet search engines. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of brain trust
Argo had in her network of contacts. At any rate, when I saw the blacksmith’s true name at the end of
her write-up on the Legend Braves, I finally had an epiphany.
He did not join this game intending to be a crafter. He tried to be a fighter, but due to his
circumstances, he was eventually forced to become a blacksmith.
However, that meant that despite playing as a smith now, his weapon skills might already be
above a certain level. Following that line of logic, I eventually hit upon the possibility that he was
using the battle skill mod Quick Change to switch out weapons, and the rest was history.

“The Legend Braves are a team we formed for a different NerveGear action game, three months
before SAO came out,” Nezha explained after another sip of tea. “It was a very simple game, where
you used swords and axes to fight off monsters in a straight-line map, and tried to get the high score
… but even that was difficult for me. Because I had no perspective, I’d swing when the monsters
were too far away, and then they’d come in close and hit me. The team could never get into the top
ranks because of me. It wasn’t like I knew Orlando and the others in real life, so I probably should
have left the team or quit playing the game … but …”
He clenched his fists again, his voice trembling. “… No one told me to leave the team, so I used
that as an excuse to stick around. It wasn’t because I liked that game. It was because we decided that
we’d all switch over to the very first VRMMO, Sword Art Online, when it came out in three months. I
really, really wanted to try out SAO. But because of the FNC, I didn’t have the guts to start it up on my
own. I was … weak. I figured, if I got to be in Orlando’s party in SAO, I might be able to grow
stronger … even if I still couldn’t fight that well …”
We could only sit in silence as we listened to his painful confession. It would be easy to say that I
understood how he felt. The moment I saw the very first trailer for SAO, I swore to myself that I
would play this game. Even if I’d had a worse FNC than Nezha, I’d have gone in headfirst, as long as
I was able to dive.
But I couldn’t say that aloud. I abandoned my very first friend back in the Town of Beginnings—
someone seeking help, just like Nezha.
However he interpreted my silence, the blacksmith smirked in self-deprecation and continued his
tale.
“I went by a different name in the previous game … I used a name that anyone would recognize as
a hero, like Orlando or Cuchulainn. The reason I changed it to Nezha was a sign of humility, or
flattery. I was trying to say, ‘I won’t call myself a great hero like you guys, so can I still stick
around?’ When they asked what it meant, I said it was based on my real name—that was a lie, of
course. Every time they call me Nezuo, I want to say that it’s still a hero’s name. I don’t know … It’s
silly …”
Neither I nor Asuna denied or agreed with Nezha’s self-flagellation. Instead, a quiet question
emerged from her hood, which was still up, even indoors.
“But then things changed when we got trapped in here, didn’t they? You stopped venturing into the
fields and switched to crafting. As a blacksmith, you can still support your friends without fighting.
But … why would you make the jump to swindling people? Whose idea was it in the first place?
Yours? Orlando’s?”
She leapt to the point as quickly and accurately as if she were in battle. Nezha had no response.
When he did answer, it was a surprise.
“It wasn’t me, or Orlando … or any of us.”
“Huh …? Then, who?”
“For the first two weeks, I tried to cut it as a fighter. There’s one skill, just one, that allows you to
fight remotely … I thought I might be able to hack it that way, even without being able to judge
distance …”
That didn’t seem like it would work to me, but I explained for Asuna’s sake. “Ahh, the Throwing
Knives skill. But that’s kind of …”
“Yes. I bought as many of the cheapest throwing knives as I could in the Town of Beginnings,
hoping to train up my skill, but once I used up my stock, there was nothing I could do. Plus, the stones
out in the field you can throw hardly do any damage. So it wasn’t really much use as a main weapon
skill … I gave up once my proficiency reached fifty or so. And because the other Braves stuck around
to help me with that, we ended up getting off to a slow start …”
The Legend Braves’ slow start was probably not due to them helping Nezha train with throwing
knives, but because the other beta testers and I rushed off at top speed on the very first day and left
everyone in the dust. I had a feeling Asuna would throw me some very dirty looks if I mentioned that,
however, so I kept it to myself.
“Things got very … tense when I said that I’d give up on learning how to use throwing knives. No
one said it out loud, but I’m sure they were all thinking that the guild got off to a slow start because of
me. Even after becoming a blacksmith, training a crafting skill takes a lot of money … It seemed like
the other guys were just waiting for someone to suggest that they cut me loose and leave me back in
the Town of Beginnings.”
He bit his lip before continuing, “Really, I should have offered on my own … but I just couldn’t
say it. I was afraid of being alone … Anyway, in the corner of the bar where we were talking,
someone I thought was just an NPC came up and said, ‘If you’re going to be a blacksmith with some
weapon experience, there’s a really cool way to make more money.’ ”
“… !”
Asuna and I shared a look. It hadn’t occurred to us that the idea for the Quick Change weapon trick
came from someone outside of the Legend Braves altogether.
“Wh-who was it …?”
“I don’t know the name. They only told me how to switch the weapons, and left immediately after
that. Haven’t seem ’em since. It was a very … strange person, too. Funny way of talking … funny
outfit. Wore a hooded cape like a rain poncho—glossy and black …”
“Poncho …?” Asuna and I repeated together.
Hooded capes were a fairly common item in fantasy-styled RPGs like SAO—practically a staple
of the genre. Asuna herself was wearing one of her own at this very moment, though it was on the
shorter side.
Just minutes earlier, she had claimed she wore it for its warmth, but the real reason for those
hoods was not the ability to keep out the cold and rain but to hide her face. And whoever this man in
the black poncho was, he likely wore it for the same reason …
Asuna seemed to read my mind, and she pulled back her gray hood with a snort. Even in the empty
room, lit only by a single lamp, her gleaming chestnut-brown hair and pale skin seemed to give off a
light of their own.
Upon seeing her face clearly, Nezha’s wide eyes squinted, as though staring into the sun. Given
that player names were not displayed by default in SAO, the main means of recognizing a person was
the face, followed by the body. Eventually, the equipment and fighting style of a player might become
part of their persona, but at this point in the game, everyone was rapidly switching to newer gear and
even changing their main weapon skill. Someone playing a knife-wielding thief in leather armor one
day might be a heavy warrior decked out in full plate armor the next.
Essentially, with an average build and a concealed face, pretty much anyone could pass
anonymously. Even voices could be altered using a few special means, such as the great helm I was
wearing when I approached Nezha.
But there might be a way to learn more identifying features of this man that taught Nezha how to
swindle others. He was still staring at Asuna, so I brought him back to the topic at hand.
“About the guy in the black poncho …”
“Ah … y-yes?”
“How did he demand the margin be paid? I mean, how did he want you to hand over his share of
the money you made?” I asked. Asuna nodded in understanding. If they were making cash handoffs,
we could stake out the place and catch a glimpse of the man.
But Nezha’s answer blew that possibility to smithereens. “Um, actually, he didn’t really say
anything …”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
 “Well … like I said, he taught me how to use Quick Change and the Vendor’s Carpet to pull off the
weapon-switching trick, but he didn’t say a word about a share, or the payment for his idea, or
anything.”
“…”
Asuna and I stared at each other again, dumbfounded.
The trick was brilliant and nearly flawless. I made sure Nezha knew my opinion of it. The trick
was certainly possible back in the beta test, but not one of the thousand testers had come up with the
idea. Whoever devised it was a creative genius. If Nezha had chosen a player handle based on his
own given name, or Asuna hadn’t asked Argo for info on “Nataku,” I would never have figured the
trick out.
But because of that, it was very jarring to hear that the poncho man who devised this brilliant idea
would hand it over without asking for anything in return. If he hadn’t asked for col … what did he
stand to gain from giving his idea to the Legend Braves?
Clearly it wasn’t out of sheer altruism. It was fraud, a means of ripping off other players.
“So you’re saying … he just butted into your conversation, explained how to switch weapons like
that, and then disappeared?” Asuna asked. Nezha was about to agree, but he stopped before
committing.
“Well … Technically, he did say a bit more. A scam is a scam, so Orlando and the others weren’t
into the idea at first. They knew it was a crime. But then he just laughed. It wasn’t put on or menacing.
It was just a really pleasant laugh, like out of a movie.”
“Pleasant … laugh?”
“Yes. It was like—like just hearing it made everything seem so unimportant anymore. The next
thing I knew, Orlando, Beowulf, all of us were laughing with him. Then he said, ‘We’re in a game,
don’t you know? If we weren’t supposed to do something, they’d outlaw it in the programming, right?
So anything you can do … you’re allowed to do. Don’t you think?’ ”
“Th-that’s total nonsense!” Asuna exploded before Nezha had barely finished. “That would mean
you could butt in and attack someone else’s monster, or create a train that attacks someone else, or
any other thing that’s completely against proper manners! In fact, since the anti-crime code is turned
off outside of towns, that would mean it’s totally okay to—”
She stopped mid-sentence as if afraid that saying it out loud might cause it to come true.
Without thinking, I reached out and brushed Asuna’s arm, the white skin even paler than usual. In
most cases, she would pull several feet away in disgust, but now, that contact grounded her emotions,
and the tension drained out of her.
I pulled my hand away and asked Nezha, “Was that all the poncho man said?”
“Er … yes. We nodded to him, he stood up, said ‘good luck,’ and left the bar. I haven’t seen him
since,” he said, his eyes wandering as though searching his memory banks. “Now it all seems very
mysterious … After he left, the guild most certainly changed. Everyone seemed very gung ho on the
idea. I’m ashamed to admit that I decided I would rather be the centerpiece of the money-making
scheme than be relegated to useless baggage, dragging everyone down. But …”
Expression flooded back into Nezha’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.
“But … the first time I tried the trick … when I broke that substitute weapon and saw the look on
the customer’s face, I knew. Just because it was possible within the game didn’t make it right. I
should have given the real sword back and explained everything … but I didn’t have the guts. When I
went back to the hangout bar, I was going to say we should call it quits, but … but when they saw the
sword I stole … they were so, so happy, and they said how great I was, and … and … and I just
couldn’t—!”
Wham! He suddenly slammed his forehead down straight onto the table. Purple light flashed off
the walls of the room. He did the same thing again, then again, but his HP were protected by the game
code in town.
He didn’t know what to do. We’d prevented him from attempting suicide, he had no means of
replacing the victims’ belongings, and he couldn’t even return to his friends.
If there was one way to atone for his sins, it would be to publicly admit his actions and apologize
to the playerbase. But I couldn’t demand that he do it. I couldn’t guarantee that all of the honest,
upfront players fighting to free us all from Aincrad, some of whom were his victims, would forgive
Nezha for his actions. And I couldn’t imagine the punishments they might devise for him if they didn’t.
The only realistic solution I could come up with was to have him go through the teleporter back to
the Town of Beginnings and hide himself in that vast city. Or perhaps he could reverse course, going
back to fighting, and find some way to contribute through battle. The problem with that was that
throwing knives were a total sub-skill, better for nothing more than distracting enemies …
But then I remembered a rare piece of loot I had gotten from a difficult Taurus Ringhurler in the
labyrinth just earlier that day. It was rare but not particularly valuable, and of no use to me—
something very eccentric and long-ranged.
“… Nezha.”
He raised his forehead off the table an inch. I saw cheeks wet with tears.
“What’s your level?”
“… I’m level 10.”
“Then you’ve still only got three skill slots. What are you using?”
“One-Handed Weapon Crafting, Inventory Expansion … and Throwing Knives …”
“I see. If I told you that I had a weapon you could use … would you be prepared to give up on
crafting? On your Blacksmith skill?”
 11

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2022.

The tenth day since we had beaten the boss of the first floor, and the thirty-eighth day since we’d
first been trapped inside this game of death.
The collective “front-line players,” including me and Asuna, had finished progressing through the
massive labyrinth tower brimming with muscled bull-men, and finally reached the chamber of the
second-floor boss.
Our raid, made up of eight different parties, was at a total of forty-seven, just under the limit
allowed by the game. Despite the loss of Diavel the knight and those too shocked by his death to take
part, the group had grown, thanks to the addition of the five warriors from the Legend Braves.
Lind the scimitar user, formerly Diavel’s right-hand man, led his blue group with three parties
totaling eighteen members. Once we’d cleared the second floor and they initiated the guild quest on
the next floor up, they were planning to establish the Dragon Knights guild. The knights part was
clearly an homage to the spirit of their fallen leader, but I didn’t know where the “dragon” came from.
With another eighteen was the green group, gathered around their opposition to beta testers. Led
by Kibaou, who swung a one-handed sword just like me, they’d already decided on their own guild
name: the Aincrad Liberation Squad.
That accounted for six parties and thirty-six members. Next was Agil, the massive axe-wielder
and his three friends (all muscled like he was, for some reason), Asuna the fencer, the only female in
the group, and then Kirito the evil beater. That made forty-two. With the five added members of the
Legend Braves, that made a total of forty-seven, just one under the limit.
I sat in the corner of the large safe zone just outside the boss chamber, watching the separate
groups check their equipment and distribute potions. I leaned over to Asuna, who was once again
wearing her trademark hood, and whispered, “Just one more and we’d have a full raid.”
“True … I guess he didn’t make it in time.”
“We got to the boss chamber a lot faster than I expected … It’s a tough quest to beat in just three
days,” I bemoaned. Asuna shot me a dirty glare.
“Well, from what I hear, it even took a certain someone three days and two nights to finish it.”

Three days earlier, in the village of Taran near the labyrinth, I had given Nezha a special kind of
ranged weapon and a map.
The map pointed out the location of an NPC hidden in the rocky mountains along the outer
perimeter of the second floor, and the secret passageway to reach him. This NPC was none other than
the bearded Martial Arts skill master who had drawn the whiskers on my cheeks that turned me into
Kiriemon.
I asked Nezha if he was prepared to give up on the weapon-crafting skill he’d spent so much time
on, and take up Martial Arts instead. The weapon I’d picked up in the second-floor labyrinth required
both the Throwing Knives and Martial Arts skills to use.
Abandoning a skill was not an easy decision to make, even when it was only a day or two of
experience being lost. In the case of a blacksmith, working the skill upward was both a matter of time
and considerable money. In other MMOs, it was as easy as rolling an alternate character, but now that
SAO was a “one character per account” system by virtue of our predicament, that wasn’t an option.
The most rational choice was to wait until he reached the level that would open up another skill slot.
Another choice might be to remove the Inventory Expansion skill that gave him extra room for items.
But instead, in exchange for the weapon and map, I demanded that Nezha remove his
blacksmithing skill.
In SAO’s current state, attempting to balance crafting and combat was too dangerous. A player
venturing into the field needed to focus everything under his control on maximizing the chances of
survival, from his skill choices, to his equipment, to his inventory. Plenty of even the most well-
prepared players had lost their lives because they were missing that last bit of attack strength, or
armor value, or one more potion.
Nezha took just one deep breath before accepting my harsh demands.
“As long as I can be a swordsman here, I don’t need anything else,” he said, then smiled and
added, “but I suppose using this thing won’t make me a swordsman.”
Surprisingly, it was Asuna who answered, “Everyone fighting to help beat this game is a
swordsman. Even a pure crafter.”
We had guided Nezha past the battles to the entrance of the secret passage and left him there. His
level was high enough, and I considered inviting him to join the boss battle if his Martial Arts training
finished in time, but it seemed three days wasn’t enough for him to break that rock. There was no need
to rush. Nezha wouldn’t be risking danger by attempting weapon fraud again.

“He’ll be a big help in beating the third floor, I’m sure. It’s a pretty good weapon if you can master it,
and he’ll be able to find a spot in some guild or other. One aside from the Braves, I’m guessing …”
“Yes … I hope so,” Asuna agreed. We looked across the safe zone at a group of five. Orlando
was wearing his usual pointed bascinet helm and Anneal Blade. Beowulf was the short man with the
double-handed sword next to him, and the skinny spearman was Cuchulainn. There were also two
others that weren’t present during the battle against the Bullbous Bow: Gilgamesh, who fought with a
hammer and shield, and Enkidu, who was outfitted with leather armor and daggers.
At this morning’s meeting, I detected a mixture of unease and discontent among the Legend Braves.
I had to assume it was the disappearance of Nezha, their sixth member. If they had been an established
guild, they could use location trackers to find him, but here on the second floor, guilds were nothing
but names.
I could understand their concern, but I was under no obligation to explain the situation to them.
After all, they’d forced Nezha to undertake a weeklong string of dangerous scams that easily could
have led to his execution if anything was exposed to the public.
“That’s all nice and good, Kirito, but we shouldn’t be spending our time worrying about the state
of other parties.”
“Oh? Why?” I blinked. She sighed in exasperation.
“Lind said we’d put the raid group together just before the boss fight, but think about it. There are
three parties for the blue team, three parties for the green team, one for the Braves, and probably one
last one for Agil’s group. That makes eight.”
“Oh … g-good point.”
 I hadn’t given it any thought since she mentioned it, but eight parties was the maximum for a raid.
In the first boss fight, we’d had a lower number, and Asuna and I got to be in our own leftover party,
but that wouldn’t be an option this time.
Without any magic, SAO didn’t have the usual full-raid heals and buffs, so it was quite possible
for extra people to take part in the battle outside of the raid. The problem was that being outside the
group meant you couldn’t see the HP of the other members, and they couldn’t see yours. It made
gauging the proper timing of potion rotation very tricky.
I had to make sure that Asuna at least made her way into Agil’s party. I looked around for the axe-
warrior’s distinct shape.
“Hey, you two. Good to see you again,” came a baritone voice from behind me. I turned around to
see the very man I was looking for.
His craggy face split into a grin, the light shining off his bald head. “I hear you two have paired
up. I guess I should congratulate you.”
“Um… we’re …”
Not a pair, I tried to say, but Asuna set the record straight.
“We’re not a pair. It’s just a temporary partnership. Nice to see you, Agil.”
Agil smiled again and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. It was a cool gesture, but it felt as though
he meant it in a consoling way. I hastily cleared my throat.
“Y-yes, well, um… that’s right. So I’m guessing we’re about to finalize the raid structure, since
we’re almost at the absolute limit for eight parties …”
I was planning to ask them if they would take Asuna in their party, but again, I didn’t get the
chance to finish.
“Yeah, that’s what I came to ask you about. There are four of us, so why don’t you two join our
group?”
It was such a breezy, careless invitation that I couldn’t help but hesitate.
“Um… well, that’s really generous of you, but are you sure? I mean, given my standing …”
Asuna sighed and Agil shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands. That gesture, combined
with his appearance, was clearly not Japanese, but his command of the language was perfect, so there
was a strange mixture of exoticism and familiarity about the man that made him both fascinating and
charismatic.
“What do they call you, a beater? It’s only a tiny percent of people who actually call you that.”
Even the word beater sounded fresh and new coming from his lips. Most people, including me,
pronounced it with a flat intonation, like cheater, but he stressed the bee and softened the ter, which
made it almost sound like a cool title to have.
“We actually have our own nickname for you.”
“Really? What is it?” Asuna asked. Agil glanced at her and grinned.
“The Man in Black. Or Blackie.”
She snorted. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that epithet—I hadn’t chosen the color of the coat I
looted from the kobold boss—but even more startling to me was that she’d actually laughed. I peered
into her hood in curiosity.
Asuna quickly composed her expression and gave me a familiar glare before continuing, “Thanks
for the offer, Agil. I suppose we’ll take you up on it—me and Blackie.”
“Oh, come on, you’re not going to run with that, are you?” I protested.
 Asuna replied, “Blackie, as in the prompters who wear all black during a play, right? Sounds
perfect for a guy who hates being in the spotlight.”
“… Oh … I see. But that’s not exactly the same…”
“I mean, if you’d prefer that I just call you Mr. Kirito all the time, I can do that.”
“… Like I said, that’s not exactly the same …”
Agil, who grinned as he watched our bickering, burst out laughing at that point. “If you two are that
in tune, then I’m leaving the switch timing up to you. The four of us will focus on tanking, so you guys
do the damage.”
He held out both hands, and Asuna shook his right, while I took the left. I bowed briefly to the
other three behind him and received waves and thumbs-up in return. I hadn’t talked with them much at
the first-floor boss battle, but they all seemed to be as good-natured as Agil.
I accepted Agil’s party request and noted the six HP bars lined up on the left side of my view, just
as we hit fifteen minutes until the battle would begin. The noise of conversation died down toward the
front, so I turned to see that two players were now standing before the massive doors to the boss’s
chamber.
One of them was Lind, decked out in silver armor, blue cape, and scimitar at his waist. The other
was Kibaou, with his dark armor and moss-green jacket.
“Ugh, not another double-leader situation,” I groaned.
“Isn’t there only one leader by definition within the system?” Asuna asked.
“That’s a good point …”
As if sensing our confusion, Lind raised a hand and spoke loudly to the group. Unlike the area
outside the first-floor boss chamber, this was a safe zone, so there was no fear of tauruses coming to
investigate the noise.
“Well, it’s time. Let’s start forming the raid! First, an introduction: I’m Lind, chosen to be your
leader today. Greetings, everyone!”
Before I could even wonder how Kibaou would willingly give up control, the cactus-headed man
interjected, “Only chosen ’cuz ya won a coin flip.”
Half the gathering laughed at this, while the other half looked upset. Lind shot Kibaou a dirty
glare, but he did not respond to the bait.
“…The fact that we’re already here, just ten days after opening this floor, is a testament to your
skill and dedication! If you lend me your help, there’s no way we can fail to beat this boss! Let’s
finish the day on the third floor!”
He raised a fist, and all of those who didn’t laugh at Kibaou’s jibe roared in approval.
With his rousing speech and long hair, formerly brown but now dyed blue, Lind seemed to be fully
accepting the role of Diavel’s heir. I couldn’t help but feel that here and there, hints of self-
consciousness that his predecessor never displayed peeked through the facade.
“Now let’s form the raid! Of the eight parties, the Dragon Knights will form teams A, B, and C.
Kibaou’s Liberation Squad will make up teams D, E, and F, and team G will be Orlando’s Braves.
And team H …”
He looked to us in the very back. For an instant, his breezy smile seemed to vanish when his eyes
met mine, but he looked past me just as quickly.
“… will be the rest of you. Teams A through F will concentrate on the boss, while G and H handle
the mobs …”
 This news did not come as a surprise to me. What was surprising, however, was the voice that
spoke up in response.
“Hang on just a moment.”
It wasn’t Agil and certainly wasn’t Asuna. It was the leader of the group of five on the far wall:
Orlando.
When he spoke, the eyes staring out from beneath his bascinet visor were just as piercing as when
they’d nearly seen through my hiding ability outside the bar.
“We’re here to fight the boss. If you want us to rotate around, I might understand, but we’re not
going to just hang back and deal with mobs.”
His brassy voice echoed off the walls and died out, the ensuing lull filled by the fevered
murmuring of the blue and green players. I could make out mutters of “Who do they think they are?”
and “Bloody newcomers.”
Then it all clicked into place for me.
With the disappearance of Nezha, Orlando and his team had just lost a huge source of income.
This was their chance to leap out to the head of the clearers. The money earned by the raid party was
equally shared between all members, but the experience points and skill boosts were not. The
enormous store of experience points the boss was worth would be distributed by the amount of
damage done (or blocked), and the skill proficiency gained by attacking a powerful enemy was far
beyond that of a normal foe. None of that went to them if they didn’t attack the boss directly.
The five Braves had upgraded their equipment to about the maximum it could be at this point, but
their player levels were below the average of the raid. They probably saw this boss battle as the best
chance to close that gap.
And yet, disagreeing with the raid leader’s orders wasn’t going to get them anywhere. The scene
could have easily turned into an ugly shouting match, but the blue and green players didn’t let it get
any worse than whispers.
I suspected that was due to the powerful aura the Legend Braves were exuding. Level, stats, and
skill proficiency were all hidden variables not exposed to the public—but equipment power was
different. Weapons and armor augmented close to the limit began to glow with a depth that reinforced
their value.
At the present moment, the best any player—including me—could do was upgrade their weapon,
and perhaps their shield, to that glowing state. But the Braves were a different story. With the massive
sum of col they reaped in the past week, they’d been able to buy full sets of excellent equipment and
power it all up. All of their gear was glowing as if under a powerful buff spell, and it created the
strong impression that these five men were not to be trifled with.
Of course, equipment strength was not all there was in the game. More important than anything in
SAO was personal experience and the ability to react and adjust. But in the battle ahead against Baran
the General Taurus, every value was important—especially armor strength.
This was because General Baran used an elite version of the taurus race’s special attack …
“All right. In that case, team G can join the fight against the boss,” Lind said stiffly. I looked up
and found myself staring right into the blue-haired man’s eyes again.
While his hairstyle might have been the same as the one worn by breezy, affable Diavel, Lind
seemed to have a significantly more obstinate side to him. He held my gaze this time and said,
“According to our prior intelligence, the boss only has one accompanying mob that does not re-pop. I
trust team H will be able to handle that alone?”
Asuna and I sucked in a sharp breath, our hackles raised, but team leader Agil waved a hand to
calm us. His voice and manner stayed perfectly calm.
“It might be one monster, but the intel says that it’s not your average mob, but more of a mid-level
boss on its own. Plus, maybe it’s only the one, but we don’t know that for sure. That’s a lot to ask of a
single party.”
The prior intelligence they were referring to was, of course, the second-floor boss edition of
Argo’s strategy guide, which appeared just yesterday in Taran. It held the attack patterns and weak
points of the boss and its attendant mob, but as the disclaimer on the cover said, all information was
based on the beta test.
The first-floor boss used katana skills that hadn’t been there in the beta, and it led to the death of
Diavel the knight. We had to assume that there were alterations since the beta here, as well. In a
worst-case scenario, there might be two or more of “Nato the Colonel Taurus” accompanying Baran
instead of just one.
But Lind actually agreed with Agil’s rebuttal.
“Of course, I have no intention of repeating the mistakes of the first floor. If we spot any difference
in the patterns listed in our prior intelligence, we will immediately retreat and rethink our plan. If the
attendant mob is too much for one party to handle, we’ll send another team to help. Will that do?”
It was about as much as we could hope for at this stage. Agil murmured in the affirmative, and
Asuna and I let out the breaths we’d been holding in.
Next came a review of the boss’s attack patterns and a final check of each team’s individual
strategy, leaving just two minutes until the scheduled fight time of two o’clock. That was only a
general guideline, so nothing was stopping us from beginning the fight slightly before or after the hour.
Lind raised his hand and said, “All right, it’s a bit early, but …”
Suddenly, he was cut off by a familiar phrase from Kibaou, who had, somewhat surprisingly, kept
quiet this entire time.
“Now, hang on just a sec!”
“…What is it, Kibaou?”
“You been basin’ everything on this strategy guide so far, Lind. Now, all this info is comin’ from
the info dealer who ain’t even been in the boss room, right? Is that really good enough for us?”
Lind’s mouth twisted in displeasure. “I won’t claim that it’s perfect, but it’s better than nothing,
isn’t it? What’s your alternative? Are you going to walk in there to check out the boss for yourself?”
Now it was the green-clad Liberation Squad that bristled in anger, but Kibaou simply smiled
confidently.
“What I’m sayin’ is, we know we got at least one person here who’s seen this boss for himself. So
why don’t we get his take on it?”
What?
I took a step back and to the left, to hide behind Asuna. But Kibaou lifted his right hand and
pointed straight at me. Dozens of eyes turned in my direction, and Asuna callously stepped aside to
avoid them.
“Whaddaya say, Black Beater? Why don’cha offer us some advice on this boss battle?” he
bellowed. I couldn’t read his expression to see what he was really thinking.
“…What does he think he’s doing?” I muttered quietly, but Asuna could only shrug.
 I’d heard that Kibaou’s Aincrad Liberation Squad rallied around a resistance to the former beta
testers. As a means to compete with the testers who rushed out to monopolize the game’s best
resources, they aggressively recruited new members from the thousands left down in the Town of
Beginnings, distributed money and items fairly, and planned to conquer the game through sheer
numbers. At least, according to Kibaou’s theory.
So what did he stand to gain by giving a known ex-tester a platform? You’d think it was clearly
some kind of trap… but there was something in the cactus-haired swordsman’s eyes that could be
taken as honest fervor.
If that look’s an act, yer one helluva actor , I muttered to myself. One, two, three steps forward,
and I had a proper view of every face in the raid.
“Let me just make this clear. I only know the boss from the beta test as well. So it’s totally
possible that something … or everything about this boss has been changed.”
As I spoke, the muttering players eventually fell silent. Even Lind, who I figured would interrupt,
did not speak.
“But I can say that the regular tauruses in the labyrinth use the exact same attacks that they did in
the beta. So I think it’s a certainty that the boss will use sword skills that are an extension of that
pattern. As you just discussed, you want to evade when he goes into his motion, but what’s most
important is how to react when you take the first hit. Avoid getting hit with double debuffs at all costs.
In the beta, every player that got stunned and then paralyzed …”
Pretty much died, I stopped myself from saying.
“At any rate, if you stay calm and watch his hammer, you can avoid the second hit. As long as we
all take that into account, this lineup can beat the boss without any casualties.”
Nothing I said couldn’t be found in Argo’s guide, but virtually all the players present nodded in
understanding when I was done.
As usual, Kibaou’s expression was a cipher to me, but Lind had a look of surprise. He clapped his
hands briskly. “All right, everyone: Avoid the second hit! Now let’s get started!”
He turned around and faced the giant set of doors and loudly drew his scimitar, holding it aloft.
“We’re going to crush the second-floor boss!!”
The dim corridor shook with the roar of the gathering.
Blue hair waving, his left hand pushing the door open, Lind looked very much like Diavel had in
that same exact moment back on the first floor.
 12

MONSTER ATTACKS AGAINST PLAYERS FELL UNDER two general categories. One w
direct attacks that dealt HP damage.
The other was indirect attacks that did not cause direct damage but occasionally posed a
significant threat—in other words, debuffs.
Akihiko Kayaba, the designer of this game of death, at least had a minimum of sympathy for new
players, for he did not grant any of the kobolds in the first-floor labyrinth debuff attacks. The delay
effect that led to Diavel’s death was a debuff, in a way, but it was an effect that occurred at a high
likelihood when suffering multiple consecutive attacks, and wasn’t a special skill that the kobold lord
could use at will.
Which meant that the tauruses that dwelt in the second-floor labyrinth were the player’s first real
experience with serious, regular debuffs.

“Here it comes!” I cried, recognizing that the double-handed hammer was being lifted straight aloft.
The rest of my party called out their acknowledgment and jumped backward. The hammer stopped
high overhead for an instant, its wide surface glowing with brilliant yellow sparks.
“Vrrroooooo!!”
With a roar so fierce, it might as well have been a long-range attack of its own, the beast brought
down the hammer. The mass of metal, rippling with lightning, slammed against the dark stone floor. It
was the taurus race’s special debuffing skill, Numbing Impact.
No one was standing within the direct damage range of the blow, of course, but there were also
narrow sparking tendrils that extended out from the impact point. One of them shot toward me along
the floor, fading out, until it just barely licked the end of my boot.
Instantly, I felt an unpleasant prickle at my toes. Fortunately, I was just outside of the debuff range,
so there was no stun icon showing beneath my HP bar. Everyone else kept farther away from the
shockwave, so none of them were affected.
“Full-power attack!” I shouted, and the six of us fanned out in a semicircle around the taurus and
closed. Each person unleashed the strongest sword skill in their weapon’s repertoire. Agil’s two-
handed axe, his crewmates’ similar weapons, Asuna’s Wind Fleuret, and my Anneal Blade blasted
the beast with an array of colored lights. The bull-man’s three-part HP gauge finally emptied its first
bar and opened the second.
“I think we can do this!” Asuna shouted from her familiar position to my left.
“Yeah, just don’t get overconfident! Once we get to the third bar, he’ll start using consecutive
numbing attacks! Plus,” I raised my voice to ensure that Agil’s group heard me, “based on the first-
floor battle, we should assume there might be a new attack when we hit that last bar! If that happens,
we all pull back!”
“Got it!”
The taurus recovered from its delay at the same time our skill cooldown ended. Agil’s tanks
recognized that the next attack would be a sideways blow and took defensive stances along its
trajectory. Asuna and I hung back, waiting for the right moment to counter.
Just over five minutes had passed in the battle against the boss.
So far, our team was performing well. None of us had suffered the Numbing Impact effects yet,
and none had taken heavy damage. The four tanks were losing HP with each attack they blocked, of
course, but the pace of damage was slow enough that we were making do with just a one-man pot
rotation so far.
And yet, the fact that our battle was going well meant hardly anything.
The blue-skinned, bull-headed beast that team H faced right now was only Nato the Colonel
Taurus, an extra thrown into the boss monster fight … a distraction at worst.
“Evade! Evaaaade!” came a somewhat panicked scream from the other side of the vast boss
chamber. When I had the chance, I glanced over the heads of the dozens of players to see a frightfully
large shadow.
A bristly, crimson red pelt enveloped rippling muscles. His waist was covered with a luxurious
golden cloth, but in keeping with taurus tradition, his upper half was bare. The chain dangling over
his shoulders was also made of gold. To top it off, the golden battle hammer in his hands shone with a
dazzling brilliance.
Coloring aside, Colonel Nato might as well have been a body double of Baran, but there was one
other major difference: size. General Baran, the boss of the second floor, was at least twice the size
of Nato.
Because of the physical height limit of the ceilings in the labyrinths of Aincrad, Baran was not as
tall as the mammoth Bullbous Bow that prowled the landscape, but there was no escaping the primal
fear inspired by a sixteen-foot beastman. Even the kobold lord from the first floor felt huge, and he
was only seven feet tall and change.
Naturally, General Baran’s golden hammer was massive as well, its powerful head the size of a
barrel. When he lifted it, the surface shot golden sparks. The tanks and attackers pulled back as one,
in accordance with Lind’s order.
“Vrrruuuuvraaaaa!!”
Baran’s roar was appropriately twice as fierce as Nato’s, and he smashed the floor. Even at our
distance, we could feel the shockwave, which was followed by a burst of sparks. Again, the effective
range was twice that of his subordinate. It was Baran’s unique skill, Numbing Detonation.
The queuing-up motion was very easy to identify, but the blast radius was so wide that two
members failed to get to a safe distance, and their feet were swallowed by the golden sparks. The
lightning wrapped around their limbs and demobilized them—the stun effect, one of the most common
debuffs of the many in the game, though not one to be overlooked. The stun effect caused by the
taurus’s numbing attacks lasted three seconds, and unlike many debuffs, it wore off automatically.
But while three seconds might not feel long against garden-variety mobs, it was a lifetime against
a deadly floor boss. Even at this distance, I was keenly aware of the fear and panic those stunned
warriors were feeling.
One second, two seconds … and just before the third, one of the stunned fighters dropped his short
spear to clatter onto the ground. It was a fumble, a secondary debuff that sometimes occurred in the
midst of a stun. In the next instant, the soldier was free, and the blue-shirted member of Lind’s group
bent over to pick up his weapon.
“No—”
 Get back, here comes the next one! I wanted to yell, but I held it in. He wouldn’t hear me at this
distance, and my companions in team H would confuse it for an order directed at them. After a brief
but powerful Slant to Colonel Nato’s ribs, I looked to see General Baran raising his hammer again.
Thwam! A second Numbing Detonation.
The hammer struck the same spot as the last one, and more yellow lightning shot forth. Again, they
swallowed the spearman attempting to pick up his weapon.
But while he’d been standing upright last time, he fell down to the floor in this instance. The visual
effect that surrounded his avatar was not yellow, but pale green. This was not a stun but a more
powerful and dangerous debuff, paralysis.
It was the true terror of the tauruses’ numbing skills—the second hit in succession would turn the
stun to a paralyzing effect.
Unlike a stun, paralysis did not disappear after a few seconds. It wasn’t indefinite either, but even
the weakest effect would last ten minutes … a full 600 seconds. Obviously, no one could survive a
battle while prone for that length of time, so healing items were necessary.
The main methods of recovery were healing potions or purification crystals. The latter were
impossible to find until later in the game, so potions were the only choice. However, paralysis left
only the dominant hand of the player able to move—and slowly, at that—so even pulling a bottle out
of a pouch was a trial. Crawling out of the boss’s attack range was completely out of the question.
I told them not to pick up their weapons but wait until they were sure the boss wasn’t going to
attack twice!
But there was no use complaining to myself. Besides, picking up a dropped weapon was just
human instinct. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d done the same thing and suffered additional
hits during the beta. I only learned to deal with that particular challenge with a cool head once I
gained the Quick Change mod so that I could call up a replacement from my inventory.
Baran callously targeted the paralyzed spearman and prepared to stomp him with a massive foot.
Fortunately, his party members quickly intervened to pull him out of harm’s way.
I heaved a sigh of relief, but when I saw where they were taking him, my eyes bulged.
Lined up along the back wall were already seven or eight players, clutching green potions in their
stiff hands and waiting for the effect to wear off. The entire time that we’d been carefully chipping
away at Colonel Nato, a large number of the main force was suffering from secondary numbing.
“Things aren’t going well in the main fight,” Agil rumbled as he returned from his potion rotation.
I quickly responded, “Yes, but the more they fight, the more they’ll get accustomed to the rhythm. I
haven’t seen any differences from the beta yet, so I think—”
We’ll be all right, I was about to finish, but Asuna cut me off with a sobering note.
“But Kirito, if any more of them get paralyzed… it’ll make a temporary retreat much harder.”
“… !”
I tensed and clenched the handle of my Anneal Blade. The weapon wouldn’t fall unless I
intentionally dropped it (or an external factor caused me to fumble it), but my subconscious was
working in overdrive after witnessing the prior scene with the spearman.
The boss chambers in Aincrad, at least as far as I’d seen, did not lock the players inside once the
battle had begun. If things got hairy, it was always possible to beat a hasty retreat. That didn’t mean it
was a simple matter, of course; there was a considerable distance between the battle zone and the
door, so if everyone took off running at once, the boss would catch up to us in no time and cause
delays, stunning, and ultimately, death.
So in a way, escaping from the boss chamber required a trickier coordinated effort than actually
fighting the adversary. Could we even pull it off, burdened by a large number of paralyzed fighters?
For one thing, lifting an immobile player in your arms to carry them out required a significant
strength value. I couldn’t lift Asuna up with my skinny arms when she had passed out in the first-floor
labyrinth, so I had had to drag her out using a sleeping bag—an emergency measure still fresh in my
memory.
From what I could see, about four-fifths of Lind and Kibaou’s forces were balanced or speed-first
fighters, with only a few pure-strength tanks. As Asuna pointed out, if many more players got
paralyzed, it would be much harder to disengage.
“We might need to refocus and prioritize dealing with the numbing,” I said, stepping out of the
way of a three-part hammer combo from Nato. Asuna nimbly matched my steps beside me.
“I agree. But if we start calling out orders for the main force, it’s only going to confuse the chain
of command. We need to get our ideas to Lind’s ears.”
Her hazel eyes darted over the HP of team H, and then Colonel Nato.
“We can handle him with just five. Go and talk to Lind, Kirito.”
“Um… a-are you sure?”
“Yeah, no problem!” boomed Agil, who must have overheard. “The four of us can handle guarding
for now! You’ve easily got two or three minutes to go talk with him!”
I turned back to look at the chocolate-skinned warrior and his friends, who seemed resolute, and I
made up my mind. The key to defeating Baran was to keep his paralysis out of the equation. The battle
was holding up for now thanks to our large number and high average level, but if this was the same
party that tackled him in the beta, we’d be wiped out by now.
“All right, just for a bit! I’ll be right back!”
Before I left, I unleashed a Vertical Arc into Nato’s back as he stood frozen after missing with a
big attack, and sped off for my target.
I shot across the coliseum-styled chamber, more than a hundred yards across, and headed for the
main battle in the back. My pasty, skinny real body back home would be lucky to break fourteen
seconds in the hundred-meter dash, but the agility-heavy Kirito crossed the space in ten flat. My
bootheels screeched to a halt as I lined up next to a blue cape at the rear.
For a moment, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d ever been face-to-face with Lind,
leader of this raid and former confidant of Diavel the knight.
Ten days earlier, just after we defeated the previous boss, he’d screamed, Why did you abandon
Diavel to die? You knew the moves the boss was using! If you’d told us that information to start
with, Diavel wouldn’t have died!
I hadn’t apologized. I’d met him with a cold smile.
I’m a beater. Don’t you ever insult my skill by calling me a former tester.
And having said my piece, I had put on the Coat of Midnight I was still wearing, and left the first-
floor boss chamber. I hadn’t interacted with Lind since that very moment.
So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that when I sidled up next to him, Lind’s first reaction was a
grimace of disgust. His narrow eyes went wide, his blade-sharp chin trembled, and his thin lips went
even thinner.
But that manifestation of his true emotions soon sank back beneath his skin. It bothered me that
both he and Kibaou were attempting to mask their true feelings about me—though it also wasn’t my
business to care about it—but now was not the time to worry about feelings.
“I ordered you to handle the sub-boss. Why are you—” he growled before I interrupted with the
line I’d prepared.
“Let’s regroup. If any more members get paralyzed, it’s going to make escape nearly impossible.”
The raid leader looked back at the seven or eight players waiting to recover, then at the state of the
fight itself. Following his lead, I checked the HP bar of General Baran. Out of his five bars, they’d
lowered the third to the halfway point—we were already half-done with the boss.
“We’re halfway there. Why would we need to retreat now?”
I had to admit, there was a part of me that thought it would be a waste to give up now. In the ten
minutes since we had started the battle, several people had been paralyzed, but no one’s HP had
fallen into the red zone, and the pace of our damage against the boss was better than expected. There
was more than a small chance that we could continue to press on, and make it through…
But as if seeing through my hesitation, a voice rang out from behind us.
“How’s about we pull back if one more person gets paralyzed?”
I turned around to see Kibaou’s familiar, light-brown spikes of hair. No doubt he was also filled
with a powerful disgust at me for being a tried-and-true beta tester, but the look on his face was
honest and forthright.
“Everyone’s got the hang of the numbing range and timing. They’re focused, an’ morale is high.
We been poundin’ paralysis and healing potions, so if we stop now, we might not have the supplies ta
give it another shot until tomorrow.”
“…”
Again, I let my mind race for half a second before reaching a conclusion.
The most important thing here was not the number of tries or the sum of spent resources but human
life. We had to succeed without losing anyone. That was the first rule of any boss battle in Aincrad.
But Lind and Kibaou already knew that. And if the leader and sub-leader of the raid decided that
we could still win, the only thing that a single fighter from an outlying party would do by disagreeing
was sabotage the chain of command—obviously, a bad decision. And on top of that, my own instincts
were telling me that if we could just maintain our current progress, we could defeat Baran without
any casualties.
“All right, one more. Just be careful when we get down to the last HP gauge,” I said. Kibaou
growled in acknowledgment and turned back to his station. Lind nodded silently and resumed his
command.
“Team E, prepare to retreat! Team G, prepare to advance! Switch at the next stagger!” he ordered
as I turned back and crossed the coliseum to rejoin team H.
Asuna wasted no time in asking, “What happened?!”
“We’ll pull back if one more person gets paralyzed! But at our current pace, we can probably
make it!”
“I see …” She briefly looked upset and glanced over at the main battle, but grudgingly agreed with
the decision. “All right. In that case, let’s finish off this blue guy quick, so we can join the others.”
“Yeah!”
Having reached a rapid consensus, we turned back to see that Colonel Nato had just unleashed a
massive attack that was expertly blocked by Agil’s group. There was just a bit over one full HP bar
left. With perfect precision, we hit the beast with sword skills to either flank.
That attack brought Nato to his final HP bar, and the blue-skinned minotaur bellowed up at the
ceiling. He stamped the ground with hooves as big as buckets, then hunched over to expose his horns
and tensed like a coiled spring. It was a new pattern to this fight, but not one I’d never seen before.
“He’s gonna charge! Watch the tail, not the head! He’ll go along that diagonal!”
Nato turned to his left and charged right for Agil. But the axe-warrior, poised and prepared, easily
dodged out of the way and unloaded his double-handed combo, Whirlwind. He stepped back, and
Asuna and I switched in to continue the onslaught. The damage was so great that spinning yellow
rings appeared over the colonel’s head, and he began to wobble. We’d inflicted our own stun status
on him.
“Now’s our chance! Everyone use two full-power attacks!!”
“Raaah!!”
All six of us surrounded the taurus and pummeled him with flashes of light in red, blue, and green.
His HP bar lost refreshingly large chunks in quick succession and soon plunged into the yellow zone
that signified less than half remained.
Our full attack a success, we held distance once more, and the taurus’s skin turned purple as he
raged even louder. This berserk state before he died was, again, the same as in the beta. His attack
speed was half again as fast as before, but with a calm head, this was not an issue.
On the other side of the chamber, the players let out a roar. I nearly lost my balance for a moment
before I realized it was a cry of high spirits. General Baran’s final HP bar had gone yellow as well.
Meanwhile, the number of paralyzed along the wall had not risen but had shrunk to five.
“It’s a good thing there weren’t any surprises since the beta,” Asuna opined to me while we
waited for our skills to cool down behind Agil’s protective wall. I looked back to the battle at hand
and nodded.
“Yeah. But if we’d been paying attention against the kobold lord, we’d have noticed that the
weapon on his back was a katana, not a talwar. And General Baran hasn’t changed an inch from the
beta. So …”
I suddenly realized that a shadow had passed across Asuna’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Um…nothing. I’m just overthinking things … I was just noticing that it’s weird the first-floor
boss was a lord, but the second one is only a …”
Ga-gong!
A sudden crash interrupted our conversation. We all turned as one to the source of the sound—the
center of the coliseum chamber.
But there was nothing there. Only a series of concentric floor rings made of blackish stone …
No. It was moving. The three circles of paving stones were sliding, rotating counterclockwise and
slowly picking up speed. The stones were rising from the floor before my eyes, elevating into a three-
step stage at the center of the room.
Suddenly, the view of the far wall over the center platform began to waver.
“Uh-oh…” I grunted. That was the visual effect that signaled a very large object being generated
into the map. As I feared, the wavering in the air rapidly spread and began to generate a thick,
menacing shadow at the center.
The shadow soon coalesced into a humanoid form and grew two legs thick as tree trunks that
thudded heavily onto the stage. Sturdy, dark chainmail covered the figure’s waist, but its torso was, as
usual, bare. This one had a long, twisted beard that hung down to its stomach. The head was that of a
bull, but it had six horns instead of two, and atop the center of its head was a round accessory of
silvery platinum—a crown.
The mammoth figure, so black it might as well have been painted with ink, reared back, and the
third and largest of the tauruses let out a roar. Flashes of lightning spread around the minotaur, filling
the chamber with blinding light.
Finally, a six-part HP bar appeared so high in my field of view that it seemed to be stuck to the
ceiling. I gazed dully at the letters that appeared.
Asterios the Taurus King.

Keep your mind moving! Think! I told myself so hard that if I wasn’t gritting my teeth, I’d have
spoken the words aloud.
It was clear what had just happened. General Baran, whom every player present, including me,
had assumed was the second-floor boss, was just as much an opening act as Colonel Nato.
Baran’s final HP bar turning yellow must have been the trigger to generate the true boss—the
pitch-black King Asterios. But speculation about the origin of the creature was pointless. What
mattered was what we did next.
There was no need to think. We had to retreat out of the chamber. We didn’t even know how this
monster would attack… and the risks of fighting this taurus king were clearly far greater than that of
the general.
The problem was that Asterios had spawned in the center of the chamber, and the raid party was
fighting in the back of the room. The group would need to charge through his attack range in order to
reach the exit. Team H, fighting Colonel Nato, was the closest to the exit, and we could probably
make it out safely now, if we broke for it … but if we did that, and teams A through G were wiped
out by the king, our chances of beating this game of death disappeared along with them.
How to evacuate a forty-seven-man raid party? The first step was eliminating our present foes as
quickly as possible.
Time seemed to spring back into motion once our path became clear, and I promptly raised my
sword high and shouted, “All units, all-out attack!!”
I tore my eyes away from Asterios atop his three-step stage, and fixed a gaze on the berserk
Colonel Nato. I leapt as hard as I could, following the path of his hammer as he raised it behind him.
As a speed-focused swordsman with no heavy metal armor, I could jump about six feet from a
standing position. Nato was closer to seven or eight feet, but with the added reach of my sword, I
could easily get to his head.
My Slant skill hit the shining black horns directly. Nato’s attack motion stopped partway, and he
reared back and roared. The tauruses of the second-floor labyrinth, excepting only a few (say, the
Taurus Ironguard, which wore a heavy metal helm), were weak to blows to the horns. I hadn’t tried to
strike their foreheads at any point until now because jumping attacks were inherently risky, and even a
clean hit from a sword skill was no guarantee that the opponent would suffer a movement delay. But
this situation called for desperate measures.
At the exact moment I landed, Asuna and Agil’s team followed up with attacks of their own,
knocking Nato’s HP into the red zone. His delay wore off, and the minotaur roared and began his
motion for a numbing skill. In any other case, now was the time to pull back, but I pushed forward.
 “Raaah!”
With a roar of my own, I unleashed my very best Horizontal. Even if I hit the beast’s weak point, I
couldn’t stagger the creature on consecutive attacks, but it wasn’t the forehead I was aiming for—it
was Nato’s giant hammer. The timing window was extremely short, but if I hit his sword skill with
one of my own just before he fired it off, it was possible to cancel the attacks out.
There was a piercing clang that seemed to strike directly into the center of my brain, and my
sword shot backward. Meanwhile, the hammer was pushed back overhead. Without missing their
chance, my five companions proceeded to launch another wave of attacks. Only a few pixels of HP
remained.
Under normal circumstances, chaining sword skills together was impossible. But I knew from our
hunting of the Windwasps the other day that you could get past that limitation if you used weapons of
different categories. I curled up in midair and kicked out with my left foot. The resulting Crescent
Moon, a vertical kick attack as I spun backward, caught Nato right on the forehead.
The taurus hurtled backward and let out a high-pitched screech before freezing stiff, then
exploding into a massive cloud of polygons. It must have been treated as a proper sub-boss, not just a
typical mob, because I promptly saw a Last Attack bonus readout. I didn’t have time for that,
however; I spun around as I hit the ground.
The first thing I saw across the room was a towering ebony back. King Asterios was on the move.
Fortunately, he hadn’t targeted any of the five paralyzed along the east wall, but his destination was
the thirty-six remaining fighters of the main party—who were still busy with General Baran.
My worst fear was that the main force would fall into total panicked chaos and retreat if faced by
a boss on either side. Fortunately, that was not happening. But very soon, his lumbering steps would
take him within attack range of the raid. We had to defeat the general before then.
“Let’s go, Kirito!” said Asuna, her voice tense. But I wasn’t sure if I should agree. It wasn’t that I
was afraid for my own life—for some reason that I couldn’t explain, I was gripped with a sudden
feeling that once I set foot into the battle ahead, I could not guarantee that she’d survive.
I knew damn well just how good Asuna was. I wasn’t even sure if I could beat her in a one-on-one
duel. But there was no denying my urge to force her to escape right there and then.
After I had abandoned my first and only friend at the start of this game, and was nearly killed by a
fellow beta tester just hours later, I had sworn to live as a solo player, relying on no one but myself.
The week that we had just spent as a partnership-of-sorts was only a means to uncovering and
stopping Nezha’s fraud. Nothing more.
So why was I being ruled by this emotion… this sentimentality?
Why was I so desperate to keep Asuna from dying?
“Asuna, you need …”
To run, I wanted to say—but I saw the powerful light in her hazel eyes. They told me that she
knew full well what I was thinking. Her eyes were full of an emotion that was neither anger nor
sadness but something even purer. Again, she said, “Let’s go.”
There was enough strength in that voice that it bottled up the fear that had overtaken me.
“… All right,” I said, and looked back at Agil’s party. The axe-warrior nodded at me, not
frightened in the least.
“We’ll swing around the right flank and defeat Baran first. If the king attacks before then, we’ve
got to pull him away as best we can to help buy them time.”
 “Got it!” the others shouted. Bolstered by their courage, I leapt forward. By the time I reached full
speed, my hesitation was gone.
The monster’s reaction zone, also called its “aggro range,” was invisible to the naked eye. But the
more experience one built, the more it felt like a tangible thing. I followed my instinct and circled
around the right side of the plodding King Asterios toward the main party.
Baran’s HP bar was already down into the red zone. But as with Nato when he was nearly dead,
Baran had gone into a berserk state and was using his Numbing Detonation at every possible chance,
slowing the group’s attack progress.
We had thirty seconds until the king started to attack, I gauged. I darted right between the wide-
eyed Lind and Kibaou, directly in front of General Baran, and leapt high into the air, aiming for his
blazing orange horns. But the general was nearly twice the size of the colonel. Even my highest jump
combined with my longest reach couldn’t make it all the way.
“Rrraah!”
At the apex of my jump, I took pains to hold my stance and just barely managed to throw off a
sword skill. My Anneal Blade glowed green, and my body sped back into motion as though pushed by
invisible hands: Sonic Leap, a one-handed sword charge skill.
This desperate attack hit him right in the weak point, and the general’s body arched backward.
This staggering was our final chance.
Asuna and the other four didn’t need my order to know what to do. They raced in to land blows,
then pulled back. The rest of the raid followed their lead, and General Baran was enveloped in
flashing effects of every color.
But once again, it wasn’t quite enough. There was still a pixel or two left on his HP bar.
“Not again!” I cursed, clenching my left fist. Coming out of a major sword skill off-balance, my
only option was a simple attack. I roared and swung forward with a Flash Blow, hitting him square in
the chest. It was just enough damage to do the job, and that tiny little jab sent the massive body
expanding … and exploding.
I landed hard, ignoring the LA bonus readout entirely, and took a deep breath to command
everyone to retreat back against the wall. There was no time to worry about whether I was
overstepping my bounds or not.
But my breath caught in my throat before I could speak.
The onyx taurus king, who should have still been ten seconds away, was leaning backward, his
massive chest bulging like a barrel. That looked like …
A breath attack. Long range.
And right in his path, back to him, her eyes fixed straight at me, was Asuna.
If she didn’t move now, there would be no escape. I couldn’t waste time racing over to her. But
that kind of logical reasoning went out the window.
“Asuna, jump to your right!” I shouted as I dashed toward her. There were other players in the
breath range, of course, but my tunnel vision was fixed on no one but the hooded fencer. She must
have sensed the danger approaching from behind in my voice and expression. She leapt as I
commanded, not bothering to turn around.
As soon as her boots left the black paving stone, I reached her and slipped my left arm around her
slender body, leaping in the same direction to add to our momentum. Even at full strength, the jump
speed was unbearably slow. The arabesque pattern in the floor flowed past, glacial in pace …
 The right side of my vision went pure white.
The dry shockwave that hit me was exactly like a clap of thunder. Asterios the Taurus King’s
breath attack was not poison or fire but lightning. And by the time we realized it, the both of us, and
over twenty other players in the raid, were enveloped in its white blaze.
There was no such thing as attack, healing, or support magic in Sword Art Online. But that didn’t
mean that all traces of magic were absent from the game world. There was an infinite variety of
magical items to be found that raised stats or provided buff effects, and the blessing of an NPC priest
at a church in one of the bigger towns granted a player’s weapon a temporary holy effect.
But those supernatural effects did not exist solely for our benefit. In fact, the majority were a
detriment. For example, the many special attack skills employed by monsters: poison, fire, ice, and
lightning breath.
The most powerful breath attack in terms of damage was fire, but lightning was no joke. For one, it
was instantaneous—it traveled the full length of its range in the instant it was unleashed. Worse, it
had a very high chance of stunning its victims, with the worst-case scenario involving an even more
dangerous debuff.
Asuna and I took Asterios’s lightning breath to our legs, and we both lost close to 20 percent of
our health in one go. A green border began to blink around the gauge, and a debuff icon of the same
color appeared as well.
Instantly, I felt my physical senses growing distant. I couldn’t move my legs to land upright, even if
I tried. Asuna and I slammed into the ground on our backs. This was no mere tumble effect—after all
of my warnings, we were now paralyzed.
“Asu … na,” I rasped. She was laid across my chest like an immobile plank. “Heal with …
potion.”
I tried desperately to move my stiff hand. There were two red HP potions and one green paralysis
antidote in the belt pouch on my right side. Somehow, I felt around and grabbed the green one, popped
the cork and held it up to my lips, even as the rumbling footsteps grew closer.
Once I finished the minty liquid, I hesitantly looked up to see that the massive taurus king was
barely ten yards away. His attack had hit several other players with paralysis, and over a dozen of
them littered the ground between us and him.
The other thirty players who escaped the lightning breath were making their way around the
slowly moving boss, but they weren’t sure how to react. The reason why was clear: The raid’s leader
and sub-leader, Lind and Kibaou, were both paralyzed, and the closest to the boss’s position. They
were desperately trying to give orders, but a whisper was the best anyone suffering from paralysis
could produce. None of the players outside Asterios’s attack range could hear them.
But very close to my ears came the sound of a fragile, beautiful voice.
“Why … did you come?”
I looked back to see two very large hazel eyes right in front of my face. Asuna was collapsed
directly on top of me, empty potion bottle clutched in her hand. She repeated herself.
“Why …?”
 She was asking me why I’d run toward her when I realized the taurus’s breath attack was coming,
rather than darting directly out of harm’s way. I wondered what the answer was myself, but it did not
become apparent. All I could say was “I don’t know.”
And for reasons that were once again a mystery to me, she smiled gently, closed her eyes, and set
her hooded head against my shoulder.
I looked over Asuna’s back to see Asterios raising his massive hammer high overhead. The
crushing implement, twice as large as even Baran’s, was aimed right at Lind and Kibaou.
So this is it, I told myself.
If our two leaders died, the rest of the raid party would flee out of the boss chamber, leaving
behind the ten or so paralyzed, including me and Asuna, to die … But at some later point in time, they
would be able to use the information gleaned from Asterios’s appearance and attacks to launch a
second attempt.
The worst regret of all this was that I wasn’t able to save Asuna and her limitless potential. As I’d
told her after the first-floor boss, she could have one day led an enormous guild and been a leader to
the player population. Like a shooting star, endlessly lighting up the sky of this dark, hopeless game of
death.
I hallucinated a strange light, passing across the ceiling of the dim chamber.
But even after opening my eyes wider, the shining arc did not disappear. It reached an apex and
began to fall, heading right for the crown on Asterios’s brow as he was preparing to swing his
hammer …
It wasn’t until a high-pitched squeal of metal rang through the coliseum and Asterios lurched in
pain that I realized the light wasn’t a trick of the eye.
That was a long-range attack that shouldn’t have been possible at this point in SAO, a sword skill
under the Throwing Knife category. But the thrown weapon didn’t simply fall to the ground after
hitting the boss’s weak point; it spun around and flew back across the room, as though pulled by an
invisible string.
Asterios recovered from his delay and roared in anger, making a slow turn back to his attacker.
That was the first actual hit on the boss, so it automatically drew the enemy’s attention.
Suddenly, a powerful set of arms pulled me and Asuna off the floor. The mighty warrior, holding
two people aloft without any help, spoke in a deep baritone.
“Sorry about that! I actually got a little spooked!”
Agil the axe-warrior carried us over to the eastern wall. His three companions were also busy
moving paralyzed party members to a safer position. As if brought to their senses, the remainders of
the blue and green teams raced over to the other immobilized fighters.
I tried to crane my neck up so I could see as he ferried us under his arms like suitcases. As we
moved, the southern side of the coliseum came into view behind the boss’s massive bulk.
About thirty feet from the entrance, a small figure clutching a bizarre weapon was staring up at the
looming giant with a resolute look on his face.
“Isn’t that—?!” Agil cried in surprise as he dropped us on the floor against the wall. And it wasn’t
just him—virtually everyone in the chamber was staring with shock at this new, forty-eighth player.
Not because he had suddenly appeared just before the boss routed us, or because he used a strange
and unfamiliar weapon. It was because we had all seen this man hammering away at an anvil in the
eastern plaza of Taran just a few days ago. It was Nezha the blacksmith.
 He was dressed much differently now, of course. The brown leather apron was replaced by a
bronze breastplate, gauntlets of the same material, and an open-faced helmet. But the image of a
beardless dwarf that his short, stocky build and round, dour face created hadn’t been neutralized by
this new look; if anything, his outfit accentuated it.
The entire raid was shocked that a blacksmith would be here, participating in the boss raid, with
only two exceptions: Asuna and me, the ones who’d convinced him to change careers in the first
place. I was surprised as well, of course, but only because I hadn’t expected him to be able to charge
straight through the labyrinth alone, after just three days of training.
But there were others here who would be shocked in a much different way from the rest of us. As
soon as the thought occurred to me, a group rushed forward from the raid party in the center of the
room. They came to a stop once they reached an angle that gave them a clear view of Nezha’s face
around the side of the boss. It was team G … the Legend Braves.
“Nez…”
Orlando started to call the name of his missing partner, but he held back at the last instant. It
seemed the Braves were still trying to hide the fact that Nezha was part of their guild.
For an instant, Nezha looked back at his silent former companions with a pained look, but he
composed himself and yelled, “I’ll draw the boss away! Get everyone back on their feet now, while
you can!”
Asterios’s walking speed—for the first of his many HP bars, at least—was quite slow. If Nezha
used the hundred-yard hall effectively, he could probably continue to occupy the enemy’s attention all
by himself. If he held out until all of the paralyzed had recovered, we might be able to evacuate the
entire raid group safely…
But no. It wouldn’t work. The boss moved slowly, yes, but he had that instantaneous lightning
breath to make up for it. There was no way to dodge that onslaught on your very first encounter with
it. And based on the moment of Nezha’s appearance, he probably hadn’t seen Asterios’s first attack.
“Agil, warn him about …”
The breath attack, I wanted to say, but I was already too late. Asterios stopped still and pulled
his head back again, sucking in breath. His chest puffed up into a round ball, and little sparks crackled
out of his nostrils. Nezha was standing still, looking up at the boss’s head.
“Move …” I rasped.
“Get out of the way!!” someone in the raid shouted. But Nezha nimbly leapt aside before the
words were even out of his mouth. The next instant, a brilliant cone of white lightning shot from the
boss’s gaping mouth. The breath attack reached nearly to the exit of the room, but Nezha was clear of
its path by a good six feet.
The way he moved… Did he know exactly when to dodge?
My eyes went wide, and I suddenly heard a very familiar voice… but not one I would have
expected to hear here, of all places.
“The boss’s eyes glow just before the breath attack.”
I looked up from the floor, stunned, to see the tile pattern on the wall warp out of place. An even
smaller figure than Nezha appeared out of thin air. My mouth fell open (as did Asuna’s and Agil’s, if I
had to guess) as I stared at that familiar whiskered face—Argo the Rat, the information dealer.

It was only afterward that I learned that she’d undertaken a series of quests beginning in the jungle
outside the labyrinth that eventually earned her information on Asterios the Taurus King, the true boss
of this floor. She learned not just his attack patterns, but the best way to counteract him—such as
staggering him with a thrown weapon to the crown atop his head.
When Argo discovered that quest, she zipped around turning in objectives, and only finished just
after the raid party entered the labyrinth. Messages couldn’t reach anyone in a dungeon, and it was a
question whether Argo and her agility-heavy build could make it through the labyrinth alone.
As she wavered with indecision outside the tower, she happened across Nezha, who was also
preparing to brave the dangers of the labyrinth alone. They worked together—using Argo’s Hiding
skill and Nezha’s throwing weapons to avoid or lure mobs out of their way—and reached the boss
chamber just before Asterios appeared and threw the battle into chaos.

“Why are you still lying around? You’re not paralyzed anymore,” Argo said. I finally noticed that the
paralysis icon beneath my HP bar was gone. I sprang to my feet and sprinted over to the Anneal Blade
where it lay after I was hit by the breath attack. Asuna’s Wind Fleuret was also nearby, so I brought
them both back to the wall. I considered whether or not to address what Asuna said while we were on
the ground, then decided it wasn’t the right moment.
A quick look around told me that nearly everyone else had recovered from their paralysis. Lind
and Kibaou were on their feet, but I saw Argo marching over toward them. For an instant, I even
forgot that Nezha was single-handedly keeping the boss occupied.
Argo the Rat was, along with me, one of the most prominent publicly known beta testers in the
game, and Lind and Kibaou were leaders of the anti-tester movement. As I expected, Lind didn’t even
pretend to hide his disgust, while Kibaou’s expression was more uneasy and uncertain.
“Hey, spiky. Long time no see,” Argo greeted Kibaou, ignoring Lind entirely. That’s when it hit
me.
Kibaou was the very man who’d attempted to buy my Anneal Blade through Argo. It was the kind
of shady dealing that no leader would want associated with him, and Argo could sell the details to
anyone who paid the price.
He didn’t respond to her greeting, so she continued, “If you’re gonna pull out, better do it now. But
if you want info, I can sell it to you. For the low, low price of … nothing.”

The moment Asterios’s lightning breath hit Lind and Kibaou, they were at the greatest risk of dying of
anyone in the raid. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that after just a few seconds of deliberation,
they chose to continue the fight. Of course, we wouldn’t know if that was the right choice or not until
the end of the fight. But the tables had turned significantly since the moment just after the boss
appeared. Nezha had successfully pulled Asterios’s aggro for over two minutes, giving the rest of the
raid enough time to recover from paralysis and refill their HP. On top of that, now we had the details
on the boss’s patterns.
“All right, let’s begin the attack! Teams A and D, forward!” Lind ordered. The heavily armored
tanks rushed in at King Asterios. Their body-blow charge hit him in the legs, finally drawing his
attention away from Nezha.
Instantly, he started to sway, as though all of the tension keeping him upright had snapped. Asuna
and I raced over.
“Nezha!”
 The former blacksmith looked up, his expression as weak as usual … but with a new core of
strength behind his smile. He held up the throwing weapon in his right hand.
It was the weapon I’d given him—a thick, bladed, circular throwing tool about eight inches
across. The only way to get it at this point was as a rare drop from the Taurus Ringhurler enemies in
this labyrinth. It fell under the Chakram subcategory of throwing knives, but unlike the actual
chakrams from ancient India, this one had a leather grip along part of the circle. The grip made it
useful for both throwing like a disc, or augmenting a punch like a set of brass knuckles.
Because of that versatility, chakrams in SAO couldn’t be used with the Throwing Knives skill
alone. They also required the mastery of Martial Arts, the extra skill that could only be learned from
the bearded master hidden deep in the mountains.
As he said himself three days ago, he could hit monsters with a thrown weapon without having to
worry too much about his perspective issues. But orthodox throwing knives were a quantifiable
weapon that ran out over time and weren’t suited for a main weapon. But the chakram was like a
boomerang: It returned to the thrower’s hand automatically. Thanks to that, he didn’t need to worry
about ammunition.
Nezha steadied his weary legs and held up his chakram. The blade was glowing yellow. Even
though I was the one who’d given him the weapon, I didn’t know the name of this sword skill.
“Yaah!”
With a powerful cry, his hand flashed, and the sparkling ring flew high in the air. It raced across
the ceiling, a brilliant burst of light, and hit Asterios on the crown with perfect accuracy as he raised
his giant hammer. There was another high-pitched clang, and the boss’s muscled torso writhed. One
of the attackers in Kibaou’s team shouted, “Nice!” from the taurus king’s feet.
The chakram hurtled back with alarming speed and smacked right back into Nezha’s hand, thanks
to the assistance of the game engine. He turned to me and Asuna and smiled again as though he were
about to burst into tears.
“It’s like a dream come true. Here I am… in the boss battle, playing a role …”
His voice quavered and died out there. Nezha swallowed and tried again.
“I’ll be fine! Go ahead and join the battle!”
“All right. Do your best to read his lightning breath ahead of time and stagger him before he uses
it. You’re the key to our victory!”
I turned around and saw not just Asuna but Agil and his band of hearty toughs, ready for action.
Wasn’t Agil supposed to be the leader of this team? I’ll have to apologize to him later for
taking over.
I shouted an order to the group. “Let’s go!”
They echoed my call, and we headed for the unceasing series of sword flashes centered around
our foe.
The true boss of the second floor of Aincrad, Asterios the Taurus King, was a third bigger than
even Baran the General Taurus. His paralyzing lightning breath had terrified us momentarily, but with
Argo’s knowledge of his patterns, the group had devised a safe and steady strategy that was chipping
away at his health.
The greatest role in the battle was undoubtedly Nezha and his throwing weapon, but it soon
became clear that the single strongest group was team G—not Lind or Kibaou’s forces, but the
Legend Braves.
 Like General Baran, Asterios used the area-effect skill Numbing Detonation, but Orlando and his
team were able to take the numbing effects at very close range without ever being stunned. When the
king lifted his mighty hammer, the other groups had to evacuate to safety, but team G stayed right on
him, continuing their assault without fear of his detrimental attacks. Even Lind had no idea when to
give the order for them to retreat.
All of the Braves had high debuff resistance, thanks to their heavily upgraded gear. The
unfortunate truth was that they’d “earned” the money for that herculean task through Nezha’s
upgrading scam, but now that Nezha was no longer a blacksmith, there was no longer any chance that
they’d take the heat for it.
“… It’s a complicated feeling, isn’t it?” Asuna mumbled when we retreated temporarily to drink
healing potions.
“Yeah. But at least they shouldn’t be able to do it anymore,” I replied, referring to the weapon-
switching fraud. “If they’re able to help us advance through the game like this, we’ll just have to
accept it. I still feel bad for those who lost their weapons, though.”
“Yeah …”
She still looked conflicted, so I took her mind off things by leaning in close and sharing an idea.
“Y’know, I don’t really feel like letting them win the battle MVP, so how about we fight back a
little bit? If the timing permits it, of course.”
“Fight back …?”
I lifted the edge of her hood and whispered into her ear. Asuna’s eyes looked skeptical and
exasperated, but she nodded in agreement. When she pulled the hood back up over her head, I thought
I detected a hint of a smile on her lips, but I couldn’t peer in close for a second look.
“Hey, Kirito,” Agil rumbled from behind, with an odd tone in his voice and an empty bottle in his
hand, “You said you weren’t a pair, right?”
Asuna straightened up and pivoted on her heel. Her voice was frosty.
“We are not.”
Fortunately, I didn’t need to weigh in on the topic, because a cheer broke out from the direction of
the battle. Asterios’s last HP bar had gone red. Our team’s HP had just hit maximum again, which
was perfect timing.
“Team E, pull back! Team H, up forward!” Lind commanded. I held up my free hand and clenched
my Anneal Blade +6. Even if it was our turn in the rotation, it spoke to Lind’s fairness as a leader that
he didn’t try to hold me back.
“Okay, hang on,” I said, waiting for the right timing. “Go!”
We darted in to take the place of green team E along the boss’s left flank. First, Asuna and I traded
off with single skills against those tree-trunk legs. The monster roared in rage and swiped at us,
which Agil and his friends blocked as they switched in.
Asterios’s size was certainly frightening, but on the other hand, the larger a monster was, the more
people could attack it at once. One full party was all that could fight Colonel Nato at a time, while
two could tackle General Baran, and King Asterios was large enough for three at once.
Team H took the left side, blue team B handled him front and center, and Orlando’s team G was
still tearing away at his right flank. The king’s black skin was burning through like coal, a sign of his
berserk state, but we were on pace to finish him off with this set.
“Vrrruaaraagh!!”
 With a terrible, primal roar, Asterios began to suck in air again. I didn’t need to see the sparks
around his mouth to know he was preparing his breath attack. But just as quickly as he started, the
chakram flew in and struck him on the crown. Lightning exploded harmlessly from the king’s nostrils.
If this was a normal MMO, that 100-percent-guaranteed stagger from the chakram would get
nerfed to oblivion, I thought to myself, referring to the practice of reducing its power to restore
proper game balance.
Floor bosses in SAO were a one-time affair—once defeated, they would never return. If Akihiko
Kayaba was indeed watching over the battle from afar, would he be gnashing his teeth at the sight of
his guardian, unable to stay poised long enough to unleash its best attack? Or would he be applauding
the ingenuity (and luck) of the players who hit upon this unlikely strategy?
We’re going to beat your second floor in just ten days, Kayaba! I thought triumphantly. A glance
at the king’s HP bar showed just a tiny sliver of red about to disappear. He raged even harder,
stomping three times in succession before raising his hammer. Team B pulled back, recognizing the
Numbing Detonation motion, while team G readied their best sword skills.
If the Legend Braves seized the Last Attack bonus here, they’d go from the backup force during the
Bullbous Bow fight to the best fighters in the game. But I wasn’t charitable enough to sit back and let
them reap those rewards. I had a beater reputation to uphold.
“Now, Asuna!”
I leapt as high as I could. The fencer kept right up with me—in fact, her jumping speed was faster
than mine. The force ripped the hood off of her head, and long chestnut-brown hair flowed through the
air.
“Vraaaah!!”
Asterios brought down the hammer. A circular shockwave spread from the impact point, followed
by bursts of sparks. Two of the Braves couldn’t fully resist, succumbing to the stun effect of this final
attack. Numbing Impact was weaker, but Detonation couldn’t be avoided just by jumping, so Asuna
and I would suffer the same effects once we touched the ground.
But …
“Sey-yaaaa!”
Asuna unleashed a fierce cry and shot off the rapier charge attack Shooting Star in midair.
“Rrrraaaah!”
I followed her with the one-handed sword charge attack Sonic Leap. We both shot up vertically,
followed by trails of blue and green light. We were headed straight for the forehead of King Asterios,
which was protected by his metal crown.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flashing of the three mobile members of the Legend Braves
firing off their own sword skills.
The next instant, our Anneal Blade and Wind Fleuret pierced the crown entirely and sank deep
into the enemy’s head. The crown splintered and cracked into pieces.
The massive body of King Asterios burst in an explosion that filled the entire coliseum chamber.
 13

“CONGRATULATIONS,” CAME A FAMILIAR VOICE, MAKing a familiar statement in Engli

with a familiar native accent.
Asuna and I turned, exhausted after the long battle, to see Agil’s smiling face. His meaty hand was
curved into a thumbs-up, which I returned. Asuna didn’t bother with that, but there was a rare smile
on her beautiful face.
Agil lowered his hand and let his eyes gaze into the distance. “Your skill and teamwork are as
brilliant as ever. But this victory doesn’t belong to you … it’s his.”
“Yeah. If it wasn’t for him, we’d have lost at least ten people in this fight,” I replied. Asuna
nodded in agreement.
Standing alone on the far side of the celebrating mass of players was the small figure of Nezha the
former blacksmith. He stared up at the ceiling, watching the vanishing fragments of the boss, golden
ring clutched in his hand.
I was distracted by a sudden cheer that rose from the group. At the center, Lind and Kibaou were
locked in a bracing handshake. The blue and green squads were applauding wildly, and I joined in by
clapping.
“Sheesh. They’re best friends after all …”
“At least until we reach the third floor,” Asuna noted sardonically. I got to my feet, whispered
thanks to my Anneal Blade for its duty, and returned it to the sheath. After pulling Asuna up to a
standing position and sharing a brief fist bump, I finally felt the satisfaction of the victory … of
winning safe and sound.
We’d finished the second floor of Aincrad. It had taken us ten days, and there were zero fatalities
in the boss battle.
After taking an entire month on the first floor, and losing our promising leader Diavel in the fight,
this was better than I could have hoped for. But I reminded myself that we were a hairsbreadth from
being wiped out entirely. The sudden and surprising appearance of King Asterios nearly killed Lind
and Kibaou, not to mention Asuna and me.
We learned two lessons from this battle.
One, fulfill every quest around the last town and the labyrinth, because they might impart info on
the boss.
And two, we had to assume that every boss from this point on had been changed in some way from
the beta test. Of course, we’d only made it to the ninth floor in the beta, so once we reached the tenth,
it was all new to us regardless.
Not only did gathering info through quests become important, but so would scouting out the boss
first. The latter would not be easy, however. Most boss monsters didn’t appear until you reached the
back of the chamber and destroyed some key object, so there was no guarantee that a reconnaissance
party would escape safely. There were a fair number of speedy scout types among us, but very few
that could use throwing tools.
From this point on, the role of Nezha the chakram-thrower, as well as Argo, would become even
more crucial.
 I took a quick look around the room and didn’t see the Rat, even with my Search skill—she must
be hiding again. I nudged Asuna and we made our way over to Nezha.
When the ex-blacksmith saw us, he smiled radiantly, as though a great weight had been lifted from
his shoulders. Nezha bowed and said, “Great work, Kirito and Asuna. That last midair sword skill
was incredible.”
“Well, actually …”
I scratched my head uncomfortably. I didn’t want to tell him that it was just me trying to make sure
I beat Orlando’s group to the prize. Instead, Asuna answered for me.
“Incredible? That was your appearance. How did you manage to use a brand-new weapon with
such skill? You must have practiced quite a lot.”
“No, it didn’t seem hard to me. I mean, I finally got to be what I’d always wanted. Really … thank
you so much. Now I have …”
He trailed off and bowed deeply one more time, then turned back to face the center of the room. I
followed his gaze and saw a group of five about twenty yards from the crowd. They were lined up
and exchanging handshakes—Orlando with Lind, Beowulf with Kibaou, and the three others with
other leading players. They wore the proud smiles of true heroes.
If you looked at the results screen for the battle against Asterios, the score based on damage
defended and caused by the Legend Braves would easily outclass any other team. They’d found their
place front and center among the best players in the game. I didn’t know if they’d end up joining
Lind’s Dragon Knights or Kibaou’s Liberation Squad, or if they’d start their own guild. But …
“Nezha, shouldn’t you be there with them?” I asked. But the single most important person in the
fight simply shook his head.
“No, it’s fine. There’s something else I still need to do.”
“Huh? What’s that?” I asked. Nezha looked at me and then at Asuna, whose brows were furrowed
in apparent understanding. He bowed once more, then lovingly traced the surface of his chakram’s
blade with a finger, and began to walk away.
That’s when I noticed that three players from the raid were coming this way. At first, I assumed
they were coming to thank and congratulate Nezha, but their faces were hard. After examining the tall
man in front with the broadsword, I finally realized why. This man, now wearing a breastplate over
the blue doublet of Lind’s group, was none other than Shivata, the man who’d asked Nezha to upgrade
his sword five days ago. Next to him was another man in blue, and the third wore the green of
Kibaou’s team. They were all scowling.
Shivata pulled up in front of the Nezha and growled, “You’re the blacksmith who was working in
Urbus and Taran just a few days ago, aren’t you?”
“… Yes,” Nezha replied.
“Why did you switch to a fighter? And how’d you get that rare weapon? It’s a drop-only item,
isn’t it? Did you make that much money from smithing?”
Oh, no.
Shivata’s tone of voice said that he already suspected Nezha of shady dealing. Even if he didn’t
have a clue about the weapon-switching trick, he was clearly guessing that some kind of foul play had
occurred.
In truth, Nezha’s chakram was a rare weapon, but not particularly valuable. After all, it required
both the Throwing Knives supplementary skill and the Martial Arts extra skill to use. But explaining
all of that wouldn’t remove the suspicion from Shivata’s mind.
Eventually, all of the celebrating players fell silent, including Lind, Kibaou, and the Legend
Braves, watching this new turn of events. Most had looks of grave concern, but even at a distance, the
panic and tension on the faces of the Legend Braves was written plain as day.
In the moment, neither I nor Asuna knew what to do.
It would be easy to speak up and say that I gave him that chakram. But was deflecting the brunt of
Shivata’s anger and forcing him to back down really the right choice? It was undeniable truth that
Nezha had seized Shivata’s precious, treasured Stout Blade and broken a spent weapon in exchange.
Shivata used all of his willpower to control himself at that moment. He left without insulting or
blaming Nezha. The broadsword he wore now was two ranks below his old Stout Blade. Shivata had
done his best to power it up in the five days between then and now, and had managed to survive
through this terrible battle. Did we really have the right to trick him again, to lead him away from the
truth?
Nezha sidestepped my indecision entirely. He laid his chakram on the ground and got down on his
knees, then pressed his hands to the ground and lowered his head.
“I deceived you, Shivata, and the two others with you. I switched out your swords before
attempting to upgrade them, replacing them with spent weapons that I broke instead.”
The coliseum was full of a silence even heavier than the one before the battle, ear-piercing and
thick.
Sword Art Online had an astonishing system of re-creating players’ emotions on their virtual
avatars, but if there was one glaring weakness, it was a tendency to exaggerate for effect. I hadn’t
seen it for myself, but from what others said, it took very little time for sadness to manifest as tears. A
happy feeling translated to a wide smile, and anger was represented by a reddened face and a bulging
vein on the forehead.
So the fact that Shivata’s only response was a furrowed brow was a true testament to his self-
control. By contrast, the two men at his sides looked as though they were ready to explode, but they
held it in as well.
I looked over at Asuna and saw that she was trying to suppress her feelings as well, but her face
was visibly paler than usual. I must have looked the same way.
Shivata’s hoarse voice finally broke the painful silence.
“Do you still have the weapons you stole?”
Nezha shook his head, hands still firmly on the floor.
“No… I already sold them for money,” he rasped.
Shivata clenched his eyes shut at the answer, but he knew it was coming. He only grunted, then
asked, “Can you pay me back the value?”
This time, Nezha had no immediate answer. Asuna and I held our breath. Far behind Shivata,
standing at the left edge of the raid, Orlando’s group was visibly uncomfortable.
In terms of simple feasibility, the sum of money that he’d taken from them was far from impossible
to raise again.
Only ten days had passed since Nezha and the Legend Braves had started their fraud. The market
prices for those items couldn’t have changed that much, so if they sold off the assets they’d bought
with the money they received, it should turn back into roughly the same amount.
But that was where the problem lay.
 It wasn’t just Nezha who had spent the money they’d unfairly earned, but the entire Legend Braves.
The brightly gleaming armor covering their bodies was that very sum of money in physical form. In
order to pay back their victims in col, Orlando and his group would have to sell off their equipment.
After they’d just played a major role in this boss battle, would they really just give up the source of
their power? And more fundamentally, how did Nezha plan to get out of this situation?
As I watched, holding my breath, the short ex-blacksmith answered, forehead still scraped against
the floor tiles.
“No… I cannot repay you now. I used all of the money on all-you-can-eat meals at expensive
restaurants, and high-priced inns.”
Asuna sucked in a sharp breath.
Nezha wasn’t trying to weasel his way out of anything. He was going to take responsibility for all
of the crimes, and force Shivata and the others to focus their anger and hatred solely on him. He was
covering for his companions, the ones who treated him like a nuisance and egged him into committing
those acts.
The large member of Lind’s team to Shivata’s right finally snapped.
“You… why, you filthy—!!” He raised a clenched fist and stomped his right boot on the ground
multiple times. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to see your favorite, beloved sword smashed to
pieces?! And you sold it off … to have yourself a feast?! To stay in deluxe hotels?! Then you use the
rest to buy yourself a valuable weapon, barge into the boss battle, and fancy yourself a hero?!”
Kibaou’s companion on the left shrieked, “When I lost my sword, I thought I’d never fight on the
front line again! But my friends donated some funds to me and helped me gather materials … You
didn’t just betray us, you stabbed everyone fighting to complete this game in the back!”
And like a lit fuse, those shouts caused all the other players who’d been silently watching this
scene to explode.
“Traitor!”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”
“You caused our pace to slow down!”
“Apologizing isn’t going to fix anything!”
Dozens of voices overlapped into one mass of angry noise. Nezha’s lonely back shrank, as though
succumbing to the pressure of all that rage.
When the crowd’s anger at beta testers threatened to explode during the planning for the first-floor
boss battle, Agil had been the voice of reason. But there was nothing he could do here. He and his
companions stood off at a distance, watching pensively.
Orlando’s group was equally quiet. The five of them were whispering to each other, but it was
inaudible over all the angry bellowing.
I couldn’t do anything but watch, either. There was no magic word to solve the situation at this
point. Now that the truth of Shivata’s weapon was open knowledge, the only thing that could mend the
wrongdoing was an equal sum of col, or something similarly heavy …
Suddenly, I remembered something Nezha had said just minutes before.
I finally got to be what I’d always wanted. Really … thank you so much. Now I have …
… nothing left to regret.
Those were the final words he’d said, the ones I couldn’t hear.
“Nezha… you can’t mean …” I mumbled.
 One of the two people who had the power to bring this scene to a close strode forward, his hand
held high. Blue hair and blue cape. A shining silver scimitar at his waist. Lind, the leader of the raid.
Shivata’s trio stepped back to give him the stage, and the furious shouts that filled the chamber
gradually died down. When it was at least quiet enough to have a conversation, he spoke.
“Will you tell us your name?”
At that point, I realized that Nezha was never a part of the raid party as classified by the system. It
was one thing for Argo, who passed on her info and split, but Nezha took on a crucial role in hitting
the boss’s weak point. He deserved to be part of the raid, and we’d been one short of the limit,
anyway. The only team with five members was G … the Legend Braves.
Something rubbed me wrong about the fact that Orlando hadn’t extended a party offer to Nezha, a
friend since before the days of SAO. But more important than that was how Lind decided to rule on
this situation.
“… It’s Nezha,” the ex-blacksmith said, still prostrate on the ground. Lind nodded a few times.
His features were sharp by nature, but he looked more nervous now than he did in the midst of the
battle. He cleared his throat.
“I see. Your cursor is still green, Nezha… but that speaks to the severity of your crime. If you’d
committed a properly recognized crime and turned orange, it would be possible to return it to green
through good karma quests. But no quest will wipe your sins clean now. If you cannot repay what you
owe to others in the game … we will have to find a different means of punishment.”
He can’t, I thought to myself, teeth gritted. Lind’s thin lips grimaced, then opened again.
“It was not just swords that you stole from Shivata and others. It was a great amount of time that
they poured into those blades. Therefore…”
Some of the weight lifted off my shoulders. Lind was about to demand that Nezha pay back his
crimes by contributing to the game’s advancement, and most likely regular payments over a long-term
period. It was the same punishment that Diavel would have meted out if this had happened ten days
earlier.
However …
Before Lind could finish, a high-pitched voice drowned him out.
“No… it wasn’t just time that he stole!”
A green-clad member of Kibaou’s team ran forward. His skinny body shook left and right as he
screeched—

“I … I know the truth! There are plenty more players he stole weapons from! One of them had to
use a cheap store-bought weapon, and ended up getting killed by mobs he’d handled just fine
before!!”

The vast, masterless chamber fell silent once more.

After a few seconds, the blue-clad man next to Shivata spoke again, his voice hoarse.
“If … if someone’s died because of this … then he’s not just a swindler anymore. He’s a puh …
puh …”
The scrawny green man jabbed a finger forward and said what the other one couldn’t.
“That’s right! He’s a murderer! A PKer!!”
It was the first time I’d heard the term PK in the open since we’d been trapped in the flying castle.
 It was one of the most well-known terms among all the many MMOs out there. It wasn’t short for
“penalty kick,” or “psychokinesis,” or anything like that. It stood for “player kill,” or “player
killer”—the act of killing another player, rather than a monster.
Unlike most MMORPGs made these days, PK-ing was possible in SAO. There was absolute safety
within any town, thanks to a stringent anti-crime code, but that protection disappeared outside of town
limits. The only things that protected players then were their own equipment, skills, and trusted
companions.
In the month-long beta test, a thousand players cooperated and competed in a race upward,
sometimes erupting into combat where players crossed swords with one another. But PK did not
apply to honest duels between two willing combatants. A player killer was someone who set upon
unsuspecting adventurers in the wilderness or dungeons, a pejorative term slapped on those who
killed for fun and profit.
Several times during the beta, I’d been attacked by PKers, but not once since the full game
launched. On the very first night, I was nearly killed by another former tester who formed a party with
me, via MPK: a monster player kill, using monsters to do his dirty work. But that was a passive
means of killing and done in an attempt to win a quest item to further his own survival.
Now that the chaos of that initial starting dash had died down, it was impossible to imagine
someone committing a true PK for the purpose of sick pleasure.
With the linking of our virtual and physical fates, PK-ing was out-and-out murder. In a normal
MMO, engaging in such behavior was a form of roleplay, but that excuse didn’t fly anymore. After
all, killing players—in particular, players who showed enough willpower to venture into the
wilderness and fight for themselves—only prolonged the possibility of our eventual freedom.
The day I met Asuna again in Urbus and we went Windwasp-hunting together, I said that wearing a
burlap sack for a mask would make me look like a PKer. The only reason I made a joke like that was
my belief that no one in Aincrad would actually stoop to such a thing. But here we were, and that ugly
term was out in the open.
The skinny dagger user from Kibaou’s team kept shrieking, his finger still pointed at Nezha’s head.
“A few bows and scrapes can’t make up for a PK! No amount of apologizing or money is going to
bring back the dead! What’s your plan? How are you gonna make this right? Well?!”
There was a painful edge to his voice, a screech like the point of a knife scraping against metal.
Within a cold, sobered corner of my mind, I wondered where I’d heard it before. The memory came
within an instant.
This dagger-wielding man had leveled a similar charge against me, right after we beat the first-
floor boss. “I know the truth! He’s a beta tester!” rang the voice in my ears. I’d shut him up by
haughtily demanding that he not lump me in with the other testers, but that trick wouldn’t work here.
Nezha’s tiny back absorbed all of the accusations hurled at it. He clenched his fists atop the stones
and spoke, his voice trembling.
“I will accept … whatever judgment you decide upon.”
Another silence.
I felt like every person present understood the meaning behind the word “judgment.” The air in the
coliseum grew even colder and pricklier than before. That invisible energy reached a critical point,
everyone waiting for the one person who would break the tension.
Eventually, I succumbed, ready to tell everyone to just wait a moment, even though I didn’t have
any ideas of how to follow it up.
But I was half a second too late. One of the dozens of raid members who’d been inching up on
Nezha finally uttered a short burst.
“Then pay the price.”
It was just four words, a statement that didn’t hold any specific meaning of its own. But it was like
a pin that burst an overinflated balloon.
Suddenly the chamber was full with a roar of noise. Dozens of players were shouting all at once:
“Yeah, pay the price!” “Go apologize to the ones who died!” “Live by the PK, die by the PK!”
Their cries grew more and more overt until spilling into direct threats.
“Pay with your life, fraudster!”
“Settle your account by dying, you PK-ing bastard!”
“Kill him! Kill the filthy scheming scum!”
I couldn’t help but feel like the rage on their faces wasn’t entirely anger at his crime. There was
fury and hatred for the game of Sword Art Online that had trapped them here, as well. It was the
thirty-eighth day since we’d been locked in this flying fortress. Ninety-eight floors remained to
conquer. The overwhelming, desperate pressure of those astronomical odds had finally found an
outlet, a target ripe for punishment: a swindler and murderer among our ranks.
Neither Lind nor Kibaou had the means to resolve this situation now. Even I’d just been sitting on
my heels the entire time, watching the scene unfold, since Nezha had admitted to his crimes. My eyes
wandered until they happened across the five Legend Braves standing at the side of the raid. They
weren’t shouting like the others but staring down at the ground, avoiding looking at Nezha.
You should have known this could happen someday, Orlando … Didn’t you ever see it coming?
I asked silently, but there was no answer. In fact, if I was making accusations, the same went for the
man in the black poncho who’d taught them the trick. If he was generous enough to show them a fancy
trick for free, why didn’t he explain the potential dangers to them?
Unless …
What if this situation—the group turning on Nezha, demanding his execution—was exactly what
the black poncho was hoping for in return?
In that case, what he wanted was not the help of the Braves, but the opposite. He wanted Nezha to
be killed at the express desire of all the top players in the game for his direct role in the scam. That
would create a precedent for direct player-on-player killing and lower the mental hurdle to reaching
the act of murder across Aincrad.
If my fears were correct, that man in the black poncho was the real PKer here. But rather than soil
his own hands with the act, he set up other players to do the dirty work for him, dragging them down
to his level.
This was bad. We couldn’t allow his devious plan to work. We couldn’t have Nezha publicly
executed. After all, I was the one who recommended that Nezha switch to a combat role and make up
for his crimes by helping advance the game. In effect, I brought him here to this situation. I had a
responsibility to prevent his death.
Amidst the hail of jeers, someone finally moved into action. Not Lind, not Kibaou, not even Nezha
—but the Legend Braves.
They slowly crossed the vast room, metal armor clanking, toward the prostrate Nezha. Orlando’s
bascinet visor was half-down, so I couldn’t see his face. The other four marched in step with him,
their faces downcast.
The semicircle of Lind, the dagger user, and Shivata sensed that something was happening, and
they stepped back to make room for the newcomers.
The group came to a halt with heavy footsteps. Nezha must have sensed the approach of his former
comrades, but he did not look up. His fists were still balled on the floor, his forehead pressed to the
tile. Orlando stopped directly across from Nezha, the chakram placed on the floor in between. His
right hand moved to his left side. Asuna gasped.
His gauntleted hand gripped the hilt of his sword and pulled.
Orlando’s weapon was, like mine, an Anneal Blade. It appeared to be powered up to a similar
level. If he was going to strike Nezha’s unprotected back, it would only take three or four hits to
finish the job.
“Orlando …”
I called out the name of the paladin who had just helped defeat the boss monster minutes ago.
You spent far more time with Nezha than I ever did. But I can’t stand here and watch you kill
him—no matter what that does to my reputation.
I put all of my weight into my right foot, preparing to dart forward the instant he raised his blade.
At the same time, I sensed Asuna shifting position as well.
“Don’t do anything, Asuna.”
“No,” she said flatly.
“Don’t you get it? If you interfere with this, you won’t be allowed among this group anymore. You
might even be labeled a criminal.”
“I still won’t stop. Don’t you remember what I said the first time we met? I left the Town of
Beginnings so that I could be myself.”
“…”
I didn’t have any time or arguments with which to convince her. Instead, I merely sighed in
resignation and nodded.
Somehow, the angry shouting that filled the coliseum had turned to silence again. Everyone
watched wide-eyed, waiting with bated breath for the fateful moment.
And perhaps because I was concentrating so hard… I picked out the quiet voice from Orlando’s
helmet, even though I was nowhere near close enough to hear it.
“I’m sorry … I’m so sorry, Nezuo.”
The paladin laid down his sword next to the chakram on the ground. He took a few steps and got
down on his knees next to Nezha, facing the same direction, removed his helmet, and put his hands flat
on the tile.
Beowulf, Cuchulainn, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu followed his lead, setting down their weapons and
helmets and getting into a line with Nezha at the center.
Amid dead silence, the five—no, six Legend Braves bowed in apology to the rest of the raid.
Eventually, Orlando spoke up, his trembling voice the only sound in the coliseum.
“Nezuo… Nezha is our partner. We’re the ones who forced him to commit that fraud.”
 14

“SO WHY DO WE HAVE TO BE THE ERRAND-RUNNERS here?” Asuna grumbled as s

trudged along.
I shrugged and answered, “What can you do? It’s just the way it is.”
“No, not that! We were a party of two during the first boss fight, but this time we had a full six!”
“Only because Agil was considerate enough to let us join him. We’ll need to thank him when this
all blows over.”
Asuna raised an eyebrow at me.
“W-what?”
“Nothing. I’m just wondering if your skill at getting along is earning a few proficiency points.”
“That’s …” my line, I wanted to say, but I held it in. “That should be clear, since I have a gift for
him, too.”
“Oh? What’s that, the Mighty Straps you found in the labyrinth?”
“… Ooh, good idea. I’ll have to give those to him, too.” I patted my fist into my palm.
Asuna looked at me doubtfully, then her eyes went wide with understanding.
“Oh, I know! You’re going to foist that thing you’ve been keeping in the inn chest off on Agil!”
“Indeed.”
She was referring to the large Vendor’s Carpet that Nezha left with me when he abandoned his
blacksmithing and went off to learn the Martial Arts skill. It was an expensive and useful item, but
offered little benefit to a combat-focused character. Plus, it couldn’t be placed in one’s inventory, so
it had to be rolled up and hoisted around by hand.
“Agil might be a warrior, but he seems likely to know some promising future blacksmiths,
wouldn’t you suspect? I’m sure Nezha would be happy knowing that it went to good use.”
“But what if Agil himself wakes up to the lures of running his own business?”
“… Then I’ll be his first customer,” I answered glibly.
Asuna sighed and glanced ahead. We were walking up the spiral staircase between the second and
third floors. But for some unknown design purpose, the stairs spiraled around the entire eight-
hundred-foot-wide tower, meaning that we actually had to walk a distance of over 2,500 feet … plus
height.
But because there were no monsters on the staircase, it was still a much easier exit from the tower
than going from the boss chamber all the way down to the front entrance.
As the roving strikers (or, if you prefer, leftovers) of the raid, Asuna and I had been given our
orders by Lind: to leave the labyrinth, which was shut off from all instant messages, and deliver the
news of our victory to all the players who were eagerly awaiting an update.
Normally this would be the job—no, privilege—of Lind or Kibaou. But the main raid force could
not leave the boss chamber for another hour or so. Not because they were locked inside but because
they were too busy talking. The debate raged on about how to deal with Nezha and the Legend
Braves.
But I no longer had any concerns about the outcome of that discussion. The instant that Orlando
and his partners had laid down their weapons and admitted their sins, the conclusion was foretold.
No matter how heated up the group was, they weren’t so bloodthirsty that they would execute a group
of six players, and the addition of the Braves to the guilty side changed the equation: Now Shivata
and the others could realistically be repaid for their lost weapons.
Orlando explained every last detail of the deception and removed all of his equipment, not just the
sword and helm. The other four followed his lead, and produced a small mountain of high-level gear
that would fetch a price beyond my estimation.
He told the group that if they turned all of these items into cash, it would surpass the value of the
lost weapons—they’d sunk their own honestly earned money into the armor as well—and serve as a
repayment for all the victims of their scheme. If there was col left over, it could be used as a potion
fund for the next boss battle.
Now that the damages were able to be repaid, the remaining problem was the player who died
because his weapon was stolen.
Under the current configuration of SAO, no amount of money could make up for a lost life. The
Legend Braves offered to go find the fellow’s companions and apologize in person, if that would help
in any way. When they asked the dagger user who’d brought this story up, he backed down on his
assertion, saying that it was just a rumor and he didn’t know the name.
In the end, the group decided to ask the information agent to discover the truth of the matter. The
first controversy over player-swindling in Aincrad was about to reach a close without bloodshed, but
there was one problem remaining: how to convert the dozens of pieces of high-powered equipment
into cash.
There was always the option of selling them to NPC merchants in town. But the NPC’s prices
were always kept below the market rate by the “invisible hand” of the system in order to combat
inflation. If we were going to get the maximum value, the transactions had to be with other players.
The people with the most col and the largest need for good equipment were the front-line players.
So Lind and Kibaou considered the possibility of selling that equipment to the few dozen players
present in the boss chamber and donating the money to Shivata’s group of three. Of course, there were
more victims of the scheme than just the people present here, so proper payment would need to be
made once everyone went back to town.
So the delay in leaving the boss chamber was due to a spontaneous auction. Sadly, none of the
items was suitable for agile leather-wearers like me and Asuna—and even if there were some, I
wouldn’t have been in the mood to buy and equip them. As we stood around feeling relieved that a
peaceful solution was found, Lind came over and said, “If you don’t have anything better to do, could
you leave the dungeon and tell the newspapers that our conquest was successful?”
I couldn’t find a good reason to decline his request, so I prodded the reluctant Asuna, and we went
out the door in the back of the chamber to the next floor. Agil and his friends waved goodbye, but we
didn’t have an opportunity to say anything to Nezha the former blacksmith.
As soon as Orlando and his friends lined up around him, his little back trembled and shook with
constant sobs.

“Well, it seems like the case of fraud is going to wrap up safely … What do you suppose Nezha and
the Braves are going to do next?” Asuna wondered as she climbed the gently sloping staircase.
I mulled it over. “Depends on them. They can’t prevent the tale of the Braves’ shady behavior
from spreading around the front line. Either they’ll have to avoid everyone here and go back down to
the Town of Beginnings, or start over from scratch and try to reach our level again. Before we left,
Lind told me that if they wanted to, he’d allow them to keep a minimum of col necessary for the
equipment they’ll need to hang around. But no matter what they choose, they won’t treat Nezha like a
third wheel.”
“Hmm … To be honest, I’m still not sure how I feel about Orlando … But if they do make it back
to the front line, I’ll do my best to work with them. I mean, even you did all right with Lind and
Kibaou, didn’t you?”
I nearly missed a step.
“I-I haven’t changed my attitude a bit! If anything, they’re the ones who are acting weird. Kibaou’s
totally anti-tester, and Lind’s trying to raise an elite fighting force, so solos like me are only an
obstacle to his goals. And yet, both of them were being oddly normal …”
Asuna momentarily looked frosty when I uttered the word solo. She sighed and said, “As usual,
you’re completely clueless.”
“Huh? How so?”
“If all of the frontier players were under the lead of either Lind or Kibaou alone, they would have
been much more open about excluding you. But the blue Dragon Knights and the green Aincrad
Liberation Squad are jockeying for power even as they work together, right?”
“Um, yeah …”
“In the current situation, they’re both on edge. They think that if they antagonize you too much,
you’ll end up aligning with the other team.”
“Me? With either blue or green?” I came to a standstill and chuckled. “Ha-ha, no way. They’d shut
the door in my face, even if I actually wanted to join. I’m the evil beater, right? I mean, even today
…”
I shut my mouth and started hopping up the steps. Asuna hurried to catch up, looking skeptical, then
raised a finger in sudden understanding.
“Hey, by the way, what happened to the boss’s last attack bonus? On Asterios the Taurus King, I
mean. I didn’t get the prompt.”
“Uhh, ahh, umm …”
“And now that I think about it, didn’t you win the LA on Colonel Natoand General Baran? You
didn’t get the king too, did you …?”
“Um, well, that’s, uh—hey, is that the exit?”
“Oh, no, you don’t! You did win it, didn’t you? What did he drop? Tell me!”
Suddenly we were both jogging up the stairs. At the end of the gently curving staircase was a thick
door decorated with a relief. The scene was of two swordsmen facing off among gnarled old trees.
The left was dark-skinned, and the right was pale, but both were slender and fragile, with pointed
ears.
The picture was meant to represent the theme of the floor ahead, I thought to myself.
Nezha—no, Nataku. You were the real MVP of the second floor. Come on back to us. The front
line’s a scary, dangerous place … but it’s where you’ll find what you really wanted. And the front
line needs you, too. After all …
“In a way, the third floor is where SAO really starts,” I said aloud. Asuna caught up to me, looking
puzzled rather than harassing me more about the LA.
“It is? Why is that?”
I started off with my now-familiar, unhelpful refrain: “Um, well …”
And savoring each and every step, I crossed the final thirty feet of the second floor of Aincrad.
 AFTERWORD

Hello, this is Reki Kawahara, author of Sword Art Online Progressive 1.

The word progressive might make you think of video formats, but in this case it is meant in the
“incremental increase” sense. I chose this title to represent the task of conquering Aincrad bit by bit,
from the very first floor. From this point on, I’ll be using the abbreviation SAOP.

So first of all, I should explain why I decided to start writing this series.
If you’ll permit me to repeat what I said in the afterword of the first volume of SAO, I wrote the
story as a submission for the Dengeki Novel Award, so I had to finish the story with the game being
beaten, right in the very first installment. Later on, I wrote a number of shorter prequel stories that
filled in gaps (see Volumes 2 and 8), but they’re more like little episodes, and don’t focus on the meat
and potatoes of the players advancing through the game.
So I’ve always harbored a secret desire to write about how Kirito and the others cleared each
floor and defeated each boss in the game, it just didn’t really happen until now. Because I’m now
trying to write it all over again from the first floor, it creates a number of issues.
Biggest of all is how to deal with Asuna, the heroine. In the previously published series, Kirito
doesn’t get to know Asuna until much, much later. If I depicted Kirito as working with Asuna on the
first and second floor of Aincrad, it would contradict what I’ve already published.
For a long time, I wavered between two options: avoiding that contradiction by starting off
Progressive with a different heroine, or embracing the contradiction and going with Asuna right from
the start. Ultimately, I admitted to myself that it didn’t feel right having anyone but Asuna at Kirito’s
side, and I suspect that most of my readers feel the same way. So I decided to have Kirito meet Asuna
right away.
Of course, I’m certain that some readers will not be able to accept the contradictions with what
I’ve written before, and that’s okay. But I will do my utmost to make sure that the choices I make line
up with the established events as best I can. My hope is that you’ll be able to overcome my
inconsistency and enjoy this new series for what it is.

Now that I’ve gotten my customary apologies out of the way, let’s go over each of these stories.
“Aria of a Starless Night,” the story of the first floor of Aincrad, picks up right after the story of
“The First Day,” which is found in Volume 8 of the main series. We see characters that had only
appeared in name before, such as Kibaou, future leader of the Army, and the information dealer, Argo
the Rat. Then, of course, there are old favorites like Agil before he became a businessman, and Asuna
when she was just a beginner to MMORPGs. It was a very strange mix of the new and familiar as I
was writing. Of course, Kirito is still Kirito.
Part of the point of Progressive is to explain the systems of SAO in greater detail, so “Aria”
spends a lot of time covering the concept of a “boss raid.” I hope you really got the feel for a great
big group of eight parties of six members each. If it didn’t make sense to you, watch the second
episode of the SAO anime series, please! Ha-ha.
The story of the second floor, “Rondo of a Fragile Blade,” features a whole host of new faces. It took
me quite a while to decide if the character of Nezha should be a man or a woman. Eventually, I got
the feeling that having him be a girl would pose a whole new set of problems, so I took the easy route
in making him a man.
I meant to have this tale feature the weapon upgrading system, but I let it slip away from me a bit,
and the result was more of a mystery story surrounding the concept of upgrade fraud. Since there
wasn’t much fighting in the early part of the story, I wanted to feature a nice, meaty boss battle, and
ended up bringing out quite a nasty boss for just the second floor of the game. If that happened in a
real MMO, I would totally throw in the towel!

Those two stories made up the first volume of SAOP. I’ve already got the title of the third-floor story
picked out: “Concerto of Black and White.” In game system terms, I’m going to focus on the theme of
campaign quests.

Well, now that I’ve gone and done a sneak peek for the next volume, I should probably come clean
and admit that I don’t think I can write more than one volume of Progressive a year. So if I cover two
floors a year, when will I actually get to the seventy-fifth floor …? I’m too scared to consider the
possibilities! Hope to see you in Volume 2!

And of course, I’ll be continuing with the main SAO series. Part Three of the Alicization arc,
Volume 11, should be coming out in December. Kirito and Eugeo will be tackling the mysteries of the
Underworld. Please check it out.
Also, the continuation of SAO means that I’ll need to skip Accel World this time around. Deep
apologies! But since Volumes 9 and 10 of that came out in quick succession, it should be back to its
normal schedule now. I’m not sure how long I will be able to keep up writing a book every other
month (in fact, it’s already looking hairy) … but I’ll do my best!

Thanks once again to my illustrator abec for eagerly tackling two series at once, to my editor Mr.
Miki for eagerly (I think) tackling this five hundred–page monster of a book, and to my vice editor
Mr. Tsuchiya for dealing with the ulcers (I assume) of waiting for my very late replies to every
message. And to those of you who read to the end of this very thick book, the greatest LA bonus of my
gratitude!
Reki Kawahara—August 2012
 Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.
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