Sword Art Online - Volume 24 - Chapter 6

6

It was 10:40 PM.

After its very unexpected twists and turns, the “friendly” gathering dispersed, and Argo and I slipped out of the arena among the crowd.

I wanted to leave early after checking it out, but the developments had required us to stay and watch every last bit. Alice and Kuro were left all on their own for too long. I wanted to get back to them now, but if we didn’t at least visit the shops, I’d have suffered this Debuff for nothing.

We asked a passing player where to find a shop that would buy our items and made our way to a building at the corner of the market. The elderly merchant, who was well-built but pale, took a look at all the hyena, bison, and newt skins and bones and such, then quoted us a value of three el and seventy-eight dim.

“……Three el?”

Argo and I put our heads together. The hyenas were one thing, but the bison—officially named long-haired gale cattle—were one of the more dangerous monsters on the Giyoru Savanna, and the newts and axolotls from the giant wall dungeon were anything but weak. That was all he’d give us?

The shopkeeper seemed to sense our skepticism of his offer. “Listen, folks, I’m sweetening the pot for you. They’re all rare materials around these parts, you see. But there’s only so much value in these untreated hides and such.”

“Ahhh, so they’d be worth more if we tanned them ourselves first…”

I considered retracting the offer to do that first, but I had no idea what tools would be necessary and what the steps were, and it was even less clear when we might actually visit this town again. I was hemming and hawing over the options when a man dressed in leather armor inspecting the shop’s display case in the corner turned and said, “Hey, buddy, three el and seventy-eight dim is a huge fortune, you know that? I’ve been sitting here wondering whether to buy ten of these items for a single dim, if that puts it into perspective.”

…Is he an NPC? Or a player?

“In fact, where’d you get such high-quality furs? Is there a good collection spot around here? I’ll pay three dim for the details.”

Judging that he was a player after all, I said honestly, “It’s not very close. Farther north of where New Aincrad fell.”

“Ugh, you’ve been that far already? So I guess you’re one of those fancy frontline guys, despite the shabby duds.”

“F…frontline? You call people that?”

“At first, we had terms like hard cores or sprinters or top players, but at some point, we settled on that one. Hey, weren’t the front liners gathering at the coliseum? They were making all kinds of noise before it got real quiet. Something happen?”

I almost reached for my throat but resisted the urge.

“Nah…but I did peek in on them. Thanks for the advice.”

“Sure thing.”

The man turned back to the shelf, so I returned to the shopkeeper and said, “I accept your offer.”

“Then we’ve got a deal. Thank you.”

There was a jingling sound effect, and the materials on the counter vanished. A message appeared in my view, informing me that I’d earned 1-el Brass Coin ×3, 1-dim Copper Coin ×78.

Just in case, I peered around the interior, but I didn’t see any bullets or gunpowder. I waved to the shopkeeper and left the building, exhaling and walking north.

“So I guess Sinon’s hundred-el silver coin is serious cash. I guess it’s like the equivalent of ten thousand col in SAO or so? Wonder where she got it,” I said to my partner but didn’t get an answer. In fact, ever since we left the arena, she’d been extremely reticent.

“Um, Argo?” I said, staring under her hood. Argo came to a stop. When she finally spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically hoarse and limp.

“…I’m sorry, Kiri-boy. You took the shot from that screwed-up spell in order ta protect me…”

“What, you feeling self-conscious about that?” I asked after a split-second pause. I had to remind myself, That’s the Rat, not Little Miss Tomo Hosaka! and slung my arm around her shoulders. “If we’re going by that, I couldn’t even tell you how many times Argo’s strategy guides saved my hide. Compared to what I owe you from the SAO days, this is nothing. What have I always said? Every night ends in the dawn, and every curse wears off one way or another.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever heard ya say that. But yes, it’s true that there should be a way to dispel that magic,” she said, nodding.

That brought something to mind. “Uh, and speaking of that magic,” I said, “would you mind not mentioning it to Alice or Asuna for the time being? I’d rather wait until I’ve got the means to undo it before I talk about it.”

“That sounds just like you, Kiri-boy.”

She slipped out from under my arm, looking a bit more like the scheming info dealer I knew so well.

“I won’t tell ’em. But I can’t guarantee what’ll happen if they slip me money.”

With my new coins, we bought food from the stalls here and there, and scooped up as much free water from the well as we could carry, before we sprinted back to the abandoned room near the north gate. We put on our armor again at the entrance, then went inside. I sent a message while we traveled, but just in case, I knocked twice before opening the door.

“You’re late!” Alice promptly scolded me.

“Gra-rooo!” whined Kuro, the two coming in stereo. I rubbed at the black panther’s neck as it leaped on me and said to Alice, “Sorry, sorry, things didn’t exactly go to plan…”

“You couldn’t have at least given me an estimate for when you’d return?”

“Uh…good point. I’ll report in next time…In fact, I suppose I should do the same for everyone guarding the town while we’re out…”

“I already sent a message that we wouldn’t be back until midnight at the earliest.”

“Th-thanks for that. Um, this is for you, if you want it.”

I pulled out some of the food we’d bought and laid it on the aged table in the center of the room. It was just from a food stall, so the ingredients weren’t the finest, but each one had a rather enticing look and smell, from the pita-sandwich-like thing consisting of crisped pouches of bread with grilled meat and vegetables inside, to the shish-kebab-like thing with heaps of sliced meat jammed onto a skewer and fragrantly seared, to the quesadilla-like thing with thin batter enveloping cheese and onions and cooked until melting.

But when Alice saw the food, she just glared at me.

“Kirito, did you…?”

“Oh! No! I didn’t spend Sinon’s money on this. I sold some of my materials to make the money. Here, you can have it back…Unfortunately, we didn’t see any bullets,” I said, returning the leather pouch with the hundred-plus el in coins.

At last, Alice’s expression softened. “I will trust you on the contents. So in that case, I happily accept your offer.”

She took a bite of the quesadilla, chewed a few times, then said, “It’s quite good.” Alice was an Integrity Knight in the Underworld, a position more exalted than even the emperors of the human realm, but her tastes were not as refined. If anything, she preferred more rustic, common food. Of course, her machine body in the real world didn’t have the ability to eat, so she could experience cooking only in the virtual world. But in ALO, she typically requested hamburg steaks, stew, and spaghetti for meals. Asuna did her best to re-create curry and ramen for Alice, but that ongoing experiment had been interrupted partway by this whole incident.

Praying that we’d one day get the chance to sit around the meal table with Alice in the real world, I took the shish kebab. Kuro pressed its head against my waist, so I slid some pieces off the skewer and fed them one by one to the panther.

Idly, I wondered what would happen to the world of Unital Ring once someone reached the land revealed by the heavenly light. Would it disappear forever? Would Kuro, Aga, and Misha go with it?

“Aren’t ya gonna eat, Kiri-boy?” asked Argo, holding a shish kebab in one hand and a quesadilla in the other. I looked up.

“I’m eating, I’m eating.”

I grabbed a pita sandwich and lifted it to my mouth. I didn’t have much appetite, to be honest, but I needed to refill my TP and SP before we left. I took a huge bite out of the sandwich, getting a realistic sensation of thin-sliced meat and raw vegetables crunching between my teeth. Unital Ring’s graphics were far beyond those of any existing VR visual engine—and so was its taste modeling.

Who would do this and why? I wondered for the umpteenth time as I ate the pita.

The moment we passed through the north gate into the field, I realized that I had forgotten to do one thing.

“Oh…Argo, did your ancient ghost quest update at all? Did you need to take care of that?”

“It’s fine. We had more important things ta do,” Argo admitted.

On her other side, Alice asked, “What in the world happened?”

“We’ll explain as we move.”

Once I was sure there were no other players in visible range, we started running northeast.

I described the events at the gathering, leaving out one specific piece of information, and Alice’s expression grew more disturbed the further I got. When I was done, she couldn’t hide the fury in her voice.

“Who does that Mutasina woman think she is?! If I had been there, I would have cut her in two!”

“Actually, she had a really high level. Probably higher than any of us.”

“That does not matter! But…it is good to hear that neither of you were hit by that curse, if it got everyone else.”

My omission, of course, was the fact that I had taken the Noose of the Accursed spell as well. Fortunately, the neck protector of my armor hid the curse line branded on my throat. When I admitted the truth to her later, she would be more than furious, of course, but if I told her now, she would turn back to the ruins and attempt to avenge me against Mutasina.

“Well, I had plenty of practice cutting through magic in ALO,” I replied, glancing at Argo. The info dealer shot me a look that said, I know, I know, so I moved the conversation forward.

“The real problem is that Mutasina and the hundred-plus high-level players under her control are going to be attacking our town. This isn’t the kind of situation we can defuse with discussion. We’ve got to be ready to fight back.”

“When will they attack?”

“Mutasina said it would be the day after tomorrow…the night of October 1st. Their plan is apparently to take two days to boost everyone’s equipment to a minimum of fine leather, so it might be later than that but definitely not earlier,” I explained.

Argo deftly tilted her head with surprise as she ran. “But, Kiri-boy, you really think all hundred people who were there are gonna take part in the attack? Mutasina’s suffocation magic is pretty crazy, but she can’t do nothin’ to ’em if they log out, ya know?”

“Sure, that’s true…but not logging in to the game means not taking part in trying to beat Unital Ring. Those were advanced players in that stadium, the kind you called front-runners back in the day. If their only other option was to throw in the towel and give up, I think they’d submit to Mutasina’s hand around their necks and keep pressing onward to the finish line.”

“…I suppose you’re right. I mean, the frontline folks in SAO kept pressin’ onward, and their very lives were on the line.”

“Yeah. They were insane.”

“I’d like ta go back to those folks and give ’em a survey. Ask who they thought the most insane was,” she said with a smirk.

As this conversation continued, we blazed across the grassland at top speed. We had to make our way around a number of hunting parties, but there was no real trouble, and we made it back to the river—what Mutasina had called the Maruba River.

I had given it a greater-than-half chance of being gone, but our dugout canoe was right where I’d anchored it in the water. Argo was quite impressed with our creation; I sat her in a spot near the stern, put Alice in front of her, and let Kuro take the helm again. I pulled up the anchor, tilted the oar, and sent the canoe swimming upstream.

If only we could float upstream all the way back to the Great Zelletelio Forest. It wouldn’t take that long before we heard that same deep rumbling that we did on the trip out. It was hard to make out the scale of it by moonlight, but Alice estimated the drop at a hundred feet, a massive waterfall. There was no way this canoe—or any other boat—was getting back up there.

“That’ll be it for the boat,” I murmured.

Alice replied ruefully, “I’m afraid so. We’ll have to pull over to the side and break it down into materials.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” I said, then wondered, Wait, shouldn’t that be, “Aye, aye, ma’am”? But then I realized Alice might not understand the English words anyway.

I was about to turn the oar to starboard when Argo abruptly snapped, “Not so fast! Kiri-boy, you know there’s somethin’ you oughtta do before you break down this boat!”

I blinked with surprise. “Do? Like what?”

“C’mon, you’ve got a giant waterfall in a virtual world! There’s only one thing to do, dummy!”

“…Ohhh.”

I smirked as I realized what she meant. But it wasn’t as simple as that.

“Listen, Argo, this might be a game world, but it’s a realism-based VRMMO. One wrong move could completely shatter this boat.”

“So don’t make a wrong move! C’mon, full speed ahead!” Argo instructed irresponsibly. Kuro yowled in agreement. I told myself that the boat would get destroyed one way or another anyway, and I pushed the oar forward again.

“Ah…what are you doing?” asked Alice with some consternation.

I gave her a vague “There, there” and continued our forward motion.

“But, Kirito, the falls—”

“There, there, there.”

“The waterfall!”

“There, there, there, there.”

While this was going on, the canoe reached the wide waterfall basin. The massive falls and their ever-present roar were right in front of us.

I focused on the falls, lit by the moon and stars, and saw huge rocks jutting out on either side that made it impossible to swing around. There was one point near the center of the falls, just to the right, where a single tree stuck out and left the stream a bit weaker beneath it. If we were going in, that was the spot.

“Okay, here goes! Hold on tight!”

I tilted the oar with both hands as far as it could go, rowing left and right at maximum power. The canoe accelerated swiftly, charging toward the deluge from above, which shone silver in the light of the moon.

“Kirito! Don’t be reckless! Miracles don’t happen twice!”

Presumably, Alice was referring to the fact that we’d fallen down this cliff and survived. I didn’t necessarily disagree with her, but I tended to play the wild card to her straight man.

“No, there will be a miracle! I’ll make it happen!” I shouted baselessly. The canoe charged into the roaring falls at maximum speed.

First Kuro roared, “Graoowr!” then Argo hollered, “Yahooo!” and Alice screamed, “Kyaaaaaa!”

All I could see was blue. Incredible water pressure clamped onto my shoulders, pushing the boat downward. If the side of the canoe dipped any lower, the water would flood in and sink us.

“Hrrrrrrg!”

In my mind, I wailed, I shouldn’t have done thiiis! but nevertheless, I kept rowing for all I was worth. The canoe did not move forward, however. Just when I expected it to sink for good, the pressure on the oar eased up. I looked back and saw Alice, water beating down directly on her back, holding the tip of the oar.

With the strength of two together, the oar creaked against the great pressure of the water, but it helped shoot the canoe forward to break through the torrent at last. In an instant, the roaring and pressure were gone, and I had a brief moment of disbelief before I quickly stopped our forward progress. The boat slid several feet forward in calm waters and came to a stop.

“…Is everybody all right?” I asked, since there was no way to tell through the pitch-black surroundings. Argo and Kuro responded from the front, and a moment later, I heard Alice’s exasperated huff behind me.

“Well…we’ve survived, I’ll give you that. But I absolutely refuse to be party to a third attempted miracle.”

“Thanks for the help,” I said, pulling a torch out of my inventory and lighting it. As I raised it higher, I thought about how much I’d like a lantern by now…or even better, light magic.

The firelight exposed a mammoth natural cavern. Clusters of stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites grew from the banks of the water in strange configurations. Behind us, I could see a narrow exit through which the back of the waterfall was visible. If we’d hurtled into the waterfall even three feet to either side, we would have crashed into solid rock and sunk.

With that done, I looked around the cave again. The floor was covered in gently flowing water, which meant we could keep moving the canoe forward…but something else was more important.

“There…iron! Iron ore!” I cried the instant I spotted the reddish-black rock jutting from the gray walls, all the unpleasantness of being doused forgotten. “Whoa, and there…and over there!”

“Look, calm down, Kiri-boy. We should be thinkin’ of what to do now, not worryin’ about ore…”

“No, ore is more important than the future!” I paddled the canoe closer to the right bank. “Take the oar, Alice…The flow is gentle here, so you can just hold it upright in the water.”

“…Very well,” said the knight, accepting the helmsman position with resignation. I stuck the torch into the socket on the side of the canoe and jumped onto solid ground. The surface was slick and slippery, so I carefully made my way around the stalagmites to approach the ore.

The first time I’d discovered iron ore, in the bear’s cave in the Zelletelio Forest, I’d had to use a primitive method, chipping at it with a stone ax. It took lots of time, and I didn’t get much from it. But now, I had a fine iron pickax, courtesy of Lisbeth. I took it out of my inventory, gripped it tight in my hands, and smacked it hard against the ore sticking out of the wall.

The impact made a high-pitched clink sound and created sparks that leaped and bounced. In the real world, you’d extract ore like this by breaking the other rock around the vein, but here, that would only give you plain rock. You had to smack the exposed ore itself. An ore vein this size would take at least thirty hits with the stone ax, but my trusty iron pickax created a big crack in the ore after just eight swings. Two or three more, and the ore would crumble to the ground in several chunks. I just had to be careful that it didn’t roll into the water behind me…

“Kiri-boy, above you!”

“Grau!”

Argo’s and Kuro’s warnings drew my attention upward. I thought it was going to be a monster, but instead I saw two massive stalactites swaying and shivering above me.

“Whoa!”

I jumped backward as hard as I could, right before the spires fell soundlessly and smashed into the spot where I’d been standing. I wasn’t wearing a helmet, so a strike on my head would have killed me instantly…or at least taken 20 or 30 percent of my health.

“A-are you all right?!” Alice called out. I lifted my hand to wave.

“I’m fine…Interesting. So the stalactites are set up to fall when you tap on the ores without paying attention…”

If I were alone, I would never have seen it coming, I thought, grateful to my companions for being here.

Argo, meanwhile, sounded more annoyed by the experience. “You don’t have a helmet to wear, do ya? Maybe you shouldn’t bother with this, Kiri-boy.”

“Urgh…”

It was true that I had no headgear in my inventory. In fact, from the SAO days until now, I had almost never worn a helmet of any kind. Not because I thought I looked cooler this way, but because, in a full-dive RPG, the downside to your sight and hearing outweighed the upside of the extra defense. Even Heathcliff, leader of the Knights of the Blood, who was a monstrously defensive-minded player, did not wear one, and that told me my logic was sound. After all, he was none other than Akihiko Kayaba, father of the VRMMO…

These were the thoughts passing through my mind as I returned to my spot in front of the cracked iron ore. “I don’t have a helmet, but I bet I’ll be fine as long as I pay closer attention,” I said to Argo, then raised the pickax.

Once I was sure there were no stalactites threatening to fall, I resumed smacking the rock. On the third hit, the ore broke into four pieces and tumbled to the ground. I quickly scooped up the pieces and tossed them into my inventory. The only place around the log cabin where iron ore could be found was Misha’s old cave, so our supply was not exactly robust. If I could fill my carrying capacity with ore and bring it back, it would be a huge help to our growing town.

After that, I stopped the canoe each time I spotted iron ore and resumed striking with my pickax. In addition to iron, there were small amounts of copper and silver ore. There was even a crystal, though I didn’t know what they were used for yet. I collected them all as we went farther into the cave.

It might have been a natural cave, but this was clearly a dungeon, so there were monsters now and then. The worst were giant bats that flew over three or four at a time, trying to extinguish my torch. Once the light was out, the three of us couldn’t swing until we got fresh illumination, lest we accidentally hit one another. But Kuro, true to its name as a dark panther, could see our enemies even in the darkness, and it batted down the speedy bats with its powerful front paws.

In less than half an hour, Alice, Argo, and I had filled our storage with natural resources, and I was feeling very satisfied…or at least, I should have been.

“…You don’t seem very happy,” Alice noted. I closed my window and acknowledged her.

“Yeah…the thing is, I realized something very inconvenient.”

“What is it?”

“This cave isn’t all that far from the Stiss, right? Which means it’s only a matter of time before Mutasina’s group of players finds it. And if you can get this much ore from here, it won’t be hard to outfit all one hundred of them in iron equipment.”

Alice’s expression tightened. The team led by Schulz, which had attacked us last night—apparently named Fawkes—numbered twenty-something, and about half of them had iron weapons. And we had just barely won that battle. If an army of a hundred all wearing iron attacked, we didn’t stand a chance.

“…Yes, that would be as disadvantageous as the Battle of the Eastern Gate,” she said, her voice hard.

The Battle of the Eastern Gate was the opener to the Otherworld War, which had embroiled all the Underworld. When the battle had happened, I was still comatose, so I had only the vaguest recollection of an oppressive atmosphere hanging over the human camp. But to Alice, it was the battle where she’d lost her one apprentice, Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One.

I felt bad that I was causing her to view PvP battle in Unital Ring the same way as the War of the Underworld…but then I reconsidered. To Alice, both were true battles that required her very best efforts.

I smacked my cheeks to scold myself for that moment of foolishness. When she gave me a curious look, I explained, “That doesn’t mean I can just give up. If a hundred people with iron weapons pull off an ambush on us, that’s that. But we know the enemy’s camp, and we know we can get iron ore here. If we put our minds together and come up with ideas, I’m sure we can find a way to win.”

“…Yes, that’s right,” said Alice with a smile.

“In that case, I’ll give ya a good idea right now. For free, even,” said Argo, who was stroking Kuro’s neck at the prow of the canoe.

“Wh-what idea is that?”

“We don’t want the enemy mining iron ore from this cave, right? So why don’t we just seal off the whole thing?”

“Seal off…the cave?!”

I was aghast for several seconds, then cast around. The cave was twenty to twenty-five feet wide—and about as tall, too. There were many branches, making its full size hard to grasp. We’d been moving slowly, gathering resources, but it had been thirty minutes without reaching the end, so it could be a good mile or two long, for all we knew.

“If we try to fill this place in, we’ll need ten trucks full of dynamite. And even here in Unital Ring, I’m guessing that kind of major landscape change is impossible to do,” I argued, using plain common sense.

But Argo just smirked back at me. “I’m not sayin’ we should fill the entire thing in. Just the exit behind the waterfall. If we seal it there, they can’t get in.”

“Oh…r-right. Yes, that’s true…but even that’s a huge task. Just whacking at the ceiling with a pickax isn’t going to do it…”

“Ah…that’s it. I understand.” Alice smacked her fist into her palm. “You don’t mean to destroy but to build.”

“Build…? Oh! I get it. You mean craft a stone wall right at the entrance,” I said, finally realizing what Argo was implying. I lifted my hand to snap my fingers but stopped myself before that. “But wait, that won’t work, will it? I mean, if a player could build a wall or staircase in a dungeon, you could make your own map shortcuts and mess with other players all you want.”

“Well, test it out and see,” Argo said.

I realized she had a point. So I took my unsnapped fingers and opened the menu instead, pulling up the Beginner Carpentry creation menu and finding Stacked Rock Wall on the list. The translucent ghost wall that appeared was colored gray because its initial position intersected with the wall of the cave, but sliding it to the side turned it light purple.

“…I think it works…”

“There, see? I had a feeling this aligned with the design philosophy of UR,” said Argo with confidence.

Out of the frustration of not thinking of this myself, I shot back, “What’s the design philosophy of UR?”

“In a word, excess. An excessively huge world map, excessively detailed graphics, excessively extensive skills and abilities…This entire game is designed ta challenge our gaming experience as players. Those who place boundaries around what they can do die first, and those who come up with ideas beyond the bounds of common sense are the ones who survive.”

“……”

I had no rebuttal for that.

When fighting the vengeful wraith, I’d used flaxseed oil to light my sword on fire and cut through the ghost, which was immune to physical attacks. But that was still an idea that relied on gamer knowledge. When the wraith was coming back together, however, Argo had snatched the torch from my hand and jammed it into the cut, causing it to explode. That was pure creativity, an idea that surpassed common sense.

In the SAO days, I’d come up with all kinds of wild ideas, too, and attempted them without fear. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of those ideas failed, but there were numerous times when that one successful idea had saved my life. But once I’d started playing and enjoying ALO as just a normal game, I’d lost that enterprising spirit. I’d lost my spark.

I wanted to smack my cheeks again, but I was still holding the stone wall ghost, so I clenched my fists instead. A number of rough-hewn stone blocks fell into place from nothing. A wall six feet to a side appeared at the edge of the cave wall.

“…Ya did it,” Argo said proudly.

“I did it,” I repeated, considering this.

If we could build walls here, we could even build a house and production facilities inside this cave, with enough space. In other words, we could make our own base. We could not just seal off the mouth of the cave with a wall—we could build up a base inside and produce a huge amount of iron ingots and make Kirito Town out of iron ore, right in here. It would be much more effective than hauling all of it to the distant forest. That, too, was a commonsense idea, rather than an uncommon one, but I felt it was worth trying.

But for now…

“All right. We’ll go with your good idea, Argo, and block off the entrance. It sucks that we won’t be able to explore all the way to the end of the cave, but oh well…”

“Why don’t we go to the end first, then? Mutasina’s army isn’t going to leave the ruins until the evening after next, right?”

“Well, that’s true…”

The march to attack might happen in two days, but they were already gaining levels and gathering leather, I knew. There was no guarantee that at least one of them wouldn’t find the waterfall and try to search beneath it, like we did.

“The thing is, I’m still a little worried, so I’ll go back to the entrance. You two search around here for now.”

“What?!” Alice exclaimed. “Then we should all go back…”

“It’s much faster to run along the water than make the trip there and back with the canoe. And I’ve learned how to deal with all these monsters.”

“Then go with this guy here,” Argo said, patting the back of Kuro’s neck. The panther growled, “Grau!”

“Uh…are you sure you two will be all right?”

“There you go, disrespecting me again,” Alice muttered, her cheeks puffing up like a sulking child’s. “My level is almost matching yours by now. Argo is an excellent fighter, too. You should be more worried about yourself.”

“That’s right. Listen, we’re not gonna try anything reckless, so you just take Kuro there with ya. In fact,” said Argo, patting the panther’s broad, powerful back, “do you suppose you could ride on this guy?”

“What, on Kuro’s back?”

“Give it a try.”

“But what if it gets mad about it…?” I replied. But in terms of physique, the panther certainly looked capable of it. I hopped from the canoe to dry rock, and Kuro followed me out, light on its feet, and went to lie down next to me without needing an order.

“…Kuro, do you mind if I ride you?” I asked. The creature growled, “Grau.” I interpreted that as a yes and timidly straddled its back. The moment my weight was resting on it, Kuro easily stood up, carrying me in full gear.

“Whoa…I think this might work…?”

“See? Now give it the order to run,” Argo insisted.

After a brief hesitation, I directed my panther mount, “Kuro, go!”

Immediately, it roared enthusiastically and began to race along the water’s edge inside the cave—despite the fact that there was only about four feet of dry space there.

“Aaaaah!!”

I was holding the torch with my left hand, so my right hand was all I had to grab onto the lapis-blue hair on the ridge of Kuro’s back. Behind me, I heard voices call out “Come back quick!” and “Be careful!” but they were growing quieter by the moment.

The floor of the cave was not flat but rippling, with sharp stalagmites sticking out here and there, but even so, the black panther nimbly leaped over all obstacles without slowing. Upon reflection, Kuro had initially run into that cave in the middle of the Giyoru Savanna to escape that hailstorm. Perhaps lapispine dark panthers made their homes in caves from the start.

It was my first time riding a panther, but I’d been on horses many times—virtual world only, of course. I recalled how to absorb the fierce rocking and shaking of the experience, and once I felt like I was in sync with Kuro, a new message appeared.

Riding skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1.

So the system categorized Kuro as a mount. That meant Misha, the thornspike cave bear, was, too, since it was holding five of those Patter children at once. As for Aga, the long-billed giant agamid, it was the same size as Kuro…but I couldn’t say anything for sure. I could ask Asuna to give it a try once we were back at the town.

Meanwhile, Kuro raced through the darkness. When we got to a fork in the path, it would follow my lead as long as I tugged in a direction on its back fur. Occasionally, monsters appeared, but I gauged that we could speed right past them. And even if I was building up a train of them behind me, there were no other players in the cave who might be endangered.

The trip that took thirty minutes on the canoe—including mining and battle time—took Kuro only seven or eight to finish on foot, as we entered a single straight section I recognized. I tugged back on the panther’s pelt to slow it down. The sound of the roaring falls was faint but growing.

“Kuro, stop.”

The panther immediately came to a halt, so I got off and gave the back of its neck a good ruffling as thanks, then I pulled out a piece of bison jerky to give it as a treat. For myself, I had some leftover shish kebab from the Stiss Ruins to chew on as I headed for the entrance to the cave.

When more light appeared ahead, I put out the torch, and I could see the opening, which let in the pale moonlight.

I took another good look at the size of the exit; it was about eight feet tall and wide. It felt narrow when we rammed the canoe through, but now that I was thinking of blocking it off, it seemed huge. On the other hand, I was just placing crafts there with the help of the menu, not stacking rocks one by one, so the size didn’t matter that much. The real problem was whether I could place a stone wall through the path of the river flowing through the cave, and to find out, I would have to test it.

My inventory was full of ore and crystals, so I materialized some of the ore nuggets and stacked them on the ground, then grabbed my pickax.

The wall of the cave still featured a hole where I’d extracted the first iron ore earlier. Resources in this world regenerated over time, but the cycle was quite slow compared to the average RPG. I aimed the pickax at a spot just to the side of the hole, and a single swing broke out a gray chunk. I picked it up and checked its properties: The name was Favilliteresite. If the familiar favillite found in unlimited quantities upriver was a kind of brittle limestone, then this was a smooth limestone, I supposed. That might make it a higher-tier material, but I doubted it was valuable enough to come here to mine.

After a while, I’d filled my inventory with all the favilliteresite I could hold, then collected a bit of clay from the water’s edge and selected Crude Stone Wall from the crafting menu. I put the ghost object just in front of the exit, but it turned gray, indicating that I couldn’t place it there. I sank it down into the water, but there was no change.

“I figured…”

That was all within my expectations, so I slid the ghost to the right, and it finally turned purple again when over half the base was resting on land. I clenched my hand there and created the stone wall. Then I dug out some more stone and clay and tried to snap it in place with the first bit of wall, but it wouldn’t turn purple.

“Hmm…”

Well, it stood to reason that a huge stone wall wouldn’t just float in the air without any support. And it was kind of crazy to attempt to block off the entrance to a dungeon anyway. I was about to call off the whole experiment when Argo’s words repeated themselves in my head.

This entire game is designed ta challenge our gaming experience as players.

I had to think, not like a gamer but like a carpenter.

The reason I couldn’t put the wall in the river was because it would block the flow of the water. So what if it was a structure that didn’t impede the flow? I scrolled through the Beginner Carpentry menu until my eyes landed on the name Crude Wooden Pillar. It required only one log. I knew I had a few logs of spiral pine left, so I hit the craft button, creating a simple circular ghost pillar. I swung it over the water, then pulled it downward, and when the bottom touched the riverbed, the object turned purple.

“Yes!”

Without thinking, I clenched a triumphant fist with my free hand, which caused Kuro to swish its tail from the ground nearby. Then I carefully adjusted its positioning and created the pillar. With a few more repetitions, I had created four pillars that acted as an extension of the original stone wall. That used up all of my logs, so I had to pray it would be enough.

I selected the stone wall from the menu again. This time, I snapped it to both the original wall and the four wooden pillars. Instantly, the gray ghost object turned purple, and I shouted, “Yes!!” After clenching my fist, a huge amount of stone tumbled into place, blocking 80 percent of the cave entrance. It was suddenly much darker, so I lit the torch again.

From there, it was just simple repetition. I put more stone and clay into my inventory, then added to the wall. I placed three side by side and two more on top, and then the exit was completely gone from sight.

But that was not truly sealing off the exit. It was just a crude stone wall, after all, and its durability wasn’t high enough to prevent it from being destroyed by appropriate means. The wooden pillars under the water were even weaker. But the walls I’d built were made of the same favilliteresite as the cave itself, so from the outside, its color and texture should be seamless enough that it would be very hard to detect that it was blocking the entrance to a cave.

It probably wouldn’t last forever, of course. But right now, all we really needed to do was prevent Mutasina’s army from equipping itself in iron gear.

I stuck my hand behind my throat guard to touch the choker-style symbol that I was keeping hidden from the rest of the world—my Noose. The breath-stopping magic hadn’t activated once since I’d left the ruins, so that probably meant Holgar and the others were playing nicely on her orders for now. I didn’t blame them. I never wanted to experience that terror again. It was like staring headlong into an encounter with death.

But I had to resign myself to it. When I eventually had a direct meeting with Mutasina, and she learned that I was under her Noose, she would activate the spell without a second thought. And the chances of finding the solution to the curse before then were slim.

In any case, I had to do what I could for now.

I lowered my hand and opened the ring menu, then sent Alice a message: Done sealing entrance. Heading back. She promptly replied with Got it. We’ve found the boss room.

“…‘Boss,’ she says,” I told Kuro, shaking my head. The panther just yowled, as if to say, “I’ve still got energy!”