Sword Art Online - Volume 27 - Chapter 7

7

Fortunately, there was no second boss before the exit of the staircase dungeon.

Including the battle with the golem, we climbed a total of six hundred feet inside the earth-enclosed tower in only an hour before leaving through the half-crumbled great doors on the other end.

The damp night breeze caressed my face. Up in the sky, a scythe-like crescent of white hung over a pitch-black curtain.

I looked around. The torchlight alone didn’t show much, but I could tell that the area was grassland that rose and fell slowly. The rest of the raid party members followed us up out of the staircase’s exit, a stone enclosure that looked like old ruins. It reminded me of the exits from the staircases between floors in Aincrad.

“All right, people! Ten-minute break! If you wanna log out and use the restroom, now’s the time!” shouted Holgar, the leader. A few people took a knee and opened their ring menus. The instant they hit the LOG OUT button, their avatars slumped lifelessly. I thought I was used to the way Unital Ring did not remove a player’s avatar after logging out, but it was still a bit nerve-racking to see so many of my companions looking utterly comatose like this.

Obviously, the rest of the gang couldn’t read my mind, but Klein walked over anyway and kicked at the ground, as though testing it out, just in case.

“Hey, Kiri, is this really the second tier of UR?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me…”

“Well, fine, point taken. But it just doesn’t feel real…I figured there would at least be an obvious difference in the environment graphics, or some cute NPC girls to congratulate us…”

“……”

If Agil were here, he would have pulled Klein aside at that moment and said, Congratulations! in his beautiful baritone voice, but Dicey Café was hosting a party that was renting the place out, so both he and his wife, Hyme, were out this evening.

After a bit of thought, I said, “Come over here,” and dragged him behind the staircase enclosure. It took less than sixty feet to reach the sight—no, the vista—I expected to see.

The ground simply vanished up ahead, as cleanly and totally as though God’s knife had cut it loose.

Below was forest and grassland, glowing in the pale moonlight, as far as the eye could see.

“Hooooooly…crap…”

Klein marveled at the view and started to approach the sheer cliff edge for a better look, until I quickly reached out and grabbed him by the back of his bandana.

“Hey, chill! You fall, you’re dead!”

“I know, I know. It’s just…man, what a view…”

“Now you can believe that we’re on the second tier, though, right?” I said, equally blown away by the sight before us.

The entire stretch directly below, covering probably hundreds of square miles, was the Great Zelletelio Forest, the base of our adventures over the past six days. A little blob of orange light visible from here had to be good old Ruis na Ríg.

Farther off in the distance was the surface of the Maruba River, shining with reflected moonlight. And much, much farther off, glowing vaguely in the distance, was the Stiss Ruins, the starting point for all ALO players. Just in front of the ruins, a sharp, dark silhouette to the east of it was the fallen castle of New Aincrad.

Given the vast size of it, even with the bottom quarter crushed flat, the distance from the ground to the tip had to be well over twenty thousand feet. It was a massive structure that we were still looking up at, even from the distant second tier, and there were no lights on it.

When we traveled to the Stiss Ruins, Alice was in the party, and she worried about what had happened to the NPCs who lived in the castle. It was concerning, and at the time, I had wanted to investigate when I had the chance, but it had been four days since then.

When our exploration of the second tier has calmed down a bit, we’ll head back to New Aincrad, I thought, making a note in my mental schedule.

“All right, time for the meeting!” Holgar shouted in the distance, drawing my attention. I took one last look at Ruis na Ríg, then shuffled back two steps before turning around.

“Welp, guess it’s time for one more shift at the adventurin’ factory,” Klein said, stretching luxuriously.

“Time to clock in,” I agreed, and trotted back to the rest of our companions.

According to Argo, who continued proving to be an all-around excellent info dealer in Unital Ring, and Friscoll, a spy from Mutasina’s army, the second tier was roughly split into four areas.

The west and east areas were forest terrain. The north area was snowy terrain. And the south area, where we were, was grassland terrain.

Each area had a number of smaller villages and at least one midsize town. NPCs lived in these villages and towns, which could be valuable waypoints on the route to the land revealed by the heavenly light, but at the moment, all NPCs were extremely hostile and would apparently attack you as soon as you got anywhere near their homes.

At that point in Argo’s lecture, Leafa raised her hand and shouted, “Ooh, ooh! But the only factions that are ahead of us are Asuka Empire and Apocalyptic Date, right? What if they just messed up their first contact opportunity, and it’s not that all NPCs are hostile by default? Is that possible?”

“Of course it’s possible,” Argo said. She scooped up a nearby dead branch and used it to sketch out a model of the world of Unital Ring on the ground.

“The Asuka team is makin’ their way through the northern snowy region, on the opposite side of the map from us. AD is in the forest region to the west. Asuka’s on the far side o’ the world, and the AD base is hundreds o’ miles away, so we can’t make direct contact inside the game. Everything I’ve told you is secondhand and thirdhand information I got in the real world…so it’s not all that reliable,” Argo explained, shrugging.

Friscoll took over. “My info about Asuka and AD is about the same, but there’s one curious thing I heard about…Lately, a bunch of folks in ALO starter gear have shown up around the Stiss Ruins, asking lots of newbie questions.”

“…And how does that relate to Asuka and AD?” Sinon asked.

Friscoll spread his hands. “This is just my personal theory, but I wonder if they’re Asuka or AD spies.”

“Spies…?”

That ominous word caused concern to visibly take hold of Zarion and Ceecee, who were receiving real-time interpretation from Asuna.

It seemed unbelievable to me, but it wasn’t impossible.

At present, ALO’s management company wasn’t accepting any new registrations, but following the rules of The Seed Nexus, as long as the server was running, no game could refuse a character conversion from a different game. In other words, players from Asuka Empire or Apocalyptic Date could convert abandoned characters they had previously made on other accounts into ALO, thus “making” new characters they could send into the Stiss Ruins hundreds of miles away as spies.

But would the factions currently in the lead really go to those lengths to find out more about the status of the ALO faction? Once converted, those characters were useless for anything other than collecting information.

Friscoll could practically read my mind, though; he looked at me and grinned. “Kirito here might be underrating our humble group, but I think both Asuka and AD are wary of ALO—specifically, Kirito’s team. Not just because of our waypoint of Ruis na Ríg, but because the leader is the famous Kirito.”

“…Just so we’re clear, I’m not the anything, and I don’t remember claiming this raid party should be called Kirito Team or anything like that,” I announced.

For some reason, Sinon gave me a very smug, “It’s too late for that now. If you really want a different name for us, you’ll have to list some suggestions.”

“……”

Well aware that I was terrible at coming up with names, I could only grit my teeth and groan. The rest of the group burst into laughter.

Three minutes later, we had come to the collective agreement to avoid approaching any NPC settlements we found and to withdraw if attacked first, without retribution. We refilled our TP and SP before moving onward.

The faint trail from the staircase enclosure headed north. It was exactly ten o’clock, the time of night when things were just getting really started, but having arisen at four o’clock this morning to travel to Roppongi and go on a huge adventure in the Underworld, I was definitely feeling the fatigue now.

Asuna was under the same circumstances, however, and she was sticking it out, plus I had gotten an extra thirty minutes or so of sleep thanks to Kikuoka’s car ride. You can do this! I told myself, and started walking.

The monsters in the grassland at night were all animal types, such as hyena-like carnivores, gazelle-like herbivores, and surprisingly speedy tortoises. But true to their billing as second-stage foes, they were all clearly stronger than the ones in the Zelletelio Forest.

And yet we were doing more with our time than just focusing on town-building. Sinon and I were over level-20, others like Leafa and Silica were level-18 or level-19, and even the latecomers like Asuna, Argo, and Klein had reached level-16 or level-17. It hurt not to have Alice, who was so effective on offense, but we still managed to defeat all monsters without running into trouble, and after thirty minutes of travel, we reached a point where the grassland ended.

The path gently descended toward a river at least sixty feet across, which flowed from northeast to southwest. On the far bank of the river were the silhouettes of what seemed to be multiple buildings. Not a single light was lit, and the majority of the roofs and walls were collapsed, so it seemed this was a ruin, not an active settlement.

Of course, we didn’t know that for sure, and even if there were no residents, there could still be monsters there, so caution was required. If we wanted to check it out, however, we would still have to get across the river.

Argo and Ceecee went first, and once we confirmed that there was no danger in the sand or water, the rest of the group descended to the waterside. Kuro stuck its snout into the river to drink, while Aga just leaped into the water to swim across. The fact that it could do so meant the water was significantly deep here.

Upon a closer look, the path we were following met the river at the remains of what seemed to be bridge girders. There had probably once been a grand bridge here, but it had been destroyed long ago, like the ruins on the far bank. But was it caused by a natural disaster or by someone else?

“This river seems dangerous for us to try swimming across,” murmured Asuna, who was watching Aga cross the river’s length.

“True. I don’t see any aquatic monsters so far, but there’s got to be at least six feet of depth in the middle, and it’s flowing fast…”

“Meaning we’ve got to build either a bridge or a boat.”

“The bridge will have a high cost, so I’d like a boat instead, but you need sawed thick logs for that. And there are no large trees around here,” I pointed out, looking around.

While this was primarily grassland, it wasn’t as if there were no trees whatsoever. Most of them, however, were short and shrub-like, and I hadn’t seen a single large, proud tree yet. When I went to the Stiss Ruins with Alice, we made a crude large dugout canoe. Was that in my inventory? I started to go to my menu to check, then remembered it was too heavy to fit; we had left it moored on the bank of the Maruba River.

So the grassland was easy to traverse, and we didn’t struggle for water or food, but it had the downside of making wood and stone materials hard to come by. In Unital Ring, you needed wood and stone to build anything, so if we wanted to build something on the scale of Ruis na Ríg here, that was going to be a major struggle.

To that end, the Apocalyptic Date faction proceeding through a forest zone had a major advantage. It also made me wonder how snowy it was in the north, where the Asuka Empire people were active.

I was lost in thought when I heard two sets of footsteps approaching from behind. Asuna and I turned around together.

“Do you have a minute?” asked Holgar, who was accompanied by Friscoll. They were looking not at me, but at Asuna.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He sounded apologetic. “Well, if possible…we were hoping that your pet might help us cross the river. We’re really short on resources to build either a bridge or a boat.”

“Help you…Oh, you mean by having Aga take people over on its back one at a time?”

“Exactly.”

Friscoll added, “There aren’t many trees ’round here, and if we start gathering material for a bridge or boat, it’ll take at least an hour. That lizard seems to be a good swimmer, and we were thinking it might be able to take one person at a time.”

“Ah yes…”

Asuna watched Aga swim effortlessly through the water. It looked less like a lizard and more like some massive waterfowl, and it didn’t seem like it would have trouble carrying a single person across. The issue was what would happen if a problem arose—the player would get washed away, not Aga. Most likely, somewhere downstream was a waterfall that would drop you six hundred feet to the first tier again, so if you couldn’t climb out before then, you were going to die.

I would have preferred to test this plan in a different body of water first, but there was no time. If only there was some safety device we could prepare…

“I’ll test it, then!” said Yui, hopping out from behind Holgar and Friscoll with her hand raised.

“What?! N—”

Asuna swallowed the word no before it could escape her mouth. She must have determined that it wasn’t a good idea to simply forbid Yui from doing everything without giving her a chance.

I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, either, but if anyone was going to be a test pilot, Yui would be ideal as the lightest member here. Even still, I wanted a safety measure. On the fourth floor of Aincrad, Asuna and I had inner tubes, but that alone would not be safe now. Even if you avoided drowning with the inner tube, it wouldn’t help if you still sailed over the falls.

Asuna surely saw the same downsides, but she shook it off, opened her menu, and materialized a coil of thin rope. It wasn’t the crude ubiquigrass rope that had played such a key role in the game so far, but a rope made of much finer white fibers.

“What’s that?”

“I made this rope out of thread that Needy spat up for me,” she replied.

I was briefly shocked. Needy was one of the Insectsite Sixes who came to Ruis na Ríg with Zarion. He was a type of cricket and could eject tough thread from his mouth. Needy was the one who had tied up Friscoll (who had been a spy for Mutasina’s army at the time), so any rope made from his threads was sure to be plenty tough.

First, Asuna had Yui stash her equipment into storage, then tied the rope tight around her in a bowline knot. “If you fall into the water, don’t panic, Yui. We’ll be sure to pull you back to shore.”

“Yes, Mama!” Yui cried. We called Aga over and had it hunch at the water’s edge. I picked Yui up and placed her on Aga’s back. We hadn’t tested riding the agamid before, but its skeletal structure was conveniently concave near the front, making it an ideal place to sit.

Yui clung to the base of Aga’s neck, while Asuna took a few steps back, holding the other end of the rope. She watched the far side of the river. I looked there, too, and into the water itself, but didn’t see anything that suggested monsters.

Satisfied, Asuna gave her pet its orders. “Aga, swim slowly to the other side of the river, without dunking underwater!”

“Quak!” it cried confidently and began to swim without so much as a splash. It paddled through the water with limbs and tail, keeping its back exposed to the air. Eventually, it reached the midpoint, where it nimbly adjusted its propulsion and continued swimming with almost no pushback from the water’s flow. The length of the rope didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem.

Every one of our old friends was aware that Yui was an AI, but we hadn’t told Holgar or Zarion yet. How did they see the fact that Yui had the appearance of a little girl and called me and Asuna “Papa” and “Mama”? Surely they didn’t assume she was a real child, but what other interpretation was there?

While I was distracted by these thoughts, the girl and agamid continued their journey, and they finished crossing the sixty-foot-plus river in less than thirty seconds. When Aga climbed onto the far bank, Yui slid off its back and waved to us, beaming. Aside from the hem of her dress getting wet, it seemed like there hadn’t been any trouble worth mentioning.

“Thanks, Yui! Can you undo the rope?” Asuna called out.

Yui said, “Uh-huh!” and without much trouble, undid the rope that Asuna used all her strength to tie on.

That made it possible for Asuna to pull it back across the river. “Just wait there for a little bit! Aga, come on back!”

The giant agamid quacked and jumped back into the water. This time it dived down and used its full body to swim, making the trip back in less than half the time.

“Okay, I think this’ll work. Are you next, Kirito?” Holgar asked. For a moment, I wavered. I wanted to get over there to help Yui, but she might not want me to treat her like an eternal child who needed protection. Yui had proven that she was a full-fledged warrior equipped with smarts and bravery of her own.

“…Nah, I’ll go later. Let’s start with the lightest. Silica or Argo should be next…”

I glanced over at my companions—but at that moment, Kuro suddenly stood up and growled a warning.

“…?!”

I followed its gaze to the other side of the river. Yui was looking back our way in her white dress, confused.

Over her right shoulder, the grasses parted—and a human-sized shadow leaped forth and began racing right for Yui.

“Yui!!”

“Oh no, Yui!!” Asuna cried.

Yui was already on the move. A human player would have turned around and tried to see their attacker first, but she just started running without a second thought. She must have realized that, with everything unequipped, she couldn’t fight back, so jumping into the river and swimming was her better option.

That was probably the optimal choice in this scenario. But the pursuer reached Yui with unimaginable speed, reached out with an arm that was much longer than it should have been, and grabbed the collar of her dress.

She had jumped out over the water, but the hand pulled her backward. At last, I could see the figure of her attacker in the moonlight.

Its pelt was all black hair. Its freakishly long arms held Yui tight, and its equally long tail swung back and forth.

It was a monkey. Its build was clearly not human, so I assumed it was an actual monster and not a player wearing furs. But while it had Yui in its grasp, it was not attacking her. If it harmed her HP bar in any way, that would flip the hostile flag and allow me and all the other party members to see its spindle cursor, but it was almost like it was purposefully avoiding that.

The monkey readjusted its grasp on the struggling Yui, shot a glance at us on the other side—and turned tail, racing off downstream along the river.

Blam! Sinon shot at the monkey with her musket. But the shot only kicked up sand near its feet and did not seem to have hit the target. It was likely she was unable to get off an ideal shot for fear of hitting Yui.

But at least the gunshot had the power to undo the paralysis that had taken control of me.

“Asuna, get on Aga!” I shouted, straddling Kuro. I gave it the order to go, and the panther bolted at top speed.

Over my shoulder, I could see Asuna leaning over Aga like a jockey on a racehorse. Even on land, the giant agamid was more or less as fast as Kuro.

The monkey that kidnapped Yui was about thirty yards ahead on the far bank. If it were the black-haired monkey alone in the darkness, I might have lost sight of it, but Yui’s white dress picked up the moonlight and made it possible to follow them.

“We’re leaving her up to you, Kirito!” shouted Lisbeth from the rear.

We’re going to save her! There’s no other option! I swore to myself, hunching as low as possible to reduce every last bit of air resistance.