SOMEONE ONCE WARNED ME THAT A FIVE-MINUTE chat with the Rat would end up costing you a hundred col. I wondered how many times that would happen for me to learn my lesson.
I trudged back into the forest, shoulders slumped. Every once in a while, I stopped to open my window and ensure that I was moving in the right direction—in the last four days, I’d mapped almost 90 percent of the forest.
Getting back to the dark elf camp didn’t require a map by now, but that wasn’t my destination. I set down coordinates in the center of the Forest of Wavering Mists, which covered the southern half of the floor, and made my way carefully for them. I was not heading for the town of Zumfut or the queen spider’s cave but the large forest elf camp to which the imposter soldier had fled. I couldn’t bemoan my carelessness now; this was the real point of my solo night expedition.
I had experienced “Infiltration,” the sixth quest of the campaign, during the beta. To complete it, I had to steal a scroll of orders from the forest elf camp. In it were top-secret commands from the leader of the forest elves, who was situated in their home base at the north end of the forest. Having done it before, I knew the contents of that “top secret” mission: to use a disguising charm and steal the Jade Key from the dark elf base. If that mission failed, the agent was to wait for reinforcements and lead an assault on the base…
In the beta, I was in a party of four with another four hired dark elves, and we led a midnight assault on the camp, killing all the enemy soldiers to steal those orders. If I tried to complete this quest with Asuna, Kizmel, and some of the soldiers from the base, we would probably have to use the same method.
But now, I felt a strong resistance to that idea. I didn’t want to force Asuna and Kizmel to kill a number of forest elves in their sleep, even if they were our foes.
I knew that was an illogical, meaningless, emotional reaction. And it was easy to imagine that if I completed the quest on my own and informed Asuna of that fact, she would be furious.
I could have explained it all to her, attempted to convince her. But Asuna—and likely Kizmel as well—would have resisted my request that she stay back at the base. And the way I intended to beat the quest was only possible alone.
My idea was not to steal it by the sword. I was going to sneak into the camp by myself and take it through stealth.
Now that a single fatal mistake was permanent, and I couldn’t just revive myself at Blackiron Palace, it was the height of stupidity to take such a risk on nothing more than an emotional reaction. Even worse, this quest had no bearing on clearing this floor and furthering the ultimate goal of freedom.
But even if I hadn’t teamed up with Asuna on the second floor and had adventured alone on the third floor instead—which easily could have happened on a whim—I would still be tackling this campaign quest alone. I’d have to complete the quest to steal the orders as a solo player anyway.
I had plans. Based on the title of “Infiltration,” one assumed that the quest had been designed for a player to beat it without drawing his sword. By the end of the beta, the orthodox strategy was for a player with a good Hiding skill to sneak in and do the job alone. At this point in time, my level and skill proficiency was far above what the quest required.
On the other hand, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t cause an accident of some kind and be forced to fight the entire camp on my own.
But after the week and five days I’d spent with Asuna on the last two floors, I understood that my personal values were shifting. In the past, I cared for nothing but effective mob farming, quick quest completion, and maximum money and experience gain. That was what I needed to tackle the ultimate goal of winning my freedom—fixed parties and the background stories of quests were extraneous fluff that only got in my way.
But what if there was something here just as important as efficiency? I couldn’t express what that thing might be in words yet. But here I was, hiking through the woods at night alone, for that mysterious sake. Something I treasured enough to open myself to incredible risk.
Despite being lost in thought, I managed to travel over a mile without drawing the attention of any nocturnal mobs and arrived at my destination just before one o’clock.
The forest elf advance camp was located atop a hill looking over a river that ran through the Forest of Wavering Mists from east to west. There was only one entrance to the semicircular fence that surrounded the camp. There were guards manning the entrance, of course, and my Hiding skill was woefully inadequate to sneak through without detection. I might be able to bump the Hide Rate number a bit with Kizmel’s Mistmoon Cloak, but from what she told me, it did not work quite as well against other elves. I supposed that was why the forest elves had to use disguises to sneak into the dark elf base—a similar invisibility cloak would not have done the trick.
So infiltration via the entrance was off the table. The brittle fence, made of dead, whitened wood, would split with a deafening crack when pushed against, so climbing was not an option either. But as a proper beater, I knew the way in, of course. If I descended to the river a safe distance away from the camp and snuck along the waterside, I could position myself just below the tent with the item I needed. There was a sheer cliff over twenty feet tall from the foot of the canyon to the top of the hill, but there were roots conveniently placed just so an opportunistic climber could scale the wall, as long as he wasn’t outfitted in heavy armor—theoretically.
If I managed to pull this off, I could sell that nugget of info to Argo for the second volume of her Elf War guide. Lind’s guild were the only other people attempting the campaign for now, but the information would be very useful to those who wanted to catch up to the frontline team.
I circled the hill from the south to the west and found a relatively gentle slope that would take me down to the foot of the cliff. I stared out at the pleasantly gushing river, spotting the occasional shadow of a large fish beneath the surface. I was in the mood to fish one up and salt grill it, but I didn’t have the Fishing or Cooking skills. That reminded me of Asuna’s crafting Tailoring skill, but I had to scold myself for getting distracted during a mission. I steadily slipped along the rocky shore.
After about ten yards along the water, aided by nothing but a pale sliver of moonlight, I came to a dead stop. It felt like someone was watching me.
I scanned the surroundings, but there was no silhouette of man, beast, or insect, either in front, behind, or above. The idea that I could “feel” someone’s gaze was even more impossible in Aincrad than in real life. Detecting other players and moving objects in the game required direct visual, auditory, or olfactory signals from the NerveGear. It was absolutely impossible for me to notice that someone was watching.
Even still, I couldn’t move. I was held still by a dread chill, something I’d felt several times since being trapped in this game of death. I continued to look around, rooted to the spot.
In the end, what made the difference—possibly between life and death—was the Spotting Bonus mod I’d earned for reaching skill level 100 in Search. As the name suggested, this mod made it easier to find hiding targets.
As my gaze swept from right to left, I detected a vague, shifting outline in the shadows on the far bank. I stared hard at the spot, wide-eyed. If someone was hiding there, my constant gaze would be dropping their Hide Rate. But if I was focusing on the wrong spot, my would-be attacker could slip around my backside and catch me by surprise.
For ten seconds I concentrated on the far bank, resisting the urge to turn around.
Suddenly, color bloomed within the shadow. A figure appeared as though from the cliff itself. The mod was meant to help me against the forest elves, but the cursor that appeared over the figure was not the yellow of an NPC or the red of a monster, but the green of a player.
After the cursor, I saw the dark gray of scale mail. It did not appear to be metallic but close-fitting scales that clung to his torso and gleamed wetly. His gloves and boots were made of the same material. A longsword hung at his left hip. And dangling from his head to his shoulders, a fine, chain mail coif…
“…You,” I growled.
It was him. The man I saw in Lind’s party three days earlier. The newest member of the DKB, who I’d just learned was named Morte.
But why would he be here in the middle of the night, all alone?
No.
There was something more important than that. Morte was hiding—and he stayed hidden as I entered the canyon.
Hiding itself was not a crime. I did the exact same thing when Kibaou’s party passed by in the queen spider’s dungeon. But Morte did not happen to be here and then hastily hid when he noticed me coming. If that was the case, I’d have noticed him first, thanks to the Search Distance Bonus mod I earned at skill level 50—or at the very least, we’d have detected each other simultaneously.
No, Morte had been hiding here all along. He expected someone to come through this passage at the foot of the hill behind the camp. Someone who had to be pursuing the Elf War quest, on the side of the dark elves. Only two people on the third floor currently fit that description: me and Asuna.
He was waiting for us.
Pure, righteous fire must have poured out of my eyes in that moment of understanding. Just twenty feet away, his right hand twitched.
But in the next instant, a bright, cheery voice that was completely out of place broke the silence.
“Welp, looks like I got spotted!”
Just a bit louder, and his voice would have been audible in the camp above. He lifted his fish-scale gloves and made a show of pretend applause without actually making a clapping noise.
“Pretty good job. I’ve never been revealed like that at this distance, in this kind of darkness. And you totally spotted me on a sheer hunch, not with your eyes at first, right? You don’t have some kind of Sixth Sense extra skill, do you?”
His voice contained both a playful, boyish innocence and a grating theatricality. He was about my height and size, but I couldn’t see his face due to the coif that hung down to his nose.
Upon closer look, the border of that metal hood was torn and ragged, with fine tendrils of chain that hung down like locks of hair. It was probably just the design of the item, not a sign of wear and tear, but it looked creepy all the same.
“You’re Morte from the DKB?”
He had been using reasonably polite speech, so I could have stood to return that level of courtesy, but I wasn’t in the mood after learning that he’d been trying to spy on me. The man didn’t seem to be bothered by my brusque response. He did the show of fake applause again.
“You get your info quick for not hanging around the town at all. Yep, the name’s Morte. Guess you could say naming’s not my forte, ha-ha-haaa.”
I recoiled a bit at his slimy evasion of my curiosity. I’d never run across someone of his type in SAO. Klein had been a breezy, lighthearted kind of guy before the game turned deadly, but compared to him, this Morte fellow was totally inscrutable.
He bowed politely, dangling chains jingling. I took a step toward him.
“I don’t suppose I need to introduce myself. Seems clear you were hiding with the expectation that I’d pass through the area.”
“Ha-ha, why, you make it sound like I was waiting to ambush you, Kirito,” he said casually, indicating that he knew my name. There was a wide grin on his face, but as usual, I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Sound like? That’s what you were doing,” I accused, barely holding back the bile I felt rising to my throat for reasons unknown. Morte’s smile never wavered, and he shuffled his shoulders in some strange mockery of a dance.
“Well, you got me, then.”
“…Was it on Lind’s orders?”
“Ha-ha-ha, y’know, he’s got potential, I’ll admit. But no, this was my decision. I mean, Lind’s not a beater; he just wouldn’t understand. How could he know that you’d pass by this river to sneak into the camp?”
“But you did know…which means you were a beta tester, too.”
“Just call me a beater. It’s a stupid nickname, but that’s what I like about it. Did you know that ‘beater’ is the name of a kitchen implement in English? Like for beating eggs. Makes you want to whip everything in this game up into a froth, ha-ha-haaa!”
Even at low volume, his bubbly voice was crystal clear, and he remained steadfastly polite. So why did I find it all so annoying?
I took a step back, intending to demonstrate that I would not put up with his silly chatter without a point.
“If you were waiting for me, then get to the point. As I know you’re aware, I’ve got a quest to complete.”
“Gosh, this Elf War quest really takes me back. I hear that only like three people managed to complete the whole questline in the beta, including you. I ran out of time before I could finish.”
Morte held up his hands in panic as I started to turn my heel. “Whoa, hang on, friend. I’ll tell you what I want. What I’m asking for.”
“…Asking for?”
“That’s right. Look, here’s the deal: I’m asking if you can forget about this quest and turn back.”
I stared at him in stunned silence, then shrugged my shoulders just as theatrically as he had earlier. “You know I’m not going to turn back now. And what does it have to do with you? The DKB’s working the forest elf side of the campaign, right?”
One of the basic rules of the Elf War quest was that each party proceeded individually. The main bases of either side were instanced maps, and it was impossible for Party A completing quests on the dark elf story line to somehow disadvantage Party B as they worked the forest elf story. Yes, the individual quests sometimes overlapped at non-instanced locations, such as the spider cave earlier and this camp now, so that multiple parties could be in the same place at the same time. But with a bit of waiting, everyone could complete their goals safely. Besides, Lind’s team was on the forest elf side, so they wouldn’t even get the quest to steal the commander’s orders.
So whether I completed this quest or not, it would have no effect on Morte or the DKB.
But Morte simply grinned, jangling the metal threads of his hood, and wagged an index finger back and forth.
“Actually, it is my business. I’m afraid I can’t actually explain how it is, though. I mean, if I could do that, I wouldn’t have been hiding, would I? Ha-ha-haaa.”
“…What?” I nearly overlooked the menace hidden within his statement. My eyes narrowed. “You’re saying…that you weren’t hiding in order to call out to me and negotiate…but to interfere and stop me by force?”
“Why, that would be silly of me. I mean, I’d get tagged as an orange player if that was the case. That’d be an awful easy way to get kicked out of the guild I just joined, ha-ha-haaa,” he said, waving his hips back and forth. But the menace returned with his next statement.
“The thing is, I won’t get flagged just for performing a song, see? I really like singing, you understand. If they had karaoke in one of these towns, I’d be hanging out there all the time.”
…What are you…? I wondered, eyes narrowed. Then I understood.
Morte was threatening to cause a racket as I was trying to infiltrate the camp. The dozen or so elven warriors sleeping in their tents would immediately burst out, ready to fight. If I was spotted by that many foes at once, it would be difficult to escape. If I was unlucky, and they surrounded me…
“So you’re trying to MPK me,” I murmured, remembering what had happened forty days before. The face of the man who’d tried to kill me remotely through a monster trap steadily faded from my memory, replaced by Morte’s.
But the mysterious beta tester didn’t play up his devious plot. He grinned disarmingly.
“Oh, I’m not suggesting anything that awful. I mean, you’d be able to slip right out of their grasp, wouldn’t you? All I’m asking is that you hold off on that quest for a day.”
“A day…? What difference will a day make?”
“Well…”
He slowly held up his hands and made an X over his mouth with his index fingers.
“Sorry! That’s a secret! But you’ll understand, come tomorrow. All I’m asking is that you go back to wherever you’re hanging out for tonight.”
“And if I refuse?”
I was getting tired of his slimy, smarmy nature. I wanted this meeting over with.
Morte took the fingers off his mouth and pointed them directly at me instead.
“Why don’t we settle it the way we did in the beta? You remember how guild members would settle disputes, don’t you?”
“Ha-haaa, but you wouldn’t accept that result, would you? No, I’m talking about the other way. The cool, exciting way.”
It took me two seconds to realize what Morte was suggesting. For another two seconds, I glared at the swordsman on the far bank. When I spoke, my voice was as low and gravelly as it could go.
“…Are you being serious?”
“Oh, my serious switch is always on, partner.”
He lowered his left index finger and used it to trace the pommel of the Anneal Blade at his waist.
That settled it. Morte was proposing a duel.
The idea of a dueling system itself was not new to MMORPGs. Many games that otherwise removed the ability to PK implemented a dueling system where two players could agree to fight. In SAO, PK-ing was legal outside of towns, but anyone who committed a PK became a criminal, which turned their cursor from green to orange and prevented them from entering town.
Duels, on the other hand, were legal anywhere and invoked no crimes. They happened with wild frequency in the beta, as a test of strength or a means of settling scores.
But once the retail game came out, I had never challenged or been challenged to a duel. Even in a duel, when a player’s HP reached zero, he was dead. Which meant that in today’s Aincrad…
“…If we duel, one of us will die.”
Morte practically squirmed in delight at my observation.
“Well, Kirito, if you insist…Kidding, kidding! I mean, a complete duel would be super-dangerous, right? Oh, but it’s much safer in half-finish mode. That way, the duel ends as soon as one of us gets to the yellow zone. A lot milder, if you ask me, ha-ha-haaa.”
Aside from the “full-finish mode,” in which a duel continued until one player’s HP reached zero, there were a “half-finish mode,” where an HP bar down to 50 percent ended the duel, and a “first-strike mode,” where the first clean hit won the match.
Unsurprisingly, the over-before-you-blinked first-strike mode and the unsatisfying half-finish mode were rarely ever used in the beta; I’d forgotten they even existed. But as Morte said, a half-finish duel would not result in death.
It was dangerous to allow yourself to lose 50 percent of your HP, the very numerical embodiment of life in Aincrad. But if I refused, Morte could make good on his promise to shout and disrupt my quest. Then again, even if I dueled him and won, he could still break his word and shout anyway…
“Is there any guarantee that if you lose, you won’t interfere with me?” I demanded, staring into the darkness beneath the coif. He shook his head in a show of mock affront.
“Oh, I wouldn’t pull a dirty trick like that. If I broke my word, I’d be too Morte-fied to show my face again. But let’s say I lose. Then my HP would be at fifty percent, you know? It’ll take a while for a healing potion to kick in, and I wouldn’t be able to shout, because the long ears in camp might hear, and some other mobs might approach from behind, ha-ha-haaa.”
“…”
It was a weak guarantee.
I had the choice of not exposing myself to needless danger and swallowing Morte’s condition for today. There was no reason I had to complete this infiltration quest tonight. According to the road map Kibaou set up at the strategy meeting, this was the day (now that midnight had passed) that we started on the labyrinth, and in two days, we would be challenging the boss. There was plenty of time for questing.
But if I left the camp then, I would never know Morte’s motive for staking out this location.
It was easy for a beta tester to assume that if I didn’t show up in town, I was busy with the Elf War quest. But it was impossible to predict with such accuracy that I’d be visiting this camp on this night. It would be one thing if he bought that information from Argo, but I had just met her, and she would have offered to sell me the fact that Morte bought my info.
That made it highly likely that Morte was waiting in this spot for hours and hours on nothing more than an assumption that I’d come by. Why would he go to all that trouble just to prevent me from finishing one single chapter in a lengthy quest?
It wasn’t curiosity that made me stay but a feeling of peril, a need to understand before I could leave. I nodded.
“…All right. Let’s have a duel to see who leaves. But you need to throw in another chip on the wager.”
“Oh? Awful pushy of you.”
“Of course. If I lose, I have to call off the quest, but if you lose, you just go home. That doesn’t add up.”
“I see, I see. So what am I supposed to wager, then?”
“I want an explanation that makes sense. I want to know why you did this.”
Morte rocked back and forth like some kind of toy, but he soon nodded in agreement.
“Allll righty. I can’t guarantee that you’ll understand it, though.”
Now that we’d reached a deal, I had no obligation to listen to his prattling. But I couldn’t just tear into him right away, either. If the sound of our sword fight reached the camp above, the elves would wake up and be on alert.
“Let’s change spots, then. There’s a place upstream with some open space.”
“Roger that. Man, I’m getting so nervous thinking about a duel with the Kirito. Can we take a photo to commemorate after the fight? Oh, wait, we haven’t gotten to the point where screenshot items show up yet. Aww, too bad.”
I took my eyes off Morte and his babbling and started walking upstream, to the south. Morte sprang after me on the far bank of the river, dancing along.
After about thirty yards, there was a circular clearing next to the river. Usually such landmarks held something of interest—perhaps this was a good place for fishing—but this wasn’t the time to be peering into the water.
I proceeded to the center of the clearing and turned to my right. Morte turned to me at the same time. The grin was still slapped across his face, but I felt that his concentration was just a bit sharper than before.
“Okeydoke, so I’ll send the request.”
He swept his right hand to open the menu and smoothly tapped a series of commands. A smaller sub-window popped up before me. It read: MORTE HAS CHALLENGED YOU TO A ONE-ON-ONE DUEL. DO YOU ACCEPT? YES/NO.
At least the name Morte wasn’t an alias. Sadly, my knowledge database was woefully inadequate to indicate if his chosen name was supposed to mean anything.
Above the YES/NO prompt was a series of check boxes for the duel mode. The center option, for a half-strength finish, was selected. I looked up.
Across fifteen feet of water, Morte still had his coif on. The more space covered by headgear, the better the defense, but the poorer the visibility and hearing. The chain veil hung down below his nose, so he must have been staring through it like netting. Combined with the darkness of night, his vision must have been severely affected.
My vision and hearing were at maximum efficiency because I wore no helmet, but a good blow to my head would cause tremendous damage. On the other hand, even if I did have a helmet, a clean hit to the head would still cause temporary dazing and stun effects. Such negative status effects were fatal to a solo player anyway, so my thought process was simple: avoid head damage at all cost, and bothersome headgear will only make it harder to avoid, so no headgear.
In that sense, Morte’s coif was baffling. Compared to one of the bucket-like great helms, the coif offered little protection, but it robbed just as much eyesight. There had to be some reason that he wouldn’t remove it, even in a duel.
It belatedly occurred to me that I should have dared him to add the reason for his coif to the bet, but now was the time to concentrate. I flipped my mental switch to battle mode.
Without taking my eyes off of him, I slammed the YES button. The sub-window shifted and began a sixty-second countdown.
During the beta, many complained that a full-minute timer before the duel began was overkill. But the development team made no moves to shorten the timer while the test was running.
Despite not having dueled in months, the timer still felt long to me. I drew my Anneal Blade +8, held it up in an orthodox mid-level stance, and spread my legs front and rear.
But Morte showed no signs of drawing his blade, despite the active countdown. He just stood there, watching. Just as I began to wonder what he was up to, it hit me.
I had accepted his challenge without a second thought.
The most important factors for survival in SAO were knowledge and experience.
I had been in countless duels in the beta. I had acute knowledge of which skills were best for a one-on-one fight against a player and how to use them.
But this was different—a duel in the official release of SAO, where the stakes were deadly. And I had never once tried a duel in these circumstances.
Morte probably had been active in dueling since the change. He might have done it dozens of times. He knew something I didn’t know. And based on that knowledge, he was simply staring at me, learning what he could from my stance and location, waiting to draw his sword until the last moment.
Nobody did that in the beta. We groaned over the length of the timer, chatting with any onlookers or waiting with boredom, then unleashing our best sword skills as soon as the timer hit zero. That was the duel I knew.
But after the moment forty-three days before that changed everything, the old way went out the window.
Sixty seconds: a span of time allotted to observe the enemy and formulate a strategy.
I glanced back down at the window hovering in front of my chest. The countdown was around forty-five seconds remaining.
Back to Morte. He stood straight, swaying slightly. I gleaned nothing from his stance. In comparison, I had my Anneal Blade held out in front of me, crouched slightly, center of weight leaning forward. What did he see in my stance? How would he read and react to my first movement? I could change my stance, but would that just give him more information instead?
I checked the counter: thirty-five seconds. That endless timer from the beta seemed to be ticking twice for every actual second now. There was no time for thinking. Could I signal a pause and request a do-over? No, I wasn’t that shameless, and once the timer started, the duel was inevitable. I realized that I was losing my cool and starting to panic, and the first bead of virtual sweat trickled down my forehead.
Twenty-five seconds left. Perhaps I should give up on striking first and see what he did instead. There was fifteen feet of water separating us. It was certainly shallow enough to cross, but I could easily fall into a tumble just from running through it, to say nothing of striking with my sword. Morte wouldn’t just rush across the water…
But hang on. Fifteen feet could be crossed quickly with the Sonic Leap skill. And if used right as the counter ended, there wouldn’t be enough time to escape the accuracy range of the sword skill. Fortunately, Sonic Leap started with a high stance, and I had the blade held neutral, so he wouldn’t know I was going to use it.
Ten seconds left. The countdown started to beep audibly with each second.
Five seconds. Morte finally drew his sword. His Anneal Blade had a slick gleam to it, the sign that he’d put a lot of work into upgrading it.
Four seconds. Morte swung the sword up into a careless high stance. The blade started glowing light green, the sign that he was about to use a sword skill. The stance and color meant…Sonic Leap.
Three seconds. Was his plan the same as mine? But the counter wasn’t over yet. Hitting the opponent during the countdown to a duel outside of the safe haven of town was considered a criminal act. His cursor would go orange.
Two seconds. If I was going to evade, I had to jump to either side now. But I stayed pointed right at Morte and raised my sword to a high position. He probably intended to hold the premotion of the sword skill until the countdown finished, but he’d started far too early. It was going to cancel out before the duel began.
One second.
But just as the counter read 01, Morte leaped off the ground. The high-speed slash screamed across the water, green trail reflecting off the surface.
Then I understood.
There was no need to wait until zero to let the skill fly. If the blade hit the opponent’s avatar and caused damage even a mere 0.001 seconds after the bell, it would not set off the criminal code. Morte understood that well and timed his move perfectly.
Zero.
A purple DUEL!! sign appeared over the river, but I did not see it. Morte’s body, like some dark, monstrous bird, blocked my view.
I was planning to use Sonic Leap when the duel began. But that naive plan of mine was ultimately what saved me from the ignoble result of a defeat simultaneous to the start of the match.
Because I had my Anneal Blade held up, not yet in the motion for the skill, I just managed to turn it flat and absorb Morte’s attack in time. If he’d hit me right on the head, it would have stunned me, if not consumed half my health right in one go, and left me unable to stop a follow-up attack.
A tremendous shock ran through both hands—right gripping the handle, left pushed against the flat of the blade for support.
Player sword skills had a special weight to them that far outclassed monster attacks. He didn’t just rely on the system assistance for speed and power but jumped and swung downward for extra momentum. Orange sparks and green light exploded just inches from my eyes, clouding my vision.
Longswords were among the hardier one-handed weapons, but they had a weakness. If a powerful shock hit the flat side of the blade head-on, there was a chance for the weapon’s durability to drop to zero at once, resulting in the destruction of the item.