On the first floor, there existed many towns and villages other than the Starting City, and the largest was the town situated in the valley closest to the Labyrinth: «Tolbana».
"The meeting is supposed to take place in the town centre, at 4 PM in the afternoon."
"…"
Asuna simply nodded in response.
"Strange girl."
Suddenly hearing that murmured behind him, Kirito turned around.
"No matter how you look at it, she's a beginner, but her skill is fearsome. What kind of person is she?" The speaker was a nimble-looking player that was a head shorter than Kirito. Her armour, like his own, consisted of cloth and leather.
"Do you know something about that fencer?"
"I'll sell it cheap. 500 Cor."
"400 Cor."
"Five or nothing."
Her grinning face had one big distinct feature. On both of her cheeks were three distinct whiskers drawn on with a make-up item. Matched with her curly auburn hair, her appearance was reminiscent of a mouse. Kirito had asked about those markings in the past, however, he only received the angry outburst of 'Don't ever ask the reason why a girl puts on makeup' reply, immediately followed by 'I will tell you for 100k'.
The girl in front of him was Aincrad's first informant: the player known as Argo the Rat.
'If you chat with the Rat for five minutes, you'll end up paying for 100 Cor worth of stories without knowing it.'
However, Argo herself had said that she had not once sold information of doubtful authenticity. She said that she would only treat it as merchandise after she determined that the data had value, made sure to pay an appropriate information fee to the source of the story, and also collected as much of her own evidence as possible. If faulty information were sold, then the reliability of the informant would drop, so the business of information gathering possessed a different kind of danger and anxiety compared to gathering material items in dungeons and selling to NPCs in towns.
"So, if you aren't here for business, then you're here as a proxy negotiator?"
Then, Argo grimaced this time, and after quickly glanced left and right on the street, she led Kirito towards a nearby alleyway.
The Boss strategy conference was still two hours away, so there were not many players here yet, but it seemed like this was a conversation that she didn't want to be heard by others.
"Well, yeah. It's been raised to 29,800 Cor."
He smiled wryly, then shrugged.
"Sorry, but no matter how much Cor is offered, my answer remains the same. I don't want to sell it."
"I also already told the client, but he's very persistent."
Argo's main business is as an informant, but by using her high agility stat, she also maintains a side business as a messenger. Normally it was just delivering oral messages or short messages on a scroll, but the person who had been contacting Kirito through her over the past week seemed to be a troublesome client.
They wanted to buy his one-handed longsword,
«Anneal Blade +6 (3S3D)».
Acquiring a weapon with Sharpness +3 and Durability +3 on the first floor required a lot of patience and luck. Because of the situation within Aincrad, not many players have trained smithing skills, and although the NPC blacksmiths do have an appropriate dwarvish appearance, their level of skill is very unreliable.
Since the Anneal Blade was also the reward from a relatively difficult quest, the current specs of this sword could be said to make it almost the most coveted item on the first floor. However, that being said, its usefulness would decrease, becoming unviable around floor three or four.
For the above reasons, Kirito wasn't able to guess the motives of Argo's client, who wanted the sword so much he was willing pay an ungodly amount of Cor for it.
"The hush money the person paid was 1000 Cor, right?"
"That's right. Are you willing to raise?"
Hush money was the amount of Cor that X-shi3 paid Argo to keep their name hidden from Kirito. If he decided to pay 1100 Cor, Argo would instant message her client to inform them of that and ask if they would like to counter it raising to 1200 Cor and so on.
"That won't be necessary."
"I will tell the client the offer was rejected this time as well. See you later, Ki-bou."
Waving her hand, she turned around and left the alley. After watching her curly auburn hair disappear into the crowd in an instant, Kirito opened his menu nd checked the time.
The meeting would be, without a doubt, stormy.
Asuna's selection of food for the past three days consisted of the cheapest black bread from an NPC baker and a bottle of water that could be filled from the fountains that were scattered throughout the town.
Even in the real world, she hadn't enjoyed eating that much, but the food and drink in this virtual world were so bland that it was beyond description. No matter how much you gorged yourself on luxurious food, not even a single morsel would reach your real body. She thought it would be better if the food system and the sensations of hunger and satiety did not exist at all, but, when your stomach was empty three times a day at mealtimes, the hunger would not dissipate until you have eaten some virtual food.
Even so, she had recently become able to cut off this fake hunger by using willpower when she went into the Labyrinth, but after returning to town, it had become too much to bear. She bought the cheapest items on the menu as an act of minimal resistance, but she found it strangely annoying that even a dry and coarse piece of black bread seemed delicious in and of itself as she tore it apart and chewed it little by little.
She had finally finished half of the piece of bread, which was comparatively big for a price of 1 Cor, when—
"That bread looks pretty delicious."
She stopped her hand that was just about to tear off a piece of the bread and threw a sharp glance.
The person who stood there was the man she had just left at the town entrance a few minutes ago. The grey-coated swordsman.
A troublesome person that had used some method earlier to move her outside after she had fainted inside the depths of a Labyrinth.
The moment she realized that, her cheeks grew hot. Even though she had said her ambition was to die, he was seeing her here, shamelessly eating a meal as soon as she came back alive. A strong embarrassment ran through her body, and she did not know what to do at that moment.
"May I sit next to you?"
Normally, she would have left the bench without a word, and moved away without turning back in this kind of situation. However, right now, she was assailed by a stunned confusion she rarely experienced in this world, leaving her unable to react. Perhaps interpreting Asuna's stiffness as a sign of approval, the man sat down on the right side of the bench and began searching through his coat pocket. What he took out was a loaf of black bread.
At that instant, Asuna momentarily forgot about her embarrassment and confusion, and instead looked at the man in amazement.
Judging by his ability to be able to go that deep into the Labyrinth and the quality of the equipment all over his body, this swordsman should be able to easily earn enough to eat at a restaurant. In that case, he was either a super thrifty person, or—
"You seriously find it delicious, don't you?"
Without realizing it, she had asked the question aloud in a small voice. Hearing this, the man raised his eyebrows.
"Of course. Since coming to this town, I eat it every day…Well, I add a bit of a twist."
"A twist?"
Not understanding his meaning, she shook her head under the hood. Instead of answering, the swordsman took out a small unglazed pot.
"Try using this on your bread."
Asuna hesitantly extended her right hand and tapped the pot lid with her finger. From the pop-up menu which appeared, she selected 'Use', and then her fingertip started to glow with a faint purple light. She then touched the half-eaten black bread in her left hand.
With a small tinkling, one side of the bread was smeared white.
"Cream? Where did you get such a thing?"
"This is the quest reward from «Cows of the Counterattack» that I accepted one village back. Though, not many people do it, since it takes a while to clear."
The swordsman applied the pot to his own bread with a practised gesture. Then, with its contents presumably used up, the pot shattered into light.
Hearing the sound of his chewing, Asuna's own stomach felt not the unpleasant pain that she had been experiencing for quite some time, but instead the onslaught of a healthy hunger.
She hesitantly bit into the cream-covered black bread still held in her left hand.
The cream was sweet and smooth, along with a refreshingly sour taste. As she was struck by a feeling of fulfilment that numbed even the insides of her cheeks, Asuna dreamily stuffed the bread into her mouth with two, three bites.
When she suddenly came back to her senses, the food item that had been in her hands had completely disappeared without leaving a single morsel. When she looked beside her with a start, she seemed to have finished two seconds or so before the swordsman.
"…Thank you for the food."
"You're welcome."
Having finished his own meal, the swordsman brushed off his hands and then continued.
"The cow quest I mentioned earlier. If you want to do it I can give you some tips. If you do it efficiently, you can finish it in two hours."
"…"
To be honest, her heart was moved. With that cream, even the 1 Cor black bread became delicious.
It was a false fulfilment simulated by the game, but she wanted to taste it once more…no, to eat it every day if possible.
However—
Asuna lowered her eyes and shook her head gently beneath her hood.
"It's okay. I did not come this far to this town just to eat delicious things."
"Hmm. Then, for what purpose?"
Maybe it was the food or the fatigue. Regardless, Asuna answered honestly.
"It's to…prove that I exist. Instead of locking myself in a room as I did at the beginning and slowly rotting away, I want to be myself up to the last moment. Even if I lose to a monster and die, it would have meaning."
Yuuki Asuna's 15 years of life had been a series of battles. Beginning with her kindergarten entrance exam, she had had an endless number of challenges big and small imposed on her one after another, and she had overcome them all. It was set so that even one failure would make her a worthless person, so she continued to brush aside that heavy pressure.
"I-"
The wind-powered clock that stood tall at the centre of Tolbana rang loudly.
It was four, the time of the Boss strategy meeting. Looking around, Asuna saw that players had gathered around the fountain for some time now without her being aware of it.
"Let's go. It's the conference you invited me to."