Monday, December 19th, 2022, 12:20 A.M.

Morte quickly maneuvered through his menu and sent me a duel request. A small window popped up in front of me; the first line of text that caught my eye read 「Morte has challenged you to a 1v1 duel. Do you accept?」.

Stupidly, I hadn't thought to check his cursor yet; the text in front of me proved that Morte was actually his name.

Below that line of text were three check boxes, with the one for the half-finish mode already selected. At the bottom were the buttons to accept or deny the duel.

I glanced up at Morte; he was relaxed as ever, one hand on his hip and the other hanging limply at his side. Again I was struck by how strange his coif was; wearing that thing could only be a hinderance, but it was too late to ask him about it now. I looked back down at the window and pressed the accept button. The window switched to a timer that was counting down from sixty seconds and moved off to the side of my vision. A larger timer floated in the air between myself and Morte, positioned a few meters above the river. Kirito backed away to give us space, but he didn't leave.

I looked back at Morte before doing anything else; when he didn't move at all I realized that getting into a combat stance too quickly would give away information.

Then I felt like a complete moron. What the hell was I getting myself into? I was going into this fairly blind, and with barely any hesitation. More than that, I realized I was at a severe disadvantage.

Morte was the one that initiated everything, aside from us spotting him… unless he planned for us to do that, too. His request, the suggestion of a duel, the duel prompt itself… Morte had been on the leading foot the whole time. He knew what he was doing, and what his goal was. Me? Not so much.

Since Morte had suggested a duel he was likely quite comfortable with fighting other players. Who knows how much he'd dueled in the beta… or even since the beginning of this death trap. There were definitely things he knew about duelling that I didn't. I had barely any PvP experience from the beta. Moreover, it was clear that Morte knew who I was, so he likely knew my fighting style as well.

My one saving grace was that he likely didn't know I had Martial Arts. Hell, it was possible he didn't know about it at all, since the rumor about it during the beta came about pretty late. If I was lucky, he also wasn't aware that I knew he had a second weapon skill, but that one was up in the air.

I glanced at the timer. 45 seconds remaining. In the beta, that timer was just a nuisance, a tedium that preceded the clashing of Sword Skills. Now it was an opportunity to observe.

My gaze returned to Morte. He stood straight but lazily, swaying back and forth slightly as if he was getting impatient. Nothing about his attitude gave me anything useful. On the other hand, he could probably tell how tense I was.

Observe, observe… What next? The moonlight was fairly bright tonight, so vision wouldn't be too much of an issue. The river between us was about 4 or 5 meters across and only a few centimeters deep; easy enough to stand in, but still possible to slip in and lose my footing. There were also rocks poking up out of the water in places. It wouldn't hinder me too much, but I'd rather keep my feet out of the water if I could help it.

So crossing the river on foot was out. I could possibly make it across using Lunge or even with just a strong jump, but I'd be cutting it close. I was probably better off waiting for Morte to cross. I held little doubt that he'd use Sonic Leap to jump across; a few meters was nothing for that Skill. I briefly felt a little envious that sword users got access to such a good leaping Skill so early on.

20 seconds left. The surrounding terrain was mostly hazard-free save for a few rocks and boulders, and some roots at the tree line. The main point of contention would be the river. It'd be good if I could draw Morte further away from the camp, but I wouldn't focus on that.

I once again returned my gaze to Morte, and that was where it remained for the rest of the countdown. The timer started to beep once it reached ten seconds.

Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Morte finally drew his sword. It had a smooth sheen to it, so it was likely fully upgraded. I left my dagger sheathed for the moment; the time it took for me to draw it was negligible. After another second passed, he lazily held his blade to a high stance, and it started to glow light green. Sonic Leap, like I had thought. Was his goal to leap just as the countdown ended?

But he'd started the Skill too early. By then, he'll have to either have jumped already or cancelled the Skill. Hitting me before the countdown ended would be a criminal offense, and the duel would be cancelled immediately.

Wait. How long would it take for him to jump across the river? Again, Morte was likely quite familiar with duelling. If his goal was to hit me right as the countdown ended…

The timer ticked down to one. Morte smirked, and launched off the ground. No more time to think.

I leapt to the side as hard as I could, unsheathing my dagger as I went. A sound was emitted by the timer when it reached zero and changed to a time limit for the duel, but both of us were past caring by this point.

Morte landed on the ground hard, his obnoxious smirk gone from his face and his sword sunk into the ground. At the same time I leapt back towards him and scored an easy slash along his back as I passed. Morte hissed in annoyance as his health dropped a few percent. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

Morte slashed at me once he had freed his sword after his post-motion delay ended. I stepped to the side to avoid the slash, and I felt my feet graze the water. He continued to press his attack, and I opted to keep evading instead of parrying with my dagger. I'd get more benefit out of waiting to exploit an overextended swing than trying to parry and counterattack with a lighter weapon.

His attacks were concise and controlled; Morte wasted no effort in aiming for critical points, though to be honest any hit against me would be devastating since I had so little armor. His swings were a strange combination of short slashes and thrusts.

"Shryaaa!"

Morte shouted in rage and attacked with a full-on thrust. I easily sidestepped to the left of the attack and slashed at his right side, scoring another few points of damage. Unfortunately it was minimal, since his armor was putting up a good front against my attacks. After that I quickly put some distance between us. There was no trace of a grin left on Morte's face now, just anger.

I belatedly realized that I had the advantage of being left-handed against a right-handed fighter. It was a small advantage, but one I needed to keep in mind. Even Morte, the duelling expert that he likely was, probably didn't have much experience fighting against a lefty. On top of that, the fact that I had to get so much closer to attack than he did might have been throwing him off slightly.

I darted forwards again, deciding that it was best to not give Morte an opportunity to do something. He resumed his swinging thrusts as he backed away, but I was able to deflect and evade them as I continued to push forward. After a few steps Morte's boots hit the water.

He continued a few steps backwards into the water, and kicked at it with his right foot. His kick sent up a screen of water between us. I retreated, wary of whatever trick Morte might be pulling.

At the same time, a small flash of light refracted through the water. It was the game menu.

He's switching to his axe!

He must have dropped his sword to be able to use his menu. I rushed towards him and started a Sword Skill in an attempt to get a good hit in.

I heard a soft whooshing sound come from where Morte was standing; he must have had Quick Change since there was no other way to equip a weapon that quickly. His large metal round shield was already in his hand and raised in front of him. He blocked my Skill and the impact sent us both staggering backwards.

I struggled to recover my footing, as did Morte. His new weapon was behind his back where I had no vision of it, but I had no doubt it was his one-handed axe.

Now it was all about who could recover first. I expected that Morte would counterattack the moment he was able to. I had mostly seen through his game plan; his strange swinging thrusts from before were intended to lure me into thinking he'd only use thrusting style attacks, but now with his axe he'd be using wide, sweeping attacks instead. Since the axe would deliver a heavier hit than a sword, it was a good strategy as long as the opponent was unaware. Unfortunately, I barely knew anything about one-handed axe Sword Skills as it was a rather underused weapon type.

I was still stumbling backwards a bit, but Morte had already recovered his footing; since I had a lighter build the impact had had more effect on me. His right arm started to move. Not a Sword Skill, but it looked like it'd still be a heavy swing. As I saw the axe's blade peek out from behind him I realized that it would be better to move with my interia, rather than against it.

I slammed my foot into the water hard and leapt into a backflip. It was enough to clear Morte's swing, but my foot had slipped slightly and I hadn't gone as far backwards as I'd hoped. Thankfully, though, it was enough; Morte spun around to try to hit me with a second strike, but I had landed just outside of his range.

Once I landed I leapt backwards to give myself some space; the backflip had left me a little disoriented, so I didn't want to give Morte an easy attack.

To my surprise, Morte didn't pursue me and instead remained motionless where he stood in the water. He appeared as relaxed as ever, save for the expression on his face that gave away his frustration. For a few seconds neither of us moved a virtual muscle.

I moved first. I dashed forwards and activated Lunge. It was a risky move; I was gambling on the speed of Morte's weapon, hoping that he wouldn't be able to counterattack with his slow axe fast enough. There was also the chance I could slip in the water. At the very least, I was hoping that he would be slow enough for me to dodge after my Skill wore off.

My judgement, however, wasn't so accurate. Morte moved much faster than I had expected; not only did he avoid my attack, but he got a hit in on me as well, although it didn't connect perfectly. Even so, it took around 15-20% of my health and caused me to lose my already unstable footing.

Morte twisted along with his attack's follow-through and his axe became bathed in a blood-red glow.

"Shayaaa!"

With an ungodly-sounding scream, Morte spun his axe around twice at a ridiculous speed. The first strike hit me in the chest and the second just below in the stomach. I was lucky enough for the first hit to push me back some before the second landed which saved me from a few points of damage.

Still, the force from the heavy Skill sent me backwards and off of my feet entirely. I crashed on the ground in a heap, and I watched my health drop to around fifty-five percent. More than that, an icon below my health bar told me that the Skill had inflicted a short stun effect.

The impact left me feeling dizzy and out of breath. I looked around groggily; I couldn't spot Kirito, so hopefully he had already left to do the quest. I heard Morte's boots splashing in the water as he approached, his axe and shield held carelessly at his sides.

After three seconds, the stun effect faded and I was able to stand up. I thought that Morte would use the chance to finish the duel, but instead he just commented on his attack.

"Woow! Still in the green even after that? You're tougher than I thought, especially for an Agility type. This axe can even cut plate armor, you know."

"What are you doing…?"

"Ha-haa, come on now, it'd be lame if the duel ended with just a little tap! We gotta make this exciting, you know? Besides that, who knows what kind of trick you might be hiding up your sleeve right now, hm?"

"Tch." I stood up and regained my balance. Morte stood barely two meters in front of me, his axe and shield still limp in his hands. His relaxed posture wasn't out of laziness, but confidence.

He had the right to be confident, too. So far he'd mostly outclassed me in strategy—unsurprisingly, he seemed particularly keen on deception and trickery. Obviously he was ahead in the amount of damage that he'd done as well. Speaking of which, the fact that he had left me at just above fifty percent worried me. That axe of his was damn heavy, and it did a lot of damage…

Wait… was Morte really all that surprised that I was still above 50%? I didn't take the full force of his Sword Skill earlier, and it took over a quarter of my health. It wouldn't be too far-fetched for him to have an attack heavier than that. Sure, the duel ended when one of us reached half health, but since we weren't in a safe area any leftover damage would still happen. If he had an attack that could deal enough damage…

I would die.

I'd die, and Morte would face no consequences for it since his attack would still be considered part of the duel. I didn't know what motives he might have had, but Morte wanted to kill me.

I swallowed nervously and gripped my dagger more tightly. Morte noticed my discomfort, and a nasty leer crept across his face.

I raised my dagger to ward away my nerves. Morte responded in kind by readying his axe and shield. At that moment, an idea formed in my head. If he wanted to use deception, then I would too.

"Iiit's showtime!" Morte shouted. His talkativeness was really getting on my nerves.

I circled around to Morte's left to keep on the same side as his shield. It was the conventional tactic for dealing with shield-users; the shield was cover for him, but it was also cover for me. That, along with my own trump card, was my one out. It wasn't a guaranteed victory by any stretch, but it was my best option.

Blocking an attack wasn't just about holding the shield up in front of you; to parry the attack properly and cause the opponent to stagger, you had to react with force. It was all about timing. Morte would be holding his shield loosely until that exact moment, and I sought to abuse that fact.

Morte kept his shield facing me, as it was in his best interest to use it to make an opening to attack. I held my dagger out wide and charged forward for an attack, with an added yell for maximum attention.

"Haaah!"

Morte prepared his shield. It hid most of his upper body from my view—and most of mine from his. Additionally, most of his attention would be on my dagger. If this went the way I hoped, he wouldn't notice my right hand at all, which was currently covered in a red glow. It was «Flash Blow», the fastest Martial Arts Sword Skill.

My quick punch struck Morte's shield and sent it flying out of his hand. Since Flash Blow had next to no ending delay I kept moving forwards and slashed with my dagger. Morte did his best to avoid it, and all I accomplished was a small gash across his chest. The shield landed off somewhere in the river.

Getting his shield out of the way was a benefit in itself; it was simply that much easier for me to land an attack. Besides that, hopefully Morte wasn't used to using his axe without a shield. But just getting rid of his shield probably wasn't enough; I had to keep going.

I jumped, and at the same time Morte counterattacked—he thrust with the pommel of his axe, which I wasn't prepared for. Fortunately it barely grazed me since I was already moving out of the way. My jump carried me high enough for me to deliver a strong kick to the back of Morte's head. He was totally unprepared and faceplanted into the dirt.

I used the force from my kick to help myself to spin around in the air just enough for me to be in the right position to hit him with a Sword Skill. I raised my dagger above my head with both hands and it became suffused with a bluish-green glow.

The Skill pulled me to the ground with an invisible force; with the addition of gravity, Dive had a high potential for damage. It was also rather unique in that the direction that the blade was pointing actually didn't matter; when I had used the Skill against Illfang I had oriented it as a slash, but here I had the dagger pointed down to stab. Despite all that, since it required being in the air it generally went unused. I landed on top of Morte as he was standing back up, which drove him back into the ground. At the same time, my dagger sunk into his shoulder at a weak point in his armor.

In addition to my kick and Sword Skill, both of his impacts with the ground had done damage. I could only hope that it was enough. I watched his health bar drop—eighty, seventy, sixty percent. It stopped just barely above halfway.

Morte pushed me off of him, and we both hastily got up off the ground. I absently swiped my dagger at him as we were both trying to get up.

A loud buzzer sounded in my ears. The timer floating above the river and at the side of my vision stopped.

I had won.

Morte calmly brushed himself off—I had no clue why, it wasn't like the game would actually leave dirt on him—and rubbed the back of his head. "Maaan, you sure got me! That was one hell of a combo you pulled off there. That long hair of yours was blocking my vision, too, ha-ha!"

I crossed my arms. He was still trying to be disarming, after all that?

"Say, was that that Martial Arts thing that people were going on about at the end of the beta? You wouldn't tell me where to find it, would ya?"

"No."

"Jeez, you're such a buzzkill, aren't you?" Morte's tone was playful, but his obviously fake smirk made it clear that he wasn't the least bit happy. I had pretty much ruined his plan, and on top of that I had beaten him at his own game—and in a way that probably frustrated him a ton.

I didn't say anything in response. The last thing I wanted to do was entertain this maniac.

Morte finally dropped his friendly facade, at least slightly. "Alright, alright, you won. Soo, you wanted to know what I'm up to, right?" Morte spread his arms out wide. "I just want a little friendly conflict, you see. All the guildies surprisingly get along pretty well, but a little healthy competition can do a lot of good, riiight? Just so happens that me being here serves as a nice catalyst for that. They're pretty neck-and-neck right now, so who knows what'll happen!"

So it was related to the DKB and ALS. He wanted to incite conflict between them… Morte claimed it was for their own good, but I doubted that. But what exactly did he mean by 'neck-and-neck'? Their levels, player count, clearing progress?

No, if he was obstructing us from the quest, then both of the guilds had to be here right now.

As I stood there lost in thought, Morte realized that I wasn't going to say anything else to him and went to collect his gear. He walked out into the river and shot his hand out into the water precisely where his shield had landed. He did the same with his sword, as if he had remembered the exact spot where he had thrown it.

"Well, uh…" Morte turned his head suddenly as if he'd noticed something. "Ah, perfect! I s'pose I'll be off then! Got stuff to do, you know, ha-haa! Too-de-loos!"

And with that, Morte vanished into the forest.

I remained motionless for another moment before my nerves finally got to me. I collapsed to my knees and heaved a sigh of relief. That was way too close, and it marked the second time I'd come dangerously near to dying in the past week.

"Probably shouldn't make a habit of that," I mumbled to myself. Honestly, it felt like that it wasn't getting to me as much as I expected it to. I pushed myself to my feet, deciding that now wasn't the time to think about it.

I dashed back the way we had came and towards the forest elf camp, traversing the uneven forest floor with ease. I made my way around the cliff and along the side the hill the camp stood upon. The hill itself had little cover from the road so I stuck to the foot of the hill where the forest provided plenty. As I approached I could hear the shouts of an argument that was starting to become quite heated.

The path leading up the hill to the forest elf camp connected just at the foot of the hill to the main path that started at Zumfut in the east and ran west along more than half of the Floor, parallel to the river. At the intersection of the two paths was the source of the argument.

On the side of the intersection opposite of the one I approached from, Lind stood in front of the rest of his party, his arms crossed and his face tense. Well, tenser than usual—he was almost never relaxed from what I had seen. As for the group on the other side, they were larger in number at around two full parties. From where I was I didn't have a view of their faces, but considering the context I didn't need to be able to see them to know that they were members of the ALS.

I got as close as I could, making sure that I was deep enough into the trees that I would go unnoticed.

"There's no point in continuing to argue over this," Lind said, his voice as stiff as his posture. "We arrived here first. Therefore, it is only fair that we should proceed with our quest before you."

Kibaou's accented voice chopped through the air. "Pah! Ya only beat us by a second or two at best! It don't mean jack!"

Lind's words proved to me that there was in fact a quest on the forest elf side at this same camp. I wondered idly what it might be, but that wasn't pertinent at the moment. What was pertinent was that the two were continuing to argue, and I was worried that it might escalate further. I didn't want to have to step in, but if they went too far…

"'Sides, why should we have'ta play along with yer little rules or whatever? We've gotta beat this assault quest, and I'm not about ta' let you get ahead of us!"

Kibaou's words made me wince. He called it an 'assault quest' which wasn't wrong in any way, but after being around Kizmel it just felt wrong somehow to blindly slaughter the forest elves. Besides that, I was kind of surprised that the ALS was at the same point in the campaign as us. I couldn't know when they had started, but they had had Morte helping them, after all.

Kibaou turned away from Lind to start up the path towards the camp. Lind hastily grabbed his shoulder to stop him, causing the rest of players present to tense up.

"Wait a second, Kibaou! The camp disappears once someone completes the quest there, and it shows back up somewhere else in the forest! If you did the quest now, there'd be no point in us waiting here!"

Kibaou spun around and snapped at Lind. "So yer sayin' that you should go first and we get the short end of the stick, huh?!"

"We were here first, so yes, that's exactly—"

And then the camp vanished.

Lind stared at the camp, dumbfounded. Confused by the blue-haired knight's sudden silence, Kibaou followed his gaze only to be equally shocked.

Nice timing, Kirito. I rolled my eyes and stepped out of my hiding spot, not bothering to be silent about it. All eyes turned to me.

I held up my hand lamely. "Uh… yo."

Kibaou clicked his tongue and returned his gaze to where the camp used to be. His face only grew darker upon seeing Kirito. "'Course. Should'a figured it was the beaters behind this nonsense."

I bristled slightly at the word; the way Kibaou accented it made it sound derogatory than it already was. I did my best to ignore him and walked forwards to meet Kirito partway. "That was good timing on your part, for better or for worse. Probably worse…" I said as I scanned my vision over the group of players in front of us.

"What have I missed?"

"Well, these guys were arguing about who would get to use the camp a second ago, but that's obviously moot now…" I leaned in closer to whisper. "Morte was involved with them being here, but now's not the time for that."

"So are you two just gonna whisper to each other all day, or are we gonna get an explanation?!" Kibaou shouted, his already small amount of patience evaporated.

I turned around to glare at him. "What is there to explain? Kirito was already up in the camp doing our quest while you all wasted your time down here bickering."

"What I meant was why the hell did y'all just happen to be here at the same time as us?!"

I hesitated to reply as I wasn't sure how much I should let them know. Morte was a huge problem, but I doubted that trying to tell them about him now wouldn't work out too well.

Kirito picked up the slack and replied coolly. "Just a coincidence, I guess. I'd say a better question is why both guilds happened to be here at the same time. It makes sense for us to be questing in the middle of the night, but not you guys."

"Grrh, don't you talk down ta me! I—"

Lind suddenly made a confused face and held out his hand to interrupt Kibaou. "Er, I don't mean to avoid the current topic, but I need to ask—Rei-san, why is your health so low?"

I glanced up at my health bar in confusion, only to realize that I hadn't healed at all since I fought Morte. "Ah, hell." I quickly fumbled through my menu and pulled out a healing potion. "I was kind of in a rush, so I just forgot about it."

I hadn't really answered his question, but Lind didn't pry further. Thankfully, his interruption gave Kibaou a much-needed moment to think. "Tch… well, I suppose I can accept that you'd be questin' at this time of night. We did run into y'all early the other day, after all." He crossed his arms and his suspicious tone of voice returned. "Which reminds me… Where's yer other partner?"

I ignored the small prickle of deja vu that I felt. "Well, Asuna should still be asleep, unless she's woken up since we left."

Kibaou's eyes narrowed. "Whatever. While we're at it, I got another question for ya: I bet you weren't plannin' to tell us that the campaign has an item that we need to kill the boss, right?"

Kirito cocked his head in confusion. "Uhh, what?"

"Don't play dumb! You know exactly what I'm talkin' about!"

I took a deep breath to try to keep myself calm, which was becoming increasingly difficult. "No, we really don't. This is as far as I ever made it through the campaign in the beta, but I never heard of any kind of required item."

"Pah! There was some item we needed last Floor that was new, right? Course there'd be one here, too! You jus' won't tell us."

"God damn it, why do you need to accuse us over every single little thing?!" I shouted. Kirito put his hand on my shoulder to stop me; if he hadn't I would have kept yelling at Kibaou. "Okay, maybe there is something, I don't know. But you're acting like you know for sure that this is the case. I know who gave you that idea, and I'll say right now that you absolutely can not trust him."

Kibaou's face contorted with anger. "How do you know—why should I believe you?!"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, gee, I dunno, maybe he's the beater that was in your party the other day." I paused for a moment to rub my forehead. "Look, that aside, you seriously can't trust him."

"Why not?!"

"Because he's really dangerous! You—"

"She's lying!" a high-pitched screech came from the back of Kibaou's group. The group parted slightly as he pushed his way to the front. "She's just trying to make excuses so that they can keep doing the campaign without us knowing!"

The man's voice sounded vaguely familiar… he was skinny and clad in the green color that the ALS had adopted. At his side was a sheathed Numb Dagger. A leather mask obscured his face, which gave him an appearance that was slightly unnerving.

"Listen, you don't—" Kirito started.

"I won't listen to you! You're the reason Diavel died! I—"

Kibaou held his hand out in front of the masked man to stop him. "Can it, Joe," he growled. It looked like the Diavel comment got on his nerves. "Look, I ain't gonna listen to ya; I'll trust who I want. It's none'a yer business."

"It is my business!" I stamped my foot on the ground in frustration. "Seriously, he's going to get you killed!"

"Yeah, so what?! Even if you were right, why would you care?!"

"Because—Grrh, you know what, fine. I don't care. If your group dies and people start giving up because of that, it's your fault, not mine."

"Hey, Rei—"

"Forget it, Kirito. He's not going to listen to us."

"I think now might be a good time for me to step in?" A voice sounded behind me.

I whirled around in shock. In front of me stood our cool-headed but warm-haired fencer. "Jesus, Asuna! You scared the hell out of me!"

Asuna smiled slightly to apologize. "Ah, sorry, sorry." She turned to face Kibaou and the rest with a stern look on her face. "Let me ask you something, Kibaou-san. Why do you insist on finding it so hard to trust these two?"

"Eh? 'Cause they're beta testers."

"So? That's no reason."

Kibaou blinked in confusion. "Uh, well… Don't'cha remember what happened at the start? While we were all confused, the testers all up and ran off ta get ta all the good stuff before us. How could I trust 'em after that?"

"Wha—This again?!" I yelled, momentarily slipping into English. "Don't you—Don't you remember what Agil said back at the first boss meeting?! And Diavel agreed with him!"

"Tch, so what?!" My mention of Diavel had only made Kibaou angrier. "That doesn't mean anything! You lot still took advantage of us—"

"That's enough." Asuna's voice was frigid and her glare even colder; quiet as they were, her words were more than enough to silence Kibaou. "How can you hope to call yourself a leader when you act like this? You should be ashamed of yourself. Nevermind the fact that you're making baseless assumptions about an entire group, you're no better than these people that 'took advantage of you' when you try to exclude innocent people for no good reason."

A familiar smooth voice sounded quite literally out of thin air right behind Asuna. "She's right." Out of the same spot, Kizmel appeared, her powerful invisibility cloak now draped upon her shoulders.

The guilds had been rendered speechless before, but now they looked completely frozen, as if the game's server had crashed. Frankly, I was just as shocked; Asuna being here was one thing, but to think that Kizmel came along as well...

"I suppose I should introduce myself." She straightened her posture and raised her fist to her heart in a salute. "My name is Kizmel! I am a proud knight of the Pagoda Knights' Brigade, under the kingdom of Lyusula! These brave adventurers saved my life, and as such I have pledged to assist them in their journey up Aincrad."

A deathly silence sat over the players for a few moments. Before any of them could work up the nerve to say anything, Kizmel continued.

"Asuna speaks the truth. Maliciously excluding a whole group due to the actions of specific individuals is no way to lead. While I will not say that such conflict is unavoidable—I have seen as much within my kingdom's own brigades—it can be handled much more maturely than this."

The guilds stared at Kizmel in stunned silence. This elf, this NPC was lecturing them. She even knew the name of a player. And on top of that, to the DKB her cursor was likely so red that it was almost pitch black.

And sure enough, the first words to leave Lind's mouth weren't related to Kizmel's words but instead that last point. "A… are you sure you guys should be standing there…?" he asked, his voice shaking. I shrugged in response.

Kibaou leaned over to whisper to Lind; I couldn't hear him, but I presumed he was asking about Kizmel's cursor. He actually seemed rather unfazed about Asuna and Kizmel lecturing him—at least, he wasn't letting it show on his face, which I thought was an impressive feat for him.

Kizmel smiled a little upon seeing the murmurs spread throughout the group. When I glanced at her questioningly, she responded, "Well, I suppose I can understand why you may not get along so well; it seems that even your language is not that unified." She cast a subtle glance at me before looking back at the guilds. "I can barely understand the orange-haired one."

I snorted in amusement; she was referring to Kibaou's rather heavy accent. I made a mental note to ask Kizmel more about the elves and what she knew of humans later.

The whispering between the guilds continued for a few more moments. It seemed as if their conversation had suddenly become much more serious, but it was hard for me to tell.

Finally, the whispering ended and Kibaou and Lind turned back to face us. "We've come to a decision," Lind announced. "Both the DKB and the ALS will be abandoning the campaign."

"Uhh, um… what?" I stammered out, oblivious as to how they could have come to that conclusion.

"If both of us continue to work on these quests, it is likely that further conflict like what has occured today will be unavoidable. At the same time, if only one of the guilds abandons the campaign, that would give the other free reign over the labyrinth."

"Well, that makes sense…" Kirito said. "But what about—"

Lind held up his hand to stop him. "Of course, we can't just ignore such a large piece of content outright, due to the possibility of it holding something that we need. That's where you three come in—clearly," he glanced at Kizmel nervously, "you are best suited to this task."

"So, I guess that you'll be working on the labyrinth now?" I asked.

"'Course we will!" Kibaou retorted. "...'Sides, we can't have a small group like yours go in and get killed in some accident!"

I sighed. "That's one way of framing it, I guess…" In truth it was probably just a good excuse to keep us from getting ahead of them in the labyrinth, but I didn't have any reason to complain. And Kibaou was at least trying to be amicable, which helped.

Kirito remained silent in thought for a moment, then turned to face Lind. "Alright. We were planning to fight the boss on the twenty-first, right?"

Lind nodded.

"We'll have the campaign completed by the evening before, then." Kirito grinned wryly. "Of course, you'll have to trust our info."

"We have no problems with that at this point." Lind quickly glanced over his followers and spoke in a much more formal tone. "The DKB will start tackling the labyrinth tomorrow morning, and we will reconvene at 17:00 tomorrow evening. Good night." He and his party marched down the path to the east and vanished into the woods.

"Well, don't just stand there like a bunch'a idiots!" Kibaou roared at his own guild. "We ain't gonna let them get a jump start on us!" The ALS roared back in response and went off in the opposite direction.

The four of us, now alone at the intersection, stood there for a moment in silence. "Well… I guess that worked out," I eventually mumbled.

"For now, at least," Asuna replied after letting out a long breath. "So, I have a few questions…"

"R-right," Kirito nodded nervously, probably afraid that Asuna was angry. "Well, we can talk while we make our way back to camp. After all," he turned his left hand palm-up to reveal a sealed scroll, "we need to get this back to the commander."

Kizmel smiled; she turned and started walking towards the path that the ALS took, which prompted us to follow. "I see you were successful. Still, what you did was dangerous; had I not woken up to notice you two had gone, that encounter may not have gone so smoothly."

"S-sorry."

Asuna crossed her arms, seemingly annoyed. "It was my idea to follow you, by the way. I figured you two were up to some nonsense."

I raised my hands defensively. "Hey, this was all Kirito. I only followed him because I woke up when he was leaving the tent."

Kirito bowed his head slightly and apologized again. "Sorry. And thanks."

"I have been wondering," Kizmel asked after a short silence, "what did the orange-haired one mean when he called you some strange name?"

"'Beta testers', you mean?" I asked.

"Yes, that."

I nodded. "Testers… well, it's kinda like, uh… well…"

"Scouts, I guess?" Kirito interjected.

"Yeah! Scouts. That works. By the way, instead of brigades we call our groups 'guilds'."

"If that is the case, I cannot fathom why they would ever treat you the way they seem to," Kizmel replied, her tone indignant.

"Well… it's a lot more complicated than that," I admitted. My response was vague, but I couldn't think of a good way to explain it to Kizmel.

"Hmm… I suppose that often that is true of most things…" Kizmel mused. "I was hesitant to bring this up before, but I imagine your situation is indeed quite complicated…"

Asuna tilted her head in confusion. Kizmel was being unusually cryptic, even with how human she was for an NPC. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the three of you, as well as those guilds from earlier, are not of this world, correct?"

The three of us stopped dead in our tracks. I wasn't expecting Kizmel to know that, of all things. This whole time we had been careful around Kizmel and tried to avoid saying anything out-of-place. At first I hadn't been able to put my finger on why it made us feel so antsy, but it was pretty obvious now that because she was so lifelike we didn't want to risk ruining that, paranoid as that sounded. But maybe we didn't need to be so careful, after all…

"I do not know much about it myself, but from what I understand it is one of humankind's last powerful charms, almost on the scale of a true spell of the past. The ability to summon heroes from beyond our own world… I would think that the goal of such an act would be to unify all of Aincrad, perhaps even return it the lands from which it came, but I imagine that you three are mostly concerned with getting back home?"

It was a reasonable explanation, at least from her point of view. "Yeah…" Kirito replied softly. "That sounds about right."

Kizmel smiled her brightest smile yet. "Well, rest assured that I will assist you in your adventures as much as I can. I owe you that much, at least."

We fell into silence, which gave me some time to be alone with my own thoughts. We needed to decide how we were going to handle Morte… He clearly had some amount of influence over both guilds, but what could we do about it? We could talk to Lind and Kibaou about it in private, but the likelihood that they'd believe me was kind of questionable. On top of that, the last thing that I wanted to do was cause panic among the group.

"Oh, Rei-chan," Asuna said, interrupting my train of thought. "I noticed this a while back, too… for a moment you started to speak in English back when you were arguing with Kibaou, but you caught yourself. I was just wondering…"

Before I could reply, Kizmel spoke. "Indeed, I was curious about that as well. It seemed almost… vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place it."

"Oh, that?" I put my hands behind my head lazily. "I grew up with both languages, that's all. So sometimes I'll swap between the two if I'm not thinking about it…"

"So you're fluent in it, then?" Asuna asked.

I nodded.

"Hmm," she hummed. I couldn't tell what she might have been thinking.

Meanwhile, Kizmel was busy with her own thoughts. "Hmm, maybe… It's not very likely, but it's still possible…"

"What is it?" I asked, curious as to what could have her so unsure.

"Well, once you've made your way to the queen's castle on the ninth Floor, it may be worth your time to visit the Grand Archive and speak with the historians there… the probability of it is low, but that language of yours might be the key they are looking for."

"I… see." I responded. Kizmel's rather vague reply hadn't told me much, but she didn't elaborate any further. Shortly afterwards we arrived at the dark elf camp.

Author's Notes

Hey everyone!

Maan, this took me a while. The length of this chapter makes up for it slightly (twice as long as average!), but still. 4 months. Yeesh, what the heck, me.

I'm sure you have no doubt in this matter considering my track record, but I'd like to take the opportunity to say that the fact that posting chapters takes me a long time doesn't mean I've ever flat-out stopped working on SoLaD. I'm coming up with ideas constantly, but sometimes it just takes me a while to get it written (or typed, rather) down. A good chunk of that is due to my chronic laziness/procrastination, but here recently life has been getting in the way a bit as well, as it is wont to do.Point is: never fear, despite my long absences SoLaD is here to stay.

I seem to be whinging about how long it takes me to update in just about every one of these. Hm. It's almost like it's a recurring issue… well, I'm sure you get it by now.

Onto today's chapter… Initially I considered releasing just the duel between Rei and Morte as a chapter on its own (it's certainly long enough), but I decided to hold on to it. Which was good, since it's been improved over these past months.

Putting a rural accent like Kibaou has into text can be tricky to pin down and keep consistent—I don't want to make it too excessive, but it needs to be obvious, y'know? Hopefully I've done a good job of that.

There's also the English… being bilingual is a part of Rei's character (and it might be pertinent to the story, as you can probably tell) but sometimes it feels like, at least in this context, there's no way to write that that doesn't come across… kinda eugh. I don't know how else to put that. At the very least, I certainly think that I handled it much better than the first time she spoke in English like that (obligatory reminder that, y'know, the characters are Japanese and hence speak Japanese by default. Probably don't need to say that, but, nyeh).

Okay, rambling over. That's all for today.

Take care!