"Time to go," Camilla said as she leaned over the bed and dropped a goodbye kiss on my cheek, her hair tickling my skin. "Let me guess: another exciting day exploring Taft while I'm out protecting the not-necessarily-innocent."
"You never know," I said as I opened my eyes to slits. "Somewhere in town there might be a few pixels on the map that're still fogged out." I paused, looking up at my wife and blinking in momentary confusion. "It's going to take me forever to get used to that."
My wife grinned and reached up, brushing her fingertips against red hair that was now cut a few centimeters above shoulder length. "It'll take some getting used to for me too," she said. "I keep wanting to reach up and tie it back. I just got sick of it getting snagged in my armor is all."
It was hard to fault her reasons, but I was going to miss her long hair—and being able to make her purr by untangling it with my fingers. I pulled the covers up over my face in defense against the encroaching sunlight and rolled over. "You look beautiful," I said, voice muffled by the fabric. "Now get going; the Cats are waiting for you."
What was waiting for me was—I hoped—a couple more hours of sleep. I'd set my alarm to the same time as hers so that I'd be awake to see her off—so to speak—but I reasoned that any time thereafter I spent sleeping was time not spent in an apocalyptic state of boredom.
But there was something about the unwaveringly perfect nature of SAO's simulations of physical stimuli that made it really difficult to get back to sleep once I'd awakened if I wasn't still exhausted—I would just drift in and out of a muddled daydream state. So when it was obvious no further sleep was forthcoming, I gathered my wits and sought out breakfast at the pub.
As usual, the meal afforded me plenty of time to zone out and plan out the day ahead. I'd probably been in almost every NPC building in the town, and while I was sure I was missing any number of quests, thus far the only ones I'd discovered were the hunting quests I'd mentioned to my wife days before—quests which were still sitting in my journal, untouched. As for the rest, the trick was knowing exactly what conditions triggered the quest. The game didn't always drop it right in your lap.
About midway through my bowl of ochazuke, it occurred to me that I hadn't really been making the most of my local sources of information. The Black Cats might be off patrolling with Camilla, but they weren't the only friends we had in the area. So when Hinami came to take my bowl away, I stopped her and asked.
"Quests?" Hinami said, balancing several plates in the crook of her arm and setting my bowl on top of them. "I know there are, but I couldn't tell you where to find them. Want me to ask Parida?"
"That'd be great," I said. "Let her know I'm looking for something I can solo to kill time while Camilla's off with the Army."
Hinami's head of purple hair bounced off to the kitchen, but rather than returning with an answer she returned with Parida at her side, who slid into the seat across from me. "Morning, Kadyn. Hinami said you wanted to know about the local quests?"
"Solo quests, specifically," I clarified. "Camilla's off patrolling with the Army so I've got some time to kill. Are there any simple fetch quests I can grind for EXP while I'm here?"
"A few," Parida answered, playing with one of her braids with one hand as she dragged open her menu with the other. Scooting her chair over next to mine, she set the visibility on her UI so that I could see it and drilled down into her completed quests sub-menu, pointing at several entries. "These three are pretty simple, and except for the Hens for Highcroft quest they don't even take you outside of Taft.
"Please tell me that one does not actually involve transporting poultry."
Parida laughed ruefully. "You asked for fetch quests. The other two are just running stuff from one NPC to another within Taft, but the EXP you get from them is about what you'd expect from that—you'd be better off pulling squirrels in the Taftwood. You should have at least one other person along for Hens anyway; it involves a short trek east up the Taft Foothills."
As I nodded, she paused and then said: "You know, if you want to do that one I could probably get away for a while. This place doesn't really pick up until the early evening anyway."
"Sure!" Hinami called cheerfully from across the room. "Now that you ask, I totally don't mind staying here and watching the pub for hours while you go do stuff. Thanks Parida!"
I snorted while Parida hid her face. I had to admit that some company would probably make a boring fetch quest—what my wife, in English gamer jargon, called a FedEx quest—pass more quickly. "If neither of you mind," I said, "I'd be happy for the help. Are you sure, though? That doesn't look like a repeatable quest, so if you've already done it…"
"I can gather," Parida said, waving at the air. "Don't worry about me. That's the nice thing about the Cooking skill—no matter where I go or what I do, I can usually find some useful ingredients." She swiped her quest menu closed and tapped out a few commands; a party invite popped up into my view. I reached up to accept it, hesitating with my finger centimeters away from the interface. I knew it was a dumb thing to get hung up about, but right then I had the thought that this would be the first time in SAO I'd partied with anyone but Camilla while she wasn't there.
As if she'd be bothered by something so stupid, I thought, annoyed with myself for getting bent out of shape about nothing. The moment passed, and I accepted the invite. Parida's HP bar appeared in the upper left corner of my HUD, just below mine.
If Parida noticed my hesitation, she didn't comment on it. I saw her eyes go up and to her left before returning to me with a smile. "There we go. Give me a minute to get equipped and we'll go be chicken couriers."
Chicken couriers. If there had been an enthusiasm gauge in my HUD, it'd be flashing red as it emptied.
The fetch quest turned out to be exactly as dumb as it sounded. There was a small farm on the southern outskirts of Taft, and we had to go find the farmer NPC on the second floor of the barn and ask him if he needed any help. He presented us with three large cages containing chickens, and told us to deliver them to the tiny town of Highcroft on the eastern edge of the floor. It wasn't a very long trek, but it was across the Glimmerbrook and all uphill into the Foothills from there. Worse, one look at the status windows for the chicken cage objects revealed the catch for the quest: the cages were too big to store in a player's inventory; they had to be physically carried to their destination.
"You're kidding me," I said, seriously considering abandoning the quest right there and then. Fighting bandits was starting to look appealing by comparison.
Parida slapped me on the back, then stopped to make sure her staff was securely fastened to hers as she crouched and slipped her fingers under one of the cages, looking for the best spot from which to lift it. "Easy EXP, Kadyn. Normally it'd take three trips, but with two sets of hands it'll only take two. Most of the route is on a marked path, but we should be able to pull a few mobs on the way too. It'll take us maybe two or three hours, and I brought lunch for us."
That got my attention. When I put things in perspective, I had a competent and knowledgeable local player taking time she didn't have to take in order to help me do a quest she'd already done, and she'd brought lunch for both of us in the bargain. And being no more immune to such things than anyone else with a Y chromosome, the fact that she was reasonably cute didn't hurt—especially since I had no intention of doing anything about that and didn't get the impression she would either.
Given all of that, I shut up, expressed my gratitude, and picked up a chicken coop.
"So what is this place, Highcroft? You said it was to the east up in the Foothills?"
"That's right," Parida said, the free ends of her braids swaying as she jerked her head in that general direction. "In the in-game lore I guess it's some kind of mining village, though I don't think there's actually a mine up there. It's got a small trading post, an NPC smith, and not a hell of a lot else. If you're grinding in Weilan Marsh, or in some parts of the Foothills, it's quicker to go there than all the way back to Taft if you need to repair."
"But they apparently need chickens," I said, grunting as I shifted the load in my arms.
"Hens," said Parida, startling her passengers when she laughed. "Just wait until you turn in the quest. You'll get a choice of whether you want to be paid in eggs or coin. It's not much money, so if you take the eggs I can cook something for you guys tonight."
"Far be it from me to argue with one of your meals," I said, the praise sincere. "I've been meaning to ask, how does your business work? Is there an NPC that owns the pub or something?"
"Something like that. When we first got here, it was NPC-run and basically just served the usual dodgy food you get from them. But the owner was the starter for a series of crafting quests that involved running all over and gathering samples of pretty much every basic ingredient you'll find on this floor, then cooking stuff with them for the pub."
"I didn't know there were crafting quests like that," I said with some surprise.
"Neither did I, until then. I learned a bunch of new recipes in the process, so I kept going with that quest line and taking notes. And after close to two weeks of nearly non-stop work, I got to a point where the owner confided that he'd been planning to retire and offered to sell his business to me. I couldn't say no—and we've been here ever since."
"Do you—" I stopped there, my mouth getting ahead of my brain.
"Do I cook in real life?" Parida said, coming uncomfortably close to the exact words that had almost come out of my mouth. She laughed. "Oh hell no. I obsess over food magazines, but I could burn water. There's just something about the Cooking system in SAO that clicked with me. It's less like real cooking and more like a puzzle where you put everything in a microwave at the end. That I can do."
We spent a considerable amount of time going over the way the mechanics of the Cooking skill worked in SAO. There was a time when I'd seriously thought about picking it up, but any ambitions to do so died as I learned more and more about it. It sounded like the kind of thing that would be absolutely fascinating to try to figure out if I'd had any real interest in the science of food beyond the eating of it. Since I didn't, it struck me as a recipe for tedium.
But it was at least interesting to listen to, especially when the person doing the talking was someone with a sincere passion for it who managed to make the explanations entertaining.
And since Parida had opened the door to talking about our lives before SAO, it eventually gave me the opportunity to ask something else I'd been wondering about.
"Hinami and I were college roommates," Parida answered, her eyes growing distant for a moment. "I was the one who was geeking out over SAO before it came out, and I got so tired of her teasing me about it that I told her I'd split the cost of a Nerve Gear for her if she'd just shut up and try it with me." She turned and gave me a rueful look. "We all know how that worked out."
"Shit," I said eloquently.
"Yeah. She's a quick learner, but she's not really a gamer. So I feel kind of responsible for her being here, and I've been doing my best to take care of her. It's one of the reasons I bought the pub—I think it lets her pretend on some level that she's just a waitress instead of a prisoner in a death game."
"Makes me wonder just how many players in SAO were people like her—people who'd never played a video game in their lives, or who just joined up because their brother or daughter or best friend was obsessed with it and they wanted to see what all the hype was about."
"Too many, I'll bet," Parida said sadly. It was obvious that she still felt really guilty about getting Hinami involved in SAO, and I felt bad for pulling it out of the back of her mind and into the light.
Seeing a chance to change the subject, I freed one of my fingers from under the chicken coop and used it to point awkwardly off to my right. "Hey, can we clear those bobcats? I picked up a hunting quest in Taft to bring back 10 pelts."
"Oh, you're on that quest. Sure, but keep in mind the pelt drops are uncommon. We might clear that whole group and only get one or two."
I was grateful for an excuse to set down my load. Rubbing at both arms to banish some of the soreness, I drew my dagger and eyed the nearest bobcat. "Even though they're solo mobs, this is going to be interesting without a tank," I said. "I guess there's not much point in worrying about managing aggro."
"Nope," Parida said as she unslung her staff and gave it a twirl. "What's that phrase some of the hardcore types use? 'Tank and spank'?"
I cackled loudly enough to cause one of the Foothills Bobcats to turn and eye me warily. It was a good thing they were non-aggro mobs. "Yeah, it basically means there's no finesse to the fight—just burn it down as fast as you can."
"Works for me," Parida said, snapping the staff into a ready position. "Pull?"
"Incoming," I said as we both rushed the mob.
Since it was the first time I'd partied with anyone else in SAO without my wife, it was also the first time I'd fought in SAO without her tanking. It was a completely different experience—a little tougher than I was used to when duoing with Camilla, but far more manageable than the nightmare of PvP. It was probably just as well that these were fairly weak lower-level animal mobs.
Parida struck first, her staff turning into a glowing yellow blur as she opened with a three-hit jabbing combo. The Foothills Bobcat turned and leapt at her, and I ran around behind it and waited for it to hit the recovery frame of the attack it had just launched. It only paused for a moment, but that was long enough for me to critically stab it in the back, leaving only a sliver of HP. Although my recovery pause was even shorter, before I could follow up my attack I saw the steel-shod end of Parida's staff flash in an arc and crush the head of the bobcat mob. It shimmered and burst into polygons, and when it did I saw the cursors of the other two bobcats in the area turn red.
"Adds!" I said quickly, tapping my dagger and opening an options menu. A bobcat was already leaping at Parida; she just barely sidestepped and swung the other end of her staff around, hitting the mob in midair and smacking it to the ground. The other mob aggroed me, but by then I was ready for it—I ducked out of the way of its leaping attack, and slashed once as it passed. The mob went tumbling bonelessly into the dirt as the consumable Status Tip on the dagger inflicted a two-second Paralysis effect. It was long enough for me to rush in and stab at the mob until its death animation sprayed me with glittering green polygons.
I looked back at Parida, and saw her bobcat rake her across the leg with its claws. It didn't reduce her HP by much, but she yelled angrily as she executed a series of staff techniques that rapidly burned down the remainder of her opponent's life. She kept beating the ground where the bobcat had been until the last of its polygons had evaporated into the air.
"I think it's dead," I said a little wryly, checking the durability on my dagger and making sure I hadn't taken any damage.
"Sorry," she said as she leaned on her staff. "That just caught me off-guard. Why'd they attack us?"
"Probably social aggro," I said. "Non-aggro mobs won't attack you unless you attack them, but some will also attack if you kill any other mobs of the same type too close to them. Want to use a pot before we move on?"
Parida shook her head, securing her staff again on her back and picking up the chicken coop. "Nah. We're not far from Highcroft now—five or ten minutes' walk, maybe, and by then that scratch will heal. Let's drop these off; we've got one more trip to make and we can pull some more mobs on the way back."
As it turned out, Parida's description of Highcroft had been quite generous. There might've been a dozen structures in the entire settlement—the most notable of which were a mill with a water wheel driven by the branch of the Glimmerbrook river that passed through the edge of town, the NPC smith she'd mentioned, and a pair of NPC vendors that shared space under a canvas awning backed by a makeshift-looking one-story building of rough logs. The remainder seemed to be NPC residences that we probably couldn't enter; there didn't seem to be any lodging for players anywhere. It was clearly intended as nothing other than a waypoint for travelers to repair and restock.
After dropping off the first load of chickens with the miller, we visited the NPC shops to top off the durability of our equipment and vendor our trash. I checked the time; almost noon. Which meant—
"Hey, want to stop here for lunch?" Parida pointed at a rocky edge near the outskirts of the town's Safe Zone that looked like it ended in an abrupt drop. "There's a really nice view over there. It's a great picnic spot."
Walking over and examining the recommended location, I found it hard to argue. I'd been right about the abrupt drop, but didn't realize just how much of a drop it was until I peered over the side: it was probably a good fifty meters to the mossy rocks far below, and when I looked a ways off to my right I could see the Glimmerbrook spilling over the precipice and continuing its journey across the 11th floor from there. A fine mist rose from the bottom of the waterfall, the wind blowing it in waves that made it look almost like smoke, save for the faint rainbow and the cool feeling of the almost-aerosolized moisture on my skin.
It was a damn fine picnic spot.
"Challenge accepted," I said, sinking down into a cross-legged position and stretching my arms high above my head. "What's for lunch?"
In lieu of an answer, Parida opened her menu and summoned a pair of furoshiki-wrapped packages from her inventory, handing me one. When I undid the cloth and opened it, I whistled softly in appreciation. It was very nearly a proper bento, with a bed of rice in one compartment and a mixture of pickled vegetables in another, topped off with sesame seeds and slices of fish that I assumed were from either the Glimmerbrook or one of the floor's lakes.
"Can we hire you to make all of our adventuring rations?" I asked hopefully, not entirely in jest.
Parida laughed, blushing a little. "Maybe, but I should warn you that these don't keep for long—you guys would have to come back every day for them, fresh. The durability runs out in a matter of hours."
"Well, it looks amazing," I said sincerely. "About the only thing it's missing is—"
"Soy sauce," Parida said, sighing wistfully and handing me a pair of chopsticks.
"Yeah. But I'm not complaining—believe me, I'm not. Thank you so much for making and bringing these."
Parida smiled and lifted the lid off of her own lunch. "My pleasure. Itadakimasu."
Obviating my last concern, the meal actually tasted as good as it looked. As we sat there in peaceful relative silence and ate, I looked out across the Taft Foothills and just absorbed the stunning view, taking in the little details. I could see Taft itself in the distance far below our current elevation, maybe two or three kilometers away. It was an island of civilization in the midst of what from here looked like a vast stretch of farmland and prairie bordered on the far side by an even vaster forest. The heights of the Taft Foothills were in between where we sat and Weilan Marsh, but I knew it was just over the ridge to the north, on the other side of the Glimmerbrook.
Sometimes, looking at things like this, it was very hard to remember that we were living in a virtual world—that everything we were seeing was a mere simulation of life and reality.
"It's places like this that make me love this world despite hating being stuck here," Parida said as she finished, eyes drawn to the same scenic vista that I'd spent so much time admiring. "If that makes sense."
"It does," I said. "Just because Kayaba committed a horrible crime against all of us by trapping our minds in here doesn't mean that there isn't beauty in Aincrad if you look for it." I picked up a rock and threw it over the edge, watching as it tumbled for a long time before splashing into the river where it continued far below. "Think about everything that went into making that happen just now. The game has to simulate gravity, air resistance, wind, mass, and a thousand other bits of physics just to make that rock fall exactly right, spinning in a way that's appropriate to the way it rolled out of my fingers. It disturbed the mist on the way down, which means that the mist is simulated and not just a particle effect. And that's not even getting into the fluid simulation when it hit the water. I'd bet that if you went down there and waded into the river, you'd find that very rock sitting on the bottom somewhere."
I looked over at Parida, expecting to see her nodding along. Instead, I caught her staring at me oddly as if I'd been babbling incomprehensibly in English. "What?" I said.
"You," she replied, "are a very strange man."
My cheeks heated a little in embarrassment as I realized how I'd been going on at length about what the back-end simulations in SAO must be like, when she'd been talking purely about the aesthetics of the scene. "Sorry," I said. "I'm a game developer. Was."
"Did you work on SAO?" she asked, her tone abruptly uncomfortable.
I shook my head quickly. "No, just stupid little casual games, like the kind you find on social media sites. I've always wanted to work on RPGs, but it's hard to break into that industry."
The answer seemed to relax Parida slightly; her shoulders lost some of the tension they'd suddenly taken on. We were both quiet for another minute or so, at which point she used her staff to push herself slowly up to her feet, stretching. "Let's get going," she said. "We've got one more trip to make, and you get to carry the third coop."
"Joy," I said, grinning as I came to my feet. "Hey, in case I didn't mention, thanks for taking the time to do this with me. I've been bored out of my skull for the last week, and I needed to get out and do something to earn some EXP."
"It's fine," she said, waving off anything further and smiling. "You guys are friends. It's been a nice change of pace."
"That reminds me," I said. "I don't think we've actually friended you yet. You mind?"
"Not at all." She opened her menu and tapped a few times; a friend request popped up in my view and I immediately accepted it.
"Anyway, let's get this over and done with. Hinami didn't sound too happy when you left."
Parida laughed as we headed towards the small covered wooden bridge over the Glimmerbrook that marked the edge of town. "Oh don't worry, she was mostly yanking my chain. As long as I come back with more ingredients for our stores, she doesn't really mind. She likes the job—like I said, I think it helps her forget that she's trapped here."
The vast majority of the journey between Taft and Highcroft wound back and forth through the Taft Foothills, which began as the rolling hills of their namesake and gradually became rockier and steeper as they got closer to the cliff on the eastern edge of the floor where we'd had our picnic. Our return route took us through a series of winding foot paths that dipped in and out of shallow canyons before softening into hills.
At the western end of one of these narrow canyons was a player.
When we came around the corner and saw a person in a cloak standing there, it was quite startling—and not a little bit unsettling. Both of us came to a halt, and I focused immediately on the other player in suspicion—relaxing only a little when I saw that their cursor was green. From the shape of the clothing, my guess was that it was a woman—but under the cloak and with clothing that baggy, it was hard to tell.
Parida had been using her staff as a walking stick, and although she didn't have it pointed at the other player in a threatening way, she held it in a way that made it clear she was ready to use it. "Can we help you?" she asked.
The player reached up and pushed back the hood of her cloak. Air raid sirens went off in my head when I recognized who it was. Green light fleeted across my eyes as I toggled on Searching, and immediately picked up multiple orange cursors behind rocks and on the ledges above. I cursed myself for not using the skill sooner.
"I'm sorry," Viyami said as she blocked our path. I hated her even more for sounding like she truly meant it.
"Run, Parida!" I yelled as I drew my dagger and looked around, trying to take stock of how many I faced and where they were.
Parida looked at me strangely, confused. I realized she couldn't see what I could and didn't know who Viyami was.
"RUN!" I screamed as a full party of orange players emerged from their hiding places or dropped down from above, surrounding us. Realizing the situation too late, she ran straight at Viyami, spinning her staff above her head. Viyami's eye's widened, as if she hadn't expected a green player to attack her instead of one of her orange comrades. She dove out of the way, unintentionally clearing a path.
A bandit with a dagger and a tiny buckler rushed at me, a skill beginning to light up the blade of his weapon. Instead of dodging, I ran at him to throw off his timing and rolled to the ground at the last moment. As I came up to one knee, I slashed at the back of his leg with my dagger and tried to sweep him off his feet. It didn't work, but it did send him stumbling in the wrong direction as he tried to recover his balance. A player with an ugly-looking two-handed war axe chopped down at me, and only another diving roll saved me from taking the hit.
"Alive, goddamnit!" I heard one of the bandits yell. Those two words changed things. If they meant to take me alive, it meant they had to hold back.
I didn't.
A grazing blow from a sword took me in the back of the shoulder as I came to my feet, and without indulging in the distraction of looking at my HP I ran towards the only opening I saw, dashing at the wall of the cliff. Two bandits were right behind me, and just as I reached the wall I decided to try something ballsy: I jumped, kicked off the wall, and flipped over my two pursuers to land behind them.
It would've never worked in real life, but until that moment I'd never been happier that I'd filled my most recent skill slot with Acrobatics. Without wasting the opportunity, I executed a multi-hit dagger technique directly into the back of one of the bandits, the critical hit slamming him against the wall of the canyon with almost two thirds of his HP gone.
Then I felt a blade against my neck, and knew it was over.