Fairy Dance of Death

by Catsy

AU reboot of the entire SAO storyline, beginning from the premise that Kayaba Akihiko was obsessed with magic and Norse Mythology rather than swords and pure melee. As a result, he created the Death Game of Alfheim Online rather than the floating castle of Aincrad—a world in which PvP is not a crime, and the nine player races are in competition to escape. **SPOILERS IN REVIEWS**

36. Act 3: Chapter 36

"The «Area Map» is an essential tool available to every player, and can be accessed from the top-level game menu. It is a fully interactive representation of any area known to the player, visualized as a two-dimensional slice of three-dimensional space at a given altitude. By default it is shown at the player's current position, but players can freely navigate through their map using the game's standard touch interface, set and recall navigation waypoints, and mark points of interest with icons and notes. The «Fog of War» voxel effect that obscures unexplored regions of the map is uncovered at a resolution of one cubic meter through exploration, and the resulting map data can be selectively traded with other players, turned in to NPCs who offer «Exploration Quests», or transcribed into a consumable item by a player or NPC with an appropriate crafting skill..."
—Alfheim Online manual, «Area Map»

8 May 2023: Day 184 - Morning

By the time Griselda awoke the next day, almost everyone knew about what happened to Shriker's party.

The certainty that there would be an almost was what had prompted Chellok to send a message to her the night before, asking that she show up to the Depot much earlier than usual. The debriefings they had all gone through upon their premature return to Nissengrof had been almost as exhausting as the spider battle itself, and had eventually involved not only Chellok but the three faction proxies and the leaders of the clearing groups.

Small wonder that the other three members of her party had gone off on their own as soon as they could get away. Griselda had envied them the freedom.

But although rumors were already spreading like wildfire, rumors were not the same thing as experience. And as the leader of the only group so far that had survived an encounter with these new mobs, they wanted her to brief the other farmers before everyone left on their morning assignments, so that they could all benefit from—and possibly survive thanks to—the experience she had.

It was an honor, but it was also an enormous responsibility. After six months in Alfheim, she was used to carrying the lives of others on her shoulders—but now her words could very well be the difference between survival and death for hundreds of NCC contract farmers.

Griselda sincerely hoped that she would do right by them. Grimlock had gently suggested over dinner that she could be taking on more than she could handle, and she was inclined to agree with him. But although she appreciated his concern for her well-being—and made certain to tell him so repeatedly—this was something that she simply had to do.

If there was a chance that anything she had to say could save someone's life, she would do her best and hope that it was enough. Even if it meant going far outside of her comfort zone.

"You look nervous," Chellok observed as Griselda tilted her shield back and forth to get a good look at herself in the reflection. It was the best she could do without a real mirror, but it had the added bonus of distracting her from looking out the full-length windows of Chellok's office and seeing the sizable crowd gathered below on the warehouse floor.

Her emerald-green eyes turned in the direction of his voice while she tried to tuck a few strands of hair behind her long, sharply-tapered ears. "Why do you say that?"

Chellok snorted. "Miss, I've got twice your years and can tell when someone's about to fidget right outta their skin. Especially when you're sitting there fussing over hair that'll just revert to your default style anyway unless you get a tailor to change it. You ever do any public speaking?"

"Never," Griselda said after a moment, eyes briefly dropping to her feet and not coming all the way back up. "I mean, not like this. It's not my place, and my husband thinks I might be getting in over my head here. I really shouldn't—"

Chellok stopped her there with a slight gesture of his palm. "That's what I thought. Okay, look, we're short on time before you go out there, but here's the thing you gotta keep in mind: today, you are the expert. There is no one who knows this new mob better than you right now, and if you're going to go out there and teach what you know so that it sticks, you can't be tearing yourself down like that. Or letting anyone else do it."

Griselda did look him in the eyes then, although it was still uncomfortable enough that she couldn't maintain it for long. "I'm not sure I follow what you mean."

"Self-confidence, young lady. You need it, and you ain't got it." He leaned back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his head and fixed her with scrutiny that again made her bow her head deferentially. "Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. From what I've seen of you and that Lepu mechanist who works with Agil, I bet back in the world you were the ideal Yamato Nadeshiko, weren't you? Polite, humble, submissive and all that good stuff. You might lead your party in the field, but when your riaru husband's around, he the one who calls the shots. Isn't that right?"

This conversation had suddenly taken a turn that was making Griselda even more uncomfortable than the prospect of what she had to go out and do. She sat upright a bit more stiffly, unequipping her shield to send it to her inventory. "Forgive my rudeness, sir, but I am uncertain why a concern such as that should burden you. He is our guildmaster."

Chellok nodded. "Pitch-perfect courtesy even when I'm the one being incredibly rude. I don't think you could've picked a more humble, indirect way to tell one of your elders to mind his own goddamn business. And you're right—your marriage isn't my business. But if you want to go out there and speak to all those people without melting down, you need to believe in yourself." He sat forward and tapped the desk in front of him with one thick, stubby finger. "Believe that you know the material, and that you can do this. Anyone who tells you that you can't, you just tell them to piss right off and quit tearing you down. That includes the voice inside of you that's sitting there right now telling you that you ain't good enough. And that includes anyone else in your life who does the same."

Griselda's lips were set in a paper-thin line as she absorbed what Chellok was saying and glanced back up at him. The intrusive question and even more intrusive follow-up had shocked her and made her extremely uncomfortable. But now that the shock was wearing off, she found herself having to fend off a very unfamiliar urge that she felt rising within her: defiance. Chellok must have seen something of that on her face; he nodded once again as if she'd replied with words. "Good. So there is steel in you. Someone who survived the Salamander Blitz and an ambush like yesterday's would have to have some. Hold onto that, and take it with you when you go out there."

A knock sounded at the door, and Agil stuck his bald head in a moment later, the noise of the crowd suddenly increasing when the door cracked. "Everyone's here now."

"Thanks. Get them to start settling down and we'll be right out." Chellok hadn't taken his eyes from Griselda during the brief exchange, and he did not do so now. "Anything you want to say to me first?"

There was, but Griselda had been planning on holding her tongue until that prompt gave her permission to reply. "Yes, sir," she said as she came smoothly to her feet. "With great respect for your wisdom, I do not believe you or anyone else has enough information to fairly judge the relationship I have with my husband. He is a kind, gentle, and intelligent man who would do anything within his means to protect his wife… a wife who repays his love and devotion by willfully going out on her own every day and leaving him home to worry if—like Shriker—one day she might not come back." Griselda bowed, and held that position while she concluded her words. "I will think on what you've said, but I would be grateful if you would refrain from criticizing him. You don't know what weighs on his mind."

A smile tugged at Chellok's rugged face. "Yeah, you've got what you need in there somewhere. You'll be fine." The comment made no sense to Griselda, but she didn't have time to think it over before he nodded towards the door. "Now go on, they're waiting for you."

Griselda took note of the fact that Chellok hadn't really addressed what she'd said, but there was nothing for it now. She bowed once more in acknowledgement, and opened the door without another word.

·:·:·:·:·:·

"Jan—" said Schmitt.

Caynz's closed fist bobbed in the air with each word. "—Ken—"

In unison: "Pon!" Both Gnomes threw out a hand before them; each had the index and middle fingers extended like a pair of scissors. The boys sighed.

Yoruko's sigh was even deeper. Players had been trickling into the Depot for the last twenty minutes now, and with everyone asked to bring their entire farming group, what was usually a modestly-sized meeting of a few dozen party leaders had become a sizable and noisy crowd. The other two members of her party weren't helping. "What are you two doing?" she asked finally.

"Playing janken," Schmitt said without looking at her, holding out a closed fist again.

"I can see that," Yoruko said, laughing. From his hunched, prepared posture, anyone would've assumed he was about to engage in combat. "I mean, what are you trying to settle? You've been doing that for half the time we've been waiting here."

"Surely the lady recalls the necklace that we wrested from the clutches of that foul named Jotunn yesterday," Caynz said. "The power within resonates strongly with Earth magic, which both Schmitt and I use natively."

"And no one else in the party does," Schmitt said unnecessarily. "So since it dropped for Griz, she said it was up to the two of us to sort out who gets it. Ready?"

"Ready," Caynz said. This time Schmitt's paper defeated his rock—a defeat which simply prompted them to start another round. That one ended the same way, and Caynz looked over at her, grinning a bit foolishly.

"So what's the score?" Yoruko asked, inching a little towards Caynz's side.

"Thirty to twenty-seven," Caynz answered after closing his eyes and taking a moment to think. He then gave her a mirthful sidewise glance, though he had to look down a bit to do so. "In case you were wondering, I'm winning."

Schmitt pointedly cleared his throat, fist held out. "Not for much longer. Ready?"

"One sec. Yoruko, you okay?"

Her mouth was hanging open in a very impolite way, and Yoruko shut it quickly. She knew the two of them had been at it for a while, but she thought that was taking things a bit far. Her fingers wove through her purple hair and twisted the curls around one digit after another as her gaze went back and forth between the two boys. "So how does this end? It does end, right?"

"When Griselda comes out," Schmitt said quickly. "Whoever's ahead then wins. Which is why Caynz is stalling."

"I'm not stalling," Caynz said as he stopped transparently stalling. "Jan, ken—"

Yoruko turned away and raised her eyes high towards the ceiling of the warehouse. A framework of metal and wood shelving formed aisle after aisle in the vast underground chambers, and a steep, narrow stairway of utilitarian design at the near one end of these aisles ascended towards the quartermaster's elevated office.

From her vantage point Yoruko could barely make out a pair of silhouettes within; the combination of torchlit sconces and orelight overheads cast odd shadows inside of the raised room despite the full-length windows. The big black man who seemed to be Chellok's assistant—Agil, that was the name, though Griselda had only mentioned it once—he was standing at the top of those stairs, and just as her eyes came to rest on him, the massive Gnome rapped on the door and leaned in for a moment.

"Hah! Got you!"

"Still a tie," Caynz said, suddenly invested with motivation he hadn't had a minute before. "Jan—"

Yoruko missed the outcome of that round; her attention was taken by a change in the noise of the crowd. It wasn't that they got louder or quieter, per se, it was that the overall pattern of conversation altered in some subtle way that made her think something had happened without really being able to quite put her finger on why she knew. When she glanced back up at Chellok's office, it was obvious that both of the players inside had stood up, and the door opened a moment later.

"Hey, you guys—"

"One more!" Schmitt said, holding out his hand. Caynz obliged; they both played paper just as a sharp metallic sound echoed out from above. Agil was rapping the pommel of a hammer on the railing, calling for silence.

"No, one more! It doesn't count if the last one's a tie!"

Caynz wasn't having any of it. "If we play again we could end up with an actual tie score. It's over, good sir."

"Shut up!" hissed someone nearby.

Yoruko swallowed nervously, no longer caring about the results of the stupid game. She knew that Griselda wouldn't betray her promise and say anything about Penny, but she wasn't sure how her party leader was going to explain how they got all of the information they did, or how they were forewarned about the spiders before the attack. She'd been tempted to ask Penny to stay home for the meeting, but she had no idea if they were going to get to go back there before heading out for the day, and she hadn't wanted to explain it if she asked.

"You're worried, oneechan," Penny said, poking her head up within Yoruko's collar just enough to speak into her ear. "It's okay. I don't sense any danger."

Yoruko shook her head; she couldn't really respond to the Navi-Pixie without being obvious about it, especially not now that the crowd had largely fallen silent. Griselda was standing in front of Agil, with Chellok at her side giving her a brief introduction. After a few moments of looking out over the crowd, her eyes briefly met Yoruko's, and the two exchanged a smile. That seemed to break something in Griselda's reserve; she seemed to relax slightly and began speaking, though Yoruko couldn't quite make out the first few words.

She apparently wasn't the only one. "We can't hear you!" called an unseen voice. Then another.

Caynz and Yoruko had both learned how to control their breathing in their respective schools' theater and band clubs, and they had tried to give Griselda a few tips for projecting her voice. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work quite exactly the same way within ALO as it did in the real world—their avatars didn't really have lungs or a diaphragm, only animations that approximated the outward signs of such when the game determined it was appropriate.

Most players probably never noticed the difference. It was realistic enough—she could take a deep breath, and the game seemed to understand that in a general sense, and simulate how it ought to feel so that it wasn't a completely jarring experience. But she could still tell that it wasn't really simulating a volume of air being moved—it was just an animation and a set of pre-programmed tactile sensations which had probably been recorded during the Nerve Gear's lengthy calibration.

As frustrating as it was for them to have their bodies not work the way they expected from long practice, Yoruko was certain that Griselda had to be enjoying it even less at the moment. The Sylph woman's smile faltered a bit, but after a few moments of embarrassment she recovered and tried to speak up a bit more loudly.

"Sorry, is this better? Okay, thank you. Well, to start with… as Chellok said, my name is Griselda, and my group is assigned to farm out to West Glita A3. For those of you who don't work topside in that area, it's in Western Glitafrost, part of the dogleg between Tyrsong Canyon and the northern border of Greater Snjarholt."

Griselda looked a little uncomfortable for a moment, but she mastered whatever thought had put her off. "By now you've all heard rumors that Shriker's group was killed by some kind of new mob. These rumors are, to our sorrow, true. Yesterday we encountered those mobs, and we learned how and why they killed one of our best teams."

Yoruko's hands were each tucked under the opposite armpit, and she hugged herself tightly, fingers wanting to nervously wring something. This was it.

"The mob is called a «Cloaking Arboreal Spider», and we saw them spawn at around level 18 or 19." They actually knew exactly what level the mobs had been, thanks to Penny—but Yoruko had urged Griselda to be vague about it so that people would think they were estimating based on cursor color. She breathed a little sigh of relief.

"As the name suggests, they are an arachnid-type mob that can turn invisible, and they ambush players from above in linked encounters of three. And by invisible I mean truly invisible—this is a new ability that we haven't seen before."

The reaction from the crowd of players was not the least bit surprising to Yoruko. Mobs that could use the «Transparency» spell or an effect like it were bad enough—at least you could still see those if you were paying attention, or in a well-lit area with good background contrast. As far as Yoruko knew, there wasn't even a spell for true Invisibility, and before now there hadn't been any mobs that could completely disappear either. The others took the news more or less the way she would've expected; some had started shouting out questions that just overlapped each other. Agil banged the pommel of his hammer on the railing again; Yoruko winced at the sound.

"Please, I understand that this is a frightening new thing that we're dealing with, but I am alive to tell you this now because they can be dealt with. I am going to tell you how to detect them and beat them. But first I'm going to tell you what doesn't work, so please be patient while I go through this. I'll do my best to answer questions when I'm done.

"Searching will not pop a cursor. We tested the «Tracking» child skill on our way out, and it shows where they've pathed if they were on the ground. But it won't distinguish their path from any other mob's, and they don't come down except to attack anyway, so that doesn't help unless they've done so recently. They make no sound until they attack—and that is only because they have to go visible in order to do so, and the effect of dropping invisibility has a very distinctive sound effect associated with it. It is important to detect them before they strike. Otherwise you will have only moments to react to an attack from above, and their poison inflicts «Delay» status.

"The only way that I was able to see through their invisibility cloak was with the use of a Magnitude-6 Wind Magic spell called «Detect Movement». As the spell description says, it will reveal the location and approximate shape of any moving entity within the spell's range. When I activated this spell, I could see the spiders slowly moving around until they were directly above whoever they were about to attack, though I still didn't see cursors."

The fact that an invisible opponent didn't have a cursor was, as Schmitt had pointed out, quite possibly the worst part. An entity's cursor was what allowed a player to target it using the Focus system—without a cursor, they were effectively completely untargetable even if they were standing right in front of you. Any attacks, whether physical or magical, would have to be manually aimed at an invisible target without the benefit of System Assist or Focus, although one of the senior Gnome clearers had speculated that untargeted AOEs might still hit them—they weren't invulnerable, after all.

Griselda had to wait for Chellok to quiet everyone down again; the assembled farmers were growing agitated, and Yoruko could hardly blame them.

"I said they were moving slowly, and this is a very important detail. While cloaked, they never moved at much more than a person's normal walking pace, and as we saw after they attacked, they were capable of moving much more quickly when visible. This means that until they attack, it is very trivial to avoid them—just keep moving and don't stop for very long in one place."

Griselda's expression took a grim turn. "Unfortunately, we think this is exactly how Shriker and his group died."

Yoruko relaxed a bit more, beginning to tune out the now-familiar story. There was no way to know for certain, but several of the clearing group leaders had managed to piece together a solid theory during the group's second debriefing. Shriker was known to have a very methodical approach to farming his territory, one which he'd taught to many other farmers. His group's route covered their designated area in long stripes that took them from one side to the other, then switched back the other direction for the next stripe until they'd crossed and cleared the entirety of their assigned territory as if mowing a lawn.

Normally this would involve pulling any aggro mobs they saw along the way that were within the clearing path. But the spiders were drawn by noise, and once aggroed they kept following the player that had unknowingly aggroed them—invisibly, but very slowly. An efficient, overleveled group like Shriker's would rarely stop in one place for longer than it took to burn down a mob, and by the time the group took an extended break, they had probably been training a very large number of spiders.

Those mobs would've caught up with and ambushed them at the worst possible time: when they were tired, low on supplies, weighed down with loot, and thinking that they'd just finished clearing themselves a safe area.

"I need to stress that a single encounter of these mobs is not especially dangerous to a properly leveled group that's expecting them," Griselda said, raising her voice to be heard above the rising murmurs. "They have minimal resists, low HP, widely-spaced spawns, and in a stand-up fight they go down fast. Your best defense is to know they're there in the first place." She punctuated each of the last words with a gloved fist in her palm. "Here's how we knew to look."

Yoruko froze again.

"Although you cannot see them until they attack, and Detect Movement has too long of a cooldown to keep it active all the time, you can guess that there may be invisible mobs by what's around you—or really, what isn't. If an area seems empty of aggro mobs, but you haven't cleared it yourselves, don't assume that it's really clear until you have someone check for movement. It was when we started wondering why the area was so empty of aggro mobs that I thought of using Detect Movement, and that probably saved our lives." Griselda paused for a moment, looking a bit uncertain. She glanced over at Chellok, who shrugged.

"Thanks, Griselda," Chellok said, stepping into the awkward silence and making the Sylph's voice sound tiny by comparison. "To be frank, I'd say that 'don't assume' is probably a safe best-practice to follow in general, especially now that we know all the mob spawns are changing. It sucks that we had to lose some of our best people to ram that lesson home, so hopefully they're the only ones we gotta lose like this." He panned a hard look across the assembled players. "Keep your eyes and ears open, use the wits your mamas gave you, and stay frosty out there."

"Hard not to in this cold!" Yoruko couldn't see the heckler, but the joke sent a ripple of laughter through everyone, and seemed to dispel some of the darkness that had fallen over them.

Chellok was no exception; his hearty laugh was one of the loudest, and he waved towards the outer doors . "Wiseass. Alright, you've all got jobs to do, and we're done here. Git."

Yoruko and the others tried to make their way towards the front to meet up with Griselda, but were having trouble doing so—she was surrounded by a cluster of players who were hitting her with follow-up questions about the spiders and their mechanics, some of the group leaders angling for any edge they could get.

It took several minutes for the players to dissipate. Once they found themselves face to face, Yoruko impulsively hugged Griselda, who seemed surprised by the gesture.

"Thanks for not saying anything," Yoruko whispered before letting go.

Griselda simply smiled. She might've been about to speak in response, but before anyone else could do so, Agil's bulk loomed in Yoruko's peripheral vision, with Chellok's stockier form at his side. "You did great," the Gnome quartermaster said without ceremony.

"You're very kind," Griselda said, eyes briefly going to her feet before coming party back up. "I was a bundle of nerves, and I'm sure I forgot a dozen details that someone really ought to know."

Agil shook his head, his deep voice reassuring. "You hit the most important points," he said. "You told them how to avoid being ambushed, what to look for, what the risks are, and how to beat them. And because they're hearing it from one of their peers, it's probably going to sink in better than if we'd stood out there and lectured them."

Chellok nodded. "That's right. I'm giving Shriker's old territory to Jargo's group. He's got a Wind-heavy buffer in his party, and with the info you gave them, they should be able to easily handle these goddamn demonic spiders. And anyone else should be able to adapt if they run into similar mobs elsewhere."

Yoruko figured that Griselda was probably as disappointed as she was. She knew that any group would have more seniority than theirs did, but they'd still had an outside hope that the information they brought back might have earned them the right to inherit Shriker's territory—and now that they knew how to deal with the spiders and not aggro the entire zone, she thought they could've handled it. But from Griselda's nod and expression, she did not seem very surprised.

"Well, I guess that partially answers that," she said with a smile. "I'd been wondering why we didn't get an assignment slip this morning, but I thought maybe it meant you were moving us to Snjarholt."

Chellok and Agil both laughed. "Sorry," he said. "Jargo probably would've ragequit if we'd given one of our best overland territories to our newest group—and an under-strength group at that. Besides, I had another idea."

The older Gnome now had their full attention, and his gaze wandered over to Caynz as he went on. "Kainzu, right? Late yesterday you turned in some map data for the Frozen Underways."

Caynz nodded, eyebrows arched in mild surprise. "That's right. Yoruko and I have spent some of our free time down there in recent weeks. Since we were all back by lunch yesterday, she and I decided to spend the rest of the day out exploring by ourselves."

Chellok drummed his fingers against his scorched apron for a few moments. "What made you decide to go map there?"

Yoruko's unease returned immediately and forcefully with a spike of cold fear. Caynz caught her gaze just long enough to give her the tiniest shake of the head before he turned a slight smile on Chellok. "Because nobody else has."

"That's because nobody with any sense wants to go there," Schmitt said with apprehension, visibly recoiling. "It's uncomfortably cold even with resists, there are no light sources at all, the layout is a tangled maze of tunnels and caves that are hard to navigate even with the map data, and there are demihuman mobs that use weapon skills and magic." He made it sound like he'd been there, which surprised Yoruko—he'd never mentioned it before.

"«Glacial Goblins» ," Chellok confirmed. "They're rumored to have a city down there somewhere, but we've never found it—just run into patrols in the mid-level tunnels. We've been trying to get it mapped, but everyone we send just gets lost… or never comes back at all."

"And you want to send us," Griselda said. It was impossible for Yoruko to tell whether she was being skeptical or simply stating the obvious.

Chellok answered with a tip of the head. "I knew you were sharp."

"May I ask why? We're honored that you want our help with this, and I'm sure it's important work, but you said it yourself—we're an under-strength party, and virtually every ranger or farmer you have is going to be more experienced. And it's only Caynz and Yoruko who've been going there. I've never been, and Schmitt..." She looked over at the fourth member of their party.

"Schmitt has been there and is not super-eager to go back anytime this century," the Gnome tank said without the need for any further prompting, emphasizing his own name.

"That's too bad," Chellok said. "Even though it was just one of the upper levels, the data your friends brought back is the most we've learned about the Frozen Underways in months. They even marked mob spawn locations and harvesting nodes, which is invaluable data for organizing farming territory." The praise made Yoruko swell with pride, even though she knew that how dependent they were on Penny for the level of detail in those results.

"Everyone wants to farm," Agil added. He had a rich, deep voice; Yoruko wondered if he was a singer, or if anyone had ever suggested he try. "To most players, it's an easy, low-risk job getting paid well for doing what they'd probably be doing anyway. Mapping unknown areas? Compared to farming low-level zones it's dangerous, boring work to get data that only has value to someone who doesn't already have it. Hard to find anyone except solo players who want to take the gamble on doing it—let alone anyone who's as thorough about it as you are."

"You're really selling us on this assignment," Schmitt opined.

Yoruko was starting to find Schmitt's negative attitude a little tiresome. Chellok, thankfully, ignored the comment and let out a low sigh. "Look, we're facing a serious problem. We're running out of critical and not-so-critical supplies, and it's starting to look like some of them simply won't drop anymore in the areas we're currently farming. We can trade for them with other factions, but it's better for us to be as self-sufficient as possible. It isn't just supplies for our clearing groups, it's everything—stuff we need in bulk for faction projects, even the offerings from NPC vendors are all dependent on what gets brought in."

He glanced over as the last of the other groups continued milling out through the exit. "On top of that, the more players who level up to a point where they can start handling the content, the more competition there is in the contested areas, and the more qualified applicants we have for farming contracts. We already don't have enough easily-accessible farming territory for everyone, and we need to start expanding into areas that are harder to reach. There's only so far we can go up or out… so it's time we started looking deeper."

In the midst of her excitement, Yoruko suddenly realized something. "This isn't a day trip you're talking about."

Chellok shook his head. "No, it isn't. We're already farming almost everything that's within easy day trip distance. Sure, you could try to come back here every night, but the deeper you explore, the more of your day you'd spend just backtracking to get home. Depending on how deep you go, I'd expect you'll be gone at least a few days at a stretch, if you want to be most effective at it. That's another reason we have a hard time getting people to do it."

Schmitt's armored forearms crossed before him. "What you just described is clearing group work. That's what they do—go off for long stretches, mapping and collecting intel on unknown, dangerous territory. Why not send our clearers?"

"Schmitt!" Yoruko said a little more sharply than she intended. "This is a huge opportunity we've got here. Would it kill you to be gracious about it?"

"If we're talking about a field trip in the Frozen Underways, yeah, it just might."

"Well, nobody's making you go."

"His question is a fair one, though," Agil allowed. "This is pretty much a clearing group assignment. That's basically what we're asking them to go do here."

"Aye," Chellok said. "But the answer's simple: we just can't spare clearers outside of the World Tree. A new zone opened up there after the last boss, and we got the first scouting reports in last night—that's why everyone was here when you brought back your news. Every clearer in Nissengrof is already on their way back to Arun today, and if we send anyone off to a comparatively low-level zone like the Underways, they'll start falling behind in levels."

That single argument spoke for itself. Getting behind the level curve was one of the worst things that could happen to a clearer—if you fell too far behind, you had little chance of ever catching up unless the clearing groups themselves got delayed progressing. While Yoruko and the others absorbed this solemnly, he glanced over at Griselda, who exchanged an unreadable look with him.

"In case you're wondering, this isn't an order—anyone with reservations or prior obligations doesn't have to go, and it ain't like I can make you anyways. These two are the ones who did the mapping, and it's their skills we need; if they're willing to go deeper, we'll send a tank along to protect them if that's what we gotta do." He paused for effect. "That said, the four of you are a guild, and you contracted to work for us as one—and you do that pretty well so far, which I'm sure you know. If it's just these two kids with one of our people, we'll pay them well above fair market rate for map data. But prove yourselves as a guild, and I'll also give you first pick of any new farming territory we open. As an official expedition of sorts, we'll subsidize any consumables you need for your trip from our stores, too."

After Yoruko exchanged excited nods with her boyfriend, she turned pleading eyes upon Griselda. There was no way this would work if they had to go out with any of Chellok's people—they wouldn't be able to openly take advantage of Penny's help to produce the kind of data they were looking for. She couldn't even say so—she had to hope that Griselda was smart enough to pick up on that.

Chellok's eyes made a lap of the party members, coming to rest at last on Griselda—which made her the unanimous center of attention in a way that was clearly incredibly uncomfortable for the woman. "Well? I'd like to give you all the time in the world to think this over, but we've got work to do. If you're in, I need to know that so Agil can start getting you supplied. If not, then I'm wasting my time and need to go look for someone else."

Conflict and anxiety were plain as day on Griselda's face as she looked between the members of her party. Yoruko and Caynz were obviously on board with Chellok's offer, and Schmitt was just as clearly opposed. When Griselda met the latter's eyes, his shrug drew a metallic scraping sound from his pauldrons.

"No offense to Caynz and Yoruko, but I'm not solo-tanking the Underways for them. I'll go if Griz does, but not alone."

It was an answer which put Griselda right back on the spot. "I… this isn't a decision I can make by myself."

"It's your party," Chellok said gruffly. "You're the only one left who hasn't said what you want to do. Seems like it is your decision."

"That's not what I meant," Griselda said, a slight edge creeping into her voice. "I can't simply decide to disappear for a days-long assignment without talking to my husband first. It's rude."

Chellok started to sigh, but Agil seemed to catch the reaction and gave the shorter Gnome a nudge with the back of one broad hand. "Ever been married, chief?"

"Good grief, no," Chellok replied. "And this old man likes it that way."

"I thought as much," said Agil, a broad white grin splitting his face. "Speaking from experience, the arrangement usually involves not vanishing for days at a stretch without letting your spouse know." Chellok snorted. "Besides, if we're sending them out as a guild, he is their leader."

"The tall one has a point," Caynz said, moving to stand beside Griselda.

Aside from a raising of his thick brown eyebrows, Agil wisely decided not to remark on any of Caynz's idiosyncrasies. Chellok chuckled and relented. "All right, tell you what. For today, why don't you stick to the parts of the Underways that the kids were exploring yesterday—somewhere you can come back from around your usual time. Call that your farming territory for the day, except I want your expert mappers doing their thing. Bring back more like this, and I'll make sure you're paid well for it."

Agil nodded. "Meanwhile, I need to go check on your husband's latest Construct after this anyway, so I'll raise the subject of longer assignments with him then. Deal?"

This time, Griselda's response was not long in coming. The counter-offer seemed to release her from whatever remaining sense of obligation was holding her back, and she even ventured a thin smile. "Okay," she said. "We'll give it a shot. Now… what's this you were saying about supplying us with consumables?"

·:·:·:·:·:·

Kirito's day began with the smell of bacon.

So far as he was concerned, there were far worse ways to wake up. The aroma brought memories of his old life into his drowsy awareness—it hadn't been the least bit unusual for him to awaken to the smell of whatever his mother or sister were cooking, especially on a day off. Because of the way ALO's game engine handled odor propagation, a player wouldn't be able to smell anything of the sort from within an interior space unless they left a window open—something Kirito would never take the risk of doing in this death game, even though he knew all rented rooms would have their PvP flag toggled off by default.

As always, one of the first things to penetrate the fog of receding sleep was the awareness of his HUD. It was always there, projected onto a player's peripheral vision like an invisible, gently-curved plane hanging in front of their face—these days, he often even had dreams with a HUD, no doubt because of how ubiquitous it had become in his life. Even Blindness status would not interfere with the HUD layer of a player's interface, and by this point he took it for granted in much the same way that a person who wears glasses stops noticing the frames.

But when his eyes were closed and he was still coming awake, it was the only thing that existed in the darkness behind his eyelids.

In the upper left, of course, was his HP gauge and party display, with both his and Asuna's bars reassuringly full. Just to the right were the slanted rhomboid icons of the Active Effects row, with only a handful of effects currently showing—including one which Kirito hadn't expected to see; from the tooltip text it was apparently some kind of minor buff from eating a player-crafted meal, and was on the verge of expiring. In the center top—at least, in the UI layout Kirito preferred—was a clock that read 9:36, letting Kirito know just how much he'd overslept.

As he'd hoped, the stylized envelope icon of the «New Message» alert was flashing in the notification column, seeking his attention. Kirito experienced a momentary rush of excitement at the thought that Lisbeth had gotten back to him already, but that rush faded the moment he saw a completely unfamiliar name beside the icon. Disappointed, Kirito let out a sigh and indulged in a full-body stretch as he ignored the notification for now and began to open his eyes.

"Oh, you're awake!"

Details that Kirito had not yet awakened enough to process suddenly hit him, beginning with the reason why the maddeningly mouth-watering smell of braised pork belly was filling the inn room in the first place. He lurched upright from where he was lying on the floor, the sudden movement shedding the black overcoat that had been draped over him like a blanket. He looked down at it in short-lived confusion; he distinctly remembered being the one to cover Asuna with his coat the night before.

He also now remembered a few other things with equal clarity—such as the fact that Asuna had fallen asleep leaning on him, and that he'd been unable to completely extricate himself before giving up and just leaning back until he found his own slumber. He'd been hoping that he would wake up before she did, and that he'd have another chance to fix his embarrassing predicament before he had to explain himself to her.

Obviously that plan was now moot. But when he followed the sounds of Asuna's voice and the delightful cooking smells, he saw only a smile on her face. "Good morning, Kirito. I figured I'd try making kakuni with the rest of the Frost Drake Meat while I waited for you to wake up. You seemed like you needed the rest."

"I uh…" Kirito's mouth raced ahead of his brain for a moment, trying to reply before he'd quite figured out what to say. But Asuna didn't seem to share his discomfort—and she hadn't said a word about the way they'd gone to sleep, or what she might've been thinking when she woke up and found she was using his lap as a pillow. Assuming, that is, that neither of them had shifted position during the night.

None of this was playing out the way he'd imagined—or rather, the way he'd feared. But all things considered, this was one case where Kirito preferred reality over his imagination. And reality was currently looking at him expectantly, amusement on her face.

"I got enough," Kirito finally replied. "The floor isn't exactly comfortable, but at least in ALO you don't wake up with sore muscles if you sleep wrong." Hesitation stayed his next words a bit longer than necessary; he might well have been preparing to open Pandora's Box. "Did you sleep well?"

Asuna turned back to the pile of ingredients arranged on the counter and glanced at the cooking pot, but not before favoring him with another smile. "Yes, I did." She gestured in a way that looked like she was closing a number of UI windows, a process which took some time. "You'd make a better pillow if your gear didn't have so many buckles on it, though. Do the ones on your waistcoat actually even do anything?"

None of this was doing anything to help Kirito re-establish or maintain his mental equilibrium. He decided to answer the question posed at face value. "They look cool?" he answered, glancing down at the straps that criss-crossed each other.

The skeptical look that Asuna donned then was familiar ground for Kirito. "What?" he said. "It's a perfectly valid reason."

"If you say so," Asuna said unconvincingly.

"It's not like I designed the thing," Kirito said defensively. "Besides, it has really good stats and a stealth proc for the Hiding skill."

"I'm sure the decorative buckles really help with that." She was still smiling as she said this, which helped Kirito take the comment in the manner it was probably intended. "Any word from this crafter friend of yours?"

The question reminded Kirito that there was a message waiting for him, one which he'd set aside for the moment after seeing that it wasn't from Lisbeth. "No such luck," he said with a glance at his HUD. "Just a message from some random player."

"No idea who they are?"

"None," Kirito confirmed. "To be honest, I haven't even read it yet."

Asuna laughed, making a shooing gesture. "Why don't you finish waking up and reading your messages, then. This won't be ready for another few minutes anyway."

Kirito gave her a grateful look and nodded, returning his attention to his HUD. A glance and a blink expanded the unobtrusive notification icon into a message window in front of Kirito, the unfamiliar player's name in the header.

「You don't know me, and I'd just as soon keep it that way, so don't bother replying. But I heard you're looking for Prophet, and you'll find his ass parked in the Penwether jail until tomorrow around this time. Have fun with that, just leave me out of it. 」

Kirito's gaze snapped up to the message header, which said it was sent just after midnight. He must have made some kind of sound; Asuna looked up from checking the timer on the stove, concern in her tone. "What is it?"

"Someone sent me a tip," Kirito said, coming quickly to his feet and opening his game menu. "They said Prophet is locked up in the Penwether jail."

"You're kidding!" Asuna exclaimed, nearly dropping the bowl she had just materialized from her inventory. "Did they say how long he'd be there?"

"They said 'until tomorrow around this time.' That was sent a few minutes after midnight."

Asuna's expression clouded briefly in thought. "A day in jail… it sounds like he violated the anti-harassment code on someone."

"That is exactly what it sounds like," Kirito said as he re-equipped all of his gear with a flurry of gestures. "And that means I have to leave now. There's no telling if he'll ever make a mistake like this again."

His words provoked immediate resistance from her; she set the bowl on the counter and stepped around it towards him. "Oh no you don't. You are not leaving me here while you go face him alone, Kirito!"

Kirito didn't have time for this. A few long steps brought him in front of Asuna, and her eyes widened as his hands came to rest firmly on her shoulders. "Asuna, listen to me. This could be the break we need."

"Obvious trap is obvious," Asuna said. "How do you know this person isn't just another of Prophet's flunkies trying to bait us away from here?"

"I don't," Kirito replied. "But what if it's not? If it's not a trap, then we have Prophet exactly where we want him. And if it is a trap, you'll be defenseless while he'll have safe zone protection." Asuna looked deeply displeased at being reminded of that fact. Kirito pressed the advantage. "Even if we both go, there's no getting around the fact that you will always be the 'soft' target in Penwether—they'll go after you every single time. They've already tried once."

"An attempt that I survived because we stuck together," Asuna pointed out.

"This is different," Kirito said emphatically. "You're in Nissengrof now—this is one of the safest cities in Alfheim. If they come after you here, they won't be protected by the safe zone—you'll be on even footing. If I go to Penwether, there's nothing they can really do to me. But if you go, you'll be a walking target with no way to defend yourself."

"Which is why we should both go," Asuna said, hands on her hips. "I don't have to go into the city itself, but I should be there to back you up."

Kirito had no intention of budging on this point. Never again was he going to put Asuna in a position where she couldn't defend herself against Prophet or any other Spriggans who might be helping him, and bringing her back to Penwether would be doing exactly that. "Let's say we both do go, and it turns out to be a trap. Let's be optimistic and say we both survive. That puts the two of us right back where we were yesterday: with no leads other than finding the smith who forged this weapon, having wasted the three days it took to get here, go back to Penwether, then come back here."

He held Asuna's gaze, his eyes pleading with her to listen just this once. "We can't put all our hopes on one possibility, Asuna—we need to pursue both. But we don't have time to do both."

He could tell the argument was getting through—and that she wasn't very happy about it doing so. When Asuna looked down and away, he let his hands drop and re-opened his menu, materializing «Aloof Negotiator» in its sheathed form and presenting it to her. "You'll need this. Lisbeth's smithy is on the north side of the Cauldron, but if she's not there—and with this conference going on, she might not be—go to the Supply Depot and ask for a Gnome named Agil, tell him I sent you. Huge bald guy with dark skin, can't miss him. Both of them are well-connected within the NCC, and either should be able to find this smith we're looking for."

"I don't like this," Asuna said urgently, keeping up with him as he plucked his overcoat from the floor and re-equipped it. "You're the one who knows these people, Kirito. You should be here to talk to them." When he turned and began to move towards the door, she reached out and grabbed at the elbow of his coat. "Kirito, wait!"

"No!" Kirito said with even greater urgency, capturing her hand with his when he spun to face her after being accosted. After seeing the look on her face, he went on more calmly. "Asuna, please, listen to me. The anti-harassment code only imprisons someone for 24 hours. Whoever this person is, they sent their message after midnight. It's almost ten in the morning now, but with the coastal storm behind me I should still be able to make it in time—barely. But only if I leave right now."

He'd been expecting further argument, and was prepared for it. But Asuna wasn't looking at him now, and if she had words to say they weren't coming out. Her cheeks were flushed pink as if from the cold, and her eyes were dwelling on his hand where it had closed around hers. A space of a heartbeat passed where he felt a momentary urge to snatch back his hand as if burned… but the urge came, and this time it went just as quickly. In the awkward space it left behind, he found himself still holding Asuna's hand, neither of them making any move to pull away.

Instead, Asuna finally turned her hand slightly so that rather than being constrained, it ended up clasped in his, palm to palm. She seemed to take no more notice of the anti-harassment pop-up than he did; eventually it minimized.

Perhaps it was the fact that Kirito was already running on a sudden adrenaline spike, or that he was intently focused on getting out the door and on his way to Penwether. Maybe it was the events of the night before that had made this… closeness with Asuna a bit less alarming. Whatever the cause, Asuna's motion managed not to fluster him as it might have otherwise. He squeezed her hand once, wordlessly, a gesture which she returned before they both let their hands go slack and drop.

"Don't take any chances," Asuna said, calmer now but still looking bothered by the necessity of splitting the party again. "If it looks like a trap, if you have any doubts at all, or if things go badly... don't mess around with them. Don't try to be clever, don't try to be the hero—just come back right away, and we'll try something else." Her eyes locked on his, and he found it impossible to tear his gaze away from the earnest worry in their depthless blue. "Okay?"

Long moments passed as they remained like that, Kirito's thoughts a whirlwind struggling to reach a state of rest. At last Kirito inclined his head. "Okay."

An electronic tone sounded from behind Asuna, originating from the stove in the inn room's open kitchen. She didn't look away, but at least managed the ghost of a smile. "You shouldn't fight evil on an empty stomach, Kirito. At least let me pack a bento for you to take with you."

Kirito opened his mouth to object to any further delay, but found himself overruled by a stronger objection from the void in said stomach before he could muster even a single word.

·:·:·:·:·:·

When Chimiro returned and slid the door shut behind him, the Sylph assistant was mercifully unaccompanied by anyone who might've threatened to complain about anything whatsoever. Sakuya returned her steeply-inclined chair to an upright position and continued rubbing at her temples, mildly annoyed that it wasn't doing anything to make her head hurt less.

That was one of the worst things about Alfheim, in her opinion—the fact that nothing you ate or drank virtually could create real chemicals or drugs in your brain meant that you couldn't get drunk, but it also meant there was essentially nothing a player could do about it if they had a headache. You couldn't even do more than distract yourself from it by applying pressure. You just had to deal with it until it went away.

Ibuprofen, I'm so sorry I ever took you for granted. There were times when she would've gladly traded the lack of injury pain in ALO for the simple luxury of being able to swallow an over-the-counter painkiller and let it do its thing.

"Please tell me that's the last of them," Sakuya said, fruitlessly squeezing her eyes shut again.

"If by that you mean to ask whether there are any further petitioners waiting," Chimiro said, drawing to a stop before her desk and clasped his hands at the small of his back. "Then no, Lady Sakuya, there are none at present."

Sakuya allowed herself to smile and make the tiniest of happy sounds. That was the best news she'd heard in hours.

Chimiro cleared his throat. "You did ask me to set aside a few minutes for a late morning appointment with Argo and Thelvin before they leave. It is time."

A glance at her HUD told her that Chimiro was—as usual—completely on the ball when it came to scheduling. That was a quality she greatly appreciated. It was no mystery why Skarrip had delegated most of the high-level administrative work to him, and she was only just starting to get an idea of the extent of that delegation. She had spent a significant amount of time studying the Faction Leader menu and game manual since her succession, and for a moment she'd been shocked when she discovered that Skarrip had granted Chimiro nearly every Faction Leader privilege or permission that the game allowed him to assign to a selected deputy—permissions which the game then, upon opening that submenu for the first time, prompted her to confirm one by one.

The man was, for all intents and purposes, the shadow leader of the Sylph faction; for the time being Sakuya had little choice but to continue to rely on him if she wanted things to keep running smoothly while she figured out what she was doing. The discovery had left her very unnerved by how little she understood of the implications of all these permissions, and one of the first things she meant to do that evening was further familiarize herself with them.

"Lady Sakuya?"

Sakuya banished her wool-gathering with a creak of her chair as she sat up completely. "Yes, Chimiro, I'm sorry, please send them in." A few footsteps later, she leaned forward and hastily spoke again. "Wait."

Chimiro turned and regarded her patiently. "Yes, my lady?"

While Chimiro's larping was considerably less annoying than some others she knew, she still sometimes wished she could do away with all the pretentious titles. Nevertheless, at least in his case it seemed harmless and well-meaning, and she reminded herself to let the little things go. She chewed at her lower lip while she thought of how to phrase what she was going to ask. "How much of Skarrip's job did you really do, Chimiro?"

"Lord Skarrip was a man of great vision," Chimiro replied, seeming at first to be answering a different question than she'd asked. "It was he who came up with the idea of a cell-based organizational model for the Sylph Militia, which allowed a community of individuals and parties to respond to Salamander attacks much more flexibly, and absorb losses with less disruption. He knew this world's lore better than anyone else, and he used his knowledge to focus our early clearing efforts where they would do the most good. We owe to his experience and brilliant plans the fact that we all survived the first month of the game."

Sakuya realized what Chimiro was trying to say in between the glowing words of praise. "Implementation was not his strength."

Chimiro hesitated. "I wouldn't really put it that way," he said. "He was extremely competent. It was more that he seemed to find the sterile logistical details uninteresting. The only time he invested himself strongly was when it was necessary to decide who to assign to a given task, or when there was a player dispute to mediate. Lord Skarrip was always very interested in what I would classify as 'human resource' issues—questions of who was doing what, when, where, and with whom, or the larger implications of such."

All the better for Loki to manipulate them and screw with their heads. "Was there a point where that seemed to change in any way? A time after which he seemed to develop this obsession, or where it seemed to intensify?"

Chimiro's jowls shook with his head. "Not that I ever noticed. He became more and more narrowly focused over time, but there was no point I could single out as a milestone of any sort."

Sakuya's head bobbed slowly along as Chimiro spoke. "Okay. Thank you."

"Was there something you were trying to learn, Lady Sakuya?"

"Learn?" Sakuya took a moment to order her thoughts and review her motivations, staring into space in an unfocused way. "Perhaps. I'm still trying to make sense of everything that happened." Her eyes drifted back to Chimiro after a few moments of unanswered silence. "Did you know Skarrip in the beta, Chimiro?"

It wasn't the sort of thing you were generally supposed to ask; larpers in particular seemed to respond poorly to anything that reminded them of the real world. The tense set of Chimiro's jaw reminded her of as much. But his face soon relaxed. "That is not an experience I have in common with you and Sigurd, Lady Sakuya."

Meaning he probably hadn't been in the beta at all. Sakuya was a little surprised, considering how well he seemed to know the faction leader interface. "Well, as you say—I did. Not well, mind you. I wouldn't have called us close. But I partied with him a few times, and spent a fair amount of time in his presence here in Sylvain. He didn't turn into a larper until after the game launched."

A disapproving frown further creased Chimiro's lined face. "We all respond to the stresses of life-or-death situations differently, my lady."

The man was very easy to read, even to her. "You don't care for the term 'larper', do you?"

Chimiro seemed to think over his words before speaking. "The term itself is value-neutral. The way it is used is what makes it mildly offensive. If I might offer a piece of advice?"

Sakuya extended a hand, palm-up, in a gesture encouraging him to go on.

"As I am certain you are aware, Lady Sakuya, you are in a precarious position. That position does not afford you the luxury of alienating potential allies, and it is poor form in any event for a leader to mock those they lead, regardless of whether or not you approve of their quirks. I would suggest that you make every effort to erase the term 'larper' from your vocabulary entirely."

His gaze was uncustomarily direct, and Sakuya found herself having to look away from it. He was right—the term was, at best, gentle mockery. She knew what her opinion of larpers was like, and coming from her mouth, at times it had the flavor of a slur. "To be replaced with what?"

"It is an overly-broad generalization. Need it be replaced with anything?"

Sakuya imagined that she looked as blank as she felt. "I am not following you."

Chimiro sighed heavily and looked around as he visibly struggled for words. "Lady Sakuya, there are a great many Sylphs who, to one extent or another, find harmony in becoming a part of Alfheim and its ways for as long as we must be here. Dwelling on the artificiality of this world only serves as a painful reminder of the lives that were taken from us. However." His gaze sharpened again. "That is about all I have in common with someone who, say, swears to Norse gods or tries to hold conversations with NPCs."

"Which is the sort of roleplay that Skarrip did more and more as time went on."

He shrugged. "Call it roleplaying if you must—I don't think there's anyone so far gone that they actually believe themselves to be a fairy. But if indulging in the illusion of this world makes our burden even a little bit easier to bear, what gives you or anyone else the right to judge?"

Sakuya nodded after it was clear he had no more to say, appropriately chastened. "I see. Thank you for your honesty. I apologize if I gave offense." She felt more than a little ashamed of her attitude, now that she had a better perspective on what lay behind the pretenses, and wondered just how many people she had needlessly hurt by being so judgmental. She resolved to try to amend her use of language—surely there had to be some way of collectively referring to larpers without offending them.

"Will there be anything else, my lady?"

"No, thank you." Fully processing this new insight was going to take time that she did not presently have, and she set the conversation aside as fully as she could. "Please send in the Caits."

"Yes, my lady. Please try to keep the meeting brief—the clearing group leaders will be arriving soon to review reconnaissance data from the new zone."

Now that was a meeting that Sakuya was eagerly looking forward to. She'd participated in well over a hundred of these meetings as a senior clearing group leader, and this, at least, was something where she knew more or less what was expected of her.

She didn't allow herself more than a few moments to think about that; Argo and Thelvin were already on their way in. "Thank you for stopping by," said Sakuya. "I know you're anxious to be on your way, and I have another meeting soon, so let's keep this high-level and drill down if we need to. What do you have for me?"

Argo had some kind of food or candy in her mouth; she shifted it over to her cheek so that she could answer. "Okay, here's the headlines. Mood on the street can be best summed up in three words: wait and see."

"That's all?"

"You wanted the overview first," Argo pointed out. "Honestly, Sakuya? The Sylphs, collectively, don't know what the hell to think. A leader most of them never really knew was killed by the clearer who took out the last boss, and now she's the leader. That's pretty much all anyone knows for certain. There are tons of conflicting stories about how it happened, and they keep getting crazier every time someone repeats them. But that's all good news for you."

Sakuya gave Argo a puzzled look. "Explain, please."

"If there's only one story, most peeps are gonna believe it unless they've got an obvious reason not to, even if it's an idiotic conspiracy theory—because that's all they've got. If there are two or more stories, which one do you think they're gonna believe?"

"The more reasonable one?"

"Sure," Argo said. "But reasonable according to who? See, here's the thing: the average chump is gonna latch on to the least ridiculous story that matches what they already think. Their minds are made up before they even hear a word of the story. But most of them still wanna think they're reasonable people with good judgment. Get me?"

"Yes, I get that 'sheeple' are stupid and gullible, but I'm still not really understanding why this means it's good for me that there are so many crazy stories about what happened."

Argo blew out a puff of breath, which had to be a deliberate expression rather than respiration. "Because nobody wants to believe they're an idiot, Sakuya. Nobody wants to think they're a sucker who's easy to fool. And the stupider they are, the more likely they are to think that they're not—it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. So when they hear a version of the story they just know is total transparent bullshit, it makes them wonder what else they're hearing that's total bullshit. They start looking more skeptically at any story that has stuff in common, assuming that those are also likely to be bullshit—not only because they don't want to be fooled, but because it makes them feel smart if they spot it for themselves."

"So what you're saying," Sakuya began, speaking slowly while her thoughts coalesced, "is that the more ridiculous stories that are easy to dismiss are, in a sense, like a vaccine—weaker versions of something dangerous which serve to inoculate the public... so that they will ignore the more plausible story that poses a greater risk."

Argo went completely silent for a few beats. "I'm so stealing that," she said. "I've never heard a better analogy for this technique."

The word technique spurred a new line of thought for Sakuya, one she didn't care for at all. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Argo," she said, "I don't suppose you have a name for the player who started the more ridiculous rumors?"

By now, Sakuya had learned to recognize the completely blank look that Argo put on when she really didn't want to answer a question, despite the way that her feline features made her harder to read. It was short-lived, but she was certain of it. Then the Cait Sith girl smiled toothily, tiny fangs peeking out. "I do have that information," she said. "I'll tell you for 250,000 Yuld."

"Argo." Sakuya and Thelvin both spoke the name more or less in unison, and in much the same tone of voice. Sakuya looked at him in surprise before eyeing Argo again.

The subject of their scolding did her best to look confused, alternating glances between each of them. "What?"

Sakuya wasn't buying. "I'll save you the trouble. You spread those rumors. That's what you meant by 'technique'—it was deliberate."

Argo shrugged. "I said I would tell you for a fee, but keep in mind I don't burn sources."

"Shall I call your bluff? You know perfectly well that I could come up with a quarter million Yuld if I had to."

"I do now."

Damn. Sakuya's eyes went over to Thelvin. To anyone else, he probably looked completely indifferent to what was going on. The way he was subtly tapping each fingertip against the pad of his thumb in a repeating cycle told her otherwise; it was an old tell of Michisuke's that indicated he was getting irritated. She regarded Argo again.

"If it was a source, you would've just refused instead of setting a price. You just want to make finding out more painful than it's worth."

Argo's sigh was filled with exasperation. "If it was information that was important for you to have, I would've told you already instead of setting a fuck-you price on it. Can we move on?"

Sakuya tamped down a surge of anger. "Considering the stakes, I would prefer to decide for myself what information is important."

"We're wasting time getting sidetracked," Argo said, tail irregularly thumping against the back of her chair as it tried to thrash a hole in the seat. "Do you want to know the rest or not?"

She and Sakuya stared at each other.

This went on for a number of what felt to Sakuya like very long seconds, and ended only when Thelvin cleared his throat, drawing the curious gazes of both women. "I don't wish to interrupt your bonding moment," he said softly, "but I'd like to point out that you're both well aware your avatars don't have to blink. We don't have much time and you're both wasting it on this puerile dominance game. Please grow up and do it quickly."

This time, the caustic looks that both Sakuya and Argo gave Thelvin were more hostile than distracted. Sakuya was too stunned to respond. Thelvin was usually painfully polite; surely he'd known what kind of reaction he was going to get. The Cait Sith man, in response, simply regarded them mildly and shrugged. "Or not. Your choice."

Sakuya was on the verge of telling him just how out of line he was when she was stopped in her tracks by a sudden thought… and once it penetrated, she started to laugh. She simply couldn't help it, and by the time she choked off the reaction, it was too late to take it back. In response to the confused expressions her truncated laughter drew from the others, she waved a hand at the air. "I'm sorry. It just occurred to me that Thelvin, who has always played tank roles, just responded to a conflict by using a taunt to take aggro off of his friends." She at least managed a faint smile, looking at Argo. "Who've managed to aggro each other."

The corner of Thelvin's mouth moved; Sakuya was certain of it. Argo snickered, and then sat up. "Social agg is the worst," she deadpanned. While Sakuya rolled her eyes at the awful joke, she went on. "So yeah, basically everything I'm getting as far as reactions to the Skarrip thing is that by and large they're probably gonna sit on their hands, wait and see if you turn out to be a Mortimer or a Kibaou."

Sakuya winced. "Not the analogy I would've preferred."

"Aside from that, I got a few people running down leads on some things Skarrip might've had his paws in while he was larping it up."

"That's awfully vague."

"That's 'cause vague is all I got there that's solid enough to pass on. But there's information you probably have access to that could help a lot in sorting out just what he was up to. I was hoping I could pick your brain—actually, your faclead interface—and this I will pay you for."

Sakuya found her phrasing curious. After a glance up at the top of her vision, she gave a tiny nod. "We don't have the time now. Send me a message later with the specifics, and we'll discuss whether or not I can give you what you need." She raised one thin green eyebrow. "You sound certain that he was up to something."

"Yeah, I've been kicking this around in my head all night," Argo said, slipping off of the chair and starting to pace around; Sakuya gathered it was something she did to help herself think. "You said it was Sigurd who told you that Skarrip hired these assassins, right?" When Sakuya nodded carefully, Argo stopped mid-pace and turned back to Sakuya. "Who told him?"

It wasn't a question that Sakuya had been expecting to be asked, and it caught her off-guard. "I… you'd have to ask him."

There was a sudden, muted crunching sound. It took Sakuya a moment to realize that Argo had shifted whatever was in her mouth and started to chew it, all while staring blankly. "Yeah. 'Cause that's gonna happen. Anyway, what I'm getting at is: there's a chain of events here, and it took more than just one larping douchecopter to make it all happen. So Skarrip hired these assassins. Who sourced them for him? Who paid them, and how? Who were his contacts, flunkies, and gofers?" In response to Sakuya's own studiously-blank look, Argo threw up her hands. "Fine, Sakuya, so there's stuff you can't tell me. We all got our reasons. But you asked for my help figuring this shit out. Might wanna start thinking about which of your secrets could be the detail we need to break this whole thing open."

"You'll pardon me," Sakuya said evenly, "if I find a lecture about secret-keeping unpersuasive coming from you." Then her smile twitched again. "If it was information that was important for you to have, please be assured—I would have told you already."

Argo gave a clipped, unladylike snort. "I deserved that."

Before she could go on, a soft knock sounded just before Chimiro slid the door open. "The clearing group leaders are here, my lady."

"Thank you, Chimiro. Please tell them I'll be with them in just a moment." After the man bowed and withdrew, Sakuya rose from her seat. "I'm afraid you'll have to either return later or send me the rest in PM, Argo."

"PM then," Argo said. "We both gotta be getting to Arun. With the changing mob spawns, we'll be lucky to make it by nightfall as it is, especially if we have to avoid Lugru." She glanced up at Thelvin as the armored footsteps of the much taller Cait Sith brought him to her side. "Ready?"

"As can be."

"One moment," Sakuya said, stepping around her desk and gesturing towards the door. "I'd like a word with Thelvin. Argo, if you would please."

Argo's mobile ears raised as her eyebrows did. "Whatever," she said, and made herself scarce.

Thelvin had one of his own eyebrows raised in the same expression of bemused curiosity. When the door clicked shut behind Argo, Sakuya closed the space between them until she stood a respectful conversational distance away. She knew what she wanted to say, but not quite how to say it.

"If this is about your clearing groups," Thelvin began, glancing back over his shoulder at the door beyond which Sigurd and the others were no doubt waiting, "Alicia and I have been discussing what we can do to better coordinate with them going forward."

"I'm sure she and I will have a lovely talk about that later," Sakuya said. "Just as I'm sure you know that there were already talks about an alliance before…" She waved a hand expansively, as if to encompass all the events of the last few days. "Before. Perhaps we'll even get to make that happen."

"Perhaps," Thelvin said. "To that end, it might be helpful to set aside your differences with Argo. It is not her fault that your friendship with Alicia is not as close as it was before the beta. It was almost inevitable when you chose to play different factions."

Defensiveness flared up in Sakuya, an emotion which she tried not to direct at him. She couldn't be certain whether or not there was a double meaning there—a reference to one of the contributing factors in their own breakup. "I'm trying. I truly am. But you know how she is, Thelvin. The little brat thinks she's the smartest kid in class and wants to be sure everyone knows it wherever she goes."

"Let her."

Sakuya blinked, certain that she looked as confused as she suddenly felt. "What?"

"If it is important to Argo that she feels smart, let her," Thelvin elaborated. "She means well, and you both want the same outcome here… so indulge her idiosyncrasies if it gets results. Patience costs you nothing except pride."

"And time," Sakuya said. "She's wasting time I don't have, and keeping things from me that could get me killed."

"Aya," Thelvin said, quietly but firmly.

The shock of hearing her own name after so many months—even the shortened version she vastly preferred over Ayanomiya—brought her eyes sharply to his. "What is it, Michisuke?"

As she well knew, the man was annoyingly difficult to fool. "You didn't delay me in order to say all of this," he said. "Is there something specific that you'd prefer to keep from Argo?"

Sakuya paused just as she brought up her right hand. "Many things, but that's not the reason," she said after taking time to think. "There's just something I wanted to do before you went."

Thelvin's brow rose just a touch higher. "Do, or say?"

Her hand was still in the air before her, frozen in place as if seized. She let it hang there for a few more beats, carefully considering the action she was about to take. Then, in one smooth motion, she drew her first two fingers downward, and focused on Thelvin's cursor while she operated the game menu.

Thelvin regarded the friend request silently.

"You don't have to accept," Sakuya said. "But it might make communication easier now that I have to keep my PMs locked down."

It was impossible to gauge what was going on behind Thelvin's eyes. They came back up and remained there, as if his keen scrutiny was aimed at sorting out what her own motivations might be. That was fair—Sakuya wasn't entirely certain she knew, herself.

When her gaze refocused, a soft chime played in her ear and she saw a notification alerting her that Thelvin had accepted her request. He bowed once, holding the position there for a single breath. "It's always good to know who your friends are," he said.

"Or to be reminded of who they've always been," Sakuya replied. "Safe clearing."

·:·:·:·:·:·

「Thank you, but I'm fine,」 Asuna wrote, the concerned inquiry in Yuuki's message bringing a smile to her face. 「I'm worried about him, of course, and I'm still not sure if I forgive him for ditching me here like that. But he wasn't wrong, either. For all we know, the tip he got could be a ruse to distract us from tracking down the player who made Fausta's sword. What about you? Any progress?」

「Nah,」Yuuki responded after a few minutes. 「I'm still waiting for my contact to get back to the city—Kumiko says she's expected back tomorrow.」

It wasn't the first time Yuuki had mentioned the other Imp clearer by name—in fact, she'd done so almost every day when they exchanged PMs. From what she'd said, the woman was very senior in the Imp hierarchy, which made Asuna a little nervous—they were still allied with the Salamanders, after all. 「Are you sure it's safe to trust her?」

Yuuki's eventual reply came while Asuna was in the process of trying to decide what to equip for her journey out into the city. 「Kumiko's been really kind to me. She pays for food and stuff even though I've got money, and she's just… I wish you could just meet her, Asuna, then you'd understand. She gets very protective about the people she cares about —she kind of reminds me of you like that, and I think you'd get that about her right away. It bothers me a bit, how much she seems to hate Salamanders—she doesn't really see them as people. But I understand what she's been through, too.」

It was also far from the first time that Yuuki had hinted at some kind of traumatic experience from her first days in Everdark—an experience that she'd never described to Asuna in detail, and about which Asuna had never felt it was right to pry. As for the rest… it was difficult to fault someone for having hard feelings against the Salamanders, after everything that had happened because of Kibaou's invasion. Especially an Imp—despite the fact that a significant number of them had been conscripted into privateer and PK groups, Asuna knew from Yuuki that many of them were victims just as much as the Sylphs and Undines had been.

Asuna had to wonder just how much more extreme her own feelings might have been, if she'd come into the game as an Imp and not only had to go through the kind of things that Yuuki and Kumiko must have, but ended up having to work under the Salamanders ever since.

How badly might she hate them, if she'd had to live through that for the last six months?

「Well, please give her our thanks for any help that she can provide—and my personal thanks for looking out for you. I should get going—no telling how long it'll take me to find this smith. As always, be careful. I miss you!」

Once their exchange was concluded, Asuna leaned against the sill of the inn room's window and rested her chin on her folded arms there. Kirito hadn't been gone for long; she could still smell the breakfast that she'd cooked for the two of them, hastily converted into a portable version.

It still struck her as a little bit odd, the way the windows didn't seem to radiate the cold in quite the same way as the real world. Sitting where she was, she should've been shivering as cold air poured down on her like an invisible waterfall. Instead, the ambient temperature in the room seemed to remain constant as long as it remained sealed off—she'd tried opening the window briefly just to see if the game would let her, and her answer had come with a surge of cold air and snow particles that didn't remain for long after she hastily shut it.

As with many of the other surreal elements of Alfheim physics, it did feel a little odd—but Asuna wasn't complaining. There was something peaceful and relaxing about sitting by the window, gazing out at the gentle chaos of the falling snow and the only slightly less-chaotic dance of NPCs and players alike hurrying about their business. She admired their defiance of the way the northwesterly storm was picking up and deepening the white carpet that covered the surface streets—their insistence on pushing forward with whatever they had to do was inspiring when she thought about it.

And just as she'd told Yuuki, it was getting about time she did the same herself. Asuna sat up a little straighter so that she could open her game menu, re-equipping not only her usual default gear set, but also the cheap parka and leggings with built-in bonuses to Cold Resistance that would make the outside temperature feel a bit more comfortable to her. Even with the Undine-blue hem trim she thought the thick white clothes made her look pretty goofy, and they seemed to reduce her AGI a bit, but it was better than being even more uncomfortable—or worse, losing HP if the temperature dropped too low.

Any remaining concerns over looking silly were dispelled by the fact that most of the other players she saw were similarly swaddled against the simulated elements. Even once she descended from the surface streets into the city proper, the majority still wore what looked like an extra layer of warmth until her path took her deeper into the city. There came a point where the heat radiating from the Cauldron compelled even Asuna to finally shed the parka, but she decided the leggings could stay; a few seconds of test exposure had convinced her that bare legs weren't advisable even in the allegedly-warmer air far from the surface.

It wasn't until she reached the wide open, much warmer hallways of the busy Service Quarter that less bulky attire became the norm. There still the designs were considerably different than in the more temperate areas of Alfheim's rainy, overcast eastern coast or even the melting pot of Arun; Asuna thought she could identify distinct racial styles, and while she continued onward with Kirito's directions, she kept an eye out for an NPC tailor.

Another Asuna, another day, might have remained doggedly focused on the task at hand, with no room for distractions or detours. Even if Kirito had stayed, they probably wouldn't have gotten sidetracked despite his inclinations to such.

The circumstances had changed, now. With Kirito in transit to Penwether for the majority of the day, and her needing to stay where she was until they learned whether or not Kirito would find Prophet at his destination, Asuna realized that she was going to have a lot of time to kill—especially once she arrived at the shop of Kirito's alleged smith only to find it closed, with a sign indicating that this "Lisbeth" person was away at some sort of crafting-related conference.

That didn't mean Asuna could afford to goof off all day; she still had one more lead to follow. It did, however, mean that when she spotted a Leprechaun player with a fur-lined outfit that managed not to make his slender frame look like he was wearing his parents' clothing, she had to stop him and ask where it had dropped.

The dark-haired Leprechaun put two fingertips to the bridge of his glasses and pushed them up slightly. Asuna nearly laughed out loud when the adjustment made them catch the cool glare of the overhead orelight, but thankfully managed to restrain the urge. "I'm sorry, young lady, but I'm afraid I can't tell you that."

"Can't?" Asuna asked, taken aback by the unexpected answer. "Or won't?"

"Can't," confirmed the older player with a faint smile. "Due to the fact that each piece is crafted, and thus did not drop from any mob."

"Well, it all looks really nice," Asuna said. "Is the Cold Resist good?"

"With the full set, fifteen percent base," answered the man. "Before upgrades," he added unnecessarily.

Asuna was impressed. She couldn't even get 15% Cold Resist out of her entire clearing gear set without all the added bulk of the parka and leggings, and she could feel how much slower she was from the AGI penalty all that encumbrance was adding. "I think you just sold me," she said. "Could I trouble you for the name of the crafter?"

"She calls herself Ashley," answered the Leprechaun man. Periodically his gaze would wander while he or Asuna spoke, as if he'd been waiting for someone before being interrupted. From the smile that her non-reaction drew from the man, Asuna guessed that he'd been expecting her to know the name. "If you didn't already know that, you must be new in Nissengrof, young lady. Ashley's style is unmistakable."

"My name is Asuna," she said with a slight bow, trying not to bristle at being called ojousan again—the appellation reminded her far too much of her family, and the empty pleasantries of the suitors they brought to meet her. "And yes, I just arrived last night." An idea struck her then as she straightened. "And thank you for the recommendation. I'm terribly sorry to trouble you further, but I don't suppose you're familiar with the blacksmiths in the city?"

Now the man laughed, and it was his turn to bow to her. "Miss, you are now speaking to one of them. My name is Grimlock, and my specialty is Constructs."

"Constructs?" Asuna had heard Jahala and a few other clearers use the word to refer to magically-infused mechanical devices in passing, but she had never seen one. "Is that what you call those?"

Following her gaze and upturned palm towards the clanking, vaguely dog-shaped robot accompanying a full party of players that looked like they were selling off vendor trash, Grimlock nodded, again adjusting the thin rims of his glasses after the motion. "It is. Though they are more properly named Mecharcane Constructs. Lovely things—quite useful to solo players and parties alike. If you're interested, I might be able to help you. What kind of work are you looking to have done?"

Asuna hastened to clarify her intention. "I'm not…" Then she stopped there, rethinking how she ought to answer that question. "Thank you, but I'm looking for a particular smith. His name is Nezha—do you know where I could find him?"

Apparently that was a name known to Grimlock. Storm clouds crossed his face momentarily, and when they passed by his smile did not return. "Where did you hear that name?" came the oddly terse reply.

A chill washed over Asuna at the reaction Nezha's name brought. Could my luck be so bad that I ran into one of this guy's co-conspirators? She considered the words that came next extremely carefully. "I saw some of his work, and it was really nice. I was hoping to meet him."

After a moment, Asuna realized that Grimlock's smile hadn't completely fled—but it was currently a weak, understated thing that was easily missed. "The storm winds bring curious visitors to this city of steel and stone. You were so impressed by Nezha's handiwork that you had to come all the way from Parasel to Nissengrof in hopes of meeting him?"

Asuna was getting annoyed, and more than a little fearful. "What if I did?"

Grimlock's expression softened slightly. "Then I must tell you that you have, regrettably, wasted your time. Even if you could find Nezha, you don't want to take your business to him. There are many, many better choices here in the Service Quarter. Smiths who will give you far better service."

Asuna realized, uncomfortably, that she might have been reading too much into Grimlock's reaction. It was starting to sound more like she'd stepped into the middle of a business rivalry. Still—that in itself could be useful if she played her cards right. "And I suppose next you're going to tell me that you would be one of those much better choices."

"I am," Grimlock said, bowing again. "But I am far from the only one, and depending on what kind of item you need, there are others whose specialty might better serve you—in which case I will be quite glad to give them a recommendation. But I beg of you, young miss: forget about doing business with Nezha. Whatever it was you saw in his work, I promise you that there are other artists with greater skill and better ethics."

"That may be," Asuna allowed. "But I'm afraid I absolutely have to find this one person in particular. Why are you so keen on chasing me away from him? What did he do that's so bad you don't even want me looking for him?"

The Leprechaun regarded her from behind the circular lenses of his glasses, humming a tone slightly as he visibly mulled over how to respond. "Come with me."

Asuna took an immediate step back. "Why should I?"

Grimlock gave her a knowing, secret smile. "Because you want to know why you shouldn't do business with Nezha, and what it was that he did. Which is quite fair. The short answer, my dear girl, is that he's a scammer who's been blacklisted from doing business in the NCC. The long answer… is easier to show than to explain, and since you seem to mistrust me, it is probably best that you speak to one who was involved. Would you take a walk with me?"

Asuna's curiosity was piqued. When she stopped to think about it, the point wasn't necessarily to find Nezha himself, in person—they needed to find out whether or not he could lead them in some way to Prophet's group. If this Grimlock person was telling the truth about what Nezha had done, it made it a lot more likely that he was up to something potentially shady. And if she could learn more, she might even be able to get the NCC leadership to take action.

Their assistance could make a huge difference. The offer was almost too good to pass up… which only served to feed Asuna's desire for caution. "Perhaps," she said a little warily, aware that Grimlock was waiting on her. "As long as we stay somewhere public. Where are we going?"

"We're going to where I expect you will find your answers," Grimlock answered as he pivoted loosely on his heel and headed towards the main boulevard that spiraled around the Cauldron perimeter. "We're going to the Nissengrof Supply Depot."

·:·:·:·:·:·

With all of the clearing group leaders present, Sakuya was the only person in the warmly wood-paneled conference room who didn't have the latest map data; the others would already have shared it amongst themselves. The first thing that Sigurd did was open a trade window and offer her nearly a million units of merged exploration data from a zone apparently called «The Halls of Judgment», which got her caught up with everyone else. Her map window took a few moments to update the sheer volume of new data, and once it did she turned her attention to Sigurd just as he made his own map as large as possible before setting it visible and turning it towards the others.

"The Halls of Judgment is a large hub zone that uses the Tumulus Interior 7 theme with a mixture of Religion and Prison assets to depict a vast Norse burial mound—although obviously," Sigurd added, "there is no such mound, this being the World Tree and not an overland zone. Mob spawns follow a typical density distribution and fall into expected level ranges—roughly 35 to 40 so far—with a six to one ratio of scripted trash to demihumans. The demihumans are a special case, and I'll get to that."

What followed was the part that Sakuya usually gave only part of her attention, and which she now knew she had to absorb a bit more deeply: a lot of numbers. One by one Sigurd ran through the trash mobs, their known archetypes and how they deviated from base types, approximate levels, observed attacks and damage, and experience reward ranges for each of them.

It was a lot to take in at once for someone who hadn't spent the last few days learning it firsthand.

"Usually we'd want to be farming the undead trash," Sigurd was saying. "However, in this zone your best EXP grind appears to come from the Greater Graveworms. As noted, they are a weak mob that spawns in encounters of five, and they seem to aggro on vibrations. While their numbers could make them lethal to an isolated player or under-strength party, a fully-geared clearing group can AOE them down in no time with minimal risk. Chihae, how many levels did you say your group gained clearing your part of the barrows?"

The tank who'd inherited leadership of Sakuya's group glanced at her new faction leader, and her armor plates slithered as she shifted uncomfortably, clearly a bit put off by suddenly being in the spotlight. "All of us gained at least one. Batori is almost to a second, which is probably because he's new to the group and underleveled. As long as you have decent AOE DPS you're good to go."

"Everyone had better start drilling on AOE nukes when you're fighting trash mobs," Sigurd dictated to the chorus of nods that followed Chihae's statement. "I know I've been encouraging single-target focus for MP efficiency, but in an area like this that's heavy on linked encounters rather than tougher isolated mobs, we'll clear more efficiently by shepherding them."

"I'm sorry," asked the owner of a raised hand, a painfully young-looking mage from one of the second-tier groups whose name escaped Sakuya. "But by what-ing them?"

"Aegor," Sigurd said with obvious displeasure, "I'd like you to reassure me that I have not mistakenly invited Recon to this meeting rather than a clearing group leader, however new you might be." He bit off four syllables in succession. "O-i-ko-mu. It's not a complicated word and I refuse to believe you've never heard it used like this before."

"And what if he hasn't?" Sakuya said, butting in and drawing the gazes of everyone in the room. She glanced across everyone's faces at least once, and then turned to the abashed-looking Sylph. "Aegor, he just means train-farming. It's a variation on chain pulls, except you aggro a bunch of small mobs and AOE them down all at once. I'm guessing that's what Chihae's group was doing to level up so fast."

Chihae's group. The words felt so odd to say. Only a few days ago, that would've been Sakuya's group, as it had been since very early in the game—and she could definitely sympathize with the other Sylph's unease at the sudden change in roles. Chihae excelled as an off-tank, but she'd always had an extremely hard time pronouncing certain spell incantations—including some of the buffs that were essential for for a forward role.

Sakuya's departure had left a void, and there had been no one else to fill it. She gave the woman an encouraging smile, and then turned that smile on Sigurd, knowing that he'd hate it. "You said this is a hub zone. I assume that means there's side content to explore?"

Sigurd's fair green hair brushed his shoulder guards as he nodded, the neutrality on his face never reaching his eyes. "That's correct. We've discovered two branching zones so far, and a sealed portal that we think is keyed to the access quest that Romino's group picked up." He put two fingertips to his map and panned it around until he found what he was looking for, using the tip of a gnarled birchwood wand to point at certain POI icons. "The quest is called «Legacy of Interment», and the quest starter is a demi-human named mob found here."

"Is the mob non-aggro, or do you have to placate him somehow?"

"That is the explanation I was getting to," Sigurd said, glancing towards . "There are two classes of intelligent, skill-using mobs in the Halls. The first of those is a new non-aggro mob-type called an «Umbral Caretaker». We've run into a number of variants, but we have yet to identify a spawn point for any of them. It's too early to say for sure, but we believe that these mobs may have neither territory nor tethers. They can be found potentially anywhere in the Halls, ostensibly going about one maintenance task or another. They have been observed using Dark, Earth, and Wind magic."

Now that was a curious combination. But the specific elements weren't the part that was making her think. "We seem to know a lot about the combat capabilities of a non-aggro mob."

"Yes, we do. Unfortunately, the Caretakers seem to have a very annoying tendency of coming out of nowhere and roaming into battles in progress."

"Goddamn adds," said another. "Nothing sucks more than roaming adds."

"Except for intelligent roaming adds who can use skills," Sigurd said, stabbing his finger at the tabletop. "Only one Sylph died getting all of this, and we should count ourselves quite fortunate."

Sakuya had already heard about the death of one of their mages, but not the details. This seemed an opportune time to raise the issue, which she did after turning her gaze on the leader of said mage group. "Jaqell, I understand we lost Tumuzikaze?"

The charms on Jaqell's robes jingled as he rose from his seat and bowed. "Forgive my failure, Lady Sakuya."

Sakuya learned forward and hurried to reassure the man. "No, no, there is nothing to forgive. These things happen and we must learn from them. How did he die?"

When Jaqell raised his head, his eyes held gratitude. "As Sigurd implied, it started when we aggroed a Caretaker. We were burning down the last few Graveworms when it—" His voice caught there, and he hesitated, looking ambivalent about whether or how to proceed.

Sakuya tried to wait out the interruption, but when several seconds passed and he seemed no closer to getting the words out, she made a sound of clearing her throat. "Sorry about that," Jaqell said. "I'm just still debating whether to even bring up this detail, because this is a new area and I don't want to assume—"

"Jaqell," Sigurd said sternly.

"Any detail could be useful," Sakuya said before Sigurd could go any further; he seemed to be in a touchier mood than normal this morning. She was used to trading barbs with him, but he was usually more congenial with most of the other clearing group leaders.

"Well," Jaquell said, looking between the two of them with clear trepidation, "it was only for a moment, but when the Caretaker first appeared, I could've sworn it came through the wall just like the Graveworms do. I know for sure it didn't come down either end of the corridor, and there wasn't any kind of spawn or teleport effect."

Sakuya made the obvious suggestion—obvious to her, at least. "Could it have been Transparent? If you were in the middle of burning down other mobs, it would've been noisy and distracting enough to miss it."

But Jaqell shook his head firmly. "No. We'd literally just done an AOE Dispel to get rid of the Stoneskin buff the Graveworms use, and we all know what Transparency looks like when it drops. That wasn't it."

"Perhaps they do come through the walls then," Sakuya said. "You did say the Graveworms do that."

"Maybe… but it seems out of place for the kind of mob they are," Jaqell said, a troubled look crossing his face. "The Graveworms I get; they're diggers. But the Caretakers? They look like they're supposed to be workers of some kind—groundskeepers, essentially. They're just… well, borderline NPCs, there for flavor. They honestly don't even put up much of a fight—sometimes the weaker ones end up dying in an AOE before we even knew they've pathed into us. This is the first time we've had to lock one down."

Sakuya was simply confused now. "Then I'm not sure I understand the problem. If they're not very dangerous, then how did we lose someone? Every one of our groups is competent enough to handle a single add."

"We are," Jaqell said, seeming to recover a bit of his pride. "We should've been. We did everything right—as soon as we realized we'd picked up an add, Tumuzikaze hit it with Root and Silence to neutralize it while we finished the encounter. We switched to single-target burn on the Graveworms so we wouldn't break the Caretaker's Root, and managed to get the last one down just as the Silence ended."

"Leaving you with a single weak, Rooted mob to deal with," Sakuya said simply, as a prompt to continue. Clearly there was more to this than it seemed. Then, before he could go on, a thought suddenly struck her. "Sigurd, you said the Caretakers were one of two humanoid mob types in the Halls. What was the other?"

"The other," Sigurd said, seizing control of the discussion again, "is the mob that killed Tumuzikaze. Or more precisely… the mob that dealt out enough OHKs to Jaqell's group that Tumuzikaze was left without a rez." He gave a sidewise look to the mage, who looked ashamed again at failing his party member.

Sakuya sat up straighter, voice rising in alarm. "Wait, there's a floor mob that's one-shotting people?" The thought filled her with horror. A gateway boss might one-shot a mage, or anyone who wasn't properly geared or buffed—even a named mob could do it occasionally, if the level gap was significant. But barring an unlucky crit in the right location, it ought to be flat-out impossible for an ordinary floor mob to deal out that much damage in a single hit to a clearer, even if the player unequipped everything.

Which went a long way towards explaining Sigurd's attitude. He dismissed his enlarged map window with a wave of his hand. "That is what Jaqell claims."

It was impossible for anyone present to miss the implication. Jaqell's head remained bowed, but Sakuya was sitting on his side of the table, and could see his fists clenching at his sides. Her emerald eyes snapped up to Sigurd's, and she tried not to spit out the words. "You have your doubts. Why?"

"Me?" Sigurd's rhetorical response was laden with sarcasm. "Why would I doubt that an unknown mob shows up out of nowhere, one-shots a party of veteran clearers, but then decides to leave two of them alive and break the encounter with no explanation?"

"Lives could depend on every one of our clearers knowing what to expect," Sakuya said crossly. "You've obviously already debriefed everyone, so perhaps you would like to share what we collectively know about this mob."

"What we collectively know for certain," Sigurd said, sounding quite displeased about the fact, "is very little. The mob is called a «Norn Custodian», and in terms of abilities it seems to fall into a 'debuffer' role. As we have only encountered the one so far, it's difficult to say much more, but it was observed using both Holy and Dark magic, as well as a mix of other types—some of which we have never seen before." His frustration came through in every word that he spoke to the room full of clearers. "We simply do not yet understand why they do so much damage to some players and less to others, but I believe it has something to do with one of the new status effects they use, or the way those effects synergize with each other."

"I told you, Sigurd," Jaqell said, finally compelled to interrupt. "It's not the Noruna Domuru effect. I was watching the party list closely to keep everyone buffed after the first wave of OHKs, and we all had that debuff the whole time—nothing I did could get rid of it. Hyriel took hit after hit from the Norn and was still standing, while Doc Karlute and Tumuzikaze kept getting one-shotted. Even Chandler dropped in two hits, and he was geared and buffed for tanking."

Sakuya's mind was racing now. "Where's the pattern?"

"Pardon?"

"The pattern," Sigurd put in. "There's a pattern to who's getting hit, and how hard. There must be. We just don't know what it is, so we can't defend against it."

Jaqell frowned. "Why does there have to be a pattern?"

"Because that's how games are designed," Sakuya said, startling Sigurd by speaking up in support of something he'd said.

"Then maybe it's just bad design," said Chihae, breaking her silence.

"Maybe," Sakuya said. "But we're still dealing with software here, and software does what you tell it to. I know the larp—" She hastily caught herself. "I'm sorry, I know some of you don't like to break immersion like this, but it is a fact that we are living inside of an artificial world made out of code in a computer, and someone programmed that code to do something specific."

"What Lady Sakuya is getting at," Sigurd said, the style attached to her name drawing a raised eyebrow from her, "Is that there must be consistent mechanics behind this behavior. If the same mob in the same battle does wildly different damage to different players, it logically follows that there is some unseen difference between the players to account for it. Now, Doc Karlute is a Gnome. Tumuzikaze had a lot of HP for a mage, and Chandler is your tank. It may not be a coincidence that the three people with the highest HP in the party got hit the hardest."

Sakuya frowned slightly. Something about Sigurd's idea didn't quite add up, but she couldn't put her finger on it. "That... seems a rather ridiculous effect range," she said slowly, still thinking it through. "Hyriel, a squishy DPS mage, takes—as Jaqell put it—'hit after hit', and doesn't fall. A Gnome healer and a high-HP DPS mage get one-shotted, while Jaqell himself survived by…" She glanced at the Sylph buffer.

"I honestly don't know," Jaqell answered with clear anguish. "It isn't like I didn't have any aggro—I burned through pretty much every cooldown I had getting people rebuffed after Doc rezzed them, and we all know that generates a lot of hate. Hyriel's DPS might not be the best, but he still had all the agg after Chandler dropped and was soaking hits like he was wearing armor instead of robes. Once it was down to just the two of us, I hit him with my emergency hate reset, and the thing just… stopped."

"Stopped?" Sakuya was incredulous. "It didn't target you at all?"

"No, it didn't," Jaqell said, unable to meet her eyes. "It just went non-agg, said something that sounded foreign, then turned away from me and disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Sakuya echoed. She was still having trouble wrapping her head around this.

Jaqell nodded, still looking shaken at the memory. "I had just enough time to use my one rez on Doc Karlute, and Tumuzikaze was the only one who wasn't in Doc's AOE radius—he'd tried to run."

"Disappeared," Sigurd repeated once more, his tone flat. "It just… randomly decided to ignore you."

"I don't care if you don't believe me," Jaqell said, chin lifting slightly. "I'm no fool, Sigurd. I may not have been in the Militia like you and Sakuya, and my party may not be first-tier raid material, but we've been trailblazing the World Tree for months, and we do have several war veterans. They'll all vouch for what happened, and how."

"I'm not doubting your word," Sakuya said, throwing a look at Sigurd. "It's just very difficult to reconcile what you're telling us with what we know of mob behavior. Most mobs are very simple, straightforward things—they don't pick and choose their targets like that." The thought came and went before she could help it: Loki.

"The mobs spawns have changed," Chihae pointed out. "We're seeing new things in the Ancient Forest and Yggdrasil Basin that we never have before. Why shouldn't this be true in the World Tree as well, especially in a brand new zone?"

"You have a point," Sakuya allowed. "I'm sorry—we should all know better than to blithely assume that we know everything we can expect from this world. I think the problem is that we're trying to make sense of why this is happening, and we just don't yet have all the information we need to figure out what the pattern is. I'm not sure we'll get much of anywhere until we get back out there and learn more." She let her eyes drift across the others, keenly aware that most of the group leaders we holding their tongues. "No one else ran into this mob?" A chorus of shaken heads; she sighed.

"If there are no more questions," Sigurd said, clearly growing weary of the circular discussion, "perhaps we can move on to the access quest."

"One moment," Sakuya said, holding up a hand. "Jaqell, you mentioned the name of a new debuff."

"Noruna Domuru," Jaqell answered, again speaking the unfamiliar words phonetically. They sounded a bit like spellwords to Sakuya, though not like any Wind spell she'd ever cast. "We don't know what it does. The effect description just says 'Judgment of the Norns.'"

Sakuya glanced at Sigurd, who shrugged. "I didn't see the debuff myself, but the phrase Norna Dómr does more or less translate to that."

"Let me guess," she ventured. "It's a reference."

Sigurd's mouth canted slightly. Sakuya hated that smug smile; she didn't even have to hear the words that followed to know that they were intended as a poke in the eye. "Tell me, Lady Sakuya," he began, clearly relishing the opportunity to throw her own words back in her face. "How much do you know about Norse Mythology?"

You just couldn't help it, asshole, Sakuya thought fiercely. You just couldn't stop yourself from taking a gratuitous cheap shot at an incredibly inappropriate time just to make me look stupid in front of everyone. As she opened her mouth to begin taking him apart, she saw his eyes go to the left, and from the drift of his gaze immediately recognized that he was reading a PM. "This is a bridge too far, Sigurd," she said, quickly amending the impending scolding, "self-aggrandizing cheap shots are one thing, but you could at least be bothered to give me your full—"

"Shut up," Sigurd hissed.

Every other jaw at the table fell open. Never before had Sigurd been so openly rude to her in front of others, especially since she became faction leader—he'd actually been doing his best to keep a lid on his contempt, at least when in public. "I beg your—"

"Save your fucking breath," Sigurd said hotly, apparently so upset now that he was unable or unwilling to hold back any further. His arm slashed a green blur at the air as he closed a window and came immediately to his feet, hands still moving before him. "We have an emergency to deal with. Lennet, Jaqell, Chihae, call your groups and mobilize them heading northeast, I'll send a message shortly with an explanation and grid ref. Aegor—"

Sakuya was on her feet now as well, as was everyone else. The room had become a flurry of motion, with hands and fingers waving everywhere she looked as players frantically sent messages to the members of their respective parties. "Sigurd, what the hell is going on? What are you doing?"

Sigurd stopped to give his faction leader a contemptuous look, every bit of his stiff body language and self-righteous tone proclaiming superiority. "My job as leader of the Militia, Lady Sakuya," he said acidly, sketching a bow that was not the least bit respectful. "The Salamanders have come again to the Ancient Forest, and we are going to go remind them of the price they previously paid for that folly."

---

Author's Note 7/4/15: I swear, the thing about being on track to finish the story in time for the "real" launch of SAO in 2022 was a joke. It really was.

I got nothin'. Life is what it is. Although it is a bit ironic that one thing that inspired me to get off my ass and finish this chapter was getting sucked back into an MMO that is about as opposite of ALO as you could get. Post-hoc rationalizations ahoy!

Anyway, for those of you in the States who do the thing, happy Fourth. I'll be in my cave playing video games, hiding far away from traffic, fireworks, and drunk people. Please enjoy the chapter, and let me know what you think. Some very interesting things are afoot, and they are all connected in ways that I doubt most will see coming. Feel free to speculate, just don't ask me to confirm or deny said speculation. XD