This life is a dream
A gift we receive
To live and to love
We forge The Path

Our nightmare in birth
Our struggle for worth
In vain we carry on
Our mission to become

Adapt to this world
It's a chance we must take
We'll sing our song
We'll play our hand

— Haken - The Path, on The Mountain

Saturday, December 24th, 2022, 4:30 P.M.

After I woke up yesterday, we set about the day completing the various quests around Rovia. None of them were particularly extraordinary; just the usual fare of plain quests. Kill this, collect that, tell that person this, et cetera.

Earlier today we got an early start to finish up our leftover tasks from yesterday. After that, we successfully took down the Floor's field boss, a two-headed turtle named «Biceps Archelon». The guilds, with some fresh recruits and three gondolas each, obviously took part; Lind even had a giant gong on his gondola to help with commanding. Agil and his group was also present. The fight went mostly smoothly—although some of the ALS and DKB rather expectedly got into a squabble, and had we not interfered they would have been hit by a powerful spinning attack that we were unprepared for.

And, surprise surprise, Kirito got the Last Attack Bonus. We quickly evacuated through the river the boss had been guarding before we could draw the ire of the guilds.

Now we found ourselves in the small floating town «Usco», sat at a table outside at the village's only restaurant. Usco was quite small, little more than a handful of shacks connected by floating wooden pathways.

"Well," Kirito said after taking a big gulp from the drink he ordered, "we should probably get started on the quests here soon, before the guilds get here."

"I guess," I said.

Asuna looked between us, a confused expression on her face. "Well, they're going back to Rovia today, so that won't be a problem…" Asuna said.

"Huh? Why're they going back to Rovia?" I asked.

"Ahh, right, I guess I shouldn't be surprised they didn't invite you…"

My confusion continued for a moment before I got my bearings. "Invited to what? Ah. Right…" I had been trying my best to avoid thinking about it, but there wasn't much for it now.

Kirito shook his head. "What?"

I sighed. "Dude, c'mon. It's the 24th."

His I-don't-get-it face remained. "The 24th…? Oh, right… uh…"

"Christmas," I said, emphasizing the pronunciation. "But… the way you put it makes it sound like they're holding a party together."

Asuna blinked. "That's exactly right."

I gave her a blank look, struggling to believe they would be that friendly with each other. "Wha… well… I guess stranger things have happened on Christmas… I guess it's better that they're getting along, at least…"

At the least, it was good that they were willing to celebrate anything at all. It was better to make the best of our situation rather than be dragged down by it. Regardless, it came as no surprise to me that neither of the guilds elected to invite Kirito and I to the party. They probably wouldn't stonewall us from coming period, but I wasn't exactly motivated to go…

"I imagine you had plenty of people inviting you, Aa-chan," I said.

She nodded. "Actually, it wasn't like everyone wanted to exclude you two. It was mostly some of the vocal players in the ALS…"

"…Hmmm, that so," Kirito said.

A silence fell between us for a while.

"Er, if you want to—"

Asuna cut Kirito off with a snort. "If you mean to say that I can head back to Rovia for the party, don't. I had no intention to. I don't… really like flashy parties…"

Kirito gave me a quick glance. "Well… we ought to at least have our own celebration, I guess?"

I shrugged. I felt rather conflicted about it; it reminded me too much of home…

Asuna took a moment to come up with an answer. "That's… no, we don't have to. I don't have anything… Besides, this place isn't exactly Christmas-y."

And then, here in this tropical-feeling village and likely across the rest of the Floor, it started to snow.

The glow of early evening had been quickly overruled by gray clouds, and a cold wind blew across the lake. None of the Floors we knew had ever had a cold climate—and this one certainly didn't, although it had been colder than usual today—and yet here it was.

I stared at the falling snow wide-eyed. "Why'd it have to do this… I was trying to avoid thinking about Christmas…"

"Avoid…?" Kirito trailed off.

"It's just… Christmas had always been a really big holiday for us at home…"

I folded my arms in front of me as I gave up on holding back my thoughts. It must have been a pretty sour Christmas back home. I couldn't speak much to any kind of traditions; Dad always said that for us, it was more about just having an excuse to celebrate and spend some time having fun with family. With one of us stuck in what might as well be a coma to them…

Would I be there for next Christmas, would we be out by then? What about the next after that? It wasn't really reasonable to gauge what our progress would be going forward, based on just a couple of Floors… It felt like it had already been ages, but at the same time like we had only just started yesterday. It was so unbelievably, unbearably daunting.

What is it really going to take for us to make it out? What are we about to go through…?

I must've been making a pretty ugly grimace; Kirito reached across the table and poked my arm.

"What's wrong?"

"No…" I shook my head. "Nothing. Just thinking…"

Asuna nodded. "I'm… not really in the mood to be celebrating anything either, considering. We should be working on clearing the Floor instead. Besides, it only just got brought up now."

"T-that's… I'm sorry, I should have thought of it earlier if I wanted to do something…"

Asuna was surprised by Kirito's sudden apology. "W-wait, there's nothing you need to apologize for…"

Kirito's head was low. "No, really. Rei's gotten onto me in the past for forgetting about stuff like this. Really, we should at least be able to forget about the game on Christmas, at least…"

I scrunched up my face, feeling conflicted from Kirito's words. It was a bit unusual, coming from him… Asuna looked to be similarly conflicted.

"Look… if I really wanted to celebrate anything, I would have brought it up by now… Really, you don't need to apologize. This is enough for me," she said, looking out across the village.

The snow was quickly piling up; by now, Usco had been covered in a layer of fluffy snow. I tried my best to push any more thoughts of Christmas out of my mind; I didn't want the mental burden. The three of us sat there in silence for a while, watching the snow fall upon the water.

"…Aah! Hey, Rei, Asuna."

"What?"

"It's… not exactly something to give to you directly… but I do have something to make up for it…"

I remained silent. Asuna blinked a few times, unsure what to make of Kirito's words. "You really don't have to… well, you're free to offer something, but don't expect anything out of me…"

—-—-—

After eating, we went around Usco to pick up the handful of quests available and to buy up some more supplies. We then set sail in the Tilnel again, following the river as it meandered eastward to the other side of the Floor.

"Hey, Kirito, aren't we going to reach the end of the river soon?" I asked.

He nodded. "Mhm, that's where we're headed."

I continued onward; soon we came to a point on the river that was covered in dense mist. There was no way to tell what was beyond. I hesitated for a moment, but Kirito made no indication that we should stop yet, so further onward.

As the mist faded away, what came into view was a great lake, larger than even the one that surrounded Usco. The snow had continued to fall on our trip here, and as I let the Tilnel coast along the world was covered in a white silence. Countless trees formed a locus around the lake's edge, giving off a nostalgic forest-y scent.

In the center of the lake stood a castle upon a small island. A black triangular flag, adorned with crossed horn and scimitar…

"Wait, is that…" I mumbled.

"The Dark elf flag!?" Asuna shouted, an order of magnitude more excited than she had been a while earlier.

By now it was long into the evening; the towering white walls of the castle combined with the falling snow gave it an almost glowing presence against the darkening gray sky. As we drew closer, the fortress only appeared more impressive; it must have towered as high as the tallest trees of the previous Floor. Torchlight spilled out through the occasional window in the castle's walls and towers.

Even as we tied up our gondola at the dock, no elven guards came out to question us. For a moment we stood in silence, admiring the impressive structure.

"…Hell of a present, Kirito," I muttered.

"Well, it was definitely worth the trip here, but that's only a part of it," Kirito said. He didn't elaborate further; instead he rushed us up the pier towards the castle's gate. Two rather heavily armed guards stood on either side, who hurried to stop us as we approached.

"Halt! Humans have no place here!"

Kirito produced a sealed scroll from his pouch and held it up to present it to the guards. "I am Kirito! I seek audience with the master of this castle!"

The guards eyed the scroll for a moment, and silently stepped aside to allow us through the gate. The giant metal doors opened sluggishly, with the rumbling sound they produced disturbing the peaceful calm that had previously beset the lake.

The main gate opened to a large garden, which proved to be even more picturesque than the castle that contained it. Untouched snow was dusted across all the pathways and colorful varieties of flowers, which gave off an almost unearthly glow due to the soft lighting from the lampposts dotted around.

"Oh yeah, you told me about this place before…" I mumbled. I had never gotten this far into the elf questline in the beta.

Kirito nodded. "Yeah, back when I came to it in the beta. It was all dusty back then, though I got the feeling it would be more impressive now… Well, what should we do first?"

"I guess that's what we need to figure out, really…" I said. "Uwah. Before anything else, let's get inside the castle. The snow is making it cold out here."

With that, Kirito led us through the garden and into the castle's main entrance. The main foyer of the castle was tall and spacious, a red carpet covering most of the stone floor with a small marble fountain in the middle. Numerous doorways led elsewhere into the castle, both on the ground floor and up above on a balcony accessible by a wide flight of stairs behind the fountain.

"Hmm… ah, right. Was that scroll the one from last Floor?" I asked.

Kirito nodded. "That plus some information from the commander. Want to get that wrapped up now?"

"Mh, yeah…" I tilted my head back while I sorted through my thoughts. There was something poking at my memory, but I couldn't quite work it out. "… Say. Why did you say the Fallen elves were building those boats?"

"Well, from what we could tell they planned to launch an attack somewhere."

"An attack…" It clicked into place. "An attack!? Wait wait wait, they're working together with the forest elves right!?"

The other two caught onto where I was going. "Wait, they're going to attack here!?"

"Do you have any idea when?" I asked.

"Uhh…" Kirito rubbed his forehead. "That was yesterday—no, two days ago… five days from then… the 27th!"

"Do you know where we need to go?"

"No… Kizmel! We need to go find Kizmel!" Kirito suddenly grabbed my arm and started running through the castle, leaving Asuna behind to catch up to us. We went down a corridor and out through a door that led us into an inner courtyard.

"Are you sure she's here!?" Asuna shouted.

"No, but I sure hope she is!"

The courtyard was quite a bit different from the one at the entrance. Instead of the various flowers of before, this was filled with hedges that came to just above eye level. At the center stood a single juniper tree bordered by a couple of benches. Aside from the ones we were making, the snow was disturbed by only one other set of footprints. At the end of that trail of footprints stood a familiar beautiful dark elf, clad in an unfamiliar clinging lavender dress.

"Kizmel!"

The dark elf whirled around to look at us, initially with a smile. Her expression turned sour when she saw our expressions of panic, however. "Kirito-san! It's—wait, what's wrong?"

We ran up to her at full speed. "Sorry, the happy reunion will have to happen later!" I said. "The Fallen and forest elves are going to attack the castle in three days!"

"What!? The Fallen are on this Floor? Are you sure?"

"Definitely!" We explained what had happened so far on this Floor as quickly as we could. During our explanation I got a small popup notifying us of a quest completion, and we each went up a level, putting Asuna at 16 and Kirito and I at 17. Now wasn't the time to dwell on that however.

"I see," Kizmel said after we finished our frantic explanation. "We don't have any time to waste. Follow me."

We hurried as quickly as was acceptable through the castle halls, back to the main entrance. Kizmel led us up the stairs, and through a doorway nearby that contained a stairway the rest of the way up the castle. Our destination proved to be the fifth floor. At the top of the staircase was nothing but a large door, with two guards stood at either side. A quick glance from Kizmel allowed us through.

The office we stepped into was of a significant size… and it was also significantly dark. The windows on one side of the room had thick curtains drawn across them. The floor was covered by a rather thick rug; at the other end of the room was a two meter wide solid wooden desk. Such a large piece of woodwork would be incredibly valuable to the elves, since they couldn't cut down trees of their own accord. Behind it sat a dark elf; despite a lamp sat on top of the desk, their face was too deeply cast in shadow to make out any features. An inspection of their cursor revealed their name to be «Yofilis, Dark Elven Viscount».

Kizmel stepped forward and gave a dark elf salute. "Viscount Yofilis, I apologize for the sudden interruption but we have an urgent report."

Yofilis waved their hand in front of them. A flat, androgynous voice emanated from the mysterious figure behind the desk. "I do not mind. I take it these three are the humans that have been assisting us?"

Kizmel nodded. The three of us saluted as well; Kirito stepped forward and produced a scroll from his inventory and held it out over the desk. Yofilis took the scroll from him and gave it a once over, a soft hum being their only sign of affirmation. They opened a drawer in the desk, placing the scroll inside and taking something out in its place.

The viscount held their hand back out towards Kirito, who cupped his hands to catch whatever it was the dark elf held. Three silver rings, each with the sigil of Lyusula imprinted on them.

"With these, the guards of Lyusula will grant you free passage. Provided you continue your allegiance, of course."

Kirito gave a deep bow, and stepped back again in line with us. He handed Asuna and I each one of the rings, which we put on without rudely opening our inventories.

"Now, as for this urgent report?"

"Of course," Kizmel said. "According to the human warriors here, The Fallen elves' General N'ltzahh is present on this floor."

Kizmel went on to relay the details that we had explained to her, both of the collaboration of the Fallen and forest elves and their plans on this Floor. Their goal was presumably to obtain the Jade Key that was currently stored in the castle, as well as the «Lapis Key» that we were likely to recover within the next day or two.

"I see." The viscount said once Kizmel's relaying was over. "Do you have any knowledge of how many ships they intend to attack with?"

I looked at Kirito for the answer; he remained silent for a moment while he worked the numbers out. "… At a minimum, I believe they are building ten ships capable of holding ten soldiers each?"

"Hrm. We have but eight 10-man ships present at the castle… "

"Sir, as much as I respect the forces here… would it not be wiser to transport the keys to the Fifth Floor?" Kizmel suggested. Yofilis remained in contemplative silence for a moment before responding.

"As much as I trust our forces as well, I agree we have rather poor odds. But moving the Keys would only result in bringing three of them together… It has always been our duty to keep the Keys separate, to avoid any chance for all six to be gathered; indeed, even moving the Keys a Floor upward would be a favorable outcome for the Fallen. It is quite a sly move on their part."

A long few seconds of silence descended. Asuna was the first to break it, with a difficult question. "Um… my lord, what would happen if all of the Keys were gathered together?" Kizmel hastened to reprimand her, but the viscount waved it off.

"I do not mind, Kizmel. I can tell you what I do know, though even as one of the long-standing Yofilis bloodline I do not know much. Perhaps, not even Her Majesty knows the full truth…

"Human warrior, this is all I have to tell you. Us people of Lyusula believe that opening the Sanctuary will bring unknown terrible ruin to Aincrad. It is simply that—we do not know what, but we have no doubt it holds nothing good. The forest elves' beliefs go slightly differently… they believe the power contained within the Sanctuary will return the Floors of Aincrad to the world below, thus reconnecting us with the magic of those lands. In a way, that does align with our theory—the complete separation of this floating castle would indeed be 'bringing ruin' to it."

Those words were incredibly shocking. In the context of the game, either event would be a disaster, and more to the point likely impossible. Never mind the fact that the questline was separate for each group doing it.

So both theories were surely false. But then, what was behind the doors of the Sanctuary? Was there anything? The easiest out would be that the quests were scripted so that the Keys never all came together at the Sanctuary in the first place, so it didn't matter.

But as we progressed further and further, I found it harder to believe that we were still on any kind of script, and the cause of that doubt was standing next to me. With the presence of Kizmel and her seemingly sentient AI, it felt like we were slowly being led further and further away from any concept of pre-scripted quests. We'd only been speaking with them for a few minutes, but Yofilis seemed to exhibit a similar level of intelligence.

If these NPCs were on this kind of level, what could be said about whatever system there might be controlling our quests, or the game as a whole? Even if Kayaba wasn't all by himself, I could only think that a full team would be hard pressed to keep something like this running as smoothly as it had.

Kirito's voice ringing out through the resumed silence pulled me out of my thoughts. "Er, my lord… we overheard General N'ltzahh state thus: 'Once we open the door to the Sanctuary, even the greatest magic left to humankind will vanish…'"

"Magic… of humankind?"

Oh right, Kirito had mentioned that before… What could that mean? Our menu systems were like magic to them, sure, but as far as the elves were concerned they were just some convenient charms, not grand magic. Surely there was some meaning to all these theories… but what?

Finally, the conversation returned to a more familiar quest dialogue, and a golden ! appeared above Yofilis's head. "Strange… In any case," the viscount said, "the Lapis Key should be retrieved. In the meantime, our guards will prepare for the coming battle… human warriors, would you assist Kizmel in retrieving the Key?"

"Of course."

Kizmel's health bar once again appeared in the corner of my vision.

Our meeting with the viscount concluded, Kizmel guided us to the castle's dining hall. A myriad of festive smells wafted throughout the hall, and we had a typical Christmas dinner. The four of us made general small talk over dinner, though most of my attention was focused on one corner of the hall. From there, the sounds of gentle string instruments emanated from a pair of dark elf musicians.

"Are you interested in the castle's musicians, Rei-san?" Kizmel asked.

"Ah… it's just that I haven't gotten to so much as touch an instrument since we got here… I just kind of miss it," I admitted.

"I see. Tilnel always greatly admired the kingdom's musicians, though when she tried it out herself the result was rather… clumsy," Kizmel reminisced with a soft smile on her face. "You know, I believe on the 6th Floor there resides a retired musical arts master who is a close friend to the dark elves; you may be interested in meeting him. From what I hear he is extremely skilled in crafting his instruments as well as playing them."

I nodded. "Nn, I've heard of him. That's definitely at the top of my list when we get there."

After we were done eating, Asuna expressed great interest in taking a bath, so Kizmel and Kirito led her to the castle's bathing area. I had something else to do, so I told them I'd catch up later.

With my recent level-up to 17, plus the bonus from the «Sigil of Lyusula», I had finally broken past 40 Agility. I had been waiting on that for a while, as for my previous level I decided to put all three of my points into Strength to get some extra health and damage output. With the new three points, I put two of them into Agility and the last in Strength, leaving me at 42 and 16 respectively after equipment bonuses.

In particular, I was interested in seeing if the milestone had any meaning for the mizugumo. I had a hunch that past a high enough Agility value, using them would suddenly become much easier.

As I walked out the castle's front gate and down the pier, I had an unrelated thought. A while back, I had equipped a Numb Dagger in my offhand to have easy access to a backup weapon as well as to some paralysis chance. At the moment, I had it situated with the sheath on my back so that it was accessible with my left hand.

I hadn't made much use of it yet, but after some thought I noticed a couple of problems. First of all was the dagger itself—it had no upgrades on it whatsoever, and while it was a fairly uncommon drop it wasn't anything special and was a couple Floors old. In truth, my current Wolfswipe was about reaching its limit as well. At the moment there wasn't much to do about that, though.

More notably, I realized that having it oriented the way I did was rather inconvenient. If I wanted to draw it immediately, it took a little time going back-and-forth to sheath my main dagger and reach back to grab the backup. Even worse would be if, say, my left hand got cut off—the backup was totally out of reach of my right.

With that in mind, I readjusted my gear so that the backup was sheathed on my right hip, which meant I had to move my item pouch over to the left. It felt a little lopsided to have both daggers on my right side, but I just needed to get used to it.

With that sorted, I sat down on the edge of the pier and equipped my mizugumo. It looked like the water wasn't terribly deep right up against the edge of the castle, so that probably wouldn't be an issue. Unlike before, I didn't remove any of my equipment before trying to stand on the water.

In a word—incredible. It felt effortless to move around on the water; any sudden movement that before would throw me off-balance now felt like a breeze. My hunch had been right—past 40 Agility, it seemed that the system did a lot more to keep me stable on the water. I spent a little time just skating around on top of the water, enjoying the moment I had to myself.

I made a mental note to let Argo know about this later, though she'd probably already figured it out herself. It was possible the threshold was dependent on the person and their gear, so extra data points would be good.

Happy with the result, I made my way back to the pier and clambered up. This would be incredibly helpful against the coming raid.

I made my way to the bathing area using the directions that Kizmel had relayed to me earlier. I entered the changing room doorway; nevermind the bath, the changing room itself was huge. A fancy chandelier hung from the ceiling, its soft light reflecting well off the shiny white tiles of the room, and a number of wicker chairs surrounded a table at the center of the room. I quickly unequipped all my gear by tapping the «Unequip All» button in my equipment menu. Before I could press it again, though, I heard the plap-plap-plap of sodden footsteps rushing towards me from the opposite door of the changing room.

Asuna appeared from the door, clad in just a one-piece white swimsuit. "Ah, I thought I'd heard you in here! Here." She tossed something towards me, but I had been too distracted by her sudden appearance to react fast enough. Whatever it was smacked me in the face before dropping down to rest in my hands. It was a two-piece swimsuit, made out of a dark blue fabric.

I blinked in confusion a couple times, staring at the swimsuit in my hands before I realized why; it was obviously a shared bath, so Kirito must have been in there as well. "But why—" I quickly cut myself off before I could continue that mistake of a sentence. "Er, rather… Thank you."

Asuna gave me a grin and a thumbs up before disappearing back into the bathing area.

I put on the unexpected present and walked out into the bathing area myself. The floor tiles were a well-polished white, much like the surfaces in the changing room. Two of the four walls were made of large panes of glass, giving us a perfect view of the snowfall and the lake outside—we must have been at the very back of the castle. The bath itself—really, it was big enough to just call it a heated pool—was constructed of what was likely the same black stone that surrounded the lake and castle, but just as well-finished as the white tiles alongside it. A golden spout kept the bath full to brim, and was also what kept it well-heated.

Asuna and Kizmel were having a small conversation, and Kirito was there with them. I walked over and slipped into the bath on Kirito's other side. "Fancy, huh."

"Oh, there you are," Asuna said. "Be glad you weren't here earlier, the doofus over here cannonballed into the bath and splashed water everywhere."

Kirito rolled his eyes.

"Ahah… Oh, come to think of it, Kizmel, why haven't you been wearing your normal gear?" I asked.

"Ah, I was just telling Kirito-san and Asuna-san about that…" She cast a forlorn look out the window. "The isolation of this castle makes the people here go soft and, for lack of a less rude way of putting it, out-of-touch. The priests here demand no metal armor to be worn in the castle, as they state the noise it makes to be too distracting."

"I see…" Fortunately for us, at least, we didn't wear enough metal armor for it to make much sound.

We spent some time making small talk in the bath, though after a number of stifled yawns we decided it was about time to go to bed.

I felt pretty tired, so once we made it to our suite I made a beeline for one of the bedrooms and crashed on the bed. We had two bedrooms with a single large bed each, and a central living area; it took some convincing to make Kirito take one of the beds and not just sleep on the couch. So as it were, I would be sharing with Asuna for the night.

That said, I was asleep before she even made it to the room.

I jerked awake. To my surprise, however, I wasn't in a bed, or even a chair; I was standing upright, in… a forest? Everything felt kind of hazy. There looked to be a faint dirt path through the forest in front of me. With nothing else to do, I started following it.

One step, two, three. My legs felt terribly heavy. Just what was this place, what was making my senses so dull? I closed my eyes for a moment to think.

—-—

I opened them again. The forest was gone; in its place was an immense library. Massive bookshelves towered above me for multiple floors; the space felt simultaneously cramped and wide open, dim and well-lit. Something about it felt ominous, like a massive pressure was weighing on my shoulders. I felt the urge to turn around, but at the same time a torrential fear; just what was I going to see…

—-—

I forced myself to spin around—and I was back in the forest from before. My senses suddenly became clear and sharp. The dirt path in front of me went up a gentle incline before disappearing in a bend behind the trees. I tried following it.

With each step my feet felt heavier; with each step, my vision grew narrower. I was moving closer, but it felt like that turn up ahead was getting further and further away… What was the point? I kept forcing myself to move forward, until I could raise my feet no more. I hadn't gotten any closer to the end of the path… I fell down face first into the dirt. With this… maybe I could at least claim I tried…

—-—

A scream pierced through my fading senses. At first I tried to ignore it. Somehow, though, I felt responsible for its cause, so I pushed myself off the ground. The forest looked completely different, now… the trees were much taller, and there was no path in front of me.

A sudden shock of adrenaline hit me; I rushed through the forest as fast as I could towards where I thought the scream came from. I felt incredibly scared, praying that I wouldn't find what I was expecting to… but I wasn't really even sure what I was expecting to find. I came to a large clearing that was surrounded by foliage; this had to be the place. I leapt through the thick plants.

—-—

The clacking of my boots on the ground told me that instead of grass and dirt, my feet had landed on stone. I—wasn't in the forest anymore. A dungeon? No, this was much too small, it must have been some kind of building. I had a strange dagger held in my hands. There was… something… floating in front of me, some kind of tall humanoid creature. I couldn't tell what it was through my wavering vision and the thing's large hooded robe. I was thankful, since I held no doubt that it was obscenely disgusting.

I looked back to my hand—the dagger was gone. In it's place was some kind of ornate object, but I couldn't really tell what. Feeling a sudden epiphany, I held it out towards the creature.

—-—

After a sudden flash of light, I felt my back hit the ground. There was a new figure similarly robed, this time human-sized, pinning me to the ground with its sword. It seemed more human than the last, but at the same time less. To my side, I saw a girl similarly pinned by a similar creature, fighting to fend off the sword with their own. Upon seeing her struggling, I felt anger well up inside of me.

I shouted with rage and flung the hooded figure off of me and towards the woods nearby, as if it weighed nothing. After hearing me, the girl to my side did the same. If we had such strength, why were we struggling?

The sound of shattering glass filled my ears.

—-—

A sudden impact assaulted my senses—when I regained my wits, I was on my knees, unable to move. There was no soft, lush grass below me as before; only cold, hateful stone. Why couldn't I even move my arms? I felt so dull. Was I paralyzed?

The monster before us felt outright invincible. It felt like it towered above us, far taller than any labyrinth we had climbed. I couldn't believe this was what we had to fight against. It felt so, so difficult. But I had to do something, no matter what. I had to move.

Move! MOVE!

A bloody crimson red dyed my vision.

A piercing scream.

—-—-—

I woke up with a start, in what felt like a cold sweat. My breathing felt heavy, despite the game not particularly simulating that most of the time.

Feeling distraught, I rubbed my throbbing forehead.

I looked to my side, but the space next to me in the bed was empty.

"What the hell was that nightmare…" I mumbled. "It was so vivid, but…"

I shook my head to try and chase off the remnants of the nightmare. I took a quick glance at my clock—it was about six in the morning.

"No point going back to sleep now, I guess…"

I forced myself out of bed and put on my gear. After fighting off the last vestiges of sleep, I went out into the shared living area, which greeted me with a rather unusual sight. Huddled up together on the middle of the couch were Kirito and Asuna, fast asleep. They were covered with the same cloth that we had used to hide the Tilnel from the Fallen elves a while back.

After taking a moment to observe the two, I quickly left the room. Didn't want to be around when they woke up; it would probably already be awkward enough without me there.

"Oh-kay…" I mumbled to myself. "Six o'clock on a Christmas morning, huh…"

Without much else to do, I wandered around the castle mindlessly while humming to myself. Shortly I found my feet had taken me to the courtyard with the juniper tree, where we had found Kizmel yesterday. As I walked around the tree, I found to my surprise that Kizmel herself was sat on one of the benches opposite the side of the courtyard I had come in on.

"Ah, good morning, Rei-san."

"Morning." I sat down next to her on the bench. "No need for the honorific, by the way."

"Alright. Are Kirito and Asuna awake as well?"

I shook my head. "No, it'll probably be a bit until they wake up. I only woke up because of a nightmare, actually…"

"Oh dear. Do you remember any of it?"

"Well… where do I start… Um, Kizmel, have you ever experienced anything like prophetic dreams?"

It was a bit of a strange question to be asking an AI maybe, but we were well past that point of contention by now.

"Prophetic, huh… I'm not sure that I remember any…"

"Hm… I've never really asked anyone about this before… everything I've seen about something like this just kinda waves it off as coincidence, but I've experienced them too many times to believe that. The thing is… it's always something so mundane and small, like a random short conversation or reading a line from a book…"

"You say you don't think it's just coincidence?"

I shook my head again. "There's no way. The dreams are so vivid, I always remember them so well. And I get such a strong sense of déjà vu when it actually happens… This nightmare I had was sort of like that, but parts of it felt strange and hazy. A lot of it didn't make any sense, and it was kind of scary…"

"Hmm." Kizmel raised her hand and softly patted my head. "Well, I have no doubt that whatever's in front of you, you three have plenty of strength to pull through it. Ah! Actually…"

"What is it?"

"I do remember having a dream like those you speak of, though it's not exactly right."

"Eh…?"

"It was back on the Third Floor, when I was fighting the forest elf knight. I remember Kirito coming to my aid much like you three did, however the group he was with wasn't the same, nor was his equipment… More than that, they weren't nearly as capable, and I perished in our fight…"

"That's…" I trailed off. That sounded an awful lot like she was remembering when Kirito started the Elf War questline in the beta. But why would she even have those memories in the first place?

After a moment of silence, I spoke back up. "Well… I guess the only way I can know for sure is to keep going and actually find out, huh?"

"Indeed."

To be frank, between this nightmare and the way the elven questline had been shaping up, I wasn't exactly looking forward to finding out. It had already been hard enough so far to adapt to our new lives here in the game, and there was no reason to believe things would get any easier. Hell, for most people it was already beyond a nightmare, a pointless struggle. The front lines probably only accounted for a couple percent of the total playerbase, at best.

I could only hope that the path laid out in front of me wouldn't take a sudden turn for the worse.

I stood back up from the bench and stretched. "Ahh… How about we go and see if Kirito and Aa-chan are up yet? Ah—" I turned around to look back at Kizmel. "One more thing, actually—does the word 'Khazmeri' sound at all familiar to you?"

"Khaz…meri, huh? Khazmeri… It does sound oddly familiar, yes, but I can't seem to place it. Perhaps the priests or elders may know… The Grand Archive may also be helpful to you—I believe I mentioned it to you before."

"Mhm. Guess I'll have to ask around, then."

Author's Notes

Hey, everyone! Long notes coming up.

Alright. First of all, the usual spiel about my absence—

About midway through this chapter I hit some difficulties with it; I butted heads with that for a while, and eventually I decided I needed to take a small step away to recollect myself. So I gave myself some time for that.

And, well—I'll opt to not dwell upon what this year has been like so far, for all of us.

—-—

Originally, I was planning for this chapter to finish up the 4th Floor and thus be much longer, likely over twice the length. And I do already have about half of that second half completed at this point. However, I've decided that such length isn't really necessary—additionally, splitting them like this means that this chapter has come out sooner. And splitting it in half helps for this chapter to be slightly more focused.

Since I do have a good chunk the next chapter written, expect that soon barring any extraordinary circumstances. And not like, Soon™, I mean properly actually soon. Relatively speaking, anyways. Honestly, I'm saying this here partially to give myself some actual responsibility to get it finished up.

Anyway, with that out of the way, here we are now.

—-—

So, what's the deal there at the top of the chapter? Well, those are the lyrics of the song The Path, by Haken. It's the first song of their album The Mountain—and also the namesake of this chapter.

The Mountain overall serves as a cohesive allegory for the ups and downs of life. Each song is more or less independent, but I often see the album as a cohesive whole overall, albeit quite loosely. The Path presents itself as a fitting opening to this, as its three verses describe different perspectives on how people forge their paths through life. It's a small entryway into a passage much more grand.

And we see the same thing this chapter, as it starts to morph into something more unique and presents us with what the future might hold in store for Rei. A bit heavy-handedly, I admit.

But what path does she take that leads to her hazy nightmares? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

This is the first chapter that draws inspiration from a song in such a way; although in this case, it came pretty late on, and there's a lot of progression Floor-wise going on here alongside. This is one reason why I split this up into two chapters; when this was going to be closer to 12 or 13 thousand words, this part got pretty drowned out.

Not all chapters will be like this going forward, of course, but this is far from the only one. This one is a bit of a special case in that I've presented here the full lyrics of The Path, as it's just the three verses. Expect future chapters to usually only come with a handful of lines.

Lastly, I won't go into detail about genre here, but expect progressive metal to show up pretty often. It's good at story telling, go figure. The Mountain is an incredible album, and is a pretty welcoming one as far as prog metal goes. I implore you, even if you feel it's not your thing, give it a shot! It's always good to push your boundaries a little. A big goal of mine in working song concepts into the story like this is to share some awesome music. And let me tell you, Haken is awesome—they've been a defining face of prog metal for the past decade.

—-—

Ahem. The music essay aside… a little teaser for next time. So far I've been following canon Progressive pretty rigidly (at times to the letter when it served my intentions well). I've done a little wiggling via some new things I added in between the canon stuff, but that's the majority of it. Going forward, though, we'll be pretty much breaking free of that cast entirely (sans some really weird coincidences with stuff I've had planned out for a while).

So look forward to that.

—-—

By the way, I'm sure you noticed these pseudo-breaks that I've made using some dashes. I needed some finer control over spacing for pacing purposes, and this was the easiest option I found that works within the formatting limitations. I may experiment with it some more.

A lot of blabbing from me today, but looks like that's all for now. Take care!