Monday, December 19th, 2022, 1:30 A.M.

Once we had returned to the camp, the others went to report to the commander while I made a beeline for Kizmel's tent where I promptly collapsed.

I was exhausted. The fact that I had only slept for a couple hours aside, fighting for my life and dealing with the bickering of the guilds was… stressful. I had had a small moment of respite after the duel was over, but now that I had the time to sit down and simply think about it for a moment I could actually feel the impact of what had just happened.

"Jeez… what the hell…" I mumbled. Dealing with the guilds already took way too much energy out of me—even if they cooperate fine, I just couldn't do well around them—but now I had to worry about someone that wanted me dead. Or at least out of the way and dead being the easiest path to such. And Kirito was likely in the same situation, as Morte seemed eager to fight either of us. Who knew what else he was plotting…

Wait, wait wait. Could Morte have been the guy that taught the Legend Braves that upgrade scam? But compared to how direct Morte was, that scam was far too subtle… So he was either working with someone else, or there just happens to be two—or more—people working independently. There was that guy in the ALS with the screechy voice, too…

I heard Asuna's voice along with footsteps approaching from outside. "I suppose we should get back to sleep…" she trailed off as they enter the tent. "I'd like to talk about what happened tonight, but…"

I held up my hand to stop her. "Sleep, please. We can talk in the morning, I'm too tired and stressed out right now."

"R-right, sorry."

I rolled over and mumbled incomprehensibly as a response. I barely remembered to take off my armor before I fell asleep, as little actual armor as I had.


Monday, December 19th, 2022, 6:30 A.M.

I woke up only feeling moderately better than the night before. Getting my sleep interrupted had left me feeling a little groggy.

That being said, only Kizmel had woken up before me; I saw Kirito and Asuna begin to stir as I sat up.

Before getting breakfast I explained all the details of our encounter with Morte to Asuna as well as filling Kirito in on the few things he missed. I also brought up my concerns about how this incident might not have been so isolated. Unfortunately, for the time being there wasn't much we were able to do about it—we would just have to be careful.

After that, it was time for quests. The quest after Infiltration was quite short, involving simply chasing down an oversized butterfly that the forest elves were using to scout. After that, the commander had decided on a course of action to take after reading the plans we had stolen from the forest elves.

We were to head to a spirit tree on the western edge of the Floor so that the Jade Key could be secretly transported to a safer location. Rather expectedly, though, we were ambushed by masked attackers that I assumed were forest elves. Unfortunately one of them stole the Key and escaped.

Kirito had told Asuna and I to expect the remainder of the quest to last well into the night, as tracking down the thief was supposedly annoyingly difficult. One of the guards that had accompanied us on the quest had hit the thief with a small bottle that left a sort of tracker on him—it was normally extremely hard to spot in the forest's dense mists, but Kizmel's powerful eyesight mostly trivialized that.

After finding the thief's hideout in the afternoon, much to Kirito's surprise, we reported back to the commander at the camp. In the evening we began the final quest, but as it involved a large dungeon we weren't able to complete it that night.

We returned to the dungeon the next morning—this time without the extra soldiers that had accompanied us. After fighting through the dungeon, at the end we found the thief's hideout. Instead of forest elves, though, we found elves with purple skin and evil-looking features, called Fallen elves. Kizmel looked uncomfortable at the sight of them, but it wasn't the time to ask about it.

After fighting though the fallen elves, we found the Jade Key among various other treasure and this time safely transported it to the spirit tree.

When we arrived at the tree, there was a large group of dark elves waiting to take the Key up to the next Floor. At this point, Kizmel turned to us to speak.

"Kirito, Asuna, Rei… now that it has become clear that the forest elves are working with the Fallen, the Jade Key must be secured as quickly as possible. Normally it would likely have fallen upon me to take the Key to the fortress on the next Floor, but…" she glanced over at her fellow knights. "It seems that it has already been taken care of."

"So…" Asuna trailed off, not needing to vocalize what we were all thinking.

"That being said, I will need to report to that place rather promptly… If you do not mind, I would like to accompany you up the Pillar, however I would have to return here afterward."

Asuna nodded vigorously. "Of course, you can stay with us as long as you like."

Kizmel smiled and bowed slightly. "Well then, I trust you'll take care of me."


Wednesday, December 21st, 2022, 1:20 P.M.

After finishing up the campaign quests for the 3rd Floor, the only 'reward' that was in any way related to the Floor boss was a small bit of information—it made heavy use of poison attacks, so bring a lot of antidotes.

While that was a change from the beta, where the boss didn't have poison attacks, it was standard practice to carry as many potions as you reasonably could, so the advice was rather moot. And fortunately the guilds didn't make a big deal about it.

As for the actual rewards we received, we were provided with a decent list of items to choose one from. Asuna chose a cloak made out of the same material as Kizmel's—while not as powerful, it still gave a good bonus to Hiding and Agility. I picked a new pair of boots that provided resistance to tumbles and gave a small boost to jumping power, which felt reassuring after that duel with Morte. Kirito waffled over the decision for a while, but eventually he chose the same item as me.

The northern section of the Floor was rather sparse; as the bulk of the Floor's content was the elf campaign which took place in the south, the north only had a few grinding locations, the labyrinth town «Dressel», and some random filler quests. As we had no need to do them, we skipped most of that and made our way straight to the labyrinth and the boss.

Lind was a little skeptical about Kizmel being a part of our party, but since it was clear she was our ally he decided to defer to our judgment. All in all the boss fight was rather simple; with his poison mostly negated «Nerius the Evil Treant» was an easy fight. Between Asuna's powerful rapier and Kizmel's assistance, the battle took well under an hour. Unsurprisingly, Morte was nowhere to be found.

Kirito got the LA Bonus, of course.

Despite our reluctance, Kizmel dropped out of the party and made her way back down the labyrinth and to the spirit tree. The guilds were busy working out loot, so the three of us were left to climb the stairs on our own.

Soon the door was upon us… and quite quickly I noticed a problem.

"Hey, Kirito…"

"Hm? Oh…"

"Hey, why are you two just staring at the door? Is it because it's the 4th Floor?"

It took me a moment to understand Asuna's question. "What do you… oh, no, I don't get all that superstitious stuff. And Kirito certainly doesn't; just look at him."

Kirito rolled his eyes at me.

"No, the problem is the door itself. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kirito, but… wasn't the 4th Floor a giant dusty canyon?"

"No, that's right…"

"So why is there an engraving of a boat out on the water here?"

"I would think that the Floor has changed, then," Asuna said.

"Well, I'm getting a bad feeling…" Kirito mumbled.

Kirito pushed the door open, and we were greeted with a sight that couldn't have been more different from the beta.

The door opened out to a small pavilion atop a steep grassy hill—a hill that in the beta had been completely barren of plant life. A large tree was growing behind us, but aside from that the hill was mostly empty. Tall cliffs towered above the hill most of the way around. A couple of paths forked off from the pavilion and headed down the hill to the canyon surrounding it…

A canyon that was now filled with flowing water, which left via a single outlet to the south. We were stuck on an island.

"Wha… what the hell?!" I shouted.

"Well, that's that, then," Asuna said, as if she'd proven a point somehow.

Kirito and I just stood there for a moment to take in what was in front of us. There had certainly been numerous changes implemented in SAO since the beta, but none on this kind of scale—at least until now. Back in the beta, the canyons had been the only way of moving throughout the floor. So now what were we supposed to do?

"Hey, hellooo? Earth to Thing One and Thing Two." Asuna elbowed Kirito in the side and pulled us out of our stupor.

"Oh, um… sorry," he replied.

"I don't need an apology, but we shouldn't be making the others wait around for us to activate the teleporter."

"Right. Er, first we need to—"

"I contacted Argo while you two were zoned out, if that's what you're about to say."

"Oh, um, thanks." At least one of us was being capable. "Well then… I would say we should get going, but I don't think it's going to be so simple…"

"Well, is the Floor at least laid out the same way as before?"

"It looks like it," I answered.

"What are we waiting for, then? Lead the way!" Asuna pushed us forwards a bit, so we walked down to the edge of the water. I peered over the edge; with just a glance it was clear that the canyons were just as deep as before.

"Wait, this looks awfully deep… We can't cross this," Asuna said.

Cross…? I looked up from the water at Asuna. "Wait, I think you've misunderstood. In the beta the only way to get around the Floor was by walking through the canyons. There isn't anything else; the 'pathways' are the water."

Asuna's brow furrowed. "So, there's…"

"No path at all."

"Well… what about the top of those cliffs?"

Kirito shook his head. "No way. No one could climb them in the beta. Even if we could, it's too dangerous… and we'd still have to cross the water."

Asuna looked back to the water. "I guess the only option left is to swim, then."

Kirito and I weren't so ready to accept that conclusion. "It's not that simple," he said.

"Why not?"

"Well, swimming in SAO is quite dangerous. It's completely different from how swimming works in real life, and takes a lot of practice to swim even in still water."

I laughed nervously. "Didn't stop you from diving into that lake in the cave, though."

"Well, I'm used to it at this point. But rushing water like this is completely different, and there's still the risk that we could drown."

"How much practice is 'a lot'?" Asuna asked.

"Well, it took me at least an hour to figure it out in a shallow pond, and a while after that to get good at it… That doesn't mean it won't take longer for you or anyone else…"

"We need to activate the gate, though, and we don't have any other way… If you two went back—"

At this point I had to voice my growing concerns. "No, there has to be another way. I can't accept that."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because… I don't even know how to swim in the first place."

"…"

"Wait, really? But…" Kirito trailed off, surprised by my statement.

"Yes, really. I didn't really… I just… never learned, okay? But that aside, look at it from a design standpoint."

"Design standpoint… no, you're right, we must be missing something…"

"Huh? You lost me," Asuna said.

"Well, with how dangerous swimming is, it's crazy to think that we'd be thrown into a Floor like this. SAO is cruel, but it's not unfair…" Kirito started looking around, as if there was anything on this barren hill to find.

Actually, there was one thing we hadn't really looked at. I spun around and jogged up to the tree that we had seen behind the pavilion. Kirito had come to the same conclusion and rushed up the hill, dragging Asuna behind him by the hand.

I pointed up at the branches above us. "There, look."

"Hm?" Asuna grunted, a little ruffled by the sudden upheaval, and she took a moment to straighten her skirt. Once she finally looked up, her mood improved for a moment. "Oh, fruit! And they're colorful, too."

Indeed, growing on the tree were a bunch of donut-shaped, multicolored fruits. On their own, they seemed kind of weird.

Asuna's smile quickly faded away again. "But… what does this have to do with anything? We don't have the time for food right now."

"Well, here, give me a second." Kirito reached up to one of the lowest branches and tried to shake the tree; unsurprisingly it didn't budge, nor did the fruit.

"Ah, come on… If only I had the right Skill for this…"

I rolled my eyes and walked up to the tree. A good punch with Flash Blow was all it took to knock down a couple of the fruits. I caught one in my hand, while the other two bounced off Kirito's head before he caught them himself.

"… Oh."

Asuna gave me a look like I shouldn't have punched the tree, but I just shrugged.

"So are we supposed to be eating them?" She asked. "If we are, then I want the yellow one." The other two, which were bright neon blue and red, didn't look so appealing to eat.

"No, we're not eating them. At that, they're not shaped like donuts," Kirito said.

"Uhh… what are they shaped like, then?"

Kirito brought the blue fruit up to his mouth, which caused Asuna to huff and cross her arms. Instead of eating it, though, he put the fruit's stem in his mouth and took a deep breath. After blowing hard into the stem—

Fwoomp!

The fruit suddenly inflated to many more times its original size, from a few centimeters wide to almost a meter.

Asuna's annoyance instantly turned to surprise. "Wha—it's an inner tube!"

"Mhmm." He tossed the yellow fruit to her. "Try it for yourself."

"So you think we'll be able to swim safely with these?" Asuna looked down at the fruit in her hand for a moment before inflating it. It bounced around as she struggled to keep the light inner tube still.

"Well, I wouldn't say completely safely," I said after inflating my own fruit, "Plus there's one other thing…"

"What is it?"

"We'll need to take off any gear that would weigh us down."

Asuna's expression soured. "How much gear are we talking?"

"Hmm…" Kirito took a moment to look over Asuna's gear, which seemed to make her a little uncomfortable. "Anything metal, of course, and leather or other materials that would soak up a lot of water… so in your case, your rapier and breastplate, and your boots and gloves… The cape, obviously… your skirt and vest would probably take on a lot of water…"

"That's basically everything, isn't it!?" Asuna threw her inner tube at Kirito's face and it bounced off harmlessly. "I assume you're going to take off the black thing, and all the other black things!"

"Um…" Kirito looked away sheepishly. "I was just looking at what would be the safest for swimming…"

"Uu… I should at least be fine with the tunic, right?"

Kirito nodded. "Yeah, it should be light enough to not really weigh you down."

Asuna huffed and picked up her inner tube, which had landed around Kirito's neck.

I sighed. "Well, the issues with it aside, Kirito's right. Even with these inner tubes, trying to swim fully equipped is suicide. Metal is one thing, but it's surprising how much water cloth will actually soak up. Unequipping our weapons kind of worries me, but… I

guess it'll be fine."

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to practice fighting with only Martial Arts.

While I spoke, Kirito quickly wrote out a message for the rest of the clearing group about the fruits, and left it in the pavilion on a piece of parchment. It would despawn, but not before they made it up here.

"Oh…" We made our way down to the water's edge again to prepare to venture out. "Do you think there will be monsters in the water, then?" Asuna asked.

I started taking off my equipment as we walked. "There's got to be, it just makes up too much of the Floor. We do have Martial Arts, but even then we can't really fight in the water… It'll be okay if we move quickly. Probably."

"Um—. That's… not very reassuring."

Once Asuna was sure that Kirito was facing the other way and taking off his own equipment, she started to undress as well. I actually felt a little uncomfortable watching her take all her stuff off, so I turned my gaze to check on Kirito instead—

And right there on the ass of his underwear was an embroidered golden bull head. It took me a second to register why he had underwear like that.

"Ahhh… I see."

"Hm?" Asuna turned around just in time to see the sight. "Pffff—ha-hahaha!" It was rare to see the usually level fencer laughing so much.

Kirito spun around, looking hurt. "Hey, come on! You don't have to—"

"No, no, you're more in shape than I am, that's not the issue," I interrupted while waving my hand back and forth. "Rather, you should probably look at your butt."

"Eh?" Kirito stuck his butt out over the water to look at the reflection, causing Asuna to laugh even more. "Wha—!?"

"The LA from Baran, right?"

"Ugh, yeah… it has good resistances and a Strength bonus, though…"

"Well, that aside…" I walked up to the water and stuck my hand in to test the temperature. "Ugeh, cold. At least this Floor isn't matching the weather in the real world, though it'd be nice if all the water was frozen…"

"Hmm…" Kirito stuck his hand in too. "Alright, let me try it out first." He threw his inner tube onto the water and hopped into it, splashing water all over me.

"Gee, thanks."

"S-sorry." He paddled around a bit to get a feel for swimming with the inflated fruit. "Okay, this should work pretty well. You sure you'll be fine, Rei…?"

I kicked at the water to splash his face. "Don't treat me like a kid! I'll be fine, jeez."

Asuna and I joined Kirito in the water and tested out moving around. "Wow, it's been a while since I've gone swimming," Asuna said.

"It's no beach, though…" Kirito replied.

"Actually, I bet there will be one at some point. I should make some swimsuits."

"Oh yeah, you were working on Tailoring before. There might be an ocean Floor, who knows."

After moving around some more Asuna noticed how strange the water in SAO felt. "Um, this is weird," she said.

Kirito nodded. "It doesn't feel quite the same, right? It's kind of… artificial. You'll get used to it soon enough. The current will get stronger at the exit here, so be careful so that we don't get separated."

"Well, then…" Asuna stuck her hand into Kirito's inner tube and grabbed onto it. "Now we should be fine, right?"

"Y-yeah, that works."

Kirito and I did the same so that all three of us were linked together, with Kirito in the middle. After that we started swimming.

"… I'm still kind of worried about monsters in the water."

Kirito glanced over at Asuna. "Ehh, it should fine. I don't remember there being many mobs between the stairs and the main town back in the beta, plus the spawn rate should be really low right now since we just entered the Floor."

"Hasn't that period passed already, though…?"

Kirito hummed noncommittally.

"Oh, um, I think it would be better for me to be in the middle—" I started to say.

I heard a strange splash come from behind us, as if some water had been suddenly displaced under the surface. The other two turned their heads to look, but I didn't bother.

I immediately started kicking faster, but it only did so much—I was already relying a bit on Kirito to pull me along.

"…We should hurry," Kirito said.

"Yeah."

"Ready… GO!"

Kirito and Asuna immediately started kicking much faster, to the point that I could barely keep up at all. With the other two dragging me along we rushed through the water. I noticed Kirito glance back again and subsequently speed up, but I was too focused on hanging on to his inner tube to care.

No thanks to me, we covered probably a couple hundred meters in record time. I damn near lost my grip when we had to make a turn. Once near the shore, Kirito's feet hit the riverbed and he started sprinting as fast as he could, dragging Asuna and me along with him. He turned around when we were a safe distance from the water, and I saw what had been chasing us for the first time.

It looked like an oversized tadpole with a massive dorsal fin, so big that it couldn't even keep its balance when it washed up on the shore. Soon a wave pulled it back out to the water.

The other two must have only seen the fin and thought it was a shark or something.

"Wha… what the hell…" Kirito dropped to his knees and let the inner tubes slip from his arms, dropping Asuna and I face-first into the sand. Asuna pushed herself up after a moment, too tired to be mad at him; I didn't even bother moving at all.

"Fuck… this Floor…" I groaned. The whole ordeal lasted only a minute or two, but I was exhausted and didn't so much as want to think about water for a while.

"Language…" Kirito mumbled. My habit of swearing in English didn't stop him from berating me for it.

"Whatever…"


Once we collected ourselves, the main settlement «Rovia» was just past the crest of a small hill. I didn't remember much of the town as it had been rather bland back in the beta, just that it had strange buildings that had all their entrances on the second floor, so you had to climb a set of stairs to enter any of them.

Come to think of it, since the whole Floor was flooded now, that probably wasn't just some random design choice.

Sure enough, once we crested the hill it was apparent that the town looked much better than before.

"Ooh, it's so pretty!" Asuna exclaimed with all the fatigue from our ordeal evaporated and more excited than I had ever heard her.

Buildings made of bright white stone rose above a network of waterways that had originally been plain stone paths. Gondolas of varying sizes rowed along the waterways, which fortunately made getting around less of a hassle than I was expecting it to be.

Beautiful as the mini-Venice was, for me it was kind of overshadowed by how troublesome it was to get here. I wasn't looking forward to getting around the rest of the Floor, but hopefully we'd be able to get a gondola of our own somehow.

A small stone path led down the hill to the large entrance gate of the town. Once past its threshold, the game informed us that we had entered a Safe Area. Just up ahead was a large dock where gondolas of varying sizes were waiting for passengers.

"Amazing, it's just like Venice!"

Asuna sure was enjoying this.

Along the dock there were plaques placed periodically that listed the prices to use one of the gondolas. There were no three-person gondolas, but one with space for four was 100 Cor to use once. Hopefully getting around wouldn't end up draining too much of our money…

Kirito examined the gondolas for a moment, and pointed out a four-seater mahogany one with a smooth finish. He turned to look at Asuna. "Will this one do?"

Asuna examined the boat for a moment before nodding. We walked down some steps into the gondola, and the gondolier inside gave us a friendly greeting.

"Welcome, travellers! 100 Cor and I can take ya anywhere in Rovia."

In Rovia. Well, the gondoliers here probably didn't leave town for safety reasons. Kirito asked the gondolier to take us to the teleporter plaza, and a payment window appeared briefly before the gondolier pushed off. He headed down the main street—well, rather—

"Hey, Rei, what was the English word for a waterway?" Kirito asked.

"Channel."

Yeah, that. The main channel. He headed down the main channel of town, which was a good 20 or so meters across and filled with gondola traffic. Shops and stalls were lined up along the sides of the channel, but I imagined that taking detours here would be rather time consuming… and expensive.

Soon we were docked at the plaza, and once we had disembarked the gondolier left with a wave of his hat. When I glanced over at the other two, I saw that Asuna still had sparkles in her eyes.

"That was so much fun!"

"Uh, yeah…" I replied half-heartedly. Sure, riding in a gondola was neat, I guess. She must have just really wanted to ride in one.

Once we activated the Gate and watched the crowds spew forth from a safe distance, we went to rent some inn rooms. Kirito suggested that we all get separate rooms, but I insisted that at the very least I was fine sharing a room with one of them, since it would be cheaper.

We needed to work out what our plan would be for the next day or two before resting, so we ended up on the sofas in Kirito's room. I expected Asuna to be a little on-guard, like she was back in Kizmel's tent, but it appeared that she was still in gondola mode.

"Asuna, do you like ships?" Kirito asked.

Asuna took a moment to reply. "Oh… not particularly, I've just always wanted to ride in a gondola. I didn't expect that to happen here, of all places."

"Yeah, me neither…" I said. "The Floor looks a lot nicer now, but I could do without all the water."

"Yeah, since the gondolas don't seem to go out of town we'll have to deal with more swimming."

I shook my head. "No, I don't know about that. There has to be another way."

Kirito looked at me. "You'll have to learn how to swim at some point, Rei, and we still have the inner tubes."

"Again, don't treat me like a kid!"

Admittedly, I was being kind of stubborn about it.

He laughed. "I'm not, I'm not. What else do you think we can do? Use those ninja water-shoe things to walk on the water?"

"No!—Well, actually, with high enough Agility and low enough weight that might actually be possible if we can get some… Look, the point is I might not be the only person in this situation, and we can't be sure how quickly I'd be able to learn, or anyone else for that matter. Even that aside, fighting in the water is really dangerous."

"You have a point," Asuna said. "Come to think of it, wasn't that fish's cursor fairly red? Rather than just being able to swim, I would think that the problem is the monsters."

Kirito nodded. "It looked like it was fairly high level, despite its uh, appearance. The three of us would do okay, since we're lightweight, but the other players might not do so well without all of their equipment…"

"I think we should at least take a good look around Rovia before being sure that swimming is our only option," I said. "Maybe there is a gondola that leaves the town."

"We'll see, I guess. For now, we need to resupply, and go around and find all the quests we can. We'll be able to look for better alternatives to swimming, too."

"Oh, right!" Asuna suddenly sat up and shouted. "I was going to make swimsuits!"

"You were serious about that?" I questioned. "Wait, do you still even have Tailoring?"

"Ah, about that." Asuna opened up her menu and started looking through her inventory, much to our confusion. After a few moments she triumphantly materialized a small crystalline bottle filled with a glowing liquid and placed it on the table.

"Uh." I blinked, still lost.

Kirito reached out to pick it up, but Asuna blocked his hand. "Well, if you don't know what it is, don't mess with it!"

"I know! I was just going to read its description."

"Waaait…" I looked at the bottle with a large helping of suspicion. "No way, no way. Does that do what I think it does?"

"Well, don't be vague about it!" Asuna said.

"Does… does that bottle store a Skill?" I couldn't believe my own words, but from the way Asuna was acting made that the only conclusion I could draw.

Kirito was reading out what the bottle did as I said that. "Crystal Bottle of Kales'Oh… allows you to save the proficiency of any skill currently… Wha-whaaaaaaaat?!"

Asuna plucked the bottle from the frozen Kirito's hands and, after fiddling with a setting on the item, removed the stopper. The contents turned into a bright blue light that raised up out of the bottle, and Asuna breathed the light in, and then breathed a different, yellow light back into the bottle. She placed the bottle back on the table.

"So now I have my Tailoring level back, and my Sprint level is saved in the bottle."

"Uh… huh. Where did you get it, exactly?" I asked.

"I think it dropped from that forest elf knight we fought when we first saved Kizmel. It was kind of hectic so I don't remember picking it up specifically, but that makes the most sense to me."

"I see…" The forest elf had dropped some good items, but our hands were so full with Kizmel that I hadn't gotten around to checking them until later. I hadn't gotten anything amazing, just some items to sell, and since Kirito and Asuna didn't say anything about it I assumed they hadn't either. But it appears that I had been mistaken.

Well, we didn't exactly go around sharing everything we had either, so it's not like it was that strange.

"Are you two going to just sit there? If we're done, I'd like to go to my own room and get to work on these swimsuits."

"Ahh, uhh…" Kirito stammered. "No, just hold on for a second. I have another question or two…" Kirito took a moment to compose himself before continuing. "Have you told anyone else about this thing, or just us?"

Asuna shrugged.

"Not even Argo?"

"No. When would I have had the chance to show it to her, anyways?"

"Er, right…"

"Why are you overreacting so much?" Asuna questioned. "All it does is hold a Skill, it's not like it improves it or anything."

Asuna's words left me dumbfounded for a moment. Right, she doesn't have much experience with games… "Well, look. Skill slots are a really valuable resource. From what I remember, after level 20 we'll only get another one every ten levels…"

I reached out to pick up the bottle and inspected it myself. It was mostly empty, with just a small amount of liquid at the bottom—maybe the amount represented the level of the Skill, so it could probably hold anything all the way up to the max level. While I looked at the bottle, Kirito explained more about how important Skill slots were to Asuna.

The information window for the item was rather small, as it mostly held just a short description. There was a space for stats and other info, but this kind of item wouldn't have anything like that—

But there was actually something like that. It had a tag that I had never seen before.

『Unique』.

"Hey, uh, Kirito." I nudged his shoulder and cut off whatever he was explaining. "Have you ever seen this item type, or rarity or whatever before?"

"Hm?" I set the window to be visible to party members and he leaned over to look. "Unique? No… I haven't."

"Unique?" Asuna asked. "I did see that before, but I didn't really think much of it… What would that mean? Well, the word gives me a good idea, but I want to be sure…"

"Well…" I put the bottle back down. "It's hard to be completely sure. The first thing that comes to mind is that it's one-of-a-kind. But I've played a game or two where an item being unique didn't mean that it was the only one, just that it had special properties that normal items wouldn't…"

Kirito scratched his head as he thought. "Well, in SAO's case I think it would be more likely to be the former. But if that's the case, we absolutely can't tell anyone else about this. For one, we'd have way too many people hounding us for it."

"It wouldn't exactly help your reputation, either," I commented.

"Ahaha… That aside, this item is really, crazy, extremely rare, that much is for sure. Plus our encounter with that forest elf wasn't exactly the standard, and you only get to fight that particular enemy once… You should be careful with it."

Asuna put the bottle back into her inventory and nodded slowly. "I see… Yeah, I can see how having an extra Skill slot would be a big deal."

"Maybe once we hear about another Unique item appearing or something, it would be okay if other people would know about it—it's not like I want to completely hide its existance... Plus I guess we're not completely sure that that's even what Unique means… But I want to put your safety before anything else."

I wondered how Asuna would react to Kirito's sudden sentiment. I had a hard time getting a read on her sometimes—thinking back on it, aside from the odd conversation or two, I hadn't put much effort into knowing her better. Which, to be honest, was kind of the norm for me.

Asuna simply stared at Kirito for a moment before she looked away in a huff. "If that's what you want to do, fine," she said in a small voice.

'Oh, uh… w-well, okay." Kirito was apparently surprised by her response. "Uh, well… we can rest for a bit now, so how about we meet back up in the café below at six?"

Asuna made a small nod and left the room.

Kirito looked at me, a small hint of concern showing on his face. "Uh… I didn't make her mad, right?"

I sighed in mild frustration. "Well, if it's all the same to you, I'm gonna go… I dunno. Do something, I guess? Later." I got up and left the room myself.

I stopped in front of Asuna's room and reached out to open the door, but I hesitated. I kind of wanted to talk with her for a bit, but…

Eventually I decided against it and left the inn. I found myself suddenly feeling kind of listless, so I figured wandering around the town for a bit might help. Between the boss fight—easy as it was, relatively speaking—and all the water, it had already been a pretty long day.


Author's Notes

Hey everyone!

Business as usual as far as the time between releases. From your perspective, at least—I mostly got this done in the past three weeks or so. But let's not dwell on that.

As you may have noticed this chapter isn't quite at the length of the previous one, but the length has still increased somewhat compared to older chapters. I have a few thoughts on chapter length, but I'll spare you them for now.

You also likely noticed that I finally added a cover image. It's extremely minimal, and probably more of a placeholder—if I manage to get something together that's better than I'll replace it, sooner rather than later provided I don't get lazy. But it's better than nothing.

By the way, 4 is an unlucky number in Japan (and China) much like 13 is here in the US and elsewhere.

I keep wanting to talk about how in places the story becomes similar/identical to canon, even down to the word in places, but I think I'm better off not rambling about it. It's… a complex topic, and something I think isn't too suited to ANs. Bottom line is, it serves the story the way I want it to so that's how it is, I guess.

In general I've noticed that I tend to ramble a lot in ANs and then edit it down later. Words are hard.

That's all from me for today. Take care!