Thursday, December 22nd, 2022, 9:00 A.M.
After I finished up my business with Argo, I made my way back to Rovia. I looked around the plaza after stepping off the teleporter; to my surprise, the Tilnel was moored off at one side, opposite that of public gondola docks. A quick glance at my map informed me that Kirito and Asuna were both in the inn.
They must have decided to get some rest after they went to visit Remolo again. I couldn't blame them for that; hopefully with that they could get their sleep schedule mostly sorted out.
Since I was left with not much else to do for the time being, I decided to head back down to the first Floor. I had half a mind to take a look at the various items the merchants (both player and NPC, I noticed) were hawking along the streets of Starting City, but I didn't feel like sticking around in the crowds longer than I had to, and the items probably weren't of any use to me anyways.
Outside the city gate, I turned east at the fork to head towards the large lake that spread along this section of the Floor. Rather, instead of that lake specifically I was looking for a smaller lake a bit out of the way where other players wouldn't bother me. A remote area wouldn't have many monster spawns either, not that anything on the first Floor would prove to be much of a bother. Towards the edge of the Floor I found a place that fit my needs—a medium-sized pool secluded in a small forested area.
Uh, hello, earth to dumbass. What kinda stupid idea is this? I thought to myself once I took another look at the water. What if I drowned? What if I got attacked while I was defenseless? …There was nothing for it; I was already here, and I really needed to get this dealt with. I did my best to shake off my nerves. It wasn't that bad; I was on the first Floor, so it wasn't very dangerous. The water didn't look very deep either.
My self-reassurance didn't do me much good. I'd always been kind of afraid of the water since I didn't know how to swim, really a rather unfortunate feedback loop. I would just have to push through it.
I'd asked both Kirito and Argo for some tips since we'd started with the fourth Floor; aside from the general swimming stuff, they had given me a good amount of info specifically about how it worked in SAO.
As amazing as FullDive VR was, it wasn't quite perfect. One of the things that varied the most from real life was liquid simulation. It came as no surprise; fluids were incredibly complex, and bodies of water were often a major talking point when it came to videogame tech.
Here in SAO, the issue largely came down to the fact that while the hardware was definitely capable of much more realistic water, it was pretty taxing and ultimately not that necessary for this kind of game. In a physical sense, that is; visually it was perfect. The result was a feeling that was… incredibly strange. The water's pressure and texture felt kind of off, somewhat simplified compared to real-world physics but not by much.
The whole swimming ordeal wasn't actually the first thing on my mind at the moment, though. After we were done at the cave, I asked Argo for a bit more info on the water shoes—mizugumo, they were called—she had mentioned. Obtaining them was as simple as knowing where to buy them, but she warned me that they were extremely difficult to use, at least for where we currently stood in terms of game progress. High Agility and weight as low as possible were mandatory. Keeping balance was tricky to say the least, and fighting while out on the water on these was absolutely out of the question.
That being said, the shoes weren't completely unforgiving. Unlike how they would 'work' in real life, as long as you did it right you could easily glide along the water and leave next to no wake, much like a water strider as the name implied. Besides that, though, one mistake and down you went.
Argo told me that she had to unequip just about most of her gear to get the mizugumo to work. Thankfully, it wasn't like I had to be out in the middle of the water to test them—as long as there was a few inches of water, they worked fine.
Anything metal or leather would be pretty heavy, so that was an obvious no-go. I unequipped all my leather armor and both my daggers, leaving me with just my tunic, pants, and a couple of bits of jewelery. I equipped the mizugumo and tried stepping out into the water. After taking a moment to make sure I was indeed floating and not just standing on the lakebed, I silently thanked myself for getting the lightest clothes I could find a while back. After that I tried putting on different pieces of gear to see how far I could push it—one or two bits of leather, depending on the size, was okay, but either of my daggers was out of the question. My cloak was just barely pushing it too, unless I took something else off. Even if I could equip more than just some clothes, that probably wasn't the best idea—even if it was light enough to support, the less weight I had the easier it would probably be to keep my balance.
At that, it definitely took some effort to stay balanced. I threw a light punch to see if that was reasonable, but like Argo said, it was no good. I didn't completely fall over, but I was cutting it close. Even if that wasn't an issue, I didn't really have the reach to be effective anyways. However, I didn't have as hard a time moving around on the water as I expected to. I did a few laps around the edge of the water for practice.
With any luck, the mizugumo would scale well with Agility so that in a couple levels' time I could use them fully equipped—though by that point they'd probably be irrelevant anyways. I didn't feel like spending any time on testing that with Agility boosting items, either.
I continued to slide around on the water, and when I reached the center I took a look below me. The water was clear enough for me to see to the bottom; it looked even shallower than I had thought. Even at its deepest, the water probably only came up to my chest. Despite that, looking down through the surface I was balanced on suddenly made me feel really nervous.
Relax… relax. It's fine.
Suddenly, I heard a faint rustling sound from the forest nearby, as if something was sneaking around through all the foliage. I whirled around to try to see what the sound was, but I moved too quickly and lost my balance—
"Huwah!" It was a weird feeling, like the 'ground' below me had suddenly fallen away. I fell into the water with an unceremonious splash. For a moment I flailed around wildly, afraid that I was about to go under. I did my best to force myself to calm down—without really even trying, I found myself floating along the surface.
…Well, that was easier than I expected. It really didn't come as much of a surprise, ultimately; Kirito told me that at the very least as long as you stay in place and don't panic it's pretty much impossible to sink. The thought didn't do much to calm my nerves though.
I looked back over towards the source of the sound, but saw no evidence of anyone or anything there. It must have just been a small critter that got scared away when I made a ton of noise.
I tried getting up back onto the surface on my feet somehow, but the mizugumo just felt too clunky to pull that off; all I accomplished was some flailing around. With that a failure, I opened my menu and unequipped the water shoes. I also pulled out my inner-tube-fruit as an extra safety measure, since I still had it sitting around in my inventory.
With that out of the way, I tried to move around a little, and quite quickly I remembered how weird the water felt. It wasn't exactly… coarse, but the water certainly didn't feel smooth like it would in real life. The amount of inertia the water had felt kind of strange as a result, as well. I wasn't very successful; I couldn't move around quickly at all, and certainly not as fast as Kirito and Asuna had gone when we were getting chased by that fish.
At the very least, I felt a lot more comfortable knowing that I wouldn't be in immediate danger if I got thrown out of the Tilnel unexpectedly. In retrospect, though, I should have accepted Kirito's offer to come with me to help the next time we had the chance. I was just too on edge by myself like this.
The ping of a incoming message distracted me from any further worries—Kirito had sent me a message that he had just woken up, and that he and Asuna would be at the inn in Rovia if I wanted to come along with them on the quest. I shot a quick reply saying that I was on my way, and made my way out of the water.
The moment I arrived at the teleporter in the Venice-like city, I wanted to spin back around and go back to the first Floor. Kirito and Asuna were not present at the plaza; they had opted to get a head start on some shopping. More distressingly, a rather irritated-looking group consisting of both the DKB and ALS, leaders included, were currently mulling about nearby. Much to my misfortune Kibaou spotted me right away and came marching up.
His body language was more prickly than even his hair, which immediately put me on edge. Lind followed after him, but their subordinates hung back. Lind looked as stern as ever, but otherwise non-confrontational.
As Kibaou approached, I adjusted the hood of my cloak to draw it slightly closer to my head.
"What do you want," I snapped, less as a question and more as an expression of general disdain.
"Ya got some explainin' ta do! An' no runnin' off like the other two did!"
"… What?"
"Don't act dumb. The gondola!"
Behind him, Lind rolled his eyes at Kibaou's behavior. At this point, I was getting pretty used to dealing with these two. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
"No." I stepped off the teleporter and started walking towards the dock. Kibaou followed, with Lind trailing behind.
"Whaddaya mean, no?! Why not?"
I pulled down my hood and sighed in frustration. "Multiple reasons…"
I didn't continue until I sat down at the dock and started taking off my equipment. The guild leaders gave me a weird look, but I ignored it.
"One, you're being an ass." Really, I was content to stop at just that, but actually explaining would at least get him off my case. "Two, we're not even done with the quest. Three, I barely even know anything about the quest, as Kirito and Aa-chan have been working on it without me. And four, even if it weren't for the last two things, we probably don't have all the information that you'd need anyways. Just wait for Argo's guide… please." It took some willpower to add that last word. With all my extraneous weight removed and my mizugumo equipped, I carefully lowered myself down onto the water of the canal.
Once I was confident that I was stable on top of the water, I turned around to see the guild leaders and their followers rather dumbfounded at my achievement. Kibaou was trying to find something to say to me, but there was nothing that I had said that he could really refute.
"Oh…" I moved backwards a bit and gestured down at the water shoes. "No, you won't be able to use these. You need as low weight and high Agility as possible, and I can barely use them."
With that, I sped off down the canal, taking care to leave a wide berth between myself and any gondolas. I didn't want to draw the ire of any of the boatmen, nor did I want to smack into the side of a gondola by accident. I was already moving at a pretty good clip, but I could tell that it would be easy for me to go quite a bit faster yet. All the faults aside, these were probably the fastest option for getting around the Floor.
Hey, this is pretty fun. I felt almost like a little jet-ski, weaving around among the gondolas that were barge-like in comparison. I was still somewhat afraid of the water, but this was a good boost to my confidence.
After checking my map for Kirito and Asuna's location, I found a spot nearby to climb up out of the canal and reequipped my gear. I caught up with them just as they were about to start their shopping. Aside from general supplies, we got a few upgrades—Asuna in particular, as per Kirito's suggestion. Since she had the Light Metal Armor Skill, she might as well get as much worth as she could out of it.
I was mostly satisfied with my gear although I did get a set of studded gloves and boots, as did Asuna. She also got a stronger steel breastplate to replace her bronze one, and a plated leather skirt—just a leather skirt with metal plates sewn into the sides—to replace her plain leather one. The steel plate had the design of a plant faintly etched into it. It wasn't enough metal to slow her down appreciably, but she definitely had more protection to work with than before. Certainly, of the three of us she had the most armor by far. Kirito had a thin piece of metal that could hardly be called armor and was probably about as much as you could get away with without a proper armor Skill. Besides my new gloves and boots, I had no metal to show at all.
With our shopping done, we made our way to a small restaurant thanks to the help of Kirito's memory of the beta. Asuna seemed quite excited by her new gear; it was probably the biggest upgrade that she'd gotten by far. "You were probably due for a good upgrade, huh?" I asked her. "Wasn't that bronze plate from the second Floor?"
Asuna nodded. "I've been using it since then, yeah. I was thinking that you were going to get more than you did, though…"
I shrugged. "Not much for me to do, honestly. The leather here isn't much better than what I have now. Although, seeing that plated skirt has got me wondering if I'd be able to use some metal arm or leg guards… that's probably all I could do without the Skill."
We had entered the restaurant and sat down while we talked; Kirito was poring over the menu. "Didn't you try that out before?" he asked.
"Well, yeah," I admitted, "in the beta. At the time I didn't really like it as it slowed me down a bit for what was pretty meager protection. But the speed issue is nothing that a level or two or some Quickness on my dagger can't fix, and every bit of defense matters."
"Mm…" Kirito glanced up at me from the menu. "Wouldn't it get in the way of your sheath, though?"
"Ah, right… Well, it's nothing I'd do this instant either way. I'll figure it out."
We gave our orders to an NPC waitress amid a brief pause in our conversation. I wasn't really in the mood for Italian or seafood, but the Floor being as it was there wasn't much other choice. I settled for a dish of what seemed to be shrimp-like fish.
"While we're on the topic of armor, is there any specific reason you picked an Agility build, Aa-chan? Kirito and I are one thing, but…"
"Well, honestly it's just that I dislike… how do I put it… the really bulky full armor."
"Hm, because?" Kirito questioned.
"I just don't like how heavy it is… plus it feels like using that kind of armor is completely accepting this world, in a way…"
I could see her point in that. The first thing that would often come to mind when thinking of a medieval fantasy game would be a knight in full plate armor.
Kirito didn't completely follow. "Hmm… but wouldn't your weapon be kind of the same concept… Ah, or do you have actual fencing experience?" That made sense, as Kirito partially made his choice based on his kendo experience.
Asuna shook her head vehemently. "No, no, nothing like that. Rather… back at home, there was a similar-looking sword hung above our mantelpiece. I got in trouble for messing with it once when I was little. I think my brother did do a little fencing, actually…" She shook her head again, and caught a questioning look from Kirito. "As for the breastplate, it was just a compromise between my thought process, and my cowardice and safety. And looking back on it, that was a good decision…"
Kirito and I nodded knowingly. Without that armor, it was quite likely she would have died back in the first Floor's labyrinth.
Thankfully, our food came along just in time to displace any somber thoughts. I popped one of the not-shrimp into my mouth, which proved to be a mistake.
"Mfhh, hot, hot!" I struggled out through a mouthful of burning shrimp. I did my best to quickly get the seafood down to spare my poor mouth.
"Spicy?" Kirito asked.
I shook my head. 'Gaah… no—no, just very fresh out of… whatever they cooked it in. Something very hot. Anyways… once we're done here, what's the plan?"
"Ahh…" Kirito leaned back a bit in his chair, and he and Asuna started explaining to me what Remolo had told them. There wasn't much to it; extraneous details aside, we had to tail a cargo gondola that was to leave Rovia close to nightfall. I glanced at my clock—it was around 2 P.M., so we had some time to kill yet.
At around 4:30, after circling around Rovia a couple of times we found the boat we were searching for. It was quite significant in size; I guessed it was around 15 meters long, almost twice as long as the Tilnel and larger than any of the largest passenger gondolas in town. Despite its size, only 4 NPCs were manning the boat; the majority of the space was taken up by large wooden boxes, about a dozen by my count.
In the mix of the fading light, the dark blue color of the gondola, and its surprising agility in the waterways, it seemed Kirito had quite a challenge keeping up with the cargo gondola. Soon we followed it past the town's southern gate and into the quickly encroaching nighttime. Kirito followed at a good distance, just far enough to keep the gondola barely in his sight but certainly far enough away to avoid any notice by the NPCs.
After a couple of minutes of drifting along the water, I broke the silence. "Say, I just thought of something."
"What's up?" Kirito asked from the back of the Tilnel.
"Well, I figured we'd probably be better off with me handling the boating."
"Didn't you say yourself that I should do it because of my stats?"
"Well… Yes, I did, but I was mostly talking out my ass. Not like I actually know anything about how the system for it works, though I guess it would be biased towards Strength." Asuna shot me a glare through the darkness for my language. "Ahem… anyways, that's besides the point."
"The point, then, being…?" Asuna questioned.
"I'm not much use while on the gondola otherwise. I'm down around a meter of reach compared to you two, without even accounting for my height…"
"Ahhh…" The two immediately understood what I was getting at. My build—in both senses of the word—was entirely unsuited to having any kind of range, and if there came a point where we needed to be able to fight while on the gondola, unless the enemy in question was actually on the gondola there wasn't much I could do about it. Additionally, my fighting style was more dynamic—since I had started using Martial Arts more heavily it meant a lot more moving around, which didn't pair well with being in a fairly narrow boat.
"Well, now's not the time to be switching around, though. Besides, for the moment I think I have a better idea…"
"What's up?" Kirito asked.
"Mmh, well…" I opened up my menu to take a look at the map while simultaneously unequipping most of my gear. Asuna looked at me with confusion, and I could assume that Kirito did the same behind me. "I wanted to get some more practice with these…" I carefully swung my feet over the edge of the Tilnel, and with my mizugumo now equipped I carefully stood up next to the boat, using its edge to help balance myself.
Two pairs of eyes gave me a blank look through the darkness.
"Ummm…"
"You can't be serious right now."
"Serious I am, Kii-bou." I drifted out from the boat slightly to bring the mizugumo into their view. "Full credit to Argo for showing them to me."
Asuna expressed her well-placed concern. "That doesn't seem very safe, to be honest."
"Well… It—It's not that bad, really… As long as I don't do anything stupid it's really easy to keep my balance, and according to Argo nothing should aggro on me."
"As long as you don't do anything stupid, you say…"
"Zip it, Kirito. Anyways, I just wanted to get some more practice on them, it seemed like a good opportunity. I could go scout ahead…" I paused for a moment, expecting that they would object. "… but that seems like kind of a stupid idea."
"Very."
"Mmh."
The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful. I spent a while zipping around on the mizugumo, but after one near slip-up I put a halt to that idea for the time being. About halfway through we decided that I should take over piloting the boat after all, which proved to be a good decision once we got to the dungeon, which was hidden behind a waterfall.
Unfortunately, we had quickly gotten cut off from the cargo gondola by one of the many oversized crabs that inhabited the dungeon. And to further our misfortune, the dungeon proved to be quite large and quite full of said crabs and other enemies.
The dungeon wound on and on, and it felt like we had barely managed to make any headway. I kept my map open as I slowly rowed along to keep an eye on our progress. I didn't bother to look at the time myself, but as the hours crept along it definitely had to have been past my bedtime. I was starting to have a hard time staying awake.
After Kirito finished off an enemy for the umpteenth time, I took a glance back over my map and stifled a large yawn. We had mapped quite a lot of the dim halls at this point, surely we were close to our goal by now… "Hah… how long have we been in here now?" I asked.
"About… six hours, now?" Asuna answered.
I glanced at my clock; just after midnight. December 23rd.
Christmas… I quickly cut that line of thought off; Christmas was the last thing I wanted on my mind at the moment.
"Oh, there's a door up there," Asuna said. "… And it looks like it's probably another dead end." We had happened upon a multitude of doors just the same throughout the dungeon; all of them went nowhere. A good number of them had treasure chests within, but it was mostly just junk.
"Ah, wait!" Asuna held out her hand to signal a stop. I was rather unprepared for it and jerked the oar the other way quite suddenly; the violent stop shook us about, but fortunately not out.
"More warning next time, please…?" I mumbled through my exhaustion.
"Shh! I hear voices ahead of us."
I did my best to focus my sight through the darkness. Up ahead it looked like the surface of the water widened significantly into a large room.
"Slow, then," I said. I pushed the oar forwards again, less sharply than before to move as slow as I could. I let the Tilnel creep forwards until just before the end of our passageway opened into the large hall.
Kirito and Asuna crept to the front of the boat to peek into the hall; I stayed next to the oar. It took most of what I could muster to stay awake. The two of them whispered back and forth about something, though all I managed to catch was the word 'fallen'.
After a moment to process it the word shocked me back to wakefulness, if only for a moment. Wait, 'fallen'? The Fallen elves? Why the hell are they here? The NPCs that were piloting the cargo gondola were quite obviously human; I had asked the dark elves for as much information as I could get on the Fallen, but 'cooperating with humans' wasn't on the list. What was the deal? Were the forest elves involved too? The Water Carriers Guild was already sketchy enough; if they were working together with these guys, too…
"We need to find out what's in those boxes," Kirito said, mirroring my train of thought. The two of them remained up at the front of the Tilnel for a few more moments, watching the NPCs unload the cargo gondola going by their conversation. All of a sudden, they leapt back towards my end of the gondola in a panic.
"They're coming this way!"
Shit. I quickly ran through the options—going forwards and fighting them was a definite no, but trying to get away in reverse would be too slow and there definitely wasn't enough space to turn around. With no other option left to me, I threw the gondola into a hard reverse until we reached the small landing where the door we had earlier passed was. Kirito and Asuna instantly caught on; they tied down the boat and rushed through the door. I followed behind them, but just as I got to the door Kirito burst back out with a huge piece of cloth in his hands.
He threw the cloth out over the Tilnel to cover it; just as the gondola was fully covered, the cloth appeared to disappear into the water. There was no time to question it, so I simply followed Kirito back through the door and quietly closed it.
I sat down on the ground next to the door; Kirito and Asuna crowded around the door's peephole to keep an eye on the Tilnel as the cargo gondola passed by it. Once everything was clear, Kirito retrieved the invisibility cloth and returned to the room.
"I friggin' hate stealth quests… I'm too tired for this," I groaned.
Kirito shrugged. "It looks like we still have work to do," he said, looking at a window in his inventory. "We can probably go back to Rovia and return here tomorrow…"
I shook my head. "It's fine. If you two aren't too tired it'd probably be better to go and finish the quest now." I took a look at my map, which had been open the whole time. "It'll take, uhh… at least an hour to get back to Rovia?"
"Sounds right," Asuna said. "Any idea how long the rest of this quest could take?"
"Well…" Kirito paused for a moment to think. "No clue, really. We might have to do some searching, it just depends on what the area is like."
"Nn… you two are fine to keep going?" I asked.
Kirito shrugged. "No problems here."
"I slept better than usual, actually." Asuna's response earned a questioning glance from Kirito, which she promptly answered. "I don't get much sleep normally."
"'Kay… well, I can barely keep myself awake for much longer…" Obviously, it would be better if we got the quest done. There was no way I'd be able to help at this point… I could head back on my own with my mizugumo, but it probably wasn't worth the risk, and there was no way Kirito and Asuna would agree to that. "Tell you what, I'll stay here and you two can go finish the quest."
Asuna wasn't entirely convinced, judging by her facial expression. "You sure? We can go back…"
"Really. It'd probably be easier to sneak around with one less person, anyway…"
Friday, December 23rd, 2022, 9:30 A.M.
"…ei…"
No. Sleep now, awake later.
"Rei!"
"Hwa? Uh…"
Reluctantly, I managed to push myself up into a sitting position. I looked around at the room I was in… inn? An inn. Not the one at the plaza by the look of it, though. A cursory glance at the clock—9:30 in the morning.
Clearly, I fell asleep not long after the two agreed to finish the quest without me.
I was in one of the beds of a two-bed room, which made sense—if they hadn't woken me up at all after returning from the quest, it would be kinda difficult to get me my own room. I certainly had no memory of waking up, so they likely carried me here. Kirito was stood in front of me, his arms crossed after shaking me awake.
"Sorry, we didn't want to wake you up after we finished. You seemed pretty tired…"
I shook my head. "It's fine. Quest went fine?"
Kirito nodded. "Mhm. Asuna's already downstairs."
I clambered out of the bed. Since all of my gear was still equipped, I didn't have to do anything before leaving the room.
Asuna was sitting at a small table in the inn's lobby. "Morning, sleepyhead."
I rolled my eyes. "Sorry for sleeping like a reasonable human being, unlike some people. What'd I miss?"
Kirito pulled over a chair from a different table and we sat down. What they had learned boiled down to a couple of points:
First of all, the quest wasn't actually complete; the next step listed in the log was to 'inform the appropriate person', whoever that was.
The people that the cargo ship brought the shipment to were indeed Fallen elves, though how they came to the arrangement wasn't clear.
The elves had paid quite a lot of Cor for the boxes—and it was just that. There was nothing in them, the shipment was the boxes. The elves couldn't cut down trees; it was a taboo for them, so their only way to get lumber was via humans. The boxes just served as a convenient disguise.
Going by what they had overheard from an extremely high level Fallen elf general, the boxes were to be used to build boats. Presumably to launch an attack somewhere.
"Uh… wait, how did they get so deep into that dungeon then, if they need boats?"
"Uhh…" Kirito shrugged. "Beats me. Maybe the Guild helped sneak them in there, or something? Or they could already have a boat, they just need more."
"Well, whatever. Was there anything else?"
"Uhh, what did the general say…something like, 'Once we open the door to the Sanctuary, even the greatest magic left to humankind will vanish…'? "
"That's… greatest magic? Sanctuary? I know our inventory and stuff are like charms to them, but that doesn't sound all that grand…"
"Whatever it is, hopefully we don't find out," Asuna said. I agreed with her; if it was something the Fallen wanted, it sounded like nothing but trouble.
Author's Notes
Hey everyone! At this point, you know the drill...
No rambling today, just the chapter. Take care!
