Tuesday, December 27th, 2022, 1:20 P.M.
"Howoah! Yeesh…"
I narrowly slipped by the corner of one of the makeshift boats of the forest elves. Rather expectedly, there were no Fallen in sight. The boat's oarsman tried to catch me off-guard, but I was too agile for them to actually be able to hit me. The spearman at the front of the boat also took a swipe at me, but similarly missed.
Our quests to acquire the Lapis Key had proven to be mostly uneventful, so the most memorable thing of the past few days was the tense atmosphere at the castle as we waited for the forest elves to mount their attack. It happened to coincide with the boss raid for the Floor, so that wasn't helping our nerves.
After continuing forward for a moment to make sure I wasn't off-balance, I pushed off the water hard with one foot, opening my menu with my free hand at the same time. While midair I unequipped my mizugumo, giving me normal range of motion once I landed upon the boat.
My sudden invasion caught the elves off guard; I was able to kick the oarsman off the boat and get a good strike in against one of the guards with ease. I made a point to smash the oar in the process. A short fight with said guard ensued; after knocking him off as well I quickly reequipped my mizugumo and hopped back off the ship.
I could take down every enemy on a ship all by myself if I really had a mind to do so; the ships were barely just wide enough for two people to stand side-by-side, so I could abuse that to make the elves body-block each other and fight them one at a time. Fortunately they were fairly average-level mobs—nothing like the forest elf we saved Kizmel from back on the third Floor.
But there wasn't much point in actually fighting all of them. With the oarsman and the oar itself both gone, the ship was basically defeated; actually dealing with every elf would waste too much time.
The others were employing a similar tactic; with that camouflage sheet that Kirito got for the Tilnel, they were able to pull off some good sneak attacks. As I had been told, attached to the underside of the boat was the horn of a 'giant unicorn fire-bear'—must've been a hell of a quest—that proved to be an effective weapon against the makeshift ships.
Everything wasn't quite so peachy, unfortunately. The forest elves had turned up with sixteen ships, not ten; meaning we had four each for me and the Tilnel to take out on our own if the dark elves' ships were to match them in strength. Additionally, the forest elves had much stronger morale—Viscount Yofilis not showing his face was likely a large cause of the disparity.
So far, I had disabled one ship and knocked a couple of soldiers off others here and there, while the Tilnel had sunken two. The dark elves had also sunken two of the forest elves' ships, but at the cost of one of their own. That left us at seven to their eleven, so we were just ahead of pace.
As that thought went through my mind, I heard a large crashing sound and saw that another dark elven ship had sunk. So six to eleven, now.
Fortunately for me, the elves showed no signs of attempting to return to a ship after being knocked off—they simply swam for the shore. Assuming that trend held, I could likely make quick work of a number of ships using the hit-and-run tactic I had just pulled off. I didn't feel a hundred percent comfortable with that assumption, but there was no alternative.
I made my way around the battlefield—or rather, battlelake—to make an attempt at another ship. That one went similarly smoothly, but unfortunately as I made my way to a third it appeared that they had wisened up to my tricks, and had moved more soldiers to protect the oarsman. I could probably still hop up onto the ship to attack them, but it would be more risky now. I wished I had another approach, but all the ideas I could come up with were much too risky.
A nasty sound of creaking wood hit my ears from across the lake, so I turned myself to take a look. Two of the box ships were flanking either side of the Tilnel, attempting to crush the smaller ship between them. Kirito and Asuna leapt off the Tilnel onto one of the enemy ships; Kizmel to the other. I quickly rushed over and gave Kizmel a hand with the forest elves. She didn't particularly need much help however; it seemed almost effortless for her to fend off the forest elves, her cloak swaying gently behind her.
We made quick work of knocking the elves into the water; I joined Kizmel in returning to the Tilnel to allow myself a moment to rest.
Kizmel gave me a quick nod upon returning to the Tilnel. "Thank you for the help, Rei. Those water shoes of yours have proven you to be quite the force."
I waved my hand in front of me. "I wish you guys could've used them too, but they're just too demanding agility-wise. The ships are so slow it's a joke to outmaneuver them."
A quick survey of the battlefield gave us updated numbers—as we looked about the dark elves managed to sink another of the forest elves' ships. That left us at a much more even number of six to seven; fortunately none of the dark elven craft were much worse off than the last time I had checked.
"Alright… let's go for the enemy's flagship before things have the chance to turn on us!" Kirito said, a determined expression on his face.
I nodded. "I'll swing around the other side and distract them." I hopped off the Tilnel and took a wide path around the lake, making sure not to draw attention from the forest elves' commander. Which didn't prove to be difficult, since at the moment he didn't seem much concerned about myself or the Tilnel; he must have blindly assumed those ships we just took down would have dealt with us.
The others moved quickly to put their camouflage back up and started to approach the flagship from behind. As it turned out, I had misjudged the commander's intent; it seemed his lack of interest in us wasn't due to negligence after all. He gestured with his sword at the castle and shouted.
"NOW! Ships one and two, begin the charge! Five and six, clear our path!"
"Ah, shit!" I hissed. I rushed to try and stop the charging ships, but I was too far out on the water to catch up in time even with my much higher speed; the Tilnel was similarly behind. The forest elven flagship crashed into the dark elves', as did the same with one other pair of ships. The dark elven craft began to sank into the water.
The enemy commander signaled for them to attack the pier. I rushed my way to the castle to help defend against the forest elves making landfall; the Tilnel barely squeezed through a gap between the enemy ships to do the same. I did have the time to try and attack the incoming ships if I wanted, however from what I could tell the elves on the flagship and second ship were more powerful than the rest so I didn't want to risk it.
A handful of seconds later, the two ships pulled up at the dock and twenty forest elf soldiers disembarked. The gate had just me and six spearmen guards for defense, though we at least had a formation advantage due to the layout of the dock—the forest elves had grouped up into three rows of six as well, unable to get much more width to attack the gate. The commander and one other elf stood at the back.
A few seconds later, the other three came rushing up the gate, frantically discussing what our plan would be now.
"Guys, hold out for just five minutes!" Kirito shouted as they approached me.
"What's your plan, Kirito?!" I asked.
"I'm getting backup. Don't push yourself, if it gets too dangerous move to safety!"
With that, Kirito slipped through the gate once the guards opened it just enough for him. I could only assume his intention was to convince Yofilis to come out and fight.
As I had guessed the forest elves from the leading ships proved to be a stronger than the rank and file. They were aslo equipped with shields which made it a bit more difficult for me in particular, though Martial Arts would help with that somewhat.
At the moment most of the forest elves were blocked by the dark elven spearmen or behind other forest elves, so Asuna, Kizmel, and I were fending off those that had slipped through on the sides.
I was stuck trading blows with one fallen elf soldier, doing my best to dodge or block his sword swings. I was having a hard time getting past his shield with my dagger, so I needed something with more force. I spun around, and my heel struck his shield with the blue glow of the «Water Moon» Martial Arts Skill. The attack gave just enough knockback to to push the elf into the water behind him.
In the meantime one of the spearmen had been forced to retreat, so Kizmel had taken their place to defend. At the same time, one of the forest elf soldiers slipped through over to where I was; fortunately, Martial Arts Skills tended to have shorter ending delay so I was prepared to face him.
As two, three, and four minutes passed, the number of elves still fighting continued to dwindle, both on the pier and out on the ships. Unfortunately, in both cases we were on the losing side. There were eight or nine of the forest elf soldiers left on the pier, but we were down to just three of the spearmen, so the three of us were now in full-on defense. The dark elves' ships were dangerously low on manpower; it wouldn't be much longer until we had waves of enemies pouring onto the dock.
After what was a bit over five minutes, I heard the gate behind us rumble open and a set of footsteps rush up next to Asuna and I. Kirito slid to a stop just behind us, the metal on his shoes scraping against the wooden pier.
"Sorry, I was a bit slow!"
"We're okay here, but the ships are…" Asuna trailed off. "How did—"
Before Asuna could finish her question, a powerful, flowing voice came from behind us.
"I am a knight of Lyusula and the master of Yofel Castle, Leyshren Zed Yofilis!" Far from the flat, slicing tone from before, his voice was filled to the brim with vigor and confidence. "My fellow warriors, I sincerely apologize for my absence in your time of need, and beseech your strength! The future of our kingdom rests upon this battle! For the sake of queen, friend, and family, stand strong and fight with me!"
I took a quick glance behind me to get a look at the viscount. His skin was quite a bit paler than an average dark elf, and he had a large scar down the whole left side of his face vertically, across his eye. I wondered if that was the reason why he was shut away in that dark office.
The roaring response from his fellow dark elves was almost deafening. For the first time, the dark elves of Yofel Castle matched their attackers in motivation.
Even better, four new icons appeared under the party's health bars—increased damage and knockback buffs, a damage reduction buff, and a luck buff. It was safe to presume every other dark elf present had the same buffs, as well. Now a single-hit Sword Skill was more than enough to knock one of the forest elves clear out into the water.
The forest elves pushed on, unperturbed by the sudden turn of the tide. The six in front of us prepared to attack together with Sword Skills, at their commander's direction. We didn't have the organization on our side to fend off such an attack—
"Evade to the sides!"
—but that problem got solved for us. We followed the command on reflex, our party and the spearmen splitting to one side or the other at Yofilis's command. As the forest elves started their attack, a streak of blinding light dived through the gap we had made straight into the attacking elves. Yofilis's powerful Sword Skill flung the six elves into the water like an explosion, leaving the viscount lingering frozen in his post-skill delay. We made quick work of the couple of soldiers that remained.
With the fodder out of the way, Kirito and Asuna immediately leapt forward to intercept the enemy commander and his adjutant. Left with no enemies to fight and no space to assist, the rest of us hung back to watch, though I kept myself ready if one of them needed to switch out. Even the elves out on the water stopped their naval battle to watch Kirito and Asuna fight the leaders.
Kirito and Asuna attempted to push their attacks through, but were met with a stout defense. Kirito and the commanding knight appeared to be arguing about something, but I couldn't hear them over the sound of clashing metal.
With a shout, the knight suddenly knocked Kirito's sword back, and raised his sword high in the air. It began to glow a light silvery-red—the Skill «Sharp Nail». Left with no other option, Kirito turned his sword and supported its far end with his palm.
I winced as the first hit slammed against the Anneal Blade—it sent up a huge shower of sparks, and I felt like I could hear the sword creaking from where I stood.
The second swing came back up; Kirito blocked the attack similarly, fortunately more of a glancing blow this time.
The third swing came back down as sure as the first, again creating a shower of sparks. I heard a small ping as a small fragment of the blade came flying loose. But it held.
I turned my attention to Asuna's battle with the adjutant. It was progressing much more slowly; the two were locked quite evenly, with both of their health bars still well in the green. I wanted to switch with her so we could try to make an opening, but it was too dangerous to try with how little space there was.
A shout from Kirito drew my attention back to him; he was in the middle of a Sword Skill, his sword enveloped in a powerful sky blue as it plummeted towards the enemy commander. The sword collided with the commander's shield in a flash of sparks and white light. The powerful impact blew the elf clear out into the lake.
Kirito's Anneal Blade, from all the way back on the First Floor, had paid quite the price however. The small chip in its edge had turned into a large crack all the way across the blade, with multiple chunks falling out.
With the commander out of the way, now was our chance.
"Aa-chan, switch!"
Kirito backed up from the edge of the pier. Asuna put all of her might into an incredibly powerful Linear, striking the enemy's shield square in the center. Even just the single hit was enough to push the elf back substantially.
Figuring it was my best route, I got a good run-up and leapt over Asuna's head. While in the air I activated the Sword Skill «Spark Blow», a simple kick with a bright orange glow. My boot passed just by the edge of the elf's shield and stuck them cleanly in the center of their plate armor. The combined force of the kick and my weight falling towards them was plenty to push them off the edge of the pier.
With the last enemy defeated, the buffs we got from Yofilis wore off. Kirito walked up to us; with Asuna recovered from ending delay, the three of us shared some celebratory fistbumps, though Asuna gave me a bit of a look.
"Was the jumping kick really necessary?" she deadpanned, her arms crossed.
I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. "Eheh… it was faster than going around. The unexpected angle makes it more effective too…" Asuna rolled her eyes in response.
I looked out across the water to assess the aftermath. All the forest elves were swimming off to the lake's mouth, while the dark elves had made their way onto the dock. Just looking over them like this, I wasn't able to tell how many had died on each side.
"Ah…"
No longer annoyed, Asuna tilted her head slightly in confusion. "What's up, Rei-chan?"
I equipped my mizugumo and hopped down onto the water. "I'm gonna go check for any messages from Argo, it should just take a moment."
"Oh, good idea."
By now, the forest elves were completely out of sight. As I strode away from the docks, a popup informed me of the completion of the «Laketop Fortress» quest, along with a substantial experience reward. I swiped the window away.
It took me just a few seconds to reach the edge of the lake and pass through the fog separating the instanced area from the rest of the world. A small ping informed me that I had in fact received a message. No doubt it was from Argo.
I opened it up and skimmed it over.
"… The hell?!"
I turned around and rushed back to the castle as quickly as I could. I returned just as Yofilis seemed to be presenting a reward to Kirito and Asuna. They seemed to be quite surprised themselves.
"For all three of us? Two each?"
"Naturally," the viscount said.
Kirito spun around as he heard me approach, excitement filling his voice. "Ah, Rei! Did you hear that?"
"Uh, yeah…" He was right to be excited; from the looks of it we had quite the selection of items to choose from, and having to pick out just one item in such a situation was always difficult to do. "We have a bit of situation though—the raid has left to fight the boss already!"
"Whaaaaaaat?!" Kirito and Asuna shouted in unison.
I nodded, clenching my fists in frustration. "Apparently they found and scouted the chamber earlier than they expected to this morning, and decided to just get it done with. I couldn't imagine why, the bastards."
Kizmel tilted her head slightly at my momentary English; I'd spoken in it in front of her before, but she still seemed to be somewhat perplexed by it. She had said it sounded strangely familiar and directed me to talk with Lyusula's historians once I got the opportunity—there was something deeper to it, apparently. Now wasn't the time to be pondering it, however.
Kirito closed his eyes for a moment to think. "How long ago did they leave?" He asked.
"Um… just under an hour ago. So we'll just have to leave them to it, I guess…" I admitted.
"Yeah…"
At this point, Yofilis joined our conversation. "I take it some fellow humans are facing off the guardian of the Pillar?"
Kirito nodded. "Yeah, but it seems like they're already partway up the tower."
Yofilis frowned. "Well, if you trust them then there is not much cause for concern… I only know it based on legend, but it is said that the guardian of this Floor's Pillar holds some sort of strange power."
"Strange power…?" I mumbled. This could not be good…
"Yes. The beast is called a hippocampus—a mixture of horse and fish. It is capable of bringing water forth from the driest earth, flooding one's feet from beneath him. As it is said, anyone that intends to fight the beast should have a charm to float in water."
We were all silent for a few moments.
"Ah, shit." I said. "They must already be in the labyrinth, we can't even tell them!"
"What do we do, then?!" Asuna shouted.
"We just have to go there ourselves. I'll go ahead of you two at top speed. Hopefully some of them kept their inner tubes…"
"Alright." Asuna spun around to face Kizmel and Yofilis. "Kizmel, Lord Yofilis—sorry, we need to hurry."
The two dark elves gave her a slightly confused look. "What do you mean, Asuna?" Kizmel said. "I will be joining you, of course."
That proved to be quite the surprise, but nothing compared to the next.
Yofilis stepped forward. "I shall join you, as well."
— - — - —
To replace his cracked sword, Kirito made use of the longsword that the forest elves' commander had conveniently dropped when Kirito knocked him off the pier. Asuna offered Yofilis the vacant seat in the gondola, but he declined. Instead, he simply leapt down onto the water right next to me. He must have had some sort of charm on his boots to allow him to walk on water.
The Tilnel would be left at the castle for the time being—a couple of guards were coming along as well, so they needed the larger boat. The Tilnel would be safer at the castle as well. With everyone ready, I gave a wave to Kirito, Asuna, and Kizmel, and set off at full speed. Once outside of the instance, I sent a message I had written up beforehand to Argo explaining the situation. Unsurprisingly, Yofilis kept up with me with ease.
Yofilis sped up for a moment to pull up alongside me. "I do hope we are not too late," he said.
"Yeah. It shouldn't take us too long to get there, and with your help getting through the labyrinth should be a breeze. I don't know that we'll catch up, though…"
He cast an inquisitive glance towards me. "You mentioned some sort of… tube, before. What did you intend by that?"
"Ah… at the other end of the Floor there's this tree that grows expandable fruit that we could hold onto to float in the water more easily. With any luck some of the raid members will still have those handy."
"Ah, the fruit. I had suspected as much."
Thanks to our speed on the water, it took us at most about fifteen or twenty minutes to make it to the base of the labyrinth. Argo was waiting for us at its entrance. She paled a bit upon seeing Yofilis—no doubt his cursor was a shade of deeply violent red to her.
"I'll be joinin' ya. Here's the map data," she said, quickly passing the information over to me.
I nodded, and quickly glanced over the map of the first level before replying. "Thanks. You should wait for Kirito and Aa-chan, they'll be here in a few minutes; they're stuck with the boat. We'll go on ahead."
"Gotcha."
With Argo's data in hand and the viscount's powerful sword arm, we blew past the monsters we did encounter. We didn't seem to be too far behind them, since not quite everything had respawned along the path to the boss chamber.
We didn't quite manage to catch up to them, but we made it to the chamber at most a couple minutes behind the raid. A small trickle of water was making its way through the gap in the doors.
"Brace yourself!" I shouted. I ran up to the doors and yanked them open. Despite their size, they burst open with ease, no doubt due to the weight of the water behind them. A big wave of water came rushing out, along with Agil and a number of other players.
"Uwah!?"
At about the same time, Kirito and Asuna showed up behind us, just narrowly avoiding getting washed down the stairs by the water.
"Woah! So you guys did get flooded!"
I helped Agil stand up against the flow of the water.
He shook his arms to try and dry himself off a bit faster. "Sure did. I told 'em we ought to wait on you three, since the boss looked different from the strategy guide's description…" Agil grumbled.
"Is everyone alright?!" I asked.
"Yep, we're all good. Some greedy, prickly guy grabbed up all those floaty fruit things back at the staircase, so we've managed fine. We got some damage in at the start, but beyond that we've just been trying to avoid its attacks and to open this damn door." Agil crossed his arms and turned to look at the giant doors in front of us. "Can't open it from inside, though."
"Y-yeah…"
By now, the whole raid had been washed out of the boss room and into a great big pile behind us. Thankfully, there was a fence set up to prevent them from getting carried down the stairs.
I ignored them for the time being and took a look at the boss room. It was nothing special—about fifty meters across, made of the same stone of the rest of the labyrinth. The only notable feature was a number of pillars around the room with strange blue lights at their tops, which was the only lighting in the chamber.
In the center of it was the boss— «Wythege, The Hippocampus». It was indeed a hippocampus—front half horse with sharp flippers, back half giant fish. As Agil had said, its first health bar was mostly empty.
A bothersome voice rang out from the pile of players behind me. "If you were plannin' ta show up, shoulda done it on time!"
"Tch. Maybe don't leave until you're actually supposed to, next time," I shot back.
He and Lind then argued back and forth a bit, as they were wont to do. I ignored them. The whole group shut up quite quickly, anyway, upon seeing Kizmel and Yofilis.
The castle master looked across the group, looking bemused by their quibbling. "Warriors of humankind, pray stand to fight or cease your prattling. In either case, I will assist in dispatching the Pillar's guardian, as is my pact with Kirito, Asuna, and Rei."
Yofilis drew his rapier and held it out with a metallic schwing.
"I am Yofilis, a knight of Lyusula and master of Yofel Castle! I command all who can to stand and follow my lead!"
With a similar line as before, I and the rest of the raid group received the four buffs we had gotten earlier. The raid came to their feet and shouted with newfound confidence.
— - — - —
With the boss's unique effect mitigated, the fight proved to be quite trivial. Yofilis and I rather expectedly proved to be the main damage output for the majority of the battle, given that our mobility wasn't restricted to the extent that everyone else's was. The water otherwise proved to be of no danger, as we had Argo stood outside the boss doors to open it whenever water started leaking through.
For once, Kirito went without taking the Last Attack Bonus; that privilege went to me. Thankfully no one cared to complain this time around.
"We'll have to get back to the castle soon to get our rewards," I said. We were now climbing the stairway to the next Floor. As always, the guild were busy working out the rest of the boss rewards, so it fell to us to activate the Teleport Gate.
"Yeah, I need to replace this thing," Kirito said, tapping the plundered sword currently across his back.
Asuna rubbed her arm, some concern showing on her face. "Well, about that," she mumbled, "how are we going to go back to the castle? We left the Tilnel there…"
I shrugged. "We'll just have to build another one. Not with the same level of materials, of course."
"Hm. Naming it's on one of you this time, then."
"Eh…"
Once we made it to the top of the stairs, Kirito let out a frustrated sigh.
"What's up—" I started, then I saw the problem for myself. "Ugh. Not again…"
"Oh, is the relief in the door different again?" Asuna asked, peeking around from behind Kirito.
"Yeah. Before it showed just a bunch of barren ruins, but now…"
I pushed open the door. A wave of humid heat assaulted us, vastly removed from the wintry weather we had experienced just a couple days before. In front of us, just beyond a small clearing for the exit, appeared a lush green jungle, thick with all kinds of different vegetation in places and crumbling ruins in others. The teeming of who know what kinds of insects could be heard in the distance… we could only hope that it was just a sound effect, and that Kayaba hadn't gone to the length of populating this entire place with bugs.
"It seems a jungle has been thrown into the mix."
Asuna took a moment to take in the surroundings before posing her next question. "… How different do you think it is?"
"Hm…" Kirito scratched his cheek. "Not as different as it looks. The ruins were still there on the relief just how they looked in the beta—but now they've been surrounded by this jungle. Look, we can see some of the ruins from here, even," he said, pointing out towards the jungle.
I did my best to peer through the thick foliage and trees. I could definitely see some ruins around the edges of the small clearing here, but that was about it. I looked along the pathway leading away from the stairs as far as I could to see if it was all like this.
"Say, do you think it's thinning out a bit up ahead?" I pointed out.
Kirito and Asuna walked over next to me to get a look at the same angle. "… I think so," Kirito said. "The whole Floor definitely can't be as dense as it is here, plus the ruins and towns need some space. But… don't you think it's weird?"
"Hm?"
He turned his head back to look at me. "Well, if the Floors after this haven't been changed, then more than half of the first ten Floors will be big forests… it seems kinda unbalanced."
"God, I hope the eighth Floor is different…" I mumbled. "A-anyways, it doesn't seem that weird to me. We're in the middle of an elf-based questline, after all."
"I guess…"
"The Floor itself aside," Asuna interjected, her attention still half-drawn by the sights around us, "what about the monsters? Jungles aren't exactly safehavens in the real world."
"You have a point… there's no point trying to guess anything, though, " Kirito said. "We'll just have to find out. Come on, we should get moving."
As if to mock our worrying, we didn't encounter a single monster on our way to the main town of the Floor, «Karluin». Given that its name had remained unchanged, we figured that the general layout of the Floor was the same as well, just with a lot more plants in the way.
In our journey to Karluin, we discovered a change that proved to be quite helpful. In its original form, the southern half of the Floor was covered in a sprawl of crumbling ruins and not much else. The outer edges of Karluin had similar wear to them, so it proved quite difficult to discern where exactly the Safe Area boundary was, and we had never figured out a permanent way of marking it in the beta. Now, though, the trees and heavy foliage of the jungle fell away quite suddenly at the town's borders, saving us from that problem of the past.
With the Teleporter Gate activated, the three of us retired to the town's inn to rest for a while. At the moment, we were sitting around in Asuna's and my inn room—Asuna had implored we get the shared one as it was cheaper, though Kirito expectedly got a single room for himself.
"I'd say we should call it early for today," Kirito said as he plopped down in a chair. "It's been a day."
I leaned back in the sofa I was sitting on. I was surprised by how soft it was. "Yeah… I would like to work on getting to level 20 as soon as possible," I replied, "but we should rest for a while."
"Why 20 specifically?" Asuna asked from next to me, before answering herself. "Oh, right. The next skill slot, right?"
I nodded. "I have something specific I want to get on the next Floor. It's not exactly… combat-oriented, but I can justify using the slot."
"I see…"
We took some time to just sit and relax after our day of combat. After a while, Kirito stood up and stretched. Despite what he had just said earlier he didn't look to eager to sit around for too long. "I'm gonna take a look around Karluin, see if anything important's changed."
Asuna and I agreed to do the same, so the three of us left the inn to go look around the town.
— - — - —
Kirito and I split up to get a lay of the land; Asuna stuck with me, as she was unfamiliar with the place. Unsurprisingly, not much had changed about the layout itself. Visually it retained the dark stonework of its appearance with the beta; but now the various ruins were also entwined with vines and other foliage, naturally thickest in the most worn away areas.
The ancient ruins provided an ample spread for people to go about their business. Tents were set up in the various open areas of Karluin, providing a bustling, open-market style atmosphere. In various places, the buildings that proved to be the least crumbly were repurposed as various shops and such—the inn we had rented rooms at was a particularly large example. Some of the businesses were fairly clearly marked with signage; other's weren't quite so obvious.
As we explored I picked up a couple of quests to save myself the trouble later. It was mostly the usual fare of collection and errand-running quests, so we'd get them done as we went around the Floor. After a while, we started to make our way back to the inn.
"Hey, Rei-chan…?"
I stopped walking to look behind me towards Asuna, who had mostly been trailing just behind me during our exploration. She looked to be concerned about something.
"What's up?" I stepped off to the side of the path we were on and leaned against a wall that looked less crumbly than the rest.
Asuna moved over to stand next to me. "Well, it just looked like you had something on your mind… I wanted to ask if anything's wrong."
"Ahh…" Am I that easy to read…? "Well, I was just wondering how we're going to handle this whole Morte situation."
I was somewhat loath to bring it up. We hadn't heard a peep from the would-be PKer throughout the last Floor, and we'd had our hands full enough with other things that we hadn't really thought on it much. As much as I'd like for it to, however, the issue wouldn't just vanish into thin air.
"Oh, that…" Asuna replied halfhartedly. She must've mostly forgotten about it, as well.
"Well, there's not much we can do 'til he shows his face again, I guess. We could try tracking him down, but…"
"What then?"
I massaged the bridge of my nose in frustration. "Right. Putting aside the fact that we probably couldn't find him in the first place, what would we do at that point? He's definitely up to something, but we don't have much to go on. Best we can do is just wait and see, for now…"
She turned her head down to look at her feet. "I wonder. Well… how could we go about finding him, anyways?"
"Might be able to ask someone in the DKB or ALS… one of the more agreeable members, preferably. But I doubt they'd know much more of him than we do."
"Right…" Asuna snapped her head back up "Oh, what about Argo?"
"Ehh…" I shook my head. "The thing is, Kirito and I had already asked her about him, before we ran into him back on the third Floor. If she'd known how dangerous he might be back then, I dunno that she would've done so much…"
"Really?—Well, no, you're right. We can't just go about asking her to put herself in danger like that…" Asuna mumbled.
I sighed and gave her a pointed look. "Well, we oughta be conscious of that, too. This Floor isn't exactly friendly for us."
She blinked in surprise before looking away. "R-right. We should probably stick together, huh…"
"Yeah… Really that's directed at myself more than anything, since I have a tendency to go off on my own. I was hoping we could split up to get some quests done faster, but that'd probably be a bad idea…" I stamped my foot on the ground, annoyed at myself. Worrying about it wasn't going to do anything for us at the moment. "Sheesh. Let's get back to the inn."
Hi everyone!
I originally intended to go a bit further in this chapter, but it's at a good length now and I'd rather get this out "sooner" rather than later.
Blah blah you get the idea.
Well. That aside, I do want to say that coming up rather soon after the time of this post I'm going to be very busy at times, probably through to the end of the year at least. I should still have ample time for writing, honestly, but… you know me. I have some other hurdles to get through as well regarding the story itself, across a couple of different avenues.
— - —
Moving on, we have finally reached our point of divergence from canon…Mostly. I opted to retain the basic layout of the fifth Floor, as you can see. This is due in part that I decided to make this change rather recently (I originally planned to diverge next Floor), so I decided it was unwise to burden myself with making a totally new Floor on "short" notice.
That's all for today. Take care!
