Wednesday, December 28th, 2022, 10:30 A.M.
After some much needed rest the previous afternoon, we did our best to get an early start. We picked up a few easy-to-spot quests here and there during our initial exploration of the town, but we started today with combing through and finding every quest we could. We were able to speed things up by splitting up as we did before—I went by myself while Asuna stuck with Kirito.
Most of the quests were similar to what they were previously, more or less, with minor changes to go along with the Floor's. There were a few that seemed totally new, but nothing that looked particularly major.
"So, what should we start with?" Asuna asked, peeking over Kirito's shoulder at his shared UI window.
"Ehh… a lot of the quests are in the town's dungeon, so we could go down there… although, I think it'd be a good idea to explore the surface first, since that's probably where most of the changes are."
I nodded in agreement. "Sounds good to me."
With that decided, we left Karluin to do some exploring. The jungle was quite dense, though there was a network of small pathways throughout it that let us get around okay enough, along with the occasional clearing much like the one at the Floor stairs. Cutting through the jungle directly would be possible, we figured, but too dangerous to try out. The Floor would likely be much more linear than before as a result.
One of our quests was to pick up some materials from one of the ruins scattered around the jungle and take them back to town. It wasn't tied to a specific location, so we stopped at the first place we came across; the ruins weren't as constant like how the Floor was in the beta, but they were still quite common.
"This kind of makes me wonder…" Asuna started, as we went about collecting things.
"What's up?" I said.
"What must have this place been like? Before it turned into ruins, I mean."
"I mean…" I shrugged my shoulders instead of saying anything further.
Kirito shrugged as well. "It is what it is. The whole setting is kinda weird if you think about it too much. Suspension of disbelief, or something."
"Yeah… wait." I said. "You say that… I remember Kizmel mentioning something about this before."
"Ah, you're right," Asuna said. "Something about how the Floors got cut out from a world below Aincrad, or something like that."
"Hmm…" Kirito trailed off. "Maybe—ah, a mob."
The enemy in question was a grossly oversized beetle. Nothing special about it, just a typical trash mob; we made quick work of it, with Kirito doing most of the work since he was taking point. He hesitated for a moment after we killed it, though, prompting me to give him a questioning look.
"Well," he said. "Why not just ask her about it?"
"Eh?"
"I forgot—we need to go get our rewards." He held out his sword, the one he had pilfered off a forest elf when his broke. "This thing isn't really a good replacement."
Our return to Yofel Castle was a simple enough endeavor; we popped down to the fourth Floor, borrowed Agil's boat, and made our way to the floating fortress. A quick search and some asking around informed us that Kizmel had already made her way to the fifth Floor. Unfortunate, but not a big deal. We made our way up to Yofilis's office—with notably more sunlight pouring in compared to our previous visit—and after a short conversation the viscount presented us with rewards to choose from.
The amount of selection in the gear we could choose looked a little overwhelming. The first thing that caught my eye were the «Prancing Boots», which gave a boost to jumping height as well as reducing the sound of the wearer's footsteps. I had gotten some boots with a jump boost a while back, but they proved to be somewhat underwhelming and got quickly usurped by a pair with better stats; hopefully these ones would do better. Choosing my second item took me a bit more time, but I settled on some «Knuckle Gloves», which provided bonus damage to punching attacks.
I equipped the items on the spot—the aptly-named Knuckle Gloves were simple black fingerless gloves with metal studs around the knuckles, and the Prancing Boots were light brown boots accompanied by black knee-length socks. Not particularly to my taste as far as the style, but it was worth the stats.
A glance told me that my companions were still taking some time to choose their items, so I stepped over to talk to Yofilis.
"Say, I was wanting to ask…"
"How can I be of help?" the viscount replied.
"Do you know anything about how Aincrad was formed? Kizmel had mentioned it to us briefly before…"
"Hmm…" the elf stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Likely not much more than she may have told you, I'm afraid. Some mysterious force or magic cut circles out from the world below, and they were assembled into this castle. The work of someone, one must presume; but who or for what purpose, I couldn't know. The scholars that reside in the Queen's Castle may be of more help to you."
I sighed. "That seems like it's becoming a common response, 'scholar' this, 'archive' that. I hope this place is all it's cracked up to be."
Some more time passed for the other two to finish their item browsing. Asuna took the same boots as I did, along with a pair of earrings. Kirito got a new sword, as expected, and a ring that gave a decent Strength boost.
We returned to the fifth Floor shortly after collecting our rewards and finished up the couple of quests we had started. The next day, we moved on to exploring the dungeon beneath Karluin.
As we descended the entrance stairs, a gust of wind suddenly came rushing up at us from within the dungeon, causing me to shiver. It was raining and rather mild out besides, so the damp air from underground felt quite cold.
"Uwah, that's musty," Asuna said, recoiling slightly at the wind.
"Didn't hold back on the smell, huh…" Kirito muttered. "Must be pretty overrun with plants."
As we proceeded into the first level of the dungeon we saw that vines and various undergrowth had indeed worked their way through the rough brick walls. Tree roots were sticking out in places here and there as well. The ground was the main source of the rotting smell, sporting a mix of mud and decaying plants likely due to adventurers trampling in and out all the time. Trickles of water were seeping through the walls from the rain above, further worsening the ambiance.
At the base of the stairs was a fairly open room that a couple of players were using as a sort of base camp for exploring the dungeon. The entire first level was within the town's Safe Area, so it was mainly just for treasure hunting and some quests. It wasn't too crowded, though; the smell had probably warded off a number of the players that would otherwise be exploring.
We walked straight through the initial room and into one of the tunnels branching off from it. They were only just wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side.
"I'm glad we don't have to do any fighting here," Asuna mumbled. I had to agree; the narrow halls aside, the slippery ground thanks to today's rain would make things extra difficult. Hopefully the lower areas wouldn't have the same problem when we went down there later.
As I contemplated the messy floor, a patch of green more vibrant than the rest caught my eye at the bottom of one wall. I stopped and crouched down to get a closer look; it was a short plant of some variety with a few large, heavy leaves. It must have been something important, to not be trampled like everything else was.
"Hey, look at this," I said as I reached out to pick the plant. As I took it in my hands, I got a notification in the corner of my vision for a quest called «Jungle Spirit». It said simply 「Find a use for the mysterious plant.」
"Well. That saved us some time, probably."
As I stood back up, I felt Kirito's hand pat my head. "The height pays off sometimes after all, eh? We probably wouldn't have spotted it."
I spun around and shot him a glare. "You wanna go?"
He stepped away and held up his hands innocently. 'Relax, I'm joking. You don't want an orange cursor, ri—"
His sentence was cut short by the wham of my fist impacting the purple Safe Area barrier, preventing any damage but imparting knockback in its stead. Kirito, fully unprepared, fell unceremoniously to the mud below him.
I gave a smug grin. "We're still in town, idiot."
Asuna tried to hold in her giggles, but ultimately failed. Kirito rolled his eyes and picked himself up off the ground, looking thankful that the mud wasn't sticking to his clothes.
Antics aside, we got back to exploring and after some time came to a room of some kind… not large by any means, but certainly better than the cramped hallways. The room was rather bare, containing only an opened stone coffin and three extinguished censers around it.
Before any of us could comment on the room, a mist of some kind rose out from the coffin, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid shape. A low groan vibrated throughout the room, sounding as though it was a voice that hadn't spoken in hundreds of years. I heard a small "Eep!" and a soft impact to my left; I looked over to see that Asuna was now hiding behind Kirito. Must not like ghosts, I guess.
"Disturbed… stolen… need ritual… rest…" After struggling out those oh-so-informative words, the ghost vanished as quickly as it appeared.
"Um…" I started, but a quest update answered my coming question before I could ask it. 「Find the stolen ring and return it to the spirit.」 Surprisingly, this was quickly replaced with another update, telling us to put the ring in the coffin, close it, and light the censers.
"Asuna. Um, Asuna-san… you good?" Kirito glanced over his shoulder at the unusually timid Asuna, whose eyes were still fixed on the coffin as if she were expecting the spirit to pop out again.
Upon realizing her predicament, Asuna suddenly hopped away from Kirito's back and straightened up, acting as if nothing untoward had just happened. She wiped at her skirt to smooth out some non-existent wrinkles. "Ahem. I-I'm fine. Um, what do we need to do?"
Kirito observed her for a moment, then shook his head when he noticed the look I was giving him; he knew better than to poke at people's fears, at least. "Well…" he said, "going by the way the quest log updated, we seem to have the item we need already. I'd bet that the plant Rei picked up is for the censers, but… I dunno anything about this ring."
"A ring… oh!" Asuna quickly rummaged through her inventory and materialized a silver ring with a small gemstone embedded in it. She held it out towards Kirito. "This might be it. It's called a «Mysterious Ring»… I picked it up yesterday with that other treasure we found."
After finishing our quests yesterday, we paid a visit to a cafe called the «Blink & Brink», which much to my chagrin had remained effectively unchanged from the beta. One side of it bordered Aincrad's edge, and had just a fence separating it from a drop into the open sky. I made a point of keeping myself as far away from the edge as possible while we were there.
Among the cafe's offerings was a limited availability dessert, a blueberry tart that provided a buff that highlighted valuables for an hour after consuming it. One of the notable features of Karluin was being a treasure hunter's paradise; the ruins and dungeon of the town were scattered with coins, small gems, and jewelry. The jewelry had a random assortment of effects, and the loot became more valuable the further one went into the dungeon below Karluin.
"Awesome, that saves us some time." Kirito took the ring from Asuna's palm and nonchalantly tossed it into the coffin, then closed its lid. "Rei, you have that plant, right?"
I stood still for a moment, unsure how to react. "No sense for ceremony, huh… yeah, I've got it." I pulled it out of my inventory and tore it into three pieces—conveniently, there were three leaves—and placed one into each of the censers. "How do we—woah!" As I placed the third, they came alight with fire without any further input.
The censers igniting prompted the spirit to rise out once again. "Thank… you…" it sputtered before vanishing through the ceiling. And thus we got a quest completion notification, providing us with an average amount of Cor and experience as an award.
"Well, uh, that was easy," I mumbled.
Kirito shrugged. "On to the next."
— - — - —
Said next quest was one that I had found, called «Lost Legacy». Unlike the previous quest, which roughly corresponded to a similarly ghost-themed quest from the beta, we couldn't remember any predecessor for this one. The quest giver had provided terribly little to work with, stating that one day while exploring the the dungeon he had found a hidden study, dusty and long-abandoned. It was late in the evening, so he left and resolved to return the next day, but hadn't been able to find it since. There wasn't anything that the giver particularly wanted, and was more just providing information to anyone interested.
"So, how are we supposed to find this place?" Asuna asked.
I sighed. "Beats me. We just need to look for something out of place, I guess… usually a secret passage would be behind a wall that looks a bit different."
Kirito nodded. "Yeah. Down here it might have less plants growing on it or something."
"Um." I pointed at the corner just ahead of us, one wall of which looked unusually devoid of plant life. "Like that one. Seriously, what is the deal today?"
"Hey, less work for us, I'll take it."
We investigated around the wall for a few moments and quickly found the mechanism to open it; one of the stones in the wall nearby was a hidden switch. With a low rumbling noise the wall rose up into the ceiling to reveal a secret passageway, as expected. As we passed through the entrance, the wall slammed back closed behind us.
"… We're not trapped, right?" Asuna asked nervously.
"Uh… probably not," I said. "There's probably a button on this side too, or another exit somewhere, probably."
"I don't how many times you said 'probably'."
"… Let's keep going."
I led us down the passage, which quickly started descending with a set of stairs to outside of the Safe Area. Not long after, we came to a fork in the path turning ninety degrees either direction. I took a few steps down the right path to look at where it went; as soon as I was past the corner, I heard a loud rumbling and the sound of rock slamming down behind me. I spun around to see that a wall had come down to block the path, much like the initial entrance.
I quickly tried sending Kirito a message, which was promptly blocked by the dungeon. "Shit. Well… gotta keep going, I guess," I mumbled to myself.
Things proved to be relatively uneventful as I continued down the tunnel. There were a handful of traps similar to those that were dotted around the main dungeon, but I had my guard up after getting walls slammed closed on us twice so I didn't get caught by anything. I kept an eye on our health bars as I progressed; Kirito and Asuna both took some damage once or twice, but nothing that was incredibly concerning. I could only assume that they were encountering similar traps.
Eventually the tunnel opened into a rectangular room, which presented itself in quite derelict shape. It was hard to say for sure, but it appeared to be some kind of study or office. At one end was a simple desk, with a chair at one side and a smashed-up chair laying beside it. At the other end of the room was a fireplace surrounded by ashes and coals, with the distant sound of the rain outside making its way down the chimney. Bookshelves flanked the walls, all but one of them totally collapsed and scorched in places. Books and papers were strewn about the entire room, most of them burnt up or torn to bits past recognition. To top it off, all of it was covered in a fine layer of dust.
"The heck am I supposed to do with this…" I mumbled. Without much else to do, I decided to pick my way through the debris, searching for anything that wasn't totally destroyed. After I had picked up an armful of bits of paper and books, I dumped it all on the table and sat down in the good chair to look through it.
I frowned as I picked through the burnt scraps of paper; most of it was damaged to the point that only a fraction of a word would be visible here and there. I did find a couple pieces with whole words, though they obviously didn't convey much meaning; the words 'sword' and 'magic' showed up, though that didn't provide much evidence of anything on its own. Oddly, however, everything appeared to be in English.
The rough sound of stone being dragged against itself startled me out of my thoughts. I turned, half-leaping out of the chair, to see that Kirito and Asuna had found their own path to the dilapidated room, through another stone door. They were gasping for breath and looked quite weary; whatever traps they ran into must have given them quite the run for their money, I surmised. Before I could respond to their appearance further, I received a quest completion notification for the quest. A little odd, since it seemed to only require getting to this location, but with the entire party. Nothing worth dwelling over, though.
"Damn, you scared me. You two alright?" I asked.
Kirito took a moment to relax somewhat before replying. "Never better. Just, y'know, getting charged down by some freaky sword-hand thing."
My frown returned, deeper this time. "Wait, seriously? All glowy, like an oversized Sword Skill?"
"Yeah… did you run into one too?"
"Not here… a while back, down in a cave on the first Floor. I think I told you about that, right?"
Kirito nodded. "Yeah, I think so."
I sighed. "Well, between that and now this.." I gestured to the scraps of paper in front of me, "I'm wondering if there's more going on here. Maybe it's part of the elf campaign, then…" I looked across the room again and realized that there might be more to find; I hadn't looked under some of the collapsed bookshelves. I got up from the chair and walked over to one of the piles of wood and paper. "Hey, give me a hand with this, I might have missed something," I said.
The three of us spent some time digging through the room; the first few bookshelves provided nothing of note, but eventually we came to the one shelf that hadn't fully fallen apart. With some effort we were able to push it to one side slightly, and under it was some kind of safe embedded in the ground. Its door provided no resistance when I pulled; inside was a single unlabeled book, bound in leather and a robust-looking lock keeping it shut. I picked it up to take a closer look; the backside was blank as well, and it was generally unremarkable aside from its pristine condition compared to the rest of the room. I was able to put it into my inventory, thankfully. We could look for a way to open it later.
Escaping from the small quest dungeon was trivial; another stone wall opened shortly after we completed the quest providing a direct route back to the entrance, which had also been opened. The rest of the day was mostly uneventful, with the couple other quests we completed being more run-of-the-mill. When we returned to Karluin we had a short run-in with Argo, which supported the idea that our quest just now had something to do with the elves.
"Ah, I was gonna message ya, but this works out well enough," she said. "Cut to the chase, I can't find that 'Lost Legacy' quest you told me 'bout. The place you marked was empty, no quest-giver or anything."
I shrugged in response. "Yeah, we just did that quest earlier, actually. It seems like it might have been related to our elf questline, so it might not be there otherwise."
Argo nodded. "Gotcha." She scampered off as quickly as she appeared, melting back into the shadows.
Running. Running. I didn't know why, what for, all I knew was I needed to run. The crack of thunder reached my ears, paired with a bright flash of light and sparks. I was blown off my feet, left unable to move.
A small beep, followed by that sickening crashing sound, something like glass but all too digital and alien.
I shot up out of bed, taking deep, heaving breaths. I rubbed my forehead with my hand, trying in vain to ward off the oncoming headache. I sat in silence for a few minutes to try to give myself some time to relax.
"I guess it is getting to me, after all…" I muttered to myself. It had just been a lack of a little sleep at first, but nothing that couldn't be attributed to the stress of, well, being in a death trap. Nightmares had only come on recently, but this was the first time it had been so clear, and so similar. The reminder of how close it came was a shock. Just a small difference, and…
I shook my head to clear the morbid thoughts away; if anything, it was probably impressive that it had taken this long for the constant threat of death surrounding us to take its toll. More sleep clearly wasn't in the cards, so I slipped off of the bed and left the inn. The rain had thankfully passed, and a walk around the town would help clear my head, hopefully.
I glanced up at the clock; it was getting close to 10P.M., meaning that I had barely slept at all. With a sigh, I opened my map to take a look at Karluin as I didn't quite have it memorized yet—and I tilted my head with confusion at what I was seeing. And what I didn't see; the dot indicating Kirito's location was nowhere to be found, meaning he was on a different Floor or in a dungeon, or had otherwise disabled map tracking. As I watched, Asuna's dot vanished from its location near the entrance to the town's dungeon, suggesting that Kirito was likely there as well.
I took a moment to consider what to do. I wasn't particularly concerned; those two could handle themselves, and I didn't suspect them of being up to anything. Going into the dungeon would be a benefit for me regardless; I wanted to get to level 20 as quickly as possible for the next Floor, and since I wasn't about to go back to sleep I could at least make use of my time more wisely.
With no real reason not to, I decided to follow them in.
Author's Notes
Hey everyone.
Been a while, eh. You know the drill by now—life's rough, motivation's rough, blah blah blah. Still kickin'.
First, an important note: a little while back I made a small edit to Chapter 15 after spotting a problematic discrepancy. Literally just one word, but yeah.
Anyway, new chapter. Exciting times—particularly, this chapter marks the milestone of 100k words! By the site's count, anyways. This chapter is nothing super monumental, but holds little bits of progress here and there—quests, leveling, mysteries, and so on.
As you might have noticed, I've also updated the story's summary! It's been long overdue, since I wrote that first one, uh… five years ago, and my plans for the story have changed and grown in scope by at least an order of magnitude since then. As a result, the old summary didn't quite match up with what I wanted it to be. It's not perfect; might change it around some more yet, but we'll see.
I also spent some time checking over previous chapters and fixed some typos that had slipped through. Additionally, I've reworked my profile a bit, most notably including a section at the top regarding progress on the next SoLaD chapter. Seemed like a good way to show that things are moving forward, and hopefully simple and quick enough that I'll actually keep it up to date, relatively. Not much there otherwise, but maybe I'll have more to say in the future.
In a similar vein to all that, I've had a mind for a while now to consider rewriting some of the earlier chapters or at least doing some touch-ups, as I've been feeling that they likely don't match up to my writing standards these days. It won't be something I focus on, though, just something to poke at every now and then. I'll make mention of it if I do anything like that, but it generally will just be edits to improve quality, no retconning or anything. So don't feel pressed to reread anything in that case.
That's all for today. Take care!
