Dreamers of the Day - Book One - Interlude I
Castle Aincrad - 1st Floor - Orignia - Day 7
When Argo introduced herself, she usually started with the fact that she was an Information Broker, usually so that she could then explain what an Information Broker did, and thus why she was a valuable person to know. Most people didn't really know what an Information Broker did. Even fewer knew how an information broker did it.
They imagined a stealthy figure, stealing across rooftops, eavesdropping on confidential conversations, and moving furtively through the shadows. They imagined a spymaster, or a ninja.
But for the most part, Argo worked in broad daylight, under an open sky, and without any obfuscation to her role and identity, beyond simple, pragmatic, anonymity. The truth was that openly available information, bought, bartered, or synthesized from other openly available information, was a Broker's bread and butter.
To do this required cultivating a robust network of contacts, and staying in good standing with a lot of different people. It wasn't what you knew, it was who you knew. Argo was a people person.
She was also totally a ninja.
Which was why, as she scaled the the gentle grassy slope, climbing towards the edge of Orignia, she opened her menu, reviewed her message log, and grimaced. Of the eighty people she'd managed to link up with on launch day, far too many were already grayed out. The Beta Tester were getting hit hard. Their experience with the game had made them over confident in their deadly new reality, and they were paying a high price.
She sorted by most recent and opened her log with Kirito. Not that she'd been worried about him more than anyone else, but after three months in the Beta together, and three months chatting online, she'd admit, under duress, that they were friends.
Argo - Listen Kii-bou, I don't know why you're Radio Silent. But if our friendship means anything, and your sword arm is still good, meet me on the Southern Lip near ToB tomorrow at noon. You know the place. There's some things we gotta start figuring out.
She hadn't gotten word back until past midnight.
Kirito - I'll meet you there.
Never one for a long message when a short one would do, Argo thought. She swore it was probably a credit to his parents he didn't speak in a stream of abbreviations, memes, and gamer lingo like some of the idiots she knew in school. But it didn't exactly give her any hints of what to expect. How he was holding up in their new reality.
When she reached the summit of the hill, where grass and sandy earth gave way to the smooth gray metal skin of Aincrad itself, she wasn't surprised to find Kirito waiting. She was only mildly surprised that the nest of Vespid Sting Wings had already been dispatched. She was mildly more disturbed that her gaming buddy was sitting cross legged with a dagger, digging through their innards.
"Please don't tell me you're one of those creepers who played with roadkill as a kid." Argo said by way of greeting, causing Kirito to look up, wiping some ichor from his cheek as he blinked innocently.
"Afternoon." He didn't so much greet as make an observation about the time before returning to his grisly work. "I'm trying to dig out the venom sacks. They still go for decent col to the apothecaries." Kirito grimaced. "And I'd like to eat something other than what I can scrounge up today." Then his expression twisted into a thoughtful frown. "These ones don't fall apart like the Labyrinth creatures . . . or us . . ."
Argo suppressed a tingle that ran from the nape of her neck to the tip of her tail. She knew exactly what the young swordsman was talking about. Watching it happen was almost unearthly surreal. All the more for how real these bodies clearly were.
They breathed. They bled. They ate. They slept. They even healed. But as incredibly durable as they were, when it became too much, that was it. She'd seen flesh and bone as substantial as her own body, unravel and evaporate into a dissipating mist of light. It was like, after the person inside was truly dead and gone, there was nothing left holding these bodies together. They just disintegrated.
The same happened to the monsters, maybe leaving behind a few choice bits. Usually something hard like tooth, or bone. Whatever they were, Argo thought, it was more real than the Monsters and Castle Folk, but still not entirely natural. "So they're not monsters." Argo reasoned. "They're natural fauna." It seemed like a simple distinction. Normal animals died, decomposed, and returned to the earth exactly as expected.
With not much else to say, Argo stood behind the swordsman, and observed over his shoulder as he pried the dead . . . Birds? . . . Bugs? . . . Bird-Bugs? . . . apart as if he had some vague idea of what he was doing. Once he'd found what was reasonably likely to be the venom sacks, he'd pulled out a hempen bag and loaded them inside, taking care to tie off the black barbed stingers. Then, they went back to waiting.
Argo checked her messages. A half dozen correspondences had updated, but the only pressing one read :
L:Annihilator - Be there soon!
The Pictish broker killed the time staring out over the cloud sea that stretched off to a nauseatingly far away horizon with no sign of land or water, only variations of light and dark within the clouds themselves and, occasionally, flashes of illumination of what might have been lightning. But if there was any thunder, it was swallowed in the low steady roar of the wind breaking against Castle Aincrad's invincible steel skin.
At her back was a more human world. A world of greens and blues, of fields, farmland, and forest. They sat on the dividing line, and they waited in silence until even Argo couldn't stand it anymore.
Kirito yawned, blinking sleepily.
"So", Argo began, "See'ya got some new threads, Kii-bou. Not what I'd expect ya to go for." For one thing, none of it was black as such. Dark, but not black. The shirt and trousers were NPC fashion, simple and sturdy, and fitted well to his body.
A jacket, a brown leather jacket, not a long coat at all, quilted, and looking amply warm enough to stave off the cold wind blowing over the Lip. Clothing didn't resize like an in game item any longer. It had been cut for a bigger man and hung a little loose on Kirito's lean frame. The breastplate was new too. Or rather it was old, but looked pretty well made, and well cared for. A bit better than anything he should have been able to scrounge up now that the quests didn't reset.
"Huh?" He blinked, rubbing at an eye, "Y-Yeah. Well, beggars can't be choosers, y'know?" There was a story there, but the urgency had faded. It was unlikely the information was reusable, and thus, wasn't worth much anymore.
Argo nodded, that was the truth. The biggest problem they were all facing was that they were, to put it bluntly, dirt poor. Twenty five thousand, minus a couple hundred so far, players with only some starting col to their names and not many obvious ways to earn more.
And now they needed food.
And they needed shelter.
That all cost money.
The Castle Folk expected payment and that starting col was dwindling fast.
Information brokers bought and bartered information. Argo had been doing a lot more of the latter, trading in promises and favors in the hopes that they'd have a way to pay later. Everyone had accepted her IOUs so far. It wasn't like anyone could outbid her. It was that or nothing at all. But it couldn't last this way. They had to break in, participate in Aincrad's economy, such as it was. She felt like the parable of the merchant who bought a kingdom with a piece of straw. But all her trading had barely gotten her two copper coins.
"That's not an Anneal Blade, either." Argo noticed the dark scabbard. Though she hazarded it was probably of about equal quality.
"No, it's not." Kirito agreed.
"And that's a nice dagger." She added. They looked almost like a matching set.
"Yeah, it is."
"Ya doing okay, Kii-bou?" She hazarded.
The young man, though if she were to guess he'd put on a few years, like her, blew a few loose strands of hair from his face. "Well, I thought I was doing bad."
"Yeah?"
"Then I poked my head into ToB on my way here."
"Yeah." Argo agreed. "Place is a mess. A-kun is trying to hold things together."
"Good luck to him."
Thinking too hard about it was just going to make her depressed. She checked her messages and answered some of the most pressing strategically, before closing out again. The problem was there was almost nothing to do but think. Thinking without knowing. They didn't know, there was too much they didn't know. When she heard a voice calling at her back, Argo was almost relieved. A small part of her taking heart that, at least on this matter, there was an 'adult' to take the lead.
"Argo! Over here!" A hand waved high in the sky. It was attached to a woman scarcely bigger than Argo herself. Though she could have easily been mistaken for much larger owing to all of the hair. Beautiful, volumouse, long blonde hair that seemed to catch in the wind and fan out behind her like a cape. Argo couldn't imagine how she'd keep it in this real world for much longer. It would either have to kept tied up, or snipped off before too long. But for now, it remained her most distinguishing feature.
Argo waved back, rising to meet her fellow Beta who wrapped her up in a hug and then pulled back to cup her face, smiling warmly. "Oh, Argo! It's been too long!"
"It's been seven days." Argo chided. "Lyza."
"It's felt like seven months!" A mousy green haired man groaned as he caught up with his partner. He carried a heavy pack, lashed with poles, ropes, and cooking pots. His soft features weren't just feminine, like Kirito's, they were downright dopey. No way that was anything but his real face scanned to game. This one, Argo didn't know personally, though she'd heard about him during the Beta. Lyza confirmed.
"This is Torka. He's from my old Delving Squad. Y'know, in that survival game I was telling you about? Abyss Raiders!" Kirito perked up slightly at the name. Of course a Full Dive addict like him would have at least tried it. "Well, he was also my fiancee IRL, and right after the Beta closed, I made him my husband!"
"Then we went spelunking all over Asia for our honeymoon." Torka nodded. "Soon as we got over the jet lag, we logged in for the launch."
Argo winced, that was pretty rough, but Lyza just gave a big grin and pumped her arm. "Don't sweat it, Argo. We may not be great Labyrinth fighters, but out here on the floor field craft is king and we're champs. So kick back and leave everything to us!"
And that's exactly what she did. It wasn't what you knew, it was who you knew. Kirito had watched as well, with growing interest, as Lyza and Torka set down their packs and began taking out ropes, and notched straight sticks, and chalk, and stakes, and string. The list went on. It was bit . . . very . . . primitive, but Argo had faith in Lyza.
"She's actually an urban surveyor." Argo elaborated on Kirito's burning unasked question. "A real good one too, I hear."
"So you knew her IRL?" Kirito pondered.
"No. Just learned chatting her up during some friendly co-op PVE." The Pictish replied. She was a fiend with that dwarfish pickaxe of hers.
"And you believe her?"
"People don't generally lie without a reason, Kii-bou." Argo told him. "You're going have to learn that eventually. Make some friends that aren't behind a monitor or projected into your brain." Kirito simply yawned again, maners of a feral cat.
Lyza had set up and then called them all over help running string and hammering down stakes into the earth. She sent Torka running a good distance, measuring her string, only stopping when Torka came running back, chased by more Sting Wings that were quickly dispatched.
Finally, Lyza had tied herself securely, and then instructed the three of them to lower her over the edge. "It's fine Torka!" She'd called to her fretting husband as she stood dead horizontal and measured with her improvised tools, nothing but the Cloud Sea at her back. "It's just like going down to the Goblets, but I won't get hit with the debuff when you pull me back up!"
Pull her back up they did, and while Lyza's fingers happily danced, making numbers move in her menu's math function, Torka had prepared lunch.
Her poor husband might have had a dumb face, but Argo refused to believe he was anything but a master of the stew pot. The second he'd recognized the carcasses Kirito had been rendering apart, a gleam had appeared in his eyes. "Wait up, there's a great little recipe I learned from the Castle Folk!"
"Well you guys must have had an adventurous few days." Argo had laughed as Torka had set to work with his simple crafting knife. The humble blade glided, propelled by the skill of a true chef, making Kirito's work look like sloppy butchery.
"First you separate out the meats. Be sure to avoid the venom sacks and cut off the gristle! Then you want to take this part under the mandi-beak, it's full of enzymes that help with caramelization!" He'd set the meat to sizzling over a campfire, giving Kirito the unenviable duty of 'milking' the mandi-beaks for their soon to be sweet juices.
"Once it starts to glaze, toss it in the pot with some wild root vegetables, then leave to simmer until the broth turns brownish red for a balanced and nutritious sting wing stew! You can use the rendered fat from the meat to fry up the wings and add some salt for a crunchy and low calorie snack while you wait!"
And so they did, and so they snacked on their crispy salted bug wings, and so it was good. The stew had turned out delicious, the meat was tender and succulent, and tasted faintly sweat, like a strange cross between shellfish and a honeyed ham. Kirito, especially, looked like he'd just found an oasis in the desert.
"I ate well a couple of days ago." He admitted. "But it's just been snacks since then."
"Shame that irredeemable partner of yours is missing this." Argo told Lyza. She barely looked up from her calculations. "She's doin okay, right?"
"Actually." Torka frowned. "I don't think she likes my cooking much."
"Nonsense dear! She'd wouldn't finish if she thought it was bad. Even if she was starving. And she's doing fine Argo, she's scouting with that druid we met playing ALfheim." Then Lyza smiled slyly, ribbing the broker. "And this Kirito, is he the one you and Pitohui had that bet going about?"
"Bet?" Kirito looked up as he handed his bowl back to Torka for seconds. "What bet? I didn't know there was bet."
"Social, Kii-bou." Argo snickered as she and Lyza shared an inside joke.
"And I think that does it." Lyza announced as she stood and swept an arm wide over the verdant expanse of Orignia.
"So, tell it to us straight, doc." Argo said. "Is it as bad as I think it is?" Because from up here, it was hard to say. The scale just wasn't anything human. Looking at it visually, the town of beginnings certainly looked smaller by comparison to its surroundings. And the natural features of Orignia looked bigger.
But the town was where it should be, and everything seemed exactly as it ought within. She'd been able to navigate the familiar streets by memory while escaping the riot of the first day. She couldn't think of the slightest discrepancy when her vision had gone white and then cleared in the Square of Origin. Everything had felt exactly like the place they'd been a moment before, in the virtual Aincrad of Sword Art Online.
But . . .
"The numbers are in and the results, assuming a perfectly circular floor area, are . . . Eighteen kilometers!"
Argo breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, that's not as bad as I thought."
"Divide eighteen over ten and square it to get three point two four." Kirito muttered to himself, without bothering to consult his menu calculator. "A bit more than three times as big isn't that bad." Lyza became very quiet. "Lyza?"
"Uh . . . Sorry." She smiled sheepishly. "That was radius, not diameter."
Kirito's eyes darted as he recomputed the answer in his head. "Twelve point nine six." That was thirteen times larger. More than an order of magnitude. And judging by Lyza's other surveying results, the floor height had increased proportionally as well. "If it's still a hundred floors," Kirito muttered, "And assuming they're each about the same size that's one hundred and one thousand seventy seven hundred and eighty seven", doing a quick tally on his fingers, "Point six. That's . . . "
"Bigger than Hokkaido," Argo said. The broker sat quietly, curling and uncurling her fingers as she blanked her mind and counted down from ten. Then she did the only productive thing she could do. She swiped open her menu, she had some people she needed to get in touch with . . .
End of Book One - Interlude I
LYZA JOINS THE FIGHT! - "What a marvelous adventure!"
TORKA JOINS THE FIGHT! - "I've got a great idea for a new recipe!"