As a result of our victory over the Life Harvester, we got a ton of experience, items, and meat. So much meat that we couldn't carry it all in our inventories. Yzelma suggested we cook the meat in celebration and chow down most of us did. The Patter, Insectsite gang, the three pets, Klein, and I were delighted to feast on the cooking of the nomadic tribe. I don't think I've had so many thick-sliced, juicy, well-seasoned steaks in one go in my life, and I've been to many Brazilian steakhouses back home in the states where they practically throw meat at you.

Yes, it is the flesh of the Life Harvester, which is why some hesitated, like Kirito, Leafa, and Alice. Kirito was forced by Yzelma into eating, though. He did believe it was delicious -"jeemeh" in Bashin tongue - and so did I. It was to the point that Sinon, the resident vegetarian, was handing me her steaks. She probably preferred the herbal stew Asuna, Koharu, and Yui made, which is as excellent as any dish Asuna and Koharu have a hand in.

After the festivities ended, Kirito, Asuna, Kureha, and I properly met with Hyme, the orchid mantis and Agil's real-life wife. The Actaeon rhinoceros beetle and Cantharolethrus steinheili stag beetle, who fought alongside us in the initial attack against the Life Harvester, are named Zarion and Beeming. After that, the two of us got to Argo and the SA:O sisters, the outliers in the group of insects.

"So...Argo, why were you with them?"

"Welp, I said I'd do everything I could last night, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did say that."

"Truth is, I've known Hyme for a little while."

"Oh...from Agil's route?"

Argo shakes her head. While we've all known her for a year (beyond SAO, of course), she only makes contact with me, Asuna, or Kirito. "Nope. Different route. I've been reseachin' the globalization of the Seed Nexus for the past year or so. Insectsite's one o' the bigger Seed games in America, but almost no one in Japan plays it. So when I finally found someone who was, it turned out to be Hyme."

"Whoa. It's that big in America?" Kirito asks, stunned by the revelation. As an American (I'm not ready to completely renounce my citizenship yet), it's surprising that a game about being a bug is as popular as a more Western-oriented VRMMO, Gun Gale Online. Then again, GGO is not the type of game I would have suspected to take off in fantasy-oriented Japan against the likes of ALO and SA:O.

"Yes," Asuna replies. "I was only aware of the name of the game because of Yuuki. She said the Sleeping Knights played it for just a little bit before they came to ALO."

"Ohh..."

I glance at Asuna, seeing the wavering smile on her face. Like yesterday when I took the ice magicrystal from Kirito, noticing his distant look as his thought of his lost friend, Asuna's doing the same. I wouldn't consider myself close to Yuuki, though we all adventured with her earlier this year in SA:O and I inducted her into Crimson Squad shortly before her passing. While Kirito comforts Asuna, I clear my mind of mournful thoughts and turn to Kureha. "You recognized them first, Kureha. Did you know it's popular back home?"

She nods. "Crazy, right? But apparently, it's big back in the states. I only know of it because Zeliska once spoke of how competitive it is against GGO, and seen some vids on it to understand why."

"All right," Kirito starts, "I know how you know Hyme, but why were you being chased by the Life Harvester with them?"

"Well, ah..." Argo picks up a stick off the ground, then draws a circle about three feet in diameter. "It's probably more complicated than that, but let's assume this is the Unital Ring world map, m'kay?"

"Got it."

"If north is this way, then where we are is right about here," Argo says, pointing close to the southwestern edge of the map."

"How do you know we're there," inquires Sinon, who joined the group along with Alice and other Insectsite players once Argo began drawing the map.

"You remember the direction the aurora ran on the first night, Sinocchi?"

Taken aback by her new nickname (Argo did it last night too, with "Alicchi"), Sinon nods her head. "Yes, I think it was northeast, right?"

Kureha angles her head just a bit. "Hmm, not exactly." She leans forward and pokes a spot on the map a couple of inches northwest of Ruis na Rig. "We were on the other side of the Giyora Savanna, hiding in a cave around here. Jaymes and I had the best view of the aurora. It went more north than what Sinon said. Compared to what Asuna and the others saw, it went differently." Argo and Kureha draw lines to the center of the map. Both intersected, meaning Kureha's right. We saw the aurora from a different angle than Kirito and everyone else.

"Meaning..." Agil turns to his wife's avatar, saying in English, "Hyme, which direction did the aurora flow for you?"

"Almost exactly north." She marks a location east of Ruis na Rig and draws a line from the mark to the center.

That leaves one more starting. I glance at the sisters, who've been dreadfully quiet during this entire conversation. I believe I know the answer to my unspoken question, so I point to a general spot between Ruis na Rig and where Hyme is marked. "Premiere, Tia, did the SA:O players spawn somewhere in this area?"

Premiere nods and marks an approximate location to the southeast of Ruis na Rig, close to the circle's edge. "Yeah. The aurora ran somewhat close to directly north, not as direct as the Insectsite players saw it." She doesn't say any more than that, despite the many questions I have about how Origin transferred over, especially what happened to their Aincrad.

"You're saying that the aurora appeared all over Unital Ring's world in a big...radial pattern?"

"That's exactly it. Gatherin' info on the net, I found stories of the aurora travelin' west—and south, too. I'm guessing that all the Seed game players who got converted into UR were placed in a big ring along the outer edge of the map. And from there, it was 'On your mark, get set...'"

"Aim for the land revealed by the heavenly light, I the center of the world," Alice picks up. "In that sense, it was good fortune that Sinon's GGO players were placed right next to the ALO players."

"I wouldn't say we were right next to each other," Sinon replies dryly. Those of us who made the trip to meet up a couple of nights back agree. It took us two nights to meet with Kirito (granted, the first night, we were wandering aimlessly). From Ruis na Rig to the wall cavern was twenty miles, and from the cavern to the ruins we GGO players spawned in is the same distance. Just to mentally reference that distance, that's more than twice the distance of Aincrad's largest floors and the distance me, Kirito, Leafa, Yui, and Strea traveled from the sylph city of Swilvane to the World Tree a year and a half ago.

Our resident lover of ALO picks up on that and asks, "Argo, just how long is the radius of this world?"

She taps the four spots with the end of her stick. "Hmmm... I only drew four spots based on a hunch, y'see. But if the scale here is accurate, the distance from these points to the center of the map would be somewhere between three hundred seventy-five and four hundred twenty-five miles."

"Four hundred?"

"Oh nooo..."

"No way!"

"Are you kidding me?"

"That's large," I say to myself. As I stated before, the distance from here to Crimson Squad's starting point surpasses Aincrad's largest floor. I can confidently say it's longer than ALO and GGO's diameters by a bunch. SA:O is larger than the previous two, but at best, it's no more than 150 miles in diameter. Doubling UR's radius means the world is 850 miles long, which is insane to think about when compared to all the virtual worlds I've visited since Sword Art Online, and to put this in a real-world perspective, that's a trip from Atlanta, Georgia, to NYC.

But there's one virtual world that compares to it and seeing this circle conjures up the thought: The Underworld.

I share a glance with Alice, Kureha, and Kirito, who had come to the same realization. If Argo's rough estimates of UR's radius were slightly higher, about 450 miles, that would match the radius of the Human Empire. Star Empire, whatever. I frown slightly at the coincidence. Kirito and Alice seem to convey that there's nothing more to it but a coincidence, but the list of coincidences was piling up. The Underworld is not connected to the Seed Nexus. It just uses the assets obtainable from the Seed package, but... What Kikuoka told us about a recent mysterious invader, then the sudden appearance of UR, and now this. I couldn't find a more profound thought in Kureha's eyes, but we'd be on the same track of mind if I knew her.

"So we have a broad understanding of the structure of the world map," Kirito says, getting us back to the original topic. "But how does that connect to the reason you were together with Hyme's group?"

"Oh yeah! I was explaining that, wasn't I? It's simple, really. Ever since this whole thing started, I've been gettin' feedback from Hyme about their situation. The Insectsite folks said things were real fishy with them, so that asked if I wanted to help 'em out."

"Fishy?

Hyme speaks again, this time in fluent Japanese. "Kiri, how much do you know about Insectsite?"

"Um...h-hardly anything."

"That's natural. In Insectsite, players are all arthropods, and there's a faction war between hexapods-six-legged insects-and others like Chelicerata and myriapods. Chelicerata include spiders and scorpions, while myriapods are centipedes and millipedes and the like."

I sense Koharu, seated shoulder to shoulder on my left side, shudder. Her dislike of insects hasn't changed one bit. Now that I remember her revulsion, she's doing okay with the Insectsite players. Granted, none are around her. I grab her hand and say, "So I'm guessing the true insects are the majority?"

"Ex-zactly. The Chelicerata and myriapods - based on the number of legs, we call them Eight-Or-Mores, or more commonly, Eighmores - have always been overwhelmed by the insect side and consistently losing territory. So there's been some rebalancing lately, so that Eighmores have way stronger stats and skills now. The Eighmores were starting a furious counterattack to tilt the scales when this whole incident started."

"So, um... I'm guessing that the Insectsite players showed up in the same place, both insects and Eighmores?"

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't that lead to absolute chaos?"

"It did. Within the first few hours of being forced to convert to this game, nearly all the Sixes-that's us, the insects-were killed by Eighmores. It was inside the grance period, so we revived, but we lost our inherited equipment and had no way to come back from behind. Most of the Sixes didn't leave the starting ruins regardless, but our troop had a feeling that the grace period was going to end, and we escaped."

"Troop...? Is that what they call guilds in your game?"

"Yeah...In fact, we were one of the top-ten troops in Insectsite. But it was really hard to advance without gear, and the grace period ended at some point, plus the Eighmores started rushing out of the ruins to chase us down. There was no way out for us...How do you say that in Japanese, again?"

"Um...we'd say nicchi mo sacchi mo ikanai, I suppose..."

"Okay, so we were all nicchi-sacchi, and that's when I got the message from Argo."

"So today, you were traveling to the Insectsite area to meet up with Hyme and her friends. If you'd just said the word, we could have sent someone with you."

"Nah, I was hiding and sneaking past all the monsters along the way. Safer for me to go alone."

"Huh," I interrupt, a smirk forming on my face. "You know, you're good at hiding for a rat. Which means something had to go wrong if you got chased by that beast."

She makes a bitter face. "That was my mistake. The info agent part o' me got greedy. Listen, Unital Ring's got some unnatural features." As we lean in, Argo pokes the ground southwest and northwest of Ruis na Rig. Instead of dots, she draws small circles. "Here and there around the world, there are perfectly circular basins. At the biggest, they're about six miles across, and even the smaller ones are still two or three miles. The forests and rivers are all perfectly natural in design, so you gotta figure there's a particular reason these basins are so circular, huh?" Another one is drawn to the east, northwest of SA:O's starting point. "There's no intel about this one on the net yet, so I wanted to at least see what was inside it. I asked them to wait outside, and I snuck in. Inside a forest of dead trees, there was a stone circle ruin, and I felt sure I smelled treasure inside. That was when that huge freakin' humantipede jumped out at me."

I hear Philia, our resident treasure hunter, scoff, which causes me to chuckle. "And that Life Harvester chased you from the basin to here, where you met with us?"

"Who would have guessed the thing would give chase for twenty whole miles. I really screwed things up for Hyme's group." In all the years I've known Argo, I've rarely seen her express regret. However, the Insectsite players seem to be excited regardless. It cheers Argo up, and she even jokes that it chased them because they're Sixes and it, by their definition, was an Eighmore.

"Premiere," Koharu beckons to our old companion. "How'd you get involved?"

She crosses her arms while pondering the matter. "I can't really say, but as far as we know, Tia and I are the only 'non-player characters' that survived what happened to Ainground. Tia and I were resting in the plains when the sky turned red, and words appeared saying 'System Warning.' Next thing we knew, we were here in a ruined town with the others."

"Same here. For all of us who were online during the conversion." I rarely get triggered when thinking about Sword Art Online. We all played Sword Art: Origin without much issue, even when we watched the incomplete Aincrad rise in the sky and stepped foot on it a couple of weeks back. Until this summer, the most that could hurt me was obviously thinking about Koharu, and up until Sunday, I thought I was over SAO completely. So when the red sky and the system announcement appeared, my body froze on the spot as I relived that nightmare.

"For the first two days, we tried to understand what happened, then earlier today decided to pick a direction to go. It just so happened to meet Argo and the others being chased by the Life Harvester..."

With that situation explained, Kirito explained the Mutasina situation to Premiere, Tia, Hyme, and the Insectsite players, hoping they'll stick around and join us with the warning of tomorrow's invasion. After being given enough details, minus that Kirito and Lux are afflicted with the Noose of the Accursed, Hyme and her group deliberate for a moment. Premiere and Tia give their support immediately, as expected. After a while, she turns around to us to ask. "Is there any possibility of cooperation with this Mutasina?"

Kirito unconsciously tugs at the throat guard of his armor. Beneath it is the ring pattern that marks one cursed with her power. At any moment, regardless of her position or ours, Mutasina can choke the hell out of Kirito without warning. If, and that's a big if, there's a chance we could work with Mutasina, I would have considered it once before. But I remember her words to Holgar and the others.

"You might cooperate now, but the closer the goal becomes, the more our teams will compete with one another. In the end, even the players within a team will fight and kill one another. But as long as my magic is active upon you, we can avoid that situation. Do you see? This is the best and most effective means of getting to the finish line, isn't it?"

"No," I say flatly in English to Hyme. "She said it herself; she rather have complete control of the others than have competition between the teams. In her words, her method is the most effective. I hate to say it, but to a degree, she's not wrong." Having been betrayed a few times and witnessed teams that should work together bicker to a near-violent resolution, Mutasina's method is sound.

"Ridiculous," Hyme mutters in English before reverting to Japanese. "No, I don't think we'll be making friends with her. And now that I've heard about this, I can't possibly move on and pretend it didn't happen."

"W...well, I want you to consider this carefully. We're talking about an army of a hundred...You could stay here for the night and leave tomorrow morning, and no one will think the worse of you."

"Yes, a hundred players is no laughing matter. But between your friends, Kiri, those cool natives, the cute mice, and all of us, that makes seventy, right? I know we're better in terms of individual combat ability, and we've got the advantage of our defenses. It'd be closer than you think, wouldn't it?"

"Well...that's true."

We have the aid of the Bashin, the Patter, and the Insectsite players. If it were just us, our merry band of around twenty ALO and GGO players would have been wasted without some cunning plans. With our allies, we have a better chance of fighting them off. As I see it, our odds of 7:10 is much better than 1:5.

I don't plan on losing any of my friends to this battle, as we only get one life here in Unital Ring. Like Sword Art Online, I'll do my best to make sure they all survive to the very end. And like we did in Sword Art: Origin and the Underworld, that goes for our NPC allies, who won't respawn upon their death. As for Mutasina's army, in my mind, the enemy is the enemy, but that would be the story if they were united in their fight against them. Mutasina is forcing this fight on them with her magic. I know this is a long shot, but if we can get rid of her, we might be able to negotiate our way of fighting the other groups.

"If we can just do something about Mutasina before the battle begins," Kirito proposes again tonight.

"That's what it comes to, huh?" says a virtually drunk Klein. Then again, virtual alcohol doesn't make one feel wasted... usually. "It ain't in my playbook to do a sneak attack on a lady I've never even seen before, but if they're gonna attack us, I guess it's gotta be done."

"Oh, if you want to go meet her, be my guest," remarks Zeliska in her normal light voice, laced with a spine-tingling threat that I hope Klein got.

"Hell no! Not if it means walking right up to her and having her cast that choking magic on me!" Well, he didn't receive the threat, but at least he recognizes Mutasina's. Yet, I'm certain Mutasina wouldn't cast the art on Klein anyway. She said it takes a while to channel and only worked because the players in the coliseum had their guards down. Against someone like us, it would be tricky. As for casting it on those already affected, Kirito and Lux's status remains hidden because Kirito and I agree that if Mutasina did so, she'd immobilize her army too.

Which is why we're focused on dealing with Mutasina first. Take care of her or her staff, and the spell should be removed. And if we take the fall after explaining things, I'll be sure Lux is spared from scrutiny by her friends. She's following my orders, after all.

If Sinon could carry her Hecate rifle, or even better, if we GGO players could use our converted weapons, we could turn the tide drastically in our favor. Sinon could snipe Mutasina, and we could use the forest to our advantage and gun her down. Any strategy possible in GGO would work. But we're stuck with muskets and low-grade convert weapons without a means to resupply them with ammunition, and we can't carry our guns either.

"I'd be very grateful if you stayed around to fight. If so, I think that it will be the key to our victory, as you said. But now, it will be hard for us to fight off a hundred enemies without losing anyone. So I want to search for a way to avoid this war until the last possible moment, and if it comes to this...I think we should consider abandoning the town."

Kirito's statement brews silence over the assembly of players. Earlier, we decided we couldn't leave town, not with the Patter and Bashin with us. I sense he's afraid, and I understand his fear. I know to a fault the fear of losing close companions. The two people I fear losing most sit to my left and right. I did lose Koharu, and I almost lost Kureha. And everyone else from SAO and GGO had their lives threatened too. Even in a virtual sense, I don't want to see them fall on the battlefield.

But that's not what gets me to open my mouth. In the center of town, behind me as we gather on the north side of Ruis na Rig, is the cabin. Koharu and I first found and rented the cabin on the twenty-second floor of Aincrad. I used it as a rest spot for us, and it unintentionally became Koharu's fifteenth birthday present once she told me of it. Later, I told Kirito about the place, and with me and Argo's help, he bought the place for Asuna. Ever since they bought the place again on New Aincrad, it has become more than their home, but a place where we all can meet up and hang out. My apartment in GGO serves a similar function for Crimson Squad, so I am well aware of those feelings of not only having a place to call home but also where friends can come to.

"No," I resoundingly state, glaring at Kirito out the side of my eye. "I know this sounds selfish, maybe it is, but there's no way I'm giving up this place without a fight. You, of all people, should know that risks are to be damned. We knew the risks of Aincrad, yet you raced out of town almost immediately. You, me, Asuna, Koharu, Agil, and Klein knew the risks of fighting the front lines; Strea, Rain, Philia, Lisbeth, and Silica knew the risks as mid-level players. We're all here despite it. And..ever since then, in ALO, GGO, SA:O, OS, and Underworld, we knew the risks were against us, but each time, we stood together. Sure, we lost many things in facing those risks...and paid for it...but that's just the game we play."

"But-"

"Kirito, if you think only of what happens in defeat before you fight, you will end up losing winnable battles," speaks Alice, her back straight, hand on the pommel of her sheathed sword. For a moment, her presence changes to that of the Integrity Knight I met, though she still bears her pride and nobility. "Of course, it is important to consider all circumstances, but they must be considered for the sake of victory; is that not true? I believe that it would be losing sight of the entire purpose if we were to choose to run on order to avoid the battle."

On that note, Kirito agreed.