A/N: Quick note here before this chapter, I practically typed half the chapter while simultaneously watching other anime, reading the SAO light novels, and playing MMO's on the other computer screen, so it might not be the best. The other half was my bored typing as I was playing Undertale on the other screen. About the 7k words last chapter, don't expect that too often. I usually can never type in bulk.
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The way the swordsman fought brought the word "possessed" to mind.
He darted out of the way of the level-6 «Ruin Kobold Trooper»'s «Crude Axe» so tightly, I felt a chill run down my back. After three successful evasions, the kobold's balance was entirely lost, and he unleashed a full-power sword skill into the helpless beast.
He used «Vertical», a simple upward slash that was one of the first attacks in the «One Handed Swords» category. It was an ordinary attack, a simple slash upwards, but his speed was astonishing. It was clearly not just the game's motion-assistance system at work, but rather the product of his own athletic skill.
I'd seen party members and enemy monsters use the same skill countless times during the beta test, but all I could catch this time was the visual effect of the sword's trajectory, and not a glimpse of the blade itself. The sudden flash of pure light in the midst of the dim dungeon brought that memory of that shooting star to mind.
After three repetitions of the same pattern pr dodging the kobold's combo and responding with an attack of his own, the swordsman dispatched the armed creature—one of the toughest in the dungeon—without taking a scratch. But it was not a lazy, easy battle. Once the final slash ripped through the kobold's body and sent it bursting into polygonal shards, he stumbled back and thudded against the wall, as though the creature's disintegration had pushed him backward. The man slid down the wall until he sat on the floor, breathing heavily.
He hadn't noticed me standing at a tunnel intersection about fifteen yards away.
My normal activity at this point would be to silently slink away and find my own prey to hunt. Ever since I'd made the decision one month ago to work as a self-interested solo-player, I had never gone out of my way to approach another person. The only exception would be if I saw someone battling and in mortal danger, but the swordsman had never dipped below full health. At the very least, he didn't seem to need anyone barging in and offering to help.
But still…
I hesitated for five seconds, then made up my mind and strode forward in the direction of the sitting player.
He was skinny and undersized, wearing a light bronze breastplate over a light green tunic, tight-fitting leather pants and knee-high boots. His face was hidden beneath the hooded cape that hung from head to waist. Everything aside from the cape was proper light armor for a nimble fighter, and it was similar to my swordsman's wear. My beloved Anneal Blade, a reward for a high-level quest, was so heavy that I needed to cut down on the bulky equipment to keep my moves sharp—I didn't wear anything heavier than a tunic and breastplate.
The swordsman flinched when he heard my footsteps, but didn't move farther. He would have seen the green color of my cursor to reassure him that I was no monster. His head stayed hung between his upturned knees, a clear sign that he wanted me to keep walking past, but I stopped a few feet away.
"A bit overkill if you ask me."
The slender shoulders under the thick cape shrugged again. The hood shifted back just a centimeter or two, and I saw two sharp, glaring eyes fixed on me. All I could see was two amber eyes; the contours of his face were still shadowed.
After several seconds of a stare as piercing as a sword thrust, he tilted his head slightly to the side. It seemed to suggest that he didn't understand what I meant.
Inwardly, I heaved a sigh of resignation. There was one massive itch in the back of my mind that kept me from continuing on my solitary way.
The swordsman's Vertical was chillingly perfect. Not only were the pre- and post-motions extremely brief, the attack itself was faster than I could see. I'd never been in the presence of such a terrifying and beautiful sword skill before.
At first, I assumed he must've been a former tester, like I was. That speed had to have come from plenty of experience gained before this world had plunged into its current deadly state.
But after seeing the skill a second time, I had begun to doubt myself. In comparison to the excellence of the attack, the swordsman's strategy of dodging enemy strikes with a minimum of movement led to quicker counterstrikes than blocking or parrying, as well as saving durability on equipment, which now every point could cost our lives. But the consequences of failure far outweighed the pros. Worst-case scenario, the enemy would be treated as a counterattack that included a brief stun effect. For a solo fighter, getting stunned in battle was a kiss of death.
It didn't add up—brilliant swordplay accompanied by reckless strategy. I wanted to know why, so I approached. "Isn't that a bit overkill?"
He didn't seem to understand the extremely common online term. The swordsman here couldn't be a tester. He might not have even been an MMO player until this game.
I took a deep breath before launching into explanation.
"Overkill is aa term used when you do far too much damage for the amount of HP the enemy has left. After the second vertical, the Kobold was nearly dead. It had only two, maybe three pixels of health left on its HP bar. You could've finished it off easily with a light attack, rather than going for a full sword skill."
How many days has it been since I had said so many words at the same time? How many weeks? For being a poor Japanese student, my explanation was as elegant as an essay, but the swordsman showed no response for a full ten seconds. Finally, a soft voice muttered from the depths of the hood.
"Is there a problem with doing too much damage?"
Finally, at long last, I realized the swordsman was one of the rarest encounters in this entire world, to say nothing of deep in a dungeon—not a male player, but a female.
—==[]==—
The world's first VRMMORPG, or Virtual Reality MMO Role-Play Game, Sword Art Online, had opened its virtual doors nearly a month before. In your average MMO, players would be hitting the initial cap and the entire game world would have been thoroughly explored from end to end. But here in SAO, even the best players in the game were only around level 10—and no one knew what the cap was. Barely a few percent of the game's setting, the floating castle of Aincrad, had been mapped out.
SAO was not quite a game anymore. It was more of a prison. Logging out was impossible, and player death resulted in the death of the player in the real world. Period. Under those circumstances, few people dared to risk the danger of a dungeon's monsters and traps.
On top of that, the game master forced every player's avatar into their real-life gender, which means there was a significant lack of the female player-base. I had assumed most had been camped out somewhere in the safe haven of the Town of Beginnings. I'd only spotted females two or three times in this massive dungeon—the first floor Labyrinth—and they were all in the midst of large adventuring parties.
Thus it had never occurred to me that this solitary sword-user at the edge of unexplored territory deep in the dungeon might have actually been a girl.
I briefly considered mumbling an apology and leaving in haste. I wasn't on a crusade against men who always made it a point to talk to any and every female player they saw without hesitation, but I most definitely did not want to be identified as one of them.
If she'd responded with a "Mind your own beeswax" or "I can do whatever I want", I'd have no choice but to agree and move along. But the swordswoman's response seemed to be an honest question, so I stopped and tried to come up with a proper explanation.
"Well... There's technically no penalty in the game for overkilling—it's just inefficient. Sword skills take a lot of concentration, so the more you use them, the more exhausted you get. I mean, you've still got to get back home, right? You should try to conserve more energy."
"... Get back home?" the voice from the hood questioned again. It was a ragged monotone, seemingly exhausted.
"Yeah, it's going to take a good hour to get out of the labyrinth from this spot and get to town, and the closest town is even another thirty minutes away. You'll make more mistakes when you're tired. You look like a solo player to me; those mistakes can easily turn fatal."
As I spoke, I wondered to myself why I was lecturing her so earnestly. It wasn't because she was a girl, I thought. I'd started this conversation before even knowing her gender.
If the roles were reversed and someone was haughtily lecturing me about what I should do, I'd certainly tell them, without hesitance, to go to Hell. Once I realized how contradictory my actions were to my personality, the swordsman finally reacted.
"In that case, there's no problem. I'm not going home."
"Huh? You're not... going back to town? But what about refilling on potions, repairing equipment, getting sleep...?" I asked, incredulous. She shrugged briefly.
"Don't need potions if I don't take damage. And I bought five of the same sword. If I need sleep, I just get it at the nearby safe area," she said hoarsely. I had no response.
The safe area was a small room located inside the dungeon that was never in danger of spawning any monsters. It was easily distinguished by its colored torches in each corner of the room. They were useful as a foothold when hunting or mapping out a dungeon, but they weren't meant for more than an hour-long nap. The rooms had no beds, only hard stone floors, and the open doorway didn't keep out incessant sounds of monstrous footsteps and growling in the corridor outside. Even the stoutest of adventurers couldn't get honest sleep under those conditions.
But if I was to take her statement at face value, she was using that cramped stone chamber as a replacement for a proper inn room in order to camp out permanently inside the dungeon. Could that possibly be right?
"Um... How many hours have you been in here?" I asked, afraid to know the answer.
She exhaled slowly. "Three days, maybe four. Are you done? The next monster's going to spawn soon, so I need to get moving."
She put a fragile, gloved hand against the dungeon wall and unsteadily climbed to her feet. With the longsword dangling from her hand, she turned her back to me.
As she walked forward, I saw tears in the cape that spoke to its poor condition. In fact, it was a miracle that after four days of camping out in a dungeon, the flimsy cloth was intact at all. Perhaps her statement about not taking any damage wasn't an idle boast...
Even I didn't expect the words that tumbled out of my mouth at her receding back.
"If you keep fighting like this, you're gonna die."
She stopped still and let her right shoulder rest against the wall before turning around. The eyes I'd thought were hazel under that hood now seemed to flash a pale, piercing red.
"...We're all going to die anyway."
Her hoarse, cracking voice seemed to deepen the chill of the dungeon air.
"Two thousand people died in a single month. And we haven't even finished the first floor, There's no way to beat this game. The only difference is when and where you die, sooner... or later..."
The longest and most emotional statement she'd uttered so far passed her lips and hung in the air.
I instinctively took a step forward, then watched as she quietly crashed to the floor, as though hit by an invisible paralysis.