Monday, January 2nd, 2023, 6:30 P.M.

"Good, the relief looks about the same." I took a close look at the door as soon as we reached the top of the stairs. It was a depiction of a forested mountainside, with sheet music staves winding around some of the trees.

"Well, that's a relief."

I slapped Kirito's arm for his stupid joke, just lightly enough to avoid dealing damage.

"What? Oh." He just rolled his eyes. "No point standing around." He pushed the door open and the sight we were greeted with was almost what I was expecting. One significant change had occurred.

We emerged out into a large forest dominated by deciduous area immediately surrounding the stairs' exit was sparser than the rest of the forest to allow the arriving players a decent look at the Floor. In the not-so-far distance we could see a mountain range looming over us, also forested, spanning from the eastern wall to the northwest along a gentle curve. We couldn't see it from here, but a second line of mountains split off from the center and ran southwest, splitting the Floor into thirds.

That was all as it had been before. The change we were confronted with was the season. In the beta the Floor was smack in the middle of summer, swelteringly hot with bugs teeming and chirping and the scenery as green as could be. Now though, the Floor had progressed into late autumn.

A cool breeze blew through the trees. At times the wind died down, and as the rustling and falling of the trees' leaves abated an almost deathly silence would fall. The forest was filled with the yellows and reds and browns of turning trees, and up on the mountain specks of green were visible here and there where coniferous trees snuck into the mix.

Asuna ran forwards a few steps to get a better look at the mountains. "Ooh! This is much better than the jungle!"

"Definitely. In the beta, this place was hotter at times than the last Floor just now was…" I let myself relax slightly as I took in the sight myself. We lucked out; this time the Floor appeared to change for the better.

"I do have one question though…"

"Hm?"

Asuna pointed up to the sky—or rather, the next Floor—above. "Wasn't every Floor supposed to be three hundred meters tall? The ceiling and the mountains look way higher up than that."

"Ahh…" I looked up to the bottom of the Floor above. It was indeed much further away than the previous Floors had appeared. "Right. Strictly speaking that's true, but only from the outside of the castle…"

Kirito jumped in to explain when I trailed off. "Yeah, from the outside every Floor of Aincrad is three hundred-ish meters. Being a game, there's no reason the internals have to respect that geometry though."

"Oh… like an instanced area?"

"It's… not entirely the same, but the idea is similar enough I guess. Makes it easier to be immersive if you want to have a Floor like this." Kirito gestured at the mountains with an upturned hand.

We started making our way down the path to the Floor's first town. I looked around at the forest surrounding us as we moved. The change was quite deceptive; one would not expect a simple change of seasons to affect so much at first glance. With the forest so quiet and dead leaves all over the ground, it would be easy to hear monsters approach—but also easy for them to hear us, and to fall into a false sense of security as a result of the silence.

Asuna and Kirito kept talking while I pondered the floor. "Next question, do we go under or over the mountains?"

"Under. They're no Fuji, but the mountains are at least five hundred meters tall and pretty steep most of the way through. There's nothing stopping you from going over them, but…"

"I see. Is there a lot under there or just a few tunnels?"

"There's a large town at the center of them, as well as a bunch of cave systems. Hmm…" Kirito tilted his head back, doing the thinking emoji gesture with his thumb and index finger. "If I remember right, it was almost a fifty-fifty split between doing things outside and under the mountains."

"Ohh, I see… the mountains do seem to take up a lot of the area of the Floor."

I chimed back into the conversation. "Ah, for what it's worth, I never heard about there being anything on top of the mountains to find."

Kirito shook his head. "Me neither. They're dangerous to climb, one misstep could easily mean a deadly fall."

"Under it is then," Asuna said. "… Are the caves lit with torches or anything?"

"Most of it."

We were free of bother from monsters as usual for the for the first trip to a new Floor's Gate. In this instance our walk did take longer than usual however, probably over half an hour. The first town, named Trefolo, was situated southwest of the stairs and nestled closely against the mountain range. The mountains weren't formed in a perfectly smooth line of course—Trefolo was located in a cove where the mountains were steeper than usual, almost vertical.

As a result the town had exactly two entrances. One to the north, which we were currently headed towards. One to the south, which led into the cave system that wound through the mountains. Trefolo was unique compared to the other towns we had been to so far. Due to the small footprint that the cove provided, instead of sprawling horizontally the buildings here were fewer in number but mostly three or four stories high.

Wooden bridges and pathways criss-crossed above our heads, allowing movement from place to place without having to go up and down stairs all the time. The buildings themselves were quite colorful. There was a mixture of ones made of bare woods of various types, and some that had been painted in different shades of red and blue. The town's main road was bearably wide enough but the side streets were all narrow alleyways, barely enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The teleporter plaza however remained mostly open to the sky and was only marginally smaller than usual. A number of trees lined its edges to help preserve the forest feel.

"This town is really pretty…" Asuna said.

"Mm." I just hummed and nodded. We walked up to the Teleport Gate; I tapped on its frame and accepted the prompt to activate it. "Nice as it is, I spent more time here in the beta than I wanted to. It was way too hot. I just went and got Musical Instrument and buzzed off—Woah!"

I had gotten a bit too comfortable. I completely forgot that a flood of players would come through once the new Gate opened. We usually left opening the gate to the guilds, just because we didn't want to deal with the tourists. But now…

"They did it!"

"Woohoo!"

"So tall!"

"Woah, it's nice and cool here!"

"Huh, where's the guilds?"

"These three are clearers? Where are the rest…?"

"Woah! Cute girls!"

Overwhelmed by the sudden crowd in front of me, I felt like my head was spinning. "Umm… um… uh… S-sorry didn't mean to activate yet Kibaou and Lind will be here soon we gotta go now bye!" I grabbed Asuna's hand and rushed off to the plaza's southern exit, and Kirito quickly followed behind.

Thankfully no one tried much to follow after us. Once we were away from the plaza, I turned down a random alley to escape any further prying eyes. Kirito gave me a candid look. "Why the heck did you turn on the Gate…?"

I leaned forwards, hands on my knees, breathing hard from the unexpected exertion. Why am I even getting winded? I thought the game doesn't simulate breathing. "Haah… shit. I dunno, I was just going on autopilot. Why didn't you stop me?" I shot back.

"Fair." Kirito chuckled a bit.

"What's so funny?"

"No, I was just thinking you have a weird habit of attracting attention like that sometimes."

"Eh?"

"Well, you know, the whole dwmrhm mwphph—!" I quickly covered up his mouth with my hands.

"Uwa, shut it! Why are you bringing that up!? I don't wanna think about that! I know you don't either!"

"Pf—hehe, hahaha!" Asuna was laughing now too, she tried to cover it up at first but swiftly failed.

"Aa-chan, seriously!"

"Hahaha—no, it's just…" Asuna wiped away a couple of tears from her laughing. "I can totally see it. I've noticed you don't think things through well enough sometimes… or it's more like, you don't have enough self-awareness."

"Self-awareness…"

"Rei-chan?"

"Hm?" I guess I let that show on my face more than I thought. "No, don't worry about it. Just… like I said, it's something I don't really want to think about."

"Oh. Um, sorry…"

"Don't worry, It's fine, really." I sighed. "It's just some dumb nonsense. The past isn't worth remembering right now. Look, let's pick up some quests and go get me my Skill."


We did in fact pick up some quests as I suggested and made our way out of the town, exiting through the same entrance we came in through. Fortunately none of the crowds pestered us. Just off to the left of Trefolo's north entrance was a smaller pathway that led into a denser section of the forest. We didn't get anything special in terms of quests, just some hunting and collection quests that we could complete on the way.

"Oh, hold on. Rei-chan, you didn't get to level 20 yet, did you?" Asuna asked out of nowhere.

I shrugged in response. "Well, no… It's not really a problem though, the quest is doable without having the slot open, I just have to wait for the level to actually use it."

"I see… how does the Skill work anyways—oh, an enemy. Ehh, it's cute!"

The enemy in question was one of the ones we picked up a quest for, an oversized vole that had small antlers similar to a deer's. It dropped some useful materials at a low chance, but was otherwise an unremarkable filler mob. I didn't quite agree with Asuna's assessment of it being 'cute', but there were worse looking things out there. We dispatched the distraction quickly and returned to our conversation and to continuing down the increasingly narrow path.

"Anyways… I was just about to get to that, actually. As far as just playing an instrument you don't actually need the Skill, if you know how to play the game won't stop you. Getting an instrument is a part of the quest so I don't even need to slot the Skill right now, actually."

"Ehh, wait, so you're actually a musician?" Asuna was excited now, her eyes all sparkly similar to when we were in the gondolas on the fourth Floor. She leaned in close, a little closer than I was comfortable with.

I backed up a step and held my hands up. "Um, well, yeah… it's just something I grew up with."

"What kind of music do you play?"

"Well… anything really, I mostly listen to and play a lot of, um… I'll just say metal. But I'm capable of most things, I guess." I was a little overwhelmed by Asuna's excitement, so I tried to shift the subject back. "Ahem. A-anyways, the Skill provides you with a number of things. The most important would be the performance assist and the Crafting modifier."

"I'm guessing the modifier lets you make your own instruments… what does that performance assist do?"

"Right. Basically the system helps you with playing an instrument, guiding your body along similar to how it does with Sword Skills. It gets more powerful as the Skill levels up, and there's also settings to control how strong it is or to just turn it off."

"Oh, so anyone can use the Skill?" Sparkly eyes again.

"Right… unless something comes up on later Floors that requires it, it's just for entertainment though. Oh, we're here."

We had been following along a fairly narrow path through dense forest; it was fairly clear that people didn't come this way often. The path was winding and darkened from the trees' shade; it felt almost completely hidden away from the world. With it being so late in the evening already the tree cover made it effectively nighttime, prompting Kirito to carry a torch. Fortunately the forest was so dense here that few mobs showed up.

We had just reached the end of the pathway, where it opened up into a small clearing. The mountains were fairly close by, but the wall of the Floor was a good couple kilometers away still. A somewhat unremarkable wooden house was situated at the center. There was also a number of other amenities to help with living out in the wilderness alone; a well, a place to chop and store firewood, a vegetable garden, a separated storage shed, and a pen that was ostensibly for holding small livestock but was currently empty.

We walked up to the house and I knocked on the door, using the small bronze knocker that was attached to it. A wizened old man soon answered the door, barely any taller than me and a narrow beard of white that was almost to the floor. Just looking at him, you would expect the guy to be a martial arts master rather than a musician. He seemed to have aged a decent amount since the beta, previously he looked old but the man in front of us was downright ancient.

A yellow cursor and his name appeared above his head—Korstan, Legendary Musician.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the man quickly cut me off. "My, my, could it be? Rei, that is you, no?"

I opened and closed my mouth silently a few times, unsure of how to respond. I wasn't expecting another eloquent NPC, let alone for them to remember me. Though he did have some connection with the dark elves, so perhaps it should not have been so surprising. This was starting to become an annoyingly common experience. "I, uh… yes, it's me."

"Come in, come in! Your friends too. I got the feeling I was just about to have some visitors, I'll have some tea ready in just a moment. Please, sit down." He gestured towards a low table in the center of the room. In total conflict with the outer log-cabin-esque appearance of the house, all the floors inside were tatami.

We sat down as he asked and he hurried off into another room. For how old Korstan appeared to be, he sure didn't move like it. We looked around the room; it was just as I remembered, with a number of bookshelves lining the walls and a couple of guitars sitting around here and there, one or two half-finished with clamps and tape attached to them.

Kirito and Asuna gave me a look as if to ask what the hell was going on. I simply held out my hands—I was just as clueless. The old master returned with a tray holding a teapot and four teacups, and then crossed the room to another door and vanished again. We heard some rummaging sounds; a couple of things fell to the floor, likely books, and Korstan muttered something in frustration too low for us to make out.

My eyes went wide when I saw what he returned with. An acoustic guitar, both body and neck made of dark-colored wood. The fretboard was nearly black, with strange swirls running throughout its grain. "That's…"

The old man nodded. "Your guitar. It was sat on my table one day, with a note saying it needed to be kept safe for a while. I haven't the faintest idea how you got it here without me noticing, but…"

All I could do was laugh weakly in response. "Eh… ahaha…"

Asuna slid over to the corner of the table and leaned over to whisper to me. "Is that really your guitar?"

"Yeah… there's no mistaking the fretboard. It was a huge pain in the ass to get…"

There was an incredibly wide variety of woods available in the forests of the sixth Floor, totally past the point of realism for the Appalachians it appeared to be modeled after. The rarest were woods from ents that spawned in the forests, and the rarest of those was the wood of the Ebonent, a super-super-super-rare miniboss spawn deep in the dense forest we were currently within. The way it twisted and writhed produced unique swirls in its wood, producing an appearance similar to poorly tempered chocolate.

Naturally, I spent hours upon hours trying to find the thing, and more upon that to actually beat it. Getting through the dense forests around the area it spawned in was awful, and that further compounded on the fight itself. There was terribly little space to move around the thing. Even Kirito refused to help me after just a couple tries.

"I'm certainly happy to see it. Thank you, sensei."

The old man shook his head. "Please, just call me Korstan. I'm hardly a teacher to you with how skilled you are." He handed me the guitar, which I quickly stowed away in my inventory. He gave a wry grin. "I betcha you're pretty happy you don't have to hunt down another one of those ents, eh?"

"Ugh, don't remind me of that thing." Kirito shuddered a little, recalling how awful the thing was to find.

I took a sip of the tea—I couldn't really describe what exactly it tasted like, I wasn't much of a tea drinker—and turned my focus to a notification I got when I took my guitar. The notification took me to my Skill menu, and what I saw caused me to choke on my tea.

"You good, Rei?" Kirito asked.

"Cough—ugh, ah, I'm fine." I'll tell them in a second, talking about this in front of an NPC feels weird now.

"Well, returning your guitar is all well and good, but I'm grateful you're here for another reason." Korstan changed both his tone of voice the topic suddenly. It sounded like we had a different quest coming. "Long story short, I'd like for you to escort me while I transport some books."

"Oh… sure, no problem," I replied without much thought.

"Many thanks. Excuse me for a moment, I shall go finish collecting them." His tea already finished somehow, Korstan stood up from the table and returned to the room he retrieved my guitar from.

"Come look at this, you two." Kirito and Asuna moved over to my side of the table when I waved them over. I made my Skill menu window visible to them. What we saw there was the Musical Instrument Skill, active despite me not having a free slot to use it. More than that, the experience bar for it was completely filled, and rather than showing my level in the Skill there was just a gold star next to it. I tapped on the star, and a small popup appeared.

True Skill Mastery

Awarded only to unparalleled masters in a Skill.

Enables all normal modifiers.

Unlocks and enables additional unique modifiers.

Skill no longer requires a Skill Slot.」

I simply looked back and forth between the two of them, unsure what to say. Kirito and Asuna were similarly speechless.

"So, um… guess I don't need to worry about getting the next slot…" I mumbled eventually.

Kirito snorted at my awkward comment. "Pfft—jeez. Why the heck did you get that, though…? First that bottle Asuna got, now this."

"Don't ask me! I did max the Skill in the beta, maybe it's because of that…? Come to think of it, Kizmel and Linda both said he was friendly with the dark elves, so maybe it's just this campaign being bizarre again."

"Ahh, I remember that now… Eh, wait, you maxed it?" Asuna asked. "With how long it's taken us to even get to 150 in our combat Skills…"

"Ah, right. Well, one of the side effects of the assist thing is, if you turn it off and can still play an instrument well, the Skill levels up stupid fast. Since it's not actually all that useful in a practical sense, there's not much harm in it I guess."

Korstan returned from the other room just then, carrying a large leather bag on his back that presumably held the books he was needing to transport. "Unless you young'n's need something else, I say we go ahead and get moving." He gave an odd look at us gathering around my Skill menu but didn't comment on it.

"Sure." I looked at the old man as I stood up from the table. He had not told us much about what we were actually doing. Given that he appeared to be one of these super-NPCs, asking would be no problem. "By any chance, are we taking these to the dark elves?"

Korstan raised his eyebrow in suspicion, but after a moment passed a look of realization came across his face. "Ah, I see. You're wearing the sigil yourselves, so I take it you are friendly with those lot as well then? Good, that will make this simpler." He walked out the front door without explaining any further.

The three of us followed Korstan out of the house. As we left his health bar appeared in our party listing. We were distracted by my Skill at first, but we did also get a notification that we started a new quest. I took a quick look at the name—Gift of Knowledge.


We made our way back to Trefolo without incident, where we stopped to rest for a short time. Despite his age Korstan proved to be a capable fighter. Both Linda and Korstan himself had said he was well-traveled in his younger years, which helped to explain his skills as well as giving some reason to him being familiar with the elves.

The dark elves on this Floor were situated in the southeast section, so we were getting ready to go through Trefolo's southern exit into the caves. It was already getting quite late but Korstan didn't give any indication that he wanted to stop here for the night, so onward we would go. After checking over our supplies, we were just about to head for the exit when I got a concerning message.

Argo: Rei, got a sec?

Rei: What's up

Argo: Have you or the others gone to the music instrument teacher yet?

Rei: We have, just like an hour ago

Argo: And he was there?

Rei: Yep. Wait, do you mean he's not now?

Argo: Nope

Rei: …The hell, is it not instanced?

Rei: So, long story short I got a weird mastered version of the skill and now hes come along with us to do a quest for our elf campaign

Argo: Why the heck is it not instanced then… that's kinda concerning

Rei: This campaign has been nothing but bizarre turns for us so honestly I'm not totally surprised

Argo: I'll just tell people that the skill NPC isn't in the same place as the beta for now and we haven't found it. Keep me posted if anything goes weird

Rei: ( ̄^ ̄)ゞ

Argo: I'll ask for more details on your skill later

I shared my chat window briefly to show Kirito and Asuna the exchange. They gave me a look as if I would be able to offer any further explanation, but all I could do was shrug. "We'll just have to keep an eye on it. Damn, I guess I shouldn't take the guitar out in public for now…"

Korstan led the way out of Trefolo and into the cave entrance. As we crossed its threshold there was a noticeable temperature drop, and I felt myself shiver. The cave systems here were winding and expansive. The main routes' walls and floors had been worn smooth from presumed decades of regular traffic, and torch-holding sconces were bolted into the walls at regular intervals. The various vestigial caves were rougher, darker, and altogether more dangerous; thankfully our route today would not lead us through any of those.

The three of us were quieter than usual, once again unsure how exactly to conduct ourselves around an NPC of this caliber. Between Kizmel and Yofilis I had gotten somewhat used to it, but it still felt… off. Roleplaying was something that had always kind of eluded me.

I glanced at the old man walking slightly in front of us. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me. "Um, Korstan… how are you… acquainted with the dark elves, exactly?"

He turned his head slightly to look back at me with one eye. "Well, I could ask the same of you fledglings, no? The elves are not exactly so trusting of humans." He gave a hearty laugh when he saw my grimace, and turned back to face forward again. "Hahaha, do not worry yourself. Whatever it was, to earn yourself a sigil is no mean feat. That alone proves you're trustworthy enough."

"So…"

"It is much the same for me. I was of help to them once in a time of need, and they extended a hand to me in kind. And that continues to today, I have been helping them with figuring out some… issues."

"Issues?" Kirito asked.

"That I can't tell you, I'm afraid. And mind they can retract that hand just as easily as they gave it."

I got the feeling that pressing for more answers would not go anywhere, so we fell silent again. It appeared fairly evident however that whatever he was talking about was related to this escort quest of ours.

Before I could ruminate on it further, as we rounded a slight bend in the cave two monsters approached us. A pair of mole-ish creatures, named Skewermoles. For the most part they just looked like oversized moles, about a meter total from snout to tail. The head appeared slightly too large for the body. Adorning the head and face was their namesake, a long pair of sharp bull horns atop the head and two pointy boar tusks sticking out of their mouths.

They presented a scary sight but fortunately they were dead simple to fight in actuality. When above ground they were so slow that one just about had to jump right on them to get hurt. As might have been expected they often dug into the cave floor and walls and burrowed around, sticking their horns out here and there. Like this they were much faster, but left such obvious trails behind that it was again difficult to actually get hit. They did serious damage if you did get hit.

We organized ourselves quickly, Kirito and Korstan handling one of the moles while Asuna and I took the other. Fighting these was mostly an exercise in patience as it was near impossible to damage them while they were burrowing. It was quite literally whack-a-mole.

Kirito did not hesitate to express his frustration. "I still freaking hate the design of these…"

"I can agree with that. Ugh…" Asuna wasn't fond of them either.

"Gotta suck it up, Kii-bou." I sighed as I watched the mobs' death effect disperse. "You know as well as I do mobs are just like this sometimes."

"Please don't make a habit of calling me that."

"No promises~."

We encountered a few more of the Skewermoles along the way, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. As we progressed through the cave the torch sconces gave way to glowing spherical stones halfway embedded into the walls, emitting a soft teal glow. On occasion there would also be stalactites made of the same glowing rock, more naturally formed than the regularly-placed spheres.

To correspond with the change in environment, we were also presented with a change in enemies. From amongst the glowing stalactites came large bats, their eyes glowing the same color as the stone they lived amongst. Flying enemies were typically quite annoying to deal with, but between our group's high Agility and the restricted space of the cave they were mostly unremarkable.

As we progressed further into the cave, a literal light at the end of the tunnel began to grow brighter and brighter. What greeted us as we crossed the threshold was truly a sight to behold.

A gargantuan cave, almost perfectly hemispherical with lines carved into it here and there by running waters. It was hundreds of meters wall to wall. Perhaps a full kilometer across even. Thousands upon thousands of stalactites above flooded the cave with an almost alien glow, a soft teal light where there would otherwise be complete darkness. In front of us, a stone bridge over a wide, jagged ravine that ran around the circumference of the cave. Small waterfalls were present here and there around the cave's walls, and the sound of rushing water could be heard below. I hadn't the nerve to approach the ledge to look, but no doubt a river ran below us.

In the center, upon the large island of sorts that was formed by the ravine, there was a town. Some of its streets and buildings were below us, carved down into the rock of the cave's floor. Others were elevated, built up from the horizon no doubt using the very same stone that was carved out to make the lower sections. They were hard to make out individually from this distance, but the streets were lined with lamppost-like stalagmites, tipped by spherical teal stones much like those that lined the cave we had just passed.

This was Baclef, the central hub for all the underground activity here, and very much the centerpiece of the Floor.

Asuna could only let out an astonished "Oh wow…" as we approached the town's entrance. Even for Kirito and I it was astonishing to look at, since it had been some time since we were here last. Baclef was one of the most beautiful locations of all those we had seen in the beta, beating out even Rovia and Trefolo.

"Baclef's a new sight for you, eh?" Korstan stopped us just after we passed the town's entrance. "If ya don't mind, we'll stop here for the night. It's quite late and I have some personal business to handle here anyhow."

I glanced at my system clock—it was indeed well past 10 P.M. "Sure, that's fine with me." Kirito and Asuna nodded in agreement.

"Excellent. We can reconvene at the southern exit, at say, eight in the morning or so." He walked off into a nearby alleyway and his health bar vanished from our party list. I looked down the path he had taken only seconds after, but he was already gone.


Author's Notes

Hi everyone!

As you may have noticed if you've looked at my profile recently, I've been sitting on this chapter for… a while. I was intending to post it only after I completed a behind-the-scenes project I've been working on, but that has ended up growing in size quite substantially. So instead I'm posting this now and will continue to work on things in parallel.

I don't have much commentary on the chapter itself today—only thing of note I want to mention is, as you've seen, I've changed my approach for how I present in-game DMs between players, and I've stopped using those angle quotation marks (they're called 'guillemets', apparently).

Take care!