Kirito

"That was...something..."

"He was much nicer to the girls than to us, that's for sure. That old, useless pervert." Jaymes and Kirito, kicked out of the library while Asuna, Koharu, and the ladies undergo the Meditation trial (on top of comfortable cushions, no appetizing fricatolle in sight, and for one hour instead of three).

They learned a couple of things from the storyteller, though. The two iron keys' resonance was the result of a powerful charm placed on them to keep them from aligning and forming a larger key. The elf couldn't undo the charm, leaving it up to whoever created it to dispel it.

The storyteller also knew of the Platinum Shield that the hero Selm used against Shmargor and its spikes, but he didn't know how to craft it. Instead, he mentioned an alternative method to fight the spikes — the Meditation skill, which is why the girls are training for it now and why, after wanting to watch the girls train, Kirito and Jaymes are left alone outside.

So with nothing to do except wait, the boys mutually decided on going to the dining hall. Taking a seat on a couch by the wall, they were giving a dessert menu by a servant and settled on herbal tea, a chestnut—and—walnut tart for Kirito, and cocoa-chunked cookies for Jaymes. They quickly demolished their choice deserts and quietly sipped on tea. When Kirito spoke up, only twenty minutes had passed between them leaving the library and the present...and the desire to sleep was strongly claiming his body

Finding a comfy position on the couch, Kirito muttered, "You know, we've been up since two in the morning. I'm so tired."

Jaymes chuckled, though it seemed like he put whatever strength he had left into it as he leaned his head back. "Really? Back in the real world, I could go almost a whole day on a couple hours of sleep and not feel exhausted. Well, school didn't allow one to feel sleepy, hehe."

"...I wish I could admit that was the case for me."

"What, you fell asleep in school? Let me guess, you sat in the back corner of the room by the window like the loser protagonist you are?"

"And what about you? Did you sit somewhere in the middle like the smart and popular asshat you are?"

"...Yeah, but more towards the front. And I might've been popular, but I never enjoyed it. Never in my life...and I hadn't enjoyed school in years. You the same?"

"Uh...I guess so... Though I'm sure talking about the real world —"

"Yes, yes, taboo and all." Jaymes sighed and closed his eyes. "Yeah, I know...but who knows when we'll return home. It could be this year, next year or two...or never. I guess I'm being a bit fearful, but when I look at the girls...they don't pretend there's a divide between Aincrad and Japan. This world and that one...there's no difference. Reality is whatever is around us, so why bother trying to detach from one while living in the other..."

Kirito opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out as sleep claimed him. Jaymes didn't complain himself as he fell to his own slumber seconds later.

It wasn't a servant who woke the sleeping boys, but the bell in the courtyard Kirito silently thought the bell was for the return of Mito and Qusack, but then the clanging sped up and got more intense. That roused both males from their slumber and took them out the dining hall in a hurry. They raced to the first window they could get to and looked out the window to the courtyard below.

At the opened castle gates, white light flashed, indicating a battle taking place. Kirito opened the window to get a better analysis of the scene below and focused on the attacking force at the castle gate. Defending the castle, of course, were the dark elf guards, and the force attacking were wearing black and had face masks on. One of the latter group's cursor appeared in Kirito's sight and read "Fallen Elven Warrior".

"The hell?" Jaymes shouted in what sounded like English. In Japanese, he continued, "I thought elves weren't able to cross the canyon."

"And to attack a fortified position like this...something isn't right."

"Let me guess: Castle Galey wasn't attacked in the beta."

"No." More Fallen Elves and Dark Elves poured into the courtyard to fight, but Kirito's mind wasn't on defending Castle Galey. He and Jaymes needed to be sure the girls were safe, which also included Mito if Qusack had returned or not. They could escape with the women in the chaos, but Kizmel's honor wouldn't allow her to abandon her comrades. Koharu and Asuna wouldn't abandon Kizmel, and there's no chance Jaymes will abandon Koharu.

Yet before Kirito could pull away from the window and say "Let's get to the girls," three of the dark elf guards fell at once. They were still alive at half-health and a blinking icon underneath their cursor that indicated paralysis. As for the source of the paralysis, along the side walls were elves that were named "Fallen Elven Scouts" that were throwing objects at the half-plate wearing guards. Those damned needles.

To regroup with Asuna or help the defensive line? Which should Kirito and Jaymes do first?

"Hey, Kirito, the pervert did say the Meditation skill could neutralize the poison, right?"

"Y-yeah."

"...Koharu and Asuna are strong. If we go to them now, when the enemy is nowhere close, we'd do them a disservice to their strength. Believe me, I know how you feel...but the gamer in me wants to rely on them."

"Got it." Kirito dropped to the ground and, just in caution, sent a message to Asuna to "Finish the training." Next, he folded his legs into the Zen lotus position and placed his palms on top of his upturned feet. Jaymes made the same pose and Kirito sent a silent prayer that this would work.

In the beta, it took a minute for the skill to activate after assuming the pose, worthless when in an actual battle. However, with it automatically raised to 500, Kirito betted on a faster activation time — and was right. When he counted to twenty, an icon bearing the silhouette of a person in the Zen pose appeared.

Satisfied, all he had to do was trust Bouhroum at his word about the level-2 poison nullification. Undoing the pose, Kirito turned to the servants standing in fear behind them. "Go to the storeroom and bring all the healing and antidote potions you can to the courtyard!"

While most of the servants shrank back to the dining hall, the elder of the group said, "I understand. Come, you lot, let's go!" She led the younger servants down to the east wing. Once Jaymes stood up, the same icon activated under his cursor, the boys sprinted to the west wing.

"Make sire all three of yuo have Med buff before going down to cortyard," Kirito sent to Asuna again, not bothering to fix the typos. They've been in the library for fifty-five minutes, so they should nearly have the skill. There's a chance the old man heard the bells and ended the session early, but Asuna's lack of response said otherwise.

"You're not going to rush off without a word to me again! You must be within my sight for all twenty-four hours. Is that understood?!"

"...Asuna and Koharu are going to be mad at us, huh?"

"I can understand why Asuna would be pissed at you, but why add in Koharu? Ah... I forgot about the other day. Well, they kicked us out the library."

"From a certain point of view, that's true...but technically they said not to watch them. We assumed that meant to leave the library."

"...Who side are you on, Kirito?"

"All I'm saying is that this is a perfectly timed excuse for them to be irate at us."

"Well, in that case, we better defend this castle well. Speaking of which." Jaymes made it to the door at the end of the first floor of the west wing that led to the courtyard. He cautiously opened it in case enemies were on the other side or nearby. "I have two ideas as to why they're here, and given the fact you said this didn't happen in the beta, one hypothesis is more likely than the other."

"Which is?" The four sacred keys are in the treasure room on the fourth floor of the castle. Kirito couldn't think of another reason the Fallen Elves would attack Castle Galey.

"We'll talk about that later." Jaymes drew his sword and opened the door. Kirito followed suit and the pair hung close to the wall on their right. Kirito took stock of the situation, seeing that the defensive line is halfway between the eighty-meter distance between the castle wall and the spring that houses the spirit tree. Before they joined that frenzy, Kirito and Jaymes must eliminate the scouts and their needles.

They approached the first one, and instead of raising his shield, Jaymes slowed his pace and exposed himself. The masked scout sensed them and reached for his belt, arming himself with a black pick and threw it at the warrior. Kirito swallowed the fear of helplessness and Morte from three nights ago as the pick flew at bizarre speeds towards his companion, making contact with his left shoulder. As Jaymes winced on impact and came to a stop, Kirito pressed onward, his blade taking on a blue hue.

"Nothing!" Jaymes shouted, indicating the Meditation skill was working as suggested. At the same time, Kirito unleashed the four-part sword skill Vertical Square. The first three hits slashed the surprised elf from head to toe, obliterating over sixty percent of the elf's health points. On the final strike, Kirito felt the Sword of Eventide rattle slightly in his hand, and added his own force to the impending critical strike rather than fight it off. The sword dug itself into the elf's breast, hitting a weak-point critical and struck down the remaining life of the elf completely.

One down, two to go.

Since the other scouts hadn't turned their attack on the human swordsman, Kirito took the moment to turn to the courtyard to the left. The Fallen Elves outnumbered the Dark Elves at this point, but that was a slight advantage. He was about to turn to Jaymes when he noticed something else about the Fallen Elves.

Since their backs were to the humans, Kirito was able to see a strange object held by their belts — tree branches. Odd, considering that like the other two sects of the elven people, the fallen cannot harm living trees. That was confirmed by General N'ltzahh himself on the fourth floor in that warehouse hideout, which is why they had humans supplying lumbar.

"Jaymes, those tree branches."

"Huh? What, wait, how? But the Fallen cannot..."

"I think they're not there for decoration. Could they be the reason they passed through the canyon unharmed?"

"We'll have to get one for ourselves and check it out—"

"Gaaaaah!" A scream from one of the Dark Elf guards reached their ears. He was cut down by a Fallen warrior. That got their focus back on the scouts.

"Here." Jaymes handed Kirito the Spine of Shmargor, then started running at full speed towards the scouts. Kirito had been considering putting the Throwing Knives skill in the newly gained fifth skill slot, but with Meditation there, he could only pray the pick struck its target. It did just that, dropping the second scout after the pick penetrated his leg and propped a green border around his body. His partner rushed to his aid with a potion, but Jaymes gained his attention and reached for a black dagger at his waist.

"Have this!" Jaymes' Imperial roared with blue light as well, but instead of Vertical Square, a different sword skill was used. Four horizontal slashes dropped the elf's health to nearly twenty percent, then Jaymes bashed his shield against his opponent's head to knock him down on his belly.

Before the elf could recover and attack, Jaymes was released from the post-skill delay and put one foot on the elf's back, kicked the dagger aside with the free foot, then reached down and grabbed the branch. The scout, realizing this, began to squirm and hoarsely shouted, "Give it back!"

Kirito joined Jaymes, taking the branch from him. He didn't expect anything to happen to the elf with the spirit tree nearby, but if his hunch was correct, it would be deadly if he left the protective range of the tree. "How did you get this branch?"

With hatred laced in his eyes and voice, the elf barked back, "That is nothing you need to know, human! And what business does your kind have in this fight?! The enmity between elves has nothing to do with humankind!"

"Your kind?" The elf said no more afterward, so Jaymes impaled him in the back, letting the continual piercing damage kill him off. As the shards dispersed around their feet, Kirito ventured over to the paralyzed scout. Instead of killing the elf, Kirito robbed him of the branch, his dagger, and ten Spines of Shmargor. The spines went Into his carrying pouch while the former items and the branch from before were placed in Kirito's inventory.

As for the elf, Kirito might've shown it mercy — perhaps an unnecessary fixation on not executing a helpless enemy — but Jaymes did not harbor what could be seen as a harmful thought. When Kirito was done taking what he wanted, Jaymes severed the elf's neck and head in one slice.

With the scouts taken care of, all that was left was to aid the defensive line. They were fifteen meters to the spring, on the verge of collapse as they were outnumbered still. There were about ten guards paralzyed on the ground, and no more flooding out of the castle. It didn't seem Count Galeyon himself would enter the battle.

The only option was to use the Fallen's own weapons against them. With thirteen needles collected in total, Kirito only needed to knock down ten to turn the tide in the guards' favor. He drew a spine from the pouch, aimed at the closest target, and threw it. It landed on a part of the fallen warrior unprotected by armor...but not only did the warrior disregard the attack, he remained on his feet and continued fighting.

"Wha?"

"How come... Wait, what's that icon?" The icon Jaymes spoke of was a black leaf. It probably meant it was a paralysis resistance buff. Kirito relayed his thoughts to Jaymes, who sighed and looked towards the gate. "Of course."

"It sounds like a smart strategy, in case the scouts hit one of their comrades. But you'd agree that it's too smart for NPCs, right?"

"Right. The branches, the resistance...this took some meticulous planning. As if..." Jaymes bit his lips in deep thought, then faced Kirito. "My second hypothesis was Myia and the keys. The Fallen did attack us earlier, but when you consider that the Fallen did not attack the castle in the original story..."

Kirito picked up where Jaymes left off. "...and Myia had only been here two hours, there's no way they could have known about where she was and prepared for this attack. Especially those branches... Wait, how did they get through the gate in the first place?"

Kirito and Jaymes were sleeping in the dining hall when the bell rang. But there were two kinds of ringing; the normal toll for the gates to be opened, which Kirito initially disregarded, then the rapid alarm that woke both boys up. Since there was a delay between the two tones, it could be thought that the Fallen Elves had hidden in the canyon as a force friendly to the Dark Elves entered the castle, then they rushed to the castle. But that also meant the gates could've been closed before the Fallen entered.

Which meant the only possible solution is that they were intentionally let in, and the only group Kirito noticed come in and out the castle was Qusack. If they controlled the gate, they could have allowed the Fallen to enter through.

But there's an additional problem: Mito went with Qusack this morning. "...Jaymes, I'm going to enter the tower and close the gate. Can you get in contact with Mito?"

He nodded. "Sure, but... Wait, you think Qusack is responsible for this?"

"...Is that really it?" he asked himself more so than Jaymes, then turned on his heel for the nearest gate tower. At the tower, he pulled the metal door open and thrusted his sword inside to ward off any attackers. No one was inside, dead or alive. If there had been some sort of sabotage, it would not have left any bodies as evidence.

Kirito searched through the hanging gears and weights in the room until he found a wooden lever which he pulled with all his strength. The gears turned with a weighty rumble, starting the process to close the gate. With no one in Qusack in sight, Kirito pushed them to the side in his mind and exited the tower, racing for the battle taking place there. If the picks can't take the Fallen Elves down, he'd have to rely on the Sword of Eventide.

"Raaaaaah!"

It would be minutes later that Kirito would realize he joined the battle alone, for Jaymes had disappeared without a word.