Sword Art Online Progressive 5 Read online

  “What?! So you’re saying…if you wanted to solve the whole batch, you’d have to do seven hundred twenty-eight sudoku puzzles in a span of twenty-four hours?” Asuna exclaimed. She started counting with her fingers. “Let’s see…At a glance, these look like maximum difficulty, so even an expert would take a good twenty minutes to solve one. Multiplying that by seven hundred twenty-eight would be fourteen thousand five hundred sixty minutes…divided by sixty makes two hundred forty-two hours and forty minutes…”

  I had to admit that the speed of this calculation backed up her claim to be “pretty good” at math puzzles.

  “That’s over ten days!” she exclaimed, her shock turning to annoyance. “That’s impossible! I’m not going to do them!”

  “N-nobody said you had to…At any rate, the sudokers split up as a group to try to tackle them, and even then, they weren’t fast enough to beat it by midnight. So on the last day of the beta, they resorted to forbidden measures.”

  “Forbidden…?”

  “Since you could log in or out as much as you wanted in the beta, they would memorize the placement of the hints, then log out and use an external program to solve the problem…”

  “Oh, I see,” Asuna said, smirking.

  I concluded the heroes’ tale. “They beat the whole lot just an hour before the end of the test. Now, do you see how just one tile out of the eighty-one is a darker color?”

  “Hmm, you’re right.”

  “The numbers in those tiles are some kind of key. So at the end of all that work, the sudokers got seven hundred twenty-eight key numbers…”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “And that was it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nobody knew what to do with them. They say that for the last hour until the end of the test, the tragic sudokers were reduced to running around the square in their underpants, screaming the numbers and going mad.”

  “…”

  Asuna’s annoyance turned to pity. She gazed out at the wide space of flat stone and numbers, lonely in the moonlight. Without another word on the matter, she closed her eyes for a moment, then waved her right hand to bring up the menu.

  “Oh my, it’s past three. We should go to the inn already. I assume the DKB and ALS will be sleeping in, too, but I’d still like to get up and back to business by ten o’clock.”

  “Good idea,” I agreed, reminded of my earlier anxiety. But Asuna’s smile was earnest and innocent.

  “Here’s question two, then. What’s your recommended place to stay in Stachion?”

  For about three minutes, we walked east down a road paved with the same tiles as the square, until I led Asuna to a nondescript, midsize inn—though, given the way everything in the town was built out of the same little blocks, it was hard for any of them to acquire distinguishing features.

  I pushed open the wooden door (at least that was different) and checked in at the counter, reserving two adjacent rooms on the second floor. The empty hallway up there turned out to be ten blocks wide, just over six feet, with no place to hide.

  I’d kept my hackles up from the moment we’d arrived at this level of Aincrad till we got to this inn, but no one had been following or watching us—at least, so I thought. But I couldn’t be absolutely certain, because now that I suspected the man in the black poncho had a Hiding skill at least as good as my Search, I could no longer trust my eyes and ears.

  I walked to the end of the hallway, keenly aware of the stress of being in potential danger. Asuna was in Room 201 in the corner, while I was in 202 just before it.

  The fencer yawned gracefully in front of her door and glanced at me. “Um…shall we meet in the restaurant downstairs at eight…or, no, nine o’clock?”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “Then good night, Kirito.”

  She waved and grabbed the door handle. But the handle rattled in place and resisted her pressure.

  “Wh…whoops? Is the other one my room…?” she wondered, shuffling over with sleepy eyes. I grabbed her shoulders.

  “Nope, you had the right one.”

  “Uh…why isn’t it opening, then?”

  Her question was a reasonable one. Inn rooms in Aincrad didn’t have keys as a general rule; doors automatically unlocked for the owner (or their registered friends and party members)—a system choice made for player convenience. And we were in a party together, so even if she’d gotten my room, the door should have opened.

  I walked over to Asuna, who was half sleepy and half skeptical, and pointed at the 201 attached to her door. On closer look, the square plate was split into a four-by-four grid, with the other squares having fainter numbers of their own and a single blank space in the bottom right corner.

  “Doesn’t this look familiar, too?” I prompted.

  Asuna blinked about five times and finally said, “Oh…is this a fifteen puzzle…?”

  “Bingo. Only in this case, the numbers go from zero to fourteen.”

  “……Are you saying that if I don’t solve this puzzle, the door won’t open?”

  “Correct.”

  “………”

  Now her expression was 20 percent sleepiness, 20 percent suspicion, and 60 percent disgust. I hastily added, “B-but don’t worry. There’s a trick to this…”

  I reached up to the plate and started sliding the wooden numbers around, which were randomly placed aside from the Room 201 numbers.

  “See, it’s easy to get zero through seven in the top two rows, right? After that, you just line up the eight and twelve in the lower left, then put the nine and thirteen next to them, and the rest is natural…”

  The moment I slid the fourteen into the right spot, there was an audible click as the door unlocked. Then I pushed down the handle, and the door opened inward this time.

  “…Thank you,” Asuna said, but her expression did not suggest gratitude. I’d brought her to this inn for a reason—of all the puzzle doors in Stachion, the ones here were on the simple side.

  But there was something more important to explain to her now—more important than the facts of this town or this entire floor. Asuna was quite exhausted, and I was reaching the peak of my fatigue, too, but the last thing I wanted to do now was put off this decision until tomorrow, only to regret it.

  “Well, good night…” Asuna started to vanish through the doorway.

  I raised my voice just 5 percent higher than normal. “Asuna!”

  “What?” she asked, eyes bleary. I felt guilty, but there was no going back now.

  “I…I have something important to tell you. Do you mind if I come into your room for a bit?”

  “Mm…go ahead…”

  Her permission came shockingly easy. She tottered through the doorway. I hurried after her before the door automatically locked itself.

  As the corner room, 201 had large windows on the east and south sides, but there was no skyline to look at now. The room was maybe 175 square feet and had standard furniture: a bed that was spacious enough for one but not two, a sofa set, and a writing desk. The floor was dark brown but checkered in that familiar eight-inch pattern.

  Asuna floated weightlessly to the bed and plopped down onto its soft surface. She waited for me to speak, just barely preventing herself from flopping over into a sleeping position.

  “So what’s this important thing you have to…tell……Important thing?” she repeated, blinking thrice.

  Suddenly, her eyes were wide open. She stared around the room, then back at me. For some reason, her left hand reached for a large pillow, and she clutched it in front of her as she stammered, “Uh…wait…import…I…W-wait, I’m, uh, I’m not, ready for…”

  It wasn’t clear what Asuna was imagining, but fortunately for me, whatever it was had woken her up a bit. I took a step closer.

  “Listen, Asuna.”

  “No, wa…w-wait, just wait.”

  “No. I can’t wait.”

  “What?”

  She was clutching the pillow so hard it was fi
t to burst. I took another step closer.

  “Asuna…in the morning, I want you to practice human combat with me.”

  “………Hweh?”

  “I know you hate PvP. But we’re coming to the point where there’s no getting around it. Before we start heading out to tackle this floor, we should at least spend half a day practicing…”

  “Stop.”

  Her hand darted out at the speed of lightning, cutting me off. She took several deep breaths. Eventually, she got to her feet, still holding the pillow.

  “……I knew that I couldn’t keep running away from it. So I agree with your point about the training. I’m ready for it.”

  “Oh…c-cool.”

  “But let me just say one thing first.”

  The fencer grinned at me kindly, switched the pillow over to her right hand, then cocked it back.

  “That was…extremely misleading!!!!” she screamed, hurling it at me overhand with a bit of rotation, like a major league pitcher. The pillow hurtled audibly toward me hard enough to flash up the purple barrier effect when it landed, no matter how soft it was.

  A cold drink of water helped calm Asuna down, after which I briefly explained what had happened in the castle ruins of Karluin. While she was furious at necro-poncho—and somewhat concerned for me as well—she largely accepted the situation calmly and rationally and agreed to resume dueling practice.

  By the end of this, it was already 3:40, so we delayed the next day’s meeting until nine thirty, and I left Room 201.

  Suddenly, the sandman’s bags weighed heavily on my eyelids, now that I was no longer holding him at bay with sheer willpower. But there was another job I had to do before I opened the door to my own room.

  Unlike Room 201, the fifteen puzzle to open Room 202 had a pair of twos, and the highest number was thirteen. While I did make a few mistakes because of it, I managed to finish the puzzle in under thirty seconds. I opened the door into my own room, removed my gear as I shuffled forward, and plunged into the bed face-first.

  I had time for just a few thoughts in the three seconds before I fell asleep.

  You know, I forgot to actually tell Asuna that the entire theme of this floor is puzzles.

  And what did she mean by “misleading”?

  2

  DESPITE THE FACT THAT I FORGOT TO SET A WAKE-UP alarm, my eyes opened just three minutes before we were scheduled to meet.

  In the real world, I’d never make it in time with that little to spare, but in here, there was no need to wash your face, brush your hair, or pick out what to wear. I just rolled out of bed, equipped the coat over my shirt, and left the room.

  The sound of the door opening and slamming was louder than I expected, and for a moment, I wondered if I was still a bit dazed with sleep. But no, my fellow guest in the room next door had emerged at the exact same time.

  Asuna and I shared a look for about two seconds. It seemed like she’d just woken up, too, and her brain wasn’t running at full capacity yet. In the silence, I heard the number plates of both doors click and rattle as they shuffled their puzzles.

  “Good—” I started to say, but Asuna swept her cape aside and raced past me toward the stairs.

  Why did she run away?!

  But the answer occurred to me immediately. She was going to get to the restaurant a second ahead of me, so she could smugly accuse me of being the one who slept in.

  “N-no fair!” I shouted, starting to run, but I couldn’t catch up to Asuna at full speed, given her (likely) higher agility stat. Her long hair shone in the morning sun as it vanished around the end of the hallway.

  I was going to lose the race.

  Resigned to bad behavior, I launched myself off the floor and took one, two, three steps along the nearest wall, dragging the edges of my soles along the flat stone. This was a non-system skill I called Wall-Running. Three steps was the best I could do without an equipment bonus, but with an Agility dump stat, people like Argo the Rat could probably go much longer.

  Still, it was enough to get me to the corner of the hallway, so on my third step, I pushed hard and leaped to the far wall around the corner, then jumped off that to the handrail on the stairs. I landed right behind Asuna, who’d slowed down at the hallway turn that sat at the stairs’ landing. With one more huge jump, I slipped past her and rushed into the first-floor lobby.

  “Hey, no fair!” she shouted behind me, but athletic competition was inherently unfair. The entrance to the restaurant was past the reception desk. I lowered my center of gravity in preparation for the last fifty feet of the race—

  “Hi-yah!” went an unsettling cry over my shoulder, and I felt myself being pulled backward. My soles lost their grip and slid along the polished floor. Asuna had grabbed the hem of my coat.

  “Hey…foul! Foul!” I wailed as I fell onto my butt, but there was no referee’s whistle.

  Right beside my face, I heard her say “Later!” as white leather boots raced past me.

  Yes—there were no rules or referees in this battle. Only our good consciences limited what we would do. And I was the kind of person who was furthest from the concept of a good conscience: I was a teenage boy and a former beta tester.

  I reached out without a word and grabbed Asuna’s left ankle.

  “Heywha?!” the fencer exclaimed, a strange abbreviation of Hey, what are you doing? and she lost her balance. A second after we both rolled over onto the floor, the NPC lady behind the counter called out, “Please, no disruptions inside the building.” If it wasn’t my imagination, her voice seemed colder than usual.

  We sat at the farthest table in the back of the restaurant and ordered the breakfast platters and coffee.

  Asuna sighed. “Haaah…The last thing I need in the morning is to get all tired out…”

  “W-well, you were the one who started running first.”

  “I was just picking up my pace, that’s all.”

  I knew she was lying, but the food arrived before I could call her out on it. The breakfast platter varied depending on the town and establishment; this one had two buttered rolls, green salad, cheese, ham, and eggs, which was a fairly orthodox combination.

  Asuna neatly sliced the square of cheese into two triangles and noted, “You don’t have to solve a puzzle to get your food.”

  “Oh, would you prefer it that way? For lunch, I know a place that sells a meal served in a puzzle box…”

  “No, thank you,” she said, picking up the hard cheese with her fingers and taking a nibble. We ate in silence after that, and it wasn’t until the both of us were half-done with our plates that Asuna spoke again.

  “…So why are there so many puzzles all over Stachion?”

  “Oh. It’s because the theme of this floor is puzzles,” I said, finally revealing the detail I’d forgotten to tell her last night. The fencer blinked in surprise.

  “You mean…it’s not just the main town, but it’s the entire floor that’s like this?”

  “Yep. Most of the dungeons are full of puzzles and tricks. It was a floor that really divided the player base during the beta, I can tell you that.”

  “Uh…huh…”

  There was something odd in Asuna’s look, but with my low Communication skill, I couldn’t make out what it was.

  “…What does that expression mean?” I asked her, sticking ham inside of the slit in my mini-loaf of hard bread. Asuna shrugged.

  “Well, it’s not that I hate puzzles themselves…I like the sudoku number games from the square—and jigsaw puzzles and disentanglement puzzles and the like. But…when I think about the fifth-floor boss, I get worried…”

  “Oh. Good point…”

  At last, I understood why she looked upset. The floor boss we’d just defeated yesterday—Fuscus the Vacant Colossus—started off like your archetypal RPG golem monster but turned out to be horribly different—a creature fused with the very chamber itself. It then deployed a number of complex gimmicks and tricks that were a huge headache for the raid party
.

  “So does that mean if the floor’s theme is puzzles that the boss is the same way?” Asuna asked.

  “Kind of,” I admitted. “The boss in the beta was kind of like a Rubik’s Cube with arms and legs. The row you attacked would rotate, and once you got all the sides aligned, its armor would break off. But because everyone just went ham on it, the colors would get more and more out of alignment…”

  “…”

  Asuna sighed deeply, her fork paused in midair with a cucumber-like vegetable on it. “That’s exactly the kind of thing that Lind from the DKB and Kibaou from the ALS are going to argue over—who gets to call the shots in battle. Maybe it’s better that we tackle this boss with the same group as the last one?”

  It was bold, but I had to shake the idea off. “No, no way. We had no other choice in the matter to prevent the ALS from rushing ahead…but the entire point of boss fights is to use a full raid party and go in at maximum strength. And you never know if it might’ve been changed since the beta.”

  “Probably to make it more annoying, if anything.”

  This time I had to agree. I didn’t want to imagine a setup more annoying than the Rubik’s Cube, but if any pattern had held true so far, it was that nothing had been made easier since the beta.

  On top of that, I had another problem to deal with regarding the boss battle beyond just the potential puzzle tricks.

  Asuna sensed something in my expression. She chewed on a slice of cucumber and waved her fork like a little flag. “Speaking of which…what are you going to do with that thing you’re holding?”

  “Dunno,” I said. She made a face that said she figured that was the answer.

  The “thing” I was holding was the Flag of Valor, an ultrarare item that the fifth-floor boss dropped—otherwise known as the guild flag.

  If you registered the flag under your guild name and stood it upright on the floor, any guild member within a radius of fifty feet would enjoy four different kinds of status buffing. The reason Kibaou’s ALS had attempted to sneak into a fight against the boss first was because they were afraid the DKB would get the guild flag and the incredible bonus it conferred.