Sword Art Online - Volume 1 - Aincrad Read online

  “Of course I have. It’ll be hard to come across something like this a second time… But it’s sort of hard to find someone who can cook something like this…”

  Then someone behind me tapped my shoulder.

  “Kirito.”

  It was a feminine voice. There weren’t many female players who knew my name. Well actually, in this situation there was only one. I grabbed the hand on my left shoulder and said.

  “Cook acquired.”

  “Wh-What?”

  With her hand in mine, the person stammered with a suspicious expression on her face.

  The small face, which was surrounded by long straight chestnut hair that was split neatly in two, was egg-shaped, and her two sparkling hazelnut eyes were almost blinding. Her thin body was covered by a red and white knight-like combat uniform, and there was an elegant silver-white rapier sheathed in her white leather scabbard.

  Her name was Asuna. She was so famous that almost everybody in SAO knew her.

  There were a lot of reasons, but the first was that she was one of the very few female players, and that she was the owner of a face that lacked nothing.

  It’s hard to say this in this world, where everyone had their real bodies, but beautiful women were a super rare presence within it. You could most probably count the number of players that were as pretty as Asuna with your fingers.

  Another reason that she’s famous was because of her red and white uniform which belonged to the guild «Knights of the Blood». The members are called KoB by taking the initials from «Knights of the Blood», and, out of the many guilds, everyone acknowledged them as the best.

  It’s only a medium-sized guild of about thirty players, but they were all high leveled and seasoned warriors, with the leader of the guild being its strongest player and almost a legend within SAO. Also, contrary to her delicate frame, Asuna was the sub-leader. Her sword skill was so exceptional that it had earned her the title «Flash».

  So her appearance and sword skill were at the zenith of six thousand players. It would have been strange for her not to have become famous. She had numerous fans, but among them there were some stalkers who virtually worship her, and there were also those who hate her, so it seems like she’s having a hard time.

  Well, since she is a top class warrior, there shouldn’t be that many that would challenge her directly. But as if the guild wanted to show that they would protect her, she’s often trailed by two or more bodyguards. Even now, there were two men a few steps behind her fully equipped in metal armor and KoB uniforms. One of them, with his hair in a pony tail, was glaring at me, who had grabbed Asuna’s hand.

  I let go of her hand, shook mine in his direction, and replied.

  “What’s up, Asuna? For you to be coming to such a rubbish heap like this.”

  The face of the man with the pony tail and the shop owner’s faces convulsed; one because I didn’t call Asuna with her title and the other because I called his shop a rubbish heap. But the shop owner…

  “It’s been a while, Egil-san.”

  …gave a sunny smile after hearing Asuna’s greeting.

  Asuna looked back at me and pouted her lips in discontent.

  “Hey, what’s this? After all the trouble I went through to see if you were alive for the boss fight that’s going to take place soon.”

  “You’ve already listed me as a friend so you’d be able to tell if you just looked at that. Anyway the only reason you could find me was because you used a friend trace on your map.”

  Asuna turned her head to the side as soon as I answered.

  She was also responsible for progressing through the game in the guild as well as being a sub-leader. That job included searching out selfish solo players like me and forming a party to fight bosses. But even then, to actually come to see me, there should be a limit to how devoted a person could be.

  Looking at my half-tired, half-amazed expression, Asuna put her hands on her hips before saying with a motion that was akin to raising her chin.

  “Well, you’re alive and that’s all that matters. M-More than that, what do you mean? You were saying something about a chef or something.”

  “Oh, right right. How high is your cooking skill right now?”

  By what I knew, Asuna was particularly focused on raising her cooking skill whenever she found time in between training her sword skills. She answered my question with a proud smile.

  “Listen and be surprised! I «Mastered» it last week.”

  “What!?”

  She’s…an idiot.

  I thought that for a second. I didn’t say it out loud, of course.

  Training skills was mind-numbingly boring and extremely time-consuming, and could only be «Mastered» after leveling them up 1000 times. On that note, levels didn’t have anything to do with skills and went up by gaining experience points. The things that went up with the levels were HP, strength, stats like dexterity, and the number of «Skill Slots» which decided how many skills you could learn.

  Right now I had twelve slots, but the only ones that had been completed were my one-handed straight sword skill, Scan for Enemy skill, and my Weapon Guard skill. It meant that this girl had spent a lot of time and effort on a skill that wasn’t even of any help in battle.

  “…well, I’ve got something to ask you to do, trusting that skill.”

  I waved her over and put my window on show mode so that she could see it. Asuna looked at it suspiciously, and then her eyes widened at the name of the item.

  “Uwa!! That…that’s an S-rank food ingredient!?”

  “Let’s trade. If you cook this, I’ll let you have a bite.”

  Even before I stopped talking, that right hand of «Flash» Asuna grabbed me by the collar. Then she pushed her face to a few centimeters before mine.

  “Give. Me. Half!!”

  My chest stopped at this sudden ambush and I nodded without thinking. When I got back to my senses it was too late, and she was waving her arm with excitement. Well, let’s consider it a good thing that I can watch that delicate face from so close. I convinced myself.

  I closed the window and spoke while looking at Egil’s face.

  “Sorry. I’ll stop the trade.”

  “No. It’s fine but…hey, we’re friends right? Eh? Can’t you give me a taste…?”

  “I’ll give you an eight hundred word essay on it.”

  “D-Don’t be like that!”

  As I cold-heartedly turned my back on Egil, he called out in a voice that seemed as if it was the end of the world. As I made to walk away, Asuna grabbed the sleeve of my coat.

  “Cooking’s good, but where are we going to do it?”

  “Ah…”

  If you’re going to cook, then you needed some cooking appliances, such as a stove or an oven, as well as the ingredients. It wasn’t as if my house didn’t have them, but I couldn’t invite the sub-leader of the KoB into a messy place like that.

  Asuna looked at me with an unbelieving expression on her face.

  “Well, your house wouldn’t have the proper appliances anyway. But I could serve it to you in my house just this once.”

  She said something shocking in a calm voice.

  Asuna ignored me, who was standing there frozen as if I was lagging while my brain processed this, and turned to her guards and spoke.

  “I’m going to teleport to «Salemburg» soon, so its fine if you go. Thank you for your hard work.”

  “A-Asuna-sama! Coming into the slums was bad enough, but to invite someone as suspicious as him to your house. Wh-What are you thinking!?”

  I couldn’t believe what I just heard. «Sama» he said. He must be one of the worshipers. As I looked at Asuna with these thoughts, the person in question had an annoyed expression on her face.

  “OK, maybe you could call him suspicious, but his skill is unquestionable. He’s most probably ten levels above you Cradil.”

  “Wh-What are you saying? To say that I’m not even equal to someone like that…!”
r />   The man’s voice sounded all the way out to the alley. He glared at me with his heavily lidded eyes. Then his face scrunched up as if he suddenly recognized something.

  “That’s right…you, you were definitely a «Beater»!”

  Beater was made by mixing «Beta tester» and «Cheater». It was a word meant for people who used unfair means and a swearword that was unique to SAO. It was something I’d heard a lot of times. But however many times I heard it, it still hurt me deeply. The face of the person who had first said it to me, who had once been a friend, suddenly appeared in my head.

  “Yeah. You’re right.”

  When I affirmed it with an expressionless face, the guy started talking excitedly.

  “Asuna-sama, these sorts of guys don’t care about anything as long as they’re fine! There’s nothing to gain from mixing with these kinds of people!”

  Asuna, who had been calm until now, suddenly knotted her eyebrows in disgust. A crowd had suddenly appeared and the words «KoB» and «Asuna» could be heard here and there.

  Asuna looked around and said to the man who was getting more excited by the minute.

  “Well, please leave for today. That’s an order.”

  She spoke bluntly and grabbed my belt with her left hand. Then she started walking towards the gate plaza, dragging me as she went.

  “Err…hey! Is it okay to leave them like that?”

  “It’s fine!”

  Well, I’ve got no reason to complain. We made our way through the crowd, leaving the two guards and Egil, who was still disappointed. When I glanced back one last time, the furious expression of the man called Cradil stuck to my vision like an afterimage.

  Chapter 6

  Salemburg was a beautiful castle-city on the sixty-first floor.

  It isn’t all that big. But the city, with a castle which has serene spires at its center, was delicately built from white granite, and contrasts spectacularly with the overflowing green foliage. There were quite a few shops in the market so a lot of players wanted to use this place as their home city. But since the houses were crazily expensive—they must be at least three times the price of Algade—it’s almost impossible to buy one unless you were at a high level.

  When Asuna and I arrived at the teleport gate in Salemburg, the sun had almost set, and the final rays of light lit the streets a dark purple.

  Most of the sixty-first floor is taken up by a lake and Salemburg was located on an island in the middle of it, so one could see the setting sun reflected on it like a picture on a canvas.

  I gazed at the city in awe, my breath taken away by its beauty as it shined blue and red with the vast lake behind it. Not that it would be that hard for the NERvGear to create lighting effects like this with CPUs of the new generation and their diamond semiconductors.

  The teleport gate was placed in the plaza in front of the castle and the main street, which headed north, going through the city while being surrounded by street lamps. The stores and houses stood orderly on either side of the street, and even the NPCs that were walking around looked well dressed somehow. I spread my arms and breathed deeply, as even the taste of the air differed from Algate.

  “Hmmm. It’s large and has few people. I like how it feels so spacious.”

  “Then why don’t you move?”

  “I don’t have anywhere near enough money,” I answered with a shrug, before fixing my expression and asking hesitatingly.

  “…more than that, is it really okay? Back there…”

  “…”

  As if she realized what I was trying to say, Asuna twirled around with her head bowed down and tapped the floor with the tip of her boot.

  “…it’s true that some bad things happened a couple of times when I was alone. But to assign bodyguards to me, it’s going a bit too far, right? I said I didn’t need them but…the members said that it’s guild policy.”

  She continued in a subdued voice.

  “In the past, the guild was small with the leader inviting people individually by talking with them. But as the number of members grew and started changing… Then when it started being called the greatest guild or so, something became a bit strange.”

  She stopped talking and turned around slightly. Something in her eyes seemed like she wanted to rely on me and I subconsciously stopped breathing.

  I had to say something. I thought that, but what could a selfish solo player like me say? I simply watched in silence for a few seconds.

  Asuna turned her gaze first. She watched the lake, bathed in soft light, and said, as if to get rid of the awkwardness.

  “Well, it’s nothing much so you don’t have to worry! If we don’t go quickly, the sun is going to set.”

  Asuna set off first and I followed suit. We passed by quite a lot of players but none of them stared at her.

  I only stayed here for a couple of days when the front line had been here, so I never really looked around properly. As I looked at the delicate carvings that adorned the city, the thought that living in a city like this for a while wouldn’t be too bad came unbidden to my mind. But then I changed my mind and decided that it would be better if I only came here once in a while to sightsee.

  The house where Asuna lived was a small but pretty three floored maisonette which you could get to by walking eastward from the downtown area for a few minutes. It was, of course, the first time that I had come here. Now that I thought about it, I’d only talked to this girl during boss fight conferences; and we’d never even been to an NPC restaurant together before. As I became conscious of this, I stopped in front of the doorway, suddenly tense, and asked.

  “Is it…alright? Y’know…”

  “What? It’s something I suggested first, and there wasn’t anywhere that was fit for cooking so we don’t have a choice!”

  Asuna turned her head and bounced up the stairs. I steeled my resolve and followed her.

  “E-Excuse me.”

  I hesitantly opened the door then stood there, speechless.

  I’d never seen a home so well-ordered before. The wide living/dining room and the kitchen adjacent to it had furniture made out of light-colored wood, and was decorated with moss green cloth. They were all most probably the highest-quality player made items.

  But it wasn’t overly decorated either, nor did it make you feel uncomfortable. It was totally different from my house. I felt overwhelmingly relieved that I didn’t invite her to my house.

  “Erm…how much did this cost…?”

  At my materialistic question.

  “Hmm-, with the house and the furniture, about 4000k? I’m going to change so just sit anywhere you want.”

  She answered lightly and disappeared through a doorway. “K” is short for thousand. 4000k meant four million Coll. I practically lived on the front lines so I could save up that much if I tried. But I always wasted it on either some strange item or a sword that caught my eye, so I never saved up. I chastised myself, which was out of character, and sank into the spongy sofa.

  Asuna appeared after a short while, fully changed into a simple white tunic and a knee-length skirt. Well, I say changed but there’s no actual taking off and putting on involved. All you have to do is fiddle with the figure in the stats window. But there were a few seconds when the player was only dressed in their underwear. So unless they were a very bold male player, most players, especially girls, did not change in front of others. Our bodies may be nothing more than just a bunch of data rendered into 3D, but that sort of thinking got hazy after two years, and right now my eyes went to Asuna’s bare arms and legs without any remorse.

  Asuna, with no clue of my inner-conflict, threw a sharp look my way and said.

  “Are you planning to stay dressed like that?”

  I quickly opened my menu screen and took off my leather coat and sword. While I was at it, I brought the «Ragout Rabbit’s meat» out as well and put it, which was in a clay bowl, on the table in front of me.

  “So this is the legendary S-rank food ingre
dient-. …so, what should I make?”

  “Ch-Chef’s recommendation.”

  “Oh…? Well then, let’s have stew. It even has «ragout» in its name.”

  Asuna headed into the next room; I followed.

  The kitchen was large, and the various appliances that I could see next to the oven looked expensive. Asuna double clicked on the oven’s surface, set the time on the pop up window that appeared, and pulled out a metal pot from the cupboard. She put the raw meat in it, threw a couple of herbs in, and then poured water inside it before closing the lid.

  “If I was actually cooking, it would need to make all sorts of preparations. But in SAO it’s so short that it’s no fun.”

  She put the pot in the oven and pressed the “start” button on the menu as she complained. Even as the 300 seconds counted down, she moved about with precision, making various other side dishes. I watched in a stupefied daze as she went about, not making even a single mistake in operating the menu or the actual tasks.

  In just five minutes, the table was fully set and Asuna and I sat down across from each other. The brown stew looked incredibly delicious as it rested on the plate in front of me. Its smell enticed me as the steam rose slowly from it. Smooth, rich sauce covered the thick meat, and the creamy white marbling on it was truly enchanting.

  We lifted our spoons, and felt that even the time spent saying, “Thank you for the meal,” was too long. Then we ate a mouthful of the best food in existence in SAO. I tasted the heat and flavor in my mouth and as I bit into the meat, the juices inside poured out.

  Eating in SAO didn’t calculate and simulate the feeling of biting into the food. Instead it used a «Taste Reproduction Engine» that Argas and an affiliated environment programming designer had made together.

  This sent preprogrammed sensations of «eating» various foods and could make the user feel as if they were actually eating something in real life. It was originally designed for people who were on diets or needed to restrict the amount of food they ate, so it sent fake signals to the parts of the brain registering heat, taste, and smell to trick it. In other words, our real bodies weren’t actually eating anything right now, and all that’s happening was that the program was wildly stimulating our brains.