Chapter 7

September 27th, 9:05 PM.

The end of the grace period came at last—all the icons on the ring menu were

fully reddish-purple now. Asuna, Alice, Leafa, and I waited for the moment from

the living room of our log cabin.

The last bits of blue in the system menu icon—a gear—at the upper left of the

ring were slowly but surely fading, and then they were gone. In that moment, a

series of events that I expected to happen, and some that I did not at all,

occurred at once.

The first thing I noticed was the light coming through the window. It wasn't

the rising sun. It was an abnormally brilliant reddish-purple color. I walked over

to the broken window and looked out to see a series of rippling curtains of light

in the night sky. It was an aurora.

Next, we heard a voice. It was a very strange voice, combining the

youthfulness of a young girl with the thoughtful wisdom of a much older

woman…but somehow, it felt familiar to me, like I'd heard it before.

"The seeds bud, sprout stems and leaves, and join ends to form a circular gate.

Visitors to this land, drained of hope, preserve your solitary life. Withstand

myriad trials, survive untold dangers, and to the first to reach the land revealed

by the heavenly light, all shall be given."

When the voice from on high died out, the aurora that lit up the night sky

vanished with it.

Visitors? All shall be given…?

I pondered the meaning of the words as I stood at the window. But then there

was a shriek behind me, and I spun around in alarm.

"What's—?" I started to say, until I saw what had happened. "I warned you to

take them off…"

In the middle of the living room, three women were down on their hands and

knees. Each one was trying desperately to get up, but the best they could do

was keep themselves from falling flat on their faces. With the end of the fourhour grace period, the weight of their high-level armor was now fully applied

and had over-encumbered them. Alice seemed especially strained, as the only

one with metal armor. She lifted her face with great desperation and yelled,

"Kirito, go outside for a bit!"

I was expecting this to happen, so I said "Yes, ma'am," and obeyed, carefully

opening the door so it didn't pop out of the frame on my way out to the porch.

The impact of the thornspike cave bear had done further damage to the

already miserable state of the log cabin. The largely unharmed front wall now

had two massive craters in it, and the foundation was significantly tilted. The

initial calculation was that we had until six o'clock tomorrow morning before

the durability ran out, but now it was going to deplete two hours sooner. That

meant we had seven hours until the deadline.

But there was reason for optimism, too. Out of all the materials we needed to

repair the house, the seemingly toughest to acquire was iron ore, and we'd

found quite a lot of it in the bear's cave. Apparently, taking in plenty of iron was

how the creature grew those metallic bristles on its chest.

We used makeshift stone axes to chop out as much of the ore as could be

carried, but there was no way to know if this would make enough iron until we

melted it. Which meant our next mission was the first real step toward the Iron

Age—building a proper furnace for smelting.

"…But before that, I'd really like some clothes," I murmured, looking down at

my avatar dressed in underwear and nothing else. I felt quite vulnerable

walking in the woods at night like this, but we had to find the bear's cave while

we could still make use of Leafa's sword. We did, in fact, end up in combat one

more time while searching. It was a giant bat-type monster, and my brilliant

sister was the one who ensured we were able to reach the spot where we

found all that iron. Yes, I'd jumped all the way up to level-13, but in an RPG, it

was your gear that truly defined you.

So the furnace came first and then armor—or at least clothes.

Then I heard a voice from inside calling out, "You can come back in, Big

Brother!"

But that answer didn't tell me how they solved the encumbrance issue.

Feeling skeptical, I opened the door carefully.

In the torchlit living room, the three girls were standing in a row. To my

surprise, all three were wearing identical dresses.

"Uh…wh-what's with those?!" I asked, my index finger swaying back and forth

from end to end.

With a look that was seven parts pride to three parts bashfulness, Asuna

replied, "We made cloth out of the ubiquigrass fibers and turned that into

clothes."

"Wh-when did you…?" I gaped. This time, it was Alice's turn to give me a grin.

"We already knew from your example that the equipment we brought over

from Alfheim would eventually be unusable. So I started to prepare from that

point onward."

"A-and were you going to make something for…?" I tried to ask, but Leafa

clapped her hands to interrupt.

"Sorry, Kirito, we used up all the rough ubiquigrass cloth making our outfits.

You'll have to wait a little longer for us to make more!"

"…Okay," I said, telling myself I can always make it on my own. There were

plenty of other things to discuss at the moment, I supposed.

"…Anyway, about the…"

"Hold on, Big Brother. Don't you have something else to say first?"

interrupted Leafa. She did a little spin for me, which caused me to snort.

"Ah yes. Of course. You all look very nice in your new—"

"Does this game have a photo feature, Kirito?" asked Asuna. Clearly, all three

of them were quite pleased with their rough cloth dresses. Or maybe it was

because, for the first time, they were all wearing matching outfits.

They seemed so happy that I did want to capture the moment, but alas.

"There doesn't seem to be a photography button in the UI…Perhaps there is a

picture-taking item like in SAO, but I doubt we'll find it anytime soon," said the

most crestfallen member of the trio, who, to my surprise, was Alice. But she

recovered from her mood quickly to look out the window. "That voice from

earlier…It was a very strange message. Something about all shall be given."

"Oh! Yeah, it did say that!" Leafa cried.

Asuna added, "Saying all might as well be saying nothing…But at least I kind of

understand what it is they want us to do…"

"The way it spoke reminded me of the pontifex," Alice said. At last, I smacked

my fist into my palm. Maybe the reason it sounded so familiar was that it

reminded me of the half-human, half-god master of the Underworld,

Administrator, and her pompous, enigmatic speeches. Asuna and Leafa didn't

seem confused by this, because they knew quite a lot about the history and

events of the Underworld. Over there, they'd been the goddesses Stacia and

Terraria, after all.

Of course, the voice just now did not belong to Administrator. She had

perished on the top floor of Central Cathedral, her fluctlight obliterated. And it

had cost the life of my best friend and strongest partner…

A sudden, surprising pain stung my chest, and I held my breath. Slow

exhalation helped me sink that painful throb back to the depth of my memories.

I smiled for the girls, who were looking at me with concern.

"Well…putting the voice aside for now, we should hurry on the house repairs.

I'll go collect some stones by the river. You make more kindling wood from

the…"

But I didn't get to finish that sentence. Not due to any external reason; I was

suddenly overcome with a ferocious thirst, and I couldn't speak.

I looked below my HP and MP bars and saw that the blue TP (thirst points) bar

was below its halfway point, and the yellow SP (stamina points) bar was also

about 20 percent down. It wasn't just the carrying weight that the grace period

was saving us from. It was also holding back hunger and thirst, and when that

mysterious voice spoke, that protection vanished, too…From this point on, it

was truly going to be a struggle for survival.

"I'm…thirsty…"

I looked down at the sound of the voice and saw that Leafa and the other two

were also holding their throats and coughing. It was too early for our bodies to

be getting dehydrated in the real world, so this was definitely a virtual sensation

the game system was causing. In other words, we could ignore it with no ill

effects on our physical bodies, but once the TP bar dropped to zero, our HP

would go next. We needed to replenish our fluids if we wanted to survive here.

"I take it back. Let's all go to the river," I suggested, to unanimous agreement.

Asuna, Alice, and I had our trusty stone knives, while Leafa equipped the stone

ax we'd used to mine the ore, and we left the cabin.

With the torch in my other hand to light the way, we hurried southwest to the

river. Just hearing its cool, rustling flow made the dryness in my throat feel

twice as harsh. Initially, I expected to use some kind of material to make a cup,

but I couldn't wait.

I knelt at the edge of the river, stuck the base of the torch between some

rocks, and scooped up the water with both hands. It wasn't quite laceratingly

cold, but it was still plenty chilly. As I lifted it to my mouth and gulped it

greedily, a numbing sense of intoxication spread to the back of my head, and

my TP bar began to recover. The girls knelt down to the sides and scooped up

water for themselves. I repeated the process three times before I felt normal

again.

When my TP bar was full again, I checked the clock in the corner of my vision.

It was nine fifteen at night. I'd have to put up with the thirst after this point for

a while and make sure I checked to see how many hours it took for my TP to

drop dangerously low again.

Once we'd all drank our fill, the four of us stood up, then smiled bashfully as

we noticed we'd all splashed water on our shirts, like little children.

"…I would like a cup," said Alice.

Asuna looked at the riverbank. "I don't think we can make cups out of grass.

Maybe you can carve one out of wood…"

"It's probably easier to just bake one out of clay," I said. "Actually, hang on.

It'll be a pain to come down to the river every time we're thirsty. We need to

build a container that can store a lot of water—and canteens for carrying

around…"

"What if we just dig a well, then?" Alice pointed out.

That made sense. Only Centoria had a proper water system in the

Underworld. In rural villages and towns like Rulid and Zakkaria, people used

wells and water jugs. That was possible because that world wasn't a 3Dconstructed digital setting. But in a normal VR game, altering the landscape by

making mountains and digging deep holes just wasn't possible.

"We can test that out later, but for now, the furnace comes—"

But before the word first could escape my lips, my stomach happily let out a

tremendous gurgle. I felt a wave of hunger come over me, and now it was the

SP bar that was nearly halfway gone.

The girls suddenly clutched their own stomachs, probably worried they would

make similar sounds. That might have a helpful effect in the real world, but it

would do nothing in the virtual realm…

"Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!" Leafa suddenly shouted. I flinched, feeling tense. At first,

I was worried, but then I realized that it was her attempt to hide the sounds of

gurgling. Ahhh, my sweet, foolish sister. As the big brother here, I needed to say

a word.

"Look, who cares if your stomach gurgles a bit? For one thing, it's just your

avatar—it's not you."

"I don't want to hear that from a guy dressed as a caveman!"

"H-hey, I'm not naked by choice. And you didn't bother to make clothes for

me, so…"

There was another mysterious sound, and I fell silent. This time, it wasn't

from my own stomach, but another source…A large splashing sound from about

the middle of the river.

"…What was that?" Asuna asked.

Alice's face went hard. "Probably just a fish leaping out of the water."

"What? A fish? Let's catch it, then!" Leafa proclaimed, making no bother to

hide her hunger as she approached the river. I grabbed her collar and yanked

her back.

"Listen, we don't know it's a fish yet. It could be a crocodile."

"Ha-ha-ha! Since when can you find crocodiles in a coniferous forest?"

"And since when did commonsense rules from real life apply to a…?"

Splash, splash.

This time, the new sound was closer than before. Something was

approaching.

"Get away from the water!" I said to the others at minimal volume, retreating

from the river while still holding Leafa's collar. Then I picked up the nearby

torch and held my knife in the other hand.

"Give me some of the fire, too!"

I turned left at that request to see Alice holding out a stick she must have

picked up along the riverbank. It would have lower light and durability than a

proper torch with dried grass tied around the end, but we needed all the

visibility we could get right now. I leaned the torch over and lit the dead branch.

Now that our light was 50 percent brighter, it shone upon the blackness of the

water. The waves were complex and churning because the river curved at that

point, hiding whatever was under the surface. I waited for several seconds, but

there was no new sound.

Maybe it really was a fish…

I had just relaxed at last, when the water burst forth just ten feet away. It

revealed a round head and flat beak, just like a duck's. But this one was a foot

wide and twice as long.

"…A p-platypus…?" Leafa whispered. As if it heard her, the creature opened

its yellow bill.

"Quack."

Well, it sounded exactly like a duck, but it wasn't enough to calm my nerves—

because when that bill opened, it revealed many small, sharp fangs.

"Quack-quack," it repeated, silly and nasal, and the massive bill began to glide

toward the bank. I waved the others farther back. As with the bear, it did not

yet have a visible cursor. It seemed that, in this game, an enemy cursor would

not appear until you or a party member attacked or were attacked. In other

words, you couldn't use the system's method of display to determine if a

creature was approaching because it was hostile or if it was harmless and just

wanted food.

The bill stopped again, just short of the water's edge. I waved the torch

closer, still keeping my distance, but this one did not seem to be afraid of fire,

either. The eyes on either side of its rounded head were black, reflecting the

torch's orange light.

Suddenly, it broke the surface with a splash, and the owner of the bill rose up

to reveal its body. The torso was squat, with thick limbs. It looked like a

platypus at first, but rather than a furry hide, it was covered in green scales.

The platypus waddled a bit, then rose up onto its back legs. When standing,

its head was level with my chest. Now I could see that its rear legs were bigger

than the front and much stronger. Its tail was long and worked to keep its

balance as it stood, just like…

"…A dinosaur!" I shouted without thinking.

The platypus (platysaur?) opened its bill. "Quaaack!"

It still sounded exactly like a duck, but those gleaming fangs were

unquestionably carnivorous in nature and were going to do much more than

hurt if they bit you. I was readying myself for battle, realizing that if it took one

more step toward us, I needed to attack at once, or we were in trouble.

Just then, some kind of reddish blob flew from the left and landed smack-dab

in the middle of the creature's open bill.

"Gwack!" the platysaur squawked, lowering its head and wriggling its bill

furiously. When it had swallowed, it opened its mouth again.

I looked over and saw Asuna throwing another blob. It was about the size of a

softball. At last, I recognized that she was throwing the thornspike cave bear

meat at it.

The platysaur devoured the second hunk of meat and began to move toward

Asuna across the sandy riverside. Its short arms waved, and it squealed,

"Quack-quack!" It was clear that the creature was now begging for more, but I

didn't know if feeding it more meat would satisfy it. The platysaur was smaller

than the bear but twice the size of a large dog.

"Um, Asuna…"

I wanted to suggest throwing the next piece of meat farther, so we could

escape while the platysaur ran after it. But she raised her hand to quiet me and

whispered, "I can see a circular meter in front of it. It's about sixty percent full."

"A m-meter…?" I parroted back. Then it clicked—she was probably seeing a

taming indicator.

It occurred to me that taming the creature would probably create its own

difficulties…but I couldn't say that now. Asuna brought out a third chunk of bear

meat from her inventory and was approaching the creature, holding it in her

hand rather than throwing it. The platysaur squawked and briefly backed away,

but its appetite won out, and it leaned its head forward. It sniffed at Asuna's

hand with the nostrils at the end of its bill, then took the meat in its mouth and

chewed.

Asuna looked at me with some consternation and said, "The meter's full, but

nothing's happening…What should I do now?"

"Um, I don't know…"

You started it, Asuna! But the truth was, I wanted the taming to work out,

too. I just couldn't figure out what the issue was.

Alice suggested, "When capturing wild dragons, we calm them first with meat,

before putting the reins on them."

"Reins…? Oh, right."

I called up my ring menu and went to the inventory. There was something

weird in the middle of the ring, but I was too busy to investigate now. I brought

out the leftover ubiquigrass rope and tossed it to Asuna.

"Put that around its neck and tie it!"

The fencer—stone knifer?—looked intimidated by the thought. But I had to

assume that the attempt would only work coming from Asuna, who could see

the meter. She held the rope and slowly approached the platysaur. As it chewed

on the bear meat in blissful ignorance, she slipped the end of the rope around

its neck and tried to tie it into a knot.

"Th-the meter's shivering!" she said, trembling.

Leafa sent some encouragement her way. "You can do it, Asuna!"

"I'll tryyyy," she wailed, but the end of the rope slipped through her fingers.

Tying knots was one of the most difficult physical actions in a virtual setting,

because of the fine coordination required between hands. In the meantime, the

platysaur finished eating the meat and noticed the rope around its neck. It

screeched, "Quack!"

But that was also when Asuna finished tying the rope. Instantly, the

platysaur's entire body flashed, the same way the materials did when you

crafted them into something else. The same 3D cursor combining a circular HP

bar and sharp spindles appeared over its head. It was green.

"Quah-wah-wah-wack!" the platysaur exclaimed, rubbing the end of its bill

against Asuna's face. Our first attempt at beast-taming was a success.

"You did it, Asuna!" cheered Leafa, throwing her arms around the platysaur's

neck and scratching at its triangular scales. The tamed monster made little

grunting noises of pleasure. I stared at the cursor, eager to find out what the

creature's official name was. Underneath the HP bar was a string of words

reading: Long-billed Giant Agamid.

What's an agamid?

I was going to ask Yui, until I remembered that our dear daughter was in a

separate location. My next choice was to open a browser, but we couldn't do

that, either. Well, the next time I logged out, I could do an Internet search…

assuming I remembered.

At any rate, it was a very good thing we did not need to fight. Since Asuna

successfully tamed it without having the Beast-Taming skill already, it probably

wasn't that powerful of a monster, but we needed to avoid every possible fight

until we had safely repaired our cabin.

"Okay, let's move those stones," I said, heading back for the riverbank to

complete our original mission.

"Before that, we should eat," said Alice. My stomach promptly gurgled a

response. It kind of sounded like the cry of the long-billed giant agamid.

We dined on a rather lopsided menu of seared bear meat, but it did recover

my hunger and SP bar—plus the HP I'd lost from the fight with the bear, which

was an unexpected bonus. Only then did we finally collect stones from the river.

The other necessary materials were clay and dried grass. The grass was easy,

but I wasn't sure where to get clay at first. Then I noticed the whitish spots on

the ground near the river, dug them up, and tapped them to find that they were

called rough gray clay, which seemed to fit the bill.

Once the materials were collected, we went back to the log cabin, and I

opened my menu.

That was when I noticed, once again, that the inside of the ring menu, in

between the eight icons, was no longer an empty space.

"Wh…what is this?"

This was a string of numbers that read 0000:01:03:24. The rightmost digit was

increasing by one each second, so I could surmise that the format was day :

hour : minute : second, but what kind of time was it measuring?

"Oh, we noticed that when we were making the clothes," said Asuna, who

opened her own menu. The same count was there, the numbers identical down

to the second.

"Let's see…An hour and three minutes ago was…," I said, trying to count

backward to the moment it started, but it wasn't necessary.

Over my shoulder, Alice announced with great certainty, "That clock began

counting at 9:05…the moment the voice said all shall be given."

"Oh, right…of course. But why do they need this counter? It's not like you'd

need something like this to remember how many hours it's been since then…"

"If anything, I would have preferred a clock that says the real time on it," said

Leafa. We all nodded. But given that we still didn't know who created Unital

Ring or why they'd converted hundreds of thousands of players, it seemed

pointless to guess whatever hidden purpose the UI contained.

"Let's just focus on our task for now," I said, pushing that frustration aside

and tapping the SKILLS icon. From the list of craftable items under the

Stoneworking skill, I selected Stone Furnace.

Something strange appeared before my eyes—a large, translucent lightpurple object. It was a metalworking furnace in ghost-display mode. A new Tips

window appeared in front of it.

Manipulating a construction object's position in ghost mode is done manually.

Use pinch controls to approach or distance—and clench firmly to begin

construction. Once in construction mode, it is impossible to cancel.

"Pinch controls…?" I repeated. I tried closing my hand a bit, and the

temporary ghost image floated closer. If I uncurled my fingers, it moved farther

away. Tilting my hand left or right allowed me to fine-tune the way it hugged

the ground.

"Can you all see this, too?" I asked, and the three of them nodded. I guessed

that making it impossible to cancel construction was supposed to prevent

pranks or harassment using ghost objects. It would probably be fun to wave it

around with my hand, but the last thing I needed was for someone to punish

me with another open-hand slap on the back.

There was a decent amount of space in the clearing around the log cabin, but

it was easy to envision running out of room if we didn't do this logically. After

discussing with Asuna, we decided to get some distance away from the west

wall of the cabin. I carefully adjusted its placement and clenched my right hand.

With a da-thud! a large object fell out of thin air and landed on the ground in

the exact position of the ghost. Construction mode ended, and my

Stoneworking skill increased again. The new object resembled a white stone

fireplace with gray clay grout. The smokestack was about six feet tall, and a

semicircular combustion chamber jutted out of the front like an oven. I couldn't

tell how to work it just by looking at it.

The giant agamid approached it first, stuck its head into the oven area,

sniffed, and remarked, "Quack!"

"By the way…what should we call him?" I asked the creature's owner, who

mulled it over.

"Hmm…I'm not really good at coming up with names…"

"No kidding. Your avatar name is your real name."

She bopped me on the shoulder. "Yours is practically your real name, too!

But…I'll think of something," she said, shrugging.

The giant agamid came trotting back, claws clicking, and she scratched him

under the chin. Knowing her personality, she wouldn't want to just pick the first

name that came to mind, but she would do her research and arrive at a name

with meaning. That would require going back to the real world, but since she

was borrowing her brother's secret connection to dive, she wasn't going to log

out until we were done repairing the cabin.

"Kirito, let's use it already!" said Leafa, beckoning me to the furnace.

I walked over. "Sure."

I was expecting some trial and error, but in the end, running the furnace was

simple. I tapped it to bring up a special window—and either dropped the

materials there or transferred them directly from my inventory—and that was

it.

The first thing I did was set a few of the ores we retrieved from the bear's

cave, and following the advice on the Tips window, packed some wood into the

combustion chamber. After lighting them with Alice's flint rocks, they began to

burn nice and red.

The furnace worked like what they call a rocket stove, sucking in air from the

entrance to the combustion chamber and shooting flames up out of the

smokestack with a whooshing roar. It worked somewhat like a mini game,

where you had to continually feed it more fuel at appropriate times to keep the

inside of the furnace at the proper temperature.

I fed it log after log, watching the flames from the chimney, until eventually

red-hot melted metal trickled out of the tap and flowed into a rectangular mold

at the base of the furnace. Once it was full, it made that flashing effect again

then vanished so that more molten metal could collect there. A message

popped up saying Smelting skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1. It felt like my

character build was going further and further into crafting.

After three minutes or so, the flames automatically went out. When I opened

the furnace's operation window again, there were four crude pig-iron ingot

items in the completed area. I touched one to make it appear, tapped it gingerly

with my fingertip until I was sure it was cold, then lifted it over my head.

"The Iron Age has arrived!" I announced, excited. It did not seem to register

deeply with the women, who gave me a few polite claps out of courtesy. The

giant agamid approached, sniffed the ingot a bit, then muttered "Quek" in what

I registered as a mocking tone.

It took over thirty minutes and a hundred-plus logs to melt all the iron ore.

We had plenty of spiral pine logs around, so the wood wasn't an issue, but the

waiting was very tough, especially after I'd gotten used to the nearinstantaneous crafting process of SAO and ALO. My companions went back to

the river to get more clay, so I fed the logs in alone, and when it was all over, I

felt more exhausted than elated.

Still, this meant we could move on to the next step. To repair the cabin, we

needed iron sheets and iron nails, and to make those, we needed an anvil and a

blacksmithing hammer.

For a moment, I was worried, thinking that in order to make an anvil, we

would need an anvil, but according to the Tips window, it could be done with a

piece of equipment called a casting table. That could be made with the

Stoneworking skill, but it required stone, clay, wood, and sand. So I had to go

the river, too, and fill my inventory with rocks and sand and such. I felt like a kid

in kindergarten playing with mud and stones.

I went into construction mode and created a casting-table ghost, then set it

up on the left side of the smelting furnace. In the operation window, I set the

production item to be an anvil, inserted the ingots and wood, and lit it up. The

melted iron pooled in the mold, and when it was done, I had a crude anvil. I also

gained the Metal-Casting skill, but at this point, my honest opinion was Just

combine this all into the Ironworking skill!

The only remaining step was getting a blacksmithing hammer. That could also

be crafted at the casting table, so I was all set to get started, when I was

interrupted.

"Kirito, why don't you take a break from that and make us a bisque-firing

kiln?" asked Asuna, who came back from the river with me.

I considered this for two seconds and then asked, "…What do you mean by

take a break, exactly?"

"Take a break from working on the iron so you can work on some potteryfiring equipment instead," she said without batting an eye, then smiled. This is

what you get with people who take a break from their English homework to

work on math homework, I thought ruefully and opened up the Stoneworking

skill again.

The bisque-firing kiln required lots of materials, too, but that was what Asuna

and the others had brought from the river. I loaded up my inventory with

stones and clay and such and went back into construction mode. At Asuna's

request, I selected a location close to the cabin and watched them go to work.

The kiln looked like a gigantic dog kennel, with a door in the front and a

combustion chamber below. If you opened the door, there were stone shelves

inside, which they stacked with plates, bowls, and cups they'd made out of

kneaded clay. We packed wood into the burning chamber, and Asuna lit it.

"My Pottery skill proficiency went up," she said happily. Noting that she was

turning into a crafter rather than a fighter, too, I headed back for the Iron Age

civilization I was building. According to my four status bars, my HP and MP were

maxed out, while my TP was down 40 percent, and my SP was down 20. All that

water I drank occurred at nine fifteen, and now it was eleven fifteen, so it took

two hours for my TP to go down 40 percent. In other words, 10 percent every

thirty minutes.

That was a very leisurely pace compared to the survival RPGs I'd played

before, but that was probably subject to change based on the player's activity

and environment. If you were engaged in heavy, continuous labor or situated in

a baking desert, it would probably go down faster. Changes in stats, skills, and

gear might make a difference, too.

"Hmm…"

I opened my ring menu. In the middle of the circle of icons, the mysterious

counter was up to 0000:02:10:45. A bit over two hours since that mysterious

voice…but that alone didn't make me feel much of anything, except that time

had passed quickly. I shrugged and opened the STATUS icon at the very top.

This strange Unital Ring game did not have numerical stats like Strength and

Intelligence. Instead, it was more of a perk-based system—concrete abilities

that could be earned, rather than increasing base stats. If a skill was a talent you

practiced and built up, your abilities were the things you could do as a result of

it. It seemed like the general breakdown was that skills were more for item

crafting, while abilities were combat-focused.

At the bottom of the status window was a button to take you to a detailed

screen for abilities, which appeared in a window when I pressed it. In the center

of that screen were four icons arranged in a cross configuration. The one on the

top was BRAWN, on the right was TOUGHNESS, on the bottom was SAGACITY, and on the

left was SWIFTNESS. Two lines extended farther from there in each direction,

leading to more icons. For example, BRAWN led to BONE BREAKER and STOUT, while

TOUGHNESS led to PERSEVERANCE and ANTIVENOM, such that the farther you went, the

more the ability tree developed outward. And each ability had ten ranks you

could earn.

I'd defeated the ultra-hard thornspike cave bear by using the rare Rolling Logs

Off the Roof to Crush It stat, boosting my level up to 13, so I now had twelve

ability points to spend. I couldn't stand the idea of dying while I was saving up

my points and potentially losing some of them due to a penalty. Spending them

now was probably a wise decision, but I didn't see a re-spec button on the

window to get all the points back. I had no idea what the best or most efficient

choices were at this point.

In this sense, SAO had been a walk in the park—your only choices were

between STR and AGI. I glanced over at the women feeding logs into the kiln

and gave the topic some thought.

It seemed like we were going to be in the four-person party for a while, so it

was probably best to consider abilities by distinct roles. If we kept our builds

from ALO, I'd be a physical-based attacker, Alice would be a defense-focused

tank, Leafa would be a multiskilled magic swordswoman, and Asuna would be a

healer who could use her sword in a pinch. That probably meant I should take

the Brawn tree…but in a survival game, nothing could be more survival-focused

than Toughness. And it might be nice to learn some magic so that all my MP

could be used for death prevention.

Plus, maybe the others would want to choose different roles than what they

took in ALO. At this point in my life, I was finally learning that the secret to

getting along with girls was consulting with them about everything, so I decided

not to go off on my own selecting abilities and closed my window. I considered

the freshly made anvil at my feet.

"Hmm, what was I supposed to do next…?"

Realizing that I was getting way too used to relying on Yui to remember things

for me, I finally recalled that I was about to make my own blacksmithing

hammer.

Once again, I faced the casting table and set the item to create. First, I melted

down ingots to make a crude iron hammerhead, then combined it with a piece

of wood to turn it into a crude blacksmithing hammer. At last, I was ready.

Next, I went to the anvil and set the ingots. In SAO, you had to put the metal

into the furnace to get it red-hot before you struck it, but in Unital Ring, you

could do it cold. I selected Iron Sheet from the anvil's menu and swung the

hammer.

It made a high-pitched clang! and a message saying Blacksmithing skill gained

appeared, but I was more concerned with the surprising volume of the impact.

Thinking back on it, the thornspike cave bear that attacked us could very well

have been drawn by the sound of Leafa's sword skills slicing up the logs. Three

hours had passed since that incident, so I supposed a new bear could have

popped up from the same cave by now.

Asuna and the others looked nervously at me from the kiln, clearly worried

about the same thing. I lifted the hammer in a gesture meant to reassure them

that it was okay. If another bear attacked, we could still use the same logdropping technique again…

But…no. It was too powerful of a method, being able to kill a much tougher

monster without any exposure to damage. If the Cardinal System that was

loaded into The Seed was managing Unital Ring like the other games, and all of

its autonomous features were enabled, the system would have realized after

the first use that the log-dropping trick was essentially a glitch and would come

up with some way to prevent us from doing it again.

"Hmm…"

I looked from the pitch-black forest to the roof of the log cabin and back. Just

in case the system only tried to prevent us from using logs, maybe it would be a

good idea to stockpile a bunch of rocks. Or boulders.

"I'm going back to the river for a minute!" I said to the other three.

To my surprise, Asuna opened the door of the kiln, said "Oh, then take

these!" and removed two round objects. Pots…? Ahhh yes, it was about time

that my TP meter hit the halfway mark again.

"Got it!"

I trotted over, took the pots, and hurried to the river. I filled them up with

water, put them back in my inventory, then filled the rest of my carrying

capacity with big rocks.

Back in the clearing, the women had laid out the other pottery on the ground.

Some of them had cracked during firing, but there were four cups, five bowls,

and six plates that had survived intact.

"Here you go," I said, producing the water-filled jugs. Asuna smiled and held

out a cup, which I took and filled with water. "Let's give this a try!"

I put my other hand on my waist and drained the cup in one go, refilling the

TP meter. The others enjoyed their water, too, and we filled a bowl for the giant

agamid to lap at with its tongue.

I exhaled and said, "So we have to drink water every two hours…This is going

to make it really tough if you run out while in the middle of a dungeon or

something…"

"What if it's like the Underworld, and there are sacred art…er, magic spells

that produce water?" Alice asked.

I smirked initially, then said, "I suppose that's not out of the question. The

real issue is how to learn the Magic skill…"

"Perhaps if you use it, you acquire it? Like with Weaving and Pottery," Alice

suggested, then snapped her hand right in front of my nose. Out of pure reflex, I

jolted backward, and she chuckled at me.

Leafa shook her head in dismay. "You're such a chicken, Kirito."

"N-no! I'm not!" I protested. You just don't know how scary Alice the Integrity

Knight was! But I couldn't say that out loud. Instead, I drank another cup of

water and handed it back to Asuna. "If you have extra clay, make more pots and

jugs. At this rate, there's nothing to be lost by having them filled up and sitting

around."

"That's true. And it looks like getting the Pottery skill higher allows us to make

bigger jugs. I'll keep at it."

"Thanks. I'll go make those sheets and nails."

"Good luck, Kirito."

We fist-bumped, and I headed back to the anvil. I just had to trust that if

another bear came back for us, I could deal with it using all the rocks I had

stuffed in my inventory.

I used a sliced piece of log for a chair and grabbed the blacksmithing hammer.

It was probably just superstition, but Lisbeth the experienced blacksmith had

told me that if you hesitated, the rate of failure was higher. So I put my all into

the swing and smacked the ingot.

Clang! Clang! I put ten crisp, firm blows onto the ingot before it flashed white.

It slowly changed shape atop the anvil and turned into ten thin sheets of metal.

The repair required 216 sheets, which meant a minimum of twenty-two ingots

with no mistakes. But even including the material for nails, I knew we had just

enough. I told myself I'd be done with the iron materials by midnight and placed

the second ingot on the anvil.

This was another simplistic, repetitive process, but compared to feeding wood

into the furnace, it was much more fun. If I really did choose to play as a crafter

in this game, I would much rather be a smith than a metalworker, I decided. But

that would mean starting as an apprentice at Lisbeth's armory. I wondered if

she and Silica and Yui were all right after falling with New Aincrad…

My thoughts wandered here and there as I worked, and before I knew it, I had

220 sheets of iron. Even if each one was less than a tenth of an inch, all stacked

up they were a foot and a half tall. If I tried to pick up the entire thick stack of

metal at once, the paperweight encumbrance icon appeared again. I was

hoping that being level-13 would fix that, but at this rate, it was going to be a

while before I could equip my trusty Blárkveld. I could carry it around in my

inventory, except that my space was currently full of big rocks. If I got my

weight down to half the capacity, I could lift the stack, and so I started trudging

back to the cabin to put them in the home storage space there.

The others were busy kneading more clay in front of the kiln. It didn't seem

like we'd need that many dishes to me, but I guessed they were serious about

getting the Pottery skill high enough to make giant water jugs. Only one of them

really needed that…but I was probably just being crude. They simply liked

making dishes and utensils.

They waved at me with muddy hands, and I gave them a smile back, then

headed up the half-destroyed porch. In order to open the door, I had to set

down the stack of sheets on the floor, so I took the opportunity to stretch.

It was almost midnight, but I didn't feel sleepy yet. My nerves were probably

just raw from being in this unfamiliar, dangerous situation, I thought, but then I

realized that wasn't the entire story. A part of me, deep down, was enjoying

this new challenge. There was an excitement associated with working your way

through a new and unfamiliar world with no proven success strategies, figuring

it out as you went along. Technically, we hadn't gone anywhere yet, just stayed

close to the starting point, but if we didn't have the cabin here as a fixed base, I

would probably have chosen to keep moving, onward and upward. Just like the

time four years ago, when I'd left the Town of Beginnings alone, trying to reach

the next destination before anyone else…

And because I was too lost in thoughts like this, I failed to notice it at first.

But I should have realized much earlier. I should have known that the clanging

of the hammer late at night would bring other things than just bears.

"…Who's there?!"

Alice was the first to speak. I paused in the act of opening the cabin door to

look at the cat-eared knight—and then in the direction she was facing.

A number of torches were approaching from the path that led southwest,

toward the river. In the lead was a man of average height, wearing brown

armor that looked like leather. The orange light source was reflected by the

pommel of the longsword on his left hip. Like with the monsters, no cursor

appeared just from meeting his gaze, so at the moment, there was no way to

determine if this was a player, an NPC, or even a monster.

The group did not stop walking upon hearing Alice's voice. In a potential sign

that they had no intention of fighting, the man in front raised his right hand to

show there was nothing in it as he entered the clearing.

Asuna and Leafa took sides around Alice, and the giant agamid opened its bill

in a threatening manner. I quickly leaped off the porch onto the ground. After

making sure my stone knife was stuck into the back of my underwear

waistband, I called out, "Stop right there!"

At last, the men came to a halt. Going by the light of the torches, there were

eight of them in total. Twice as many as us…and they all had weapons. Some of

them even had small plates of metal on their leather armor in a scale mail

fashion. I was impressed that they'd reached this level of technique in the first

eight hours of the game. The women here only had dresses made of woven

grass fiber, and I was stuck in a measly pair of underpants.

They were checking out our tech level, too, based on the way they looked at

the women. When the man in charge saw me, he went wide-eyed, and from the

rear, I heard stifled giggles, as if in relief…or perhaps mockery. That's minus one

affinity point for you, I thought.

"Are you players?" I asked, just to be sure.

The man in the leather nodded. "You too, I assume."

I didn't recognize his voice or his face. But of course I didn't. Unital Ring had

converted over a hundred thousand VRMMO players. I couldn't tell if these

players had come from New Aincrad or not—or if they were former ALO players

at all—but I could guess that they'd appeared somewhere on this vast continent

and followed the river until they found us.

As if to back up my conjecture, the man in the leather armor lifted his hands

again. "We don't intend to fight you," he said, "we just want to rest a little.

We've been on the move for nearly five hours now, and you're the first players

we've met."

"The first? How do you have such a huge party, then?" I asked.

He blinked a few times, surprised, and asked, "What about you? Didn't you

rush out of there?"

"Rush out…?"

I glanced at my other party members, but none of us knew where "there"

was. I turned back to him and chose my words very carefully.

"…We fell here with our house. So you're the first players we've seen, too."

Now it was his turn to look skeptical. A smaller player dressed in cloth gear

stepped forward and sized up our half-destroyed cabin. "I get it…You must have

fallen all this way from New Aincrad."

"What? Is that even possible?" A large man in scale armor gaped. Though I

had no evidence, my intuition told me that these three were the leaders of the

group. The small man had a metal dagger at his left side, and the large man had

a two-handed hammer on his back. Neither one looked very fancy, but they

were clearly much stronger than the stone knives and axes we were equipped

with.

The dagger-user looked up at the man in scale armor and waved his hand.

"C'mon, old man, you saw all the wreckage from roofs and walls and such near

where New Aincrad fell. I didn't see any houses that were intact, but that was

hard ground there. If they fell on sand or water, maybe some stuff would have

survived with damage like that?" he said, indicating the cabin.

"Don't call me 'old man,'" grunted the large man, prompting some brief

laughs from the rest of the group.

Things seemed a bit more relaxed, but only for a moment—until Asuna said,

"So you came from ALO, too, then?! Did you see where New Aincrad fell?!"

"Huh? Er…y-yeah, we did. In the distance, though."

"Where did it fall?! Is it still intact?!" she asked rapidly. The dagger-user tried

to keep up and answer the questions, but the man in the leather armor put a

hand on his shoulder.

"Now hang on…that's valuable map data. We can't just give it away for free."

Alice was about to say something, but Leafa quickly grabbed her dress and got

her to stay quiet. I was sure it was going to be some insult about greedy smallmindedness, but it was the right move to stop her. I stepped forward and said

to the man wearing leather armor, "All right. We can make a deal…What do you

want in exchange for your map data?"

He turned around to confer with his companions for a little bit and came to a

quick answer. "Food and a resting place…Preferably somewhere we can spend

the night."

"Let us discuss that, too, then."

I lifted my hand, told them not to move, then headed over to the other three.

The first thing I whispered was a question for Asuna.

"How much more bear meat do we have?"

"Plenty, but there are lots of them…If we cook a full, solid meal for us, them,

and Aga, it'll probably use up all we have."

Really? I wanted to ask. You're going to call it Aga?

"What if we turn it into a soup, rather than cooking it directly?" I suggested

instead.

"Oh, then we could make two meals out of it. But we don't have any salt or

spices, so I can't predict how it will taste."

"They'll have to deal with it. Also…what about letting them inside?"

Irritated, Asuna briefly furrowed her brow, but she consented. "That's fine;

it's just one night. Well…are you okay with this deal, too, Alice and Leafa?"

"I suppose we have no better choice."

"Learning where to find New Aincrad is huge for us."

On top of that, the giant agamid quacked its assent, so I turned and walked

toward the other party, giving them a quick nod.

"We'll give you a place to spend the night and enough food to refill your SP

bars. But we don't have beds or blankets, and we can't guarantee the food will

be tasty."

"Not a problem. It's enough just knowing we don't have to worry about mobs

or NPC attacks. Logging out in this world is a major gamble."

"…What do you mean?" I asked.

The man in the leather armor shrugged. "You don't know…? Well, it's only

been three hours. You heard that message, right?"

"Yeah."

"From that point on, whenever you log out, your avatar stays in its place,

even inside your own home. If a mob attacks you, you'll be completely helpless.

We basically came here looking for a safe place to sleep."

"…Your avatar…stays in place…," I repeated, looking down at my body. If I got

attacked with zero defense like this, it didn't have to be a bear; even a fox or a

tanuki—if such things were actually found in this forest—would easily kill me. If

you didn't have a place guaranteed to be safe from a monster attack, or friends

who would guard you for hours at a time, you couldn't even safely log out to go

to bed.

"That's crazy…If you die from circumstances that unfair, no one's going to

even want to keep playing this stupid game after that."

"Oh, that's not a big concern," said the man in leather armor. He, the daggeruser, and even the large one in scale armor, wore oddly strained smiles. He

continued, "We didn't use this as a bargaining chip, so I'll tell you for free. In a

way, Unital Ring is a re-creation of SAO."

"…What's that supposed to mean?"

Did he know I was an SAO Survivor? I was briefly nervous, but it turned out

not to be the case. Instead, the man opened his ring menu and pointed at the

time counter in the middle.

"You noticed they added this to the menu, right?"

"Y-yeah…"

"We didn't know what it was counting at first…until one of our friends got

killed by an NPC. This is counting up how long we've survived so far. Once you

die in this game, that's it…You can never log in again."