The Day Before: 22nd Floor of Aincrad October 2024

Nine PM, October 23rd, 2024, Aincrad Standard Time.

I, Kirito, the level-96 swordsman, proposed to Asuna, the level-94 fencer, and

she accepted.

This was only within the VRMMORPG called Sword Art Online, of course. In

the real world, Asuna and I had never seen each other in person, and I wasn't

old enough to be legally wed—although maybe Asuna was.

I'm not sure what the first online game to incorporate a marriage system was,

but for the last twenty years at least, weddings between characters had been a

popular feature of MMOs. In most games, there was a bonus given to the

married couple, so many players chose to do it for practical reasons, while

others got married as a result of role-playing. There were even examples of

people getting married in-game and then going on to get married in real life

afterward. I imagine that if you surveyed all the MMO players in the entire

world and asked if they'd ever had an in-game marriage, over half of them

would say yes.

But unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for me, of all the MMORPGs I'd

played, I had never been married to another player.

The reason why, aside from my total lack of communication skills, was

because I felt completely unsure of what it meant to be "married in a game." If

I, Kazuto Kirigaya, playing the male avatar Kirito, was married to the female

character Random-ko, played by someone somewhere in the real world (who

quite possibly could have been male or female), should I consider myself to be

in a permanent party with Random-ko forever? Should I also assume that I had

paired up in some way with the real person playing Random-ko…?

To be completely honest, it wasn't as though I'd never received an invitation

to get married from female players on my friends list or in my guild in games I

played before SAO. But every single time I was asked, I froze up in front of my

monitor, sweating profusely, and just made things awkward for them.

I was an overthinking, overly timid coward, and I knew it.

But the entire reason I was so enthralled with MMOs was because they were

worlds where nothing was real. Behind every character was an unfamiliar player

of uncertain gender and age. There was no point in wondering, Who is this

person anyway? Everyone, including me, was not actually their in-game

character.

However, there was something about the marriage system that collided

headfirst with this perception of mine. Even if it was just in a game, there was

something about having a unique relationship with another person that I

couldn't get past. I couldn't help but be conscious of that person in the real

world, sitting at their computer with a mouse and keyboard.

So I avoided ever becoming permanent partners with other online players,

and that carried over into Sword Art Online after it turned into a death game. In

fact, I might have kept my distance from others even more, since our avatars'

looks and bodies were essentially our own.

But there was one person who slowly but surely melted away that alienation,

that fear of mine—Asuna.

In the nearly two years we spent trapped inside that deadly game, she

occupied different positions, but she never left my field of view. She started off

as an impromptu party member, then eventually joined the Knights of the

Blood guild and also took part in our boss raids. Sometimes she helped

investigate mysterious safe-zone murders, and sometimes she cooked S-ranked

ingredients into meals for me. It was through my experiences with Asuna that I

learned a valuable lesson.

In this world—and in the real world, too—and maybe even in the old-school

MMOs I played on a desktop, it was my choice to decide if the person I stood

across from was really them or not. If I doubted them and kept them at a

distance, they would be false. If I trusted them and drew closer, they would be

real.

And with me now, right here, was a warrior named Asuna.

It was fun to be with her. Asuna fighting, Asuna laughing, Asuna sulking—they

all stirred powerful emotions in me. I wanted her to always be within arm's

length, and I wanted a tangible connection to her. When I looked at Asuna, I no

longer wondered who she really was, even for a moment.

That was why I proposed to her.

It was not as though all my doubts were gone. I couldn't be completely

certain that my desire for Asuna's presence was truly what you'd call love. I

kept at a distance from my family in the real world and maintained my stance as

a solo player in this world. It made me wonder if I was truly capable of loving

another person.

But I felt sure that if I stuck around with Asuna long enough, I would learn the

answer to that last question.

That was the mental side of getting married in SAO, as I had come to feel

about it.

On the other hand, even in a game, that still left the physical side of getting

married—or more concretely, the question of our domestic situation.

After we were married, we would be living together, of course. The back-alley

room where I slept in Algade on the fiftieth floor was much too small for the

both of us, and even Asuna's maisonette in Selmburg on the sixty-first floor

wasn't quite up to size. And aside from the space issue, there was another

reason we couldn't continue living in the same places.

Asuna the Flash, subleader of the Knights of the Blood, was essentially the

most popular player in all of Aincrad at the moment.

The newspapers printed and sold by info dealers featured popularity polls,

where she regularly placed first by a mile. She had multiple fan clubs. The

owner of a chain of general stores offered her a deal to record not CDs, but RCs

—recording crystals—but they'd backed off when she pulled her rapier on

them.

She was worlds different from the player I remembered at the start of all this,

when she wore a hooded cape like Little Red Riding Hood. All the same, if word

got out that the game's sweetheart was married, it'd be front-page news.

If all her many fans mourned the change, and their energy eventually

morphed into curse-type attacks aimed at me, her marriage partner, then my

real-life luck was sure to plummet. Well, fine, maybe that wasn't really a

concern, but we couldn't enjoy our new life together if people tried to interview

her about it all the time, so we wanted to keep it a secret for as long as we

could.

Naturally, we'd be telling her many—and my few—friends, so the secret

wouldn't last for that long, but we couldn't enjoy the honeymoon forever,

anyway. Only four days had passed since we toppled the Gleameyes, the boss

of the seventy-fourth floor, so it would still be several days before players

discovered the boss chamber on the seventy-fifth. But even if Asuna and I didn't

take part in mapping the labyrinth tower, we had to be there to fight the boss.

So before then, we had to find a home in a nice, peaceful place where we

would spend time together for at least ten days…or maybe two weeks…or even

more.

As far as finances went, if Asuna and I sold off all the items we'd collected

that no longer served any real purpose, we would have enough col to purchase

a single-story home in the safe zone, near a town. But within that same day, the

info dealers would sniff us out. Ideally, we'd want a home on one of the

forgotten floors long past, in a discreet, out-of-the-way location but with a

comfortable amount of space.

That was a difficult set of conditions to meet, but as a matter of fact, I'd had

my eye on such a place before I proposed.

The twenty-second floor of Aincrad hadn't been the frontier of player

progress in a year and a half. Being lower on the conical flying castle, it was

therefore a larger floor, but nearly all of it was covered by deep forests and

grasslands—a beautiful floor that was low on interesting features to most

players. There hadn't been any memorable quests or field bosses, either. The

advancement group made a beeline to the labyrinth from the main town of

Corral, rushed through the mildly difficult tower, and beat the boss in a number

of days that was significantly fewer than average. At this point, the only players

who would visit the twenty-second floor were fishermen heading for one of its

many lakes and woodcrafters gathering lumber from its forests.

I hadn't visited it for a long time, either, but there was a sight that had stuck

with me for a long time that I just couldn't forget:

On the day the twenty-second-floor boss was defeated, I rushed back to

Corral alone to clean out all the quests I'd left unfinished.

Near the banks of a crystal clear blue lake, I found a tiny footpath that was

nearly invisible until you were right on it. It didn't seem related to any quests,

but I walked down it anyway, climbed a hill, and found myself at a single log

cabin sitting quietly in the midst of a dense pine forest.

Moss dotted the log walls, and there were two or three saplings growing from

the roof, but it wasn't dilapidated at all. If anything, it had a kind of natural

beauty, like a house built by elves that blended in with the trees around it.

I opened the wooden gate (the fact that I could do this was proof no other

player owned the home) and used my Search skill to survey the interior (it was

empty, meaning no NPC lived there, either) before approaching the front

terrace. At last, hanging from the doorknob, I found the wooden FOR SALE sign.

At the time, I was still under level-40, so I used my finger to count the digits of

the number on the sign, then exhaled and turned to leave—though I couldn't

help but look back over my shoulder several times with longing. In my head

were visions of being rich enough that the col I'd need to buy the house

overflowed from my packed inventory.

As a matter of fact, by the time I was level-70-something at the end of the

fiftieth floor, I could have scraped together enough to buy it. But as a member

of the frontline team, I couldn't make my base of operations a house that was a

twenty-minute walk from the nearest teleport gate. Ultimately, I chose a little

roost in Algade on the fiftieth floor, and I'd been spending my nights there until

just a few days ago.

It had been a year and a half ago that I found that little log cabin in the woods

—but when I made up my mind to propose to Asuna and wondered where we

would live, that was the first image that popped into my mind. Frankly, to me,

there was no other choice.

To propose to her, I'd brought up the information on the log cabin, suggested

we move there together, and lastly, said, "Let's get married."

Asuna had said yes without a moment of hesitation. I'd like to think that the

log cabin played some small part in that.

2

So with that out of the way…

The day after my proposal, at two in the afternoon on October 24th, Asuna

and I visited the twenty-second floor.

The day before, we went to the Knights of the Blood headquarters in

Grandzam on the fifty-fifth floor and submitted our notice for a temporary

leave of absence. Temporary or not, it technically meant leaving the guild at the

system level, so the red cross of the guild's insignia no longer showed up on our

player cursors.

We traveled through the teleport gate in Corral and began walking toward a

large lake to the southwest. I asked Asuna, "How long has it been since you

joined the KoB?"

"Well…," the fencer replied, inclining her head and sending her chestnutbrown hair swaying, "the commander recruited me last December…so it's been

over a year already. It was just after the boss fight on the twenty-fifth floor…"

"Oh, right…The KoB started up after the Army got decimated…"

I glanced at the bottom of the floor above us.

Just three floors from here, the twenty-fifth floor of Aincrad had been the

greatest test for the best players since the very first floor.

Immediately after a player left the main town, it became clear that the

monsters on the twenty-fifth floor were significantly tougher than on the

previous one. The layout of the landscape was complex and mazelike, and a

number of players died just getting to the next town. NPCs did not offer much

information, and there were numerous traps like poison swamps and pits. By

the time we had finished exploring the floor and reached the labyrinth tower,

the frontline group as a whole was exhausted.

The person who was responsible for whipping us back into shape and

energizing us for the tower was Kibaou, the leader of the guild known as the

Aincrad Liberation Squad—at this time, they were not yet called the Army. He

hurled insults at the group with his characteristic Kansai dialect until we were

all furious enough to be back on our feet and ready for action.

However, just before we rushed into the boss chamber to fight the floor boss,

someone fed Kibaou, the unquestioned leader of the frontline group, some

false info. They rushed into the chamber with only forty-plus guild members,

much less than a full raid party. Over half the ALS died in that battle. It was only

when the main force of the advancement group arrived, including me and

Asuna, that we managed to topple the horrific boss, despite more deaths.

But nobody could openly celebrate passing the quarter mark of Aincrad. Not

when Kibaou's furious screams of grief were echoing off the walls of the

chamber.

From there, he parted ways with the frontline players, taking his surviving

comrades all the way back down to the first floor. There, they teamed up with a

mutual aid group called MMO Today, and that alliance formed the foundation

of the Army.

"The mood of the entire advancement group was dire back then…Suddenly

we'd lost a third of our numbers—and it was possibly because of an intentional

trap. I suppose it's no surprise things felt raw. People were downcast even at

the meeting to beat the field boss on the twenty-sixth floor…but that was when

the new KoB guild showed up. Everyone all decked out in custom white-and-red

gear…it left quite an impact," I said, going over the old memories as we walked

along the lakeside. My partner was very quiet, so I glanced over and saw Asuna,

with her cheeks red, turning away for some reason.

Catching on, I feigned ignorance and continued, "But especially, it was the

sight of the vice commander that caught my eye…and Klein's, and even Agil's.

But her, well! She went from plain-looking equipment to the total opposite,

with a pure-white no-sleeve bodice, a bright-red miniskirt, and then those white

knee-high stockings…If you ask me, it felt like the scattered remnants of the

group all came together as one—"

Wham! There was a bludgeon attack on my left shoulder just short of causing

actual damage, cutting my thoughts short. I turned my head and saw the vice

commander herself, face beet red, holding a fist.

"Ugh! You know how embarrassed I was to be seen like that! I assumed the

commander would stand at the fore, but then he just says, 'The effect will be

greater if you stand at the front, Asuna,' so I did it out of sheer resignation!"

"Um…I see…By the way, I assume that had to be a custom uniform, right?

Who designed it?"

"…All the other officers held numerous design meetings in secret, leaving me

out. When they showed the uniform to me, I said, 'I'm not wearing that!' But

then Daizen got tears in his eyes and claimed, 'You wouldn't believe how much

it cost us just to produce this one outfit!' So again, out of sheer resignation…"

"Ah…I see."

The Knights of the Blood were known today for their ironclad rules and strict

discipline, but it sounded like their early days were rather jovial. At any rate, the

KoB's arrival certainly gave the frontline group a big morale boost, and they had

stood at the front line of the deadly game ever since. Even at this very moment,

on the newly opened seventy-fifth floor, red-and-white parties were battling

furiously…

Once again, I glanced up at the bottom of the upper floor. That gesture was

enough for Asuna to read my mind. She unclenched her fist and gently grabbed

my hand.

"You basically beat the seventy-fourth-floor boss all by yourself. It only had

two or three pixels left on its HP bar. Nobody's going to complain if you take a

little break from the usual activities."

"…But they'll all complain if they learn why I want a break," I replied with a

smirk, squeezing her hand back. The vice commander looked like she wasn't

sure whether to be angry or embarrassed, but she settled on a chuckle.

By the time we'd gone halfway around the huge lake, which was probably half

a mile across, there was a coniferous tree that looked like a cedar, looming

higher than the others. At its massive roots was a faint, tiny footpath that broke

off from the trail leading around the lake and headed southwest.

"…So you found this path? You're always so keen when it comes to finding

these hidden routes," Asuna said, which I chose to take as a compliment.

"And I didn't have the Detection mod on my Search skill at the time, so it was

all pure eyesight and intuition," I boasted. "Once we get over that hill, you'll see

the house right away."

Now it was Asuna's turn to light up with excitement. "Ooh, I can't wait to find

out what it's like! Let's go!"

"…Um, Asuna, it's…just a typical log cabin, so I don't want you to get your

hopes up too high."

"When I was a little girl, I often dreamed of living in a log cabin. As long as

there's a proper hearth and a rocking chair to sit in, I'll be over the moon!" she

crowed, hurrying up the hill. I hustled after her.

A rocking chair could be bought at a furniture shop, but I couldn't remember

if there had been a hearth or not. But at this point, I had to assume there was

one. I found this cabin a year and a half ago for the purpose of this very day. If

fate had been guiding me properly, there would be a hearth.

Praying that we'd see a chimney on the roof of the cabin, I crested the hill a

few steps behind Asuna and stood next to her, scanning desperately for a

chimney.

But—

It wasn't there.

There was no chimney.

We were looking at a circular space covered in green undergrowth, with not a

single man-made object there…and certainly not any houses.

3

It was the wrong place.

That was the most logical explanation. So I apologized to Asuna, went back

down the hill, and rushed around the area for the next two hours, searching.

But not only were there no log cabins, I couldn't even find another footpath

branching off. Stunned, I returned to the original hill and examined what I could

see from there.

"This is it. This is definitely the place…?" I murmured to myself.

The spacious grass yard (just an empty lot now with no house there), the thick

coniferous woods behind it, the looming pillars supporting the outer aperture

of Aincrad in the distance, and the endless expanse of sky behind it all. I could

vividly recall each of these details from my memory of being here a year and a

half ago.

But the most important thing of all, the log cabin, was not here. Just to be

sure, I went into the clearing, even walked to the very center, but the house did

not suddenly pop into being.

Shocked and rooted to the spot, I heard footsteps marching across the grass

behind me until they stopped very close by.

I couldn't turn around. The suggestion to move into the log cabin on the

twenty-second floor was my marriage proposal. Now that the house wasn't

there, my proposal had essentially been rendered false.

"Asuna…it's true. There was a cabin. Right here," I murmured, face downcast.

She circled around directly in front of me, patted my shoulders, then cupped

my cheeks with her hands and lifted my head. Those hazel-brown eyes were as

kind and soft as they ever were.

"I believe you. Of course I believe you," she said, let go, and took a few steps

back. "I'm sure it got removed for some systemic reason. It's a shame, but even

without the house, it's a beautiful place. I'm very happy to have come here with

you."

She stood atop the green grass and spun in place, skirt twirling. The sun

dappling through the trees and gleaming off her long hair, her platinum

breastplate, and the sheath of her rapier, Lambent Light, were so beautiful they

could be used for promotional videos.

Obviously, Asuna couldn't read my mind, but she stopped and faced me

anyway, patting the belt pouch on her right side.

"Hey, since we're here, let's take a photo to commemorate the occasion. I

brought a photo crystal."

"Oh…um, sure…" I smiled, but Asuna could tell from my voice and expression

that something was wrong.

"Was this really such a shock to you?" she asked. "That the house is gone…?"

"Er, no, not a shock, necessarily," I claimed, shaking my head and hands, but

Asuna still seemed worried for me. It was going to be impossible to dispel that

notion from her at this point, so I fessed up.

"The thing is…I had a whole plan regarding what I was going to do here today.

And it can't happen if the house isn't here…"

"Hmm? What did you want to do?"

It was hard to explain with her big, beautiful eyes staring at me, but after

proposing to her, I couldn't be shy about it now. I cleared my throat and started

by explaining how the system worked.

"Well, here's the thing. Getting married in SAO is pretty simple in terms of

how it works. You start from the main menu, go to the communication tab,

then go down the list of requests to the very bottom, where the MARRIAGE button

is. Then press it, select your target…and if they hit OK, it's all done. No need to

submit any forms to any offices…"

"And you don't have to visit my parents and say, 'I'm asking for your

daughter's hand in marriage!' either," Asuna interjected with a smirk.

I couldn't help but imagine that unavoidable cutscene (with Commander

Heathcliff from the KoB playing her father, for some reason), and it made me

shiver. The daughter—er, Asuna giggled at the sight of me.

I cleared my throat. "A-at any rate! Because the process only takes, like, five

seconds, I wanted, you know, to do it in a way that would be more memorable

for you. Unfortunately, we can't have some big, huge wedding ceremony, so I

thought the best method of all would be to buy our new house and have

something in front of it…"

By the end, I had craned my neck down toward the ground and started

mumbling awkwardly, but I managed to finish my thought successfully and

exhaled with relief.

And then I took a high-speed body tackle.

Or rather, one had come for me. I hadn't been bracing for it, so I landed hard

on my back in the grass.

Fortunately, Asuna wasn't trying to pound my face with knuckle sandwiches.

Her warmth just leaned against my chest as she whispered, "That's…

wonderful."

"Er, I mean, it was just a spur-of-the-moment idea—"

"But that's what makes it so wonderful. You thought so hard about making

things nice for us, and you even looked all over for a house…"

Up close, just inches away, I could see that tears were brimming in Asuna's

eyes. That hit me deeply, and I enclosed her slender body in my arms.

For a while, the two of us lay there on the grass, feeling the breeze. In time,

Asuna's voice whispered in my ear.

"It's enough."

"Huh…?"

"I'm already happy enough. So shall we do the marriage process and go back

for today? We can look for a home some other time."

The stone bottom of the floor above us was dyed yellow with the sunlight of

afternoon. The sun would be down in just another hour or two.

"Yeah…good idea."

I straightened up, still embracing my fiancée, and glanced around the empty

circle in the midst of the coniferous forest.

If we were patient and thorough about looking for modestly sized buildings

that were outside of town, had no monsters spawning nearby, and were

remote enough that other players were unlikely to wander by, we would surely

find something. There was also the option of asking Argo the info dealer for

help. Surely the Rat wouldn't sell the coordinates of our new home to anyone

else. Surely.

So like Asuna said, there was no need to be fixated on the cabin. The little

grassy knoll was striking enough, and the memory of our marriage ceremony

here would surely remain in Asuna's memory—and mine—long after SAO was

beaten, if it happened.

...And yet.

That was all well and good. But there was something about this experience,

unrelated to our eloping, that itched at the back of my mind, eating away at me.

It was like an unfinished quest that I'd gotten stuck on and abandoned, sitting

at the bottom of my quest log. Taunting me.

"…Kirito?"

The sound of my name brought me back to my senses with a start. Asuna's

face was close; she wore an expression that said she could see everything. I

froze up again.

"Y-yes?"

"…I bet you're thinking, 'That's all well and good, and yet…'"

I nearly made a guilty erk expression but managed to hide it with a poker face

just in the nick of time. "Um, wh-whatever do you mean?"

"I can tell these things, you know. You're wondering why the house isn't here

anymore and want to get to the bottom of it."

Okay, so my poker face wasn't that great. That was useful to know. I'd learned

from experience that continuing to deny it would only make it more painful, so I

fessed up and admitted it:

"Ummm, well…yes. B-but I mean! It just doesn't make sense that a player

home would disappear like this. You mentioned some kind of system-level

issue, but SAO doesn't have any GMs, so I can't imagine that it was manually

removed by an admin. Even if the cause was from a program, houses have

infinite durability—they don't go bad. And there are no earthquakes or wildfires

in Aincrad, so the only other possibility I can imagine is…uhhh…"

I started going into heavy deduction mode until Asuna pressed her index

finger against my mouth.

"All right, stop right there! Look, I've known you for long enough. I know

you're not the kind of person who can just turn off that part of his brain…" She

sighed with resignation.

I undid the pause before she had even taken her next breath. "W-well, I know

our time off is valuable, but I can use part of it to figure this out…can't I?"

Asuna grumbled under her breath that she'd had a feeling this would happen

and that it wasn't the point of our vacation, but in the end, she took a deep

breath and announced, "The window for investigation opens and closes

tonight!"

4

Over 99 percent of the countless terrain objects that populated Aincrad's

many floors were classified as indestructible. All natural features, aside from

standing trees, and all man-made objects, like buildings and walls, were

impervious to any kind of attempted destruction.

In some dungeons, depending on the design, there were breakable walls, and

every now and then, you found breakable rocks and soft earth in the

environment, but I had never heard of a house that could be broken down.

What if you bought a house that could be destroyed? Just imagine being asleep

in bed when a huge hole smashed into the wall, and a guild of orange criminal

players came storming inside…You'd be living in the world of the Three Little

Pigs.

So right off the bat, I knew that my missing dream home could not have been

destroyed by players.

"…Well, I agree with you there." Asuna nodded when I finished my

explanation. "That is, assuming there isn't some extra skill like Land Speculation

or something."

"B-but what would be the point of driving up land prices here? They'd do it

along the lake in Selmburg or something."

"Ah yes. Property along the lake there is expensive. It would cost three times

as much as my place…But I guess if we can't find the house here, we might

spring for a place there."

"Er, I dunno…M-might be a little tough on my income," I stammered, going

pale. Asuna gave me a big smile and reassured me that she was joking.

She quickly moved back into strategic-officer mode and stared at the empty

space of the little glen. "Well, let's eliminate the possibility that someone

destroyed the house…And just to be certain, the customization of player homes

doesn't extend to outer walls and roofs, right?"

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"I mean, when you buy a house, there's a customization menu for the owner

to play around with, right? Where you can decide which fixtures you want to

remove?"

At last, I understood the point Asuna was making. "Ahhh," I said, nodding, "so

you mean someone might have bought the house, used the customization

menu to remove the walls, roof, and floor, and turned it into a blank lot. Hmm…

I've only ever lived in little places like apartments, so I've never seen the

customization options on a house…"

"Same goes for me. Hey…let's ask Liz!" Asuna suggested, opening her menu to

type a quick message to her good friend Lisbeth the blacksmith.

I was on good terms with Liz, too. She was the one who'd forged my sword,

Dark Repulser, so she was one of the few people on the list we would inform

about our marriage. After purchasing the house today and completing the

marriage process, we'd intended to send off a message to a dozen or so people

promptly, including Liz. But now the order of events had changed, and we were

going to be asking her about real estate.

The reply came back within moments. Asuna read over the message on a

screen that only she could see, and she bobbed her head.

"She says you can't remove or rearrange the exterior walls and roof. If you

pay up, you can change the color or add bay windows and flower beds and

options like that, but that's it…"

"…And I'm guessing one of those color options isn't 'invisible.'"

More important, Asuna and I had walked all over the empty lot and found no

traces of the building. If it were there but invisible, I would have smacked my

face on the front door.

"Then…is there another option? Like outfitting it to be able to sink

underground?" Asuna wondered, tapping at the ground with the toe of her

boot.

I couldn't help but smirk. "Ha-ha, it's not going to be like some supervillain's

secret base. Besides, if you dug a hole in Aincrad deep enough to fit an entire

house inside, you'd pop through the bottom and fall down to the next floor."

"Awww, that sounds so lovely, though. Like a gnome's house."

"I thought those were dug into the side of a hill…Wouldn't it be a dwarf's

house if it's underground? You remember that huge dwarven citadel with at

least a dozen floors, right?"

"Ew, I hated that place. It was so dank and had all those bug monsters…

Besides, even that 'underground' castle was just on the inside of a mountain on

the floor map."

"It's a structural flaw of Aincrad, isn't it? Since there's a limit to how thick the

ground can be, you don't get those classic RPG sprawling underground

dungeons."

"I'm fine with that!" Asuna snapped. "But do you really want to just stand

around chatting? I mean, I'm having fun, but…"

I glanced at the sky to the sides. The trailing wisps of clouds in the sky were

colored orange. The sun would be down in just two more hours.

"G-good point. Well, if it's not invisible or a secret underground base, then…is

it a moving fortress? No, that would make it too easy to march straight from the

main city to the labyrinth tower. And that would rule out a flying fortress, too…"

I was getting further from likely possibilities and deeper into wild fantasies,

much to Asuna's chagrin. She glanced upward, while I hung my head, folded my

arms, and thought.

"So it doesn't seem likely that it was obliterated with the customization

menu. Plus, that would mean another player has already bought it…I have a

feeling that whatever caused this wasn't player related…"

"...Hey."

"But does that mean…a field boss with the ability to destroy terrain objects…?

No, even the Geocrawler on the fifty-sixth floor couldn't break the gate to the

village. If there was a boss that crazy on the twenty-second floor, we would

have had to put together a whole raid party…"

"Hey, Kirito."

I felt a tugging on my coat sleeve and interrupted myself to look at Asuna.

"…What?"

"...Look."

She lifted one of her white-gloved hands and pointed. I followed the angle of

her finger up into the sky.

It was there, in the sky, directly above the largest cedar tree, beyond the

north side of the empty clearing.

Floating high in the air, nearly touching the bottom of the floor above us, was

a house. Because of the angle from the ground, you could only see the bottom,

but the combination of massive logs made it clear that this was the cabin I'd

been searching for.

I was so stunned that I couldn't feel happy about spotting it—just shocked

that it was floating over 250 feet overhead.

In a daze, I murmured, "Wh-why…is the house…flying…?"

"...You mentioned a flying-fortress option…It's not that, is it…?" Asuna

asked. I squinted to get a better look at the tiny feature far overhead, but I

couldn't see anything like wings or balloons or propellers.

But thanks to my skill-enhanced vision, I spotted two things I hadn't noticed

before:

First, there was a swirl of air below the house, flickering like heat haze. It was

probably flying on top of something like a whirlwind fixed in place.

Second, sticking out of the south-facing window of the house and waving

wildly at us all the way down on the ground was a person.

"S-someone's in there," I pointed out to Asuna's surprise.

She craned her head farther and said, "Y-you're right. From this distance, I

can't tell if it's an NPC or a player, though…"

The visual clue that distinguished a player from an NPC was the color of the

cursor. But this distance was much too far for the cursor to display.

I had no idea why the house was flying, but if the figure inside was a player

rather than an NPC, we couldn't just leave them up there. If the house fell from

that distance, it would easily kill them.

"Wh-which is it…?"

Asuna and I watched with bated breath—when the figure suddenly pulled in

its waving arm, then stuck it out again. It let go of some object that fell,

glittering in the sunlight. The angle was so straight that it seemed to move

slowly, heading directly toward the clearing where we stood.

"Oh…oh…oh…"

I took four steps to the right, then three steps forward, and caught the little

object with both hands. Asuna rushed over so we could examine it.

"An empty…potion bottle…?" she said. I nodded, then looked back up at the

floating cabin in the sky.

"It's a player!" I shouted. An empty bottle after the potion's contents had

been drunk would soon disintegrate and disappear. To prevent that and keep

the bottle, you had to put it away in a bag or in your virtual inventory menu.

NPCs wouldn't do something like that, so having an empty bottle was a sign that

it was a player trapped in that floating house up there.

"W-we've got to save them," I said, holding the bottle.

But Asuna, as ever, posed the proper question: "H-how?!"

"..."

That was indeed the question. As a general rule, there was no way for a player

to fly in SAO. After all, then you could simply fly up to the next floor and bypass

the labyrinth tower and boss—or go all the way up to the hundredth floor, the

goal.

A few months ago, Asuna, I, and the blacksmith Lisbeth had flown briefly

when we held on to the tail of a white dragon. But there was no choosing our

destination then, there were no dragons on this floor, and I certainly didn't

want to repeat that experience.

"...W-well, let's head to the spot right under the house," I suggested without

any better options. Asuna gave me a funny look but agreed.

When we walked out of the clearing and into the forest, the carpet of

branches overhead blocked the sight of the flying house. But I used my special

real-life skill Direct Line Intuition to maintain my bearings. It was surprisingly

difficult in a forest, where you couldn't see into the distance. I had tried

explaining it to Asuna once, that you had to treat your legs like they were

autorunning, but she just looked at me like my head was on fire.

But my intuition was correct, and after two or three minutes, the especially

large cedar tree appeared. It was definitely positioned directly under the house.

I looked up as I approached the trunk, and through the many branches, I could

see the tiny floating shadow high above.

"So…what now? Climbing to the very top of that tree isn't going to get us

close to reaching the house," Asuna observed, walking forward with her face

pointed skyward.

I took the same pose and replied, "I was thinking that if we were directly

below, we might be within shouting range…but that doesn't seem likely,

either…"

"Ahhh. If we could talk to one another, we could learn how that happened.

Should we climb the tree, then? Maybe being up in the branches will make it

possible to hear."

"The problem is, these pine trees are harder to climb…Might be too hard

without the use of the Acrobat skill…"

We were just within fifteen feet of the massive cedar tree when there was a

roar from close by, like that of a monster, causing us both to jump with fright.

"Arf! Harrrf-harf-harf!!"

On pure instinct, I reached behind my back for the hilt of Elucidator but

paused there. The howling was coming from a quadrupedal creature no more

than sixteen inches long…Something I would normally call…

A dog.

It had longish fur in a light-brown color, with big bright eyes and a fluffy tail

with a blue ribbon attached to it. The color cursor was yellow, indicating that it

was either an NPC, a beast-tamer's pet, or a nonactive monster that wasn't in

an aggro state.

"Ooh, it's so cute!" squealed Asuna. She crouched down and reached out a

hand, but I quickly held her back.

"N-no! Wait!"

"How come? It's so cute."

"It c-could be some kind of trap! For one thing, it's weird that there's just a

dog hanging out on the map. What if it transforms into a direwolf the moment

you touch it?"

"It'll be fine. Look at how its tail is wagging."

In the meantime, the little dog was hopping and spinning around in front of

Asuna, practically begging her to pick it up. I maintained a tight hold on Asuna's

sword belt so she couldn't squat down, and I stared at the mutt to check its

cursor. The name that appeared was Toto.

"…Toto? That's not a species name…So is that its given name…?"

"Awww! Even its name is cute! C'mere, Toto! Here, boy!"

"I told you to stay back…"

Asuna had already been hit by the Charmed negative status effect, clearly. I

dragged her back with all my strength and gazed into the big, deep eyes of the

mutt named Toto, seeking signs of wicked cunning within them.

Belatedly, I spotted a new detail. Floating about eight inches above the dog's

round head was a little ? icon.

"What…? A quest symbol?!" I shouted. "But why is it already in progress…?"

Asuna noticed it as well, and the pulling against my grip lessened. "You're

right…It's got a quest…"

Each floor of Aincrad contained so many quests, you could barely hope to

complete them all. Most of them came from NPCs with ! symbols over their

heads, and when the quests were already active, the symbols turned to ?.

Meaning this doggy was a key person—er, animal—to a quest in progress. But

the problem was that neither I nor presumably Asuna had accepted any quests

relating to a dog…

"Oh! That's it!" Asuna shouted. Startled, I let go of her belt. The fencer spun

around and fixed me with a deadly serious look. "We're usually occupied with

taking out the labyrinth tower and floor boss, so we don't usually take on the

side quests, right? It's been our blind spot. Whenever there's some

phenomenon that doesn't seem to make sense, it's got something to do with a

quest. Such as…a flying house!"

"...Hmm," I hummed, agreeing. Asuna spun back to face the little pup, who

was still in a state of great agitation.

"And that means, in order to find the cause of why the house is flying…we

need to make contact with little Toto here! You understand, don't you, Kirito?

We don't have a choice!" she said, making it sound like a great personal

sacrifice. Before I could stop her yet again, she crouched and reached for the

furball.

"Arf-arf-arf!" the little brown dog barked happily and leaped into her arms. Its

tail wagged furiously as it licked her face.

"Ha-ha-ha! Oh, that tickles! Awww, you're so cuuute! I've always wanted to

have a dog just like this!"

Fortunately, Toto did not turn into a giant man-eating wolf.

But what did happen next surpassed anything I expected by at least three

light-years.

A tremendous whirlwind whipped up around our feet. The sheer power of the

wind dragged us off-balance without any chance to resist. I toppled, and my

feet left the ground—and to my horror, they did not touch it again.

"K-Kirito!"

Asuna reached out with the free hand that wasn't holding Toto, and I grabbed

it. The three of us were thrown upward by the impromptu tornado. The light

blurred and rotated, and the wind caused my coat hem and Asuna's skirt to flap

hard (a phenomenon that never happened with ordinary breezes in the

wilderness), not that I had the attention to dedicate to it.

"Ah! Aaah! Aaaaaaah!" I screamed.

"Aieeeeee!" Asuna shrieked.

"Harf-arf-arf!!" barked the dog with great excitement.

We rose directly up into the air toward the floating log cabin far overhead.

5

"…Wh-what's the point of you comin' up here?!" were the first words out of

the mouth of the player in the log cabin who'd been pleading for help.

About ninety seconds earlier…

Asuna and the dog and I were sucked up into the sky toward the flying cabin.

The whirlwind took us over the roof, then down a chimney yawning at one end

of it. After going through a cramped, dark tunnel, we landed on our behinds on

the wood-paneled floor of the living room, where a female player looked down

at us, aghast.

Once I could think straight again after that astonishing event, I looked up into

the face of the cabin's inhabitant. To my shock, it was a very familiar one, but I

wasn't really capable of wringing out the strength to act further shocked.

Instead, I said, "Hiya. It's been a while."

And that was what earned me that response.

At any rate, the first step was trading information.

But my suggestion, while met with agreement by the other player, also

elicited a disappointed slump of her shoulders. She pointed toward a round

table fixed to the floor of the living room. I sat next to Asuna, who was still

holding the dog. The female player kept her distance and sat on the other side.

By this point, Asuna had recovered her normal wits, too. She greeted the

woman, whom the both of us knew quite well.

"It's nice to see you again, Argo."

"…Hullo, A-chan. Same to you, Kiri-boy," she said with a wave and an

indecipherable expression. There were three lines painted on each of her

cheeks to look like whiskers. For the nearly two years since the start of this

game of death—in fact, add an extra month for the beta test—she had stuck

with that face paint, because it matched her nickname, Argo the Rat. She was

the finest info dealer in all of Aincrad.

Asuna and I had known her since the earliest days of the game, and we'd

bought and sold her info countless times since then. Even outside of business

circumstances, we'd helped her and been helped in return many times, and

we'd never been on outright hostile terms. It didn't sit right with me that she'd

act guarded around us, but there were more pressing matters for now.

"So, Argo…what's going on here?"

I gestured with my right arm around the room, indicating the tremendously

airborne building. The info dealer's eyes blinked, framed by her golden-brown

curls.

"You don't know? You had to've picked it up ta get here! The quest, man, the

quest!"

"Oh…r-right…"

I glanced over at the pup, who was looking sleepy in Asuna's arms. The ? over

its head was still active. That meant there was a quest in progress…

"But it wasn't as much that we accepted the quest as it happened to us…"

Asuna nodded. "That's right. I picked up this dog, and then all of a sudden, we

were getting blown all the way up into this house. In fact, it was almost like

someone else had started a quest and left…it…behind…"

She trailed off, and I looked over at her. I knew exactly what thought had just

popped into her head:

If a quest someone else had started was the cause of all this, then the guilty

party could not be anyone other than Argo the Rat here.

Our heads turned with a crack to stare at Argo, who hunched her shoulders

guiltily and said, "Guess I'll explain from the top."

See, lately I've been pickin' up word of strange new quests bein' generated on

the lower floors of Aincrad. Like masked ogres that just keep respawning, no

matter how many ya kill, or fire-breathin' tortoises that do spinning jumps, or an

undead woman dressed in white who comes crawlin' out of a cursed message

window.

Since I'm the one putting out the Complete, Unabridged Quest Guidebook, I

gotta get the scoop on every new quest as soon as I can. So the day before

yesterday, I came here to the southwest region of the twenty-second floor to

investigate a quest, and I found the starting point right away. But there's a

problem with the content. I hopped inside this house without bringing along a

key character for the quest, and all of a sudden, the whole house just shoots up

into the air! I've been stuck inside this place for the last two days, just hopin'

someone would come along and reset the quest for me.

At that point, Argo just threw up her hands in resignation.

Resetting a quest was an operation performed from the menu, when an

active quest had been ignored for a long period of time. There were more than

a few quests in SAO that could only be attempted by one player at a time,

which was why the function existed. Of course, you had to be in the vicinity of

the NPC who started the quest in the first place.

In other words, at the point that we spotted the pup named Toto under the

cedar tree and noticed the ? over its head, if we had opened our menus and

opened the quest tab, there should have been a quest-reset button there. But

now that we had piggybacked onto the quest in progress, neither Asuna nor I

could reset it.

"…Well, I guess that kind of explains the situation…but there are still plenty of

mysteries. Argo, you said there was a problem with the content of the quest?" I

asked.

The info dealer adopted the same conflicted expression from before, and she

glanced at Asuna—or more accurately, the little animal sleeping in Asuna's

arms.

"W-well, the thing is…even I've got certain things I'm better at than others…"

"Ooh, I get it! You're afraid of dogs!" Asuna said with a smile. The whiskers

painted on Argo's cheeks twitched awkwardly.

"I—I can't help it! That's my default status! As if you're perfect—I've heard

you're afraid of astral-type mobs, A-chan!"

"B-but those are ghosts! Of course people are scared of ghosts. But puppies

are cute! Come on—just hold him!"

"N-no! Stop! Let the dog sleep!"

I stood to the side, allowing Argo and Asuna to bicker so I could mull over the

facts. Argo (despite being a rat) was afraid of dogs, and there was a quest

marker open over the dog's head, which meant…

"Aha, I get it. Argo, you started the quest, but because the quest character

was a dog, you ran for the house with all your Agility stat and shut yourself

inside, which advanced the quest and shot it up into the air, but the dog wasn't

able to keep up and get inside the house with you, so the quest got stuck, and

you were trapped inside a flying building for two whole days…Ha-ha-ha, oh, the

fun you get into on your own. You should write about your exploits in the Great

Adventures of Argo one day. You'll make a fortune," I jabbed, laughing.

Argo briefly made a tempted face—"A fortune?"—but then exploded, "This

isn't funny! It means that both you and A-chan are stuck here in the house now,

too!"

"Oh, you're exaggerating. If we really have to, we can just use a teleport

crystal to zip over to a town," I replied, chuckling—until I saw both Argo and

Asuna making the same expression.

Asuna glanced at her, then back at me. "Um, Kirito…don't you think Argo

would have tried that already?"

"Eh?"

"It can vary depending on the quest, but usually in forced-event quests like

this, they prevent you from teleporting out of trouble. Right, Argo?"

"You betcha!"

"…Are you serious?" I asked, feeling a cold sweat break out.

Argo just shook her head in disappointment. "Well, I suppose there's always

the final option of jumpin' out the window and teleporting just before ya hit the

ground…but I don't have the guts to try that."

"Y-yeah, I don't think I do, either…," I said, glancing at all the space outside

the window.

I gave the matter more consideration. What was this quest, anyway? You take

a quest from the dog, then go inside the house with it, and it gets blown into

the sky on a whirlwind? The premise just didn't make sense. SAO's game server

couldn't be under the control of its developer, Argus, anymore, so I doubted

that anyone at Argus had written this script. So who came up with this pointless

scenario? And without a function to call for GM help, how were we going to get

out of being stuck…?

"…Oh…wait a second," I called out.

Asuna looked up from petting Toto's head, and Argo looked away from

keeping an eye on the fearsome beast.

"If the reason the quest is stuck is that the dog, Toto, was left on the ground…

then hasn't that been solved? Wouldn't that mean the quest is functioning

normally again…?"

"Ah…!"

Argo snapped her fingers. She bolted over for the window with alarming

speed and looked down toward the ground.

"W-we're moving! In fact, we're almost back down again!"

"R-really?! Great, then we can get back home before it gets dark," Asuna said

with relief, walking toward the window, but I was not feeling so optimistic. I had

a bad feeling about this.

As far as quest openings go, throwing an entire house into the sky was a

drastic one. A story that began that dramatically would not end this easily. It

might involve several steps, like going here and finding something, going there

and helping someone…And most important, beating the quest did not

guarantee this house would return to its former status as a purchasable asset.

And at this rate, I didn't know when Asuna and I would ever be marri—

"Ooh!" I grunted and glanced over at Argo, who was maintaining an awkward

distance from Asuna—or more specifically, the dog in her arms.

She was an old friend, but it was imperative that Asuna and I didn't let her

catch on to our eloping before it happened. As soon as she knew about it, it'd

be front-page news in Weekly Argo, and I'd be cursed to the grave by Asuna's

fan club.

So the longer we worked on this quest together, the more dangerous it would

be. We needed to beat it quick and say our good-byes before the Rat's keen

sense of smell sniffed out what was going on.

I straightened up with a newfound sense of purpose—right as the log house

came crashing to the ground in an unknown place.

6

"…By the way, what was the name of this quest?" I asked.

Argo opened her window and answered, "It's 'The Three Treasures of the

Wicked Witch of the West.'"

"Sounds normal enough. Especially for one so surreal…"

The three of us stepped out onto soil again—Argo for the first time in two

days, Asuna and I for the first time in fifteen minutes—while the next key

character in the quest stood wavering before us.

But once again, it was not human. It was a figure with a torso made of two

crossed sticks, and a round fabric head that was stuffed full—a scarecrow. It

looked silly, but it was a monster by definition. Scarecrow mobs were not

uncommon on horror-themed floors.

And the scarecrow wasn't the only thing greeting us. To its left was an enemy

that resembled a hollow suit of plate armor. And on its right was a werelion,

which had a human head on a lion's body. None of the trio were attempting to

attack us. Their color cursors were yellow, indicating they were nonaggressive

now.

I was just wondering what was going on when the scarecrow began to talk.

"Oh! We've been waiting for you!"

At that, the ! symbol over the scarecrow's head turned into a ?, indicating

that a quest had initiated. The symbol over the dog's head vanished.

"You've been…waiting for us?" I asked, playing along. The scarecrow nodded

its head much harder and began to tell its story. It went roughly like this.

We're Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion, and we're on a journey to become real

humans. But the girl we were with got kidnapped by the Wicked Witch of the

West. We want to rescue her, but the witch stole the stuffing from Scarecrow's

head, the jewel in Tin Man's heart, and Lion's golden mane of courage. So we

cast a whirlwind spell on the girl's dog, Toto, and sent it beyond the walls to find

a warrior who will fight the witch for us.

"Ah…ha-ha-ha…I see…"

I glanced behind us.

According to the map, we were in the northwest part of the twenty-second

floor. We were surrounded by vertical cliff walls that made it impossible to walk

here. Those had to be the walls the scarecrow mentioned.

That gave me a broad idea of the quest itself, but I couldn't shake the feeling

of how strange the quest was. For one thing, there was no magic in SAO, so

things like witches and whirlwind spells didn't make sense. Plus, the scarecrow

and the lion were easy to understand, but why was the living armor called Tin

Man?

These were probably not the most pressing questions at the moment, but I

couldn't help myself. Next to me, however, Asuna murmured, "Okay…I get it. I

know what this quest is."

Argo nodded, too. "So do I. No wonder the house was flyin'."

"Huh? What do you mean?" I asked, turning left and right.

Asuna gave me a grin and said something that took me completely by

surprise.

"You must have read it when you were a boy, Kirito. Some of the details are

different…but this quest is clearly based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!"

"…Ohhh…Oh, now I get it!"

To be honest, I couldn't remember every part of the story. But a girl with her

pet dog being blown into the air in her house by a tornado, then falling into

another world where she met a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion before finding

her way back to the real world—yes, that seemed familiar to me.

Well, that explained why the living armor monster was the "tin man," but it

also was a foreboding sign for the quest ahead.

"…I bet that means this one's going to take forever," I groaned. Asuna gave

me a curious look, so I explained, "I mean, we'll probably have to get the

scarecrow's brain, the tin man's heart, and the lion's mane in order, right? How

many hours will each one take…?"

Asuna and Argo shared a look, then grinned for some reason.

"Kiri-boy, you don't really remember how the story goes, do you?"

"Uh…W-well, I suppose not…"

"Ha-ha, I don't think we'll need to collect any items. Let's just skip past all of

that and head straight for the witch's castle!"

"Wh-whaaat?!" I shouted. The scarecrow, tin man, and lion also made

shocked faces, although maybe that was just my imagination.

On the map, the elliptical quest area had three golden ! symbols to indicate

quest checkpoints, with one other ! that was gray (the final destination, but not

yet activated). Ordinarily, we would have to tackle each of the three golden

symbols first before heading to the last one, but Asuna and Argo were resolute

in their direction.

The two girls led the way on the road paved with yellow bricks, followed by

three monsters that wanted to be human, and me, the least certain member of

the group. Argo kept an awkward distance from Asuna, presumably because of

the cute little dog in Asuna's arms.

Since the ! over Toto's head was gone, and it was no longer the point

character for the quest, Argo and I suggested that the dog be left in the log

cabin. But Asuna refused to let it go, and she pouted with the occasional snarl,

so we couldn't insist. I was fine with or without the dog, but it seemed like this

was going to really test Argo's resolve.

If she was actually that uniformly upset, then she had to be telling the truth

about her phobia—she wasn't just role-playing for the sake of her character.

Argo must have been deathly afraid of dogs in real life. But if I were in her

position, would I be able to let my innermost feelings be expressed this openly?

If I were her, I would be desperate to uphold the image that I'd built around me,

and I'd push down my true feelings and attempt to act unbothered.

And if that was how I felt, then could I call the feelings I felt for Asuna genuine

love…?

"…What do you think?" I muttered to one of our accompanying NPCs, the lion

whose courage had been stolen.

Nearly all of the myriad NPCs placed throughout Aincrad ran on simple

algorithms that performed some basic question-and-answer routines, which

made actual conversations impossible. So I wasn't expecting the character to

give me a real answer.

"Did someone take something from you, too, pal?" the lion mumbled back,

which took me a bit by surprise…Well, maybe a lot by surprise.

"Hmm…Yeah, maybe that's true. Until this point, I don't remember ever truly

falling in love with someone," I said, letting my momentum answer for me. The

lion nodded, looking even more downcast. He was very shabby by the standards

of the game's werelion monsters, which appeared around the fortieth floor.

"I see. The fact is, I don't know the truth, either. I can't recall if I was truly c-ccourageous before the witch took my mane away."

He sighed and hung his head, revealing a part of his mane at the back of his

head that had been cut abruptly short, as though barber's clippers had chopped

it right off.

With that in mind, I looked at the scarecrow bouncing along next to the lion

and saw a rip in the back of his head bag that had been roughly sewn back

together. Past him, the tin man's breastplate featured a large hole that had

been covered with two bandages in an X shape. These were evidence of the

Wicked Witch of the West having stolen the things that were most important to

them.

Of course, I couldn't remember any witch stealing my ability to love another

person. If my heart had been sealed away, then it was me who had done it—I'd

been keeping everyone, even my family, at arm's length ever since I was a child.

So where could I go to find that heart? If I married Asuna and lived with her,

would I be able to find it? But what if the lion's suspicions were true in my case,

and I never had one to begin with…?

Just then, as though psychically sensing my unease, Asuna turned and glanced

at me over her shoulder. She tilted her head and smiled, just like always. Then

she pointed in the direction we were going and called out, "C'mon, Kirito! You

can see it just ahead!"

Argo extended the metal claws she had equipped on the backs of her hands

and struck them together with a ringing sound. "If I don't know about this

quest, then nobody knows about it! This dungeon is untouched! We'll find lotsa

treasure inside!"

"Look…I hate to be a downer, but it's just the twenty-second floor, so it's not

going to be anything earth-shattering," I said, playing the cynic about loot for

once. I hurried to catch up to the girls, and as I moved, a castle came into view

beyond the trees. It had several thin spires and walls such a dark gray, they

were nearly black. Standing against the deepening red of the sky, it was truly

worthy of being called a witch's castle.

If we found the witch deep within that castle and defeated her, the quest

should be over, but we couldn't get inside at the moment. After all, they

weren't going to open the final dungeon and situate the boss inside until we

completed the first few steps and returned the missing parts to our traveling

companions. And to be honest, it felt just mean to ignore their plight…

But meanwhile, Asuna and Argo continued walking at a brisk pace and

awkward distance, and within a few minutes, the castle gates came into view.

They were a good fifteen feet tall, made of black cast iron, and firmly shut. They

wouldn't be opening anytime soon—

Click-click-ka-ching.

It was an undeniable unlocking sound. The gates swung open smoothly and

automatically, leaving me standing there with my mouth agape. The little dog in

Asuna's arms barked, but obviously it hadn't caused that to happen.

The two women looked at each other and nodded with satisfaction, but I had

no idea why it had happened. I glanced at the others, who were missing their

parts, and gave them an uncomfortable shrug, then walked into the castle.

Instantly, there were growls all around, and four monsters popped into the

front entrance of the castle. They were werepanthers, monsters with burly

torsos and panther heads. Witches kept black cats as familiars, so that seemed

to fit the image, I supposed.

"Gyaaaaowr!"

The panthers howled again and drew scimitars with jagged edges. The

scarecrow, tin man, and lion shrieked with terror and huddled on the spot. It

wasn't clear if they were inflicted with the Fear status or just normally afraid,

but they certainly didn't seem like they were going to be any help against the

boss later. Not that I expected much from them in the first place, however.

Shaking my head, I drew Elucidator from my back and targeted the two

werepanthers charging from the right side. One-handed swords featured few

single-attack, area-effect skills, but I did have one to use: Serration Wave.

The sword smashed against the ground and vibrated at a high rate, sending

jagged, saw-edged visual effects radiating outward. The effect swallowed up the

two werepanthers and left them unbalanced. It was a technique for

immobilizing enemies, not dealing big damage, but these were twenty-secondfloor monsters. The werepanthers lost all their HP before they could recover

their footing, and they burst into pieces, one after the other.

The other two werepanthers were easily handled by Asuna, despite holding

the dog in one hand, and Argo, who was actually quite powerful on her own.

One of the werepanthers dropped a key with a quest item tag on it, so we used

it to open a small door at the corner of the castle building.

I glanced at the sky one more time before going inside; it was red going on

purple now. We had an hour at best before it would be night. The castle was of

a considerable size, so it seemed unlikely we would wrap it up before sunset.

But once again, Asuna read my thoughts and patted me on the back. "Don't

worry. I brought plenty of food with us."

I'm not worried about food—I'm worried about whether I'll be able to marry

you before the end of the day, I thought, though I couldn't say it to her face.

Instead, I hesitantly agreed with her.

Argo blithely said, "Ooh, can't wait for that! I've heard the rumors that you've

developed your own take on soy sauce, A-chan!"

Just ten minutes after entering the wicked witch's castle, the combined party

of me, Asuna, Argo, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and dog had already reached a

big door that probably belonged to the boss.

Part of that was because our combat level was far beyond the quest's

difficulty, but the most gamebreaking part of it all was Argo's incredible

mobility. Balconies that should have required a detour to reach, jumps that

even I wasn't sure I would attempt—she found risky shortcuts all over the place

and pulled them off with ease. Thanks to that, the sky was still red through the

narrow windows to the outside.

"…I suppose we can hold off on eating until after the boss fight," Asuna noted,

a bit exasperated. Argo agreed. The monster trio still looked a bit bothered, like

they weren't sure things were supposed to be happening in this order. The

scarecrow hopped forward to speak for the group, his mouth a hole in the

burlap bag with a single stitch through it.

"They say the Wicked Witch of the West uses all kinds of fearsome spells," he

babbled. "If only my head weren't empty, I might be able to remember what

kinds…"

Ahhh…we probably should have done the subquest steps in order, I thought.

But Asuna calmly patted the scarecrow's shoulder (which was just a stick) and

reassured him, "Don't worry. The three of us together should be more than

strong enough to rescue Dor—to rescue your friend. C'mon, let's go."

She turned briskly on her heel and pushed the door open without a moment

of hesitation.

The room beyond was large and rectangular, in true boss-chamber fashion.

The moment we stepped inside, candles in chandeliers hanging high overhead

lit up with eerie green flames. They got brighter and brighter farther into the

room, and there was a large cage near the back wall.

Trussed up on the floor of the cage was a girl. Next to her was a large

bubbling pot and an old crone dressed in black, stirring with a long ladle.

"Whoa…that's the witchiest witch I've ever seen," I murmured. As a general

rule, SAO had no offensive magic, and for that reason, there weren't any

magicians. A monster of this type was extremely rare.

How is the old witch going to attack? I wondered. But the scarecrow shouted,

"Oh, Dorothy! Help her! She's going to be turned into soup!"

Next, the tin man rattled forward. "Dorothy! Danger! Help! Hurry!"

Lastly, the lion spoke up, what little parts of his mane remained standing on

end.

"Just you wait, Dorothy! We're comin' ta…comin' ta…"

But then the lion's mane wilted again, the tin man's armor fell silent, and the

scarecrow's spine bent.

Asuna, Argo, and I stepped forward to take their place. We approached

carefully—the witch's side was facing us, and she continued stirring the pot.

Just as the party reached the midpoint of the chamber, the black-robed witch

looked up from the pot and over at us. Her shining yellow eyes narrowed, and

she screeched, "Would you like to taste the soup? One swallow will make you

youthful again, and two will fill you with strength. The flavor's delicious, too!

Hee-hee-hee-hee!"

Since being careless enough to say yes would start an event scene that would

end with poor Dorothy bubbling away in the pot, I made our intentions crystal

clear.

"No! We're here to save her!"

"I see, I see. What a shame. In that case," said the witch, scooping up the

ladle from the bottom of the pot and blowing, "I'll just have to add you to the

soup! Heeee-hee-heeeeee!"

She hurtled the contents of the ladle at us. The liquid turned into a horrid

purple mist that surrounded us.

Instantly, there was a new green-bordered Debuff icon under my HP bar in

the upper left corner: paralysis.

"Ugh…"

No sooner was the grunt out of my mouth than all of us, including the trio of

companions, collapsed on the floor. The fact that even our high-level resistance

didn't work suggested that it was a forced paralysis event, but it was still

dangerous. I tried to pull a healing potion out of my pouch—in normal paralysis,

I could still move my right hand, but now it was immobilized.

"Hee-hee-hee…Well, well, well. Which one of you should I cook first…?"

The witch danced closer, using her ladle in place of a magic wand. I was

getting worried that we were actually in considerable danger. I tried

desperately to get to my feet, but my body would not budge.

"Hee-hee! Don't waste your time, deary. The only thing that can break this

spell is the roar of a lion."

Ohhh, I get it!

It was a very obvious hint. I swiveled my eyes—the one thing I could move—

to look behind us. The scarecrow and the tin man were paralyzed, just like us,

but the lion was the only one without a Debuff icon. If he gave her one good

roar, it should free all of us from our paralysis.

And yet…

Alas, the lion's mane was flat against his neck. He was cowering and

blubbering, cradling his head between his arms. Are you kidding me? I thought.

But then I remembered.

It wasn't his fault. The witch had stolen his courage. If we had done the

subquest and recovered the golden mane that was the source of his courage,

that would be one thing, but right now, he was helpless. We could have

predicted this would happen, but the girls had insisted we didn't need to bother

with the other steps…

"ARF! Harf-arf-arf!" the little dog barked, interrupting my thoughts.

But that wasn't the only thing that happened. The lion's trembling stopped,

and his wilted bits of mane began to bulge upward again. But why?

As I watched, wide-eyed and trapped on the floor, the lion got up to a

standing position. He still looked miserable, but there was a new strength in his

eyes that wasn't there before.

"I'm…I'm here…to help Dorothy!" he shouted, then sucked in as much breath

as his lungs could take—and let out a roaaaaaar! The bellowing simply

obliterated the paralysis icon affecting me.

The witch tried two more paralysis attacks after that, but following the lion,

the tin man got up and dispelled the effect, and the scarecrow took his turn

last. Once she was presumably out of magic, the witch panicked and simply

charged with the ladle in her hand.

With her long black robe and pointy hat, the witch didn't look like much of a

melee fighter, but I was a bit shocked when the end of the long ladle began to

glow red above her head. As befitting a resident of this world, she could

apparently use sword skills of her own that treated the ladle as a poleax.

"Kweeeaaaahhh!"

She swung the ladle down with an ear-shattering screech, but my Vertical Arc

easily blocked it. The skill hit the witch as a counterattack and knocked her

back, leaving an opening for Asuna to switch in.

It really didn't seem necessary for Asuna to keep holding the dog in one hand,

but she was talented enough that she could execute sword skills regardless. A

merciless five-part thrust attack knocked the witch farther away. Before she

could even hit the ground, Argo was there. With sprint speed faster than even

Asuna, Argo circled under where the witch was falling and unleashed a twirling,

slicing skill with both of her metal claws.

That was a trio of high-level skills in combination, but the witch was a quest

boss, after all, and she retained just a tiny bit of HP. She plopped onto the

ground but got to her feet right away and rushed to the cauldron at the back of

the chamber. As soon as our skill delay allowed, we ran after her, determined

not to let her use the mystery soup for another curse spell.

But suddenly little Toto shot out of Asuna's arms and launched itself after the

witch like a cannonball, biting the black heel of her shoe. The witch lost her

balance, stumbled forward, and rolled with great velocity, plunging headfirst

into the bubbling pot.

A few seconds later, a massive monster death effect burst up out of the

cauldron.

When freed from the cage, Dorothy hugged her precious Toto and thanked us

over and over. She said that she would be continuing the journey with the

scarecrow, tin man, and lion, searching for the Emerald City that existed

somewhere else in the world.

Back at the log house, we watched Dorothy and her friends go. Asuna looked

sadder than the rest of us (probably because of the dog), and Argo looked

relieved (probably because of the dog). I patted them on the back together. The

final ! of the quest was floating over the log cabin. If we walked inside and

closed the door, it should take us back to where it should be.

"Come on. There's no place like home," I said, looking to the western sky,

where the setting sun was sinking behind the clouds.

7

In the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz story, as Asuna taught me while on the

return trip, the scarecrow was searching for his brain; the tin man, his heart;

and the cowardly lion, his courage—just like in this quest.

But in the end, they never found those things. At the end of the story, the

eponymous wizard tells them that in the process of rescuing Dorothy from the

witch, the scarecrow used his brains, the tin man expressed emotion, and the

lion showed courage. In other words, they already had what they were

searching for.

"…Ah, I see. So that's why you and Argo didn't bother with their parts of the

quest. You knew they'd pull through in the end," I said with a wry grimace. The

girls looked very satisfied with themselves.

The house thudded down onto the ground again. Outside, we were back in

the same empty clearing in the forest where I originally found the cabin. Argo

walked past us across the grass, then turned around and beamed at us.

"Ya pulled me outta trouble today. So I'll make it up to ya by not selling this

tip. It'll be my little secret."

"Huh? Tip…? What tip?"

"You know which one!" she said, throwing me a big wink. "Many blessings to

you, Kiri-boy, A-chan!"

As we stood there, rooted to the spot in shock, Argo simply vanished from

sight, like a ninja. A few seconds later, Asuna started giggling, and I found

myself smiling, too. The final thorn that had been stuck in my heart had come

loose at last, I could feel—and I started laughing.

From the moment you took your first step, what you sought was already

within your grasp.

I hoped to be with Asuna forever, and I'd proposed to her. So I'd already

found what I was looking for at that very moment—love for another person.

"...Asuna."

She looked me in the eyes, still smiling.

The last rays of sun came over the roof of the log cabin, glittering in those

beautiful hazel-brown eyes. Without breaking that connection, I opened my

player menu, moved two tabs over, and hovered my finger over the button I

wanted.

I pressed the string of text that said MARRIAGE, then touched the name ASUNA.

Her eyes broke contact, traveling down to a small window that had appeared

for her. She lifted her right hand, her slender fingers tracing the edge of the

window.

"...Kirito."

She looked back, right into my eyes, and pressed the OK button.

It was just a few days after this that we learned the name of Cardinal, the

autonomous system that controlled the world we lived in.

But it wasn't until much, much later that we were taught about the

remarkable quest auto-generation capabilities the Cardinal System possessed.