Chapter 2

"…So I guess insect people eat the same things we do…"

I replied to Leafa's whisper with a quick, surreptitious nod.

We were seated in a giant circle of over sixty people—players and NPCs—in

the empty space bordering the pet stables in the northern part of Ruis na Ríg.

The fan-shaped empty lot was planned to be a large farm in the future,

measuring thirty yards side to side and fifteen yards front to back, so we still

had plenty of room, but even still, the sight of all the former ALO players (plus

one from GGO), the former Insectsite players, the Bashin, and the Patter all

mingled together around a roaring bonfire was truly something to behold.

The Insectsite players, in particular, had not been anthropomorphized much,

if at all; their faces were still those of grasshoppers and mantises and stag

beetles, which made them rather frightening to look at. Despite the fact that

they should realistically be licking tree sap and eating plants, those grotesque

jaws were busy chowing down on fresh-cooked meat, which looked like

something out of a horror movie.

"I wonder what the inside of their mouths are like," muttered Alice, who was

seated on my left.

To Leafa's right, Agil was drinking something resembling beer. He replied, "I

could see it during battle. They looked just like human mouths inside."

Alice made a rather strange face, and I couldn't help but grunt, "Freaky!"

That was probably because creating an oral structure that was too different

from reality would be difficult for a player to process. Back in ALO, I once

transformed into a demon with an elongated, wolflike muzzle and tried to eat

another player, and I could remember how difficult it was to actually get them

into my mouth.

Fortunately, there were no children crying at the sight of a giant grasshopper

chomping on meat. It was currently 9:20 PM on September 30th, so the five

Patter children were asleep in their dwellings in the east area of town, and the

ten Bashin who had moved here were all adults.

But if Yui's conjecture that NPCs in the world of Unital Ring were adjusted to

match the capacity of their dwellings was accurate, the Bashin might soon have

children of their own. The problem was that this place was going to be a

battlefield tomorrow night, so I hoped they could put off their childbirth until

later. We had to concoct a plan to evacuate the Patter children if necessary. The

more time went on, the more I needed those Bashin and Patter language skills…

Just then, Yzelma the Bashin chief came striding over to me, holding a massive

platter in both hands. She had been drinking heavily, a cheerful smile plastered

on her reddened face. She slammed the plate down in front of me, sat, and

belted out " !"—not that I knew what that meant.

There was a sizzling, thick-cut steak on her platter, which was at least two and

a half feet in diameter. It was a simple dish, just a huge chunk of meat that had

been seared over the fire, but it had a mysterious new seasoned smell, the likes

of which I hadn't experienced in this world before, probably due to some Bashin

spices she'd brought from home.

" !" she bellowed again, motioning with the plate. I decided that she was

telling me to eat, so I stabbed the steak with my wooden fork. I lifted the cut of

meat, a foot long and an inch thick; globs of fat and juices dripped off it.

It looked and smelled delicious—but there was a mental hurdle that kept me

from chomping down on it: in a word, because it was the flesh of the gigantic

man-faced centipede field boss, the Life Harvester.

Just thirty minutes earlier, we were launching into an all-out raid on the Life

Harvester as it went into a frenzied state. The beast had lifted its twin scythes

and tail spear high as dozens of sword skills flashed around it. The key that

overwrote the possibility of a party-destroying counterattack was my jumping

three-part Sharp Nail skill. The third hit split the Life Harvester's solar plexus,

and when its third and final HP bar disappeared, the adrenaline was so intense

that I could have set off the AmuSphere's safety shutoff.

As befitting an ultra-tough enemy, the Life Harvester dropped a ton of

experience and items, but the most numerous of those were meat, shell, and

bone. There was so much meat, in fact, that we couldn't carry it all, even after

stuffing everyone's capacity full. It was Yzelma's suggestion of a celebratory

feast that finally gave us something to do with all that meat.

The Bashin grabbed the piles of meat stacked by the bonfire and sliced them

up, skewered them, and spiced them before roasting. The Insectsite players, the

Patter, and Klein were all delighted to chow down, but I found it difficult not to

recall the grotesque image of the Life Harvester, and I was hoping to pass on it

—or at least wait to try the stew that Asuna and Yui were using their Cooking

skill to flavor—when Yzelma came over.

I glanced to my right, but Leafa looked away. I turned to the left, and Alice

averted her eyes. The only person who would face me was Yzelma, directly in

front of me. She beamed. There was no escape.

The Life Harvester had a centipede-like design, but to be a true insect, it

would need to have a boneless, monocoque structure. So if it had a skeletal

structure inside of flesh, that made it a vertebrate animal, closer in biological

terms to a cow than a bug.

Or so I told myself, carefully ignoring the knowledge that there were no

vertebrates with more than four legs. I took a big bite of the thick steak.

Despite the charred burns on the surface, the inside was appropriately soft. It

seemed a bit closer to mutton than beef in flavor, but the Bashin spices made

the gamey part of the meat more fragrant. In all honesty, it tasted a rank or two

above the thornspike cave bear and Giyoru bison meat—as long as you didn't

let the horrid visage of the Life Harvester cross your mind.

I chewed the meat until it vanished into the void within my avatar and

shouted, "It's good!"

But Yzelma just looked stunned, so I looked to my companions for help. "Um,

what's the Bashin word for delicious?"

Leafa and Alice seemed confused by the question. Silica, who was feeding

Pina nuts nearby, glanced over and said, "It's jeemeh."

Setting aside the question of how she had learned Bashin, I turned to Yzelma

and said, "Jeemeh!"

The warrior's expression did not change.

"Jeemeh! This is super jeemeh! Crazy jeemeh!"

The other girls couldn't hold back their giggles. I kept repeating the word

—jeemeh, jeemeh—changing the intonation slightly each time, until around the

tenth attempt, when Yzelma's broad face broke into a smile.

" ! Jeemeh!"

She pounded my right shoulder with a powerful hand and distributed more

steaks from the platter to Leafa, then Agil and his friends, and returned to the

fire. A familiar message window appeared over the sight of her retreating back.

Bashin skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1.

Once the window disappeared, I asked Silica, "About how high do you have to

get your language skill proficiency before you can use it?"

"Hmmm. To be able to hold even the most basic kind of communication,

you'll need a proficiency of around ten. I'm still only at fifteen, so I can't act like

much of an expert, though…"

"Ten…," I repeated, thinking it wouldn't actually be that bad.

Then Silica grinned and added, "By the way, to get to ten, you only need to

master about thirty words. Good luck!"

"…Ah…I see…"

So if I wanted to get both Bashin and Patter language skills up to a proficiency

of 10, I'd need to memorize and perfectly pronounce sixty vocabulary words

that would have zero use in the real world. And I'm sure that the effort would

squeeze at least two or three English words out of my brain in exchange.

I have no idea who created this game, but I have to wonder why they made it

so damn complicated, I swore to myself, taking another big bite of Life

Harvester meat, which I chose to shorten to "harve."

Every single person at the feast ate until they were full to bursting, but we

didn't consume even 10 percent of the total weight of Life Harvester meat we'd

received.

If this were the Underworld, the life of the meat would run out very quickly if

the remainder wasn't dried or frozen or salted, but fortunately, the durability of

materials did not decrease in Unital Ring, as long as they were stored in your

inventory. In other words, for the moment, we'd solved the issue of Ruis na

Ríg's burgeoning population's food needs. Eating steak for every meal was going

to get boring, but Asuna and Yui's herbal stew was delicious and a bit gentler in

flavor, and there would be plenty of other ways to cook it. On top of that, Misha

the bear, Kuro the panther, and Asuna's pet lizard, Aga, all seemed to love their

new harve diet.

The feast lasted until ten at night, when the Patter and the Bashin returned to

their dwellings. That left our group and the twenty former Insectsite players in

the empty lot by the stable. We took the opportunity to introduce ourselves

once again.

The leader of the insects was Agil's wife, Hyme the orchid mantis. Her senior

officers were Zarion the Actaeon rhinoceros beetle and Beeming the

Cantharolethrus steinheili stag beetle. After the handshakes concluded, I finally

got around to asking the question I'd been wondering about Argo the Rat.

"So…Argo, why were you with them?"

The diminutive info dealer drained the mug of beer in her hand before

answering, "Welp, I said I'd do everything I could last night, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did say that."

"Truth is: I've known Hyme for a little while…"

"Oh…from Agil's route?" I asked, then realized that couldn't be correct. Argo

showed up just two days ago, and she'd been effectively missing before then. If

she had been in contact with Agil, he wouldn't have been so shocked when I

introduced her last night.

"Nope. Different route," Argo replied, as I suspected she would. She glanced

at the insects. "I've been researchin' the globalization of the Seed Nexus for the

past year or so. Insectsite's one o' the bigger Seed games in America, but almost

no one in Japan plays it…So when I finally found someone who was, it turned

out to be Hyme."

"Whoa…It's that big in America?" I asked, more than a little stunned by the

revelation.

It wasn't Argo who replied, however, but Asuna: "Yes, I was only aware of the

name of the game because of Yuuki. She said the Sleeping Knights played it for

just a little bit before they came to ALO."

"Ohhh…"

Even though I hadn't been as close with Yuuki the Absolute Sword, I still felt

my chest tighten at the mention of her name. Asuna was smiling, but I couldn't

help but see the light in her eyes wavering.

I reached out without thinking and brushed Asuna's hand before looking back

to Argo. "All right, I know how you know Hyme…but why were you being chased

by the Life Harvester with them?"

"Well, ah…"

Argo glanced around, then picked up a long stick off the ground. She used it

to draw a circle in the dirt about three feet across.

"It's probably more complicated than this, but let's just assume this is the

Unital Ring world map, m'kay?"

"Got it." We nodded. Sinon, Alice, and several of the Insectsite players came

over to surround the map.

Unbothered, Argo continued her explanation. "If north is this way, then

where we are is right about here." She jabbed the end of the stick at a spot in

the southwest part of the map, quite close to the edge, in fact.

"How do you know we're there?" Sinon asked.

Argo flipped the branch upward and pointed at the night sky, where trails of

rain clouds still remained. "You remember the direction the aurora ran on the

first night, Sinocchi?"

Apparently, Argo was content to continue the pattern that began with Alice as

Alicchi. Sinon blinked twice with surprise, then bobbed her shoulders. "Yes, I

think it was northeast."

"Meanin' in this direction." Argo pointed the branch toward the Ruis na Ríg

spot again but stopped herself. "Or was it a little more north than that?"

"Huh? Oh…yeah, I guess," Sinon agreed. She crouched down and poked a new

hole in the dirt with her finger, a few inches northwest of Ruis na Ríg. "There

was an aurora in the sky, and when I heard the announcement, I was on the

other side of the Giyoru Savanna…around here, I think. If I'm right about what

you're saying, Argo, the aurora I saw would have been pointing a slightly

different direction than the one Kirito saw."

She drew a line to the northeast from her point—toward the center of the

circular map. Argo grinned at her and drew a line to the same point from Ruis

na Ríg. It also went toward the center, which would mean that, as Sinon had

said, they were at slightly different angles.

"Meaning," rumbled Agil, who had joined the circle at some point. He turned

to the praying mantis avatar standing next to him and asked in English, "Hyme,

which direction did the aurora flow for you?"

Hyme's razor-like jaw moved, emitting a smooth, mature woman's voice.

"Almost exactly north."

She extended her right arm, using the point on the end to draw a line directly

north, about four inches west from Ruis na Ríg's location. Based on the three

lines on the map, Argo's point was clear.

"You're saying that the aurora appeared all over Unital Ring's world in a big…

radial pattern…?" I murmured.

Argo nodded and drew a few more lines from the east and north side of the

map toward the center. "That's exactly it. Gatherin' info on the net, I found

stories of the aurora travelin' west—and south, too. I'm guessing that all the

Seed game players who got converted into UR were placed in a big ring along

the outer edge of the map. And from there, it was On your mark, get set…"

Alice picked up where Argo left off. "Aim for the land revealed by the

heavenly light, in the center of the world. In that sense, it was good fortune that

Sinon's GGO players were placed right next to the ALO players…"

"I wouldn't say we were right next to each other," Sinon remarked dryly. The

others who made the journey to the Giyoru Savanna nodded. As a matter of

fact, the wall dungeon where they met Sinon was in the middle of the savanna,

and that was already nearly twenty miles from Ruis na Ríg. Sinon had

apparently traveled about the same distance before she met up with us, so that

meant the ruins for the GGO players were close to forty miles away—farther

than the distance between the sylph city of Swilvane and the World Tree at the

center of Alfheim.

Leafa was picking up on the same thing. She stared at the map on the ground

and murmured, "Argo, just how long is the radius of this world…?"

"Hmmmm," Argo grunted. She used the tip of the stick to tap three points:

the GGO players' starting point, Ruis na Ríg, and the Insectsite players' starting

point. "I only drew these three spots based on a hunch, y'see. But if the scale

here is accurate, the distance from these points to the center of the map would

be…somewhere between three hundred seventy-five and four hundred twentyfive miles?"

"Four hundred?!" Leafa shrieked. Lisbeth and Silica groaned "Oh nooo…," and

I could even hear, belatedly, the English-speaking insects exclaiming "No way!"

and "Are you kidding me?!"

I couldn't blame them. If that was just the radius, that meant the diameter

was twice that length—over 850 miles. Alfheim alone had a diameter of sixty

miles, and that felt nearly endless. Even locked in the death game of SAO, a

single floor of Aincrad being six miles across seemed utterly huge. Eight

hundred miles was simply impossible to understand. It was nearly the length

from Hokkaido in the north down to Kyushu in the southwest. And in terms of

the Underworld…

"...!"

Suddenly, I bolted upright, my body trembling.

I looked up and met eyes with Alice, who was directly across from me. The

cat-eared knight's blue eyes were just as wide as mine.

I had a feeling she had come to the same conclusion: What if Argo's rough

estimate was just slightly larger? Say, a radius of 450 miles instead of four

hundred…

Then it would perfectly match the radius of the human realm that was

surrounded by the End Mountains.

But even if the numbers do match, that's just a coincidence, I thought, which

Alice seemed to sense. She nodded silently.

Aside from the use of the Seed package, there was no connection between

the Underworld and Unital Ring. And the Underworld wasn't connected to the

Seed Nexus, which made any possibility of a link exceedingly remote. It was

better to focus on the situation around us, rather than trying to look for

meaning in coincidences, I told myself.

The murmuring of the group around me died down, too. I cleared my throat

and got back to the original topic. "So we have a broad understanding of the

structure of the world map. But how does that connect to the reason you were

together with Hyme's group?"

"Oh yeah! I was explaining that, wasn't I?" Argo joked. She shot a glance at

the line of insect soldiers before continuing, "It's simple, really. Ever since this

whole thing started, I've been gettin' feedback from Hyme about their situation.

The Insectsite folks said things were real fishy with them, so they asked if I

wanted to help 'em out."

"Fishy…?" I repeated.

From ahead and on my left, someone said, "Kiri, how much do you know

about Insectsite?"

It was coming from the praying mantis with a white exterior and pink

highlights: Hyme. I was taken aback by her fluent Japanese and nickname for

me. I shook my head and mumbled, "Um…h-hardly anything…"

"That's natural. In Insectsite, players are all arthropods, and there's a faction

war happening between hexapods—six-legged insects—and others like

Chelicerata and myriapods. Chelicerata include spiders and scorpions, while

myriapods are centipedes and millipedes and the like."

"…Wouldn't most players side with the insects?" I asked.

The mantis's triangular head bobbed. "Ex-zactly. The Chelicerata and

myriapods—based on the number of legs, we call them Eight-or-Mores, or more

commonly, Eighmores—have always been overwhelmed by the insect side—

and consistently losing territory. So there's been some rebalancing lately, so

that Eighmores have way stronger stats and skills now. The Eighmores were

starting a furious counterattack to tilt the scales when this whole incident

happened."

"So, um…I'm guessing that the Insectsite players showed up in the same

place, both insects and Eighmores?"

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't that lead to absolute chaos?"

"It did," Hyme confirmed. Zarion and Beeming, who were receiving

interpretation from Agil, snarled in their own language. Once they were done

expressing their frustration, Hyme resumed her story.

"With the first few hours of being forced to convert to this game, nearly all

the Sixes—that's us, the insects—were killed by Eighmores. It was inside the

grace period, so we revived, but we lost all our inherited equipment to them

and had no way to come back from behind. Most of the Sixes didn't leave the

starting ruins regardless, but our troop had a feeling that the grace period was

going to end, and we escaped."

"Troop…? Is that what they call guilds in your game?"

"Yeah…In fact, we were one of the top-ten troops in Insectsite. But it was

really hard to advance without gear, and the grace period ended at some point,

plus the Eighmores started rushing out of the ruins to chase us down. There was

no way out for us…How do you say that in Japanese, again?"

"Um…we'd say nicchi mo sacchi mo ikanai, I suppose…"

"Okay, so we were all nicchi-sacchi, and that's when I got the message from

Argo."

I exhaled, relieved to see where the story was going at last.

The bonfire in the center of the clearing was nearly dead now, just the last

little flickers of flames remaining, around which Misha, Kuro, and Aga slept

soundly. And now that I looked closer, even Pina had left Silica's head to curl up

atop Kuro's back. While Aga hadn't taken part in the battle, a worse outcome

against the Life Harvester could have spelled disaster for Misha or Kuro—or

perhaps both of them.

Each of these pets had been tamed through a confluence of circumstances,

but even in the few days we'd had them, I had to admit that I was surprisingly

attached. I didn't want to imagine losing them, but that just meant I needed to

think long and hard about how to use them in battle to minimize risk.

I turned away from the animals to Argo again. "So today, you were traveling

to the Insectsite area to meet up with Hyme and her friends. If you'd just said

the word, we could have sent someone with you…"

"Nah, I was hiding and sneaking past all the monsters along the way. Safer for

me to go alone."

"Oh yeah, hide-and-seek master?" I needled good-naturedly. "How'd you end

up getting chased by that huge monster, then?"

The Rat made a bitter face. While she'd traveled to meet them alone, she was

returning in a huge party of twenty-one, so that was an unfair question. I felt a

bit bad about asking it.

"That was my mistake," she admitted.

"Wait…really?"

"The info agent part o' me got greedy. Listen, Kiri-boy, Unital Ring's got some

unnatural features."

"Oh…?"

Asuna and the other girls leaned in closer with interest. The center of

attention again, Argo resumed poking at the map with her stick.

To the southwest of Ruis na Ríg's dot, in the lower right of Giyoru Savanna,

she drew a small circle, rather than a dot. Then she added another, far to the

northwest.

"Here and there around the world, there are perfectly circular basins. At the

biggest, they're about six miles across, and even the smaller ones are still two

or three miles. The forests and rivers are all perfectly natural in design, so you

gotta figure there's a particular reason these basins are so circular, huh?" she

stated. I murmured and stared, lost in thought.

"Oh…That's the basin where the Bashin village is!" Lisbeth cried, pointing at

the circle closer to Ruis na Ríg. And Sinon indicated the circle farther away. "I

suspect this basin is where the Ornith village is. I just assumed that they had

dug the land down that way…But I suppose it was a natural feature instead."

Asuna and Silica nodded along with them, but I had seen neither basin for

myself. Yui was examining the map closely next to Asuna. She had visited the

Bashin village twice, so I asked her, "Yui, was the basin where the Bashin live

really that circular?"

"I did not have the opportunity to view it from a high altitude, so I have not

confirmed the full scale of it…But from what I observed, the arc of the basin's

boundary has an estimated roundness deviation of about two inches. That

number is certainly impossible to imagine coming from the Seed program's

landscape-generation process…"

It took me a moment to digest this explanation. A roundness deviation of two

inches meant that the miles-wide basin, when measured against a perfect

geometric circle of the same size, wouldn't deviate more than two inches from

its border. Indeed, that could only mean it was intentionally placed by the

world's creator.

"…What are these circular basins for anyway?" I asked Argo.

The info dealer's grimace was clearly visible under her hood. "That's what I'm

lookin' up. For now, I know there's been over thirty of these basins found all

over the map. And there's somethin' inside every one of 'em. NPC villages,

ruins, dungeons…I spotted one of them around here after meeting up with

Hyme tonight, in fact."

She drew a third circle on the map, two inches east from Ruis na Ríg—which

was probably more like twenty miles in actual distance.

"There's no intel about this one on the net yet, so I wanted to at least see

what was inside it. I asked them to wait outside, and I snuck in. Inside a forest

of dead trees, there was a stone circle ruin, and I felt sure I smelled treasure

inside. That was when that huge freakin' humantipede jumped out at me…"

"…I see."

Over to the east of the clearing, the only sight were the trees of the Great

Zelletelio Forest that surrounded Ruis na Ríg. But of course, the map continued

on beyond the boundary of the forest, which was only a tiny part of the world

of Unital Ring.

"And you got chased by the Life Harvester from that basin all the way to

where you met up with us."

"Who would have guessed the thing would give chase for twenty whole

miles? I really screwed things up for Hyme's group…," Argo lamented, a rare

sign of deflation from her.

But Zarion, the something-or-other rhinoceros beetle, said happily, "Never

mind that, girl! I had a blast!"

Beeming, the something-or-other stag beetle, added, "I felt so much better

after we beat that guy!"

The other insects chipped in with their own words of reassurance. To my

surprise, Argo replied with English just as smooth as Agil's.

"Hey, do you think the reason that giant freak chased us so long is because it

was an Eighmore, and y'all are Sixes?"

The insects erupted in laughter, and I couldn't help but think, Wow, Argo, this

is incredible!

With the situation fully explained now, I had no reservations about bringing

the twenty insects into Ruis na Ríg. If anything, I was ready to beg them to join

us…except that there was one warning to give them before that could happen.

Employing plenty of help from Agil, I used every last bit of my English ability in

explaining to Hyme and her friends the ultimate danger that was approaching

us as soon as tomorrow night.

Upon learning about the witch Mutasina, leader of the Virtual Study Society,

and her terrifying suffocation magic, plus the army of over a hundred players

under her thrall coming to attack our town, Hyme engaged in a very serious

conversation with her companions.

She turned back to me at one point to ask, "Is there any possibility of

cooperation with this Mutasina?"

"..."

I couldn't give her an immediate answer. Without realizing it, I lifted my hand

to touch the throat guard of my armor. Beneath it, there was a stark, ringed

black symbol around my neck, symbol of Mutasina's suffocation magic. In the

Stiss Ruins far to the south, Mutasina could thump the butt of her staff against

the ground, and I would be reduced to rolling around on the ground, unable to

breathe.

There was no doubt that her overall power was in the top echelon of the

entire Unital Ring. If we could work alongside her, we would have a

tremendously reassuring ally. If.

Picking my English words carefully, I translated Mutasina's words for them to

hear.

You might cooperate now, but the closer the goal becomes, the more our

teams will compete with one another. In the end, even the players within a team

will fight and kill one another. But as long as my magic is active upon you, we

can avoid that situation. Do you see? This is the best and most effective means

of getting to the finish line, isn't it?

Even after the final question at the end had been relayed, the insects did not

speak for some time. I started to worry that my choice of English had been

poor, until Hyme spat, "Ridiculous."

She crossed her thorny arms before her chest and said in Japanese, "No, I

don't think we'll be making friends with her. And now that I've heard about this,

I can't possibly move on and pretend it didn't happen."

"W…well, I want you to consider this carefully. We're talking about an army of

a hundred…You could stay here for the night and leave tomorrow morning, and

no one will think the worse of you."

"Yes, a hundred players is no laughing matter. But between your friends, Kiri,

those cool natives, the cute mice, and all of us, that makes sixty, right? I know

we're better in terms of individual combat ability, and we've got the advantage

of our defenses. It'd be closer than you think, wouldn't it?"

"Well…that's true."

It seemed like desperate odds for us this morning, but the twenty insects

added to the equation made for a much different picture. And the players on

Mutasina's side had no idea that we had the Insectsite team on our side, so if

they took part in the big battle, the visual shock of those grotesque insect

avatars might have a psychological effect on the enemy. As long as we cooked

up a good plan and confused them with traps and sneak attacks, we might have

a chance to win.

But…

"A good chance" wasn't good enough. Fighting off an enemy invasion only to

lose half of our number wasn't really victory. If you died at all in Unital Ring, you

could never log back in. I didn't want to lose a single companion until we could

beat it altogether. And it was doubly true for NPCs, who really would die for

good. I only wanted to fight if I was certain that we could turn back a hundred

enemies without a single casualty on our side. And those players in Mutasina's

army were under her coercion, so I didn't really want to cause mass casualties

among them, either.

"…If we can just do something about Mutasina before the battle begins," I

proposed, as I'd done in the meeting before we fought the Life Harvester.

Klein, who'd been through somewhere between ten and twenty beers,

lamented, "That's what it comes to, huh? It ain't in my playbook to do a sneak

attack on a lady I've never even seen before, but if they're gonna attack us, I

guess it's gotta be done…"

"If you want to go alone and talk her out of it, be our guest," Lisbeth

suggested.

He shook his head and wailed, "Hell no! Not if it means walking right up to her

and having her cast that choking magic on me!" Our friends and even the

insects chuckled at this.

To my right, I could feel Argo's gaze on me, and I carefully avoided looking

back at her.

Last night, when traveling to the Stiss Ruins where the ALO players started, I

fell under the effects of Mutasina's choking magic, the Noose of the Accursed—

but I hadn't told my friends yet. The only person who knew, because she'd been

there, was Argo.

I made her promise to stay quiet; because if the others knew, they would

demand to place solving my curse at the top of the priority list when we had a

mountain of other tasks to stay on top of. I didn't want to be the reason we

were falling behind on leveling up and getting better gear.

At every opportunity, Argo sent me telepathic messages saying "Ya better tell

'em," but once the Siege of Ruis na Ríg began—or Defense of Ruis na Ríg, from

our perspective—Mutasina wouldn't activate the Noose spell. Not only would it

immobilize me, it would affect all one hundred of her followers as well.

My guess—which was almost certainly accurate—was that killing Mutasina or

destroying her staff would undo the Noose. I could explain the situation to

Asuna and everyone else after that point and apologize for keeping it secret, I

told myself, to assuage my feeling of guilt.

I turned to Hyme. "I'd be very grateful if you stayed around to fight. If so, I

think that it will be the key to our victory, as you said. But at the current

moment, it will be hard for us to fight off a hundred enemies without losing

anyone. So I want to search for a way to avoid this war, until the last possible

moment, and if it comes to this…I think we should consider abandoning the

town."

No one spoke for a long time.

Now that the Patter and the Bashin were here, with the Patter having had

children to boot, we had just come to the conclusion hours ago that we could

not abandon the town. The others had to be wondering what I was thinking to

go back to it again.

But after experiencing the possibility of total loss against the Life Harvester,

the chill running down my spine was still present. I didn't want to lose my

companions. I didn't want anyone to die. I would be happier to just stop playing

Unital Ring if going on meant losing anyone…

I clenched my fists briefly, then turned to look Asuna in the face. Her eyes,

which smoldered with quiet flames, stared right back into mine. It seemed to

me, however, that there was a faint note of misgiving in them, too.

I couldn't blame her. The center of Ruis na Ríg was our home, the log cabin. It

should have been smashed to pieces along with the twenty-second floor of New

Aincrad when it fell, but through a number of miracles and an incredible

amount of effort, we managed to make it land in this forest. Abandoning Ruis

na Ríg meant abandoning our home.

Amid the heavy silence, a voice arrived that was as cool and refreshing as a

night breeze.

"Kirito, if you think only of what happens in defeat before you fight, you will

end up losing winnable battles," said Alice. Her back was proud and straight,

and her hand rested on the pommel of the sword on her left hip. Even wearing

crude iron armor, she looked just like the Integrity Knight she had been in her

old glory days. But what was I saying? She was still the proud and noble

Osmanthus Knight, of course.

"Of course, it is important to consider all circumstances," she continued, "but

they must be considered for the sake of victory; is that not true? I believe that it

would be losing sight of the entire purpose if we were to choose to run in order

to avoid battle."

I couldn't argue with that.

During the Otherworld War that took place in the Underworld, Alice threw

herself into a battle that was three thousand against fifty thousand, and against

those astronomical odds, she led her troops to victory with a massive sacred art

of her own making. At the time, I was in a comatose state, so I wasn't able to

help—and those words coming from her now were a sucker punch directly to

my heart.

Yes…we had over twenty hours before Mutasina's army attacked. It was too

early to be giving up yet. If we thought hard, we might find a way—a way to

defeat a raid party of a hundred without losing a single one of our friends.

In the corner of my view, it said ten pm. The evening was getting long by now,

but for VRMMO players, this was prime time. Perhaps now was a good point to

move to the log cabin and start strategic planning for real.

But Hyme, who'd been discussing something with her companions, turned to

me and motioned nimbly with her strange praying mantis shoulders. "Kiri, I hate

to say it, but my friends need to log out now."

"Huh? Oh…right, the others are diving from America, huh…?"

Agil's wife lived in Tokyo, but the other nineteen of them lived in the United

States, I presumed, so the time difference was a consideration. I tried to

calculate what time it would be over there. Yui was thoughtful enough to

recognize the look of pain on my face and did it for me.

"It is currently five AM on the West Coast, and eight AM on the East Coast!"

"Thanks, Yui. Yeah, that's a long night…Sorry for taking so much of your time,"

I said.

Hyme's triangular head shook from side to side. "No, we had a great time. Do

you mind if they use those shacks to log out?" she asked, pointing at the stables

on the north end of the clearing.

They might have been nonhuman avatars, but it didn't feel right to treat them

like stable animals. Instead, I guided them to the inn—which wasn't yet

functioning as a business—on the south side, where Zarion and the others could

log off.

Left behind on her own, Hyme came to the cabin with us. We sat on the floor

of the spacious living room to resume our talk.

On a bulletin board I built using the Beginner Carpentry skill, I drew a simple

map of the environs around Ruis na Ríg using some bonfire ash. Then I posed a

question to the group. "Think about this as if you were Mutasina. If you were

going to attack this town with a hundred players, what strategy would you

use?"

They were taken aback by the sudden mental exercise but took the scenario

seriously.

Ruis na Ríg was a circle two hundred feet across, surrounded by sturdy tenfoot-tall stone walls and wooden gates in the four ordinal directions: northeast,

southeast, southwest, and northwest. Thick forest surrounded the town, with

the only exception being a road from the southwest gate leading to the Maruba

River that ran to the west of the forest.

After thirty seconds, the first to speak was Agil, who'd been freed from his

interpreting duties now that the Americans were gone. "From what you've said,

it sounds like this Mutasina has a real sick personality, so I doubt her forces will

just come rushing right up the southwest road."

"I agree," said Silica, Pina resting on her head. Misha, Aga, and Kuro were

sleeping in the stable, but Pina's default location in this world was its owner's

head. "Mutasina will want to minimize the loss of her allies, too, so I think she'll

try to come up with a plan that will catch us by surprise. Like, hiding separate

parties in the woods on either side of the road, then catching us in a pincer

attack when we rush out at them…"

The rest of the party murmured in agreement. Luring enemies out of their

safe zone into being surrounded was a classic strategy against monsters. If it

worked in a PvP setting, it would have great effect, too.

"I wonder if clearing out the surrounding forest is the safest thing to do, in the

end…," Sinon questioned. Again, murmurs arose, sounding more conflicted this

time.

Argo, who was sitting cross-legged against the wall, rocked back and forth. "I

ain't just sayin' this because I'm using a scouting build, but you can use forests

in a big free-for-all, too. Clearing out the trees to open up the land removes the

danger of an ambush, but it also leaves us with fewer options for strategy."

"Indeed," agreed Asuna. "The reason Schulz's ambush group burned the

forest first was probably for light—and also to protect against us launching a

sneak attack through the trees. I would guess that, generally speaking, in the

open the advantage will go to the side with numbers…"

"That's true," said Sinon, who did not have a rebuttal.

The next to speak was Yui, who usually dedicated herself to listening carefully

in discussions like these. "In that case, would Mutasina attempt to level the

forest before launching her attack? You would need some heavy machinery in

the real world, but in Unital Ring, depending on your skill level and tools, you

can cut down a grown spiral pine in about ten seconds. With a hundred players,

I think they could clear out every last tree within five hundred yards of Ruis na

Ríg in an hour."

"...Uh-huh…" In the back of my mind, I thought of the witch as I had

witnessed her at the Stiss Ruins. "There's no way that the Noose of the

Accursed is the only spell that Mutasina can use. If she can use other attack

spells, she'll want to remove any cover to hide behind…So it seems possible

that she'll open up the land around us, then put another tactic into play."

"Great thinking, Yui! It's so good to have you with us!" exclaimed Lisbeth,

hugging the girl and scrunching her hair.

Asuna watched this interaction with delight but soon took on a more serious

expression. "Say, Kirito…do you think this Noose of the Accursed might be

possible to recast…or add new victims to somehow?"

"Uh…meaning, can she maintain the hundred who are already under the spell

and cast the Noose on more players?"

"Yes," she said, totally serious. I was almost going to laugh it off, to say that it

would practically be cheating to work like that.

But everyone's heads turned when a voice said, "Why not?"

Eleven pairs of eyes fixed on Argo's face. She continued, uncharacteristically

severe, "In the Stiss Ruins, when Mutasina said their first target was Kirito's

team, Dikkos of the Weed Eaters had said, 'Why would we do that? Use this

choking magic on them and make them your slaves, too, why don't ya?'"

Indeed, that quote sounded like something I'd heard atop that stage in the

ruins. But it was impressive that she could recall the details of the quote amid

all the chaos of that scene.

"And Mutasina replied, 'It is not easy to succeed at casting the Noose of the

Accursed. The motions are lengthy, and the magic circle is impossible to miss. It

will not work this effectively without the right situation and audience, such as a

group of people who would believe an easy lie about casting a grand buff spell

on an entire gathering.' She didn't say that it was impossible for the spell to add

extra targets to its effect. Of course, that coulda been a bluff to make her threat

more effective…"

Another long silence settled over the scene. I was keenly aware of an itching

around my throat where the symbol had been placed.

Asuna, who had brought up the topic, suggested, "It might be a bluff…but we

should assume it's possible. Which means she might attempt to place the

Noose upon us at some point, too. It might have lengthy motions and an

obvious magic circle, but if the targets are surrounded with no escape…"

Her words brought the image of Mutasina to mind again.

She looked like a holy woman, wearing a spotless hooded white robe and

bearing a simple staff, and her voice was pure and righteous, but the words she

spoke were utterly cold and ruthless. She had called SAO, the world that Asuna

and I and our friends lived through, a world of pure hell that took four thousand

lives with it, kicking and screaming.

I had to take a deep breath to calm myself from the memory. "Yes, it's quite

possible that Mutasina will attempt it…In fact, I can't imagine her doing

anything else. She could clear out the forest around the town to prevent

guerilla combat, surround us with a huge army to cut us off of escape, and then

put the Noose on us. If that works, she'll earn herself sixty new followers."

"You know, I was thinking something," said Klein, still holding up his beer

mug.

"Go ahead."

"You just said sixty—that includes the Bashin and the Patter, yeah? This might

sound cold, but…will suffocation magic even work on NPCs who don't have

physical players inside them?"

"Uh…" This question took me so by surprise that I had to blink several times

before I could compose myself. "Um…While I know I said it was suffocating, it's

not actually stopping the player's breath; it's just making it feel that way for the

avatar, so…"

"Huh? Really?"

Now it was Klein's turn to be surprised. Even having experienced it for myself,

I couldn't state for certain that it was safe. The recollection of that frighteningly

realistic choking sensation came back to me, and I nearly started coughing out

of sheer impulse.

"I conclude that it is impossible for an AmuSphere signal to stop actual

physiological breathing," said Yui firmly.

She was being held in Lisbeth's lap at the moment and hopped up to walk

over to me at the bulletin board, where she turned, white dress twirling, to

continue her explanation.

"Respiratory control in the human body lies in the medulla oblongata, at the

lower part of the brain stem. But the AmuSphere signals that allow a game

program to interact with the brain only reach the cerebral cortex, the

outermost layer of the brain. The cerebral cortex includes the sensory

processing areas, so you might be able to create the illusion that breathing has

stopped, but the AmuSphere is not functionally capable of stopping the body's

respiration, and even if it were, the safety would kick in and forcefully log the

player out of the system."

The collected group murmured with admiration at Yui's tactful, logical

deduction. I had to take her word for it about the medulla oblongata and

cerebral cortex, but I understood the final part of her speech very deeply. The

AmuSphere was built directly in response to the NerveGear that took the lives

of thousands of SAO players. It was packed with layers of safety features, so

that if the user reached an unsafe heart rate, or went into a dehydrated state,

or even just held their bladder for too long, they could be pulled out of the

program. It was unthinkable that the people who made it would allow for any

kind of freakish outcome that might have a direct effect on the user's life.

The Noose's feeling of constriction, like the sounds I was hearing and scents I

was smelling, was nothing but a virtual sensory signal. But even still…

Yui continued, "Also, I surmise that the suffocation magic will be effective

against NPCs like the Bashin and the Patter as well. NPCs in Unital Ring utilize

the same language engine that I do. Through my avatar, I receive sensory

information, including not just sight and hearing, but also smell, taste, and

touch. I enjoy good smells and delicious flavors, but I am programmed to find

pain and heat unpleasant in the same way that you all do. I was made

indestructible in SAO and ALO, so I never felt pain in them, but now that I am a

player, I will feel pain if I am slashed by a sword, and I will feel anguish if my

windpipe is blocked."

Without thinking, I reached out toward Yui, rubbing her little head with my

left hand. She smiled at my touch, reacting as though it was ticklish.

Yui could find delight in these interactions and think that Asuna's cooking was

delicious, but she could also feel physical pain and agony. The elaborate nature

of Akihiko Kayaba's AI programming was as stunning as ever, yet I couldn't help

but wonder why he hadn't just stopped at simulating the feeling of pleasure

alone.

I didn't want to put Yui into our defensive battle, but I had a feeling she

wouldn't accept that as an answer.

Klein smacked his knee to break the heavy silence. "Even if the suffocation

spell works on NPCs and Yuippe, we can deal with it! If it's just an illusion, we

can basically ignore it," he said confidently.

"Ah yes. If we know it's fake from the start, there's no need to panic about it,"

Leafa added. "In fact, our best chance to strike might be by allowing Mutasina

to cast the magic on us. All the other enemies around us are going to fall over,

so if we just withstand the pain and sprint to her, we could beat her with two or

three good sword skills, right?"

That was my sister, ever the bold and confident combatant. In the Otherworld

War, she had used the Terraria account to protect the Dark Territory's orcs and

pugilists from thousands of American players, thanks to that spirit of hers.

However…

Unfortunately, the feeling of suffocation that the Noose of the Accursed

simulated was horrifyingly difficult to bear, even knowing that it was just a

virtual sensation. When I felt the effect of the Noose for myself in the coliseum

of the Stiss Ruins, my first thought was what Yui had just said: It had to be false,

because the AmuSphere's safety systems made it impossible to stop the user's

respiration. But the feeling was so overwhelming that it shattered that logical

thought process in an instant. The realistic sensation of having something stuck

in my throat, impossible to swallow or spit out, caused a primal, biological

panic. If she had waited five more seconds to turn off the spell's effect, I would

have logged off to escape the terror of death.

Despite having experienced it already, and knowing that it was an illusion, I

didn't think that I could ignore the effect and act with full and total movement.

We ought to make our plans under the assumption that if the Noose was placed

and activated, everyone under its effect would collapse to the ground on the

spot.

But would the others believe me if I told them that now?

It was tempting to take on the Noose of the Accursed on purpose and launch

an attack when Mutasina was expecting to have the advantage. It made it

highly possible that we could keep our casualties to zero. And defeating

Mutasina alone aligned with our core values better than an entire war. It made

me wish that this was our only valid option—if only I hadn't experienced the

suffocation for myself.

The group seemed likely to lean toward Klein's plan. I had to think of

something to say that would convince them to go the other way…

I felt eyes on my cheek and turned to look directly into the gaze of Argo, who

was seated cross-legged in the back row. The Rat's gold-tinged irises were

telling me loud and clear, Just give up and admit it already.

…Oh, fine. Fine.

I exhaled and raised my hand.

"All right, folks, listen up. Unfortunately…I don't think that Klein's suggestion

will work as well as you think."

"Why's that, Kiri, my man?" grumbled the katana-wielder.

I opened my ring menu, moved over to the equipment window, and removed

the Fine Iron Chest Armor. Underneath, I wore only the Ubiquicloth Undershirt

that Asuna had crafted, but it was a turtleneck style and nearly black in color, so

it still wouldn't make the symbol of the Noose stand out, even if I pulled the

collar down.

Throwing caution to the wind, I unequipped the undershirt, too, baring my

torso. Leafa grimaced and exclaimed, "Hey, hang on, Big Brother! Why are you

taking off…your…?"

She slowed down and trailed off as her wide eyes caught sight of what was on

my throat. Everyone aside from Argo made the same expression.

"So yeah…This happened.