— III —
They pushed deeper into the cave. The tunnel narrowed, and the spawns thinned in number but climbed in level — not dramatically, but steadily, the way pressure builds. Foot by foot.
Asuna and Lisbeth were occupied ahead, looting a cleared section, their voices low and easy.
The rhythm of combat had a way of establishing its own small normalcies. This was one of them.
Mito moved to stand beside Neo. Not close enough to draw attention.
"I want to ask you something," she said quietly.
He didn't turn. "Shoot."
"Alternative escape methods." She kept her voice under the ambient sound of the cave. "A backdoor in the Cardinal System. An exploit that wasn't patched. Something from outside — a signal interrupt, a server-level access, something the developers might have left unsealed." She watched his face while she said it. "Have you thought about it?"
He was quiet.
Then: "Yes."
"And?"
"It's not our best option right now." His eyes stayed on the passage ahead. "Not while we're still in the single digits."
She waited.
"Ten thousand people are in a coma," he said, in the same register he used for tactical assessments. "Their bodies are in hospitals. Connected to equipment that keeps them alive. Their families are watching. The government is acting, each day under more pressure."
He Followed. "At some point, someone in that chain makes a decision. They can't clear the game for us. They can't execute a hard server shutdown — that could kill everyone inside. Therefore, they start looking for something else." He looks at her in profile. "Want to guess what?"
A pause.
"Extraction tests," she guessed.
"Extraction attempts," He narrowed his eyes. "Something experimental. And to run something experimental, they need test subjects." His voice didn't change. "The candidates they'll select first are the ones who represent an acceptable loss."
"Low-level players. No guild affiliations, no established profile, no one positioned to matter yet in Aincrad's progression." He kept on with his explanations as Mito's eyes opened wide. "Whatever method they try first, the survival rate won't be good. If they can't crack us all out at once, no one but Kayaba understands the system they're working against."
The cold settled on her chest got even colder.
"And right now," she added, "we're exactly that profile."
"Right now, yes." He finally turned to look at her.
His dark eyes were direct in a way they weren't always. "Lvl 10 is the threshold I'm targeting before anything else. As quick as possible."
From further up the tunnel, the murmur of Asuna and Lisbeth comparing dropped items carried through the dark.
She nodded, once. The weight that had settled in her chest during that sleepless night in the inn — the guilt about Asuna, the terrible arithmetic of ten thousand trapped lives, the stone that had been growing steadily heavier since the moment Kayaba's made it over the Plaza's sky — found a new and more precisely shaped edge.
Ten thousand people. The governments would be desperate. And desperate institutions will try the unthinkable.
"Just leveling fast?" Mito asked.
"Just leveling fast," he assured.
He stepped back toward the center of the tunnel as Asuna and Lisbeth rejoined them, both carrying the easy energy of people who hadn't just been discussing their odds of surviving someone's extraction trial.
"From here," Neo said, already moving forward, "is where the real work starts."
The dark ahead swallowed him first. He walked into it without hesitation in his footing, without a glance back to check the terrain. Like someone who had already mapped the distances and decided the risks were acceptable.
Like death was just another variable he had already accounted for.
Like the single-digit level bar on his status screen wasn't a target painted on his back.
Mito tightened her grip. Her scythe became a bit heavier before following.
…