A few days later, people began gathering at the fountain plaza in Tolbana. Most of them were wearing dropped equipment, and even the ones in shop gear had clearly bought the better stuff. As for weapons, that went without saying. In the early game, those were what people poured the most effort into.
Satoru walked that way as well, everyone's eyes crossing as they sized one another up.
Were they judging the comrades who would soon be fighting and dying beside them?
Or were they measuring each other's strength?
Everyone here was part of the current front line. It wouldn't have been strange if a quiet sense of rivalry was already starting to stir beneath the surface.
Sweeping his gaze over the plaza, Satoru spotted plenty of familiar faces. He'd seen them around the frontline streets and labyrinth zones, and had even partied with some of them, but he hadn't gotten close to most. There were only a handful of names on his friends list. Even so, whenever their eyes met, they still nodded to each other in casual goodwill.
The only one he could really say he'd properly talked with was the information broker sitting atop the high wall.
The eyes beneath the hood noticed him too. Maybe out of sheer mischief, she pulled a face at him.
She's not that old, is she? Satoru grumbled inwardly.
"Is that... Yurnero?"
Hearing someone call his name outright, Satoru turned around.
The other's long hair looked soft and smooth, and his features were delicate enough to seem almost girlish. He wasn't the kind of face you'd forget at a glance. Still, to be fair, it had been nearly half a month since they'd last seen each other. In that time, they'd only exchanged a few simple messages, and Satoru had only learned about Argo through him.
"Long time no see, Kirito," Satoru said with a smile.
"Yeah, you too." Kirito nodded, looking a little more at ease. "I knew how you were doing from your messages, but seeing you in person now... you've really been working hard. Argo's been complaining about you to me a lot lately."
"So the boss has issues with her own customer?"
"I think your personalities just don't click." Kirito scratched his head, like he wasn't great at this sort of conversation either. "Still, seeing you're okay... I'm really glad."
"Speaking of that, Klein and his friends have been working hard to level up too, so there's nothing to worry about."
"I-is that so? That's really good to hear."
He's genuinely kind, Satoru thought. He still felt guilty about leaving on his own that time. At least in Satoru's mind, Kirito had made exactly the right call.
"By the way, who's this with you?" Satoru pointed at the player standing beside Kirito. The person looked quiet and withdrawn. Just from the outfit alone, which covered the whole body and hid the face beneath a large hood, there was a strong keep-away vibe.
"W-well, I guess we're teammates for now," Kirito said hesitantly.
The hooded swordsman gave a small nod. Whether that was agreement or something else, Satoru couldn't tell.
After briefly glancing at the rapier at the cloaked player's waist, Satoru looked away and didn't press any further. In Kirito's mind, it was probably pretty hard to justify showing up here with someone else after not teaming up with Klein or the others.
"Forty-four people," Kirito said, scanning the plaza as he counted those assembled. "That's far fewer than I expected... If we want to beat the First Floor boss with zero casualties, we'd need at least two groups rotating in and out."
He looked ready to sigh, but the rapier user beside him cut in first.
"Really? I think... there are actually a lot of people here."
"A lot?"
"Because there really is a chance we could all get wiped out, isn't there?" the rapier user said quietly.
"Not necessarily." Satoru gave a slight shake of his head and casually picked up the thought. The rapier user's gaze turned to him from beneath the hood, and under that questioning look, he went on. "I wouldn't say everyone here has some noble spirit of self-sacrifice, wanting to pave the way for the players after us. But I'm sure there are people here who simply don't want to fall behind."
I count as one of them.
"Everybody knows boss rewards are better than what normal monsters drop, right? And only the frontliners can get them. In SAO, once a Floor Boss is defeated, you can't farm it again. That means it's a one-time-only reward."
Even so, that was a pretty dark way to put it. Maybe trying to lighten the mood, Kirito thought for a moment before saying,
"Uh, it's like... not wanting to fall to tenth place in your grade, and wanting to keep your scores around seventy."
At his oddly down-to-earth explanation, the rapier user tilted her head, then seemed to accept it after a moment.
Most of the people in the plaza were chatting casually like they were, until one of the organizers clapped his hands to call for attention, and the noise gradually died down.
After that crisp applause came a bright, clear voice full of energy and encouragement.
"All right! We're five minutes behind schedule, but let's get started! Everyone, please come over here!"
His deep blue hair gave him a lively look, and his outfit looked carefully coordinated from head to toe. Stats aside, he easily had the best visual presence out of anyone there. The mix of blue and cyan blended smoothly, and the metallic parts gleamed in the sunlight.
There was an easy smile on his face, and the impressive part was that it didn't look forced.
The blue-haired swordsman took the straight sword from his back and planted it upright before him, resting both hands on the pommel. He looked more like a royal guard standing watch than a player.
A low murmur spread through the group of forty-odd people watching him.
Even with that many eyes on him, he didn't seem pressured at all, and answered them with the same cheerful smile and open voice.
"First, thank you all for responding to my call today. You're all powerful players, so the fact that you made time to come here already means a lot to me. Some of you may know me already, but please allow me to introduce myself anyway. My name is Diavel! And as for my profession... naturally, I am a gallant knight!"
"Why not say you're a knight on his way to rescue a princess too?"
The moment he finished, someone whistled and teased him at just the right time. In Satoru's darker view of things, those people might well have been plants, but Diavel's opening wasn't bad at all.
Satoru and Kirito stayed toward the back of the crowd and watched.
"Now then, I believe everyone knows why we're here." Diavel's voice turned serious. He looked out at the giant tower stabbing into the sky, the First Floor's labyrinth that had been their prison for the past month.
"Earlier today, my party located the stairs to the next level. To put it simply: we've found the First Floor boss. If we defeat it, the path to the second floor will finally be open to us."
The crowd gradually grew solemn.
"It took us a whole month just to get this far... but this game will be beaten. Someone has to do it, and right now, that responsibility falls to us frontliners. Let's carry the good news of clearing the first floor back to the others. Let's give courage to the players who are still holding back. And in the end, let's all move forward together!"
At that point, not clapping would've felt wrong, so Satoru started applauding. Plenty of others had clearly been won over for real.
In any case, he genuinely admired anyone who had the nerve to stand up and say something like that. Even if Diavel had his own interests in mind, he still understood what the bigger picture demanded.
"Hold it, Knight-san!"
Right as the mood was turning good, a voice cut in. It stood out so sharply that the crowd parted on its own, revealing the speaker.
A somewhat short male player with cactus-like hair and a huge one-handed sword on his back stepped forward. His voice was the exact opposite of Diavel's, low and heavy, with a Kansai edge to it.
Whether he was picking a fight or not, Diavel's expression didn't change in the slightest. He stayed perfectly composed.
"Do you have some objection?"
The cactus-haired man gave a grim nod.
"My name's Kibaou," he said, using a bold-sounding nickname that didn't really match his appearance. "I've got nothing against you, Diavel. But I do have something to say about the rotten bastards mixed in with this crowd."
"You mean...?"
"Isn't it obvious? Two thousand people are already dead! And it's all because those guys hogged all the good stuff for themselves and caused this whole tragedy!"
By then, almost everyone understood what he meant. Diavel lowered his head and rubbed his chin.
"You're talking about the closed beta players, then."
"Isn't it obvious?!"
Kibaou shot back furiously, his chainmail clinking as he moved.
"The ones from the closed beta left the Town of Beginnings as soon as the game started and abandoned over nine thousand newbies!"
He swept his glare across the crowd, pointing straight at them.
"They grabbed the hunting grounds and all the profitable quests and just got stronger for themselves! There are people like that in this crowd too, aren't there? People like that! Unless they come forward, apologize in public, and hand over the money they built on top of the dead, there's no way I'm ever going to trust them and fight beside them!"
Oh.
Satoru gave a small nod of understanding.
That kind of anger wasn't hard to understand.
The timing was just terrible. If the very first strategy meeting got derailed by a clash between closed beta players and newer players, things were going to get messy fast.
Besides, had the closed beta players alone really made no sacrifices?
Satoru glanced at the silent Kirito beside him. He looked like he was holding some emotion back.
Clinging too stubbornly to old information was incredibly dangerous, and Satoru had already seen people like that before.
Like a hidden blade beneath silk, it would catch you when you least expected it.
Even when gathering information himself, he never fully trusted it. He always wanted to verify it first.
That was probably one of the reasons Argo disliked him.
Did other people just see him as overly afraid of dying?