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Chapter 1: The Transition

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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Elder Tales was based off of the Half-Gaia project, meaning that the distances between places inside of the game was half the distance between places in real life.

But otherwise – with the exception of whether or not a city was in a certain spot or not – it pretty much followed the real world every step of the way. Which was why the sight of the massive mountain on the horizon, looking like it'd been lodged in the middle of the channel leading out of Tokyo Bay, came as such a shock.

There shouldn't have been a mountain there. It made no sense that there was a mountain there.

Shiroe was in fact paying that distant mountain so much attention that he nearly fell off his gryphon, probably would've if Akatsuki hadn't managed to steady him.

"My lord!" Akatsuki wrestled him back into position, looking quite terrified.

Shiroe didn't pay as much attention to that as he really ought to have done. "Akatsuki, why is there a mountain?"

"My lord?" Akatsuki followed his gaze towards the impossibly gigantic shape on the horizon. "A... mountain?" She shook her head, dismissing her own confusion on the subject. "My lord, concentrate on the now. We can investigate it later."

Shiroe frowned, but nodded. Deliberately not calling Akatsuki out on the fact that she was was clutching onto him with a white-knuckled grip. Neither of them knew what would happen to the gryphon if the one controlling it suddenly fell off of it, but it would likely be an unpleasant experience for both of its riders.

They hadn't seen the mountain when they left for Susukino, which likely had more to do with how it was to the south-east of Akihabara, and they'd needed to go north, than it not being there previously. But now that they were actually looking in that direction from up high, it was quite impossible to miss.

It'd probably rival Mount Fuji in height. No, actually. It looked a lot sharper in the sky than Mount Fuji ever had, so if it was of a similar size across, it'd be even taller than that.

Considering the expansion-pack that had probably started before this whole world-transfer thing had happened, Shiroe would bet a lot of money on that being some kind of new raid-zone. Though it was eerily familiar, despite how out-of-placed it looked.

It was almost as if he could recognize it from-...

Shiroe felt suddenly cold, his face paling as he turned his attention back towards the mountain that was wedged in the channel. No, not a mountain. Shiroe stared at the giant castle that had fallen from the sky.

"Aincrad." He wasn't sure if it was horror or awe in his suddenly hoarse voice, but it was probably a mixture of both.

Akihiko Kayaba's masterpiece. The madman's Death Game. The castle with one hundred Floors, and ten-thousand players forever trapped inside of it.

Akatsuki lunged for the reins as they slipped from his numb fingers, her voice buzzing unheard over the ringing in his ears. The gryphon's flight steadied, even as Shiroe's eyes remained fixed on that impossibly familiar shape in the distance.

The shape of Aincrad, the floating castle of Sword Art Online.

XXX

Kirito gritted his teeth.

Everyone had been forcefully teleported to the First Floor, the teleportation-gates between the Floors no longer worked, and Aincrad was no longer floating in the sky. Hell, the view kind of looked eerily reminiscent of Tokyo Bay, only without Tokyo or any other major city.

The First Floor was also destroyed, as if by an earthquake, the distinct architecture of its floating islands now irrevocably shattered. Considering that the castle itself no longer floated in the sky, Kirito wondered if it had been less of an earthquake and more a result of whatever was keeping them afloat suddenly ceasing to do so.

But there were other things to worry about. Some people were claiming that they'd been killed, that either a monster or a piece of the scenery had managed to kill them, and that instead of dying they'd woken up in the Starting City with the rest of them. There was a rumor rapidly gaining traction that whatever SAO had become since it fell from the sky, it was no longer a Death Game.

It wasn't as if anyone would be willing to try proving it, so the rumor remained a rumor, but the NPCs were acting strangely too. There were more of them than there used to be, thousands, possibly something like three or four NPCs for every Player. And they were behaving like people, even more so than they once used to.

Which didn't even start on the changes in the User-Interface, or the mobs that had changed their attack-patterns, or the graphics that had gone from beyond-compare to identical to real-life, or the fact that Immortal Objects were no longer indestructible. Safe-zones thankfully still remained the same as they'd always been, meaning that – despite the way that everyone had been teleported into the Starting City – the PKers weren't running wild.

Yui was as confused as they were, but considering that she was a little kid, Kirito wasn't really surprised by that. Asuna was trying to get into contact with Heathcliff about what'd happened, but she wasn't getting through. He was still alive though, at least according to her contact-list.

Kirito simply sent a message off to Argo asking for any information she might have. He very deliberately didn't put a price-tag on it. Whatever had happened, SAO had changed, and they needed to know what was going on.

He wouldn't let any crazy new plan of Kayaba's threaten his family.

XXX

"Shiroe, what's Aincrad?" Naotsugu frowned down at him where he'd collapsed in the first place he could find.

"The floating castle." Shiroe answered, but took a deep breath when nobody seemed to recognize it from just that. "It's the name for the floating castle of Sword Art Online."

Nyanta startled, turning towards him with concerned eyes. "You think they were caught too?"

Shiroe shrugged, still feeling kind of terrified. If there were people inside of that mountain-sized castle, and those people were the Players trapped within the first VRMMO on the market-... They would've been in there for nearly two years, endlessly struggling to reach the 100th Floor, desperately hoping that Kayaba could be trusted to at least not lie to them about releasing them once the game had been cleared.

Ten-thousand players had been trapped, but last he remembered, the death-toll had already been over two-thousand. What kind of place was Aincrad? Was it beautiful despite the dangers, or was it just horrific? Had the people inside cracked under the pressure, or were they still trying to fight their way out? Would they blame the Adventurers of Elder Tales for never being able to go back home, when they learned of where the Apocalypse had landed them?

Shiroe still didn't have the faintest clue as to what could've caused the whole thing, but this world was definitely the world of Elder Tales. A world that the SAO-victims wouldn't recognize, wouldn't already love. They would be torn from their only chance of mercy from Kayaba's madness, and thrown into a place from which they'd probably never return.

Did the SAO-players respawn in this world? Or where they like the People? Shiroe couldn't quite decide which one was more terrifying. Their fellow countrymen dying like flies, or a potentially insane force of players with an ax to grind against all the world of Elder Tales and who couldn't be permanently killed and would keep coming no matter what.

He could sort of understand why the People might be terrified of the idea that the Adventurers might declare war on them. If it wasn't for the knowledge that he could respawn too, the latter possibility would've been terrifying.

"It's possible that it just looks like it. It's possible that it's some kind of raid-dungeon done with really bad taste. It's possible that when Elder Tales' servers dragged us into this, SAO somehow got pulled along with us." Shiroe rubbed his temples, frowning. "We don't know what caused this, so it's not like we can really predict what else it might've caused."

"The Noosphere, the expansion." Naotsugu commented with a thoughtful frown of his own.

Shiroe shrugged. "It matches with the time, but it's not like anyone even really knows what it was supposed to be."

Akatsuki pulled on his sleeve. "My lord, should we go there next, or shall we remain here?"

And then there was that, of course. The atmosphere of Akihabara wasn't exactly healthy right now, and even as worried as he was about Aincrad suddenly appearing in the middle of the Uraga Channel – possibly turning Tokyo Bay into a lake instead of a bay, which was sure to cause havoc on any sea-trade that their neighboring cities might do – there were a few ideas bouncing around in his head about what he might try to do to make things better for the Adventurers of this place. And the People, too. They were all victims here.

Shiroe took a deep breath, shooting a small smile at the ninja, before adjusting his glasses. "One foot in front of the other, one step of the time. Whether they truly are the SAO-victims or not, there's nothing we can really do to help them until we can stand on our own two legs. We stay."

Akatsuki nodded, face carefully schooled into neutrality, even as she blushed at the slight motion of his hand. The hand-motion that was their secretly agreed-upon sign for 'thank you', because they'd been traveling for days, and there was definitely a tactical advantage to being able to relay secret and silent messages to each other.

It wasn't exactly an advanced language, if the half-improvised hand-signals could even be called that much. They only had a few handful of words, though even that much would still be useful if they were ever in a situation where they needed to be discreet about what they were doing.

Besides, up until they'd stumbled upon Aincrad at the horizon, the only other thing they'd had to entertain themselves with was Serara's painfully obvious crush on Nyanta. And Nyanta's cooking of course, but their stomachs could regretfully not survive them spending all of their time eating.

So when Akatsuki had made a few aborted attempts to ask for something, Shiroe had had more than enough time to ask her about it. And then he'd gleefully wasted even more time developing an entirely new language from scratch. Just because.

He wasn't that much of a roleplayer himself, but Akatsuki had always seemed to enjoy it, and he didn't mind humoring her. Especially when there were tactical advantages to it.

He just wished that the first sign she'd insisted on developing hadn't been 'my lord'.

XXX

Heathcliff was dead. Nobody was entirely sure how that'd happened, but they'd been able to confirm at least that much, even if his name hadn't been automatically struck from the Monument. There simply was no way they wouldn't have been able to reach him or locate him after over a week of searching.

The leading theory was that he'd somehow been killed in the middle of the Transition, which had caused the glitch in the User-Interface of 'being alive' whilst 'not being anywhere' to those who had him on their friend-lists, and that the Monument no longer registered whether a had Player died or not.

But Heathcliff's death meant that Asuna was suddenly the highest ranked commander of the Knights of the Blood, one of the highest-ranking Clearer-guilds there was – only partially matched by the Divine Dragon Alliance, and that was actually a point of contention. And even if she'd technically resigned from it before the Transition had happened, she wasn't going to let them tear themselves apart without a leader.

The Aincrad Liberation Force – being the main force amongst those of the middle Floors – were keeping the peace between Players and NPCs admirably, and most of the other mid-Floor guilds were following its lead. As for the Clearer-guilds, not even the DDA wanted to openly challenge the decisions of the Knights of the Blood – though that might change in due time, as things settled down somewhat – which meant that a large portion of them were gearing up to go hunt down the Red Players that'd managed to escape their prison-cells in the Transition.

It wasn't like they could send mid-liners up against Laughing Coffin.

But still, with Kirito by her side, carrying Yui along with him, the rumors of Kirito's marriage to Asuna became more-or-less confirmed by the people who still found time to gossip. Though there was a lot of talk about exactly how they'd ended up with a daughter after something like a month's worth of vacation.

Kirito very deliberately didn't think about how the new User-Interface titled Yui much the same as it titled NPCs. She was one of the People of Aincrad, whereas he along with every other Player he'd met were titled as an Adventurer of Aincrad.

Whether Yui had been an NPC, or a quest, or something else entirely, she was their daughter and he wasn't going to allow anyone to claim otherwise. Not that anyone seemed to have any interest in doing so.

During the hunt for PKers, it was also officially confirmed that Adventurers respawned, whereas the People didn't. They could put that discovery down to a few members of Laughing Coffin who didn't want to come quietly.

Thankfully, the prisons still worked perfectly fine as they were, and the fact that the PKers couldn't be killed permanently meant that at least arguments surrounding the ethics of how to deal with murderers were at an all-time low. Nobody wanted them to run free, and prison-cells was apparently the only way to make sure of it, so into prison they went.

There'd also been some clamor about food tasting like cardboard, until someone had figured out the problem and sent out a message to everyone through Argo about how they were supposed to bodily prepare the food in this new system.

After that, not a lot happened.

The teleportation-gates between Floors were still down, and they had no idea how to either get them up and running or how to bypass their necessity. There were people who'd kept most everything stored away in their homes, which they now couldn't access, so there'd been some heated arguments about it. At least, until nearly two weeks after the Transition when someone in the Fuurinkazan had pointed out that they could just take the stairs.

It wasn't like the Floor Bosses respawned, and the dungeons up until the mid-Floors were almost pathetically easy to traverse for anyone who was at the level of a Clearer. Noticeably, this meant that there were suddenly a whole bunch of escort-missions between Floors, but by then the PKers had already been rounded back up through the combined force of the Clearer-guilds and Argo's information-network.

It wasn't that things went back to normal. 'Normal' would mean that the Clearers threw themselves back into preparing themselves for the next Floor Boss, and considering the changes to the game, nobody really believed that Kayaba had any power here. Which meant that they wouldn't be released once they reached the top, so there wasn't really any point in aiming for it.

Most people tried to ignore that though, and things settled into something like a routine.

At least they weren't on a time-clock anymore, because Kirito was pretty damn sure that whatever had happened during the Transition, Aincrad was no longer a creation of electronics. This was a place of flesh, which meant that their bodies were no longer effectively comatized and at the mercy of the hospital-staff and the Japanese government.

They were free, even if they were trapped.

Kirito smiled slightly as Yui made a face after trying to eat something spicy again. There were definitely worse places to be trapped in.

XXX

Shiroe smiled as the faces of the guild-leaders around him paled, only now realizing what he'd done.

Five million gold he'd asked from them, and in return he'd given them a weapon capable of forcing even the strongest battle-oriented guild to heel under the laws of the Round Table. It wasn't an unfair deal, as far as he was concerned, but it hadn't been one they'd even considered previously, nor a deal that they'd technically agreed to.

He hadn't lied, but assumptions were what they were, and it wasn't that hard to pull their strings when he knew their personality-types like the back of his hand. He was a gamer too, after all.

Arranging for the timing to coincide had been harder. He couldn't afford the guilty party to realize what he'd done before he'd managed to free the new players from them. Otherwise they'd just leave, taking those innocents with them. And he couldn't allow that. Not when he'd already failed Minori and Tohya by not going looking for them at the start of this whole mess.

So he smiled, because it was so very satisfying when a plan clicked into place, and the dawning horror appeared on the faces of his enemies.

He supposed that was why they called him the Villain in Glasses.

XXX

Kirito was pretty sure that whoever had thought up this idea had been insane.

Not just the concept of implementing it and all the work that'd gone into that side of things, or the certainty that there was no way that connecting the Floors like this would be worth the effort they'd had to put into it. After all, it'd taken them nearly two whole weeks of work to finish only the one elevator. But it was also a good indication of the inventor's insanity because of the sheer near-suicidal madness that must've possessed someone into thinking that it'd be a sensible idea to actually use it.

Even so, Klein certainly seemed enthusiastic about trying it out.

Kirito lifted Yui a bit higher so that she could see past the crowd of curious onlookers. "Yui, say something nice to Klein, okay? It might be the last time you'll ever see him." He told his daughter in a voice designed to carry.

"Oi! Quit writing me off as dead, Kirito!" Klein glared at him from where he was meticulously strapping himself in.

"Bye, Klein!" Yui waved with a innocently cheerful smile. "You're sure to grow up into a handsome man someday!"

Even Kirito winced at that. His daughter was a natural, cruelly piercing straight through the heart with ruthless efficiency.

Klein's head drooped, and he made a despairing noise that probably meant that he wasn't very appreciative of the 'compliment'. Considering that he was already a 'grown up man', that was kind of to be expected.

Truly, Yui was the best and most talented daughter in the world.

Still, the two of them waved cheerfully as the rickety elevator lifted off the ground, Klein's face disappearing from sight as it rapidly ascended towards the sky-like ceiling of the First Floor. If everything went to plan, this would be a common sight in a few days, increasing the mobility between Floors and freeing the Clearers up from endlessly escorting people back and forth through the dungeons surrounding the Floor Boss areas.

For the first time since the Transition, nearly five weeks ago, contact was officially established between two Floors, without anyone having to brave the Floor Boss dungeons.

It was an ambitious plan, and whoever came up with the idea of building an open-to-air elevator by cutting a hole in the floor of the Second Floor was at the very least not scared of heights. Kirito had to tip his metaphorical hat and admit that much at least.

Even if they were definitely insane.

XXX

Unlike a great many others, Shiroe hadn't been all that surprised at the procession of the People that showed up at Akiba's gates, demanding an audience with the leader of the Round Table by the authority of the leader of Eastal.

Admittedly, he hadn't really paid enough attention to the flavor text to immediately recognize who they were talking about, but then he wasn't entirely sure if they'd existed as actual NPCs to visit when everything had been a game. That was his excuse, and he was sticking to it.

It made sense that the Round Table would be challenged by the local government of the People of the Land. They were after all a miniature government designed to keep Adventurers within Akiba in line, and the People would no doubt love to have them under their thumb.

Not that that would've helped much, considering how fluidly independent most guilds really were. Everyone did what they wanted, and if the guild disapproved, it was easy to just leave the guild without anyone really holding grudges. That was the way it'd worked when Elder Tales had been a game, and it probably wasn't going to change overly much now.

Perhaps the fragility of the guild-system had been part of why Shiroe had been avoiding guilds for all this time, considering what it'd been like to watch the Debauchery Tea Party split up. It's hard to join a group of friends when you're fully convinced you'll only know them for a few months at best.

Part of that fluidity in guild-membership had changed with them being trapped in this world, mainly based around the knowledge that at least nobody could disappear without a word on behalf of 'quitting the game' or 'real life getting stressful'. Which was probably no small part in why he'd finally managed to push past his own distaste of guilds and formed Log Horizon.

He was still a little bit amazed that people were willing to follow his orders outside of a battle, setting him up as the leader they placed all of their faith in. Akatsuki's decision to extend their sign-language even further to account for the new situations they faced-...

The worst part was that even when Shiroe tried to pretend that Akatsuki's sign for 'my lord' was actually her sign for 'Shiroe', the ninja would know. Shiroe wasn't sure how she knew, but she always knew, and she always responded by frowning at him and audibly calling him 'lord'.

His little ninja was a spiteful little bundle of stubborn loyalty.

Still, with an invitation to the People's capital of Maihama, things were beginning to change.

They still hadn't heard anything about Aincrad, the mountain of a castle that was in all likelihood blocking all of the sea-trade of the neighboring cities. Which either meant that very few people had access to either flight – or a good lookout-position – that were necessary for seeing it on the horizon, or the People of the Land believed that it'd always been there and that it as such didn't need to be spoken of.

Shiroe was leaning towards the former option, but it was entirely possible that he was wrong on that. Either way, once they reached Maihama they'd be getting information on it one way or the other.

Akatsuki was very good at finding out about things that nobody wanted to tell them of.

XXX

"A mountain blocking the exit of the bay?" Crusty frowned over at him. "You think it has to do with the expansion?"

Shiroe adjusted his glasses, perfectly aware that he now had the attention of the entire group that had been sent to Maihama. "I hope that it does, because if it isn't then I'm not sure I want to see it."

Akatsuki fidgeted silently in her corner as everyone's eyes narrowed suspiciously at him, knowing what she did about his conclusions, she kept her silence.

"There's something you're not telling us." Crusty said, though it was probably more of a command than an observation.

"Almost two years ago now, I considered buying a new game, but I hesitated at the last minute." Shiroe took a deep breath. "I remember the trailers for it quite well. They gave me nightmares for weeks. And that mountain out there? That looks an awful lot like the floating castle of Sword Art Online."

Silence. Everyone's face slipping in between disbelieving and sudden worry.

"You think that the SAO-victims could've ended up here in this world, with us?" Michitaka frowned.

Shiroe shrugged. "I don't know enough about how we ended up here to make any predictions either way, but if the only thing needed for a player to be included in the Apocalypse was to be logged in-... well, they've been logged in to their game for nearly two years straight, now."

"But you don't know for certain." Crusty nodded. "Which is why you are asking the People."

"It is entirely possible that it was designed to be a crass joke of some sort." Shiroe sighed, leaning back in his chair. "But it's a bit out-of-character for how Elder Tales generally does things, even if I'd honestly be much happier to hear that the whole place is just a weirdly designed raid-dungeon."

"If there are other people from our world there, what do we do?" Henrietta asked the question on everyone's minds.

"Talk to them, make sure they're not going to go on some kind of rampage and cause a war." Crusty said pragmatically. "Maybe see if anyone in Akiba lost someone to the SAO-Incident, as well."

Shiroe clapped his hands, interrupting further discussion. "And that's about all we can decide without more information on the subject. But we should probably hurry, we've been here for over three months now, and we have no idea what they're dealing with."

Personally, the largest reason Shiroe had been willing to sit on the information about Aincrad's presence on the horizon for as long as he had, was almost entirely down to that complete lack of information.

It was entirely possible that the People of the Land had made contact with Aincrad within the first few weeks of them being stranded in this world, and had built perfectly friendly relationships with them. It was however, also possible that the People had been trying very hard to ignore that something had cut off all of their routes for sea-trade. And Shiroe had never been the kind of person to rush into a situation without having some clue about where he was going.

Sure, they might've been able to rush over to help, but that kind of thing could've easily ended up causing even more issues for the SAO-players. After all, even if they somehow managed to figure out who to help and how to do so, there could've easily been some very unpleasant culture-clashes.

Elder Tales had PKers, and they were mainly referred to as 'griefers'. Annoying and somewhat detestable individuals who made a profit from the suffering of others. SAO probably had PKers too, but considering that death had for them – at least previously, who knew if anything on that front had changed – been permanent and violent, they'd probably interpret those PKers as 'murderers' instead of nuisances.

Considering that Akiba had been having PK-related issues right outside of its city-limits until the Round Table had been firmly established, the SAO-players might've reacted hostile to all Adventurers simply be association.

No. Waiting had been the best option, Shiroe was sure of it. Solidify the ground under their own feet, and then investigate all possibilities, before making a move.

That didn't mean that the others were going to be happy with him for withholding information like this, but he'd been hoping that this trip to the capital would easily dismiss all of his worries and allow him to scrap the idea that that mountain out there truly was Aincrad.

Unfortunately, he hadn't found anything like that at all. So he'd had to come clean about his suspicions on the matter, and now everyone were worried.

The SAO-victims had been trapped inside of a Death Game for nearly two years running, and who knew if the people still in there were even sane anymore? It was entirely possible that they'd devolved into some kind of corrupt tribal-system where slavery was considered a perfectly normal thing.

It probably wasn't very likely that that specific scenario had happened, but the simple fact of the matter was that they didn't know. Nobody knew. That'd been half the terror of the ones left behind, the understanding that even if the victims miraculously escaped, there was a high chance that they'd never speak about what had happened in there, or that even if they talked the non-victims wouldn't be able to comprehend it at all.

Shiroe rubbed his temples and sent a brief signal of reassurance towards Akatsuki. The 'reveal' had gone over as well as he could've hoped, even if they weren't very happy with him right now for withholding it for this long.

She signaled back an acceptance of how the situation could've turned out a lot worse, before tacking on a 'my lord' to show that she'd continue to defer to him. Which was oddly reassuring, even if it still made him want to sigh at how she continued to call him that.

If it weren't for the fact that he was perfectly capable of matching her every step of the way, Shiroe might've been a little bit disturbed by how dedicated the ninja was to her role as his loyal servant.

It takes a special kind of madness to invent a sign-language on a bit over a week's worth of travel-time out of sheer boredom. Though Shiroe was still blaming Akatsuki for giving him the idea in the first place.

XXX

Nearly seven weeks into figuring out how everything worked, and the Adventurers of Aincrad had started to get bored.

They'd reconnected a few of the Floors through elevators, and most everyone had been able to return back to whatever home they'd made for themselves in SAO. A few had decided to move to different Floors, in order to be able to reach their friends and workplaces easier, and most everyone had reached some kind of equilibrium.

But that just meant that people were starting to realize that there wasn't a lot to do. There was no point in trying to Clear Aincrad anymore, since – even if Kayaba could somehow detect it – the madman wouldn't be able to change things one way or the other once they made it to the 100th Floor.

And without that, everything else kind of tumbled away after it. There was no real need to go farming for materials when they didn't desperately need the best gear in the game, there was no real point in grinding for levels in order to continue pushing everyone forward into freedom, and without any of that people were left to simply wander around aimlessly.

Until someone got the bright idea that they really had two things they could do. One, explore the land that Aincrad had 'landed on'. And two, finish clearing the Floors to see what the 100th Floor was like.

Since nobody wanted to risk abandoning Aincrad or getting lost somewhere outside without a way back home, most everyone agreed that perhaps they ought to focus on Clearing the last few Floors.

Kirito personally believed that the Final Floor would be an empty space, possibly just a large platform on top of the whole of Aincrad, maybe with a big flag of Kayaba's smug face on it. There just wouldn't really have been any point in developing the 100th Floor any further than that if Kayaba had simply been planning on using it as the finish-line to release them from SAO.

Then again, considering Kayaba's personality, it was entirely possible that there was some huge plot-twist planned for that moment, and in that case it might be kind of interesting to see it.

The 75th Floor Boss was kind of a dick to fight, what with being damn-near unblockable and capable of outrunning pretty much everyone. But since the scouting team actually survived – even if they'd technically had to respawn to do that – they'd already known a bit of its move-set and been able to plan accordingly. So even if it likely would've been an utter terror in SAO, whatever this place was now, it'd been kind of lackluster.

Turns out, Boss Fights without the threat of imminent death were actually kind of funny. It was like they could finally have revenge on all of the previous Floor Bosses who'd killed their friends. Not to mention the adrenaline mixing with the annoyance of respawning and the wonderful feeling of being perfectly safe, all combined into a very cathartic experience.

So, three days later – they'd been over-leveled anyway – they went through the 76th Floor Boss too. That one was actually weaker, proving again that the Floor Bosses had been working on a 25-Floor interval of really difficult Bosses.

By the twelfth week since the Transition, they'd reached the 90th Floor.

And they weren't planning to stop climbing.

XXX

Shiroe frowned. They'd all been worrying about Aincrad's existence to one degree or another, but with the emergence of the Goblin King, it was becoming glaringly obvious that they didn't really have the time to investigate it.

They might be able to send someone to check it out, but there weren't exactly a lot of people Shiroe would trust to be diplomatic enough for the job if Aincrad really was populated with the SAO-victims. At least, nobody who wasn't already occupied with the diplomatic side of things in Maihama, or keeping the Round Table running smoothly back in Akiba, or out with the new players at the training camp.

Once everything got sorted out and the Adventurers could set out to kill the Goblin King without submitting to the authority of the People, then most of those people capable of investigating Aincrad would be even busier with either leading or planning what basically amounted to a small war.

As for confirmation of Aincrad's nature, ReGan was of some help there. He clearly didn't seem to consider the 'mountain in the channel' to be part of their world, even if he wasn't entirely certain as to the nature of it. Which meant that it likely wasn't part of any expansion.

Everything seemed to point towards the mountain of a castle truly being Aincrad. But apparently the People from all of Yamato had been decidedly nervous about approaching it, possibly thinking it to be a raid-dungeon or something similar. They weren't exactly happy with its placement, what with it interrupting their sea-trade, but no ship wanted to sail over and give it a closer examination.

For a little bit longer, at least until the armies of the Goblin King had been crippled, they weren't going to be making any headway in regards to the mystery that was Aincrad's existence. Even if it gnawed at Shiroe to abandon people who could very well be in desperate need of help.

XXX

A/n: I started writing this in the middle of editing the Epilogue for "A Ninja's Parents". So yeah, I've been unusually productive about finishing it. Even if I got interrupted by a really busy week when it came down to editing the full story.

As for the hand-signals... You can blame Vathara's "Dislocation" for that one.