Where Your God Is - Chapter 15 (Patreon)

Part of me was glad this entire 'Trapped in an MMO' thing had happened to a group of majority Japanese individuals.

Especially rather than Americans.

The reason for that is... complex, sociologically-speaking. Sword Art Online was a fairly expensive game, on top of that most people had to buy the NerveGear as well, since this was the first title for the console. What this meant, though, was that most of the people playing the game on launch day had enough of a reliable income stream to shell out for a significant luxury purchase. Thankfully, this translated to most of the players being young adults or older, with the average cut-off being somewhere in the sixteen-seventeen range.

There were younger players, though, don't get me wrong. Just as a dimly-remembered piece of trivia from my past life had indicated, one of the buildings in the <<Town of Beginnings>> had been turned into a makeshift orphanage/foster-home for the real children trapped in the game. I'd swung by and explained how to reset their avatars once I'd heard about that, ensuring that the kids looked like kids now.

But, as the old saying goes, there are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

So when someone asserts eighty percent of the people trapped in the game are seventeen or older, that sounds good. Tied in with only five percent being children at or under the age of twelve, you're left with just fifteen percent of the current player base that fit into the most likely demographic to go Lord of the Flies given half a chance.

These were, admittedly, very rough napkin-math estimates that I'd glimpsed a few times on the various analytics screens for server numbers.

To quote The Bard, though, 'therein lies the rub.'

We'd started out with twenty-thousand players, more or less, and lost about three-hundred to some combination of suicides, inexperience, and Darwin Awards over the first two weeks. All things being equal, that means we still had about... we probably had a little less than three thousand teenagers who'd had the opportunity to go completely feral running around largely without any adult supervision.

I take back most of the things I've said about the Japanese government over the years. If I were them, I'd have thrown the lot of us in a prison-school and thrown away the key, too.

Contrary to most expectations, though, Japanese teenagers could actually handle themselves pretty well when thrust into an environment without adult supervision. It was a hard-coded part of society that kids should be at least minimally self-sufficient at as young an age as possible. There was even a show on network television which documented sending toddlers out to run errands to the local convenience stores.

The flipside, though, was that a lot of the people we were currently worried about were also teenagers who had their shit together. Just ones inclined to be destructive instead of constructive.

“Okay, so Kii-chi's running us through a dungeon next week,” Argo stated, looking over the notes she'd taken in her notebook. “Asu-chi's volunteered for cooking duty for breakfast and lunch, while Leafa is gonna' do dinner.”

The two chefs met each other's gazes in a firm stare down, but nodded.

Mito, Sinon, and I all rolled our eyes.

“Mito's volunteered to do scouting runs fer finding us a blacksmith,” Argo continued, even if her lips twitched. “And Sinon's doing the legal shopping trip while Kirito and Leafa do the illegal shopping trip.”

Asuna twitched at the reminder, giving me a... not-quite glare as Mito patted her hand with a grin.

“I've got this week's newsletter to polish up, but we're in good shape to start <<Floor 3>>,” Argo stated. “Pretty much all our gear is new drops or loot from Kirito's stash of cheater goodies-”

I smiled and took a mock-bow, to which there were many scoffs or sarcastically-light golf claps.

“-in other news,” Argo continued, snorting at the byplay, “there's a concert a bunch of bards are giving back on floor one that we can go to in a few days. There's also an NPC production of Midsummer Night's Dream on tha' calendar at the big opera house down there, too. But that's next month. Hmm... the big thing to talk about is the <<Elf War Questline>> that's going to open up any day now. How are we doing this?”

“Whatever approach we take has to be very light-handed,” Mito sighed, leaning back in her chair. “For all that the Elf War is the first campaign quest in SAO you don't have to do it.”

Asuna blinked, cocking her head slightly as she turned back between her friend and Argo. “Wait, I thought quests were the entire point of the game? Or, at least, we needed to do them to get items and stat buffs to make our avatars better?”

I have the brunette points for being able to organically insert all of that terminology into her speech without stumbling. She was learning!

I cleared my throat. “That's because there are multiple types of quests and we've only been doing the ones with the most immediate rewards since the game started. Obviously, that's because we need the immediate rewards to keep at a competitive level with the mobs and bosses, but also because the larger storyline content is very time-consuming-”

“-and tedious,” Sinon stated, cutting me off as I looked to her and clutched my heart in mock-offense. “Kirito, you know we love you for your crazy game rants, but even you have to admit that, in our situation, the lore quests can get exhausting to deal with.”

Asuna frowned and manifested a stack of... note cards? “Uhh... Okay, I've got 'fetch' quests, 'fedex' quests, 'kill' quests, 'collect' quests, and 'escort' quests. I don't have lore quests, though. What are they?”

I silently turned to Mito and raised one eyebrow as high as I could go without bugging my avatar. The purple-haired girl avoided my gaze and blushed.

I shook myself and turned back to Asuna, ready to explain when Leafa chimed in for me. “Lore quests are quests which have the primary function of explaining things about the world you're in, instead of focusing primarily on quantitative requirements and results.”

Asuna nodded, pulling out a blank note card and something to write with before scribbling down the term on one side and the definition on the other.

This time I looked at Argo for answers, but she simply seemed bemused by the entire thing.

“That's not to say that any of these individual types of quests can't overlap,” I started cautiously, deciding to ignore the awkwardness of Asuna making vocabulary flashcards. If it worked for her, I guess it worked for her. “But lore quest's primary defining feature is that they aren't really given so much as discovered through exploring the people, world, and objects that make up the game's environment.”

“They also still usually give you stuff,” Argo nodded thoughtfully. “But it's stuff you don't expect ta' get. A surprise instead of a prize. Heh.”

“Is there an easy example to give?” Asuna asked, finishing the tiny print on the back of the card and looking up at us. “I think I understand it, but knowing what it looks like in action would be helpful.”

“Well, in this game called Everquest-” I started, only for the slapping of a palm against a face to interrupt me. Well, that and Sinon dropping her head into her folded arms with a groan and Argo nearly falling out of her chair laughing.

“Big Brother,” Leafa sighed, dragging her hand down her face with an exasperated expression. “When's the last time you heard of someone playing Everquest?”

There was an odd, fleeing sensation of deja vu that resisted my urge to capture it, but I shook it off quickly enough. Maybe I'd recall it later. “Me, last week?”

 Sinon groaned again while Argo actually fell out of her chair and began rolling on the floor laughing. Even Mito, the absolute traitor, seemed to be struggling to hold a biting comment or hilarity at my expense. Leafa, my dearest sister, stared at me before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “Kirito, I love you, but you're a game-otaku beyond all hope and reason. Please pick an example from Sword Art Online. For Fuck's Sake.”

Asuna winced at the curse, raising her hand slightly. “Ah... not that I don't think an example from the game we're in currently wouldn't be more topical, but I don't really understand the reaction?”

Mito took a calming breath and chuckled lowly. “Think about it like... someone asked for insight on a question about government and business problems in the modern era and the person you're talking to decided to reply by citing the economics of the early Tokugawa Shogunate.”

Asuna blinked and turned to regard me in what was clearly a new light. “Ah.”

“I feel called out,” I stated, frowning at the rest of the group.

“Good.” All three of 'my' girls, Mito, and even Asuna replied instantly.

“Well, if you're going to be like that about it,” I muttered, my face growing red but still enjoying the banter. After all, they weren't wrong. “So... Elf War Questline. Most of the quests are your basic stuff. The object of completing them is to familiarize yourself with the forests on this floor, learn where the safe zones are, find appropriate mobs and bosses, and acquire the appropriate gear. This usually takes the form of being sent out by one of the elves on the side you've chosen to get resources, find and rescue lost villagers, etc... with the reward explicitly spelled out.”

I paused and materialized a soda from my inventory, cracking it and taking a swig before continuing. “A good example would be after the initial encounter when you're tasked by the commander of either side to retrieve information a scout was carrying when they were killed by... for the Dark Elves, I think it was a giant spider. For the Forest Elves, I'm pretty sure it was a giant snake. The reward for completing the quest is to be able to enter the main camp of the side you've chosen, use their safe zones, and buy from their markets. That's pretty standard among the 'normal' quests... get asked to do something in exchange for a specified reward, do it, get the reward.”

 Asuna nodded, clearly focused on my explanation despite her earlier derision.

“A lore quest on the Dark Elves' side is that you can find a set of words scrawled into one of the trees in their region of the forest. Taken by itself, it's just an interesting piece of the background that doesn't mean much. If you actually write down the passage and try to either look it up or ask one of the NPCs about it, you can discover it's a part of their holy text. The context of the quote relates to wandering through the forest at night and finding safe haven with a guardian beast. Which, if you go back to the spot where you found the words on the tree and wait until night, you can follow those directions in the holy text to a hidden spring that turns out to be a small safe zone where wildlife can drink from a healing spring. This is one of the first opportunities you have to befriend an animal companion.”

“Ugh, those quests are so finicky,” Mito grumbled, crossing her arms and pouting. “I always got like... a pigeon or a rabbit or something. I wanted one of those super cute little feathered dragons!”

“I don't know if I want a pet, but I can see the comparison now.” Asuna nodded slowly, taking out another flashcard and beginning to write even as she continued speaking. “There's basically no way of finding 'lore quests' except by interacting with the game world on a deeper level than just asking for jobs or trying to get gear and kill monsters. That's really insightful and I can see how it would make the experience much more immersive. Are there a lot of quests like that?”

“Literally uncountable,” Sinon stated, preempting me.

Asuna jerked her head up, her eyes just a bit wide. “What? I thought there would be a lot, but...”

“See Ki-bou, we do pay attention,” Argo chimed in with a grin, which I returned with a smile. “The system that runs SAO, <<Cardinal>>, is responsible fer spawning new content quests when players start poking around stuff a lot. So if someone kept looking around an area or going through stuff, eventually they'd find somethin'. Probly.”

“That...” Asuna began, biting the end of her pen as she stared into the middle distance. “That's... something. I feel like there are... existential problems, knowing that observing the world around us can change it to that degree.”

“It's not quite that bad,” I interjected. “Cardinal only takes action like that in cases where it's obvious that the players aren't going to continue moving through the content without some kind of nudge. Believe me, I had to really work to trigger it the only time or two I've actually done it.”

“Still...” Asuna made a face, then shook her head. “We can worry about that later, and I think I've pulled us into a tangent anyway. So, getting back to the Elf War Questline, I think I understand what Mito and Kirito are worried about, but do you really think players are going to k-attack each other in the game?”

“That's what we're trying to prevent, Princess,” Sinon snarked at the brunette, drawing a mild glare

“Down girl,” Argo warned our mutual girlfriend, patting the bluette's hand. “But, yeah, most of the quests don't require you to actually fight other players. Most of 'em.”

“Players can be jerks,” Leafa sighed. “There were people like that in the beta, because Argus needed people like that to stress-test how the game would perform under real-world conditions. So we could see some of them start up guilds or infiltrate other ones just to make trouble.”

“Which is why Argo's newsletter is only going to highlight the rewards from the non-competitive quests,” I explained. “Sinon and I have already touched base with the major guild leaders on avoiding the worst problems that might show up and warned them off. That leaves the minor guilds, which we're going to need to handle carefully.”

Mito nodded, looking tired already. “Because they're usually groups of close friends who like doing stupid sh-er, stuff together because it sounds fun.”

“But they'll be killing people!” Asuna cried, clearly unable to help herself in voice how appalled she was, shock clear on her face.

I took a deep breath and sighed. “They will be, but because of the circumstances we find ourselves in right now, it's going to be extremely unlikely that anyone who kills someone in this game faces any kind of justice for it. There are just too many mitigating factors, even for the Japanese justice system. At worst, if they can verify a few of the deaths, the players might be remanded to some kind of mental health ward, but I'm not even sure about that. The situation we're in is far from ideal, but it's our job to at least try to help everyone stay on the right side of things.”

Asuna grimaced, but nodded as she looked away to rub at her eyes with a knuckle.

“So, when do we start?” Mito asked, cocking her head. “And which side are we picking? Assuming we're doing the questline as a party...”

I looked around to the girls. Sinon shrugged, Argo grinned, and Leafa nodded happily. Even if Sinon and Asuna didn't particularly like each other all that much, they didn't so much actively fight as they did occasionally snipe at each other. Argo enjoyed having Mito around again, being the one with the second-closest relationship to her from the beta. Leafa hadn't interacted much with Mito, given she was my usual partner when we wanted to go off and do our own thing.

“I think that's still on the table. We didn't have any major issues on the second floor, so if you all are good to keep working together, it's a go.” My announcement was met with a relaxation by Mito and a wide smile by Asuna.

“Thank you for having us,” the brunette stood and bowed, making Mito blush and cover her face. Asuna blinked, looking around awkwardly before sitting down quickly with her own reddened face. “Sorry, force of habit.”

“No big deal, Asu-chi. It's part of why we like you,” Argo chuckled, leaning back and basking in the embarrassment. “But... yeah, probly gonna' head out tomorrow, and I think we're picking the Dark Elf side, right?”

I nodded slightly, even as we began to discuss the stages of the quests involved.

There was another reason why I was for the Dark Elf side of things, though. Or... at least two more. The first was that I was running my beta avatar, which meant I had a lot of system values embedded in my character that the game would be constantly reading. One of those was a hidden variable which decided how much [NPC X] liked or disliked you.

That was probably going to affect which 'randomly assigned' NPCs we were going to find at the start of the questline. Any event like this would have the system check players into the quest at the start of it. When it did so, though, it would automatically look and see I had a preassigned friendship score for a given elven NPC and, very likely, put that NPC into play for my party as a glitch.

I could run the quest as a solo to prevent this and give the others a more authentic experience, but... what would be the point, really? If my guess was right, and it usually was, we'd be getting <<Kizmel – Dark Elven Royal Guard>>. She was one of the best possible random encounters for the starting event and opened the door to a lot of subtle lore quests if you raised her affection value high enough. Or, in layman's terms, became her friend.

The other reason I had for going down the Dark Elf path was another pair of NPCs I particularly wanted to interact with down the line.

Finally, though, the meeting began to wind down even as I kept my assumptions to myself.

“Ahh... Argo?” Asuna asked, visibly attempting to remind herself to drop the honorific. “Umm... you'd said something last week about the police or government maybe sending someone into the game. Have you heard if that's happened yet?”

Argo clicked her tongue and shook her head, looking a little disappointed herself. “No such luck, but I'm holding out hope. It's probably just taking them a while to pick someone they think is right for the job. Signing up for something like this can't be easy, right?”

Asuna nodded, looking bummed. Mito began to approach, then paused, paralyzed with indecision. Rolling my eyes, I stepped behind her and gave her the slightest nudge towards her friend. “Well, I'm beat. Time for bed. Anyone wanna' join me for a soak?”

Tellingly, it seemed as though the other girls realized Mito needed the opportunity presented just as much as I did.

We'd see what came of it, hopefully.

~~~

As promised! Here we are! This chapter officially starts the Elf War Questline and will feature the first prominent NPC of the story showing up. Kizmel, the Dark Elf Royal Guard.

I hope everyone enjoys the chapter.

I aim to get another chapter of Winning Peace out in a few days and an update for the Code Geass Quest Epilogue sometime Sunday or Monday of next week. That'll probably be the last update of the month before the new poll goes up.

In the meantime, I hope everyone's having a good week and that you enjoy the update. Rock On, Stay Awesome, and Thank You for all the support!