Chapter 122 - We Are Frontliners

Argo the Rat watched Drifter and Yuna walk away with the new additions to Reaver's Requiem in tow. Keita and his group weren't the best, but they were good people, and they were being trained by the best. That amounted to something.

Lowering her gaze to her menu again, Argo resumed her work. She was combing through dozens of reports at the same time. Most were just from frontliners trying to make a quick buck by giving vague descriptions of the 19th floor and the Hero's Ghosts.

Argo classified those as third-rate informants. Not someone she would ever give priority when buying or selling intel, but still necessary because they were the bulk of her network.

Argo took her job very seriously. Lives depended on it. Used to be 10.000, now they were down to just 7.262. That was a number she knew by memory. It diminished each day.

Which was why she paid her third-rate informants even if their intel was half-assed and virtually identical. The latter was actually what she liked to see. Conflicting reports were a mess. Dozens of messages saying the same? That meant the intel was solid.

Then Argo moved to her second-rate informants. The Legend Braves and Fuurinkazan were in that group, as well as another portion of the frontliners and clearers.

She was currently going through one of Kirito's messages which described the appearance and fighting patterns of the Hero's Ghost. The boy was updating her in real time if the bursts of messages followed by periods of silence were any indicator.

Second-rate informants were much more thorough, and their intel much more reliable. They weren't so much after the cor she could pay them, as sharing what they considered necessary information for survival. Drifter and Kirito - Reaver's Requiem as a whole, really - Shivata, Liten, and even Kibaou and Lind to an extent were all second-rate informants.

The reason they weren't considered first-rate in her internal classification wasn't because she distrusted them. Quite the opposite, especially when it came to Reaver's Requiem. There was no one she trusted more than Drifter and Kirito.

But they were still second-rate, because they weren't Fuumaningum. The role-players, as distasteful as they could be sometimes, were the only ones in Argo's first-rate informants list.

The Rat had reached an agreement with Akari. Fuumaningum were her eyes and ears in Aincrad. And while they might not bring in as much information about mobs and quests as frontliners and clearers did, there was one major reason they were first-rate.

Fuumaningum was the dark side of Argo's trade. The side she didn't mention to her friends because they wouldn't approve.

Maybe Drifter would, after Morte. He was accompanied by Akari then, after all.

Argo employed Fuumaningum to do all kinds of dirty stuff. Invasion of privacy by Eavesdropping on conversations and stalking were the most harmless ones. She had Fuumaningum players constantly acquire orange status so they could enter outlaw zones. She had them tail red players in hopes of discovering their identities and hideouts. She had them intimidate people who bullied low-level players.

Yeah, she wasn't looking forward to the day Kirito and the others found out. Asuna would fly off the handle. Drifter probably already suspected something. He knew Akari, and he was a lot more perceptive than he let on.

Akari didn't have any reports for her right now. But maybe Argo had a job for her. So she paused, hesitated, and in the end typed a message.

She didn't like the look of Golden Apple. Not at all. Most of the members looked like they had already given up. One looked ready to snap.

And when a player snapped, it only ever went two ways. Either they jumped... Or they dragged someone down.

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Drifter was distracted. Which was very hypocritical of him after all the speeches he delivered today about staying attentive being key to surviving the 19th floor. But he couldn't help it.

Grimlock had glared at him throughout their entire short meeting with Golden Apple. Not just stared hard, but tried to pierce a hole through him with his gaze.

Now, Drifter wasn't a stranger to being glared at. He was headstrong and had made plenty of people unhappy during strategy meetings, Lind and Kibaou being just two of the most blaring examples. He faced boss monsters who wanted nothing more than to smash him to a past, and who stared like it.

But Grimlock's glare reminded him of one other, much more malicious. Only Morte had glared at him with so much animosity. Like they wanted him to drop dead just from their gaze.

Which didn't make sense, first because Griselda's husband had no reason to hate him so much, and secondly because Grimlock was a coward.

It was plain as day to Drifter. Grimlock was someone who should have been sequestered away in their room back in the Town of Beginnings, never having left the 1st floor. One of those players who didn't have the courage to take a single step outside of a safe zone, but also weren't brave enough to jump over Aincrad's edge.

Every step Grimlock took was hesitant, every move he made full of fear. Grimlock hadn't left his room out of his own free will. He had been dragged away. And the only one who could do that was his wife, Griselda.

But none of it explained why Grimlock hated Drifter. The spearmaster thought back to his interactions with the older man. Truly, there weren't many. They had crossed paths a few times. It was inevitable, as there weren't that many clearers. But if they exchanged 10 words, it was too much. Drifter was fairly certain they hadn't gone past an introduction in their first meeting.

So it wasn't something he did to Grimlock. And the only other connection between them was Griselda.

'He can't be jealous, can he?'

Jealousy made a bit more sense - but only because humans could be irrational. In reality, there was no reason why Grimlock should be suspicious of Drifter's and Griselda's relationship, because there wasn't one to begin with. The woman might seen close to him, but she was bubbly towards anyone. Surely Grimlock knew that, being married to her.

'What a headache.'

"Hey, Drifter! Take your head out of the clouds, man! It's going towards you!"

Agil's yell was unnecessary. No matter how out of it Drifter was, he was never going to be caught off-guard by a mere normal mob.

"Sting!"

Watching the Hero's Ghost's broadsword coming closer and closer to his face, Drifter allowed himself to fall backwards. The attack missed him by a mile, and he stabbed up, his spear piercing the mob under the jaw and coming out the back of its head.

His back hit the ground, and Drifter lashed out with a Martial Arts: Tendon Snap without getting up.

It struck the mob in its mid-section, and the broadsword started to drop towards his chest. Drifter didn't blink. He smashed the butt of his spear with his palm, pushing it deeper into the mob's head.

The fake Dirty Play staggered the Hero's Ghost for a fraction of a second. It was all Drifter needed. He rolled away, and the broadsword cut the ground where he had been laying. It was never lifted again.

Tearing his spear free, Drifter spun it one-handed and beheaded the Hero's Ghost with a snap Horizontal.

Dusting off his clothes, Drifter stabbed his spear into the ground and raised an eyebrow. There were a lot of side-eye glances and outright stares being thrown in his direction.

"What?"

"Something changed."

Liz spoke. The blacksmith was giving him an appraising look, as if he were a new material and she hadn't quite yet figured out what to forge with it.

"Whatever are you talking about?"

"You were always good, but the way you are fighting now is... Different. Unstoppable. Fluid. That's the only way I can describe it."

Drifter considered her words for a moment, his gaze wandering towards Ran and Yuuki. He saw the twins tense. He looked to his guild. Yuna and Nautilus. Kirito and Asuna. Sinon, Kizmel, and Feredir. Agil, Wolv, and Shigio. Liz, Silica, and Vallerk. Keita, Sachi, Sasamaru, Tetsuo, and Ducker.

They were already missing some.

"More people are going to fall. But none of ours. We'll beat SAO."

There was the customary silence that always followed declarations like that, until Ran shook her head.

"Merida wasn't anyone's fault, Drifter. We already went over this."

"I know. The same way it won't be our fault if your disease gets you or Yuuki before we clear SAO. But we are getting to the top. All of us. No one dies."

Ran looked at him with the same sardonic smile she always had when she didn't want to show emotion. The spearmaster's gaze softened. He knew he was making an impossible promise, but he meant every word.

"What brought this on, Drifter?"

Nautilus questioned him, and Grimlock's glare entered his mind again.

"Yuna and I met Golden Apple when we went to activate the teleporter. They are going to crumble. Or they are going to die."

"And it reminded you of... Us?"

There was some incredulity in Sinon's voice, and Drifter allowed himself a bark of laughter.

"Not even close. Reaver's Requiem is as different from Golden Apple as it can be. They only have Griselda driving them forward. We..."

Drifter looked around, and his smile was answered with smirks and grins, from Silica to Agil, from Kizmel to Yuuki. They knew exactly what he was going to say.

"We are frontliners."

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"This... Did your son always have that tendency to make chill-inducing statements at the drop of a hat, Kana? That's not the first time either. Look, the hairs on my arm are all standing up."

"N-No. He did not."

Ogawa Kana herself was still feeling goosebumps. Her Itsuki was always an outspoken and active kid, but he had never been this... Intense.

"Sword Art Online changed him, Miss Hosaka. It changed all of them. The only thing I will ever be grateful to Akihiko Kayaba for is allowing us to witness those changes in real time. If my daughter woke up now and I hadn't been able to watch her and know what she had gone through... I don't know if I would recognize her."

Argo's mother, Hosaka Miuchi, turned to the person who spoke, a tall and lanky man wearing thick glasses. He was also their host for this evening.

"Nonsense, Tetsuhiro-kun. Yuna will always be your daughter, Songstress or not. And I already told ya to call me Miuchi."

Shigemura Tetsuhiro, the father of Songstress Yuna, or Shigemura Yuuna, as was her real name. The families of Reaver's Requiem had come to his house to watch today's floor boss raid.

It was a very large house. It might even be accurate to call it a mansion. Kana and Genji's eyes had popped out when they first saw it, and realized that, while their financial situation wasn't bad at all, their son was the one marrying into money.

Yuna's mother was nowhere to be seen. Kana and Genji knew they would have to breach the subject at some moment, but they didn't have the courage to do it yet. There were no pictures of the woman in the house, and Tetsuhiro never mentioned her, nor did he wear a wedding band.

"Miuchi's right, Tetsuhiro. They were forced to grow up, but they will always be our little boys and girls. And change isn't bad. I never imagined Shino would turn out to be... That way. But she moved on from the past. There's nothing that could make me happier."

Asada Izumi, Sinon's mother, spoke softly. She was still very taciturn, but there was pride visible on the curl of her lips. She may have been shocked to find out her daughter was a lesbian, but she was being honest when she said nothing could make her happier. The girl now had several friends when before she had just one, and she was more confident and joyful than she had ever been since the incident in her childhood.

"Hah... I know you are right. I just can't help but think of the what ifs. What if we only had their bodies in the hospital beds to watch over? And what if they had never put on the NerveGear... Or never met each other."

Tetsuhiro rubbed his forehead, his mind somewhere else. Then he realized everyone was looking at him, and stuttered.

"A-Ah, I-I don't mean any offense, Kana, Genji! Both of you are wonderful! And while this isn't how I thought Yuuna would find me a son-in-law, I would have blind to not see how good Drifter - that is, Itsuki - is to her. He's..."

"We understand, Tetsuhiro."

Genji put a hand on Tetsuhiro's shoulder to stop him. He had gotten to know the other man fairly well in the last few months, and knew that Tetsuhiro tended to babble when he got nervous. He did convey what he was thinking, though.

Tetsuhiro smiled in gratitude and glanced at the television again. He could see Drifter cutting down another monster from Yuna's PoV.

Learning his daughter was dating an older man had been a shock. The way it happened had been awkward. And he would be lying through his teeth if he said he wasn't a little uncomfortable about it at the start. But there was no way he could disapprove when it was clear how much they loved each other.

It also helped that it was hard to dislike Drifter in general. Celebrities usually only showed a public facade, so there was no way of knowing how they truly were as people. That made it much easier to love and hate them.

But the SAO players couldn't hide anything, whether they were frontliners or murderers. The world witnessed it all, save from the most intimate moments inside their rooms.

Again, how could he dislike Drifter when all he saw was a young man who willingly risked his life everyday? Who put it all on the line to save all the trapped players?

Most importantly, he couldn't dislike the man his daughter loved. She had suffered too much already. He had caused her too much pain. And even then she had grown up to be a cheerful and loving person. She deserved true happiness. And if Drifter brought her that, then Tetsuhiro approved of him.