Shattered: A SAO Tale (Sword Art Online)

As expected, Reaver's Requiem didn't take the news of Laughing Coffin's public debut well. And Drifter didn't like the glint in some of their eyes when he told them about the revive item rumor - a glint that remained in some even after he explained the high likelihood that it was another trap by the red players.

Over the course of the next weeks, Laughing Coffin ramped up their attacks. They stopped bothering with secrecy, and seemed to be in every floor at once, ambushing anyone who was alone or in small groups, even attacking right next to safe zones sometimes.

Even entire guilds weren't safe, as Laughing Coffin already proved. But still, the murderers never once went after the frontliners, which was at the same time frustrating and relieving, because it meant they didn't have the strength to match the Assault Team just yet.

Still, over the course of three weeks, nearly a hundred players had been killed by Laughing Coffin. And their MO was always the same: leave one survivor to tell the story.

It was like living a horror movie. Even more than SAO already was. Until now, everyone at least thought they knew who the enemies were. Not anymore.

And the arrival at the 35th floor didn't make things any easier. Players were crowding by the hundreds in front of the teleporters in every floor. They had barely paid attention to the 34th floor raid.

The counter rumor Drifter, Akari, and Argo had spread had done little to dissuade people from searching for the fabled revival item. Sure, the more prudent players had taken it to heart, but they were never the ones the spearmaster was worried about.

The frontliners approach to the safe zone after lingering for as long as they could in the boss room was slow.

Drifter had warned everyone. He had told them again and again that it was most likely a plot by Laughing Coffin. That even if it was true, it would be one item for thousands of dead players.

Even so, it had still taken him and Kirito beating Lind, Klein, Ambros, and a couple other hotheads into the ground in a series of closed duels before they calmed down.

What finally got the message across had been as simple as it was cruel: if you get the revive item, who are you bringing back?

For some, the answer was simple. Fuurinkazan had lost Harry One, so that's who they wanted. But the DKB? The remnants of the ALS? They had suffered dozens of losses. How could they choose?

After hearing that question, tempers had cooled down a lot. Because there was no right answer. Only one that brought some happiness and a lot of heartache and anger.

That was how the Assault Team ended up dragging their feet towards the 35th floor main settlement, Mishe.

Some of them split off first. Heathcliff and his KoB, for example. The older man had a permanent frown on his face since Drifter first shared the rumor with the rest of the Assault Team.

Most simply didn't have the heart to watch hundreds of players pouring out of the 35th floor teleporter, and then immediately leaving the safe zone to venture out in the wilderness, searching for their 'immortality ticket'.

Drifter supposed the bright side was that this floor would be mapped in days.

But there was no bright side when you considered how many people would die for what was quite possibly a fairy tale, or just a straight up trap.

"What now?"

Yuna asked softly, resting a hand on his arm. Drifter looked back at her, at his guildmates, shoulders hunched.

He hadn't felt this defeated in a long time.

"Now? You can do whatever you want. I'm going to sleep."

He shrugged off Yuna's hand, and stalked towards the first inn he saw. She followed him, of course, looking just as tired as he felt.

He didn't see that Nautilus was with them too until the ash-haired player sat down on the foot of his bed. Drifter glanced up to him.

"What?"

"Everything will turn out okay, Drif- Itsuki. Maybe not fine, but okay. We'll make it through this."

Drifter didn't even react to Nautilus using his real name. It felt so distant right now, more like a memory.

He was more Drifter than he had ever been Itsuki.

"We will make it through this. What about everyone else?"

Nautilus grimaced. That wasn't a question any of them liked to ponder. But Yuna's expression held a hint of steel.

"We are not heroes, Drifter. You know that better than anyone."

The remainder hurt, especially because of how true it was. He led people to their deaths. He let children join his guild and fight with their lives on the line. He had blood in his hand, of friends and foes.

No, Drifter was no hero. He never aspired to be one. Not since he killed Morte. Since he learned Akari led her guildmates to hunt down red players like animals, and let her.

Since he started believing that killing off Laughing Coffin was not just the only solution, but the best one. Permanent.

"People still look up to us, Yun'."

"Not our problem."

"They will die."

"Not our problem."

Nautilus echoed Yuna's words. Callous, cold. Cruel.

Realistic.

"We did what we could, Drifter. You did what you could. We warned everyone. They didn't listen, won't listen. I'm not saying we should write them off, far from it. We still have to save everyone we can. But this isn't a burden you or anyone can carry, Drifter. It will crush you."

He knew it was true. Hell, he had made that same argument to others once before.

"We are a bunch of hypocrites, aren't we? All that talk... And don't we want it just as badly as them?"

The songstress and shield-bearer couldn't deny it, and Drifter let out a hoarse bark of laughter.

It was the truth, yet again. That if they got the chance, if, by some miracle, the revival item existed... They would try to have it, hoard it for their own use.

They just wouldn't cross as many lines as some others to get it - except the ones they had already crossed.

"We are taking the rest of the day off. And tomorrow. We'll go somewhere else, the 3 of us, to clear our heads. Just like old times."

Yuna combed Drifter's hair with her fingers, and Nautilus nodded, one leg stretched over her lap. The spearmaster breathed.

"Yeah. That would be nice."

...

Aincrad felt like a ghost town. Of course not everyone had gone to the 35th floor, but enough people had that everything below felt empty.

Normally Drifter would be glad for that. He hated being gawked at. But right now, all he felt was miserable. And Yuna and Nautilus weren't doing a very good job of cheering him up.

"Stop thinking about it, dummy. You are supposed to relax."

"Yeah. This is the first time in a while we are taking this big a break, right? Since..."

Drifter raised an eyebrow.

"You two are especially bad at this today."

Nautilus snorted, idly swinging his feet over the waters of the 4th floor.

"Making grand motivating speeches is normally your job, Drif. You are quite good at it for someone who hates attention almost as much as Kirito, too."

Drifter opened his mouth to deny, then closed it again. It was true, wasn't it? He huffed.

"Nautilus is bullying me, Yun'! Scold him!"

His wife gave him a deadpan stare.

"You are 21."

Drifter scowled. Now even his lover was joining in on it!

He knew they were doing it simply to take his mind off what was happening right now on the 35th floor. And it worked, a little.

But not nearly enough. It wasn't so easy to shake off the doom and gloom. And Drifter wasn't sure he wanted to.

"What's everyone else up to?"

He asked, just to change the subject. Yuna frowned, gazing at the water. Then she sighed.

"They are all keeping to safe zones, like you asked. Kirito and Asuna went to the church to visit Sasha and make sure none of the kids got swept up in the excitement. Agil's with Wolv, Shigio, Vallerk, and Liz, doing something, dunno what. Keita and Tetsuo are meeting some friends down on the 1st floor. The others are mostly planning on staying in their rooms for today, I guess."

"Ran and Yuuki are chasing down a lead on the chain quest we got from killing the Abyss Leviathan. I think they roped Sinon, Kiz, and Silica into going with them. They promised not to leave the safe zone, or call for backup if they end up needing to do anything more than run around the towns on the 30s."

It wasn't as if the Reavers expected to be attacked. They were, without a doubt, the group Laughing Coffin hated the most. But the red players also knew they were dangerous. And that at least one of them was willing to kill.

No, Reaver's Requiem was too big a fish for the current Laughing Coffin. Maybe if one of them got careless, went out into the wilderness on their own.

But that wouldn't happen. Drifter gave explicit orders, and when he looked like he did, you didn't disobey him.

Drifter was known to be somewhat confrontational and even overbearing towards other players, especially Assault Team members, but it wasn't often that he turned to his own guildmates.

Sinon had seen that side of him after her stunt on the raid against the Abyss Leviathan. The others hadn't expected to be targets of it so soon, or ever, but Drifter had made sure to stamp out any inkling his guildmates might have of chasing the revival item.

He probably wouldn't have been so stern if, when Argo came back from talking to Loute in prison, she had anything to say other than that the red player seemed to find what was happening the funniest thing in the world.

"35th floor already. Should I say that? Or 'finally'?"

Drifter sighed. It had been nearly 19 months since they entered SAO. If they kept going at this pace, ot would take another 7 months before they reached the halfway point, the 50th floor. Which meant they now had a somewhat feasible time-line for clearing SAO. 4 and a half years.

If they didn't all die first.

With that last hundred or so players who died between the 33rd and 35th floors, the count of players in Aincrad had fallen to somewhere around 6.600 souls.

In other words, 3.400 people were already gone. Drifter really wasn't sure if they would have enough to beat the game if the death toll kept increasing at this rate.

It was hard to relax when those kinds of thoughts were running through your head 24/7. As much as Drifter could put on a good facade for others, he couldn't just turn off his brain when he was idle.

He wished he could. Everything would be so much easier. But that wasn't reality, so instead, he just leaned back and tried to enjoy the sun.

-----------------------

The 35th floor was a frenzy. Hundreds of players who would normally stick to the lower floors were now on Aincrad's most dangerous and uncharted territory.

Surprisingly, not that many people had died. Only 19 so far. In the 12 hours since the floor had been opened.

So, a lot of people. A lot of needless death. But not as many as one might expect, as Drifter had expected, simply because of how many people were on the 35th floor.

Whenever they spawned, the mobs were immediately ganged upon by at least 2 dozen players. Sometimes they got a lucky hit in, and that was when someone died, but more often, the sheer numbers advantage overwhelmed them.

Maybe even Laughing Coffin hadn't expected this situation, or at least they underestimated the lure of the revival item, because they too were staying quiet.

Although, maybe their objective had already been achieved: to cause strife between players. The amount of fights that had broken out, for any number of reasons, had already resulted in a few orange players in prison, although none had gone so far as to kill someone. Yet.

That could change very quickly. Two hot-headed players meeting, an unlucky critical hit. All that was needed was a spark for the powder keg to blow.

It came in the form of old grudges. Two clearer guilds which had already gotten into conflict because of loot division and kill stealing before.

Someone in one of them, didn't matter which, got a rare drop from an elite mob. Not the revival item. But when they refused to share what it was...

It devolved into arguing. The arguing into shouting. And the shouting into fighting. Until one player took it a step too far. Used a skill on someone who was already low.

The flickering shards of a shattered life seemed to pause the entire floor, all of Aincrad, for an eternity.

And then, just as abruptly, the fighting resumed. Now with blood in their eyes. And more shards in the air.

Nobody noticed the hooded figure of Johnny Black putting away their throwing picks with a silent guffaw and reapplying their Hiding skill to watch the carnage.