Progressive Factor II: Lacrimosa Of A Reaper

Dungeons and Deserts

If blood pressure could be checked in the virtual world, Asuna's sure hers would have skyrocketed in the midst of the infighting between ALS and DKB.

Agil had sent them a message during breakfast before the quintet had changed plans from furthering the Stachion quest to investigating the Fallen Elf weapons, that the frontier players were planning to advance into the second slice of the sixth floor, counterclockwise from the slice that Suribus and Stachion occupy. The way forward is a dungeon cavern in the bordering mountain ranges, in which Kirito and Mito describe as being filled with puzzles and a mid-boss at the end. This is the same setup for the other three intersecting dungeons.

Jaymes grumbled that if they were able to bring the boats made on the fourth floor, they could traverse the star-shaped lake in the floor's center and bypass the mountains altogether. It would make getting to the Celestial Tower to the seventh floor easier - it's on the southeastern side of the Stachion slice, and there's no way to get there except by going counterclockwise through the others.

Once Asuna's team caught up to Agil's Bro Squad and the big two, Asuna was partially unhappy they hadn't cleared the dungeon; instead, they were on break outside of it. They joined the Bro Squad, huddled around a small fire, then enjoyed a snack of the Icththyoid Potato - the sweet potato that Kirito got as drops from the fish creatures and first served on the fifth floor.

Right before that, Asuna posed Kirito and Mito a question, "How does a player with an orange cursor get it back to green again?" They both looked astounded by the question at the time, but they quickly understood why Asuna posed the question. Morte and Joe are members of the big guilds, or at least Joe still is a member of ALS. The previous night, both players attacked NPCs, and their cursors turned orange as a result. Asuna is aware of the consequences of receiving the cursor, and the others might've mentioned the way to alleviate that problem, but never in detail.

They explained that they would need to complete an "Alignment Recovery" quest, a kind of trial given by random NPCs traveling the wild. Whether it could be completed in a night, neither Mito nor Kirito knew, but they explained that the difficulty of the quest fit the crime, and if one clears the quest before, the repeated offense of the crime also raises the difficulty. PKing five people at once counts as a single offense, but it is nearly impossible to regain green status.

Morte killed Cylon, but Joe attacked the big man, so their quests were of varying difficulty. Even if Joe did succeed, it doesn't look like he's here now - and the same is for half of ALS's members. Both the big guilds are eighteen members strong right now. Add in Agil's four and Asuna's five, and they're forty-five in number.

After Kibaou rounded everyone up, he and ALS took charge of the raid. Things were well for a while in the first chamber - all they did was fight ten Living Statues -but things took a turn for the worse afterward. The exit out of the first chamber is a sliding puzzle with blocks of varying sizes and orientations. To solve the puzzle, the lone large block had to be taken from the top of the puzzle to the exit at the bottom. In the beta, the puzzle consisted of one large block, four vertical blocks, a horizontal block, and four small blocks, which Kirito claimed was easy in comparison. The puzzle now looks similar to the one in the past but has an additional row of small blocks.

Kibaou initially attempted to solve the puzzle, but after five minutes and a couple of hundred moves, he had no success. Lind offered to try, Kibaou told him to butt out...and the usual glaring contest between the blues and greens went on.

Currently, Kibaou is trying again. Asuna, her party, and the Bro Squad sit back, not eager to get between the rival guilds. Annoyed, she sighs and glances at Kirito. "Well...this certainly looks familiar. Say, isn't there a simple and reliable way to solve that, like with the fifteen puzzle?"