More details needed to be hammered out before Kibaou left, or course, but Drifter was glad to let Argo deal with it. He meant it when he said he would be interfering as little as possible on the new Aincrad Defense Force - ADF for short - other than to shut it down if Kibaou went back to his old ways.
Watching Kibaou's back vanish in the teleporter, Drifter quite eagerly scratched his name off the list of people allowed into the Reaver's Mansion.
Only then he turned to Argo, barely stumbling as the info-broker wrapped her arms around his midsection.
"Thank ya for bein' mature 'bout this, Dri-bou."
"Don't mention it, little rat. And I'm sorry for dumping most of the ADF-related work on you. I know you are already swamped. I'll message Akari later too."
"Eh, it ain't that bad. After Kibaou gets it off the ground, it'll actually free up a whole lotta time for me."
"Good to hear that."
Drifter squeezed her one last time before letting go.
"Whatchu gonna do now?"
"Meet up with Yun' and the others and keep grinding."
"Thought so. See ya 'round then!"
The young girl - young teenager now - hopped towards the teleporter with a final toothy grin. Drifter waved.
"I'll invite you to a housewarming party soon!"
"Lookin' forward to it!"
Then she was gone. Drifter smiled wryly before shaking off the last remnants of tension from meeting up with Kibaou.
Summoning his spear and armor, he walked out the front door. The work of a frontliner never stopped.
-----------------------
2 months later, 55th floor of Aincrad - 'Eagle's Nest'.
"Duck!"
Nautilus dove to the ground and Drifter's bident shot over his head, impaling a monstrous eagle just as it was about to peck the ash-haired player's head off.
Shriek!
"Ugh!"
The edge of a bronze feather still caught the Indomitable Knight in the neck, leaving a deep cut, and Nautilus grunted as a sixth of his HP vanished.
"Sonic Leap!"
Sword glowing green, Ran dashed in and lopped off the mob's left wing. At the same time, Drifter pulled back his spear with the sharp grind of metal on metal, and brought it down again as a halberd, almost severing the eagle's head in two.
The mob burst into shards, and Drifter stabbed his weapon into the ground before offering Nautilus a hand and dragging him back up.
"Sorry 'bout that. My skills were on cooldown."
The ash-haired player shook his head, pressing a hand to his neck and watching the red polygons flake away.
"Don't sweat it. I made a mistake too. Should have used Indomitable Might, but I got greedy."
He hadn't actually been in any danger, with his build and HP nearly full, not even a head-on attack from a Bronze Eagle could kill him in one hit. But it still hurt.
Ever since they reached the 55th floor, Aincrad's pain setting had been boosted to reflect 100% of the real thing.
So when Nautilus got his neck slit and just grunted? That was the result of 2 very long months of training and hardening themselves to withstand pain.
A lot more had happened in those 2 months too. The Assault Team had climbed to the 55th floor, thankfully without any further casualties.
More players had gathered the courage to leave the safety of the lower floors too. Not many, but more than before.
Argo's latest count put it at 111 frontliners, 296 clearers, and 180 normal players who currently inhabited, or at least regularly explored, Aincrad's upper half.
Not nearly as many as it should have been, that's for sure. But it was, quite honestly, more than Drifter had hoped for, or expected.
Part of it was, as much as he hated to give their leader credit, due to the new Aincrad Defense Force. Kibaou's proposal had been implemented and, though it faced heavy pushback at the start both due to who he was, as well as what the new group's role is, once it became clear the Assault Team supported it, there were a lot less voices of dissent.
Drifter wasn't sure how he felt about that. Before the 51st floor, although he wouldn't say the frontliners were close to the normal players or anything like that, there certainly wasn't this air of mystique, nor such a distance between them.
He knew it was largely his fault. With the speech he had made in the Town of Beginnings, where he basically told the general SAO populace that they should shut it and suck it up, the difference between frontliners and clearers, and normal players had been dragged out into the open.
It didn't help that the vast majority of players never went above the 50th floor, and that the frontliners rarely went below that nowadays. Only seeing the Assault Team in the floor boss raids broadcasts, or hearing about their exploits through the grapevine, it was inevitable people would start to idolize them. More than they already did, that is.
One truth was clear to all SAO players: the frontliners were their only shot at escaping Aincrad. So, when they told you to do something, you didn't ask questions. And you definitely didn't cause problems.
Was it right? Probably no. Was it authoritarian, almost dictatorial? Most definitely yes.
Did Drifter or the other frontliners care?
Fuck no.
It might have been a different story if the ADF had turned out to be bullies and tyrants. But Kibaou was running a tight ship.
Joining the ADF was strictly voluntary, and you could leave at any moment. But while you were a part of it? You followed orders.
Quelling unrest, gathering and filtering intel for Argo, protecting low-level players, even handing out supplies - simple food and a tiny bit of cor, but supplies nonetheless - to those who were too scared or incapable of leaving the safe zones - like Sasha's kids. The ADF did it all, and more.
And whether it was because he truly believed in it, or because he didn't want to fuck up a second time, Kibaou kept a close eye on all of ADF's operations. There had been 2 occasions where ADF members tried to intimidate others using their positions, and they had been kicked out faster than Argo's spy web could pass it on to Drifter.
So, after 2 months of mostly smooth operations, Drifter was willing to give the Aincrad Defense Force and its leader the benefit of the doubt. As long as Kibaou didn't let the power get to his head, the spearmaster was happy to let him do his thing.
He had much bigger and more urgent issues, after all. Such as completing the pain in the ass chain quest Reaver's Requiem had been slapped with.
It had begun on the 53rd floor, when Wolv and Silica rescued an NPC who had been chained to a rock and left to starve. Said NPC gave them a sob story and a seemingly simple quest to save the rest of his family from some evil mobs.
Easy enough. Silica, being soft-hearted, insisted they complete it soon, and the promised rewards were fairly good, so the others saw no problem with it. Plus, the quest led them to a, as of then, unexplored portion of the floor, so that was two birds with one stone.
They found the enemy stronghold easily enough, guarded by some bandit NPCs, accurately classified as mobs, and wiped them out. That was when things got a whole lot more complicated.
There was no innocent family waiting to be rescued inside the building, just a golden scepter with a giant emerald embedded in it.
The NPC who they rescued turned out to be a backstabbing traitor. He snatched the scepter, which was revealed to be an ancient magic artifact of a long gone kingdom, used it to paralyze the Reavers party, and fled.
And had been fleeing for the last 3 floors. Every time they got close, something would get in the way - mobs, traps, tricks - and the NPC would escape again.
It was very annoying. But also, because it had been Reaver's Requiem who unknowingly started the chain quest, they couldn't just pawn it off to somebody else. And because questilines spanning multiple floors always contained information about the bosses, they couldn't also just abandon it.
So that was how Reaver's Requiem was stuck chasing a slippery traitor throughout Aincrad.
In a way, it was kind of refreshing. Their guild hadn't done a chain quest since the Elf War questline. After the Assault Team got properly organized and the clearers were put in place, things like that were generally left for them to handle.
But this quest was annoyingly repetitive. Chase the traitor, fall into a trap. Defeat the mobs and realize the traitor escaped. Rinse and repeat.
Still, the Reavers pushed through, mainly because the intel was good. It had provided them with important information for the boss fights on the 53rd and 54th floors, and, if the pattern endured, it should soon yield something for the coming raid.
The 55th floor was where things had gotten real, per se. The pain setting was now 100% of the real thing, and there was a limit to how many times you could tell yourself it was all fake - because it wasn't.
They pushed through, of course, like they always had.
"More eagles incoming!"
The mobs also never stopped. A new flock of Bronze Eagles, 7 in total, crested over a hill, shrieking their cruel hearts out. Drifter sighed.
"Well then. Let's get those chickens on a skewer."
He groaned at his own pun, shrinking his neck to avoid the deadpan stares of his party.
"Sorry. I'm tired."
Ran shook her head in exasperation.
"What were you even doing last night that you stayed up so late?"
The spearmaster scratched his neck. He didn't quite have bags under his eyes, but he definitely wasn't in peak form.
"I don't even know. Just felt uncomfortable. Same thing the whole week. I can't sleep 'cause it feels like we are being watched."
He sighed again.
"Which is stupid because nobody can enter the mansion that I didn't put on the list. And unless Akari got really bored those last couple days and decided to stalk me at night, then I don't know what's going on."
He had barely slept 2 hours last night, and was feeling irritated. His words came out with more bite than he meant to, directed at no one in particular.
Near him, Sinon raised an eyebrow even as she knocked another arrow onto her bow.
"You too?"
"What do you mean?"
Drifter ducked under a sharp beak and thrust his trident through the neck of a Bronze Eagle. Another came at him from the side, only to get intercepted by Nautilus with a violent Shield Bash.
"Two nights ago, Yuuki was rolling around on her sleep and woke me up. I couldn't go back to sleep so I went out to get some fresh air. Kirito was on the porch, looking around. Said he felt like someone was watching him. I don't think that was the only time either."
That made Drifter pause - mentally, that is. He spun his spear with Tidal Sequence, mincing an eagle into four pieces, and impaled another with a Snake Bite.
"Really?"
If Kirito also had the same feeling as him, this escalated from a midly annoying case of insomnia to full-blown paranoia.
"But who could it be? Sneaking onto a private property... I don't think even Argo could do it, if she wasn't on the list already, right? It isn't just improbable. It's impossible. System enforced."
Ran said as she ran a Bronze Eagle through with a Sharp Nail. She had a scratch on her ribs from where the tip of a feather had caught her, and was mightily pissed that she let herself get hit.
"Wouldn't be the first time someone found a workaround a system rule."
"Still doesn't answer who."
"No clue. A red player?"
Drifter shook his head almost at the same time as Nautilus voice the thought.
"No way. There are only a handful left, if any at all, and they are too busy trying to avoid Argo's search and Akari's surveillance."
If it was the former who found them, those red players might still have a chance. But if it was the latter... They all knew Fuumaningum only had one solution to red players, and it was the permanent kind. They were all keeping to ground, too afraid to pop their heads up. After all, the red players who were left weren't Laughing Coffin's psychos, but greedy fools who had killed for items or grudges. They didn't have the same determination to die as PoH's guild did.
When one of the mobs managed to score a gash across his forehead, Drifter decided to put all thoughts of their mysterious stalker aside for now. He had always been the one who preached the most about never letting your guard down no matter how weak the enemy.