Material Edition 23 - Sugary Days 10

So, as promised, here's the first of the Sugary Days Material Editions that Tap hasn't translated. I hope certain people are happy now. :stare:

Jokes aside, you may want to reread the previous Sugary Days chapters translated by Tap to recall what the story was about, seeing as even I myself had doubts whether I had actually read Sugary Days 8 and 9 before... until I noticed that I had left comments on Tap's blog about them... wow, it sure has been long since I read it...

Any feedback is appreciated.

-Gsimenas

Credits

Translation: Gsimenas
Proofreading: JengKay

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• This chapter uses both English and Japanese words for certain plants. So, I decided to use the Japanese name for the actual Japanese instances and use furigana to explain what the Japanese word means.
• In some instances, Kirito uses the phrase スギ類 (Sugi-rui). In cases like these, 類 is used to indicate that something is similar to whatever noun the 類 is attached to, so it's basically the equivalent of the Latin suffix -oid, which is the equivalent of adding -like to a word in English. As such, I translated スギ類 as cryptomeroid (cryptomeria-like).
• When honorifics were used with titles but not addressing the person, I translated the honorific into English. Specifically, I translated Vice Commander-sama as "Esteemed Vice Commander" in this story.
• Agil speaks in a coarse/masculine tone with some slangy grammar (-nai --> -nee, atarimae --> ttarimee etc.). I accounted for this by making his speech slangier (to -> ta, omitting the g in -ing, using "ain't" etc.)

Markup explanation:

• Itallics mark text that was written in katakana English (I only highlighted the cases where the author uses both English and actual Japanese equivalents for the same thing, or when I needed to emphasise that an English word is used there).
• Ｆｕｌｌ－ｗｉｄｔｈ text indicates non-Japanese text that was written in the Latin/English alphabet, rather than katakana. Basically, what you see is exactly how it's written in the raw.
• Single quotation marks (') are quotes that weren't in the original text but were added for the convenience of English speakers to mark implied quotations. I used it mostly to separate Kirito's internal monologue from his narration, as well as mark sound effects and so on. Actual dialogue lines or quotations (with 「」 punctuation marks) within a narration line are indicated with the usual double (") quotation marks.

Sugary Days 9 (Translated by Tap)

Index

Sugary Days 11

1

"Hey, you did say that an old walnut tree was used for making the table, as I recall."

"……I did, and?"

"And a walnut is a #walnut#(kurumi) tree, meaning that it's a broadleaf, right?"

"……I did, and?"

"In that case, it should be quite eye-catching on a floor that basically only has conifer trees. Look around the field from over there and see if you can find any tree that fits the bill!"

"…………Well, I don't mind doing that……"

After her reply, Asuna tightly squeezed my neck with her legs.

"Gueh……"

"……Since you've had no trouble pulling this stunt out of the blue, I'm sure you won't mind giving me a piggyback ride wherever I please from now on either, right?"

"W……wherever?"

Squeeze.

"I……I hear you loud and clear."

Upon forcing her demands on me without letting me have a say in the matter, Asuna finally released her triangle choke. I was afraid to even think of where exactly she would be forcing me to give her a piggyback ride, but more importantly——

"……So, how is it? See any kurumi trees?"

"Hmm……"

I felt Asuna rotating her body to the left and right above me. After a short while, I heard her reply in an awkward tone.

"……Though you claim that a broadleaf would be eye-catching here, this floor is nearly entirely covered in trees. Come to think of it…… even the biggest #kurumi no ki#(walnut) would still be smaller than the #touhi#(spruces) that make up the main portion of trees here. While a spruce can reach up to fifty metres, a walnut can only do twenty at…………ah."

Asuna's tree trivia suddenly cut off in a whisper. Just as I was about to look up at her, she pinned down my head with her hands——

"Kirito-kun, turn about thirty degrees to the right and jump up!"

"W-whaa……?"

"C'mon, hurry!"

As the guy who came up with Plan Piggyback, I had no choice but to abide by her will when she turned my head to the right as if it were a joystick. Upon carefully turning to the right on the middle of the roof, I braced my legs for a jump.

"A-alright, I'm gonna jump! One, two……"

With Asuna holding on to me using her legs, "Three!", I jumped up with all my strength. Being the indoors type, the real me probably wouldn't be able to make even thirty centimetres with my jump even with as slender a girl as Asuna on my shoulders, but in this world, numerical stats were everything. After I put my all into the jump, though I did hold back to some extent for safety reasons, my jump nevertheless put me a whole two metres or so away from the log house's roof.

The moment I reached the apex of my vertical jump, "Ah!", shouted Asuna again. Meanwhile, I focused entirely on landing as softly as possible and managed to reach satisfactory results with my effort, but Milady Princess showed no appreciation for my effort whatsoever as she pounded my head with light smacks.

"One more time! One more time!"

'What are you, a child!', exercising my discretion to not put this thought of mine to words, I made my second jump. Followed by a third and a fourth one, at which point Asuna seemed to finally be satisfied as she brought her face to my brow and pointed to the floor's south-east.

"I think there's a tree like that over there!"

"Oh…… nice job finding it."

"A walnut is shorter than a spruce but its leaves turn yellow in this season since it's a deciduous tree. I saw a glimpse of yellow in-between the tree branches."

"Heeh…… I see."

In Aincrad, it depended on the individual floor whether the four seasons were observed, but Floor 22 was one of them. As such, deciduous trees probably turned red-leaf and dropped their leaves, but I've honestly almost never cared about changes like that till now. The only time I seriously considered the differences between tree species in this world was when I had to make the distinction between fir trees and cryptomerias on Floor 35.

As I nodded, Asuna once again lightly struck my head.

"C'mon, let's go there already!"

"A……alright."

Having moved to the edge of the roof, I peered down to the ground. Seeing as I had some landing practice just a few moments ago, I came to the conclusion that there wouldn't be a problem landing from this height either and so I jumped down resolutely. My landing was perfect again, yet Asuna wasn't fazed the slightest bit by this as she pointed to the south-east.

"Let's get rolling!"

"Yeah, yeah."

There was no longer any need to continue giving her a piggyback ride at this point… is what I realised only when we were already nearly fifty metres down a forest path.



Approximately twenty minutes of walking alongside Asuna, who had been strangely reluctant to come down for some reason despite all those screams when I first picked her up, later.

Just as I began to doubt whether we were truly going the right way since we had to go off-road midway through, something vividly-coloured entered my view.

Having reflexively reached out towards it with my right hand, I found an elliptical leaf dyed in deep yellow in my grasp. In Aincrad, fallen leaves were generally temporary objects, thus the leaf vanished in my hand right away, but having had a glimpse of it, Asuna said the following.

"That was a kurumi leaf you had just there."

"Heeh…… I'm surprised you can even tell the leaves apart."

"It wasn't all that big, but the garden at my home had a……"

Just as Asuna began saying that, a second yellow leaf fluttered past her and vanished upon falling to the ground. Exchanging a nod in silence, we made haste in the direction the leaves had come from.

Upon making our way barely ten-odd metres forward while avoiding the huge, dark-barked cryptomeroids——which were apparently touhi, according to Asuna, we suddenly found ourselves in a bright area. It was a circular clearing in the forest of conifers, at the center of which stood a majestic broadleaf tree with knotty branches expanding in all four directions.

It was only half the size of the surrounding touhi in height, but its trunk clearly surpassed them in thickness. Elliptical just like the leaves we saw moments ago, the tree's leaves had vivid colours; the way they gently floated about each time the wind blew made it look like it was raining gold.

Although the taller cryptomeroids would have blocked out the sunlight and thus exterminated all the small trees around them if this were a forest in the real world, the huge kurumi——black walnut in the virtual world looked as if it were the king of the forest, surrounded by subjects, the touhi. Asuna and I approached the tree in silence, stroking its rough and scraggy bark with our hands.

The Woodcrafter Mahokl had mentioned that the tree used to craft the single-plank walnut table we bought at a ninety percent discount was felled on this here Floor 22, though there was no guarantee that it was specifically this very tree here in front of us, of course. In the real world, a tree once felled would have met its end there and then, but in Aincrad, generally any tree respawned infinitely no matter how big it was——though its size and rarity did affect how long this would take——so you had to either have a superhuman memory, or leave some kind of mark to be able to tell which tree you've felled before.

On the other hand, however, you'd probably have a very hard time finding another S-class old tree as grand as this one even on a floor as vast as Floor 22 with a radius of eight or so kilometres.

Back when we met Klein in Coral Village this morning, he mentioned that Agil the axeman-slash-shopkeeper had, for a period of time in the distant past, been collecting a variety of different trees on random floors. If he had done this for some specific goal, rather than just merely levelling his skills, there was a chance that he had felled this kurumi tree in the distant past as well. And assuming that he 《had no need to fell a tree he had already felled before》——

"……So, Kirito-kun, what's with this tree you wanted to find so badly that you even resorted to forcing me to take a piggyback ride for?"

'Says the girl who actually enjoyed herself quite a lot back there', deciding not to say that out loud, I took my gaze off the kurumi tree and looked around our surroundings.

"I'll explain right after this; for now, just help me find something for a bit."

"Huh? Well sure…… but what are we looking for?"

"I believe there should be something sticking out from the cryptomeria, I mean, touhi trunks nearby."

"What exactly do you mean by 'something'……"

Despite her expression indicating how she thought that I was being fishy, Asuna looked up at the conifers nearby as well. I held down her head with my right hand, slightly adjusting the angle she was looking at.

"I don't think it'd be all that high; it's probably going to be at around a height that a well-built player could reach by extending their hands to their limits."

"That's very specific."

Once again donning a distrustful expression, Asuna blinked thrice all of a sudden, before pointing behind me.

"Oh, Kirito-kun, over there!"

Turning around in a hurry, I found something with a silver shine stabbed into a single touhi trunk there. The height it was located was just as I had predicted: one where a nearly hundred and ninety centimetre-tall player would reach by extending their hands all out.

Upon dashing over to it, I found a single, thick nail about the size of my pinky when I looked up. Having caught up with me, Asuna said the following in surprise.

"Uwaa, that's one huge nail. Though, why's a thing like that sticking out of a tree, I wonder."

"It's probably a case of you-know-what…… some player wanted to put a curse on someone, so they took a huge straw figure way back when and stab, stab……"

"Hey…… s-stop with stories like that!"

Astral-type monsters being her grand weak spot, the Esteemed Vice Commander painfully pinched my right elbow. Promptly apologising, I amended my conjecture.

"Sorry, sorry, that's just a regular old mark."

"A mark……"

Moving a short distance away from Asuna as she tilted her head, I slightly kicked off the ground. The nail was sticking out from the trunk more than two metres away from the ground, but I easily reached it with my extended right hand. Pressing against the touhi trunk with my left hand, I used brute force to pull out the nail that I had been gripping.

When I landed after showing off two somersaults with my excess momentum, I showed the nail in my right hand to Asuna. It was one centimetre-thick and two centimetres-long, thus they were bigger than my frequently-used throwing picks.

"This is a mark that the woodcutter who felled this kurumi tree way back when left on a nearby tree so he wouldn't end up felling the same tree again."

"'Way back when', you say…… but aren't items supposed to decompose if you just leave them lying around on the field?"

I gave a nod when Asuna pointed this out.

"In principle, let's see, not unless you store it away in an 《Eternal Storage Trinket》. But Aincrad's principles……"

"Usually have exceptions."

Taking over for me, Asuna looked up at the touhi tree, before turning her gaze to me again.

"I see…… the main point here is that it's not a weapon, but a carpentry nail, right? Could it be that if you drive in a nail into a standing tree, it will remain undecomposed forever…… or something?"

"Mostly correct. I'd just have to add that this is a nail meant for tree house creation specifically."

"Tree house……? You can make those in Aincrad?"

"Yeah, though my experience with them is limited solely to laying eyes on them a few times in the distant past. You need a pretty high Carpentry skill proficiency to craft the materials for the tree house and there are some issues on the safety front to boot, so it didn't catch on."

"Safety front…… you mean like being attacked by tree-climbing monsters or something?"

Asuna looked to a nearby treetop while saying that. Of course, she didn't find any monsters there, but there were monkey- and insect-type tree-climbing monsters on other floors that would attack people from the trees if they were walking through the forest incautiously.

"Oh, that could pose a problem too, but the main issue was actually pranks from other players. The selling point of tree houses is that you can create them on some tree you find out in the field, but that doubles as a downside too……"

"Oh, I get it…… someone could just cut down the tree that the house was made on. If you were sleeping inside of it at that very moment, it could shake you up real good."

"It sure would. Besides, it's also possible that you'd become the target of thieves and ＰＫers, rather than just pranksters…… and so people were publicly warned to only make tree houses inside the premises of a player home if they really wanted one, but then again, if you could afford a house that came with a garden and garden shrubs in the first place……"

"You wouldn't go out of your way to make a cramped tree house, huh. It would be one thing if you had small children with you."

As she said that stuff, a vacant look appeared on her face, as if she were imagining something, thus I subconsciously hurried the conclusion along with a cough.

"W-well, that's how it is, which is why tree houses died out in a flash, though the player who used this thing as a mark found a different valid use for the nails themselves."

"……I see…… ——So, what are you planning to do with this na……"

Having returned from daydream land, Asuna managed to get that far into her sentence, before opening her eyes wide.

"Oh…… you did say that you needed a Carpentry skill to make the materials for the tree house back there, right? Which is to say that they aren't sold on the market?"

"Yes."

"Implying that the nails…… are player-made?"

"Yes."

Once I nodded twice in a row, Asuna gave a satisfied smile, as if finally getting the full picture.

"In that case, I know where we're going next."

2

The general store in Algade that I visited a second time in a twenty-four hour period had a reasonable number of customers patronising it just like the previous day. However, for some reason, the regulars of the store preferred to silently examine the wares at the counter without chatting up the shopkeeper. Even when they decided to buy some items, the majority of the players just quickly finished up the transaction through the purchase window rather than directly trading with the shopkeeper, who was willing to haggle.

Hence, even today the giant shopkeeper had his back turned to his customers and was examining the items he had apparently just bought up at his work desk beyond the counter. However, he turned around to face us with his swivel chair just as Asuna and I walked over to him, as if having noticed our presence through our footsteps when we stepped on his black and shiny floorboards; guess it just goes to show you that he's a member of the Clearers.

"'Sup."

As I greeted him, the shopkeeper turned his intense, suspicion-filled gaze towards me in silence.

"Hey hey, is that any way to greet your customers?"

When I let out a retort, the shopkeeper——the axetrader Agil finally deigned to put his stern jaws to work.

"Seein' yer face two days in a row is never a good sign. I beg of you, don'cha dare foist an even more annoyin' order on me than you did yesterday."

"Oh no, no, I've got a simple errand for you today. I just want you to appraise a single item."

Hearing that, Agil finally dropped his wariness.

"Oh, why din'cha just say so. An appraisal is no big deal. Glad ta have ya here too, Asuna, want some tea or something?"

In response to the shopkeeper's words, wildly different in attitude from the ones directed at me, Asuna said her thanks with a smile.

"Thanks Agil-san, but since it's still business hours for you, I'll pass. I'll bring some sweets next time, so I'll take you up on your offer then."

"Hoh, now you've got me eagerly waiting…… So, where's the goods?"

With Agil's attention pointed to me now, I quickly operated my window and turned the item in question into an object. Once it materialised with a faint sound effect, I slowly placed it onto the counter.

The instant he saw the gigantic iron nail, Agil knit his distinct eyebrows.

"The heck, this sure ain't a pick. A stake…… nah, that ain't it either; a shuriken…… also outta the question……"

His deep voice gradually slowed down, before cutting off entirely. With his mouth still slightly open, Agil slowly extended his right hand and picked up the large nail. He repeatedly squeezed the nail in his hand, as if checking on its texture. Before long, he tapped on the nail without a single word from me and began his appraisal.

The moment he glanced at the property window that opened up after a brief wait, Agil's eyes opened wide for a moment. Upon noticing this reaction of his, I was basically already convinced we had found our man, but I nevertheless kept my mouth shut as I awaited the axeman's words.

Having raised up his face after several seconds had passed, Agil gazed at me with a somewhat dazed expression, before saying the following.

"Guys…… where did ya get this?"



In the end, Asuna and I wound up having to go up the stairs to the store's second floor to be treated to some tea. Making good use of a moment when the foot traffic died down, Agil promptly closed his store and prompted us to go up the stairs.

Appearing in the living room on the second floor a few minutes later, the giant brought over a tray with three cups. After placing the cups with a nice aroma of coffee coming from them onto the table and lining up some small jars with milk and sugar, he set down in front of us.

There was one final item remaining on the tray. The big nail that brought us here.

While Asuna and I added some milk and sugar to our coffees, the shopkeeper took a sip of his coffee as is, before finally uttering something.

"The forest on Floor 22…… huh. It should've been left exposed ta the elements for over a year now after I had used it as a mark, yet it looks brand new……"

The instant we heard that, I subconsciously exchanged a glance with Asuna. Though, the only thing that we've proved so far was that Agil had once felled that giant walnut tree; his relationship with Mahokl had yet to be made clear. Avoiding the urge to bombard him with questions impatiently, I followed up on his topic as a lead-up.

"If it had been stabbed into the ground or a tree that was turned into logs, it would have probably decomposed long ago. Seems like the 《Tree House Roof Nail》 is programmed not to lose durability only when it's stabbed into a standing tree, after all……"

"Come ta think of it, I'm getting the feeling that I've heard that before."

Muttering this, Agil leaned against his chair's backrest, folding his arms behind his head. After a whole ten seconds of pointing his far-off gaze beyond the window in silence, he once again began speaking.

"……That's from back when I was still working as the leader of the 《Two-Handed Builders》⁽¹⁾, huh……"

Since Agil's begun reminiscing about the past for a change, I mustn't interrupt his story——but despite these thoughts of mine, I butted in on reflex.

"Hey wait a sec, the heck is that?"

"The name of our guild……what else."

"Wai…… whuuuut!? It wasn't the 《Bro Squad》!?"

As I shouted that out, Agil and Asuna sent me appalled looks.

"'Course it wasn't, how d'ya expect anyone but guys joining us with a guild name like that."

"I for one knew all about it, their official name I mean."

"But…… I mean……"

'That didn't stop you from only having bros for guild members anyway, did it!', holding back from saying that out loud, I urged him to continue.

"Oh nothing, sorry. Continue where you left off……"

Once I did, Agil took another sip of the coffee and did one big cough, before getting back on track.

"……Anyway, it's from back when I was still working as the leader of the Twohanders."

Seeing as even I understood that this was an abbreviation, I just nodded this time.

"How should I put this, back then I'd been harbouring some doubts about continuin' ta fight on the front lines as part of the Clearers…… since I wanted some time alone ta think over things, I'd been doing some lumberin' in some random forests at night. I'd felt my head clear up after swingin' my axe like crazy on some unmovin' targets."

I could sympathise with those feelings. Though I've never done any lumbering, I have felt as if I were meditating while doing some menial solo levelling and skill raising for long periods of time…… sometimes.

However, as if to prove that he was a true merchant at heart, Agil added the following with a big grin.

"Besides, by levellin' my axe skill with lumberin', I had plenty of logs left over that could fetch a hefty sum, ya see. Though I had been selling 'em off dirt cheap to some ＮＰＣ at the closest town at first, the ranks of artisan players were growing bit by bit at the time, so I ended up selling them to a woodcrafter before long instead…… Then one day, said crafter came to me with some strange errand."

"Strange errand……?"

When Asuna repeated those words, Agil raised one of his brows at her.

"Aye. 'I want you to gather up as many different and as high-rarity and unusual logs as you can'…… they said. Dough it was easy for me ta take up the job so casually, the job itself turned out to be a much bigger pain in the ass than I had thought…… For starters, an amateur on trees like me ain't gonna recognise what counts as a rare tree, oh and you know how trees in Aincrad respawn after several hours or days after you fell them? If I ain't got some kinda mark to help me, I'd lose track of which trees I've felled before and which I haven't. So, when I brought it up to my client……"

"So they made you that nail for it, huh."

When I butted in this time, the axetrader nodded while once again returning his gaze to the big nail atop the tray.

"Uh-huh. I used it at the time without any knowledge of what the nail was used for, nor why it wouldn't decompose either…… so that's how it is, it was a material for tree houses, huh……"

"So…… were you able to fulfil the errand?"

"Though it did take quite a bit of time. The craftsman themselves accompanied me with my lumbering work to help distinguish rare trees. Come ta think of it, we found a big 'ol kurumi tree on Floor 22 as I recall…… it wasn't the tree the craftsman was lookin' for though, so they brought it over to a furniture store ＮＰＣ in the main town and fashioned it inta a huuuge table on the spot. It was quite a piece of work…… though the price tag for it was outta the world too. They consigned it to that very store; wonder if it's still on sale……"

Taking advantage of Agil looking up to the ceiling in nostalgia, Asuna and I quickly exchanged looks.

This basically confirmed it. The one who felled the tree that had been used to make the single-plank table now gracing the living room in our home was none other than the axetrader before us. Meaning that Agil had at a time had dealings with Woodcrafter Mahokl…… or depending on the circumstances, could have even been her partner.

I placed the skinheaded giant axewielder and the spiral glasses-wearing petite artisan side-by-side in my head. It was quite the mismatch, yet surprisingly nice match when you actually thought about it, though it was far too soon to do any guesswork on what kind of relationship the two of them had.

A month ago, Mahokl vacated the atelier she had been using and hid herself in the main town of Floor 3, Zumfut. She had mentioned that the reason for this move was that she had "discovered the composition recipe for a ballista", but when we gave Agil a list of materials to collect for us, he never realised that they were the materials for a ballista. Meaning that even Agil, whom she once had dealings with, had not been informed on why she had ended up hiding away.

As such thoughts swirled around in my head, Agil finished drinking his own coffee, before saying the following.

"……We found the tree that the craftsman had been looking for a week or so after that. It was an annoying errand, but I did get paid as agreed upon, and I even got a bonus made for me……"

"A bonus……?"

When Asuna and I tilted our heads, Agil stood up in silence and tapped on the long chest in a corner of the room. After a rather long moment of scrolling through the home storage, he finally turned a single two-handed axe into an object.

Worn and emitting a dull gleam, the axe didn't have the specs to be useful on the current front line; however, I could tell at a glance that it used to be quite the masterpiece back in the day. I even faintly recalled seeing Agil using this axe in battles against floor bosses on the front lines for a time before.

"……They made you this axe with the 《Polearm Weapon Creation》 skill…… right?"

At Asuna's question, Agil gave a deep nod.

(To be continued)

Sword Art Online Material Edition 23
Publisher: WordGear
Date of publishing: 2017-5-16
Supervisor: Kunori Fumio
Printing: Ryokuyou

Afterword

I'm sorry I didn't finish I'm sorry I'm sorry. Next time, for sure, I should bring the story to an end I'm sorry I'm sorry. Look forward to it I'm sorry.

Sugary Days 9 (Translated by Tap)

Index

Sugary Days 11

Notes

1. ^ The name is probably supposed to mean "two-handed weapon-wielding body builders" with certain key words omitted in typical Ingurisshu fashion.