[Progressive manga] Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 010 + 011

We didn't manage to get a release done for last week, so we're making up for it with a double Scherzo release this week.

Chapter 10 is another dialogue-heavy chapter focusing on Kirito's idea on how to resolve the ALS issue - one-upping them at their own game! Chapter 11 features the gang coming together and arriving at the Labyrinth.

I hope you enjoy the release. If you have any suggestions/requests for what to work on, feel free to leave a comment or contact us through Twitter/Discord/Email.

Finally, a standard thank you to all of those who contributed to the SAO Scans project for helping us get the raws.

-Gsimenas

Credits

Raws: SAO Scans
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas
Redrawing: Nguyen Milk
Typesetting: Nguyen Milk
Quality Assurance: Mttblue2

Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 10

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 11

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Chapter 009

Index

Chapter 012

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:
-Chapter 10

• Page c10-02: The name "Bro Squad" (アニキ軍団) had "Team Agil" (エギル組) as furigana. The original novel text only had "Team Agil" (エギル組). Note that "Bro Squad" is not actually the official name of their guild.
• Page c10-02: Argo nicknames Kirito as Kii-bou (キー坊) and Asuna as Aa-chan (アーちゃん). -bou and -chan are cutesy suffixes/honorifics for boys and girls respetively. Of course, since boys don't want to be associated with "cuteness", -bou usually only gets used with very young boys, unlike -chan being used for any relatively young and cute girl.
• Page c10-02: "keeping tabs" - the original phrase was チェックしてる (be checking, where "check" is in katakana English).
• Page c10-02: There are a variety of ways to refer to people fighting on the front lines in Sword Art Online. The most common of them is 攻略組 (Kouryaku-gumi, lit. "capture/conquest group". I usually translate this term as "Clearers", based on the fact that the characters use the English verb "clear" when referring to beating the game (for reference, Yen Press seems to go with "advancement group" in Progressive volume 5). On the other hand, Argo invented the name "Front Runner" (フロントランナー) in English for them, but she's probably the only one who actually uses this name. In this case, the original text used 攻略組 with フロントランナー as furigana.
• Page c10-03: The word "stats" (ステータス) in Kirito's bubble had "numbers"（数字）as furigana text.
• Page c10-04: Japanese gamers frequently abbreviate the word "quest" (クエスト) to just "que" (クエ). I decided to translate the abbreviation as "q'st".
• Page c10-05: "throw in the towel" - the original phrase was "raise (our) hands (in surrender)" (お手上げ)
• Page c10-10: "expenses aren't a concern" - the original word for "expenses" was コスト (kosuto), the katakana spelling of the English word "cost".
• Page c10-13: Nezha's name is based on a Chinese protection deity named 哪吒. The spelling "Ne zha" is based on the Chinese pronunciation of the characters. The same characters in Japanese are pronounced "Na taku".
• Page c10-14: There were two different phrases that used different words for "floor": 第五層 (Dai-Go-Sou = 5th Floor), where "floor" is the kanji 層 = layer/stratum, and フロアボス (furoa bosu), which uses the English word "floor" in katakana.

-Chapter 11

• Page c11-01: "you rock" - the original phrase was パネェ (panee), which a slur of the colloquial phrase 半端ない (hanpanai, literally "not half-assed" = "impressive"). I went for an equivalent English colloquial phrase.
• Page c11-02: "Blackie" (ブラッキー = burakkii) is a nickname that some people use for Kirito due to his tendency to wear black outfits.
• Page c11-02: "a very precarious tightrope here" - the original idiom was 危ない橋渡らせる (abunai hashi wataraseru = making [object] cross a dangerous bridge). I chose to go with the English idiom "walking a tightrope" to approximate the intended metaphor.
• Page c11-02: "he's got nothing to gain" - the original phrase was
• Page c11-04: "crapmmo - the original phrase was クソゲー (kuso-geh), a slur of 糞ゲーム (kuso gehmu = shit game). It's a common gamer lingo to describe bad or so-bad-that-it's-funny games. The best localisation that I could come up with was crappy + MMO = crapmmo.
• Page c11-07: "Truth is, my actual goal" - Kirito uses both the phrase 本当のところ (hontou no tokoro = truth is/in truth) and 本命 (honmei = actual goal), hence the redundancy.
• Page c11-11: While trying to deny that he and Asuna were an item, Kirito suddenly switched to Osaka dialect for some reason. Made his speech sound broken to capture the intended effect of this nuance.
• Page c11-12: "eighteen hundred hours" - Kirito used 十八時 (juuhachi-ji), which literally means 18 hours, rather than saying 午後六時 (gogo roku-ji = six o'clock in the afternoon) like in the novel. Since o'clock can only be used with 12-hour times, I decided to use military time to get around this weird format choice.
• Page c11-12: "Aye-aye, roger" - Argo's phrase was entirely in katakanised English (アイアイ　ラジャー = ai-ai rajah)
• Page c11-13: "I've been trying to decide on a formation" - the word "formation" was in katakanised English (フォーメーション = fohmehshon) in this specific case. The characters usually use actual Japanese words for this, but this time Kirito went with Engrish.
• Page c11-13: Japanese gamers use the abbreviation "DPS" as a synonym for "damage dealer", when it's actually used to describe parameters, rather than party roles. The original text even has an outright note saying that "DPS" stands for "Damage per second" in the same instance where "DPS" is used to refer to damage dealers...
• Page c11-13: "※Stands for Damage Per Second" is a note present in the original text. "Damange Per Second" is written in English in the original.
• Page c11-14+: "damage dealer" - the original term was the English word "attacker" (アタッカー), which is the Japanese gamer lingo equivalent of "damage dealer". In the novel, Kirito even outright used the English term "damage dealer" in addition to "attacker", but it was cut out in the manga to save space.
• Page c11-14: "※Stands for Crowd Controller" is a note present in the original text. "Crowd Controller" is written in English in the original.
• Page c11-19: Japanese gamers frequently abbreviate the word "quest" (クエスト) to just "que" (クエ). I decided to translate the abbreviation as "q'st".

Adaptation notes:
-Chapter 10

• "Weren't you the one who claimed that it was impossible to take on the boss with just three members in our party even if we brought Kizmel with us!" - this is an original line in the manga. The novel just had Asuna giving Kirito a meaningful glare. Also, the Twitter/Comic Walker version of the chapter had a mistake in this dialogue line, making it sound like Asuna was referring to what had happened on the 4th Floor, when she was actually referencing something that was said in this very manga.
• Asuna reference to the 4th Floor boss battle with Kizmel and Yofilis was omitted.
• The manga skips Argo complaining that Kirito forgot she was doing the boss quests as an info broker.
• The manga greatly trimmed down the backstory for Floor 5 when revealing what she knew about the boss. It also skipped the reveal that the catacombs boss used to be the king of the lands back in the old days.
• Kirito's mention that the party-planning committee was about to head back to Karluin for the party, which meant that Shivata and Liten could sneak off for the boss battle without being noticed by their guild, was omitted.
• In the novel, Kirito began writing his message to Nezha after his talk with Asuna, while the manga shows him already receiving a reply just after their conversation.
• Some of Kirito's dialogue lines with Nezha have been re-arranged.
• Various dialogue trimming.

-Chapter 11

• In the novel, Nezha went off to share his greetings with Asuna before Kirito was accosted by Hafner.
• Hafner directly addressed Okotan and Liten in the novel, rather than Okotan barging into the conversation. But Okotan's line is the same in the manga as in the novel, despite the manga skipping a line where Hafner addressed him.
• The manga omitted Kirito's monologue about how difficult it would be to explain his status as a Beater to Liten, which is why he offered a more simplistic reason that utterly backfired on him.
• Various dialogue trimming.