Hello once again. I'm sorry for posting new stories all the time. BUT, please enjoy the story.
'The world of «Sword Art Online» really is amazing. The perfect escape from the cruel reality.' Looking at the endless green field, feeling the strong wind against her now cold face and preparing to kill whichever monster appears first, Asada Shino had never felt more alive.
No. Not Asada Shino.
Here, within the virtual world in the form of a floating castle, she was Sinon, one of the thousand who were privileged enough to be selected to test out the game - also proudly known as beta tester. Gone was the weak, gun-phobia little girl. Here, within this reality, she, Sinon, was strong and fearless.
Five boar-like monsters appeared in the peripheral of her vision and Sinon grabbed her weapon - the «Wooden Spear». Among the various types of initial weapons a player can choose from, Sinon had favoured the spear. It gave her the longest reach among the weapons and the long weapon made her feel invincible.
As she strolled towards the boars, a smile involuntarily stretched across her face, as her heart raced with barely content excitement. Five medium size, tough-looking boars. The perfect opponents to test out her choice of weapon.
Sinon briefly wondered why the boars had yet to attack her despite her proximity. By now, she could almost touch those monsters with her bare hands. 'These are monsters, right?'
As if to answer her question, words appeared atop each of the five boars, identifying them as the «Frenzy Boars». 'Let's see how frenzy these boars could get.' were her last thoughts, as Sinon charge in to attach her first preys with a smirk.
With the intention to kill, Sinon positioned her weapon such that the spearhead was aim directly at the middle of the front most boar's head. Breaking into a sprint, Sinon notice a drastic change in the monster's attitude, the most obvious of which being the sudden flash of red in the boar's previously black eyes. As opposed to its previously lazy atmosphere, the front most boar was now in full attack mode and as if taking the first boar's lead, the other four «Frenzy Boars» followed suit.
The female warrior was absolutely sure that her spear would pierce right through her target's skull when the boar suddenly moved, causing the tip of her spear to barely nick the side of the monster. The suddenly movement startled Sinon so much that she was unable to recover herself fast enough to avoid the attack of the second monster. In fact, even by the time she recovered from her shock, the «Frenzy Boars»' movement were so fast, that it took Sinon everything she's got to avoid their subsequent attacks.
'These monsters indeed live up to their name as «Frenzy Boars».' Sinon thought as her heart began to race. 'This is bad. I am starting to enjoy this a little too much.'
The blood pulsed against her ears and Sinon lost all coherent thoughts as she tightened her grip on her spear. She would kill these boars no matter what.
Yakami Kazuyuu was content.
He had practiced kendo since almost before he could remember and enjoyed it as much as he did anything else, but «Sword Art Online» far surpassed the sport. The cool evening air and beautiful scenery aside, here, in Aincrad, Yakami could fight to his heart's content.
Standing on the grassland which sits on the edge of «Starting City», Yakami ran his free hand through his messy starlight silver hair as a smirk stretched across his face. The last pack of «Dire Wolves» were a little tricky and the swordsman almost didn't get out of the fight alive, but where's the fun if the fight wasn't such a close one?
His dominant hand still held the starter weapon he choose just an hour ago, the «Long Sword». The sword of this world felt more natural in his hands than the shinai of the real word ever did. It felt more like an extension of his own limbs than just a weapon he had not been using for long. It's strange, ironic even, now that Yakami thought about it. The stunningly golden sky, the pleasantly soft green grass, the simple yet cool weapon, even the lingering excitement he felt from the previous adrenaline rush, none of these were real. They were all just information in the programme database. Yet, here in this fake world, Yakami Kazuyuu had never felt more alive, never felt more real. After all, this fake world was the only place where the swordsman can just let go and be true to himself, to fight to his heart's content. The avatar, Rykou, represented the real him more truly than the human Yakami Kazuyuu ever did.
That's why, in the short span of not more than an hour since the start of the SAO beta test, Yakami had created his avatar, explored Starting Town to obtain the necessities, grasped the basic of SAO game play and managed to power up his avatar to Level Four.
Sighing, he stood up and started walking further into the field. It was easy to level up for the first few levels of the avatar. He had an appointment with one of his close acquaintances later at around five. Well, he had around less than four hours left. They had wanted to compete to see who could reach a higher level in the five hours of the starting of «Sword Art Online».
Kirigaya Kazuto was immensely amazed at this world. Sure he had played a wide range of MMOs like this but this, was just wonderful. He did not even bother reading the instructions before logging into the game at exactly twelve noon. He would find out the mechanics while playing.
The world was just fascinating. A MMORPG without magic? That was interesting. As his avatar body materialised, he looked around. His avatar was much taller than his real body, it seems. Oh well, he should get started on this game.
He ran past many shops, eyes scanning the signboards to find a weapon shop. At this level, there would be no player weapon shops so he had to stick with NPC made swords. Finding a suitable long but quite heavy sword, he stepped foot out of the «Starting City».
He looked at his health bar which was beside his avatar name, Kirito. What a pitiful amount of HP he had at the mere level of one. 'I wonder how it would feel like to die in this world since it's a VR,' he thought to himself as he headed over to a pack of boars. So it seemed like slimes were replaced by boars in this world.
He positioned himself like how he would in a kendo match. It was second nature to him. However, just before he could strike the charging boar, his long sword glowed in a flashing blue and he lunged forward without control.
"WHOA!" he yelled as he struck at the boar, causing it to growl in pain and take away half of its HP bar. "Eh, so this is what I heard about... Sword skills, huh," he mumbled, quickly preparing for another strike to the boar.
Boars were not that difficult to kill. As he sat down on a patch of grass, he flicked his wrist to open the menu bar. Fine, he did read a little bit of the instructions but it was more like the summary. He scrolled down to the settings bar and deactivated the autohelp function. He preferred to fight by himself instead of relying on the system.
He looked through his Sword Skill list. "So...that Sword Skill was called Horizontal. Is there a Vertical then? Or a Diagonal? I should try it out..." he mumbled as he stood up to find harder monsters to kill.
He was such a risk taker. He knew it himself. He sprawled himself out on the green grass, heaving a sigh of relief. Kirito had ventured into a forest that was said to contain a mini boss. It was scary, not to say the least. Firstly, the forest had many packs of «Dire Wolves» roaming about. When he arrived at the middle of the forest, there was a larger black wolf laying there asleep. He stared at the cursor. So far, the boars had been yellow, the wolves had been orange but this wolf had a red cursor.
'It must be how I can tell the level difference between us. Well, killing it will give me a huge boost in EXP,' he thought, advancing to the wolf. Just before striking it, it's yellow eyes flashed red before rearing up and slashing down. It was a miracle he had dodged it. The mini boss was called «Mad Wolf». It really was mad. It even slashed through tree trunks with the huge claws it possessed!
Half an hour of dodging and slashing and dodging again resulted in a glass shattering sound. A banner appeared in his vision as he stared at the EXP box. He had leveled up thrice because of the immense amount of EXP he had gained. He even obtained a cloth of some sort. He equipped it.
It was a black fur coat called «Midnight Fur Coat». It increased his attack and defense and some other stats. Furthermore, it was black, just as he liked it. He walked out of the forest at level ten. Even in VR games, fatigue was present.
He walked through the boar field, trying not to get too close. As he stared at their cursor, he saw that they were yellowish green. It must have been because of his level increase. As he trudged back slowly, a piercing scream reverberated through the air.
Senses piqued, he ran towards the scream, only to see a shot blue-haired girl avatar running from a mob of «Frenzy Boars». He was tired and did not feel like fighting. Dying in this game was also alright but you would start out at the Starting City again and lose some EXP. However, the gentleman side of him took over as he raced towards the mob.
'Nothing can be worse than that «Mad Wolf», right?' he thought as he sliced through a few boars with a Horizontal. The boars had their HP reduced to the yellow zone. Many years of kendo had really helped him in this game. Using some other new found skills such as «Vertical», «Slant», which he still dubbed as «Diagonal», «Uppercut» and a few others, the mob of six boars were finally defeated.
He sighed as he sheathed the sword on his back. As he turned around to face the girl, she yelled, "Hey! That was KS! That's unfair!" Kirito searched his mind for the definition of KS.
Ah, since he was a solo player in many games, he rarely had fights with other people about their hunting spots. KS was «Kill Steal», a usual occurrence in other games whereby players defeated monsters that had been previously fought by another. Thus, each would have lesser EXP than killing it yourself.
Kirito scratched his head. "Eh…but weren't you running around shouting for help?" At this, one could practically see the steam escaping from the girl's ears. Her face was also flushed red.
"A-ah, I could have killed them myself!" she yelled, embarrassed. After a while, she asked, "Fine, I will begrudgingly say that I owe you one. I have a meeting with a friend later so I will treat you to dinner. Anywhere you want. Then we're even, ok? By the way, my name is Sinon. What's yours?"
Kirito smiled a little at the girl's antics. "I'm Kirito. Nice to meet you. I hope we don't get chased by anymore mobs like you did."
"HEY!" Sinon punched his arm at that. Meanwhile, Kirito was dazed at being hit because of telling the truth. He really did not want to fight anymore mobs and even disliked being chased by a mob.
Sinon and Kirito walked down the street, looking for an inn that wasn't so expensive but still could provide good service. Another player walked by the pair, pausing in the middle of the street barely a moment later. The figure stood still before turning around, eyebrows raised in confusion.
"Sinon," Rykou called. They paused and stopped as well, turning towards him. Rykou walked back to them, eyes locked on Kirito. "And who's this?"
Sinon frowned and grumbled, "This is Kirito, a jerk who KSed me."
"You mean saved you," Kirito corrected, earning a death glare.
"Ah, whatever. I promised him dinner since he saved me," Sinon muttered.
Rykou repressed a small smile at his friend's antics. "Ah, I was exploring this place just now and there was a decent place not too far from here," he suggested.
Sinon glanced at Kirito to see his opinion. Receiving a shrug, she just sighed and gestured for Rykou to lead the way. Five minutes later the three entered the aforementioned establishment.
Upon sitting around a round table, Kirito asked, "So...you two know each other on the outside?" Two nods. Not knowing what else to say, the table fell into an awkward silence as the food had not arrived. Rykou tapped his fingers lightly against the table, gaining the attention of the other two. His attention was solely on Sinon.
"Sinon, so what level are you at?" Rykou drawled, smirking lightly. "Remember we bet one hundred Col for the winner. I'm level eight."
"So am I," Sinon scoffed. She thought to herself for a moment. "How much more EXP till you reach the next level? I only have around two hundred more left."
"So do I. That means it's a draw," Rykou frowned, disappointed at the outcome. His eyes flickered to their other companion. "Hey Kirito, what level are you at?"
Kirito seemed shocked at the sudden attention given to him. "Eh... I'm level ten."
"WHAAAAAAT?" Sinon shrieked after a moment's silence. Rykou closed his mouth with a sudden snap, the only sign of his own surprise. Sinon continued after a moment. "Hey, hey, we've both been farming for the longest time and how did you advance to such a high level?"
"I defeated the mini boss in the «Wolf Forest» when I was level seven," he answered. There was another pause.
"How?" Rykou finally said, his voice close to a growl. He didn't elaborate. The boss in «Wolf Forest» was level ten. His question was warranted, in his opinion.
"Maybe it's because I've done kendo back in the real world?" Kirito shrugged as he scratched the back of his head. "I decided to take away the autohelp function since it hinders my normal movements."
"Kendo?" Rykou repeated in surprise. He eyed Kirito more closely. "What's your name, your real one?"
"I'm not sure if it's proper etiquette to tell each other our real names though…" Kirito hedged, glancing towards Sinon a bit uncomfortably.
"I just want to know if you've competed, that's all," Rykou sighed irritably. Kirito didn't reply, making Rykou sigh again. "I'm Yakami Kazuyuu."
"I'm Asada Shino," Sinon added as a way to break the slightly tense atmosphere.
Kirito blinked in surprise. He had heard of Yakami-kun before. He was quite the shinai wielder, though Kirito had never dueled him before. "I am Kirigaya Kazuto. Nice to make your acquaintance."
A dead silent pause.
"Kirigaya Kazuto, as in the national under sixteen champion?" Rykou finally said, his eyes betraying his shock. Kirito gave a small nod of confirmation.
"What, seriously?" Sinon gaped, looking between the two. "That's amazing!"
"I guess," Kirito shrugged, wishing they would move on.
"Kirito…" Rykou started, his eyes glinting dangerously. "How would you feel about meeting in real life?"
"…What?"
Thank you for reading to the end. Please, please, PLEASEEEEE review.