When the sky fell and the robed One descended, I had an inkling of a feeling that I was to be cursed to a life of desolation. The facades of the crowd were stripped bare, and amidst their frenzy, I found myself reaching towards the bloodied dome above, in a futile attempt to kill God.

I was appointed, along with Asuna, to establish a set route to the next boss tower for our guild's members. After expressing my concerns to the leader for the general lack of manpower and the uncharted, wild nature of floor 89, I was permitted to bring Klein, and the two other girls I knew, Lizbeth and Silica, of whom were already keen to join me on this voyage.

With the land reaching far to the horizon, I checked through my bag to double-check my equipment, Asuna standing beside me and scrolling through her inventory.
"Why are you scrolling through that screen? Just go through your bags, like a normal person," I suggested
"It's not efficient, I want to look through the details of each item too."
"It's much more adventurous and human if you go through your bag though."
Asuna winced, if only slightly, "I don't want to get any more used to this world than I already am. I want to get out quickly, honey."
Klein snickered at me from the side, and I brushed him away with my usual indifference as I lifted myself from the grass and began walking down the hill, with my crew following suite.

Unlike the other floors, this floor had a surprising lack of towns, favouring the mildly cold wilderness of the pine trees that towered above us, and the gentle, yet chilling breeze that would pass by every now and then. Though a small town could be seen in the distance, dusk had already befallen us, and by the time the sun had fallen, our warmly-lit tents had already been pitched, with specks of fireflies flittering between the trees.
"Man... it's been a while since the stars were so pretty."
Klein, sitting against a tree and amongst the fallen leaves, took out his dragon-bone pipe and lit it, continuing his monologue as he blew dancing smoke into the air.
"Kirito, I wonder if this Kayaba Akihiko guy was really that bad of a person – I mean, look at all of this sky. He programmed it, and it's damn good!"
I motioned him in the dark light to keep his voice down, and looked up at the stars just as he did, tracing the patterns that I fancied.

"Kirito! Klein! We need help!"
Asuna's cries from the distance shot us to our feet, and we rushed back to the tents, leaving our lamps behind.
Inside Asuna's tent, Silica laid on the middle of the floor, writhing in pain and clutching tightly on her left arm. I made a quick observation of the symbol next to her health bar – a purple square with a white tear-drop at its centre: she had been poisoned.
I yelled at Lizbeth, of whom was crying over Silica and begging her to stay still, "What happened? Tell me everything!"
Startled, she gained control of her tears and explained, stammering, "She... She was... s-stung... It was a brown-looking scorpion, it had th... three stripes on its back..."
"Asuna, get the encyclopaedia from my bag and do a search term for what she just said," I had sternly told her.
Following a momentary blankness, she quickly pulled out my bag and retrieved the book, scattering the various health potions I had stocked up on, "It says here that the poison takes 3 days to kill... What do we do, Kirito?..."
With my mind, fixated on the town ahead of us, I suggested that we make haste the following morning, and find treatment in the town. With darkness enveloping my being, with the exception of Klein's snores across the men's tent, I laid on my side, feeling an impending dread that has haunted me since the beginning of Aincrad.

The dawn that rose behind us cast our shadows ahead of us upon our arrival to the small town. Asuna yelled out to the unkempt man fishing by the river, and explained Silica's situation to his ignorant face as I stood by the water and watched the fish rush past my feet. Asuna, snapping me out of my trance, tripped over to me, burying herself in my chest, her hands gripping on my shoulders, shaking.
"There's... there's no one, nothing to treat her here..."
"What do you mean? There should be some sort of hospital, church-healer, anything here."
"This place doesn't even count as a town, Kirito! There are no barriers or rules here! Just buildings. This place is a free-for-all, anything can happen here!"
With shock jolting through my body and a sudden feeling of 'being alive', I stomped to the old man, admittedly in an angry fashion, "Where's the next nearest town? Some-place that can treat her."
Shuffling in his feet, he took a step back and answered me, "If you go by this road here, there should be a bigger town. It'd take probably 4 days on foot, but if only the warp gates we-"
In a bout of fury that had surprised even myself, I took a heavy step towards him, loudly exclaiming that we didn't have time and had an additional sleuth of things to fulfil.
A moment of silence was heard amongst us, and Lizbeth, carrying Silica's arm with her shoulder, broke down into tears again. Silica looked over to me with fatigue in her expression. Bags hung under her eyes – so much so that she may as well have been a ghost. Klein looked on with a look of disappointment one would give to a tantrum-prone child, and I withdrew to allow Asuna the control over this situation.

After countless negotiations and arguments, Asuna had managed to gain ownership over a small boat that would barely fit our members into it. With Klein taking helm as the boat captain, we aimed to sail down the river and reach the next town within 24 hours. With the many raids being part of the guild had entailed and the many other jobs that had bogged us down, Asuna and I finally had a moment to sit down and enjoy, if not the space we were in, at least the time we would have together.

"It's been a while, huh..." she muttered, skipping stones across the water. They began with a passionate vigour that, after every skip, gradually died down, subject to that final sink to the bottom.
"Yeah..." I could only look up at the night sky again, and trace those constellations I had kept to myself.
"Kirito, I feel like you've been keeping yourself from me for a while... If anything's wrong, you're allowed to talk to me, alright?"
She looked over to me with a glamour in her eye that I had not seen in a long time.
"It's nothing Asuna, I've just been tired lately."
It's always around this time that I'm tired – the anniversary of my failure, in which Sachi's face would flash in my eyes during my deepest, most restless dreams.
"I wonder if you're even really cut out to be fighting all the time like this, Kirito..."
Twiddling her thumbs, she fixed her attention to the warped moon that shone from the river.
"...that Kanta guy in the guild... He's quite admirable, don't you think?"
Mayonnaise sandwich in mouth, I muffled and nodded as my eyelids twitched from exhaustion.
"Always looking forward and charging ahead. He's a good commander, and at the core, he just wants to escape from this place..."
With a hint of a blush shining on her cheeks, I rose up from the ledge and walked over to the wheel, boots clicking louder than I had intended. I tapped Klein's shoulder, drooped over the boat's controls, "Klein, I'll take it from here – go get some rest..."
Submitting himself to the gravity of sleepiness, he plopped himself in the corner at began to snore immediately.
"Asuna, get some sleep too, your strength is needed."
Lizbeth breathed quietly, embracing the disgruntled, sleepless Silica. On the opposite corner, Asuna tucked herself in, with a warmth in her heart that carried her through these days. I looked over to everyone and set my eyes ahead – I was to face this night alone.

It was upon my waking from troubled dreams that I was confronted with the sounds of large banging and violent yelling. As the orange sun in the horizon shrouded my vision, hooded figures from both sides of the now narrow river had jumped onto our boat and had begun ransacking our supplies. In a flight of rage, I drew my sword from its scabbard and pierced one in the chest, pushing him behind the boat and throwing him off, almost following him. His blood trickled in the water until he dissipated in sparks of red, like they usually did. Behind me, Asuna stood guard over Lizbeth and Silica against the two remaining bandits. Klein screamed much like a bear would, swinging indiscriminately at them and driving them away, with our bags and supplies undeservedly hanging from their backs. Before any intervention could be conducted, they had already slipped away into the bushes and masked their presence. I had attempted to chase after them, but after 10 minutes of searching, they were, along with the potions that sustained Silica's life until now, nowhere to be found.

Upon my return, Lizbeth sat frozen over Silica, who was struggling to raise herself up, her pale skin ghastlier than ever. Asuna leaned on the ledge, her hands on her face, while Klein sat by Silica, sweating and exhausted. With this, Silica's rate of survival had drastically decreased, our efforts on the brink of being rendered futile. The sun shone through the branches of the forest, and laughing pine needles fluttered onto our heads, all over the deck.

Over the following 12 hours, Asuna, Klein and I would make brief stops to hunt animals and harvest plantation to cook our food – mostly for the benefit of Silica. Despite our efforts, the healing that the food entailed could not combat the increasingly drastic effects of the poison running through her veins. For 5 hours, as we sailed down this river, we watched over Silica – speaking and purring softly, holding her hand when she reached for us, listening to her now croaking, little voice. Her small figure had become even sicklier, and it was 4 minutes after she muttered the words 'save all' that her cold hands, encased by the warmth of Lizbeth's, went limp.

The moment the life faded from her eyes, those very same eyes were fixated on me – and as if to mock me even further, her body stayed, refusing to accept the mercy of sparkling away in red, as every other player would.
"Do... do we keep her here?" Asuna would ask me.
Taking a glimpse Lizbeth curled up in the corner, staying silent since the 3 hours of Silica's death, I averted my gaze and looked down at the peaceful sleep that the little Silica was now subject to. Out of some twisted sentimentality, I suggested to keep Silica there until we arrived at our destination. However, Klein, now teary-eyed, forced me away and carried her limp corpse to the miniature storage area at the back of the boat: "It's not like we have anything left in there, anyway," he grunted.

It was only a day later, when Silica's stench rose and became unbearable, that we decided to throw her into the river and grant her the mercy she so deserved. Asuna stood at a distance, her eyes turned away and her hand covering her face, when Klein and I opened the storage door only for a violent waft of death to blow past our faces. Observing her tattered robes and now rotting skin, I was amazed by Kayaba's genius and cruelty for simulating everything from the sun light that shone through the leaves, to the process of bodily decay. Looking at her pale blue face once more, Klein and I carried her on both sides, and gently as we could, lowered her from the bottom of the river, letting her float away. Klein, now weeping, turned and made his way back to the steering wheel while I sat at the edge, watching Silica depart with a sense of melancholy. It was when she was at an almost indiscernible distance that the rushing water turned her body, and I, for the last time, gazed at her gentle red eyes.