Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my computer

AN: This came flowing out of my brain despite trying to get work done on my original story, my inability to stick with a story disgusts me.

Chapter Start

3 days later

Leveling up, I was finding, was ending up being quite a bit harder than I had expected. Partly it was how the game was balanced, but a good part of the problem I was facing was of my own creation. My choice of equipment as well as initial skill choices during the creation process had me set up as a classic 'rogue' class player. On top of that I had worked hard the first couple of days to increase my stealth skill in order to increase my safety margin when I scouted out an area prior to hunting the monsters in the area. All common sense and supported with sound logic, but resulting in a major flaw I was now facing after having progressed past the easy forested area I had been leveling at.

I was so specialized I was lagging behind the other front runners that had started to populate the area that I was in because of the base mathematics of the other weapons compared to my dagger skill.

When stabbing with a dagger, I needed to hit precise points to score the high critical that composed most of a knife users damage.

And while stealth was great to let me get close enough to carefully strike, farming large numbers of mobs was almost impossible due to the difficulty of returning to stealth mode while in a field. On top of that, I was desperately keeping track of the six other players in the nearby area. Similar to the starting fields that were populated by boars, this area contained Rambunctious Boars that regularly spawned, making it a great place to grind EXP. These boars however were aggressive and would attack if you got too close or were too slow in killing a boar that was nearby by.

When a 7th player arrived from the direction of the road leading to the Town of Beginnings, I wasn't too worried. He had a full set of heavy armor as well as a single handed sword, all gear that I knew wasn't possible to purchase on the starting Col that had been given, meaning that the player had at least some level of experience fighting the mobs.

Dismissing him beyond keeping track of his location so I didn't steal his kills, I returned to my pattern of thrown attack to draw aggro and then flurry of slashes when charged, following up by leaping attack to stab at the spine below where the ribs were, which was the boars particular sweet spot to score a critical hit.

With a sparkle of polygons, another boar was defeated, and one more piece of the reagent needed for my current quest 'Pigging Out' appeared in my inventory, along with a sum of Col, XP, and whatever other random drops were generated. Checking my surroundings, it looked like I was clear for a little while until the next spawn in the area I had staked out, when I noticed that the newcomer was getting attacked by two boars. Not really a problem for a character equipped to take damage and deal it back, but this noob wasn't swinging the sword that he had been carrying earlier. In his hands was a spear, which was a major problem given that spears were supposed to be the two-handed weapon of choice for a speed build, not something that someone that had clearly put their level up stat bonus into strength should be wielding. Add in the slowing effect of the heavy armor he was wearing, as well as the third boar that just started lining up for a charge, and it wasn't looking good for him.

Breaking into a jog toward they guy, I got ready to tell him to guard so I could get behind and backstab them. As I got closer the noob then managed to make the worst mistake he could have.

He tried a heavy sword skill.

Sword skills generally fell into two categories, fast and heavy. As the names suggest, fast attacks required minimal setup time to activate, and had both lighter damage as well as a reduced stun time when finished. Heavy attacks took a long time to charge from the starting position, and dealt high damage. On the flip side they prevented the player from immediately using another skill as well as making it difficult to move for a second or two after hitting. As a result, it was easier to position yourself to use the heavy attack skills and you were rewarded with a powerful attack.

The rub however was that if you got hit while charging your attack, your body would freeze up for a few moments, oftentimes resulting in an inexperienced player falling over.

Thankfully he didn't fall, but the feeling of paralysis must have sent him over the edge, as he turned around and tried to run away in a panic. He was heading at a right angle to me, but with the heavy armor he was moving distinctly slower than the boars that were following him. As a fifth boar started the animation of preparing to charge, I slipped in behind one of the initial trio chasing the now blindly fleeing idiot and got ready to attack.

With my Murderous Strike I managed to kill two and get him pointed toward the knoll where the other players had retreated. With him no longer screaming and generating noise that helped pull the mobs toward him, I had the opportunity to organize. While several of the other players had made a break for it, several more had gathered a safe distance from the boar spawning area.

"Oy, you guys, have two of you stay there to keep the area clear, the rest of you get over here and start killing the stragglers! Use your heavy sword skills, they're aggroed on the noob so you can really let'em rip!"

Following my instructions, aided by the fleeing idiot in the armor heading toward the 'safety' of the other players it was fairly short work for our impromptu group to wipe out the small zerg of boars that had been chasing the single, now in the red, player.

Once the last one was cleared, I lost my shit and started yelling at the idiot that could have easily killed one other players there as well as himself.

Towering over the high school aged teen that was sitting and shaking from the adrenaline I couldn't help but let some of the derision I was feeling into my word and tone.

"You want to kill yourself? Fine, go jump off the edge like everyone else. But don't you dare come out here where you can die from the fucking NPC's. Here is where the people trying to save themselves and everyone else are, and you are putting them, and everyone else who hopes to one day clear the game at risk with your goddamn selfish stupidity." Yelling at the teenager sitting there that had nearly died out of poor planning wasn't exactly productive or professional on my part, but it made me feel much better.

After getting one of the players that had helped with our impromptu rescue effort to escort the shaken noob back to the Town of Beginnings, I spent a little more time working on finishing off my quest as well as a grabbing the contact information of the other players.

After all, they were brave and smart enough to keep from panicking when things had gone south earlier, and in games like these there are almost always group quests that need more than just a single person in order to complete and having people that could be relied on to keep their heads were worth their weight in gold.

Heading back to town as the clock on my menu was showing that it would soon be night, I got ready to dump the various junk loot that I had picked up as well as go through the other items that I could potentially use.

After emptying my inventory and picking up an early dinner, I went to the local apothecary to try to pick up several healing potions, only to find that despite not being in the Town of Beginnings and having been restocked earlier that day, they were completely out. Since at this point I had upgraded my dagger from the initial purchase to a superior monster drop, Wieldable Fang, I checked to see if I could pick up some high level armor.

Perusing the selection at the armor shop, I considered my future build. Clothing comes in several types, namely that of cloth, leather, light metal, and heavy metal armor.

Most of the players that I had seen on the fields liked to equip either light or heavy metal armor. And for swords that made a great deal of sense. Both provided an excellent level of defense while in the case of light metal armor also allowing for a minimal reduction in Agility in return for their relative protection. Comparatively, wearing cloth armor actually boosted the wearer's strength and agility at the cost of providing absolutely no protection. As a knife fighter I needed a seriously high agility stat to get close and avoid attacks, but even I consider wearing only cloth armor as suicidal. Leather armor on the other hand only minimally reduced the wearer's strength without touching their agility stats, all the while providing a modest amount of protection against attacks.

What I wanted was a set of high level leather armor that I could use for the rest of my time on this floor. It would wipe out my cash reserve, but I purchased the Supple Pants and Supple Shirt that were the highest tier leather armor that I could find. Equipping the items, the pants reminded me of nothing so much as a set of form fitting jeans. The torso armor however was very different from a normal piece of clothing, notably I had an under t-shirt of cloth that the sleeveless leather tunic went over. Stretching to test the flexibility, I could feel a bit of stiffness in my torso like I was wearing a heavy sweatshirt, but nothing beyond that that would impair my ability to fight with my knife.

Knife fighting after all was all about cutting the enemy and getting hit as little as possible in return.

Being unable to parry or effectively block meant that in order to not get hurt, I would need to be able to dodge with the best.

While running around for several hours in the periphery town looking for good places to drop my loot and get armor, I had been keeping an eye open for the various apothecaries that all had a universal sign, SOLD OUT. I was a psychology major, but I was also studying economics, and currently all the classes that I had taken on the subject were screaming about supply and demand.

Namely, my supply of relatively rare healing potions that I had been slowly amassing as I killed my way through the fields of the first level of Aincrad and the insane demand that had totally exceeded the supply made available through the various NPC shops.

This of course brought me to one really easy conclusion, if I sold all but a few of my healing potions, I was going to be significantly ahead of the wealth margin for most of the other players in the game.

Selling was easy considering the number of people standing around talking in the various plazas that the game designers had built into the towns in Aincrad.

Several days after my first foray into being a Merchant, I was taking my first step into the third common element of any MMORPG, namely Crafting

In preparation of playing SAO I had read a few of the information guides that had been posted about the crafting system of the game.

Namely, each of them involved at least one basic harvesting quest to be completed with a provided harvesting tool that when presented to the quest giver would give a short walkthrough on how to use that skill and their first recipe in that particular skill.

For the various crafting skills for armor, repairs, and weapons this involved simply buying the materials or getting them from certain monsters or even going out and mining the copper from various nodes via the Mining skill.

Medicine Mixing was a tad different.

For me that namely consisted of getting a small hand sickle and then being told that I needed to find a particular set of herbs and mushrooms that only seemed to grow where they were protected by a stupid number of mobs. On top of that, when they were harvested would give them additional or stronger properties. Namely being, at night, at midday, or according to the lunar cycle they would give a stronger potion at the end, something that I was all for, and none of the areas that I needed to harvest from were particularly dangerous for me, having recently hit level 4 and most of the monsters during the daytime were a challenge for a level 1 character.

My harvesting task had taken me back to the forest that I had first fought my way through on that first hectic, terrifying day. This time however I wasn't desperately heading into town as night fell, but actively relying on the darkness to provide higher level monsters and more powerful reagents.

Having just finished yet another wolf that was higher level than what I had faced during that first day, I pulled the sickle out of inventory and set about carefully using it to strip the leaves from a small bush that was nestled under a particular type of tree that looked like a mutant pine.

With finally managing to collect the last of the 4 necessary ingredients for the Medicine Mixing skill, my quest alert system popped up a message telling me that I needed to meet with the quest giver in the main city at what at first glance was a low level apothecary that only sold a limited supply of healing potions. In truth however, if you were to bring a set of specific ingredients, the ingredients I had spent the last 2 days hunting down and gathering, the NPC in the form on an old man would show you into the back of the shop and unlock the medicine mixing skill.

What made the medicine mixing skill a bit different was that unlike all of the other trade skills in SAO other than cloth armor making, there was no separate ingredient harvesting skill like there was for all the metal using trade skills.

A key part of SAO was that in order to level up a particular skill, you didn't have to have a certain level. In fact, all leveling would do is increase your basic stats and allow you to upgrade certain attributes like agility or strength as well as allowing for limited number of additional skill slots. For leveling skills, all you had to do was use them again and again for them to increase.

This meant that there was a burgeoning number of players trying to advance their trade skills in a bid to both aide the players in the fields as well as try to generate money so they could afford luxuries like staying in an inn or buy a variety of food that tasted good, as the cheaper fair from the vendors was pretty bad.

For Medicine Mixing, which combined gather with production, ingredients at the Auction Board were through the roof, meaning that only people who were actively hunting mobs ever bothered with the skill. Add in the fact that all the basic recipes thus far unlocked were mostly inferior to all but the cheapest of NPC bought healing potions, and you had a skill that wasn't getting all that many serious practitioners that were also out hunting the harder areas or at night. At the same time, healing items continued to be in incredibly high demand as players desperately tried to stockpile potions in order to create a wide safety margin.

It was still the only source of combat healing so there was plenty of competition at the harvesting nodes for the quest during the day. Lucky for me though the higher risk night gathering seemed to be allowing me to avoid the crowd of competitors.

Back at the City of Beginnings, turning in the quest was as easy as I had read; with the NPC showing me into the back area of his shop and demonstrating how all the ingredients I had gathered were to be placed into a basic mortar and pestle that was almost as large as my stretched open hand.

Grinding the pestle six times clockwise as per the NPC's instruction, the various herbs and mushrooms quickly glowed and then disappeared, immediately followed by a ding and announcement appearing before me informing me that I had acquired 10x Minor Healing Salve. Going over the description of my first attempt at Medicine Mixing I couldn't say that I was particularly impressed given that all of my ingredients had been gathered either after night had fallen or during midday, something that should have given the recipe a major boost given the difficulty of gathering them.

Namely, while the healing amount and duration were pretty good, on par with a mid level NPC healing potion that I could theoretically buy at an alchemist's shop, it couldn't be drunk like a normal potion. Instead, when materialized it took the form of jar with a spot on the top to touch to dispense it that had to be physically applied to the red damage site area.

Meaning it was worthless for applying mid combat when in a rush.

Oh it was still pretty useful if you had a series of monsters that you would fight with only a minimal break in between them, but not the sort of item that would justify spending 2 whole days getting the ingredients for, especially since each jar of salve only had 3 uses and would only work on one injury at a time.

What had intrigued me when I had been reading the guide that had appeared free of charge at most of the shops in town, was that little was actually known about the Medicine Mixing skill since there wasn't anyone who had been able and willing to power grind the skill during the beta due to the gathering constraints.

Even if the Healing salve and other variants of it were all that I ended up being able to produce, it would still be a useful skill to have. But if some of the other possibilities that were prevalent in other MMORPG's popped up here, it was going to become invaluable for me.

Because if either the ability to create potions capable of giving bonuses to various stats for a short period, or even unlocking the ability to produce poisons were available, Medicine Mixing would be powerful when combined with my dagger. Either of those would be massive boost in the field, as those could greatly increase my survival margin. Add in that they could be easily sold in bulk as I leveled the skill and I would have a more than decent amount of money. Combined with the fact that the gathering requirements for top of the line reagents weren't efficient for most groups, and I would be golden in terms of money for at least a while.

Leaving the shop with my recently acquired skill, despite my hopes for future profit, I couldn't help but feel as if I was going to be in for a major grind with Medicine Mixing, at least in the short run while I leveled the skill.

Namely, if I really wanted to use it to the fullest, I was going to have to rerun everywhere I had already been in order to see if any of the villages I had thus far visited carried Medicine Mixing quests that would now be visible to my eyes. Additionally, while I could now passively detect the herbs that seemed to be the resource for my new skill, they were linked to my Search skill that would otherwise be solely for finding hidden monsters in the environment.

Not a problem, except I had only run into a couple of monsters on the first floor that actually bothered to hide, and thus my level in that skill could be counted as being practically nonexistent. Sure it would rise rather quickly now that I had a new way to level it, but it was still going to be a pain redoing all the area that I had already covered solely to gather a variety of ingredients and try to power level my Search skill.

Ah well, it is what it is, and the end result should more than make up for the initial hassle.

Over 2 months have passed since that first day in Aincrad and I was still alive.

Waking up in the room that I had rented for the entire week, I couldn't help but groan slightly at seeing the blinking light to left of my vision that indicated that yes, I once again had mail.

You would think that being stuck in a virtual reality death game would let you avoid it, but it just kept on happening.

Quickly scrolling through the list of messages, most of them consisted of a variety of requests for healing items.

I had fairly early on decided that selling my potions in the marketplace was a waste of my time that could be better spent fighting monsters in the various zones offered by the first floor. But trying to sell my various healing items I could now make was too much of a chance to make money for me to be willing to let go of.

Yes, I am greedy.

But I am also as a result of that greed equipped with some of the best gear that money could buy, not just from the various shops, but also out of various rare drops that other players had found and been willing to sell.

My solution to the dilemma of sales was a simple one, pay for a poster to be put on the notice board that was present at every town and village on the first floor that we were still stuck on. With my contact information on the bottom I advertised my ability to make not just healing salves, but also my recently unlocked healing potions and status buff potions. Most critical for my burgeoning wealth were those status buff potions though, since I apparently was the first person to manage to power level my way through the various Medicine Mixing quests to unlock the first recipe. With that recipe came acquiring access to an Alembic Still that I could rent at any apothecaries' back room. With the ability to distill various ingredients, I could produce liquid potions that could boost certain stats and abilities for an hour at a time, something that almost every player trying to level up was very willing to pay a large amount of money for.

Today's selection of customers however was something that I had accounted for and thankfully wouldn't need to delay delivery in order to gather ingredients for.

Namely, today was a meeting that had been called by Diabel, a sword and shield user that had claimed in his message that he "had located a point of great interest." Even without his roundabout way of talking, it was pretty clear that he had either a clue as in to the location of the floor boss, or had already found it and wanted to put together a raid group.

Either way, a lot of my fellow high level players had all sent in orders for my best healing salves and status buffs. Normally they would only keep a few in reserve in case of emergencies, but everyone with a brain was planning on going into the meeting stocked to the gills with items.

The meeting itself was set to three o'clock, which would give me plenty of time to set up the various deliveries I needed to make.

Eventually I was going to need to set up some sort of broker system with someone else handling the actual sales, but until then I had people to meet and have pay me large sums of money.

Watch me not complaining.

Getting to the ruins of an open air amphitheater where the meeting was scheduled to take place, I was quick to get waved over to sit with several of my customers from earlier in the day.

"So you're here too huh?" came from a spear user that had purchased a stack of speed buffs as well as some general healing potions.

"Of course I got called for something like this. What do want to bet though that Diabel managed to find the entrance to the Floor Boss's lair?"

"No way, I think everyone here has a pretty good idea of what is going down at the meeting site. I mean really, you saw the list of people that message was forwarded to. Practically all the top level players that have been regularly farming the high level spots on the floor are going to be here."

Sitting back and chatting with a couple of the other players that I had peripherally become acquainted with I let my eyes roam over the various players that had already seated themselves on the stone benches. Counting up my mental tally, I was happy to see who was present. Almost 5 full groups of 6 players, with a good split of heavy armor tanks as well as a variety of damage dealers with a variety of weapons from a fast rapier poking out of a girl's cloak to a two-handed long sword jutting out from behind another player's armored back.

None of them however had a knife as a main weapon though. It always amused me to a certain degree that it seemed as if I was the only high level player to seriously use a dagger as a main weapon as well as a ranged throwing weapon. The one thing that I was worried about for the upcoming fight was to what extent I would be able to use my Hiding skill against a boss. While attacking from stealth didn't exactly give a damage bonus like some other games, it was still a pre-requisite for one of the sword skills that I had managed to unlock for my dagger. Being able to provide a short duration stun from stealth would be incredibly useful if I could manage to use it repeatedly over the course of a boss battle. If I ended up being blocked from hiding once in combat though, it left me with no real option but to act as a close range DPS fighter, which wasn't exactly the safest position to be in when dealing with a boss that could easily weather my short flurry of attacks and then proceed to seriously hurt me due to my relatively light amount of armor.

Yeah, I could deal a lot of damage as well as provide some status effects such as slowing the boss's movement speed, but that would create difficulties due to not being able to fight on the same kind of rotation as whatever group I ended up working with.

Listening to Diabel talk about his plan for dealing with Illfang the Kobold Lord, as well as what the combat rotations were going to be, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of group I was going to joining. Others might be forming groups based off of things like who their friends were, or who they had worked well with before, but I most definitely wasn't going to get sucked into that particular trap.

Grouping with friends was a good way to die.

More effective in terms of combat yes, but I knew myself well enough to predict that if I watched a friend die while fighting next to them as their teammate, I would likely freeze or do something stupid.

And being stupid in combat got you killed, end of story.

This time though it wouldn't be like several months ago when I stopped that fool from getting himself killed, where it was a simple manner of killing a few mobs that were chasing him.

No, this time it would be against a boss where everyone needed to be able to work together to slowly grind down the boss' health while rotating out to heal with potions and salves.

No, far better to simply join whatever group seemed competent and capable of not letting their egos interfere with the fight. Watching the spiky brown-haired player stand up and start ranting about Betas, I mentally crossed him off my list of potential group members, as there was no way someone with that kind of ego was going to handle the boss fight without giving in to his emotions. And while getting emotional about stuff was fine in real life, this was SAO, and getting emotional meant not planning out what you were doing. And not thinking things through would get a person a rather terminal game over, something I was quite keen on avoiding.

Thankfully the axe user that stood up to Kibaou's demands and proceeded to logically shut him down managed to get the group on track without damaging everyone's moral.

Good thing too, since that sort of attitude of blaming a small group for all our current problems would seriously poison the culture of what would become the frontlines of the game.

Watching Agil sit down from where he had confronted Kibaou, I thought to myself, 'Now that was someone I am going to have to get the contact information for.' If nothing else, he had proven he had a head on his shoulders as well as having the courage and level to get invited to the boss raid. All-in-all, this was someone that I wanted to group with in the future.

When the call went out for everyone to form groups, I made sure to hang back as the various groups started to coalesce. Several of my previous customers were quick to try to catch my eye as I watched the crowd in order to attract my attention, but I made sure to not indicate that I was interested. Most of them were decent people, but I really didn't want to end up in a group with anyone that I knew. Add in that most of them were going to be running pretty specific combat roles that weren't suitable for a knife user, and I was not going to be joining any of them any time soon.

No, from my count of the groups, as long as as many groups as possible were of 6 people, that would leave a group of 3 including me as leftovers.

Based on the information that Diabel had just gone over, that group would be dealing with the additional kobolds that would periodically get summoned.

Cause really, facing a giant boss monster or dealing with the additional spawns, I knew damn well which one was going to be safer. Cowardice, maybe, but putting myself directly in the line of fire on the very first boss fight was not something I was particularly interested in doing.

Standing up and heading over to where the two players were sitting and trying to get into their party was what I was going to do. Neither of them showed up with friends, so working with two other solo players that had skills was for the best.

Standing in front of them one bench below where they were sitting, it was pretty obvious that neither were out of highschool, which could be good or bad depending on how well they had adapted to Aincrad.

"Can I join your group?" I asked. Blunt, to the point, and more than a little intimidating if the look the black haired boy was giving me was any indication.

"Why didn't you join your friends?" was the response from the brown hooded girl while the boy was sitting like stunned fish.

Kudos to her for observational skills.

"Exactly, because they are my friends there is no way in hell am I going to group with them for a boss fight." Watching them look blank, at least from what I could see of the girls face, I was reminded that I was dealing with kids that were at least four years younger than me, if not more.

"Look, I know them, I've partied with them, and quite a few of the rest I've sold healing potions to. We're going to be facing a boss. That means there is a better than good chance at least one of them is going to get killed when the boss pulls out some super move or something. I know them, but more importantly I know that if I see a friend go down I'll probably freeze up or lose my shit and try to pull some shounen hero crap trying to save them." Watching the boy's eyes widen, I was glad that at least one of them had a brain as he got what I was saying.

I had realized it on that first day after Kayaba had made his ultimatum, the most dangerous enemy I would encounter would be other players.

I knew myself fairly well, so I had a good idea of what would happen if I watched a friend die while fighting alongside them. Freezing up, and then losing my cool and attacking head on whatever had killed them worked in shounen manga. This was realer than real life, and there was only one result from pulling that kind of stupid shit.

This wasn't the real world where the worst that would happen from being stupid was a bad grade, a wrecked relationship, or even losing your job. There was only one result from being stupid in Aincrad.

Being stupid got you dead unless you were lucky.

I hadn't one single contest in my life, from the occasional game of pachinko to the drawings at the supermarket, and if getting stuck in SAO was any indicator; my good luck was pretty much nonexistent.

Getting a slow nod and an invite from the boy, Kirito if the name on the top left of my vision was correct, I knew that at least one of them knew what I was talking about.

Asuna, in her cloak and nonexistent expression, though was making me sort of worried. Kids in high school forced into a death game don't go stone faced unless they were repressing their emotional problems. And while repressing was better than committing suicide like a lot of people did during the first couple of weeks, it was still damn dangerous, both for themselves and everybody around them, because if they lost it during a fight, it got everybody around them into a massive amount of trouble.

Hopefully not during the boss fight, but still a potential problem, and at least they were likely going to be assigned the additional summoned kobolds due to only having 3 members instead of 6 like all the other groups.

At this point pretty much everybody started heading out to get their final preparations ready for the boss fight tomorrow. Of course for me that involved getting several messages from other players asking me about what kind of healing items I had available on demand. This of course was part of my standard rules that I had set up for my repeat customers; don't come up and ask me about what I have, send me a message, and I will give them a message containing my prices. That way no one can eavesdrop if I gave one player better prices than another, or had reserved certain items for people that I knew and liked while withholding from players that pissed me off.

Avoiding the image of favoritism was pretty darn important in this kind of situation, especially since I did regularly raise my prices for people who I knew acted like dicks to other players.

Just from today I knew that Kibaou would be paying double if he ever asked for healing items from me.

Of course I claimed it was because certain reagents for the potions were hard to find or there was a high demand, but unless they caught me lying there wasn't all that much they could do, as I was one of the main players that regularly had high level healing items available for sale. Maybe in a couple of floors there would be more people offering healing items, but for now I was the only person that would regularly make healing salves that were significantly better than what could be purchased from NPCs.

After offloading almost all of my upper and mid tier healing potions and salves, making sure to keep a good reserve for my own use, I set out to see if I could find the other two members of my party to see if they were willing to go over some basic tactics as well as see if they were willing to go over what their relative combat specialties.

One of the things that I had appreciated in the past about forming a group in SAO was that you could always tell which general direction your party members were in if you weren't in combat. This made finding members after getting separated due to running away or shopping in one of the villages incredibly easy.

Unlike most other MMORPG, the game map wasn't something that constantly updated itself with the location of NPC's, enemies, or party members. Instead, map data was generated only after you had passed through an area and was devoid of anything but town names unless the player added notes about specific locations. My biggest expense after spending money on equipment was in fact buying map data where other players had noted the location of various herbs and reagents.

They couldn't identify what the various reagents were or gather them, but they could and did sell their location to other players that could harvest them. Several players had turned just buying and selling map data into a lucrative business for themselves, and I had been more than willing to fund their activity from the sale of the my various healing items.

Finally locating the backs of my two party members sitting and eating, I made sure to pause and then turn around to find a nearby bench to wait until they finished.

Intruding would have been more than a little rude, and quiet frankly trying to deal with two solo players that I didn't know particularly well while they were already talking seemed like a bad idea.

After waiting a while and going over my inventory and the guide book's information about the boss, I noticed that the markers at the edge of my vision that indicated my party members' positions had finally started to move. Of more immediate concern was that the marker for Kirito was heading in my direction, meaning that he likely wanted to talk to me as he had just been with Asuna.

Dismissing my inventory screen as he emerged from the dark walkway, I waved him over as he stood there clearly trying to decide on whether or not to approach me.

"Come on and grab a seat." I said. "It's Kirito right?"

"Ah, yeah that's right."

Watching him sit next to me on the bench from the corner of my eye, I couldn't help the mental fist pump at how he was clearly uncomfortable but doing his best to hide it.

First rule of negotiation, stay silent and let the other party talk, cause oftentimes they'll let something out that they never intended to.

After a few moments though, Kirito breached the topic that I hadn't precisely expected. "So you aren't new when it comes to MMORPGs are you?"

Mentally swearing, I went for the easy answer. "No, I'm fairly familiar with PC RPG games and how all this would normally go." Opening with a line like that meant only one thing, Asuna didn't have experience when it came to computer games. "But first, introductions." Turning to look directly at him, I smiled and offered my hand. "I'm Nori, I specialize in daggers and medicine mixing."

Returning the gesture, Kirito was quick to strike up a conversation about our preferred weapons, a longsword and knife respectively.

As the conversation progressed into discussing switching rotations and the advantages and disadvantages a knife offered, I was slightly stunned. I had fully expected that there would be at least some comment of how I had seen him and Asuna talking. Given his ability to use the group markers there was no way that he hadn't realized I had spent several moments observing their interactions. That he would completely ignore that while still immediately seeking me told me that whatever else Kirito was, he was damn good at reading the undertones of a group, as well as being a more than competent player when it came to utilizing the game mechanics to the fullest.

After reviewing some of the basics for tomorrow, each of us said our farewells and headed out to our respective inns.

I could probably find Asuna, but chances were that she would be holed up at some inn and would be less than favorable to have to deal with a party member in their room, especially an older guy.

Walking with Asuna and Kirito on the way to the boss entrance, I thanked my lucky stars that I had already gone over tactics for the boss fight with Kirito. Because Asuna seemed to know absolutely diddlysquat about working in a group.

I'm not just talking tactics or how to maximize damage while not stepping on another player's toes, but not even the basic terminology like what 'switch' even meant.

Kirito and I clearly had experience with groups in both SAO and other games, but I would be amazed if that girl had even played an RPG in her life before this. That having been said, she certainly wasn't stupid and clearly had the levels needed if she got invited to this raid, so I was holding my judgment until I actually got to watch her fight.

Thankfully Asuna was as quick a study as Kirito, and I went over with her the plan for dealing with the Kobold Sentinels that were supposed to regularly spawn during the boss fight. Other than that, it was a pleasant walk through the sun-lit path that meandered through the forest that led to the cave that held the final dungeon of the First Floor.

Standing with everyone else in front of the giant doors leading to where the final boss was supposed to reside, I am not afraid to admit that I was practically shaking in my boots from a combination of fear and adrenaline. I had played more than my fair share of MMO's and facing off against a boss is always a challenge. Most of those times however it was simple to jump on the internet and find a video of a walk-through for any particular boss prior to actually trying to fight them. And even going in blind all it would cost is some time and frustration of having to resurrect back at a waypoint or town if your character died.

This time there was only the information provided in the guidebook that had been put together by the beta players. And while I was glad that we had advance information about what we would be facing, there was no solid proof that Kayaba hadn't changed things up since the beta ended. More than anything else that uncertainty was what had me worried.

After all, if I was in Kayaba's shoes, changing around a boss's behavior is exactly what I would have done.

If everything went as planned the boss fight would be tough, but fairly easy. If the boss changed from what had been described, things could get bad quickly as I doubted very many, if any, of the groups had the ability to adjust their tactics in a coordinated manner on the fly. Maybe in a few floors when the clearing parties had gotten more experience fighting together it would be less of a concern, but here and now I had the suspicion that fighting the boss was very much going to be a sink or swim endeavor.

And there weren't going to be any convenient flotation devices handy.

Diabel's cheer as he opened the doors to start the battle helped calm everyone down, including myself, but it certainly didn't get rid of all of the group's nervousness.

With the Kobold Lord appearing at the end of the giant hall surrounded by three Kobold Sentinels I was supremely glad that I wasn't on the teams responsible for directly fighting the boss. My knife may be fast and be easy to use to score critical hits, but that doesn't change the basic equation of the blade being seven inches long while Illfang the Kobold Lord was at least fifteen feet tall and carrying an axe that had the blade alone as big as I was.

Following the charge of the main groups while Diabel reminded everyone of the attack rotations from the rear, I angled my charge to the right Sentinel with Kirito and Asuna trailing behind.

As I closed with the monster I launched one of my flat throwing daggers from my left hand in order to draw its attention. Closing to melee range with a couple more steps I used my accelerated speed to quickly crouch and land a sword skill on its right leg to apply Hamstring in order to slow its movement speed and leave it open for Kirito and Asuna's follow through.

Allowing my momentum to carry me past the first Sentinel, I watched as the main tank and DPS teams began to get into the rhythm of fighting the boss. The DPS teams would all unleash the heaviest attacks and then retreat while their skills were on cooldown so that the other team could switch in and unleash their attacks. Similarly the tank teams would take turns blocking Illfang's attacks and trying to use heavy attacks with knockback effects to interrupt its attack skills.

For our group the rotation was equally simple. I would attack using Hamstring whenever a Kobold Sentinel would appear, often times bouncing between multiple slowed enemies while Asuna and Kirito would use combination attacks to quickly do heavy damage to the slowed enemies.

The three of us in my opinion were almost perfectly balanced as a team. Each time I had achieved a new level, I had put almost everything into my Agility stat, allowing me a faster attack and movement speed than almost any other player in the raid team. In SAO the two major uses of the Strength stat was to increase damage with a weapon per hit and to increase the weight of items that could be equipped. This didn't impact what was carried in your inventory, just how much your equipment and weapons could weigh, most of which increased steeply in weight along with their defense and damage bonuses. With almost pure Agility I could move quickly between enemies and with the already fast attacks of a knife, do a considerable amount of damage on top of slowing the monsters' movement speed.

Kirito and Asuna however took the cake when it came to damage. Kirito was higher level than both of us and had excellent combat abilities, meaning that he could keep up a continuous flow of attacks with his one-handed longsword. Asuna's skill with her rapier took it to a whole other level though. While not as maxed out as I was for speed, she was still really fast, allowing for high speed attacks with her rapier. Rapiers, unlike most swords, were only meant for stabbing attacks. The creators of SAO had thus justified that since rapiers confined a player to stabbing attacks, rapier users should get a combat bonus, namely a high critical hit chance. But only a high critical hit chance, unlike daggers which also had a larger multiplier to for critical damage than swords.

Normally scoring a critical hit required experience against a type of monster to know where and how to attack the single point in every one that could be targeted for max damage.

Fighting in a group changed that.

Whenever a slashing attack hit there would appear a tracery of red to indicate where the enemy had been hit. It would only last a second or two based on several factors, but if another player could land a precise hit on that area, the game would recognize that strike as a critical hit and award increased damage against whatever had been struck.

Needless to say between my slowing down the Kobold Sentinels and Kirito and Asuna regularly chaining stupidly high number of crits we were managing all of the regularly spawning sentinels with a good margin of time to wait between spawns while the other teams were smoothly whittling down the boss's life bar.

When Illfang's life hit red and it started the animation to switch to its alternate weapon, I was feeling pretty good. No one had messed up in a major way, everyone was green for HP and the boss was practically dead.

Then Diabel charged it alone after telling everyone to back off.

Words barely begin to describe how I feel. I knew what he was doing. The Last Attack Drop.

Fucker.

He wasn't in any group since he had stayed back to coordinate the switches. Assuming he could survive the boss's switched attack pattern long enough to land a couple dozen hits he would kill the floor boss, receiving a huge amount of XP, Col, and rare items that would normally be split between 6 people. If he pulled it off he would be catapulted to a level advantage that would ensure his level dominance for several floors even if he leveled conservatively for months on end.

Then he promptly lost his gamble and life while I watched from the sidelines.

Kirito was trying to feed him a potion right before he burst into pixels and everyone was panicking.

I was panicking right along with them.

Kirito charging Illfang was one of the stupidest things I have seen. The fact that Asuna immediately followed him immediately made second stupidest. When the tank team under Agil started interrupting its attacks, I followed them in since they were doing something that I couldn't do, but could take advantage of.

Parrying a boss attack.

Watching as Agil broke the boss's attack pattern, I knew I wasn't ever going to be doing that. High Strength and two handed weapons gave massive bonuses that I totally lacked. The exposed legs however were something only I could do something about.

Darting in and letting rip with Hamstring onto both legs before retreating I was ready to pat myself on the back for a good job in locking the already slow moving Kobold Lord in place for all intents and purposes. Barely five seconds later watching the status effect disappear I felt like swearing until the Ethics Code sent me to jail. Hamstring applied a 50% movement speed condition for 10 seconds for each leg that it was applied to. Hitting both legs like that it should have stayed on for a solid 20 seconds. 20 seconds where players could get in then out of attack range with impunity.

I got 5 seconds worth, meaning slowing the boss was only ¼ effective.

Right, MMORPG bosses classically had reduced condition damage whenever they got poisoned in order to prevent players like mine that used condition effects from being overpowered.

Either way, while the slowing effect lasted, it was enough for Kirito and Asuna to get into their attack groove, managing to deal heavy crit damage with a series of chained attacks as they switched back and forth attacking from the rear.

Roaring as they pulled the boss's attention, I took the opportunity as it turned to dart in and score another series of condition attacks to keep the monster still while Agil's team headed in to disrupt its attack pattern to prevent it from using the sword skill that it had used to kill Diabel.

With my second round of attacks, that was the end of the battle for me. Still, watching Kirito almost walk through the boss's sword skill was pretty darn impressive, especially since it was using attack patterns I had never seen before.

With the burst of pixels and victory BGM going I couldn't help but feel like curling up in a corner somewhere and just going to sleep as my adrenaline began to fade.

"Dammit! Why did you let Diabel die!? It's your fault that Diabel's dead you damn beta tester!" came from Kibaou just as everyone was starting to move to congratulate Kirito on his clearing of the boss.

Aaaanndd there went the mood.

I have to give Kibaou credit, with the accusation of Kirito being a beta tester he just managed to bring back the 'blame everything on someone else' mindset with only a couple of sentences. Add in that it was spectacularly obvious that Kirito was clearly a beta tester given the way that he managed to dodge and move around the boss's sword skills and this was going to get bad quick given the mob mentality vibe I was getting from the rest of the crowd around me.

Watching Kirito's face as it shifted from shock and betrayal into the intense game face he had been wearing for most of the boss fight I could practically see him coming to the same conclusion I had. Of course for me that just insured that I would be selling any healing items he needed to him for almost nothing. He knew what needed to be done to unify the newly combat baptized clearing veterans.

Denial would be worthless and seen as the lie it was; reconciliation wouldn't work with someone like Kibaou pushing blame, so instead Kirito was going to give them something to rally against.

Kayaba was too distant, too powerful, and most importantly, wasn't someone they could really see themselves beating. But Kirito, strong, skilled, equipped with the best gear, that was a goal that the average player could possibly match or exceed as long as they worked with others in a group.

Watching his dramatic performance of equipping the Last Attack Drop and mocking the other beta testers before heading up the stairs to the next stage in front everyone I knew that even if no one wanted to admit it, Kirito would become a leader for the players in Aincrad.

By kicking them in the ass until they moved forward maybe, but sometimes that sort of leadership worked better than giving speeches and being someone that could be leaned on for strength.

Watching Asuna chase after him, I just hoped that she turned out to have a good head on her shoulders and didn't reject that boy, because the path Kirito was taking was darn lonely without other people to fall back on.

I knew I would help, and with any luck Asuna and others would be there even when the tide of resentment against the beta testers peaked in the next couple of floors.

Chapter end

Episode 2 of the anime is finished, now we go into the unexplored territory where the anime never covered and the novels only briefly touch.

All I know about the second floor is that it has mountains where the quest for the Martial Arts skill can be learned by repeatedly punching a rock until it breaks and that at the start of the quest you get doodles drawn on your face that can't be erased until the quest is finished.

My Muse is With Me!

And totally gone from Dire Familiar…