The First Night of Fall

There he stood on the cliff, looking at the horizon of emerald-green meadows beneath his feet, stretching out in front of him and glinting in the brazen orange sunlight. A cold breeze caressed his worn cheek carrying the coldness of the dusk. The wind puffed from the rear, weakly pressing against his back and making his clothes flutter along the wind.

He put his head back and watched the faint glow of the stars in the dawning sky. The sight of the vivid landscapes, the scent of blossoms, the warmness of his coat, the feeling of exhaustion, even the few pebbles which were noticeably pressing against his soles. Everything felt so realistic.

The automatic street lights of each city, which usually activated around 7pm, were already lit. It must have been hours since the god of this world fell, but only a few minutes since he had regained consciousness. He had no recollection of what had happened after he passed out in Asuna's arms.

To his right a path of gravel lead down steeply the little mountain and cut through green landscape with the flow of a creeping snake, ending up in a little city with houses made out of timber. Their appearance wasn't the most promising in this world. They all reminded him of the petite, almost derelict taverns he had slept in the very first months of this game to save money.

Only a few dozens of steps behind him was the door leading towards the room he thought to be his grave in. But somehow it was strange, like everything had changed since they exited that room. Somehow he felt like Aincrad, the whole world, had changed with the deprivation of its master.

And since then, the random pangs of pain in the back of his skull pestered him incessantly. Pain...the feeling which he hadn't felt since like forever.

That's most probably the punishment for the Revival, was his first theory. There were a lot items which could cause a lot of burden to the body, like the Rage Potion for instance, which basically increased the strength of the consumer for 50%, but exhausted the person's stamina a lot faster. So there was no reason to doubt that there was an item which caused pain.

However he had a second theory to odd occurrence. Since he had died for a few seconds, the procedure of the brain-cooking could have been started. The damage which was dealt to his brain before the killing program was interrupted, could have caused this pain. Or maybe his brain experienced a huge overflow of electrical signals because of his apparent death.

But all the feelings from the outside would be blocked….he thought.

A voice dragged him from his endless train of thoughts to the present.

"Kirito-kun~, come here!" The voice-owner was none other than Asuna.

"Sure" He responded with lacking motivation to walk those few steps. Walking to the slim figure in white armor, which simplified the task to find her in the dark, he recognized two more frames standing there. Klein and Agil.

"Kirito, there's a real problem." started Agil with a stern face "We found out that all items are inaccessible beside the ones having equipped."

Chills rushed down his spine as he heard that. Swiftly pinching his thumb and index finger, he swiped downwards through the air. Pressing some buttons on his window, he let his jaw drop.

"You're right, shit!" All item names were greyed out, and couldn't be used.

"At least, we have our battle gear already equipped." Kirito let out a long sigh of relief.

But then he saw the still furrowed look on Agil's face.

"That's not all."

"What do you mean?"

"We also found out that the teleport gates don't allow us to teleport to lower floors anymore."

"Wha-" A rush of sadness rushed over him. A glimpse at Asuna who was smiling soothingly at him, told him that she knew it already. Their house on the 22nd floor, the little log house by the wonderful lake, which they had bought only weeks ago with all of their money, was no more to return. He was so eager to return to that log cabin, if only for a few days.

And not only that, Lizbeth and Agil had it very hard too. Their shops and homes were on the lower floors, but they would need to come up here if they wanted to meet again.

"Will you manage?" Kirito asked Agil.

"Yeah, no problem for me." but then he added with a lower voice "but it will hit Lizbeth quite hardly"

Right, she had humongous storages for swords and armors, but they all were unusable by now. At least Agil was flexible and could fight for money from now on, but Lizbeth had only her blacksmithing skill which was useless without the hardly gathered resources.

'Kayaba's death caused all of this, didn't it?' Kirito tried to find an explanation for this odd events happening lately. Something had to be wrong with the Cardinal System. But Kayaba told them that he was the actual last boss so the game must be cleared by now if he had done what he promised. What was he waiting for?

"...-ito-kun, Kirito-kun ?" As he shifted his mind back to the present he found Asuna looking at him with a smile.

"You are daydreaming very often recently." said Asuna, but he was too tired to explain what was going in his head, so he simply averted his gaze. A short glance to the night sky reminded him of how exhausted and tired he actually was after the two boss fights.

"Let's go already."

They walked through the valley between hills to the left and right. The slim gravel way ended in front of the city and flowed over into stony soil, covering the whole ground of this small city.

"See you guys tomorrow" said Klein and Agil in unison as they were branching off to the left at the first junction.

"Bye"

His feet grew sore and his legs became doddery. Walking hand in hand with intertwined fingers, they decided to go into the next inn they see, as Kirito stumbled every second step due the growing tiredness. Searching support on Asuna's shoulders with his arm slung around her neck, they made it to a tavern which didn't look different from the others. He couldn't afford being picky as the desire to sleep grew. They entered the room without hesitation.

A small light bulb brightened the room with an orange tone. The walls and floor were entirely made of wood planks. In the petite lobby was a small counter without a person staffing it. On the left side of the room was a staircase leading upstairs to the rooms as he supposed. Asuna approached the counter and chimed a bell placed there, while Kirito supported his heavier-becoming body. After a few moments, footsteps could be heard from upstairs.

A woman with the age of around 25 apologized as she walked, from the stairs to the other side of the counter. She wore an elegant purple shirt with white traces at the edges along with a suitable skirt reaching merely her knees. 'It is an NPC', he realized. Actions like making players wait or have a habit of any kind or other little imperfections were added on purpose to make them seem more human. However her moves, gestures, expression and even her way of talking made it obvious, at least Kirito had never any trouble distinguishing between NPC and human.

"Sorry for keeping you waiting" She apologized with a deep, respecting bow.

"We would like to have a room for two persons." said Asuna. The NPC averted her gaze from Asuna to Kirito who was slowly having greater problems at standing on two feet, and smiled broadly.

"Perhaps you'd wish for a bigger room?" she said innocently with a little too much happiness and friendliness at this late hour.

"No, we'd like to have a normal one please." She threw a glance back at him. To her surprise, Kirito had planted the side of his face on the desk and searched for a firm grip. Drool flowed out of his mouth and wetted the surface of the counter gradually. The more exhausted Kirito was, the cuter was his sleeping face. And the face she was seeing, she considered to be the cutest sleeping face she's ever seen.

"One or two beds?" The woman asked with a neutral expression.

"One bed is enough"

The sunlight pierced through the cracks of the curtain, dividing the shine into individual sunrays and brightening the whole room. As one of them hit the face of the chestnut haired girl, she left the world of sleep and reluctantly woke up.

Rubbing the drowsiness away from her eyes with the back of her fist, she let out a low yawn, careful not to wake up the person next to her. Stretching her limbs in all possible directions she shifted to the side and watched her husband sleep in this peaceful morning.

She giggled silently at the sight of Kirito's face and slowly put her head on his lifting chest, listening to his calming heartbeat.

From the past she had learned to savour the few peaceful moments in their life. Especially since yesterday this feeling had grown a lot stronger. 'What if Klein hadn't had that item?'

Soon, they'd be forced to go on forward. Even if everyone had accepted that they'd have to live in a game their whole life, she wouldn't stop. Her burning desire was to meet Kirito in the real world and fall in love with him there as well.

And beside that, there was actually a frightening feeling that they had missed something very important lately. But she had no idea what it could be causing this much worry.

A slight movement on her side stopped her racking her brain to the limits and attracted her attention towards Kirito whose face had scrunched up as a sunray was thrown his way. Asuna stared at his shut eyelids, waiting for them to open and reveal the tender gleaming, onyx eyes.

Hazel met onyx. Kirito blinked a few times as to blink away the remaining tiredness in his eyes. A faint smile painted his face, which was responded by a peck to the cheek by Asuna.

"Good Morning"

Asuna gently lowered her body on top of his, which she did very carefully for some reason, and they just lay there in comfortable silence, inhaling and exhaling each other's scent and warmth.

But even this little time of peace for only them both had to end as the ringing of a notification broke the silence.

"Who is it?" Kirito asked as Asuna threw herself on her side of the bed. Seeing the fortunate in the unfortunate, there was no need to get changed as they had slept in before getting undressed.

"Hm, lemme see... it's from Masaru. It's an invitation to a meeting which will take place around 6pm" Asuna sighed. But actually there was no reason to go, as they both were no guild leaders. So why?

Kirito rolled his eyes over to Asuna who had stood up and stretched her arms into the air to get rid of the stiffness in her body. Unconsciously his eyes examined Asuna. The gallant white silk of which it was made accompanied with the metal breast plate. It sure looked light to wear in contrast to his armor of special material sewed into the fabric of his coat, which was anything but light.

"What are you doing?" Kirito had hoped to stay in bed a little longer with her. She looked at him in surprise as if he had no notion at all. Well…he had no notion after all.

Then it hit him like lightning strike. The Flash, Asuna-sama, the reason to why she was the most famous female player. After all she had been the deputy of Heathcliff, the strongest player in the world leading the strongest guild in the world. His thoughts were affirmed by Asuna moments later.

"I'll go there, I have to be present as the leader of The Knight of the Blood and need to prepare with my substitutes."

Kirito's jaw dropped. Did that mean that there was a lot less time for them from now on?

"What's the conference about?" he asked. Asuna responded with a very surprised expression as if she was telling her how he hadn't figured it out already. But instead of saying it out loud she drew closer to Kirito and pinched his arm.

A feeling he hadn't felt this bad in ages. IT remembered him of then when he still was doing Kendo with his grandpa and sister. For every little mistake he would get punished. And those punishments were severe if his opponent swung hard and was as merciless as his grandpa or sister.

Pain... But when Asuna, and apparently everyone else knew about this one it couldn't have been the effect of the Revival Item.

"Also, wounds and bruises are now existing…" With a gesture of her head she made him look down onto his arm, which was red because of the pinch. Kirito started to panic internally. How would he fight from now on as he was very pain-intolerant because his body almost never had experienced brutal pain.

Before he could panic anymore, Asuna looked intensely at his chest, hesitating to explain. "Also you should have a look at your chest…" and as if to avoid seeing his chest with him, she left the room.

Worried by the strange behaviour of Asuna, he heaved his shirt.

A bandage?! Someone had treated him with aid as he had slept deeply, he thought. Grabbing the Bandage, he heaved it little by little. The images assaulting his eyes made him almost throw up.

A flow of dried off blood blotched his whole torso. Dozens of veins had popped and burst all around his chest because of outer assault. And then there was this spot he couldn't look closer if he didn't want to puke. The place where Kayaba had thrusted his sword into him. A single thrust made that wound look like his chest had been butchered and mauled.

He covered the wound as fast as possible with the bandages, doing as few motions as possible.

That meant not only did they start receiving pain, but also they would get horrible, disabling wounds which would last if they were not careful.

They hadn't played a death game up until now, he realized as the realization of his injury made him notice. The real hell just had started.

A/N: Please review, I'd appreciate it very much! Also it would be nice to follow if you like this story so I'm able to get feedback of how many actually follow this story. New Chapters are coming every second week. If there are any typos or weird, senseless sentences, please point them out and I will correct them. I had no time to read through it and to be honest, I was quite in a hurry.