January 8th, 2029

Armed with an iron sword, Kirito lunged at a large hog, slashing at it and knocking its hit points down below fifty percent. Before he could strike again, an arrow flew past him, hitting the animal in an eye, killing it. Kirito turned to hold up his weapon in defense, blocking an attack from another beast's large tusks.

Unlike the pigs from before, these wild hogs were larger, and had more hit points. They also had higher offensive stats, and were more prone to attack rather than to flee. They were level four, three whole levels higher than their smaller, critter class counterparts.

Agil brought down a large, stone club against the hog's head, causing it to pull away from Kirito, dazed. As it wasn't moving, Kirito moved forward, gutting the animal and finishing it off.

Altogether, there were six of these hogs, and they were all down now. "Great," Klein said. He looked at a weapon in his hand, an iron sword, broken in two from the fight. "Another one bites the dust."

"I'm sorry, guys," Lisbeth smiled at the group. "Blacksmithing isn't what it was in SAO. I can't just swing my hammer and automatically generate a good weapon."

"It's nothing, Liz," Asuna said, looking at a broken sword of her own. "We're all low level again. It's a work in progress, we all understand."

"Just like we understand your cooking is too a work in progress," Silica teased.

"I don't have any cookware! It's not fair, I have to cook on rocks and with wooden spoons."

"So we'll be having pork steak again?" Klein asked. "I'd give anything for a good burger."

"Find me some bread, and I'd be happy to make you one."

"I could use some proper blacksmithing tools too. And a furnace instead of a fire pit."

"I think we should try finding some NPC's in the forest," Kirito said. "If we can fight humanoids, they might have weapons and some actual usable gear instead of meat and bones."

"I can go do some scouting while you get your weapons fixed and make lunch." Sinon was already walking towards the forest in the distance. She stopped though, as she saw something moving ahead. She pointed and proudly proclaimed, "I found some!"

The group all moved up onto the hill where Sinon was standing. In the distance, there was dust being kicked up, and the sound of hooves beating against the ground. They were too far away to see if they had anything useful.

"Get ready," Kirito said, shifting into a combat stance. "They might not be friendly." The group all did the same. Those with broken weapons stayed a few feet farther back.

As the horses came closer, green cursors appeared above their heads. Kirito lowered his guard. "They're players," he said. "Not NPC's." Everyone lowered their guard and sighed miserably.

"Players riding horses?" Asuna asked. "Then that means—" A look of shock was on her face, and then a hint of anger. "They've gone farther in the game than us."

Before much more could be said, the riders reached the party, and slowed down at the approach. "Howdy!" One of them was young, a girl looking to be about fourteen or fifteen years old. "What are you folks doing out here?"

"Howdy?" Klein, as well as everyone else was confused by her wording… and her accent.

"You know this isn't a western, right?" Sinon asked.

"Naw, that's just how I normally speak." She dismounted her horse, and walked up to greet them. "My name's Gretch. I'm Texas born and raised, so you can call me Tex. Where do ya'll come from?"

"Texas?" Kirito asked. "And… you speak Japanese?"

"No, no no. We was all confused about that too at first, but then Germany figured it out."

"Ya." Another player, tall and fair of skin, dismounted. He wore heavy looking leather armor. "I remembered from an article I read before logging into this game. I guess the… Laughing… Coffin? I guess they took advantage of it. But programmers were working on a mental translation software to be implemented into the game next year. They must have got it done in a rush to get more players together from all over the world, instead of having to restrict their player base to Japan."

"That's... that's amazing!" Lisbeth said. "So we're speaking and hearing Japanese, and you're speaking and hearing German or… in your case, English." She gestured from Germany to Tex.

"Mhm!" Tex looked at their weapons. "Where'd you get them there fancy shiny metal weapons?"

"You mean, you don't have any?" Kirito asked.

Tex shook her head, and frowned. "Sadly, we haven't had any luck with weapons, except for this one!" She pulled from her side an iron knife, one of the ones the Laughing Coffin had used in the initial slaughter. "Found it on the ground, and so they made me the leader of the Vearth Scouting Union."

"The… vee-earth—"

"You must have left before the players organized, then," Germany said. "By the end of the first day, a lot of huge groups had formed, and started getting used to the new world. Then the next day those groups started coming together. By day four, we had a nice little town going, and it was growing still when we left."

It had been a full week now. "Good," Kirito said. He looked at their levels. They were level two or level one. His own group ranged from Silica at level seven, to himself and Asuna, both at level eleven. "You're not as high level as I thought you'd be… where did you find horses?"

"They're all the way on the other side of town. Ever since we leveled up our riding, we've been scouting the plains, looking for more resowhatch'yamacallits."

"Resources… did you ever pick up a textbook in the real world?" Germany asked.

"Hey, I went to school!"

"Not much of it."

"Did you find any metal?" Lisbeth asked. "We've been recycling our weapons and tools since we got here. And they were originally made of metal scraps we found in the dirt around the destroyed buildings."

"Metal? Oh shoot, we found a mine with copper and tin just a few minutes ago. We was on our way back to town to tell them about it. Wanna see it?"

"Yes!" Kirito's whole group responded in unison.

"Well Germany can take the lead from here back to town. I'll take ya."

"Tex," Germany said, calling her over. "Can we trust them?"

"Yes," Kirito said. He pointed to them, and then above his head. "The same way we know we can trust you. If you kill another player in this world, the cursor on your character turns red."

"How do we know you're not lying?" Germany asked him, looking at his iron sword.

"I guess… you don't," Kirito said, disheartened by the lack of trust all of the players seemed to have.

"It's no matter, Germany. It's my choice, and you don't have to worry about it. Head back to town and tell them the news. These strangers'll help me make the first haul back to town, won't ya?" Kirito nodded, and invited Tex to his party. Tex left her horse to Germany, and started on foot. "It's not too far, about ten minutes on horseback, and probably no more than forty on foot."

"Lisbeth," Agil said as the group started moving.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think we have enough metal to make some mining pics?" He asked. Lisbeth nodded back to him. "Good, we'll be needing them."

"So you're a blacksmither, eh?" Tex asked Lisbeth.

"Yes," Lisbeth said.

"You'll be loads of help when we start hauling in these ores. Pretty much no one has any real weapons," Tex told the group.

"Actually," Kirito said. "We'll be heading straight from the mine to the forest area. We want to keep leveling."

"Kirito?" Asuna said. "Are you sure? We might want to at least check them out."

"No, we move forward."

"Why?" Silica asked.

"Aww, well, I'll hope ya'll decide to come back. We're building something pretty great there. Pretty soon the town will be a safe haven for players. A lot of them just want to survive, and they don't want to have to fight to do it."

"We want to survive too. And we'll do what we've always done to survive," Kirito told her.

"Kirito," Agil said. "We're hopelessly under-geared. It could do us some good."

"Kirito?" Asuna asked. "I'm still standing with you… but I think—"

"Fine, fine," he said. "We'll go back to town with Tex and see what we can do to help everyone."

"Whoopie!" Tex was excited, jumping up into the air and running ahead. "The more the merrier, right? Come on, we're close now."

The mine was a cave going down underground that opened on the side of a hill. It seemed to go pretty deep, but there were rocks with oranges and shining whites outside of the cave. Lisbeth pulled out some wood she'd gathered early, and a few rocks she was using to hammer metals with. She took some scraps of broken weapons from the party, and started up a fire to heat them up with.

"Normally, I would think you couldn't heat iron up hot enough with a wood fire to shape it." Asuna watched her work.

"Yeah, but this is still a game. Maybe it's why they're coming out so weak though." She threw the scraps all together into the flames, and a few seconds later, pulled them out, hot, and started hammering them with her stones. Soon, she had pumped out two mining pics. "Alright, whose strength stat is highest?"

"That'd be me," Agil said, taking one of the pickaxes, and going to swing it at a rock. A couple swings later, chunks of copper or broke off, and the group cheered.

Lisbeth went to work too, and the two spent a while mining. Meanwhile, Asuna pulled up some of the pork, and skewered it on some sticks to cook over the fire.

"It's just like the countryside," Tex said, "Only a little greener. I wonder if this is what is was like for the cowboys on the frontier."

"Maybe if we had guns," Sinon said.

"Well yeah, and the guns."

"Kirito!" Lisbeth shouted, running from the mine. The group all snapped to attention.

"What's wrong, Lisbeth?" Tex asked.

"The mine—" She had to stop speaking, out of breath. It took her a few moments. "Energy stats are annoying. There's something in the mine, it might be a monster!"

Tex jumped into action, pulling out her knife and heading for the mine. "Well, let's get it!"

Kirito stopped her, holding her arm. "What if it is a higher level than you?"

Tex shrugged, and Sinon pointed at her with her fingers. "You die." Then she squeezed her finger as if pulling a trigger. "Bang." Now Tex seemed worried, and looked at her new groups' levels.

"Silica is good with daggers," Kirito said, looking over to her.

Tex nodded, and gave the blade to Silica. Disheartened though, she sat down. "I'll leave it to you then."

Kirito put a hand on Tex's shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll be sure to share any treasure with you. It's just better to be safe than sorry."

"I know. I'm just not used to this game yet."

Silica tossed the knife back and forth between her hands. "Dagger skill: 19." The rest of the group walked towards the cave behind Silica. Though Asuna's weapon was broken, she pulled out a wooden spear she'd made earlier, and Klein used a large, two-handed stone sword.

As they approached the cave, they heard a monster inside of it, and stepped into the darkness. The light from outside was enough to see where they were, even though the monster remained hidden. "Where is it?" Asuna asked.

"There!" Leafa pointed towards a dark part of the cave, where a pair of red eyes glowed in the shadows.

The group readied their weapons, and the creature came out of hiding, attacking Kirito first. With his high level, it saw him as the greatest threat. The monster was a creature that appeared to be made of stone and metal, with a rough, gray skin, and claws and teeth of tin or possibly iron.

It jumped at the swordsman, slashing at him with his claws. Kirito blocked with his weapon, and the creature dropped to the ground. It growled.

Sinon took a shot at it, and as a reaction, the monster, curled up into a ball, and rolled away from the group, back into the shadows.

"Did it run?" Asuna asked.

"It was only level six," Klein said. "Wouldn't be surprised."

"Wait!" Leafa said, pointing back to the darkness. Three more sets of eyes appeared. "There."

"And here!" Sinon pointed to another spot where more creatures seemed to be emerging.

Kirito thought for a moment, and figured it out. "We can only see their eyes in the dark. Until then we have no idea how many there are!"

Klein put up his guard, and the group started to move together.

Sinon fled the cave, and prepared to fire a shot from outside. "Lead them out into the light where we can see them!"

Kirito nodded, and the group followed him as they ran out from the cave. Creatures followed them out. Seven in total, and uncurled, ready to fight. Their levels ranged from six to eight.

"What are they?" Leafa asked. She read the name above their hit point bars. "Stone Goblin."

"Alright, play this defensively, and we'll see how to fight them first," Asuna said. The group nodded, and stayed close to one another.

The monsters attacked, all running at different members of the group, and trying to jump onto them. They were small when standing, no taller than three feet, and no shorter than two. Their height varied slightly by their levels.

Each of them was thrown back to the ground, where they curled up into their defensive ball forms, much like an armadillo. Then Kirito and his group attacked. They struck at the hard backsides of the creatures, but surfaced minimal damage.

After a couple strikes each, the creatures all jumped again, this time slashing around, some of them dealing damage to the party. Before any of the players could react, they were all back into defensive stances.

"Their skin is too strong, at least to these weapons," Kirito said.

"I'm going to try something," Sinon shouted. "Silica, get one of them to attack you, and when it jumps this time, duck!"

"Hai!"

The creatures launched into another attack, and all except for Silica focused on their defense. The players repelled the attack, but Silica ducked and rolled out of the way. Sinon fired a shot at that moment, and dealt a critical blow to the creature that attacked her.

It cried out, and curled up on the ground, dead. "That's it!" Sinon said. "When they're in their defensive positions, they can't be harmed by our weapons. But when they attack, they expose their weak bellies."

"Fight in pairs!" Kirito said. "One person draw their attacks, and when they strike, the other needs to strike while the defender repels any extra attacks."

When the creatures attacked again, they were ready. Klein paired with Agil, Kirito with Asuna, and Silica with Lisbeth while Leafa stayed back to defend Sinon. Sinon fired shots from a distance during each attack to take an extra one out. Klein dodged one of the beasts' attacks, and took damage from another, though it was minimal. Agil brought his club into one of the monster's guts, and knocked it away. Lisbeth used her shield to knock off two attackers, and Silica came in quick to slice at one of them. The second was shot by Sinon. Asuna threw one of the goblins away with her spear, and Kirito slayed the other attacker before it reached her with a swipe of his blade.

The three remaining goblins all attacked in a flurry. Asuna speared her attacker this time, and Lisbeth stabbed another. The last attacker was shot by Sinon before it reached a target.

The group had a short cheer, but the celebration was quickly interrupted by a rumbling from the cave.

"What's that?" Klein asked, pointing to a figure coming out. It was like the other creatures, but much larger, towering over them at about nine feet.

"Stone Ogre. Mini-boss?" Kirito read the description around the creature's name. "That's new."

"Level eighteen!" Klein shouted.

"Don't panic," Kirito said. "It's a fight like any other, and there's nine of us. We got this!" The group all readied for combat again. "Lisbeth, Agil, tank it. Use your shield and your large weapon to block its attacks."

"Hai!" Lisbeth said, raising her shield and approaching the beast next to Agil.

"Everyone else—"

"Yeah, we know, Kirito! Get it!" Klein jumped right into combat, swinging his sword at the monster. Before Klein reached it however, it knocked him away with a swipe of its arm. He took damage amounting to fifteen percent of his health.

"Be careful, Klein!" Asuna said.

"Sorry, I got a little excited," Klein said as he got up, and shook it off.

The monster started to swing at Lisbeth, and she used her shield to deflect the strikes, but she was still taking small amounts of damage. "This thing hits hard!"

"Now, attack!" Kirito shouted, and the entire group leaped into action. They all ran in and dealt a couple of attacks to the creature's belly. The strikes knocked it down by twelve percent of its hit points.

As expected, the monster curled up into a ball. "Alright, get ready for the next attack!" Asuna said. Only it seemed to stay in its ball shape, and left the players waiting. "Any second now…"

"What's it doing?" Lisbeth asked, lowering her shield to see.

It began to move, rolling towards Lisbeth who quickly raised her shield again. It was fast, and plowed into her hard. She was knocked away and disarmed by the attack. Dazed, it took her more than a couple seconds to get to her feet, and she took twenty percent of her health in damage.

"That's new," Klein said.

"Okay, we can't defend against that attack," Asuna said. "We have to dodge it!"

It turned towards Kirito, and he watched, carefully assessing the situation to learn how best to avoid the attack. Once it rolled to him, he moved to the side, and it rolled right past him. "I thought so," he said. "It can't turn once it starts rolling."

After the miss, it uncurled, and turned around. Lisbeth was back up, but Agil took to the front, deflecting its strikes to the side with his weapon. "Now, before it curls up again!" he shouted.

The group all went back to the attack. Lisbeth picked up her weapon and ran in to fight as well. Together, they brought the mini-boss down to about sixty percent of its health before it curled up again. Lisbeth picked up her shield and prepared for the next phase.

The battle continued the same, and after two more phases, they had it down to ten percent health. Things changed then. It roared and got on all fours to charge at Asuna.

"Asuna! Run!" Kirito shouted.

Asuna looked at him, and then back to the monster. She instead got low and readied her spear.

"Asuna!" Kirito shouted and ran towards her to help just as the monster was about to hit, but he was too far away.

Asuna was fine though. She had a plan of her own. When the beast met her, she raised the spear and thrust it underneath its body, driving the pointed end in and breaking the weapon halfway through. The mini-boss stood up afterwards, now at one percent health, and with a 'bleed' buff on its vitals. It reached for the impaled weapon, but then fell to the ground, dead.

"Asuna?" Kirito asked. She looked over to him and gave him their victory salute. The group then rushed over to congratulate one another on their victory, and then settled down afterwards.

"What's this?" Asuna asked as a pop-up appeared before her. "Reward? Inflicted the most damage that fight?" Her eyes lit up and she hit a button. The next moment, a long, metal spear dropped into her hands. "Did anyone else get anything like that?"

"Yes!" Lisbeth yelled. She was now equipped with an iron square shield. "Rewarded for taking the most damage that fight."

"So there's a new set of player rewards for accomplishments in a single battle…" Kirito said. The group all looked through their stat increases and then started going through the reward items.

"Iron ore," Lisbeth said. "That'll come in handy. So will these blacksmithing tools."

"Guys," Tex said, rejoining the group and pointing at the mine. "Look."

Above the cave, text appeared. It read "Small Battle Cleared. Reward: Eastern Mineshaft." The area began to change, and lights appeared in the cave. A rack with pickaxes appeared first, and then a table with some other mining gear on it.

"That's also new," Kirito said.

"I like it!" Lisbeth said. "Now all we need is a forge! We should go back to the starting area. Maybe they've built one by now!"

"It's a good idea, Kirito," Asuna said.

Kirito thought, and then nodded. "Yeah, it is. Now that we have some real metal to use. Speaking of which, Tex, we owe you some, don't we?"

"Naw, I'm fine. We got a mine and pics and stuff. That'll be good enough for everyone."

"Alright, then let's head back," Kirito said, heading off with the others.

Lisbeth came to a wooden table where the others all sat and ate skewered pork and vegetable dishes. She let out a hefty sigh as she set down a cache of weapons and armor on the table, and slumped over the surface as she sat down. "Blacksmithing is hard in this world. I actually have to work."

"No, you don't," Agil said.

Lisbeth glared at him. "Oh yeah? Well it drained my energy meter."

"Again, no." Agil pointed to where she could see her vitals. "It's a mechanic of this game to make you feel tired when you work continuously, so that you have to rest. But remember that it's just a stat like any other. In the real world, you're lying on a bed… a hospital bed in all likelihood, where your muscles haven't been used at all."

"I know that, dummy."

"What we were discussing," Kirito said after he cleared his throat, interrupting the conversation. "…was the mechanics of the energy vital and figuring out how it works. It's not just energy as in the amount of running and working you do."

"It takes into account your hunger and tiredness as well," Asuna cut in. "If you go long periods of time without eating or sleeping, it lowers your maximum energy values."

"Right, and it also reduces the rate at which you restore energy." Kirito took a bite of his food. "We also figured out what happens once you hit zero."

"What happens when you hit zero?" Lisbeth looked up, and looked at her energy bar. It was flashing red, sitting at only one percent.

"First, you pass out immediately," Kirito said.

"Pass out?"

"Fall to the ground. Your avatar enters a forced sleep state. This lasts for ten minutes. It's not good." Asuna had her serious face on. "When you wake up, it's even worse. You'll restore to five percent, but afterwards, you'll drain faster. If you hit zero again, you lose hit points."

"One percent every five seconds," Silica said.

"That's steep."

"Until you get a full four hours of sleep. You can also starve."

"St-starve?" Lisbeth seemed worried now, and grabbed a hunk of pork to chew on.

"If you haven't eaten in twelve hours, you'll gain a buff: Hungry, with an eight hour duration." Asuna sighed and took a bite of her vegetables. "And once that wears off, it will change to Starving, and you'll lose one percent of your HP every five seconds."

"And your energy drains too when you're hungry. One percent every ten seconds! If you're starving it drains twice as fast!" Klein stopped talking suddenly to eat.

"Where did you find this out?"

"Mostly talking to other players," Kirito said. "There's a fairly decent communal atmosphere here. Players are mostly friendly and helpful. They want to survive just like the rest of us."

"Then… what about these other two: will and spirit?" Lisbeth asked.

"No idea," Kirito said. "No one's even seen them go down yet."

"Not true," Asuna said. "You're not paying enough attention. We were told that both will and spirit have a drop in their maximum amount when energy is low, or when you're hungry or starving. No one has seen either drop in actual amount though, and the effects aren't clear."

"If I had to take a guess, I'd say they would give you combat penalties of some kind. Maybe they reduce your movement speed." Agil looked at the pile of armor and weapons. "It looks like you made a lot of progress though. It didn't seem like we had enough iron to make all of these."

"Yes!" Lisbeth said in the middle of a bite. She stopped to finish her food and swallow. "My blacksmithing is all the way up at 130 now! And it's not all iron. I used the copper and tin to make some bronze gear. It should be about as good as the iron gear in terms of stats, but it will have lower durability."

Klein rubbed his hands together as he looked at the cache. "So what have you got for me, huh?"

Lisbeth took another bite, and slapped Klein's hand away as he reached for the gear. "Please, let me tell you." She dropped the cache back into her personal inventory, and then started going through the list. "Kirito," she started with him. "For you, I didn't make any armor, because I know you like your speed and to be able to move around. Heavy armor would be a net loss for dual wielding anyways. For you, I made two iron longswords. I didn't know what your strength looked like, so I wasn't sure if you would be able to equip both of them right off the bat."

"I can't dual wield."

"What?" Lisbeth… the whole group was surprised.

"It's a locked ability of some sort, but if I try to use two swords, I take a lot of penalties. Right now it's better just to use one."

"Well, oh well, you have two swords then!" She traded the items over to Kirito. "Klein. I know you like the katana, but my blacksmithing needs to be at 400 before I can craft that, apparently. I did get you a bastard sword, though."

"Hey!" Klein shouted. "I'm not a bastard…"

"Klein," Agil said. "A bastard sword is a sword said to be equipped with one and a half hands. It's light enough to use with one hand for certain attacks, but heavy enough to deal lots of damage with the others."

"Oh. I knew that!" Lisbeth traded him his new sword. He immediately equipped it and got up from his seat to swing it around, testing it out. "No armor for me either?"

Lisbeth shook her head. "Actually. Armor requires a lot more metal, so… the only people who I was able to make it for are myself and Agil. Mail armor for me, because my strength isn't high enough for plate, and half-plate for Agil, because that's all I had left. Also for Agil, a great axe."

Agil smiled, equipping the armor he was given, and looking at his new axe. Lisbeth continued. "Asuna. You won that spear in the fight, so I figured that would suffice for you. But just in case, I got you a small circle shield of bronze."

Asuna took the item, and equipped it. "Spears are two-handed though."

Lisbeth blinked, stopping in her explanation. "But… someone I talked to at the furnace said you could equip a shield and spear… if the shield was light enough in weight."

"Sounds cool," Asuna said, taking the weapons. When she tried to equip both though, the game wouldn't let her, the same way it wouldn't let Kirito dual wield. "Or not… maybe I have to be a higher level like Kirito for his dual wielding."

"Silica," Lisbeth said.

"Hai?"

"For you, I made an iron dagger, as you might expect. And for myself, an iron short-sword to go with my shield." Finally, she turned to Leafa. "Leafa, I made you a sword. I know you're hoping to learn magic…"

"Not just hoping!" Leafa said. "They said there was magic. I'm going to find it!" She took the sword from Lisbeth anyways. "But I guess I should still stick with this for now…"

After that, all gear was distributed. "Alright then," Kirito said. "Tomorrow it's back to the front lines… but we'll need some more supplies first. We should trade some of the meat and materials we aren't using for things like tents and sleeping bags, survival gear. I plan on staying in the wilderness for a long time."

"Now that we're geared, I'm with you!" Klein said.

"One hundred percent." Asuna nodded in agreement.