Chapter 3: Educated

Kirito and Asuna were walking down one of the stone streets in the town they had stayed the night in. The sides of the streets were filled with wooden carts run by NPC's that hosted a large array of goods, anywhere from jewelry to fruit to cloth. Asuna's eyes sparkled as she ran from shop to shop, admiring everything she saw. Kirito was less interested in the shops, and merely glanced at them as he passed, his eyes mostly scanning the gray, stone road ahead in search of a NPC blacksmith.

"Hey Asuna," Kirito stole Asuna's attention away from a NPC cart sporting several colorful necklaces. Catching up to his stride, Asuna walked by his side as she responded "Yeah?"

"Was that rapier the first weapon that you tried out?"

Asuna thought for a moment before responding, "No. I tried out a sword and a katana first before I decided on this rapier. I liked the lightness of it."

Kirito grinned. "Perfect," he commented. "I just wanted to make sure that the rapier was really the weapon you wanted to use. When you level up, you get a notification and a screen that gives you the option to level up certain categories, called Attributes. Every time you level up, you get Attribute points. What you put your Attribute points into decides what gear you will be able to use, which is why it matters that you want to use a rapier. Also, once you put your points into an Attribute, you can't change it back."

Asuna nodded, understanding everything that she was being told so far. Kirito continued, "There are five Attributes. Health, Endurance, Strength, Agility, and Precision. Health is exactly what it sounds like; it gives you health. It's mostly on used by tanks, because you get health through leveling up anyways."

Asuna interrupted, "Tanks?"

"People with a lot of health and defense, which makes them really hard to kill, but they don't do a lot of damage themselves. They're extremely useful in group combat because they can take a lot of damage from monsters, but since they can't do a lot of damage they aren't very good on their own."

Asuna nodded, understanding the information about Health now.

"Endurance. Endurance is used to determine whether or not you can wear heavy armor. Heavy armor slows you down though and is pretty much only used by tanks as well. Endurance also affects your character's endurance, like how far you can run, but since that can be improved normally just like a regular person, it's not super important. Then there's Strength; that's what I'll be putting my points into. Strength doesn't actually improve your damage, but it does allow you to hold heavier swords. It also improved your actual character strength, but if you're using a rapier you don't have to worry about Strength."

Kirito glanced at Asuna, who seemed to be understanding everything so far before he continued. "Agility is the next one, and the other Attribute I'll be putting my points into, as well as the Attribute you should put your points into. Agility also affects what weapons you can use; especially rapiers. Agility affects how fast you can move and how fast you can attack and stuff like that, as well as improving your agility as a character overall. Lastly, there's Precision. Precision is the other Attribute you should put your points into, because it affects weapon accuracy. If you're striking a lot with your rapier, weapon accuracy will really help you make sure you land several strikes in critical areas on your enemy. It also affects stuff like knife-throwing and blocking. Got all that?"

"Yeah I think so. I should put my points largely in Agility and Precision, allowing me to strike fast and deadly with my rapier."

Kirito smiled, "Exactly. Also, you don't have unlimited Attribute points. The highest level you can reach in SAO is 100. Out of those 100 Levels, 50 of them reward you with 3 Attribute points, and 50 of them reward you with 2 Attribute points. If you check right now, you should have 2 Attribute points to spend."

Asuna opened her menu and found that was he said was true. She quickly put one into Agility and one into Precision.

Kirito continued, "That means that at Level 100 you will have earned 250 Attribute points. Each Attribute maxes out at 100, which means you can max out two Attributes and then have an extra 50 left over. I'll be putting my extra 50 into Precision, because knife-throwing is good for hunting and blocking is important to me for when I can't dodge."

Asuna thought for a moment about what she would put her other 50 points into. "I think…I'll put my extra 50 points into Strength. It makes you stronger right? So my rapier will feel lighter and I'll be able to strike even faster." She turned to Kirito to see his face, which was beaming.

"See? You got it already. Now then, skills. Skills are like Attributes, except they level up through use, and max out at 1000. There are hundreds of skills, including mace-using, sword-using, katana-using, rapier-using, knife throwing, tracking, listening, cooking, blocking. Pretty much anything you could imagine, there's a skill for it."

"Wait. Did you say cooking?" Asuna's interest was piqued. She had loved cooking ever since she was a kid; could cooking really be an option in this world of swords and death?

"Yeah. Cooking. Anyways, as you level up the skill by doing said skill, you get better at it. That's why you really don't have to worry about it, because you'll naturally get stronger as long as you stick to the same play-style and don't switch weapon types halfway through."

Asuna thought she understood it all, but to her horror Kirito continued.

"Lastly, we have Durability. If the Durability of an item reaches zero, it gets destroyed; it's gone forever. If it's something like armor or a weapon, the usefulness of it decreases with the Durability, so you won't have to check the stats of your gear to know when it's durability is getting low. Whenever the durability is low, just go to a smith and they can put the durability right back up."

Kirito stopped speaking for a while and Asuna was sure he was done. Just as she had decided to be relieved, he spoke up again, and her heart dropped. "Oh! There's the smith!" Kirito pointed to a gray shop that looked to be one of the only indoor shops on the street. A large window however, allowed customers to stay outside while the smith did whatever the customer needed.

Approaching the smith, Asuna and Kirito both noticed that the shop owner didn't have an icon above their head; they were an NPC. It wasn't a surprise really, Kirito knew that not many players would have reached this town by now, but the occasional player wandering the shops let Kirito know that some players had braved the path from The Town of Beginnings already. "Alright Asuna, use your Col to upgrade your rapier," and with that Kirito walked off to admire a shop next to the blacksmith.

After a simple greeting to the NPC shop-owner, Asuna upgraded her rapier and glanced at the new stats.

[Upgraded] Beginning Rapier – 3 Attack, Infinite Durability

Thanking the smith, Asuna found Kirito at a cloak shop next door to the smith. "It only went up by one attack," she said, showing Kirito the stats. "But I suppose that still matters a lot because I'll be striking more than a sword will, right?"

Kirito beamed with pride, and Asuna smiled shyly as she saw his face. "You're getting this already. Now then, let's go kill some monsters."