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Chapter Six: Party Time
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There was something strange about the hallways of the boss room. First, Kirito noticed it was the first ever boss room that didn't automatically include the boss right in front of them. Leafa pushed the doors to the room open and like the other members of the group, she was surprised to see another door right in front of their faces, a hallway leading to both left and right.
"What's this?" asked Asuna.
The door was locked but Leafa laughed. "Hah! Step aside!"
She moved past Keita and the other [Moonlit Black Cats] and drew up her sleeve. She powered up a [Heavy Cross], her fist shimmering with a bright pink glow. When she brought it upon the door she expected it to explode into a million wooden pieces, but instead, wind blew across the room in a loud snap and a purple icon appeared above where Leafa struck.
[Immortal Object]
"Well, that's just great. Let's leave." Keita shrugged.
Kirito shook his head, remembering the fight with [Ovol] the Crab Lord back in the beta. "No, wait a sec." He knelt and ran his hand across the door, eventually finding a small ridge that appeared invisible to how the light was hitting it. "Gotcha. Think I know what this means." his black eyes scanned over the writing beneath the lock.
Everyone watched as he stood up and explained. "Kayaba's quoting something, 'Mary Mary quite contrary.' beneath an almost invisible lock on a door..."
"Psshh!" Keita waved a hand at Kirito. "A riddle? What kind of boss is worth this much effort?"
"This isn't a boss room. This is a puzzle room, I read about them in the patch notes for the beta." Yuuki stepped forward.
Kirito nodded. "She's right. Kayaba's referencing The Secret Garden, the main character of it is named Mary and she found a key to the Garden in some dirt. For some reason, he has a fascination with having certain areas of the game only be passable through knowledge of kid's books."
"So what do we do?" asked Asuna.
"We split up and try to find the key." Kirito looked down the hallway, "There's gotta be something valuable in that room for sure."
Yuuki took Keita and his group down the left side hallway and Kirito took Leafa and Asuna with him down the right. As they walked, Asuna asked Kirito something. "You read a lot?"
"Somewhat. I enjoyed reading before I got into video games and computers. Never would've guessed my life depending on it."
Leafa added on her adopted sibling's statement. "Never would've guessed either that all that training Jii-chan put us through we'd need to survive either."
They reached the end of the hallway and Kirito saw the door was locked, but the lock looked strange to him.
"What kind of key would go through that?" wondered Asuna.
Kirito had an idea and drew a [Hidden Blade], shoving it right into the lock. The door opened and he looked at Leafa, who looked right back in curiosity as to why this lock could only open to his knife. Kirito assumed more locks in the future could perhaps have this unique feature. He guessed that it was a bit early for the correct key to be granted this early so he hesitated on running to the first door and using it.
Kirito walked into the room surprised to see it was a small garden with a few trees and even a pond.
"Is this the garden from the book?"
Kirito shook his head at Asuna's question. "No." he looked around the room further to see the edges of it were blank white walls. Leafa walked up to the fountain in the center of the garden to fish out a key. "Guys? Is this it?"
Kirito walked up to her and took the key into his hand. "Maybe. But it's possible there's a door we're not seeing that has a lock to it."
Leafa understood and they started looking around the garden for it. As Asuna started trying to see if looking through the tree branches would reveal the door, Leafa took the opportunity to talk to her older brother.
"Oi, Onii-chan. Do you think Asuna's pretty?"
Kirito looked at Leafa. "Well, I do have eyes Sugu."
"But do you think she's prettier than me?..."
Kirito paused. He remembered how Leafa had mentioned 'not wanting any more competition' when Asuna joined Kirito's group and how she implied that she had feelings for him. While he initially considered this to be a joke at the time, if he added the fact that Leafa had more than once flirted with Kirito and was jealous of Yuuki's aspirations with him, Kirito surmised that Leafa might be serious about liking him.
"I'd say that's tough to answer."
Leafa smirked. "What's so tough about that?"
"Well, she's, " Kirito looked over to the rapier wielder jumping about the tree branches gracefully. "Pretty awesome and cute. And she's very intelligent too."
"So do you like her?"
Kirito looked up at her crouching to get a better view of the white walls around her, but Asuna looked back and thought he was checking out her more than fine rear so she squinted back at him in a glare.
"Eh, maybe."
Leafa smirked again.
"W-wait that doesn't mean-"
Asuna had stood in the garden's pond and realized the door was visible the whole time through looking at the reflection of the white wall in it. "I found it."
As Kirito unlocked the door, Asuna looked at the Kirigaya siblings. "Were you two talking about me?"
Leafa and Kirito looked at each other. "No!" "We wouldn't-" "Nah!"
Asuna crossed her arms. "So you didn't?"
"No, w-we didn't," said Kirito.
As they progressed deeper into the puzzle room, Asuna said something that made Kirito freeze in shock. "I could hear you two the whole time you know."
Asuna brushed past them and Leafa muttered to Kirito. "She's got some hearing."
Kirito looked at her and walked forward to catch up to Asuna's pace. Leafa raised her hands in shock. "What is with everyone today!?" as she saw Kirito speak to her, Leafa placed her hands over her chest. "I bet he's only into her for her body, guys do seem to like that sort of thing..." she sighed out.
They entered the maze garden where on the other side of it Yuuki and her group were traversing it.
~000~
Yuuki was dragging the Moonlit Black Cats everywhere while feeling slowly more and more annoyed every second.
"How do I activate sword skills again?"
"Ugh! These weapons are soooo heavy!"
"Can we have a break now?"
Yuuki rolled her eyes and wished she was in the real world playing basketball with her friends again. 'These guys are so weak. Half of them can barely fight.' Her calm dark eyes started scanning various areas of the maze. She noticed a few stone statues of lizard soldiers and focused on them. After walking with her group for a little, she noticed something. 'Wait. Did that thing just move?'
One of Keita's party members noticed this too and tried to stab it with his spear as Yuuki yelled. "Wait!"
As the spear set into the stone, the monster was a [Construct] and repelled any weapons not made of [Flawless Steel]. Sasamaru's spear shattered on impact and the [Stone Demon] stood up slowly along with its brethren.
Sasamaru watched helplessly as it drew its halberd and was on the verge of killing him before Yuuki dashed over with her incredible speed and pushed him aside. She narrowly avoided death by catching the weapon on her [Anneal Blade] and having the strength to push it away.
The [Black Cats] kept their distance and Yuuki breathed in deeply, seeing monsters twice her size approach.
She dodged a swipe from an axe and slashed so quickly Keita failed to see her attacks. Yuuki launched off her hands and did a jump kick, her heel sending the statue's chin flying upward. It staggered and its friends descended on Yuuki.
More stone constructs flew out of the hedge of the maze and tried their best to smash Yuuki, the girl proving much too fast to connect a strike to. She used her sword so skillfully that damage streak marks on her enemies were the only visible evidence that she had attacked. She spun about in attacks that were fast enough to not be blockable but not strong enough to tear any of the stone off the constructs.
She panted as she wiped some sweat off her cheek. 'They have too much damn health. I gotta get these idiots out of here before they die.'
Yuuki dodged another attack from a statue's sword and jumped as high as she could into the air. She landed on one's head and used her sword pierced through it as a lever to fly off it. As she kept soaring through the air, she dragged her sword out of the statue's head on her way out and the tip flew right out.
She parried an attack from one monster away from killing Sachi and yelled. "Follow me!" The stone soldiers ran much slower than them so they were able to get away quickly.
They hurriedly ran away following Yuuki's lead. Kirito, Leafa, and Asuna had heard the commotion and tried to make their way in the direction of Yuuki's fight with the stone lizard soldiers. The two groups ran right into each other and Kirito and Yuuki flew around a corner of the maze and collapsed into each other. Yuuki gasped along with Kirito's grunt of surprise when they bumped into each other and a small dust cloud built from the speed they picked up.
When the dust settled, Kirito realized that he had accidentally planted his hands on Yuuki's chest when they crashed together from running very fast. Yuuki smirked up at Kirito and Leafa's shocked reactions, cooing confidently. "Fufufu." she giggled. "You're so bold Kirito-kun..."
Kirito looked down to see his hands directly on Yuuki's front and stood up as Leafa took on a face of shocked jealousy. Asuna internalized her emotions that Leafa displayed however.
The stone soldiers caught up and Kirito put his hood up automatically after standing up off Yuuki. His weapon sheathes hissed when he drew his [Hidden Blades] and ran with Yuuki into action.
Kirito did a [Quintuple Stab] with his hidden blades glowing lime green, as he drove into a construct with everything he had. It was strong enough to punch through the stone and it stumbled back with multiple holes in its chest. Yuuki saw this as an opening and used Kirito's shoulder as a platform to jump and strike.
A whir was heard in the maze as Yuuki powered up [Drop Slash] and her [Anneal Blade] swung right through the weakened monsters neck, sending its head sailing off. The monster exploded into glass pieces and when Yuuki landed with her strike completed, three other constructs tried to smash her with different weapons.
Yuuki did a backflip as she had the reaction time to fly away before they finished their attacks and slashed away twice as she flew past a [Stone Demon]. Kirito drove upward with his [Cutlasses], using his swords like ice climbing picks to drive right through ones back as he flew up.
When he reached the top of the monsters back he drove the tip of his sword across the back of its stone head and did a backflip off it to land next to Yuuki. When he landed, he fist bumped her as the monster became defeated.
The remaining two monsters swung their massive hammers and struck places where the teens disappeared from. Yuuki and Kirito struck in unison from either side, slashing as they drove through their stomachs.
When they landed on either side, the [Stone Demons] tried again to crush Yuuki and Kirito only to find them attacking much quicker than they were. The monsters yet again took two direct blows to the body.
Kirito watched as Yuuki patiently rolled around more attacks and waited for the cooldown for her sword skills to wear off. When it finally did, Yuuki determined that she would use all of her remaining energy in a [Cyclone Attack], spinning upwards and around the monsters while dragging her sword through them multiple times. After landing with her attacks completed, the constructs froze before being defeated.
Kirito soon realized that his skill was soon rewarded by the system.
[Result]:
|Exp- 712|
|Col- 1009|
|Items- 1|
[You have improved your |Hidden Blades| skill with |Level 14 Assassination- Quintuple Stab|! Hidden Blades: 81/120]
[You have leveled up! Level 44-45]
Kirito checked his inventory and checked his new item, labeled: |Puzzle Key|. "Yeah guys, I got it."
When they returned to the first door at the very beginning of the room, Kirito did the honors of opening it after unlocking it. Inside was a simple room that held a note on a pedestal.
Kirito read it aloud to his friends. "Congratulations, you have completed the first of many puzzle rooms to come! At the very end should you find a reward worthy of your effort. The clue for the next puzzle room is: the law of club and fang."
'Fuck you Kayaba.' muttered Kirito in his head. 'Call of the Wild, really?'
"That's it!?" Leafa shrieked. "All that nonsense just to get nothing!?"
"This is an RPG Sugu," Kirito explained. "It's very rare for things to be granted instantly. However, if there are multiple rooms to get the reward, I'm guessing it should be really good."
Outside the dungeon, as Sachi explained to Keita that she was leaving his party to join Kirito's, Asuna and Kirito spoke to each other.
"So you really think they can go off on their own?" Asuna asked.
Kirito sighed. "Doubt it. But these are the first set of people we've had to protect." he turned to face her. "And they certainly won't be the last. It's our duty as the best players in the game to protect everyone we can."
"That's really honorable." Asuna smiled.
"It's our jobs," replied Kirito.
Sachi returned and joined Kirito's party, and they all set off to return to the inn to rest before continuing their adventures.
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I know almost everyone in the comments has been asking for me to keep updating and not let this story die but I've been feeling pretty unmotivated for a while for a lot of reasons, mostly because of a lot of trash I've just finished doing and some other bullshit. Plus I've really felt the need to continue my RWBY story.
If you guys are fans of Naruto and the Gamer, check out 'Naruto: The Game of Life' by SeerKing, it's quite honestly one of the best things I've ever read and it's a fun story. The only question I have for you Seer if you're reading this, is I want to know why you extended the prologue so much, seriously it took almost 20 chapters to start the first arc. This is not a criticism at all I'm just wondering why you did that.
I never request reviews and I'm still not requesting them, but the serious lack of them I've been getting hasn't helped my motivation on continuing this story. Mostly I've been at a loss for where the hell to take this story. I've started deviating from canon, and I'm so afraid of writing filler stuff that I realize that anything new I write is basically filler by default.
I have a clearly defined idea of where the story will end, but no idea how to get there? I've also realized that I'll be adding Sinon to the Harem by next chapter and if I add anyone else, Kirito's Harem will get too big and I'll have a hard time focusing on the romance properly. I've said this before and I will again, the larger a harem, the harder it is to write.
The few people I've seen who can manage large harems properly enough would be really skilled writers like SaintInfernalNeos, but I think that I am not nearly good enough at writing romance as he is, so I'll be scaling down the focus of the harem to who I have now and then Sinon.
Silica and Lisbeth will still be in it, but honestly, they won't have the main focus.
Anyone who wants to make a TV Tropes page for this would have my support, I've been waiting a very long time for someone to make one for this fic, but then again it's only 20K words so far so yeah I get why it wouldn't have one. It would also motivate me more to write as writing more stuff would allow for more tropes to be added to the page and for the page to be updated faster.
Sorry for not uploading for a while, I get how frustrating it can be to wait for a fanfic to update, mostly because my favorite one at the moment hasn't been updated in about three months. But again I was busy plus unmotivated for a lot of reasons.
Thank you all for reading. Peace out.