First and foremost, thank you to gustave.rahm01 and mernom for reviewing and following!
Also thank you GameLord The Hitman and Hasse360 for favoriting and following.
And finally, thank you al'verde for following!
If you don't write (or maybe if you're just not me, who knows), you wouldn't know how nice it is to get reviews, especially ones which aren't just pointless hate. There's something extremely nice about knowing that someone cared enough to write a review. Unless this story somehow gets insanely popular (happened with my first story, which was jackshit, somehow) and gets a ton of reviews, I will try to reply to every review which isn't pointless hate (a review like 'this story sucks' with no explanation for why you believe so will not get more of response than 'care to elaborate?' (you can imagine someone speaking in an extremely condescending tone for that) or 'go fuck yourself', so unless you get off on textual abuse or something, don't bother).
On an unrelated note, I haven't been so in to writing a story in a while (maybe that was why my first story was popular? Because I didn't feel like I was forcing myself to write (as opposed to just thinking of it)? That or, more likely, because it wasn't an OC story). It's great.
Fun fact: I just realized the original idea behind this story was a fem-KiritoxSinon (Sinon is best girl and KiritoxSinon is best pairing) yuri pairing... Yeah... like nothing of that is left now. Except 2 girls as main characters, an archer, and a dual-wielder. Not only is that gone, but so is the original scene I planned which made me change it from that...
Another thing that has been changed to some extent is how I planned HP to work. Originally, I planned it to be almost literally % of oxygen in brain. Like (blood pressure * oxygen saturation in blood) in the brain. That plus some offset, because you'll die before that number reaches 0. Unfortunately, this still isn't completely realistic because if it is low enough for long enough you will still die and it can be very low for a short time without you dying. Also doesn't take into account certain types of poisons, like neurotoxins, and doesn't work for creatures without blood, which is a huge portion of creatures in RPGs (elementals, undead, plant monsters, etc.).
Also geez is it hard to write a proper fight where each person has two swords. That's like... 6 things I have to keep track of. Each person's position and the position of each of the 4 swords. Sorry if the fight is a little hard to follow, just remember that 'right' and 'left' are going to be from the perspective of the person making the action.
"You said you needed my help with something? Why is Klein here? Why is Liz here? And who are they?" Nira asks Kirito.
"They are a small guild who we agreed to help, the Moonlit Black Cats. Klein is here because I was dueling him. You are here because we decided to have some demonstration duels for them, but after I beat Klein and Asuna I'm pretty sure they just wanted to see me lose, so they had me call you. Liz is here because Asuna invited her to watch our duel."
"So you want to duel?" Nira says.
"Yes."
"With pleasure," Nira says.
"First strike, but try not to actually hit the other person and just stop right before because it would hurt a lot," Kirito says.
"Alright," Nira agrees and sends a duel request.
As the duel timer counts down, Nira comments, "This is rather pointless from a teaching perspective, I mean, I highly doubt they'll be able to follow at all. Not to mention we're both dual-wielders, a highly uncommon style almost nobody is able to use, so even if they were able to follow, it wouldn't help them much."
"As I said, I'm reasonably certain Asuna and Klein just want to see me lose, or at least come close."
"First strike does favor me, as the faster player. Well, we haven't actually dueled since the beta test, so this'll be fun," Nira says with a smile and draws her swords.
As the timer counts down, Akari walks over to Asuna, Klein and his guild, and the other guild and sits down.
"Good luck," Nira says.
"Good luck."
The timer hits 0 and both of them charge forward, a motion difficult to follow on its own.
Nira swings in a downward cross with both swords, swinging her right sword from top left to bottom right and her left sword from top right to bottom left, causing Kirito to dodge right to avoid the strike with the left sword and knock the right sword aside with a horizontal swing with his left sword from left to right, followed by a parallel swing with his left aimed at Nira's chest. It would have been closer to stomach on someone his height.
Nira steps back to avoid the attack and swings up with her right sword. Kirito parries the attack with a downward swing of his left sword and swings his right sword back across to the left with a forward step. Nira slows the swing down with her left sword by twisting it up with her wrist and steps back, moving her left hand to her right with the momentum of the block before swinging it back down right to left while swinging her right sword up right to left. With an upward swing of his right sword and a duck he knocks Nira's sword high while swinging forcefully left with his left sword, overcoming Nira's right sword's swing with sheer force.
Nira leaps back a couple meters to reset. The entire exchange took considerably less than 2 seconds.
The entire audience, except Akari—who had seen them duel before, and could actually follow the exchange... approximately—and Asuna—who had seen them both going all out—, lets out a mixture of gasps and 'wow's. Klein had never had the chance to pay attention to either of them going all out, since during boss fights he was busy ordering his guild and fighting.
"You've gotten even faster," Kirito comments.
"So have you," Nira responds before jumping (metaphorically) back into action.
Kirito brings his left sword to the right to swing. Nira swings downward with both swords in parallel. Kirito blocks with his right sword, using his superior strength to mostly block the double handed blow and swinging his left sword across from right to left, redirecting the strike downwards since both of Nira's swords were high.
Nira responds by jumping into the air, pushing with herself up further and into a flip by pushing down with her swords, starting to spin round to land facing Kirito's back. As Nira comes down, Kirito turns the remains of his right to left swing with his left sword into a spin, following with a long sweep from his right sword.
Nira crouches down as she falls, falling beneath the two blows and swings at Kirito's legs with a horizontal cross, swinging right sword from left to right and left sword from right to left, as she stands up.
Kirito jumps over the low swings and raises his swords for a down swing and Nira leans forward with her right shoulder, pushing into Kirito's left leg and forcing him to land unstably with most of his weight on his right leg. She uses the moment of poor balance to swing back across from left to right with her left sword at his side, his weight being on that side stopping him from dodging and his swords too high to block, stopping just before the attack hits and falling into a right shoulder roll to dodge his downward swings.
"I win," she says as she stands up from her roll.
"Forfeit," Kirito says to the duel system.
A 'winner' icon appears over Nira's head.
"Damn it, you were so much easier to hit when you were taller."
"I also have the advantage in landing a single hit since I'm faster but each hit is somewhat weaker. In the beta we fought to half-death, eliminating that advantage. Being short isn't exactly an advantage over all, even in a fight, but it does have its perks," Nira says.
The two sheathe their swords and the audience starts clapping.
The entire fight had lasted less than 6 seconds, 2 of which were them just looking at each other.
[500 words for 4 seconds of combat (plus some more but those weren't actually combat). You happy mernom? This is hard and I probably messed up somewhere and had some impossible motion (like a left to right swing with a sword that should be on the right already or whatever).]
"That was amazing!" says the girl in the Moonlit Black Cats.
"I find it interesting how their duel lasted only a few seconds while my duel with Klein lasted over half a minute," Asuna says.
"Fights at low levels don't last long because nobody can block and even a half-assed swing will hit. Fights at mid to high level, especially between relatively evenly matched people last a decent time because everyone has good defense and there are exchanges of blows. Fights between them last seconds because while the exchanges happen, they just happen insanely fast," Akari says.
"Why didn't you use any sword skills?" asks the girl.
"Because, uh- what's your name?"
"Sachi," the girl says.
"I'm Nira. Anyway, for the purpose of this expiation I will break down sword skills into two categories, short single or double hit skills and long multi-hit skills. Both have their own reasons for not being used, however the biggest reason is in common between the two. Kirito and I have practically speaking the same skills. If I use a sword skill, I am locked into that path of motion. Kirito has memorized all the sword skills available to either of us at this point, as well as most of the skills available to other relatively common builds. This means Kirito knows exactly where I'll be for the duration of the skill, long enough for him to strike himself. This applies more to long skills than short skills. If I use [Horizontal], any player in the game may be able to predict the skill but that does not make it completely ineffective because it is fast and does not lock me in for long. It sacrifices flexibility for speed and power. If I use a long multi-hit skill, like [Deadly Sins]-"
"What's [Deadly Sins]?" one of the other members asks.
"Irrelevant, but it's a 7 hit [One-handed Sword] skill. The point is it is long. If I use a long multi-hit skill which can last several seconds, Kirito knows where I'll be the entire time, and even someone who doesn't know the exact motions can just jump back and avoid the attacks. As such, multi-hit skills only work against who are either stupid or very large. Non-humanoids and bosses mostly. Any humanoid will be able to avoid and likely counterattack, either during the skill or during the PMD—before you ask, PMD is [Post-Motion Delay], a freeze period which activates a short moment after a sword skill finishes—, and deal damage while you are defenseless. This is the first and greatest weakness of sword skills, and combat skills in general, in a duel. In short, they are predictable and they are inflexible, once you start, it is very difficult to stop and you suffer a penalty, which brings to the second reason, [Post-Motion Delay]. It activates shortly after you finish a skill and generally lasts anywhere between a small fraction of a second, like for [Horizontal], and a couple seconds, like for something like [Deadly Sins]. It activates at full length even if you cancel the skill. Following so far?"
She gets some nods.
"The first kind is alright in a slower duel, or if used well and knocks your opponent off-balance. Most monsters, humanoid or not, will be unable to counterattack in that time, and since it activates a moment after the skill you can move to block before then if they do, and so the boost in speed and power of the blow is useful. Our duel has one key features that makes the advantages null and the disadvantage huge. That is, we both move very fast. Especially compared to our [AGI] skills, so the sword skills do not give us a major boost of speed, so since our goal is a single hit and neither of us tends to break through defense with brute strength, it gives practically no advantage. That we move fast also amplifies the disadvantage. If your opponent attacks once every couple seconds, maybe striking twice in a row sometimes, then a fraction of a second isn't very big and boost in speed is huge. However if your opponent strikes multiple times per second, a fraction of a second of predictability plus a fraction of a second of immobility can be immediately fatal, especially since our duel is until first strike. This is obviously not worth it when the sword skill provides nothing but an unneeded boost in strength."
"The second kind is going to result in an almost guaranteed loss in a duel against practically any opponent who isn't so stupid as to try to tank a multi-hit skill. They will step out of range and they will counterattack the moment the skill stops and you will be defenseless. Never use them against a humanoid enemy unless they are very large. They should reserved for dealing burst damage to bosses or stupid creatures, finishing or stunning them so they can't counterattack. If either of us used on them in the duel, it would be over before the skill even finished since we both know the exact motions of the skills for this exact reason. To counterattack during the skill against anyone who uses it against us, be it a player in a duel or a humanoid monster."
"So short skills should be used when you can be reasonably certain that the enemy can't quickly counterattack and long skills should only be used against large or stupid enemies and only for burst damage when it can stun the enemy or kill it?" Sachi confirms.
"Yes. There is one final reason for our specific case. We were trying not to actually hit each other because that hurts like hell and instead stop our blows just before, which is far more difficult with sword skills. There is one exception which I really shouldn't be telling you since you wouldn't be able to pull it off."
"What?"
Nira looks at Kirito, who nods.
"Combos. A combo is a chain of sword skills. Ordinarily, you are frozen after the skill. However that is not exactly true. You are not frozen, you simply can't make yourself move. But a sword skill can. If you can activate a sword skill in the brief moment between completion of sword skill and activation of PMD, you will effectively cancel the first PMD. This is called a cancel. If you can chain this together, you get a combo. Chaining short skills has all the power of a multi-hit skill with the two main disadvantages practically nullified; the PMD will simply be the PMD of the last skill you use; and you have the flexibility of shorter skills, choosing a new one at each step. However since you have only a short time to start your next skill, you are limited on the skills you can use after a given skill, so you still lack a good deal of flexibility, and it is easy to mess up."
"In most duels, a good combo will be an incredibly powerful tool, allowing you to chain powerful attacks while only suffering a short PMD at the end. In a duel like ours however, if we ever broke combo without a large advantage, we would still lose due to PMD. Even we would be unable to maintain a combo for an entire duel... with just one sword."
"So with both you could?" Klein asks. He knew about combos, however...
"With two swords you can chain combos to near infinity, position not only your next skill, but also the skill after that in each free period, giving you much more freedom with skills and much more leeway. Don't try though. You will cut off your own limbs and even if you don't, there is a reason why there aren't many dual-wielders."
"Can you demonstrate?" the leader of the Black Cats asks.
"I guess we could..." Nira says, realizing that it would probably involve the duel ending with one of them actually getting hit. A first strike duel in a safe zone meant that you would be healed almost immediately after being hit, but it wouldn't stop it from hurting.
Kirito sighs.
"I feel like I have a good chance of winning this, so let's go," he says.
The duel is practically a light show, streaks of light through the air trailing the blow and flashes of light with ever clash, accompanied by loud clangs of metal on metal. Strike met strike over and over and over again, several times per second. Even their own conscious brains could hardly follow the attacks and they were both running on autopilot. Strike after strike after strike. Over and over and over again.
Both of them was slowly losing HP from bad parries or blocks. The duel was likely to end with Nira getting to half HP (first strike duels end when someone reaches half HP even if nobody landed a proper hit) and Kirito having just ever so slightly more.
Strike, parry, deflect, block, strike, strike, dodge, parry, strike, strike.
An endless storm of light.
"The game must feel so abused," Akari comments.
Asuna glances at her. "What do you mean?"
"They're abusing the hell out of that mechanic with their unrelenting combos of arbitrary length," Akari answers, "Of course I don't blame them, in this death game anything goes, but I'm reasonably certain that Kayaba did not intend that to work that way. Though, once again, if Kayaba didn't intend it, all the more reason to do it."
"Oh, I see," Asuna says, without looking away from the fight this time.
A short while later, though those moments seemed to stretch on, Nira's HP hits 50% and Kirito wins... with like 54% HP himself, which means if time had run out it would have been a tie (within 5% of each other (as in like 5 HP if everyone had 100, not 5% of 50%, which would be 2.5%).
Both of them practically fall over. "My arms hurt," Nira whines at Akari.
"Should have thought of that before you decided to show off," Akari answers playfully.
It wasn't surprising that Nira's—and Kirito's—arms hurt. After all, sword skills or no, she did feel all those blocks and parries and the recoil from her own attacks being blocked or parried.
"Don't ever try to replicate that, you'll just hurt yourselves," Asuna says to the Black Cats.
"It happened to plenty of people during the beta test. When you see that, it seems very appealing to be able to do it yourself. They ended up with missing limbs or just dying outright, which wasn't a big deal," Akari adds.
"Oh don't worry, it seems completely impossible," the leader says.
"Hey Kirito," Nira says.
"Yeah?"
"That was fun. Well, the first one anyway-"
"You're just salty that you lost."
"-but the second one too. We should duel again sometime soon."
"You're on whenever."
"Akari!" Nira calls.
Akari walks over. "Yeah?"
"Help me up," Nira says with a playful smile on her face.
"Oh no way, you brought this on yourself," she says teasingly, before extending a hand to Nira a second later anyway.
Mernom complained about the lack of epic fights. I hope that qualifies (the first one, I mean).
And I really am sorry that half the chapter is a literal lecture. I got a little carried away and before I knew it, the chapter had reached my usual chapter length, so I'm ending it here and I'll just continue in the next chapter.
Also, this officially qualifies as my third longest story, in chapters (fourth in words). If you count my first 3 'stories' which were all one actual story in 3 parts as 1. And I'm currently maintaining an average rate of a chapter every two days, which I'd say is good enough, even if it is unscheduled.
Thanks for reading, please tell me what you thought and follow/favorite!