Hi everyone, SemiInsaneCentipede here with the next chapter of Player Killer Killer! I apologise that this chapter is shorter than the rest, but hopefully it s to the same standard. Anyway, I do not own SAO, only my OC's other than that, please enjoy!

Player Killer Killer

Chapter 7

Shiniki made the news of our discovery public by talking to a man named Diavel, who is apparently well-known and respected as a leader; I've never heard of him. "Good job!" Diavel tells Shiniki. "You're so brave to have gone up there all by yourself!" Shiniki laughs and blushes a little.

"Aw, thanks... hey wait, all by myself? What the...?" Shiniki spins a full one-eighty, looking around wildly. "Rin!" he called, the annoyance in his voice rising as he spoke. He sighed and just as I thought he was about to give up, he reached into a nearby bush and pulled me out of it by the hair. "Ow!" I complain.

"This is Rin; he did most of the work." Shiniki informs Diavel, who appears to be a little put off for some reason. "Nice to... meet you?" He says awkwardly. "Do you always hide in bushes?" He holds out a hand to shake, but I'm petrified, damn it Shiniki! Shiniki grabs one of my arms and lifts it up to shake Diavel's. "I'm sorry about him; his social ineptness isn't normally this bad."

"I'll take your word for that." Diavel replies, regaining his composure. Shiniki, if I could move right now, I would strangle you! But... maybe not in front of all these people... or maybe at all, I don't really want any weird looks. I think I'll just find an inn and curl up in bed instead.

We slept at an inn that night, it was one of the many in this town, I believe I've stated that this is the biggest town on the floor, so it's made to host a larger amount of people. The next morning a message box appeared informing us that a meeting was going to be held at the auditorium regarding confronting and defeating the boss. We made our way to the auditorium and... Well, when I say we found our seats, I really mean we sat down on some pale-yellowish steps that were arranged in a semicircle around a stage. Diavel was on the stage, pacing left and right, he kept looking from down at the stage, to the stands, and to his inventory, where I'm assuming he was looking at the time. More people piled into the auditorium, no-one seemed willing to sit too close to anyone else and seemed to spread out to avoid sitting next to others. This was completely fine by me, I didn't really want to sit next to them either, and I'm only here because Shiniki's here. My thoughts were interrupted abruptly by Shiniki's elbow ramming itself into my side. "Stop thinking that." He snaps.

"Thinking what?!" I ask in an annoyed tone.

"You're thinking antisocial thoughts." He states.

"Those are my normal thoughts!"

"Exactly." Shiniki tells me, shutting me up for a good minute before I have anything to say again, and when I did say something, it wasn't really significant. "What?"

When it was time for the meeting to start, Diavel thanked everyone for coming and started talking. It was a bit boring, so I'll give you a quick overview. Diavel was talking strategy until some prick interrupted him and started whinging about beta testers, which caused some unrest among the crowd, until a big muscle-bound man shut him up. Having cleared that up, the matters of the boss' weaponry was discussed and other minor details which I forget. The only part that stood out to me was when Diavel told us to get into groups of four. I didn't like that part. Teaming up would mean... I shuddered at the thought... social interaction. "Spend today preparing; contact friends and gather more to our cause." Diavel called out as the meeting came to an end. "We leave tomorrow morning, meet out the front of town at nine tomorrow."

Shiniki smiles evilly, and I know I'm not going to like whatever comes out of his mouth next. "C'mon Rin, find us some others to team up with." He jeers, poking me as he does so.

"You bastard." I curse, but he just snickers and pokes me even more.

"No escape this time." Shiniki taunts, but then it seems that he has calmed down; he adopts a more considerate tone. "Look, see that boy over there? He's all by himself, go and ask him, it's only one-on-one, you should be fine." He tells me, pointing to a boy on the other side of the auditorium as he does so. "Gah, alright, just this once." I concede, looking at the boy critically, he seems somewhat familiar. He's wearing a blue shirt, black pants, a light, silver chest plate and has a sword over his shoulder. I slowly approach him until I can read the name tag above his head: Kirito. Yes, I remember him; he was the one that ran away screaming.

I kept approaching until I was standing one step lower than him. "E-e-e-excuse me... Kirito." I stutter, but he doesn't react, I took a deep breath and try again. "Pardon me, Kirito." I say as clearly as I can, making to enunciate each word completely and correctly, but still he does not respond, heck, he hasn't so much as looked my way yet. Finally, he moves, but not because of me, he starts looking around randomly. "Crap, there's no-one around." He mutters, craning his neck to look for other people.

"Um, hello? I'm right here. W-want to join my friend and I?" I asked him, but despite being little over a metre away, he still doesn't show any signs that he has heard me, is this guy's awareness stat negative seven or something, I figure that he must be deaf, but surely he's seen me with all of his looking around. Stats can't even go into the negatives. Suddenly he starts scooting away from me and towards someone completely shrouded in a red cloak, making none of their other features discernable. "So, you're alone too?" He asks them. I don't even stick around to listen to the rest of the conversation; I'm already on my way back to Shiniki. "You were watching that, right?" I ask my friend.

"Yeah, I was, he didn't even look at you; and I could hear you from back here." He replies, bewildered.

"Hey! Shiniki... and Rin!" Someone calls out and I turn to see the speaker and find Diavel standing with the big muscle-bound man from before, whose name I could now read to be Egil, he has a giant double-headed battleaxe slung over his shoulder. "You two come here!" Diavel continues. "Join up with us." Shiniki and I jumped down to the stage where the other two were standing and accepted their party requests. "I look forward to fighting beside you two." Egil tells us in his deep, manly voice.
"Likewise." Shiniki replies cheerfully, shaking his hand while I simply nodded.

The remainder of the day was spent buying supplies like potions and... Well, just potions; I didn't need anything else. After that, Shiniki and I went back to the inn to organise our inventories and rest. I scrolled through my list of sword skills; there are only a limited amount of skills that can be equipped at a time, as there was only a certain amount of trigger positions available for certain skills. I kept mirage blade and blade rain, then added a skill called longsword to my list, it doubles the reach of my rapier for ten seconds, and to activate it I have to point my blade to the sky. I kept straight strike, which had been one of my first skills and is pretty self-explanatory; it is simply a more powerful thrust attack and was the one I had used to defeat Morna two months ago. I added flame point, which set the tip of my rapier on fire for seven seconds and to activate it I had to hold the hilt of my rapier in front of my face.

I sighed and fell back onto my bed and open my inventory to remove all my armour and weaponry, and then crawl beneath the blankets of the bed. Tomorrow I was to participate in the effort to defeat the first boss. This was to be done with more people than I've ever worked with before (which may or may not mean more than five), I was going to need my energy not to run and hide in a corner or a conveniently placed bush.

The next morning we met up with Diavel and Egil. Our group is the one to lead the march to the boss room. Okay, maybe march isn't the right word, it's more along the lines of a leisurely stroll. We walked through the forest on the way to face the familiar purple wooden doors. We entered the tower and ascended up the stairs, man I sure hope that all those Kobold Sentinels did not respawn, otherwise the earlier efforts of Shiniki and I would have meant nothing. Thankfully, they did not respawn and we continued our ascent to the top of the tower until we came to face a larger set of the doors at the entrance of the tower. Diavel turned around and gave everyone a speech, re-familiarising us all with the strategy, telling us to look out for each other, and that there may be a day when the strength of men fails, and today was not that day, until finally: "For freedom!" He finished with volume, receiving a roar of approval in return and one guy shouting: "America!" With the support of everyone behind him, Diavel turned around and pushed open the doors.

The doors crashed open and we all ran in, the room lit up and Illfang the Kobold Lord appeared, he/she was a large red ball with arms, legs and a canine-like head... hmm, what else is there... oh right, a massive metal implement for killing players, but that was about it, no other outstanding features. Enemies appeared between the boss and us, they looked like Kobold Sentinels, but bigger, their name tags identified them as Fell Kobold Sentinels, I'll just assume that falling over makes one more powerful. Illfang roared angrily and loudly and all the Kobolds charged at us. "So Rin," Egil asks "any tips for killing these guys?" I looked up at the big man; I'm not really sure how to tell him that there is not strategy.

"Uh, hit them and don't get hit...?" Egil looked like he was about to give me a sarcastic thanks, but Diavel interrupted him, yelling "CHARGE!"

With a great roar, we charged, and the army of players and Kobold met in the middle and metal met metal.