"Alright Maka, let's try this out."
The group from the DWMA walked through the first floor forest with blades sheathed, now was not the time to fight with sword, but souls. The only blades out were BlackStar's and Crona's, as they were the ones who actually understood the minor intricacies of sword fighting. Kid had finally figured out enough to recreate their souls into weapons for this game. Soul's words to Maka were from him seeing a dire wolf behind a bush, time to test it out. Maka nodded and walked forward with Soul."
Soul gripped Maka's hand, then accessed his power. The white hot rush of his energy flowed into his body and he formed it into a weapon, his skin melded into steel, bones into the spine of the scythe, and Maka held onto his hand, which was now a tight grip on the shaft of the weapon. Soul's transformation was complete.
The wolf looked up from where it had been crunching on some bloody stump of meat and saw only Maka standing in front of it. It growled a challenge and left its dead prey to remain on the ground. The wolf was all alone, its pack having left it behind after it came of age to leave. If the pack had been there, that low growl would've swiftly grown into a flash of teeth. However it played safe and began to circle around Maka and Soul.
Maka tracked the wolf around her, not letting it out of her sight. Soul's handle was light as the air around her and she spun the scythe deftly, the weapon humming as it traversed the air.
"C'mon you stupid mutt." Maka mumbled under her breath, patience running out as the wolf sized her up. Then as Maka turned to keep facing the wolf, a rock under her feet slipped and she stumbled slightly.
No matter how small the fault was, the beast sensed it and leaped at her. The blood enraged snarling emanated from the throat of the wolf as it flew through the air at Maka, who recovered quickly and was waiting for it.
Maka caught the wolf's leap with Soul's handle, then threw the wolf off to the side. The mangy wolf slid a few feet on the leaves of the forest, then got back to its feet. The fight wasn't at its end however, as Maka lunged with Soul facing the wolf. And the scythe cut straight through the wolf's muzzle to remove the lower jawbone from its hinge.
This wolf in particular fell to the ground with data leaking from only half of a mouth, it's HP depleted, death inevitable. It exploded into data particles. Soul turned back into his human form, and both him and Maka checked on their loot gains to discover that they both received the rewards.
"So it works." Kid said, walking up behind them with the rest of the group close behind. "Glad it does, otherwise that would've been a rather nasty surprise. That one's teeth were sharp."
Soul smiled devilishly, "I'm sharper."
"True, but is your data compatible? We just got that answered. Time to test out the other weapons. BlackStar? You and Tsubaki are next."
BlackStar stepped forward and Tsubaki flew into his hand in chainsickle form. The group continued deeper into the forest until they encountered a second wolf, this one in a pack, but had wandered slightly away. BlackStar and Tsubaki rushed off.
This wolf fell just as quickly, if not quicker, than Maka's. BlackStar lured it into attacking, let it leap at him, then moved aside to reveal a tree. The wolf, now stunned, was easy prey for Tsubaki's sharp edges. The chainsickle bit into the wolf to end it while it was fazed.
"Alrighty then, Crona, your turn."
"Okay."
The black bump at his neck turned into the creature known as Ragnarok. Ragnarok switched form from bump to creature to sword, and ran himself into Crona's hand without a word. He was still annoyed that there really was no candy in Aincrad.
The wolf pack was padding softly towards the group and Crona noticed them while they attempted to sneak around their packmate's body.
"Screech alpha"
The explosion that ensued absolutely decimated the wolf pack, leaving no survivors and Crona a nice pile of loot. Not to mention a level up from destroying all those wolves at the same time.
The group watched with eyes wide and mouths open as a Crona demolished enemies that may have given them trouble had they been using the weapons the game gave them.
"So how was that?" Crona asked.
"I think we need more enemies." Kid responded.
They scoured the forest for the next ten minutes, looking for enemies. Yet none were found, either someone killed them all, or they never respawned. They kept searching though, and a thud brought them to realize where an enemy was. The thud came from the east, and they followed the tracks left by it as it plodded through the forest. When they finally found the monster, their surprise was evident.
"What the hell." Liz mumbled, "that thing's massive."
"Liz!" Kid called out, "Patty! To me!" Liz and Patty turned themselves into the ranged weapons Kid so specialized in and Kid caught them as they fell into his hands. He reversed his grips into his traditional stance of a reversed holds.
He aimed down the sights and fired at the enemy.
The enemy looked at the blasts as they flew towards it, and walked right through the gun shots. The enemy itself was rather large, towering over everyone there and even reaching the middle branches of the taller trees. It looked somewhat like a pitcher plant, with a red fruit in the middle of where it's head would be. An HP bar showed up on the group's HUDs revealing the name of the monster. The Little Nepent.
The HP part of the enemy's statistics dropped by a small fraction, Kid's attacks doing next to no damage.
"Oh crap!" Kid yelled and dodged backwards as the Nepent flung itself at Kid, attempting to crush him. Kid's backwards roll took him into the middle of the DWMA group and they helped him to his feet as the Nepent got back up. The meisters nodded to their weapons, and everybody armed themselves. By either grabbing their weapon, or turning their arm into a weapon.
The nepent flung itself at the group again, and they scattered like leaves. Kid popped right back up from his roll and pummeled the Nepent with his barrage of bullets. BlackStar and Maka ran in as the Nepent tried to get up and slashed through its stubby legs with Tsubaki's enchanted sword form and Soul's scythe form. Crona hung back from the battle and waited until Maka and BlackStar retreated, then blasted the Nepent with screech beta.
The health dropped by an eighth. Barely rewarding the efforts of the DWMA students.
"I was forced to make the weapons scale their damage to our level. The higher level we are, the better our weapons are, so as it is, we are at a very low level right now and can't fight to our best!" Kid yelled out, "Thought you might want to know!"
"Could've used the info earlier!" BlackStar yelled back and slashed at the body of the Nepent as it rushed him down, then rolled to the left and let the Nepent crush a tree trunk instead. "YAHOO!" He jumped after rolling away onto the Nepent's back and slid Tsubaki down the spine of the plant.
The Nepent felt BlackStar there and turned, yanking him around and putting Tsubaki out of his grasp as he flew off of its back. Tsubaki remained there and was forced to return to human form and escape the Nepent before it crushed her. The Nepent looked down to see the girl run towards BlackStar, who had hit his head on one of the trees and was dazed for a moment. Then it charged at her, ground shaking as it crashed through shrubs and stumps to have a murderous line straight towards the unarmed Tsubaki.
"NO!" Maka screamed and threw Soul at the Nepent, but missed and Soul sliced into a tree behind the Nepent. He returned to his own human form and looked to Tsubaki, who was just turning to see the shadow of the beast towering over her. Tsubaki stumbled backwards onto her rear and held up her arms in futile protection.
Then the monster dissolved into code.
Standing where the monster was, was a boy dressed in the standard starter's outfit for SAO and holding his own blade. He sheathed the blade on a scabbard hooked to his back, and dismissed the loot gain screen.
"You guys okay?" He asked Tsubaki and BlackStar.
She looked up at him from where she sat, "Yeah, thanks. But... who are you."
The boy helped Tsubaki and BlackStar up, "My name's Kirito, nice to meet you."
