Sunday, December 11th, 2022, 7:30 P.M.
I tapped my foot impatiently while burning holes in the inn door with my stare. Since it was fairly late in the evening the inn was filled with other players, so Asuna and I both had our hoods up. Kirito had been grinding non-stop all day to get his weapon Skill to 100—Asuna had been with him earlier, but she had had enough fighting for one day. He had messaged me that he would meet up with Asuna and me "soon."
That was over an hour ago.
"What's taking him so long?" Asuna whined.
I sighed and looked up at our health bars. Kirito wasn't in serious danger or anything; his health hadn't gone below 75% this whole time. I would have thought he would be done by now, but apparently I was wrong.
I turned my gaze back to the door. "Hm…"
"What is it?"
"Well, you said that you think Nezha originally wanted to be a fighter, right?"
Asuna nodded. "Yes, since he's named after a hero like all of the other Legend Braves. I thought it was kind of strange how obscure his name is compared to the others, though."
Indeed, everyone in Nezha's party was named after some sort of hero. Literature wasn't exactly my best subject, but apparently they were mostly well-known names: Orlando, Beowulf, Cuchulainn, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu. Nezha's namesake was a bit more obscure but after reading Argo's info on it we figured it out: it was the Western transliteration of the original Chinese name. Nezha was a young boy god in Chinese folklore, certainly befitting the theme of the Legend Braves being named after heroes. We hadn't noticed the connection ourselves because the name is read as Nataku in Japanese.
"Well, why did he become a smith? You and Kirito never saw him fighting along with the others, right?"
"Huh…"
We sat in silence for a few moments as Asuna thought.
"I don't know. But, there's one other thing that's been bugging me…"
"Hmm?"
"Nezha… doesn't seem like a bad person." Asuna shook her head. "He just doesn't come across to me that way, and his apologies felt genuine. The way he admires a weapon before stealing it, too… it's almost like he's mourning the loss. Are the other Legend Braves forcing him into this, or is there something else…?"
"…"
As I sat there pondering Asuna's words, Kirito entered through the inn door. He walked over to our table and sat down, pretending like nothing was wrong.
"What the hell took you so long?"
"Er, well, I uh, got a little sidetracked… Plus the grinding took a bit longer than I expected."
"Geh, whatever. You got «Quick Change», right? Let's go up to your inn room, it's kinda crowded down here."
We did as I said; once we got in Kirito's inn room, he unsheathed his sword and sat down on the floor in roughly the same posture that Nezha did while he was working.
"Ah, come to think of it, you two never told me exactly how Nezha pulled this whole thing off. How did he make the swap so unnoticable?"
"Oh…" Kirito trailed off. "Basically, he used the bright flare from the furnace when he tossed the upgrade mats into it."
"Mats…?" Asuna asked, confused.
"Short for materials."
"Okay," I nodded. "And the weapon breaking was… Oh! I did that once by accident, early in the beta. I forgot about that. A weapon with no upgrade attempts left will always break if you try to upgrade it, right…?"
"Yeah. Wait, how did neither you nor the smith notice that it was spent?"
"I dunno."
Kirito rolled his eyes. "Well, let's see here…" He opened up his menu and pressed the Quick Change button below his equipment; he must have already set it up to pull another sword from his inventory. The Anneal Blade in his hand flashed and almost instantly a different sword was there. Normally to change your weapon you would have to select the hand that your weapon was equipped to in your equipment menu, choose the option to swap your weapon, and choose the weapon from the list that pops up. With Quick Change it was just a single button, and there were numerous ways to customize it.
I sat up, surprised. "Hey, that was barely more than a blink. That'd be really easy to miss with the forge flaring up like it does."
Kirito nodded. "At this point it's pretty clear… First, he gets the weapon from the customer to upgrade it, and since he's holding the weapon it counts as equipped for him, even if he's not the owner."
"Right. And you can set Quick Change to pull a weapon of the same type from your inventory, right?" I questioned.
"Yep. He swaps it to a spent weapon using Quick Change, covering up the small flicker with the bright flash from him throwing the upgrade materials into his furnace. The spent weapon breaks, and it looks like the person's weapon broke… It's actually really smooth."
"Don't go praising him," Asuna warned. "Well, that's it then, right? All we have to do now is figure out how to confront him."
"Yeah…" I mumbled. "Well, he might recognize you two, right? I've never met him, so I wouldn't raise any suspicion. Ah, well, Kirito's the one with Quick Change, so he'd have to do it regardless, I guess."
Kirito shrugged. "So, ask him for an upgrade and once the replaced sword's broke, use Quick Change to pull mine back?"
"Yep. Er, I mean, as long as you're fine with it."
"It's fine, I know I'll get my sword back. He'll recognize me, though, so I need a disguise…" Kirito opened his menu and started looking through his items.
"No, you're not wearing that dumb bandanna you had the other day. It wouldn't work, anyways."
"H-Hey, I never said anything about that… I like that bandanna, though…"
"Why?"
"... Moving on," Kirito said, oh-so-expertly changing the subject, "we'll need something that covers my face. I guess a full helmet would work, but we'd need an armor set to go with it so it doesn't look weird…"
"The helmet would mask your voice as well, so that's perfect. The basic plate armor you can buy at the shop isn't too expensive, right?"
"Yeah. I'll go get that now, and get ready. You two should find somewhere you can watch from without getting noticed." Kirito stood up and headed for the door.
I held up my hand to stop him. "Ahh, hold on a sec."
"Hm? What is it?"
"Should we contact Argo about this? All she knows is that we looked into the Legend Braves, right?"
"Mmh…" Kirito rubbed the back of his head in frustration. "We can meet up with her after I reveal myself to Nezha. I'll get going now."
After Kirito left to go buy the armor for his disguise, Asuna and I went back out to the plaza and looked around at the buildings. One building at the corner of the plaza caught our eye; it was near Nezha and provided a good view from a window on the second floor. Fortunately the building was empty, so we didn't have to worry about any NPCs or players bothering us. The room with the window even had a couple of chairs for us to sit in.
Once Kirito revealed his true identity to Nezha and retrieved his sword using Quick Change, Nezha shrivelled up pitifully, like he was trying to hide from the world. Asuna jumped down from the window, and Kirito told Nezha to stand up.
The three of them started a conversation, only parts of which I was able to pick up on over the noise in the plaza: Nezha planned to kill himself if anyone found him out, and that Asuna's and my cloaks, rather than hiding us, had become a sort of identifying mark. So much for people not noticing me.
I was about to jump down as well, but a I noticed a shadowy figure standing out against the evening light in the corner of my eye. On the rooftop of the building across the road from mine was a man in a rough black poncho. He was probably using Hiding, so I averted my gaze to prevent his Skill's effectiveness readout from dropping. I was surprised that I had even spotted him. He was watching the three on the ground intently, so he probably didn't notice his Hiding readout drop when I first looked at him.
I quietly walked through the building to another room, which had a balcony attached. This room was closer to the mysterious man, but because of his poncho I still couldn't see most of his face. I could see a small grip poking out of the side of his poncho—likely a dagger. It could be the Braves member Enkidu since he used a dagger according to Argo's information. I had no way of knowing, though.
What do I do… he's going to have high Agility, and possibly Sprint too, so if I jump over there he could still run and probably keep pace with me… I guess I have to give it a shot.
I stepped out onto the balcony and jumped with all my might. Immediately the man stepped back in surprise and quickly turned around to run. I landed on the spot where he had been standing and started chasing after him. The buildings in Taran, like in the rest of the towns of the second Floor, had flat roofs that were mostly the same height, so they were easy to run across.
I followed the man to the edge of Taran; he continued past the city's short wall and started running atop the trees of the forest that filled the upper edge of the Floor.
"Tch." I stopped at the edge of the last building. The guy was just as fast as me, and I didn't trust myself to run on top of the trees that well. Even if I was able to catch him, I wouldn't be able to get any answers out of him. I turned around and made my way back to the central plaza. Kirito and Asuna were nowhere in sight, so they had probably gone somewhere to sit down.
I walked into the inn, drawing a few stares from the players inside—my hood had fallen when I was running, not that it apparently made any difference at this point. I did my best to ignore them and looked around for Kirito and the other two. I couldn't spot them, so my next guess was Kirito's inn room.
I walked up the stairs and to Kirito's room; the three of them were there, and Argo had shown up as well. The four of them were currently gathered around a table, Nezha on one side and Kirito and Asuna on the other. Argo was leaning against the wall.
Kirito turned around to face me. "There you are. What the heck was that about?"
"I'll explain in a second. Could you fill me in on what I've missed, first?"
Kirito nodded. "Well, I'll skip the unimportant details... First of all, Nezha has a «FNC»."
A «FullDive Nonconformity». Put simply, the NerveGear wasn't interfacing with the user's brain properly. The issues brought on by it vary… at worst, the NerveGear would become completely unusable.
Although, considering our situation, that would actually be the best case.
"Ehh, for real? What's it causing?"
"... I-I have no depth perception," Nezha said, still somewhat confused by my sudden arrival.
"That's… fatal, if you were to try to fight. I see now why you became a blacksmith."
"Well, I did try to fight, at first. I used throwing weapons… that's how I have Quick Change. But it even makes smithing difficult." His voice was trembling slightly. "I just didn't want to be a burden to the others…"
"«Thrown Weapons», huh… well, I guess you wouldn't need to judge distance then. But keeping ammo stocked would be expensive… and once you run out, it's useless."
Nezha nodded.
Kirito leaned forwards slightly. "So, whose idea was the scam? Was it you, or your leader…?"
"Not me or Orlando-san… it was none of us."
"Then who...?"
"When we were talking about me becoming a smith one day, a… strange man came up to us. He had a weird way of talking, and he was wearing a black cloak, kind of like a poncho…"
"Ehh!?" I slammed my hands down on the table, startling the others. "A poncho? Are you sure?"
"Y-Yes, definitely."
"Damnit…"
Kirito looked at me, confused. "R-Rei, what's wrong?"
"The reason I took off running across the roofs was because a man in a black poncho was watching you three from there. I chased him to the edge of Taran but he kept running along the trees outside the town, which I wasn't willing to risk. I should've kept following him…"
Kirito sighed. "Nothing we can do about it now. Anyways, he's the one that came up with the scam? What did this guy want from you in return for telling you?"
"... That's the weirdest part… he didn't ask for anything."
"What? No cut of the profit, no nothing?"
"Nothing… When he showed the scam to us, we were really against it at first. But when we told him that, he just… laughed, like nothing mattered…"
"He just… laughed?"
Nezha nodded. "It had this bizarre, pleasant tone to it… After that, it really did seem like nothing mattered. What did he say… something like, 'If the game's system didn't want you to do something, then wouldn't it prevent you from doing it?'"
"That's crazy talk!" Asuna shouted as she shot up from her chair. "That's… that's like saying you could just do anything to get in the way of what others are doing, completely against any proper manners! And since Safe Areas mostly only cover towns—" She shut herself up once she realized what she was saying.
I walked over to the window and looked across the roofline of the plaza. The poncho man had definitely made himself scarce; he knew we were onto him now. The four continued their conversation behind me, but I was too lost in my thoughts to pay attention.
He explained a way to steal people's weapons, without any profit for himself… why? That doesn't benefit him at all. Depriving the players of their weapons will only make us stuck in here longer… is he just sowing discord for the sake of it? Does he have another purpose? Maybe he wants to slow us down?
As much as I hated to consider it, it wasn't impossible. Did that poncho-wearing man not want to return to the real world? Did he consider his life here to be better?
What if there were others like him?
A sudden bang from behind me startled me out of my thoughts; I turned around to find that Nezha had slammed his head on the table.
He was probably in despair. He had no way to atone for what he did… we were preventing him from killing himself, and since he would have sold off the victim's weapons there would be no way of recovering them. He definitely didn't have the Cor to pay them back, either.
Even apologizing was no good. While plenty of people would see reason, I knew many wouldn't by firsthand experience. And if they were told the truth, how would those players want to punish him?
Kirito suddenly spoke up. "Nezha."
Nezha slowly rose his head. "Huh?"
"What level are you?"
"U-Um… 10."
"Three Skill Slots… the base «Smithing» Skill and Thrown Weapons… what's the third Skill that you have?"
"«Inventory Expansion»… why?"
"Hmm…" Kirito opened his inventory and materialized an item—a large metal ring, its outer edge sharpened. "If I told you there was still a way you could fight, would you be willing to give up on smithing?"
Monday, December 12th, 2022, 10:00 A.M.
"Kirito, your weapon Skill is at 100 now, right?" I turned around to walk backwards, so I could face him.
"Yeah."
"Aa-chan, what's yours at? I'm probably a bit behind both of you right now, since I haven't been grinding as much…"
"I got to 92 yesterday…"
"Guh…" Mine was currently 86. "Well, I'll worry about it when we get to the labyrinth. Wonder if they've gotten to the quest yet…"
The metal ring that Kirito had produced yesterday was a chakram. He had said that he had gotten it as a rare drop off of one of the tauruses in the labyrinth. It was a special thrown weapon that would return to the wielder after thrown, which was perfect for Nezha's situation. The kicker was that it required Martial Arts in addition to Thrown Weapons. Kirito's proposal yesterday was that Nezha would give up his smithing Skill, freeing up a Skill Slot for Martial Arts. Nezha had gladly accepted.
Earlier this morning, Argo had left to take Nezha to the Martial Arts quest. Argo was also going to go talk to the rest of the Braves, to explain the situation to them. We didn't have any reason to go with them, so instead we were headed for the labyrinth to get some more progress done.
"Ah, I just remembered. Kirito, have you ever tried equipping more than one weapon?" I asked. "I've come up with an idea since we've been dealing with equipment ownership lately."
"Eh, I tried dual wielding in the beta once. All I remember is that Sword Skills didn't work, so I gave up on it pretty quickly."
"Hm. I'm not that interested in dual wielding, especially since I can use Martial Arts anyways. Did you happen to get a «Numb Dagger» from the labyrinth?" The dagger in question was a rare drop from the tauruses of the labyrinth that had a small chance of stunning the target.
Kirito shook his head, but Asuna spoke up. "Oh, I think I got one of those…" She opened her inventory and scrolled through it. "Ah, here it is… I was actually planning to give it to you at some point, it seems useful."
She materialized the dagger and tossed it to me. It was noticeably lighter than my Wolfswipe, mostly due to its shorter length. I put it in my inventory and went to my equipment window to equip it to my right hand.
"Well, it does let me equip it…" I equipped the dagger and it appeared sheathed at the default position, on the left of my waist. I drew both daggers and took my usual stance, albeit a bit adjusted. It felt a little weird. "You said it didn't work, but I'll try to be sure… I'm going to try to use a Sword Skill, so stand back."
The two moved back to watch from a safe distance. I got in the position for a simple Slice, but it wouldn't activate. I tried it with the Numb Dagger as well, but since it was in my off-hand I wasn't sure if I had the starting motion right.
"Well, that's expected. Can I at least have both equipped with only one unsheathed…?"
I sheathed the Numb Dagger and tried to use Slice again, and it worked.
"Alright! That's perfect."
Out of curiosity, I tried the same with my right hand instead of my left. It was a bit difficult, but I managed to get the Skill to activate. I wasn't planning to train with my off-hand at the moment, but it would probably be a good idea to at some point.
"Hmm… well, for now I can do this." I moved the Numb Dagger so that it was sheathed at the back of my waist and accessible to my left hand.
Kirito finally understood what my goal was. "Ahh, I get it! That way, you can have a backup weapon, or one that you would use for a specific situation."
I nodded. "Exactly. You could do it with swords as well, but that would be difficult due to their size… this only really works well with daggers or any other small weapon. Heck, if it's possible to equip stuff by just materializing it and strapping it on, I could have a third dagger…"
I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible; the system granted a lot of leniency in its mechanics across the board, which was pretty necessary due to the nature of the game.
"Don't go too overboard."
"Yeah, whatever. Let's get going."
"Hmm…" Asuna lifted a finger to her chin. "You said you're a bit behind us on your weapon Skill, Rei-chan… Maybe it'd be good for you to take point today."
"Ick, against those tauruses? No way. I'll make up for it later."
Kirito chuckled. "Whatever you say. Don't blame me when you fall too far behind."
Author's Notes
Hey everyone! Once again, thanks for reading. The story hit a thousand views a while back, which is awesome. Onwards and upwards!
Man, I'm sorry this hasn't gotten released sooner… I had said in the previous AN that the chapter was pretty much done, but it's gone through quite a few changes since then. On top of that, I've been putting off posting it, for a couple of reasons. Mostly laziness and me being too much of a perfectionist.
Pointless excuses aside, it's here now, so all is good.
That's all for now. Take care!
