~First Dungeon~
Most people still were unable to narrow down were the dungeon might be, since there seemed to be some sort of camouflage to it, making it impossible to see until close. Since Ana had been combing them steadily across the fields and islands of the first floor, they were easily able to find the dungeon on their third day within the game. Ana had an estimate that it might take much longer if other people were reacting more along the lines of those who trapped themselves in the Town of Beginnings, because of their fear to work on themselves into becoming capable of fighting forward up through the game. Because of how well levelled the group had become, they were totally ready for the optional mini boss which showed near the entrance to the dungeon. It was easy to enter the dungeon without alerting the mini boss.
It was actually quite a good thing that other people hadn't found the dungeon before them, because while Kirito started the pull of the mini boss, Ana was quickly able to notice the massive jump in difficulty from the other boss monsters of the floor. The elder kobold warrior they encountered which was assumed to be a dungeon gateway boss, was also one of the larger monsters they had encountered. This monster was taller and more muscular than other kobold, and didn't follow the usual patterns of kobold. Ana had to heal Kirito a few times with items before she switched with her.
The boss monster was a fast attacker, so it would be difficult for people who didn't learn the patterns first to fight. Kirito was having a very difficult time, and Ana was receiving a call from Ryra. The cause for the call would obviously be that Kirito's heart rate had shot up. Of course. No matter how much Kirito was working on her calming exercises, she was still facing a frightening situation that could potentially kill her. It wasn't so bad during the beta, because death simply sent the players back to their last registered safe point, which would have been the Town of Beginnings on the first floor. This time however, there was no reviving. Everything had to be considered dangerous.
When Ana switched with Kirito, she managed to stun the boss monster, and she shoved it back enough that Kirito would be out of the effective sweeping range of the attacks. She was fluid in her dodging, sometimes low, sometimes above. Sometimes just a step to the side was all it took. She motioned for the rest of the party into their positions and had them start putting damage out on it. The issues with the boss monster compared to the other floor boss monsters in the fields, was that the current boss had awkward attack patterns, for one. It was also nimble and fast, dodging attacks as much as throwing them out. It would grow more intelligent the longer a battle would draw on, but Ana wouldn't let the battle drag on. The boss also had instead of the usual two health bars, three. It was more defensive as well with the armour that it wore. It didn't have as many exposed weak points.
Still, Ana wasn't pushed to using any of the programmed skills within the game because of the strengths of the kobold warrior. She snaked her sword in like a needle in and stabbed through the weaknesses of the kobold, the weaknesses giving way to the bleeding effect, draining the kobold. It only became easier to attack the kobold when she used her attacks to weaken and remove the armour from the kobold. Before the boss monster was down one full health bar, all of its armour was gone. Unfortunately, the loss of its armour gave way to the monster moving even faster. Thankfully, Ana had assumed it would be the case, and she adjusted to the speed increase as smoothly as if she was growing faster with chopping vegetables with a knife on a cutting board. The weaknesses of the monster exposed, the health dropped more rapidly. Because of the more rapid drop, only a minute later into the flurry of strikes on the monster brought it to the first additional mechanic. The new mechanic made the monster leap back, and attempt to switch to another target.
For the first time, Ana used a skill. She only used the sonic leap to close the distance though and keep its attention on her. She unleashed another flurry of staggering attacks, making it easy for the others to try and get in their attacks and diminish the monster's health even faster.
The draining of the health finally reached the last fifth of the total health, and the final mechanic was revealed. The boss dropped his weapon, and his claws extended. It was a whole attack pattern change completely. However startling a change of mechanics it was, it was within Ana's expectations, and she was thankfully more knowledgeable about how to dodge an unarmed kobold. She danced between the swipes and strikes of the kobold's hands and claws, her sword easily carving through the hands and making them weaker. Everyone contributed their best skills, and the last of the health dropped. The boss didn't even make a dying animation, exploding into the data fragments and disappearing into pixels of the environment while still standing and staggered from the tempest of attacks. It was truly a heavy realization to Kirito and Sinon, that they were able to see a boss monster so heavily suppressed. Not once had it landed a hit on Ana, no matter how close it managed to get with its blade, hands or claws. There was only a short amount of time in the entirety of the fight that the monster wasn't under her control when she switched in to main tank.
Everyone was exhausted however. Such a fight was definitely going to drain most people. A glance at their hunger gauges told them just how tired they had become, their stamina depleting into their hunger from how much they pushed themselves. Ana passed out to everyone their lunches, and she sat down beside the entrance door to the dungeon.
Still, Ana hadn't opened her eyes during the fight. The others had to wonder about Ana. Would she be even more terrifyingly powerful if she opened her eyes, or would they only impede her ability? They all had their eyes on her as they sat down and slowly ate their sandwiches. Ana having finished her sandwich first, she checked around them, finding many gathering items. There were many herbs, and there were many small ores which could easily be picked up beside a mineral outcrop. The mining aspect reminded her that she would need to make herself a pickaxe to harvest her own materials. There had been very few kobolds they encountered so far which held metal weapons, and their metal materials couldn't be used unless many were gathered to make one simple low levelled craft. It was...annoying. That all smithing was locked behind either having pure metals locked behind mining, or wasteful amount of time poured into fighting the right type of monster for those drops.
She would pour the metals of the kobold drops they had accrued into a pickaxe for the very first craft, so that she could gather more useful ores and minerals straight from the normal gathering method. Then, she would work on Asuna's rapier and everyone's armour. For the time being, it ashamed her that they were all still in the beginner level gear they all started with. She should normally be more prepared for a situation and not need to be concerned about her party when they would eventually be going out on their own without her to gather her materials from monsters or gaining their experience from levelling.
Ana sighed after gathering all of the materials around them, and she recalled how disappointing all of the boss monster drops had been so far. She approached the entrance of the dungeon, and waited for everyone to gather up with her.
The situation inside of the dungeon was...well, it was more relaxed than fighting the monster outside of it, but not by much. Usually, there were a few monsters, and all of the monsters were kobolds. Different variations, and while they weren't too difficult as far as their mechanics and attack patterns being the same as the other kobolds they had met on the floor, they hit much harder, so Ana either had to tank the whole groups and let everyone else focus on eliminating one after another, or she would be spending a lot of the healing items on keeping everyone alive.
With disappointment, they left the dungeon before progressing far enough to even discover a treasure chest. When they returned to the inn they had been frequenting, there was a crowd around Argo's bench from the morning where she had been found sleeping. When the group reached close enough, they could see that it was mostly a gathering of many players who had ventured from the Town of Beginnings and were looking for life saving information before they would set out and try their hands at fighting the monsters. Argo was having a difficult time, because some of the topics were basic MMO gaming knowledge. It was insulting to hear those questions asked, from an MMO gamer perspective. Kirito walked through the crowd as best she could to stand beside Argo, and shouted for everyone to be quiet and make a line. The rest of the party organized everyone, and for the odd person who was too impatient after waiting a long while, whatever they did know and they could provide to the people in line, they told. Well, aside Ana's text boxes she sent to the recipients.
From food, to potions, to levelling zones...every kind of question was asked. Finally, at one point, someone asked if anyone had found the dungeon. Kirito answered that question.
"We found the dungeon today. We'll provide the map information tomorrow morning to get there."
Ana's text boxes continued the speech and Kirito stopped explaining, embarrassed at the contents of the text boxes because she knew how dangerous it was to even so much as mention the dungeon to the people so desperate to get out of the game.
"The dungeon, however, is incredibly difficult. Unless going in with a very skilled and developed team, I highly recommend against attempting the dungeon. There is a boss guarding the entrance of the dungeon itself, which was difficult enough for our team. We are still at a point where it is difficult to work on our gear, for everyone. Even with a larger, well developed raid team, it would be difficult to proceed through the dungeon. No matter how good or decent one may be at leading a raid team, no matter how skilled a player of usual MMO games, this is a physical challenge which most people here won't have the stamina to face. I greatly urge for everyone to train and become stronger before attempting the dungeon."
The crowd went silent when they all received their text boxes from her. The rest of the team with Ana grouped together and showed their determination to stand by Ana's words. They were still exhausted and sore from attempting the dungeon. It would be the best place for them to level together, but they would not be levelling there the next day when Ana would be taking it off in order to get a good start on progressing the crafting possibilities. They definitely needed their new upgraded gear before attempting the dungeon again. The next best training ground for them without Ana, would be an area somewhat close to the dungeon, which would help them in noticing and deterring people from recklessly attempting the dungeon without being prepared.
Everyone realized how serious the situation was, but when the map information instead of being passed around to everyone, was passed to Argo alone, there was some distress in the crowd. They only needed to buy the information from Argo to find the dungeon, but the price for it would obviously be expensive, so to make sure the people at least invested the time and care into earning the money to reach the dungeon. They should be at least some level of prepared.
There were other ways to get to the dungeon without paying, but none of that was on their minds. They were so distracted by the fact that Ana gave Argo the map information, they couldn't think of another method at the moment. Ana and the others left for the inn, and Argo was relieved of her massive crowd of information seekers.
Ana kept it on her mind, different ways for normal people to get through the dungeon without a very prepared team leading them. She tried figuring out a way to make it possible to clear the dungeon soon, but it seemed to her the answer would take a while. Getting people geared enough that they would take less damage, and have enough healing items distributed to cover any losses of health. She was not good enough with people to teach all of those people. She was surprisingly getting better at handling being around Asuna, Kirito, Leafa and Sinon, but other people were still a way off from being comfortable with them. She needed to work at her anxiety. It was one unchanging fact of her life which got in the way of a lot of things, past and present. Presently, it would get in the way of any floor boss battles they might face in the near to distant future. She imagined that most floors would require being at least a certain level of prepared and having a larger amount of people in raids to handle the weight of how difficult some of the bosses would pose. Floor bosses after all, would definitely be a lot more challenging than any other monster on the floor.
Dinner time came and passed. Ana puzzled over how to make it easier, and the only solution she could come up with, was to teach each of her current team how to lead a team like herself, how to handle teaching and dodging the patterns of the monsters, so that they could teach and ready others for the larger scale battles. She wouldn't know how immense the challenge of later floors would be until they would face the floor boss. From knowing how difficult the first floor boss would be, she would be able to gauge how much effort would be needed to put in for the further floor bosses. Perhaps having her alone around inside of the game wouldn't make a huge difference with the amount of time that everyone would be trapped.
The day ended, at least as far as regular activities. Before going to bed herself, she went out into the town after everyone else was in their rooms, and she went to the shopping area within the town, to find tools for crafting. The base level items were fine. She needed the base level crafting items to make a dent in certain things. She already had the tools for her alchemy and tailoring, but she needed the tools for more refined work, such as a hammer for crafting a pickaxe. Or a saw or chisels for working wood.
She easily found the shopping area. While there, she noticed that there were a few other people out and about for the night. They were seemingly just browsing the selection, or walking around since they weren't yet tired enough to need to sleep. It wasn't entirely the case though. There were a few of those people who were specifically targeting her. Whether it be their aim for the map that had been given to Argo earlier, or other reasons tied to how she had become known, there was a number of reasons she was being watched.
There were some people who were looking at her for pure interest sake though, hearing about the blind woman who was without doubt the strongest person currently in the game. The person who solved the issues with the information dealers, punished the first considered criminal player within the game, and the person who led the party to discover the dungeon. She was famous, whether she wanted it or not. In her opinion, it wasn't a good thing to be famous. Ever.
She managed to purchase the crafting tools she had yet to add to her inventory, and started making her way back to the inn. She made it obvious and easy for the people following her to take a chance at whatever they planned to attempt on her. At least, at this point she had rested and recovered enough from the dungeon experience before to be able to handle any one or two people if they showed any skill level below Kirito, which was quite a range to cover. She had to assume that most of the people inside of the game were currently worse than Kirito's level.
Because of her confidence to lure them out, a group of seven of the people following her positioned themselves around her in the square. The feeling she felt from their presence, gave her the sense that they might be experienced in playing MMOs, but she felt no pressure, the weakest of killing intent, but it was still killing intent. She knew killing intent well, because of the experience she had protecting Ryra in Shibuya. The people around her intended to kill her, but the more she heard about them and sensed, the less she realized the need to worry about them. She sighed and stopped walking. They started closing the distance toward her, drawing their weapons.
She could tell that they were well coordinated, and it was very possible that those people were their own kind of raid group, aiming to bully her to death if they could. She easily stepped out of the range of their attacks, their blades glancing off each other and they all became confused with her sudden absence where she should have been caught on their attacks. They were organized, but they were taking it too much like a normal game where you can't control the character much as far as full body movements. All of their cursors lit up orange from the contact with each others weapons. With the signal they were marked orange, Ana pulled the prison porting crystal from her inventory and activated it. All the crystal needed, was to be activated near an orange marked player.
"I would play with you, but playing would be much smarter when we're not playing with life. Take care of yourselves in prison."
Her text box to them followed them to prison, as they all flashed out of sight from the middle of the small town. She didn't even need to try. Ana yawned and made her way the rest of the way back to the inn. There, she was greeted by the NPCs, and she made her way up the stairs to her bedroom there. She closed the door behind her, and began her work on the crafting. Thankfully, she would be able to do any of the crafting anywhere, but she assumed crafting would be better with more appropriate equipment within the game later, like with the game all of her instinct on it came from.
She started with continuing her work on the alchemy and tailoring. Those were easy after all. However, she noticed at some point along the way, relying on the guidance system felt to take away from the quality of what she crafted. She still had plenty of materials left for crafting, so she stopped part way in, and took the tools in her hands properly, wielding them in the ways she had learned, and she used the vision given to her in the game to get a sense for the tailoring within the game. Once she got the hang of doing it with her own hands and not using the guidance system, it went surprisingly quick. She managed to easily run through five new high quality cloth sets for everyone to wear under their armour. The cloth armour, when compared to the starting equipment, more than doubled the defence of the cloth. With such an improvement, she was eager to get to the rest of the crafting, doing it by hand. She was experienced with the knowing bit, for crafting. The game was giving her a near guaranteed technique to arrive at high quality production.
She continued on, arriving at many of the high quality clothing copies she could sell for the next day. She also produced a lot of high quality base level potions. The high quality potions regenerated more health over time. There was also high quality basic status affliction items she managed to create, which not only cured the low level afflictions, but also recovered some health. She realized when she finished with her normal night crafting, that she had stayed up later than usual. She needed to be more careful. She returned everything to her inventory, and set her alarm for the usual time, so that she would be able to have the breakfast ready on time in the morning...no, she set it for sooner than her usual time, so that she would have time to try out cooking properly instead of using the system's guidance.
When she awakened, she immediately headed for the kitchen. When she arrived there, she put out all of the ingredients from her inventory she would use, and she got her hands busy with the equipment in the kitchen. The rush of the feeling, working the kitchen like she normally would her own kitchen outside of the game, was intense. The feeling of cutting the ingredients or cracking the eggs by hand, the feeling of whisking ingredients together to form the familiar textures. The rich scent which wafted through the virtual environment when the food was set to cook...it was remarkable. It felt nearly as if she had been returned to real life, and merely moved to a different kitchen...because her kitchen was smaller.
The food finished before Kirito arrived to find out that breakfast was ready, and more intense in scent and appearance than usual. Perfectly visually plated, and looking like it was literally made by hand. Kirito assumed that it must have been just the difference between a high quality craft and a normal quality craft in the game, but when she saw Ana keep going, starting preparing the ingredients for the lunch, Kirito's jaw dropped, and the rich scents of the ingredients made her mouth water with the desire to divulge in her hunger. Ana's cooking by hand was also a surprise, because it was a literal view of how Ana worked in her own kitchen. Ana didn't need to keep her eyes closed in real life not to see anything though, and Kirito didn't know what Ana's kitchen was like.
Kirito was surprised that Ana was suddenly doing everything by hand though, and when her curiosity got to her, she decided to ask Ana why she was.
"Ana, why are you doing everything by hand this time?"
Ana barely paused with the preparations for the lunch ingredients, and the expected text box appeared in front of Kirito.
"Properly crafting by hand and with personal skill instead of using the guidance crafting system programmed into the game gives so far, a ninety nine percent chance of high quality. At least, as far as calculating the rate from last night's tailoring, alchemy, and today's breakfast and lunch. Everything except one status ailment potion has been high quality with doing it by hand. Ah, and here's your new cloth armour, and pyjamas."
A trade window followed the text window, and Kirito stared at the stat comparison window for each of the new items. Even better than the base stat being doubled, there was added resistances. The cross stitch tailoring Ana had done provided resistance to stabbing attacks, slashing attacks, and blunt attacks. It wasn't a lot, but it was far better than the three points of defence each clothing provided before. Even the pyjamas had a unique and cute design which made Kirito happier than she had been when Asuna agreed to go shopping together on later floors for clothing.
Kirito equipped the new gear sent to her, and sighed in complete satisfaction from the feel of the cloth. It wasn't just stronger in many ways, but also far comfier. Plus, the design was more feminine and well designed than the basic tunics which were slightly torn and rough. Ana could do nothing about the colour as of yet, so the off-white cloth felt completely out of place with the brown and grey leather and metal armours Kirito otherwise wore within view. Kirito removed the other armour and smiled while looking down at herself, and she had the idea to take a look at her reflection in the status screen. She smiled with the sight of the reflection of herself.
"These clothes are amazing! How do you even tailor these clothes without seeing them?!"
Ana breathed a light snicker toward the question and another window popped up in front of Kirito. Kirito was further impressed with the answer.
"I did use my virtual vision, but only for the start of the tailoring. I learned quite a lot about the craft from the guided system."
Kirito shook her head, realizing once again, it was pointless to question the possibilities of Ana. It was a little disappointing though. There had been a chance to see Ana's eyes again, and it was lost.
"I'm so eager for breakfast now though...should I try and wake everyone up a little early, or are you going to take long with the lunch preparation?"
Ana shook her head. During their conversation and Kirito's admiration of the new cloth, Ana finished making the lunch. She had also just finished sending a message to the others.
"On their way."
Kirito smiled and giggled softly. Ana motioned Kirito over, and sent another text window.
"Put the food for everyone else' lunch in your inventory. I've already put my lunch in my inventory. After breakfast, I'll have a request for gathering while you all do your training today. I'd like you to take my place with the leading today. However, I want you to try and consider the situation more as if you are being expected to move like myself. By now, surely you have learned plenty of my movements when I fought many of the different monsters. Your heart will be more than fine if you perform my movements properly."
Kirito nodded her head, stashing the lunch for the rest of their party in her inventory, and grabbing two of the plates as per usual, carrying them into the inn lounge. The rest of the party were making their way down the stairs into the main area at the same time Kirito and Ana left the kitchen.
Even the NPCs reacted to the scent of the food, so when Asuna, Leafa and Sinon caught a whiff of the breakfast, they nearly gravitated over like floating ghosts instead of using their feet properly. It was a little humorous to Kirito, noticing how much it affected them. She was curious just how silly she might have looked at first smelling the high quality cooked food.
To no surprise, everyone was filled with surprise at how simple the difference was. The food felt and tasted completely real. The food was delicious, even more an impact than they had experienced from the same recipe before. Everyone had to wonder while the experienced the difference of high quality, just how much work went into all of the sensation programming. Ana knew that they had used a lot of the work she had done with the quality difference, but it did still surprise her at first. She was surprised that programming had been integrated.
After breakfast, the rest of the group were given their new cloth gear, and Ana passed the new high quality healing items to Asuna.
"I trust you will be the most ready for using these should anything happen out there today. Now...I'd like you all to not just spend time in the good experience area near the front of the dungeon. After lunch, I'd like you to go to the small cavern area we discovered on the way to the dungeon as well. From there, I'd like you to take the new pickaxe I will be crafting before you head out, and grab me as much ore as possible. There were also some monsters near there, so you can take turns, one person collecting the materials, the rest fighting some of the monsters of the area. Carefully of course. Kirito has everyone's lunch on her as well. I have asked her to lead everyone today, so please act as if she's speaking my words."
With agreement and the new gear switched out, everyone was even more impressed with Ana. They knew she was going to be doing more crafting while they were gone, so they would end up returning having more high quality gear, which would likely appear more properly together than the mismatch of the off-white cloth with the brown and grey armour.
"Also, cut today a few hours short. I'd like to try and have a chance with the new materials before nightfall, and check on our readiness for the dungeon tomorrow with the comparison of everyone's gear change. You'll be able to find me at the NPC crafting station on the other end of this small town."
With full understanding, everyone stood up, and made their way outside together. They stopped at the NPC crafting stall, where Ana was allowed to quickly learn and forge together a high quality basic pickaxe. It would be more than enough to gather materials for at least a few floors through the game. With the new pickaxe, and everything else ready, Ana was left behind to finally work on her leather crafting, which went along very well. She continued for a while, and other players would stop by when they would notice she wasn't an NPC. There were a lot of questions about how good her crafts were, and when the consensus was understood that the clothing she had on sale was so much better than the basic gear, the players were eager to pay. In exchange, if they didn't have the currency requested for the clothing, she offered they pay with materials, which she immediately put to work with her crafting. Flawlessly, she continued producing high quality gear. Leather armour sets, a new weapon for each of the team instead of using the metal on armour since it was still early for the armour with the little amount of metal material she had.
When the team returned, high in spirits, they delivered the materials and received their new equipment. Asuna was thrilled to finally have a proper rapier, while Kirito Leafa and Sinon were all much more comfortable with their weapons. Even to just remove the basic metal armour, the new leather armour provided more defence overall. The off-white and light brown of the leather went along well together, which made them happier than they expected to be. Each of them had their own slightly different design as well, suiting to the differences in the body type of each.
Before Ana finished with her crafting, a call reached to Kirito's account. On the other end, was apparently Ryra, but when she accepted the conversation for video viewing as well, hidden inside the NPC forge, Kirito saw Leafa's mother. Tears leapt to her eyes, and she quickly sent a text window to Leafa to bring Sinon into the forge because all three of them needed to talk to the person on the other end of the call. Leafa cried relentlessly when she saw her mother on the other end, Sinon finally cheered up a little more, and Kirito continued to show her feminine side.
"How is everything going on your end?"
Even Kirigaya-san cried from her end. Seeing the people in the same room she was in, moving on the other side of the tablet conversation she was having, struck her heart in a way that she had never expected. She couldn't believe how happy she was made, just to see that they were safe and doing well on the other side.
"We're doing great, Mom."
Leafa managed to finally respond after pulling herself together. She laughed a little after saying those words.
"We're really doing great. It's mostly because of Ana-san."
The warm smile from the mother on the other end truly warmed them.
"It's so relieving to hear those words. Ryra-sensei has explained how difficult it has been so far, for the other contributors to try and get everyone safely out of there. Maybe it will fall on you and Ana-san to find the way out of that game you're stuck in. Just how is that going, by the way?"
Kirito started with that explanation.
"Well, the person who trapped us here, Kayaba Akihiko, told everyone that our requirements for getting out is clearing the game...and we're not even done the first floor out of the hundred floors that we would need to clear. Ana-san might have us ready to challenge the boss monster soon, but it's still very dangerous. She's making sure we're prepared as much as possible before trying to make any more distance. Ana-san is incredible by the way! She's doing all of this while being blind!"
Kirito was even more enthusiastic about their chances, telling her aunt about the chances they have with Ana there.
"Ana-san really is incredible. She managed to help you find your personality again. I'm so happy you've finally managed to smile again. I look forward to the chance of meeting her soon. I have to thank her for taking care of all of you."
She looked toward Sinon through the window, and she smiled again.
"You look so much more lively too, Shino-chan. I'm so happy you're doing better too. I'm a little sad that you're probably decided on returning home to your family after this, but you'll always be welcome in our home. I consider you my daughter as well, so be sure to take care of Kazu-chan and Sugu-chan. Don't push yourselves too hard either. Try and enjoy your time there too, and have lots of fun stories to tell me about your time in there for when you get out."
The tears continued to stream down everyone's faces. Kirito took a deep breath, closed her eyes and managed to calm herself down enough to find the courage to reveal her decision to all three who could hear her.
"I...I've decided to really become a girl. This experience has helped me realize how much easier it is to just accept what life was steering me to. I've always been growing more and more feminine, so now I'm accepting it instead of denying it. Ana's also helping me with it, and same with Asuna-chan. They're both amazing, and we all like cooking. They're only making it easier and easier to make the decision."
Ryra's voice chimed in, and her face peeked into the screen from the right side.
"So, are you consenting then to having surgery? Wake up from there with the consistent feeling and measurements to feel on that side? I also have been prepared in performing the surgery which made Ana capable of becoming a mother, so I could perform that far for you. Add some hormone therapy medicines to your IVs and you'll be completely female, completely ready for normal life. Well, so long as the challenge is completed soon. There's still likely to be some rehabilitation time for nearly everyone since if it takes any more than a month on your end to make it out, you'll need to work on regaining strength and control of your movement capability. It sounds to me that even with Ana's ridiculous ability, it'll take at least a year. She's cautious in the best sense after all, so you'd better believe she would have a raid party ready for a no death run of the boss monsters. Kirito and Sinon being fans of our work in that other game should be assurance enough of the no-death runs."
Kirito smiled, and the tears on both ends of the call finally came to an end.
Kirito nodded her head, the brightest smile she'd ever made on her face before she said her response to Ryra's suggestion for the surgery.
"Yes, Ryra-sensei. Please let me be a girl when I return home."
Leafa and Sinon were both in shock, from the time that Kirito mentioned the intent to be a girl, still to that moment when Kirito accepted Ryra's offer to perform the surgery which would make the difference in real life.
Ryra and Suguha's mother were both smiling, happy with the result of the answer.
"Kazu-chan...how do you feel about me fully adopting you to our family? Become Sugu-chan's elder sister? I can also work on that for when you come home from there. Uncle and myself have been ready for a while to adopt you if the topic ever came up, and since right now other heavy topics are being answered, I have the feeling to ask you this as well."
Kirito nodded her head right away to that question as well. Tears streamed back down her face again. She breathed raggedly, exhausted from all of the emotions going through her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, calmed herself down and nodded her head again.
"Yes, Mom."
Those two words alone finally snapped Leafa and Sinon out of their shock from the topic before. They were more supportive of Kirito having legal parents again, not just guardians from the same family. They were still uneasy about accepting Kirito's decision to be a girl, but it was Kirito's decision alone.
A text window appeared in front of Kirito, Leafa and Sinon, telling them that their new armour pieces and weapons were also ready. They even had some accessories to fill the rest of their equipment.
With the notification, Sinon asked one final question.
"Ana's called us to try our new weapons and armour. Uhm, Ryra-sensei...have you heard when my family will be able to call?"
Ryra smiled yet again, nodding her head before answering.
"Your mother and brother will be here on Saturday. Your father is too busy at his work to make it that day, but he promises to visit as soon as he can. In case you've already forgotten which day it is from that end, that means your mother and brother will be here in three days."
With the reassurance, Sinon took a deep, very calmed breath, and she smiled.
"Thank you, Ryra-sensei."
The three in the game waved their farewell and closed the call from their end, only to return to Ana and be presented with light metal dresses. Apparently, Ana was a blind artist. The armour was completely beautiful. Overall, their defence alone was more than ten times stronger with the high quality full armour set. With their weapons, they would deal twice as much damage, possibly more depending on how well everyone adjusted to their weapons. Ana smiled, and confidently put up another window for everyone.
"Tomorrow, another run through the dungeon. We'll map to the boss room. We won't challenge the boss though. Just take a look through the door if the system will allow us a peek at the situation on the other side of the door."