"Did you just take out that Nepent in one hit?" BlackStar asked Kirito, still a little dazed from his flying headbutt into a tree. Kirito shrugged, "You guys took down a good portion of it's energy. I only finished it off." BlackStar frowned, then shook himself like a dog shakes off water. He got off the ground and held out a hand to Kirito.

"Either way, you saved my friend. Thanks." While Kirito was distracted with BlackStar, the others changed back into their human forms.

Kirito took the hand, then looked at the now bigger group surrounding him. Most were eating or drinking health items to recover what they lost.

"Who are all of you?"

The group introduced themselves by their real names, not their screennames, except for Liz, who technically told him both. BlackStar had a fervor in his eyes when talking to Kirito, and his next question revealed what the fervor was based on.

"So how did you get so strong?"

Kirito smiled and pulled out his blade. "I see that you still have your starting blades, so you might want to visit the next town to get this sword from a quest. It should last all the way to the third floor. But I've also been power grinding with it against these Nepents for the past day."

"Grinding?" Liz asked.

"Have you ever played an RPG before?"

"Nope."

"Well grinding is when you fight a lot of enemies in order to quickly level up. You aren't doing any quests or side quests really, but instead just walking around and looking for enemies to kill."

Liz thought about that for a moment, "So what level are you?"

"Ten."

Liz's jaw went slack.

"Ten?" Maka asked Kirito, sure she heard wrong, "You're level ten?"

"Yep, grinding works. Why do you think most people who've played RPGs before do that to quickly level up?"

BlackStar smiled, "How do you grind?"

Kirito opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, a boom sounded in the distance, the sound of a Nepent walking. Kirito re-sheathed his blade without saying anything and started walking towards the noise.

"Come with me and I'll tell you."

Soul shrugged and followed, the others quickly catching up. They walked in silence for a while before running into a dire wolf. Crona killed it quickly with his sword, and only then did Kirito continue his thought on grinding.

"So you guys are good enough to take down dire wolves, but struggle with a Nepent? You're all levels three or four, aren't you?"

They nodded.

"So what you want to do is find an enemy that is somewhat easy for you to kill, and kill a lot of the. Once you're strong enough to take down an enemy a little bit stronger, you move on to that one and do the same thing. You're constantly leveling up and fighting better enemies, who also drop better loot, and maintaining a constantly increasing stream of experience."

BlackStar filed that bit of information away for later reference.

"I've been grinding on Nepents, no not in that kind of way, for a while. So I've got some advice for you, if you're ever stuck fighting one. It's got a weak back. If you need to fight, have one person run distraction while the others cut through it. We'll practice on the Nepent we're following."

Soul thought for a moment, "But what about you?" he asked Kirito.

"Me?"

"Yeah, I don't see anyone near you who could be part of a group. You're all alone, so how do you defeat Nepents on your own?"

"I'm a solo player." Kirito told Soul, "so I've been using faster speed and greater maneuverability to get around my enemies. I also have higher power than most others, due to where I'm leveling up my stats, so my being a solo player normally works out. And if I get in trouble, I can just run away."

Tsubaki listened and nodded, "Okay, but why don't you find a group? It's dangerous alone, hell, it's dangerous no matter what. That's the nature of this game, you'd be safer with friends."

A memory of Klein asking him to stay and go with his own friends plagued Kirito. He denied himself the perks of being in a group, and friends, that day. Opting for more power instead.

"I'm.." he paused, "better as a solo player."

Tsubaki had the tact to not push the subject with Kirito, noticing his pause, and instead the conversation turned to weapons. Kid was wondering about ranged weaponry in the game and Kirito's answer was, unfortunately, negative. He told Kid that there's basically nothing ranged in the whole game, only melee weapons. Kid scowled as he heard the news, but when Kirito asked him about the scowl, Kid passed it off as him preferring guns in real life.

"Damn it, I'm gonna need to hide my weapons as something else. But then it'll look like I'm throwing my swords. Maybe if I disguised them as small throwing knives, I'm pretty sure this game has tiny knives." He whispered to Maka behind Kirito's back as Kirito was tracking the Nepent.

When they reached the Nepent, this one was different than the last. Instead of nothing at the top of its plant body, there was a red fruit. Kirito stopped the group behind a bunch of bushes before they went any farther.

"This Nepent is a different kind. It's slightly weaker, but the fruit on the top is a-"

"YAHOO! A WEAK POINT NO DOUBT!"

The group didn't need three guesses as to which one of them just charged in to battle with his sword out. Only one was obvious.

"BlackStar!" Tsubaki yelled after him, "Not alone! Wait!"

But it was too late. BlackStar sunk his blade to the hilt in the fruit of the Nepent. Kirito sighed and rushed in after him, drawing his own sword, jumping and jabbing his sword into the Nepent's back.

Kirito let gravity work for him and he slid down the Nepent's back, gouging out a line of code, and as he touched the ground, the Nepent vanished.

From where he hung by his sword, BlackStar fell as the monster dissolved.

"Whoah!" he called out through his free fall down. Letting out a solid "oof" as he hit the ground.

Kirito helped BlackStar off the ground. "I wasn't going to say weakness. More along the lines of 'trap'. Smell the air, do you detect the faint scent of something bitter? That smell came from the fruit, it attracts other Nepents to where we are. The smell will hang with us, and those Nepents aren't going to stop."

The entire group glared at BlackStar.

And then a thud filled the air, and another, the number of thuds increased as Kirito tilted his head to listen.

"Eleven of them." He said, "we need to run. Maybe we can outdistance their agro, or find a place to hide until the smell wears off."

Kirito didn't have to say anything more, they were already sprinting away. Kirito started to run after them, "well at least they aren't totally stupid." Kirito mumbled under his breath as he tried to catch up. Then he remembered BlackStar's exploits in the last minute and rectified that previous thought. "Most, aren't stupid." He said as he caught up and they ran from the horde of Nepents.