I'm afraid I won't be revealing Nira's [Unique Skill] yet...
Anyone who does manage to guess what it is gets a virtual cookie. Or at least, what I hinted at it being, I changed my mind about what it is, so the hints don't all help you.
I won't be revealing the nature of what they're doing with the sword skills till next chapter either. Here, I'll tell you this though, it exists in Underworld and exists in Accel World. All abilities shown are actually canon, just in Underworld instead of in Sword Art Online. If you've read the LNs and still can't figure it out... well, it's probably just not as obvious when you don't know that the answer.
You know what sucks? I've been chewing gum basically all the time so as to not bite my nails and now it tastes like vaguely minty chemistry. Not that I've ever tried actual chemicals of the sort you don't eat, but you get the idea.
After Kirito and Heathcliff had 2 more rematches which both ended in draws, they each had a rematch with Nira, both of which she won using her [Unique Skill]. Not easily, but won.
"So you were holding back in all but the last two matches?" Kirito asks.
"Using a [Unique Skill] I feel like I did nothing to earn to win feels like cheating."
"Heathcliff used his," Kirito points out.
"Regardless, how did you warp sword skills?" Heathcliff asks.
"Power of will," Nira says with a smug smile. Akari chuckles.
Kirito looks at her skeptically. "You're joking, right?"
"Not at all. Seriously all it takes is trying to do it hard enough. The only thing necessary is trying to do it, really," Nira says.
"I find that hard to believe. The NerveGear should simply be incapable of having a feature like that," Kirito says.
"I highly doubt the NerveGear works the way Kayaba says it does. Tell me, how would sleep poison, or alcohol for that matter, work if the NerveGear actually did work the way Kayaba claims? It wouldn't, that's how. There's no possible way you could make someone drunk by intercepting nerve signals," Nira says.
"You have a point. Still what do you actually do to accomplish that?"
"Hard to explain. The way Akari and I found out about it was by simply seeing if it was possible to make sword skills change by attempting to apply force," Nira says.
"Whatever you say," Kirito says sarcastically.
"Just try it. Push as hard as you can to go faster. It should be easier for you than it was for us at first because you know it's possible and this doesn't apply just to yourself. In other words, since we believe you can do it, it should help you," Nira says.
"Right... so basically, whatever people believe will happen will?" Kirito asks.
"Well, not whatever, or maybe bigger things are believed impossible at the backs of everyone else's minds with sufficient force that just 1 or 2 people willing it isn't enough. Makes you wonder, if we got together the entire player base and all believed together—that makes me cringe so much—then maybe we could just kill boss's with our minds," Nira says.
"That's probably wishful thinking," Asuna says.
"Even if it isn't, there'd be no way to actually make it work," Akari points out.
"I know it's wishful thinking, just thinking about it," Nira says.
"'Believe in yourself and you can do it', huh?" Kirito says and puts his sword to the side in the starting position for [Horizontal].
He activates the skill and the sword moves a speed impossible without sword skills, and even with under normal conditions.
"Congratulations, you just broke the game," Akari says.
"You try now, Heathcliff," Nira says.
Heathcliff also succeeds, relatively easy after seeing Kirito do it.
As Asuna talks to Kirito and Heathcliff watches them, Nira walks over to where nobody was looking at and points her hand at a pebble on the ground. And imagines as hard and precisely as she can the pebble lifting off the ground and into her hand.
The pebble moves slightly and then stops.
"Telekinesis is possible, cool," Nira says.
"Huh?" says Akari, the only person close enough to hear.
"I made that pebble move a bit with my mind. Just a bit, but it proves it's possible," Nira says.
"Maybe, or maybe anymore and the programming would not let it work, overriding the whatever allows this to work," Akari says.
"Maybe, but with that kind of negative thinking it'll never work," Nira says.
"I find it annoying how true that is," Akari says with a sigh.
A few minutes later, Kirito approaches them.
"What's up?" Akari asks.
"Asuna and I were planning to go do a dungeon tomorrow, I was wondering if you two would like to join us. Like old times," Kirito says.
The two look at each other.
"Sure, we'll join you. Is Heathcliff coming?" Nira says.
"He says he needs make sure he can take the time from his guild but he'd like to join us," Kirito says.
"Cool, having a tank is useful," Nira says.
"Indeed, as effective as Akari's support is, the 4 of us make a pretty unbalanced party. 2 pure DPS, 1 DPS/Harasser, and 1 support DPS," Kirito says.
"Yeah. Since there are no healers, at least not to a degree any one of us 4 can't do, with Heathcliff we'll be good. While having a second tank would normally be good, Heathcliff is considerably more effective than 2 normal tanks," Nira says.
"Maybe we can fight a boss with some strategy that isn't try to kill it before it can put out enough damage to kill us."
"'The best offense makes a good defense'," Nira says.
"Who said that? That seems like a pretty changed version"
"Heathcliff during our duel," Nira says.
"I suppose he's right. The best defense makes a good offense, too. Which has the opposite meaning of the normal meaning of that expression despite being very similar since normally it means that having a good offense is the best defense," Kirito agrees.
"So any particular dungeon in mind?"
"Yes, actually, but it's pretty far from any teleporters so we'll just show you tomorrow. Argo found it and we bought the location from her. Asuna and I peaked inside but decided that just two of us would be very risky," Kirito says.
"Theme?"
"Some sort of war between light and dark-"
"We're siding with dark, right?" Nira says.
"-who aren't actually good and evil or something and those are just themes, like forest and dark elves. When the dungeon quest turned out to be to stop it, we decided that it was a good place to turn back and get some help. The NPC claims the entire war was caused by a misunderstanding and if we can help her stop it, she and both sides will be grateful. We didn't accept the quest yet," Kirito said.
"Aww," Nira pouts.
Akari chuckles. "That sounds pretty cool."
"I wonder if there are vampires in ACO," Nira mutters.
"Huh?"
"Nira is often a vampire in games where the player can be one."
"Vampires are awesome!" she says.
"True," Akari admits.
"And they generally get life steal, which is generally OP as all hell when mixed with a DPS build, as long as you can survive a single hit," Nira says.
"That depends on what game you play, but I understand what you mean," Kirito says.
"Well, if that's tomorrow, I'm gonna go sleep," Nira says with a smile.
"It's not late though..." Kirito says. It was, indeed, not all that late. Only 7 PM.
"I don't know about you, but I'm tired as hell after that tournament," Nira says.
"I suppose you do have a point. I fought even more matches than you did and I do feel rather tired actually. Maybe I'll go take a nap too," Kirito says.
"Naps? You go to invite to a dungeon raid and I come over and you're talking about naps?" Asuna asks.
"If you don't recall, we just had a tournament. Good night," Nira says.
She grabs a teleport crystal out of her coat.
"Bye," Akari says and grabs Nira's hand.
"Teleport Tufmuz," Nira says. Tufmuz was the main settlement on the 9th floor.
"Hmm, they're still staying there?" Asuna wonders. Asuna was referring to the [Living Caverns] they had unlocked as a place of residence, among other things, back on the 9th floor when they completed a dungeon together. Asuna and Kirito had come by to talk to Actaea a couple of times, but they didn't realize Nira and Akari were still staying there. Since the two weren't particularly social, they had never invited Kirito and Asuna to their place so the latter two never realized that they still hadn't moved.
"As nice as that place and Actaea are, we should really get them to move in to our place. We have tons of room and it's considerably more comfortable," Kirito says.
"That's true. Besides, as annoying as Nira can be sometimes, I like having them around," Asuna says.
"We'll have to invite them to our guild once we get around to making it," Kirito says.
"That's a given. Maybe Heathcliff will stop inviting us to his guild once we make our own," Asuna says.
"That would be nice. Anyway, I'm gonna take Nira's example and go sleep," Kirito says.
"I suppose I'll join you, that was actually pretty tiring. And infuriating, my matches with Akari and Nira especially," Asuna says.
The next day, the 5—Heathcliff had managed to finish or offload onto his second-in-command all the things he had to do that day as guild leader—meet on the 65th floor, the last unlocked floor, and head out.
"4 days on this floor and Argo already managed to find something obscure? Wow," Nira says after a while of walking.
"Speaking of Argo, I still need to pay her back for what she pulled on Christmas," Nira adds.
"I don't think I want to know what you come up with," Kirito says.
"Hmm... maybe pretend to be PKers and ambush her," Nira plots aloud, knowing that in this area Argo couldn't be following them without her noticing.
"Sounds cruel and wonderful," Akari agrees.
Heathcliff thinks how children's pranks normally don't involve pretending to be trying to kill the victim, then realizes they sometimes do and also that it is probably a bad idea to comment on it unless he wants to be the victim.
Instead he says something else.
"Speaking of PKers, Laughing Coffin is becoming a big problem. They've killed over 300 people by now and they're not going to stop on their own any time soon. If we don't do something, by the time we clear the game, they'll have killed at least 700-800, especially since they've been getting stronger. We'll need to do something about them, and soon."
"Unfortunately, we don't where their base is," Asuna says.
"They're [Red Players], that means unless they wear concealing hoods and cloaks, they can't enter safe zones without being attacked and killed or arrested by powerful guards and even then, if they get close to anyone, their cursor will be revealed. Thus, they can't travel between floors, except by manually climbing the labyrinths or extremely carefully prowling through cities. We can use this. We can watch for and follow players concealing their cursors in the cities, especially teleporters, and the boss rooms they'd have to pass through. And, regardless of what method they use, traveling floors will be difficult and/or risky for them, and unlike for other players, how many floors makes a difference. This means it is likely that their base is near the floors where they are the most active, so we can start there," Nira says.
"The biggest issue is that the moment we start watching the boss rooms, and maybe even just the teleporters, they'll know we're searching for them and slink away into their holes. We can't enlist the entire player base either, since they'd obviously know then. We'd need to have at least 400 trustworthy people, 200 of whom would need high [Hiding] skills," Kirito says.
"Not necessarily. Once we have an idea of the floor they're on, we only need a few people stationed above and below the floor. The big issue is teleporters. For that however, we can just put out a big warning. Not an enlistment, but a warning, so they don't think we're actively hunting them. A warning that says to check anyone who has a concealed cursor. Maybe make them think we're taking a passive approach and offer a reward for any red player caught using teleporters. If you reveal one you get some col. It wouldn't cause an overly big inconvenience for people who aren't red players and just wear hoods anyway, since all it takes to reveal someones cursor is to get within a few meters in front of them. Then you just holler for guards and don't put yourself in needless danger. This should hopefully keep them from traveling using teleporters, to a large extent anyway, so they would be forced to travel through boss rooms," Heathcliff says.
In safe zones, you can attack a red player, however they will be able to fight back then. If you don't touch them then they can't touch you, however, even if you call for guards.
"You're right. Then once we pinpoint the floor they're on, we can keep them locked in on that floor, since they can't use teleport crystals except to teleport to the current floor and you can't use teleporters immediately after using a crystal. Once they're locked onto that floor, we can begin searching the floor for their base and we can have people stop going to that floor outside the safe zone. Even if they find out then, they won't be able to do much," Kirito says.
"The only remaining issue will be the 'green' players. The spies and informants. This won't catch them. They might be unable to harm people directly without becoming red, but they can recruit, or they can just be willing to sacrifice their green status for a sneak attack that lets them escape the floor," Akari says.
"This plan will need some work, but it should be workable. Let's agree to never speak of this to anyone else, even those we trust, simply because while they aren't Laughing Coffin, they may trust someone who is. So until we need to and all agree, nobody but us 5 finds out about this," Nira says.
"That seems reasonable. The moment Laughing Coffin finds out that they're being hunted and not just guarded against, it'll be infinitely harder to catch them," Heathcliff says.
"We all agree on that?" Kirito asks.
Akari and Asuna agree.
"Still, as important as this is, this is supposed to be a day off of having fun, so let's change topic. The point of this excursion was to do a dungeon raid and have fun," Asuna says.
"You're right," Akari agrees.
Laughing Coffin gets its first mention. I don't know the exact canon mechanics for red players and safe zones, but I feel like the mechanics I use are reasonable. Anyone is welcome to try to play the role of Poh or whatever and try to figure out what Laughing Coffin can do to escape this issue (assuming their secrecy and whatever goes to plan).
That aside, I'm sorry this chapter is a little short and that it took forever. I felt like writing some other stuff (haven't and probably never will post, but if I do, it's a Fate/Stay Night X SAO crossover) but now that I've satisfied myself with that (for now) I'm planning to get back to write this.
I posted this right now because it seemed like a reasonable place to stop and I plan to go to bed right now, so it's just a matter of whether I post this now or not and I decided it would be better this way.
Just a little spoiler hint thing; Poh in this story was a murder before ACO. Try to figure out what significance this has... The other half that should help you guess is a part of the summary... this might be a little too obvious, or it might be a case of hindsight 20/20 on my part.
If anybody thinks I do too much of this thing where I have you (the readers as a whole, I mean) figure stuff out from hints.
Well, thanks for reading and good night. Please review and tell me what you thought of the chapter!