Hey, some changes have occurred since the last update. My girlfriend and I broke up and we haven't seen each other much since then. We were in the middle of writing the chapter when it happened. Recently, we have decided to at least stay friends so this story will continue with the both of us. If things change, I'll probably take up the story myself. It might not be her vision, but I've had thoughts on how the story will unfold. You'll know what happens later on if anything does change. Anyhow, let's get to the chapter.
[Nina's POV]
Since our mission with Asuna, we've been pretty quiet. We've done some favors for other people as well as helping our members grow stronger. Ever since the incidents that have occurred with the Titan's Hand guild, Max has been making it a priority that everyone gets stronger. At least our combatants. The ones that are in the guild but don't fight too much aren't required to do so, but for those that do it is highly encouraged that they do. It was just another dungeon run. I was in charge of it while Max and DJ were with another group. Silica is also one of the members that I'm with, mainly because DJ's and Max's group are in an area that is tougher than the one that I'm in. We keep telling her that she's ready for tougher dungeons but no matter how hard we try to convince her, she keeps denying herself. Either way, this gives me and her a chance to bond together. We've never really had time to ourselves like this before. There may be other people, but when we camp out, we'll have a tent all to ourselves. Speaking of, that's what we were doing before something a little out of the ordinary happened.
"How did you and DJ meet?" She asked in the comfort of our tent with Pina laying on her lap. We both felt it was time to get to know what we did IRL instead of in the game.
"I met him through Max (she knows his real name now considering I call him that all the time. He told me to stop but it's really hard to.). I met him while I was playing a game with him and he joined our party. I met him in person during a cookout his family had." I had started to change into my nightwear which caused Silica to stare at me. "What's wrong?" I was just standing there with only my bra and panties on. I didn't give it much thought because there was only another female with me.
"Nothing, I just haven't seen you… exposed before, or anyone besides me." I looked at her a little strange.
"You've never had to change in front of others for gym class or going to the pool or beach?"
"No, when I have gym class I normally go in after everyone else leaves, and as for going to the pool or beach, I normally wear my swimsuit underneath my clothes and just take them off before I get in the water." I understood why this would make her a little flustered.
"Let me guess, it's not the same as seeing others in a swimsuit because this isn't the right setting for it." She nodded. "Well, why not get comfortable yourself. It's a little hot where we're at anyway, I don't mind sleeping like this." When I said that she got even more fluster. I thought it was cute.
"I don't think I can."
"Why?"
"I'll feel self-conscious about how I look." This was the last thing I expected.
"You're joking right?" she gave an audible huh in response. "You have nothing to worry about here. Even if you didn't have the best body, which I don't think is the case, it's just us girls in here. I'm not going to harass you about how you look." I gave her a little more confidence when I said that. "Go ahead, you'll feel a lot more comfortable when you do it trust me." She slowly opened her menu and went into her equipment and took off her armor that she was currently wearing. She immediately felt self-conscious and put her arms around her chest. I wasn't going to have that, so I pulled her arms apart. "Like I said, it's just me, you have nothing to worry about." I let go of her arms and she just put them down to her side. It took some time before she said anything.
"This is going to be a weird question, but what's your size?"
"My size?"
"You know…" She put her hands on her chest. "These."
"Oh, they're an E cup. It was D when we started but somehow the game is able to track my body's growth IRL and I grew another size." She messed around with her chest when I said that. "I can tell you've grown as well. Do you know your size now?"
"B I think, it was A when I first joined." She kept eyeing my chest. "How did yours get so big?"
"Well, they actually started growing in 4th grade, and didn't stop till now, hopefully." She still kept playing with hers.
"Do you mind if I…" She pointed at my chest.
"Sure, I don't mind." She slowly brought her hands up to my chest and made contact with them. being as gentle as she could she moved them around a bit and gave them a little squeeze. I had to bite my lip in order not to moan. After what seemed like an eternity she let go of them.
"They feel really nice. They're soft yet firm." It's amazing this game can render touch so well.
"Thank you. Why don't we get a little shuteye? We have some more grinding to…" I paused when I saw a flashing light outside of the tent. I poked my head out to try and make out some detail of what's out there but the light made it difficult. I reequipped my armor and weapon and started to make my way out of the tent.
"Wait! Where are you going." She asked a little panicked.
"I see a light out in the distance, I'm going to investigate the source of it."
"Then let me go with you." She then equipped her armor and weapon, woke Pina, and proceeded to follow me out of the tent. We followed the light until we came across a monument.
"This wasn't here earlier, was it?" She shook her head.
"I don't remember it being here before." The light that we saw was a lantern.
"Someone else was here. Not only that but this isn't as bright as the light I saw earlier."
"Where are they now?"
"I'm not sure." I inspected the monument and the lettering was in another language. "Do you understand this?" Silica shook her head.
"No, I don't I've never even seen this type of language before." I took a closer look at the lantern and noticed that there was a piece of paper under it. I gave the lantern to Silica to hold while I read the paper. It was a descriptive drawing of the monument. On the drawing, there was an X. It was in an area of the monument that seemed like it could be interacted with.
"Just in case something happens, make sure you keep a good grip on that lantern." Silica nodded her head and I could see the muscles in her hand and forearm tighten a little more. I put my hand where the X was on the paper and I pushed in. We were enveloped by a bright light, similar to the one I saw from the tent, and when that light disappeared we were in a dungeon-like area. Good thing Silica held on to the lantern because it was pretty dark. I took a look around to try and find out where we were and the only thing I was able to come up with was some sort of tomb. There was writing on the walls along with some pictures.
"Where are we?" Silica asked while looking around.
"Some type of tomb. Not sure what floor we're on." I opened my map to see if there was one of this area. "And there's no map data on this place either."
"Maybe there's…" A loud scream interrupted her.
"That came from this direction. Follow me." I took off in the direction of the scream with Silica following behind me. I stopped when I saw a long hallway filled with wires. Someone was at the end of the hallway, on the ground, holding their side.
"Help… me… but… be… careful." She wheezed out before it looked like she passed out.
"We got to get to her fast. She's gonna bleed out if we don't help."
"Scraw!" Pina called.
"Pina can fly through the wires and help buy us time to get to her." Silica suggested. It was a good idea and Pina could use some more training in the healing department.
"If you think she can make it, go for it." Silica gave Pina a pep talk and Pina flew down the hallway, avoiding the wires and got to the girl on the other side. She began to heal her the best she could but it would only buy some time. "Alright, now we have to get down this hallway." Silica immediately became nervous.
"Do we have to? Maybe there's another way around."
"If there is there's no time to find one. You'll be fine, we practiced evasive maneuvers before, it's just like that. I'll even go first so you can see what I do and copy it." Silica just stood behind me and waited. I took a deep breath and jumped through the first set of wires. Using my momentum I kept twisting my body through holes in the wires. About halfway through, I landed on the floor and a tile sank into the ground. A spike came out of the wall to try and skewer me. I picked up the pace and reacted accordingly to the spikes. I had a plan at the beginning, but I didn't count on the tiles being triggers for traps. I reacted the best that I could, using the holes in the walls as clues to where the spikes were coming from. I was able to reach the end without a scratch. I looked back to see Silica watching in awe. "Your turn Sil…" I couldn't finish the sentence because the hallway shook. The wires were cut and the tiles raised back to normal. To be safe I stepped on a tile to make sure it didn't sink. Nothing happened. "Nevermind, it looks safe to cross now." I could hear Silica sigh in relief from the other end of the hallway. As she waltzed through the hallway, I examined the girl. She had the bleeding status ailment which isn't the worst thing in the world by itself, but this ailment was stacked three times on her. Pina kept healing her as much as she could while I got out potions to help get her HP back up and get rid of her bleeding ailment.
"Is she going to be ok?" Silica asked me while looking over my shoulder. I used the potions on her and got her stable.
"She should be ok. We're going to have to wait here until she wakes up, though. I don't feel comfortable about this place. It's not even the threat of monsters that scare me it's the fact that there could be traps anywhere. And we can easily set them off while carrying her." I sat down on the floor next to the girl and just relaxed. Silica came up next to me and sat down as well.
"How did you get through that trap-ridden hallway so easily?"
"It's what we practiced on. Except, instead of predicting someone else's movements I made a plan for my own."
"But you didn't know about the spikes at the end of the hallway did you?"
"No I didn't and that's when I threw my plan out of the window and just reacted. It's something I learned from Max. Before SAO he played a lot of tactical shooters. He said that making a plan is only as good as the intel you were given. If the intel is bad, you have to make split second, instinctual decisions. The team that does that the best will always come out on top. At least, according to him."
"So, basically, sometimes it's better to just react to situations rather than predict them."
"Exactly. It's something that the higher ranking members of the strike team do very well. While it's true that we try and plan fights out thoroughly, we always go in expecting to be wrong. That way, if something does drastically change, we're prepared for it." The girl in front of us started to come to and was looking around until she spotted us.
"Thank you for saving me. It's appreciated." She tried to stand with the help of Silica and once she was up she was able to keep herself up. I got a better look at her then. She had long, brunette hair, and her skin was like a cream color. Her eyes were a beautiful light blue if I had to comment on it. Since I'm describing her body, she had around a C cup for chest size. She had on a Blue battle dress with a silver chest plate, like Silica's
"No problem, we're just happy to get to you in time. By the way, how did you get down here in the first place?" I asked
"I was on a quest to get stronger, I heard that there is a special skill that only one person can learn if they get through this dungeon in one piece." Her eyes widened as if she realized something. "Which one of you two made it through the hallway unscathed?" I cautiously raised my hand. "Really?" Her eyes wandered to my chest. "These didn't get in your way?" She said still eyeing my breasts.
"Not really, it made for some close calls but it wasn't too bad." She opened her inventory to look for something.
"Where's my paper? Did I lose it? That's not good, it has the instructions for the dungeon." I realized that I left the paper we found earlier at the end of the hallway. I walked down the hall, grabbed the paper, and brought it back to the girl.
"Is this what you're looking for?" she grabbed the paper out from my hands and scanned through it.
"Yes! This is it! Thank you." She read through the paper. In our hustle to catch up to the person who went into the dungeon, we didn't think to turn the paper over. "Ok, we're going to continue forward, there shouldn't be any traps ahead for a bit. By the way, my name is Kiki."
"Nice to meet you Kiki, I'm Silica."
"And I'm Nina, nice to meet you."
"It's nice to meet you as well. Especially with the circumstances. You two saved my life."
"Three." I said.
"Huh?"
"Scraw!" Pina emerged from behind Silica causing the girl to jump, fall back a bit and put her hand on the handle of her dagger.
"It's a dragon!"
"No no! Well yes, but she's a tamed dragon." Silica said.
"You tamed a dragon?" Silica nodded. "That's so cool! What's her name?" She asked getting up in the dragon's face which in turn made her really close to Silica.
"Uhh, Pina." Silica responded with no comfort in her voice. It was clear that she wasn't comfortable with the situation.
"Wow! Hi there Pina. Thanks for your help back there."
"Scraw!" Pina responded looking visually happy. After she had her fill, Kiki backed off of Pina and Silica and took lead in front of us.
"Ok, let's get going!"
We walked through the dungeon for a few minutes. Pretty boring since there weren't any monsters to fight, but we made do with some conversation.
"So are you a part of a guild in SAO?" Silica asked.
"Oh yeah. They don't know I'm here though so we should probably get out of here before daybreak and they start wondering where I am."
"Are you in the assault team?" I asked.
"No, I'm not strong enough. That's why I came here, but now I know I can't get the skill."
"Why not?"
"Because, I didn't get pass the hallway in one piece. According to what I figured out about the skill, it's only available to the first person to get through the dungeon unscathed. As you saw before, I was not unscathed. So I'm out. You can possibly get it, though." She pointed at me.
"Do you know what the skill does?" She shook her head.
"But if it's so special that only one person can learn it, then it must be powerful." I started wondering what could possibly be the skill that can be learned by going through this dungeon. My first guess was a skill that's used for dodging but I felt like that wouldn't be the only part of the skill.
"Hey Kiki, how did you know what language the monument showed?"
"Oh, that was Russian. I actually live there. I used to live in America for most of my life, though." She started to look a little sad when she mentioned she lived in America.
"Hard moving away from your friends?" I asked.
"Yeah, you could say that." She was so deep in her own thoughts she didn't realize that we walked into an arena.
"Hey Kiki, where are we?" I asked her. She snapped out of her thoughts and looked at her paper.
"This is the arena, where you'll be given one last test before you can learn the skill."
"Which is?" A skeleton archer formed at the other end of the arena. Its health bar was very low as if one light tap could finish him.
"Killing that guy." She grabbed Silica's hand and bolted to the entrance behind me. "We can't help you and we don't want to be caught in the crossfire, so good luck!" I started wondering what kind of test this was. My mind was scrambling trying to figure out why killing such a weak enemy would warrant challenging enough to learn a special skill. It just didn't make sense to me. I started running toward the archer, hoping to get this done as quick as possible, but in the blink of an eye the archer drew and arrow and fired directly at me. The arrow was as fast as a bullet, but I was able to dodge it fairly easily. It was then that I realized what this was meant to challenge me on. I may have been able to dodge it easily now, but as I get closer dodging will only become harder and harder. It's testing my reflexes, my instincts.
I sprinted towards him again, keeping my knife in its sheath. As quick as inhumanly possible, he let loose his arrows, each one speeding towards me like a bullet. One by one I dodged them as I continued to close the distance on him. I was almost there when his strategy changed. Instead of letting loose one arrow at a time, he let loosed multiple arrows at once. Increasing by one every time. Two arrows, then three, then four. I had to move carefully. Dodging one could mean walking into another. And I'm too close to slip up now. As a last resort, he let loose five arrows in a fan pattern. There was no way to dodge horizontally without giving up distance, so I slid underneath the arrows, swept the skeletons legs and let him fall to the ground. The fall causing the minuscule amount of HP he had left to deplete to zero. I expected the skeleton to disappear but it never did. It just laid there.
"You can grab your spoils now. There's a dagger that the Skeleton is carrying, you can pick it up and use it as your own." I inspected the skeleton and sure enough, there was a dagger right next to it I picked it up and inspected its stats. Surprisingly, it was slightly better than my current dagger. As I went to equip it I noticed that I could equip it in my offhand slot, something I couldn't do before now. I swapped the dagger I got just now with my current one and move my current dagger to my off hand. A second holster appeared behind me and both daggers crossed each other. I pulled both daggers out and the game allowed me to carry both of them. I was extremely confused by what was going on, then I remembered the skill.
"Kiki, do you know what skill I was supposed to learn?"
"The skill you should have learned after this is the dual wielding skill. It allows you to use two daggers at the same time. It only works for daggers, though. Now, you can do twice the damage and be able to dodge a majority of attacks now." I was in awe. Now, I was more of the DPS character that was needed in our group.
"That's great. And to think I only got it because I was curious what that light meant outside of our tent."
"Speaking of light, how do we…" No sooner did Silica start her sentence did a bright light surround us. When it vanished, we were back to where we started. It was still dark out and a look at the clock on my HUD confirmed that it was very early in the morning.
"Thank you guys for your help, but I should get back to my guild headquarters before they wake up and realize I'm gone."
"No problem, we're happy to help."
"Before you go, though, I have a favor to ask."
"Sure, what is it?"
"Can I feel your face?" I was confused why she would want to do that but I wasn't going to deny her the opportunity.
"Uh… sure." She ran her fingers lightly over my face. thoroughly feeling everything from my forehead to my chin.
"Thank you, I'll remember your face if we ever meet IRL. Thanks again for your help. Bye!" She turned and walked away but I was confused by what she last said.
"Hey, why can't you just recognize me with your eyes?" She couldn't hear me, though, she was long gone. "Oh well, guess I'll have to find out some other time." I let out a rather loud yawn.
"You must be exhausted after doing all of that. Why don't we turn in and get some shuteye before we finish our trip with the guild tomorrow."
"I agree with that." We both went to the tent and I took off my armor until I was left in just my undergarments. Silica was hesitant to do the same.
"Come on Silica, get comfortable.
"Are we really going to go through this again?"
"Nah, I'm too tired for that but if you want to do so then be my guest." I got in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes. Before I drifted off to sleep, though, I heard the sound of someone messing with their menu and the sound of something disappearing.
Kiki was someone I contemplated about putting in the story. This might be the last you see of her in this story, but I've been thinking about a possible sequel to this story. Not saying that this is going to end soon because it's not. Still got plenty of ideas. And as far as me and my ex-girlfriend goes, don't worry about it. Whatever happens between me and her this story will still go on. Until next time this is ragmanthemadman, signing off.