Note: Hey people! Sorry I haven't been releasing anything lately, been caught up in a lot of stuff. Chapter 11 is in progress but will still take a while to release, so I decided to post a few "teasers" of scenes from upcoming chapters. The story will still mostly be told from Kirito's perspective, but due to some things I have planned, some events will be told from others perspectives. So here we go! I hope this will keep you all interested ;)

Kirito's POV

'He's far stronger than me. But, similar to Argo, his greatest strength is his knowledge, and I can exploit that.' I leapt back, disengaging from the blade lock, "You want to see my true power? Be careful what you ask for." I kept up the facade of being a proud jerk as I had through the entire game, but my opponent just smiled complacently as if he knew what was hiding under the facade. 'Just wait, I'll wipe that smug smile off your face a thousand times over.'

I opened my menu, my opponent kindly waiting for me to finish whatever I was doing. His smile faltered as I equipped five different swords in a flash of light. I drew a sword in my right hand and it began to glow with a dark green light. I rocketed toward the man at a speed faster than should be possible as I spoke two words.

"Infinite Combination."

Sinon's POV

The man smiled at me mockingly, despite the fact that I had my dagger at his neck, half a moment from permanently removing him from this world. "Hahaha, what's a good girl like you doing in a place like this? Someone who's never killed has no place in this world." I flinched as he said those words, recoiling slightly. But quickly I caught myself and resumed the pressure on his neck with the dagger.

"Oho, judging by your reaction, you have killed before, and now you're afraid of it, hahahaha… HAHAHAHAHA! I can't understand someone like you, I thought most people would be addicted to it once they got a taste." I felt rage and disgust well up in me, along with a strange, almost unidentifiable emotion; one that I hadn't felt in over a year. Fear?

"Only a psychopath like you would enjoy killing, to most people it's the greatest taboo, even in this hellish world." the mocking smile remained on the man's face, as if daring me to violate the greatest taboo. 'Killing an evildoer means saving 100 innocents.' I recalled the pained look in the multicolored eyes of the girl when she had spoken those words to me so long ago.

I tilted my head to the side slightly, letting the disgusting projectile fly past my head as the man in front of me spat at me. "You're WEAK! A person like you has no place in this world, you should just die and let the strong…

Even though I could tell by his expression that he was still speaking with the same animated ferocity, his voice seemed to fade into the background as a scene that I'd never seen came into my head.

A strange world. A world of iron and oil where firearms reigned supreme. A single figure stood out; a figure who wielded a sword.

A girl. No, a boy. A boy with long hair and surprisingly girlish features. Someone that almost resemble the black swordsman that she knew so well.

The boy who resembled the black swordsman held a cyan-haired girl in his arms. The scene that would have resembled something from a romance novel was broken by the fact that he was holding a sword, no, a lightsaber, to the girl's neck.

I was suddenly torn from the scene and back to reality by a splitting headache. However, words poured into my head as if I was remembering some long forgotten memory.

'If that ĐȺǥǥɆɍ could also kill a player in the real world, and if you didn't ȺŧŧȺȻK them, you or someone you loved would be killed… Could you still ρપɭɭ Շɦﻉ Շɼٱﻭﻭﻉɼ?' A strange mechanical voice overwrote certain parts of the memory. Memory? Why did I think it was a memory?

But at this point I knew what I had to do.

I pulled the trigger.

Isuca POV

"Hah." I gave a mocking laugh. "The 14th seat of the illustrious ******** ** ******** was selected from a player?" The familiar man standing in front of the 13 figures smirked at me, a gaze of fire meeting a stare of steel.

"******, you don't deserve to live after betraying us like this. Your prev-" I was cut off by a loud laugh "AHAHAH! Is it wrong to seek strength? Isn't that what you've done, ****** ******** ** ********?"

"I sought strength, but not in the way you did. My strength is my own, not borrowed from an impostor. Prepare yourself, ******. I drew back the empty string of the pitch black bow in my hands as I spoke four words.

"Life Break: Concept Sever."

Note: For anyone curious about what's going to happen to this fic in the future, it'll probably be at least a week until the next release. Currently I'm adjusting to a new learning method IRL in the year break I'm taking between highschool and college, along with a war in an online game I play. Although that will be taking up a lot of my time until the end of this month, it means that I'll be more free to work on this project in the future.

In addition, I'm going to be taking some writing courses, so hopefully the quality of my writing, story, and storytelling will improve as I go! This is a pretty big project that I'm expecting (and hoping) to exceed 200k words by the time it's completed.

This is going to be a long journey and I'm looking forward to traveling it with all of you ;)

I'd like to thank Themailman'sdog for leaving a review that helped me flesh out some ideas I had.

And BorderLand, I'd love to hear your ideas about Isuca, for the reasons of seeing how good of a job I did at dropping hints on her backstory and so that I might get some ideas on how to flesh out her character more ;)

Thanks for reading and sorry that there haven't been any releases lately! Hope to see all of you next chapter!