Author's Note

7/29/2018 Update: Here's part two of the edit release! As always, thanks to Guy for helping me out with this stuff! You're amazing, man!

Whew, this took much less time than I expected! I was expecting another week or so, but then this went from 600 to 4600 words in a collective four hours over two days. I guess it goes to show just how easily my inspiration can shove my expectations up my— well, you get the point.

So, another branch from Progressive/GGO SW happens in this chapter. After all, Diavel didn't die, so Lind obviously can't get super pissed at Kiriko for "letting" it happen, right?

Also, this is basically the last chapter of this story's first major arc! There'll be more on that in the bottom note, but you have to get through the chapter first.

That's all stuff I can't say here without spoiling the chapter for everyone…

Enjoy the read, guys!

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Transcendent Bonds

Chapter Eleven: A New Goal

I lazily held my gun's barrel level with the barely-visible critical weak point on its waist. I had one thing to tell it before I shot.

"It was a good fight."

With that, I fired a round straight into the boss's critical weak point, depleting the rest of its HP. Its avatar began to shimmer and distort, until finally, it exploded into an array of innumerable red and orange polygonal fragments.

The «Karakuri King: Infinite Avarice» was no more.

I don't know what compelled me to give it a few words of comfort before I ended its hold on the players' progress. Perhaps out of pity for it after completely thwarting its every move in rage mode. Perhaps out of a genuine desire to praise its fighting power. Either way, I knew it didn't understand anyway – this boss wasn't even programmed to speak, let alone understand human language. It wasn't like the boss of zone ten, which could even hold a conversation with you as it you fought it…

As I contemplated my words, I heard a horn-like sound effect. I turned upwards in the direction of the noise and found a gigantic window that took up at least fifteen meters of space across the air of the room. On it, the word 'congratulations' was spelled out in English letters.

In the middle of my field of vision, a red system message popped up. I read it and saw exactly what I expected, the familiar message that greeted me after countless big battles in the beta.

You got the last attack!

Before, the lights that had turned on overhead at the start of the battle were slightly dim, but now, they illuminated the room completely, having turned to full strength. A cool draft blew throughout the room, washing away the heat of the hard-fought battle.

No one wanted to break the silence that descended upon the room. Teams F and H stood in the back, the center groups A, D, E and G were kneeling while recovering from the pain of healing injections, and Agil's team B, the last line of tank defense, were all standing around with blank, weary stares. They weren't that tired after Asuna and I pretty much took down the boss's rage mode by ourselves, but the fatigue and unease that washed over everyone with the battle's end was intense. Everyone all seemed almost afraid that the boss would come back to life at any second.

Even I stood dead still, my gun still raised slightly to be level with where the boss's weak point resided mere moments before. Is it… over? Or is there going to be another surprise, another difference from the beta test?

A small, pale hand touched my arm, gently pulling my gun down. It reminded me of the scar-faced man from before, but this touch felt warm and kind, rather than cold and menacing. The new memory of this warm hand seemed to be melting through and replacing the old memory of that man.

I looked at the arm's owner and found Asuna, my partner. Though the hood of her cloak still covered the majority of her head, a few more locks of chestnut-brown hair had escaped in the heat of battle to show outside her clothes. Remembering my meeting with her in the real, I knew she had a beauty greater than mine – my height made me look like an overdeveloped eleven year old.

She locked eyes with me – a hard feat considering my head was level with her chest – and spoke after a few moments of silence. "… Nice work."

Finally, I understood. It was all over… finally, the biggest barrier keeping the seventy-thousand players confined to the first zone had been removed for good.

As if the system had been waiting for me to make that realization, a new message popped up. Experience gained, credits distributed, and finally, the loot. For me, the last category showed me what I gained as the last attack bonus.

The faces of everyone around me finally returned to normal as soon as they received similar messages. A chorus of cheers broke through the silence. Some roared with their fists in the air. Some hugged their partners. Some put on absurd victory dances. Amidst the storm of celebration, one man moved through the crowd to approach me – the anti-tank rifleman, Agil.

"That was some brilliant swordsmanship," he told me with a smile. "Congratulations – this victory belongs to you."

I couldn't help but notice that he said the word 'congratulations' in English perfectly intonated. The large man grinned widely and extended his fist.

"It wasn't just me…" I denied his praise with a more noble response. After all, after the raid fell apart, a good portion of the last of the boss' HP was downed by Asuna. If anything, the success was a team effort. Regardless, I formed my right hand into a fist and raised it up to give him a bump. But then, right at that moment—

"Am I the only one who gets it?!"

The room fell silent once again at the angered shout. I tore my gaze away from Asuna and Agil to look at a man with a bulletproof vest, wielding a semi-auto handgun and combat knife. I didn't recognize him at all, but he seemed to be in the team led by Diavel, from where he stood.

"'She knows this boss better than me?'" he repeated the raid leader's earlier words. "You didn't just know about the boss, you knew its every move in its new rage mode!"

I didn't get it before, but now I knew exactly where this was heading. I shrugged, giving him a challenging stare. "Are you going to stop wasting time and tell me why that interests you so much?" I asked him in a biting tone.

"There's only one way you could have known the boss's patterns so well!" he shouted back, falling into the hole of predictability my mind already dug for him. "You must have been a beta-tester!"

"Yeah? Am I supposed to care that you connected a few dots at a pace a monkey could beat?" I asked him in the most belittling manner I could muster. "It's like, woo-wee! I can use basic reasoning skills! Somebody give me a medal! That's what I'm hearing right now."

The whole room had gone completely stiff after my retort. I watched as my verbal opponent's face turned three shades of red before he finally did something in response.

"What did you just say?" the man queried in a dangerously low tone. He brushed past his shocked partners, including Diavel, and walked straight up to me, glaring me down.

I didn't flinch back. "You heard me. I'm not impressed, bud," I told him before walking forward a step, forcing him to step back. "I would have been if you figured out that Diavel was a beta-tester too, but no dice, right?"

"That has to be a—"

I cut off his accusation of deceit before he could even make it. "The reason he put me at the back of the raid is because he remembered my name from the beta. I was the player to get every last attack bonus in the test period. He put me at the back with minimal contact with the boss because he thought I would try to do the same here."

I looked past this angry man to our raid leader, who looked to the ground with a conflicted expression. I holstered my gun and pointed at Diavel with my left hand. "If that expression doesn't scream 'guilty as charged', I don't know what does."

When my accuser looked over at his faithful leader a moment later, nothing had changed. Diavel's face still had "guilty" written all over it, just like I said. Everyone in the room must've been looking at him, some quietly questioning him, asking him if it was true, why he hid it and many other things.

"Of course, if you're still not convinced that our leader is not a saint, but a human capable of deceit," I spoke again, drawing everyone's attention back to me. "I have some more proof."

This time, I pointed to Kibaou, who had tried to inch away once he realized what was coming. The room's focus shifted onto the cactus-haired assault rifleman, who returned their gazes with a harsh glare.

"For the past couple days, the leader of the info house has been contacting me repeatedly," I said loud enough for everyone to hear. "She had been acting as a proxy in order to buy my photon sword off me. The day before today, she upped the offered price to one and a half times the market rate. When I bought the name of her client, it was Kibaou."

I lowered my finger from its pointing position. "But between the offer of seventy-five-thousand credits and the raid meeting the next day, Kibaou's gear didn't change. You'd think with that much money, he could have got some better equipment or done some serious upgrading, right?"

I shook my head as I continued revealing my findings. "Wrong, because as I realized during the fight, the money wasn't his. And when Kibaou approached me during the fight and mentioned how Diavel told him about my tendency to get the LA, it clicked. The buyer had wanted to drive down my attack power to prevent me from getting the last attack.

"Which meant that the buyer must have been someone aiming to get the LA themselves," I continued my speech without pausing for anything more than a breath. "From there it was pretty easy to connect the dots. Diavel wanted to get the LA for himself, so he did everything in his power to keep me from getting it, though not all of it worked."

With that, I began walking towards the door at the far end of the room. To the beginning of the second zone. As I walked, I went into my equipment menu and equipped my new prize – the LA bonus, the «Moonlit Illusion Cloak». The gray fabric of my jacket took on a pale glow before flashing into sleek black leather. The length went from my waist to my knees in an instant.

As I reached the other side of the raid, I turned around with a flourish of my long, black coat. "Why did I have to reveal all this? Why did I have to crush your vision of your once-proud leader?" I asked the dumbfounded crowd with a cold stare.

"Let me be straight; because visions of perfection won't get us out of here," I answered my own question with a harsh tone. "Working together will get us out. And the sooner you get the dumb idea that your leader should be perfect out of the way, the better it will be for everyone trapped here. Nobody's perfect. Diavel would have died if I didn't save him using the knowledge and techniques I learned from the end of the beta."

I sighed, turning back around. As I began to step further away, I said one, final thing. "Now that you know he's human, you can start trusting him for real. Because when you've sunk as low as him, you can really only go back up. The same goes for how you see him, too."

This would work out nicely, pretty much like I planned from the start. Everyone would probably still trust Diavel, that much I could almost be certain of. Though my words definitely hurt some people, both in feelings and reputation, I knew they'd want to start from the ground up with our leader, just because without him, nobody could lead them. And sheep like these frontrunners needed somebody to herd them.

But as for me, I'd probably be alienated for my blunt speech. Not like I really minded, but I guess that answered the question of whether I'd ever find a party in the foreseeable future. Nobody would want to even speak with someone as brutally honest as me, let alone party up.

It didn't really matter, though. I already burned that bridge on day one, it's not like I could just suddenly change my mind two months later.

Having already said my parting message, I sped up my pace. I could feel a significant portion of the eyes of the room still on me, but I didn't pay them any mind. None of them mattered to me. None of them had any significance… except—

Except for Asuna… and that Agil guy seemed nice enough.

These thoughts confused me greatly. I had no reason to care about either of them now that the battle that brought us together had ended in victory. But despite the complete lack of necessity, I still felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of those two being alienated by this.

Just as I reached the door, I spared one final glance at the raid group a couple tens of meters behind me. Most of the players had gathered around Diavel, but the two I had searched out, my partner and the kind giant, both hung near the back. They were both looking at me with eyes that showed they understood everything.

I inwardly chastised myself at the relief I felt when I saw their expressions. I had no reason to care, and yet I couldn't in any way of denying the relaxation of tensed muscles as I saw their understanding faces.

I put my hand on the door's sensor panel, watching as the sensor scanned my hand. After a few seconds, the whole panel turned green and the double door began to slide open. I walked through it without a second thought.

At the bottom of a spiral staircase, there was another door. Normally, there wouldn't be such a staircase, but in the scenario where two adjacent zones were at vastly different elevations, this would be a standard feature. The end of zone one was supposed to resemble the forests at the base of some mountains, so the elevation was naturally quite high.

However, zone two was designed after an area of the world much, much closer to sea level. With such an incredible distance from one to the other, a staircase would need to be implemented inside the zone wall to bridge the end of one to the beginning of the next.

The doors at the end of the staircase were usually representative of the general theme of the zone. For example, if there were a door to the beginning of the first zone, it would be an electric sliding type due to the high-level technology of zone one. However, this set of double doors was an old-fashioned wooden type with a sideways U-shaped handle to open each one, just as I remembered.

I gripped the handle of the right one and opened it gently to find a stunning sight ready to meet me. The zone wall receded in order to show a desert-like biome, incredibly flat and dusty. The sun was right above the zone wall of the other side, close enough that it appeared much brighter than normal as it descended. For a moment, I just drank in the sight of the second zone.

Unlike the varied terrain of zone one, the second was a giant dustbowl that was made to resemble the American Wild West from end to end. Most of the cities were modeled after towns in that timeframe where cowboys would reign supreme, and the majority of the guns sold were types seen in that era and place as well. There were a lot of NPCs that looked to be from the American southwest during this era, such as cowboys and bartenders and the like.

«Dodge City», the main settlement of the second zone, was only a kilometer walk from here. All I had to do was make the trek, activate the Warp Gate in the middle of town through touching it, and get the heck out of dodge. At that point, it would be connected with the teleporter in the «SBC Glocken» behind me, and anyone could travel between the two.

If I managed to die on the short journey, or decided to not activate it and proceed with questing instead, the teleporter would automatically activate two hours after the boss's defeat. But word had no doubt spread to the first city about today's attempt on the boss, and I could imagine a crowd of players waiting in the town square until the moment that blue warp gate appeared. I wanted to get to «Dodge City» and open it for them, but I had the right to stop and enjoy the scenery for a few minutes first.

I walked forward and sat on a large rock that was the perfect height for a seat, with the width of a two-person couch. Beyond the rocky, dusty desert was the second-third zone wall, which, though it was barely visible from here, met with the horizon.

How long did I sit there, watching the sun continue to descend? Eventually, I heard the door open behind me, and a set of careful, petite footsteps make their way towards me. The owner of the steps reached the rock and stopped, then sighed and sat down on it next to me.

"I'm pretty sure that at this point, being with me will only make it harder on you to be included," I told my partner as I cast her a sideways glance.

"So what?" she retorted as if everything I said was pointlessly stupid. "We're partners, remember? I wouldn't leave you just because you said what everyone needed to hear."

I gave a sigh at her determination, though I inwardly felt a little bit better after hearing her thoughts. "Fair enough," I told her with a small smile after a moment's deliberation.

The responded to this with a rather interesting tidbit. "I have messages from Agil, Kibaou and Diavel."

"Is that right?" I looked up at the orange sky as I spoke. "And what did they have to say?"

"Agil says we should tackle the next boss together," she started with the giant's message, then got a rather conflicted look on her face for a second before relaying the next. "And Kibaou says…"

She cleared her throat, expression serious, and clumsily attempted to recreate his Kansai dialect. "… Ya saved our asses this time, but I still can't get along with ya. I'm gonna do things my own way to beat this game, y'hear?"

"And what did our leader have to say?" I asked once she finished, trying not to crack up at the near-perfect imitation.

"Diavel says… that you and him should aim for joint leadership of the next raid," she told me. My eyes widened a smidgen at the sudden offer, and she elaborated. "You may have been blunt, but what you said was something we all needed to hear. Nobody back there holds it against you."

"… I see."

Her words reverberated through my consciousness a few times. It came as a mild surprise that I hadn't alienated the raid group with my bold, blunt words. Before I could ponder it too much, Asuna coughed to get my attention and turned her head away once I looked over.

"Also, I have a message from me," she told me with a troubled look. She continued to keep her gaze away from me even as I tried to close in to make her turn.

"What's up?" I asked from my new position that leaned into her considerably.

"You called out my name during the battle," she said after a moment's pause.

It took me a second to remember. Yes, I did give her an order by name while we were soloing the boss's rage mode.

"Oh, right," I acknowledged her concern with a few simple words at first. "I wasn't trying to be disrespectful or anything. Did I pronounce it right?"

My partner turned to face me with a strangely nervous expression. She backed away several centimeters once she noticed our lips were millimeters away from touching, a cutely fierce blush on her cheeks, and finally spoke.

"Y-you did, but how did you even know it in the first place?" she asked me with a slightly nervous stutter at our close proximity. I myself didn't really care, but I did think it was kind of adorable that she got so embarrassed about it. "I never told you my name, nor did you say yours. We never introduced ourselves when we met in real life, either."

Deciding I'd had my fill of teasing her, I backed away to a more normal position, and she returned to normal as well. I realized why she was confused right then – this must've been her first time in a party, so she must not have realized we could read each other's names off our HP readouts.

I pointed to the left side of Asuna's face, right at where my HP bar would be in her display. "Do you see the second HP bar below yours? Is there anything written beneath the thinner part?"

The second question was rhetorical, as I already knew full well that my name would be where I described. My partner turned her head, so I used my pointing hand to stop her by holding the side of her face. "If you turn your face, the readouts will move with it. Keep your head still and look to your top left."

"Like… like this?"

Her light brown eyes uncertainly moved to the left as heat gathered on her cheeks, and she soon found a string of letters for her vision only. Her lips whispered out three quiet syllables. "Ki… ri… ko… Kiriko? Is that your name?"

"In this world, yeah," I made sure to specify after thinking about it a moment.

"So it was right there the whole time…"

Suddenly, Asuna's face heated up a bit more and gained a deep red hue, and I realized I still hadn't retracted my hand from her cheek. I pulled my hand back rather slowly, trying as hard as I could to make it look as nonchalant as possible in order to keep up a façade of calmness.

Once my hand was back up at my side, she spoke again as soon as her face returned to normal. "Actually, I came here to thank you."

"For what?" I queried. I thought about making guesses, but I decided against it once I realized that some of the guesses might make her a bit embarrassed and possibly angry with me.

"For a lot of things," she told me with a small smile. "But mostly… because I finally found something here I want to accomplish. A goal I want to chase after. And you're the one who led me to it."

"What's the goal?" I couldn't help but ask, though I knew I probably wouldn't get a straight answer.

As I predicted, she responded with a gentle shake of her head. She stood up and made a step back towards the door to zone one. "It's a secret," she said as the turned to face me again. "But I'll keep trying. I'll try to survive, to be stronger. Until I can reach the place I want to be."

Though she didn't know it, those words were the most reassuring thing I'd heard since before I got trapped in GGO. I felt so much more at ease knowing that for whatever reason, she actually cared about keeping her life.

"You're going to get much stronger, I'm sure of it," I told her with a tone that said much more than the words themselves. "Not just in terms of fighting skill, but in a much more important, personal sense. So take it from me… if someone you trust invites you to join a legion, don't turn them down. Because there's an absolute limit to what a solo player can do."

For several seconds, the only sounds made were our slow, even breaths. When Asuna next spoke, it wasn't at all what I had been expecting.

"I almost forgot," she muttered before continuing in a clearer voice. "You said when we survived the raid, you'd tell me the real reason you saved me twice."

"Oh, you're right. It's a pretty simple reason, though," I repeated the phrase I used to describe it the first time, a few days back. "I just don't like watching people die. I don't have any reason like 'all life is important', I just don't like the empty feeling that sets in when I see someone die in front of me."

"… I think I like that honest reason better than what you compared it to," she told me after a moment's pause. "It's more understandable, especially coming from you."

She began to walk away after that, stopping once she reached the door. "See you around, Kiriko."

The creak of the door opening reached my ears. Then a few footsteps. Then the thump of it closing.

I stayed sitting on the couch-sized rock until Asuna's HP bar disappeared from my vision, signifying she had left my party. The way I had set it up, once she got far enough away from me, our party would automatically dissolve. For a few moments, I tried to figure out what her new goal was, but the answer eluded me long enough that I lost interest for the time being.

With a deep sigh, I got to my feet and turned to look back at the door. Asuna had just passed through about two minutes prior, so she must've been all the way up the steps and out of the boss room by then.

I turned away and started down the path towards the main settlement. I took a look on either side of me, noting the incredible distance from one end of the path to the other. Eventually, I realized the meaning behind the distance. It was about enough for sixty people of varying sizes to walk side by side.

If we had taken on the boss with a full raid party and managed to win without any fatalities, we could have all walked side by side on the way to the settlement. I laughed at the irony of the real situation.

I doubted the designer of this path would have predicted just a single player walking along this dusty, brown pathway. This huge difference seemed to be foretelling of the ordeals ahead of me. Looking in front and in back of myself, there was not a soul in sight. I walked on, further and further forward, alone just like I had wanted.

It sure is quiet when I'm alone. Was it always this bad?

Before I could ponder why I would have a thought like that, I noticed a small envelope icon flashing on the right side of my vision. It was a friend message notification. There were only two players on my friends list, last I checked – my first friend, Klein, and Argo, the rat-like leader of the «Info House».

I tapped on the flashing icon to open it, and immediately realized it was from the latter.

"It sounds like you averted a witch hunt of the beta-testers after the boss raid, Kii-boy," it said. I marveled at the incredible speed at which she gained her information. I scrolled to read more, but the message was barely long enough for that to be necessary.

"Good job! As thanks, I'll give you any one piece of info on the house."

"Oh, really?" I said with a devilish smirk as I brought up the holo-keyboard to type a reply as I walked.

"Why the whiskers? Tell me once you get to the second zone."

I hit the send button just as my smile turned to a normal one. I picked up the pace a little, eager to get to the main settlement and cash in on my reward.

Author's Note

Despite the setup, I'm not writing the equivalent of "Reason for the Whiskers". I'll reference to it, but I'm not writing that out. Sorry for those of you who are disappointed by that, but I decided I would more or less stop paraphrasing the novels here, with one minor exception a few chapters down the road.

So, this is the last chapter in arc one! After this, there's going to be a mini-arc that spans a few chapters and details the transition from arc one to arc two. The second arc of this series will be much, much longer than the first. It's going to cover all the way from the beginning of zone three to the BoB, and then end with the aftermath. Which means probably over twenty chapters in length, though I'm not certain of that.

But before arc two starts, there's a few things that need to be narrated in between. I have a few chapters to write before I can get to my favorite part of this story.

Critique, please? I need it to improve, and my progress as a writer has been stagnant as of late. Please be as detailed as you can, too. Tell me what works and what doesn't.

See you next chapter!