SAO: The Rangers Black and Blue
Good news for you, bad news for me, I have nearly finished all the SAO light novels, currently on the 12th one.
This means that starting tomorrow it will no longer be disrupting me from writing.
It also means that I may intentionally or unintentionally incorporate small parts of Alicization into my story, though no plot or characters (After all ideally this story will go all the way to the Alicization arc and if I use characters from there it won't make any sense.) I may use some ideas and terms.
Also, 40k words have been broken.
This will probably be a very fluffy pointless chapter.
Also sorry if this chapter sucks more then most.
Chapter 14: Christmas Special
(1st person, Kirito, December 24th, 1:02pm)
I was currently on the latest floor, the 15th one, and I was in a forest, hunting.
What was I hunting? Rabbits.
Specifically [Christmas Bunnies], a special, rare, type of bunny that spawned only on christmas, as you can guess from the name.
It dropped special holiday drops like chocolate!
I was trying to catch some to get chocolate for Sinon, because as far as I knew she loved chocolate and it was near-immposible to make in this world, as in it should be possible technically but even Asuna hadn't figured it out yet.
Unexpectedly, I wasn't the only one celebrating Christmas in this death game, I expected that most others would either be extremely sad as this would be their first Christmas without their families, or ignore it and keep trying to clear the game.
My thoughts were interrupted as I heard a sound to my right. I pulled out my bow quietly and turned.
Once I turned I saw would looked like a large and white rabbit with a santa hat. I drew back my bow and shot, the arrow slammed into it at high speed and removed its 1 hp point.
I inspected the drops window that had some exp and col rewards that were rather large, the exp comparable to a field-boss on floor 10 or so.
But what I was most interested in this case was that I had received 2 [Christmas Chocolate Bars]. I decided that I would hunt for them the rest of day, because they gave a lot of exp anyway, so it was probably a fairly efficient in terms of time, effort, and risk means to gain exp.
(8:05pm)
I had been hunting for the past seven hours and caught a total of seven rabbits, the spoils I got were some Christmas clothes like a santa hat and a santa beard and a little over a dozen chocolate bars, as well as some other stuff not really worth mentioning at the moment.
I was anxiously awaiting for tomorrow, just because I wanted to see the look on Sinon's face when she sees chocolate.
I was wandering around the 15th main town, because it was too early for me to go to bed and to late for me to grind, so I had no idea what to do.
After wandering around for a little while I stumbled upon a small shop that was open, though at the moment there were very few shops open, so I decided to go inside and check it out.
When I went in I saw a vaguely familiar face as the shopkeeper. I had seen him during most of the earlier boss fights, and a few of the later ones. He was one of the few still friendly to us after the stunt Sinon and I pulled on the second floor, his name was Egil, and we was a [Two-Handed Axe] user, and one of the better ones at that.
Though I didn't know he was a shop owner, I guess that explains why he was slightly behind on levels despite showing up to a bunch of the boss fights.
"Hey Kirito! Didn't expect to see you here!" he said.
"I didn't know you were a shop owner. I just walked in because it was open the day before Christmas and I was bored." I answered.
"Open 24/7 except sometimes." he said cheerfully.
I chuckled and said "What kind of things do you sell here?"
He answered "All kinds of things, potions, swords, armor, crystals, and even some food, though it isn't very high quality."
"So basically you sell everything, which means you sell nothing good?" I asked jokingly.
"Now I wouldn't put it that way..." he said.
"My potions, crystals, armor are all top quality, though your sword probably exceeds the quality of my weapons, I am not so sure about you armor." he said.
"Right... Let's see, I take your finest piece of armor and slash it once and we find out how top-quality your armor is." I said.
"No! I can't sell it if it's broken, and anyway I know that your sword is stronger then my armor, but is your armor stronger then my armor?" he answered hurriedly.
"Probably, anyway it is definitely stronger then your armor of the same weight." I said, I was currently wearing the [Cloak of Starless Night]—that my [Cloak of Midnight] (funny it turned midnight exactly as I wrote the word 'midnight') transformed into—and it was an amazing piece of armor. For its weight it had a ridiculous defense bonus, but along with that it gave large bonuses to [Agility], [Strength], and any [Sword-Type Weapons], as well as [Hiding] which was nice because it gave me a certain level of hiding without wasting a slot on it.
After browsing his wares for about half an hour I decided to buy some of his high-class health potions, which were good because they healed a ridiculous amount of health over a long time, basically a regeneration boost for the next 2 hours and not a health potion. I decided that I would pick up the [Alchemy] skill in one of my empty slots soon, because it was like cooking but more useful. I should be able to create any number of useful effects, like boosts to hidden or not hidden stats. A little known fact (as in literally known only to me and Kayaba-san) was that a luck potion was possible, and if you used one, it would result in you acutely raising your luck stat permanently as well because of the way raising your luck stat works.
The downside was that they required ridiculously rare materials to make. So you needed to be lucky to make luck potions...
(December 25th, 8:00am)
I woke up at 8:00am by my alarm clock as usual and then realized I shouldn't have set one because it was Christmas today, well since I'm up early might as well do the usual, 'Early Morning Grinding'.
On second thought, why don't I start getting all the stuff required for the [Alchemy].
NPC shops were only closed on Aincrad holidays, not real world ones, even though there were events for real world ones.
Because my [Alchemy] level would be at 1/1000 I wouldn't be able to use any sophisticated equipment for brewing anyway so I might as well go to the lowest level shop were the basic gear is available and buy that. That would be around the 5th floor if I recall correctly.
Potion making was complicated but the general idea was simple.
(The following part probably exists in many games and such but was also invented by me and my brother while just running around and talking, plus some stuff I come up with on the spot.) When you make a potion you need water, a catalyst—which come in different 'classes', you need higher class ones for higher class ingredients—and ingredients—which also come with different 'classes' as well as different effects, and strengths of these effects. The class determines the amount of and what strength catalysts are needed, basically every ingredient has some value, and every catalyst has some value, the sum of the values of the ingredients (greater then linear sum though, for those of you who understand what that means) must equal the sum of the values of the catalysts (though this goes up less then linearly per ingredient, thus encouraging one strong catalyst and preventing people from making very strong potions just by dumping an abundant supply of poor catalyst.) So if you had a basic health ingredient and a basic catalyst which had equal values you could make a potion, however if you dump two of each into the potion, not only will there not be enough catalyst, but also the effect won't be doubled.
The maximum 'value' of a potion depends on the alchemists level.
The effects of potions vary from recovering health or the hidden stamina stat, to temporarily boosting strength or agility stats, to anti-posion and temporary immunity to poisons, as well as some more unique and interesting effects, such as luck potions.
Almost anything can be used as an ingredient but most yield trash results.
For example something as basic as a feather could result in an agility boost.
If that same feather was made into a potion by a person with a stat of 100/1000 it might have some small effect, but if used by a person with [Alchemy] 1000/1000 the effect would be much larger, though not ten times larger.
There are also special modifier ingredients which do things like reduce the effect but increase the duration of a potion, or the opposite. With a health potion if you reduce the regeneration effect but increase the duration with even a semi decent ingredient it will increase the total amount healed. In math terms the integral over the duration of the potion with respect to the effect strength of the potion will increase (what I'm taking a calculus class right now, like writing this instead of doing my homework, just kidding, I am having no trouble keeping up with the homework and have plenty of free time).
[Alchemy] could also be used to create something other then potions such as smoke bombs for a random example and once you get it high enough you can unlock the [Crystal Craft] skill, which just as you expect lets you make crystals such as healing crystals.
Anyway, back to buying potion materials. I went to the [Teleport Gate] and teleported to the 5th floor, where I bought a bunch of glass bottles and basic ingredients to level up, as well as the basic equipment that would be the equivalent of a hammer and anvil for a blacksmith, in other words, mandatory.
Afterwards I went back to our inn room and started making basic stat boost potions to level up, the reason I didn't make health potions was because we already had better ones then I could make at the moment, but there were no potions sold by NPCs for stat boosts and no one had really gotten the [Alchemy] skill yet, so even these were better then nothing.
After the hour and a half it for Sinon to finally wake up I had managed to create about 50 potions, and gotten my skill up to about 50/1000, the first of the potions were terrible, but as your [Alchemy] skill increases the quality with the same ingredients also increases.
"What are you doing?" asked Sinon who had finally woken up.
"I am leveling up my newly acquired [Alchemy] skill." I answered.
"I decided it would be useful as practically nobody else seems to have picked one up yet and the potions made by players can be far better then the ones made by NPCs, also ones made by NPCs are practically limited to health potions and not any other kind, despite the literally nearly infinite possibilities." I continued.
"I made a bunch of [Agility] potions this morning, they are pretty terrible so I don't mind wasting a few. Try drinking one, they make you feel lighter." I finished passing her a potion.
She drank it and suddenly looked like she grew slightly, actually it was just that she effectively got lighter, so the force that was being put into holding her up had gone into making her go up. She then quickly lowered down to her normal height and said "Wow, it's like you wake up and weigh a few kilos (converts to 2.2*(a few) pounds) lighter."
"I know, that would be useful in a fight too." I pointed out and she nodded.
"Though these are really weak and the effects should wear off in only a few minutes." I said.
"Still, I see why the skill could be useful." she said.
"Anyway, you know it's Christmas today." I said, the fact she didn't look at all panicked meant that she already knew though.
"Duh." was her simple answer.
"So, for Christmas I got you this." I said pulling out some chocolate.
"What is it." she asked.
I poked her so she opened her mouth and then threw a piece of chocolate in her mouth. She was about to be angry but then forgot about it started thinking about chocolate. She looked actually happy for the first time after the start of this.
After a minute she finished the chocolate and shyly asked "Is there any more?" with an adorable pleading expression, it translated to 'Can I have more?' because it was blatantly obvious there was more because I was holding it in my hands.
"Here you go." I said and tossed the rest of the bar into her hands.
She ate it happily and slowly and said "And I thought my present was awesome."
Then she added "Speaking of which, here it is." she said going through her inventory and handing me a wrapped box.
I opened it and found that it had a [Insert Author's Lake of Imagination Here] (It won't play an important role and apparently it being a fiction story didn't make coming up with presents any easier, so I am just going to do that and go with it.)
After we chatted and ate chocolate for a while Sinon said "Hey Kirito, do you want to go have fun today and NOT grind all day, like sight seeing, or eating at a restaurant, or just taking a walking the snow."
"Sure, we could do all of those, I mean if we don't grind we have hours on hours of free time." I said.
"Let's go do something right now, I just want to do something someone would do in real life today." she said and we left the room.
It was cold and snowing out side and we walked for a little while, eventually we walked off the path and walked into an area with deeper snow and then the idea that we should have a snowball fight—though it was stupid because of how accurate Sinon was—struck me.
I leaned down and swiftly picked up a snowball and threw it at Sinon in one motion, who was too surprised to dodge and it hit her in the face.
Her response was rather unsurprisingly a snowball to my face, or it would have been to my face if I didn't block it with my arms.
We threw snowballs back and forth because at some point Leafa and Horum showed up and started throwing snowballs at both of us, so we teamed up and started pelting them with snowballs and after about two hours of this, we decided to stop, with Leafa and Horum literally in a pile of snow, and Sinon and I practically not hit because of our dodging and blocking skills.
Then while they were still digging themselves out we ran off, though we didn't show it much, we did still feel bad about spilling with them on the second floor.
(Sinon, 6:03pm)
After our 'little' snowball fight we had walked around and had some competitions on small stuff.
Then Kirito said "Why don't we have dinner about now, I'm hungry."
Since I didn't see a problem with that I said "Sure, why not." and started looking for a restaurant that looked good.
We were probably the richest people in the game—counted as money divided by number of people in organization—at the moment so price was not of the essence.
After a little bit of searching we found a player restaurant that seemed to rated rather highly on Argo's restaurant guide book, which basically means she asked people for their opinion on a bunch of restaurants and put it in a book, which—unlike the basic guide book she gave out for free—she sold, though not for a very high price.
We decided to go in a see if it was any good.
After looking at the menu—which was surprisingly large for a player owned restaurant—Kirito decided to order fish and I ordered some seafood, which until now I didn't know existed and I loved.
It took only about 10 minutes for the food to arrive—due to the accelerated cooking process in SAO—and when it did we dug in happily.
""Itadakimasu"" we both said at the same time before starting to eat.
After about half an hour we finished our delicious meal (writing in anymore detail will make me hungry and it is like 2am so it's not like I can just go get some food (this is my pathetic excuse for my laziness)) we went out side and walked around in the snow, which was surprisingly fun, for being walking.
We stopped in a circular paved area, with a smaller circle inside it where there was a fairly large tree, and I looked up to look at the stars.
Only to see some mistletoe above us, and before my brain could process the thought that came to mind, I acted on it and kissed Kirito who had just turned to face me...
About half of a second to late I realized what I was doing but it was to late to turn back. Kirito, surprisingly, instead of pulling back, after a moment kissed me back.
Cliffhanger-ish awkward ending.
How is the idea for a first kiss? I feel awkward writing that question.
Anyway review, favorite, and follow please.
Also exactly 3 thousand word chapter.
Anyway, cya me oouuttiiyy!