September 2, 2024.
"Hey Asuna," Lizbeth started. The two girls were eating lunch near Liz's home after her best friend dropped in on her unexpectedly. Asuna didn't always get a lot of time away from the front lines, so when she did it was drop-everything-and-hangout time for Liz. "Have you heard about the hot springs on floor sixty six?"
The orange haired girl put down her sandwich and frowned, "No," she stated. She wasn't saying no that she hadn't heard of them, but no to the following question. Asuna held up a hand before her friend could argue that she hadn't asked anything yet. "It's not in a safe zone, and we have to take off all our armor to go in. It's not worth the risk."
"Come onnnn," Liz whined. The pink haired girl had been waiting for an opportunity to go up there, "You're strong enough to take down any monsters that try to enter the hot springs while we're in there."
"That's not the problem," Asuna said with a sigh. She put her elbow on the table and rested her right cheek on her hand. "It's not that I don't want to go," the second-in-command of the KoBO muttered, "but if something gets in and I take too long to equip my sword, I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you."
Liz frowned and crossed her arms. She wanted to say she was an expert mace user, but sixty six was a floor even she had never dared to go to. There were fewer and fewer front-liners every day and the top floors were known to be beyond deadly.
The pink haired girl with freckles on her face suddenly had an idea and smirked. She leaned in and whispered into Asuna's ear and the orange haired girl lowered her jaw for a few seconds before closing it again. Her face was a little red, so was Liz's, but now both girls were smirking and Asuna said, "Sounds like we're going to floor sixty six."
"Do you want to call him or should I?" Liz asked.
"I'll do it," Asuna grumbled, not too thrilled by the idea. Still, the promise of a day at the hot springs was worth asking for his help. But if he tries peeping, ohh I'm gonna shove my foot so far up his butt he'll fly all the way to the sixty seventh floor!
FLOOR 66
"So why did you need me to come again?" Kirito mumbled as he walked in between the girls on their way out of the warp city. He'd been called out of a dungeon for Asuna's "urgent" task.
"It's very important," Liz said in a grim tone and kept staring ahead with a straight face. She was giggling mentally, but her face was solid as a rock, no emotion shown.
"Without you, there would be no possible way for the mission to succeed," Asuna agreed with a nod.
Now Kirito was getting intrigued and he tried pressing the issue, but their answers were continually vague. I don't know what they're trying to do, but it sounds big. The boy in the Blackwyrm Coat became serious and lifted his right hand, holding it on the hilt of his blade over his shoulder.
This one motion made the two girls with him almost lose their facade and start cracking up, but they managed to stay stoic for a few more minutes. Finally their reason for coming was in sight and the girls almost shrieked in excitement when they saw it. The end of the trail they were walking down was before them, and Kirito was staring at it blankly, his hand dropping from the hilt of his weapon. "Uhh," he started and looked to his left and right where the girls next to him were smiling madly, "is that a hot springs?"
The trail in front of them ended with a rice-paper wall extending out from one side of the forest on the trail to the other. Behind it, the steam was visible and there was a rock wall behind the open-air hot springs where a waterfall was dropping down into the springs. "Alright Kirito, here's the deal," Liz turned to the sixteen year old boy and gave him her best puppy dog eyes while she held her hands together. "We've both been working really hard lately, and not to interrupt you from your nap, but we need a guard while we use the hot springs."
If only I was taking a nap, the boy yawned at the thought of it and then snapped back to the issue at hand. "You said this was urgent," he turned to Asuna with a sharp stare.
She stared right back at him and his look faltered when she got up in his face, "It is urgent," Asuna replied. "I don't know where you were in the last boss room fight, but that, and the constant training on the front lines with the Knights of the Blood Oath has me wiped out. If everyone is going to get out of this game okay, then I need to be at my best during the next boss raid. People on the lower floors are relying on..."
"Sheesh, I get it already," Kirito said to stop her rant and lifted up his hands in defeat. "You need a break, sure, but... Why did you need me here?"
"As our bodyguard," Liz said with a small smile. "That hot springs isn't in a safe zone, so you'll have to stop any mobs from getting in the doors while we're in there. I'm not used to having someone guarding me, but Asuna here shouldn't have a problem..."
The orange haired girl elbowed her friend who oofed at the hard hit. Asuna growled, You don't know the half of it... but I'll tell you once we're in there. "Anyway Kirito," the girl said and turned from him. She started walking towards the hot springs, "Just keep guard, and no peeking."
Kirito had a witty retort to make, but Asuna's last phrase caught him off guard and his cheeks flushed red. Liz giggled and gave him a small wave before spinning and chasing after her friend.
"You think he'll stay there?" Liz asked once the two of them were in the door.
"Definitely," Asuna stated. Kirito might be lazy at times, but he wouldn't just leave us here in an unsafe area... right? She looked back at the thin white walls but she couldn't see anything outside of them.
"Asuna," the pink haired girl whispered and tugged on her friend's white sleeve. Asuna turned around to see what her friend was looking at and they both gasped, "Wow," they said for three full seconds while they took in their surroundings. "I wonder if anyone else has ever used these," Liz said while they looked around at the large hot springs. There was a huge pool in the middle with steam coming out of it, but a few smaller hot tubs around the sides that looked a lot hotter. The small area in the back near the wall didn't look like it was very hot since it wasn't steaming, and the waterfall from up the cliff was falling into it.
The KoBO officer shook her head, "I doubt it. I've heard about this place, but no one I talked to ever risked taking off all their gear out in the wilderness."
"Like this?" Liz asked and Asuna pried her eyes away from the amazing scenery to her friend. Liz had her hand out in front of her and was clicking a bunch of buttons on the screen that appeared. First her cloak came off, her weapon was put away, and then her underwear followed.
"Your turn," Liz said as she ran off towards the waterfall pool. "Geronimo!" she yelled and cannonballed into the pool.
Well, here goes, Asuna smiled and started to undress as well. When she was almost finished, she looked back at the walls and above them to see if anyone, Kirito, was looking over. Stop worrying, I'm sure he's just sitting there bored. With that, the girl turned and removed her underwear, dipping slowly into the large pool with steam coming off of it. "Ahhh," she couldn't help but release a soothing breath of air as soon as the perfect temperature water touched her.
Outside the Hot Springs
Kirito was about to sit down in front of the door when he heard rustling in the trees on either side of him. A notice appeared in the middle of the path they just walked down and the wind was blowing faster than before. The boy in the black cloak read the words in the air fast and his eyes widened. 'Hot Springs Trap initiated- Wave 1/5 begin' this is bad!
The boy rose his sword and held it in his right hand at his waist level. Should I call Asuna? No, she said she needed this break. We're five floors down, I should be able to handle this! He watched as two Devil Dwarves with red faces came out of either side of the forests and started converging on him. Besides the four coming in from the sides, five Ripjaw Mutts were coming down the path fast with the Ripjaw Trainer running behind them holding his whip.
The dogs got to him first and he jumped, easily dodging the mutts who were carried by their momentum and sprinted past him. As he landed on the other side of them, he slashed his sword and parried the whip coming at him. He twisted his sword off the parry and cut across the trainer's chest, then back across his stomach in a twirl that hit two of the dogs leaping at him from behind.
His sensors went off like crazy and he bent back, just as an ax flew past where his chest was a second before. Kirito turned and saw the Devil Drawves on his right side coming at him and the second one threw his throwing-ax. The box smacked the ax away with his sword and jumped to the right to avoid three of the remaining mutts. He felt a whip hit his back and he winced in pain, remembering the trainer still wasn't dead.
"Ackrack grawc," the Ripjaw Trainer laughed in some foreign tongue that Akihiko Kayaba probably didn't even bother to translate himself. Kirito sprinted forward with a sword skill readied and slammed into the Devil Dwarf closest to him. He cut its head off with the powerful attack and then spun, slamming the other in the pair with one of the two dogs coming at him. While the first of the dogs hit the dwarf and fell, Kirito focused on the second one, sliding underneath it as it pounced and cutting it from neck to its feet.
His sensors flared again and this time he didn't have to turn to know another ax was coming at him. He twirled his weapon with a small dip of his head and redirected the ax back into the trainer who was about to crack his whip again. The ax stuck in the trainers face and Kirito was too busy cutting up the last two dogs to notice the trainer explode. With that he only had the three dwarves to take care of and without the dogs constantly jumping at him, they were a piece of cake to destroy.
He was panting pretty hard after that but he didn't slide his sword back in his sheath. Health bar is only down a little, and if the break between waves is at least twenty seconds, I should have it all back. The boy's thoughts were interrupted and he felt chills run down his spine. Far down the path between the two forests, there was a lone figure watching the battle.
The man was in full body armor, looking like how the Divine Dragons dressed, except instead of silver the armor was black. His head was covered by a helmet and there was darkness visible inside the helmet, leaking out a little into the air around him. He was sitting atop a horse, although Kirito could tell from this distance that the horse was no ordinary horse: its bones were showing on its legs and it had rotten flesh around its lower torso and face, looking a lot like a zombie of some sort.
Guess he's the boss, Kirito wondered as his health hit full and he awaited Wave 2/5. He looked closer and saw a name next to his opponent, telling him what the mob's label was. Instantly the boy's face hardened, "The Black Knight," he muttered in anger. The boy scowled at his enemy, "There can only be one."
In a deep menacing tone, his foe down the path spoke and his voice carried down to surround the boy facing him. "You may have defeated the first wave, boy," Kirito frowned deeper at the man's insulting tone towards him. He didn't even care that the person was actually an NPC enemy triggered by the hot springs, the guy pissed him off as much as some red guild members he'd run into. "But let's see how you fare against more of my dark army!"
The horse in the distance reared up and the trees started to rustle again. A large notice appeared in the sky telling Kirito to get ready for Wave 2 and the kid readied his weapon. This is going to be a long afternoon...
Back inside the Hot Springs.
"You mean he followed you to the restaurant?" Liz asked in surprise.
"I didn't say that," Asuna countered quickly. She didn't know what to think of it, "All I know is that I was on the fortieth floor eating lunch by myself, when he just happened to walk in the door. If he wasn't already following me around half the time anyway I wouldn't suspect anything, but Kuradeel almost always seems to find me when I don't want to be found."
"So ditch him," Liz said and leaned back in the hot pool they were in. It was just deep enough for them to stand at about chest height, and they were wading around the stone hot spring in the virtual water that felt so very real. "If he's really bothering you that much, why haven't you ordered him to stop?"
Asuna frowned and looked up. She had her arms out to either side on the ledge of the pool and she sighed. Everything was always rushing about around her, so she never had a good time to sit down and think clearly about her situation. Her friend continued, "Everyone knows you're one of the strongest players in the game. You shouldn't need someone walking two steps behind you ever second of the day. What if he's been watching your house?"
"Now that would be seriously weird," Asuna said with a small shiver. It wasn't from the hot water, but from the idea of the man following her home. "But that's not happening, he's just really enthusiastic about his job. Besides, I can't ditch him after he saved me a few months ago..."
"Asuna," her friend said sternly, startling the relaxed girl. Asuna shut up and turned to her friend who was staring at her in the eyes. "If every person you've saved in a dungeon or during a boss raid thought they owed you a debt, then you'd have a personal army following you around right now. Don't think that you're obligated to stay with him just because he saved you once," the pink haired girl had heard all types of amazing stories about her friend, and she didn't like to see her upset like this.
"Maybe you're right," Asuna said and leaned back, letting her orange hair sink farther into the water. "But for now I'll let him stay as my bodyguard. I don't want Heathcliff punishing him if I order him away, so I'll have to talk to the leader myself before I do anything."
The girls sat there for a little longer until Lizbeth suggested trying one of the hotter tubs of water. They walked over and tried one and their thoughts that the earlier pool's water was perfection disintegrated. "Now this," Liz said as she sank deeper and deeper until her mouth was just above the water, "is the life."
"We should let Kirito-kun have a turn in here when we're done," Asuna mumbled as she felt the hot water all around her. It felt so good that she couldn't hide it from the boy who came all the way out here with them. "I'm sure he'd appreciate it."
Liz smirked and said in a teasing tone, "I'm sure he'll appreciate it more if you go in with him."
Asuna's face turned bright red and she snapped her head angrily towards Liz, but the pink haired girl disappeared under the surface. She could tell where her friend went though from the bubbles appearing on the water's surface. Liz couldn't hold in her laughter after seeing Asuna's reaction and she had to come back up for air after a few seconds of underwater laughing.
As soon as Liz emerged, Asuna splashed a huge amount of water at the girl and Liz shielded her face from the hot water. "Oh you're gonna get it!" The pink haired girl yelled and reached down to splash back, but was hit by a large amount of water before she could do so. The orange haired girl was relentless, splashing over and over at her friend who spat it out and shielded her eyes from the onslaught. "Alright alright, I give up," Liz said and turned away from her friend, clinging onto the side for a breather.
Asuna stopped splashing and grinned at a battle well fought, and won. Suddenly she thought she heard something behind her and snapped her head around. Weird, she looked over at the thin walls and called out, "You better not be peeking over there!" She received no response and couldn't tell whether that was good or bad.
I've got you now, Liz shoved both of her hands in the water and the other girl heard the noise and started turning her head back around. Her face turned completely, right as the water from Lizbeth's splash hit her and she swallowed a huge amount. "Hahaha!" the blacksmith laughed and splashed again, her friend having recovered fast and going at it as well.
Back outside...
Kirito was panting heavily, his breaths coming out staggered as he stared at the final monster in the wave. Soul Reaper, that's a new one, he stared at the figure in the raggedy black cloak with a hood over his face and a scythe in its hands. Its hands were boney and when the creature finally attacked to avenge its subordinates, Kirito saw its face was made entirely of bone as well.
The Black Knight was watching atop his horse down the path a ways. He was closer than at the end of the first wave, and Kirito guessed once the third was over he'd be moving up again. Maybe if I beat him, the boy thought as he parried a blow from the scythe, I can just skip the next waves entirely. The boy slashed across the monster's face and flipped backwards to avoid the next attack, but the skeletal creature was deceiving him and pulled a dagger from his cloak with its free hand.
Kirito felt the slash on his left side and fell to the right, skidding across the floor. His health dropped from low green into the yellow. The boy tssked with his mouth and pushed himself to his feet, "Why don't you and your dark army..." the boy shouted and ran forward, cutting the Soul Reaper back and forth while dodging every attack the skeleton threw at him with its scythe and dagger, "just get back in the ground!" Kirito jumped and brought down his Elucidator, snapping the scythe in half and continuing the blow down into the skeleton's head.
"How dare you defeat one of my Lieutenants?!" The Black Knight roared and his horse raced forwards. "The other three will defeat you with ease!" The forests on either side started rustling and it hadn't even been a full ten seconds when he started to see the next wave appear and the notice showed in front of his face.
The waves are getting closer together. I have to expect that at the end of the fourth, the fifth will start immediately. That's when I'll have to fight him, the boy used a potion while his enemies were approaching on all sides except for one. He had his back to the hot springs and rose his weapon in a defensive stance. I won't let you get to them! This is a battle between the Black Knights! He was really pissed this mob had the same name that the rest of the world designated for him, especially because the mob was so powerful and annoying.
The kid smashed the three arrows coming at him in one strike and the three cracked bolts shattered in midair into a bunch of blue crystals. "Come get it!" the boy yelled and his sword started to glow as he raced forward to meet his enemies head on.
So far in the fights, not a single enemy had attempted to go past him at the hot springs. They were focused on fighting him first, and he figured once he was beaten they would go past and attack the springs. For this exact reason, Kirito didn't notice the Orc Spy sneak around the forces on the left while Kirito was fighting the ones on the right. He didn't see it use a knife to cut through the rice paper like butter, and he didn't see it slip inside the hot springs.
Kirito defeated the scouts of wave 4 and eliminated the archers targeting him by flanking behind. He had to take down a troll three times his height before the Lieutenants that the Black Knight mentioned finally bore down on him. They didn't come one at a time, they all charged in at once.
One was a red cloaked mage on top of an oversized alligator. He held a wooden staff with a weird knobby end that glowed as the man shouted out in ancient unknown languages. The other two were knights wearing blue and green armor, both holding long broadswords above their heads as they charged on either side of the alligator.
This is going to be difficult, I might have to switch to dual wield if the next wave is this hard. The boy readied himself, still just barely in the green, and he started fighting the three enemies.
Inside the hot springs.
"I thought Schmitt was going to replace Lind as one of the top three officers," Liz stated as the two girls floated around back in the pool with the waterfall. It was the coldest of the pools, but it felt good to sit under the falls and let the cool water fall down on their heads.
Asuna shook her head, "I thought so as well. During the LC raid, he saved Xavier from one of their officers, Terminus. But instead," the girl frowned, "Will chose Tamu to take her spot. I despise that man," she mentioned, in case her tone didn't already give it away.
"He's pretty creepy," Liz agreed with a small nod. The two girls hadn't talked for this long in a while, and the water falling down on their heads felt great. "The last time I saw him, Henry was kicking him out of the shop for hitting on me. Like that was ever going to work out," the two girls laughed and then Asuna froze.
There's definitely someone else in here, she thought to herself and slowly turned her head to the right. She was concealed inside the falling water of the waterfall, but the fact that her sensors were going off like crazy meant someone was hiding and didn't want to be seen. Liz doesn't notice it yet, and my detection skill is just high enough that I noticed when they were only twenty feet away. This person could have probably snuck all the way up to her and killed her before Liz sensed a thing.
Asuna slowly lifted her hand and pretended to wash her hair draping over her right shoulder and over her right breast. Liz started talking to her again about something, probably trivial, she didn't know. What she did know was that whoever was in hiding was moving closer again. That was why while pretending to wash her hair, she was actually sliding through her inventory. Armor or weapon? Armor or weapon? She knew the second she equipped one, whatever was hiding would attack her. Has to be weapon, I need to protect Liz.
The Lightning Flash pressed the button and her senses flared. She knew it was approaching quickly, and she slashed the sword that appeared in her hand as fast as she could. Her rapier slammed into a sword coming at her on the right and Liz screamed. The pink haired girl was so shocked, she fell off the ledge they were sitting on and into the pool below the waterfall.
The Orc Spy stopped cloaking itself seeing as it didn't work, and Asuna saw the thin blade the monster was using. "Damn it Kirito," the girl growled angrily. He had one job! What is he doing, taking a nap?! With rage directed at Kirito, the girl smashed the Orc too fast for him to follow and she hit it with a combo to knock it back into the water where it shattered into a hundred blue shards.
She didn't waste a single second to stare at the monster. Asuna saw Liz was alright, and she instantly stormed off towards the front of the hot springs where the paper wall was standing. There was a hole cut in the wall and the girl became even more furious, How could he not see that?! She was enraged and almost forgot to equip her clothing before running out there.
Right as the orange haired girl pressed the button to put her underwear back on, she heard a loud crash and her eyes widened. In front of her, the walls were ripped through and torn down, with Kirito lying on top of the rubble. His health was in the mid-yellow and he was struggling to get back up. "K-Kirito?" the girl muttered and the boy looked up at her.
The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds in the eyes, and then Kirito quickly lifted his left hand and covered his eyes. Asuna looked down and saw her pale colored bra and panties were the only things covering her soaked body. Her face turned red and she screamed, "KIRITO!" she was seriously pissed off. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?!" She was about to yell about him dozing off and then trying to peep on her, when the yellow health bar flashed again in her mind.
"Sorry, one second," Kirito said between deep breaths as he pushed himself up and lifted his blade. Right as his blade lifted, a small black creature about a foot tall with glowing white eyes flew into the hole in the wall. It had small hands and feet with sharp claws on it and an open mouth glowing red with tons of sharp teeth as well. The boy was panting hard, but he still managed to lift his blade at incredible speeds and slice the creature in half.
Kirito marched back out of the hot springs and Asuna walked behind him in a daze as she watched him take out five, six more of those small black creatures as he sprinted forward. The man he was charging at was riding an undead horse, and he had his arms raised causing darkness filled black circles to appear around him where the creatures were coming out of.
The boy wearing the black cloak charged at the knight on the horse and allowed himself to get hit by two of the smaller creatures so that he could slice the legs of the zombie horse. No one was expecting him to sacrifice more health to knock the knight off his horse, so The Black Knight fell to the side, dropping his hands and causing the small black minions to collapse into dark mush... and then blue crystals.
"You dare knock me off my steed," the knight growled and lifted the horse off of him. He tossed it to the side and it exploded into computer fragments. Asuna was scared of the man in black armor and his voice as he marched forward and drew a huge sword from his waist. It was as tall as he was, but the man didn't have any trouble wielding it and slammed it down towards Kirito.
The boy dodged by rolling to the right, but the heavy-looking weapon seemed to weigh nothing to the huge armored knight who lifted the weapon again and slashed across the ground, leaving a small trench in the dirt towards Kirito. Asuna started looking around and saw axes, swords, and staffs lying all over the place. What the Hell is going on out here?
"Asuna," Liz whispered as she walked out of the hot springs behind her friend. The orange haired girl turned around and saw Liz was wearing her normal gear, which triggered something in her own mind reminding her to put on the rest of her clothes. "Help Kirito," the pink haired girl begged, "please Asuna!"
Asuna's white and red cloak appeared over her and the girl lifted her rapier high. "Kirito, switch!" she yelled and started running forward.
"No!" the boy yelled back and rose his sword, blocking a heavy blow that looked like it was going to smash straight through his weapon. I was going to use dual wield for you, but now the girls are here and I'd rather not let them see it. "I am the Black Knight Kirito, right?!" he called over to them.
The girls never heard him refer to himself as that before and they nodded slowly. "Well this guy," Kirito shouted and pushed back as hard as he could, knocking back his enemy and leaving a spot open for him to attack. "Has the nerve," the boy continued as he comboed his attack and lifted his weapon across the man's back causing the mob to roar and slash behind him. Kirito jumped over the blade and flipped in midair, "To call himself," the boy kept talking while he crossed his blade over the enemy's and sparks flew as he dragged it towards the man's hand and sliced off fingers. "The Black Knight!"
The two girls sweatdropped and Asuna saw the monster swipe and hit her friend with another attack, bringing him down to the red. "I don't care!" The girl shouted and charged forward.
"This is a fight between men!" Kirito yelled.
"He's an NPC!" she yelled back with a tick mark on her head as she charged. She heard the monster talk, which meant he was at least a little more than the average mob, especially since he had his own name.
"And I just happened to be fighting him?!" Kirito shouted and the girl stopped in her tracks. "No one has ever heard of this guy before, so why did I, the Black Knight, run into him?!" Both Liz and Asuna were speechless. Kirito kept shouting as he dragged his own sword across the ground and charged his enemy as they were both low on health. "I think Kayaba is messing with me! And I!" he lifted his weapon and smashed it against his opponent's knocking it away, "Don't!" the boy slashed his foe's knees and then across the stomach and the chest, "LIKE IT!" he yelled and slashed one final time across his opponent's neck. He knew never to shove his weapon straight into his foe, in case it wasn't strong enough and he had to make another quick slash, but the slash he used was enough and The Black Knight's health dropped down to zero.
"I can't, believe it," the knight stumbled backwards a few feet and fell to his knees. "The Black Knight, defeated by a mere mortal." It exploded into fragments and they rained down over his enemy.
"No," Kirito slashed his sword to the right, the left, and then up over his shoulder into his sheath. "I'm still alive," the boy looked up at the sky. What do you want from me? Why did I get the dual wield ability? What is your plan, Akihiko Kayaba?
"Hey Kirito," Asuna started marching forward and the boy in front of her turned around meeting the gaze of a very angry girl. "Why didn't you call for me?" she said with her hands on her hips.
"I could handle it," he replied arrogantly and turned away. "We're only on floor sixty six," though most of those monsters were at least level sixty nine worthy, not to mention the Lieutenants, or Mr. Fakeypants.
"You could handle it?" Asuna said in a dark tone, glaring at him through shadowed eyes. The boy gulped and stopped smiling from the nickname he gave The Black Knight. "Then why was there an Orc Spy sneaking up on us inside the hot springs?! A few more steps and it could have gotten us!"
Kirito's demeanor instantly changed and Liz was already walking out towards him. The girls stopped for a second as a notification appeared above Kirito's head. "Wave 5/5 completed," Asuna and Liz read out at the same time.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "You said you needed a break, and I figured if... I thought..." stop making excuses! They could have died! Kirito's face became dark and the boy was sweating even more than directly following the duel with his arch enemy.
"A break wasn't worth risking our lives for..." Asuna began.
"Were you fighting, the entire time?" Liz asked, interrupting her friend. "We were in there for well over an hour, but you didn't call for help once." Asuna heard what she said and stared at the boy for some sort of response, but he just nodded. "You could've just died..."
"Everyone needs a break once in a while," he muttered and turned around so he was facing the path. Asuna can watch Liz on the way back.
Asuna was about to retort something along the lines of, 'I've seen you napping out in the open all the time!' or 'I don't even want to hear you talking about breaks!' but the boy lifted up a blue crystal and called out, "Algade." Then he was gone.
"Oh I'm going to kill him," Asuna was so tense she just wanted to punch something.
"Why?" Liz asked and got very close to her friend's face with her own, making Asuna a little uncomfortable. "The way I see it, he just risked his butt to give us a good time. And I don't know about you, but I had a great time in the hot springs." Asuna softened a little, also having had a great time in the springs. "What was that you said earlier about us watching while he went in later? You were the one who suggested it, or did you decide to forget now that enemies might actually spawn while he's in there?!"
Liz sounded pretty mad, but she was right to. The way she saw it, Asuna was easily able to defeat the one enemy that got by. Neither of them were hurt at all, and meanwhile, Kirito was fighting who knows how many enemies so protect them. "And then you blamed him for it and said we could've gotten killed! Do you know how that made him feel?" Asuna's eyes opened wide as she knew exactly how that would make him feel. She spent six months wincing every time she saw the look in Kirito's eyes after his guild was slaughtered. Liz continued, "He once told me he'd much rather die with someone, then watch that person die before his eyes. I know that the only thing he's thinking about right now, is what would've happened if he heard cannons and looked up to see our faces while he was fighting!"
"Kirito," the other girl whispered.
"Now you need to go to Algade," Liz demanded, "and apologize to him right now. Take back what you said, or at least word it differently!" Liz shouted, seeing her friend about to argue again. Asuna still thought Kirito should have just called for them in the first place, but she felt guilty about the way he ran off like that.
Asuna sighed, "Alright, but first we're heading back to town. I'm not leaving you out here alone," this time Liz didn't cut her off and the pink haired girl nodded sheepishly before jogging down the path.
Floor 50
When Asuna arrived in Algade, her first thought was to run straight towards Kirito's inn. She took a step though, and her detection skills picked up on a conversation someone was having next to the warp point. "...appeared right there, and then poof! He just teleported right away!"
"This boy you're talking about," Asuna started as she walked up to the pair of men. Both men recognized her instantly and their eyes went wide at the celebrity talking to them. "Was he wearing all black?" The two guys nodded quickly. "Good, did you hear where he was going?"
"Yeah," one of the men said and told her the location.
Her heart jumped and she thanked the men for their help before stepping back to the teleporter she arrived at in Algade. "Teleport: Taft!" She yelled and disappeared in a flash of blue light.
The minute she arrived, she started walking towards the old inn that she followed Kirito to once. Floor eleven was a quaint place: not many people and a nice atmosphere. It was still daylight, which meant she didn't have to sneak around and just jogged quickly to the inn with the tree in front of it.
Asuna glanced down at the rock beneath the tree and read the names inscribed on it. Keita, Sasamaru, Ducker, Tetsuo... Sachi. She thought he might be there, standing over the rock, but he wasn't and she headed inside. Inside the building it only took a hundred Col to bribe the innkeeper and she learned where Kirito was.
"He's back in his old room," the man said and grinned at the young girl in front of him. "Give me an extra hundred..." she drowned out the sound of the NPC and started walking upstairs.
How much time did he spend here? She thought as she reached his room and stared at the cracked open door. Asuna pushed the door open and saw Kirito lying down on a bed in the room, facing the opposite wall with his arms out in front of him, hugging a pillow. "Kiri..."
The boy shot up fast and reached for his sword before the sound of the voice registered and he recognized who it was. "Oh," he mumbled and turned so he was sitting on the edge of the bed facing her. Come to yell some more I'm guessing, "Wait, how did you find me?"
Asuna's face turned bright red. This wasn't where she was expecting this conversation to go. She just came to apologize for snapping at him, and to thank him for coming out there with them today. "Remember that fake murder case we solved?" she asked and twiddled her fingers as his eyes opened wide, "I may have, followed you that night."
"That was you?!" he exclaimed with huge eyes. He shot out of bed and asked, "D-Did you hear anything?"
"Everything," she responded quickly, not wanting to drag it out for very long.
"Oh," he said, sitting back a little as he realized some of his secrets weren't so secret anymore.
"You were hugging that pillow pretty tight," Asuna said with a small smile, "thinking of anyone special?" She was trying to change the subject from her creepily following him to, pretty much anything else.
Kirito's face turned red and he muttered, "Sachi," the boy turned away. A small smile appeared on his face as he remembered her recording on Christmas and he wasn't too sad anymore. "She used to come in here every night; she was so afraid she was going to die. So she'd," now it was his turn to be embarrassed, "she would sleep in my bed..."
"What?! Sachi would?" Asuna remembered the girl from the lunch she had with Kirito and his guild. Her eyes narrowed, "You better not have done anything to her," she scolded.
"What?! No!" Kirito held up his hands in defense and didn't want her thinking the wrong thing. "I would just tell her, night after night," he paused and whispered quieter, "'you won't die,' I'd say, 'I'll protect you.'" The two of them stopped talking and the room was silent.
Neither of them knew how long they sat and stood there like that, but then Asuna broke the silence. "Thanks for today," she whispered, looking down to the right with a light shade of red in her cheeks. "We really, I really appreciated it. Really."
"Yes, you've said 'really' a few times now," the boy said with a grin. Asuna's flustered look turned angry again. He just had to make her gratitude into a joke didn't he?! Last time I thank him for anything! She thought angrily. "But you're welcome," Kirito continued and Asuna forgot about her misplaced anger. "I'm glad I was able to give you two some time off."
"Mmm," Asuna mumbled, wishing her vacation was more than just half a day. I've spent almost two years now inside this world, I deserve a break once in a while. But I know if I don't check in soon, Kuradeel will come looking for me. "Well, I'll see you later Kirito," she said to the boy on the bed. The two of them didn't see each other too often nowadays. Recently they only saw each other during floor boss battles, and even then it wasn't like the two of them were talking for very long like this. "It was, nice talking, to you," the girl whispered and then turned, walking out of the room.
Kirito watched her leave and then fell back on the bed he was lying on. He continued to rent this room from the day his guild died until now, and even a year's worth of regret couldn't make him forgive himself for that day. A blurry face came into his vision and he clenched his eyes shut. It was a face with a black cloak around it, but he didn't want to remember that, he didn't want to remember anything about the Laughing Coffin raid. He wanted to keep his friends in his memory for as long as he could, but those men he killed, he just wanted to forget about them.
To get his mind off of any bad thoughts he might have, the kid started thinking about the day he had. He still had a half-finished quest he could go complete on the seventy-first floor, but he wasn't in the mood after already leveling up today. I wonder if Asuna is a higher level than me. She's right, I have been slacking off a little lately. It's probably because I don't have a guild pushing me forward with them. He shook his head, I can't join a guild, I like being a solo player, they'll only slow me down. He convinced himself it was better to just stay the way he'd been doing things, and with that he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Floor 60
Lava boiled and bubbled all over the small rock island. There was a small house, more like a shack, sitting atop the island. It looked to be deserted, but that was what the inhabitants were going for.
One man was carefully hopping along the rock path that only the people who had been to the house before knew to take. There were a lot of unsturdy rocks on the trail, but as long as you knew which ones to step on, it wasn't a hard journey
Kuradeel finally stepped off the last rock and onto the island. He was wearing his Knights of the Blood Oath white and red cloak, but he was far from any members of his own guild. The man with gray hair walked up to the door and let himself in. No one inside reacted much to his entrance and barely gave him a sideways glance upon his entry to the room. He looked around and grimaced; the once enormous and powerful red guild had been reduced to this: six men in a shack on an abandoned island.
The guild had started recruiting again, but the idea of joining a red guild wasn't thrilling to many orange players. They'd heard what happened to Poison Apples and Death's Grace, and read all about the slaughter of Laughing Coffin. They'd only received one new member since their guild was annihilated, a young kid named Drexel. The only positive about the whole situation, was that their leader survived the attack.
PoH was sitting on a chair in the back of the room, the only member there with his hood covering his face. The others were too hot to keep on the extra clothes and were dressed far more casually.
One man, Tyrone, was leaning back against the table in the center of the room. He was throwing a ball at the wall and bouncing it back to himself, but when Kuradeel came in the room he caught it and stopped. "Oh, it's you," he stated. The large black man rose to full height and looked over to the door where Kuradeel walked in and closed it behind him. "Any news?"
"The seventy second floor is going to be cleared on Friday," Kuradeel reported to the new second-in-command of their small guild. "The Knights of the Blood Oath are getting larger and stronger every day. What used to be a small but powerful guild is now turning into a very large, and even more powerful guild."
"No matter," a low voice spoke from the back of the room and everyone stopped what they were doing to turn back there. "The front lines are getting smaller every day," PoH stood up and walked forward a little. The man was smiling, stunning Kuradeel by the confidence he had, despite the circumstances surrounding their own guild. "We'll continue to kill them, while staying in the shadows." The others were all grinning now and even Kuradeel, despite his bad mood, couldn't help an evil smirk from coming to his face.
PoH clenched his fist and held it above the table, "When the time is right, we'll kill them all and halt the progress completely. The Strongest Man in the World, the Lightning Flash, Godfree, The Silver Lancer," (the epithet people gave to the leader of the Divine Dragons, Will), "and especially, The Black Knight."
A/N Hey everyone I'm back! So yeah... in my last author's note I mentioned going on a college visit, and now it's many months later and I'll b heading off to college in a few weeks once work is done. That just shows how long it's been since I've written a chapter of this, but now that I have, I can't stop XD! I got pretty excited by this show again just thinking about it, so I reread my whole story two days ago, then wrote this yesterday and today. I've already started up on the next chapter, and I hope you enjoyed this one. Next time... LC's back baby!
mailbox killer
Heathcliff is an ass, but great chapter,
Thanks! Yeah, that guy is pretty strict with his rules, but he's kind of an ass in the first place for trapping a thousand people in this world. Glad you liked it!
Kayaba Akihiko
Amazing writing! Definitely deserves more attention than its been getting. Please keep up the good work.
Thank you! Hope I've kept up to your high expectations!
PsychoSphinx
You should do a chapter showing us how the people in the real world are reacting. I would really like to see how asunas mom would react :)
Anyways, nice chapter yet again.
Not a bad idea, but we are reaching the end of our journey here in SAO. Thank you for your review and there are only a few months left in the SAO world before this game reaches its demise...
Delta Marauder
The fluff was so cute, then Heathcliff ruined it by making what they did a punishment. Anyways cute chapter, keep up the fantastic work, and update soon.
As I reread my story two days ago, I felt worst that I stopped updating because of all the reviews you left every chapter. Sorry for taking so long to update, and I hope you can still get back into this story. Thanks for the reviews!
Kirinthor chapter 13 . Mar 15
Great chapter. Very sweet as well between kirito and asuna, loved it :)
Yeah I'm really liking the interactions between the two before they actually start dating, or being married, because it shows how much history they had that it really worked out between them. Thank you!
Guest
This is one of THE best SAO fanfics I've read in a while. The effort you put into this story is astounding. You made all of the characters better than they were in the anime, you actually made them characters, not a rushed mess like in the anime. I just have to say great job, and I hope you update soon. 4112001. :)
Thanks for the great review. It really did take a lot of work to write those early chapters where I had to watch the show in order to keep clothing and dialogue accurate. Putting in a lot of the missing time that the anime left out was also hard since there wasn't much for me to base my chapters off of besides the SAO timeline on their wiki. Don't know what those numbers mean, but I hope you're still into this story! XD
SamchowFTW
I love this story it is so well done. hope to see more of your work soon.
I was thinking maybe you should do a what if they made it past flour 75 all the way to 100.
that would make my day and year and life.
Sorry for taking so long, but thanks for saying it was well done. I've already planned to keep this as close to canon as I can (besides the cannons that go off when people die) so it will most definitely end where it's supposed to. Sorry to spoil your life :p.
RedFox20
This is probably one of the best SAO fics right now. You manage to keep a fine balance between details, character development and story progression, keeping the reader hooked. Spelling is impeccable and character dialogue feels very natural.
I don't know what else to say - just keep doing what you are doing and show us what a real fic should look like. To be honest, this is a very strong contender to SAO: Progressive LN-s, however your writing and dialogue is a lot more interesting.
Them feels when Klein keeps losing his RL friends one by one to the death game... Really brings out the desperation and creates a genuine atmosphere to the story.
All in all 10/10 - a must read in the SAO category
This might have been one of the best reviews I've ever received, especially because it actually goes into what is good about it, not just the usual Great Chapter. I do spend a lot of time editing to make sure my spelling and grammar works out well, and I'm very glad you like the characters I've created as well and can make you feel for when Owen and the others get killed ;( (sobs)
KaptainKaveman
Not gonna lie. First word out of my mouth when i realized that i had read all there was to read, "DICKS!" But only because the story is so damn good! It always bugged me how short the Aincrad arc seemed in SAO. Thank you sir/mam for filling some of the holes with damn good storytelling.
Yeah, I apologize again for taking so long to update. I know you thought where you finished was the end, but if this is on your follow list and you see the new update, I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter! Thanks for the great review!
DarkQuacker
I really love how well thought out all your character interactions are while following the cannon basically word for word. I like the imagery/description as well as adding plausibility/questioning to make it seem more like a game with techniques/tricks that can be employed.
However, I most like that your story if much more fleshed out than the actual anime. The time flows well, Kirito's lvl actually makes sense, all in all a fantastic story... if it were completed.
I know you are currently writing a lot about One Piece and other things, but whenever possible please come back and finish this story plox?
TL;DR FINISH THE STORY
It has been a few months since this review, but it was one that even back when I first saw it, I instantly felt the urge to go back and continue writing. I'm in the middle of multiple crossovers and other One Piece fanfics, but I'm going to take a break from them to continue this for a little while. Thank you for your well thought out review and the second part of what you wrote was what I hoped for when I started writing this. I felt too much time was skipped and we didn't get enough development for all the characters they showed us, and now we do. I'LL TRY TO FINISH THE STORY! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, gave feedback, and will review to this latest chapter!