Chapter Two

Cast: Kirito, Leafa, Recon, June, Yolko, Shivatz, Coper, Sakuya, Lux

"Oh, I am so sorry!" the timid girl squealed. She quivered in place, and bent down with a lavender handkerchief – clearly a tool from her employer, as it was much to expensive for a newbie to purchase – and set to wiping the spilled tea.

"It's fine, really!" Kirito said, bending down himself to look at her. Kirito and his waitress made eye contact, and tears came to her eyes. The young Spriggan had ordered a cup of hot tea from the waitress – June, her name tag said – and she had just dropped it.

Kirito didn't know why he was being forgiving. June was an NPC. Showing forgiveness to an NPC was like showing appreciation to your socks. Thing was, June looked so real at first glance Kirito couldn't help but feel real embarrassment for her mistake.

No, not mistake. June was probably programed to occasionally drop tea. It was completely intentional.

Nevertheless, the NPC waitress toiled away and brought Kirito a new tea. Drink in hand, Kirito set about his task – formulating a plan for grinding. That was, after all, why Kirito had come to popina est non ut, the restaurant that did not exist. The name was a player on words – the small mahogany tables and pinewood walls were very much real – but it fit, as it was located in the prime pavilion of Civitatem-Illusionar: quia non est tubernaculum, the pavilion that may not exist.

All of it was a joke about the Spriggan's affinity for illusionary magic.

Kirito cleared his mind, and set about to formulating a plan for his leveling. Currently, there'd only been twenty-one confirmed deaths in the Spriggan faction, but Kirito wasn't about to be the twenty-second. He knew he probably had nothing to worry about, but he was a level 4 player going into a level 6 farming spot.

It had been two days since the elections and the beginning of the death game. Kirito had already leveled – he simply went to the pastures outside of Civitatem-Illusionar, and farmed until he hit level 4. The enemies were extremely weak. However, to really level, Kirito needed to kill monsters stronger than him. To do that successfully, he needed a plan.

The Spriggan boy opened the general menu, and then navigated through several more. By the end, he had a note pad open, a map, his EXP and stats, and his bestiary. Kirito set to work deciding on quotas of mobs to kill, how to target their weaknesses, and which ones would prove much to challenging for him. The safest course of action was probably to get a room in some inn and lock himself in there, waiting for someone to clear the death game. Issue was, no one knew how to clear the death game.

The Game Master-like figure said to clear Yggdrasil and achieve unlimited flight…but what of after? Since there were no more safe zones, Kirito couldn't count on safety from unstable players. All Kirito could do was trust that once Yggdrasil was cleared, all would be revealed.

"Damn you! You're absolutely useless!" a voice screamed. Kirito jumped out of his seat, startled. The tiny porcelain cup of tea tipped over once more and fell to the floor, shattering upon impact into tiny blue polygons.

Kirito grimaced as June came rushing to wipe the tea off the floor once more. He dropped six Yuld – the currency of Alfheim – on the table. "Keep the change," he told her. Kirito heard an incomprehensible shout, and then another. He briskly walked out of the tavern, floors creaking under his feet, and into the pavilion. There he saw a short, pasty girl standing on a makeshift stage. In front of her was a podium and a lemon-yellow amplification crystal. She was trying to talk to several angry players, all of them warriors clad in armor with weapons sheathed at their sides or backs. However, she couldn't get many words in against their shouting. Kirito knew from the beta that amplification crystals were only available in Yggdrasil, save for the leader of each race and their Chancellor. This girl clearly wasn't Lady Griselda, the elected leader of the Spriggans, so she must be her Chancellor.

Her very easily flustered Chancellor.

The Chancellor tried to say something, but a large player clad in cheap but heavy armor came forward and hushed her. "Yolko!" he shouted angrily.

"Look, Shivatz, I-I just want to help, please don't yell…" Yolko said, her voice dripping with a nervous stutter.

"I don't care what you want!" another player yelled. This one was a tall, thin man with a ponytail and wrinkles. "The reality is, we can't grind until we kill this thing!"

"Can't grind?" Kirito thought. He jogged forward to the stage, pushing through a crowd of angry players.

He received a shove on his back. "You mind!?" a particularly nasty looking man half scolded, half yelled. Kirito ignored him, and made his way to the front of the crowd.

Yolko grimaced when she saw Kirito coming up to the front. "Again, I am so so sorry for the inconvenience…." Yolko looked like Suguha when boys were bullying her over being a kendo tournament finalist and a girl: fed up and angry, but most of all, helpless to fix things. Kirito felt a surge of hatred to the players harassing her.

"Inconvenience!? More like death sentence! We can't get any goddamn levels!" a voice screamed. Yolko ignored it, and looked at Kirito. Her very face was questioning him.

"I-Chancellor Yolko, what's going on?" Kirito asked. The man next to him – Shivatz, Kirito remembered – laughed hysterically.

"A mini-boss spawned right outside the gates to the city, that's what!" Shivatz complained, "We can't leave the city! We can't level."

"Lady Griselda and the council will fix this-" Yolko started, but Kirito cut him off.

"Why not instead of harassing our Chancellor about this, you do something about it?" Kirito asked, inflecting as much venom as possible into his voice.

"It's a mini-boss, idiot, it'll annihilate us at our level," the tall man with the wrinkles told Kirito.

"And you think Yolko here can fix that? The RNG here will spawn mini-bosses around the city, deal with it!"

"Not at level one!" Shivatz cut in.

"As the ones trying to level, it is our job to fix this, not Yolko's!" Kirito snapped back.

"How would you know, you idiotic…" Shivatz breathed in like he was about to call Kirito a stream of profanities, and sure enough, Shivatz did.

"Guys! Guys!" a new voice yelled, "Guys, stop!"

Kirito looked at the stage. Standing there, amplification crystal in hand, was a rather short boy with stringy brown hair.

"Oh, thank you, Coper," Kirito heard Yolko say.

"I'll take it from here," Coper told her. Yolko stood to the side of the stage, and all eyes turned to Coper.

"The boy is right. We need to do something about this," Coper said.

"And what do you propose?" someone yelled.

Coper looked down, and then breathed in. The entire crowd went silent, anticipating his next words. Everything, from the clouds to the hardwood seemed to stiffen in a show of nervousness.

"The only real way to take something like this down at our level is with a raid," Coper decided. The crowd erupted into fury once more.

"A raid!? We'll die!"

"We won't have a chance!"

"Why not contract an ally? Oh wait, we have no allies, because you've been to busy coming up with horrible ideas!"

Kirito frowned, and opened his menu. His stats in agility weren't high enough to fly away from a mini-boss. The boss would have to die for Kirito to grind.

The Spriggan boy cleared his throat, and walked up to the stage. He looked at Coper. The brown haired boy smiled nervously, and handed Kirito the amplification crystal.

"I'm joining the raid," Kirito announced to the crowd, "That's the only realistic way to fix this. Everything else is wishful thinking." Immediately, Kirito walked off and tried to melt down into the invisibility of the large group.

The entire city seemed to pause once more.

"So who else is with us?" Coper asked.

Suddenly, Kirito felt himself fall under the stampede of players going to Coper, asking to be in the raid.

As the large double doors shut behind her, Leafa felt a wave of worry course through her body.

"Worried to get involved in this, aren't you?" Sakuya asked. She gave Leafa a sympathetic smile.

Leafa looked around the room. She was in a grand hall, one that you may find in a palace or a mansion. Above her was a golden chandelier that somehow glowed despite not having a fire to illuminate it. A piano lay in the edge of the room, and velvet chairs and fine benches were littered throughout the hall. Beautiful paintings were hung on the walls. At the back of the chamber was a throne made of gold and silver, adorned with crystals and silk.

Leafa took a moment to collect herself, and reminded herself all this wealth was digital. "It's a lot. I…well, I barely even know you."

Recon spoke up, for the first time since entering the room. "Leafa, if we have to be trapped in a death game…why not do something about it?"

"My philosophy exactly," Sakuya said, marching to her throne. When she sat in it, she navigated through menus, until she found the right one and tapped an icon. A small table with a board on it appeared. Four chairs and the throne lay around it.

"Recon, wouldn't it be safer to just stay in and wait for this to blow over?" Leafa asked in a quieted voice.

"I can still hear you," Sakuya said, her voice spreading throughout the room.

Leafa walked to her new leader. It was shocking to believe that she and her people weren't ruled over by the Prime Minister, but rather by a woman in a splendorous throne with a regal dress. Recon paused, and then shuffled along with Leafa.

"You can understand where I'm coming from, though?" asked the kendo player turned fairy.

"Leafa," the ruler answered, "In reality, I am a businesswoman. I am the CFO of Green Plastics. What I wanted to do was hide myself in an inn and wait for this to end."

"So you can forgive me for doing that," Leafa replied. She turned around, but Recon stopped her.

"Listen to what she has to say," her friend pleaded.

"But I reached a realization," Sakuya continued, "We are going to get absolutely nowhere if we do not do something. The Sylph need a leader. When we were told of our circumstances, the only true advice he gave us was unlimited flight-and only one race can achieve that if what he says is true, and it very well may not be. Perhaps each and every one of us is truly screwed, and we are all to die here. But if that is not the case…well, if it is not the case, the best path I have to get back to Green Plastics is by following his instruction."

Sakuya stared Leafa in the eye. Leafa looked tried to look back and see just what Sakuya was feeling, but she couldn't tell at all what was going on in her head.

"What do you want to go back to, Leafa?" the queen asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What in your life will you miss? What are you losing because of this heinous crime?"

The Sylph girl hesitated for a moment, and then remembered.

"I-kendo. The tournament is in ten days, and I'm going to miss it."

"And what are you willing to do to return to the real world, so you can be in that tournament?"

Leafa stopped. She felt as if she was manipulated somehow, but Sakuya was only telling the truth.

"Anything," Leafa whispered.

"Then Leafa," Sakuya said, leaning in to face her, "I can use people willing to do anything for freedom. I can tell you everything that needs to happen to maximize our chances of the Sylph getting precious unlimited flight. Perhaps together we can even uncover the true win condition of this death game."

"Don't omit, Sakuya," a high, feminine voice spoke. It seemed to bounce and flow around the room.

"Who are you?" Recon asked. Leafa forgot he had been watching the whole thing. She looked behind him, and saw a new girl. She was tall, taller than Leafa, with vibrant silver hair that shined under the light of the glowing chandelier. She wore a scarlet coat, with metal plate adorning her torso. A spear lay sheathed along her back.

"I'm your Chancellor, Lux," she quietly explained, "And she isn't telling you everything."

"What am I not telling?" Sakuya asked.

"That we haven't a clue where to begin. That we're trying to find something from nothing. That we're trying to manage thousands upon thousands of players. That what we're attempting is an impossible task, and that's just trying to win unlimited flight."

Lux looked at Leafa. "This is a true challenge, Leafa. Are you up for it?"

Leafa stood still, silent. She felt inspired by Sakuya's speech, but…

"I'm ready," Recon cut in, "I'm a longtime gamer geek. Tell me what to do."

Sakuya smiled. She opened a menu again, and tapped three icons in quick succession. A white screen popped up in front of Recon, and he tapped a button of his own.

Lux looked at Recon. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Recon laughed mirthlessly. "To late now."

"Nice to meet you then, Spymaster Recon."

"I want him on the tunnels," Sakuya said, "Can you brief him on the situation?"

Lux nodded. "Of course, my lady." She took Recon by the wrist and led him through a door.

Sakuya sighed. "Lux was right. You can go now, Leafa."

"W-wait!" Leafa exclaimed, "I never said no."

Sakuya's eyebrows rose in a mix of excitement and bewilderment. For the first time since meeting her, Leafa could easily tell her emotion: surprise, and confusion, and a small dose of fear.

"I want to do this. I want to go home. I…I can't stand by and let something happen. I won't let a chance to do something correctly slip out of my fingers."

Sakuya opened her menu again, and once more tapped three icons. An invitation opened in front of Leafa. "Do you accept the position of Marshal?"

"Marshal?" Leafa asked out loud.

"My head of all military operations," Sakuya explained, "You said you were involved in kendo. It seemed more appropriate for you than Spymaster."

Leafa nodded, and tapped the "Yes" icon on her menu. The invitation vanished, and Leafa felt heard a small ring in her head.

"What's our first course of action?" Leafa asked her queen. She took a seat at the table Sakuya had conjured.

Sakuya opened an icon on her menu for the umpteenth time, and several pieces appeared on her board. "We have reason to think something is happening in the sewers underneath Swilvane…"

Recon's very first operation as Spymaster was dirty, wet, and smelly. He expected that maybe he'd be poisoning people, concocting schemes by moonlight on dark midnights, or starting spy networks of powerful and wealthy players of vast levels.

In all actuality, Recon would very well be doing some of that. However, his first job was to simply scout a low-level field map: the sewers underneath Swilvane.

Lux had given him his mission straight away. After leading him to the armory, where Recon had gotten a new dagger and some light armor, she had sent him to the tunnels. Players had been complaining of suspicious noises and lack of mobs to kill, and Recon was to investigate.

"It's not demeaning…." Recon thought as he walked through the sewers, "It's necessary scouting." Each step he took in the gravel walkway crunched, and the walls all around him looked like they were a safety hazard. In fact, the most constant thing in the room was the murky sludge that swished throughout a canal next to where Recon was walking. Recon knew that the sewer wouldn't collapse on him, but an irrational part of the back of his mind felt that it would.

As Recon trudged on, lost in his thoughts, he drifted back to three days ago. He had spent that day playing games and reading a manga about a muscular hero and the scantily clad girl who always seemed to get kidnapped. If Recon had known what was going to happen, he wouldn't have spent his day that way.

Recon would've done so many things differently….

A scream filled Recon's ears. He whipped around, snapped back to reality, and saw a yard-long rat.

It was a low-level trash monster – something he could have defeated at level 1 with ease. However, it had caught Recon by surprise, and already bit him twice. Recon's eyes flicked to where his hit points were on his HUD – he saw they were down by a tenth.

The rat hissed, and flicked its tail angrily. Recon brandished his dagger and sliced at the rat twice. The monster lost half of its hit points immediately, and let out a scream. It jumped back, seemingly about to retreat, and then leapt forward and bit Recon. The fairy lost another fifth of his hit points, and found himself with the slowness status effect.

"Dorcha targaid cron dha bolteta!" Recon chanted. Golden arcane symbols and words revolved around him, and when he finished, they solidified into black. An orb of black energy in Recon's palm, and he willed it to discharge, sending a bolt of darkness into the rat. The monster's HP plummeted, and it shattered into polygons.

Recon panted, surprised. Had he really lost nearly a third of his hit points to that?

Once he stopped panicking, and his hit points regenerated, the boy continued. He rounded the tunnels in the sewer once, then twice, only finding low level slimes and rats. He was about to stop and quit, when he smelled something even more noxious than the sludge.

Recon plugged his nose, and searched for the source of the smell. Just next to him was a decrepit bridge – though calling it a bridge was generous – charred in ash and soot.

"How could that even happen?" Recon murmured. On the other side was another walkway. Recon tapped the bridge, and it fell apart into the sludge. "Please, no…" he thought. Recon jumped over the sludge, using his wings to flutter over, but he overdid the fluttering and fell face first into the water. The boy angrily climbed out onto the walkway and brushed the mud out of his face. He walked and yelled to nothing, proceeding along the path with fury and frustration in his steps.

"Whoever made a bridge that led me into falling into mud, so help me I will massacre you with every-"

Recon paused his cursing, noticing something. Something different caught his eye. But what? The sewers were identical the whole way…

These walls were different. The Sylph looked at it closely, investigating to see if his impulse was true. But there was no doubt to it. These were made of a cedar wood, while the sewer walls were made of stone.

"These are artificial…" he realized. Recon crouched down, suddenly embarrassed about his yelling, and began to proceed forward as quietly as possible. The walkway, like the last one, winded on for what seemed like an eternity. However, it was straight the entire way, with no crossroads or branching paths. Eventually, Recon came to a corner.

"Moment of truth," he whispered to himself. Recon rounded the corner…

…and was immediately hit by a ray of fire.

"Kill him!" a voice screamed. Recon saw a redheaded player with scarlet wings rushing toward him, small axe in hand. Recon rolled, and the player buried his hatchet in the ground. Recon gathered himself, and found that he was in a small, artificial chamber with a fire and two tents. A makeshift campsite.

The axe player got his weapon back and readied it. Behind him was a young man, perhaps college aged, wearing the signature robes of mages. The axe player charged toward Recon. Recon sidestepped and avoided most of the player's swing, but still took damage. A quarter of Recon's hit points were gone, and the two Salamanders were clearly intent on finishing their job.

"Ga-gaoth duin putadh sgoltadh!" Recon stammered. He invoked the spell correctly, though, and a gale of wind knocked the axe player backward. Recon took his dagger and activated the sword skill "Armor Pierce." Recon's dagger glowed a bright blue, and he jumped forward and drove it into the axe Salamander's face. A third of his hit points were taken off due to the head being a damage multiplier, and he received a status effect lowering his defense.

"Bastard!" the axe player shouted. Recon heard the other player fleeing behind them. The axe player hit Recon square in the chest with his hatchet, and then grabbed Recon by the throat.

"Not so tough now, are 'ya?" he said, cackling. The player took his hatchet, and whilst holding Recon in place, put it to his head.

"It won't hurt. But it may be frightening…" he mused. The player ran the hatchet along Recon's cheeks, bringing it to his eyes. Recon blinked, willing the tears of fear and hatred to vanish.

"Die." The axe wielder took his weapon and struck Recon in the head. Instantly, he was taken down to twenty percent of his hit points.

"Fl-" Recon began.

"I won't press F to pay respects, nerd," the hatchet player said, cackling with cruelty and mirth.

"Dorcha duin cron-thar'uine aon ceo!" Recon shouted. The arcane symbols locked into place, and a dark mist poured out of Recon's hands. The player wielding the axe backed off, his own hit points dropping in the damaging smoke. He took his axe and struck at Recon, hoping to end him, flailing stupidly and clumsily. Recon ducked underneath him and stabbed his would-be murderer in the back. The hatchet wielder fell, coughed twice, and disintegrated into a remain light.

Recon gasped, shocked by what he had just done.

"I've…I've just killed someone," he said aloud.

No. Now was not the time. The other Salamander could return at any moment. He had to go, and he had to go immediately.

Recon vomited all over the remain light of the Salamander, and then ran back to Sakuya's manor as fast as he possibly could.