The Centipede
- Prologue
It scurried through the dark wet dirt, climbing and crawling over everything stick, plant, and pebble in its path. At times it would stop and attempt to feel the vibration around it, but as always, nothing. It continued on its path hoping to find a meal. It swiftly maneuvered through the space before it felt something cold, hard, and slippery. This sensation was familiar to it, throughout its life every time it dared to venture far from its burrow, this giant cold barrier prevented it from leaving the vicinity. Its instincts told it to find a way, a way to break through the wall, day after day it would patrol this route searching for a way out.
Until one day, a large stone came down from above, settling upon its burrow while it was asleep. After digging its way out, it turned around and to view the large intruding object. It curiously placed one leg on the mysterious structure, then another, and another. Soon it began to ascend higher and higher realizing that the one way out was up. To leave this glass prison, it had to go up, further, and further. The territory it occupied was comfortable, food fell from the sky, the inviting humid environment, everything it needed was here, but something outside of this prison called for it. Was it the freedom to roam? Or to burrow wherever it saw fit? Perhaps to hunt whatever it liked?
Finally, it made it to the top of the formation, but what then? It looked around as it stood up on its forty-nine hind legs. The gateway to the outer world was still high above, maybe it could reach it if the rock formation was double the size. It stretched its body higher, each time a pair of legs left the rock, the closer it would get. Then, it lost balance, losing grip it started to roll down the formation hitting every jagged edge and crashing into the damp earth.
For a moment it flailed its legs in the air before finding the needed momentum to flip back onto its front, but something felt off, turning around it noticed some missing limbs lost in the unplanned descent. It didn't seem fazed at all, after all, they would grow back in time. Quickly dismissing the recent failure, it raced around the mountain trying to find another route up. Once the path has been decided, even if failure looked to be inevitable, the long and little arthropod started to climb.
Unknown Floor, August 19, 2023
The rain poured down heavily as the dark gray clouds camouflage themselves into the moonless night sky. The millions upon millions of water-drops crashing into the ground resonated a deafening rumble and summoned a mist so thick that one would barely be able to see their own feet if they looked down.
Within the dense curtains of rain, there was a small plateau formed of dark gray stone, and a figure wearing a drenched, ragged cloak, was slowly crawling across towards the edge. Each hand frantically clawed at the stone beneath as the man in the cloak inched forward. He left behind a trail of light red particles that slowly leaked out of his legs, as both limbs were sliced in half from the knee.
The cloaked man's desperate hands slid out in front of him, and his chin crashed into the wet ground beneath. He groaned in pain and tiredly panted as he pushed his torso up slightly while turning onto his side. Doing so caused his worn cloak, heavy with water to be shifted to the side, revealing a tattoo of a smiling coffin with a skeleton hand sticking out on his left flank. Terrified hazel-brown eyes stared back into the thick downpour.
Each steady footstep was a splash and the dark, foggy silhouette of another person became visible.
Despite the moisture in the air all around him, he felt as if his mouth had become drier than sand in the desert, even so, he mustered enough strength to scream into the storm.
"You! ...You are the one who ruined our plans on Floor 27 two days ago!" the Laughing Coffin member coughed between words, "What is it that you want, huh!? What is it that you fucking want!?"
Upon hearing the quickening steps of the silhouette, the man scurried back as much as he could before reaching the end of the plateau, where a sheer drop awaited. Slipping off would lead to instant death, either by the damage from the fall or by being ripped apart by the giant lizard-like beasts that lurked below.
"Names!" the silhouette replied in a slightly muffled yell as he was stepping into view.
The newcomer wore a dark, hooded coat with the ends of the long sleeves covering his bare hands up to his knuckles. There was a hardened leather breastplate around his torso as armor. Long black pants hugged his legs and short leather boots were worn on his feet. Finally, a short gray scarf was wrapped around his neck and a section of it was pulled up to his nose, acting as a face mask. He didn't even have any weapons equipped, none that were visible at the very least.
The Laughing Coffin member looked up and saw underneath the soaked hood, and between the gray mask, two gleaming, scarlet-red, eyes were glaring right at him. Piercing into his skin and striking him down with fear.
"Give me the names!" the masked male repeated.
"What names!?" the player-killer shouted back.
The water flew up around his feet as the masked one threateningly stomped forward.
"One month ago, in a dungeon on the outskirts of Floor 31!"
"What are you talking about!? I know nothing about that!"
Dashing forward, the masked player snatched the murderer by the collar of his cloak and anchored his knee into the killer's stomach. The killer coughed as the wind was knocked out of him.
"Don't try to play games with me!" the masked one snarled, "I know that you and five others were in that group that day! Now give me the names of the other five who were there!"
"I have no idea what you-!" the player-killer's retort was cut off by a swift punch to his face.
"The names!" the masked player roared as his fist crashed into the murderer's face once again.
"I will never tell you!"
The killer felt two hands wrap around his head and as he was pulled slightly up, the knee that rested in his abdomen collided with his nose. The masked player dragged the dazed killer to the edge of the plateau and swung his body over the dark, wide, chasm. He held him by the back of his cloak as the murderer's body dangled in the air, and he let out a horror-filled shriek.
"Last chance," the hooded player threatened, "Tell me their names,"
"...If...if I tell you," the murderer stuttered as he peered down at the seemingly eternal drop below, "Will you let me live?"
The player's red eyes narrowed and for a few seconds did nothing. Due to his high detection skill, an animalistic rumble reached his ears, and he flickered his gaze down towards the chasm. After seeing something large and serpentine moving down within the fog, the masked player shifted his feet to haul the killer over and behind him, onto the wider section of the plateau.
The legless player killer grunted as he hit the ground, and when he looked up, he saw the red eyes looming over him.
"I'll consider it," he stated as he crouched down to be on the same level as the killer.
"...T-T-That's better than nothing...v-very well...I'll tell you," the killer stammered and stared down at the giant chunk of stone holding them up, "There were only three of us...from Laughing Coffin there that day...XaXa, and Johnny Black and myself… The other three, I don't know,"
Hearing the last three words, the masked player narrowed his eyes, but before he could do anything the murderer hastily spat out.
"Wait! Wait! Wait! They're business partners of the guild and I'm not high enough of a rank to know who we deal with! I don't know their actual names but I know the titles they go by!"
"Then speak!"
"They go by… The Orca, Black Dog, and...and…,"
"And who?"
"And… The Hyena,"
The red-eyed player's gaze pierced into the other male's skin as he pondered for a bit before standing back up, and as he did so, the killer flinched. Without a word, the masked player simply walked away, back into the cover of the heavy curtains of rain, leaving the scared and confused player-killer, lying there, and still legless.
Suddenly, a maniacal grin stretched on the killer's face and he reached behind his back to pull out a throwing dagger.
"You shouldn't have turned your back on me," he chuckled gleefully as he winded his arm back, "The boss will reward me for clipping the thorn in our side!"
The player-killer let his arm fly. The sharp blade whistled through the damp air and directly towards the masked player's head. Unfortunately for him, the red-eyed male seemed to have anticipated this.
It felt like time had slowed down, and each raindrop, although still on the move, could be seen clearly in its descending egg-shaped form.
The masked player tilted his head to the left and the throwing knife zoomed past his face, just half an inch away from scratching his cheek. At the same moment, the player-killer, whose eyes stretched to the maximum and jaw dropped to the ground as he watched his last-ditch plan fail before him, swore that he caught a glimpse of the gleaming of steel coming from the right long-sleeve of the hooded male.
With a sharp twist of his hips, the red-eyed player whipped around and punched out a powerful underarm palm-thrust with his right arm. A leaf-shaped blade, nearly as wide as his wrist and as long as his hand, shot out from the inside of his sleeve. It traveled swiftly and cut through the air with no resistance. Trailing behind it, attached to the end of the blade, was a thin but strong, dark, woven rope.
A Rope Dart.
The dart pierced into the chest of the murderer as red pixels splashed out from his wound. The masked male then grabbed hold of the rope and yanked the killer through the rain towards him. As he got close, the red-eyed player chambered his leg and released it as a bone-crunching side-kick straight into the bottom half of the killer's ribs. In the same movement, and by using the force generated in his foot strike, he ripped out the rope dart from his target's chest. The dart slid comfortably back into his sleeve.
The player-killer flew back and hit the ground, hard. His health dropped from yellow to a small strip of red as his body bounced and rolled towards the plateau's edge. Unluckily for him, due to the slippery stone surface, it assisted in his body sliding an extra foot, and the player-killer lurched off, he would've fallen to his death if he hadn't grabbed onto the edge with desperate hands. He clawed at the wet surface aggressively as he tried to heave himself back up but it was to no avail.
"HELP ME!" he wailed towards the masked player, who just peered at him from where he stood, then turned his back to him as he walked off into the downpour.
A couple of hand gestures later and crystal-blue rectangular-prism appeared in his hand. He said something, that was muffled and drowned out by the roaring pitter-patter, and a second later, he was gone, the only thing to prove that he was there were the blue particles, dancing away with the wind.
As the Laughing Coffin member hopelessly attempted to pull himself to safety, he failed to notice a reptilian monster lurking in the shadows beneath, that had been silently climbing the cliff walls the entire time.
Dark green in color with a scaly brown underbelly, it greatly resembled a Mosasaurus with its large, robust triangular head, an overall streamlined torpedo-shaped body, and a long muscular tail. Each leg was short and powerfully built, with each foot having four large, curved claws. Running down its spine and tail was a line of thick bone spikes, a particularly large spike was protruded at the tip of its tail.
The reptilian beast jumped off the cliff, lunging up for the helpless player-killer dangling at the edge of the plateau. Its large mouth stretched wide open revealing the deadly rows of bone-crushing and flesh-slicing teeth the size of an average arm, and the Mosasaur-looking creature chomped down on the player-killer, leaving only his arms hanging out of its jaws, as it allowed itself to fall back into the foggy darkness below. A barely audible shattering sound of death leaked out of the reptilian creature's nostrils.
As the blue-white light dispersed from his sight, the masked player found himself standing in the middle of a flat platform made from neatly stacked stones, and in each corner stood a short column with a small obelisk attached on top. A [ Teleportation Gate ]. At the same time as him, a couple of other players along with a party of six warped in around him. The party, all excited and loudly chattering about the day's spoils, stepped off the platform first and no doubt headed for the tavern, the two other smaller teams also left the Gate as they went their own ways. Thus the masked player was the last to leave the platform.
As he stepped down and walked away from the platform, he pulled down his scarf-like mask then brushed a hand over his head to remove his hood, revealing a somewhat pale complexion accompanied by a youthful face and jet-black hair in a slightly disheveled style.
He had arrived in the town of [ Mishe ], the main settlement of Floor 35. It was one of the many towns in Aincrad that shared the urban, medieval concept, with wide cobblestone roads, and neatly compact buildings made from smooth yellow stones and daub, a combination between wet soil, clay, sand, and straw. All the buildings were a minimum of two stories with the tallest going up to seven.
With two fingers he drew a mirrored 'L' out in front of him activating the [ Registered ] Menu, a branch-off section of the normal Menu. It provided ten slots where a player could 'Register' items of any kind from the main menu that they deemed a priority for quicker selection. Item registration had no known restriction and anything ranging from gear, outfits, items, and drops were all allowed. The majority of players had stacks of potions and crystals in the first couple of slots, their weapon of choice and casual clothing would take up the rest of the space. This branching menu was discovered by complete accident on the fifth floor by a player that stayed in the [ Town of Beginnings ], and news of newly found Registered Menu spread faster than a wildfire in a dry summer.
From the Registered Menu, the red-eyed teen selected his main weapon, a sword, and with a light-blue glow, it was equipped across his back resting in its scabbard. The sword was classified in the same category as the typical one-handed long-sword and utilized nearly all of the same available Sword Skills, however, its appearance differed from its cousins. Unlike the other double-edged swords in Aincrad, the weapon was noticeably narrower and had a smaller hilt and pommel but a slightly longer handle. This resulted in giving it the illusion of being straighter and sharper than the other swords. It looked almost as if it was a fusion of the one-handed sword and the rapier.
Now looking like every other player, the black-haired teen began walking down the town's main road after dismissing the branch-off menu. The myriad of lively sounds produced in the bustling streets of Mishe surrounded him as he made his way down the path. Players and NPCs alike strolled past him as he did the same to them. They simply had no reason to stop and chat, they lived their lives and he lived his. To everyone around him, he was just another person stuck in the Death Game known as [ Sword Art Online ]. He didn't have the flashy, colorful, standout, and eye-catching outfits of the other Clearers and the Guilds that made up eighty percent of the Frontlines. Nor did he have a memorable title that others would love to put a face to a name. Based on appearance alone, no one aside from the ones who he called friends and allies knew that he was over ten levels higher than all the other players currently on the 35th floor.
There were only two things that separated him visually from the others around him, and only one was visible as it was strapped across his back. The thinner straight sword was not a popular weapon of choice and no one ever used it, not to mention that it was a rare drop from a boss several floors down, so that dwindled the chances of seeing another wielder of the particular weapon. The second thing was…
The red-eyed teen grazed a hand over the underside of his right sleeve, feeling the unmistakable, narrow, leaf-shaped blade hiding underneath, along with the short skin-tight gauntlet that contained both it and the rope.
As he continued to walk down the cobblestone road, he pulled up the Main Menu and decided to go into his inbox to read any of the new messages that he ignored for the past week. There were twenty unread messages, and just then the twenty-first popped up, he couldn't say he didn't expect this. He did vanish from the Assault Team without warning a little over three weeks ago after all, and at the same time, deactivated the 'Friend Tracking' feature.
'Asuna, Asuna, Asuna, Asuna, Asuna, Asuna, Kirito, Asuna, Asuna, Asuna, Klein? Asuna, Asuna, Asuna, Klein, Kirito, Heathcliff? Asuna, Asuna, Asuna,'
In his head, the red-eyed male listed off the names of the senders in order from latest to the first sent. His pace slowed as he opened the first of twenty messages and started to read through them. Most of them were rather short and didn't consist of more than four to five lines, mainly asking him extended versions of; Where are you? Are you doing okay? Why did you leave? What are you doing? When are you coming back?
There were also a couple of lines of motivational quotes amidst the messages from Heathcliff, the leader of the Knights of the Blood Oath Guild, and Klein, a redhead samurai he met on the seventh floor, who was also the leader of a guild, albeit much smaller than the Knights. The latter had even written a page-and-a-half essay on resolve and never giving up.
He had expected Kirito to be the sender behind the one-liner questions and was proven right, however, he knew that it was either Asuna, Klein, or Heathcliff, maybe all three, that edged him on to send them. He didn't blame Kirito for not being in the mood, last time he checked, the fellow black-haired player looked to be depressed about something.
Lastly, there were Asuna's messages. Her fiery, second-in-command attitude showed through the letters. They started normal but by the fifth, the red-eyed boy felt as if he was reading a bunch of spam messages. Entire paragraphs of the same things over and over with little to no change in them, demanding him to answer her immediately. Perhaps she was hasty or worried...or both. He couldn't really tell.
When he got to the final and latest letter, also from Asuna, he sighed as he opened it, expecting the same thing from the last fifteen times. Instead, it exuded a more gentle aura, the black-haired teen didn't know if it was because it lacked any exclamation marks.
Nevertheless, he began to read through it:
[ I honestly don't know if you'll see this or not. I don't know where you are right now, or what you're doing, and no one can seem to find you. But my conscience won't be calmed if I don't let this out. We NEED you, Hei. You've been off the Frontlines for three floors already, four if you don't show up in two days. Point is, the bosses are getting harder. They're tougher, stronger, and more unpredictable than before. We nearly lost five people getting to Floor 38.
...But I guess that's not important to you now, is it?
To tell you the truth, I'm still grieving over her too. I haven't told anyone this but… I did cry all night the day I found out she died. It was so sudden… She was my friend too. The three of us traveled and fought all the way up to Floor 25 together. So please, don't feel like you're alone. If you ever need someone to talk to or to just hang out with, I'm always here.
And when you decide to come back, the Assault Team will welcome you back with open arms.
Just...please until then...don't go and get yourself killed. I don't want to lose you too. ]
As Hei closed the message, his lips curved up into a small but somber smile. With a slide of two fingers, he highlighted all but the last one and tapped delete.
The red-eyed player dismissed the menu and kept walking, soon he saw the luminous glow of the vibrant hub known as Mishe's Shopping District. Crowds of players from all levels, genders, and ages, weaved their way through the different stalls and various in-building stores set up all around.
Going forward, Hei melted into the crowd and disappeared from sight.
The Centipede: Prologue
A/N: This is a new project. If you want, please leave a review (if you want) and tell me where I should improve. Constructive criticism will be welcome. Thank you for reading.