Again he walked and again nothing happened, there were no beasts or infected roaming about, he found himself at some sort of plaza where the statues of saints seemed to either be wailing to god for help or calling to him to look upon them and grace them with his presence.
The marble statues seemed to turn a shade of red when the sun touched them.
He noticed a small figure hiding behind one of the statues, however, he realized it wasn't alone, as the dark figure revealed itself to be a boy, playing with several other children.
He allowed his tense muscles to relax as he had prepared himself to attack or be attacked.
Suddenly a massive figure dropped next to the children who screamed in shock but quickly regained self-control, as the creature had a knight riding on its back.
To his surprise, however, wasn't the strange creature that had what looked like the head of a leopard, hooved legs- claws for hands- a muscular body, and a scorpion tail.
No, his surprise was the fact that the knight that had arrived on the creature's back, was no bigger than the children she had come to visit.
He had to admit he was tempted to continue exploring the city especially considering that the creature made eye contact with him and was now making light grows as it warned him to stay away.
Yet he noticed that the creature was unusually tens as if it had noticed something that was a threat to it or its master.
He felt the bottle of fire in his pocket begin to warm as a hunter passed by him, he watched as the creature's growls grew louder and lauder as the hunter approached it.
He felt the bottle in his pocket become unbearably hot to the point that he had no choice but to pull it out of his pocket, or else risk the fire burning him.
Yet try as he might he couldn't feel the bottle anymore, unable to bear the heat now passing on to his hand, he pulled out his hand and noticed it was on fire.
Perhaps it was his instincts kicking in, or perhaps it was the influence f something greater, but he graved ahold of his sword and watched the fire leave his hand, travel down the hilt, and cover the blade of his sword.
He grasped his head as the world around him began to spin and he soon found that he was kneeling on the street, the only thing that remained was the creature patiently watching over him.
"So he couldn't stake being connected to the chat room?" he heard the girl ask someone
"Yeah the strain nearly killed him, but he should be able to read things he shouldn't and see the memories or things that are going on that he normally shouldn't" Kirito answered the girl
He tried to get up only to feel a warm hand on his shoulder.
"Easy there big guy, you were just exposed to the network and it nearly killed you. Stay down" Kirito said to him as he struggled to stand up, but lacked the strength to do so
"What happened?" he began to ask
"The fire you were given reacted to the hunter that passed by you, and it allowed you to access the network so you could at least keep up with him in a fight" the girl answered him
"The problem is, you aren't ready to access the chatroom or any part of the network, so it nearly killed you. On the upside however your now able to do things no ordinary person should" Kirito added.
"What?' he said out loud as he noticed something just outside his field of vision, it moved whenever he moved his head, so whatever it was it seemed to either placed in his eye or something had been implanted into him
"What your looking at is your health," Kirito said to him as he walked towards one of the statues and leaned on it
"What's happening to me?" he asked the two knights who were now looking at the distance.
"You came here with us, to deal with the monsters and the infected."
"Did you think we would let you out without a way of evening out the odds?" Kirito said to him as he drew his sword
He watched as the black knight and the white knight both held their weapons tightly but soon relaxed and placed them back on their sheaths.
"What were they looking at?" he thought to himself, as he watched the monster who was on high alert relax and return to watch him as his head had been momentarily turned towards the same direction the knights had been looking at.
Once again he tried to stand up and he had to admit he was glad to find that his feet could hold the rest of his body up.
"Okay we need to get back to work, so sit down for a few minutes and then do whatever you were doing before you nearly killed yourself," Kirito said to him before he walked away.
He watched as the young girl who wore the white-colored knight's armor, jump onto the beast's back and the beast leap onto a nearby roof, before leaping again and fading out of sight.
For a moment he wondered if it was a good thing that most of the houses in the area were empty because the people that would have once lived in them had either died or moved because of the plague.
He gave a single uneasy step before he had no choice but to stop walking and gasp for air.
His entire body felt as if he had been forced to do all of his training routines with a fresh body that had no experience doing any of those simple yet exhausting tasks.
He was completely helpless at the moment but as long as he heard the sound of children laughing he knew that he was safe after ...
His train of thought topped, this entire time the children he had seen earlier hadn't been present at all and there were no hints that the creature had devoured them, or carried them away.
Meaning that either the children had either been sent away or they had never been there, to begin with.
Again the children's laughter echoed and he saw them again, standing near the marble statues.
His instinct kicked in and he drew his pistol, why had the children laugh after the knights had left?
He was about to fire a warning shot, then he remembered that he neither had the ammunition nor was the pistol currently loaded.
The children's laughter echoed once again and he felt something grasp his boot, he looked down to see what it was, but it was too late.
Whatever had graved ahold of him, pulled him to the grounds, and dragged him around the plaza, before slamming him into one of the statues knocking him unconscious.