Heyyyyy...how's it going?
Wait, what? SAO fanfic? terrible upload rate? What are you talking about? Come on, the first episode of One Piece is about to air, let's watch it on our tape machine :D
Ok, jokes aside, it's good to finally release another chapter. My excuse this time is the fact that I got a new gaming computer recently (a ROG Strix G15 to be precise) and I've been spending all my free time playing on that. The trouble with it is that all of my story's progress is on this old MacBook so I had to dust it off and charge it up again so I could release this chapter.
So the good news is that now my old pc is back on my desk. The bad news is that I keep forgetting it's there because of how much time I spend on my new one. But fear not, before I started posting this chapter I spent a good few hours writing a whole bunch more on the story and have finally gotten myself into the rhythm of a new little arc so I have a set idea to expand upon again.
Oh and quick warning, this chapter has some cringe in it cause I can't write realistic relationships for shite, and with that, this A/N has gotten wayy too long so I'll shut up and let you enjoy the chapter.
I DO NOT own SAO or its characters. (btw, I hardly spent any time proof-reading this one so I'll apologize in advance for the pitiful mistakes)
"The Twenty-Second floor of Aincrad has just been cleared. Repeat, the Twenty-Second floor of Aincrad has just been cleared. Floor Twenty Three is now available to all players," It resonated throughout the lands, though Sinon and June didn't pay too much attention to it. They were too busy taking in the scenery of the floor they had just unlocked.
To say that this floor was very lake-heavy was an understatement. The whole floor was basically a big lake with loads of islands littered throughout with many, many bridges connecting each of the islands. It was sort of like a Waterworld-inspired floor. The main village was easy to spot from where they were, only a few bridge crossings away and, due to the lack of obstructing views, they could also see where the entrance to this floor's labyrinth was across the other side of the floor.
"Well then, shall we go check out the new village?" June asked happily, but unfortunately, Sinon had to disappoint her.
"Would love to, but there's somewhere I need to be for a short while for…reasons," She claimed truthfully as she apologized.
"No, that's fine. I should probably go find Kuro anyway, he'll need some help leveling up again," June said as the two shared a small laugh. Sinon waved her new friend off and teleported all the way back down to the ultimate adventurer haven known as the Town of Beginnings on the first floor.
She hadn't visited this floor in a hot minute but, unsurprisingly, it hadn't changed at all. She even saw Kuro at the Chamber of Resurrection looking like a default newbie again but she moved on before he noticed her. After showing so many uncharacteristic emotions throughout the boss fight with June and Kuro, it made her feel so much better to go back to just simply putting her head down and ignoring anyone and everyone who she walked by while she made her way out towards the dense forest area where she would remain for the next short while in hopes that she could find some sort of closure with Toran.
Most of the walk towards the forest was spent thinking about what might happen should Toran decide to show up, followed by the realization that it's more likely that he won't anyway so there's no point in having hope. But even so, she was still able to take in the nice scenery of the city outskirts and marvel at the streams and gardens.
It was during this walk that she actually focused on the beauty of the virtual world. Despite the fact that it's all really just ones and zeroes, it really can rival the serenity of real life sometimes. She eventually made it to the forest after humming the tune of a couple of her favorite songs and prepared to fight some field mobs.
The first few to attack her were the usual wild animals and angry slimes, but after she got a little deeper, she realized she was treading into Nepenthes territory. She recalled that these big plant enemies with large mouths and lightning-quick tentacle-like roots were the ones that almost killed Leafa a couple of months ago before being saved by Asuna in the nick of time so she kept an extra keen eye on the fruit that was on the heads of a few of them, making sure not to pop them. Despite this though, she did think she was a high enough level that they wouldn't be too much trouble even if there were multiple of them.
The first few Little Nepenthes to notice her started with acid spit attacks, which Sinon easily sidestepped and countered with arrows. It wasn't until she got even deeper into the forest did they start using their vines to attack. One of the nearby ones unleashed a quick thrusting vine at her abdomen but she was able to duck to the side in time, but before she could counter with an arrow, another vine swiped at her feet.
She dived over that one just in time and rolled into a super quick shot into its mouth which landed perfectly.
As it writhed in pain, two more Little Nepenthes showed up and threw a down swinging vine at her, closely followed by a swinging vine from the left. The speeding vines almost caught her out but she was able to flip out of the way of the dropping vine before crouching down as the swinging vine barely passed over her head.
As she went to aim another arrow shot, she found that she was too slow with her movements and had to abandon a counter or she would've been pierced by a thrusting vine. While she avoided that, some more acid spit attacks limited her evasion ability.
At this point, she was so focused on killing these two Little Nepenthes that she hadn't noticed the numbers that were slowly gathering from elsewhere and starting to surround the area where she stood her ground. After just barely bending her body backward enough to avoid another thrusting vine, she speedily fired a fire arrow at the Little Nepenthes that was causing her the most trouble and killed it with a straight shot to where she assumed the brain was.
As she confirmed that the enemy had died, she focused her efforts on the other one, but unfortunately, the other Little Nepenthes that had started surrounding her had gotten close enough to start attacking and she was caught off guard with a swiping vine from behind. The sharp edge of the vine sliced through her lower spine and almost knocked her clean off her feet, but she held on and whirled around for an explosion arrow to make mincemeat of them.
Unluckily, the one specific enemy that her aim happened to take hold of had fruit on its head, meaning that it would attract countless more Little Nepenthes if it got broken. This realization caused her to hesitate for the shortest of moments, but it was still too late as a vine quickly wrapped around her right ankle and threw her painfully to the side.
Her hard landing on some sharp rocks didn't help the pain, though she was still able to keep fighting and took aim of the fruit Nepenthes. But in a strange twist of fate, the Nepenthes caught the arrow she fired out of mid-air with its vine and almost immediately threw it back at her, a counter that she rolled out of the way of by the skin of her teeth.
Sadly at this point, she had lost control of the fight and only had a matter of time before she was fully overwhelmed. She would've liked to have used her shock magic but she had already used it today and it had a seventy-two-hour cooldown. She took the next few seconds to comprehend just how quickly this situation really got out of hand and how fast she lost the upper hand. Even at her level, these things were still extremely dangerous when in packs.
As she attempted to get up and fight back, it got even worse and a vine from behind wrapped around her arm and picked her up, and to make matters worse, she lost her grip on her bow and it fell to the ground beneath her, meaning she had no way to break free from the vine. It was here when she noticed that the Little Nepenthes holding her had started charging up an acid spit attack, and with no real chance of escaping, she just thrashed around in hopes that it might drop her by accident.
"Crap, not good," Sinon thought worriedly as she failed to find a way to break free from the Little Nepenthes hold. As she hurriedly scanned her surroundings, she saw that even more Little Nepenthes had shown up. So much so that even if she did break free from this hold, it would be mere seconds before she was thrown around again. So with no other options and death at her doorstep, she faced the music and braced herself to be covered in toxic acid that would kill her in seconds. She closed her eyes and prepared, but instead of being poisoned by acid, it suddenly got very bright.
Out of confusion, she opened her eyes and looked up. What she saw was the entire sky completely bathed in a fiery inferno with all the flames coming together into one specific spot. She could hardly tell what was happening when the center of the sky inferno was formed into a great big fiery meteor which was thrown towards the Little Nepenthes that was holding her.
What ensued after that was essentially a meteor impacting the earth at the speed of light and causing a hellfire of an explosion that sent a tidal wave of flames in every direction, absolutely eviscerating every single Little Nepenthes that was even remotely close to the point of impact. However, despite all this, there was one part that was particularly weird. Sinon, despite being right where the meteor hit, felt absolutely no real pain whatsoever. She definitely felt the heat to a decent extent but everything around her burned in a demonic inferno.
One by one, Sinon looked around as all the Little Nepenthes surrounding her burned to death in seconds, and even ones that were a distance away that were trying to join the fight got charred to the bone before disappearing in an explosion. Sinon was seriously struggling to comprehend what had happened but to no avail. Shortly after, as the hellfire finally started to die down, she saw a silhouetted figure beyond the flames in front of her, and as the flames vanished and the heat dispersed, she saw with her own eyes the cause of the attack. Standing just a few feet in front of her, holding the biggest and most demonic sword she had ever seen, was Toran. Seconds after that, Toran took a step towards her.
"Are you okay?" He asked sincerely. She was at a loss for words.
"You…how did…what just…wait, what?" She stuttered before slapping herself on the cheeks to force herself to regain her composure. "What the hell did you just do?"
"That's one of the many things I've come here to explain to you. I'd been wanting to talk to you about everything for a while but…" He briefly paused and looked away, clearly sad about something "I was sure you didn't want to see me again, but then I read your message and…Well, look, I'm really sorry about how I've treated you recen-" As he said this, he got interrupted by Sinon who clapped her hands together to get his attention.
"Skip the apology, what I want you to give me is an explanation of everything…I just want you to tell me who you really are," She pleaded softly yet somehow a little desperately at the same time. Toran took a moment to prepare himself with a deep breath and then started.
"Alright, I'll tell you absolutely everything about me…I was one of the ten thousand people stuck in the original SAO with Kirito and all of them," Just from that starting sentence, Sinon realized there was going to be more to this than she thought as Toran continued. "I guess what I did in there isn't necessarily important but basically what happened is this; the moment Kirito defeated Kayaba and cleared the game. I was killed in a dungeon a few floors down at the exact same time. As a result of that, through an insane case of unfortunate timing, the game started deleting itself and since the data of my avatar's death was being sent through the game's code at the time, my data was deleted with the rest of the game. Basically, I was stuck within the cyberspace of the game with no way of logging out. Completely stuck in the pitch-black abyss that used to be SAO for over three years. I haven't logged out since I logged in way back in 2022 because I'm not connected to my NerveGear in real life anymore. My real-world body is just an empty husk now with no consciousness," Toran explained in detail.
He took a slight pause here just in case Sinon was having trouble processing it and to say that's an understatement is an understatement in itself. She was lost for words, completely shocked by what she was hearing. She knew he was probably going through some tough stuff but this was on another level. She couldn't believe what he had gone through or what it must have been like.
After a little bit more silence, Toran continued. "So after suffering an endless eighteen-month solitary state inside the abyss of SAO, this new version of SAO that we're in now suddenly appeared before me and I thought I could finally log out, but it just got worse because the game assumes I'm part of its code now, it thinks I'm an NPC. So technically, I'm no longer human, I'm just…data now, I can't ever live in the real world again," Toran explained with a pained expression on his face. It hurt him to remember everything he had tried to forget, but Sinon was worth facing those memories. Even if she hated him after this, at least he was able to tell her everything.
"…T…" That was all that came out of Sinon's mouth after that, plus a tear that fell down her cheek and eventually dropped onto the ground.
"That's why I was scared to tell you…I figured that if you knew I wasn't a real person, you wouldn't see me the same way and I was so scared of that reality. I didn't want you to hate me because, despite me not being real anymore…I fell in love with you and I wanted to be with you," Toran revealed as he himself started to let a few tears fall out, though he kept most of his composure. "But I knew you wouldn't want to be with someone who isn't real, who's just an NPC that has no right to exist. Heck, my body in the real world could've died ages ago but that's not me anymore so I wouldn't know. At least I'm still feeling somewhat real emotions, like love. Though I think it's only a matter of time before I start losing my humanity,"
After Toran said that, silence filled the area for a good while. Toran stood there praying that Sinon wouldn't reject and Sinon…she was heartbroken. Not by Toran, but for him. Heartbroken for his struggle, heartbroken for his pain, heartbroken for the loss of his human life. She was seemingly feeling all of this pain in his place, but the worst of all…
"…Why," Sinon said, on the verge of being unable to hold back her outburst. Seconds later, she failed. She cried both for him and at him. "Why didn't you tell me!" Toran briefly didn't know how to respond.
"I…I didn't want you to think badly of me," he answered depressingly.
"How could I have possibly done that!? If I had only known you were going through so much, I would've given the world to help you," She yelled at him as she cried and fell into his arms. "Because…that's what you do when you love someone! You help them, no matter what!" Toran started tearing up even more after hearing that as he held her.
"You…you don't think worse of me?" He asked on the verge of tears himself. Sinon looked up at him, having regained a little decency and composure. All the pieces that she was looking for had finally fallen into place. His mood swings, his odd reactions to certain topics, his awkwardness, everything all made sense now. She looked him straight in the eye before grabbing his cheeks with her hands and pulling him into a kiss. Toran was so surprised by this action that he almost passed out but he kept himself awake to take in the fact that the love of his life had just pulled him into a kiss. Sinon was also taken quite aback by her own actions. Never in her life had she ever been one to act so emotional, but considering all that had happened, she allowed herself this one moment of uncharacteristic affection. After a short time passed, Sinon separated her lips from his and continued.
"I could never…ever," She answered truthfully as she put her head back down into his embrace. "I understand your worry but…if you had just told me when we met, we probably could've figured something out by now,"
"I-I'm so sorry," Toran apologized as he reciprocated the embrace. "I was too scared of being rejected and losing the last human feeling I have left. But I can see now that I was wrong. I promise you, on grandma's grave, I will never hide anything from you again," He promised as the two continued to embrace in silence for a while until Sinon finally loosened her grip on him.
"I'm going to hold you to that," She said which got the two of them to briefly laugh together. "And from now on, I'll always be here to keep your humanity in check and I'm never going to stop looking for a way to get you back into the real world," These words from her got Toran tearing up again but he maintained his composure.
"Thank you Sinon…You have no idea how much this means to me," He thanked deeply. "I pray there comes a time in the future where I can tell you how much I care about you with my real voice,"
"I look forward to it," Sinon replied as they gazed at each other for a bit before Sinon realized there was something else she wanted to know. "Oh, by the way, what the heck was the giant meteor explosion of fiery death and destruction thing you did to save me?"
"Oh yeah, I can do that due to some sort of silver lining with my situation. Because I'm technically an NPC but also have a consciousness and free will, I can operate the game's data directly from a sort of broken administrator's menu. So I can give myself any item, weapon, stat, or anything at all that exists within the game's code. Basically, I have admin privileges for some reason so I spawned one of the mythical rare level weapons to use in order to kill all those Nepenthes," Toran revealed. "But no, I'm not just going to use it willy nilly for no reason," Sinon pouted at this since he lowkey read her mind there. "If I do that too much then Kayaba will notice there's another admin in the game and something not good would happen there so that's why,"
"Eh, fair enough," Sinon accepted, though still annoyed that he couldn't constantly give her all the rare stuff for free. Suddenly, she remembered something bad she did that she felt she should apologize for. "By the way Toran, I may have accidentally thrown the ring you gave me into the lake on the twenty-second floor while I was angry, I'm really sorry," She apologized, but Toran was fine with it.
"Ah, that's fine, I'll make you an even better one myself, promise," Toran offered with gusto to which Sinon laughed lovingly.
"I would love that, thank you," She said as they walked back towards the Town of Beginnings. Now, they had very obviously been on many missions and adventures together, but this was the first time they were actually just hanging out as a couple. It also gave Sinon a chance to properly experience the good side of the game as Toran took her all around the first floor and showed her all the beautiful scenery and secret areas.
At one point, he took her to what he referred to as his favorite spot which was a hidden oasis on a slightly sandy part in the far reaches of the first floor. It was so much more beautiful and relaxing than any other place she had been to so far, which was probably just because she hadn't really taken the time to appreciate the scenery before. After that, Toran took her through all good spots on the rest of the unlocked floors as well. There were especially a few nice spots on the third floor and he also showed her a dungeon on the eleventh floor where one of his party members died in the original SAO, which was a bit of a bum out but he mentioned that, while it was generally the same dungeon, the room layout seemed different. So, although it got a little bit repetitive near the end, Sinon quite enjoyed Toran's little lower floor tour.
"By the way, once the twenty-third floor is unlocked, there's this cool tag team quest that I did with a guild member back in the old game that I reckon we could do. It's like a timed challenge where you have to beat this dungeon as fast as you can and you get different rewards depending on how well you do," Toran informed happily as they sat on the pier of the 22nd floor's lake in Coral. Sinon decided this was a good opportunity to let him know what had already happened.
"Oh yeah, about that, I already beat the 22nd-floor boss," She revealed with an awkward laugh.
"Oh dang, well done. Did you have help?" He asked curiously. He had been fishing just before but was so invested in their conversation that he hadn't realized his fishing rod had long since been swept away by an abnormally large fish.
"Yeah I did it with this couple who were new to the game so I showed them a thing or two," Sinon semi bragged as she briefly recapped her little adventure by herself earlier in the day.
"I doubt you had any trouble, it's definitely one of the easier bosses. But still, that's an impressive feat," Toran praised as he stood up and stretched his virtual muscles. "Well, wanna go check out the next floor then?" he asked happily, but Sinon politely declined.
"Maybe tomorrow, It's been quite an eventful day and I think we've earned some time in the real world," Sinon joked before realizing that she might've just accidentally been insensitive. "Oh right, sorry, I forgot. I wasn't…you know, I didn't mean to-" She started to apologize but Toran reassured her with a laugh that seemed a bit sorrowful.
"Don't be, you don't have to apologize, I'm used to it. Maybe one day I'll be able to go back to the real world but for now, I'll always be here when you log back in," He said with a loving smile. Sinon now knew how much pain was being held behind that smile but there was nothing she could do about it, at least right now. After a few seconds of both of them sitting in deep thought, they received a message from Kirito.
"Wonder what he's up to?" Sinon wondered aloud as she opened it for both of them to read;
Hey everyone, come to the home base in Coral Village on the 22nd floor if you're available. There's quite a special person here, especially for one of you in particular.
Alright, the cringe-fest is over, you can open your eyes now. Jk but still, my inability to write romance is laughable.
A mysterious person has shown up at the base of operations, but who is it? You haven't met them yet, you haven't had the chance, cause they've been kicking ass since the ambassador to France, but someones gotta keep the American promise, you simply must meet Thomas, Thomas! ok i'm sorry i wont do that again.
Next chapter comes out...uh, idk, god knows when. But it'll be there eventually, it always has been and it always will be :Dpls excuse all spelling and grammar mistakes, it really do be like that sometimes.