===== December 22, 2022 - Floor 4: Necluda Wasteland =====

Link, Zelda and Kiwi had spent the night in the town at the base of the tower leading up from the 3rd Floor. As such, they were up at the crack of dawn to reach the next level...

...and were wholly disappointed by what they found.

No trees, no grass, no wildlife, no rivers, no lakes. The entire floor seemed to be one massive wasteland as far as the eye could see.

"This is certainly... unexpected," Link mused.

"What do we do? We obviously can't just go back," Kiwi said.

"You're right, we can't. We push forward, no matter what," Zelda said. And push forward they did, slaying monsters along the way. One thing they did come across that they hadn't seen on previous floors were metallic-looking structures sticking out from rocky surfaces. Link used the Camera function of his Sheikah Slate to identify them as Ore Deposits, although exactly what type of ore they held was a mystery since nobody owned a weapon strong enough to break them open.

The first day on Floor 4 failed to yield much in the way of productivity; the party hadn't even found so much as a single settlement, and sundown now presented them with a difficult choice. Either they slept out in the rocky terrain of the field, or they went back a floor and started from the beginning the next day. Link was beginning to make a case for retreat, when he spied a plume of smoke out in the distance and suggested they check it out.

"Could be monsters," Zelda objected.

"Could be players," Link countered. "Kiwi?"

"It's at least worth checking out. Besides, you have your Sheikah Slate so you can view them from a distance."

Zelda relented, and the group continued their trek. They got within range of Link's scope, and his hunch was confirmed. Some players had made camp in a cave for the night, and the smoke he had spotted had been their fire. "Can't get a solid count from here. I don't see a guard, though."

"Why does that matter?" Zelda inquired.

"If the three of us were going to sleep in the field, we'd absolutely set up a guard. Especially if we were going to leave a fire going."

"Do you think we should approach them, or stay away?"

"Tough call, but we've come this far... we might as well."

"All right... I trust you, Hero."

They got within about a hundred meters of the cave when Kiwi halted them. She dropped to the ground and began to crawl, stopping another few feet ahead. "No wonder they didn't set a guard," she observed as she stretched her hands out as far as she could reach. "Tripwires. Probably rigged to some sort of alarm."

"That makes sense enough, but still..." Zelda pondered what other reasons they would have for not setting a guard. Wires could be stepped over or crawled under, so it just seemed like the smart thing to do... unless...

That's when it hit her.

"They don't have enough people to get adequate rest and post a guard at the same time."

"Then they shouldn't be out here, but that's neither here nor there. I can't see any movement from - shit, get down!"

Zelda took Link's cue and dropped to her stomach alongside him and Kiwi. It soon became apparent what he had seen: a singular form moving towards the mouth of the cave. The person set something down, then looked out across the landscape, seemingly staring in their direction. After a few tense moments, the cave dweller grabbed a torch in one hand and a sword in the other, and started to walk a straight line to Link and his companions.

He decided that was the time to make themselves known. He stood up with his hands up and stayed on his side of the wire. The other person stayed on their side as well.

"Who are you?" the stranger said in a trembling and decidedly female voice.

"My name is Link. I saw your smoke in the dist-"

"What do you want?"

"Shelter for the night."

"Why should I help you?"

"Why shouldn't you?"

That failed to produce a response, so Link continued, "How many people do you have with you?"

"None of your business."

"So... probably not as many as I have with me, if I had to guess?"

"Ha! You don't scare me!" She was in fact terrified from the sound of her voice, but she couldn't show it. "In fact, what's to stop me from killing you right now?"

A voice from behind the stranger said, "This," and a blade was at the side of her neck.

"Down, girl," Link said, and Zelda pulled her sword down. "So I won't ask any more questions if you allow us to stay with you tonight."

"I see no reason to do that."

"Considering you're out here alone, you don't look to be very well supplied, not to mention the tripwires. I'd say that's three decent reasons right there."

"What's in it for me?"

"You live to see another day," Zelda sneered.

"Down, girl!" Link commanded once more. "We'll feed you and keep you safe throughout the night, and if you want you can stay with us until we find a settlement."

A few tense moments passed before the woman finally lowered her weapon. "Fine. Come on."

Link took a few moments over the fire to prepare dinner for himself, Zelda and their new companion - whose name was Reychelle, they managed to get out of her before they went to scout for a source of fresh water - and Kiwi, who was roaming the perimeter and reinforcing their security. She dipped back into the cave as she finished up. "They're back, but it looks like they're empty-handed," she reported to Link.

"Just as well, we stocked enough water to last us a couple days, but neither Zelda nor myself anticipated going so long without finding a settlement to resupply. Not to mention supporting another player." He pulled up his map; they had traveled almost exclusively on a western heading, but he couldn't tell how much distance they had actually covered. Combined with the lack of distinguishing landmarks, and Link had to admit to himself that he and his party were pretty much lost.

Oh well... in the morning, he'd toss Reychelle a Teleport Crystal and send her on her way, and then they'd warp back to Kakariko to regroup.

Meanwhile, Zelda and Reychelle had arrived back at the cave. He passed each of them a bowl of the stew he had made, and he noticed a somewhat disturbed expression on Zelda's face. Not only that, she ate in a very uncharacteristic manner, like she was trying to keep her mouth full at all times. That, and she actively avoided making eye contact with anyone.

Link sighed as the realization dawned on him. She didn't want to talk, which most likely meant that she and Reychelle had been talking while they were out and the conversation had been less than pleasant.

"Kiwi, would you do me a favor? Once you and Zelda are done eating, show her around the perimeter. Show her the snares you set. After that, we should all bed down and get some sleep. The sooner we're away from here in the morning, the better."

"Absolutely. Zelda, let me know when you're ready."

"I'm ready. Let's go." She set her bowl down and left the cave with Kiwi hot on her heels. Out of curiosity, Link checked her bowl; she wasn't even half finished. Across from him, Reychelle stared at the wall in silence. "Reychelle?"

"What do you want?" she responded with as much acid as she could muster.

"Tomorrow morning we're going to continue exploring this floor."

"So what?"

"You're not coming with us."

"Who ever said I was?"

"I did. I said you could stay with us until we found a settlement. But I'm seriously having second thoughts about that." He scrolled through his inventory and produced a Teleport Crystal. "Take it. Consider it payment for letting us shelter with you."

For the first time, Reychelle looked Link in the eye, and he saw a mixture of pain, hatred and anger contorting her face. She snatched the crystal from him - wait a second, was that a black band on her hand? - and whispered in a barely audible voice, "Teleport: Town of Beginnings" before vanishing from sight.

Zelda darted back inside. "Where'd she go?"

"Town of Beginnings," Link responded with an indifferent shrug.

The look of horror on Zelda's face suggested he had literally just murdered someone. "WHAT?! How?"

"I gave her a teleport crystal. I don't-" Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by her fist in his face.

"You... you..."

When Link finally got his bearings and looked up at his wife, he saw the horror in her eyes replaced by a pure, unadulterated fury that he had never seen in the lifetime he had known her.

"YOU IDIOT!"

===== Flashback: Several hours earlier =====

"Damn, this floor really is a complete wasteland... how do they expect anyone to survive here?" A man surveyed the landscape for signs of life, food, water, anything... but came up empty.

"I don't know if they really do, Reynaud," his female companion answered. "They've already killed over 2,000 of us and we're not even two months in."

"You're right about that, Reychelle. But still... we should at least be able to find something around here, right? Something other than monsters, anyway."

"At least we were able to find a place to sleep."

"Yeah, but that won't last long. Sleeping an hour at a time isn't very productive."

"I keep telling you, that's why I set up the tripwires: to wake us up if something comes near."

"They can be avoided, though. Especially by red players. That's why we need to stand guard."

"Ugh... if you say so."

The pair continued to scout for another hour, but still found nothing. They decided to double back to camp - or were they now so hopelessly lost that finding their makeshift shelter was also doomed to fail?

Eventually they came across a wide clearing remarkably free of monsters, except for one. One that demanded a wide swath of territory, and slaughtered anything that came too close.

They had stumbled across a Lynel.

And it had seen them.

Drawing a massive bow from its back, it galloped after Reynaud and Reychelle, leaving them no choice but to try to run for it as it fired volley after volley of arrows.

Of course, the key word was "try." Not only was the Lynel faster than they were, it had still done significant damage with its arrows as both players' HP was now in the yellow zone.

It was now close enough to stash its bow and draw a massive two-handed club, which it swung with reckless abandon.

At that point, Reychelle made a choice. It could only follow one of them, and she knew she had the better chance of outrunning the Lynel compared to her partner. She broke off to the left, hoping the monster would continue chasing after her.

Either she had 'hoped' wrong, or Reynaud was just so confused that he slowed down, making himself the more opportune target.

As a result, Reychelle watched as the Lynel obliterated him, his HP never even stopping in the red.

"So she... she lost her..." Link said in shock as Zelda finished recalling her conversation with Reychelle, the realization of what he had just done settling down upon him like a dark shroud. She was in that cave alone, grieving the loss of someone close to her. They had come along and intruded upon that, putting her immediately on the defensive. And through it all, he hadn't even had the decency to try to see through her "tough girl" façade. No, he had just given her a teleport crystal and basically told her she was on her own. "My god... what have I done?"

"We have to go find her!"

Link grabbed the Sheikah Slate from his waist and warped the party to Kakariko Village. After instructing Kiwi to stay there for the night, he and Zelda used Teleport Crystals to warp back to the Town of Beginnings. The plaza was empty, save for a few vendor NPCs, so there was nobody to ask if they had seen any players come through recently. On a hunch, Zelda ran towards the Black Iron Palace, where the Monument of Life was. Link struggled to keep up with her.

The Monument of Life was a massive stone tablet, containing the names of all 10,000 players inside Sword Art Online. When players died, their names were automatically crossed out, and the cause, time, day, and month of death was written beside it. Players also came here to pay respects to their fallen comrades. The floor near the monument was littered with notes, flowers and other tributes.

So while she wasn't entirely surprised, Zelda felt a rush of gratitude come over her when she saw Reychelle kneeling in front of the wall.

"Reychelle! Thank the gods I found you!"

"Stay away from me." The command was dripping was malicious intent.

"Please, listen to me... what happened to Reynaud wasn't your fault."

"Then whose fault was it? Why don't you tell me that, so I can kill them instead?"

Zelda was shaken at the implication of what she meant. "'Kill them instead...' were you going to... to kill yourself?"

"What else do I deserve, after I... I... after I got..." The words choked her as they refused to come out.

"You're in pain right now, I get that. But that won't help anything." She tried to take a step toward Reychelle...

...and was promptly knocked off her feet for her troubles.

"Zelda!" Link panicked. He went for his weapons-

"Stay out of this!"

To his utter dismay, it wasn't Reychelle who had said that, but his own wife. His wife who was now picking herself back up, staring down a woman with a sword in her hand...

...who again knocked her on her ass, this time into a wall.

One of the huge selling points of the NerveGear and Sword Art Online had been that with full-dive technology, the feeling of physical pain could be eliminated.

"Eliminated" had clearly been the wrong choice of words, because Zelda was feeling every blow from Reychelle's sword, fists and feet. Yet not only would she refuse Link's help, she refused to so much as draw her own sword. But why?

It made no sense to Link... until he saw her HP gauge never once drop below full.

Of course... the city is a safe zone!

Somehow he had forgotten the laws of SAO that prevented players from taking damage inside cities and towns. So while she was in fact getting her ass absolutely handed to her, Zelda wasn't actually being hurt.

She was allowing Reychelle to work out her aggression on herself, rather than taking her life.

After several painful minutes, Reychelle stood over Zelda's fallen, battered body. Without a shred of remorse, she punctuated her assault by driving her sword straight down into Zelda's chest, causing a scream of pain to reverberate off the walls of the Black Iron Palace. Without saying another word, she left the Palace, her sword still buried in Zelda's body. Once she was gone, Link hurried to Zelda's side and removed the blade. He helped her to her feet and attempted to carry her back to the surface, until she (finally) drew her own sword and hit him with her Rising Cross skill. She looked down on him with absolute disgust and contempt before storming away, leaving him alone in a battered and tangled heap.

Once he finally managed to pick himself up, Link went to read the letter Reychelle had left by the Monument, but he dropped it before he could finish it. He knew he had to find her as soon as possible.

He exited the Palace and found Zelda sitting in the main plaza. "Zelda, I know you're still really pissed at me, but we have to find Reychelle."

"I know."

"That guy, Reynaud... he was her-"

"I know."

"And she's planning on-"

"I KNOW!"

"Well... don't you think we should stop her?"

"I think..." she said as she walked away from him, "you and I should get some sleep. We have a very early day tomorrow."

That night was anything but harmonious, and as a result Link and Zelda were at a significant disadvantage the following day compared to their normal mornings. They met a very reluctant Reychelle in the central plaza, who said nothing when she saw them, walking to the warp gate in total silence. Link and Zelda followed her at a safe distance, not speaking to her or each other. Nobody had said a word by the time they made it back to the cave on the 4th floor sometime around midday. Between Reychelle's grief, Zelda's fury, and Link's desire to not piss either of them off, talking just didn't seem like a good idea.

Considering their intended opponent, it was not a good day to not communicate.

Link had learned from Reychelle's letter, and Zelda had learned from Reychelle herself, that she intended to challenge the Lynel that had killed Reynaud.

Perhaps 'challenge' wasn't the appropriate word, as she had no expectation of survival.

Out of some sense of guilt, Zelda had offered her and Link's help, which Reychelle had been altogether indifferent about accepting; far be it for her to talk them out of their deaths. Although she hadn't told him as much (in fact, she hadn't spoken to him at all since they left the plaza), he didn't need to be told; it was the only possible reason they had for staying with her.

Eventually they came upon the spot where the monster had set upon the two players, but it was nowhere to be found. Reychelle was frantic. "Where is it?" she kept shouting.

Link finally dared open his mouth. "Someone else must have come through recently and killed it."

"What? No... that can't be..."

"Reychelle, whatever happened, the Lynel just isn't here. The best thing for us to do is be gone by the time it respawns."

Zelda begrudgingly agreed, and the trio kept moving. Since they weren't moving back towards the floor entrance, continuing on their current heading seemed to be the best course of action, if not the most productive. They wandered around for several more hours, haphazardly slaying monsters as they went. Link and Zelda did most of the heavy lifting as their levels and equipment meant they were more than a match for anything they came across, but keeping Reychelle out of the way was challenging at best. She was so consumed in her grief that she randomly struck at anything the two were fighting, throwing a monkey wrench in their already compromised (yet still extremely effective) dynamic.

It was close to sundown when Link finally sensed a ping on his Sheikah Slate, indicating a shrine was nearby. He convinced Zelda and Reychelle to stay put for a few minutes, pointing to his hip the urgency to "scout ahead." They still didn't trust Reychelle - or any other players, for that matter - with the secrets of the shrines, the Sheikah technology, any of it. Plus, it gave him an excuse to get away from the two women for a while.

Shortly Link was out of earshot, Reychelle asked Zelda, "So who exactly is that guy?"

Zelda frowned as she picked at the edge of her sword. "That's... not really a conversation I feel like having right now."

"I mean... you guys do seem-"

"I said I don't want to talk about it."

"All right, fine... I was just asking."

"That's the problem," Zelda continued, now clearly irritated. "You 'just asked' right after I said I didn't want to talk."

"I'm sorry, I thought-"

"You thought, huh? When exactly did you pick up this mystical superpower? Before or after you-" Somehow, some way, she found the discipline to cease speaking at that precise moment, before she said something that would result in one of them dying. "Whatever... I'm going to find him." She got up and started to walk in the direction Link had traveled, but Reychelle reached up and grabbed her hand.

That was her mistake.

Out of sheer instinct, Zelda kneed the woman once in the stomach and once in the face. She reached for her sword, and saw Reychelle cowering on the ground before her. For the briefest, most fleeting moment, she actually thought about it. Thought about cleaving Reychelle's head clean from her shoulders...

...but as soon as it came, it was gone, leaving Zelda on her knees clutching at her own head. What is wrong with me...

A quivering voice broke her concentration. "What are you waiting for?" She looked up to see Reychelle still on the ground, holding her head down. Oddly enough, she had pulled her hair down over her face. "Hurry up and do it already," she whimpered.

"Huh? Do..." She looked at Reychelle, who for whatever reason was exposing her neck, and in that moment whatever pity Zelda had felt gave way to pure, unbridled fury. "You... you..."

She clenched her fists in rage...

"You... cowardly... BITCH!"

Zelda kicked Reychelle square in the side of the head, with every intent of breaking her virtual jaw. "I can't believe it... you're too much of a coward to take your own life, so you tried to get a monster to do it. When that didn't work, you tried to get me to do it. I can't believe I felt any sort of pity for you."

She tried again to walk away, but this time she was stopped by hands around her ankle. "Please... just kill me, please. If you take any pity on me whatsoever, just end my miserable life now before I get someone else killed."

"Do you think he would want that?"

"..." Finally Reychelle stood up, the mention of the man she'd lost giving her some false sense of resolve. "I don't know, and it doesn't matter because he's not here to tell us."

"Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't. I honestly don't know, but here's what I do know. Life is a gift, even more so now in this game of death. And I'm not going to be the one to take that gift from you, or anyone else if I can avoid it."

"If you can... avoid it, huh..." Reychelle debated reaching for her sword, but felt the point of another sword at the back of her neck before she could draw it.

Without bothering to turn around, Zelda asked, "What'd you find?"

"Settlement, point-five at twelve," came a familiar voice from behind Reychelle. "Straight path."

"Good. Let's move." Zelda took point, Reychelle followed with Link close behind her. They crossed the half kilometer he had scouted fairly quickly, arriving at a small outpost called Palu. There wasn't much there, but there was an inn and Link had already reserved a room for himself and Zelda. Reychelle left without saying a word, heading towards what looked to be a small tavern. Probably to get herself plastered, Link presumed, but that was no longer their problem. Once inside he quickly showered, and got started cooking dinner while Zelda took her time doing the same.

Dinner passed by without a word, the tension between the two still thick enough to cut with a knife. Finally, once they were in bed, Zelda decided to break the ice. She didn't say anything, just snuggled up to his back and put her hand on his chest. He also remained silent, just placing his hand over hers. Another few uncomfortable minutes passed before Zelda finally broke the silence. "Do you have any idea why I've been so angry with you these last two days?"

"None whatsoever."

She muscled him around so that they were now facing each other, and Link took a good look at the disappointment in Zelda's eyes. He hadn't quite expected to see that.

"The man I fell in love with is kind, caring, empathetic, and always willing to help a player in need... where has that man been since we got to this floor? Reychelle's issues are her own, I get that, but still... you..."

"Didn't even try to help her. I let her wannabe toughness get under my skin, and I acted like I real asshole as a result."

"Yeah, you did."

Link's mind drifted back to the letter she had left at the Black Iron Wall. "I can't even begin to imagine how she must be feeling, and I didn't even bother to offer a word."

"Of course you can imagine it, dummy."

He started to retort, but got the gist of what she was saying, and she was absolutely correct. If one of them lost the other, they would lose their will to go on living as well. "What do you think I should do now?"

"An apology might not be a bad place to start."

"I suppose you're right... but if I'm gonna do that I should probably go find her now, before she does something reckless. I'm gonna feel really guilty if I don't."

Zelda sat up. "You're going to leave all this," she said with a sense of playful annoyance as she gestured to her naked body, "to go find some random woman?"

Link chuckled as he gave her a peck on the cheek. "All this will be waiting for me when I get back. I won't be long."

"Don't keep me waiting too long, Hero... you have a long night ahead of you."

"Not planning on it."