Monday, November 7th, 2022, 2 P.M.
"Alright, here's the cave."
Earlier, Kirito and I had visited the NPC Linda at her house near the west edge of Tolbana. Kirito was able to take the quest as well; the only new thing was a few new lines of dialogue about the wolf claw once I showed it to her.
"Anything specific I should know about?"
I shook my head. "Not much, it was a pretty simple quest in the beta. There was a puzzle partway through the cave, so that might have changed… I don't remember the monsters being too threatening. Definitely nothing we can't handle." I started heading into the cave as I spoke.
"Ah, w-wait… don't we need a torch or something?"
"Nope. There's a reason it's called the Lunar Cave." As we walked further into the cave, the sunlight from outside fell away, revealing what I had meant. A soft blue glow enveloped the whole cave, almost like moonlight. There were glowing blue spots and veins running through the cave walls and formations, which was the source of the light. It wasn't much, but it was enough to walk and fight by, meaning we didn't need to carry a torch.
"Woah…"
"Yeah, it's pretty amazing. There shouldn't be any monsters for the first part of the cave."
"Okay. We should still stay on guard… it wouldn't be the first thing that's changed."
We walked in relative silence, admiring the beauty of the softly-lit cave. It was fairly large; there was enough space for 4 or so people to walk side-by-side and plenty of headroom. After a few minutes, we came to a large cavern, with brighter lighting than we had seen so far. On our right was a small lake, with some stalactites hanging above. However, my interest was focused on what was to our left: an organized collection of small stalagmites, each of which had a glowing stone at the top.
"Is this the puzzle you mentioned?"
"Yeah, but it's definitely different than from it was before. In the beta, you just had to tap the stalagmites in a certain order, honestly it could hardly be called a puzzle… there's too many here for something like that." They were arranged in a semicircle, and there were around 25 in total.
"Huh…" Kirito walked up to the stalagmites and tapped the stone on top of one of them, and it let out a soft chime. "Did they do that before?"
"No…" I tapped a few of the other stones, each of which produced a chime different in pitch, based on their position in the semicircle. "Sounds like they're laid out like a piano… yeah, the accidentals are a bit darker in color too. The notes we need are probably hidden in this cavern somewhere."
"But… where? They'd be pretty visible if they were carved into the walls or something."
"I dunno… maybe it could be hidden in the floor, the surface of it is pretty varied… or it could be something to do with the lake." I turned to look at the water in question behind me. The blue glow that permeated the cavern combined with the water's clearness made it look crystalline.
Kirito walked up to the shimmering water and looked into it, trying to see the bottom. "It looks kind of deep, but there's no current, so swimming in it wouldn't be too bad."
I shuffled my feet uncomfortably. "Yeah, sure…" I looked up at the stalactites hanging above the lake, searching for any hints hidden in them. "I don't see any pattern in the stalactites… I'll take a look around up here to make sure we didn't miss anything, so if you really want to you can dive into the lake. I'm sure you remember how dangerous swimming was, though..."
"... Well, yeah… Alright, I'll jump in. I don't see any fish or anything in there, so it should be safe enough… probably." He opened his menu and started unequipping any unnecessary gear.
I rolled my eyes and turned around, walking away from the lake and towards the nearest wall. I scanned carefully up and down the wall, slowly walking along; after a few moments I heard a splash from behind me, which was presumably Kirito jumping into the lake. I continued walking along the wall, but I didn't find anything that looked like notes or any kind of hint. Maybe there was something somewhere along the path we came down…
I heard another splash from behind me, and turning around I saw a soaked Kirito at the surface of the water, holding a small stone tablet. His HP was in the yellow, around 40%.
"You idiot…"
"Hey, I'm not dead. Besides, I found this." He got out of the lake and handed me the tablet, before putting his gear back on.
The stone tablet had a music staff carved into it, containing the key signature and only one measure of six notes.. "D Major… Was this the only thing down there? Also, drink a potion already."
"From what I could tell, yeah." He opened his inventory and pulled out a health potion, which he quickly drank.
"Huh… I was thinking that maybe we passed something on our way through the cave here, because it seems kind of extreme for the solution to be at the bottom of the lake. Well, I'll try this, I guess." I walked up to the stalagmites and took another look at the tablet in my hand. "So… D-A, then D-A-B-D." I tapped the corresponding stones, and shortly after doing so, I heard the sound of rock scraping against rock to our right.
"Ah, a doorway. Well, let's go." Kirito quickly made his way through the new opening, and I rushed to catch up, putting the tablet in my inventory.
"To be honest, I feel like being able to read sheet music is kind of a steep requirement for a quest, especially one this early… even if it was so simple."
Kirito shrugged. "Eh, that's an RPG for you. Besides, there's bound to be someone in the game that's able to do it…" He gave me a pointed look.
"Yeah, yeah… There is the «Musical Instrument» skill too… Plus, I guess people could always go back and ask the quest NPC."
Kirito nodded. "Anyways, we should be on our guard now. You said that monsters start appearing after this point, right?"
"Uh-huh. They blend in with the walls, plus it's darker in here than it was in the first part of the cave, so they can be hard to spot. They're called «Stone Gremlins»." We proceeded to walk in silence for a while, expecting one of the gremlins to jump out from the shadows and attack us. However, no attack came.
"Er… are you sure there were monsters here?"
"Yes, completely sure. If they aren't here now, there might be a miniboss or something instead."
"I hope it isn't too hard—wait, is this a dead end?"
Sure enough, the path just ended, a solid wall of rock in front of us. Unlike the rest of the cave, there were no blue glowing veins running through it. "Well, um, crap. What now?"
"I don't remember seeing any other pathways… maybe it's another door?"
"But, there's nothing else here…" I took another look at the wall in front of us; a roughly rectangular section of it was indented. "Oh, maybe…" I took the stone tablet from the lake out from my inventory and pressed it into the wall. After taking my hand away from it, the wall rose up into the ceiling, revealing a large, circular room, well-lit by the same glowing veins that were spread throughout the cave.
"So, uh… miniboss?"
I sighed. "Yeah, probably. My first guess is a bigger version of the old mobs…" We cautiously walked into the room, scanning the edges to watch for anything that might jump out. The room was absolutely empty. "It's so much brighter in here, and I don't see another doorway, so where—" The ground started violently shaking, and the center of the floor started raising up. It kept rising, slowly unfurling into a somewhat humanoid shape that stood about 8 meters tall. A red cursor appeared above its head, along with two health bars and its name: «Lunite Golem». True to its name, it was a stone golem made mostly of the blue glowing ore that we had been seeing throughout the cave.
I backed up slightly, putting Kirito in front of me; he could handle aggro better than I could. "Any ideas?"
"Well, let's just watch it first. We didn't come across any golems in the beta, but it'll probably be slow and heavy-hitting." He started inching forward, quickly drawing the aggro of the golem. It stomped towards us and pulled back its arm, winding up for a swing. It was a long wind-up, so the attack would be pretty heavy; Kirito and I both jumped backwards as it swung towards us. The golem's fist impacted the ground, sending a tremor throughout the room. It lingered there for a few moments, so Kirito rushed forwards and attacked it without using a Sword Skill. Unsurprisingly, it did very little damage.
We kept the same pattern for a while; all the golem ever did was the same slow attack, so I started attacking as well. We both used Sword Skills, as we wouldn't need to worry about any counterattacks during our post-motion delay. Soon, though, we encountered a problem.
"Jeez, this thing is barely taking any damage…"
Kirito and I dodged another swing, and we both attacked again. "Well, it is made of stone… my sword and your dagger aren't exactly the best weapons for dealing with it."
I sighed. "Yeah, I guess—wait, what is it doing?" The golem had retreated towards the center of the cave and curled up into a ball.
"Well, we just reached half of its first health bar, so maybe that triggered something…"
We stood there and watched the golem for a moment, but it made no effort to move at all, so we slowly started moving closer. I took another look at its health bar—
"It's regenerating!" Kirito dashed forwards and swung at it with a «Horizontal», but it bounced off with a spray of purple sparks and a system message.
"I-It's invulnerable…? But then, how…" The golem had reached full health again, and unfurled itself. Kirito and I quickly backed away from it, and it resumed its sluggish assault, slightly faster this time. As we were backing away, I nearly slipped on a small chunk of rock that was lying on the ground.
Wait… there was definitely no loose rock on the floor earlier. I looked down at the rock underneath my foot, and found that it had a blue glow, identical in brightness to rock that made up the golem. I picked up the small stone and tapped on it, and a small system window with a name popped up—«Small Lunite Chunk». I looked back up at the golem, focusing on its arm; the spots where we had attacked it had a few pieces of rock missing.
"Oi, Kaz—er, Kirito. Attack it with the strongest Skill you can, I'm going to hang back and watch for a second."
"Er, okay." Kirito looked a little confused, but didn't question me. After the golem did its usual attack, he dashed forwards and used another «Horizontal», putting all the force behind it that he could. When the attack connected, I could see a few chunks of rock fly out from where he had hit.
"That's it! We don't need to kill the golem at all!"
"Haah?" Kirito wasn't buying it.
"Look, our attacks have been knocking off small pieces of the ore that we need. If we can get a big enough piece, that should fulfill the quest requirement." I looked at my Quest menu, and the only text displayed for the quest was 『Collect a piece of «Lunite Ore.»』 It didn't say anything about defeating the golem.
"Okay, but how do we get out of here? The door closed behind us."
"Uh, we'll… figure that out." We dodged yet another attack; this time, I focused on hitting the wrist of golem, hoping to cut its whole hand off. My first attack wasn't successful, but a few more hits would do it. Kirito caught on, and for the next few attacks we worked at cutting off the golem's hand. Eventually, we succeeded, and the golem retreated back to the center of the room.
I tapped on the severed hand, and sure enough it was called «Lunite Ore». I wasn't able to put it into my inventory, and it was too heavy to hold with one hand, so I had to sheathe my dagger to be able to carry it.
"Okay, so, now what?"
"Um… maybe the door will open now?" I walked up to said door, but it didn't budge. I tried pressing the ore up against it, but that didn't do anything either. "Crap." Heavy footsteps from behind me told me that the golem was coming towards us again.
"It's attacking, and fast!" After shouting that, Kirito ran along the wall, pulling me with him. Moments later, the golem's non-severed hand slammed into the wall, right where we were standing. To our surprise, when it pulled its fist back, the door was open.
"Well, I guess we can leave now."
"My, that is quite a large piece of ore."
We had returned to Linda's house in Tolbana after escaping from the golem. It was fairly obvious why she didn't practice her smithing much anymore; she was quite old, probably at least 65 or 70 years old. We were currently standing in a small workshop in the basement of her house.
"Hand it to me, if you would. The wolf's claw as well. I could easily make a few extra ingots using this, if you would like to take them with you."
I bowed politely to the woman after handing her the materials. "That would be wonderful." Interacting with NPCs could be a bit stiff at times, but I found that they had become able to understand more complex sentences than in the beta. She walked over to her furnace and placed both the ore and the wolf claw inside. After some time, she pulled out four red-hot ingots using a pair of tongs, and placed one of them on her anvil.
"This metal is quite strong, but I'm afraid I can't forge any large weapons from it… the best I can make is a dagger."
"A dagger is perfect, actually."
Linda nodded and started hitting the still-glowing ingot with her hammer. Smithing in SAO wasn't exactly realistic; throwing some ore in a furnace and hitting it with a hammer once it was in ingot form was about all there was to it. You could choose what type of weapon got made—and obviously what material it was made of—but beyond that no one had figured out how to influence how the weapon was made.
After a few minutes and quite a few hits, the ingot started glowing similarly to a Sword Skill and changed into a shape of a dagger. Linda picked up the dagger, examining it closely. After giving a satisfied nod, she handed it to me. "There you are. I don't ask of any payment from you, but if you don't mind, could you tell me if there was anything peculiar in the cave?"
"Well… there was a large cavern with a lake and some stalagmites that produced musical notes if you tapped them… the right notes made a secret door open. That pathway led to another cavern that had a huge animated stone golem, made completely out of that ore. We weren't able to defeat it, but the ore we gave you was actually from the golem's right hand."
It was quite a lot for the system to work through, but Linda understood without any problem. "A golem… I see." She walked over to the other ingots that she had made, which had since cooled off. They gave off a similar glow to the ore that they were made from. She picked the three of them up and handed them to Kirito. "Here you go. I doubt I will have any other use for them… perhaps you will find someone more skilled than I to shape them."
I bowed again. "Thank you. If you don't mind, we'll be leaving now."
Linda smiled. "Take care."
I turned and walked up the stairs, Kirito following behind me. Once we exited the house, we received a quest completion popup.
『Quest Completed: «Secret of the Lunar Cave»
Bonus criteria fulfilled!
Rewards:
5000 XP
«Wolfswipe»』
5000 was enough experience to put me halfway past level 3; it was higher than average for a reward for the first floor, plus I was probably slightly underleveled for the quest. The "bonus criteria" was probably that «Long Alpha Claw» that I had. «Wolfswipe» was presumably the name of my new dagger; Kirito would have the ingots listed as a reward instead.
"3 «Wolfmoon Ingots»… I guess the name makes sense, since it was made using «Lunar Ore» and the claw from a wolf… What are the stats on that dagger?"
I looked down at the dagger I was holding. Its design was fairly simple; the blade was about 30 centimeters long and 3 centimeters wide, and had a shallow fuller running down most of the blade. One edge of the blade was roughly serrated, while the other was smooth. The crossguard extended about a centimeter on either side of the blade, and was completely straight save for a small curl towards the point of the dagger at each end. The grip was just long enough to fit my hand, and was made out of a material that looked similar to the wolf claw that was put into the ingot. The pommel was a simple small sphere placed on the end of the grip.
After examining the dagger for a moment, I tapped on the blade to bring up its stat window. "...Woah, really?"
"What?"
"Well, look for yourself." I tapped on the window to bring up its local setting menu, and set it to be visible to all players.
『Wolfswipe
Dagger - Wolfmoon
Damage: 20-30
Weight: 0.5
Durability: 500/500
Upgrade Attempts: 10/10
Upgrades: N/A
Min. Level: 4
Min. Agility/Strength: 10/3
+1 to Agility
Many talk of bark and bite—but none talk of a wolf's swipe, as none live to tell the tale.』
"What… that's better than the «Anneal Blade», and it even has a stat boost!"
"Even the damage? That's really weird, daggers don't usually match swords in damage…" I looked at the stats again, noticing that I didn't meet the level requirement to equip the dagger. "What's the level requirement for your sword?"
"Level 3… even then, higher damage is weird, never mind the Agility boost."
I looked up at my clock, and found it to be 4:30 P.M. Two-and-a-half hours wasn't too bad, considering that the quest had been completely reworked. "... I think I'm done for today. Between the wolf and the golem, I'm not exactly eager to do any more fighting. I'll try to get to level 4 tomorrow." We started heading towards the center of town.
"Alright. Are you going to rent an inn room?"
"Actually… Have you rented the second floor of that farmhouse yet?"
"No, I haven't gotten around to it."
"We could share it if you want. I don't remember the inn rooms here being very comfortable."
That got the exact reaction I expected. "U-Um, well, er…"
"Oh, calm down. Dibs on the bed, by the way. You get the sofa."
"Ehh!?" He gave me a pathetic look.
"Fine, we can switch on different days. The rent is 80 Cor a night, right?"
"Y-Yeah… and we can pay for 10 days' worth at a time."
"Alright, so how about the first one there doesn't have to pay for the first 10 days?" I grinned and starting running full-speed towards the east side of Tolbana.
"W-What!? But, your Agility is higher!" Kirito struggled to chase after me, his late start and lower Agility guaranteeing that I would be 800 Cor richer… not that it was much money to begin with.
Author's Notes
Hey! Huge thanks to those that have followed and favorited so far.
So, first off: Apologies for the longer wait for this chapter. Had lots of stuff to do. I also need to decide exactly what I want to do with the next chapter, so it'll likely be more than a week's wait again.
One thing that's been bugging me a bit is that I'm not sure if the level of detail in my writing is at a good spot; maybe it's fine, but I feel like there could be more. Honestly, I'm probably just being too hard on myself... it seems much more noticeable when I'm writing compared to when I'm reading someone else's work. Well, we'll see. On a related note, here's the layout for the info window of weapons, if you're curious:
『Name
Weapon Type - Material/(s)
Damage: x-y
Weight: w (in kg)
Durability: d/d
Upgrade Attempts: u/u
Upgrades: n
Min. Level: m
Min. Agility/Strength: a/s
Bonus Stats
Description/quote/flavor text/other
Smith (if by Player & with sufficient Appraisal skill)』
Don't expect to see it much; I only have one other instance of it being used planned currently, partially because that weapon might have a special property… I feel that going into too much detail with stats is kind of unnecessary, especially with damage numbers. Said numbers become kind of useless when there's a realistic force component to consider; a weapon's going to do way less than its listed damage if you barely poke someone with it, and way more if you have a lot of force behind it. I just wanted to show off this weapon a bit, and I feel that its somewhat unique source justifies it as well. Also, flavor text is cool. I'm not sure how I feel about Appraisal being its own Skill… that's the case in canon, but using a Skill Slot feels a bit steep to only be for identifying items. Maybe it has some benefits with trading as well… maybe a general Trading skill would be better. Meh, it's a minor point anyways, not something I need to fret over.
That's all for now. Take care!
