Thursday, December 8th, 2022, 7:40 P.M.

"Um, care to repeat that?"

"It's exactly what I said," Kirito sighed. "Asuna's rapier broke right in front of us on the anvil when it was getting upgraded."

"It broke…"

I didn't get it. Why the hell would her rapier break from an upgrade? That certainly wasn't a consequence of the attempt failing in the beta.

"So you think the blacksmith might be behind it?"

"Only answer I can believe, at least at the moment. He failed a bunch of crafting attempts earlier too, though it didn't destroy the weapon."

I looked over at the blacksmith in question, who was currently not tending to any customers. From this distance all I could see was that he had light blond hair.

"Hm… Well, I'm just as clueless as you."

We fell into silence. Kirito watched the blacksmith while I looked around the plaza listlessly.

"... Hey…"

Kirito turned to look at me, but I didn't meet his eyes in order to avoid tripping his Hiding.

"Have you… thought about how everyone… outside is taking it?"

Kirito turned back to look at the smith again and spoke quietly.

"Well, to be honest, there's not really that much to think about… It won't do us any good anyways."

"I guess you're right… I just hope Maki and Kiko-chan are doing okay…"

Silence again. I yawned.

"I'm going to go to the inn now. Hopefully you'll have figured something out by tomorrow morning."

"Yeah."

I left the plaza and headed north up a small street; the inn I spoke of wasn't too far from the plaza. Once I rented a room and flopped down on the rough bed, I thought about how Kirito had answered my question.

He was right, of course; there simply wasn't much to say about it. As far as our friends—er, friend, singular—and family were concerned, we were basically in a coma. Of course it'd be terrible for them. But even with us gone, they still had to go on with their daily lives.

I tapped the clock in the corner of my vision to open its menu and looked at the calendar. After thinking for a moment, I disabled my alarm; I hadn't been sleeping enough recently, so I needed the extra sleep. I didn't have any reason to get up early the next day, either. After turning off my alarm, I returned to my thoughts.

Who knows how long we might be in here? It took a month to clear the first Floor. It was hard to estimate, but at our current pace I guessed that'd we'd be done with the second Floor in about another 5 days. It was likely that we would keep speeding up, but I couldn't see us getting through Floors much faster than a week on average. Even at 5 days per floor, it would take 490 days to clear the remaining 98 Floors; well over a year.

With my useless thoughts drifting around in my head, I eventually fell asleep.


Friday, December 9th, 2022, 10:00 A.M.

"Mmh… whuh?"

I woke up slowly, wondering why my usual alarm hadn't gone off to wake me up yet. Looking up at the clock, I realized that it was much later than I usually got up.

"It's ten!? How did my alarm… Oh, right…"

I belatedly remembered that I had disabled my alarm last night.

"Well, damn. I didn't think I was that tired... I knew I'd wake up late, but 14 hours is kinda excessive." I shook my head and attributed the long sleep to the extra mental fatigue FullDiving can cause. "Wonder what Kirito and Aa-chan are doing…"

I opened my map and found two dots on the southern side of the Floor. It looked like they were near «Taran», the town closest to the labyrinth.

"They're already in Taran? Jeez, at least send me a message… Wait… they're probably fighting the field boss!"

I lept out of my bed and hurriedly equipped my gear. If I ran at full speed, it wouldn't take me long to get there—probably half an hour at most, accounting for fighting mobs along the way. Being able to run so fast was probably my favorite part of playing an Agility build, and my Sprint skill helped as well.

I rushed out of the inn and went south down Urbus's main street towards the town's exit.

Fortunately, the cow-type mobs tended to stay away from the roads connecting the towns of the Floor. They weren't anything I couldn't handle by myself, but they were a huge pain in the butt. The few mobs I did encounter were oversized insects, like the Windwasps that were present to the west of Urbus, but weaker. I barely even had to stop running to kill the insect mobs; the combination of my momentum and Sword Skills was enough to kill most of them in one hit.

After about half an hour, like I had estimated, I arrived at Taran. Checking my map again, I found that the dots had vanished—Asuna and Kirito were probably in the labyrinth now. It was a little frustrating, but if they had gone in under half an hour ago than I would probably be able to catch up just fine. On top of that, the rest of the clearing group was probably not as far as them, so I wouldn't run into too many monsters.

I was about to rush out of Taran and towards the labyrinth, but a sharp pain, albeit muffled by the system, stopped me in my tracks.

"Oh, right… food. Gah, to hell with it. They probably won't be in there all day, and I don't exactly want to have to deal with those stupid tauruses."

I turned and headed towards an NPC stall, resolving to wait for Kirito and Asuna to come out of the Labyrinth.


A good hour and a half later, right around noon, the two walked into Taran. I confronted them once they got to the eastern plaza.

"What the heck, you two? When did you leave this morning?"

Kirito put his hand up in a halfhearted wave when he saw me. "A-ah, hey, Rei. We left at about 8:30, I think?" He glanced over at Asuna, who nodded silently. She currently had her hood up.

"Why didn't you wake me up!?"

"Um, well, you seemed pretty tired… besides, you were still in your room."

"Well, I did need the sleep… But why should my room matter? It shouldn't have been locked to party members. Even a message probably would have woken me up."

Asuna and Kirito both jumped slightly, the latter looking away nervously. "A-ah, well, you know, it's rude to barge into your room like that a-and all…"

I sighed. "What did you do?"

Asuna lowered her hood. To my surprise, her face was neutral; I had expected her to be at least a little angry, since judging by their reaction Kirito must have barged into her room. "Well, long story short, Kirito-kun got my sword back." She tapped the green sheath at her waist—it was definitely her Wind Fleuret.

"Huh… so it didn't break? Ah, come to think of it, that smith is here in Taran, I think…" I looked around; he was set up on the opposite corner of the plaza, his anvil and wares spread out on his «Vendor Carpet».

"—!" Kirito hid behind a pillar that was supporting the balcony of a random building, and he pulled us along with him. "It'll be a problem if he sees us."

Asuna puffed out her cheeks, annoyed. "Honestly. To think he'd be set up even after you figured out his trick."

"Well, I haven't exactly figured it out…" Kirito pointed out, "I don't know how he actually stole your sword, just that he did."

I looked over at Kirito. "Speaking of which, how did you figure it out?"

"Er, let's go to the bar over there and sit down. I don't want to have to hide here the whole time. Plus, we'll be meeting Argo there soon anyways."

We walked over to the bar that Kirito pointed out and went inside. Fortunately, no one else was inside at the moment. The three of us sat down at a table far from the entrance.

"Nezha—that's his name—left the plaza at 8 last night, just a bit after you went to the inn, Rei," Kirito said. "He went to a bar and met with a few other players. He seemed friendly with them. I overheard them talking about making a lot of money, but for some reason Nezha seemed really against it."

"That's what tipped you off, then?" I asked.

"Yeah. Although, at first I thought they were being paid by someone to break people's weapons, but it was too roundabout of a way to target people. After thinking about the whole upgrading process, the only thing that made sense to me was a scam…"

"So Aa-chan's sword never broke, he just stole it."

Kirito nodded.

"I think I can guess what happened next… You rushed back to the inn, barged into Aa-chan's room, and forced her to materialize her whole inventory? And her Wind Fleuret was there."

Even if the sword had left Asuna's inventory, it was still hers. There were specific rules for how equipment ownership worked, one of which being that once an equipped weapon or piece of armor left a player's possession, it would still be flagged as theirs for a full hour, unless it got overwritten by trading, the «Robbing» Skill, replacing it with a different item, or some other similar effect. Deep in the game menu, there was an option called «Materialize All Items» that would… materialize all of your items in a pile in front of you regardless of where they were stored, with the exception of currently equipped items. It made me wonder what else was in Asuna's inventory.

"U-um, yeah, that's basically it…" Kirito quickly changed the subject. "There's something else… those people that he met up with, they were at the field boss battle today. They call themselves the Legend Braves. They have really expensive gear, but they didn't really know how to fight."

"I see. So they used the weapons they stole to buy powerful gear… They would certainly get a lot more money than they would by grinding mobs. Is that their whole goal, just to get more powerful?" I shook my head. "It seems counterproductive." Stealing other people's gear to make yourself stronger wouldn't do any good; there was no net gain in strength for the clearing group as a whole. If anything, it was a loss, since Kirito said that these guys weren't good at fighting.

Before Kirito could respond, I heard the door open. Turning to look, I found that Argo had shown up. Our conversation with her followed her usual pattern; she teased Kirito about being in a party with two girls, he gave Argo map data and asked for info on the Legend Braves, Asuna asked her about something or other—I wasn't really paying attention—and then she left.

Kirito and Asuna said that they wanted to watch Nezha to see if they could figure out how the scam worked; I wasn't particularly interested in sitting around watching a smith all day, so I went to the fields northwest of Taran to grind for a while. Going into the labyrinth on this Floor wouldn't be great for getting experience; the various taurus-type mobs that inhabited it were on a slow respawn timer, and while I could fight them solo it would probably be more trouble than it was worth. After a few hours I decided to call it a day and returned to Taran.


Sunday, December 11th, 2022, 11:00 A.M.

"There you are, Argo. What's this quest that you messaged me about?"

We were currently standing at the mouth of a cave close to the southern edge of the second Floor. Argo had sent me a message earlier, requesting me to help her with a quest. Kirito had been busy for the past two days grinding to get his weapon Skill up, to test a theory about how Nezha was stealing people's gear. Asuna was with him, and I had been planning to go along as well until Argo messaged me.

"Well, nothing too major, just another step in the line that I've been following that should lead to some boss info. It should just be some basic puzzles and exploration, but it needs two people. Far as I know, there shouldn't be any combat, but we oughta be careful just in case."

"Hm, I see."

"Course, I can pay you for your help. Dunno how long it'll take though."

I smiled. "Alright. Sure, I'll help. Do you have a torch or anything so we can see in there?"

I took a few steps into the cave, and Argo followed behind me.

"There's torches set up along the walls, but I've got a few in case we need 'em."

"Any context that might help me?"

"Mm…" Argo thought for a moment. "Not much, just that the puzzles'll likely have something to do with the Floor's theme."

"'Kay, so cows and bugs. Got it."

We walked through the cave for a while; like Argo said, there were torch sconces along the wall. The cave wasn't too large, but there was enough space for 3 or 4 people of our size to walk shoulder to shoulder, just barely. Soon we came upon a set of double doors that had two levers next to them on either wall.

"I tried pullin' the levers quickly one after another earlier, but the door wouldn't budge. Seems that they've gotta be pulled at the same time."

"Got it."

Argo walked over to one lever, and I went to the other. We pulled them after a short count, and the doors opened. More walking ensued. The cave was winding around, sloping upwards and downwards slightly and likely weaving around itself.

"Hey, Rei-chan."

"What's up?"

"I'd like to ask you about somethin' that I've been wonderin' about. It's kinda personal, so you don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"... Okay, go for it."

"How close are you and Kii-bou?"

I blinked. "Um, well…"

"Er, lemme put that a bit better. You two were always chummy even in the beta, despite both of you being loners otherwise. I'd just figured that maybe you two were already friends or somethin'."

"Well, yeah, something like that."

We continued walking through the cave as we talked; there were a few doors that had puzzles that we needed to solve to unlock them, but none of them were very difficult.

"By the way, I probably won't sell this information, since it's so personal and kinda falls under info about other beta testers."

The one thing that Argo refused to sell was information about any of the beta testers. Besides that, anything was up for sale, even her own personal details… granted, those were very lucrative.

"'Probably' being the operative word… Well, whatever, it's not that big of a deal to me. Yeah, we're friends in the real world."

"Hmmmmm."

"Just friends, mind you. I know what you're trying to think."

"Oh, what could you possibly mean?"

I rolled my eyes. "Moving on, you're not really wrong about the loner part. We only have one other friend in the real world, though one or two people do come to mind that at least tried to talk with us often, though one of them was… bothersome."

It had mostly become taboo to talk about the real world as long as we were trapped here, but I thought that was kind of stupid. It's not like it was something we could just ignore, and in any case, sometimes people just needed to talk.

"That so… not much of a 'people person,' are ya?"

"Mm, just kinda introverted I guess…"

"I guess that's one way you can put it. I'd be careful with that word if I were you, though… people tend to misunderstand it a lot."

I chuckled. "I know."

"What about Kii-bou?"

"Well… he has his own reasons."

Argo understood that it was something I'd rather not talk about, so we cut off the conversation there.

After one last door, we entered into a large room that was obviously carved out by hand. There were a few shelves along the wall, mostly empty save for a few extremely old, decaying books. There was a small stone table with a few chairs on one side, and an altar and a dais on the other. Atop the dais was a throne, in which sat a crown made of stone. The altar and dais were adorned in various depictions of cows and tauruses. Most of them had been worn away by weathering—which was weird, considering that there was absolutely nothing about the room that could cause that. The only one I could make out was an image that depicted a person throwing something at a massive tauruses from a distance.

I looked around the room, mildly confused. "What is this, the secret base of a cow-worshipping cult or something?"

"I dunno about that, but it is weird. Why is there a throne just randomly in the middle of a room in a cave, and next to an altar and a mini-library?"

I looked along the shelves; none of the books were legible. I shook my head and turned to look at Argo. "Beats me."

"Hmm…" Argo was taking a close look at the altar. "There's small hoofprints at the base of the throne…" She picked up the crown and looked at it closely. "This is just rough stone. It seems more like a placeholder or a prop than an actual crown… Ah."

"What is it?"

"Quest updated. I need to take this crown back to the NPC. But, uh, I think I already have an idea about what I might be told."

"And that is?"

Argo turned to look at me. "The boss of this floor, at least during the beta, was «Baran the General Taurus», right?"

"Yeah… what about it.?"

"Did it ever strike you as weird that the first Floor boss was a lord, but the second was just a general?"

"Well, not really… But, wait. Are you saying that the boss for this floor might have completely changed?"

That was… a problem.

"Maybe. I can't say for sure; I'll have to finish the quests first. For now, let's get out of here." Argo put the crown in her inventory and looked around the room one more time before exiting. I followed behind her. All of the doors we had passed through were still open, so there was nothing for us to do besides walk to the exit.

"Thanks for the help, Rei-chan. I'll let you know when I find out what the deal with the boss is. Ah, here's your payment." Argo pulled a few coins out of the pouch on her waist and tossed them to me. "See ya later."

"Later."

Argo dashed off back towards Urbus. I looked at the coins in my hand, hoping that the boss fight wouldn't end badly.


Author's Notes

Hey everyone!

AAAAAAAAAA I've finally written things. Christ almighty this took me a while. I think I'll delete the postscripts from the previous chapter after a little bit, since they're not needed anymore.

I know where I'm wanting to go now; the main reason for the extended delay is due to me having some trouble figuring out how to handle the rest of the second Floor. Couldn't really get it to click; even now, I just want to keep sitting on this chapter to see if I have any better ideas floating around, but I need to make myself post it otherwise I'll never make any more progress. On top of that, the more I sit on it the more disjointed the chapter will end up feeling; some of the stuff here was written months ago. Had I been more careful earlier, I wouldn't have had as much of a problem with it, but the damage is already done; at least I've prevented it from getting worse.

At the time of me writing this AN I have the next chapter pretty much done, but I'm still not 100% sure I like where it's at right now… it feels like I'm jumping over too much, and a chunk of it still needs a bit of looking over as it's copy-pasted from an older draft. I plan to post it soon, though. Like, actually soon, not Soon™.

In semi-related news I graduate from high school in two weeks (yay me!). In other words, I'll have about three months of total free time before I ship myself off to college. Hope for more updates.

But knowing me, don't expect them.

That's all. Take care!