Chapter 2: One Month of Fun

August 1, 2022

Aincrad Beta Floor 1: The Town of Beginnings

So this is the game that my father envisioned? Incredible! Everything looked and felt so real. Altinator took a good look at his surroundings and his appearance. He was standing in front of a fountain of the town's central plaza. He was wearing a red shirt and breastplate along with simple brown pants. On his waist was a basic one-handed sword. This toy won't do me any good. Thankfully, I created countless varieties of powerful weapons for later in the game. Altinator unsheathed his sword and started swinging. It was pretty light. Kinda too light, but oh well. He made his way outside into the grassy field when he saw a young man getting used to the controls of his new body. As Altinator watched, the young man managed to slay a boar turning it into millions of tiny pieces.

"Getting the hang of it already, eh?" Altinator called out to the man who turned to face him.

"Took a while, but yeah," the young man answered as he made his way over to Altinator. "Say, would you like to join me in level grinding?"

Altinator smiled as he drew his sword. "Don't mind if I do." As he was cutting down boar after boar, the young man started up the conversation again. "By the way, what's your name?"

"It's Altinator, How about yours?" He asked.

"Name's Kirito! Pleasure to meet you Altinator!" the man responded.

The two of them were cutting down boar after boar, and the beasts kept respawning. It was like a contest to see who can kill the most before they get tired. After a good hour, both Kirito and Altinator were out of breath.

"So how many did you kill?" Kirito gasped as he laid face up on the ground.

Altinator collapsed right next to him laughing. "I completely lost count. What about you?"

"Same," Kirito answered back.

It didn't take long until the two fell asleep after a good workout. The two had barely met and they seemed like long time pals. It wasn't long as more and more beta testers were figuring out the controls and Altinator knew that he needed to move on. After napping for nearly an hour, Altinator woke up seeing more testers fighting boars to level up.

"Hey Kirito," Altinator said as he woke him up. "Shall we head over to the next village? There's a quest that earns us a sturdy sword much better than the cheap starter ones that we have."

Kirito smiled at Altinator as he replied. "Yeah sure thing! I always love information that I can use for the actual game!"

With that said, the two of them made their way to a small village called Horunka. Compared to the busy Town of Beginnings, Horunka was a quiet and peaceful little village with a decent weapon and tool shop for any beginners wanting a head start. Out of all the buildings, a two-story building stood out. Figuring that the building was where the location of the quest that Altinator talked about, Kirito and Altinator entered inside to find a person living there greeting the two. Kirito noticed that the way the person talked was rehearsed and scripted. Therefore, he concluded that it was an NPC for that quest. The NPC offered them some water and led the way to the living room since there was no food at the moment. Kirito, however, noticed that there was also a simmering pot in the fireplace and implied that something didn't make sense.

Strange. The NPC says that they have no food at the moment but there's something simmering in the pot. Kirito thought to himself. I wonder what's going on? Before Kirito could answer his own question, as if on cue, someone started coughing in the next room the moment Kirito and Altinator received the cup of water.

"Is there something wrong?" Kirito asked. "I think I heard some coughing from the other room."

The NPC turned to the two and frowned. "It's my little daughter, Agatha. She's been sick for quite a while now and after we had spoken to the doctors, the only way to cure her is medicine created with nectar from the flower of a Little Nepenthes. Will you please help me?"

Kirito looked at Altinator for a moment who in turn smiled and nodded. "Yes of course," He answered with a small smile. "Is there a place where we can find some of these creatures?"

The NPC gave a small smile and replied. "Over in the west of this village, there is a forest filled with Little Nepenthes. If you can collect the nectar from the creature with a flower on its head, please bring it to me. Please hurry. Time is short for my little daughter and her illness can be fatal."

Altinator and Kirito nodded and headed out the door towards the forest. Along the way, Altinator filled Kirito in on more information about the quest.

"The Flowered Little Nepenthes is a very rare find," Altinator stated. "We should start killing random ones to see if one of them spawns."

Kirito nodded. "How can you tell that it's rare?"

"Quests are never easy," Altinator answered. "If the quest demands a specific type of item, it will definitely take a good amount of effort to find it. With that said, the Flowered Little Nepenthes must be a rare creature."

"That makes sense," Kirito commented as they went deeper into the forest. Eventually, the two ran into a few Little Nepenthes, but as expected, there were no flowered ones in sight. Kirito and Altinator drew their swords and after fist bumping their acknowledgement for competition, they started to cut down creature after creature to the point that they were no longer keeping track of how many they killed. After several hours of killing Little Nepenthes, the two still haven't found the rare flowered one. Feeling super tired from nonstop killing, Kirito and Altinator went a little outside of the forest to take a nap.

Although the two managed to fall asleep, it didn't take long for Altinator to wake up to find a Flowered Little Nepenthes about to take a swipe at them. Unable to wake Kirito up, Altinator dodged the attack only to see it strike Kirito hard several times making him lose over half his health and over to the yellow nearing the red. Altinator then drew his sword and slashed that Nepenthes with a clean swipe shattering it into thousands of pieces. A notice popped up in front of Altinator showing the rare item needed for the quest. Kirito was up a bit surprised that he was attacked by that creature.

Shaking his head, Altinator looked over at Kirito with an "oh boy" look. "I swear Kirito, you need to be ready and on guard at anytime even when you're sleeping."

Kirito laughed as Altinator made his comment. "Well, it's just a game you know. Who cares if we end up dying. We can just revive and try again."

"Yeah true," Altinator admitted. "But doesn't that take away the fun of the game? We can move around and be in environments where we have to depend on ourselves for survival."

Kirito nodded as Altinator continued. "I have a feeling that if there were more severe consequences when we do die in this game, we would do things differently don't you think?"

"Yeah that's definitely true," Kirito agreed. "After all, we are participating in this beta test to see how this game goes. There's plenty of noobs that can tell us how dying looks and feels like. Maybe we can experience how it feels to advance from one floor to the next."

"That's the spirit Kirito!" Altinator stated with a thumbs up. "I got the rare item with me. Shall we return to the house?"

"Right behind you partner!" Kirito answered back with a fist bump.

The two of them made their way back over to the two-story building where the quest had started. The NPC welcomed the two back with the rare nectar and hurried over to her room to create that medicine. After a few minutes, she came downstairs and into the room where the daughter was laying and gave her the medicine. The initial effects were promising.

"The medicine seems to be working," the NPC said. "I believe it will be a matter of time when my daughter will get better. I humbly thank you for your time. Please accept this family heirloom as a reward."

A notice popped up in front of Altinator revealing the reward known as the Anneal Blade. It was a one-handed sword that was a big improvement from the cheap starter sword they received when they started the game.

"I will take great care of it," Altinator said as he thanked the NPC for the humble reward.

The two left the village and made their way over to a town called Tolbana where they both agreed to go their separate ways for quests only to meet up each time to conquer the floor bosses together. Before leaving the village, however, Altinator gave Kirito the sword seeing that he preferred a one-handed sword as his main. The goal was to cover as much ground as possible with all the possible quests to level up and strengthen players. As a game developer, Altinator was able to pinpoint every quest that allowed him to gain all the experience and crucial items he wanted while leaving Kirito to take care of all the quests that gave him the upper edge. This was accomplished floor by floor until the beta test closed a month later. As the beta test came to a close, Kirito and Altinator bid a temporary farewell promising that they will meet up again during the formal release of the game server. Now that the closed beta was over and money was flowing into his bank account, Josh made sure that between now and the release of the full game, he would make final preparations of game strategy with his siblings and also focus on developing his side project as much as he can.