Chapter 3
December 22nd, 2022
4th floor, Rovia town inn
Approximately 10:00 AST (Aincrad Standard Time)
Party stats
Will: Level 14 spearman
Emily: Level 14 shieldmaiden
Grace: Level 14 Katana swordswoman
Xander: Level 14 War Hammer tank
"You all know why I called you here."
Asuna faced the group of players in the inn. There weren't many of them, only about ten to fifteen at best. It was the remnant of the team that had taken on Illfang, three floors below, not even two weeks prior, or those who had answered Asuna's summons. Will, Emily, Grace, and Xander were up in the front row with their new weapons.
Having learned the skill for creating polearm-type weapons, Will had been eager to put it to use and created for himself a double-sided spear. The blades were a bit shorter than the one on the spear he used against the Kobold lord, but as there were two of them, and Will could thus attack twice as quickly, he felt it was a worthy tradeoff.
Emily had different shields, one of which had a similar blade to the ones she started with, but the other was larger and had a curved blade, not unlike a Karambit knife. Grace had bought a sharper and longer Katana called a katana at the suggestion of another katana user they had encountered while practicing, Klein. Xander on the other hand, opting to go with the classic "bigger is better" idea, had a very similar hammer to the one he started with, just his new one was, well, much larger.
"We were able to work together to defeat Illfang, as well as Asterius and Nerius, but it would be foolish to think that future bosses would not require such teamwork. As a result, I am proposing the creation of a large party, one composed of many small parties," explained Asuna. "The assault team."
Asuna looked around the room. People were nodding in consideration.
"Really, there's no reason not to go through with the creation of a large party like this. We were able to cooperate and kill the previous three floor bosses, something that a single party, to say nothing of a single player, would be able to do easily," Will thought to himself. "Besides, teamwork like this could boost morale, and that's never in enough supply, least of all here, in this hell hole of a video game."
"What do you all say?" Asuna asked the group. "Who's in?"
Will looked to his three friends, and they all nodded back. It took him a second to realize that they were letting him make the statement. He looked up at Asuna.
"The four of us are in," he told her, holding out a hand. She smiled and shook it.
Slowly, others in the group came around and joined Asuna's new party. She quickly went through and assigned roles. Agil, who had taken up the job of a roaming merchant, would be in charge of procuring supplies for them before boss raids, including armor and weapons. Will's group would lead scouting and explorations to find the next boss room, while Asuna herself would personally see to recruitment. It was a very organized endeavor.
Everyone spent the rest of the day doing some last-minute solo grinding out in the wilderness around Rovia, the main settlement on the fourth floor, as the next day, they would begin their work in earnest. Will improved upon his martial arts skills with Emily, Xander, and Grace, as all four of them had come to the agreement that it would be a good skill to have, should they ever be disarmed in combat. That was until Asuna approached them and invited them all to dinner.
"I want to improve my cooking skill, and since I wanted to get to know everyone in our new group, and your four were the first to join, I thought I'd start with you," she explained, setting up some portable cookware in a rented apartment.
"Well, this is very kind of you Asuna. Is there anything we can do to help?" Will offered, but Asuna politely declined. "Maybe next time. Right now I don't have much cookware to set up, so that doesn't take much time at all," she said, preheating a small oven. The five of them sat down around a small table.
"I heard you four already knew each other before this game began, right?"
Will nodded. "We did. All four of us went to the same high school over on the east coast of the US, and we were also all in the marching band there. Grace and I are clarinetists, and so was Emily before she decided to become the drum major. Xander on the other hand was our only Bari-Saxophone player during our last show, Once upon a time. And let me tell you, that man knows how to blow.
"Even though he was a solo section, everyone could hear him loud and clear, so much so that we occasionally confused the judges into thinking we had more Bari-saxes playing out of sight," Will explained.
"That's really cool!"
"What about you? Did you ever play any instruments in school?" Emily asked, to which Asuna nodded.
"I played a Japanese wood flute for a few years in Middle and high school. If I knew where to get a musical instrument skill, I'd try and make one here!" she replied with a grin. "I hope I won't be too out of practice when I get back…"
The timer went off on the oven, and Asuna got up, donned a pair of oven mitts, and placed a closed pot inside of it.
"Hmm… you know, that'd be a fun way to pass the time if we ever got a chance, creating and playing musical instruments. I'd be surprised if, in all of Aincrad, there wasn't a way to do that," Grace mused. "There probably is. After all, we've already seen a musical instrument skill."
They all talked for about another half hour about their lives back in the real world. The conversation went back and forth between them, from talking about school to their favorite pass times. Eventually, dinner, a stew made of Ichthyoid Potatoes, broth, and other vegetables, was ready to eat, and as they ate, the five of them continued to talk, with the conversations moving more to how they chose the weapons they did.
"I know Kirito told me he went with the longsword because he used to train in Kendo, and I chose the rapier because my dad used to be a competitive fencer, but what about the rest of you?" Asuna asked.
It turned out that Xander decided to use a hammer simply because, in his words, "It was the only weapon available that was as big as I am". Emily meanwhile figured now would be as good a time as any to put her the lessons she learned in a martial arts class to use, and Will's was similar, as he had first learned how to fight with a bo-staff when he was taking Karate classes, and the spear was the closest thing he could find to a bo-staff.
Contrarily, Grace had no motivation to choose any of the weapons, but she decided on the Katana because she'd always liked watching movies about ninjas when she was younger. "I know if Jakub was here, he'd have one hundred percent gone with the sword and shield," Will said, referencing a graduated clarinet player from their previous year in marching band. "But then I'd have to look out for a crazy fool beside myself, so it's best he's not here."
Asuna nodded. "It's a difficult topic, who you wish you could see from the real world now. I'd give anything to see my brother, but then I'm also glad he never has to play in this death game," she admitted.
Xander nodded back. "It's the same for my older sister. I miss her so much, but she'd have a panic attack seeing what we have to do now just to survive," he added.
After a moment though, Will had had enough of the dreary mood. "Well, that's just all the more reason to finish this blasted game as soon as we can, right?" The others nodded in agreement.
The next few days, Will, Grace, and two other players were tracking a creature through the woods outside of the town at the behest of a quest NPC. The footprints were massive, but there was no other sign that anything had been through this forest. They followed the creature's footprints to a large, open clearing, but upon entering the clearing, the prints suddenly vanished.
"How can something so large just disappear? It couldn't have flown off, there would've been some hints of wind damage to the environment," Will wondered, leaning down to examine the last pair of prints. Suddenly, Grace let out a startled yelp and flew up into the air. Will looked up in time to see her hanging from the tail of a massive, and to Will's confusion and horror, level 20 scorpion with dragon-like feet and legs.
"Don't worry Grace, help's coming!" Will shouted, sprinting over to the scorpion, which was preparing to drop its prey into a mouth of massive fangs and venomous ooze. The front tip of his spear glowed a vibrant red color as he leaped into the air and severed one of the beast's claws with a sword skill, before landing on its back. Then the back tip glowed a bright green, as he twisted around and impaled the blade on the beast's tail, releasing Grace, whom Will shoved in mid-air out of the way of the fangs. With a yell, Will jumped off of the beast's back and spun in the air, bringing down a tornado of blades that shredded the scorpion's face.
Suddenly, more creatures emerged from the undergrowth, and Will turned to face them. His spear hummed in his hand, and he threw it at the nearest scorpion before it was pulled back to his hand by the sword skill. Letting out a battle cry, he jumped onto the first scorpion and shredded it, while Grace charged into the fray with her katana in hand. She chopped off a claw, and then a tail, but was sent flying back by another scorpion's tail. Will called out for a tank to shield her while he dealt with the remaining Scorpions.
Both blades glowed a deep orange color, and he spun on the back of one of the scorpions, sending out a shockwave of energy that vaporized the remaining scorpion tails. Ying, a mace-wielding tank, charged forward, her mace glowing a brilliant white color, and she crushed it down on the ground. A violent tremor shook the earth, shaking the scorpions off of their feet. Now healed to full health, Grace charged in again, and was lopping limbs off of the scorpions left and right. Will jumped back to recover while the others made quick work of the remaining beasts.
Soon, the clearing, although devastated, was devoid of living scorpions. But it was not all good news. Grace had been hit by a blast of acid from a scorpion, and her left arm had been melted off as a result. Ying and John, another tank, had deep cuts running down their sides, and Will had numerous cuts and bruises along his arms, although none were too severe. He immediately ordered them to sit down as he checked them for poison. Fortunately, they had been lucky, and no one had been infected by a damage over time status effect, but they still had to get back to the others.
"Hang on, I've got an idea," Will said, picking up a small rock.
"What are you going to do with that?" Grace asked.
It was a sword skill he seldom used, and had thus been considering getting rid of. However, he was glad at this time that he hadn't gotten rid of it. The rock glowed a bright red hue, and Will threw it into the air. Moments later, a sound a fireworks exploded above them, and they began the treacherous walk back to the town.
Meanwhile, a lone figure grinned under a dark hood from the dense foliage.
It was almost dusk when the group got within sight of the town. Asuna was there, having seen Will's signal and come running to the outside of the town with some other players, including Emily. "What happened?" she exclaimed upon seeing the battered condition of the scouting party.
"We were ambushed by these… Things… Scorpions, bigger than a shark, claws as large as a car…" Will gasped, out of breath. "I don't know if they're some kind of rare enemy or a field boss, or what, but they were level 20. We barely got out of there alive."
"Level 20 creatures? The highest players in the game right now are only level 18!"
Two other players were already helping Ying and John into the town, while Will tried to follow them with Grace when suddenly, a group of cloaked figures dropped down around them. "The hell is this?" Will exclaimed, pulling out his spear with one hand as he watched them draw a numerade of weapons ranging from daggers, to longswords, to even oversized machetes. And all of them had orange color cursors.
"Whoever you are, let us pass. We've done nothing to bother you, and three of us need urgent medical attention," Asuna asked. The cloaked assailants merely laughed at that, and all took a step forward, their blades already dripping with malicious intent.
"We can't get past them," Will breathed.
After a moment, Emily responded. "Then we force our way past them." She slipped her hands into her shields. Asuna drew her Rapier, another player named Clyde pulled a greatsword off of his back, while Blake, a newer member of the assault team, held a two-handed longsword, and Amy, who was holding up John, held a war mallet. Will stood next to them with his spear in hand, ready to fend off their mysterious attackers. One assassin stepped forward.
"Just lay your weapons and items down and we won't kill you," he said, pulling a cruel-looking sword out of its sheath on his hip.
"Why would you want to kill us anyway? We've done nothing to you!" Grace cried out.
"Yeah, and you're the ones attacking us. Why would we listen to you?" Will added.
The leader grinned. "Because four of you already nearly died once today, and that was just from beasts we had lured to that clearing. Boy, you really feel for that fake quest, didn't you?"
Grace gasped. "You led those scorpions there?"
"How perceptive. Your ears do work then."
Clyde snarled, and then charged forward. "You nearly killed my brother, you bastard!" he shouted, attempting to cut the assassin in two from shoulder to hip. But the assassin was ready, and he threw aside his blade in mock surrender, before sidestepping with the speed of a snake, revealing a coffin-shaped tattoo on his wrist as he slipped a wicked-looking dagger in between Clyde's ribs. The boy gasped, as a red line appeared on his stomach, before the assassin jumped over him, pulling the knife with him as he went. Clyde toppled over, the single stab wound now a deep, grisly slash running from his stomach to his neck, and then he shattered into a cloud of polygons. But the assassin wasn't done yet.
Another assassin lunged for their leader's sword and tossed it to him. He caught the sword in the air, throwing his dagger at Amy, the player carrying John. The knife spun in the air, cutting right through the skull, and causing John to fall to the ground with a pained groan. He laid there, moaning in agony until the assassin leader lunged forward again, and despite Emily's efforts, skewered John on the end of his sword, batting the girl aside with his other hand, letting out a menacing laugh he did this.
Will, Asuna, Emily, and the others stared in horror. These assailants clearly weren't joking around. Will set Grace on the ground and stood over her, his spear held in a defensive stance and daring anyone to come and fight. The party gripped their weapons tighter, waiting for their foes to come to them. One of them, wearing a mask made out of what looked like a human skull, approached Will with an estoc in hand, preparing to drive it into Will's gut. With the speed of a bullet, he lunged, and Will barely blinked in the time it took for the assassin to get close enough to stab him. Instinct took over, and Will brought his knee up into the attacker's chin, stunning them long enough for Will to take off the hand holding the estoc.
But as one assassin fell, two more advanced, and Will had a hard time keeping up with their lightning-fast attacks. Emily was in a similar situation, being forced to block again and again with few opportunities to strike back, until Asuna ordered them both to duck, jabbing out in all directions with her rapier and making the attackers fall back, lest they get gored. But even with the skilled Rapier wielder backing them up, the odds did not look good. There were only four of them in fighting condition, and only three of those four could fight freely, as Ying and Blake were standing over Grace, each holding their weapons in one hand as they supported themselves with the other. Will stabbed another assailant through the arm, and they backed off, but they were still vastly outnumbered.
Suddenly, Asuna heard a very relieving voice. "Hey! All of you assassins had better back off right now, or else things will get really ugly!" warned Kirito, standing behind the assassin leader, his hand gripping the sheathed sword on his back.
"Not today, swordsman," the leader said, pointing his sword at Kirito. The other assassins grinned. "We'll just have to kill you and your friends then."
Kirito smirked, pulling the sword out of the sheath and holding it in one hand. "Wrong answer," he said. The assassin leader charged forward towards Kirito, and at the same time, the other assassins surrounding Will, Emily, Ying, Blake, Grace, and Asuna converged once again, their weapons aimed to kill.
A dagger flew towards Will, and he barely got his spear up in time to block it, but it still skimmed past his cheek, drawing a red line across his tan skin. He let go of the spear with one hand and gripped the arm of the assassin, then rotated around behind him, holding the blade and arm in a lock. Remembering a technique he had been taught many years prior, over a decade in fact, when he still took karate classes, Will kicked off of the ground and rammed his knee into the assassin's hamstring.
The assassin screamed in pain, dropping the knife. Will grabbed him by his other wrist, and muscle memory did the rest. The assassin flew over Will's shoulder, landing safely in the grass, although still in considerable pain. With one foe down, Will moved onto another, slicing past a second assassin and bringing his blade across the backs of their thighs before they could press forward and land a cheap shot on Grace while she was on the ground. Will jumped to his feet with a dexterity he didn't know he possessed and swept their feet out from under them before Blake darted over and soccer kicked them to the side.
Asuna's eyes scanned her foe for a weak spot as she parried a thrust with her rapier. "There," she thought, finding what she was looking for as she blocked another thrust. "Whenever he thrusts with his left hand, his right arm moves away from his body." She elegantly kept fighting defensively, waiting for her opponent to thrust his blade at her again. When he did, she sidestepped his attack and repeatedly jabbed her rapier into the left shoulder of her foe, which was left exposed by his wild thrust and flailing right arm. With a scream, the assassin attempted to recover from the attack but was unsuccessful as Asuna flicked her blade in a vertical motion, removing his left ear and making him flee, one hand cupping the wound.
Kirito leaped over the assassin's leader to stand beside Asuna. "I move on ahead of the group for one day and you're already being ambushed by a bunch of murderous lunatics?" he sarcastically asked as he blocked another slash. Asuna quickly took advantage of the opening Kirito had created, and pierced the leader's skin with her rapier right above the elbow, and then a moment later, slipped her blade across his chest, right below the neck.
"Well, it's not like we intended for this to happen!" she shot back at Kirito, who sliced open a cut on the assassin's leg, just above their knee.
"Save it for later you two," Emily interjected from behind them, blocking a cut from a longsword with her shield, and then bringing her bladed hand up and drawing a line along her opponent's sword arm and through a strange tattoo similar to the one on the leader's wrist, before landing a powerful side kick to their gut and knocking the wind out of them.
The leader of the ambush glanced around quickly and saw that his allies were falling or retreating fast. With a frustrated snarl, he called out to his allies, "Retreat, Laughing coffin. We'll live to kill another day," and threw down a small smoke bomb. When it cleared, the assassins were gone without a trace, even those who had been lying on the ground, injured to such a degree that they couldn't seem to walk.
But the assault team had lost friends too. Clyde's greatsword, John's shortsword, and Amy's war mallet, all laid on the ground where their owners had stood barely five minutes earlier. Xander, Agil, Klein, and the other players in Klein's guild ran up behind Kirito.
"We heard shouts, what happened?" Klein asked, with his Katana in hand. Moments after the sentence left his mouth, he dropped his blade, having seen the weapons lying there without a wielder, and quickly realizing what that meant.
"We lost Clyde, John, and Amy to an ambush by… other players…" Asuna breathed. Will bent down and picked up Grace, whose arm had started to regrow slowly, albeit also painfully. Her face tightened up, gripping the regenerating appendage with her other hand, a futile attempt to alleviate some of the pain, before passing out from the pain entirely.
Kirito lowered his head. "You've been around the town a lot recently Agil, right? Have you heard anything about a group that goes around murdering other players?"
Agil shrugged. "You hear a lot in the town when you spend as much time there as I do. It could've just been bandits," he said, but Will shook his head.
"No way these were bandits," he replied. "They were far too organized. They had a whole plan laid out. They tricked me, John, Grace, and Ying into going on a made-up quest to take out some creature that kept trampling a farmer's crops, creatures that ended up being massive scorpions they lured themselves to try and kill us, and then when that failed, they ambushed us here."
Ying nodded. "Yeah, and they must have known about the scorpions because they talked about how they watched it happen. They knew the scorpions nearly killed us, and they wanted to finish the job."
Agil narrowed his eyes. "Did they give you a name? Or something their group went by?"
Kirito closed his eyes in thought. "No… No, I don't think they did." But that didn't seem right to Will, and he focused on what he had seen and heard during the fight.
"Wait a minute, they did! Or at least, they might have," he suddenly. Everyone looked at him. "When the leader retreated, he called out to his group. He said 'Laughing coffin, retreat. We'll live to kill another day.' Does that ring any bells Agil?"
"I have heard rumors about a new group of players, running around and killing people if they don't do as they say," Agil replied. "The name sounds vaguely familiar, although then that could've just been two different people in two different conversations that I heard while passing by."
"Regardless, we need to be extra careful from now on. Let's get everyone back to the inn so we can treat Will, Grace, and Ying," Asuna ordered. She and the others helped the scouting survivors back to their temporary base of operations, and once they got there, they set Will, Grace, and Ying on a set of beds they had rented from the innkeeper.
Emily set a jar down on the nightstand next to Grace's bed and tapped it once. Immediately, a blue glow enveloped her finger, and Emily dragged it along the girl's slowly regenerating hand. A light blue paste materialized on her skin, and Grace's expression of pain relaxed. Emily then picked up the jar and handed it to Asuna.
"It's a jar of numbing paste I bought in the town this morning," she explained. "You can use it like you would any other item in a jar. Go ahead and apply it to their wounds."
Grace opened her eyes slightly and tugged on Emily's sleeve, causing her to spin around quickly. "Emily…" she murmured, before being hugged by the older girl.
"What is it Grace? Are you ok?" Emily replied, a worried expression on her face.
"Emily… My arm is really cold…"
Emily smiled, knowing her friend was going to be ok, before moving a small candle lamp over by Grace's bed.
Later that night
Emily woke up to the sounds of grunts, followed by a weapon striking the tree outside of the inn, rustling the leaves in the process.
"That's weird, who could be up at this hour?" She thought to herself, pulling the covers off of her and clipping her bucklers onto her belt, just to be safe.
As she tiptoed downstairs, she saw that the candle next to Grace's bed had burned out by now and that her friend's arm had fully regrown. Seeing the regeneration process take that long and be so painful for her friend made her feel like her own arm was being regrown at the same time, and she couldn't stand it. She made a silent vow to herself then and there to never let another one of her friends endure so much pain again.
Emily quietly walked outside, careful not to attract any attention or wake anyone else up. The grunts were getting louder, and now that she could hear them clearly, she recognized that voice.
"Will?" she whispered, confused. Her friend was supposed to be in bed, letting his body recover. As she turned around the corner, she saw that it was indeed Will. His double-bladed spear was leaned against the side of the building, and he was going through martial arts forms, grunting quietly with each strike. She watched as he finished one kata, and began sparring against an invisible opponent, jabbing head-height with his left fist and following up with a right hook, only to slide left and kick their knee in with a low side kick.
Will breathed heavily as his imaginary foe fell to the ground. "Will ?" Emily asked, concern lacing her voice.
The startled Will looked behind him and saw Emily standing behind a tree that he had been clearly practicing against with his spear earlier that night after everyone else went to bed, based on the numerous slash and stab marks all over the trunk.
His face lost all of the aggression that it had during his imaginary sparring match, and he shook his head. "Sorry Em, I couldn't sleep. I didn't wake you up," he replied, walking over to his spear and picking it up. "I'm done for now. We should get back to bed."
As he walked past her and around the corner though, she grabbed his shoulder gently. "Talk to me," she said. "What's wrong?"
After a moment, Will sighed and set his spear against the side of the building. He sat down, leaning against the wall, and Emily did too a moment later. They stared up into the midnight sky. Even though the Castle of Aincrad was completely sealed off from the outside, the floors were designed with an extremely realistic skybox, and a digital replica of the Milky Way illuminated the sleeping town.
"It's my fault," Will said.
Emily frowned. "What is?"
"When we were tracking down those creatures today... we fell into that trap because I was leading the way, and I let my guard down. As soon as I did, one of those scorpions grabbed Grace and nearly killed her," he said. "It's my fault we fell into that trap, and because I didn't think to make sure we weren't being followed back to town, it's my fault Laughing Coffin ambushed the rest of us. It's my fault John, Clyde, and Amy all died. Hell, I was the one who convinced you and Xander to get this God-forsaken game after Grace managed to get me to buy it, so you could easily say it's my fault that the two of you are stuck in here too!"
Will rested his head against his knees in despair, and Emily could now see bruises on his wrists and legs where he had beaten himself up. Now that he said all of these things, she realized that there had been warning signs that she'd missed since the death game started. His consistent charging headfirst into battle ahead of his allies, his willingness to put himself in harm's way so his friends wouldn't have to, and more, were all indicators that something was wrong. In the back of her head, she chastised herself for not noticing the red flags that her friend was subconsciously raising for so long.
"That's why you were out here tonight, isn't it? You're trying to get strong enough to protect the rest of us?"
Will nodded. "How else can I make it up to you three? It's my fault Grace got hurt today, and it's my fault that you and Xander are stuck in this game to begin with. If any of you... if anything happened, and one of you got hurt, or worse... I'd never be able to live with myself."
Emily wrapped an arm around him, and she pulled his head towards herself. "It's not all your fault Will," she quietly replied. "Grace doesn't blame you for letting your guard down, mistakes happen to the best of us. Besides, even if she got hurt, had it not been for your quick action, she'd be dead now. And it's not your fault Xander and I bought this game either. You may have suggested to us that we get it, but it was ultimately our decision.
"Please, Will. Please, stop beating yourself up over every little thing. You may not realize it, but it hurts the rest of us as much as it does you because we care about you, Will. If anyone's truly responsible for what's happened since this death game started, it's Kayaba. He's the one who locked us all in this game, and he's the one who built that kill switch into the NerveGear."
Tears formed in both of their eyes. Will knew, deep inside, that his friend was right, but something else within him just couldn't give up and accept that not everything that happened was his fault. Even though he knew that wasn't true, it was a bad habit that he had reinforced over and over for years on end, one that, by the time he realized it was there, it had become so strong that defeating it seemed impossible. It was like a massive dam of negative feelings and unnecessarily harsh self-talk, and now, being stuck in this game had finally broken the seal wide open.
Neither said anything after that. There was nothing else that needed to be said, and so eventually, they both fell asleep in each other's arms.
