Just warning you in advance, my vocabulary may go a little south in this chapter. I was in a rush to upload because i wanted to get this one out a day earlier than normal since part 2 of this chapter will be uploaded only 2 days after this one gets released instead of one week. So i may have rushed my proofreading.

Another thing, i haven't done this in past chapters and i am berating myself for forgetting but, Thank you to all of those who have Followed/Favourited/Reviewed my story so far. Your actions encourage me to keep improving my writing :)

Lastly, i do not own Sword Art Online or it's characters.

Kirito had no time to dodge the beam and it enveloped him completely. Asuna shouted out to what was now just a beam of light but got no response.

"Asuna! Look!" She heard Leafa shout to her. Turning to look at the sister of her beloved, she saw her pointing out her her right. Asuna looked in that direction and saw a single other beam of light around one hundred meters away. Two beams of light meant another person other than her husband was being affected by it. Asuna then tried to go into the beam of light to pull Kirito out but the closer she got to it, the faster her health went down, this could only mean that Kirito had already died. Luckily for her, this wasn't the original SAO so she hadn't lost her husband for good. Not only that but he was also the only GM the game had so his death wasn't anything to worry about. After a few more seconds, the beams of light started to fade and upon their disappearance, Asuna confirmed her theory. Kirito was no where to be found, meaning that he, as well as whoever else got attacked, died.

"Thank god that's over." She said with a relieving sigh. Out of habit however, Asuna went to check her friends list. Upon inspection, she was surprised, confused, and shocked at what she saw. At the top of her friends list, where it shows your in-game significant other, Kirito was shown to be alive and well. Not only that, but he hadn't lost a single bit of his health. What made it worrying was that his location was displayed as 'Unknown'.

"What's happened to him?" Leafa asked, obviously concerned about her brothers health.

"That beam of light wasn't an attack." Asuna informed the two beginners. "It was a form of teleportation."

"Teleportation? So, like a teleport crystal?" Sinon asked using the knowledge she gained from the researching she did a day earlier.

"That would make sense, but a teleport crystal can only transport one person at a time. There were two beams of light." Asuna reminded her. "Also, you saw that I got hurt from it right?" They both nodded with anticipation. "The Town of Beginnings is supposed to be a safe zone. So how was someone able to register a harmful attack here." Asuna asked them, to which they shrugged their shoulders. "Only someone with stats like Kiritos could have done this. We need to find him and make sure he's okay before finding out who did this." She ordered as her old second-in-command habits came back to her.

"Right." Both girls agreed and they set off to find their party leader.

Kirito's world was just a bright light for a few seconds, until suddenly, he was thrown back into SAO and hit the ground with a mighty thud.

"I'm seriously getting tired of these distorted visions." He said, expressing his annoyance from all the teleportations he's had as he struggled to his feet. He first looked at his party list which showed that all his party members had a long line of question marks where the health bar should be. He made up his mind that they were okay and were probably now looking for him. He then looked around and took in his new surroundings and saw that another player and been teleported there, just like him. Upon closer inspection, Kirito noticed that it was the same guy who he bumped into not too long ago, the guy that seemed to be crying. "Hey, you're that guy!" he said as he examined the player. They had short golden hair that was somewhat messy and curly with noticeably blue eyes. He wore a lightweight black coloured armor-vest over a dark blue pair of overalls. He also wore fingerless gloves and leather boots. What was interesting was that he had a sort of pauldron on his left shoulder and had armaments on either side of his wrists than went up to his elbows.

"That guy? Really?" The user replied in a monotone voice.

"Well, I don't know your name so what else am I supposed to recognise you by?" Kirito asked rhetorically

"The username's Toran and my real name is…" Toran suddenly stopped and looked down to ground for a bit until looking back up and laughing awkwardly. "You know what, don't worry about it." He turned and started heading towards a series of doors. "What we need to do is find out where we are." Kirito followed him as he couldn't think of a better way out. When he caught up to him, Toran was staring and four different doors on the walls. Each of which had a symbol above them.

"Fire, Water, Lightning and Earth, huh?" Kirito said the symbols of each door aloud to help him think about it easier.

"I say we go Earth." Toran admitted. "I've seen things like this in anime and games and for some reason, people always choose either fire, lightning or water. So let's do earth. I mean, come on. How hard can it be."

"I think we should go with water." Kirito suggested. "What's the worst that could happen there?"

"Um, we could drown." Toran informed him in a dumbfounded voice.

"And if we go for earth, we could get crushed by who-knows-what" Kirito said in an attempt to persuade him. Toran put his hand on his chin and thought about it for a moment. But ultimately, he stuck with his original decision.

"Well I'd rather be crushed instantly than drown slowly." Toran admitted to which Kirito couldn't help but agree. There was too much logic to what he had said so Kirito decided on the earth door as well.

"Alright, earth it is then." Kirito announced. The duo made their way to the door and Kirito pushed it open with a mighty heave. Upon opening it, they saw a grassy landscape with trees and rocks scattered around the area. There was nothing special about it, in fact, It pretty much looked like a normal SAO area. The only thing they did notice was a door that had a golden frame and two dark green gems on the top of it. It was about one hundred or so metres away and about fifty metres off the ground. Kirito and Toran looked at each other and took a step towards the floating door which they assumed was their exit. However, after that first step. The door behind them closed suddenly and would not open again when Toran pulled on it. Kirito looked towards the door but instead found himself looking at the many cracks that were appearing on the ground.

"It won't open!" Toran shouted to him.

"Thanks for the info!" Kirito replied sarcastically "But I'm pretty sure we have bigger problems right now!" Toran was about to ask what he meant but he got an idea when a huge crack appeared under his feet and he almost fell through the big hole it formed. He stumbled his way towards Kirito until they were back to back.

"Got any bright ideas?" Toran asked Kirito as the cracks quickly multiplied around them.

"All I know is that we're not safe until we get up to that floating door." Kirito answered as his concentration hardened. Suddenly, an explosive bang was heard and all the earth around them was sent flying into the air. Before they could comment on that, a large crack appeared in between the two and both sides were thrown towards the sky as well. Next thing they both knew, they were levitating. Kirito quickly got his concentration back and came up with a plan. "Hey Toran!"

"What is it!" Toran replied as he stumbled on his floating rock.

"This might be crazy, but I think we have to use the floating rocks to get to the door." Kirito shouted his plan right before his rock started to fall back down.

"That's definitely crazy. But hell, let's try it anyway!" Toran said as his rock split in half causing him to fall to a piece of floating earth below. Kirito found his footing on his falling rock and jumped on to a small rock that started to drop under the wait, Kirito hastily jumped to another small rock and parkoured his way to a large rock that seemed to be safe enough to stand on for the time being. Thanks to his avatars speed and stamina, he hardly came close to faltering the jumps. Toran on the other hand, who although not under leveled, could definitely use a higher level, barely made a jump from one big rock to another by clinging to the edge with his hands. After pulling himself up, he sighed with relief. However, his relief was cut extremely short as he was suddenly attacked and thrown quite down the chasm. A lucky rock near the bottom only barely managed to save him.

"Toran!" Kirito shouted out to him but had to evade his attention to the thing that was about to attack him. It was a wolf of some kind. It had tiny horns on the top of it's head and it's fur was brown all over apart from the paws and the tail which were white. It's fangs were also nothing short of terrifying. The enemy known as an Earth Hound lunged at Kirito who only barely managed to dodge it and it went flying off the edge of the rock he was on. He looked down the chasm to watch the wolf fall to it's death but what he saw shocked him. The Earth Hound had managed to find it's footing on a very small rock and, in the blink of an eye, it jumped from rock to rock and before Kirito knew it, it was right back in his face. He could also see that Toran was having some troubles of his own with an Earth Hound but kept his focus on his own enemy.

Kirito decided to use his GM privileges to end this quickly and went in for a super quick sliced but nothing happened. He went as slow as normal. It was so slow that the Earth Hound already dodged and had gotten behind him before his attack had even finished. It swiped at his back, causing him to lose 10% of health off of his health bar as well as almost make him fall off. Kirito cursed the reliability issues of the GM status he had in his head. The Earth Hound then attempted to tackle Kirito off of the rock he was on, but Kirito expected that and ducked under just at the right time. He even tried to stab the Earth Hound from under it but it was just moving too fast. It once again managed to land on a super small rock and speedily parkour it's way back up to Kirito.

Kirito managed to use what little time he had away from his enemy to check up on how Toran was managing. Because Toran wasn't in his party, Kirito had to look at him to see. What was shown to Kirito was not good. He only had about 50% of health on his health bar, which was now yellow. Kirito hoped that he had some potions or something from his original SAO item list and by some sort of miracle, he did. Quite a lot of them actually. So he summoned one and threw it towards Toran as hard as he could before immediately turning around to block an attack from his enemy. Toran managed to shake off his enemy very briefly by using a strange sort of spell that broke the rock they were on in half and in the time it took for his own enemy to find a way back to him, he managed to use the potion and got his health back up to 90%.

Kirito, as well as Toran, knew that this was fight was not going to end unless they knew some sort of way to kill these things. "If striking and dodging aren't enough." Kirito thought in his mind while barely fending off his opponent. "Is it possible that we have to outsmart it somehow?" Kirito said as he decided to attempt to beat the Earth Hound at it's own game. So when Kirito barely managed another successful dodge, he looked at the nearest rock and jumped on it, then on to another and another. He used his avatars speed to make sure not to fall along with the rocks behind him. He found a good assortment of tiny rocks to act as a tiny battlefield for him and fought the Earth Hound on them. Kirito had never had to carefully watch where he was jumping while maintaining complete focus on his enemy before, it sure was difficult for him and he made the decision that he did not want to do this again.

He used basic sword skills to try and get rid of rocks that the Earth Hound was about to jump on but it used it's extreme agility to either turn around or just jump over it, after getting rid of three or four, Kirito decided that at that rate, he would have nowhere to go either. So he tried to make his way back to a safe large rock but was side-swiped by his enemy and almost fell down the chasm. He luckily landed on his feet on a rock two metres down though. But before he had time to recover, his enemy took a deadly leap of faith and opened it's mouth wide as to bite Kirito's face off. With less than half a second to think about it, Kirito leaned backwards and fell off the rock back first along with the Earth Hound who was inches away from his face. In the blink of an eye, Kirito stabbed his sword into the side of the rock he had just fallen off and basically did a backflip while holding onto the handle of his elucidator for dear life while watching the Earth Hound fall.

Unfortunately, another problem occurred immediately. The Earth Hound that he had just dodged was now quickly soaring through the air towards an unsuspecting Toran, who was already focused enough on his opponent. He was in a lock with his enemy, who he was trying to push away with his sword, but it was quickly biting away at the blade. Toran then went to slice it from inside the mouth but, as if reading his thoughts, it slightly pulled back. Toran quickly used his spell to separate the two of them and the rock split in half. All of a sudden, he heard a yelp and watched an Earth Hound, that looked like his own enemy, fall through the crack he just made and disappear into the pitch black chasm. All three living things in the room stared at the chasm dumbfoundedly. Suddenly, Toran and Kirito heard a small chime and upon looking towards the door, they saw one of the two dark green gems on the top of it light up and turn a bright green. Kirito and Toran looked at each other and nodded. They finally knew what they had to do and how to do it.

Kirito let a confident and cocky smile to appear on his face upon realising that his earlier assumption was actually correct. The issue now was how to get the last Earth Hound to get to higher ground. The enemy was about to lunge at Toran but Toran noticed a piece of earth come shooting out of the dark chasm like a geyser. He jumped on it and lost 15% of his health from the impact. The Earth Hound jumped after him but before it could land on his rock, he used his spell once again. As the both of them fell, Kirito ran up and tackled the falling Earth Hound onto a piece of earth high in the sky. Toran hit landed on a rock below him, lowering his health to 40% which is dangerously close to the red zone. Suddenly, large sized piece's of the rock he had just split open came shooting down upon him. He had but a millisecond until he was mauled by the debris so he used a barrier spell to deflect them. The big piece almost broke the shield but he remained safe from the dropping bits of rock.

He then heard Kirito's voice shout out to him. "Toran! Incoming!" He shouted to alarm Toran of the falling Earth Hound. Toran confidently got into stance and went to activate his special spell. But disaster struck when nothing happened. Toran immediately realised that he was out of magic. Disoriented by this, he failed to move out of the way of the Earth Hound's downward assault and it bit down on his shoulder with all it's might. The deadly fangs dug into Toran as his health went down to 10% and continued to lower slowly. Kirito shouted out, worried for his new friend. Toran barely dealt with the pain as he realised that his enemy was only biting harder. He looked up at Kirito and nodded. Kirito knew what it meant but had no time to save him as Toran latched onto the Earth Hound with all his might and threw himself off the edge of his rock and into the dark chasm. Kirito watched as his new friend sacrificed himself to rid them of their final enemy. The Earth Hound opened it's mouth and pushed itself away from Toran as it cried out in horror. Toran closed his eyes and waited for his inevitable death. A tear crawled out of his eye and he smiled as he waited. Suddenly, he felt as if he stopped falling, and a notification covered his vision. The notification read only this:

'Sacrifice? I don't think you've done enough to deserve that.'

Out of nowhere, a piece of rock threw him upwards. The geyser like rock missed the Earth Hound and it continued to fall to it's death. Toran kept going until he could see the light again and was thrown onto the same rock that Kirito was on.

Kirito looked at him with shock until he got a hold of himself.

"What the heck man! That was way too reckless. I don't know how you got back up here but I sure as hell recommend that you don't try that again." Kirito expressed his hidden concern for his new friend. Toran laughed apologetically before going into his menu and seeing that his notification he got was not only gone but had also deleted itself. So he decided to keep his mouth shut about that. Kirito sighed with relief and saw that the second dark gem on the floating door had turned a bright green just like the first one. The loud sound of a door unlocking could be heard which Kirito immediately realised was the floating door. Floating rocks appeared to have formed a stepping stone like staircase that lead to the floating door as well. Kirito took a step towards the staircase, but heard an alarming amount of growls come from somewhere around them. He looked up and saw hundreds and hundreds of Earth Hounds come barreling down towards them. If only two of these things had been as troublesome as they were, then this many is a guaranteed death sentence. "Run! To the door!" Kirito shouted, Toran had no idea what he meant but he ran like cheetah anyway. Kirito and Toran parkoured their way up the stepping stones and barely avoided so many Earth Hounds. They were being caught up with so quickly that they doubted that they would make it.

"Kirito! I have an idea!" Toran shouted

"If it involves anything to do with you trying to get their attention then forget it. I already told you not to be reckless, remember?" Kirito shouted in reply.

"Just trust me! All I need you to do is give me a potion to refill my magic." Toran asked him frantically. Kirito hastily opened his menu, got a MP bottle out of his items and threw it to Toran. Toran used it on himself and once his magic was full, he ran forward as fast as he could. He even caught up to Kirito until suddenly he stopped. Kirito looked at him and was about to shout angrily about doing reckless things but he decided to trust in his new friend and continued for the door. A dangerous aura surrounded Toran and a black and white sphere appeared in his hands. Many Earth Hounds had surrounded him and lunged at him. It seemed to be the end. Until he extended his hand out in front of him and…

[Oblivion]

All of a sudden, a ball of darkness and light exploded and encased Toran along with every single Earth Hound. After a few seconds, the ball hastily shrunk until it vanished completely and the only person still left was Toran. Kirito blinked his eyes in absolute shock. Until he saw Toran collapse onto the ground after which, he dragged Toran's unconscious through the door and closed it behind him. In the room was a circle on the ground. Kirito quickly guessed that it was a teleportation circle, which annoyed him, and decided to wait until Toran woke back up before berating him on yet another reckless thing.

"If it were me, Asuna would have had my head by now." After waiting ten minutes for Toran to wake up. He decided to just drag him onto the teleportation circle and they teleported away. After another distortion of vision, they found themselves at one of the teleport gates in the Town of Beginnings. Kirito put Toran on a bench and shouted out one of the few commands he knew how to use with his GM status. "Let's hope this is working again." Kirito said as he took a relieving breath. "System Command. Log Out User. I.D Kirito!" And to Kirito's relief, he was thrusted back to reality.

Kazuto woke up on his dive bed feeling rather dizzy, and all of Kikuoka's data team had run over to him.

"Thank goodness you're okay." Dr Kurahashi said with a playful smile.

"Okay?" Kazuto said angrily. "I'm far from okay! What the hell happened to me?"

"Listen, we understand that something happened to you. We tried our hardest to figure out what was going on and did what we could." Dr Kurahashi said apologetically. Kazuto then calmed down a bit and asked something else.

"Does that mean you're the one who saved Toran?" Kazuto asked him calmly. Dr Kurahashi hesitated to speak for a moment.

"W-who's Toran?" He asked in serious confusion.

"What do you mean, he was the guy who was with me during that predicament. Are you saying you didn't save him?" Kazuto asked the unknowing doctor.

"You weren't with anyone on our computers. According to what we saw, where ever you were, you were alone." The genuinely confused doctor said. "We hadn't the slightest idea that you were with someone."

"I don't believe you. I saw him with my own eyes. I saw him get hurt with my own eyes." Kazuto grumbled angrily.

"Look for yourself. Data tells us that this 'Toran' guy doesn't exist" After hearing Dr Kurahashi's request, he looked at the computer which showed where someone was. The computer didn't know exactly where Kazuto was, and neither did Kazuto himself, but it did show that he was in there somewhere. But, like Dr Kurahashi said, Toran was no where near him. In fact, his indicator wasn't there at all.

"That's not right." Kazuto said in worry as he searched 'Toran' in the search bar. Upon pressing enter, the computer told him that there were no avatars with that name in SAO. "But i…" Kazuto paused for a moment and then got back on his dive bed and shouted "Link Start!" He prayed that Toran would still be there when he arrived back in the Town of Beginnings as his consciousness faded.

Thank you for reading! (i am going to be way more thankful to you readers from now on after the surprising popularity of it.)

I do want to ask you something though: I want to know what you think of my first fight scene. I tried my best to make it as descriptive and enjoyable as possible but i get the feeling that it's lacking something (other than good writing, lol.) So your opinions on the matter, be it positive or negative, would be greatly appreciated.

Once again, Thanks for reading! Make sure to review before leaving :)