[Message from fanfic author Anayea Winter: "Hello everyone, and profuse apologies for the massive amount of time between the last update and this one. Life got in the way, my mindset changed, and I tend to write from an emotional space so I needed to get into the right emotional space to continue this. Admittedly there were more important writing projects in between which weren't fan fiction, but I feel obligated to continue a project which has an audience. This chapter will be relatively short to previous chapters as a bit of a warm up, and I need to get used to the site again after such an amount of time away.

I do have a few chapters written which I will be editing and posting over the next couple of weeks at a pace which should be fine for everyone involved. Thank you immensely for any support and patience given!"]

Crafting leveling and otherwise leveling had slowed to a crawl for the majority of the people stuck in Aincrad. After clearing floor twenty, everyone took another break.

Total level being a major factor to overall strength, most people in the frontline groups had to at least start investing a little to obtain passive skills to aid in their further travels. When the news spread from Beta that there were some crafter passive skills which added strengths in battle, nobody could pass on it. At least one craft per person had become a requirement to be part of the frontline.

There were some who blatantly refused, saying it was too small of a boost to bother with such a time sink. The remainder of their guilds took the news seriously, so they felt themselves forced to quit and join another group with the same mindset as them.

Beta journeyed out to the dungeon for a material run once again, exploring the dungeon of the twenty first floor. The boss room had been found, the dungeon totally mapped. In all honesty, there was no reason to hold back from clearing the floor. And the boss was an eight person limited encounter. It was tempting to just clear the floor and push forward a little, so that new materials would be available, and potentially a higher level cap that could be reached.

Kirito knelt down and prodded forward a toy soldier he had made for scouting boss rooms, and sighed in relief. They were in perfect condition, no exhaustion from their material gathering, and the boss inside would be a walk in the park for them. Of course they readied themselves to stay vigilant, in case anything unexpected could happen.

The boss inside the room was a giant moth. There were some smaller moth additional monsters, but they were not showing up as targettable with the toy soldier. They were likely to just be a mechanic of the boss.

Kirito went over a strategy with his friends and they all agreed on it.

"It has really been nice to have a break from battle, but we should work a little more toward getting out of here instead of stopping for so long. There can be such a thing as being over prepared."

Nodding in agreement, everyone faced the door. Kirito pushed it open, and sprinted full force with his sword drawn. Everyone followed suit to the strategy. Asuna and Leafa were right behind Kirito, and equipped torches to their off hands. After getting a couple of hits in, the smaller moths became apparent in their purpose. They swarmed around like violent clouds.

Asuna and Leafa circled around, cutting in once in a while. The smaller moths followed their torches, and so their mechanic never became an issue. So long as they kept their distance, the smaller moths wouldn't hurt anyone and become a hindrance.

Kirito dodged as expertly as usual. His breathing was calm and measured, and he did as much observing as possible because moth monsters didn't usually have many mechanics, and he needed to ensure he wasn't caught too off guard by a new mechanic. Sinon continuously loosed arrows the entire time they fought. Often, her arrows only pierced into the main body of the boss, while when the wings were wide open, she littered barrages into the wings to work on clipping them down. Silica stuck behind the boss, moving once in a while to not get in Asuna and Leafa's slices at the boss. Pina kept on using breath attacks on the boss to lend support, and Kiin as well lended a buff to Kirito while perched on his head. Lisbeth stood on standby at the side of the boss to switch as the off-tank.

Nothing special happened from the boss until it reached a tenth of its total health. The enrage was very easy to crush through...if the moth didn't pull in the smaller moths and recover its health back to full. Apparently the mechanic with the smaller moths was to eliminate them with the flame from the torches so it wouldn't heal itself. More moths spawned from the ceiling, and Kirito called for Lisbeth to switch. It was a possibility he had discussed with them before the fight. While Lisbeth had managed to learn Kirito's dodging patterns to avoid taking any damage from the moths, Kirito urged Leafa and Asuna to put their torches away. Kirito pulled out his torch and charged through the new swarms of moths, swinging the torch in precise arcs like a blunt weapon. The smaller moths were cleared out within the minute that he took from main tanking. Switching back in to main tank, Kirito unleashed a barrage of stuns, and heavy bleed slices. The moth crippled and dispersed in a death animation not a minute later. The victory music played and they only smiled at each other before moving on to the next floor. There was no bonus for final hit. There was however a no damage taken bonus. Everyone in the group got the same item for not taking any damage in the fight. An insect repellent badge. The status of the item was that boss insects would take five percent more damage with it equipped, and regular insect monsters would flee the presence of a player with it equipped. It would be good when exploring, but bad for material gathering since insects tended to have some rather valuable materials for medicines.

The twenty second floor was decorated as a forest town, with the whole town, the whole floor shrouded in a leafy canopy far above. The main town was raised far above the ground, a tree-top location. The field was rather easy to reach with some trees housing staircases. The field was below, so the town was rather safe.

After activating the teleport crystal, it took a few minutes for people to appear.

"About time Beta started clearing floors again! Thank you as always."

Those words came from a cheery elderly man who stepped through. He had recently become one of the first people to step through the teleport gates after a floor boss was defeated. He was too afraid, too old, weak and frail to risk going into battle, but he wanted to see the wondrous sights that Aincrad held. When spoken to, he had expressed hoping there would be safe areas to fish, as that was his hobby outside of video games.

"Ooh! There might be a wonderful lake on this floor I could finally fish at. What do you youngsters think?"

Kirito nodded happily.

"I agree, maybe there's more layers to this floor than previous ones. I get a really cozy feeling from this floor."

All in agreement, they set out to explore the tree top town. The npc characters were no different than usual which was a little disappointing since there could have been some more kind of fantasy element finally brought in, like elves, or demi-humans.

A few hours later, the six in the evening bell rang, and Kirito decided to check the interior of the town's hub building. He had been visiting them since the beginning to get an overall map of the floors. That way he would have a basic idea of how to explore the floors. With a smile, he happily whispered to himself.

"Yes! A sanctuary floor!"

Sinon had stuck with him instead of setting up their lodging at the inn with the others.

"What does a sanctuary floor mean?"

Kirito hummed a little as he brought up the manual from the Town of Beginnings on the first floor.

"Sanctuary floors are floors where monsters are all passive, and the dungeon is a simple staircase to the next floor, potentially skipping multiple floors. Sanctuary floors are meant for player housing and residential districts where everyone can feel safe to spend any amount of time in leisure. Quests on these floors are regular courier quests where the player takes items from one NPC to another. Be sure to relax on sanctuary floors, but keep an eye out for hidden treasures in their wilds."

Kirito finished reading aloud the excerpt from the manual and smiled again as he looked at the map. There were a few small towns, some buildings on the map near lakes, and the dungeon was directly on the main map. So, sanctuaries were essentially completely free floors, meant for exploring.

"That's amazing!"

Sinon's eyes sparkled with excitement, and Kirito went over the map with his eyes finely combing it.

"Let's buy a guild house here. I'm checking the cottages around the lakes if there's a big enough one for us."

Beta had far more than enough funds for a guild house. Having basically become the head crafting market and a necessity, they could probably afford the most expensive endgame items already at only floor twenty one out of one hundred.

"Sounds like a good idea. It would be great to no longer have to share an inn room so often for lack of disbanding our party. I'm sure some of us would appreciate a guarantee of privacy."

Kirito and Sinon were in agreement that they could use the guild house as a sort of necessity.

A quick message out to the rest of their party, and the inn room for the night was canceled. They hurried from cottage to cottage around the lakes until they found one that suited them perfectly. It was a three floor cottage, ten bedrooms, a kitchen space, a large living room/lounge, and a large patio deck. All agreed, Kirito pressed the purchase button for the house. Stepping inside, it was a little disappointing that it wasn't decorated, but a surge of excitement hit him when he checked his crafting lists and they were absolutely stuffed with new furnishings that could be crafted from the lowest level.

Quickly working through crafting some lighting and kitchen furnishings, everyone made the house workable before their usual shared bed time. Laying out on futons, with the lingering scent of dinner in the main living space, they all passed out happily.