Kirito walked from the teleport plaza on the first floor around from place to place with Yui riding on his shoulders. Sometimes he held her hand while she walked beside him when her legs weren't tired. She was still tired from the long sleep they had the night before. Kirito had dreamed that night.

It was a dream where, he was homeschooling Yui, they weren't separated by pixels, and she really was his child. In that dream though, he was 100% female and her biological mother. Everything from childbirth to her nineth birthday played out in that dream. She was a wonderful, playful child. She was incredibly quick to learn, very swift and strong in her practice of archery and kendo. She didn't have a father, only Kirito as her parent. Everyone from the game was in their lives. Not living together full time, but either they had small gatherings where they would just eat and chat about recent activities in their lives, about how school was going for some of them. It was as if...aside Yui, everyone else went ten years into the future and had become close friends after the Aincrad incident. Virtual reality was banned, Kirito got a surgery so he could have a child, and got artificial help so he could bring Yui into his life.

That dream, nearly erased any remaining desire for Kirito to remain male. There was no romantic feeling pulling him out of it. He had feelings for Shino, and he wanted to have a future together, but she was only a friend in that dream. So many years passed within that, and it felt so real. Shino had turned him down after he confessed the desire to become a mother, to have Yui in his life again. She wanted something else, even though she admitted to loving him. None of their group had romantic partners. It was a little depressing in that sense, that none would go on to have families with other people. The Aincrad incident scared any romantic interest off, thinking that past would be damaging.

Kirito sighed and pushed the memories of the dream out of his head and continued facing forward as he aimed himself at the information bureau. His mind kept on blurring the pronouns in his mind. His gender identity was coming heavily into personal question. It was frustrating and terrifying. As wonderful as the dream was, the surgery, and giving birth were the most excruciating experiences of his life. They turned out worth the happiness which followed. Would he have the courage to go through it again to make it a reality? By the time it was figured out how much Yui meant to him, his mind would probably be made up. The future wasn't written in stone, and his dream could just be his mind running wild with the idea of having Yui as a real child.

After entering the information bureau, Kirito noticed that there was a ruckus going on. An NPC wearing the town guard uniform was trying to talk down a player who was shouting, begging for help.

"What good are you if you don't help capture the escaped prisoners?!"

Red lights went off in Kirito's head and his internal tempest calmed down.

"What happened? Escaped prisoners?"

The player with shopkeep clothes turned to Kirito to redirect their concerns, but before another word spilled out of their mouth they let out a high pitched scream while backing off quickly.

"Th-th-th-th-th-the black swordswoman!"

Kirito sighed and nodded her head, gently bringing Yui into her arms. Yui looked up at his face and then back to the person who had panicked so much.

"Whatever reason you're afraid of me, quell it. Tell me what's going on. I came here to get information on...my daughter. But it can wait if there's some kind of trouble with escaped prisoners."

The man balked as he heard Kirito refer to Yui as his daughter. He looked from Yui's face to his back and forth a few times and gave out a weak "huh".

He quickly remembered why he was harassing the guard, and began to explain the situation to Kirito.

"So, there was a jailbreak! I was just doing a bit of sightseeing around town earlier after my shift for the candy store finished, and when I was passing an NPC weaver's store, that bright red haired prisoner was stealing from the store! I booked it out of there as fast as possible, because I've never leveled up and she could kill me if I stuck around."

Kirito nodded his head in understanding and posed a quick note to him.

"Players and NPCs are immortal objects, not able to be harmed within sanctuary zones like this town. Crimes only as far as theft of items out in the open and harassment are possible in sanctuaries. You were essentially safe. But, explain more. Which direction is the shop?"

"Ah...it would probably be better and safer to go with you. She might still be in the area."

He left the information bureau and led Kirito to the weaver shop he had mentioned. It only took a couple of minutes to get there. The shop was ransacked and the NPC working on replenishing stock. The NPC was unharmed, only the shop was damaged. Mostly in the fashion that everything was scattered which remained.

"Which way did the thief go?"

The weaver NPC pointed in the opposite direction from which they arrived from.

"Ugh, she's going outside of the town..."

"No problem. Just stick close."

Kirito took the lead and Yui continued to look up at his face and hummed once in a while. She gave the impression of not really knowing what was going on. She was just happy to be with her mother.

The quickened pace brought them to the edge of the town in next to no time. A flash of red appeared in Kirito's peripheral vision, and he turned to see red hair disappearing down into the ground. There was a Hatch which slammed shut. Kirito jogged over and lifted the hatch. He had his sword at the ready just in case an attack was waiting on the opening of the hatch. No attack came, there was only hurried retreating footsteps.

Kirito followed after, securing Yui to his chest with an overcoat and waist belt. The sewers which they entered were not as foul as he feared. The smell wasn't nearly as bad as they could have been. He quickly pursued the fleeing escaped criminal, and noticed that there were in fact, fairly powerful monsters in the sewers. They were spawning randomly out of the sewer water and throwing toxic sludge, or jumping at him with weapons. Variations of frog monsters, goblins, zombified monsters. There were all kinds of monsters and it was strange to him that such a dungeon hadn't been discovered by the public yet.

Yui looked on in interest and clapped when Kirito executed a monster in a particularly interesting way. The person who followed jumped at the very sight of shadows. He was level one, not even a shred of battle experience in him. Even though he was only a little older than Kirito, he was like that...

"You should go back before those monsters start spawning back. I'll take care of this."

Kirito's words made him feel bad.

"I would feel bad for abandoning the top player to this dungeon..."

Kirito sighed and continued forward like a monster, hacking down every spawned hostile there was. There were no passive monsters in the sewer.

Eventually, two floors deep into the dungeon, they came across something that greatly caught Kirito's interest. Cells which held a lot of unfortunately familiar faces. The cells were open too. It was probably more dangerous for them to leave the cells than it was to stay inside of them, so they were simply surviving off of the basic food which spawned for them, and stayed there.

"Oh heyyy, it's Kiri-chan! What brings the strongest person in Aincrad to this hellhole?"

That comment came from a particularly annoying person Kirito had locked up. Not the red haired woman he was looking for, but the original leader of Laughing Coffin.

"Just putting someone back in their cell so they don't cause any trouble."

"Oooh, yeah she's been doing her damndest down here to level up. It's way too much effort for most of us, but she really grinded it out against the monsters here. She might even be the second strongest person in Aincrad right now. I have to admit, this sewer dungeon goes pretty deep, and it just keeps giving out stronger monsters. In particular, there's this roaming guy. Might want to watch out for a massive scythe, and run."

The jovial voice betrayed just how terrified the man was. His voice trembled in fear and his face showed recollection as he mentioned watching for a scythe. Was a reaper a roaming boss in this dungeon?

Kirito shuddered at the thought such a terrifying boss could be roaming a dungeon. With such a thought, they could even be far beyond Kirito's level. It definitely would be a "if you see it, run" situation.

Kirito continued on through the sewers and reached the fifth underground level. There, it was a massive boss room, where the red haired woman was waiting, watching the entrance staircase. There were no doors like the upper level dungeons. There was a massive, level 50 skeletal dragon as the boss, and she was likely just outside of its aggro range. It was at least possible to run from because of the staircase not being blocked, and there was no sign of a gate closing off the space.

"Aahhh, I knew it was Kirito-chan that was following me! Have you come to finish the job after so long?"

Kirito have her a cold stare. Not a glare, no malice. Just an empty expression which conveyed he was done with her. He started turning around and she shouted for his attention.

"I'm going to take a jab that you weren't very pregnant when you entered this game. That companion of yours might belong here. You see that terminal behind the boss here? Yeah...you might need to kill it to figure out what's going on with it. Of course no boss in this game re-spawns upon dying. So...I'm curious about what you'll figure out, Kirito-chan."

Kirito looked down to Yui to check how she was reacting, and admittedly she was eagerly hopping in her saddle. Kirito sighed and looked around to check if there was a way to protect her from the fight. He wasn't going to leave her somewhere the murderer could get her disgusting hands, and he wasn't going to leave her in the unreliable hands of the level one player.

"How am I going to protect you and fight this boss monster...?"

Yui poked Kirito a couple of times on the chin and then poked her chin a couple of times. When Kirito saw a notification pop up where she poked her chin, he imagined she poked hard to give any notification. The purple IMMORTAL OBJECT notification sent chills through Kirito. With a shake of his head, Kirito walked forward and the murderer ran toward the staircase where the level 1 was. She ignored him and set on the bottom step to watch safely.

"Why don't you sit down and watch the strongest person in the game destroy the strongest deep dungeon boss currently available? I'm sure this is going to be quick."

He practically ran away from her into a corner of the room. The corners of the boss room had protective walls, for some reason. Kirito shrugged it off and gave Yui one more look to check she was ready for the fight. His mind kept replaying herself poking herself enough to trigger an alert, and that immortal object notification showing up on that contact.

Yui was an immortal object. Getting that through his mind would have to wait. He focused down his mind onto the boss and recalled the bone dragon on the upper floors. The bone dragon above had an army of skeletons. This one was on its own. The level of the dragons was also the same. Would he truly be able to take down the last major floor boss on his own? He had to.

A quick duck down and a sprint linked into a sonic leap skill, he ripped his longsword through the ribcage of the bone dragon, turning it away from the staircase, but also away from the terminal which was on the opposite end of the room from the staircase he entered from.

The regeneration didn't happen like the other bone dragon, the bones not piecing back together. Its health dropped a significant amount from the first attack and Kirito gained some confidence. As long as he kept himself going how he fought the other bone dragon, this boss would go down far easier. Each slice with the sword carved away chunks of the head. By the time the head of the dragon was carved down so the face was unrecognizable, the dragon slumped down. As soon as it hit the ground, it shattered in the death animation. The victory tune played and a few notices showed up in front of Kirito's eyes.

System[Underground Floor 5 Boss Cleared]

System[Undertown of Beginnings Unlocked for Teleport]

Personal[Rewards issued for: Boss completion in under 1 minute;

Untouchable achievement, and Last Hit Bonus]

The fact that there were system announcements for a new teleport location and the boss completion, meant that everyone in the game would get the alter.

There were three rare equipment drops from the boss monster. The primary one was a katana with a black dragon themed handle, and a thin bone-like blade, called [Dragon King's Soul]. There was a curse like effect to wielding the weapon [Starts with only one attack stat, but consumes the souls of monsters it slays, gaining stats the more it kills]. It was a typical demon equipment from other games, but somehow existed within Aincrad. Perhaps there would be more worth to going through the underground levels of Aincrad as far as progressing up, if it would offer experience points and such broken equipment.

The next item which dropped, from the untouchable achievement, was a brooch/necklace [Dragon King's Neckpiece]. The curse like effect on that one was more obvious [Immune to all status ailments including death, however cannot be removed and prevents any form of logout]. The final reward, was a skill [Skill Creation]. The effect of the skill was less curse like than the others, and was probably the most overpowered skill in the game. As long as a skill name was known, Kirito would be able to learn it. So, shooting and bow would be available to him finally. And katana would be available, making it possible to use the new weapon.

The neckpiece was questionable on usefulness. It could potentially be an immortality item, or it could be a death sentence, to be stuck in the game even after clearing the game. Kirito would only use it if death was imminent.

Finished sorting his mind through the rewards, Kirito walked up to the terminal and got to work on figuring out how it worked. It didn't take long. It was basically a GM terminal if there were GMs monitoring the game. It could do all kinds of system inquiries, and had a direct scanner. Removing Yui from the makeshift harness and placing her on the scanner, Kirito figured out the answer he was looking for regarding Yui.

[Scanned Subject: Yui]

[Status: Healthy; Infant(2 days old)]

[Type: Cardinal Representative]

[Type(2): Human Emotion Scanner]

[Type(3): Dependant of Player "Kirito"]

[Targetable: Immortal Object]

With a huge sigh of relief, Kirito gave Yui a smile.

"I'm happy about this. It would be relieving if you could communicate a little better, but you're still young. Hopefully you grow up nice and quickly so we can speak a little more, explore Aincrad together. I'll save your information to my NervGear so that I can upload you to a robot in the future. But we'll always be together."

Kirito finished the action to save Yui's information to his device, and gave her a hug. Holding onto her, he walked back to the stairs where the murderer and the level 1 player were staring in shock.

"There's seriously under levels to this...another hundred maybe? Imagine if we could clear it one way or the other."

Her speculation earned a shrug from Kirito. Either way, seems you didn't learn to stay in the cell. What's your plan?

"I'm not going back in there, no point since unless there's a much deeper prison in Aincrad, I could just get back out. Part of me wants to go back to my previous play style, but you wouldn't allow that, little miss perfect."

Kirito thought it over as he looked at the level 1 player who still stared in shock.

"I can warp you back to the Town of Beginnings when we're done deciding what's happening with our criminal."

He nodded his head stiffly in response.

"Right! I've got this new policing cuff item. As long as a player is wearing it, it prevents them from committing crime, and can't be removed. A neck piece. You could go free while wearing one of those."

The [Policing Cuff] could be worn as a bracelet, ring or necklace, but it was easiest to secure on the neck. It adjusted to where it was equipped. It was a cursed item in that it couldn't be equipped. It was the only way to let a criminal out of the prisons. Of course, there could be ways around it, but only if the "officer" didn't think ahead on placing the enchantments. Traps and other indirect methods were ways it could typically gone around, but the ones Kirito crafted were all around crime prevention.

"I've got a solution for you. Here."

Kirito held it next to her neck and it auto equipped. The item could only be placed on an orange or red marker player. It gives them prisoner status, but they were "free".

"What's this, Kirito-chan?"

Kirito smiled and explained.

"That's a new item called a [Policing Cuff], a crafted, enchanted item combining accessory creation and enhancement from the alchemy branch of crafting. The crafter places all the restrictions the item carries. Basically, I made it perfectly suited to prevent all forms of direct and indirect crime. Theft, murder, assault, anything, including setting traps. Now that you're wearing it, it's a cursed item on you and can't be removed. You can go "free", but you won't be as free as you once were here. I could make more for your friends in the cells, but that would be a waste since they're too afraid of the reaper boss."

As Kirito finished explaining, he looked past her and chills ran down his spine. There was a figure on the staircase. In full black, much larger than a person, and stopped a fair amount behind the level 1 player.

"Get back!"

Kirito shouted at the level 1 player and the both of them rushed to a side of Kirito. A resounding crashing sound rang through the boss room, and the stone floor chipped, while showing a flickering IMMORTAL OBJECT symbol where the ground was destroyed. A curved long blade on a metal pole reaching down from the staircase. The blade lifted up and returned to the wielder, and approached closer.

It was now or never as far as porting out. Kirito tried porting out but he was given a message "In battle, please defeat or escape current battle to continue". Kirito mutter under his breath.

"No, no no no! If you two can teleport, get out of here NOW."

It took only seconds before they disappeared, porting out to their own destinations. Kirito couldn't escape no matter how far he retreated into the boss room. The reaper was targeting and following him. At least where the floor was destroyed, it quickly pieced together. He wasn't going to let Yui be hit by that Reaper though.

The reaper followed far enough into the room that Kirito was able to kite around it and sprint up the stairs. Terrifyingly, the reaper sped up, chasing with a speed which matched Kirito's.

After somehow managing to gain enough distance to take a look back and examine the reaper, Kirito saw the reaper's information.

[Boss: Wandering Reaper]

[Level: 199]

[Engaged in Pursuit]

Kirito dashed as hard and fast as he could back through the dungeon, the reaper hard on his heels as he rushed even past the cells. The voice of the original Laughing Coffin leader shouted.

"Ruuun Kiri-chan, ruuuun~! HAHAHAHA!"

The maniacal laughter followed by the taunting shout only made Kirito more determined. Kirito moved so fast, that he began gaining distance from the reaper again. The state of the reaper wasn't changing, still in pursuit. Kirito finally managed to return to where he entered from, and jumped with enough force to slam the hatch door open. Yui was still safely in his arms, safe and tight in his grasp. Terror ran through him as the reaper followed through the hatch. The question now was, go into the sanctuary of the Town of Beginnings and hope it would ignore him because of the sanctuary's protected status, or keep running through the low level fields.

Tempting fate, Kirito hurried into the Town of Beginnings sanctuary and turned to check on the reaper again. It stopped following, staring from the line which signaled the edge of the sanctuary. The status [Engaged in Pursuit] disappeared and the reaper just stared at Kirito for a minute before turning around and slamming the door of the sewers shut.

Kirito fell to his knees and shook from the exhaustion of the long sprint from the fifth basement floor of the under dungeons of Aincrad. It might be dangerous just to go to the teleport he unlocked by defeating the fifth floor boss. Maybe the reason the reaper followed him was because of being the killer of the other boss.

There was a temptation to check the new teleport location, but also a fear that the reaper would be waiting there, that the sanctuaries below might not prevent monsters from entering.

Kirito decided to port him and Yui back to their home and just rest for the remainder of the day. Somewhere along the way, Kirito had gotten many messages from the guild. All were confused about status location, about the system notification, and then the surprise at what the new layer under Aincrad was like. Apparently the lower level they ported to was designed like a massive underground network, started with a city in size bigger than the Town of Beginnings. Which was significant to say the least. The lower floors were visible from the top. Jumping down to lower levels would be a foolish idea.

The way the floors were laid out for the underground levels of Aincrad was incredible. A picture taken with a view shot showed Kirito and Yui how amazing the underground city was. The whole environment was dark, but had a lot of atmospheric lighting in the form of floating mushrooms and stones all over the place. The architecture of the city was very old European, with stone as the primary substance, metal frames, gargoyle statues all over the place, other beast statues everywhere. It was straight out of a horror video game, but it was so interesting that it was part of Aincrad. The bottomless seeming fall which went pitch black at a long distance from the sixth floor sanctuary, gave the impression there was another hundred floors below Aincrad, despite the map showing the Town of Beginnings to be at the bottom layer of the structure of Aincrad, the first floor. It didn't make sense there would be anything below, even the sewer system. There must be some kind of engine magic hiding the rest of the structure or layering and flipping it so the lower levels were some kind of full inversion of the upper levels.

Either way, Kirito was still afraid of going there, for risk of the potential the Reaper posed. Even though there was potentially game changing equipment below. Yui also didn't give the impression of wanting to go below again, the fear of going into the dark place the pictures showed was more for her than for Kirito, admittedly. A significant part of him wanted to go there.

"Do you see anything like a reaper down there?"

Asuna replied quickly with a picture of two reaper like creatures, similar but not the same to the previous one at level 30 each. They were apparently outside of the main gate of the city. Both were breathing and moving. Apparently there weren't any inside of the sanctuary, but Kirito was still afraid just knowing there were Reapers just outside of the city gates.

"I may not be going back down there..."

Asuna responded with a confused emoticon.

"I was chased from the floor 5 boss room after killing the boss there by a wandering reaper boss which was level 199 and it temporarily destroyed the floor of the environment...which was an immortal object...so yeaaahhhh...not taking the risk that guy shows up as soon as I port there, because I won't have a way out."

Asuna gave a shocked emoji in response to that. There was one potential solution to the issue, if the neckpiece from the floor 5 boss meant anything, and it was actually not a cursed item but an immortality item, then Kirito would be absolutely broken journeying through the rest of Aincrad and of course be fine going lower if he wanted. He would discuss the rewards from the boss with the group at a later time. The katana, he decided he would use right away however, and used the skill learning skill to choose Katana first. It turned out the skill had a cooldown, and a skill could only be learned once a week. So shooting bows would take another two weeks to fully unlock.

Kirito wanted to try out the new katana since it wasn't a locked item, unable to be unequipped once equipped. It was just a mimic of the demon weapons of other games, only limited by the grind the wielder was willing to put in for the weapon to grow stronger. It was not able to be enhanced through crafting, but could have one more enhancement unlocked according to its status, after consuming enough lives.

He would have to wait though, since Yui had become clingey and possessive of him.

"Well, I'm going to hang out at the house with Yui for the rest of the day. Will fill everyone in on what I learned about her when everyone gets back home for dinner."

Everyone in the party chat function replied with their okays and envy of Yui getting alone time with him. The rest of the afternoon was very relaxed, with Yui playing with her and Kirito's hair. Kirito's mind raced from one thing to another about what would be coming up in the near future within the game after what he just discovered earlier in the day.