Sachi didn't wake up for a full week after fainting. News hit [Alt] that the Midnight Black Cats guild all fainted out of nowhere in the middle of the streets on floor 41. In that time, panaceas were given to all of them, but nothing, even after a week worked on getting them out of their mysterious unconscious. Their statuses only said they were asleep after a while, but at first they were experiencing the ailments Kirito had been suffering minus one. Terror, and nightmare had become something truly worrisome.

Floor 41 was a floor of perpetual darkness, the main town filled with a Gothic style of architecture, overcast weather, and often had a rainy weather condition as well. The gargoyles littered around everywhere was unsettling, as if even in the sanctuary they might come alive. The floor bore a striking resemblance to the people who had explored under floor 6's starting town. The only thing missing was reaper type monsters. Thankfully there were none present, as far as Kirito was concerned.

It was made a rule quickly that people would travel in groups, with their parties. During that week, everyone from the clearing group searched for any reasons that Sachi and her previous guild might have mysteriously suffered their fainting and abnormal status conditions. No progress was made, even when Kirito revealed that he had been having nightmares of something awful happening to them in an alternate reality. He was obviously not involved in their current conditions, but it plagued his mind that maybe he was involved in their situation.

Kirito couldn't stand the idea that he might be the cause for their situation and wrote down every detail he could pick apart from those nightmares and figure out what might be going on.

Eventually, he came upon some other details outside of the nightmares which clued him in on why he was experiencing the alternate timeline nightmares and dreams. When he didn't sleep alongside Yui, those dreams and nightmares wouldn't occur. When they progressed to a certain floor, new ones would be introduced at first, but the more dreadful nightmares would be recurring.

The important factors to consider were Yui being the conductor even though she obviously didn't intend it, and the floor progression introducing more information. But there weren't any clues to help. Kirito's only answer in the end was to check out where Sachi and her guild died in the dream.

He snuck away from the guild, ignored their messages when they realized he was missing, and made his way to where the trapped room was. He had been there so many times in his nightmares, he could never make a mistake. Surprisingly unlike most things, the dungeons were very similar to in his nightmares. Floor layouts were very different a lot of the time, but dungeons were consistent.

In front of the trapped room, Kirito shivered. He unlocked the door with his lock picking skill, went in and stared a whole minute at the chest in the middle. He could see his companions from the alternate timeline in the room, everything, but it was all in his head, images from his nightmares projecting onto a space he knew unfortunately well. The golems which spawned in, everything. The room was still dormant, the trap not activated. Kirito moved up to it, and used a trap destroying crystal on the chest's lock before opening it.

Inside of the chest was 20 thousand col, a spear, and a one handed long sword of jet black. There was another item hidden at the bottom. A book item.

System[Loot Received]

Loot[Weapon: Spear of the Sundered Stone, Sky Piercer]

Loot[Weapon: Sword of the Reaping Curse, Elucidator]

Loot[Unique: Tome of the Unending Sleep]

Kirito stored the spear and sword in his inventory and immediately began to flip through the book, studying its pages to figure out if there was anything he could learn in there about the conditions of Sachi and [MBC]. Around the middle of the book, something caught his eye and he slowed down to read it completely.

[Placed in the hand of one experiencing the unending sleep, this tome will give them the chance to fight their way out of their sleep. Optional dungeon Dreamscape will be unlocked upon completion of those bound in the unending sleep. All effected by the unending sleep will challenge the dungeon together.]

Kirito continued reading through the book but the important information was learned in that passage. The effects of the unending sleep are a sudden faint, followed by short terror, and finally a sleep status that won't allow those under the effect to progress. A forced coma. He grew angry at such a thing existing, but pocketed the anger and pulled a teleport crystal out of his inventory so he could escape from the dungeon. After getting out of the dungeon, he ported once again to the guild house. Once he got there, he opened his messages to find he had been messaged hundreds of times during his absence. He had alerted the guild on his return to the house due to an alarm being set on the opening of the door, which had everyone port back to the house almost immediately. Kirito had already made his way to Sachi's room however and he placed the tome in her hands.

"Where were you?!"

That shout from Leafa was almost loud enough to pop Kirito's ear drums if they weren't in a virtual space.

"I followed a lead nobody would have considered."

Him saying as such told Leafa and the rest of their guild that his hunch on following his nightmares was the answer.

"This item I gave her is called the tome of unending sleep. It's a dungeon that allows those experiencing the status condition to fight together to make their way out of it, thereby making it out of their status condition. The thing is, the dungeon is for eight people. There's only seven between Sachi and [MBC]. No news came around about there being another person experiencing it, so hopefully there isn't a low level person in there to drag them down. The other option is that...never mind. I'm going to rest here for a while, wait for her and her classmates to get out."

Kirito pulled the sword and spear from his inventory and placed them in between himself and Sachi on her bed. He hoped they would be able to help her in the dungeon.

Leafa and the rest of [Alt] went silent after Kirito finished explaining. Kirito continued to sit there, Yui walked in and sat on his lap, and everyone else left the room except Asuna.

"Were you okay?"

"I was fine. I barely had to fight anything."

Asuna gave Kirito a smile and he returned it.

"I'll make Sachi's favourite stuffed bread for lunch. Help her out of there if you can, Kirito."

With a nod, Kirito faced Sachi again, and Asuna left the room.

As suddenly as Kirito was alone with her, a wave of exhaustion washed over Kirito, plummeting him into a nap.

"Kirito-san, switch!"

The familiar voice called Kirito's senses into full alertness and he instinctively deflected a lizardman's scimitar descending toward Sachi.

Sachi was wearing the attire he was used to seeing in his nightmare, the plain equipment was disappointing to say the least. Kirito took in the immediate situation, and unleashed all the skill he had built up as a hurricane of slashes dismembering the lizardmen around them.

Dispatched in seconds, a fight that was giving [MBC] trouble disappeared.

Resounding sighs filled the space and Kirito was surrounded by a very familiar crowd. Familiar from his nightmares. They were in that dismally weak equipment. Kirito was in far weaker equipment than he was used to as well. He took a deep breath to collect himself mentally and looked everyone in the party over. He knew them. He knew their abilities. As long as they were the same people he knew and not the companions who died in the nightmares, he could rely on them as support. He would be tanking for them, considering the equipment they were in. Kirito with his skill and speed could handle the tanking even if his equipment was lousy.

"How are you all doing?"

Sachi sighed and hugged Kirito upon noticing which Kirito he was on the inside.

"Better now that the Kirito we know is here!"

Sachi smiled and exclaimed, but then she backed off, shy from the sudden act of affection she made. Kirito smiled, blushing a little at her. The feeling of not having a chest was strange to him, the armour felt foreign, everything about his equipment, he would have to get used to. But it wasn't going to last long. He was used to quickly adapting to most given situations.

"Wait, why did you say that, Sachi-chan?"

The party leader and guild leader of [MBC] posed the question to her.

"The Kirito we know doesn't use system guided attacks. The one who was fighting with us using system guided skills was probably information...I think."

Sachi blushed and looked at the ground.

"That's also what my guess would be."

Only one person gave off a sense of confusion to what Sachi and Kirito explained. He was the rogue type member of the group, wielding a knife as his main weapon type. The confusion morphed into a blank expression like Kirito had never seen before and then was quickly replaced with a shocked expression.

"Who are you people?!"

He backpedaled until he crashed into the wall behind him, setting off a trap.

"Get down!"

Kirito yelled as he heard the trap mechanism spring claw blades horizontally from waist height and up. Kirito dragged as many of them low enough as he could, while the others followed his instruction and ducked to the floor. The blades safely passed inches above the highest head. Kirito gave a sigh of relief and grabbed the rogue by the collar of his tunic, pulling him into a huddle so they wouldn't set off any more traps.

"We're in a bonus, optional dungeon. You were all unconscious for a week. I found a tome connected to strange things I had been experiencing which related to visions of you. We need to complete this dungeon for you to get out of essentially a coma."

The group's eyes lit up, but were in despair by the time the explanation finished, them realizing they weren't in their familiar, comfortable equipment and would have to clear the dungeon they were in, in order to return.

"I'll handle tanking since you aren't familiar with your equipment. I can adapt very quickly after all. We might be able to take a couple of breaks for me to craft us more suitable equipment if we get lucky with drops in here, so watch if any of you gets material drops of any kind. Keep your eyes peeled, and don't wander. We need to stick together."

After getting the instructions through to them, Kirito broke the huddle, leading out of their starting room into the only passage out. The hall was filled with traps, he could sense them as clearly as if his full skill stats transferred into the dungeon.

"This might take a long time...hold positions so I can clear out all these traps."

Kirito got to work and the rest of the group sat where they were.

"I'm so happy you're in here with us, Kirito-san. This kind of thing would be so dangerous without you."

The whole group voiced their agreement. Sachi was more talkative than he was used to her being. Maybe it was the oppressive feeling of usually being surrounded by a group of female friends instead of the male friends she knew from school which made her hold back so often. Maybe it would be a good opportunity to merge their guilds after they cleared the dungeon, Kirito thought.

After five minutes straight of disassembling and tearing up the traps in the hall, Kirito beckoned the group.

"Alright, the hall is clear. Let's move forward as much as possible."

Kirito was feeling thankful that the friends he was in the dungeon with were the versions he knew and had trained to be able enough to join the clearing group. Those he lost in the nightmare had many flaws, impatience being a glaring one. If they moved forward carelessly or dismissed him for being too cautious, then the traps in the first hall alone could have massacred them.

Past the first hall was a large room with many support pillars, and a large force of lizard men of varying sized, wielding all kinds of weapons. Kirito set to quickly directing them as he dashed into the room. There weren't any traps as his sensory skill revealed, so it was just a challenge of wiping out the large number of monsters.

"I'm going to gather them all up, use sweeping skills from their flanks. Don't attack their rears as their tails are likely their primary weapon, not the ones in their hands. If you can, try and cut their tails off."

Kirito's directions had everyone follow him at far slower of a pace. Kirito dashed in at incredible speed, hacking off tails and arms of lizard men as he passed them, those losing their tails flailing on the ground and quickly beheaded by the rest of the group. The shattering of the dead lizard men showed them item windows, while also showing zero experience points were gained.

"Got some materials, Kirito-san!"

Sachi's alert got a big thumbs-up signal from Kirito before he finally grouped up the lizard men into one mass. He swiftly slashed repeatedly, deep enough the sever most lizard men's necks enough they dropped over immediately. His inventory flooded with materials, shabby weapons as well as scales and tails belonging to the monsters.

Three minutes passed and the massive chamber was cleared out of the lizard men. Kirito quickly gathered up the materials everyone had harvested, summoned his crafting kit which was strangely available, and got to work. A few minutes later, everyone was kitted at least in more comfortable to move in equipment. Their weapons weren't very good, but they were better than the ones they had been spawned into the dungeon with.

As they progressed further in, it was quickly realized they needed the upgrades. Three giant lizard man bosses towered eight times taller than Kirito and swiftly attacked. Kirito was barely able to keep up with the three of them as he tanked them. He shouted angrily as he strained himself to hack them apart as much as possible, and when he managed to hack their toes off, they fell onto their bellies. It wasn't a good position for him.

"I'm going to need someone to take their attention! Any volunteers?"

Kirito got ready to stun them for the clean switch, and when the ax wielder rushed in to take his place, Kirito unleashed blunt strikes on the lizards. The stun that inflicted on them lasted 8 seconds. During that time, Kirito unleashed a terrifying spinning vertical slice which hacked all the way through their massive tails, even though the blade of the sword he was wielding was so dull it would only be good for butter.

Making a slightly stumbled landing after completing the severing of the lizards' tails, Kirito hurried back in front of the monsters and switched back to being their enmity target. With their hit points dropping significantly fast, he got to work on hacking deep gouges into their faces. In no time after removing their tails, the lizards shattered and dropped even better materials for him to work with.

Now with improved, sharper weapons they proceeded to find a staircase, leading them upward to another floor of the dungeon they had been spawned into. The next pack of monsters were flying around with large wings. Lizard men. With wings. Kirito was baffled. He had encountered lizard men before, but not with wings. He had fought winged creatures in Aincrad already though, so it wouldn't take him too much effort to get used to their attack patterns.

Ten winged lizard men were brought down even faster than the previous packs of monsters. They picked up the pace as they proceeded through the dungeon, hacking apart pack after pack of monsters with increased ease, until they reached a familiar looking door. A boss room door.

Kirito had managed to craft some toy soldiers to observe the room for mechanics once. The dragon like humanoid was shorter than the giant lizard men, only standing about five times taller than Kirito, had massive dragon kin wings, horns and a spiked tail, and had a hot glow dribbling from its mouth.

The mechanics that Kirito was able to observe...were none. They were going into the fight blind because as soon as the toy soldiers entered the room, they were incinerated. The fire breath was terrifying. Kirito cooked up a plan for the beginning, and put together his observations of the monsters of the dungeon so he could guess as to how the boss was going to work.

"Alright."

Kirito pulled together the plan in less than five minutes, and began to explain.

"To avoid that first blast of fire, I'm going to go in on my own first. I can kite the flames, and when it follows me with its flames, hurry to the opposite side so you can focus on rear and flank. The tail, treat it as a whip or flail with a blade. Block it, dodge it, do not take a hit from it. Preferably, dodge under and move closer. I'll do what I can to hack the tail off as quickly as possible. After that, we'll work on exhausting it so I can reach the wings easily and hack them off, we don't want it in the air. After crippling it from being able to fly, I'll take out its legs so we can deal with it like the giant lizard men from before. Prioritize dodging and avoidance over dealing damage."

After he finished explaining the plan, everyone nodded in agreement. Sachi spoke up.

"Are you sure about this Kirito?"

Kirito rubbed the back of his head.

"I would feel better if I had a shield to block the fire, but we didn't come across any shields and the materials we came across were too shabby for a reliable shield."

Sachi slumped forward in disappointment.

"Maybe we should check the dungeon for hidden rooms. We might be able to find some equipment that way. You seemed to be avoiding the main path...were there that many traps?"

Kirito nodded his head.

"We could be here for days if I had to disarm every trap in this dungeon for the hope of finding a shield. Either way, I have confidence in my speed and reaction time. If I can't dodge its flame, then nobody in here could. It'll be fine. I am nervous of stumbling again like after my spin earlier, but I'm going to be careful."

Kirito's reassurance that he would be fine resonated with the group.

"Kirito is still super cute as a boy."

Kirito blushed and stood just before the line to enter the boss room.

"Thanks!"

After saying that, he dashed into the room at a speed which astonished them. They had seen him take off many times before, but they had never seen him move quite that fast. He must be giving his all into closing the distance with the monster. After he managed to close it cleanly, he signaled them to join in.

The fight went almost exactly as he planned it. He quickly dispatched the tail, worked away its energy to get rid of its wings and hacked out its ankles enough for it to fall to the ground. The monster ripped out at Kirito with its claws, losing its hands to the attack. The massive chunks of hit points flying off of the monster's bar and the stacking bleed effects brought it down to five percent of its total hit points in minutes. The enrage, was that it tried spewing flames at Kirito again. His speedy reaction however, hacked out the lower jaw and the upper jaw slammed into the ground, totally missing Kirito. Next lopped off were the horns and the monster shattered in a final dying animation.

The message with the victory music was surprising to the group.

[Floor 41: Cleared]

Kirito stared in shock at the ridiculous notification. The scene changed slightly in the next second, and all of them were in their usual battle appearances, all wielding new weapons. Kirito and Sachi's weapons were familiar, while the rest were just as impressive.

Their inventories loaded up, their appearances changed all of a sudden, Kirito's sudden massive change, and the group just stared between each other. After a bit, they proceeded to the staircase to reach the next floor, and found that they had in fact unlocked floor 42. When they unlocked the teleport plaza, people they recognized immediately flooded in.

"How?!"

That was a resounding word, being repeated by many of the people in the surroundings. Kirito rubbed the back of his head and began to explain what happened, but his head was throbbing from the social anxiety. Sachi and him passed out around the same time, from the immense sudden immersion into a heavily social environment.