Lisbeth groaned as she noticed a new load of materials flood the guild storage. She felt like when she wasn't collecting materials herself recently, that she wasn't at all able to keep up with producing equipment. She wasn't the only smithy of the guild, but it sometimes felt that way. It was just that their work was so high in demand. Outside of the guild, other crafting players weren't making much currency. The trust that was placed on Alt's quality and efficiency was what kept people going to them above any other choice.

People didn't want to place the chance of dying while exploring and trying to put their effort in getting out of Aincrad, on a less expensive and possibly less sturdy piece of equipment breaking in battle. She knew what she was doing was important. And she was happy she had friends she could do her thing with inside Aincrad. She hoped that the friendships would persist outside. That even if their ages aren't the same, they would keep in touch. It was difficult making friends, and those she made in Aincrad were important to her. Bonding over facing danger together was something incredibly significant.

She at first was a little more playful and sarcastic with her friends, but her social anxiety eventually became a common point with her friends. Because there were too many people in the guild. The addition of a whole squadron along with Yuuna and Nautilus was more than her comfort zone would allow. If it were just Yuuna and Nautilus to join their big family, then she figured she might be able to handle it.

An alert beeping rang softly in her ears, disrupting her attention on hammering out an ax for a customer. She quickly checked the alert with a glance and grew excited when she noticed it was from Kirito. She didn't often get messages directly from Kirito unless it was something for a work related order. She hoped it wasn't just another work order. She hurried through completing the ax she was working on as reasonably as possible, checked it's quality and when the high quality shine was shown back to her as she checked the surface of the metal, she set it down. As she opened up her messages, she read through Kirito's message immediately.

"How is your crafting going today? I don't want to inconvenience you if you're really busy with guild shop orders, but if you have some free time, do you want to do a quest together? There's this quest only material as a reward and I'd like to try making my second dual wielding sword out of the material. If the quest is farm-able, we might be able to use the material for upgrading a bunch of people's equipment, but I'm thinking it might be unneeded."

A new material. That thought made Lisbeth disappointed. Another material. Their own equipment hasn't needed upgrading in over ten floors, so she had some doubt it was going to be so groundbreaking that anyone would need the material for upgrades. She might as well take the chance to have some bonding time alone with Kirito, was her main thought aside the disappointment in it being over a material.

"Sure, where do you want to meet up?"

Kirito's response was immediate.

"I'll be waiting by the quest NPC at the floor 68 teleport plaza. Take your time if you need to finish anything first."

Lisbeth shook her head while smiling. She liked Kirito. She made her feel a lot of things that she wanted to feel more of. Lisbeth was more conscious of herself around Kirito. She was happy just spending time crafting together. It was more enjoyable when they crafted on their own, and she missed it. She regretted not trying to get closer to Kirito sooner. She regretted teasing her about her situation earlier into their experiences together.

She packed up her crafting equipment into her inventory and swapped from her crafting gear into her battle gear before leaving the forge. On her way out Agil grabbed her attention.

"Oi Lisbeth-chan, how are we doing on the currently ordered equipment?"

"Guild storage. I still have some things to craft but I'm going with Kirito on a high level quest. I'll finish crafting the rest of the list later along with her."

Agil gave her a thumbs up and a toothy grin as if expecting interesting things to come from the quest. It only made her more flustered as she hurried out of the shop to the teleport plaza and ported for free up to the 68th floor. When she got there, Kirito was waiting in her casual dress of the day. Lisbeth stood stock still staring at the baffling scenario. She showed up in her equipment since they were supposed to be going on a quest.

"Oh, that didn't take very long. I thought the crafting list was pretty big. I'll make it up to you later for coming out by helping clear through that list together. I don't recall putting in the messages to wear your battle equipment..."

Kirito checked through the messages and nodded when she confirmed she had indeed not said to wear equipment.

"Well it's pretty much a given to wear equipment for questing...unless it's just a fetch quest?"

Kirito nodded and gave a gentle smile. Lisbeth blushed. That smile could make anyone swoon, she thought. Lisbeth crouched into the unseen corner of the teleport plaza and swapped to her casual attire. The pink sundress which matched her hair and long stockings with short heeled pull-on shoes was something she had immediately taken as her favourite outfit crafted for her by Kirito.

After changing her attire to the more casual equipment, she stood up and faced Kirito again. Kirito gave that gentle smile again and Lisbeth felt her heart race. Her thoughts swam with it not being good for her heart to be around such a pure Kirito. As she stood beside Kirito, she took her hand without warning and Kirito led them to the quest NPC she had been talking about.

"Hello mister adventurer, we're here to help you with the delivery you wanted done."

The tall heavily built fantasy adventurer NPC they faced was surreal and it gave them a strange sense since it was obvious such a person wouldn't exist in reality. The proportions were just too unreal.

"Ah~ two beautiful young ladies to help me. Yes, could I get you to expedite this dragon fang to the forge master in town here? She promised to turn this into a fine sword. I will reward you handsomely for your efforts."

With a wink, he left the plaza in the direction of the field and Kirito equipped her elucidator to her waist. Lisbeth scrambled to equip her morningstar as well, and followed Kirito's lead of watching where the NPC went. Kirito concealed them around a corner as the NPC turned back to check if he was being followed.

"We both got the fang right?"

Lisbeth nodded her head.

"And you notice his curious activity? I noticed someone doing this quest earlier and wanted to follow him the rest of the way. The other person didn't find anything too suspicious about the NPC's activity, but I followed him to the fortress at the edge of the sanctuary. I activated false stealth just in case I needed true stealth later. I was spotted so this quest is too suspicious."

Lisbeth gave her a baffled expression.

"And why does that make the quest too suspicious? Maybe the guards of the tower have high visibility."

Kirito shook her head and took a peek to make sure the adventurer NPC continued going.

"A unique quest usually disappears here after it's been completed properly once. The material you get from bringing the fang to the forge is okay, but nothing special. I get the feeling that the true reward is from following him. And to explain what you asked – the only NPCs that can see through false stealth are hostiles. The guards of the tower attacked me before. Meaning they are equivalent to monsters. I'm still a green marker – meaning I wasn't trespassing an NPC home."

Lisbeth's eyes grew wide as Kirito's explanation made it more and more clear something was definitely suspicious.

"If we do this right using my true stealth this time, then we might get a very good material out of this quest instead of the regular material."

She finished the explanation and began leading Lisbeth through the streets again.

"Is there a reason...for holding my hand?"

Lisbeth was worried her hands would sweat or her heart racing was loud enough to let Kirito know about her nervousness.

"It's because stealth skills transfer to whoever or whatever I touch. That includes you."

Lisbeth shook her head and sighed.

"You couldn't tell me this sooner?"

Kirito picked up the pace pulling her along. Lisbeth became more invested in the quest through the explanation, but Kirito holding her hand so long already made her uncomfortable. She was afraid that Kirito would avoid her after the quest was over if she was too sweaty or too nervous while covering for her during the stealth quest.

"Was taking me along really a good idea? I'm one of the louder people of our group. I could ruin your stealth."

"Not going to be a problem. I will put the silence debuff on you when we get close to the fortress if you're that worried about alerting them of our presence. I have confidence you can hold it in though. I noticed that you've been working very hard on your ability to communicate with others. I'm proud of you. You came a long way from that empty stall I found you at over a year ago."

Lisbeth stared at Kirito and tears filled her eyes. She had thought for a while with all the new members of the guild, that having so many people around would take Kirito's attention to her progress away. It was relieving in a very significant way to her that Kirito was still noticing her efforts to get better at communicating.

"I thought you might be a little nicer than suggesting putting a silence debuff on me, but thank you Kirito. Thank you for paying attention to my efforts..."

Lisbeth heart rate calmed down from the relief and the sweaty palms didn't happen as she remembered that sweating was only a debuff at the forge, thankfully not connected to nervousness in Aincrad.

"Of course. I've been paying attention to everyone in the guild. Oh, and the reason I brought you in particular is because I figured you needed a bit of a break from the forge as well as the quest needing to be taken by two female adventurers and the final reason that both adventurers needed to be above level 50 with smithing."

Eventually, Lisbeth understood that the option was either her or someone from the ex [KoB] members of the guild. She still wanted to hold onto the first reason Kirito gave, that she figured Lisbeth needed a break. Being honest with herself, she definitely did need a break. She felt like she was always working recently when she wasn't asleep or eating. Because she was. She was pulled away from the forge for material gathering missions if a group needed a tank, or she was working on catching up the backlog of requests of the forge. She had been thinking recently it wasn't fair and that the new people from [KoB] should be doing the forge work. But orders were more or less expected to be done by either her or Kirito. The little crafter signature on the items was more what sold a product than the quality of recent. Kirito's were for some reason valued higher by a fan club that had started. Lisbeth had her own fans, but there was jealousy since Kirito's fan club was ten times the population.

"Alright, we're just outside the fortress section. Are you ready to go in or do you want the silence on?"

Kirito's signal that they were about to progress brought Lisbeth back to their current situation. She shook her head.

"I'll be fine unless my footsteps are going to catch their attention."

Kirito nodded her head and gave Lisbeth a potion. She drank the potion and watched her status conditions for the suspected silence debuff to show. She was instead surprised to see a buff, [Light Feet]. The status condition silences footsteps of the bearer. She smiled at Kirito and nodded in acknowledgement. A party message told Lisbeth that they were going to proceed. She nodded again in confirmation and followed behind her. Kirito led the way smoothly behind the adventurer into the fortress and watched as the adventurer proceeded to be taken prisoner by the fortress guards and led down into the basement. The basement of the fortress was to no surprise a hidden dungeon. The dungeon signified to Kirito that the previous quest taker didn't end up finishing the quest at all, or bringing the fangs to the smithy was an optional end for the quest. Kirito was beginning to think it was the second option and failing the quest sent the adventurer back to the quest starting point.

Lisbeth just followed until she realized the guards threw the adventurer into one of the cells within the dungeon. She gave Kirito a confused look. Kirito just kept looking on, dodging the guards as they returned to the entrance. They made their way to the cell and Kirito picked the lock on the cell. Only nudging the cell door barely open to figure out if the adventurer would act on his own to leave the cell. After a minute, the adventurer got up to put his hands on the bars and finally noticed that the door was open. He looked around, but quickly began to proceed.

The adventurer went in the opposite end of the entrance, which eventually led to a branch of three paths, one to the left, one to the right and one in the middle. The one on the right went up in a spiral staircase, the one on the left went down, and the middle path went further into more cells. The adventurer continued into the further cells. There, he suddenly turned about half through the second set of cells and went down a new path to the right. There was another staircase which went down there, and when they arrived at the bottom, they found a maiden in a tight birdcage type of captivity. She barely had room to move within the cell. At the end of the large room her tiny cell was in, there were some broken weapons of indescribably beautiful coloured metal, chipped, broken in general. Likely relics of some kind lost to the wears of time.

"How am I to get you out of here now...?"

The adventurer looked around the room for an answer to that question, but every normal looking weapon he touched fell to tiny pieces on contact. Finally one didn't break, a dagger of soot black. He raised his hand to strike at the lock on the door, but stopped himself as he noticed the door beginning to swing open. His confusion alerted him that there might be someone else in the room with them, invisible.

"Who's there?"

There was a sense that he was holding back from shouting. Kirito blew in the direction back out to the other cells, and the adventurer sighed before looking back to the maiden and picking her up in a typical princess carry. Kirito began leading the way out with short, sharp breaths. Using map information from above ground, she guided the adventurer out of the town, and eventually they found a staircase leading up to a forest outside of the town.

"Whoever you are, I give my thanks for your aid. Your stealthy actions though criminal in appearance did a great service this day. I shall leave this sum to you. Please, accept it with my gratitude."

Kirito waited until the adventurer left with the maiden and stowed away the money in her inventory before delving back below. She ventured back to where the maiden had been held captive only to find that there were now several guards patrolling the dungeon. It was easy enough for Kirito to dodge them alone, however Lisbeth was having trouble keeping up with the smooth movements between the guards. In and out, they obtained the broken weapons into their inventories as materials. After collecting the reward and making their way back to the forest above ground, Kirito ported them back to the 30th floor which disabled the true stealth and let go of Lisbeth's hand.

"Thank you for joining me for the quest. That was quite fun."

The gentle smile was award enough for Lisbeth, she thought as she saw that pure smile spread across Kirito's face. Kirito walked past her toward the shop and Lisbeth followed yet again. Lisbeth always wondered why she could never just walk up beside Kirito. Either she followed behind her, or was pulled along at Kirito's pace, or she didn't have Kirito's lead to follow. Since their time together, she always saw Kirito as a goal to surpass, or a strong and reliable back that could easily carry her.

Lisbeth shook her head to clear those thoughts and jogged to catch up and walk beside Kirito. They soon after were inside the shop. Welcomed by both customers and the current shop attendants, they waved and were quickly in the back of the store at the forge. Kirito emptied out the broken weapons that were collected in her inventory and Lisbeth quickly dropped her pickups as well. The result of the quest was about enough broken weapons to reforge ten new weapons using the material.

Kirito separated the materials from all the broken weapons they collected and put them into casts to melt them down without mixing the material. Crafting metallic equipment with the forge was a huge upgrade to their equipment. It was something that was upgraded a long while back, but it was worth a lot. It increased the quality of their metal based equipment immensely. They could ensure that the quality of the metal was good, the balance of the material was just right, the material didn't bubble, it solidified properly. It was a lot to learn for them to craft their own metallic equipment, but the metal armour protected them better than anything else, and the weapons were more sturdy and deadly when used against enemies.

Kirito hummed after putting the first set of casts into the hot forge with a thoughtful expression. Lisbeth understood that expression as contemplating the shape of what would come from the material in the forge. There were different colour metals in the forge. Red, blue, yellow, green, purple.

Thankfully forging within Aincrad was faster than forging in real life. The materials melted down quickly like anything else. What would usually take hours turned into a few minutes. Kirito produced moulds to pour the liquid metals into. The moulds wouldn't be the end shape of the weapons, but the basic outline. The moulds already existed since they had been making all variety of weapons for a while, so once they were laid out, Kirito only checked what colour the metals were before pouring the metal into the moulds. The moulds would then be left out for a while in the closed moulds to fill out in their intended shape, cooled in a controlled temperature environment. Not cooled too much though. While the initial moulds were cooling and shaping the liquid metal into solid basic forms, Kirito got the rest of the metal ready.

The moulds which were used were: two katana moulds, one battle hammer mould, one one-handed sword mould, one spear, a rapier, an ax, six dagger/short sword moulds, and an arrow heads mould. The katana moulds were for Leafa and Klein's weapons, the battle hammer would be for Lisbeth's weapon, the one handed sword would become Kirito's second one handed sword for the dual wielding skill she had been training. She needed something equally as strong as the Elucidator. The spear was for Sachi's primary weapon which wasn't so often used anymore in favour of the bow. The rapier was for Asuna, and the ax was for Agil. The daggers were for the dagger and bow wielders of the main guild members, and the arrow heads were for upgrading the type of arrows which would auto-spawn for the bow users.

Lisbeth always ended up mesmerized by Kirito's movements when she would go about the forge and preparing everything. Once the moulds were done their purpose, the metal was removed from the moulds and they could be shaped. Held with tongs, heat maintained so that shaping was easier, not pounding the metal too thin with the work hammer of the anvil too thin, folding material often in case the material was hammered too thin. Reshaping the material until the desired shape was just right. Cooling the metal with a forge bath, and then trimming the excess metal off. The final steps were sharpening and polishing the blades. Otherwise, the rest of the job was usually in the hands of leather working or cloth work so that the handles would work with the wielders of the weapons.

Lisbeth and Kirito worked on everything together as far as weapon production and armour plates, rivets, chains for chain mail. Often it was just Lisbeth recently working the forge since Kirito was usually so busy with...any of the other jobs she had accrued for herself. Weaving, alchemy, cooking, wood working, leather working, boss scouting, dungeon scouting, floor mapping...Kirito was a woman of many well honed skilled within Aincrad. It was no wonder to most that she had a fan club. Able to do anything, and did so phenomenally.

Finally the process was done. Kirito and Lisbeth did the whole process and the final outcome of the weapons were a blood red katana, a green katana, a pink battle hammer, a purple one handed sword, a blue spear, a pure white rapier, a dark green ax, a pair of black daggers, a pair of cyan daggers, a pair of white daggers, a white, black, red and blue arrow head. Kirito also crafted bows to match the arrow heads in colour with dye and leftover metal as a reinforcing strip on each. The latest wood collected from their current floor of 68 was likely the last for more than ten floors.

As Kirito was about to leave the shop, having stowed the weapons into the cooling rack for the time being, Lisbeth stood up and tried to get her attention.

"Uhm..."

Kirito turned around to see Lisbeth moving a bit restlessly.

"Don't worry, I'll be back shortly to help finish the backlog. I just want to stretch a little and get some "fresh air". Being cramped in the forge for so long without a break isn't healthy. Just need a little break once in a while. I think you could use more of those. You don't take very many breaks, always either joining material or dungeon runs, or working at the forge. People can wait a little for their weapons and armour. They can postpone their adventures. Your health is more important. It isn't like you won't get to it as soon as you can. Just because these aren't our real bodies, doesn't mean we aren't experiencing mental exhaustion from pushing ourselves so much every day. So how about we have a short walk?"

Lisbeth grew more and more relaxed as she listened to Kirito explain that it was okay to take a break. She understood the rationalization to taking a break, and that she could just tell her customers to wait a little longer. She had great work ethic and got out the orders to their customers as quickly as possible, and having so many customers should mean it would take longer, not that she should work harder.

"Thank you Kirito. I needed today. You seem to know me better than I do."

Kirito just gave the pure smile in response and Lisbeth returned her own relieved smile. She wondered how her smile looked to Kirito. Was she attractive to her? There were many questions which ran through her head, but she simply went along with Kirito to have a break and enjoyed a nice short walk.