"Trespasser!"
Kirito spun quickly to see the approach of some men in crimson red armour flying at blistering speed toward her. Yui flew into Kirito's coat as her tiny sprite form to hide herself and Kirito pulled her swords from her back as an instinctual response to the crimson fighters continuing their speedy approach.
Kirito realized she had plenty of time to prepare so she checked her stats and inventory. Interestingly, her stats were strikingly similar to what they were in Aincrad. She was fast, strong, and built for stealth work.
When the crimson soldiers closed in on her, she only moved to defend herself. She blocked the large swords which swung down on her, and she pushed them back. Surprisingly her back and the wings responded with her to ensure she didn't move too much from the knock back. The soldier who attacked first rebounded back and clashed with another soldier. There were a total of five of them. She took a breath of relief and smiled a little as she realized flight battle might not be so difficult.
"I'm sorry if I'm intruding, I only just spawned in here. Which way is it to the nearest town?"
Kirito might have given off an entirely different intent with her question since she had smiled, but the soldiers froze in place, their wings beating hard to keep them in the same spot.
"Oh? Are you new? But that block...and your wings...? Truly?"
Kirito nodded.
"I don't know why, but I only just signed up for this game and completed character creation. It dumped me here. Maybe it's because I played another VR game before this?"
The crimson soldier who had attacked her rubbed the back of his head covering helm and continued the conversation.
"Ah~ then you might have a bit of data corruption on you. Make sure you get everything patched up with the GMs or you might run into a bit of trouble. This is a very competitive game. I'll let you off this time, but when you see someone with a different colour from you, you usually fight to kill each other's avatar."
Kirito nodded and smiled a little brighter.
"So, which way was it to the nearest town? Preferably a neutral town if there are towns like that in this game. Somewhere I would be safe to learn everything."
He nodded and pointed in a direction.
"There's a town called Faevus to the east of here. It's a small questing village for new adventurers in the game. You fly pretty well so it might not be that useful to you, but it would be safe and you could stock up before heading to the main city. You seem pretty decked out with carried over equipment from your previous game. I'm honestly a little glad we didn't get into a serious fight now that I think on it..."
Kirito nodded again.
"Yeah, it would have really been a nuisance having to find my way to the nearest safe place. I'm glad you were a reasonable person. Have a safe night."
Kirito waved as she began flying off, and the five crimson clad soldiers started bickering. She heard some things about how unfair it was that only the captain of the team got to talk to her – such a cute girl. She blushed and sped up the beating of her wings.
It only took Kirito a minute to get to the village she was directed to. The place was cozy. A gathering of about 20 small buildings. Some were bigger, some were smaller, but the general idea was that it was fantasy setting, stone or wooden houses, most of them primitive or distinctively important buildings to signify some kind of importance within the village. Kirito landed in the middle of the town and glanced around for the indication of an inn or a quest building. There weren't any signs like there had been in Aincrad. She just needed a place to sit down, check the world map for Alfheim and plot her course. She needed to find some clue as to where the people from Aincrad were being held hostage.
"Yui, have you or Ela-san gathered the information we need on where I can find our family?"
Yui poked her head out of Kirito's coat and looked up only to see Kirito's chin. She flew up and sat on her shoulder before reciting what information they had.
"I don't have any leads currently on where you'll find them, but Ela-san has informed me that there's some kind of hint in the grand quest of the game. The quest to get to the top of the world tree for upgraded wings. Wings that let you fly without limit. The quest is something that all players get. You don't have it though mama. I think you have the wings mentioned due to the completion of Aincrad. But, at the top of the world tree, there's supposed to be a city of elves, mystical beings who give you the reward of the upgraded wings."
Kirito hummed and heard footsteps approaching. Yui didn't hide in time to be noticed by the approaching person. The person had a nervous expression on their face. It was difficult to tell whether they were a girl or boy. Kirito kindly moved to the side a little in case the person was looking for a seat on the bench, but they cleared their voice.
"A-hum...would you...be okay with partying up?"
The high pitched boyish voice gave away what Kirito was missing. She nodded in response.
"Sure! Is that really okay though? I thought that different in game races weren't allowed to form alliances?"
Kirito decided that the best way to get more information was going to be through normal interactions with others.
"O-oh! At low levels it doesn't really matter...and we're in a low level town. I was...betrayed by my last party, so I hoped...a girl would be nicer than those guys."
Kirito nodded and immediately pressed accept when the party invite showed up.
"So, what are we doing? Where do you want to go?"
Kirito noticed the name of the boy show up in her party list. Recon. She giggled a little and shook her head.
"It's so cool though..."
Recon got close and looked at Yui closer.
"She's one of those companion pixies right? How did you get it?"
Kirito shrugged.
"I'm honestly not sure. I transferred in from another game so she might have come with the benefits of transferring. She reminds me of a companion in the other game so it feels like I never left."
Kirito smiled a little more before searching her inventory again. Interestingly, only unprocessed ingredients were showing up as corrupt. Everything she had crafted with her own hands were totally fine. Her Elucidator might need to be stowed away before it gets checked by the system surveillance, but Confidence was just fine.
Kirito nodded one last time before closing her inventory and noticing Yui desperately struggling away from Recon's prying eyes.
"I'm so jealous."
Yui hid in Kirito's hood and Recon gave up the prying into Yui's appearance as a companion pixie.
"R-right! You wanted to know what quest we were doing right? Do you have any left from here you want to deal with first? If not I'll tell you what's at the top of my list."
Recon was interested in finding out what more he could from her.
"I don't have any active quests aside from the main quest to reach the top of the world tree right now, so let's deal with some of your quests first. By the way, what have you heard about progress on the world tree quest? Has anyone gotten close?"
Recon shook his head.
"No, people have been trying climbing the tree, flying up to it normally, but there's a bunch of things that stop people from going up. The exhaustion on our wings, time span on how long we can have them out, people are even planning right now to try and launch off each other to break past the height limit. People are so creative..."
Recon had some wonder in his voice as he went on about the world tree quest.
"Is there a normal way to go up the tree that those people haven't tried yet?"
Recon grimaced.
"An army of valkyrie knights are like pesky bugs in there, but way too strong for most people playing right now since we're not that geared. There's an arena kind of battle inside the tree that if you clear the battle, should let you go up the rest of the way."
Recon sighed.
"I think that it might take people years to clear that quest. The developers were definitely unfair. But maybe the launching off each other thing will work!"
Kirito smiled and hummed an "mhm!" in response. Recon shook his head and checked his quests.
"Let's go beat up some of the slimes nearby for slime cores. It's one of the quests for the inn here. We can't use the inn here without turning in the quest."
Recon was pretty knowledgeable for being in a starting area. It might be that he was really studied in the game and just playing the game on his own now. There were overly prepared people like that who studied everything about a game before playing it. Kirito was more of the exploratory type. Learning as she went. Aincrad had taken her out of that type of habit by needing to prepare as much as possible to keep everyone who went into the raids with her alive.
"Sounds good! Do you know if there's a shared quest thing? Because I'm not getting any quest signals for this area. Or do quests not show up normally in this game?"
Recon gave a confused expression.
"Quests are all given by NPCs who have troubled expressions. You must be really new, or played one of the first VR games."
Kirito blushed a little before turning away.
"Ah, then I should go pick up the quest too right? So I can use the inn here."
Recon nodded eagerly and led the way to the inn. Kirito was surprised when the largest building ended up being the inn. She had thought it might be a mayor's house or something as far as NPCs were concerned.
"Oh! How new are you? How is your money?"
Recon was getting less nervous as they continued conversing. It might have been strange to say it, but Kirito was feeling as if Recon was showing exactly what kind of trauma he had as far as being betrayed. His previous teammates weren't so open to his more outgoing way of talking.
Kirito checked her inventory again as she had forgotten about it. When she saw the ridiculous sum that had an additional set of zeroes on her previous amount of money in Aincrad, she closed her inventory and waved her hand in front of her face.
"Apparently my money transferred over with me to this game too. I would be embarrassed to reveal how much I no lifed the previous game..."
Recon shrank back a little at that, thinking it might not have been a good idea to ask about that.
Kirito hadn't put away her wings for lacking on knowing how to, so they had been beating gently the whole time, folding to her sides when she was relaxing.
"You have a really long duration on your wings. Are they maybe something that came from your previous game as a visual accessory?"
Kirito shook her head.
"No, my wings are just like that since I logged in. Yui said that it might be because I have game completion information on what was transferred over. I hope that the main goal of this game isn't ruined for me because of these wings..."
Recon nodded.
"Yeah, that would be really unfair! But now I'm curious. What was the game you played before that all this stuff transferred with you? And what's with that armour?"
Kirito sighed and gave a serious thought to revealing she was from Sword Art Online. People might not even know that it was cleared yet even with Ela's promise to share the news around the world. Many people were out, but most were still "stuck".
"You might not believe me if I said it..."
Kirito settled with that for the time being. If Recon pressed it, she would say and let him react how he would and part ways if that's what it led to.
"Wait...are you...one of the SAO survivors who just woke up today?! Shouldn't you be taking a break from VR at least?"
Kirito shushed him and Recon lowered his voice.
"Sorry...but are you really?"
Kirito nodded her head. Recon looked over Kirito again and smacked his head.
"I should have known from your appearance! You look exactly like the person who defeated the final boss! The black haired swordswoman Kirito! Your battle with that final boss Heathcliff, that jerk Akihiko-san was so overwhelming! He stood no chance against you!"
Kirito shushed him again, hoping that Recon wasn't attracting attention. Unlike the spelling of his name, he wasn't very stealthy for a thing like reconnaissance.
"S-sorry..."
"I'll tell you why I'm here...let's finish the inn quest first together so we can get to a location where we won't be listened in on."
Recon nodded without another word and led the way after going into the inn, to the field where there was a gathering of slime creatures in different forms and glowing colours. Kirito displayed an easy dispatching of the creatures and Recon was only further proved that Kirito was the same person from the infamous death game.
After taking care of the quest, Kirito rented a room for the both of them that had a divider and she sat at the table to go over information further with him.
"So, we'll go question for question."
Kirito started out with that statement before motioning for Recon to start with his own question first.
"Uhm! Did something happen that forced you into this game? Can you not log out here either?"
Kirito shook her head.
"Something forced me to come here, but I can log out of this game. Now a question for you. Has anything strange happened in this game today? Something out of the ordinary around...an hour ago?"
"You mean when you cleared SAO? Not that I know of, nothing changed in this game and there's no news. Did something happen in SAO that's spreading to other games?"
Kirito shook her head.
"Truthfully, this might not spread to the news. I'm working with an acquaintance genius who was talking with us from outside of SAO, and she found out that everyone's data was transferred from there to this game. So, I need to continue and truly set everyone free or SAO is never over for me..."
Recon wore a glum, utterly defeated expression when he heard the explanation.
"Unfortunately there wasn't a significant surge of new players today, so whatever happened was made totally secret. I guess I understand now why the grand quest is still there for you. You probably need to clear the quest in order to free the other SAO survivors..."
Recon appeared as if he was looking at someone who was doomed for failure.
"Don't worry, it'll be fine. I've got nearly two years of strengthening up I can throw at this game. As long as I'm careful about one of my weapons, I'll be totally overpowered if this game was scaled how I'm guessing from first impressions."
Recon blinked and tilted his head in confusion.
"Flight is probably one of the regular challenges right? And fighting while flying is an even greater challenge. I had no problem blocking and repelling an attack from a crimson player before, and I get the impression from your equipment compared to theirs, that the difficulty scaling isn't as immense as it was in SAO. My personally crafted equipment is all intact and not showing signs of corruption, so I'll do what I can to not get myself scanned by GMs. The fight challenge in the tree might still be a challenge since I'm likely to need to face it on my own, but I'll just keep throwing myself at it. At least I'm not facing certain death here like I was in SAO."
Recon sighed and nodded his head, psyching himself up.
"If anyone can beat the challenge solo, it would be you, Kirito-san!"
Kirito smiled again.
"I'll fight the battle in the tree with you!"
Recon's statement caught Kirito off guard.
"I'll do it! You are the amazing hero of SAO, but some fights need more people. One person versus an army of monsters is just not fair. Maybe we can ally with my sylph alliance and some others and all fight it together to help you out?"
Kirito shook her head.
"I appreciate the thought, but I think you might be an anomally in believing my situation. Most people would probably shrug me off saying I'm a character clone or something ridiculous like that. I'm glad you were so easy to talk to, but now that I know where to go, I should probably log out for now and start making my way to the tree after getting some sleep. My real body is already exhausted and I'm technically asleep right now connected through an AR device."
Recon stared in bewilderment.
"An AR device? What do you mean by that?"
"Augmented reality. It's a device that safely connects into the brain through listening to brain activity. The device is probably still very private so I shouldn't say too much, but my real body is asleep, and technically me connecting in here is through a dream full dive. I'm just waiting to wake up and none of this happened and I still need to climb up Aincrad to the end..."
Recon shook his head frantically.
"No way! No you are definitely here and this isn't a dream!"
He moved to pinch her cheek but she stopped his hand with her wrist.
"It's okay. I'm just beating myself up a little...I could have done more. Anyway, thank you for your help. I'm going to get some proper sleep, so hopefully when the time comes you get your sleep too."
Recon nodded with a remorseful expression on his face.
Kirito disappeared from in front of him, and Recon crumpled, falling backward on the floor of the room. He worked on processing everything he heard from Kirito. He was the first person in sustained contact with the hero of that famous death game. He wanted to keep helping her. He wanted to do whatever he could. He pumped his fists to psych himself up and logged out of the game. Calling some friends and classmates from school, he decided to tell some people so that he could drum up whatever support he could gather.
