Kirito, Asuna, Klein, Dale, Harry One and Issin were sprawled out in the tavern. The rest of Fuurinkazan logged out already, after seeing them return defeated and a short round of consolation. By the lack of noise around, it seemed like most of their fellow human players had done the same. The six were grumbling over their defeat, and their loss of items. Except Kirito, who they were looking at with great envy.
"If you wanted to keep your stuff on death, you should have Spirit Bound it."
"Man, those Exp penalties are crap though. And you did it twice?"
"Gear is really important to high level players." Asuna defended Kirito, which felt nice. He placed his cheek on the table feeling the slightly cool sensation, muted by the limiting processing power of the game. This world, he would miss it. Finding another game that engrossed him so much would be tough, maybe he could just play whatever Klein's group picked up. It still felt a little awkward around them, but he could solo play for the most part and just team up with them on occasion. Kirito could deal with that.
"Hey Asuna, you think maybe..." Kirito stopped mid sentence. What did he want to say? He liked her, not like, like like, but spending time with her... It felt like all the servers were suddenly dedicating themselves to make him hyper aware and inflicting {Mute} and {Confusion}.
"Uh, this is the last day and uh," Damn it man, you're the Black Swordsman! You can ask for her number, wait no he can't, maybe just an email address. Just to stay in touch. So they could play together sometime. In a game, a game!
"What is it Kirito?" Aw crap, it looked like she was wise to the situation. Kirito felt the room drop 20 degrees. Wait, that was just the table.
Hold up a sec.
Kirito sat up, his subconscious thanking the universe for the distraction. Running his hand across the table, it felt much cooler and, was that texture the grain of the wood? No way. One of the worlds must have been shut down, though he didn't know Yggdrasil had dynamic memory allocation. That also would mean the texture had been there all along.
"Klein, pass me a drink."
"Need some liquid courage?" Klein laughed "Here you go buddy." Kirito caught the bottle the redhead threw overhand at him. He stared down the neck before downing it. Oh no. He felt the liquid wash into his stomach after tasting it. Both sensations illegal to implement to keep people from starving. Kirito handed off the bottle. It just so happened to be Asuna who was seated closest to him. She blushed a little.
"What are you doing? I'm not, I won't drink after you."
"Drink it!" Kirito commanded. Crap, crap, crap. He was furiously willing the command console into existence to no avail. Asuna was looking nervous as she took a sip. Her eyes widened in realization.
"Man, they must have put a heavy debuff on whatever's in that thing because you two are acting weird. You doing okay?"
"Klein. I need you not to panic. But try opening your console." Kirito kept his voice level. Calm. Cool. Collected. Klein proceeded to start freaking out.
"Kirito, do you know something I don't? Because it isn't working! Shit, are we stuck in this?"
"There's got to be a reason this is happening."
"You're right Asuna, let's think." Kirito searched his knowledge of computers "Maybe they're shutting down the server in phases? Yggdrasil had several server locations, maybe the command functions were disabled. We'll just have to wait until we're forcibly ejected when they turn off the actual world."
"How long'll that take?"
"It shouldn't take too long. Besides, your friends might come looking for you and rip that thing off your head. My brother or father can do the same for me. Do you live with someone Kirito?"
"He's got his cousin and her family. You still live with them don't you, damned NEET?"
"I go to school."
"NEET."
"That's not what that word means." Kirito sighed. At least Klein's shenanigans eased the atmosphere.
"Hey Kirito"
"Yeah Issin?"
"How does using skills tie into this theory of yours? I don't have the menu up, but if I concentrate I can definitely use Sense Heat"
"Okay, that's odd but not totally crazy. It might be, uh, the commands might still go through but the visuals and manual selection are gone." Issin furrowed his brow before a silvery dome surrounded him. The low level Repel Evil spell.
"The strangest thing is how naturally that came to me. Would the visuals for this and the HUD be stored separately?"
"Are you trying to say we're stuck here? Not cool dude!" Harry slapped the back of Issin's head.
"No, that's the right thing to do. You should try disproving your hypothesis. If you fail to disprove it, it's probably true. What? My dad made me read a lot of high brow intellectual stuff." Asuna explained under their confused stares. "Issin, you said you could detect heat? Are there other people around?"
"Yeah, they're near the edge of my range, that's around 150 meters."
"Let's go meet up with them."
Met with a vast expanse of grass and starry skies, they quickly forgot about Klein's plan. This was very clearly not the town the tavern was found in. In fact, there were no buildings before them. Okay so they weren't just waiting for the worlds to shut down.
"It uh, could be that they're keeping the data for a sequel?" Kirito suggested weakly "Like the world is just being transformed for the next game. The servers are probably optimized for Dive MMOs, so maybe they were sold to a competitor. The tavern we were in wasn't an offloaded instance so it couldn't be overwritten. That makes a lot of sense." As Kirito spoke, he convinced himself and the others. The explanation he gave was quite reasonable, and they were relieved to know what was going on. Keeping everyone from panicking at the change in surroundings, they began paying attention to the surroundings themselves.
There were mountains rising beyond the forest in the distance far ahead of the tavern. A well worn dirt road was to their right, and following it led to a city with massive walls. From what they could tell it had three tiers, looking like one of the simpler cities of Yggdrasil but by no means was it not imposing. It's just that after assaulting Nazarick, architecture usually diminished in comparison. It sat around the distance Issin stated, so it loomed behind the bar.
"Should we go over there?" Harry asked
"Man, this is too much to handle right now. Let's head to the inn to keep it from offloading. The devs should notice that after a while. I wanna relax, this is too stressful." Klein complained. He had a point.
"Let's wait until daylight and then set out. You can calm down and then we can spend our time occupying ourselves until we're taken out of this place."
Kirito and Klein and Co. agreed retreating back inside. He felt unusually drowsy, usually the game would kick you if your mind felt tired. Kirito wondered what dreams were like in the Dive system.
Not much different then real life, because the swordsman awoke with a vague recollection that things happened, but couldn't recall what they were. The similarity made sense, since dreams were purely mental that were hardly influenced by surroundings. There was a loud knocking at the door, with a booming voice.
"Open up, in the name of King Ranpossa the Third!"
"Shit, an event? Whyyy? There can't be any players here yet!" Klein whined, slowly rousing from atop a table he'd used as a pillow.
"I'll get it." Asuna rubbed her eyes as she emerged from the back room, but otherwise looked pristine.
"Wait up." Kirito raised a hand, as the knocking continued. What if this game was different? He drew his sword and placed the edge on the back of his hand.
"Kirito what are you..." Even though it was a game, it went against his instinct. Doubly so if he was right. Before he stopped himself, he drew the blade across his hand. Through gritted teeth he groaned in pain, dropping his sword and clutching the vessels at his wrist. The a line of blood slowly formed. Wait, skills worked, Regeneration! The cut almost instantly vanished.
"What the hell was that?" Asuna stormed up to him.
"Pain is ramped up. If we, the server could be," Kirito took a deep breath. This was computer stuff. He could do computer stuff, simple, easy peasy. "This might be a role-playing server, with punishments for acting OOC. With the pain ramped up, injuries and death could have serious consequences. When you answer the door, slowly work game terms in." Kirito collapsed onto the padded booth next to Klein. Ugh, the things he did.
"Just don't go doing stuff like that Kirito." Asuna looked a little upset with his rash action. He felt a bit upset too, but the knocking was turning to pounding.
"We can hear you in there! If you are plotting escape, there are several squads surrounding this building. Now come out and show yourselves!"
Asuna opened the door to an armored man, textbook guard NPC, equipment so crappy an Orc could kill him and wearing a frumpy look on his face.
"How may I help you sir? I fear we were up rather late and needed to prepare ourselves for visitors."
"From where do you hail and how did this building get here?"
"Ja-" she turned back to him and Klein.
"Yggdrasil."
"Helheim?"
"Klein! Helhiem is terrible in like, all of its interpretations. Besides, we're 'from' Midgard." Kirito hissed. The guard only started to look more and more suspicious and Asuna quickly tried shoehorning it all together.
"Ah, what they mean is that we are from the nation of Midgard. We last found ourselves in Helheim. Both of which are in Yggdrasil?" She finished sheepishly.
"I've not heard of these places. I suggest you start telling the truth."
"Well you see, we were in the middle of a...transition I guess? It seems a mistake was made and now we've ended up here."
"A mistake? A mistake takes you and your horse North instead of South. A mistake does not take you and your house to an unheard of country." Issin mouthed to the group from outside the guard's field of view. 'They're moving in.' Kirito activated his abilities. Like Issin said, it felt very natural. Klein did the same, but seemed to be having a more difficult time. He was trying to keep it subtle, to be ready for hostility without provoking them.
"Could you tell us where we are? Are you perhaps an NPC?" Ooh, well done Asuna! Very naturally working that in, a player would react and an NPC could alert the system. Wait, no, he didn't want Asuna to face the wrath of the system overlords!
"A what? You are in the glorious kingdom of Re-Estize! You foreigners are going to need to come under the custody of the law." But it seems all that happened was he thought it to be another nationality. Okay, metagame talk was in, but useless to the NPCs. Well in that case he could ignore this automated scrub. He did have to compliment the AI system though.
"Looks like there isn't much point talking to him. Should we go, because I mean we'll need to leave this place but if there are GMs they might notice some of the flags we trip or something along those lines."
"Kirito! He's right in front of me!"
"Asuna, he's an NPC. He doesn't get what we're talking about. He's just trying to retrieve us." The guards face continued looking furious.
"Hmm, I don't really fancy a night in the medieval slammer. Hear they got rats."
"We could give Kirito and Asuna some private time together." Issin wiggled his eyebrows, giving both of them the shivers.
"Hey, you, I'm not..." Issin struck his weak point for massive damage! Asuna faired slightly better, huffing before making a complete sentence.
"Alright, we'll go with him. You keep this place out of trouble. Don't anger anyone either. Let's go Kirito."
"Alas, we have been captured by the Knights of RestEasy! Take us to be judged Knight-Captain-San." Kirito held out his arms at chest level to await a pair of manacles. Klein smirked and he noticed Asuna grin. Heh. He was so clever.
"Are you mocking me?"
"Wow this guy's AI is really good. This is probably why Yggdrasil was kicked to the curb. No sir, just please, please let our good friends stay here. They are too ill and addled from our journey to take any more chaos." Klein threw in a few pitiful coughs for effect.
The Captain motioned for a few squads to remain stationed outside the entrance. Clapping some irons around Kirito and Asuna he began escorting them away. There were 10 guards other than the captain, the grunts sending them curious looks. Asuna smiled nervously at them.
"Kirito." She whispered.
"Sup?"
"I uh...broke the cuffs." What? Kirito shifted his wrists and quickly felt the metal deform. Oh man. The new server must be using the human value range for materials. With players with the strength to physically beat down World Class monsters, all materials in the world were scaled up accordingly. Otherwise the bones of large creatures would crack under their own weight. It seemed their super stats remained at the same value while the world around them turned out to be a city of styrofoam. It must be worse for Asuna, he favored agility even more than she did.
"Try not to run into anything." Repair. He picked that magic up when traveling around in acid slime territory. Not wanting to spend cash, it already came with his Spirit Weapon User class. It had been a while since he'd gotten to use it though.
"What was that light?"
"That's called a firefly. They come out during the day too y'know."
"Kirito!" Yeah, he probably shouldn't have said that. At least not so loud Captain could hear him. Things were a bit stressful though. A good amount of tall, dark and snarky helped with that. He just had to imagine he was taller.
"I don't think there's going to be anything more pleasurable than putting you in your place."
"Hey, I'm a piiiii- Never mind, sorry sir!" Remembering Asuna's presence at his side, he aborted his retort and switched to a high pitched apology. They resumed marching and entered through the city gates.
"You're a what now?"
"Nothing!"
The inside of the city was nothing impressive to the travelers of Yggdrasil. It looked fairly well off, but whatever. They were not taken into the second ring of the city. Huh, Kirito thought things would get more military further in. Oh well. Instead they were lead into a jailblock and placed in adjacent cells.
"Nice place. A lot less straw then I expected actually. So when do we get to chat with the king or mayor or duke or whoever?"
"You'll be speaking with the constable when he gets to you." The captain turned around "I'll be putting in a few words about you before hand."
"So can I use you as a reference on my résumé then?" Kirito asked to his back.
"Kirito."
"Sup?" A small chunk of stone she grabbed off the wall nailed him in the head, exploding like a clod of dirt. "Hey! What was that for?"
"Even if they are NPCs, haven't you heard of Relationship Points? What if you pissed him off so much that now he hates us?"
"Eh, we're getting out of here in a few days. Might as well try screwing up some stuff to get back at those negligent coders."
"What are your suspicions?" Marc Louvre asked The Captain. In charge of keeping the peace, his brother was a successful merchant, leaving him with a portly stomach resembling his elder sibling's. The tale of a tavern suddenly appearing was definitely strange. His first two thoughts were it was either a facade or summoned by magic. With the Captain reporting a fully furnished interior, that left magic. But such a thing would take dozens of casters and a lengthy ritual. What benefit was there to that? Apparently they claimed to have arrived by mistake, could they have been heading to their alleged home 'Midgard'? No this still required them to use magic, besides a country that could use magic to travel was too powerful for rumors not to have spread.
Magic or no, they were illegally in the area surrounding E-Rantel. The difficulty would be in how harshly to sentence them, and if they were spies of some sort, then to detain them. Which was why he felt it so important to get the captain's opinion.
"I'd like to say they're spies, but they would be too blatant for that. Instead adventurers or mercenaries are a better description; they're more likely to be mercenaries."
"What makes you say that?"
"Both their disrespect for figures of authority and the way they spoke of 'Yggdrasil'"
"The area that contained the alleged nations Midgard and Helheim."
"So they say. They referenced it as though it were destroyed, but didn't seem very upset. Not being old enough for it to have been a long time ago, I suspect they had few ties in the land and after a war they left."
"This makes sense, but is also presupposing the existence of such states."
"I don't see any other reason to claim such absurd things other than that they are foreigners. They certainly look strange at the very least." The constable reclined in his seat, pondering what to do. Ah, he had an idea!
"Captain, haven't we been having problems with monsters lately?"
"Mercenaries? Sure I guess we are. I mean we do stuff for money, lot times it is killing monsters so yeah."
"In that case you will be doing service for the Kingdom as reparations. You will be registered with the Adventurer's Guild and take on jobs with the proceeds going to the government. When you've paid off your debt, we will allow you to go on your way. There will be a minimum quota of work you have to do, so no slacking off."
With that a nameless guard was asked to escort them to the Adventurer's Guild. To Kirito it didn't seem like it would be filled with adventure, the front looked more like a bank. Yggdrasil spoiled its players with buildings that matched what they 'should' be, no matter how impossible. He never did figure out how the dwarvern kingdoms moved around such large golems. Sir Unimportant explained to the desk jockey they were working off a debt to the government. Wasn't this all a little extraneous? Immersion was important, but did he really need to fill out a form?
"I can't believe this. Bring back 10 goblin ears?"
"Do you really have to complain so much?"
"It's just...I guess not." Kirito shut up, this did mean hanging out with Asuna. Usually when they partied up they were facing something far too big for idle chitchat. They definitely didn't need Klein for this either. He'd only be missing out on 20 exp at the most anyhow. They'd pick him up on their way back. Not wanting to waste too much time, he grabbed a few other goblin hunting requests.
"Which way to...Tob Forest? Is that the one to the north or west?"
"The North. Are you sure you can handle that many goblins?"
"No worries, you just keep to the side and stay shiny."
Kirito was starting to get sick of Mr. Shiny. Were you hit with a {Slow} or {Paralysis}? He could probably lay on the ground and roll there faster. Instead he made the best of his time and tried talking to Asuna.
"So, how do think this game plays? I mean how do you like it?"
"It all seems quite realistic. There's something missing though." Probably thousands of players trying to be as bombastic as possible. Instead they spent 20 minutes filling out forms to go kill a dozen or so goblins.
"Uh huh, I get that."
"It's very beautiful. Not like Yggdrasil, the land here is much more peaceful."
"A bit mundane maybe?"
"There's nothing wrong with that."
Kirito and Asuna talked, paying no mind to Mr. Shiny. The NPC was dutifully following them to their destination. Kirito felt his stomach rumble. That unsettled the peaceful journey for him. The Dive System couldn't simulate or sate hunger, nor were any programs supposed to. Outside tasteless replicas, creating in game food was illegal, not to mention how much extra data that would take for such small benefits. He hoped his body wasn't starting to get hungry.
Uneasily continuing on, Asuna didn't seem to notice. He hoped she wouldn't, he didn't want the others worrying over him. Other than his slight internal turmoil, they reached the edge of the forest with the sun a few hours away from dark.
"I think we should be careful. The woods are dangerous at night." Asuna spared only a quick glance over to their escort.
"He sounds pretty concerned Kirito."
"Well unless he's one hell of an actor, that's an NPC. It's just the general 'Be careful, don't let the boogeyman get you' line. Besides we're hunting goblins, this is a starter zone."
"You're a lot better with words when it comes to gaming and computer."
"It's stuff I know stuff about, not meatspace people conversing."
"See? Doing it again." Kirito looked at the grass and dirt, averting his eyes. No he wasn't good talking about non-gaming things. People could react weirdly, it was best to just keep it mellow and let them hear what they want if you don't know what you're talking about.
"Let's just get this over with."
Parlston didn't like these two. He thought it would be interesting to get to know the strange foreigners, but they didn't seem interested in talking to him. In fact, it was like his existence didn't register with them. They called him an Enpecee, which the way the dark haired 'Kirito' said it sounded like he was talking about a boulder on the side of the road. The brown haired 'Asuna' seemed like she tried to make him act nicer, but she too didn't seem to put much importance on the matter.
They were young, so he gave them one final warning when they reached the edge of the forest, but the cocky brats ignored him. Fine. If they died, it wouldn't be on his head. The Captain already seemed displeased with them. He would understand they'd gone off on their own and gotten themselves killed.
They said planned with each other to come back in 5 minutes with whatever they'd gotten to talk about what they'd found. As if Parlston hadn't been standing there the whole time, the boy-brat told him they were leaving and would return in 5 minutes. The guard was about to curse them when they vanished.
Not exactly, his eyes strained to keep up, but the two ran fast enough that he had only a few seconds before they disappeared into the forest. Were they actually skilled adventurers? Even so, they were still risking themselves splitting up. After all, many high ranked parties attributed their success to teamwork. Going it alone would just put them in danger. Well it didn't matter to him, impressive speed was one thing, but could they use their swords?
Yes they could.
"Looks like he fainted. Wonder why."
"It may have something to do with your new 'pet'."
"His name is Kiba."
"The 'Lone Wolf' theme is overdone."
"Soooorrryy. He just took a liking to me."
"He's biting your arm."
"Doesn't hurt."
"You're keeping him in a headlock so he doesn't escape."
"Details. Now let's get these ears back to the guild. I really want to do something more interesting than this."
AN: Addressing some comments from the last chapter Kirito is still silly strong. It's just Ainz Ooal Gown is THE dungeon.
That's not the reason I had him take down a warg though, I just wanted him to surprise Mr. Shiny
Nazarick coming soon maybe. Until Momonga heads to E-Rantel, I haven't thought of anything I really wanted to change. Also he spends three days inside Nazarick getting his bearings before saving Carne village. But Momonga-San will make an appearance soon I hope!