AN: Slightly longer one just cause I could, plus making up for the last two being shorter.

December 8th, 2022 – 15:00 AST. The plaza of Urbus on Aincrad's second floor.

Kirito and I had just heard a player cry out in frustration by one corner of the plaza.

"P-Put it back! Back to the way it was! That was a plus-four… P-Put it back to what it was!"

I sighed as we approached. "Sounds like weapon enhancement failure."

"At least nothing can happen inside the city walls."

I chortled at Kirito's concern. "Put your damn coat back on. I mellowed out the raid group."

He groaned and opened his menu. "What did you even say?"

"I confirmed their suspicions of my real-world identity," I answered plainly, as I glanced back at the Teleport Gate with the thirst for Italian citrus still fresh in my mind, "Helped them understand the purpose of a beta phase, and reinforced the software's age rating."

He then squinted at me. "You know I just barely meet that rating, right?"

I blinked, and snapped my fingers in disappointment. "Should've guessed."

I didn't bother to answer him as his expression gained more confusion, and pressed on to see how our little smithing dispute was going. You fool, no adult male is that adorable. …Outside the music industry, at least.

After he re-equipped his coat, he also unequipped the stupid bandanna on his head, and then we reached the source of the yelling – a small blacksmithing shop atop a Vendor's Carpet.

In front of the shop was a front-line aspiring player, flailing his sword angrily. He wasn't present for the first-floor boss, but he had a lot of metal armor, and his helmet had three horns.

"Wh-Wh-What did you do?! The properties are all way down!" The man couldn't hurt anyone inside town, but his general behaviour with his weapon was very unprofessional as he stuck the tip into the pavement while bellowing on.

"How could you possibly fail four times in a row?! You can't have reduced my sword to +0! I should have left it with a damn NPC! You owe me for this, third-rate blacksmith!"

The blacksmith he was referring to, was a short male on a gray carpet, with a chair, anvil and shelf set upon it. A Vendor's Carpet, in addition to granting hammerspace storage to items placed on it, would protect those items from floor decay and theft.

Blacksmithing was just like any other skill in the game, in that it had levels of proficiency with it. Alongside this, certain tiers of tools – the quality of the hammer – were only usable by blacksmiths with a high enough proficiency. For example, the blacksmith player here was using an iron hammer, which required more blacksmithing proficiency than the bronze hammer used by NPCs of this town.

Of course, if a player only used the quantity of materials generally required for the enhancement to succeed, they still had about a 30% chance to fail. That was why I would always use the maximum quantity of materials possible per attempt. But for this guy to fail four times, was 0.8% of a chance.

"What's all the ruckus about?" I suddenly heard close enough to my ear for it to feel like ASMR, had it not been for the other guy still shouting. It was enough for both Kirito and I to hear, though.

"Well, it's not about glutton bread."

The gears in Asuna's head spun for a moment to process my attempt to romanize the penultimate word of my response from English into Japanese.

"Isn't… that 'gluten' bread?" she eventually asked, having to romanize a word in turn.

"Not the way you ate it."

I couldn't help but chuckle as one of Asuna's Hornet Boots hit my shin. Unlike Kirito, she had a more valid reason for disguising herself – she had on a crude gray wool cape to conceal her gorgeous hair from the majorly masculine demographic.

I regained my composure to properly answer her. "Anyway. Guy with the horned helmet wanted the blacksmith here, to enhance his sword. It didn't work out too well."

"Huh. Well, the success rates are posted right there," the fencer responded as she tried to better position herself, "It even says that if he fails, he'll only charge the material cost and not the labor."

I stepped back a bit to give her a view of the situation. "Similar principle to gambling. He got angry, wanted to make back what he lost. And it resulted in a downward spiral of failure."

Asuna shrugged. "…Well, I can't say I don't feel sorry for him. But that kind of rage doesn't seem necessary. He can just save up the money for another attempt."

"Ah, see, that's the thing," I interjected as I pointed to the sword on Kirito's back, "Guy's got an Anneal Blade, like mine and Kirito's. It's a rough quest to get it, and the guy must have got it to +4 through an NPC."

Kirito nodded as he continued the explanation. "Though, the failure rate is higher past +5, which is why he needed to find a player blacksmith, who has higher proficiency and better tools. And each failure results in one boost coming off."

"But… There's no way to fall below zero."

I chortled at her brief misunderstanding. "Well, that is true—"

She then got the point. "Oh… There's a maximum limit to attempts."

I nodded with a snap of my fingers. "Sure is. Four up, four down, is what he got. The Anneal Blade is limited to eight attempts."

"I see… Well, I can understand why he'd be upset. Just a little, though."

Finally, the raging man was silenced by two friends of his. "C'mon, Ryufior, it's gonna be okay. We'll help you try the Anneal Blade quest again."

"It'll only take a week to get it back, then we can push it all the way up to +8."

I leaned my head over to Kirito to comment softly. "They probably just mean getting through the queue of players to even start the quest."

Ryufior seemed to calm down, and his shoulders slumped as he turned to exit the plaza beside his friends. Just then, the blacksmith finally said something.

"Um… I'm truly sorry about this. I'll try much harder next time, I swear… I mean, not that you'd want to bring me again…"

Ryufior stopped and looked at the blacksmith, then spoke in an almost entirely different voice.

"…It's not your fault. I'm… I'm sorry for ripping you apart."

"No. I failed at my job…" The blacksmith bowed as he deflected the apology, still looking rather young himself, probably in his teens. He stepped forward and bowed again. "Um, I know it's nothing in return… But do you think I could buy your spent Anneal Blade +0 for 8000 Cor?"

Many onlookers murmured in surprise, and even Kirito made some small kind of sound in response to the offer. The market price for a freshly-acquired Anneal Blade +0 was 16,000 Col. But the value of one spent so badly with enhancement attempts that it remains +0, would be 4000. So, this was an extremely generous offer. Ryufior and his friends were stunned, but after a moment of conference, they all nodded.

The incident was resolved, and the blacksmith began to produce a weapon on his anvil. Kirito was only really here to enhance his Anneal Blade, but it was very handy for me to have conversations with him and Asuna – I got a lot better at Japanese with actual experience than just idly learning it.

We sat down on a bench on the other side of the plaza, the clanging of the smith's hammer on his anvil as the fencer turned to the 'beater'.

"So… Aren't you going to get your weapon enhanced?"

"…Why would you think that?" After Kirito asked that question, Asuna and I both gave exasperated looks in a semi-simultaneous fashion.

"When we were in Marome two nights ago," she replied before I could, "you said you were hunting Red Spotted Beetles in the mountains to the east. That must have been for one-handed sword upgrading materials."

"Oh… Yeah," he sighed.

"What was that reaction for?"

I exhaled in amusement. "It was only four days ago that I told you how to navigate the HUD."

Asuna leaned back. "…I have been studying a lot."

"That's really the best thing to do in a situation like this. Remember, use any information you can easily confirm, even if it comes from beta testers," I chuckled, as I pointed to myself and Kirito while correcting myself quickly, "I mean, especially if it comes from a beta tester."

"SAUER…!"

I laughed at Kirito's concern. "Come on, 'Beater'. Don't you think she would have been more subtle in approaching us, if she feared association with even one of us?"

The boy sighed. "I mean, I suppose so…"

"So, you're not going to hesitate on upgrading, are you? I was coming here to do the same thing."

At Asuna's statement of her intention, I glanced at her rapier. Though she had managed to get her Wind Fleuret to drop for herself after Kirito and I helped her adjust her fighting patterns, I had my own contingency to prepare for Illfang anyway: I was going to give Kirito the one I used for my new boomerang, and tell him to give it to her, and say that he got it to drop – not to mention me at all.

I was even hoping that this would come to pass. And the system gave me another two out of spite. Whatever, I thought as she got hers, at least she has something until the middle of the third floor.

"It's a +4, isn't it?" I asked her, and she nodded before my next question, "And you're doing it with your own materials?"

"Umm… I have four Steel Planks and twelve Windwasp Needles."

I shrugged. "That can do it. But how would you like 95% instead of 80?"

Asuna tilted her head. "Aren't those odds good enough?"

"Well, if what just happened isn't so convincing," I answered without much hesitation, "It's easy enough to get in the extra work for materials if you already did it for what you have now. I mean, sure, the needle drops only 8% of the time from Windwasps, but Kirito and I can make it so much easier to get them."

"I can…?" As Kirito reacted to my statement, I elbowed him in the stomach. "I mean, we can, yeah! Yeah, sure, that's right. We can get your needles easier than if it was just you."

Asuna tilted her head, and without a word, began walking to exit Urbus. I looked at Kirito, and he began walking too, myself walking beside him.

"Really, SAUER? Windwasps?" Kirito had much reason to complain – there were very few ways to attack from a distance, and all of them involved Throwing Weapons. But I showed him the same boomerang he'd seen me use at least a handful of times in the last couple days, to remind him that out of the three of us, I had an advantage to fight the flying enemies. Of course, he was probably additionally concerned about the Windwasp having an extra effect to its sting, which stunned its target for two to three seconds.

I held my index finger up to my lips as I tucked Convection into my standard leather coat, keeping Pressure Cell, my scimitar, sheathed at my side. Kirito tilted his head at my gesture as I cleared my throat while we walked.

"Say, Asuna," I called to her as I moved from my side of Kirito to between the two, "Do you feel like higher success on an enhancement, and some extra XP, are rewarding enough for this effort?"

She leaned her chin on her index finger for a moment. "Now that you mention it, we could do with some kind of dessert after this. What do you say, whoever kills the least Windwasps in two hours, pays in full for whoever kills the most? I'll cover dinner beforehand."

I glanced back at Kirito to wink, and then looked to the fencer again. "Runner-up gets a third of it, covering a quarter of the cost."

Asuna grinned at the suggestion. "Either way, I'll have some of it."

The boy with us chuckled. "You're the only one here who isn't a beta tester."

She squinted at him with Linear-like piercing eyes. "I'll take that as accepting the challenge."

I nodded with a smirk. "Perfect. That's how it'll… bee."

Both players groaned from either side of me, though I did sense amusement from the 'Beater'.

Windwasps could be found past a narrow canyon splitting the fields of oxen into north and south. Further south from the location of the Windwasps, and we'd run into Jagged Worms.

We crossed a natural stone bridge across the gorge, and Asuna decided to add some color to the trip ahead of us. "I wonder what would happen if we fell off."

I glanced over as she unequipped the cape, letting her beautiful hair flow freely. "Past level five, you wouldn't die from this height. But the monsters on the way out are pretty slimy, and generally won't make it easy to recover." I looked back to Kirito as he stared at my phrasing on the slimy enemies, knowing the jokes I made in the beta around other girls. "In most other games, it can potentially be rather hilarious to die from fall damage. But it's a completely different story in this case, if it means actually dying."

The Anneal Blade wielder nodded. "Remember when you jumped from the tenth floor and tried to skydive back under the first floor's ceiling?"

I chortled at the memory from the beta. "My skull bounced right off the rim of the floor disc."

The fencer giggled softly. "Well, if we do want to live, we ought to put our best effort into defeating the second-floor boss. And helping me power up my weapon is part of that process."

"Of course, of course," I agreed as we approached our destination, "Since you already have some of those needles, how's your immersion so far? Did you ever actually picture black-and-green striped insects larger than your head, brandishing stingers the size of an ice pick?"

I grinned as Asuna shivered. "I hadn't been thinking about this place as an actual world until exactly when you said that."

I cackled wickedly as the Windwasps came into view. "Well then, shall we get started?"

I wasn't looking at her, but I could feel the white-hot burning of her eyes on me. I then heard her taking a deep breath. "In the case of the game, though, we can get through 100 in two hours. That being said, let's do exactly that!"

"Right." I drew Pressure Cell as Asuna ran down to a basin of low trees, and I took off toward a different group of Windwasps. As Linear was a basic attack, its cooldown was much shorter, so she would be ready to hit the wasp again after it lost the first half of its HP from her precise strike to its weak point at the thin portion connecting the abdomen to the rest of the body.

Right after she hit the first Linear, I struck a low-flying wasp with Reaver. As soon as I noticed that another was close enough to the ground, I turned away from the one I had reduced to half already.

Asuna's confusion as she shattered her wasp with a second Linear, was quickly answered when I launched Convection at my first wasp, using the «Blade Throwing» Sword Skill «Inner Curve» – an equivalent of «Single Shot» for projectiles with irregular flight paths. Inner Curve and Outer Curve would carry a boomerang through an inward or outward semicircular arc respectively – in my case, being a right-handed thrower, an inward throw was to my left, and outward was to my right.

Both versions of this skill, after slicing through the other half of the wasp's HP, would then curve in my direction and fly towards me, slowly descending as it approached. I caught Convection after the first wasp shattered, and sent it for a third wasp as I finished off the second with Reaver. In just as much time, Asuna had also killed her second. Meanwhile, Kirito had just killed his first, as he was using Vertical Arc to hit it twice per skill use, albeit without hitting the weak point.

By the time Kirito had killed three, Asuna had killed six, and I was halfway through killing my eighth. Together, we had killed sixteen and a half. I made it a full 17 as the others engaged the eighteenth and nineteenth. Essentially, we were managing a rate of 1 for Kirito, 2 for Asuna, and 2.5 for me.

"Four!" Kirito called out after his next kill. "Eight!" Asuna had called a second before him.

"Ten!" I called as I caught my boomerang and brandished my scimitar toward another Windwasp. Using a projectile between sword attacks, was to cover the fact that Reaver was not a Sword Skill which could be used in the air, and while I had Curved Sword-based Sword Skills that could, their cooldowns were not worth it in a race like this. I wouldn't even take the time to use some extra Martial Arts to help level it, taunting the other two players while I was ahead – I had decided right from the beginning that I would be winning that dessert; the one that Asuna likely had in mind was rather expensive, but would surely erase her memory of the black bread with sour cream.

As Asuna announced her 25th kill, she returned her attention to another wasp, facing the opposite direction from Kirito. As if he was watching her, he followed a Vertical Arc with the red glow of his hand as his left fist belted 20% of his wasp's HP out of its abdomen. This was the basic Martial Arts attack, «Flash Blow» – of course, it was written in-game as «Senda».

He seemed to use this Sword Skill – irony in the name given to what I would have called Art Attacks, since there was no weapon involved here – in desperation as the wasp began to pull back, out of range for a second Vertical Arc. However, he had to finish it with a Slant anyway.

I felt like we could have fought 150 wasps in the two hours proposed by the fencer, had it not been for the spawn rate. Regardless, 100 was good enough to get sufficient drops for Asuna.

"Eighteen!" Kirito called out, followed by Asuna's call. "Thirty-six!"

"Wait, I'm almost done with 46," I called to them as I prepared Reaver, "That'll be a hundred, we're done here!"

They nodded and dipped out of other wasps' aggression range, as I finished the last. Sheathing my scimitar, I caught my boomerang and returned to Kirito and Asuna.

"You know," I chuckled as I patted them both on the shoulder, "I realized that we could have just proposed that it was a race to 34, since there's three of us."

Kirito shrugged. "It ended up the same. Asuna was second behind you."

I nodded as I passed them. "It's also only been one hour. Maybe we could have done 200."

Asuna smiled as she spoke with no exhaustion in her voice. "We've got what we need. Thanks."

I turned back to face the two with a smile of my own. "Let's get back for dinner, then."

The fencer nodded again as she looked over to the young boy beside her. "Right. And then when we're eating dessert, you can tell me about that punch you did."

I decided to spite the poor 'beater' myself. "Don't worry, Kirito. I'm sure if I wasn't here, and the race was for the first to fifty, that my absence from the available wasps would have allowed you to reach 49 just as she hit 50."

We got back to Urbus around 6PM, or eighteen-hundred hours. For the most part, I had been using military time in my head since 2015, when I got sick of confusing AM and PM at work. Ironically, converting time back and forth ended up helping me keep track of them anyway. But I had become used to mentally converting the time by then, regardless. SAO also used a 24-hour clock display, unusually making me feel at home through association with the Black Yeti Executive Offices, as the Harbinger family lived with their main work desks in their own bedrooms, and my room was no exception to this rule. I was sure the staff in the separate corporate building were glad that their homes were completely separate from their workspaces.

"Stakes really affect the degree of celebration upon victory, huh?" I chuckled at the sight of all the players drinking and laughing together in the evening. "Been like this all week."

It really had; from the day the second floor was opened, Urbus and the Town of Beginnings both became livelier than one would expect from within a death game. Every evening, there would be cheering, dancing, pretty much any kind of happy expression.

"It's probably just because it's the first time that progress was made," Asuna answered as we made our way through town, "It'll probably settle down once the other half of the floor gets opened up, then it will likely stay pretty calm from then on."

I nodded. "Makes sense. They're like this in Marome, too, aren't they?"

"Uh-huh," the fencer answered, "And it's all thanks to the 'beater'. Which they've been more than willing to acknowledge."

Kirito seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, still wearing his coat. "Alright. I'll stop worrying."

The NPC restaurant we went to only had salads and stews, but it was still the best from either open floor at the moment. We made our orders, and Asuna paid for it all as she said she would.

"You didn't pick out this restaurant at random, did you?" I asked Asuna, as I leaned back, "You must have known about the Tremble Shortcake beforehand."

The fencer nodded as she looked around for others. "I asked Argo if there were any low-traffic NPC restaurants in Urbus and bought the answer." And after confirming we were alone, she promptly unequipped her cape, letting her hair free.

"Oh, makes sense," Kirito entered the conversation, "How did you end up running into her?"

"I asked people where I should go to find specific players," the fencer answered with a sigh as she remained sitting upright, while Kirito had his elbow on the table, "Needed just a few more details about a non-beta blacksmith whom SAUER recommended to me."

I shrugged with a smile. "I gave it the best shot I could."

Kirito chuckled softly. "That's as good as anyone can do, isn't it? Anyway, Argo might be quick and accurate with your information, but be careful around her. There's no entry for what you would call 'client confidentiality' in her dictionary."

Asuna blinked. "Meaning… I could ask her to sell me all the information she has about you?"

I chortled at Kirito stepping in it. "W-Well, yeah…" He began to answer, "Maybe… But it'll probably cost you a lot. I'm sure the whole bundle would cost you at least 3000 Cor."

"That's actually not as much as I expected. I bet I could raise that amount without much trouble…"

"N-N-No! I'd buy all of yours in return!" Kirito hastily replied, "After all, she and Sarako likely—"

"There's no 'likely' about it – they talk every day. She has her own reasons, but I know she likes to brag from time to time…"

Kirito raised his index finger as if he wanted to interrupt me, then promptly, but slowly, lowered his hand as I grinned at him. That grin faded quickly as I saw Asuna with one, directed at both of us.

"What is there for her to brag about?"

I cleared my throat awkwardly as the NPC waiter arrived with our orders. "It, uh, depends what she thinks would be worth bragging about. 'She' being either Sarako or Argo."

The fencer nodded slowly as she looked over the food. I decided to take this time to go over her question from when we finished with the Windwasps.

"Now, the Flash Blow that Kirito used," I explained between bites, my lips sealed while chewing as everyone should be taught in childhood, "That was a Martial Arts attack. You may have noticed him using it during the delay of his weapon-based Sword Skill. We might have to look into that later, but the main thing is the skill itself. Very important in case you can't get your hands on a weapon. But I suppose that after seeing it, there may be an exploit open on skill delay."

I continued my exposition throughout the meal, and the beautiful rapier-wielder ate up the info as eagerly as the food itself.

"I suppose I will have to try that quest for myself." As Asuna finished that comment, dessert was brought to the table – 75% of the price paid by Kirito, and the other 25% by Asuna. Even just three quarters of the cost was still more than that of dinner for the three of us.

The Tremble Shortcake, the dessert in question, was named for the tower of cream on it, which not only was made with the milk of a Trembling Cow – the female counterpart of the Trembling Ox, and twice its size – but the height of the cream essentially caused it to 'tremble' itself. The whole cake was 14 inches in diameter, and we were served a 60-degree slice – a sixth of the full circle. Asuna opened a small measurement interface, and cut off 20 degrees for herself as agreed.

Her eyes sparkled at the three-inch-tall slice, even if it was just a third of a sixth. "Oh my gosh! It doesn't matter how much of it I have. Argo's info said you just have to try the Tremble Shortcake at least once. I can't believe the moment has finally come!"

I chuckled at her expression. "I assume the name 'shortcake' is not actually related to height."

Asuna picked up her fork as she nodded. "That's right. It's because the crispy texture of the cake is achieved with 'shortening'. In America, they use a tough, crispy biscuit-like cake as the base, but we have soft sponge cake in Japan, so it's not really accurate to the original meaning of it."

"Ah, my boss' mother told me about shortening," I vaguely recalled as I grabbed my fork and pulled my slice closer, "It's all vegetable oil, so it has a higher melting point than butter. Since it stays solid longer in the oven, it gives the dough more time to form a crispy crust, so that when the oil finally melts and the steam pockets push the layers further apart, you get a flakier texture than if you had used butter."

"You interact with your employer's family often, SAUER?" asked the curious female.

"It's fairly well known in my fanbase, both in gaming and music," I answered as we each scooped chunks of cake from our slices, "But yeah, this cake – it's sponge-based. Had it in the beta, actually. Didn't you too, Kirito?"

The boy who lost our race lifted his head. "Oh, yeah. You could say it's enough for a pale, nihilistic fighter to blossom into a radiant-smiled heroine with hope to spare."

For a second, I was briefly reminded of a similar smile from years gone by. Then the memory faded quicker than it returned, just like it always would when it popped up. I did not attempt to chase the memory and catch it, instead focusing on the cake.

It was layered like most sponge-type shortcakes – sponge, then strawberries and cream, then more sponge, then more strawberries and cream. And on top were some in-game fruits which resembled strawberries, lining the rim of the slice.

As Asuna finished her third of the cake, I opted to distract myself from her envious eyes, taking my sweet time with my slice. "Say, Asuna – how much do you really grasp of the business world? I am certainly understanding of how odd the practices are in my workplace…"

She promptly shook her head with a look of contempt. "Please. I hear enough about business from my whole family. You and Black Yeti's American-born CEO should be well aware of the standards typically upheld in Japan."

I shrugged. "Least you know she's American," I quipped, omitting the 'Native' prefix which would usually belong in that sentence, "Are you perhaps having trouble communicating at home?"

I briefly felt impaled by her pupils, but then she lowered her head. "My mother hardly listens to anything I've tried to convey. She's been especially pushy with dad as of late…"

Kirito tilted his head at the scene before him. "Uh, SAUER, don't you think this is a little…?"

"Personal? It certainly comes off as such, the way she says it," I addressed his concerns before returning my attention to Asuna, "But your father is a great man. I've had coffee with him alongside my boss, on October 25th. They're looking at the opportunities in FullDive."

She sat upright again. "That's right, they are…! So, wait – Black Yeti wants to work with RECT?"

I nodded as I swallowed a bite of the cake. "We understood that multiple overseas branches exist under RECT already – but when RECT Progress, the FullDive division, was established; they wanted coverage of not just languages, but dialects. And they knew our English localization efforts were drawn from a diverse range. Of course, we couldn't have a conversation about RECT Progress, and leave its… annoying lead programmer out of the picture."

"Ugh… Nobuyuki."

"Nobuyuki!" I snapped my fingers in recollection, "Mr. Sugou. Oh, how he rattled on – about you! Followed shortly by Kayaba, and SAO… I told him I'd be playing it, and the meeting devolved into an expectedly-abrupt conclusion, for what was otherwise a smooth-sailing morning conference."

"Oh, that's definitely him," the fencer nodded aggressively, "I told my father that Mr. Sugou simply does not belong in my life. But my mom doesn't listen. Dad wants what's best for me, but he can't grasp that my mother's telling him what that is, and that she's wrong…!"

I finished dessert as I listened. "You sound mature enough to make your own decisions, actual age notwithstanding – maybe your parents should try a Tremble Shortcake."

Asuna rolled her eyes at my segue, but still cracked a smile. "Maybe. That was really good."

"Better than the beta," I added, pointing just below my HP bar – not the one on my HUD, but the rough spot where mine would appear in her view, like a wide, green crescent halo, "See the buff on your interface? That four-leaf clover? Might be obvious enough, but it's a luck bonus. Usually, you would gain it from making an offering at a church, or equipping an accessory with that effect on it."

"Unfortunately, it's not enough time to be worth using in the fields." Asuna was right. The effect granted by the Tremble Shortcake was 15 minutes – most of it would be eaten up by travel.

"We were talking about probability earlier today, however, when we had discussed hunting extra Windwasps for materials." As I said that, I pointed in the direction of the rhythmic clanging back in Urbus' plaza, from a hammer on an anvil. "You've made your quota, haven't you?"

"Yes. I'm a bit over, actually. Do any of your weapons take the same materials?"

I chortled. "Technically, my Wind Fleurets need to have materials baked into them just so they can later be melted into a better alloy than it would be on its own."

Asuna lifted her head. "You can do that?"

"Uh-huh. Most weapons and some types of armor can be recycled into the metals used to make something else. I had upgraded all of my Wind Fleurets that I used in my new weapons."

She nodded as she took in the info. "So, do you have any that you need to do?"

I smiled looking at my hands. "A few more needles and I could almost guarantee my last one into hitting +6 now. Anyway, maybe the factor of the bonus was affected by how much cake you got? Since I had more, I should try first to see if outcomes influenced by other players are affected. It's surely worth a shot, as it's still the buffed player's weapon."

The fencer giggled softly. "Makes sense to me. You going first, in case it's better than mine. Do it."

Nezha's Smith Shop, the sign read at the top. Logically, the pronunciation would be 'Nezuha', but as the rules went with linguistics, it was entirely possible that Nezha would have had it pronounced some other way. The problem with the game using the Latin characters that made up most of the world's languages, and only those – not unheard of in Japanese games, but still strange.

I walked over to the boy on his Vendor's Carpet. "Good evening."

The blacksmith looked up from his anvil and hastily bowed. "G-Good evening. Welcome."

Nezha got to his feet and bowed again. "A-Are you looking for a new weapon, or are you here for maintenance this time?"

I pulled out the one Wind Fleuret I had that was still +5. "This Wind Fleuret +5 needs a point of Accuracy for my purposes. My own materials."

"A-All right… How many materials do you have?"

"The maximum, mate – four Steel Plates and 20 Windwasp Needles." I exhaled somewhat in slight exhaustion from this song and dance with other smiths. The mandatory base cost for the attempt, were the steel plates. The boosting materials were different for each modifier – Accuracy, in this instance, took Windwasp Needles, and 20 would max out the success rate at 95%.

"Uh… Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll take your weapon and materials." He bowed again after answering, with a face that seemed to convey that he'd managed to produce digestive waste in-game and was trying to keep it inside himself.

I passed him the Wind Fleuret nonetheless, provided the sacked materials through a trade window, and then paid the actual cost of the attempt. Then, I stepped back politely, as the blacksmith took count of the materials to confirm. He signalled that they were satisfactory, and I gave a reassuring smile to Asuna and Kirito behind me.

The furnace small enough to sit on a Vendor's Carpet, couldn't melt enough ingots to forge larger equipment like polearms or heavy armor, but it was enough for streetside business. On the pop-up menu of his furnace, he set it from creation mode to strengthening mode, then set the type of augmentation before finally tossing the materials in.

Four thin sheets of steel and 20 sharp stingers turned red and burst into flame, and shortly after, burning in the furnace was a blue flame representing Accuracy. With this done, Nezha removed the Wind Fleuret from its sheath and set it down within the brazier-shaped furnace. The blue flames enveloped the slender blade, and the entire weapon soon glowed azure.

Nezha then quickly pulled the rapier out and laid it on top of the anvil, then gripped his hammer and held it high.

Clang. Orange sparks flew from the anvil. Clang. Once an upgrade began, there was no stopping it. Clang. Not without guaranteeing failure. Clang. While weapon creation varied in hammer strikes… Clang… Enhancing a weapon was 10 strikes. Clang. Nothing more, nothing less.

Clang. Of course, after playing Dungeons & Dragons for seven years, I knew a 20-sided die could always land on the '1' side. Clang. And with all the many, many, many memes there were online of rolling a Natural One… Clang… 95% was still something for more tense people to bite their nails at.

Clang.

The process was complete, and the rapier flashed brightly atop the anvil.

…And then with a fragile, even beautiful tinkling, the Wind Fleuret +5 crumbled into bluish dust from tip to hilt.

I stared at the anvil. Asuna stared at the anvil. Kirito stared at the anvil. Nezha stared at the anvil.

We watched the glittering shards of silver scattering about the anvil, which had previously been my Wind Fleuret +5. The scattered pieces melted into the air, such animation typically representing a complete loss of durability, becoming irretrievable at that point and being deleted from the server. General damage otherwise to a weapon by monster skills, such as melting, warping, or chipping, were things that could be fixed. But once anything was completely broken, it was gone forever.

Nezha was the one to break the silence as soon as the final fragment disappeared, throwing his hammer aside and bolting to his feet, to bow repeatedly to us.

"I… I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll return all of your money… I'm so, so sorry!"

"Uh, sure," I accepted, and as he returned the money, I then placed my grip firmly on his wrist, "Although, there is the obvious question – what happened?"

Nezha looked at me, and if our avatars could produce digestive waste, it would be in his pants.

"I played the beta, and there were three outcomes to failure, even in the manual on the game's official website: losing the materials, the modifier being randomized, or losing one modifier."

After I offered that explanation, I opened up one of my menus to double-check if it was really gone, almost in denial over what happened. Nezha's response became fairly shaky as he glanced at me.

"Um… I think that maybe… they added a fourth penalty type for the launch. This happened to me… Once before. I'm sure the probability is very low, though…"

I shrugged as I took back my money. "By no means, would it be a secret kept off the site. And as the outcome of success is so high, it wouldn't even be something that could be studied."

"Um… Well, it may be a rough setback to lose it, but you used the phrase 'for your purposes'. You made it sound like it's, maybe… Not your primary? What was the Wind Fleuret for?"

"That Wind Fleuret…" I began as I stared at a shortcut button by my menu in confusion, then I held out my hand, and brandished the rapier as it re-materialized in my hand, "One that I just gave you. How odd. What's it doing still in my Quick-Change slot, and why can I still equip it?"

Nezha confirmed the correct modifiers, looked down for a second, and then at me again. Kirito and Asuna had priceless expressions in the reflection of my blade.

"Rather peculiar scenario here: one way or another, you made it appear as if my weapon broke, but the reality is that you had a weapon of the same type…" I glanced down at my Wind Fleuret.

"Suppose I'd given you my Anneal Blade, instead. You could have used Ryufior's to pull off the same trick as with… I see," I realized midway through my speculation, "The rapier you broke was also one completely spent of upgrade attempts."

I looked back at Kirito and Asuna again, and chortled at their expressions. It occurred to the latter, how she could have been the one subjected to this trick – and she likely didn't have Quick Change assigned as a weapon skill mod, as it would only become practical for mainstream play, around the fifth floor. I had it because of the way I designated separate purposes to most of my weapons. I was surely the only one using the shortcut at the top of my primary menu to forgo multiple equipment changing steps, for the game's intended purpose this early in the game.

Similarly, the 'beater' beside her must have realized that, without someone having Quick Change at this moment, many of the details I filled in as I'd realized them, would not be immediate thoughts.

The thought crossed my mind, as well – the steps we'd have to take to get to where we were now. Asuna would lose her primary weapon, and we'd sit around in denial of Nezha's claim that a new outcome of failure was added. Kirito likely would have gone to watch him after hours, and the boy could potentially have let something slip, to someone else or just talking to himself. Then, if we had been lucky, we could have recalled the weapon within the equipped item's ownership overwriting interval of one hour, using the emergency 'Materialize All' button deep in the inventory menu.

Whether or not we could do that, the investigation would have resumed, and we'd have watched someone else be subjected to the scheme, just so we could try to observe how it was done. Then, maybe only then – which could have taken days of wandering around to pick up the relevant clues pointing us in the right direction – one of us could have deliberately baited him with Quick Change available to us.

I then turned to Nezha again. "Let me guess – if players didn't realize they could recall their items, ownership data would be overwritten with yours. Then, you could either give the weapons to any accomplices you might have, or sell them and use the money to get clearer-tier gear. Which is it?"

The bowl-cut teen, who seemed closer to Kirito's age at this distance, softly sighed. "A bit of both. Obtaining upgrade-spent weapons would cut into our profits, but what we made back would help contribute to our growth."

I nodded. "Our, huh? Let's go somewhere else to talk, so we actually get time to learn everything without your other victims overhearing and taking out their frustrations before we know it all."

AN: Starting with this chapter, I'm giving myself one less hour each fortnight to finish a chapter. This is to help me adjust back into a weekly schedule by teaching myself to manage time better. It's Summer in Australia too, so the heat preventing me from running many PC games leaves me a lot of idle time to write, and more easily undertake this experimental self-training.