Of Mouse and Man

Phase 8

..

Original Title: The World Only God Knows / 神のみぞ知るセカイ & Sword Art Online(ソードアート・オンライン)

Original Concept by: Tamiki Wakiki & Kawahara Reki

written by: wrathie

Author's Notes: A Crossover where Keima was not approached by the Weiss Capturing Squad and the Events of the Goddess Arc is non-existent.

Author's Notes: Thank you, bowpurity for the beta!

Aincrad 5th Floor

'What do you mean by that, Keima. You guys don't even fight, so why do you get to tell us what to do? Screw that, we're going with our plan and that's that. You can tell us what to do after you actually take part in a raid.'

The leader of one of the smaller clearer guilds, Kibaou, smirked haughtily at the Capturing God, Keima, as he sat together with Argo in the meeting that was organized to discuss how to take down the Boss of this particular level.

As with the other levels, information on the boss was collected, analysed and disseminated to all everyone who had a copy of the Field Guide to Aincrad.

After the first disastrous raid on the first boss floor, the members of Nezumi had re-organized themselves by sending scouts to test the abilities of the Floor bosses before the actual raid.

It was an unreasonable request for Keima or Argo to send others out in such a fashion without leading the way and they had done so in the second floor boss.

Like Argo, Keima's build had focused on speed and the two of them had hung around for a bit to see the attack patterns of the floor boss, mapped the area where it waited for them before retreating from battle to regroup.

The two hadn't even gotten hit a single time as they ran circles around them. One important thing that the two practised was the group slogan, 'When in doubt, retreat!'. Unlike conventional slogans that frowned on retreat, seeing that it was a morale killer and that it would entail that it would be almost impossible to reinforce discipline or confidence in their own troops.

Who would wish to lead a group of individuals that would run away and not cover each other's back when they were facing the enemy, no one would!

But the members of Nezumi was not fighters, they were scouts and they were much better off alive than dead as a dead man could not relay the information that they gathered.

It was one thing to be a hero or a warrior and to die in combat with honor, a sentiment that was probably shared by those who saw Diabel died on that raid, but it was a different thing when it was pride against death.

Pride always loses out to death, and if by retreating they can save themselves as well as to ensure a win the next time, why not?

There was always uncertainty in battle, nothing was certain after all and in SAO, that was the kicker. Once you fail, you died, but there was no escaping the battles against the floor boss.

However, Nezumi was not a clearer guild, they were the support factions to the clearers and with the alliance that Keima insisted and paid for, the alliance between the Merchant Guild, Atelier and their own guild meant that the clearers themselves had to acknowledge it.

'I will repeat this as many time as necessary, we are in a war, Kibaou and all of us have different roles to play in this conflict. We are all in the same boat after all. The clearer's roles in this war is to fight and win. None of us can dispute that, all of you are the best players we have for this role. Our role in this conflict however is to provide support to the front-line players, whether it is first-hand information on the pattern of attacks of the monsters, the equipment that all of you are wearing and using or the services that we provide out on the field. We are here to assist all the players to ensure that everyone knows what they are getting into. Do you, or do you not acknowledge our presence as well as our contributions to our overall cause?'

Keima's words made Kibaou frown as he tried to argue that his guild didn't need all of them, and they were certainly not pulling their actual weight on the situation.

'I see your point, Keima-san.'

It was the leader of another guild, this time a player with the name of Dylas, who spoke up.

'Our roles and your roles are different, that much I can understand and accept. Many of the players that are here have benefited directly and indirectly from Nezumi, the Merchant Guild and Atelier's hard work and effort. We acknowledge that, and we offer our sincere thank for the effort in coordinating and planning to achieve the level of efficiency that all of you have achieved.'

Dylas paused in his pompous tirade to get to his point.

'But I believe what Kibaou-san was questioning was why we are expected to follow the advise and lead of a player whose role, as you have explained earlier, was not in direct combat.'

Keima gave a small smile and nod in acknowledgement even as Kibaou nodded his head while agreeing with Dylas. At least this individual was not taking it as an insult like what Kibaou did.

Dylas had not formed a guild, but had participated in all of the raid with the same small group of players in his party since the second boss raid. Like Diabel he had dyed his long shaggy hair, only his was to a dull grey that made him look like a feral wolf. He was a skilled player and a very brave one. With his main weapons being fists, meaning he had to actually fight in close quarters, he had always been the first to request information on the attack pattern of monsters and etc.

Keima knew that he had always appreciate the help that Nezumi provided him and decided that he probably was still on their side. Fighting with fists was unorthodox as the activation of the its skills wasn't the same as other weapons like the axe or the hammer, it required the player to get in close but at the same time require them to have good footwork and a good eye to land their attacks. Compared to other weapons, fists skills had the huge advantage of not having a cool-down time compared to other weapons skills. However, the trade off was it required extreme mental focus, and a slip up would be catastrophic. Dylas was a skilled player and with the monster's attack pattern known to him, even partially, he would be able to handle himself with a group of them with relative ease.

He was also the one who leads the charge on the boss when the opening was there, he had good eye and good footwork as well.

..

'… Keima, you need to get out of the office more. I mean, it's cool and awesome that you are actually out of the office and talking to people face to face, but you really need to you know, interact with others.'

Argo shook her head while garnering the attention of the leaders of the parties that had gathered together to discuss the raid plan for the floor boss.

'Guys, guys. We are Nezumi, we are the group that provide information that you want at a price. From the selling prices of the new latest bit of battle ware from all the fancy schmancy shops, we got a +10 Anneal blade up for auction by the way just to keep things interesting, to the attack patterns of the Kobold Leader Field Boss that I'm sure all of you fought before, we engage monsters too. We just don't fight them long enough to be a clearer, why else would we able to publish all the monster attack patterns, their spawn areas and drops?'

Argo looked around for a moment to allow the news to sink in before she continued, ignoring Keima's comments on how they bought some of their information as well. They had a policy which allowed players to sell information to them, stuff like the rare drops of a monster, they exact recipe to make a new type of weapon and etc. It's a win-win situation for all.

'And it was Keima who was leading the scouting party to test out the boss's attacks in the first place. Although we didn't hit it much, we couldn't possibly kill it, we faced the monster first-hand and we know what we are doing by giving you advice on what to expect in the battle with it.'

'Information is the most important thing in this war that we are engaging, and no matter what, the scouts are the first to encounter the enemy and the face to engage. We might not finish them, but that is not our role... our role, is to ensure that all of you have the best possible chance of success and victory. Your victory, is our victory as we are in same boat. Why would we wish to sabotage an operation that benefit all of us?'

Keima finished patiently and that seemed to settle the group of displeased players as Dylas gave the two of them a quick wink before taking charge again.

'Let's go through Keima-san's plan again before we debate this again . Would you please, Keima-san?'

..

'To be honest, it'll be great if all the clearer guilds just joined up together like what you made the Merchant Guild do, Keima-san. Having a centralized power would make our meetings that much faster.'

The meeting was over and only a few group of players were around, one of them was Dylas and his small group of players. The others was Klein of Fuurinkanzen and Kirito with Asuna and Fuse.

The last group was currently being teased by Argo endlessly as the three of them had not separated ever since Fuse had managed to break through to Kirito and force him to accept her into his party.

The three of them fought like a well-oiled machine and their teamwork was unmatched, and their average DPS was on par with bigger groups like Dylas and Klein's own parties even with three players.

Klein of Fuurinkanzen was a veteran of other MMORPGs and he picked up SAO quite readily after seeking assistance with Nezumi on the build of it's current party members. They had a good mix of players that complemented their strength and covered their weaknesses. It took sometime for them to get to the level and skills necessary to work as cohesive unit due to the mechanics of SAO, but they were now considered experienced in their own right in clearing bosses after joining the raid group in the third boss raid to the current one.

Of course Kirito's group were active in all the raids, the title of 'beater' should have made it hard for him to party with others but with the two girls with him, he didn't need any one else. That caused some friction when they volunteered, or Fuse volunteered to lead the raid in engaging the boss by themselves. They were still sore that Kirito got the last attack bonus after all.

It really didn't helped that the two female players adamantly defended Kirito from others who tried to bad mouth him. Kirito was quickly labelled to being a playboy, something which Argo found absolutely hilarious.

Kirito himself didn't know of that reputation until Keima pointedly told it to him in his face, causing the poor boy to blush red together with Asuna. Fuse on the other hand did not even blink and just replied that relationships was something she didn't find time for.

However Nezumi did their party good by starting a newsletter that detailed how the raid on the first floor went and went all out in what went down on that raid. This helped remove most of the heat off Kirito and the beta-testers after a few days.

Called the Aincrad Times, the newsletter was available for 5 Gold each at all Merchant shops and was released every week to keep players updated on the latest happening.

Eventually Argo wanted their newsletter to include sections which resembled a newspaper that they had in the outside world, complete with scandalous gossip and articles on the famous individuals of Aincrad.

Seeing that there wasn't any form of entertainment in Aincrad, something which irked Argo quite a bit, the clearers themselves tended to be mini-celebrities.

At least, that's what Argo hoped would happen, it would be too boring if their lives in Aincrad, no matter the length, was filled only with battles. They had to have some semblance of down-time and a normal life. Even if life in Aincrad really wasn't normal.

It also really wasn't that difficult for Argo to recruit interested members who would love to put together the newsletter to join the guild and their current members who were putting the Field Guide together. There were roughly ten thousand players stuck within SAO after all and they were all located in many different floors right now. Eventually the number of floors and distribution of players would make it difficult to monitor all the activities of the guild by the two of them and they were being prudent by teaching, selecting and delegating the different departments of their guild's functions to trustworthy players within the guild.

..

Recruitment however was a little harder in other roles like for the scouts, whose tasks involved them putting themselves in danger by exploring uncharted areas and unknown monsters with different skills and attack patterns. The clearers weren't mostly made up of beta-testers, something which didn't surprise the two leaders of Nezumi that much, considering the way Kibaou had tried to publicly lynch them.

Instead the beta-testers made up the majority of the scouts within Nezumi itself. Keima and Argo frequently defended the beta-testers and seeing that they had played SAO before, they knew what they were doing, where they were doing and as a bonus – wanted to help everyone more than others.

Keima and Argo would never admit it, but Kibaou's little stunt there had helped their recruitment by guilt-tripping the beta-testers to assist them, it really helped that they had defended the betas themselves too.

The other group of players within the scouts were the players who wished to explore Aincrad proper. They had similar thoughts to Keima at the start, players who wished to explore what Aincrad had to offer and they were sent mostly to the towns to interact and to discover the mysteries of Aincrad. These players provided the bulk of intelligence on what goes on within the town, the 'affluence' mechanics and different systems that were implemented within Aincrad. For example only players who had unlocked the 'cooking' skill were able to purchase cooking utensils from the general stores after fulfilling quests which required players to submit food which they cooked themselves to NPCs. The cooking utensils unlocked new recipes that players were unable to use with their hands.

The cooking utensils also enabled players to raise their cooking skills much quicker and were exchangeable, many players who were willing to invest to increase their personal comfort were more than happy to buy the utensils at a slightly marked up price than from the NPC.

Sales from cooking utensils were not the main bulk of what were transacted between players and Nezumi, more often than not it was the 'broker' fee from general enquiries for dungeon crawling, party make up and etc that made up the bulk of sales.

But back to topic - the scouts did make up the bulk of the players who were in Nezumi, with the rest taking on roles to disseminate and gather information that was gathered by Nezumi. Heading the effort to analyse and make sense of the information was Keima, with Argo taking on the key important role of disseminating the information as well as handling their relations with the other guilds.

'Nah, that'll be too much work. It's been only two months and we're getting swamped due to how much work we have to do every day.'

Argo's roles within Nezumi were doubly important as relations between players were always going to be difficult and sensitive to boot. Ironically, Argo wasn't exactly the most sensitive of people and she was a horrible gossip after all.

But she was still the lesser of two evils between the two leaders, and she had more charm and charisma than Keima. The Capturing God was a magician with words, but wasn't the most approachable person, hence Argo being in that hot seat for customer relations.

Despite the difficulty and to the contrary, Argo was good at her job. She was even proud of her accomplishments and hence her annoyance and reluctance in Keima's insistence on sitting in during the clearer's meeting and his earlier speech to all of the clearers. He didn't have any bad intent, but the delivery of his concerns could use some work. Their guild had never publicly made a move on anything within Aincrad, they were always in the background, supporting and assisting the players without a peep or much protest.

Argo was confident in saying that thanks to their efforts, hope was given to the players stuck within SAO as there were zero suicides and most, if not all of the players were playing a part besides the younger children which had all gathered at the orphanage at the first floor. The five floors of Aincrad were always buzzing with activity and there was none of the same hopelessness that had been building up after the fact that they were stuck in SAO struck home.

It helped that the three supporting guilds were encouraging everyone to do something rather than mope around waiting for help. One might argue that it was counter-intuitive to encourage players to do things besides fighting to get stronger to clear the game, but Keima had counter-argued that not everyone could fight the monsters. They were mostly civilians who were brought on the front of war and should be treated as such.

Fighting monsters took priority but shouldn't be mandatory or the death of more players would be guaranteed, especially when people who aren't supposed to fight in the first place be dragged into the conflict.

The only Happy End that Keima would wish to see, no, what Meizun wanted to see would be one where there were no deaths. That however was impossible, people already died, not due to the game and due to Kayaba. But that did not mean it was an ideal that was not worthy of trying to achieve. Hence – Keima did it the only way he knew how, by guiding everyone through the most conservative way. One might argue, the most inefficient way but they were playing with people's lives here.

..

More likely than not the clearers had become accustomed to the support that the three support guilds were providing them and had started taking them for granted. As with all habits, they were hard to break but relatively easy to get used to. Everyone was in some way or another indebted clearers, something which no one was able to ignore but at the same time, no one was indebted to them as all of them shared the same goals.

It was a something that was easy to say, but difficult to understand or accept – especially when the clearers and the support weren't equal in the things that they placed on the line.

The clearers placed their lives on the line while the support crew did not, well, some did but in the end the scales of exchange were not exactly equal. Keima didn't believe that anyone truly analysed or thought about the situation as deeply as he did up till now, even if they did however Keima did not care. Life itself wasn't fair. There were those that were good at one thing and bad at another. If the clearers truly wished to complain, or compare or to use their 'advantages' against other players, the same humans in the same boat - Keima will not hesitate to bring out the big guns on his side.

It was also true and concerning that the clearers were getting complacent and spoiled after having successful raids with no deaths after the first raid. It was partly due to the more conservative way that the players had planned on taking the boss as well as the more accurate information that they had been able to piece together with the beta's knowledge of monsters on higher floors.

It had given them some base to work with to share in the meetings, and that helped them to work out a plausible pattern for them to plan the raid party and how they were supposed to advance and to fight against the gathered clearers.

..

'Your work is important, all of your members are. I think Keima-san has shown that today.'

Dylas gave Keima a bow which he did not return, he was too busy replying and relaying orders through his interface right now. Dylas simply shook his head and simply gave a lopsided grin while turning to Klein, the red-haired swordsman grinning back while his guild mates waited patiently at the background.

'So how was your first meeting as part of the planning group? I understand that you and your guild has been participating in the front lines for quite a while, but this is your first time being asked to participate in the planning of the raid, right?'

'You got that right in one, Dylas-san. We're glad to be on board, it's one thing to follow orders and another to be part of the group which gives them out you know? I gotta say one thing though...'

Klein took deep breath before scowling and pointing at Kirito's party.

'HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT MAN! YOU BETRAYED US!'

Klein's complaints were directed at how out of all the clearer groups, only Kirito had good active female members within it. The other guilds, although no slouch in the size department were lacking in the quality department. If one asked Keima, he would simply retort that they were babying the female players while Argo would argue that there just weren't anyone who could match up to Fuse, or Meizun.

Argo pointedly did not mention that in front of Keima, she could be mean at times, but she wasn't that mean.

'Klein? What's wrong?'

Kirito had not been listening to his friend and that response caused Klein to drop to one knee in frustration. His guild mates just sighed as one and headed over to try and cheer him up while Dylas and the few guild members he had with him just chuckled.

'Fuse-san and Asuna-san works very well with Kirito-san, the three of them, as small as their 'guild' can be, is a force to be reckoned with.'

Kirito was listening this time and he scratched his ears in embarrassment. Fuse gave a small scoff as if saying that was to be expected while Asuna blushed, unsure what to reply on being complimented in that way.

They were being complimented right?

'Our offer still stands, Keima-san, Argo-san. The two of you with your influences and contacts would do well as the advisor for the clearer groups as well. I'm sure that is the best way forward, we are in a war, like you've said before. Using all our resources in the best way is the best way to end our time in SAO.'

Dylas wanted Nezumi to oversee all the players and to coordinate the efforts to clear SAO as fast as possible, an elected party that could and would have power to ask and order players to do what was necessary. Like a government of sorts, but Keima had declined almost immediately.

Argo wasn't too comfortable with that suggestion as well, partly because it was a huge responsibility, secondly because they were playing with people's lives like mentioned before and she wasn't fully confident in her own abilities.

Keima on the other hand simply replied that he was a stern believer in the rights of people – what players do should always be done willingly and not coerced or forced or suggested by others.

Argo wanted to retort that he was just hiding behind the shield of 'free will' when and if he screwed up one day. However Keima hadn't done so so far and hence her point was moot, so far.

'I stand by my words... and I shall only guide, never shall I take control...'

Keima answered softly and stiffly before nodding to Argo, signalling that they should be leaving. Before he did however, he called out to Klein.

'Yeah?'

'About your recruitment request to add a female member to your guild...'

Argo rolled her eyes but then grinned when Keima paused, seemingly milking the situation while Klein just grimaced, hoping for the best. So she did rub off Keima, that was a good sign! Having a sense of humor, no matter how twisted, was a great sign actually.

'We found one. She's waiting for us at our guild house. Are you coming?'

'W-Wait, what? Really? WHOO HOO! C'MON GUYS!'

Argo paused for quite a while before she chuckled and waved her goodbyes to Kirito and Dylas's groups, he never failed to amaze her every day.

Author's Notes: Villianization of Kibaou (is that a word?) and more of Aoba being a /clearer/ and not a /strategist/. Remember that guys!