December 5th, 2022 (Floor 2: Marome)
"Alright, gang! You all know what time it is!" I cheered, punching the air with excitement. Blake started at me blankly.
"It's time for you to ditch us and pretend to be a smith," she drawled. I scowled, good mood evaporated.
"Marome doesn't have any NPC smiths. No smiths, no forges for us to get sucked into," Heidan whispered to Blake, who smirked. "No forge means it's my favorite time of the day."
"Levelling time?" Blake asked jokingly.
"Levelling time," Heidan confirmed with a savage grin. I rolled my eyes to Maisie.
"Yes, if you two are done flirting. Now..." I opened my menu and pulled up my map data. "We've already explored these regions... I propose we keep moving further south, During the beta, there was a quest to grant the Martial Arts skill right about here and I want to see if it's still there."
"So... we basically just have to fight our way through the entire lower half of the floor to find something that may or may not be there?" Heidan summarized. "Sounds good to me!"
"We should really stock up before we head out..." Blake murmured, glancing at her inventory. "We are doing okay on healing potions but we might want to see if any of the shops sell transport and healing crystals. I don't want to be caught somewhere where we don't have time for a potion to kick in."
"Good call. Maisie, you and Blake go stock up on supplies. Heidan and I will try to get in contact with the info-brokers for updated map data." The Hunters split and I looked to Heidan. "You get Argo?"
"And you get Kirito," he agreed. While Kirito wasn't an info broker, it was already established during the first month of the game that he knew SAO very well. If we were thinking of doing the quest, there was a good chance that he was already working on it.
Kirito. The Hunters and I are looking to do the Martial Arts quest. Do you know if it's still up? Riva.
I sent the message moments before Heidan sent his and, with both of us done, we took a seat by a local fountain. Floor 2 was mostly savannah and dry crags so there wasn't much clean water to go around. Marome and many of the other settlements were dug down into the ground to make access to aquifers easier, however, and several small fountains dotted the town, providing ambience and clean water to those who needed it.
Heidan was the first to get a reply, and he grinned.
"She's got the info. She's asking for 300 cor."
"For how wide a spread?" I asked. Map data tended to be expensive and 300 didn't seem to be Argo's usual cut. I met the girl a few times myself and she was always willing to sell high.
"As wide as she has. She's supplied by a good number of players, namely our boy in black." As if he knew we were talking about him, I received a reply.
Riva. Actually working on it now. The old man is still nuts. Kirito.
"The quest is up and currently occupied," I said with a chuckle. "Kirito will probably be done by the time we get there."
"Argo's agreeing to 900 cor for full spread."
"I'm not sure how the bank will take that hit, especially with Blake stocking up. Let's go with strict map data, 300. We should be able to handle any mobs. We aren't heading towards the labyrinth so I doubt we'll run into anything too massive."
With a few more minutes, we were ready to move out. Heidan shared the map data with everyone and Blake and Maisie returned with much less cor but a good variety of crystals and potions.
"It took Kirito less than two days to get to the quest location so I doubt it'll take us that long if we don't hit any major obstacles."
"This is boring." At Heidan's comment, repeated for the nth time, I narrowed my eyes and whipped around at him.
"Would you shut up? I get that there isn't much to do but I'd rather us not risk getting ourselves killed just because you want us to move a little faster. We're already moving mostly blind, here."
"Oh, just fight me," Heidan said, sticking his tongue out.
"Bring it on, Danny-boy!" I roared back, drawing my naginata. It wasn't my shining moment, but Heidan was pushing his luck and pushing my buttons. I swiped into my menu and challenged my guildmate to a duel. Even with my temper raging, this fight wasn't worth becoming an orange player and the duel protocols would stop us from getting too hurt.
"Let's make this interesting," Heidan offered with a crooked smile. He swiped into his inventory and I raised an eyebrow. This was new. "Outside safe zone dueling lets the players to put something on the line. Winner takes all. What do you say?"
Heidan put one of his monster drops on the metaphorical table, a B-rank hunting bow. While none of us specialized in archery, the higher ranked nature of the item meant the owner could sell it for quite a few cor. Seeing him put up a B-rank, I glanced through my inventory quickly. I didn't have much... I spent so much of my cor investing in weapons and my skills that I... That was it!
I entered in a weapon of my own making: a double edged greatsword I'd named Windbane. Being a player-made item, the weapon had greater stats than similar weapons on the NPC market and, trying to up my smithing skill, I had already upgraded the weapon several times. Even if the weapon wasn't used by Heidan, he was sure to find someone who'd give an arm and a leg for the sword.
With the two items in the balance, Heidan selected "First Strike Mode" and the duel was slated to begin despite Maisie and Blake's protests.
"You're going down, Danny-Boy," I threatened. He only hefted his hammer up onto his shoulder.
"I was just about to say the same to you, Ri-Ri," he assured me with a confident smirk. The clock continued ticking off the seconds until the full minute was over and then everything exploded.
Heidan started right out of the gate with a sword skill. He slammed his warhammer onto the ground, breaking the ground and sending up jagged rocks into the air. Calmly executing a half spin, he swung his hammer diagonally, sending the rocks flying towards me. I immediately grabbed my staff off of my back.
I had to replace it after the boss fight. The wood of the middle had been too weak and vulnerable so, when we were still at Urbus, I visited the forges and made a new model. This one was totally made out of hardened steel, with black leather cord wound around the handle. The blades were configured differently, as well; instead of narrow and straight blades like my old naginata, this staff bore curved blades that had a hollow in the middle shaped like a bottle opener. The outside of the blade was smooth and sharp enough to cut through anything I'd thrown it through. Each end of the staff was spiked and there was a compartment in each spike that allowed me to poison the spikes and the blades. It had a few other tricks, but I hadn't gotten an opportunity to show my guildmates just yet.
I spun my new staff, named Gwaedu, and resisted the urge to grunt when the rocks collided with my spinning staff. The rocks shattered but I was rained on by the small shards and I instinctively half-closed my eyes to shield them from the splinters. Heidan took advantage of the moment it took me to repel his attack and he was on me in an instant. His hammer flew into my peripheral vision and I swung my staff to parry, taking a step further away. We were both close range fighters, but his range was much closer than mine and I needed room to maneuver. Heidan knew that, of course, and he didn't let up easily.
The trouble with this new weapon being made of solid steel was that it was heavy. My strength stat wasn't high enough to totally compensate for the weight and my arms were tiring with each parry and block. Estimating how much longer I'd be able to wield Gwaedu without sacrificing speed and effectiveness, I ducked down and scooped up a clump of the sandy soil. I threw it into Heidan's eyes without hesitation and, as he was yelping in surprise and game-muted pain, I slashed forward with one end of my staff. He predicted that and, when he parried with the handle of his hammer, I used the returning momentum to swing out the bottom end of my staff, slicing painfully into the back of his knee.
I was panting as the game called an end to our duel, with Heidan's life force drifting frighteningly close to the yellow.
"Are you two happy now?" Blake grumbled, darting forward with a potion in hand to heal Heidan. He waved her away, promising that his battle-healing could handle it. He looked at me, a teasing light in his eyes, but his face changed abruptly, probably because of the shock on my face as SAO opened a new window in front of me.
Result: Exp: 250 cor: 0 Items: 2
"I... got experience for that. Is that normal?" I asked Heidan. He was the would-be info broker, he'd know. Unfortunately, he looked just as worried as I did. "What does this mean?"
"We could level outside of mobs," he murmured, his brow drawn. "But that doesn't make sense. The game wouldn't allow that. There has to be some downside to it."
"Well, you two have to beat yourselves up," Maisie grumbled.
"No, seriously. Logistically, this shouldn't occur. The balance of the game would be totally upset, unless there were some serious restrictions to it," Heidan continued. I clicked out of the congratulations message and view my inventory. As soon as it opened, I gasped softly.
"I figured out at least one restriction." I gestured to the menu. "The hunting bow. It's no longer a rank B. The roster has it listed as a C rank now... The rank value of the item goes down with each duel?"
"That would make sense," Heidan hummed, scratching the back of his head. "But still. We could be fighting over E-rank items... Unless there's a certain level of rank an item must be for it to be fought over?"
"And what if we don't put an item up? Would the winner still get experience?"
"No. Player duels are rare, but I would have heard about this if other people discovered it. There must be some restriction on it. Maybe it doesn't apply to duels within safe zones, or only applies to duels involving high-rank items. Maybe even both. There's got to be some safeguard within the system, either there would be nothing to keep us from dueling each other back and forth until we're strong enough to just walk up to the 100th floor and getting out."
"That'd be nice, though," Blake chuckled humorlessly.
"Let's try it again," I decided. "Windbane is still a B rank item, so let's try with that. Maybe there's a secondary ranking system we can't see? So Windbane was closer to A rank than your bow, and that's why the bow downgraded faster."
"It's possible." Heidan challenged me to a duel and I put Windbane on the line. This time, after the 60 seconds, I just looked levelly at Heidan before shrugging.
"I won last time. Beat me so you get the experience."
"Are you sure?" he asked cautiously. I shrugged.
"No big deal. It's as you said. My battle healing will take care of it."
Heidan glanced at his hammer before executing a very careful blow to my outstretched arm. I didn't defend or pull away and the system recognized the clean blow, ending the duel with Heidan as the victor. A result menu popped up for him as well and he frowned, checking his inventory quickly.
"Yeah... It's C rank now."
"This is weird," Maisie declared.
"This could be dangerous," Heidan said quietly. "If other players get a hold of this knowledge... Who knows what could happen? More duels, competition over higher ranked items, PKs... We can't tell anyone."
"I agree... I don't see how we can keep other people from figuring it out on their own, though... We could try meeting with the info brokers? Convince them to stay quiet about this?"
"I don't know if that would work. Some of them wouldn't talk about it on principle, just in case, but who knows about the rest... I could name a few that would turn right around and sell the info to the next player who crosses their path," Heidan said with a huff. I bit my lip.
"We can figure this out in a while. Let's go get that martial arts skill."
Updated 22:03, 1.27.2022