Aincrad. A castle composed of iron and stone, that endlessly floated in the air, acting as the world of Sword Art Online. The base of the structure was over six miles in diameter, the floors held up by giant columns of sky. The hundred floors of this world held unimaginable amount of data and adventures. But instead of being admired and awed, Aincrad soon became a levitating prison enslaving 10,000 people as players in Akihiko Kayaba's sick game of playing god. But who knew god could be so… sexy.
An entire month had passed since the dreaded beginning of Sword Art Online's official launch. Within this short amount of time, two thousand people had left both the world of SAO and the world of the living. And yet, all players were still confined to Floor One. Kirito, a former beta tester, hadn't even been able to find out where the boss's lair was. Many players had already given up, but an assembly of frontline level fighters had finally been called together and it was time for action.
"Okay, people!" the blue haired man announced, trying to get the attention of the crowd of players. They had gathered in what appeared to be the ruins of an outdoor theatre. Crumbling columns surrounded a pit of granite steps leading to a center stage. Balconies and an actual building standing in the back. Players had gathered and sat in the stands, while the speaker, a man of short blue hair, spoke in the center. "Now that everyone's here, let's get this meeting started." Everyone settled down, waiting for him to continue. "So anyway, I want to thank everyone for coming. Good to see you. My name is Diabel, and in this game, the job I rolled is knight!"
Several of the spectators laughed as one called Diabel out on his proclamation. "Dude, there's no job system in this game!".
Kirito inspected the supposed 'knight's' face and figure, noting his handsome smoldering expression, even after everyone had been given their original bodies as avatars. Diabel's jaw was clean shaven, a stark contrast from Kirito's previous romantic interest. Thinking of Klein, Kirito shuddered, and tried to distract himself from the painful memory by focusing on Diabel's impressive biceps and hearty physique.
"You guys want to hear this or not?" Diabel asked, trying to calm down the rowdy bunch of gamers. All I want to hear from you… are hopeless displays of affection, Kirito thought to even his own surprise. The blue haired swordsman's expression darkened. "Right, anyway here's the deal" he continued. "Our party found the boss room at the top of the tower today." The players began to talk amongst themselves. This was big news, no one had had the slightest clue of where the boss was located… even after intensely searching the dungeons on the first floor.
"First, we need to defeat the boss and make it to Floor Two. The next step, is we have to tell everyone waiting in the Town of Beginnings that it is possible to beat this game! Fact is, it's our duty as the most capable players here! Do you agree, or not?"
The crowd responded positively with cheers, urging him to elaborate on his battle strategy and plans moving forward. "Okay, glad to hear you're all with me on this, now let's figure out how we're going to bear the boss. First off, we'll team up into parties of six. A typical party doesn't stand a chance against a floor boss. We need a raid group made up of multiple parties".
Before Diabel had finished speaking, players had already began forming parties with those they knew in the game. It seemed that many of these frontline players travelled together. Of course, this left Kirito at a disadvantage seeing as his only friend he had left behind on day one. He thought of Klein's face again, and sucked in a small sob. Kirito looked around to see if there were any sexy hunks left out of the mix, but everyone had already joined their parties quickly. What a whole bunch of territorial sluts, Kirito ranted to himself. He looked up over his shoulder, and saw that there was one person sitting alone above him on the steps.
"You got left out two, huh?" Kirito said, trying to be friendly. After a close look at the person, who was wearing a maroon and white cloak covering their face and body, he realized they were female. He felt disappointed, but it wasn't in his nature to be rude about it.
"Not even" she responded. "I wasn't left out. It's just everyone seems like they're already friends".
That sounded about right. The parties were formed rather quickly, otherwise Kirito definitely would have tried to swoop in and get a good partner or group.
"So, you're solo too?" he asked, trying to break the tension between the two of them. "You want to form a party with me? You heard what the guy just said, we can't beat the boss on our own, and it would just be for this fight."
She nodded, and Kirito opened his menu and sent a request to form a party with the girl. The window popped up in front of her, and she accepted. Kirito inched closer to the girl, waiting for Diabel to address the group again.
"All right. Looks like everyone's teamed up. Now then…" as he paused Diabel was interrupted by a player emerging from the top level of the steps. "Hold up a sec!" he bellowed at the raid group. The sloppy bear of a player aggressively jumped down the steps, taking them five at a time. For a disheveled enough looking man, he was strangely agile. He eventually reached the bottom and took a few large strides towards Diabel, who looked confused but stopped talking, waiting for the man to say something.
"My name's Kibaou, got that? Before we take the boss, I want to get something off my chest! We all know about the two thousand people who died so far, yeah? Well, some of you need to apologize to them right now!"
Kirito felt his stomach churn. He was more than aware of what Kibaou was talking about. Most players viewed former beta testers as cheaters with an unfair advantage in this game of death. That would be true, but seeing as the First Floor still hadn't been cleared, the only advantage Kirito had was his unhealthy amount of sex appeal. And in a world where he was unsure things like that were even possible, this talent probably wasn't going to get him very far.
I bet… Diabel would appreciate it though. Lol. Gay. Kirito felt a sense of excitement rivaled only by his interactions with Klein on that cursed day. He pushed the thought from his mind.
"Kibaou, I think I know who you're referring to" Diabel said, his shiny blue locks reflecting in the sunlight. "You mean the ones who were ex-beta testers, right?"
"Course I mean them! The day this stupid ass game started, the beta guys got up and vanished, right? They ditched all us beginners! They snagged all the good hunting spots, and they grabbed all the easy quests too! They were the only ones getting stronger in here. This whole time, they've ignored us like we were nothing. Hell, I bet there are some of them here! Come on out, beta testers! We should make them apologize to us, and we should make them all give up their money and the items they got! They can't expect the party to trust them when they don't trust us! Why should we?"
As an ex-beta tester, Kirito was used to this hatred, but still feared how the raiding party would react if they found out about his past. Normally, he would like being verbally berated by a more dominant male acquaintance, but Kirito knew that this was hatred… not foreplay. He could only hope that Diabel was more understanding, or that no one found out about his dark secret to begin with.
A tall and muscular axe-wielder stood, grabbing everyone's attention. "Can I say something?" he started. "Hey, my name's Agil. Kibaou, right?"
Kibaou nodded after huffing and crossing his arms. He obviously wasn't a fan of the other player stealing his thunder.
"I want to make sure I'm on the same page" Agil continued. "You say the ex-beta testers should be blamed for the rookie's deaths because they didn't help them, and you want them to apologize and give up their winnings. I leave anything out?"
"No, you didn't" Kibaou said, saucy.
Agil pulled out a small brown leather-bound book, and showed it to Kibaou and the crowd. "The item store hands these out for free. It's a guidebook. You got one didn't you?"
"Sure I got one." Kibaou admitted, not sure what Agil was getting at. "So, what about it?"
"You know who was handing these out? The ex-beta testers." Agil turned from Kibaou and addressed the players instead. "Listen up! Everyone had equal access to this information. Even so, lots of players still died. I didn't come here to point fingers at anyone. I'm here 'cause I want to learn from those players' deaths. I'm here because I want to find out how we're gonna beat the boss".
Agil accepted some brief applause and then sat down, Kibaou accepting defeat and returned to his seat as well. Once this small dispute had finished, Diabel continued with the briefing.
"Okay, can we get back to the meeting now? For info on the boss, it's all in here-" he held out his own leather-bound manual. "The latest issue of the guidebook you just heard about. According to the book, the boss's name is Illfang the Kobold Lord. Also, he'll be surrounded by his minions- the Ruin Kobold Sentinels. Illfang carries an axe and a buckler. He has four health bars, and when the last one turns red, he switches to a curved sword type weapon called a Talwar. He can change his patterns of attack, too." He closed the guidebook. "That's it for the briefing. As for the distribution of loot, money will be divided equally among everyone. The party that defeats the boss gets the EXP; and whoever gets an item, keeps it. Any objections?" The crowd remained silent. "Good! We leave tomorrow at ten in the morning! Meeting adjourned, people".
The players talked a bit more with their party members, and then slowly left the area. Kibaou even approached the blue haired knight to apologize for his disruption. Kirito hadn't gotten a word in with Diabel, but felt that the little to no eye contact that they made was enough to tide them over until their racey adventure the next day.
Kirito walked down the dimly lit street in the Town of Beginnings, the heels of his boots clicking against the stone walkway. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a familiar maroon hood, one that belonged to his party member in the upcoming raid the next morning. He approached the girl, who was sitting alone on a stone ledge. She had a roll of stale bread in her hands, and was slowly tearing off pieces as she ate.
"Those are pretty good, aren't they?" Kirito said, making conversation. In reality Kirito liked eating… other things… much more. "Mind if I sit down?" He hopped up onto the ledge and sat a few inches apart from her. She quickly slid away to increase the distance between them to a few feet.
"You really think these taste good?" she questioned, referring to Kirito's comment. She looked at the bread with a sense of contempt. Even with the hood covering the majority of her face, it was clear that it had wronged her in some way. She was eating it not out of hunger, but vengeance.
"Uh-huh. Since I came to this town, I ended up eating at least one a day. Of course, I got a trick to make it taste better." There were two, really. The first was imagining Kayaba's excellent knee-caps to distract from the wretched taste. Kirito liked to keep that one his little secret though. The other, he would gladly share.
"What trick?" she asked.
Kirito opened his menu and then scrolled through his items in the window. He clicked on one, and a jar materialized in his hand. He passed it to the girl, "Try it with some of that".
She tapped the top of the jar, and a glowing white light hovered over her fingers as she dragged it across the top of her roll. Thick yellow cream scraped across the top of the bread, and once she finished the motion the jar shattered into hundreds of colorful shards of glass. "Cream?" She took a bite, and after realizing the drastic improvement in taste ate it with haste, nearly inhaling the bread.
"I got it from 'The Heifer Strikes Back'" he added. "That's the quest in the village before you get to this one. You want to know how I did it?"
"Uh-uh," she responded. "I appreciate the offer, but I didn't come to this town to eat good food."
Kirito was a bit taken back. It wasn't everyday that he attempted to be friendly with people he had no interest in. Especially boring women that offered no prospects of a romantic relationship. "Okay. Why are you here?"
"So I don't lose sight of who I am" she said, still cloaked in darkness. "I don't want to lock myself in a room in the Town of Beginnings and slowly rot away. I'd rather stay the way I am till the last moment. Even if a monster beats me and I die, I won't lose to this game or this world, no matter what."
He didn't know if he could last sitting through the girl's monologue much longer, the pure ennui was sinking in faster than the realization that Kirito would have missed the season finale of DragRace. But when thinking of Diabel's stunningly smooth skin and slim fingers, he knew he could make it. Although, against the girl's claims, being killed by Kayaba's system didn't feel like the worst way to go. It seemed even a bit… hot.
"I wouldn't want a party member dying on me," he said coldly. "So try not to die tomorrow".