I stared down at the panel, confused and not sure as to how to process what I was seeing. The three of us had logged in without any real problems, but the panel also showed that Steven was logged on with the same account as the one he used for Sword Art Online. Until now I had been sceptical of what the two men had been saying in the real world, I was at the point of believing that Steven was as good as dead. But here it is, proof that he was still alive and was in this world.
"It could be wrong. The friends list may just be glitching, as we're using our old accounts." Aurora said with a slow and faltering voice. It seemed that she still couldn't believe what she was looking at.
"But what if it is him?" I ask quietly, wanting to believe that he was still here and trying to push aside the doubts in my mind.
"If it's him, we'll find him and end this." Aurora replied with more confidence behind it. She closed the friends panel and grabbed hold of my hands and pulled back against them, forcing them to raise up between us. "But first we need to find Sky." She continued with a stern tone. At this she turned around, let go of one of my hands and dragged me forward into the forest with the other hand.
I quickly gave into her tugging and trailed behind her for a few seconds before I matched her pace and we moved through the forest side by side, still holding hands. I wanted to get straight into searching for Steven, I wanted a friend and comrade back with us in reality. To me getting him back in any way we could, or being told that he would never return was much better than watching him tread the balance in the hospital bed.
But however much I wanted to follow whatever trail that Steven may have left, but I found it almost impossible to ignore or go against something that Aurora had asked me to do. I cared for her too much and she was too much a part of me for me to simply shrug her off and follow my own desires, I trusted her and wanted to stay close to her. So I somewhat reluctantly followed beside Aurora making sure I didn't lose grip of the warmth in her hand.
As we ran we got deeper and deeper into the forest and so it grew ever darker and it was not long before we were practically running in pitch black conditions. It was at this point that my tracking vision kicked in again which allowed me to see the slight outlines of the trees enough so that I could avoid running into them. As we kept running I could see faint green footprints across the floor which we seemed to be following.
Suddenly practically out of thin air a large object, that was glowing a vivid bright red came into my vision and lunged at the two of us. Instinctively I fell to one knee onto the dry ground and pulled Aurora down with me, nearly making her fall forward onto her face. The glowing object which had propelled itself at us just missed our heads and landed with a loud thud a few meters away from us.
I turned around, let go of Aurora's hand, and drew out my short sword. To my left Aurora stood up to a few large steps backwards, pulled her bow from over her back had nocked an arrow within a second. The monster that had attacked us had quickly wheeled itself around and bared down at us once again.
I burst forwards, pushing hard off from the ground, and started initiated a sword skill out of pure habit. The monster swiped at me with one of its paws, which had a number of sharp, needle like claws attached to it.
I took the decision not to parry it, or even try to dodge the attack, as I was already committed to my all out sword strike. Luckily a luminous arrow flew at an unbelievable speed, hitting the paw and piercing straight through it without any problem. This arrow knocked its strike completely off target and so with a spin of my body I swung upwards and cut straight through the middle of the monster, splitting it in half and killing it.
The monster gave off a white glow before exploding into a number of particles which floated away with the gentle breeze. But although the monster was gone my body was shaking and my hand twitched around the hilt of the sword. I tried looking down at the sword in my hand but the sight of the killing blade forced me to look away. I had instinctively and brutally killed a monster, albeit a virtual representation of game data, but the speed at which I reacted to the monster shocked me.
"Andrew!" Aurora's pleading shout snapped me out of my shock and I looked up to see that she had been pushed up against a tree by another monster, which she was barely holding back by holding her bow between her and her attacker.
My grip around my sword tightened once again and my body stopped shaking as I once again burst out from my standing position. My sword skill initiated in a bright flash of red and I stabbed out at what I presumed to be the neck of the monster. The sheer force of my sword colliding with it and the small explosion caused by my sword skill sent the monster flying through the forest, crashing through trees and far beyond my tracking vision's range.
"There's going to be more of them." I said quickly, standing in front of Aurora to try and create a physical blockade from anything wishing to attack her.
"There's at least 5 of them that I can see." Aurora said through heavy breaths. Obviously her search skill was higher than my own, which came as a surprise to me. I really didn't know as much as I thought I knew about them. She then went to nock an arrow again, this time she pointed her bow upwards and shot a shining white arrow high into the trees above us. The arrow embedded itself within a branch of one of the overhanging trees and turned into a small ball of light, which acted almost like the sun.
With the area now lit up, almost as if it were daytime, I deactivated my tracking vision and looked at the monsters which were prowling in a wide circle around us. The monsters looked like wolves with grey fur, fangs and red eyes. But they were much bigger and bulkier than any wolves that existed in the real world, placing them close to bears. In this new light I could see their names, 'Wolverns", however I could also see that they only had a small green health bar.
The monsters circled us while giving off low growls, after their first attacks they seemed not to want to attack us and for now stayed back from us. "How do you want to do this?" I asked in a low voice. The monsters on their own wouldn't pose much of a threat, but if they attacked at the same time when either of us were off guard then it would likely deal a lot of damage.
"Best we could do is for me to shoot at them and you protect from any that try and charge us." Aurora replied after a few seconds before nocking another arrow. I readied my sword in front of me and I heard the slight noise of Aurora drawing back on her bowstring.
However before Aurora could let off her first arrow a tunnel of red and gold fire burst out from far in the forest and burnt two of the monsters to nothing within a second. A moment afterwards a huge fireball sped through the trees and crashed into the ground with a huge explosion, killing two of the monsters and knocking the last one to the ground.
The Wolvern tried to scramble itself to its feet, but its life was quickly put to an end when a longsword was thrust through its exposed neck. I looked up from the dead Wolvern to see a player wearing a large red leather trench coat, a black shirt, black trousers and heavy brown boots. Their hair was blonde and fell down their back in a single plait.
The player ripped out their sword from the ground, where it had managed to embed itself, and looked up at the two of us, who stood there in confusion. I instantly recognised the face. Sky had managed to find us while we were fighting. But the thing that threw me and put me on edge and on guard was the simple fact that she was part of the player killing race of Salamanders.