Chapter 3

On my way out of the plaza I saw the player with red hair walking back towards the plaza. I kept on running and when I left the city I saw the black haired boy in the distends. I tried to keep up with him but every time I got closer, a monster would span and set me back again.

After seeing how he defeated monsters I knew he was a beta tester. There was no other way that he knew so much about moving in this game without being in the beta test. I knew them because I had 1 day in it myself. But seeing how fast he was going and never seem to get lost on the paths ahead of us, he must have the full 2 month of experiences. I knew I would only slow him down and the reason he ran when before anyone else must have been to avoid that. But if I have the chance to talk to him, maybe he would give me some tips and tricks so we could help each other if one of us needed it.

After I saw him except a quest I took it also. The reward was a sword and I knew the starting sword wouldn't be strong enough to keep protecting me. I saw him in the distant walking with another player. I haven't seen another player then him and me this far so I was wandering how he got here this fast.

On my way back to finish the quest I saw a sword, standing in the ground with the flower needed for the quest on top of it and couldn't help myself to think who had died. And why so soon? If both of them had been here this fast, shouldn't they both had been in the beta test? And if they were, they should both been incredibly strong and skilled enough to finish a quest like this alive like I did.

Still thinking about that I arrived back in the town and walked towards the NPC to finishes the quest and take the new sword. I hoped it was a strong one-handed sword because during that one day of testing, I had tried a lot of different swords and found out that the one-handed type was the one that fit me. The moment I wanted to open the door, the boy that I was following walked outside. He looked sad so I didn't say anything. I could only nod at him and think about the sword I saw in the forest.

A week after that I finally met him in person. We met in the dungeon, both leveling up. Well met, we saved each other from monsters that were trying to hit us in our backs. I saw him struggling and I decided to help. After I saved him, a second monster attacked me and he returned the favor. After that we both took a rest.

"That was close… Thanks for saving me." I said to him.

"Well, thank you too. You saved me first so I had to return the favor."

"Still, if you didn't reacted, I would been dead now. But I'm glad it didn't came to that. I'm Exia."

"I'm Kirito, and I am also glad we both made it out of there."

We shook hands and smiled to each other.

"I have to admit something, ever sins the day this started, I have been following you. Thanks to you I have this sword on my back. After seeing you I knew you had experience and knew how to survive this world. You have learned this in the beta test right?"

He looked at me with an expression I couldn't describe. Was he angry because I followed him or scared that I founded it out that he was in the beta test?

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make a party here or make you do something you don't want too. I saw you running of on your own so my guess is you don't want to be in a party and I think that's because you were in the beta test and most players will hold you down. I just hoped to learn a couple of things from you so I would have a bigger chance to survive."

His face relaxed a little after my words.

"Well yes, I was a beta tester." He started.

"But you must have been one too, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to get here alive. The way you fight, I can see you have been used to higher level swords and sword skills."

I looked surprised. But thinking about it, it wasn't weird that he saw it. It was true after all. After seeing my face surprised, his became serious again.

"Well your right that I do have some experience myself. I won a quiz and the prize was a tour at Argus, the company who had made this game. During my time there I had the chance to try the game out for one day. That is how I know some stuff. But because it was just one day, most of the time I had I used different kind of swords to find out the kind I like. The avatar they gave me was a level 50 one so I was able to use a lot of the higher level skills and was able to get swords of the same level too."

He looked at me and was thinking about what I had said. Was he thinking I was lying to him?

"Well, there was a quiz back then. So if you tested the game you should know the answer to this question. There were always GM logged on, but the head of the GMs, what did he look like?"

He looked serious and I noticed his hand slowly moving towards the handle of his sword.

"Well, I have met him one time so I'm not really sure but I think his avatar was just like all male GMs. An old sorcerer with a ling beard. But because it wasn't always the same because no one can be logged in 24 hours a day. If it was a girl, there avatar was a bespectacled girl. But you could always see who the GMs were because they always would wear the same robe as Kayaba did on the day this started."

He took his hand away from his sword and started smiling.

"First, you are right. And second, it seems that you can work under pressure. You noticed I moved my hand and still you took your time while getting ready to dodge if I attacked. Very well then, I will teach you what you want to know. But I am not planning to form a guild here. So after we are done, our ways will separate again."

After 3 days of training he had told me almost everything he knew and I was aware what had to be done. I had to find the boss room and until I had found it, map the dungeon. The moment I was back in the city, share it with everyone else and hope that anybody else who went in the dungeon did the same. There were some people trying to make money from the data but after they founded out I was giving the same data away for free they stopped with it.

One month after it all started, I was in the dungeon still trying to find the boss room. I know a lot of people are gathering today to make a plan to work together to find and defeat the boss. But I decided to go to the dungeon. I knew Kirito was going to the plaza so if something interesting would happen, he would send me a message. I would do the same if I founded the boss room. So the ones in the plaza would go right to planning the boss raid instead of finding the room.

After I was nearly there, I got a message from Kirito saying the room was found and that the Guide Book had information about the boss monster. They were planning to attack it in the morning.

The guide book he was talking about was a small book that was sold for free in most shops. It contained information about the game and would have an update when people shared information in it. That way we would have information about what monster are ahead of us, or like in this case, the boss monster. Most likely, the last part was shared by the game itself to help us a little. Most likely, only the first boss would have this feature. After that we had to see for our self what the second and from that one would be like.

I decided to go back so I could take part of the raid the next day. But because of a lot of monsters in my way I had no other option then to keep using save zones in the dungeon to rest and charge myself up. Because of that it was already morning when I finally was outside of the dungeon.

Because of that I decided to rest and not be part of the group moving towards the boss room. Later that day I got the information that thanks to Kirito the boss was defeated. The only part I didn't understand was why they called him a [ Beater ].

When I tried to send him a message to ask it to him, I noticed that he was no longer in my friend list. What was weird because he was there the day before. There wasn't a way he had died, he was too strong for that so there had to be a reason he deleted me.

I had the chance to ask it to him, 4 month later on the 6th of April 2023 when I suprisedly met him on floor 11. The front line was already on floor 28 and I was here to get some items. So was he here for the same thing?

After we talked for some time I learned that they called him a beater because he knew about the weapon the boss used. The information in the guide book was wrong and after he noticed that, it was already too late and someone died. They founded out he was a beta tester and called him a cheater. That is how they came up with the name [ Beater ] for him. He was on this floor to escape from those people for a bit and have some time to relax. Also that a guild had invited him to join them after he had saved them but he was scared that if they founded out that he was the [ Beater ] and his level was higher than them, they would be angry at him and wont trust him.

"Well, I think you should join them Kirito. Being a Solo Player does increases the risk of being killed." I said to him.

"I always have some things ready to be save but yeah, it is a lot saver to being with a group. But what will happen if they see my level. They will know I'm a lot stronger and they will not trust me for it."

"Then hide your level." The reason I knew about this is because I spoke with some players that had done that.

"Hide your level? Can you do that?" he asked surprised.

I showed him how to do it and 2 days later he joined that guild. He seemed happy so I left for the front lines again, knowing he would be alright. And because he was in my friend list again, I would know if something was up.

Later that year I met him again, it was December 20, 2023 on floor 49. He was looking for information about a rumor spreading around. That on Christmas Eve, an event would take place and the reward for it was an item that would revive players that were killed.

It was almost as he was a completely other person. When I got close to him I noticed that the emblem for member of a guild was no longer there. And just like me, he had been leveling up like crazy. I was already level 70, but he, who had been on the lower floors after he joined the guild was also level 70.

After I asked him about it, he told me about how the entire guild had been killed. And he was after that item in the hope to revive a girl from that guild, Sachi. I offered my help but he didn't want it. He would do this alone.

Instead of leaving him there I found as much information I could. Places that were big enough for a boss fight and stuff like that. I did that mostly because I was ashamed I couldn't understand what he was going through.

Sadly, I founded out a month later. I met a party in a dungeon and because we both had the same goal, exploring and mapping that dungeon I joined them and we went together. Because I was stronger than them, I hide my level and told them I didn't know why it didn't show my level but that it was the same as them. I knew that if I used sword skills higher of level than the level they had, they would find out so I mostly did support then the actually fighting. But then it back fired on me,

We ran into a trap and we were surrounded by monsters. When I figured it out, I accidently used a high level sword skill. They all turned around and looked surprised at me, and because of that, monsters attacked in from behind and they didn't have time to defend themselves.

They were all killed and I was the only one that survived. Because I lied to them, they were killed. If they had known my true level, they weren't surprised when I used that skill and wouldn't be distracted.

A week after that, I met Kirito and we talked about it. Both of us didn't talk about what happened but mostly about how we had to move forward from it. We decided that it was probably the best to try and forget it and move on. If we didn't, then we both would die to, or too scared to fight at all. We knew it wasn't easy to do, but we didn't had a choice and went or separate way.