"Did you honestly think that we would miss this fight Steven." Said the tall one looking directly at me.
"Yer, you've known us long enough to know that we were gonna get our hands on this game one way or another." The other said to me as he sheathed his sword and leaned his shield against the wall.
"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!?" I shouted in astonishment at my two oldest friends from the real world, I had known Oliver Scarrow and Andrew Burlet for most of my life and regarded them for a long time as my best friends. I had thought for all this time that only me and the shorter curly haired Andrew, that stood beside me in shock at seeing people he knew to be my friends, were the only ones in this grand game of chess. But no these two people had come through to the virtual world as well as us and were now in the same situation, a true hope of survival rose within me now I had three friends who I trusted with my life and was ready to die for them.
"Well we saw you walking down towards these mountains and decided to follow to try meet up. But by the time we reached the mountains you were already halfway up the path. So we followed and found that you were in a bit of trouble with the Goblins, soooooo we decided to give you a bit of help." The tall one named Oliver answered my shouted question as he strapped his axe to his back.
"Just in time by the look of it as well." Commented the shorter one named Andrew.
"And many thanks for that as well, but now lets party up and get the hell off this mountain before night. We can talk when we've set up camp." I say seriously when I remember the danger these mountains might pose during the night.
"All ways were the kill joy weren't you Steven." Oliver says with a laugh remembering how in the real world for a long time I was stiffly serious all the time.
"Oh, shut up Torinn." I respond using Oliver's in-game name which was now above his HP bar on my U.I. above Andrew's in-game name being Adrin. "And seriously what the hell kinda names are they?" I ask the two after thinking of what they could mean with no success.
"Just random names from an old game I used to play as we couldn't think of any good ones ourselves." Oliver replied without hesitation as if expecting me to ask this question.
"Right." I say quietly before walking out of the cave with my trusted friends behind me. It took about 40 minutes to scale down the mountain and only a few words are passed between us, it takes a further 20 minutes to find suitable flat ground just outside the mountain range to set up a camp and then actually set it up. By now the sun was setting and the sky had become a gentle shade of orange.
As we sat round the large roaring fire which me and Oliver had brought to life we began talking about our experiences in this world. Oliver and Andrew's time in SAO started off a lot like my one, fighting with a vengeance to get through the first floor. However they had lived in a town further away from the front lines and therefore only fought at the front line on occasion and mostly grinded on a number of lower level monsters and repeatable quests. However they had heard word that an organised boss battle was to occur and so the two decided to make the journey to the front line to join the battle, however when they arrived the battle had ended long before. Seeing no point in staying on floor one they went through the floor door and came out on the same cliff side which we had and when picking a route they unmistakably saw me and Andrew in the distance fighting the ox monsters and decided to follow.
"Then we came into the cave where I charged the Goblins while Andrew guarded the entrance stopping anything getting out or in. So after all of that did anyone get any useful loot as all the goblins dropped was some iron which I can't actually use." Oliver finished off. We all looked in our inventories and I found that I had the scale mail shirt and sword of the Orc that I had killed, seeing I had it I decide to equip it to show the rest. The white steel scale mail shirt replaced my chest plate, it was a simple shirt but protective and allowed me to move around easier than with my chest plate. The sword however was more interesting it had a black silk saya with a red ruby dragon encrusted under the cross guard, as I drew Black Cloud from it's Saya we saw that it was a smoky black blade with the blade being sharp enough to seeming cut through anything, the usual flat side of the Katana was finely serrated giving me two lethal way to use it. This had to be one of a few swords like this in the whole game and with this tier of rarity came a great power with the sword, the sword had an attack stat way beyond anything I had seen and it's defence was a bit higher than the sword I used to kill Black Cloud's previous master.
"WOAH! That sword is a bit over kill don't you think, for this floor at least." Andrew B. said when I passed it over to him so he could see it more closely.
"Overkill maybe, but this beauty is going to last a long time and will be useful for at least 50 floors if I can get it buffed by a good blacksmith or I could enchant it or simply do both." I say thoughtfully as the sword was passed between my friends who were amazed at the beauty of the sword but the brutality and damage that it could inflict from one swing.
"So how rare do you think that sword really is Olly, as you're the expert on rarity." Andrew B asked Oliver who sat next to him. Oliver opened up the stats panel of the sword which had an extra tab which allowed him to appraise the sword, a skill belonging to merchants or weapon experts. He pressed the appraisal button and after a few moments of what looked like the system gathering info on the sword he reached his verdict.
"Well the sword is extremely rare as it is a one of a kind and is worth around a mega col in normal shops and about 1 and a half mega col to people who know what this sword really is. Now you know about it's ability to do more damage to any creatures of darkness, well it has another hidden ability. When or should I say if, a vial of dragon blood, which itself is an exceedingly rare item, is combined with the sword through a blacksmith the sword transforms into a much more powerful version of itself." He related to us stunned at the weapon he was currently holding in front of him.
"Sooooo, in other words, it's extremely overpowered and is worth more than anything any of us have seen before combined." I say in disbelief as I accepted the sword back from Oliver's appraisal.
"Basically, yer." he replies simply before bidding us goodnight and then retreating to his tent. Not long after Andrew B does the same and leaves me an Andrew sitting by the fire alone. I look into the dying embers of our grand fire mesmerised at how real it all looks, not virtual, not fantasy and not imagination, in this world everything was now real. I looked up into the night sky and saw the glowing white moon high in the sky shining it's light over the vast mountain range and valleys under it. The stars in the sky glittered in the blackness in the eternal constellations I had learned many years ago, no matter where I was the same stars looked down upon me as a burning reminder of the light within all darkness showing me that anything in this universe was possible, as long as we fought for it.
"The murmuring of summer grass, all that is left of the warrior's dream." I say aloud remembering an old Haiku I had read in a book.
"Which means what exactly?" Andrew, who had obviously heard me, asked me with a quizzical look upon his face.
"In this world all that is left of the dream we had of this virtual reality are gone except for the murmuring grass around us." I say back quietly, knowing that he would never actually understand the meaning of the poem. The poem describes a soldier's dreams of a battle shattered when he truly fight his enemies on the field where the cold steel of a sword cares not for who you are only that you bleed and die upon the fields of grass.
"How many people do you think are going to get out of here Andrew?" I ask solemnly with thoughts of death and despair going through my mind.
"I don't know, I just don't know." he replies quietly as any remaining visions of this world begin just a game are shattered by my words. At this he gets up and goes to his tent so he can get some rest for the next day's trek. Now alone outside next to the now faintly glowing ashes I get up, un-sheath my new sword and walk off into the darkness of the mountain range leaving the camp behind me without a look back.
That night I walked through the mountain valleys encountering all kinds of creatures spawned from the darkness within this range. Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and stone Golems all fall to the my blood lusty blade which hacked, sliced and stabbed mercilessly at my foes. The blade never wearied in it's fight, never blunting, cracking or chipping as blood quenched the thirst of the cold steel.
It was morning by the time I arrived back at the camp tired and any lust for battle no longer existent. When I reached the tents I see that my three friends had been looking for me worriedly after finding an empty tent when they had woken up to cook breakfast.
"Where have you been then?" Asked Andrew more relieved to see me than angry at my disappearance.
"Was out training with my new sword." I reply vaguely not wishing to relive the events that night where the darkness within the blade overwhelmed my sense and plunging me into pointless bloody battles before being able to control my actions and therefore taming the sword. After saying this I walk straight into my tent and fall forward onto my makeshift bed and instantly fall asleep.
When I wake after another sleep of tormenting nightmares I hear voices outside talking in serious tones, so I decide to listen in for a bit before coming out of my tent.
"But why was he out all night, I mean a bit of training is okay but a whole night alone is just dangerous here." I hear Andrew saying in a worried voice.
"Well he came back alive so that proves that he isn't going down that easily, however I agree that no matter how skilled he may be he can still die out there on his own." I hear Oliver agree with obvious thought put into what he had just said.
"So what are we supposed to do anyway? None of us can stop him so stop worrying about it, he's not stupid enough to get himself killed. Now lets plan what to do today. Do we stick through the mountain passes, go over the the valley areas or pick a direction and walk?" Andrew B says to the other two with finality.
"Well Steven probably cleared the pass out last night and found nothing to interesting so why don't we go back and go over to the low lying valley area today, there might be a town somewhere around there as well." Oliver says after a few seconds of thought. The other two agree to this and then I hear the three of them begin to cook a breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausages. A few minutes later I decide to get up and out of my tent.
"Hope you cooked something for me as well." I say to the two Andrews sitting by the fire cooking.
"Good job we remembered about you then isn't it." Andrew replies captiously looking at me. I see him doing this and just shake my head and then plonk myself down in front of the fire and gaze into the ever changing and moving flames and embers that made up the fire.
A few minutes later we all sat down and had our small, cooked breakfast in silence before dismantling the camp and then beginning our walk to the large low lying valley area which we saw when we entered the floor. We trek on the few dirt paths that we find and most of the time we walk cross country until we reach a hill which over looks a medium sized town which laid on an excavated flat topped mountain.
The town had very drab buildings which each had a uniformed height to them. As we walked into the town I opened up my map and found out that this town was named Urbus. The city wasn't too interesting and didn't have many shops and only a low level blacksmith. However there was a few item fetching or specific monster hunting quests.
This is how we spent the next few days on the second floor, we stayed at an inn during the night and completed these quests or out fighting monsters to find the boss room. One of the monster killing quests gave us all a martial arts skill when we completed it allowing us to fight our enemies unarmed in extreme cases but it also allowed us to train our base strength and dexterity faster than if we used our weapons.
On the fifth day after completing all of the quests in the town and were beginning to get bored of this town life we found the boss room. We were on the 23rd floor of the dungeon tower which was a large dark cave system which had Goblin and lizard creatures throughout. The boss room came in the form of a formidable tall, solid and thick rusty iron. The door bore runes which none of us could read.
We all pushed hard against the door to open it, the door slowly opened with a creak and revealed a large circular room with a domed stone roof, running along the walls were pillars which went up all the way to the top where they all met up at one small point directly above the centre of the room. The boss stood directly under this meeting of the pillars in the centre of the now lit boss room.