The sound of the Boss crashing its claws in rage against the imposing wooden gate resounded through the town, but the players walking into the town of Pani from it were relieved knowing that we had escaped the horror that was now stuck on the other side of the imposing reinforced wooden unbreakable gate. Pani was a small town made up of many medium sized wooden houses surrounded by many green trees and a district at the back of the town of anthill like buildings made from the yellowish stone of the area, this was all encircled inside a high walled gorge of rough and jagged yellowish stone.
I stood not far behind the locked gate in the shadow of the still raging beast, sheathing my sharp blade in its sheath and anxious as to weather the gate would hold against its viscous attacks, even though I knew that the game wouldn't allow the gate to fall. After a few more enraged attacks on the gate the Geocrawler seemed to have realised it couldn't get through the gate, it let out a short clicking noise before turning away from the gate and moved back into the valley where it promptly burrowed deep into the ground sending a cloud of dust and dirt into the air and causing the ground to shake slightly.
I turned away from the gate to see that both Klein, still with his sword held tensely in his hand, and Kirito, slowly placing his single handed black blade into its sheath on his back, looking out over the gate with looks of annoyance at how their plan had worked out. No success in killing it, wasting a rare A-rank food, finding a seemingly unbreakable defence and nearly loosing skilled players in the process. The two of them quickly turned away from the gate and walked off silently into the town, following the crowd of players that were still slowly moving away from the gates.
Me, not seeing much point in just standing there, also began to walk back into the richer trading district of the town. The streets were wide, clean and were paved with large light grey cobbles, lining the streets was a number of detached beige coloured buildings with black slate roofs some large and some relatively small, each selling a different range of items or services, from high end and mystical rune and crystal shops to the general bare basic food merchants. The merchants themselves varied as much as their shops, some wore long flowing dark silk robes while others wore simple cloth and cotton clothes and some wore various bits and pieces of shining armour as they all stood outside their shops calling out to and bartering with passing players.
As I kept walking down the street the cobbles began to become mossier and rougher, the buildings started to size down significantly until all was left were a number of wooden stalls where farmers sold their produce to any who would listen to their prices and offers. Pani was a very polarised town when it came to wealth, the district closer to the gate was where the shop owners and the rich men of the town lived in solid, comfortable and somewhat luxurious houses, but as you moved further and further from the gate the solid brick and wooden buildings began to dissipate into a large spread of anthill like homes, small formations of hollowed stone with some openings for light and an open entrance, this is where the general farmer slept, ate and generally lived when not at work.
However the poorer people of Pani seemed not to be resentful to the richer and were content with the simple, yet laborious, life style which they had been destined to live. Past the hollowed rock houses was the large expanse of fields which had a huge range of crops growing on them, from wheat to rice, any crop that could be farmed was being farmed in a huge miss match of patchwork fields owned by close to 100 people. This was the entirety of the 56th floor, the floor entrance lay on the far side of the fields in the side of one of the surrounding mountains, all the way through Pani, the floor's only town, through the long barren valley that the Geocrawler had just escaped from ending with a huge opening from the valley where the floor portal was hewn into the mountainside with a large orange stoned staircase leading up to it. This was one of the smallest floors we had yet to encounter, yet the problem of the Geocrawler had made it one of the hardest to clear.
I walked through the no longer cobbled, but dirt street up to one of the small hollow houses which I walked into through the opening in the face of the rock. I entered a medium sized room which was partially lit by sunlight pouring through a couple of small square openings high on the walls, the room was simply furnished with two small beds a small rough and slightly chipped round wooden table which stood on four thick legs, around it were 4 similar hard chairs, in the far corner of the room was a large ash pile under a roughly cut chimney which cut out of the rock letting light in through it.
Sitting at the table both of the Andrews and Oliver who were playing some sort of card game with a pack of monster imaged cards, each of them hiding their cards form the other two and concentrating on their next move. While Aurora was lying down on one of the beds looking up at the ceiling and Sky was sitting against the wall by the burnt out fireplace reading an old leather bound book., both of them not really paying attention to what was going on around them. Oliver was the only one who realised I had walked in, as he sat facing the door, and quickly said "Hi Steven." before looking back down to the card game where he promptly threw his cards on the table in defeat.
The rest of them looked up at me and mumbled greetings, still half in their own worlds, this was the norm for us when the frontliners were on a boss raid. We would rent out a house so we could stay close to the front so that we could be called out to help against the boss a a moments notice and so that we could add any ideas we had to the strategy meetings which were held daily to gather ideas and form a plan of attack. Should that plan fail however, as the one today did, the six of us went back to our rented house and just sat around for a few hours doing things of little importance before going back to goal at hand.
I sat down in the last chair at the table next to Oliver and asked him, "So, how did it go on your side with the Worm's tail, as its head and claws were a pain to dodge for me." I say only somewhat interesting in the answer, but wanting to break the silence that held the house.
"Wasn't to hard at the start, but it didn't realise that we were there at that point, once it did know we were there it was hell with that bloody spiked tail flying from side to side and ploughing into the ground every so often. It didn't seem to have much of an attack pattern either, so it was hard to predict where it was going to hit. We landed a bunch of hits on it though, shame practically all of them hit its sodding armour and pretty much bounced off and then the very few that hit the thing did such a small amount of damage it would have taken hours to finish that thing off." He said angrily at how so far this boss seemed impossible to beat by the normal force that every other boss in Aincrad had fallen to.
"Same happened for us with its armour, even Kirito couldn't smash through its visor. I suppose we had better wait till tomorrow's meeting, see if anyone has come up with any other brilliant ideas or see if the Dragons or Blood Knights just come up with another way to try take it down using force." I say sarcastically knowing that something of the sort was likely to be suggested. Andrew suddenly threw down his cards and Andrew B let out a cheer and punched the air with his hands as he placed down his winning hand, I turn to the table as Andrew B collected the cards in and said, "Deal me in as well."