We all stood around the cracked stone table, partially lit by a steak of light filtering into the room through the many round windows in the hard and dark stone walls that surrounded us, looking at a yellowed map of the floor displaying the regions of Pani and the regions beyond the walls which the Geocrawler and other monsters lurked. At the head of the table was Asuna in her normal white and red uniform with her arms folded, backed by 6 heavily armoured Knights, each of them in similar red and red uniforms and all had sheathed great swords on their backs. The Holy Dragon Alliance stood to one side of the table with similar numbers, Fuurinkazan stood back a little from the table with Agil looking over the map, Kirito stood to the side of the table near to the Dragons but not too close, me and the Rangers stood to the side of the Dragons on the opposite side of the table waiting for something to be said.
Suddenly Asuna slammed her hand down on the table and said to all of us in the authoritative and determined voice she always seemed to use at meetings, "We'll lure the boss into the village." She let this sink into the people who were gathered around, some made confused sounds, others looked on in agreement to the idea. But before anything more could be said Kirito had stepped forward and looked at Asuna.
"W-Wait a second. If you do that, the villagers..." He began to speak in a surprised way, obviously against the idea that she had just proposed. But Asuna quickly cut in to his sentence.
"That's the idea. While the boss is killing the NPCs, we'll attack and destroy it." She said without remorse laying out her somewhat cold but simple plan for beating this heavily armoured boss. What she was saying made sense, we attacked it by surprise but we couldn't keep it distracted after we had poured down from the hills to attack it, therefore for this attempt Asuna wanted to use the NPCs for bait to do what we preciously couldn't. I didn't particularly like the idea, but if thats what it took to take down the boss, then that's what we'd have to come to.
"NPCs aren't just 3-D objects like trees or rocks. They're..." Kirito tried to protest once more before yet again being cut over by Asuna who looked at him with an impatient, annoyed and somewhat disgusted glance.
"Alive? Is that it?" She said coldly, at this I saw Kirito falter a bit in his stance knowing that he had no way of denying this underlying fact that the NPCs were still only the projections of a computer program, nothing more. "They're only objects. Even if they are killed, they'll just respawn." she continued now looking back down at the map.
At this Kirito simply said "I can't go along with this." obviously giving up on his protests against the plan, instead he was now not going to cooperate, meaning that we had now lost one of our best front liners before any fight had even begun.
Asuna leaned back up from the table and looked at Kirito irritably "I, Asuna, Vice Commander of The Knights of the Blood Oath, will oversee this operation. You will obey my orders." She asserted her authority as the second in command of the strongest guild in Aincrad and of the organised front liners, she practically held the authority to order near enough everyone here to do whatever she wanted. However Kirito just looked back at her in a calm way, shook his head and walked out of the meeting hall without saying another word. Asuna looked back at everyone in the room "Anyone else got anything to add." everyone remained silent and still, "Right then, I expect to see everyone at the gates at noon, meeting adjourned."
She turned from the table and walked from the room, followed by her entourage of heavily armoured knights, as they left everyone began to mill around some leaving, some staying but most people were talking about the abrupt way that Kirito had left the meeting and of the coming hours when the brutal and cold, yet logical plan would be set into motion. I left the large, yet dark room, and walked outside where I was momentarily blinded by the bright sun that was slowly climbing over horizon of tall buildings and mountains. Outside people were slowly moving away from the large meeting hall, a building similar to the rest of the ant hill like houses but bigger with a large dirt path leading up to it.
Behind me I heard Andrew B talking in his usual loud manner, not particularly caring if anyone was listening to him. "Honestly I don't see what's wrong with Asuna's plan, I mean yer, the villagers are likely to get killed, but unlike us, who are much more important and LIVING, they will just respawn in five minutes or so after they die. That way they get killed and we don't, no real harm done, whereas another head on plan like last time will get even more people killed in this game." He said resolutely, knowing what he was saying was true, even if people may not agree with the idea of offering the townspeople up as a tasty offering.
I just shook my head, knowing that I couldn't change Andrew B's mind and anyway it didn't really matter. But when I heard the rest of them agreeing instead of going against it like I though they might I turned around and spoke to them. "So just because they're not real in the sense that they're not actually human, you're prepared to let these people get completely massacred in an attempt to kill a boss, people who have helped us and given us places to stay and sold us a fair amount of items. Its not even as if they don't act like humans, they act and talk as if they were players even if their speech is blatantly scripted in some places."
"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity and if you never venture, you never win." Oliver came back quickly, I recognised them from the Art of War. The first one meaning that in the chaos of the village we would have our opportunity to find its weaknesses and strike, the second meaning that we would never win any battles without trying things that may be risky or that may break the standard forms of fighting. "And anyway as Asuna said they'll respawn, even if every single NPC dies before we push it out of the town, nothing has been lost really." He continued calmly. I still looked at him annoyed, every way you look at it the plan is simple and would theoretically work, I just didn't want to offer up defenceless peasants and merchants just so we could attempt a win to move onto the next floor.
"Its still only a game Steven. I don't like the fact that we're following her orders either but we both know damn well at the moment this is all that we can do." Andrew B added, he could obviously see the conflict between liking and hating the plan going on in my mind. "Well there's not much point waiting around, noon is half an hour away so we might as well get over to there now." He continued decisively changing the subject from the actual plan at hand.