ALO: The Rangers
My writing fan fiction started off as a way to write down some ideas, then I started writing it because people wanted to read it, and now I write it for fun.
Me writing for fun, I would not have guessed it would happen in a million years.
And we're on too chapter 4 already! This one may be somewhat shorter then the first because, well the ALO part is worse in my opinion and because ALO part is shorter, they don't do as much anyway. I'll add some extra stories onto the end, the canon ones and possibly some original ones.
This story can't be longer then a week of in story time from here because they need to rescue Asuna before she has to marry Sugou in a week.
Also, sorry that I called Alicia Alice in the last chapter.
Also I'm pretending Sinon bought a dagger along with her bow, though I forgot to write that.
Chapter 4: Arun
(1st person, Sinon, January 21st, 3:02pm)
Okay well now that that was dealt with...
Alicia and Sakuya were both trying to flirt with Kirito who just sent me a look that said 'Please help'.
Normally people—at least stereotypically—are supposed to stop people from flirting with their boyfriends, but I was lazy, ah whatever I'm gonna shoot her or something.
I drew my bow and launched an arrow right between Kirito's arm and Alicia's face, who was hugging onto his arm causing her to jump back.
Sakuya hadn't actually been touching him so he was able to step away now.
He jumped and landed next to me.
"Uhh, thanks." he said.
Alicia had a sad look on her face, well I don't care if she's sad, next time it will hit her in the hand, yeah I know I just said I was lazy but it is still annoying given that Leafa literally introduced me as her 'brother's girlfriend'.
"You know you aren't supposed to shoot your own race's lord right?" asked Leafa.
"If I was trying to hit her, I would have hit her." I said.
"True, true, not doubting your ability to hit anything you want at any distance as long as it is within theoretical range and not obstructed, but still..." Leafa said.
"Is that how you treat your lord?" asked a very angry Alicia.
"Depends on the situation." I answered.
"What if you hit me?!" she asked angrily.
"If I wanted to hit you, I would have hit you, if I don't want to hit you, I don't hit you. I never miss." I said, it was nearly true anyway.
"Well you scared me." she said calming down a bit.
"That was the point." I answered.
"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" she asked, angry again.
"Because, incase you didn't notice, you were clinging to and flirting with my boyfriend." I answered.
She just drooped, unable to come up with an answer to that.
I walked over to Kirito—who was standing next to the edge of the flat spot on the cliff they were on, right next to a sheer drop off—and jumped at him, sending us both of the cliff.
While we were falling I hugged him under the arms from behind and said "Payback!"
"For what?" he asked.
"For when we just learned to fly without the controller." I answered.
"Oh... yeah I guess that makes sense. So are we planning to slam into the ground or fly before then?" he asked.
"I dunno, I would prefer the later because it will be less painful." I said.
"Right, well let's fly then because we only have about 3 more seconds of free fall." Kirito said and started flying.
I let go of him and started flying as well.
We hovered there and I said "That was fun."
"Yeah." Kirito said.
"Are we going back up or heading straight to Arun?" I asked.
"Let's go back up and get Leafa." Kirito said.
"Right, but first..." I said and pulled him into a hug, surprising him.
After a moment he hugged me back and then Yui returned to full size and hugged both of us, though in this form Yui couldn't fly so she was hanging onto us.
"Yui, be careful okay." I said.
"It's not like I have HP as a navigation pixie or in this form anyway." she answered.
"Still, watching children fall isn't nice even if you know they'll be fine." I answered.
"Fine." said Yui with a fake pout and climbed between us.
I kissed her on the forehead and said "We should probably go back up before Leafa starts worrying about us."
"Okay mama!" Yui said and with a flash of white Yui transformed into a pixie and landed in Kirito's pocket.
Kirito and I let go of each other and flew up, landing on the flat area after about 30 seconds.
"Why did you two jump off a cliff, literally?" asked Leafa.
"Fun and payback." I answered.
"You two are weird." she answered.
""We don't deny it."" Kirito and I said in sync.
"Do they always act like that?" asked Sakuya.
"Yes. Annoyingly so." said Leafa.
"What's wrong with how we act?" I asked.
"In the real world all you two do is get perfect grades and then sleep in the park and in the virtual world you just take stupid risks and do things that would terrify the s*** of normal people for 'fun'."
"What is wrong with that?" I asked.
"It makes it impossible to do anything with you. It is either boring or terrifying." Leafa said.
"We live life how we live it." I said.
"Anyway, we should probably get going to Arun." Kirito said.
"Why are you two going to Arun, are you going to try to clear Yggdrasil with two people?" asked Sakuya.
"If necessary, it can't be that hard." I said jokingly, knowing full well that if we are right about what is at the top then it will be designed to be impossible.
"We owe you two, we will try to gear up as fast as possible to help you clear it." Alicia said.
"Right, well if you need money." I said and materialized half of the total money I had, knowing I wouldn't be needing it.
Kirito did the same and the amount of money we gave them completely shocked them "Where did you two get so much money?" asked Sakuya surprised.
"That should be enough for everything else we need to prepare a raid on the world tree." Alicia said.
"It's a secret." I said, not particularly wanting to tell them, or anyone, that the game glitched and gave us our SAO money and some other stuff.
"You could make a fortune off selling your way of getting money." Leafa said jokingly.
"Or we can make a fortune by using it." I answered.
"Anyway let's get going, I want to ideally get there today so we can try to conquer Yggdrasil today or tomorrow after school." Kirito said.
Leafa and I nodded and the 3 of us took off, waving goodbye to the Cait Sith and Sylph lords.
We flew off at the highest speed we could maintain to the center of the world, Yggdrasil.
The flight there was rather uneventful and boring though it took a while and we need to rest our wings a few times.
Overall we got there at around 7pm, which meant that because it was a Sunday, Midori would be home soon.
"Looks like we don't have time today for attempting the tree, we need to hurry and make dinner." I said.
"Yeah, sadly, of well it will give the lords more time to prepare and help us, after all, if attempting something designed to be impossible, we could use all the help we can get. Not that we haven't done the impossible before, and every game has bugs, other then SAO of course." Kirito said.
"You just say SAO has no bugs because you helped make it." I said.
"The only confirmed bug or glitch was that static that occurred around Yui, and that was because Kayaba gave Cardinal strange orders." Kirito said.
"Whatever. Anyway, we should logout and make dinner." I said.
"Okay." Kirito said and went into his menu, navigation to where the log out button is and then froze.
"What?" I asked, thinking that the logout button was gone.
"Nothing, just kidding with you." Kirito said and then before I could react pressed said button and vanished.
I went through the menu and selected logout, tapping it.
Once again the world faded away and was replaced by a green visor.
I pulled the helmet off my head and set it down gently, on a bed, but whatever.
I looked over next to me and saw Kazuto had just sat up.
I decided to get him back for pretending the logout button was gone so I jumped on him and we rolled around back and forth until we rolled off the bed, and fell on the ground in a position where we both hit our elbows.
"Ow. Fu-" I said, cutting myself off from swearing.
"Ouch, that hurt." Kazuto said grabbing his elbow with his other hand.
Sugu walked in and asked "Are you alright? I heard a crash from here."
"Perfectly fine." Kazuto said, just barely keeping the pain out of his voice.
"Did you two like roll off the bed or something?" she asked, giving us a look that had 'seriously?' written all over it.
"Something like that." I muttered, slightly embarrassed, and still in pain.
(January 22nd, 2:23pm)
School was almost over! We could go and rescue Asuna and finish with this stupid thing called SAO at last, though I personally rather enjoyed my time there, not that I would admit it to anyone but Kazuto, they would think I was happy it happened. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all glad that SAO happened, but if SAO could happen in such a way that, for example, no one else risked death, maybe just thought they did but really got logged out when they died or something, then I would prefer it happening to not happening.
Basically I personally enjoyed my time there but I don't wish it would happen again and if I could go back in time I would stop it.
7 minutes later the bell finally rang and ended another boring class, this time the last one of the day.
Kazuto and I walked out of the class and to the meeting point, then walked in the direction of home with Sugu and Horoku.
Then we split up with Horoku when our paths home diverged and then walked home with Sugu.
Staying in the same house as Kazuto was nice and all but I needed to move out at some point, even if Midori didn't seem to mind, I felt bad about it, especially because they didn't know my secret. Unfortunately I had no money, so until I could get enough of an income to rent an apartment I wouldn't be able to move out.
"Well, let's get to clearing the world tree." I said to Kazuto.
"You don't have to come if you don't want to." I added to Sugu.
"I'm coming, no way am I leaving on the best part." she said.
"Then off we go." I said and ran up the stairs.
We dived into ALO and appeared back in Arun.
"Let's see how high we can fly up before going in, I'm just curious." I said.
"Sure." Kirito answered and we pushed off the ground full force, flying upwards to maximum speed.
And a little bit before the lowest branches a barrier stopped us.
We were right under the giant branch which had Asuna's cage in the picture, so we were as close to Asuna as we were getting.
"Asuna can you hear me!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.
My response was that after a few seconds a card fell down and I caught it.
It didn't have any info and I didn't seem to be able to put it in my inventory either.
"Yui, do you know what this is?" I asked.
Yui flew out of Kirito's pocket and touched the card.
"It seems to be some sort of admin card, though I can't use it to gain full administrative privileges. It seems to need a console to be used properly." Yui said.
"Right, well we don't know the location of any consoles in ALO so let's try to get to the top of the world tree then." I said and we flew down.
Asuna had probably tossed this down because I doubt Sugou would give us an admin card, which means that she was here.
We entered the dome and started the [Guardians of Yggdrasil] quest, whose goal was to reach the top of the world tree and whose stated reward was your whole race becomes the Alfs, it was a quest that could be completed once.
When we walked into the tree there was at first nothing, but all along the walls, all the way up to the top where there was a large door, there were crystals.
We started flying up, and as expected the moment we started flying the crystals started spawning monsters called [Guardians] that looked to be some form of grey robot, they were all armed with long swords.
Kirito slashed through one with his katana and it went straight through, chopping the sword it tried to parry with and the robot itself in half, killing it instantly.
They were weak. The problem was the quantity and the non-zero attack.
I drew back my bow and chanted a spell that I had learned which basically turned one arrow into a bunch of explosive arrows.
I tired at the blockade of [Guardians] and killed maybe 50 of them, though near instantly 50 of them took their place.
To reach the top we would need to destroy them continuously right in front of us while not getting attacked from the sides. This would be difficult, probably.
I flew next to one and let it hit me with its sword to see how much damage it did.
It did about 3-4% of my total HP, which while if there were a few of them would make them harmless, with this many meant it would be tough.
I pulled out my dagger and slashed it apart, easily killing it in one hit.
Several attacked me and the moment Leafa used a healing spell on me they all suddenly turned and attacked her, that would be a problem.
We retreated to the ground and the moment we landed they all retreated.
"It seems that there is a limitless supply of them and they each deal non-zero damage so we'll need to plow through them while guarding our sides, they regenerate at such a speed that the path we create would close right behind us and we would also be attack from behind." I said.
"Yeah, this might be tough without some way to thin them out first." Kirito said.
"Why don't we give it a try?" I asked.
"Sure, what should we do to plow through? No spell alone will work, it would need to have ridiculous duration, high damage and not hurt us." Kirito said.
"You could do one of your weird blade dance thingies but increase the coverage with some magic?" I asked "Then Leafa and I could cover our sides."
"Might as well try." Kirito said.
Then he chanted "οι σκιές γίνονται λεπίδα μου σφυρηλατηθεί από το σκοτάδι" and a blade of shadow appeared in his hand, he drank a mana potiona and then chanted "απελευθερώνουν την ουσία σας και την εξάπλωση της βασιλείας σας"
After then second chant both swords started to 'glow' black and Kirito said "Okay, I'm ready."
We all got ready and then flew up at top speed, charging through the blockade of [Guardians] with Kirito's blades guarding us from the top and me and Leafa destroying [Guardians] that got near, unfortunately, once we reach about half way up the [Guardians] became [Guardian Archers] and they started hitting us with arrows, we made it a bit higher before we nearly ran out of HP and dove to the ground at max speed to avoid suffering the death penalty.
We reach the ground with a total of about 5% of our party's max HP.
"There are too many, we are going to need to block the arrows somehow, and they might have another trick up their sleeve after that. This is, after all, designed to be impossible." I said.
Just after there was a loud shattering sound and Kirito's shadow sword shattered into fragments of shadow and then faded to nothing. The black 'glow' around Muramasa had also ceased.
"We only made it a little over half way up." Kirito said with a frown.
"Only?" asked Leafa "We just did better then anyone else has done with a full raid yet!"
"Well we have a time limit of one week to reach the top, and unlike them, we're not incompetent." I pointed out.
"Let's see, I can cast a type of shield on you that will be good for stopping the arrows and Sinon can kill the few [Guardians] that get near which would mean that we would have dealt with everything we know of right now though I don't doubt that they have more tricks." Leafa said.
"Yeah, sounds like something we should try." I said.
We waited for a bit to fully recover mana and HP and tried again, though this time Leafa instead stayed on the ground and shielded us with a shield that blocked light attacks almost ignoring them at the cost of being ignored by heavy and slow moving attacks, meaning I had to deal with the [Guardians] that got close.
We got about somewhat higher but then they [Guardians] started throwing their swords and the attacks were heavy and slow enough to ignore the shield, but fast enough that I was unable to block them, so after we each got impaled by a few swords we were forced to retreat, once again, reaching the ground at a few precent HP.
There were two things we would need to get through this, me having the ability to block at least most of the swords and the density of the [Guardians] to be lower, neither of which we really had an immediate way to fix.
Cliffhanger!
But at least this is your second chapter today so you shouldn't expect it to exist at all.
There will probably be only 1 or 2 more chapters of the 'rescue Asuna' part and then I will have to come up with some extra stories for this, sorry that this is much shorter then the SAO part but there is just so much less canon material for the ALO part, well and also it isn't my favorite part.
On top of that the main driving factor of Kirito rescuing Asuna and the main point of the ALO part is how Kirito is in-love with Asuna, which obviously isn't the case here.
Spell guide:
Sword effect area power up: release your essence and spread your reign
Pronounced: apeleftherónoun tin ousía sas kai tin exáplosi tis vasileías sas
Didn't use many new spells this chapter... hehe... I also used the shadow blade one from last chapter.
Well anyway, please follow, favorite and review!
Anyway, I say 'anyway' to much.
But for this next part it must be there.
Anyway, cya me oouuttiiyy!