A/N:So I said I wasn't going to reply to guest reviews here but that seemed to confuse someone so let me clarify. If you do not have a FFN account I cannot direct mail to you so cannot respond to your message. I won't be putting it in chapters like this because it inflates word count. This is nothing against guest users your reviews are all apreciated.
Lizbeth seemed very happy to be travelling with Kazuto and myself. She had told us that she didn't go on adventures that often.
After meeting Lizbeth we explored the town we had arrived in. Lizbeth was particularly interested in a smith shop that apparently sold more durable hammer's than the one she currently used.
I was happy to say no weapon in the store looked like it could match my new baby. Kazuto had laughed when I pointed this out to him.
On the second day travelling with Lizbeth we headed deep into the fields of floor three. So far we had not met with anything too troubling. It should have been a sign that something would go wrong.
In a lush green forest that we had been wandering we found a large empty clearing. Kazuto without hesitation drew his sword and I followed his lead.
Lizbeth seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Kazuto because her weapon was ready and she was looking around the clearing. This impressed Kazuto I could tell and I was happy we brought her along.
After a few moments of looking around a large white wolf came into the clearing, followed by several smaller wolves. I counted seven of them.
"Liz, Leafa take care of the small ones. I will hold off the white one until you can help me take it down." Kazuto ordered going into battle mode.
I was thankful that Kazuto was quick to assess situations like this. Following his orders I ran around in an attempt to flank the wolves. I saw Lizbeth run, slamming her mace into one of the wolves' heads.
I didn;t have time to appreciate her skill however as one of the wolves attempted to bite me mid section. Bringing my Katana down on its rear hind the wolf burst into polygons.
With no hesitation I charged a lunge skill and slashed at the next closest enemy. It too fell and I didn't understand why they were so weak when the white one was proving to be really tough.
After Lizbeth had dispatched three on her side and only two more remained the white wolf howled loudly. From the forest ran five more wolves bringing the small wolf count back up to seven.
I realised at this moment this fight was going to take us a lot longer if we had to keep dealing with the small ones it summons.
The fight was long and rather tedious. Ths small wolves went down so easily they were not particularly fun to kill. After killing them I noticed they were not dropping any experience either.
After a long thirty five minutes, maybe more Kazuto managed to kill the white wolf. As it exploded I saw a very nice amount of exp awarded to me.
After thirty minutes of fighting I fell to the ground needing a rest. I was joined by Lizbeth who was grinning happily.
"Is this what fighting the floor bosses feels like?"
I looked at her and shook my head slightly.
"Not quite. We have a lot more people in those fights so you can rest if you need it as long as you move to the edge."
"You fought really well, both of you."
Kazuto told us. I couldn't help but smile seeing Kazuto looking proud of me. I decided to throw my arms around him and kiss his cheek.
Lizbeth who saw me kiss his cheek blushed a little.
"You two are really close aren't you"
"We are yeah." I said happily not elaborating at all.
Kazuto looked at me surprised. He was clearly wondering why I had not told her we were related. He did not comment on it though.
After heading back to the inn we were staying at we met up with Klein who was with his friends celebrating.
"We just founded our guild." Klein happily announced, to which his friends all stood and yelled cheers.
We spent a little time congratulating Klein and his friends before heading up to bed for the night.
"Sugu. Why didn't you tell Lizbeth we're actually related? You kind of made it sound like we're together or something."
He looked slightly nervous and embarrassed saying that and looked away. For some reason I felt my stomach bubble slightly.
"I didn't think it was too important. We are close right?"
I knew that this wasn't exactly the right answer. It wasn't a lie but I knew there was more to it that I couldn't quite place.
I then realised what it was. I have a crush on Kazuto? I shook my head. Surely not I can't can I?
Kazuto didn't feel the need to question it further it seemed and he started changing into his sleepwear. I looked away blushing nervously.
The next two days were spent exploring the rest of floor three. During the exploration we had managed to raise Lizbeth's level to nearly double what it was.
Kazuto always knew the best places to level and we made sure to show Lizbeth them too. After the two days exploring Lizbeth told us she really must get back to work. She still wanted to be known as the best blacksmith.
After saying goodbye to Lizbeth, Kazuto and I decided we needed to do some powerleveling to make up for the three days taking it easy.
It felt a little strange not having Lizbeth to back us up but Kazuto and I fell into our usual pattern of handling mobs.
We had managed to raise our levels nicely during our time training. While on our exploration we managed to find the location of the boss room.
We had a look inside and saw a large treenet type monster inside. He had huge thick legs and was taller than a house.
"This ones going to be fun. Lots of places to attack" I mentioned to Kazuto.
"I will message Argo and she will be able to contact everyone who participates in clearing."
Upon hearing this Kazuto and I warped back to the town. We had not yet had to talk to people and make them listen to us and I was anxious about having to address the people. Knowing there was a high chance people would not listen, we enlisted Klein's group to pass on the information.
As one of the first Guilds formed Klein's group had become quite popular and it helped their faces were recognised as clearers from the past floors.
That night we met with Klein. I was happy he knew I was too young for him after watching him attempt to flirt with every female that passes him.
We told Klein everything we saw and even transferred mapping data to him so he could hand it to the teams.
The next day at noon we met everyone. Staying on the sidelines we listened as Klein presented all the needed information. The room listened to him and cheered that we had found another floor so soon.
Plans were made for everyone to meet at noon the next day to take on the floor boss. When Kazuto and I arrived at the designated place I was surprised to see Lizbeth stood there with her mace in hand and a parry shield on her arm.
I was further surprised when Agil and Asuna walked over to us and asked to join our team for the fight. We had never had so many people want to fight with us and Kazuto was shocked into silence for a moment.
"Kirito It isn't nice to keep people waiting." I scolded lightly and looked at him.
After a moment's hesitation Kazuto invited both Asuna and Agil to the party. On the way to the boss room Kazuto and I discussed with our temporary party members the best way to fight now we had nearly a full party.
The tree ent was slow and his attacks were fairly easy to dodge but if they managed to hit you they did a huge amount of damage.
After taking a lot of damage it would shake its canopy and small acorn bombs would fall and explode. Despite this I was having a huge amount of fun.
Agil proved to be an absolute unit. His ability to block attacks and create openings was truly a big help. I could tell Kazuto was impressed too.
The battle was one of the quickest we had seen so far from a boss room. The fact that it was slow and large meant many people could damage it at a single time.
I didn't see who received the last attack bonus this time. I Can't be lucky everytime. On floor 4 our small party went in search of a good inn to stay in and have a small celebration.
Despite not normally being sociable the celebration of clearing floor three lasted most of the night. Partly helped by the fact Klein and his buddies had found us in the inn and decided to join us… His friends sure can drink.
At one am the NPC's that own the bar ordered anyone who wasn't staying to leave. With that I was able to go to bed and get some much needed rest.
When I woke up I was surprised to see it was much later than the time I normally woke up. Looking over I could see Kazuto laying on his bed looking at me.
"What are you looking at?" I asked giggling and blushing from his attention. Upon hearing me he looked away and started getting ready for the day.
When Kazuto and I walked down into the dining area I saw Lizbeth. Upon seeing me Lizbeth waved me over and by extension Kazuto.
After ordering some food Lizbeth started talking.
"So I was thinking maybe we could explore floor four together? I had so much fun when we explored floor three."
I looked at Kazuto and saw that he was smiling at me. He nodded his head toward me and re added Lizbeth to our party.
"I heard there is a big mountain region to the south. It would be a great place to start our adventure."
Kazuto and Lizbeth both nodded and agreed with me that it would be a good spot. Once food had been consumed we had Lizbeth fix our gear. Once it was sufficiently repaired we headed out of the south gate.
We spent a long amount of time walking around the edge of a large mountain. After some large amount of time, maybe an hour, we found a cave without needing to ask. I knew we all wanted to search for it.
Other than being damp and the floor wet the cave was completely safe. Not a single mob was in here that I could see.
This didn't stop Kazuto being on guard as we continued to walk through the cave.
The cave opened up on the other side after a short walk and the view beyond was breathtaking. There was a large reservoir surrounded by the mountains. The water looked clear and on the opposite side of the reservoir stood a castle.
Deciding it was not the best idea to break into a castle right now without knowing anything about it, we headed back out in search of other villages.
We had been gone most of the day by the time we found a village off to the far west of this floor. Lizbeth was particularly happy that we didn't have to camp out.
When we entered the village I could see quite a few other adventures here. We looked around to try and find a nice place to eat before settling down for the night.
"You know Leafa, you need to learn to cook here. We could have nice food anytime we wanted then."
As Kazuto said this I couldn't help but laugh.
"You know that you can get the cooking skill yourself so you don't have to rely on me."
"You were always the better cook. We both know it."
While I couldn't deny this I was curious how Lizbeth would take the news I used to cook for Kazuto. I still hadn't told her I was his cousin and I didn't really want to either.
I was happy when Lizbeth didn't mention it but I could see an inquisitive look in her eyes. I knew I would be questioned about our relationship sooner rather than later.
This of course meant I had to work out my feelings and speak to Kazuto about them too. I knew my feelings weren't the normal sibling love.
Signing I forced myself to forget these things for now and fall asleep. I wouldn't want to sleep in again that's for sure.
Upon waking up we decided to look around to try to find any information about the castle in the reservoir. What we found when we started looking was a huge civil war between elf kind on this floor.
It seemed several quests were to gather materials or weapons for the elves. This of course posed a problem since Neither me or Kazuto wanted to take sides in a war we knew nothing about.
After doing a few quests we didn't think would have too much effect we moved onto exploring the forest to the east. It was a huge forest and I prayed there would be no wolves in this one.
Upon arriving on the edge of the forest we were ambushed by several forest elves that did not hesitate to attack us. The elves were at quite an impressive level and if it was not for Kazuto and I constantly striving to be a higher level this could have been challenging.
I could see that while Lizbeth was defending herself well she wasn't doing enough damage to really help us out. Thankfully the exp she was gaining from the elves would change that soon.
As we moved through the forest we encountered many more elves who seemed determined to keep us out. In what we assumed was the centre of the forest stood a large castle.
Upon seeing the castle we considered leaving again but several elves had already started respawning behind us. Now we were close to the castle it seemed the elves were trying to push us closer to the fort.
Deciding we were well within a safe level parameter to continue we headed toward the gate as we approached a few guards in heavier armour approached us they had health bars so they were clearly the enemy.
Despite being heavily armoured they fell pretty easily like the other mobs in the area. Soon we found ourselves inside the fort.
It was decorated with dark greens and had a very earthy feel to it. Now we were inside and the mobs became less frequent allowing us to search the fort.
Despite being a fort the loot inside was pretty mediocre to our little group's disappointment. It felt like we were doing a quest we had not yet accepted. Maybe one in the village.
While being a rather fun adventure the day had been a bust. We decided to head to the town of Rovia feeling slightly disappointed that we found a whole lot of nothing.
Despite finding no loot we did raise our levels slightly and Lizbeth quite a bit. With her base level risen Lizbeth bade us goodbye for now not wanting her blacksmith level to fall behind.
Alone with Kazuto once more I decided to think hard on what it was I was feeling for him. I wasn't naive, I was pretty sure I was falling in love with him. But that doesn't happen right.
While I was thinking about this Kazuto was leading me around the town as we filled our supplies and looked for some food. I decided to see what Kazuto would do If I took his hand.
As I slipped my hand into his I moved closer to him. He looked at me and I could tell he was confused. I chose not to say anything not wanting to tell him how I was feeling.
Kazuto seemed to follow my lead and didn't question me on it. I felt him squeeze my hand a little and continue leading me through the streets. I was all too aware we looked like a couple and my face started burning thinking about it. But I was also happy too.
Once I had gotten over my embarrassment I started listening to things people were saying around me. Kazuto had told me pretty early on that people often let slip information in towns if you listened.
Upon listening I heard a tale of a monster in a lake on this floor that had been giving a few groups trouble since it was slap bang in the middle of the floor.
The monster was apparently a two headed turtle and I knew Kazuto, like me, wanted to challenge it. We decided to ask Lizbeth if she wanted to join us.
When we met her the next day to take on the beast I was surprised to see Asuna with Lizbeth. I waved happily to both of the girls, Laughing as Kazuto merely nodded his head in acknowledgment.
"Lizbeth told me about your plans to take on a troublesome beast. I asked to tag along." Asuna said once we were in front of her.
"Couldn't hurt to have another capable sword, Kirito" I added looking at Kazuto smiling.
Kazuto gave a pretend sigh of agitation making me laugh. I could tell he wasn't really agitated and he quickly added the other two girls to the party.
On our way out of the village we saw a group of red people seemingly waiting for something. Kazuto seemed the first to recognise the group.
"Oh It's Klein's guild. What are the chances they are here too."
He said making me realise who the group was too. They seemed to see us approach and waved us over.
"Kirito dude, why are you always surrounded by females." He asked, looking slightly jealous. A few of his friends who were no doubt used to his antics started laughing.
He seemed to see how close I was standing to Kazuto and gave us a funny look. When we first met him we had introduced ourselves as brother and sister and had not yet corrected this bit of knowledge.
I pulled him off to the side not wanting to have to explain things to the group of friends just yet.
"Klein. Kirito isn't actually my brother, he found out before we came into the game and told me recently. We haven't told anyone about it and would appreciate you not mentioning it."
"I will keep your secret if you answer my question. You like him right."
I nodded my head and walked away not wanting to voice the fact it was true. I didn't look back at Klein but if I had I would have seen a sly smile on his face.
Klein and his Guild had apparently come to take care of the beast so we decided to go together as two parties and take on the beast.
On the way to the location I was amazed watching Kelin and his guild mates fight. They always seemed to cover each other perfectly, they seemed to predict what the others were going to do and meshed well together.
It made me wonder if we could have this kind of thing too. Kazuto had not spoken about joining a guild and I didn't bring it up either but looking at the Fuurinkazan guild I wanted to have a team like Klein had.
I made a mental note to bring it up with Kazuto later and focused on the battle to come.
As we approached the area ahead we could see two groups were already in active combat with the beast and they were not making much headway at all.
Kelin being the boisterous person he was quickly shouted down to those in the fight asking if they would allow us to join them in the hunt.
The group was discussing it. It sounded like they wanted the glory for themselves but they could clearly see that their groups would not be able to defeat it by themselves at this rate they were attacking.
The Turtle was named Biceps Archelon and when it saw us arrive on the battlefield it ignored the people it was fighting and charged straight for us.
This gave the group it left a chance to recuperate. The Fuurinkazan guild quickly took the monster head on the group using its tank to attempt to keep the beast's attention.
Seeing that the heads were occupied, Asuna, Kazuto, Lizbeth and I took the sides. We didn't realise right away that that the turtle had fins on the side it was capable of attacking with.
Thankfully Lizbeth proved to be a skilled tank as well as mace user and stopped any real damage reaching us.
It wasn't long before the two groups that were here first now rejoined the fight. Biceps Archelon seemed overwhelmed by the mass attacking it and soon it fell.
A shout of happiness came from my left and I turned to see Lizbeth looking at a pop up on her interface. I ran over to her and high fived her.
"Congratulations Lizbeth, last attack bonus I see."
Lizbeth quickly High fived me in return and then Kazuto who had joined me next to her. Asuna seemed to see just how much closer we had gotten with Lizbeth watching from the sidelines.
Lizbeth flashed her a small smile and Asuna came closer adding her congratulations. The two groups that had helped were a little put out. They missed out on the last attack bonus but thanked us for the help before leaving.
The last attack bonus was a silver ring that boosted the wearer's defence. Lizbeth quickly equipped the ring and our group headed back into town.
When arriving back at the town I was shocked to see a huge amount of people gathered. I recognised several faces from previous floor battles.
One of the men ran up to Klein and they started talking. At that moment I realised I had a message. Apparently floor fives floor boss had been found and we were asked to join the fight.
This surprised me since a lot of players still avoided us, but we had been getting a reputation of being reliable which I was happy about.
Wythege the Hippocampus turned out to be easy to defeat. Like last time Agil, Asuna, Lizbeth, Kazuto and I formed a party together. We worked closely with the Fuurinkazan guild during the fight knowing we worked well together.
During the fight I was astutely aware of people watching us fight and not actually fighting themself. During the fight I did not have enough time to really think about it.
With so many floors getting cleared in such a short amount of time there were parties in the streets of floor five to celebrate. After finding nothing the first two months people were glad we were now making good progress.
