Changes

Discord Link ~ https://discord.gg/smAesXp

***

"Okay, what monster do you want me to fight?" asked Sora with a scratch of his cheek.

"For now, defeat the monsters on the first floor. Mainly the Dire Wolves and the Kobolds," said Kayaba.

Knowing what beasts to fight, Sora dashed to the field to look for the beasts. He looked at his status earlier and he had noticed a little lock icon next to his level 1 and skills list.

When Sora had asked Kayaba about this, he said that this was just a trial run to see the fighting capabilities of the monsters and no skills were needed for this. He went on to explain that the monsters also have the same restriction being at level 1 and can only use their basic skills.

"When the time comes, I will input the skills you made and then I will record the movements of your body to fix them onto the skill," said Kayaba as he watched Sora run quickly through the field.

Kayaba was shocked by Sora's extremely agile and explosive movements as he dashed through the field. Normally a level 1 player is slow and can't run as fast without the help of a skill. Yet Sora was able to run 3 times his speed.

If Kayaba knew that Sora wasn't even trying and can run almost 10 times faster than the normal speed, he would have heavily changed the game just for Sora.

"Is there any way you can help me find the monsters?" asked Sora as he quickly ran through the large expanse of grass filled land.

Sora had already been running for 20 minutes yet he couldn't find any monster in sight. It was like he was tricked by Kayaba about how he will be finding monsters left and right without trouble.

"Haha!" laughed Kayaba as he remembered something. "I forgot to mention that when I found monsters left and right, I was joined by 20 other personnel from the group. You see, the monsters spawning in are proportional to the amount of players in the game. Though this little thing will be changed for the Beta testing and the actual game."

"Why have this dumb rule in the game right now?" cursed Sora as he stopped running and just stood still. Lifting a middle finger to the air, Sora hoped Kayaba saw it.

"I'll change it right away," chuckled nervously Kayaba. On his screen, the angered face of Sora's was covered by a line of code that was quickly thrown into the game. Instantly, many monsters quickly spawned around Sora, surrounding him in an instant.

Grr!

Sora raised his eyebrows and looked at the Dire Wolves that he was surrounded by. They all turned to Sora with a growl and locked their eyes on their target.

"You see, the reason why the spawn rates were low for the monsters since we were just doing some small testing, was because the monsters quickly lock on to the first player it lies it's eyes on. A problem that won't be much of an actual hindrance with hundreds of players in the game. But..."

Sora pulled out his sword and took a step back as he looked at the Dire Wolves closing in on him with their sharp claws and their bared fangs.

"But what?" asked Sora.

"With just a small amount of plays, like 30 or less, all the monsters in a 50 meter radius would instantly be attracted to them. Whether they are in the line of sight or not," said Kayaba as he gave a wry smile.

Grr..

Pu.. pu…

Once Kayaba finished talking, Sora heard some more beasts approach him from the back. Sora turned around and looked at the 12 Dire Wolves and 7 Frenzied Boars behind him. They all approached quickly, joining the group of 5 Dire Wolves already with Sora.

"Damn, and you couldn't tell me this before? I could have fixed it for you," said Sora as his face turned serious and he raised the sword in his hand high.

"But then the process of dealing with the fighting capabilities of the monsters would go down!" said Kayaba flusteredly.

Kayaba didn't really mind the amount of time it would take to find the flaws of the fighting capabilities system going down. He had just forgotten that Sora was a wiz behind the keyboard and can easily fix this problem for him.

After seeing Sora reveal his amazing martial prowess, Kayaba could hardly remember that Sora was also exceptionally well-versed with other items as well.

Slice!

Sora's sword fell down swiftly on the Dire Wolves neck, instantly dropping it's 100 HP bar down to forty. On top of the wolf's head was a bright golden 60 with the word CRITICAL over the number.

Moving quickly, Sora wasted no time as he moved from a Slicing motion to piercing through the head of a Dire Wolf who jumped at him.

CRITICAL!

-66!

The Frenzied Boar quickly followed behind the Dire Wolf that dissipated into many light fragments. The Frenzied Boar quickly met it's demise as well under Sora's swift sword moves with two more CRITICAL hits.

CRITICAL!

-72!

CRITICAL!

-78!

"HOW?!" asked Kayaba with shock as he looked at Sora quickly make his way out of the 17 Dire Wolves and the 7 Frenzied Wolves with ease.

Kayaba knew that the health bars of all the normal monsters were at 100. The Field, Quest, and Mid-Floor Bosses all had an HP bar of 1,000. The High Difficulty Quests, and Dungeon bosses had an HP of 10,000. The Floor bosses had HP bars that reached all the way to 50,000.

Knowing this, Kayaba was shocked that Sora could instantly take down a monster.

If the strength of a level 1 player was only 5 damage, adding on +10 damage for the sword, it would be impossible for the damage to be over 100 in just one attack. Only way was to attack the weak spots of the beasts or have the CRITICAL skills.

Although hitting the weak spots doesn't take off as much health as the CRITICAL skills. The weak spots were also small enough that it would take amazing precision to land the CRITICAL hits over and over.

"It's just impossible! There's no way he's hitting them all accurately!" said Kayaba, jumping in shock.

Everyone in the area turned to look at Kayaba, wondering what he was yelling for. When they looked at his screen, they all also jumped in shock from what they saw.

Each attack Sora landed on the beasts would land accurately on their weaks spots, landing CRITICAL hits often. Not only that, each time a new CRITICAL hit landed, the number would jump 10 points higher than before.

Sora's movements grew faster and heavier as they landed on the monsters, quickly taking them out. Every single move of Sora's was connected and the effect that the Basic Sword Technique mentioned was being executed.

Whenever one or more skills was executed together, and swiftly, the power behind each attack would rise by 10%

Eventually, it stopped at +100%, each hit dealing a 120 damage to every Dire Wolf and Frenzied Boar, instantly killing them all with each move.

'Come and be slaughtered!'

Sora's sword flashed through the air and quickly chopped off the head of a Dire Wolf that lunged at him.

CRITICAL!

-120!

"Guh!"

Kayaba stumbled back and fell on his chair, a weird look on his face as he remembered Sora not failing to hit the targets at all in their weak spot.

"Should we remove the weak points of the monsters?" asked a nearby programmer as he watched Sora's moves with shock.

"No! The only reason why he gets consecutive CRITICALS is because he has amazing accuracy and is an accomplished martial artist," said Kayaba with a dark face.

"Then what should we do?" asked the programmer as he sighed at not being able to remove the weak points.

"Enlarge the area of the weak spots and make it a probability to land CRITICAL hits. The CRITICAL skills will go through some code changes as well. Make the skills just increase the chances of landing a CRITICAL hit, no matter where they strike, and increase the damage of a CRITICAL hit."

Kayaba stood up and calmed down before handing out the orders to the programmer and the rest. He rubbed his temple, leaned in and talked on the mic to Sora.

"Sora, can you not land CRITICAL hits constantly. We're trying to gather data on the fighting system of the monsters. And how did you manage to raise the damage of the attacks you were landing?" asked Kayaba as he looked at Sora on the screen with shock.

"It's a technique," said Sora, not explaining any further.

"Hmm… can you try not to use it. Try to make the monsters launch multiple different attacks. We need to go for realism and versatility," said Kayaba as he sighed.

"If you want to go for realism, try not to make the attacks be all set on one number. Make it depend on the mass, acceleration, weapon, armor, and environment," suggested Sora as he sheathed the sword and walked around.

"That… can work, but we just don't have the skilled personnel to do something like that," said Kayaba as he took out a briefcase and looked at the files that contained the skills and extent of the abilities of the main program and designer group.

"I know how to do it," said Sora as he looked at his inventory that was filled with the drops of the monsters of the first floor.

Kayaba remained quiet for second in shock, "You know how to do it?"

"Sure do, it's something easy," said Sora.

Of course, without the Technology Scripture Sora had received from his time in DxD, he wouldn't know how to do something like this. Unless he read books and had the necessary research, Sora would easily come to learn how to do something like this with his level of intellect and learning capability.

"You can also make this option something the player can choose," said Sora as he thought on it further. "There are people out in the world who aren't the fastest."

"If you have any other bright ideas, be sure to tell me and I'll give the final say whether they are allowed in the game or not," suggested Kayaba as he listened to Sora's ideas.

"..."

Sora just kept his mouth shut as he headed out to fight some more monsters. Since he had fought against the Dire Wolves and the Frenzied Boars without giving them a chance to fight back, Sora had to go look for more.

In just a couple of steps, Sora was approached by 2 Frenzied Bulls. This time around, Sora didn't attack, instead he parried and defended against the attacks from the monsters. As he was fighting the monsters, Sora realized that when he becomes a higher level and walks on by here in the future, the monsters will still be attacking him despite the level difference.

"Kayaba, how about we give the monsters intelligence as well. It will make it more entertaining and challenging for the players to hunt and attack these monsters.

And when the monsters are against someone on a whole 'nother level, let them realize that they can't fight against them and instead run away to gather with other monsters," said Sora as he deflected the bash of the Frenzied Boar.

"That's not a bad idea. It would be annoying if monsters always attacked you despite how strong you are compared to them," chipped in a programmer as he listened to Sora.

"It will also allow them to group up with other monsters to attack the player that poses a threat to them," said another programmer.

"We need to add this in," said the first programmer as he thought about the possibilities the monsters gaining intelligence could do.

"Might as well give the monsters the ability to level up as well," said Kayaba in a bit of an annoyed tone.

Kayaba had worked in the Sword Art Online project for almost 3 years already, yet almost 90% of it was already changed by Sora and even made better!

Yes it made Kayaba happy to see his game grow better and more promising, but it wouldn't end up being his anymore since all he pitched in was the idea and some basic stuff for the game. He wasn't much of a game enthusiast, but it still hurt his pride to have the game he has been creating all of a sudden go massive changes that it was no longer his.

'I'll just leave it like this. I just hope the plans I have made are still possible with all these changes,' thought Kayaba as his eyes turned cold.