2 CHAPTER 2

"Ahh... A... uh..."

You must be wondering, why would I be panting so heavily in the middle of the night? Well, you see, I met this cute girl and... nope, just kidding, the thing is, I discovered a quite painful thing, somehow, I couldn't sleep, no matter how tired I am after fighting non-stop per hours, I just couldn't get sleepy so I decided to keep hunting even at night.

It has only been two weeks since we left the <<Starting City>> and things are actually better than we expected, with the vast majority of the players still in some sort of depressed state, the few ones like us had a clear path to take over the best missions and grinding spots.

Right now I'm level 9, thanks to my almost unlimited available grinding time. My HP is already at 827 points, as for the counter on the corner of my FOV it had increased to fifteen thousand points, however, I still didn't know its purpose, I've tried asking Kirito about it but he kept saying I must have seen wrong, there was no such a thing in the game.

"Sigh..." I sheathed my sword and sat down on the grass. I felt the wind going against my body refreshing me with a pleasant feeling, I still couldn't believe how real everything seemed to be, the grass on my hands the mud on the ground the texture of the trees, everything was there.

Kayaba Akihiko, you can call him a madman, bastard, and murderer, and I wouldn't be able to not to agree with you, he is all those things and more, but... How did that guy create such a wonderful world? How much time did he spend just to recreate those things in virtual reality? If Hideo Kojima existed in this world, he and Kayaba would probably be best friends forever.

"What are you doing here so late?"

A voice came from behind me, startled I turned to see and gulped seeing those extremely beautiful pair of legs and the angelical face covered partially by a hood.

"How rude." I playfully smiled as I said that. "Coming from behind and suddenly asking questions... tsk, tsk... My nickname is Takashi, what is yours?"

She looked at me for some time and seemed to be deep in thoughts, and yet, I somehow could feel a deep penetrating gaze coming from her, I couldn't help but shudder a little at that time, this girl is a bit scary...

"You can call me 'Ruler', like an emperor or a king." Her voice drifted into my ears making me a little bit surprised, I assure you that I wasn't trying to increase her actual status, but I could faintly sense some sort of pride in her voice, almost like she was stating an undeniable truth.

"Oh, I see, you must be someone destined to do great things them." I turned away from her and kept staring at... nothing.

"You didn't answer my question." Her feet tapped on the ground as if she was losing her patience.

I looked at her one more time before sighing and replying.

"I'm resting, can't you see it?"

"Oh." She nodded and sat down as well a few meters away from me.

We both stared at whatever could be seen in a kilometer while being washed by the gentle wind. While I truly appreciate the presence of a beauty I was also curious to know why she was there anyway, looking at the clock it was already two in the morning, who would stay awake at such time?

"And you?" She stared at my face without saying anything. She probably didn't understand... "What are you doing here?"

Like any other girl, I wouldn't expect her to truly answer my question, most girls I met tended to lie a lot for no real reason, they just did not want to tell much about themselves, but her next words could have made me cough a litter of blood had it been outside the game.

"I was following you the whole night."

This... What the f*ck!?

"Sorry, maybe I wasn't paying attention, did you just said you were following me?"

She nodded and went back to appreciate the landscape. At that moment a strong gush of wind swept us removing her hood and allowing me to take a good look at her face, her skin was white like the clouds, her eyes were crystal blue almost like the sea, and her hair was short and black like the night although it shined a lot thanks to the moonlight.

She was really beautiful, back in his school, this girl would probably become some sort of idol for the boys, many would be interested in her.

She wore a cloak, brown leather armor over a blue shirt, with black pants and silver iron greaves. On her waist, she carried a blood-red scimitar with a double-edged blade, one of the edges was serrated.

"Eh? What sort of sword is this?"

"Mm?" She looked at her sword and held it in her hands. "It dropped from a roaming boss I killed yesterday."

Hearing this I was stunned, did she just said that she was capable of soloing a boss? I couldn't help but take another look at her, there is no way that was possible... could she be a beta tester that knew a really good strategy to kill the monster? Yeah, that must be it.

"So, you and some people defeated it, or you used some sort of strategy?"

"No strategies, I fought one on one against him." Her expression was awfully calm and collected as if what she said was completely expected.

I felt like crying at that moment, just what the hell have I been doing this whole time? I felt like she was slapping at my efforts somehow, I could finally understand why so many people hated the main characters from wuxia novels... They all did things that were considered impossible and had an enviable level of luck.

It's like if you were a mathematician, researching a conjecture for decades, trying to solve it, only for a kid to appear out of nowhere and not only refute your arguments but even prove the whole thing before you despite not having researched it for as long as you.

I silently cried on the side, trying to forget her words, until she suddenly started talking.

"I saw you fighting, where are you from?"

"Eh? What does that have to do with fights? I'm from Akihabara, what about you?"

"I live in Akita with my grandpa and father, as for why I was asking, it is because my grandpa and father are the owners of a dojo, they were the ones who taught me how to use all sorts of weapons and how to fight, but you somehow seemed to fight even better than them, that's why I asked you that."

Oh! So that's the reason... I silently nodded to myself, that is true, my swordsmanship is really good, although I lacked someone to compare my skills with.

"You must be overthinking, this is a game, not real life, I probably have a better grasp of the system assistance than you, and that coupled with your lack of understanding about how the game works created a misleading impression of my real abilities."

Every single word I spouted carried a hint of truthness on them, as for why... it is simple, even now I don't think that my capabilities are truly mine, I do not know how other people feel while playing the game, but I'm pretty sure that knowing how to use swords and everything wasn't something that I should be capable of unless it is inside a game like this one.

She carefully looked at my face, her eyes seemed to have a supernatural ability to pierce into one's soul and easily pry into a person's secret as if they were nothing. I felt naked at her presence, and that made me frown, this girl wasn't simple, look at her behavior, her figure, and her personality, these aren't the kind of things you'd find in someone normal by any means.

I could somehow feel in my heart that she was lying or hiding something, all in all, she is not trustworthy.

"I see." She extended her hand and with a gesture opened the game menu, since she had configured it to stay hidden from other people's eyes I couldn't see it, after some time a friend request appeared in front of me.

['Ruler' wants to add you to her friend list. Would you like to accept and add her to your friend list? Y/N?]

I thought for a moment before accepting it, it was a gamble, I didn't trust her but maybe she could give me some benefits in the future, Ruler had this aura you would expect from a detective or maybe the leader of a crime syndicate or mafia, like Michael Corleone.

"You may think whatever you want of me, but I assure you that this is merely the surface, let's keep in touch, I might have some work for you in the future if you are interested." She slightly smiled before walking away in slow steps.

After she disappeared from my field of view I sighed, just what sort of person did I meet?

I shook my head and smiled, I should have managed to do what I came here for. If my information was correct, it should be happening soon.

As I watched the surroundings carefully I noticed an old man wearing black leather armor with a copper sword on his hand walking in hurried steps towards me, sweat poured down his face as made a worrying expression.

He collapsed in front of me and hoarsely said, "Please, help me.". At that moment a screen popped up.

[New quest: Help the old man. Rewards: ????]

There it is, I've been waiting for this, those quests with little to no information and question marks as rewards were called hidden quests, they could only be triggered by doing a specific set of actions or finish a specific chain quest, they were rare and highly sought after.

I accepted and hurriedly said.

"What's wrong? How can I help you?"

The man stood up and pointed to the north. "My daughter! She was kidnapped by a group of cultists! They want to sacrifice her, please young hero, don't let them hurt her!" He fell on his knees and started crying.

"Don't worry old man, I'll help your daughter."

[Ding! Mission updated, infiltrate the bandits' lair and save the girl before time runs out: 14:59]

Seeing this I unsheathed my sword and ran with everything I got towards the quest waypoint on the minimap, fifteen minutes was too little, I couldn't afford to fail it just because I was lazy!

After five minutes I arrived at some sort of abandoned castle, it had 4 entrances and the courtyard around the main building was filled with tents and bonfires, it was possible to see the movement of some humanoid monsters.

In SAO, bandits weren't people who decided to become criminal, they were literally monster and their skin somehow replicated the appearance of a what a bandit would use, so it looked like they were wearing dirty clothes with a layer of leather to protect them over it, because of this they had this glowing red eyes.

I entered the place through the front door and started killing anyone on sight, my sword moved with precision and every gesture carried the might of a <<Sword Skill>> that was aimed at their weak spot, which allowed me to basically instantly kill them without wasting too much time.

But as I killed the bandits more and more started running towards me, at some point, a larger bandit appeared carrying an Axe, unlike the monsters, players couldn't simply use whatever weapon they wanted, in order to unlock a weapon skill tree, we first need to progress a little bit with the swords.

Then they would unlock, curved swords, two-handed swords, and so on, it was a pain in the ass and it was a process that demanded quite some time, in two weeks that I kept grinding like crazy I only managed to unlock 3 skill trees, curved swords, two-handed swords, and spears.

Axe was something that would require at least someone at level 11 in terms of progress, so you could imagine how powerful this guy was.

Holding the ax, he cut down vertically leaving a trail of blue light, I sidestepped to the left and with a spin hit him two times with <<Double Slash>> before jumping away to avoid his next attack.

That sequence only managed to take away 1/4 of his hp, you could see just from that the difference in power between him and the other bandits.

Without wasting time, I ran up to him holding my sword down, the blade started to glow orange when my ability was activated.

When we were less than a meter away from each other, he tried to cut me with the ax from the right, but at that moment I acted, my sword went up in a curved arc, the blade cut part of his leg and abdomen before accurately slicing the hand that held the weapon.

The ax flew to the sky as he hand fell on the ground, he became stunned due to the negative effect of suffering dismemberment, I used this opportunity to use his body as some sort of propeller to launch me even higher upwards, as I started to fall my sword shined with orange light once again and I literally cut him in half.

The sound of shattering glass entered my ears as his body exploded in a wave of red polygons.

Looking at the pop up with the loot and rewards, I turned to the quest screen and stared with eyes wide at it, there was only one minute left!

I ran throughout the castle using every bit of strength I had at my legs to launch me forwards with speed while looking for the girl, when I arrived at the upper floor I found her tied to a wooden pole, as I tried to remove the ties the timer was almost running out when I finally managed to get her out of the thing I had already missed the mark, but instead of failing a new screen popped up.

[Ding! Conditions met, quest secret ending activated, completion of the quest will ensure higher rewards, there will be punishments if you fail.]

At that moment the girl opened her eyes and muttered something with despair written all over her face, and after a few seconds, the blood on the ground started changing patterns until it looked like a summoning circle.

It glowed with red light and a portal opened above it, from inside came a smelly beast similar to a bear, its body was covered in thorns, the mouth was filled with sharp teeth and it had two horns growing out of its head.

I looked at his HP bar and focuses on its name.

[Avarus Daemonium]

He had two bars of HP and somehow I could feel his threatening power. The bear roared and ran towards me, it raised its claws and attacked from the right with great speed.

Even with my reaction speed I only had time to use the sword to parry the blow, yet the force was so great that I could feel a shockwave sweep me, taking with it a small piece of my health points!

"What the hell is this attack power!?" I could only scream as I used my leg to kick him in a desperate attempt to pull away and catch my breath.

The bear roared again and ran towards me with its horns pointed at me, it probably wanted to impale me, but that would not be so easy, I ran using all my strength to the wall behind me and used my speed to propel myself on the wall.

The << Immortal Object >> warning appeared on it while I used the remaining strength of my previous move to take 3 long strides upward before jumping backward in a backflip.

The bear hit the wall with his horns while I was above him. Somehow I managed to attack him twice while falling on the ground even without any support, even if the damage was great, he still had two bars of HP in the green zone.

When I hit the ground, I activated two skills in a row, <<Avalanche>> a heavy one-hit vertical attack from above, and <<Blood leaker>> a one-hit horizontal cut in a 35-degree angle with high chances of causing blood loss.

One of the bear's HP bars instantly entered the red zone and the icon of blood loss appeared right next to his name.

I was in ecstasy seeing I succeded but my happiness didn't last for long, the Bear didn't even bother to turn and simply threw his back at me as his thorns suddenly grew larger than before by 10 centimeters, I was caught off guard and got struck in several points, my HP bar instantly entered the red zone, and fear took over my body.

Using my feet I managed to jump away from his back, wasting no time, I grabbed the girl that was watching the fight awestruck and started running to the lower floors as I opened my inventory and grabbed a potion. I drink it all in one gulp and threw the glass on the wall as I kept running.

This sort of potion was extremely slow and it would take ten minutes to fully heal my injuries, I had to stall for time as I recovered my HP. However, it didn't matter how much I ran I could still hear the beast roaring as he ran towards us, it didn't take a genius to know that we were still targeted by his AI.

Just a few seconds before I left the castle the bear appeared right behind us with extreme speed, seeing that I had no other choice but to throw the girl to the left as I used my whole body and sword to bear the power of his attack.

My HP that had once again entered the yellow zone started lowering until it once again hit the red critical zone, I would die if things remained like this, my heart started beating faster and faster, the adrenaline coursed through my veins as I thought of any options to survive.

At that moment a weird feeling once again refreshed my head and calmed down my heart, my surroundings became extremely clear and I felt like the whole world became slower. I felt confidence showering my body as I suddenly thought of a plan, I let go of my sword and used the demon's strength to propel myself upwards.

The beast angrily roared at me and started running towards me once again, however, as I was a few meters above him, I used one of the tents as a jumping platform and threw myself towards the weapon storage of the bandits were they were all neatly organized.

My objective was the support of spears, if I could throw it on the ground it could serve as a trap to make the monster impaled on its own while running towards me.

And sure enough, I was right, the thing fell on the ground and I stood behind it, the bear once again ran towards me using his horns as some sort of weapon, however the moment he stepped on the spears support, his feet carried enough strength to lift it upwards and since it was his own strength against him, the five spears in that thing easily penetrated his skin locking him in place.

His HP rapidly declined as he stared at me with anger, soon, he died and exploded in bright polygons, I fell on the ground panting heavily.

"Fuck this game... What the hell was that?" I could only smile wryly as the sight of how that damn boss died crossed my mind, it reminded me of the woodpecker cartoon where one of the antagonists was chasing him but he stepped on that farm tool that ended up lifting it and hitting his head.

I somehow managed to recreate that scene inside SAO.

Shaking my head I went towards the girl that only managed to look at me, and dragged her away towards her father. When we arrived he bowed as he thanked me and as he left the quest completion screen popped up.

[Congratulations, you finished the quest! Rewards: 3000 cor, <<Purgatory>> Two-handed sword, <<????>>]

I smiled brightly at the rewards, a quest that rewarded more than a few hundred cor hasn't appeared till now, besides, that <<Purgatory>> sword as quite a good one for a monster drop, even without upgrades it already gave +3 for sharpness and durability, this is the equivalent of a +6 sword which is very rare at this point of the game.

As for the other thing, I didn't manage to find anything in my inventory, so I wasn't sure, maybe it was some sort of bug? Who knows, I'm not a developer, for all I know this could have been done in purpose and was the trigger of another quest.

Sighing I opened the map, before walking away towards <<Tolbana>>, I'm currently the only player staying there, I and Kirito do not stay together for long periods of time, after he gave me some tips about the game, we went separate ways and only worked together whenever there was a quest that the other required assistance to complete.

It might seem strange, but I assure you it isn't, after he saw how good I was in fighting he said that there was no need to remain in a party, we would be able to progress much faster alone than together in the first ten floors at least, I could only nod at his words and agree, but hey, he was actually right, after we separated I started to level up crazily fast.

....

One month had gone by, two thousand players died in this period, the hope that outside help would come was crushed. As I was in <<Tolbana>> alone clearing every single hidden quest I could find, I didn't see it myself but they said that the panic and the madness that took hold of the players when they realized that they really couldn't get back was unbelievable. There were people crying and others wailing, and some even tried to dig up the ground of the city saying that they were going to destroy this world. Of course, all buildings were non–destructible objects so this attempt failed without any results to show for it.

They said that it took days for the players to accept the situation and think of what to do next, and they ended up splitting into four groups.

The first consisted of a little over half the players—they were the ones who still wouldn't accept the conditions that Kayaba Akihiko had put forth and still waited for outside help.

The second category consisted of about 30% or three thousand players. It was a group where all the players worked together. The leader of it was the admin of the largest online game info site.

They ended up creating the first and largest guild of the game and was known as <<The Army>>, it was some sort of joke that other players came with.

The third category consisted of, at an estimate, a thousand players. It was made up of people who had wasted all their Cor but didn't want to make money by fighting monsters.

For every single player with exception of myself, there are two basic bodily needs, hunger, and fatigue. I only had the hunger for some reason, don't bother yourself trying to understand this, I spent weeks thinking about it and couldn't arrive at any conclusion if it was a bug Aincrad System would have already fixed it.

Those players either entered the army to do simple jobs that didn't require fighting in order to get some money or ganged up to attack other players in huge waves and steal everything they have.

The final, fourth category was, simply said, the rest.

There were fifty groups created by people who wanted to clear the game but didn't join the huge organization. They numbered around five hundred. We called these groups <<Guilds>> and they had a mobility that <<The Army>> lacked. Using that mobility, they steadily grew stronger.

Then there were the very few who chose the merchant and craftsman classes. They only numbered about two to three hundred, but they created guilds of their own and started training the skills that they would need to earn the Cor they need to get by.

The rest, around one hundred players, were called <<Solo Players>> — this was the group I belonged to.

They were the selfish group who had decided that acting alone would be better for strengthening themselves and simply surviving. If they could use the information they had, they could level up quickly.

After they had gained the power to fight against monsters and bandits by themselves, there was truthfully no merit in fighting with other players.

Of course, there were risks involved. To give an example, if a person was <<Paralyzed>> and if he had party members with him, they'd just cure him and that'd be that. But if the person was playing solo, it could lead straight to death. Actually, in the very beginning, solo players had the highest fatality rate amongst all the players.

But if you had the experience and knowledge to win through all this danger, there was a much better compensation for all this risk, and the beta testers (including myself) had both of these things.

With this precious information the solo players leveled up at a fierce pace and a huge gap soon opened between them and the rest of the players.

As an example of how great is the difference, while we still didn't open the doors to the next floor, I'm already at level seventeen, 3 levels above the second-ranked person in the level scoreboard at the starting city, and everyone in the top 20 are beta testers working alone.

Kirito wasn't in it, because he decided to hide his level, but he was only two levels away from me.

Today the majority of the players who could already explore the dungeon would be meeting to discuss how to proceed with finding the boss and defeating him.

In a place that resembled the theatre of ancient Greece, thirty or so players were sitting on the stairs-like seats, I was a few meters away from Kirito seating on the first row of stairs.

This time however I was fully covered in plate metal armor from head to toe, and instead of a one-handed sword, I was using my <<Purgatory>> which was upgraded 9 times, I literally spent 5000 cor to make it better, even after so much time, I didn't manage to find any other weapon, and I discovered that I am much better with two-handed swords so I could only accept this.

"Alright, everyone, let's start our meeting!" Shouted the guy with blue hair.