Chapter 55 – A Clue and a Direction for the Main Mission
Third person POV
Shortly after Shuto had entered a contract with Mai, Roxas came to the kitchen to grab a bag of potato chips when he saw Shuto with Mai. "Um…who are you?" he asked Mai directly. Shuto and Mai then looked at him.
"Oh, hi there, my friend. This is my friend and spirit guardian Mai Matsumoto. Say hi to her."
"Nice to meet you, kid."
Roxas was utterly shocked to hear that. "What?!"
Hearing the noise, Anko came out of Roxas' body, only to be shocked to see Mai. "Woah! Who are you?"
"Who are you?" Mai asked him directly. "And how did you came out of that kid?"
"Oh! This is Tachibana Anko," Shuto said to her about Anko. "This boy is the spirit guardian of this kid named Roxas Nietes of the Philippines."
Mai got that after a bit of analysis and critical thinking, and now, she knew which one of them was Roxas and the other was Anko. "Oh…I get it now. That kid with slightly brown skin was Roxas, and the one with blue eyes was Anko, right?"
"Yes, exactly," answered Shuto back, "you guessed them correctly."
And so, happy that Shuto had his own spirit guardian, Roxas and Anko introduced themselves to Mai.
"Nice to meet both of you," Mai responded back positively.
After that, at dinner time, while his friends were eating their Tamagoyaki dinner, Shuto proudly introduced Mai to them. Minato, Hideyoshi, and Koyuki were shocked to see her, dropping their chopsticks to their ceramic plates.
"Woah, that was quite sickly cool!"
"Another spirit guardian…"
"Yes, I met her recently tonight," responded Shuto back.
"No way! Tonight?!" Minato spat out his water drink. "When? While cooking dinner?"
"Yes, my friend, and my level now is at Level 36."
"Nice one!" Hideyoshi responded back, before glancing at Mai. "Thanks for giving him a big jump boost."
"Well…it's just my perk for him…" Mai shyly replied back as she stood next to Shuto.
Seeing that all of her friends had spirit guardians of their own made Koyuki feel insecure, now wishing to join the bandwagon by finding her own and accepting that dead person's request so she could have one, and in theory, she could survive the game without death.
Later, at night, at 10:23 p.m., Shuto, while sleeping, was in a void as a dream-dream. Mai was with him. "Woah, what is this place?" Shuto asked while looking around.
Shuto and Mai's POV
And then, we saw someone chained to a wall. That person, according to Anko, was Keita, one of the Elite Players and one of Kirito's friends. We were shocked.
"What the what…?"
"Oh, no…"
We then rushed to him, asking if he was okay.
Keita then looked at us with a despairing look on his face. "Yeah…help me…"
"Don't worry, we'll get you out of here," Mai responded.
"We need some sort of key though…" Shuto added.
"There's no key…" Keita said to us. "You have to defeat my evil self that was made by the game's creator…"
We were stunned to hear that.
"What?"
"Defeat him? Made by the game's creator?"
Keita then nodded. "Yes, but first, make your way to the 80th floor of the Tower and defeat the monster there. It had the keys to this kind of void. After that, defeat my evil self."
Those instructions seemed to be lofty and big for us to do it ourselves, so we said, "Don't worry, we're not alone. We had friends who would help us. They have spirit guardians of their own."
"W-What?" Keita was stunned. "These guys still linger around? My evil self said that there is one person who had a spirit guardian named Tachibana Anko, and those two are very strong together."
"Oh, you mean Roxas-kun?" Shuto asked back.
"That's his name?"
"Yes," Mai responded back.
"Oh…"
After that, we said our introductions of ourselves to him.
"Nice to meet you two," Keita replied while being slightly positive. "My name is Keita."
"Don't worry, we'll do our best to do this hard quest," Shuto brightly assured. "You can count on me, the Poet Knight."
Keita then chuckled a bit. "Nice nickname you have, Shuto-kun."
And then, both of us suddenly disappeared from the void, taking us back to the real world.