chapter 13

Leonard, seeing that his favorite weapon of which had gone through thick and thin with him for the past month or so destroyed, he was feeling quite depressed and heartbroken.

"...why are you feeling so depressed Leonard?" Kirito seeing that Leonard mood was quite ugly and listless on top of that came over and asked.

"...my sword...my favorite sword…all broken…" Leonard replied as he showed Kirito the hilt of the sword with no blade attached to it.

"...we can go to the next floor and get you another one...a better one." Kirito pats him on the back as he said those words, trying to cheer him up.

"..ok…" Leonard let out a long sigh.

Suddenly the system, the multiverse system sent him a message that changed everything.

[Congratulation for defeating the first-floor boss! Your reward is 10 achievement point!]

After seeing the message, Leonard who previously felt like he was stuck on the bottom of the pit of hell, suddenly felt like he was once again brought up to high heaven.

"Such generous reward?!" Leonard couldn't help but cheer out inside his heart.

He remembered the time when he has to survive the walking dead world and fought off the ridiculous corpse-monster, only to gain five points at the end and a single weapon.

But now, seeing that defeating something like a floor boss of Sword Art Online, he could gain twice the amount of what he had previously on the other world, he could help but feel excited.

"10 points per boss...100 bosses...wouldn't that give me 1,000 points?!" Leonard broke out in a smile as he did the simple math, even though it was his most hated subject in school- but now he couldn't help but fell in love with it.

Now with the new piece of information in hand, Leonard skipped happily and climbed the stairway upward leading out of the first boss dungeon, there once again he was blocked by another stone door, he waited for everyone to arrived.

"You do the honor," Diavel told him when he caught up with Leonard after checking on all the other players seeing if they're okay or not.

"Alright." Leonard then pushed the stone doors open, revealing what lies beyond the labyrinth of the first floor.

There, after he opened the door, a gust of hot and dried air assaulted his face and a bright blinding light distorted their vision for a moment.

After they regained their sight, all the players were confused.

"So this is the second floor."

The second floor of Aincrad could be described as depressing with all the slow ongoing background music that was installed for the floor itself, slowly the players walked through the door and entered the second floor of Aincrad.

Then they founded themselves on top of a cliff, overseeing the geography of the entire floor itself for kilometers around.

"This place looks so depressing." one of the players commented as he quickly surveyed the surrounding below them.

Which was all seen to be a large savannah-like grassland dotted with trees or boulders, the only real noticing feature of this floor was the giant pillar in the middle of the whole floor which had a head of a bull imprinted on it.

"Alright, we should try to find the closest settlement to this place as soon as possible, then one of us should go back and informed the other- who were either waiting in Tolbana or the town of beginning about the good news," Diavel suggested.

"Yeah we'll do that, let head there- I can somewhat see a large settlement in the distant." Leonard pointed out to him using his finger, the settlement ahead of them seen to be on a large plateau high up above the ground.

"Yeah let's go everyone." Diavel then told all the players as they slowly make their ways across the treacherous savannah which contained Jagged worms, Hornets and Beetle and occasionally they also run into one or two bullheaded humanoid monsters.

However, with the combined might of every player in the group, disposing of these monster was much of an issue, as they overpowered all of them with numbers.

As they walked under the scorching sun.

Diavel walked up to Leonard and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, behind him was Kirito and Asuna.

"So, tell me, what kind of skills that back there, when you were fighting Illfang...I don't think I've seen any of it, even in the beta." Diavel asked him.

Leonard looked at him, and then back to Kirito.

"I've also wanting to ask you that, but…" his voice slowly trailed off.

"It's a skill that I got after I entered Sword Art Online," Leonard told them.

"But how? That looks nothing like a skill! It's like magic!" Diavel told him.

"Well all of my skills deprived of a certain skill call [Negative Energy Manipulation]- just don't ask how I've gotten it, even I can't explain it logically," Leonard stated.

"But magic does not exist in Sword Art Online!" Asuna, Diavel, and Kirito called him out on that one important key information that was well known.

"...honestly...did any of you know the setting for Aincrad?" Leonard asked the three of them.

To which they looked at one another and smiled in an awkward manner.

Seeing this, Leonard couldn't help but let out a sigh.

"Aincrad setting goes with something like this, Aincrad was created from pieces of Alfheim, the land of the fairy- which also known as one of the nine worlds in the Norse Myth, and I tell you, when you think of fairy, what usually goes with it?" Leonard asked the trio.

"Tinker Bell?" Asuna accidentally blurted out before she used her hand to cover her mouth in shock, as her face flushed red, all the male players had sweat rolling down their forehead.

"...magic?" Kirito then answered.

"Bingo! You are correct." Leonard exclaimed dramatically.

"But that didn't explain how you got magic though," Diavel told him.

"Didn't I say that I can't explain the Cardinal System kind of logic? I only told you of the possibility of magic existed, who knows- I might be the lucky and chosen one." Leonard said jokingly to Diavel.

"Don't get your hope up too much my brother, someday I swear that I will get something unique too, so you won't be special for too long," Kirito told Leonard as he elbowed the walking sarcasm machine.

"I guess I'll look forward to that day to come then," Leonard told him.

"Probably won't be long though…" those words sounded within his mind as they continue to head toward the closest settlement of the second floor.

When they arrived, what greeted them was a large stone gate structured right outside of the plateau, the gate and wall itself seen to be carved out from stone.

[The Town of Urbos] the system informed the players as they stepped past the gate into the settlement.