SAO 2

The next day, Carl watched from the rooftops as the group met up and made their way to the town's edge. Carl heard plenty of comments about the "dirty beta tester that ditched us" as he watched out of sight.

He sighed at the stupidity of some of those people. They knew how beta testers were hated. Did they really expect him to go traipsing around the town without a care and let the bastards follow him, gather intel about his habits and whatnot? Maybe get a chance to "show him who's boss"? Idiots.

Before they left the town, Carl slipped ahead of them and waited outside the town's gates, casually leaning against a tree like he had been waiting there the whole time.

Carl wasn't too petty to admit to himself that he enjoyed the way some of the people who had been badmouthing him guiltily started when they saw him.

'Badmouth me behind my back, will ya?' Carl laughed inside. 'I'll show you what's up in this fight.'

Carl then joined the end of the line as they trekked to the dungeon. He would likely sense it if anyone made a move on him, but no sense giving them the apparent chance of a free attack being behind him offered if they were so far gone from reason as to actually attack him in front of everyone.

As they were walking, Carl noticed the two party members directly in front of him. One was a girl with a cloak covering up her head and shadowing her features. Carl guessed she had some run-ins with pricks who liked her looks and tried to "protect" her for favors.

The other was a young teenager who was a head shorter than Carl who looked quite nervous. Carl could tell he wanted to ask him something, but was hesitating to ask.

"Go ahead and ask, dude. Don't hold it in." Carl finally stated after watching his nervous back and forth behavior ticks.

"Why'd you admit to being a beta tester? You know they are just going to blame you for everything that goes wrong and despise you. So why?" The kid finally asked.

"You remember what I said at the meeting, about things being a bit different than in the beta?" Carl asked, and noticed that the kid had also been a beta tester. The girl was just listening to the conversation, curious.

"Yeah. So?"

"Well, I know I'm not the only beta tester around. And judging by what was written about the boss, the other beta testers are relying pretty heavily on what they learned in the beta. But that can only get them so far. Normal games get things changed, reshuffled, and rebalanced between the beta test and the official release. After seeing how cruel and clever Kayaba is, you think he wouldn't tweak his game so people couldn't totally rely on prior knowledge?"

"I guess you've got a point there." The kid admitted.

"Yeah. And another thing, I don't listen to random people and their guilt trips. The fact that people died in this game has nothing to do with me. That blame lies solely with Kayaba. No matter how much you try to help people, you can't be responsible for other people's lives. You can only be responsible for your own. If they can't protect themselves in this death game, they're better off going to a safe zone to live. If they make the choice to go into danger, it's no one else's fault if they bite the dust." Carl commented.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Carl could tell the kid wasn't fully convinced. But that's teenagers. Well, people in general, really. Unless they work something out for themselves, they wouldn't be fully convinced.

They soon arrived at the boss room. Opening the 20 foot double doors, they saw a dark room that lit up when they entered. A 3.5 meter tall pot bellied Kobold lord sat on his throne, eyes glowing, with a long handled single blade ax resting on the floor next to him.

Illfang the Kobold Lord grabbed his ax in one hand, and had a buckler shield in the other as he leapt forward and roared at the raid that intruded on his territory. Three minions appeared wearing plate armor, with large maces they held in two hands.

The four Kobold charged across the football field sized hall, roaring as they came closer.

Diabel pointed with his sword, "Commence attack!" He yelled.

The group split up, different squads keeping each of the enemies occupied. Diabel sat in the back, directing the group's movements and when they would block or switch out.

Carl joined in one of the groups killing a minion, moving to his side and slashing the kobold up. The kobold only needed a few hits before it died.

After a few moments Carl heard the boss loudly roar. Carl looked over and saw Illfang toss aside his ax and shield. Carl then heard Kibaou snidely say, "Looks like the guide book was right" as he looked over at Carl in a challenging manner.

Suddenly Diabel charged in, yelling "Stand back, I got this!" Contrary to the plan where everyone in the group should surround the boss, it looked like Diabel was determined to get the last hit bonus.

Carl could read from Diabel that he let his greed overtake him, wanting to get the killing blow to get the extra nice loot.

The young teenager that Carl talked to earlier yelled a warning. "He doesn't have a Talwar! This isn't like the beta, get out of there Diabel!"

Illfang pulled out his No-Dachi and jumped, bouncing off the wall and ceiling before coming down like a ton of bricks on Diabel, slashing him good and flinging him through the air. While Diabel was in the air, Illfang moved to get a second slash on him, and was about to hit him when Carl appeared in front, blocking the swing of Illfang's blade from taking Diabel's life.

Carl then proceeded to slash the last of the health off the boss, getting the final blow.

The raid was still standing there, stunned from the sudden drama and danger that almost took Diabel's life, and would have endangered theirs.

Suddenly, the fact that they won and killed the boss occurred to them, and the group started cheering and celebrating. Everyone was hugging each other in relief. Carl just kind of smiled at their good cheer. He looked over and saw the teenager he'd talked to early giving a health potion to Diabel.

Diabel got up a moment later, and looked at Carl with a complicated gaze. On the one hand, he didn't get the final attack bonus and special item. On the other hand, Carl just saved his life. So he just stood there quietly, not sure how to act.

Agil, the girl, and the teenager then came up and congratulated Carl on finishing off the boss.

"Today's victory, is all thanks to you." Agil stated. The raid cheered Carl on, relieved that the fight was over.

"Well, everyone did their part. I just finished him off." Carl modestly claimed. He already won, getting some special armor piece. No need to rub it in people's faces.

"Stop cheering!" A loud voice angrily yelled out, ruining everyone's good mood. The group turned back and looked at Kibaou, who was glaring at Carl. "Admit it, you knew what the boss's technique was going to be. That's how you stopped it. Why didn't you tell us? People could have died!"

Kibaou's friend agreed in a seriously whiney voice. "It's cause he's a beta tester! He knew all about it but didn't tell us! He knew, but he kept it from us! And, I bet he's not the only beta tester here. Come on, show yourselves!"

Carl just started laughing at the idiots. "Yeah, you guys are idiots. You're still hung up on that, as if anyone who was a beta tester wasn't in the same exact death game as the rest of you idiots. I already told you the game now is different from when it was in beta, but you idiots didn't listen to me. Beta testers have the same exact chance of death here. And blaming your cowardice and idiocy on others doesn't help everyone trust each other and help us get through this death game. Stop trying to target people who aren't responsible for your situation, idiot."

"Yeah, if that's the case then how did you know the boss's attack path? Huh? It's cause you're a dirty rotten cheater!" Kibaou yelled.

Carl laughed even more at the idiots.

"Why are you laughing!?"

"Because, dimwit. I don't need to cheat." Blatant lie. If he didn't have skills from other worlds he would be in the same situation they were. But hey, since they were his hard earned skills, it really wasn't cheating, now was it? "Everything I've told you is the truth. The game now is different than the beta. The reason I could react to the boss's attacks, is that before entering the game, I was already a master swordsman."

Carl moved, not anywhere near the fastest he could, but enough so Kibaou could see him coming but not do anything about it. Carl soon rested his sword against Kibaou's neck in open threat. "It has nothing to do with being a beta tester."

"I'm." Carl moved to the next idiot in line who was calling him a cheater, resting his sword against his neck before he could do anything,

"Just." Carl targeted the next idiot, resting his sword on his throat for a moment before moving on to the next one.

"That." And on to the final idiot who was Kibaou's friend gulped loudly when the sword was laid against his neck.

"Good." Carl emphasized the last word. If these idiots didn't get the message that there are some people you just don't fuck with from this demonstration, then they were hopeless.

Carl sheathed his sword on his back, smirking at the still shocked players. "I've been practicing my swordsmanship since I was knee high. So, yeah, I could read the boss's attack because of skill. If you idiots want to survive this death game, you're just going to have to git gud, scrub."

Carl had all his memories from this life of being a gamer. And gamers respect skill above all else. Not to mention they were in a life and death situation. He may not be able to change Kibaou's stubborn idiocy, but everyone else there who had seen his skill should be thinking that having him along for boss raids was the correct choice if they wanted to survive. And if they were smart enough, they should be rethinking their unreasoning anger against beta players.

Carl then started walking off, casually waving farewell at the group. "The name is Rondo." Carl gave them his in-game name for contact purposes. "I'll be available next time there's a boss raid. Until then, I'll be researching more info for the guide books. Don't call me if you're an idiot. Otherwise, thanks for the raid, guys. Good hunting!"

XX

Carl climbed out the exit onto the 2nd floor. The exit was on a towering cliff, giving Carl a beautiful view of the land in front of him. From what he could see, the land was mostly a series of mountains, cliffs, and valleys.

Carl saw there was a series of stairs and switch backs leading down to the valley where there was a town. He knew from his time in the Beta that the town was Urbus.

Carl had been stuck in dungeon stale air for a few hours, so he took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air in appreciation. Once he felt like he had cleansed his lungs, Carl began making his way down the trail.

He figured he had a few minutes until the rest of the raid group followed him to the exit, so Carl bound down the switch backs in a series of jumps that would have broken anyone else's legs. Once he got enough distance that he could be sure no one in the raid would be able to catch up, he slowed his pace to enjoy the walk.

Upon arriving at Urbus, Carl first went about collecting quests and taking advantage of being the first person to arrive in the town. What Kibaou had said the day before about beta testers had been about 1/5th truth. The beta testers did take advantage of their knowledge to get to the quests and hunting grounds first.

But there were many reasons Kibaou was just an idiot. First of all, most of the quests were repeatable by everyone. There were only few unique quests that could only be done a single time by a single person.

The hunting grounds that Kibaou complained about have respawning mobs, so the first people there only have a slight advantage. The people who come behind still get mobs to hunt so they can level.

People like Kibaou were just bitter and jealous of other's success. They try to use moral sounding arguments to take advantage of and steal from others. As evidenced by his desire to steal the money and equipment of the beta players so he could benefit. Through that one demand his real self and greed was shown.

His grief at the loss of a friend was genuine, but he took advantage of that "moral high ground" to come up with a way to spread his misery and punish others while benefitting at the same time.

So while Carl may be wary of the idiot backstabbing him in the future, he felt absolutely no qualms with continuing his practice of being the first to an area, to a quest, or to a hunting ground. Carl was already fulfilling his moral duty and community service by providing information about the quests, hunting areas, and dangers to the information broker, Argo, who was the one who put out the information guides that people like Kibaou benefitted so much from.

After Carl was done sweeping through town, he found an out of the way place to enter his Warehouse. He went to his laptop and quickly wrote up a report of the boss encounter. He made special note of the boss's level, 5, and the deviation it had from the Beta test. His report was made much easier to compile because of the Data Book item he had gotten from the HSDK world that automatically recorded information of every mob or boss he encountered.

Carl noted the raid's average level, 7, and mentioned that in the future the bosses were likely to get even tougher and that it would probably for the best if the raids had at least 5 levels on the raid boss to be safer.

He then exited his Warehouse and mailed off his report to Argo. He had a deal with Argo to provide her his reports and she would send him any information of note she gained from other players. Carl's information alone had made sure she was the top information broker around, so it was a lucrative business deal for her.

In order to make a profit and ensure she could keep being an information broker, she had different tiers of information available for payment. She would constantly be moving information from one tier to another. The information would eventually end up on the free tier after a certain amount of time.

She knew that the information would eventual get out into the public anyway, and that there was a fine line between profiting from information and profiteering from information. The basic information about how to survive was free from the very beginning, but other important information that players needed to get an edge and be head of the pack would cost them.

Carl was already level 12 from his near constant questing and grinding. The mobs in SAO never stopped giving xp, no matter how high level one got. But as one got higher in level, the amount of xp a level 1 mob could give a level 50 would be so negligible that it would basically be a waste of their time.

The highest level mobs on the first floor were only level 5, so despite Carl's near constant grinding, his leveling had been slowing down more and more as he leveled. Despite his leveling speed slowing down, Carl kept up his routine for a number of reasons.

First was his martial arts practice. Even though the low level mobs didn't give him any challenge, he made grinding into a training trip. Especially because the game mechanics made it so Carl could only do so much damage to the mobs. If this was real life, Carl would be one-shotting all the mobs. But since the damage was limited by his level, gear, and stats, he could practice against enemies that survived the first hit in many cases. It was good practice for him.

Next was all the item and crafting materials he gained from his near constant training. One of the effects of being astrally projected into the game, was that he had to actually learn the skills he was training. The crafting system only gave him the recipe or plans, he had to actually make the item, instead of relying on the system to do it for him. So he was becoming much more skilled in crafting. And he was becoming rich from selling all the products.

Carl wondered if some of the players in the beginner town might start buying the many bows and arrows he had crafted and left with merchants after they read his report on the first level boss. It would be interesting to see a ranged class become more popular. Not everyone had the guts and determination to get up in a monsters face in melee. It would give many of the more timid a chance to do something with themselves.

Carl finally looked over the special item he won from the boss, the Coat of Midnight. Looking at what it did, Carl was pretty disappointed. It only increased a player's ability to hide. Other than that, it just looked like a black trench coat. So it did pretty much nothing for him.

'Eh, not my style.' Carl thought as he was looking in a mirror at what he looked like wearing the coat. "And I don't want to pick up some weird nickname like the emo swordsman because of always wearing black. Should I sell it?" Carl wondered as he unequipped it and stuck it in his inventory. "It's a unique item, and I've got an infinite inventory, might as well keep it. Or throw it in storage in the warehouse. I can always hype it up and auction it off later."

With several quests to do, Carl quickly left the town and moved into the nearby mountains. He first had to round up some goats. Carl had long since stopped wondering about the odd quests the towns folk gave him. Round up goats? Sure. Milk some spiders in the forest? Why not? Gather some river mud? Eh, okay, sure.

When Carl arrived at the location given to him by the herder with a broken leg, he saw half a dozen goats standing on top of a large rock formation, just out of reach of the eight wolves that were looking for dinner.

Carl drew his sword and charged in. Those goats weren't going to save themselves!

Several moments later, Carl finished off the last of the wolves. He pulled out the special whistle given to him by the herder, and blew on it. The goats easily leaped down from the rock formation they were on, and followed him back to town where he showed them to their pen.

Carl's reward was a large sized soup cooking pot. At first, Carl was annoyed at getting something so simple. His quest senses had told him he would get a nice tool for one of his crafting professions, and only got what looked like a simple pot.

But then Carl read the description, and was pretty happy with the results. The cast iron looking pot could fit as much soup or stew inside as needed, and would perfectly cook it. Not only that, but the more Carl used it, the higher tier it would get. It would absorb a portion of the aroma of everything cooked in it, and that would enhance the flavor of all future soups and stews cooked in it.

"Now that's some Toriko level gear! Hell yeah!" Carl was excited. Toriko was an adventure cooking manga. The basic idea is the world is a gastronomic dream.

In the Toriko world animals and plants all had super high levels of energy they pack in. The higher tier, the higher the energy value and the better the flavor of the food. And the more a martial artist eats, the more powerful they get because they consume that energy to fuel their rising strength.

With this cooking pot, his stews and soups would just get better and better. Carl couldn't wait, he found an out of the way place, and entered his warehouse. He pulled out the ingredients for a hearty stew, and soon had it cooking on low heat. He could leave it for hours before coming back to it when it was ready.

Carl decided that he would always keep a pot of stew brewing. Even if he just took the stew and sold it, it would continue to upgrade his pot.

"The journey of a thousand pots of stew…" Carl began the joke, but soon trailed off. For one, there was no one there but him to enjoy it. Second, it wasn't really a great joke. If there was no Cordelia to slap his shoulder, or Fred to snort laugh at the silliness of the joke, or Fiona and Rhona to get excited about getting to eat delicious stew, it really wasn't worth finishing the joke.

Shrugging off the momentary feelings of gloom, he soon left his Warehouse and continued questing.

XX

Crouched behind a rocky outcropping so he wouldn't be seen, Carl watched the movements of the large herd of bovine monsters in the valley below him. They were grazing in circles around the single tree in the middle of the valley.

The item that was his target was resting in the higher branches of the tree. He needed to retrieve the item and return it to Ben the villager in the small village a couple of kilometers away.

The only problem? The quest asked him to sneak past the bovine monsters. If he failed to sneak past them, the quest would fail.

It was time, the bovine monsters were in position.

Carl swiftly moved to the next outcropping of rocks that would hide him. Success, no moos of alarm.

He waited 5 seconds, then low crawled to a bush that would keep him from view for the 2 seconds needed as the strangely aggressive cow moved past. Carl then sprinted for the small depression in the ground, reaching it just moments before he would be discovered.

This was the part that he'd had problems with three times already. From here, he kept being spotted from different directions. This time, though, he tried a distraction. He threw a rock high in the air. It came down on the other side of the bull that kept spotting him.

The large bull snorted, pawed the ground a few times as he turned around to investigate. Which allowed Carl to finally reach the tree without being spotted and begin climbing. A few moments later, and Carl had reached his objective.

He placed the child's kite in his inventory.

That's right, the quest that had been giving him such a hard time required him to retrieve a child's kite. He wasn't allowed to kill the cows. He couldn't be seen, or "the cows will stampede our little village."

Carl snorted. He'd already been seen three times and the cows had done no such thing. But that was quests for you.

Carl made it back to the ground before the bull was done investigating the noise from his earlier distraction. He swiftly flitted across the ground from hiding place to hiding place, and made it out of the valley unseen.

Success!

Wiping the imaginary sweat off his brow at the quest completion, Carl traveled back to the little village. Looking around at the NPCs rustic lifestyle in the mountains, Carl wondered just how self aware they were.

There was only so much computing power available. If all of the NPCs were not just running on rote programming, but developed self awareness, this world would soon crash.

Carl had seen small interactions between NPCs that Cardinal, the world's main AI, had set up a pretty decent imitation of human emotions and interactions. It was good enough to imitate human emotions in some cases and touch the heart strings of the players.

Case in point, when Carl returned the kite to the quest giver, seeing him hand it over to his son and the son's apparent joy at getting his kit back touched on Carl heart strings. He knew it was all a staged play, but it looked so real.

Carl received his reward, a blueprint on how to build kite's.

It didn't seem like a very important quest reward. It wasn't even as useful as getting gold, let alone epic weaponry.

But Carl had already seen in the Beta Test how Cardinal liked to make quest chains. Sometimes at higher levels, Carl had found a quest that made him return to a lower level to do some mundane task before he could advance to get a decent reward.

So it had turned Carl into something of a hoarder. He would complete quests and keep even the seemingly useless rewards. Who knows if they would be useful later? And he had the inventory space for it.

Now that Carl had finished the quest, he returned to the valley with the bovine monsters that kept him from completing the quest three freaking times. He had to run back to the village and reaccept the quest each time he failed. It was seriously a pain.

Looking down at the cows with a scary smile on his face, he slowly drew his sword.

Fifteen minutes later, Carl sighed in happiness. He had a whole bunch of leather, and he'd shown those damned cows the error of their ways! Good thing they had a quick respawn timer, so he could thoroughly enjoy getting back at them.

Carl chuckled at himself. It was somewhat nice being able to go on a rampage against what he knew to be virtual monsters. Just let go and work out his frustrations on them. Whistling a merry tune, Carl made his way back to the hunting grounds he had been leveling at. He had taken a break from the grinding to explore a bit when he'd come across the kite retrieval quest.

Upon arrival at the valley, Carl was a little disappointed to find there were a large group of players already there. The group of 15 players were split into three groups. Two groups of six, and one of three.

When one of the players noticed Carl walking by, he quickly let everyone else know. "Hey, Rondo's here!"

Upon hearing that, the entire crowd of players stopped their discussion to prevent Carl from hearing what they had been talking about and turned to glare at Carl. As if Carl hadn't already heard their whole discussion. His hearing was quite acute.

Carl just ignored them and continued whistling as he moved past, acting like he had no clue what they were up to. But he filed away the information he'd gathered. Apparently, after the first boss's defeat, the raid group had split up and organized itself under two leaders.

One group was following Diabel and his second in command, Lind. The other group was following Kibaou the dumbass. Who was currently trying to stare holes in Carl's back, but was too wary of Carl to say anything. Apparently, Carl had made an impression on the idiot back in the boss room. A sword to the throat would do that.

When they saw that Carl was just killing the mobs in the area, they soon left. They were hoping to kill the Field Boss Bulbous Bow before Carl realized it was there and tried to get in on the action.

After they left the area, Carl stopped killing the mobs and followed. He was curious about what was going to happen. When he arrived at the area, he simply hung back without letting himself be seen.

The three groups were still arguing. Eventually Kibaou got impatient and his group started attacking the Field Boss, causing the other two groups to jump in too. But the whole formation was messy.

The Field Boss, a 4 meter tall cow, had a few different attacks. He would stomp the players, try to gore them, steam breath them, and his most devastating attack was a charge that would knock the players back and stun them for his stampeding follow up. If the players didn't protect the one charged, he would be stomped to death. All they had to do was hit the boss on the head to divert his attention, otherwise he would stomp to death the one that received the charge.

Due to the lack of coordination among the group, and the stubbornness of the two leaders, Kibaou and Lind who both wanted to get the killing blow, the fight turned into a huge mess. The players being knocked back only barely escaped due to sheer luck time and again.

But the infighting was getting worse. They paid more attention to each other than the boss.

And sure enough, Carl saw that one of the players in Kibaou's group was knocked back by a charge, but no one was close by to protect him from the following stampede. He was for sure going to die because of the two main group's infighting.

Carl had been prepared for just such a moment, so he fired the arrow he had prepared. He struck the boss between the eyes just before the boss reached the downed and stunned player. Snorting in anger, the boss turned to where the arrow came from, and saw Carl standing there in the open.

Carl fired another arrow that hit the giant bull on the nose. Snorting in anger, the bull charged Carl, leaving the group of players behind. Carl put his bow away and pulled his sword. He easily side stepped the field boss's charge, slashing him several times as he did. The bull stood twice as tall at the shoulder as Carl, so he could only reach several tendons in the legs and vital points in the lower body. Every swing was a critical hit.

'Thanks for recognizing my skill, Cardinal.' Carl thought.

The players that were running to try to catch up were amazed at the speed of Carl's swings. He hadn't displayed that speed previously in the 1st floor boss fight. They started to wonder just how good was Rondo?

Carl also didn't let the boss recover. He stuck to his side, never letting the bull actually face him, as he continually sliced into the boss. Before the players could reach the boss, Carl had finished it off.

When Carl turned to face the players, he wasn't surprised that Kibaou started ranting about him stealing the boss from them. Lind kept his silence, occasionally glaring at Kibaou, waiting to see how everything would play out.

"Hey, dumbass." Carl interrupted Kibaou. He was really growing tired of the stubborn idiot. "I only stepped in to save one of your party members. But instead of being thankful that a 'dirty rotten cheating beta player' saved the life of your party member, you are mad that I stole the boss from you."

That shut Kibaou up good, but Carl could tell he wasn't self reflecting and adjusting himself to think properly. Carl didn't come right out and say it, but he heavily implied that Kibaou cared more about the loot from the boss than he did about the life or death of his party member.

'Maybe I made a mistake in not getting that one perk.' Carl thought. 'It would be so useful for settling the dipwad once and for all. Maybe. He might just come back later with even more dumb.'

Let's Not and Say we Didn't: That's dumb and you're dumb. You possess the amazing ability to point out something is a bad idea and have it stick. Even without explaining your reasons, people will understand if your reasoning is good or bad. Should the idiot persist, they are compelled to reveal their reasoning – which you can then further point out as dumb.

"From what I saw, you guys didn't have control of the fight, you were too busy fighting each other for positioning. That's a good way to end up dead. You had the manpower to kill the boss, easily, if you had all worked together. If you had, I would have just watched the fight play out."

"It was only when one of you was about to die that I stepped in. Remember that this is life and death. Is your pride and greed worth your life?" Carl chastised them.

Carl then turned around to leave. He'd said his piece.

But Kibaou proved how stubborn he was.

"Wait just a damned minute, Rondo! We found the boss and did most of the work in taking it down. Don't think you can just leave with the loot! Cough it up!" He yelled, full of anger.

"Nah, I think I'll keep it as an idiot tax to remind you not to be dumb. Good luck with that." Carl then left without another word. Staying to argue with Kibaou? Catch the idiocy? No thanks.

XX

Carl was at the southernmost part of the second level. He was exploring the mountain, mining ores and gathering herbs.

One of the things he'd discovered was how magical his Warehouse and attached farms were. He knew he was astrally projected into a digital game. But when he dug out some of the herbs needed to make potions and transplanted them into his farm on a whim, he found that they became part of the farming system.

From then on, he could purchase seedlings to plant in his farms and grow the different ingredients for the potions. Carl then tried the same for his metal farms, and found that the ores also transferred over.

"I should expect nothing less from an op hax system that lets me jump to different realities." Carl commented. "When I go back to the Pokemon world I'll have to gather everything needed to make all the pokemon boosters, medicines, and training supplements."

Now that Carl knew he could add all the herbs and ores to his Farmville farms, he was determined to hunt through all the levels and gather everything to add to it. He was also considering plans to add the fish and other food animals from Aincrad to his farms. There were some rare bird he remembered being on level 6 that made the absolute best tasting drumsticks.

If he could raise those birds on his farm, he would have a steady supply of delicious food. And with the magic of Jump Chain, turning them from virtual to real seemed to be a thing.

And that realization made Carl want to plunder the world of Aincrad for every bit of resource that he could. Which led to Carl wandering the wilds of the tall mountain in the south of level 2, looking for anything rare.

Which led to Carl now looking at the isolated, lonely hut sitting nearly at the top of the mountain. As Carl watched, he saw a hermit puttering around the yard, doing simple chore work. Looking around, he didn't see anything unusual about the area. Nothing to tell him why some NPC was so far away from any village or town.

"Are you going to come in, or just sit out there in the cold?" Came the aged voice of the white bearded old man.

Shrugging at being found out by an AI that was connected to the virtual world he was in, Carl entered the yard. "Hi there, old man. The name's Rondo."

"Ah, yes. Names…It's been so long, I've actually forgotten my own name. You can just continue calling me 'Old Man'." Old Man stated while stroking his beard. He spent a moment looking over Carl. "You look like a strong one. I've got a task for you. If you succeed, I'll reward you with some knowledge. If you fail? Well..." The old man laughed. "You get nothing. What have you got to lose?"

Carl laughed in response to the old man's laugh and challenge. "Sounds good. I'm in. What do you want me to do, Old Man?"

"Follow me to the task. I'll explain when we get there." The Old Man flipped his beard as he turned to walk towards his back yard. After they passed the hut, Carl saw a 2.5 meter tall rock sitting in the middle of an unplanted field. "Your task, is to break up this rock so it can be moved." Old Man said as he pointed at the enormous rock. "Using only your fists."

"Well, that doesn't sound too bad-"

"And you must wear the facial paint of Cat-Man-Do while you do the task. Remove it, and you fail."

"Okay…" Carl trailed off as he watched the old man pull out a pot of paint. He approached Carl and painted three whisker marks on each cheek. Carl could feel the corner of his mouth twitching. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Cat-Man-Do and whisker marks? Was Old Man messing with him here?

Old Man had a suspiciously amused glint in his eye as he returned to the front yard of his hut. Carl sighed. Even if Old Man was messing with him, it was officially part of the quest. Time to get started.

Carl squared up and threw a punch at the tall rock. When his fist hit, only a small quarter sized chip of rock broke off.

"And this is why, in the virtual world, the AI is king. I would have easily destroyed this rock in the real world." Carl complained even as he began raining blows down on the stubborn rock. The sooner he got punching, the sooner he would finish the quest.

Carl narrowed down his focus on the single task before him. Time passed as Carl didn't flag in his efforts. After 50 minutes of pounding away on the stone, it finally broke apart into many pieces, falling to the ground and then dissolving away into motes of light that then faded into nothing. Carl saw the notification in the corner of his eye that said the quest was complete.

Carl reported a successful demolition effort to Old Man. For his effort, he was rewarded with the martial arts skill. Carl thanked Old Man and made his way further up the mountain before checking out what the martial arts skill did for him.

Looking over the description, Carl saw that it would give him a certain amount of multiplication of his damage dealt with his hands and feet, based off his stats.

"If most of our enemies in this game were humanoid, this might be a path people would be happy to take. But most of our fights are with giant monsters. I can't see too many people giving up the bladed weapons in order to punch things to death." Carl laughed.

He might play with the skill in the future to see if he could improve it. But he only really had the confidence to do so because he was already highly skilled and could basically avoid the damaging attacks of the bosses.

With that quest diversion complete, Carl continued his trek over the mountains looking for more crafting materials. Traversing the mountain areas was so easy when he had parkour skills and the body of a master.