Chapter Text
“Switch!”
The sounds of blade clashing against blade could be heard reverberating around the hall as a boy with short snow white hair leaped back with impressive speed. He wielded a dagger-type weapon, it had a double sided blade and was only a few centimeters at the hilt. At the end of the blade was a needle-like point, a weapon designed for piercing through gaps in a set of armour.
As he jumped back, his dagger reflected the blue light coming from a two handed axe with a wicked spike at the end. Its user, a girl with long jet black hair charged forward, swinging it at the now stunned skeleton. Connecting heavily, it left a trail of red particles behind as it sliced the steel armour it was wearing. The health bar hovering near it trickled down a small amount turning from green to yellow.
In total there were a total of 7 of them up against 5 skeletons. The one the two were fighting stood at a height taller than most fully grown adults, its nametag reading <<Ruined Skeleton Knight Captain>>. Its longsword and full plate armour were in decent shape and their large shield was adorned with a red cover and not just raw wood.
Accompanying it were four smaller skeletons each called <<Ruined Skeleton Knight>>. However, although shorter than the captain, they still were taller than some of the party. Their arming swords and bucklers, although more damaged than the captain’s gear, were still in a usable state compared to the spears the armourless grunts had plowed through near the start of the dungeon.
The long stone hallway they were in was being periodically lit by the brightly coloured sword skills they were using. Both sides traded blows, blade clashing against blade, whittling each other's health bars slowly. As the captain’s health bar went from yellow to red it let out a scream, or would have if it was still living. Instead it stood there, screaming its silent rage. Throwing its shield aside, it pulled a parrying dagger from its belt and charged forward with new speed.
“Shit, pattern change!” The boy shouted as the skeleton moved towards him, dagger out in front. Quick as a bird, he pivoted on the spot, knocking away its thrusting dagger with his own. However as he attempted to leap away a blue blur caught in the corner of his eye.
“Shit-”
The longsword, performing the basic skill <<Slant>> began descending towards his arm like an executioner’s axe. Just before it reached his grey overcoat however, it was intercepted by a glowing red blade. Stuck between the space between the spike and the axehead of the polearm, the skeleton tried to free his weapon continuing the slashing arc. However with the skill interrupted the sword now was back to dull grey.
“Switch!” She shouted as the red hued halberd continued its thrusting motion, moving his sword out of the way.
Regaining his footing he sprang forward, raking the skeleton’s chestplate full of red slash marks. His black boot was now glowing a bright orange as if it was a burning flame. Using the extra skill <<Martial arts>>, his now deadly boot smashed into the shin plate of the skeleton, knocking it back. As the skeleton tried to regain its footing it was met with a combo from the axe wielder. Performing a relentless amount of powerful slashes, the axe traced more red lines through its armour depleting the final parts of its health bar with the powerful hits.
The skeleton froze as if it had been turned to ice, slowly turning blue. It then disappeared into a mass of blue polygons, sounding like a glass sculpture shattering into thousands of pieces. In front of the two players appeared status windows showing experience points, cor and items earned. Around them the last two remaining knights were quickly slain as well until the seven of them stood alone in the hallway.
“I’m outta pots you guys got any?” Asked another party member, his health bar in the red zone.
Most of the room had yellow or green health bars, scars from the fierce battle. The battered players shook their heads, empty on health potions themselves. He was the only one in the red danger zone, the area hanging between life and death.
Looking around, the white haired boy whose name tag read <<SukaBlyatt>> clicked his tongue in annoyance. He sheathed his dagger while walking over to him. He pulled out a glass bottle from his belt, it had the same design as most potions bought from the various vendors of Arincrad. The colour of it was a deep purple, like the colour of grape juice. He handed it to the player as he continued to walk past them. “Seeing as I’m almost out of pots, I’m gonna head back.”
The boy studied the potion suspiciously as if it had poison in it. With most of them giving him distrustful gazes, of fear, of anger, of disgust, the tension could have been cut with a pair of scissors. Seeing this, Alace quickly got up, getting between her party and their guest.
“I thought you solos were supposed to be the toughest of all of us, able to survive the dangerous dungeons of Arincrad all on your own. I never knew you all fell back the second your oh so important health potion disappeared." She teased, trying to release some of the tension from the room.
She had a playful smirk on her face, contrasting with Suka’s scowl. Next to her half-full health bar was her gamertag <<AlaceOfHearts>>.
“So you’re calling me a coward for having survival instincts?”
“Nah, I’m just messing with you. Alright everyone we’ll take a breather and then start to head back.”
With a growl, Suka sat down, leaning against the stone wall while pulling out a health potion. It was a bright lime green, the same exact shade as a drink he used to drink back in the real world. The bright green liquid had a sour orangy taste overpowering the slight sweetness it had. As he drank the potion, he was interrupted by a shout from across the hall.
“Fucking hell, what the hell was that? Tastes like bloody nuclear waste.”
Suka finished his drink, his health bar slowly creeping back to full. “What is it? It’s a high level healing potion, it should heal most if not all your health.” he replied curtly.
“No I mean what kind of psycho buys a potion that makes your tastebuds get flashbanged?”
”What, you’re telling me you don’t like the taste of cordial mix straight from the bottle?”
The other players looked incredulously at the solo player as if he had asked whether breathing was necessary. A silence came over the group as they decided whether the solo player tagging along with them was playing a cruel joke on them or simply just had bad taste.
The rest, although having different equipment all wore some dark yellow signifying their guild as the Arincrad Legion. Meanwhile he wore an unadorned dark grey overcoat that looked in bad shape. If it had a hood, the scowling man could have been mistaken as a member of the player killing guild: laughing coffin.
“Well you better drink up… else you’re gonna die.” he said unsympathetically.
Alace with black hair seeing this faceoff, pulled a flask from her belt. She walked over and grabbed the purple potion, pouring it into the flask. She handed the drink to him with a smile on her face. “There you go, I put it with some tea so it should be more palatable now.”
He griped for a second, first by being given cough syrup from the stranger travelling with them and then being treated like a child. After a few seconds he grabbed the drink, downing the now palatable liquid. After the party members had healed up and sorted out their inventories the group started the long trek back to the dungeon.
Although the boss labyrinth they were currently in was only about 300 meters in length, the tremendous 100 meter height meant they had to descend many, many levels to get to the exit. After descending a few floors, they passed a large gate with a raised castle-like door. On the other side of the door was a large circular room, about 50 meters in width. Dotted periodically, the walls were lined with more castle gates, these all closed. What was behind the doors was obscured by the shadows. The only open one was directly opposite to the first door, a pile of treasure chests lining the space.
Suka scoffed at the obvious trap, all too aware of the dangers of this floating castle. Areas like this were common in boss dungeons, holding a large amount of loot to anyone who dared venture into it. The problem was that these types of mob gauntlets were often full of waves of elite level enemies, often balanced with gear from the next floor in mind.
In Sword Art Online, if you died here you would die in real life. Many traps used the promise of loot to lure greedy players in with the promise of riches, only to punish them with cold death instead. He walked by the door not giving it a second thought. However, as he continued walking he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking.
He turned around to see that their party of six behind him had suddenly become five. In the top left corner of his vision, he saw one of his party members had a blue boot icon near his health bar. The rest of them were staring into the room with expressions of shock or hands in their faces.
“Oh my god he just ran in.”
“Save him!”
“Hey guys, not the time for jokes!”
Suka looked into the arena-like room to see a shape moving across the room charging across the room at superhuman speed, bee-lining for the treasure. He clicked his tongue in disgust, not bearing any pity for the idiot who was throwing his life away. As he reached the halfway point, two of the other gates opened up with heavy metallic clanking. Out of the shadows rode out skeletal knights mounted on skeletal horses. They charged towards the greedy player, spears at the ready.
Suka turned around ready to walk away. He had seen too many players fall for these traps, there was nothing he could do for him. Most of the time these traps had either a mass of enemies or a few elite enemies that would prove difficult for anyone to take down. If this were a regular game, you would probably just lose some items and some experience points and avoid the trap next time but here, there was usually no escape.
However as he continued to walk off a voice called out to him “Hey where do you think you’re going?”
“Out of the dungeon?”
“So you’re just going to leave him to die?” she asked, some anger in her voice.
“Yep, that’s about right. It’s his own fault for being an idiot and thinking he can outsmart the system.” He replied coldly.
“Anyway, at this point, he’s as good as dead.” He scoffed as he continued to walk away, “Those skeleton jockeys can probably do a third of his health in one hit since he has light armour. They also move faster than him even with a speed boost so evasion isn’t really possible. There’s no point in risking our lives to try to rescue a dead man.”
In front of her screen appeared a notification, it read “SukaBlyatt has left the Party.” After a moment of thought she took her axe off her back. “Alright everybody, hold tight formation, aim for the horse's legs and let the tanks take the brunt of the damage!” She commanded.
As he continued to walk away however, he thought he heard one of the players shout something, something he had heard many times before.
“Beater.”
Isuka was walking along a rough cobbled path on the 12th floor of Arincrad. The dirt nearby was dry and black. The dark brown trees were without leaves, only the husks of their former selves. Ethereal ghosts wandered the empty forests, disappearing and reappearing like mirages. Skeletons with varying levels of armour of around walked in an almost robotic cycle, still guarding the run-down forts and castles that were on the floor, even after their death. Those features combined with the endless night that haunted this floor made it feel like one of the fantasy games he had played back in the real world.
Behind him was the 100 meter tall dungeon tower that was on every floor. They connected each floor to the next, one after another up until the 100th floor and their freedom. However, behind him was also the party he had been travelling with.
“Beater.”
Beater, the slur used to describe his kind. The beta testers who used their knowledge of the game to get ahead, leaving the rest of the players in the dust. He had heard it plenty of times, the clearers all knowing of his prior sins. Still, even though the verbal insults were what most people greeted him with, the word still lingered in his mind. Isuka clicked in disgust, trying to get rid of that small sliver of his mind that still felt some guilt or sympathy. They had brought it upon themselves, the lot of them.
He had been venturing through the labyrinth on the 12th floor on his own when he had stumbled into a party from the clearing guild; Arincrad Leigion. Since the elite enemies on the floor were too difficult to solo effectively, he had decided to tag along at their request. When one of their members had triggered a trap he had decided to leave, unable to do anything with his current resources, or so he told himself.
With Teleport crystals becoming exponentially more expensive as the floors went up, his only option as a relatively broke solo player was to walk from place to place. His lifeline, healing potions didn’t come cheap and the few teleport crystals he bought were for emergencies only. So what that meant was mainly using teleport gates and traversing the long distances of Arincrad by himself.
As he continued walking along the lonely path, he got a sense of Dejavu. The long walk from his school to his home back in the real world. Somehow even though he wasn’t surrounded by towering buildings and packed roads, it still reminded him of those long walks back, each and every day. Continuing on the rough path, his passive skill <<Searching>> suddenly flared up a new alert. Unlike the other monster cursors, this one was a lime green like one his potions in his belt. That could only mean one thing.
Isuka pulled out his <<Knight’s Misercode>>, a stiletto type weapon that was a subclass of daggers. The area around him was bare of any flora, that meant that hiding was out of the question. As he turned to face the player however, he recognized the face from a few hours ago. He couldn’t remember her name though, all he could remember from the day-long dungeon raid was how exceptionally annoying she was.
“Oh… It’s you.” he said, dropping his fighting position but keeping his stiletto out.
“Yep it’s me!” She said, still with the same smile she had been wearing earlier.
Isuka looked away, annoyed. All throughout the day, while the others had been treating him like usual, she had been constantly teasing him, always with the same stupid grin.
“So what do you want? Also, where’s the rest of your party?” He asked, already continuing his walk back to the safe area.
“Well to answer your question I wanted to talk to you, also the rest of the part took teleport crystals back.”
So it seemed, guilds were much richer than individual players. With plenty of resources they apparently had the ability to outfit their members with teleport crystals, even on the frontline where the crystals would be the most expensive. So it seemed, just like in real life while others had the luxury of bikes or cars, he was stuck walking.
“Uh huh gotcha. So did anyone else die?”
He could hear a slight pained sound from behind him, a mix of regret and guilt. It seemed his remark had worked, his cold words sinking in like daggers, piercing straight through her heart. However instead of silence he was met with more talking.
“Yeah… two casulties… Nymph and Storm.”
“So is that all? Just wanted someone to blame for that extra death resulting from your little rescue attempt?” He growled, just wanting to get rid of the pest.
“No, that’s not it. I know better than to blame you for their deaths.”
“Then why have you come to bother me?”
“I wanted to ask you… do you have any plans tonight?” She said, placing an arm around him and saying it practically into his ear.
Isuka, luckily hadn’t been drinking anything otherwise he would have spat it out.