A Hundred Floors in the Titan Castle

Chapters

Chapter 1: Unwelcome Return
Chapter 2: Speedrunning
Chapter 3: Reunion

Chapter 1: Unwelcome Return

Twilight could hardly believe what she was hearing. They were… trapped?

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

Twilight opened her eyes. She was no longer in her own body, and now she moved a fake one inside the world of virtual reality. She didn’t have a distinct appearance at all at the moment, and it looked… really unsettling. She looked more or less like a clay doll. She stood in an empty room, sized about a hundred square feet. The walls and floor were black, lit only by what seemed to be a heavenly light from above. An array of nine computer monitors in a 3x3 grid was embedded in the wall before her. A female voice spoke.

“Welcome to Sword Art Online.”

A small white window appeared, hovering in space in front of her, about twice the size of her hand. Input name and gender, it read. Twilight wondered briefly what kind of name she should go by in the game. After mulling it over a bit, she just decided to use her real name. Twilight Sparkle, she typed out. She hit the checkmark button and the voice spoke again.

“Hello, Twilight Sparkle.”

The voice spoke Japanese, as this was a Japanese game. Her name sounded a little funny in that accent, she thought. Oh well, just something she’d have to get used to. She could understand everything it said, as she was fluent in several languages, one of them being Japanese.

Twilight had powered on her Nervegear as soon as the SAO servers went online. As one of the five hundred players who had been in the beta test, Twilight was probably more excited than anyone else to be back in the world of virtual reality.

The computer monitors lit up, displayed a generic-looking female avatar, and highlighted a number of different body features. Looks like I can’t use the same avatar as in the beta, Twilight thought. She approached and tapped on one of the screens, and a number of different options appeared just for that feature. Twilight made her hair completely black instead of her usual dark people. She made it longer. She made her nose smaller. She made her eyes blue instead of pink. She lowered her cheekbones.

Twilight made a lot of changes.

Eventually satisfied, she found and tapped the checkmark again. Another window appeared.

Are you ready to play?

She tapped on the check one final time, and everything went white.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

Twilight opened her eyes once more. She now stood in a huge circle in the center of a medieval looking town. The ground beneath her was a white brick path. All around her, more and more players started appearing, logging in for the first time. A quick opening of the menu would show that the current population of SAO was about four thousand and counting.

Twilight looked her reflection in the bronze starting shield she had been given. She no longer looked like the disturbing clay figurine, and now had the appearance of the character she had designed. She also wore a basic leather tunic, which looked more or less just like a life jacket. Underneath, she wore a purple sweater as was her color of choice, and some tan khakis. Players weren’t given any leg armor or anything else but the tunic, shield and iron shortsword.

As a beta tester, Twilight had previously explored the Town of Beginnings and knew exactly which shop to go to to find useful, cheap equipment.

The currency of this world was called Cor. Cor could be obtained in various ways, with the most common method easily being defeating monsters. One could also sell items to NPC shops to obtain Cor, complete quests, or trade with other players.

The starting Cor each player was granted when beginning the game was, unfortunately, zero, so Twilight immediately left the town to go fight some monsters. She needed to upgrade her stuff, pronto. A leather tunic, an iron shortsword, and a bronze frisbee weren't gonna cut it.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

The white brick path underfoot gave way to a grassy field immediately upon exiting the Town of Beginnings from any direction. Twilight chose the north exit. The Town of Beginnings was on the southern end of the floor one map, and following basic RPG logic, the monsters would get stronger the farther you went from your origin point. Therefore, Twilight went north. She already knew her way around a sword pretty well, so she figured she didn’t need to waste her time training on level one enemies, even though she was still level one herself.

Inside the world of Sword Art Online, you didn’t actually walk on the “ground.” There was ground to walk on, but players were really inside an enormous structure floating in the sky, called Castle Aincrad. Inside Castle Aincrad were one hundred “floors” stacked on top of each other. On these floors were villages, forests, mountains, lakes, and countless dungeons to explore. These floors started with the largest ones at the bottom and grew smaller as you travel upwards, making the entire structure look somewhat like a cone. Monsters naturally became stronger too the higher up you went as you progressed through the game.

The goal of Sword Art Online was to defeat a boss at the end of every floor’s main dungeon and travel up to the top of Aincrad, where the final boss of the game awaited. Upon learning of the game’s lore initially, Twilight’s first thought was to wonder who came up with the ideas for a hundred different boss monsters.

As Twilight walked along the path, she examined her blank skill trees. “Mastery for different types of weapons… shortswords, longswords, broadswords, cleavers…” she mumbled. She scrolled down a bunch, intending to read into them more in-depth later. “Huh?”

Once Twilight scrolled past all the blades, it looked there were other weapons to master too.

“Magic?”

The biggest change to Sword Art Online since the beta was the addition of magic. Argus, the company that developed SAO, had originally stated that they would be one of the very few existing RPG’s to not have magic, their reasoning being that it would be too complicated with existing VR technology. However, it seemed that developers had massively overestimated the difficulty of implementing it.

“This is… really in-depth. Wow, can’t believe I didn’t know about this...” Twilight mumbled, scrolling through the different types of magic.

As she walked, she had stopped paying attention to the path she was walking on and bumped into someone, which really surprised her, since she didn’t think many people would be out this far yet. She had been walking for quite a while.

She stumbled backward and clumsily closed her menu. “S-sorry!”

“Get back!” A female voice barked. Twilight heard a blade draw. She looked up and saw a flurry of blonde hair lunge towards a furry, blue pig-like monster in front of her with a flash of red light. Twilight quickly picked out the monster’s HP bar in the scene in front of her. It was a level 3 Frenzy Boar. Its life bar dropped some as this person’s sword connected, but was still green. The boar rammed into the girl and she stumbled backwards. Twilight drew her sword too, thinking this might not end well.

“What are you-”

Twilight dashed forward past the other girl and slashed rapidly at the side of the boar before it got a chance to react to this new challenger. Its life bar quickly dropped to zero and it shattered into a bunch of little blue triangles that disappeared slowly in the wind.

Twilight sheathed her sword, ignoring the small window that appeared in place of the defeated enemy. “You can’t just go charging in blindly with a sword skill like that,” she told the girl who stood before her. “If you do that while the enemy’s guard is up, you do less damage and leave yourself wide open for a counterattack.” Expecting thanks, she was surprised at the outburst that came next.

“What the hell was that for?! You just stole my kill!”

Twilight finally got a good look at the other girl. She had long blonde hair which was worn in long pigtails--very long, as in those twintails didn’t end until around her upper thighs--and was about the same height as Twilight. She had gray eyes, which were furrowed together in an irritated expression.

Twilight blinked, taken aback. “You were- I was- I just-”

“I had it under control!” The other girl raised a fist to about chest height and stomped a foot towards Twilight, who raised her hands defensively.

“Under control?” Twilight countered. “Your health bar is yellow! One more hit like that and you would have died!”

“I fight better under pressure! I wouldn’t have messed up like that again!” The girl crossed her arms. “And what makes you such an expert on this game anyway? Were you in the beta test, or something?”

“Yeah, so?” Twilight said defensively. “I know how to play the game already, so what? That doesn’t make me an expert.”

She seemed to have calmed down mostly. “Hmph… Well, you know your way around a sword, at least. You swung crazy fast just then! And… what you said did make sense. So thanks… I guess?”

“Uh, no problem…” Twilight extended an arm with a smile. “I’m Twilight. Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight’s new friend accepted the handshake. “Kaiya. So… could I get you to tell me more about what to do here? You know, how to play this game? The monsters are really tough.”

“The monsters are so strong cause you’re not really meant to leave town through the north exit yet. Did you… even read the tutorials? They wanted you to go to the south so you can learn how to swing a sword.”

Kaiya waved a hand dismissively. “Psh. Tutorials? Give me a break. I learn more from experience, not by cutting down straw dummies. It’s only a matter of time before I completely master this game. I’ll be at the top of every leaderboard!”

Twilight stared at Kaiya’s hit point gauge, which had only barely regenerated past fifty percent and was now green again. “Uh huh… you won’t do that by getting slaughtered by some of the weakest enemies in the game.”

“You tryin’ to start me up again? I need to fight the toughest enemies I have access to so I can level up the fastest!” Kaiya crossed her arms and nodded proudly. “Stronger enemies are worth more experience points, so if I fight them instead of the weakest ones, I’ll have to fight less of ‘em! That means I can get more experience in the same amount of time and I’ll grow faster than anyone else! Isn’t that genius?”

“That’s not exactly a groundbreaking revelation… just about everyone knows that.”

“...H-What?”

Twilight scratched the back of her head. “Have you… even played any RPGs before?”

Kaiya drooped her head. “Uh… no, I haven’t…”

“Well, you sure started with a good one, I guess. Uh, but really, the north exit isn’t the best place to start. I’m not certain I could actually handle it for very long myself,” Twilight lied.

“Then where?”

“Well the south exit is where the weakest monsters are, but they’re just slimes. So while you do get experience points, you don’t really get battle experience, know what I mean?”

“What can slimes do?”

“Not much more than fall over. It’s basically target practice. You don’t learn from fighting an enemy that doesn’t fight back. So instead, the west exit is probably the best place to go. There are still the Frenzy Boars, but they’re level ones and twos. You can still learn how to really fight, but it’s more forgiving if you mess up. But if you’re out here…”

Kaiya raised her arms above her head. “Okay, okay, I give. I’ll head back to the town and then go west. Thanks for all the advice!” She turned around and started walking.

“I could help, if you want!” Twilight followed a few steps.

Kaiya kept walking. “Nah. You can take care of yourself just fine, even out here, so I’d just be wasting your time. I’ll be fine now. I may seem kind of hopeless, but I really can figure some stuff out pretty quickly. Especially if I actually read the tutorials and all that. So, I’ll see you later, I suppose.”

Twilight placed a hand on her hip. “If you say so. Find me again sometime!” she called and turned around, continuing on the path to the north.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

As yet another Frenzy Boar shattered into small blue triangles, Twilight opened up her inventory.

“This much money will get me some okay equipment,” she said aloud to herself, briefly confirming in her mind the prices of a better sword and shield.

Twilight, since she had begun her training, had entered a small forest, where she could find Frenzy Boars and Mushroom Spearmen for training on. She had earned a decent amount of money and had also leveled up once. She ignored her stat allocations for now, as she still hadn’t read up on them in more detail.

When a player levels up in SAO, they get a few skill points, which they can add to a number of different stats. They affect things as follows:

Strength: The weight of the weapons and armor they can equip and the amount of damage they deal with melee attacks,
Vitality: Players' maximum hit points and slightly affects their maximum mana,
Defense: The amount of damage taken from physical attacks like swords or axes,
Intelligence: The complexity of the magic you can use and your maximum mana,
Resistance: A player's tendency to not suffer status effects like poison or stun and the amount of damage taken from magical attacks,
Agility: A player's movement speed in and out of battle.

There were other factors that affected all of these things as well, but spending your skill points was the main way to increase them.

When Twilight played the beta, she didn’t think much about what stats she should spend her skill points on boosting, as she knew it wouldn’t be permanent. Now, though, she didn’t use them yet, intending to further investigate the changes to the game and what type of stat build she should go for.

She checked the time. It was past one AM in her time zone. By now, her mother would be home. She would have thought Twilight to be asleep, so Twilight could play until the morning. Which would be… 10 PM in-game time. Right now it was 3:17.

It wasn’t the first time Twilight would pull an all-nighter, and it wasn’t the first time it would be for video games either. It did feel kind of strange though, because she was sort of acting on two different time zones at once. The first time she played SAO, she had discovered she didn’t really suffer any “jet lag” it inside the game. SAO was apparently programmed so your character would only feel tired when it became night time in Japan. And whenever she logged out, it turned out she wasn’t tired either. All of your physical senses are at rest while diving, so you could stay in as long as you wanted. It wasn’t very uncommon for people to stay in virtual reality for days at a time, sometimes even getting hospitalized due to dehydration because of it.

Just playing overnight wouldn’t hurt, though.

Twilight put away her sword and left the forest, jogging along the path back towards the Town of Beginnings. By now, nearly everyone who owned a copy of SAO had logged in, evident by the many small groups of people slaying monsters in the fields surrounding her. The population of the game was now up to 9,893. She figured maybe a fifth of those people had leveled up by now, meaning Twilight was roughly in the top two thousand players. Not exactly something to be super proud of, but she hoped to stay up there as long as she could.

Along with the many swords being swung around, there was an occasional small blast of fire.

“I guess there's a place to get magic here now,” Twilight mumbled. She absolutely had to try it.

Upon re-entering the city, Twilight was approached by an elderly NPC, or non-player character.

“Excuse me, are you an adventurer?” She asked.

“Yes, I am!” Twilight said cheerfully. “Is there something I can help you with?” She asked, recognizing this NPC and knowing exactly what the problem was already.

“Y-yes… you see, I used to have a silver pendant. My husband gave it to me many years ago, and now it’s been stolen by some strange creature that looked like a mushroom. Would you help? There’s a promise attached to that pendant and I just can’t lose it.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, slightly confused. She had remembered this NPC’s dialogue differently. Well, it sounded like the quest was the same. It was probably just some developer fiddling with the scripts.

She ignored the thought and her smile returned to her face. “Of course! Do you know where it ran off to?”

The NPC woman gave a hopeful smile. “Yes, it escaped into the Sunflower Fields.”

A small window appeared in front of Twilight. Accept Quest? it read. Twilight tapped the circle button. “You have nothing to worry about. I’ll head right out after some quick shopping for better gear!”

The NPC’s smile widened and she disappeared without another word.

“Okay, that was a little weird… guess she just went back home,” Twilight mumbled to herself. “Okay, I need to find that magic… salesperson, and figure out how it works.”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

Surprisingly, it only took her about two minutes to find someone that sells magic. This was probably due to the fact that just about every NPC selling anything had it.

“I guess that would make sense. Since it’s so low-level, basic magic wouldn’t be very difficult to come by. Specialized vendors must not start showing up until later floors. Now, let’s see here…”

Magic could be wielded with three tools: Wands, Tomes, and Staffs. Any type of spell could be used with any of the weapons, but their effects would be slightly altered in strength. Staffs gave a boost to healing and stat buffing spells, tomes were better for offensive magic, and wands were mostly neutral with what type of magic worked best. Most vendors only sold wands on the first floor.

On top of the tools used to cast the magic, you also had to buy scrolls to actually learn each spell.

“What a drag… there’s the fireball everyone is using, a small self-healing spell… and that’s it. Thanks, floor one. Oh well...”

Twilight made her purchases which included a wand, both spells, and a new sword. She had wanted to get a new shield and armor too, but she didn’t have enough money. The thought didn’t occur to her that her defensive ability might be insufficient for the quest she was about to do. Instead, she was still wondering about magic.

“Ugh, I don’t really want to have to wait until higher floors for new magic. Maybe I can find new spells by doing quests… maybe even this one? Oh, no, I’ve already done this quest in the beta… but, maybe they changed the reward? I hope not.”

Twilight was mumbling things like this to herself while walking towards the exit of the city again when someone grabbed her shoulder.

“Wh- Hey, what are you-” she stammered.

“Twilight?” A boy spoke. Twilight turned her head to look at him.

“Do I know you?” She questioned.

“It’s Hikaru! From the beta?”

Twilight’s face lit up. “Oh! Hikaru! Wow, it’s awesome to see you again!” She gave him a hug and stepped back, closing her menu. “How’d you recognize me?”

Hikaru crossed his arms with a grin. “You’re the only person I’ve seen who just mumbles to themselves out loud like that. And you also mentioned the beta.”

Twilight dug her toes into the ground nervously. “Is it really that much of a tell?”

“Well, I guess it could have been a coincidence, but you also have the same nervous habit.” He pointed at her foot. “So I know it’s you.”

“Uh, yeah…” Twilight forced her foot to stay flat on the ground.

Hikaru was Twilight’s best friend from the beta. They had challenged dungeons together, did a lot of questing, and even fought two bosses in the same party. He preferred to fight with a katana, but Twilight thought he was better with hammers. She figured he thought he just looked cooler with a sword. Which he did, but it got on Twilight’s nerves that he would deliberately wield something he wasn’t as proficient in for the sake of flashiness. She didn’t understand the logic behind it. Probably a boy thing.

“So!” Hikaru pulled her out of her thoughts. “You mentioned a quest?”

“Yeah, I found one of the ones I played in the beta. Want to join me?”

“Sure! Where are we going?”

“The Sunflower Fields.” Twilight opened her menu and added Hikaru to her friend list. Hikaru was inviting her to a party.

“Really? Don’t you think a quest there is a bit easy?”

“Oh, shut up. This one’s… special to me. Wait, what?”

Hikaru rolled his eyes. “Just cause you played it already? Or is the story so heartwarming? So beautiful that your eyes can’t help but become watery when you think of such sweet sorrow?”

How can you even say that without being embarrassed? “Stop talking for half a second.” Twilight spun her menu around. “Any idea what the deal with this is? Did you do something?” She joked.

Hikaru looked at her menu. “What? What am I looking at?”

“The accept button is grayed out. So I can’t join your party.” She turned her menu back around and closed it.

“That’s really weird. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! Maybe parties are just disabled in the game for now? Maybe they found a bug?”

“I doubt it. I was in a party with another friend earlier. It looks like it’s just you.”

“Why would it be me?”

“Maybe it’s your quest? Maybe it’s single player only?”

“I guess that would make sense. Its content didn’t seem like it would be one player though. Whatever. Want to tag along anyway even if we aren’t in a party?”

“Sure. I’m done with my shopping. You ready to go now?”

“Yup. You buy any magic?” The two of them started walking towards the edge of town.

“I doubt there’s a single person who hasn’t. Everyone thought this would be a swords-only game so I bet everyone wants to at least try it.”

Twilight equipped her new sword while she walked. “Hmm… it looks like you can’t have both a sword and a wand equipped at the same time. That’s a bit unfortunate… What if you need to swap from magic and sword in the middle of battle?”

“Well, how long would it take to switch them yourself?”

“Probably about ten seconds if you were really rushed and you didn’t press any wrong buttons by accident, which could very well happen if you were panicking.”

“That’s not very long at all.”

“Ten seconds can mean a lot. It’s more than enough time to die if you let your guard completely down while you’re navigating your menu.”

“So your party members can cover for you while you switch. Why would you even need to? You should have, like, a balance of magic users and sword fighters.”

“I don’t know, maybe you underestimated how strong some boss is and need one more healer than you thought you would. You can’t just say you’ll never run into a situation where you might need both.”

“Okay, point taken.” They crossed the front gate of town and started down the path again. “Where are the Sunflower Fields? You’ve always been the expert on this game.”

“Once the path turns we keep going straight and we’ll end up there before very long. It’s about six minutes from here.”

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes. Hikaru was the next one to speak. “What kind of quest is it?”

“It’s, uh… kind of cheesy. Some NPC had her amulet stolen, so I just have to kill some mushroom thing and get it back for her. Her husband gave it to her.” Twilight scratched the back of her head.

“And you’ve played it before? In the beta?”

“Yeah, but it was a little different this time. She said her husband promised something when he gave it to her, and that little detail wasn’t in it before.”

“You sound irritated about it.”

“I do?” Twilight mentally cursed herself. “I just… well, the point is it’s different.”

Hikaru raised an eyebrow but apparently decided to drop the subject. “Did she say what that promise was?”

“No, I guess I’ll find out when I complete the quest.”

“And,” Hikaru pointed straight ahead. “Here we are.”

Ahead were sunflowers that seemed to be around ten feet in height, and they looked to be pretty thick too. “Yup. Sheesh. How does one even fight in that mess?”

“How do we even find your mushrooms?”

“Want to just try shooting some fireballs around?”

“Seriously?” Hikaru rolled his eyes.

Twilight crossed her arms. “Do you have a better idea?” They stopped walking in front of the sunflowers.

“Do what you will.” He pushed a few sunflowers aside and walked straight in.

“You’re gonna get yourself killed like that.” She followed him in anyway but opened her menu to switch to equipping her wand.

After about a minute, Hikaru spoke again. “Yeah, I can’t see anything at all anymore. Should we leave the field?”

“Maybe. We walked straight forward, right? So if we just turn around we’ll be fine?”

“Uh… maybe?”

“Great. So we’re lost. This was a really great idea. Nice job. So what exactly compelled you to walk in like this? Can you explain that to me, please?”

“I get it, I get it. Okay. New plan.” Hikaru drew his sword. “Start cutting down flowers.”

Twilight began repeating the magic words for the fireball spell over and over, burning up a few flowers with each ball she threw. “So didn’t you…” she said between incantations. “...say something about… the sunflower fields… being easy?”

“I only said that because I had entered the fields in a different place before, and that entrance happened to have a path.”

“That could have been useful information before we got ourselves lost in here.” Twilight blew a petal off that had landed on her nose.

“You didn’t ask. But…” Hikaru stopped cutting down flowers and squinted his eyes like he was looking for something in the mess.

“But?” Twilight dropped the arm with her wand to her side. “Shoot, I’m out of mana…” she mumbled.

“There were like… rabbit monsters hiding in the flowers, but we haven’t seen a single one since we got here… ah.”

“Hiding in the flowers?” Twilight backed up against Hikaru and opened her menu, switching to her sword. “...Yep, looks like they’re here right now. And… I think I found my quest enemy too.” A flash of orange in the green and yellow had caught Twilight’s eye, and looking lower, she saw many white blobs low to the ground. She turned her head left and right. “Looks like we’re surrounded.”

“Well, we made an okay battle arena, I guess.”

“This is… more or less a circle. Sure.” Twilight giggled a little. “So we're about to have a battle against rabbits and a mushroom in the middle of a bunch of sunflowers, hm? Video games are weird.” She drew her sword slowly and held it in front of her.

“So… who makes the first move?” Hikaru whispered. He held his sword still, ready to activate a sword skill at a moment’s notice.

“We do. Those rabbits are probably weak enough to kill with one good hit since they’re a swarm-type enemy. The faster we get rid of them, the easier on us this’ll be. Try a stabbing attack, if you can. The flowers will get in the way of a wide swing.”

“Gotcha. On three?”

“Whatever works.”

“One…”

Twilight gripped her sword hilt with both hands, pointing it upward. Her first real fight since starting the game again... She felt her heart racing.

“Two…”

She shifted her left foot slightly, ready to launch herself forward. She picked out her target, a rabbit right in front of her. The mushroom bandit was off to Twilight’s right. After she killed the first rabbit, it would try and hit her from the side. Mushrooms were slow, hard hitters. Twilight couldn’t see its weapon, but she was plenty confident in her dodging ability.

“Three!”

Twilight kicked off the ground and sprinted forward, activating a sword skill and stabbing the rabbit in front of her, right in its head. It broke into pieces and Twilight glanced over to her right. A rabbit knocked into her from the left and she nearly fell over. Instead, she jumped forward into the flowers, trying to kite the enemies into fighting her one at a time. She whirled around and cut down another rabbit. The mushroom now stood in front of her, holding a spear. Twilight could see it wearing some sort of necklace.

While she thought about how best to go about fighting it, the mushroom moved first. It stabbed forward and Twilight reflexively swung her sword upward, knocking the mushroom off balance. Twilight tried stabbing forward, but a rabbit headbutted her in the side again and she missed. “You guys are irritating me,” she mumbled. She glanced at her health bar and saw it about half depleted already. “Shoot!”

Just then, she heard Hikaru’s voice. “The rabbits are stronger than I thought! Be careful!”

“Yeah, I noticed!” Twilight called back. She sliced upward, cutting another rabbit in half. She glanced around for something to climb, but there was nothing tall enough to see above the sunflowers. Another rabbit tried ramming into her, but Twilight jumped back. She saw a window where the rabbit she had just killed was. An item drop… probably a minor healing potion. That’s something I could definitely use, but I’d have to get back over there to accept it...

Twilight kicked a rabbit to the side and swung at another one. Another still jumped onto her shoulder and scratched her. She grabbed it and hurled it away.

“Aren’t you done yet?” She heard. Then came an “Oh.”

“Why are they all… coming for me?!” She shouted and did a roll forward so she was next to Hikaru again.

“Your health is low. Go get your health potion, now!” Hikaru lashed out with his sword but missed a rabbit. “What the…”

Twilight scrambled to her feet and tapped the accept button on the item drop window. It went into her inventory and she immediately drank it, bringing her hit points to about 65%. As she ran back toward the crowd, she counted 5 more rabbits, and the mushroom. Hikaru was backing up.

“These rabbits are stronger than the ones I was fighting off.”

Panting, Twilight held her sword up again. “How can that be? They’re from the same swarm. That doesn’t happen.”

Hikaru chuckled. “Maybe they knew you’re better at this game than me and sent the strong ones to try and get rid of you first.”

Twilight stayed silent for a moment. “No, all swarm-type monsters from the same group should be the same level. Did you see any of your other ones’ levels?”

“I think they were level 3.” Hikaru’s sword drooped slightly.

“These ones are level 4… keep your guard up. They may be giving us a break, but they’re probably waiting for the smallest sign of weakness to jump again.”

“It could just be two swarms together, couldn’t it?” Hikaru raised his sword to a ready-to-swing position again.

“It’s extremely unlikely. Swarms don’t spawn within a certain distance to each other, so another player would have to kite one over. And I didn’t hear anyone else in the area.”

“Then we can blame your quest again. You don’t really think any quest would just have you fight a single enemy, do you?”

Twilight’s legs twitched. “Are we ready? I want to finish this.”

Hikaru nodded and faced forward. “Three!”

Twilight and Hikaru sprinted forward at the same time. They caught the rabbits off-guard and managed to each destroy one. Two of them jumped onto Hikaru’s arms, and the mushroom tried to whack Twilight with its spear. Twilight ducked and swung her sword upward and with frightening precision, cut one of the rabbits on Hikaru without hitting him. Hikaru grabbed the other one and tossed it at the mushroom, and the other remaining rabbit found itself under Twilight’s left foot. She slipped on it and fell over.

“Ah!” She scrambled up. “Did that one die? I don’t think stepping on it would do that much damage.”

“I didn’t see it break apart. It’s still around.” Hikaru swung his sword downward and knocked the mushroom’s spear into the ground. It stumbled backward from the recoil.

“This is more manageable. Swarms aren’t fun to deal with.” Twilight stabbed the mushroom in its chest. She saw Hikaru slash near the ground out of the corner of her eye and saw some blue triangles float upwards. She sweep-kicked the mushroom’s feet and it fell over on its back. Twilight jumped up and stabbed into its chest again from above. The mushroom broke apart, leaving the pendant on the ground.

Hikaru sheathed his sword and turned around to face Twilight. “I got them both.”

“Phew. I guess the swarm was the real challenge of the quest. The mushroom was just so we’d know where to look after killing everything.” Twilight knelt down and picked up the pendant the mushroom left behind. It was a silver locket that you could put a picture inside. Twilight fiddled with the button. “It doesn’t seem to open…”

“Weird. Is anything written on the outside?” Hikaru put a hand on his hip.

Twilight turned it over. “Nope. Completely blank on both sides.” She dropped the locket and let it hang in her hand from its chain. “I guess it’s kinda pretty though.”

“Back to the town?”

“Yup.” Twilight put the locket in her inventory. “This whole thing seems a little strange though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, the party not working and the rabbits’ levels… And they changed this quest.”

“Twilight, you’re overthinking this. Video games change drastically all the time between beta versions and the completed games. Why do you care about this quest so much anyway?”

Twilight ignored his question. “Well, are we going or what?”

“We’re still kinda lost in here. I don’t suppose you have teleport crystals?”

“Uh… no. I ran out of money.” Twilight kicked the ground in embarrassment. “I was excited to try the magic.”

“Well, we can find the path after we get out of the field.” Hikaru picked a direction and started walking.

“Oh! Waitwaitwait!” Twilight grabbed his shoulder. “They’re sunflowers! They face east in this game!”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s helpful. So we want to go…”

“This way!” Twilight started moving in the opposite direction Hikaru was. “Glad you have me around, huh?”

Hikaru sighed and followed her. “Yeah, we would have done quite a bit more walking if you weren’t here.”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

As Twilight and Hikaru crossed the town gates, Twilight heard a voice call out.

“Heeeey! Hikaru!”

Twilight turned around and saw someone waving a couple hundred feet back. She looked at Hikaru.

“Uh… yeah. I’ll catch you later, Twilight. I’d better go see what he wants.” Hikaru started jogging back down the path.

“Suit yourself,” Twilight mumbled. “I’m going to go see what they did to that quest.”

It didn’t take very long for Twilight to find where the map pointed her to turn in the finished quest. Twilight stood before a wooden cabin near the edge of town. There was a small garden in the front, which gave it the distinctive appearance of an NPC’s home, as the player homes on floor one were extremely basic. “Right… this is that lady’s house.” Twilight knocked on the door and checked the in-game clock, which read 5:42. “Still plenty of time to play.” The door opened shortly.

“Miss adventurer! You’re back!” The NPC greeted Twilight.

“Yes I am, and I got your locket back!” Twilight held it out to the NPC.

“Ah, could you hold onto that for a few moments, dear? Please, come inside! I have some tea ready.” She held the door open for Twilight.

“Uh… okay.” This was weird. She wasn’t invited inside before. Twilight walked past her into the house.

The inside wasn’t anything strange. It felt a little warmer than outside, which made it feel pretty homely. To the side against the far wall, a faded gray couch sat with a scratchy looking blanket hanging on one of the armrests. The coffee table in the middle of the room was a dark walnut brown, rife with dings and scratches. Only important NPC’s generally have this much detail in their furniture... Taking in more of the house, which didn’t contain very much else, Twilight noticed the kitchen off to the side, just through a small doorway. She sat on the sofa and the NPC brought her a saucer and cup of tea. She took a sip and the NPC sat next to her.

“So… what was the promise you made to your husband?” Twilight asked.

The NPC sighed with a smile and sat back into the sofa like she was remembering something happy. “I still remember when he was here. He isn’t dead, just… off somewhere. He sends me letters sometimes. It’s a bit hard to explain.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. Perhaps she should have known better than to expect a straightforward answer.

The NPC continued. “When he left, he gave me this pendant and asked something of me. I made a promise.”

“Why did he leave?” Twilight asked. She took another sip of tea and set the cup on the coffee table.

“He went to go... make something. I’m not completely sure what. Anyone could see what it is by looking at it, but there’s more to it when you see it up close. Does that make sense?”

“I’m afraid I’m not following.”

“That’s quite all right, dear.” Her face fell a bit. “It makes me sad sometimes, that he isn’t here… I don’t completely like what he’s doing…” Her face turned cheerful again. “But I’m sure it will be okay in the end!”

Twilight remained silent.

“You know… that promise I’ve been talking about wasn’t actually one that I made to him. I promised something to myself when he left. May I see the locket, dear?”

Twilight handed it over. “What would that be?”

“I promised myself… that I would create a hero.”

“What?” Suddenly, the room started getting increasingly bright. It seemed to be coming from the locket in the NPC’s hands. Twilight tried shielding her eyes from the light, but in a matter of seconds, she couldn’t keep them open. A few moments later the light died down. Twilight opened her eyes and looked at the NPC again. The locket had turned into a silver ring. The NPC offered it to Twilight.

“Please… take it.”

There wasn’t anything weird about it. It was just a band of silver. Twilight tried to convince herself of that and hesitantly reached out and took it. It felt heavy in the palm of her hand. She slowly put it on the ring finger of her left hand, and it instantly shrunk and tightened on her finger. “Wh-what the…” She tried tugging it off, but it wouldn’t budge. “What is this?” Twilight looked up where the NPC was sitting, but she was no longer there. “What…”

Twilight looked around the house. The cup she had been drinking out of was also gone. The only sign the lady was ever even there was the silver ring that refused to come off her finger. “Well… no reason for me to stay here, I guess...” She stood up and left the house. There were a couple of players eyeing the house and staring at Twilight. They probably noticed the light from outside. Twilight decided to act like nothing was wrong. She tried walking away as normally as possible, but she was shaking pretty badly.

Twilight walked to the center of town and sat on a bench near one of the NPC shops. She took a few deep breaths and rubbed her temples. “That was so freaky…” she mumbled. She looked at her hand and tried tugging in vain on the ring again. “What’s the deal with this?” She tried coming up with some possibilities in her mind. This could still be part of some quest. There could be some NPC who is able to do some magic and take it off her finger. Twilight never saw the Quest Complete window, but upon checking her Quest Log, it seemed to have completely disappeared from the list. It wasn’t in the Ongoing Quest or Completed Quest list. So even if it was still part of a quest, Twilight would have no way to know what to do about finishing it. The game’s engine also scanned for inconsistencies in quests and rewards constantly, and deleted any bugged logs and quest items. So she decided that her still being in the quest was impossible. It could, however, just be a bug that the ring was stuck to her finger. Twilight looked at her Equipment Window. Players could wear rings to boost some stats, but her Equipment Window showed that there was nothing on her left hand. To test whether that was true or not, Twilight went and bought the cheapest copper ring she could find in the Town of Beginnings and tried equipping it to her left hand via the Equipment Window. It appeared on her left ring finger right above the silver ring. Then she took off the ring by pulling it off her finger. Then she put it back on her finger and de-equipped it with the Window. Just for completion’s sake, she repeated this process on her right hand. Everything worked fine. But she couldn’t remove the silver ring.

“This is so weird… What does it even do?” Twilight wondered aloud.

She didn’t have time to worry about that right at the moment though, as players suddenly started appearing into the plaza around her. Twilight stood up with a start from the bench she was sitting on. It… was getting really crowded. It looked like everyone in the game had been teleported into the Town of Beginnings all at once. Instinct told her to look for people she recognized, but she couldn’t pick out any familiar faces at the moment. It sounded like everyone around her was just as confused as she was.

“Why did we just appear here?”

“Is this an event?”

“Someone teleported everyone here at once.”

“An admin, maybe?”

“Whoa, what’s that?!”

Twilight followed that last voice and saw a pointing hand. She looked up at a gigantic red robe appearing about twenty meters above them. Twilight swallowed. She recognized that robe. It didn’t have a face, but it did have giant white-gloved hands in the arms of the robe. It raised its hands flat as if asking for silence. Most of the noise died down.

“Attention, players,” the voice overhead echoed around the plaza. “I welcome you to my world.”

So this is him… Twilight dug her toes into the ground and stared at the being before them.

“My name is Akihiko Kayaba. And as of this moment, I am in control of this world.” The robe turned its hands palms-up and widened his arms.

There was more mumbling around the plaza, but Twilight couldn’t hear any of it.

“I’m sure many of you have already noticed an item missing from your main menus--the logout button. Let me assure you, this is not a defect in the game. I repeat, this is not a defect. This is how Sword Art Online was designed to be.”

Twilight’s heart lurched. She instantly opened her menu and scrolled down to the bottom of the list of options. The door icon that usually meant logout was there, but the words were not. She tried tapping on the button, but nothing happened. Twilight felt her heart beating faster. What does this mean?

Kayaba continued speaking. “You cannot log yourselves out of SAO, and no one from the outside will be able to shut down or remove the NerveGear from your head. If anyone attempts to do so, a transmitter inside the NerveGear will discharge a microwave signal into your skull, destroying your brain and ending your life.”

Twilight took a step back and nearly tripped over the bench she was just sitting on. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. They were… trapped? Inside a video game? Inside Sword Art Online?

Twilight had inspected the NerveGear fairly closely before purchasing it. She wanted to be pretty careful with something that could interrupt signals your brain sends to your body. She found that about thirty percent of the NerveGear’s weight comes from an internal battery, and that the plug from the wall that connects to the NerveGear connects to that battery. Players were instructed to only turn it on if it was plugged in, and the NerveGear couldn’t load any games if it wasn’t. No one really wanted to play without having it plugged in anyway, as even with such a large battery, the system could only run for about two hours if it wasn’t plugged in. Twilight had thought that was a pretty heavy design flaw, but suddenly that made a bit more sense. If people were going to be trapped inside a video game, unable to eat or otherwise take care of themselves, those two hours would give people time to move the players to hospitals and such.

This is… what’s going to happen to me…? To us all? Twilight found herself unable to continue standing and fell to her knees.

“Despite my warning, the families and friends of some of the players have attempted removing the NerveGear, an unfortunate decision, to say the least. As a result, the game now has one hundred sixty-seven fewer players than when it began. They’ve been deleted from both Aincrad and the real world.”

And I didn’t notice any of this happening? I didn’t see anyone panicking?

“As you can see…” Kayaba made visible a number of windows showing news stations, mostly in Japan. “International media outlets have round-the-clock coverage of everything, including the deaths. At this point, it’s safe to assume the likelihood of a NerveGear being removed is minimal at best. I hope this brings you a little comfort as you try to clear the game.”

Twilight had a brief panic attack. It was the middle of the night where she lived. Would Argus send someone out all the way just to inform her family of the circumstances? Or would she be ignored and in the morning someone would come and take the NerveGear off her head? Twilight started hyperventilating. She kneeled low to the ground, clutched her sides, and shut her eyes tight. She could die before she got a chance to do anything. No… think logically. This is a major world crisis. Other countries than Japan will be broadcasting news stories about this. My family will see the news and I’ll be okay. Maybe eventually someone will come and get me and take me to Japan or something, just so they can have all the victims in one place. Either way, no one will take off the helmet. Twilight slowly returned her breathing to a steady pace.

“It’s important to remember the following: There is no longer any way to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be deleted from the system. Forever. And the NerveGear will simultaneously destroy your brain. There is only one way for a player to escape now: you must clear the game. Right now, you’ve gathered on Floor One, the lowest level on Aincrad. If you can get through the dungeon and defeat the boss, you may advance to the next floor. Defeat the boss on Floor 100, and you will clear the game.”

Clear the game… beat Sword Art Online? Twilight slowly stood up on shaky feet. And… if we die in the game… the NerveGear still kills us? Even if no one tries to take it off of us? Twilight swallowed. She had died five times in the beta. Back then, she had respawned in the center of whatever floor she had died on, in the middle of town. But there would be no respawning this time.

Twilight finally noticed people shouting at the robe above them as she got over her panic attack. The initial shock had seemingly worn off of her, and now she looked around the plaza at everyone else.

“You want us to clear the game? Are you nuts?!”

“You can’t just trap us all in here like this!”

What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Kayaba continued over the mass of voices. “Also, I’ve placed a little present in the inventory of every player. Please have a look.”

Twilight lifted an arm and opened her inventory. There was an item without a name at the top of the list of the few items she had collected over the past few hours. She tapped on it and it appeared in her hands. “A mirror?” It didn’t seem to be anything special. But as this game goes…

The mirror suddenly started glowing white in her hands. The light grew and enveloped Twilight along with everyone else, completely blinding her in the process. After a few moments of disorienting whiteness, it slowly faded away. Twilight looked around. She didn’t really feel anything different. She looked down at the mirror in her hands.

“Whoa.”

Staring back at Twilight in the mirror was… herself. It was her own face. The face in the mirror blinked when she did. She raised her eyebrows, and the mirror girl did too.

Twilight lowered her arm and looked down at her body. Her height was the same as she made her avatar the same height as her real body, but now her proportions were exactly like her real body too. This is insane…

“Right now, you are probably wondering why. Why would Akihiko Kayaba, developer of Sword Art Online and Nervegear, do this? Ultimately, my goal was a simple one. The reason I created Sword Art Online was to control the fate of a world of my design.”

Huh? The heck is that supposed to mean? What kind of an explanation is that?

“As you can see, I have achieved my goal. This marks the end of the tutorial and the official launch of Sword Art Online. Players, I wish you the best of luck.”

And with that, the enormous red robe slowly dissolved into smoke, leaving nearly ten thousand players gaping at the empty space before them.

Unsurprisingly, panic quickly ensued. People began shouting obscenities, prayers, cries for help, or were just screaming, and a bunch of people started pushing each other towards the exits of the main plaza.

Shoot. Twilight jumped over the bench she had been standing next to and rushed around the mob heading for the north gate. She sprinted out of the town and slowed to a walk. People started rushing past her, running to nowhere particular. No one seemed to realize if they were afraid of dying, the safest place was the town. People apparently just wanted to run. Twilight kept walking, ignoring the rush of people on either side of her. A lot of them were bumping into her arms in their panic. Twilight was unfazed, her head held low.

Okay. Let’s see. How much of that is true? Probably all of it. Wait. Not the last thing. The reason he created SAO? That’s… most likely complete bull. But he had to say something. Kayaba… Obviously, the reason Sword Art Online was created was for the same reason any other company makes a video game: to sell a product and make a profit. But the development costs of the Nervegear had to have been astronomical. Only ten thousand launch copies of SAO surely can’t turn a profit with costs that high. Maybe he thought his game was going under and he just cracked? No… the Nervegear had to have been designed with the microwave signal in the first place. So what then?

“None of this makes sense…” Twilight mumbled and rubbed her head. So what do I do? She looked up at the artificial sky above her. What… can I do?

Her step wavered a little as she came to sit down with her back against a tree. She gripped her own arms in a futile attempt at self-comfort. I’m stuck...we’re ALL stuck… Inside this… giant metal death trap. She felt her breath quicken, practically hyperventilating once more. Everything here… is out to kill us. To kill me. It’s only a matter of time...

She held her head in her hands holding back tears, too terrified to utter a sound. None of this makes any sense. Why? Why, why, why, why, why?

“You!”

Twilight, who didn’t notice the steps approaching her, opened her teary eyes to see a pair of white booted feet a bit to her left.

She looked up at a rather short girl glaring daggers at her. Twilight rubbed one of her eyes with the back of her right hand.

This girl looked to only be about thirteen or fourteen but was showing no signs of fear at being presented with such heart-crushing news.

“Huh?” Twilight croaked out lamely.

The irritated stranger pointed a finger at her with such force that Twilight flinched. “I recognize you. I saw you training earlier.”

Twilight rubbed her other eye clear. “So?”

“So what the hell are you doing moping around?! You should be fighting already!” With each accented word, she jabbed her pointing finger again in Twilight’s direction.

“...Huh?” Twilight repeated.

The other girl facepalmed with the hand previously used to point. “Ugh!” Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Why is someone as good at this game as you just sitting around?!” She practically spat out each word. “The only way out of this game is to finish it! So what are you waiting around for?!” She reached down and yanked on one of Twilight’s arms to pull her to her feet.

“What are-” Twilight was pulled up so hard she nearly fell forward and on her face.

“Don’t ask me what I’m doing! I’m keeping your sorry ass from stalling our way out of here any longer than it already will be!” She blew a strand of brunette hair out of her eye. “Stupid game,” she mumbled. “That doesn’t happen nearly this often in the real world. Need a hair tie or something… even a damn bow…”

Twilight could only stare at this other girl. She was… awfully forward. But while not exactly the most polite way to say it in the world… she was right. The longer I mope about, the longer it’ll take to escape here...

Twilight took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. Though I’m not really sure what it is you see in me, everyone needs to be working towards clearing the game.”

All she got in return was a “Hm? You say something?” As the other girl turned back towards Twilight, probably pondering solutions to the inconvenience that was her hair.

Twilight sighed. “Thanks for cheering me up, however weirdly you managed to do it. I’m Twilight Sparkle.” She extended a hand, but the other girl was already turned around again and walking away. “Uh…” Her arm fell back to her side.

“...Did I ask?”

Actually, maybe it’s better we don’t become friends after all.

After this thought from Twilight, there came an overly-exaggerated sigh in front of her.

“Uuuuggghhh. Name’s Lucky. See you around, Sparkles.”

She almost couldn’t hear it, because Lucky never even slowed her gait and was still turned around. “O...kay…” Twilight mumbled. She dusted herself off and sighed. So what now? Obviously, I play the game. Everything’s just… Yuck. This mood is terrible. Maybe I’ll start tomorrow. But…

Twilight suddenly had a frightening thought. What if one or more of her friends were playing SAO? What if one was already dead?! She vaguely remembered hearing about a stone monolith in town from the beta with every tester’s name and the number of times they died. That seemed pretty weird back then, but maybe now it…

Twilight rushed back into town. She found the monolith in a building near the very center, a cathedral. It was a large smooth black stone wall, the only thing in the room. Etched into the stone were a bunch of names. These… must be the dead players.

Twilight approached the left side of the wall. The writing was pretty small. I suppose it has to be, if it can fit up to 10,000 names… she pushed that thought out of her head and scanned the list of dead players. None she recognized immediately. What if they were using a different name, though? She couldn’t know for sure.

Twilight was about to leave the cathedral when another name appeared on it. It wasn’t someone she knew either, but the idea made her feel sick to her stomach. People are dying right now. And they’ll keep dying.

She finally left and found an inn. She checked into a room for the night, ignoring everything else around her. She sat on her bed and opened the menu again, and tapped the population number, which was now 9,714. What appeared was a list of every single username in the game.

She spent over an hour, feverishly scrolling down the list, praying to whatever gods she could think of that she wouldn’t find any name she recognized.

Over three quarters of the way through the list, Twilight was starting to feel a little hopeful. There wasn’t anyone so far. Then, around the end of the S’s, she read a name that made her heart sink.

Sunset.

Chapter 2: Speedrunning

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. Wait! The boss wasn’t like this in the beta!

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

For a minute or two, Twilight forgot where she was. Probably because her eyes were still closed. Even so, something felt different. This bed… was kind of hard. She could feel that well enough, but even though she was used to a soft mattress, nothing ached. Twilight slowly opened her eyes to wooden walls and a solid white bed sheet. The events of the day before slowly came back to her.

She was still alive, meaning her family didn’t try to take the Nervegear off of her head when they woke up in America. It was the afternoon there, so they were surely fully aware of Twilight’s situation. The fact that Twilight was safe in that aspect set her heart at ease a little bit. But that username still worried her massively. It couldn’t be the same Sunset, could it? She just… tried to forget about it for now.

Twilight sat up and instinctively stretched her arms above her head, even though there was no real point to it, since muscles didn’t become sore in SAO.

After Kayaba Akihiko’s welcome yesterday evening, Twilight met Lucky, read just about everything you could read in the menus without completing any prerequisite skills, and went to sleep. She hadn’t eaten anything at all since entering the game, and her stomach heavily reminded her of this.

Players couldn’t starve to death in virtual reality, but their stomachs would start hurting something fierce after a while. Fortunately, food wasn’t ridiculously expensive as long as you didn’t go above floor 10, where it started slowly shifting from survivability to luxury. This is what the tutorials seemed to imply, at least.

Twilight tossed off the thin bedsheet that didn’t actually serve much purpose in keeping her warm, and stood up, changing from her plain white nightshirt and pants that every avatar was gifted at 7:00 last night back into her starting gear: her purple turtleneck-esque shirt (as was her color of choice) and leather tunic with pants that were pretty much khakis. The night clothes didn’t do much to keep her warm either. Thusly, she was pretty cold last night.

“Priority one, food.” She spoke aloud as if to keep herself sane. “Two, new stuff to wear. Three, next town.”

Twilight left the inn and headed to the center of town.The general mood was… not great. Unsurprisingly, not many people were talking or even smiling. It was like everyone had already given up. Twilight had felt ready to do the same yesterday though, so it wasn’t like she could judge anyone for it… it just made her sad. I’ll do my best to help clear this game, She thought. Don’t worry, everyone. We can do this.

Twilight found a stand with pictures of different shaped rolls and loaves of bread on a sign. The old grandfather-looking NPC greeted her with a warm smile and the trading interface appeared in front of her. Town of Beginnings fare… not overly impressive. For 1 cor, she could get some rather unappealing black bread... I guess this would obviously be the worst food in the game… for 3 she could get a dark brown roll, or for 6 she could get a semi-normal looking tan roll. Somewhat fearing for her safety, she opted for the 6 cor roll. “Note to self,” she murmured. “Never eat in the Town of Beginnings again…” She waved to the old man and walked off, taking a bite out of the bread. It was a little tough, but not bad.

Since it was more of a snack than a breakfast and the quality was… questionable, Twilight decided the Town of Beginnings wouldn’t have much in the way of better clothing, so she decided to head in the direction of the next town right away.

Swallowing the last of her food as she crossed the gate of the town, Twilight equipped her wand. Reading about all of the skills last night made Twilight want to practice magic a lot more, but at the same time, she loved swinging a sword around. Twilight figured that the best way to play the game would be to choose one and allocate her stat points towards only using magic or swordplay, but she didn’t want to limit herself like that. At the end of the day, it was just a game. She’d put some in both. Wait, is that kind of thinking dangerous…? Surely it can’t be a bad thing to use both magic and swords, right?

Starting down the path, Twilight activated the practice mode for spell incantations. When she spoke the magic words, her mana didn’t decrease and a spell wasn’t actually cast, but the system showed her a window of her projected minimum and maximum damage on an enemy of the exact same stats as her based on her speed and clarity of her words. This was a way the game let you practice getting better at using magic without having to wait for your mana to regenerate. Twilight didn’t really expect to be using that basic fireball for very long, but it was also a way for her to just get used to the language a little better.

Twilight practiced speaking the words for the fireball spell over and over until her projected damage increased by about ten percent, then the dirt path under her feet changed to a grassy field. At this point monsters would start approaching more often, so she turned off the practice mode. There were very few players out and about as it was still early morning and most people didn’t seem to have decided what to do just yet. One of the people she did see, though, was a certain short brunette from yesterday…

Twilight stopped walking and watched Lucky somersault over a blue lizard on two feet and stab it in the back, shattering it into pieces. Now facing Twilight, Lucky scowled.

“You again. Guess I got to ya, huh? Don’t want to quit already?” She sheathed her weapon, which looked a bit too short to be a sword, but too long to be a knife.

Twilight sighed. “Did I… do something to you?” She put a hand on her hip, giving the girl a flat look.

Lucky crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side like she was trying to figure Twilight out. She probably was. She was silent for almost a full minute and didn’t move. Only the gentle breeze told Twilight that everything wasn’t completely frozen. After a time passed, Lucky’s arms dropped to her sides with a heavy sigh. “Alright, I guess you’re not that bad. Come train with me.”

“Uh, I was heading over to the next town.” Twilight pointed in the general direction, which caused Lucky to stop in the middle of her stretch and stare into space for a second.

“Yeah, what the hell am I still doing here?” She whispered to no one in particular. Then she started running north. “C’mon, Sparkles, keep up!” She called behind her.

“Wh-” This girl is a mystery… Twilight shook her head and started running after her.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

When the 26th Lizard Barbarian fell, Twilight fell to her knees and then rolled onto her back, completely out of breath.

“Is that all you can do? We’re not even there yet!” Lucky stood over Twilight and looked down at her. “Why are you giving up already?”

“Maybe if you would…” Twilight coughed twice. “Stop aggroing every single monster on our way… How do you have so much energy?!”

Lucky stared into the horizon with squinting eyes. “Kayaba’s got me fired up. I want to break everything there is to break in this game.”

Twilight groaned. “You know that they spawn infinitely, right?”

Lucky leaned down and yanked on one of Twilight’s arms. “Up you get! I want to get to level 3 before we get to Horunka!”

“Give me a minute.” Twilight leaned her head back as Lucky pulled her to her feet. Something about this seems familiar…

What should have been a half hour trip to the next town had already taken 45 minutes and they were still only two-thirds of the way there. This was due to Lucky’s running up to every single monster she could find, which so far included 26 Lizard Barbarians, 14 Lesser Dire Wolves, and 60 something Slimes. Twilight lost count of those. Lucky never seemed to run out of energy. What was even more impressive though, was that Lucky hadn’t taken a single hit yet. Of course, Twilight hadn’t either, but she hadn’t been fighting nearly as much. It was enthralling just watching Lucky. Her small stature allowed her to jump around monsters like a gymnast. It was incredible. She likely put most if not all of her points into agility.

Lucky pushed Twilight towards a wolf. “You haven’t done almost anything yet. You fight something. I need to know if what I saw yesterday was right. Put your wand away. It takes more skill to use a sword than to speak fancy words.”

Twilight rolled her eyes but switched to her sword, then walked closer to the Lesser Dire Wolf. It bristled its gray fur and snarled at her, lowering its back and widening its stance. Twilight drew her sword from its scabbard at her side and held it low. Lucky stood back and leaned against a tree, crossing her arms.

The wolf crept up close and raised a front paw. Twilight angled her sword from the bottom left. The system sensed the initial position for a sword skill, and Twilight’s sword started glowing red with a small hum. The wolf sprang forward with its jaws wide, aiming for a bite on her left leg. Twilight cancelled the skill and kicked upward, knocking the wolf backward. It missed the bite but lashed out with a paw and clawed at Twilight’s side.

Pain coursed through Twilight’s body. She gasped and her legs crumbled beneath her. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw Lucky lean forward.

“Twilight?!”

The wolf faced Twilight and started to rush again. Twilight scrambled to her feet and activated the same skill as before, this time unleashing the basic single-hit sword skill ‘Upwards Diagonal.’

Her sword connected and the wolf shattered into pieces. Lucky rushed over to her side.

“What the heck happened?!” She grabbed Twilight’s shoulders and looked at her torso at the single glowing red line that had appeared where the wolf scratched her.

“I don’t know. It… hurt.” It hadn’t hurt that bad, but the fact that she wasn’t expecting it to be possible made it a bit worse. She gingerly touched the mark. The pain had already completely subsided, but she was shaking a little. Her health bar hadn’t even gone down that much.

Twilight gently removed Lucky’s hands from her shoulders. “I’m okay now. It just felt like a paper cut. It’s already stopped. I… guess it’s just a part of this game now.”

Lucky held her own sides and shrunk a bit. “I do not like this.” She shook her head. Where was all that bravado that she had just a second ago? Twilight reminded herself that even though she seemed like she had really thick skin, Lucky was still pretty young. She wasn’t even the one that got hurt. Lucky quivered slightly, and Twilight’s heart melted.

“Lucky, listen. Kayaba can sting us with paper cuts. But that’s about as bad as it gets, and it doesn’t really inhibit our ability to fight at all. I was just surprised. And besides, you’d have to get hit first, right? You’re the most incredible fighter I’ve seen. Just watching you, I- wait, are you laughing?”

Lucky had gotten a bit louder. Indeed, Twilight heard her chuckling under her breath. Suddenly, she glared up at the sky and started shouting.

“Akihiko Kayaba, you son of a bitch! I’m gonna climb up to the top floor myself and tear you limb from fucking limb!”

Twilight stared at her, speechless. Lucky whirled around and gave her a determined look.

“Let’s get a move on, Sparkles! We’re going to floor 100!”

Twilight shook her head clear. “What makes you think Kayaba’s there?”

Lucky overexaggerated a roll of the eyes. “What else could possibly be there? It’s so obvious! Either a player avatar controlled by Kayaba himself, or a boss monster he commands.”

“Why would he be inside the game? That’s basically suicide.”

“Well, where else is he supposed to hide from the police? They can’t really do anything to him if he’s trapped the same way everyone else is. Also, what, you think he’d actually let his own game kill him?”

Twilight didn’t really have an answer for that. Lucky had a point. She sighed. “You’re hard to keep up with. In more ways than one. Let’s go, then.” Twilight started walking towards Horunka again, which was now able to be seen in the distance. Lucky sprinted around, getting monsters’ attentions, and drew them into a group and started fighting them all at once. Twilight... calmly kept walking.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

“So what’s even the point of doing quests? Can’t you just fight monsters to grind levels?” Lucky took a drink from the glass she was holding.

Twilight and Lucky were sitting at a table in the only inn in Horunka, next to a window. Lucky had taken the seat in the sunbeam, facing the door. Twilight was sitting opposite Lucky with a glass of grape juice.

Upon their arrival to Horunka, Lucky walked right over to the center of the town, which wasn’t very impressive with its meager 10 buildings, looked at Twilight, crossed her arms, and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t look at me!” Twilight had protested. “We need to pass through here at some point! If you don’t like it, let’s just keep moving on!” to which Lucky in response had made a beeline for the inn, claiming that she was finally tired and in need of a break. Lucky was… a very strange character, to say the least.

“Well,” Twilight said after taking a sip of juice, “You could just fight monsters for hours on end, but quests generally give more experience than the time you could have spent on just monsters. You can also get unique items and weapons, like ones you can’t get from monster drops.”

“If you can just get your level high enough though, fancy items and tricks shouldn’t matter,” Lucky deadpanned, taking another large mouthful of her drink. “Just pure skill.”

Twilight sighed. “I guess everyone has their own playing style.”

Lucky looked out the window with an irritated expression. The pair sat in silence for a few moments until Lucky started sighing every ten seconds, gradually getting more and more exaggerated, obviously trying to get Twilight to ask. Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Something the matter?” She questioned, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Lucky leaned back and slammed her palms on the table, causing a few NPC’s to look over at her.

“This game is too easy!” She declared. “Is there a boss anywhere around here?”

Twilight sighed and shook her head. “At our levels, any boss would kill us with two or three good hits.” She crossed her arms on the table. “The online wiki describing floor one recommended waiting until you were level 5 before challenging one.”

Lucky pointed a finger right at Twilight’s nose. “Answer the question, Sparkles! I didn’t ask for a lecture!” Twilight’s eyes narrowed.

“I refuse to just let you go fight a boss on your own. Typically, you should bring at least 2 full parties of 7 members each to fight a field boss, and for a floor boss, you should always bring a full raid group of 6 parties of 7 members. Taking on a boss of any kind alone is absolutely suicide. It takes a minimum of 3 players together to block a blade that they swing. Their parameters are just too high. Also, to have only 2 players for a field boss means your damage per second is a lot lower, so you’ll have to fight it for a lot longer, compared to a minimum of 10 minutes with 14 players.”

Lucky glared at Twilight. “Don’t know if you noticed, mom, but I’m not blocking anything. No one can even touch me.” She exhaled sharply through her nose and crossed her arms, looking to the side. “I guess you have a point though.”

“Good. The forest to the east has higher-leveled monsters than we were fighting earlier if you-”

“So we’ll just have to find some other people to fight a boss with us!” Lucky grinned and stood up suddenly, almost knocking her chair over. “Let’s go!”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

Why does she insist on being so reckless?

“Anyway, you know like, way too much useless crap about this game.”

And why am I letting her drag me around like this?

“You’re like… for lack of a better term, a super-nerd. But...”

Am I just trying to keep her from killing herself? I can’t quite tell.

“I mean, like… The people with the highest grades in school are usually worse at video games, but you’re different. Somehow. Maybe not as great as me, but, y’know.”

And what is with that in-your-face attitude?

“Are you listening?!” Lucky whirled around, forcing Twilight to stop in her tracks.

Lucky had grabbed Twilight by the arm and pulled her out of the inn. She led her back along the cobblestone path in the direction of the Town of Beginnings, intending to find other people that were trying to progress through the game already. They assumed they were alone in Horunka as it was still pretty early in the morning and not many people apparently wanted to get going yet. So Lucky was going to drag Twilight all the way back to the Town of Beginnings trying to find some people to fight a field boss with.

Twilight sighed. “Sorry, I’m kind of distracted,” she admitted lamely.

Lucky made a face that looked halfway between a pout and a glare and looked away with an “Ugh!” She crossed her arms and leaned over a wooden fence on the path. “Can’t believe I was about to open up to you,” she mumbled.

Twilight stood behind her. She felt… really awkward. Twilight dug her toe into the ground, unsure what to say. After a moment, Lucky raised her arms above her head in a stretch.

“You’re an open book, you know that, Sparkles? I guess you’d like being a book, but be careful about it. It could get you into trouble eventually.”

“Wh- huh? But…” Twilight stammered.

Lucky turned around to face her. She sighed and shook her head. “I’m really good at reading people, okay? No pun intended. Let’s go.” She turned and started back towards the Town of Beginnings without another word.

Twilight stared at her for a second, wondering what exactly it was that Lucky was able to glean about her.. ...What just happened? She was about to call Lucky’s name when another voice from behind her startled her.

“She is troubling you?”

Twilight turned around. The person standing before her was another girl quite a bit taller than Twilight. She was wearing glasses, even though they had no effect in SAO because everyone’s avatar had perfect vision. Twilight quickly looked up and down at her. She wore a purple turtleneck shirt similar to Twilight’s, but hers was a much darker shade than Twilight’s lavender. Her hair was also a dark purple, and her green and brown eye-colored gaze probed Twilight with an analytical sense. She also still had the khaki-like pants that everyone else did, but she had some silver-colored (probably polished iron) shin and thigh guards over them. Also, instead of the leather tunic most players still had, she had already upgraded to a black metal chestpiece. It wasn’t anything fancy; it just looked like a metal version of the starting leather one. Even so, Twilight was impressed. She couldn’t see what kind of sword she had equipped, but the hilt looked like the starting one.

“N-no!” Twilight said, remembering to speak. “I’m just… not used to her type I guess?”

This new motherly-looking face tilted to the side inquisitively. “Her type? I do not understand. It would be human, would it not? You are not used to other people?”

“No, I- that’s not what I mean. She-”

“Yo, Sparkles, what’s the holdup?” Lucky approached from behind Twilight. “We’re going back t-” Lucky looked around Twilight at the tall girl, who in fact seemed nearly double Lucky’s height. There was a moment of awkward silence. “...Good god, your tits are huge.” Twilight facepalmed.

“...I am assuming that to be a greeting? Your names are?” She questioned, looking at Twilight.

“Uh, Twilight. S-Sparkle. I-I’m sorry about-”

“Usually you give your name before asking for someone else’s, y’know?”

Twilight turned her head and looked at Lucky, whose arms were crossed. She was glaring, not at her face, but a bit lower.

“I see. My apologies. I am Kotori. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She spoke nearly in a monotone.

“Jeez, she’s like a Twilight Mk. 2 or something…” Lucky mumbled.

Kotori brushed her long and flowy plum-colored hair behind her shoulder with one hand. “And you are?”

The shorter girl exhaled sharply through her nose. “Lucky.” She said tersely.

“Lucky. You are experiencing envy at my proportions? Perhaps there exists within this game magic that can-”

“Are you good at this game? You’ve already upgraded your armor.”

Twilight could feel her face getting redder and redder. She leaned against the same fence Lucky was a minute ago and covered her face with one hand. Whyyyyy is this conversation happening?

Kotori tilted her head. “I would not consider myself more experienced than anyone else in the game. I have upgraded my armor because I am choosing to play the style of a dark knight. Exceptional defensive capabilities, both physical and magical, with low-moderate attacking power. Able to wield either swords or magic at approximately equal prowess. Usually mounted on horseback, though I do not know if that is possible in Sword Art Online. One of few classes referred to as ‘tanks.’ As official classes do not exist in Sword Art Online, however, I am forced to improvise my stats.”

“Well, you could certainly block a few hits with those knockers of yours…” Lucky mumbled. Twilight grabbed Lucky by the shoulders and turned her towards the Town of Beginnings.

“OH-kay, we’ll just be on our way now, sorry to bother you, great to meet you, maybe we’ll see each other again sometime!” Hopefully not with Lucky here! Twilight screamed in her head, forcing herself to keep a semi-pleasant looking smile.

Lucky pulled away from Twilight and turned towards Kotori again. “We’re gathering people to go fight a field boss. You want to join us?” She looked none too happy about it, but her desire to fight something difficult apparently won out over whatever rivalry she felt towards Kotori. “And more importantly, do you know anyone else who may want to join?”

“A field boss? Already? Typically, you should wait until-”

“Ooohhh my god, I’ve heard this already.”

Twilight piped up. “She originally wanted to fight with just the two of us. I stopped her.”

“No, you didn’t, you’re just refusing to tell me where to find one until we have enough people to make you happy.” Lucky poked Twilight in the collarbone as she said this. Then, without waiting for an answer, she faced the Town of Beginnings again. “Come on, you two, let’s get moving!” Lucky sprinted off. “I’m not turning around this time!” She shouted.

Kotori and Twilight stood silently for a moment. “I believe I understand what you meant now, when you said you weren’t used to her type,” Kotori spoke and then started walking after Lucky. Twilight breathed a tired sigh and followed.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

“You want to fight a field boss?” Hikaru asked, his arms crossed.

Hikaru didn’t look very different than the avatar he had previously designed, surprisingly. Kayaba’s mirror didn’t change him much. Twilight guessed he didn’t want to look very different than he did in real life. Well, no need to worry about that anymore. He had blue eyes and short, sort of spiky hair. His turtleneck color of choice was also white, and he was only a couple inches taller than Twilight, who was 5’6”.

Twilight sighed. She seemed to be doing that a lot since meeting Lucky. “Not particularly, but I’m just trying to keep Lucky out of trouble.” This elicited a raise of an eyebrow from Hikaru, but no words, so she continued. “She wanted to fight one with just me, but I convinced her to gather a bigger group.” She looked around the field they were in, scanning for the short brunette. Her eyes found her talking to a group of three guys. One shook his head and Lucky pointed at him, probably verbally berating.

“So you don’t think she’s capable of fighting one?”

Twilight turned back towards Hikaru. “No, no, that’s not what I mean at all! The way she fights is actually amazing! She’s like an acrobat, the way she dodges attacks. It’s just that the bosses are way too strong for one person. One misstep and bam. Game over.”

“But isn’t the first field boss just…?” Hikaru tilted his head to one side.

“It doesn’t matter what it is. That boss actually killed me when I fought it in the beta. Twice.”

“To be fair though, you had no idea what you were doing. If what you say about Lucky is true, she’s definitely better than you were back then, at least.”

“You’re not helping!”

Hikaru chuckled and let his arms fall to his side. “Sure, sure, I’ll join up.” Twilight glared at him. “What? Don’t give me that look.” He was still smiling.

Twilight opened her mouth to fire a comeback at Hikaru when someone crashed into her. Or, was pushed, would be the better term. Hikaru met a similar fate.

“Two more party members!” Lucky exclaimed proudly with a cheesy grin.

The body separated from Twilight and stepped back. The person who stood before her looked about as average as you could possibly get, like Lucky had found a background character from an anime and dragged him into the spotlight. He had short dark brown hair and brown eyes, was an average height and build… and didn’t really have any eye-catching qualities. It was almost scary. Looking over at the figure who had bumped into Hikaru, she saw basically the same person. Hikaru looked about as wide-eyed as Twilight felt. She didn’t really know what to say. Hikaru apparently didn’t either. One of the background-character looking people spoke.

“Let me just say you aren’t the first to have this reaction. I’m Ryota, this is Ryoka. We’re twins.” Cookie-Cutter Boy One gestured to Boy Two as he spoke and they bowed in turn.

“Just so we’re clear, you’re going to help us fight a field boss? Lucky didn’t lie or mislead you? I just feel like I need to make sure.” Lucky glared at Twilight but didn’t say anything. Ryota laughed. Or… was it Ryoka? Darn it, she already lost track.

“No, we’re good. The party is up to five now, right?”

“Nope,” Hikaru spoke up. “Six. I’m joining too. I’m Hikaru, and this is Twilight.” They bowed back to the Twins. A moment later, Kotori approached the group with another person trailing behind.

“Twilight!” She ran forward and attacked Twilight in a bear hug.

“Uhf!” Twilight stumbled backward. “H-hi, Kaiya…” Kaiya let go of Twilight and stepped back to Kotori’s side.

“You’re gonna fight the boss too? Figures. You’re really good at this game!”

You didn’t even really watch me for more than one fight… Kotori looked at Twilight. “You know of her?”

Kaiya crossed her arms proudly for some reason. “I met Twilight yesterday! I was about to get my butt kicked by a boar but she swooped in and saved me and gave me some tips on the game! Now that I actually know what I’m doing, I can even help fight the boss!” Kaiya grabbed Twilight’s hands. “Thank you so much by the way! I’d probably be dead already if it wasn’t for you!”

“No problem…” Twilight said with a sheepish smile.

Lucky pulled Kaiya off Twilight and pointed at the latter. “We have seven now! Is this enough?! We’re all pretty skilled! We could take down a boss!” Her tone was demanding, but her words made it seem like she was asking Twilight for permission. Twilight saw Hikaru grinning out of the corner of her eye. She ignored him. Instead, Twilight looked around at the group. Against her better judgment, she relented.

“All right.” She said with a sigh.

“Yes!” Lucky jumped in the air and pumped a fist. After this brief excitement, she pointed at Twilight again. “You know where it is! Let’s get a move on! No dilly-dallying!” Knowing that Lucky wouldn’t be happy unless she picked up the speed, Twilight addressed the group.

“Let’s run.” Twilight turned around after watching everyone’s expressions to make sure they were on board and started jogging back towards Horunka.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

Once they reached the entrance to the small town, Twilight slowed to a stop and turned and faced the group. “The field boss is about ten minutes away from here. Take the opportunity to upgrade your gear as much as you can and make any other necessary purchases. We leave in fifteen minutes.” The group nodded and split into three groups to head to the inn, tool shop, and blacksmith. Hikaru and one of the twins went with Twilight to the blacksmith.

As they entered the NPC shop, a girl looking to be in her 20’s waved at them from behind the counter. Twilight stepped up to her and opened the trading interface, looking to get some better armor. She replaced her leather tunic with a dull iron chestpiece. Her defensive power only went up a few points, but those points meant a lot more so early in the game. She also bought a slightly longer sword, even though it was about the same strength as her old one. Lastly, she sold her old gear to the shop.

That was about as good as the shop had, so Twilight closed the trading interface and the mute NPC gave her a smile and a bow as her new purchases appeared on Twilight’s body. Hikaru and… Ryota, Twilight guessed, had bought the same armor and sword that she had due to the relatively low variety of options. Twilight was scrutinizing the list of available purchases to make sure she wasn’t missing anything good when she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Was wondering how long it would take you before making fun of me,” She said matter-of-factly without looking up.

“Making fun of you?” Hikaru asked with a chuckle. “Why would I make fun of you for that?”

“I don’t know, maybe I seem like her mom or something.”

“Well, she obviously respects you.” Hikaru sat on the counter.

“For some unknown reason, she apparently does, in her own weird way. And with Lucky’s respect means being appointed leader of a party against your will. I guess.” Twilight turned to face the door. “I haven’t bought any potions; let’s go to the inn.” Hikaru hopped down to the floor, visibly irritated that he was kicked off his seat so quickly. Twilight waved to the blacksmith and left the store with Hikaru. The twin had already left the blacksmith and Twilight now saw him chatting with Kotori next to the fountain in the center of town. He looked intimidated.

Twilight and Hikaru entered the inn right as Kaiya knocked a chair over. “Told you,” The other twin told her with a smug grin.

“Oh, I don’t need your sass, pretty boy.” She rolled her eyes at him and set the chair back up.

Twilight stepped past them and approached the NPC’s counter, but not before uttering a “What’s the matter?” to whichever of the two felt like answering.

Kaiya leaned on the counter next to Twilight. “Oh, don’t worry about it. A small bet. That I lost. Whatever. Which one are you again?” She asked, looking over at the twin now sitting on the armrest of the chair Kaiya had previously knocked over.

“Ryota. And don’t worry, I’m not gonna hold it over your head or anything.” Out of Twilight’s vision, Ryota waved a hand dismissively.

Kaiya shrugged. “So I’m a bit of a klutz. Nothing I’m not used to.” Twilight finished her transaction with the innkeeper and closed the window. She waited for Hikaru to do the same and turned to the rest of the few around her.

“Everyone ready?”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

The group met at the fountain in the center of town. “Is everyone done preparing?” Twilight spoke. Everyone nodded without a word. Most of the faces looked nervous. Twilight opened her menu. “Okay. First, we should form an actual party so we can see each other’s hit points.” Twilight sent out party invites to everyone else. “Don’t do anything reckless. We can always run away.”

“Run away? Ha!” Lucky piped up. “We’re gonna kick that thing’s ass!” Twilight saw Hikaru and Kaiya roll their eyes. “What is the boss anyway?”

“The boss itself is just a giant slime. However,” she said quickly, sensing Lucky about to flip out and raising her arm, showing Lucky her palm in a ‘wait’ gesture. “The challenge of the fight comes from getting over to it. It’s surrounded by smaller slimes and lizard footmen. Tons of them. A hundred, at least.”

Lucky pondered this for a moment before nodding slowly. “I guess that’s okay.”

“That doesn’t mean it’ll just roll over and die once we kill all the small fry though. It can stun, poison, burn, blind, and paralyze you.”

“That’s kind of a lot of effects…” one of the twins said, shifting on uneasy feet. “Will we really be okay?”

Twilight gave a reassuring smile. “I think we’ll be just fine. Besides, we have magic now. It’ll be easier than it was in the beta. We can attack from a distance.” The twin nodded and once Twilight made sure she saw seven health bars in the corner of her vision, indicating that everyone had successfully joined the party, Meaning it was that quest after all that was keeping me from being in a party, as Twilight silently noted, she turned to face the north exit of Horunka. “Let’s go.”

As they walked the beaten dirt path out of town and through the grassy hills, nothing seemed to bother the group on the way to the battleground. After two minutes of silence, Kaiya spoke up. “Guess we’re getting lucky with the monster spawns, huh?” No one responded. Twilight looked over her shoulder at the group. Only Lucky’s and Kotori’s eyes met hers. Everyone else was looking at the ground. Lucky gave her a solemn nod. Kotori blinked once, but that was it.

Twilight faced forward again. She needed to break this silence or everyone would drown in their own worry. “All right, let’s talk strategy. First of all, does anyone have any general questions about the game that someone else may be able to answer?”

“...Yeah,” Twilight recognized Hikaru’s voice. “Refresh my memory: What’s the difference between stun and paralysis?”

“Paralysis,” Kotori spoke up, “Prevents you from moving at all while being stunned merely locks some of your joints at random intervals. Players still have some limited mobility while under a stun effect, however battling effectively is practically impossible, so anyone who gets stunned should make an effort to retreat immediately. Paralysis, however, if inflicted in the middle of battle, is effectively a death sentence unless other party members are nearby to protect the victim or administer an antidote. Manipulating the menu is also impossible under the paralysis effect. Even if a player were to manage to lift their hand high enough to open the menu, it would not open, as the menu is completely disabled to a player who has the paralysis debuff. This means that a paralyzed player cannot heal themselves without assistance.”

Twilight didn’t know that last part. She swallowed. Hopefully, not many monsters in the game had paralyzing effects. If a lot of bosses could, that would be… bad. Long story short. “Okay.... a-any others?” No one spoke up. “Alright. Let’s get to strategizing. People capable of ta-”

“How does the slime boss actually attack?” Lucky interrupted. “You know, if slimes can’t really move very much?”

Twilight tilted her head, trying to remember. “It, like… dropped blobs of gunk on you? Yeah, that was it. Those will damage you and can inflict all of those status effects on you randomly, and then they became more smaller slimes if you didn’t destroy them fast enough.”

“Gotcha. Sorry. I would’ve forgot to ask if I didn’t.” Twilight nodded in response to this, but still faced forward.

“People capable of taking a lot of hits should stay in the front of the party. Kotori’s already said she plays like a tank. Does anyone else?”

“I do,” One of the twins spoke up.

Oh… great. “Right then... Which… one are you?”

“Ryoka.”

“Ryoka. We need a better way of identifying the two of you. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s… been having trouble.” Murmurs from behind her told her she was correct.

“I don’t really know what to do about that,” Ryoka admitted.

“I have something!” Kaiya nearly shouted. Twilight turned her head to see Kaiya raising her hand. She opened up her inventory and removed two long strips of colored fabric about an inch wide. She handed a red one to Ryoka and a green one to Ryota. “Headbands!”

The twins smiled and nodded. They exchanged glances and switched their headbands. Ryoka tied the green strip around his forehead, and Ryota the red.

“Thank goodness,” someone mumbled.

Twilight faced forward again and took a deep breath, speaking in a militant-like tone to quell her own nervousness. “Okay. Kotori and Ryoka should stay in the front of the group and mow down as many of the smaller enemies as they can. For the first few minutes of the fight, we stay as far away from the boss slime as possible. It has a very short range of attack. The higher damage-dealers spread out from either side of our tanks and hit anything that they miss. Hikaru, you’re on healing. We don’t have magic that heals other party members yet, so you just pass out healing potions.”

“Roger, captain!” If you’re saluting, I swear…

“If the group stays together, we shouldn’t be at very much risk. Hikaru stays in the center of the formation and won’t be fighting as much. Once the majority of the minions are down, we can focus the boss, but don’t break form. We circle the boss, dodging what it tries to throw at us. It takes a few seconds for us to be able to attack the piles of slime, but by the time we make a full circle around, we can destroy them. Tanks, that is not your job. You ignore them and whittle away at the boss. I’ll deal with the piles myself. They have extremely little hit points before they turn into slime enemies. Damage dealers, attack with magic from behind Ryoka and Kotori. Watch your mana, and don’t let it get too low. If another monster spawns, ideally we shouldn’t wait for someone’s mana to regenerate before blasting it. If we follow this strategy, we’ll be just fine. This is similar to how I beat the boss in the beta, and now it’ll be even easier with magic. Objections?”

No one spoke up. Opening up her menu, she continued. “Everyone give your healing potions to Hikaru. This way, you won’t have to mess with your menu while under attack.” She sent her potions to Hikaru’s inventory.

Twilight felt a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped and turned around to face the group. Hikaru was giving her an encouraging smile.

“I get what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying not to show any fear to reassure the rest of us. You don’t have to, okay? We all know the risks of fighting… basically anything in this game. I wouldn’t still be here if I doubted anyone’s skill or your strategy. I’m sure everyone here feels similarly. Like… come on. It’s the easiest boss in the game. Do we really even need a strategy?”

Twilight frowned. “You never know what will happen. Of course we need a strategy.” Also, you don’t really have a good reason to be so confident in everyone… you haven’t seen them fight enough. Twilight kept that thought to herself.

“I know. We’re still using yours. Just relax a little, okay?” He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and pushed it a little to turn her around. “Onward!”

Twilight took a deep breath. She steeled herself and continued walking. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“Anytime.”

It took about another five minutes of walking to reach the boss’s field area. It was... just a really flat, circular grassy field, which looked to be about a hundred yards in diameter. Guess that’s the first floor for you… I’m getting tired of being disappointed.

The group stopped before they crossed a line in the grass. Twilight turned to the group again. “See that line where the grass changes color? That’s the boss’s spawn zone. Once we cross that, the battle starts. Everyone ready?”

Various nods and smirks told Twilight the affirmative.

“Then get in formation. Let’s do this.”

The group formed up. Kotori and Ryota stood in the front just before the line where the grass changed, Hikaru stood behind and between them, and the rest got on either side of Hikaru.

Twilight, Lucky, and Kaiya equipped wands, and Ryoka, Ryota, and Kotori drew swords. Twilight’s and Lucky’s wands just looked like twigs, but Kaiya’s was a polished rod of a dark-colored wood with a round, green jewel at the base. Twilight poked Kaiya’s shoulder.

“Where’d you get that?”Kaiya made a face like she was thinking. “Monster drop. It has a bit higher damage, but my mana cost is a little more, too.” She sighed. “I don’t really like being limited on how often I can attack. I’ll probably mostly stick to melee weapons, but I can’t really take chances fighting a boss.”

“Huh… fair enough.” Twilight then raised her voice to address the group. “Everyone, forward!”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

The group advanced and entered the circular arena. Monsters began appearing in flashes of pale blue light, scattered all around the arena. There were slimes of a yellowish-green color and red lizards that stood on two legs wielding branches for swords and slabs of tree bark for shields.

“Remember, everyone,” Twilight spoke again, “If it looks bad, there’s absolutely no shame in bailing. Don’t be a hero. Just… let everyone else know so we don’t end up a man short when we don’t expect it and fall apart.”

The lizards, being faster on their feet than the slimes on their… slime, reached the group first. Kotori and Ryota lashed out with their swords, hitting the first two lizards at the same time. They staggered back but still lived. Lucky lobbed a fireball at one of them and set its shield on fire when it tried to block. Twilight looked through the few of the mob that was approaching to the center of the field, where the boss slime had appeared.It looked to be about six of the smaller slimes tall. While obviously more threatening than the other monsters, it still looked pretty stupid.

The group had killed 4 lizards in the time it took Twilight to process this. Maybe this wouldn’t be that tough. Twilight swung her sword downward at a slime that had dared to venture near, cutting it in half and destroying it in one hit. Even at their lower player levels, the slimes could be taken care of easily. Good to know.

The battle against the horde seemed to be going by rather quickly and without much incident. The group managed to keep their distance from the boss while they were cutting away at the numbers of the mob. It took some getting used to the fact that the game could make its players feel pain, but it wasn’t anything fierce enough to cause anyone to stop moving.

As Kotori knocked a lizard’s branch upwards and Twilight stabbed it in the chest to finish it off, Twilight spoke. “Hikaru, have you needed to pass out many potions?” Twilight recalled that she had needed one, and she saw Kaiya take one, but she wasn’t watching everyone the whole time, so she wasn’t quite sure how everyone was really doing.

“Nope. Still have plenty.” Hikaru sighed. “This is getting boring. I’m not even fighting.” His hand was resting on his sword hilt, his fingers tapping it impatiently.

Ryoka piped in as he knocked a tree bark shield to the ground. “Think he should join the fray? These monsters aren’t much of a threat. We may not even need a healer at all.”

There might have been some truth to what he said, as Twilight’s potion was more of a precautionary measure than a panic-induced heal. Even so, the sound of the fighting around her just made her a little nervous. She shook her head. “Sorry. I really don’t feel comfortable with that idea. Think you can hold out?” She looked at Hikaru with a supportive smile. He sighed in response and rolled his eyes, but it was lighthearted.

“Sure, sure. I shouldn’t be complaining about boredom in a game that can kill you, anyhow.” he gave a sarcastic smirk.

Twilight turned to face a lizard that had approached her and was rearing back to swing at her. She quickly blocked the blow and tried knocking its weapon out of its hands, but it held onto it. They held their weapons together for a second, both pressing hard. Twilight could see the rage in its eyes. They were glowing red, like all the others, but it felt different, being this close. When you’re busy running around and swinging wildly, it’s a lot less impersonal. With their weapons locked like this, Twilight felt a different type of adrenaline than the usual. Some people might be intimidated, but not Twilight. Instead, she smiled.

“Those guys in monster design are really good at their jobs, huh? It’s like you’re almost real.”

As if it could understand her, it hissed at her, pressing its branch even harder against her blade.

In response, Twilight lifted her foot and kicked out at the lizard’s legs, knocking it off balance. It fell on its back, and Twilight swiftly stabbed her sword downward into the beast’s heart, killing it instantly.

“Not very sure that hiss was realistic, though. Don’t think lizards do that.”

Surprisingly, nothing else bothered her while she was locked with that lizard. It seemed that the monster AI on the first floor didn’t understand that concept of swarming an enemy or something, despite swarms already existing as a monster type of their own. Weird.

The battle against the mob was fairly uneventful. Twilight watched Hikaru out of the corner of her eye, and she didn’t see anyone else take a potion. The group managed to stay away from the boss the whole time, as it was pretty slow. Eventually, the mob was down to nothing.

“How’s everyone doing?” Hikaru asked, deadpan. He was very bored. He made it obvious.

Lucky rolled her shoulders around. She had switched to a sword at some point. Twilight thought it suited her much better than fighting from afar. “I’m good. Now we just cruise, right?”

“Well… pretty much. The boss isn’t very threatening. We should probably stay in formation, though.”

Ryoka grinned. “You kidding? If that thing couldn’t even catch up to us the entire fight, I don’t think we need to worry about a thing.”

Kotori adjusted her glasses. “It would be unwise to battle without a strategy. A situation can change in an instant.”

“We have a strategy. Can we just get it over with?” Hikaru sighed.

Kaiya rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it’s like… getting closer, so we should kinda, you know, be ready?”

Twilight was watching the boss slime. With each passing second feeling like an eternity, it slid closer. Very… very… slowly. Annoyingly so. It hadn’t done anything special at all the entire time the group was fighting the monster army. It was almost funny how little of a threat it seemed to pose. Well, time to deal with it. “Kaiya, is your mana restored?”

“Good to go!” Kaiya twirled her wand in her hand like a baton.

“All right. Everyone, face the boss.”

“You mean the slime,” Lucky muttered. Apparently now that the challenging part was over, she was instantly bored. Reluctantly, though, she did as she was told.

The group approached the giant mound of green. It hardly seemed to notice them until they were less than ten feet away. Well… it’s hard to tell what a slime is thinking. It seemed to… jiggle a little faster when they got near, though. It shook madly for a second and flung a smaller blob of slime towards the group, narrowly missing Kaiya. “Ew?! What in the-”

“I told you,” Twilight chided. “Come on, let’s move around it. Those blobs won’t take damage right away.”

The group circled the boss, sword fighters in front slashing at it, and magic users in the back lobbing spells. Twilight destroyed the piles of slime every time they made a full circle around the boss. It was going really well. No one was even getting hit.

Until the boss was knocked down to half of its health.

The second its hit points reached fifty percent, it let loose some sort of shock wave, pushing everyone back a few feet. It let out a cry, almost like a screech. Twilight lowered her sword and stared at it in bewilderment. It started vibrating madly, and the shade of green started turning darker, and it was getting… more shiny?

“Twilight…? What’s going on?” Hikaru asked.

“I- I don’t- This isn’t-”

The slime screeched again, and pieces of it began melting off, slowly revealing a figure underneath.

Twilight’s heart skipped a beat. Wait! It wasn’t like this in the beta!

The rest of it melted off the figure, leaving some sort of giant knight-looking monster. It was entirely green, and looked like it was made of glassy, crystallized slime. It stood up on two legs and wielded a sword and shield which looked to be made out of the same material the knight itself was. Its health bar reappeared, full, and it had a name now. Calamus, The Gelid Warrior.

It roared and slashed its sword down into the ground in the direction of the party, causing the ground to shake and a couple of them to fall over. Twilight looked at the faces of her friends. Fear, in all of them. They looked to be completely frozen. Even Lucky, with her daredevil self. Twilight faced the knight again, who pulled its sword out of the ground and glared at the group with its glowing red eyes through its green crystal slime helmet. Twilight could already tell, this was not a fight they could win. It had to be way stronger than before. She swallowed.

“Ret- Retr- Run!”

Those who had fallen over scrambled to their feet and the group scattered, just as the boss swung its blade around again. Twilight felt the rush of air the blade pushed around. This was real. For the first time in the game, she felt genuinely terrified for her life.

The boss didn’t seem to be targeting Twilight, so she looked around the field for her friends in a panic. Lucky was rolling under its sword, dodging everything like usual. “Everyone!” She shouted. “It won’t chase you past the field! Remember where the grass changed color? That’s the aggro zone! Leave that circle and we’ll be safe!”

Lucky looked at Twilight like she wanted to argue, but she too seemed to realize they wouldn’t be able to win right now. So instead, she shouted something too. “I’ll keep it focused on me! Everyone else, go first!”

Everyone else started running towards Twilight, and Lucky ducked under the boss’s giant blade and ran between its legs to get behind it.

The boss, instead of turning around, jumped up and stomped down hard, causing the ground to quake. Twilight was far enough away to be fine, but it slowed a couple others, and Lucky went down. The boss raised its arms and a cold wind emanated from it. The grass around it turned icy. Lucky stood up again and stabbed the boss in the back of the leg, and it finally turned around to face her.

Everyone else had reached where Twilight was, just about halfway from the boss to the edge of the field. They were far enough away to not be in any danger, so Twilight called out to Lucky. “Start moving towards us!” She got a “Roger!” in response.

The other six slowly backed up towards safety, watching Lucky dodge swing after swing with bated breath as she followed after them.

“That girl is nuts,” whispered Ryoka. “In- In more ways than one.”

Twilight had to agree. Lucky was amazing, but it was so nerve-wracking watching her. Just one bad mistake, and…

They were only a few meters from the edge of the circle when Lucky tripped. She stepped on her own foot and tumbled to the ground.

The slime knight raised its sword above its head and Lucky stared up at the weapon. She only had time to climb to her hands and knees…

“What are you doing?!”

Before she was pushed out of the way.

The person the knight stabbed was Ryoka. The blade went completely through his body and into the ground. His eyes widened and there was an audible grunt of pain. Before his life points hit zero, he managed to lift his head and say to the group:

“She’s… a lot more valuable to everyone than I am… Make it out alive.”

Those were his final words, before he shattered into nothing.

Some movement in the corner of Twilight’s eye forced her to turn her horrified gaze away from the spot Ryoka used to be.

Ryota took a step forward. Tears were welling up in his eyes, and his mouth was agape.

“No… NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

He raised his sword above his head and tried to rush forward, but Hikaru and Kaiya grabbed his arms and held him back.

“Let me go! Let me GO, damn it!”

With the boss’s sword stuck in the ground, Lucky was able to get up and everyone left the circle, Ryota unwillingly. With no one left to fight, like a switch was flipped, the knight retreated to the center, and the slime regenerated around it, leaving it in its unassuming state.

Kaiya and Hikaru let go of Ryota, and he fell to his hands and knees. No one seemed to know what to say. Twilight had sort of forgotten the risks here throughout the day, but reality now hit her like a ton of bricks.

Someone… just died.

Chapter 3: Reunion

Ryota was still on the ground, quietly sobbing. Lucky was the first to break the silence.

“I’m… really sorry.”

Twilight looked up at her. Her usual hardened expression looked much more dispirited than usual. They weren’t really the best words, but what do you say to someone whose twin just died right in front of them?

Twilight looked at everyone else, too: Kaiya was staring off into the distance, rubbing her arm uncomfortably, Hikaru was looking down at Ryota, and Kotori’s eyes were closed.

Twilight kneeled down and placed her hand on Ryota’s back. She could feel him tense up at her touch.

His voice was hoarse. “I don’t… blame anyone. But just… just go. Please. Everyone.”

“Ryota, you-”

“I said leave!” He turned around and smacked Twilight’s hand away, glaring at her through the tears in his eyes.

Twilight stood up. Her feet and heart felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each. “All right then…”

She took a few steps back, and the others did the same. One by one, they turned around and started walking away, Twilight being the last one. Twilight thought she saw something shining in Lucky’s eye when she turned. She probably feels so guilty…

Twilight finally turned around and left the boy on the ground. She walked past Lucky and Kaiya, who had hidden behind a tree and were now watching him. “Are you two-”

“Shhh!” They hushed her in unison.

She spoke more quietly, “What are you two doing?”

“Making sure he doesn’t go try and fight the boss again.” Lucky answered concisely, contrary to what you’d expect from her. This wasn’t a time to be joking around, even she knew that. Twilight joined them in their stakeout.

She sat with them for a while. No one said anything. There was an air of sadness surrounding the area. Twilight watched the gentle breeze blow through the grass in the field.

After almost twenty minutes of uneventful stalking, Ryota slowly stood. Lucky tensed up, ready to jump, but Ryota lethargically started walking away from the boss’s field, his head hung low and feet dragging. Kaiya sighed. There was both relief and sadness in it.

“Poor guy… This game isn’t fair.” Kaiya sat with her back against the tree and crossed her arms. “It was just a slime, how were we supposed to know?”

“I feel like it was my fault,” Twilight mumbled. “I was the one who said we could probably take it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. There was no way you could have known about that. You fell for the same trap everyone else did.”

Lucky spoke up. “Shut up, both of you. It was my idea to fight the boss in the first place. I knew everyone was so underleveled, but I didn’t care.”

Kaiya put a hand on Lucky’s shoulder. “Lucky, you couldn’t have-”

“It doesn’t matter what I could or couldn’t have, did or didn’t know.” Lucky shook Kaiya’s arm off. “You have to be careful in this game. I should have been. I was also the one who tripped. Stupid! Why did he do that?! I should be the one who paid for that, not him!”

“What’s done is done,” Twilight said sternly. “Don’t make his sacrifice be for nothing.”

Lucky stared at Twilight for a moment, her face emotionless. “Right.”

There was a sort of awkward silence. Kaiya kicked some dirt around. “So… do we head back to town?”

Lucky stood up. “I’m going ahead. North, I guess. Towards what I hope is probably the general direction of the Floor Dungeon.”

Twilight grabbed her wrist. “Is that such a good idea?”

“It’ll be fine. I’m only toying with my own life this time.” Lucky gently removed Twilight’s hand from her arm.

Twilight knew she wasn’t going to be able to stop her. “Just… try to be safe. Please. I don’t want another friend dying on me.”

Lucky looked down. “...Yeah. I gotcha.” She opened a map and looked at it for a second, then turned another direction. “See you guys later.”

Twilight watched Lucky walk away for a full minute before turning to the one other person left in the area. “Kaiya?”

“I’m gonna go back to the Town of Beginnings. I want to find some more people I can trust. Come with?”

Twilight’s stomach growled. “Think I’m gonna have to pass. I’m gonna stay around Horunka for a while. Grind some XP, get some food and rest. Then head north too, I guess.” Kaiya stood up and stretched her arms.

“All right then. See you later, Twilight.” She started walking away, leaving Twilight to her thoughts. There were certainly a lot of them.

Twilight scooted over so she was sitting against the tree to collect her thoughts. So, let’s see. Still trapped in a video game. Yup. Threat of death still looming… I have this annoying ring that I still can not take off my finger. Someone I was in a party with just died, everyone else split up, for better or worse… and we also have-

“Twilight?!”

Sunset?! Twilight bolted to a sitting up position at hearing that familiar voice. She turned her head towards the direction of its origin, and there she saw that telltale hairstyle and yellow color with auburn highlight. Sunset started hurriedly walking toward her, and Twilight stood up all the way.

They met with a hug, Twilight both relieved and terrified at the same time. “What are- I mean, wait, um- dang it-” the purple-haired girl stammered, switching back and forth between Japanese and English mid-sentence.

“Just speak Japanese. Everyone else does,” Sunset stopped Twilight, grinning in amusement.

Twilight took a deep breath. “I… didn’t know you do.”

“It’s my foreign language of choice in high school. I’ve been in it all four years, and a few before that, too. More importantly, what are you doing here?!” Sunset threw her arms in the air, expecting an answer out of her friend.

“I could ask you the same thing! There were only twenty copies shipped to America! How did you get one?”

“I waited 54 hours outside one of the two stores that had them. Guess you went to the other one, huh?” Sunset furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. “Wait, why did you do that? We live about the same distance from the one I went to. And I definitely did not see you there. It would be pretty hard to just miss you with only 10 people buying it.”

Twilight gave a small nervous-slash-embarrassed chuckle. “I only knew about that one at the time.”

“Oh. Well, too bad we even found out about the game. You know, with the… yeah.”

Twilight was silent for a moment. “Yeah.”

“Hey, you’re a fighter, though. I think you’ll be fine.” Sunset nudged Twilight’s shoulder with her fist lightly, trying to make light of the situation.

“It’s not myself I’m worried about…” Twilight trailed off, rubbing her hand where Sunset had touched her.

“Pft, I’m not just gonna keel over either. You know me. Let’s work together to kick this game’s sorry face in.” The fiery-haired girl punched her open palm with her other hand and wore a smug grin on her face.

Twilight giggled a little. “That was so cheesy.” Sunset shrugged. “So what are you doing here? Like, here, here?”

“I came to scout. Heard there’s a boss around here.”

“Oh. Yeah, about that. I, uh... just fought it... It didn’t go well.” Twilight rubbed the back of her neck.

Sunset covered her mouth in shock and her eyes grew wide. “Are you the only one that made it?!”

“Wh- No! No! Only one person died. Everyone else just… kinda left. Well, I say ‘only’ one person, but-”

“Right, right, sorry... Well, sounds like you’ve got a story for me.”

“Yup.” Twilight’s stomach growled again. “But first, back to Horunka.”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

“Question: Why did Lucky seem to appoint you leader?” Sunset had her arms resting on the table, crossed.

“I’m not quite sure myself, really. She’s definitely better than me at this game.” Twilight dug her fork into a piece of (rather dry) chicken and took a bite.

“What does she look like?”

“She’s-” Twilight swallowed. “She’s a really short brunette. Silver eyes. Turtleneck color of choice is a pale red. But, like, not pink. She looks like she’s around 14.”

“Hang on!” Sunset started giggling uncontrollably. “She was- She was cursing out Kayaba? She actually cussed at the sky? A 14-year old?!”

“Yup. She is not afraid to tell you what she thinks of you.”

“Oh my god, that’s just amazing! I need to meet her!”

“Well, she went north, so…”

“Ah, gotcha. I need a break first.”

Twilight set her fork down. “Been grinding for experience?”

“Yup. Done a bit of questing, too. I got a spell that heals party members.”

Twilight nodded. It was silent for a moment.

“So, tell me about the boss.” Sunset’s face looked more serious now.

Twilight took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It… started out as just a giant slime. There were a bunch of regular enemies surrounding it. I was in a party of seven, and we killed the mob before we started on the boss.”

“Was that part any trouble?”

“Not really. I guess that should’ve been another hint that there was still some sort of challenge. So once the slime went down to half its maximum health, it, like… melted away, kind of? And there was this crystallized-slime-knight thing underneath it. It had a sword and shield.”

“What kind of sword?”

Twilight tried to remember. In her panic, she didn’t really think to look. She had a vague mental image, though. “A dao, I think. Wait, was it? That’s not really a sword built for stabbing, but…” She shivered. “A-Anyway. I guess I don’t remember.” I could have sworn, though… “We quickly realized we couldn’t win, so we started to run away. But it… ended up getting one of us.”

“You didn’t even try to fight it?”

Twilight shook her head. “We weren’t ready for that kind of fight. We had a strategy, but that was just for a slime. So we’d have been going in completely unprepared. We’d need more people.

Sunset thought for a moment. “How would that help, exactly? Other than the obvious dealing damage faster thing, how would that make it less likely for people to die? Like in your case?”

Twilight nodded. “Fair question. It’s about dividing the boss’s attention. If it gets too focused on one person, that person is in a lot more danger than someone shooting fireballs at it from fifty feet away. But with more people, if things look dicey up front, you can, say, have a bunch of people shoot magic at it all at once and try and get its focus away from some other people. A boss has more trouble deciding who to attack if there are more targets to pick from, whereas we all have only one target.”

“Ah… So that’s why they’re so strong.”

“It’s also why there are limits on how many people can challenge a boss at once. For a field boss, it’s three parties. And for a floor boss, six. And all parties in a boss fight can have up to seven people.”

Sunset nodded. “Gotcha. Cause if there wasn’t a limit, you could just completely overpower the boss with like, a hundred or more people, right?”

“Yup.” Twilight sighed. “Too bad there isn’t an easy way out of here.”

“Yeah, everything seems pretty well-balanced so far.”

“Uh huh… Do you play video games a lot?”

“Would I have stood in a line for 54 hours if I didn’t?”

Twilight giggled. “Fair enough, I guess.”

Sunset smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Same to you.” Twilight stretched her arms. “I… think I’m good to go. Any destination in mind?”

“Actually…” Sunset put a finger on her chin. “I think there was a dungeon nearby here.”

“Oh? That’s new.”

“New?” Sunset tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Uh… new to me. I investigated the area pretty well, but I guess I missed it somehow.” Twilight chewed the inside of her lip nervously.

There was a moment of silence. Sunset just kind of stared at Twilight for a few seconds. Please don’t ask, please don’t ask….

Sunset shrugged. “Anyway, I found it when a wolf knocked me over. It’s not really something you notice easily if you’re not looking for it. It was a really small hole. I’m assuming we can either dig around it, or there’s another entrance somewhere.”

“How do you know it’s a dungeon? It could just be a small monster den or something.”

“I saw a wall of stone brick. I only noticed it cause my head was really low to the ground.”

“Ooh, interesting! Should we check it out?”

“You ready?”

“Yup, batteries recharged.” Twilight stood up.

“Let’s go then.” The pair left the inn and headed out of town. It was quiet. Twilight wondered if Sunset was suspicious.

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

“Here? I don’t even see anything.” Twilight was looking at the ground as hard as she could.

“Exactly.” Sunset knelt next to a tree and held some tall grass down. Twilight could just see a small hole.

“Oh, wow. Lucky find.”

“No kidding. Help me dig.” Sunset began shoveling some of the dirt away with her hands. Twilight joined her after staring thoughtfully for a moment.

Twilight wasn’t quite sure why she didn’t want Sunset to know she was in the beta. It might have something to do that she may ask questions Twilight didn’t particularly want to answer. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t doing the best at hiding it so far. Sunset might already know. Brilliant job, Sparkle.

After a bit of digging, the hole was big enough to squeeze through. Twilight could clearly see the brick walls Sunset spoke of, a turquoise color, strangely enough. All that was visible was just a long hallway of that brick. The two girls looked at each other.

“Do we go in?” Sunset asked.

Twilight looked down at the hole again. “I don’t think it would be here if it wasn’t meant to be explored. Do you think this is the main entrance, though? Or would we be dropping in halfway through a dungeon?”

Sunset ran her fingers through her hair. “Normally the completionist in me would want to look for another entrance so I can say I explored absolutely everything, but I mean… this is life and death. Or as close to it as we can get in a video game. I think we take whatever edge we can get.”

“Fair enough. Shall we?” Without waiting for an answer, Twilight slid forward and dropped into the hallway, and stepped aside for Sunset to jump down too.

Sunset landed on bent knees and stood back up. “Geez, it’s dark.”

Twilight looked up at the hole they had jumped through. It was the only source of light in the area. It looked to be just high enough for them not to be able to boost each other out. “Hmm. Exit strategy?”

“Cross that bridge when we get to it. Which way do we go?” The hall extended both ways, and both looked to be the same. Not a turn visible either direction.

Twilight stepped toward the wall and knocked her fist on it. It felt like cement. None of the bricks were marked or anything. Nothing to suggest a hidden third path. “It probably doesn’t matter. This way.” Twilight turned and began walking down the hall. Sunset joined her.

It was silent for a while. Well, almost. The pair could hear their footsteps echoing on the walls. As they got farther from their hole, it got darker and darker.

“This is just lovely.” It was too empty here. Twilight wasn’t actually sure if she said that, or Sunset did.

“We’re gonna run into a wall or something at some point, and we won’t even see it coming.” That was Sunset.

“Oh, idea.” Twilight equipped her wand and started reciting the incantations for the fireball spell. There was a dim glow as the magic began, and the words Twilight chanted started appearing around her in a faint light, just enough for the pair to see each other. Twilight spoke slowly to keep the light as long as possible. Once she finished the spell and launched the fireball down the hallway, they could clearly see how far they had left to go before… something else. The hallway opened up into a large room a ways in front of them.

“Well, we have confirmed that this is not just an infinite pointless hallway,” Sunset announced. Twilight started the spell again.

After two more casts and starting a fourth, they reached the room. The room was almost a miniature forest inside, holding many small trees that grew up to the ceiling like thick pillars to hold up the roof of the cave. With their dim light they could make out the winding and weaving vines that grew up the walls and roots that almost tripped them on the floor. Twilight looked around, finding a small dead bush and fired her fourth fireball spell at it, lighting it on fire to illuminate part of the room.

“That shouldn’t spread, probably.” Twilight walked around the room, examining everything. “This is weird. Think there’s anything here?”

“You know what I hope is here? Some other kind of magic. Like, as loot. That fireball is getting boring.” Sunset leaned against a tree and rested her head against her fist.

“Well, it was useful here.” Twilight kicked some grass. “Doesn’t seem like there’s anything in this room, though.”

“We haven’t seen a single monster either. What is this place even for?”

“Well, you were the one who found it.”

Sunset sighed and shook her head. “I was hoping it would be a little more exciting. Like, an amazing adventure to go on with one of my best friends. Not an empty hallway and an underground greenhouse.”

“Yeah, fair enough…” It was quiet for a minute. The tree Twilight had set on fire was almost completely burned up. “Should we press on?”

“I guess.” The pair set off through the other hallway connected to the room. Twilight began the incantation once again, and the words of the spell started appearing again to light their way.

Apparently though, it wasn’t needed, as the second hallway ended rather quickly. The turquoise color in the bricks turned to a gold-like one and opened up to a smaller room than before. Torches lit the room from all four corners. The room was otherwise empty, except for a lone figure standing inside, messing with something on an ornate stone table. It turned around. “Ah, there you are, dear! Kept me waiting, you did.”

Twilight instantly recognized the motherly-looking face that greeted them. “Hey, you’re that-”

“Nice to see you again! And hello to your friend, too!” The same elderly NPC that had given Twilight her rather irritating ring smiled warmly at them. “Sorry I had to leave in the middle of our conversation last time. We were being spied on. Couldn’t have anyone knowing about me.”

“Twilight?” Sunset raised an eyebrow and turned toward her. “Who’s this?”

“An NPC. Um, I think. Her speech is... really complex for not being a player.”

“And she’s also standing right here and can hear you!” the NPC cackled. Twilight gave Sunset a spooked glance. “Oh, but don’t worry your little head over it. You still have the ring I gave you, yes? May I see it, please?”

Twilight held her hand out. “Sure, but it won’t-” the NPC plucked the ring off Twilight’s finger like it was never the least bit stuck. “...come off.” Twilight sighed.

The ‘NPC’ turned back around to the table. “Couldn’t have you going and losing it before I was done with you.”

Twilight looked over at Sunset, who was now leaning against a wall. Sunset waved her hand at Twilight with a look that said You can explain it to me later. So Twilight turned back to the lady.

“Um… what do you mean by we were being spied on?”

“The game was getting suspicious.” The old woman answered simply, as if that was supposed to answer every single question Twilight could possibly think of.

“Right…” Twilight peered over her shoulder and was surprised to see that she wasn’t doing anything like building or crafting something with her hands, and was instead typing on what looked like a keyboard, with the ring selected in some window Twilight had never seen before. “What on earth…?”

The old woman then grabbed Twilight’s arm and put the ring back on her finger, and highlighted it again in that weird window, including her hand too this time, and continued typing on her keyboard.

“Um?! What exactly is going on here?” Twilight almost wanted to pull her arm away. Keyboards and computers weren’t supposed to exist in Sword Art Online.

“I told you I wanted to make you a hero last time, didn’t I, dear? If I’m right about you, I’m giving you the means to become one.”

“Okay, but what’s with the…” Twilight gestured with her free hand to… everything around her. “All of this?”

“Well, surely you’ve figured out by now that I’m not a normal Non-Player Character. I’m not even supposed to exist. But someone took some matters into their own hands.” The NPC shut off whatever she was doing, and the window and keyboard disappeared. “That should do it. Now, one more question. I can’t linger here too long either.”

Twilight’s mind raced. She stammered for a second, before managing to get out “Why me?”

The NPC made a weird face at that, like she was thinking hard. “Different question. Trust me, you don’t want me to answer that right now.”

“What? Why not?” The NPC waved a hand dismissively in response.

“Ask quickly dear, I need to go.”

Twilight scratched her head nervously and thoughtfully. “Ugh… f-fine. Will I ever be able to talk to you again?”

The woman smiled. “Floor 7. You’ll be able to find me there. You’re a smart girl. Ciao!” There was a small flash of light, and she was gone. Twilight sighed.

Sunset pushed herself off the wall she was leaning against and put a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “Well, that was a thing. Care to explain, like, any of that?”

Twilight pinched the bridge of her nose, obviously stressed. “Well, for starters, I have multiple unanswered questions myself. I really would rather have asked one of those, but then I didn’t know if the other ones would ever get answered.” Twilight lifted her hand to show Sunset. “This ring was given to me by that character as a quest reward. It stuck on my hand and wouldn’t come off, and she disappeared before she explained what it did. Now, it-” Twilight blinked a few times. “I still don’t know what it does!” She stared at it for a second before trying to take it off her finger.

It came off fine this time. Twilight sighed, and Sunset took it from Twilight and put it on her own finger. “Weird. No change in your stats or anything?” She handed it back.

“Nope. The equipment menu didn’t even seem to think it was there.” Twilight put it back on her finger and opened her status screen. “Still nothing. Let’s see if…” Twilight tapped on the ring with one finger, attempting to select it so she could put it in her inventory, but the ring didn’t react. “So it can’t go in an inventory either.”

“All right, so that ring is a complete mystery still. What about that woman? A self-aware NPC? Was she really not human? And what did she mean by she isn’t supposed to exist?”

Twilight put a finger on her chin. “Maybe someone on the dev team of SAO programmed a NerveGear so they could act as an NPC or something.”

“Why would they pick you to… ‘make a hero’ then?”

“I tried asking, didn’t I?”

Sunset nodded slowly, digesting this. “Twilight, were you part of the beta?”

Twilight felt her shoulders tense up. “That… came out of nowhere.”

“Mhm… no offense, but you’re a terrible liar.” Sunset crossed her arms. “How is that even possible? You’re not from Japan.”

Twilight took a deep breath. “There was a contest. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. I… I thought you’d be jealous or something.”

“That contest? You entered?” Sunset was silent for a second before nodding, apparently choosing to believe her. “Okay. But jealous? Seriously? How long have we been friends, Twilight? Get real.” There was good intention behind the words, but Sunset didn’t do a very good job at hiding her irritation.

“Uh… Right… S-Sorry.” Twilight dug her foot into the ground.

Sunset sighed. “So what do you think was with the…” She waved a hand at the table, where the keyboard once was. “That.”

Twilight silently thanked every god she could think of for Sunset dropping the beta thing. “Huh… she had to select the ring for part of it… and me. Do you think the ring can modify the game’s code…? What if it can log me out now?”

Sunset shook her head. “Psh, I seriously doubt that. I guess there’s no harm in trying, though.”

Twilight opened her menu and tapped the logout button with a gulp.

Nothing.

She sighed. There was both disappointment and relief in it for some reason. “Well, it’s obviously special for some reason, though at this point that goes without saying…”

There was a full minute of silence while they processed what they learned, and moreso what they didn’t.

Sunset rubbed her head. “Well, should we try and find a way out of here?”

Twilight poked at the stone table, as if the keyboard would come back. She ran her hand over the smooth surface, cool to the touch. “I guess so… Honestly, the biggest thing that bugs me is why an NPC would be able to or even want to modify the game’s code… I’m pretty sure that’s what she was doing, at least.” She stared at the ring on her finger. “Well, better not lose this.” Twilight turned to Sunset.

“Ready?” Twilight nodded in response, and Sunset turned to leave the room. Twilight followed silently.

The pair didn’t say anything for a while as they walked back the way they came. Twilight wasn’t entirely sure Sunset completely believed her about the contest. Technically, she didn’t lie. There was a contest that resulted in a player from America being invited into the beta. She didn’t explicitly say she won it. Technically, she told the truth. Just not the whole truth.

Not that that made it any better.

The words stung.

How long have we been friends, Twilight? Get real.

Sunset was right. Twilight should trust her. But…

Twilight saw for the umpteenth time in her head that boy shattering into pieces. She shook her head and decided to just forget about it.

Eventually they reached the hole in the ceiling they dropped in from. There was now a rope ladder coming from the top.

“Well, that answers that question.” Sunset murmured.

Twilight squinted her eyes down the hall in the other direction. “Do we investigate that way?”

Sunset looked down, seeing only black as Twilight did. “I dunno… Something’s just telling me no. Maybe launch a fireball down there. If we can see anything, we check it out.”

Twilight nodded and cast the spell. It flew for several seconds before exploding on the ground. It was just brick all the way down as far as they could see.

“Yeesh…” Sunset sighed and shook her head. “Maybe another time. Tired of inky blackness. At the very least, I think we need a light spell before we come back.”

“Agreed.” Twilight grabbed the rope ladder and pulled. “This seems to hold fine. Out we go!”

-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-

“Do you just wanna head north?” Twilight suggested, idly kicking some grass.

The two girls had done some searching in the area for anything else that resembled a dungeon. Turning up nothing, they were getting bored.

Sunset made an audible exhale through her nose. “I guess so. Maybe there just isn’t a good dungeon around here because it’s floor one.”

“I think ‘because it’s floor one’ can explain just about anything annoying us so far,” Twilight joked. “Still early in floor one, at that.”

Sunset was quiet for a minute. “Well, I can’t think of anything to disagree with. Anyways, yes, let’s press forward. Maybe I can meet Lucky soon.”

“I get the feeling you already like her.” The two of them started walking north after briefly checking the floor map.

“Just a bit.” Sunset grew a wide smile on her face. “A kid like that? Amazing.”

“By amazing, you mean funny?” Twilight raised an eyebrow, though Sunset couldn’t see, being a couple feet in front of her.

“Maybe a little.”

“She probably wouldn’t like hearing you say that. She’s… I wouldn’t say hostile, but…”

“I know, I know. I do want to be friends with her. From what you’ve told me, she seems pretty smart, if a little hotheaded.”

Twilight nodded. “She’s definitely clever, at the very least.”

“Is there a difference? Uh, never mind. Anyway, Hikaru. You spoke about him like you were pretty familiar.”

Twilight made a humming sound. “Yeah, I guess so. I knew him during the, uh… the beta.”

“You like him?” Sunset teased.

“What? No! Not like that!”

“Okay, okay, I'm kidding.” A chuckle was in Sunset’s voice.

Twilight sighed, relieved that Sunset’s mood no longer soured every time she heard the word ‘beta’ come from Twilight’s mouth. But Sunset’s next words did come with an about-face shift in tone.

“Hey, Twi?” They sounded level but forced. Almost like she was sad, like she was remembering something from an early childhood and forcing herself not to cry.

Twilight’s mouth instantly felt dry. “Yeah...?” She tried to look at Sunset’s face to discern what she was thinking. It was really hard to read. She looked completely neutral.

“Are you gonna fight?”

The question was simple, but Twilight understood completely. Was she going to be one of the players who clears the dungeons, fights the bosses, climbs the tower, and fights for everyone’s freedom?

Twilight wanted to answer yes without any hesitation, but she had to stop. She was prepared to. She was ready to fight. To slay countless virtual monsters, build up levels and escape with everyone. She was prepared to risk her life. But Twilight wouldn’t be the only one affected, if something… something bad happened to her. There are so many friends waiting in the outside world. Friends that she knew would grieve. If she were to screw up and foolishly meet her end at the point of a claw, or a sword, or anything else, she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer. She wondered how she herself would feel if something happened to Sunset in this game. Twilight would probably never get over it. Did she want to risk inflicting that pain on everyone?

A part of Twilight wanted to say no. She had already seen someone lose someone important.

But if she fought, maybe she could save someone else from that loss. Everyone else in the game has friends and family outside, too. This game isn’t just about her. The choice was obvious.

“Yes.” Her voice carried an intense determination. “I have to. I can’t stand idly by and watch people get hurt. You know me.”

Sunset slowly nodded. “I do. I knew you’d say that.”

Twilight’s heart still ached. From lying to Sunset, from watching someone die because of her own stupidity, and now this... “Listen, I understand if you don’t want-”

“I’m fighting too.”

“You’re… what?” Twilight gaped.

Sunset actually grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised? I’m the same as you. More or less. And hey, what have I been doing with you for the past couple hours? You think I’m out here because I’m bored? I’ve already started.”

“I… Well… Okay, you make a good point.” She took a long and shaky breath to keep herself calm.

“So… shall we press on?” Sunset opened the floor map.

Author's Note

Oh hey. I can type somewhat informally now. Um… so, first and foremost, as I’m sure you’re wondering, what was up with the long break in between published chapters? Sooo, my ORIGINAL plan was to finish writing three complete chapters before publishing any of them so that I could have a bit of a backlog to rely on while I wrote further, and I was gonna try and publish them in like, two-to-three-week intervals. Obviously, that didn’t happen. I kind of got tired of waiting for myself to finish the third and posted the first one early, and then I got a bit excited that I was finally getting some work out there for other people to see, so I jumped the gun a second time. And then multiple other things happened to delay me finishing chapter three including, but not limited to, college classes kicking up, writer’s block, and a bit of self-loathing here and there. #socks. So that’s more or less what I’ve been up to. I’m really sorry to anyone who got impatient, confused, or upset, etc. as to my absence.

Ah, but I’m not done here yet. I wanted to bring up one of the reasons for my writer’s block. I haven’t really talked to any other writers about this to see if they share my sentiments, but when I only write about the same thing and nothing else for so long (approximately 25,000 words, yeesh… and this is still the beginning?) I get burned out on the subject. I lose motivation. Someone I DID express this to suggested that I write a short, completely original one-chapter something every once in a while, even if it isn’t for anyone else to see, just to keep my mind fresh, but my problem with that is that frankly, I’m not that great at coming up with brand new concepts. It’s one of my reasons for writing a crossover of two universes that already exist. While I managed to come down from that funk long enough to finish this chapter, I can’t really promise it won’t happen again unless I do something about the problem.

What am I proposing? Well, after I finished this story, I was going to do another crossover to a different… something. Anime, game, TV show… I had a few ideas already. And my plan was to keep any Twilight-main-character-crossover stories I write in the same universe, like one of my own, sort of. I hope I’m explaining that well enough. So, would anyone be vehemently against the idea of me writing another story at the same time as I do this one, instead of waiting? It may be slightly difficult for me to not spoil anything depending on how I decide to structure my timeline, as I’ll have some characters in more than one story, and for example, if I write another story that takes place after this one and you see someone you’ve already seen in this story still alive, then it takes away part of the experience here because there’s no longer any real threat to that particular character. I’m also not going to do anything like the Zelda timeline or do alternate universes or something, because that’s just something I really don’t want to keep track of. Obviously, I’d do my best to give as good a reading experience as possible… just, that would be the con, if any, to writing more than one story at once. Also that chapters of one story would come out slower, which wouldn’t be ideal for anyone who isn’t interested in the other. So… in addition to anything you have to say about this chapter, let me know your thoughts on this idea! Thank you for reading! -TWS

Hi! I’m one of the editors and just wanted to tell everyone happy holidays! I may have also contributed to the many distractions faced by the author lol - SBN

Hoi am second editor, and while I did not add any distractions to the writing process unlike some people *cough* I wanted to say merry everything to everyone because y'all are great :D -RB