Chapter Text
Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online or any of its characters. They are all owned by A-1 Pictures, Aniplex USA, and Reki Kawahara.
Discord: A3dTszc
(See A/N at the top of Chapter 1 for context)
Diabel, despite having known he would be speaking in front of everyone today, couldn't stop himself from feeling nervous. It was the first time that all the best players had gathered together like this. It was a historic moment where the entire future of the game might be decided.
But he was the guy who had been picked to speak. He didn't like giving speeches, but apparently, he had given enough of them over the past few weeks that were good enough for him to be nominated and shoe-horned into the position he currently found himself in.
He took a look at the audience in front of him. There weren't too many people there, only about 40 or so. But there were a few dozen cloaked players hanging out in the back, listening in from a distance, as well. Anonymous players that didn't like being in crowded places but who had still found this moment important enough to spectate.
Those anons were on the fence about this. If the meeting turned out alright, then many of them would join in the upcoming fight. But if it failed, they would quietly leave without anyone really realizing that they had been there in the first place. So the full crowd that Diabel would be speaking to was probably at least twice as big as it looked at first glance.
He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and then finally began his rehearsed speech. He covered all the main points. He introduced himself, thanked everyone for coming, tried throwing in a quick joke to try and ease the tension, and then finally explained how his party had found the boss room. He explained how they needed to beat the boss to make it to the next floor, and how it was their duty as the best players in the game to demonstrate to everyone else that it was possible to beat the game.
"Do you agree?" He asked. "Or not?"
When everyone cheered and agreed wholeheartedly, almost all the remaining nervousness he had in him vanished. It definitely could have gone worse.
Diabel immediately continued. He started explaining to everyone that they needed to form into parties and started to delve into some of the basic strategy behind the upcoming fight.
That was when things started to go south.
"Hold up a sec!"
Diabel pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration at seeing who it was. He had a rough idea of what was about to happen next. Kibaou had been making all sorts of waves and spreading rumours about the beta testers. Diabel had hoped that this player wouldn't voice such hate here, since it could drive a wedge between all the players, but that was apparently too much to ask.
Thankfully, however, the infamous Agil had his back. Unfortunately, however, the sight of the merchant threw the entire meeting off-course. Almost every single player there sported an Anneal Blade. Diabel actually had two of them. Both of them were maxed out in their upgrades as well and had cost him almost every last cor that he had.
The problem now was, even though most of the players hadn't purchased their ovules from Agil himself, everybody knew that he was getting his supply from that mysterious merchant. And as a result, almost everybody had suspicions that the man knew who that player was, and how they were getting so many of them. So when Agil showed up to the meeting and spoke, everything almost instantly derailed into a bunch of accusations and discussions about the mysterious, shadow-deal between Agil and that other merchant.
Why couldn't everyone just listen quietly until Diabel was finished? They were just wasting time now.
"Shut up!" Diabel shouted, finally fed up with the constant interruptions, silencing the crowd. "Nobody cares about the stupid ovules right now! We all have our weapons, we all have our items, so we all have everything we need to take down this boss! If you want to start throwing each other under the bus then let's get to the next floor first!"
"The same goes with the beta testers! Now is not the time to drive a wedge between us! Nothing will ever get done if we start a pointless witch hunt! We can talk about the beta testers and who the mysterious merchant that allowed us all to get our Anneal Blades is, after Illfang is dead. We can even have another meeting about that if you want. But this meeting here, is not that one. This meeting is to inform you all that we, me and my party, are going to take down the boss tomorrow no matter who decides to come with us! I am giving you all the option to participate! So either sit down and shut up, or get the hell out! Understand?!"
There were no further complaints from the crowd. Diabel took this as a sign to continue.
"Good. Now listen carefully..."
He was able to finish the rest of the strategy briefing without any further interruptions.
There was good news and bad news from Kirito's point of view.
The good news was that the raid group wasn't setting out immediately. They weren't leaving until 10 o'clock the following morning. The bad news was that Diabel had not clearly emphasized how different the beta test was from the actual game. The gathered players would not be prepared for the differences if they stuck to that strategy guide too closely. There was definitely nothing at all listed about Illfang's unknown ranged attack.
Diabel had also left out the fact that beta testers currently had the highest casualty rate amongst all types of players due to being caught unprepared for these differences. The meeting may have gone over better if he had mentioned that.
But what did he know? Kirito was hiding on a rooftop. And there's no way he would have been able to summon the courage to speak in front of everyone like that, even if he had been green. And chastising the crowd like that to get the meeting back on track… it was something else. It looked like the raid group would be in good hands with someone like that at the helm. Someone who actually seemed like a leader.
Kirito took a look at the player called Kibaou, next, and started thinking.
That player could cause massive problems in the future. If he succeeded in villainizing the beta testers, the players' progress through the game would be slowed down immensely due to all the infighting.
That was a problem. Kirito depended on the players ultimately winning in the end to get out. The only reason why he was trying so hard to be the strongest among them all was to keep himself safe until then. He needed everyone to cooperate with each other. This sort of rhetoric about beta testers being the bad guys... that could get people killed. Even if there were a few grains of truth to it.
Kibaou might just get himself killed, by a beta tester no less, if he kept making waves like that.
Kirito's thoughts were cut off when he noticed a familiar face in the crowd of players. He had spotted her as soon as she had stood up to leave. The girl had been sitting in the back of the crowd of players and had just stood up after forming her party.
He didn't expect that girl to be here. Only yesterday she had been a wreck. But now here she was, preparing to take on the boss with all these other players.
Kirito grinned. It'd be an interesting battle.
But before it happened, Kirito had to decide what he wanted to do now. The meeting was wrapping up, and he had no reason to be there any longer. But the players weren't planning to fight the boss until tomorrow. So what should he do until then?
Reaching up to his hidden camera, he finally turned the video feed off and prepared to leave.
He had levelled up in the skill again. Taking such a long video of so many players having a meeting had apparently been 'interesting' enough to give the requisite experience. Unfortunately, Kirito would not be able to just keep the camera on indefinitely, however. It wouldn't be considered 'interesting' if he did, and so he would be granted a vanishingly small amount of xp the longer a recording like that went on.
But Kirito had been on the internet a lot in his life, and he had an idea now on how he could level the skill up a little faster while having the added advantage of organizing some of his thoughts. If he died at some point, it'd also serve as a record that he was there.
The boom of the boss room door closing echoed throughout the silent room.
"I came here yesterday on my own," Kirito whispered to the currently recording video camera in his hand. "I've been preparing to solo this boss for a long time now. Unfortunately, my first attempt didn't go so well. I didn't have this camera at the time, though, so I couldn't record the attempt."
Kirito rested his back against the giant stone door he had just come through, and continued to narrate his thoughts to the camera. Once again, he was alone inside the boss room.
"Anyway, Illfang did something back then and it almost killed me. I wish I could have recorded it. I have no idea what it was, but it left me with only 3 HP left after. Launched me clean across this room. It should have killed me. It was really only due to luck that I was able to pull a crystal out in time."
"I never really thought about it before, but today I learned that teleport crystals actually have two effects. They transport a player from one location to another, but they also halt any leftover kinetic energy that the player may have had when they do. That effect is what saved my life."
"So I'm here again. Reluctantly. In fact, you can see Illfang right over there, asleep." As he said this, Kirito tilted the camera in the direction he indicated. It was incredibly dark, but there was enough light to see what was going on.
"That's kinda why I'm whispering. If I make too much noise, my camouflage will break, and I'll be spotted. It turns out, boss rooms don't actually automatically activate upon players entering them. The boss has to actually find you first before they wake up and attack. Or at least Illfang is like that. So if you happen to be really good at hiding, you can sneak around the deactivated boss room and mess around with the items inside. I'm making this video mostly as proof to demonstrate that."
"Last time I was here, I was able to steal Illfang's weapons, but nobody would ever believe me if I just said that, so I'm here to gather irrefutable proof that it's possible. I stole his axe, his shield, and his nodachi earlier and I plan to do it again. He doesn't have a talwar like he did back in the beta, so I am here to confirm that the rumours of there being differences between this version and the beta are true as well."
"Anyway, when I succeeded in stealing them, I had the random thought to see if I could actually remove them from the room entirely. I had locked myself in though, back then, so I wasn't able to test it out. Since I had been prepared for a long battle and didn't want to get crashed by anyone, I had decided to activate the boss room locking switch."
"I suppose I could have used a crystal to leave with them, but then I would have been warped to the other side of the map, which would have ruined my plan to solo the boss. I'd have had to walk all the way back here, which wasn't an option since I was on such a tight schedule."
"But I failed in that attempt anyway. I did not forget about that idea, though. I am going to test it out while I'm here. I'm not here to actually make an attempt to defeat Illfang. I'm just not ready for that. Not without understanding what nearly killed me last time. I'll probably fight him a little, but I plan to retreat. I'm here for information, just in case the other players succeed in their own attempts to defeat this boss tomorrow. If he dies now, I'll never know the answers to these questions."
"I'm going to go take his weapons now. You'll have to forgive me for not narrating the process as I do, but I'll leave the feed on so you can watch. I'm going to stop talking for a while though, so… yeah. Enjoy the video I guess."
"It was much harder the first time," Kirito whispered, after gently placing the final, stolen item onto the ground next to the boss room door. "I was overly cautious back then, but I've sort of gotten used to doing this now. So I've got Illfang's shield, his axe and his nodachi. Last time, I climbed up one of these pillars and dropped down on the boss from the sky with the nodachi. I had this whole plan in place to deal as much damage as possible."
"It didn't work."
"Anyway, if you can bear with me for a few moments, now that I have this camera, there are a few more experiments that I need to quickly run. I'll be back in a sec."
Kirito shut off the video feed.
"Okay so I just checked," Kirito whispered on the next segment of the video, "and it turns out that when I'm invisible like this, these giant weapons can't actually be seen on the camera when I'm carrying them. I took a video of myself carrying them around while invisible, but nothing showed up. I can only assume that that means they can't be seen by other players either. I guess anything that I'm carrying with me falls under my camouflage, even if it's a huge axe I can barely lift."
"You know, now that I'm thinking about it, these videos probably look pretty weird to you. When I point the camera at my face like I've been doing all this time while I'm talking, you can't actually see me because I'm invisible. So to you guys, it looks like I'm pointing the camera in weird directions for no reason while my disembodied voice continues narrating. I'll try and be more mindful of that from now on."
"Anyway, because everything I'm carrying is invisible as well, this means that other people won't see this giant axe right here floating through the air suspiciously. It's actually invisible as well and will remain so until my camoflauge drops or I let go of it."
"But it does make it harder. My camouflage is basically like a bubble. I can expand the bubble as big as I want, but it becomes more unstable and easier to break as I do. So I have to be careful about that."
"I needed the results of that last experiment so that I can safely conduct this next one. I'm going to teleport back to the Town of Beginnings now with some of these items, and I'd rather not be seen when I do." It was a bit risky doing that, and it'd be suicidal if he tried to do that with something as heavy as the axe, but the shield wasn't nearly as heavy. He could take it back with him to the center of the town and escape before being spotted, he was nearly certain of that. Kirito had gotten some practice getting out of sight from that teleport gate.
"This experiment serves two purposes as far as I can tell. It'll show whether or not I can teleport with an item that belongs to a boss and keep it, and it'll also allow me to see what happens to it when I come back here. If I stash everything I steal somewhere outside this labyrinth, then what happens when I come back here? Will Illfang have new items to replace the ones he lost? If he does, can I steal everything again to get more?"
"Is this an item duplication glitch?"
"It's time to find out, I guess."
"Okay, I'm back. Again. It's been over four hours since my last video. I spent most of that time walking all the way back here. Though I did have to re-steal all of the weapons, again. The boss room resets every time all players leave, so this makes three times that I've stolen all three weapons now.
"Anyway, while I did succeed in bringing the weapons outside the boss room earlier, it turns out that they can't be teleported. My teleport crystal worked, but it did not bring the shield back with me even though I was holding it at the time. I guess the weapon just doesn't belong to me. I can't put any of them in my inventory, either.
"But I've been thinking. What if I just walk them all the way back outside the dungeon on foot? It'll take a long time, but it'll test the same thing as teleporting with them. I already confirmed that I can take them outside the room, but how far can I actually travel with them? Can I walk all the way out of the labyrinth?
"I'm going to leave this video running while I do, because no matter what happens, it'll be worth recording. I might run into an invisible wall or something. Some system command demanding that I cease attempting these experiments. Wouldn't that be something? Or I might actually succeed. It's interesting either way.
"The problem is I can't carry all three of these things at once. It's too risky with all the hazards in the dungeon that I might run into. Too much weight. So I'm just going to try taking two, for now.
"I basically have two options. Because of how massively heavy the axe is, I can either take just the axe, or I can take both the shield and the nodachi. Since I'm not a two handed weapon user, I figured that the axe wouldn't be as helpful so I'm not going to take it. This nodachi is also beginning to grow on me a little bit. It's heavy in its own right, but it isn't nearly as bad as the axe.
"So I'm taking those two with me. The shield and the nodachi. Let's see what happens."
Kirito finally stepped outside into the daylight, video still recording. Just before he was about to speak again, however, a notification screen suddenly appeared on his menu. His eyebrows rose up into his hairline as he finished reading the prompt.
He spent a long time staring in total disbelief at the message before finally doing something.
"Um… I don't know if the camera can actually see my menu or not," Kirito spoke in disbelief, aiming the camera at his menu, "but uh… yeah. I just got a text prompt."
"Apparently, I just completed something called a Hidden Quest." Kirito had so many questions now. He had never heard of one of those before. Nothing about them had been mentioned in the guidebook, and nobody in the beta had heard about them either.
"The quest is called: Stolen Weapons." It was pretty obvious what it entailed. "And it was unlisted. There were no people to talk to or places to go to actually start it. You just had to figure it out, I guess. So I accidentally stumbled myself into completing it."
"Like most quests, this one has a reward." Kirito gulped, and stared at the rewards screen, trying to confirm that his eyes were actually telling him the truth. "The weapons themselves. They are considered mine now. On my menu right now, I can see their stats, and my name is listed as the owner."
"The quest isn't fully complete yet. It's got a big 2 / 3 listed next to the name of the quest. But I think it's pretty obvious what that means." Kirito turned around and looked back at the entrance of the labyrinth.
"I know what we're doing next."
"The weapons are actually gone now," Kirito whispered in disbelief as he re-entered the boss room. "Illfang doesn't have them anymore." The boss room had not reset back to its original configuration this time. Everything else was in place exactly as it should have been, but Illfang did not have the two main weapons that Kirito had stolen. Illfang only had the axe that Kirito had left behind.
"They actually belong to me now. All of them except the axe anyway. But that'll be mine too in a little while. I just need to steal it again." Kirito paused for another few moments and contemplated this new plan, before finally looking into the camera.
"Well, I guess I'll see you guys again when I'm outside with the axe." All he had to do was walk it out of the labyrinth, just like with the others. Then it'd be his.
"What the hell am I going to do with these things?" Kirito asked rhetorically, to whatever unknown future audience that may or may not ever watch this footage. He now had all three weapons in his possession. "Their stats are unbelievable. Weapons like these shouldn't even exist on this floor. Will a Blacksmith even be able to repair them if they get damaged?" This was completely new territory. He had never even imagined that something like this could be possible. So many new doors were now open to him.
But what about the raid party? What would they do when they found Illfang unarmed tomorrow? That could pose some problems. Since Illfang was unarmed now, what would the other players do when they walked into the boss room? They would immediately notice this. Would they think that maybe Kayaba had been kind enough to make the first floor boss easier than expected to raise their hopes? Or would they think something else was going on?
What about Argo? What would she do with that information? She was completely dangerous and unpredictable. Would she figure out anything that Kirito didn't want her to?
He needed a plan.
"I think I'm going to need to do a few more tests," he said. "There's a few things I need to do over the next couple of hours." He had figured out a lot of things, but he still had so many questions.
"What will happen if I give these new weapons back to Illfang? Will he pick them up again? Will he reclaim them as his?"
He needed more answers.
"I can't wait anymore. I have to test it out. The only way to do that is by waking him up and fighting him though. I have no intention of defeating him, but I need to see what happens."
Kirito started the trek back to the boss room once again.
"Just so we're clear," Kirito whispered to the camera, as he continued setting up everything for his next plan, "this is almost exactly what I did the last time I fought him. The only difference is that I can actually store these giant weapons in my inventory and I don't have to struggle my way up these pillars with any of them tied to my back." He was standing on top of the pillars now, just as he had been during the beginning of his previous attempt on Illfang's life.
"I am going to perform the exact same opening, exactly as I did last time. I need to know if these weapons do the same amount of damage when they belong to me." He had used the weapons last time, but the system had considered them as belonging to Illfang at the time. It was possible that that had restricted his damage output with them, somewhat. This test was to figure out if that was actually how it worked.
"So I'll compare where Illfang's health bar is after I'm done attacking this time, to where it had been at the end of my assault last time. In order to do that, everything needs to happen the same way."
Kirito continued walking along the concrete beam spanning across the top of the pillars. He was on the right side of the room, just like last time. After a few moments, he found what he was looking for.
"I'm going to leave this camera right up here so that it can see everything," he whispered as he wedged the camera inside a divot at the top of one of the pillars. From the new location, it could see a bird's eye view of the entire room.
"I don't have anything convenient to carry this camera with, so I can't shoot anything in first person. If I had some sort of strap or something, that would have been ideal. Or maybe a belt of some sort." He'd have to talk to Timely about that. Or Agil. Maybe someone with a Crafting or Tailoring skill could make him something to allow him to create videos akin to the ones made from a Go-Pro, or a body-cam.
"After getting this new information on the boss's health and the strength of these weapons, I intend to drop them on the ground to see what Illfang does with them. Will he pick them up and try to use them even though they technically belong to me now?"
"Anyway, I'm off. Here goes nothing." Kirito drank a full set of his potions and repeated the exact same maneuver as he did last time.
Five, sword skill aided spins on top of the pillars, followed by switching out his weapons for the nodachi in a precise combination of gestures, kicked everything off. Then Kirito came down on top of Illfang almost identically to how he had before.
The nodachi dug so deep into the boss that it ended up stuck, impaled in Illfang's gut.
The boss room activated and lit up, Illfang awoke, and Kirito planted his swords into the boss's eyes once again. He flipped Illfang off the throne and onto his back, and pulled out his new axe, this time from his inventory, and went into the helicopter technique.
The same, exact sequence of events played out with almost no deviations. About 30 hits in total before Illfang finally collected himself and leaped away. Illfang got up, and Kirito bowled him over again by tossing the axe at him.
Then the minions spawned.
This time, however, Kirito wasn't going to approach Illfang at all. And he certainly wasn't going to look away from him. His goal was to simply avoid the boss as best as he could, keep the minions at bay, and watch what Illfang did like a hawk.
Kirito observed Illfang's health bar. Doing so, he learned that it didn't matter who owned the weapons. They did the same amount of damage as last time. Illfang had only lost about 3% of his total HP. This led him to believe that this concept probably applied to players as well. If Kirito ever disarmed a player, and stabbed them with their own weapon before they could summon it back to their hands, he could probably inflict some decent damage that way.
He spent the next minute or so keeping his distance from Illfang, and battling the minions. 'Battling' was perhaps not the appropriate word, however. He was mostly just running from them, waiting for Illfang's blindness debuff to run out to see what the boss would do next.
When it finally ran out, Illfang pulled out the swords from his eyes, and tossed them to the side, marking the first significant variation between this and the previous fight. Kirito was too far away to be in range of a thrown Anneal Blade, so Illfang had tossed them aside instead. Kirito summoned them back to his hands anyway, and quickly put them away.
Illfang pulled out the impaled nodachi from his stomach next and sheathed it, then he walked over to pick up the axe from the floor.
This was what Kirito wanted to see. Illfang was trying to reclaim his weapons. Would he succeed in doing so? Kirito was eagerly anticipating the results of this test.
But a single paranoid thought crossed his mind at that moment. What if Kirito actually lost the weapons permanently? Just in case, he quickly summoned the nodachi that Illfang had just sheathed, into his hands, and immediately threw it into his inventory. Since the weapon was currently considered his by the system, there was no reason why he would be unable to summon it to him just like any other weapon. So he did so, not wanting to risk losing something so valuable. He didn't really care about the axe, though. Illfang could have that one if he wanted.
Now, even in the worst case scenario, Kirito would come out of this confrontation with at least two items. The shield, and the nodachi were both in his inventory.
But then something unexpected happened. Illfang just… stopped. After picking up the axe, the boss made no further attempt to close the distance. Instead, it elected to simply observe Kirito, just as he was observing Illfang.
They were watching each other.
Another strange event occurred next. One of the six minions that Kirito had been keeping at bay disengaged and made its way over towards the boss. Kirito watched the kobold casually saunter across the room to Illfang and stand right next to him.
Then both Kobolds simply… stared at him.
At first, Kirito didn't really pay it much mind. It had been slightly disconcerting at first, but he hadn't really had the time to figure out just how weird it was, since he was busy keeping the other five minions occupied. But when the seconds continued to tick on and turn into minutes, Kirito started to feel uneasy. The two kobolds on the other side of the room stood perfectly still like statues. Illfang wasn't growling. He wasn't roaring, or acting aggressive, he was just standing perfectly still, watching Kirito's every move. They were about 30 meters away.
Frankly, it was terrifying. Kirito did not like it one bit when the monsters he was fighting started to behave erratically. Especially when they were a floor boss. He had no idea why they were acting this way. It wasn't natural in the least. No boss that he had ever encountered had just wandered off to the side of the room so it could stare at him from a distance. The sight was so disturbing that Kirito began to wonder if this was some sort of glitch.
In some multiplayer console games that he had played in the past, things like this sometimes happened after a particularly nasty lag spike. If the connection was poor, sometimes, the game would just give up on animating entities properly. Oftentimes these entities would just revert back to their default state, usually standing straight up with their arms out to the side, imitating a perfect 't'. Despite the lack of body animations however, these entities could still sometimes move around when they were like this. They could basically fly around in that 't' shape at whatever speed they were supposed to be moving at.
It could be downright disturbing when that happened in those games. But it almost looked like that's what was happening here with Illfang. The timing was suspicious. Illfang had started acting like this almost immediately after Kirito had summoned the nodachi. Maybe that had caused something screwy to happen in the system code. From Illfang's perspective he had had the weapon in his possession in one moment, and then it simply vanished in the next. That might have done something to mess up the boss.
Kirito's 'this entire situation is fucked right up' senses were screaming at him.
'What is up with this boss?!'
It had a mysterious ranged attack already, and now it may or may not be glitched out? Kirito made a decision at that moment. He wasn't going to look away from the boss for a single instant. He had to tread extremely carefully.
Kirito and Illfang continued to stare at each other. But secretly, some part of Kirito was glad about this turn of events. His camera was recording all of this. This time, Kirito's horrible luck and the fact that the universe itself seemed to hate him would actually be captured on film, which would vindicate him. Nobody would ever be able to say he was exaggerating since he could just point to this video.
The feeling prompted from that realization, was similar to what he imagined catching real, undisputable footage of a paranormal event would feel like. Nobody could ever say he was crazy now.
Kirito paid almost no mind at all to the minions that he fended off, almost subconsciously. He would not lose focus on Illfang for any reason. He had to figure out what was going on here.
Kirito's willpower hit its limit at the thirty minute mark. For thirty uninterrupted minutes, he and Illfang had stared at each other. Illfang hadn't moved at all during that time, while Kirito had been fighting off waves and waves of minions.
But the fight had gotten much easier. After each new wave of defeated minions, Kirito had found the next wave a little easier. He began to memorize their attack patterns, and slowly adapt to them. Eventually, he started trying to optimize the process. He had figured out the most efficient way to kill them, and used that same method over and over again.
He would take a subtle step or two in one direction at a leisurely pace, and that would be enough to manipulate the kill-order. This was the technique he had developed when fighting those nepenthe swarms. When Kirito was at his peak, he wouldn't run, leap or spin anymore. He would walk at a casual, leisurely pace through the swarm of enemies he was fighting, with each step carefully calculated to manipulate the paths that his enemies took when travelling towards him. It would control the order, speed, and time intervals in which they all arrived at, delaying some by fractions of a second and speeding others up by similar amounts. It was geometry. Kirito would intuitively understand in an instant, by looking at the shape of the oncoming swarm of enemies, exactly how to kill them all without needing to exert any serious effort. All by controlling the rate at which they all reached him with extremely subtle footwork.
It was a strategy that came with experience. When fighting swarms, it simply wasn't possible to fight the way he used to. Where he would make these dramatic jumps, and swings, and fly all over the battlefield. He'd just get dogpiled if he tried that, or waste a ton of energy. His new style was all about efficiency, and economy of movement.
Despite the fact that these minions were actually decently high levelled monsters, Kirito was able to one-shot them with a quick jab as long as he perfectly struck the weak point in their necks. It was all that was required to get the job done, though it had taken him some time to actually figure this out. He had needed a lot of time to learn the intricacies of how they moved and attacked so he could manipulate it and use it against them in this way.
The minions simply didn't have an answer to Kirito's ridiculously high AGI stat. So exactly like all those nepenthes he had killed, it felt like he was cutting the grass again.
Throughout the entire process, Kirito didn't once look away from Illfang. But after thirty minutes, he finally decided to try and figure out what was going on. Frustrated at the lack of answers, Kirito finally decided to start closing the distance to the boss, himself. So he started advancing towards the giant kobold.
After only ten steps, Illfang finally moved for the first time. As soon as he did, Kirito froze in place and observed.
Illfang took a few steps backwards... and then came to a stop. Then it started staring at him once more.
Confused, Kirito took a few more steps.
Illfang backed away again.
The boss didn't seem afraid of him, but Kirito seriously began to wonder if that was what was going on. Was there some sort of fear mechanic that he didn't know about?
Kirito took a few more steps.
Illfang backed up.
At that point, Kirito got another idea. Maybe there was something in Illfang's programming that was telling it to maintain a specific distance for some reason. He had no idea why that would be, but it looked like Illfang was trying to do that.
But there was a wall behind the boss. So if Kirito kept advancing, Illfang would back into it and wouldn't be able to retreat anymore, failing to maintain that hypothetical distance. What would happen then?
Kirito decided to find out, so he started walking again. Continuing until he walked the boss right into the wall.
When there was no more room, everything suddenly changed. As soon as Illfang could no longer back up any further, all of his recent behavior vanished as if it was never there. He roared and instantly charged towards Kirito, exactly as he was supposed to be doing all along. The minion that had been standing at his side this whole time, followed suit.
'What the hell is going on here?' It was as if Illfang had just now remembered that he needed to actually fight.
Abruptly, another plan entered Kirito's mind. He quickly ran up the side of one of the nearby pillars and grabbed his camera. Unfortunately, his camera could not be summoned to his hands in the same way that any other item could be. Kirito could summon it, but it would delete the footage it was recording at that moment when he did so. It'd keep all of his old videos and photos, but not anything that was currently being created. This mechanic was designed to prevent him from doing anything crazy like throwing his camera vast distances through the sky while it was recording, and summoning it back just before it hit the ground as a way to map out an unexplored area.
Kirito backflipped off the pillar, and landed right back in the path of the charging Illfang. Back in the same spot he had been in previously when Illfang had stopped acting weird. Then he immediately pointed the still recording camera at the charging Illfang.
Since Kirito was standing back in the exact spot he had been in when Illfang had backed into the wall, by taking a quick image of the floor tiles, the pillars, and the other various distance markers throughout the room, he would be able to rewatch this footage later to try and mathematically determine exactly how far away that magic range was. He'd be able to do that with the footage he had been gathering this whole time as well, but he got another angle here, and that could only help.
Illfang had been trying to keep a certain distance between them for some reason, so Kirito wanted to know what that distance was.
With this series of images captured, there was only one more thing he had to do. Kirito watched as Illfang continued to rush towards him. He didn't attempt to flee or defend himself. He just pointed his camera up and watched Illfang charge.
At the last moment, as Illfang's axe came crashing down towards him, Kirito reminded the kobold just who that weapon belonged to by summoning it into his hand. As a result, the attack that should have cleaved Kirito in two had missed, since the weapon conducting it was no longer there.
Illfang suddenly found himself unarmed.
Kirito didn't attempt to take advantage of the situation, however. It wouldn't help. The plan wasn't to defeat the boss here. Just to gather information. And Kirito had gathered all he needed.
So he put the axe back where it belonged, in his inventory, and then ran out of the boss room.
He had footage to analyze, and plans to make.
"So, uh, hey Argo?" Timely Advice asked the girl sitting next to him.
"What's up, friend?" Argo replied.
Timely's eye twitched in annoyance. They were not friends by any means.
"I've been thinking."
"Uh-oh."
"Fuck you." Timely had been getting increasingly frustrated at the girl's persistent stalking. Since she was still doing so, Timely had been unable to escape from her in order to meet with his recent anonymous client, which meant he wasn't going to be making any more money from their arrangement. Once the recent set of ovules ran out, there would be no more. So this girl was eating into his profits, and doing so deliberately. And to top it off, the girl had been making these annoying, snide remarks whenever she had found an opportunity to, just like that last one. There was only so much of that that he was willing to tolerate before he finally just dropped his 'nice guy' facade and started treating her the way she deserved to be treated. Like a piece of shit.
"Touchy-touchy," Argo grinned. "Someone's sensitive today. But do tell. What were you thinking so hard about, Timely Advice?"
Timely glared at her, but ignored the jab.
"What will you do if I meet my client inside an inn room? One that you're blacklisted from?" He had been spending a lot of time trying to come up with schemes in order to escape his current situation. He had eventually decided to try running some of his ideas past her to see how she would react to them.
"How would you do that?" Argo asked, amused.
"My client pays for the inn room, sets it all up, and then I walk into it," Timely explained. "We both then teleport out after."
Argo frowned.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'd certainly be mad at you if you tried that."
"Oh?" That sounded promising. "It sounds like this ultimate plan of yours might have a hole or two in it after all."
"It might," she agreed. "But that little scheme of yours requires you to make contact with each other without my knowing."
"How do you know that we didn't come up with that strategy in advance for this exact occasion?" Timely asked.
"I didn't know that. But since you haven't tried that yet, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you didn't plan that far ahead."
"So you did all this even knowing it could possibly backfire?"
"Exactly. Being in my position isn't about planning everything out perfectly. It's about taking calculated risks. If I fail, then I just open up the next plan. Simple as that. My plans actually fail more often than not. I just have a lot of backups ready to go when they do."
"So you've just been shooting in the dark this whole time?"
"Yeah. But I've got a ton of bullets."
There was a moment of silence as Timely deliberated over this new information.
"What'll you do if my client just gets another middleman?"
"Get angry, probably."
The longer this conversation went on, the more promising it seemed to become, from Timely's point of view.
"That doesn't sound very constructive," he teased.
"If that were the only thing I was doing, then you'd probably be right. Thing is, I'm running six simultaneous operations right at this moment. Yours isn't even all that important."
"Important enough to do it yourself, apparently," he grumbled.
"Not really. My presence just isn't needed in any of those other ops. So I could have chosen to run only five operations at once, or I could have come here to pick up a sixth. It's a side project."
Timely took another glance around his surroundings before finally noticing something in the corner of his eye that lifted his spirits considerably.
He smiled.
"Hey Argo?" He asked innocently.
"What now?"
"Are you scared of heights?"
Argo turned to face him after that seemingly random inquiry. She stared at him in suspicion for a few moments before finally giving her reply.
"Well aren't you just full of strange and foreboding questions today."
"Is that a yes?"
"That information is personal. It'll cost ya 500 cor."
"Why didn't all that other information you gave me cost me anything?"
"Oh didn't it? Sorry, sorry. I was preoccupied. Please, feel free to pay me what you owe anytime."
'Oh yeah. This is going to be so good,' Timely thought. He needed to see her get knocked down a few pegs.
"Hey Argo?" He asked.
"What?" She sounded slightly annoyed now. As if she was finally starting to get bothered by all of his rapid questions.
"You should have just answered my question."
"Why?"
"Because fuck you, and you deserve everything that's about to happen."
Argo stared at him for the next few moments, confusion clear across her face. She raised an eyebrow, and opened her mouth to speak.
Timely would never forget the look on her face in that moment.
"Hrrk-!"
In an astonishing turn of events in full view of everyone in the town square, Argo was suddenly pulled off her position seated on the side of the fountain, into said fountain. She was dunked, becoming completely submerged under the water. Then she began picking up speed. Rapidly.
She flew out of the fountain, bounced off the ledge, and was bodily dragged across the pavement. She smashed into the side of a nearby building and was suddenly dragged up the side of it towards the top. She flew through a window on the fourth floor, into the building, but was only inside for a brief moment. A moment she spent smashing into various walls and pieces of furniture. She was quickly pulled out the other side of that building through the opposite window.
She was then pulled under the influence of gravity towards the ground, four stories down, through an awning, landing face-first into a fruit stand. There was a sickening splatter as her face buried itself into a pool of unidentifiable slime and muck. She was utterly coated, head to toe in juice, soaked to the bone.
The whole process had taken only a handful of seconds. That covered everything from minding her own business sitting on the ledge of the fountain, to getting dragged through a building and getting a face full of fruit.
All conversation in the vicinity had died out the instant all of these rapid developments had started occurring, creating a pin-drop silence as everyone in the area took in this spectacle.
After a few seconds, Argo slowly picked herself up. Shakily, she rose to her feet. It took a few moments for her mental faculties to reboot, but when they did, she reached down towards her waist and confirmed the fact that there was a rope currently tied tightly around her. She followed the length of it with her gaze and quickly found the smashed up crate that the other end had been tied to. Then she glanced up at the nearby building that she had just been dragged through. It took only about half a second longer for her to fully understand all the pieces behind what had just happened to her.
She had been lassoed. Lassoed with a rope that had been tied to a crate that had then been launched off the top of a building with considerable force. Dragging her along for the ride.
She stood in shocked disbelief as she tried visualizing all of this.
That shock turned to rage real quick, though.
"What the fuck?!" She finally screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice cracking at the end.
She was furious!
Argo glared at the stunned players in the square around her, looking for whoever was responsible.
But then the spellbound spectators finally broke their silence. They took in the fruit juice soaked Argo, and then let out a roar of uncontrollable laughter at the sight. Players were hunched over in pain, holding their sides, and crying their eyes out.
"Holy fucking shit!" Someone shouted amidst the crowd of hysterics.
"My sides!"
Argo immediately flushed beet red in embarrassment, as everyone started pointing and laughing at her. Almost a hundred players had just seen that happen. Nearly everybody knew who she was, and more than a few held secret grudges against her. Those few took great delight in seeing The Rat being publicly humiliated like this.
She looked down at her feet and shrank into herself, mortified.
To top it all off, a text prompt suddenly appeared on her menu detailing how much cor she now had to pay to the NPC owner of the fruit stand. She now had to pay reparations for destroying all the wares, even though it hadn't even been her fault.
A few minutes Earlier
'Oh you have got to be kidding me,' Kirito thought after finally spotting his assistant in the middle of the town square.
Kirito had never seen Argo's real appearance before, but there was no mistaking those whiskers, and the teasing vibe that just spewed out of her in waves. He knew what her plan was the instant he saw the resigned expression on Timely's face. It was a common Argo tactic. To just follow a player relentlessly and never leave them alone. She planned to stalk Timely until the Nameless Merchant showed up again for a meeting. Then she'd change targets and stalk him.
But Kirito could not allow her to interfere with his plans like this. He needed Timely as an assistant for now. But he also needed to avoid Argo. Since he couldn't message his middleman to set anything up, however, he needed to come up with some sort of plan.
"This is the dumbest plan that I've ever come up with," Kirito grumbled. He couldn't even believe he had come up with it himself. It was something he would have expected to see only in some sort of cartoon with how utterly loony it was.
The first part of it wasn't so bad. Every now and then, Timely Advice would do a cursory scan of the area around him. The next time he did so, Kirito would simply flick his camouflage off. He would be inside a building at the time, on the fourth floor, overlooking the square when he did. The window was also open, and he would be standing in it. So when Timely finally got around to randomly taking a glance up there, he would see him, and Kirito would then turn his camouflage off and back on again.
It was a calculated risk. Timely did not know about Kirito's camouflage at the moment. So giving away this information could end up coming back to bite him in the future. However, it had an upside to it that Kirito deemed as worth this risk.
It was another instance of plausible deniability. Kirito could demonstrate this ability to his assistant and then say that from now on, he was going to be using it permanently, for the foreseeable future. Timely would then incorrectly conclude that the reason for this was due to all the heat that was on Kirito from the rest of the players. He would not randomly conclude that he was an orange player from just that.
This would allow Kirito to travel with Timely anywhere in the game, indoors or not, without revealing his cursor. He'd just tell his assistant that he was going to turn completely invisible everytime they were in public, and explain that he would always be following him from a few steps behind.
They would still be able to talk. Kirito's Hiding skill allowed this functionality. By fiddling with his settings, Kirito could selectively de-couple certain noises from his camouflage's muting function. If he wanted his camouflage to mute every sound he made, he could do that, and this was what he usually did. But he could also tell his camouflage to not attempt to mute some specific type of noise, like anything he said out loud, or the sounds of his footsteps.
Doing this would actually strengthen his camouflage in one aspect. The less his camouflage had to hide, the stronger it would get, and the higher the Hide Rate would be. But doing this would also weaken his camouflage in another aspect. If Kirito spoke, or made some noise that was not muted, other players would hear it and would know exactly where to direct their Searching abilities to reveal him.
But this wouldn't matter in this instance because Timely would already know how this arrangement was supposed to work. Kirito wasn't trying to hide from him, just everyone else. So Timely wouldn't attempt to break the camouflage and would probably actually help prevent anyone else from doing so to ensure he kept getting paid.
And the whole point of going through this scheme was the simple fact that Kirito's cursor was invisible whenever his camouflage was active. So it'd still be invisible, but it wouldn't be seen as suspicious by his assistant that it was. It was plausible deniability. The cursor would be invisible because Kirito needed his entire body to be invisible, and that would just be a side effect. Not because he was orange.
But for any of it to work, Timely had to first know that Kirito had this ability. So when the opportunity finally presented itself, Kirito executed his plan. He flashed the ability, and Timely noticed him doing so.
At no point during the process did Kirito's orange cursor show, even when his form had been revealed. He was inside a building, technically, even if he could still be seen from outside since he was so close to the open window.
All Kirito had to do next is quickly show the item he held in his hand for Timely to get the picture of what his plan was. It should be pretty obvious. A noose, with a subtle gesture pointing over at Argo. Who wouldn't figure it out?
Argo was going to be so mad after this. But after all the teasing she had put him through in the past, some part of Kirito felt that it really was about time for some payback.
He had tried wracking his brain to come up with a different plan than this. But he hadn't been able to come up with anything. He needed this distraction to meet up with his assistant again. And he needed Argo to leave the area. With the conveniently placed crate inside this building, and the leftover rope he had in his inventory, this plan just seemed to make the most sense, crazy as it was.
"Argo," Kirito spoke into his currently recording camera, "if you're somehow watching this in the future, know this. I'm only doing this because I have to. You can be too stubborn for your own good." Kirito quickly tied one end of the makeshift lasso around the precariously balanced crate he had placed on the windowsill on the opposite side of the room.
It was a pretty straightforward idea. Lasso Argo, then kick the crate that the rope was tied to, out the window. The crate would then serve as a counterweight, pulling her off the ground and up the side of the building. Then Kirito could meet with Timely without any more issues, at least for long enough to come up with a plan of some sort.
The hardest part would be successfully looping the rope around her. He'd only get one shot at it. If he missed, he'd never get another chance since Argo would immediately figure out what was going on. He'd have to think of something else if that happened.
But she was sitting in a wide open area, upright, on a ledge. Vulnerable. So it wouldn't be too difficult a toss. He intended to record a video of this incident, so he pressed record on his camera, and positioned it in a good spot. Then he walked over to the window.
Easy does it.
He threw the lasso.
Bullseye.
His aim had been perfect. He could not have done a better job. As soon as The Rat was in the trap, Kirito activated a sword skill to initiate a spin, landed, twisted, and roundhouse kicked the crate out the back window as hard as he could possibly manage, firing it out the window like a cannonball.
Then he watched the proceeding events. He had a front row seat as Argo came flying into that very room only a few seconds later, missing him by only a few meters.
"Dude, she is going to kill me," Timely claimed.
"Why?" Kirito asked. "You didn't do anything." The two of them were inside a nearby building, after the incident had concluded.
"I may have sort of… taunted her, subtly, before it happened."
"Oh." Kirito stared at his assistant with dull eyes. He understood his fear now.
"Yeah. Oh."
"Well why did you do that?" Taunting Argo unnecessarily was a bad idea. Kirito had thought that this was obvious.
"I thought it'd be funny."
Kirito thought about this explanation for a moment.
"It was pretty funny," he admitted.
"You're goddamn right it was funny," Timely agreed with a smile. "I'll never let her hear the end of it."
"You could have acted totally innocent, though," Kirito pointed out, "and she wouldn't have expected a thing. We could have played it off as some old enemy of hers trying to get revenge for something she did long ago. Argo has tons of enemies like that."
"I don't think she would have bought that."
"But she wouldn't have been able to prove anything, either. Plausible deniability. Too late for that now, though." Timely was going to have to watch his back now. Kirito couldn't even imagine what sort of revenge scheme Argo would inevitably cook up against him.
"You're right. I guess I'll have to blackmail her into submission or something."
"How are you gonna do that?" Blackmailing Argo sounded like a terrible idea. Timely wasn't anonymous, so Kirito had no idea how this would even work.
"I'll need some sort of humiliating nickname to call her for starters. See if I can spread it around. Something about fruits. Or slime. That was a brilliant touch by the way."
"It wasn't intentional," Kirito mentioned with a wince. He had not meant to do that. "That trap ended up working way better than I expected it to." It wasn't even supposed to have dragged her into the building at all. Just leave her hanging in the air. Not launched clean through and out the other side. He had clearly kicked that crate way too hard. Kirito was going to need to redouble his efforts in staying off her radar for good, now. If Argo ever figured out that he had been the guy to do that, she would hunt him down to the ends of the Earth for it.
"Why didn't you get sent to jail for it?" Timely asked.
"For what? I didn't do anything."
"You lassoed her, and dragged her through a building."
"No, the rope did that," Kirito explained with a small smile. "It just happened to be tied to a crate at the time that just so happened to fall off the side of a building at that exact moment. No player was involved." The anti-harassment system got confused whenever a player made a mechanical contraption like that one, and it didn't know who to assign blame to if someone ended up getting harassed by one.
"That is the grimiest loophole to get around the system that I've ever heard," Timely said with a shameless grin. "I love it."
"Pretty cool right?"
"Did you come up with that?"
"Definitely not. There are videos on the internet of the beta testers doing that sort of stuff. I learned it from there before logging in here." Timely didn't need to know the truth, so Kirito bent it a good amount here to distance himself from the possibility of being a beta tester. In reality, Kirito had fooled around with that mechanic himself back then in person, and had not seen any such videos, but felt no need to explain this.
"That loophole sounds like a serious, game-breaking oversight," Timely said. "Can you kill someone in a safe zone by taking advantage of that somehow?"
"No." Kirito had tried figuring out how to do that back then with a group of like-minded players, and none of them had been able to figure it out. "The worst you can do is knock them around a bit." The closest you could get to succeeding is by knocking a player out of the safezone and PKing them then. But that was extremely difficult to do.
"Well that's good at least."
"Yeah."
"So anyway," Timely scratched the back of his head, "we need to come up with a new way to meet. If Argo tries something like this again, we need to be ready."
"I'll tap you on your right shoulder," Kirito replied. They'd use that as a signal.
"What?"
"I'll go invisible with my ability, and tap you on your right shoulder when I want to meet up. Then you can go pick up an inn room, and I'll follow you there." It'd probably take some getting used to, as from Timely's perspective it'd probably feel like being touched by a ghost, and he'd have to learn not to react visibly to the touch or else risk coming off as suspicious.
"Sounds good," Timely agreed.
"Alright. Well, here's the next set of ovules," Kirito said as the two players started going through the drop trading process. "I'd also like to get another contract set up."
"What type?"
"I want to dump everything I have off on you now," Kirito emphasized. He wanted to clear out his entire inventory of everything that he no longer needed. "All of my items that I don't need. Rare or otherwise. Not just the ovules." Kirito's inventory had started to get pretty bloated, and so he wanted to liquidate it as much as possible by getting rid of all his junk.
"I've been waiting for you to say that for a long time," Timely replied, excitedly. "I'll set it up with Agil."
"Cool."
The two players were walking down the street now, one invisible, the other not. The meeting with Agil had been surprisingly fast, and Kirito himself hadn't even needed to step inside the shop at all since the new contract worked the same way as the old one. He had just waited invisibly outside the shop while Timely took care of everything.
Almost 75% of his inventory had been cleared out. All that remained now were his survival supplies, and the state of the art equipment he was planning to take down Illfang with.
"That's a pretty powerful ability you have there," Timely spoke quietly, not wanting to rouse suspicion. It'd look like he was talking to himself if someone noticed, after all. "If I hadn't seen you vanish right in front of me, I'd have no idea you were there."
"Yeah," Kirito replied, "it's pretty useful." He was Timely's invisible friend now.
"That can't be from the Hiding skill, can it? There isn't even a trace of you anymore. How'd you get it?"
"Who knows?" Kirito replied, mysteriously.
"Ah, right. I forgot," Timely said. "Mister Mysterious here doesn't like to talk."
"Can you really blame me?"
"No, I guess not. If I were in your shoes I'd probably be doing the same thing."
"We're going to have to get used to meeting like this from now on."
"You could just add me as a friend," Timely pointed out. "That'd make things easier."
"I bet it would." Kirito still could not trust his assistant with the knowledge of his cursor, though. He had no idea how he would react. So it was best not to test it out.
"But you're not going to do that, are you?" Timely asked.
"Nope."
"Figures."
The two of them continued walking down the street until they reached the end of it. There, the two of them intended to go their separate ways.
"See ya later, invisible guy."
"Yeah. See ya later. Try not to let Argo kill you."
"Don't worry, I don't think she will. If she tries, I'll make sure to let her know that you were actually the guy to do that to her."
"Thanks," Kirito replied, sarcastically, as he started walking away.
Timely laughed at the reply, and started walking in the other direction without another word.
Kirito spent the next several hours coming up with a strategy for the following morning. Now that he owned Illfang's weapons and currently had them in his inventory, he needed to figure out a way to avoid suspicion when the players started their raid tomorrow.
He planned extensively for the rest of the day, and into the evening, and went to sleep only when he felt satisfied.
He'd be getting up early again.
"Hey, how's it going, Fruit Juice?" A player snickered at her.
Argo clenched her fists and kept walking.
Nobody had been able to pinpoint who had said it first, but someone had given Argo a new moniker.
After passing her on the side of the street a few hours ago and recognizing her, rather than using her name, this player had referred to her as 'Fruit Juice,' after remembering the infamous incident with the fruit stand that had happened earlier that day. Other players in the vicinity had heard this player use this name and had thought it to be funny. So they had spread it around even further. In almost no time at all, the story of Argo's public humiliation had spread amongst huge swaths of the player base and she was being constantly referred to by that name now.
This naturally, pissed her right off. Argo was absolutely livid about the whole thing, and she immediately renewed her efforts of actively searching for the player responsible for this with a vengeance. She didn't care about the player who had come up with the new name for her all that much. It was the player who had lassoed her in the first place that she was after.
Argo wasn't an idiot and knew exactly who it had been. Timely Advice had known about what would happen and had clearly been in on the whole thing, but the player who had ultimately been the one to lasso her like that hadn't been him. It couldn't have been. Argo had been sitting right next to him at the time.
The only explanation was that it was the Nameless Merchant. Maybe not him directly, but that player had definitely orchestrated the incident. He had been the only one to benefit from it. So he was the person that was now on her shit list, and that she blamed everything on.
Now all of that time that Argo had spent following Timely around had been wasted. Because now it was clear that those two players had successfully been able to meet up again without her being there to observe the interaction. They had probably come up with a plan to deal with her now, too.
But two could play at this game, and she had no intentions of giving up.
She had a team of players following Timely around now. It wasn't just her anymore. These extra players were constantly surveying their surroundings to ensure that nobody could slip through the net again.
She would find this asshole merchant if it was the last thing she did. It was personal now.
December 3, 2022, 2:06 p.m.
'This is it,' Diabel thought to himself as he finally spotted the boss room door. It had taken a lot longer than expected, but everyone was here now, and it was time for the raid to begin.
He glanced around at the other players following behind him. Many of them looked nervous. Others, determined. If he were being honest, he was pretty nervous himself, but he couldn't allow himself to show it on the outside. Many of these players were counting on him to remain confident.
Almost everyone had their menus open, doing their last minute checks.
After it looked like everyone was ready, he planted his sword into the ground. He had originally thrown around the idea of giving another speech of some kind, but the current mood didn't really call for it. Instead, he kept it short.
"Listen up everyone. I've got only one thing to say to you. Let's win this."
"Come on!" He spun around and opened up the door.
Improvements:
Haley Dill, Sean Wales, Gabriella Gadfly