About the players:
Kayaba was "nice enough" to send the full list of players – along with their real-world addresses – to the relevant authorities, so that each one could be located and transferred to medical care.
— II —
Caves near Horunka, 1st Floor
The cave smelled like damp stone and a faint, meat-metal odor that monster hives always have.
Mito held her position at the rear of the formation and watched.
Neo had organized their party into a rotating system: each of them cycling through points while he coached and backed them up in real time. It was an efficient use of a training run. She'd recognized that from the moment he laid it out. It was also, she suspected, a way to measure what each of them could do without his direct involvement.
"Again." His voice was patient, not sharp. "Lisbeth, you're telegraphing the skill activation. Hold it a beat longer before you commit."
At the front of the formation, Lisbeth squared her stance against a pair of «Ruin Kobolds». The small blue humanoids paced the tunnel ahead with the restless energy of creatures that had never known anything except hunting.
Lisbeth had their only light source – a torch – in her off hand, and her mace in her dominant one. The flame threw uneven shadows across her face. Her freckles stood out against skin flushed from exertion.
"Like this?" She adjusted her footing. The torch guttered with the movement.
"Better. Now!"
The Kobold lunged, short sword in hand. This time, Lisbeth's timing held clean. Her mace glowed red as [Crack] activated, the downward smash connecting squarely with the creature's skull before it could finish its swing. Fragmented blue-white polygons were scattered as a result.
"Yes!" She pumped her fist.
"Well done. Watch your positioning in the post-skill delay, though. You're exposed while the animation resolves." He was already moving past her, his fist glowing white as it intercepted a second Kobold's strike mid-lunge. "And always assume there's a second threat!"
From the other side of the tunnel, Asuna cleared the next cluster in three precise movements. Her rapier pierced, withdrew, pierced again. Each thrust was perfectly placed. The monsters came apart in rapid succession.
"Impressive," Neo murmured, almost to himself.
Most beta testers had needed hours just to synchronize with their avatars – to calibrate the gap between intention and movement, between what they meant to do and what the body actually executed. What Asuna had managed in less than twenty-four hours was in a different category.
Her classmate was something close to a prodigy, and Mito was still deciding how she felt about that.
Adapt fast or die, she thought bitterly. Asuna…
"Mito," Neo gestured toward the next spawn point. "Show them [Reaping] against spread targets."
She snapped out of her momentary daze, gripping her scythe. Three «Ruin Kobolds» spawned ahead, their AI registering her approach and shifting into pursuit patterns.
She let them close – not because she had to, but the approach told her things: Movement speed. Attack radius. Whether their way of engagement still matched the Beta.
It does. Good. She thought. Got them.
Her scythe swept purple. [Reaping] activated in a wide horizontal arc and caught all three simultaneously. They dissolved in the same breath.
"Her angle," Neo said immediately, turning to face Asuna and Lisbeth. "She controlled the full engagement before committing. The enemies weren't in a line; she arranged it."
"What if they come from multiple directions?" Asuna asked.
"Use the Terrain." He stepped to the cave wall and pressed his palm flat against it. "Bottleneck them. Force a line. In open ground, you kite them: it means making constant movement, attack and retreat, never let them corner you."
In the narrow space between the stone walls, he traced the movement pattern in the air with one hand – the path, the angles of attack, the position relative to the threat.
His unarmed style was fluid in a way that still caught everyone's attention each time they watched him. Liz, Mito, and Asuna – like most players – built their strat around an equipped weapon. However, the American fought as if it wasn't necessary.
In a sword-dominant game.
The break came naturally. A pause before the next pull, inventory checks, the small domestic math of survival.
They sat in a circle.
Asuna and Lisbeth navigate the Main Menu together, trying to familiarize themselves with the interface.
Mito settled against the cave wall. "Neo," she said, keeping it level to not attract more monsters. "Unarmed builds weren't this effective in the Beta. Not at floor level."
He looked at her. Something moved briefly behind his eyes – a careful, considered flicker – and then settled.
"I have some battle instincts," he said. "And the starting options from being a tester limited what I could equip early on. Didn't leave many choices."
"Which tester options? I was a Beta participant too. I didn't receive anything like that."
"Different tier," he responded with a small shrug.
She filed that away. "Did you study martial arts?"
"A bit." A pause. "Mostly watching."
"Watching," she repeated.
"Movies, MMA, wrestling matches." His voice matter-of-factly. "I have a knack."
Lisbeth glanced up from her inventory window with a short laugh. "You' saying –" she stood up "– you can do this –" she mockingly punched the air with a left jab.
"– This, and this, –" she followed with a sidekick and straight right. All in terrible form. "– from movies only?"
"Okay, I took a class of Kung Fu. ONCE." The reborn one conceded. "The thirty most exhausted minutes of my life."
"Rrrrrightttt," the mace wielder huffed in indignation. "It's so hard to be a prodigy nowadays, huh?"
Mito said nothing more. The explanations held too little substance. It answered the shape of the question without explaining a single thing underneath.
His uncanny abilities…the composure in the middle of a deathly fight, just pure talent?
She knew evasion when she heard it.