Second Floor, Eastern Rocklands.
Unlike the First Floor's varied scenery, the Second Floor was almost entirely crimson and ash-black as far as the eye could see.
Vast plains stretched out in rolling waves, dotted here and there with lonely but steep, towering rubble hills. Even the sky seemed to echo the land's roughness, a clear blue vault without a single cloud, bright and endless.
There was scenery like this outside the Town of Beginnings too.
Just nowhere near this pure.
Maybe, when they first designed the game, the creators only meant to give players a rough glimpse of it all. But the higher you climbed, the more each floor took on a distinct theme of its own.
Outside the Town of Beginnings, the landscape came in many forms: grasslands, lakes, forests.
But Satoru didn't really like wide-open fields with barely any cover. They just didn't suit him.
Waist-high brush or dense woods might force him to be more careful when searching for enemies, but they also gave him cover. Out here in this bleak rockland, trying to circle around behind a monster for a sneak attack felt honestly a little ridiculous.
Once again, after picking an area suited to his level but farther out than the hunting grounds near the village, Satoru settled into another dull grind.
Parting a patch of dry brush, he kept half his body hidden and watched the crimson bull ahead of him pawing at the dirt and flicking its tail.
Once he was ready, he burst from the bushes like an assassin springing from concealment, launching a silent but deadly strike from directly behind.
He'd practiced this skill sequence hundreds of times already, refining the damage and kill speed until it was as efficient as possible.
It was only a crimson bull a little higher level than him. A few seconds after his curved blade sank into its thick rear, the poor thing barely got half a howl out before it shattered into crystal fragments, briefly erased from the world and turned into part of his EXP bar.
It was smooth as flowing water, at least for those few seconds of the kill.
If you counted the nervous observation beforehand, though...
Even he had to admit his tactics were kind of shameless.
He almost never fought head-on, like the heroes in those hot-blooded stories who roared and drew gleaming greatswords for a dramatic clash.
If he was going to fight like this, maybe he should've started with daggers instead.
Satoru glanced over the drops and closed the system window with practiced ease.
His gaze followed the rocky trail off to the right. He was near the entrance to a small valley. Partly he wanted to update his map, but mostly he just felt more comfortable fighting here. The trouble was that most of the paths inside the valley were narrow strips of broken stone with even less cover.
I'll just circle around outside for now. Once I level up, I'll head inside and explore. Then I can hand the updated map data to Argo for free.
That ought to make her take my request more seriously. Ever since that day, the rat girl with the golden-brown curls had been half-ignoring his messages. He had no idea how he'd managed to annoy her again, especially when he'd been perfectly willing to negotiate on price.
After one more look around at the monsters he'd already cleared out, he found the same broad, monotonous landscape he'd grown sick of over the last few days.
He nodded to himself, put away his weapon, and quickly slipped onto the mountain path where the brush was starting to grow thicker, his body brushing against the sturdier shrubs with a soft rustle.
About ten minutes later, his field of vision held almost nothing except the Second Floor's unchanging rocky terrain, the mountain walls gradually narrowing around him, and the wide-ranging enemy indicators from his Search skill. Earlier, he'd still been able to catch glimpses of other players hunting now and then.
That was only natural. There was no real need yet to go this far out just to grind, and the areas closer to the village had the huge advantage of faster resupply.
Most players, even some of the top ones, would stay in the safer rear areas and keep training there for the time being. Even the more impatient, efficiency-minded players would treat the spot he'd just left as their limit.
I'm probably the one opening up the map fastest right now.
Even if it comes with a lot of pointless exhaustion.
Grinding this hard felt like it was slowly stiffening both his mind and body.
Hunting had become something close to mechanical, like he was carrying out a fixed program over and over.
He was starting to feel like a field monster himself. His mind drifted in a haze of attacks and dodges, and his body only followed muscle memory as it fired off Sword Skills.
When he was too tired to move, all he could do was rest in one of the tiny safe zones in the field and chew on the cheap bread in his bag, practical and filling and absolutely awful.
Leaning against a cold, textured rock inside the safe zone, he silently watched the monsters that had respawned outside. He knew they couldn't attack him here, but their meaningless growls and restless pacing made it impossible to feel at ease.
It was like being dumped alone on a bleak little island with no shelter from the wind or rain, not a single companion nearby, and threats staring at you from all sides. Just calming down enough to relax took time.
Who could rest peacefully in a place like that?
Well... he could.
If the system said it was a safe zone, then it was completely safe. Because this was a game.
A former power-leveling player who had always been just as ruthless with himself was still using that same cold, efficiency-first approach in this life-or-death online game.
He had spent three straight days and nights out in the field. At two in the morning, he'd been lying in a safe zone set on a wind-lashed plain, a place with nothing but a token boulder to mark it.
Under the darkening sky, the beasts around him blurred into shifting shadows, coming and going in the gloom, their eyes the only things that occasionally flashed with hostile light.
It was basically being dropped into the middle of a horror movie set, except this time there was no crew around him.
He was the only one there.
Someone softer-hearted might've started missing certain things.
He just didn't have anything like that to miss.
Even when he forced himself to sleep, his mind stayed murky, and eventually the repeating rasping cries of the nearby monsters would wake him again.
After about four hours, he'd drag himself back up. Just as sunlight began to spread across the horizon, he'd stumble out of the safe zone with bloodshot eyes and turn the monsters that had prowled around him all night into fragments.
The nearest one had only been seven or eight meters away.
His EXP and materials were piling up fast, which pleased him, but by the fourth day he seemed to have hit his limit. No matter how much he numbed himself or pushed onward, his vision had already started to blur.
So he forced himself back to town, rested for a day, then came back out loaded with potions and spare weapons.
That was how he'd always done things.
Back when he was drowning in studio orders, this was exactly how he worked.
Gameplay, fun, immersion, story, all of it could be ignored. He'd never had the leisure to care about the passion developers poured into their games. In his bloodshot eyes, the only things worth constant attention were the contents of his inventory and his EXP bar.
Love for an account he'd painstakingly raised?
He had no idea what use that was supposed to be.
Even a character he'd personally built up and pushed onto the server rankings, he could throw away without hesitation if the price was right.
This time was the same. The only difference was that instead of one disposable account after another, now it was just one irreplaceable self. The difficulty was set to no retries, and the method of raising proficiency had changed from mouse and keyboard to actual combat.
This kind of "power leveling" was a first for him too, but so far he was satisfied.
"I still need six Black Poison Stingers. I've already got more than enough Blazing Bull Horns."
He kept moving forward at a steady pace. He didn't need to open his inventory to sort through it. He could organize it all in his head.
That was probably all that filled his mind anyway.
The next material-dropping monster was in the valley.
Windwasp were insect-type monsters, mostly black with patches of vivid green.
They were unmistakably bees in shape, but nothing like the harmless kind you could crush in your hand. Their bodies alone measured fifty centimeters from top to bottom. If something like that existed in real life, it'd probably mean Earth had been completely swallowed by radiation.
The kind of thing you saw in disaster movies.
Then again, in this world, fifty centimeters only counted as average, maybe even small. The crimson bulls he'd been slaughtering earlier were already twice the size of normal cows.
That didn't make them any less troublesome. Those wild bees, each one bigger than a human head, hovered in place with wings buzzing loud enough to sound like bellows pumping air.
Their black-and-green bodies practically announced their toxicity without a word. At the end of each abdomen was a long, slender stinger, needle-thin, so hard to see in sunlight that all you caught was a faint white glint.
Just thinking about that thing slipping cleanly into flesh without drawing blood, piercing through muscle, blood vessels, maybe even bone, sent a chill down his spine.
Then those emotionless green compound eyes would lock onto you. The stinger would aim at you. The wings would beat with a violent hum, and the thing would lunge with blinding speed.
For eighty percent of people, the instinctive reaction would be to dodge.
And for anyone who was naturally afraid of insects, enemies like these were a complete nightmare. SAO's absurdly high production quality made them feel all too real.
Satoru was still managing, though even he had the embarrassing weakness of being afraid of cockroaches.
But as long as he could treat them as data, he could deal with them. He could force down every stray thought. Bees, wild boars, bulls, even that Kobold Lord, there was no real difference. Just different data structures, wearing different shapes.
Learn its attack pattern, get a read on its HP, adjust your skill timing, and everything becomes simple.
In theory, anyway. In reality, it probably took someone like him, someone halfway into self-hypnosis, to actually turn that skin-crawling giant bee into a cluster of numbers wrapped in a bee-shaped outline on his retina, and that was only if he also ignored the oppressive weight of death.
He instinctively sank his breath and let out a muffled grunt. His curved blade caught the opening after the Windwasp's attack, and a heavy single-hit strike chopped through the soft abdomen connected to the stinger.
An orange-red slash mark lingered in the air before slowly fading. In reality, foul green blood would probably have sprayed all over him, but here, after the solid impact, the bee's body split cleanly in two in midair, both halves dissolving into clear fragments.
At that same moment, a brilliant golden glow rose from his body, and celebratory music chimed in his ears.
He'd leveled up again.
His status filled instantly. The Yurnero character was, without question, fresh and stronger than ever at this moment, but the Satoru inside it, the effort he'd spent and the fatigue he'd built up, hadn't improved at all.
He glanced at the level icon in the top left, fell silent for a moment, counted down his skill cooldowns in his head, then went right back to clearing Windwasps without stopping.
"Hmm..."
A faint note of confusion slipped into his numb state of mind. In his field of vision, the monster indicators were unusually concentrated deep to the left. Or maybe that side was just a high-density spawn zone?
The distribution was off. His side had way too few.
He moved a little closer, and as he gradually approached, his Search skill fed him more information.
"What's this?"
Through rock walls and brush, behind that solid, indestructible terrain geometry, the monster markers were bobbing around. Then a new marker appeared among them, green.
A player marker.
Can't believe there's still someone out here.
That was his first thought. Then he immediately sensed something was wrong.
The monster markers gradually closed in around that person. Whoever it was seemed to be trying to move, but kept running into the aggro range of monsters in other positions, drawing even more Windwasps.
The area he'd just been in had apparently been part of their escape route too, which explained why the monsters there had been dragged away.
Even after coming this deep...
You'd think they'd be the type to stare at the ground if someone dropped a pin.
Running around blindly like that would only get them buried in the end.
Satoru frowned in silence, his face unreadable, then shifted slightly.
Because that player had changed direction again.
This time, toward him.
He instantly grew wary.
If the other person had a Search skill at his level, or higher, then they could also see him through the rock wall. And if they meant to drag him down with them, pass the aggro over and dump the mess onto him, that kind of escape tactic wasn't impossible.
Monster PK.
He'd seen it plenty of times before. His eyelids lowered. Some memory seemed to stir, bringing with it irritation and a trace of self-disgust, and the look in his eyes gradually turned cold.
Leave. Fast.
Even if that player didn't have that kind of ugly intention, he still had no choice but to watch them die. Taking the heat onto himself would be foolish.
He turned and started running.
A little over ten seconds after he left that spot, the sound of Windwasps in flight suddenly grew louder and denser, like standing near an apiary.
The layered hum made his ears go numb. Even without looking, he could picture the disgusting sight of more than ten huge bees swarming together and pouring through the gap where he'd just been.
Mixed into it was the clumsy sound of chained Sword Skills used in desperation.
Just as I thought.
Satoru kept running as he reached that conclusion. It matched his guess. A player in trouble.
The curved blade on his back was already entering the starting motion for a dash skill. He was about to use it to flee. You could call it decisive. Quick judgment, quick action.
From behind, though, he looked like nothing but a coward and a selfish bastard.
"Ngh—"
The player under attack let out a breathless sound from far away. Not a cry for help, just the instinctive noise someone made after getting hit.
But Satoru froze.
A woman?
He frowned hard.
That voice was nothing like his, nothing like a useless man who only crouched in a chair staring at a screen. His own voice was dry and plain as dead wood. The voice behind him was clear and pleasant, the kind that could make even a simple grunt stir pity.
A woman? Out here?
Was she just suicidal...?
No, if that were the case, there'd be no reason to keep using Sword Skills. A cleaner end would be easier.
When this death game first began, there had been more than enough examples of players who couldn't bear the pressure and killed themselves. But if she'd made it to the Second Floor, then she wasn't that weak.
Thinking that, he started remembering bits and pieces of stories he'd heard about dead players. Before he knew it, he felt a trace of respect for this female player's nerve. In the end, curiosity got the better of him, and he glanced back.
Her slender body had been driven back until it was pressed tight against the rock wall behind her. In front of her was that mass of mindless killing data.
She had nowhere left to retreat. The black-and-green bees flew up and down in a dizzying blur, but they weren't what fully captured his gaze.
It was the girl's hair.
Light gold, yet under the sun it looked almost white, like some unreal phantom. You could make out every strand. It was so fine, so pure, it seemed almost like a translucent veil.
Unnaturally smooth, as if some machine had drawn pale gold into thread with perfect precision, except it didn't feel artificial at all.
Her pale wrist and neck, even her face, were already streaked with dust. The blade of the one-handed straight sword in her hand was scratched all over, and it looked close to breaking from zero durability.
She was a mess, and stunning, at the same time.
She's beautiful...
Satoru stopped without meaning to.
Was that... an NPC?
He checked the marker again just to be sure, afraid he'd misread it. Maybe this was some hidden field quest? Rescue a princess in danger, something like that?
But no.
She was definitely a player.
Could it be... she never used the handheld mirror Kayaba Akihiko gave everyone in that plaza? Never updated her character to match her real body data?
Satoru couldn't help thinking it.
In a fantasy game, not even the idealized faces that fit that fantasy, no, not even the system's preset character creation options, could compare.
That was the only thought he had.
And that was where it should have ended. Even after turning back, Satoru's feet were still edging away.
But just as he'd spotted her, the girl looked toward him too.
"..."
He instinctively wanted to turn his face away, almost as if he was afraid to see.
Because he thought he already knew what would be in that look. He thought he knew exactly what emotion he would find there.
Sorrow. A plea for help.
The terror of not wanting to die. Eyes wide with panic. A desperate, endless attachment to life.
It would ruin all of her beauty. What would remain would be something too twisted to bear looking at. Even that light, delicate voice would turn into something hoarse and ugly from screaming, like the shriek of some wretched ghost filled with nothing but negativity.
And in the end, her view of his refusal to help would harden into hatred.
But he reacted a beat too slowly, and their eyes met anyway.
Before regret, hesitation, or that familiar wave of self-loathing could even begin to rise in him, all of it vanished in the next instant.
"...?"
It wasn't sorrow.
It wasn't a plea for help.
The doll-like girl saw him and gave him a faint smile, one that reflected clearly in his eyes. Her features were so beautiful they almost seemed deliberately carved by some invisible hand, and yet there wasn't the slightest trace of unnaturalness in them.
"A... smile?"
Satoru stood there, stunned, murmuring to himself.
Her HP bar was already down by two-thirds. She was in a dead end. Hope was standing just a short distance away.
And yet she looked nothing like what he'd imagined.
She smiled at him.
A simple, clean smile, the kind a child might show upon spotting something delightful.
A smile of surprise after a chance encounter, like meeting someone at the turn of a corner.
The intensity of his confusion, and that moment of beauty so unreal it felt fabricated, made him frown deeply and ask himself why.
Then the Windwasps tore more life from her bar. At this rate, with the way they were attacking and the way her straight sword was growing weaker and weaker in her hand, she would die in ten seconds at most. And then even that dreamlike beauty would shatter into fragments just like the data around them.
There was no other outcome.
The bees' mouthparts scraped together with the eager sound of something closing in on prey.
In their eyes, there was only that dwindling HP bar.
Their wings beat faster, almost joyfully, as they prepared to faithfully carry out the program their creator had given them.
Kill her.
Five seconds after that faint smile disappeared.
From the left side of the black-and-green swarm, the side where the victorious bees had already begun to close in, came the sound of hesitant footsteps.
Then the sharp, tearing whistle of a curved blade slicing through the air.