"As for how we split the items once we get back, you already have that lizard healing you, so you probably don't need a Healing Crystal, right?"
The older female player in the party spoke with a faintly provocative tone. Or rather, she was outright picking a fight, arms crossed as she looked over with narrowed eyes.
The girl reacted as though someone had touched a raw nerve. She glared back with eyes that had not yet fully lost their childishness, while the little blue dragon that always stayed close to her let out a small whine in support.
"You're the one who doesn't need one! Someone who never steps onto the front line and only hides at the back of the party has no use for crystals at all!"
After that came a fierce back-and-forth argument.
The captain and the other party members tried to smooth things over, but it barely helped. In the end, the girl could not hold back anymore and threw out one last declaration.
"I don't want the items! And I'm never partying with you again! Besides, there are so many parties that want me to join, they're practically overflowing!"
Although the captain desperately tried to stop her, asking her to at least stay with them until they left the forest and reached town, the girl ignored him completely. She immediately split off from the five of them and ran down a fork in the path, leaving with a stomach full of anger.
The remaining party members could only sigh a few times and call after her with more pointless words.
And just as she had said, for a Beast Tamer, something so rare that most players had almost never seen one, there were plenty of curious players eager to party with her.
Even on her own, with her Dagger Skill already around seventy percent proficiency and a Feathered Little Dragon assisting her, the monsters on the 35th Floor were not exactly strong enemies. She should have been able to defeat them easily.
But this place was called the Forest of Wandering for a reason.
The forest, made up of rows of massive, densely packed trees, was divided into hundreds of grid-like sections. One minute after entering any section, the connections to the surrounding adjacent sections would randomly change.
To leave the forest, a player had to keep breaking through each section within one minute, or use the expensive map item sold at the item shop in the main settlement, checking the connections in all four directions as they advanced.
The only one with a map was the party leader, the Shield Swordsman.
On top of that, using a Teleport Crystal inside the Forest of Wandering would not return someone to town. It would only send them to a random area somewhere else in the forest.
Because of that, she had no choice but to keep running nonstop and try to break through. Yet running along the winding forest paths while dodging the roots of enormous trees was far harder than she had imagined.
Although she tried to move straight north, by the time she reached the edge of a section, more than a minute had already passed. Being repeatedly transferred to unknown locations only exhausted her further.
The color of the sunset deepened, and as night slowly descended, her anxiety rose. Escaping the area became harder and harder.
In the end, she had no choice but to keep walking while hoping she would happen to be transferred to an outer section of the forest.
But luck never came.
Monsters attacked without mercy. Although she had enough of a level advantage, as the area around her grew darker, she could no longer clearly see the ground at her feet.
Even with her pet's support, she could not finish every battle without taking damage. By the end, aside from the items she still had left, she had even used up her emergency Healing Crystals.
As if sensing her master's unease, Pina, perched on her shoulder, let out a low purring whine and pressed its head against the girl's cheek.
She stroked Pina's long neck as though comforting it, while she herself began to regret the predicament brought on by her own temper and arrogance.
But the situation would not change just because of a few thoughts in her heart.
She forced herself to keep walking and stepped into a transfer zone that shimmered like heat haze.
After a dizzying sensation, the scene that appeared before her was still the same deep forest as before. The depths of the woods had already sunk into darkness, and there was not even a shadow of the grassland that surrounded the forest.
She paused and sighed where she stood.
Just as she lowered her head in discouragement and prepared to start walking again, Pina suddenly lifted its head from her shoulder and let out a sharp warning cry.
It was an alert notification.
She immediately drew the familiar dagger from her waist and took a stance facing the direction Pina was staring at.
A few seconds later, a low groan came from the shadows beneath a moss-covered giant tree. She focused her gaze there, and yellow arrows appeared.
Two.
No, three of them.
The monsters were called 'Drunk Ape', the strongest type of monster that appeared in the Forest of Wandering.
In terms of level, this monster was not that dangerous.
When intermediate players like her left a Safe Zone, they usually prepared more than enough safety measures for the monsters that might appear. At the very least, they made sure they could win even if they were surrounded by five monsters alone, with no recovery methods available.
Unlike the front-line players who fought at the very front and aimed to clear the game, intermediate players had three reasons to go adventuring.
First, to earn the money needed for daily life.
Second, to gain the minimum experience required to remain at an intermediate level.
Third, because they were bored enough to go crazy.
No matter which reason it was, none could really be called a goal worth risking real death for. After all, there were still several thousand players in the Town of Beginnings who avoided even the slightest increase in their chance of dying.
However, in order not to go hungry and to sleep in a bed at an inn, they needed regular income.
On top of that, MMO players had a peculiar chronic habit. If they could not keep themselves within the average level range, they started to feel uneasy.
Now that nearly a year and a half had passed since the game began, the players who formed the main middle layer had started to slowly step out of the Safe Zones after making sufficient preparations, enjoying adventures that belonged to them.
That meant even three Drunk Apes, the strongest monsters on the 35th Floor, should not have been a match for her.
Especially since, thanks to her pet, people kindly called her the Dragon Tamer.
She forced her tired mind to focus and tightened her grip on the dagger. Pina also floated lightly up from her shoulder and entered a battle-ready state.
What emerged from behind the trees was a massive ape-man covered head to toe in dark red fur. In its right hand, it gripped a crude club. In its left, it carried a gourd-like jar tied with a rope
As the ape-man raised its club, bared its fangs, and roared, the girl rushed toward the enemy at the front, determined to seize the initiative.
First, she landed [White Fang], an intermediate charging Sword Skill from the Dagger Skill line, shaving away a large portion of its HP. Then she followed through with the high-speed combos unique to daggers.
The Drunk Ape used a low-level mace skill. Each strike carried considerable power, but neither its attack speed nor the number of hits in its combos was especially impressive.
She adopted a hit-and-run strategy, making sure her consecutive attacks landed before quickly retreating to avoid the enemy's counterattack, then charging in again. The first HP bar was immediately whittled down. Sometimes Pina would also breathe out bubble-like breath to cloud the ape-man's eyes.
On her fourth attack, just before she unleashed the combo [Swift Bite] and attempted to finish off the ape-man at the front...
In that split-second opening, a new enemy switched places with the target from the right rear and moved to the front.
Silica had no choice but to change targets and begin cutting down the second one's HP. After the first ape-man retreated to the rear, it raised the jug in its left hand and gulped from it with loud, gurgling sounds.
When she glanced at the first Drunk Ape's HP bar from the corner of her eye, she noticed something that startled her.
Its HP bar was recovering at a considerable speed.
Apparently, that jug held some kind of recovery agent.
She had fought Drunk Apes on the 35th Floor before. Back then, she had defeated two of them easily because she had never given them the chance to switch out, so she had not noticed this special ability at all.
She tried to make the most of her timing, but after one fierce assault reduced the second one's HP bar into the red zone, she stepped back to prepare a final heavy attack.
In that instant, the third Drunk Ape forced its way in from the side.
By then, the first ape-man's HP had already recovered almost completely.
At this rate, it would never end.
The taste of panic slowly spread through her mouth.
She had never had much experience fighting monsters alone to begin with. A level-based safety margin was ultimately just a number, something separate from the player's own skill.
This unexpected situation gradually colored her anxiety with panic. She began missing more and more attacks, giving the enemies chances to counterattack.
Just as she finally reduced the third Drunk Ape's HP bar to about half, the ape-man did not miss the opening caused by her pushing too hard while trying to keep firing off combos.
In the end, it landed a direct critical hit.
The club was only a crude piece of wood, but the basic damage created by its weight, combined with the Drunk Ape's Strength correction, unexpectedly wiped out about thirty percent of her HP in an instant.
A chill ran up her spine.
She no longer had any healing potions on hand. Pina's Healing Breath could only recover about ten percent of her HP, and it could not be used frequently.
By that calculation, if she took three more hits like that...
She would die.
Death.
The moment that possibility flashed through her mind, the girl's whole body froze.
She could not lift her arms.
She could not move her legs.
Until now, combat had been tense for her, but it had always felt far removed from real danger. She had never once imagined that actual death could be waiting at the end of a battle.
In front of the Drunk Ape, which roared and raised its club high again, she stood frozen with her eyes wide open.
Only then did she finally understand what fighting monsters in SAO truly meant.
She understood that, even though this was a game, it was not something to play around with.
That contradiction-filled truth.
The club fell with a low roar and struck her as she stood there in a daze. Unable to withstand the violent impact, she collapsed to the ground, and her HP bar plunged into the yellow warning zone.
She could no longer think at all.
Even though options like turning to run or using a Teleport Crystal still existed, all she could do was stare blankly at the club being raised for the third time.
The crude weapon glowed red.
Just before she reflexively closed her eyes...
A tiny figure flew through the air and darted in front of the club.
Then came the sound of impact, and aqua-blue feathers scattered together with the effect light.
Pina, knocked to the ground, lifted its head and looked at its master with round blue eyes. After letting out a faint chirp, it dissolved into glittering polygon fragments and scattered.
Only one long tail feather drifted gently down from the air, finally landing on the ground.
Something suddenly snapped inside her heart.
The invisible threads binding her body all vanished.
Before sorrow could come, what she felt first was anger.
Anger at herself for panicking so badly after a single hit that she could no longer move.
Anger at herself for quarreling and sulking over something so small, and for being foolish enough to think she could make it through the forest alone.
Just as she forgot her fear of death and prepared to throw herself beneath the swinging club, wanting to release even the tiniest fragment of the emotion in her heart...
A pitch-black beam of light slashed sideways from behind the ape-men, cutting through the two Drunk Apes standing side by side.
It should have been only one strike.
But in an instant, the ape-men's bodies were divided into more than a dozen pieces.
Before the sound of the Sword Skill tearing through the air had fully faded, the monsters let out successive screams and shattering noises, then burst apart and scattered.
There was no doubt that it was the result of overwhelming excess damage.
Silica stood frozen in place.
Only after the object fragments evaporated did she see the male player standing there.
He wore a gray hooded one-piece coat. He was not especially tall or strong, but rather slender. In his right hand, he held a deep, pitch-black curved sword, slightly tucked back behind his waist.
He slowly removed his gray hood, revealing his face.
Under the star-like lights left by the monsters as they burst apart, a faint glimmer appeared in the man's eyes, which were otherwise as still as an old well.
But when she met the black eyes beneath his long bangs, Silica felt an instinctive fear for some reason and took a small step back.
The other party's gaze shifted, like a dead pond disturbed for one brief moment by a falling leaf.
He glanced at the faintly glowing blue feather floating in front of Silica, opened his mouth, and spoke in a slightly dry voice.
"Looks like I was a little too late."
The moment she heard those words, all strength left Silica's body.
Tears she could no longer hold back began streaming down her face.
She did not notice the dagger slipping from her hand and falling to the ground. Her gaze moved to the aqua-blue feather on the ground, and she sank to her knees before it.
As the anger that had become a burning whirlpool vanished, bottomless sorrow and loss welled up from deep inside her.
That emotion turned into tears and slid down her cheeks without end.
"A familiar's AI shouldn't have a behavior pattern for actively attacking monsters. So in that instant, it chose of its own will to rush in front of the club."
The man said it quietly.
He closed his eyes slightly. After a moment, he spoke again, sounding somewhat helpless and rueful.
"But... I've seen plenty of cases where data goes wrong like this."
With both hands pressed against the ground, Silica kept sobbing.
At last, she managed to squeeze out the words.
"Please... Pina... don't leave me all alone..."
But the aqua-blue feather gave no answer.
The man looked at her as she cried, then simply turned to the side and lit a cigarette.
He said nothing more.
Even after witnessing this small tragedy, not a single expression on his face had changed.