POV Aoi
A few minutes later, after Kirito and I had left the city to think things over, I was sitting on a tree stump, my hands over my face. After all, like they say: once, maybe it's just your imagination. Twice, that's too big a coincidence. And if I saw that silhouette a third time, it wouldn't be a coincidence anymore it would be a fact.
Kirito paced back and forth without a word for a while. Then he finally muttered, his voice low:
"How is this even possible... The logout button is completely impossible to find."
I looked up at him.
"Unfortunately, I think we're going to have to be careful from now on," I said bitterly.
Kirito didn't answer right away. He crossed his arms, his gaze fixed on some spot on the ground, like he was arguing with himself in his head without wanting to share where it was going.
"And our bodies, back in the real world?" he finally asked, more to himself than to me.
I thought about it for a second.
"I guess they'll take us to a hospital. Probably feed us through tubes."
He nodded, not adding anything. That was so Kirito he never stayed loud or angry for long. He'd swallow things down, or he'd rather just hold onto them, only for them to surface later, once he'd gone cold about it, even if that annoys me more than anything else because I wish he'd just say it outright, but whatever.
We stayed quiet for a while. The kind of silence you let settle because you don't really feel like talking about what you just heard.
"It'll blow over," he finally said, his voice flat, without much conviction. "Kayaba's insane, but it's a game. A game can get hacked, or some damn patch drops, or who knows what else. There's gotta be a way out we haven't found yet."
I nodded, not really believing it either, because I figured he'd said that more for himself than for me.
"Yeah. Probably."
That's when Kirito, almost absentmindedly, kicked a pebble against the tree trunk next to us.
The sound froze us both in place.
A dull, hollow thud.
Before just a few hours earlier everything we stepped on or destroyed in this world dissolved into a scattering of little light particles. That pebble had struck like a real pebble hitting real wood.
Kirito didn't say anything. He just stared at the trunk, his face going paler by the second.
We stood up at the same time, like we'd silently agreed to, and walked over to the trunk. I put my hand on it. The bark was rough under my fingers, a little damp in places. There was no reason for it to be that detailed.
"Knock on it," Kirito said, his voice neutral or at least, he was trying, despite himself.
I knocked. The sound echoed, hollow and dense, exactly like real wood.
We stood there a moment, staring at that stupid tree like it was going to give us an explanation.
"Maybe it doesn't mean anything," I said, without much conviction. "Some graphics engine thing, or a last-minute patch, or I don't know, honestly I'm just as lost as you are."
Kirito didn't answer. He stayed silent for a few seconds, his eyes locked on his own hands. Then, without warning, he pulled a small knife out of his inventory.
"Kirito, what are you..."
"I just want to check something."
He turned his palm toward the sky and cut it, lightly.
We were both expecting, I think, to see his hand break apart into light, or nothing at all. What happened instead was blood. A real trickle of red blood, running down his palm and dripping onto the grass. A small system alert flashed above his hand: [Bleeding].
Kirito didn't say anything. He looked at his hand like it belonged to someone else, his face drained of color. Then he dug through his inventory, drank a healing potion, and the wound sealed itself with a faint crackle, exactly as the game intended.
But the blood stayed on the grass. No potion had erased that.
He stayed silent for a long moment, his eyes still fixed on the dark patch in the grass. Then, without looking at me, quietly:
"Don't tell me the game got this realistic."
He didn't finish the sentence he didn't need to. And I knew that if it had been anyone else standing there, he probably would've kept it to himself, shrugged, and changed the subject. But with me, he never really tried to hide it when something got to him. That's just how it had always been between us.
I could feel my own heart racing, and part of me wanted to believe, really believe, so badly, in some simple explanation. A display bug, or some damn overblown graphics update. Anything reasonable.
"We need to go check on a monster," I said, as much to convince myself as to convince him. "If it's the same with a boar, then we'll know for sure."
Kirito nodded, still pale, and put his knife away without a word.
We crossed the field in silence. It was nearly empty the other players were probably still processing Kayaba's announcement somewhere in the streets of Aincrad, or huddled together trying to make sense of what had just happened to them. We had our own question to settle, smaller, more concrete: did killing something here actually mean something now?
A boar eventually stepped out of the tall grass. We approached it far more carefully than the first time. Kirito let me take the lead, without a word.
I drove my sword into its skull.
Blood sprayed out, and the animal collapsed into the grass with a dull thud real weight hitting real ground. It didn't dissolve. No light, no particles. Just a still body lying in front of us, like any dead animal in any forest in the real world.
The only thing that still hinted, faintly, that we were in a game was the small XP number that flashed at the top of my screen.
Neither Kirito nor I said anything for a long time. We just stared at the boar's body, and I think we were both thinking the same thing without daring to say it out loud: if a boar could bleed like that, die like that, then so could we.
"We thought this would just stay a game," Kirito finally murmured, his voice a little cracked the one real crack he allowed himself, and only because I was the only one there to see it. "Like... worst case, a creepy game. Not this."
I didn't answer. I was watching my own status screen, where two new bars had quietly appeared beneath my HP gauge: a hunger bar, a thirst bar. Details no game, however ambitious, should have bothered simulating with that much realism.
Before either of us could say anything else, an alert rang out:
[To all players: the Sword Art Online update has been applied]
[Classes have been unlocked and can be chosen starting at level 5]
[Warning: new monsters have appeared]
[Good luck]
Thanks to our grinding, Kirito and I had already reached level 6. Opening the menu, we noticed a new tab called Classes. Tapping it brought up an entire interface a full skill tree, with dozens of darkened branches, some locked behind conditions, others marked with a simple "???" where the name should be.
Kirito tapped around rapidly, looking a little overwhelmed.
"You've gotta be kidding me! This looks like Ubisoft and their damn skill trees!"
I sighed.
"Look, seems like things are about to change now."
The tree split into major families: Melee (Fighter, Warrior, Berserker...), Ranged (Archer, Ranger, Hunter...), and a third, more discreet column labeled Hybrid, which included classes like Magic Swordsman, Blade Dancer, and a few entirely grayed-out slots marked "Secret condition unknown."
"Check this out," I said, zooming in on the Hybrid column. "Magic Swordsman. Looks like it uses the sword for... something more specific."
Kirito leaned over my shoulder.
"Like what, spells?"
"No, I don't think it's actual magic-magic. Look at the description."
I clicked, and a text box appeared, laid out almost like a classic MMO skill sheet:
Magic Swordsman Hybrid base class. Channels raw energy through the blade rather than the body. Doesn't cast spells: it enchants, extends, and projects.
Starting skills: Blazing Edge (temporary offensive enchantment), Far Cut (short-range attack, a bladed energy projection). Future skills locked until level 15: Blade Wave, Resonance, ???
"Ah, okay," Kirito said, sounding a little more at ease. "So it's not a mage hiding inside a swordsman, it's more like... a swordsman who can pull off stuff a normal swordsman can't, kind of like when we were kids messing around with a Star Wars lightsaber, making our own sound effects and everything."
"Exactly. Like a Sung Jin-Woo from Solo Leveling, if you're picking up what I'm putting down the weapon stays a weapon, but it becomes a vessel for something more."
We went back to sit where we'd been before, and I picked the conversation back up:
"We need to be careful from here on out. What are you thinking of specializing in?"
Kirito thought about it.
"Honestly, the sword. So for me it'll just be Swordsman, no magic side to it. You?"
I thought it over too. There were classes like Fighter, Warrior, Berserker, and so on, but I already had an idea.
"I'm going to lean into command, I think. So I'll take the Fighter class. It unlocks Quick Reflex and Encouragement a passive that boosts our damage across the board the more I fight alongside my allies."
I sighed and confirmed the Fighter class. A small box popped up:
Class selected: Fighter. Skills unlocked: Quick Reflex, Encouragement (passive). Next specialization tier: level 20.
Kirito did the same on his end and announced:
"I unlocked Honed lets me deal slashing damage even against stone enemies and Weakness Detection, which does exactly what it sounds like."
After a few minutes of talking things through, we settled on a simple plan: even if it's a little selfish, we'd focus on quests that pay out rewards, skills, and items. Which meant I'd still be stuck fighting with a sword for a while longer, until I could actually make use of the magic branch.
After the conversation, we settled down by the lake, eating some smoked meat, each lost in our own thoughts, watching the water.
My mom... I know she's strong, but I also know that if she loses me, she won't fight anymore.
I clenched my hand, crushing a bit of dirt between my fingers, because deep down I knew that if I died, I'd be killing my mother too. She'd already lost her husband. She wouldn't survive losing her kid on top of that.
What else stayed stuck in my mind was that silhouette. My gut kept telling me it wasn't a coincidence, that it wasn't...
Something snapped me out of my thoughts: I saw Kirito collapse, a "Sleep" status displayed above him. I rushed to wake him up.
"Kirito!"
On the surface of the lake, a woman appeared. Her long black hair fell over a flowery dress, something out of the nineteenth or twentieth century. She walked on the water without sinking, and her hands or rather, her entire arms seemed to be made of paint.
Instinctively, I stepped in front of Kirito, drawing my sword.
"Who are you!"
The woman stopped, smiled softly, and kept walking forward. Once she was close enough, I swung my sword toward her side as a feint, then redirected it toward her arm at the last second. She intercepted it with two fingers. My sword turned into paint and collapsed into a puddle at my feet.
She laughed softly.
"Unfortunately, that's not very effective against me. But I do appreciate the courage."
I raised my fists, ready to fight bare-handed, knowing full well it probably wouldn't do anything — but if I had to die, at least let it be while fighting.
Sorry, Mom. I guess...
The woman cut off my thoughts with a soft laugh.
"Relax. Stop thinking about death. I come in peace well, actually, I just wanted to see the anomaly."
I stayed on guard.
"That word again. What is it?"
She looked me straight in the eyes.
"Are you sure you want to know? Even coming here, it's mostly out of curiosity on my part. You could still stay in the dark. Ignorance is a fine choice too, sometimes."
I thought about it for a long moment, but deep down I felt like there was so much more behind all of this. I looked her in the eyes and said, firmly:
"No. Tell me."
She smiled softly, placed a finger under my chin, and looked deep into my eyes.
"Just as I thought. You really are an anomaly."
She stepped back and bowed, like a proper lady.
"Pleased to meet you. My name is Clea Dessendre, and I'm ready to answer you, Aoi."