The nights in Aincrad weren't completely dark. Moonlight helped, and so did the scattered glow of fireflies. On clear nights especially, the moon shone bright and clean, with the stars glittering around it like decoration. Every now and then, just looking up could be genuinely beautiful.
At the same time, though, when he lifted his head, he saw more than stardust.
He saw the underside of the second floor.
And once he saw it, there was no way not to feel oppressed.
No way not to think about the ninety-nine floors of suffering still waiting above.
Satoru walked slowly through the forest, one cautious step at a time. Dense branches and leaves blocked out the moon, and his faint shadow broke apart across the patch of wild grass behind him.
Honestly, walking through the field at night was a terrible experience.
He liked to think he had plenty of gaming experience, but that had all been on a screen barely over a foot wide. No matter how vicious the monsters looked when they lunged out of it, he'd still been sitting safely in a chair, sipping something cold and refreshing.
Now, though, it felt like he'd wandered into a horror movie, like one of those idiots who went exploring graveyards and abandoned mansions in the dead of night.
The wind was colder after dark. It wasn't just the chill on his skin. His heart had been tight the whole time.
At a time like this, a monster jumping out of nowhere was practically expected. What really got to him was the unease, that constant fear of what he couldn't see. Every so often, it made him catch his breath.
A long time ago, he'd played a famous old game where you needed to equip a candle at night just to see the area around you.
Without one, everything went pitch black.
And the monsters would beat you into the dirt.
"Haah..."
He carefully scanned his surroundings before moving on again.
A teammate would've been a huge comfort right about now. Just having another person close by probably would've eased some of the pressure in his chest.
But...
Humans, meaning players, were already on the list of things he had to be wary of.
Other people had no reason to help him. And now that he basically had no family to rely on, there was nothing wrong with being broadly suspicious. If he wanted to lower his guard, he'd already had more than enough chances to learn better. He wasn't stupid enough to keep bashing his head against the same lesson.
As he went deeper, monster indicators began appearing in his field of vision. He still couldn't make out the monsters themselves through the dim, blurry darkness ahead, where they hid in the forest's shadows, but his basic Search skill was enough to show that their aggro range had expanded around him.
The markers were a faint red, which meant they were within his level range, though not without some risk.
Gray-white meant trash mobs.
Dark red, almost black, meant impossible.
At least the system designers had put in that much thought.
He stopped, then crept forward as lightly as he could, parting a chest-high patch of grass and narrowing his eyes.
A plant about one and a half meters tall swayed in the shadows.
That wasn't the wind.
It was alive, with its own AI. Just like wild boars idly pawed at the ground, this thing, a Little Nepenthes, swayed its body back and forth as if stretching. It was called a bug-eating plant, sure, but he had no doubt that if they fought, it would happily try to eat him too.
Its level was 3.
Not unbeatable.
More importantly, it was also the target of the quest. Thankfully, there were no other monsters nearby. Just this one. Perfect for a test run.
After one last check of the area, Satoru reached behind him. His hand found the hilt of his curved sword, and by the time he drew it, he was already in position.
Reaver activated in an instant.
One second he was hidden in the grass, watching from cover. The next, he shot through the forest shadows with a sharp, tearing rush of air.
His blade grazed the plant, and the swaying Little Nepenthes let out a shriek that sounded nothing like any living thing. Satoru landed, flicked a glance at its HP, and sent his curved sword back in.
Curved Sword Skill, Flash Triple Slash.
Orange-red light traced the movement of the weapon as it struck the monster head-on in a clean three-hit combo. Between the two skills, its HP was already down to the point where a few normal attacks would finish it.
Good.
He lowered his blade at the right moment. A half-dead enemy like this was enough for testing.
Now that he was close enough, he could finally see what it really looked like.
Honestly, it looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, some grotesque alien plant. Its body resembled a giant pitcher plant, writhing all over with green, tentacle-like vines. Sharp leaves jutted out from both sides of its head, edged with cold-looking serrations, and thick yellow fluid dripped continuously from what passed for its mouth.
Disgusting...
Satoru clicked his tongue.
Even badly wounded, the Little Nepenthes still waved its tentacles high in a threatening display before lashing them at him. The twisted stems moved along bizarre attack paths. On that point alone, it was already tougher than the wild boars that only knew how to charge.
Satoru immediately stepped back, batting away a tentacle with his sword more as a test than a defense, memorizing that attack pattern.
Sssshhk!!
A scraping sound came from between its split leaves. He wasn't sure whether this thing had AI on the same level as humanoid mobs, but it definitely seemed vicious enough.
Then it spat acid straight from its maw.
Even though he'd been focused the whole time, that kind of attack still caught him by surprise. He dodged in a slight panic, but some of the acid splashed onto the curved sword he'd only just bought. A faint corrosive hiss rose from the blade.
Its durability had probably dropped already...
That wasn't going to work if he wanted to grind all day.
As expected, pigs really were humanity's best friends.
Satoru sighed and kept tangling with the nearly dead Little Nepenthes for another minute or two. Only after his own HP had dropped by around a third did he finally kill it, sending the monster he'd been toying with back into the system as data, where it became part of his EXP bar.
And it gave nearly twice as much EXP as a wild boar.
That was enough to get the picture.
Time to begin.
Without a word, Satoru backed off, slipped into the brush again, and moved toward the other Little Nepenthes his Search skill had marked.
Figure it out, get used to it, repeat.
Even in a pure fighting game, with no stat advantage between characters, doing those three boring steps hundreds or thousands of times was enough to earn yourself a place among the best.
This was an RPG, where strength accumulated.
Satoru didn't let up for even a second. Call it copying the process he used on the first Little Nepenthes if you wanted, but he repeated it exactly on the next several dozen.
Right.
He didn't need talent.
He didn't need miraculous reactions in life-or-death moments.
There was no need to keep forcing himself into desperate situations just to make a comeback.
In a game where even one extra point on the stat sheet could decide the outcome, this was how he played.
This was how he'd topped multiple game servers more than once.
If there was one thing bothering him, though...
It was that he still hadn't found the special monster the quest required.
It definitely appeared in this area, so maybe he just had to keep killing these things until it spawned. In other words, its appearance was random. He could treat this as leveling, sure, but it'd still be better to finish early and head back.
Reaver, Flash Triple Slash, then normal attacks.
The Little Nepenthes's HP was shaved down with precise efficiency, almost no damage wasted.
After checking his EXP panel again, Satoru fell into thought.
"Yo, pretty impressive."
The sudden applause rang sharply through the silent forest.
Satoru's body tensed at once. He spun around, his grip tightening on the curved sword.
"Uh... sorry. I scared you, didn't I?"
Faced with the hostility Satoru wasn't even trying to hide, the player who had appeared looked awkward. He quickly raised both hands, doing his best to seem harmless.
"I don't mean anything by it. Seriously."
In the dim light, Satoru could just barely make out his face. He looked a little younger than him, maybe. His equipment was one of the sets Satoru had seen earlier at the blacksmith in the village.
So he was from Yerika Village too. Here for the quest?
After a moment, Satoru relaxed his grip on the curved sword and put on a smile that could pass for friendly.
"No, my reaction was a little much. It's just... in a forest like this."
"Haha, yeah... after what happened, I guess that's normal." The player let out a sigh, then added with open admiration, "That was a really clean fight. Plant-type monsters don't have annoying sword skills like humanoid mobs do, but they're still a pain to deal with. And they're seriously gross. If you're not mentally prepared, they can make you shiver."
"You're definitely right about the gross part."
Satoru kept smiling.
A beta tester, huh.
"Honestly, I didn't expect this," the player said, rubbing his chin. "I figured everyone would go to Horunka Village first. That route has higher priority, after all."
Satoru paused, then nodded with a smile from the cover of the trees.
"Maybe because everyone's thinking the same thing. That just makes resources harder to compete for there. Better to walk a little farther and come to Yerika Village instead."
"Haha, that's exactly what I thought. Guess we're on the same wavelength. There's only one cake to go around, after all."
"Then I guess we got here fairly early."
"I almost thought I was the first one, honestly. I kept going back and forth on whether I should come here or head to Horunka Village, so I spent forever deciding..."
The way the guy looked at him made it seem like he'd settled on something.
Maybe he already considered Satoru one of them. A fellow insider.
"Then you're doing the Secret Medicine of the Forest quest too, right?"
"Yeah."
"I see..." The player suddenly looked puzzled and gave him another glance. "But you use a curved sword, don't you? The reward for this quest is Anneal Blade, right? It's strong enough to last you to the third floor, sure, but it's still a one-handed straight sword."
Satoru's smile didn't falter.
"The weapon isn't the only reward. Besides, one extra weapon never hurts. For me, this is the last quest in the Yerika Village quest line."
"You've got some serious persistence," the player said with a sigh of admiration.
He didn't seem to be thinking anything deeper than that. Then, as if something had just occurred to him, his face brightened.
"Oh, right. Since we ran into each other anyway, want to team up and do it together?"
"I could..." Satoru frowned and hesitated for a moment. "But this is a solo quest, isn't it?"
The required drop only came from a single monster. Even if a hundred people showed up, only one of them could get it.
"It's fine. You know the monster that drops it appears randomly. If there are two of us killing them, the chances of it showing up are better," the player said cheerfully.
Satoru was silent for a moment.
"I-I'm not going to steal it from you," the guy said with a wry smile. "Yeah, the drop goes into the temporary party inventory, but I'm not that shameless. I'm doing the quest too. If we can get yours first, I'd really appreciate it if you helped me with mine afterward."
"No, no. It's not like I was going to think something that cynical." Satoru smiled without hesitation, then made his decision. "All right, let's work together for now. My name is Yurnero."
"I'm Coper."
Coper looked pleased at the answer. He walked over and held out his hand, and Satoru reached out and shook it lightly.
"No time to waste. Let's get started."
That really was the most efficient way.
Satoru looked at him.