"Please upgrade it. Thanks."
His hoarse voice sounded like he hadn't slept in days, grating like wood being scraped. The small blacksmith looked at the customer in confusion.
His gear was visibly worn, likely close to breaking. He was wrapped in a tattered black hooded cloak, as if he had just returned from a defeat in the wilderness, his face hidden beneath the shadow of the hood.
For a brief moment, Nezha's eyes flickered with suspicion, but soon settled back into calm.
"Alright… let me check its stats."
He carefully took the heavy longsword, tapped the blade, and watched the stat window pop up. His usually drooping eyes lifted slightly.
"A Forged Blade at +5. Two upgrade attempts remaining. Not a bad weapon."
And most likely, all his funds had been poured into this partner. Just by looking at the cloaked man, it was clear he had been extremely cautious even with maintaining his other gear. That exhausted appearance. How long had he been forcing himself into relentless hunts, pushing himself this hard?
Nezha lowered his head, as if suppressing something.
"What's wrong? Is there a problem?"
"No… nothing. What type of enhancement?"
His voice was tightly restrained, and Nezha's expression twisted ever so slightly.
"Sharpness and precision."
The young blacksmith kept his head lowered, jaw clenched, forcing out a low reply.
"Alright… no problem. Total cost: 2,700 Col."
"Okay."
After the payment was completed, the small-statured Nezha walked over to the forge and began processing the materials. Brilliant flames surged to life, their elegant curves mesmerizing to watch. He gently lifted the Forged Blade and slid it into the furnace, letting it be engulfed in heat.
A minute later, he pulled out the glowing red blade and placed it on the anvil. After taking a breath, he raised the forging hammer and began striking, one blow after another, slow and heavy.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
Everything proceeded exactly according to the standard process. Yet on the final strike, the crisp ring of the hammer rose sharply in pitch. Then, with a harsh cracking sound, the Forged Blade on the anvil shattered instantly into molten, fiery fragments that scattered outward.
The cloaked man's body trembled.
Nezha's expression twisted. He let the hammer drop weakly, staring at the now-empty anvil before bowing deeply toward the cloaked man.
"I'm sorry."
His voice trembled with tears.
"I'm really… sorry!"
"If 'sorry' were worth tens of thousands of Col, I'd be saying it every day."
The flat, emotionless response made Nezha clench his fists again. To him, it sounded like biting sarcasm.
But it was nothing more than a simple remark. What followed turned his face pale.
"I didn't expect Quick Change to be usable like this."
"Th-that…"
"I really have to give you some credit."
He pulled back his hood, revealing Satoru's utterly ordinary face. His fingers moved as if pulling up a menu and selecting something. With a light clatter, a jet-black longsword appeared in his right hand.
It was the very same Forged Blade that should have been destroyed moments ago.
Seeing the blade return as if from the dead, Nezha collapsed to the ground, as though all strength had left his body.
"Sorry about this. If I wanted you to admit it without any room to deny it, doing it face-to-face like this was the only way."
Quick Change was a derivative skill available to all one-handed weapons. As the name implied, it allowed rapid switching between equipped weapons. Normally, changing weapons required opening the character menu, unequipping the current weapon, and then equipping a new one.
But with this skill, all it took was a single input on the menu bar to complete the process. With enough proficiency, it could be done in an instant.
At weapon proficiency levels of 50, 100, 150, and so on, enhancement skills could be learned. Quick Change was one of them. Originally, it existed to counter future debuffs from demi-human monsters that could disarm players, so most people wouldn't waste valuable resources learning it early on.
Satoru had learned it at level 50 purely by chance.
To him, it was the starting point for studying weapon-based skills. In someone else's hands, though, it had become a money-printing exploit. Perhaps that kind of possibility was part of the game's appeal.
"You took the customer's weapon and used Quick Change to swap the 'transferred' weapon with a scrap plate in your inventory. I'm guessing your stall clutter conveniently blocked the menu interface."
"Even if I apologize, it won't change anything."
After a long pause, Nezha let out a hoarse laugh.
"I kept forcing myself, telling myself it would be the last time. But when I looked back, I realized I had already deceived so many people. By the time I wanted to make it right, it was too late. Everything I scammed had already been converted into Col."
"Yours too… all that equipment you risked your life to obtain in the wilderness is gone."
"Someone like me should've just been left to rot, yet I dragged others down with me!"
"So, do you want to kill yourself to atone?"
Hearing Satoru's question, Nezha looked up blankly, meeting a pair of utterly calm eyes.
"After going this far, doing things that disgust even yourself, ending it all by killing yourself. That's just backwards, isn't it? If you're this hesitant, then forget high-risk schemes that require acting. You wouldn't accomplish much even doing good deeds."
"I…"
"Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed I got deceived by someone like you," Satoru sighed.
"Of course I can't compare to people like you who can swing their swords however they want!"
Nezha slammed his fist hard against the ground, growling.
"You're amazing, aren't you? Swinging that curved blade so skillfully that people around you admire you and cheer! Everyone wants to be the hero standing at center stage!"
"Is that why you chose the name 'Ne Zha'?" Satoru asked.
Nezha froze mid-outburst.
"That's the name of an Eastern hero, right? Rare, and even misleading in pronunciation… Come on, get up. Let's talk properly. Personally, I do want to recover the Col I lost, but before that, there are others who want to have a serious conversation with you."
The three people who had been watching from the street corner stepped forward.
...
"From the very beginning, when I first connected, I was judged as unsuitable for FullDive. It's like having lag in a normal network. My hearing, touch, taste, and smell all function normally, but my vision has issues."
In a secluded tea house they found for the discussion, Nezha sat with his head lowered. As he spoke, he slowly reached for the cup in front of him. His movements were cautious, like a blind person feeling his way. Only after locating the handle did he firmly grasp it.
"It's not that I can't see. I just can't judge distance. I can't tell how far my hands are from objects in front of me, or how far obstacles are from my feet. At the beginning, I once thought a small step right beside me was a meter away. I stepped forward confidently and ended up falling."
"For me, striking the blade accurately with a forging hammer already takes everything I have."
He forced a faint smile.
"No wonder your movements were always so slow when you were hammering," Kirito nodded.
Nezha looked at Kirito and Asuna, his face filled with apology.
"Three days ago, when Asuna-san took back that rapier, I already had a faint feeling… but I was actually a little relieved, thinking maybe someone else would stop me."
"You should have stopped immediately."
"Was it because your companions kept egging you on?"
Nezha fell silent for a long moment.
"We aren't friends in the real world; we met in a previous stealth game. It was a cheap prototype, just a simple game where you fought wave after wave of monsters on a vertical path, competing to see who could score the highest. But even with something like that, I felt a lot of pressure because I was holding the party back, and our total score just wouldn't go up."
"I did think about quitting, but no one ever suggested it to me… so I just kept hanging on. Finally, when SAO came out, everyone decided to jump into this VRMMO, and so did I. I wanted to experience it no matter what. But since I'd been labeled a 'disabled player' in that kind of game, and partly out of a desire to get an easy ride… I figured that if I joined their party, I could get stronger even without fighting seriously."
He wore a sad expression.
"But when it turned into a death game, things were different. Still, even if you didn't fight, being a production class could still be helpful. I suppose it was just my personal curiosity, who gave you the idea and inspiration for such a deceptive strategy?" Satoru suddenly asked.
Players enjoy the game, yet they are also, in fact, fighting against its creators.
On one hand, creating the system; on the other, subverting it. For a player, there is no greater honor than forcing a seemingly balanced game to be patched through one's own abilities.
Seeking out and exploiting what appear to be non-exploitable areas, using them as exploits, this is exactly what Satoru has been doing all along. To be honest, he even feels a kinship with this approach.
Nezha, however, shook his head.
"It wasn't any of us, but someone else we've never met."
"Who was it?"
"For the first two weeks, I was trying my hand as a combatant. I had the only long-range flying attack item in the game, even without a sense of distance, I figured I could still fight…"
"You mean the Blade Throwing skill," Kirito said in surprise.
"Yeah, I bought a bunch of cheap throwing knives to practice, but the ammo capacity issue was unavoidable, the limitations were too severe. I gave up when my proficiency hit 50. My teammates, trying to coordinate with me, ended up falling behind the front-line players. When I said I was quitting, the atmosphere got really tense."
"I really didn't know what to do back then. Even if I'd said I wanted to change classes to a Blacksmith, production classes are hard to develop early on without a massive amount of currency. In the end, even I knew what the best solution was… to just leave me in the starting town. That was something I should have said myself, but I was too scared."
"Just then, from a corner of the tavern, a guy we'd always assumed was an NPC suddenly spoke up: 'If that guy has Quick Change, becoming a Blacksmith actually has a super cool way to make money, you know.'"
Everyone couldn't help but look at each other; this sudden appearance was way too out of the blue.
"Who was that guy?" Argo pressed.
"No, I don't know. He just explained the swap method and left. We never added him afterward, but he seemed really strange, his way of speaking, his appearance… He was wearing a big black cloak, wrapped around him like a raincoat, covering his whole body."
"A raincoat?" Argo and the others muttered.
A hooded cloak isn't exactly rare gear; you could probably find one in just about anyone's backpack if you stopped someone on the street.
"Right, it was a bit like the gear Yu-san asked me to upgrade earlier, so I mistook it at first glance and was really surprised."
"Nero, what's wrong? You suddenly look really pale." Sheeta, who had been mostly silent, suddenly spoke softly, gently tugging at Satoru's sleeve.
"Is that so?" Satoru replied in a low, even tone.
A raincoat.
Black.
Shattered fragments.
In a secluded grove, bathed only in sparse moonlight.
'Such a rare opportunity, and yet you were the one to make the first move?'
'Could you tell me your name?'
'Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.'
"What else did that guy say? Like, about the cut he'd get?" Satoru asked Nezha, though his tone sounded more like an interrogation.
His behavior was a bit unusual, but the content of his questions was important. Coming up with such a cunning yet brilliant idea, that guy was smart. If he wanted to make money without taking too much risk, using Nezha and the others as assistants was entirely feasible.
"No, nothing. He didn't say a word about any of that. He just explained the quick-Switch technique and left without mentioning any reward for himself. He walked out cleanly and decisively after that," Nezha said, shrinking his head.
"…What?" Satoru stared at him.
"Then what was he after?" Doubt spread among the group.
'We'll meet again in the future, heh, after all, you've already killed someone.'
"Did he really say nothing else besides that?" Satoru pressed further.
"If I had to say, there was one more thing. At first, even Orlando and the others were against it, thinking it was a crime, but that guy laughed heartily, a very distinctive laugh. I'm not sure if I should call it clear or joyful; it was just like in the movies. What else did he say afterward? Anyway, eventually, whether it was Orlando, Beowulf, or anyone else, including me, we all ended up laughing."
"'This is an online game. The only things you can't do are the system rules, right? Everything else is fair game.' I vaguely remember a line like that."
"Finally, he said 'Good Luck' and left."
"That's sophistry. If that were the case, you could attack players fighting monsters right next to you, or even dump the hordes of monsters you've drawn onto others. Or, if the area outside the circle isn't covered by crime prevention protocols, in extreme cases…" Argo said hurriedly.
Nezha also looked a bit lost.
"Looking back now, it's still hard to believe. The Guild's atmosphere had completely changed. We did whatever we could get away with, and everyone was on a high. I even thought to myself, 'Rather than being a useless nobody, I might as well scam some money.' But… the first time I destroyed someone else's weapon, the look on that person's face, that's when I realized just how unforgivable that kind of thing is."
"When I got back, everyone was so… so happy to see the sword I'd swindled. They even praised me for the first time. So, so…"
His voice trailed off into a murmur.
Silence fell over the room once more.
The only things forbidden were those according to the system rules from the very beginning.
For Satoru personally, it was a view he couldn't help but agree with.
But… he felt a slight chill run down his spine.
They were of the same kind, but definitely not of the same mind. Satoru's grip tightened slightly.
That man, just like him, was fully aware of the role he played within the game, yet he consistently turned a blind eye to what should have been the top priority, financial gain. It was the same back then, and it was the same now.
Sheeta, who was gently tugging at the hem of his shirt, looked at him with a hint of concern in his eyes.