It’s been one week since the clearing of the first floor. In that time, the second floor was easily cleared by Yuto and the Northern Star Guild. The floors seem to build into each other, the forest we entered at the end of the first floor is still what we’re exploring now on the third floor. While the first floor was Rapunzel, the second was Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf was easily slain, Yuto reported to us that it was even weaker than Gothel. Well, ‘us’ might be a stretch. He reported it to the guild leaders, and Bai-ko reported it to me. Meanwhile, across the last week I’ve been busy with two things.
“When the blue-bird sings??” I cry out into the street, standing at my small stall in Trestar. Sukine, Haruhi, and Haruno, have all been completely missing in action. They couldn’t have died…right? No. They’re good players, they’re smart people, and just like me they’ve coded games. We know what to do to win. I sigh, looking down the crowded street and seeing nobody responding to my seemingly schizophrenic shouts. “...the episode of Naruto is over,” I mumble to myself, sitting back down on my chair. I’ve had no success with this first goal, but the second goal speaks for itself.
[Player Profile: {Kazesoku}
Class: Bounty Hunter
Titles: Gilgamesh, Cain
Lv. 16 - 12,559/32,000 EXP
HP: 1235/1235
ST: 1450/1450
MP: 825/825
Strength: 6
Dexterity: 16
Constitution: 7
Intelligence: 8
Presence: 5
Skills: LOCKED, Swordsmanship (D), Evasiveness (Passive), Tracking (E), Weapons Improvisor (Passive), Arcane Knowledge (F), Sharpshooter (F)]
I snicker. Everytime I look at my profile I feel better and better about it. I haven’t quite caught up to where Yuto was during the raid on Gothel, but I’ve still made good progress. Not to mention my skills, which prepare me for anything. It was an incredible stroke of luck I was able to acquire arcane knowledge, mixed with my knowledge of how games like this work. Albeit, I didn’t expect it to take three straight days of studying beginner spell books and interviewing every magic class I could find…
[System Alert: Message from Bai-Ko]
She’s been sending me updates pretty frequently, but this is too early. She hasn’t even met with the other guild leaders yet. Maybe she’s found some information on Sukine and the rest? With a thought, I open the messages tab.
[TP as soon as you can. Yuto lost a life.]
I rise to my feet immediately, my eyes widening. Yuto? He lost one of his lives? “That can’t be…” I whisper to myself, reading the message over and over trying to come to terms with it. Yuto’s strong, he’s smart, he’s level-headed. How did he lose a life?! On just the 3rd floor?! That doesn’t make any sense, it’s too early, he’s strong! With my heart pounding in my ears, and still in disbelief, I select Bai-ko’s profile. Friends can teleport to each other as long as they’re in a safe zone, which I’m assuming she must be given she’s sending me this message. I select the teleport button.
= = = = = =
My vision dissolved into blue shards, but gradually the pieces came back together and regained color. I’m on the third floor now, around a small campfire. Bai-ko, Gondolin, Christopher, and two people I’ve never met before are already here, sitting on logs around the flame. There are a total of four tents, three large and one small, which make up the small outpost on the third floor’s forest. It’s ridiculously dark, and if not for the fire I wouldn’t even be able to see the dozens of thick oak trees densely packed around us.
I stride forward, “Bai-ko, I got your message, where’s Yuto? What happened?”
Bai-ko turns to me, the rest continue staring at the fire, “Yuto’s back on Trestar. We banned him from the floor.”
“WHAT?!” I cry out in shock, unable to believe the words, closing the gap between us. Before I can get to her though, one of the strangers I don’t know interrupts me. He’s a beastkin like her, with auburn fox ears, shaggy hair, and piercing green eyes. He wields a kanabo, a metal rod thicker at the top with studs, and looks stand-offisly at me. “I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Bai-ko,” I hiss, stepping past him. Or trying to. But to my surprise, he swings the kanabo at me. He’s a build I’ve seen before. He’s strong, but that’s really it. He’s not creative, he’s not fast, he’s just strong. I step into his attack, closing any space between us, sweeping his legs from under him and grabbing his mouth while I bring him to the ground. I hold him there tightly, looking up at Bai-ko, putting together their relationship. “Tell your second in command to step down, and stop being so cryptic. Explain what’s going on Bai-ko.”
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
She sighs, massaging her eyes while saying, “You’re right. I’m sorry. We’ve just all been on edge. Hong-hu, stand down.” I feel him relax under my hand, so I let him go and get next to Bai-ko.
“What happened?”
“Kazesoku did,” Christopher grumbles, tossing a few more twigs into the fire. I hide my reaction as well as I can, but fortunately everybody save for Bai-ko and Hong-hu are still staring at the fire.
“That’s not quite right,” Bai-ko corrects, “We don’t know that he’s done anything-”
“Oh cut it out,” the girl I don’t know steps up, her arms crossed and a defiant expression on her face. She has black hair, braided into twintails, and a sharp jawline. Pointy ears strut out beyond her hair, signaling her as an elf. Her eyes border on black, and there are freckles across her face, “What are you, in love with the guy?! He made Yuto lose a life! And he did it with a surprise attack no less! I don’t know why we’re still sitting here debating about what to do! We should just go out there and-”
“Lose a life? Like Yuto?” Gondolin finishes her sentence for her.
She tsks, “You don’t know that! He got caught off guard. We know they’re here now! Instead of taking revenge, we’re sitting here while they’re laughing at us!”
“We’re coming up with a plan, actually,” Bai-ko says, “Now sit down and listen. Or, if you want, you can go brazenly chase after the shadows.” The girl throws her hands up in annoyance and storms off into a tent. Baiko continues, “That’s Tankina, she’s the second in command of The North Star. She’s been taking Yuto’s first death the hardest of us all…We kind of thought he was invincible.”
“I kind of did too…On the topic of which, are you going to explain what happened yet? Or should I try to piece it together from what I’ve heard.”
Bai-ko sighs, “You’re probably not far off. Yuto was raiding this floor with an advance party from his guild. Things had been going well, and we’d made substantial progress. This floor seems to be based off Hansel and Gretal, so there are some breadcrumbs hidden along a path you need to follow. If you follow them, you get deeper and deeper into the forest, until eventually you come across a cabin. The cabin was a dungeon, Yuto didn’t want to challenge it yet, so he came back along the trail, and was going to try and gather a proper raid guild for it. But he was ambushed.”
“Thanatos?”
“There were way more than they could fight off. According to Yuto and the others there were at least 100 of them. Yuto was…Well, he’s the only one that made it back.”
“What does that even mean? You die and then respawn, there’s no way everybody there was on their last life except him, right?”
“Do you know how respawns work?” Bai-ko asks coldly. I slowly shake my head, and she continues, “Wherever you last slept, you respawn, as long as it's a designated safe spot. Which, are determined by the game as spots cleared by players and where they’ve set up camp with actively residing players.”
“They didn’t…” I murmur, realizing what they did. As long as a spot was cleared by players, it doesn’t matter what those players do. So if they kidnapped the rest of the players…They could kill them over and over as they respawned in Thanatos’s camp.
“They did. Yuto had to kill himself in order to escape. They had arrows with sleeping potions, or paralysis, he couldn’t tell. But one thing was clear, they were targeting him.” We all sit in silence for a few moments, with only the crackling of the fire to interrupt it.
“So, why aren’t we going after them immediately? Tankina’s right. If we go now, we could probably still save some of them, and avenge Yuto.”
Bai-ko shakes her head slowly, “No, almost certainly not. They’ve been missing for three days now. It takes that long to respawn. There’s no point in rushing at this point.”
“Well, then why don’t we get a huge force together? We could just totally overwhelm them with numbers. You don’t seriously expect a couple of us to fight against a group that big, right?”
Christopher speaks up this time, his normally strong voice slightly weathered and pained, “You weren’t there for the colosseum massacre. Even if we called on the guilds, most of them wouldn’t want to fight against Thanatos, and by the time we got a force together they would’ve heard of it and left.”
I groan in frustration, plopping down on a log next to Bai-ko, “Cool. So, no offense, but Tankina was right. We’re just sitting here for no reason? Why’d you even call me if we’re not going to do anything.”
The camp shifts slightly, and the members all look between each other uneasily, their eyes settling on Bai-ko. She closes her eyes and announces, “Well, I called you because I thought you might be able to help us make a decision. You’re strong, you’re competent, you’re smart. What do you make of things?”
“What do I make of it?!” I ask incredulously, snickering and staring back at the fire. I list off our assets, “We don’t know where the enemy is. We don’t know their real strength, or levels. We don’t know how many of them are here, only that they outnumber us by at least 15 to 1. We don’t have Yuto, we don’t have time to get any more group members, and as a wonderful cherry on top we’re in the middle of dark woods. Did I miss anything?”
“They’ve got Kazesoku,” Gondolin glumly adds. And that’s when it hits me. My eyes flicker to Bai-ko. Her red eyes are open again, and staring back at me with an almost apologetic light. Her plan, without ever being explicitly stated, becomes clear to me. She wants me to use the renown of my username to go and chase the Thanatos guild away, or to help us get the drop on them. Or…Maybe even to infiltrate and keep an eye on them.
“...We’ve got Aoi.”