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There wasn’t really any other way, after the 25th floor boss…it was too hard to pass up the offer. She was going to ditch her companionship with her long time partner, Kirito. The first time since the first floor, her heart was stuck in two directions. To partake in the frontlines or to live in this floating castle. It took her half a year to decide; now she needed to take up responsibility and join a guild.
The Knights of the Blood Oath was small, it only included the guild master, Heathcliff, her, Godfree and Uzala. After she had joined, she felt weak compared to the towering, sparkling men that looked down at her with narrow eyes. Compared to Kirito, they seemed to be much older considering how squared their chins were.
Transitioning from a solo player to a guild was rough, especially with Kirito on her mind. It had seemed that she wouldn’t receive the same support from the new people around her as the guild got bigger. For that, she had to harden her heart; steel herself from the ongoing judging looks from the other members. She had to be strong.
Eventually, Kirito was far from her concern from the pressure hanging on her shoulders. If anything, a dark cloud hung over her. Everytime she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw her oldself, fighting for validation. She told herself that the place wasn’t real and didn’t need validation from anyone–specailly if these people around her turned out to be fake. Even she had her doubts if Kirito or Heathcliff were real people and were only NPCs. Something at that thought stabbed her in the heart. If she was going to seek validation, it was going to be someone…someone that could see her and feel her without the barrier of data transmission.
Asuna and her guildmates settled in a town on the 27th floor of Ronbaru. For the meantime. Before they could find a proper base. She went alone at night to grind her heart out for the means to not be left behind. That school girl that she was half a year ago was crawling back into her skin and controlling her bones. Her brain rewiring slowly to the person she was born–taught to be.
From what she heard about this floor is how dark the floor was. The only light source igniting the rocky scenery was the prismatic ores glowing, leaving little to no light. Now that she was in a guild, she did not get as much time to grind as she would while going solo. So, she found herself walking off in the middle of the night.
As she was walking, she couldn’t help but feel a tingle in her back. She stopped in the middle of the rocky pathway; gathering her surroundings. Even with the glowing ores providing the blue light, she still could not see twenty feet in front of her. It was an odd feeling that she felt many times. In the real world, that kind of feeling was due to the feeling of danger if there was something that posed such a thing. But in the virtual world, this was something that coded in to give the feeling of “danger” in a perpetual area. Meaning that…something was watching her. Her hand on her rapier’s handle tightened its grip as she swung her head back and forth. It was deemed useless since her eyesight was futile in the darkness.
“Hello there~”
Asuna gasped as she spun around, digging the heel of her boot into the ground to keep from falling off the treacherous path. She didn’t see anything. Confusion wrote on her face as she kept her rapier at a defensive stature.
“Up here.”
She heard another voice up on the rocks. Her eyes focused hard as the light was barely showing anything, but her eyes did catch a small glint perched on some ores. The light of the ores were only able to give away the light of their boots and metal, but the rest of the body was completely submerged in black. As she looked at them, she could feel her heart jump and wondered if it was Kirito that she was looking at. But the voice was totally different and was much rougher than her former partner’s.
The dark figure jumped down in front of Asuna. The light of the ores and the moonlight gave aid to her sight of this man. With the way she heard high pitched jingling made her think they were wearing chainmail.
His body was more visible now, Asuna recognized it immediately, “Morte…”
The last night she had saw him was back at floor 6. Her and Kirito were paralyzed as Morte and his partner schemed a plan to get them killed as they partaked in the quest. The fight resulted in Morte almost getting killed by Kirito. His partner fetched him and they fell back.
Morte made a low chortle, “Yes, I see that you recognize me. Now with your new fit, I almost didn’t recognize it was you. You look so lonely now,” he flashed a wry grin, “did you and Mr. Blackie break it off?”
Asuna tightened her jaw, “it’s not your business, but if you’re looking for him then I’m sorry to say, but he’s not here,” she darted her eyes from side to side. If Morte was here then surely the other one was here; the one with the short dagger. Her heart drummed against her chest; subtly wondering if she could take the two of them. Her eyes burned into his, under the chained coif, “May I ask where your partner is?”
He hummed a laugh as he stepped forward, “he’s not with me anymore–”
“Liar!” Asuna spat, her rapier twitching in her hand. Morte stopped a few feet in front of her as it appeared that Asuna was ready to strike.
He held up his hands, “look…look, I don’t have anything in my hands. So you can calm down,” but his devilish smile was unwavering.
Despite him being empty handed, Asuna was still on edge. He still could have been lying that his partner wasn’t around anymore–whatever that meant. Someone that could attack her from behind. Or a single flick of his wrist could send a poison pick flying towards her. Anything could happen. Since it was so dark, fighting with someone so crafty was such a gamble. The proficiency of her acrobatics skill was still low, so she did not have much confidence wouldn’t be sent off to the side. She slid backgrounds. Her boots made a crunching sound as she backed up into a rock to keep any ambush attacks on her.
“If you’re going to attack me, go ahead. Blackie isn’t here to hold you back now, is he?”
A low growl came from Asuna’s throat. So it was a trap…
He’s trying to get her to jump away from the rock so they could perform an ambush attack on her, “I’m not doing that. Why don’t you attack me first?”
Morte’s fists clenched as he slowly reached behind his back and pulled a ball off his belt. Asuna couldn’t see exactly what he pulled out, but she planted her feet on the ground accordingly, prepared to defend herself.
He pitched the ball towards her. As soon as it hit the ground, a bunch of smoke plumbed into the air around them. Unfortunately for her, her rapier was too thin to be able to fan the smoke away; however, the smoke wasn’t poisonous, so she was safe from being payalyzed. By the time she was able to move out of the smoke cloud safely, Morte was not there anymore. The hair on her neck still stood up. She looked around everywhere if he was around, but she couldn’t see the lurking figure.
With a sigh, Asuna sheathed her rapier to her hip. Her legs were locked up from the previous encounter. So much that it hindered her ability to move. Which was weird considering she did not have a debuff status effect on her. For a moment she thought that smoke bomb actually had a paralyzing buff on it.
As she was able to relax her legs, she moved forward with precaution. She had fought her heart out that night and came back to the KoB with a strange energy.
Asuna, now being the vice commander of the KoB, gave her chances to be in control of the front lines. Her desperation to get home was her guide. It was keeping her grounded, facing the reality of the world of SAO.
It has been a year since SAO started. Asuna’s mind felt numb from the normalcy of hazards around her everyday.
There was one night, Asuna was in the streets sitting on a barrel, just to wallow in her mind, planning for the next boss raid. It became a habit to this to the point that she did not know why she was doing it anymore…
At that second she heard a familiar beautiful sound of jingling chains in the darkness of the alleyway that was between a tavern, where her guild was hosting a party, and a store. So the smell of fermented berries wafted in the alleyway. It surprised her to see someone walk into the alleyway. By chance, that person came in to see her.
As the person came in closer, the dim lamp at the west wall made the chains on his head look like jewels.
“I had a feeling you’d be around since I saw all those white coats go in,” he said in a mocking tone.
Asuna glanced towards him before she went back to staring at the wall in front of her, in an attempt to ignore him.
“Oh, come on, you look like you’re not happy to see me.”
He came over and pulled an empty upside down barrel up in front of her to sit on. As he did that, Asuna turned her face at least 5 degrees to the left.
“I just want to be left alone right now,” she said.
Morte then laughed a little as if to ridicule her desire to be alone, “you want to be alone, out here? Aren’t you the supposed Aincrad Idol? At least have some glory in yourself. You look like a trash bag.”
While Morte talked, the words that he spewed out seemed to mean well but there was still a hint of a wry tone in them. Or it could just be Asuna. This was the person who tracked down Asuna and Kirito to get them killed. She still did not know why he was here or what he wanted. Since they were in a safe zone and Asuna was fully aware, there was potentially no way that Morte wanted to try to kill or hurt her.
He then reached into his pocket, “here, I’ve been wanting to get rid of some stuff in my inventory, so you can have this.”
Morte pulled out a small flower.
“Ah…”
Asuna let out a small bewildered sound as she looked at the flower in his hand. She wanted to snap and say “in your dreams” but she did not have the energy to argue with someone right at the moment.
She looked at it and up at him before she reached out and took the delicate petals from his hand. It was small and had six petals. Four of the petals were white, while the two petals at the top were purple. From what she could tell about the characteristics of it, it looked like a virtual equivalent of a viola. She wasn’t too sure if it was an attempt to cheer her up or it actually was an excuse to get rid of stuff from his inventory. Although, he didn’t seem to be like the guy who would go flower picking. This could have been from someone else’s inventory, someone he might have killed. A shiver went up her spine as she looked at the flower.
However…
Flowers in SAO usually have a duration time before they spoil and this kind of flower can be used for teas and medicine. Since she had a cooking skill, she could see what class ingredients it was and the spoil time. Most of the herbs and floral ingredients expired within a week which was 168 hours. This viola here only had 167 hours and 40 minutes left on it. So he must have only gotten it 20 minutes ago and they were in the safe zone. Usually when a player PKs, it takes effort to finally be able to enter towns that have the safeguards up. From her knowledge, these quests they have to go on can take hours or days…
“Anyways, I gotta go, Little Fencer. Have fun with your rotting~,” he walked away. Before Morte walked out of the alleyway, he looked back at her. Asuna could see a wink from the white of his eyes from under his coif; adorning with the same devil like grin.
She looked down at the small viola again. She just did not understand. This person used to try to kill her and Kirito and here he was giving her a flower. Her fingers twirled the flower around before she let out a small smile.
It was so absurd to think that it came from Morte. Back then, she could have just assumed that he was one dimensional, like with all the mobs that she had fought and the guilds she had to deal with. There was a point where she had trouble distinguishing real people and the NPCs. But there was something that the NPCs here couldn’t replicate which was the complexity of the human mind. She cherished that she was confused with Morte’s behavior which made her want to see him again.
Asuna closed her eyes.
*At least have some glory in yourself.*
“Thank you, Morte.”