Tsurei

As they exited the store, Kenji breathed onto his hands in an attempt to warm them up,

“That NPC was weird…” Yuta frowned as they walked to the city gate,

“We think they're mindless, but that may not always be the case,” Rei murmured,

“Their AI could just be really good, with the technology we have now, it won’t be that hard,” Takumi stated,

“But when it can learn and think for itself, isn’t it already a person?” Kenji raised,

“No, they’re still dependent on code and programming, things like that will never be human,” Takumi stated with a hard edge,

“… Whatever the case, let’s look around for that aconite, we’ll get geared up and get started on our journey,” Rei declared, eyes raised and forward,

“Journey?” Yuta asked, surprised about the ambition in his voice,

“Yeah, we had enough time to lie around and process things, it’s time to get moving and start doing things, we need to see what’s beyond.” Rein nodded, grinning at them,

“And this is our first step huh?” Kenji smiled,

“Sounds like a pain,” Takumi looked over, “Isn’t it enough to just get some money and stay down here?”

“… I don’t plan on wasting away from boredom down here.” Rei stated, “Let’s get everything we can and see more of this place,” Rei had a faraway loot in his eye. "It would be a waste not to, after getting ourselves into this mess, let's at least have some fun with it,"

“It’s poisonous?” Rei added, they turned back to Zackariah who smiled with glinting eyes,

“Very astute, indeed, Aconite is also known as Wolfsbane, Monkshood and Queen of Poisons, whatever the case, they were once poisonous but not anymore, not since the land was pulled into this tower of Aincrad,”

“Why?” Yuta frowned confused,

“The strange magics at work in Aincrad must have done something to them, the truth remains that Aconite is now the main ingredient for healing salves and potions,”

“And how did you find this out?” Rei asked pointedly,

“Not through ingestion, of course, a famous scholar in the past had the revolutionary thought to cast aside all that he once presumed and take everything from scratch, in this way, he discovered one of the world’s most well known poisons was now the most well known medical plant,” Zackaria looked up at them, “If you are to adventure in this world, young travellers, you should cast aside all your assumptions.

Nothing is as it seems.”

The glint of intelligence was certainly present in this old man’s eyes as he looked at them with a kind smile, “A quest you say? Indeed, I was just looking for some help in gather materials for simple healing potions, if you would like, I can teach you how to make them in exchange for the herbs I need,”

“What herbs do you need and where can we find them?” Rei asked,

“I need some aconite herbs, they’re quite common but they won’t grow near the town, you’ll have to leave the town and head into the grassland to find them,” he explains, pulling out one of the herbs from under his counter, it appeared like a green stalk with several purple flowers growing out of it, it was warped in such a way it appeared like the hood of a priest.

“…Isn’t that wolf’s bane?” Takumi sudden stated, narrowing his eyes,

Shivering slightly and withdrawn into their jackets, the four man group found themselves at Zackariah’s potion store, nice and labelled, entering inside, it appears that this place too had a rustic décor, wooden flooring, a nice wooden counter and shelves of various kinds of potions of all kinds of colours and effects, their small labels with their prices, simply picking them up was enough to display the name and effects of the potions.

In the back of the store, they could see a open doorway into a stone based alchemy lab, various instruments, mortar and pestle, Bunsen burner type things and so on littered the work table there. Manning the counter was Zackariah himself, a elderly looking man with long, grey hair and finely trimmed bread but brown eyebrows, he wore a blue and white robe along with leather belts and pouches,

“Greetings, young travellers, welcome to my store, please, take a look,”

“We’re here for the quest,” Yuta stated, straight to the point.

Zackariah had his own little potion shop near the town square for easy access for new players entering the game, this did mean that they would have to go in the opposite directions of the gates to get there and then retrace their steps back out of the gate like a good ‘ol fetch quest annoyances, but that was how it was.

“The best weapons for beginners over here! No shop can beat these prices!”

“Looking for an upgrade? Try Brendan’s Blacksmith over at Sunny Square!”

“Cute accessories for a cute player! I’m certain this will make you look adorable!”

The skies were perfectly clear, not a single cloud in sight, only the expanse of a cool blue hung above them, few people roamed the streets and there were hardly any stalls around not manned by unfeeling NPCs, it was strange that these people, NPCs rather, repeated their words continuously and senselessly, this was a full immersive game, so their AI was fairly advanced, but at the same time, their obvious logic and programming was easy to see. They were immortal object and could not be killed, not to mention that they were in a safe zone where no damage can be done even if attacks can be made. Though sometimes, they could swear they could see a glint of intelligence in their eyes.

Later, Rei brought their last member of the party down, Takumi was a fair skinned young man with green, brown speckled eyes with deep black marks of exhaustion and short-medium length, messy, slightly curled crimson red hair, he wore a simple dark blue hoodie jacket and navy trousers. He gave a large deep yawn as he approached,

“Couldn’t this wait until 2?” he sighed,

“We’re not sitting around until then for you to get up,” Rei rolled his eyes,

“Then do it without me,”

“It would be a pain in the ass to do it separately, so come on,”

“How did you get him up?” Yuta raised a brow, after all, he and Kenji spend a fair amount of time knocking on their doors,

“A lot of kicking,” Rei shrugged, “Anyway, I've brought him up to speed, so let’s go get that first quest then,”

“You know where it is?” Kenji asked, surprised,

“Yeah, it was on the guide,” Rei nodded, “Our target is Zackariah, an alchemist, the first mission is to get some materials for them, craft potions and then move on,”

“Sounds easy enough,” Yuta nodded.

“I mean, they're just boars, so it’s not like it’d matter,” Yuta shrugged,

“Loot is random in this game, so long as we’re of equal or lower level to the monster, we could even get a perfect weapon, the problem is that it’d be unidentified and to identify things we need money, but even so, once we level up and grind out some money, we can identify those items get something for it, we might even get something interesting.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little convoluted?” Kenji asked,

“… You’re right,” Rei sighed, “So then, we go do the beginner quest chain?”

“Yeah, let’s just do that, can we get it done in time?” Yuta worried as they glanced over at the clock, to was nearing noon now,

“… We might want to hurry,” Rei laughed, “I’ll go get Takumi,”

As Rei went upstairs, the pair looked over at each other,

“Are we really going to go out there?” Kenji worried,

“Seems like it,” Yuta nodded, “we need to do something and we’re out of options, to be honest, I’m just glad we’re working towards something now,”

“I guess…”

He could see the scepticism on their faces, “Finally, option 3, we start the beginner quest chain, that way, we might not get money per say, but we get experience points and level up, as well as get some gear. From what the Beta Tester’s guidebook says, we get potions, a Uncommon level weapon or armour and then a Ring of accuracy or Ring of evasion. We won’t be in debt and at least we’ll have some gear to start with.”

The pair nodded, it was clear which one was preferable, and they were going to make their choice, but Rei spoke up,

“But. If we want to optimise things, we should gang up on the boars and beat them with our fists, since our levels are still low, low level monsters could still drop us some loot. Once we start being over the monster’s level, the chances of loot drops become zero.”

They thought he had some sort of good plan but to think this was the first thing out of his mouth, it surely must be a joke and from the grin on Rei’s face, they weren’t too sure.

“From killing a boar, we earn 30-70 Col, so long as we’re persistent, we can rack things up,” Rei stated, “Option 2, we get a loan and buy some gear for ourselves, preferably Perfect level gear, once we buy the gear, we probably won’t need to worry about equipment from there on out and we can start hunting monsters like crazy and rack up the coin that way, it’s safer, but we’ll be in debt,”

They didn’t spend all their time lollygagging in the tavern, they’ve walked around the town and chatted about various things, during that time, Rei noticed a few pawn shops, where they sold their gear for some money, and some loan sharks. They were NPCs so they were certain to get a standard and fair system, the only problem was uncertainty about what systems were in place to enforce them to pay, it could land them in the deep end.

The man walked over and sat next to Kenji and Yuta,

“Yo,” he casually waved in greeting,

“Hey, Rei, did you just wake up?” Yuta asked curiously, glancing at the clock, it was already 11AM,

“Something like that,” Rei nodded, glancing over at the table, “So Takumi is still down?”

“Yeah,” Kenji nodded, “We can’t seem to wake him up,”

“Right, anyway, I guess you guys already noticed that we’re out of money?” Rei asked for confirmation and the two nodded,

“Yeah, we were going to wait until everyone woke up, but...” Yuta sighed,

“We don’t have much time, yeah…” Rei nodded in understanding, “So, from what I know, we have a few plans.” The pair listened attentively as Rei motioned vaguely, “First, we go out there and beat up the weakest monsters around and grind for gear, our HP regenerates outside of combat after a few seconds anyway, so long as we don’t get absolutely destroyed by a wild boar, we’re good to go.”

Yuta and Kenji let out a deep sigh at their table, it went unnoticed by anyone since they were all stuck in their own thoughts and worries, a stone sat in their stomach as the weight of the situation fell on them, a familiar sensation, it was the same was when you realised that you got a bad mark on your test, that you screwed up somewhere along the way when you thought it would be fine. The same feeling when you were told that you were in a death trap.

There was the sudden sound of falling footsteps and creaking floorboards, and they looked up. The NPCs hardly made a sound and no one was willing to move around with all this going on, so who was it?

Walking down the stairs they saw a young man, dressed in a grey t-shirt, casual black and blue jacket and navy trousers, his boots tapping the steps and his ragged blue scarf around his neck. He had olive skin and ocean blue eyes, with short-medium length, straight, black hair, styled so that they would keep out of his eyes and an average build. A green cursor over his head displayed the name [Tsu-Rei]

But he had to do it. As much as he wanted to just stay here, it was getting boring and the atmosphere was weighing down on his heart far more than it should be. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

“Do I plan on heading to the frontlines and risking my life?” he mumbled to himself,

No.

“Do I plan on staying here and rotting away like this?” he looked up at the ceiling, pulling his arms out of the duvet and letting the chill take him as he laid,

No.

“Why am I here?” he asked the air,

Because you wanted to play a game.

“And what was the game?” he rubbed at his eyes,

Fighting against monsters with your (virtual) life on the line,

“Well what a coincidence, what opportunity do I have before me right now?” he chuckled to himself madly,

The chance to do it for real.

“It sounds insane, and I might actually die,” a grin spread on his face,

But let’s try and have some fun.

“Yeah…. It’s boring to stay like this…” he took a deep breath, “Right then…. Let’s get this show on the road,” he threw off the covers and in one movement jumped to his feet.

“I have to go out there, don’t I?” Rei groaned, twisting and turning in his bed, the chilly air seeping under his duvet, “Money’s low, I've read the manual hundreds of times and I’ve seen every menu on the system a hundred times over. At this rate, we’ll be kicked out of the inn and forced to live on the streets, in winter. We won’t die from something like that,”

But it would be no better than being tortured, after all, it would be horrible to be forced to spend the nights on the street during winter, without actually being able to die.

They were Level 1, had no gear, and had no money. Their chances of earning money depended entirely on completing quests or fighting monsters, and what were they to do, fight monsters with their bare hands? Did that even do any damage? The system’s machinations were hard to understand and unclear, even the slightest experiment may just get them killed and it was not a good prospect.

Unlike the others, they weren’t all that early to the party, they had barely logged in and wandered the town before they got teleported to the city square and given the announcement that their lives were on the line. The only way to escape was to clear the 100^th floor of this steel fortress. It’s not like everyone has to do it, just one person has to make it there and they were all home free. For many of the people here, it was a matter of leaving it up to the more driven and desperate, even after so long, they were only on the 23^rd or so floor. A long way from reaching home.

Those who left the city aren’t aware of it, but the overwhelming depression, the hopelessness that flowed through the town was sickening, suffocating and infectious. Displaying it’s true mob mentality, many people gave up and stayed here for all this time, simply waiting for someone else to save them.

Well, they were no different.

The problem was, it’s been a long time since they’ve arrive in this world of Sword Art Online, they’ve been getting by using the money they started with, carefully scouring the town for the best prices for the best conditions landed them here in the Silver Horned Inn, it was where they’ve been staying since then, but money was running out, they nearly had nothing to their name now, no amount of rationing or selling off their items would help them now.

The thing about this world, and it’s probably old news by now since it’s what got everyone so despondent, is that you can’t leave this game. You can’t log out, you were stuck here, in this game that simulates reality down to the 5 senses, with all it’s dangers of monsters with the real chance of death, if your HP went to 0, you were done. It was this sudden shift of a casual reckless fun that turned into a chance of death that scared everyone, paralysed them with fear.

They were able to play the game for the first few hours when the servers launched, hitting monsters with swords, getting exp and loot, seeing the wide open world, during that time, everyone was still convinced it was a game. But soon it became clear, those who died never came back, there was no way to reach the game masters and there was no log out button.

They were trapped.

“Well… Takumi won’t get up until a few hours anyway, Yuta,” the other man sitting opposite them commented, this one had slightly tanned skin, short brown hair that was styled back and soft brown eyes behind black square glasses. He wore a shirt, a thick green turtle neck jumper and simple grey trousers, he had a tall and lanky build, spontaneously shuddering in the chill. He too had a green cursor, the indicator of a real life player, [Jikken] was displayed under it.

“Yeah, but Rei should be up by now. Kenji, we need to talk about this with everyone immediately,” Yuta stated seriously, frowning over at him,

“I mean, it’s not like we could go drag them out of bed,” Kenji shrugged,

“Yeah… and knocking didn’t work either, I expected nothing less of Takumi, but Rei?” Yuta shook his head,

“What should we do? If we wait for Takumi, we might not have enough time to do anything about it,” Kenji asked worriedly,

“Yeah… we need to solve it and quick, otherwise, we’ll be sleeping in the streets tonight,”

Down on the first floor was a tavern of sorts, it should be filled with drinks, food, lively music and lovely tavern wenches, but, well… because of how things were, the mood was dour as ever, everyone had despairing looks on their faces that looked like they were walking corpses, not just the tavern, everywhere in the town was like this, at least, anyone that was a player.

The tavern was not empty nor full, sitting at the tables were various people wearing simple tunics under large jackets and trousers, even indoors it was cold and they needed to wear appropriate clothes, for a game, it sure was inconvenient, though as to be expected of a full dive, ultra-immersive experience that stimulated the brain to produce realistic sensations such as hunger, exhaustion and temperature. This was a world of fantasy and swords, and well, no magic, and everyone here were all fools for being so enamoured with such a fantastical escapism that they were all lured into a deadly trap.

“Rei’s late…” a young man muttered, the young man had fair, nearly pale freckled skin, with light blue eyes and short-medium length hair that was bleached white, styled messily and nearly reaching his eyes, he was slightly short and had a average slim build, wearing a simple grey tunic, a navy jacket with long coattails that reached his knees. His hands were shoved into his pockets and he was lounging in his chair. A green cursor floated over his head with the name [Riyu]

The building they were in consisted of two floors, the second floor was the Inn, where there were small rooms for rent and it was where they stayed for quite some time, the rooms were quite cramped, more so than they were used to, but it was more than adequate for their needs and the price was just perfect. There was probably about 12 rooms upstairs, their little group took up 4 of them already, and the other 8 were filled with lifeless layabouts just like them, people who had given up and simply waited for salvation that was taking its sweet time.

Within the small room of a cheap, decent inn in the town of beginnings was a young man. His name was Amatsuki Rei and he was currently huddled under the duvet mumbling to himself quietly, trying to ignore his problems for as long as he could.

The room itself in terms of dimensions was a place you can cover in a matter of 3 or less steps, the floor was made of old school, dark oak planks, the walls were much the same. There was a small desk, a wardrobe on one side of the room and on the other there was a single adequate bed with a wooden storage chest at the foot of it. The curtains were drawn over the window as little rays of light peeked through and the chilly weather outside froze over the streets and the world, not enough to snow, not enough for frost either, but more than enough for it to be freezing to the point that even in this virtual world, that you can see your own breath and your fingers to go purple and numb.

“Why is it so damn cold…” Rei sighed with a shudder, the chill of the air, even indoors, made him unwilling to leave.

Alrighty, thanks for the answers, looking forward to exploring the system and seeing where things take me.

So, I was doing some JumpChain stuff and landed on Sao, wondering if there were any rpg systems to set it up with, I ended up here and down the rabbit hole I went. Now I want to give this whole thing a try to get a deeper understanding of the system, so I started on making a Journal but I'm unsure about a few things. I figure that the answers may be out there somewhere, but i felt directly asking a question to the more veteran people might be a quicker way than me scouring for hours not sure where to look, sorry.

1. Katana? - So... I need 1H Curved Sword Rank 1 before I can start on Katana things? Why is that? I see the connection, but why is this an in-game requirement? I feel a little peeved about ending up having a dump skill slot. The Guide said something about a Katana Acquisition Thread, is there something I'm supposed to specifically do for that, apart from just buying one?

2. Buying things - So, with the starter packs, you start with 2,500 Col and 10 Tier one Materials, from what I can see, doesn't that mean a starting character can quickly get 2 [T1] [Perfect] gear if browsing Player Run Store prices are anything to go by? What did I miss?

3. Buying things, again - How do I buy things? I mean, from NPCs, and NPC Players, I see the Player run shops on the forum and the whole system goes through the banker system which I haven't looked at much yet, but how does buying things from NPCs work out? Can I choose the Enhancements like a custom order? Since out of all the npcs and couple thousand in world players, there's bound to be something that matches what my character's looking for.

4. Starting Setting - So, the current frontlines are at Floor 23 or so, and with new players like me coming in, when does our story begin? It seems unlikely to be at the Canon begining, did we just lay about for a few months down on the first floor before we decided to do something? Without ever fighting a single monster or doing a single thing for several months?