Tsurei

Apart from the looming ambience that filled the silence, their footsteps and the clunking of armour, as well as the distant sounds of monsters creeping around in the dark just beyond the edge of their light, there was little else. The howling wind that whistled through the cave’s opening and echoed through it’s tunnels was unnerving to say the least, but they forcefully ignored it, pushing down the desire to just scream and run away purely because every part of their instinct said that this was a bad idea to wander in dark places, that primal fear.

That was when they heard the piercing scream, loud and high pitched, echoing from far away, it was that of a child’s

“Nooo! Get away from me!”

The four of them glanced at each other before running forward, any attempts at keeping in formation was slowly broken as Yuta with the better athletic ability charged forward ahead, Rei glanced back and made sure he was never too far away from Yuta or Kenji and Takuma who were both lagging behind greatly due to their armour, laziness or lack of athletic ability.

They strode forward, Rei stood in the front, having already drawn his blade and prepared for combat, Yuta stood to his right, dagger drawn in one hand and the other raised, his hands and legs equipped with his weapon, Warrior’s Armour, which were essentially gauntlets and shin guards for his martial arts. To Rei’s left stood Kenji, a look more uneasy than the other two, shivering every few seconds, shoulders up and tense raising his shield and straight sword, and in the centre back of the formation was Takuma in the safest position, holding the glowing crystal in the air behind his barbed shield.

The cave was like the abyss, the cavern itself was rather large and wide, the ceiling was high enough that most times they could never see it, the easiest way to keep track of their locations were by the movement of the lit walls on their side,

That kind of mood and train of through followed them all the way through their short little journey towards the cave, the animal trail strayed from the main path into the mountains, by following it through the sparse forestry unimpeded by any of the monsters due to their higher level, they soon came across it, a deep endless, pitch black cave carved into the side of a stony cliff, looking down behind them, it was a similar cliff face, a sharp steep drop to their deaths on the grounds below, it took a narrow side path along the rocks to get up here.

Rei and Takuma briefly paled at the sight of the heights but quickly faced the dark cave within, the pair gave each other a glance and shared a nod, Takuma materialised the golden crystal in the place of his spear,

“Let there be light,” he murmured to the crystal, by the command words the crystal lit up, casting a wide golden glow similar to that of a fiery torch, a somewhat magical way of creating light but still no less effective in the end,

The four of them set off on the path towards the main gate, giving a light wave towards the woman who was trying to stop worrying despite it still being etched her realistic face, completely conveying her anxiousness,

“… Npcs make me sick, seriously,” Takuma spat on the ground in extreme distaste, his face grimacing as he made a point to not look back,

“That’s a wee bit harsh…” Kenji looked at him disapprovingly, he understood what he meant but at the same time, it felt disrespectful,

“They’re just predetermined programs, very good ones, but still just that,” Yuta nodded, agreeing fully with Takuma,

“If we’re going to say that, what’s to say that every one of us aren’t just complicated programs, every thought we have is just electricity in the brain and every emotion is just chemicals in the blood,” Rei shrugged, trying to get across the pointlessness of delving into that kind of topic too deeply,

“I don’t have much, I can pay you with my savings, please…” she nearly got onto the ground to beg but purely on reflex since Rei thought she was falling over when she dropped so quickly so he stopped her, there was brief pause when they stared at each other and Rei realised what she was trying to do,

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll head on over and get her out as soon as possible,” he nodded in what he hoped was as reassuring as possible, these people were npcs, people without actual life, emotions or sentience, but even so, the biggest sense of the human was their eyes, as such, they can be easily tricked by what they see and thanks to Kayaba’s twisted genius, these npcs looked no different than real human beings.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

This quest was repeatable, meaning, this npc was stuck in a repeating cycle of constant fear for her daughter’s life. Well, perhaps the game system was good enough to randomly generate it and switch it up, it was a game mechanic but at the same time it brought the question to mind, were children getting lost playing in monster filled caverns that common around here?

“You’re an Adventurer, right!?” the woman cried out in desperation, lightly placing her hands on Rei’s chest to stop him in place, her eyes flickered over his weapon as well as noticed his leather armour under his jacket before looking back at him and his friends in a pleading tone, “Please, help my daughter!”

“please try and calm down miss, what’s the matter?” Yuta went through the procedure, walking over to try and get her off Rei,

“My daughter needs help, she was playing with a friend in one of the nearby caverns but they got separated and only her friend made it out, please search for her, the cave is full of monsters!”

“We’ll look for her, which cave was it?” Rei nodded and gently asked, hoping that this was enough to count as accepting the quest,

“It’s the caves to the left of the gates,” she turned around and pointed down the main path, straight to the gate of the small city, “If you follow the road, there’s an animal trail leading right to it,”

"Hey, think that’s her?” Yuta pointed out at a npc woman in the distance, she wore a drab plain dress with the skirt headed down to her ankles, she had fair skin and braided brown hair and eyes, she was glancing around constantly worried, considering that most npcs were set up to walk around and stop at shops on a cycle, one of them showing an actual emotion was out of the ordinary.

Watching her made Rei wonder what made npcs different? Rossa and the others that managed the Inn they lived at was so alive you’d hardly think she was a programmed npc, meanwhile these people walking by, their eyes were dead and he couldn’t feel any life from them.

His eyes made contact with the distressed woman whom all seemed to ignore, she didn’t look all that different from the other npcs and would be impossible to know that she was the quest giver if not for the marker and her emotional display.

“Bloody hell… can’t they do anything about that? It’s like it’s bugged or something…” Takumi grumbled, grasping at his stomach with a face that was easily read by them as `currently trying to not throw up breakfast`, a sentiment they all shared,

“Who knows, if it is, I don’t think anyone will be fixing it all things considered,” Yuta grimaced,

Yeah, the only one with those kind of administrative privileges were Kayaba, and he was set as a criminal after the stunt he pulled, they had no idea what was going on in the real world, so they didn’t know if he had been caught yet or if the real world was making any sort of progress into creating a backdoor for them to escape.

“Anyway let’s get going, we’ll walk it off,” Rei waved them to follow him as he began to walk, glancing at the digital map in his hud,

Rei gathered a deep breath to recovery his composure, this was still in the mountains and the fresh air of such clarity was to be expected, at the same time, perhaps because there was no kind of industrialism around her or modernisation that the real world had so much of, causing the air in this game world to feel so much more pleasant.

Though, it was rather easy to forget that when the game world was set on having hardcore ironman rules, but either way, it didn’t deny that this world was rather amazing to look and travel through otherwise.

“Are you okay?” Yuta patted Kenji on the back as he slowly stood up, Rei and Takuma merely looked over, waiting for them to recover,

“Y-yeah… I-I’m fine,” Kenji mumbled, wiping the dribble from the corner of his mouth with a wince,

“I guess we’ll never get used to that,” Rei commented with a small sympathetic smile,

It was as if the game was set on making things unpleasant for them, being that the teleport gates were the only way to get to the other floors after the floor’s main labyrinth collapsed after the death of the floor boss that opened up the path to the next floor, only the people involved in the raid would then walk through the door to enter the next floor, whilst everyone else down below had to wait a bit before the teleporter was online for that particular floor.

Each floor was different in terrain, but this second floor was that of a mountainous region, full of green valleys and rivers as well as medieval esque villages, buildings made of wood, stone and thatched rooves, the ground wasn’t properly made into pavements or streets, just straight up mud and cobble stones, any place there was grass was long worn down like animal trails.

“Urgh…” Kenji collapsed to his knees the moment they landed, keeling over and doubled down, he didn’t seem to resist all that hard before he began to retch and vomit onto the smooth carved stone platform beside the rest of them,

It’s not like they didn’t know how he felt, Takuma was similarly pale and queasy whilst Rei and Yuta struggled to keep a straight face, grimacing under the weightless effect of the teleportation gate that took them from floor to floor, it was best described as falling for a brief moment, when you tripped down the stairs or something.

Only this felt more like tripping off the side of a building and sensing your very impending doom for a brief moment, only to land on the other side in a completely different place than the last step, when you feet touched the ground they would be like jelly and full of weakness,

“I already said sorry…” Kenji mumbled, a bit peeved with a subdued, unhappy expression, no doubt they all had vague amounts of a grudge levelled at him for being clumsy during the last dark cave and dropping their one and only light source, leaving the entire group to scramble around in the pitch black darkness, surrounded only by the sounds of giant spiders crawling over their heads and by their feet, the hair on the spiney legs of the spiders brushing up against them, the glistening wet fangs of the spiders gnawing on their necks and arms, so light that it felt more like a lover’s teasing bite despite the spider’s full intent on tearing them limb from limb and injecting potent poison into their veins.

All in all, it was not a great time, and each of them sincerely hoped that it would not end up in the same way, now that he thought about it, they were fighting giant bats, they too, would be more than happy to gnaw on their necks to drain their blood…

Yeah… let’s hope this wasn’t a repeat.

“I remember last time we weren’t exactly in the most danger, but the feeling of being nibbled on by spiders wasn’t exactly pleasant,” Takuma frowned at Rei’s outrage and lack of temperament, continuing to convey his own misgivings about the whole quest,

“With that shield, the monsters will die if they hit you 6 times, not to mention the rest of us hitting it as well, they won’t really get much of a chance,” Rei shrugged with a deep sigh, “come on, let’s just get going alright? We’ll go take a look at the place first hand and we can make our decisions from there, yeah?”

“…If you say so…” Takuma gave in as well, expelling a deep sigh, he then looked at him straight on with a serious expression, only glancing ever so slightly over at Kenji, “but this time, I’m holding the light crystal,”

“So you’re not going to fight, huh?” Rei raised a brow, considering that the glow crystal required you to use one hand to hold,

“Whatever, let’s just get going yeah? It’ll be fine…” Rei quickly brushed it off and strived to dismiss their worries with a wave of his hand, coming out with that ever so optimistic line, it’ll always be fine. Until it’s not and they need to scramble for their lives again, the last experience with a deep dark cave wasn’t great considering the amount of spiders and creepy crawlies they had to deal with all whilst being in pitch black darkness because a certain someone dropped the glow crystal.

“Yeah, you say that, but…” Takuma probably detected the lack of complete confidence in Rei’s own words and gave him a dubious, unconvinced expression, reluctant to even step foot out of the inn in the first place, let alone wanting to delve deep into a cave with possible spiders.

“Look, quest enemies are usually stronger than the monster mobs, and on the second floor, the strongest stats we’ll come across are 100 health and 30 damage, there’s absolutely no problem here, and we have proper gear this time, we’ll wipe them out no problem, okay?” Rei exploded in annoyance, quickly summarising the numbers,

“And the giant bat’s stats?” Yuta pressed on,

“50 health and 20 damage per hit, it’ll be easy enough,”

“…Right… easy probably doesn’t even state how simple it’d be… so it’s one of those quests, huh?” Yuta nodded to himself and crossed his arms as he leaned back in his chair, eyes closed in thought, his brows were furrowed and his tone full of disappointment, but the smile on his face spread in juxtaposition, it was clear he was still excited at the prospect,

“Eh…. Another dark cave?” Takumi shuddered, “There better not be spiders in there are something…” he turned his face on the table to stare at Rei with a narrowed death glare,

“… It’s probably not out of the question, but I don’t think there will be any,” Rei shrugged back, the targets were giant bats, if there were other things in there, he wouldn’t be surprised, but it’s not like giant spiders are the only things to be found in the dark cave,

“I-I mean, are you s-sure we can handle it?” Kenji stammered, his fork and knife shivering in the air as he tried to cut a piece of cooked sausage only to fumble it several times, his cutlery clanging onto the plate,

“Yeah, I mean, this particular quest is for level 5s and all,” Rei nodded casually, waving his piece of toast, “It’s going to be a cakewalk this one, we might have time… for a second one,” he spoke between munches of his breakfast,

“The second floor huh… we’ve already been there for the Boulder quest, now we’re finally going up there proper huh?” Yuta murmured, “So? What’s the quest like?” he leaned in over the table, asking for the details from Rei, in his excitement he forgot he could just look through his own digital guidebook,

“It’s another dark cave,” Rei sighed slightly as he explained, “We’re to save the daughter of one of the mothers in  a village, the daughter went playing with a friend in the cave and encountered some monsters, only the friend made it out to get help, the targets are a few giant bats accosting the little girl inside,”

He had thought to wait for them to recover, but quickly impatient and bored, he took a piece of buttered toast and used it to wipe up some baked beans before chomping into it, the soft crunch of the absolutely perfectly toasted bread was like a pin drop in the silence, as Rei chewed on it, the others burst into activity,

“Are trying to kill us?” Takumi grumbled, slumping to the table exhausted, lacking in sleep with dark bags under his eyes, he couldn’t believe he was woken up today for this…

“It’s already been that long, huh…” Koga breathed in shock and disbelief, realising that it’s been a full 3 weeks of adventuring every single day without a break since they’ve started, he thought back to all the fights they’ve had since then, from boar pups to wolves, to winter wolves and giant spiders to stone Terracottas and emerald dragons. They’ve seriously moved up a bit, huh?

Rei gave them a small wry grin, having expected this reaction, “Well, I mean, we’ve cleared the first floor,” he gave a nonchalant shrug, but it was clear that in both his tone and gesture that there was a sort of, fondness to it, the four of them, once completely hopeless, were now ready for the next floor.

I mean, for a 100 floor dungeon and with the frontlines at the 30^th, being able to now step foot on the second floor without a shred of doubt hardly meant anything, but for them, it was something that they would hesitate to even think about 2 years ago and even 3 weeks ago.

But here they were.

Rei glanced over at their expressions, his grin slowly faded as he realised that they were still all stunned,

Huh? Er… was it all that surprising? He thought they would realise that they’d finished all the quests on the first level by now…

Today was a rather special day, it didn’t really need to be said between the four of them, but they all just got the gut feeling that today was going to be different. It’s been some time since they’ve started their adventure, a handful of weeks and during that time they’ve rapidly levelled up, got suited up and were well enough versed in the world to be no longer considered complete noobs.

Even the weakest of them was capable of putting up a prolonged fight against a monster of an appropriate level now and they’ve generally gotten over their fear and depression of being stuck in a game world where you could seriously die, well, it was 2 whole years late, but still, better than never.

In short, enough time has passed that the next words out of Rei’s mouth at the breakfast table didn’t surprise them inwardly as much as it should’ve,

“Ah… yeah, today’s quest will be on the second floor, called, Let There Be Light,”

…

“What?” the other three had their mouths agape, wondering if they heard wrong,

Summary

“I would love to see your Arts, just to see what they’re like,” Rei asked, seriously interested, he leaned towards Takumi which made him lean back in response, feeling overwhelmed when he saw the grin on Rei’s face and the glint in his eye, he was only ever this riled up when it came to weapons, combat or games, those were the only 3 subjects he was ever that interested in as far as Takumi knew having been good friends with Rei for nearly 10 years now,

“Sure… when we have the time,” Takumi relented in the end, unable to refuse since he knew Rei was not going to stop bugging him about it if he refused, it was going to be embarrassing and knowing how critical Rei was, he was going to judge him a lot, but he supposed it would get him to stop, and it would actually be useful advice considering he needed to actually be able to fight.

“You too, Kenji,” Rei glanced over at him, surprised that Takumi had agreed, Kenji couldn’t feel like he could refuse either,

“Y-yeah…”

“Excellent, look, we’re nearly out of the forest,” Rei pointed out, “Can’t wait for dinner, I’m starving!”

“I suppose it’d have to be the Tornado Kick,” Yuta spoke after a long period of thought, “I mean, it’s quick enough to pull off, it’s powerful and can be used for multiple targets, it’s not too flashy either,”

“I can see that,” Rei nodded in understanding, no doubt analysing his answer which made him a bit uncomfortable when he came to that conclusion, but instead Rei turned to look at the other two, “I’m not expecting much, but do you guys have a favourite attack?”

“Apart from passive defense and letting the enemy kill themselves on my shield?” Takumi gave a smartass response, materialising his wicked looking shield in his left hand, even now, it still looked like the shield belonging to an incredibly cruel and sadistic person, the various hooked claws glinting in the setting sun, it was truly a weapon that suited a villainous character,

“Yeah… apart from that…”

“It’s quick, easy to execute, ranged, decently powerful, the execution isn’t impractical, the cost is nice and low, and it looks pretty cool,” Rei counted various points in his imaginary list as to why his current favourite sword art was awesome, “Essentially, it’s not my most damaging art, but it’s definitely my favourite,” he turned to look at Yuta, “Have you figured out your favourite yet?”

“Er… not really… no… I didn’t really use all of them all that much…” Yuta gulped and glanced away, rubbing at his neck feeling incredibly inadequate for this kind of conversation, he often discussed practical combat techniques with Rei in reality, even though they were not exactly fighters or violent people, but as expected he was kinda lost right now, he supposed Rei was just easily capable of adapting to things like this, the whole being stuck in another world was definitely his kind of best miracles to ever happen to him.

No, he was a normal gamer, but Rei pretty much gamed every single minute of his free time, which was impressive to say the least he supposed,

“Anyway, back to combos, holding onto that idea that sword arts are not set in stone and there are ways you can modify them slightly depending on their wording, you can execute some creative combos, like… Ukifune to launch them into the air, even if the art itself is low tier, weak and costly, it stuns the enemy and launches them up, perfect for any combo, from there, just about anything will work out, such as the long charge time for Gen Getsu, my current strongest attack which requires me to trace the awkward circle in the air before a single powerful strike,”

“Right…”

“And apart from skills that synergise together, there are favourites, like my Tsuji Kaze, it’s the one and only ranged skill I have, launching a shockwave in the shape of my attack that goes a few meters away, it’s practically a projectile attack, it’s not the strongest, but a ranged attack is amazing in a near melee only system like this,”

“With such a broad thing such as combat, how does it detect which sword art we want to do?” Rei wondered, “Normally, it requires you to be in a specific stance, this is the `Charging phase,` where we gather energy in the form of light into our weapons, waiting for the system to decide what Art to execute for us,

but the Arts themselves are vague, Ukifune is just a strike that intends to send the enemy upwards, so, so long as that’s the motive behind the stance, the system, which runs on our brain waves anyway can pick up on that, which is why I can use my sheath as the catalyst to launch the enemy up,”

“R-right…” Yuta nodded, trying to concentrate and focus on Rei’s long winded explanation, he knew that Rei loved game systems and delving into their mechanics, even so he hated the more technical games because they were too mind boggling, but when he found a system he liked, he would delve into it to a ridiculous degree that even a game lover like him had a hard time catching up.