Zajcica

Desforestation

The pink hair paladin arrived on floor six for the first time. It was a vast and dense jungle that looked like something out of a story book. An enchanting atmosphere filled the floor that no other floor really captured for her. Floor four still was her favorite, however. She always thought the snow was beautiful and funnily enough, that's what she was named after. Her mother really like the seasons, so that where her and her sister's names came from: Yuki for snow, like winter, and Aki, her younger sister, for Autumn. Even though she chose the name Yuki, she knew her mom wanted to name her that before they found out she was a boy.

It didn't take long for Yuki to find a reasonable quest. The recommended level for the quest was close to her level, and it wouldn't come close to beating her with tanking abilities. She didn't waste any time and left the settlement as soon as she was ready. The forest would be hard to navigate, but it shouldn't be hard to find a giant tiger burning down all the trees in its wake.

@Hidden

Yuki quietly smiled to herself. It felt odd to give inspiration to someone else like that, after all that's what she had always hoped to do for others. Being a symbol of hope and inspiration to encourage everyone around you to do better. Her heart skipped a beat when he pulled her chin up from looking at her feet. A slight blush formed around her cheeks that she quickly hid from him.

"Nn." She nods in agreement. "I am always scared that things will go wrong, but I do realize that no matter what, bad things will happen sometimes. I do my best to always look at the positives though."

Bringing up things that could go wrong: How much stronger would this dragon be than the last? Its not like it would be weaker, or have the exact same stats. Hopefully she would be alright to tank it. The first time she had taken more damage than one came from that dragon. That scared her. It was really just that matter of how much stronger the next one was compared to the emerald one.

@Life

Yuki rubbed her arm a bit nervously as Life brought up him nearly dying to a boss. It was weird to think about. He was so much stronger than she was. If he had trouble with bosses at his level, how long would she last? She was still pretty weak, compared to her friends. 

"That sounds pretty harsh. Maybe one day I'll experience something like that, but I have dreams of being one of the toughest players in the game." She giggles a bit to herself. "It's kind of funny that someone as small as me would want to be so tanky I guess. Maybe my small size combined with heavy armor will make me hard to hit and take hard hits easily." She laughed at her own joke. Really the reason she had chosen to become a tank over support was because she was scared of dying. The best way to survive would be to become a tank, right? Even if you're the focus of damage, you can just absorb it all and sustain.

"Would you like to take the lead this time and tell me what I need to do so I don't run into battle like a headstrong idiot and get myself killed?"

@Life

The Quartz Hatchling

From the Town of Beginnings to the town of Urbus nigh instantly. Yuki blinked a couple times to fix her vision and looked around for Life. It took him a few seconds longer to appear than it did for her, but when he did, Yuki gave him her signature smile and a thumbs up.

"Yoshi. Time to fight another dragon!" She said, much more cheery than she was just moments ago. "I'll try not to be dumb and get smashed by this one."

The pink paladin scratched the back of her head and chuckled awkwardly. Her mind was still on the feeling she got earlier, when she was smashed by the dragon an Life saved her. She could have gotten out of that predicament on her own, but the relief she felt when someone saved her that way was explainable. A slight blush was painted across her face as she thought about it in her head again.

@Life

Although finding materials seemed to be her weakest trait in this video game, she had been having much better luck lately with this specific quest. Maybe the quest boosted your luck to find materials since they were required for progression. It would make sense, or else you would be out here digging up materials for hours. That wouldn't stop her from searching for hours, but she was sure others who wanted to get things done as quickly as possible would hate this kind of menial task.

Another node of materials came into view. She reached down and harvested it from its stationary position in the grass. That was half of the materials that she needed to finish her time outside the safe zone, then she would have to go back to the cook's restaurant and make something with her materials. Shouldn't be much longer now if her luck continued to see her bountiful.

Her luck ran pretty dry after getting two in a row so quickly. In her initial, quest where the spawns for materials came more frequently, she got three spawns in a row and since then she hadn't had a much better time finding anything useful so this seemed more like bad news to her. She used up all her current luck getting those two in a row and now she wasn't going to find anything. Would getting her profession take her hours to complete?

She continued to look around for materials, even so. She wasn't going to let her bad luck stop her from getting the profession she wanted so badly. She would really have to work for it too. Even when she collected the skill she'd still have to gain experience to improve her ability to make better food. She would make tons of bento boxes for everyone in all of Aincrad!

Yuki sighed in relief that she was able to find something pretty quickly. She had only been in the field for about ten minutes, much quicker than any of her other attempts at finding materials. She hoped she could find more just as quickly. 

Just as she was thinking that, she came across another piece of material. She quickly gathered it up and the quest updated showing that she only needed three more pieces of material to finish this part of the quest. Once she was done with this task, she had to go back to the kitchen of the quest giver and make something there. She hoped her first craft would be something amazing. From what she knew, there was luck involved with crafting too and that scared her. If her luck was based on her ability to locate and collect materials, she could only imagine what her cooking was going to end up like in that respect.

Finding materials would probably be the bane of her existence for the foreseeable future. She was already pretty good at combat for being so inexperienced at it, but she would still have to change her weapon skill to using a spear rather than using a sword. She seemed to favor the spear more than she did the sword. It felt more like a tank weapon to her. A few more minutes of searching allowed the first successful pick of materials she had gotten in quite some time. She looted the node and added the materials to her inventory.

Thank god she actually found something without spending an hour in the field for a single one. Maybe she was taking it overboard, but she had spent quite a bit of time searching for materials before and her luck was easily below 50%. It didn't seem like she had an bonus from the quest, like extra nodes spawning, so that was pretty annoying too.

Yuki looked around in a new area for anything else. Still nothing came up as useful for crafting and she was already becoming annoyed again. She wished that her current materials would have sufficed for this process but the quest insisted that she go and find her own materials after activating the quest. Her luck continued to leave a lot to be desired. 

Even with bonuses to her luck she couldn't find much of anything to use. Did she really need that much bonus just to find some useful materials for crafting? She knew there was a skill that would let her farm materials more quickly by investing some skill points. She might have to consider dipping into it if she wanted to take crafting seriously in the future. She really did, but she didn't know if it would be smart to invest skill points into non-combat skills just yet. She would wait awhile before doing such.

Out of the safe zone and into the frying pan that was the wilds of floor one. Yuki hadn't spent much time out here yet, but even still she'd had some pretty eventful adventures. Fighting wolves and looking a complete idiot in front of handsome men. That encounter with Life continued to haunt her memory. She'd never felt that kind of feeling when she was interested in a woman. Is that what it meant to truly be captivated or charmed by someone else?

Her train of thought was distracting her from actually looking for materials. She tried to shake those thoughts out of her mind and look around for anything useful. Too bad she couldn't just use the materials she already had in her inventory, but on the bright side that would save her the materials for later when she is practicing. Nothing useful just yet but she only just started looking. Hopefully her luck wouldn't suck this time.

Earning a Living: Cook

Yuki's next challenge in this world was food. It wouldn't be like the real world with cooking. She already knew how to cook, learned it from her mother, but her food wouldn't be any good without practice and profession in the skill itself. She knew it would take time, but she was determined to make her own Izakaya here in SAO. It would be a good way to earn extra money and get people useful consumables for their battles in the field.

She needed to go into the field herself to collect materials herself. And if there was a single thing that she hated so far, it was collected materials. She always had awful luck with it, even with her rings that boost the luck a player had when it came to drops and loot. She equipped her rings while it was on her mind, trading out her weapon and shield for them since you can only have so many actively equipped slots of equipment. This was going to be annoying as hell, but she was happy to finally start this quest for herself.

General
Level: 9 | HP:  180 | Energy: 18 Hate: 1/3/4(M/H/C)

Stats
DMG: 1 | EVA: 0 | MIT: 9 | ACC: 0 | Thorns: 18 | Regen: 5

Skills
R1 One Handed Straight Sword; Fighting Spirit

Equipment(In use)
Regal Cuirass(Heavy Armor): 1MIT, 2 Thorns
Silver Serpent Ring: +2 LD
Covetous Gold Serpent Ring: +1 LD

Equipment(Standby)
Aegis(Shield): 2MIT, 1 Regen
White Spear - Lux(OHAS): 2 Bleed, 1 Taunt

Consumables
3) Starter Healing Potions(50HP)

Yuki shrank a bit when he mentioned her outburst of her being able to survive something like that on her own. She had honestly said such to make herself feel stronger than she really was and not feel so embarrassed that the dragon nearly crushed her.

"I may have been spouting drivel. I don't think I could have purely killed it with my thorns and attacks alone. The potions I brought were going to be my escape plan... I wanted to see what kind of damage it could do and how long it would have taken me to kill it with my thorns." She said feeling stupid. The plan sounded so much dumber out loud than it did in her head. What if she had died? "I'll be more careful from now on though, but yeah, its hard to vanquish my spirit when I get fired up. Let's kill another dragon!"

She stood on the teleporter and repeated the phrase she'd used to get to other floors, "Tei: Urbus!"

Yuki wanted to argue that statement to Life, but he seemed pretty adamant about atoning for himself by helping others. He didn't owe Yuki anything, but he does seem like has something weighing him down heavily. She really wanted to ask him more about it, but it would be insanely rude of her to ask him about his past like that when she barely knew him at all. The safe zone wall was coming into view by now. It was always relieving to see it coming back in from the field.

"N-Nee? Thank you for deciding to help me, and I'm sorry I lost my wits a bit. I understand that you and Mari have a lot you need to work on, but so does everyone in this world. And even in the real world. Nobody can be perfect and it's not like we could every really get close. Mari continues to urge people to avoid her because she has an orange crystal, but I think she's well on the path to being a better person. You're a good person as well." She smiled at him for the first time since they started fought the dragon. "And, I realized I never thanked you for saving me from the dragon so... Arigatou, Life-san."

@Life

She was absolutely annoyed that anyone would call her a kid, but to be fair, she was rather small and didn't have on the front side. It would be pretty easy to mistake. Life didn't exactly apologize for mistaking her for being ten years younger than she really was, but that was alright. She'd get over it.

Mari's message stayed up for a second. Life mentioned Mari like he might have known her. Honestly Mari and Yuki weren't really that close, she had just helped Yuki start her adventure and she looked up to Mari as a mentor. If it wasn't for her, she wouldn't really be as confident as she was.

"A-Ah, yeah but not really. I went to an event way up on about floor 20 and met her there. I was pretty stubborn and bugged her a lot, but then we quested recently and she taught me a lot about the game. I want to get stronger to repay her for the help she'd given me... Now I feel like I owe you as well..." She looked down at the floor awkwardly. "People have just been helping me a lot and I've done nothing for my past ten levels. I'm just an idiot built like a steel wall..."

@Life

Yuki folded her arms and pouted slightly, looking off to the other side away from Life. She wasn't a helpless little girl, she was a freaking woman.

"I'm just fine. Granted that was the first time ever took more damage than my regeneration could return, I have several potions that could keep me alive. Just because you are stronger than me doesn't mean I can't fend for myself.." Why would she say that? If it were Mari, she would have just thanked her for the help and the two would have laughed about it. Or well, Yuki would have laughed and Mari would have probably been her grumpy self.

Eh-? Did Life just call Yuki a kid?

"E-Eh? Kid?? I'm 22 years old now, maybe 23 I've forgotten where the calendar is now." She fixed her ruffled up hair. "I'm probably older than you are."

Yuki's notification box opened in front of her, a new message. From Mari it would seem.

"I've accepted Macradon's proposal to be a teacher

-Thanks." -Mari

That brought a renewed smile to Yuki's face. Mari was a really good teacher to her, she was glad to see it was taking off.

@Mari

She laughed awkwardly as Life mentioned her balls- Er, not those ones - and guts for rushing in to be someones shield. She blushed a bit, even after her flushed face was washed out.

"I mean, my job as a tank is to stand and be mostly a punching bag for my party members so they can win. Um...Isn't it?" That's certainly what she had done for Mari and Luna so far. Even if she hasn't been that great at it. "I'm really nothing to be admired." Some old voices popped into her head. Ridicule and snide remarks about her not actually being a woman.

She blinked as an additional quest popped up on her HUD. There was more to the quest, she remembered now. This was only the first one of nine. Then Life had to say something awkward like that. "Wh-What are you insinuating? I-I-" She looked at the quest in front of her with the now updated objective. "I'm going to continue this quest! Y-You're welcome to come... If you want to." Her voice started somewhat angrily like she was still trying to avoid the feelings, but then calmed down and became awkward and quiet. "Do you want to?"

@Life

The dragon exploded into digital coding and Yuki continued to lay in the grass. Confused at first to the dragon's death, but then she came to the realization that Life had saved her from the dragon by killing it single-handedly. Her face got even more red with that realization. How could she just brag about being strong then get knocked on her ass and have to be saved by the person she boasted to. She covered her face with her hands until Life made her way over to help her up. He reached his hand down to her, but she ignored it and sat up quickly.

"D-Daijoubu-!" What was this stupid feeling? She should be extremely annoyed that she couldn't do anything to help, but overall she felt relieved more than anything. Was Life's charm getting to her that much? It was then she realized that her not taking his hand to help her up was kind of rude. "G-Gomen... That was just... A bit embarrassing."

Redirecting the reason she was embarrassed to just being pinned by the dragon, rather than the stupid love-dovey feeling in her stomach would probably help, as long as Life didn't notice it. Life then asked what her username actually meant.

"Th-That's not important!" Gotta change the subject really quick before she melted. "I-It's pretty impressive, the damage you can output, Life-san."

Yuki blushed deeply as life interrupted her reminiscing with his hand on her head. Her hair was ruffled out of place and strands of pink covered her vision. Butterflies flew in her stomach. What was this stupid feeling? She hated it but also loved it at the same time. This wasn't a feeling she had ever experienced as a man. Is this really what it feels like to be charmed by a guy?

"I- uh, I-" She mumbled to herself quietly, her face filled even deeper red than it was before. He was so calm about it all, even if he was hiding his own fears. His speech was charming but reassuring at the same time. It was almost as if he was treating her as a helpless little girl. "I- I'm strong too, I can protect people! Remembering what fuels a person's resolve is what truly makes someone strong."

On queue, the boss spawned several meters ahead of the two. Yuki drew her new lance from her inventory and stood in front of Life. "Don't worry, I'll keep it occupied while you attack." She said charging ahead of Life, recklessly maybe, but full of enthusiasm. She went to strike the beast with her new weapon, but was caught off guard. The dragons claw came down and smashed Yuki into the grass under its scaly grasp. She let out a sharp cry of pain. "K-kuso..."

@Life

Yuki: 160/180 Hate: 1 (52 - 27) + 5 = 20 DMG
Life: 500/500 Hate: 0
Emerald: 125/125

Yuki smiled and was pretty ecstatic to hear what the front lines was like. Hearing that two of his friends died in that fight made her frown a bit, but it was nice to know that one of them survived. 

"You sound a lot like Mari in that regard. You both have had a rough time and made your decisions, but now you're trying to redeem your mistakes and failures by helping players like me. I never really knew what MMO games were like. I simply wanted to try the whole virtual reality thing out for the most part. Here I am now. I can only imagine how much my sister has cried for me." The grimace stole her smile as she mentioned her family. "I miss my family so much. My sister always wanting to dress me up, my moms cooking and my dad being scared I'll get mugged on my way home from school. You never really think that you'll lose something like your family so quickly and miss such basic things."

She only continued droning on about her family while they walked towards the boss area. It was sudden how quickly her mood went from a hyperactive schoolgirl to quiet and reserved. Thinking about her family always got her like this.

Yuki reached her hand out to shake with Life. Her handshake was much more firm than the man was probably expecting from someone so small. After all, Yuki was a man and did have a little more muscle than most girls did. Ah the life of a transgender woman.

"That's quite a few exs. You must really have a history, I won't pester you about it though. I thought front liner level was close to like 60 or 70 wasn't it? Does that mean you took a break from it all? I'm ashamed to say I was pretty shocked about the situation when it all began and I hid." She looked at the ground, upset with herself for a moment before looking backing up. "But I'm doing my best to become stronger now. I hope I'll be able to make waves with the higher players soon."

She waved her right hand down pulled up the party menu and sent Life an invite. "Well, let's get this quest underway then, hunh?"

@Life

Yuki paused momentarily when she heard Life begin speaking Japanese. Sure, it was pretty likely that most of the players in the game were Japanese, or understood it to a degree. Heck, Mari understood it and from what she knew, the dagger user wasn't native. She lost herself in thought until the mention of the Dragon Hunter quest came into conversation.

"I was actually going to go do that quest right now myself!" She exclaimed. That giant smile she always wore around her friends came back. "I would have no problem tanking with the armor that I have, I'm just worried about my damage being to sup-par to kill it before it kills me. I was thinking of messaging one of my higher level friends for help, but Mari has helped me with two quests already and I don't want to bother her for everything I'm doing.. She helped me finish a really hard quest recently and I gained five levels from it. I'm currently level ten! Soon, I'll be tanking with the front line."

Her anticipation could almost be felt as she spoke. She realized that the front lines probably weren't the most welcoming place, especially as they continue to clear floors, but it was in her motto now. Become powerful and do something, don't lie down and wait to die like some coward.

"May I ask what level you are? Oh! Watashiwa Yukidesu. Yoroshikunee!" She said with another bow.

@Life

<<DHA1: Emerald Hatchling>>

Yuki scrolled through the quest data. Those hunters were pretty cool to share the information with her when she wasn't even close to getting to floor ten but it would be good to take this quest early and have them finished for when she did make it up to floor ten level. She actually met the recommended level for this quest, or at least a level short of the recommended level. Still closer to it than she normally is. The only thing she was really worried about was dealing enough damage to it. Mari popped in her mind instantly and she scrolled through her friends list to find her name. She was just about to start typing a message, but stopped as her finger got close to the keyboard. She couldn't just default to asking Mari for help with every single quest she takes on, no she would have to do it solo or find someone else to help her with her escapade. Luna was another option, but she was still pretty low level too.

Yuki sighed, walking through the Town of Beginnings as she contemplated what she should do. She was so lost in though that she didn't see the towering man stopped in front of her. She crashed into him, with her being the only one to hit the floor.

"It-t-ta.." She paused as she looked up to see the cloaked man looking back to see what just bumped him. Her face got red for a moment, awkward thoughts filled her head that hadn't felt before, but to put it bluntly: This man was rather handsome.

"Ah, gomen!" She said getting up and bowing apologetically. "Too many times do I meet new people by crashing into them! I'm such a freaking klutz!" She laughed awkwardly hoping he would forgive her for her clumsiness.

@Life

Yuki raised her head back up when the man asked if she would like some help with her quest. It was pretty obvious that she was a new player, hunh? Questing on the first floor wouldn’t be something you saw from higher level players

”Nice to meet you Solei! I wouldn’t want you bother yourself since you have some children with you.” She chuckled a bit awkwardly, “Although, I am only doing the First Lessons quest and Im pretty sure that one doesn’t involve any combat. So if you want to come a long I wouldn’t stop you. A healer would be super helpful with combat if I were to run into enemies for sure.”

She looked at the quest description again before making any assumptions but she was pretty sure that it didn’t involve participating in any combat, but she thinks the second lesson will require it.

”Would Emi and Eito be alright to leave the safe zone? From the way you sounded, you didn’t seem to mind if they did. I would be pretty upset if I caused them to get hurt because we all got dragged into a combat situation.”

@Solei

The last member of her family, her younger sister Aki, was probably torn to shreds right now about her current state. She was probably strapped up in a hospital room right now like other were that are trapped in the game. She remembered Kayaba showing news reports of SAO players being moved to medical facilities. Aki was really close to her older sister when she started her transition. She loved the idea of having an older sister, even if it was a bit awkward for her to get used to at first. She wondered how much her family was seeing her in the real world. How much had they cried for her while she sat around doing nothing to escape her situation other than making sure she didn't die. She realized now that she would rather die than watch others die trying to free her. She would help them, or die with them. It was that simple.

The safe zone was just ahead, so thankfully she could put this adventure behind her.

Her father was a little more lax than some of her real life friends' fathers were. The friends that remained on good terms with Yuki when she started her transition had fathers that resented her life choices. She was so scared to tell her father about her change from male to female that she had to tell her mom first and then she convinced Yuki to tell him about her feelings. She was glad she did too. Her father was so accepting of it, much more than she had thought he would be, for sure.

Her train of thought was interupted by the glowing craft node of to the side. This one was pretty difficult to not spot. Right on the side of the road just ripe for picking. She reach down and collected the material into her inventory. Once that was done, she got under way again. The safe wasn't much further away now.