“What?!” screamed the girls. The volume alone was enough to make Kirito flinch. But the ensuing questions and decreasing distance between their faces and his caused him to make full use of the reclining part of his seat.
“You’ve seen him?”
“Where is he now?”
“Are ya sure his name was Spike?”
By this point, three of the girls had leaned all of the way over the table and were each far too close to Kirito’s face. Asuna was just about to do something before each of their bodies lit up in a blue aura and they were forcibly stuffed back into their seats. Kirito turned to the only girl who hadn’t jumped the gun. For the first time he noticed the glowing mark on Rarity’s forehead; it was a light blue diamond. He caught it just in time to see the glow fade from it. Looking closely, he could see a purple mark peaking through Twilight’s hair. Though neither of the other girls appeared to have one from what he could see.
She flicked her hair. “Honestly girls. I know you are excited but please compose yourselves.”
Twilight blushed. “Sorry…”
Dash rolled her eyes. “I’m not.” She turned to Kirito and once again leaned forward in her seat. “Does the Spike you know have green hair and a stupid grin on his face?”
Kirito thought back on it. The Spike he knew did used to love to smile… for a while anyway. “I guess I’d call it stupid. He did have green hair though.”
Dash’s face lit up in excitement. But it faded when she felt two hands on both of her shoulders. AJ looked up at her with a serious look while Twilight was giving her a sad smile. It was almost as if they were trying to send her two different messages. One silently asking her to calm down, and the other silently warning that this could be dangerous. She dislike both of them. Reluctantly, she sat back down and reined in her excitement.
Twilight looked at her for a second more. While she would also love to believe in the best, she still had to be one hundred percent sure. “Sorry. We’re just a little… concerned,” she said to Kirito. “First of all… how do you know Spike? Did he visit this world too?”
Asuna furrowed her brow in thought. “Spike… that name sounds familiar. I think you’ve mentioned him before, haven't you?
Kirito nodded and prepared tell his story. “It started about 5 years ago. Just after I met you for the first time, Asuna.”
~~~
Slashing downward, a younger Kirito eliminated yet another low level Slythern lizard. A transparent white screen appeared before him and informed him of his newfound experience and treasure. Sliding his plain looking sword back into his sheath, he glanced around the area.
Currently, he was knee deep in the Forest of Sleep on the 4th floor. White leafed trees stood tall and dense, barely letting any natural sunlight through. Well... as natural as the sun could get in a virtual game.
This was a dangerous place to be at this moment in time, what with the lead team only recently defeating the 3nd floor’s boss. There was no telling what would show up in this level. Normally, the sensible thing to do would be to come here with at least a mid sized party or guild.
Unfortunately, Kirito wasn’t exactly someone who others wanted on their team. He sighed and looked down at his plain black coat. Known as the Coat of Midnight, it was a rare drop from the ogre that he had helped defeat with the help of the lead team guild and at the cost of a man’s life. Ever since he lied about his origins as the highest ranking beta tester and intentionally withholding vital information, most of the other high level guilds refused to work with him. They immediately dubbed him as a “beta testing cheater” or rather a “Beater” as he was commonly referred to these days.
Of course this wasn’t entirely a bad thing. His actions redirected all of the hatred and jealousy that regular players held towards the normal beta testers towards him instead. This allowed everyone to band together and work harder to clear the floors. In just a month the lead guild, a new one called Knights of the Blood Oath, cleared 2 floors by themselves.
Whatever the case, as long as this game got beaten, Kirito couldn’t care less about who disliked him. He decided he would be a solo player early on anyway; he would just need to be more careful about where he power leveled.
Kirito took one last look around and shrugged. “Guess I should heal up and move on to the next area then,” he muttered to himself. Deciding to find a nice spot where he could rest, he turned and walked through towards a forest clearing he had found earlier.
He ducked and made his way past the tall white leaved trees, making careful and deliberate steps. This place wasn't called the Forest of Sleep for nothing; the trucks of the Slumber Trees have the ability to put players to sleep if they touch them for too long. And falling asleep in the middle of a relatively unexplored place like this would be a death sentence.
Finally, Kirito broke through the treeline and winced back from the sudden beam of sunlight in his face. He moved towards the center of the circular forest clearing; if he was going to rest he wanted to have a 360 degree area of awareness so that nothing could sneak up on him.
*Fwoosh!*
Kirito stopped in his tracks partway toward the center. “What was… Woah!” He gasped loudly as he glanced up at the large plume of smoke raising from somewhere up ahead. “What the hell…” he mumbled.
“CrapCrapCrapCrapCrap!” Kirito’s gaze lowered from the smoke to see a figure dashing through the trees on the other side of the area. Finally, the figure broke through the tree line and ran towards him. From what Kirito could see it was a young boy. “Run!” the boy yelled.
The urgency in the boy’s voice nearly caused Kirito to obey out of fear. “W-what? Why?” he asked.
The boy was fast, clearing the entire length of the area and skidding to a stop near Kirito in a matter of seconds. He looked panicked, but also a bit excited. “Just trust me dude. We need to get the hell outta dodge!”
Now that he was up close. Kirito took a quick second to examine him. Like he noticed before, the boy was young, looking around 10 years old. Though the 14 year old Kirito couldn’t really say anything. He had spiky emerald green hair and wore a sleeveless dark red hoodie with a picture of a green flame on his back and black torn jeans with untied boots.
The oddest part, Kirito found, was that his skin had a slight violet tint to it, as well as slitted green eyes. Even if the game still allowed disguised avatars, Kirito was sure that green skin wasn’t allowed.
“Why?” he asked. “Does it have something to do with that smoke.” Kirito turned to look back at the smoke and his eyes widened at the sight of a billowing fire now flaring in the distance. Worse though, it appeared to be streaming towards him. Soon enough, a large tree burst through the others. The top of the tree was blazing and as the flames touched the other trees it set them on fire along with it. It was a living Slumber tree, and it was mad. The dark face on its truck opened its mouth wide to roar at them as burning white leaves fell from its branches.
“What the hell is that?!” exclaimed Kirito, turning towards the kid.
Said kid was nervously rubbing the back of his head and desperately avoiding eye contact. “Yeah...” he chuckled. “Turns out you can set these things on fire.”
“Why would you even try?!” he yelled, dumbstruck at the fact that the possibility of setting fire to wood was even in question.
“It was an accident!” the boy screamed back. “I honestly didn’t think it could catch fire!” He pointed towards the still roaring tree.
“It’s a tree, you dumbass!”
The boy nodded. “Exactly, which is why we need to get out of here!” The boy turned to run but Kirito caught him by the hood of his jacket. “What? Let go!”
Kirito shook his head, and with his other hand, unsheathed the sword from his back. “We can’t run. If we let this thing go it’ll set fire to the rest of the forest. Plus, I’m almost certain the smoke that results from the burning tree will gather and put us to sleep if we fight it anywhere other than out in the open.” The boy, seeing the truth in his logic, stopped struggling. Kirito let him go and readied his weapon. “Since you’re here, I’m guessing you can fight?”
The boy scoffed and smirked. “Of course!” A completely white object shimmered into existence in his palm. It appeared to be a long club or axe of some sort. Kirito, stunned by its design, traced it up and down with his eyes.
It was wide with a single chain going up the middle of the shaft and wrapping around a flame that stuck out of the side. The guard around the handle resembled a dragon’s folded wings. Finally, a six pointed star-shaped amethyst gem swung from a keychain at the end. A second later, an identical black weapon appeared in his other. Only this one had a red lightning bolt shaped ruby at the end. Oddly enough, the boy seemed excited by it.
“Sweet! I got the second one to show up!” he cheered.
Kirito glanced down at him in confusion. “What kind of weapon is--”
“Watch out!”
Kirito returned his gaze back towards the tree just as it shot out one of its branches towards them. Both of them reacted in time to dodge it. Now that it had attacked him, Kirito’s battle system activated and targeted the tree. Kirito finally saw its name. “Drasil the Spirit Tree” Kirito instantly noticed the large “B” next to its name and immediately halted in his advance.
The tree saw this as a chance and threw out another branch. Kirito hopped backwards to avoid it as it smashed into the ground. “Kid!” he called out. “Stop! It’s a boss! We can’t fight it on our own.”
“Don’t call me kid!” he yelled back. Unlike Kirito, he continued to zoom forward with surprising speed and agility, easily avoiding any ranged attacks. Once close enough, the boy pointed both of his weapons toward the monster.
“Duelcast: Fira!” Suddenly, two balls of fire burst forth from the tips of his weapons and engulfed the tree.
Kirito was stunned beyond words. That shouldn’t have been possible. What he just saw couldn’t have been anything except magic. He also noticed another thing just then. The kid’s two weapons were way too long to be knives; they were both almost as long as his own blade. He was dual wielding swords of some kind.
The kid hopped back over to Kirito. “How’s that? I’ll burn this thing to a crisp!” he grinned.
Kirito shook his head. He decided that he would ask some serious questions later; but questions could wait, they had to take care of this thing. He examined the tree. It was burning and one look at its health bar revealed that it was draining rapidly. Whether it was the fire or the magic doing it, he did not know.
“Whatever you did, it’s working. Let’s finish it off.”
“Right!” The boy and Kirito rushed forward together. The tree lashed out, this time with far more ferocity. Clearly it was the frantic strikes of a dying monster. Unfortunately, the boy was too fast and Kirito was experienced in parrying monster strikes.
Once they were close enough, Kirito’s blade began glowing a bright blue colour as he readied a sword skill. He briefly glanced over at the boy. The kid had a wide smile on his face as he joyfully hopped from here to there, dodging branches and flames all the while. He turned back and parried another attack.
Eventually, the two warriors reached the tree. Kirito ducked low and swung upwards, releasing the skill and attempting to split the tree in half from the bottom up. Unfortunately, his attack was just a bit too weak and the tree survived the move. The boy came up behind him and leaped into the air. Spinning his weapons for style points, the boy slashed the tree diagonally with one blade, then again with the other in the opposite diagonal. The attacks created an X slash to go with Kirito’s upward strike.
This was the final straw. The tree froze in place for a second before bursting into thousands of shimmering blue shards of glass.
The boy landed right next to Kirito and looked up with glimmering eyes at the shining shards raining down around them. A white screen appeared in front of Kirito. He looked at it curiously. It said that he got the finishing bonus. He was sure that it wasn’t him who got the last hit.
The boy looked down at the weapons in his hands and in an instant they shimmered out existence in the same way as they arrived. Afterwards, the kid turned to Kirito. “That was awesome!” he exclaimed. “Oh, my name’s Spike by the way. I guess I’ll see you around then.” Without another word, the boy turned away, took a running leap, and jumped high into the air.
“Wait! Hold on!” Kirito called out. It was too late, the boy landed back into the forest in the direction Kirito had originally arrived from. Frowning, he turned back around, frustrated that he didn't have a chance to ask any of the questions rolling around in his skull.
“What kind of weapon was that? How did he use magic? How did he jump that high? Is there really a dual wield skill or is just a perk of that weapon?”
Although, one question seemed more urgent than the rest as he looked up at the side of the forest he was on. “What am I going to do about the fire…?” he groaned, looking up at the still raging forest fires. While the fire didn’t look to be spreading, it also didn’t look like it was going away anytime soon.