A gender-neutral Y/N is an introverted solo player who spends almost every moment they can grinding in the Fields of Aincrad.
Y/N find themselves distancing further from the people they say they're fighting to free; but what happens when those peopl...
U/N: "Wait? What just happened, did I miss something?"
Kirito: "I almost cleared the game... by killing Kayaba Akihiko."
U/N: "I don't understand... It's only been like 10 minutes? How much did I miss?"
Kirito: "Well..."
Kirito: "But, I still don't understand... I was sure that I got him in the chest right at the end... but he didn't shatter at all, he just disappeared?"
U/N: "Hmmm... Well, I wouldn't think him to be one to cheat his way out of it. He seemed to have a genuine passion for this game and the denizens that fought to live in it..."
Kirito: "Yeah, that's what I though too, so maybe something went wrong on his end that he didn't expect that prevented it? For some reason I trust him to not back down on his end of the deal."
Klein: "That's all well and good Kirito, but we're still trapped in here regardless of Kayaba's promise! And have you checked your inventories yet? A bunch of my items have got all this jumbled up text where the names used to be."
Kirito: "Huh? My swords... El_cid@tor and Dar@ Re_ulsor... Lisbeth is not going to be happy about this!"
Agil: "How are you meant to get a new sword though, we can't teleport back down to the earlier Floors anymore?"
Asuna: "And it isn't just our equipment that have gone all weird! My skills have changed too!"
U/N: "What?"
I was already going through my inventory menu and applying a tag to all of my corrupted items so that I could dispose of them later when I had the chance, but when Asuna mentioned this I quickly swapped to my skills list...
My Spear Mastery skill has dropped 400 levels?! It's now down to 600/1000, that means my Spear will do less damage per attack now and a bunch of my Sword Skills were unlearnt?! I then went to my Bow Mastery skill, fortunately that one was still at 994 like it was earlier this morning... I wonder why that one didn't get affected by whatever happened here?
U/N: "Hey Kirito, did your Dual Blades skill get affected too?"
Kirito: "Yeah it did! First my swords and now my skill... I'm going to have to train a bunch to catch back up ready for the next boss fight! What about yours?"
U/N: "My Spear and my Spear skill got affected... but my Archery stuff didn't? So... I guess I don't have to grind too much back at least?"
Asuna: "Ahhh! No! My cooking skill! It's dropped back down to 300/1000! b-but... that's not fair! What about you U/N?!"
It went on for a while, the group of us all checking our skills and items and comparing it with one another, trying to see if we could make any sense out of these setbacks we had received. But we couldn't figure out a link that made sense... maybe it was just a bug?
But then we heard the Teleport Gate go off, and when we looked over towards it we saw a sight we were not expecting to see at all!
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