Sword Art Online - Midnight Assassin - Vol.1

Chapter 9

[Tuesday, 6th December 2022 - 09:10 a.m.]

Two days had passed since the first floor was cleared and that made it exactly a month since Sword Art Online was launched. I had already upgraded my Anneal Dagger to plus one Sharpness and plus one Quickness so it'd be labeled like this: Anneal Dagger 1S1Q.

In order to save my time on grinding upgrade materials, I decided to only put the success rate at 90% instead of a hundred. What's ten to ninety anyways, I'm confident with my current success rate. Plus it saved me from another hour of grinding for the last ten percent.

Of course, I upgraded my weapon at the NPC blacksmith. Though now we have quite a few player blacksmith setting up shop in Urbus. I don't plan on being a customer of one anytime soon since it's only the second floor so I doubt anyone have a high enough level on Blacksmithing skill. I'm not gonna risk the chance on some low-level blacksmith when I have NPCs to rely on. Though I doubt the NPCs' skill level are much higher than players'.

As usual, I wore my cloak to hide myself from the crowd whenever I'm inside town. And of course, I avoided talking to people whenever possible, that includes Argo the Rat. She is a useful source of information but after our arguments a few days ago in Tolbana, I need to avoid her for now.

Then there's Kirito the goth boy. I don't see any problem with talking to him. He might be useful if I want information too since he was a beta tester but we aren't so close. I should consider befriending him like I did Argo. However that could be a risky move with his current reputation.

There's also the girl Kirito's currently partying with. I haven't known her name yet but she has quite the potential to be someone strong seeing her fight. Maybe I could use her? She is quite naive after all, I bet this is her first game. But if I have to summarize her attitude, I'd probably say she's a tsundere.

Moving on, I had spent the last two days completely solo without any interactions with anyone. If you don't include NPCs, of course. I completed most of the quests I could find in this town and already planned on moving out to the next town.

Since it's been two days since floor 2 opened, many players who chose blacksmithing as their main skill set up their shops on this floor. I could even say there's too many of them for one floor. Some of them will surely move their shop to the next floor after we cleared this one.

I walked in quick steps but not too quick so I don't attract unwanted attention and headed towards the town gate. Passing by the guards, I already set a destination in mind. Despite not having a info broker to give me infos, I'm doing fine finding my own informations. I was planning on trying a hit on the field boss but I need to scout it out first.

Having unequipped my cloak, I sprinted around the town of Urbus and headed into the sandy savannah. Sand were thrown onto the air as my feet quickly stepped on them. The nearest town from here wouldn't be far off. Probably two or three minutes to arrive on feet.

And that's why I won't go there. The nearer it is means more players would've been there. I ran with full speed towards the west area of Urbus and prepared my dagger just in case. It was a wasteland full of high level cattle monsters, according to my scouting information.

As the image of the main town behind me blurred, dark fog started to surround me and cover my sight. I activated the search skill as a step of caution and continued running at full speed towards the destination I have in mind.

*time-skip some minutes later*

Despite being almost half an hour running in this high-level wasteland, I haven't encounter any kind of monsters. That's too bad, honestly. I was really looking forward to gathering experience points from this said-to-be high-level mobs area.