Sword Art Online Gameverse x Reader

Chapter 4: The Meeting(s)

December 2nd, 15:40.

Today has been more taxing than I expected! I would have thought that coming from my multi-day grind sessions to doing some in-town quests would have been a cinch, but I'm exhausted from walking all over! I suppose I normally stayed in the same spots before and didn't walk nearly as much as I did today- I can't even imagine how much worse off I would have been without Argo's intel, she even gave me an efficient itinerary so I wouldn't have to backtrack around so much with an accompanying note that it was to even out the trade we did so she didn't feel like she was scamming me...

First a breakfast and now an efficient itinerary, I could keep trading at a loss and see how far I can get before enough is enough... but I don't really want her doing favours out of just some merchant's honour obligation or whatever!

. . .

Anyways, that's the last of the quests completed now, of the ones discovered so far at least; fortunately I don't have to immediately invest any of my limited skill points to finish the quest.
In theory I now have access to all these skills at their most basic level and I can then use my skill points to further advance these skills.

<Author's Note: I don't actually know if this is correct as I couldn't find any information that really goes into detail here as to how the process works, so I'm using the skill tree logic of the SAO game Hollow Realisation and just assuming that the non-combat skills have their own trees and use the same skill points, if you can point me to a resource that states anything different I'd love to read it and I'll see if I can alter my story to accommodate how the non-combat skills actually works! >

But I can worry about that later, for now I suppose I should make my way towards that amphitheatre that Diavel told me about. I should probably equip my better gear when I go in rather than my in-town gear... although, maybe I should equip a tier down so they don't expect too much of me.

-=-

The equipment in this game can only be equipped when reaching a certain level, and despite being on the same level requirements most equipment have differing names making it a pain to categorise them using their actual names, so I tend to refer to them as tiers:
- The gear you spawned with being tier 0 
- Tier 1 is what most people should have after at most a day out in the field;
- Tier 2 is what I'd expect most players to have earned by now considering we're a month into this game, this is what I have equipped inside towns and I'd expect everyone doing the boss to be at this tier at least;
- Whilst tier 3 is what the more dedicated grinders should have equipped, this is what I'll be wearing for the meeting;
- And tier 4 is what I currently use when I'm out on the field and what I'll probably equip for the boss encounter.

-=-

*I navigate through several menus and equip my tier 3 armour and spear from my tier 2 appearance as I walk around the corner and into the amphitheatre*

There are a fair few people here, about 40 from a glance, all spread out across the cinema-esque seating, a lot of them were in groups chatting away with the odd pair by themselves... only two solo players by the look of it. I suddenly feel my anxiety building, I never was good in groups in real life, I much preferred the text-based chat in games- I'll just sit as close to the exit as these benches will allow and I could probably make a quiet exit if I need to.

I take a seat and check the time on my menu, 15:58, at least I wasn't tardy I suppose!
I've got a couple minutes, let's take a glance around and look at what everyone else has equipped...