Chapter 4 - Floor <Zero> and training

After another month Mint has finished farming all those skills up to level 500, now a month remains until the start of the beta, Mint has discovered that showing the weapons' abilities to every player isn't such a good idea plus he needs a more special characteristic for his guild of copies than a particular appearance.

So he has chosen that the ability will be summoning demons or demon tamers, specifically D&D demons [I will use those demons as familiars], then he started making the floor, there will be several sections of the Zero floor called Planes of existence which are, Gehenna, The abyss, and the nine hells. The guild base will be in the middle of them.

It took Mint a month to build half of the floor so he took a break and met up with his brother that will start playing in the beta, Kazuto was very excited to play with his brother because he knows Mint assisted building Sao.

When they met each other Mint started teaching him about all the know-how that he needs, Kazuto complained to call him Kirito in-game because it's a virtual world and not the real world, so Mint agreed with him and continued teaching him, Kirito learned fast and Mint only intervened when like if there was a rare monster [even if he could spawn it, he wants Kirito to know that it's rare], or when he gets a paralysis debuff for example, after a couple of hours Mint reminds Kirito to eat because unlike him Kirito is starving but endures, after a dry laugh Kirito says goodbye and logs off for like 12 minutes while Mint hunts the monsters around the area, Kirito comes back and says with a big smile "The table was ready so I tried eating fast, but they scolded me saying to not choke, but luckily I mentioned you so they let me off", Mint chuckles and they continue, after a couple more hours Kirito asks if he needs a break but Mint replies "I have a capsule that takes care of my needs for me, if you want I can send one to you but make sure to still socialize with your family, like maybe eat something light at dinners to let them see you at least", Kirito's eyes sparkle and nods furiously and agrees with every word, they continue hunting until it's time to sleep, Mint tells Kirito "It will arrive tommorow so be prepared." Kirito is excited and after logging off he falls asleep because it's nighttime outside.

The next day the capsule is installed by Mint copies that changed the appearance they have into regular employees, Kirito is very excited and ready for a full day of hunting because it's a Saturday, the capsule was installed quickly and Kirito jumped in and starts playing, Mint is in the area where Kirito appeared and asks "Hey hows the capsule? pretty neat right, I was the one that designed it.", Kirito, of course, amazed that he made it because it's pretty damn advanced, it puts you in sleep mode and takes care of all your needs!

Then the time to check out the boss is coming, Mint uses the shield form of Dementhor and the katana form of Electro Dragon, Kirito is stunned by the weapons then snaps out of it because he IS a GM, Mint tells Kirito he will only help when he needs it, Kirito agrees and they head off to the dungeon but then Kirito realizes they still didn't find the boss floor, Mint just says "We just ram through the enemies with power", Kirito realizes he is level 10 now and understands that with Mint he grinded all-day in great monster spawns and that the best player among the others must be the highest level 4, Mint knows what he is thinking about and just shrugs and says "You just learned fast and I just advised you, I didn't level you up myself..." Kirito is grateful and bows a bit, then he gets determined to clear the dungeon...

Kirito gets to the boss room quite exhausted after about 2 and a half hours, Mint advises for him to eat a snack and chat with his family, Kirito agrees and he goes resting for 10 minutes and comes back refreshed, they then go to the boss room and enter it, Kirito is nervous a bit but when he saw Mint in front of him he got reassured, Kirito beats up the boss easily but when the last health bar goes to the red Kirito stops and says "Let's not kill him, the other players may think we are cheating if we kill him this early and let's be honest, it won't be any fun if we kill every boss..." Mint blocks the boss's attack and agrees with him but then he says "Then I shall block the blows while you kill the kobolds, we will camp these kobolds until a group enters in the area of the boss door, after this, I'll show you a good hunting ground that would last until they beat this floor that would give you a better sword" Kirito's face was excited about the new equipment he would get so he massacred the kobolds that respawned, Mint set the respawn time faster because Kirito needed to wait a bit every time he quickly killed them, of course, Mint continued to block the attacks all this time. {This part is tricky, the wiki tells me the beta lasted a month but the anime says it took a couple of months to reach floor 8 so I will go with the 1 month and reached only to floor 5...}

After 4 days Mint senses a group entering the area of the dungeon boss and gives Kirito a teleportation crystal and tell him "Hey, stop attacking and let's teleport, there is a group of people coming to the dungeon door." Kirito teleports at the same time as Mint and the boss rooms resets completely from all the damage and the respawn rate comes back to its original rate. Then Mint says "Hey, you know how I guided you all this time? yeah, I'm going to set you free for a bit to make new acquaintances, I'll meet you again when it's nighttime" Kirito rubbed his head and just nodded because he did guide him a lot...

Kirito makes friends with Agro, etc... now it is nighttime and there are only a few players around the city, Kirito meets up with Mint and they go do the quest, the quest requires them to kill Little Nepenthes, despite having little in their names they are big quite big, and after they arrive at the Little Nepenthes field Mint kills one with a fruit and says "If you kill the ones with a fruit other Little Nepenthes come here so this is a great place to level up as long as you don't die to their attacks", then Kirito fought hordes upon hordes because Mint made the ones with a fruit more common, by now Kirito is around level 13... {the training is very harsh but because Mint exists his fatigue that would make anyone collapse is restored by being near him} Kirito understands that without Mint he wouldn't be able to level up this fast and says "I understand that without you I wouldn't be able to reach this far... so I need to train by myself, if you can't play with me for some time I wouldn't be able to play normally, plus it's a game and we are supposed to have fun" Mint agrees with him and tells him "I just wanted you to know how to fight hordes upon hordes of monsters so no problem, let's part ways tomorrow when we finish this quest" Kirito agrees and goes to rest.

Kirito completes the quest after an hour of fighting hordes, Mint made more fruit Little Nepenthes appear to find the flower faster but it was longer than expected. Mint waved goodbye to Kirito as he finished the quest and went in a different direction than Kirito, after making sure no one was in sight he took out a pendant with a glowing dark red crystal and said "Teleport " and continued working on the Planes of existence.