𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝗻𝗱, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮. 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝟯:𝟯𝟬…
The poor player ran, scared, uselessly screaming for help while running through one of the many forests of the first floor.
Behind him, several Wolf mobs lead by an 'Alpha Wolf' chased after him, quickly shortening the distance between them each second.
Suddenly, the random guy's eyes widened, even as he saw the end of the forest, hope filling his heart…until he stopped after exiting it, despair overcoming his mind once again at seeing the end of the floor, the infinite virtual sky of Aincrad's still darkened early hours greeting him.
Why did he think it was a good idea to sneak out of the Inn very early just to get some levels above the rest of his Party?! He should at least leave them a message or something, dammit!
And now, even as he turned around to see the angry mobs emerging from the forest and start surrounding him, he knew he was going to die.
Taking several steps back until he was at the very edge of the Floor, the guy closed his eyes and wondered if he would see his long-dead cat on the 'Other Side'.
Then, the sudden sound of whimpers/squeaks coming from the wolves and a sudden rush of air made him open his eyes in shock.
He did it just in time to see several wolf-limbs flying everywhere in a shower of angry-red polygons (That would have been very gore if they weren't inside a game-world), and some sort of black-white blur speeding past him.
He could also swear he hear the words 'Who the hell is stupid enough to run around alone at THIS hour?!' echoing for an instant, but he was too shocked to know if it had been his imagination or not.
The rest of his party would find the guy half an hour later, still sitting wide-eyed in the same spot and telling him that one of them had woke up early to get some extra potions and realized he was missing.
When he had, between half-choked words and happy sobs, explained to them what had happened, a random Beta Tester between them had frowned before sending a message to someone else.
It seemed that the mysterious 'anomaly' of SAO was still active.
Barely some minutes after the 'miraculous rescue' had happened, the same black and white blur that had just been at the other side of the Floor could be seen leaning against the side of the 'Tower' that was the dungeon leading to the second floor, a mix of annoyance and tiredness on his face.
"Goddammit…why am I STILL doing this?" muttered Kirito to no one even as he looked to the fake-sky/ceiling.
It had happened in a VERY strange and confusing way, the events that lead the previously not-very-social boy to where he was.
That fateful first day, after getting over the shock of what had happened, Kirito had decided to test if he REALLY hadn't gone insane, and had proceeded to try and punch another nearby mob, telling himself that it wasn't really tempting fate if he had just accepted his death some moments before.
When the Boar had exploded into polygons in contact with his bare fist, having also flown back several meters through the air from the impact, he had still been in denial and had tried to punch another one. When the SAME result was obtained, he tried again.
And again. And again. And again. And again…
One hour of punching any Wolf or Boar that were between the Starting City and the nearby village of Horunka later, Kirito had been forced to accept that no, he apparently hadn't gone insane, and THAT was really happening.
Another dosage of shock overcame later, he had decided to test something he just had an inkling of and, looking into the forests surrounding Horunka with a half-hearted determination, the boy RAN.
He had stopped once he arrived to the edge of the floor closer to Horunka, barely 20 seconds later.
And he knew there were almost 3 Km. separating that distance.
Almost robotically, he had turned around and, still a bit out of it, he had once again RAN in the opposite direction.
2 minutes later, he was standing on the other opposite edge of the 1st Floor, silently watching the virtual clouds in front of him and the tower leading to the next floor not far behind.
The young gamer had been trying to process that, even running through forests and more than one mob (Which had been mostly destroyed the moment he ran THROUGH them), he had somehow run at a speed that was impossible to reach not only in the real world but also in SAO. He was pretty sure that, besides using a GM-account or something like a hack (Which was essentially impossible thanks to the marvel that was the 'thinking' Cardinal System created by Kayaba Akihiko), there was NO WAY of doing what he had just done.
Even more, he was pretty sure even a Game Master COULDN'T run like he had done. In one of the many articles that he had read, written by that bastard of Kayaba himself, the man had stated that even those accounts 'Stats' would be limited by the maximum quantities that could be reached inside the game, which in itself wasn't a problem because they would have far more useful things than being faster or stronger than other players, like being able to inflict status effects or directly teleport anyone to where they wanted, not to mention the advantages of turning themselves into 'Immortal Objects'.
Once, during the Beta, he had been curious about how much their stats were translated into he 'speed' and 'strength' they had in-game, so he had asked Argo if there was a way to calculate the maximum limits the players could reach within the game limits.
A week later, the girl nicknamed 'The Rat' had answered him that, roughly and if one were to reach the max level AND only focus in one stat for the whole time (Meaning, just a hypothetical scenario), a player would be able to run at almost twice the speed of the greatest Olympic champions, be a little stronger than the best weight-lifter in the world. As for endurance, they could, in theory, take a direct hit from something the size of a car without losing their entire HP…once.
He had been amused by the idea, especially because of how impossible it was. No one but a GM, and they really wouldn't have a reason to do so, would be able to be 'superhuman' to the level of comic books, even in SAO, then.
Of course, realizing that he had essentially broken ALL those records (Except the endurance one, which he wasn't willing to test), and he had still felt as if he could punch HARDER and run FASTER had left him very shaken…until yet another little detail had popped into his mind again.
Aincrad's 1st floor, the wider of them all, was 10 Km. in diameter. So, he had essentially just run 10 Km. without really noticing.
He had broken down laughing and sobbing at the same time from the 'coincidence', wondering if he was going to wake up the next instant on his bed after having spent too many hours watching One Punch-Man with Sugu the last night.
When he had come to his senses some hours later, vaguely aware that there were some plant-type mobs surrounding and attacking him, despair and depression had filled him once again at seeing that no, he was still trapped inside Aincrad and he was still dressed in probably the silliest superhero costume ever.
Then, he had deadpanned at the mobs, before STARING at his bugged HP bar.
Not a single sliver of green was dropping, despite the fact that they had been probably trying to kill him for an hour or more.
Slowly standing while being aware that, despite trying to push or pull him, the man-eating plants were unable to make him even bulge a cm. if he didn't allow it so.
Then, he had punched them, one by one.
When the last of the mobs whose name he was TOO stressed to even remember had died in an absurdly and slightly gory (Virtually, at least) way, the black-clad boy had sighed and RAN once again through the floor, letting his mind wander until it led him to the edge of the Floor closer to the Starting City, trying to sort his thoughts and decide WHAT he was going to do.
For good or bad, the…'Bug' that had screwed with his character had essentially turned him into some sort of 'virtual superhuman'. His mind was still sane enough, though, to bring ALL the sinister parallels to Saitama as facts. As far as he knew, things in the floor could still be able to kill him or maybe the Cardinal System would detect him as an error and 'fix' the Bug sooner or later, leaving him as a Level 1 character with no equipment in the middle of a group of angry mobs. Or worse, it could just ERASE his account all-together, which most likely would result in his death.
Still deep in his reflections and trying to decide WHAT he was going to do, Kirito had only became aware that a group of players screaming at another one were some hundreds of meters from him only when said guy, with a slightly crazed look on his face, had stopped just at the edge of the floor, looking down to the abyss with hopeful eyes.
The young gamer had realized WHAT the unstable player was trying to do when he already had one foot over the endless void.
Barely thinking and moving more by instinct than anything else, Kirito had done the only thing he could think of.
He RAN and, just as the idiot threw himself off Aincrad, he had grabbed him from the back of his light armor and thrown him back through the air. All of that in less than an instant.
The other players were still blinking and trying to realize WHAT had happened when Kirito's eyes had widened at seeing the screaming player flying more than 20 meters high through the air in a direct collision course against the walls of Starting City. Screaming and once again acting instead of thinking, the boy had once again run and JUMPED after him.
Only when he had already caught the screaming player and was spinning over himself through the air, cape flapping behind in a very 'cool' way, had he realized that yes, he had jumped the height of a building without any effort.
Then, he had crashed back-first against one of the walls, a crunching sound and the display of an 'Immortal Object' pop-up appearing even as he slumped to the floor.
The no longer screaming guy that he was STILL holding was just babbling senseless things when he stood up and let go of him, looking with dread to his HP bar.
No, it hadn't gone down in the slightest. And, despite clearly knowing that 'Pain' didn't really exist in SAO, he hadn't felt the 'numbness' that came when being damaged in-game either.
He had been adding 'falling down from several times a sure-death height' to the list of weirdness the Bug had caused when he had remembered about the guy he had just 'saved' and turned towards him with an annoyed face.
Said guy, for his part, was still too busy staring at his currently red HP bar, and as such not looking at Kirito, while hyperventilating, any thoughts or 'brilliant' ideas he had had about being disconnected from the server by jumping off the floating castle long-forgotten thanks to the sheer terror he had just felt when 'flying' through the air. He was now more than willing to believe that he would REALLY DIE if he tried something like that again.
Then, an angry voice had called out to him.
"Don't FUCKING ever try to do something SO stupid again, you heard me, idiot?! Next time, I'm NOT saving you!"
The guy had just turned around in time to only see a white-black blur sped away to parts unknown, even as several confused and wide-eyed players ran towards him, shouting and asking if he was okay.
Unknown to Kirito, the guy he had just saved was named 'Arvin' in-game, and by saving him he had prevented what would have been the first in-game death of Sword Art Online had things gone as they should. He had also stopped countless 'suicides' committed by deluded and desperate players that would have followed Arvin's crazy example after he jumped off, and also started a round of wild rumors that would spread through Aincrad like fire in barely an hour.
But as previously said, the boy had no way of ever knowing that, and as such, it was with an annoyed and tired look that he arrived once again to Horunka village. Not even wanting to try and do the special Quest he knew could be done there, seeing as he had no way of equipping the 'Anneal Blade' even if he obtained it, the boy had marched to the village's Inn, paid for a room with his noticeably increase funds of Col and fell sleep.
The next day, when he had woken, still unable to even take off the damn jumpsuit and cape to even SLEEP and seeing that he was STILL trapped inside a videogame, the boy had once again wondered WHAT he should do…until a 'simple' question that, if he had never seen that crazy anime, he would have never even considered struck his mind.
What would Saitama do?
And so, for the next days, people left and right started to report and talk about the several sightings and intervention of 'The White-Black Blur' or 'The Anomaly', as the Beta Testers started calling him.
Several times, and in places too far away for any normal player to reach in such a short period of time, the mysterious 'blur' would appear, saving players that had been cornered by mobs or that had wandered too far away from the areas suited for their levels, moving too fast and killing the monsters too easily for anyone to be able to properly see him.
Even though sometimes someone reported that they heard him swear or muttering something or another, which was led to people at least 'knowing' that it was a 'him'. Player or something else, though, no one was sure, even though the Betas KNEW that it was impossible for any player to be able to do that.
It also didn't help that Kirito's slightly anti-social behavior hadn't improved really much since his mad situation began. Yes, he would go out of his way and run around 'saving' people, but he only did it because he had NO IDEA of what else to do. If he had still had a 'normal' avatar, he most likely would have done his best to grind like crazy, get his level up and try to clear the game, trying to relate as little as he could with other players when he didn't need to.
His current and 'uncertain' situation, however, had made essentially unable to level up and had basically made it so that getting equipment was totally pointless for him. He was glad that he could at least still HAVE the items in his inventory, though. One never knew WHEN those would be necessary, for whatever reason.
And so, he had decided to do like the guy who he was still trying to deny he hadn't 'become' into had done on his series and turned into some sort of 'Superhero'.
He didn't do it for glory or any 'righteous' purpose, though (He wouldn't make sure that no one could clearly see him every time if that was the case). He wanted to live, after all, and with no way of knowing if he wouldn't suddenly find himself 'powerless' in the middle of a 'fight', he would have never been stupid enough to do it for such silly reasons.
He did it…because he COULD do it. Because, even if the reason for which he had gained these 'powers' wasn't clear and he didn't know if they would go away, simply doing NOTHING would make him go crazy way faster than not using them.
After all, if he could stop someone or another from dying with barely any effort at all, why shouldn't he do so?
With an annoyed tick, Kirito returned from his recollections of the past month by remembering something Saitama himself had once said:
'If the Heroes run and hide, who will stay and fight?'
He DIDN'T want to be a Hero (Not that anyone had called him such, at least that he knew), but he was essentially doing the job of one, saving people left and right from dying for stupid reasons like being overconfident or overestimating their limits and/or knowledge of the game, and in a way he WAS doing it to NOT get 'bored'…
…that didn't turn him into a guy just being a 'hero for fun', right?
With a slowly hardening gaze (Mainly to banish the disturbing idea from his mind), the boy turned to look at the only place he hadn't entered in the whole month, the Tower against where he was resting right then.
"…well, I guess now is as good as any other time." muttered the boy before slowly heading towards the Dungeon's entrance.
The main reason why he hadn't tried clearing the dungeon by himself was simple and once again the same one why he originally didn't want to risk things with his uncertain situation: Death.
He wasn't God or anything like that. Nor was he a 'real' superhuman, neither did he believe himself a superhero or anything else. And even if he did, he still had limits, mainly that he needed to rest from time to time, lest he fell unconscious from mental exhaustion, and that, like Saitama, he wasn't omniscient. He didn't have any 'power' that let him know where someone who needed help was, and, even with super speed, the 1st Floor was still a massive place.
More than 500 people had already died since the game began, and that scared him, thinking that, if he tried to enter an area of the game that was 'important', either the Cardinal system would finally erase him, return him to 'normal' or that his apparent powers would prove themselves useless against the stronger mobs inside the tower, never mind the Floor Boss.
Of course, even as he entered the tower while taking a DEEP breath and readying his fists, Kirito once again had no way of knowing that, if things had gone as they should have, TWO THOUSAND people would have already died by this point in time, and that the level of the average front line-players would be lower than it was. Neither did he know that much more people than it should have had either started to leave the Starting City to try and clear the game or at least do SOMETHING, either inspired or hopeful thanks to the rumors of the 'Black-White Blur', which would lead to countless changes and many crazy things on the already very messed-up future…
But again, he had no way of knowing any of this, so it was with careful and hardened eyes that the boy took his first steps inside the Dungeon, ready to punch anything that came his way and cursing being up when it wasn't even 4 in the morning.
Even as he walked deeper into the dark-stone hallways, Kirito thought about Sugu, sadness, and worry filling him while wondering what his sister would be doing.
The boy had no way of knowing that said girl was currently staring at the ceiling of her room with reddish eyes, unable to sleep and her insides an emotional mess after, the previous day, her mother had told her the 'truth' about their relationship with her currently trapped 'brother'.
𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬
The anomaly had entered the 1st Dungeon.
As always, the MHCP-001 watched him, wondering what he would do next, like she had been doing for the past month.
Ignoring that 'her' own cognitive processes and many more complicated things were changing and growing the more she kept looking over the strange player that, despite the clearly IMPOSSIBLE things he did, Cardinal didn't recognize as an error, and that had changed the original despair-filled atmosphere of Aincrad in very bizarre ways, the AI known as Yui softly raised her right hand, never stopping staring at the screen showed the caped boy with her empty eyes.
Slowly, she made a strange 'Fuuum!' noise while closing her virtual fist and punching at the air, her eyes never leaving the boy's image.
A dreadful chill ran down the backs of several people around the virtual world, for some reason.
𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬
BAM!
"Okay…guess I can still one-punch the mobs inside here…" commented Kirito while seeing how the last of the 'Kobolds' he had been fighting against exploded in polygons after painfully crashing against the wall. "Good to know."
Also, he had been talking alone out loud for the last 10 minutes, since the first wave of Lizardmen failed to do anything more than annoy him. Even so, he guessed it was just more a way to cope with the growing feeling of boredom that was invading him than a sign that he was finally going insane.
It was wrong, he knew it. People were in danger every day they spent inside there and many had already died because of it. He SHOULDN'T be feeling bored when people's lives were at stake!
…and yet, the only thing that had stopped him from starting feeling that way after his 700th kill since he began 'playing Hero', his fear of dying, was slowly vanishing the more he went inside the Dungeon, the only place he had 'feared' to venture into.
Kind of like how someone grows irritated while playing an old RPG and getting countless random encounters while traveling from one place to another, the boy was slowly getting tired of simply walking/running around and punching things, which was how he had spent the last 20 minutes after, unconsciously, getting sure that he wasn't suddenly going to get killed, at least for the time being.
He was about to call it a night (Or at least a bit of a day, he guessed) when, after turning around a corner, he came face-to-face with an unusual sight.
A hooded player, clearly a girl even if the hood covered her head and obscured her face, was rampaging in the hallway, impaling lizardmen left and right with one of the rapiers that the NPCs sold in masse on the Starting City.
If he was still his 'old self', Kirito would have stopped to admire the impressive speed and grace with which the girl executed the 'Linear' Skill and killed the mobs with an impressive speed…but after a month of running up and down one-punching all kind of monsters through the Floor and going at speeds that made the girl seem like a snail, the boy was able to notice others, more important things.
Mainly, the fatigued look on the girl's face, the almost robotic way in which she just kept spawning the same Sword Skill again and again, and the slight, almost unnoticeable, suicidal way in which she fought.
The girl called Asuna stumbled back as her weapon broke as its durability reached 0, feeling herself about to lose consciousness after days of endless fighting without any break, lizardmen surrounding her panting form with an evil glint in their eyes…
…when SOMETHING shot into the hallway, making the wide-eyed mobs crash against the walls and explode into polygons in a very virtual-gore way, all in less than an instant.
Just before losing consciousness, she could have sworn she felt someone holding her falling body and a resigned voice speaking out loud.
"Why do I seem to find someone in troubles everywhere I go?"
When her eyes opened again, she was 'moving' through the forests outside the Dungeon.
On the arms of an unknown boy wearing the weirdest costume she had ever seen.
Kirito blinked and offered her a tired smile when he noticed her eyes opening.
"Hey there. You woke up. That's good."
Asuna slapped him.
The next instant, she regretted doing so when the numb feeling of not-pain spread through her arm, a sliver of her HP going down from it. The blinking boy in black just sighed and cursed with annoyance.
There were many kinds of players in SAO.
There were the Beta Testers, who clearly had the most knowledge of the mechanics and content of the game, at least to a certain extent. Then, there were the ones who liked playing videogames and had bought a Nerve Gear and SAO to experiment the next level of gaming (Which were divided in those who had played MMOs before and those that hadn't). Finally, they were those who were simply 'curious' about how the Virtual World was and how would it feel to experience it through the revolutionary technology of the Nerve Gear. This last group was, mostly, people who had NO IDEA of anything videogame-related or experience with any similar thing beforehand. But even then, most of those people had AT LEAST read the game's manual and the box.
The girl he had saved, Asuna, was apparently from the last, sad group that hadn't even done THAT, and only knew how to play by their own means.
Meaning that, despite having a clear talent for fighting, she was a total noob. Kirito almost felt like crying when (After convincing her that no, he hadn't done anything except getting her out of the Dungeon for her sake) he had realized that the girl didn't even know how to assign the Stat-points that were obtained when leveled up. Neither did she know WHAT a stat-point was.
Also, she seemed to have a slightly depressing and resigned view of things, which included the surety that they were all going to die sooner or later, hence the reason why she had decided to 'go down on her own terms' by fighting to the death inside the Dungeon.
The old Kirito would have probably fallen silent after trying to reason with her and using logic to show her WHY she was wrong in thinking like that.
The current self of the boy had just LAUGHED for several seconds before, to the shocked girl's outrage, calling her an idiot.
He had then half-dragged her to the nearest village, Tolbana, forced her to accept enough Col to pay for a room in the Inn and told her that, if she had enough time to be thinking and acting like that, she should use it to go to the 'Floor Boss Strategy Meeting' that was being held there tomorrow evening. He had decided to take the shock on her face after knowing about said events as his cue to leave.
He was already 10 meters away from her when Asuna had spoken again, still seeming a bit angry…but more confused than anything else.
"Why?" asked the hooded girl, a bit more emotion than before in her previously cold voice. "Why did you save me and…did all of this for me?"
Not turning around, the boy seemed to think over her words for an instant before suppressing a resigned chuckle and thinking 'What the hell!' before muttering the words that would become something that many people would hear from then on.
"That's just what I do…You see, I'm just a Gamer who plays as a Hero for…fun."
And before Asuna could say anything about his words, he was gone, his white cape flapping on the wind the last thing she was able to see.
In the silent streets of Tolbana, the girl seemed to frown while trying to understand the meaning behind those words.
"A Hero…for fun?"
Not really far from there, in the room of the house he had kind of 'rented' to spent his time on the small city, Kirito let himself fall down on his bed, no longer bothered enough by the cape or the jumpsuit to be unable to fall asleep, especially after having been 'awake' for almost 20 hours.
Why had he said those words? Yeah, they weren't a 'lie', but they weren't exactly the truth either…Maybe he was starting to emulate Saitama a bit too much?
At that thought, his hand shot by reflex to his head and, after once again making sure that his hair was still in place, he looked around with hard eyes, as if daring anything to happen.
When no mysterious race of super-powered monsters with the need to destroy him broke through the walls, Kirito nodded to himself with satisfaction and let his mind drift towards the usual dreamless sleep that one could get in SAO, wondering what tomorrow would bring.
Still, the meeting with hat weird girl had made him take a decision: Tomorrow, he would go the First Floor Boss strategy meeting. Whatever happened would happen and if anyone recognized him as the mysterious 'blur'…well, he would cross that bridge when it came to it.
What mattered was that, even if wasn't sure how his 'powers' would do against the Floor Boss, he COULD do something to at least help the other Front Liners when they headed into battle, and he may be able to take care of the Adds that he knew would spawn together with the Boss.
So, even if it meant he would have to renounce to his semi-comfortable 'anonymity', he WOULD go and see if he could help. Who knows, maybe he would even see that strange girl again, and he also needed to send another message to Argo in the morning with his latest excuse about why he was still too busy to meet with her and that he really didn't need any of her info at the moment…
Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬𝟬
𝗡𝗘𝗫𝗧 𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗗𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪!
"Hello everyone…this is Asuna. I don't really know why I am here or WHY couldn't anyone else do it, but I'm supposed to give you a 'preview' of the next chapter, whatever that means. Anyway, let me read this…yeah, next time on 'One Punch-Gamer': 'Rage of the Kobold Lord!'. Can Kirito's fists really help everyone around him or is his unclear path doomed to end in the face of the First Boss? Also, he will meet with someone who will change the unsure path he's walking down? And the decision he will make will affect everyone in Aincrad! Don't miss it!...wait, Kirito…maybe that's the name of that guy with the cape and-?"
𝗘𝗡𝗗 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪!
"HEY!"