"Please......Don't leave me alone......Pina......"
Two lines of tears streamed down Silica's cheeks, as scattered grains of light burst from the big feather on the ground.
That pale blue feather was the remains of her sole friend and partner for a long time, the familiar «Pina». Just a few minutes ago, Pina died protecting Silica. Given a mortal wound by the monster's weapon, it gave out a cry in a sad voice before shattering like ice. Leaving only its long tail feather which had always waved happily whenever its name was called——
Silica was one of the rare «Beast Tamers» in SAO, or perhaps it was more accurate to say 'was once'. Her familiar, the symbol of a beast tamer, was no longer here.
A beast tamer wasn't a class or skill given by the system, but a term used by the players.
On rare occasions, aggressive monsters would show interest in players. If you didn't miss the chance, you could successfully tame the monster by giving it something to eat. The monster would then become the player's «Familiar» and serve as a valuable ally who supports the player in various ways. Players referred to those who had succeeded in doing so as beast tamers with a mix of praise and envy.
Of course, not all monsters can become familiars; only a very limited variety of small monsters could. The conditions to trigger the event weren't all that clear, but the only one that everyone was sure about was that the event wouldn't occur if the player killed too many of the monster type.
This was a rather hard condition when you think about it. Even if one tried to get a familiar by repeatedly meeting them, the monsters were aggressive and the player can't avoid entering a fight with them. In other words, if one wished to become a beast tamer, they would have to keep meeting with the monster, and if the event didn't occur they would have to keep running away. It wasn't hard to imagine just how annoying all that would be.
You could say that Silica was very lucky on this matter.
With no knowledge of this, she had entered some forest without any reason on a floor she visited just because she felt like it. The first monster she had met didn't attack her, but merely approached her. She then gave it a peanut that she had bought the day before without much thought, and it just happened to be a food that the monster liked.
The monster was a «Feathery Dragon». Its whole body was covered in soft, pale blue feathers, and it had two long feathers instead of a tail. The small dragon was a very rare monster to come across. Perhaps Silica had been the first to succeed in taming it, as it immediately became the subject of much interest when she went back to her hometown «Friben» on the eighth floor with it sitting on her shoulder. The next day, countless players had attempted to tame a Feathery Dragon after listening to Silica's information, but none of them managed to succeed.
Silica had named the small dragon «Pina». It was the same name that she gave to a cat she had in the real world.
Familiar monsters were known to have low stats when it comes to actual combat and Pina was no different. But they had a number of special skills instead: a scanning ability that warned the player of approaching monsters, a skill that healed the player a little, and so on. They were all pretty useful and made day-to-day hunting much easier. But what Silica was most happy about was the warmth and comfort that Pina's very existence brought.
The AI of a familiar wasn't that great. Of course, it couldn't talk, and it could only understand a couple dozen commands. But to Silica, who had entered the game when she was only twelve and was being crushed by fear and nervousness, Pina was a savior that was hard to explain with words. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that Silica's «Adventure» — which meant actually «Living» here — had started with Pina.
