SAO: The Explorer

CHAPTER I: EXPLORERS MUST START SOMEWHERE

LINK START

sweet sweet words that release me from the annoyance of reality, a world with limits, I've already explored all out there, all of it. every corner and edge of the town i live in, it was so boring walking the same stones that i grew up apon, the cracks i watched grow over years, the world out there was so.... dull, so boring and pale, the bleak brown colours, with hints of green here and there.... but i lost interest in that world.... now, let me lose myself, in this, limitless world.

Sword Art Online, in the Town of Beginnings, I've explored this town in the Beta too, i know this town well, every corner, every edge, every turn and curve, in this town I'm the map, this town was brighter in colour, much more interesting as you never meet the same person twice, you never hear, nor see the same voice and face twice, except your own.

I'm Oda Yakana, though my SAO name is «Explorer» , I'm not a fighter, like the rest of these people here, I'm not one for the battles, I'd rather climb, and struggle on rocks, weave through water, jump over lava and ridges, I'd like to explore every edge and corner of the floors, every curve and twist it can offer, discover all the traps, treasures and shortcuts, I've already done this for this floor, but again, I'm not a fighter, i need to wait for someone to kill the first floor boss before i can move onto the next floor, so for now i double check, triple check, and quadruple check, every edge and blade of grass.

i decided that Today, I'd use my speed to quickly check the Dungeon again, draw up another few maps to sell to «Nakuzi»  for cor, i can easily escape traps by using my skills, and the monsters aren't fast enough to hurt me during my dodge, so it would be easy to get away.... well, enough of my rambling, I'm sure you'd rather read about my amazing discoveries and dodging of monsters, the exploration of dungeons and dangerous areas. well. lets hop right into it.

3 monsters ahead. Ruin Kobold Troopers, slow, and weak, easy to Dodge, my hiding skill is quite high for a level 3, so it was easy to get past one of them, but the other 2 spotted me, not good. swung it's sword at me, dodge, successful, now for the other, dodge, good. usually the Dodge Skill has a problem, if you dodge into the enemies attacks you'd get hit, sadly for them I've found out this game has highly accurate hit boxes, so as long as you don't touch the weapon, you're fine, a quick dodge underneath, but i sadly wasn't fast enough, the sword hit my arm, that's half my health, gone. but i gotta keep running.

after a while, i managed to escape from them, like all monsters they have what i call a 'care area' where if you leave this area they don't care for you anymore, I lay my back to the wall, this game doesn't have blood, so I can't say blood was pouring down the wall, but my arm hurt like hell, thankfully my health regen skill kicked in, almost fully healed. Thanks «Banette»   for explaining that skill to me.

I suppose i might aswell tell who Banette is whilst my health regens. Banette you could say is my 'beta buddy', a bit of a nutcase Beta Buddy, he helped develop the game, and i helped Debug SAO, though i don't really know what Banette even made, coded, designed or whatever, and he's a bit of a wierdo. He's African too, but he speaks English, so the first time we talked i couldn't understand him, since I'm Japanese, eventually he used a translator and worked with me. to describe his ingame character he made him look like a white haired, multi-eyed medium height and build person, by multi-eyed i mean one eye was black, the other was white, his hair was scruffy, and in the Beta he wore almost no armour, he uses gauntlets too, no weapon. though that's his «Unique Skill» .

My health's done, back to full, time to head on, the corridor splits into 2 paths in a T formation, usually people would choose either the left or right path, i have a high reveal skill though, i found a hidden door right in the middle of the T path, a hidden treasure room. i tapped on the wall to open the hidden path, and inside there's just a cube room, with a single chest in the center....

"trap" i said to myself, with a plain bored expression. this was such an obvious trap, only a fool would fall for it. the room will either spawn monsters that lock you in the room until you defeat them all, or the chest will be a Mimic... i need to come back with a friend for this room. the map data is ok though, i can sell it for a lot of Cor from Nakuzi.

i pull out one of my 99 teleport crystals, yeah. i have alot of them, I'm an explorer afterall. but just as i was about to use it to teleport to the «Town of Beginnings» , something force teleported me to the center of the «Town of Beginnings», but not just me. every player in all of SAO was being brung here! what's going on?.

after a few moments of mass confusion and players being forced here, the sky became a dark crimson red hexagon rectangles with 'WARNING' spammed all over them, then, someone i know very well, poured out from the sky into a blood-like sphere, Kayaba, «Game Master» Kayaba Akihiko, many were confused, many were scared, i'd lie if i said i wasn't one of them...

but after what he told everyone

I was more angry than scared