These Scars of Ours // kiritoxasuna // no longer a fan fiction in works

13: A New Found Glory

Kiritos P.O.V

One month. That's how long it has been since Sword Art Online turned into a nightmare that no one was able to escape unless their HP gauge was to drop to zero. But that would cost the loss of their own life.

Many players have killed themselves in ways no one could imagine. Entering a labyrinth alone. Sending a dagger straight through their own head. This meant that the game that had started with a mere 20,000 players, has now dropped to 8,000 with in one month, because they have not been able to handle the full actuality of this game.

After Asuna and I woke up at our spawn points when the GM put us to sleep, we ran through the towns in Coral, trying to comfort the players that were not taking the situation well.

"Please! Calm down! It will all be okay!" Asuna called to the man standing on top of the cliff.

At that moment, Asuna and I had seen this man climb to the top of this cliff, and a crowd was gathering around him. Asuna and I were at the bottom, standing in front of him, begging him not to jump off of the cliff. If we could, we would fly up and take him off of the cliff. But, that ability won't be unlocked until we reach floor 10.

"You have so much to live for!" Asuna shouted.

"I don't... I am not strong enough to survive in this world..." He muttered unsteadily.

He took another step forwards, which was one step closer to death.

If this guy was to jump off of the cliff, it would send definitely cause a lot of people to freak out.

He looked up, and closed his eyes. He was about to jump off.

"Don't do it!" I yelled, but just then, the crowd gasped and he walked off of the cliff.

I ran to try to catch him, and Asuna did as well, but as if in slow motion, he hit the ground with a thud.

"No!" Asuna gasped just as we got to him. She fell onto the ground, and knelled down next to him and sat him up on her knees. I pulled out a healing potion, and handed it to him, but he shoved it away.

"I was never going to survive in this world..." He said with a slight smile.But immediately after, his HP gauge hit 0, and he burst into a million pixels in Asuna's arms. My eyes bulged, and I looked up at Asuna. Her head was hung down.

"Kirito..." She whispered to me unevenly. I grabbed her by her shoulders, and hugged her tightly.

"Take me home..." She whispered to me. "I need to go home..."

I remember looking in the crowd and seeing a teenage girl with blonde hair, and in her arms was her little sister who looked exactly like the girl holding her. But she looked to be 7 years old. All of the people in that crowd were the ones I was supposed to protect. Some thing was telling me to make sure to free them all. This would have been my immediate goal, even without this hunch to free them all. But am I the strongest one here? Or just the one with the most experience?

I pulled out of the hug, and looked at Asuna. Her eyes were red from crying, and she was looking at me with a longing look, begging me to take her home. I nodded, and stood up, helping her stand. I grabbed her hand, and led her home. The walk home was completely silent. I didn't have anything to say, because it felt like there was something in my throat, and it was hard to speak because of it.
The only thing that was heard was the sniffles that came from Asuna who was behind me.

Soon, the house came into view, and Asuna let go of my hand and ran for the house. I ran after her, and when she got inside, she collapsed onto the couch. I sat next to her and put my arm around her, and she huddled close to my chest.

"What are we going to do now..." She asked me with a shaky voice.

That was a good question she asked me. What would we do now? I remember all of the possible answers that I could was chosen to give her, but for some reason, I choose the one I didn't want to choose.

"You and I... We are the most capable players in the game. Back in old Aincrad, you and I were the ones who lived to the fullest, and made sure that we were able to still fight on the front lines. This means we are going to have to fight and make it back to the real world, taking chances while still being careful..."

She stiffened up, but nodded after. "What about the others..."

"We are going to tell them our plan, and if they want to fight on the front lines with us, then that's what they can do. To be quite honest, I just want to work with you to achieve the role as the most powerful players, just the two of us. Then, once we reach floor 10, we can make a guild."

Asuna swung her legs onto the couch, and sat her head on my lap. "What will we do after today then?"

"We are going to grind on this floor in the fields, and level up so we can have higher stats for the boss fights. We can complete quests together, and get a lot of exp. If I am correct, the quests hardness went up, so that means that the rewards should have risen."

"We should also go see the labyrinth, and see if we can actually get inside it. If we can, then when we can form a guild, we can scope out all floor Labyrinths that are activated so far." She added.

So this was the plan Asuna and I had in mind. After we made our plan, we had a meeting with our friends at our place.

The meeting was quite depressing, but everyone decided to part ways. Basically, Klein went back to help his old friends, Silica wanted to help the younger kids of the game, Agil went back to keeping his shop with his wife, who happened to log in to get Agil to ask what he wanted for lunch. Asada wanted to open up her own restaurant, for reasons that I don't understand, but Suguha, who kept her in game avatar, decided that she would find new friends and form her own party with them to train with them.

Everyone agreed this was a new opportunity to try to live as best we could.We all agreed to try to hang out sometimes, and form parties to clear the Labyrinths together, but that promise was harder to keep than it sounded.

Now, Asuna and I are both at level 70, after grinding for 1 month straight while everyone else scouted the floor to search for the Labyrinth and map it out as well. We leveled up at the 24th floor labyrinth, and managed to map it out in the mean time. All of the floors that were unlocked but still had to boss room locked still had access to the Labyrinth itself. Asuna and I took that to our advantage.

All of this fighting gave Asuna an idea for what our guild name would be.

She decided to call it "The Frozen Angel Legion"

..................

Gahh, short chapter, but I want to do a major time skip for the next chapter, and I wanted to make it to where the characters don't hang out as often because it makes my writing easier and stuff. I currently have another fan fiction I am writing, so I spent a lot of time perfecting this chapter for you all :)