In the face of the wild and uncaring nature of floor 89, Kirito and his crew are appointed to tracing the quickest, and safest path to the next boss tower. As they travel across the land and further down the Stelph river, the tired veterans' minds a...
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When the sky fell and the robed One descended, I had an inkling of a feeling that I was to be cursed to a life of desolation. The facades of the crowd were stripped bare, and amidst their frenzy, I found myself reaching towards the bloodied dome above, in a futile attempt to kill God.
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I was appointed, along with Asuna, to establish a set route to the next boss tower for our guild's members. After expressing my concerns to the leader for the general lack of manpower and the uncharted, wild nature of floor 89, I was permitted to bring Klein, and the two other girls I knew, Lizbeth and Silica, of whom were already keen to join me on this voyage.
With the land reaching far to the horizon, I checked through my bag to double-check my equipment, Asuna standing beside me and scrolling through her inventory. "Why are you scrolling through that screen? Just go through your bags, like a normal person," I suggested "It's not efficient, I want to look through the details of each item too." "It's much more adventurous and human if you go through your bag though." Asuna winced, if only slightly, "I don't want to get any more used to this world than I already am. I want to get out quickly, honey." Klein snickered at me from the side, and I brushed him away with my usual indifference as I lifted myself from the grass and began walking down the hill, with my crew following suite.
Unlike the other floors, this floor had a surprising lack of towns, favouring the mildly cold wilderness of the pine trees that towered above us, and the gentle, yet chilling breeze that would pass by every now and then. Though a small town could be seen in the distance, dusk had already befallen us, and by the time the sun had fallen, our warmly-lit tents had already been pitched, with specks of fireflies flittering between the trees. "Man... it's been a while since the stars were so pretty." Klein, sitting against a tree and amongst the fallen leaves, took out his dragon-bone pipe and lit it, continuing his monologue as he blew dancing smoke into the air. "Kirito, I wonder if this Kayaba Akihiko guy was really that bad of a person – I mean, look at all of this sky. He programmed it, and it's damn good!" I motioned him in the dark light to keep his voice down, and looked up at the stars just as he did, tracing the patterns that I fancied.
"Kirito! Klein! We need help!" Asuna's cries from the distance shot us to our feet, and we rushed back to the tents, leaving our lamps behind. Inside Asuna's tent, Silica laid on the middle of the floor, writhing in pain and clutching tightly on her left arm. I made a quick observation of the symbol next to her health bar – a purple square with a white tear-drop at its centre: she had been poisoned. I yelled at Lizbeth, of whom was crying over Silica and begging her to stay still, "What happened? Tell me everything!" Startled, she gained control of her tears and explained, stammering, "She... She was... s-stung... It was a brown-looking scorpion, it had th... three stripes on its back..." "Asuna, get the encyclopaedia from my bag and do a search term for what she just said," I had sternly told her. Following a momentary blankness, she quickly pulled out my bag and retrieved the book, scattering the various health potions I had stocked up on, "It says here that the poison takes 3 days to kill... What do we do, Kirito?..." With my mind, fixated on the town ahead of us, I suggested that we make haste the following morning, and find treatment in the town. With darkness enveloping my being, with the exception of Klein's snores across the men's tent, I laid on my side, feeling an impending dread that has haunted me since the beginning of Aincrad.
The dawn that rose behind us cast our shadows ahead of us upon our arrival to the small town. Asuna yelled out to the unkempt man fishing by the river, and explained Silica's situation to his ignorant face as I stood by the water and watched the fish rush past my feet. Asuna, snapping me out of my trance, tripped over to me, burying herself in my chest, her hands gripping on my shoulders, shaking. "There's... there's no one, nothing to treat her here..." "What do you mean? There should be some sort of hospital, church-healer, anything here." "This place doesn't even count as a town, Kirito! There are no barriers or rules here! Just buildings. This place is a free-for-all, anything can happen here!" With shock jolting through my body and a sudden feeling of 'being alive', I stomped to the old man, admittedly in an angry fashion, "Where's the next nearest town? Some-place that can treat her." Shuffling in his feet, he took a step back and answered me, "If you go by this road here, there should be a bigger town. It'd take probably 4 days on foot, but if only the warp gates we-" In a bout of fury that had surprised even myself, I took a heavy step towards him, loudly exclaiming that we didn't have time and had an additional sleuth of things to fulfil. A moment of silence was heard amongst us, and Lizbeth, carrying Silica's arm with her shoulder, broke down into tears again. Silica looked over to me with fatigue in her expression. Bags hung under her eyes – so much so that she may as well have been a ghost. Klein looked on with a look of disappointment one would give to a tantrum-prone child, and I withdrew to allow Asuna the control over this situation.
