Unending - a Sword Art Online Fanfic (being rewritten)

Chapter 38: Ambushed, and Evil Rant?

🎶And another chapter bites the dust.🎶

Hello and welcome back for another chapter. This should be a little shorter than the last two, but will set us all up nicely for the finale. Hope you're all ready, cause here we go!

P.S. Turns out it isn't much shorter than the last two chapters at all. hehe

Zaor's POV:

Zaor followed the team leader through the ruins. It seemed that the army had torn the town apart before leaving. All that was left was emptiness and destruction. Half destroyed buildings stood next to piles of rubble, and the streets looked no better, with the remains of what looked like everything from clothes to food stomped and scattered on the ground. Zaor had never seen such a level of destruction before. It was almost too much to take in. Having found nothing. Zaor returned to the square to find everyone making camp in on of the half-destroyed buildings.

"I see you didn't run off the first chance you got." One of the members said, getting up. "We all thought you had volunteered for this so you could desert."

Zaor shook his head. "I have no plans of deserting. There is far too much waiting for me back on floor 22 to even think of such a thing." Zaor came over and sat down next to the fire that had been built with the others.

"Alright, report." The leader said.

"Nothing but ruins." Zaor said.

The others all nodded in agreement with him. Apparently they hadn't seen anything either.

"OK. Get some sleep, we'll take another look in the morning, then move on to the woods."

Everyone nodded and began bedding down for the night. As Zaor drifted off to sleep, an idle thought passed through his mind. "What if something goes very wrong tomorrow?" He shook the thought straight off and fell asleep for the rest of the night.

<Timeskip>

The night had passed with nothing interesting happening. Zaor woke up and quickly packed up the camp alongside the rest of the team. They made their way into the forest and began searching, but with no success. After having spent a whole day, they had found nothing. Zaor and the others all camped for the night again in the city ruins.

The next morning, they all got up and searched again, and again they found nothing. The men's nerves were running high, so high that one of them decided to let out his frustrations on Zaor.

He turned and yelled at Zaor, "Tell us what you know!" right before punching him in the face and sending him staggering. Zaor stood up straight and dodged the second punch, delivering one of his own, knocking his opponent back.

They began circling, looking for an opening in each other's defenses. Zaor slipped in and put a right uppercut straight into the man's chin, the man went flying a few feet off the ground before landing flat on his butt with an groan.

"Enough." The leader said, coming in between the two. "We're all tired and frustrated from having searched all day and not found anything. That doesn't mean we take it out on each other. Understood?"

He looked at Zaor, who nodded, then at the man who was dusting himself off.

"Yeah, I got it." He said.

"Good, now let's..." The man stopped talking and looked around. "Something's not right. We've been surrounded."

He drew his sword just in time to block and arrow that came out of the shadow of the ruined buildings at him, the arrow bouncing off his sword. The others all drew their weapons and circled up, even Zaor. They all watched with bated breath as soldiers began appearing all around them by the dozens. Zaor felt the fear in the eyes of his companions. The soldiers formed a complete ring around the team, then two stepped aside and let through one person, Nagano.