Sword Art Online: Regeneration

5:

"Let's move it!" Commander Rogue's voice boomed as me, Misotofu and Asugaya followed her. She didn't have her men surrounding her, they were leading smaller groups. Her marching was confident, almost like she must be some leader for some organization in the real world.

I examine who my new teammates were, Misotofu was a heavy guy with light blonde hair, it was almost white. His eyes were shock blue and he didn't show age, so I assumed he was maybe a high school student or an early college student. He wore a brown long sleeve shirt and above it, a leather tunic and a breastplate. He had black pants and matching Brown boots. He had bandages wrapped in his lower arms. His weapon, dual axes, were proudly hung by his waist on both sides.

I turn to the other way and see Asugaya, a boy who seemed nervous and looked like having a huge panic attack. He had chestnut brown hair and a nervous grin. He wore a black long coat and inside a white shirt. His sword hung by his back like mine. What was stranger about him than Misotofu was his eyes. They were not the same color, no. His left eye had that chestnut brown hue while his right had the almost black color, where barely any pupil was visible. He was roughly the same age as me and Akari. He caught me glancing at him and I exchange weird looks with him, giving him the crappiest smile I've ever shown.

We were now at floor thirty-two. The dungeon was located at the very edge of a pine forest that made the border of the small village of Elk. None have ever been interested in this particular floor. For one, there were no insane drops that the NPCs would give if you killed one. On the other hand, it's just a place that was mostly a safest place to grind your avatar's levels if they weren't up to date. Being a level thirty, I was on the weaker side of the spectrum. Most would say a few levels wouldn't be too hard but if a player was a floor clearer at my level, they'd probably kick them out. They wouldn't even get a scratch on the boss. Now that the current floor we've reached in the game so far was sixty seven.

     We approached a tree that stood out of the endless series of pines. It wasn't a pine, but a willow. It reminded me of the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, with its massive roots digging the ground. The branches dangled and hung down. You could touch them but unlike the Whomping Willow, it wasn't going to murder players.

     Rogue turns to the entire KoB company and back to the willow tree. She steps closer slowly and starts knocking the trunk. Instead the normal thump of the wood, it was a violent clanking sound.

     "This is it." She told us.

     I look at Miso who was staring somewhere else while Asugaya was shrugging at me to let me know he had no idea what's happening. Rogue examines the trunk of the metal willow with her fingers carefully. She seemed to have grabbed a part of the tree, I couldn't see clearly as I didn't have a good sneak or sight proficiency and the dark also contributing.

     Suddenly, the ground started to shake, like an earthquake somewhere about the five magnitude. The front of the trunk starts sliding to the right. In the trunk, a ladder made of wood led down.

     "Remember, we don't know much of the NPCs lurking here so to be safe, we put the higher leveled teams on the front and the non fighters at the far back so the aggro is even."

     She proceeded to the inside and started climbing down the ladder, "My group, come on, everyone else, carefully climb. The ladder's wood's durability won't be able to hold everyone."

     I went down the ladder carefully, Misotofu and Asugaya followed. I saw Akari looking down trying to peep out where I was. Honestly, it felt a little weird without her annoyance wanting me to slit my throat with my sword.

     Everyone eventually got down and it seems that the dungeon had shelves of rotting bodies, skeletons. My NerveGear did an excellent job of recreating the smell of dead bodies, it made me want to throw up. The rows of skeletons seemed to have no end. There was no other direction than straight. The path was narrower than most dungeons. The path is two people wide. And even that much space isn't enough to use swords well.