When Our Blades Cross (A Sword Art Online Story)

Connections

Gosen took a glance over to the AmuSphere, a hesitation overcoming him as he recalled the events of the previous night. He ran a hand through his hair, "There's no way, right? It shouldn't be possible he knows where I am..." He grimaced as his father's words echoed in his mind.

"I have eyes everywhere..." He shuddered thinking about it. Gosen clenched his fists tightly, causing a moderate pain. Shaking violently, he released his grip and forced himself to breathe. I told everyone I'd log in immediately after waking up... He shook his head and eyed his AmuSphere once again. With a heavy sigh, he grabbed it and placed the system over his head.

"Link start!" He uttered, the command launching him straight back into Alfheim Online. The sight of New Aincrad was still mildly surprising. A lot had happened, Gosen remembered the final fight clearly; Kirito had been able to defeat the creator of the floating castle himself, Akihiko Kayaba.

He waved his hand down, bringing open the game menu. It was still early on a Saturday morning, but there still seemed to be active players, so either they stayed up all night or chose to log on early like him. After giving it a few seconds, he decided it was better not to focus on that, instead choosing to think about what exactly he should do first.

"Hey, Gosen!" Michael's voice launched him out of his thoughts, forcing him to pay attention to the waving sylph in front of him.

"Oh, hey Michael..." he said as Michael ran over with a huge grin on his face. During his time in SAO Gosen had noticed that when he approached like that it generally meant that he was excited about something, but rather than bluntly asking what Michael was excited about, he settled for a simple "Good morning."

Michael nodded in response, "Yeah, good morning," he said. "I just woke up and saw you on,  figured I'd say hey."

Gosen raised an eyebrow. "And that's all?"

Michael let out a laugh, "Crap, you know me too well... Truth is, there's this quest I want to do, but I can't really go alone... I'd like to have three people for it if I can, but that may be a little difficult this early in the morning."

"I can be your third person," Came a girl's voice from behind Gosen.

He turned, "S-Silica? What are you doing up so early?"

She puffed her cheeks out, "Well good morning to you too..."

"Eh? S-sorry..."

Michael laughed at their little interaction, "So you're willing to go?"

"Wait--at least tell me about the quest first."

Michael nodded and began his explanation. "Well, I don't know a lot of the details, but there's a strange NPC in a dungeon around the Leprechaun territory. The strange thing is that no one has been able to find out how to activate him..."

Gosen forced himself not to audibly groan--he wanted to go questing but he... No, no one could figure out how to activate the quest, if there even was one. "Wait, hold up," He said as calmly as he could, "are you even sure it's a quest NPC? It's uncommon, but sometimes NPCs are just placed in dungeons as a guide of sorts."

"That's been a concern among many players  from what I've seen because he's just... Silent. He doesn't say anything, he's just...there. At the very least I'd like to check it out just to make sure there's nothing; and if that's the case, I'll make up for taking your time somehow... I understand if you have doubts about doing this now," Michael responded.

He gave it some thought. Provided there is a quest at the end of this, there's bound to be some pretty good rewards considering the general pattern he noticed in SAO; he was by no means an MMORPG expert, but in SAO the harder a quest was to activate, the better the reward generally was.