"But the monsters over there are a real pain. That bear over there is way too hard to fight."
Lisbeth felt that the difficulty was quite high.
"Those bears?" Asuna said. "They really are troublesome."
"There are fewer players over there. Most players are trying to clear Moen City to the south. The Mist Forest doesn't offer much profit. Although the road south toward Heide Fortress is almost fully open, who knows when the path deeper into the Mist Forest will open..."
Kiriko had a strong grasp of games and immediately understood what was going on.
"Eh? Are the NPCs over there really pretty?"
"Mm-hmm, they are. They even have pointy ears."
Lisbeth and Asuna started chatting.
"—Ahem, ahem. Don't get off topic at a time like this!" Kiriko coughed twice.
"Ah, sorry. Liz wanted to know what Mist Village was like, so I gave her a brief introduction," Asuna said.
There was actually nothing particularly special about the Mist Forest itself. What was special was that beneath it lay Nokron.
Of course, that place was inaccessible for now. The current players were not strong enough yet. Defeating Margit the Fell Omen might actually be more realistic.
"Speaking of which, we—"
Lisbeth was about to say something else when her eyes suddenly went blank.
Clearly, she had temporarily "disconnected."
Asuna carefully laid Lisbeth on the ground.
"Liz isn't strong enough. Even if we escort her, she'll still be in danger, right?" Asuna looked at Kiriko.
In Sword Art Online's story, the game itself actually took up a relatively small portion.
In the "original work," most of the content was about the two protagonists' push and pull.
But the Sword Art Online here was starting out as a long-running series, so some of the basic settings still needed to be explained.