Special Reward: Wolf Heart Necklace!

Special Reward: Wolf Heart Necklace!

Blue light flashed from the one-handed sword in Seiya's hand—the visual effect of activating a sword skill.

As a cold spark emerged from the tip of Seiya's blade, his one-handed sword shot forward like a bolt of lightning and pierced straight into the Dire Wolf Leader's eye.

Blood-red pixel fragments splashed from the Dire Wolf Leader's eye, and the field BOSS let out a piercing, miserable howl.

Clearly, no matter what kind of animal it was, its eyes were undoubtedly one of its weak points.

As Seiya's one-handed sword sank all the way into the Dire Wolf Leader's eye, the multiplied weak-point damage finally killed the field BOSS on the spot.

With the Dire Wolf Leader dead, the last remaining Dire Wolf on Kirito's side also vanished like shattered glass.

Seeing that Seiya had already finished the fight and had even begun "looting the body," Kirito was rather surprised.

He remembered that once the Dire Wolf Leader's health dropped to ten percent, it was supposed to summon another pack of underlings and enter a berserk state.

But Kirito had not expected Seiya to skip that phase entirely and use high-multiplier weak-point damage to instantly kill the Dire Wolf Leader in one hit!

"This isn't what we agreed on. Didn't we say that, to make it fair to the other person, whoever held off the wolf pack would get the final hit on the BOSS?"

SAO had another mechanic: during a BOSS battle, the player who landed the final blow could receive astonishing bonus rewards.

According to Seiya and Kirito's prior agreement, the special reward for the final hit would go to whichever of them had worked harder.

But now...

"Come on, didn't I already apologize? Besides, I never expected a so-called field BOSS to be this weak.

And didn't I give you all the Dire Wolf Leader's other drops?"

Hearing Seiya's words, Kirito first looked at the pile of junk in his hands, then at the wolf-fang necklace hanging around Seiya's neck. He immediately felt a deep sense of imbalance.

Granted, the Dire Wolf Leader's drops were quite valuable at this stage, but compared to the special reward Seiya had just obtained, they were utterly incomparable.

Equipment: Wolf Heart Necklace

Type: Accessory

Equipment Effect: Increases gained experience points to 120%.

Bound Character: Wenren Seiya

It had to be said that when Kirito saw the special equipment Seiya had obtained, his eyes instantly turned red with envy.

Most rare equipment in SAO came from BOSS drops or special rewards.

Even rare equipment, however, was merely transitional gear for players who could continuously level up.

Yet there was one type of equipment with no level restriction, whose attributes improved by percentage and could grow along with the player's level and strength.

Equipment like that was rarer than rare!

That was right. The Wolf Heart Necklace Seiya had received as a special reward after killing the Dire Wolf Leader belonged to that category.

Moreover, the Wolf Heart Necklace had the exceptionally rare effect of boosting experience gain.

Its effect might not have been especially obvious during the early stages of the game, since leveling up was not particularly difficult then.

But once they reached the mid and late game, even a veteran gamer like Kirito could only say that this thing was absolutely divine-tier equipment!

Of course, although the Wolf Heart Necklace was an incredible item, Kirito could do little more than lament Seiya's absurd luck. After all, Seiya was his only close friend, and the equipment was exclusively bound to him.

Time passed as swiftly as a galloping horse. Before long, a month had passed since the players had been trapped inside SAO.

Yet during that month, the players had still failed to break through the First Floor of the Sky Tower and enter the Second Floor.

In the same amount of time during SAO's closed beta, players had already reached the eighth floor.

Logically, the closed beta players who had gained experience during the beta should have progressed even faster this time than they had during the internal test. Yet reality was not like that.

The reason for this was actually quite simple.

During the internal test, players progressed quickly because they had no reservations.

As game players, they had Immortal Bodies. If one attempt failed, they could simply try again—twice, five times, even ten times.

No matter how invincible a Floor Boss was, it could not withstand their relentless waves of attacks.

But the current situation was completely different from the internal test. They were no longer playing a game; they were living their lives.

They had once possessed Immortal Bodies, but now they would truly die after dying just once. With fear in their hearts, their progress through the game naturally slowed dramatically.

Because of that sluggish progress, a boss Strategy meeting would be held today in Tolbana Square on the First Floor.

The person who had gathered everyone for this meeting was a handsome blue-haired man named Diabel, while those invited were all well-known players currently at the forefront of the strategy effort.

"That guy Seiya said he had something to do and told me to come ahead alone. How can he even be late to such an important Strategy meeting? What the hell is he up to?"

Over the past month, aside from the beginning when Seiya and Kirito had often acted together, Seiya had frequently started moving on his own after thoroughly figuring out the game's various mechanics.

After completing the quest for the shrewd merchant Messi, Seiya and Kirito had not only received the Windflower Sword as a reward, but Seiya had also gained a measure of Messi's friendship through his false identity as a "noble's son."

With his silver tongue and ample startup capital from the early game, Seiya obtained some resources and connections from the merchant Messi. He had now begun laying the foundations for his own merchant guild.

Originally, with information about the First Floor's boss, Kirito had been confident that he and Seiya could join forces to take it down.

But his friend had neglected the proper work. Rather than focusing on the strategy progress, he had recently become obsessed with business activities, which was why Kirito had to attend this boss Strategy meeting today.

As the initiator of the Strategy meeting, the blue-haired man spoke eloquently under everyone's gaze, carrying himself like a true leader.

Just as everyone nodded and prepared to act according to his battle plan, a spiky-haired player named Ya Wang suddenly jumped out from the crowd and pinned a huge accusation on the so-called Beater players.

According to Ya Wang, the reason such large-scale deaths had occurred since the Death Game began was largely because the Beater players were too selfish.