It took Lin Yuan a whole day to descend from the fifty-eighth floor to the thirty-fifth floor.
For ordinary players, this kind of travel is meaningless. The teleportation portals that have already been opened can cross floors in a few seconds. Only Lin Yuan, who cannot be recognized by the teleportation system, needs to go through each floor passage again.
The bending of the longsword was already visible to the naked eye, and abnormal friction marks were beginning to appear on the inside of the scabbard. Lin Yuan only drew his sword when he couldn't find a way around it; most of the time, he simply avoided the monster's warning range.
Even so, the downward speed was still very fast.
He left the thirty-fifth level of the Wandering Forest, the twenty-seventh level of the maze entrance, and the twenty-second level of the lake area behind him one after another. The players he encountered along the way only saw a figure without a cursor crossing the road, and by the time they recognized " Nameless Swordsman," Lin Yuan was usually already far away.
When we reached the twentieth floor, it was almost dusk.
He paused for a moment outside the main street and took out the note that Keita had sent. The Moonlit Black Cats were still staying at the original inn on the eleventh floor, but they had saved enough money to buy guild housing and were debating whether to stay on the familiar lower floors or move to a location closer to the middle floors.
At the end of the note, Xing added another sentence, "Come back first if your sword is broken. Don't always wait for others to find out."
Lin Yuan glanced at the longsword at his waist, which could no longer be fully sheathed, and then folded the note back up.
The next floor is the nineteenth floor. From there, continuing downwards, you won't be far from the Black Cats.
After leaving the main street on the twentieth floor, Lin Yuan did not take the widest stone path. The paper map marked a path that ran through the woods, bypassing two areas with high concentrations of monsters, and leading directly to the vicinity of the lower level passage.
Shortly after entering the woods, he noticed a new scratch on a tree trunk.
The scratch resembled an upward-curving coffin, with a smiling face carved into its edge. The pattern was very faint; if Lin Yuan hadn't relied on the system map to navigate, he would easily have mistaken it for an ordinary scratch on tree bark.
A few dozen steps away, the same pattern appeared on a second tree.
Lin Yuan recalled the name mentioned by the player on the fifty-eighth floor.
The Laughing Coffin.
He didn't change his route because of this. The markings only proved that someone had been there, not that someone was in danger nearby. But the closer he got to the nineteenth level, the more footprints were left in the forest. At least three people wearing equipment of varying weights had passed through here, one of whom was dragging a sharp weapon, leaving intermittent scratches on the edge of the mud.
Lin Yuan stopped at the fork in the road.
A metallic clang echoed in the evening breeze, followed by hushed voices.
It's not far.
He turned into the hills and after walking for a short while, he saw a cemetery shrouded in twilight. There were leaning stone tablets on both sides of the road, and the highest one was a tombstone with the name of a female player engraved on it.
Three tense-looking players stood before the tombstone. A heavily armored man stood in front, while a man and a woman held weapons. Above their heads were normal green cursors.
Surrounding them were three players with red names (indicating they were not identified by their real names).
One of them wore a skull-shaped mask, and the blade of his scimitar had an unnatural dark green hue. Another held a slender rapier, positioned to block the cemetery exit. The last hooded man did not immediately attack, but observed from a distance.
Kirito and Asuna have already positioned themselves between the two sides.
The Elucidator was held in Kirito's hand, its black blade slightly lowered, ready to be raised at any moment. Asuna's rapier was pointed to the other side, behind them were the three players who were surrounded.
"Two people trying to stop us?" The skull mask chuckled. " The Black Swordsman, and the vice-commander of the Knights of the Blood. Today's haul is greater than the employer promised."
Kirito didn't answer, but only adjusted his position by half a step.
There are three opponents, not a significant numerical advantage. The real danger lies in the poison on their weapons and the fact that the red-named players don't care whether their companions are alive or not. As long as someone can hold off Kirito and Asuna, the rest can attack their targets behind them.
The hooded man raised his hand.
The skull masked figure and the rapier-wielding man simultaneously lowered their bodies, and a faint glow began to gather on the surface of their weapons before the sword technique was unleashed.
Lin Yuan stepped onto the stone steps of the cemetery at that moment.
He didn't try to lighten his footsteps; everyone heard him.
Kirito was the first to turn his gaze. After seeing who it was, his grip on his sword didn't loosen, but his expression clearly became less serious.
How did you get here?
"Just passing by," Lin Yuan replied.
The skull mask, who was about to charge, stopped in his tracks upon hearing this. He first noticed the deformed sword at Lin Yuan's waist, then raised his gaze and finally noticed that there was nothing above the man's head.
There is no green cursor, nor any orange or red marker.
There was nothing there.
" The Nameless Swordsman..." The man with the rapier recognized him.
The hooded man's raised hand did not fall.
The first boss was crushed head-on, and the second boss died before the raiding team arrived. Those two battles have been recounted countless times, and Laughing Coffin naturally collected information about them as well.
But rumors have it that he only stood before them now.
The skull-masked man whispered, "His sword is bent."
"So?" The man with the rapier didn't look at him. "You want to try and see if your curved sword can cut through your weapon?"
Lin Yuan walked to Kirito's side and slightly behind him, his gaze sweeping over the positions of the three people with red names.
Need help?
"That would be best," Kirito said.
In short, the original three-on-two situation has become three-on-three.
But no one truly believed that the number of Laughing Coffin was equal.
The hooded man stared at Lin Yuan for several seconds, then suddenly withdrew his hand from the hand that was about to give the order to attack.
"Cancel," he said.
The skull masked man whirled around. "Just because there's one more person?"
"Precisely because there's only one more."
The hooded man took out the transfer crystal without any hesitation.
"Retreat first."