Its real purpose was to make everyone taller

Aincrad's second floor was not much smaller than the first.

Outside its main city, [Urbus], lay a vast savanna, slightly hotter than the first floor's grasslands and dotted with long stretches of low, table-shaped mesas. Together with the caves and underground structures scattered throughout, they created terrain that looked simple and open on the surface but was actually extraordinarily complex.

Of course, the first thing to explore was still the world aboveground.

A giant hornet over half a meter long rushed toward Shino at high speed. Its paralyzing sting was quite troublesome for a solo player.

But Shino was not the ordinary player she appeared to be. Her footwork and attacks had an exceptional rhythm. Even without using Sword Skills, her normal attacks struck a weak point with every swing, keeping her safer while dealing considerable damage. Less than a minute into the fight, her opponent fell to the ground.

No stinger dropped...

The drop rate for [Hornet Venom Stinger], which was not considered a rare drop, was much lower than she had imagined. At least, the forty-odd hornets she had personally defeated had only dropped one.

The good news was that there were enormous numbers of hornets. Here in the western grasslands, all one had to do was walk some distance away from the obvious roads to find large hornet colonies.

Venom stingers were weapon enhancement materials that offered both "sharpness" and "accuracy." Almost every weapon used some amount of them, so overall consumption was enormous. Thus, even though the monsters were nasty-both airborne and capable of inflicting paralysis-players would eventually have to settle down and farm these things themselves.

Probably everyone except me, Shino muttered inwardly.

She nimbly hopped onto a rock and looked toward the hellish scene fifty meters away.

It was a huge swarm of hornets, countless insects packed tightly together in a physically revolting mass. The main reason Shino dared show herself so close to these aggressive monsters was that the hornets were currently crowded together on the ground, writhing.

The swarm carpeted the ground. They trembled there, [Paralysis] and [Poison] effects displayed beside their HP bars as damage numbers continually rose.

As her experience bar visibly surged forward, golden light flashed around Shino, and she officially reached the unimaginable level of fifteen. Yet just two days earlier, she had only just set foot on the second floor, barely above level eight.

Shino shifted her gaze to Wang Shui, who lay facedown a short distance ahead, playing dead, and felt somewhat conflicted. She could not understand why a role-playing game where levels mattered so much would contain a weapon of mass destruction against insects like [Nepenthes Honey].

Nor could she understand why this guy had so much stockpiled, but she knew that if this leveling secret became public, those honey reserves would be difficult to replenish.

The word "selfish" had surfaced in her mind, only to flash away. Shino had no reason to be selfless.

If they released the information, the honey supply would certainly be spread thin across the enormous player population. In fact, once this leveling efficiency was divided among tens of thousands of players, it would become negligible.

Besides, Shino had no experience with selflessness. She had always been the one left wanting and being robbed.

While her thoughts wandered, this round of farming was nearly over. Giant hornets were high-agility, high-attack monsters whose HP could not even withstand two rounds of poison. Wang Shui's [Flying Sword] skill had also reached an extraordinary level. He could now burst reagent bottles in midair to create a rain of honey, spreading it over the widest possible area to make the most of this god-tier farming tool.

Hornet corpses filled her view. Shino browsed the drops she had received simply for being a party member. This wave alone had contributed five venom stingers through natural drops.

Suppressing her revulsion toward the mass of insect corpses, Shino approached Wang Shui and gently nudged his head with her calfskin boot as he played dead.

"What are you clowning around for now? Hurry up and get Gathering."

Faced with Little Shino's merciless urging, Wang Shui canceled [Feign Death], a skill under the [Hide] skill tree, but remained sprawled on the grass. He replied lazily:

"Ah,

"I'm so tired, so anxious, so miserable. What am I supposed to do when I don't feel like working for twenty-something days every month~" What kind of corporate slave talk is that? Shino found it somewhat funny, but she could not bring herself to say anything harsher. After all, just watching the work of dismembering insect corpses made her scalp prickle, while the boy her age lying at her feet had already processed thousands over these past two days.

That was how terrifying the hornet population really was. They were far more numerous than even the second floor's main bovine monsters, and their respawn rate was extremely fast.

Unable to do anything about Wang Shui's refusal to work, and no longer in the mood to farm scattered monsters, Shino simply sat beside him with her back to the insect corpses and waited for his spirits to recover.

"Shino, I feel like such a failure." Wang Shui sounded deeply dejected as he lay on the ground.

Shino, beside him, had no idea what had gotten into him. She could only let the grassland breeze brush her face and wait with a faint smile for him to talk.

"Even though I entered this world intending to run away and coast through life, there's always a little part of me that won't accept it. I keep wondering whether I could become a little stronger."

What Wang Shui was rambling about was clearly different from Shino's understanding. She thought he meant the world of SAO.

"With your skill and level, you can hardly call this coasting, can you? If you wanted, you could be a core member of the clearing group."

Wang Shui fell silent for a while before continuing:

"I just... I just feel like I'm wasting my effort. No matter how strong I become in SAO, once I return to reality, I'll still be my ordinary, cowardly self. Even if I transcend reality by another layer, I might not change much either. Wasting years of my life like this makes me anxious."

Shino instinctively thought of school and life in society. She believed Wang Shui was worried that staying in this world too long would leave him useless when he returned to society, making it hard to get by.

"It's hard to offer you any advice. I'm trapped in this world too, but I don't feel like I'm wasting my time... Actually, over this past month, I haven't just gotten used to life here and to fighting. I've also... come to like it here." Shino's reply came naturally.

There was none of the social hell of reality here. No one knew Shino's past, and no one could threaten or bully her anymore.

"Sorry, I can't understand your anxiety. I'm already enjoying this slow-paced life... I suppose my contradiction is that I want to escape the death game's control, but I also want to live in this fairy-tale world where all I need to do is fight."

A world where all one needed to do was fight was no beautiful fairy tale.

The system's core region in the infinite worlds was forever filled with traces of war. Every day for the past six months, Wang Shui had received news of familiar people dying, then continued meeting more people every day.

Wang Shui had come here to escape forced labor, hiding away in a long fantasy world, only to grow anxious over his inability to become stronger. That contradictory greed made even Wang Shui himself feel he was being melodramatic.

So he rolled over.

"Feeling better? Talking about it should help, right? Though I don't know much about psychology." Shino smiled.

"No. I still want to bully someone to relieve some stress."

"Oh? Who are you going to bully?" Shino gave Wang Shui an adorably angry glare.

Wang Shui, however, asked somewhat seriously, "Are you sure guns won't make you nauseous and throw up anymore?"

Shino's heart gave a jolt. Then she nodded, serious as well, with a hint of anticipation.

Wang Shui turned away and rummaged around, then turned back and handed Shino something wrapped in black cotton cloth, a couple of sizes larger than a palm.

Shino's trembling hands reached for the black cloth. Once she felt the solid shape through it, she felt her blood surge, her mind jolting alert before becoming somewhat hazy.

Wang Shui handed the object to Shino, but did not let go. She had casually asked him to make it after watching him carve wood, and he was still worried that something might happen to her because of an emotional fluctuation.

Shino answered him with bright, excited, ice-blue eyes. Wang Shui let go.

The black cloth slowly slipped away. Shino's slender fingers tightly gripped the unfamiliar yet familiar handle. The realistic visual and tactile feedback cleared her mind, smoothed her breathing, sharpened her thoughts, and even made her body feel much lighter and more agile.

It seemed like a heightened sensory experience under the influence of adrenaline, completely different from her PTSD symptoms!

Shino excitedly looked at the somewhat worried Wang Shui, then threw herself at him.

There was nothing wonderful about a hug of that intensity to Wang Shui. He only felt as though he had been sent flying by a dump truck again. In fact, Shino, whose strength stat was quite high, really did pin Wang Shui to the grass and send him sliding a considerable distance.

Happy sobs sounded beside his ear. Wang Shui first patted Shino's head, then abruptly shoved her off.

Tsk, she actually dared to launch a sneak attack. If I hadn't reacted half a beat too slowly, I'd have given her a shoulder throw!

Watching Shino cry tears of joy on the grass with the wooden pistol in her arms, Wang Shui truly could not relate to what this little girl, tormented by mental illness for years, was feeling. But he understood that mental torment could be every bit as bad as physical pain, if not worse.

"All right, it's just a wooden carving. That's enough to satisfy you?"

Creatively comforting her with mockery, Wang Shui tossed Shino another small object.

"This is... a paper cartridge?! You've made real firearms!"

Shino had been very proactive in fighting her mental illness. To defeat an enemy, she had to understand it and grow accustomed to it. Although even pictures of firearms had triggered a reaction at first, she had gradually adapted to images and text, then acquired a fair amount of firearms knowledge.

That was also why she firmly believed she could overcome her psychological problems.

"Not even close. This is just a prototype missing plenty of details. I only wanted to see how the system would classify something like this. After these past few days of experiments, I found that if you simply put the materials together by hand, the system won't even recognize it as an item. It can ignite, and it can fire when wedged inside a narrow tube, but its damage against monsters is rated extremely low, about the same as throwing rocks without the [Flying Sword] skill."

Shino nodded to show she understood.

"After that, I learned the [Handicraft] skill." Wang Shui slowed his speech this time, seemingly organizing his thoughts.

"Wait, the hidden skill from that information that was just released, the one that boosts all life skills?"

"That's right. And I was the one who discovered that information. Earned two thousand Cor from it. Argo was the one who released it for free for the crafter players." Wang Shui gave a thumbs-up to indicate he had profited.

"So the experiment you mentioned was..." Shino had more or less guessed.

"Exactly. The [Handicraft] skill lets you actively apply for the system to recognize handmade products. After checking them through the physics engine, the system assigns attributes. If the crafter feels the attribute description is wrong, they can also request a one-time discrepancy adjustment. After that, they can record the crafting recipe under the [Handicraft] skill."

As he spoke, Wang Shui took out another identical paper cartridge and tossed it to Shino. She discovered that the first cartridge had no attributes at all, like a blade of wild grass snapped off at random, while the second, identical-looking cartridge had a little white dot she could open.

[Paper Cartridge · Test05]

[Item type: consumable]

[Base damage: 30-85 (distance falloff)]

[Quantity: 1]

[Trait · Craftsman Product: physically recognized as an item capable of firing its internal lead projectile at high speed within a sufficiently enclosed environment. This trait grants base damage effect recognition.]

[Description: prototype no. 5. Records stored in section five of the first document group under classification G-B. Performance specification completion: 60%.]

Shino's gaze seemed ready to pierce Wang Shui's brain. Wang Shui returned a look of disdain.

"What are you getting excited for? Even knowing how self-contained cartridges developed, plenty of technical problems are still hard to solve. This thing only has propellant, not even a rolled-paper primer cap. It's still at flintlock level. Besides, I haven't even made a firearm yet. There are problems everywhere."

"Is this what you spent a skill slot on [Handicraft] for, and even stopped researching martial arts to make?"

Shino did not understand. The Wang Shui she knew had a nasty personality but was extremely goal-oriented. When something offered no benefit and was purely a matter of interest, he never went beyond dabbling.

"There's a secret I need you to keep for me." With a serious expression, Wang Shui placed his right hand on Shino's head.

"If it's a secret, you don't have to tell me..." Holding the wooden pistol in both hands, Shino had no way to push away Wang Shui's presumptuous hand. Probably.

"And watch you spend all day fretting and guessing? All right, you'll see me learning and using all sorts of skills from now on. Don't be surprised. I have a special piece of equipment that lets me learn some extra skills and swap them out whenever I want."

Startled, Shino asked in astonishment, "No requirements or negative effects? Ah, sorry, what you already told me was enough."

"Of course there are requirements. Learning skills is just more troublesome, that's all. And people have limited energy. Just knowing a whole pile of low-proficiency skills hardly makes someone strong."

"No, that's already very powerful. If you can learn all the combat support skills, the bonuses from those passive effects will add up to something quite considerable."

Wang Shui smiled and ruffled Shino's hair, withdrawing his hand before she got angry, then answered:

"Of course. I'll learn them later. I'm just more interested in handicrafts right now. As for combat strength, I'll deal with it when what I have isn't enough."

"So you've given up researching martial arts?" Shino circled back.

"Of course-not. I've just temporarily lost interest. It's an old habit. My martial arts research has hit a wall for now. Martial arts inherently require steady effort over the long term. You have to work them into daily life and training, improving little by little. Constantly poring over wording is boring."

Wang Shui understood his impulsive, interest-driven learning habit quite well. Since his interests had shifted, forcing himself to do something he did not want to do would only create needless frustration and produce very inefficient results.

Shino seemed to understand. Then she put away the wooden pistol and said:

"So, you seem to be feeling a lot better. Can you get to work now? Hornet venom stingers should stay expensive for a while. Are you really willing to let these corpses despawn?"

Wang Shui's vision went black as he collapsed back into the grass and activated [Feign Death].