Embarrassing Bro Takes an L Online

With their experience from the first floor and the confidence gained from defeating the boss, progress on the second floor went much faster.

Clearing the first floor had taken over twenty days, nearly a month. Today was the eighth day since players had set foot on the second floor, and the latest news from the front lines was that the assault team had already entered the labyrinth area.

The assault team's growing combat power and improving skills were plain to see. The large population of high-level players produced abundant supplies, and trading what they had for what they needed naturally made clearing the floor much more efficient.

Wang Shui had recently been roaming... ahem, moving to [Talan Village], the last supply stop before the second-floor labyrinth.

After several days on the road, the two of them had been hunting across the vast grasslands, so today counted as a break.

During this time, Wang Shui's [Gathering] skill had shown its might. With proficiency as high as 700, he could extract almost one venom stinger for every two hornets. Each stinger currently sold for around 1,200 Cor, and the market was broad.

Only with money did he have the foundation for stirring things up.

Unlike the last supply stop on the first floor, Talan Village was not a large town. It was a settlement built inside a hollowed-out, flat-topped hill. Its facilities were reasonably complete, and the weapons at the blacksmith's shop were quite high-level.

Of course, what had drawn Wang Shui here was not its proximity to the labyrinth area, but a mineral: saltpeter ore.

Recently, Wang Shui had been exploring how realistic SAO was. He already had some saltpeter on hand, which he had mined himself, but only a tiny amount.

Yes, mining nodes produced all sorts of things. The same node could yield both iron and silver. Saltpeter was an extremely rare mineral, yet NPCs paid very little for it-a rather contradictory miscellaneous ore.

Wang Shui had wanted to play around with that little bit of saltpeter while mining, but had only recently started testing it. He quickly used it all up and had nowhere to replenish it.

Because he had to keep the hornet money printer running, Wang Shui had to return to the first floor from time to time to compete with low-level players for Nepenthes in the dense forest. Along the way, he even sparked an eerie legend on the first floor.

Essentially, not a single Nepenthes monster spawned in the dense forest area for a while. A rumor spread among low-level players that once the second floor opened, monster resources on the first floor would slowly run dry, prompting many players who had been idling away their days on the first floor to hurry to the second.

While rumors flew, the source of the trouble was operating his hornet money printer on the second floor's vast savanna.

He had never had time to mine. The turning point came yesterday-the professional merchant who helped Wang Shui sell and handle various metal ingots, including copper, iron, tin, lead, silver, and so on, as well as hornet venom stingers, sent him an industrial report on the second floor's mineral resources, hoping to subtly urge him to mine higher-grade ores.

Then, among goods with strange names such as "planck iron ore," "Planck steel ingot," and "aul silver ingot," Wang Shui spotted a little darling called "saltpeter."

A stack of twenty pieces of saltpeter cost 100 Cor, was classified as ore, and weighed one kilogram. All ores in SAO were extremely pure. The iron ore looked silvery-white, like elemental iron, which had both surprised and delighted Wang Shui. Seeing saltpeter in this state at this price nearly brought him to tears.

He had received the report yesterday, and only Talan Village sold it. Wang Shui arrived today and bought out the entire stock of the ore and metal materials store operated by the blacksmith's shop: 242 stacks in total.

By the time Wang Shui returned to the small, detached house rented under their party's name, Shino was already grinding sulfur and charcoal. Incidentally, they had only made the charcoal today, and had bought the lidded iron drum for making it that morning. Farming hornets while making charcoal was already the absolute limit of their time management.

"How's the saltpeter?" Those were Shino's first words upon seeing Wang Shui. She was even more enthusiastic about these things than he was.

"No problems. Did you test the iron pots?"

Shino was grinding in the living room. To her right was a large open kitchen with two big, adjoining stoves.

Two deep iron pots sat on them. "I tried them. They boil water quickly, you can let them cool gradually, and you can control the temperature. Plus, you don't need to add any extra fuel in the kitchen."

"Tsk. Enviable infinite energy." Wang Shui smiled, filled one iron pot halfway with water, added saltpeter, and began heating it.

Unable to determine the saltpeter's purity, and unsure whether SAO would add any impurities, Wang Shui decided to recrystallize it twice to be safe.

After heating and dissolving a few pieces of saltpeter, the resulting solution was extremely clear, far less trouble than leaching nitrate-rich soil. Wang Shui kept adding saltpeter until the solution grew viscous. After lowering the temperature slightly, white crystals precipitated, and he filtered it directly through cotton cloth.

Wang Shui did not wash or filter it repeatedly, because when he cut a strip from the cotton cloth and lit it with a flint, it burned extremely quickly, like a lit fuse.

That indicated that most of the filtered crystals were potassium nitrate, so he could cool it directly to crystallize it. The yield afterward was naturally very high; after all, the ore Wang Shui had put in was highly pure and there had been a tremendous amount of it.

Beside him, Shino used a small stove to heat a thick stone slab raised over it, carefully keeping it just slightly hot to the touch. The recrystallized saltpeter would have its moisture baked out here. In a little while, she would need not only to put out the fire, but also watch the saltpeter's state.

The dried saltpeter also needed to be ground finely, after which they could begin mixing.

As it happened, shops did not sell mechanical platform scales for weighing heavy goods. Wang Shui had only managed to buy an old scale from the first-floor blacksmith NPCs because he knew them fairly well, and even then it had cost him quite a bit.

Since they were already spending the time and effort, there was no point being stingy.

First, he added equally finely ground sulfur to the finely ground charcoal powder, using a fine pastry sieve to shake, mix, and work them together thoroughly, sifting out any possible lumps. The materials had dried well and were very pure, so there were no lumps.

Next, he added potassium nitrate and dried, finely ground white sugar, mixing them thoroughly in a dry wooden bucket.

Then he added water as though kneading dough, slowly mixing and moistening it, carefully stirring it evenly until it became a paste, before transferring it to the warm stone slab to bake. The open flame had to be extinguished. Water would greatly affect the result, but they had no choice but to be careful during drying.

The mixture was rather sticky. Once it had dried a little, Wang Shui brought over a wooden sieve with holes all the same size as a fine drill bit, visually around one millimeter in diameter.

He put the paste into the sieve and gently pressed it with a wooden mallet, letting a little poke through before scraping off the protruding mixture with a wooden slat to form small, flat, pancake-shaped granules.

While Wang Shui was granulating it, Shino had already heated another concave stone slab in a different room. Once its temperature had dropped a little, Wang Shui poured a small wooden bucket of black granules onto it, gently turning them with a wooden spatula to dry them.

There was no helping it. They had no professional drying equipment, nor were they in the mood to wait for it to air-dry. With a small quantity and plenty of space, it was not too dangerous.

The processes above continued. Wang Shui separated a little of the first dried batch of black powder onto some paper, then took it outside and lit it.

The black powder erupted in a brilliant red-white flare, dazzling and swift. The thick paper beneath it only yellowed slightly at first, but the residual heat still set it burning afterward.

The good news was that very little residue remained after combustion, though quite a lot of white smoke rose. Shino's eyes were full of excitement.

They worked late into the night. Having gotten carried away, they added more materials several times, never expecting charcoal to be the first ingredient they ran out of.

The final product was piled into five enormous sealed glass jars. Yes, glass jars-very clean, very thick, and absolutely huge. Wang Shui was speechless at this world's baffling tech tree.

At three in the morning, the two sat opposite each other in the dining room. Several copper cartridge cases with sealed bottoms and several pointed steel bullets sat on the table.

"How far along are we now? Can we make guns?" Shino did not sound particularly impatient.

"Now? Fifty percent, I suppose." As he spoke, Wang Shui took out several drawings covered in simple lines, their outlines resembling a vise. Pointing to them, he said,

"A lever vise. The blacksmith's shop has something similar. They said they made it themselves, so I ordered one. I also borrowed their waterwheel-powered press to stamp out the cartridge cases. I brought back the custom-made dies. We might need a permanent workspace in the future."

Wang Shui paused here-he had received a message. After carefully reading its brief contents, he replied, confirmed the response, and only then continued speaking to Shino:

"With these, we're sixty percent done. The last step might be troublesome, so don't rush."

Shino wanted to say something else, but her mind was a little muddled. She had been excited the whole time, and now that she had stopped, sleepiness naturally swept over her.

"Go get some rest. The market's been hot lately, and demand for equipment enhancement has risen for some reason. We need to sell a batch of hornet venom stingers, so we'll put leveling on hold. I'll finish writing up today's experiment records before bed."

Shino nodded groggily and swayed back to her room.

Wang Shui took out paper and pen and began rapidly writing today's observation records at the dining table. Without professional testing and measuring equipment, weight data was also very important. The five batches of black powder he had made looked similar, but their formulas had all been adjusted slightly. These records would serve as the basis for comparing their effects later.

Ten minutes. Of course Wang Shui had not finished writing; he was simply timing those ten minutes. He guessed Shino was probably asleep by now.

Wang Shui still wore his indoor clothes, but changed into a long coat for going out. He put away his notes and pushed open the door.

Talan Village was pitch-black beneath the night sky and exceptionally quiet. The village had been built inside a hollowed-out hill, while the house Wang Shui and Shino rented stood on the outskirts, closer to the edge of the second floor, so half the night sky was visible.

The stars shone brilliantly.

Wang Shui walked unhurriedly out of the village and onto a secluded boulder, letting the breeze soothe his mind.

"Is this the place you chose?" A low, level male voice came from the side, and Wang Shui could not help looking toward the man.

He wore black dress pants and a white shirt, utterly out of place in this world, beneath a thick white lab coat. His short brown hair looked casually arranged, and his appearance was thoroughly ordinary, like a listless office worker.

"What a great lab coat. The ones I remember were all flimsy synthetic-fiber things just for show, uncomfortable and always getting in the way."

"Is that what you wanted to say?" The middle-aged man emitted a faint glow like a ghost as he continued questioning him.

"Just feeling a little sentimental. To think you've got your eye on me again. Have you prepared a reward for me this time? Or are you just going to ban me from making guns?"

Wang Shui stared at Akihiko Kayaba, taking the initiative to conceal his true feelings. He guessed the man before him would not be bored enough to study conversational techniques.

Akihiko Kayaba merely glanced at Wang Shui, then looked away without any unusual reaction and said:

"What caught my attention was how quickly you and your teammate were leveling. Though it was indeed somewhat excessive, the method itself uses existing mechanics. It was only after SAO officially launched, with its world expanded a hundredfold and maintained by the [Autonomous Intelligent AI], that the hornet population became abnormal."

"But all of that is still within controllable limits. The hornets haven't caused too many additional casualties, and using poison to farm insect monsters will become much less effective later. Probably because monsters will have much more HP, along with increased status resistance."

Wang Shui supplied the latter remark, but his attempt to show off his cleverness elicited no response from Akihiko Kayaba.

"Yes. So you can still farm hornets, accumulate money, and help large numbers of players raise their weapon enhancement levels. But you cannot continue that experiment."

Why?! Wang Shui desperately wanted to shout that heated question, then talk Akihiko Kayaba around with talk no jutsu like a hot-blooded manga protagonist.

But he was not that sort of person, and Kayaba was not that sort of villain.

"Just now, I thought I could persuade you. I thought you were the kind of person I imagined, someone who created this world out of passion and interest, who wanted to watch it grow and see history unfold and play out. I thought you might be a little sentimental, but it seems I guessed wrong. You're still a rational researcher who doesn't want unexpected developments in his experiment. Heh. Seems there's not much difference between an idealistic madman and a madman of rational science?"

"You seem to be trying to anger me. That will do you no good."

"Right, oh great creator god. You've trapped me here with death so you can observe me however you please, and you still expect me to think highly of you? I've had plenty of bosses. Some made me work my life away, others made me risk my life. It's only because those things weren't standing in front of me. If they stood here like you, I'd curse them to death in my head."

"Aren't you only fourteen?" Akihiko Kayaba suddenly went off topic.

"Wow, you've been snooping on me. A metaphor. It was just a metaphor. I'm just really frustrated. I've already been working hard to get stronger, and then I happened to find something that interested me and wanted to put some effort into it. I just wanted to play! That's all! Why, ever since I was little, have you so-called adults always had to stop me from playing! Stop me from doing things that interest me! What about you, Kayaba! Aren't you playing too! Playing with over two hundred thousand lives as your materials!"

Kayaba fell silent for a short while before saying:

"I cannot refute that, but neither can I empathize. I can only roughly understand what you mean."

"Well, thanks so much for understanding a little. After all, you're this world's creator. You're a genius. I just wanted to make something of my own in the world you created. I only wanted a slice of the pie, and I might even bring more possibilities to your world, yet you still want to snuff me out."

As Wang Shui spoke, he slipped into his genuine feelings. Right now, it was as though he were making a mod for a game, only for the game's creator to dislike it and decide to ban him.

"Regardless, the appearance of firearms here would not merely change the world's aesthetic..."

"Are you worried heavy firepower would turn boss clears into child's play? You really don't need to worry. Probably nobody in this world understands firearms to that extent, and automatic weapons and large-caliber weapons aren't things you can just casually make."

Faced with Wang Shui's defense, Akihiko Kayaba waved a finger. A massive, two-meter-tall metal tower landed heavily on the ground, and Wang Shui instantly broke into a cold sweat.

"Uh, please let me explain."

Akihiko Kayaba said evenly, "Ordinarily, I would not examine any player's detailed data, nor would I record any particular player. Though it might seem a little affected, I still want to explain my position. I am the creator and controller of this world, but I am not the owner of your souls."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean-you are too creative. So I checked your data, and among the normal data, I found this. Although I don't understand chemical engineering, the internet is quite advanced now. An image alone can turn up similar results. A proportionally scaled-down lead chamber. Are you planning to start an industrial revolution in my world?"

"Of course not!" Never mind the question. Deny it first. "My position hasn't changed. My teammate and I simply like guns. With some basic chemicals missing, we have to make them ourselves. If you supplied concentrated acid, why would I go to all this trouble?"

Good. Throw the blame back at him first.

On the surface, Wang Shui was still struggling to argue his way out, but what Akihiko Kayaba did not know was that Wang Shui had already won. He was already happy enough to ascend to heaven.

When he received Akihiko Kayaba's message a few minutes earlier, Wang Shui had nearly died of cardiac arrest on the spot. Of course he was not afraid of Kayaba taking issue with the guns. They were all things from his world anyway, and Wang Shui was only making guns as a hobby. If he banned it, so be it.

What truly made Wang Shui feel guilty was his bug-like skill bar...

Then Akihiko Kayaba said that Wang Shui's data was normal-good, we're safe. Although Wang Shui did not know why the data was normal, just as he did not know why Kayaba's helmet could let people enter FullDive, that did not matter. As long as it did not affect his ability to protect himself, it was fine.

While Wang Shui was overjoyed, Kayaba grew quiet, seemingly stumped by Wang Shui's request to supply concentrated acid.

What was he hesitating over? Was he really going to supply industrial products? Surely not...

"Wait, bro Kayaba, I have a very bold guess. A lot of your world's products come from spawning, and plenty of industrial products are inserted directly. Then your world's maintenance and completion are delegated to the [Autonomous Intelligent AI]... Is it trying to complete the production settings and starting to guide an industrial revolution?!"

Then, under Wang Shui's shocked gaze, the embarrassing bro Akihiko Kayaba nodded.