I was such a fool, truly...

5:30 p.m., the Town of Beginnings, Lemon and Salt bar.

When Wang Shui entered the bar, he had not expected it to be so lively.

The sky had only just darkened. Many of the players brave enough to go out grinding on the second day had returned to town, then come to the bar to unwind their weary bodies and minds.

Cigarettes and alcohol were cheap, effective stress relief for adults, though SAO did not seem to have cigarettes.

It did not take Wang Shui long to spot that small figure in front of the counter.

Golden-brown curls, three faint whisker marks visible on her face, and a brown cloak that covered almost her entire body, leaving only a face full of smiles exposed.

Wang Shui reached her in a few strides and got straight to the point:

"Important intel."

"Wow~ wow!"

At the words "important intel," Argo, the information broker known as the Rat, jumped straight off her tall wooden stool.

"What sort of information are you looking to sell, mister? There are quiet seats behind the counter..."

"This is urgent. Message everyone first-everyone you can contact who's grinding levels like mad! Tell them not to spend the three free attribute points they get from leveling up!"

Wang Shui's lowered voice was a little hoarse. Although the Body Part Destruction effect on his throat had disappeared, it still stung a little.

Argo froze for a moment, then looked at Wang Shui's serious expression and opened her mail system without much hesitation.

After all, simply holding on to the points for now would not cause any losses.

"Mm, all right, I've sent out a mass message. Does this information need to be discussed in private?"

The more serious the conversation became, the more amusing Argo the Rat's distinctive nasal voice sounded.

"No, I want you to make this information public. Three minutes ago, I learned from an NPC..."

Wang Shui briefly described how all four attributes could be trained, and how free attribute points affected the equipment one could wear.

It was fair to say that before reaching a training bottleneck, every attribute point invested was an irrecoverable loss.

Argo the Rat's small, perpetually smiling face grew serious too. Keenly aware of how important this information was, she asked earnestly:

"Can you guarantee this information is true?"

"I can take you to the NPC who told me. Although I haven't gained any attributes through training yet, the chances of success shouldn't be low. Haven't you noticed, Argo? The NPCs since the official launch are frighteningly intelligent."

Argo nodded as though she felt exactly the same way. She opened her mail system again, wrote a long message with great seriousness, and only breathed a sigh of relief after sending it to everyone.

"Whew~ I've explained it properly to them now, and they're spreading the news to the other level grinders too. But that's still not enough. Looks like the strategy guide will have to go on sale early."

"A strategy guide on day three? The official release is so different from the beta. Have you already gathered enough information?"

Argo hopped onto her stool, slumped weakly over the counter, and said listlessly:

"You know quite a bit, huh? There's actually very little strategy information. Only a few people have verified a handful of quests. Luckily, the stats of the monsters out in the fields on the first floor are mostly unchanged. That's very important information too. Besides, your intel warrants releasing the guide early. Oh, I haven't thanked you yet, mister..."

Wang Shui sent her a friend request straight away.

"Nice and straightforward. Huh, Half a Heavenly Book? What a strange Chinese-character name. We really owe you one today, Banbu. If the losses had been too great, it's hard to imagine what those gaming fanatics would have done."

Wang Shui pressed a hand to his forehead helplessly. "Please call me 'Heavenly Book.' The first part is a measure word, not a surname! As for the intel, thank your own luck that we happened to be in the same Town of Beginnings. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to search the other five towns for you."

"Right, right, what a rare coincidence. So, Heavenly Book, how much Cor do you plan to charge for this information?"

Wang Shui was a little surprised:

"Someone like you is actually offering to pay!"

"Wow, how can you say that to a girl? Honest business is this shop's guiding principle. Don't worry, I'll recoup the cost from those elite hamsters-the hardcore grinders."

Despite her words, Wang Shui could still sense Argo's gratitude.

"Then let's make it a hundred thousand Cor."

"A hun... a hundred thousand Cor! You're beyond ordinary delusions at this point! Since the changes to monster drops, even the players on the very front lines probably have no more than five thousand saved up!"

Changes to drops?!

"What changes to drops?" Wang Shui asked.

"Huh? Since you know about me and could find me right here in the tavern, you're a beta tester too, aren't you, Heavenly Book? Haven't you noticed that the amount of Cor monsters drop has fallen by ninety percent?"

"Uh, you've got the wrong idea. I wasn't a beta tester."

And he had yet to kill a single monster.

"You weren't?! Then how did you know about me?"

"Argo 'the Rat.' Quite a few posts on the strategy forums mentioned your illustrious name. Though the content wasn't very friendly, admittedly."

"Ah, ha, haha, really? I only look up specific strategies myself, so I never noticed."

The two exchanged awkward but polite smiles.

"Because of the drop changes, players haven't accumulated much Cor yet. Plenty of materials we used to throw away during the beta now get dutifully carried back to town and sold," Argo explained with a shrug.

"Reducing output... Is this crude way of extending a game's lifespan meant to deal with the enormous player base?"

Wang Shui muttered to himself. He was not asking Argo a question.

"There's nothing we can do about that. Your important information has to be paid for, Heavenly Book. Hmm, I can offer 2,000 Cor right now. Would that be acceptable?"

The penniless Wang Shui nodded, then immediately received a trade request.

With 2,000 Cor received, at least his meals were covered for the immediate future.

"All right, that concludes our transaction. The NPC I got the information from is the [One-Handed Straight Sword] skill instructor in the back street. You can confirm it with him. He considers this common knowledge, so he probably won't hide it. See you, then. I still have levels to grind."

"Night fighting? That's a lot more dangerous. Speaking of which, you already need a Sword Skills instructor, Heavenly Book? Your [One-Handed Straight Sword] skill reached 50 proficiency on the second day?"

"If you want that information, it'll be 500 Cor."

With her signature line stolen, Argo froze for a moment, then puffed up indignantly, transforming from a rat into a hamster.

Wang Shui simply waved and left.

Night fighting? Grinding Frenzy Boars under the lights near town shouldn't count as night fighting, right?

Argo had seriously overestimated Wang Shui's level, assuming he was heading to a distant village to do quests.

Back on the grassland north of the Town of Beginnings, the lights on the town walls illuminated a sizable stretch of the field. They were not very bright, but fortunately, the surrounding area was open enough.

The blue-furred boars with scarlet eyes were slightly smaller than real wild boars.

Their only skill was a charge, and their HP hovered around 300, varying with their size and level, from 1 to 3. They were the monsters this world had prepared for new players.

But their attack power was not low.

Wang Shui fixed his gaze on the nearest one. Since the target was a non-aggressive monster, he slowly moved to a spot three or four meters behind the boar, recalling the distance of his own charge.

He crouched and held his sword level.

Across the dim plain, scattered blue light suddenly flashed and vanished.

The Frenzy Boar staggered from the impact and squealed in pain. Wang Shui kicked the boar's back, which was far too close, then raised his sword and chopped down.

Although the game world had become much more realistic, fighting monsters had not become excessively true to life.

The long wound carved by the [Small Sword] displayed a red grid effect, with no spray of blood.

Three numbers burst above the boar's head: [-62!], "-4," and "-11."

The first number was larger and more conspicuous, its lettering red tinged with gold-the visual effect for a critical hit.

The Sword Skill's damage plus the critical bonus had produced a large damage number.

Wang Shui had wanted to keep dealing damage, but the boar hurriedly got up and ran a few steps forward, then swiftly turned to face him and took a charging stance.

Faced with a sizable wild boar charging at them in reality, plenty of people would probably have gone weak in the knees.

Wang Shui was different. He had witnessed battlefields where mechs grappled with each other, and had been kidnapped into forced labor by a major arms corporation. He had seen plenty!

So his knees did not go particularly weak.

The boar charged at a normal running speed. Wang Shui stumbled back a step before remembering to dodge sideways.

Facing the boar head-on put him under even more pressure than fighting Seventh Brother, the skill instructor.

Because he knew Seventh Brother would not kill him, and that the worst he would get was a beating. Besides, Seventh Brother struck so quickly that he had no time to feel afraid.

As his heart pounded, Wang Shui's body began to feel lighter and lighter.

This virtual game avatar reproduced the body's response to adrenaline with remarkable realism. Frankly, Wang Shui did not believe Akihiko Kayaba had that kind of technical ability at all. It was most likely a change caused by the alteration tag.

In his heightened state, Wang Shui closed in on the boar in two steps, chopped down once, then quickly circled to its side.

"-13"

Clumsily adjusting his one-handed sword's position, Wang Shui stopped and planted his feet. Applying force as correctly as he could, he focused his mind and swung the blade down.

[-81!]

The basic One-Handed Straight Sword skill, [Slant], had very luckily scored a critical hit too.

In pain, the boar immediately turned and thrust upward. Its short, thick tusks grazed Wang Shui's calf, and a small bright red patch instantly appeared on his coarse trouser leg.

It was the same red grid effect that appeared when monsters were injured. The pain was not as pronounced as Wang Shui had imagined-at least, it was much milder than when Seventh Brother beat him.

Although there was no bleeding, seeing the wound on his body still gave Wang Shui a hollow feeling, as though something was draining out of him.

It was like seeing someone else's open, steadily bleeding wound and feeling a chill down his own spine, as though he too were bleeding continuously.

Hollow. Nauseating.

Wang Shui gritted his teeth and quickened his pace, running rapidly around the Frenzy Boar. The sword in his hand kept making light cuts, sending up a dense stream of single-digit damage numbers.

In the end, naturally, the boar fell and dissolved upward into blue, glass-like shards.

Breathing hard, Wang Shui collapsed to the ground. A system window appeared before him, its first line of purple text showing 50 experience points, which nudged his experience bar forward a little.

But Wang Shui paid no attention to his gains. His gaze was somewhat vacant.

Sure enough, I'm no decisive, ruthless protagonist from an infinite-flow novel.

Wang Shui could no longer remember how many times he had confirmed his own ordinariness. In the past, he had at least entertained delusions such as, "Maybe I'm just a late bloomer."

The mere 3 Cor dropped confirmed that Wang Shui had only killed a beginner monster like a slime in other games, rather than defeating his first dungeon boss.

Afraid? No. Once the battle ended, his panic vanished along with the lightness brought on by adrenaline.

Happy? No. A victory on this level offered no sense of achievement.

Instead, the clumsy process left him a little lost.

Wang Shui did not question himself again, nor ask why he was not a born powerhouse.

When something offered no feedback, Wang Shui was the sort of person who would give up, rather than remain trapped in a particular negative emotion.

He merely stood up in silence, then charged at the next monster, his entire body cloaked in the radiance of a Sword Skill.

The sunlight was blocked by Aincrad's second floor, with only a slanted ray slipping through.

It was already past nine in the morning, but the transition zone between the grassland and the dense forest remained dim.

A small campfire flickered feebly, its weak tongues of flame licking the chunks of meat skewered on a branch. A drop of melted fat fell onto the firewood with a pleasant sizzle.

Wang Shui was as listless as his flames. Expressionless and with tears brimming in his eyes, he chewed the roast meat that had no salt on it.

At this moment, SAO's realism, enhanced by the Infinite World Key, was showing itself off with a vengeance.

The slightly charred but delicious-looking roast meat was releasing an intensely wild, rank gaminess inside Wang Shui's mouth. Fortunately, he could not vomit, just as he did not need to use the toilet.

Make no mistake: Wang Shui had not spent the entire night grinding and then been forced to forage in the wilderness like a wandering warrior.

He had returned to town around one in the morning, and had made preparations before heading out to grind this morning too.

He had bought two [Bronze Swords] as spares. His starting weapon, the [Small Sword], had almost run out of durability, and neither its stats nor its appearance made him want to repair it.

After spending all his remaining savings on small recovery potions-ten bottles-a certain idiot discovered he did not even have money left for food.

Actually, he still had a single-digit amount of Cor at the time. Buying a loaf of bread to make do would have kept him going for quite a while.

But this idiot, who also thought he knew better, had a sudden inspiration after seeing an item called flint-he was going to eat roast meat!

Freshly cut branches contained too much moisture to start a fire. To obtain dry firewood, one had to use [Gathering] on shrubs or [Logging] on trees.

Without the support of a skill, the yield would be much smaller.

After wasting a great deal of time getting a tiny campfire going, Wang Shui, whose fire-tending skills were terrible, even managed to put it out several times.

Finally, Wang Shui obtained juicy roast meat that looked thoroughly cooked with charred edges. Then, after taking his first bite, he promptly spat it back out.

So without salt and seasonings, boar meat could taste this awful... awful enough for his body to reject it.

Besides, roasting meat over an open flame was a task that truly tested one's technique. It looked charred outside, but was still quite raw inside.

The reason Wang Shui could now swallow the skewered meat expressionlessly was not that he had obtained spices, but that he had acquired the [Hunger] debuff-a negative status effect.

The shriveled stomach icon told him to eat or starve to death.

From his current position, walking back to the Town of Beginnings would take over an hour. Nor did the virtual map, with its vast stretches covered in shadow, show any village information. There was genuinely no telling what might happen if he did not eat.

A waste of time, a waste of money-meat-and a waste of life.

But none of that was enough to give Wang Shui this "dead inside" expression. What truly left him so dejected was that one of his only two skill slots had been occupied by a skill called [Gathering].

Wang Shui tried removing the skill, only to be told that it would cost ten thousand Cor. To obtain his next skill slot, he would have to reach level five.

I was such a fool, truly. I only knew I had a damnable innate ability that would seriously affect the pace at which I mastered skills; I didn't know I could acquire a skill this way too...

Wang Shui had already been cursing himself for nearly an hour, but now all he could do was grind to level five using only [One-Handed Straight Sword].

He had thought he had grasped the key to learning skills, only to be screwed over by this stupid ability yet again.

With his painful breakfast over, Wang Shui began grinding through the game's third day-which, for him, was only his second round of fighting monsters and exploring.

Speaking of grinding, although Wang Shui had been a sorry sight at the start last night, killing a few monsters had not granted him sudden enlightenment or formidable combat aptitude out of nowhere.

Still, he had gained something. At least he had gradually grown familiar with the feeling of swinging a sword at a living target.

It was completely different from slashing and thrusting at the air or a practice target. Without using Sword Skills to create exaggerated wounds, ordinary attacks against a target provided extraordinarily realistic physical feedback.

Tough hide and fur, firm muscles, hard bones and teeth, and the reaction forces transmitted to his sword hand as the blade met different body parts at different angles.

Almost every swing produced a different tactile sensation. The force fed back would sometimes bounce the sword upward, and sometimes make the blade twist.

Without taking care to control the sword, guide it, and plan the next swing, the weapon in his hand would quickly become a fire poker.

It was this experience of attacking living targets that gradually drew Wang Shui's attention toward controlling his sword, reducing much of his panic and his fear of death.

Perhaps those powerhouses were born with this ability.

Frenzy Boars fell beneath Wang Shui's sword one after another. Occasionally, monsters simply named [Wolf] spawned among them.

Previously, Wang Shui had always avoided them, quietly leaving whenever he spotted a wolf.

But this morning, with his mind unusually clear in his "dead inside" state, Wang Shui began trying to challenge wolves.

The results surprised him on several levels.

The aggression and agility of wolves surprised him, but so did how easy the fights were.

Indeed, wolves lunged, clawed, and bit very quickly, but their attack range was short and their hitboxes small, making them very easy to dodge.

The wolves' recovery animations were indeed very short too. They recovered their stance extremely well after finishing an action, making their attacks seem tightly packed and relentless, difficult to fend off. This was the main reason wolves were hard to kill.

But Wang Shui unexpectedly discovered that wolf-type monsters were very susceptible to debuffs (negative status effects).

He first noticed this when, under a string of attacks, he desperately kicked a wolf hard in the head. The sizable wolf staggered and stood there dazed for a while.

Aside from using sword skills with the corresponding effects, negative status effects could also be inflicted by striking specific body parts directly.

The final scene of the battle was Wang Shui finding an opening to daze the giant wolf with a "soccer kick," then quickly lowering himself into a running stance, his sword held close to his side in his right hand.

After he took his first step, the blue glow of a sword skill enveloped Wang Shui's entire body, and he became a streak of blue light that pierced straight through the giant wolf.

A one-handed sword charging skill, [Rage Spike].

A three-digit damage number appeared, followed by a level-up notification, while Wang Shui, still wanting more, glanced at the dense forest not far away.

It was the third day already. Should I go give it a try?