Sword Art Online - Volume 21 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3
Kirito apparently played a survival game on his PC before, so he knows the basics of what you're supposed to do in a survival game at the start, even though he's never played a VR survival game before. Kirito decides to head back to the river. Upon reaching the dry riverbed, Kirito instructs the girls to find the hardest stone they could, about 30 cm in length, preferably long but narrow. Meanwhile, he found himself a rock to use as a workbench. He then picked up a round stone and threw it at the rock, splitting the stone into two down the middle. Unlike most VR games, the stone didn't disappear after breaking. He then investigated the stone by tapping on it to bring up the property window. [Broken Grey Stone Weapon/Material Attack: Smashing 2.18; Durability: 5.44; Heavines: 3.71], surprising Kirito that it even went into decimals.

At that moment, Asuna and Alice returned from their search. Asuna brought a greyish-green stone; Alice - blackish brown. Kirito took both stones to evaluate their weight. Green one slightly heavier, but the black one is harder. Kirito decides to turn the green one into materials first and placed it on the workbench. Holding it in place with his left hand, he took the black one and struck the green one with it. After a moment, the stone split into two. Then he took one of the pieces and hit it with the black one again; he failed this time. Just as he readied for the third strike, Asuna noticed that Kirito resembled a certain something. As she was about to tell him that, she had to suppress her laughter.

At that point, Alice explained that Kirito breaking the stones in his underwear looked like a Neanderthal she saw on TV. She even proposed the idea of him changing his boxers to a fur pelt to complete the look. This breaks Asuna's self-restraint limits and she begins chuckling, followed by Alice right afterwards. In response, Kirito starts protesting... in self-created Neanderthalian... causing the girls to burst into laughter.

Anyway, on his third strike, Kirito managed to split off a fragment of the stone, creating a 3 x 5 cm piece, 1 cm thick. With the black stone, Kirito further processed the stone piece, believing that the system would somewhat understand what he was planning and help him out. Eventually, a flash came from the stone for a moment and Kirito received a system message that he obtained the Stonemasonry skill, raising it to level 1. But Kirito was more interested in his work rather than the skill, so he tapped on the stone, bringing out a window. The window showed: [Crude, sharp, green stone knife; Weapon/Tool; Attack: Slash 7.82; Thrust 5.33; Durability: 10.05; Heaviness: 3.53] So, Kirito succeeded in crafting a knife.

While crude, the knife had better stats than the stone he crafted the knife from. Putting his new knife away, Kirito took the other stone piece and repeated the same process again. After numerous tries, he finally managed to get another decent-sized fragment out of the stone and crafted a second knife out of it. By then, his Stonemasonry skill reached level 3. Third knife came about more quickly. What remained of his stone materials was deemed insufficient for further crafting and dispersed into particles of light. While all three stones were named «Sharp Green Stone Knife», they all slightly (by decimal points) differed in attack power and durability, as well as their appearance, unlike in other VR and non-VR games. Thus, Kirito was a bit surprised that somebody put in the effort of making 3+ different designs for such a low level item. He speculates that whoever is behind the game isn't concerned with profits. Like Kayaba or Kikuoka.

At that point, Kirito wondered if it was possible to upgrade the knives. So, he cut a bundle of grass growing within stone cracks with his knife. While Asuna held one side of it, Kirito coiled the grass around. Once he was done, another flash of light before a window popped up, announcing that he acquired the Weaving skill, raising it to level 1. But Kirito ignored that window and instead tapped on the grass rope to bring out its property window. [Crude Amane Grass Rope; Tool/Material; Durability: 4.10; Heaviness: 0.65]. Kirito then took a knife from his workbench and wrapped the rope around the part for holding it. As he expected, the moment he was done, another flash of light came from it as the two items became merged, even though he hadn't tied the rope in any way.

When he tapped on the item again, he got a window that said: [Crude, sharp, green stone knife with a rope tied around it; Weapon/Tool; Attack: Slash 7.82, Thrust 5.33; Durability: 15.82; Heaviness: 4.18]. Happy that things turned out the way he had expected, he showed the window to the girls. The two looked impressed for like half a minute... until they realised that while the item's durability increased, so did its heaviness. So, instead of clapping for him like Kirito had expected, the girls complained about the whole thing being a pain in the ass. Anyway, after the two girls took up the Weaving skill themselves as well by making some grass ropes of their own, the three took a knife each and headed back to the log house. By then, they already began to see the sunset.

Not expecting to get all the materials till it gets dark, Kirito wanted to at least finish up with the logs. So, he started using his knife to remove the bark from the logs. To his surprise, the bark didn't disappear after being peeled off, but he did earn himself the Carpentry skill. As he more or less expected that, Kirito continued processing the logs. Since the system greatly simplified the process as long as he was doing it somewhat right, he finished up with one megurimatsu log in a mere minute, turning it from blackish to ivory white round timber. Apparently, the megurimatsu name comes from the fact that the log has spiral grooves beneath the bark (meguri = going around, matsu = pine tree). Upon checking on the property window of the processed log, he saw that its name was changed to [Sawed Aged Megurimatsu Log]. Since the log house's repair window didn't request specific tree logs, he assumed that these will have to do.

Thus, the three of them began working on the other logs. However, they also need a ton of other stuff, which in turn requires a lot of different equipment, tools, knowledge to produce, thus he wished there were a walkthrough for this. Being the Kirito that he his, he lets his thoughts wander off during his work. One such thought was the idiom for being extremely busy: "wanting even the help of a cat​". He realises that they do have a cat, so "cat" in the idiom should be replaced with "Cait Sith". Luckily, he refrains from sharing his poor pun with the girls.

Anyway, the biggest concern for Kirito was that their knives might not hold out till they finished the job, but 42 minutes later, they did manage to finish with the last log. Kirito was the last one to finish his portion, to his disbelief. At the end, Kirito's knife was at 0.46 durability; Alice's - 0.13 (Asuna's not listed). Coiling the rope around the knives turned out to be a great idea. However, all that work was only for one of the six required materials... and they're still 12 logs (+ some more for crafting planks) short. On the other hand, the 150 that they gathered were felled by the log house's crash, rather than themselves, so they would need an axe or something for the rest.

But it's getting late and the following day is a Monday, which means school tomorrow. Since Asuna's from a family of good upbringing, she can't allow herself to have an all-nighter just before a school day (though Kirito had to bring up the school thing himself, as Asuna didn't think of it at first). To cheer her up, Kirito promised to take care of the remaining resources even if he'd have to go into dogeza to apologise to his own parents for the all-nighter later, so he asks her to trust him. Alice volunteers to help too, as she has no other plans till next evening. However, Asuna's reluctant to force Kirito and Alice to shoulder the entire burden themselves. Kirito was about tell her that everything would be fine, but he realised that if he himself were in Asuna's position, he wouldn't be able to get a wink of sleep during the night.

After considering what to do about the situation until imaginary smoke came out his ears, Kirito asked Asuna how her mother would be aware of her dives. The girl explained that her mother could see her diving from the home server's management screen. While Kyouko wasn't keeping an eye on Asuna like that nowadays, Asuna would be busted if her mother happened to glimpse at the screen while working late into the night. At that point, Kirito promises to take care of it for her, without revealing how exactly. However, he does point out that Asuna will have to log out for dinner time (for half an hour), so he decides to do the same during that time.

As the two gaze at their crumbling log house and Kirito was about to reassure Asuna again, Alice interjected... complaining that she wanted to be able to eat with her machine body too. Koujiro and Higa were apparently working on taste sensors for Alice's body, though that will take time to develop. At that moment, Asuna finally shows a smile as she promises Alice to hold a party at the Dicey Cafe once Alice gains the ability to eat food in the real world. She also promises to make tons of tasty stuff for her then. By then, the sky is dyed in deep purple and stars began appearing here and there. The time is 6:45 PM (Asuna's dinner is at 7:00 PM), so it's about time for the first logout.

But there's one thing they have to take care of before then - stashing their logs somewhere. As the log house is still considered a player home, even if it's steadily decaying away, Kirito assumes that anything in the house's storage would be safe from theft. Thus, he decides to have the logs moved to the log house through several runs via carrying them in their inventory. He also decides to store away the unused bark just in case it proves to be useful. The three also store their now-nonequipable main weapons.

By the time they finish up, it's already 6:55 PM. After making plans to make some new armour (or at least some clothes) while looking at his Boxers-Only avatar, he says goodbye to Asuna and Alice, agreeing to meet up again with them 30 minutes later. At that point, the three press on the log out button via their menus. This brought up a standard warning that it was possible for his avatar to die if he logged out while not being in a safe place, but Kirito concludes that there's no safer place than home. When he presses on the "yes" button to log out, a confirmation window pops. "Would you like to disconnect from Unital Ring?". Thus, for the first time, Kirito learns the name of the survival game that he was dragged into.

Moments later, Kazuto awakes in his room. Logout works fine, despite ALO suddenly being hijacked like that. However, he soon feels something heavy on his stomach... Panicking that he was being restrained, he immediately took off his AmuSphere, only to find... Suguha straddling him on his stomach. He couldn't see her face as it was somewhat dark in the room, but he knew that there was only one person in the world who would do something like that.

Apparently, Suguha came over to call him for dinner. It seems he didn't notice that she was shaking him, so she was about to pull his AmuSphere of him. When Kazuto asked why she hadn't just sent him a message (ALO is connected to outside networks, thus it was possible to surf the net an exchange messages in-game), Suguha revealed that she had tried... twice even, but received no response, so she decided to resort to using force. Suguha also complained that she wished she had been home an hour earlier so she could have joined them on their farming, as Liz had promised to show her a secret good spot. Meanwhile, Kirito realised that the ALO --> UR change was responsible for the unreceived messages.

Just as Kazuto began telling Suguha that something bad happened in ALO and that Sugu was lucky she wasn't there, he recalled that Lisbeth, Silica, and Yui were still inside the game on the 45th Floor of Aincrad. He suddenly jumped up (causing Suguha to fall off) and grabbed his Augma from his desk. The moment it loaded up, he called out for Yui, but received no response from her, so he concluded that she was still in Unital Ring. Although he could forcefully disconnect her via his PC, he did not want to force her out.

At that moment, he realised that unlike in SAO, Unital Ring wasn't isolated from the real world and that the whole transition took place at around 5 PM, so 2 hours earlier. Thus, he presumed that some ALO players would have logged out to take it up with the admins and share info on the Internet. Via his Augma, he was about to access «MMO Today», the largest online game info site... when Suguha struck a daunting pose as she pulled on his shirt, telling him to head down for dinner. She added that their mother made his favourite meal that day.

Unable to refuse after hearing that, Kazuto stood up with his Augma still on. While en route downstairs, he opened a browser on the Augma to check for announcements from Ymir, ALO's admins - none to be found. Then he accessed MMO Today... and the moment he took a glance at the top page, he let out a strange sound... Frozen in place like he had turned into stone, he focused on top news headline: [Large Scale Disorder in 100+ VRMMO worlds]. Thus, Kirito realised that the strange phenomenon wasn't limited to ALO... but rather affected The Seed Nexus in its entirety.