Sword Art Online - Volume 21 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

This chapter begins with Kazuto having dinner with Suguha. The guy is eating is favourite dish - brown stew chicken with mushrooms. The reason for this is because it's similar to the Ragout Rabbit stew Asuna had made for him in Aincrad... though he didn't tell his aunt or Suguha about that. Apparently, that's not the only dish that he began to love because of Asuna. Same applies to his other favourite dishes: teriyaki and mayonaise hamburgers, shio ramen, and honey pies.

Anyway, having sent out an email before the dinner, Kazuto finished eating without his Augma... since Midori was apparently strict about table manners despite being the editor-in-chief for an IT magazine. By that time, it was already 7:22 PM (3 minutes till his meeting with the girls), so after thanking his mother/aunt for the meal, he headed upstairs.

Suguha was about to head for a bath, but Kazuto caught her by the nape and told her to bring her AmuSphere to his room. Without explaining anything, he turned her around and gave her a push, telling her to hurry. Once Suguha brought her AmuSphere, Kazuto doubled checked whether she had her respawn point set to the log house, and whether her last logout was from there. When she confirmed that, Kazuto said he'd explain what's going on inside the game, telling her to go into the game at once.

Suguha was surprised that he wanted her to dive from his room, but after taking a look around, she didn't see anywhere to dive from anyway. So, Kazuto told her that she could take half the bed. As she was too shocked to say anything, he sat her down and put the AmuSphere on her. ust then, Suguha's phone rang. She received a message from Nagata (Recon)... and then noticed that he's been spamming her with messages and calls for awhile now. Since Kazuto already had a hunch on what the messages were about, he told her that something important was up and they had to go into the game. When the two both lay on the bed, he looked at the time on the AmuSphere (7:24:47) and decided to dive on the count of five.

By the time Kirito found himself back in Unital Ring, the white-dressed Undine ) and the golden-armoured Cait Sith were already there. Just before the two could say a thing, their gaze moved to the right as Leafa spawned in at that point (2 seconds after Kirito). The two expressed relief that Leafa was alright... leaving the out-of-the-loop Leafa confused. And then she saw Kirito in his undies. Anyway, Leafa had come to UR with her light armour and her longsword, both of which weren't weighing her down yet, so the leniency mode was still in effect. Leafa's ears were also changed to human ones, but the change to her appearance was so minimal that she hadn't even noticed. At that point, Kirito asked her if anything felt different with the login sequence. Apparently, some strange ring appeared then. This proved Kirito's suspicions, since he himself saw the same thing when he converted his account to GGO and so he explained that it was a «conversion ring». In other words, Leafa's account was forcibly converted into Unital Ring.

Shocked, Leafa remarked that they were still in Kirito and Asuna's log cabin... and then she noticed all the damage to it. After the narration detailed the extent of it, Asuna explained that they were no longer in ALO and that the log house and Aincrad had been transferred to a new world. After Leafa was informed of what the others knew, Kirito explained that she was the only one with a(n equipable) sword among them, so they were counting on her. At that point, Leafa remarked that Kirito dragged her there as they needed a bodyguard, though Kirito claimed that wasn't the only reason for it.

Leafa asked what kind of monsters spawned in the area. Alice replied that they hadn't seen any monsters, but did hear some distant roars in the forest. Then Leafa asked about spells and Alice explained that ALO's sacred tongue spellwords didn't work here. At that point, Alice brought up Yui and asked whether Kirito had any luck contacting her. He hadn't - she was still with Liz and Silica.

Since Kirito brought up Aincrad, Leafa immediately asked if they had seen what happened to the castle in the end, but Kirito and co. didn't exactly have the time for that with the whole log house issue on their hands. At that point, Asuna did the math and estimated that Aincrad had fallen about 17 km away from them. Leafa then tried to materialise her wings. Being the speedholic that she was, she found the loss of her wings a bigger blow than the status reset.

Anyway, Leafa realised that their goal was to repair the log house, so she volunteered to help out, as the house was like a second home to her too. Estimating that they had slightly over 10 hours for the repairs, Asuna brought out the property window for the house and showed it to Leafa.

Meanwhile, Kirito opened his own menu to check on his skills. Aside from his One-Handed Sword from ALO (which was currently useless due to the lack of an actual sword to use), he saw the production skills he had already acquired in UR: Stonemasonry (石工スキル), Woodworking (木工スキル), Weaving (紡織スキル), and Sturdiness (強健スキル). All of them were basically near zero. Kirito tapped on the Stonemasonry skill and inspected what items he could craft at that point. The list showed a variety of primitive weapons: stone knife, stone axe, stone spear etc., among which he saw «Stone Sword». If it came down to it, he figured he'd rely on the sword... but didn't really want to equip it while looking looking like a Neanderthal, as he feared that Suguha would burst into laughter, rolling on the floor, upon seeing him wearing a complete Neanderthal set. So he hoped he could skip to a metal weapon instead.

At that moment, he saw a hammer icon next to the names of the stone weapons. Wondering what it meant, he pressed on it, which opened up a Tips window: [Items marked with this icon need to be crafted manually with your hands and tools]. At that point, Kirito wondered if there were items that didn't need to be crafted like that and scrolled through the list. After weapons, he saw stone plates, stone hammers and other stone tools, after which came stone blocks and other stone building materials. All had the hand-crafting icon. Finally, at the bottom, he came across «Stone Cabin», «Stone Hearth», «Stone Furnace for Iron Production», among other things. These had an icon with two tetragons next to them. When Kirito tapped on it, he got another window: [Items marked with this icon can be crafted from the skill window. Please have the necessary materials in your storage for that.]

At that moment, Kirito tapped on the cabin option and got a window with the required materials. He tried pressing the "craft" button. Naturally, he got a window telling him that he didn't have enough materials. Just then, Alice peeked into his window and noticed the furnace option. She wondered whether they could use it to craft the iron plates and nails for the house with it. And some weapons too.

Moments later, Kirito brought up that they would still need to find iron ore to make iron... and that iron ore wouldn't be so easy to come across in such a game, since they wouldn't just grow out in the fields. When Alice wondered where they were going to get some then, Kirito stated that they'd typically be found in mountains and caves. Since there weren't any mountains around, their only option was to find a cave.

At that moment, Kirito trailed off into his thoughts. Apparently, during their adventures in ALO, Kirito learnt that the flawless Alice hated certain things. One of these things were caves. Although Alice was completely fine with artificial dungeons, cave exploring wasn't really her thing. Kirito wondered if this could have anything to do with Alice's sealed memories of her youth.

As Kirito didn't expect to just find a cave out of nowhere, he proposed dealing with the wood materials first, especially since they now had a decent lumberjack with them. Leafa quickly realised that he was talking about her, thus she remarked that she only had a sword, not an axe. But when Kirito started bragging about cutting down the Gigas Cedar with a sword, Leafa agreed to take on the job.

While Kirito was explaining that only the mastermind of the game knew how long Leafa would be able to use her sword, Alice brought Kirito's attention to the game's menu. Apparently, she noticed that the eight icons on it slightly differed in colour shade. The top icon was tinged with red but the following icons gradually got a bluish tinge in a clock-wise manner, until the last one was entirely bluish purple. Since Asuna didn't quite understand what Alice's point was, the Cait Sith explained that all the icons were Zephilia-blue when she had first opened her menu at the time of the crash. The fact that the colour reminded Alice of the Underworld flower is why she remembered such a detail.

But by now, five of the icons had already changed colour... so she theorised that this acted as a timer for the leniency period. Kirito did the math: five icons = 2.5 hours, so 1 icon = 30 min. Meaning, 1.5 hours left. Thus, Alice urged everyone to hurry up with the trees while they still had Leafa's sword. Leafa would fell some trees while the others handled the debarking. But once they rushed out to the porch, they stopped. Since they noticed that it had become awfully dark since the last time they were outside. At that point, Alice stepped outside with an impromptu torch.

Apparently, Alice had returned faster than the others and found two egg-sized stones for starting a fire, thinking that they would be useful when darkness fell. Thinking how actual otherworldians were really something, Kirito asked how she had used the stones. But when Alice explained how she had made some tinder out of dry grass, used the stones near it to cause a spark, lighting the grass on about the tenth attempt, and then used the lit grass to set fire to a tree branch, calling the process simpler than in Underworld... Kirito for once thought that he'd have preferred to have magic. In SAO, he had used lanterns for lighting, but those could be lit up with a press of a button, so not much different from magic. But Unital Ring wasn't going to go as easy on them.

Just as Kirito was about to head out to find his own branch, Alice went over to a large stockpile of them that she had already acquired, and lit them up. At that instant, Leafa remarked that the fire effect was quite realistic, which caused Kirito to compare UR to ALO and SAO - UR had much better graphics than those two. Kirito used an analogy with flat panel displays: it was like comparing HD and 4K video. However, Kirito noted that this clashed with the info he had acquired when he had logged out: how exactly was the game capable of such high resolution when it forcibly converted players from 100s of The Seed games?

By that point, Kirito was forcefully woken from his daydreaming when Leafa slapped him on his back to get him to work already. Midway through Kirito's attempt at thrusting his arm upwards to get psyched for the job, Leafa had already begun slashing away at a tree, causing Kirito to freeze mid-motion. As Asuna and Alice stared at him, he resolved to get some new equipment as soon as they were done with the house, even if he had to pull an all-nighter before a school day.

Since Leafa's long sword was an Ancient Weapon, it didn't even take her 30 sec to chop down a tree with one slash. On the other hand, the debarkers numbered three but had difficulty keeping up with her. After 15 minutes, they already had 3 piles x 10 logs each. With this many of them, Kirito expected to still have some logs to spare after crafting 75 sawed wooden boards. Just then, Kirito realised... that he didn't exactly know how to craft them... As Kirito thought about the process, Asuna stated that they would need at least an oga saw (large Japanese saw) to saw the logs into boards. Asuna had to explain what an oga saw is to Kirito. Just as Kirito thought about crafting a saw, he realised that Japanese saws weren't exactly a thing in the early days, like the Kofun period (i.e. around 250-538 CE), so he wondered what people used before saws.

At that point, Asuna gave a history lesson on saws (causing Kirito to be surprised by the capacity of her brain). Anyway, in the end, Asuna explained that people just used a wedge to split a log, finishing it up with an axe or plane, but this method had a high rate of failure. Aside from the fact that the megurimatsu tree's spherical fiber pattern made it hard to split the tree using this method, they also needed iron to make the wedges. As Asuna and Kirito thought about how complicated it is to produce boards from logs, Leafa came over to them from her workstation beside Alice. Slapping Kirito on the back again, Leafa warned him not to look down on her skills, or her sword «Rísavind».

When Kirito complained that everyone's been slapping him lately, Leafa remarked that seeing his outfit results in the urge to do so... and so she offered Asuna to try it herself.

As Kirito hurriedly jumped back, he seemed to have caught a glimpse of disappointment on Asuna's face, but he brushed it off as his imagination. Anyway, now being careful not to have his back to any of the girls, Kirito asked what Leafa had in mind with her skills.

Leafa asked Kirito and Asuna to move out of the way, before taking a chuudan (middle) stance with her long sword in both hands. Leafa's long sword is apparently categorised as a bastard sword and could thus use both one-handed, and some two-handed sword Sword Skills. The drawback was that her sword was quite heavy to use as a one-handed sword, but too light and lacking power as a two-handed sword. But it was just the right length and weight for a kendoka like her.

Anyway, Leafa raised her long sword and it lit up green, triggering a Sword Skill, thus confirming their existence (though Kirito had assumed they existed as weapon skills were transferred over from ALO). Leafa used a two-parter two-handed sword Sword Skill named «Cataract». Normally, the skill consisted of two overhead slashes, but Leafa's were so fast that it seemed like both attacks came in a single breath. The slash sunk into the topmost log on the pile. The flash went all the way to the other side. One second later, the log split into two and fell to the ground. Between the two pieces was a long and thin board/plank. Kirito grabbed it before it could fall to the ground.

The board/plank was 2 cm thick and as smooth as a plank treated with a plane. When Kirito tapped on it, the property window named it [Sawed Aged Megurimatsu Board]. This method allowed them to produce the needed materials... but they could only get one per log at this rate. Kirito suggested making something to support the logs so they could be reused, but Leafa told him to just support it by hand. Despite having a bad premonition about this, Kirito complied by raising the log to stand vertically on its ends while he supported it with his hands. Leafa activated another two-handed sword Sword Skill, this time a one-parter «Cascade». The skill sliced through the tree about 2 cm away from the previous cut. Kirito gave a scream, thinking that his hand was chopped off too, but he hadn't actually suffered any damage.

As he was about to let go of the log, Leafa ordered him to hold still and again activated «Cataract» just as its cooldown expired. Followed by «Cascade». Then again «Cataract». After a total of six slashes, what was left of the log broke like glass, having expended its durability. That left them with six boards of different sizes out of it. Seven if you count the very first one. Alice gave Leafa an applause for her splendid work. The Cait Sith claimed that Leafa did a better job at making the boards than Alice herself had during her seclusion in Rulid. As Leafa gave an embarrassed grin, Asuna continued pouring the praise by saying that Kirito probably wouldn't have done the job as accurately as her.

Kirito grumbled in his mind that he had no way of showing off his divine skills as he silently added the boards to his storage. He then picked up the other half of the log and prepared it for the same process. By the time they finished slicing ten logs in such a manner, the time was past 8 PM. Less than one hour till the leniency period expired. By now, they already had 130 boards, but that meant that only 2 of the 6 different kinds of materials had been gathered. The other 4, however, were going to be harder to get. Now they had to do something about the iron materials.

While they could craft a furnace, they'd still need to find ore to make the iron. Ore could be found in caves, but those would naturally have monsters. The stronger kind to boot. After another one of Kirito's internal monologues about how not everyone had their items equipped before the conversion and stuff, we finally get an explanation for Kirito's plan to allow Asuna to secretly play UR overnight.

Kirito had contacted Asuna's brother, Kouichirou. He had apparently promised to show the guy around New Aincrad. During their conversation, Kirito had learnt that Kouichirou secretly had a private channel installed at home (i.e., he can avoid going through the home server). Thus, Kazuto had sent the guy an email via his Augma while he was logged out. This way, Kazuto arranged for Asuna to use Kouichiro's channel to prevent her mother from noticing her Dive. Meanwhile, Asuna apparently (still) can't get used to Kirito calling her brother "Kouichirou-kun". Though, Kouichirou was the one who apparently told him to address him like that. While Asuna felt a bit of guilt for tricking her mother, she said that her "mama" has grown to like their log house herself, so she hopes to have a chat with her sometime and apologise.

With that out of the way, Asuna began to get psyched up for their iron ore hunt... but her proclamation was interrupted midway by another problem. Another beast roar from the forest. But this time it wasn't far off... and was emanating hostility. All four of them prepared their weapons, though Leafa was the only one with a proper sword, while the three indigenes​, as Kirito called themselves, only had crude stone knives.

Another roar, this time even closer. It reminded Kirito of the sound of a motorcycle in idle mode. Due to the bonfire's brightness, they couldn't really see anything beyond the trees. Kirito considered whether they should douse the fire, but he also considered that if their enemy were an animal, the fire might scare them, while it would be impossible to light a new one mid-battle.

A third roar. The sound of branches being trampled coming from the meadow to the north towards, heading towards the west. Already very close. Kirito tried to calm the others down with his speculation that the monster would be some early game stage small fry. So, Asuna wondered if Kirito believed the monster would be on the level of the blue boars from SAO. Kirito instead claimed that it would be something even easier than a boar. Like a wolf, or a fox, or a nutria. The last one earned a question from Alice, as she had no idea what that was, so Kirito was about to explain that it looked like a capybara. But then he realised that Alice wouldn't know what that is either, so he wondered what the big rats with long ears in Underworld were called. But before he could finish his thought, a roar came from the other side of the bonfire.

A moment later, a huge shadow jumped out to the meadow and rushed towards them, causing tremors along the way, until it suddenly stopped and stood up just before reaching the bonfire. The monster was easily over 2 metres-high, with brawny limbs, a round head, blackish brown fur, and bizarrely long and sharp claws and fangs. It wasn't a wolf, or a fox, or a nutria. It was a bear. "Onii-chan, how is that a small fry!", shouted Leafa.

At that point, Kirito finally recalled a teeny tiny detail... that their log house and broken away from Aincrad and crashed ~17 km away from the castle (he compared the distance to Kawagoe and Wako), which was quite far in game terms. Though, Aincrad wasn't guaranteed to have fallen onto the game's starting point either. Either way, it wasn't strange to encounter mid-level monsters in the field.

The bear roared again. The light of the bonfire revealed lightning-like jagged marks on it. Kirito would have wanted to see the monster's official name, but no cursor appeared over it despite the monster obviously targeting them. Thus, Kirito considered whether they should fight or run. All of them were level 1, while the bear could be around level 10 for all they knew. But they didn't have much options for running away either. They would need to either run into the log house, or to the riverbed to the south-west. The house had huge holes, while the river could have other monsters around. Plus, kinda hard to avoid hitting something while running in the dark.

At that moment, one of the pieces of wood in the fire crumbled, creating sparks. As if that were a signal, the bear lowered its paws, scratched the ground, and charged towards them. "Let's fight, Kirito-kun!", shouted Leafa and she prepared her Risavind. Kirito responded by leaving the front to her as he headed for the bear's right flank. Meanwhile, Asuna jumped to the left, while Alice assisted Leafa. At that point, the bear jumped over the fire, landing right in front of Leafa. Having stood up again, the bear looked thrice the size of her.

Without hesitation, the girl charged at the bear and swung her long sword at its right side. As a deep crimson damage effect appeared, so did the bear's red cursor, and its HP bar. The former looked like a revolving ring pierced by a sharp spindle. The HP bar and the monster's name were displayed above and below the ring. The monster's name was written in katakana, rather than in the Latin alphabet. Its name was 【トゲバリホラアナグマ】 (Togebari horaana guma / Togebari Cave Bear).

Just as Kirito finished looking at its cursor, the bear slashed. But Leafa, despite having lost her wings, agilely jumped aside and lunged with her sword again. Another clean hit, but the bear's HP bar was still only down by ~10% so far, despite using a sword that was high-class even among ancient weapons. Angered, the bear spread its paws, making it harder for Leafa to approach it. But at that moment, Asuna resolutely charged at it from behind. Her stone knife buried itself deep in the bear's fur, before she removed it again. The damage was negligible, but it did get the bear's attention. It tried to turn around to chase after Asuna, but it had a hard time actually doing so seeing as it was too big to be nimble.

The moment Kirito felt the bear was distracted, he made eye contact with Alice and both of them kicked off the ground simultaneously, stabbing the bear's flank and back. Just as the two jumped away, Leafa activated the 1-H sword Sword Skill «Vertical Arc», striking the bear's back in a V shape. This time, the monster's HP decreased visibly down to 70%.

Just as Kirito became confident that they would just need to repeat the same tactic three or four times to beat it, the bear... returned to walking on all fours... and jumped towards the forest. For a moment, Kirito thought that it was running away already. But it wasn't. It nimbly turned around and stood up again. Then it spread its arms, raised its face towards the sky, and bent backwards as much as it could. The white lightning marks started shaking. Just as Kirito was midway through warning everyone to watch out, the white bristle ruffled up as if the bear was a porcupine... and the hair was fired away. Hundreds of them.

At that moment, Alice jumped in front of Kirito, crossing her arms. The next moment, they were assailed by the hail of needles. Some hit Kirito at his right shoulder and left foot, making Kirito feel something quite similar to pain: a strong sensation mix of heat and cold.

Kirito's HP suddenly dropped over 70% from just that one attack and the bar turned orange. The three girls had also lost around half of their HP themselves. Kirito took a look at the needles: milky-white with a metallic lustre, 15 cm long and 2 mm thick. Kirito was surprised that the attack did so much damage, but then he realised that he's not even wearing any armour, so he should be glad he even survived the attack at all.

Meanwhile, the bear got down on all fours again, roaring in victory. The needle attack had a rather wide range. Leafa and Asuna both had over 10 of them stuck to their armour. Fearing that they wouldn't last a second attack like that, Kirito ordered everyone to retreat. When Asuna asked where to and Kirito replied that their only option was the house, the girl reminded him about the holes. He decided to worry about that when they got there.

As they couldn't really turn their backs on a bear that's out to get them, Kirito gestured for the girls to keep down as they moved behind a pile of logs they hadn't used yet. As soon as the logs hid him from the bear's sight, he ordered the girls to run. Moments later, the bear crashed into the logs head-first and got buried under the logs. But it didn't die. It just kicked away the logs and continued charging with minimal change to its HP bar. By that time, the girls were already at the porch, so Asuna told him to hurry up. He dashed with utmost effort, jumped over the stairs and into the house, shutting the door behind him. Two seconds later, the bear crashed into the door, causing the house itself to shake.

Before he even finished shouting an order for the girls to help him with the door, they were already pressing against it. Another impact. Almost felt like the door would fall out of its frame. The bear seemed to give up on a frontal assault and moved away to the right. Kirito went to the window to check on it, but it seemed like the bear was waiting for him. With another roar, it charged towards him. Despite Kirito pulling back, the bear still rammed the wall. Asuna checked on the house's property window, confirming that the house was suffering damage to its durability. Fearing that the bear would eventually destroy the house itself, Kirito looked for ways to repel the bear.

However, pretty much everything inside the house had disappeared during the conversion. The only thing left was the home storage chest, which now only had the things they had put in after the conversion. At that moment, Kirito came up with an idea. He looked at the chest, then at the hole in the ceiling, then at the chest again. Kirito then ordered Alice to kneel at a specified point. The girl gave a perplexed look just as the fourth ramming attack came from the bear.

Since they didn't have the time, Alice complied with Kirito's request and got down on her knees. At that point, Kirito climbed up on her right shoulder, before using her as a stepping stone for a jump (to her surprise). Although barely, Kirito managed to reach the beam with his fingertips and climb up. He then ordered Asuna to take out all the logs from the home storage and trade it to Leafa. Due to being used to Kirito's behaviour, Asuna immediately complied without any questions. Upon taking out all the logs, she had to press her hands against the floor to not fall down.

Asuna opened her menu and sent a trade request to Leafa. The moment the logs were transferred to her, she also fell to her knees, moaning that the logs were heavy. Kirito was about to give her the next order, but she had already realised what he was planning and opened her window. Leafa then transferred the logs to Alice, who then sent a trade offer to Kirito. Despite the distance, the two were still in range, so Kirito saw a small window pop up. The range for trade windows in VRMMOs was apparently ~2.5 metres. However, once the request was sent, both parties could move about one more metre without terminating the trade. Kirito thus stood up on the beam without touching the window.

Kirito then grabbed onto the edge of the hole in the ceiling and pulled himself up. Just before Kirito reached the 1 metre extra distance limit, he used one hand to accept the offer, before returning his hand to the beam and sticking out through the hole. The moment he kneeled on the roof, another window appeared: [150 Sawed Aged Megurimatsu Logs Accepted]. At the same moment, the guy was assaulted with extreme weight, ending up crawling on all fours.

At that moment, the bear seemed to notice him as it roared again. It stepped back for another approach run. Kirito could barely see it, but it was about a metre to the right. With a shout, Kirito extended his arms. Ignoring a [Sturdiness proficiency increased to 3] window, Kirito mustered his willpower and slid to the right. The bear roared and began its fifth attack. Ignoring his fear that he'd fall off the roof during the following impact, Kirito operated his menu. He tapped on the option to materialise all the logs. At that moment, 40 cm thick logs started appearing and falling on the roof... before rolling down... and then falling down on the bear. The logs continued appearing non-stop. Eventually, the bear's screams stopped.

Finally, just as the final log appeared and started rolling down... Kirito suddenly heard a fanfare as a blue ring enveloped his body. Once it went above his head and disappeared, he saw a new message window: [Ｋｉｒｉｔｏ reached level 13] So, Kirito went all the way from level 1 to level 13 with just one bear. Though it took Kirito a moment to realise where the level up came from. At that point, Kirito wondered why he didn't get a loot drop window before the levelup message. He figured that even a monster like that should drop some money and items.

So, he carefully crawled to the edge to look at the meadow. Then he realised why he didn't get any drops. The bear's body was still there, buried under the logs. Apparently, unlike SAO, dead bodies stay behind, rather than crumbling to pieces. Meaning that he had to put in some effort to retrieve the drops from the body. Thinking that the body wouldn't just disappear all of a sudden, Kirito returned to the hole and carefully climbed down. At that moment, Asuna clung to him with the force of a cannonball.

Just as Kirito was about to say that it was all thanks to Asuna's that they won, he realised that the other girls were looking at him, so he corrected himself to say that all of them helped him with the task before the words left his mouth. Having survived the bear attack, the group returned all the logs into their home storage. Then came the question what to do with the bear's corpse. The girls silently looked at Kirito. Kirito momentarily considered that Alice might have experience of handling the bodies of hunted beasts from Underworld, but decided that he needed to take action himself.

While praying that the dissection of one's prey would be handled in just one or two moves without needing to see all the viscera, Kirito thrust his stone knife into the bear below its mandible. Once he made a slash from the chest to the stomach, the corpse flashed and disappeared, leaving a load of objects behind it. [You have acquired the Dissection skill. Proficiency raised to 1] message appeared.

Kirito was left with a blanket-like object (fur), a pink mass (meat), and various other items. Asuna picked up a nearly 10 cm long claw. At that point, Alice asked how the loot rights were handled. When Kirito pointed out that anyone could pick it up, he realised that it could raise problems. Would be problematic during large scale raids where rare items could drop. As such problems didn't matter at the moment, Asuna tossed the claw to Kirito, before saying that they should move the bear's materials into storage and return to gathering the materials for repairs.

When Kirito checked on his menu, there was only one icon left that hadn't changed colours. So, only 30 minutes left. At that point, Leafa asked if Kirito had an idea where to get the iron. Kirito had one - the bear's home.