The Survival Logs || Sword Art Online Fanfic

Skill Research Arc: Chapter 28 - Unwelcome Regulars

25 June 2023

Kesoko, 32nd Floor

It seemed weird for an isolated settlement like Kesoko to have enemies trying to invade its land, especially when it's located in an area that's technically not part of Aincrad. The fact that the village was an instance confirmed it.

Since that might be the storyline of the Kesoko campaign quest, I obviously didn't challenge the twisted logic presented in front of me, by Mikane and her twin brother, Hakuro.

The story lore that I had gotten from the twins was this: The village of Kesoko have been threatened by enemies known as demons since their ancestors settled down here, and have been protecting themselves from the monsters ever since.

It was thought that the demons were a curse brought by leaving their homeland on the ground after the Great Separation, when the floating castle of Aincrad was created. The villagers had wanted to take refugee on the lowest Floors of the castle, but they had already been occupied by the Elven races. Hakuro even mentioned that his people were blessed when they found this area on the 32nd Floor, and I would have agreed with him if not for the fact that the demons exist.

In the early stages of the Kesoko campaign quest I had encountered the demons while doing quests to gather resources or helping to patrol around the village. And when I first saw those enemy mobs, they were nothing like what I'd expected them to be.

Aincrad's monsters were usually based off on various animals. The demons, however, looked as if they were truly made to be monsters. No two demons looked identical to each other; there was no limit to the variety of combinations that the demons have in physical appearance. They had all the kinds of limbs I could think of: claws, tentacles, and the like. They were so irregularly shaped that I couldn't think of a reason why they exist, except......they might be based on Japanese folklore.

Judging by their HP gauges, they seemed easy to take out in just a few hits, but achieving such clean hits was the difficult part. With the demons coming in many shapes and sizes, it was impossible to use the same attack techniques on every single one of them. I wondered if the villagers, especially the twins, knew much more about the demons than I did after encountering them.

The quest stages of the campaign quest didn't just limit itself to running errands and patrolling the village. Some of them involved my companion twins, probably to facilitate story progression. Although those quests were different from each other, I was either always sparing with Hakuro, or hunting for animals with Mikane. While their techniques were swift and cunning, they each dealt with combat situations with their own specialities (although both of them often use the Armament Swap skill to support the way they did things).

Hakuro was the straightforward fighter of the twins. My trial battle with him gave away his fighting style quite easily. Closing in on the enemy and unleashing consecutive but swift swings with his ninja knife (or kunai, as he had called it) were his usual routine during combat. Watching out for his surprise kunai throws was my only concern whenever I sparred with him, but other than that, I was fine beating him at his own game every time a combat training quest involving him popped up in my menu.

Mikane was different with her fighting style. I didn't spar with her, but she was always with me during material collection and monster hunting quests. She fights in what I called a supportive way, never directly damaging enemies, but instead inflicting debuffs that render them useless in combat. Her favourite debuff though is the sleep debuff, which causes enemies to fall into deep slumber for 1 minute. Hitting sleeping enemy mobs might cause them to wake up, however. Mikane always holds two short weapons when she fights, a kunai in her left hand and a real dagger in her right. She always inflicts the sleep debuff by throwing her kunai at a monster, before letting me or herself go in for the kill.

Initially, I was intrigued by how she could do that. It was genuinely impossible to inflict debuffs just by throwing a weapon, unless that weapon had the ability to inflict said debuff. In the first place, one would have to hold the weapon while trying to use the weapon's ability, so throwing said weapon wouldn't count. I had approached Mikane with that question in mind, and was a bit taken aback by her answer.

"...I was born with it." Mikane ended her sentence with her usual cheerful smile.

Knowing that I would be getting into more story lore, I listened to her explanation. It turned out that ever since the village of Kesoko was established on the 32nd Floor, some of the children born after that were shown to have abilities that could inflict instant 'curses' at anyone who got hit by them. Some said the abilities were derived from the scarce magic that was possibly left behind after the Great Separation, but they were soon not considered as magic, simply because the 'curses' could only work through a specific medium, which were weapons. If one with the inborn ability were to hold a weapon in their hand, the weapon would temporarily gain the ability to inflict debuffs of a particular kind, depending on the wielder. Some time after the people realized these abilities, they were given a name: Weapon Gifts, or Gifts in short (probably because the people understood that these abilities weren't as bad as they thought).

Apparently, Mikane was one of the few Gift wielders who could inflict the sleep debuff, but was the most proficient in using the ability. With her personality and all, the village had given her the title: Happy Lullaby. If I had the chance to give a better name for her, I would have modified that into the Cheerful Tranquilizer, because that would make way better sense in my thought process. If I would challenge her to a duel, I wouldn't ever get a chance to win if I ever got hit by her kunai. That was a fact that I definitely took note about her.

Honestly, there were still mysteries surrounding the village that I didn't think I'd discovered yet, but the Weapon Gifts were interesting enough for me to find out more. Abilities that inflict status effects onto enemies whenever you wanted? That was something players like me could never have. It was definitely a NPC-exclusive ability, but worth getting to know more of, due to the possibility that there might be more status effects that no player had known before.

I didn't think I'd completed even half of the campaign quest yet, but deep down, I knew that something big would happen at the end. Something that Argo would never tell me about, because it's a spoiler in the Kesoko campaign quest.

I couldn't help but let that feeling tug at my thoughts as I embraced the hospitality of the village, throughout my stay here.

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