It was during my time in Aincrad that my personality shifted and began to question myself and those around me, for my time trapped in that virtual world was a life changing experience for not only me but thousands of others. Like this game I too had started off as something sweet and innocent as seen by the naked eye, but as the months of survival dragged on I went through an evolution within myself that rotted me to my very core and altered my perception of the world around me. My name is Takeshi, and this story is about the time I killed another player.
It happened during the December of the first year while trapped inside Aincrad, the time of year when men and women would lay down their weapons and embrace each other with a sense of holiday spirit, that didn't happen to me. I was making my way down a dirt road on the far side of the 35th floor, or at least I think it was dirt, the snow was thick and falling fast in an attempt to blanket the road entirely and cause travellers to lose their way. On my person I was wearing a large cloak with a hood that shielded my eyes from the cold, and across my shoulders was the pelt of a creature I had killed earlier this year and had fashioned into something to keep me warm, but in this weather it felt as though the difference was naught. I was keeping my arms close to my chest to keep myself warm and my legs were slowly trudging through the snow trying to cover some ground. As I continued on what was starting to look like a lost cause, I was delighted to see in the distance the warm flicker of lights that shone brightly through the winter's darkness and with hope now in my eyes I briskly stated to walk towards the golden glow. When I came face the face with the source of the light, I discovered that it was in fact the interior lighting of a small tavern that was escaping through the windows and into the night. Thankfully I was able to find the entrance with the help of a lantern that was hung above the door and gently swinging as the wind blew past it, the door itself was large and made of a thick dark oak that was perfect for keeping out the cold, and in the centre of the door was a large door knocker that had been fashioned into the head of a boar with opals for its dark eyes that stared at me as approached the door. With eagerness I pushed the door inwards expecting to see happy faces huddled around an open fire, accompanied by good food and something warm to drink. But to my surprise I was greeted by a different sight.
As I closed the door behind me I took in sight of the room that I was now in, I removed my cloak and placed it carefully on a hook to my right, revealing myself to those who now had their gazes fixed upon me. I was what I thought was an average height, but my build was far stronger than anyone who I had met in that world or in the real one. With large arms that resembled trees I was able to easily wield the greatsword I wore on my back with grace and fluidity, but I also wore a small dagger on my hip for quicker combat needs. I wore tanned leather armour on my torso, shoulder pads made of steel and a pair of vambraces to match, black leggings and leather boots, all of my gear looked beaten and aged, but still able to protect me none the less. The final features of my armour were several straps made of black leather that were used to hold the weapons I used to hunt and defend myself. With thick stubble that defined the rest of my face, I had a broad brow and a nose that was almost flat against my face and a pair of thick eyebrows that sat above my amber eyes. The hair that capped the top of my head was jet black, with a length that fell down the base of my neck and a fringe that stopped when my eyes began. With my cloak in its place I started to walk further into the room and glance at the other players, the room had a series of booths that had a round table and seat that could hold about six people with segregations between every booth for added privacy and an added sense of security. In total there were eight booths that started in one corner and followed the wall around to the back of the room. In the centre of the room was a large open hearth that was burning bright enough the fill the room with enough light to see everyone who was in front of me. Opposite to the booths was a bar that was being worked by a young girl who was frantically trying to make herself look busy, there was also a man sat at the bar but her was slumped over in a deep sleep, his hand still clasped around an empty glass. Making my way through the room I saw various other players who were sitting quietly to themselves, not fuelling any of the atmosphere I would have expected to find in a tavern late at night. But as I continued t walk I noticed that all of them were quickly turning their heads to uncomfortably glance towards the back of the back of the room, and as I approached the hearth I saw what they were all looking with scared looks on their faces. In the booth that was placed in the corner of the room sat an unruly group of "Red Players", those who kill others for sport and the stuff of nightmares for the rest of us. From the looks of it there were four of them, all of them dressed in dark clothing and rusted armour which looked beyond threatening. As I made my way towards them I was able to get a decent enough glance at the shadowy group to see what they were doing.
Two of them were drinking heavily and laughing as loud as the audience of a circus, both of them caught in the fray of their own jokes that were only funny to them. The third player was sinking his teeth into a piece of well cooked meat with great ferocity, forcing it into his mouth like a savage animal and washing it down with a tankard that was full of a foul smelling liquid that I crept up my nostrils as I walked past. The final player was probably the largest cause of commotion in the room; he was sat with his back against the wall and a tankard of beer in his right hand, and to his left sat a small girl who was squirming as the brutes empty hand was slowly moving across her body, but she never made a sound in fear of her life. She had cropped black hair that was silky smooth and wide eyes that were bright blue and slowly filling with tears, and she was wearing a long dark green cloak that hid the movements of the thug's hand but it was obvious what he was doing to her. At first I thought it odd that the harassment warning wasn't appearing, but then I remembered that there was an option to deactivate it, something that had originally been designed for couples to become even more intermit with each other had been twisted into a someone's dark perversion. When I finished passing them I quickly averted my eyes so that they wouldn't notice my analysis of them, and I placed myself in the only booth that was available, unfortunately for me, it was the one next to them. As soon as I sat down the girl at the bar had hurried over with a quill and a notepad ready to take my order with a nervous look in her eyes, fearing that I was like the thugs in the next booth. I smiled at her and politely asked for some warm food to satisfy the growing hunger within me, with a sigh of relief she quickly scuttled through some doors which I assumed led to the kitchen. I waited patiently waited and in no time at all she returned with what I had ordered; a medium sized steak that was accompanied by a large knife to cut it with, along with some vegetables. Just as I had picked up the knife the laughter in the room stopped and I heard movement from the booth next to me and I watched as the shadows of all four men started to lift themselves up, throwing the whimpering girl to the floor in the process, I tightened the grip of my knife when I saw her collide with the floorboards, still not making a cry for help. Like stumbling giants the players slowly made their way out of their booth and to my surprise and dread, in my direction. Leaving the girl behind they started to march towards my booth and one by one they lined up in front of me, each of them with a gruff look on their faces and the blacks of their eyes glaring down of me with boiled potato on the tip of my knife. Like angry dogs it almost seemed that they were going to start growling at me, but without losing my nerve I ate the potato and politely asked them: "can I help you gentlemen?"
The one who had previously had his hands on the girl spoke to me in a rough and hash tone of voice; "that's some nice gear you have strapped to your back there" he said with a slur. "How about you hand it over and you can go on your merry way". Then he smiled at me with a toothy grin that made the contents of my stomach start to shift, but I was able to only just stop myself from vomiting. Thinking the situation through in my head I looked at my aggressors and I remembered that it was possible me to die where I sat because the tavern was outside the safety of the nearest town, leaving me vulnerable to dying in a bar fight. With a nervous swallow I raised myself to my feet so that I could look the group directly in the eyes, I wasn't going lose any of my gear, especially to them after I had worked so hard to get the gear in the first place. Now standing, I replied to the one who had instructed me, "how about you sit back down before you do something you'll regret; you can also give me the girl please". I decided that if I was going to do some good that day I might as well try to help her. With a confused and angry look on his face the thug started to laugh loudly at my statement, still laughing his moved over and lifted the girl up by the arm causing her pain and dragged her over so that she now stood beside his in front of me. "I think he might you might be confused" he said while chuckling, "you see... she's mine. Do you honestly think I'm going to let you have her even if you ask nicely?" As he spoke his dirty hand caressed the girl's torso and I watched as she squirmed in fear, each movement causing her more discomfort. When he had finished he simply cast her aside like a used item and took a step towards me in an attempt to scare me, but he saw that I was unmoved by his act of dominance. He spoke to me again but once again the laughter had left his voice and replaced with a ton that was more serious and threatening. "Maybe" he said, "I'll have to teach you a lesson and take that sword by force", but I was ready for him with the same reply, but this time more demanding and a louder voice; "Maybe you sit down and give me the girl now". Unmoved by my statement the player once again spoke while his companions stood silently like drones; "Okay, now I'm going to have to hurt you". But I wasn't scared either and I smirked while I uttered my reply: "I'd like to see you try".
With a quick movement my opponent went from negotiating to fighting and he raised his fist in order to strike my face with a brutal force, I watched him move the strength in his body to his arm and I was ready for when he launched his punch at me. In one swift movement I grabbed his unsuspecting arm and forced it down on to the table with a loud thud causing his fist to open up and lie flat with pain. As his hand stung with a slight pain I brought up the knife that had come with my meal and plunged it into his hand, piercing through his digital flesh and into the table below, locking him in place. As he began to scream in agony I turned my attention to his silent friends who had now come alive as though a puppet master had suddenly pulled their strings, unsheathing their weapons and raising them to strike me down where I stood. While the screaming continued I leapt over the table and readied myself the next stage of the fight, I was prepared for anything and I felt quite confident going up against these fools. The first to attack was the man who had been stuffing his face full of food and drink, but he had swapped his dull cutlery for a spear with a wooden shaft and a sharp tip. He lunged at me in a manor that was sloppy, misplacing his steps and tumbling to the floor without me laying a finger on him. Although he had been drinking it was impossible to get drunk in Aincrad (unless you count getting "drunk" on the atmosphere), meaning that it was probably his overconfidence that had caused his mistake. As his spear fell to the floor I quickly lifted my foot and stomped down on the shaft of the weapon, causing his still gripping fingers to become squashed against the floor which brought the man to his knees in agony. While he was still caught in agony I brought the knee of my other leg upwards so that it crashed directly into his face, forcing him to collapse on to the floor with an enormous thud, sending him into a deep sleep. With my body still tensed I turned finally to my final two opponents, who were stumbling as they held their swords in their hands. The thug on the right was the first to move, raising his sword high above his head with an ugly fashion while he walked quickly in my direction, his footsteps load with every step he took. But as soon as he was upon me I was already moving towards his sword and as he brought it down I made contact with the hilt of his weapon, in one graceful movement I manoeuvred myself under his raised arm while twisting his arm as I moved. By the time I was standing still again I had the attacker in a locked position, making it easy to simply take the sword from his weakening grasp. To finish him off I raised his sword and violently brought its hilt to the base of his skull, quickly rendering him unconscious. I raised myself up in order to face my last foe, but now he was less sure about himself, with a scared look on his face in response to what he had just witnessed. I raised the sword and pointed it directly at him, but as soon as the weapon was ready to strike, he was already running out of the door in a cowardly fashion, trying not to trip on his way out. As I watched him leave the tavern I began to swing the stolen sword in my hand before finally throwing it down to lie beside its sleeping master. I looked at my handiwork and I smiled at the once terrifying players who had now been reduced to nothing more than sleeping giants, their loud snores filling the air of the room. But as I looked down I realised that their snoring had replaced the screaming of my first attacker who had now gone silent, and nowhere to be seen.
As I began to walk towards my booth I was suddenly caught off guard but the vicious cry of someone behind me, but as I turned I was thrown to the floor by the man who I had left attached to the table, who was now waving the meat knife wildly in front of me. As he brought the knife down to stab me where I lay, I was able to quickly divert his attack, causing the knife to dig into the wooden floor next to my body. But that did not quell his rage as he abandoned the knife and he forced both of my hands out of the way with his great strength; he finally made contact with my skin as his large rough hands gripped around my throat as the brute sat on top of my torso, keeping me pinned down and more vulnerable than ever. With a derange look in his eye he began to squeeze my neck in an attempt to end my life, as his grip tightened I felt the air in my lungs cry out to be released from their prison of flesh and the edge of my vision was becoming more and more blurred as the world started to fade out. As this happened I listened to the man as he began laughing, providing a crude soundtrack to the end of my life, with a grin on his face and a deranged look in his eyes. As I lay there on the floor I felt my body start to collapse under what it was going through, and my arms fell so they lay spread out in opposite directions, no longer wanting to fight after fruitlessly trying to remove the hands from my next. But as I lay there, the fingertips of my right hand didn't find the floor, but something cold and sharp... the meat knife.
As the strangler continued his work, with the strength that I had I curled my fingers around the hilt of the small knife and twisted my arm so the blade was now pointing to the ceiling. Even with the seconds I had left to live I knew I had to wait for the right moment, which came a lot sooner than I expected. While he laughed my attacker slowly leant forward and looked directly into my eyes to watch what was left of my life leave my body, but instead he found something else. With is head above mine I took the opportunity in order to save myself, but I never realised the consequences of came to do. In one violent movement of my arm I brought the knife up and stabbed it directly into the brain of the man looking down on me, ripping into his health bar in a single blow and freezing his face in a position of sudden surprise. As I held the knife in place I felt the grip of his hands weaken and I watched as his health bar quickly depleted, like liquid escaping from a broken glass. It was over when he shattered like a mirror, breaking into a million polygons that began to float away and slowly disappear into nothingness, until only the knife in my hand remained in the space where he used to be. With steady movement, I carefully lifted myself into a sitting position and I looked to see what had transpired around me. The girl who had been cast aside had stopped crying and was now looking at me with a blank look in her eye; in fact, everyone in the room was staring at me with the same expression on their faces. Slowly I stood up and I walked over to her, "are you alright?" I asked gently, but the girl did not utter a word and continued to stare at me with her large eyes. I turned my back on the girl and I placed a small pouch of col on the bar, enough the pay for my meal and the damages that I had caused. As I grabbed my cloak I once again looked back into the room and saw that the room had shifted back to normal, all of the other players had returned to what they had been doing, all except the girl, who was still looking at me, but this time with a small smile on her face. From they way it looked, it was as though the death had not affected them at all, even if my victim had been a red player I was starting to feel a sense of guilt well up inside of me, which I believed to be the typical human response. But as I continued to look started to wonder why I was the only one reacting to the situation. It was then when a thought came to me; "has death truly lost its meaning in this world?"
I once again ventured out into the snowy night and on to the buried path where I continued to question whether if we had all left our morality in the real world, abandoned in our lifeless bodies of flesh and bone where we couldn't hear their cries. This left my pondering mind with one final question, a question that remained with me like a curse for the rest of my time in Aincrad...
"What was this game turning us into?"