Sword Art Online: Enhanced - Chapter 1.1 (Patreon)

This is another one of my works that unfortunately tapered off early on. I used a lot of roll systems with it as a quest type story. Unfortunately, I didn't balance the things I added in properly and messed it up.

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In a wave of flashing light, you found yourself returning to the familiar central square of the Town of Beginnings.

You let loose a sigh of content, relishing in being back in the game, Sword Art Online. It had been quite a while since the Beta Test after all. And it had been the most fun you'd had in a while between your stuffy arse private school and home tutoring in preparation for taking over your families company.

'Fuckin' pain in the arse that is.' you rolled your eyes and took a look around you. The Town of Beginnings was utterly massive. You suppose it had to be with how many players there were going to be coming into the game. Just today alone one hundred thousand would be logging in.

The central square of the town itself was beautiful. Covered with pristine marble pathment and buildings, with a massive square fountain in the middle of it. All around you mass amounts of people were excitedly talking. Honestly, you could barely see ten feet in front of you because of the mass amount of people.

'Wit tae dae, wit tae dae.' you mused, reaching up to finger the hilt of the massive claymore sheathed across your back.

As far as the first floor was concerned, you didn't know all of it. Mostly because, cunts in the beta test happily suicided against the boss over and over to beat it in the first few days. Not exactly a lot of time to explore.

Off the top of your head, you could only think of a few locations to go to right away. There was the fields all around the town, it was filled with level one boars, decent for grinding up on in the beginning. there was the labyrinth, but this early, you'd be hard pressed to beat any of the Kobolds in there. They were the highest level things on this floor outside of the roaming Sub-Boss.

..Oh! There was that quest in that village to the north of the town as well. It had that quest for getting the Anneal Blade. Not many cunts knew about that quest back in the beta, and it was one of the best weapons you could get sword wise early on. The base stats ranged from what type of sword you used, but it could be upgraded a total of eight times. Most shit weapons this early could only be upgraded twice, three times at most and were lower quality all the same.

The road there was filled with level 2 wolves though. Their health was shit, but they were fast as fuck and hit pretty decently. Might be a bit rough to go that way, one or two you could handle no problem, but if you ran into a pack you might be fucked.

You spent maybe five minutes at most before deciding, fuck it, the wolves would be way quicker for experience and the amount of Anneal Blades up for grabs was limited from what you remembered.

The quest was only available for like the first one hundred people to find it. And since it wasn't well known even amongst the Beta Testers, it was the perfect opportunity to head for it now.

So, straight away, you headed straight north, running along the open pathment, weaving between players and dashing passed all the market stalls that were open showing off the NPC's selling their beginner wares.

The town was so massive, that it took you a good twenty minutes of constant sprinting at a pace that well outpaced you in real life just to reach the northern gates and pass through onto the open plains.

Nobody was out and about you noted, the most, was one guy keeking around the corner of the gate and peering out in trepidation. 'What a weirdo.' you laughed internally.

You continued on sprinting, and to your surprise, it wasn't long before a howl split the air.

Narrowing your eyes as you ran forward, you looked to the distance in front of you, to see a blue and white blur dashing towards you from the front.

You activated your Appraisal skill., and there, you could see red aggressive text floating in the air above the blur.

'Dire Wolf - Level 2'

Sadly, since your skill was so low right now, that was all the information you could get out of it.

You grinned, picking up your pace and reaching up to grasp the hilt of your massive claymore with one hand.

You rushed towards the Dire Wolf at your full pace as fast as you could go. When you were ten feet within its space, you activated both your Sprint and Acrobatic skills. You accelerated forward suddenly at twice the speed, and then the wolf jumped, maw open wide, drool dripping from its huge fangs.

You pulled the hilt on your back up, grasped it with both hands and then with an agile ease far beyond you, you leaped above the Dire Wolf and pulled your massive claymore out with both hands.

"Cascade!" you shouted, and bright orange light flared brightly above you. You brought the massive sword down in as hard a swing as you could, and were rewarded with a howl of pain before as your blade met resistance for one instant, before the resistance faded.

The sound of glass shattering rang in your ears as you landed, stabbing your sword into the ground to halt your moment and turned around. As soon as you did, a small white screen popped up in front of you.

[40 Experience Gained!]
[40 Col Gained!]
[1 Item Gained!]

You quickly sheathed your sword and stored the Col in your inventory. Then, you tapped on the loot button to see what you got.

To your surprise, when you pressed the claim button, what appeared in your hand was a piece of meat. Not raw meat, but cooked meat. And it had a slight silver glow about it.

'No fucking way!' your eyes widened in shock. Essence Meat. Some of the rarest drops possible from monsters, and thee best drop from the Dire Wolf. It was a one in one thousand drop rate. And the rates only got higher from there on with stronger monsters.

Now, that wouldn't be a big problem in any other RPG. Since farming mobs was something any experienced player could do by the hundreds easily. The difference in SAO though, was how competitive grinding was. There was a limited amount of monsters in any one place. For instance, there were only ten Dire Wolves in the plains to the north of the Town of Beginnings, and each one took a good half hour, sometimes more if there were more players around to respawn.

So farming ten Dire Wolves in half an hour, if you could even track them all down, would give you a ten percent chance to get the essence meat drop. Not exactly worth it at all, and if you had to compete with other players, that just made it all the harder.

You shook your head at your amazing luck before lifting the beat up and taking a bite out of it. It quickly disappeared in a flash of polygons after that.

Then, you brought up your stat page, noting you add the option of adding four stat points to either strength or agility, or two to anything else.

You quickly put it into strength. As far as things went now, that was the best bet since it would let you take down monsters much easier. You only had one teleport crystal on you, you didn't fancy using that up already to run away. So once you could one hit mobs like Dire Wolves in one shot, without a critical hit, like you had with that one with catching it in the head, the better.

Your strength now raised to seven, you sheathed your sword on your back, and took off running once again.

About ten minutes later, and about halfway in your journey towards Horunka Village, where you could pick up the Little Nepent Quest for the Anneal Blade, a trio of loud howls startled you.

It wasn't the fact that there were just three of them, but more the fact that, they came from all around you. One from each side, and one from the front.

You could already see the one in front dashing down towards you, and a quick jerk of your head, let you pick up the other two pincering towards you from the sides.

"Fuck!" you cursed. This might get dicey. You'd need to be prepared to teleport away at a moments notice if they managed to drag you down, otherwise it would all be over and you'd get the experience penalty. Spending a hundred col for a new teleport crystal was a much better deal than losing most of your experience from that first wolf.

You reached up with both hands and grabbed your claymore and settled yourself into a stance, preparing yourself for the three wolves.

You'll need to aim for their vitals if hope to bring them down quickly before you can be overwhelmed.

In an instant, you decided on your target and rushed forward towards the frontal wolf. It forced the other two to change direction, even if only slightly and put them a slight pace behind than they would usually have been in reaching you.

The good thing about monsters in Sword Art Online, was that their intelligence increased the higher the level they were. so the AI's for the low levelled mobs, were pretty straight forward.

The wolves had two attacking patterns for standing foes, a lunging bite and clawing.

So with that in mind, you only had to get the timing just right!

"Cascade!" you shouted, swinging your blade overhead as you got in range of the wolf and it leaped towards you, mouth opening and fangs aimed towards your throat.

Your glowing orange claymore came down hard, just as it got within your personal space and with a yelp, its head was cleaved in twain.

You quickly jumped through the polygons of its body as it burst apart to get a little more distance and swipe through the experience and loot notification.

Forty experience and Col, and one item.

The loot was a Wolf Fang. One of the better drops from Dire Wolves, and they were useful items for upgrading edged weapons, like swords.

You quickly stashed the col and wolf fang within your inventory and turned around as another pair enraged howls rung harshly in your ears.

Your eyes widened as a speedy blur jumped right towards you. You pivoted on your feet, a snarl ripping from your lips, "Fuck off!" you bellow and swung your sword around, slashing into its side and slamming it flying through the air with the sheer weight of your blade.

It yelped loudly as it flew over ten feet, but recovered admirably and flipped as it came down to land, a large glowing red gash in its side.

The third wolf came in the shadow of the last, and you growled as it bit into your hand around the pommel on your sword.

You lashed out with a quick, but it let go and jerked to the side in a roll, moving out of the way. There was a glowing gash in your hand, but, it hardly did any damage to you.

The wolf you slashed into snarled as its buddy got out of its way and it started rushing towards you again in a rapid sprint, crimson eyes glowing ominously.

You pulled your blade up high as it sprinted forward and with a savage snarl, lunged right towards you, and like the first wolf, its teeth were aimed for your jugular.

You let the weight of your blade carry you back just enough for it to pass you by, and you let loose a snarl of your own, "Cascade!" orange light burst into existence, and you brought your blade down like a meteor and cleaved right into its neck.

Its snarl cut off, and its head separated from its body, the furry four legged corpse collapsing in two parts just as it passed you by.

And with a grin of victory, you swivelled around to face the third and final wolf.

Unlike the other two, this one didn't lunge right for you stupidly. It circled idly around you, watching you. How odd.

Its paws silently palmed the dirt beneath its feet, left, to right it walked, its glowing crimson eyes never leaving you once.

Then, to your utter surprise, it bent lower, offering the nape of its neck to you and a whine of submission left its throat.

Your eyes widened. 'No fucking way!' your luck could not be this good! You licked your lips, before opening your inventory and pulling out one of the five starter loafs of bread new players started with.

Then, you edged closer to the Dire Wolf cautiously. But, it made no move to do anything. And only moved at all beyond watching you intently when you offered the bread out to it. It opened its mouth wide, and accepted the bread, chewing on it, before quickly swallowing it.

Then, it stood up, and plodded its way over to stand by your side.

[Beast Tamer Skill - Level 1 - Gained!]
[Dire Wolf Has Joined Your Party!]
[Please Select Name for Tamed Dire Wolf Within Ten Minutes, Or Else It Will Leave!]

"..Jesus fuckin’ christ man." you shook your head.