Am I the only one streaming Sword Art Online on the entire internet?

As mentioned before, the Power Belt's attributes are quite good, but its design is a bit disheartening. The other item, the [Ring of Belbas], is actually a weapon, but it's not only limited by its equipment skill, but it's also a very weak weapon type—a boomerang.

SAO does have ranged weapons, but weapons like throwing knives and darts require a hidden "Throwing" skill to function as normal weapons. Since these items are consumables, the "Throwing" skill is actually very difficult to learn and impractical.

"I won't bid. Whoever wants these two things can take them. Then let's hurry up and get into the maze area. We can explore as much as we can while we can."

------

In the end, they didn't actually explore a very large area, but they didn't need a particularly complete map; they just needed to determine the path to the boss room. After a day of exploration, Sorin led the team back to Taran, the village closest to the labyrinth area, to rest and prepare for a decisive victory on the second day.

The people following behind him now are Asuna and Nashley, but Nashley still treats Sorin with indifference, and the few times they do exchange glances, she glares angrily at Sorin before looking away.

"Alright, don't be angry~ lovely Miss Nashley~" Sorin said with a mischievous smile, "In order to prevent more people from being scammed out of their equipment, I can only ask you to make some small sacrifices~ Besides, on the bright side, Asuna likes to see you like this, right?"

“Sorin, I really believed your lies…” Nashili said through gritted teeth in a voice barely audible, “That Nezha… have you seen him?”

“Why do you all use such strange names, like Nezha and stuff…” Sorin still doesn’t understand this point. “You guys basically didn’t have a childhood.”

"By the way, I was wondering about that too. Sorin, the information you received is that [Nezuha] is a member of the guild [Legendary Hero], but the name itself doesn't refer to any legendary hero, does it?" Asuna asked belatedly after hearing Sorin's words. "Look at their other members, like Beowulf, Cú Chulainn, and Orlando, their names can indeed be found in legends, but what about Nezuha?"

"So you can't tell when your pronunciation is wrong? That's not Nezha, that's Nezha!" After saying this, Suolin noticed that Tong... I mean Nashili had an "I see" look on her face.

"That young god from Chinese legend? The little hero who rides on a fiery wheel and holds a red water chestnut?" she exclaimed in sudden realization.

"It's the Hun Tian Ling and the Wind Fire Wheels, but back then, most people knew this image because of that older animated movie, which is why I just said you guys didn't have a childhood. But thinking about it carefully, your childhood should be something like Doraemon."

At this point, Sorin pointed to a player blacksmith shop that was opening for business, then patted Nashili on the shoulder and traded his one-handed sword [Ryazan +6] to her.

"Go ahead, the task of teaching him how to be a person is entrusted to you."

29. Exposing the Scam

"You're asking Kirito... I mean Nashiri to expose that enhancement scammer... won't there be any bad consequences?" Asuna looked at Nashiri with some concern. "Several people have been scammed these days. If they get angry, it might lead to extreme behavior, or even be the trigger for the first PK."

The duel with Thorin was different from PvP. PK stands for Player Kill, meaning player-versus-player combat with the goal of killing. In older MMORPGs, PK wasn't considered a bad thing; some players even became famous for it, the most well-known being the undead mage "Three Seasons Rice" from the Azshara server when WoW was distributed by The9. However, in this death game, PK has become a terrifying thing, or rather, a metaphor for something even more terrifying. A player's death leads to their death outside the game, so PK... well, it's killing.

"To put it bluntly, he brought it on himself. If it's pitiful that he was exposed for his fraudulent behavior, leading to enraged players camping out at his door and killing him, then isn't it even more pitiful that the player who was tricked out of his only weapon, causing him to become mentally unstable and be killed by a monster?" Sorin analyzed for Asuna word by word. Although what he said was cruel, it was indeed the case. "Imagine if you were still a solo player, and he tricked you out of your [Swift Fencing +4], and Kirito and I didn't help you get it back, what would you be like now?"

“Sympathy is superfluous for people like this. And judging from the information Kirito gave me, they are very likely a gang, which means that the ‘legendary hero’ who condones or supports his fraudulent activities is no good either.”

Asuna remained silent for a while, then finally sighed and watched helplessly as the lovely Miss Nashley walked to the front of the stall.

"Please...please help me strengthen this weapon, okay?" Nashili's voice was quite soft, making one feel as if their heart was about to melt. "My brother said to strengthen the [Sharpness] attribute, and the materials are here."

"Please show me the sword's attributes... +6 level, and sharpness and speed have each been enhanced three times?" Nezha (it really feels a bit strange to call him Nezha) looked at the sword with an approving gaze, but there was still a hint of struggle in his eyes. "This is not a sword that just anyone can wield. Little girl, you really are a genius."

"Genius... I wouldn't call myself that~" Nashiri blushed and lowered her head upon hearing Nezhar's praise, her voice soft yet carrying a hint of pride, "The enhancement fee is yours, Mr. Nezhar~"

"WTF, you taught him this last night?" Solin was completely shocked. "I just said it casually, as long as he could look the part and keep a cold face and say as little as possible, the task would be completed. I didn't expect you to actually..."

"Stop talking now, let's keep watching." Asuna subtly changed the subject, pointing to the light flashing from the blacksmith's shop. "It's starting, look!"

With trembling hands, Nezha placed Nashiri's short sword, [Sharp Storm], on the anvil and activated its skill, striking it repeatedly. Nashiri, bearing the heavy responsibility, counted the number of strikes Nezha made, while also checking her inventory for any particularly private items.

This was a weapon powerful enough to ignite the greed of this enhanced fraudster. After ten strikes, a flash of light appeared on [Sharp Storm], and in the next moment, it shattered into countless points of light from the blade to the hilt.

When Nezha himself saw this scene, he looked shocked and apologetic, just like the previous times. But Miss Nashiri, who should have been shocked or saddened by the "broken weapon," had a confident expression, like Zhuge Liang.

"So, you finally managed to blow up all the weapons in our team, Mr. Nezha."

He reverted to his original pronunciation and changed his address for Nezha to the correct one. He quickly pressed the "Concrete All Items" button, watching as the items in his inventory fell to the ground one by one. Then, he changed into all the armor he was originally equipped with, picked up the [Forging Blade] and slung it on his back, and finally picked up the one-handed sword [Ryūra] that had just been broken right under everyone's noses.

Nashiri disappeared from Nezha's sight, and in her place was Kirito, the [Extreme Shadow Sword], who was Sorin's teammate.

"I should be apologizing, not you, Mr. Nezha. It was my makeup that fooled you. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have taken my job." Kirito sighed, watching Sorin and Asuna, who had been observing from a distance, walk over, and complained, "But I still mind this outfit. At least I can change it now."

"No, you don't understand, Kirito. There's no such thing as crossing over to women without trying. I bet you'll slowly come to like the feeling." Sorin joked casually, then leaned closer to Nezha and said in a sinister tone, "If Kirito, as a closed beta player, hadn't known that weapons that have run out of enhancement attempts would break if enhanced again, and if my skills didn't happen to have a quick-switch effect, you might have really fooled everyone. Too bad you met us."

"My quick switching is simply switching from one weapon to another. However, assuming others could also possess this skill, they could simply activate it once to switch from their original weapon to one that has already used up all its upgrades. As for the glow during the switch, it could just be covered by the glow of a successful upgrade, am I right?"

He watched as Nezha's body suddenly trembled. After a while, he suddenly rushed to one side, his target being the wall not far away.

"Suicide is the greatest sin. If you commit suicide outside, it's just being irresponsible with your own life. But in this death game, if you commit suicide, it's equivalent to letting down everyone who is looking forward to completing this death game."

Asuna casually stepped in front of him, stopping him, and then said this.

“I once thought that if the fraud was discovered, I would commit suicide to atone for my sins.” Nezha lowered his head, his tone full of regret and self-blame. “If only I could make up for it in some way, but those weapons have already been replaced by Cole! I… I can’t give anything back.”

"Anyway, a piece of trash like me is going to die eventually, whether it's on the front lines or somewhere else, the only difference is sooner or later..."

Kirito wanted to say something more, but Asuna stopped him.

“I think the person who should be providing psychological counseling at this time is obviously an adult, not the two of us, even though he doesn’t look like us. But don’t overlook that,” she said.

Solin, on the other hand, was well aware that if he were to be unforgiving here, it would be detrimental to both the mental and physical development of the two kids behind him and to the reputation of his livestream. Moreover, he roughly knew that this person had his own hardships and that his values ​​were sound, so perhaps he could still salvage the situation.

30. Even if it is an FNC, it can still be an FNC!

Full title of this chapter: Even Full-dive Non-Conforming Can Serve as a Front Line Set!

The following is the main text (D3-FNC is absolutely amazing)

“I don’t mean to blame you. Look up, young man.” Solin softened his voice as much as possible, limiting each word to four or five syllables—something he’d learned in his psychology elective. “You also yearn to become stronger. If you didn’t want to fight, you probably wouldn’t have chosen an ID like ‘Nezha,’ a hero from the Investiture of the Gods. Humanity’s anthem is an anthem of courage, and this place is no exception. To be honest, I don’t know how far I can go, but if I give up halfway, I’ll lose even my courage. You should also have a reason to fight and your own goals, right?”

When Nezha heard him say that, he didn't answer immediately. Instead, he lowered his head and stared intently at his combat boots. They weren't some everyday items, but rather essential armor for a player fighting outside the designated area.

“Just call me Nezha… That’s what I wanted them to call me when I chose this name. The goal I wanted to achieve… I did have one,” he said. “But… it’s gone. Before I came into this world, on the day I got the NERvGear, I was judged to be… FNC (Full-dive Non-Conforming) in my first test.”

FNC, meaning unsuitable for full stealth. Sorin had heard similar examples before, but those were in normal PC games. A friend of his suffered from motion sickness and was practically immune to all FPS and action RPGs, only able to play strategy games. But that just meant he couldn't experience the fun of the game; being an FNC in this death game wasn't so optimistic.

"My hearing, smell, taste, and touch are all working normally, but the most crucial thing is my vision. Although I am not blind, my binocular vision, that is, my sense of distance and depth, is abnormal. I cannot sense how far away my hand is from an object in front of me."

Sorin immediately understood the problem. This game doesn't have typical ranged attack methods; neither mages (Wiszards) nor archers (Archers) exist. This means that if you want to fight, you generally have to face the monsters head-on and fight them hand-to-hand.

“Before SAO officially launched, a game company released an action game played with the NERvGear. There was a team in it called ‘Legendary Heroes,’” Nezuha (let’s call it that) continued his narration. “It was a dungeon crawler where you could control different heroes and fight your way forward. You could call it a mini-SAO. But even in that kind of game, I couldn’t accurately hit the monsters in battle. In the end, they could only let me choose a ranged support hero like the Witch Doctor. Even so, we still couldn’t make it onto the leaderboard.”

Solin had also heard of this game. At that time, Valve ported a previous DOTA2 TI event, "Battle of the Broken Rivers," to the NERvGear platform, and the name was still Battle of the Broken Rivers. The reason he did not choose to stream this game was because seeing this game reminded him of when Newbee was crushed by Liquid and missed the TI championship.

"I wasn't very familiar with Orlando and the others to begin with, but they didn't ask me to leave the team, so I shamelessly stayed. They wanted to enter SAO, which would officially launch in three months, and I also wanted to experience the game. At the time, I thought that even if I was an FNC player, I could still become stronger by staying with the team, even if I couldn't fight normally."

This confession was rather heavy. At least Kirito knew that even if he had been identified as an FNC (Final Fantasy) player, he would have gritted his teeth and put on the helmet to enter the game on the official launch day. Of course, it wasn't like that for Sorin. If he had known he was an FNC player, he probably would have packed his bags, boarded a plane to Tokyo, and gone to play GP (Game for Peace).

However, Solin didn't speak at this moment. He chose to continue being a listener, at least to find the breakthrough point from his confession, untangle his knot in his heart, and then think about the remedial measures afterward.

"In the last game, I used names like Cú Chulainn and Orlando, which are practically household names. But to show my obedience to Orlando and the others... or rather, to curry favor, I changed my name to Nezha. That way, even though they don't know, I can still tell myself I'm a hero when I'm fighting..."

Sorin pieced together the information he had gathered so far: Nezha had been in the same team as the "Legendary Heroes" before; he was an FNC (Final Fantasy) player, and he lacked self-confidence...

"So, it seems that after SAO turned into a death game, you chose to support your teammates as a production-type player, right?" Sorin frowned, then pressed on, "But I couldn't find any reason for you to commit fraud. To put it another way, who came up with this idea? Orlando, or someone else in your team?"

"Neither of them. It wasn't me, nor Orlando...or anyone else on the team..."

"Actually, in the first two weeks, I still longed to fight. It was a skill called [Throwing Knife], but I bought a bunch of the cheapest throwing knives from the shop, and after using them all up, I was helpless. The stones I could find in the wild had too little damage, which caused my teammates and I, who were practicing throwing skills with me, to fall behind the front lines..."

"When they finally heard me say I was giving up my throwing knife skill to become a crafting player, the atmosphere in the team became very tense. Some even suggested abandoning me in the starting town... But just then, a guy in a black cloak, whom we thought was an NPC, came over and explained the whole process, including switching weapons and how to create this illusion. He said... In online games, if the system doesn't allow it, it won't let you do it in the first place. In other words... If you can do something, then the system allows it."

"This...this is sophistry! If that's the case, then it doesn't mean that stealing monsters outside the circle, running a train of monsters, or even PvP all count as..."

"This is an online game, you know. You know, when I first didn't know it was a death game, I was thinking of stealing Kirito's and that Klein guy's monsters, and maybe even doing some PvP. That's all perfectly normal, isn't it?" Sorin thought for a moment, then suddenly seemed to realize something, and her voice rose several octaves. "...Now I guess I won't be able to ask this cloaked man his real identity. What's your level now? How many skills have you retained?"

"I... I'm level 10 now, and I have three skills: [Forging], [Capacity Expansion], and [Throwing Knife]... What's wrong?"

He saw the way Suolin was staring at him and suddenly panicked. He hadn't been this panicked even when he was caught red-handed.

“We’ll talk about the cloaked man later.” Sorin said, taking out the [Ring of Belbas] that had dropped from Belbas the Brutal earlier, and asked seriously, “Now, the only way for you to make amends for your past actions is not by committing suicide, but by fighting on the front lines like a man again. Do you have that kind of resolve?”

“Yes. But… do I really have a way to fight?” Nezha asked expectantly, as if he had found a glimmer of hope.

"What I'm telling you is that even a Full-dive Non-Conforming player can be a Front Line Set player!"

31. The Second Floor Strategy in Progress

"Currently, besides our Edelweiss guild, the only other guilds capable of taking on the boss are Mr. Fang's [Aincrad Liberation Army] and Mr. Diabel's [Dragon Rider Regiment]. Edelweiss doesn't have enough manpower to form a 48-person raid, so each of those guilds sent a six-person team to join the second-floor boss raid. The remaining six members are from the [Legendary Hero] guild. This is our entire team for this raid."

Sorin stood at the table, pointing to a map of the second-floor boss room hanging on the wall. A meeting was underway before the second-floor boss battle. Although Argo's intelligence booklet detailed the attack patterns and precautions for this floor's boss—General Balan, the Taurus—just like with Ilfang on the first floor, no one knew whether the beta version of Nato would be the same as the closed beta. Therefore, Sorin still convened this meeting.

"Firstly, due to the diverse group of participants, the loot distribution will still follow the 'whoever finds it keeps it' model. Of course, all members of the Edelweiss guild who participated in the raid will still receive 20 DKP, and the main tank will receive an additional 10 points, consistent with the previous boss distribution model. Next, let's talk about the division of labor."

"Baran's basic attack will stun non-tank characters, and when the character is hit a second time, he will be inflicted with a paralysis buff. This is something to be aware of. So this time we need a team of six as the front line. After the first tank takes the skill, the other tanks need to immediately follow up to share the damage. The six tanks should be spread out as much as possible in a hexagonal formation, which is related to his skills. I will explain the skills below."

"The first is a charge. He will randomly select a non-primary aggro target and charge at them. If you get hit, you will be paralyzed. Once everyone sees that they have been hit by this gaze, they should move behind the nearest tank so that the tank can take the gaze. After being charged, the opposing tank should immediately use taunt to pull Nato and wait for the tank that was charged to recover from the paralysis. Then there is a stomp. This one has a long wind-up. Once you see the wind-up, everyone should retreat. That's about it. The tanks just need to pay attention to their positioning and follow my instructions."

"Colonel Nato the Taurus will be handled by the [Legendary Hero] squad. If multiple mobs spawn, start with the squads that have the later numbers, one mob per squad. Just be careful to distribute aggro and avoid over-aggroing."

There was no doubt about that. As the team leader, Sorin was quite adept at assigning tasks. So, after everyone expressed their understanding, the team that was going to take on the second boss set off.

"So, Mr. Nezuha still couldn't catch up with the boss's strategy in the end," Kirito suddenly sighed, seemingly with some regret.

"Someone with level 1 physical skills and level 1 throwing... how much DPS do you think they can deal? Even if they can, what's the use of them? To use them as invincibility cards?" Solin retorted without hesitation.

"What is 'Invincible Card'?" came Asuna's question.

"WF's Nezha Group 3 is invincible for the whole team. After activating invincibility, you can commit suicide to get permanent invincibility, which is used for farming the Temple." Solin explained simply, and then walked to the front of the team. The maze area is the most difficult part of this level. Not only are the monsters powerful, but the environment is also not very friendly to players. However, this is obviously not a problem in large-scale raid groups.

"I wonder if there will be a maze-like area on a certain floor in the future, with multiple bosses, and you have to fight from the first boss to the final boss," Solin pondered.

It took a total of twenty minutes to advance from the village to the entrance of the boss room in the maze area. Before pushing open the door to the boss room, Solin minimized his comment assistant and then turned on the screen recording system.

"Hello everyone, welcome to Sword Art Online brought to you by MagicTV and Suolin. Yesterday we just defeated the kobold boss Ilfang on the first floor, and today, after the initial preparation phase, we've arrived at the final boss of the second floor, General Balan. General Balan's skills are slightly more complex than Ilfang, who was considered a beginner boss on the previous floor. We can see that the boss's size has increased from two meters to five meters tall, making him a tree that only a storm could knock down."

No, anything except a storm can topple a large tree.

【FNNDP!】

[The first boss was defeated several days ago.]

Solin pushed open the door and quickly arranged for all members to stand in the positions they had agreed upon beforehand. He then joined the other five tank players and stood around Balan.

"I've started the countdown! After the red countdown ends, the first tank charges in, engages the mob, and then taunts. The other tanks follow up. After the blue countdown ends, all DPS should be in position and ready to attack. Heroic team, once the countdown ends, immediately pull Balan. Got it?"

He repeated the strategy, then placed a red five-second countdown marker and a blue twelve-second countdown marker above Balan's head. The five-second countdown ended quickly, and Yura, on Sorin's opposite side, also saw the signal and launched a charge attack on Nato.

"The other tanks, follow up! Number one, give them a taunt!" he shouted.

"Received! Ugh... Hmph... Aa ...

"Damn it! Can't you say it another way?" Sorin complained. "Yura, are you from Shimokitazawa?"