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

"I remember it being like this. Did the task settings change after the official launch?"

Kirito was also puzzled. During the closed beta, this place was bustling with activity, with groups of players crowding into the lord's mansion. But now, only Sorin and Yuna were known to have accepted the quest, and the remaining players, some of whom also wanted to accept the quest "The Curse of Paisagros," had all received the same reply since then: they were unable to enter.

"Maybe it's been changed to a unique quest. Perhaps the plot has been changed quite a bit compared to what you said." Asuna guessed, when suddenly she noticed a tall black monster and a sea monster that almost reached the sky appear in the lord's mansion. Then, a huge wave swept away many things in the lord's mansion, including the tall black monster.

"Watch out! Where did that wave come from?!"

"Calm down, Asuna, this is a safe zone!"

Kirito grabbed Asuna, who was trying to escape, and then the wave rushed towards them. To Asuna's surprise, the seemingly terrifying wave was just an illusion and didn't affect her at all.

"Even if it's a safe zone, this is clearly a forest area, so why are there waves like this?" Asuna questioned first, then looked at an even stranger sight in the sky: four slender firebirds flew out one after another, rushing forward after the blue sea monster. "Look! Kirito! What's that?"

"I do remember that in the final part of this mission, if you chose to expose Lord Seron, you would be forced to compete against him in an intellectual game of any kind. But back then, no one could win; everyone had to fight their way through." Kirito recalled the mission from the closed beta after a moment's thought. "But with such a huge commotion... what did Sorin choose?"

—Meanwhile, inside the city lord's mansion—

"I respond to the stubborn refusal to cast the spell, triggering the Frozen Colossus ability to remove the last marker on it, and the Frozen Colossus flips over to deflect your death shadow."

Solin looked at the enormous monster that appeared before him, casually drew a card from in front of him, and threw it out. After he finished giving these instructions, the huge block of ice that stood alone on his side suddenly shattered, and a giant sea monster emerged from it, sweeping away the monster with a huge wave.

“…Settle!” Theron clenched his fist and issued the command with difficulty.

"Then don't rush. I'll cast a 'Death's Lapse,' draw two cards, discard two Arcane Phoenixes, then cast 'Reflect Death's Lapse,' draw two cards, discard two Phoenixes, and advance to the Battle rank!"

"The arc light guides our path, and charts your retreat! All Attack!"

As Sorin gave the order, four fiery red flames flew out from the void on his left side, which represented the graveyard, and transformed into four crimson phoenixes in mid-air, circling around the sea monster.

"How...how is this possible?" Theron looked at the scene on Sorin's side in a panic, and asked incredulously, "Damn it...why did I lose? Why? I, who inherited Mr. Paisagros's skills, am invincible in intellectual games! This is impossible!"

“Nothing is impossible. After all, you killed him with your own hands. You have no right to say his name, Theon.” Thorin sneered, turning to the side and pointing his index finger straight at Theon in the empty arena. “Go! Arc Phoenix! Arc Flame Quartet!”

The four Arc Phoenixes and the sea monster charged towards Theron, crashing violently into him. Theron grunted, and then the entire barrier instantly dissipated, sending him flying backward.

"You lost."

Sorin stood in front of him, drew his katana and pointed it at Seron, while Yuna stood behind him this time, holding a rapier and guarding against the approaching guards.

"Why...?" Theron struggled to her feet, pointing at Sorin and demanding, "No one should have known... How did you find out all this?"

“Take a look at this. I went to Mr. Paisagros’s estate in the Red Zone and found this there.” Sorin tossed Paisagros’s diary to Theron from his inventory. “He was planning to make you his successor and was ready to let you take over the city, but you used such an unwise and clumsy method… Do you really deserve to call yourself Paisagros’s disciple?”

“I…I only wanted to become a true symbol of wisdom! Not some empty title like city lord!” Theron stared at the torn pages of the diary that Sorin had thrown at him, his hands trembling, his voice growing low. “Whenever people mention ‘the man who can never be stumped,’ ‘the king of wisdom,’ they always mean him! I’ve never heard my name heard from them!”

“But so what? Pasagrus once said that intellectual games and puzzles are just a way to enrich one’s wisdom, not the final result. He has already recognized you, but you have not recognized yourself, and even…” Sorin sighed. Once again, he subconsciously treated this NPC as a real person and habitually said in a lecturing tone, “even killing his own teacher for a little bit of empty fame.”

"I am just a passing adventurer and have no right to judge you, but please think carefully about what you have done."

“I…I understand.” Theron stood there dejectedly, waving away all the guards who had surrounded him. “But I don’t want my people to know about this. You can understand me, right?”

"You still can't let go of your fame, Theron... Never mind, what are you planning to offer as hush money?"

Sorin initially appeared heartbroken, but the next moment, he moved closer to Theron, rubbed his fingers together with his right hand, and said with a shrewd grin, "As the lord of a city, you must have quite a lot of stock on hand."

Chapter 106: Cherry Blossoms and Lily of the Valley (Bonus Chapter 8/75)

Sometimes, being too serious isn't a good thing. Especially arguing with NPCs in a game, that's just incredibly foolish. Someone like Thorin is more shrewd; after Lord Theron mentioned the possible quest reward, his focus immediately shifted from empty talk to how to extort money from him.

After spending more than half an hour choosing, he took out a strange weapon from Lord Seron's storage room that was more like a staff than a gun or naginata. Yuna, on the other hand, picked out a set of two new headdresses, one light pink with lily-of-the-valley decorations, and the other silver with cherry blossoms.

"Sorlin, bow your head."

Yuna suddenly said this to Sorin beside him. Sorin obediently lowered his head and watched as Yuna put the light pink ring-shaped headdress on his head, while she put on the other silver one.

"I don't really understand why the city lord's storage room would have something like this." Solin shrugged. He didn't mind wearing such a feminine-looking headdress, but he couldn't help but complain as he subconsciously started to pay attention to details.

He only now realized the true power of the [Weapon Master] skill. Because each level might contain hidden weapons and weapon mastery skills; for example, the first level has tower shield mastery, the second level has throwing and melee combat, and the tenth level he possesses has katana mastery. But Weapon Master allows him to skip the process of acquiring mastery skills and directly use these weapons that would normally require completing quests.

For example, the battle staff [Azure Lightning Soul] that he just redeemed. That's right, the official name of this strange weapon is a battle staff. Sorin took a quick look at the skill list and found that the staff's crowd control ability almost completely surpasses that of the scythe, and its movements are exceptionally agile, basically giving off a feeling of jumping around. The only problem is that its output is lower than most of Sorin's current main weapons, only higher than the one-handed sword he uses to initiate combat.

So he thought for a moment and decided to go out and sell the scythe later, then get this weapon. But before that, he had one more thing to do. He took out the ring he had exchanged on the fourth floor and knelt down in front of Yuna.

"I'd like to put this ring on your finger, is that alright?" He looked up and stared directly into Yuna's eyes. He had imagined all sorts of reactions Yuna might have in this situation, but to his utter surprise, after a moment of stunned silence, Yuna took out a similarly designed ring from her inventory.

Both are a pair of rings, both decorated with cherry blossoms and lilies of the valley. Perhaps it's a coincidence, but Suolin prefers to believe it's inevitable, a destiny.

He took Yuna's slender right hand, put the ring on the ring finger of his right hand, then lowered his head to kiss the back of her hand. After bowing slightly, he stood up, took his own ring from her hand, and put it on the ring finger of his right hand as well.

"Actually, I really wanted to use my left hand, but then I thought about it and decided to wait until we get out." Solin didn't seem to care about his speech, which sounded like an old general with flags planted all over the stage, or rather, he knew he already had enough flags planted. "After we get out, I'll wait for a meteor shower, and then propose to you under the meteor shower. What do you say?"

"You said it, promise me." Yuna gave Solin a slight smile, once again captivating a group of viewers in the live stream even through Solin's eyes.

[That sudden outburst really hurt my back.]

Has anyone counted how many flags Solin set in this game?

[Replying to the comment above, who has the time to count these things?]

Will we ever see the SAO playthrough series end...? There are so many cliffhangers!

[Like an old general standing on a stage covered with flags]

"Let me tell you, of all the flags I've set, only one has backfired. I don't want to go into the specifics of what happened, but moderators, please get back to work and ban anyone who posts anything that mentions 'upside-down masturbation'."

"Solin said this in an annoyed tone. He now had a moderator team, which consisted of the Rainbow Squad members watching the live stream. As for that ridiculous thing about being suspended upside down and masturbating... let's not talk about it."

[A genuine live stream, a genuine handstand, a genuine airplane—Teacher Mo delivers on his promises; I admire him.]

[Rabies patient has been banned from speaking for one hour.]

The brief ring exchange took place inside the storage room. Once everything was ready, Sorin led Yuna out of the storage room.

"Then goodbye, Lord Theron. I will keep this secret." Thorin left Theron with these words and departed the lord's mansion without looking back. This mission, though described as long, actually only took one day, and the rewards were quite generous. Of course, he was unaware that [The Curse of Paisagros] had become a unique mission.

And as soon as he stepped out, he ran into Kirito and Asuna, the two (frenemies).

"Wow, that was quite a commotion. I knew that if you chose the final reveal of this mission, there would be a battle. But what did you choose?" Kirito looked at Sorin and Yuna with interest, scrutinizing their now highly similar appearances. "Goodness, they started with a huge wave right from the beginning. What kind of strategy game can be this bad?"

"...Are you sure you're Kirito? You're not just some guy dressed as Kirito with Diabel in drag to mess with me, are you?" Sorin looked at Kirito with a strange expression, frowning as he asked, "Speak like a human. You know I don't understand Kansai dialect."

"...I just suddenly wanted to learn it for a bit. But what kind of puzzle game did you choose? Asuna even thought a boss was spawning in the city." Kirito composed himself and spoke in a more normal tone.

"I fused three Blue-Eyes White Dragons into an Ultimate Dragon and unleashed a devastating jet of white light on him, and then he collapsed," Thorin casually remarked. "His dark mage was strong, but still no match for me."

"Why do I feel like this relationship is completely reversed? When Kaiba and Yugi were in a love-hate relationship, did Kaiba ever win?" Kirito immediately understood what this was all about. "By the way, you shouldn't have encountered anything particularly strange, right? This mission became the only mission after you accepted it, and it seems to be going smoothly so far."

"What the hell is the only mission... I'll tell you about it later. If I were to tell this story as a storyteller, I could talk about it for days."

"Oh, so you can tell stories in addition to crosstalk? I didn't know that. Tell me a story about taking Tiger Mountain by strategy?"

Yuna and Asuna exchanged a glance, then both wore helpless expressions.

"Two idiots." *2

Chapter 107, Back on Track (Bonus Chapter 9/75)

After completing this quest, everything returned to normal. The sixth level's maze area is located in the very center, and to reach it, one needs to obtain five different colored gems from the passages in the five different areas. In other words, this level takes significantly longer to complete than the others.

As Solin had predicted, the terrain in the other areas was the same as the basic terrain of the corresponding color. In the blue area, they were forced to retrieve their Phoenix Tail Boat from the fourth floor to assist in the exploration. The white area was nothing special, while the exploration in the black area almost resulted in the team losing members due to terrain-based attacks.

"Guild Master, is this considered complete?" Lu Fei'er watched as Solin unlocked the passage from the white area to the green area and took down three white gems. He asked curiously, "Is there any special detail about the boss on this level?"

“There’s something to know about this maze area. As for the boss… there’s a rather unique mechanic. Everyone will need to be highly focused and follow instructions.” Sorin recalled the details Kirito had told him before, which were even more detailed than Argo’s walkthrough. “Now, all we need to do is insert this white gem into the door in the central area passage to unlock it.”

"By the way, Guild Master, those rumors... are we really not going to care?" Yura looked at Sorin with some concern and asked, "We can all understand you, but those ordinary players at the lower levels have started to speculate whether they should continue to believe that a murderer can help them beat this game."

"What the hell? Why bother with this idiot?" Solin said this in Chinese, and his teammates could only hear the indignation in his voice, but they didn't understand a single word. "Don't panic, let's just keep clearing the way. Let them say what they want, what can they do to me?"

However, even after he said that, many members still looked at Solin with worried eyes.

"I really admire one thing about them. Those red-named players can't touch us high-level players, so they can only target the lower-level ordinary players. But instead of being grateful for this, they started questioning my character. That's really strange." Solin said this casually, with an air of confidence. "Yura, after we finish this level's boss, you'll become the guild leader of Edelweiss. The guild will be yours from now on. Just call me if you need anything."

“This… Guild Master, this isn’t appropriate.” Yura hesitated, hearing Sorin’s tone, which sounded like he was entrusting his children to someone on his deathbed (which seemed a bit off). “After all, you are our spiritual leader who has been leading us since the first level. We probably can’t do that.”

"I'm just giving you a contingency plan. If things get out of hand, just follow this plan. Have some confidence in yourself; a tank leading a raid is pretty reliable." Solin patted Yura on the shoulder and then punched him on the shoulder. "Good buddy, good luck with the job."

"Alright, Guild Master, if you say I can do it, I'll give it a try." Yura shook her head helplessly, then raised her shield again and was the first to step into the passage from the white area to the central area. "The rest of you, follow along! Let's get ready to explore the maze area!"

------

"Hey Diabel, lately it seems like Brother Solin is leaning towards going solo and leaving our two families."

Ya Wang sat with his legs crossed in the conference room at Diabel's residence, while Diabel stood to the side, looking very serious.

“That’s true. And to be honest, all we can muster is a small squad. If they were willing to recruit more people, they wouldn’t have needed us to come along.” Diabel sighed, shrugged, and said with a hint of helplessness, “Perhaps we should change our approach and help more lower-level players gain the ability to join the front lines. That might be more suitable for us, and it would also be a contribution to the game.”

“But I’m still not entirely satisfied. Although we are convinced of President Sorin’s abilities, it sounds like we are falling behind him.” Ya Wang clicked his tongue and continued, “Hey, by the way, Brother Diabel, it seems like quite a few people down there don’t have a good impression of him lately.”

“Not just not good, I’d say they’re just messing around. It reminds me of a Chinese story called ‘The Farmer and the Snake.’” Diabel suddenly sounded indignant as he said this. “I’m worried that if Solin can’t hold on or gets too angry and quits, the progress of the strategy will be slowed down for a long time.”

"Alright then. Although I'm a little uncomfortable playing a support role, I'm happy to do it if it helps with the strategy." With that, Ya Wang got up from his seat and left the conference room.

However, neither Diabel nor Ya Wang expected that Sorin already had the idea of ​​transforming into Huang He and turning Edelweiss into a Jiangnan leather factory. Of course, he was still kind enough to leave Edelweiss a backup leader, although he had also factored in the possibility of making Yura the next president of Edelweiss.

"Don't blame me, blame yourself for revealing your weakness too early, Yura."

Suolin pondered this in his heart. In fact, no one would have paid attention to such a casual remark at that time, but Suolin noticed it and even wrote it down.

The first exploration was over by this point. The progress was incredibly slow, because this level's maze area was a true maze in every sense, filled with various puzzles and special levels. Successfully applying the puzzles would speed things up, but failing to do so meant a very laborious and tedious process.

"Sorin? What are you thinking about?" Yuna's voice suddenly called out in his ear. Sorin turned around and found that she had appeared behind him at some point, looking at him curiously.

“I was wondering if there was an easier way to beat this game. Like an elevator that could take us straight to the 100th floor,” Sorin shrugged, half-jokingly. “That way we could just go to the Ruby Palace, kill the boss, and go home.”

"But without the prior preparation, do you really think you can defeat the boss in the Crimson Jade Palace?" Yuna tilted her head in confusion. "It's like trying to fight a monster on the sixth floor with equipment from the first floor; you'd find it very difficult, wouldn't you?"

“That makes sense. I was just thinking about it casually.” Solin stretched and leaned against the balcony railing. “I’ll go back and think of a better strategy and try to come up with a better way to proceed tomorrow.”

Chapter 108: The Wounded Ilfang (Bonus Chapter 10/75)

"It seems I underestimated this maze area yesterday. I didn't tell you beforehand, so before we start exploring the maze area today, I'll go over some key points."

Sorin stood in a conference room on the sixth floor, a room he had spent an hour unlocking beforehand. He held the newly acquired battle staff, [Azure Lightning Soul], and tapped a panel beside him. The panel displayed separate maps of the sixth floor, and judging from their thickness, the sixth floor could be considered a watershed moment in terms of difficulty.

“Unlike the previous maze areas and boss rooms which were relatively independent, this sixth-floor maze area is more like a RAID instance, with a prerequisite boss along the way.” Solin coughed twice to attract the attention of his members.