A journey to another world starting from a sword

It's highly likely that she had never played any RPG games before, or even any video games at all.

And it was obvious that she hadn't read many novels or anything like that, and was completely unaware of what the "time travel" she had just mentioned was all about.

"Ha, let's get out of here first, it'll be dawn soon." Dante wanted to tease her a little longer, but time didn't allow it. He looked up at the night sky, which was already turning pale.

"Is there anything wrong with dawn?" Leafa asked doubtfully. She still didn't understand her situation, but she was certain that this was not the real world.

“I am a Nightborn, and I cannot move once it is light.” Dante had already turned and walked north.

"Wait." Leafa knew that the other party must know something, at least how to get to the town, so she quickly followed the man in black ahead.

Leafa ran up to the man, standing about two meters behind him, and followed closely behind. "Do you know anything about elves?"

"Yes, I have also met with the Queen of the Dark Elves."

"Queen? Is she the Elf King?" Leafa had read about the ALO lore. There are nine elven races. The race that first reaches the top of the World Tree can meet the Elf King and evolve into light elves who can fly freely in the air.

"It's the Queen."

"Have you heard the legend of the Light Spirits? Where is the World Tree?" Leafa kept asking.

“There are no light spirits here, nor is there a World Tree,” Dante said, turning around. “But if you want to meet elves, I can introduce you to my friends among the dark elves.”

"really?"

"fake."

"..." Anyway, can I give him a punch first?

Chapter 169: This is SAO

A small indicator below the field of vision shows that the current concealment rate is 30%.

It's probably because Kirito's sister is too close behind; if she were a little further away, the concealment would be better.

The black cloak she was wearing had magical properties that increased her concealment rate, and coupled with the fact that the surroundings were quite dark, the concealment effect was already maximized.

Normally, Dante would keep activating this skill unless there was a special need for it. For others, the hidden training was quite monotonous and tiring. During the day, there was no environment for training unless they were in the labyrinth area. However, for a night-traveling player like him, it should take a little more time to fully learn it.

"Hey, wait a minute." The forest path was difficult to walk, and Leafa could hardly keep up with the man in front of her by simply walking, not to mention she had the feeling that if she stopped the next second, he would disappear from her sight.

So she quickly stretched out her hand, but the next second her wrist was grabbed and she was pulled forward forcefully.

"Hurry, I don't have much time left."

"...Does this have anything to do with the 'Night People'? By the way, what does 'Night People' mean?" Leafa asked, puzzled, sensing the urging in the other person's voice.

"It means I can only move around at night; during the day, I'll be scorched by the sun."

"Isn't this... a vampire?"

"It's surprising that you even know about vampires." Dante had thought the other person was a kendo-loving girl.

"So you're a vampire... then will you drink my blood?" Leafa asked in a low voice.

"Although I do drink blood, there's no need to worry. I won't drink blood without the person's permission."

Leafa felt the other person turn their head slightly towards her and tease her in a flat tone.

"Would you be interested in trying it out?"

"No thanks." She was somewhat curious, but not really interested in experiencing it; she felt it would hurt a lot.

"Strange, it was supposed to be here."

After walking for a while, Leafa heard the other person murmur.

"What's here?"

"Horse, I'm looking for a horse."

The 22nd floor is arguably one of the floors with the fewest NPCs in Aincrad, and very few players come here. The main district is so small that it's practically just a tiny village.

At the same time, because the building is low, the area is quite spacious. Without a horse, it would take him half an hour to get here at full speed, but only half the time would be needed on horseback.

According to the weather column in the Argo Weekly, it is now 5:07 a.m., and there is less than half an hour left until sunrise.

"Could it be that you've remembered the wrong place?" Leafa thought for a moment that the other person had made a mistake and that it should be nearby.

“No.” Placing his hand on the hilt of the elegant black sword at his waist, Dante glanced around. “Get a little closer to me.”

"Why? What's wrong?" Leafa craned her neck and looked around, her feet not moving, until she saw a shadow emerge from the darkness.

At the same time, there was the crisp sound of tree branches being broken, and the smell of humus mixed with the stench of blood wafted over.

As the shadow became visible in the moonlight, she couldn't help but gasp, almost choking on it.

The newcomer was a bear, as tall as two people. Its body was covered in gray moss, and every hair on its mane stood up like steel spikes. Dark red flesh hung from the gashes on its body, as if it had just been through a fierce battle.

"Hunter Bear, a superior predator that exists only deep in the forest."

Hiding behind Dante, Leafa listened to his explanation as if he were blaming her for waking up in a place that was too far away, but now was not the time to think about that.

"What should we do? Run away?"

As she spoke, she grabbed Dante's sleeve with her left hand and pulled hard, as if trying to drag him along with her.

“No need for that.” Dante drew “Melancholy Nocturne”, crossed one hand over his chest, and still held Leafa’s wrist with his left.

At the same time, the bear sensed danger and instinctively roared at them, charging towards them like a chariot.

"..." Just as Leafa was about to say what use a sword was against a bear, her eyes were drawn to the beautiful blade. The translucent black blade had an obsidian-like sheen, but with a more profound and serene beauty.

He swung the sword vertically down, then immediately flipped his wrist and slashed horizontally, turning the sword's red-glowing strike into a cross-shaped shockwave that flew away.

"No way?" Leafa whispered, revealing her disbelief.

What did she just see?

No, before that, she seemed to see a black, prismatic object appear on the bear's head, along with a long green strip.

Of course, the next second, the green bar slid directly from right to left all the way to the bottom, and the bear's body turned into countless shards of glass.

"...So this is in a game, right?!" she asked Dante to confirm.

“That’s right,” Dante nodded.

"Huh?! So you were just lying to me?" Leafa couldn't help but shout. She instantly felt her face burning.

“No, what I just said is true.” After saying that, Dante took off his hat and then reached out and flicked Leafa’s pointed ear.

"It hurts so much." Leafa instinctively closed her eyes.

"Idiot~, there is no pain in the game."

"Ah..." Leafa subconsciously touched her ear and found that it didn't hurt. Only then did Leafa remember to look up at the other person's face. The first thing that caught her eye was the short, golden hair that was even more dazzling than her own.

But what's even more important is the other person's ears.

"Not... an elf?"

"Didn't I just say that? Besides, this is the human world, you idiot."

-----------------

The horse was never found. If it was lucky, it probably escaped; another possibility is that it was eaten by a bear.

However, Dante leans more towards the first possibility, since the horse was rented from the stable, and after the player reaches the destination, it will find its own way back. Perhaps after encountering a monster, it went straight back to the town.

Then, as expected, he couldn't return to the main street "Goral" before sunrise, so he started moving eastward.

"You can walk by yourself, right?" Dante released Leafa's wrist once he could see the path ahead.

"Ah." With the gradually increasing light, Leafa finally saw the green cursor above Dante's head. "So, where are we going next?"

“I have a house nearby.”

"Eh—" Leafa exclaimed, then suddenly became very interested. "Even buying a house in a game must be very expensive."

"It's very expensive, probably around five million Cors." Dante turned slightly to look at Leafa, sensing her current happy mood, and pity gradually appeared in his eyes.

The reason he hasn't told her that this is Aincrad is that just now he asked Leafa—Kirigaya Suguha—about how she entered SAO. After learning that she logged in using NERvGear, he guessed that she was probably disconnected from the game, and that she didn't indicate that she couldn't log out.

ALO, a game that suddenly appeared and claimed to surpass SAO, was actually developed based on SAO, including most of its data, parameters, and equipment.

Essentially, it's just a reskinned version of SAO, plus NERvGear. It's no coincidence that Kirigaya Suguha appears here.

But even Dante admired the world's corrective power, which was working little by little to bring the timeline back on track. He suspected that Diabel's death was, in some way, a masterpiece of timeline repair.

So why is Leafa, who was supposed to appear later, here?

Because the conditions for Leafa's appearance were becoming increasingly difficult to meet, and if things continued this way, there would be no main storyline for ALO. Therefore, in order to salvage the dying branch, this world chose to graft it onto a relatively sturdy branch. This approach of robbing Peter to pay Paul was entirely forced upon them by a certain outsider.

Dante was wondering what was going on with the spatial anomaly that Cardinal had suddenly detected, so he rushed here to check. Luckily it was nighttime, but what he didn't expect was that a huge-breasted elf girl had fallen from the sky.

"By the way, Cor is the currency here, right? What does five million mean?" Leafa understood quickly and asked with some curiosity.

"Well, it's about 100 million yen," Dante said casually.

"..." Leafa stopped walking. "What did you just say? One hundred million?!"

She was shocked by the number. Her family lived in Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture, a tourist city where housing prices were not low. Moreover, the house she was currently living in was the Kiritani family's ancestral home, which had undergone modern renovations.

It has a large area, includes a dojo, is well-maintained, is very close to the station, and there is a villa area under development nearby.

My mom and dad mentioned it once at the dinner table: including the land cost and the house construction cost, the total value of the house is about 100 million yen.

And now, this person in front of me is saying that he spent 100 million yen to buy the house!!!

"Is it easy to make money here?" Leafa asked quietly as she followed Dante, who was walking ahead on his own.

"An average player can probably earn between five thousand and ten thousand Cors a day at most."

This refers to mid-level players, not strategy players. Strategy players hunt monsters in a more efficient way, and the number of Kol dropped is incomparable to that of ordinary players who make up the majority of mid-level players and only know how to team up and carefully hunt monsters.

Just now, a rare monster called "Hunter Bear" spawned in a forest where almost no one ventures. After killing it, it dropped 800 Cor.

If it's a six-person team, that number needs to be divided by six. Also, the amount of Kor dropped by monsters actually has a fluctuating range; the average player might only get a little over a hundred Kor.

so......

"Are you very powerful?" Leafa asked cautiously.

"The word 'perhaps' is superfluous."

"Eh—" Leafa didn't quite grasp the reality, but she accepted the fact that she seemed to see a small cabin in the woods ahead.

Bathed in the morning light, this little wooden cabin in the woods looks like a scene from a dream.

"That must be it," Leafa thought to herself, and her steps became much lighter.

But just then, she suddenly remembered something she had been ignoring from the beginning, without having had a chance to ask about it.

"So, is this a game world?" she asked the man in front of her.

"Yes."

Leafa didn't know how she got here, but there was one thing she needed to figure out: "Which game is this?"

"Ah." Suddenly, the person in front of her stopped, almost causing her to bump into them. "What's wrong? Is there something special about it?"

"This is the floating city of Aincrad."

“Aincrad? That name sounds familiar.” Leafa laughed, unaware of the gravity of the situation.

"Yes, it's normal that you've heard of it, since Aincrad is in SAO."

"Oh, so that's how it is, hahaha... ha, ha..." The laughter gradually subsided, and the smile on her face became somewhat stiff, as if she hadn't applied any lubricant. Leafa lowered her hand that was scratching her hair with a "crunch, crunch."

"What did you just say?!"

The girl's shout startled the birds that were sleeping in the forest.

Chapter 170: Leafa's First Experience

In the five million korla cabin.

"This is S...SAO? Then...do you know my brother?!" Leafa stepped forward emotionally, raising her clenched hands to her chest.

"Your brother?"

“Yes, his name is Kirito!” Leafa nodded repeatedly. “He should be in this game too!”

"I..." Dante had just laughed easily when he felt an eye in the sky suddenly staring at him.