I closed the window as if to get rid of any regrets, and scanned the area with my skill. There wasn't a very high chance of a bandit appearing on the front lines, but you couldn't be too careful when you had an S-cla.s.s item in your hands.

I'd be able to buy all the teleport items I wanted once I sold this, so I decided to minimize the risk involved and started rummaging through my pouch.

The thing that I'd taken out was a crystal shaped like an eight sided pillar that shone a rich blue. The few magic items in this world where "Magic" had been excluded were all shaped like gems. Blue was for instant teleportation, pink for recovering HP, green for antidotes, and so on. They were all convenient items that produced instant effects, but they were also expensive. So in most cases, people used cheaper items such as slow-acting potions after running away from a fight.

Telling myself that this was, without a doubt, an emergency situation, I grasped the blue crystal and shouted.

"Teleport! Algade!"

There was the refreshing sound of many bells ringing and the crystal in my hand shattered into pieces. At the same time, my body was engulfed in blue light and the forest disappeared from my vision as if it was melting. A brighter light then flashed, and when it disappeared, the teleportation was over. In place of the sound of the rustling leaves, the sound of a smith hammering and the loud sounds of the city invaded my ears.

The place I appeared at was the "Teleport Gate" that was situated in the middle of Algade.

In the middle of the circular plaza, a gate made out of metal stood over five meters high. Inside, the air swirled as if a mirage, and people who were teleporting, or who had just teleported, came and went.

Four large roads stretched in all four directions out of the plaza, and on the sides of all these roads, countless small shops were gathered. The players who sought a short refuge after a day of exploring shared conversations in front of the food menus or pubs.

If someone tried to describe Algade in one word, it would be "messy".

There were no big streets like the ones you could see in the Starting City and crisscrossing alleyways covered the whole city. There were shops that you couldn't even tell what they were selling, and inns that looked like you could never get back out once you went in.

Actually, there were a lot of players who'd accidentally gone into one of the alleyways of Algade and wandered for days before getting back out. I've been living here for almost a year now, but I still can't remember half of them. Even the NPCs here were strange people whose cla.s.s was hard to guess, and it makes you think that people who use this as a hometown these days are all sort of strange.

But I liked the feel of these streets. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that the only time I felt at peace was when I was sipping some strange smelling tea at a corner shop I frequented. The reason behind this was that I felt a little sentimental because it reminded me of an electronics store I used to frequent-well not really, or I hoped not.

Thinking that I'd deal with the item before going back to my house, I started walking towards a shop.

If I followed the road that led west out of the central plaza, I would arrive at the shop after working my way through the crowds for a little bit. Inside, it was so small that five players would feel cramped in there, and it had the trademark dizziness of a player shop: the tools, weapons, and even food ingredients were mixed up.

The shop owner was busily getting worked up bargaining.

There are two ways of selling items. One was selling to an NPC, a character controlled by the system. There was no danger of being tricked but the price was always the same. To stop inflation, the price was set lower than the actual market price.

The other was trading with another player. In this case, you could sell the item for a high price if you bargained well, but you had to find someone to buy it, and arguments between the players after completing the trade weren't uncommon.

Therefore, merchant players who specialized in trading items appeared.

Merchant players couldn't live on trading itself. Like the technician cla.s.ses, they had to fill half of their skill slots with battle unrelated skills. But that didn't mean that they could stay off the fields. Merchants had to fight for goods and technicians for ingredients, and, of course, they had a harder time than warriors. It was hard for them to feel the exhilarating feeling of beating an enemy.

Therefore, the reason that they chose these cla.s.ses would be the n.o.ble one of helping the players who fought on the front lines every day. So I respected them deeply, if secretly.

...well, I respected them, but it was also true that the character in front of me was someone who was very far from self-sacrificing.

"Okay, it's settled! Twenty-five "Dust Lizard's hides" for five hundred Col!"

The owner of this shop I often came to, Agil, thumped his bargaining opponent, a weak looking spearman, on the back with his thick arm. Then he quickly opened the trade window and entered the amount in his trade list.

The opponent seemed to be thinking, but as soon as he viewed Agil's face, which looked frightening enough to resemble one of a seasoned warrior-in fact, Agil was a top cla.s.s axe warrior as well as a merchant-he hurried to put the items in his trade list and pressed OK.

"Thank you every time! Please visit again!"

Agil thumped the spearman's back one last time and smiled brightly. The hide of the Dusk Lizard could be used to create high standard armor. I thought that five hundred was too cheap however you looked at it. But I stayed silent and watched the spearman leave. Take this as a lesson to never give any ground when bargaining, I muttered in my mind.

"Hey, you're going about your business shamelessly as usual."

The bald giant looked my way and smiled when I said this behind him.

"Hey, Kirito. Our shop's motto is to buy cheap and sell cheap," he said without any sign of remorse.

"Well, I'm a little suspicious about the 'sell cheap' bit but that doesn't matter. I want to sell you something too."

"You're a regular, so I can't trick you. Well, let's see..."

As he said this, Agil stretched his thick, short neck and looked in the trade window that I'd offered.

The avatars in SAO were all replicas of the player's real body which had been created through scans and calibrations. But every time I looked at Agil, I always asked myself how someone could have a body that fit him so well.

All 180 centimeters of his body were packed with muscle and fat, and the head that rested on top of it looked as if it'd fit a pro-wrestler villain. On top of that, he had set his hairstyle, one of the few things that could be customized, to be bald. The effect was at least as scary as the barbarian monsters.

Despite that, he had a charming face that looked childlike when he smiled. He looked in his late twenties but I couldn't even guess what he did in the real world. Not asking others about "The other side" was an unspoken rule in this world.

The two eyes that were below his thick eyebrows widened as soon as he saw the trade window.

"Wow, it's an S-rank rare item. "Ragout Rabbit's meat", it's the first time I've actually seen one... Kirito you're not that poor are you? Don't you have any thoughts of eating this?"

"Of course I have. It'll be hard to come across something like this a second time... But it's sort of hard to find someone who can cook something like this..."

Then someone behind me tapped my shoulder.

"Kirito-kun."

It was a feminine voice. There weren't many female players who knew my name. Well actually, in this situation there was only one. I grabbed the hand on my left shoulder and said.

"Cook acquired."

"Wh-What?"

With her hand in mine, the person stammered with a suspicious expression on her face.

The small face, which was surrounded by long straight chestnut hair that was split neatly in two, was egg-shaped, and her two sparkling hazelnut eyes were almost blinding. Her thin body was covered by a red and white knight-like combat uniform, and there was an elegant silver-white rapier sheathed in her white leather scabbard.

Her name was Asuna. She was so famous that almost everybody in SAO knew her.

There were a lot of reasons, but the first was that she was one of the very few female players, and that she was the owner of a face that lacked nothing.

It's hard to say this in this world, where everyone had their real bodies, but beautiful women were a super rare presence within it. You could most probably count the number of players that were as pretty as Asuna with your fingers.

Another reason that she's famous was because of her red and white uniform which belonged to the guild "Knights of the Blood". The members are called KoB by taking the initials from "Knights of the Blood", and, out of the many guilds, everyone acknowledged them as the best.

It's only a medium-sized guild of about thirty players, but they were all high leveled and seasoned warriors, with the leader of the guild being its strongest player and almost a legend within SAO. Also, contrary to her delicate frame, Asuna was the sub-leader. Her sword skill was so exceptional that it had earned her the t.i.tle "Flash".

So her appearance and sword skill were at the zenith of six thousand players. It would have been strange for her not to have become famous. She had numerous fans, but among them there were some stalkers who virtually worship her, and there were also those who hate her, so it seems like she's having a hard time.

Well, since she is a top cla.s.s warrior, there shouldn't be that many that would challenge her directly. But as if the guild wanted to show that they would protect her, she's often trailed by two or more bodyguards. Even now, there were two men a few steps behind her fully equipped in metal armor and KoB uniforms. One of them, with his hair in a pony tail, was glaring at me, who had grabbed Asuna's hand.

I let go of her hand, shook mine in his direction, and replied.

"What's up, Asuna? For you to be coming to such a rubbish heap like this."

The face of the man with the pony tail and the shop owner's faces convulsed; one because I didn't call Asuna with her t.i.tle and the other because I called his shop a rubbish heap. But the shop owner...

"It's been a while, Agil-san."

...gave a sunny smile after hearing Asuna's greeting.

Asuna looked back at me and pouted her lips in discontent.

"Hey, what's this? After all the trouble I went through to see if you were alive for the boss fight that's going to take place soon."

"You've already listed me as a friend so you'd be able to tell if you just looked at that. Anyway the only reason you could find me was because you used a friend trace on your map."

Asuna turned her head to the side as soon as I answered.

She was also responsible for progressing through the game in the guild as well as being a sub-leader. That job included searching out selfish solo players like me and forming a party to fight bosses. But even then, to actually come to see me, there should be a limit to how devoted a person could be.

Looking at my half-tired, half-amazed expression, Asuna put her hands on her hips before saying with a motion that was akin to raising her chin.

"Well, you're alive and that's all that matters. M-More than that, what do you mean? You were saying something about a chef or something."

"Oh, right right. How high is your cooking skill right now?"

By what I knew, Asuna was particularly focused on raising her cooking skill whenever she found time in between training her sword skills. She answered my question with a proud smile.

"Listen and be surprised! I "Mastered" it last week."

"What!?"

She's...an idiot.

I thought that for a second. I didn't say it out loud, of course.

Training skills was mind-numbingly boring and extremely time-consuming, and could only be "Mastered" after leveling them up 1000 times. On that note, levels didn't have anything to do with skills and went up by gaining experience points. The things that went up with the levels were HP, strength, stats like dexterity, and the number of "Skill Slots" which decided how many skills you could learn.

Right now I have twelve slots, but the only ones that had been completed were my one-handed straight sword skill, Scan for Enemy skill, and my Weapon Guard skill. It meant that this girl had spent a lot of time and effort on a skill that wasn't even of any help in battle.

"...well, I've got something to ask you to do, trusting that skill."

I waved her over and put my window on show mode so that she could see it. Asuna looked at it suspiciously, and then her eyes widened at the name of the item.

"Uwa!! That...that's an S-rank food ingredient!?"

"Let's trade. If you cook this, I'll let you have a bite."

Even before I stopped talking, that right hand of "Flash" Asuna grabbed me by the collar. Then she pushed her face to a few centimeters before mine.

"Give. Me. Half!!"

My chest stopped at this sudden ambush and I nodded without thinking. When I got back to my senses it was too late, and she was waving her arm with excitement. Well, let's consider it a good thing that I can watch that delicate face from so close. I convinced myself.

I closed the window and spoke while looking at Agil's face.

"Sorry. I'll stop the trade."

"No. It's fine but...hey, we're friends right? Eh? Can't you give me a taste...?"

"I'll give you an eight hundred word essay on it."

"D-Don't be like that!"

As I cold-heartedly turned my back on Agil, he called out in a voice that seemed as if it was the end of the world. As I made to walk away, Asuna grabbed the sleeve of my coat.

"Cooking's good, but where are we going to do it?"

"Ah..."

If you're going to cook, then you needed some cooking appliances, such as a stove or an oven, as well as the ingredients. It wasn't as if my house didn't have them, but I couldn't invite the sub-leader of the KoB into a messy place like that.

Asuna looked at me with an unbelieving expression on her face.

"Well, your house wouldn't have the proper appliances anyway. But I could serve it to you in my house just this once."

She said something shocking in a calm voice.

Asuna ignored me, who was standing there frozen as if I was lagging while my brain processed this, and turned to her guards and spoke.

"I'm going to teleport to "Salemburg" soon, so its fine if you go. Thank you for your hard work."

"A-Asuna-sama! Coming into the slums was bad enough, but to invite someone as suspicious as him to your house. Wh-What are you thinking!?"

I couldn't believe what I just heard. "Sama" he said. He must be one of the worshipers. As I looked at Asuna with these thoughts, the person in question had an annoyed expression on her face.

"OK, maybe you could call him suspicious, but his skill is unquestionable. He's most probably ten levels above you Kuradeel."

"Wh-What are you saying? To say that I'm not even equal to someone like that...!"

The man's voice sounded all the way out to the alley. He glared at me with his heavily lidded eyes. Then his face scrunched up as if he suddenly recognized something.

"That's right...you, you were definitely a "Beater"!"