It was a new day, and Asuna woke up in a house in the Town of Beginnings.
Her living conditions here could be said to surpass 99% of players.
The reason was simple: every morning when she woke up, she could enjoy breakfast prepared for her, and most importantly, where she lived had a bathroom—even one with a bathtub.
Even though this was a virtual world, there were still settings for dust and grime. Through some unknown technology, people could even smell the unpleasant odors from being dirty.
Especially when mining outdoors or collecting plants, it would be like this.
This was probably to make this world closer to reality.
Returning to the issue at hand, where she lived was actually the home of a female NPC.
She had received a quest from this NPC, and after completing it, she got this reward—the ability to live here.
Although she still had to pay money, it was cheaper than an inn and the environment was much better.
You had to know that most players now had difficulty even staying in inns, with many people having to squeeze into one room or sleep on the streets.
"Has it already been a month?"
Opening the window and looking at the scenery outside, Asuna couldn't help but murmur this.
It had been this long since being trapped—no one would still doubt this was the developers playing a prank.
In this month, according to statistics, over two thousand players had died—that is, one-fifth of the ten thousand players had perished.
In the peaceful era she lived in, this was simply a horrifying terrorist incident.
With so many people dead, yet so far, not even the first floor of this hundred-floor Aincrad floating castle had been cleared.
However, these past few days, people had finally started organizing, preparing to begin the raid on the first floor boss.
Should she participate too?
Participate!!!
If she kept running away like this, once she started avoiding it, she would begin to be eroded by cowardice.
At worst, she'd really die in battle.
Tomorrow would convene the strategy meeting, where they would reportedly distribute strategy manuals with relevant boss information.
These were written by players who had experienced the beta test phase, though which specific player remained unknown. Currently, beta test veterans were hiding even deeper.
Because if their identities were exposed, they would be targeted.
Some people believed beta testers should be held responsible for the two thousand deaths. If they had all stepped forward and shared all the information they knew, there wouldn't have been such great sacrifice.
As a result, few people stepped forward—everyone selfishly hid themselves.
Asuna could somewhat understand this.
On one hand, as beta testers with more information, they could use this to survive in this dangerous world. If they publicized information that helped them survive well, the resources they could obtain would be divided, meaning their own life security would decrease.
Some of it was purely selfishness.
Others worried that the information they provided might be problematic—the beta test content might differ from the official release.
For example, some monsters that had certain characteristics and attack patterns during beta testing might have changed in the official release.
If they tried to deal with them using beta methods and something went wrong, resulting in deaths, how would they take responsibility?
In any case, over this month, a serious rift had appeared between new players and beta testers.
As for the first floor boss data, Asuna actually had it—information given to her by Black Cat.
According to Black Cat, the first floor boss was indeed somewhat different from the beta period, more dangerous, wielding weapons that only elite monsters from the tenth floor would use during beta, capable of releasing special wide-range slashing attacks.
This meant even beta testers didn't know about this, and if they attempted the raid without knowing, casualties would occur.
So Asuna was very troubled about how to share this information.
Since this was a virtual world, she couldn't directly download data from Black Cat's livestream to store on a computer.
So now she could only memorize it through rote learning.
Although she could find paper in the virtual world to write on, Black Cat advised against this.
Because content written on paper would be equivalent to being recorded by the virtual world, and Kayaba Akihiko as the GM might discover it and realize she was problematic.
Going online to the "Interdimensional Channel" and checking the situation, Asuna's expression was still somewhat dejected.
Why had she been so restless, making her want to go back to that day and slap herself hard?
It was because of her restlessness that the "Interdimensional Channel" now seemed to have problems.
For example, she now clicked on Golden Toilet's livestream—it was broadcasting, but the image seemed frozen. However, if you kept staring, you'd discover the image was still moving, just slowed down N times.
The cause of this was that when Black Cat had organized the data and sent it to her, she had looked at the "Cross-World Invitation" button again and discovered a strange adjustment dial beside it with numerical markings.
Curious about what this was, she had turned the dial to 1, and this was the result.
The entire "Interdimensional Channel" seemed stuck. At the time, she thought the system had crashed, but later discovered that the "Interdimensional Channel's" time had become sluggish.
Finally, she calculated what the effect of setting 1 might be: one day in the "Interdimensional Channel" would probably equal one year on her side.
That is, from the day she adjusted it, she would have to wait a year before she could synchronize with everyone's normal time again.
So, realizing the problem with this dial, Asuna immediately warned everyone in the channel not to mess with this dial.
"Mm, okay, this should be about right."
Asuna adjusted the playback speed of Golden Toilet's livestream and began watching content that, for her, she hadn't seen for about half a month.
After adjusting the speed, continuing from where the previously slowed plot left off to the latest episode, for Golden Toilet's side, about two hours had passed.
One hour was content she'd already seen—just replaying it.
Starting playback, the combat scenes made Asuna's heart rise and fall dramatically.
He was fighting so hard to stay alive, so she had to fight hard to stay alive too.
Asuna felt a kind of shared suffering with him—watching him fight so desperately infected her as well.
Every day when she logged on, she would check that his livestream was still active, meaning he was still alive and still surviving.
This also indirectly encouraged and motivated her.
"Whew, that was close."
Another extremely dangerous situation almost made Asuna's heart jump out.
Asuna hadn't noticed that her level of concern for this person had changed much more compared to half a month ago.
Her concern seemed to gradually shift from purely kind-hearted worry for another person, to the concern of a good friend, and finally began to change in nature.
It felt like if he were seriously injured, she would feel heartache.
"Exterminatus?"
What was that? The playback was nearly at the end.
Here, those Astartes' conversation mentioned Exterminatus, instantly making everyone's faces become grave.
Golden Toilet's face also became extremely grave.
Although she heard such words about the Imperium abandoning this planet, Exterminatus was definitely not simply abandoning the planet.
So if she just waited one day's time to play back, she should be able to hear the subsequent conversation content.
Now it was like using a computer to watch a movie when the internet speed was really infuriating—the video loaded slowly and played choppily, slowed down many times.
So she'd let it buffer for a while before watching again.
Then she'd know what Exterminatus was.
Closing it, she should also do what she'd planned for herself today.
So, Golden Toilet, please definitely stay alive!
She would also fight desperately to stay alive.
Keep fighting—
...
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