Hold over Myriad of Worlds

~"Everyone ready?"~I asked after arriving in the Third Town plaza.

-"Yup, you are the last one."-Elysia Smiled at me teasingly.

~"I wouldn't be if you didn't give me the wrong hour."~I rolled my eyes at her.

She stuck her tongue out at me.

-"OK, we can get started."-Mei shook her head at our antics.-"We already accepted the quest, and to be honest, it's not that hard."

~"What do we have to achieve?"

-"There are five factions on this floor, and we have to gain recognition of at least one of them. Depending on the number of forces that recognize us, our guild will be treated differently by the NPCs. The fewer the factions, the lesser the importance the guild will receive in future quests."-Sofia explained the workings of this quest.

-"We investigated those groups yesterday."-Eden gave me notes they composed before my arrival.

Long story short, five noble houses, each specializing in combat, craftsmanship, commerce, alchemy, and art, respectively. Relations between them are neutral at best, but there is no conflict on the surface.

~"System to show what your guild is best at?"~I looked at Sofia after reading through the notes.

-"Yes."-She nodded.

~"Better than telling you to describe yourself or to check some box. Leaving aside the whole dying thing, SAO is quite a well-made game."

-"I believe anything that needs to 'put aside' dying to be appreciated is..."-Mito smiled stiffly at my strange compliment for SAO.

~"Just imagine if SAO was full of microtransactions, or wait times in days or weeks, or loot boxes, or it was a buggy early release, or..."

-"I get this!"-Mito covered my mouth with her hands.-"Please, don't make me respect this game."

I shrugged my shoulders while blowing some air into the hands covering my mouth, earning me a shy gaze from Mito.

-"So how do we plan to do this?"-Mobius asked, wanting to finish as soon as possible, being exhausted by potion making.

-"No splitting this time!"-Elysia quickly set the core rule for our quest.

-"We already have teleports to every location, so let's just tackle them all one by one."-Eden smiled, agreeing with Elysia's idea.

-"Then there is nothing else to add."-Mei was also on board, so without wasting more time here, we left for the first noble house, one in charge of combat.

After arriving there, we entered a colosseum where the NPC responsible for the quest was. A quick dialogue later, we received our task: gain the champion title by defeating five opponents in the arena. While it was enough for one person to achieve this, we decided that all of us would apply for fights, and we would stop only when we either were defeated in combat or achieved a fifth victory.

In addition to us, many other players also applied for the arena, as while we didn't advertise our guild establishment, due to our popularity, many people watch our every action, so seeing us start the guild founding quest, they also decided to join the fun.

-"It's good to see people smiling."-Elysia spoke as she sat next to me in the stands, leaning her head on my shoulder.

~"We brought them 'Hope'."

-"Yes."-She smiled hearing my words.-"Thank you."

~"Why are you thanking me?"

-"I just wanted to say that to you."

~"Is that so?"

-"Yup!"

We continued to sit in silence, enjoying our company until our turn in the arena arrived.

Our first fights were rather uneventful, with only Su getting unlucky, drawing one of the top players, Heathcliff, as his opponent, and despite trying his best, he was defeated.

During our second fights, Sakura and Mobius encountered each other, so to Elysia's enjoyment, we could see that while Foxes are not specialized in hunting snakes, they definitely can vent some accumulated resentments on them. The rest was again not worth mentioning.

The third turn proved to be the biggest roadblock, as after three-fourths of the contestants were eliminated, aside from a few lucky ones, only elites remained. This time, not only Eden, Asuna, and Dystopia were eliminated by other players, but Kevin met and eliminated Vill-V while I encountered Kosma, defeating him after a few clashes.

With our numbers reduced to almost half, we entered the fourth round only to again prove that aside from Felis, all of us weren't lucky. To his utter sadness, Kevin encountered Mei and had to eliminate her, as if he were to surrender, Mei would be displeased even more. Elysia was almost rolling on the ground laughing while watching that fight, but as if Karma had caught up with her, the next fight was between us.

Neither of us surrendered, so we fought with each other, and while Elysia knew my style well, I emerged victorious after more than ten minutes of chasing her. The next fight was also between two of Flame Chasers, Sakura and Fu Hua. What made this fight even more intense was Elysia's revenge for me 'not showing gentleness to a beautiful girl' during our fight by proposing a bet to the girls: the winner gets me for a whole day.

While I'm a person who definitely enjoys seeing girls fight, the intensity of their confrontation made other players doubt their abilities. In the end, It was Fu Hua who emerged victorious, as the limitation of game mechanics made Sakura unable to use her battou.

After those three fights, no other fights between the two Flame Chasers happened in the fourth turn, though Griseo and Aponia were eliminated by other players. In the last round, only Kevin, Felis, Kalpas, Fu Hua, Mito, Sofia, and I remained in our group. After drawing our opponents, we began the last duels.

First was a fight between Kirito and Felis. While Felis was the weakest of the combat-oriented Flame Chasers, she was still an experienced warrior, so even an experienced player like Kiroto had a hard time against her. When their fight was in a stalemate, Felis' biggest advantage showed up to make her first champion: her luck.

After that fight, Sofia, who, despite not receiving the title of Flame Chaser due to her still looking for her 'self' and thus being unable to receive a title from Elysia, was already a member of our group, was stumped by how someone could trip during the fight on the flat terrain, as it was impossible due to nonexistence of any tripping mechanic in the program.

The second fight was between Kevin and Kalpas. As neither of them liked to speak, they directly started fighting, ignoring all those fancy moves and defense, purely beating each other in head-on clashes. This resulted in a quick but intense fight that ended in Kevin's victory.

Next, it was a fight between Sofia and Fu Hua. This was an interesting comparison between perfect knowledge of game mechanics and the experience of a real warrior. Here, experience probed the king, allowing Fu Hua to defeat Sofia with a well-placed faint.

After that, there was a fight between two players that was worth mentioning, a duel between Kirito and Heathcliff. It was a great fight, proving that their names of the top players were well-earned.

And finally, it was time for the last duel, Mito vs I. It was a nice surprise to draw her as my opponent, as it wouldn't be wrong to call her my pupil by now.

While Asuna split her focus in the game between fighting and helping me manage some businesses, Mito used all her time on either leveling or learning combat from me. She was still far off compared to even an average Hold's Solider, after all, she was a teenager from a peaceful world, not a trained warrior, but here, under the restriction of game mechanics, she could keep up with me somewhat.

Treating this fight like an exam, I spend some time allowing her to show her abilities before pointing out her errors and things to improve by exploiting those and defeating her. She was a little annoyed by her defeat, asking me not to treat her as a child who should receive lessons on every occasion.

I promised her not to do so in the future, and as we had nothing to do here anymore, we turned in the first quest before leaving for the next noble house.

After quite an interesting first quest, we were expecting that the remaining quests would be as interesting, but sadly, the trio of craftsmanship, commerce, and alchemy proved underwhelming.

Craftsmanship quest not only had a level requirement in at least one matching profession but also only required forging one item of 'satisfactory' quality, which Vill-V thought as insulting, having never forged anything beneath exceptional.

Alchemy quest was almost the same, with a different profession required. The only slight difference was the requirement to mix the potion from a unique recipe given by the NPC, meaning that you at least received some reward for all of this.

Commerce quest was the worst. It consisted of two parts, one requiring you to pay a fixed sum while the other was to provide a rare material, no matter how you earned it. If the previous two quests were boring, if not insulting, this one was a straight fusion of pay-to-win and a fetch quest.

Luckily, the last quest was able to save this questline somewhat. Being about the art, it required making a performance that would be liked by at least ten other players. After hearing this task, Elysia instantly perked up, asking Eden and me to do a concert here.

Eden asked me before to find some time for a joint performance, but I haven't done so yet, so this would be killing two birds with one stone, and as she also agreed, it was decided. While the two of us made some preparations, not needing to rehearse due to our regular 'tea drinking' sessions back in Hold, Elysia and the rest advertised our concert, gathering quite a sizable audience in the two hours we needed to begin.

We needed this long as Eden composed a song she wanted me to play accompaniment to, so with Sofia's help, I recorded all instrumental parts aside from the piano that I would play live.

Despite being in a fantasy setting, SAO had many useful functions available to players, and recording was one of them. Those recordings normally could only be used by sharing them between players, but there was a programmed function to play them out in the in-game world, not only on players' screens, which was made to facilitate any events planned for the future if the whole death game didn't happen. Sofia manipulated the Cardinal System to give access to this function to the NPCs responsible for the art stages in the cities, thus allowing us to use them as well.

So, after an hour of me playing as the whole orchestra, Sofia was able to compile those recordings into one and then prepare a 3D rendition of it to be shown on stage. With this done, I tuned the piano that I would be playing, after which I was ready to start.

-"I'm glad that we can play together on the stage."-Eden approached me after changing into a beautiful evening dress.

~"While it might be unbecoming of an emperor, I still planned to play with you during the Festival of Hope in Hold. For what would I have all this power if I can't do what I wish?"

-"Don't make trouble for others. For me, it's enough that we can spend time drinking tea and listening to music."-Eden smiled and passed me clothes for our performance.

I only smiled at that and walked to the changing room, but before I could close the door, Eden also walked in.

-"Your Majesty, please allow this poor girl to help you change."-She bowed to me, acting like a humble maid.

I nodded and returned the clothes to her. She quickly helped me change, and after helping me with a Shendai belt that was the last piece of the Hanfu, she hugged me from behind, resting her forehead on my neck.

~"Stage fright?"

-"Don't ruin the atmosphere."-She tightened her hug.

Without speaking, I covered her hand with mine, squeezing it slightly.

-"Please, give me the response to that song later."-She spoke, referring to one of her new songs.

~"That's why you not only hid the lyrics from me but even didn't disclose the name."

-"Yes."-She let go of me and took out a hairpin decorated with madder flowers.-"Stand still."

After binding part of my hair into a bun, she walked in front of me. She took out a veil from her inventory and put it on my face. Taking a step back to take a better look, she nodded and spoke with a smile.

-"While I must admit that I like to see your face, without the veil, something always felt out of place."

~"I must agree on that."~I smiled and touched the thin cloth covering my face.

Eden quickly stepped forward and pecked me on my veiled cheek before turning away and walking toward the stage. After shaking my head, I followed her a step behind.

On the stage, I took a quick look at the more than a thousand players sitting and standing, waiting for us to start, before ignoring them and sitting in front of the piano. I looked at Eden, who was also looking at me, and after seeing her nod slightly, I started playing the first note.

At first, she sang a few popular songs she released before SAO that I knew from even earlier, as those were her songs from times in Fire Moth. Next came songs that she created in this world, each of them being in the top ten of listened songs of their release year. And finally, a little over an hour in, it was time for her new song.

Accompanied by my slow piano, Eden's soft voice started to echo around. Starting with a chorus, she expressed how minuscule she felt, a life short like a blooming flower, yet she still wishes to wait for 'one' at home. Quickly dispelling any doubt about who the 'one' was, she sat next to me, singing the first verse while looking at me, asking where I belonged after years spent alone, so long that even traces of my companions were lost.

As the song was getting sadder and sadder, she reversed that feeling with pre-chorus, pointing out that despite exhaustion, it was far from the end. Along with her voice getting more lively, more instruments were added to the composition, entering into the next chorus. To cement the change in the atmosphere, she added her promise to me at the end: 'Till I reach your arms; A madder there for you.'.

Standing up, she continued to express her conviction that despite the past, the future holds what we are looking for. Turing her back to the audience, she looked at me playing the piano and sang with a smile on her face: 'Could you please hear my voice; That hungers for a duo?'.

As if finally liberated, the song reaches its climax, all instruments coming together for a chorus, repeating it after a short pause.

With a last word, as the final note sounded, she smiled at me before returning her attention to the breathless audience.