Roxas' POV
Later on, at 11 a.m., while my friends are setting everything up at our campsite after I had given the firewood to them, Anko and I are at a nearby spot next to some trees. There I ranted about the fate of my life here in Japan to Anko, who was sitting on a wooden bench nearby. "It happened literally 2 months after my first day in school!" I ranted while feeling and expressing how shocked I was. "I supposed to have a nice and normal high school life in this country, but that went off the flippin' rails in just hours."
"I see…" Anko replied back while listening to him attentively.
The spirit of Sachi was concerned for me.
I then sighed to calm my nerves down and sat down next to Anko and Sachi.
"I don't even know if I am qualified to do this, Anko-kun," I responded back, "I mean, I am just an ordinary foreign student from a Southeast Asian country. Also, this one might be dangerous, too, even though I would get healed by you every time."
And then, as my expression reduced to just melancholy, Anko placed his ghostly hand on my left shoulder. "It's okay, my friend. I am here for you. There's no pressure for you to complete this mission. Just tell me everything you feel and need, and I'll adjust accordingly to it, okay?"
I was stunned at his willingness to be flexible for me. "You do?"
Anko then smiled. "Yes, just tell me everything. I am here to listen to you."
I was happy and relieved that my spirit guardian would always understand me always. "Yes, thank you. Salamat."
"Yup!" Anko replied while wrapping his arm around me with enthusiasm. "Also, can you teach me about your native language? Because I feel that the last word you had said is not Japanese."
"Haha, of course," responded I, "that one means thanks or thank you in Tagalog. That one is more like a casual one. The formal one is this: Salamat po."
Anko was thrilled to hear that. "Man, that was so awesome, dude!"
"Wow, I have a friend who is both a foreigner and a caring one!" Sachi chirped.
Third-person POV
A bit later, at noon, Roxas, accompanied by Anko and Sachi, headed to the nearest village sector for lunch. They will have a camp lunch later. There in the village of traditional Japanese homes and hamlets, the village square was quite busy, even for a rural place. After picking up some pork and vegetables, Roxas spotted an NPC Armor Merchant. Among the things he sells was a brown leather scabbard for storing two swords in a crisscross configuration on his back. Remembering how Evil Kirito unsheathed his dual swords in battles, Roxas purchased it for 200 Gold Yen (cheaper than a Japanese fountain pen back in Kanagawa or a large cup of French Fries in a mall in Iloilo/Manila in the Philippines).
In a restroom nearby, he unequipped his waist scabbard and stored it in his inventory, before equipping his new scabbard. As Roxas stored his Writer's Bolo and Bicol Blade, the hovering Anko and Sachi were snickering. Only Anko evolved it into a full laughter.
"Oh, my flippin' volcanoes!" Anko wheezed so hard he flickered for a millisecond. "If the Black Swordsman himself saw that, he thinks you're copying him, only in a royal blue and grey color palette."
Rocxas then looked at them and chuckled. "Yup, kopya."
The trio left the restroom and headed back to their campsite in the east with their groceries.
Later at 12:20 p.m., in their camp site, the Kanagawa Group had their cooked lunch on the campfire, or rather, two campfires. Shuto cooked the pork as fried tonkatsu with mozzarella cheese stuffed into it while Roxas used the second one to make his Filipino cheese sticks with a mix of mozzarella and Filipino keso cheeses. Koyuki took charge of the vegetable salad. And as they had their meal after Roxas said his Christian Baptist prayer for the bounty of the food, Roxas finally gestured at his new scabbard on his back. Eiji was mesmerized while Minato, ever the resident gamer, doubled over hard, thinking how funny it would be.
"Oh, hell no!" Minato wheezed as hard as Anko. "The copycat of the famous legend of the Black Swordsman himself!"
Shuto chuckled and recited a line from Virgil's "Aeneid": ""Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves"— or, thus you sheep carry fleeces not for yourselves."
Koyuki let a slight blush on her cheeks on Roxas's new gear.
After that, Anko went into explanation mode regarding the dual swords Kirito/Evil Kirito always uses: the Elucidator and the Dark Repulser. "The original Kirito's signature setup of his," he said enthusiastically, "relies on the Elucidator—a unique drop from a boss on the 50th Floor—and the Dark Repulser, a sword crafted from crystalline ingots by the smith Lisbeth. The names were odd, but the swords themselves are unique. Plus, Roxas-kun's own swords are like Kirito-kun's but standards ones with unique names."
Koyuki raised her hand. "Um, who is Lisbeth-san?"
"Oh! That would be Kirito's blacksmith friend," replied Anko. "And she was among the Elite Players."
At this point, Minato, ever the gamer, imagined asking for a new forged sword from Lisbeth when he and the others managed to bring her soul from Akihiko's control.
They paid attention to Anko, while the resident writer-strategist Roxas took notes in his notepad.
Also, the spirit of Sachi was stunned that Kirito, ever since the day she died in the lower floors of the original game, had grown up so much and evolved a lot.