Third person POV
Meanwhile, in the dark Void, the real Kirito and his friends, still chained up, were still reeling from Akihiko's control over their avatars. "Damn that Akihiko-san!" Sinon moaned. "He's a lunatic who shouldn't be allowed to develop a game like this!"
"Yeah…" Klein wheezed, "…he is super nuts."
But then, an HUD popped up with the tab for Roxas's Beginning from Darkness story on Jewel Books. It also offered being commanded verbally to flip through the pages and adjust the size and font of the text. So, bored from being locked up, Kirito and his friends read the fusion stories of Roxas's version of the Echoes from "Bird Box" and dystopian tropes that formed from the death creatures.
"Page 2, adjust the text size to 14," Kirito muttered, "make the font type New Times Roman."
The HUD adjusted accordingly.
"Wait, death creatures?" Klein became pale. "Inspired by the Echoes of "Bird Box "?"
"Know that film from 2018?" Agil asked.
"Yeah, I watched it in 2019 and had nightmares for a month." Klein nodded.
"Sounds like something I would never ever watch…" Asuna remarked.
As they continued with the prologue, they saw the remorsefulness of the death creatures to humanity after the death creature as a Fahrenheit 451 fireman named Ceo wept at the death of Italian jurist Lorenzo Gucci in his hands in the jurist's home in Padova, Italy.
"Wait, who wrote this story?" Agil asked before commanding the HUD to flip to the Jewel Books profile.
It was Roxas himself, or Anh_Iloilo2 as his JB profile name.
"No way…" Klein was shocked, "...Roxas-kun himself wrote this book?! He made the death creatures kneel and apologized to the humans?"
"That's some talent," Kirito commented.
"That kid was something else," Agil replied with a nod, producing sounds from his obsidian chains.
"I think no one in the real world, or what was left of it,' Lisbeth remarked, "ever wrote this kind of story. I remembered "Psycho-Pass" as the worst anime I had ever watched. I didn't even pass episode 5."
"Yeah," Silica said while summarizing the chapter in one long sentence, "and this story was now in its first chapter after the prologue. Chapter 1 spoke of how the antagonist Max Blacke was deposed and thrown into the fiery Abyss, and the death creatures, from the Fahrenheit 451 firemen to the Psycho-Pass Enforcers, destroyed his six obsidian tablets to seal the portal forever."
"Come on!" Kirito interjected. "Chapter 1 might be Roxas-kun's peak of his creativity! He's like the Filipino version of Virgil when he wrote his poetic farm manual!"
"Oh, you mean Virgil's Georgics?" Agil chuckled.
"Yeah, that one! And this story is basically the Georgics but after the humans were gone! Or maybe, Roxas-kun is also the Filipino version of Dante, too! He is probably mapping our way through Akihiko-san's digital hell!"
"Haha, that's funny," Asuna said with a hearty laugh. "Imagine Dante and Virgil in the afterlife would be proud of their Filipino contemporary."
"Yeah!" Klein laughed.
"Whatever that "Bird Box" film was," Sinon said, "I am preferring his story over that film."
"Agreed," others agreed, knowing that the boy their evil versions had tried, and failed, to take down. They knew about him through their evil versions.
Back in Mount Tō of this alternated world, after that hearty lunchtime, Eiji was scouring the forested area for any more mobs to grind for XPs and loot drops with a Georgics-reading Roxas trailing behind with the spirits of Anko and Sachi beside him. Eiji's HUD revealed some valuable loot drops in this area from mobs such as most standard SAO mobs and some Japanese yokais. The loot drops included healing and energy potions, sheets of papers and origami papers, some bread and fruits, and, if lucky, book, manhwa, and manga. Seeing that, Roxas's enthusiasm spiked up higher than Mount Apo and was ready to grind mobs for XPs and rare drops. "I want to get manhwas and origami papers!"
And so, the duo battles various mobs ranging from Level 20 to Level 30 for the last hour and 10 minutes. Anko boosted Roxas's strength and power and even did a little fear debuff on some mobs with their intermixed voices.
As a result, they acquired 5 mangas, 2 Lout of the Count's Family manhwa (for Roxas), and a lot of bread, fruits, and Gold Yen coins. Roxas leveled up to Level 32, while Eiji, ever the former Knight of the Blood Oath, leveled up from Level 50 to 52. "Man, that was so much fun," Roxas said while wiping the sweat off his forehead with a rectangular white hand towel.
"Yup," responded Eiji while drinking a healing potion to replenish his health bar while Roxas's health bar remained full thanks to his ghostly contact with Anko.
Although, his energy bar can't have the same benefit, so Roxas chugged an energy potion for that.
"Akihiko-san really went all with the loot-drops," Anko responded while floating above a tree stump. "I think he was trying to bribe us to stay here forever."
"Let him try," Roxas said with his logic and reason. "As we get more better stuff here, we would remember our past lives before he brought the game into this world."
Eiji nodded, before taking a look at one of the five mangas to see what title is. Unfortunately for him it was a "Psycho-Pass" one. Eiji hated that, and Roxas took a quick peek and recoiled. "Oh, no, nem for me!"
Anko read the nem as 'no' in Hungarian.
"I'm selling this manga," Eiji said while tucking the terrible dystopian manga volume into his inventory. "I don't want that."
"Yeah, at the nearest markets," Roxas responded.