As expected of someone who'd taken part in the closed beta. It wasn't that his raw strength or combat skill far surpassed Satoru's, but the knowledge and habits he'd built up over those months.
Coper knew the order of skill usage, how to handle recovery lag, and how monsters moved. He also deliberately coordinated follow-up attacks with Satoru, one of them staggering the monster while the other attacked during the opening. That sort of unspoken teamwork was probably a shared instinct among closed beta testers.
If he hadn't subconsciously known when to move in and attack, it might've looked suspicious.
Had all those years of gaming finally paid off...?
Fighting together, their grinding speed shot up. After turning one Little Nepenthes after another into scattered polygonal fragments, Satoru suddenly muttered something that sounded half like a complaint, half like he was talking to himself.
"This feels kind of weird..."
"Hm?" Coper asked without thinking.
"Ah... it's nothing. Don't worry about it. It's just been a long time since I fought like this, so I'm a little out of practice," Satoru said awkwardly.
"Yeah... you do feel a little rusty."
"I wasn't playing every single day during the closed beta either. I had all kinds of stuff going on," Satoru lied smoothly.
"Now, though, there's no time to worry about any of that." Coper worked with him to quickly finish off another one, then finally muttered in a low voice, "I really don't know what Kayaba was thinking. Coming back into this world a second time should've been something happy, but somehow all that happiness just turned into grief."
"Yeah. As long as it's not causing you trouble."
"No, no. Nothing like that."
"I see. That's good, then." Satoru nodded.
After that came another long, tedious stretch. The two of them chatted here and there while swinging their weapons, but little by little, neither of them felt like forcing conversation anymore. Even after nearly thirty more minutes, the peculiar Little Nepenthes still hadn't spawned.
"Did they change the rate or something? It's way too low now, isn't it?!" Coper said first, crossing his arms in exhaustion.
"Mmm. Our weapons have lost a lot of durability too." Satoru hesitated. "We might have to head back and regroup."
Coper looked helpless, but he knew there wasn't much choice. Just as he irritably ran a hand through his hair and was about to say they should just go back and try again later, a monster respawned some distance away.
This time, it carried an obvious red glow, and in Satoru's vision, a pale yellow ring hovered around it.
Quest Objective.
"..."
The two of them stared at the monster like men who'd snuck into a women's bathhouse. Up until now, everyone who'd come in had been another sneaking man just like them, and now, at last, a woman had appeared.
"There it is."
It was clearly a different color from the other Little Nepenthes, and most striking of all was the huge tulip-like flower growing from the top of its head.
They exchanged a look. There was no need to cheer. Each of them tightened their grip on their weapon and, like they were about to do something shady, rushed toward it as quickly and carefully as they could.
But halfway there, Coper suddenly froze for a moment.
"What is it?" Satoru asked.
"The fruit spawned too..." Coper said, sounding like he was lamenting his bad luck. "In that case, we can't just charge in carelessly."
Fruit?
Satoru didn't voice the question. He looked more closely instead.
Not far from the flower-headed Little Nepenthes, another newly spawned monster stood nearby, a different type altogether. On top of its head was a huge round bulge, just like fruit, swollen and balloon-like, so unstable it looked as if it might explode from the slightest touch.
"What do we do...?" Coper murmured.
After thinking for a moment, he made up his mind. "How about this? I'll keep the fruit occupied. You take down the flower first."
Satoru looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded.
They moved at once, splitting in different directions. Coper charged straight at the monster called the fruit. Once he entered its aggro range, he successfully pulled it away. Satoru, meanwhile, used Reaver to close the distance to the flower before that, landing a skill for full damage as he arrived.
The indicator still showed it as safe. The color wasn't especially deep red, which meant it was manageable. No need to be too timid.
The same familiar tentacle attack came at him again, and by now Satoru was used to it. He countered with Flash Triple Slash, cutting through the tentacles as they broke apart into fragments and vanished in midair. Wounded, the flower let out a shriek, but before it could react, Satoru was already in close, delivering a third strike to the maw at the top.
Falling Leaf Slash.
A single heavy cleaving attack.
A crisp slicing sound rang out. The fleshy stalk split open, spraying blue liquid, maybe sap, maybe blood. Now that his level had gone up, even this rare monster was fragile. The attack hit hard. When he saw it was barely hanging on and his other skills were still on cooldown, he simply finished it off by hacking wildly with his curved blade like a kid in a scuffle.
With one last pitiful shriek, the monster they'd waited thirty minutes for finally burst apart, its whole body scattering into polygonal shards like shattered glass. The giant tulip on its head withered in an instant, as if it had lived through spring, summer, autumn, and winter all in a single second.
Then, from the dead petals and leaves, a shining sphere the size of a fist fell free.
Satoru hurriedly caught it.
Clink.
His quest panel updated to show the quest as complete. All that was left was to go back and turn it in.
But...
Coper was still fighting the fruit.
Satoru opened his window, stored the quest item in his inventory, and glanced over.
At that exact moment, Coper looked back at him too.
What was in that glance?
Whatever it was, when he saw Satoru put the item into an inventory that belonged to him alone, the meaning in Coper's narrowed eyes deepened.
"Sorry, Coper. I'll help you farm yours later," Satoru said quietly.
"No... I should be the one apologizing, Yurnero," Coper replied.
The moment he finished speaking, he suddenly raised the sword in his right hand high overhead. Pale blue light flashed around it as he activated a sword skill, but instead of striking the monster he was fighting, he aimed at the bloated fruit above its head, the one that looked ready to burst.
Boom!!
The fruit exploded.
And the sound effect was absurdly loud. The crack of it was so violent it almost felt like the whole forest had shaken.
The fruit was destroyed, and the monster carrying it vanished at once... though of course it wasn't some easy kill mechanic. There was a price for doing that.
Satoru understood what that price was in the very next second.
Because he had the basic Search skill, he could see the monster indicators outside the area, and they were all converging here.
A massive aggro pull... huh.
Expressionless, Satoru looked at Coper.
Right. Left. Behind him. Indicators everywhere.
Ten. Twenty.
More than thirty.
"I'm sorry, but I'd still rather have yours. Though since you already put it in your inventory, I may not be able to get it now. This is your fault too. You really don't trust people, do you?"
It sounded like a parting whisper.
Coper lowered his sword and slowly retreated into the deeper woods behind him. Little by little, the marker above his head started fading until it became transparent.
Hiding...?
Satoru considered it.
Among the earliest skills players could learn, Hiding was one of them. Just as the name implied, it was a camouflage skill. It could erase a player's indicator from another player's sight, and whether it could even stop monsters from targeting you was still an open question.
"MPK..."
He named the tactic under his breath. The monsters drawn by the fruit explosion were already closing in around him, forming a loose encirclement, but standing in the middle of it, Satoru said calmly, "The old trick of luring monsters into killing another player. Then again, if there's a red-name system, the penalty would probably be pretty severe."
All this over a single quest item?
How stingy.
The swaying Little Nepenthes were close enough now to make out clearly. In the dim shadows of the forest, their writhing shapes looked like alien creatures slowly advancing, and the wet sounds of dripping slime and scraping branches overlapped from every direction, enough to send a chill down anyone's spine, especially in a death game.
"I really didn't trust you at all, so I guess both of us had our own plans in mind."
Satoru drew his curved blade and started walking in the direction where Coper had hidden himself.
"When I looked at Hiding back then, I could tell it was useful. But if a beginner-level skill can already make monsters act blind, that's a little too much. Especially when these Little Nepenthes don't even have eyes. Then again, this is the first game I've seen obsess over details like that. This game really is that messed up. There's too much to account for. Even I find it annoying."
"Considering the value of beginner skills, I ended up choosing Search instead."
His voice carried into the shadows ahead, and some of the monsters that had been charging in a frenzy very clearly began moving toward the place where Coper had concealed himself.
That meant Satoru had guessed right.
Of course, his deduction carried risks too.
But...
Staying alive meant facing risk every second.
"Your plan was good, but your escape route was way too unsafe."
Satoru swung his blade as the remaining monsters lunged at him.
He raised his hand.
"Reaver...!"
A straight orange-red charge tore through the field, hitting four monsters lined up along its path and maximizing the damage the situation allowed. Without changing expression, Satoru unleashed every skill currently available on his curved blade. He fought like someone wading through blood, and he didn't bother defending or dodging, simply letting their attacks land on him.
His kill speed was high, but his HP dropped to half almost immediately.
For someone so calm, the way he was fighting was strangely reckless.
Then, from farther away, came someone's furious shout and the sound of desperate attacks, the anger in it tinged with fear.
"This game is a contest of numbers and levels..."
Satoru sounded like he was talking to himself again. His HP had already fallen into the red. Five or six more hits and he'd be done. Even so, instead of backing off, he rushed forward with the abandon of a man fighting for his life, aiming at a Little Nepenthes with only a sliver of health left.
Behind him, the monsters pursuing him surged like a storm.
But...
The instant he finished off the one in front of him, golden light suddenly burst from his body, brilliant against the dark woods.
Every player would experience that light sooner or later.
And it was the one they'd be happiest to see.
Level up.
The moment he leveled, his HP refilled automatically, and even his maximum HP rose with it.
"Keeping your level just below the threshold, then leveling at the right moment. That kind of strategy is actually more useful in MOBA games. Like when your lane opponent thinks you don't have your ultimate, but in reality all you need is one more minion to level up and catch him completely off guard."
And now, in his eyes, the Little Nepenthes' indicators were no longer light red. They had faded to a much paler shade, almost white.
The threat they posed a moment ago and the threat they posed now were no longer the same.
He naturally didn't have time to assign the extra stat points from leveling up. Instead, he tightened his grip on his blade and charged straight into the now much smaller pack of monsters.
You don't need to apologize.
Because the malice and caution you feel toward me don't run nearly as deep as mine do.
What a shame.
Closed beta players.
In this game where reality has been mixed in, I'm the true closed beta tester.
Satoru never looked back again. In perfect condition now, he devoted himself completely to dealing with the enemies that remained.