Episode 3

“Ngh…arrg…hyaa!”

The strained cries were paired with desperate sword swipes, the blade swishing through nothingness.

The blue boar charged its attacker the next instant, nimbly evading his slashes despite its massive bulk. As I watched the beast’s flat snout throw him skyward to roll across the field, I couldn’t help laughing aloud.

“Ha-ha-ha…not like that. The important part is your very first motion, Klein.”

“Yeow…Hairy bastard.”

As the boar’s attacker—my party member, Klein—rose to his feet swearing, he shot back a pitiful reply in my direction.

“Easy for you to say, Kirito…He can really move!”

I’d only met this man just a few hours earlier, his reddish hair flared back by the bandanna tied to his forehead, his lean figure clad in simple leather armor. If we’d introduced ourselves with our real names, it would have been hard not to use polite honorifics. But these were character names we’d chosen specifically for this virtual world: He was Klein; I was Kirito. Attaching -san to each other here would’ve just been weird.

Noting that Klein’s legs were unsteady and his spill had probably dizzied him, I leaned down to the grass at my feet, scooped up a rock, and held it above my shoulder. The system recognized this motion as the initiation of a sword skill, and the stone began glowing a faint green.

The rest happened nearly automatically. My left hand flashed, and the rock traced a bright arc through the air, striking the blue boar between its eyes as it prepared to charge again. The swine uttered a squeal of rage and turned to me.

“Of course it moves; it’s not a training dummy. But as long as you initiate the motion and get the sword skill off properly, the system will ensure that it hits the target.”

“Motion…motion…”

Klein muttered the word like a spell, waving the cutlass in his right hand.

The beast, properly known as a Frenzied Boar, was only a level-1 mob, but with all the missed strikes and painful counterattacks, Klein’s HP bar was nearly half gone. Dying wasn’t a big deal, since he’d simply revive at the nearby starting town, but we’d have to trek all the way back here to the hunting grounds again. This fight could only last one more round.

I tilted my head in hesitation as I deflected the boar’s charge with my sword.

“How do I explain this…? You don’t just hold it up, swing it, and cut the enemy like one, two, three. You have to pause just enough in your first motion to feel the skill cue up, then kapow! You blast it into him…”

“Kapow, huh?” Klein held his curved sword at mid-level as his handsome features crumbled into a pathetic grimace beneath the tasteless bandanna.

He took one deep breath in and out, lowered his waist, then lifted the sword as though to cradle it on his right shoulder. This time, the system recognized the required motion and his arched blade glinted orange.

“Raah!”

He roared and, in a much smoother motion than before, bounded forward with his left foot. A satisfying shgeen! sound effect rang out as his blade carved a path the color of fire. Reaver, a single-handed scimitar skill, caught the charging boar squarely on the head, wiping out its remaining HP.