The reward for the quest was a decent amount of col and a two-handed sword called «Stone Raid». It had the same enhancement potential as the «Anneal Blade», but a noticeably higher stat requirement to equip. Not only that, but it required the Weapon Skill «Two-Handed Sword» to be unlocked.

It was no wonder none of the players who knew about the quest actually wanted to do it. Not only was the material reward useless this early into the game, but by the time you managed to unlock the «Two-Handed Sword» skill, the weapon would be pretty much useless.

Since Weapon Skills were unlocked by training related skills, it took quite a bit for new Weapon Skills to be unlocked. In the case of «Two-Handed Sword», the «One-Handed Sword» skill needed to be sufficiently raised in order for the «Two-Handed Sword» skill to appear.

However, that didn’t discourage Shizuka in the slightest.

She’d spent the past two days grinding the hell out of her «One-Handed Sword» skill to the point where it had surpassed even Jin’s.

Overall, Jin’s level was still higher than ours, but since we were still sticking around Horunka village, the EXP gain for him had ultimately plateaued, and we were on the cusp of catching up.

Either way, we were supposed to leave Horunka last night, but Shizuka insisted that we stay one more day. And so, here I was sitting on a log in the middle of a forest.

Next to me was Jin who was resting an arm against the pommel of his sword. The tip of the weapon was planted into the soft dirt of the ground, and although that would’ve been a taboo in the real world, it was alright in SAO.

Weapon durability only lowered in actual combat anyway, so he was free to park his weapon anywhere he pleased.

A few meters in front of us was Shizuka. She thrust rapidly and repeatedly at the little nepenthes, making sure that all of her attacks were nothing more than glancing blows.

The monster’s HP bar was slowly being whittled down while Shizuka danced circles around it. I honestly felt a little bad for it, but Shizuka wasn’t doing this out of spite or some sort of perverse pleasure.

Weapon Skills increased in experience for every hit that connected. Associated Sword Skills that connected would grant more EXP whereas normal hits would grant less. The strength of the target was also important, but didn’t make a massive difference.

Thus, Shizuka was maximizing the skill EXP that she was gaining by repeatedly striking the little nepenthes without actually killing it. Normally, I would’ve praised her for her ingenuity in using the system to her advantage, but this was an insane strategy in a game where one mistake could spell death.

Despite that, I couldn’t help but admire Shizuka’s confidence. The way she carried herself even in this small bout was something I’d never seen before.

When we get outta this game, I’ve gotta get her into martial arts. She’d be a damn prodigy!

Part of me felt envious of her. She was executing her attacks with flawless precision, and just two days ago, she’d saved my life in an incredible fashion too. There was no doubt in my mind that she was just one of those naturally talented people.

The day before, I had asked her how she managed to parry the kobold chieftain’s attack so easily. The only answer that she gave was a shrug accompanied by “I saw you were in trouble, so I just did what I needed to do.”

It would’ve been touching if she didn’t immediately start berating me for jumping into the fight at less than 25% of my HP afterward.

“I did it!” Shizuka exclaimed as the little nepenthes that she was bullying finally exploded into prismatic shards.

“Yeah? Can we leave now? We’re already behind in levels. We should be grinding the kobolds inside the labyrinth right now.”

Blunt as he was, Jin was correct. It was important to stay at a high level in SAO so that we could survive. We were already level 10 while Jin was sitting at level 12, his EXP bar refusing to budge ever since.

“That’s not what I meant!” Shizuka puffed out her cheeks in annoyance as she opened her menu. A second later, and a large two-handed sword appeared on her back. “Tadaaa!”

I shook my head in amazement and clapped while Jin simply raised an eyebrow.

“Y’know, you’ll be switchin’ that thing out in no time. ‘Sides, couldn’t you have leveled your skill while we were en route to the labyrinth? There’s even a town close to it.”

Shizuka shook her head. “That’s not why I wanted this now. Watch this.”

She assumed a stance and unleashed a Sword Skill. It was a simple one-hit skill that was the two-handed equivalent of «Vertical». She tested out a few more Sword Skills before nodding to herself.

We thought that’d be the end of it, but Shizuka did the unexpected and threw a pebble at a nearby little nepenthes.

Maybe she just wants to test out the dama—Wait!

“Shizuka!” I cried out on instinct.

After having drawn the little nepenthes’ attention, Shizuka had immediately executed a Sword Skill in its direction once she was in reach of it. It was an overhead swing that would leave much of her body exposed to a counterattack.

Maybe she was excited about the prospect of using her newly gained weapon, but it just wasn’t something that I thought she’d do. It was reckless, especially because the enemies always attacked the moment they were in range.

And that’s exactly what the little nepenthes did.

One of its vines lashed out toward Shizuka, its knife-shaped leaves cutting through the air as it did so.

I could only watch in horror as the monster’s attack closed in on Shizuka while she remained locked in the Sword Skill. She wouldn’t be able to dodge until it completed, and even then there was the Post-Motion to worry about.

I had already picked up my weapon and was dashing toward her position. Based on the footsteps I heard beside me, Jin was doing the same.

But then, Shizuka’s expression drove me to a halt. It wasn’t worry or fear that was painted on her face, but a grin.

All of a sudden, the turquoise light that surrounded her blade flashed once and shattered in mid-swing, revealing the luminous silver steel behind it.

Following the momentum of her attack, she ducked, causing the monster’s attack to miss her by mere inches. Jin had reached her position by now, but before he could issue his attack, Shizuka issued her own.

Her weapon shot out twice in quick succession. The hilt glowed a bright green as she stood, lifting the weapon up and smashing its pommel into the monster, causing its HP to drop by a little under half.

Then, she whirled its massive blade in a wicked side cut, the blade glowing a bright blue this time as she bisected the little nepenthes and turned it into nothing more than rainbow-colored shards.

Both Jin and I stared at her completely stunned, but I managed to recover first.

“What did you just do...?”

Instead of answering my question, Shizuka bounded right past Jin and grasped my hands in her own, letting her weapon clatter to the ground as she did so.

The smile that adorned her face right now was brighter than anything I’d ever seen in my life. It filled me with an indescribable warmth.

Even though I knew that the Shizuka standing before me right now was nothing more than a high-definition 3D model rendered by whatever engine was running SAO, she was unfathomably beautiful.

Even if the world around us was nothing but data, that smile was real. It had to be.

“I did it, Akira! I’ve figured out how to cancel Sword Skills!”

It was something that I didn’t even consider possible, but here Shizuka was, defying the limits of the system yet again.

Something that should only be governed by ironclad rules and numbers was being inexplicably twisted by Shizuka’s pure talent or instinct.

I honestly didn’t know what it was. Back in the real world, whenever we played MMOs, Shizuka always took on the support roles. Healer, buffer, debuffer, tactician.

That was the kind of stuff that Shizuka played and enjoyed playing.

So why was she such a capable warrior here in SAO?

I didn’t have an answer to that question, and I doubted anyone did.

“...The strongest player...” Jin finally spoke, his eyes wide as he stared at Shizuka’s back in disbelief. “You’re definitely the strongest player in Aincrad right now...”

The compliment had thrown Shizuka off guard, but she took it in stride as we prepared to depart from Horunka village. Our next destination was a large town named Tolbana. On the first floor, it was second only to the Town of Beginnings.

More importantly, Tolbana was only thirty minutes away from the labyrinth entrance, but it’d take a while for us to get there. Since we stayed here on Shizuka’s insistence for two days, we were already behind other players who had made the journey before us.

For some reason, when I thought of players who were progressing faster than us, the image of that red-haired bitch Tenzuki popped into my mind. I don’t know how she managed to start invading my mental space now, but it was annoying, so I pushed the thought away.

“So you’re calling it «Skill Cancel», huh?”

“Mhm! Keeping it simple is the best, especially when I thought it up for you!”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean!?”

Shizuka giggled at my outburst. “I mean, I only started thinking about it because of... You know.”

“Ah.”

Her gaze had been cast to the ground, the previous traces of her mirth gone for the moment. I knew exactly what she was talking about.

The reason why I had frozen up and almost met the reaper. It was because of Post-Motion that I had been struck by the kobold chieftain’s attack and nearly died. Not only that, but Post-Motion was something that I’d constantly complained about in addition to the inability to cancel Sword Skills once they began.

Shizuka had put all this effort not to become stronger, but to create a technique that would allow me to shore up my weaknesses.

Although I was happy that she was worried about me so much, part of me felt disgusted at myself. I wanted to protect Shizuka. 

I wanted to be stronger.

“Sorry.”

That was all I could offer right now.

“T-That’s not it at all, Akira! Anyone would’ve been scared!”

“She’s right, you know?” Jin chimed in. “Even my heart skipped a beat when you were all locked up like that. Thought you’d leave my maiden heart alone after you charmed me into partying up with you and your gal pal.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up.”

The three of us exchanged a bit more banter until Jin sensed that my cloud of self-doubt had been cleared up. He turned to Shizuka.

“I’m actually interested, though. I ain’t seen anything like that before, even from the beta test. How the hell did you pull that off?”

Shizuka placed a finger on her chin as her eyes turned upward in thought. “Hm... Do you know about input buffering?”

“Yeah. What kinda gamer doesn’t?”

“Well, it’s something like that, I suppose. But also the opposite. Normally, you use input buffering for when you want to send an input before the current move is finished, allowing for frame-perfect combos in fighting games.”

Jin and I nodded along wordlessly.

“But this is the opposite. You don’t want a combination here. You want to interrupt the current Sword Skill, and that’s where input buffering comes in.”

“You’re making absolutely no sense,” I said.

“I’m not done yet, jeez!” Shizuka stuck her tongue out at me cutely, causing me to grin. “Anyway! SAO doesn’t have input buffering. It runs off the NerveGear which uses our brain’s neural input.”

“So far so good.”

“You can’t input buffer in SAO, just like you can’t input buffer in real life. I mean, you can’t send a command before your brain processes it, right? That just wouldn’t make sense. But what if you could?”

“You just said you couldn’t.”

“Nah, I think I get what she’s sayin’, Akira. Listen to the woman, will ya?”

I raised an eyebrow but promptly shut up.

“While we’re locked in a Sword Skill our body moves even without any input from us. Even if we want to move out of the Sword Skill, it won’t let us until the skill is complete and Post-Motion is concluded. But what if the system that governs all these variables is interrupted?”

“Well, that would cancel the sword skill, right?” I replied idly as I kicked a pebble in the middle of the road that we were traveling on.

Honestly, I partially understood what she was trying to say, but I couldn’t exactly understand the core concept behind it. Mathematics and science were never my strong subjects anyway. I also sucked at fighting games despite being a karateka, which was slightly embarrassing.

“That’s right,” Shizuka nodded. “So how can we achieve this? Well, it’s actually pretty simple, really. You just need to be sending commands that the system has no choice but to recognize while it’s still executing another command. These two will clash and thus cancel out.”

“Hah! You’re a genius, Hinotori!” Jin exclaimed, actually clapping his hands together in excitement. “You’re using the game’s Pre-Motion system to interrupt the Sword Skill, aren’t you!?”

My eyes widened. I was now beginning to understand what Shizuka had created. It was truly a stroke of genius.

While the period after a Sword Skill finished was called Post-Motion, the period when a Sword Skill was activated was called Pre-Motion. It was a stance or action that the system recognized as the initiation of a Sword Skill.

After a player performed an appropriate Pre-Motion, the system would then take over for the player and automatically complete the Sword Skill for them. What Shizuka had proposed and demonstrated was attempting to initiate a Sword Skill’s Pre-Motion action in the midst of another Sword Skill.

Because Pre-Motion was what allowed the system to take over your body’s actions, it had the same “priority” as a Sword Skill that was in the middle of executing since the Pre-Motion would require the ability to hijack your body’s current movements.

However, since the system still needed to resolve the Sword Skill, it would be at an impasse and therefore terminate both commands as it would be impossible to resolve them simultaneously. Thus, your Sword Skill would be canceled prematurely and you would be given control over your body once more.

However, something like this was unrealistic in theory, and downright impossible in practice.

“That’s impossible, though. Not only would you have to know every Sword Skill’s motion sequence down to the fine details, but you’d also have to be able to time the interruption perfectly. Sword Skills move your body faster than what’s normally possible, so it’s just not feasible.”

“But I did it.”

“Yeah, Akira. She did it.”

I squinted at Jin. I genuinely had no idea if he was just screwing with me or not, because ever since Shizuka managed to pull off the impossible, he had pretty much been following her like a dog.

It wasn’t so much as a romantic attachment rather than a sense of admiration and respect, so I could at least live with it, but he was starting to get really annoying.

Before I could throw any verbal jabs, Shizuka spoke once more. “The reason why I wanted to unlock the «Two-Handed Sword» skill as soon as possible was to demonstrate that it could be done. If I just started saying all of this stuff, the two of you would’ve called me crazy.”

“I’m still calling you crazy.” I grinned.

“Yeah, and you’re crazy for me.”

I immediately blushed and looked away as Jin guffawed uncontrollably. I couldn’t blame him this time.

Honestly, I was completely caught off guard. It was so totally out of character for Shizuka that there was no way I could’ve expected a comeback like that.

Luckily, I wasn’t the only one with a flushed face as I noticed two rosy dots on Shizuka’s cheeks the moment she fired that line out at me.

Shizuka cleared her throat. “A-Anyway! I tried doing this with a one-handed sword, and you’re completely right, Akira. The skills are executed way too fast for me to attempt something like this. I could only do it with the two-handed sword because the skills swung slower.”

I nodded, recovering from my embarrassment albeit not completely. “So, uh, how’s this supposed to help me then?”

“It isn’t. Not yet, at least. But you know how you said that it’d be impossible unless you knew every Sword Skill’s motion ‘down to the fine details’ and also time the interruption perfectly? Well, there’s one thing that I’m betting you know way better than the game. You could probably even do ‘em at the speed of a Sword Skill.”

“What? There’s no such—” I never finished my retort because I realized she was right.

Indeed, there was one thing that I knew far better than the game, and that was hand-to-hand combat. My knowledge was heavily influenced by karate, but I’d dabbled in a lot of other martial arts too.

The moment I got my hands on the «Martial Arts» skill, I’d probably be able to put what she’s proposing into practice.

Damn. So she’s already thought that far ahead, huh?

Once again, I was stunned by Shizuka’s intelligence and beauty as she gazed at me with her warm eyes while the sun set behind her.